profile 5.pmd ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○5 profileprofileprofileprofileprofile editorial introduction “there is a lot of writing already published from classroom teachers across the world; many topics have been covered beautifully by teachers in the past. but we wouldn’t be encouraging you if we didn’t know that most teachers do have something to contribute through writing and publishing”.1 it is well-known that research is thought to be valuable if findings are made public. the same could be said of innovations. publishing our projects allows other researchers and teachers to try to evaluate and replicate them. thus, we deepen and refine our knowledge about the english language teaching field and the factors that influence it. this is the way professional development takes place. as mentioned above, the main purpose of publishing is sharing knowledge. researchers report what they have found and other people can examine the results and methods, and even carry out similar studies to confirm the results. if the new studies get different results, the results of both studies can be re-examined to find out the reason for the differences. errors may be found, or the influence of other variables may be better understood. in this way, knowledge is developed. this journal has as its main goal the dissemination of research and innovations carried out by teachers in the colombian context. it is a pleasure to see that this attempt is shared by professionals from different parts of the world. as you will see in this number, profile will spread issues in teachers’ professional development beyond our country. i am very glad to share with you papers sent by contributors from brazil, india, slovakia, and the ukraine as well as from our country, whose contributors have been engaged in carrying out research and innovations in wideranging contexts. this, i am sure, will give us the chance to get in touch with a wider community so that we can examine our thoughts and local teaching conditions and contrast them with what happens elsewhere. 1 hubbard, r. s. and power, b. m. (1999). living the questions. a guide for teacher researchers. york, maine: stenhouse publishers, p. 183. ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ 6 profileprofileprofileprofileprofile we begin this issue with five reports from teacher researchers. first, we have an empirical study that investigated whether the methodologies of implicit and explicit efl instruction account for the improvement of university students on a performance test for two grammar topics. then we find an experiment aimed at assessing the two most widely-used methods of correction for compositions, traditional teacher correction and peer marking, and their effect on the frequency of errors. after that, a case study shows that reforms, in classrooms where english is not the mother tongue and where age-old teaching methodologies are predominant, can be self-defeating if they are imposed without an attempt at a gradual, gentle and well-thought-out implementation. we continue with an ethnographic research project which tells us about the complex task of teaching english to children in public elementary schools in colombia. this is shown in the analysis of class methodology in terms of activities, materials, and teacher and student roles. following that, we can read a study of the reliability and validity of the english component of the 2002 entrance examination of the federal university of amazonas, in brazil. afterwards, we can get acquainted with a methodological innovation implemented in a beginner’s english class at university level in colombia, which aimed at exploring the role of reading aloud activities in the teaching of english and describing the narrative template students use when retelling a story via writing. the section concerning issues from novice teacher researchers includes a report on a case study carried out by a pre-service teacher when doing his teaching practice in a public high school in colombia. it accounts for the students’ views on english reading comprehension, their handling of strategies to develop reading competence in english, and their progress in the reading comprehension process. the last section of this number includes reflections and innovations concerning ethnography, literacy processes in an adult english class, materials design, and the hidden curriculum. a description of ethnography, the various tasks of the ethnographer, and the values and limitations of this qualitative approach are presented in the first paper. the second article of this part of our publication deals with a slovakian experience. it refers to the introduction of the clil (content and language integrated learning) -a newly invented and officially recommended method for the teaching of foreign languages in the european union. the third article gathers fundamental aspects for the elaboration of materials to support the instructional design component of our english classes. then, we can read about the framework that guided the design and implementation of a curricular unit for university students. lastly, we can find some reflections regarding the hidden curriculum and its relevance in educational processes. once more, we hope that you will find the contents of this number relevant to your teaching context and cordially invite you to consider sharing your reflections, innovations, and research experiences through this publication. melba libia cármelba libia cármelba libia cármelba libia cármelba libia cárdenas beltrándenas beltrándenas beltrándenas beltrándenas beltrán journal editor profile 3.p65 ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ 6profileprofileprofileprofileprofile introduction “ e have a profession which is informed by established practice…that practice is challenged by theory and also by the experiences of many practitioners. we must take these challenges seriously. one thing is sure. if teachers are to be able to offer their learners a range of language learning activities, if they want to find out how best to meet the needs of their students, if they are to take full advantage of a range of teaching materials and to keep abreast of new teaching opportunities, then they need to adapt to new values, new approaches to language, to learning and to students. they need to assimilate a range of new techniques and procedures. they need to be prepared to experiment and innovate.”1 educational reforms, students’ expectations, technological development, and new views on assessment are just a few of the pressures today's english language teachers are encountering. if the foreign language profession is to provide first class instruction to its students while keeping up with a growing list of demands, support for high quality teacher preparation and continuing professional development must be given high priority. english language teachers must maintain proficiency in the target language and stay up to date on current issues related to the target culture and language teaching. regardless of the skills and knowledge that foreign language teachers possess when they commence teaching, maintenance and improvement must be an ongoing process and these cannot solely depend upon policy makers or administrators’ plans. though teachers’ skills and knowledge can be fostered by external agents (advisors, colleagues, supervisors, university programmes / professors, policy makers, among others), beliefs and attitudes cannot be attained if they are not based on individuals’ willingness. beliefs and attitudes are the main internal forces that can lead to development and cannot be attained if teachers’ commitments towards their importance are not genuine. teachers interested in their growth see professional development as an on-going process and thus take part in different activities to gain 1 dave willis, in willis, j. & willis, d. (eds.). (1996). challenge and change in language teaching. oxford: mcmillan, p. vi. w ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ 7 profileprofileprofileprofileprofile experiences, to validate their expert knowledge, to keep updated, or to maintain contact with academic communities. in any case, we can see that development is attained when we engage in reflective cycles that integrate practice and knowledge. these two components inform and support each other and can then contribute to expansion of our pedagogical knowledge. as a result of this interplay, we gain deeper understandings of educational phenomena, solve problems, answer questions, confirm theories, test hypotheses or introduce innovationsinnovationsinnovationsinnovationsinnovations. given the fact that we always seek transformations in our practices, i can argue that innovative proposals should be based on theory. that theory could stand for new findings after having carried out new explorations; it can also embody the expansion of existing principles, or the confirmation of hypotheses. in any case, our theories cannot be the result of the emotion of change. in contrast, as an innovation may work for some people but not for others, they should be realized through an appropriate methodology which illustrates how those constructs operate in real situations. in view of this, the values and principles which lie behind any innovation must be made explicit. these considerations can somehow justify why we do not only value the topics or the results of innovations we hear about or come across in publications, conferences or just when we exchange views and experiences with other teachers. we need to know about the assumptions behind innovations and the processes they implied. in other words, we enquire about the “how” so that we can figure out why particular results are achieved. it is very likely that this information can serve as the basis for other teachers’ innovative initiatives. being aware of our teaching profession involves a cyclical process of stating what we know about an aspect of our teaching; questioning; trying to account for what is known and believed, that is to say, exploring what others have found out about our area of interest; reconceiving; and seeing things differently from new perspectives and/ or proposing alternative ways of doing things and thinking about them. this cyclical process can be fostered in continual teacher preparation, but its actual effect can only be observed in teachers’ decisions to make it part of their daily practices. keeping these reflections in mind, the first part of this profile journal issue starts by drawing the readers’ attention towards what constitutes teachers’ knowledge base. in order to somehow contribute to the development of our knowledge base, we include some articles concerning aspects such as the features of a communicative classroom, the factors influencing the learning of a second / foreign language, and the importance of ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ 8profileprofileprofileprofileprofile approaching the individuals encountered in the preschool classroom by applying the theory of multiple intelligences. it is expected that frameworks like the ones addressed in those papers contribute to the development of our pedagogical understanding. likewise, the second part of this edition gathers a series of papers written by teachers who participated in former in-service courses and who describe innovations they have built-in in specific teaching contexts. innovations presented here cover areas such as story-telling, the promotion of oral communication through extra-curricular activities, the development of students’ self-esteem to speak in english, the use of task-based learning to enhance classroom interaction, and the management of children’s aggressiveness when playing competitive games in the english class. by focusing on teachers’ innovations we can re-evaluate myths which most of the time associate change with policies or outsiders’ decisions and interventions. departing from the assumption that teachers are agents of change, we value the importance of presenting a series of experiences teachers wish to share with others. it is hoped that principles and conclusions they present in their papers generate the readers’ interest to explore those issues in their classrooms through further investigations or to react by writing other papers that can contribute to widening our professional knowledge. melba libia cárdenas b. journal director profile profile 1.p65 ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○45 profileprofileprofileprofileprofile homework in the learning process sandra m. gómezsandra m. gómezsandra m. gómezsandra m. gómezsandra m. gómez a problem has been observed thatcreates difficulties in the normaland productive development of the english courses. without any doubt, doing homework is very important in the learning process of a new language. doubtless it affects the student’s active participation in the classroom and his relationship to partners and teachers. because of this, a research project was done with the aim to finding out strategies to ensure students do homework and make it part of the learning process, erasing the image of homework as a punishment. intrintrintrintrintroductionoductionoductionoductionoduction when we say tasks we can refer to different kinds: daily tasks, pedagogical tasks done in the classroom and tasks as activities to reinforce learning. anyway, all tasks have something in common in some way: that is to evoke a communicative use of language and to create habits in those who do them. we can say a task is a series of processes that allows the student to develop abilities and skills in second language acquisition. it is necessary to take the process of language acquisition not as “learning that” but as “knowing how”. this way, students will not see this learning as an obligation but as a useful tool for their future performance. through tasks we shall allow students to use right rules in a suitable, real context. teachers assign homework for many reasons. homework can help students to review and practice what they have learned, get ready for the next day’s class, learn to use resources, such as libraries with their reference materials and encyclopaedias, and explore subjects more fully than time allows in the classroom. methodmethodmethodmethodmethod time limits for students to hand in their homework will be the first step to consider. the next step will be doing and preparing homework with direct participation from the teacher. in other words, what techniques must be developed by the teacher to instil motivation in students to do their homework? after a week’s observation to find out what kind of homework the teacher usually gives, it was noticed that homework was generally from the workbook and tape. that procedure, although necessary, could be supplemented giving students a chance to demonstrate their aptitudes for drawing, dramatisation, etc. and for the development of creativity. the third step is related to the kind of homework students like to do. a survey was made whose results show a certain attraction to things like greeting cards, drawings, collages, comics, etc. with a communicative or competitive purpose. likewise, they show ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ 46profileprofileprofileprofileprofile an affinity for current themes like music, cinema or singers’ biographies. likewise, it is necessary to remember that homework plays an important role as a complementary activity and is a part of an organised and researched lesson plan. homework is also a work tool in classroom and multiplies the chances for students’ practice of the second language out of the classroom. subjectssubjectssubjectssubjectssubjects the group chosen to be the subject of this project is the tenth grade. it’s made up of ten students with an average age of 16 years and with great academic differences among them. this group has been chosen because it has the greatest apathy toward lessons and no motivation to do complementary activities such as homework. prprprprprocedureocedureocedureocedureocedure in order to encourage students to do homework an informal survey was made to find out preferred activities (hobbies, music, free time, etc.). then, activities with specific goals were designed. resultsresultsresultsresultsresults with the first test, students had the opportunity to learn basic vocabular y necessar y in the classroom and were encouraged to use it. they were also encouraged to ask open questions about anything interesting to them. 50% of students did this homework. they were asked about what they thought about homework, how they felt doing it, and whether they learned any vocabulary or not. they said that it was a new way to do homework because they had always filled in the workbook and now what they did was more realistic. they had doubts about the pronunciation of words in questions. we could see trouble in word order in sentences (spanish syntax), trouble with wh-questions and spelling. this fact could explain why they don’t speak in the classroom although they know the words. they admit they know the vocabulary but they prefer not to speak. here, the teacher’s role is important because he/she can encourage the students to use the language they are learning. about 50% of the students didn’t do homework. a strong link was obser ved among the three findings: they were motivated to do the homework but 30% of them didn’t understand it very well; didn’t understand the meaning of the words and had grammar deficiencies; and 20% were completely uninterested in it. here we can see a clear relation between grammar limitations and low interest in doing the homework. the lesson plan for the classroom must be clear and organised to encourage students to do homework that is interesting and in accordance with their abilities. the second homework was done by 70% of the students. they had more interest in doing the homework. perhaps in the classroom they found clear ideas on the basic questions and were encouraged to participate in the activities. 30% of them continued in their apathy about the activity. ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○47 profileprofileprofileprofileprofile they argued they didn’t understand or they didn’t have enough time. in this homework we found syntax and grammar deficiencies and misuse of prepositions and conjunctions. all the writings were analysed and corrected. work done in and out of classroom is intended to encourage students to speak, think and communicate in the second language. we can see in students’ attitudes to homework that motivation is not only given by the teacher but some of them are predisposed to expressions like “i have never been good at english” or “it’s not important for what i want to do in the future”. the third activity was making up dialogues. students should hold short dialogues with communicative value. they must use situations and people from their own life. the success of this activity was not seen in homework but in classroom responses. students were more confident in the classroom and they participated spontaneously. some students argued that the activity was very easy and some said that it was attractive because it was easy to do. in the next two activities we can see important progress participation during the classroom activities. 90% of the students brought their homework and it was possible to revise it. conclusionconclusionconclusionconclusionconclusion we have three items to discuss and these are classroom observation (which was very important because classroom development is directly linked to practice done when students are doing homework), reactions and responses from students. they said they were bored of always doing homework from the workbook and of working at home. we can see progress in this item because of many reasons like novelty, relation to work in classroom and practice of the second language in classroom. dealing with these three items we can say that the lesson plan and homework must match, students must acquire vocabulary via their homework, and that the classroom environment must encourage students to express their opinions, likes and dislikes, hobbies, etc. this way, they can see a reason for doing homework.• profile 1.p65 ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○61 profileprofileprofileprofileprofile playing and teaching english to adults víctor manuel cuervíctor manuel cuervíctor manuel cuervíctor manuel cuervíctor manuel cuervo ballén, oscar orlando reyes,vo ballén, oscar orlando reyes,vo ballén, oscar orlando reyes,vo ballén, oscar orlando reyes,vo ballén, oscar orlando reyes, sandra patricia tsandra patricia tsandra patricia tsandra patricia tsandra patricia torororororres díaz, lucila urres díaz, lucila urres díaz, lucila urres díaz, lucila urres díaz, lucila urrea de garrea de garrea de garrea de garrea de garcéscéscéscéscés this project tried to answer thequery: can adult students (whohave not studied english before) speak english if they are given the opportunities to do it? the high school subjects in question belong to instituto san fernando ferrini. subjects study at night and they have not studied english before so they were afraid. results suggested that changing parameters such as speaking in english most of the time and including dynamic activities such as games could help adult students feel better about speaking. further research is needed to describe how to improve pronunciation and writing in adult students. the project was based on the legal framework o f m e n ( m i n i s t e r i o d e e d u c a c i ó n nacional: decreto 3011, 1997) that establishes parameters to teach adult students because they have particular characteristics such as families, children, marriages, responsibilities, etc. intrintrintrintrintroductionoductionoductionoductionoduction importance of this research. speaking english is very important and necessary nowadays because it is spoken and used in all fields of work. hence, this project intended to improve this skill in adult students. we took into account what kinds of activities they asked for in an interview (games and songs). subjects. the five subjects attend san fernando ferrini institute which is located in downtown bogotá. this institute has a formal non-intensive high school program divided into cycles open to both young and adult people. this cycle division was established by men in the decreto 3011/ 97 and has four cycles: cycle 3 which includes students from 6th and 7th grades, cycle 4 which has students from 8th and 9th grades, cycle 5 which has students from 10th grade and cycle 6 which has students from 11th grade in regular high schools. the minimum age to start this kind of program is 15 and there is no upper limit. the group belonged to third cycle, i.e. 6th and 7th grade together. they had two english hours weekly. all of the students had full-time jobs, their ages ranged from 17 to 40, one of the students was married and had children and they had different perceptions about english language as: “i do not like gringos”, “i have never spoken a word of english and i won’t do it”, “an old dog does not learn new tricks”, “ i like english but it is difficult to speak”, etc. it was necessary to break the ice at the beginning with them! aim. the aim of this research was to improve speaking in adult students giving them the opportunity to listen to and practice english from the beginning. ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ 62profileprofileprofileprofileprofile prprprprprocedureocedureocedureocedureocedure action research was carried out, the procedure of planning was drawn up during four months’ sur vey construction, then lesson plans were made, taking into account what type of activities the students asked for (games, and songs), searching for references and material to include in the report and in the classes. teachers worked in a group. then the lesson plans were applied which included activities without much use of english (mime and intonation) suggested by wingate (1993), group work suggested by golebioswska (1990) and different activities taken from harmer (1984). the teacher used games, realia, songs and different activities to explain and practice in class. data was collected and analysed to write the final report, draw the conclusions, and answer the hypothesis to apply this knowledge to further experiences as teachers. data collectiondata collectiondata collectiondata collectiondata collection data collection was obtained from students’ surveys. this information was then tabulated and the results showed that speaking was the most important skill for the students as we guessed at the beginning; games and songs were therefore chosen to use for speaking in classes. after this process, the lesson plans were designed and applied by one of the teachers while at the same time two teachers observed the classes, making field notes based on the teacher’s and students’ activities. in addition, at the end of these classes, one of the teachers interviewed the students to get their opinions about the material used, the teacher ’s performance, the kinds of activities and suggestions. another teacher video-recorded almost all the classes. the field notes and interviews were done in 10 sessions. after each class, the group of four teachers communicated what could be improved, changed and used and there were discussions about the students’ opinions. resultsresultsresultsresultsresults students learned and used english more easily and effectively than with other methods like books, self-learning, etc. through different activities, students achieved a good proficiency in speaking according to the beginners level. they were satisfied with teacher’s performance and activities. the teacher had fun while teaching and found that choice of didactic material is extremely important for motivating students. the students spoke in english; not all the time but without pressure. shyer students were afraid of talking or participating in classes. thanks to the activities and teacher’s motivation, they fought against shyness and finally they spoke a lot. the students’ perceptions changed during the process and they preferred english to their other subjects. ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○63 profileprofileprofileprofileprofile field notes showed that students were very satisfied learning english through games, songs, realia and speaking interaction among themselves and with the teacher. their opinions about classes were interesting: in spite of the fact that they had low proficiency in english, they said that all the classes were different and they learned a lot of new concepts and ideas. they thought that group work was a great strategy to learn because they could help each other, speak english and they were very happy. our research showed that adult students needed great motivation to learn english. teachers who work with this kind of student have to be professional and very humane. conclusionsconclusionsconclusionsconclusionsconclusions * adult students are concerned about their learning process because they are motivated and they really want to learn. * they learn a lot when the teacher uses different and new methodologies and fun activities that involve movement and reflection. * when they use spoken language in songs, for example, they practice real english. * group work is an excellent strategy to learn english for adult students: they are generally ver y shy and this activity gives them opportunities to practice speaking. * by the use of games they internalised numbers and they repeated them in context, not mechanically. * as long as the students had opportunities to use english they used and understood it as a communication instrument in real situations. * it is very important for further research to develop listening, reading and writing in this kind of student. referencesreferencesreferencesreferencesreferences decreto número 3011. (1997). santa fe de bogotá: ministerio de educación nacional. golebioswska, a. (1990). getting students to talk. great britain: prentice hall. harmer, j. (1984). the practice of english language teaching. london: longman. wingate, j. (1993). getting beginners to talk. great britain: prentice hall. profile 2.p65 ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○31 profileprofileprofileprofileprofile i observed that students from barranquillita public school had a great lack of motivation, low interest in learning english and they did not like to interact in english class. they presumed that they could not learn a second language and it was not useful for them because they only wanted to finish school in order to go to work. in view of this, i considered it necessary to know my students´needs, likes, learning styles, preferences and dislikes better in order to design activities that would motivate their interest to learn english. taking into account this issue, i decided to give my students the possibility to have contact and experience in the english language in order to increase their communicative competence. introductionintroductionintroductionintroductionintroduction this project was applied in barranquillita public school to seventh-grade students. i can say that these pupils are not very motivated to learn the second language because they have no opportunity to practice and apply it outside the classroom, nor any expectations for using it in their future lives. i think if we set a goal and that goal is sufficiently attractive, we will be strongly motivated to do whatever is necessary to reach that goal. my main concern in this study was how we could motivate students to learn english as a second language through classroom activities that correspond to their interests and learning styles. my first task was to take learning styles into account. with this thought, i administered and interpreted two learning-styles instruments to students: barsch learning-style questionnaire and oxford style analysis survey (barsch: 1994). the instruments classified a majority of the students in the sample as learners who were predominantly visual, hands-on, global, open learning and extroverted. they liked learning through pictures, posters, videos, games, the building of objects, moving around the room, mingling activities, group work and speculating on possibilities. at this point, as a second task, i organized the syllabus according to their likes, interests, learning styles, and social environment in order to give them more favorable conditions and opportunities for using the language. procedureprocedureprocedureprocedureprocedure based on the analysis and reflections about the results from the two instruments, i planned some lessons according to the syllabus and chose topics such as physical appearance, routines and likes. then i chose classroom activities that correspond to their interests and learning styles, using visual aids (morgan: 1992) because i concluded that students improve their english knowledge through the visual aids that help them handle language better. for the first data collection, i recorded notes in my diary after each class. i observed that students carried out the activities according to my expectations. in general, students motivating students to learn english by responding to their interests and learning styles magda moreno aguilarmagda moreno aguilarmagda moreno aguilarmagda moreno aguilarmagda moreno aguilar ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ 32profileprofileprofileprofileprofile manifested more interest in the class and less difficulties. in spite of their having some problems in oral production, some of them felt anxious and shy during the different activities programmed. going deeper into the results obtained from the diary, i could conclude that most of the students showed interest in the performance of the activities although some of them looked confused and anxious during the instructions being given by the teacher because of their problems in listening comprehension; but later on they got involved in the activities. i could observe that the majority of the students were motivated by the activities (mingling activity, guessing games and others) and with the material used in class (pictures, posters, charts, etc) that helped them interact according to the visual and tactile learning styles. at the end of the class, students looked confident so i concluded that the activities planned and developed were appropriate and made the students engage themselves in the learning process. conclusionconclusionconclusionconclusionconclusion nowadays, a teacher must be an investigator, must have a lot of expectations about his/her professional development by knowing students’ preferences, needs and learning styles better or by recognising their own preferred way to learn in order to give his/her students the best opportunities to practice the foreign language and to generate changes in the colombian educational system. in the development of the lessons, i tried to integrate all four skills in the teaching/learning process taking into consideration that the activities suit students´ learning styles, attitudes, needs, preferences, likes and dislikes. it is important for the teacher to know how students use their physical senses for study and work (if students are visual, auditory or handson), how students deal with other people (if they are extroverted or introverted), how students handle possibilities (if they are intuitive-random or concrete-sequential), how students approach tasks(if they are closure-oriented or open) and how students deal with ideas (if they are global or analytic). if the teacher identifies his/her students’ learning styles, it is easier for him/her to plan activities in order to motivate students to participate and improve their english knowledge easier and faster. this research project produced a powerful impact not only on the students of the sample, but also on the rest of the students in the other levels, who asked for the application of those activities in their classes. pppppedagogical implicationsedagogical implicationsedagogical implicationsedagogical implicationsedagogical implications i am conscious that learning is a selective, individual process directed by specific needs and motivation and that it requires an adequate educational environment that grows when teachers put into practice the following considerations: • first of all, teachers must change teaching attitudes and get really committed, involving their colleagues in this process. our students are really the centre of our research and they can obtain excellent benefits while working in each subject based on the interests and learning styles which motivate them. • teachers must know students´ needs, learning styles, preferences, likes and dislikes and based on those, plan the lessons that include more motivating and interesting activities. ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○33 profileprofileprofileprofileprofile • teachers must understand how to enable their students to become more effective learners through optimising language motivation. it means we should know how students must use the broad approaches for learning and their specific behaviours to improve their learning. • teachers must look for activating knowledge, activities like brainstorming, showing pictures, doing demonstrations, semantic mapping and imagery. for gaining knowledge, activities like reading, charts, graphs, structures and grammar points. for using the knowledge, activities like hands-on activities, worksheets, puzzles, fact games, reading materials, word searches, role-play situations and drills. and for applying knowledge, activities like drawing, cartoons, predictions, writing a story, a poem or a journal (real) and making comparisons. as i said at the beginning of this paper, we must know our students´ difficulties and try to solve them or look for different solutions to get the best results in the language learning process. taking into consideration these words, i think that it is important to work in the future with oral production, reading comprehension and the development of writing skills in order to cover very interesting topics that really help our professional development. referencesreferencesreferencesreferencesreferences barsch, j. (1994). “helping teachers and students understand learning styles”. forum. volume 32, no. 3: 12-19. morgan, b. b. (1982). look here! visual aids in language teaching. essential language teaching series. london: macmillan press. editorial 9profile: issues teach. prof. dev., vol. 24 no. 1, jan-jun, 2022. issn 1657-0790 (printed) 2256-5760 (online). bogotá, colombia. pages 9-11 https://doi.org/10.15446/profile.v24n1.100199 editorial1 in this issue, we are very pleased to share with you 15 articles. ten correspond to the section issues from teacher researchers, two to the section issues from novice teacher-researchers, and three to the section issues based on reflections and innovations. the contributions come from six countries: colombia with seven articles, iran with three articles, argentina with two articles, and mexico, spain, and canada with one article each. the topics discussed by researchers in the current issue concern english language teaching and learning, foreign language teacher education and teacher professional development, the beliefs of preservice teachers, and the perceptions and identities of students of english. the featured articles touch on language education research in different fields: english as a foreign language (efl), teacher education and the research process itself, the assessment of language competences and the training needs to do so, materials development, english as a medium of instruction, and culture as an important issue in communication. these topics occur across the different educational levels (elementary, secondary, and tertiary) with undergraduate preservice teachers, in-service teachers, and efl learners as the main actors. colombian authors abel andrés periñán-morales (institución educativa juan bautista la salle), john jairo viáfara-gonzález (universidad pedagógica y tecnológica de colombia), and josé alexander arcila-valencia (institución educativa sagrados corazones) open the issues from teacher researchers section with a case study that seeks to examine the role that specific factors exert on the evolution of beliefs within preservice english teachers during their final teaching practicum. the findings suggest that three groups of factors affect belief evolution during the practicum: participant subjectivity, contextual circumstances, and university support community. this article is followed by the first contribution from iran in the current issue. mohammad hadi mahmoodi, shiva hosseiniyar, and negin samoudi (bu-ali sina university) report a correlational study that examined the relationship among some english teachers’ characteristics and their students’ foreign language learning. the study certainly revealed the correlation concerning teachers’ characteristics for their learners’ l2 learning. the second iranian contribution comes from chabahar maritime university via the voice of researchers mansoor ganji and farzane safarzade samani, who studied the influence of demographic features, such as teaching experience, gender, and educational degree of english language teachers in their classroom performance. 1 how to cite this article (apa, 7th ed.): cárdenas, m. l., & nieto-cruz, m. c. (2022). editorial. profile: issues in teachers’ professional development, 24(1), 9–11. https://doi.org/10.15446/profile.v24n1.100199 this is an open access text distributed under the terms of the creative commons license attribution noncommercial-noderivatives 4.0 international license. consultation is possible at https://creativecommons. org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/ https://doi.org/10.15446/profile.v24n1.100199 https://doi.org/10.15446/profile.v24n1.100199 universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras cárdenas & nieto-cruz 10 the second contribution from colombia is a joint effort of two colombian universities: universidad de córdoba in montería and universidad cooperativa de colombia in bucaramanga. the former university is represented by liliana valle and danilsa lorduy-arellano and the latter by nohora porras-gonzález. these three researchers carried out a qualitative research study into elementary school teachers’ beliefs and the potential contribution of reverse mentoring to improve english language teaching to children. the results indicated that reverse mentoring plays an important role in the transformation of in-service teachers’ beliefs about teaching english to children. the third article from iran comes from the hands of ali sayyadi (university of tehran). professor sayyadi’s mixed-methods study carries out an examination of assessment in the areas of training experiences, classroom-based practices, and training needs. the study revealed that assessment has not been properly articulated in practice as the topic has mainly been discussed from a theoretical perspective. the study suggests implications for university english instructors, teacher educators, and university administrators. the third contribution from colombia comes from universidad de antioquia in medellín via the researcher isabel cristina cadavid-múnera. her article is an example of a qualitative interpretive research study that explored the social representations children have about the teaching and learning of efl in elementary schools in medellín. the children’s perceptions revealed that english is seen as a tool with which to “survive” or to “live and interact with others.” gabriela n. tavella and s. carina fernández (universidad nacional del comahue) present the first argentinian contribution to the current issue. the case study, carried out in a specific argentinian context with a specific branch of english teaching—english for specific purposes—examined teaching practices and intercultural exchanges. the identities of learners from native communities emerged as an expression of cultural enrichment in the english classroom as a result of an intercultural dialogue. the next article is a contribution from paula wood-borque (universidad de zaragoza, spain). this researcher presents how learners’ communicative competence can be enhanced through audio-visual materials such as films and tv series because they offer real-life language in context. mexican authors maría de los milagros cruz-ramos (escuela normal “juan enriquez”) and luz edith herrera-díaz (universidad veracruzana) contribute to the current issue with an article dealing with the improvement of students’ oral communicative competence via changes in the instructional design of an online english course. the quantitative quasi-experimental design resulted in making possible online assessment and in an oral improvement of students’ competence. this article is followed by the second argentinian contribution to this issue. melina porto, anahí pesci, and mariela riva (universidad nacional de la plata and conicet) submitted a paper that delves into the research process from different perspectives. the researchers assumed three different roles—informant, research assistant, and supervisor—in two research projects. the study unveils a linear developmental trajectory that illustrates the participants’ fluid, critical, complex, and personally relevant pathways. profile: issues teach. prof. dev., vol. 24 no. 1, jan-jun, 2022. issn 1657-0790 (printed) 2256-5760 (online). bogotá, colombia. pages 9-11 editorial 11 section two, issues from novice teacher-researchers, includes two articles. the first article is a contribution from colombian authors alber josué forero-mondragón and álvaro hernán quintero-polo (universidad distrital francisco josé de caldas). these authors discuss how the discourse of standard english exercises disciplinary power in five international scholarships programs. the study asserts that school is a breeding ground whose disciplinary techniques (e.g., test training) objectivize people to satisfy multinational corporations’ hiring processes. the second article is authored by kelli johana ariza-quiñones, lizzeth dayana hernández-polo, kelly julie lesmes-lesmes, and elcy lorena molina-ramírez (universidad surcolombiana). these novice researchers wanted to make sense of their teaching experiences in their first teaching practicum using collaborative autoethnography as a research method. the research experience acquired different meanings for the participants immersed in the process in previous and current times of the pandemic that has affected the world. our issue closes with the section issues based on reflections and innovations with the inclusion of three articles. wilder yesid escobar-alméciga (universidad el bosque, colombia) presents a literature review that systematically situates english-as-a-medium-of-instruction literature related to higher education within the iberian-american school contexts where spanish was the students’ first language. the author claims that there is a pressing need for framing english-as-a-medium-of-instruction at different levels in students’ learning process, communication, classroom culture, social values, and classroom climate. the second article is a literature review by claudio jaramillo-yanquepe (university of toronto). the author summarizes available research on efl education in chilean high-school settings. the review accounts for research that addresses curricular aspects devoid of socio-political and historical contexts, emphasizing primarily teachers’ teaching tensions and challenges. in the last article, julia posada-ortiz (universidad distrital francisco josé de caldas, colombia) aimed at identifying the identities present in the communities to which four efl preservice teachers belong. the findings indicate that the preservice teachers’ identity construction is mutable and not essentialized. as you can see, the topics in this issue are manifold and varied, which, we hope, will spark the interest of a wide readership. the insights from the authors featured in this issue will certainly prove relevant for many teachers who are immersed in educational contexts similar to the ones described in the selected articles. as always, our aim is to offer our readers information that may enrich their professional practice. enjoy reading this issue! melba libia cárdenas journal editor maría claudia nieto-cruz journal director profile 2.p65 ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ 12profileprofileprofileprofileprofile frequently, in our english classes, weobserve our students working on sometasks and some questions come to our minds: are we using good procedures to teach english?. are they effective ways to learn english? and in general: what can we do in order to improve english learning?. these reflections belong to a wide field of research. we concentrated on one of the skills that we consider basic to develop the overall improvement of english as a second language: speaking. after some pedagogical reflections concerning oral activities in the classroom, we chose some role-plays and dramatizations to determine their impact on students´ oral production and the effect they may have on students´ learning processes. introductionintroductionintroductionintroductionintroduction we were very interested in using effective techniques to improve our teaching and the learning process in the classroom. we were conscious that they must be in accordance with the individual characteristics of the students and their specific needs. after the analysis of this situation we began to look for the best procedures to help students develop speaking in an effective way. so, based on our previous experiences, we chose role-plays and dramatizations because they had some characteristics that we considered important to solve our main issue. we wanted to determine the effect of role-plays in students’ speaking and what kind of factors influence students’ willingness to dramatize. we were concerned with this matter because the students saw english as an isolated subject with no great relevance in their lives. they were not conscious of the importance of learning english as a means of interaction with other classmates. also, we could observe that the students seldom use english in the classroom because they did not have english classes before, so, it was difficult for them to produce a short oral message with just the few words given by the teacher. in order to develop our project, we chose relevant topics according to students´ lives and then, after each topic, they acted out roleplays and dramatizations related to the issue: greetings, family photo album, fashion show, speaking by telephone, free dramatization. in addition, we decided to use the action research method because it helped us observe the impact of role-plays and dramatizations in students on a constant basis. this way, we could make changes, look for new aids that improve these activities and, finally, we could analyze the results. through direct obser vation, questionnaires and videos we could detect students´ attitude, participation level, use of vocabulary, aids to dramatize, environment to dramatize, pronunciation, creativity, spontaneity and roles that students enjoy. field of actionfield of actionfield of actionfield of actionfield of action we developed our research project at c.e.d. san luis s.o., a school that is located in the improving speaking through role plays and dramatization diana cárdiana cárdiana cárdiana cárdiana cárdenas r. and maría deisy robayo ruizdenas r. and maría deisy robayo ruizdenas r. and maría deisy robayo ruizdenas r. and maría deisy robayo ruizdenas r. and maría deisy robayo ruiz ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○13 profileprofileprofileprofileprofile southeast of bogotá, in los libertadores neighborhood. this is a small public institution for children with low economic status. there, we find boys and girls of different ages, different family structure and different problems. for our research, we selected the third grade because of its special characteristics. it was a well-motivated course in which students liked english and enjoyed the class, although they scarcely participated orally or spoke in english. their performance was limited to some songs or rhymes. the students were seven to twelve years old. an important thing to take into account was that they did not have english before this year, so, their level was very low. conclusionsconclusionsconclusionsconclusionsconclusions through the implementation of this project we can conclude that role plays and dramatizations are good activities for developing speaking in a funny and interesting way because these permit students to use the language in communicative situations related to their lives, such as greetings, family album, clothes and weather. while we developed these activities, we could detect the progress in the students’ oral production. before we implemented these strategies, the students just sang isolated songs, said rhymes and words, and after the implementation of role-plays and dramatizations, they spoke frequently of situations in context. for instance, when they expressed their feelings about presentations or when they helped each other remember what to say. it was very gratifying to observe students´ attitude and aptitude when they developed these activities. all children participated in role-plays and dramatizations and they were very interested not only in their own presentations but in their classmates´ too. their happy faces, their enthusiasm, their applauses after each presentation, were great for us. role plays and dramatizations are activities that students enjoy a lot not only because they like to dress in different ways, make faces and imagine that they are different people, but also because they can internalize and use english expressions. (holden:1985). we could appreciate this situation when the students showed interest and enthusiasm to participate, and, in the presentations, they were coherent, although in some cases, some children did not match the questions to the right answers. it was evident when a couple of the students were acting “the family album”. a student asked, “who is he?” and her partner answered, “he is wearing my father”. as kenneth chastain (1988), we consider as other researchers that “people learn to do things by doing things…” so, we can say that students learn to speak by speaking in a real context, and role plays and dramatizations are useful tools to make it possible. it is not relevant at all that students speak fluently but that they can communicate using l2. after some dramatizations, our students recognized that in spite of certain difficulties, they could understand and be understood. as a sample we have the answer of one student: “¿comprendiste lo que se habló en la dramatización?”. “si, porque cuando los niños disian wtah llu eri sabiamos que era que tienes de ropa”. role-plays and dramatizations are effective activities to help students develop speaking; however, it is necessary to complement these by using aids such as clothing and other elements to make the situation more real. in other words, we should create an appropriate environment in which students feel secure and are able to speak naturally. for instance, in our project we noticed that the students had better performances when they acted ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ 14profileprofileprofileprofileprofile out the role play “telephone conversation in different cities” than in the previous role-plays because, in this case, they were wearing clothes according to the weather, they used telephones and the classroom was decorated with posters according to the situation. in addition, it is necessary that the teacher give students input according to the topic to provide them with enough knowledge to represent the situation in a better way using different expressions. we could notice that in this school, the teacher’s input is not only necessary, but relevant since they do not have any other help around them like television, relatives or friends who have some english knowledge. for example, when we asked them to create individual dramatizations, they could not do it and just repeated the model given by the teacher. as we developed our project with children, we could observe that it was very important for them to be noticed by the teacher. the positive attitude of the teacher and the classmates was of vital importance for children to feel that they were doing things well and that their job was recognized (harmer: 1988). students felt motivated and showed more interest in participating in dramatizations when their classmates and teachers applauded them, said “very good” and whistled at them demonstrating their approval after their presentations. students always looked at the teacher, not only for her recognition, but also for her help in remembering the forgotten words and/or lines. as teachers, we have to take into account that in order to obtain effective results in speaking through dramatizations and role plays, it is very important to support them with an appropriate environment, good and useful resources, enough teacher’s input and teacher’s recognition of children’s work. role-plays and dramatizations are activities that not only have the benefits mentioned above, but also have other implications that help the teaching process. one of these is that they promote team interaction and cooperative learning. another aspect is that they can be used with students at different levels and ages and, at the same time, can be adapted to different topics according to the students’ context. as a third aspect, we can mention that role plays and dramatizations are useful to develop and increase children’s selfesteem and confidence to speak and participate in front of their classmates, especially for shy students. we should say, that in spite of the benefits of these activities we will face some difficulties in their implementation. for example, it is possible that the children do not have enough initiative to create new situations to dramatize and use new words and expressions in english. in that case, the teacher could feel frustrated about the results. for that reason, it is necessary from the beginning of the implementation of role-plays and dramatizations, that the teacher motivate students by giving them different ideas about resources, situations and expressions that they can use while acting out. referencesreferencesreferencesreferencesreferences chastain, k. (1976). developing second language skills. theory to practice. 2nd ed. boston. houghton mifflin company. chastain, k. (1988). developing second language skills. theory and practice. 3rd ed. new york: hancourt brace. harmer, j. (1988). the practice of english language teaching. londres: longman. holden, s. (1985). second selection from modern english teacher. london: longman. profile 10.indd editorials profile 10, 2008. issn 1657-0790. bogotá, colombia. pages 5-8 5 editorial in memory of professor orlando fals-borda, who taught us the following: “it is possible to produce serious, responsible knowledge apt to accumulate through group vivencias and symmetrical information exchange…”1 as you might know, professor orlando fals-borda, promoter of participatory action research and founder of our faculty of human sciences at universidad nacional de colombia, passed away last august 12, in bogotá. hundreds of people came to our university to express their gratitude to an outstanding human being, sociologist and educator. messages and notes were also written to portray his contributions and outstanding work. his lessons and ideas have had a great impact in our university and abroad. in my particular case, action research was the inspiring force to create the profile journal, with the conviction that, as fals-borda (1997) stressed, “it is possible to produce serious, responsible knowledge apt to accumulate through group vivencias and symmetrical information exchange” (p. 108). as i have expressed in several forums, scientific publications should not only gather the works produced by experienced researchers who belong to recognized or well-known groups or institutions, but should include knowledge, teaching experiences, innovations and reflections that come from practitioners who face school realities in varied teaching settings. hence, the need to see teachers not only as consumers of theories, other people’s experiences and knowledge, but as participants in solving problems; as producers of knowledge; and as agents of change. this idea, highlighted by theoreticians and practitioners of action research, points out that we should know more than the necessities of a community. it is necessary to know its capacities in order to transform its own social reality to members’ satisfaction for, above all, it is the community who knows what is best for itself and for its members. the speech fals-borda delivered in april 1995, in which he outlined four of his own guidelines for sociology researchers, has had an impact on social 1 fals-borda, o. (1997). participatory action research in colombia: some personal feelings. chapter 5. in r. mctaggart (ed.), participatory action research: international contexts and consequences (pp. 107-112). new york, ny: state university of new york press. profile 10, 2008. issn 1657-0790. bogotá, colombia. pages 5-8 profile 10.indd 5 23/10/2008 8:46:02 cárdenas beltrán universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras6 sciences. those guidelines have also inspired our work in english language teaching (elt). in profile, they have been vital in our attempts to promote the publication of papers by different teacher-researchers with different backgrounds. those guidelines are as follows: do not monopolize your knowledge nor impose arrogantly your techniques • but respect and combine your skills with the knowledge of the researched or grassroots communities, taking them as full partners and co-researchers. that is, fill in the distance between subject and object; do not trust elitist versions of history and science which respond to dominant • interests, but be receptive to counter-narratives and try to recapture them; do not depend solely on your culture to interpret facts, but recover local values, • traits, beliefs, and arts for action by and with the research organizations; and do not impose your own ponderous scientific style for communicating results, • but diffuse and share what you have learned together with the people, in a manner that is wholly understandable and even literary and pleasant, for science should not be necessarily a mystery nor a monopoly of experts and intellectuals.2 bearing in mind these principles, we motivate the publication of purposeful life experiences, classroom research, innovations and reflections, supported by academic knowledge, along with common teachers’ wisdom and know-how, as well as works of experienced teachers and teacher-researchers. as announced in issue 9, our journal will be published twice a year. this is, then, the second number of 2008, and to face this new challenge, we continue getting the support of our advisory and editorial boards, as well as the commitment of new collaborators. this time i want to welcome professors simon borg (university of leeds, u.k.) and gerrard mugford (universidad de guadalajara, mexico), who have started supporting us in our attempts to make teacher research and innovation in elt stronger and more visible. the eleven papers contained in this issue address topics about elt, language policies and teacher education. most of them derive from research and two of them are based on reflections on innovations or daily work in given settings. we open this issue with a research report by rosalba velandia on the role of warming up activities concerning adolescent students’ involvement in a public school in bogotá and the impact these activities had on students’ attention and on the processes of the class. this project was carried out while the author took part in a professional development 2 fals-borda, o. (1995). research for social justice: some north-south convergences. plenary address at the southern sociological society meeting, atlanta, april 8, 1995. retrieved september 4, 2008, from http://commorg.wisc.edu/si/falsborda.htm profile 10.indd 6 23/10/2008 8:46:03 editorials profile 10, 2008. issn 1657-0790. bogotá, colombia. pages 5-8 7 programme led by the profile research group at universidad nacional de colombia. we continue with carmen helena guerrero’s report of a critical discourse analysis of the document issued by the colombian government on the basic standards for competences in the english language. this analysis, informed by theory on critical discourse analysis and on symbolic power, presents what it means to be bilingual in colombia, according to the said document, and adds to the discussion going on about elt policies in the country. on the basis of the new paradigm we are exposed to in our social and educational settings in which decision making becomes a key feature of individuals, autonomy is then addressed by j. aleida ariza, who writes a report on university students’ understandings of autonomy as evidenced in their learning experiences while in the efl classroom and outside of it. in the following two articles we can get acquainted with issues belonging to the in-service teacher education area. elizabeth gonzález tells us how she worked with two english teachers in order to establish the relationship between what they understand about communicative competence and what they actually do in their english classes. she points out how difficult it is to define what communicative competence is in teachers’ own words and stresses that teachers should make careful decisions to help them develop their language competence. next, sonia jerez addresses the topic of reflective teaching through the development of reflective thinking skills within the framework of a research project with two in-service teachers of english enrolled in a professional development programme. the author also informs about teachers’ attitudes towards reflective teaching, factors associated with it and some of the changes observed in their teaching practice. these articles are followed by a paper dealing with the design and implementation of content-based courses in english with non-language faculty at a university. fabio alberto arismendi, claudia patricia diaz and leidy natalia salazar report the findings of a study on the work of a group of professors from undergraduate programmes in hard sciences who participated in a multi-site case study to implement content-based courses in english. the authors also propose the implementation of a mentoring program that supports professors in the said experience. we continue with david alberto londoño’s article on error analysis which based its study on a written composition. this study, rooted in clinical elicitation (ce) research, tells us how he examined the data produced by a foreign language adult student, what kind of errors the learner made and what possible reasons can be identified to explain them. profile 10.indd 7 23/10/2008 8:46:03 cárdenas beltrán universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras8 in the issues from novice teacher researchers section, we include two articles. first, we can read javier rojas’ account of the benefits, challenges, advantages and disadvantages experienced by teachers in a public school when working collaboratively to implement a language resource center in their institution. the results show that when overcome, difficulties and challenges provided good opportunities for teachers to develop further in their professional and personal life, as well as to improve the school environment and classroom practice. then we have a study reported by francia del pilar gavilán, which describes and interprets the dominant kind of language teaching technique –controlled, semi-controlled and free– within the context of two first semester english teachers of a languages teaching program. the next paper belongs to the area of innovation in teacher education. claudia torres and rocío monguí share with us a narrative on the manner in which they fostered alliances to bridge the gap between universities and schools through the establishment of a professional development school. in the paper we can find the stages followed in the innovation, the action plans, the conditions and the obstacles the authors faced in achieving that goal. in the last article, yamid fandiño argues the importance of action research and critical reflection in the study of affective factors and language learning strategies in foreign language teaching, as well as the contribution of action research for developing teacher and learner autonomy. i hope you enjoy reading this second issue of 2008 and feel motivated to contribute toward expanding knowledge in our action field by sending your contributions for future numbers or by helping us spread the word about the work we do via our publication. finally, i want to share with all of you the indexation of profile in publindex – colciencias, in category b. with this, the national indexing system for colombian journals acknowledges our scientific and editorial quality as well as the visibility of our publication. once more, i should express my gratitude to the advisory and editorial committees and to my working team, whose contributions were vital to achieve that goal. profile will continue promoting the dissemination of research in english language teaching, including action research, which is the approach that has given us the chance to work with schoolteachers for more than 12 years. in doing so, fals-borda’s work will continue being an important point of reference. melba libia cárdenas beltrán journal editor profile 10.indd 8 23/10/2008 8:46:03 profile 3.p65 ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ 63 profileprofileprofileprofileprofile o ne of the main concerns i shared with other english teachers while taking an in-service course at the universidad nacional was that of providing opportunities for students to practice the language. despite the difficulties (large classes, limited time for language teaching, and lack of student motivation, among others), we try to generate interactions that allow them to experiment with the language. nonetheless, those practices are not enough. in this paper i describe the way an extracurricular activity was organized and carried out as a means to engage students in a meaningful activity: the english day. english is a language of international communication, and not limited to any one country, religion or culture. with the advances of technology, english in colombia is becoming an important linguistic phenomenon and is creating a need for learning. this is partly due to the fact that, in many cases, academic and job demands are higher. additionally, the emigration of many families who are leaving our country, generate the need to learn this foreign language to establish a good communication in english speaking contexts. these factors have had an impact on individuals’ cognitive, affective and sociocultural needs, among others. taking into account these needs, it is important to improve the communicative skills in our schools through activities that involve our students’ senses and cognitive skills as well as through experiences that catch the students’ attention so that they are sensitive to acquire and construct knowledge. after studying an in-service course at the universidad nacional, i have undertaken new experiences which have created in my professional life a new and fresh view of the english teaching job. all of the experiences i had there helped me improve my methodology to develop listening, reading, writing and speaking skills and to apply with my students appropriate guidelines to acquire the second language through different activities that create motivation in the teaching-learning process. another goal i was able to achieve after the inservice course was the designing of my english project. it follows the new curricular guidelines for foreign language teaching and is being applied in the environment of education in bogotá (men: 1999). after that course and in spite of the limitations and difficulties to effectively apply elt methodologies, i felt a deep need to establish conditions for students to engage in processes related to their daily experiences and opportunities for interaction which could help them to develop their thinking skills. in doing so, i thought students could develop the main competencies in the second language as well as the traditional skills. in the long promoting communication through the english day: an experience after studying an in-service course mermermermermercedes vcedes vcedes vcedes vcedes vegaegaegaegaega instituto técnico distrital juan del corral mercedesvegaruiz@hotmail.com ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ 64profileprofileprofileprofileprofile term, students could be given the chance to share experiences with other partners from different schools and who have the same profiles we have at juan del corral school. in my english classes i have tried to follow pedagogical guidelines and principles learned at the university, but in reality, i have found many obstacles in applying them in the classroom. i consider these obstacles are the same ones most of my colleagues of distrital schools face. one of these is large classes which limit the correct development of language skills because that factor limits the participation of all students. policy makers and administrators have not taken into account that english probably needs a special methodology according to the level of the grade, with groups of about 20 students. this is different to other subjects in which students have the chance to acquire knowledge and interact in their mother tongue. to overcome difficulties, i searched for options to inject my classroom with more vitality and to expand the activities developed in class into a real and significant environment. i thought that organizing the english day could be a new way to enhance students’ participation and integrating schools could generate motivation to join efforts, so that both, teachers and students worked as a team in the development of activities intended to foster communicative competencies and to make teaching and learning easier. organization of the english day toorganization of the english day toorganization of the english day toorganization of the english day toorganization of the english day to prprprprpromote communication among studentsomote communication among studentsomote communication among studentsomote communication among studentsomote communication among students and sharing with other schoolsand sharing with other schoolsand sharing with other schoolsand sharing with other schoolsand sharing with other schools the purpose of inviting different schools to my institution to celebrate the english day was to motivate students to improve their english, through communicative activities in which they could express common interests in english. this activity, i thought, could provide opportunities to show proficiency. to organize the english day, i sent invitations to some schools of my locality. they were invited to participate with role plays, songs, choreographies, and poems, among others. i started to work with my students of ninth grade motivating them to read stories such as “the man who tried to please everybody” and with 10th grade we worked on drama activities. as we know, reading literature stimulates students’ creativity as they become more adventurous in the use of the language they are learning. they begin to appreciate its richness and linguistic variety through the context of the story. after doing some comprehension exercises, i asked them to write the script and to dramatize it in groups. this was done with great responsibility and enthusiasm. while some groups of 10th graders opted for acting out, others were inclined and motivated to make the scenery and the decoration of the place. role play was an excellent activity for students. since the beginning of the process, they all expressed an interest in bettering their english skills in the classroom, in the rehearsal of the play and in its performance. throughout the rehearsal of the drama, they could express all their emotions, feelings, fears and doubts. they supported each other to keep motivation up because they were conscious of the challenge they had in front of them. students from all grades of the institution participated in other activities like poems, dance, songs and choreographies. these activities were prepared in class developing different listening, reading, writing, and oral exercises. finally, we established a compromise to participate in the english day. as can be seen, planning required extra time, especially in the last two weeks. ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ 65 profileprofileprofileprofileprofile the focus during the process of the activity was students’ participation so, i put into practice cooperative work principles (kagan: 1994). time and material keepers as well as monitors were appointed. duties were distributed among all students who carried out each task assigned. throughout the process we started to negotiate with students rules of work, time and responsibilities, and code of mutual behaviour relevant to the english day activity. the discussion made the students and me aware of individual responsibilities and roles. they encouraged classmates to be aware of passion for work. likewise, when they had difficulties, they found a way to continue the work. this environment generated confidence to correct mistakes without pressure, to follow instructions without resistance to the process, to express their own ideas, and to develop their creativity to speak in english. on the whole, the activity generated a linguistic and sociocultural environment. motivation was high and learners worked very hard. they were eager to learn and improve their english competence. the english day experience: somethe english day experience: somethe english day experience: somethe english day experience: somethe english day experience: some snapshotssnapshotssnapshotssnapshotssnapshots we had a varied and long program. each student of each school was conscious of his role, behaviour and responsibility. they showed language competencies through linguistic, interpersonal, art, musical, and drama activities. schools demonstrated creativity and proficiency in english through the different activities they brought: songs, choreographies, role-plays, dances, poems, and cheerleaders. furthermore, the environment students from our school created caught the participants’ attention (english proverbs, balloons, printed programs, presents for guests, identification cards for all the staff of the school, and the scenery for the drama activities, among others). ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ 66profileprofileprofileprofileprofile achievementsachievementsachievementsachievementsachievements all students were satisfied with the results of the activity. they were impressed by the participation and the organization of the activity, which kept the audience attentive throughout the four hours. douglas’ testimony supports this: “the process of learning a second language involves a total compromise from students. it implies necessary physical, intellectual and emotional compromise to send and receive linguistic messages successfully”. teachers also valued the activity a great deal. to confirm this, we have the opinion of gloria alvarez, english teacher from jose asunción silva high school, one of the schools invited: “this english day was very exciting, funny and interesting because i had the opportunity to watch, listen, understand and learn from all the activities that the english teachers from juan del corral technical institute carried out with their pupils. i also thank this school for the chance they gave me to participate with my students. these activities were very meaningful. one could see that teachers and students worked as a team. this work is really relevant to me because it had an impact on language learning and involved the participation of a complete school community. this english program had varied topics, within a daily context. it was easy to understand and the content was motivating and interesting. so it encouraged the audience and interlocutors to understand and enjoy every single activity”. another aspect i would like to highlight is the fact i confirmed that most schools’ needs are the same. thus, several schools could start networking through an inter-institutional english project that matched our common needs. conclusionsconclusionsconclusionsconclusionsconclusions participating in teacher development programmes gives us some tools to grow professionally and to make our teaching more successful. however, it is our task to think and act beyond –without depending entirely upon external supportso that we can lead activities in tune with the english curriculum we have at school. the english day programme we had at school demonstrated how students can benefit from activities that allow them to share with other schools and to see their progress in their communicative skills. by showing their proficiency in the language as well as by reflecting upon that of students from other schools, they may be more conscious about the importance of developing higher competencies in the english language. referencesreferencesreferencesreferencesreferences ministerio de educación nacional. (1999). lineamientos curriculares. idiomas extranjeros. bogotá: ministerio de educación nacional de colombia. kagan, s. (1994). cooperative learning. san clemente: kagan cooperative learning. profile profile 2.p65 ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○83 profileprofileprofileprofileprofile the rhythm of social change in thepresent world is so quick that it isdifficult to assess what is needed in the near future. these accelerated changes have crucial implications in education and lead to focusing our teaching on helping learners develop skills that are essential to obtaining, organizing and using information. skills that help learners control their lives and learning. the traditional approach to learning, particularly in secondary schools, has been to assume that the right ideas are in the teacher’s head and that learners need to be exposed to these ideas in order to understand the world. however, in a productive mode of learning, the learner is actively engaged in a learning situation in which he becomes involved in processing information, in investigating, in making connections and solving problems in such a way that he combines reflection with practice and experience. based on these assumptions, the authors who took part in the gtfl project (curricular guidelines for the teaching of foreign languages in the middle school system of bogotá), a project that emerged out of a bigger project located in fiun (a consultancy organization run by national university academics) proposed the inclusion of a project work approach as the central part of the curriculum. the foundations of this proposal are that the areas of learners’ experience may be related to the subjects of the school curriculum and to the various forms of human intelligence. introductionintroductionintroductionintroductionintroduction the present article explores some of the complexities involved in the curriculum of the gtfl project, an evolving project in which the authors took part as co-ordinators during the period 1999-2000. the gtfl project laid out a programme’s educational philosophy, specified purposes and contents in the form of expected performances and articulated assessment and evaluation criteria. it emerged out of a bigger project located in fiun, a project that sought to design curricular guidelines for four major subject areas in the middle school system of bogotá: natural sciences, language, mathematics, and modern languages. the fiun project was responsible for the curricular content as well as the staffing and managing of the project. the personnel –typically university academics– were subject specialists, and teacher trainers. central to this project was an interest in the development of competencies : ‘a capacity to use knowledge in a meaningful way’ (vinet: 1999). the philosophy of education that underpinned this project was based on the idea of enabling learners to obtain knowledge through active involvement, and to apply it in meaningful situations. discover y and experiential modes of education were, thus, central. in the field of foreign language teaching, this notion of competency is based on the project work as the central part of the curriculum nohra vnohra vnohra vnohra vnohra vararararargas b. and alberto abouchaar vgas b. and alberto abouchaar vgas b. and alberto abouchaar vgas b. and alberto abouchaar vgas b. and alberto abouchaar v..... foreign languages department, universidad nacional de colombia ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ 84profileprofileprofileprofileprofile communicative use of the language, i.e. using the language for social interaction, to perform different tasks, to survive in the context of the foreign language. the communicative approach emphasises the communicative use of the language in real-life like situations. some trends of the communicative approach have emphasised the use of the language in cognitively complex situations: 1. problem– solving approach: the language is used to identify problems, and come up with solutions based on evidence (murray: 1980); 2. task-based approach: the learners engage in demanding and solving complex tasks (prabhu: 1984,); 3. project work: the learners learn through active participation and co-operative work (fried-booth: 1986). according to legutke and thomas (1991), the theoretical and practical foundations of project work came from the american pragmatists dewey (1916) and kilpatrick (1918), who referred to the concept of learning by and through experience. scopescopescopescopescope although the implementation of a project work approach in the public school system would pose great challenges to the teachers, the students, the schools, and the educational system at large, the following circumstances, however, led the gtfl project team to push forward a proposal based on this type of approach: • working on projects, with its participatory and co-operative methodology, springs from a philosophy of education that promotes a democratic view of society. this emphasis is fundamental for a country that strives for peace, disarmament and development. • working on projects would exert pressure on teachers, students and the government to compromise and look for ways by means of which innovations can be brought into the educational system. project work emphasises learner autonomy, and the importance of such qualities as self-direction, self-monitoring, and a capacity for responsible social action. • in the view of the gtfl project team, project work represents an important move to innovation from practical experience, theory and research. there was interesting evidence as case studies and documented accounts both in the curriculum and the teaching of foreign languages. the following experiences were examined: 1. project zero, an educational research group at the harvard graduate school of education that promotes project work in american public schools, particularly those that ser ve disadvantaged populations; 2. bell education trust at bath, uk. various projects to teach english to foreign students (carter, 1985, 1986; lambert, 1989). 3. universidad nacional de colombia, departmento de lenguas extranjeras. different experiences to teach english to children (vargas et al: 1999). • project work would represent an effort away from weak forms of the communicative approach (sometimes represented by banal dialogues, memorisation of sentences, promotion of cultural and social stereotypes based on consumption) towards more cognitive challenging work. • whereas the quantity of textbooks and literature promoting the communicative approach has mounted in colombia, classroom obser vations and inter views continue to suggest that the structure of classroom interaction has changed very little. a stronger version of the communicative approach would advance the claim that foreign language can be an instrument of thought, a means to develop the capacities of the mind to resolve problems and come up with solutions. • the national curriculum, the national curriculum for foreign languages, and the ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○85 profileprofileprofileprofileprofile theoretical framework that gave rise to the un project, all emphasise the development of competencies and problem-solving performances as means to foster students’ personal growth in a complex and changing world. these documents constituted the legal framework from which the gtfl had to be structured. the main purposes of the gtfl were established as follows (fiun: 2000, 35): • to promote school-based knowledge that can be of benefit to the learners (groups in grades 10/11, and the age range between 16 and 18 years), the school community and society at large. • to develop autonomous, responsible, critical and creative learners. • to equip students with academic and linguistic competence to cope with academic study throughout their university courses. • to develop an awareness with regards to the culture, and the technological and scientific products associated with the foreign language. the concept of project work that constitutes the gtfl was adapted from legutke and tomas (1991). project work is a thematic and taskcentred mode of teaching and learning which results from a joint process of negotiation among teachers, students and the schools. these themes and tasks are not derived exclusively from a list of predetermined curricular items, but from life, the school, and the tasks and experiences students will encounter outside school and, particularly, in the world of work. so, students’ projects transcend the boundaries of traditional academic subject areas, and, therefore, require interdisciplinary forms of learning. assessment as a reflective and evaluative tool for learning involves students as well as teachers and creates dynamism in which students take on the ultimate responsibility for the quality of their work and learning (fiun: 2000). one source of resistance to project work may originate from the type of learning strategies promoted by these practices. teachers still focus on grammar and mnemonic forms of teaching –as opposed to holistic, open and experiential. teachers and students’ previous experiences, values, views and expectations are to a larger degree reliant on the tradition of teacher-centred approaches. the tendency of project work to assume great identity between what native speakers might need in an experiential classroom and what foreign language learners would need, poses new challenges. students and teachers in the foreign language classroom have limited linguistic tools for engaging in the type of spontaneous communication required by project work. thus, any initial specification reflecting native speakers’ needs should be reinterpreted and reconstructed in terms of the real possibilities of students and teachers in the context of bogotá. this would necessarily require many more hours of real contact between the learner and the foreign language. conclusionconclusionconclusionconclusionconclusion at an operative level, the implementation of any proposal –pilot project or major change– that integrates project work into the current practice would require some minimal provisions: 1. a policy of teacher development and a commitment on the part of the teachers to improve their present levels of communicative competence in the foreign language. 2. the gradual allocation of materials and teachers resources that allow classroom practices to integrate project work. 3. the allocation of more hours of foreign language ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ 86profileprofileprofileprofileprofile education with the view that students and teachers have more interaction with the foreign language. the social and economic cost of an innovation based on project work needs to be borne in mind but it deserves a try. referencesreferencesreferencesreferencesreferences carter, g. (ed) (1986a). proxemics, project book. bath: bell school. carter, g. (ed) (1985b). ‘the circus, project book’. bath: bell school. carter, g (ed) (1985c) the kennet and avon canal, project book. bath: bell school. carter, g. (1986b). the language of children’s comics project book. . bath: bell school. dewey, j. (1916). democracy and education. new york: macmillan. fiun (2000) lineamientos curriculares para la enseñanza de las lenguas extranjeras en la educación media del distrito capital. bogotá. abouchaar, a; n. vargas; c. rubiano. fried-booth, d. (1986). project work. oxford: oup. kilpatrick, w. (1918) ‘the project method’ teachers’ college record 19/14 lambert, v. (ed.) (1989). keynsham. project book. . bath: bell school. legutke, m and thomas, h. (1991). process and experience in the language classroom. london: longman. murray, d.m. (1980). ‘writing as a process: how writing finds its own meaning’ in t.r. donovan and w. mcclelland (eds.) eight approaches to the teaching of composition, illinois, iii: national council of teachers of english. prabhu, n.s. (1984). ‘procedural syllabuses’. in j.a.s. read (ed.) trends in language syllabus design. singapore: seameo-relc. vargas, n et al. (1999). ‘teaching english through projects’. paper presented at the national conference on skills development. bogotá: universidad javeriana. vinet, m. (1999). ‘lenguas y competencias’ in d. bogoya (ed). hacia una cultura de la evaluación para el siglo xxi. bogotá: unilibros. profile 1.p65 ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○25 profileprofileprofileprofileprofile el desarrollo de competencias: ¿la nueva opción para un aprendizaje efectivo y afectivo del inglés? gladys martínez d.gladys martínez d.gladys martínez d.gladys martínez d.gladys martínez d. responsable área de lenguas extranjeras ministerio de educación nacional intrintrintrintrintroducciónoducciónoducciónoducciónoducción un factor que afecta la adquisiciónde una lengua extranjera es sinduda el contexto social en el cual la lengua se aprende. ¿ha estudiado otra lengua o conoce a alguien que lo haya hecho? ¿cómo la aprendió? ¿qué tanto aprendió? ¿habla inglés? si preguntamos a nuestros mejores alumnos muy seguramente nos dirán que estudiaron fuera del país; otros, se limitarán a hacer alusión a técnicas específicas de enseñanza de la lengua extranjera para el aprendizaje de la gramática, pronunciación y vocabulario usualmente del inglés americano o británico que año tras año les repitieron sus maestros. muchos de ellos aún recuerdan actividades como la repetición de frases en secuencia, memorización de vocabulario y, quizás en algunos casos, hablan de las oportunidades que el maestro les dio para organizar lo aprendido en escritos o conversaciones simuladas, lo que muchas veces no resultó ser un conocimiento práctico. bajo estas condiciones, el conocimiento fue limitado y hoy es desprestigiado en parte debido a la interpretación e implementación de ciertos enfoques metodológicos. aunque a pesar de las circunstancias un conocimiento mínimo pudo ser desarrollado, muy pocos estudiantes pueden reportar un nivel de logro substancial en competencia comunicativa. las oportunidades de viajar o hacer permanencias en períodos vacacionales en el exterior arrojan frutos en el desarrollo de una segunda lengua pero, en contraste, estudiantes que han permanecido en usa o inglaterra como inmigrantes tienen diferentes historias para contar sobre su aprendizaje del inglés. al hablar con expertos docentes acerca del aprendizaje de la segunda lengua nos brindan algunas miradas que han realizado al interior de los procesos de la adquisición, o de experiencias vividas por inmigrantes o por estudiantes nativos que cursan una lengua extranjera en la escuela. ¿qué tanto podemos aprender de las diferentes experiencias de aprendizaje de una segunda lengua?. lo primero es establecer una diferencia entre estudiar una lengua extranjera por un período en el día en la escuela vs. aprender una lengua en ambiente de un inmersión social -incluyendo la ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ 26profileprofileprofileprofileprofile escueladonde el lenguaje es usado regularmente en la comunicación día a día. las diferencias entre estos dos contextos de adquisición del lenguaje impactan el proceso de aprendizaje de las lenguas. los estudiantes inmersos en un ambiente donde la nueva lengua es hablada tienen la ventaja de estar rodeados de oportunidades para escucharla y usarla. así, el resultado del aprendizaje en el aula puede ser el fortalecimiento y la expansión de la competencia interactiva hacia el resto de la comunidad. por otra parte, los estudiantes que aprenden la nueva lengua en un nuevo país pueden tener altos grados de motivación porque el desarrollo de habilidades en inglés es importante para la vida cotidiana y para la total participación en la sociedad. en una situación de inmersión la adquisición de una segunda lengua es facilitada por la exposición a la diversidad y riqueza de la lengua y por la inherente necesidad de comunicar. así mismo, en un contexto de inmersión los estudiantes son desafiados a alcanzar altos niveles de adquisición oral y escrita porque ellos necesitarán habilidades semejantes a las de los nativos con el fin de cualificar para una educación futura y tener mayores oportunidades de empleo. en contraste, el estudio del inglés como lengua extranjera tiende a ser muy limitado en cuanto a oportunidades y en cuanto a la necesidad para usar la lengua en una comunicación funcional. en el aula los estudiantes necesitan oportunidades para interactuar con los demás y negociar significado -compartir vivenciasa través de actividades como conversar, dramatizar, intercambiar escritos o compartir lecturas. además de hacer uso de los procesos cognitivos y lingüísticos naturales similares a los empleados en la adquisición de la primera lengua, los estudiantes “se impregnan” del lenguaje que escuchan o que circula alrededor de ellos y usan éste gradualmente para adquirir la nueva lengua (su vocabulario, sistema de sonidos, estructuras gramaticales y convenciones sociales de uso, entre otros aspectos). a medida que se brindan oportunidades para desar rollar pensamiento de orden superior (crítica y creatividad) y se resuelven problemas o se hacen propuestas innovadoras, los estudiantes van adquiriendo competencia en el lenguaje formal necesario para el aprendizaje en matemáticas, ciencias, literatura y otras áreas. por otra parte, los estudiantes deben aprender a “engancharse” en las transacciones sociales y cognitivas complejas a través del inglés en los aspectos orales y escritos básicamente. es de esperarse fijar como metas claras si lo que se pretende es un desarrollo de la lengua o conocimiento formal con propósitos académicos o una lengua usada para la interacción básica social con unas estrategias de aprendizaje y un ‘input’ comprensible suficiente que garantice un nivel de interacción social. el ‘input’ comprensible se refiere al lenguaje usado en formas que lo hacen claro para el alumno aún cuando la proficiencia sea limitada (krashen: 1982). el uso de la lengua requiere de un contexto o variedad de contextos donde ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○27 profileprofileprofileprofileprofile se negocie significado, de tal manera que el significado “emerja” a partir de la interacción. las interacciones proveen plataformas importantes para la adquisición de la nueva lengua – una situación funcional de comunicación, ‘input’ comprensible e interacción social alrededor de una tarea específica. en el ámbito de la competencia, es pertinente resaltar aportes de décadas anteriores. la diferenciación entre competencia y actuación ya la hacía chomsky cuando determinó que la competencia de un hablante podía diferir de su “actuación” en un momento dado. los errores en la actuación pueden ser producto de los nervios, cansancio, desinterés, rebeldía o de otros factores (por ejemplo, en una situación de entrevista pueden incidir el desconocimiento del inglés estándar vs. el inglés como lengua vernácula de la población negra ). la conceptualización de competencia ha evolucionado hasta constituirse en un sistema de saberes, saber hacer, saber ser, producto de varios aprendizajes, interiorizados por la persona y orientados hacia un tipo de situaciones escolares, personales o profesionales. la competencia tiene un carácter global: moviliza las capacidades cognitivas, afectivas y psicomotrices (cepec, francia: 1996). más específicamente, la competencia es un saber hacer o conocimiento implícito en un campo del actuar humano, una acción situada que se define en relación con determinados instrumentos mediadores. como puede inferirse, la competencia permite seleccionar los conocimientos en función de las situaciones pero esta lógica de formación, de aprendizaje obliga además a que se tengan en cuenta no sólo las operaciones mentales sino que nos lleva a “restaurar” una mirada formativa más allá de la simple producción de actuaciones o “desempeños” observables hacia desarrollos intelectuales, actitudinales y valorativos que se concretan en una competencia emocional. estos desarrollos inciden en la formación personal y social del estudiante, es decir, en su formación integral. competencia comunicativacompetencia comunicativacompetencia comunicativacompetencia comunicativacompetencia comunicativa freeman y freeman (1992) definen la competencia comunicativa como el hecho de ser capaz de usar la lengua apropiadamente en un contexto social dado. cuando nos comunicamos, usamos la lengua en un contexto social y con funciones como las de argumentar, persuadir o prometer. es a través de la interacción entre hablante y oyente (o lector y escritor) que el significado se hace claro. el oyente da al hablante retroalimentación para indicar si ha comprendido o no lo que el hablante ha expresado. la competencia comunicativa tiene dos componentes macro: la competencia organizativa y la competencia pragmática. dentro de este nuevo esquema, bachman (1990) aboga por un desarrollo integral de las competencias gramatical, textual, ilocutiva y sociolingüística deseables y alcanzables mediante estrategias de aprendizaje que lleven al estudiante a un ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ 28profileprofileprofileprofileprofile aprendizaje autónomo y consecuentemente autodirigido. ¿qué habilidades se requieren para ser¿qué habilidades se requieren para ser¿qué habilidades se requieren para ser¿qué habilidades se requieren para ser¿qué habilidades se requieren para ser competente en lengua extranjera?competente en lengua extranjera?competente en lengua extranjera?competente en lengua extranjera?competente en lengua extranjera? • habilidades para decir lo correcto en una determinada situación social. widdowson (1978) señala que el aprendizaje de una lengua involucra la adquisición de la habilidad para elaborar el discurso correcto y apropiado a un contexto. implica una comprensión de cuáles frases o partes de las frases, son apropiadas en un contexto o situación específica. al primer caso se le denominó “usage” y al segundo” use”. esta distinción entre “usage” y “use” es similar a la que se establece entre la competencia gramatical (usage) y la sociolingüística (use). los usuarios del idioma inglés necesitan las dos competencias para funcionar dentro de una nueva comunidad de lengua. los docentes, a través de la creación de ambientes sociales significativos de aprendizaje, pueden contribuir al desarrollo de tal competencia. • habilidades para expresar actitudes hacia lo que se está diciendo y para marcar identidad social. para desarrollar estas habilidades se requiere de la competencia pragmática. la adquisición del inglés es más que el aprendizaje de nuevas palabras, su pronunciación o su ordenamiento en un discurso; es una forma de “enculturación”. desde el aprendizaje de una lengua necesariamente se abarcan las perspectivas y las identidades, así como todo lo que a través de ellas se desprende: culturas y valores. • habilidades para saber cómo sostener y hacer que se avance en una conversación. esto incluye el poder iniciarla, participar en ella cuando otros hablan, hacer contribuciones a la conversación y finalizarla . por otra parte, la competencia discursiva incluye la habilidad de expresar ideas a través de diferentes géneros. este foco interactivo en el idioma posibilita el avance en el dominio de la competencia. los estudiantes tienen que hablar y dialogar en grupo y también utilizar el lenguaje escrito con una variedad de funciones para que puedan plantear y resolver problemas y dar respuestas innovadoras. en el trabajo conjunto, cooperativo se aprende, por ejemplo, a elaborar el lenguaje persuasivo de tal manera que adquiera sentido para los otros. • la competencia comunicativa incluye la competencia estratégica. los aprendices de una segunda lengua desar rollan estrategias para comunicarse con efectividad y para remediar problemas causados por las interferencias o deficiencias en la comunicación. un número significativo de estrategias y de estudios sobre las mismas se viene llevando a cabo por parte de la comunidad pedagógica e investigadora. canale y swain y rebecca oxford, entre otros, hablan del parafraseo, la circunlocución, transferencia desde la primera lengua y la evasión. estudios posteriores hablan de las estrategias directas (de memoria, cognitivas y de ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○29 profileprofileprofileprofileprofile compensación) y de las indirectas (metacognitivas, afectivas y sociales) como procedimientos específicos para alcanzar una participación auto-dirigida y activa (men: 1999). si el docente quiere contribuir al avance de la competencia estratégica de sus estudiantes, identifica las que ellos manejan o las que tienden a aplicar y trabaja unas adicionales para que avancen en el desarrollo de la proficiencia en inglés. ¿qué pr¿qué pr¿qué pr¿qué pr¿qué procesos se desarocesos se desarocesos se desarocesos se desarocesos se desarrrrrrollan en laollan en laollan en laollan en laollan en la adquisición del idioma inglés?adquisición del idioma inglés?adquisición del idioma inglés?adquisición del idioma inglés?adquisición del idioma inglés? • proceso interlingual. este abarca todos lo momentos por los que inevitablemente transcurre el aprendiz de una segunda lengua para producir la versión correcta del inglés. estudios recientes describen los momentos o etapas pero no hay desglose para todas las estructuras de la lengua. si se tiene conocimiento de cada momento y de cómo evoluciona la lengua dentro de cada uno o qué limitaciones se pueden dar por factores como la edad, el grado, el contexto, entonces tendrá lugar el diseño de un currículo pertinente para el área. • proceso intercultural. nos referimos aquí a los inevitables y afortunados encuentros interétnicos e interculturales facilitados por la promoción de la adquisición de la lengua inglesa. se busca alcanzar logros en la construcción de una cultura de paz mundial mediante el entendimiento y comprensión mediatizados por los conocimientos de las lenguas y las culturas. la interculturalidad significa culturas en constante diálogo de saberes, implica hacer interpretación, decodificación, es decir, comprensión y apropiación de lo valioso de las culturas involucradas. conclusiónconclusiónconclusiónconclusiónconclusión ser facilitador de la competencia del estudiante en una nueva lengua es mirar a la persona en un proceso de aprendizaje y de acercamiento a una nueva cultura. podemos decir que cuando adquirimos una nueva lengua también adquirimos una nueva visión del mundo y nuevas maneras de hablar sobre esa nueva visión. en este sentido, el desarrollo de los procesos interlingual e intercultural previstos en la adquisición del inglés en la escuela, es posible gracias a las competencias interactiva, lingüística-comunicativa y cultural. en esos procesos están presentes dos lenguas y dos culturas en situaciones en las que intervienen dos o más individuos en uno o más contextos de comunicación con un propósito. en este marco, la comprensión crece, se amplía y se encauza por un querer compartir de los universales de la experiencia humana. bibliografíabibliografíabibliografíabibliografíabibliografía bachman, l.f. fundamental considerations in language testing. reading m.a.: addison wesley. 1990. ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ 30profileprofileprofileprofileprofile cepec. construire la formation. parís: esf editeur. 1994 freeman, d. y freeman, y. between worlds. access to second language acquisition. portsmouth, nh: heinemann. 1992 krashen, s. principles and practices in second language acquisition. new york: prentice hall. 1982 ministerio de educación. lineamientos curriculares, idiomas extranjeros. bogotá: ministerio de educación nacional. 1999 widdowson, h.g. teaching language as communication. oxford: oxford university press. 1978.••••• profile 4 2003.p65 ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ 59 profileprofileprofileprofileprofile introductionintroductionintroductionintroductionintroduction children need activities which areexciting and stimulate their curiosity;they need to be involved in meaningful situations that emphasize interaction through the use of english as a foreign language, so that play activities are considered pedagogical alternatives to encourage children’s development of communicative competences in this language. the purpose of the investigation was to provide teachers with didactic tools that promote changes in the classroom and the building of meaningful learning. i have attempted to find a way to encourage the teaching activities in the english area, considering the possibility of including the play element in the teaching – learning process of this foreign language in order to promote the development of oral communicative competences. this research was carried out in fifth grade at a public primary school in bogotá from februar y to november 2002 with the cooperation of the homeroom teacher. i did initial observations inside the classroom in order to explore what was happening at this school. from this process, i detected a lack of teacher’s preparation in the english area, which led her to focus the lessons on repetitive exercises that mainly had to do with writing. i also detected some weaknesses in the students’ oral communicative competence. then i talked to the students about the class’ limitations and they expressed their desire to learn english differently. the children said that they learnt better when playing and that they enjoyed being involved in activities which allowed them to be more active and creative. in this process the classroom teacher also expressed her limitations in the english teaching area and her willingness to collaborate in this research. from this diagnosis, the following questions were chosen as the main focus of the study: · how can we encourage the development of oral communicative competences through play in fifth grade students in a public primary school? · what play strategies can be used to promote the development of oral communicative competences? · what is the effect of games on the development of these competences? · what constitutes a meaningful situation for children’s interaction in english as a foreign language? 1. research procedures1. research procedures1. research procedures1. research procedures1. research procedures based on the theoretical framework and the problematic situation observed inside the public primary school, i opted for collaborative research which belongs to qualitative approaches. buendía (1998) points out some relevant aspects of this type of research. the objective of the study is decided from a problematic situation which is observed within a group. its purpose is to change that situation by researcher intervention and participants’ contributions. thirty-five students from fifth grade at a public primary school participated in the investigation. data was collected through interviews, observations and field notes. the interview was applied to find out students’ perceptions, interests and expectations of the english class. then i carried out a field study. a structured observation was conducted in order to determine the strategies used by the teacher and to determine learners’ performance in relation to the development of the english communicative competence. based on the identification of the students’ lack of oral production in english, this research was directed towards the development of oral ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ 60profileprofileprofileprofileprofile communicative competences. the theoretical review led me to opt for the play component as a support strategy. in the final stage i participated as a teacher in the process of preparing and carrying out the play activities with the students inside the classroom. meanwhile, the classroom teacher continued collaborating by taking an active role in the development of these activities. 2. theoretical framework2. theoretical framework2. theoretical framework2. theoretical framework2. theoretical framework since the purpose of this research was to encourage the development of oral communicative competences through the use of play activities, it was relevant to explore elements such as competences and children’s characteristics in the second language learning process as well as the concept and the importance of play activities. bogoya (1999) defines competence as an individual ability to do something in a specific context. it occurs only through performance. communicative competence means an ability to communicate; it concerns either spoken or written language. hence, communication is seen as a dynamic process which depends on the negotiation of meaning between two or more persons who share some knowledge of the language being used. according to hymes (1972) and bachman (1990), communicative competence has to do with the functional use of language. they emphasize that communicative competence requires realistic interaction among learners using meaningful and contextualised language. these are decisive aspects when thinking about activities which will encourage the development of oral communicative competence among learners. regarding children’s characteristics in the second language learning process, several psychologists such as piaget and bruner have pointed out some important aspects. for piaget (1981) children construct their own knowledge in an active and creative way. according to vygotsky (1978) and shorrocks (1991), interaction is defined as a force that encourages language learning. bruner (1990) points out that children need a supportive environment which facilitates the learning process in order for the child himself to promote his language development. gonzález (2000) recommends learning through play. it creates suitable conditions for children to learn a foreign language. the play element is a dimension of human development. it is an essential part of life. for this reason, jiménez (1996) argues in favor of the importance of this component in the educational field. in play situations children make the foreign language their own. the play component is a key factor in the development of oral communicative competences because it contributes to the preparation and the promotion of the development of human processes. figure 1 presents some key aspects in the development of oral communicative competences in english taking into account that varied games are interesting for children and motivate them to communicate in the new code. figure 1figure 1figure 1figure 1figure 1. key aspects in the development of oral competences ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ 61 profileprofileprofileprofileprofile playing is an activity connected with daily life that facilitates teaching and contributes to improving the relationship between children and school. this component can be used in different environments as a cultural and learning experience. piaget points out that play operates as a revealing element of the mental cognitive processes. play activities are recreational exercises that give children pleasure and enjoyment as they are learning a language. playing is a way to make learning interesting and to satisfy children’s needs because this activity is within the bounds of their daily life. therefore play should be considered a strategy to encourage the use of the foreign language and the development of oral communicative competences in learners. on the other hand, it should be considered that the pedagogical conception of this research was constructivism, in which knowledge and language are seen as human construction. therefore, the basis for learning is the interaction between people and their environment through the use of language. 3. resul3. resul3. resul3. resul3. resultststststs to analyze the information obtained from my field notes and the interviews, i followed the principles of triangulation. according to arhar et al. (2001), this process includes analysis, synthesis and making assertions. the data collected was examined and two main categories regarding the implementation of play activities in the classroom were derived during the process. these relevant aspects were contrasted with what was recorded in the field notes. 3.13.13.13.13.1 g a m e s a s a c t i v a t o r s o f g a m e s a s a c t i v a t o r s o f g a m e s a s a c t i v a t o r s o f g a m e s a s a c t i v a t o r s o f g a m e s a s a c t i v a t o r s o f communicationcommunicationcommunicationcommunicationcommunication in this category games are considered pedagogical tools for effective foreign language teaching. these include a set of play exercises that takes into account children’s interests and has great relevance in their school life, as was expressed by a student: “we learn more when playing, we like it so much, it is more enjoyable than writing” (geraldine). the play element allows children to develop autonomy by using vocabulary and structures that they learned in a controlled way but more freely and spontaneously. hence, learners have the opportunity to be involved in a more authentic communicative situation: “i understand better with play activities, i don’t like when teacher gives a traditional class” (yessica). games motivate children to take an active part in language learning by getting involved in the construction of their own knowledge. for instance, in my field notes i could see that children acted out scenes of a sketch in class. they showed interest and started to imitate the voices of the characters and practice pronunciation several times. this first category, games as activators of communication, includes two important issues: overcoming fears and action. they are explained in the following paragraphs. 3.1.1 over3.1.1 over3.1.1 over3.1.1 over3.1.1 overcoming fcoming fcoming fcoming fcoming fearsearsearsearsears this aspect is defined as students’ initiative to take the risk of interacting in a foreign language in spite of making mistakes. children construct hypotheses about the foreign language based on the knowledge they already have of their mother tongue. therefore they use the language thinking their hypotheses are right. for students who are not familiar with english oral practice, it is difficult to acquire self-confidence to do it. in this study children continually expressed their fears and difficulties in pronunciation. very often ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ 62profileprofileprofileprofileprofile i could see that most of them hummed the song’s rhythm without saying a word. they were confused with the pronunciation and sang as if they were reading in spanish. learners also included spanish words when they spoke in english to get the message across. this helped them develop self-confidence. for instance, when i asked for the description of a book’s cover, some of the children said, “hay una pink lamp y un yellow elephant”. likewise, they tended to replace phrases by others when these were similar to something they had heard before. a sample of this could be seen when some of them sang the second stanza of a song called merry christmas. they said, “and a happy to you” instead of “and a happy new year”. children demonstrated their willingness to overcome their fears by participating in the development of the activities carried out in class. although they felt nervous when making presentations (sketches, worksheets, little projects, etc), most of them tried to say things in english in spite of their difficulties with pronunciation. this shows us the benefit of the play component for facing learning situations that at the beginning made them feel insecure. 3.1.23.1.23.1.23.1.23.1.2 actionactionactionactionaction this component is like a force that motivates children to express and use language for communication through body movements. this has to do with the total physical response method, in which students act as a response to teacher’s requirements. their learning process is more effective and their participation more active. for example, when i started with the song head and shoulders, children sang it and touched the parts of their bodies as they were being mentioned. they also sang a song called yellow submarine and, after repeating it several times, they sang ‘karaoke’. most of them moved their bodies according to the music and they enjoyed what they were doing. another example of such a response could be this: “today students did several actions using their hands according to the song. for example, they raised their right hands and shook their left hands” (field notes). activities that imply actions can be considered useful tools for working with children because they develop self-confidence in using the english language orally. this is enhanced through the implementation of musical and linguistic games as well as drama. 3.2 children3.2 children3.2 children3.2 children3.2 children’s commitment towar’s commitment towar’s commitment towar’s commitment towar’s commitment toward sd sd sd sd s learning opportunitieslearning opportunitieslearning opportunitieslearning opportunitieslearning opportunities language in real context contributes to the development of expressive abilities and to foster children’s involvement in linguistic interactions. this category includes three important aspects that affect learners’ commitment to engage in learning opportunities: interest, daily life and variety. 3.2.1 interest3.2.1 interest3.2.1 interest3.2.1 interest3.2.1 interest this factor is defined as the children’s desire to take an active part in the activities carried out inside the classroom, especially the ones which take into account the play component. learners are free to involve themselves voluntarily and creatively. they have the satisfaction of participating in enjoyable activities and expressing their ideas. “it is great when we participate in all the activities carried out in the classroom; for instance, talking about the family and the parts of the house” (edwin). more evidence of this could be seen when they enjoyed showing the cards with their favorite animals and saying their names in english. ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ 63 profileprofileprofileprofileprofile 3.2.2 daily life3.2.2 daily life3.2.2 daily life3.2.2 daily life3.2.2 daily life this element connects school life to the children’s experiences and environment. for instance, when we talked about professions and jobs, the children were asked about their parents’ occupations, and all of them wanted to say them in english. in another lesson, when i asked the class to work in pairs doing the exercise related to the family, all of them did it introducing to his/her partner the members of their families. these examples show that play activities provide them with a familiar context to engage in new learning experiences. hence, it is important to include children’s life aspects in this process because these increase their interest and desire to participate. 3.2.2 v3.2.2 v3.2.2 v3.2.2 v3.2.2 varietyarietyarietyarietyariety this element has to do with the selection of activities to be carried out inside the classroom so that children can experience different approaches to english learning. this also implies a break in the routine of the classroom. this led me, as a teacher, to include innovations in the lessons for, as one student said: “i like different activities for learning and enjoying” (nury). throughout this study, it could be noticed that it is necessary to take into account that children show lack of interest towards repetitive exercises based mainly on writing. they do not like activities that require looking up words in a dictionary and building sentences according to given models. children enjoy fun activities; they need to be exposed to a large variety of activities which have meaning and purpose because these provide them with opportunities to interact in the language. furthermore, varied activities help kids to increase their desire of being involved in the development of the classes. therefore, these kinds of exercises facilitate the learning process and encourage the development of children’s oral communicative competences. in relation to this, vanessa expressed, “i liked taking part in different activities that allow me to work and learn but also enjoy what i am doing”. 4. concl4. concl4. concl4. concl4. conclusionsusionsusionsusionsusions regarding the results obtained in this investigation, i can conclude that in order to encourage the development of oral communicative competences through play, it is fundamental to take into account children’s traits in the teaching-learning process. this can help the foreign language teacher to get a better view of them in such a way that he or she can choose the most effective strategies. in relation to the play strategies that can be used to promote the development of oral competences, i concluded that the implementation of strategies such as musical activities, linguistic games, and activities related to drama in the classroom encourage the development of oral communicative competences. through all of them children can perceive the foreign language as a useful instrument of expression and play. musical games include songs and rhymes that promote children’s freedom and self-confidence allowing them to express themselves using the english language. linguistic games allow students to participate actively and become more interested in the learning process. likewise, the activities related to drama encourage children to interact in english spontaneously. in the development of oral communicative competences, games have a great impact because they are ways to make learning attractive. besides, games are an important part of children’s lives and they satisfy their needs. ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ 64profileprofileprofileprofileprofile therefore games should be considered play strategies to encourage the use of the foreign language and the development of oral communicative competences. lastly, we concluded that meaningful situations for children’s interaction in english should include their experiences. authentic situations create suitable conditions to develop oral communicative competence as children understand better things that are relevant to their lives. in general terms, games are pedagogical tools that help learners to express themselves in communicative situations. 5. ped5. ped5. ped5. ped5. pedagogicagogicagogicagogicagogic al implical implical implical implical implicaaaaationstionstionstionstions in the implementation of play activities as a supporting strategy for oral communication in the foreign language classroom, it is important to take into account the following aspects: · teachers should include games as part of their teaching strategies because these provide students with situations that help them learn easily. at the same time, games encourage the development of oral and written communicative competences. · it is important that the tasks suggested by the teacher have a purpose and a strategy to involve students in games and enjoyable activities. · it is fundamental to take into account learners’ characteristics, needs, and cultural contexts in which the teaching-learning process takes place. · finally, the teacher should contextualize the language through the use of concrete activities related to the children’s lives. referencesreferencesreferencesreferencesreferences arhar, j.m., holly, m. and kasten, w.c. (2001). action research for teachers. traveling the yellow brick road. new jersey: merrill prentice hall. bachman, l.f. (1990). fundamental considerations in language testing. reading m.a. addison wesley publishing company. bogoya, d., et al. (1999). competencias y proyectos pedagógicos. bogotá: unibiblos. bruner, j. (1990). la elaboración del sentido. la construcción del mundo por el niño. buenos aires: paidós. buendía l. (1998). métodos de investigación en psicopedagogía. bogotá: editorial mcgraw-hill. gonzález de zárate, m. (2000). lúdica y lenguas extranjeras. bogotá: cooperativa editorial magisterio. hymes, d. (1972). on communicative competence. en j. b. pride and j. homes (eds.). sociolinguistics: selected readings. harmondsworth: penguin books. jiménez, carlos a. (1996). pedagogía de la creatividad y de la lúdica. bogotá: cooperativa editorial magisterio. piaget, j. (1981). la representación del mundo en el niño. madrid: morata. shorrocks, d. (1991). the development of children’s thinking and understanding. in c. brumfit. teaching english to children. london: collins. vygotsky, l. s. (1978). mind in society. the development of higher psychological processes. cambridge, ma: harvard university press. the article was received on september 10th, 2003 and accepted on october 12th , 2003 profile 3.p65 ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ 35 profileprofileprofileprofileprofile v ideo is a popular and a motivating potential medium in schools. usingvideo in the language classroom helps the language teachers in many different ways. video, for instance, brings the outside world into the language classroom, providing the class with many different topics and reasons to talk about. it can provide comprehensible input to the learners through contextualised models of language use. it also offers good opportunities to introduce native english speech into the language classroom. through this article i will try to show what the benefits of using video are and, at the end, i present an instrument to select and classify video materials. 1 . t h e b e n e f i t s o f v i d e o i n t h e1 . t h e b e n e f i t s o f v i d e o i n t h e1 . t h e b e n e f i t s o f v i d e o i n t h e1 . t h e b e n e f i t s o f v i d e o i n t h e1 . t h e b e n e f i t s o f v i d e o i n t h e language classrlanguage classrlanguage classrlanguage classrlanguage classroom oom oom oom oom the same principles and benefits we have when developing listening activities apply to video: we get familiar with different varieties and accents of spoken language; we acquire language subconsciously even when we are not requested to pay attention to its special features, and we develop awareness of pronunciation, rhythm, intonation, pitch and stress. nonetheless, video is richer than audio tape. as harmer (1998) points out, speakers can be seen, background information can be filled in visually, and paralinguistic features such as body movements, clothes people wear, and their location, help us grasp meaning. likewise, video contributes to the development of grammatical, sociolinguistic and discourse competencies, among others. in the following paragraphs i briefly describe the advantages of using video in the language. 1.1 the language system1.1 the language system1.1 the language system1.1 the language system1.1 the language system video presents language being used in all its aspects (grammar, vocabular y, communicative functions, pronunciation and intonation) (bouman: 1986, 14). in the sociolinguistic area, it should be pointed out that the immediacy of video helps to show social interaction, its visual setting and the socio-linguistic factors that are vitally important in determining which language should be used in a particular social situation (bury: 1983). 1 . 21 . 21 . 21 . 21 . 2 paralinguistic featuresparalinguistic featuresparalinguistic featuresparalinguistic featuresparalinguistic features as said before, video provides a truer representation of a communicative event (hick et al: 1982) where paralinguistic or non-verbal features of face-to-face communication such as gestures, postures, eye contact, closeness of one speaker to another, facial expression, form an integral part of the communicative process (bury: 1983). 1 . 31 . 31 . 31 . 31 . 3 listeninglisteninglisteninglisteninglistening video provides practice in listening comprehension (sheering: 1982) and shows using video in the english language classroom vicente amadovicente amadovicente amadovicente amadovicente amado antonio nariño hh. corazonistas and tabora school v_amado@yahoo.com ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ 36profileprofileprofileprofileprofile english spoken at a normal or near-normal speed, introducing a variety of different accents, speech patterns, and voice types (hall: 1986). as bury (1983: ii) points out, “if the materials have immediate visual impact, then learners will naturally want to talk about them”. 1.4 language experience1.4 language experience1.4 language experience1.4 language experience1.4 language experience video enriches the student’s experience of language and helps him to continue learning from tv and video on his own (willis: 1983). 1.5 contextualisation1.5 contextualisation1.5 contextualisation1.5 contextualisation1.5 contextualisation tomalin (1986) and hick et al. (1982) see video as a diverting and motivating tool that contextualises language better than anything else using a combination of sound and moving pictures where the language learner sees and hears the various characters using the target language in varied situations. 1.6 discourse1.6 discourse1.6 discourse1.6 discourse1.6 discourse for hick et al. (1982) video can present discourse features such as the organisation of information in a speech with hesitations, pauses, repetition, restatement, etc. 2.2.2.2.2. elelelelelt video: at video: at video: at video: at video: advantages and limitationsdvantages and limitationsdvantages and limitationsdvantages and limitationsdvantages and limitations according to lonergan (1984), the merit of elt video materials is that they are planned and produced for a languagelearning audience. using elt video material in the classroom has been proved to be of great advantage in helping the development of language abilities in students. however, it also has been shown that some limitations have to be faced when video is used as a teaching aid. lonergan also sees the fact that the vast majority of viewers watch for relaxation and entertainment and that the medium makes no demands on them. that is a limitation in the use of video as a teaching aid. on the other hand, the reciprocity of discourse is a missing element in the learner’s response to video materials as face-to-face interaction is not possible other limitations of elt video materials have been pointed out by porter and roberts (1981: 37), as follows: • intonation: • intonation: • intonation: • intonation: • intonation: intonation is marked by unusually wide and unusually frequent pitch movement, as opposed to spontaneous speech which “is jerky, has frequent pauses and overlaps, goes intermittently faster and slower, louder and softer, higher and lower” (ur: 1984, 9). • e n u n c i a t i o n : • e n u n c i a t i o n : • e n u n c i a t i o n : • e n u n c i a t i o n : • e n u n c i a t i o n : speakers tend to enunciate words with excessive precision; assimilation and elision are minimal. • structural repetition:• structural repetition:• structural repetition:• structural repetition:• structural repetition: some structures/ functions are repeated very often. • complete sentences: • complete sentences: • complete sentences: • complete sentences: • complete sentences: speakers express themselves in neat, simple, rather short, wellformed sentences. this type of speech does not give a good model of spoken language, as brown and yule (1983: 26) observe, “yet native speakers typically produce bursts of speech which are much more readily relatable to phrase -typically shorter than sentences, and only loosely strung together”. • distinct turn-taking: • distinct turn-taking: • distinct turn-taking: • distinct turn-taking: • distinct turn-taking: one speaker waits until the other has finished, a situation not common in real life where there is, in fact, some overlap between speakers including interruptions. ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ 37 profileprofileprofileprofileprofile • pace: • pace: • pace: • pace: • pace: often elt texts have a uniform and typically slow pace, whereas in normal speech the speakers adjust their speech according to the situation, their knowledge of the topic, their mood, etc. • quantity: • quantity: • quantity: • quantity: • quantity: speakers usually say the same amount of utterances. • attention signals: • attention signals: • attention signals: • attention signals: • attention signals: the hesitation (er...you know...) and attention signals (uhuh... mmm...) are missing. in natural conversation these ‘fillers’ as brown and yule (1983) call them, help the interlocutor to make it clear that he has taken up his turn or intends to continue but needs to plan what to say. • f• f• f• f• formality: ormality: ormality: ormality: ormality: there is a great deal of standardised language; slang and swearing are very rare. • limited vocabular• limited vocabular• limited vocabular• limited vocabular• limited vocabular y: y: y: y: y: vocabulary is restricted and specific whereas in natural speech there is usually a great deal of nonspecific, general vocabulary, e.g. chap, guy, fellow, etc to refer to a male person (brown and yule: ibid). • mutilation: • mutilation: • mutilation: • mutilation: • mutilation: texts are mutilated or isolated from their context (noise reduction, limited number of characters, etc). “such ‘mutilation of the message’ is, however, a natural and integral part of the authentic listening experience” (porter and roberts: 1981, 38), where the listener tries to ‘clean up’ the text of distracting noise, concentrating his attention only on the message. 3. the type of materials available3. the type of materials available3. the type of materials available3. the type of materials available3. the type of materials available the first type is those materials specially made for language students. the second type is those videos made for general educational purposes whose main aim is the subject matter. the third type includes those off-air tv programmes videotaped and used as a teaching aid. in order to ensure adequate selection of video material we can use evaluation forms like the one included in annex 1. in preparing this scheme i have relied heavily on joiner ’s model (1990). it should be pointed out that by using evaluation frameworks to select video materials, we can make sure we examine general, technical, and linguistic and paralinguistic features. 4. suggested stages for video use4. suggested stages for video use4. suggested stages for video use4. suggested stages for video use4. suggested stages for video use 4.1 pre-viewing activities4.1 pre-viewing activities4.1 pre-viewing activities4.1 pre-viewing activities4.1 pre-viewing activities during this stage students should be introduced to situations that generate expectations that will be useful in anticipating and predicting the content of the scene that will be seen. one way to introduce them to such situations is by giving them previewing questions to help them approach the text with certain schemata in mind. the purpose of this stage is to create an atmosphere to viewing and to guide the learner to watch with a purpose. 4.2 while viewing activities4.2 while viewing activities4.2 while viewing activities4.2 while viewing activities4.2 while viewing activities the purpose of these activities is to help guide students’ comprehension while viewing. the students are asked to focus their attention on specific information. this activity is followed by one or more selective viewing tasks where students are asked to search for information and record it in some way, usually by completing a grid, ticking a box, drawing, etc. (maley and moulding: 1981). this stage includes techniques such as silent viewing, listening with no picture, guessing, predicting, checking, interpreting and matching. ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ 38profileprofileprofileprofileprofile 4.3 p4.3 p4.3 p4.3 p4.3 post-viewing activitiesost-viewing activitiesost-viewing activitiesost-viewing activitiesost-viewing activities these activities have multiple purposes: to check whether the students have understood what they needed to understand and whether they have completed whatever while-viewing task has been set successfully (underwood: 1989) and to broaden discussion of the topic or language of the viewing text, and perhaps transfer things learned to another context. post-viewing activities also attempt to guide students’ discussion of what they have seen or heard in the video sequence and to provide controlled language practice related to the video. finally, these activities give the students the opportunity to consider the attitude and manner of the participants of the video sequence (underwood: 1989). 5. some techniques to exploit video5. some techniques to exploit video5. some techniques to exploit video5. some techniques to exploit video5. some techniques to exploit video materialmaterialmaterialmaterialmaterial popular techniques include silent viewing, listening with no picture, prediction, description, freeze frame, role playing, guessing, jigsaw viewing and listening. • sound only: • sound only: • sound only: • sound only: • sound only: the listening with no picture activity is the opposite technique to silent viewing. it “emphasises the importance of the contribution of the visual element to understanding and context” (lonergan: 1984, 76). • jigsaw viewing and listening: • jigsaw viewing and listening: • jigsaw viewing and listening: • jigsaw viewing and listening: • jigsaw viewing and listening: ·half of the class watches the sequence without sound while the other half listens to the sound with no picture. • predicting: • predicting: • predicting: • predicting: • predicting: the teacher shows a short scene stopping it at particular points. the students are asked to say what is going to be said or done next. • role play: • role play: • role play: • role play: • role play: as (watcyn-jones: 1983) says, the aim of role play is to give students realistic practice in performing tasks which they may encounter outside the classroom; and to allow them to use language in a much freer way. • description: • description: • description: • description: • description: half of the class sees and listens to the scene while the other half only listens. then the ones who listened describe what happened to the others. the students who saw and heard the scene tell the listeners how accurate their description is. after the discussion the scene is shown again to the entire class. • f• f• f• f• freeze frame:reeze frame:reeze frame:reeze frame:reeze frame: this technique is useful to direct students’ attention to gestures, facial expressions or movements which indicate mood or feelings. it allows a more detailed discussion of a particular action or gesture. • guessing (what are they thinking?• guessing (what are they thinking?• guessing (what are they thinking?• guessing (what are they thinking?• guessing (what are they thinking? what are they feeling?): what are they feeling?): what are they feeling?): what are they feeling?): what are they feeling?): before viewing the sequence the teacher asks the students to look for kinds of emotions speakers can reveal, or what their thoughts are. conclusionsconclusionsconclusionsconclusionsconclusions as shown above, video offers more possibilities of class activities to the language teacher than any other teaching aid. it gives the teacher the opportunity to change the routine and get more students involved in the class participating actively which could help to change the students’ attitude to english. once this goal is reached, better results can be expected. referencesreferencesreferencesreferencesreferences bouman, l. (1986). “who is afraid of video”. met. 13/4: 14-19 ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ 39 profileprofileprofileprofileprofile brown, g. yule, g. (1983). teaching the spoken language. cambridge: cambridge university press. bury, c. (1983). video english teaching guide. london: the british council & macmillan. hall, d. (1986). “the vcr in the efl classroom”. english teaching forum. xxiv/ 2: 24-27. harmer, j. (1998). how to teach english. essex: longman. henry, l. geddes, m. (1987). zoom in. oxford: oxford university press. hick, s. et al. (1982). “video for analysis and correction of learner performance”. in geddes and sturtridge (eds.) video in the language classroom. london: heinemann. joiner, e. (1990). “choosing and using videotexts”. foreign language annals. 23/ 1: 53-64. lonergan, j. (1984). video in language teaching. cambridge: cambridge university p r e s s . maley, a. and moulding, s. (1981). learning to listen. cambridge: cambridge university press. po r t e r, d . r o b e r t s , j . ( 1 9 8 1 ) . “au t h e n t i c l i s t e n i n g ac t i v i t i e s ” . e lt journal. 36/1: 37-47. sheering, s. (1982). ‘exploiting television videos with particular reference to teaching esp’. in geddes and sturtridge (eds.). video in the language classroom. london: heinemann. tomalin, b. (1986). “using video with children”. pet. june: 34-35. under wood, m. (1989). teaching listening. london: longman. ur, p. (1984). teaching listening comprehension. cambridge: cambridge university press. watcyn-jones, p. (1983). impact. london: penguin. willis, d. (1983). “the potential and limitations of video”. in mcgovern, j. (ed). video applications in english language teaching. elt documents 114. london: pergamon. profile ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ 40profileprofileprofileprofileprofile anne anne anne anne annex 1: evx 1: evx 1: evx 1: evx 1: evalalalalaluauauauauation schemetion schemetion schemetion schemetion scheme (based on joiner’s model: 1990) i. basic informai. basic informai. basic informai. basic informai. basic information tion tion tion tion title of the video course:_____________________________ title of the sequence: _______________________________ length: _____________________ format/standard: vhs __ betamax __ umatic/pal __ secam __ ntsc __ aids: what aids does it have? tick where appropriate. script ____ study guide ____ teacher’s guide ____ suggested segmentation ____ test ____ audio cassettes ____ other (specify)_______________________ ii. general characteristicsii. general characteristicsii. general characteristicsii. general characteristicsii. general characteristics tttttick the worick the worick the worick the worick the word/phrases that applyd/phrases that applyd/phrases that applyd/phrases that applyd/phrases that apply..... categorcategorcategorcategorcategor yyyyy to which of the following categories does the sequence belong to? oral communication ___ cultural information ___ other (specify) _________ p u r p o s e p u r p o s e p u r p o s e p u r p o s e p u r p o s e what is the purpose of the text?what is the purpose of the text?what is the purpose of the text?what is the purpose of the text?what is the purpose of the text? to inform ___ to instruct ___ to entertain ___ to persuade ___ to provoke ___ to stimulate ___ tttttarararararget grget grget grget grget groupoupoupoupoup is it intended for general english students? ___ is it intended for english for specific purposes students? ___ linguistic and cultural assumptions with respect to viewers/listenerslinguistic and cultural assumptions with respect to viewers/listenerslinguistic and cultural assumptions with respect to viewers/listenerslinguistic and cultural assumptions with respect to viewers/listenerslinguistic and cultural assumptions with respect to viewers/listeners is it addressed tois it addressed tois it addressed tois it addressed tois it addressed to beginners ___ intermediate ___ advance ___ native speakers ___ do the students need to be familiarized with the culture? ___ can it be used to teach culture? ___ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ 41 profileprofileprofileprofileprofile iii. technical characteristicsiii. technical characteristicsiii. technical characteristicsiii. technical characteristicsiii. technical characteristics tick the words that apply. quality of imagesquality of imagesquality of imagesquality of imagesquality of images blurred ___ too contrasted ___ too bright ___ clear ___ quality of sound trackquality of sound trackquality of sound trackquality of sound trackquality of sound track inaudible ___ noisy ___ sharp ___ editing of video editing of video editing of video editing of video editing of video non-professional ___ professional ___ iviviviviv. linguistic and p. linguistic and p. linguistic and p. linguistic and p. linguistic and paralinguistic characteristicsaralinguistic characteristicsaralinguistic characteristicsaralinguistic characteristicsaralinguistic characteristics imageimageimageimageimage tick where appropriate. societysocietysocietysocietysociety the society is depicted as: historical ___ old fashioned ___ up-to-date ___ body languagebody languagebody languagebody languagebody language are the gestures and body language spontaneous? ___ rehearsed? ___ overacted? ___ credible? ___ clothesclothesclothesclothesclothes does the type of clothes tell the viewers something about the role and social status of the characters? ___ sociocultural grsociocultural grsociocultural grsociocultural grsociocultural groupsoupsoupsoupsoups what levels of society can you identify? ___________ what age groups are presented? ___________ what professions and occupations? _______________ settingsettingsettingsettingsetting can the setting be easily identified? yes — no — movementmovementmovementmovementmovement does it help to understand the text? ___ does it act as distracter? ___ does the sequence have ‘stills’? ___ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ 42profileprofileprofileprofileprofile speakspeakspeakspeakspeakersersersersers how many speakers are on screen? one ___ two ___ more than two ___ vvvvv. sound track/script. sound track/script. sound track/script. sound track/script. sound track/script tttttick where apprick where apprick where apprick where apprick where appropriate.opriate.opriate.opriate.opriate. rate of delivery slow ___ fairly slow ___ normal ___ fast ___ very fast ___ quality of articulationquality of articulationquality of articulationquality of articulationquality of articulation incomprehensible ___ fairly comprehensible ___ clear ___ very clear ___ vvvvvoiceover (off screen) naroiceover (off screen) naroiceover (off screen) naroiceover (off screen) naroiceover (off screen) narrationrationrationrationration no use of voice over ___ very little use of voice over ___ frequent use of voice over ___ extensive use of voice over ___ density of languagedensity of languagedensity of languagedensity of languagedensity of language is the flow controlled? ___ uncontrolled? ___ does ‘turn taking’ sound natural? ___ unnatural? ___ music/sound effectsmusic/sound effectsmusic/sound effectsmusic/sound effectsmusic/sound effects do the music/sound effects help comprehension? ___ act as distracters? ___ relationship between image soundrelationship between image soundrelationship between image soundrelationship between image soundrelationship between image sound the visual support: matches the verbal commentary ___ conflicts with the verbal commentary ___ acts as a distracter ___ can stand by itself ___ is essential for the verbal commentary ___ the verbal supportthe verbal supportthe verbal supportthe verbal supportthe verbal support the message is primarily verbal? ___ the verbal support is helpful? ___ acts as a distracter ___ is essential ___ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ 43 profileprofileprofileprofileprofile the verbal and the visual support are redundant? ___ complementary? ___ vi. lvi. lvi. lvi. lvi. language contextanguage contextanguage contextanguage contextanguage context language systemlanguage systemlanguage systemlanguage systemlanguage system is the sequence useful to teach: phonology (specify)__________________________________________ grammar what structures:___________________________________ vocabulary what items:_______________________________________ which language functions can be taught through the sequence? name them:_______________________________________ what kind of english is taught? british ___ american ___ accentaccentaccentaccentaccent r.p pronunciation ___ regional ___ mixed ___ registerregisterregisterregisterregister is the language used: formal ___ informal ___ familiar ___ technical ___ other(specify) _______________ tttttypes of spokypes of spokypes of spokypes of spokypes of spoken languageen languageen languageen languageen language is the speech natural? ___ is the speech limited by the topic? ___ is it written to be orally presented ___ is it a rehearsed script? ___ syllabussyllabussyllabussyllabussyllabus does it fit into the syllabus? ___ is it useful to reach the goals? ___ motivate the students? ___ class timeclass timeclass timeclass timeclass time how much class time should it take up? ______ profile 2.p65 ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ 48profileprofileprofileprofileprofile helping students develop vocabularycompetence is one of the mainchallenges english language teachers face. this paper addresses the main aspects we should consider when planning and developing lessons in terms of vocabulary improvement. to achieve that objective, we will analyse the linguistic background and principles of vocabulary teaching and learning, as well as some ways of opening up vocabulary. introductionintroductionintroductionintroductionintroduction teacher training books and materials concerning english language teaching have promoted the teaching-learning process in terms of communicative functions. even methods and aims that are mainly concentrated on improving the four skills, general improvement, and the importance of vocabulary have not been very relevant. that is because grammar and pronunciation have been given the most emphasis. it is obvious that those areas involve words, but teachers do always have to cope with the students’ perennial question ‘how can i learn more vocabulary?’. words are essential, and the lack of them leads to feelings of insecurity, a very common syndrome among foreign or second language students. consequently, the major explanation one can give to this situation is that students are not taught enough words in class; words needed when talking to people, watching tv and reading. recognising those motives, this paper focuses on the main aspects teachers should consider when planning and developing lessons in terms of vocabulary improvement. we will start by identifying common problems in learning vocabulary. we will then focus on basic elements of vocabulary learning and teaching. after that, we will address key principles of teaching and learning vocabulary, and finally, highlight some options for handling vocabulary in the classroom. 1 . c o m m o n p r o b l e m s i n l e a r n i n g1 . c o m m o n p r o b l e m s i n l e a r n i n g1 . c o m m o n p r o b l e m s i n l e a r n i n g1 . c o m m o n p r o b l e m s i n l e a r n i n g1 . c o m m o n p r o b l e m s i n l e a r n i n g vocabularvocabularvocabularvocabularvocabular yyyyy perhaps we ought to begin by looking at some things which can go wrong when someone tries to learn vocabulary in another language. some of the symptoms of bad vocabulary learning and teaching are: • inability to retrieve incorrect vocabulary that has been taught. this is the most notorious kind of vocabulary-learning fault. • use of vocabulary inappropriate to the given situation. • use of vocabulary at the wrong level of formality. this is rather similar to the previous symptom –– it also has to do with inappropriate use of the language. we tend to use the most formal language found in textbooks in normal conversational situations, with results that sound strange to the native speaker. the reverse can also happen when a learner picks up a slang or colloquial expression and uses it inappropriately. the challenge of effective vocabulary teaching melba libia cármelba libia cármelba libia cármelba libia cármelba libia cárdenas b.denas b.denas b.denas b.denas b. foreign languages department, universidad nacional de colombia ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○49 profileprofileprofileprofileprofile • possessing the wrong kind of vocabulary for one’s needs. it is necessary to lead learners to the vocabulary related to the situations and/or areas of study they are going to be involved in. • using vocabulary in a non-idiomatic way. • using vocabulary in a meaningless way. this is frequent when students are required to report information from texts. to do it, the learners merely lift phrases from the text. it means that the grammatical and contextual clues in the passage are enough to give the framework for the answer. the effect is that the students are using the target language, but they are not learning it, since no connection has been made between the vocabulary and meaning. • incorrect use of the dictionary. some students are not aware of the most efficient way to use a dictionary; others go to the other extreme. this can kill interest and even interfere with comprehension because the reader/listener is so concerned with the individual words that he or she is less aware of the context which gives them meaning. it also results in ver y slow and inefficient reading/speaking. • use of incorrect grammatical form, spelling, pronunciation, or stress. 2 . b a s i c e l e m e n t s o f v o c a b u l a r2 . b a s i c e l e m e n t s o f v o c a b u l a r2 . b a s i c e l e m e n t s o f v o c a b u l a r2 . b a s i c e l e m e n t s o f v o c a b u l a r2 . b a s i c e l e m e n t s o f v o c a b u l a r yyyyy learning and teachinglearning and teachinglearning and teachinglearning and teachinglearning and teaching given the preceding problems in learning/ teaching vocabulary, it seems important to look at the basic elements in the study of lexis which have obvious teaching implications and which were highlighted by wallace (1984). the first element to consider is form and meaning. it is possible to ‘know’ a word without necessarily knowing how to use it in all its various forms. for example, a learner can know the use of the adjective ‘big’ before knowing its comparative and superlative forms. the second element refers to the common argument which infers that it is better to teach common words before we teach more unusual ones. however, we need to remember that frequency is not the only criterion for vocabulary selection. in certain learning situations, rather unusual words may be of the greatest use. so, words may be learned or taught because they are seen to be of special relevance to particular situations in which the learners find themselves, or might find themselves. in the following sample, the student uses vocabulary on the basis of the context of the definition he writes about castles. definition of “a castle” by luis guillermo forero c. (10 years old). used with permission. ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ 50profileprofileprofileprofileprofile the third element has to do with english for specific purposes vocabulary. this element deals with the idea of special kinds of vocabulary (words or expressions) which are relevant to special interests or fields or knowledge. there is another aspect to this, however, and it is the question of learnability. in situations where english is taught as a second language, learners have a more difficult task. the serious problem for them is probably not technical language as such, but the language framework in which the technical expressions are placed. apart form certain typical grammatical or rhetorical features, the nontechnical framework will probably consist of two kinds of language: first, basic lexical items, and secondly, other subtechnical words and expressions typical of academic discourse (that is, such as, hence, etc.) which the subject specialist may assume the student should already know. we can now refer to the structure and content element. a basic distinction is often made between structure words and content words. structure words may be considered part of the grammar of the language; they are almost ‘empty’ of meaning when considered in isolation. modal verbs, pronouns, conjunctions, prepositions, and certain adverbs (e.g. very, rather, etc.) are often put in this category. content words are nouns, verbs, adjectives and adverbs formed from adjectives (e.g. beautifully). regarding meaning, we can say that most common words have a wide denotative range; technical words tend to have a narrower denotative range, i.e. they usually have one very specific meaning, and this is another thing which makes them easier to learn. some words, of course, have a common meaning and also a technical meaning. when talking about connotation, we should point out that certain words are chosen because they convey some kind of feeling or judgement. rather similar to the connotations of a word are its associations, but whereas connotations relate to the conventions of the language, associations relate more to the individual or the culture. clearly there is not much to be done about the private associations words have for individuals, but the teacher may well feel that associations which relate to the culture of the target language, and certainly the connotations of a particular word, are part of the ‘meaning’ which has to be learned. wallace (1984: 20) explains the element connected to relationships between words, as follows: “the meanings of certain words are so closely related that they are often confused by the learners. this is specially true of words with reciprocal meanings such as words like ‘borrow/ lend, bring/take’. another teaching problem arises with words which are in the same rough area of meaning or semantic field. one explanation is the words which can be used instead of the noun ‘horse’, such as ‘colt’ (‘male horse or pony under the age of 4’), etc. the problem is not, of course, that such distinctions exist, but that they may not exist in the mother tongue of the learner; or, if they exist, the distinctions may be made in a different way”. another element of vocabulary learning and teaching is concerned with productive and receptive vocabulary. everyone who learns a foreign language is usually able to recognise many more words than he can produce. this involves pronunciation, spelling, appropriate grammatical form, and so on. it may therefore be important for a teacher to decide which words he wishes a student to produce correctly, and which words he wishes him merely to recognise. this pedagogical element of vocabulary learning and teaching is exemplified in the sample below. it can be specifically noted in the teacher’s feedback. ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○51 profileprofileprofileprofileprofile pronunciation, spelling and stress are important aspects of a word. stress determines intelligibility. as we know, pronunciation and spelling are related only partly in english because the english sound-symbol relationship causes many problems. this is one of the reasons why learners are puzzled by words which have very different forms but are pronounced identically, and also by words which are very similar in form but are pronounced differently. finally, we should refer to the cognates and ‘false friends’ element. speaking a language which has a kind of relationship in certain areas with english (this is the case of ‘cognates’) is an advantage. nonetheless, words often have very similar forms in related languages, but totally different meanings (this is the case of ‘false friends’). for us spanish speakers, ‘important’, ‘secretary’, and ‘doctor’ are samples of cognates, whereas ‘exit’, ‘terrific’, and ‘embarrassed’ are examples of false friends. extracts taken from the composition “the most stressing (sic) period of my life” by luis guillermo forero c. (16 years old). used with permission. ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ 52profileprofileprofileprofileprofile 3. principles of teaching and learning3. principles of teaching and learning3. principles of teaching and learning3. principles of teaching and learning3. principles of teaching and learning vocabularvocabularvocabularvocabularvocabular yyyyy before pointing out the principles, we should first clarify the implications that ‘knowing’ a word has. to ‘know’ a word in a target language as well as a native speaker involves the ability to: recognise it in its spoken form; recall it at will; relate it to an appropriate object or concept; use it in the appropriate grammatical form; in speech, pronounce it in a recognisable way; in writing, spell it correctly; use it with the words it correctly goes with; use it at the appropriate level of formality; and be aware of its connotations and associations. teaching and learning vocabulary should be based on several principles: clear aims, need, situation presentation, quantity, frequent exposure and repetition, meaningful and contextualised presentation and inferring procedures in learning. quantity will depend on different factors varying from class to class and learner to learner. regarding exposure and repetition, it should be said that if the word has to be part of the learners’ productive vocabulary, they must be given the opportunity to use it as often as is necessary for them to recall it at will. additionally, meaningful presentation requires that the word is presented in such a way that its denotation or reference is perfectly clear, which is not always an easy task. once we have the principles established above, it is important to see how they relate to the learning of vocabulary in the mother language and the second language. first, in the mother tongue, ‘knowing the words’ is a matter of survival, or at least of social competence. secondly, the mother tongue learner mostly controls his own rate of learning. therefore, he learns what he needs as he needs it. thirdly, the mother-tongue learner is exposed to an enormous quantity of his own language and has tremendous scope for repetition of what he learns. fourthly, the language is nearly always encountered in an appropriate situation and in the appropriate context. lastly, since words are learnt as they arise out of a felt need in a particular situation, they usually have a clear denotation. of course, there is no guarantee that the vocabulary of the second language can be dealt with in the same way as the mother tongue vocabulary. circumstances are very different. however, it is interesting to note that many of the principles and basic elements which have been pointed out before apply equally well to both languages. 4. v4. v4. v4. v4. vocabularocabularocabularocabularocabulary in the classry in the classry in the classry in the classry in the classroomoomoomoomoom at what time in discussing a passage with the class should we start teaching individual vocabulary items? how should we choose items to teach? what are the main methods we should use to teach them? besides the bad symptoms, the principles and the basic elements of vocabulary learning and teaching, as teachers we are supposed to plan our work in terms of answering those questions. eliciting the meanings of unknown words is a time consuming process, and also, not all words can be guessed from context; consequently, as teachers, we will have to choose carefully those words we think can lead the students to an understanding, and we will also have to decide how we are going to lead the students to that kind of understanding. we will also have to be careful about the kind of habits we may promote in our students. if not, we will encourage the tendency to concentrate on individual words rather than overall meanings. this has to do with the role of the teacher as the main supplier and organiser of english language input. as noted by cameron (1994), we need to ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○53 profileprofileprofileprofileprofile be aware of what is known about learning and the organisation of ideas in order to best present our learners with new language and enable them to learn it. another common situation is that perhaps many teachers give up too easily and give the meanings to students. probably more time ought to be spent on getting students to make ‘educated guesses’ at word meanings. and this is something that needs to be practised at all stages of the class, but not with the easiest alternative of translation. that is because the result of this overuse leads to another problem: the target language can be very little emphasised in the foreign language lessons. the solution, we know, is not the other extreme. on the whole, however, translation of vocabulary into the mother tongue should be kept under control, and it should not interfere with the extra-exposure to the target language that explanations might bring. as can be seen, the teachers have to weigh up the situation, i.e. what the purpose of the lesson is and how long it will take to elicit the vocabulary. 4.1. v4.1. v4.1. v4.1. v4.1. vocabularocabularocabularocabularocabular y techniques used iny techniques used iny techniques used iny techniques used iny techniques used in classroom interactionclassroom interactionclassroom interactionclassroom interactionclassroom interaction the main element one should analyse when using techniques is that they should be concerned with productive vocabulary and the development of the learners’ ability to use the context to infer meanings. among the techniques we can list are the ones explained by morgan and rinvolucri (1986) and wallace (1984): pre-text activities, presentation of new words, dictionary exercises, revision exercises, word sets, working with texts, vocabulary in context and idioms and multi-word verbs. as there are detailed descriptions and exemplifications of those techniques in tesol (teaching english as a second language) and tefl (teaching english as a foreign language) books, we can now concentrate our attention on two fields that have not been promoted enough: vocabulary in context and idioms. 4.1.1. the teaching of vocabular4.1.1. the teaching of vocabular4.1.1. the teaching of vocabular4.1.1. the teaching of vocabular4.1.1. the teaching of vocabulary iny iny iny iny in contextcontextcontextcontextcontext taking the principles of teaching vocabulary into account, it is necessary to consider various ways in which contexts can be exploited for vocabulary teaching purposes. among the suggestions wallace (1984) describes, we can draw attention towards the following ones: • inferring or guessing. the teacher looks for words the students might not know, but which are fully supported by the context, so that their meaning might be inferred or guessed. • listing words which are related in meaning. • allowing students to develop knowledge of word-meaning and also of related forms, by giving them ample information to infer the meaning and also to use the word productively. • inferring meanings by analysing their internal structure. • directing the learners’ attention to the markers. by this means, students can identify the structure of a context and how statements relate to each other. • finding out which students know (or think they know) the meaning, then helping the others guess it, and finally, checking with the other group. • providing students with the meaning and then asking them to find the word or phrase. this is a useful technique, especially in the sense that it cuts out the problem of students having to produce the explanation. • attempting to make some sort of ‘meaning bridge’ between the target word and its mother language translation (this could be done by ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ 54profileprofileprofileprofileprofile means of drawings, posters, and picture dictionaries). it happens very often that vocabulary is taught in context, but is not stored and memorised in context. therefore, as with any passage for comprehension, the first task would be to ensure that students have an overall understanding of the main information in the passage. only when it exists, should the student be asked to infer the meaning of individual words. furthermore, a lot of vocabulary work will be done incidentally as it arises naturally out of the discussion of the meaning of the passage. 4.1.2. learning and teaching idioms learning idioms has always been very difficult for second/foreign language learners. a common problem we have to face when planning and developing programmes is that idioms can be regional, short-lived and confined to a particular group. in this part we mention some reasons why idioms are difficult to learn, including the fact that most materials for teaching idioms are inadequate. to help teachers prepare materials for teaching them, criteria are suggested for deciding which idioms to teach. all of these will help students understand and produce idiomatic english. the learning of idioms must be considered an integral part of vocabulary learning. but, as highlighted by irujo (1986), some difficulties are involved in such process: • non-literalness: idioms are not literal; they do not mean what the individual words mean. • exposure to idioms: idioms are usually omitted in the speech addressed to secondlanguage learners. but learners’ first exposure to idioms occurs mainly in non-interactive situations – such as tv and movies -, where there is no opportunity for negotiation of meaning, rather than in interactive situations which allow learners to seek meaning clarification and receive feedback on use. • correct use: even when learners do master the meanings of some english idioms, it is still very difficult to learn to use them correctly. idioms vary in formality from slang (‘you got it’) and colloquialisms (‘he kicked the bucket’) to those which can be used in formal situations (‘run the risk’). in addition to situational appropriateness, many idioms have grammatical constraints. on the other hand, if learners try to rely on their mother tongue to help them use idioms in the second language, they will be successful in only a very few instances. in most cases, this strategy will produce an incorrect and often comical form of use. · teaching materials: many secondlanguage teaching materials ignore idioms or relegate them to the ‘other expressions’ section of vocabulary lists without providing exercises or other aids to learning. materials designed specifically to teach idioms do provide exercises to help learners master them, but many of them are inadequate: exercises which involve understanding usually require comprehension only and do not ask students to produce idioms. these include matching the idiom with its definition or substituting one for the other; multiple choice exercises where the correct definition or paraphrase is chosen, and completion exercises where the correct idiom is chosen from a list and inserted into a sentence. in some cases, exercises requiring production of idioms are included only in review lessons which occur no more than two or three times in the book. thus, one of the difficulties in learning english idioms is the lack of suitable materials for teaching them. as the teacher has to decide which idioms to teach, there are some criteria that can be ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○55 profileprofileprofileprofileprofile considered when doing so: first, frequency of use –– even when no frequency lists of english idioms exist. secondly, appropriateness –– colloquial use or slang should be avoided. thirdly, simplicity of form and vocabulary. fourthly, similarity to first-language idioms (this is useful only if the members of the class share the same first language and the teacher knows it). and fifthly, student-generated idioms lists. one way to avoid having them is to teach those idioms students encounter and want to learn i.e. through pop music. below i present a sample in which the student integrates idioms in a composition about music after having been exposed to a song. extract taken from the composition “bon jovi” by luis guillermo forero c. (16 years old). used with permission. ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ 56profileprofileprofileprofileprofile the aspects mentioned above lead us to a common assertion: we need to integrate idioms into the english language programme. learning idioms is, or should be, an integral part of vocabulary learning in a second language and they should be included even at beginning levels. conclusionconclusionconclusionconclusionconclusion what has been said about how vocabulary is acquired should be encouraging since it shows us that learners can be their own best teachers if and when they are exposed to the target language in an appropriate way. it is unfortunate that most learners of a second/ foreign language are not exposed to it in situations outside the classroom as native speakers are. they can, however, be exposed to the target language in appropriate forms: access to books and magazines which are within their vocabular y range, a class librar y, encouragement to continue reading at home, a record of what each student is reading, and activities demanding the use of vocabulary learnt before, are some of the alternatives one can easily propose. for learning to be effective, attention must be paid to the students’ own process of learning; and for adequate, motivated learning to take place, we have to go beyond the descriptive frame of lexicography and semantics: the ‘dictionary meaning’ is only a first step. what has been featured does not mean that there should always, or even most times, be a separate section of the lesson plan for vocabulary practice. this is sometimes done because many textbooks have lists which tempt the teachers to do it that way. in general, the teacher should prepare in advance lists of words or phrases to be explained –– if possible by the students as they arise naturally from the text or the situation. additionally, it should be stressed that it is safer for us teachers to devise our own vocabulary questions, techniques and activities since it is very likely that they respond better to our learners’ characteristics. referencesreferencesreferencesreferencesreferences cameron, l. (1994). “organising the world: children’s concepts and categories, and implications for the teaching of english”. elt journal. 48/1: 28-39. irujo, s. (1986). “a piece of cake: learning and teaching idioms”. elt journal. 43/4: 288-93. morgan, j. and rinvolucri, m. (1986). vocabulary. oxford: oxford university press. wallace, m. (1984). teaching vocabulary. london: heinemann. profile 2.p65 ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○5 profileprofileprofileprofileprofile acknowledgements i am pleased to share with you this second number of the profile journal. now we can assert this has become a means to socialise our teacher development programme outcomes with a wider audience throughout the country. as in the previous number, i wish to express sincere thanks to the school teachers and my colleagues at the universidad nacional de colombia for their enthusiastic work throughout the teachers’ professional development programme (tpdp). i also want to highlight their interest in contributing with articles to this journal and their encouragement during its preparation. thanks are also due to professors randall barfield and elizabeth rodríguez for their expert support and advice during the review process. the director bogotá september, 2001 profile 4 2003.p65 ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ 9 profileprofileprofileprofileprofile this article reports the first part of a larger research project designed to investigate functions of language instructors’ oral behaviors in the development of english as a foreign language (efl) classes ** . through this applied classroom research we have investigated the processes of teaching and learning as they occur in our language classrooms. it is methodologically descriptive and experimental because it ranges from relatively simple observations to tightly controlled experiments. we pursue to identify how teacher talk is distributed in 15 foreign language classrooms. the database comprises transcripts of over 16 hours of interaction recording during 15 lessons in 15 general efl classrooms at the post-secondary level. the functions of teacher talk are analyzed by gathering data using the flint system instrument adapted from moskowitz (1971). findings reveal that teachers do most of the talking and the most frequent categories are gives information, asks questions, and gives directions. the study also demonstrates that oral teaching strategies in the classroom affect the participation process of students. kkkkkey worey worey worey worey words:ds:ds:ds:ds: discourse analysis-education-research, english-teaching-evaluation, classroom-evaluation, educators-teaching practiceinteraction. este artículo reporta la primera parte de un proyecto de investigación más extenso diseñado para investigar las funciones de las conductas orales de los profesores de lenguas en el desarrollo de clases de inglés como lengua extranjera. a través de esta investigación aplicada hemos indagado los procesos de enseñanza y aprendizaje como ocurren en nuestras aulas de lenguas. esta investigación tiene metodología descriptiva y experimental porque empieza con observaciones relativamente simples y termina con control de variables en la etapa experimental. indagamos para identificar cómo se distribuye el habla del profesor en 15 clases de lenguas extranjeras. la base de datos comprende transcripciones de más de 16 horas de interacción grabadas durante 15 clases de inglés general en el nivel universitario. las funciones del habla del profesor se han analizado mediante la recolección de información usando el ������������������������������� ����������������� ������������ discurso oral del docente en tres instituciones colombianas de educación superiordiscurso oral del docente en tres instituciones colombianas de educación superiordiscurso oral del docente en tres instituciones colombianas de educación superiordiscurso oral del docente en tres instituciones colombianas de educación superiordiscurso oral del docente en tres instituciones colombianas de educación superior gloria balcárgloria balcárgloria balcárgloria balcárgloria balcárcel zambranocel zambranocel zambranocel zambranocel zambrano ***** universidad autónoma de bucaramanga gbalcarc@bumanga.unab.edu.co ***** gloria mergloria mergloria mergloria mergloria mercedes balcárcedes balcárcedes balcárcedes balcárcedes balcárcel zambrano cel zambrano cel zambrano cel zambrano cel zambrano holds a b.a. in language teaching from the universidad industrial de santander (1984) and a masters degree in curriculum from pontificia universidad javeriana (1996). she is a doctoral candidate in educational leadership in higher education institutions from argosy university/sarasota, usa (2003). she is currently a full-time efl researcher of education college at unab. she is the director of a classroom research project focused on language instructors’ oral behaviors that is granted by colciencias. ** findings reported in this paper are based on the descriptive stage of a research project funded by grants from universidad autónoma de bucaramanga-unab and the instituto colombiano para el desar rollo de la ciencia y la tecnologíacolciencias, a colombian research granting institution. earlier versions were presented at the annual meeting of asocopi in 2002 (cúcuta, ns) and at the iv congreso nacional de investigaciones lingüístico-filológicas (lima, cátedra unesco sede perú/universidad ricardo palma) in 2003. ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ 10profileprofileprofileprofileprofile instrumento flint adaptado por moskowitz (1971). los hallazgos revelan que los profesores hablan más y que las categorías más frecuentes son dar información, hacer preguntas y dar direcciones. el estudio también demuestra que las estrategias orales de enseñanza en el aula de clases afectan el proceso de participación de los estudiantes. palabras claves: palabras claves: palabras claves: palabras claves: palabras claves: análisis del discurso-educación-investigación, inglés-enseñanzaevaluación, aula-evaluación, formadores docentes-práctica profesional-interacción introductionintroductionintroductionintroductionintroduction learning a foreign language is arequirement for all of the under-graduate programs at the university. this obligation is not always welcome. many students exhibit fear concerning the university demand, and there is anger from some who have failed in the attempt to learn a foreign language. these emotional worries (anxiety, aptitude, and motivation) coupled with the major program challenges at the university have many wondering how our foreign language programs can help students to achieve their goals. most of our post secondary institutions admit that the ultimate aim of their foreign language programs has been to develop their students’ communicative competence. in the early 1980s, communicative language teaching ‘fever’ (spada and frohlich, 1995, pp. 2) reached its peak and is still being advocated by many published course books and curricula. it has developed from a form of sociolinguistic theory which has broadened the concept of the traditional understanding of the terms language and language use. this approach claims a growth in opportunities for language learners to use a second language for communication rather than studying it as an academic subject. in recent years, not only communicative but cognitive approaches have attributed a main role to interactive features of classroom behaviors, such as turn-taking, questioning, negotiation of meaning, and feedback. interaction is viewed as significant because it is argued that 1) only through interaction can the learner decompose the tl structures and derive meaning from classroom events, 2) interaction gives learners the opportunities to incorporate tl structures into their own speech, and 3) the meaningfulness for learners of classroom events of any kind, whether thought of as interactive or not, will depend on the extent to which communication has been jointly constructed between the teacher and the learners (allwright, 1984 cited by chaudron, 1988, pp.10). according to richards & lockhart (1994, pp. 138), the background of this view lies in the fact that second language learning is a highly interactive process. they add that for ellis (1985) the quality of this interaction is thought to have a considerable influence on learning. according to krashen (1977, 1982, and 1985), language acquisition takes place through comprehension. he hypothesized that when students understand a message in the language containing a structure that is one step in advance of that learner's current level of competence, then that structure will be acquired. long (1980, 1981, 1983) supplemented that this strict view that comprehensible input leads to acquisition with the additional notion that native speaker's speech (ns) to nonnative (nns) is most effective for acquisition when it contains "modified interaction". these interactive features consist of ways of negotiating comprehensibility and meaning. long suggests, in fact, that interactive modifications are more important for acquisition ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ 11 profileprofileprofileprofileprofile than modification of ns speech that only results in simplified target language (tl) syntax and morphology. research in second/foreign language classrooms has established that teachers tend to do most of the talking (about 60% of the moves), mostly as soliciting and reacting moves (bellack et al., 1966 and dunkin & biddle, 1974). legarreta (1977) investigated five bilingual education kindergarten classrooms representing two program types (concurrent translation and alternate days). the flanders observational system was used to code segments of teacher talk and student talk. she found that students accounted for only 11% to 30%, and teachers for an average of 77% of total amount of talk. gaies (1977) tape-recorded a group of teachersin-training talking in two different situations: 1) with their peers, and 2) with their own students in practice teaching assignments. he found a considerable modification of teacher talk in the classroom with their learners. long and sato (1983) analyzed transcripts of six elementary adult esl classes comparing the teachers’ speech to the learners. this was an experimental study of native speakers and non-native speakers interacting in pairs called ‘dyads’. they concluded that the learners have little opportunity to communicate in the target language or to hear it used for communicative purposes by others. later, ramírez et al. (1986) conducted a longitudinal study between three instructional programs considering functions of teacher talk. they found explanations to be the most dominant category of teacher talk (60% to 80%). this category includes explanations of concepts, names for things, and grammar. cohen and fass (2001) conducted an action research project with nine teacher-researchers in medellín, colombia regarding the teaching, learning, and assessment of speaking. they argued that the efl students do not necessarily speak very much english in class. they have not much opportunity to practice using the language inside the classroom and they are also reluctant to participate. they realized that although teachers wanted to add an oral component to their classes in an attempt to adopt a communicative style of teaching, they lacked the knowledge to do it. the teaching of oral language in the post secondary-level english as a foreign language classroom in colombia is a challenging task. teachers are generally non-native english speakers who are frequently not fluent enough in english and therefore not confident in their use of the language: even those teachers who are compelled to the communicative language teaching (clt) fail to create genuine communication in their classrooms. many higher institutions in colombia indeed offer general english programs. usually, the main goal of these foreign language programs is to develop the linguistic competence to improve communications and science. the review of the literature offers theoretical reasons as to why the teachers talk in a language classroom and difficulties surrounding the interaction between teachers and students in classrooms. long (1983) suggested one of those reasons. he stated that the transmission model of education–the idea that the teacher’s task as the knower is to convey information to the learners, leaves the learner little opportunity to practice genuine communicative uses of language or to negotiate for meaning. talk is one of the major ways that teachers have to convey information to learners, and it is also one of the primary means of controlling learner behavior. the role of input is a major issue in second language research. the term input is taken from ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ 12profileprofileprofileprofileprofile information processing and is deemed as oral/ written data which learners are exposed to. it is impossible to conceive second language acquisition without input in some form or other. long (1983) argued that access to comprehensible input and opportunities to use the target language for communicative purposes were probably the minimum requirements for successful classroom second language acquisition. swain (1985) and montgomery & eisenstein (1985) carried out studies that supported the idea that opportunities to practice language were important for acquisition. in the early 1980s, it was commonly felt that traditional approaches to second language instruction–which focused on the presentation and practice of discrete grammar items reinforced by rotelearning with immediate and constant error correction had not been successful. instruction, therefore, must adopt more contextualized meaning based on spontaneous language use, which would permit learners to communicate their ideas. this was quickly interpreted by many as support for exclusively meaning-based instruction even though the research actually provided evidence that a combination of form-based and meaningbased instruction is beneficial (doughty & williams, 1998). methodologymethodologymethodologymethodologymethodology this study involves not only the use of a set of categories for coding a specific classroom behavior (teacher talk), but also note-taking and questionnaires suggested by interaction analysis and ethnography research traditions (chaudron, 1988). as nunan (1989, pp. 76) states, there is no substitute for the priority of direct observation as a way of finding out about language classrooms to describe how language teachers bring about classroom lessons. participantsparticipantsparticipantsparticipantsparticipants the study was conducted over a period of six months in three private post secondary institutions in bucaramanga, colombia. the non-participant observations took place in fifteen efl classes of an average of 15 students. all of the teachers being observed were non-native speakers with an average of 11 years of experience. most of them have a master’s degree either in esol or in education. the students were from different undergraduate programs and their average age was eighteen years old. the fifteen instructors were provided with an overview of the study which notified them of the research goals and procedures as well as their rights as volunteers so that they could make an informed decision as to whether they wanted to participate in the study. these classes were mainly conducted in english. l1 was rarely used. instrumentationinstrumentationinstrumentationinstrumentationinstrumentation the categories used to code the data in the present study were adapted from the foreign language of interaction analysis -the flint system instrument developed by moskowitz in 1971 (chaudron, 1988). only the part of the teacher talk categories suggested by moskowitz (see appendix) was adopted here. these categories include a teacher's acceptance of feelings, praise, encouragement, acceptance or use of students' ideas, repetition of student response verbatim, use of questions, giving information, correction, directions, pattern drills, and critics of student behavior or student response. a questionnaire using open-ended format was used to gather descriptive data from the fifteen instructors. it includes information about education background, attitudes, opinions, characteristics, and definitions. ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ 13 profileprofileprofileprofileprofile procedureprocedureprocedureprocedureprocedure during observations of 25 hours of classroom interaction, observers wrote field notes to capture specific contextual and paralinguistic features. data was gathered by using an audio tape recorder. recordings were transcribed verbatim and then coded according to the flint instrument. although the flint system was developed as one of the schemes for real-time observation (holland and shortall, 1996), it was adapted to be used after the audio-taped record here in order to be sensitive to the whole class atmosphere. of the 25 hours of recorded interaction, auxiliary researchers transcribed 16 hours, which constitute the present study database. these 16 hours contain lessons from different levels, instructors, and undergraduate programs. resulresulresulresulresultststststs the database is composed of a total of 9,272 teacher utterances. from the whole utterances, 719 were inaudible or incomprehensible. of the twelve categories of teacher talk, gives information (31.61%), asks questions (25.62%), and gives directions (15,83) were used the most frequently. these categories accounted for 73.06% of the teacher utterances, thus leaving little opportunity for use of other teacher talk categories (see table 1). the first data collected confirmed that teachers do speak in class more than a half of the time. class observations showed that teachers devoted large amounts of time to explanations, drills or drill-like questioning, and class management. hence, learners have less opportunity to evaluate input and to produce creative target language. in some cases, students may want to speak out, but feel inhibited in doing so. student utterances are generally one or two-word phrases long. if one of the main aims of clt is to give students confidence in expressing themselves orally, the emphasis should be, therefore, on spoken fluency rather than on spoken accuracy. this should encourage students to be confident and creative in their spoken english. it is desirable that teachers find time to talk and to listen to their students in ways that encourage them to think more deeply and respond using longer utterances. students often find it difficult to provide a fast spoken reply to a question without time to process an answer. adding just a few seconds at the end of a question gives students the time they need to arrive at deep answers. table 1table 1table 1table 1table 1 distribution of teacher utterances ( n= 8553)distribution of teacher utterances ( n= 8553)distribution of teacher utterances ( n= 8553)distribution of teacher utterances ( n= 8553)distribution of teacher utterances ( n= 8553) ttttteacher talk categorieseacher talk categorieseacher talk categorieseacher talk categorieseacher talk categories nnnnn %%%%% deals with feelings 41 0,48 praises or encourages 510 5,97 jokes 56 0,65 uses ideas of students 56 0,65 repeats student response 580 6,80 verbatim 2191 25,62 asks questions 2704 31,61 gives information 217 2,54 corrects without rejection 1354 15,83 gives directions 776 9,07 directs pattern drills 56 0,65 criticizes student behavior 12 0,13 criticizes student response ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ 14profileprofileprofileprofileprofile nunan (1989) quotes studies that show that, when teachers are trained to wait 3 or 4 seconds, instead of the conventional one, there is not only a decrease in the failure of students to respond, but there is an increase in average length of students' responses. moreover, the proportion of student initiated questioning increases. all of these adjustments would seem to be worthy objectives in a communicative classroom. with regard to questioning (25,62%), findings of this study show that most of the questions these teachers ask are display questions. the primary purpose of display questions is to provide answers that are known and which are designed to elicit or display particular structures, while referential questions are those in naturalistic and classroom discourse that teachers do not know the answers to (richards & lockhart, 1994). there was little production observed from students of this study. brock (1986) discovered that increasing the number of referential questions promoted students to provide significantly longer and syntactically more complex responses (cited in nunan, 1991, pp. 194). nunan also suggests that it is not inconceivable that the effort involved in answering referential questions prompts a greater effort and depth of processing on the part of the learner (nunan, 1989, pp. 30). asking students openended questions such as "what will happen next?" or "how did you do the homework?" is one of the best ways to foster more talk in our classroom. conclconclconclconclconclusionsusionsusionsusionsusions the present study investigated the roles of teacher talk in the development of efl classes. the classroom and questionnaire data suggest that efl teachers, who are committed to be communicative teachers, are seldom, if ever communicative in practice. nunan demonstrated more than a decade ago that there is growing evidence that in communicative classes, interactions may not be very communicative (nunan, 1987, pp. 144). in fact, basic instructional patterns of classroom observed were those in which the teachers talked a great deal, but the students got to say very little. hence, the speaking skills among these efl students are not well exercised and consequently underdeveloped. teaching cannot be defined apart from learning. teaching is guiding and facilitating learning, enabling the learner to learn, setting the conditions for learning. our understanding of how the learner learns has to determine our philosophy of education, our teaching styles, our approach, methods, and classroom techniques. moreover, a theory of teaching in harmony with an integrated understanding of the learner and the foreign language to be learned (english) can point the way to successful procedures under the various constraints of the university context of teaching. referencesreferencesreferencesreferencesreferences allwright, r. l. (1984). the importance of interaction in classroom language learning. applied linguistics, 5, 156-171. bellack, a.a., kliebard, h. m., hyman, r. t., and smith f. l. jr. (1966). the language of the classroom. new york: teachers college press. brock, c. a. (1986). the effects of referential questions on esl classroom discourse. tesol quarterly, 20, 47-59. chaudron, c. (1988). second language classrooms: research on teaching and learning. cambridge: cambridge university press. cohen, a., & fass l. (2001). oral language instruction: teacher and learner beliefs and the reality in efl classes at a colombian university. ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ 15 profileprofileprofileprofileprofile retrieved march 12, 2002, from university of minnesota, center for advanced research on l anguage acquisition web site: http:// carla.acad.umn.edu/profiles/cohenpapers/ cohen_paper2.pdf dunkin, m. j. & biddle, b. j. (1974). the study of teaching. new york: holt, rinehart and winston. doughty, c. & williams, j., (1998.). focus on form in classroom second language acquisition. cambridge: cambridge university press. ellis, r. (1985). understanding second language acquisition. oxford: oxford university press. gaies, s. j. (1977). a comparison of the classroom language of esl teachers and their speech among peers: an exploratory syntactic analysis. unpublished ph.d. dissertation. bloomington: indiana university,. holland, r. & shortall, t. (1996). classroom research and research methods. the university of birmingham, centre of english language studies. krashen, s. (1977). some issues relating to the monitor model. in h. d. brown, c. yorio, and r. crymes (eds.), on tesol '77: teaching and learning english as a second language: trends in research and practice. washington: tesol, 144-158. krashen, s.d. (1982). principles and practice in second language acquisition. oxford: pergamon press. krashen, stephen d. (1985). the input hypothesis: issues and implications. new york: longman. legarreta, d. (1977). language choice in bilingual classrooms. tesol quarterly 11, 9-16. long, m. h. (1980). inside the “black box”: methodological issues in research on language teaching and learning. language learning, 30, 1-42. long, m. h. (1981). input, interaction, and second-language acquisition. in h. witniz (ed.). native language and foreign language acquisition. annals of the new york academy of sciences, 379, 259-278. long, m. h. (1983). native speaker/nonnative speaker conversation and the negotiation of comprehensible input. applied linguistics, 4, 2: 126-141. long, m. h. & sato, c. j. (1983). classroom foreigner talk discourse: forms and functions of teachers' questions. in h. w. seliger & m. h. long (eds.), classroom-oriented research in second language acquisition (pp. 268-285). rowley, mass: newbury house.. montgomery, c. & eisenstein, m. (1985). real reality revisited: an experimental communicative course in esl. tesol quarterly, 19, 317-334. moskowitz, g. 1971. interaction analysis – a new modern language for supervisors. foreign language annals, 5, 211-21. nunan, d. (1989). designing tasks for the communicative classroom . cambridge: cambridge university press. nunan, d. (1987). communicative language teaching: making it work. elt journal, 41 (2), 136-145. nunan, d. (1991). language teaching methodology. a textbook for teachers. phoenix : prentice hall macmillian (elt). ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ 16profileprofileprofileprofileprofile ramírez, j. d., yuen, s. d., ramey, d. r., & merino, b. (1986). first-year report longitudinal study of immersion programs for language minority children. arlington, va: sra technologies. richards, j. c. & lockhart, c. (1994). reflective teaching in second language classrooms. cambridge: cambridge university press. spada, n. and frohlich, m. (1995). colt (communicative orientation of language teaching) observation scheme coding conventions and applications. sydney: nceltr. swain, m. (1985). communicative competence: some roles of comprehensible input and comprehensible output in its development. in s. gass and c. madden (eds.), input in second language acquisition. cambridge: newbury house publishers. ccccc aaaaategortegortegortegortegor yyyyy descriptiondescriptiondescriptiondescriptiondescription 11111 deals with feelingsdeals with feelingsdeals with feelingsdeals with feelingsdeals with feelings in a non-threatening way, accepting, discussing, referring to, or communicating understanding of past, present, or future feelings of students. 22222 praises orpraises orpraises orpraises orpraises or praising, complimenting, telling students why what they e n c o u r a g e se n c o u r a g e se n c o u r a g e se n c o u r a g e se n c o u r a g e s have said or done is valued. encouraging students to continue, trying to give them confidence. confirming answers are correct. 33333 j o k e sj o k e sj o k e sj o k e sj o k e s intentional joking, kidding, making puns, attempting to be humorous, providing the joking is not at anyone’s expense. unintentional humor is not included in this categor y. 44444 uses ideas ofuses ideas ofuses ideas ofuses ideas ofuses ideas of clarifying, using, interpreting, summarizing the ideas of studentsstudentsstudentsstudentsstudents students. the ideas must be rephrased by the teacher but still recognized as being student contributions. 55555 repearepearepearepearepeats studentts studentts studentts studentts student repeating the exact words of students after they response verbaresponse verbaresponse verbaresponse verbaresponse verbatimtimtimtimtim participate. 66666 asks questionsasks questionsasks questionsasks questionsasks questions asking questions to which an answer is anticipated. rhetorical questions are not included in this categor y. 77777 gives informagives informagives informagives informagives informationtiontiontiontion giving information, facts, own opinion or ideas, lecturing, or asking rhetorical questions. 88888 c o r r e c t s w i t h o u tc o r r e c t s w i t h o u tc o r r e c t s w i t h o u tc o r r e c t s w i t h o u tc o r r e c t s w i t h o u t telling students who have made a mistake the correct r e j e c t i o nr e j e c t i o nr e j e c t i o nr e j e c t i o nr e j e c t i o n response without using words or intonations which communicate criticism. 99999 gives directionsgives directionsgives directionsgives directionsgives directions giving directions, requests, or commands which students are expected to follow. 1 01 01 01 01 0 directs pdirects pdirects pdirects pdirects paaaaattttt ternternternterntern giving statements which students are expected to repeat d r i l l sd r i l l sd r i l l sd r i l l sd r i l l s exactly, to make substitutions in (i.e., substitution drills), or to change from one form to another (i.e., transformation drills). 1 11 11 11 11 1 criticizes studentcriticizes studentcriticizes studentcriticizes studentcriticizes student rejecting the behavior of students; trying to change the b e h ab e h ab e h ab e h ab e h av i o rv i o rv i o rv i o rv i o r non-acceptable behavior; communicating anger, displeasure, annoyance, dissatisfaction with what students are doing. 1 21 21 21 21 2 criticizes studentcriticizes studentcriticizes studentcriticizes studentcriticizes student telling the student his response is not cor rect or responseresponseresponseresponseresponse acceptable and communicating by words or intonation criticism, displeasure, annoyance, rejection. appendix: foreign language interaction analysis (flint) systemappendix: foreign language interaction analysis (flint) systemappendix: foreign language interaction analysis (flint) systemappendix: foreign language interaction analysis (flint) systemappendix: foreign language interaction analysis (flint) system (moskowitz, 1971, pp. 213) the article was received on september 1st, 2003 and accepted on october 10th , 2003 profile 1.p65 ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ 48profileprofileprofileprofileprofile improvement of writing proficiency through creation of homegeneous groups in the classrrom luis ernesto ortega sarmientoluis ernesto ortega sarmientoluis ernesto ortega sarmientoluis ernesto ortega sarmientoluis ernesto ortega sarmiento and víctor adrián rodríguez nietoand víctor adrián rodríguez nietoand víctor adrián rodríguez nietoand víctor adrián rodríguez nietoand víctor adrián rodríguez nieto our interest in students’ writing inthe second language (english)encouraged us to car r y out research in the classroom, taking homogeneous group and mixing it with new activities to provide alternatives in writing. we found a lot of theory about writing skills which did not take into account students’ problems such as adolescence, likes, environment and their attitude toward english. from these elements we developed a research project divided into two cycles. the first cycle confirmed a problem and the second one was used to provide possible solutions to the problem (writing proficiency), always taking into account our students as the main performers in our research. intrintrintrintrintroductionoductionoductionoductionoduction we chose santo tomas school (our work place) in order to carry out our research. there, english had been a common subject but recently it has taken on importance in the curriculum. for this reason we have found that students have problems using english, especially in eighth grade, because these students have suffered the change from a regular work load to an intensive load, and also, they did not study english in primary. additionally, we observed this group as a good target of investigation due to its behaviour, interest and age level. these students are ready to learn and we wanted to help them through this research work. our first task was determined through some activities (first cycle) that elicited students’ english production, deducing that from what we had obser ved (as their teachers) in their writing performances. we developed a series of activities to determine a problem and to pinpoint which population and which level demonstrated signs of problem (diagnosis). during this diagnosis we noticed different performance levels and that students worked depending on the activity’s level of interest. looking at that situation, we thought of a new work alternative which would encourage students to develop their writing and at the same time to organise groups according to production level, helping the class and the student to work according to his own proficiency. from this we have drawn up this hypothesis: “handling small homogeneous groups in the classroom itself may help students to improve their writing proficiency”. ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○49 profileprofileprofileprofileprofile hence, we began to develop a second cycle, taking as a reference a literature review about groups (group interaction, group techniques, kind of groups, etc.) and writing techniques (our field of action in this research). we created groups, called corners. we can define them in this way: • picture corner: use of pictures , drawings to promote free-style writing. • miming corner: use of gestures, representations and sounds to raise students’ sensibilities through written work. • organising sentences to build paragraphs corner: use of headlines and sentences prepared by teacher so students follow a sequence in their writing performing. • using readings corner: from readings chosen by the teacher, the student has to read and paraphrase, or express the ideas using his own words. • reading comprehension: the student has to read a slightly more extensive text where he has to deduce and work from a main idea to do his own writing. • four skills corner: this corner integrates work on writing, listening, speaking and reading. from a tapescript previously recorded by a teacher, the student listens to a text, writes notes about a stor y and organises them; teacher gives them the whole story written down and the student compares his notes with it and comments on it to his teacher. then, students were organised into similar levels and we applied a series of writing activities based on free and controlled writing techniques using very illustrative patterns and interesting material for students. our goals through this work were to achieve a levelling process where students would feel comfortable and be able to develop their writing skills. prprprprprocedureocedureocedureocedureocedure we organised the corners in the classroom over twelve class hours (blocks), two blocks per corner. each time block was 90 minutes where students had to develop the totality of activities proposed; i.e. 180 minutes per corner working. we carried out the work using six activities which were prepared with guidelines to hand out to each corner. groups received guidelines with the entire instructions for working. they had two or three activities always focused on the technique used for the corner. coloured illustrations and interesting materials were presented . the teacher’s role in these activities was to be a guide and to clarify instructions or to correct students’ performances. guidelines were very clear and explicit. these activities were carried out based on a controlled writing situation, used to give coherence and cohesion (structure) to the building of paragraphs and sentences, checking grammar and syntax carefully; sometimes correcting and helping students. we also used free writing techniques by using models such as large pictures, ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ 50profileprofileprofileprofileprofile gestures, headlines and reading, giving the students the possibility to express their ideas freely. regarding previous comments on time, level and instructions, when we tried to do the two last corners (reading comprehension and using four skill corners) we found students had many difficulties: they did not understand these new complex instructions because they had to follow certain stages to understand the next instructions and so on. the grammatical and syntactic level, which required the students to have more knowledge, was a problem in those activities. resultsresultsresultsresultsresults in order to collect data and to evaluate this work, we used three sources of information: tutor’s information, observer’s information and students’ interviews (how the activity worked for you, how you deal with others and your feelings towards the activity). we made a triangulation of these aspects, showing information in graphic statistics. in each corner, we can see the following results: • picture corner: the activities and the students’ feelings toward work were 100% effective. it was very productive for the class, the teacher and the students. • miming corner: effectivity, regarding the attitude of the students who changed it into a kind of game, playing around, was forty percent (40%) in all aspects. • organising sentences to build paragraphs: the students thought the activity seemed to have rigid standards. the students showed a very good attitude, presenting 100% productivity. • using reading corner: here, vocabulary and grammar structures were more complicated, but despite that, the students made a good effort, due to the interesting readings, and got positive results in the corner. • reading comprehension and four skills corner: these activities were not performed because of the difficulties mentioned above. discussiondiscussiondiscussiondiscussiondiscussion as we said at the beginning and throughout this article, students need motivating activities which push them to try to write well, also to work with people with a similar level that makes it easier to work. taking this and the benefit of our students into account, we designed activities and applied them getting very good results. students took the main role in the class, working with their likes and writing about their feelings. it was reflected in the picture corner, building paragraphs and using reading corner, but in the miming corner this kind of freedom conducted them to disorderliness. in general, this work is ver y effective but teachers have to be careful about students’ personality, writing level, classroom, group work techniques and demands in writing performance. ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○51 profileprofileprofileprofileprofile conclusionsconclusionsconclusionsconclusionsconclusions through this article we have mentioned the main role of the student as the centre of the research. we want now to draw the following conclusions projected toward the pedagogical field: 1. this way of improving writing proficiency based on corners and homogeneous groups could be used in the classroom as a pedagogical tool to provide solutions to possible problems, not just in writing skills, but also in other communicative skills because the students always look at options in which they can develop their knowledge freely. 2. we observed that the work environment was positive; our work as teachers was limited to guiding the groups with instructions, having little participation in the class development, merely resolving some difficulties.• profile 1.p65 ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ 64profileprofileprofileprofileprofile titles of research projects the research reports corresponding to the titles we list in the following pages can be consulted in the foreign languages department at universidad nacional de colombia. there, we can find a detailed account of the theoretical issues that led teachers to undertake classroom research. reference is also made to research procedures and findings in the teaching settings where investigations were carried out. ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○65 profileprofileprofileprofileprofile prprprprprofessional development professional development professional development professional development professional development programme:ogramme:ogramme:ogramme:ogramme: “listening practices in the english class” “listening practices in the english class” “listening practices in the english class” “listening practices in the english class” “listening practices in the english class” (januar(januar(januar(januar(january to april 1995)y to april 1995)y to april 1995)y to april 1995)y to april 1995) titles of research projects ttttteaching english in primareaching english in primareaching english in primareaching english in primareaching english in primary schools:y schools:y schools:y schools:y schools: 1. difficulties in comprehension when listening to the english language. patricia mesa garcía 2. students don’t want to listen to english because they don’t understand it! ana elena prieto ttttteaching english in secondareaching english in secondareaching english in secondareaching english in secondareaching english in secondary schools:y schools:y schools:y schools:y schools: 3. difficulties in distinguishing sounds in listening exercises. rosalba porras de benavides 4. students have difficulties in listening because they forget vocabulary easily! alberto lozano bonilla and rafael a. roa caro 5. students’ difficulties in understanding native speakers’ texts because of their speed. presentación jiménez acero 6. students, as listeners, have limited vocabulary which is not enough to let them understand listening texts and to get the whole meaning of the messages. rosalba velandia, ana isabel mora, and hugo abril 7. students do not take part in listening activities! luz alba martínez a., hilda mercedes ortiz, and ana teresa martínez 8. why students do not understand a simple conversation between native speakers. margoth tunjano de mayorga 9. providing opportunities to practice listening. elisa convers guevara ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ 66profileprofileprofileprofileprofile 10. students have difficulties in listening comprensión, particularly in grasping main ideas and getting specific information form a text. flor marina arévalo, maritza berdugo, and ana cecilia díaz 11. students are afraid because they do not understand verbal information from recorded material or also from the teacher. josé alvaro parrado s. 12. students do not understand when they listen to english instructions given by the teacher! josefina cortés, dary barreto, and luz edi pérez 13. some problems in handling vocabulary in listening lessons. maría de la o rodríguez and miryam espitia espitia 14. are students able to catch information about themes studied in previous courses despite the lack of exposure to listening practices? leonor escobar orozco ttttteaching english to adults:eaching english to adults:eaching english to adults:eaching english to adults:eaching english to adults: 15. students’ tendency to understand word by word in order to get the message from recorded or direct texts. rocío mahecha sánchez and rocío hernández farfán ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○67 profileprofileprofileprofileprofile prprprprprofessional development professional development professional development professional development professional development programme for the togramme for the togramme for the togramme for the togramme for the teaching of englisheaching of englisheaching of englisheaching of englisheaching of english as a fas a fas a fas a fas a foreign loreign loreign loreign loreign language in primaranguage in primaranguage in primaranguage in primaranguage in primary and secondary and secondary and secondary and secondary and secondary schoolsy schoolsy schoolsy schoolsy schools (september 1996 to september 1997)(september 1996 to september 1997)(september 1996 to september 1997)(september 1996 to september 1997)(september 1996 to september 1997) titles of research projects ttttteaching english in primareaching english in primareaching english in primareaching english in primareaching english in primary schools:y schools:y schools:y schools:y schools: 1. the use of structured listening activities and the improvement of classroom management can help us to overcome problems of discipline. jenny lagos bejarano 2. how can materials help students improve listening comprehension? gloria emperatriz barreto correa and martha ednia castro díaz 3. how to help students who do not concentrate in class or misbehave during it to develop their listening skills. mireya esther castañeda u. 4. promoting speaking in beginners by using games. martha méndez and consuelo rojas 5. can play activities contribute to improve students’ pronunciation? jorge enrique arcos triana and ligia moreno de troncoso 6. one day a boat. children in storyland. silvia alexandra cortés r., marlén jeanet moreno v., consuelo sánchez prada, and aurora triviño anzola ttttteaching english in secondareaching english in secondareaching english in secondareaching english in secondareaching english in secondary schools:y schools:y schools:y schools:y schools: 7. helping students develop writing skills. ruth rocío toro 8. helping students improve listening skills by developing pre-, whileand post-listening strategies. herminda burgos, luz mila moreno, and luz amparo valencia ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ 68profileprofileprofileprofileprofile 9. improving writing through description. maría inés hurtado, liliana ochoa patiño, and miguel antonio caro 10. speaking improvement through grammar games. mery bastidas mejía, rafael pinzón, and sonia sacristán garzón 11. listening activities in simple past tense. amalia hernández and nélida estupiñán 12. communicative grammar activities: improving speaking by means of games. judith astrid martínez ardila 13. games and songs help students to produce oral english. mercedes vega ruiz 14. strategies to improve written grammar. yolanda molano rodríguez profile 2.p65 ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ 34profileprofileprofileprofileprofile we as teachers sometimes notice lowmotivation and participationduring the development of our classes. students have an aphatic attitude and this creates a bad environment when they work in class. motivating and creating a good environment in class through our english activities, was the objective of our project. we took problem solving activities as an excellent way to create a good atmosphere in class and change the routine in order to motivate and increase students’ participation. this project was relevant because we explored a new method of teaching english which included different types of activities and our students became active agents in the learning process. introductionintroductionintroductionintroductionintroduction reflecting on the low student participation and desiring to raise student motivation, we decided to include some problem-solving activities as a way to develop a process in teaching that would guide thoughts (kudriatsev: 1987) and involve students in situations and activities where they would feel confident and participate by themselves evidencing interest and motivation. marinko (1988) defines problem solving as a peculiar form of teaching in which one imitates the investigative process. it outlines problems and solves them in conjuction with the students. in this way , students are in contact with english not only during the classes, but also at every moment. problemsolving activities permit students to consult specific topics to express their points of view about the problem, and generates a final assignment where they demonstrate their motivation and participation. subjectssubjectssubjectssubjectssubjects the group chosen to be the subject of this project was the tenth grade san bernardo de la salle students. it is a religious private school and these students have an intermediate level of english. this group was chosen because it had showed the greatest apathy towards activities during the english lessons. procedureprocedureprocedureprocedureprocedure in order to implement our project, the english teacher planned the classes taking problem-solving methods into account. after consulting the theory, we concluded that there was not any activity that we could select to apply during our classes. we adapted some activities of the guide text used by the students to apply problem-solving activities. we selected motivating topics with the students’ help. they were challenged cognitively by means of consulting by themselves and through the teacher’s explanation. so, the work was individual first and then shared with their classmates. this way, they were encouraged to work closely in groups by holding discussions about the given situation. finally they submitted improving students’ english through problem-solving activities gustavo tgustavo tgustavo tgustavo tgustavo torororororres and gregorio juliores and gregorio juliores and gregorio juliores and gregorio juliores and gregorio julio ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○35 profileprofileprofileprofileprofile a list of suggestions or expressed their ideas about some topics related to their lives and experiences. we began with these activities in march 2001. we gave students the first topic and they researched it for two weeks. after that they discussed their points of view with their partners (the teacher was a guide during this part of the process). next we organized an activity based on the topic and the students did it over two classes. the final work was presented by groups and shared with other groups. the same procedure was followed with the two activities during april and students worked not only faster but better. we observed this in a sample written by a student to express his list of people who influenced his life. data collectiondata collectiondata collectiondata collectiondata collection in order to collect data and evaluate this work, we used three sources of information: student’s survey, teacher’s diary and video recording. the surveys were tabulated and the results revealed the students’ opinions regarding the problemsolving activities developed by themselves. as teacher-researchers, we observed some lessons while students were developing the activities; we wrote diary entries as soon as classes finished. the last source was video recording. we designed a check list to analyse the videos individually and compared our results. in order to come up with the final conclusions, we used the triangulation procedure. results and conclusionsresults and conclusionsresults and conclusionsresults and conclusionsresults and conclusions students showed a high level of motivation because they wanted to express their points of view and they used english more easily and effectively than in other types of activities developed beforehand. the results showed that the improvement not only in grammar, but also in speaking was noteworthy because these activities generated a high level of motivation in the students. we noticed that interest was higher when the activities were related to the interests of the students. for example, their lives, music, friends ,etc. for this reason we had to be careful when we chose topics to work on in class. students expressed their interests consulting or working by themselves with the guidance of the teacher. the students’ interest could be observed by means of their papers where the quality was better than ever. a sample of students’ work is included below. we worked on the topic named ‘lyfe styles’ and students were asked to express their ideas about ‘people who influence my life’. ‘people who influence my life’ by luis carlos cortés lago, student of 10th grade at san bernardo de la salle school. 2001. used with permission. ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ 36profileprofileprofileprofileprofile students improved their english level in all the activities given, but especially in speaking and writing. in the first case, they needed to communicate with their partners and the teacher in order to get involved in the activity assigned. in the second case , writing, students applied their grammar knowledge got through personal study and the teacher’s explanations. they were confident expressing their ideas in writing. students also improved their reading skills because they had to prepare the topics, so they needed to read a lot outside the classroom. problem-solving activities involve cognitive and practical problems whereby students have to consult by themselves by via observing, inferring and finally communicating their conclusions or solutions using different forms of communication. the best problem-solving activities to generate good results in the improvement of english are those that let students think in english and feel english as a necessity, not only in the classroom, but also in different contexts outside, such as when they have to investigate other cultures and lifestyles. the teacher must create problem activities where the students observe, consult, infer, analyse, classify and create the solutions to the given problem and, this way, the students become sure, critical, conscientious, interested, creative and motivated to improve their language levels. referencesreferencesreferencesreferencesreferences kudriatsev ,t.v. (1987). ideas de la enseñanza problémica en la práctica. berlín: instrucción pública. no 10. marinko j. (1988). l as situaciones problémicas en el pensamiento y la enseñanza. moscú: ed. pedagogika. how to improve sixth graders’ reading comprehension through the skimming technique profile 8, 2007. issn 1657-0790. bogotá, colombia. pages 25-39 25 how to improve sixth graders’ reading comprehension through the skimming technique* cómo mejorar la comprensión de lectura de estudiantes de grado sexto a través de la técnica del ‘vistazo’ sandra calderón agudelo** ligia milena carvajal ávila*** ana yamile guerrero lópez**** institución educativa distrital venecia, colombia this project was developed at venecia school morning shift located in tunjuelito, zone 6 in bogotá. population involved consisted of forty-four, sixth-grade students. the pupils were between 11-13 years old, whose social and economic conditions were difficult. our goal for this project was to introduce the skimming technique to familiarize students with it to make the reading process easier since reading in a foreign language implies a complex process and students need useful tools to confront a text in an effective way. through different reading workshops worked in classes we discovered that reading can be a meaningful and interesting process for students. according to the findings, we concluded that the skimming technique was very easy to apply and it was appropriate for reading and comprehending a text. key words: skimming technique, meaningful reading, innovation este proyecto se desarrolló en el colegio venecia institución educativa distrital, jornada mañana, localidad 6 de tunjuelito en bogotá (colombia). los estudiantes que participaron en el proyecto cursaban grado sexto. tenían entre 11 y 13 años de edad y vivían en condiciones económicas y sociales difíciles. puesto que el proceso de lectura es complejo y los estudiantes necesitan herramientas útiles para enfrentarse a un texto de manera exitosa, nuestro objetivo fue familiarizar a los estudiantes con el uso de la técnica del vistazo, de tal manera que el proceso lector fuera más fácil. a través de diferentes * this paper reports on a study conducted by a group of teachers who participated in the profile teacher development programme, at universidad nacional de colombia, in 2006. the programme was sponsored by secretaría de educación de bogotá, d.c. code number: 30101007234. ** e-mail: sandrasolarix@hotmail.com *** e-mail: lcarvaj5@redp.edu.co **** e-mail: yamile.guerrero@gmail.com address: colegio (ied) venecia. carrera 55 no.49-25 sur, bogotá, colombia this article was received on march 31st, 2007 and accepted on july 17th, 2007. profile 8.indd 25 28/09/2007 12:42:12 a.m. calderón agudelo, carvajal ávila and guerrero lópez universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras26 talleres de lectura trabajados en clase, descubrimos que la lectura puede ser un proceso significativo e interesante para los estudiantes. de acuerdo con los hallazgos concluimos que la técnica del vistazo fue apropiada y fácil de aplicar para leer y entender un texto. palabras clave: técnica del vistazo, lectura significativa, innovación introduction reading is one of the two language receptive skills. it gives students the possibility of accessing written materials on practically any subject. there are several techniques for confronting a text. one of them is the skimming technique which consists of identifying the topic of a text and the general ideas of it. at the site http://www.lengua.profes.net, skimming is defined as a reading technique that permits the reader to reduce the numbers of the words without affecting the sense of the text. the purpose is to capture the totality of the ideas of the text. based on this, we decided to introduce the reading technique of skimming to sixth graders at venecia school since they were first-year high school students. initially the students had the opportunity to apply this technique, step by step, to simple texts in the foreign language; english, in our case. the skimming technique, in order to be useful to students, needs to be practiced a lot. we designed several workshops for applying and practicing it. the emphasis of this technique is on general comprehension, as stated before, which includes paying little or no attention to unknown words. reading techniques are suggested to get students out of the common habit of reading word by word and going to the dictionary to look up the meaning of every unknown word. justification sixth-grade students have had little practice in the reading comprehension process in the foreign language because they have not had contact with texts like poems, tales, rhymes, or different readings taken from a real context. this fact occurs due to the following main reason: in primary school, the english teacher teaches through different and isolated activities without meaningful contexts. we introduced the skimming technique to sixth-grade students in order to familiarize them with a new process, then we worked with texts of progressive difficulty in order to improve the skill of reading comprehension. although in our school there is a licensed english teacher for the primary level, she only explores the oral skill, using different activities that make english more enjoyable for children. therefore, the other skills such as writing and reading are not worked on at all. our choice also took into account that sixth grade is the first stage of high school and it is necessary to develop the reading skill from the very beginning of this cycle, because at this level students should start to develop more complex competences than the ones worked on at primary level. success in knowledge acquisition depends on the efficient process that they perform in this field. besides developing this skill, students can access information from a new profile 8.indd 26 28/09/2007 12:42:12 a.m. how to improve sixth graders’ reading comprehension through the skimming technique profile 8, 2007. issn 1657-0790. bogotá, colombia. pages 25-39 27 culture and better understand a globalized world in which english is one of the main languages. reading in a foreign language is a difficult task in our school. students try to understand something from a passage or a text using a dictionary and translating word by word because they do not identify the logical and rhetorical relations in a given piece of writing which are necessary to interpret and decode a text. consequently, we tried to explore a technique for comprehensive reading which would help sixth grade students overcome such difficulties, and not just for this grade. moreover, as english teachers we consider that it is relevant to help students develop reading strategies, so they can confront more efficiently and comprehensively texts in order to be more competitive in the labor context, considering that the world is global. finally, nowadays, the icfes test demands that students demonstrate a good performance in the skill of reading. the skimming technique can be useful to improve this skill because the exam is based on reading comprehension, and the technique helps achieve that purpose. research objectives we developed our project based on a diagnosis we did with sixth graders and according to the results, we stated the following research objectives: general objectives to implement the technique of skimming for reading comprehensively in the efl class for sixth grade students. specific objectives to familiarize students with the skimming technique. to have students practicing the skimming technique. to provide students with exercises to find the main ideas of a text. to have students applying the skimming technique to different texts in different subjects. to show students they can understand a text without knowing all the vocabulary. type of project we consider that our project proposal focuses on the innovation aspect, because we want to apply non-traditional methodology for developing reading comprehension in our classes. as markee (2001) says: “innovation will be defined as proposals for qualitative change in pedagogical materials, approaches, and values that are perceived as new by individuals who comprise a formal (language) education system” (p. 120). with this project, we wanted to develop the reading process using the skimming technique, through different and meaningful activities that permit sixth grade students to enjoy learning how to read in a comprehensive way. for this purpose, we proposed designing interesting workshops based on attractive and real readings, in order to increase students’ motivation, because this is a main factor affecting reading approximation. curriculum innovations should be sensitive to the local setting. this has resulted in what has been called a more personsensitive approach to curriculum project profile 8.indd 27 28/09/2007 12:42:13 a.m. calderón agudelo, carvajal ávila and guerrero lópez universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras28 management. our project proposed taking into account that the reading skill has had little practice even in the mother tongue, and it is necessary to develop different and innovative activities to make this skill more attractive for students, bearing in mind their contexts, needs and expectations in order to have an impact on the english curriculum. theoretical framework this section has the purpose of providing theoretical support on the skill of reading and the skimming technique. we consider here aspects such as reading definition, comprehensive reading, the skimming technique and classroom approximation to reading. these theoretical aspects were relevant in supporting this project in order to determine the usefulness of the skimming technique in comprehending a text in an efficient way. there are many definitions of the reading process, and we identify with this one: “reading is a receptive language process in which the reader recognizes and decodes any kinds of symbols. this process ends when the reader gives sense and meaning to the decoded written language and transfers the information understood into his experience and thought”. (ríos & valcárcel, 2005, p. 60). even though from the start, decoding is a necessary part of the reading process, this definition goes beyond that. it implies understanding and using the acquired knowledge to be able to infer, to argue and to propose, and in this way to be a competent reader. another view is expressed by grellet (1981, p. 4): “there are two main reasons for reading: reading for pleasure, reading for information”. in our project we consider it important to familiarize students with the skimming technique to help them get information in a general way from a text, but also for students to begin to read for pleasure. furthermore, sixth grade students need to acquire at least one technique (skimming) for efficient reading comprehension. no one doubts that the ability to read and understand written texts in english is a great advantage for an adequate performance in the modern real world. additionally, the main language of the academic world is english. in the same way, as teachers, it is necessary to design reading materials focused on students’ needs and interests. thus, students enjoy their own learning, making it more meaningful. what is reading comprehensively? reading comprehensively, first, implies the capture of the writer’s purposes. also it implies that readers identify basic information, are able to predict, to infer, to argue and to recognize writers’ points of view. according to alderson & urguhart (1984, p. 95): “the reading comprehension process focuses on three elements: the text being read, the background knowledge possessed by the reader, and contextual aspects”. he suggests that background knowledge is a helpful tool when a person confronts a text since he can reorganize his knowledge and put it together better. to comprehend a reading it is necessary that the reader can extract the key words in order to capture the whole sense of the text. another consideration can be expressed like this: reading is an active skill. it constantly involves guessing, predicting, checking and asking oneself questions. it is possible, for profile 8.indd 28 28/09/2007 12:42:13 a.m. how to improve sixth graders’ reading comprehension through the skimming technique profile 8, 2007. issn 1657-0790. bogotá, colombia. pages 25-39 29 instance, to develop the students’ powers of inference through systematic practice or introduce questions which encourage students to anticipate the content of a text from its title and illustrations or the end of a story from the preceding paragraphs (allen, 1997). based on this statement, the skimming technique is a useful tool to help students extract from the text key words that permit them to infer the general sense of a text, which lets them interpret a text faster and advance in the reading process. a final point is contained in the following observation: “reading involves many periods of mulling over ideas and translating information into a more familiar framework. what is acquired from the text is a richly interwoven structure consisting of material generated from the conscious interplay of the two”. (alderson, 1984, p. 65). skimming reading technique the process of reading is very important because it helps to develop thought and active cognitive processes such as inferring, categorizing, arguing, predicting, etc. there are different techniques to make the reading process more effective. for this project we concentrated on the skimming technique. synthesizing grellet’s (1981) claims, the skimming technique has basic characteristics. it is an activity which requires an overall view of the text in order to find the general contents and ideas of the written material. also, skimming is going through the reading material quickly to find out how it is organized or to get an idea of the intention of the writer. for this project the emphasis was on general comprehension of texts, with little or no attention paid to unknown words. as cross mentions (1991) there are some strategies used in reading which can help students understand a text more easily. these activities include combining sentences, filling the gaps, completing tables and graphs, selecting a summary, matching nouns and verbs, comparing versions, and identifying facts. it is then suggested that, to get students out of the common habit of reading word by word or line by line and into the process of relatively quick skimming, there are some specific activities that permit the extraction of a general idea, such as recognizing similar words in english and spanish, identifying unknown vocabulary, inferring meaning from context and detecting typographical clues and often repeated words. in our innovative project, we selected activities which we considered appropriate to sixth grade students, such as filling the gaps in phrases related to main topic, with students required to fill in the missing words. another activity was underlining words in the text which appear similar in english and spanish to help students become familiar with the text. in this same way, they could understand the whole meaning of the text. these activities permitted students to comprehend the whole meaning of the text even without knowing all the words. additionally, the activity in which students had to complete tables and graphs was very useful in helping them infer the meaning of the text. from the questionnaire given to students after the workshops, we observed that these activities were very useful to students because they could understand the whole meaning of the texts and they became aware that reading in english is not a difficult process. profile 8.indd 29 28/09/2007 12:42:13 a.m. calderón agudelo, carvajal ávila and guerrero lópez universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras30 classroom approximation to reading the skimming technique is introduced to students in order to make them proficient in reading comprehensively. “by helping students read in english we put the vast world of english printed matter within their reach” (dobson, 1980, p. 151). in other words, reading can help students understand foreign culture; through readings they can access information they want to know, such as favorite singers, famous people and, in some cases, historical and scientific events. although there are many possible strategies for reading comprehensively, we decided to apply the skimming technique because we consider that students neither read comprehensively nor apply any technique while reading a text. we wanted to introduce students to this technique since they need to understand the gist of a text as a first step to understanding all of it. methodology when selecting reading materials, we initially tried to find simple texts related to students’ context and culture, looking for things relevant to their lives, with limited but unknown vocabulary and simple grammatical structures. for example, the first reading was a text on a popular colombian singer, shakira. the teacher played a major role in this workshop because the new technique of skimming was unknown to the students. the instructions were given in spanish for the sake of making the new technique very clear to the students. the other workshop was about school life in which we selected different activities and an easy reading (see appendix 1). to gather the data, we applied a questionnaire (see appendix 2) with seven questions. the information collected during the second academic semester of the year 2006 was collected in ten classes where relevant data were recorded. we used the questionnaire after applying workshops, and the students answered freely. this tool was designed to discover what the students knew about the skimming technique, and to find out their attitudes, expectations and feelings towards it. students were asked to give their opinion on the workshops. through questions, we looked for information about the vocabulary found in the text; the comprehension level obtained, the usefulness of the technique introduced, and, in general terms, their opinion of the activity. also, the teacher-researcher used field notes from direct classroom observation (see appendix 3) because this was the method of registering the relevant information for our project. as burns (1999) considers, “notes, or field notes as they are often referred to in qualitative research, are descriptions and accounts of events in the research context which are written in a relatively factual and objective style” (p. 87). with this instrument the researcher recorded what she observed, such students’ attitudes and comments, and took notes about the development of the classes. those notes were very useful in allowing the teacher-researcher to see that the students enjoyed the activity and identified with the topic of the text. therefore, they enjoyed the work. our field notes included reports on the function of group work, interesting or common errors made by students, conversation and interactions between participants, non-verbal profile 8.indd 30 28/09/2007 12:42:13 a.m. how to improve sixth graders’ reading comprehension through the skimming technique profile 8, 2007. issn 1657-0790. bogotá, colombia. pages 25-39 31 information and reflections about the classes (see appendix 3). findings students were highly motivated, participated actively and were ready to give an answer when requested. we also noticed in the workshops that the students liked this technique. they mentioned that they found it easy, and that they understood it. in the analysis of the workshops we discovered that the students made few written mistakes, and they could read in english without problems because they applied the technique’s exercises. pupils believed this technique is easy to apply and brings many advantages in comprehending a text. these activities included: recognizing similar words in english and spanish, underlining known and unknown words, identifying frequently repeated words filling in the blanks, multiple choices, completing a chart according to information given, etc. following on from our innovative project we proposed implementing a reading technique called skimming, whose purpose was that students understood a text in a meaningful way. the analysis of the instruments applied allowed us to find out some students’ impressions and opinions about this technique. in relation to the questions asked in the questionnaire, 44 students gave their impressions and ideas about the skimming technique and the activities in the workshops. our data indicated that 75% of students found the activity “excellent”, and 18% considered it “good”. from these answers we can conclude that the workshop was very well-received. in addition, 77% of students said the instructions were clear and precise. this is a key to success in reading comprehension. we could infer the level of comprehension of a text. the majority of the students understood almost all the text. this reflects a high level of comprehension when students dealt with a text. with reference to the skimming technique, the answers were positive, with students considering that this technique was easy and a good method for understanding a reading. a great number of students considered vocabulary was easy to understand. in fact, the selected texts were easy to comprehend because pupils could understand the chosen vocabulary. from these findings, we can say the text was motivating for the majority of students. lastly, we wanted to have an impact on the curriculum, proposing reading comprehension as an effective way to access all areas of knowledge, through application of this technique in other academic fields in an interdisciplinary way. based on our analysis we organized the findings in three categories: motivation, familiarization with the skimming technique and progress in the learning process. motivation from the beginning, one of the recurrent aspects in our project was motivation. it has become one of the key concepts to take into account in any learning process. a person who is motivated to do something can get better outcomes. bearing in mind that reading is a complex process that involves profile 8.indd 31 28/09/2007 12:42:13 a.m. calderón agudelo, carvajal ávila and guerrero lópez universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras32 not only decoding words but also the whole meaning of a text, the motivation of the reader is important. we can back up this observation with this students’ answer: “the workshop was easy to understand and the topic turned out to be interesting. (students’ survey number 33). through reading, they can access knowledge, enjoy themselves, and learn at the same time. grellet (1981, p. 89) says: “motivation is of great importance when reading. partly because most of what we usually read is what we want to read, but also because being motivated means that we start reading the text preparing to find a number of things in it, expecting to find answers to a number of questions and specific information or ideas we are interested in”. into our innovative project, we observed that the skimming technique made the reading more pleasurable for students and allowed them to read a text without using the dictionary. “…students went to the board, they were very motivated and answered the questions correctly. the use of the dictionary wasn’t frequent”. (see appendix 3). when students developed workshops, they enjoyed them because these activities were a new methodology used in our english classes, taking into account students have difficulties understanding a foreign language. to introduce the skimming technique in our classes, we designed three workshops. the first one was about shakira, and students liked it because she is a well-known and important singer and many students’ fans. we saw this idea in this pupil’s answer: “i liked this activity because it was about shakira and i love her. i have her last compact disc at home” (students’ survey number 07). other workshops were called my school and i am a bee. these readings were meaningful for students and focused on their reality. this idea is corroborated by gebhard (1996, p. 213): “...we can do our best to introduce students to readings that match their interests, mostly through extensive reading activities.” finally, as the activities developed, students were happy because they understood the readings and they found many words they knew. we have a piece of evidence about this: “it was easy and i understood all the text”. (students’ survey number 43). familiarization with the skimming technique one goal of our project was to get students familiarized with the skimming technique. in this sense, we can argue students did, in fact, become familiar with the technique, since the majority considered it easy to apply. this fact permitted us to introduce students to the development of workshops in a confident class environment that produced a good result: students could answer questions about readings freely. we evidence this aspect in this statement: “students paid attention, they participated a lot in the class although, sometimes, two or three students answered at the same time (field notes, session number 01, september 15th, 2006). in addition, we can back up this finding with the assumption that students want to implement this reading technique with other readings and texts in their mother tongue. with regard to this, we found this evidence: “this technique is so good for understanding texts in english and other languages” (students’ survey number 23). in other words, students got used to applying the skimming technique as a useful strategy comprehending different texts. profile 8.indd 32 28/09/2007 12:42:13 a.m. how to improve sixth graders’ reading comprehension through the skimming technique profile 8, 2007. issn 1657-0790. bogotá, colombia. pages 25-39 33 it is also important that pupils should be helped to apply the skimming technique to get the author’s general idea, and they should be oriented with clear and precise instructions in order to familiarize them with this technique. here, the teacher’s role is very important because if students understand the technique they can apply it in different circumstances. we can observe the importance of this with this quotation: “instructions were clear and i could answer in my workshop” (students’ survey number 17). progress in the learning process the third category concerned progress in the learning process. workshops were designed with students’ interests and likes in mind. during the development of the workshops the english teacher-researcher observed that students worked with interest and enthusiasm, and they could arrive at a better reading comprehension of the text through the skimming technique. in relation to vocabulary, students worked through different exercises such as underlining similar words in english and spanish, and circling words frequently repeated. in this way the students noticed that unknown vocabulary was not an obstacle in comprehending a text. this aspect could be seen in the fifth question of the questionnaire, where 93.18% of the students responded that the vocabulary was easy to understand. as well, in the open questions, the majority of students showed that they found the vocabulary easy to understand. in the same way, we discovered that a wellplanned activity, well-designed material and instructions well-given by the teacher are factors that facilitate the learning process and make the adventure of learning more enjoyable. conclusions to sum up, our proposal led to the development of a pedagogical innovation that brought students a useful tool for comprehending a reading in an effective way. our objective was to help sixth grade students to find the meaning of a whole text through the skimming technique. we believe that students can succeed in the academic world if they know how to extract the principal ideas from a text. after applying different reading workshops, we concluded that students had acquired the ability to comprehend a text. we can infer this from answers given in the questionnaire. we acknowledge the fact that perhaps we had very high expectations in terms of what we and students could do. we certainly believe that there is a myriad of possibilities we can explore in our efl classes, and the skimming technique for reading a text is just one of them. however, we think that it is important that we examine our own context in promoting the development of techniques for reading comprehensively. from our findings we conclude that the skimming technique permits students to capture key words and the whole meaning of a text. in this sense, we can say that students can comprehend and paraphrase a text, which permits students to become proficient readers. when students get the general meaning of a text, they engage in a complex mental process in order to interpret and criticize a text. profile 8.indd 33 28/09/2007 12:42:13 a.m. calderón agudelo, carvajal ávila and guerrero lópez universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras34 references alderson, c., & urguhart, a. h. (1984). reading in a foreign language. michigan: the university of michigan press. allen, e. d., & valette, r. (1997). classroom techniques: foreign language and english as a second language. prospect heights, il: waveland press. burns, a. (1999). collaborative action research for english language teachers. cambridge: cambridge university press. cross, d. (1991). a practical handbook of language teaching. abidjan: vaughan janes. dobson, j. (1980). tfl anthology english teaching forum. making the most of reading (pp.151-157). chicago: university of chicago press. garns, r., & redman, s. (1986). working with words. cambridge: cambridge university press. gebhard, j. g. (1996). teaching english as a foreign or second language. michigan: the university of michigan press. grellet, f. (1981). developing reading skills. cambridge: cambridge university press. markee, n. (2001). managing curricular innovation. cambridge: cambridge university press. ríos, s., & valcárcel, a. (2005). reading: a meaningful way to promote learning english in high school. profile, 6, 59-72. about the authors sandra calderón agudelo holds a b.a. in modern languages from universidad distrital. then she got her specialization in educational projects. ligia milena carvajal ávila holds a b.a. in modern languages from universidad distrital and a specialization in teaching foreign languages from universidad pedagógica y tecnológica de colombia. ana yamile guerrero lópez holds a b.a. in english and spanish from the universidad pedagógica y tecnológica de colombia. the authors work at institución educativa distrital venecia, in bogotá – colombia. profile 8.indd 34 28/09/2007 12:42:13 a.m. how to improve sixth graders’ reading comprehension through the skimming technique profile 8, 2007. issn 1657-0790. bogotá, colombia. pages 25-39 35 appendix 1: reading workshop skimming strategy venecia school name level: 600 before reading 1. with two lines, underline the words that are similar in english and spanish 2. underline the words that you know 3. circle the words that appear in the text several times 4. put a square around the words whose meaning you don’t know my school 1. i like my school. it is big and it has many interesting places. 2. my favorite place is the chemistry lab. i like it because i can do many 3. experiments there. my brother prefers the gym. he’s very good at sports 4. and plays basketball with his friends there every day. there is also a 5. library in my school. it has lots of mystery stories and science-fiction 6. books. it’s a great school. complete the following table according to the reading: line the underlined word refers to 1 it 1 it 3 there 4 his 4 there 5 it profile 8.indd 35 28/09/2007 12:42:13 a.m. calderón agudelo, carvajal ávila and guerrero lópez universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras36 match the places with their corresponding activities: places activities to experiment to read books to study to play ping pong fill in the following table with yes or no. read books experiments play games general study physical exercise school gym chemistry lab library profile 8.indd 36 28/09/2007 12:42:14 a.m. how to improve sixth graders’ reading comprehension through the skimming technique profile 8, 2007. issn 1657-0790. bogotá, colombia. pages 25-39 37 read the text and complete the puzzle 4. y 8. 2. 5. 1. p b r 7. h 3. o 6. a 1. the place to make is the lab. 2. there are many books in the . 3. you can find different stories in a . 4. in the people practice physical exercise. 5. children go to . 6. place to make experiments. 7. i go to school to . 8. a gym is a place to . profile 8.indd 37 28/09/2007 12:42:14 a.m. calderón agudelo, carvajal ávila and guerrero lópez universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras38 appendix 2: questionnaire used to find out students’ opinions on the use of the skimming technique in class institución educativa distrital venecia (morning shift) questionnaire target: sixth grade students subject: english date: september 6, 2006 people in charge: pfpd red profile 2006 teachers objective to know students’ opinion about the functionality and applicability of the skimming technique when reading texts in english and the possibility of using this technique in other subjects. dear students: the purpose of this questionnaire is to know your opinion about the activity done in the english class that dealt with the “skimming technique” applied to reading comprehension. cross (x) the answer that better suits your point of view. your sincerity will be of great help to us. 1. the activity done was a. excellent. b. good. c. average. d. deficient. 2. the instructions to do the activity were a. clear and precise. b. confusing. c. impossible to understand. 3. from the given text, you understood a. everything. b. almost everything. c. little. d. nothing. 4. for you, the skimming technique for reading comprehension was a. easy. b. hard. c. impossible to apply. 5. vocabulary in the given text was a. comprehensible. b. totally unknown. c. impossible to understand. 6. in your opinion, the topic of the text was a. interesting. b. boring. c. little interesting. 7. would you apply this technique to other readings either in spanish or english? yes___ no___ why? profile 8.indd 38 28/09/2007 12:42:14 a.m. how to improve sixth graders’ reading comprehension through the skimming technique profile 8, 2007. issn 1657-0790. bogotá, colombia. pages 25-39 39 appendix 3: field notes lesson plan one date: september 12 th topic: skimming technique teacher asks students to read shakira’s text. everybody reads the text. students recognize known words. teacher explains the skimming technique. it was easy to explain. students paid attention all the time. students work in individual way but they can talk with partners to share ideas about reading. then children begin to develop activities. during the english class, students participated in an active way. on some occasions 2 or 3 students answered at the same time, but their answers were right. they went to the board, they were motivated and answered the questions correctly. profile 8.indd 39 28/09/2007 12:42:14 a.m. profile 11, 2009. issn 1657-0790. bogotá, colombia. pages 29-40 29 the reading strategies used by male and female colombian university students estrategias de lectura usadas por hombres y mujeres en universidades colombianas alex poole*1 western kentucky university, usa the present paper aimed to discover whether females and males significantly varied in their utilization of reading strategies. the participants were 352 (male=117; female=235) low to intermediate colombian university students who completed the survey of reading strategies or sors (mokhtari & sheorey, 2002). the results showed that males’ overall strategy use was moderate, as was their use of nearly half of their individual strategies. females’ overall strategy use was high, as was their use of half of their strategies. females’ overall strategy use was significantly higher than males’, as was their strategy use on two of the three sors subscales and on eight strategies. the study provides ideas for teaching strategies and suggests areas for future research. key words: reading, gender, reading strategies, reading surveys el objetivo de este trabajo fue descubrir si había diferencias significantes entre el uso de estrategias de lectura entre mujeres y hombres. los participantes fueron 352 estudiantes (117 hombres y 235 mujeres) de nivel bajo a intermedio, quienes completaron la encuesta de estrategias de lectura (mokhtari & sheorey, 2002). los resultados mostraron que el uso de las estrategias en los hombres fue moderado como también lo fue su uso de casi la mitad de las estrategias individuales. el uso de las estrategias de las mujeres fue significativamente alta en comparación con los hombres, al igual que lo fue el uso de sus estrategias individuales. las mujeres usaron dos de las tres estrategias de subescala de la encuesta y ocho estrategias. el estudio proporciona ideas para la enseñanza de estrategias y sugiere áreas para investigaciones futuras. palabras clave: lectura, género, estrategias de lectura, encuestas de lectura * e-mail: alex.poole@wku.edu address: department of english, 1906 college heights blvd. bowling green, ky 42101 usa. this article was received on september 12, 2008 and accepted on february 27, 2009. poole universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras30 research has shown that the use of reading strategies is significantly tied to second language (l2) reading proficiency. furthermore, females have been shown to be more active strategy users than males, suggesting that there is a gender gap in l2 reading achievement that needs to be narrowed. however, it is not known whether or not this difference in strategy use exists among colombian efl students at the university level. thus, the present paper had two objectives: (1) to explore the kinds of academic reading strategies used by colombian university efl learners; and (2) to discover whether or not females and males in this group significantly varied in their utilization of reading strategies. the participants in the study were 352 (male=117; female=235) low to intermediate students at two colombian universities who filled out the survey of reading strategies or sors (mokhtari & sheorey, 2002) in their respective english classes. the results showed that males’ overall strategy use was moderate, as was their use of nearly half of their individual strategies. females’ overall strategy use was high, as was their use of half of individual strategies. females’ overall strategy use was significantly higher than males’, as was their strategy use on two of the three sors subscales and on eight individual strategies. the results suggest that colombian university teachers should incorporate the sors into their classes in order to see if such findings represent a widespread phenomenon. if so, techniques for narrowing the gender gap are provided. areas for future research are also discussed. review of literature reading strategies: definition and importance one of the key findings in the last several decades of reading research centers on the importance of reading strategies, or the “[…] specific heuristics, methods, or procedures which readers more or less apply intentionally to adequately process and understand the information presented in a text” (aarnoutse & schellings, 2003, p. 391). such a skill set is especially critical in post-secondary institutions (college, universities, technical institutes) where professors expect far more independent and critical reading than in secondary schools (simpson & nist, 2000). not surprisingly, mokhtari & sheorey (2002) claim that skilled second language readers are skilled strategy users in that they incorporate numerous strategies in creative ways. less skilled second language readers do not reflect such flexibility, and, in fact, only rely on a few strategies which they use with little awareness of when and how to use them. reading strategies at the post-secondary level: selected studies a number of studies show the connection between increased reading strategy use and skilled reading among second language learners at the post-secondary level. kamhi-stein (1998), for instance, studied the reading strategy use of three struggling spanish-english bilingual freshman at a california state university. her goal was to find out what strategies they used often and rarely. participants engaged in think-aloud protocols using science journals, filled out a questionnaire about their reading habits in both spanish and english, completed a writing exercise in which they noted their strategy use in both languages, the reading strategies used by male and female colombian university students profile 11, 2009. issn 1657-0790. bogotá, colombia. pages 29-40 31 and did an outline during a timed reading exercise. a key finding of the study showed that they rarely used important strategies such as text integration, planning, strategy evaluation, and strategy selection. another study that found that low-level second language readers used few strategies was done by zhang (2001) with ten chinese l1 students from two academic proficiency levels. the students participated in interviews in which they were asked about knowledge of themselves as readers, their knowledge of reading tasks, and of strategic reading. the results indicated that low level readers were not as knowledgeable of themselves as readers, reading tasks, and strategic reading as their more proficient counterparts. in fact, more proficient readers reported frequently engaging in skimming, predicting text meaning, and comprehension monitoring. low-level readers, in contrast, used more bottom-up strategies such as using the dictionary, and analyzing sentence-level grammar, which are time-consuming strategies that frequently do not contribute to understanding the overall meaning of a text. yang (2002) also studied highly and minimally proficient chinese efl learners. six highly proficient and six minimally proficient learners engaged in think-aloud protocols from english language textbooks, in addition to receiving strategy instruction. the results indicated that highly proficient readers were efficient at monitoring their comprehension and did not become overwhelmed by sentencelevel grammar and lexical items; minimally proficient readers, on the other hand, were poor comprehension monitors and frequently became bogged down by grammar and vocabulary. a number of studies using strategy inventories have also found significant strategy use differences between more proficient and less proficient readers. specifically, the survey of reading strategies or sors (mokhtari & sheorey, 2002) has been used in a number of studies where those who were more adept readers used more strategies than their struggling counterparts. according to mokhtari & sheorey (2002), the sors is a 30-item self-report tool designed to capture the nature and frequency of strategies that english language learners use. specifically, it contains three types of strategies: global (13 items), problem-solving (8 items), and support (9 items). global strategies are those which learners use to monitor their progress, plan for reading, and set reading objectives. problemsolving strategies involve measures learners undertake to comprehend text while engaged with it, such as getting back on track after losing concentration, reading carefully, and visualizing information read. finally, support strategies are those tools students utilize when text comprehension eludes them, even after global and problem-solving strategies have been used. such strategies include using a bilingual dictionary, asking oneself questions, and translating from english into one’s native language. mokhtari & sheorey (2002) note that the sors is scored on a five-point likert scale in which scores of 2.4 or below show low strategy use, 2.5 to 3.4 signifies moderate strategy use, and 3.5 or above demonstrates high strategy use. the first study that revealed significant differences between highly skilled and less skilled second language learners was carried out by sheorey & mokhtari (2001) with 152 english as a second language (esl) students at a us-based university. among other things, participants were asked to rate their proficiency on a scale of one to six, from which they were divided into high and low groups. the results showed that the group with a higher self-rated proficiency more frequently used all but three strategies. in addition, on two of the three subscales and poole universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras32 overall, the high-proficiency group used more strategies than the low one. another sors-based study was carried out by sheorey & baboczky (2008) in which they studied the strategy use of 545 hungarian college students. once again, students were asked to self-rate their reading abilities in english on a scale from one to six. the results indicated that those who rated themselves as strong readers had a higher mean on eight individual strategies and on the global strategies subscale. finally, sheorey, kamimura & freiermuth (2008) studied the reading strategies of 237 japanese students studying technical english in a japanese university. students were asked to rate their reading ability on a scale from one to six, from which they were divided into high and low groups. the results showed significant differences between the high and low groups on nine individual strategies. in addition, on 80% of the strategies, the high group used more strategies than the low group. reading strategies and gender it is evident that better readers tend to be more active strategy users, and it is also evident that most studies show females to be superior strategy users. one study that shows a slight advantage for females was carried out by sheorey & mokhtari (2001) with 152 (60 females, 92 males) esl students studying at a north american university. the participants filled out the sors (see above for a description of the sors), the results of which indicated no overall gender differences or on any of the three subscales. in fact, there was only one individual strategy in which there was a gender difference, with females scoring higher. the studies discussed below have also shown significant advantages for females. another sors-based study was carried out by poole (2005) with 111 male and 217 female mainland chinese students. females reported using significantly more strategies than males overall and on all of the three sors subscales. in addition, females used 18 of the 30 strategies significantly more than males. sheorey (2006) again used the sors in order to study the strategies of 323 female and 276 male indian university students. the results showed that females used significantly more strategies overall and on two of the three sors subscales. finally, sheorey & baboczky (2008) studied the strategy use of 134 male and 411 female hungarian college students. the results of the sors indicated that females scored higher than males on 13 of 30 individual strategies, overall, and on all three sors subscales. in sum, the studies mentioned above reveal two important facts. first, l2 reading proficiency is generally tied to strategy use. second, females tend to be more active strategy users than males. these findings combined suggest that there is a gender gap in l2 reading proficiency that needs to be filled in many settings where english is taught and learned. unfortunately, although much is known about gender differences between males and females from various cultures and l1 groups, little is known about the differences in reading strategy use between male and female english language learners in colombian universities. this is an important area to study, for advanced educational opportunities and employment with domestic and international companies in colombia frequently require a high level of reading proficiency in english. in addition, such data are important for english teachers and programs directors in helping determine whether or not they are appropriately addressing their students’ literacy needs. if significant gender differences are found and not addressed, the reading strategies used by male and female colombian university students profile 11, 2009. issn 1657-0790. bogotá, colombia. pages 29-40 33 males could be left with fewer educational and professional opportunities than females. in any case, the findings should motivate teachers to reflect on how their programs can better provide equitable instruction to all groups, whether they be gender-based, socioeconomic, or ethnic. thus, this study represents a first step in discovering if there is a significant gap between males and females in efl reading proficiency. the specific questions used to guide the study were: 1) what strategies do males and females use most commonly? 2) are there significant differences in males’ and females’ reading strategy use? method participants the participants in this study consisted of 352 low to intermediate level (male=117; female=235) colombian students from two private, non-sectarian institutions in bogotá. the author contacted the directors of the english programs at the universities to solicit their involvement in the study. individual english teachers, in turn, administered the survey in their classes. the author had no contact with any of the students. participants were in the first, second, third, or fourth year of their education, and were majoring in a wide range of subjects such as business, biology, psychology, medicine, theater, and dance. participants were selected because they represented a wide variety of academic interests and socioeconomic backgrounds, thus enabling generalizable results. the average age of participants was 23. males reported reading academic materials in english for 4.09 hours per week, while females reported doing so for an average of 4.33 hours per week. males reported reading for fun in english for an average of 3.41 hours a week, while females reported doing so for 2.88 hours per week. on a six-point scale, males rated themselves an average of 2.88, while females gave themselves 2.72. instrument the instrument used for this study was the survey of reading strategies (sors) (mokhtari & sheorey, 2002), which was previously discussed. to reiterate, the sors consists of 30 items using three individual subscales: global (13 items), problem-solving (8 items), and support strategies (9 items). teachers administered the survey by asking the students in their classes to voluntarily participate. before beginning the study, students were required to read and sign an informed consent document stating that they agreed to participate, were under no obligation to do so, and could withdraw at any time. the participants filled out the sors and a short demographic survey in their classes. this process required approximately 15 minutes. roughly two-thirds of students completed the survey in english and one-third in spanish. the spanish translation was done by a native-speaker of colombian spanish who holds a master’s degree in spanish and academic training in english to spanish translation. to check for reliability, the cronbach’s alpha was utilized and showed the instrument to be reliable overall (.89), and on the global (.77), problem-solving (.71), and support (.69) subscales. the data were further analyzed to find out each group’s mean, and one-way anovas were used to see if there were significant differences between males and females. poole universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras34 results strategies most commonly used by males and females as table 1 indicates, males used 14 strategies with high frequency and 16 strategies with moderate frequency. of the top ten strategies, five were problem-solving, while three were global, and two were support strategies. the most table 1. males’ use of strategies. strategies used with high frequency: 14 mean prob 9 i try to get back on track when i lose concentration. 4.01 prob 25 when text becomes difficult, i re-read it to increase my understanding. 3.84 prob 14 when text becomes difficult, i pay closer attention to what i am reading. 3.81 glob 3 i think about what i know to help me understand what i read. 3.79 prob 7 i read slowly and carefully to make sure i understand what i am reading. 3.76 sup 29 when reading, i translate from english into my native language. 3.68 glob 1 i have a purpose in mind when i read. 3.68 sup 13 i use reference materials (e.g., a dictionary) to help me understand what i read. 3.64 glob 4 i take an overall view of the text to see what it is about before reading it. 3.59 prob 16 i stop from time to time and think about what i am reading. 3.56 sup 10 i underline or circle information in the text to help me remember it. 3.55 glob 23 i check my understanding when i come across new information. 3.54 sup 18 i paraphrase to better understand what i read. 3.54 sup 30 when reading, i think about information in both english and my mother tongue. 3.50 strategies used with medium frequency: 16 mean prob 11 i adjust my reading speed according to what i am reading. 3.40 glob 15 i use tables, figures, and pictures in text to increase my understanding. 3.33 glob 24 i try to guess what the content of the text is about when i read. 3.32 sup 22 i go back and forth in the text to find relationships among ideas in it. 3.30 glob 8 i review the text first by noting its characteristics like length and organization. 3.29 glob 12 when reading, i decide what to read closely and what to ignore. 3.29 glob 17 i use context clues to help me better understand what i am reading. 3.21 sup 2 i take notes while reading to help me understand what i read. 3.15 glob 27 i check to see if my guesses about the text are right or wrong. 3.11 prob 28 when i read, i guess the meaning of unknown words or phrases. 3.10 glob 6 i think about whether the content of the text fits my reading purpose. 3.07 glob 21 i critically analyze and evaluate the information presented in the text 3.02 commonly used strategy was “i try to get back on track when i lose concentration,” which is a problem-solving strategy. the least commonly used strategy for males was “when text becomes difficult, i read aloud to help me understand what i read,” which is a support strategy. overall, males had an average strategy use of 3.39, 3.32 for global strategies, 3.56 for problem solving strategies, and 3.34 for support strategies. the reading strategies used by male and female colombian university students profile 11, 2009. issn 1657-0790. bogotá, colombia. pages 29-40 35 prob 19 i try to picture or visualize information to help remember what i read. 2.99 glob 20 i use typographical features like bold face and italics to identify key information. 2.86 sup 26 i ask myself questions i like to have answered in the text. 2.83 sup 5 when text becomes difficult, i read aloud to help me understand what i read. 2.83 as table 2 indicates, females used 15 strategies with high frequency and 15 strategies with moderate frequency. of the top ten strategies, three were global, four were problem-solving, and three were support strategies. the most commonly used strategy was the same one that it was for men: “i try to get back on track when i lose concentration”, which is a problem-solving strategy. the least commonly used strategy was “i ask myself questions i like to have answered in the text”, which is a support strategy. overall, females had an average strategy use of 3.58, 3.45 for global strategies, 3.72 for problem-solving strategies, and 3.64 for support strategies. notably, of the top ten strategies used by both males and females, nine were the same, although not in the same order. the exceptions were “i stop from time to time to think about what i am reading”, for males and “i underline or circle the information in the text to help me remember it”, for females. table 2. females’ use of strategies. strategies used with high frequency: 15 mean prob 9 i try to get back when i lose concentration. 4.15 sup 13 i use reference materials (e.g., a dictionary) to help me understand what i read. 4.10 prob 14 when text becomes difficult, i pay closer attention to what i am reading. 4.06 sup 10 i underline or circle information in the text to help me remember it. 4.05 prob 7 i read slowly and carefully to make sure i understand what i am reading. 4.06 prob 25 when text becomes difficult, i re-read it to increase my understanding. 4.02 sup 29 when reading, i translate from english into my native language. 3.96 glob 3 i think about what i know to help me understand what i read. 3.93 glob 4 i take an overall view of the text to see what it is about before reading it. 3.80 glob 1 i have a purpose in mind when i read. 3.77 glob 23 i check my understanding when i come across new information. 3.74 sup 18 i paraphrase to better understand what i read. 3.67 prob 16 i stop from time to time and think about what i am reading. 3.61 sup 2 i take notes while reading to help me understand what i read. 3.54 sup 30 when reading, i think about information in both english and my mother. 3.51 strategies used with medium frequency: 15 mean sup 5 when text becomes difficult, i read aloud to help me understand what i read. 3.49 sup 22 i go back and forth in the text to find relationships among ideas in it. 3.48 prob 11 i adjust my reading speed according to what i am reading. 3.44 poole universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras36 glob 17 i use context clues to help me better understand what i am reading. 3.41 glob 24 i try to guess what the content of the text is about when i read. 3.35 glob 15 i use tables, figures, and pictures in text to increase my understanding. 3.32 glob 8 i review the text first by noting its characteristics like length and organization. 3.30 glob 27 i check to see if my guesses about the text are right or wrong. 3.30 prob 19 i try to picture or visualize information to help remember what i read. 3.27 glob 20 i use typographical features like bold face and italics to identify key information. 3.26 glob 12 when reading, i decide what to read closely and what to ignore. 3.24 glob 6 i think about whether the content of the text fits my reading purpose. 3.20 prob 28 when i read, i guess the meaning of unknown words or phrases. 3.19 glob 21 i critically analyze and evaluate the information presented in the text. 3.18 sup 26 i ask myself questions i like to have answered in the text. 2.93 table 3. significant differences between males and females. overall mean males=3.39 females=3.58 [f (1, 350)=9.90, p=.002] females=higher overall problem-solving males=3.56 females=3.72 [f (1, 350)=5.91, p=.016] females=higher overall support males=3.34 females=3.64 [f (1, 350)=18.66, p=.000] females=higher sup2: i take notes while reading to help me understand what i read. males=3.15 females=3.54 [f (1, 350)]=9.12, p=.003] females=higher sup5: when text becomes difficult, i read aloud to help me understand what i read. males=2.83 females=3.49 [f (1, 350)=19.42, p=.000] females=higher prob 7: i read slowly and carefully to make sure i understand what i am reading. males=3.76 females=4.04 [f (1, 350)=6.75, p=.010] females=higher significant differences between males and females table 3 shows that there were significant differences overall, on two of the three sors subscales (problem-solving and support stra-tegies), and on eight individual strategies. interes-tingly, on all of these items, females scored higher than males. the reading strategies used by male and female colombian university students profile 11, 2009. issn 1657-0790. bogotá, colombia. pages 29-40 37 discussion learners’ use of strategies this study shows that both male and female colombian english language learners are, in general, active reading strategy users. in fact, both populations reported using half or close to half of their strategies with high use, and neither reported using any strategy with low use. such results show that these learners are probably receiving strategy instruction in english, transfer their strategic knowledge from spanish, or both. regardless of the causes, the fact that they are using them with such frequency can only be taken as a sign of reading growth. we can speculate on the relatively high use of some strategies. for example: both males and females used “i try to get back when i lose concentration”, as their number one strategy possibly because as relatively low-level learners, it is easy for them to be distracted by the physical and semantic features of the text. in addition, both males and females used “i use reference materials (e.g., a dictionary) to help me understand what i read” with very high frequency. this could be because learners are still relatively low-level and aren’t able to infer the meaning of words from context and can’t distinguish between important and unimportant vocabulary words. we can also speculate on the relatively low use of some strategies. for example: “when text becomes difficult, i read aloud to help me understand what i read”, was the least used strategy for males. this could have been, as many males from china, japan, south korea, and various latin american countries in college esl sup10: i underline or circle information in the text to help me remember it. males=3.55 females=4.05 [f (1, 350)=15.85, p=.000] females=higher sup 13: i use reference materials (e.g., a dictionary) to help me understand what i read. males=3.64 females=4.10 [f (1, 350)=12.82, p=.000] females=higher prob 14: when text becomes difficult, i pay closer attention to what i am reading. males=3.81 females 4.06 [f (1, 350)=4.96, p=.027] females=higher glob 20: i use typographical features like bold face and italics to identify key information. males=2.86 females=3.26 [f (1, 350)=7.81, p=.005] females=higher sup 29: when reading, i translate from english into my native language males=3.68 females=3.96 [f (1. 350)=4.54, p=.034] females=higher poole universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras38 courses in the united states have anecdotally reported to me, because they feel awkward when reading aloud and have few quiet places in which to do so. in addition, these individuals feel that if they don’t understand the text, then reading it aloud will do them little good. for females, “i ask myself questions i like to have answered in the text”, was the least used strategy. this could have been due to the type of reading that they do. so, certain types of texts are not very interactive, and are very teacher-centered, thus not allowing the students much room to speculate on the content. however, in order to find out why learners are using certain types of strategies with high frequency and others with moderate frequency, more qualitatively-based studies would have to be done. specifically, researchers could have the participants fill out the sors, tally up the scores, and then interview them about why they used certain strategies with high frequency and others with low to moderate frequency. another approach, which is also pedagogically beneficial, could be one that i use in my advanced esl class at western kentucky university in the united states. first, i have the students fill out the sors, and then i have them explain why they use each strategy with the frequency indicated. then, they list the top five most important strategies and the bottom five least important strategies to them. afterwards, they pair up and compare their list to their partners’ and discuss the results. a classroom discussion then ensues about each strategy in which i ask students to explain their rationale for using individual strategies and to model them. if students cannot properly model certain strategies and explain when to use them, i model and explain them. this discussion helps students become aware of strategies that they may not have been aware of or that they may not have known how to implement. likewise, it helps me understand what strategies students don’t understand so that i can periodically re-teach them through direct modeling and explanation. such periodic review is also important because students need to know that certain strategies are used differently depending on their purpose. mokhtari & reichard (2008) found this to be the case in their study of 65 (34 males, 31 females) native-speaking american high school students. using a survey instrument related to the sors, they found that the participants often used significantly different amounts of strategies depending on whether they were reading for study or entertainment. for example: they more frequently had a purpose for reading, used typographical aids, and took notes when reading for study than when reading for entertainment. these results lead the authors to suggest that academic reading is more mentally challenging and thus requires the use of more strategies. even though this study was done with native speakers of english, its findings are likely to be similar for efl students. males and females’ use of strategies it is very interesting to note that the majority of their top strategies were the same; in other words, nine of the top 10 strategies were the same for females and males, although not in the same exact order. this indicates that males and females are using remarkably similar types of strategies. however, they are using many of them with significantly different frequencies. overall, on problem-solving, and support strategies, females scored significantly higher than males. in addition, on eight individual strategies, females scored higher than males. this difference in strategy use could be due to proficiency. it could be that females had studied english for longer amounts of time than males, although this study did not control for this factor. future studies should carefully the reading strategies used by male and female colombian university students profile 11, 2009. issn 1657-0790. bogotá, colombia. pages 29-40 39 look at how years of study and proficiency level affect perceived strategy use. whatever the reason for these differences, it is interesting to note that the results of this study are in line with many of the above reviewed ones (sheorey & mokhtari, 2001; poole, 2005; sheorey, 2006; and sheorey & baboczky, 2008) in which females reported using more strategies than males. this seems to suggest that females, regardless of their l1 proficiency level, and l2 learning setting, tend to use more strategies than males. the main question is whether or not these differences should warrant concerns about wide gaps in achievement between colombian males and females, the answer to which is no. first of all, both males and females used all strategies with either moderate or high frequency, and they used almost identical numbers of both. second, of the top ten strategies used by males and females, nine were the same. third, of the individual strategies in which there were significant differences, five had both males and females using strategies with high frequency, two had both males and females using strategies with moderate frequency, while one had males using strategies with moderate frequency and females with high frequency. in short, even when differences were significant, they did not appear to signal that males were poor strategies users. however, any gender gaps that could lead to differences in reading achievement should be addressed. therefore, as suggested above, individual instructors should have their students complete the sors and provide direct strategy instruction if gender differences are discovered. references aarnoutse, c., & schellings, g. (2003). learning reading strategies by triggering reading motivation. educational studies, 29(4), 387-409. kamhi-stein, l. (1998). profiles of underprepared second-language readers. journal of adolescent & adult literacy, 41(8), 610-619. mokhtari, k., & reichard, c. (2008). the impact of reading purpose on the use of reading strategies. in k. mokhtari & r. sheorey (eds.), reading strategies of first-and second-language learners (pp. 85-97). norwood, ma: christopher-gordon. mokhtari, k., & sheorey, r. (2002). measuring esl students’ awareness of reading strategies. journal of developmental education, 25(3), 2-10. poole, a. (2005). gender and academic reading strategies: a survey of adult efl learners in mainland china. hong kong journal of applied linguistics, 10(2), 38-51. sheorey, r. (2006). learning and teaching of english in india. new delhi: sage publications. sheorey, r., & baboczky, e. (2008). metacognitive awareness of reading strategies among hungarian college students. in k. mokhtari & r. sheorey (eds.), reading strategies of first-and secondlanguage learners (pp. 161-173). norwood, ma: christopher-gordon. sheorey, r., kamimura, y., & freiermuth, m. (2008). reading strategies of users of english as a library language: the case of japanese esp students. in k. mokhtari & r. sheorey (eds.), reading strategies of first-and second-language learners (pp. 175184). norwood, ma: christopher-gordon. sheorey, r., & mokhtari, k. (2001). differences in the metacognitive awareness of reading strategies among native and non-native speakers. system, 29(4), 431-449. simpson, m., & nist, s. (2000). an update on strategic learning: it’s more than textbook reading strategies. journal of adolescent & adult literacy, 43(6), 528-541. yang, y. (2002). reassessing readers’ comprehension monitoring. reading in a foreign language, 14(1), 18-42. zhang, l. (2001). awareness in reading: efl students’ metacognitive knowledge of reading strategies in an acquisition-poor environment. language awareness, 10(4), 268-288. poole universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras40 about the author alex poole, phd, is tesl program director and assistant professor of english at western kentucky university, usa. his interests include issues related to gender and technology in l2 literacy development. 43profile vol. 11, no. 2, 2009. issn 1657-0790. bogotá, colombia. pages 43-54 ¿duermes mucho tony? interpersonal and transactional uses of l1 in the foreign-language classroom*1 ¿duermes mucho tony? usos interpersonales y transaccionales de la lengua materna en el aula de clase de lengua extranjera sandra higareda** georgina lópez*** gerrard mugford**** universidad de guadalajara, méxico whilst communicative teaching approaches sanction, often grudgingly, the limited use of the students’ first language (l1) in english language teaching (elt), critical debate is now centred on a much more substantial and energetic role for the use of mother tongue in the language classroom. justifications favouring the use of l1 currently range from ideological arguments to classroom teaching considerations. this paper contributes to this ongoing debate by examining how new generations of language teachers in mexico are using the students’ mother tongue, spanish, not only as a pedagogical tool but to develop and reinforce interpersonal relationships in the language classroom in order to enhance the learning of english. key words: first language, critical pedagogy, phatic communion mientras que los métodos comunicativos de enseñanza autorizan, muchas veces con poco entusiasmo, el uso de la lengua materna (l1) de los estudiantes del idioma inglés (ei), un gran debate propone un papel más sustancial y activo para el uso del español en el salón de clases. actualmente, los argumentos que se muestran a favor del uso de la lengua materna (l1) parten desde motivos ideológicos hasta factores pedagógicos en la enseñanza en el salón de aprendizaje de idiomas. el presente artículo contribuye a este debate en curso examinando la forma en que las nuevas generaciones de profesores de inglés en méxico están utilizando la lengua materna de sus estudiantes, el español, no sólo como una herramienta pedagógica sino para desarrollar y reforzar las relaciones interpersonales en el salón de idiomas, de forma que el aprendizaje del inglés se vea favorecido. palabras clave: lengua materna, pedagogía crítica, comunión fática * this article reports on a research project carried out at universidad de guadalajara between october 2008 and april 2009. the project reflects work carried out by el cuerpo académico análisis crítico del discurso (udg-ca-552): lgac (contextos sociales y discurso crítico). ** e-mail: higareda87@hotmail.com *** e-mail: ginamandarina@live.com **** e-mail: gerrymugford@yahoo.com address: universidad de guadalajara. centro universitario de ciencias sociales y humanidades. departamento de lenguas modernas. guanajuato #1049. colonia la normal. guadalajara jalisco, méxico. this article was received on april 30, 2009 and accepted on june 19, 2009. 44 universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras higareda, lópez & mugford introduction the prevailing debate concerning the utilization of l1 in the english as a foreign language (efl) classroom centres more on transactional use in both terms of teaching and learning, rather than possible interactional functions. in this paper, we will briefly summarise the transactional arguments in favour of using l1 before examining its potential interpersonal role in the efl classroom. to further this argument, we examine the specific case of how teacher trainees, studying for their b.a. in tefl at a mexican university, employ spanish during their teaching practice to establish, maintain and develop classroom relationships with their students. to undertake this study, we investigated not only teacher trainee attitudes towards the use of the mother tongue in the classroom, but undertook classroom observations to examine if and how spanish is used in the classroom. the results indicate that whilst teacher trainees claim to adhere to conventional beliefs and practices regarding the use of l1, they are often not aware of their own practices in the classroom. theoretical framework three lines of argument have been forwarded in discussing the role of l1 in the efl classroom. reflecting the concerns of critical pedagogy, canagarajah (1999) and phillipson (1992) claim that the use of english reflects an ethnocentric approach to teaching which puts learners at a disadvantage. from a methodological perspective, harmer (2007) and paradowski (2007) claim that the students’ first language has a pedagogical role to play in the efl classroom. meanwhile, atkinson (1987) and prodromou (2002) argue that the use of the mother tongue has practical advantages in terms of classroom management and teacherstudent and student-student interaction. ideological arguments arguing from a global perspective, phillipson attacks “[t]he monolingual tenet which holds that the teaching of english as a foreign or second language should be entirely through the medium of english” (1992, p. 185). phillipson examines “monolingual fallacy” in terms of beliefs and teaching traditions and argues that such an approach “contributes to the failure of the majority in school and to their exclusion from technical and scientific knowledge” (1992, p. 189). highlighting three aspects of the “monolingual fallacy”, phillipson claims that the english-only stance ignores the learner’s language knowledge, fails to understand the nature of bilingualism and psycholinguistically ignores first-language learning experiences since the foreign-language learner is expected to start with no existing language resources. canagarajah argues that the ‘monolingual fallacy’ has gained so much ground that it is claimed that an impressive tradition of empirical research confirms the assumption that english should be the sole medium for instruction for non-native students, and that use of their first language should be eschewed at all costs. the belief that use of the learner’s native language interferes with the learning of english, and hampers the process of second language development, has now passed into the realms of pedagogical common sense and professional orthodoxy (canagarajah, 1999, p. 126). indeed so overpowering are the claims and assertions in favour of the monolingual fallacy that it is often difficult to even open up a debate on the possible use of l1 in the efl classroom. 45 ¿duermes mucho tony? interpersonal and transactional uses of l1... profile vol. 11, no. 2, 2009. issn 1657-0790. bogotá, colombia. pages 45-54 classroom teaching within pedagogic theory, different approaches, methods and techniques have adopted contrasting positions towards the use of the mother tongue in the elt classroom. methodologically, l1 use is almost synonymous with grammar-translation methods since “sentences had to be translated from the target language (l2) back to the students’ first language (l1) and vice versa” (harmer, 2007, p. 63). while spurned by subsequent methods such as the direct method and audiolingualism, the use of l1 has featured heavily in more humanistic approaches such as community language learning (cll) and suggestopedia since l1 is considered to be a linguistic resource that learners bring to the classroom. whilst communicative language teaching (clt) has long disdained the use of the mother tongue in the fl classroom (paradowski, 2007, p. 153), proponents of the lexical approach, which has emerged from clt, have argued that “translation is an instinctive part of the way the mind approaches learning a second language” (lewis, 1997, p. 60). emphasising the value of using l1 in the efl classroom, lewis asserts that “it is inevitable that language users use l1 as a resource and that they make both helpful and unhelpful assumptions on the basis of their experiences of l1. sound pedagogy should exploit rather than try to deny this” (1997, p. 64). in terms of teaching techniques, atkinson (1987) provides a comprehensive list of reasons for using l1 in the efl classroom which can be categorised in terms of classroom management (e.g. giving instructions, saving time in unnecessary explanation and discussing classroom procedures) and focusing on the learner (e.g. checking on learning, allowing learners to say what they really want to say and promoting cooperation between learners). to this list, harmer (2007, pp. 133-134) adds that l1 use encourages interaction between teacher and students at a basic level, allows learners to talk about learning, and enhances the social atmosphere in the classroom. at a more specific level, paradowski maintains that use of the mother tongue can be useful in error correction, contrastive grammar and explaining new vocabulary. for instance, paradowski argues that a contrastive/ comparative approach to pedagogical grammar can help promote tl (target language) grammatical competence (2007, pp. 151-152). classroom interaction research has also examined learners’ attitudes towards the use of l1 in the classroom. for instance, prodromou (2002) has investigated transactional motivations for using l1, asking 300 greek learners if they wanted their mother tongue to be used in the efl classroom. whilst generally sceptical over the role of first-language use, students did express limited support for using the mother tongue to contrast l1 and l2 discourse and for explaining new words. from an interactional viewpoint, holliday argues that in the strong version of communicative teaching, learners should understand how language works rather than just practising language. where there is collaborative work, it is not for the purpose of students communicating with each other, but for the purpose of their helping each other to solve language problems. therefore, students working in groups or pairs do not have to speak english all the time, making the approach much more manageable in monolingual classes. they can speak in their mother tongue about the text. indeed, it would be unrealistic to expect them to tackle the text analysis required by language problems in a foreign language (1994, p. 172). 46 universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras higareda, lópez & mugford we believe that holliday appears to stop short: the use of the mother tongue should not solely be seen in terms of transactional/interactional language use between learner-learners but also as a way for teachers to use language to enhance interpersonal relationships and to express their identity in the classroom. as harmer argues: “it seems highly probable that our identity is shaped to some extent by the language or languages we learn as children” (2007, p. 132). given the difficulties and challenges in learning a foreign language, it is inconceivable that teachers should want to leave any potential learning resources outside the classroom. arguments against the use of spanish given that this paper examines how the mother tongue can be used in the efl classroom, we will not spend an undue amount of time reviewing already well-rehearsed arguments in favour of the tl. instead we invite the reader to examine the arguments summarised in harmer (2007, p. 134). it should be noted, however, that perhaps the strongest argument in favour of monolingualism is that since the efl classroom is aimed at promoting foreign language use, the target language should be the classroom language. however, a counterargument is that besides offering an opportunity to use the target language, the efl classroom is also focused on understanding how language is used. it is debatable whether this task can be carried out effectively only in the target language. importance of interpersonal language use efl teaching has long focused on the transactional aspect of language i.e. “to get something or get something done” (nunan, 1999, p. 228). meanwhile, the interpersonal language dimension has been given less emphasis. interpersonal language “is produced for social purposes” (nunan, 1999, p. 228) and involves the establishment, development and maintenance of social relationships or, as aston argues, “interactional speech is typically employed to negotiate personally-defined relationships – it is the language of making friends” (1988, p. 217). in the classroom context, teachers are not only interested in teaching the language but also in developing relationships with learners. teachers may want to create an atmosphere of trust and confidence so that english-language learning can proceed as smoothly and non-threateningly as possible. it may be more expedient to develop this relationship in spanish, especially at basic levels, because students may not understand its process in english. we examine the use of interpersonal language in the classroom through the concept of phatic communion because phatic communion reveals not only the transition from non-interaction to transactional talk but also reflects the underlying interpersonal dimension within transactional talk. the term phatic communion was developed by malinowski who agued that the breaking of silence, the communion of words is the first act to establish links of fellowship.... the modern english expression, ‘nice day to-day’ or the melanesian phrase, ‘whence comest thou?’ are needed to get over the strange and unpleasant tension which men feel when facing each other in silence (1923, p. 314). students coming into the classroom need to be helped to overcome the potentially uncomfortable and challenging stage of using unfamiliar language as they are expected to switch from spanish to english. this transformation can be even more threatening in the english-only classroom. 47 ¿duermes mucho tony? interpersonal and transactional uses of l1... profile vol. 11, no. 2, 2009. issn 1657-0790. bogotá, colombia. pages 45-54 laver identified the social function of phatic communion and its various stages which he divided into the opening phase, the median phase and the closing phase (1975, pp. 217-218). describing the function of the opening phase, he argues that as a preliminary comment, we might say that the function of the behavioral activity that characterizes the opening phase is to lubricate the transition from non-interaction to interaction, and to ease the potential awkward tension of the early moments of the encounter, “breaking the ice”, so to speak, before the main business of the encounter is embarked upon in the middle phase (1975, p. 218). the opening phase is therefore important in the language classroom, since students transfer from spanish (or fl non-interaction) to tl interaction. laver argues that phatic communion helps interactants establish what goffman (1959) termed a “working consensus”. a working consensus develops as interactants agree on a common framework within which to achieve their communicative goals and thus “involving a degree of mutual considerateness, sympathy and a muting of opinion differences” (1963, p. 96). whilst phatic communion in the opening phase has a transitional/initiatory function, laver argues that it also provides an exploratory function as “it allows participants to feel their way towards the working consensus of their interaction” (1975, p. 221). this “feeling their way” may be achieved more effectively in spanish rather than in english, especially at basic levels. laver identifies a third, initiatory function: [...] in that it allows the participants to cooperate in getting the interaction comfortably under way, using emotionally uncontroversial communicative material, and demonstrating by signals of cordiality and tentative solidarity their mutual acceptance of the possibility of an interaction taking place (1975, p. 221). therefore, the use of spanish has dual roles to play in the english-language classroom in that it signals “sociolinguistic solidarity” (laver, 1975, p. 227) in that the teacher identifies with the interpersonal feelings of students before and whilst they interact in english. research context in order to understand how new generations of teachers approach the use of l1 in the classroom, we examined the attitudes and working practices of 43 students in their second and third year of study for their b.a. in tefl at a mexican university. the typical programa abierto de lenguas (pal) teacher is middle class, female and 18 years old and she learned her english in mexico. to achieve graduation requirements for the b.a. in tefl, second and third year students have to teach english-language classes for four hours a week on a language programme offered to external language students. the pal programme consists of 8 levels and has a student enrolment of approximately 200. charging a minimal fee, pal offers classes to adult students who want to study english but cannot afford market prices charged by private language institutes. typical pal students are either 40-year-old middle class housewives who want to study english to learn more about culture or for personal development or 30-year-old workers who need to study english for academic purposes or to get promoted on their job. pal teachers, who are supervised by fourthyear students and faculty, are expected to follow a communicative approach although this is not explicitly formulated. pal student observers reported that teachers are supposed to only use the mother tongue judiciously, and then only in cases of extreme necessity. however, in practice, the teachers’ use of spanish seemed to depend, to a 48 universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras higareda, lópez & mugford certain extent, on the position and reaction adopted by faculty and fourth-year student observers. spending a total of 80 hours, the researchers observed 80 classes on the pal programme. whilst pal student observers examined teaching practice, the researchers examined the transactional and interpersonal use of spanish. the researchers did not provide any feedback to the pal teachers that they had been observing, leaving the language classroom as soon as the class was over. therefore, they did not take part in the formal feedback sessions. since the pal teachers are used to being observed by several teachers at a time, we do not consider that the researchers’ presence unduly affected classroom teaching practices and the subsequent feedback sessions. research questions in identifying the use of the students’ first language in the fl classroom, we have been pursuing one overarching research question: what is the motivation for teachers using spanish in the classroom? in answering this question, we have tried to identify attitudes and actual classroom practices in terms of transactional and interaction language use. research methodology in order to understand teachers’ attitudes, we gave a written questionnaire to the 43 teachers (see appendix 1). the questionnaire elicited teachers’ attitudes towards monolingualism in the fl context, their own classroom practices and whether spanish should have a place in the efl classroom. in order to triangulate the results, we observed what actually happened in the fl classroom by conducting more than 80 observations over a period of 15 weeks. classroom observations attempted to identify whether spanish was used for transactional purposes (e.g. for exemplifying grammar or giving instructions) or for reflected interpersonal motivations e.g. developing and reinforcing interpersonal relationships. the questionnaires and observations were overseen by three students in their fourth year of the b.a. in tefl with the underlying premise that pal teachers would be more open to answer questionnaires prepared by peers and less inhibited in their teaching if they were also observed by their peers. all the participants in the research were asked to sign a consent form authorising the use of information gathered from the questionnaires and classroom observations. they were also given a draft of this paper so that they could freely comment on it and provide feedback. observations often took place when the pal classes were being observed by faculty and fourthyear student observers who gave formal feedback. this fact may have had a negative impact on the number of instances of interpersonal language use in spanish given that the pal teachers were aware that their classes should be taught in english. to protect the identity of all participants in the study, all names used are pseudonyms. presentation of results participants’ professed beliefs, attitudes and values often heavily contrast with actual classroom patterns of behaviour. the following findings summarise teachers’ responses and actual classroom practices. questionnaire the first two questions probed participants’ attitudes towards the use of english and spanish in the classroom. the results indicate that 28 49 ¿duermes mucho tony? interpersonal and transactional uses of l1... profile vol. 11, no. 2, 2009. issn 1657-0790. bogotá, colombia. pages 45-54 respondents (65%) said that english should be the classroom language whilst 37 respondents (86%) said that there was a case for judiciously using spanish. such findings indicate that pal teachers do not diligently follow a 100-per-cent only english policy in the classroom. question three focused on respondents’ own classroom practices by asking whether they ever used spanish and, if so, whether they felt guilty regarding its use. the purpose behind asking teachers whether they felt guilty about using spanish was to probe whether they felt they were under pressure to adhere to the english-only precepts of the communicative approach as prescribed on the pal programme. the overwhelming majority of teachers, 35 in total (81%) said they did use spanish. of those, only eight felt guilty about using spanish. the main justifications for using spanish were to explain the meaning of new words and clarify meaning. questions four and five attempted to differentiate between the pal teachers’ transactional and interpersonal uses of spanish. on the transactional side, respondents recognised that they principally used spanish to explain unknown words (33 respondents); explain grammar (30 respondents); and clear up language doubts (29 respondents). the overwhelming number of respondents said that they did not use spanish for giving instructions (41 or 95%) or for maintaining class control (40 or 93%). spanish was used much less for interpersonal reasons and principally to express humour and play with language (23 respondents), to relate to students’ learning problems (14 respondents) and to relate students’ personal problems (10 respondents). on the other hand, 36 respondents (84%) said they did not use spanish to express their identity as a person and 34 respondents (79%) said they did not use spanish in order to identify more closely with students. whilst spanish was not used to develop interpersonal relationships, it was used to express humour and to play with language indicating that teachers use the mother tongue to express a lighter side to language learning. in questions six and seven, teachers were asked to consider an acceptable balance between the use of spanish and english in the efl classroom. with regard to basic level efl classes, 34 respondents (79%) thought that there should be a balance between 90% english and 10% spanish. at the intermediate level, 30 respondents (70%) argued that the classes should be 100% in english. classroom observations in order to understand how spanish is actually used in the fl classroom, observations focused on both the transactional and interpersonal use of spanish. teachers’ use of spanish was extremely judicious and on numerous occasions students were reminded by their pal teachers to only use english. transactional use of spanish in the classroom largely mirrored the teachers’ questionnaire answers. for instance, teachers sometimes explained new words in spanish. the underlying motivation appeared to be expediency. for instance, during a reading activity, a student asked for the meaning of skeleton. the teacher replied: “it’s like in spanish: esqueleto”. the teacher offered a quick translation in order not to interrupt a silent reading activity with an oral vocabulary presentation. on another occasion, during controlled grammar practice, the teacher saved time by explaining an unknown word in spanish: “goals son… goles”. in other cases, the use of spanish reflected a contrastive angle. for instance, one teacher used spanish to say: “when you are de acuerdo, you say i agree” in order to highlight the use of the verb ‘to agree’ in english as opposed to estoy (i am) in spanish. sometimes, the 50 universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras higareda, lópez & mugford use of spanish was used as a last resort to explain a word as in the case of words such as apostar (bet) and tiempo de vida (life span). spanish was occasionally used to give students the necessary knowledge to understand grammatical structures. for instance, one teacher offered “you want to ask what?” as a way to say “¿qué quieres preguntar aqui?” another teacher reminded students that ‘what number is?’ reflects the spanish construction: “¿qué número es?” on another occasion, a teacher explained that “i don’t know where are my things” reflects the spanish construction “no sé dónde están mis cosas”. spanish was also used to clear up language doubts. for instance, during free practice, this teacher switched to spanish: teacher: does anybody need this? [thinking that nobodyunderstood,] ¿alguien necesita esto? students: oh… no, we have one. thank you the teacher asked “does anybody need this?” after thinking that nobody had understood what she had said in english, she switched to spanish: “¿alguien necesita esto?” the fact that students answered in english indicates that the classroom language was english. confirming the questionnaire results, observations recorded no use of spanish to explain giving instructions or for maintaining class control. classroom observation that recorded instances of interpersonal language use contrasted heavily with the questionnaire results. first of all, it was noticeable that spanish was used to develop and re-establish interpersonal relationships. at the beginning of class, spanish was occasionally used phatically with several recorded instances of ¡hola, buenos días! (hello, good morning!), ¿cómo están? (how are you?) and ¿cómo están ustedes?, reflecting laver’s transitional/initiatory function. there was also evidence of laver’s exploratory function as teachers asked students what they had done at the weekend as in ¿qué hicieron el fin de semana? and in the following conversation: teacher: what did you do? students: a lot of things. teacher: cosas sanas lo que quieran [healthy things – all that you want] student: todo es sano… todo es sano [everything is healthy ... everything is healthy] the teacher’s light-hearted advice signals a humorous use of the initiatory function as participants interact comfortably “using emotionally uncontroversial communicative material” (laver, 1975, p. 221). spanish was the language used to show concern when, for instance, a teacher asked after a student’s health “¿sigues enfermo?” (“are you still sick?”), or during small talk as in the following extract which takes place before the class begins: teacher: why are you so quiet? student porque tengo sueño maestra [because i’m sleepy teacher] teacher: oh, are you sleepy? why? do you sleep a lot? student: what teacher? teacher: ¿duermes mucho tony? [do you sleep a lot, tony?] student no teacher es que me levanté a las 6 [no teacher it’s just that i got up at six] teacher: did you wake up at 6? oh... very early! the teacher uses english as she shows concern for tony’s silence: why are you so quiet? whilst the student replies in spanish with porque tengo sueño maestra, the teacher continues in english. however, tony does not appear to understand or perhaps he is tired. at this point, expressing solidarity and 51 ¿duermes mucho tony? interpersonal and transactional uses of l1... profile vol. 11, no. 2, 2009. issn 1657-0790. bogotá, colombia. pages 45-54 demonstrating an understanding that the student is tired are more important than conducting phatic communion in english. therefore, the teacher switches to spanish with ¿duermes mucho tony? after the student replies in spanish, the teacher switches back again to english. spanish was also used during classes to probe students’ feelings when, for instance, one teacher asked students how they did with the homework: ¿cómo se les hizo la tarea? confirming the questionnaire responses, teachers also used spanish to play with language. for instance, one teacher used ¡duérmanse! (go to sleep!) when asking his students to close their eyes and think about their last vacations. the use of ¡duérmanse! conjures up the vocabulary of hypnotizers when trying to hypnotise their audience. playing with language also reflected the transfer of cultural concepts from spanish to english as seen in the following extract: teacher: (to a student who just had arrived) good morning, sir! student: fine, and you? teacher: just look at me. like a mango! in everyday colloquial english, mango has no special significance beyond being a tropical fruit. however, in mexican spanish it carries the additional meaning of someone attractive and good-looking and is often used humorously. it should also be noted that interpersonal language in english was often accompanied by spanish-language fillers such as a ver and the use of no? at the end of a question as for instance in and fatima?… yes, no? when asking fatima if she agreed. data analysis questionnaires and classroom observation findings indicate that teachers firmly reject the monolingual fallacy and the concept of the english-only classroom. the use of spanish appears to be a fundamental resource in teaching practice within the university pal programme. at the same time, its use does not reflect any particular elt approach, method or technique, but appears to emerge out of practical considerations as teachers try to help learners come to terms with the target language. with regard to the use of transactional language in the classroom, there is a little discrepancy between the teachers’ stated beliefs in the questionnaires and actual classroom practices. teachers basically used spanish to explain the meaning of unknown words and grammar and to clear up language doubts. of more interest is the divergence between professed teacher attitudes and beliefs and actual classroom practices regarding the use of interpersonal language. the phatic use of language – the language of relationships – reflects laver’s transitional/initiatory function as teachers sometimes greeted students in spanish, and the exploratory function when teachers asked about students’ weekend activities. furthermore, the initiatory/ solidarity function of phatic communion was evident when teachers asked about the health of their students and problems such as feeling tired. pal teachers appeared to be seeking out ways to relate to their students and the appropriate means was often provided by spanish. conclusions in answer to the question regarding the motivation for teachers using spanish in the classroom, 52 universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras higareda, lópez & mugford there are two key findings. first of all, teachers use spanish for transactional reasons and disregard those advocates of the communicative approach who disapprove of the use of the mother tongue. a new generation of teachers in mexico seems to be taking a much more pragmatic approach towards the use of the mother tongue –an approach that responds to more closely to the efl classroom context than the precepts of communicative teaching methodologies. secondly, often unwittingly, teachers use spanish for interpersonal reasons to a much greater extent than they themselves realise. teachers appear to engage in interpersonal language use in spanish so as to separate english-language teaching and learning from the affective dimension of the efl classroom. teachers want to be able to express interpersonal interest and solidarity with their students so that students feel comfortable and at ease. it may be more expedient, to a certain extent, to develop such a relationship in spanish, especially at basic levels. further research needs to analyse whether such interpersonal language use could really be carried out just as effectively in english. when it comes to identifying specific transactional and interpersonal uses of spanish in the classroom, teachers need to adopt a principled approach to the use of l1 in the classroom since there is a potential danger of indiscriminately using the mother tongue in the teaching/learning context. a principled approach that justifies l1 use (e.g. making students feel comfortable) would, first of all, give the “guilty” teachers a pedagogical basis for using spanish. secondly, a principled approach, openly discussed on teacher training courses, would allow teachers to evaluate whether the judicious use of language that stresses relationships (e.g. expressing concern or encouraging students to participate) would help put learners at ease in the classroom. the interpersonal use of l1 that ultimately leads to foreign language use must be an overriding argument against constricting and inhibiting learners by the compulsory use of english. references aston, g. (1988). learning comity: an approach to the description and pedagogy of interaction speech. bologna: cooperativa libraria universitaria editrice bologna. atkinson, s. (1987). the mother tongue in the classroom: a neglected resource. english language teaching journal, 41(4), 241-247. canagarajah, s. (1999). resisting linguistic imperialism in english teaching. oxford: oxford university press. goffman, e. (1959). the presentation of self in everyday life. london: penguin. goffman, e. (1963). behavior in public places. new york: free press. harmer, j. (2007). the practice of english language teaching. harlow: pearson longman. holliday, a. (1994). appropriate methodology and social context. cambridge: cambridge university press. laver, j. (1975). communicative functions of phatic communion. in a. kendon, r. m. harris, & m. r. key (eds.), organization of behavior in face-to-face interaction (pp. 215-238). the hague: mouton. lewis, m. (1997). implementing the lexical approach: putting theory into practice. hove, england: language teaching publications. malinowski, b. (1923) (1969). the problem of meaning in primitive languages. in c.k. ogden, & i. a. richards, the meaning of meaning: a study of the influence upon thought and of the science of symbolism (pp. 296-336). london: routledge & kegan paul ltd. nunan, d. (1999). second language teaching and learning. boston, massachusetts: heinle and heinle. paradowski, m. b. (2007). foreign-language grammar instruction via the mother tongue. in b. frank, j. darquennes, & r. temmerman (eds.), multilingualism and applied comparative linguistics, 1: comparative 53 ¿duermes mucho tony? interpersonal and transactional uses of l1... profile vol. 11, no. 2, 2009. issn 1657-0790. bogotá, colombia. pages 45-54 considerations in second and foreign language instruction. newcastle-upon-tyne: cambridge scholars press. phillipson, r. (1992). linguistic imperialism. oxford: oxford university press. prodromou, l. (2002). from mother tongue to other tongue. retrieved on april 15, 2009, from british council/ british broadcasting corporation web site: http:// www.teachingenglish.org.uk/think/articles/frommother-tongue-other-tongue about the authors sandra higareda is a mexican efl teacher with experience in teaching adults, teenagers and children. she is currently completing her b.a. in teaching english as a foreign language at the universidad de guadalajara. her current research interests include sociolinguistics and teaching english as a second language.  georgina lópez is a mexican efl teacher with experience in teaching teenagers and children. she is currently completing her b.a. in teaching english as a foreign language at the universidad de guadalajara. her current research interests include sociolinguistics, research and teaching. gerrard mugford works at la universidad de guadalajara, mexico, and holds a ph.d from the institute of education, university of london. his current research interests include critical pedagogy, interpersonal language use, and linguistic politeness. 54 universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras higareda, lópez & mugford appendix 1: teachers' attitudes towards monolingualism in the efl classroom name: ____________________________ e-mail: _____________________________ the following questionnaire examines the use of spanish in efl classes. 1. should english be the only language used in english-language classes? yes__ no__ please give reasons for your answer: __________________________________________________ 2. do you feel that teachers may have valid reasons for using spanish in the classroom? yes__ no__ please give reasons for your answer: __________________________________________________ 3. do you ever use spanish when teaching in the classroom? yes__ no__ if you answered yes, do you feel guilty about using it? yes__ no__ please give reasons for your answer: __________________________________________________ 4. as a teacher, do you ever use spanish in the language classroom to: reflect your own teaching methodology yes__ no__ explain grammar yes__ no__ clear up language doubts yes__ no__ explain unknown words yes__ no__ give instructions yes__ no__ control the class yes__ no__ others: _________________________________________________________________________ 5. as a teacher, do you ever use spanish in the language classroom to: relate to students’ personal problems yes__ no__ relate to students’ learning problems yes__ no__ identify more closely with students yes__ no__ express your own identity as a person yes__ no__ express humour / play with language yes__ no__ others: _________________________________________________________________________ 6. what is a good balance between the use of spanish and english in the basic level efl classroom? english 100% spanish 0% english 90% spanish 10% other: ________________________________________________________________________ 7. what is a good balance between the use of spanish and english in the intermediate level efl classroom? english 100% spanish 0% english 90% spanish 10% other: _________________________________________________________________________ profile no. 6 oct 13.p65 ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ profile profile profile profile profile 6 (2005): universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras developing oral skills through communicative and interactive tasks desarrollo de las habilidades orales a través de tareas interactivasdesarrollo de las habilidades orales a través de tareas interactivasdesarrollo de las habilidades orales a través de tareas interactivasdesarrollo de las habilidades orales a través de tareas interactivasdesarrollo de las habilidades orales a través de tareas interactivas dorelly gutiérrez gutiérrezdorelly gutiérrez gutiérrezdorelly gutiérrez gutiérrezdorelly gutiérrez gutiérrezdorelly gutiérrez gutiérrez yggd@latinmail.com institución educativa distrital britalia this article describes a research project carried out with a group of ninth grade students at the institución educativa distrital britalia, in bogotá. the starting point was a needs analysis which revealed the lack of practice regarding speaking skills. three interactive tasks, a free conversational activity, and basic oral defenses were designed and implemented. direct observation, videos and audiotapes provided evidence of the improvement of students’ oral communication. the changes in the pedagogical practice, in the role of the teacher, in the syllabus design and in learners’ attitudes towards their learning process were recorded as the main results of the action research project. kkkkkey worey worey worey worey words:ds:ds:ds:ds: oral communication, interactive tasks, task-based learning este artículo describe un proyecto de investigación desarrollado con un grupo de estudiantes de noveno grado en la institución educativa distrital britalia, en bogotá. se partió de un análisis de necesidades que reveló la ausencia de práctica en habilidades orales. se diseñaron e implementaron tres tareas interactivas, una actividad de conversación libre y sustentaciones orales básicas. la observación directa, los videos y audio casetes evidenciaron el mejoramiento de la comunicación oral de los estudiantes. los cambios en la práctica pedagógica, en el papel del maestro, en el diseño del programa y en las actitudes de los estudiantes hacia su proceso de aprendizaje fueron los resultados principales del proyecto de investigación acción. palabras claves: palabras claves: palabras claves: palabras claves: palabras claves: comunicación oral, tareas interactivas, aprendizaje basado en tareas 83-96 this article was received on april 06th, 2005 and accepted on august 16th, 2005. ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ 84 gutiérrezgutiérrezgutiérrezgutiérrezgutiérrez profileprofileprofileprofileprofile introductionintroductionintroductionintroductionintroduction one of the main necessities in the learning of a foreign language is the development of the four skills, which are listening, speaking, reading and writing. but in the colombian context, especially in public schools, those skills are not developed enough due to a set of factors such as the number of students per classroom, the lack of learning resources, and the exaggerated use of grammar approaches which cause some students to lack motivation in the learning of english. as a consequence, learners have many problems, especially in oral communication. when they try to express themselves orally, they only pronounce isolated words and disconnected sentences making their production poor and meaningless. since speaking is required in academic and professional performances, the lack of oral production skills becomes a serious disadvantage when compared to private school students. this project proposes the implementation of a research activity which includes the application of some communicative and interactive tasks directed to improve oral skills. bearing in mind task-based learning and communicative and interactive views, learners can approach speaking as a way to negotiate meaning and to establish social relations with others. research questionsresearch questionsresearch questionsresearch questionsresearch questions • what is the role of interactive tasks in students’ oral production? • what are the teachers’ and learners’ roles during the development of oral tasks? • in which way does feedback contribute to developing speaking skills? literaliteraliteraliteraliterature reviewture reviewture reviewture reviewture review learners of foreign languages in our context usually do not like to speak the l2 and most of the time they exhibit a passive attitude in class. training in oral skills which let them communicate and interact in a meaningful and fruitful form, that is, exchanging information, negotiating meaning, supporting ideas, facing oral defenses, is a way to motivate students to see the foreign language as a vehicle for social interaction. humans are social beings who are in continuous communication and interaction with each other. for that reason, it is important to foster situations in which learners can face real communication in a foreign language. an argument that supports this view is found in bygate (1987: 1), who states: “our learners often need to be able to speak with confidence in order to carry out many of their most basic transactions. it is the skill by which they are most frequently judged, and through which they make or lose friends.” “in interaction students can use all they possess of the language, all they have learned or casually absorbed in real life exchanges” (rivers, cited in brown, 1994, p.159). this quote addresses the importance of real interaction which gives the learners the opportunity to demonstrate what they can do in the foreign language. interaction is the basis of human communication and all elements of communicative and interactive competence (grammar, discourse, sociolinguistics, pragmatics) are involved in human interaction. they must work together for successful communication to take place. on the other hand, it is important to create a positive environment to encourage the learners’ interaction. as such, they can express their ideas, feelings and opinions without feeling afraid of making mistakes. students can also carry out communicative tasks in an effective way. willis (1996) states that creating a low stress atmosphere and using the language for real purposes are ways to get meaningful communication and through interaction learners have the chance to acquire discourse skills. willis also highlights the essential conditions for effective language learning, such as exposure, use, and motivation. with this view of language, task-based learning offers many advantages in the designing of communicative activities and the development and improvement of oral skills. nunan (1991: 279) says that task-based learning views the learning process as a set of communicative tasks that are directly linked to the curricular goals ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○85 profileprofileprofileprofileprofile developing oral skills through communicative and interactive tasks they ser ve. task-based teaching involves an approach where communicative tasks are important because students need to engage in interactions inside and outside the classrooms. this view changes the approach of designing tasks to be developed in the classroom. it means teachers and students must be engaged in tasks which involve meaningful contexts where learners use the foreign language in a real form not only for a grade but for their daily life. task-based learning lets the students develop a set of discourse strategies such as opening and closing conversation, introducing a topic, etc. also, the learners have the opportunity to interact in different situations, in different groups and audiences. at this point i want to highlight the importance of group work because when learners work in groups, they have the chance to rehearse their speech and also give and receive feedback. methodologymethodologymethodologymethodologymethodology since the purpose of this research project was to inquire about the development of oral production and how interaction and the task-based approach could contribute to improve the quality and the development of students’ speaking skills, it was undertaken in the form of action research in which the teacher researcher reflected on the speaking tasks carried out with ninth grade students at britalia high school. kemmis and mactaggar (1985), cited in jiménez, luna, and marín (1993) provide a view of action research. it deals with understanding, changing, and innovating classroom processes by collecting information in a spiral way. moreover, action research allows teachers to inquire about learning problems and reflect on their pedagogical practice. action research is an ongoing process of continuous reflection, redesigning and rethinking to improve pedagogical practice in each cycle. the implementation of each cycle of the research project let me reflect on students’ needs and, at the same time, be aware of the main changes needed in the pedagogical practice. for instance, in the first task (speaking about music), i perceived that video was a good input for the activity. the students enjoyed singing the nirvana songs, but when they were required to speak about them, they were very scared. for that reason, i had to look for alternatives which solved that problem. i reflected on possible solutions such as interaction in small groups. teacher and peer feedback were fruitful because in the second task, students were more confident in their oral communication when facing the whole group. setting and psetting and psetting and psetting and psetting and populationopulationopulationopulationopulation the research project was carried out at institución educativa distrital britalia with a ninth grade group. forty students participated in the project: twenty three girls and seventeen boys, whose ages ranged from 14 to 17 years old. students share similar socio-economic status (middle – low). they receive three hours of english instruction per week. the institución educativa distrital britalia is a public school located in the kennedy district, bogotá. data collection instrumentsdata collection instrumentsdata collection instrumentsdata collection instrumentsdata collection instruments the following list outlines the techniques and instruments i used: (1) questionnaires. they were used in the needs analysis stage to inquire about students’ opinions and experiences related to speaking skills. (2) observation was carried out through proformas which gave me the chance to analyze what was happening in the classes and the students’ attitudes toward the speaking tasks. (3) i also used a diary. it enabled me to reflect and rethink regarding my teaching practice and take notes about special or meaningful teaching experiences. (4) videotapes and audiotapes became useful tools in the research project because i could capture valuable information and analyze it at different times. pedagogical designpedagogical designpedagogical designpedagogical designpedagogical design the starting point was a diagnosis and needs analysis activity whose results helped me to design three communicative and interactive tasks which ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ 86 gutiérrezgutiérrezgutiérrezgutiérrezgutiérrez profileprofileprofileprofileprofile let students explore their process of oral communication. the learners’ personal experiences were of paramount importance in the planning and further implementation of new tasks. they were asked about personal points of view, telling information about past events and supporting ideas. the first data were provided by needs analysis and a diagnostic activity. i used a questionnaire which was answered by forty students. they were asked about speaking skills and oral communication (see appendix 1). the activity showed that the majority of students was conscious about the importance of improving speaking skills and the problems that they had in oral communication. learners wanted to communicate in english and considered speaking in that language an important skill. but they wanted to communicate in writing rather than orally because speaking involves good pronunciation and fluency which they did not have. what is more, they felt scared when they spoke in front of people or when they made pronunciation or grammar mistakes. in addition, teachers in public schools have an average of 50 students per group so it makes it difficult to train the students in oral skills. speaking demands a lot of time, especially when the students are not used to working in groups and monitoring themselves; they are dependent only on the teacher’s feedback. among the favorite topics that learners liked to speak about were music, literature, films, stories, sports, and important people. students preferred to narrate and describe instead of supporting ideas. some students said that they did not like to communicate in english with others because they did not understand them. consequently, they had some problems in listening skills too. some of them pronounced isolated words or said incomplete sentences. i could observe that learners made a set of grammar and pronunciation mistakes (see appendix 2). also, students showed a lack of fluency and problems with word order, sentence structure, transferences, omissions, and pet words. i concluded that students needed to carry out not only pedagogical tasks (tasks developed in the classroom) but also target tasks (tasks that students must accomplish beyond the classroom), which involved independent study and practice. i wrote a general report about the first findings. periodical analysis and reflection were carried out during and after the implementation of each speaking task and their results were used to design the new actions or new tasks. three tasks oriented to improving speaking skills were designed and the following procedure was implemented: in the first step, i looked for the students’ preferred topics, the students’ weaknesses and strengths, the available materials, and the designing of workshops and guides. the second cycle was the implementation of speaking tasks. in the first task (speaking about music), students expressed their opinions about nirvana, a rock music group and the principal singer, kurt cobain. they participated in different activities such a free conversation in small groups and giving points of view in a discussion. during the development of these activities, the majority of the group was stressed, but little by little the members avoided anxiety and were willing to participate in oral activities. the first participants were volunteers. in order to carry out this task, students required the following skills: to produce speech in a natural way using appropriate sentences and some cohesive devices in spoken discourse (see appendix 3). in comparison to the diagnostic stage, i could perceive an improvement of sentence structure, the students pronounced short sentences and used some paralinguistic devices (gestures, eyes and hand movements). however, some of them did not handle cohesive devices. this fact gave me the idea to reinforce the use of linking words in oral production and take advantage of writing as a strength in the group. the students could write a draft of their oral composition in order to give them constructive feedback. it fostered improvement of word order, sentence structure and pronunciation. the second task, a photo-story, consisted of the narration of a story based on the students’ photographs. students enjoyed it very much; they inquired about classmates, family, childhood, elementary and primary ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○87 profileprofileprofileprofileprofile developing oral skills through communicative and interactive tasks before the implementation of the projectbefore the implementation of the projectbefore the implementation of the projectbefore the implementation of the projectbefore the implementation of the project there was not a context of communication and interaction in the classroom. speaking was assimilated as an isolated product. students only repeated instructions and memorized dialogues. students perceived speaking as an individual activity, and they did not interact using the foreign language. there were not clear or evident phases in the development of speaking. students were not able to communicate orally. they were afraid of making mistakes and speaking in front of others. students’ oral production was poor; they only pronounced isolated words or disconnected sentences. students did not use paralinguistic resources in their oral communication. students were not able to negotiate meaning and support their ideas. after the implementation of the projectafter the implementation of the projectafter the implementation of the projectafter the implementation of the projectafter the implementation of the project there was a context of communication and interaction where students developed tasks focused on the practice of oral skills. speaking involved learners’ experiences and interests. they gave information about themselves, expressed their feelings, opinions and criticism. speaking was seen as a social skill, where interaction, feedback and group work played an important role. exposure, interaction, feedback were useful phases before oral production. they let students rehearse and refine their speech. students perceived speaking as a developmental skill where pronunciation and grammar mistakes are part of the process of improvement. students improved their oral production. isolated and disconnected sentences turned into meaningful and coherent texts. gestures, tone of voice, hand and eye movements complemented their oral communication. students exchanged information and negotiated meaning in their conversations. they expressed positions in a basic way. education, and the most important celebrations. this showed that it was positive to implement tasks where learners involved personal experiences. nunan (1991) brings out this aspect in the designing of tasks. with this activity, i could see that students had difficulties related to fluency. they used pet words and repetitions. although they tried as much as possible to keep correct word order, sometimes they did not remember specific words in their tales. it broke the narration of the story and the listeners became bored. the last situation gave me cues to design activities oriented to practice narration faster by using dumb stories to improve fluency and speed. ferdinand’s stories, for instance (see appendix 4). the final task was presenting a conversation about maloka, a technological and interactive place in bogotá. students exchanged information through open questions. they gave points of views and supported their ideas orally. students learned about some research experiences and watched an interactive film. then, they carried out an interactive activity in groups of four people. students had to discuss some open questions related to technological advances and the film. during the interactive phase, they received teachers’ and classmates’ oral feedback to rehearse, refine and improve their oral production. in order to develop the ability to support ideas, learners also carried out some activities such as small debates tttttable 1.able 1.able 1.able 1.able 1. summary of the diagnostic stage and findings. ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ 88 gutiérrezgutiérrezgutiérrezgutiérrezgutiérrez profileprofileprofileprofileprofile about the advantages and disadvantages of technology for human beings. finally, they held a group conversation, exchanging information and opinions about maloka. findingsfindingsfindingsfindingsfindings with the information provided by the four instruments implemented, i analyzed the data to highlight the relevant information and establish the categories. the following table summarizes the findings before and during the implementation of the project. the information in the first column is the result of the diagnostic stage and the teacher’s reflection regarding observation. the second column shows the most important findings during the development of the project taking as base the video and audiotapes and proformas. on the other hand, i established some categories bearing in mind the collected information. the categories are related to the following stages to enhance oral communication among students: exposure: students were put in contact with some patterns of the foreign language which provided models and, at the same time, created a stimulating communicative context. in that way, they were motivated to communicate in english. for instance, in the implementation of the first task the learners enjoyed listening to music and watching the videos and pictures of nirvana. some of them asked about the history of the group, the lyrics and albums. at the beginning, oral production was poor; students only pronounced isolated words or disconnected expressions, so their oral production was not meaningful for their interlocutors. also, learners did not have confidence to communicate in oral form. interaction: students carried out the interactive and communicative tasks practicing in small groups where they could speak without the teacher’s control or grades. this was the phase where students ridded their fear and rehearsed their speech. in this phase, they improved their oral production due to the group work practice. students exchanged information with different listeners using short sentences. feedback: it was one of the most important tools. students received feedback from the teacher and their classmates because the development of the speaking activities required different listeners’ contributions in order to establish meaningful interaction and fruitful communication. feedback also contributed toward giving confidence to learners and, at the same time, contributed toward improving language use. students received feedback in all speaking tasks (see appendix 6). in this phase, they began to use connectors to make their oral production more coherent for their interlocutors. final oral production: students incorporated feedback observations and refined their oral texts. they obtained fluency in their oral production and used pragmalinguistic devices to make their communication more effective. for example, students in the third task held oral defenses and simple conversations supporting and defending their ideas in front of others. all interactive and communicative tasks involved the development of the following basic phases: exposure, interaction and feedback before the final production. i consider them to be useful in the implementation of activities because oral production is a meaningful process which requires time and practice. conclconclconclconclconclusionsusionsusionsusionsusions following the cycles of action research helped me to carry out the research and innovation project which took into account the needs and interests of students. it also let me reflect on my pedagogical practice and look for new alternatives to encourage oral communication among the learners. the problems of the lack of an interactive and communicative context and speaking skills were addressed in this project. an approach to taskbased learning proved to be effective for the population of this study. so the three speaking tasks were activities which let students express their ideas, feelings and opinions freely. the teacher was a facilitator of learning. i interacted with students giving feedback, offering ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○89 profileprofileprofileprofileprofile developing oral skills through communicative and interactive tasks solutions and assessing speaking in a collaborative way. students were active participants during the course of the project. they interacted with others and asked for information or feedback which let them improve their oral production. feedback and group work let students assess themselves, refine their oral production and get confidence in speaking. they interacted all the time in a collaborative environment, leaving behind their fear of making mistakes and perceiving speaking as a process of continuous practice. by developing interactive and communicative tasks, the students of ninth grade of britalia could develop speaking skills, which let them interact in different situations using the foreign language in a fruitful form. they asked and gave information, expressed their ideas and supported them. during the research project learners were encouraged to communicate in the oral form as much as possible. they used the foreign language by engaging in situations that replicated normal language use; for instance, speaking about the advantages and disadvantages of technology. thus, i can conclude that the learners attained a certain level of knowledge and proficiency in the language use. but the most important point was that they could express and communicate orally, without the pressure of time or grades. they used language meaningfully and effectively. pedpedpedpedpedagogicagogicagogicagogicagogical implical implical implical implical implicaaaaationstionstionstionstions this project implied a set of tasks based on interactive and communicative approaches with the purpose of helping students improve their oral skills. the analysis of findings suggests the implications for pedagogical practice as follows: the creation of an interactive and communicative context contributes to the development of speaking skills and the improvement of oral production. students work in small groups. this, in turn, helps them to improve oral production. task-based learning lets students carry out activities around their personal experiences. it is then important that teachers be aware of the students’ knowledge of foreign language and of what they can do with it. for instance, when the students are able to interact with others or face an oral defense supporting their ideas. feedback is a useful element in foreign language learning. it lets students rehearse and assess their oral production. feedback lets teachers perceive learning as a process. this way, they can analyze the students’ mistakes and work based on their strengths and weaknesses to improve language use and communication. lastly, i can point out that the steps that teachers bear in mind in action research should become part of the daily teaching activity, especially for those who are really engaged in making their teaching practice an environment of reflection and improvement. about the authorabout the authorabout the authorabout the authorabout the author dorelly gutierrez gutierrezdorelly gutierrez gutierrezdorelly gutierrez gutierrezdorelly gutierrez gutierrezdorelly gutierrez gutierrez holds a b. a. in modern languages from the universidad pedagógica y tecnológica de colombia and participated in the “red profile” in-ser vice program. she is working at the i.e.d. britalia kennedy. she is a master’s candidate in the master program in applied linguistics to tefl at the universidad distrital francisco josé de caldas. referencesreferencesreferencesreferencesreferences brown, d. (1994). teaching by principles: an interactive approach to language pedagogy. new jersey: prentice hall regents. bygate, m. (1987). speaking. new york: oxford university press. jiménez, s., et al. (1993). action research guide. bogotá: cofe series publications. nunan, d. (1991). designing tasks for the communicative classroom. new york: cambridge university press. willis, j. (1996). a framework for task-based learning. london: longman. ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ 90 gutiérrezgutiérrezgutiérrezgutiérrezgutiérrez profileprofileprofileprofileprofile appendix 1: needs analappendix 1: needs analappendix 1: needs analappendix 1: needs analappendix 1: needs analysis surveyysis surveyysis surveyysis surveyysis survey the purpose of this survey is to inquire about the most important needs of the population and the students’ attitudes to speaking skills. please respond precisely. grade: ________ 1. do you communicate in english? yes ____ no ____ why 2. in which form do you communicate? oral ____ written ____ why 3. do you consider oral communication important? yes ____ no ____ why 4. what strategies do you use in oral communication? 5. what elements are required to express yourself effectively in oral form? 6. do you speak with other people in english? yes ____ no ____ why 7. write some problems or difficulties that you face in oral communication. 8. what are the possible solutions to the above problems? 9. in your oral communication you prefer: a. to describe b. to narrate c. to present d. to support why 10. what are your preferred topics in conversations or in oral defenses? 11. would you participate in a speaking program oriented to improve your oral production? yes ____ no ____ why ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○91 profileprofileprofileprofileprofile developing oral skills through communicative and interactive tasks appendix 2: transcription of the diagnostic activity (fappendix 2: transcription of the diagnostic activity (fappendix 2: transcription of the diagnostic activity (fappendix 2: transcription of the diagnostic activity (fappendix 2: transcription of the diagnostic activity (free speaking)ree speaking)ree speaking)ree speaking)ree speaking) students developed a simple speaking task. the patterns of oral language demonstrated that they have problems in their communication and their oral production was very poor. speech samplespeech samplespeech samplespeech samplespeech sample s1…grunge movement (he moves his face) and breaks the conversation. the majority of the students look at each other and avoid the camera. others hide their faces and when somebody speaks, they laugh very much. s1: nirvana was //…the grunge… t: what is the idea? s1: nirvana was one grunge band. conventions // interruption … pause commentscommentscommentscommentscomments i perceived that the students have many problems in oral communication. they did not want to speak because they are afraid to make pronunciation and grammar mistakes. students only used isolated words and disconnected expressions. there was not a context of communication and interaction which encourages learners to speak. ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ 92 gutiérrezgutiérrezgutiérrezgutiérrezgutiérrez profileprofileprofileprofileprofile appendix 3: transcription of the first tappendix 3: transcription of the first tappendix 3: transcription of the first tappendix 3: transcription of the first tappendix 3: transcription of the first task (speaking about music)ask (speaking about music)ask (speaking about music)ask (speaking about music)ask (speaking about music) this extract illustrates oral production during the development of the first task. in this activity students began to use the foreign language to interact with each other. speech samplespeech samplespeech samplespeech samplespeech sample s1: … the music is so depressed& t: what are the reasons that kurt cobain music was depressed& or sad? s1: but parents divorced& // in childhood… (she moves her hands) depressed& kurt cobain. s2: my opinion // it is interesant*… in the band ¡ violence& and problem in his family… (she moves her eyes and face) and ¡ excellent band of nirvana t: do you like that music? s2: yes t: what is your preferred music? s2: romantic conventions … pause & mistaken pronunciation // interruption * invented words ¡ omitted word commentscommentscommentscommentscomments i could observe that both speakers are in a developmental process. they make different kinds of mistakes in their pronunciation and grammar structures. they omitted some verbs and there are some disconnected sentences. however, there is a relative improvement in word order and sentence structure. in the oral production, students tried to express their opinions leaving the limitations of vocabulary or grammar structures and focusing on the messages. they used different resources (face, eye and hand movements, gestures, tone of voice and other ones) which helped them to communicate in an effective way and to improve their oral discourse. i was aware of the lack of cohesive devices in the oral texts. for that reason, in the next task, students will develop a workshop about the different kinds of connectors in order to make their oral texts more meaningful and coherent for their listeners. ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○93 profileprofileprofileprofileprofile developing oral skills through communicative and interactive tasks appendix 4: transcription of the second tappendix 4: transcription of the second tappendix 4: transcription of the second tappendix 4: transcription of the second tappendix 4: transcription of the second task (photo storask (photo storask (photo storask (photo storask (photo story)y)y)y)y) this extracts shows that students improved their oral production and fluency. they were very encouraged speaking about their family, trips, memories of childhood and adolescence. speech samplespeech samplespeech samplespeech samplespeech sample s5: …with my& family i ¿ work cared to ¿ … i visited my& grandmother// with my family… in the house. ( she moves her eyes and looks the photography) s5: i ¡ six in mother house in company the parents // after… i traveled with my& family in girardot. (she looks the photography) … on vacation i visited a grandmother in the boyaca. // i celebrated bautism* “veinte de” july& i eat& chicken in the restaurant with godparents… conventions … pause & mistaken pronunciation // interruptions * invented word ¿ misunderstand word ¡ omitted word “” expression in spanish commentscommentscommentscommentscomments in this task, the student faced a presentation using different photos. the student had fluency in her speech; however, she used few connectors. i could perceive an improvement in the sentence structure and word order. the student tried to communicate by related sentences in each photo. the student expressed as possible the message in her presentation. sometimes she used her native language in order to continue her oral text and avoid stops which could break the narrative sequence. in this stage of the project, students made pauses to express their thinking in english and avoid the direct translation from spanish because they began to be aware about the differences between their native and the foreign language. some of them told me that it was a difficult process. ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ 94 gutiérrezgutiérrezgutiérrezgutiérrezgutiérrez profileprofileprofileprofileprofile appendix 5: transcription of the third tappendix 5: transcription of the third tappendix 5: transcription of the third tappendix 5: transcription of the third tappendix 5: transcription of the third task (speaking about maloka)ask (speaking about maloka)ask (speaking about maloka)ask (speaking about maloka)ask (speaking about maloka) this pattern illustrates the production at the end of the speaking tasks. in this activity, students were more confident in their interactions. speech samplespeech samplespeech samplespeech samplespeech sample s4: hello friends s4: what is your opinion about maloka? s1: my opinion about maloka is that it is a // a good place to learn. (he moves his eyes and hands) s2: my opinion about maloka is good, ¡ good because… because it ¿ for its games and experiments. s3: my opinion about & maloka ¡ is good for incent* technology. s4: my opinion ¡ is wonderful and beautiful. s3: what is the most important place for you? s4: for me ¡ place was important is theatre and ¿ (students look each other and smile) s1: the place many important for me was the cinema, because ¿ was a beautiful for yourº decorations. s3: my favorite place is electrocut* and decoration… s3: did you like the film dizziness? s4: yes, the film dizziness is real and wonderful. commentscommentscommentscommentscomments in the conversation, i perceived that students spoke spontaneously. they used different pragmalinguistic resources to make their communication more effective. students smiled and moved their hands like native language speakers; also their tone of voice expressed enthusiasm. it was planned that students ask questions but not only one member of the group. at the beginning of the conversation, s4 began to ask questions and the rest of the students gave their opinions. however, s3 decided to ask all the questions. perhaps it is the first time that students faced an oral presentation and they needed to develop other conversational activities. in the oral production, i could analyze that students improved their level of fluency. there was not a great number of interruptions and pauses despite their omitting words in some sentences and inventing new expressions. learners emphasized bits in the message. they defended their ideas with the use of connectors of reason. students highlighted cinedomo as the most important place in maloka. additionally, they expressed their opinions about the dependence of men on technology. it is interesting that students used the foreign language to make judgments about the situation nowadays. ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○95 profileprofileprofileprofileprofile developing oral skills through communicative and interactive tasks (students look each other) s3: what are the disadvantages& of technology? s1: the disadvantage& of technology is that human depend of technology… s3: what invention do you consider important for human beings&? s1, s2, s4: computer (they speak at the same time) s1: … ¡ save information. s3: and chat conventions … pause & mistaken pronunciation * invented word // interruption ¿ misunderstand word ¡ omitted word º wrong word students tried to support their ideas, they answered yes – no questions and complemented them with an additional explanation. ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ 96 gutiérrezgutiérrezgutiérrezgutiérrezgutiérrez profileprofileprofileprofileprofile appendix 6: feedback formaappendix 6: feedback formaappendix 6: feedback formaappendix 6: feedback formaappendix 6: feedback format for the speaking tt for the speaking tt for the speaking tt for the speaking tt for the speaking tasksasksasksasksasks students received the form before the final production. feedbackfeedbackfeedbackfeedbackfeedback fluency: pronunciation: interaction: vocabulary: use of language: coherence and cohesion devices: speed: suggestions: profile 3.p65 ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ 67 profileprofileprofileprofileprofile f our tasks, set up by an english teacher in his efl lessons with undergraduate licenciatura students, were analyzed and compared on the basis of the input involved while they were being developed. the nature of input was established for each case through observing particular features of each task as well as factors that might affect input in those. at the end, it was seen how tasks play an essential role in the way participants make an effort to understand and be understood in their interactions. the prthe prthe prthe prthe procedure for the innovationocedure for the innovationocedure for the innovationocedure for the innovationocedure for the innovation four samples of tasks were collected at different sections from an efl classroom. each of them, quite different from each other in nature, were designed to be developed by students in second semester of a licenciatura in languages (see annex 1). a nested group composed of four students, whose ages were between eighteen and twenty four years, was observed while they developed the tasks interacting with their classmates and the teacher. the whole group was asked about specific candidates to be in the nested group and these four young adults volunteered. personality, proficiency and experiences were quite different among them. in order to monitor this process, the lessons were video recorded three times. audio recording was also used, as well as direct observation by two teachers who were part of the team in this study. this process helped a lot to complement the analysis. finally, supporting materials, which were used to carry out the different tasks, were also collected. theoretical frameworktheoretical frameworktheoretical frameworktheoretical frameworktheoretical framework task-based learning has been an approach adopted in many different ways in language classrooms. in our experience for instance, most of us got acquainted with it through the implementation of classroom projects to organize learning experiences. this has shown to be a beneficial methodology. students who develop tasks in language classrooms get engaged in a great deal of interaction. these exchanges generate input which might change depending on the kind of tasks we choose for our classrooms. defining tasksdefining tasksdefining tasksdefining tasksdefining tasks it is common to find that many prospect and active teachers tend to identify different actions as tasks. for example, some of them refer to tasks as completing exercises from textbooks, others relate the concept of task to any activity developed in class, and other designing tasks to promote interaction john jairjohn jairjohn jairjohn jairjohn jairo viáfarao viáfarao viáfarao viáfarao viáfara universidad nacional de colombia mireya esther castañeda mireya esther castañeda mireya esther castañeda mireya esther castañeda mireya esther castañeda juana escobar school moravia elizabeth gonzálezmoravia elizabeth gonzálezmoravia elizabeth gonzálezmoravia elizabeth gonzálezmoravia elizabeth gonzález icfes jviafara@yahoo.com, egonzalez@icfes.gov.co ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ 68profileprofileprofileprofileprofile educators define it as a problem solving action. willis (1996: 23) proposes a general notion of tasks, which can give the previous beliefs a more concrete perspective in the line of the present paper, when he states that they are “activities where the target language is used by the learner for a communicative purpose (goal) in order to achieve an outcome”. some other relevant aspects which can complement the previous concept of task and can be used to guide an analysis and construction of such experiences have been set by nunan (1991: 10-11) as follows: activities, teachers and learners’ roles, setting and input, which can be verbal or nonverbal. based on a diverse number of teaching and learning aspects, tasks have been classified by different authors, among them prabhu, pattison, clark, willis as information gap, reasoning gap, opinion gap, problem-solving, and those whose purpose is to share personal experiences. defining inputdefining inputdefining inputdefining inputdefining input the issue of input and its nature has been a broad and controversial one in the area of language acquisition. authors such as krashen, ellis and allright can be reviewed about the different positions in this matter. in this study, input refers to verbal or nonverbal communication that learners use in interactions to maintain fluidity. the input produced in educational settings, as well as in others, is characterized by a series of modifications. through the following devices, it is possible to facilitate communication and teaching. among these, researchers like ellis, t-sui and seedhouse have identified: grammatical, ungrammatical and interactional modifications, which will be exemplified by means of samples taken from data we collected by the authors of this article (see annex 2 for symbols and meanings that might appear in the samples). to start with, we can have a look at an evidence of grammatical modification: luis: do you have coffee with milk? teacher: coffee and milk l: coffee and milk (sample from task 1) here we can see that the teacher provides input containing linguistic features that the learners have not learned yet. he is trying to help luis be aware of a problem in the language he is using. to continue with the analysis of modified input during the development of learning tasks, an example of ungrammatical modification is provided below. in a sample taken from task 2, pedro is telling the class how he felt when his grandma died: pedro: we spend o eh a good time together but i feel me o i feel me teacher: i feel me? p: no o i feel t: i felt i felt myself? p: okay i felt myself eh... the teacher introduces ungrammatical forms because he wants to accommodate what he is saying to pedro’s talk, so they understand each other. finally, the following is an illustration of interactional modifications, taken from task 3: t: if i ask you if you are going on o vacation...how do you keep in touch? ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ 69 profileprofileprofileprofileprofile mario: [makes faces and signals to indicate that he doesn’t understand] t: xxx do you understandunderstandunderstandunderstandunderstand? m: ah, i don’t know. aweek, for a week... t: no o no. first was the time because you are talking about how long... but the means, how do you keep in touch. m: ah! by phone. here the teacher is tr ying to repair communication by repeating his question and adding some other hints to make it comprehensible for mario. input and tasksinput and tasksinput and tasksinput and tasksinput and tasks the relation between input and tasks needs to be seen in two ways. the following sample, in which students have adapted a dialogue from a book to be performed in the class, can show this point clearly: l: can i have a capuccinocapuccinocapuccinocapuccinocapuccino? sb: no o i am afraid xxx sb: yeah o and anything else? l: yes, o i want a ooo how do you say panecillo? l: panecillo? o biscuit....biscuit and i want a cold xxx (sample from task 1) first of all, as it can be seen, the task is a potential generator of input for the learning situation. the student, luis, used an expression they had just learnt from a model of conversation in a listening comprehension activity minutes before. second, the input is mediated by students’ background and knowledge, for example in the previous task, luis will not only use input from the printed dialogue. instead, he also used his knowledge about the given situation bringing vocabulary such as “panecillo” into it. findingsfindingsfindingsfindingsfindings input can be shaped through specific characteristics of the task such as: goals, roles, communicative nature, type of interaction required, the materials needed for the task, students’ preparation, the freedom the task allows, level of difficulty, the structure of the task, and the length. for example, task two has certain features which directly relate to the kind of input it generates. one of them is that students talk about different topics to their partners. it is seen how the narrators input is full of discourse management modifications. this is the case in the following sample. student pedro changes his topic and he and his audience need some orientation through the narrative. let us see how modifications in his input play an essential role: p: eh o i don’t know. i o remember this day very special and well p: eh oo and now i am going to talk about the most important person pedro is controlling the topics in his narrative using some markers to express the end of a topic and the starting of a new one. different tasks can make that not only the teacher (the one who is supposed to be the language model here) makes an effort in making input comprehensible to achieve communication through different modifications. students also might be moved to work hard in modifying or reinforcing their input to make it comprehensible as can be seen in the following interaction which took place between two students, in task 2: t: okay questions j: how did you meet your girlfriend? p: when? ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ 70profileprofileprofileprofileprofile j: how did you meet your girlfriend? p: eh, i meet her in a party en o five years ago. in this case, it is the student himself who repeats his question for pedro. this is a role which traditionally is assumed by the teacher. tasks promote the use of different linguistic and paralinguistic means to shape and improve the quality of input. the previous idea is exemplified through the next piece of conversation taken from task 4 in which students are discussing about becoming a father as an “accidental situation”: juan: if you’re not sure that the baby is yours... pedro: right...why you are not sure? maybe is yours o you were drunk? luis: well. t: that’s an interesting questionquestionquestionquestionquestion! here it can be seen that communication is unpredictable and students use their improvisation skills. this generates opportunities for students to develop strategies in making input meaningful. pedro’s desire to communicate his idea leads him to give a couple of answers to his own questions and this can clarify his contribution to the talk. in some other cases, certain tasks require the students’ background, which is reflected in the type of input they produce. that is why they bring cultural and social issues to the class, as in the next interaction taken from the same task mentioned above: mario: if you want to know which is the real father of the baby eh you have to do an analysis of adn and hope for advice. and remember your career your future is xxx important. in this particular case, mario is talking about his own beliefs, feelings and in general, experience in life. this motivation causes that his input, though a bit out of standard parameters for the language, helps him communicate. finally, he can express his advice in a highly controversial social issue. pppppedagogical implicationsedagogical implicationsedagogical implicationsedagogical implicationsedagogical implications • careful preparation of specific features in tasks can result in providing students with quality input and so, help students improve in problematic areas of his language learning. • the kind of tasks teachers decide to have in the classroom plays an essential part in the opportunities students might find to work hard in modifying theirs and others’ input to make it comprehensible. • learners should be challenged through tasks which require them to use their life knowledge. so, the kind of input they produce might ensure several possibilities to connect social and cultural issues which keep their interest in learning how to communicate in the foreign language. • designing or choosing tasks needs to be a process in which teachers set the necessary conditions to promote in students the use of different linguistic and paralinguistic means. these tools can improve the quality of input. referencesreferencesreferencesreferencesreferences nunan, d. (1991). designing tasks for the communicative classroom. cambridge: cambridge university press. willis, j. (1996). a framework for taskbased learning. london: longman. ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ 71 profileprofileprofileprofileprofile annex 1: description of tasksannex 1: description of tasksannex 1: description of tasksannex 1: description of tasksannex 1: description of tasks anneanneanneanneannex 2: tx 2: tx 2: tx 2: tx 2: transcript (symbols and meanings used in the samples)ranscript (symbols and meanings used in the samples)ranscript (symbols and meanings used in the samples)ranscript (symbols and meanings used in the samples)ranscript (symbols and meanings used in the samples) xxx: inaudible t: for teacher c: for class sg: girl student sb: boy student l: luis p: pedro j: juan m: mario [ ] to explain what is going on with the class wwwwwororororord:d:d:d:d: for rising of intonation word: for soft intonation word: for spanish utterances aspects goal learners’ roles teacher’s role activities initial input task 1 rehearse how to buy something in a shop. supposed customer and assistant observer and guide create a dialogue based on a model and role play it. model provided in the textbook, students’ background knowledge and teacher’s instructions task 2 practice narrative tenses narrator listener and guide narrate happy or sad events in one’s life and answer questions about it students’ preparation task 3 practice the use of expressions related to future plans participant guide and model complete sentences from the textbook language in the textbook and students’ background knowledge task 4 give a piece of advice to someone advisor, person in trouble or part of the public part of public integrate a group of advisors, discuss a problem and give some advice to solve it students’ background knowledge and letters telling problems profile 2.p65 ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○15 profileprofileprofileprofileprofile this article presents the first yearexperience of teaching sciencecombined with english in the preschool section with ages between 4 and 6 in the gimnasio campestre. a brief theoretical framework is exposed based on inquiring attitudes and theoretical models about this. then a proposal is presented which was applied to these children; the purpose is to show a new methodology where students will acquire an inquiring attitude through a science class taught in english. introductionintroductionintroductionintroductionintroduction after many observations in science class taught in english, it is surprising how the lack of an inquiring attitude in students from 4-5 years old is presented. that is why an exploration about students-teachers and students-students was made to look for the best way to interact and motivate students to acquire inquiring attitudes in a classroom where the teachers act as mediators. nowadays, kids in our society are expected to get things easily (spoon-feeding). we as teachers must provide students with a new method for a new generation, we do not want this generation to just “absorb” any kind of knowledge or information uncritically. since i began to work at the gimnasio campestre, i have noticed a lack of stimulation in the inquiring attitude of pre-kinder kids in stimulating an inquiring attitude sonya patricia navarretesonya patricia navarretesonya patricia navarretesonya patricia navarretesonya patricia navarrete science teacher at gimnasio campestre science class taught in english. at the beginning, they looked at me like passive receivers who were not able to discover the environment. that’s why, this project attempted to find a methodology which would stimulate the pre-k kids with an investigative attitude and, at the same time, encourage them to practice it as a part of their lives. at the end of this project, students will be capable of questioning their surroundings instead of getting the “correct” answer to a question from a teacher. researresearresearresearresearch questionsch questionsch questionsch questionsch questions there was also a main difficulty, which captured my attention and it was the enormous adult dependency the kids had shown throughout the learning process and often gripping firmly the act of being guided and their lack of confidence or curiosity of new experiences leading toward the development of knowledge. so, the main question sprouts: how can i stimulate pre-k kids toward developing an inquiring attitude in science class taught in english? also two sub-questions addressed my research: • what kind of activities could i design to stimulate the development of an inquiring attitude in science class taught in english? • what are the characteristics that show evidence of inquiring attitudes in the kids during science class? “more than to learn things, the interesting thing is to learn how to discover” (gardner: 1989). ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ 16profileprofileprofileprofileprofile theoretical frameworktheoretical frameworktheoretical frameworktheoretical frameworktheoretical framework after having kept my journals, the two question-survey applied orally (figures 1 and 2), and exploratory experiences in the laboratory or just outside the classroom, i noticed that my students from pre-k in science class needed a new methodology where they would acquire an inquiring attitude, at least from the very beginning guided by the teacher. ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○17 profileprofileprofileprofileprofile earth science? (planeta tierra) human body? (partes del cuerpo y el uso de las mismas) de estos temas ¿cuál prefieres? life science? (plantas y animales) physical science? (transformar y crear nuevas cosas como lo haces en el semillero?) the main objectives, traced throughout this project, were to find activities to stimulate an inquiring attitude and identify characteristics that show evidence of an inquiring attitude in pre-k kids through science in english. it is necessary that they must be able to apply their ability to questions of importance to them, not be told in advance the questions to be answered. a partial answer to this challenge can be found by looking at one of the central beliefs of the early science reform movement of the 1960’s; to learn science, students should do science. it seems from here the doing of science is then boiled down to a set of processes called “inquiry.” sund and trowbridge (1967: 49) gave a description of inquiry: “the inquiry approach requires the learner to be an active participant in the quest for knowledge. in so doing, the student discovers his ability on how to learn by using his own mind to solve problems”. vaidya (1970) applied piaget’s theories to children’s learning in science and was more successful in articulating a constructivism theory that could empower the learner. he wrote: “the goals of science education are effectively achieved if students base their work on their personal question and problematic situations encountered by them in their own immediate environment. the role of laboratory then, is to raise and define problems, to learn the meaning and use of controls and to test hypotheses and interpret data” (272). in addition, students should be helped to distinguish between those questions that can be meaningfully posed and answered within science, and those other nonscientific questions that are outside the pur view of science. students should be taught the art of formulating scientific questions, breaking up “large” questions into more manageable “smaller” questions, and designing a procedure (whether involving experimental work, library research, or other means) for answering them (mestre: 1990). harlen (1996) details the significance of children’s questions as well. harlen proposes that teachers categorize questions into those that are investigatable and those that are not, and work to turn children’s questions into the bases for investigations. she writes: “‘turning’ questions into investigatable ones is an important skill since it enables teachers to treat difficult questions seriously but without providing answers beyond children’s understanding. it also indicates to children that they can go a long way to finding answers through their own investigation, thus figure 2. second questionfigure 2. second questionfigure 2. second questionfigure 2. second questionfigure 2. second question ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ 18profileprofileprofileprofileprofile underlining the implicit messages about the nature of scientific activity and their ability to answer questions by ‘asking the objects’” (112). it is possible. if students can get the confidence in their ability to investigate and in their own ability to make and answer their questions they will get some very real power. the idea is to provide a structure to carry out experimental work. this should give students the freedom to explore and learn on their own. rather than providing all the details of an experiment, as in cookbook labs, the structured inquiry approach provides students with both designated topics that will be the focus of the experiment and the equipment to conduct the experimental work. within this framework, the teacher acts as a mediator. the methodologythe methodologythe methodologythe methodologythe methodology based on those ideas, my research project investigated a structure that carried out experimental work and which is presented in figure 3. the first stage had many activities which were carried out in and outside the classroom. at the very beginning, students started to work with hands-on and total physical response (tpr) activities where they had the possibility to interact with others, using english and the vocabulary in a proper way. hands-on and tpr activities were the ones needed to put the guided instruction into practice, where students were able to acquire and practice the vocabulary and structures. this stage represented more traditional instruction in which the questions and procedures had basically been determined by the teachers. the activities they did were cooperative. these activities were always done by cooperative groups and i designated their roles in the group so the students avoided fighting while working. the direction always came from me. the methodology carried out followed the structure above: • review: sing a song, review vocabulary seen in the last classes using pictures or mimics. figure 3. structure to carry out experimental ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○19 profileprofileprofileprofileprofile • introduce vocabulary: introduce new vocabulary to work on the activity, show them materials saying the name of the object and the action they can do, ask them to repeat it. • observe: teacher does the experiment with the help of some students, always demanding repetition. • collecting data: students draw what they observe. the second stage of this project, called “guided inquiry”, was the exploratory time, where kids continue working in collaborative groups but on this opportunity they had the chance to look for answers with little help from the teacher. they counted on some guidance. the students started to answer their questions thanks to the teacher’s role (teacher as a mediator). i began the process of motivation towards making question by themselves. the scientific process is followed strictly throughout this step. the methodology carried out followed this structure: • review: sing a song, say rhymes about the topic. then, review vocabulary seen in the last classes, using pictures or mimics. • introduce vocabulary: introduce new vocabulary to work in the activity. show them materials saying the name of the object and the action they can do. ask them to repeat it. • observe: students do the experiment with a little help of the teacher. sometimes the teacher can ask about the process or vocabulary used. • predict: students express what they think they will do and draw it. • test hypothesis: students check whether the hypothesis was true or false. teacher repeats the question: what happens when/if... • collecting data: students draw what they observe. • experimenting: students motivated by the teacher try other variables; they test and try to give reasons. • inquiring attitudes: teacher makes suggestive questions about the process. for example in the topic about physical science: how can the sense of touch feel the temperature? their answers were a reflection, where kids had the opportunity to use the vocabulary they knew in english and shared their ideas in spanish. at this point, the concept they wanted to express was important rather than the language they used. if the students could come up with the questions for our experiment with some guidance from the teacher, now we are on the road to inquiry. in other cases, the teacher asked one group of students to do the experiment in front of the class. this project is missing the last part of the method i had investigated. an open-ended inquiry, called “discovery time,” where they would have boxes with different materials according to the topics worked in science where they would find an inventory and a signout sheet. this stage could not be applied due to the lack of time. activitiesactivitiesactivitiesactivitiesactivities obserobserobserobserobser vationsvationsvationsvationsvations resultsresultsresultsresultsresults • orchard project • some guidance • answer questions • go to the lab • scientific process • students conduct activities • problem solving • look for answers • students create possibilities figure 4. chart of activities with results ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ 20profileprofileprofileprofileprofile resultsresultsresultsresultsresults according to the activities done (figure 4), students were more concentrated in their science classes, and the distraction was a word that was disappearing little by little. my students were familiarized with some simple structures and vocabulary not only related to science but with other subjects. repetition of words and sentences showed me they could differentiate when an expression was a question or an answer, so they could give a correct answer to the teacher. they improved much better in their other subjects taught in english (arts and english). also, students tried to answer questions using the vocabular y or just gave their answers in spanish creating a possible solution, which means they are on the way to act by themselves. when students conducted activities, some of them proposed new things to do. this indicated that my students were much more motivated towards the class, their interest was shown in the moments when they got new information inside the classroom. on the other hand, i could notice there were some students who decided what to do or where to go. at the end of the second stage, my students felt more confident and happier in the process of experimentation due to the repetition of the scientific process in all the activities done inside and outside the classroom (e.g. animal farm and the orchard projects). conclusionsconclusionsconclusionsconclusionsconclusions as a conclusion, it is important, to take into account that the activities proposed to the kids in science class must be according to their necessities and interests. in addition, they must be repeated later, always forcing students to recall the vocabulary used in the experiences not only inside but outside the classroom. the ones that kids in these ages prefer are hands-on activities. students show inquiring attitudes when they are able to make questions with more freedom and the teacher does not condition the questions, but acts as a mediator during this process. when the students are able to give some predictions and create their own hypotheses they are ready for the inquiry approach. with strong help from the teacher at the very beginning, then less, students give possible answers to be rechecked with experiments. they build, day by day, their own bank of possible answers, pooling the concepts, vocabulary, and experiences lived. the teacher is a mediator along the process but s/he must be ready to assist the student before, during and after s/he shows evidenceschildren engaged in ‘the orchard project’ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○21 profileprofileprofileprofileprofile of inquiring attitudes. it is possible they could find instructions, which they can follow or not. thereby, the teacher would be asked to make questions for the kids along the way, and keep a record of these, along with the answers. monthly, it is hoped; the information will be collected. other interesting topics to continue researching as part of this project should be the third missing part and the teacher and students’ interaction or the interaction among the students. they are quite giant and interesting topics to work with further on, and in that way, it would be possible to enrich this project because it will improve the relationship between teachers and students. in doing so the process followed will gain new activities to be done and develop inquiring attitudes more easily. referencesreferencesreferencesreferencesreferences gardner, h. (1989). art, mind, and education: research from project zero. urbana, il: university of illinois press. harlen, w. (1996). the teaching of science in primary schools, second ed. london: david fulton. mestre, l. (1990). bottenfield elementary school. (re)forming a community. vol 2, spring. sund, r. b., & trowbridge, l. w. (1967). teaching science by inquiry. columbus, ohio vaidya, n. (1970). some aspects of piaget’s work and science teaching. new delhi: s. chand and co. profile 1.p65 ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○31 profileprofileprofileprofileprofile using play activities and audio-visual aids to develop speaking skills nidia casallas mutisnidia casallas mutisnidia casallas mutisnidia casallas mutisnidia casallas mutis and martha rocío londoño orand martha rocío londoño orand martha rocío londoño orand martha rocío londoño orand martha rocío londoño ordóñezdóñezdóñezdóñezdóñez a project was conducted in orderto improve oral proficiency inenglish through the use of play activities and audio-visual aids, with students of first grade in a bilingual school, in la calera. they were between 6 and 7 years old. as the sample for this study, the five students who had the lowest language oral proficiency were selected. according to the results, it is clear that the sample has improved their english oral proficiency a great deal. however, the process has to be continued because this skill needs constant practice in order to be developed. intrintrintrintrintroductionoductionoductionoductionoduction learning english as a foreign language is a complex process and using audio-visual aids and play activities makes it easier and motivating. this study focuses on ability to express thoughts orally. at the beginning of the process the group was analysed and the sample was selected after a diagnostic stage (classroom obser vations, teacher ’s diaries, and a diagnostic test) in which the chosen students showed a low level in speaking skills. a hypothesis was then defined: students can improve their english speaking skills if classes have play activities developed with the use of audio-visual aids. as can be observed, the aim of this project was to outline some resources in which students may be able to use english orally through some activities carried out during the classes. theoretical frameworktheoretical frameworktheoretical frameworktheoretical frameworktheoretical framework in the foreign language classroom, students are often reluctant and too shy to open their mouths to speak. this is not just because they are learning a new language and haven’t got enough of it to say anything. even at a very elementary level, perhaps even during the first lesson, there is always something students can say if we as teachers motivate them and create a confident environment where they tr y to use the language for themselves. what is important when working with beginners is to find the balance between providing the language through controlled, guided, and free-style activities. controlled activities help students to develop confidence as well as the ability to participate in class because they give the opportunity to practice repetition. guided activities give students the opportunity for free expression by using language in the form of games, working in pairs or small groups. finally, through freestyle activities, pupils have the chance to use • ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ 32profileprofileprofileprofileprofile the new language relatively spontaneously. students focus their attention on the message, not on the language. play activities provide a powerful stimulus for real language use because they help teachers to create contexts in which the language is meaningful and they can be used at different levels of proficiency. some of the play activities that we used in our project were chorus work, mechanical drills, meaningful practice, dialogues, games, songs, poetry and videos. regarding audio-visual aids, we should stress that they have many roles to play in language learning. they can be used in different contexts and places. they contribute successfully to the learning process because they motivate students to want to speak. for our project, we designed flashcards, pictures, wordcards. additionally, we used tape recorders, multimedia resources, a language laboratory, a reading centre, and a videoroom. researresearresearresearresearch prch prch prch prch procedureocedureocedureocedureocedure the case study was carried out in two cycles. in the first cycle there were five students while in the second there were only four because one of them went to study in a different school. classes were held in the classroom, the reading centre, the english laboratory and the video-room using play activities. information was gathered by means of: daily class programmers which were designed using audio-visual aids and play activities in phonics, reading and grammar classes. teachers´ diary observations taking into account what the sample did and said during classes. videos of the production stage in order to analyse sample proficiency. obser vation checklists based on six aspects: commands, hesitation, pronunciation, confidence, chorus work and class participation. resultsresultsresultsresultsresults results of the present case study are presented based on the data collection techniques: 1. students followed commands frequently. 2. students did not hesitate as much as at the beginning. 3. all students improved their pronunciation. 4. students improved self-confidence. 5. students increased chorus-work participation. 6. classroom participation increased a great deal. discussiondiscussiondiscussiondiscussiondiscussion the results of the analysis of oral production showed a general improvement by the students in this skill. we noticed that students improved not only their speaking skills but their listening too. there is one student who did not attend all of the classes and, when he came back to school, he did not participate, he did not feel confident about participating in the classes. this made us think that oral participation depends on children’s state of mind. ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○33 profileprofileprofileprofileprofile they have been interested in the classes because of the play activities and visual aids. they enjoy classes with both of them. they prefer english to the other subjects. they look excited when going to the reading centre, laboratory and video-room. they would like the teacher to repeat the videos, the classes and the material. thanks to the new methodology, the foreign language has become more lively for the students and most of them are using it out of the classroom in real conversations. they make groups and sing the songs taught inside the classroom. despite this progress, we are aware that the process is an on-going one and teachers need to work on motivating students to use english and practice it as well as to improve their listening. general conclusionsgeneral conclusionsgeneral conclusionsgeneral conclusionsgeneral conclusions 1. play activities and audio-visual material motivate students to learn english. 2. students prefer colourful visual aids. 3. play activities help focus students’ attention on class contents without realising what language items are being practised. 4. they enjoy having varied play activities from class to class. 5. it is necessary to ensure that students have a friendly and confident atmosphere in the classroom. 6. students prefer classes in which structures are taught in real contexts. 7. students need to know that they are making progress. 8. classroom activities must give students opportunities for free expression. 9. teachers must tell learners how to make the best use of the little they know. 10. an analysis of students’ oral production showed a general improvement not only in this skill but in the others. bibliographybibliographybibliographybibliographybibliography allan, m. (1986). teaching english with video. london: longman. byrne, d. (1997). teaching oral english. new edition. london: longman. morgan b., b. (1982). look here! visual aids in l anguage teaching. london: macmillan press. wajnryb, r. (1992). classroom observation tasks. cambridge: cup. wright, a. (1976). visual materials for the language teacher. london: longman.• profile 3.p65 ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ 9 profileprofileprofileprofileprofile knowledge base for efl/esl educators: what does it mean? clelia pineda b., ph. dclelia pineda b., ph. dclelia pineda b., ph. dclelia pineda b., ph. dclelia pineda b., ph. d universidad externado de colombia clelia1@rocketmail.com s earching for an appropriate definition of what constitutes knowledge base in the teaching profession has become a central focus of attention for researchers, educators, and accreditation agencies during the last decades. the importance of clarifying such a definition has a double value. on the one hand it has become a determinant factor when assessing if teacher preparation programs are meeting the standards for excellence in education. on the other hand, the issue concerns prospective and experienced teachers themselves as they search for opportunities to acquire such knowledge whose ultimate goal is to improve the quality of their practice. but what exactly does this knowledge embrace and more specifically how does it influence an english language teacher? the purpose of this article is to present a synthesis of the most significant responses to these questions and to invite english language teachers to examine their knowledge framework in the hope that this reflection allows for an enrichment of their practice. the “truth” about knowledge base:the “truth” about knowledge base:the “truth” about knowledge base:the “truth” about knowledge base:the “truth” about knowledge base: an allegoran allegoran allegoran allegoran allegoryyyyy richard wisniewski (1988) presents an allegory that appropriately portrays the quest for a definition of knowledge base. when trying to meet a requirement of ncate (an agency in the usa for the accreditation of teacher education), illinois smith, the fictional character of the story, is selected by a principal to search for the “truth” about knowledge base. smith lives a series of adventures until he finally finds the temple of wisdom. expecting a precise answer for his quest, the character is led by a wise member of the temple to the hall where the “truth” is. perplexed and astonished, smith found a complex mosaic. it was composed of varied images portraying different aspects of the teaching profession. he, as well as his colleagues, was expecting a concrete, tangible answer. instead, he found a repertoire of images that did not form a specific pattern. the clues were there, but he had to make sense out of them. the allegory is pertinent to demonstrate that a single answer for defining teachers’ knowledge base would be difficult to determine. for a long time the formulation of knowledge base was limited to the acquisition of the basic skills required for teaching, the competency of educators in their subject matter area, and the use of pedagogical skills. however, there are other variables that are critical in the teaching profession. such variables include the classroom context, the physical and psychological characteristics of the learners, and the subject matter itself. recently other variables have been included in the list: the personal and practical experiences of teachers, their reflective practices and research skills. ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ 10profileprofileprofileprofileprofile knowledge base categoriesknowledge base categoriesknowledge base categoriesknowledge base categoriesknowledge base categories shulman (1987), in a pioneer work about teachers’ knowledge base, proposed a theoretical model that embraces the following categories: (1) content knowledge; (2) general pedagogical knowledge; (3) pedagogical content knowledge; (4) curriculum knowledge; (5) knowledge of the learner; and (6) knowledge of educational goals and their philosophical bases. the diagram below depicts all these categories nourishing educators in order to eventually excel in their profession. the arrows indicate that teachers’ experiences and insights enrich each category making knowledge base dynamic. 1. content knowledge1. content knowledge1. content knowledge1. content knowledge1. content knowledge it refers to the amount and structure of knowledge itself in the teacher ’s mind. teachers should not only possess a set of truths in a given discipline, but also be able to establish relationships among those truths. they are held responsible not only for how much they communicate but also for how assertive their explanations about those truths are. being able to explain the how and why of certain propositions in a given discipline is knowledge that “encourages the willingness to be surprised by new evidence” (buchman: 1984, 43). a teacher should, therefore, go beyond the memorization and be alert to establishing the validity of new truths. but how does this translate in the efl/esl domain? according to day and concklin (1992), content knowledge is what efl/esl teachers actually teach. that is, teaching the english language as represented by courses in syntax, semantics, phonology, pragmatics, and literar y and cultural aspects of the ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ 11 profileprofileprofileprofileprofile language. if we follow buchman’s ideas, an english teacher should not only be knowledgeable in these areas, but must be ready to challenge this knowledge as new insights from theory and research emerge. this idea implies that english language educators should not be content with what they learn in their preparation programs, but should be constantly updating themselves. the notion that a teacher preparation program is solely responsible for providing appropriate content knowledge is obsolete. a change in paradigm took place, as it is the individual teacher who undertakes the task of keeping informed and evaluating new insights. 2. general pedagogical knowledge2. general pedagogical knowledge2. general pedagogical knowledge2. general pedagogical knowledge2. general pedagogical knowledge it embraces generic teaching strategies, beliefs and practices that are usually related to classroom management, motivation, and decision-making. these issues are usually addressed in methodology courses. 3. p3. p3. p3. p3. pedagogical content knowledgeedagogical content knowledgeedagogical content knowledgeedagogical content knowledgeedagogical content knowledge it is defined as the means to represent and communicate the subject so as to make it comprehensive for other people. analogies, demonstrations, examples, pictures, explanations and so on, are means through which subject matter can be represented. teachers should possess a repertoire of alternative forms of knowledge formulation. the understanding of the easiest and most difficult topics in teaching a foreign language and the anticipation of misconceptions that may interfere with learning should be included in this area. instructional strategies should be adopted to overcome those difficulties. in the efl/esl domain this knowledge is represented in courses such as grammar, material design, reading and writing skills, and tesl/tefl methods. 4. curricular knowledge4. curricular knowledge4. curricular knowledge4. curricular knowledge4. curricular knowledge it refers to the understanding of curricular choices from which educators can derive their instruction. in addition to an awareness of existing curricular materials, teachers should get acquainted with the curricular programs of their students’ school system so that they can relate their own area of specialization to others their pupils are dealing with. curricular knowledge enables teachers to tr y to incorporate ideas that the students acquired in previous courses or in other disciplines. for the english teacher it means examining the articulation with other subjects to achieve meaningful learning. 5. knowledge of the learner5. knowledge of the learner5. knowledge of the learner5. knowledge of the learner5. knowledge of the learner besides the physical and psychological characteristics of the learners, educators should include knowledge about students’ cognitive processes. prospective educators should focus on the learning processes of their learners; that is, knowledge about how children, adolescents and adults learn. for english teachers this is especially important as they adapt their instruction, strategies and material to the students’ stage of cognitive development. therefore, if they lack knowledge about how content is received, patterned, stored, and retrieved, the perspective of how to apply those strategies would become ineffective. 6. knowledge of educational goals and6. knowledge of educational goals and6. knowledge of educational goals and6. knowledge of educational goals and6. knowledge of educational goals and philosophical basesphilosophical basesphilosophical basesphilosophical basesphilosophical bases this type of knowledge requires the teacher going beyond her/his classroom; that is, examining the expectations of the society in which the student is embedded and the principles that guide the education system. ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ 12profileprofileprofileprofileprofile this type of knowledge permits the teacher to respond to new challenges and to make informed decisions. reflection and researreflection and researreflection and researreflection and researreflection and research as componentsch as componentsch as componentsch as componentsch as components of teachers’ knowledge baseof teachers’ knowledge baseof teachers’ knowledge baseof teachers’ knowledge baseof teachers’ knowledge base back in 1991, tamir stated that professional knowledge in the teaching field, as in any other, was determined to a great extent by its interaction with the cognitive structure of the teacher. in other words, when a body of general knowledge and skills interact with the individual’s cognitive organization, the result is an idiosyncratic version of that knowledge and skills. shulman and grossman (as cited by torres and clavijo: 1999) later supported this contention. they stated that the knowledge base of teachers is the result of the interaction among the intellectual activities that this profession embraces. consequently, effective teaching knowledge derives from the comprehension, transformation, progressive application, and evaluation of new conceptualizations the teacher does. all these areas demand from the teacher constant reflection, which becomes a determinant factor to build and solidify the teaching knowledge base. reflection entails two issues. one has to do with thoughtfulness about educational theories and practices (tom and valli: 1988). continuous professional growth is obtained whenever the individual teacher engages in a permanent critical analysis of educational traditions. through this analysis, educators deliberate over main education issues as well as contemplate the aspects that would be more favourable to improve their teaching performance. more concretely, this means that english teachers adopt a critical position regarding the old and new proposals for teaching and learning a language. this is particularly true nowadays that there have been great advancements in the use of technology. knowledge on teaching and learning with technology should be integrated in teachers’ preparation programs to ensure that educators address the “equitable availability and distribution of information to all learners, regardless of socioeconomic standing” (national conference on teacher quality, department of education, usa, 2000). new technologies have generated alternative means not only to communicate with others, but also to produce varied types of texts. english teachers benefit enormously from learning about the applications of technology in their classrooms. however, they need to be cautious of its limitations in order to avoid making it the panacea for the language teaching profession. the other issue related to reflection deals with an in-depth exploration of one’s teaching practices as a means to construct a solid conceptualization of teaching. self-reflection should begin by examining one’s view about teaching and learning. this is known as personal practical knowledge. it relates to the moral, affective, and aesthetic experiences that had an impact on the teacher (connelly and clandinin: 1988). usually, the naïve conceptions of both student teachers and experienced teachers about teaching come from two sources. one is the impact of prior school and home experiences as a child or adolescent. the other arises when there is a fragmentation and little articulation between courses and field experiences at the college level. thus, identifying one’s pre-conceived ideas and possible misconceptions about teaching and learning aid in determining what detract us from an effective practice. ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ 13 profileprofileprofileprofileprofile richards and lockhart (1997) state that teaching experience without a critical reflection is not enough to enlarge an educator’s knowledge base. they suggest that second or foreign language educators also engage in a systematic exploration of classroom processes so that they assess and evaluate the impact of their teaching on their learners. exploring one’s teaching practices helps to understand the nature of teacher development. according to these authors, a teacher who gains knowledge and awareness of the multiple dimensions of teaching is better prepared to make effective decisions. this understanding, in turn, can be obtained through self-inquiry. that is, teachers working individually or with a colleague can collect information about their own practices that hopefully will make visible the multiplicity of aspects that usually go unnoticed in a classroom. critically examining teachers’ own experiences “involves posing questions about how and why things are the way they are, what value systems they represent, what alternatives might be available, and what the limitations are of doing things one way as opposed to another” (p.4). these assumptions implicitly view the language teacher as a researcher. the tradition that external agents should conduct research is challenged. freeman (1998) clearly points out that teacher generated research is being directed towards creating and testing knowledge: “teachers are creating, in their own terms, a new viable community around the issues of teaching that are central to their work. at its core, it is a question of power and participation because it means separating from the disciplinary communities that have hosted educational research thus far, and defining new relationships with them” (p.13). teachers are now empowered to conduct research in their classrooms to gain understanding about teaching and further their professional development. prospective language educators as well as more experienced teachers should reposition themselves in terms of their role and learn to recognize that they can become producers of knowledge by means of doing research. there is not a precise, concrete formula that could prescribe how a teacher is to engage in it. whatever the paradigm adopted, research should be rigorous and systematic so as to produce reliable results. the nature of the type of research an english teacher is to undertake will be determined to a great extent by factors such as the nature of the context, the teacher him/herself, the learners, the program, and so on. a quest for an answera quest for an answera quest for an answera quest for an answera quest for an answer apparently, there is lack of consensus about the criteria attributes that would characterize a definition of knowledge base in the language teaching profession. although it is widely recognized that english teachers should possess solid subject matter knowledge (that is knowledge about the language) and sound pedagogical skills (how to teach the language more effectively), limiting teachers’ knowledge to these two aspects would detriment their intellectual and thus professional growth. considering a wider dimension of what constitutes the teaching profession enables teachers to envision a more complete framework of reference for future professional application. this vision embodies thoughtful reflection not only about the proposals made by scholars in the field, but also about teachers’ own practices. a starting point for such reflection requires becoming a skillful observer willing to capture those moments ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ 14profileprofileprofileprofileprofile that could eventually generate amazement and puzzlement. teachers who constantly wonder about and attend to the “what”, “how” and “why” of teaching and learning events will be prone to engage in research practices. such an involvement allows to examine the incidence of what teachers do in their classrooms and will also shed light on the complex issues that our profession embraces. as research and insight are being collected not only by authorities and scholars in all the fields related to language teaching and learning, but also by the language teachers themselves, the criteria for including indispensable elements in the knowledge base would continue to grow. therefore, defining what knowledge base is for any english language educator, as for any other kind of teacher, is an overwhelming and demanding task. it thus becomes a matter of interpreting the “mosaic” of ideas that have been generated through the years in the field and incorporating them in their repertoire. this brings us back to our allegory at the beginning of this article. the wise one in wisniewski’s story asserts to point out that the elements are there, but it is educators themselves who have to look at the myriad of possibilities in a more comprehensive manner so as to continuously enlarge their knowledge and their practice. references buchman, m. (1984). a priority of knowledge and understanding in teaching. in l. katz & j. raths (eds.). advances in teacher education. champaign, il: ablex publishing corporation. conelly, m. & clandinin, d. (1988). teachers as curriculum planners. new york: teachers college press. day, r. & concklin, g. (1992). the knowledge base if esl/efl teacher education. paper presented at the 1992 tesol conference, vancouver, canada. freeman, d. (1998). doing teacher research: from inquiry to understanding. london: heinle & heinle publishing company. richards, j. & lockhart, c. (1997). reflective teaching in second language classrooms. cambridge: cambridge university press. shulman, l. (1987). knowledge and teaching: foundations of the new reform. harvard educational review. 57/1: 1-22. tamir, p. (1991). “professional and personal knowledge of teachers and teacher educators”. teaching and teaching education. 7/3: 263-268. tom, a. & valli, l. (1988). “how adequate are the frameworks in teacher education?” journal of teacher education. 38/4: 19-24. torres, e. & clavijo, a. (1999). las historias de lecto-escritura de los maestros. cómo saber qué aplican en su práctica pedagógica. in a. clavijo (ed.), memorias del congreso colombiano de lecto-escritura en lengua materna y lengua extranjera par un nuevo siglo (pp. 65-80.) bogotá: universidad distrital francisco josé de caldascargraphics. wisniewski, r. (1988). “illinois smith and the secret of the knowledge base”. journal of teacher education. 39/5: 2-4. profile 10.indd professional development schools: establishing alliances to bridge the gap between universities and schools profile 10, 2008. issn 1657-0790. bogotá, colombia. pages 181-194 181 * e-mail: ctorresjaramillo@yahoo.com address: avenida ciudad de quito no.64-81 oficina 607. bogotá, colombia. ** e-mail: rociomongui@yahoo.com address: cra. 109 a no. 81 a 80 casa 13 barrio bulevar de bolivia. bogotá, colombia. this article was received on october 31, 2007 and accepted on august 9, 2008. professional development schools: establishing alliances to bridge the gap between universities and schools escuelas de desarrollo profesional: creando alianzas para reducir la brecha entre colegios y universidades claudia torres jaramillo* universidad distrital francisco josé de caldas rocío monguí sánchez** fundación santa maría this article narrates the way a professional development school (pds) got started. pdss refer to alliances among educational institutions that join forces and resources to provide community members high quality services and products. two stages are depicted. the first one deals with the setting up of human and material resources, identifying ways of collaboration among institutions and defining the roles of every partner involved. the second stage has to do with the implementation of the proposal per se, the obstacles faced and the action plans to carry on with the implementation. partial findings and outcomes of this pds-in-progress are shared with the hope of promoting the pds concept in our community by means of establishing more partnerships, receiving feedback from experienced peers, and establishing networks. key words: professional development schools –pds, partnerships, cooperation, collaboration, practicum este artículo narra el proceso de implementación de una escuela de desarrollo profesional (pds). las pdss se entienden como alianzas entre instituciones educativas que unen fuerzas y recursos para brindar alta calidad y servicios a los miembros de la comunidad. la experiencia se presenta en dos etapas. la primera describe la organización de los recursos humanos y materiales, identificando formas de colaboración entre las instituciones involucradas y definiendo los roles de cada participante. en la segunda etapa se expone el desarrollo de la propuesta, los obstáculos que se enfrentaron y el plan de acción que se siguió. se presentan los resultados obtenidos hasta el momento, en la perspectiva de promover el concepto de pds en nuestra comunidad académica a través del establecimiento de más alianzas estratégicas, de la retroalimentación de colegas experimentados y redes de trabajo. palabras clave: escuelas de desarrollo profesional, alianzas estratégicas, cooperación, colaboración, practica docente profile 10, 2008. issn 1657-0790. bogotá, colombia. pages 181-194 profile 10.indd 181 23/10/2008 8:46:31 torres jaramillo and monguí sánchez universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras182 introduction professional development schools (pdss) are innovative types of partnerships between universities and schools designed to bridge the gap that exists between them. their mission is to bring about the simultaneous renewal of school and teacher education programs to improve student learning and revitalize the preparation and professional development of experienced educators at the same time. pdss starts with the premise that the additional time and effort to try to work across two or more organizations is worthwhile compared with trying to achieve the same goals internally (teitel, 2003). this article is written as a narrative grounded in dewey’s educational philosophy, which at its core argues that “we are all “knowers” who reflect on experience, confront the unknown, make sense of it and take action” (dewey, 1916, 1920, 1933; cited in johnson & golembeck, 2002, p. 4). the authors of this article are teacher researchers who worked together on the project – one as the on-site coordinator at fundación santa maria school (fsm) and the other as a professor holding a master’s degree at universidad distrital francisco josé de caldas (ud). we tell the story of how this concept was put into practice at fsm school in alliance with ud. in this setting, this is a new idea and can be considered an innovation in the educational field. narratives, by their very nature, are social and relational and gain their meaning from our collective social histories. they cannot be separated from the sociocultural and sociohistorical contexts from which they emerge and they are deeply embedded in sociohistorical discourses as stated by gee (1999) and johnson & golembeck (2002, p. 5). how we reflect on experience and how we make sense of it is often achieved through the stories we tell. narrative has been constructed as a mode of thinking (bruner, 1996, p. 15) and as a means of representing the richness of human experiences (johnson & golembeck 2002, p. 4). as bruner, in jurado (1999), points out, we narrate because our thinking process demands us to do so; we feel the need to name our experience and to organize it because we want to influence the world of others. narratives help us to open up, to fulfill the desire to communicate and are the means by which we can persuade and convince others. according to johnson & golembeck (2002, p. 7), our stories, as teachers, reveal the knowledge, ideas, perspectives, understandings and experiences that guide our work. our stories describe the complexities of our practice, trace professional development over time, and reveal the ways in which we make sense of and reconfigure our work. from our experience as educators in different settings in bogotá, we came to the conclusion that the possibilities that pdss offer are vast and valuable. the fact of having academic institutions joining forces with common goals opens many doors for professional development, qualification of students, shared resources that can be enhanced and improved, and more options to be explored, enriched and implemented according to every institution’s needs. this is the main reason for our interest in sharing with the academic community our experience in implementing a professional development school. profile 10.indd 182 23/10/2008 8:46:32 professional development schools: establishing alliances to bridge the gap between universities and schools profile 10, 2008. issn 1657-0790. bogotá, colombia. pages 181-194 183 in order to put into practice this pds concept, two institutions collaborated to establish objectives, procedures and possible alternatives for cooperative work. once this collaboration was achieved, two stages were developed. the first stage dealt with developing a proposal for the setting up of human and material resources, identifying ways of collaboration between institutions and defining the roles of every partner involved. the second stage had to do with the implementation of the proposal as such, the obstacles faced and the action plans to carry on with the implementation. partial findings and outcomes of this pds-in-progress are shared with the hope of promoting the pds concept in our community by means of establishing more partnerships, receiving feedback from experienced peers, and establishing networks. we believe that this experience will open doors and lay the ground for academic institutions to look more closely at how they can work together to tackle better the challenges that they face in education. rationale in colombia, according to our experience, there has been a significant change in the approach by universities and schools towards the teaching practicum. during the 1990s the practicum as part of the teaching programs was seen as a very important component and, thus, the university was responsible for contacting schools that would be willing to accept practitioners, but it was not an easy task. many schools were reluctant to accept practitioners as they felt observed and judged by universities since these higher education institutions were considered the holders of knowledge. this situation reflected the need for establishing stronger relationships that would allow collaborative work and the possibility of developing research among universities and schools. as teitel (2003) points out, “hybrid institutions formed by university and school partners can bridge the gap between the sectors and between theory and practice. they can facilitate renewal in both school and university as a result of knowledge shared in the partnership. most important, they can enhance both teaching and student learning” (p. 9). another factor that has contributed to broadening the gap between schools and universities is explained through the behaviorist and the traditional craft paradigms that have influenced teacher education not only in the us but also in contexts like ours. zeichner (1983, p. 3) presents these two paradigms in which students are taught certain skills technically and expected to develop a certain mastery of them. it is through imitation of a model, somebody with plenty of experience, that they can be regarded as effective in their jobs. these two paradigms have been very popular in the case of pre-service teacher training since they allude to practitioners as empty vessels which need to be filled. thus, practitioners are regarded as completely or partially lacking pedagogical knowledge and, therefore, need to be told exactly what to do and how to perform their practice (viáfara, 2004, pp. 10-11). from the numerous factors that hinder relationships between schools and universities we experienced another situation in this pds that created tension profile 10.indd 183 23/10/2008 8:46:32 torres jaramillo and monguí sánchez universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras184 among mentors and student teachers. the benefits school teachers identified in regard to having practitioners did not necessarily have to do with professional development. instead, in many cases they saw the fact of having practitioners as a means for catching up with their duties or for having some free time; many times teachers left the classroom when practitioners came in and these were left to face the classes on their own without proper training and self confidence to do so in an effective way. this situation did not contribute to developing collaborative relationships between in-service and preservice teachers. therefore, it is necessary to find a balance between the opposite and extreme positions discussed above regarding the role of the practitioners and mentors in order to make the practicum a fruitful, enjoyable and enriching experience for all the parties involved. a number of authors have discussed the personal and idiosyncratic nature of the cooperating teacher / student teacher relationship and too often this relationship is plagued by tensions and power conflicts due to different life histories and personalities of the two actors (agee, 1996; graham, 1993; sudzina, giebelhaus & coolican, 1997, as cited in vélez-rendón, 2003, p. 18). even though changes have taken place in regard to the view held towards the practicum in our context, still today, in some cases, student teachers are not seen as professionals with the growth that would allow them to contribute with their knowledge to the development of the institutions where they carry out their teaching practice. “students teachers are told what to do in their lessons to teach appropriately and they are expected to do exactly that in order to be considered successful. therefore, the opportunities for practitioners to develop their own knowledge as well as the tools to keep examining that knowledge seem to be reduced” (viáfara, 2004, pp. 5-6). according to viáfara (ibid.), it is our duty to provide student teachers with valuable opportunities to build their own knowledge. our practitioners are not empty vessels; they have been learning and accumulating knowledge for many years, in different ways, and from various sources. our role as teacher educators should be based on respect and guidance, supporting practitioners in their development of an inquiring attitude so that they are encouraged and prepared to explore several issues of the pedagogical task. unfortunately in this pds, some student teachers1 missed valuable opportunities to receive feedback and support in this difficult task that they undertook and, at times, in-service teachers did not take advantage of the chance to invigorate their teaching practice and share ideas and experiences in relation to academic and pedagogical issues. in this article we are going to narrate the way we started the implementation of a pds in a setting in which this is a new idea and can be considered an innovation in the educational field. as jerome bruner (1996) points out, we narrate because our thinking process demands us to do so. we divided the story into three parts to facilitate its understanding; the first one is preparing the ground, where we tell the readers how the setting was organized to 1 the terms practitioner and student teacher mean the same and thus will be used interchangeably throughout this paper. profile 10.indd 184 23/10/2008 8:46:32 professional development schools: establishing alliances to bridge the gap between universities and schools profile 10, 2008. issn 1657-0790. bogotá, colombia. pages 181-194 185 start the implementation. the second part is called getting started. it narrates the way this project got off the ground. finally, in the hands on experience section, we describe the process that has taken place up to now, the obstacles encountered and how we have coped with them. we conclude with some insights drawn from this enriching experience. preparing the ground there are some initial considerations that need to be taken into account when starting the implementation of a pds. key people who are highly committed and believe in such a project as well as who are able to motivate, persuade and guide others towards achieving the same objective are needed. furthermore, it is necessary to count on school and university partners who are open-minded, who are willing to innovate their teaching practices by interacting and sharing knowledge, experiences and views about education and who have the support of key institutions which are willing to help in such an endeavor. in order to put into practice this pds concept, which was an innovative proposal in our specific context, people were gathered to establish objectives, procedures and possible alternatives for cooperative work. once this was achieved, some phases were developed. the first phase deals with the setting up of human and material resources, identifying ways of collaboration between institutions and defining the roles of every partner involved. the second phase has to do with the implementation of the proposal as such, some of the obstacles encountered and the action plans to carry on with the implementation. we believe that this experience will open doors and lay the groundwork for others in colombia and latin america to look more closely at how universities, schools and other entities or educators can work together to tackle better the challenges faced in education. although the school where the pds was proposed to be implemented does not have enough resources to sponsor new projects, there were people and organizations interested in supporting a project that would contribute to the effective teaching and learning conditions of this population, and such was the case of the board members of fundación santa maría school. they believe that children with limited resources should be given the opportunity to learn english the same as the sons and daughters of elite families. nowadays in our country, as in any other part of the world, it is necessary to learn english in order to be able to access a globalized world. thus, the school had the initiative to hire an english teacher to start the process of implementing english in the school’s curriculum. the board members of fsm school realized the benefits of having an alliance with a university that would have an undergraduate teaching program with an emphasis on english and on making the connection in order to have practitioners who would reinforce the work that was being done at the school. getting started in order to start this innovative project, two institutions got together to explore possible alliances. these institutions profile 10.indd 185 23/10/2008 8:46:32 torres jaramillo and monguí sánchez universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras186 believe that education should offer better opportunities by means of providing equity within society, and that partnerships can be established among educational entities. the types of institutions that participated in these meetings were a nonprofit foundation that provides education services to children with limited resources in preschool and primary levels (fsm school), and a public university that is sponsored by the district and provides higher education (ud university). these two institutions established the partnership. alliances require, from the parties involved, identifying strengths and weaknesses, exploring different ways of working cooperatively and establishing specific roles. as mentioned by teitel, “roles in beginning pdss tend to be flexible, as pds advocates feel their way into the work” (teitel, 2003, p. 68). as the project evolved and the parties became more familiarized with working collaboratively, the roles were more clearly defined. the role of the school fsm school assumed various roles like coordinator, facilitator, and mediator. it was necessary to have an institution that would manage the whole process and the school undertook the role of coordinator. in order to do so, the holder of a master’s degree in the field of applied linguistics to the teaching of english was hired by fsm school to act as the on-site coordinator of the pds. this person was in charge of planning, implementing and assessing the whole process and was constantly providing support to the parties involved. in relation to planning, the on-site coordinator was responsible for organizing the meetings with the university and school representatives so as to start a fruitful relationship. these meetings were carried out in order to inform the parties about the principles underlying the pds and the way to implement it. the meetings took place both at the university and at the school in order for the practitioners, mentor teachers and administrative staff to feel equally treated and valued. the objective of doing so was to balance out the higher status given in our context to universities in regard to schools. regarding the implementation, the on-site coordinator kept a written record of every meeting held with the objective of first, identifying needs and difficulties encountered by the members of the partnership; and second, establishing agreements and entrusting responsibilities. furthermore, there was a constant followup and support for student teachers as well as mentors. this support is fundamental in order to guarantee that every member is familiarized with the procedures and is working towards the same goal. finally, the on-site coordinator needed to assess the process to make sure that all the actions taken contributed to the success of the pds. additionally, the school –fsmtook on the role of facilitator by providing the human resources such as administrative staff, the pds on-site coordinator, mentor teachers and students. it also contributed with resources such as the place in which the project was carried out, equipment and didactic material, among other items. the school also assumed the role of mediator bridging the gap between the school and the university, parents, profile 10.indd 186 23/10/2008 8:46:32 professional development schools: establishing alliances to bridge the gap between universities and schools profile 10, 2008. issn 1657-0790. bogotá, colombia. pages 181-194 187 students, practitioners, mentors and administrative staff. this was achieved by means of various activities, such as organizing workshops for parents which allowed them to meet each other and share their expectations in regard to their children’s education; these workshops also helped parents understand the learning processes their children were going through at school. parents were required to do the same sort of activities their children did, so that they would comprehend the purposes behind these tasks and collaborate with their children’s education at home. in these workshops, mentor teachers were leaders as they were the most experienced in handling these activities. practitioners also participated actively in the organization of the workshops, gaining experience in the development of this type of events. another activity was the application of a survey with the mentor teachers to find out more about their studies, previous teaching experience, abilities and talents. once the information was gathered and key aspects were identified, the on-site coordinator designed workshops for members of the academic community. for instance, if a mentor teacher was good at making flower arrangements, she would teach a workshop for those members of the community interested in learning about this activity. the intention behind this type of activities was to benefit from the knowledge, experience and abilities found among the teaching staff. the role of the university in relation to the public university –ud– it assumed the role of facilitator. on the one hand, the undergraduate program provided the student teachers, who carried out the pedagogical interventions and developed small scale projects at fsm school as part of their teaching practicum. moreover, the university opened spaces for mentor teachers to continue growing professionally by inviting them to attend or participate in seminars, conferences and workshops. on the other hand, the master’s program collaborated in designing a research project that would be carried out along with espere, a non-profit foundation which bases its work on emotional literacy, implementing a method that provides training for the transformation of accumulated anger, hatred and the urge for vengeance. the foundation’s work focuses on conflict resolution and the achievement of sustainable peace by means of forgiveness and reconciliation2 . with this project, fsm school intended to train teachers from the public school sector in conflict resolution strategies, the development of tolerance and the acceptance of diversity among students and the community in general. in addition, the master’s program in applied linguistics motivated its students to plan and start their theses in areas that would have an impact on the school’s curriculum. the table below shows the stages the pds went through and the roles that each institution assumed. 2 retrieved from www.fundacionparalareconciliacion.org profile 10.indd 187 23/10/2008 8:46:32 torres jaramillo and monguí sánchez universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras188 hands-on experience research in the educational field has demonstrated that the first five years of teaching practice are fundamental to developing pedagogical skills that usually prevail throughout teachers’ professional life. after some time teachers tend to become alienated by the system and, in many cases, do not engage in professional development courses and programs. thus, policies and projects are needed that help consolidate the teaching profession within society (el tiempo, 2005, p. 2). teaching has to perpetuate constant learning. only if inand pre-service teachers understand that especially in this field we need to be constantly studying, learning, sharing and taking full responsibility for our actions, will we provoke significant and positive changes in education. this perspective of the teaching practicum in our country contributed to our desire to promote changes in this field and the principles that underlie the pds became an appealing and valuable alternative to be adapted to our setting. thus, fsm school and ud university, being aware of the relevance and importance of pdss, committed themselves to put into practice this project. to start, the onsite coordinator set up the appropriate conditions for the practices to take place. then, she informed all members of the school about the project that was going to be implemented so that everybody would feel involved and motivated to cooperate; she did so by organizing schedules, preparing the induction of student teachers, mentor teachers and university professors as well as receiving and evaluating student teachers´ proposals for classroom interventions, among others. a fundamental aspect, mentioned above, that helped to set the ground to create a positive atmosphere for the implementation of the pds, was the role of the on-site coordinator. she sensitized mentor teachers in relation to the traditional idea of teaching practicum versus the new perspective pds provides. it required constant dialogue, support, and a follow-up with mentor teachers throughout the time in which this pds was implemented. in order to set the ground for this appropriate environment, several actions were taken. on the one hand, the pds on-site coordinator recognized and expressed that mentor teachers needed to be listened to, taken into account and supported in their table 1. the pds scheme: stages, roles and participants. stages roles institutions fundación santa maría school universidad distrital francisco josé de caldas espere 1) planning & initiating coordinator  2) implementing the pds mediator  facilitator   coach  profile 10.indd 188 23/10/2008 8:46:33 professional development schools: establishing alliances to bridge the gap between universities and schools profile 10, 2008. issn 1657-0790. bogotá, colombia. pages 181-194 189 initiatives, ideas and projects. this implied not only recognizing their potential but also valuing their experience and knowledge, all of which helped raise their self esteem. mentor teachers were also motivated to share their experience with others by taking the risk to write about their teaching practice and publishing it or presenting it in academic events. as noted by benson (2000, in cárdenas, 2003, p. 60), “publishing is a way for members of the academic community to share ideas and possibly contribute something to the world’s store of knowledge. to publish is to engage in a dialogue with unseen and often unknown others”. besides, the on-site coordinator contributed to raising awareness about the benefits that the strategic alliance with the university offered mentor teachers. advantages included the possibility to attend and participate in academic events, take courses at the university, and be in close contact with university professors, student teachers and administrators. additionally, within the school schedule a time was set aside for mentor teachers to gather and reflect upon their teaching practice. these meetings helped mentor teachers to value the school efforts to promote an in-depth transformation. teachers expressed that the fact of having practitioners at the school had been very enriching as it allowed them to observe, analyze and reflect carefully about their teaching, their students and even their own colleagues. this coaching was very valuable in encouraging mentor teachers to assume an active part in the project. they recognized the key role they played in the process, which promoted ownership. moreover, mentor teachers showed a very responsible and caring attitude towards their children in relation to the activities that they were to develop. such attitudes evidenced how deeper reflection was taking place among mentor teachers, partly due to the fact of having practitioners observing and supporting their classes. this issue also appeared in faith’s study (2004), when she claims that there is ample evidence that mentors were prompted to think deeply about how and what they were teaching as well as why, and to try to use more effective strategies and instructional techniques when they worked with the met students (p. 438). fostering practitioners’ sense of belonging to the institution when practitioners arrived to fsm school, they were given time to become familiarized with institutional documents so that they could propose pedagogical interventions in light of the children’s needs, existing state educational laws, policies and principles of the school (pei)3. there was also an induction for these practitioners whom had the opportunity to get to know mentor teachers, school administrators and other pre-service teachers as well as to ask questions about the school environment and philosophy. practitioners met with mentor teachers to talk about the students, look at pictures of the school, children and special events. the idea was to present an overview of the context they were to work. 3 educational project of the institution (proyecto educativo institucional pei) is the name given to the compendium of mission, vision, and curriculum of any colombian school. profile 10.indd 189 23/10/2008 8:46:33 torres jaramillo and monguí sánchez universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras190 bearing in mind the importance of contextualizing student teachers in relation to the setting where they were to carry out their practicum, fsm school provided practitioners with time to observe classes before elaborating their classroom projects. this was done in order for the practitioners to get to know the students and the class dynamics and, through this process, be able to propose a pedagogical intervention that would suit the needs of the students and the institution. after their observations, practitioners had conferences with mentor teachers who guided and oriented their proposals. the on-site coordinator also reviewed such proposals and provided feedback when necessary. the university assigned a schedule for student teachers in regard to school presence. initially, however, they showed up only for the specific class without setting time aside to share with the mentor teacher or to participate in any other curricular or extra-curricular activity. practitioners arrived with the assumption that their responsibility in the school was only to “teach the class” they had been allotted without getting involved in the school dynamics. they believed that they were required to comply only with the schedule set up for the class, but this idea gradually started to change due to the support and feedback provided by the on-site coordinator and the school dynamics that were taking place. the pds on-site coordinator, aiming to promote ownership by practitioners, proposed that the student teachers could work on committees which were intended to provide solutions to certain issues within the school. practitioners were given different options so as to motivate them to work on something of their interest, thus, trying to satisfy some of the school’s needs. the areas proposed for the committees had to do with material design, evaluation techniques and instruments, an after school program, parent involvement in the school setting, cooperative work, and a pds research group. all practitioners joined the committee which had to do with material design4. practitioners were given a room with appropriate conditions and materials so that they could design flashcards, lotteries, posters, etc. every time they got together in that room they worked enthusiastically, reflecting upon their teaching practice and experiences at the school and had a good time together. in addition, the school benefited from the material they designed since it could start its own resource center. this room became a space for sharing their concerns, experiences, fears and outcomes of their practicum, which allowed them to strengthen their bonds of friendship. student teachers felt that the school valued their work and provided enriching teaching and learning experiences. thus, they became more and more committed as the process continued. mentor teachers reported the transformations practitioners went through, which was reflected in their high quality lessons. a positive response was observed from the children as well. thus, setting appropriate conditions for practitioners to work had an impact 4 this committee focused on designing materials for teaching purposes. it allowed student teachers to develop their creativity and to support the institution in its need to have better english teaching materials. profile 10.indd 190 23/10/2008 8:46:33 professional development schools: establishing alliances to bridge the gap between universities and schools profile 10, 2008. issn 1657-0790. bogotá, colombia. pages 181-194 191 on their performance and their sense of belonging to the institution and the pds. the pds research group, which was one of the committees proposed, was based on the belief that it is important to look for different ways to achieve the educational objectives and that an important component of that quest is to investigate; in this way, you can analyze your plan of action. as some authors claim, teaching and research as practices transform teacher educators, classroom teachers, students, institutions and educational communities in general (clavijo, guerrero, torres, ramírez, & torres, 2004, p. 14). nevertheless, the practitioners did not get involved on this committee. through the pds project, student teachers were able to discover their potential, identify their strengths and weaknesses and receive and incorporate feedback on their teaching practicum. this has surely been an enriching experience for practitioners, since, based on the pds principles, practitioners have been recognized as professionals valuing their knowledge and capabilities. this fact has an impact on the construction of their professional self, empowering them as future leaders, agents of change and transformation. obstacles encountered when implementing the pds at this point, although there was commitment from some key parties in the pds such as university supervisors, the pds on-site coordinator, practitioners, mentor teachers and students, some constraints existed that we had to face, including a lack of help and support from the principal of the school. she had been working in that school for many years and it was difficult for her to accept new ideas and changes in the school. she did not speak english and the fact that the pds had an emphasis on the teaching of english, contributed to her fear of being made redundant. the principal used to abruptly change the school activities programmed from the beginning of the year and sometimes practitioners could not carry out the lessons they had planned. to mitigate this constraint and to get the principal more involved and committed to the pds process, it was necessary to involve her more in the project, to show her the relevance of implementing a pds to the benefit not only of the teaching program at the university but also of the school. she was invited to the meetings with practitioners and with mentor teachers. in addition, the constant evaluation of the process reported by students, practitioners and mentors was shared with her. once the principal was more knowledgeable and involved in the process, she allowed us to continue implementing the project with more freedom. wilson (1993, p. 70) points out that “traditionally principals have exercised control by limiting access to information in a hierarchical organization. teachers engaged in action research, creating knowledge and collaborating directly with university faculty will be empowered. they will require a new kind of leader, one who is empowering and enabling”. this situation showed us that a transformation needs to take place in profile 10.indd 191 23/10/2008 8:46:33 torres jaramillo and monguí sánchez universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras192 terms of beliefs and practices from people involved in a pds. another constraint that we faced was the fact that there were two practitioners who started teaching at fsm school and because of personal reasons, abruptly abandoned their practicum. this situation had a negative impact on the students since they had built a close relationship with the practitioners and it was difficult for the children to understand why they had left them. that event allowed us to see that when pre-service teachers are carrying out their teaching practice, it is necessary to emphasize the importance of closing cycles appropriately, especially when working with children. children, in this case, expected student teachers to explain the reasons behind their decision to leave, or at least to have the opportunity to say good bye; but none of this happened. because of this situation, these student teachers failed their practicum at the university as they did not comply with its requirements. a further constraint involved the relationship established by a student and her mentor. one student was not able to work effectively with the mentor teacher to whom she was assigned. the feedback that the mentor teacher gave was pertinent but the way she delivered it upset the student teacher in such a way that they were not able to find possible solutions and had to seek help from the on-site coordinator. although meetings were held to talk about difficulties in the way the mentor teacher and the practitioner were communicating and sharing their insights and experience, these encounters did not improved the situation and it was necessary to assign another mentor teacher. this situation raised awareness about the need for preparing mentor teachers to assume this fundamental role. such preparation requires informing mentor teachers about the principles underlying the pds, explaining the ways to implement it in the specific context, constant support and counseling, time to reflect upon the issues that may appear and exchange of ideas and analysis of specific cases that could be encountered. in the sections above we have described the experience of this pds in progress. we know that the parties involved are willing to continue and improve every day. there are some action plans already established to carry on with the implementation. in relation to further developments, we expect to expand the scope of the teaching practicum by involving not only student teachers of english but from other disciplines as well in order to enrich the school’s curriculum. a new alliance with a private university which is sending practitioners from the child pedagogy teaching program to work with preschoolers of fsm school is being planned. besides this additional practicum, the university is also cooperating with the school to provide training for the preschool teachers in the literacy process so that they can broaden their perspectives and understanding of the area. additionally, with this new partnership, workshops have been designed that will be offered to all the children, not only those of the school but of the neighborhood. these workshops are intended to help students with their reading and writing processes and with the development of artistic skills, among others. finally, one of the plans we have foreseen for the near future is to motivate the development of action research within the partnerships. profile 10.indd 192 23/10/2008 8:46:33 professional development schools: establishing alliances to bridge the gap between universities and schools profile 10, 2008. issn 1657-0790. bogotá, colombia. pages 181-194 193 action research becomes vital in order to follow the pdss’ track, document what happens, reflect towards its development and look for ways to improve it every day. research illuminates the work and provides the necessary tools for effective processes. cárdenas & faustino (2003, p. 24) argue that “more and more teachers are looking into their practice –both in their classrooms and their educational institutions to solve the problems they find or to improve their practice and their students’ learning process. they are resorting to research as an informed way to lead action and change”. conclusions implementing a pds is a very appealing idea for those who are interested in improving educational experiences by means of collaborative work. there are many important aspects to bear in mind when implementing pdss but definitely the setting in which a pds takes place plays a key role. alliances require, from the parties involved, identifying strengths and weaknesses, exploring different ways of working cooperatively and establishing specific roles. having an onsite coordinator facilitates the follow-up and constant evaluation and improvement of pdss since she set up the appropriate conditions for the practicum to take place. the fact of having academic institutions joining forces with common goals helps in professional development and qualifications of student teachers. in every pds there are issues that hinder its development such as lack of support from the administrators, lack of resources and lack of understanding of participants’ roles. teitel (2003, p. 5) uses the phrase “creative tension” to describe how, in pdss, the world of theory rubs against the world of practice. assuming new or different roles between the parties involved when implementing a pds requires transforming one’s view’s about teaching, practicum, student teachers and education in general terms; unless the concept of the pds is embedded within the institution, the project is in danger of collapsing. research is a key component of pdss since it allows for one to inquire about the teaching and learning processes, the context where it takes place, the relations held by community members and any other issue that arises from the pds. investigation can have multiple purposes, as part of the assessment and evaluation of the process, as a way to keep track of the implementation, as a means for constant improvement and sharing of partial or final outcomes of the experience. as this part of our story comes to an end, we still have a long way to go yet look forward to sharing our steps forward with the educational community as we progress. references bruner, j. (1996). the narrative construal of reality. boston: harvard university press. cárdenas, m. l. (2003). teacher researchers as writers: a way to sharing findings. colombian applied linguistics journal, 5, 49-64. cárdenas, r. & faustino, c. (2003). developing reflective and investigative skills in teacher preparation programs: the design and implementation of the classroom research component at the foreign language program of universidad del valle. colombian applied linguistics journal, 5, 22-24. profile 10.indd 193 23/10/2008 8:46:33 torres jaramillo and monguí sánchez universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras194 clavijo, a., guerrero, c., torres, c., ramírez, m. & torres, e. (2004). teachers acting critically upon the curriculum: innovations that transform teaching. íkala, 9(15), 11-41. el tiempo (2005). investigadores piden adelantar políticas para fortalecer la profesión de maestro en latinoamérica. retrieved december 8, 2005 from el tiempo web site: http://eltiempo.terra.com. co/educ/not/education/ faith, k. (2004). beginning a new partnership: professional development school-master of education in teaching style. journal of in-service education, 30(3), 13-25. gee, j. (1999). introduction to discourse analysis. london: rutledge. johnson, k. & golembeck, p. (2002). teachers’ narrative inquiry as professional development. cambridge: cambridge university press. jurado, f. (1999). investigación, escritura y educación. bogotá: plaza y janés. teitel, l. (2003). the professional development schools handbook. california: corwin press, inc. wilson, p. (1993). pushing the edge. in m. milstein (ed.) changing the way we prepare educational leaders: the danforth experience. newbury park: ca: corwin. vélez-rendón, g. (2003). student or teacher: the tensions faced by a spanish language teacher. colombian applied linguistics journal, 5, 7-21. viáfara, j. (2004). student teachers’ development of pedagogical knowledge through reflection. unpublished master’s dissertation. universidad distrital francisco jose de caldas. bogotá: colombia. zeichner, k. (1983). alternative paradigms of teacher education. journal of teacher education, 34(3), 3-9. about the authors claudia torres jaramillo holds an ma in applied linguistics to the teaching of english from universidad distrital. she is a professor in the masters’ program in applied linguistics and belongs to the research group, lectoescrinautas, recognized by colciencias. she directs the graduate program on bilingual education at universidad el bosque. rocío monguí, holds an ma in applied linguistics to the teaching of english and a graduate diploma in university teaching. she has studied and taught in english speaking countries and has participated as a lecturer in many academic events nationwide. she directs the elementary section of abraham lincoln school. profile 10.indd 194 23/10/2008 8:46:33 profile 2.p65 ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○57 profileprofileprofileprofileprofile the purpose of this paper is to point outthe need to make students autonomousreaders through the development of thinking skills such as the ability to classify, compare, deduce, induce and synthesise and reading strategies (prediction, global understanding of a text, inferences, and deduction of meaning through vocabulary). it is important to conceptualise the new didactic aim of teaching the english language. such an aim could be established as the teaching of reading comprehension through learning strategies, and the development of thinking skills in order to make the learner an autonomous reader. human beings have been defined as “political animals” by aristotle. that indicates how we all live in community and, therefore, must communicate. this justifies the natural will to understand others, whether or not others speak the same language. according to history, human beings created oral language when the need for communication arose. it is known that the first manifestations of written language were the cave drawings and the papyrus, then used as a way for humans to convey their feelings and thoughts. certain expressions allowed the identity of societies to be known, and for written language to come into existence. linguistics is the discipline that studies the phenomena of evolution, the development of languages, and how they relate. its purpose is to qualify human communication to make it more effective, and to help improve the relationships of the community to which it belongs. humans are born with phonetic skills and start developing their language as they encounter the need for communication. therefore, language develops arbitrarily and subjectively, which is the justification for the existence of the various languages, dialects and idioms. in a school environment, scientific, artistic and critical processes are mostly organised in a written fashion. for this reason, students must be intellectually prepared to comprehend, interpret and possess the information derived from this process, which requires that new strategies be developed for better reading comprehension. a good reader in his/her mother language has skills and strategies previously acquired and developed in school and family environments which can, consciously or unconsciously, be transferred when learning a new language. for example, when reading a book, the reader can distinguish the diversity of genres, and can easily identify the writer’s points of view. in this learning process, an aim and a purpose must exist, both of which allow the reader to interact with the teacher who, in turn, contributes to make sense of the newly acquired knowledge. the reader requires many thinking skills, such as the ability to classify, compare, analyse, deduct, induce and synthesise. a comprehensive reading an approach to making students autonomous readers of the english language maría elena pmaría elena pmaría elena pmaría elena pmaría elena perererererdomo c.domo c.domo c.domo c.domo c. foreign languages department, universidad nacional de colombia ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ 58profileprofileprofileprofileprofile exercise can itself generate the development of these skills, and if they exist already, it helps improve the growth of the autonomous reader. in order to read, it is necessary that students have the will and conviction to face the text. a question then arises: “what should be read?”. it is important to read things of interest, material that is meaningful to the student at a specific time. that is why reading topics should not always be imposed by the teacher, but be chosen by the students based on what matters to them. the language teacher can contribute toward helping the student, not only by taking possession of the reading strategies (prediction, global understanding of a textbook, inferences, deduction of meaning through vocabulary), but also by steering the student the development of thinking skills, such as classification, comparison, analysis, deduction, induction and synthesis. taking into account the various types of learning, the strategic teacher can predict how students will respond to specific themes and what problems they will have. this principle is believed by leinhardt (1986), cited by jones et al. (1987). once these skills and strategies are assimilated by the ideal reader, he/she will improve them by establishing analogies between his/her mother tongue and the foreign one. this way the reader will gradually become more autonomous. presently, the teaching methodology of foreign languages is very varied. it is a conjunction of distinctive methods and visions. however, the communicative focus is still valid as long as the student is the central subject of learning. he/she must solve problems, and have a critical attitude towards cognitive and social strategies. there are also other aims that focus their principles towards the development of processes, projects, and inclass research. these tend to enhance and strengthen the students’ self-esteem. such a tendency is now a general concern for all areas and fields in which humans develop. according to díaz and hernández (1998), the reading and learning strategies must be carefully assumed by the teacher. one must learn to classify strategies into the basic, important, and necessary ones, so that the reading comprehension of foreign languages is meaningful. “making reference to the selected strategies, it is convenient to analyse the following aspects beforehand: functionality, adjustment to themes, significance to the student’s needs, viability and susceptibly to training” (ibid: 1998, 15). conclusionsconclusionsconclusionsconclusionsconclusions it is difficult to learn a foreign language while being in an environment where communication does not necessarily happen in this language. therefore, the teacher must help the student with the process of constructing knowledge, and take advantage of the student’s interests, skills and motivations. learning strategies and thinking skills for the students can be designed to help him/her link previous knowledge to the newly acquired and then to subsequently apply it in any environment to which the learner is exposed. such a process can guarantee that a student will become a more autonomous reader. referencesreferencesreferencesreferencesreferences díaz b., f. and hernández r., g. (1998) estrategias docentes para un aprendizaje significativo. méxico: mcgraw-hill. jones, b. f. et al. (1987). estrategias para enseñar a aprender. un enfoque cognitivo para todas las áreas y niveles. argentina: aique. profile 1.p65 ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ 6profileprofileprofileprofileprofile introduction we perceive teachers to beagents of change who arecharacterised by high selfesteem as well as by cultural and professional identity. likewise, we suppose teachers possess solid knowledge of their teaching fields and abilities to identify problems as well as to provide solutions to them within particular educational contexts. for those reasons, and in order to help teachers strengthen their professional knowledge, the programmes offered to english teachers in the foreign languages department of the universidad nacional de colombia since 1995 have included three main components: language development, methodological updating and classroom research. the first two components respond to the trainees’ manifested needs to maintain or improve competence in using and teaching the target language, whereas the last one attempts to foster innovation. regarding innovation, we should point out that it cannot take place without previous research. we opted for action research as a means to encourage teachers to investigate the classroom despite the limitations of their working conditions as well as the research tradition in the area of english language teaching and learning in our country. keeping in mind wallace’s remarks, we admit that action research “is not for everyone. for one thing, it makes demands on our time, and also requires the ability to look at evidence of our own practice in a more detached and objective way than we normally do. nevertheless, if we can find the time and energy to do it, and we find it congenial, there is ample evidence that this approach can provide all sorts of interesting and helpful professional insights”. (wallace, michael. 1998. action research for language teachers. cambridge: cambridge university press, p. 1). the teachers who took part in the tpd programme carried out from 1998 to 1999 selected the working system that would respond to their personal interests. some of them decided to work individually in solving a problem in their place of work whereas others opted for team-work. in the former case, teachers chose data collection procedures such as sur veys, audio and video recordings, documentary evidence (students’ work) and diaries as a means to do self-observation and to keep track of research in progress. in the latter, the topic of investigation was selected bearing in mind common concerns among members of a team and the generalisibility of findings, that is to say, the possibility of applying innovations being implemented in the classroom under investigation in other teachers’ classrooms. this allowed them to do peer observation in a systematic way. due to the integration of action research into the tpd programmes, we have observed several gains: collaborative work, validity and reliability of findings as a result of the examination of phenomena from different perspectives, the sharing of teachers’ findings, and changes in beliefs about the role of the ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○7 profileprofileprofileprofileprofile teacher as a researcher, among others. these achievements have shown that classroomcentred research provides a great deal of useful information about how classes are taught and promotes self-monitoring by classroom practitioners. likewise, we can contribute to bridging the gap between theory and practice by encouraging teachers to adopt an investigative orientation to their own classrooms. in so doing, teachers can evaluate acquired knowledge and suggested innovations in the light of school life. the profile journal is an annual publication for professionals interested in continuing their professional development. this journal is mainly concerned with sharing the results of classroom research projects undertaken by primar y and secondary school teachers while taking part in professional development programmes in our university. the first part of this issue contains some papers written by teacher educators who participated in the 1998-1999 programme. the second section includes a series of articles based on the classroom research projects developed by teachers either individually or in small groups and which follows the principles of action research. finally, we include a list of research projects worked out by teachers in the programmes carried out from january to may, 1995 and from september 1996 to september 1997. the complete versions of the research reports can be viewed in our department. there, we can find a detailed account of theoretical issues, research procedures and findings in various teaching settings. the papers included in this first number represent the culmination of countless hours of work on the part of school teachers involved in the in-ser vice programme. the editor is grateful for their dedication and thanks them for giving us the opportunity to learn from them and with them. • looking at cooperative learning through the eyes of public schools teachers participating... profile 8, 2007. issn 1657-0790. bogotá, colombia. pages 103-120 103 looking at cooperative learning through the eyes of public schools teachers participating in a teacher development program* una mirada al trabajo cooperativo desde la perspectiva de los profesores de colegios públicos que participan en un programa de desarrollo profesional maría eugenia lópez hurtado** universidades la salle, nacional de colombia & javeriana john jairo viáfara gonzález*** universidad pedagógica y tecnológica de colombia an exploration of in-service public schools teachers’ implementation of cooperative learning forms the basis of this article. by means of a qualitative approach to research, two tutors in a teacher development program have studied how a group of english teachers set the conditions to create a cooperative learning environment in their classes. additionally, they reveal the perceptions that these educators have of themselves as initiators who guide their students in this pedagogical experience. the analysis of information collected provides views about the role that teachers assumed and their concerns when organizing their classroom in order to experience cooperative work. furthermore, teachers’ self-encouragement for professional development emerged as a fundamental issue when they implemented this approach in their institutions. key words: cooperative work, cooperative group, cooperative class, cooperative workshop, cooperative learning una exploración de la implementación de aprendizaje cooperativo por parte de los maestros de colegios públicos fue la fuente esencial para escribir este artículo. a través de un enfoque de investigación cualitativo, dos tutores de un programa de desarrollo de maestros han estudiado como un grupo de profesores establecen condiciones para crear un ambiente de aprendizaje cooperativo en sus clases. adicionalmente, ellos revelan la percepción que estos educadores tienen de ellos mismos como los iniciadores para guiar a sus estudiantes en esta experiencia pedagógica. el análisis de la información recogida proporciona las diferentes opiniones sobre el papel que los profesores asumieron y sus * this paper reports on a study conducted by the authors while participating as tutors in two profile teacher development programmes, at universidad nacional de colombia, in 2004 and 2005. the programmes were sponsored by secretaría de educación de bogotá, d.c. code numbers: 30102003905 (2004) and 30501006055 (2005). ** e-mail: melh2005@gmail.com address: calle 39f sur no. 72f-73 bogotá, colombia *** e-mail: jviafara@yahoo.com address: universidad pedagógica y tecnológica de colombia. avenida central del norte. tunja–boyacá, colombia this article was received on march 30th, 2007 and accepted on august 11th, 2007. profile 8.indd 103 28/09/2007 12:42:21 a.m. lópez hurtado and viáfara gonzález universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras104 preocupaciones al organizar su aula para experimentar el trabajo cooperativo. además, el mismoestímulo de maestros por el desarrollo profesional surge como un asunto fundamental cuando implementaron este enfoque en sus instituciones. palabras clave: trabajo cooperativo, grupo cooperativo, clase cooperativa, taller cooperativo, aprendizaje cooperativo many students in the given context. owing to the specific challenges that implementing cooperative learning might represent in relation to different school subjects and contexts, we consider it relevant for us in efl to see how this method is adjusted to public school realities. bearing in mind what has been said above, in this opportunity we have focused on examining what a group of in-service efl public school teachers participating in the pfpd profile1 reported about the implementation of cooperative learning in their classrooms. the examination entails, on the one hand, characterizing teachers’ procedures as they used this pedagogical strategy and, on the other, exploring what they perceived about themselves as initiators showing the path to their students. the pfpd profile (professional development programs in the teaching of english as a foreign language), which took place during 2004 and 2005 for teachers in bogotá public schools, was the context for this study. these programs were financed by the sed (secretaría de educación distrital) and developed at universidad nacional. the pfpd profile has pursued as one of its aims the involvement of teachers in analyzing their theoretical principles and practices in 1 the profile professional development programs in the teaching of english as a foreign language were developed at the universidad nacional de colombia foreign languages department, bogotá. introduction group work as a pedagogical strategy has no doubt been experienced in a great variety of forms for students and teachers in language learning. there might be cases in which teachers set a structured plan to guide the functioning of groups as teams cooperating to achieve success, however, at the other end of the spectrum, students might work in groups without any specific principles which structure their interaction, being just aware of a task they are expected to complete in their own groups as soon as possible. in any case, creating conditions for making traditional group work a cooperative experience could be a challenging task for educators. on studying the area of cooperative learning, we have found that a good number of people involved in teacher education in our country hold the belief that many of the principles of cooperative learning are now a reality in schools. nevertheless, based on the survey applied to the group of public school teachers participating in this study, 70% have either not heard of this methodology or have not implemented it in their lessons, at least not while following a set of solid principles. others have also talked about how difficult cooperation continues to be for profile 8.indd 104 28/09/2007 12:42:21 a.m. looking at cooperative learning through the eyes of public schools teachers participating... profile 8, 2007. issn 1657-0790. bogotá, colombia. pages 103-120 105 participate if he perceives that the group’s benefit constitutes also his/her own gain. one of the advantages of the motivational approach stems from the goal-oriented nature of teamwork that can be fostered in the members of a team. some researchers have agreed that mutual support for procedures helps to achieve group objectives. slavin, along with others such as kagan (1994), has also stressed the role of cognitive theories in establishing the principles of cooperative learning. they pointed at piaget’s and vygotsky’s contributions as regards the idea that there is a better chance of learning taking place when people interact with each other. another important tenet originates in social psychology from the concept of interdependence studied by deutsch (cited in kagan, 1994, p. 32) in relation to “people’s perceptions of how they affect and are affected by what happens to others”. the previous theories closely relate to a set of principles for implementing cooperative learning environments that researchers have established. johnson & johnson (1999, pp. 38-46), for instance, point at the following ones: face-to-face interaction, positive interdependence, processing group interaction and individual accountability. kagan (1994) has also observed positive interdependence and individual accountability as key elements in cooperative learning; however, he introduces two other principles, namely, equal participation and simultaneous interaction. if teachers undertake the tasks of planning a cooperative learning class, along with the principles mentioned above, additional decisions need to be made. johnson & johnson (1999, p. 75) consider it necessary to determine how to the teaching of english as a foreign language while they work with their pupils in schools. to reach this objective, teachers participated in workshops about pedagogical issues. at the same time, along the different stages of the program, educators had the opportunity to integrate their updating in elt (english language teaching) methodology with their experience as language learners and their research skills by means of an innovation or research project they developed in their specific settings. the program counted on a team of tutors who not only guided different workshops in issues about pedagogy, language learning and research, but additionally supported groups of teachers in the planning and implementation of their projects at schools. the two writers of this article worked as tutors in the pfpd profile. one of them participated in the program in 2004 and 2005 and the second one in 2005. both of them contributed to the development of the pedagogy module and guided several research or innovation projects that teachers implemented in their schools. literature review experiences indicate that group work does not necessarily deal with cooperative work. according to cohen (1986), group work involves working together in a small group so that everyone can participate in a task previously assigned. however, not all group work engages students in cooperative learning as dörnyei (1997) points out. cooperative learning foundations are rooted in several motivational theories. to begin with, slavin (1999), claims that a member who is part of a team can be encouraged to profile 8.indd 105 28/09/2007 12:42:21 a.m. sierra piedrahita universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras106 integrate formal cooperative learning in which students constitute groups for several lessons, with informal teams. additionally, the organization of groups according to specific criteria for the selection of members and the distribution of participants’ roles are key issues for the support of the principles of cooperative learning. dörnyei & malderez (1999, p. 169) state that teachers’ skills in managing groups in the efl classroom to a great extend originate from educators’ knowledge of group dynamics. arranging and monitoring groups are part of the cooperative atmosphere that is fundamental to encouraging positive relations among members. participants in a team might feel a sense of identity when they are assigned a role to perform since they assume new responsibilities, challenges or tasks in order to achieve a common goal (millis & cottell, 1997). finally, planning cooperative learning experiences also has implications for certain aspects of lesson organization. some of them include the determination of how cooperative work becomes part of the class stages, the supervision of students’ attitudes in order to gather information as well as to improve students’ work, and an enriching evaluation process (johnson et al., 1999). the following studies inform what participants in cooperative work experiences have said about their involvement with this kind of approach. children’s reflections during and after working cooperatively with a team of partners to complete a science class project were part of the sources from which muller & fleming (2001) drew their conclusions about their pupils’ learning process. this study not only confirms the benefits of cooperative learning mentioned in previous studies, but also points out difficulties that this methodology can bring. for instance, some students might end up doing all the work and certain group members might not contribute as others do. in relation to the teachers’ role during the development of this study, it is stressed that when teachers work completely on their own to implement cooperative learning, they might find the experience tough. therefore, the provision of support for teachers who decide to work with this approach is highly recommended. other studies in the area of cooperative learning reveal how teachers made decisions in terms of grouping. kutnick et al. (2005) worked with twenty teachers from different areas at secondary schools in england to determine their thoughts and practices regarding the way they grouped their students in lessons. results showed that teachers’ criteria for choosing specific groupings depended on the stages of the classes. teachers believed in the benefits of teamwork but they did not prepare students to work cooperatively. controlling pupils’ behaviour was closely related to teachers’ decisions about grouping. individual learning received much more acceptance than the idea of interaction among students. some teachers thought that small grouping was time consuming and they might lose control. regarding teachers’ implementation of cooperative learning, siegel (2005) explored how a math teacher put this method into practice within a research-based model. the math teacher’s study revealed that the implementation of cooperative learning is not a simple task. additionally, she found that in a constructivist perspective “one profile 8.indd 106 28/09/2007 12:42:21 a.m. looking at cooperative learning through the eyes of public schools teachers participating... profile 8, 2007. issn 1657-0790. bogotá, colombia. pages 103-120 107 set of factors influencing a teacher’s use of cooperative learning will be his or her prior knowledge of teaching and experience as a teacher” (p. 346). cooperative learning: a component in the pedagogical module in the pfpd profile the cooperative learning workshop was implemented during the two years in which this study took place. the following diagram summarizes the process we followed during the program to support educators in their development of teaching skills in the area of cooperative learning. this workshop usually took the form of three sessions. two initial consecutive sessions explored teachers’ previous knowledge looking at the principles behind cooperative learning and involving teachers in experiencing the method. in order to achieve this, a task was organized. the worksheet (see appendix 1) supported the beginning of the workshop. teachers read about the principles of diagram 1. process followed to support teachers in the development of teaching skills in cooperative learning. profile 8.indd 107 28/09/2007 12:42:22 a.m. lópez hurtado and viáfara gonzález universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras108 cooperative learning and prepared a short presentation for peers. they wrote their summary in the petals of a flower that was completed as each teacher shared their conclusions with their peers. to fulfill their tasks, teachers worked in groups of four and performed specific functions (monitor, speaker, secretary and designer). as they worked in teams, the tutor demonstrated different aspects to be taken into consideration when dealing with cooperative learning. from the distribution of materials to particular ideas in giving instructions, reducing noise or coordinating what happened in groups, the tutor acted as a guide to illustrate possibilities. all the stages and roles of participants during the workshop served, at the end of the sessions, as points of analysis to be discussed and connected with participants’ experiences in their real contexts. at this point, participants were encouraged to implement the approach and prepare a written report. they were also asked to be ready to share with their peers their impressions about what happened during their implementations. this task was developed in groups or individually. they were invited to get online support for their implementations. they could send drafts or express their concerns, and were given feedback and comments; we provided suggestions about authors that could support their planning, methodological tips and the introduction of philosophical reflection with their students. furthermore, they were provided with bibliographical information to complement their knowledge. after implementations took place, a socialization session was held so that teachers had the chance to share what they did and the results which were produced; they revealed their experiences, some of them successful and others not so fortunate, but all of them enriched each other since it was feedback coming from similar situations. setting up a research framework to explore in-service teachers’ implementation of cooperative learning context and participants’ profile this study took into account what twenty male and fifty female public school teachers who participated in profile during 2004 and 2005 reported regarding their experiences. they held licenciatura degrees in philology and languages, modern languages or similar programs. some of them worked exclusively in teaching english, but others worked in teaching spanish, too. their ages varied from the early twenties to the early fifties. they belonged to 34 public schools located around the city and implemented cooperative learning in secondary education. approximately fifty percent of the teachers had heard of this approach before, but only thirty percent claimed they had used it. educators had heard of it during their undergraduate programs or symposiums. the strongest reasons they gave for not having worked with cooperative learning before dealt with their belief that it was very complex or its association with ordinary group work. among the total number of teachers, fifteen percent said they had used it but not systematically; they thought they lacked the theoretical background and had profile 8.indd 108 28/09/2007 12:42:22 a.m. looking at cooperative learning through the eyes of public schools teachers participating... profile 8, 2007. issn 1657-0790. bogotá, colombia. pages 103-120 109 not implemented it with all the strategies and conditions required to guide their students in achieving common goals. the lessons in which these teachers worked with cooperative learning included from forty to fifty boys and girls on average. students who attended most of the schools lived in challenging socio-economic conditions. based on teachers’ comments, violence, drug-abuse, mugging and earlypregnancy are some of the social problems in these contexts. a good number of them lived in single-parent families and started to work very early. method this research is effected as a qualitative case study. in this light, the case study presented here is aimed at understanding the meaning of an experience on how a particular group of teachers makes sense of using cooperative work in their classes. according to merriam (1988), a qualitative case study is “an intensive, holistic description and analysis of a single instance, phenomenon, or social unit” (p. 9). this method provided us with a rich view of the data collected in order to interpret and reflect on teachers’ perceptions towards using cooperative work in their classes. procedures for data collection and analysis surveys seventy teachers were asked to fill in a survey (bell, 1999) at the end of the program. all the questions were open. the survey started by asking participants about their favorite methodology during the pfpd program. then other questions about their implementation, such as reasons for their preferences, duration of the implementation, their acquaintance with that methodology and results in their lessons, along with their recommendations for other teachers who might intend to use it, gave an overall picture of the approach teachers followed (see appendix 2). teachers’ reports we might associate this type of instrument to what hubbard & power (1993) call ‘students’ artifacts’. during the teachers’ cooperative learning workshop, they were asked to write a report on their implementation of this methodology in their classes. the guidelines provided by the tutors asked teachers to focus on three aspects. first, they contextualized the experience which involved describing duration, grade, group size and objective of the activity. second, teachers narrated how they organized their lesson and the stages of the activity. third, they described what they had observed during their implementation in relation to their experiences and to those of their students, feelings and opinions of this approach. they had the chance to work individually or in groups with teachers in their schools who were in the program. we analyzed 32 reports from teachers in 2004 and 2005. these reports were not expected to be graded as such since teachers selfevaluated their participation in workshops. interviews a semi-structured interview (bell, 1999) was used to explore the teachers’ implementations of cooperative learning profile 8.indd 109 28/09/2007 12:42:22 a.m. lópez hurtado and viáfara gonzález universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras110 in their lessons. the base questions for the interview were basically the same used in the survey plus the ones that emerged during the process which provided an opportunity to expand their comments (see appendix 2). twenty-one teachers were interviewed. they volunteered to answer and their answers were audio-recorded. field notes following hubbard & power (1993), we used field notes to record the comments that teachers voluntarily decided to share with their peers about their implementation of cooperative learning. we took notes each session in which this took place, recording as much as possible of what they said. these records represent the oral version of their written reports. the data analysis in this study is based on a grounded approach; this approach invites the researcher to read the data several times to notice similar themes or patterns (freeman, 1998). we wanted to analyze the data from surveys, teachers’ reports, interviews and field notes to identify the categories that emerged from that analysis. we followed the principles of triangulation to provide credibility for our study. we took into consideration multiple methods for data gathering (martin denzin, 1978, as cited in freeman, 1998). furthermore our study involved more than one researcher; according to janesick (1994), this is called investigator/researcher triangulation because it uses more than one investigator/researcher to gather data. characterization of teachers’ implementation of cooperative work in their classrooms the analysis of the thirty-four reports submitted and shared by teachers in the same number of public schools in bogotá, along with the teachers’ comments during feedback sessions, informed us as to how they organized the cooperative experience in their classrooms. the frequency of implementation of this approach in classes varied from one time, for the teachers who used it the least, to one semester, for the ones who used it the most. on average, the participants implemented it for approximately two percentage and language learning activities students developed 27.5% 37.9% 13.6% 7 % 7% 3.6% 3.4% project work reading & writing speaking activities vocabulary learning reading spanish classes listening starting group chart 1. distribution of cooperative activities per course. percentage and distribution per course 15% 10 % 25 % 35 % 10 % 5 % 6th 7th 8th 9th 10th 11th chart 2. kinds of activities developed. profile 8.indd 110 28/09/2007 12:42:22 a.m. looking at cooperative learning through the eyes of public schools teachers participating... profile 8, 2007. issn 1657-0790. bogotá, colombia. pages 103-120 111 months during the 10 months that they participated in the pfpd. the following charts reveal teachers’ preferences in relation to courses and kinds of activities when setting up cooperative work. nº of students per group and percentage 3 students 8% 4 students 62% 5 students 30% criteria to conform groups and percentage based on teacher’s criteria 37.5% based on ss’ likes/choices 54% based on consensus 8.5% assignation of roles and percentages teacher assigned roles 45% students chose their roles 40% flexibility in the assignation of roles 15% specific reasons to conform groups -at random (numbering) -the kinds of tasks -previous group arrangements -mixed-weak and strong ss -friendship -popularity -perception of peers responsible teachers were open but they made slight modifications to ss’ choices criteria for role assignation -division of texts -requirements of tasks -perception of students’ skills -prestige to have a role (monitor) perception of abilities and skills the needs of the group a leader assigned roles teacher assigned ss changed to feel more comfortable chart 3. teachers’ criteria for group organization. group organization, as a key feature in cooperative learning, took a good amount of time from teachers. several variables, such as the ones shown in the chart below, seemed significant at the time when the groups were formed. revealing teachers’ perceptions about themselves as guides in a cooperative learning experience when teachers implemented cooperative work in their classes, they continuously reflected upon the possibilities that this pedagogical strategy offered and upon their classrooms’ reality. the following findings describe in detail how they viewed themselves as initiators of cooperative work, showing the path to their students. the teacher as a mediator in a cooperative environment guiding their pupils in learning how to work cooperatively required teachers to act as agents through which common efforts could profile 8.indd 111 28/09/2007 12:42:22 a.m. lópez hurtado and viáfara gonzález universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras112 be channeled. in achieving the previous role, teachers seemed to soften relations among their students, foster students’ expression of their ideas, and encourage reflection upon the meaning of cooperative learning. as an illustration of how teachers assumed the roles of mediators in their implementation of cooperative learning, an excerpt of a report prepared by a group of teachers is cited below. in this implementation, students were placed in groups made up of a leader, a materials monitor, a designer and a reading monitor. after they had worked together for a while, some of them started to act aggressively; they shouted and tried to fight. teachers agreed that this type of behavior is common in the context of many public schools. the problem arose because students felt forced to do what their partners told them to do. after this difficulty started, teachers commented, “in this moment, the teacher acted as a conciliator and two of them came back to work with their group, the other two students definitely did not want to work, they did different things”. this situation relates to the most noticeable feature teachers remarked on their roles as mediators; they became similar to bridges for communication among students. information collected suggests that teachers had a tendency to be more flexible in their roles in order to facilitate cooperation not only among their pupils, but also between themselves and their pupils. they shared their “steering wheel” with their students so that they were not always in front of the class guiding others and monopolizing the opportunities for communication. in transferring authority to the groups, teachers showed their students that they were not the only person in the classroom who gave and had knowledge and they gave their pupils new possibilities for learning since sometimes students understood their peers better than teachers. this is reflected in the notes taken during a feedback session in which aura’s comments were recorded. aura was a ninthgrade teacher who worked in a school located on the edge of the city, where a high number of students have the characteristics of rural citizens. she said while using this approach she noticed how students could also be leaders. it was not always she who made decisions. students made appropriate selections of team members since they knew their peers’ abilities. the teacher was not always in control and she felt more like a guide. additionally, teachers’ mediation to make cooperative learning a successful experience bore connections with the ways in which educators encouraged their students’ development of qualified work. there are several comments in which praise or rewards took on an important value for teachers. this is reflected in a report that three teachers wrote, to wit: after students had created articles cooperatively about different issues such as poetry, culture and sports, they were rewarded as the best works and were published in the school bulletin. closely related to the challenge that teachers took of assuming new attitudes towards their students, participants talked about their disposition in managing their feelings and emotions in coherent ways within a cooperative environment. they commented that usually, as the number of students in their classrooms is extremely high, they might become quite stressed when they try to handle all the managerial aspects to support the learning of 50 students or even more without any help. they frequently have to pay attention to the organization of profile 8.indd 112 28/09/2007 12:42:22 a.m. looking at cooperative learning through the eyes of public schools teachers participating... profile 8, 2007. issn 1657-0790. bogotá, colombia. pages 103-120 113 materials, the clarity of procedures and the way students were using language, just to list some issues. when they started to use cooperative learning, they felt this method helped them to avoid becoming overstressed since they shared responsibilities. during this experience, educators also faced the pressure of the policies they had to follow in their schools. a silent classroom, with students writing on their own and sitting in rows, was expected from many of them. ernesto commented about his experience that: i would like to contribute to the discussion with some points in relation to the school administration. when i started assigning cooperative work, students worked in groups; some of them worked, others came, others went around and they (the administration) told me off. ‘it seems you are doing nothing in your class; why aren’t your students quiet? why aren’t they silent?’ the coordinator wanted to see the kids in lines, silent and writing; that’s for her a good teacher. these are retrograde ideas and one has to fight against them. though the teachers’ initial fear, caused by the noise in groups, worried them for a while, apparently their concerns tended to turn into relief as they gained more skills. on the whole, they mentioned that being more relaxed provided them with opportunities to look at students in greater detail and to solve problems which previously they did not know how to solve. several participants remarked that students were not the only ones who showed more self-confidence during this experience. a good number of educators claimed that they felt more selfassured themselves. as teachers acted as mediators, they noticed that their efforts brought another meaningful contribution to them; they knew more about their students and about their own teaching skills. specifically, they increased their understanding in relation to their students’ need for more social abilities, their hidden talents and the way in which those skills could help others in the lessons. this reminded them that it was not only the teaching of english that was at stake in their efl lessons. the search for class organization while working with cooperative learning, teachers commented on the efforts that they made to arrange their classrooms as spaces where cooperative learning might take place; many times their job contexts seemed not to fit with the innovation they tried to carry out. for some educators, the lack of materials, the kind of desks or the number of students in classrooms became obstacles. apparently, their first step to overcome this challenge was to become aware of their need to plan their lessons more systematically. teachers considered that any plan to encourage cooperative learning strategies in the class would only have a good chance of working if circumstances were propitious. among these conditions, they underlined preparing the lesson carefully in advance, taking into account possible difficulties, being alert to the need to reshape the lesson as this took place, and having enough resolution to keep on despite downfalls. specific curricular aspects that educators kept in mind when organizing this cooperative approach dealt with the clarity of objectives as well as topics, the specification of tasks, the organization of time, the availability of materials needed and the clarity in the rules of the game for students. jorge was a teacher who decided to develop his research project profile 8.indd 113 28/09/2007 12:42:22 a.m. lópez hurtado and viáfara gonzález universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras114 on cooperative learning. he worked with students in 10th grade and when we asked him about his suggestions for other teachers who wanted to use cooperative learning in classes he commented: i would tell them to use this strategy as a learning and teaching method. nevertheless, what you have to do as a teacher and your commitment increases and this is so because you have to consider the organization of many aspects in advance. something which you probably don’t do traditionally for your class… for example, resources and above all monitoring and providing feedback in relation to students’ responsibilities. a great deal of participants’ planning involved their search for suitable possibilities to plan for both work with groups and work with the whole class. facing this challenge was not easy because it implied a change in their traditional organization of students in the class space; teachers did not find it easy to break the traditional sitting in lines. however, as teachers experimented with cooperative leaning, they realized this was suitable for mixed ability classes, a characteristic of the large groups they usually teach. as teachers work in preparing their teaching setting for cooperative learning experiences, they realized it was important to combine several methodologies and approaches in their teaching. many of them said that they integrated project work and task-based learning with cooperative work since they perceived similarities and coherent principles to support students in their development of language-learning processes; guiding students in a systematic process such as writing by means of cooperative learning can enrich them a lot, they expressed. jimena talked about her experience with two of her colleagues in an interview. we integrated cooperative learning and project work. this is to say that the work we developed was geared towards the development of a project by means of cooperative learning. we designed some workshops based on clear specific tasks and everything was part of a process ‘till a final product was reached. the planning of evaluation experiences in agreement with cooperative learning principles was a concern for many teachers too. they regarded evaluation as a shared task among teachers and students and looked for different alternatives in their assessment of pupils. cooperative learning allowed teachers to open more to the value of self-assessment since students worked more in identifying their own weaknesses and strengths. moreover, students’ constant monitoring of their peers’ performance, as well as their group reflection in order to achieve a specific task, made peer-evaluation a more spontaneous practice. self and peer assessment seemed to make the teacher’s job in the area of evaluation more complete because they had more points of view as regards their students’ performance and attitudes. teachers’ realization of the need for continuous professional development: a link to their school community the positive and negative results that teachers achieved while working with cooperative learning seemed to have encouraged them to look deeply at themselves as professionals in need of continuous improvement. to begin with, they questioned what they knew about this approach. in fact, several participants stressed at the end profile 8.indd 114 28/09/2007 12:42:22 a.m. looking at cooperative learning through the eyes of public schools teachers participating... profile 8, 2007. issn 1657-0790. bogotá, colombia. pages 103-120 115 of the program that they were still lacking more knowledge and experience in working with cooperative learning; as a consequence of that, they showed willingness to obtain more information as well as to increase their skills in using this pedagogical strategy. participants valued development programs not only because they studied theory and were encouraged to put it into practice, but also because they were monitored in their implementations by tutors. regarding the previous aspect, hector, an eleventh-grade teacher, said during the feedback sessions that reading the comments that his tutors had written in his report had made him aware of key aspects of his experience. he commented that for him theory had always been important but that now he thought it was secondary. it was not only theory but also practice that he needed to pay attention to. furthermore, participants remarked how, by means of their participation in the program, they moved from a pure experimental practice into a more documented work since they wrote about their processes. on the whole, educators considered that these kinds of courses gave them the support they needed to be more systematic and analytic in their teaching. in relation to her experience with cooperative learning, rosa commented in an interview: …being accompanied and supported, sometimes you need another person who can tell you let’s take into account opportunities, spaces and schedule… you sometimes are very relaxed on your own discipline and you do not set a suitable rhythm to work. when you have acquired a commitment with an institution and you feel they are by your side, you are more devoted in those kinds of things. teachers had the opportunity to experience cooperative learning first as learners in the program and then they carried it out with their students. teachers were encouraged to try this method in their classes, thus, participants informed us that the tdp fostered their innovations. their efl classrooms were the school context where cooperative leaning took place in the first place, but teachers also transferred their new skills and used the approach in other classes, namely, in the spanish ones. additionally, this approach was also used when various activities for school were being organized. cooperative learning went beyond the efl classroom context since teachers saw a variety of opportunities at their disposal for helping themselves and others. teachers perceived cooperative work as a learning experience which took place not only among their students, but also among teachers in their institutions. among their group of colleagues in the efl area at their schools, it was possible for some educators to replicate the workshops that they had been part of in the tdp about how a cooperative lesson could be. that is to say, they could support their preparation of cooperative work experiences among themselves before putting them into practice. likewise, it seemed for them that the possibility to have a bigger impact in their students related to how they teamed up with teachers in the same grade. conclusions and pedagogical implications cooperative learning as a pedagogical strategy, in which groups of students are guided to structure their work strategically to support each other in reaching common goals, does not seem to be implemented profile 8.indd 115 28/09/2007 12:42:22 a.m. lópez hurtado and viáfara gonzález universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras116 regularly by a large number of public school teachers. group work without a clear structure for cooperation is widely practiced in the context of the population studied. different factors, such as teachers’ lack of knowledge, confidence, specific logistic features of their job context and school policies, seemed to explain educators’ attitudes. thus, the use of mainstream methodologies in efl might pose some challenges for specific populations of teachers in our country. further research in regards to these factors might contribute to what teachers themselves and teacher educators might plan to support their work with the methodologies they choose to try. characterizing teachers’ decisions in regards to their implementations of cooperative learning revealed their tendency to adapt the basic principles of this pedagogical strategy to their contextual needs and their previous teaching experiences. the great variety of options that we perceived in educators’ organization of groups, kind of classroom activities and combination of methodologies supports siegel, 2005, p. 347. he concluded that professional development courses should include strategies to encourage teachers to describe their daily teaching practices as a way to foster the integration of cooperative learning in their work. teachers perceived cooperative learning as a methodology which in several respects shared similarities with other pedagogical strategies they had used in their efforts to support their students’ communicative learning of english. in this sense, cooperative learning seemed to be an ideal ally for taskbased learning and project work which shared tenets with communicative language teaching approaches. this, in turn, endorses the views of arias et al. (2005) in relation to the experimental attitude that teachers need to adopt when working with this approach. experimenting can facilitate the way in which cooperative learning spontaneously becomes a part of a teacher’s pedagogical strategies and so obstacles might be overcome. the experience of incorporating cooperative methodologies in our classrooms opens up a rainbow of opportunities for teaching and learning. teachers developed skills to conduct future cooperative experiences, encouraging their students to grow academically and to be society members who build new knowledge and experience together. teachers’ implementation of cooperative work seemed to provide them with a myriad of positive pedagogical outcomes which brought benefits for themselves and their students. even though educators also encountered difficulties in using the approach, part of their learning process dealt with their awareness of how to overcome those limitations. difficulties appeared as a natural part of the process which involved leaving aside the kind of traditional classroom work that hinders possibilities for innovation in aspects such as seating arrangement and assignation along with distribution of roles in the lessons. other difficulties reported by teachers included how hard, on a regular basis, they found it to encourage students to assume genuine cooperative attitudes. they regarded the problematic context in which public school students often live as a potential reason for their pupils refusing to cooperate. despite the previous vicissitudes, most participants accepted the challenge of innovating by means of this approach and tried to take the necessary measures to organize a cooperative classroom. profile 8.indd 116 28/09/2007 12:42:23 a.m. looking at cooperative learning through the eyes of public schools teachers participating... profile 8, 2007. issn 1657-0790. bogotá, colombia. pages 103-120 117 providing for a genuine cooperative environment meant that the majority of participants had to assume a reflective attitude in considering what cooperation implied. crandall (1999) underlines the fundamental role that teachers play in planning strategies to discuss with their students’ cognitive, social and learning issues in cooperative work. using cooperative learning led teachers to consider and take actions about the importance of their roles as mediators among themselves and their students in establishing a cooperative environment. it is necessary to construct and develop cooperation abilities since it is not easy to change our mentality if, traditionally, we have been working in isolation. participants’ views about the relevant role of teacher development programs in their education implies that individuals and institutions supporting teachers need to seek opportunities to monitor and further support participant educators in their classroom innovations not only while the program takes place but, ideally, after it has finished. since participants perceived cooperative work as a necessary skill among colleagues in the same institution or different ones, they could become involved in networking. this kind of association might bring educators’ “emotional support and professional support and growth taking into consideration that personal and professional dimension interrelate” (oliphant, 1996, p. 69). references arias, j. et al. (2005). aprendizaje cooperativo. bogotá: universidad pedagógica nacional. aldana, a. (2005). the process of writing a text by using cooperative learning. profile, 6, 47-57. bell, j. (1999). doing your research project. philadelphia: open university press. cohen, e. g. (1986). designing groupwork: strategies for the heterogeneous classroom. new york: teachers college press. crandall, j. (1999). cooperative language learning. in arnold, j. (ed.), affect in language learning (pp. 226-245). cambridge: cambridge university press. dörnyei, z., & malderez, a. (1999). the role of group dynamics in foreign language learning and teaching. in arnold, j. (ed.), affect in language learning (pp. 155-170). cambridge: cambridge university press. dörnyei, z. (1997). psychological processes in cooperative language learning: group dynamics and motivation. modern language journal, 8�, 482-493. freeman, d. (1998). doing teacher research: from inquiry to understanding. london: heinle and heinle publishers. hubbard, r., & power b, m. (1993). the art of classroom inquiry. a handbook for teacherresearchers. portsmouth, nh: heinemann. janesick, v. (1994). the dance of qualitative research design. in denzin, n., & lincoln, y. (ed.), handbook of qualitative research (pp. 209-219). ca: sage publications. johnson, d. et al. (1999). el aprendizaje cooperativo en el aula. buenos aires: paidos. johnson, d. et al. (1999). los nuevos círculos de aprendizaje. argentina: aique. kagan, s. (1994). cooperative learning. ca: kagan cooperative learning. kutnick, p. et al. (2005). teachers’ understanding of the relationship between within-class pupil grouping and learning in secondary schools. educational research, 47(1), 1-24. merriam, s. (1988). case study research in education: a qualitative approach. san francisco: josseybass. millis, b., & cottell, p. (1997). managing the cooperative classroom. in cooperative learning for higher education. phoenix: american council of education. oryx press series on higher profile 8.indd 117 28/09/2007 12:42:23 a.m. lópez hurtado and viáfara gonzález universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras118 education. muller, a., & fleming, t. (2001). cooperative learning: listening to how children work at school. the journal of educational research, 94(5), 259-265. oliphant, k. (1996). teacher development groups: growth through cooperation. íkala, �(1), 6786. peterson, s., & miller, j. (2004). comparing the quality of students’ experiences during cooperative learning and large-group instruction. the journal of educational research, 97(3), 123-133. siegel, c. (2005). implementing a research-based model of cooperative learning. the journal of educational research, 98(61), 339-349. slavin, r. (1999). aprendizaje cooperativo. teoría, investigación y práctica. argentina: aique. slavin, r. (1988). educational psychology. new jersey: prentice hall. about the authors maría eugenia lópez hurtado, b.ed in education (english and spanish) from universidad pedagógica nacional. she is specialist in educational multimedia from universidad antonio nariño and m.a in applied linguistics to tefl from universidad distrital francisco josé de caldas. currently she teaches english as a foreign language at pontificia universidad javeriana, universidad de la salle, and escuela de cadetes general santander. she has also participated in teacher development programs at universidad nacional de colombia. john jairo viáfara gonzález, b.ed in english from universidad nacional de colombia and m.a in applied linguistics to tefl from universidad distrital francisco josé de caldas. currently he is an assistant professor in universidad pedagógica y tecnológica de colombia (uptc) where he works in the undergraduate program and in the master program in language teaching. he worked as a tutor of teacher development programs at universidad nacional de colombia. profile 8.indd 118 28/09/2007 12:42:23 a.m. looking at cooperative learning through the eyes of public schools teachers participating... profile 8, 2007. issn 1657-0790. bogotá, colombia. pages 103-120 119 appendix 1: worksheet that supported the beginning of the workshop facultad de ciencias humanas departamento de lenguas extranjeras pfpd “profile” bogotá d.c 2005 topic: cooperative learning tutor: john j viáfara date: 30/ 05 1. cooperative learning is based on four essential principles. these principles form an acronym. try to write two words which you think correspond to a letter in the acronym for each principle in cooperative learning. 2. the traditional classroom differs from cooperative learning in several ways. fill in the chart by writing characteristics for each one of them. cooperative learning traditional classroom classroom organization participation students’ roles teachers’ roles learning reference: kagan, s. (1994) cooperative learning. ca: kagan cooperative learning. i p e s profile 8.indd 119 28/09/2007 12:42:23 a.m. lópez hurtado and viáfara gonzález universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras120 appendix 2. survey about cooperative learning dear teacher, the following survey is to explore the experience that has been carried out with you in pedagogy module. we are interested in studying the generated processes from the work done throughout the semester. beforehand i thank you for your contribution in answering the questions, an action that will improve work in the area. 1. did any of the methodologies or approaches studied in the course call your attention? 2. if so, justify your answer. which methodology? 3. why did it call your attention? 4. have you implemented this method or approach in your class while you were part of this course? 5. how long did the implementation take? or how many classes did you take? 6. have you heard of this method or approach before joining the pfpd profile program? 7. have you used it before? 8. what happened while the implementation took place in your class throughout the program? 9. what would you advise teachers who would like to use this method or approach? profile 8.indd 120 28/09/2007 12:42:23 a.m. profile 1.p65 ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ 52profileprofileprofileprofileprofile kinds of materials to use as homework martha liliana rincón argüellomartha liliana rincón argüellomartha liliana rincón argüellomartha liliana rincón argüellomartha liliana rincón argüello as our environment is basicallymonolingual, there is an absenceof an adequate linguistic context, except for some music in english, cable tv or internet. in order to reinforce what students learn in english class, teachers try to assign extraclass exercises in order to complement students’ learning, but these exercises or homework must be attractive and interesting for them. it is clear that the kind of material used as homework is important to motivating students to do it. intrintrintrintrintroductionoductionoductionoductionoduction based on the students’ environment, the aim of this research was to find out what kind of homework students like to do, taking into account their materials and activities preferences, because as paulu (1995) says, the value of homework extends beyond the school and it can help children to develop wholesome habits and attitudes. at the same time, homework allows the teacher to see students’ progress and weaknesses (shockley: 1968); this constitutes a great help to him in planning new activities or methods in english teaching. looking at some materials investigations (such as wright: 1987 and swales: 1980) it could be noted that most of them were related to materials activities in the english class. meanwhile investigations like bread and candlin’s (1987) help teachers to choose homework materials based on aspects like the aim of the material content, skills development, learners’ needs and interests and materials level according to the students knowledge. on the other hand, mcdonough and shaw (1993) mention some important aspects in choosing materials for students such as the learners’ age and interests, their personality, their academic and educational level, the role of english in the school, the resources available, the socio-cultural environment and the teacher status and training. all these aspects, which are important when the teacher wants to choose english class material, help him to make decisions at the time of choosing homework materials. prprprprprocedureocedureocedureocedureocedure the first step to follow in the research was to choose some methods to help develop the investigation. the first was a questionnaire which had some items or statements with a range of possibilities to choose from related to homework activities and materials; it was applied at the beginning of the investigation and again at the end. according to the initial results, the homework began to be assigned by the teacher and each student began to keep a diar y in which he/she wrote opinions, ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○53 profileprofileprofileprofileprofile feelings, reactions, obser vations and reflections about homework. this was the second method of data collection. the third method was teacher observation in which she observed students’ reaction to different kinds of homework material, such as gestures of approval and disapproval, comments and questions. this homework material included activities like filling in crosswords, writing compositions and writing and answers based on a specific topic. some of these activities were accompanied by pictures that in some cases helped students to do the homework more easily. results analysisresults analysisresults analysisresults analysisresults analysis the first results were obtained from the questionnaire which was the basis for finding out students’ preferences in activities and materials so as to assign the homework; the results showed a great preference for crossword puzzles and materials with pictures. the students showed great cooperation with the analysis of their diaries, writing positive commentaries on homework in which they had to do crosswords, sometimes with pictures; at the same time homework involving filling in gaps based on a topic made students feel bored and sometimes they did them mechanically without thinking of the sense of what they are doing. finally, students wrote about their difficulties and fear of writing in english due to their english level being basic. on the other hand, the teacher observation demonstrated that homework given by the teacher, such as photocopies, were more attractive for students than homework elaborated on paper or in a notebook. students also reacted positively to homework with pictures in which they could understand a concept graphically. they found those tasks interesting and stimulating. at the same time material with crosswords aroused students’ curiosity and they were a challenge for them to solve. students were scared of writing but those who did it showed and proved to themselves that they could express their ideas by writing in english. as regards the final questionnaire, that was applied to the sample (26 students), and in which there were three additional questions with respect to the first questionnaire, these were the results: • students think that english homework helps them to review and practice class topics. • students do not do english homework when they do not understand it and when it is too long. • there was an increase in the percentage of students doing homework activities like puzzles (from 36% to 46%) and crosswords (from 30% to 35%). • assigned homework had helped students to improve their english knowledge. • students liked homework with pictures and which could be done quickly. discussiondiscussiondiscussiondiscussiondiscussion the results obtained from the data collected clearly showed important aspects ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ 54profileprofileprofileprofileprofile for choosing activities and materials for homework; for example, they showed a great student preference for materials with pictures and with quick activities. at the same time, homework has to be enjoyable and easy to understand for them; moreover, it has to test their creativeness. on the other hand, and according to the english level of students, homework could be assigned to make them express their own ideas and feelings; this aspect is special for them because they feel important in the english class and it motivates them to value and practice the english language outside of class. conclusionsconclusionsconclusionsconclusionsconclusions to summarise, the investigation has suggested the kind of activities and materials to use as homework and how to choose them in order to motivate students to do it and so practice and reinforce what they are learning in class. based on this, it can be concluded that students work and enjoy homework materials that generate curiosity. on the other hand, students prefer homework materials with puzzles and crosswords due to their speed and because they help them to use their ingenuity. another important conclusion of the study is that pictures in homework material make it more attractive to students, compared to material without them, because they help students to understand and practice concepts learned in class. finally, it can be said that homework material varies according to the age of the learners, their interests, and their environmental resources; for this reason, this research only tries to show one option to motivate students to practice and reinforce english language outside of class by using homework. referencesreferencesreferencesreferencesreferences bread and candlin. (1987). which materials? in nunan, d. language teaching methodology. phoenix: elt. (1995) mcdough j. and shaw c. (1993). materials and methods in elt. a teachers’ guide. blackwell publishers paulu, n. (1995) h t t p : / / w w w. k i d s o u rc e . c o m / k i d s o u rc e / content/ homework.html. shockley r. j. (1968). las tareas como medio de enseñanza. mexico d. f.: editorial hispano americana wright. t. (1987). roles of teachers and learners. oxford: oxford university press.• profile 9.indd using technology to facilitate process writing and interaction among adult students profile 9, 2008. issn 1657-0790. bogotá, colombia. pages 197-218 197 * e-mail: aaronrogers21@yahoo.co.uk address: cra. 20a no. 14-54 pasto, nariño. colombia. this article was received on september 27th, 2007, and accepted on january 10th, 2008. using technology to facilitate process writing and interaction among adult students uso de la tecnología para facilitar el proceso de escritura e interacción entre estudiantes adultos aaron rogers* institución universitaria cesmag & universidad de nariño, colombia this article deals with how through the innovative use of word processing software, process writing and interaction can be fostered among students. a description of the context where the technology is implemented is first laid out, followed by a review of the literature concerning process writing and technology based principally on pennington’s (1996) model. pennington’s (1996) model is then expanded on inasmuch as the way in which collaboration around the computer (group and pair work) and through the computer (e-mail, chat, blogs, and forums) can give rise to interaction among students and, therefore, language learning and more autonomous students. finally, a lesson plan is presented where stages and examples are given showing how technology can be implemented in practice. key words: technology, process writing, word processing, interaction, collaboration, autonomy, metacognitive control este artículo muestra cómo, a través del uso innovador del software para procesar textos, se puede fomentar la escritura por procesos y la interacción entre los estudiantes. en primer lugar se describe el contexto donde se implementará la tecnología, seguido por una revisión de la literatura relacionada con la escritura por procesos y la tecnología basada principalmente en el modelo de pennington (1996). luego se expande dicho modelo teniendo en cuenta la colaboración alrededor del computador (trabajo en grupo y en pareja) y cómo a través del computador (correo electrónico, chat, blogs, y foros) se puede generar interacción entre estudiantes, en el aprendizaje de un idioma extranjero y por ende, estudiantes más autónomos. finalmente, se presenta un plan de clase donde se ilustran las etapas y los ejemplos para demostrar cómo se puede, en la práctica, implementar la tecnología. palabras clave: tecnología, escritura por procesos, procesamiento de textos, interacción, colaboración, autonomía, control metacognitivo profile 9.indd 197 21/04/2008 07:43:59 p.m. rogers universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras198 introduction writing is a complex cognitive process made up of various stages leading the writer to his or her finished product (hedge, 2000). it is also a skill that has, unfortunately, been perceived by students and teachers alike as one of a ‘static’ rather than ‘interactive’ nature, where students write without really having a purpose or a focus on the reader. furthermore, in this model, the role of the teacher is explicitly to correct and to only give grades, hence, resulting in neither the student nor the teacher entering into what zamel states as “a dynamic teaching/learning relationship between writers and their readers” (1983, p.165). the teacher training programme offered by the university of nariño, colombia, consists of 10 semesters, within which the methodological tendency is one of communicative language teaching (clt). students’ language levels range from beginner to advanced in accordance to national standards for teacher training programmes within classes that consist of between 25 to 30 highly motivated young adult students. nevertheless, writing as a skill, although it has a considerable time allotment in the syllabus (4 hours a week), has been relegated to being watched from the sidelines while other skills are given more dedication (hedge, 1988). this relegation has been due to a lack of genuine purpose within writing tasks (zamel, 1983; raimes, 1985; hedge, 1988), as well as the focus of students solely on the product of writing rather than on the process of composing, communicating, improving and collaborating through writing (hedge, 1988). with regard to using technology i.e. word processing and computer mediated communication (cmc) for language learning and, more specifically, process writing and interaction, the outlook is equally bleak. the university does count on a computer lab solely dedicated to efl teacher training students with 25 computers, but this lab is quickly becoming outdated both in terms of technology (pentium ii processors, 32mb ram and windows 98 operating system) and in pedagogical terms (drill and practice standalone multimedia software packages) leading to a very ‘behaviouristic call’ (warschauer & healey, 1998) or a ‘restricted call’ (bax, 2003), where the computer is seen as a tutor or source of knowledge rather than a tool through which language learning can take place (taylor, 1980). an added difficulty concerning the use of technology within this context is the lack of access students have outside class time i.e. the majority of students do not own personal computers. as a result of this lack of computer familiarity, students normally need training regarding the use of basic software packages e.g. word, internet explorer, etc. (piper, 1987; hyland, 1993; susser, 1998). in this paper it is proposed that through the use of technology i.e. word processing packages and cmc, writing will become a more socially interactive process into which the writer and the reader are able to enter. furthermore, through collaboration and interaction around the computer (group and pair work) (long & porter, 1985; profile 9.indd 198 21/04/2008 07:43:59 p.m. using technology to facilitate process writing and interaction among adult students profile 9, 2008. issn 1657-0790. bogotá, colombia. pages 197-218 199 nunan, 1992) and through the computer (cmc) (kern, 1995; warschauer, 1997, warschauer & kern, 2000), negotiation of meaning and therefore language learning can take place (chapelle, 1998, 2001). through this negotiation of meaning among peers, awareness of the writing process will be raised; a situation that will thus allow for the monitoring or controlling of cognitive processes and, hence, the learning process itself as well as the planning, revising, drafting and editing of written material (cresswell, 2000; benson, 2001). word processing and writing according to pennington (1996), the word processor has four fundamental effects on the writer and his / her own writing: a) writing becomes easier; b) writing becomes more extensive; c) writing becomes different; and finally, d) writing becomes more effective. nevertheless, for these changes to take place, students need to be versed in the use of word processing software; otherwise, writing does not become easier but more stressful in terms of anxiety. bandura (1977), cited in robinson (1991, p.159), states among other conditions that “learners must be exposed to multiple observations and trials with guided participation” as well as learners needing “to be exposed repeatedly to tasks which are graduated over time and last long enough to overcome initial anxiety about performing the task”. pennington (1996, p.127) within her model separates the initial conditions, which she calls the “users starting state”, from the aforementioned four effects. therefore to be in condition to use the word processor for pedagogical ends, students must be familiar with the machine before they embark on word processing writing tasks. bax (2003) talks of a ‘normalisation’ that needs to occur before technology can be fully integrated into the classroom, where the word processor as a tool must become almost invisible inasmuch as it does not create an obstacle for the writing process to take place (susser, 1998). in this vein, hyland (1993) suggests a preliminary course of keyboard and software familiarisation whereby users are encouraged to experiment with this new tool to such an extent that they feel ‘in control’ (robinson, 1991; benson, 2001). writing easier the first of the four effects on writing is related to both physical and psychological aspects. physically, the word processor can make writing easier in a number of ways. once the user has become familiar with operating the keyboard, editing, correcting, deleting and rewriting become much less demanding on the writer (cochran-smith, 1991; pennington, 1996). nevertheless, it is important to consider how these previously mentioned writing stages are carried out i.e. at a sentence level or at a content level. obviously sentence level corrections will take place during the process of writing due to the tools on offer within the word processing packages i.e. spell and grammar checkers (vernon, 2000; gupta, 1998), but more importantly, students need to focus more on the revision or edition of content or meaning rather than on the forms of the profile 9.indd 199 21/04/2008 07:43:59 p.m. rogers universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras200 language (long & robinson, 1998; schultz, 2000). psychologically, the word processor offers an abundance of opportunities for making writing easier. motivation and, hence, a reduction in anxiety, it is argued (pennington, 1996; warschauer, 1996; lam & pennington, 1995), is greatly reduced when writing takes place within a word processing environment. nevertheless, regarding motivation, salaberry (2001) talks of the ‘hawthorne effect’ of technology on students’ production, whereby the novelty factor of using technology for language learning could have a temporary positive motivational effect on students’ attitudes. it is the need to sustain this interest and forge a more interactive, process-focused writing attitude that we will be concerned with in this paper (bangert-drowns, 1993). writing more this stage has a direct correlation with the previous stage of writing easier, inasmuch as pennington (1996, p.127), in her article, shows the bidirectional nature of the two. it stands to reason that when something is easier then production is more. nevertheless, this does not imply that quantity is better than quality (bangertdrowns, 1993; pennington, 1996). in order to determine if more is better, we must first determine why there is more quantity when using the word processor. the fact that the editing process, when using the computer for writing, is dramatically reduced in terms of time and energy spent i.e. sections can be deleted and changed without having to reproduce the whole document again, implies that there is more time (piper, 1987) to write and edit. this ultimately allows the student to pay more attention to his own process of learning; inasmuch as he has more control over the writing process (pennington, 1996; benson, 2001). also, as the familiarisation a student has regarding the use of word processing increases, so does his ability to begin to experiment or free write through the computer (jacobs, 1986). nevertheless, this free writing as pennington (1996, p.131) states, “can cause an over-production or over-generalisation” where not all that a student produces is necessarily better. this over-generalisation from a product focused standpoint is not at all desirable; nonetheless, from a process orientated standpoint it is much more beneficial, due to the fact that the student through his overproduction or over-generalisation has more opportunities to edit and revise his / her own writing or that of his / her peers. writing differently an interesting point laid out by pennington (1996) refers to the effect the word processor has on the way students write. mentioned briefly at the end of the previous section, writing becomes much more of an evolving process where students naturally use the computer to focus on the different stages of writing i.e. revising, editing, drafting, etc. (cochran-smith, 1991; bangert-drowns, 1993). again, this is due to the ease the computer offers the student for correcting his / her writing; where an error or mistake is only a temporary blip on the screen. a situation that serves to motivate the student. as piper (1987, p.124) states, profile 9.indd 200 21/04/2008 07:43:59 p.m. using technology to facilitate process writing and interaction among adult students profile 9, 2008. issn 1657-0790. bogotá, colombia. pages 197-218 201 “error is thus ephemeral, with none of the permanence of a mistake written on a piece of paper.” during face-to-face writing classes, in order to contextualise the task, there is normally a brainstorming session in order to generate content or vocabulary i.e. activate schema. the schemata that are activated are normally group activated, which is thus reflected in the similar structures and content of students’ traditional pen and paper writing. however, when students use the word processor and begin to write using a freer style, they are themselves activating schemata and begin to enter into a process of selecting and deselecting content according to varying factors i.e. context, setting, needs, task characteristics, etc. this metacognitive process is fundamental for students to realise their own learning styles and create their own identity as writers and editors (oxford, 1990; wenden, 1991; pennington, 1996; benson, 2001). writing better bangert-drowns (1993), during his metaanalysis of research in the area of writing and word-processing, found a correlation between the two when they occur over a sustained period of time. in his article he shows the difference between motivational aspects and skill development when he states “a motivational impact could result in roughly equal effects for shortand long-term interventions, whereas actual skill improvement would more likely show consistent improvement over time” (p.88). pennington (1996), however, is not so cautious in her appraisal of the effect of the word processor on writing quality. she claims that as a direct consequence of writing easier, writing more and writing differently, students will have more time to spend on creating a more complex product. she states that when using the word processor, students are able to enter into a spiral movement, constantly editing, revising and correcting their writing so as to be able to have a much more sophisticated and effective end product. these constant processes of revision, etc., need that students be able to pilot their own writing process and therefore their own learning process. robinson (1991, p.158) makes an interesting analogy between being put in charge and being in control where it is necessary to foster the belief among students that they have sufficient skills and competencies to be able to complete the task and thus be in control. without this control or metacognitive knowledge base (wenden, 1995), there is a distinct possibility that they will feel out of control and not learn effectively. metacognition, autonomy and student empowerment as we have seen, process writing and metacognition are very much interrelated, inasmuch as during the stages of writing there need to be moments of planning, editing, and revision; moments that are directly related to metacognitive learning strategies i.e. planning, directed attention, selective attention, self-management, selfmonitoring, problem identification and self-evaluation (o’malley & chamot, 1990, p.138). this process allows learners to choose, reject and revise their own content profile 9.indd 201 21/04/2008 07:43:59 p.m. rogers universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras202 to be written according to the importance that each individual allocates, thus fostering autonomy (konishi, 2003; benson, 2001). many definitions of autonomy exist, but probably the most widely recognised is that of holec (1981, p.3), cited in benson (2001, p.52), where he states that an autonomous learner is “to say that [he] is capable of taking charge of his own learning.” from this definition we can see the importance that metacognitive strategies have and how through creating the belief among students that robinson (1991) mentioned, it is feasible to empower students and eventually foster autonomy. this does not mean, however, that autonomy is “something that teachers do to learners; that is, it is another teaching method” (little, 1990, p.7). neither does it imply that “in the classroom context, autonomy is an abdication of responsibility on the part of the teacher; or a matter of letting the learners get on with things the best they can” (ibid, p.7). so how do we as teachers foster autonomy among our students? a stage of raising awareness among students needs to be included within writing tasks through the implementation of specific learning strategy training (o’malley & chamot, 1990; oxford, 1990). furthermore, when students are able to exercise effective control over their cognitive processes via self-management (i.e. metacognition), they will indeed become more autonomous (wenden, 1991; rivers, 2001; benson, 2001). in addition, through collaborative work around and through the computer, student empowerment can occur where the traditional status quo of teacher– student interaction is modified to one of student – student interaction. according to warschauer et al. (1996, p.7), “learning is a social activity and knowledge is socially produced”, which therefore allows for not only a sharing of ideas among peers but also a self-awareness of information by making it public (mcconnell, 1994, cited in beatty, 2003, p. 112–113). this assumption is based on constructivist theories of education and the social development theory of vygotsky (1978), more precisely the zone of proximal development (zpd), where through schemata or previous knowledge, students are able to share and glean information from each other according to gaps in their knowledge and thus facilitate the learning process (beatty, 2003). obviously zpd is juxtaposed to the idea of working alone, a popular misconception when talking of autonomy. a misconception which little (1990, p. 7), through showing what autonomy is not, states that it “is not a synonym for self-instruction”; in other words, learning without a teacher or peers. therefore fostering autonomy, collaborative work around and through the computer and process writing using a word processor can be said to be interrelated in terms of social interaction. second language acquisition, computer mediated communication and interaction it is widely accepted nowadays that a focus on form approach is desirable for second language acquisition (sla) to take place. it is argued that this approach, proposed by long (1983), cited in allwright and bailey (1991, p. 121-122), in which profile 9.indd 202 21/04/2008 07:44:00 p.m. using technology to facilitate process writing and interaction among adult students profile 9, 2008. issn 1657-0790. bogotá, colombia. pages 197-218 203 formal instruction of linguistic elements within meaning orientated learning scenarios (focus on form), does play a fundamental role in helping students with their language skills, and ultimately, in learning a foreign language through meaningful exposure, interaction and input. within a focus on form approach, interaction (group and pair work, negotiation of meaning, treatment of errors and ‘noticing’) as well as focusing on specific linguistic elements, either reactively or pre-emptively (lightbown, 1998; ellis et al., 2001), between teacher/student and student/student are of the utmost importance. the question therefore remains as to how call can fit into the situation described above. according to chapelle (1998), where she highlights seven hypotheses for designing multimedia materials, call theory can directly draw from sla interactionist theories. nevertheless, harrington & levy (2001) contest this assumption making a division between what is face-to-face (f2f ) interaction and cmc. they argue that cmc, although including elements of interaction, is in fact an area that merits its own areas of research rather than simply implementing theories from classroom based sla. therefore, taking into account this differentiation, it is worthwhile dividing the question into two, inasmuch as we need to analyse interaction around the computer (f2f ) and interaction through the computer (cmc). interaction around the computer for interaction around the computer to take place, there must be collaboration between two or more people. beatty (2003, p. 102) defines collaboration “as a process in which two or more learners need to work together to achieve a common goal, usually completion of a task or the answering of a question”. during this collaboration around the computer in constructivist tasks (of which process writing forms a part), students are constantly negotiating meaning, clarifying, confirming, repeating and noticing (beatty & nunan, 2004). as mentioned previously, these conditions are necessary for language learning to take place as well as providing the opportunity for scaffolding (chaudron, 1988), comprehensible input (krashen, 1985) and comprehensible output (swain, 1985). structuring collaboration for it to be successful around the computer is related principally to the idea that “no-one is successful unless everyone is successful” (hamm, 1992 cited in beatty, 2003, p. 107). hamm (1992), cited in beatty (2003, p. 107), also talks of four factors of interdependence essential for successful collaboration that ultimately need to be taken into account when designing group process writing activities around the computer. these are: goal interdependence i.e. what 1. skills are to be acquired or what language is to be learned after the task has been completed. task interdependence i.e. the 2. aim of the group inasmuch as the purpose of the task. resource interdependence i.e. 3. how and through what resources is the task to be completed. profile 9.indd 203 21/04/2008 07:44:00 p.m. rogers universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras204 role interdependence i.e. the 4. parts each member is to play in the completion of the task. it is important to emphasise that in order for successful collaborative language learning around the computer to take place, the role of the learner in terms of decision making, planning, monitoring and evaluating within the task cycle, needs to be learner-centred and not teacher-focused so as to promote more autonomy and, hence, more collaboration on the part of the learners (beatty, 2003). interaction through the computer (cmc) obviously, in terms of collaboration, cmc can be structured similarly to interaction around the computer so as to include the ideas of scaffolding, negotiation of meaning, etc., but on a different level inasmuch as these are normally carried out through writing and not speaking. in f2f situations, the conversation is usually carried out orally between two people and almost always on an instantaneous level; nevertheless, within cmc the mechanics of a written conversation are different depending on whether it is synchronous (chat) or asynchronous (email, blogging, etc.) as well as being carried out among two or more people. according to warschauer (1997), writing and speaking traditionally differ due to the reflective and interactive nature of the skills. due to the advent of cmc, this role, inasmuch as writing, has changed from being solely reflective to both reflective and interactive. within asynchronous cmc, learners are given the opportunity to read, reflect, digest and interpret information to then draft, edit, and revise a response. this is the case presented by gonzález-bueno (1998), where many of the arguments that have been presented in this paper regarding writing through the use of a word processor i.e. writing easier (less anxiety (sullivan & pratt, 1996) and more motivation (warschauer, 1996; torii-williams, 2004)), writing more (kern, 1995), writing differently (bangert-drowns, 1993; kern, 1995) and writing better (pennington, 1996) can also be applied to the situation of writing using cmc but with the added difference this opportunity offers in terms of interaction. writing through asynchronous communication provides opportunities where reflection and interaction can take place at the learner’s convenience i.e. there is sufficient time to analyse the message and structure a response through the different stages of writing. however, biesenbachlucas & weasenforth (2001) highlight how learners, through the use of cmc, tend to presume that the topic is already understood by the reader and therefore spend less time contextualising their writing, hence questioning whether e-mail is in fact an effective medium for improving academic writing. however, it is when we look at the characteristics of synchronous cmc that the emphasis seems more to be on interaction rather than on reflection due to the physical time constraints that are involved in ‘virtual conversations’. kern (1995), in his study related to the quantity and characteristics of language production during synchronous cmc, showed that in profile 9.indd 204 21/04/2008 07:44:00 p.m. using technology to facilitate process writing and interaction among adult students profile 9, 2008. issn 1657-0790. bogotá, colombia. pages 197-218 205 terms of quantity of production students tended to produce more. this synchronous cmc over-production is not necessarily as beneficial as the over-production during word processing or asynchronous cmc, due to the lack of time the learner has to draft, revise and edit his / her response. also in terms of the characteristics of language production, synchronous cmc showed more complex language than oral production (but less than wordprocessed content) and reduced anxiety, thus, motivating students to interact, who otherwise in f2f situations would not have been so willing to participate (kern, 1995; jones & issroff, 2005). however, in a study by schultz (2000), it was found that face-to-face interaction around the computer produced more opportunities for negotiation of meaning, more opportunities for language learning and, ultimately, better quality language than interaction through the computer. this finding according to her study is applicable to lower level students due to the lack of familiarisation of computer use and general language competence. nevertheless, for advanced students whose language level is higher, interaction through the computer showed signs of content area corrections leading to more positive results in terms of quality of writing. intended learning outcomes through the semester long lesson plan (see appendix 1) and its related materials (see appendixes 2, 3, 4, 5 and 6), it is intended that process writing can be fostered through the use of the word-processor as well as through collaboration / interaction around and through the computer resulting in creating more autonomous users / learners. the tasks and materials proposed in the appendixes should encourage students’ writing to become easier due to the fact that in all the tasks there are opportunities to hone word – processing and general computer abilities which can be transferred to other areas of study, not just for language learning (hyland, 1993). in addition, writing becomes easier (warschauer, 1996), due to the lowering of anxiety caused by the ‘facelessness’ of working with the computer (schultz, 2000) coupled with the increase in motivation due to the ‘novelty’ factor (salaberry, 2001). furthermore, the visible integration of these tasks within the structure of the syllabus (warschauer, 1996) creates a specific purpose for using the technology i.e. improve writing and a specific audience i.e. peers. although biesenbach-lucas et al. (2000) and biesenbach-lucas & weasenforth (2001) found that the medium of writing i.e. word-processing or e-mail affected the length of the messages, with e-mail producing shorter messages, in fairness (although this is an important finding) in this context the quantity of writing is not the focus of the class, but rather what students do with the content they have i.e. draft, revise, etc., thus entering into the interactive writing process (zamel, 1983). obviously, a consequence of the medium through which students write will be the way they write i.e. through e-mail the writing will be less-contextualised with more reader suppositions (biesenbach-lucas & weasenforth, 2001). the purpose of the tasks presented in the appendixes is not to focus on or control one particular way of writing and interacting through and around profile 9.indd 205 21/04/2008 07:44:00 p.m. rogers universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras206 computers, but to empower students to collaborate and reflect on their own learning processes, thus, creating more autonomous learners (wenden, 1991; benson & völler, 1997; benson, 2001; coniam & wong, 2004). conclusions this paper has intended to show how through the use of word processing technology, process writing, using pennington’s (1996) framework, and interaction, taking into account chapelle (1998), can both be fostered within a colombian efl context. nevertheless it is necessary to guard carefully against making the claim that the technologies mentioned in this paper will, by dint of their use, automatically facilitate certain types of learning. some types of technology, particularly web 2.0 technologies i.e. blogs and wikis, which are predicated on interaction, have the potential to facilitate more effective language learning but they do not in and of themselves do this and this is where good instructional design comes in. therefore it is necessary to evaluate every individual teaching-learning context taking into account students’ needs and characteristics, thus, leading to more informed and realistic learning outcomes while at the same time taking advantage of the technology to it fullest. references allwright, d., & bailey, k.m. (1991). focus on the language classroom. cambridge: cambridge university press. bandura, a. (1977). social learning theory. englewood cliffs, nj: prentice hall. bangert-drowns, r.l. (1993). the word processor as an instructional tool: a meta-analysis of word processing in writing instruction. review of educational research, 63(1), 69-93. bax, s. (2003). call – past, present and future. system, 31(1), 13-28. beatty, k. (2003). teaching and researching computer-assisted language learning. harlow: longman. beatty, k., & nunan, d. (2004). computer-mediated collaborative learning. system, 32(2), 165-183. benson, p. (2001). teaching and researching autonomy in language learning. harlow: longman. benson, p., & völler, p. (eds.). (1997). autonomy and independence in language learning. london: longman. biesenbach-lucas, s., meloni, c., & weasenforth, d. 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(eds.), focus on form in classroom second language acquisition (pp.177-196). cambridge: cambridge university press. little, d. (1990). autonomy in language learning. in gathercole, i. (ed.), autonomy in language learning (pp. 7-15). london: cilt. long, m.h. (1983). native speaker/non-native speaker conversation in the second language classroom. in m.a. clarke & j. handscombe (eds.), on tesol ’82: pacific perspectives on language learning and teaching (pp. 207-225). washington, d.c.: tesol. long, m.h., & porter, p.a. (1985). group work, interlanguage talk, and second language acquisition. tesol quarterly, 19(2), 207-228. long, m.h., & robinson, p. (1998). focus on form: theory, research, and practice. in doughty, c & williams, j. (eds.), focus on form in classroom second language acquisition (pp.15-41). cambridge: cambridge university press. mcconnell, d. (1994). implementing computer supported cooperative learning. london: kogan page. nunan, d. 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(1996). motivational aspects of using computers for writing and communication. in mark warschauer (ed.), telecollaboration in foreign language learning: proceedings of the hawaii symposium. (technical report #12) (pp. 29-46). honolulu, hawaii: university of hawaii, second language teaching & curriculum center. warschauer, m. (1997). computer-mediated collaborative learning: theory and practice. the modern language journal, 81(4), 470-481. warschauer, m., & healey, d. (1998). computers and language learning: an overview. language teaching, 31(1), 51-57. warschauer, m., & kern, r. (2000). introduction: theory and practice of network-based language teaching. in warschauer, m. & kern, r. (eds.), network-based language teaching: concepts and practice (pp. 1-20). cambridge: cambridge university press. warschauer, m., turbee, l., & roberts, b. (1996). computer learning networks and student empowerment. system, 24(1), 1-14. wenden, a. (1991). learner strategies for learner autonomy. london: prentice hall international. wenden, a. (1995). learner training in context: a knowledge-based approach. system, 23(2), 183-194. zamel, v. (1983). the composing process of advanced esl students: six case studies. tesol quarterly, 17(2), 165-187. about the author aaron rogers is an experienced elt professional who at present is studying for an ma in educational technology and tesol at the university of manchester. his research interests include technology, learning strategies and autonomy. profile 9.indd 208 21/04/2008 07:44:01 p.m. using technology to facilitate process writing and interaction among adult students profile 9, 2008. issn 1657-0790. bogotá, colombia. pages 197-218 209 appendix 1: lesson schema time allotment: 4 class hours (3 real hours) per week. week task and task format language / skill focus word processing function learning outcomes / comments and observations 1 and 2 (appendix 2) stories pair work around the computer. getting to know the importance of process writing as well as commands of computer. story writing vocabulary expansion: adjectives, adverbs and verbs. coherence and cohesion text selection, dragging and dropping. text selection, copying and pasting. general typing. using the spell and grammar checker this task needs that students control the mouse and operate essential keyboard skills. raises awareness regarding spell and grammar checkers. improves general typing skills due to the aspect of speed writing that they must carry out. interaction around the computer. more focus on own learning process. opportunities for negotiation of meaning. 3, 4 and 5 (appendix 3) writing a short essay using www.essaypunch.com pair work and collaboration around the computer. getting to see the stages of process writing up close. asking for and giving information. giving opinions. organising your ideas. planning, drafting, revising, editing. using the mouse. inserting text into specific fields. using the computer to generate ideas. improves general typing skills. more focus on process writing at the computer. more awareness of the stages of process writing. interaction around the computer. opportunities for negotiation of meaning. 5 and 6 (jarvis, 1997, p. 171-173) report writing. a topic that is not politically correct but is at the same time highly motivating e.g. kidnapping in colombia. individual and group work around the computer. giving opinions. vocabulary expansion: adjectives, adverbs and verbs. coherence and cohesion. planning, drafting, revising, editing. general typing. using the spell and grammar checker. raises awareness regarding spell and grammar checkers. improves general typing skills. more focus on process writing at the computer. interaction around the computer. more focus on personal identity as a writer. opportunities for negotiation of meaning. profile 9.indd 209 21/04/2008 07:44:01 p.m. rogers universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras210 week task and task format language / skill focus word processing function learning outcomes / comments and observations 7 and 8 opening an email account. sharing your e-mail with your classmates. group collaborative work through the computer. introducing yourself to your classmates. following instructions. free writing about personal opinions. responding to and sharing information planning, drafting, revising, editing. form filling general typing sending messages and checking mail. using passwords. beginning of familiarisation of interaction through the computer. still asynchronous thus giving time for focus on process writing skills. more focus on learning process and on decision making, directing attention, etc. 9 and 10 (appendix 4) joining a forum: http:// writingandcomputers. phpbb24.com starting discussion threads. writing about a topic of interest related to field of study. individual work at computer. group work through computer. agreeing and disagreeing. personalising language use. planning, drafting, revising, editing. selecting discussions to participate in. opening threads. posting and checking messages. using passwords. group collaborative work through the computer. more focus on own learning process as well as that of others. still asynchronous thus giving time for focus on process writing skills. opportunities for negotiation of meaning. 11, 12 and 13 (appendix 5) keeping an electronic journal through http://123. writeboard.com/ af72dea0ea46b4546 writing about own learning or habits of learning. individual work at computer. group work through computer. personalising language. expressing opinions, beliefs, concerns, etc. planning, drafting, revising, editing. blogging. using passwords. adding to favourites. still asynchronous thus giving time for focus on process writing skills. raise awareness for reflection concerning learning process (metacognitive knowledge) opportunities for negotiation of meaning. foster responsibility regarding learning process. 14 and 15 (appendix 6) joining a chat room through: http:// englishandfrench. campfirenow.com/ chatting with other members of the course. using different discourse, i.e. similar to spoken. able to determine topics of discussion. selecting topics and conversations to participate in. chatting. posting and responding to messages in real time. synchronous communication, therefore less time to plan, etc. more cognitive load. many more opportunities for negotiation of meaning. control over participation and therefore learning process. interaction through the computer. * the forums, blogs and chat rooms are intended to be left running after the semester has ended in order to promote their continued use. profile 9.indd 210 21/04/2008 07:44:01 p.m. using technology to facilitate process writing and interaction among adult students profile 9, 2008. issn 1657-0790. bogotá, colombia. pages 197-218 211 appendix 2: stories with a partner, look at the pictures below. they show a story but have been jumbled up. select the pictures and drag and drop them into the spaces in the table on the next page. the first one has been done for you. profile 9.indd 211 21/04/2008 07:44:02 p.m. rogers universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras212 it was a beautiful summer day, the sun was shining and the birds were singing. once you have placed all the pictures into the table, swap computers with another pair and compare your stories. hopefully you will have the same! if you don’t, explain your reasons to the other pair. now read the following sentences. which picture do they belong to? copy and paste the sentences into the table below the pictures. the first one has been done for you. be careful though as there is one extra sentence! profile 9.indd 212 21/04/2008 07:44:02 p.m. using technology to facilitate process writing and interaction among adult students profile 9, 2008. issn 1657-0790. bogotá, colombia. pages 197-218 213 …….. a crowd of people had gathered and were watching a) her anxiously as she struggled to reach the bank. ……… she heard someone whimpering below her and when she looked down from the b) bridge, she saw a small boy in the deepest part of the river waving his arms helplessly. …….. she thought he was dead but when he coughed and his c) legs started to move, she knew he had saved his life. it was a fast flowing river and she had to swim harder than she had d) ever swum before, to get to him before it was too late. as jean walked towards the bridge, she was thinking of all the things e) she could do now that the school holidays had arrived. although she was panicking, she was able to grab him f ) and she started to pull him back to the bank. …….. she jumped off the bridge and dived into the rushing water.g) …….. she managed it and threw both herself and the boy onto the warm grass.h) in some of the sentences there is a word missing. now copy and paste one of these words into the sentences to improve the flow of the story. there is one word you do not need. eventually1. suddenly2. without a second thought3. by now4. at first5. last but not least 6. when you have finished, walk around the class looking at classmates’ attempts at the same task discussing where you think it’s necessary. now let’s try writing a story of our own! read the following: you have decided to enter a short story competition. the rules say that the story must begin with the following sentence: as soon as he got out of the car, martin felt uneasy. write your story in 120 180 words. open a new word document, spend a few minutes noting down ideas for your story and then spend 20 minutes speed writing. look at your partner’s notes and read his/her story. suggest how your partner’s story could be improved, listing relevant vocabulary you could both use, including a range of verbs, adjectives and adverbs. now re-write your story, without paying attention to the spell and grammar checkers. after you have written your story, use the spell and grammar checker to revise your work. do you agree with its choices, remember nobody or nothing is perfect! discuss your findings with a partner. once you have your final draft, save it to disk so you can use it for reference later.1 1 capel, a. & sharp, w. (2000). objective first certificate. cambridge: cambridge university press. profile 9.indd 213 21/04/2008 07:44:02 p.m. rogers universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras214 appendix 3: essay punch screen shots from www.essaypunch.com profile 9.indd 214 21/04/2008 07:44:02 p.m. using technology to facilitate process writing and interaction among adult students profile 9, 2008. issn 1657-0790. bogotá, colombia. pages 197-218 215 profile 9.indd 215 21/04/2008 07:44:03 p.m. rogers universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras216 appendix 4: forum screen shots from: http://writingandcomputers.phpbb24.com profile 9.indd 216 21/04/2008 07:44:03 p.m. using technology to facilitate process writing and interaction among adult students profile 9, 2008. issn 1657-0790. bogotá, colombia. pages 197-218 217 appendix 5: electronic journal screen shots from: http://123.writeboard.com/af72dea0ea46b4546 profile 9.indd 217 21/04/2008 07:44:04 p.m. rogers universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras218 appendix 6: chat room screen shots from: http://englishandfrench.campfirenow.com/ profile 9.indd 218 21/04/2008 07:44:04 p.m. profile no. 6 oct 13.p65 ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ profile profile profile profile profile 6 (2005): universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras responding to observation: how student teachers’ use of their counselor’s notes support their preparation respondiendo a la obserrespondiendo a la obserrespondiendo a la obserrespondiendo a la obserrespondiendo a la observación: cómo apoya la preparaciónvación: cómo apoya la preparaciónvación: cómo apoya la preparaciónvación: cómo apoya la preparaciónvación: cómo apoya la preparación de los estudiantes-maestros el uso de las notas del profesor consejerode los estudiantes-maestros el uso de las notas del profesor consejerode los estudiantes-maestros el uso de las notas del profesor consejerode los estudiantes-maestros el uso de las notas del profesor consejerode los estudiantes-maestros el uso de las notas del profesor consejero john jairo viáfara gonzálezjohn jairo viáfara gonzálezjohn jairo viáfara gonzálezjohn jairo viáfara gonzálezjohn jairo viáfara gonzález jviafara@yahoo.com universidad nacional de colombia several practices for teacher preparation remain as essential today as they have been for decades. among them, observation of lessons continues to be highly popular to support and evaluate student teachers’ learning processes. the following pages deal with an experience in which observation was given an alternative perspective in the preparation of future teachers. sixteen student teachers who constantly responded to their counselor’s observation notes participated in the study. exploring the participants’ feelings about their counselor’s notes and the nature of their responses to those records were the objectives of the study. at the end, a magnifying glass, a puzzle, a book and a map emerged as valuable metaphors to explain student teachers’ use of this preparation tool. kkkkkey worey worey worey worey words:ds:ds:ds:ds: pre-service teacher preparation, teaching practice, practicum, supervision, observation, reflective practice, observation instruments, student teachers’ learning algunas prácticas para la preparación de profesores continúan siendo tan esenciales hoy en día como lo han sido por décadas. entre éstas, la observación de clases goza de gran popularidad para apoyar y evaluar el proceso de futuros profesores. las siguientes páginas relatan una experiencia en la cual la observación adquirió un perfil alternativo en la preparación de los futuros docentes. dieciséis practicantes, quienes constantemente respondieron a las notas de observación, participaron en el estudio tendiente a explorar sus opiniones respecto a las notas del tutor y la naturaleza de sus respuestas a estos registros. al final, una lupa, un rompecabezas, un libro y un mapa surgieron como metáforas significativas para explicar el uso que los practicantes hicieron de esta herramienta en su preparación. palabras claves:palabras claves:palabras claves:palabras claves:palabras claves: preparación de futuros docentes, práctica docente, supervisión, observación, práctica reflexiva, instrumentos de observación, aprendizaje de estudiantes practicantes 141-156 this article was received on april 14th, 2005 and accepted on august 16th, 2005. ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ 142 viáfviáfviáfviáfviáfaraaraaraaraara profileprofileprofileprofileprofile introductionintroductionintroductionintroductionintroduction through the experience i describe along these pages, student teachers were encouraged to adopt a central role in their preparation; they were not only university students being obser ved and evaluated while they taught during their teaching practice, but also they were mainly “the teachers” who guided their own learning. these prospective teachers had complete access to their counselor’s observation notes and, according to their needs as well as interests, they used those records of their former lessons in directing their learning process. thus, observation was planned as a liberating preparatory experience in which a counselor tried to set conditions to open its scope from a tradition of approving or disapproving supervision into a nourishing practice. the next pages describe an alternative means that i, a counselor, have incorporated for using my observation notes in the preparation of student teachers at universidad nacional. furthermore, i share the findings of a small-scale research project which explored how student teachers responded to my observation notes and how they felt about those records. to begin with, i provide information about the context of the study. then, i review some basic principles from what different authors have studied to contribute to understanding the role of observation as an essential practice in pre-service teacher preparation. setsetsetsetsetting and pting and pting and pting and pting and parararararticipticipticipticipticipantsantsantsantsants the teaching practice in which the study took place is a component of the bachelor of education programme in philology and languages at universidad nacional. after two previous courses in elt methodology, student teachers work in developing their teaching skills with the help of a counselor during their practice. by means of conferences, journals, observation and various tasks focused on the participants’ needs, including responding to their counselor’s obser vation notes, student teachers are exposed to a reflective approach. student teachers register for teaching practicum for a semester, generally teaching an average of two lessons a week. most of them work in primary or secondary courses and they receive support, on the one hand, from their university counselor; on the other, from the school cooperating teacher. cooperating teachers regularly provide student teachers with suggestions that they consider relevant for pre-service teachers’ improvement in the practice, whereas the counselor has organized a working scheme that integrates observation with other tools for student teachers’ preparation. twelve female and four male student teachers participated in this study during one of the semesters in the years 2003, 2004 or 2005. i use pseudonyms to protect their identity in keeping with a written consent form that they signed. their ages ranged from 21 to 26 years. it was a heterogeneous group in terms of their personalities. a good number of them seemed out-going and self-confident whereas a couple appeared reserved and shy. a table containing specific information about participants can be found in appendix 1. in regards to their assignments, fourteen of them worked in primary while two taught in secondary school. all the institutions involved except one were public schools. most of these young women and men had not had any previous experience in teaching. four of them had taught for a short time, but a very different population from the target students in their teaching practice courses. only one of them had wide experience in the area. concerning their attitudes towards teaching, they harbored different feelings about their future profession and the teaching practice itself. their life histories told me of different experiences they had faced as learners along their early school years. i was the student teachers’ counselor and researcher. when this study was finished, i had worked supporting pre-service teachers in the teaching practicum at the university for four years. my job also included implementing elt (english language teaching) methodology courses at about the same time, so i had previously shared ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○143 profileprofileprofileprofileprofile responding to obser vation pedagogical experiences with the participants. moreover, most of pre-service teachers’ students also knew me from previous courses. review of literareview of literareview of literareview of literareview of literaturetureturetureture implementing and evaluating the impact of different components in pre-ser vice teacher preparation programs has constantly been an issue of interest in the teacher education community. thus, supervising student teachers, which refers to the guidance of these future educators during their teaching practice, has implied the integration of numerous alternatives for their and their counselors’ practice. changing views in the conception of supervision calls for an integral observation process of student teachers’ performances. there is a growing interest in preparing reflective practitioners, so after their initial experiences they can actively contribute to their own development. henceforth, counselors’ obser vations need to imply much more than observing the patient and prescribing medicine. richards (1998: 142) depicted observation as a practice that needs to go beyond a mere diagnosis; the data we gather from looking at teaching practices in classrooms can increase our comprehension of the reasons which cause our decisions and actions. gaies and bowers (1990: 167) mention, when referring to clinical supervision, that analysis and evaluation need to go hand in hand throughout the observation process. likewise, an investigation regarding the relation of student teachers’ reflexivity with their practicum performance and clinical supervision carried out in malaysia by seng (2005) determined that “supervisors should be trained not only in the practice of clinical supervision but more importantly in a role that could ensure the enhancement function of the supervisor to promote reflection” (p. 10). pre-ser vice teacher preparator y programs generally combine observation with other exercises to help participants in their initial encounters with their future profession. for instance, involving student teachers in research has turned into one of the alternatives to improve their preparation. with no doubt, observation as a key element in teachers’ investigation emerges as one of the most important practices to help future teachers learn. studies conducted by price (2001), as well as quintero et al. (2003) have revealed that experiences which provide student teachers with tools to explore their teaching and context necessarily lead to a broader understanding of who they are as teachers. furthermore, change as a synonym of improvement in student teachers’ plans and actions can be a consequence of the various opportunities for learning that action research might give rise to. another study i would like to mention is cárdenas and faustino’s (2003). their teacher education program at universidad del valle (colombia) included exercises to encourage student teachers’ reflection as part of a general classroom research component. in regards to observation practices, they mentioned how data collected from perusing or examining lessons was used in discussions between teachers and student teachers. the authors highlighted the positive situation that through observation “students became aware of aspects of classroom life that they had not noticed before such as their own reactions towards activities, procedures and interactions” (p.36). ger vais and cor rea (2004) have also incorporated observation as a pillar in student teachers’ reflective practice. they have planned a study to examine the effect that student teachers’ explanations of their teaching has had in their practice. pre-service teachers would be involved in the use of video recording to look at their own practice; then, they would share the recordings with cooperating teachers and teaching practice counselors. participants’ obser vation through video recording is expected to trigger not only enriching discussions about teaching, but also a community to learn from each other. the observthe observthe observthe observthe observaaaaation instrument in thetion instrument in thetion instrument in thetion instrument in thetion instrument in the context of the teaching practicecontext of the teaching practicecontext of the teaching practicecontext of the teaching practicecontext of the teaching practice guiding student teachers to understand the purposes and procedures in using the observation ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ 144 viáfviáfviáfviáfviáfaraaraaraaraara profileprofileprofileprofileprofile worksheet was a key issue when i introduced the teaching practice guidelines each term. this instrument had two sections (appendix 2). the first one was available for the counselor’s notes. i recorded my observation of student teachers’ performances in classes by means of ethnographic field notes. pentimalli (2005: 4) mentions that the purpose of this kind of notes is “to portray social scenes played by actors during the performance of their activity and record dialogues between practitioners”. i did not only capture naturally occurring events, interaction, verbal and body language as much as possible but also details of relevant classroom scene elements. the description tried to be as objective as possible, avoiding judgments or value-laden comments. the second section of the worksheet was available for student teachers’ written reactions while they read my notes. from the beginning of their practice, prospective teachers were encouraged to respond to the notes; they wrote what they regarded as important in relation to the lesson they taught. through my experience, i saw how their responses corresponded to their personal styles. some of them would write a lot responding to each single aspect pictured through my records; others would write in a more general fashion. additionally, it was not rare to find single key words, symbols or pictures as part of participants’ responses. concerning frequency, some would answer the notes once a week from the start, whereas others would take a little longer to initiate a systematic work. the observation instrument was a component of the reflective process that i prepared to support student teachers along their practice. there seems to be a consensus among different authors such as gaies and bowers (1990); rondall and thorton (2001); and diaz-maggioli (2003) that a framework for observation, incorporating analysis and evaluation in teachers’ development, follows certain steps, namely: pre-observation, observation and postobservation. the following charts will relate general guidelines regarding the three stages previously mentioned (diazmaggioli, 2003), with the target experience i am describing throughout this paper. pre-pre-pre-pre-pre-obserobserobserobserobservation:vation:vation:vation:vation: the counselor and the student teacher hold a conference to discuss: • the aims, structure, principles and focus that the prospective teacher has planned for the target lesson. • the purpose of the observation and the way it will proceed. • emotional and motivational issues which might affect the teacher’s performance. in our case, general guidelines were provided at the beginning of the practicum as explained above. the specific focus on observation emerged from discussions held with participants during counseling sessions once a week. i went to the meeting with information from journals, previous responses to notes and complementary reflective tasks we had analyzed in terms of student teachers’ concerns to negotiate the points for the observation. obserobserobserobserobservation:vation:vation:vation:vation: • information is collected. • the counselor uses suitable instruments to record student teachers’ performances such as charts, notes, journals or video. • measures are taken to reduce the impact of external factors on the spontaneity of the recording. diagram 1.diagram 1.diagram 1.diagram 1.diagram 1. general guidelines for the observation procedure (diaz-maggioli, 2003). ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○145 profileprofileprofileprofileprofile responding to obser vation research methodresearch methodresearch methodresearch methodresearch method i followed the principles of a qualitative approach to develop this study. following what stake (1995: 49-50) explains about this perspective in research, the exploration of student teachers’ feelings and responses to my observation notes was seen as an integrated phenomenon which took place under natural conditions in the context of the teaching practice. i concentrated on observing student teachers’ feelings and responses to determine and explain their nature. along the process, my interpretation of the phenomenon required interacting with participants’ perspectives. among the various research designs in the qualitative approach, i adopted a descriptive case study (merriam, 1988). since i explored five groups of student teachers, it was a multi-site study. case study methodology was a suitable choice since it clearly defines the purposes of this project. my aim was to focus on units, groups of student teachers, to describe their feelings and responses to my observation notes. throughout the process, i identified and understood the characteristic and constituent factors of the phenomenon, as well as the relations among them. finally, current research implied fieldwork in which the researcher was the primary instrument for data collection. i collected data from participants through a questionnaire (appendix 3). the answers that participants provided contributed i recorded student teachers’ performances using one column of the observation worksheet i designed (appendix 2) and ethnographic field notes (a full description of this instrument was provided at the beginning of the section.) i sat at the back of the room. i did not intervene in the development of the lesson unless the student teachers involved me in activities or i had to help them when emergencies took place. pppppost-ost-ost-ost-ost-obserobserobserobserobservation:vation:vation:vation:vation: the counselor and the student teacher hold a conference to evaluate, analyze, and provide feedback. three possibilities for these meetings are: • mirroring coaching: prospective teachers have the notes and analyze them on their own. • expert coaching: the counselor studies the information collected and provides advice. • collaborative coaching: student teachers and counselors share analytical perspectives as a reflective exercise. in our case, mirror and collaborative coaching were adopted for feedback sessions. • i handed in the worksheets with my observation records to participants who wrote their reactions to them and brought them back for the counseling sessions once a week. • the notes the participants wrote substantiated feedback sessions. their responses contributed to guide our discussions about their teaching approach, the school context and curricular issues. allowing their free expression, i tried to create a relaxing atmosphere. i fuelled the conversation through comments or questions that i found to be relevant in supporting their reflection. • we completed the cycle by choosing or creating reflective exercises to address difficulties identified along the process; for instance, self-reflection tasks, planning or reading exercises. ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ 146 viáfviáfviáfviáfviáfaraaraaraaraara profileprofileprofileprofileprofile toward determining how they perceived the observation instrument, the notes that the counselor wrote about their lessons and the processes they followed while they worked with the notes. with the purpose of clarifying or specifying their views in the questionnaires, participants answered questions in a non-structured interview when it was necessary. student teachers’ responses to my notes included in the obser vation worksheets (appendix 2) provided the biggest amount of data that i analyzed. i gathered all the worksheets containing student teachers’ responses that i had stored during five consecutive semesters. the findingsthe findingsthe findingsthe findingsthe findings my analysis of the information gathered corresponded to hubbard and power’s (1993: 65) view of this process as “a way of seeing and seeing again to bring order, structure and meaning to data.” i went through the data carefully examining the information to identify and understand how it related to the two questions in this study. i analyzed data from the five groups as belonging to one case. my intention was to produce a general explanation for the phenomena. i used colors to codify the data and to help myself group what was common in the information. using techniques from grounded theory (strauss and corbin, 1990) such as making comparisons and questioning what i initially found, i established patterns which i then labeled. after this initial organization and identification of data, i engaged in grouping emerging concepts into categories according to their commonalities. as i carried out the grouping and regrouping of concepts, i took notes of my reflection about specific features i could see in the findings. the next step was naming the categories and in so doing, i used metaphors. cortazzi and jin (1999: 149) support the use of metaphors in teaching and learning since “a metaphor can easily be seen as a bridge, etymologically, carrying over, from one side to another. it links and comprises the known and the unknown, the tangible and the less tangible, the familiar and the new”. i thought of metaphors as a tool not only to substantiate my explanation of what each category meant, but also to capture the multiple possibilities of meaning pertinent to the concepts. associating familiar elements from ordinary life with the concepts that categories defined, i sought to express the complexity of the phenomena under study through the richness of language. consolidating the analysis involved the definition of categories in terms of their characteristics and the exploration of the relations among concepts. a key issue for me was always to conduct a research process which would ensure reliability and validity in what i found. it was triangulation related to my use of various sources of data that i used to solidify my findings (merriam, 1988). my categories emerged from the continuous comparison of student teachers’ perceptions recorded in questionnaires and interviews with their responses to my observation notes. additionally, i contrasted those categories with theory. the analysis i developed guided me to establish that similar to travelers who adapt basic equipment throughout their journey, student teachers made a kit of the notes to support their preparation through the practicum. let us see which elements they chose to take and how they use them. a magnifa magnifa magnifa magnifa magnifying glass of their classesying glass of their classesying glass of their classesying glass of their classesying glass of their classes student teachers started their journey through their teaching practice experience bringing a bagful of expectations, questions and fears. as travelers often do, they engaged in planning where to go and how to reach their destination. to a big extent, it was from the means incorporated in the teaching practice that they found initial support to begin their preparation. in the particular case of their counselor’s observation notes, participants reacted in different ways when they saw the notes. “my reaction is sometimes surprised or i see funny things that happen…” (lina), “i say to myself, mr…(the counselor), sí que es detallista!” (“he is perceptive”) (edison). student teachers’ perceptions concerning my obser vation notes ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○147 profileprofileprofileprofileprofile responding to obser vation seemed to change along the term. “i would say the observation notes made me feel scared and worried. at the beginning, i had not clear they were just a detailed description of my lessons… then, i understood how they worked and i found very useful data about my teaching practice.” (ximena) apparently, for these future teachers the quality of the notes had an impact on how they assimilated their content and the way they used them. we decide to look in a mirror because we believe that the image it shows us is what we really are at a specific time. participants characterized my notes as containing objective, specific, systematic and ver y concrete information. most of them considered these features in the notes positive. some also remarked that the notes “were no judgments …no pressure” (carmen). richards and lockhart’s (1994: 12) views seemed to match the previous opinions of participants when they mentioned “for observation to be viewed as a positive rather than a negative experience, the observer’s function should be limited to that of gathering information”. in contrast to the previous feelings, edison, a student teacher who initially would not respond to the notes nor write in his journal, was the only participant who expressed a negative perception about the notes. he was usually anxious to obtain teaching tips from the counselor to solve problems in his lesson. he expressed that “they were tiring for me…sometimes i felt very bored because when i saw them (a lot of descriptions) i felt lazy to answer them.” later, edison would change his attitude towards the notes. data informed me how most of the students perceived that through the notes they constantly looked at themselves as if they were seeing through a glass. “it is like a mirror where student teachers can see how the classes are developed…” (edison). participants regarded the previous characteristic of the notes as a benefit since, on their own, they could not be completely aware of ever ything happening around them. “the observation sheets made me aware of several things which took place through my lessons that i had not noticed. it is totally true that we (ts) focus our attention on a specific part of the classroom and plenty of things become dark” (ximena). a puzzle to foster reflectiona puzzle to foster reflectiona puzzle to foster reflectiona puzzle to foster reflectiona puzzle to foster reflection beyond the mere realization of other events occurring in their classes, the notes allowed student teachers to think deeply about their lessons. “the notes helped me to see my class in a much more systematic way. thus, i could analyze many situations” (carmen). student teachers read the notes and often determined on their own what they considered problematic situations. bearing the previous in mind, it seems that frequently the counselor’s notes narrated situations that participants interpreted as difficulties in their teaching; these events became puzzles. for instance, julia responded in the following way to my notes. deliberation processes were essential when student teachers read the observation notes and found a puzzle to solve. the next answer included in rebeca’s questionnaire refers to this, “they (the notes) made me reflect on my role as teacher because it showed me the importance of different issues we have to take into account when we are teachers”. reflecting upon the difficulties that they identified through the notes involved the student teachers in the self-questioning and self-appraisal description of the lesson student’s comments st is in front of the board writing the content of i’ve had some troubles when i’m checking a quiz. she writes: quizzes. i haven’t found names of students on them. name: last name: ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ 148 viáfviáfviáfviáfviáfaraaraaraaraara profileprofileprofileprofileprofile of their attitudes and actions in the lessons. turning back to participants’ direct responses to my notes, the next is a concrete sample to see the kind of reflection they often evidenced. jasbleidy established a close relation with her students. her biggest concern during her assignment was to see that students’ social and economic conditions did not stop them from developing an efficient learning process. reading the description i made of her way of working with students about “telling time” generated her writing of a question directed to herself. through her explanation, she revealed not only her interpretation, but also her analysis to place students’ development of general knowledge, “telling time”, as a priority over their learning of english. asking questions, as in the previous case, was a common practice for some participants. this practice revealed their deliberation upon what happened along their lessons. furthermore, looking at themselves through the observation notes triggered student teachers’ selfevaluations. rebeca commented in her questionnaire, “we also noticed our weakness and strengths as teachers”. luz marina had never taught before. her assignment in primar y school was a tough experience at the beginning. however, along the term she seemed to become aware of key issues for her teaching. the next response reveals how she evaluated her own practice. different authors in the area of teacher education such as pollard and tann (1993: 11) consider teachers’ “continually monitoring, evaluation and revision of their own practice” essential since it is part of their reflection. among the issues mirrored by student teachers through their responses, it was common to find their self-monitoring of the methodology, development of their role, teaching context, and feelings. a book to revise referential knowledgea book to revise referential knowledgea book to revise referential knowledgea book to revise referential knowledgea book to revise referential knowledge much of what student teachers wrote as responses to my notes corresponded to the pedagogical principles they followed and the knowledge they had about their context. edison said in an interview about reading the notes, “i realized that there are many things i need to know about and i have to find more information about methodology by myself.” in this sense, the notes became pages of a book which encouraged them to revise their knowledge. i have called referential the knowledge they recorded through their writing because it came from sources that student teachers relied on. the source of the knowledge prospective teachers brought about varied. on the one hand, it came from theory that had been studied in previous courses. university professors, books or description of the lesson student’s comments st: she is checking homework and she has this part of checking homework was great assigned students to solve a puzzle. because it was much more organized and the puzzle gave me enough time to read all ss’ commitments. description of the lesson student’s comments st goes around checking individual ss’ work, my concern at this point had to do with the lack of explains using the clock. she explains through knowledge of the ways ss can express time in their english and miming. mother tongue. and i wonder -how can i teach ss: express it is clear “marcar la hora” they say. something in english if they don’t even know it in spanish? ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○149 profileprofileprofileprofileprofile responding to obser vation academic spaces played a role here. it might also be that these principles either had been discussed during the practicum in counseling sessions or that student teachers had researched them, moved by their needs. in an interview to clarify information she had written in her questionnaire, lina answered “we (student teachers) read and compared situations in the notes with theory, so we analyzed and realized important things”. additionally, a good deal of this knowledge also embraced prospective teachers’ own beliefs, and they reaffirmed them once again through their responses. they seemed to write their own book of knowledge and principles. referential knowledge contributed to participants’ justification of what they tried to do; it supported their practice by giving meaning to it. johnson (1999: 2) sees knowledge and beliefs at the core of teachers’ reasoning to help them in their own understanding of teaching. carlos’ teaching practice was a bittersweet experience. he was not sure about becoming a teacher and at the end of the term, he had decided to stop teaching for a while. nevertheless, he always expressed interest in pedagogical topics and spent additional time discussing and exchanging views on education with me. in the next response to my notes, he seemed to reassure himself about his reasons to involve students in self-evaluation; he explains the pedagogical principles behind his selection of a particular means of assessment for his pupils. the learning process that was revealed through this exercise showed that student teachers not only revised their knowledge, but also made connections between theory and practice; they monitored whether what happened demonstrated a coherent relation of principles with their reality in the lessons. very early in her teaching practice, carmen decided to look for a methodology to handle large groups. this curious and hardworking pre-service teacher decided to shape her lesson within cooperative learning, and guided by her keen reflective style, she adapted kagan’s teaching and learning views for her lessons. the possibility of looking back at what they are doing, thinking about it and revising knowledge might lead travelers to propose coherent alternatives in the planning of their route. let us see in the coming paragraphs how answering their counselor’s notes supported participants’ projects to plan how to improve their practice. a map to plan pa map to plan pa map to plan pa map to plan pa map to plan possible routes to goossible routes to goossible routes to goossible routes to goossible routes to go “this instrument make things clear, and helps me to plan strategies in order to work harder…” expressed ximena in her questionnaire, meaning that my record of their lessons supported the planning process. on her side, carmen expressed, “you might be able to think about it, reflect and the most important thing: to find solution to the issues you face in the classroom”. therefore, the description of the lesson student’s comments st: “now, se van a calificar en estos aspectos. i kept in mind the self-evaluation because it has to he writes criteria on the board: responsabilidad, do with the democratic classroom and at the same respeto, aprendizaje, mejoramiento” time, helps ss to develop reflection, honesty and critical attitude toward themselves. description of the lesson student’s comments ss: calls monitors to the front and handed in this is a strategy from kagan, cooperative learning. postcards forms to monitors who deliver those to that is how i can avoid that kids come to me asking their groups. she draws on the board a hand up me the same things at the same time. and an arrow with a question form. she walks around explaining kids that the sign means they monitors are a great tool in terms of management. have to put their hands up if they have any question. ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ 150 viáfviáfviáfviáfviáfaraaraaraaraara profileprofileprofileprofileprofile notes acted similarly to a map telling them where they stood and providing information on their whereabouts so they could design future courses of action. evidence from participants’ reaction to my notes, as lina’s response below, confirmed data from questionnaires. lina worked with a group of enthusiastic fourth graders. promoting her students’ commitment to do homework was one of her aims. despite students’ resistance and lack of institutional support, she never gave up. next, she comments on her intention to improve her procedure to check homework. the plans participants mentioned fell into different categories. a good number referred to future teaching actions as alternatives to correct or continue what they did. other times, they made statements about the development of actions in relation to their own preparation which included being more analytic, observing more in detail what happened and improving their attitude. conclconclconclconclconclusions and implicusions and implicusions and implicusions and implicusions and implicaaaaationstionstionstionstions to close this article, i will specially state the answers for the questions i posed to guide the research. furthermore, i discuss how what was found can support our job in preparing student teachers through the observation we make of their lessons. most prospective teachers’ perceptions of my observation notes referred to the help they found to become informed about their performance and classes. likewise, their responses to those records revealed that they gained awareness of their own performance through the experience. the description participants obtained of their lessons made them aware of what they regarded as difficulties in their teaching. thus, they posed problems and engaged in reflection to understand what happened in their practices. they deliberated mostly through their self-appraisal and the questioning of their teaching. in addition, participants’ responses showed that the most common topics for their deliberation were the methodology, development of their role, teaching context, and feelings. exploring student teachers’ reflections in relation to these issues emerges as a possible question for further study. the revision of previous knowledge was also a characteristic i identified in the analysis of data. the group of pre-service teachers referred to teaching principles from their own beliefs and other sources. their constant reaffirmation of that knowledge seemed to support participants’ conceptualization of their practice. by means of the awareness, reflection and conceptualization that their counselor ’s observation notes triggered, student teachers came to understand more their teaching and to propose solutions to their problems. responding to observation notes is an exercise students can develop on their own, based on their style, priorities and interests. this kind of approach to feedback about observation contributes to easing student teachers’ stress and to increase their confidence to approach their preparation process honestly. likewise, characteristics of the notes highlighted by participants such as objective, nonjudgmental and no pressuring reveal the importance of using friendly observation instruments. in that kind of environment, reflective processes such as self-evaluation and self-inquiry seemed to take place. therefore, providing student teachers with enough autonomy and non-threatening description of the lesson student’s comments st: asked ss to go to their lines so she can check i can sit down in my desk and ask ss to come one by homework. she starts going to the first line. one to show me the homework so i can see the rest ss: the ones in the first line get ready and in the of them. other lines some talk, others move around or visit their peers. ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○151 profileprofileprofileprofileprofile responding to obser vation contexts to work regarding observation of their practices can be a key for their growing. there is the potential to foster autonomy in that responding to observation can turn out to be a liberating exercise for student teachers. when students become the center of the feedback process responding to their counselor’s obser vation notes, they might come better prepared to counseling sessions. what they might have achieved on their own could move them faster from initial thinking and reflective processes to deeper deliberation. moreover, advisors gain a better understanding of student teachers’ actions and attitudes when they share the responses to the observation. finally, the planning of conferences and tasks can be based on real needs. the features i identified in participants’ responses to my notes seem to have a connection with the teaching practice cycle that rondall and thorton (2001: 47) outlined to point out essential factors in the experiential learning of teachers and with pablo freire’s (1970) problem-posing method. rondall and thornton include concrete experience, reflective obser vation, abstract conceptualization, and active experimentation as part of the cycle. freire’s method includes the following three general phases: identifying and naming the problem, analyzing the causes of the problem and finding solutions. how the previous approaches to learning relate to the finding in this study can be the objective of future exploration. finally, the findings in the study have led me to design a new obser vation format that resembles the four features identified in participants’ responses and opinions, (see appendix 4). i am looking forward to using this new instrument in future experiences. about the authorabout the authorabout the authorabout the authorabout the author john jairo viáfara gonzálezjohn jairo viáfara gonzálezjohn jairo viáfara gonzálezjohn jairo viáfara gonzálezjohn jairo viáfara gonzález, ma in applied linguistics to tefl from universidad distrital francisco josé de caldas, and b.ed in philology and languages, english – spanish from the universidad nacional de colombia. he teaches in the foreign languages department at the universidad nacional de colombia and esp courses at universidad externado de colombia. he is also a tutor of the profile in-service program. referencesreferencesreferencesreferencesreferences cárdenas, r. and faustino, c. (2003). developing reflective and investigative skills in teacher preparation programs: the design and implementation of the classroom research component at the foreign language program of universidad del valle. colombian applied linguistics journal, 5, 2248. cortazzi, m. and jin, l. (1999). bridges to learning: metaphors of teaching, learning and language. in cameron and graham (eds.), researching and applying metaphor (pp.149-176). cambridge: cambridge university press. diazmaggioli, h. (2003). options for teacher professional development. forum, 41 (2), 210. freire, p. (1970). pedagogy of the oppressed. new york: seabury. gaies, s. and bowers, r. (1990). clinical super vision of language teaching: the supervisor as trainer and educator. in richards, j. and nunan, d. (eds.), second language teacher education (pp. 167181). cambridge: cambridge university press. gervais, c. and correa, m. (2004). explicitación del saber de experiencia de los profesores en el contexto de las prácticas docentes: un marco conceptual y metodológico. íkala, revista de lenguaje y cultura, 9 (15), 141167. hubbard, r. and power, b. (1993). the art of classroom inquiry. portsmouth: heinemann. johnson, k. (1999). understanding language teaching reasoning in action. boston: heinle and heinle publishers. merriam, s. (1988). case study research in education. san francisco: jossey-bass publications. pentimalli, b. (2005). observation in situ within ethnographic field research. retrieved april 01, 2005, from ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ 152 viáfviáfviáfviáfviáfaraaraaraaraara profileprofileprofileprofileprofile http: // www-sv.cict.fr/cotcos/pjs/ methodologicalapproaches/data gatheringmethods/ gathering paperpentimalli.htm pollard, a. and tann, s. (1993). reflective teaching in the primar y classroom. london: wellington house. price, j. (2001). action research, pedagogy and change: the transformative potential of action research in pre-service teacher education. journal of curricular studies, 33 (1), 4374. quintero, a. et al. (2003). la investigaciónacción mejora la planeación de clases en lengua extranjera. íkala, revista de lenguaje y cultura, 8 (14), 3955. richards, j. (1998). through other eyes: revisiting classroom observation. in richards, j. beyond training: perspectives on language teaching education (pp.141152). cambridge: cambridge university press. richards, j.c., and lockhart, c. (1994). reflective teaching in second language classrooms. cambridge: cambridge university press. rondall, m. and thorton, b. (2001). advising and supporting teachers. cambridge: cambridge university press. seng, t. (2005). practicum student teachers’ reflectivity, practicum performance and clinical supervision. retrieved april 01, 2005, from http/ /: www.aare.edu.au/01pap/toh01357.htm stake, r. (1995). investigación con estudios de casos. madrid: ediciones morata. strauss, a. and corbin, j. (1990). basics of qualitative research. grounded theory procedures and techniques. london: sage publications. ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○153 profileprofileprofileprofileprofile responding to obser vation appendix 1: informaappendix 1: informaappendix 1: informaappendix 1: informaappendix 1: information abtion abtion abtion abtion about pout pout pout pout parararararticipticipticipticipticipantsantsantsantsants namenamenamenamename year/year/year/year/year/ ageageageageage gradegradegradegradegrade schoolschoolschoolschoolschool semestersemestersemestersemestersemester rebeca 2003 i 22 5th instituto pedagógico ramírez montufar (iparm) araminta 2003 i 26 5th instituto pedagógico ramírez montufar (parm) carmen 2003 i 21 4th instituto pedagógico ramírez montufar (iparm) amanda 2002 i 22 4th instituto pedagógico ramírez montufar (iparm) lina 2003 ii 22 4th instituto pedagógico ramírez montufar (iparm) edinson 2003 ii 26 5th instituto pedagógico ramírez montufar (iparm) ximena 2003 ii 22 4th instituto pedagógico ramírez montufar (iparm) jenny 2003 ii 22 6th ied palermo carlos 2004 i 22 4th instituto pedagógico ramírez montufar (iparm) julia 2004 i 23 5th instituto pedagógico ramírez montufar (iparm) luz marina 2004 i 23 3rd instituto pedagógico ramírez montufar (iparm) sergio 2004 ii 23 6th ied palermo andrea 2004 ii 24 4th ied palermo polina 2004 ii 25 4th instituto pedagógico ramírez montufar (iparm) jazbleidy 2005 i 26 5th ied república del ecuador ernesto 2005 i 26 5th ied palermo ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ 154 viáfviáfviáfviáfviáfaraaraaraaraara profileprofileprofileprofileprofile appendix 2: observappendix 2: observappendix 2: observappendix 2: observappendix 2: observaaaaation worksheet for the studtion worksheet for the studtion worksheet for the studtion worksheet for the studtion worksheet for the studyyyyy class observation number student teacher: _____________________ date: ______________________ grade: ___________________ time: ______________________ description of lesson comments/questions (st’ responses) (counselor’s notes) ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○155 profileprofileprofileprofileprofile responding to obser vation appendix 3: questionnaire to explore pappendix 3: questionnaire to explore pappendix 3: questionnaire to explore pappendix 3: questionnaire to explore pappendix 3: questionnaire to explore parararararticipticipticipticipticipants’ perceptions abants’ perceptions abants’ perceptions abants’ perceptions abants’ perceptions aboutoutoutoutout their counselortheir counselortheir counselortheir counselortheir counselor’s observ’s observ’s observ’s observ’s observaaaaation notestion notestion notestion notestion notes dear student teacher, the purpose of the following questionnaire is to collect information to help me see the effectiveness of some of the instruments i use to guide you during the teaching practice work. in that sense, i think you can help me with relevant information to analyze how they function. your cooperation would contribute to improve what i can do for other student teachers in the future. thanks. 1. what do you think about the observation notes i wrote about your classes? the form: _____________________________________________________________ the content:____________________________________________________________ 2. what kind of description do the notes make about your practice and teaching situation? ____________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________ 3. how did you usually react when you read my observation notes about your class? what did you do? why? ____________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________ 4. how did you feel about these notes? why? ____________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________ 5. did the observation notes play a role in your practice? which? ______________________________________________________________________ 6. what can you say about this instrument as a working tool? ____________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________ 7. would you change anything about the notes? what? ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ 156 viáfviáfviáfviáfviáfaraaraaraaraara profileprofileprofileprofileprofile appendix 4: proposal for a reflective observappendix 4: proposal for a reflective observappendix 4: proposal for a reflective observappendix 4: proposal for a reflective observappendix 4: proposal for a reflective observaaaaation formation formation formation formation formattttt number student teacher:_____________________ date:_______________________ grade: ___________________ time: ______________________ while you read your counselor’s observation notes, use the form below to reflect on your lesson. write an issue ofwrite an issue ofwrite an issue ofwrite an issue ofwrite an issue of interpretinterpretinterpretinterpretinterpret selfselfselfselfself-ev-ev-ev-ev-evalalalalaluauauauauatetetetete your interest fromyour interest fromyour interest fromyour interest fromyour interest from and expland expland expland expland explainainainainain the notes:the notes:the notes:the notes:the notes: what did your counselor how do you explain what what does it tell you about write about it? happened? your teaching? what do you know about this issue? (principles/ ideas: from talks with people, readings…) how do you relate what you know to what happened? what future actions can you take? profile no. 7dic 5.p65 ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ profile profile profile profile profile 7 (2006): universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras a framework to understanding motivation in the tesol field un marun marun marun marun marco para la comprensión de la motivación en el campo de la enseñanzaco para la comprensión de la motivación en el campo de la enseñanzaco para la comprensión de la motivación en el campo de la enseñanzaco para la comprensión de la motivación en el campo de la enseñanzaco para la comprensión de la motivación en el campo de la enseñanza del inglés a hablantes de otras lenguasdel inglés a hablantes de otras lenguasdel inglés a hablantes de otras lenguasdel inglés a hablantes de otras lenguasdel inglés a hablantes de otras lenguas jesús alirio bastidas arteaga*jesús alirio bastidas arteaga*jesús alirio bastidas arteaga*jesús alirio bastidas arteaga*jesús alirio bastidas arteaga* jabas-ct@computronix.com.co universidad de nariño, colombia tesol (teaching english to speakers of other languages) is a field that receives the contribution of various disciplines to support its theoretical and practical foundations. in this paper, the author presents an overview of the approaches used to conceptualize motivation in psychology and apply it to tesol. then, a selected number of factors or dimensions of the achievement motivation construct, identified in the research about motivation in cognitive psychology, are highlighted. based on the previous dimensions, some practical and research implications are suggested to be applied in the area of motivation to learn a second (sl) or foreign language (fl). finally, the author supports the need to conceptualize motivation, not only from a cognitive view, but most importantly, from a socio-constructive approach, especially in the tefl context. kkkkkeyeyeyeyey worworworworwordsdsdsdsds: tesol, disciplines, approach, conceptualize, dimension, achievement motivation, construct, cognitive, implication, second language, foreign language, socio-constructive, tefl la “enseñanza del inglés a hablantes de otras lenguas” (tesol) es un área que recibe la influencia de diferentes disciplinas, las cuales han contribuido a sustentar sus planteamientos teóricos y prácticos. en este artículo, el autor presenta los enfoques que se han utilizado para definir la motivación en psicología y que se han aplicado al campo de tesol. a continuación se destaca un número selecto de factores o dimensiones del constructo de motivación de logro identificado en la investigación sobre motivación realizada en psicología cognitiva. con base en estas dimensiones, se sugieren algunas implicaciones prácticas e investigativas que se podrían aplicar en el área de la motivación para el aprendizaje de una segunda lengua o de una lengua extranjera. el autor, finalmente, sustenta la necesidad de que la motivación se conceptualice fundamentalmente con base en una perspectiva socio-constructivista y no únicamente desde la visión cognitiva, especialmente en el contexto de la enseñanza del inglés como lengua extranjera (tefl) palabras clavespalabras clavespalabras clavespalabras clavespalabras claves: enseñanza del inglés a hablantes de otras lenguas (tesol), disciplinas, enfoque, conceptualizar, dimensión, motivación de logro, constructo, cognitivo, implicación, segunda lengua, lengua extranjera, socio-constructivo, enseñanza del inglés como lengua extranjera (tefl). *jesus alirio bastidas arteagajesus alirio bastidas arteagajesus alirio bastidas arteagajesus alirio bastidas arteagajesus alirio bastidas arteaga is a professor and researcher at universidad de nariño. he got his m.a. in linguistics:tefl from ohio university in 1983. he also has an m.s. in reading & writing from the university of southern california and a ph.d. in language learning & literacy from the same university. dr. bastidas has published a good number of articles in the usa, mexico, and colombia. this article was received on march 31st, 2006 and accepted on august 14th, 2006. 147-159 ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ 148 bastidas profileprofileprofileprofileprofile introductionintroductionintroductionintroductionintroduction experts in psychology support the close relationship between learning and motivation. some of them even affirm that motivation affects learning. in the tesol field, brown (1987, p. 114) states that “motivation is a key to learning” another language. in a similar way, dornyei (2001a, p. 1) corroborates the previous assertion and adds that “skills to motivate learners are crucial for language teachers.” given these assumptions about the crucial role of motivation in relation to learning, in this paper i refer to motivation both in psychology and in the tesol field. to begin with, i briefly refer to traditional views of motivation. then, the most relevant constructs and dimensions of motivation according to recent theories of motivation are presented. next, some implications for learning, teaching and future research in the area of motivation to learn a target language are identified. based on these constructs, finally, i highlight a definition of motivation, according to cognitive and socio-constructivist theories of learning and motivation, to be applied especially in an efl context. defining motivdefining motivdefining motivdefining motivdefining motivaaaaationtiontiontiontion motivation has been defined in a variety of ways according to the appearance and development of learning and motivation theories in psychology. below i will present a review of these definitions. tttttraditional concepts of motivation inraditional concepts of motivation inraditional concepts of motivation inraditional concepts of motivation inraditional concepts of motivation in psychologypsychologypsychologypsychologypsychology traditionally motivation was viewed in terms of volition, will, instinct, drive, or need, which represented a rationalist tendency of looking at psychological processes. the advent of behaviorist psychology produced a decline of theories that linked motivation with some inner force. for behaviorists, motivation should be studied in behavioral terms. motivation was “a continual level of behavioral responses to stimuli” caused by some reinforcement (pintrich & schunk, 1996, p. 4). later, two theories related to behaviorism, drive and arousal theories, linked motivation with the concepts of drive and arousal. as a result, motivation was defined as an intensity of behavior (geen, 1995). tttttraditional concepts of motivation inraditional concepts of motivation inraditional concepts of motivation inraditional concepts of motivation inraditional concepts of motivation in tesoltesoltesoltesoltesol since 1972 we have been familiarized with two related concepts of motivation in tesol: instrumental and integrative motivation. gardner and lambert (1972), for example, studied foreign language learners in canada, the usa, and the philippines over a period of 12 years in order to determine the effects of attitudinal and motivational factors on language learning success. as a result of their studies, they proposed two types of motivation: instrumental and integrative motivation. on the one hand, a learner instrumentally motivated wants to learn the l2 in order to fulfill a particular objective e.g. gaining a certain kind of qualification, improvement, employment prospects, getting a higher degree, etc. on the other hand, a learner with integrative orientation has a genuine interest in the l2 community. he wants to learn the l2 to communicate with the people who speak that language in order to relate to them and to understand their culture. these concepts were so powerful that many authorities and teachers in the tesol field claimed that integrative motivation was an essential requirement for successful l2 or fl learning. if we compare these concepts with those in psychology, we find them to be much related to the concepts of extrinsic and intrinsic motivation proposed by deci (1972). even though brown wrote the second edition of his well-known book, “principles of language learning and teaching” in 1987, he still refers to motivation in terms of drives, impulses, stimulus, and needs. on page 114, he states: “motivation is commonly thought of as an inner drive, impulse, emotion, or desire that moves one to a particular action. more specifically, human beings universally have needs or drives that are more or less innate, yet their intensity is ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○149 profileprofileprofileprofileprofile a framework to understanding motivation in the tesol field environmentally conditioned.” brown goes on to define motivation as “an inner drive or stimulus, which can, like self-esteem, be global, situational, or taskoriented” (p. 115). in conclusion, although brown refers to motivation as an inner drive, he still shows an influence of behaviorist learning theories in his concept of motivation. r e c e n t c o n c e p t s o f m o t i v a t i o n i nr e c e n t c o n c e p t s o f m o t i v a t i o n i nr e c e n t c o n c e p t s o f m o t i v a t i o n i nr e c e n t c o n c e p t s o f m o t i v a t i o n i nr e c e n t c o n c e p t s o f m o t i v a t i o n i n psychologypsychologypsychologypsychologypsychology the theories of psychology developed in the late 1950s and in the 1960s questioned the limited views of the behaviorist theories to explain both learning and motivation, and proposed the study of motivation from a cognitive perspective. consequently, motivation was conceived to be a process influenced by people’s beliefs and thoughts. based on an analysis of the cognitive psychology theories developed in the 1970s, 1980s, and 1990s, pintrich and schunk (2001) defined motivation as a process of instigating and sustaining goal-directed activity. . . . . this conceptualization was supported by the intensive research conducted by researchers who proposed various hypotheses to support the presence of some factors or dimensions within the construct of achievement motivation. achievement motivachievement motivachievement motivachievement motivachievement motivaaaaationtiontiontiontion constructsconstructsconstructsconstructsconstructs from a cognitive perspective, many researchers have studied a number of achievement motivation constructs that influence behavior. ability and competence beliefs, self-efficacy, task values, achievement goals, control beliefs, intrinsic and extrinsic motivation, and achievement attributions are prominent examples of these constructs. researchers are also interested in finding the relationship between the previous internal motivational constructs and the external indicators of motivation, such as choice, effort, and persistence in doing different tasks. for the purpose of this paper, i will refer to the findings concerning the constructs of ability and efficacy beliefs, and task values in relation to achievement behaviors. i will also mention some of the findings concerning achievement goals since they have been frequently used in the motivation research. additionally, i will highlight some implications of the findings in each motivational construct for attempting to attain the students’ motivation to learn a second or a foreign language. ability and efficacy ability and efficacy beliefs come from three general research traditions: expectancy-value theory (eccles, 1983; eccles, adler, futterman, goff, kaczala, and meece, 1983; wigfield & eccles, 1992, 2002), self-perceptions of competence research (harter, 1982, 1985; stipek, 1981, 2001), and self-efficacy theor y (bandura, 1989; zimmerman, bandura, & martinez-pons, 1992). these constructs refer to the people’s responses to the questions ‘can i do this task?’ or ‘can i succeed in this task?’ (eccles & wigfield, 1985). research in these theories has indicated that students’ beliefs about their abilities and efficacy to perform academic tasks are essential motivational variables to predict their achievement behaviors. ability beliefs refer to the people’s selfevaluation of their own competence in different areas. researchers in achievement motivation have found a relationship between ability beliefs and academic performance. ability beliefs predict students’ achievement performance in different areas such as reading and mathematics (eccles et al., 1983; meece, wigfield, & eccles, 1990; nicholls, 1979; stipek & maciver, 1989). selfefficacy is a major construct in bandura’s theory and it refers to the “people’s judgements of their capabilities to organize and execute courses of action required to attain designated types of performances” (bandura, 1986, p. 391). the efficacy expectations to achieve in different tasks constitute a major determinant of people’s choices, willingness to expend effort, and persistence. research has demonstrated that children’s efficacy beliefs relate to their academic performance. in addition, when children are trained to believe and ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ 150 bastidas profileprofileprofileprofileprofile to be more efficacious, they achieve better in various subject areas such as reading and math (schunk, 1991b). the previous findings in the achievement motivation research suggest that students who believe they are competent and efficacious language learners should be expected to be more motivated, to engage in second/foreign language learning (s/fll), and to achieve better in s/fll activities. this means that esl/efl teachers should try to guide and help their students to have a high self-concept about their own abilities and capacities to learn another language and to become more efficacious language learners. task values subjective task value is a construct proposed in lewin’s, tolman’s, and atkinson’s expectancyvalue models and later elaborated and supported in eccles et al’s (1983) social cognitive value model (wigfield, 1994). task values deal with the people’s incentives for doing an activity. these values are concerned with the answers to the questions ‘should i do this task and why?’ or ‘do i want to succeed and why?’ task values have been defined in terms of the following four components: intrinsic interest, value attainment, utility, and cost value (eccles et al., 1983). intrinsic interest value refers to how much individuals like and enjoy doing an activity. attainment value corresponds to the importance of a task and the importance of doing well on an activity. utility value is defined by the usefulness of an activity in terms of the people’s future goals. cost refers to the perceived negative aspects or the demands of doing one task. cost also refers to the fact that if people engage in one task, they will be deprived of any benefit or enjoyment of engaging in other tasks (wigfield & eccles, 1992). researchers have mainly studied the nature of the first three subjective task values and their relation to student choice of activities and achievement performance. a major finding of these studies is that while students’ beliefs about their abilities and expectancies for success predicted their performance in language arts and mathematics, their subjective task values predicted both intentions and actual decisions to continue taking language arts and mathematics courses (eccles et al., 1983; meece et al., 1990; wigfield & eccles, 1992). the results of the previous research have implications as regards motivation to learn another language. first of all, when students value s/fll in terms of its intrinsic interest, they are more motivated to study another language. secondly, if they believe that learning another language is very important, they will likely engage in language learning activities; and finally, when they recognize the usefulness of learning a second or foreign language for their future goals, they will most likely feel highly motivated and choose to engage in s/fll activities. intrinsic and extrinsic motivation and goal orientation are three major constructs also used to explain and support the value component. personal causation (de charms, 1968), mastery motivation (harter, 1978, 1981a, 1981b), selfdetermination (deci, 1980; deci & ryan, 1985, 1991), and emergent motivation (csikszentmihalyi, 1978, 1985) are the major theories that studied the intrinsic and extrinsic motivation constructs. the role of goals and goal orientation have been discussed in the theories proposed by nicholls (1984), ames and archer (1987, 1988), and dweck and leggett (1988). research in these theories assumes that this set of constructs is critical to motivation. people could self-evaluate as competent and efficacious as regards an activity, but they may not do it if they do not have a purpose or reason for doing the activity. intrinsic and extrinsic motivationintrinsic and extrinsic motivationintrinsic and extrinsic motivationintrinsic and extrinsic motivationintrinsic and extrinsic motivation intrinsic motivation (im) refers to people’s internal desire to engage in an activity for the pleasure and satisfaction it produces (deci, 1972; deci & ryan, 1985; harter, 1981a). im is based on theories that view learning as a self-initiated, spontaneous, and natural psychological process (rigby, deci, patrick, & ryan, 1992). in contrast, extrinsic motivation (em) refers to people’s ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○151 profileprofileprofileprofileprofile a framework to understanding motivation in the tesol field decisions to do something for extrinsic reasons or incentives. the em construct is based on theories that maintain that learning occurs because of the presence of external incentives, rewards, requirements, and social control. im and em refer to the first part of the questions stated above, ‘do i want to succeed?’ or ‘should i do this task?’ in the mastery motivation perspective, im related positively to perceived competence and internal control (harter, 1981b; harter & connell, 1984). students who believed they were competent showed greater im than students who thought they had lower competence (boggiano, main, & katz, 1988; gottfried, 1985, 1990). there is also a positive relationship between im, competence, and task difficulty. children enjoy more and perceive a higher competence when they succeed at difficult tasks (harter, 1978, 1981a). the idea that people’s perceptions of control influence behavioral outcomes has been discussed in de charms’ (1968, 1984) personal causation theor y and in rotter’s social-learning theory (1966, as cited in pintrich & schunk, 1996). research has supported a positive relationship between internal locus of control and motivation and achievement in school (phares, 1976). students who perceive behavioral outcomes (successes, failures) to be under their control (internal control) should be motivated to engage in academic activities, expend effort, and persist in challenging tasks. on the contrary, students who believe that their behavioral outcomes are not under their control (external control) should be expected to be less motivated, to expend less effort, and to give up on difficult tasks. self-determination theor y has focused on some human’s innate organismic needs for competence and self-determination (autonomy). the positive relationship between competence and im found in other theories has been corroborated in this theory. the more competent individuals perceive themselves to be at an activity, the more intrinsically motivated they will be at the activity (deci & ryan, 1985). the need for selfdetermination or autonomy involves people’s experience of choice and the opportunity to use those choices as the determinants of their own actions. research has studied the relation of selfdetermination to im (ryan, 1993). children who perceived the classroom environment as autonomy-oriented reported greater internal control over behavioral outcomes. in addition, they reported higher perceived competence and mastery motivation (ryan & grolnick, 1986). research has also found that choice of activities affects im (swan & pittman, 1977; zuckerman, porac, lathin, smith, & deci, 1978). an issue debated in motivational and educational research relates to the role of extrinsic rewards on im. in general, the results of research indicate that im decreases when children receive rewards for doing activities that are intrinsically interesting (lepper, 1981, 1983; lepper & greene, 1978; lepper & hodell, 1989; pierce, cameron, banko, & so, 2003) or for just working on tasks regardless of level of performance (cameron & pierce, 1994, 2005; deci & ryan, 1991). however, nontangible incentives such as verbal praise and positive feedback enhance im if these contribute to raise children’s perceived competence (deci, vallerand, pelletier, & ryan, 1991). the results of the previous research have implications for learning a target language. students who believe they are competent language learners would show greater im to learn another language than students who think they are not competent language learners. in addition, children might feel more motivated intrinsically and perceive higher competence when they succeed at challenging, autonomous, novel, and authentic language learning (ll) tasks. furthermore, teachers should be careful about the use of incentives in their second/foreign language classes. students will be more motivated to learn another language if they perceive language learning as an enjoyable activity for its own sake. the teachers’ verbal praise and positive feedback that would produce an increase in motivation to ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ 152 bastidas profileprofileprofileprofileprofile learn a language is the one that provides information about the students’ progress in their s/fll competence. achievement goalsachievement goalsachievement goalsachievement goalsachievement goals achievement goals refer to the purposes people have in choosing and doing a variety of tasks. they correspond directly with the “whys” of behavior. goals represent answers to the questions ‘why should i do this task?’ or ‘why do i want to succeed?’ (wigfield & eccles, 1992). various types of goals have been defined and studied in the motivational field. the best wellknown classifications of achievement goals have been proposed by dweck and leggett (1988), nicholls, cheung, laver, & patashnick (1989), schunk (1991a), and locke and latham (1990). dweck and leggett (1988) defined two major types of goals: performance goals and learning goals. performance goals reflect such questions as ‘will i look smart?’ and ‘can i beat others?’ performance goal-oriented people tend to maximize favorable evaluations of their ability and to minimize unfavorable evaluations of their ability. children will tend to select activities they know they can do. learning goals reflect questions such as ‘how can i do this task?’ and ‘what will i learn?’ individuals with this type of goal orientation want to increase their competence and master a task. they tend to select challenging activities (brophy, 2004). nicholls et al. (1989) also developed a similar typology of goals. they called them ego-involved goals and taskinvolved goals. additionally, they referred to other types of goals called work-avoidance goals. individuals with these goals attempt to avoid tasks or to do the least schoolwork they can. schunk (1991a) and lock and latham (1990) referred to the specificity and the generality of goals. specific goals include specific and shortterm criteria to accomplish an activity. these goals are achieved quickly and can result in higher efficacy, more effective learning, and greater motivation. general goals incorporate general and long-term standards to accomplish something. although these goals can be accomplished, they need a longer period of time. research has shown that these goals can best be accomplished when they are divided into a series of short-term and specific manageable subtasks (schunk, 1991a). schunk has also discussed the importance of the difficulty of a goal. people are more likely to spend more effort and time on a difficult goal than on an easier one. however, the difficulty should not be extreme, but moderate, so that individuals can feel a sense of progress and an increase in their self-efficacy and motivation. researchers using goal theor y orientations have indicated that the students’ types of goals can affect their choice of activities and their achievement performance. those children who have learning or task-involved goals are more likely to be more motivated in school than the ones with a performance goal orientation (ames, 1992; dweck & legget, 1988; nicholls, 1979; nicholls et al., 1989). an important finding in the achievement goal research indicates that just setting goals is not enough to enhance motivation and learning automatically. for this to happen, goals should have the qualities of being specific, shortterm, and moderately difficult (schunk, 1991a). in the area of goals, a few researchers have recently become interested in the social aspects of motivation. for example, wentzel (1991) proposes that students have multiple achievement goals including not only academic ones but also social goals. according to wentzel, high and low achievers differ in their goal orientation. while high achievers tended to combine academic and social goals, low achievers tended to focus on social goals only. the previous theory and research in achievement goals have important implications for s/fll motivation. those students who have specific learning or task-involved goals would tend to select more challenging and more moderately difficult tasks than students with performance goals. in addition, the former students should be more likely to engage in s/fll and to get a higher language learning achievement. this means that teachers should guide ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○153 profileprofileprofileprofileprofile a framework to understanding motivation in the tesol field and help their students to be more conscious learners by means of planning and stating task-involved, specific, short-term and moderately difficult goals, when studying and learning a target language. however, the cognitive theories of motivation were questioned in the 1980s and 1990s for their exclusive focus on the individual and their minor concern for the role of the social context in the learning and motivational processes. it appears that the first author who referred to motivation from a socio-constructivist perspective was eva sivan, who wrote a review paper based on a research study in 1986; but before dealing with this topic, let me provide a general over view of socioconstructivism. socio-constructivism is not just one theory, but a group of theories that refers to human cognitive development and students’ learning in the classroom. most of these theories drew strongly from the work of vygotsky (1978) and his followers (e.g. cole & bruner, 1971; lave, 1988; rogoff, 1990; wertsch, 1991; as cited in hickey, 1997). in general, socio-constructivism emphasizes the role of socio-cultural aspects, collaboration, and negotiation in thinking and learning. in addition, socio-constructive theories state that the cognitive activity is a developmental process influenced by individual differences, socio-cultural factors, and interpersonal relations. this means that for socioconstructivists, the cognitive activity, the cultural knowledge, tools and signs, and assisted learning are three central components in order to understand the processes of human cognitive development, students’ learning, and teachers’ instructional activity (sivan, 1986). taking into account that cognitive development, learning, and social context are closely related to motivation, some researchers thought that the socio-constructive approach could be used to enhance the understanding of the nature and way that motivational processes take place. in this way, a socio-constructive approach provided a framework for understanding motivation as a social process negotiated by the participants involved in an interaction event. in addition, it was proposed that socio-constructivism help to reconceptualize motivation, especially in school contexts, along these dimensions: (a) it allowed for a discussion of context and cultural issues that influence motivation and how motivation is shown; (b) it allowed for a discussion of the intrapsychological function of the individual; and (c), it allowed for a discussion of interpersonal relations that influence, shape, and maintain motivation (sivan, 1986, p. 216). according to this theoretical framework, some socio-constructivist theorists, based on some tenets of socio-cultural theories, have proposed conceptualizing cognitive, motivation and sociocultural factors as interdependent factors (rueda & dembo, 1995; hickey, 1997; oldfather & dahl, 1994). consequently, motivation is not a process instigated by the individual. instead, motivation is a socially negotiated cultural norm that “results in an observable manifestation of interest and cognitive and affective engagement” (sivan, 1986, p. 210). recent concepts of motivation in tesolrecent concepts of motivation in tesolrecent concepts of motivation in tesolrecent concepts of motivation in tesolrecent concepts of motivation in tesol in the 80’s and 90’s the concepts of motivation in tesol were influenced by some traditional concepts coming from psychology. for example, harmer (1983, 1994) and brown (1994) highlight the importance of intrinsic and extrinsic motivation. brown affirms that “yet another but perhaps the most powerful dimension of the whole motivation construct in general is the degree to which learners are intrinsically or extrinsically motivated to succeed in a task” (p. 155). although harmer (1983) refers to motivation in terms of ‘goals’, he is still influenced by the distinction between intrinsic and extrinsic motivation, which, by the way, are wrongly defined and applied to the classroom situation, since he says that “extrinsic motivation … is concerned with factors outside the classroom, and intrinsic motivation … is concerned with what takes place in the classroom” (p. 3). a more recent concept that parallels the beginnings of a new trend in motivation theories in psychology is the one advanced by littlewood in ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ 154 bastidas profileprofileprofileprofileprofile 1984. he defined motivation as “the crucial force which determines whether a learner embarks on a task at all, how much energy he devotes to it, and how long he perseveres” (p. 53). this definition corresponds to schunk’s (1989) cognitive theory which supports cognitive views of motivation and proposes the following three observable behaviors to infer the presence of motivation: choice of tasks, effort, and persistence (as cited in pintrich & schunk, 1996, 2001). although littlewood’s (1984) concept is more up-dated, it is not in accordance with the new achievement motivation theories, and the most recent socio-constructive theories of motivation, which have started to be incorporated in the tesol field. on the one hand, some writers, such as oxford and shearin (1994) and crookes and schmidt (1991), called for a broadening of the tesol research agenda in order to include the contemporary cognitive approaches to motivation developed both in psychology and in education. the first authors to do this were williams and burden (1997), who stated that motivation was a complex and multidimensional construct influenced by internal factors (e.g. intrinsic interest of activity, perceived value of activity, sense of agency, mastery, self-concept, attitudes, affective states, developmental age and stage, and gender) and external factors (e.g. significant others, the nature of interaction with significant others, the learning environment, and the broader context). in addition, they defined motivation as follows: • a state of cognitive and emotional arousal • which leads to a conscious decision to act, and • which gives rise to a period of sustained intellectual and/or physical effort • in order to attain a previously set goal (or goals) (p. 120). as can be seen, this definition of motivation is essentially cognitive, although they claim that it “fits within a social constructivist framework” (p. 120). however, when they present their simplified model of motivation, they acknowledge the role of the social context, especially when people try to sustain the effort needed to complete an activity. according to williams and burden, this effort takes place within a socio-cultural context, which influences the choices people make to fulfill a task. on the other hand, although dornyei (2001a, 2001b) does not provide a specific definition of motivation for learning a target language, he provides a framework of l2 motivation composed of three levels: the language level, the learner level, and the learning situation level. the language level refers to such aspects of l2 culture and community, and their “intellectual and pragmatic values and benefits” for the learner (dornyei, 2001a, p. 19). the learner level encompasses the personal characteristics brought by the people to the learning process such as self-confidence (as the most relevant one). finally, there is the learning situation level, which involves course specific motivational components related to the syllabus, the method, the instructional materials, and the learning tasks; teacher-specific motivational components dealing with the teachers’ behavior, personality, and teaching style, and group-specific motivational components, such as goal orientedness, norm and reward system, group cohesiveness, and classroom structure. dornyei (2001a) refers to his model as an educational approach to l2 motivation because of its emphasis on motivation in the classroom. having in mind the social nature of learning and teaching a language in an efl context, i think that approaching motivation from cognitive and socioconstructive views has more power to explain this construct than pure cognitive theories. for this reason, i would like to propose a definition of motivation to learn another language that integrates some components of the previous theoretical approaches. motivation is a dynamic and an interactive process composed of beliefs, wants, reasons, and goals mediated by socio-cultural and historical conditions to learn a second or a foreign language. to support the previous definitions, let me refer to its main components. motivation is a process, ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○155 profileprofileprofileprofileprofile a framework to understanding motivation in the tesol field rather than a product, because we can not observe it directly; instead, we have to infer it through some behaviors such as choice of activities, effort and persistence, and the individuals’ verbalizations. in addition, this process is both dynamic and interactive. its dynamic nature is exemplified through the person’s internal processes stimulated by her/his wants, beliefs, aims, etc., and through her/his external and overt behaviors in order to accomplish her/his aims. however, motivation is not only an internal process, as cognitivist psychologists affirm; it is also an interpersonal and an interactive process because human beings’ activities take place in a social context where individuals interact and influence each other. in addition, there should be an interaction between the internal and the external factors which influence each other and affect people’s motivation. in addition to affecting each other, there should be an interaction among these factors both internally and externally. based on cognitive theories, i state that motivation is a process composed of beliefs mainly about people’s own abilities, expectancies, and selfefficacy to do a task; intrinsic task values, attainment and utility values to fulfill an activity, and goals that individuals have in mind to direct their actions. finally, i state that these internal cognitive processes are mediated by socio-cultural and historical conditions due to the socio-cultural nature of human activities. however, i do not believe that human beings are completely shaped by the social context, as the behavioral and some social theories promote. on the contrary, human beings have to be considered active, reflective, critical and creative agents of what surrounds them and of the information that they receive from others. the socio-cultural context serves as a mediator and a facilitator to accomplish people’s goals, reasons, and actions. this is supported mainly by sociocultural, and socio-constructive theories (blumenfeld, 1992; guthrie & mccann, 1997; hickey, 1997; turner, 1995; mcinerney & van etten, 2002). in the processes of learning and motivation, i firmly believe that the students play this type of active and responsible role, and, based on the interaction between their own physical, cognitive, linguistic and affective capacities and the historical and real context, make their own decisions, support them with reasons and act on their environment in order to attain a specific goal, such as learning a second or foreign language. the role of the sociocultural and the historical conditions is very important to have in mind, especially in an efl situation where the surrounding context is different from an esl situation, and these conditions should undoubtedly influence the effectiveness of learning and teaching a target language. conclconclconclconclconclusionsusionsusionsusionsusions in this article i have presented an overview of the conceptualization of motivation both in psychology and in tesol. i began with a brief presentation of traditional concepts of motivation within the rationalist and the behaviorist approaches to learning. taking into account the limited views of these approaches and their simplicity in explaining motivation, i continue with the conceptualization of motivation in cognitive psychology. in addition to providing a more concrete definition, this approach is supported by intensive research that revived the interest in motivation and showed that this psychological process is very complex, multi-dimensional, and dynamic. given the nature of the object of our study, that is language, motivation has been studied from different perspectives than the ones used in psychology, such as gardner’s and lambert’s socio-cultural and educational approach (1972), which was considered a landmark in l2 motivation and attitude that stimulated a lot of research in tesol. however, although in cognitive psychology research in motivation has been intensive, rich, and revealing, it appears that in tesol few studies have been conducted within this approach (dörnyei, 2001; williams & burden, 1997). in this article, i ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ 156 bastidas profileprofileprofileprofileprofile have selected a number of cognitive factors that have been intensively researched in achievement motivation and have suggested some implications for research and practice in the tesol field. theorizing motivation from purely cognitive approaches does not provide a clear and a complete explanation of the complexity of motivation. for this reason both in psychology and in tesol, approaching this construct from a socioconstructive and a cultural view has been proposed. consequently, the author stresses the need to continue supporting this trend, together with the cognitive view, and for that purpose he proposes and elaborates a definition that needs to be tested in research and practice. finally, it is argued that given the social nature of human behavior and the specific socio-cultural and historical characteristics of teaching and learning english in a foreign context, this view of motivation can have a more powerful capacity to explain the motivation to learn a target language. referencesreferencesreferencesreferencesreferences ames, c. 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(1992). self-motivation for academic attainment: the role of self-efficacy beliefs and personal goal setting. american educational research journal, 29, 663-676. zuckerman, m., porac, j., lathin, d., smith, r., & deci, e. l. (1978). on the importance of selfdetermination for intrinsically-motivated behavior. personality and social psychology bulletin, 4, 443-446. profile 9.indd journal writing and its benefits in an upper intermediate efl class profile 9, 2008. issn 1657-0790. bogotá, colombia. pages 111-128 111 * e-mail: jucaja_98@yahoo.com address: carrera 15 a no.44-13 apto 202 this article was received on november 6th, 2007 and accepted on january 18th, 2008. journal writing and its benefits in an upper intermediate efl class la escritura por medio de diarios y sus beneficios en una clase de nivel intermedio alto judith castellanos* universidad distrital francisco josé de caldas, colombia this action research was conducted at universidad nacional de colombia with nine preservice teachers of the philology and languages, with emphasis in english, at the upperintermediate level of english. the study consisted of planning and evaluating a pedagogical intervention, which consisted of students exploring readings and/or their background knowledge and reflecting through journal entries about themes of their own choice. the instruments to collect information comprised the students’ journals, field notes from a poster session and a questionnaire. the results allowed me to conclude that the students had the opportunity to exercise a degree of autonomy which involved free choice on the topics they explored. the journal became a language-learning tool for the students; likewise, throughout its development, they experienced the need to do some research in the area they were exploring, which allowed them to construct knowledge. key words: journal writing in english language learning, action research esta investigación acción se realizó en la universidad nacional de colombia, con nueve estudiantes del programa de filología e idiomas con énfasis en inglés, que cursaban el nivel intermedio alto de inglés. el estudio consistió en planear, implementar y evaluar una intervención pedagógica, la cual consistió en que los estudiantes exploraran lecturas y/o su bagaje cultural por medio de reflexiones escritas en un diario sobre temas de su propio interés. los instrumentos utilizados para recoger información de los estudiantes incluían sus diarios, notas de campo en una sesión de carteleras hechas por los estudiantes y un cuestionario. los resultados me permitieron concluir que a través de los diarios, ellos tuvieron la oportunidad de ejercitar un aspecto de la autonomía que involucra la libre elección de los temas que exploraron. el diario se convirtió en una herramienta para el aprendizaje de la lengua. de igual forma, pudieron investigar sobre los temas que exploraban, lo que les permitió expandir su conocimiento palabras claves: escritura de diario en el aprendizaje del inglés, investigación acción profile 9.indd 111 21/04/2008 07:43:44 p.m. castellanos universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras112 introduction as efl teachers, we sometimes focus our attention in class only on teaching the language. this approach to teaching rarely gives us the opportunity to get to know who our students are and how their lives and views of the world are shaped through the interplay of several factors and conditions, including family patterns, educational histories, personal character traits, national and regional affiliations, social class background and social encounters (danielewicz, 2001). following this line of thought, i conducted action research project that would bridge the gap between teaching the language, learning about my students as individuals and also helping them in their learning process. journal writing can take different forms and respond to different purposes and the one narrated in this article presents the implementation of journal writing within the english as a foreign language class, as a way to not only support their learning process but also to enter the students’ worlds as individuals. i will start by describing the research problem, the setting and the participants; then, i present various definitions of journals, the research design and the instructional design. next, i include the analysis of the data and, finally, put forward the conclusions and implications of the study. statement of the problem the upper-intermediate english class was experiencing the plateau effect; that is, they felt as though they were stuck in their learning process and were not able to move forward to an advanced level. in order to help solve this problematic situation in the class, we agreed to undertake a class project in which the students engaged in journal writing and so enhance their learning process. the purpose of the task was to support this process and through it, work out a way to help students surpass that feeling of not advancing. in view of what has been said, the study is grounded on the following questions: what happens to students’ language • learning process when journal writing is incorporated into an upperintermediate efl class? how do students react to the journal-• writing experience? what do journals tell me about my • students’ view of the world? research setting and participants this project was carried out at universidad nacional, a state university, with preservice students of the philology and languages, with emphasis in english, teacher training program. nine students of basic english iv (upper-intermediate level) students participated in the project, three female and six male. this was the entire class. in order to guarantee anonymity, the particiants’ names were changed as follows: three female students: sara, ana, – maria six male students: pedro, martin, – charlie, juan, diego, ricardo theoretical framework below, i present an account of my own teaching experience with journals; then, i profile 9.indd 112 21/04/2008 07:43:44 p.m. journal writing and its benefits in an upper intermediate efl class profile 9, 2008. issn 1657-0790. bogotá, colombia. pages 111-128 113 include several definitions about the nature and usefulness of journals and finally, i present a brief state-of-the-art summary about the use of journals in different studies. incorporating journal writing in the efl class agrees with a critical-literacy approach to teaching in the sense that we should: “empower learners by providing them with a critical analytical framework to help them reflect on their own language experience and practices of others in the institutions of which they are part and in the wider society within which they live” (clark & ivanic, 1997, p. 213, cited in pennycook, 2003). in doing so, students develop critical language awareness. likewise, critical pedagogy offers language-teaching educators multiple possibilities to vary the linguistic approach to teaching and learning english. steiner et al. (2000) pinpoint a learning principle from freire’s work which reads: “the world must be approached as an object to be understood and known by the efforts of learners themselves. moreover their acts of knowing are to be stimulated and grounded in their own being, experiences, needs, circumstances, and destinies” (p. 65). in that line of thought, learning should go beyond the specific contents of an area, which was guaranteed by the free choice in topic selection in the teaching-learning experience that this article reports on. concerning my experience with journals, back in 2001 i first came across the book strategies for success (brown, 2002), which encouraged me to start incorporating journals in my efl classes. in his book, brown persuades efl students to write journals by telling them that they are very informal diaries about their own feelings and thoughts as they are studying english. he also asserts that it is easy to write a journal and that it will help the students to be better learners. the idea of giving students a tool to write about their learning process was very appealing to me and i started to implement it right away in 2002. i have continued to implement journals in my efl classes ever since, every time with various purposes. the present experience depicts an innovative practice in the efl classroom which features the journal as a means for improving the writing skill and a place for self-exploration and reflection for the students. this action research project builds on evidence suggesting that responding to reading in writing, sharing ideas and reflecting on our own ways of knowing are processes that enhance learning and improve thinking (wilcox, 1998). students record their personal responses and reflections in their journals. a journal is a place where our thinking can become visible, we toss around ideas and consider what others think; we make connections between new and prior information, examine our own thinking strategies, and judge our own learning (ibid, 1998). wilcox also presents a taxonomy of journals according to content and language of thinking; journal keepers’ contents include interpretations, reactions, questions, and comments; and through them, they illustrate, express, describe, select, justify, deduce, suppose and sort. in order to continue developing this concept, it is necessary to highlight the great variety of purposes that educators can give to journals in their classes. in that profile 9.indd 113 21/04/2008 07:43:44 p.m. castellanos universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras114 respect, fulwiler (1991) emphasizes that efl students can write about academic problems and progress to sorting out where they are, how they are doing, and perhaps discuss what to do next. another quite relevant feature of journals is its free-writing nature. as such, they can be used for diverse purposes such as class starters and as a vehicle for posing and solving problems; to summarize important aspects of a lecture or lesson; to monitor students’ progress in the class; and to give students the opportunity to write to each other about concerns and questions raised in the class, among others purposes. more importantly, journals are also places where students can try out their expressive voices freely without fear of evaluation. this is a key aspect in the present action research project since i encouraged students to write on a regular basis without being coerced by a grade that measured technical aspects of the language such as syntax, grammar, punctuation, and the like. instead, i evaluated the process as a whole and students received the highest grade for having completed the task. genesse & upshur (1999) present a number of benefits of journals. first, they provide useful information for individualizing instruction; for example: writing skills, writing strategies, and making use of students’ experiences in and outside of school; learning processes; and tapping into students’ attitudes and feelings about themselves, their teachers, their school and interests, expectations and goals. second, journals increase opportunities for functional communication between students and teachers. third, they give students opportunities to use language for genuine communication and personalized reading. fourth, they permit teachers to individualize language teaching by modeling writing in their responses to student journals. fifth, they promote the development of certain writing skills and sixth, they enhance student involvement in, and ownership of learning. all of the above represent benefits that are pertinent to this action research project. genesse & upshur (1999) also recognize the uniqueness of journals as a means for collecting data, as they are a method of collecting information that is extensively under the control of students since they can write whatever and however they want. in the colombian context, viáfara (2005) conducted a study with student teachers in which he designed tasks within a reflective framework to support student teachers’ learning in their practicum. one of the reflective tools that he used was journals, which, he said, “traditionally have been widely used in teacher education courses to provide participants with an opportunity to engage in one of the most successful manners of reflection: dialoguing with oneself or someone else” (p.61). the student teachers not only shared their journals with the researcher but also among themselves; thus creating a group dialogue for peers to react by answering or posing questions, providing suggestions, narrating experiences, agreeing and disagreeing and so forth. as part of his observations about the main gains of using journals, viáfara states that journal writing not only facilitates student teachers’ reflections, but also informs the supervisor about issues that arise from the practicum, in order to profile 9.indd 114 21/04/2008 07:43:44 p.m. journal writing and its benefits in an upper intermediate efl class profile 9, 2008. issn 1657-0790. bogotá, colombia. pages 111-128 115 arrange meetings to address their needs and expectations. a second study, conducted by quintero & guerrero (2005) used journals with eighthsemester students in order to provide a space for reflection on critical pedagogy. the focus of the study was to investigate the student teachers’ discursive actions as they were reflected in their journal entries. they observed how the student teachers’ individual discursive actions evolved as they reflected on critical pedagogy tenets and aspects that are crucial to their lives as professionals, such as reflecting, being critical and sensitive to their human and social dimension and that of their pupils. in a third study conducted with eighthsemester student teachers, castellanos (2005a) used student teachers’ journals as a source of data to inform her study about the way they construct their own image as teachers. the reflections of the journals contained rich information about the student-teachers’ beliefs about teaching and learning, their philosophies as teachers, how they engaged in collaborative work with their teachers, supervisors and peers, among other significant aspects. finally, castellanos (2005b) conducted a small-scale project with first-semester preservice students of a teacher education program in elt at universidad distrital during the first semester, 2004. in her study, the author explored the role of journals as a rich source of information for assessment, which is understood as nonmeasurement (qualitative) techniques that provide information useful for instructional planning (genesse & upshur, 1999). two related questions guided this small-scale project: how can students’ feedback inform my decision-making in ongoing instructional planning? what kinds of assessment information do students’ journals provide? the findings concentrate on assessment information provided in students’ journals by analyzing their weekly entries. the results suggest that valuing instructional activities, identifying strengths and weaknesses in language skills and experiences with language learning outside of school are the most frequent type of assessment information that constitutes rich first-hand information for a teacher’s decision-making in ongoing instructional planning. in this theoretical framework, i included different views pertaining to the nature and usefulness of journals. next, there is a description of the research design, the instructional design and the presentation of the data analysis. research methodology the action research design provided a step-by-step methodology to plan, implement and evaluate the pedagogical intervention. according to carr & kemmis (1986), as cited in burns (1999), “action research is a form of self-reflective inquiry undertaken by participants in social situations in order to improve the rationality and justice of their own social or educational practices, as well as their understanding of these practices and the situations in which these practices are carried out” (p.30). i considered action research to be the most accessible form of research, for it allowed me to propose a profile 9.indd 115 21/04/2008 07:43:45 p.m. castellanos universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras116 solution to the problem that i encountered in this class. i followed the four “essential moments” of planning, action, observation and reflection (kemmis & mctaggart, 1988, as cited in burns, 1999). after observing the class for the first two weeks and an informal talk with the students, i planned my pedagogical intervention which was the task of journal writing. along with the implementation of the action, i gathered data which i analyzed in order to reflect on the implemented action. the reflections that arose from these moments are presented later in this article in the discussion of the findings. the instruments applied with the students to collect information i used the following instruments: students’ journals. i collected the 1. students’ journals every week and read and analyzed them in order to find evidence of the students’ language-learning process and their views of the world. the students wrote their last journal entry using the following prompts, which were essential to learn about their reactions towards the journal-writing experience: why did you choose the topic – you explored in your journal? how did you feel during the – process? can you name any pedagogical – implications of journal writing? field notes from the poster session. 2. my notes gathered students’ opinions about the advantages and drawbacks they experienced in the process of journal writing. a questionnaire. the questionnaire 3. contained eight questions which were answered by all of the students. the questionnaire that i designed informed me about the students’ opinions, feelings and ideas as regards the journal-writing experience. the questions were used for eliciting information pertinent to the task of journal writing, whether it was successful or not, and for evaluating the most relevant aspects of this experience. i administered the questionnaire to all the students once they had completed nine journal entries (see appendix 1). the instructional design in class, the students discussed their needs during the first week of the semester, addressing the most – and least-explored aspects of language they had been exposed to during their learning process. among the most-explored, they mentioned grammar, reading and vocabulary; writing was the least-explored. later on, an informal talk with the students shed light on their interest in carrying out a class project. they agreed on writing entries in a journal outside the class, where they could explore a theme of their choice. initially, the task was expected to be carried out over ten weeks, from august 19 to october 31, 2003, and students were expected to write a weekly entry, for a total of ten entries. in the end, however, students were able to present only nine profile 9.indd 116 21/04/2008 07:43:45 p.m. journal writing and its benefits in an upper intermediate efl class profile 9, 2008. issn 1657-0790. bogotá, colombia. pages 111-128 117 entries instead of the ten that were originally intended due to activities and events on campus that reduced the number of classes. i responded to every entry by posing questions, providing suggestions, interpretations and my point of view, agreeing and disagreeing and so forth. a certain level of informality and flexibility was guaranteed since students needed to perceive their journal as their site for selfexpression. the complete process of journal writing was shared in a poster session during a class at the end of the semester, during which i had the opportunity to learn their opinions about the advantages and drawbacks they experienced in the process of journal writing. the themes that the students explored were the following: three students, two female and one – male, explored mass media and news. two male students explored aesthetic – topics such as modern art and music. two male students explored worldwide – issues: globalization, the global village and third-world chaos. one female student focused on – dubbing (providing the dialogue of movies and tv programs in the language of the viewer country). one male student’s journal topic was – his hometown. findings data analysis consisted of examining the data carefully to search for salient patterns, and emerging commonalties were used to construct the final categories. data extracts from the students’ journals reveal the participant’s perspective. the extracts of the participants have not been modified or grammatically corrected in order to ensure authenticity. the patterns, themes and commonalities that emerged from the analysis of the questionnaire, the journal entries and the notes that i took during the poster session were condensed into the following categories: questions categories what happens to students’ languagelearning process when journal writing is incorporated in an upperintermediate efl class? how do students react to the journalwriting experience? journal writing, an integral languagelearning 1. tool i reflect, therefore i am2. flowing dialogue or discouraging criticism3. valuing the pedagogical implications of journal 4. writing what do journals tell me about students’ views of the world? read my word, read my world5. table 1. categories drawn from the data analysis. profile 9.indd 117 21/04/2008 07:43:45 p.m. castellanos universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras118 1. journal writing, an integral language-learning tool this category answers the first two questions, namely, what happens to students’ language-learning processes when journal writing is incorporated into an upper-intermediate efl class? how do students react to the journal-writing experience? it describes the students’ opinion of the journal as a tool for language learning. the aspects that are mentioned here make journal writing a very integral task that involves many aspects of language learning other than the mechanics of the language because language is conceived as permeating every experience of the human being. some of these aspects include the journal as a means for exploration and research of topics that are grounded in the students’ interests. another is free choice, since the students had the opportunity to exercise a degree of autonomy in their free choice of the topics they explored. likewise, the journal is regarded as a way to observe and experience process writing. the students highlighted their enjoyment of the process of researching in order to inform themselves about the topic. according to their answers, the students experienced the need to do some research, look for information that they had retrieved from different sources such as articles in newspapers, magazines and the internet; and to create bibliography and discography. throughout the journal entry process, students learnt about the themes they explored which included music, art and poetry, reacting to these forms of art by means of reflections and productions of their own. below i include a poem written by one of the students in his journal: it is not about peace or violence peace will never be gained without social equality it is not about delinquency delinquency is a result of social inequality it is not about personal overcoming it will keep and promote social inequality it is about the power framework and the kind of society it produces it is about looking for a new kind of society it is about looking for a new kind of power it is about looking for a new future full of liberty and real peace. (pedro) likewise, they experienced the journal as a means to express themselves with absolute freedom to write about something they like or know about and to say how they feel about it. finally, as seen in pedro’s verbatim quote: “the best thing about journal writing was to get used to writing and improve writing skills by putting into practice vocabulary and grammar in context”. the journals helped in the english-learning process because it improved the writing skill. the free nature of journal entries was a key aspect to students’ improvement, since they didn’t feel pressured to fit their writing to rigorous formats, thus, their writing flowed. they also identified improvement in grammar, vocabulary, connecting ideas through the use of connectors and developing opinions with arguments. i have included the students’ own words that can tell us about their views on the purpose of writing in their journal in terms of improving writing skills: “develop profile 9.indd 118 21/04/2008 07:43:45 p.m. journal writing and its benefits in an upper intermediate efl class profile 9, 2008. issn 1657-0790. bogotá, colombia. pages 111-128 119 written fluency through reflections and statements” (ricardo); “watch a process through what we were writing” (ana); “get used to writing” (maria). they also think the journal is an opportunity to “talk and write about a topic we are interested in” (juan) and “an easy way to learn english working with a topic in which you are interested” (charlie). students’ voices also support the view of language that is at the core of this action research: “strength or a creation of a personality, identity” and to “discover things i didn’t know about my reason to be like i am” (pedro). the students’ responses to journal writing as a learning tool seems to support the purposes of journal writing that are put forward by genesse & upshur (1999), which consist of promoting the development of certain writing skills and enhancing students’ involvement in, and ownership of learning. 2. i reflect, therefore i am this category also responds to the questions: what happens to students’ language learning-process when journal writing is incorporated into an upperintermediate efl class? and how do students react to the journal-writing experience? the experience of journaling as a reflective tool, as reported by the students, supports wilcox’s (1998) views when she asserts that responding to reading in writing, sharing ideas and reflecting on our own ways of knowing are processes that enhance learning and improve thinking. the students in this action research project seem to agree on the fact that reflecting upon their chosen theme helped them construct new knowledge. in order to illustrate this view, i have included some of the students’ in vivo words, such as “think more about”, “realize”, “become aware” “think about new ways”, “took me to places i didn’t know or didn’t want to go before.” also, reflection fostered the need to take action. to exemplify this statement, one student’s journal was developed around the topic of his hometown and he wrote: “the journal helped me to think more about the issue and probably i could help a lot in the future” (ricardo). two students, whose topic for reflection was news and mass media, suggest that reflection helped them to make connections: “reflect about how the news can be related to the human behavior and to establish relations between news and the things that happen in the world” (charlie); “assume a position about the information i receive everyday” (ana). for another student, reflection helped to “reaffirm some ideas i had” (juan). 3. flowing dialogue or discouraging criticism …the dream of liberating education is for equality and against hierarchy… for an egalitarian classroom and against authoritarian relations in the classroom; for dialogue among peer students and with the teacher and against the monologue of the talking teacher who lectures students into silence and boredom. (shor, 1986, p.5) establishing a dialogue with the students by writing comments on their journal entries is not an easy task. i find this part of journal writing to be the most critical one since the teacher’s comments are profile 9.indd 119 21/04/2008 07:43:45 p.m. castellanos universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras120 extremely loaded with subjectivity and they can enhance the process or contribute to its detriment. i was especially interested in knowing whether i had affected positively or negatively the students’ self-confidence as writers. fortunately, most of the students felt “happy”, “proud”, “comfortable” and “motivated” by my comments. they felt the journal was a means of communication where points of view were shared, appreciated and valued as interesting and important. peyton & reed (1990) present journals as a wonderful opportunity to have an actual dialogue. the journal, they assert, becomes, on one hand, an alternative to classroom interactions in which the teacher asks questions for the students to answer; and on the other hand, an alternative to the teacher’s response with brief, evaluative comments to students’ written texts. in contrast, dialogue writers place the value in the open and mutually exchange ideas. in the beginning of the process, the students were expecting to find comments related to the elaboration of ideas and cohesiveness. concerning this aspect, one student wrote: “i expected comments such as you should explore x statement more or i don’t get your idea; instead, i found comments that were motivating” (ana). this particular student, however, felt that she needed to be “more criticized to be more demanding with myself ”. another student wrote that through my comments he had realized he should work harder on the coherence of what he was writing. on the other hand, i also concluded that journals become a valuable space for the students’ voices. earlier in this article, i show my concern about the little amount of time that is actually dedicated in class to listening to what students have to say and sometimes their voices are totally left out. students’ responses in the questionnaire show that this pedagogical intervention opened a very valuable space for selfexpression and freedom. students’ journals were planned, thought and rethought by the students themselves; this made the classroom a laboratory grounded in the lives of the students where they explored the ways in which their lives connect to the broader society and how they are limited by that society. under the heading: “multicultural education is important to all students”, nieto (2002) addresses the issue of invisibility when she argues that the primary victims of biased education are those who are invisible in the curriculum. our students become invisible when the only voice that is heard in the classroom is the teacher’s voice. for the students who wrote about issues that affect communities and for the ones that explored issues of individual interests, the journal was the place where they became visible. next, i include some students’ voices concerning this aspect “i really want to thank the teacher for having given us the opportunity to write all that stuff and let us say what we probably would never say in class” (sara). “this has been for me a beginning. i did not only learn more about that what i like, but also express many things that i had not had the chance to express” (ricardo). finally, to illustrate the point of becoming visible, i quote a wonderful metaphor that introduces a student’s entry: “how to prevent a drop of water or being dried? throw it to the sea” (pedro). profile 9.indd 120 21/04/2008 07:43:45 p.m. journal writing and its benefits in an upper intermediate efl class profile 9, 2008. issn 1657-0790. bogotá, colombia. pages 111-128 121 journals, as well as other great numbers of classroom tools, can become an instrument for the inclusion and validation of all. as nieto suggests, multicultural education is by definition inclusive because it is about all people and for all people regardless of their ethnicity, language, sexual orientation, religion, gender, race, class or any other kind of difference. for me, taking such aspects into account was challenging, especially in the moment of responding and reacting to the students’ entries because i needed to be aware of the danger that engaging in a conversation with the students through their journals may imply. therefore, i was especially careful not to bias my comments; for instance, acknowledging only what i thought was true or generally true, not making punitive comments, or using irony to disagree. i had to be particularly careful with loaded words that are judgmental or with labels on the students’ thoughts and reflections. likewise, it was very tempting to include comments that disapproved of students’ vocabulary or style and to include comments criticizing form rather than focusing on what they intended to communicate. fortunately, students’ answers did not point out any of the above; however, they felt that sometimes i was a careless reader or did not pay enough attention to what they had written. 4. valuing the pedagogical implications of journal writing this category adds responses to the questions: what happens to students’ languagelearning process when journal writing is incorporated into an upperintermediate efl class? and how do students react to the journal-writing experience? on the one hand, the last question in the questionnaire aimed at retrieving information about whether or not they would recommend the use of journals, to which they all replied affirmatively. the responses given in the last entry of their journal concerning the pedagogical implications are also explored here. among the reasons they gave for their answers were the following: journals are a free way to express what you feel or know about something you have not talked anywhere (sara). you can get others’ opinions and learn from everybody (ana). is a way to know the students and that they show interest in this kind of activities (juan). is a positive thing, everybody has the right to express freely (pedro). you can improve your english and express yourself (sara). is very innovative and gives more solutions to learning than drawbacks (diego). is a nice useful way to learn and improve english and a good reflecting exercise (ricardo). journals should be checked weekly and we could include technology; for instance, use e-mails to check the journals and send comments (charlie). on the other hand, the students’ last journal entry also helped me see the impact of the journal-writing task. it informed me about why they chose their topics and how they felt during the process. some of the commonalties in their responses show that they chose to write about something that puzzled them, thus, they wanted to profile 9.indd 121 21/04/2008 07:43:46 p.m. castellanos universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras122 understand and about which they wanted possibly find some answers. of course, interest in the topic was also a major factor. one student’s entry reads: “afterwards i started looking for solutions and today i am still looking for them. but it doesn’t mean that i haven’t succeeded, it means that every day i learn new things and realize about the problems...” (last journal entry, sara) another student wrote: “i wanted to talk about it because i think it is a current topic and everybody should know about it.” (last journal entry, charlie) these students’ voices show an interest in topics that affect everybody as a community as opposed to the other half of the students who wanted to explore themes of a more individual nature. for instance, one male student wanted to explore drugs and alcohol in rock music lyrics because, as he says in his own words: “i wanted to make clear, for those who could read this, some things about the strange world of drugs, their rocker soundtracks, why the lyrics, why some of them aren’t simple apologies or invitations to take drugs, as most people think”. (last journal entry, martín) this quote suggests that he had sensed a biased point of view about the interpretation of these lyrics and wanted to show a different one. i also wanted to provoke responses about journal writing as a pedagogical tool, to which the students pointed out advantages and disadvantages. in the poster session, they orally expressed that among the advantages were building new knowledge through researching, comprised of both written and oral sources (e.g. interviews), reading and reflecting. moreover, other advantages include developing writing skills by writing about real things, about something they like, enjoy or believe; the realization of issues that they had not been aware of before; and assuming a position before the issues they explored. some disadvantages that they experienced in their process included, on the one hand, the need to receive more formal instruction in writing. in that respect, two students manifested that they would have liked to receive feedback about their style, grammar, syntax and the like. on the other hand, two of them experienced difficulty at the beginning of the process because they did not know what to write about. moreover, a couple of students experienced blockage and difficulty in putting their ideas on the paper; one of them honestly remarks on the lack of discipline to write weekly. others highlight that time constraints did not allow them to get deeper into their entries. finally, one of them found it really hard to talk about something without being subjective and he confessed that he was afraid of being misunderstood. 5. read my word, read my world the final category “read my word, read my world” sheds light on the question: what do journals tell me about students’ views of the world? i asked students about what someone could learn about them through their journal and they suggested that people may learn about their identity as writers and thinkers. concerning this profile 9.indd 122 21/04/2008 07:43:46 p.m. journal writing and its benefits in an upper intermediate efl class profile 9, 2008. issn 1657-0790. bogotá, colombia. pages 111-128 123 aspect, they said: “something about me and the place where i live” (ricardo); “they may get a little piece of reflection”(ana); “i can show an image as a thinking person who makes his own decisions”(martin); “how i think about the topic and how i put down my ideas in words”(juan); “the way i see society, the world and our real situation in political, social and economic terms” (pedro). despite these positive comments, other students’ answers can be interpreted as having a pessimistic view of the relation between a writer and a reader; for example, one perceives that nowadays “nobody cares about someone else’s point of view” (diego). although all students were engaged in the same task, they focused their journals on a variety of things. for example, sara experienced writing as a way to value the job of people involved in dubbing, which she portrayed as unknown but important; ana saw writing in a journal as a place she could approve or disapprove of human actions and pedro viewed writing as an important tool to learn about and refine his political self. i now present some students’ discourses. sara: valuing the tasks of people involved in dubbing sara developed a very expository and explanatory discourse, polite and technical because of the vocabulary that she uses, as if displaying a lot of knowledge about the topic. however, even though her discourse is expository and explanatory, the terms she uses are not excluding the reader. she informed herself about the task of dubbing and presented it first by describing it and then in a historical perspective. this type of discourse helped her learn more about the topic, and it also helps the reader get a glimpse of what dubbing is. she also explained why she was interested in dubbing and presented dubbing as a task she would like to undertake. even though she relates this task to her identity as an english apprentice, it is not highly valued and therefore is not closely related to herself: “it seems weird that translator and adapter’s part is in some way relegated in importance for me, since their work has to do directly with language itself and i love languages and my own language (because language says pretty much about culture and society at the time that about individuality); for that i affirm that i also have a high regard for that part of dubbing work...” however, she also views other tasks involved in dubbing as something completely apart that require the construction of a totally different self; throughout her journal she highly regards the task of voice actors. however, she sees it as something distant, a thing apart from her that she would like to work with one day: “i must be honest, definitely i would like to be a voice actress; all those glorifications i have made of dubbing about are the unquestionable proof. certainly, all the tasks involved in this work are very interesting and even praiseworthy, but i do love actor’s task over all the things and i admire them. i can recognize the voice of many of the actors; i like each of their particularities; and i would like to acquire those skills of creativity and beauty that they reflect in their voices”. profile 9.indd 123 21/04/2008 07:43:46 p.m. castellanos universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras124 there are also traits of identifying herself to dubbing through her identity as a colombian-by feeling proud that colombia has a great reputation and goodwill in dubbing: “nowadays, it has reestablished a little the level of performance that the actors must have in order to be genuine actors, and i am proud to say that they are some excellent voices able to compete with the ‘monster’ of mexico”. however, she is very critical of the role of colombia in dubbing and she explores solutions that would make colombia an authority and leader in dubbing. ana: approving and disapproving human actions ana’s discourse is reflective and critical of the “actions” of people portrayed in the news. she draws from news that is available and accessible. in this sense, her entries begin with introductory sentences such as “i heard (e.g. in the news)” or “i saw”. she is selective of news that causes a reaction by contrasting and comparing it to her own system of beliefs. she writes: “i love work in this journal because i learn a lot about myself, about the people, about how news can touch you, interest you, produce feelings like anger, happiness, incapacity.” her identity is then built around what’s right or wrong to her. however, there is no evidence in the journal of what supports her system of beliefs and her criticism of some human actions. it is difficult to identify whether she displays a primary discourse or a secondary discourse. primary discourses are learnt within the home and family and secondary discourses are learnt from being apprenticed to many groups and institutions (gee, 1990, as cited by mccarthey, 2002). as a writer, she does not elaborate her ideas in depth; instead, her reflections have the characteristics of an oral discourse, process-orientated, lexically sparse but grammatically intricate (halliday, 1985, as cited by baynham, 1995). pedro: refining his political self pedro viewed writing as an important tool to learn about and refine his political self. he writes: “this exercise has been one of the best ones in the class and i know that it helped, has helped and will help my linguistic, personal and political development”. his discourse is very academic and persuasive. he draws from various voices he has encountered, “when looking at the world i see... all of the above is part of another process: my political formation; which have been motivated by several factors such us personal experience, moral and ethical formation, family, music, literature (an arts in general), some teachers, some friends and lots of lectures and books that have been providentially put in my hands”. from his quote, we can see how his discourse has been shaped and developed in continuous and constant interaction with others (bakhtin, 1981, as cited by mccarthey, 2002). he builds his identity as a political being by aligning himself to the ideas of latin american leaders who have struggled for justice and equality: “i certainly think that in all times there will be certain people that dream of a united and free ‘afrolatinoamerica’ with enough room for indigenous, blacks, whites and mix blooded people”. he reaffirms himself in the diversity that characterizes latin america profile 9.indd 124 21/04/2008 07:43:46 p.m. journal writing and its benefits in an upper intermediate efl class profile 9, 2008. issn 1657-0790. bogotá, colombia. pages 111-128 125 and rejects the political world leaders who encourage globalization. in this analysis, i have presented the salient points in connection to the questions, the main aspects of the data retrieved from the three different instruments that i used to evaluate the pedagogical intervention, and examined students’ views on their own journalwriting process. finally, i have presented a brief account on the discourses of three students’ journals with the purpose of identifying how they view the world. let us now turn to a discussion of the findings that i have presented and relate them to the language-education field in our particular context. conclusions the evaluation of the journal-writing task permitted me to conclude that journal writing allows students’ free choice. they had the opportunity to exercise a degree of autonomy which involved exercising free choice in selecting the topics they explored. journal writing implies exploration and research of a topic; throughout the development of the journal, students experienced the need to do some research in the area they were exploring. besides expository, explanatory and descriptive discourse, students developed a reflective tone towards the topics explored. the journal was a site of dialogue and students viewed it as a means of communication between them and teachers. unlike essays, which aim at looking at writing as a product, students experienced the journal as a way to observe process writing, and, at the same time, as a tool for learning english in context. finally, the journal constituted a rich resource to identify traits of identity construction. the accounts of the discourses of three students revealed that all of them construct identity based on what interests them; they reproduce primary and secondary discourses (gee, 1990, as cited by mccarthey, 2002), products of their home, schooling, institutions and other people. he suggests that language is more than a set of rules for communication, it is an “identity kit” that signals membership in particular groups and that discourses include “ways of being in the world, or forms of life that integrate words, acts, beliefs, attitudes, social identities, as well as gestures, glances, body positions and clothes”. this analysis also confirms that identity builds from the interaction of many voices that people encounter. pedagogical implications the implementation of the task of journal writing has had an impact at the level of an efl class of a language-teaching program in a public university in bogotá, colombia. i hope that the information included here can and will serve as an inspiring experience for other language teachers who constantly assume the challenge of adjusting and integrating new teaching practices to meet the needs of learners. some of the implications of this action research include that our decision-making in the class, pertaining to planning, should be informed by students’ real needs, not only in terms of linguistic knowledge, but also in terms of their visibility. we can not ignore profile 9.indd 125 21/04/2008 07:43:46 p.m. castellanos universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras126 or discard students’ individualities with a totalitarian approach to teaching that forces us to see our students as a homogeneous corpus that needs to be shaped. journal writing, as it was experienced and reported on this action research, can become a place for visibility; that is, to hear our students’ voices, to engage in a dialogue with them as an alternative to the classical classroom interaction characterized by the teacher’s questions and the students’ answers to those questions. likewise, other pedagogical implications of this experience are related to the transformations that were observed and accounted for by the students themselves in their attitudes and perceptions towards writing. they became informed about the different aspects to be taken into account in order to promote writing. from my point of view, students benefit from an approach to writing that is grounded in content rather than form. additionally, teachers need to be respectful and open-minded about the students’ thoughts, ideas and feelings towards the topics they pursue. another important implication is engaging in authentic and honest dialogue as an alternative to the monologue of the talking teacher who lectures students into silence and boredom (shor, 1986). to sum up, this experience was valuable for the students and for me. it was beneficial for the students because they experienced the journal as an integral language-learning tool. also, they were free to write about the topic of their choice and to express themselves spontaneously without being coerced by the teachers’ comments or the grade itself. likewise, they had the chance to research, reflect and learn more about their topics and themselves in the process. for me, through valuing the students and their thoughts, ideas and feelings as well as understanding education from an egalitarian point of view, my teaching practice has been enriched and sustained. references baynham, m. (1995). literacy practices. investigating literacy in social contexts. new york: longman. bakhtin, m. m. (1981). the dialogic imagination. austin, tx: university of texas press. brown, d. (2002). strategies for success. a practical guide to learning english. ny: longman. burns, a. (1999). collaborative action research for english language teachers. cambridge: cambridge university press. clark, r., & ivanic, r. (1997). the politics of writing. london: routledge. carr, w., & kemmis, s. (1986). becoming critical: education, knowledge and action research. london: falmer press. castellanos, j. (2005a.). preservice students’ construction of self-image as teachers. a thesis submitted to the school of education, the masters in applied linguistics to tefl at universidad distrital francisco josé de caldas. castellanos, j. (2005 b.). student journals, a source of information for assessment. how. a colombian journal for teachers of english, 12, 29-43. danielewicz, j. (2001). teaching selves. nj: lawrence erlbaum associates, publishers. fulwiler, t. (1991). student journals. in b. miller & r. hubbard (eds.). literacy in process. porstmouth, nj:heinemann. gee, j. (1990). social linguistics and literacies. london: falmer. genesse, f. & upshur, j. a. (1999). classroombased education in second language education. cambridge: cambridge university press. kemmis, s., & mctaggart, r. (eds) (1988). the action research planner. geelong, victoria: deakin university press. profile 9.indd 126 21/04/2008 07:43:46 p.m. journal writing and its benefits in an upper intermediate efl class profile 9, 2008. issn 1657-0790. bogotá, colombia. pages 111-128 127 mccarthey, s. (2002). students’ identities and literacy learning. champaign, il: u of illinois, at urbana-champaign. nieto, s. (2002). language, culture and teaching. critical perspectives for a new century. mahwah, nj: lawrence erlbaum associates, publishers. pennycook, a. (2003). critical applied linguistics. in a. davis & c. elder (eds.). handbook of applied linguistics. oxford: blackwell. peyton, j, k., & reed, l. (1990). dialogue journal writing with non-native english speakers: a handbook for teachers. bloomington, ill: pantagraph printing. quintero, a., & guerrero, c. (2005). characterizing student-teachers’ conceptions about critical about the author judith castellanos holds a masters in applied linguistics to tefl from universidad distrital francisco josé de caldas. she currently works in the masters program in education at universidad distrital. she also teaches at la gran colombia university. pedagogy. a research document submitted to cide, universidad distrital francisco josé de caldas. shor, i. (1986). an interview with ira shor. literacy research center newsletter, 2(1), 1-5. steiner, f. s., et al. (2000). freirean pedagogy, praxis, and possibilities: projects for the new millennium. falmer press. viáfara, j. (2005). the design of reflective tasks for the preparation of student teachers. colombian applied linguistics journal, 7, 5374. wilcox, b. l. (1998). thinking journals. the reading teacher, 51(4), 350-353. profile 9.indd 127 21/04/2008 07:43:46 p.m. castellanos universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras128 appendix 1: questionnaire about the journal writing task student’s name: date: topic: keeping a journal please answer the following questions in a few words or sentences. what is the best thing about writing in your journal each week?1. what do you think is (are) the purpose(s) of writing in your journal each week?2. how has the journal helped you to reflect on 1. ? (write the topic of your journal here) how has the journal helped you in your english-learning process?2. how do you feel when you read the teacher’s comments each week?1. how do you feel when the teacher doesn’t comment in your journal?2. what could someone learn about you through this journal?3. would you recommend the use of journals? 4. yes no why? profile 9.indd 128 21/04/2008 07:43:47 p.m. 5profile vol. 11, no. 2, 2009. issn 1657-0790. bogotá, colombia. pages 5-9 editorial “the settings where research is conducted have also been expanded to include not only actual (and virtual!) language classrooms, but meetings and mentoring sessions. we now seek to examine not only what we are teaching, but what and how we think about what and how we are teaching. we now consider rich research data to even include conversations with learners about this wonderful process called language learning (p. 20)”1. the increasing interest in learning english has had an impact on the alternatives students are offered to study the language as well as on the particularities of classroom management teachers have to be aware of nowadays. hence, our conceptualizations about a classroom have to include different kinds of learning and teaching settings such as traditional face-to-face work; virtual-learning spaces to allow the learners to build a study path while tutors monitor and assist students when necessary; faceto-face study periods combined with alternating tutoring sessions; and mentoring sessions to support autonomous, semi-autonomous or self-instruction learning. this, in turn, opens doors to questions concerning a variety of issues that are born in the midst of the complex realities we face in such teaching and learning scenarios. changes in conceptions of what an english language classroom entails are also in tune with the attention research is being given in teacher education programmes. likewise, many practitioners are conscious of the importance of systematizing teaching and learning experiences, reflecting upon given matters, and carrying out classroom research, all with the purpose of sharing them through publishing. as pointed out by bigelow & walker (2004), the settings where research is carried out have also been expanded. research agendas and papers published in journals like profile focus not only on what we are teaching. as our readership can see in previous publications and in this number, we are committed to including papers that deal with what and how we think about what and how we are teaching; what we conclude after pondering the role of theory in teaching practice; the way languages policies are presented to the general community; and the relationship between 1 bigelow, m., & walker, c. (2004). creating teacher community: research an practice in language teacher education. creating teacher community. selected papers from the third international conference on language teacher education (pp. 1-26). minnesota: center for advanced research on language acquisition. 6 cárdenas beltrán discourse in policies and what teachers and students face in real life. in all cases, the authors support discussions and findings about given phenomena with data gathered through the use of various instruments and the analysis of documentary evidence. the sustained collaboration of the members of our editorial and advisory boards has made it possible to care for the standards of our journal. this number has also been backed up by other colombian reviewers who kindly helped us evaluate manuscripts, namely: professors doris correa, jaime usma and clara arias (universidad de antioquia), carlos rico (pontificia universidad javeriana), and elizabeth gonzález (instituto colombiano para el fomento de la educación superior – icfes). a word of gratitude to them is in order. in addition, from now on, we can count on the support of professors josé luis ortega martin and daniel madrid (universidad de granada, spain) and john m. keller (florida state university, usa), whom i welcome to our advisory board. this issue includes eleven papers concerning english language teaching (elt), language policies, and teacher education. in tune with the mission of profile, all of them are based on research, reflections, and innovative experiences in different contexts. the first section, issues from teacher researchers, begins with a report in regard to oral communication. this is an action research project by mireya peña and amparo onatra, two public school teachers in bogotá. the authors took part in a teacher development programme at universidad nacional de colombia, which guided them to do the study. after some time, they decided to publish what happened vis-a-vis the oral production of the secondary school students who engaged in activities that followed the task-based learning approach. the results of the study shed light on different demands transactional and interactional activities pose on learners. the next article, by carmen tulia zuluaga corrales, margarita maría lópez pinzón, and josefina quintero corzo tells us about a research project developed in a teacher education programme with a group of pre-service teachers and advisors with the purpose of sensitizing the academic community about the importance of rescuing the cultural identity of rural school students in caldas, colombia. the results show how the school curriculum was innovated by integrating the coffee culture and the development of pre-service teachers’ skills at designing content-based tasks. prospective teachers also evidenced sensitivity to their educational communities’ problems and particularities, as well as awareness of the commitment they should have with their teaching contexts. in addition, they acknowledged the impact contextualized teaching had on their students’ motivation as well as on their own interest in teaching. the third article addresses an issue of particular interest for english language teachers: interpersonal and transactional uses of l1 in the english as a foreignlanguage classroom. sandra higareda, georgina lópez and gerrard mugford, from mexico examine how new generations of language teachers in that country are using 7profile vol. 11, no. 2, 2009. issn 1657-0790. bogotá, colombia. pages 5-9 the students’ mother tongue, spanish, not only as a pedagogical tool but to develop and reinforce interpersonal relationships in the language classroom in order to enhance the learning of english. i am sure the authors’ arguments for a much more substantial and energetic role in the use of the mother tongue in the foreign language classroom contributes to this ongoing debate. i hope other teacher researchers feel encouraged to write about this matter in future issues. the next two articles have to do with the issues of testing and assessment in colombian contexts. the article by alexis a. lópez mendoza and ricardo bernal arandia addresses the problem of language testing in colombia. the authors present the results of a survey study concerning teachers’ perceptions about language assessment and the way they use language assessments in their classrooms. the outcomes point out that there is a significant difference in the perceptions that teachers have depending on the level of training they have in language assessment. as a result, they suggest that it is necessary to provide opportunities for all prospective language teachers to study how language assessment should be conducted, so that they can make informed decisions. the reading comprehension program in english as a foreign language at universidad de antioquia in colombia is the context jorge hugo muñoz marin focused on to carry out an exploratory study on teachers’ practices for assessing reading comprehension abilities. through documentary analysis and interviews, the author identifies and explains what happens with the different practices. samples from the participants illustrate the use of quantitative instruments to evaluate qualitatively, students’ lack of familiarity with qualitative assessment practices, teachers’ lack of familiarity with alternative assessment, and teachers’ concern for verification of achievement of learning objectives. his conclusions, as well as those presented in the previous article of this section, highlight the role in-service programmes may play in raising teachers’ awareness of alternative assessment and in promoting its use in efl (english as a foreign language) programmes. we close the second section of this number with a paper by aleida ariza and john jairo viáfara who tell us about the implementation of a model to foster autonomous learning among pre-service teachers at universidad pedagógica y tecnológica de colombia. participants were tutees who attended tutorial sessions with peers in higher semesters. as the model was implemented, they collected information by means of multiple qualitative research instruments. results indicate that tutees’ learning process was strongly influenced by their personality and attitudes. similarly, tutees expanded their views in regard to the english language, its learning, and their communicative competence. likewise, investigators describe three stages in tutees’ autonomous learning attitudes and practices. it is hoped that the model as well as the practical considerations described in the paper shed light on further applications in similar pre-service teacher education programs. 8 cárdenas beltrán in the next section, two papers by novice teacher researchers contain the findings of investigations carried out in the last phase of their undergraduate programmes. first, the article on parental involvement in english homework tasks as a means to bridge the gap between the school and home, by nelly patricia ávila daza and sandra janneth garavito, summarises a descriptive study carried out in a female public school. the findings of this investigation also showed the possibility of learning from each other and the importance of homework tasks as interactional and learning spaces among parents and children. rosa alejandra medina riveros writes about the study she conducted, while working as tutor, in an efl blended course that comprises part of the alex programme at universidad nacional de colombia in bogotá. we can find in this article the main characteristics of discussion boards, which were used as a main activity in the alex virtual english programme at universidad nacional de colombia in bogotá. additionally, we can learn about some of the students’ perceptions of the tool which, as can be read in the paper, was meant to ensure interaction among students and the tutors of the course. the last section, entitled issues based on reflections and innovations, contains three papers by colombian teacher educators and researchers. to begin, and following with the idea of contributing to the discussion of elt policies in colombia, the article by carmen helena guerrero nieto and alvaro hernán quintero polo draws our attention towards english as a neutral language and a constituent of dominance in english language education. the authors analyse the way the english language is constructed in an official document issued by the colombian ministry of education: the “estándares básicos de competencias en lenguas extranjeras: inglés” (basic standards of competences in foreign languages: english). the examination of the text and the conclusions revolve around three forms of neutrality: prescription, denotation, and uniformity. they also show that english is a vehicle used to spread a hegemonic and ideological influence and to alienate teachers’ beliefs and practices within english language education. intercultural competence is gaining more attention among teachers and teacher educators, as can be seen in previous issues as well as in other elt journals. this time we include a paper by josé aldemar álvarez valencia and ximena bonilla medina, who focus on the aspect of addressing culture in the efl classroom. the authors describe and reflect upon a collaborative and dialogical pedagogical experience they engaged in while working with pre-service teachers at la salle university in bogotá. the results can be divided into two main areas: teachers’ and learners’ enrichment and the generation of a proposal. the bilateral enrichment of the pedagogical experience the authors led helped them, as teachers, to improve their language teaching contexts and fostered critical intercultural competence in fl (foreign language) learners. 9profile vol. 11, no. 2, 2009. issn 1657-0790. bogotá, colombia. pages 5-9 likewise, the experience impelled the construction of a theoretical proposal to enhance intercultural awareness. finally, astrid núñez pardo and maría fernanda téllez téllez present an overview of materials development based on their experience as university teachers in bogotá. we can read about the role of teachers as textbook developers and how they can meet materials development demands by integrating conceptual aspects, a set of principles, and essential components. all of this has the important purpose of achieving better teaching and learning conditions for university students. we hope the issues contained in our journal inspire discussions, further applications, reflections, and further research. melba libia cárdenas beltrán journal editor profile 2.p65 ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○37 profileprofileprofileprofileprofile r eading should be the cornerstone of a school’s curriculum in order to build up the other skills. despite the fact that reading tends to be an obligation and a hard task, it should be seen as a fun activity which will extend the student’s knowledge of the world. reading efficiently in volves not only understanding, speed and fluency, but also the application of the student’s knowledge, thus promoting critical thinking. that is to say, the “ability to reach sound conclusions based on observation and information”. due to the importance of acquiring reading skills in a foreign language, we see the necessity to stimulate students toward becoming efficient readers. that means avoiding word by word reading (williams: 1984), and developing students’ abilities to understand and comprehend a text and to read fluently. introductionintroductionintroductionintroductionintroduction this project was conducted at fundación gimnasio los portales, a middle-high class female institution that promotes english as a second language in a bilingual environment, taking into account three levels : beginners (pre-school), intermediate (primary) and advanced (high school). we noticed that beginners present various and serious difficulties not only recognizing sounds but also matching them with alphabetical characters; as a consequence, they can not read fluently nor understand what they read. they use their native language phonetics to read; therefore, they have reading comprehension problems (dunn: 1984). intermediate students have problems understanding a text because of lack of background and interest in the reading. they can not use their dictionary even though it is handy for they don’t know how it works. in addition, they reject the idea of searching and looking for information by themselves. they are very dependable on the teacher’s presence and prodding. besides, they present troubles in reading comprehension and analyzing from context, associating, contrasting, comparing and relating different issues. advanced students consider reading more as a fun activity than an obligatory one. on the other hand, they experience problems understanding what they read when they are not able to figure out the context or when they are mistaken in pronunciation. therefore, the meaning is misunderstood. one of the most common obstacles reading is radio-t.v communication because students would rather watch t.v. than read a book. they are in favor of short easy-to-understand texts. in accordance with this, we placed special emphasis on how we could help students become efficient readers. for the purpose of this project, reading well and effectively is the activity of understanding written words, where everyone has the possibility of giving opinions becoming an efficient reader: a proposal for a school curriculum esperanza gaona g., laura isabel suárez, and hilma cristina gonzálezesperanza gaona g., laura isabel suárez, and hilma cristina gonzálezesperanza gaona g., laura isabel suárez, and hilma cristina gonzálezesperanza gaona g., laura isabel suárez, and hilma cristina gonzálezesperanza gaona g., laura isabel suárez, and hilma cristina gonzález ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ 38profileprofileprofileprofileprofile as to what a particular statement or situation means. the efficacy of this task is based on standards or levels that should be considered appropriate in the school’s curriculum in terms of reading proficiency and, consequently, upon implementation, action and changes utterly considered in the pedagogical process. procedureprocedureprocedureprocedureprocedure we worked on action research because it “pays attention to the way learners handle tasks and activities and how they try to solve their classroom problems” (gómez et al: 1993). it gave us the opportunity to detect students’ interests and difficulties, to follow up the implementation of the reading process, to asses students’ development and to analyze the effectiveness of the process. to detect the students’ interest and difficulties we applied a questionnaire for each level. we found that the majority of the students enjoy reading when it is not an obligation. however, they have serious problems in understanding due to the lack of previous knowledge, whether in phonics, vocabulary or practices in interpretation. students must be aware of the importance of reading not only as a means of getting information, but also as a skill to develop critical thinking. to enhance the girls’ understanding requires training, inferring by context and word formation as well as looking up meanings in the dictionary. we followed up the implementation of the reading process through classroom observation and identified the standards and skills to be considered in the school’s curriculum in terms of reading proficiency. through classroom observation we assessed the students’ development and analyzed the effectiveness of the process. to come up with results, we applied different reading activities according to the standards established beforehand, and instated reading strategies (williams: 1984) such as: pre-reading (in order to predict and improve vocabulary); while reading (where there is analysis and understanding); and, last, post-reading as a way of building up critical thinking. regarding the standards we have chosen for the beginners, intermediates and advanced, it is necessary to match the abilities to work on with these groups, whose characteristics are quite different. the development of the skills (abilities) depends on features such as age, sex, personality, qualifications, social status, etc. beginners, whose ages are between 4 and 8 years old and are up to now creating symbolization, are able to identify, discriminate and relate sounds and letters, reading whole words. when the student is sure of her ability, the motivation to read brings her interest to identify new words and look them up in a dictionar y. furthermore, reading comprehension provides the best means to analyze through creativity and innovation, where the students display their imagination by making predictions or changing the end of a story. intermediate and advanced students, whose ages are between 8 and 18 years old, are living and reaching stages which imply analysis, abstraction, comprehension and cognitive ability reflected in long term memory. thus, students are able to understand explicitly and non-explicitly stated information given according to their level and, simultaneously, widen their vocabulary by inferring meanings ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○39 profileprofileprofileprofileprofile and familiarizing themselves with special lexical items (grellet: 1996). the process of reading supposes an ongoing task so the opportunity of distinguishing and discussing ideas is given to help or ensure students improve not only their reading speed, but their immediate understanding, and, at the same time, enable them to arrive at the last stages of reading such as scanning and skimming through a text in order to take their own notes. resultsresultsresultsresultsresults in order to help students develop reading skills, we applied activities consistent with the students’ interests in terms of themes, length and the reading target. beginners practiced the alphabet phonemes (ackland: 1996) and tried to use them to decode new vocabulary to understand the stories; as a consequence, they have improved their fluency and understanding of what they read. some of them have to practice the phonemes more. they don’t understand when they read because they do not distinguish all the phonemes correctly and, therefore, struggle with the reading as they make strong efforts to decode and decipher. girls got the gist and identified the characters. they also worked out the meaning of some words by context. reading has turned out to be very challenging and exciting. now the girls are busily engaged with the activities and have improved their reading skills. intermediate students are making progress in respect to reading and reading comprehension. even though the process is tough, they are working step-by-step, improving their ability to analyze, not only by inferring meanings, but also by detailing the text and carrying out the sequence of events (vince: 2001). in addition, it is important to continue working on helping the students master critical thinking by solving problems, comparing and selecting what is meaningful. advanced students were really involved in the activities as they were able to read between the lines (acevedo and gower: 1998). on the other hand, they read for complete, detail comprehension, reaching out to encompass the writer’s purpose and style. that means achieving linguistic and pragmatic competence. we looked into the students’ eagerness to read aloud, to share and add new words and structures to express themselves freely and fluently. most of them showed a high level of comprehension answering, analyzing and discussing properly and accurately. they have a few weaknesses, though, such as problems with summarizing and with reading speed. we can say that the effectiveness of the process is evident, since we noticed the students’ willingness to develop reading as part of their learning process and to improve their reading skill. our jumping-off point is, “ the more you read, the more you learn”. los portales school’s curriculum is going to be based on reading as an outstanding skill, encompassing specific abilities like inferring, associating, comparing and contrasting, and also on activities such as role play, discussions, debates, reading of pictures and, finally, solving problems, drawing conclusions and identifying the writers’ purposes and styles. following these abilities, almost all of our students should become efficient readers. ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ 40profileprofileprofileprofileprofile conclusionsconclusionsconclusionsconclusionsconclusions as a conclusion we can say that the standards that should be considered in the school’s curriculum in terms of reading proficiency should foment development of specific abilities such as pronunciation, fluency, inferring, associating, comparing, contrasting, solving problems, drawing conclusions and identifying the writers’ purposes and styles. these abilities contribute to the learning process where reading will be the starting point to enhance linguistic and pragmatic competence. for the portales school, pronunciation is a vital issue of understanding in the reading process in the early stages, therefore students will be able to figure out the meaning by context and word formation and to match what they read with what they listen to, recognizing the relations among sounds/ letters/ words/ pronunciation. via this project we can conclude that the pedagogical process implemented in the school starts by sensitizing the students to recognize and identify the phonemes, to improve their reading ability and understanding. later on students will read fluently and at normal speed, using punctuation properly and running into analyzing and comprehension. the last step is based on reading with a questioning attitude where students learn how to engage and interact with a text. in order to help students become efficient readers, teachers should make reading a stimulating activity, where students understand by analyzing, inferring, comparing and selecting what is meaningful, avoiding reading word by word. “efficient learners don’t read word by word. they move their eyes along the lines of a text, taking in meaningful groups of about three to six words at a time” (acevedo and gower: 1.998, 34). pppppedagogical implicationsedagogical implicationsedagogical implicationsedagogical implicationsedagogical implications through reading we can reach linguistic and pragmatic competence, increase students’ background, acquire new vocabulary, infer by context and word formation, understand relations within the sentence, link sentences and ideas, skim and scan. comprehension plays an important role in the reading process as it is a prerequisite to working on a text in depth. it means analyzing, comparing and drawing conclusions as being the basic abilities to engage students in the reading process. reading efficiently encourages students’ participation and promotes high self-esteem and self-confidence which is why teachers need to change their minds and methods when leading the reading task by making up new strategies and activities to stimulate the accurate process of learning. fffffurther researurther researurther researurther researurther researchchchchch the purpose of this investigation is to leave a path for those who really have an interest in education vis-a-vis looking for more data based on classroom research which will improve and renew methods for our students. as a further consideration in this project, we’d like to do research as to when the reading process in english should start without interfering with the spanish reading process; how the mass media really contribute to improving students’ reading skills, and how to make the dictionary a useful tool in the reading process. referencesreferencesreferencesreferencesreferences acevedo, a. and gower, m. (1998). twentieth-century spies and towards a global ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○41 profileprofileprofileprofileprofile language. high flyer. upper intermediate. london: longman. ackland, j. (1996). at home with sounds and rhymes. oxford: oxford university press. dunn, o. (1991). developing english with young learners. london: macmillan. gómez, i. et al. (1993). cofe project working document 3. london: thames valley university, cofe project. grellet, f. (1986). developing reading skills. cambridge: cambridge university press. vince, m. (2001) in the news. english jackpot. london: macmillan heinemann. williams, e. (1984). reading in the language classroom. london: modern english publications. profile no. 6 oct 13.p65 ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ profile profile profile profile profile 6 (2005): universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras current state of the teaching of process writing in efl classes: an observational study in the last two years of secondary school1 estado actual de la enseñanza de la escritura como proceso en clases de inglés comoestado actual de la enseñanza de la escritura como proceso en clases de inglés comoestado actual de la enseñanza de la escritura como proceso en clases de inglés comoestado actual de la enseñanza de la escritura como proceso en clases de inglés comoestado actual de la enseñanza de la escritura como proceso en clases de inglés como lengua elengua elengua elengua elengua extranjera: un estudio de obserxtranjera: un estudio de obserxtranjera: un estudio de obserxtranjera: un estudio de obserxtranjera: un estudio de observación en los dos últimos años de bachilleratovación en los dos últimos años de bachilleratovación en los dos últimos años de bachilleratovación en los dos últimos años de bachilleratovación en los dos últimos años de bachillerato edgar mendoza lópezedgar mendoza lópezedgar mendoza lópezedgar mendoza lópezedgar mendoza lópez emendozl@unab.edu.co universidad autónoma de bucaramanga this study reports on the process writing activities carried out in efl classes in the last two years of secondary school. grades 10 and 11 in six colombian high schools three public and three private were observed in order to determine the way process writing is taught, focusing especially on the planning, composing, and revising activities, and based on the understanding of writing as an activity with a process-oriented approach. the findings indicate that writing and also reading are product-oriented, and that class activities tend to place or emphasize listening and speaking over writing and reading. most of the time was spent on oral exercises, drills, roleplays and pronunciation, being group work and role-play activities what students enjoyed most. kkkkkey worey worey worey worey words: ds: ds: ds: ds: observational study, efl teaching, efl in secondary school, writing process, process approach, qualitative research este estudio presenta las actividades de escritura realizadas en las clases de inglés como lengua extranjera en los dos últimos grados de secundaria (10 y 11) de 6 colegios tres públicos y tres privados. la observación se enfocó en la forma en que se enseña la escritura, especialmente en lo relacionado con las actividades de planeación, formulación y revisión con base en la concepción de la escritura como un proceso. los resultados indican que la lectura y la escritura están orientadas hacia el producto, y que las clases privilegian la escucha y el habla sobre la lectura y la escritura. la mayor parte del tiempo se dedicó a ejercicios orales y escritos, juegos de roles y pronunciación, y los estudiantes disfrutaron más los trabajos en grupo y los juegos de roles. palabras claves: palabras claves: palabras claves: palabras claves: palabras claves: estudio de observación, enseñanza del inglés como lengua extranjera, enseñanza del inglés como lengua extranjera en escuela secundaria, procesos de escritura, enfoque sobre el proceso, investigación cualitativa 1 the findings reported here are based on my ph.d. dissertation submitted to the university of manchester at manchester, england, in june, 2004. this article was received on april 15th, 2005 and accepted on august 16th, 2005. 23-36 ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ 24 mendozamendozamendozamendozamendoza profileprofileprofileprofileprofile introductionintroductionintroductionintroductionintroduction in the late 1980s, an approach to writing which emphasised the process rather than the product began to be introduced into esl classrooms (see hedge, 1988). raimes (1991: 422) has pointed out that there are parallels between a process writing pedagogy and communicative, task-based curriculum development. the approach essentially recognised that the production of a good piece of writing requires time, that it is a recursive process involving many sub-processes such as generating ideas, organising ideas, drafting, revising, and editing. it was seen to have potential where students needed to be able to produce written texts for assessment purposes i.e. in higher education but it was not seen to be so appropriate for foreign language classrooms, where more emphasis had to be given to oral production. reichelt (1999; 2001), writing from a us higher education context, has pointed out that there is no unified sense of purpose for writing within the foreign language curriculum. foreign language students are usually not required to write in their l2 outside the classroom. in addition, foreign language teachers are uncertain about the role of writing in the fl classroom. in her 1999 survey, she found that articles on fl writing appeared in publications addressing fl professionals, suggesting that many of those engaged in fl writing research and pedagogy see themselves as primarily language teachers rather than writing teachers. she suggests that this offers evidence that fl writing is currently seen more as foreign language than writing. this study was designed to be able to observe the kinds of instruction occurring within english classrooms in bucaramanga, particularly focusing on whether process writing was used within those classrooms. the following pages present the theoretical overview of the study framed by the current professional literature vis-à-vis the role of process writing in fl contexts followed by a description of the methodology and findings of the study. review of literareview of literareview of literareview of literareview of literature on processture on processture on processture on processture on process writingwritingwritingwritingwriting stewart and cheung (1989) showed that process writing could be successfully implemented in hong kong secondary schools if introduced gradually, with certain modifications and adaptations to address the constraints of the writing process in relation to the educational environment. important recommendations (1989: 42-4) were the following: 1. build up a shared understanding between teachers and learners of the nature, the purposes, and the requirements of the process approach. 2. integrate the four language skills to fit into the stages of the writing process without unduly upsetting the timetable and the scheme of work. 3. design purpose-specific and reader-specific tasks so that learners can draft and redraft with the communicative context in mind. 4. simplify writing tasks by removing limitations on the number of words and the required language forms as well as ensure the familiarity of the subject matter. 5. carry forward each stage in the writing process and focus on a different aspect of the writing process in each lesson, working on meaning before accuracy. 6. allow sufficient time for learners to draft and redraft in order to discover and express their meaning appropriately and accurately, doing some activities in class and assigning others as homework. 7. provide reader feedback from the teacher or peers, using peer reading and rewriting guidelines (distributed to all students) at each stage of the writing process to help students develop critical reading and revising skills. 8. modify the teacher's role to be less of an evaluator or judge of language accuracy and more of a facilitator or consultant. 9. grade the final draft according to how much progress the student has made in going from first ideas to drafting, revising, and editing. also, pennington, et al. (1996), in analysing hong kong secondary school students' responses ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○25 profileprofileprofileprofileprofile current state of the teaching of process writing in efl classes to the introduction of process writing, revealed a complex pattern of cause-effect relationships between students' attitudes and teachers' behaviours. of 8 classes taking part in the project, the two groups who found the experience positive were taught by a teacher who integrated elements of process writing into her teaching routine and who had displayed the most positive attitudes to process-oriented writing at the beginning of the project. the class that evaluated the experience most negatively was taught by a teacher who placed the focus on traditional language exercises and grammatical accuracy with very little attempt at integration, and who had been ambivalent about the new pedagogical approach at the beginning of the project. sengupta & falvey (1998), also working in hong kong secondary schools, reveal a picture of teacher practices which might accord with practices in fl classrooms elsewhere. questionnaire, interview and observational data showed that the concept of process writing was restricted to an emphasis on fluency rather than accuracy. focusing on the relationship between explicit instruction of the writing process and gains in writing proficiency, kern & schultz (1992) report quantifiable improvement in 3rd and 4th semester argumentative essays in french as the result of a change of policy in the teaching of writing. the new teaching programme involved a "whole language" discourse-oriented course, highly integrated with the reading of texts and concentrating on the writing process as well as the final product. this whole-hearted policy change of approach contrasts with the findings of an experimental study in which gallego de b. (1993) compared the post-treatment compositions of two groups of elementary level college students of spanish. the experimental group outperformed the control group in their improvement on composition length and quality of organisation but the groups made equal gains in content, language use, syntactic complexity and error reduction. resear resear resear resear research on pre-writing, generating ideas,ch on pre-writing, generating ideas,ch on pre-writing, generating ideas,ch on pre-writing, generating ideas,ch on pre-writing, generating ideas, and planningand planningand planningand planningand planning only a small number of studies have focused on these sub-processes in an instructional context. reichelt (2001) reports a study by becker (1991) which found that adult learners of german who used associative brainstorming for five minutes before writing produced compositions with more imagery and interesting ideas than the control group. the effect was particularly strong for the novices. it is not clear, however, which language the learners used for the brainstorming, a question investigated by the two following studies. friedlander's study of 28 chinese writers (1990) had shown that students produced better l2 essays on an l1-related topic when allowed to plan in l1 and, conversely, produced better l2 essays on an l2related topic when allowed to plan in l2. lally (2000) wished to test the effects when students of french were asked to compose on language-neutral topics, a more likely situation in classrooms and examinations. in a small-scale study of 12 4th semester undergraduates, lally compared the effects of generating ideas in l1 (english) and l2 (french) over the course of the semester (10 compositions). she found very little difference between the two conditions in terms of vocabulary or expression but l1 pre-writing activities produced better scores for organisation and global impression, although the difference was not statistically significant. this confirmed friedlander's (1990) finding that l1 prewriting activities facilitate organisation and coherence and lally suggests that this practice may be advantageous for beginning or intermediate fl students. however, akyel (1994) found that planning in l1 had a negative effect on the l2 texts of turkish beginners in english who preferred to stay focused on the l2 to maximise its use. recent esl/fl writing process research (wooddall, 2002) suggests that switching between two languages can have beneficial effects for some learners particularly for higher level operations like planning. wooddall recommends further studies ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ 26 mendozamendozamendozamendozamendoza profileprofileprofileprofileprofile on classroom based writing to help students identify when and why they use their l1. researresearresearresearresearch on drafting/fch on drafting/fch on drafting/fch on drafting/fch on drafting/formulatingormulatingormulatingormulatingormulating little is known about the way that fl writers move between thought and language (l1 or l2) to produce a text. in process-oriented teaching, drafting is usually done silently by individuals, often outside the classroom. however, research on classroom activities which focus on reviewing drafts in order to improve them provides data which expose parts of the formulating process as it overlaps with reviewing processes. the classroom equivalent of the think-aloud research technique is collaborative talk focused on various parts of the writing process, particularly on feedback by either the teacher or peers. such activities allow for the explicit negotiation of meaning (flower, 1994) in a non-threatening atmosphere, for the possibility of engaging in a dialogue between content and rhetorical concerns (bereiter & scardamalia, 1987) and for linguistic knowledge not available to the writer (to be supplied by a peer reader-listener). however, the value of peer-feedback in esl contexts has been questioned (santos, 1992; silva, 1993). there is concern about cultural and social differences between members of response groups (carson & nelson, 1994) but perhaps more commonly, there is the belief that students are not capable of detecting and correcting errors in l2 (nelson & murphy, 1993). this assumption that one type of feedback might be better than another has been replaced by acknowledgement that each type serves different purposes. a study looking at peer feedback (hedgcock & lefkowitz, 1992), used an experimental design to compare the french products (2 essays) of 14 englishspeaking student writers (intermediate) using an oral/ aural procedure with those of a tightly-matched control group (16 students) who received only teacher's written feedback. one important finding was that the peer oral-revision group performed on a level equal to that of the control group. inevitably, good student feedback techniques depend on the teacher's own understanding and skill in the process. in relation to research in the area of teacher feedback, several topics have been explored: the effectiveness of grammar correction; different points of focus error (vocabulary, grammar), content, organisation; ; ; ; ; the use of coding schemes; student corrections behaviours; teacher correction behaviours; negative vs. positive feedback; students' views on types of feedback; and the clarity of teacher feedback. kepner (1991) used an experimental design over a semester to identify types of written feedback/ response which might be related to achievement and to lowor high-verbal ability in college intermediate fl spanish writing. two different types of written feedback to fortnightly assigned and graded journal writing were used: error correction and written message-related comments in spanish. grammatical accuracy and level of thinking were examined through journal entries. students who received the messagerelated comments produced a significantly greater number of higher-level propositions in their posttreatment guided journal entries and did not produce significantly more errors than the students who received the error-corrections. kepner concludes that error corrections and rule-reminders seem to serve neither to improve students' level of written accuracy in l2 surface skills nor to enhance the ideational quality of the writing whereas message-related feedback in the tl has the potential to facilitate writing development. many fl teachers nevertheless correct errors and use coding schemes to do so. kubota (2001) explores students' use of a coding scheme in the context of teaching japanese as a fl, using observation and the think-aloud technique. 63 informants coming from a range of language backgrounds e.g. english, chinese, indonesian, korean, all with a range of learning experiences, were used for the validation of a linguistically-based coding system. a smaller number of students, representing different learning experiences, participated in the think-aloud observation and ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○27 profileprofileprofileprofileprofile current state of the teaching of process writing in efl classes interview session. when the corrections made by all participants on receipt of coded feedback were analysed, a high success rate was found in terms of a decrease in all categories of error; in twelve of the fifteen categories this was statistically significant. the greatest improvements were made in missing words, particles and vocabulary. when the data from the think-aloud sessions were analysed with respect to these three categories, numerous different correction strategies were identified. the data also threw light on reasons why certain strategies were unsuccessful. researresearresearresearresearch on revisingch on revisingch on revisingch on revisingch on revising in a longitudinal study with a pedagogical stance, sengupta (2000) monitored the effects of revision strategy instruction on two classes of 15-16-yearold l2 secondary school learners of english in hong kong, a context in which multiple drafting was rarely practised. the traditional practice of writing l2 compositions was replaced with multiple drafts of six compositions, with the support of direct instruction in revision after the first drafts had been completed. the students' performance was compared with that of a similar class who received no instruction in revision. the focus for teaching revision was on reader-friendliness, defined in terms of appropriateness, sufficiency and organisation of information. the responsibility for feedback moved gradually from the teacher to a peer, and finally, to the students themselves. a post-test composition at the end of the year showed that the two revising groups had made more progress than the traditionally taught group. post experimental questionnaires and interviews showed the students appreciating much of what they had learned for the following two reasons: it had taught them about how teachers think and they felt it would help them to succeed in the hong kong examination system. there was evidence that the instruction had helped them to gain a new conception of what writing involved. much of the l1 and sl research on revision has focused on the differences between skilled and unskilled writers, finding that skilled writers are usually more aware of variables such as audience, topic and organisation and are more likely to make revisions at a global level (hall, 1990; zamel, 1983) while less skilled writers tend to make changes affecting surface-level features. porte (1996), from a fl context, points out that very little research has addressed the reasons why the less skilled behave as they do. in two related studies (1996 and 1997), he first examined the revision strategies of 15 underachieving spanish undergraduate students as they wrote four timed compositions (draft and final version) in english in contrived writing sessions in class, and then conducted semi-structured interviews with 71 students of the same type. the first study confirmed sl findings in that 80% of the revisions were local, mostly word-level; text-level revisions did occur but mainly in final rather than draft versions and more frequently where there was a 3-day gap between draft and final version. the second study focused particularly on the extent to which underachievers' observations about revision are affected by perceived teacher preferences in methodology, feedback and evaluation. the findings confirm those of the earlier study, to wit: revision was mainly regarded as a proofreading exercise; many participants commented on perceived negative aspects of the writing context (insufficient time, unhelpful composition topics); revision was perceived as important because it contributed to the final grade on the text but was also seen as a high-risk activity; few participants recalled any explicit instruction in revision apart from teacher indications of errors. the students themselves seemed to consider revision of content important but saw it as of lesser importance to the teachers. while porte acknowledges that from this research it is impossible to claim a cause-effect relationship between perceived teacher preferences and revision behaviour, he argues that there is enough observed influence available from the data to suggest that we should be wary in describing what constitutes poor efl writing and ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ 28 mendozamendozamendozamendozamendoza profileprofileprofileprofileprofile prudent when designing all-purpose remedies for these ills. his work constitutes a plea to recognise the person and context-specific nature of certain strategies, understanding that underachievers' perceptions may well be related to past learning experiences. summing up, this section has presented some research in second language writing processes and the foreign language writing process in particular. it offers evidence to support the idea that a processoriented approach to l2 writing instruction can be successfully introduced to l2 learners. it has also looked at fl writing research on the three subprocesses, namely, planning, formulating, and revising. methodologymethodologymethodologymethodologymethodology the purpose of this study was both to determine the way efl process writing is taught, focusing especially on planning, composing, and revising activities, and based on the understanding of writing as a process-oriented approach, as well as to find out the kinds of language instruction occurring in english classrooms in terms of reading, writing, listening, and speaking in order to examine the role of the writing process within the broader curriculum framework. this purpose was achieved through answering the following research questions: 1. how is process writing taught in efl classes in the last two years of secondary school? 2. are planning, composing, and revising activities carried out within the classroom? 3. what reading and writing activities are carried out in efl classes in the last two years of secondary school? 4. what kinds of language instruction occur in efl classrooms in terms of reading, writing, listening, and speaking? the colombian school system consists of primary school and high school. primary school lasts for five years (grades 1 to 5) and high school for six years (grades 6 to 11). children normally start primary school at the age of six or seven. students must finish grade eleven to graduate and they must take the national examinations (examen de estado) at the end of this grade to enter university. based on the cumulative results of these examinations, the high schools in the country are classified as high level, medium level or low level. in order to gain a picture of the current state of the teaching of l2 english process writing and reading in the last two years of secondary school, i carried out class observations in six high schools in bucaramanga, colombia. (although this study focuses on process writing in efl, reading activities were also observed and recorded as a point of reference to and comparison with the writing activities). these six schools were selected randomly from the total of schools that took part in “examen de estado” in bucaramanga in august, 2000 – two schools, one public and one private, from each of the three examination levels mentioned above. table 1 presents the data for these six schools: the type of school (public or private), the school classification according to the national examination results, the grade observed, the number of pupils in the class, and the observation time. all the schools teach three english periods a week. one 45-minute period was observed per grade (except in school 5 which has two 45-minute periods, one after the other), and the same teacher taught both grades ten and eleven. the english teachers held a bachelor degree in language teaching (spanish, english, and french) and were between twenty and thirty years of age. the data were collected by means of the instrument at appendix 1, allowing the researcher to record the class activities, focusing especially on pre-writing/planning, writing/formulating and post-writing/revising activities, and also on prereading, reading, and post-reading activities. table 2 below shows which of these activities were carried out in each of the six schools observed. findings from the observfindings from the observfindings from the observfindings from the observfindings from the observaaaaationaltionaltionaltionaltional researchresearchresearchresearchresearch overall, the classes followed the same pattern which was correcting homework, introducing the ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○29 profileprofileprofileprofileprofile current state of the teaching of process writing in efl classes topic (mainly a grammar topic), explaining it, doing some drills, and setting the homework for the next class. in all the classes, spanish was the medium of instruction. the students in the private schools used a textbook but the students in the public schools did not have one. there were no other materials or resources in any of the classrooms observed, although most schools had audio-visual facilities. the following pages describe the writing process and the reading class activities in l2 english at each of the six schools. school 1school 1school 1school 1school 1 this school (public, high rank) is reputed to be one of the best public schools in bucaramanga. it is located near several main roads, but it is a quiet enclave in the middle of the city surrounded by trees. the classrooms are large enough for the teacher to circulate easily. in the classes observed, l2 reading involved text coherence and l2 writing was used to write a dialogue. in the 10th grade class, the teacher started by asking the students some general questions in english about how they were feeling, the date, and the time. then he divided the class into small groups and gave each group a short text, a biography of bill gates, cut into five scrambled paragraphs and asked the students to unscramble them. i noticed that the first thing they did was to translate the text into spanish, which took them most of the class time and then they started to unscramble the paragraphs. when they finished, the teacher asked some students to read the paragraphs in the sequence they thought was correct and he corrected pronunciation. when the answers were incorrect the teacher led the schoolschoolschoolschoolschool ttttty p ey p ey p ey p ey p e nationalnationalnationalnationalnational gradegradegradegradegrade pupilspupilspupilspupilspupils obserobserobserobserobser vationvationvationvationvation ratingratingratingratingrating tttttimeimeimeimeime 10 30 45’ 1 public high 11 38 45’ 10 34 50’ 2 private high 11 28 35’ 10 33 45’ 3 public medium 11 32 45’ 10 31 45’ 4 private medium 11 32 45’ 10 35 90’ 5 public low 11 33 90’ 10 36 45’ 6 private low 11 38 45’ tttttable 1. able 1. able 1. able 1. able 1. schools and grades observed. activitiesactivitiesactivitiesactivitiesactivities school 1school 1school 1school 1school 1 school 2school 2school 2school 2school 2 school 3school 3school 3school 3school 3 school 4school 4school 4school 4school 4 school 5school 5school 5school 5school 5 school 6school 6school 6school 6school 6 pre-reading x reading x x x x x x post-reading pre-writing writing x x x post-writing tttttable 2. able 2. able 2. able 2. able 2. record of reading and writing activities in l2..... ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ 30 mendozamendozamendozamendozamendoza profileprofileprofileprofileprofile students towards the correct order. the students seemed to have had this kind of activity before for they did not ask any questions about the task procedure. in 11th grade class, after greeting the students in english, the teacher wrote a short dialogue on the board and asked two students to read it. then he underlined the words ‘can’ and ‘cannot’ and asked some questions about their meanings and use. this grammar explanation ended with some drills on the board. after that, the teacher asked the students to write in groups a similar dialogue to that he had written on the board containing the verbs ‘can’ and ‘cannot’. the teacher gave the instructions and asked the students to do it orally, first, and then write it down. when it was finished, they performed the dialogue before their classmates. as homework, the students were asked to write a description of their families based on a picture and bring it to the following class. spanish was used most of the time in both classes. english was used when reading or writing a text in english. the students spoke very little english, mainly to answer yes/no questions or to respond to simple questions from the teacher. the grammar explanation was also in spanish. school 2school 2school 2school 2school 2 this school (private, high rank) is located on the outskirts of bucaramanga. it has plenty of outdoor space but the classrooms are small and the teacher cannot easily circulate. the l2 reading activities i saw were focused on text comprehension. there were no writing activities. in the grade 10 class, i observed that the whole period was spent on grammar explanation and drills. the teacher wrote some sentences in the active voice on the left side of the board and the same sentences in the passive voice on the right side. he asked the students what the difference was between both sets of sentences. a student finally gave an answer that satisfied the teacher who spent the remainder of the class explaining this grammar topic. at the end of the class, the teacher asked the students to do some exercises in the book. all the explanation was done in spanish. in the grade 11 class, the teacher distributed a photocopied handout and had his students read a short text silently and individually. no directions or instructions were given. the students seemed surprised and did not know what to do with the text. some started reading it aloud and the teacher corrected pronunciation. when they had finished, the teacher wrote some reading comprehension questions on the board and asked the students to answer them orally in groups and then put them in writing. the teacher circulated and gave some feedback to students. the answers were checked at the end of the class. the group work and the teacher’s feedback were always in spanish. it seemed to me that the teacher did not know what to do with the text he had given the students to read. i suspected that he created the reading comprehension questions while the students were reading and that the activity had especially been set up for me. school 3school 3school 3school 3school 3 this school (public, medium rank) is located in the city centre and the class i observed was in a classroom facing the street. the noise from outside was unbearable but students seemed to be used to it. as a consequence, the students and teachers had to speak very loudly, which increased the noise level. however, they somehow managed to teach and learn in this environment. in this school, reading was for comprehension, and writing involved rewriting a paragraph based on the teacher’s feedback. in the tenth grade class, reading activities aimed mainly to improve the students’ reading comprehension and to practise pronunciation. the students were given a short text and read it and then one of them was asked to read it aloud for the class. the teacher corrected the pronunciation mistakes and asked them to answer the questions about the exercise. some students worked alone and others joined in groups. they translated the reading and the questions into spanish and seemed worried about the accuracy of the translation. the ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○31 profileprofileprofileprofileprofile current state of the teaching of process writing in efl classes teacher circulated and helped them translate. when the exercise was finished, the answers were corrected. after that, a grammar topic (present perfect) was introduced. in the grade 11 class, the teacher gave the students back a piece of writing they had done at home some time before answering the question, ‘if you were the president of colombia, what would you do?’ the teacher had already revised the texts and written some comments for the writer. the period was spent on revision which involved re-writing the text based on the teacher’s feedback, which most of the students could not understand for it was in english. the teacher had to explain for every student, in spanish, what the feedback was. i asked one of the students to let me read the feedback she had been given which was mainly general statements such as nice paragraph. you would be a good president if you were elected. i would vote for you. correct the spelling mistakes i have circled and check the verb tenses again. when the class finished, the teacher collected the papers. school 4school 4school 4school 4school 4 this school (private, medium rank) is located in the city centre. the noise from the basketball court interfered with the class activities and it was difficult to understand what the teacher said. she asked the students to get closer to her because she could not speak louder. the reading activities i observed in the tenth grade class aimed mainly to improve the students’ reading comprehension. as a pre-reading activity, the teacher wrote the title of a text on the board and asked the students what they thought it was about. the answers were varied and the students answered in spanish. then, the teacher wrote some words from the text and asked the same question. she summarised the answers orally and wrote them on the board. the students were given a short text and read it and then some of them were asked to read it aloud for the class. the teacher corrected the pronunciation mistakes and asked them to compare what they had said before about the content of the reading with the actual reading. as a final activity, they answered some questions in writing. when the exercise was finished, the answers were corrected. in the eleventh grade class i observed, the period was spent on grammar explanation. the topic was the past perfect. the teacher explained the topic in spanish using a story from the textbook which narrated some events in the past in chronological order. then she said she wanted them to narrate the same story but changing the order of the events. students started doing it but with very little success, so she explained the grammar topic again in spanish and provided some examples and then translated them into english. some students seemed to have understood but the great majority seemed confused. as a final activity, they did some drills in the textbook on the past perfect. school 5school 5school 5school 5school 5 this school (public, low rank) was located in a very deprived area of the city. the school building was in a very poor state but the students looked happy and good-humoured. in both grades observed, 10 and 11, spanish and english teachers spent about 35 minutes at the beginning of the class praying and checking the attendance. in this school, the students read aloud in english to improve pronunciation and to answer questions. writing was almost non-existent. the class in 10th grade was limited to reading aloud some paragraphs describing people. the teacher selected some students to read and corrected some pronunciation mistakes. the students repeated the word she had modelled for them. then some words and sentences were translated into spanish. students interrupted very frequently to tell anecdotes or to describe some people they thought were worth talking about. the teacher followed them and encouraged them to continue describing famous people. however, very few students tried to do it in english and the teacher translated into english what was said in spanish. the class finished abruptly when a representative ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ 32 mendozamendozamendozamendozamendoza profileprofileprofileprofileprofile from the student’s union asked the teacher to let the group attend a general meeting. the students did not wait for the teacher’s approval and stormed out of the classroom. in the 11th grade, the teacher did the writing herself on the board. she asked the students: “what am i wearing today?” the students started the description saying isolated sentences several at a time. the teacher did not control or select but picked up the sentences and wrote them up until the description was completed. she then asked one student to read one, corrected some pronunciation mistakes, and asked the class to repeat after her. the same pattern was repeated three times more. the teacher or the students themselves picked a classmate to stand before the class so s/he could be described. the teacher wrote the description on the board, underlining the verbs and asking the students why the verb was in that form and not in a different one. all the descriptions were done orally and mostly in spanish. the students seemed to have enjoyed the activity, but at the end, they started joking and talking and seemed bored by the routine. school 6school 6school 6school 6school 6 this school (private, low rank) is located in a working-class neighbourhood. the building was a big old house which had been converted and seemed inappropriate for a school. the classrooms are small and there is a small playground in the backyard. in this school, the reading i observed was mainly used to answer questions about a text and writing was non-existent. the tenth grade class had a reading comprehension exercise at the beginning of the class. the activity was similar to those observed in other schools. the teacher asked the students to read a short text in the textbook. she picked some of them to read it aloud and corrected pronunciation mistakes, asking the whole class to repeat after her. then she asked them to work in groups and answer the questions about the reading. the rest of the class was spent on grammar explanation and doing some drills. in the eleventh grade class, the teacher told the students they were going to interview famous people. she gave each student a piece of paper giving them the name of the person they should pretend to be and divided the class into six groups. each student passed to the front of the classroom and, in a mock interview, the students in the other groups had to ask whquestions in order to identify the celebrity. they seemed to enjoy the activity. summarsummarsummarsummarsummary of obsery of obsery of obsery of obsery of observational findingsvational findingsvational findingsvational findingsvational findings it is important first to note that these obser vations provide only a snapshot of the activities taking place in these schools in spanish and english classrooms. nevertheless, my own local knowledge leads me to suggest that had i been able to visit more classrooms or spend more time in these classrooms, the findings would not differ to any great extent. in general, the english class gave priority to listening and speaking over writing and reading. most of the time was spent on oral exercises, drills, role-plays and pronunciation. it was evident that the students enjoyed group work and roleplays very much. reading activities were more frequent than writing activities and were focused mainly on reading comprehension of short texts. writing was done mainly at home which supports the idea that process-oriented writing is rarely done in class. however, on one occasion, there was time allotted for revision of a piece of writing, which suggests it is not alien to the english classroom. the writing of reports, summaries, and essays was not observed. process writing has been a very important and fruitful field in the teaching and researching of writing since the late 1980’s. a vast quantity of literature exists about it and it has been one of the main issues in the esl/efl context. however, this study provides enough evidence to support the idea that process writing is still alien to the contexts where this study took place. most significant, ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○33 profileprofileprofileprofileprofile current state of the teaching of process writing in efl classes perhaps this situation is a frequent one in the colombian secondary school contexts which leads to setting up the recommendations below. conclconclconclconclconclusion and recommendusion and recommendusion and recommendusion and recommendusion and recommendaaaaationstionstionstionstions the following pieces of research have special relevance for the colombian l2 (english) classroom, paying special attention to unskilled writers. stewart and cheung’s (1989: 42-4) recommendations about introducing process writing in the fl classroom are important for this study for it is possible to imagine them being implemented in the colombian l2 (english) classroom. it requires teachers willing to help the students improve their writing skills and students willing to learn more about writing, and careful preparation of both teachers and learners. teachers’ attitudes towards process-oriented programmes are crucial for the success of such implementation (pennington et al., 1996). a very important point these recommendations make is that listening, speaking and reading skills are not neglected. on the contrary, there is a call for the integration of the four skills to fit into the stages of the writing process which suits the university course requirements as students are tested in these four abilities. research, e.g. kern’s & schultz’s (1992), has shown that explicit instruction on the writing process improves students’ writing proficiency. a process-oriented programme does not exclude concentrating on the final product; they can be integrated (kern & schultz, 1992). the balance and intensity of these two programme orientations need to be addressed by a change of policy in the teaching of writing. research on planning in an instructional context, although small, shows that brainstorming, generating ideas, and pre-writing activities improve learners’ performance. in the colombian school context, where l1 (spanish) is generally the means of instruction in the l2 classes, studies by friedlander (1990), guasch (1997), and lally (2000) are of great importance for they offer evidence to support the idea that allowing students to use the l1 during the planning stage can affect writing performance positively, in particular that of the novice writer. in the colombian context, drafting/formulating in l1 and l2 is generally carried out outside the classroom. research on this sub-process shows the benefits of accomplishing this in the classroom and of using teacher and peer feedback but this implies teacher and student awareness and training. colombian learners are used to teacher feedback which tends to focus mainly on linguistic accuracy but peer feedback seems to be almost non-existent. as the colombian culture is highly oral, this is reflected in the language classroom. oral peer feedback suits this characteristic of the colombian learners and findings by hedgcock & lefkowitz (1992), which show that this kind of feedback can improve learners’ performance. also, peer feedback has been found to be incorporated in the final versions of pieces of writing (villamil & de guerrero, 1998). however, attention must be paid to the kind of peer feedback for there is the danger (carson & nelson, 1994) that students are not capable of detecting error in l2. teacher’s feedback can be improved by the use of a coding system (kubota, 2001) and by paying more attention to content (cohen & cavalcanti, 1990). as revision is mainly done outside class, research in this area is of importance to this study. porte’s (1996) study focusing on unskilled writers offers insights into learners’ revision strategies and their awareness of the need for instruction in revision which can help them to gain a new conception of what writing involves. finally, a process-oriented approach to l2 writing instruction can be successfully introduced in secondary school or university. in order to be successful, it is necessary to raise awareness among teachers and learners about its benefits in improving writing, and careful preparation of both teachers and learners is needed. a processoriented approach should lead towards a good ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ 34 mendozamendozamendozamendozamendoza profileprofileprofileprofileprofile product. planning, formulating, and revising subprocesses can be performed in the classroom and can contribute to improving learners’ writing. time is, however, an issue here. about the authorabout the authorabout the authorabout the authorabout the author edgar mendoza lópezedgar mendoza lópezedgar mendoza lópezedgar mendoza lópezedgar mendoza lópez. ph.d. (university of manchester), m.ed. (universidad pontificia javeriana universidad autónoma de bucaramanga), ba in languages (universidad industrial de santander). professor in the school of education at universidad autónoma de bucaramanga, bucaramanga, colombia. referencesreferencesreferencesreferencesreferences akyel, a. (1994). first language use in efl writing: planning in turkish vs. planning in english. international journal of applied linguistics, 4, 169196. becker, c. (1991). quantity and quality of writing german in early acquisition: a case for associative activities in foreign language courses. los angeles: university of southern california. bereiter, c. and scardamalia, m. (1987). the psychology of written composition. hillsdale, n. j.: lawrence erlbaum associates. carson, j. and nelson, g. (1994). writing groups: cross-cultural issues. journal of second language writing, 3 (1), 1730. cohen, a. and cavalcanti, m. (1990). feedback on compositions: teacher and student verbal reports. in b. kroll (ed.), second language writing. research insights for the classroom (pp.155-177). cambridge: cambridge university press. flower, l. (1994). the construction of negotiated meaning: a social cognitive theory of writing. carbondale: southern illinois press. friedlander, a. (1990). composing in english: effects of a first language on writing in english as a second language. in b. kroll (ed.), second language writing: research insights for the classroom (pp.109-125). cambridge: cambridge university press. gallego de b., o. (1993). a comparative study of the process versus product approach to the instruction of writing in spanish as a foreign language. unpublished ph.d. thesis, pennsylvania state university. guasch, o. (1997). parler en l1 pour ecrire en l2. aile, 10, 2149. hall, c. (1990). managing the complexity of revising across languages. tesol quarterly, 24 (1), 4360. hedgcock, j. and lefkowitz, n. (1992). collaborative oral/aural revision in foreign language writing instruction. journal of second language writing, 1 (3), 255276. hedge, t. (1988). writing. oxford: oxford university press. kepner, c. (1991). an experiment in the relationship of types of written feedback to the development of second-language writing skills. modern language journal, 75, 305313. kern, r. and schultz, j. (1992). the effects of composition instruction on intermediate level french students' writing performance: some preliminary findings. modern language journal, 76, 113. kubota, m. (2001). error correction strategies used by learners of japanese when revising a writing task. system, 29, 467480. lally, c. g. (2000). first language influences in second language composition: the effect of prewriting. foreing language annals, 33 (4), 428432. nelson, g. and murphy, j. (1993). peer response groups: do l2 writers use peer comments in revising their drafts? tesol quarterly, 27 (1), 135141. pennington, m., et al. (1996). explaining hong kong students' response to process writing: an exploration of causes and outcomes. journal of second language writing, 5, 227-252. porte, g. (1996). when writing fails: how academic context and past learning experiences shape revision. system, 24, 107116. porte, g. (1997). the etiology of poor second language writing: the influence of perceived teacher preferences on second language revision strategies. journal of second language writing, 6, 6178. ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○35 profileprofileprofileprofileprofile current state of the teaching of process writing in efl classes raimes, a. (1991). out of the woods: emerging traditions in the teaching of writing. tesol quarterly, 25, 407430. reichelt, m. (1999). toward a more comprehensive view of l2 writing: foreign language writing in the us. journal of second language writing, 8 (2), 181204. reichelt, m. (2001). a critical review of foreign language writing research on pedagogical approaches. the modern language journal, 85 (4), 578592. santos, t. (1992). ideology in composition: l1 and esl. journal of second language writing, 1, 115. sengupta, s. (2000). an investigation into the effects of revision strategy instruction on l2 secondary school learners. system, 28 (1), 97113. sengupta, s. and falvey, p. (1998). the role of the teaching context in hong kong english teachers' perceptions of l2 writing pedagogy. evaluation and research in education, 12 (2), 7295. silva, t. (1993). towards an understanding of the distinct nature of l2 writing: the esl research and its implications. tesol quarterly, 27, 657677. stewart, m. and cheung, m. (1989). introducing a process approach in the teaching of writing in hong kong. institute of language in education journal, 6, 418. villamil, o. and de guerrero, m. (1998). assessing the impact of peer revision on l2 writing. applied linguistics, 19 (4), 491514. wooddall, b. (2002). language-switching: using the first language while writing in a second language. journal of second language writing, 11 (1), 728. zamel, v. (1983). the composing processes of advanced esl students: six case studies. tesol quarterly, 17, 165187. ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ 36 mendozamendozamendozamendozamendoza profileprofileprofileprofileprofile appendix 1: clappendix 1: clappendix 1: clappendix 1: clappendix 1: classroom observassroom observassroom observassroom observassroom observaaaaation instrumenttion instrumenttion instrumenttion instrumenttion instrument school: ___________________________ time: ____________ subject: ___________________________ grade: ___________ number of students: ____________ males: ______females: ______ timetimetimetimetime t lt lt lt lt l t qt qt qt qt q t rt rt rt rt r pppppaaaaa p vp vp vp vp v prprprprpr p wp wp wp wp w praprapraprapra psapsapsapsapsa p wp wp wp wp waaaaa s ws ws ws ws waaaaa trptrptrptrptrp sssss uuuuu tl: teacher describes, narrates, explains, directs pra: pre-reading activity tq: teacher questions psa: post-reading activity tr: teacher responds to pupil’s respond pwa: pre-writing/planning activity pa: pupil responds to teacher’s question swa: post-writing/revising activity pv: pupil volunteers information, comments, trp: teacher revises pupil’s work or questions pr: pupil reads s: silence pw: pupil writes u: unclassifiable devising a language certificate for primary school teachers of english profile 8, 2007. issn 1657-0790. bogotá, colombia. pages 145-164 145 devising a language certificate for primary school teachers of english elaboración de una certificación lingüística para profesores de inglés en la escuela primaria marina bondi* franca poppi** university of modena and reggio emilia, italy this paper sets out to examine how the common european framework of reference can be employed as a useful tool for the purpose of devising a language certificate meant to assess the competence needed for effective teaching at the primary school level. to this end, the b1 level descriptors of the cef have been re-written so as to make them correspond, as closely as possible, to the abilities actually displayed in the context of primary language teaching and they have also been referred to three different contexts of use: classroom management, professional self-development and language awareness. a tentative draft of one of the parts of the certificate meant to assess oral comprehension will be shown as the final step of a process which started with the definition of the profile of the foreign language teacher. key words: language proficiency certificate, descriptors, common european framework of reference, foreign language teaching in primary schools este trabajo se propone explicar cómo se puede emplear útilmente el marco común de referencia europeo (mcre) en la realización de una certificación lingüística que atestigüe las competencias necesarias para una enseñanza eficaz y eficiente en el ámbito de la escuela primaria. el análisis dará cuenta de cómo se han modificado los descriptores del nivel b1 del mcre, para que se correspondan lo más fielmente posible con las habilidades utilizadas en el ámbito de la enseñanza de una lengua extranjera en la escuela primaria, con referencia a tres ámbitos de uso distintos: la gestión de la clase, el propio desarrollo profesional y la conciencia lingüística. se mostrará un esbozo de una de las partes de la certificación lingüística, destinada a evaluar la comprensión oral, para ilustrar el desarrollo de un recorrido que, a partir de la reescritura de los descriptores del mcre, lleva además a configurar un perfil del docente de un idioma extranjero en la escuela primaria. palabras clave: certificación de las competencias lingüísticas, descriptores, marco común de referencia europeo, enseñanza de un idioma extranjero en la escuela primaria * e-mail: bondi.marina@unimore.it ** e-mail: poppi.franca@unimore.it address: university of modena and reggio emilia. facoltà di lettere e filosofia. largo sant’eufemia, 19. 41100 modena, italy this article was received on march 27th, 2007 and accepted on june 18th, 2007. profile 8.indd 145 28/09/2007 12:42:26 a.m. bondi and poppi universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras146 introduction several initiatives have been implemented in the last ten years for the purpose of extending the teaching of foreign languages to primary age pupils either to increase the time available for the first foreign language or to facilitate the introduction of a second or third in the secondary stages of schooling. the european union in particular has undergone a process of gradual introduction of foreign language teaching at primary level in many of its countries, as can be seen from surveys of current research1 and as clearly highlighted by the findings of a report published by the european network, eurydice, and funded by the european commission, which sets out the key figures on language teaching in europe2. on the whole, there has been an insufficient number of trained language teachers available to cater to this new demand, especially in primary schools, and many countries have started a reflection on the specific features of the language competence required of primary teachers. this has initiated a policy of national in-service training courses for practising primary teachers, as illustrated by the european profile for language teacher education, a document which deals with the 1 an idea of the changes brought about in the past ten years can be got by comparing the survey carried out by blondin, candelier, edelenbos, johnstone, kubanek-german & taeschner (1998) with the more recent edelenbos, johnstone. & kubanek (2006). an overview of policies and approaches is also provided by nikolov and curtain (2000). 2 according to the report, in almost all countries pupils have to learn a foreign language from primary education onwards: in 2002, approximately 50% of all pupils were learning at least one foreign language. this figure has been increasing rapidly since the end of the 1990s, when educational reform took place in a number of countries, particularly in central and eastern europe, denmark, spain, italy and iceland, cf. http://www.eurydice.org/portal/page/portal/eurydice/showp resentation?pubid=049en initial and in-service education of foreign language teachers in primary, secondary and adult learning contexts and offers a frame of reference for language education policy makers and language teacher educators in europe. there has been great variety in the kinds of policy, strategies and models of provision of both foreign language teaching at primary level and the types of training on offer, with different entry points and requirements for existing language competence. some countries have emphasised process rather than outcome, others have focused on listening and speaking and avoided reading and writing. some have trained specialist, and peripatetic language teachers, others generalist primary teachers3. in italy, the teaching of a foreign language at primary level was introduced in 1985 and, in 2004, it was extended to all the five years of primary school, with english being the language which is most widely taught. the ministry of education has organised national in-service training courses for practising primary teachers, who have thus been encouraged to add a foreign language to their repertoire of teaching subjects or skills the most recent courses have focused on the english language only and are meant to help primary teachers reach the b1 level of the common european framework of reference4. 3 for a critical overview of training programmes in italy, see lopriore (2006). 4 the common european framework of reference is available at: http://www.coe.int/t/dg4/linguistic/source/ framework_en.pdf. it is a document which consists of a series of levels (a1, a2, b1, b2, c1, c2) across five language strands – listening, spoken interaction, spoken production, reading and writing. it has been designed with adult language learners/users, as well as self-assessment in mind. it has the benefit of not being specific to any country or context and offers a continuum for identifying language proficiency within a self-assessment grid. profile 8.indd 146 28/09/2007 12:42:26 a.m. devising a language certificate for primary school teachers of english profile 8, 2007. issn 1657-0790. bogotá, colombia. pages 145-164 147 the b1 level is in fact considered5 the minimum acceptable level of competence needed to teach a foreign language in primary schools. it is also regarded as particularly important, within the italian national education system, to define a common standard for training programmes that are organized locally. this normally requires the definition of a common core of abilities and specific competences that can be officially certified and recognized all over the country. after the end of the first courses, it was decided to assess the teachers’ acquired competence by means of the preliminary english test (pet), concerning the level required for the teaching of english. however, it was soon clear that this certificate, though appropriate for the level, covered a wider range of skills than those strictly needed by primary language teachers and had a different, more general target in mind, while overlooking issues which were especially relevant to primary teachers. it was thus decided to try and devise a specific certificate which could assess the teachers’ competence in those areas and skills which were actually the most important ones for the purposes of primary school teaching. this paper will report on the rationale behind and development of the cept (certificate of english for primary teachers), jointly developed by the language centres of the university of modena and reggio emilia and the university of parma, as a specific 5 for what concerns the legislative records in italy, reference can be made to: documento a cura del comitato tecnico scientifico i.n.d.i.r.e., which states: “[…] se (il docente non è uno specialista, ha una competenza minima di livello b1 in una lingua straniera…” www.istruzioneer.it/allegato.asp?id=211218. information of a more general kind can also be found in bondi, ghelfi & toni (2006). language certificate tailored to assess the needs of english language primary teachers and meant to evaluate the competence they are expected to master in order to act efficiently and appropriately in class. this certificate will, in due time, become the official qualification needed by any primary teacher to start teaching english in the local state schools. 1. the context in march 2005, the university of modena and reggio emilia was asked by the local education authorities to act as consultant in a project which was meant to compile a list of the language skills that had to be mastered by primary level english language teachers, with a view to the possibility of developing a language certificate which might be used to assess the kind of qualification for foreign language teaching actually needed by primary language teachers. members of the university of modena and reggio emilia had taken part in a socrates lingua action ‘a’ project titled ‘autonomy in primary language teacher education: an approach using modern technology’, involving experts in austria, germany, italy, scotland and spain. the close cooperation between the university of modena and reggio emilia and the university of stirling had led to the development of the please (primary language teacher education: autonomy and self-assessment) website6, which had been conceived as a self-evaluation tool addressed to pre-service and in-service primary language teachers. 6 for further information on the please website, see poppi, low and bondi (2003); poppi, low and bondi (2005). profile 8.indd 147 28/09/2007 12:42:26 a.m. bondi and poppi universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras148 this website had been devised to offer primary language teachers the possibility to assess their competence by going through five different checklists, each containing a series of statements describing the required language behaviours – listening, spoken interaction, spoken production, reading and writing for primary language teaching. these statements had been obtained by adapting the b1 and b2 level descriptors of the common european framework of reference to those areas which had been considered particularly meaningful for english-language primary teachers (see contributions to jiménez raya, faber, geweh & peck, 2001; faber, gewehr, jiménez raya & peck, 1999; gewehr, catsimali, faber, jiménez raya & peck, 1998). the expertise gathered with the please website was used to compile a list of the language skills to be mastered by primary language teachers and to devise a testing tool for the profile thus defined. the principle underlying the whole project was the same used for the website: to draw on existing tools, but adapt them to the specific context, reflecting critically on the learning context to which they would be addressed. the basic principle was, thus, that of devising, in our own way, an “appropriate pedagogy”. an appropriate pedagogy will take into account major features of the learners’ cultural identity. the debate, which links more generally to the learner-centred nature of educational interaction, has often drawn attention to critical approaches, learner empowerment and multicultural perspectives in general education (bruner, 1996) as well as to issues of multilingual language policy and transcultural learning of eil (english as an international language) in language teaching and learning (allison & lee, 1999; brady & shinohara, 2000; brady & shinohara, 2003; kramsch & sullivan, 1996; mckay, 2003; murray & kouritzin, 1997). in our case, this meant considering both the local and the professional cultures of the learners, thus recognizing the need to adapt rather than adopt existing tools as well as to negotiate objectives and testing tools of a teacher training programme with the learners themselves. 2. the rationale of the please website prior to the development of the please website, it was decided to refer to the relevant literature in the field of lte (language teacher education)7 and to the outcomes of research conducted within and across different european countries (johnstone, 1999, p. vii). the survey of research had provided an account of the outcomes (in terms of pupils’ language attainment, their metalinguistic knowledge and their attitudes) by the end of the primary school stage and of the main factors considered to influence these outcomes. moreover, it had offered a series of recommendations for decisionmakers (blondin et al., 1998), observing primary language classrooms first hand and conducting surveys of teachers’ views. the analysis had also highlighted the need for more attention to be paid to such areas as: wider-ranging skills in language for classroom management; 7 see in particular approaches to reflective teaching and self-development (li, mahoney and richards, 1994; freeman and richards, 1996). attention was also paid to the perspectives of nonnative teachers. for an analysis of the issues see llurda (2005). – profile 8.indd 148 28/09/2007 12:42:26 a.m. devising a language certificate for primary school teachers of english profile 8, 2007. issn 1657-0790. bogotá, colombia. pages 145-164 149 greater competence in the language needed for autonomous professional self-development; language awareness, as a basis for both classroom management and self-development8. the role of language awareness in language teacher education can hardly be overestimated.9 the range of activities covered includes, as pointed out by trappes-lomax (2002), awareness of teachers’ and students’ language use in the classroom; awareness of the discourse features of supportive, scaffolding teacher talk; classroom interaction; classroom discourse frames; awareness of different kinds of questions and their different pedagogical purposes; teachers’ awareness of themselves as language learners. although the language profiles of the common european framework do not include such a component, it was felt to be necessary to have it here, where it could be shown to contribute both to the teacher’s selfimprovement as a learner and to a reflective attitude towards teaching.10 banking on the assumption that the language teacher is a language learner as well as a facilitator of language learning, two contexts had been singled out within which teachers should develop their language proficiency. these were the classroom context 8 for an overview of the complexity of the linguistic competence proposed for language teacher preparation, its components, the interaction among them and the implications for language teaching, see celce-murcia, dörney & thurrell (1995). 9 on the important role played by language awareness in lte (language teacher education), see, for instance: andrews & mcneill (2005); bondi (1999a); bondi (1999b); murray (2002); sharwood-smith (2006); wright (2002). 10 for a detailed analysis of ways available to teachers for exploring and reflecting upon their classroom experiences, see richards and lockhart (1994). – – (teacher as a facilitator) and the professional development context (teacher as a learner). moreover, since it is often quite difficult to separate language and pedagogy, as underpinning both is language awareness, it was decided to consider its impact on the teachers’ teaching and learning of the language. taking advantage of the above considerations, the research group had decided to rewrite the synthetic descriptions of the language behaviours associated with the levels of the common european framework of reference, adapting them to the abilities and activities actually displayed by primary language teachers. by comparing the document obtained for level b1 (see appendix 1), with the contents of common european framework of reference, it is immediately clear that, while the former actually contains indications for what concerns the overall language behaviour to be developed by primary language teachers, the latter refers to more general objectives. this can be observed by focusing, for instance, on the following statements referring to listening and reading: the close analysis of the two sets of texts clearly shows how the former, by referring to ‘school activities’, ‘in-service presentations’, ‘teaching materials’ and ‘reading materials for children’, clearly identifies those contexts of language use which are particularly meaningful for primary language teachers. understandably, most of the descriptors are characterised by a certain vagueness. in the case of the cef descriptors, this feature is mainly linked to the attempt to provide a flexible, central core, which will have to be integrated with the learning goals specific to particular contexts (north, 2000; council of profile 8.indd 149 28/09/2007 12:42:26 a.m. bondi and poppi universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras150 plt descriptors – level b1 european framework of reference – level b1 listening i can understand the main points of clear, standard speech on familiar matters, encountered in professional development and school activities. i can understand the main points of a short talk, e.g. in-service presentation, on topics of personal and professional interest, when the delivery is relatively slow and clear. listening i can understand the main points of clear standard speech on familiar matters regularly encountered in work, school, leisure, etc. i can understand the main point of many radio or tv programmes on current affairs or topics of personal and professional interest when the delivery is relatively slow and clear. reading i can locate specific information for personal and professional interest and development. i can understand texts that consist mainly of high frequency everyday or job-related language. i can understand teaching materials and clearly identify sequences and procedural descriptions. i can understand the description of events, feelings and wishes in reading materials for children. reading i can understand texts that consist mainly of high frequency everyday or job-related language. i can understand the description of events, feelings and wishes in personal letters. table 1. some descriptors referring to listening and reading. europe, 2001; alderson, 2002). on the other hand, the descriptors devised for testing the language competence of primary language teachers also retain some ‘general’ terms. this is mainly due to the fact that they are only intended as a reference point. what we were trying to identify was the description of what we regarded as the ‘typical’ representative of effective practice, but the perspective adopted in defining its typicality has been that of ‘topologies’ rather than ‘typologies’. while the traditional typologies focus on delineating mutually exclusive categories and are set up as oppositions, which may, for example, classify learners as either elementary or intermediate, topologies are sets of criteria for establishing degrees of proximity among the members of some category, which is identified by a common core but fades off at the edges (bondi, 1999a). 3. primary language teaching descriptors after the above-mentioned general descriptions of language behaviours had been obtained, the need was felt, however, to develop more detailed checklists which would actually single out all the different abilities that primary language teachers should master. these checklists were then devised, organised as a series of ‘i can’ statements and meant to reflect the teachers’ linguistic competences within the key contexts of classroom management and professional self-development. while recognising that a general description of all learners might be limited to communicative abilities, it was felt that a specific language awareness component would be necessary for the profile 8.indd 150 28/09/2007 12:42:26 a.m. devising a language certificate for primary school teachers of english profile 8, 2007. issn 1657-0790. bogotá, colombia. pages 145-164 151 teacher. accordingly, this third priority for development was addressed, too, through a separate grid and checklist with ‘i know’ rather than ‘i can’ statements. the please website had been devised to provide primary language teachers with a self-evaluation tool, which could help them to assess their competence in five different skills and three different contexts of use (classroom management, professional selfdevelopment and language awareness). on the basis of the official descriptors of level b1 and b2, we selected the statements that were most relevant for the teachers and adapted them to the teaching context: 98 descriptors were thus developed with reference to the five different skills mentioned in the common european framework of reference (for the full list of the descriptors of the please checklists, see appendix 2). 4. towards a language certificate for primary teachers after completing the tentative list of the abilities to be mastered by primary language teachers, it was decided to employ them as the constituent parts of a language profile11, meant to provide a detailed analysis of the primary language teacher’s proficiency in relation to the typical uses of the fl needed. the profile was validated in a series of meetings with primary teachers who would be involved in the training programmes leading to the certificate. the negotiation of the contents of the profile with the teachers allowed for a closer matching between the teaching programmes and the certificate to be produce. 11 the profile is described in bondi, poppi (2006). once the overall picture of a typical fl primary teacher was completed, it was decided to go on to consider how we could devise the draft of a language certificate for primary language teachers. the cept (certificate of english for primary teachers) undertakes the following: to assess language skills at level b1; to assess those skills which are directly relevant to the range of uses in which primary language teachers will be involved; to cover the five language skills (listening, spoken interaction, spoken production, reading and writing) mentioned in the common european framework of reference as well as knowledge of language structure and use in the contexts of classroom management and professional selfdevelopment; to provide accurate and consistent assessment of an additional skill, underpinning those normally employed by language teachers, namely language awareness; to relate the various parts of the test to the professional role to be played by the candidates. the various parts into which the cept is divided refer to the language domains12 which, after observing primary language classrooms and conducting surveys of teachers’ views, had been singled out as particularly meaningful for a primary language teacher; these are language for classroom management and 12 more information on the concept of ‘language domains’, defined as the context of situation in which language is used, can be found in lee (2001), where it is defined in relation to other notions such as genre and text type. – – – – – profile 8.indd 151 28/09/2007 12:42:27 a.m. bondi and poppi universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras152 language for professional self-development as well as language awareness. candidates who are successful in cept will be officially awarded the possibility of teaching english as a foreign language to primary school pupils by the local authorities. the cept includes a reading paper, a writing paper, a listening paper and a speaking component13. the texts are authentic and adapted from real-world notices, articles, stories, texts from websites, reference books, and methodology books. the reading component contains four parts. in part 1 of the test, the candidate will read five authentic notices and signs. for each one, the candidate must choose from three options the one that corresponds to the message in the notice or sign. for a sign saying “no access to district and circle lines. use exit at far end of platform”, for example, the three available options would be: a) do not use this exit. b) this way out. c) use this entrance. in part 2 of the test, the candidate is presented with a short story. six sentences have been removed from the text. the candidate must read sentences a-g and decide where the sentences have to go in the text .there is one extra sentence. in part 3, the candidate is presented with a longer factual text and needs 13 the guidelines mentioned in the present study are the product of the joint efforts, collaboration and revisions of a team of experts including glenn alessi, marina bondi, silvia cacchiani, claire darby, gillian mansfield, sian morgan, franca poppi, sara radighieri, marc silver, patricia taylor and claire vickers. – – – to look for precise information. there are ten statements about the text following the same order of the text. the candidate should read these first and then scan the text to decide whether the statements are correct or incorrect. in part 4, the candidate reads a short text containing factual interdisciplinary reference information with ten numbered spaces. there are three multiple choice options and the task is designed to test grammatical and lexical competence. the candidate must choose the appropriate word for each space. the writing component contains three parts. part 1 focuses on grammatical precision and requires the candidate to correct five sentences that might be used in the classroom. in each sentence, there is one mistake. the candidate must find the mistake and rewrite the sentence correctly. in part 2, the candidate is presented with some images and words in a box and asked to create a coherent short story using the given vocabulary. in part 3, the candidate is given a letter to write following the guidelines indicated in the instructions. the letter is a longer piece of writing and focuses on the correct social forms and language used in letter writing. the listening component includes three parts. – – – – profile 8.indd 152 28/09/2007 12:42:27 a.m. devising a language certificate for primary school teachers of english profile 8, 2007. issn 1657-0790. bogotá, colombia. pages 145-164 153 in part 1 of the test, the candidate listens to a recording taken from a short story. there are seven questions. for each question, the candidate will find three pictures. the candidate listens to the recording twice and chooses the right picture (a, b, or c). in part 2, the candidate has to answer 8 multiple-choice questions as he or she listens to the text, choosing from three options. in part 3 of the test, the candidate listens to a longer text, which will take the form of a lecturette in which teachers and/or teacher-trainers are talking about issues connected with the teaching/learning process. the candidate is presented with some notes summarising the content of the lecturette, from which seven pieces of information have been removed. as he or she listens, the candidate will fill in the numbered gaps on the page with words from the lecturette, providing the missing information. the speaking component contains three parts. the speaking part of the cept certificate is taken in pairs. the two candidates are assessed by two examiners. only one of the examiners interacts directly with the candidates (posing questions, etc.), while the other acts as assessor and does not join in the conversation. in part 1, the two candidates respond individually to one or two short questions posed by the examiner. one of the functions of this part is to allow the candidates to feel at ease, – – – – acquiring familiarity with the test setting. in part 2, each candidate offers an extended “long-turn” around one of the following prompted tasks: story-telling and retelling; giving instructions; assigning and modelling a role-play, using a pair of written role-play cards; explaining learner errors. in part 3, the two candidates interact with each other about aspects of their work and their workplace environment. a scripted question is posed first to one of the candidates who is asked to discuss the problem with the other candidate, and then to the second candidate who in turn discusses with the first. the authors of the present study have been directly involved in the drafting of the third part of the listening component of the cept, namely, the lecturette. therefore, a copy of this part is included in appendix 3. the range of texts referred to in devising this part of the listening paper is characterised by a pedagogical focus as they may be extracts taken from in-service conferences, descriptions of short case-studies, or instructions on how to carry out activities in the classroom. 5. conclusions quite often the complexity and fluidity of an l2 teacher’s interactional work is understated. in fact, the dual nature of language as a subject and vehicle places extreme demands on language teachers. our attempt to devise a tool that might – – profile 8.indd 153 28/09/2007 12:42:27 a.m. bondi and poppi universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras154 be used to assess the interactional skills and professionalism of language teachers cannot, therefore, be said to be definitive or comprehensive. rogers (1969, p. 104) believed that “the only man who is educated is the man who has learned how to adapt and change; the man who has realised that no knowledge is secure, that only the process of seeking knowledge gives basis for security”. keeping these words firmly in mind, we have devised an instrument, the certificate of english for primary teachers, which is flexible enough to meet the different needs of a wide range of language teachers operating in manifold contexts. since we feel that it is not possible to separate language, pedagogy and language awareness when considering the role of the primary language teacher, we have tried to develop a certificate which highlights and supports these connections. obviously, further studies and tests will be needed to ascertain the validity of the cept as a certificate meant to assess the language competence that should be mastered by primary language teachers. references allison, d., & lee, w. y. (1999). appropriate pedagogy? evaluating a teaching intervention. hong kong journal of applied linguistics, 4(1), 61-77. alderson, j. c. (ed.) (2002). case studies in the use of the common european framework. strasbourg: council of europe. andrews, s., & mcneill, a. (2005). knowledge about language and “good” language teachers. in n. bartels (ed.), applied linguistics and language teacher education (pp. 159-178). new york: springer. blondin, c., candelier, m., edelenbos, p., johnstone, r., kubanek-german, a., & taeschner, t. (1998). foreign languages in primary and pre-school education. a review of recent research within the european union. london: cilt. bondi, m. (1999a). a language profile for the fl primary teacher. in m. bondi, p. faber, w. gewehr, m.j. jiménez raya, l. low, c. mewald, & a. peck (eds.), autonomy in primary language teacher education. an approach using modern technology (pp. 53-59). stirling: scottish cilt. bondi, m. (1999b). language awareness and efl teacher education. in w. gewehr, m. jimenez raya, p. faber, & a. peck (eds.), european perspectives on language teacher education (pp. 89-105). berlin: peter lang. bondi, m., ghelfi, d., & toni, b. (eds.). (2006). teaching english. ricerca e pratiche innovative per la scuola primaria. napoli: tecnodid editrice. bondi, m., & poppi, f. (2006). l’insegnante di lingua straniera nella scuola primaria: per un profilo e per una certificazione delle competenze. in m. bondi, d. ghelfi, b. toni (eds.), teaching english. ricerca e pratiche innovative per la scuola primaria (pp. 13-29). napoli: tecnodid editrice. brady, a., & shinohara, y. (2003). english additional language and learning empowerment: conceiving and practicing a transcultural pedagogy and learning. asian journal of english language teaching, �3, 75-93. brady, a., & shinohara, y. (2000). principles and activities for a transcultural approach to additional language learning. system, �8(�), 305-322. bruner, j. s. (1996). the culture of education. cambridge: harvard university press. celce-murcia, m, dörney, z., & thurrell, s. (1995). communicative competence: a pedagogically motivated model with content specifications. issues in applied linguistics, 6(2), 5-35. council of europe (2001). common european framework of reference for languages: learning, teaching, assessment. cambridge: cambridge university press. documento a cura del comitato tecnico scientifico i.n.d.i.r.e.: formazione di competenze linguistico-comunicative della lingua inglese dei docenti della scuola primaria. retrieved may 31st, 2007 from www.istruzioneer.it/allegato. asp?id=211218 profile 8.indd 154 28/09/2007 12:42:27 a.m. devising a language certificate for primary school teachers of english profile 8, 2007. issn 1657-0790. bogotá, colombia. pages 145-164 155 edelenbos, p., johnstone, r., & kubanek, a. (2006). the main pedagogical principles underlying the teaching of languages to very young learners. languages for the children of europe: published research, good practice and main principles. european commission report. eac 89/04. european profile for language teacher education – final report september 2004. retrieved may 31st, 2007 from http://ec.europa.eu/education/ policies/lang/doc/profile_en.pdf faber, p., gewehr, w., jiménez raya, m.j., & peck, a (eds.) (1999). english teacher education in europe. new trends and developments. munich: peter lang. freeman, d., & richards, j. c. (eds.) (1996). teacher learning in language teaching. new york: cambridge university press. gewehr, w., catsimali, g., faber, p., jiménez raya, m., & peck, a.j. (eds.) (1998). aspects of modern language teaching in europe. london and new york: rutledge. jiménez raya, m., faber, p., gewehr, w., & peck, a.j. (eds.) (2001). effective foreign language teaching at the primary level. munich: peter lang. johnstone, r. (1999). foreword. in m. bondi, p. faber, w. gewehr, m.j. jiménez raya, l. low, c. mewald, & a. peck. (eds.), autonomy in primary language teacher education. an approach using modern technology (p. viii). stirling: scottish cilt. key data on teaching languages at school in europe 2005 edition retrieved may 31st, 2007 from http://www.eur ydice.org/portal/page/portal/ eurydice/showpresentation?pubid=049en kramsch, c., & sullivan, p. (1996). appropriate pedagogy. elt journal, july, 50(3), 199-212. lee, d.y.w. (2001). genres, registers, text types, domains, and styles: clarifying the concepts and navigating a path through the bnc jungle. language, learning & technology, 5(3), 37-72. li, d., mahoney, d., & richards, j. c. (eds.) (1994). exploring second language teacher development. hong kong: city polytechnic of hong kong. lopriore, l. (2006). the long and winding road. a profile of italian primary efl teachers. in m. mccloskey, j. orr, & m. dolitsky. (eds.), teaching english as a foreign language in primary school (pp. 59-82). tesol publications: alexandria, virginia. llurda, e. (2005). non-native language teachers. perceptions, challenges and contributions to the professions. new york: springer. mckay, s. l. (2003). toward an appropriate eil pedagogy: re-examining common elt assumptions. international journal of applied linguistics, �3(1), 1-22. murray, g., & kouritzin, s. (1997). re-thinking second language instruction, autonomy and technology: a manifesto. system, �5(2), 185-196. murray, h. (2002). tracing the development of language awareness: an exploratory study of language teachers in training. bern: institut für sprachwissenschaft. nikolov, m., & curtain, h (eds.) 2000. an early start: young learners and modern languages in europe and beyond. graz: european center for modern languages. north, b. (2000). the development of a common framework scale of language proficiency. new york: peter lang. please website. retrieved may 31st, 2007 from http://www.please.unimore.it poppi, f., low, l., & bondi, m. (2003). fostering autonomy: implementing change in teachers’ education. in j. gollin, g. ferguson, & h. trappeslomax (eds.), papers from three ials symposia – �000, �00� and �00� (pp. 1-11). edinburgh: ials. poppi, f., low, l., & bondi, m. (2005). please (primary language teacher education: autonomy and self-evaluation). in b. holmberg, m. shelley, & c. white (eds.), distance education and languages. evolution and change (pp. 295308). clevedon, buffalo, toronto: multilingual matters. richards, j.c., & lockhart, c. (1994). reflective teaching in second language classrooms. cambridge: cambridge university press. rogers, c.r. (1969). freedom to learn. columbus, ohio: charles e. merrill. seidlhofer, b. (1999). double standards: teacher education in the expanding circle. world englishes, �8(2), 233-245. profile 8.indd 155 28/09/2007 12:42:27 a.m. bondi and poppi universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras156 sharwood-smith, m. (2006). the evolution of teachers’ language awareness. language awareness. �5(1), 1-19. the common european framework of reference. retrieved on may 31st, 2007, from http://www.coe. int/t/dg4/linguistic/source/framework_en.pdf trappes-lomax, h. (2002). introduction. in h. trappes-lomax, & g. ferguson (eds.), language in language teacher education (pp. 121). amsterdam/philadelphia: john benjamins publishing company. wright, t. (2002). doing language awareness. issues for language study in language teacher education. in h. trappes-lomax, & g. ferguson (eds.), language in language teacher education (pp. 113130). amsterdam/philadelphia: john benjamins publishing company. about the authors marina bondi is professor of english at the university of modena and reggio emilia. she has published on various aspects of discourse analysis and eap, with particular reference to the argumentative features of academic discourse and to the role of metadiscourse and evaluative language. her recent work centres on language variation across genres, disciplines and cultures. franca poppi teaches english linguistics at the university of modena and reggio emilia. she has published on various aspects of the teacher-learner interaction. her initial work was focused on learner autonomy and advising in self-instruction, but has since then concentrated on the linguistic, social and psychological dimensions of discourse analysis. her current research interests concern the interactional features of discourse. profile 8.indd 156 28/09/2007 12:42:27 a.m. devising a language certificate for primary school teachers of english profile 8, 2007. issn 1657-0790. bogotá, colombia. pages 145-164 157 appendix 1: plt (primary language teaching general descriptors) level b1 listening i can understand the main points of clear, standard speech on familiar matters encountered in professional development and school activities. i can understand the main points of a short talk, e.g. inservice presentation on topics of personal and professional interest when the delivery is relatively slow and clear. reading i can locate specific information for personal and professional interests and development. i can understand texts that consist mainly of high-frequency, everyday or job-related language. i can understand teaching materials and clearly identify sequences and procedural descriptions. i can understand the description of events, feelings and wishes in reading materials for children. spoken interaction i can deal with most situations likely to arise in classroom interaction. i can enter unprepared into conversations on topics that are familiar or of personal interest (school life, family and everyday life, games and plays, affective language). spoken production i can connect phrases in a simple way in order to describe experiences and events. i can present brief descriptions of my professional experience and plans. i can structure interaction and activities in the classroom, e.g. elicit pupils’ language, praise, encouragement. i can narrate a story on the basis of an agreed script. written production i can take notes in lectures or seminars for revision purposes. i can take notes from written sources. i can produce simple resources for the classroom such as captions, cue cards, examples. i can write simple adaptations of authentic materials making use of dictionaries and other reference materials. language awareness i can check my own knowledge /hypotheses about language using reference books (dictionaries and grammars) but may need some guidance in selecting relevant materials. i can undertake activities for self-evaluation, relating my own level to given standard levels. i can understand the purpose, scope and structure of the fl programme of study across the primary age range and can accordingly identify and select suitable fl forms and functions to be taught. i can select materials on the basis of their appropriateness to the specific learning context. i can describe and explain examples of classroom interaction, identifying, for example, interaction patterns, or the respective role of content language and management language. i can describe the most common learner’s errors. profile 8.indd 157 28/09/2007 12:42:27 a.m. bondi and poppi universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras158 appendix 2: please checklist analytical descriptors classroom management i can follow clearly articulated speech directed at me on familiar matters as encountered in school activities. b1 i can understand recorded materials (e.g. children’s stories, fairy-tales, nursery rhymes) about familiar topics when the delivery is slow and clear. b1 i can understand relevant authentic materials such as cartoons and songs. b2 i can model effective communication to my students by listening carefully and acknowledging their contributions verbally and non-verbally. b1 i can elicit and answer my students’ questions appropriately and confidently. b1 i can use intonation, gestures, etc. to convey meaning to maximum effect and to engage my students. b1 i can ask questions in a simple way and recast them as necessary to make the language more accessible to my students. b1 i can seek and hold my students’ attention, stimulate their interest and encourage them to participate verbally and non-verbally. b1 i can comment on the ideas and contributions of my students and show awareness of their feelings. b1 i can enter into conversation unprepared or unscripted, and interact spontaneously, confidently, and fluently with my students. b2 i can act as a mediator for my students when they encounter native speaker language e.g. by a visitor to the classroom or a videoconferencing link. b2 i can connect phrases in a simple way to describe experiences and events. b1 i can give instructions, organise and manage classroom activities clearly and confidently. b1 i can use fillers, for example well, ...er, to give time for me to think through what i want to say next. b1 i can go beyond the reproduction of fixed phrases and generate new language or transfer language i have learned in a different context to the classroom context. b2 i can use affective language e.g. to praise, encourage, keep the students on task. b1 i can narrate a simple story with the support of images such as picture stories, comics and cue cards or on the basis of an agreed script. b1 i can relate the plot of children’s stories, films or cartoons and i can describe my reactions. b2 i can paraphrase short written passages orally in a simple way, using the original text wording and sequence. b1 when reading aloud to my students i can demonstrate accurately the link between the printed word and pronunciation and meaning. b1 i can understand teaching materials and clearly identify sequences and procedural descriptions. b1 i can understand the description of events, feelings and wishes in reading materials for children. b1 i can discriminate between main points and less important details of a text written for children. b1 profile 8.indd 158 28/09/2007 12:42:27 a.m. devising a language certificate for primary school teachers of english profile 8, 2007. issn 1657-0790. bogotá, colombia. pages 145-164 159 i can read aloud stories, poems, and other kinds of texts suited to primary language teaching. b1 i can understand clearly written instructions in teachers’ books concerning, for instance, the organisation of pupils’ work and the performance of language tasks/activities. b1 i can understand clearly written instructions for a piece of equipment (e.g. how to operate a cd player, a videotape recorder). b1 i can adapt my style and speed of reading to different texts and purposes. b2 i can use appropriate reference sources (books, websites and the like) in a selective way. b2 i can understand stories and other authentic materials suited for the age range of my students, including imaginative texts and materials related to other areas of the curriculum. b2 i can identify the stances or viewpoints adopted by writers in stories/written materials suited for my students. b2 i can understand in detail instructions in english to operate school equipment (e.g. language laboratory, computers) successfully and effectively. b2 i can read aloud fluently and accurately different kinds of texts suited for primary language teaching. b2 i can produce simple resources for the classroom such as captions, cue cards, bubbles for stories, matching activities (picture-word). b1 i can write simple adaptations of authentic materials making use of dictionaries and other reference materials. b1 i can write simple messages to organise, for instance, an exchange for my students. b1 i can produce differentiated resources for the classroom. b2 i can write fairly long and easily comprehensible stories for children. b2 i can write adaptations of authentic materials, tuning them to the varying students’ levels of competence. b2 language for professional self-development i can follow speech directed at me on familiar matters as encountered in professional development (e.g. an in-service presentation), provided the delivery is relatively slow and clear. b1 i can understand both the main points and specific details of a short talk (e.g. an in-service presentation) in standard spoken language, delivered at natural speed. b2 i can understand simple technical information and instructions in the foreign language ( e.g. verbal instructions for equipment operation, watching a video, watching a demonstration, etc.). b1 i can understand fairly complex arguments (e.g. in lectures or media programmes) on a familiar topic or when the context is well known. b2 i can use a variety of strategies such as listening for main points and relying on contextual clues for comprehension. b2 i can understand most of the information of relevant authentic materials in standard spoken language, delivered at natural speed. b2 i can understand authentic materials (e.g. children’s stories, songs, rhymes) when the delivery is slow and clear. b1 i can use both verbal and non-verbal behaviour to acknowledge other people’s contributions to conversations on familiar topics. b1 profile 8.indd 159 28/09/2007 12:42:27 a.m. bondi and poppi universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras160 i can ask for clarification or information of seminars or language workshops on occasion. b1 i can answer questions on personal experience and express personal opinion in discussions on familiar topics. b1 i can take an active part in discussions asking and answering questions and expressing my point of view. b2 i can comment on the ideas, opinions, reactions and contributions of others showing awareness of their feelings (e.g. during seminars or language workshops). b2 i can use fillers, for example well, ... er, to give time for thought and to keep my turn in the conversation. b1 i can connect sentences in a simple way to describe experiences and events related to my professional life. b1 i can go beyond simple reproduction and generate new language in familiar and some unfamiliar contexts. b1 i can talk in some detail about a range of professional experiences and opinions and explain my point of view. b2 i can make a short formal presentation/report to colleagues with the support of notes or of an outline (e.g. on occasion of seminars or language workshops). b2 i can understand texts that consist mainly of high-frequency, everyday or job-related language. b1 i can understand the main points of texts written specifically for my professional area (e.g. textbook reviews and primary language teaching written resources). b1 i can understand the main points of written texts concerning my professional area (e.g. articles in journals of pedagogy and language teaching and elt publications). b2 i can guess the meaning of unknown words from the context and infer the meaning of expressions if the topic is familiar. b1 i can scan short texts (e.g. a conference application form or brochure) find relevant facts and information and fulfil a specific task like applying to take part. b1 i can understand clearly written instructions to perform a task (e.g. to operate equipment, to use selfevaluation tools). b1 i can recognize the writer’s attitude or viewpoint in articles or reports concerned with my professional area. b2 i can take notes in the foreign language in lectures, seminars or from written sources (e.g. for revision purposes). b1 i can write simple texts or messages on topics that are familiar to me or which interest me personally. b1 i can reply to advertisements and ask for more complete or more specific information about products (for example a language course or a training course). b2 i can convey -via fax, e-mail -short simple factual information to friends or colleagues asking and giving information on professional matters (e.g. exchanging information about interesting web-sites and newsgroups). b1 i can write letters to organise, for instance, an exchange for my students. b2 i can write a letter /report to a professional body or journal, passing on information or giving reasons in support or against a particular point of view. b2 profile 8.indd 160 28/09/2007 12:42:28 a.m. devising a language certificate for primary school teachers of english profile 8, 2007. issn 1657-0790. bogotá, colombia. pages 145-164 161 language awareness i can identify foreign language forms and functions suitable for my teaching situation and/or use relevant literature to check and support my choices. b2 i can select materials that are appropriate to the age range and cognitive development of my students. b1 i can select course-books for the teaching and learning of the foreign language on the basis of their strong and weak points. b2 i can select and adapt materials creating activities suitable for the level of linguistic competence of my students. b1 i can recognise the errors my learners make when speaking/writing in the fl. b1 i can identify or speculate about the underlying causes for the most common learners’ errors. b2 i can recast or paraphrase difficult language and make it accessible to my students’ level. b1 i can identify difficult grammar points for my students and provide a simple explanation. b1 i can understand my learners’ questions about the foreign language and how it works and provide them with appropriate answers. b1 i can name language features and provide examples and explanations accessible to my learners’ language background. b2 i can help my students identify recurring linguistic mechanisms (e.g. how to ask a question) and guide them through language practice to language production. b1 i can provide a rationale for my choice of different patterns of classroom activities (e.g. use of pairs, group work, etc.). b1 i can describe and explain language used for classroom interaction. b2 i can relate my choice to use the fl for classroom management to the needs of my students and the learning situation. b2 i can distinguish between the role of management and content language in classroom interaction. b1 i can develop strategies to balance the teaching of both management and content language in classroom interaction. b2 i can use my knowledge of the fl grammar, lexis and functions to facilitate my students’ learning in an appropriate way. b1 i can use the learning of l2 to increase students’ knowledge of l1 and stimulate their interest in how language works. b2 i can compare and contrast l1 and l2 items and guide students’ reflection on similarities and differences between l1 and l2. b2 i can help my students transfer the knowledge and understanding they already have about how language works to the fl learning situation. b2 i can provide a rationale for the foreign language programme of study across the primary age range, describing its purpose, objectives, scope and structure (e.g. to parents, colleagues, etc.). b2 i can check my knowledge about language using recommended reference books such as dictionaries and grammars. b1 profile 8.indd 161 28/09/2007 12:42:28 a.m. bondi and poppi universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras162 i can check my hypotheses about language choosing relevant reference books (dictionaries and grammar books) in an independent way. b1 i can recognise the errors i make when i have some time for reflection, e.g. in writing or when listening to myself on a tape. b1 i can monitor my language production and identify my own errors, frequently offering forms of immediate self-correction. b2 i can use my knowledge of written-word and sound relationships to help me recognise familiar language and guess the meaning of unfamiliar language. b1 i can look for grammatical clues, draw inferences and predict on the basis of linguistic knowledge, knowledge of the content and knowledge of the world. b1 i can undertake activities for peer or self-evaluation, identifying my own level in relation to given standard levels (i.e. the completing of tasks such as this). b1 i can analyse the results of my self-evaluation and plan activities for self-development on the basis of specific lacks, needs, wants identified, provided some guidance or help is available. b2 i can undertake activities for self-development with peers or with some guidance. b2 profile 8.indd 162 28/09/2007 12:42:28 a.m. devising a language certificate for primary school teachers of english profile 8, 2007. issn 1657-0790. bogotá, colombia. pages 145-164 163 appendix 3: sample listening test part 3 now turn to part 3, questions 16 – 22. you will hear a teacher talking about the different causes of students’ lack of participation during classroom activities. for each question, fill in the missing information in the numbered space. getting students to participate in class students are often reticent and anxious about answering questions. (16) is important because students can: test their own hypotheses negotiate comprehensible (17) formulate (18) output. teachers should promote students’ participation. reasons for students’ lack of participation: students’ low (19) in english fear of making (20) teachers tend to involve brighter students teachers don’t like (21) students don’t understand the teacher’s (22) / questions. transcript getting students to participate in class can be a problem. students are often reticent and anxious about answering questions. in fact, a lot of teachers’ questions receive no reply. well, --of course this doesn’t mean that next time you go to class you’ll have to force your students to participate, even if they aren’t ready. yes --participation is important… participation is important, but we shouldn’t assume that talking equals learning, --in other words, let’s keep in mind that talking is not the same thing as learning. well, ---when students answer questions asked by the teacher or by another student, ask questions themselves or give comments, they are basically doing three things: 1. 2. 3. 4. 5. profile 8.indd 163 28/09/2007 12:42:28 a.m. bondi and poppi universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras164 testing hypotheses about the language negotiating comprehensible input formulating comprehensible output. it is, therefore, essential for us --as teachers, to promote our students’ participation. but above all we should try to discover the causes of our students’ lack of participation. so what can the reasons be for our students’ lack of participation? well we could mention at least five different reasons: first, there’s the students’ low proficiency in english … of course that’s relevant… and we know that the best students will tend to participate more. the second reason is their fear of making mistakes and of being criticized… -yes… we all know that students don’t like being criticized… that they are afraid of losing face in front of the class. as a third reason we can mention the fact that teachers tend to involve brighter students in order to get the right answer. then, we shouldn’t forget that some teachers don’t like silence. that is, they don’t like to have too many silent pauses during their lessons. so they may decide to provide the answer themselves or to ask another student. and finally, we have to remember that the students often don’t respond simply because they don’t understand the teacher’s instructions and/or questions. 1) 2) 3) 4) 5) profile 8.indd 164 28/09/2007 12:42:28 a.m. profile no. 7dic 5.p65 ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ profile profile profile profile profile 7 (2006): universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras from de-anglicization to internationalisation: cultural representations of the uk and the usa in global, adapted and local elt textbooks in argentina1 de la des-angloamericanización a la internacionalización: representaciones culturalesde la des-angloamericanización a la internacionalización: representaciones culturalesde la des-angloamericanización a la internacionalización: representaciones culturalesde la des-angloamericanización a la internacionalización: representaciones culturalesde la des-angloamericanización a la internacionalización: representaciones culturales del ru y los eeuu en libros de texto globales, adaptados y locales en argentinadel ru y los eeuu en libros de texto globales, adaptados y locales en argentinadel ru y los eeuu en libros de texto globales, adaptados y locales en argentinadel ru y los eeuu en libros de texto globales, adaptados y locales en argentinadel ru y los eeuu en libros de texto globales, adaptados y locales en argentina enrique alejandro basabe*enrique alejandro basabe*enrique alejandro basabe*enrique alejandro basabe*enrique alejandro basabe* quiquebasabe@yahoo.com.ar universidad nacional de la pampa, argentina it is generally acknowledged that the culture of english-speaking countries has abandoned its central role in recent elt materials. however, this study suggests that representations of the anglo-american culture are still favoured in elt textbooks but that, in most cases, they have been transformed into “international” attitudes. this idea is tested by the compilation of lists of cultural references for four series of textbooks in use in argentina, and by the application of the procedures of critical discourse analysis (cda) to a selection of reading passages from them. the findings provide an answer as to what representations of english-speaking cultures are in current textbooks and open to debate the apparent fairness of english as an international language (eil). kkkkkey worey worey worey worey words:ds:ds:ds:ds: cultural representations, culture of english-speaking countries, materials design, english as an international language, critical discourse analysis existe un consenso casi generalizado en que la cultura de los países de habla inglesa ha abandonado su papel central en los textos de inglés como lengua extranjera. sin embargo, se sugiere que las representaciones de la cultura anglo-americana aun persisten sólo que transformadas en actitudes “internacionales”. esta idea se pone a prueba mediante la compilación de listas de referencias culturales en cuatros series de libros en uso en argentina y en el análisis crítico del discurso (acd) de una serie de textos destinados a la lectura en dichos volúmenes. los resultados determinan qué representaciones culturales subsisten en los textos y abren al debate la aparente neutralidad del inglés como lengua internacional (eil, por sus siglas en inglés). palabras clavespalabras clavespalabras clavespalabras clavespalabras claves: representaciones culturales, cultura de los países de habla inglesa, diseño de materiales, inglés como lengua internacional, análisis crítico del discurso 1 this work is partially based on the unpublished m. a. dissertation the representation of cultures in elt materials: a comparative analysis of global, adapted and local courses written at the centre for english language teaching at the university of warwick in coventry, uk, in 2004, studies completed with the help of a scholarship from the hornby trust administered by the british council. * enrique alejandrenrique alejandrenrique alejandrenrique alejandrenrique alejandro basabeo basabeo basabeo basabeo basabe. m. a. in english language teaching and british cultural studies, the university of warwick, coventry, uk. currently a student in the maestría en inglés, unrc, córdoba, argentina. teacher of english literature of the 20th century at universidad nacional de la pampa, santa rosa, la pampa, argentina. hornby alumnus. this article was received on march 29th, 2006 and accepted on july 24th, 2006. 59-75 ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ 60 basabe profileprofileprofileprofileprofile elelelelelt textbt textbt textbt textbt textbooks and theooks and theooks and theooks and theooks and the representrepresentrepresentrepresentrepresentaaaaations of cultions of cultions of cultions of cultions of culturesturesturesturestures textbooks belong in our cultural universe and are powerfully inscribed in our social knowledge. they are informed by systems of representations, or “different ways of organizing, clustering, arranging and classifying concepts, and of establishing complex relationships between them” (hall, 1997, p.17). these systems, in turn, reach moments of arbitrary closure in which the linkages established among them become powerfully tied into articulated discourses. through the textbooks we use, our learners are constantly exposed to these systems, so it is almost mandatory to examine them closely since there may be “a direct relationship between the values and attitudes learners express and those found in the texts with which they work” (littlejohn & windeatt, 1989, pp.171-172). traditionally, the cultural systems represented in elt textbooks were those of the countries where english is spoken as a first language, mainly the united kingdom and the united states of america. from the 1990s onwards, however, the demand of consumers for a better fit to local contexts in the highly competitive publishing industry has generated a rising awareness of the cultural contents already present and of the ones which should be promoted in elt materials. this, together with the advent of the integrative theoretical discourse of english as an international language (eil), have led scholars to suggest • “that learners do not need to internalise the cultural norms of native speakers; • that ownership becomes de-nationalised; and • that the educational goal is to enable learners to communicate their ideas and culture to each other” (mckay, 2002, p.12). some have gone even further and called for the “deanglicization” of english “both in linguistic and cultural respects” (alptekin, 1990, p.23). this process has led to an apparent displacement of the “target culture” from its central position, a shift which has paved the way for the consideration of the “source culture”, or the learner ’s own background, and of an emerging “international culture” inclusive of non-english-speaking countries2 . it is now generally acknowledged that the culture of english-speaking countries has abandoned its central role and given way to a fairer inclusion of local and international cultures in recent elt materials. this study questions whether or not such has been the case and it suggests that representations of the anglo-american culture seem to be still quantitatively and qualitatively favoured in elt textbooks. if this is so, then the apparent neutrality and fairness of eil may be questioned or, at least, open to debate. corpus, research questions andcorpus, research questions andcorpus, research questions andcorpus, research questions andcorpus, research questions and methodsmethodsmethodsmethodsmethods four series of textbooks in use at the third level of the general basic education or with adolescents in private institutes in 2003 in argentina were chosen for the sake of testing the hypothesis suggested above. they are the following: • new headway. pre-intermediate and intermediate. a global coursebook published in the uk between 1996 and 2000 used in private institutions; • new let’s go for egb 1 and 2. (from now on nlgforegb) a global course book produced in the uk under the name of go! (1996) adapted to the local market from 1999 to 2000 and used widely in the third level of the general basic education, • english direct 1a, 1b, 2a, 2b, 3a and 3b. a course book produced in mexico to teach american english adapted to teach british english in argentina in 2001 and specially offered by the publishers to disadvantaged schools, and • explorer 1, 2 and 3. a local course book written in argentina for the local market from 1999 to 2001. 2 even though useful as a classificator y tool, the distinction of these three types of cultural information proposed by cortazzi and jin (1999) already maintains the culture of the english-speaking countries in its central or “target” position, which is debatable in view of the de-nationalisation eil promotes. ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○61 profileprofileprofileprofileprofile from de-anglicization to internationalisation the first question that guided this investigation was • how the repertoires of representation of the target culture, i.e. the uk and the usa, are put into discourse. the findings suggest tentative responses to a second query, • whether and how these systems of representation differ or not on the basis of the context of production of the textbooks and their discourse. the research process entails a study of the representations of the target culture in view of the ways in which it appears in global, adapted or locally -produced teaching materials. it was carried out using two different methodological tools, one to gather quantitative data and the other one to qualitatively validate the findings of the former. firstly, a decision had to be taken as to what was going to be considered “cultural”, which was solved by the application of the analytical categories suggested by risager (1990) and which encompass a consideration of phenomena of social and cultural anthropology as well as international and intercultural topics. see appendix 1 for further reference. using these categories, lists of cultural references were compiled. their concoction followed the model byram used to assess representations of germany in textbooks used to teach german to speakers of english in 1993. this model consists of succinct preliminary comments on the cultural contents of the reading passages of the series of textbooks under analysis. for further reference, see appendix 2. it shows the list of cultural references regarding the target culture in new headway pre-intermediate. once listed, the references were classified into “topics”, as shown in the findings. the notion of “topics”, even though at first considered pretheoretical, was preferred as it is widely used in the context of elt. this process was thought of as a preliminary instance of critical discourse analysis (cda), in the sense that articulations into systems of representations were suggested and interpretative hypotheses were developed while the reading and ensuing listing were going on. secondly, the basic procedure for critical discourse analysis (cda) proposed by fairclough (1989, pp. 110-111) was applied to a selection of reading passages of approximately 400 (fourhundred) words chosen at random from each of the series. this instance entails an examination of the uses of vocabulary, grammar and textual strategies as well as a consideration of the different realisations of narrative and conceptual representational structures in photographs and pictures accompanying reading passages following kress and van leeuwen’s proposal for a semiotic analysis of images (1996). for a summarised version of fairclough’s model, refer to appendix 3. for an application of it to a particular text, see appendix 4. last but not least, the findings resulting from the previous two steps were compared and contrasted on the basis of their belonging to global, adapted or local materials. findingsfindingsfindingsfindingsfindings table 1 shows the results of the quantitative data produced by the lists of cultural references for each book. in all cases the references to the target culture are more frequent than those to the source or the international cultures, in new headway and nlgforegb (approximately 60 %). moreover, there are only two cases in which another type of reference overcomes those to the target culture and these are ambiguous references in the series english direct and explorer. in these series, however, the target culture still keeps 19.3 % and 26.2 % of the cultural references, respectively, occupying the second place after the cases of unclear references. texts containing cases in which there exists a relationship between the target and the international cultures are also the commonest among these containing cultures establishing some kind of contact. these cases represent 30 % in new headway, 15.6 % in nltg for egb! and 8.5 % in explorer. representations of the trepresentations of the trepresentations of the trepresentations of the trepresentations of the tarararararget cultureget cultureget cultureget cultureget culture the cultures of the uk and the usa have prevailed as the ones chosen to be represented in ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ 62 basabe profileprofileprofileprofileprofile the textbooks under analysis. in the reading texts in the coursebooks constituting the corpus of this work, the target culture is represented through the topics and in the percentages displayed below. of the 30 texts included in the list of cultural references for new headway intermediate and new headway pre-intermediate, 18 contain cultural references pointing at the target culture, which accounts for 60 % of the total of the passages destined for reading comprehension. the commonest topics dealt with by these texts are the lives and lifestyles of rich and famous people (29.5 %) and unusual jobs (23.6 %). us millionaires constitute the vast majority of the ones under the former label and british subjects who choose to change their lifestyles –a nun who becomes a tv star, a vicar who works as a ghost buster and a retired plumber who skates for tesco, for example– comprise most of the cases in the latter label. other texts include references to crime (17.7 %) and literature (11.8 %), as shown in the following table: 3 more information on the representation of the source culture in the textbooks under analysis can be found in argentina. its representations in local and adapted elt textbooks. 30th faapi conference proceedings. towards the knowledge society. making efl education relevant. (2005): 380-391. tttttopicopicopicopicopic lives and lifestyles of rich and famous people unusual jobs crime literature exploration health personal problems total ttttteeeeextsxtsxtsxtsxts 5 4 3 2 1 1 1 17 %%%%% 29.5 23.6 17.7 11.8 5.8 5.8 5.8 100.0 tttttable 2.able 2.able 2.able 2.able 2. topics in texts containing references to the target culture. new headway pre-intermediate and new headway intermediate. tttttable 1. able 1. able 1. able 1. able 1. cultural references sorted out by series under analysis. new headwaynew headwaynew headwaynew headwaynew headway nlg for egbnlg for egbnlg for egbnlg for egbnlg for egb english directenglish directenglish directenglish directenglish direct explorer explorer explorer explorer explorer teeeeextsxtsxtsxtsxts % % % % % ttttteeeeextsxtsxtsxtsxts % % % % % ttttteeeeextsxtsxtsxtsxts % % % % % ttttteeeeextsxtsxtsxtsxts % % % % % target culture 18 60.0 38 59.3 11 19.3 37 26.2 source culture3 ----6 9.4 8 14.0 0 7.1 international culture 3 10.0 4 6.3 6 10.5 24 17.0 target-source ----1 1.6 7 12.3 1 0.7 cultures relationship target-intl. cultures 9 30.0 10 15.6 3 5.3 12 8.5 relationship source-intl. cultures ----2 3.2 1 1.8 1 0.7 relationship ambiguous reference ----3 4.6 20 35 41 29.0 no cultural reference -- ------1 1.8 15 10.7 total 30 100.0 64 100.0 57 100.0 141 99.9 ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○63 profileprofileprofileprofileprofile from de-anglicization to internationalisation fifty-nine percent of the reading texts in nlgforegb student’s books 1 and 2 refer to the target culture. in most of the 38 texts that make up this percentage this reference encompasses the social and geographical definition of characters and the material environment surrounding them as the story in the textbooks features a group of students on board a ship sailing along the coast of the uk. thus, routines and daily events (36.2 %) and introductions (25.0 %) are necessarily situated in a british context. as it can be seen in the table below, the lives and lifestyles of rich and famous people represent 7.9 % of the texts pointing at the anglo-american culture. the text “billie” (elsworth, rose & date, 1999, pp. 44-45), studied using the tools provided by cda, belongs in this category. it constructs a world in which adolescents can be rich and famous from a very early age and still live a “normal” life, respectful of family and national values since sudden popularity seems not to cause any problem for teenagers raised in traditional family and school settings. tttttable 3.able 3.able 3.able 3.able 3. topics in texts containing references to the target culture. new let’s go for egb! student’s books 1 and 2. tttttopicopicopicopicopic routines and daily events introductions lives and lifestyles of rich and famous people food and drink film and tv literature cities and city life geographical or cultural aspects of specific countries pets communication, information, technology and science total ttttteeeeextsxtsxtsxtsxts 13 9 3 3 2 2 1 1 1 1 36 % % % % % 36.2 25.0 8.4 8.4 5.6 5.6 2.7 2.7 2.7 2.7 100.0 as can be appreciated below, in english direct, the amount of texts referring to the target culture does not reach a percentage as high as the ones in new headway and in nlgforegb! only 11 passages out of the 56 reading texts the series contains allude to the target culture, which accounts for 19.3 % of the total. neither do any of these texts refer to british culture, but to introductions, daily routines, the lives and lifestyles of rich and famous people and parties and celebrations set in the usa or in australia. each of these topics constitutes 18.2 % of the overall quantity of references to the target culture in the textbooks. tttttable 4. able 4. able 4. able 4. able 4. topics in texts containing references to the target culture. english direct. student’s book. levels 1a, 1b, 2a, 2b, 3a and 3b. tttttopicopicopicopicopic introductions routines and daily events lives and lifestyles of rich and famous people parties and celebrations other total ttttteeeeextsxtsxtsxtsxts 2 2 2 2 3 11 % % % % % 18.2 18.2 18.2 18.2 27.2 100.0 ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ 64 basabe profileprofileprofileprofileprofile one of the texts on which cda was applied falls into this category as it describes the world premiere in new york of a film by an australian cartoonist. its analysis reveals a world in which the accumulation of “objects” (llamas & williams, 2001d, p. 14), for example, becomes the evidence of fame and wealth. these also appear to be part of the everyday life of people belonging to the target culture. as can be seen in the table above, the series explorer contains 35 texts with references to the target culture, which stands for 26.2 % of the total amount of its reading texts. here, topics show a wider variety than in the previous textbooks since, in most cases, texts are introduced as encyclopaedic entries of a purely informative nature. twenty-five point nine percent of them, however, are concerned with narratives in which members of the target culture fight for their human rights and achieve their aims. the cases of nelson mandela, emmeline pankhurst, francis robinson and martin luther king can be counted among them. the manipulation of communication and information mainly through the internet and the advances of technology and science are also recurrent topics in the reading passages. they constitute 23.0 % of the texts related to the uk and the usa. four texts (11.5 %) portray a society fighting against crime. there are also references to english history and literature, films and tv, natural disasters, cities and the lives of rich and famous people. the text, “a macabre job” (garcía cahuzac & tiberio, 1999, p. 49), included in appendix 4, is remarkable as its critical analysis shows an evident rewording of the “crime” of robbing newly buried bodies from cemeteries in the england of the 18th century into a “job” carried out in the name of the progress of medical science and out of the needs of poor people. thus, the target culture, its academic institutions and its higher classes are discursively freed from the stigma of illegality. representations of the trepresentations of the trepresentations of the trepresentations of the trepresentations of the tarararararget culture inget culture inget culture inget culture inget culture in relationship to othersrelationship to othersrelationship to othersrelationship to othersrelationship to others not always are the cultural references in textbooks so clear and distinct that they allow classifying reading passages with utmost accuracy. sometimes cultures experience contact with one another, they are compared or contrasted, or, simply, information about more than one culture is contained within the limits of only one text. tables are not included in order to keep the article at an appropriate length and not to pack it with quantitative data. for figures and percentages, please refer to table 1. tttttopicopicopicopicopic human rights communication, information, technology and science crime mystery and ghost stories, ufo sightings history films and tv literature natural disasters cities lives and lifestyles of rich and famous people total ttttteeeeextsxtsxtsxtsxts 9 8 4 3 3 3 2 1 1 1 35 %%%%% 25.9 23.0 11.5 8.5 8.5 8.5 5.8 2.8 2.8 2.8 100.1 tttttable 5.able 5.able 5.able 5.able 5. topics in texts containing references to the target culture. explorer. 3o ciclo egb. student’s books starter, 1, 2 and 3. ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○65 profileprofileprofileprofileprofile from de-anglicization to internationalisation thirty percent of all the texts destined to be used for reading comprehension in new headway comprises instances of the target and the international cultures in contact. most of them are about the lives and habits of people from international cultures. others, for example, evaluate negatively the economic evolution of warsaw, poland, and shenzhen, china, both cities that used to live under communist governments, after having gained access to the capitalist world. the majority of texts, though, retell stories of either europeans or americans exploring, touring or consuming resources from places set in international cultures or of people from such cultures migrating to the usa. the article from new headway upon which cda has been applied, “three plants that changed the world” (soars & soars, 2000, p. 91), belongs to this group of texts and reinforces the view of an active european citizen “conquering” the world for his own profit and well-being. in it, crops like tobacco, sugar and cotton are rendered natural resources to be consumed by europe, the “world” these plants “changed”. moreover, the world and lives of other people that were also changed by these crops becoming lucrative is barely described or deemed to be forgotten if ever hinted at. last but not least, this worldview runs the risk of appearing naturalised through the inclusion of photographs accompanying the text that reproduce the working context of the past in distinctly nontemporal situations thus helping construct the idea that these circumstances are still standard and fair. only 13 texts in nlgforegb student’s books 1 and 2 contain references to more than one culture, of which only 3 can be said to constitute instances of intercultural personal communication. these are letters from a member of the target culture and the corresponding answer from a brazilian boy (elsworth et al., 1999, pp. 36-37), which in fact and within the confines of the texts themselves, still remain cases of monologue. most of the rest of the reading passages only display facts and figures, stamps, animals and celebrations belonging to different countries, all of them elements that are never shared by more than one culture and are always presented as exclusive of one particular cultural group. the reading text, “what is sea watch? who are the sea watchers?” (elsworth et al., 1999, p. 22), discloses a world in which students from the target, the source and the international cultures can share educational programmes in view of their common global interests, institutions, attitudes and codes of conduct that unite them under an aura of mutual understanding. the disposition of the texts and the corresponding illustrations in the brochure, however, reveal by implication a totally opposite worldview. the participants are introduced in an overtly classificatory representational manner by which the south american teenagers occupy the top half of the structure and the british and american adolescents the bottom half, thus reinforcing the idea that target and source cultures never mix. nor do target and south american cultures, either. by contrast, english direct shows instances of the target, the source and the international cultures in contact. nevertheless, as in new headway, it stereotypically represents the members of the target culture as active explorers and adventurous tourists and those of the source culture as passive workers related to the tourist industry or humble immigrants arriving in the usa. two texts from this series were critically analysed. one retells ernest hemingway’s catch of a big marlin on the coast of peru when his novel the old man and the sea was being made into a film (llamas & williams, 2001d, pp. 8-9). it transpires that the passage embodies the theme of the man of letters who dares plunge into exploring adventurous activities different from his usual activities –in this case, fishing–and, consequently, creating an impressive effect on ordinary people –here, the cabo blanco fishermen. the other text under analysis is a conversation in which an argentine man arriving at an american airport is asked to show his passport to an officer at a check-in desk (llamas & williams, 2001a, pp. 12-13). the illustration that accompanies it is indicative of the authoritative view of the target culture. firstly, it strikingly antagonises ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ 66 basabe profileprofileprofileprofileprofile the arrival of the argentine, dressed in simple clothes and placed in a bottom-left position in the drawing, with that of an italian actress clad in jewels and a fur coat, visually-centred and surrounded by photographers. this obviously marks the social, economic and even political position not only of the particular people involved in the narrative action but also of the countries and the cultures they represent. secondly, the skin colour of the argentine in the illustration is revealing of the racial dichotomy english direct creates. as in all other illustrations in the series, argentine people are always dark-skinned, which makes them distinctive when compared with the pale pink complexions of the american and european subjects4. this implicit hint of racism, however, seems not to produce any particular problem for the world created by english direct and this is visually emphasised through its illustrations. see appendix 5 for further references. in explorer, there are 14 texts that refer to more than one culture. twelve texts are concerned with the relationship between the target and the international cultures. among them are those in which british expeditions to places faraway from the uk are narrated. discussiondiscussiondiscussiondiscussiondiscussion the choice of which culture is representative of the target culture as a whole has got its variations in the different types of textbooks being analyzed. in new headway and nlgforegb, elements of the culture of the uk are the ones that cover longer stretches of text. in the former, this is mainly due to the texts being mostly from british newspapers such as the daily mail, the obser ver, the telegraph and the guardian, the target culture thus retaining for itself the power of surveillance over the world, even over such culturally remote places as the cases of poland and china already mentioned. in the latter, the british material environment of its narrative structure causes the geographical and social landscape of england to flood the text, as the teenagers on board the ship live their unproblematic lives. in explorer, the approach can be said to be somewhat more balanced since, if “things british” pervade the texts through references to the history and literature of the uk, americana flows in them through the scientific and technological advances of the usa. in these matters, english direct becomes contradictory since it linguistically prefers british english, in accordance with the long-standing argentine tradition that follows this variety, but culturally favours american people and places and contains almost no hint of the british culture. other english-speaking countries such as canada and australia sporadically appear in the textbooks. however, the representation of the target culture in view of the topics related to it is highly homogenous in all the coursebooks no matter whether they are global, adapted or local products. the lives and lifestyles of rich and famous people, such as those of michael owen, bill gates or milton petrie and hetty green, construct the world of the target culture as one in which fortune and success are within one’s reach and accessible even to people with working class origins like the british footballer here cited. if this is not the case, the society of the target culture lets its subjects fight for a better world, therefore achieving some kind of success. this is shown mainly in explorer through the cases already mentioned. in the textbooks, the people from the target culture are characterized by at least three traits that make them distinct from that of the source and international cultures. they are technologically advanced, culturally rich and geographically expansionistic. technology is usually in the hands of the target culture. it may be accessible to more “ordinary” people but only in instances of personal communication or schooling. otherwise, it is controlled by the usa, as in the case of the 4 this is also true of the argentine and brazilian teenagers in the photographs in the text on nationalities from nlgforegb, already discussed, and of the workers in tobacco, sugar and cotton plantations in the photographs accompanying the text from new headway, already introduced. ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○67 profileprofileprofileprofileprofile from de-anglicization to internationalisation internet or it has provided the americans with the tools to simply defeat the russians in the race for space exploration without any further contextual explanation. the culture of the english-speaking countries is judged to be “rich” in view of the references to english literature and american cinema present in the texts. dickens, wilde and stevenson are included in the textbooks as if it were “natural” for teenagers all over the world and, in this case, in argentina, to be instructed in the literature written in england in the 19th century. if something “helps” bridge this spatial and temporal gap, this is american cinema and television, overwhelmingly present in almost any contemporary society and whose popular films and series similarly cover long stretches of current elt textbooks. in explorer, the x files and die hard are instances of this as are most of the fictional reading texts whose narrative elements evidently resemble those of american thrillers. it should be noticed here that the rest of the fictional texts in this series seem to have been written after 19th century english mystery stories as well. this shows a particular emphasis on the cultural symbiosis current textbooks seem to create between the english literature of the 19th century and the american cinema of the 20th century. thus the dissemination of anglo-american values carried out by the latter appears to be more than an extension of the enterprise started by the former. similarly, current american tourism seems to embody the geographically expansionistic spirit of british exploration of the 19th century. this is shown by the american couple touring europe in new headway e.g. paul howard looking for “adventure”, bungee jumping in mexico in explorer, the waltons’ trip to machu picchu in english direct, or the presentation of argentine cities as sites receiving only international tourism in nlgforegb. this is also true of the references to explorations to spain, switzerland, the andes and the poles. the settings where these actions occur, mostly places other than europe, seem to have suffered the authorial process of “insubstantiation” by which landscapes are described only as backdrops for european voyages. on the contrary, nlgforegb is set in the uk. here, tourism emerges as a culturally “safe” topic experienced by fictitious students whose activities are mostly trivial involving situations of spare time clearly marginalized from ordinary life (risager, 1990, pp. 185-186). in all other instances, however, members of the target culture live in cities that are “modern” and “reflect their people” (garcía cahuzac & tiberio, 1999, pp. 14-15) and usually suffer the threat of crime as shown in new headway and explorer. the “problem” is constructed as one that is endured by society as a whole. therefore, the absence of other problems, such as those which may be effectively suffered by teenagers, implicitly signifies that they remain “marginal” expressions undermining society per se. moreover, problems, as well as voyages, literary and filmic achievements and technological advances, are not really aspects of social binding and solidarity but the results of a society which emphasises “individual development and personal experience” (cortazzi, 1999, p. 57). this society, which much resembles the one envisioned by the thatcherism and reaganism of the 1980s, have been effective in expanding its hegemonic views not only of itself but also of the world to the globe through its “self-presentation as universal, one that does not acknowledge its own particularity” (stratton & ang, 1996, p. 364), as is also shown through its representations of the source and international cultures. the authors of the textbooks agree on their highlighting the “international” character of the topics they discuss. headway declares on its cover that it contains “new universal topics”. the authors of nlgforegb, in turn, claim that their production “has a truly international feel” (mugglestone, elsworth & rose, 2000, p. iii). llamas and williams (2001g, p. 2) declare in english direct, “topics such as environmental protection, respecting ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ 68 basabe profileprofileprofileprofileprofile others and cultural differences are carefully incorporated into the lessons”. cresta, garcía cahuzac, and tiberio suggest that teachers use explorer to make students discuss “why english should be learnt, mainly english for international communication” (1999, p. 24). last but not least, reference should be made again to the teacher’s book by mugglestone et al. they summarise a common stance on the issue when they posit that “learning a foreign language is seen […] as part of the broader educational goal of learning: to live in the modern world in the global sense” (2000, p. xiii). these assertions, however, should be tackled cautiously and critically. on the one hand, the risks of an internationalisation or universalisation of interests in view of the attention they get from a dominant minority, i.e. mainly europe and the usa, become actually evident. the case of environmental protection is a paradigmatic one that deserves further discussion. in recent years, it has become a fashionable issue to be included in elt textbooks as “it reflects a growing interest in nature conservation” (mugglestone et al., 2000, p. 1t22). certain issues are not considered, though, such as where and why the interest grows and whether it actually constitutes a genuine concern. the burning of oil wells as a result of their bombing by the military forces of countries in which the environmental question creates popular anxieties, or the destruction of the rainforests to raise cattle in their places to provide american restaurants with meat (garcía cahuzac & tiberio, 2001, p. 57) may hint at probable answers to these queries. on the other hand, the ultimate claim that learning a foreign language in order to gain access to the modern world is part of the broader educational aim of learning may be equally arguable. first, the generalisation itself may not be valid in each and every educational context, since not every human being on earth might agree with such a “global” goal. in fact, there exist anti-globalisation movements, not to mention real people all over the world who, even though they strive to learn at least the basic english required to manage modern information technologies, will never share the “advantages” of modern life. for these people, learning english may be perceived as a must, but not necessarily enjoyed. as pagliarini cox and de assis-peterson (1999, p. 438) posit, the discourse in favour of the instrumental orientation provides a release from subjugation by a located and tangible culture and leads to another subjugation by an intangible and scattered plot of discourses that have promoted the westernization of the world for more than two millennia. conclconclconclconclconclusionusionusionusionusion the promotion of elt textbooks produced by increasingly global commercial enterprises may be “aimed ultimately at boosting commerce and the dissemination of ideas and language” (gray, 2002, p. 156). global economic processes, hand in hand with “the view of english as an international and therefore neutral language, a view central to the discourse of eil [may] resurface[s] in the form of a new ‘international content’ for esl textbooks” (pennycook, 1994, p. 45), which may mean an actual change in the repertoires of representation around “difference” and “otherness”. the production of textbooks can also be posited to be an ideological enterprise. as cultural artifacts, they may be said to have remained as “stubbornly anglo-centric” (prodromou, 1988, p. 74) as they were during the cold war era, for instance, in which case earlier representational traces may have remained intact in contemporary society. despite claims of a progressive de-angloamericanization of the cultural aspects of elt materials since the 1990s, a critical discursive view of them in the textbooks analysed proves that the process has fallen short of actually representing cultures in a fair way both quantitatively and qualitatively. the world constructed by these coursebooks still remains one in which the englishspeaking countries are not only linguistic but also cultural “targets” the globe has to aspire to, imitate ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○69 profileprofileprofileprofileprofile from de-anglicization to internationalisation and follow. these aims, however, have been, in most cases, transformed into “universal” or “international” attitudes we all seek to share and identify with. alptekin, for instance, explains the satisfactory acquisition of english in the greek context by saying it is due to the students’ “wish to identify with international attitudes which have developed in such fields as pop culture, travel culture, and scientific culture where english happens to be the principal medium of communication” (1993, p. 23). it is arguable whether pop culture, travel culture, and scientific culture actually are “international” or whether they may be said to have been “internationalised”. moreover, it is also disputable whether english just “happens to be” the global language that carries these cultural messages. furthermore, this way of representing cultures seems not to show any substantial differences in view of the materials considered being global, adapted or local. such a situation may be said to be duplicitous in view of most of the theoretical discourse of eil. if learners do not need to internalise the cultural norms of native speakers of english, then it is contradictory to propose the acquisition of knowledge about the target culture and to reflect on how their own culture contrasts with it. this assumption points to a naturalisation of this “contrast”. it does not acknowledge the fact that, as cultural artifacts, textbooks embody the belief systems of the societies from which they originate (wallace, 2002, p. 113) and that, therefore, they are instrumental to this process. as it has already been proved, even though trying to come to terms with cultural diversity, the course books analysed still seem to project “an angloamerican utopia” (prodromou, 1988, p. 79) which, instead of fostering a reflective judgement and a critical evaluation of the products of the target culture (corbett, 2003, p. 13), seems to be promoting an acquiescent and uncritical reception of them and of the patterns of behaviour fostered by them. moreover, if the ownership of the english language becomes de-nationalised, then the textbooks analysed have a tendency to be incompatible with this assumption as they try to strengthen the representation of the uk as an ideal modern european nation and they covertly nurture a growing internationalisation or westernization of trends and attitudes. not less important than providing explanations that account for the cultural representations textbooks convey is the consideration of the context of reception in which these configurations have an impact. there may be a direct relationship between the values and attitudes learners express and those found in the texts with which they work. therefore, students may tend to concur with the ideas of an anglo-american superiority and of an argentine fate to be part of a stagnated working class. or they may also follow the pattern of excessive imitation. or they may even resist not only the cultural but also the linguistic content of elt textbooks as they consider both to be almost an “absurd” imposition of foreign powers. this is generally true in less favoured social contexts in which students tend to have higher degrees of underachievement, and question the usefulness of learning a foreign language. solutions to this issue appear to be also difficult to find, as an excessive emphasis on critical reading could end up in developing further and stronger resistance to english. but an uncritical and compulsory acceptance of the views thrust upon students by teachers and textbooks alike may lead to servile submission and to the actual death of any hope of social change. referencesreferencesreferencesreferencesreferences alptekin, c. (1990). target-language culture in efl materials. elt journal, 47(2), 136-143. byram, m. (ed.). (1993). germany. its representation in textbooks for teaching german in great britain. frankfurt/main: verlag moritz diesterweg. corbett, j. (2003). an intercultural approach to english language teaching. clevendon and philadelphia: multilingual matters ltd. cortazzi, m., & lin, j. (1999). materials and methods in the efl classroom. in e. hinkel (ed.), culture in second language teaching and learning. cambridge: cambridge university press. ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ 70 basabe profileprofileprofileprofileprofile cresta, e., garcía, s., & tiberio, s. (1999). explorer one. 3o ciclo egb. teacher’s book + guía didáctica. buenos aires: macmillan heinemann elt. macmillan publishers s. a. elsworth, s., rose, j., & date, o. (1999). new let’s go for egb! student’s book 1 with activity book. harlow, england: addison wesley longman ltd. elsworth, s., rose, j., & date, o. (2000). new let’s go for egb! student’s book 2 with activity book. harlow, england: addison wesley longman ltd. fairclough, n. (1989). language and power. london: longman. garcía, s., & tiberio, s. (1999a). explorer starter. 3o ciclo egb. student’s book. workbook included. buenos aires: macmillan heinemann elt. macmillan publishers s. a. garcía, s., & tiberio, s. (1999b). explorer one. 3o ciclo egb. student’s book. workbook included. buenos aires: macmillan heinemann elt. macmillan publishers s. a. garcía, s., & tiberio, s. (2000). explorer two. 3o ciclo egb. student’s book. workbook included. buenos aires: macmillan heinemann elt. macmillan publishers s. a. garcía, s., & tiberio, s. (2001). explorer three. 3o ciclo egb. student’s book. workbook included. buenos aires: macmillan heinemann elt. macmillan publishers s. a. gray, j. (2002). the global course in english language teaching. in b. david & d. cameron. globalisation and language teaching. london and new york: routledge. taylor and francis group. hall, s. (1997). representation: cultural representations and signifying practices. london: sage, in association with the open university. kress, g., & leeuwen, t. (1996). reading images. the grammar of visual design. london and new york, longman. littlejohn, a., & windeatt, s. (1989). beyond language learning: perspectives on materials design. in r.k. johnson (ed.). the second language curriculum. cambridge: cambridge university press. llamas, a., & williams, l. (2001a). english direct. student’s book. level 1a. activities included. n. p.: macmillan heinemann elt. macmillan publishers s. a. llamas, a., & williams, l. (2001b). english direct. student’s book. level 1b. activities included. n. p.: macmillan heinemann elt. macmillan publishers s. a. llamas, a., & williams, l. (2001c). english direct. student’s book. level 2a. activities included. n. p.: macmillan heinemann elt. macmillan publishers s. a. llamas, a., & williams, l. (2001d). english direct. student’s book. level 2b. activities included. n. p.: macmillan heinemann elt. macmillan publishers s. a. llamas, a., & williams, l. (2001e). english direct. student’s book. level 3a. activities included. n. p.: macmillan heinemann elt. macmillan publishers s. a. llamas, a., & williams, l. (2001f). english direct. student’s book. level 3b. activities included. n. p.: macmillan heinemann elt. macmillan publishers s. a. llamas, a., & williams, l. (2001g). english direct. teacher’s book. levels 1a and 1b. n. p.: macmillan heinemann elt. macmillan publishers s. a. mckay, s. (2002). teaching english as an international language. rethinking goals and approaches. oxford: oxford university press. mugglestone, p., elsworth, s., & rose, j. (2000). new let’s go for egb! teacher’s resource book 1 and 2. harlow, england: addison wesley longman ltd. pagliarini, m. i., & assis-peterson, a. a. (1999). critical pedagogy in elt: images of brazilian teachers of english. tesol quarterly, 33(3), 433452. pennycook, a. (1994). the cultural politics of english as an international language. london: longman. prodromou, l. (1988). english as a cultural action. elt journal, 42(2), 73-83. risager, k. (1990). cultural references in european textbooks. an evaluation of recent tendencies. in b. dieter & m. byram (eds.), mediating languages and cultures. towards an intercultural theory of english language teaching. clevendon and philadelphia: multilingual matters ltd. soars, j., & soars, l. (2000). new headway. english course. student’s book. intermediate. oxford: oxford university press. soars, j., & soars, l. (2000). new headway. english course. student’s book. pre-intermediate. oxford: oxford university press. ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○71 profileprofileprofileprofileprofile from de-anglicization to internationalisation soars, j., soars, l., & sayer, m. (2000). new headway. english course. teacher’s book. preintermediate. oxford: oxford university press. stratton, j., & ang, i. (1996). on the impossibility of a global cultural studies: ‘british’ cultural studies in an ‘international’ frame. in d. morley & k. h. chen, (eds.). stuart hall: critical dialogues in cultural studies. london: routldge. wallace, c. (2002). local literacies and global literacy. in b. david & d. cameron. globalisation and language teaching. london and new york: routledge. taylor and francis group. ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ 72 basabe profileprofileprofileprofileprofile appendix 1:appendix 1:appendix 1:appendix 1:appendix 1: risagerrisagerrisagerrisagerrisager’s anal’s anal’s anal’s anal’s analyticyticyticyticytical cal cal cal cal caaaaategories tegories tegories tegories tegories (1990, pp. 182-183). 1. the micro-level. phenomena of social and cultural anthropology: a. the social and geographical definition of characters b. material environment c. situations of interaction d. interaction and subjectivity of the characters: feelings, attitudes, values and perceived problems 2. the macro-level. social, political and historical matters: a. broad social facts about contemporary society (geographical, economical, political, etc.) b. broad socio-political problems (unemployment, pollution, etc.) c. historical background 3. international and intercultural issues: a. comparisons between the foreign country and the pupil’s own b. mutual representations, images, stereotypes c. mutual relations: cultural power and dominance, co-operation and conflict 4. point of view and style of the author(s). ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○73 profileprofileprofileprofileprofile from de-anglicization to internationalisation appendix 2: list of culappendix 2: list of culappendix 2: list of culappendix 2: list of culappendix 2: list of cultural referencestural referencestural referencestural referencestural references new headway pre-intermediatenew headway pre-intermediatenew headway pre-intermediatenew headway pre-intermediatenew headway pre-intermediate tttttarararararget cultureget cultureget cultureget cultureget culture 1. “the burglars’ friend”. reading text from the daily mail about a british boy who helps burglars rob his house. photograph of the boy. (pp. 22-23) 2. newspaper stories. reading texts in the format of newspaper stories about situations of crime in danville, california, usa, and in a place not specified. photographs of a police detective and of an adolescent. comic strip about one of the events reported. (p. 24) 3. a short story –“the perfect crime”. reading text based on lamb to the slaughter by the british author roald dahl about a woman who kills her husband. digital drawings of the scenes of the story. (pp. 26-27) 4. “hollywood kids –growing up in los angeles ain’t easy”. reading text by carrie fisher from observer life magazine in which the lifestyle of rich american teenagers living in los angeles, usa, is described. testimonies of these adolescents. photographs of adolescents driving cars, swimming, having a nose operated on and gambling. (pp. 42-43) 5. “a tale of two millionaires –one was mean and one was generous”. reading texts from the daily mail weekend magazine and virtual vermont internet magazine about milton petrie and hetty green, two american millionaires famous because they are generous and mean, respectively. photographs of both people. (pp. 50-51) 6. celebrity interview from hi! magazine with the pop star and the footballer who are in love. reading text in the format of a magazine interview of a pop star and a footballer playing for manchester united in manchester, uk. they are rich and famous. photographs of the couple in different rooms in their house. (pp. 58-59) 7. “dilemmas” with vanessa goodman. reading text resembling a problem page from a magazine dealing with the dilemmas of whether one has to act one’s age, whether one must have a mobile and whether one should throw out one’s son. answers are provided by people from brighton, manchester, harrow, london, bristol and birmingham, all in the uk. photograph of the writer of the column. (pp. 6667) 8. “into the wild”. reading text reproduced by permission of its author, john krakauer about an american boy who, after graduating from emory university, atlanta, usa, hitchhikes to alaska, starves there and finally dies. photograph of the alaskan landscape. (pp. 82-83) 9. “i’m a ghost buster, says vicar”. reading text adapted from an article in the observer about aelwyn roberts, a retired british priest who works as a ghost buster. black and white photograph of the priest. (p. 98) 10. “a funny way of earning a living”. reading texts taken from the observer, the daily mail and the telegraph about a retired plumber who works for tesco, a retired policeman who makes a living from what he can find on the beach and of a woman who flies balloons, all of them british. photographs of the three people in their working environments. (pp. 106-107) 11. “the tale of two silent brothers”. reading text adapted from a story by arnold bennett for the oxford bookworms series about two brothers who do not communicate and a sister who dies and leaves them £ 6,000 each. drawings of the scenes of the story. (pp. 114-115) ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ 74 basabe profileprofileprofileprofileprofile appendix 3: fappendix 3: fappendix 3: fappendix 3: fappendix 3: fairclough’s procedure for criticairclough’s procedure for criticairclough’s procedure for criticairclough’s procedure for criticairclough’s procedure for critical discourse analal discourse analal discourse analal discourse analal discourse analysisysisysisysisysis (1989, pp. 110-111). vvvvvocabularocabularocabularocabularocabularyyyyy 1. what experiential values do words have? what classification schemes are drawn upon? are there words which are ideologically contested? is there rewording or overwording? what ideologically significant relations (synonymy, hyponymy, antonymy) are there between words? 2. what relational values do words have? are there euphemistic expressions? are there markedly formal or informal words? 3. what expressive values do words have? 4. what metaphors are used? grammargrammargrammargrammargrammar 5. what experiential values do grammatical features have? what types of process and participant predominate? is agency unclear? are processes what they seem? are nominalizations used? are sentences active or passive? are sentences positive or negative? 6. what relational values do grammatical features have? what modes (declarative, grammatical question, imperative) are used? are there important features of relational modality? are the pronouns we and you used and, if so, how? 7. what expressive values do grammatical features have? are there important features of expressive modality? 8. how are (simple) sentences linked together? what logical connectors are used? are complex sentences characterized by coordination or subordination? what means are used for referring inside and outside the text? ttttteeeeextual structuresxtual structuresxtual structuresxtual structuresxtual structures 9. what interactive conventions are used? are there ways in which one participant controls the turns of others? 10. what larger-scale structures does the text have? ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○75 profileprofileprofileprofileprofile from de-anglicization to internationalisation appendix 4: criticappendix 4: criticappendix 4: criticappendix 4: criticappendix 4: critical discourse analal discourse analal discourse analal discourse analal discourse analysisysisysisysisysis text: “do you know. a macabre job.” explorer starter. student’s book. p. 49. the vocabulary of the text displays a case of over-wording as the lexical item “job” appears five times to refer to digging up bodies in cemeteries and selling them to medical schools. this seems to be a strategy to hide the perverse or macabre aspects of an academic “need” of the 18th century as the practice labeled “job” in the text is considered a crime in current times. the activity is therefore reworded into a job. nevertheless, contradiction shows in a sentence of the text in which the participants are called “robbers”, a word that does not belong in the world of work but in the sphere of crime. the work carried on by these people is negatively judged through the use of the words “horrible”, “macabre” and “terrifying”, all of them not necessarily referring to the job itself but to the reaction it produces. grammargrammargrammargrammargrammar most of the sentences describe either events or actions. they are declarative, active and positive, except for “some people haven’t got a job”. “students”, “people” and “men” are the only human participants in the sentences. therefore, all actions fall upon ordinary people and no institution or superior authority is bestowed with the responsibility for the “macabre” practice. ttttteeeeextual structuresxtual structuresxtual structuresxtual structuresxtual structures title: “a macabre job”. the use of the word “need” and the use of negation in the already-quoted sentence creates the causes for the actions narrated in the following sentences. consequently, it can be posited that the text has got a cause-consequence structure. the “need” of corpses of medical schools creates the macabre job. poverty and unemployment causes poor people to be those in charge of carrying out that activity. illustrationsillustrationsillustrationsillustrationsillustrations there is a drawing of three men lifting a coffin from a tomb at a british cemetery. the drawing is very dark and black is the colour that predominates. the coffin is situated in the middle of the scene. the three men are wearing dark, ragged clothes and look unfriendly. placed on the left is a church very much akin to westminster abbey in london, which marks the british setting of the scene. profile 2.p65 ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ 22profileprofileprofileprofileprofile the main purpose of this study is tohelp students increase theirvocabular y learning in context because when learners participate in a special class with different activities and keep in mind the situation, they remember new words. the study was carried out in the action research method, and the activities provided to students encouraged learning and motivated them to practice english more. introductionintroductionintroductionintroductionintroduction this project was applied at santo tomás, a private school of the vereda cerca de piedra, in chía to third grade students, from february to may, 2001. a fter obser ving the students, their deficient vocabular y, and their fear of speaking, one of the abilities that the students must improve, is the semantic aspect in order to strengthen grammar, to build structures and have confidence in communicative competence. then, the main purpose in this study was to explore the use of new english new vocabulary in the students’ outcomes, with the following research questions: the main question is: how can we help students increase vocabulary and language learning in context? the subquestions are: what kinds of contexts are most effective to present vocabulary? what sort of activities can we employ to make the learners practice new vocabulary? in order to collect data, the sources used were direct class observation, a video recording and a questionnaire. researresearresearresearresearch designch designch designch designch design the development of the project was based on action research. it was carried out taking into account contexts and activities because happenings that occur inside the classroom promote interaction (allwright and bailey: 1991). because the lack of vocabulary was the problem, the proposal was a product of reflection on teaching, prompting changes to help my students (richards and lockhart: 1994). according to elliot (1991), the fundamental aim of action research is to improve practice rather than to produce knowledge. for that reason, the activities that could increase vocabulary were the aim in this study. besides, when lessons are planned around a specific situation of real life, meaningful learning takes place (charteris: 1991). resultsresultsresultsresultsresults through observation and sources, i noticed that guided activities promote confidence in improving new vocabulary learning in context maría colombia ovallemaría colombia ovallemaría colombia ovallemaría colombia ovallemaría colombia ovalle ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○23 profileprofileprofileprofileprofile students and give them free opportunity to practice english. the relevant activities carried out in a specific context, promote class work, giving students a chance to interact. students prefer classes developed in a real context because they can practice new words. the following was the questionnaire used as a data-collecting instrument. it was written in spanish because of the english level of the students. this is the transcriptionthis is the transcriptionthis is the transcriptionthis is the transcriptionthis is the transcription of student camilo garzón.of student camilo garzón.of student camilo garzón.of student camilo garzón.of student camilo garzón. used with permission.used with permission.used with permission.used with permission.used with permission. 1) ¿aprendiste hoy nuevas palabras? si. france, u.k., flag, states. 2) ¿el material usado te ayudó a comprender el tema? si. aprendí más 3) ¿cuál actividad te ayudó a aprender nuevas palabras? las banderas. 4) ¿sientes que tu inglés ha progresado después de clase? si. por qué? porque me gusta. • por favor, escribe otras observaciones o sugerencias que tú creas son relevantes para la clase... based on the results from this study we can conclude: 1. the kids felt that they had learned new words. 2. the material given to learners helped the class process. 3. some of the students spoke english outside of class. during the implementation, a limitation was detected with only yes or no answers. nevertheless, more than half of the course were able to speak with simple structures using vocabulary without difficulties, showing fear more for personal characteristics than their attitude concerning english. conclusionsconclusionsconclusionsconclusionsconclusions to the main question, we can conclude that the real and unreal contexts created in the class environ-ment helped make the learning process easier because students acquired meaningful knowledge. to the first related question, we can say that special contexts that students experience in class make the learning process more effective. to the second related question, we must assure that a planned activity in a definite context contributes to understanding clearly what to do in class because when kids keep in mind the situation, they remember new words and practice them. the children showed some progress in vocabulary learning and some kids liked to practice english outside class. pppppedagogical implicationsedagogical implicationsedagogical implicationsedagogical implicationsedagogical implications in the reality of the classroom, a big group (36 students) made it difficult to develop all activities because sometimes the kids’ behavior was unruly, but the results were taken as some categories that helped the research. according to the findings from the study, constantly reviewing the known vocabulary in the group is recommended because kids tend to forget the new vocabulary when it is not practiced often. therefore, it’s important to compare outcomes between periods of time during the course. ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ 24profileprofileprofileprofileprofile teachers must include activities in a special context as a condition of the real learning process because when the lesson is a stage to develop different contexts, learners are happier and the learning process becomes important. referencesreferencesreferencesreferencesreferences allwright, d. and bailey, k. (1991). focus on the language classroom. cambridge: cambridge university press. charteris, b. (1991). “it’s all-relative”. in forum i. elliot, j. (1991). action research for educational change. milton keynes: open university press. richards, j. c. and lockhart, c. (1994). reflective teaching in second language classrooms. cambridge: cup. profile 10.indd teachers’ attitudes towards reflective teaching: evidences in a professional development program (pdp) profile 10, 2008. issn 1657-0790. bogotá, colombia. pages 91-111 91 * e-mail: sonijerez@yahoo.com address: universidad de córdoba. facultad de educación. departamento idiomas extranjeros. montería, colombia. this article was received on december 17, 2007 and accepted on june 20, 2008. teachers’ attitudes towards reflective teaching: evidences in a professional development program (pdp) actitudes de los profesores hacia la enseñanza reflexiva: evidencias en un programa de desarrollo profesional (pdp) sonia jerez rodríguez* universidad de córdoba, montería colombia reflective teaching is a paradigm that dominates teacher education around the world and most professional development programs include it as a way to improve teachers’ practice. as a teacher educator i am aware of the importance reflective teaching (rt) has on teachers’ professional development. this article reports a research experience with two in-service teachers of english enrolled in a professional development program at a public university in bogotá who initiated a reflective teaching process through the development of reflective thinking skills. data were gathered through interviews, observation, videotaping, questionnaires and a diary. findings showed some teachers’ attitudes towards rt, the possible factors that might have stimulated and lessened reflection, and some of the changes observed in their teaching practice. key words: reflective teaching, reflective thinking skills, professional development program, teaching practice la enseñanza reflexiva es un paradigma que domina la educación de docentes en el mundo y la mayoría de programas de desarrollo profesional (pdp) la incluyen como una manera de mejorar la práctica de los docentes. como docente educadora, soy consciente de su importancia en el desarrollo profesional. este artículo describe una experiencia investigativa con dos profesores de inglés participantes en un pdp en una universidad pública en bogotá, quienes iniciaron un proceso de reflexión sobre su práctica docente mediante el desarrollo de habilidades de pensamiento reflexivo. los datos se recolectaron mediante entrevistas, observación, video grabación, cuestionarios y un diario. los resultados mostraron algunas actitudes de los docentes hacia la enseñanza reflexiva, los posibles factores que pudieron estimular e inhibir la reflexión y algunos cambios en su práctica docente. palabras claves: enseñanza reflexiva, habilidades de pensamiento reflexivo, programa de desarrollo profesional, práctica docente profile 10, 2008. issn 1657-0790. bogotá, colombia. pages 91-111 profile 10.indd 91 23/10/2008 8:46:17 jerez rodríquez universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras92 introduction a significant element of improving teaching in our country is being a reflective practitioner of one’s own teaching. this implies, as wallace (1991) states, that reflection upon teaching practice will probably lead teachers to understand the pragmatics of classroom instruction and this will promote teachers’ self-reflexive awareness of their assumptions about language instruction and willingness to explore how their implicit theories match or do not match their teaching. although the idea of being reflective might sound appealing to many, specially for the benefits that this might promote in one’s teaching, this is a process that has to be guided and designed rather than be left at random. in other words, to succeed one needs to be committed and have a systematic account of it, and it is up to us to improve our teaching or leave it as it is. marylyn ferguson (cited in covey 1989, p. 24) said: “no one can persuade another to change. each of us guards a gate of change that can only be opened from the inside. we cannot open the gate of another, either by argument or emotional appeal”. this study aimed at engaging two inservice teachers from a public school in bogotá while they were participating in a professional development program to initiate a reflective thinking process that could allow them to question their beliefs and actions as a way to improve their practice. so, in the lines below the reader will find some theoretical underpinnings that highlighted this study, a description of this study, its outcomes –which are presented in terms of gains as well the difficulties encountered by the teachers to understand what it means to be a reflective practioner– and finally, the conclusions and the implications of the study. theoretical framework education is a fundamental factor in the development of the human being. through it, every country enlarges its cultural base and satisfies the needs of professional development. since education is a necessary factor for the survival and a key aspect for the development of the coming years, it is evident that educational service needs to be offered with quality according to the social needs of the community. in this regard, our role as professionals in education is to participate in the development and improvement of the country by offering our students qualified teaching. insofar as assessing the quality of teaching, however, it is the state who is in charge of constantly overlooking the different factors that promote the quality and betterment of education and the participation of the community. in colombia, the general law of education – 115, (1994) in its article 4 (p. 1) says that “the state will be particularly watchful of the qualification and formation of educators, their promotion, and the resources and educational methods as well as other factors such as professional orientation, inspection and evaluation of the educational process. the law leaves the initiative for development primarily in the hands of teachers themselves: art 110 states that “the betterment of teachers will be the responsibility of teachers, the nation, the local states and the educational institutions” (p. 23) (translation from spanish). profile 10.indd 92 23/10/2008 8:46:17 teachers’ attitudes towards reflective teaching: evidences in a professional development program (pdp) profile 10, 2008. issn 1657-0790. bogotá, colombia. pages 91-111 93 however, one of the characteristics as regards the qualification and training of teachers is the expectations teachers have to be economically recognized on “teachers’ national rank” which entails economic recognition and personal growth. this can sound like a perfect logical relation since every academic effort can also deserve an improvement in salaries but improvement and changing should not only be looked at in those terms but as a response to some external motivating factor as well. it follows from the above that if the betterment of teaching is principally in the hands of teachers, it must then be the duty of universities and tertiary institutions with a school of education (or any other academic entity dedicated to education or professional preparation) to offer professional development programs to promote professional growth. important attempts to contribute to in-service programs have been made in colombia. studies conducted by clavijo et al. (2004), cárdenas (2004), and mcnulty & quinchía (2007) show the relevance of giving teachers the opportunity to pursue further professional development so that their practice can be enhanced. along these lines it is clear that there are regulations that express the importance of keeping a permanent process of professional development and maintaining an investigative attitude. it is my belief that these days most teachers are aware of the changes society is going through but the real understanding does not depend on the laws dictated to rule education. it is up to teachers themselves to update their teaching, to innovate, to do research in their classroom and to identify the real learning needs of their students. teacher education depends to a large extent on teachers’ own decisions to change and improve. but how willing are teachers to question their practice and improve it? this was one of the questions i initially asked myself at the beginning of this study and the same question led me to think that perhaps we as teachers are not very frequently aware of how to improve and that our participation in a professional development program can be a waste of time if the same program does not promote in us reflective teaching skills to continue on our own after the program finishes. what is reflective teaching? it seems difficult to agree on a specific definition for teachers’ reflective teaching practice. schön (1987) presented a view of reflection by proposing the concept of “reflection in action”, arguing against the view of professional action as a series of steps in a decision-making process. he suggested that such a view undervalues the artistry of the professional. he goes on to say that professionals can reframe a problem as they work on it, testing our interpretations and solutions, combining both reflection and action. on the contrary, reflection in action is a kind of reflection through which practitioners sometimes make new sense of uncertain, unique or conflicting situations of practice. additionally, schön suggests that reflection involves the relationship between an individual’s thought and action, and the relationship between an individual teacher and his or membership in a society. the first relationship involves the subjective profile 10.indd 93 23/10/2008 8:46:17 jerez rodríquez universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras94 perceptions in teachers’ heads, whereas the second explores consciously the relationship between individual teaching actions and purposes of education in society. another view of reflective teaching (rt) is the one presented by cruickshank (1981) and zeichner (1981) (cited in zeichner, 1981, p. 5), who defined it differently but the logic behind each definition is the same. cruickshank defines rt as the teacher’s thinking about what happens in classroom lessons, and thinking about alternative means of achieving goals or aims. according to this definition, reflective teaching is “an opportunity to consider the teaching event thoughtfully, analytically and objectively. the purpose of rt is to engender good thought habits”. furthermore, zeichner (1981, p. 20) demonstrates a robust interpretation of and practical approach towards dewey’s work. he draws on dewey’s definition of reflection as “an integration of attitudes and skills in the methods of inquiry”. the attitudes of open-mindedness, responsibility and whole-heartedness are prerequisite to reflective action. it is therefore evident that there are a number of principles that guide a process by which teachers can become reflective. dewey (1933) considered the following principles as the starting point of the process of reflection: the issue upon which the teacher 1. reflects must occur in the social context where teaching occurs. the teacher must be interested 2. in the problem to be resolved. the issue must be “owned” 3. by the teacher; that is, derived from his/her own practice. reflection on the issue involves 4. problem solving from the teaching situation in which the teacher is located. ownership of the identified 5. issue and its solution is vested in the teacher. the teachers’ ideas need to be tested 6. through the practice of teaching. ideas about teaching, once tested 7. through practice, must lead to some course of action. hence, reflective actions may be 8. transformed into new understanding and redefined practice in teaching. tested practice must lead to some 9. kind of action resulting in change. reflective actions should 10. cause new understanding and changes in teaching. the theories presented see teachers’ knowledge as increasingly interconnected and integrated with past experiences, and reflective teaching serves as a mechanism to allow teachers to modify their knowledge and expertise. reflection is in fact a cyclical or spiraling process in which teachers continually monitor, evaluate, and revise their own practice. the professional development program (pdp) in 2000 a group of 110 teachers from different schools in bogotá participated in a pdp offered by university distrital. it gave teachers opportunities for profile 10.indd 94 23/10/2008 8:46:17 teachers’ attitudes towards reflective teaching: evidences in a professional development program (pdp) profile 10, 2008. issn 1657-0790. bogotá, colombia. pages 91-111 95 professional development. teachers were situated at the center of the process for innovation, investigation, and knowledge construction. they were the protagonists whose experiences as persons, as teachers, and particularly as readers and writers, were important instruments to reflect upon. they were also considered as creative individuals, capable of introducing innovation and making multiple decisions responsibly about teaching and learning in their classrooms. the general objective of the pdp was to form teachers and children as readers and writers within the educational context, and outside of it, with the aim of connecting reading and writing practices present at home and at school. during the development of the pdp, teachers identified turning points in their experiences with literacy as learners and then as teachers through their literacy histories. they also designed a literacy project which served as another step towards their development as teachers. this permitted them to implement innovations through research in their own classroom over a period of one year. as teachers, they put into practice what they knew as well as what they had learned from the course; they also built their own theory for teaching literacy according to what they had found in their own classroom. theory building was done not only through their own experiences and the theory they were assigned to read, but through the opportunity to pick up and include other people’s experiences and knowledge as well. as a student in a master’s program at university distrital, i was allowed to participate in the pdp as an observer on saturday sessions. during these i worked with some of the teachers interested in reflecting and improving their teaching practice further and i could see how the pdp gave teachers opportunities to reflect upon their previous experiences as well as on the new ones. wallace (1991, p. 52) objects that not every course has space for practice sessions. in other words, he implies that they might operate entirely in the area of what he has called “the received knowledge”. the effectiveness of such courses will obviously depend on how well they relate to the trainees’ own reflection and practice. wallace refers to the kind of input a teacher can receive in a professional development program which the teacher believes can be used or incorporated in his teaching and if the results are fine, include it in his repertoire for teaching. in wallace’s model, the reflective process a practitioner can follow takes place outside the professional development program in which he/she participated. the drawback aspect of all this, as discussed by wallace, is that the experience becomes private, not shared. in this regard during the distrital pdp, teachers’ experience was shared and social construction was highlighted. it allowed teachers to participate actively in the development of projects and allowed them to share with others colleagues from the pdp or in their schools the experience so that it was not kept by the participants. the fact that in-service teachers could carry out some research in their schools undermined the dichotomy between theory and practice. in this respect, teachers had the opportunity to do action research since what they faced every day were practical problems for which profile 10.indd 95 23/10/2008 8:46:17 jerez rodríquez universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras96 they needed practical outcomes related to practice in the teachers’ own context. research questions this study attempted to answer the following questions: how are teachers’ attitudes toward – reflective teaching manifested in a professional development program? what are the factors that influence – teachers’ attitudes towards reflective teaching in a pdp? what kind of changes took place as a – result of reflection and action on the teachers’ part? methodology this research study was conducted in a public school in bogotá and counted on the participation of two case studies that were part of a group of 110 teachers participating in the pdp on literacy development at distrital university. the selection of the two cases was based on the fact that they were both school english teachers, they had a b.a in language education, worked as public school teachers and were interested in changing their current professional practice. both participants could be described as teachers who had taught for several years and who were also interested in participating and changing their teaching practice. they saw their participation in the pdp as an opportunity to do so since at school they were not very much supported by the principal to continue studying and developing professionally. this study followed a qualitative case research design since it was primarily descriptive and valued the perspectives and experiences of two teachers as case studies. as defined by stake (1995) (cited in clavijo, 1998, p. 10), a case study is the study of the particularity and complexity of a single case, coming to understand its activity within important circumstances. the fact that this study intended to describe the attitudes of two in-service teachers towards reflective thinking and the factors that might have influenced those attitudes made it entirely descriptive and particularistic. the results of this study can not be applied to the whole population of the teachers that participated in the pdp. the following are several data collection procedures used to collect the information: observation through participant observation done during a three-month period, several observations were conducted in order to gain a general overview of the context in which teachers worked, their interaction at school and participation in the pdp. richards (1999) states that in many language programs teachers are often reluctant to take part in observation or related activities since it is associated with evaluation. in this particular case, it served to gain entry into the group and develop rapport and trust with the participants. during my participant observation i tried to overcome the differences between the teachers’ agenda and my agenda. this stage permitted observance of their school, teachers’ practice, their relation with students and learning about their concerns profile 10.indd 96 23/10/2008 8:46:18 teachers’ attitudes towards reflective teaching: evidences in a professional development program (pdp) profile 10, 2008. issn 1657-0790. bogotá, colombia. pages 91-111 97 in regard to teaching and learning. to encourage a rapport i visited the school during the break time, had a cup of coffee with teachers and listened to them talk about different issues. doing participant observation was time-consuming and made me act as an open-minded person in order to understand teachers’ thoughts and experiences. these were registered in my diary in order to follow the two case studies’ reflective process as well as to register my own reflections. interviewing the purpose of interviews was to allow teachers to discuss what they thought about their teaching actions and to guide them to reflect upon their actions so that they could try to understand and question their teaching practice. all this served as a starting point in the process of reflective teaching. interviewing was one of the main sources of information. it was from this practice that teachers commented on their teaching and narrated experiences, which permitted exploring teachers’ beliefs about teaching and learning. it also offered the opportunity to register teachers’ attitudes toward rt as well as question their practice and think about possible changes. questionnaires these were used at the beginning of the study as a preliminary source of information to stimulate responses about teachers’ belief system. however, due to the lack of time, teachers claimed to have other data collection techniques turn out more helpful. thus, the information collected through them was expanded through interviews. videotaping using video recording provided reliable and complete information of the teachers’ classes, and allowed for contrasting the teachers’ beliefs about learning and teaching with their answers. in addition, changes in the teaching practice were registered through it. unfortunately, teachers were unable to watch their classes and reflect upon them. diaries these served to register and reflect upon all the events that occurred during the development of the study. the data collected though the above data collection procedures plus other sources of information such as teachers’ life histories provided information on how the participants had learnt english, how they perceived themselves as language teachers and users. in addition, the literacy project work requested by the pdp as a requirement to show teachers’ innovation in their practice offered information on some of the changes teachers tried to implement in their teaching. these data were then triangulated and analyzed. the data collection was a very difficult stage which taught me, above all as a teacher educator, that being reflective is not easy. several skills are necessary to do it and it does not happen from one day to the other. however, it was very interesting to see how profile 10.indd 97 23/10/2008 8:46:18 jerez rodríquez universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras98 the participant teachers made an effort and offered the best of themselves to this study. findings and discussion as the data gathered were analyzed and triangulated, two main categories arose. the first one makes reference to teachers’ reflective thinking. this presents a description of the teachers’ statements about how they see themselves as language users and teachers, their beliefs in terms of learning and teaching, their own definition as teachers, their classes’ characteristics, their role as language teachers and the factors that might influence the organization of the teaching practice. the second category refers to teachers’ reactions towards reflective teaching. teachers’ reflective thinking one of the aims of the pdp at universidad distrital was to promote reflection upon teachers’ professional performance and therefore promote changes in their teaching practice. nonetheless, teachers do not reflect as easy as one would think; on the contrary, there is resistance to being reflective. boud et al (1985) (cited in ghaye & ghaye, 1998, p. 3) suggest that knowing our practice is central to learning to reflect upon it and that this process of reflection involves both looking back and looking forward. this means using our new understanding and appreciation to improve our future teaching. reflection of the kind described before emphasizes the centrality of professional experience in the process of “understanding the self ”. it was by understanding the sense of self that the participants in this study initiated a process of consciousness; they reflected on their practice, so that they were required to remember things and to question themselves in order to find explanations for their activities. in trying to understand how teachers dealt with the dimensions of teaching, it was necessary to examine the beliefs and thinking processes which underlay teachers’ classroom actions. teachers’ beliefs about the kind of teachers they believed themselves to be served to open a path to start exploring their teaching practice. it was from this initial questioning that they allowed themselves to dig to their inner thoughts about learning and teaching. these initial reflections were followed by the teachers’ description of their practice; that is, what they did in the classroom as far as teaching the language was concerned and this included their preferences, interests and what they expected their students could achieve. teachers were led to initiate an inquiry about their teaching to find out the kind of teachers they believed themselves to be. this was done to start uncovering teachers’ self-image as language teachers and users. in order to provoke teachers’ reflection on this matter, the following initial question was asked: what kind of teacher are you? the purpose of this question was to have the participants describe their teaching practice. this was a good starting point because they needed to move on trying to explain and justify their teaching. this initial process seemed to allow the two subjects to start giving their teaching its shape, direction, and purpose in a more conscious, informed way and, therefore, becoming more open to inspection and critique. the teachers were profile 10.indd 98 23/10/2008 8:46:18 teachers’ attitudes towards reflective teaching: evidences in a professional development program (pdp) profile 10, 2008. issn 1657-0790. bogotá, colombia. pages 91-111 99 asked to think about the type of teacher they believed themselves to be as well as of the characteristics of their classes through a questionnaire. their answers were later discussed and expanded on though a structured interview. the following are the two teachers’ answers reflecting upon the kind of teacher think they are1: r: what kind of teacher are you? maria: i’m a good teacher. (raising her voice) i’m the type of teacher that worries about doing my things well, i would like to know more to improve but... we don’t have many opportunities to do so; therefore, i have to do it on my own. i have told you that i usually take other courses; of course i pay for them. here at school, that’s a problem. i think my students can learn some english but i still don’t know what for because most of them have to work with their parents and i don’t think they are going to university anyway. teresa: i’m concerned about my students. it’s important to teach them values, you are constantly teaching them through your own actions (smiles). i don’t know what use it would be to know a lot if they are unable to be life together... i usually worry about my teaching but i’m also concerned about being a good person as well. here you have to work a lot on respect and tolerance, for example. the two teachers’ answers denoted different professional values as regards the kind of job they do and how it seems to provide them different reasons to teach in a particular way. maria was emphatic and her tone of voice was high when trying to answer the question. apart from the fact that the subject could have felt initially 1 participants’ names were changed and their testimonies, gathered in spanish, were translated. judged, she seemed to be aware of the importance of being up-to-date. this awareness revealed the teacher’s ideological complexity about what she is and does, so she uncovered something about her belief system. she apparently considered it necessary to receive further training but at the same time she did not seem to see the usefulness of her efforts on students who might not continue studying. this attitude apparently reveals some kind of frustration on behalf of the teacher. on the other hand, teresa seemed to value her students as human beings who needed to be offered affective support and who did not only need to be given academic work alone. this evidence portrayed a teacher who seemed to be responsible for her students and someone who was willing to be there for them. the previous descriptions of what the participants considered to be a teacher might be compatible with how the teachers see themselves as “a person”. this idea allowed the researcher to question the participants on the role they believed to play as language teachers. to this end, the participants answered as follows: maria: the role of the teacher’s to be the right and left hand of the students if i can say so. because the teacher’s the only source they have close to them. as a teacher you have the resources, you teach what you have learnt, you do your best. teresa: i’m a guide, organizer, and provider, i give them everything. they don’t do anything on their own. i explain everything; i haven’t let them being autonomous. according to richards (1987), many teachers create their own roles within profile 10.indd 99 23/10/2008 8:46:18 jerez rodríquez universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras100 the classroom based on their theories of teaching. both cases seem to have a philosophy of teaching that might come from a specific method of teaching in which the teacher is the center of the learning process. the sociologist meighan (1990) (cited in ghaye & ghaye, 1998, p. 25) suggests that there are different ways in which teachers construct learners and that such constructions reflect individual teachers’ views of the world and also have a profound influence on their classroom practices. he adds that learners can be constructed as registers, receptacles, and raw material. these three constructs are heavily teacher dominated. in both cases teachers seem to perceive teaching as a teachercontrolled and direct process, and their assumptions make them feel responsible for their students’ learning and feel as if they are the only source available for them. regarding how they described their classes, the following were the teachers’ answers to the questions: maria: my classes are similar to anyone’s classes in any public school in colombia. you have to work without a textbook, materials or resources and the only thing you do is to teach grammar, translation, reading and sometimes try to get them to say something in english. teresa: my class is usually focused on the teaching of grammar and i work on writing and speaking. the two participants agreed on the emphasis grammar had on their teaching and this was apparently evidence of the teachers’ traditional view of what learning a language should be; therefore, they were asked to think about the reasons learners should be taught grammar and they replied as follows: maria: grammar is the most important thing otherwise how students are going to do the rest teresa: it is from learning the grammar that students can construct their own sentences, or texts and make up things. i generally given them an example and then i ask them to go to the board so that they can write a sentence. i also ask about the previous class, then some students come to the board select a verb, for example if we are working verb to be i ask them to write sentences and they invent sentences. the analysis of the teachers’ assertions on the importance they assigned to grammar learning might reveal the emphasis on the development of this aspect of the language as a prerequisite to developing the other language skills necessary to be competent in the foreign language. at this point, teachers apparently perceived learning a foreign language as the gradual development of grammar and vocabulary as separated by the language skills; therefore, it was relevant to find out the possible sources of these beliefs and to guide the teachers to reflect upon them. richards & lockhart (1996) state that “teachers’ belief systems are founded on the goals, values, and beliefs teachers hold in relation to the content and process of teaching, and their understanding of the systems in which they work and their roles within it” (p. 30). these beliefs and values serve as the background to much of the teachers’ decision making and action; hence, constitute what has been termed the “culture of teaching”. richards summarizes that teachers’ belief systems are derived from a number of different sources. these profile 10.indd 100 23/10/2008 8:46:18 teachers’ attitudes towards reflective teaching: evidences in a professional development program (pdp) profile 10, 2008. issn 1657-0790. bogotá, colombia. pages 91-111 101 are (a) their own experience as language learners; (b) their experience of what works best; (c) established practice; (d) personality factors; (e) educational based or research based principles; and (f ) principles derived from an approach or method (pp. 30-31). in an attempt to guide teachers toward identifying which could be some of the possible sources of their beliefs, they were asked to recall in a semi-structured interview the way they had learnt english and they reported as follows: maria: when i remember what i wanted to do, i recall l wanted to study english, not because i liked it but because it was a challenge. my teacher was very bad tempered, i hardly ever understood what she explained, she used to write exercises on the board, and we repeated them, everything was about grammar. at university we did translations, dialogs and grammar exercises with games. i think i usually repeat what my teachers taught me. sometimes i wonder if my english teacher still influences my teaching after all these years. (long silence). teresa: well, i was taught pretty much the same way i teach. after learning grammar comes the rest; however, with these students one has to translate everything because they do not know much, and in this way they seem to learn better, that is how i have always taught, it does not mean that i am not willing to change… (pause) at this point teachers were uncovering their belief system and starting to reflect upon their actions. in both cases the participants were apparently aware that most of their teaching came from their experience as language learners; however, there were some factors that seemed to influence the participants’ practice and development of reflective skills as will be described in the following paragraphs. in an attempt to identify the possible reasons for which the two participant teachers in this study presented difficulties engaging in reflective teaching, i sought to identify factors that could have inhibited the teachers’ reflective practice. this search permitted identifying possible factors that might have prompted the two participants to continue their routinised actions as a way to handle the complexity of their classroom and provided them a sense of security because they knew what to expect. dewey (1933) stated that routine action is guided by factors such as tradition, habit and authority, and by the institutional definitions and expectations. thus, this study found that there were organizational factors that made teachers keep their teaching routine while the intervention of others served at some time to promote reflection upon actions and change their teaching practice. regarding the organizational factors, these were related to the organization of the school and how this affected the teachers’ reflective process; specifically, they referred to the principal and the school organization and the lack of space and time to work with the researcher. the principal was identified in this study as a non-supportive person who usually relied on the coordinators and these, on the other hand, were not concerned about their co-workers’ professional development either. price (1992) comments that the organizational environment usually plays an extremely important role in teachers’ attitudes towards teaching. it also seems to be critical in its implications for teachers’ opinions about their professional development needs. profile 10.indd 101 23/10/2008 8:46:18 jerez rodríquez universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras102 maria was the first one to discuss with the researcher her disappointment regarding the school organization and principal. she reported the following: maria: i hardly ever see her, she comes and goes. she talks to the coordinators and then leaves. once in a while you see her talking to some teachers. she does not check if the projects teachers are carrying out are doing well. we have a meeting every week, one of us leads it but we make decisions and sometimes we only talk about discipline. teresa: i wish she would come more often. i would like we could have more opportunities here in the school and that she could bring workshops for us. she doesn’t know what we are doing. she will find out because the coordinator might tell her but not because she talks to me, for example. i feel disappointed, because no one from the administrative staff is concerned about us, they only worry about keeping discipline. both teachers reported the lack of support and encouragement teachers had at school. they reported the lack of communication with the principal, the discipline and academic coordinators who were regarded as nonsupportive. these findings indicate that the principal’s actions are critical in determining outcomes in the school and in the teachers. in general, the participants would have liked to count on a leader who could support them. evidence about the lack of group work and organization within the english department was also gathered. this also seemed to affect teachers’ reflective teaching since it was difficult to have teachers talk about what they were doing and comment on their actions; in general, each one did things on their own most of the time. in this regard, the lack of space and time was apparently another constraint for teachers who could not talk to the researcher at will. usually both teachers had to work at different times so that we could not discuss what they were doing in the pdp or in their english classes for more than twenty minutes without being interrupted by students or other teachers. regarding this, one of the participants reported: maria: i would like to be able to do some research in the classroom and be able to share with my coworkers about what we are doing, but we do not have the space and time to do so. in the teachers lounge there is no privacy, every one is talking, laughing, that is not the correct place to do so. as teachers were part of the pdp they had to submit a research project, and they complained of the lack of time to do it since no one liked to stay after work to do it. however, as this was a task they had to fulfill for the pdp they finally seemed to sort out their agendas and found time to do it. thus, the influence of others served to organize a project that could bring changes in their teaching and set up long term objectives; however, their reflective skills were not developed given the constraints reported before. still, i thought that this represented a positive achievement since their participation in the pdp made them work as a group and share with others what they were doing. this usually permitted receiving feedback and to be critical in ones’ actions. teachers’ reactions toward reflective teaching the initial purpose of this study was to accompany the two participant teachers in profile 10.indd 102 23/10/2008 8:46:18 teachers’ attitudes towards reflective teaching: evidences in a professional development program (pdp) profile 10, 2008. issn 1657-0790. bogotá, colombia. pages 91-111 103 their process of reflective thinking during their participation in a pdp which promoted reflection as one of its components. during the study i observed a process that eventually led to the identification of the two participants’ concepts about learning and teaching a language and some changes in practice. as the study advanced, the two participant teachers demonstrated certain attitudes of resistance towards reflection which could have also prevented them from reflecting systematically. teachers’ attitudes towards reflective teaching were identified at the beginning of the study, during and at the end of it. they were observed, registered in the researcher’s diary and discussed and verified by the teachers in the interviews. thus, this category intends to describe how these attitudes were observed and the extent to which they might have inhibited reflective action. the following are the observed attitudes of the two teachers: tension, anxiety and defensiveness, and recognition of a need for change and innovation. tension, anxiety and defensiveness accepting that we teachers are human beings who are constantly learning and who also need to continue pursuing different goals in teaching in order to innovate and change does not seem to be a very easy matter. there is resistance to change which, according to eichholz (1996) (cited in covey, 1989, p. 16), exists as an integral and necessary part of the acceptance process. eichholz states that since any change will initially cause inefficiency, partial rejection is essential. at the beginning of this study, the two in-service teachers agreed to participate in this study, to be observed during their participation, to register in their diary how they would reflect upon their teaching, how they would innovate their teaching actions and find in their own classroom what was necessary to improve and change their teaching. as i started to visit the teachers at school, i noticed that the participants were tense and anxious. these were understood in this analysis as related to an uncomfortable feeling of nervousness or worry about something that is happening or might happen in the future. usually, when a person is nervous, it is because there is some tension which makes the person feel anxious about the unknown situation. in an attempt to have an organization of the activities that could serve to record data for this study, i designed three initial questionnaires, programmed classroom observations and interviews to collect data. however, filling out the questionnaires was difficult not only because of the time teachers claimed not to have to do it but because the answers were rather short and sometimes the teachers did not answer at all. they seemed to show discomfort whenever they were asked to write their answers and avoided doing so. after several attempts to collect the information through questionnaires, it seemed as if they did not feel secure about what they were going to answer. as a researcher, i also had to reflect upon what i was doing and i realized that the participants were feeling intimidated by my presence and, in spite of their willingness to participate, it was normal that they saw me as an “outsider”. thus, i devoted more profile 10.indd 103 23/10/2008 8:46:19 jerez rodríquez universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras104 time to visiting the teachers at school, to listening to them and reducing the tension that my presence and the questionnaires had produced on them. i soon realized that for them it was difficult enough to accept a person who did not belong to their community and, even more, to report to me what they believed about teaching, the profession and the pdp. this led me to build up rapport and trust before asking for further data during the first months of the study. by the end of the first school period, i asked the teachers if i could videotape and observe some of their classes and, later on, watch the video with them. both teachers agreed and selected two groups to be observed in class. maría was the first one to be videotaped and she showed evidence of her anxiety and defensiveness when she approached me and said: this is not a normal class... the one you are going to see today because students are going to do much of the talking. as the teacher tried to prevent what i was going to find, i noticed her anxiety in the excuses she gave me despite that i had told her the objective of the observation was not to give her feedback on her actions but to have her watch and reflect upon her practice. as soon as the class finished, maría asked me in front of the students how i liked the class and what i thought of the students. this allowed me to confirm once more maría’s anxiety towards the observation and me. after the class maría continued apologizing for the class organization and this led me to conclude that the maria saw me as a supervisor and perhaps was not going to give herself the opportunity to question her actions as i expected. the second participant was also videotaped the same week. she expressed to the researcher that she was nervous and aware she needed ideas to improve and change her classes. during the videotaping she avoided the camera, lowered the tone of her voice so that the researcher had to take notes to support the transcription and she used spanish in her class most of the time. i had planned to watch the video and talk about the classes with each of the subjects but both subjects avoided watching it even though they were given the tape to watch it individually at home first. they had several excuses such as they did not have means to watch it either at school or at home or that there was no time. the teachers’ concurrent excuses regarding filling out questionnaires, watching the video and even following a diary or their activities were interpreted as a negative response to the study. during the first months i tried to establish a relationship with the teachers and this allowed them to talk about their classes, what they believed of the school, their students, the program, but all this in informal conversations. however, whenever i mentioned that i needed them to answer some questions in a questionnaire, for example, the teachers changed their attitude. it was evident that the teachers preferred to share orally what they were doing or what they wanted to do rather than following diaries, answering questionnaires or watching the video to formally reflect on it. as i could conclude they saw me as a supervisor or as someone who represented profile 10.indd 104 23/10/2008 8:46:19 teachers’ attitudes towards reflective teaching: evidences in a professional development program (pdp) profile 10, 2008. issn 1657-0790. bogotá, colombia. pages 91-111 105 the pdp tutors. for them i was acting like a supervisor who could judge their performance and observe their actions to give them feedback. there was no evidence that they wanted to hand in any written proof since i could possibly give it to the tutors in the pdp. in addition, the teachers’ questions on how to do things better in their classrooms and their concern for finding what i interpreted as “key formulas to teach” served as evidence that the teachers perceived me as a supervisor and a provider of knowledge. reducing teachers’ tension, anxiety and defensiveness became an objective during the second stage of the study. if teachers felt nervous it was necessary to converse with them and help them overcome their initial responses to the study. it was through questioning that i found that both teachers felt anxious whenever i arrived to the school. they reported seeing me as someone from the pdp. teresa reported: i was tense at the beginning. it was like being afraid to the unknown, to the new. i was usually afraid that you could tell me that my teaching was wrong just like i was told at university when the supervisor visited me during my teaching practice. maría also said, …well, you are doing a mater and you know more than we do. you are also observing us in the pdp so you know what we are doing there. both teachers reported their anxiety and defensiveness whenever they were requested for information. in their view, i was someone who was maybe checking their teaching practice. at the same time, my affiliation with the university permitted me to be accepted in the community but it also seemed to prevent teachers’ reflective thinking. as soon as the two subjects held a conversation with me and understood that my role was not to supervise but to accompany them in their participation in the pdp, the teachers started to be more open and relaxed. teachers’ apparent awareness permitted the researcher to start interviewing the subjects, to talk to them more often and to observe them at school and in the pdp. recognition of a need for change or innovation the two participants in this study were apparently aware that their participation in the pdp did not only involve both the acquisition of practical knowledge and skills but the need to examine their beliefs about teaching and learning, their own theories and principles when teaching. this process of awareness involved thought and action, and the interaction between the two forms initially caused stress. it was crucial for this study to observe to what extent teachers could develop a sense of awareness about their actions. in an attempt to lead teachers to be more acquainted with reflective teaching, i looked for questions that could develop the teachers’ understanding of their beliefs, theories and their recognition for innovation. the participants’ recognition of a virtual need for improvement and innovation seemed to be present. teachers were apparently conscious about it and their participation in the pdp was not only for profile 10.indd 105 23/10/2008 8:46:19 jerez rodríquez universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras106 the credits this would give them but also for their desire to change their practice at school. maría was usually enthusiastic about her teaching actions. she also seemed to be updated as well as interested in the latest trends in education. the image that she projected was that of a teacher ready to learn as she reported as follows in an interview: i like to learn from many things, i take courses to improve my english...whatever to improve because i know that my english is... i have difficulties... right now i am taking some courses at university... i do every course i can and i read on my own, now i am reading about the clt to see how to improve and see if it works in my classes because there are things that might work but there are that not much. regarding the reasons she had to register in the pdp she commented, i registered in this course to see what i can learn; we hardly ever have the change to take an english course so that we have to do whatever we are offered. this has to be good to change to improve because after so many years one becomes used to do everything the same and at the end one is also tired of doing it. the previous evidence might suggest that maría was willing to try new practices and seemed to be more positive in her approaches. her individual desire for change can be more directly related to personal teaching efficacy in the absence of an organizational pressure to do it. teresa also proved to be interested in understanding her teaching practice more and to discover how to improve it. she reported in an interview, i don’t know, there are so many things i would like to learn, improve and change, like to find methodological strategies that… but you know to sit down and think seriously what is best for the students , what they want, what they like… they usually forget what they have been taught. i don’t know (raises tone of voice). i don’t know…… i would like to find out what is best for them. teresa was questioned on what she meant when she said “seriously” and she expressed, i mean with everyone, we don’t do it here and you have noticed it. right now we are working on things that can be good for students but hardly ever compare them with the other teachers and share the results. that could be a good way to see if things have been done properly or to see if one has to change the next time. for teresa the desire for change was not enough unless there existed responsibility and whole-heartedness, which are presented by dewey as pre-requisite attitudes to become reflective and to think and understand our own actions. teresa does not seem to be motivated to do it on her own but she would like to be able to do it as a team with the other teachers. working as a team might help her to defeat and contain her anxiety towards everything that is new. while teachers claimed to be interested in the pdp as an opportunity for their professional development, the researcher tried to identify to what extent the two participants perceived innovation and change as necessary in their teaching practice and how they implemented actions and followed them. the two subjects were observed as different in regards to their awareness for a need for change and innovation. in order to see to what extent the teachers could follow what they did in profile 10.indd 106 23/10/2008 8:46:19 teachers’ attitudes towards reflective teaching: evidences in a professional development program (pdp) profile 10, 2008. issn 1657-0790. bogotá, colombia. pages 91-111 107 their classes and if they did notice changes in their practice they were closely observed. maría was observed to be a rather organized teacher who seemed to have clear what she was doing. she seemed to know which her teaching objectives were and how to evaluate them. when asked if she ever registered the changes she had to include in her classes, she reported that since she had different groups and all of them reacted differently, some activities could work with one group but not the others and she had to register them in her agenda. on the other hand, teresa was also asked about the same issue and she reported that she did not register changes anywhere because she was able to remember them. it could be said that given the interest maría had as regards her own development, she was motivated to use different kinds of activities and register the outcomes in her classes. teresa’s strategy to record information did not seem to help her and seemed to cause her to continue with her routine actions and not to include activities that could make her observe changes in the teaching practice. as the teachers’ participation in the pdp advanced, they were asked to design a literacy project. while maría seemed to have a better idea of what the objectives should be and what could be achieved with her students, teresa did not. the teachers demonstrated continual difficulties meeting at school and discussing the project; therefore, maría, who seemed to be the leader of the group, designed it. the project was later discussed and complemented by teresa and another teacher who was also participating in the pdp but not in this study. however, as soon this was done, the teachers started to work on the project individually again once they had discussed it. maría’s understanding apparently permitted her to organize the activities to be developed in the pdp project. she expressed that the project should allow students to express themselves and talk about things they enjoyed and liked. in her view, this was a good opportunity to do different things in class such as look for information on the internet, draw, read stories about kites, and finally have students talk about their own experience of the design of the kite and how they had enjoyed the trip they made to the park. her understanding of what innovating in her practice meant seemed to be motivating to her. teresa also showed interest in the activities and as soon as she saw the outcomes of the first activity, she seemed to realize the importance of innovating and how it could promote changes in the students’ attitudes toward the class. by the end of august, the first activity had been done and maría left the program because she was ill and teresa was in charge of the project. teresa had already seen that the activity excited and motivated her students and she reported the following: the students are participating more in class, the activities i’m doing allot them to write and read more in class. lastly, acknowledging a need for change and innovation was apparent at the beginning of the study and the two participant teachers, each to a different extent, seemed to have a positive attitude towards the pdp as a possible way to do things. in maría’s case, she seemed to perceive the program as an opportunity to teach herself and inquire after her profile 10.indd 107 23/10/2008 8:46:19 jerez rodríquez universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras108 own teaching. she was apparently more concerned to include what was discussed in the sessions she attended in the pdp and observed the outcomes of actions in the classroom. her dynamic personality permitted her to conceive the literacy project as an opportunity to implement new actions with the students and observe possible changes in their outcomes. however, due to her obligatory leave from school for some days, she could not continue a process that could have been rewarding and innovative for her. notwithstanding, her return to school was marked by her desire to continue developing the activities she had initially planned to do until the end of the year in the literacy project she designed on her own before she left. also, her departure from the program did not restrain her search for opportunities to innovate. the fact that she had the opportunity to participate during the first semester in the pdp and in this study seemed to have impacted and driven her to continue searching in her classroom, questioning her actions and looking for other activities that could improve her students’ outcomes. the absence of communication with colleagues kept her isolated and the researcher did not observe that both she and the other teachers participating in the pdp wanted to share their actions and outcomes as she was no longer a member of the program. in teresa’s case, she might initially have viewed the program as a particular set of teaching techniques or strategies to teach that could offer her the possibility to make her teaching less complicated but not as an opportunity to inquire about her actions. although, she apparently saw the program as an opportunity to alter her actions, she showed motivation and agreed to participate in the study. this study permitted her to be more interested in her actions and to question them. it was from the outcomes of the first activity implemented with the students that she realized that they were actually communicating through their writing. this motivated her to express and question her beliefs about language teaching. at the same time her new actions allowed her to reflect and change some of her beliefs about teaching and to develop essential abilities required to be reflective. this is supported by guskey (1986) (cited in richardson, 1994) who suggests that changes in teachers’ beliefs follow changes in practices. as guskey explains, only when teachers see positive results of different behaviors in terms of student learning do they begin to change their beliefs. this could be the teresa’s case since it was only when she observed positive outcomes that she showed enthusiasm for the project, and at the same time, the results seemed to influence her new actions. in general, both teachers identified professional development as a way to innovate, update their pedagogy and change their actions. each one was committed in her own way and their observed actions reflected that. maría did not have to wait to see positive results to try new actions and question them and her process was rather interactive. her participation in the pdp and in this study served as an opportunity to try and see how things worked in the classroom and to implement changes according to what she had noticed and considered best for her students. teresa, like maría, showed profile 10.indd 108 23/10/2008 8:46:19 teachers’ attitudes towards reflective teaching: evidences in a professional development program (pdp) profile 10, 2008. issn 1657-0790. bogotá, colombia. pages 91-111 109 interest but in her particular case, the process was at her own pace and it was not until she saw changes from her own actions that she realized the fact that she was changing her beliefs as well. to conclude the analysis of this category, it could be said that teachers responded to reflective teaching with different attitudes. the teachers’ responses to the process influenced their professional development. it took time and effort for the participants to realize that they could not develop a project in their institution as part of the pdp if they were not aware of their own needs, actions, strengths, weaknesses and difficulties. the teachers’ awareness of the need to appropriate and solve issues concerning their institution seemed to make them think and speak about it to colleagues which lessened their anxiety toward reflection. conclusions fostering teachers’ reflective process is a difficult process since, as chant, heafner & bennett (2004, p. 25) state, it “requires critical thought, self-direction, and problem solving coupled with personal knowledge and self-awareness”. teachers do not usually change from one day to the other just because they are participating in a pdp. when teachers enroll in a pdp, we usually expect that their classes change from one day to the other and that they become the teachers we expect them to be since they had been attending our lectures, discussing with us different issues and apparently agreeing on them. however, in our case, teachers held different attitudes toward reflective thinking. these attitudes might have inhibited teachers’ participation in more overt ways. the following lines present the answers to the research questions set up in this study: how are teachers’ attitudes toward – reflective teaching manifested in a professional development program? what are the factors that influence – teachers’ attitudes towards reflective teaching in a pdp? what kind of changes took place as a – result of reflection and action on the teachers’ part? questioning teachers’ beliefs and practical theories was stressful for them and it required time to start a process of inquiry of their actions and reasons. the participants initially avoided and seemed to reject reflecting systematically. they were not ready to do so explicitly since it implied monitoring their classes and reporting the outcomes. teachers were not willing to do so since this represented commitment and teachers did not have enough motivation, given the different factors which apparently affected their teaching practice. the teachers’ response to systematic reflection could have meant, as favell (1981) (cited in smith, 1998, p. 25) said, to be flexible, to do a rigorous analysis of one’s actions and have social awareness on the part of the teacher. the teachers reacted by trying to understand the pragmatics of their classroom instruction because it was apparently the first time they had tried to do it systematically. the teachers were used to thinking about their actions as most teachers are, but when asked to think about the reasons their assumptions about language instruction enabled them to see profile 10.indd 109 23/10/2008 8:46:19 jerez rodríquez universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras110 if their implicit theories matched or did not match their teaching, they reacted to it defensively. this allowed them to protect themselves and their practical theory about teaching. these attitudes were also part of their process toward change. not surprisingly, there were several factors that seemed to influence teachers’ attitudes toward reflective teaching in the pdp. for example, their participation in the program served to allow teachers to raise awareness and question the need to reflect. it meant more thinking and observing their acting and making changes in their practice. it also allowed them to develop certain skills to become reflective such as to start working with colleagues, communicate ideas, look critically at their actions and evaluate the process they were following. the fact that the pdp placed emphasis on teachers’ previous knowledge and experiences about teaching was the best incentive they had since they felt they were always at the center of the program. this acknowledgement made teachers aware of the importance of their participation. finally, i would like to point out that there are no “born teachers”. there are some people whose personalities, life experience, and natural ways of interacting are conducive to classroom teaching. but even so, without the knowledge of how efl/esl teaching is accomplished, even the most talented person can lose teaching opportunities. teachers’ participation in the pdp was only one step toward change and they took advantage of this opportunity as much as they could. as a researcher, i expected to see teachers’ reflections from the start; however, i found that this was rather difficult for them and that, above all, it demanded commitment. in spite of the many difficulties encountered along the way, teachers demonstrated to themselves that improving the teaching practice was possible as long as they wanted to do it. they also seemed to be pleased with the final outcomes of the project and, to them, this was their best achievement. at the end, several changes regarding their attitude toward reflection were observed. the participants were more open-minded and shared their experiences more overtly with others. they also included different activities in the language class that aimed at enhancing their students’ learning even if these were difficult to be carried out. references cárdenas, m. l. (2004). las investigaciones de los docentes de inglés en un programa de formación permanente. íkala, revista de lenguaje y cultura, 9(15), 11-41. chant, r.h., heafner, t.l., & bennett, k.r. (2004). connecting personal theorizing and action research in pre-service teacher development. teacher education quarterly, 31(3), 25-42. clavijo, a. (1998). teachers’ life histories: an important input in the formation of teachers’ beliefs. colombian applied linguistics journal, 1(1), 3-20. clavijo, a., guerrero, c. h., torres, c, ramírez, m, & torres, e. (2004). teachers acting critically upon the curriculum: innovations that transform teaching. íkala, revista de lenguaje y cultura, 9(15), 11-41. colombia. ministerio de educación nacional [men]. (1994). ley general de educación 115. bogota: author. covey, s. (1989). seven habits of highly effective people. new york: simon & schuster. profile 10.indd 110 23/10/2008 8:46:20 teachers’ attitudes towards reflective teaching: evidences in a professional development program (pdp) profile 10, 2008. issn 1657-0790. bogotá, colombia. pages 91-111 111 dewey, j. (1933). how we think. boston: d.c. heath & co. ghaye, a. & ghaye, k. (1998). teaching and learning through critical reflective practice. london: cassell. mcnulty, f. & quinchia. d. (2007). designing a holistic professional development program for elementary school english teachers in colombia. profile, 8, 131-143. price, j. r. (1992). the teacher career cycle: development and validation of research instruments. paper presented at the annual meeting of the american educational research association, san francisco. richards, j.c. (1987). the dilemma of teacher education in tesol. tesol quaterly, 21(2), 209-226. richards, j.c. (1999). language teaching awareness. cambridge: cambridge university press. richards, j. & lockhart, c. (1996). reflective teaching in second language classrooms. cambridge: cambridge university press. richardson, v. (1994). teacher change and the staff development process. new york and london: teachers college, columbia university. schön, d. (1987). educating the reflective practioner. san francisco: jossey-bass. smith, m. (1998). learning to reflect a classroom experiment. the clearing house magazine, 72(1), 24-28. wallace, m.j. (1991). training foreign language teachers: a reflective approach. cambridge: cambridge university press. zeichner, k.m. (1981). reflective teaching and field-based experience in teacher education. interchange, 12, 1-22. about the author sonia jerez rodríguez holds an ma in applied linguistics from universidad distrital. she is a full-time teacher at universidad de córdoba, montería. she is the director of the research group escu and the academic coordinator of the english language teaching course diploma at unicor. acknowledgments i would like to thank professor amparo clavijo, my tutor in the m.a program at university distrital as well as guide me during the development of this study. her experience as a teacher educator taught me to understand how to be patient and systematic when conducting research. i would also like to express my gratitude to the teachers who participated in this study since they gave a lot of their time, experience and thoughts to it. profile 10.indd 111 23/10/2008 8:46:20 profile 11, 2009. issn 1657-0790. bogotá, colombia. pages 123-141 123 education and language policy in colombia: exploring processes of inclusion, exclusion, and stratification in times of global reform políticas educativas y lingüísticas en colombia: procesos de inclusión, exclusión y estratificación en tiempos de reforma educativa global jaime a. usma wilches*1 universidad de antioquia, colombia this paper examines the national bilingual program in connection with other education and language reforms in colombia and some of the processes of inclusion, exclusion, and stratification that accompany current school reforms. the author outlines some patterns that have accompanied language innovations in the country and highlights some interconnected processes that seem to be favored in international reform and are reflected in current national policy agendas; namely, the externalization of policy discourses; the instrumentalization of languages; the stratification of groups, languages and cultures; and the standardization and marketization of foreign language teaching and learning. this paper attempts to demonstrate that processes of inclusion, exclusion and stratification through schooling are favored not only through the overt exercise of power and control, but also through the introduction of new discourses, policies, and practices. key words: national bilingual program, language policies, education reform este artículo analiza el programa nacional de bilingüismo en conexión con otras reformas educativas y lingüísticas promovidas en colombia y distintos procesos de inclusión, exclusión y estratificación que las acompañan. el autor esboza algunos patrones que han acompañado distintas reformas educativas y lingüísticas en el país y diversos fenómenos reportados a nivel internacional que ahora se pueden evidenciar en colombia. estos incluyen: la “externalización” de discursos, la instrumentalización de las lenguas, la estratificación de grupos, idiomas y culturas, y la estandarización y marketización de las lenguas extranjeras. este artículo busca demostrar que los procesos de inclusión, exclusión, y estratificación social a través de la escuela son favorecidos no solamente a través del ejercicio del poder y el control de parte del gobierno, sino también mediante la introducción de nuevos discursos, políticas, y practicas escolares. palabras clave: programa nacional de bilingüismo, políticas lingüísticas, reforma educativa * e-mail: usma@wisc.edu address: urbanización abedules, calle 40 # 105-146, apto 323, bloque 1, medellín (antioquia-colombia). this article was received on november 20, 2008 and accepted on march 15, 2009. usma wilches universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras124 introduction acknowledging the importance of english in the times of competitiveness in the global market, and within the context of different international trade agreements being negotiated with other countries, the national government in colombia has recently introduced the national bilingual program (programa nacional de bilingüismo, colombia 2004-2019). among other changes, this policy has introduced the notion of bilingualism where local stakeholders previously talked about foreign language teaching and learning, reduced the notion of bilingualism in colombia to english-spanish; established the common european framework of reference for languages (2001) as the guiding norm for this reform; and standardized foreign language teaching and learning in the whole educational system. motivated by this current situation, and supported by a systematic review of policy documents and literature produced locally and abroad, i will, in this paper, start to analyze this policy in relation to previous and accompanying education and language norms. i will also examine how the new reform favors processes of inclusion, exclusion, and stratification through policy transfer; and what issues and questions emerge as this policy comes into local schools. for this purpose, i will outline some patterns that accompany education and language reforms in colombia and highlight four interconnected processes that seem to be favored in global language and school reform and are reflected in the national bilingual program in colombia; namely, the externalization of policy discourses; the instrumentalization of language learning; the stratification of languages, groups, and cultures; and the standardization and marketization of foreign language teaching and learning. in this process, i question the notion of bilingualism that is being adopted in colombia and outline some of the challenges faced by local actors when international discourses are borrowed, when the foreign supersedes the local, the notion of english as an instrumental tool to access the job market is favored, students in public schools are not given the same conditions existing in the private sector, and the whole school system is shaped for those who are competent in both spanish and english. in this piece, i will attempt to demonstrate that processes of inclusion and exclusion in times of local and international reform are favored not only through the overt exercise of power and control over educational institutions and actors, but also through the introduction of new discourses, language policies, and school practices. this exploration is divided into three main sections. it starts with a historic overview of polices in colombia before the national bilingual program was issued; then it continues with a presentation of the adoption of this plan, its stated goals, its areas of intervention and policy tools; and it concludes with a discussion of its actual and potential effects on schools, teachers, and students and the academic community in general. linguistics policies in colombia: an historic overview language policies and reform agendas preceding the national bilingual program in colombia can be traced to the times of the colony. as presented by zuluaga (1996, as cited by de mejía, 2004) after the colonization of the “new” continent, catholic missionaries were effective in imposing their languages, mainly spanish, greek, and latin. later on, after the independence of the region from spain two centuries ago, the new ruling elite started to send their children to europe, which then led towards the importing of education and language policy in colombia: exploring processes of inclusion, exclusion, and stratification.... profile 11, 2009. issn 1657-0790. bogotá, colombia. pages 123-141 125 books and ideas associated with languages such as french, german, and english. these moves paved the road to these languages into the country and their association with enlightened ideas and intellectual elites, while indigenous and creole languages started to be associated with ignorance and underdevelopment. in more recent developments after world war ii, political, economic, and cultural processes associated with what we now know as “globalization” brought about the consolidation of english and french as the most commonly taught languages in colombia. during these decades, the national government attempted to introduce these languages into the school system through isolated and, to a big extent, improvised policies as part of international political and economic agendas (zuluaga, 1996, as cited by de mejía, 2004). for instance, “in 1979, after a visit by the colombian president to france, a decree was issued, making english compulsory for grades 6 and 7 and french mandatory for grades 10 and 11, with a free choice of either english or french in grades 8 and 9” (de mejía, 2004, p. 386). that is how foreign languages such as english and french continued to become consolidated in secondary schools in colombia, while minority languages were not given importance in national policy. in more recent decades, at least four initiatives would mark the field of foreign language teaching and learning in colombia: the english syllabus, the cofe project, the general law of education, and the curricular guidelines for foreign languages1. 1 this list does not include the so called “educational revolution 2002-2006” as, surprisingly, this far reaching and highly influential policy did not explicitly include any strategy connected to foreign language teaching and learning. the new educational revolution plan, 2006-2010, just published in 2008, addressed this omission. considering this caveat, the educational revolution plans 2002-2006 and 2006-2010 will not be included as a standpoint to the national bilingual program, but as complementary to it. the english syllabus corresponds to a seminal effort to improve foreign language teaching and learning in colombia. it was proposed in 1982 by the national ministry of education in partnership with the british council and centro colombo americano, two bi-national language, educational, and cultural organizations with a long tradition in colombia and abroad after world war ii (valencia, 2007a). the plan attempted to address students’ low levels of proficiency; lack of clear and feasible objectives in schools; the need to renovate language teaching and learning; and the absence of updated materials and textbooks. this reform introduced an english syllabus for grades 6-9 and 10-11, called for a communicative approach to language teaching, and encouraged school administrators to consider the possibility of including other languages in their curricula. nevertheless, the results of this plan were not as positive as expected. first of all, most school teachers did not have the oral proficiency required by the new approaches, while structural changes such as intensifying the number of classes in schools did not occur. additionally, teachers were not familiar with these methods and approaches and continued to teach in ways they considered were more appropriate or, as officials in the british council arguably concluded, resulted more “comfortable” for them (the british council, 1989, p. 8, as cited by valencia, 2007a, p. 7). despite the well grounded rationale behind the reform, an apparent mismatch among the rationale, goals, and strategies of the decision makers, as well as the complex reality and conflicting conditions of the school stakeholders, seemed to have affected the successful implementation of the initiative. during the early 1990s, and now with a focus on teacher education programs across the country, the government tried what they called ‘proyecto cofe’ or colombian framework for english (the usma wilches universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras126 cofe project). as described by frodden & correa (2000), this project was carried out in different universities around the country between 1991 and 1996 as part of another bi-national partnership between the governments of colombia and the uk. the project offered professional development to local teacher educators; provided material resources to promote the use of self-access centers; proposed a framework for the reform of teacher preparation programs; and introduced local university and school stakeholders to mostly u.s. — and u.k.— oriented notions of reflective practice, practitioner research, and autonomy in language learning. this is how different universities started to engage in research with a higher impetus, and began to consider the revision of their curricula according to the new guidelines. as happened with the english syllabus, the cofe project represented a number of opportunities for the participants, but also implied different complications and misunderstandings. it supported different teacher educators in becoming educational researchers, initiating their own research groups, improving their own teacher education programs, and proposing research studies with a clear impact on school practices (e.g. usma & frodden, 2003). but at the same time, the implementation of the project led to difficulties and improvisations when the ideal plan for the transformation of teacher education programs contrasted with the actual university structures, teachers’ little familiarity with educational research, limited resources, and insufficient administrative leadership (see mcnulty & usma, 2005). again, the ideal proposals of the foreign lenders and their traveling libraries (popkewitz, 2000) contrasted with the unfavorable conditions and conflicting priorities of the local borrowers. yet, the nineties not only came with efforts to improve school practices and teacher education programs, but also with a far reaching and unprecedented national constitution and general education law that would reorganize the whole school system and establish specific goals for foreign languages in the country. these policies were part of a transition from a highly centralized, nationally bounded, and catholic oriented government, to a weakened, competitive, marketized, networked, contested, and, at least officially, lay state (gonzález & ocampo, 2006; guadarrama, 2006; munck, 2005; ocampo, 2002). in this transition, the national constitution of 1991 emphasized separation of church and state, and the education system, whereas the state started to emphasize private capital, decentralization, open markets, individual choice, and competition. these were times when the interests of transnational organizations such as the world bank, the world trade organization, and the international monetary fund contrasted with bottom up efforts to make economic, social, and educational and language policies more effective for those frequently excluded from the system (ocampo, 2002). this continuous struggle and resistance would characterize not only the policies adopted after the early nineties, but also its enactment and final outputs (agudelovalderrama, 2006; lowden, 2004; ocampo, 2002; saldarriaga & toro, 2002). in this conflicting context, the general education law would not only shape the whole school system, but also serve as basis for the different reforms and counter-reforms produced in the last 15 years in the area of language teaching and learning in colombia (valencia, 2007a). in essence, the general law regulated for the public and private as well as formal and informal education, introduced the notion of school education and language policy in colombia: exploring processes of inclusion, exclusion, and stratification.... profile 11, 2009. issn 1657-0790. bogotá, colombia. pages 123-141 127 autonomy, opened the possibility for school governance, and granted school communities the ability to define their content and pedagogical processes within a general set of guidelines included in it (ocampo, 2002, p. 22). additionally, in its articles 21, 22, and 23, the national policy highlighted the need to learn at least one foreign language starting in elementary school, and included foreign language teaching as another mandatory area in the curriculum (ministerio de educacion nacional, 1994). as stated in the law: “the capacity to use and understand a foreign language” would become another specific goal in secondary schools (ministerio de educación nacional, 1994, article 22). this is how in 1999, that is, five years after the national education law had legislated for foreign languages across the whole system, the national government proposed the curricular guidelines for foreign languages (lineamientos curriculares lenguas extranjeras) (ministerio de educación nacional, 1999). these guidelines attempted to get into the specifics of the national law in terms of foreign language approaches and methods, but at the same time limited teachers’ exercise of autonomy by establishing the conceptual frameworks within which teachers should exercise their professional discretion (ocampo, 2002). despite the impetus behind these last two reforms, and the public support for the idea of learning another language, research in the field evidenced a number of difficulties at the ground level. some studies concluded that the school system was not ready to introduce foreign language classes in the both elementary and secondary schools (cadavid, mcnulty & quinchía, 2004); others agreed on the need to provide public school teachers with better working conditions in order for them to be able to exercise their professional autonomy and improve their practice (usma & frodden, 2003; usma, 2007); still others declared the little impact that central policies were having on teachers’ practice and students’ learning (ayala & álvarez, 2005; valencia, 2006). a general feeling of dissatisfaction and frustration could be perceived in the field as related to public education. as valencia (2006) concluded in a study of the times: many students feel that success in english language learning is only achieved outside the realm of the public school. the ideas that teachers have about the possibility of learning english in public school contexts are equally pessimistic. there are few resources and difficult working conditions, and the way teachers position the learners also has a direct effect on the attitude of the students; however, teachers, such as those in this case study, do manage to comply [with the policies] (p. 34). as is evident, the discourse of autonomy and improvement in public education contrasted with the lack of teachers, few materials, limited professional development opportunities, and constraining school structures that conflicted with the policy mandates. in the meantime, bilingual schools continued to thrive, the existing gap between private and public seemed to widen, and bilingual schools were depicted as the model to follow. as ordóñez (2004) commented: [p]arental demand for bilingual education is constantly increasing in colombia, from the youngest possible age. at present, the model appears widely admired. furthermore, awareness of the practical advantages of mastering a second language is generalised, and there has been serious interest on the part of policy makers to find ways to provide access to early bilingual education in the public sector (p. 450). the conditions for the adoption of a new set of discourses and practices coming from usma wilches universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras128 the private sector were given. the road for what later on would become the national bilingual program was paved. the national bilingual program late in 2005, the ministry of education would present the national bilingual program 20042019, a language policy with no precedents in colombia. different from previous projects, this program would constitute a long term, far reaching, and comprehensive policy complemented by a presidential plan called “educational revolution” (ministerio de educación nacional, 2008). it would start to have an influence not only in schools and universities, but also outside the formal education system and, for better or worse, would completely change the way teachers and students perceive foreign language teaching and learning in colombia. three diagnostic studies commissioned to the british council in bogotá and carried out in public and private schools in main cities in colombia in 2005 constituted the basis for this policy2 (ministerio de educación nacional, 2005). in the first study, consultants in the british council evaluated the communicative competence of 3,422 teachers by using the quick placement test administered by oxford university press. in the second study, they tested pedagogical and content knowledge of 243 teachers by using the teaching 2 to the best of my understanding, these studies have not been officially published in any peer-reviewed journal in colombia. what i report here is based on what state officials or agents at the british council have officially presented in the ministry of education’s website. as far as i know so far, no additional information is available about how the participants were selected, how representative the sample was, how data were analyzed, and what procedures were followed to make findings valid and reliable. despite these methodological flaws, i need to report on these studies, as they are the official basis for the national bilingual program. knowledge test (tkt), a cambridge university press product. in the third, the evaluators partnered with agents at icfes for the application of an instrument that would test 2,467 students in public schools and 1,293 in the private sector, not including bilingual schools. according to jan van de putte and his team at the british council in bogotá, the studies provided enough evidence about the state of the art in colombia (the guardian, 2006). they allowed the foreign consultants to conclude that, although teachers’ content and pedagogical knowledge was satisfactory as measured by the teaching knowledge test (tkt), only 1.8% of the teachers performed in english at an advanced level, 32.8% did at an intermediate, and 65.4% reached a basic, according to the scales proposed in the common european framework. additionally, consultants concluded that only 6.4% of students finishing high school performed in english at an intermediate level, whereas an overwhelming 93.6% did at a basic. no students were found to perform at an advanced level (ministerio de educación, 2005). officials at the ministry of education and those at the british council and cambridge university press were ready to propose an improvement plan for the whole country based on this diagnosis. this is how in 2005 the government proceeded to present the national bilingual program with one overarching goal: to make colombian citizens bilingual in spanish and english by 2019 and in accordance with international standards (ministerio de educación nacional, 2005). additionally, they presented five targeted areas in the implementation, which would include the following actions: 1) developing standards for english teaching and learning; 2) continuously evaluating communicative competence in students as well as inservice and preservice teachers within education and language policy in colombia: exploring processes of inclusion, exclusion, and stratification.... profile 11, 2009. issn 1657-0790. bogotá, colombia. pages 123-141 129 and outside the formal school system; 3) providing professional development programs for teachers in order to develop their pedagogical knowledge as well as communicative competence in english; 4) supporting the use of new information and communication technologies for the teaching of english; and 5) consolidating bilingual and trilingual models in the different ethnic communities around the country (cely, 2007). at the same time, the government would designate the british council in colombia as the leading implementation agency around the country, but now in cooperation with private transnational companies such as cambridge university press, which would be in charge of testing teachers and students, and publishing the materials that would serve as a reference for the plan. practitioners in the field had hardly faced a similar transformation like the one being experienced with this reform. the process of making this policy public was combined with the formulation of some complementary regulations. after the publication of the plan in one of the official bulletins (altablero no 37, octoberdecember, 2005), government officials started to produce the different decrees that would regulate the new system. these policies included law 1064 (ministerio de educación nacional, 2006a), which both dictated the norms for the support and strengthening of nonformal education programs, now denominated “education programs for work and human development” (art. 1), and determined that public monies could go to private institutions provided they were accredited (art. 2). additionally, the government also issued decree 3870 (ministerio de educación nacional, 2006b), which “adopted the common european framework of reference for languages: learning, teaching and evaluation” in colombia (art. 2); regulated the organization and functioning of foreign language programs (art. 3-6); mandated accreditation for language programs offered in universities (art. 6); and, in a controversial decision, defined that those “programs offered by organisms of international cooperation (…) would not require any certification” (art. 7). in a later phase, started in january 2007, the government would publish the set of standards for elementary and secondary schools based on the recently adopted common european framework. as they stated in a press release at the time: bogotá, 05 january, 2007 the national ministry of education establishes the standards for competencies for the teaching of english for grades 1 to 11. in 2007, the ministry of education and icfes (colombian institute for the promotion of higher education) will start the application of tests aligned with the common european framework of reference for languages. it is expected that 50% of the english teachers in the country can reach level b2 by 2010 and 100% by 2019. there is an inter-sector strategy for the strengthening of english learning in the productive sector (ministerio de educación, 2007. emphasis added). in other words, the ministry of education had issued a new set of standards for schools, defined standardized tests for students and teachers, established attainment targets for 2010 and 2019, and made the national bilingual program a multi sector agenda aligned with productivity needs. the far reaching scope of the plan started to become clear. this is how, in a couple of years, university and school stakeholders were inundated with standardized models and tests. these included national exams such as pruebas saber and icfes, which continued to test school students, now with a special attention to english; ecaes, usma wilches universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras130 applied to future professionals in public and private universities; first certificate of english, administered in teacher preparation programs in order to test pre-service teachers’ competence before going into the classrooms; and the qpt, melicet/met, and toefl, among other instruments that tested communicative competence in teachers and the public in general. additionally, the government adopted standardized models of professional development by embracing the icelt (in service certificate for english language teaching) and the tkt (teaching knowledge test), which tested future teachers’ professional competence based on normative and foreign models of what school teachers need to know and need to be able to do. as would happen in other countries, standards and tests mainly produced in the private sector began to be the international answer to local problems in schools (see e.g., hargreaves, 2003; hargreaves et al., 2001; stromquist, 2002; lipman, 2004; tatoo, 2007; veugelers, 2004; zeichner & ndimande, 2008). at the same time, these new regulations would definitely attempt to redefine the field by introducing a new set of discourses about bilingualism and second languages where teachers and students used to talk about foreign language teaching and learning. the government characterized bilingualism as “the different degrees in which an individual is able to communicate in more than one language or culture” (ministerio de educación, 2006d, p. 5), but limited their notion of bilingualism to spanish and english as the new norm for the coming years. as they clearly stated: the national bilingual program is oriented to educate citizens who are able to communicate into english and may contribute to incorporate the country into the processes of universal communication, global economy, and cultural aperture, with internationally comparable standards (ministerio de educación, 2006c, p. 6. emphasis added). so, in a multiethnic and multilingual country, where indigenous languages are usually ignored and silenced in the public space, and less than 2% of the population are able to speak english and spanish and have the opportunity to interact with others using these two languages (dane, 2008; de mejía, 2002; gamboa, 2007; ministerio de educación nacional, 2006d), the field of applied linguistics and foreign languages was not only adopting a new set of standards and tests, but also a new way of defining their own work and target population. new discourses and practices associated with “bilingualism,” not “foreign language teaching and learning” would accompany the national reform. as commonly happens in current school reform, a deep change in school practice would start with the adoption of new discourses, notions, and imaginaries (popkewitz, 2008). these changes would start to generate immediate reactions throughout colombia. while analysts tended to agree on the importance of english, the need to improve foreign language teaching and learning in colombia, and the importance of a coherent plan that could address students’ and teachers’ needs, a number of local and international leaders questioned the plan (asocopi newsletter, 2007; ministerio de educación nacional, 2005; revista internacional magisterio, march, 2007). among these voices, some called into question the very adoption of the term “bilingualism” in a country like colombia (ayala & álvarez, 2005; cárdenas; 2006; sánchez & obando, 2008), or criticized its limited notion of spanish-english bilingualism (de zárate, 2007). others became alarmed about its negative effects on the different ethnic groups around the education and language policy in colombia: exploring processes of inclusion, exclusion, and stratification.... profile 11, 2009. issn 1657-0790. bogotá, colombia. pages 123-141 131 country (gómez, 2007), its top down adoption approach that neglected to recognize local knowledge and efforts for school improvement and professional development (gonzález, 2007; quintero, 2007), or even its dubious viability due to the scant contact colombian students have with the foreign language (genesse, 2007). as happened with some of those reforms reviewed in the first section of this paper, the implementation of the national bilingual program started to take place in a highly contested atmosphere, which would necessarily shape its actual enactment. all these critical observations lead us to raise a number of important questions about language and education policy in colombia. for instance, we may wonder why the national government continues to reinforce the plan despite these local and international concerns; how the national bilingual program is connected to other official and unofficial economic, political, and cultural agendas that shape national policy; how global discourses and practices circulate through international policy and are adopted at the national level; how different subgroups of the population are depicted in current education and language policies in colombia; and what final effects these policies may have on different subsets of the population. these enduring and quite evolving questions in relation to international trends of reform will propel my analysis in the final section of this paper. linguistic and education policy in colombia and international reform: exploring processes of inclusion, exclusion, and stratification in order to answer some of these questions, in the last section of this paper i explore the connection between local and global and how what happens in colombia resembles or differs from international trends of language and education reform. for this final purpose, i investigate some international trends that go along with current reforms across countries and help us explain what happens in colombia. these processes can be conceptualized as the “externalization of transnational discourses”, the “instrumentalization of language learning”, the “stratification of languages, groups, and cultures”, and the “standardization and marketization of foreign language teaching and learning”. in this final section, i elaborate on these matters as a way to contribute to the current discussion in colombia, contextualize national policy within an international context, and thus explore further implications of current policies. the externalization and internalization of education and language discourses scholars in different latitudes explain processes of policy lending and borrowing that take place during the current era, the role that international organizations play in policy transfer, and how processes of inclusion, exclusion, and stratification are favored through education and language policies such as the national bilingual program. drawing on schriewer (1990), steinerkhamsi (2004) referred to the concept of “externalization” to explain how, in the process of making local school systems appear more “competitive”, national governments adopt different discourses and models accepted by an imaginary “international community” or a concrete other, which is evoked “as a source of external authority”(p. 203). and this seems to be case of the national bilingual program and most of the language usma wilches universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras132 and education reforms that have preceded it. as explained above, government officials have faced a record of ineffective policies and a scaling external pressure to adopt language policies appealing to “the international community”. in this process, they have decided to borrow a global discourse about “bilingualism”, embraced a european model for language teaching and learning, enforced internationally sound standards and tests, and commissioned transnational organizations such as the british council and cambridge university press for the local implementation. the result is an amalgam of international discourses adopted, adapted, and resisted at the local level, while past efforts and failures are politically resolved by borrowing from others and downgrading the local. as has happened in other countries, this externalization and internalization of discourses and practices have turned the adoption and implementation of the new policy into a highly contested process, one in which external pressures exert an influence over local policy makers, local scholars mostly react against the reform, and school teachers and students are left in the middle of the debate with the intricate task of enacting the policy (see saldarriaga & toro, 2002). the externalization and internalization of discourses and the adoption of international policy rhetoric and practices in colombia have been connected to the exclusion of local knowledge not only in current but also in past local reforms. in the case of the national bilingual program, in the process of formulating the plan the national government discharged the whole responsibility on representatives of foreign organizations such as the british council, and even though leaders of colombian universities were called to participate, their voices were silenced and substituted by european views of language, teaching, and learning (quintero, 2007). this is the main reason representatives of the most important public universities in the country decided to withdraw from the implementation process, instead of just accepting that their names and institutions be used to authenticate the imposition. resembling reform efforts in other countries (see e.g., tatoo, 2007; veugelers, 2004; zeichner & ndimande, 2008), colombian leaders had been expected to validate the program in a top-down decision making process in which foreign actors have controlled the agenda. as we may conclude, and in alignment with international reform trends, the externalization and internalization of policy discourses in the case of reform in colombia has been accompanied with processes of exclusion and imposition of new discourses. in this process, the local is taken as outdated and obsolete; local knowledge is superseded by foreign, and borrowed discourses are internalized by native policy makers and school stakeholders while taken as the basis for reform. the instrumentalization of language learning the externalization of discourses and practices in the presence of international lenders such as the british council seems to be closely connected to a second phenomenon: the instrumentalization of education and language learning. as presented in the literature (de mejía, 2006; lantolf & sunderman, 2001; tochon, in press; valencia, 2007a, 2007b; ayala & álvarez, 2005), learning a foreign language may serve at least three sets of different purposes: a humanitarian, intellectual, or cultural goal; a cognitive and language development purpose; and a utilitarian, instrumental or practical objective. from a humanitarian, intellectual, and cultural standpoint, foreign languages allow a better human understanding of “the other”, education and language policy in colombia: exploring processes of inclusion, exclusion, and stratification.... profile 11, 2009. issn 1657-0790. bogotá, colombia. pages 123-141 133 the different, and the inaccessible by breaking language barriers and allowing for inclusion based on intercultural sensitivity. from a cognitive or language development angle, a foreign language opens the possibility to know other ways of perceiving the world through language, other alternatives to name what is around us, and develop a more flexible way of reasoning and facing learning and life. finally, from a utilitarian point of view, a foreign language becomes a tool that serves economic, practical, industrial, and military purposes (see lantolf & sunderman, 2001). learning a foreign language, in this way, loses most of its cultural and cognitive development motivations, and becomes another strategy to build a better resume, get better employment, be more competitive in the knowledge economy (guile, 2006), or, as lantolf and sunderman have clearly explained, even participate in wars taking place overseas. and the externalization of discourses and practices seems to exclude other possibilities and promote an instrumental view of foreign language learning in relation to terms such as “human capital” and “knowledge economy”. this tends to happen when transnational and local models of “competitiveness” are not only associated with money exchange, economic capital, or trade of tangible goods, but are also connected to the “application of knowledge from any field or source, new or old, to spur economic development”, or what drucker (1969) referred to as the “knowledge economy” (as cited by guile, 2006, p. 355). in this new environment, “economic growth” and “competitiveness” do not only, or mainly, depend on possessing and controlling international flows of currency, but on being able to compete with human capital (becker, 2002). having this human capital includes possessing information and communication technologies, innovative knowledge, cutting edge information, creative ideas, and being a competent, healthy, and multilingual individual proficient in at least one of the lingua francas of our time. from this perspective, the recent emphasis that international reform models place on education, and the importance that local reforms grant to technology, flows of information, credentials, english language teaching and learning, standards, tests, and educational regulations are connected to local and transnational productive needs. these are usually determined by economic groups under rational views of education, language, and policy, and are highly emphasized in current economic and social policies (hargreaves, 2003; munck, 2005). as happens in colombia, these instrumental views of education and policy are tightly connected to particular notions of “development”, “competitiveness”, “human capital”, and “knowledge economy”. these notions shape current policy and public perceptions of formal education and foreign language learning, especially when people see in education and foreign languages a real opportunity to succeed and find a better job. that is how in the process of “inserting” the country into the global economy, proponents of the reform tend to rationalize foreign language learning and reinforce instrumental goals at expense of cognitive and sociocultural rationales. as evidenced in the policy documents reviewed above, the government usually connects bilingualism to big expressions such as “being competitive”, “global economy” or as “the vehicle that we need in order to take substantial advantage of the benefits offered, for example, by the free trade agreement or the new commercial and educational opportunities available abroad” (ministerio de educación, 2005). the false illusion of “investing in english” (valencia, 2007a) as the key for future employment sparks the proliferation of english institutes usma wilches universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras134 that teach “english for specific purposes” and “prepare for the toefl,” and then provide high-valueattached credentials required in the job market. as explained by ayala & álvarez (2005), the push for foreign languages in colombia is based on the premise that a foreign language provides status, and that “speaking foreign languages brings about expectations or represents benefits” (p. 16). as we may conclude, processes of inclusion, exclusion, and stratification do not only include and exclude particular groups in society, but also alternative ways of reasoning and perceiving a foreign and local language. this rationalization and instrumentalization of policy and human behavior following economic models of “development” may lead to the instrumentalization of language learning, the reduction of “other” languages to “foreign”, foreign to english, and english to a powerful and highly instrumental tool to be “competitive” in the job market and the “knowledge based economy”. the stratification of languages and cultures with the internationalization of discourses and practices and the instrumentalization of education, learning, knowledge, and languages, a third process is evidenced in colombia: the stratification of languages, groups, and cultures and the systemic exclusion of less powerful groups and individuals. in the case of colombia, and within the context of the national bilingual program, the situation of indigenous languages and cultures becomes more than worrisome. as the last national census (dane, 2008) indicates, out of the 44 million people in the country, 1.435.575 inhabitants identify themselves as members of the indigenous, african descendant, or rom communities that live in colombia, but only 44% of them speak their native language3. that is, while according to the official data 3.2% of the population in colombia belongs to these three minorities, only 635.645 persons, or roughly 1.5% of the total population in the country, manifest being bilingual or multilingual in any of their languages and spanish. they usually combine two or more languages in their daily life, but struggle to maintain their linguistic code and culture in a country where spanish is and has historically been dominant in public, legal, and trade scenarios, and, as presented in the first part of this paper, local minority languages have not been assigned the high value and respect they deserve4 (de mejía. 2004; sanmiguel, 2007). this is how, in times in which languages are stratified according to their instrumental value in the job market, and languages such as english gain a higher status based on the assumption that they provide better possibilities for employment and traveling, indigenous languages are deemed to be undervalued and disappear (de zárate, 2007; sanmiguel, 2007). as de mejía (2004) illustrates: “due to the recent economic opening up of the country in response to globalising and internationalizing tendencies, career advancement is dependent to a large degree on english language proficiency, and bilingual education is seen as the key to foreign language development. thus, prestigious or ‘elite’ bilingualism has a very high profile 3 gamboa (2007) asserted that, out of about 44 million people in the whole country, about one million speak one or more of the 65 amerindian languages in the country; about 33,000 members of the african descendant communities in palenque and san andres and providencia use spanishand english-based creole varieties, whereas 8,000 of the rom or gipsy communities speak romanés. 4 another group of bilinguals in the country are the deaf persons who combine spanish and colombian sign language (lengua de señas colombiana) in order to communicate with others (ramírez, 2007). the recent national census shows that barely 1% of the population is classified under this category (dane, 2008). education and language policy in colombia: exploring processes of inclusion, exclusion, and stratification.... profile 11, 2009. issn 1657-0790. bogotá, colombia. pages 123-141 135 among the colombian middle and upper classes and there is increasing demand for bilingual programmes (especially english–spanish provision). parental support for bilingual education is thus very strong and attending a bilingual school is considered to be high status” (p. 392). thus, by imposing a particular notion of bilingualism, the national bilingual program does not seem to provide a favorable context for these cultural and language minorities; instead, it seems to continue to stratify and under appreciate them. additionally, this policy seems to contribute to the promotion of “elite bilingualism”, a process that was described by de mejía (2002) within the context of private bilingual schools, but now seems to expand to the whole nation. as she stated, the concept of “elite bilingualism” applies to a privileged group of people who, “because of life style, employment opportunities or education, need to move frequently from one country to another, or who, because of the multilingualmultinational nature of the organizations they work for, need to interact with speakers of different languages on a daily basis” (p. 41). in the current wave of globalization, members of these elites, even in nations like colombia, conform to socially and economically privileged groups that attend bilingual schools, work in multinational corporations, travel around the world, and, as french analyst bourdieu clearly explained, attempt to retain and transform economic, social and cultural capital in order to maintain their position in society (bourdieu, 1986; 1991). english as an international language, in this context, represents an asset, especially when the government regulates and sets the stage for those instructed to be “bilinguals” under the new conditions. the processes of exclusion are not just given at the discursive level, but also through a new set of practices that certify and sort students and teachers, place them in public, private, or bilingual institutions, and offer disparate resources and unequal quality in different school programs. as explained by valencia (2007a), children are thus placed into different tracks within the global and national job market, paths that may highly determine their future welfare, possibilities for entrance to higher education institutions, and future role in the knowledge economy. evidence of this creation of elite through the national bilingual program has been indirectly acknowledged by the minister of education who states that one of the final goals of the plan is having at least 10% of the population bilingual by 2019 (el tiempo, january 28, 2008), not necessarily all students in the private and public sector. as is clear, the stratification of different subsets of the populations depending on their mother tongue and ability to speak english seems to be favored in the new reforms and indirectly acknowledged by government officials. the standardization and marketization of foreign language teaching and learning a fourth set of processes associated with the externalization of discourses, instrumentalization of education and language, and the stratification of languages, groups, and cultures can be described as the standardization and marketization of foreign language teaching and learning. in terms of standardization, a review of local and international literature about these matters indicates that national policy follows a rational logic and deficit view of schools and teachers imported from abroad as well. in the united states, where these models have been reinforced in the last decades, educators are commonly referred to as a “relatively low-skill teacher force”, and schools usma wilches universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras136 as loosely coupled and irresponsive organizations where teachers are isolated from each other, hardly respond to policy initiatives, and lack commitment towards school communities (elmore, 2000, p. 5). from this perspective, the public school system needs to be intervened through the enforcement of a standards-based school reform model justified by the need for control, common parameters, centralization, permanent evaluation, measurable performance, evidence, and finally, rewards and sanctions5. and this seems to be the logic behind the national bilingual program and its accompanying reforms. more than ever, the government has called for the enforcement of standards in schools, universities and all types of language programs. additionally, they have introduced foreign and prepackaged models of professional development that indicate what teachers need to know and be able to do. undeniably, this standardization of language teaching and learning depicts a lack of trust in teachers, universities and schools, and a move towards uniformity through stringent normalization and control. this standardization is based on the introduction of international models of quality and a move towards certification, accreditation, and credentials that may “prove” individual and institutional ability and capability to teach future teachers, be a “competent” educator, or speak english according to the imported models. and this move towards standardization has come with a marketization of the field. this is evidenced in the proliferation of private institutions and ad hoc agents that determine what needs to be done in teacher education programs, schools, and language centers; prepare for the 5 see also ingersoll (2003) for a complete study about control in us schools. different tests and certifications; administer these tools; and make a profit by selling their different products. these products include the tkt and icelts for current and future teachers, the icfes for school students, or the ielts, toefl or melicet/met for the general public. this is how language teaching and learning in colombia become a matter of meeting a standard, paying for and taking a language and teaching knowledge test, being certified, and advertising yourself as another available product in the “free” market. in the meantime, a growing number of private institutions and individuals make profits on the basis of the new reforms. in looking at the british council web page, it is possible to measure this move towards standardization and marketization. they advertise the ielts —international english language testing system— as “the world’s proven english language test” and the british council as “one of the world’s largest administrators of international qualifications and examinations, with over 1,5 million tests taken with us each year in over 100 countries” (british council, 2008, pp. 1-2). among the main products advertised on the webpage and connected to this single test, potential customers are offered the test for $435,000; practice materials for $95,000; a preparation book for $90,000; and a standard course for $935,000. in other words, in a country where the minimum salary for 2008 equaled $461,500, a person would require a full month to pay for this test, two months to pay for a standard course; and at least half a month to pay for the preparation materials and books. meanwhile, the tests administrators would be making the equivalent of $652,500’000,000, that is five times the national budget for research in 2008 in colombia. education and language policy in colombia: exploring processes of inclusion, exclusion, and stratification.... profile 11, 2009. issn 1657-0790. bogotá, colombia. pages 123-141 137 this is how in the context of language and education reform in colombia, international organizations drive the definition of local standards, private companies test school stakeholders and make a profit, whereas local teachers and students need to subsidize their own tests in order to keep their job or access other opportunities. this calls attention to the economic, political, ethical, and educational implications of this reform and how the influence of private publishing companies has driven the adoption of this plan. in the meantime, school and university educators keep on aligning their work to the standards; students continue to prepare for tests; and a market around language teaching and learning thrives in colombia. the multiple dimensions of this standardization and marketization of language teaching and learning in colombia are just starting to be perceived in the country and require continuous study. concluding remarks and future directions this paper has examined language and education policies in colombia in relation to processes of inclusion, exclusion, stratification and international reform. for this purpose, i have presented linguistic policy trends in times of the colony, after world war ii, and some reforms in the last three decades. i have also presented the national bilingual program, its origins, goals, areas of intervention, and policy tools, and then focused on four interconnected and simultaneous processes that are favored along with their formulation and implementation. throughout the paper, i have attempted to argue that although the national bilingual program and its accompanying education and language reform involve opportunities for some groups and individuals, they mostly generate inequality, exclusion, and stratification with the new discourses and practices being adopted. as i have explained, the instrumental notion of spanish-english bilingualism borrowed in the national bilingual program, along with its accompanying policy texts and tools, excludes indigenous and most foreign languages from the discussion about bilingualism and second / foreign language learning in colombia; imposes imported discourses and practices in the country at the expense of local knowledge; serves the purpose of stratifying, including, and excluding students and teachers by sorting them according to the educational center they attend and the score they obtain on a standardized test; and favors the consolidation of a lucrative market around language teaching, learning, and certification in colombia in which those who benefit are, again, a minority. by doing this analysis, this paper calls attention to the crucial role and social and ethical responsibility that central policy makers, inservice and future teachers, as well as teacher educators and investigators have in the formulation and enactment of reform in colombia. it alerts one regarding the multiple interests behind current and past policies in the country, and the ethical commitment that all of us have in the actual appropriation of current policy texts for the construction of a more equitable system through language and education policymaking. additionally, this analysis complements other pieces that aim at raising awareness about the multiple implications of teaching and learning a language within the context of a so-called “knowledge economy” and international school reform, and will hopefully generate changes in the way foreign discourses and practices are borrowed by national authorities. usma wilches universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras138 finally, this review indicates future directions considering the gaps found in the existent literature. as i have evidenced in the process of writing this paper, no empirical research has been published on the implementation of current linguistic policies and how different school communities interpret, enact, resist, and transform policy discourses and practices and use them as opportunities for personal and community development. studies about the national bilingual program in colombia, including this one, have attempted to explain the policy and its potential effects based on previous experiences or initial observations, but we know 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(1990). the method of comparison and the need for externalization: methodological criteria and sociological concepts. in j. schriewer (ed.) in cooperation with b. holmes, theories and methods in comparative education (pp. 25-83). frankfurt/m, germany: lang. steiner-khamsi, g. (ed.) (2004). the global politics of educational borrowing and lending. new york: teachers college press. stromquist, n. p. (2002). education in a globalized world: the connectivity of economic power, technology, and knowledge. lanham: rowman & littlefield publishers, inc. the guardian (november 17, 2006). ambitious reforms held back by budget. retrieved may 08, 2008 from http://www.guardian.co.uk/education/2006/ nov/17/tefl1 tatto, m. t. (ed.) (2007). reforming teaching globally. oxford: symposium books. tochon, f. (in press). the key to global understanding: world languages education—why schools need to adapt. review of educational research. usma, j. (2007). teacher autonomy: a critical review of the research and concept beyond applied education and language policy in colombia: exploring processes of inclusion, exclusion, and stratification.... profile 11, 2009. issn 1657-0790. bogotá, colombia. pages 123-141 141 linguistics. íkala: revista de lenguaje y cultura, 12(18), 245-279. usma, j., & frodden, c. (2003). promoting teacher autonomy through educational innovation. íkala, revista de lenguaje y cultura, 8(14), 101-132. valencia, s. (2006). literacy practices, texts, and talk around texts: english language teaching developments in colombia. colombian applied linguistics journal, 8, 7-37. valencia, s. (2007a). el bilingüismo y los cambios en políticas y prácticas en la educación pública en colombia: un estudio de caso. paper presented at international symposium on bilingualism and bilingual education in latin america, bogotá. retrieved may 08, 2008 from http://www. bilinglatam.com/espanol/informacion/silvia%20 valencia%20giraldo.pdf valencia, s. (2007b). implications of “bilingüismo” and globalization processes in colombia: insights from research on elt policy and practice. asocopi newsletter, march, 2007. retrieved may 08, 2008 from asocopi web site: www.asocopi.org veugelers, w. (2004). between control and autonomy: restructuring secondary education in the netherlands. journal of educational change, 5, 141-160. zárate, m. de (2007). por un plurilingüismo desde la escuela primaria. revista internacional magisterio: educación y pedagogía, 25, 58-60. zeichner, k. m., & ndimande, b. s. (2008). contradictions and tensions in the place of teachers in educational reform: reflections on teacher preparation in the usa and namibia. teachers and teaching: theory and practice, 14(4), 331-343. about the author jaime a. usma wilches is a foreign language teacher educator and active researcher at grupo de investigación acción y evaluación en lenguas extranjeras giae, escuela de idiomas, universidad de antioquia. he is also a phd candidate in curriculum and instruction and researcher at the wisconsin center for education research, wcer, university of wisconsin, madison. his academic and research interests include autonomy in foreign language teaching and learning, action research, teacher professional development, teacher education, and education and language policies. acknowledgements the author wants to thank those who made this publication possible. specially, the editor of the journal and her assistant for their support, the two anonymous evaluators and professor doris correa for their feedback; the members of giae and eale research groups at universidad de antioquia, with whom i have the opportunity to discuss these issues, and professors francois tochon, ken zeichner, and tom popkewitz at the university of wisconsin madison-madison, who have introduced me to the field of international language and education policy research. needless to say, all the ideas, opinions, and omissions in this piece are the sole responsibility of the author. profile 5.pmd ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ 56 profileprofileprofileprofileprofile the english component of the 2002 entrance examination of the federal university of amazonas: an analysis of its reliability and validity el componente de inglés del examen de admisión de la universidad federal del amazonas: un análisis de su confiabilidad y validez nilton hitotuzinilton hitotuzinilton hitotuzinilton hitotuzinilton hitotuzi***** federal university of amazonas nhitotuzi@uea.edu.br the study reported in this paper was: to estimate the reliability and validity of the english test administered to the candidates sitting the 2002 entrance examination for undergraduate courses at the federal university of amazonas (ufam/2002). the test’s reliability was estimated in the form of the correlation coefficient found with the test-retest method, and its validity was established on the basis of face validity and content validity. the sample population consisted of students completing their education at a high school in 2002. the results indicated that, albeit significantly generalisable to the entire population of examinees, the ufam/2002 english test had neither reliability nor face or content validity. kkkkkey worey worey worey worey words: ds: ds: ds: ds: english-examination, research-reliability, research-validity el estudio reportado en este documento tuvo como finalidad estimar la confiabilidad y validez de un examen de inglés administrado a los candidatos del año 2002 al examen de admisión para cursos de pregrado en la universidad federal de amazonas (ufam/2002). la confiabilidad del estudio se estimó mediante la correlación de coeficiente encontrado con el método test-retest y la validez se estableció a partir de la validez de forma y de contenido. la muestra poblacional consistió en un grupo de estudiantes que estaba culminando sus estudios de secundaria en el 2002. los resultados indicaron que a pesar de la generalización significativa a toda la población de examinados, el examen de inglés de la ufam/2002 no tuvo ni confiabilidad ni validez en su contenido. palabras claves:palabras claves:palabras claves:palabras claves:palabras claves: evaluación-inglés, confiabilidad-investigación, validezinvestigación ***** nilton hitotuzinilton hitotuzinilton hitotuzinilton hitotuzinilton hitotuzi holds an ma in tefl/tesl from the university of birmingham and a ba in liberal arts from the federal university of amazonas. currently he holds a lecturing position at the state university of amazonas. he is interested in teaching methodology and pronunciation teaching. ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○57 profile profile profile profile profile the english component of the 2002 entrance examination of the federal university of amazonas 1. introduction1. introduction1. introduction1. introduction1. introduction “there will always be some tension between reliability and validity. the tester has to balance gains in one against losses in the other” (hughes, 1989, p. 42). the first institution of higher education established in brazil, the federal university of amazonas (ufam), was founded in 1909 in the state of amazonas (ufampsm2001manual do candidato, 2000, p. 1, 7). ufam is home to twenty thousand students attending undergraduate courses (us) in the main city, manaus, and in other municipalities of the state. recently the university has increased its intake from 1,785 to 1,941 students (ufam-psm2003 – manual do candidato, 2002, p. 1, 6). nonetheless, efl teachers have informally argued that the english component of the entrance examination to ufam technically has no influence on the selection of candidates for its undergraduate courses: candidates can completely fail the test, and still enter the university (ufam-psm2002 – manual do candidato, 2001, p. 4). seeing that the rationale behind this policy may entail an array of sociocultural, political and economic factors, any attempt at verifying such expostulation would be likely to adopt a bottom-up approach. thus it was decided that the reliability and validity of the test merited priority in the investigation, being the english test administered to the candidates sitting the 2002 entrance examination for undergraduate courses of this university (ufam/2002) a good starting point. however, considering the involved dimensions of these concepts (bachman, 1990), the results herein described are tentative at best. the reliability of the ufam/2002 english test was estimated in the form of the correlation coefficient found with the testretest method, and its validity was established on the basis of face validity and content validity. the sample population consisted of students completing their education at a secondary school in 2002. the results indicated that, albeit significantly generalisable to the entire population of examinees, this test had neither reliability nor face or content validity. 2. litera2. litera2. litera2. litera2. literature reviewture reviewture reviewture reviewture review traditionally, tests have been considered the commonest measurement instruments used for assessing learners’ language abilities (bachman, 1990; cohen, 1994; harris, 1969; henning, 1987; hughes, 1989). carroll (1968: 46, quoted in bachman, 1990, p.20) defines a test as “a procedure designed to elicit certain behaviour from which one can make inferences about certain characteristics of an individual”. however, when devising tests for language learners, test developers should consider a number of crucial aspects and conditions such as the focus of the test in terms of the language abilities being tested, the method employed, and the issues of reliability, validity and feasibility. in this brief review, each one of these facets will be expanded on with a focus on learners of english as a foreign or second language. ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ 58 hitotuzi profile profile profile profile profile 2.1. t2.1. t2.1. t2.1. t2.1. testing learners’ lesting learners’ lesting learners’ lesting learners’ lesting learners’ l anguageanguageanguageanguageanguage abilitiesabilitiesabilitiesabilitiesabilities an important factor in determining the language abilities to be tested is the purpose of the assessment. cohen (1994: 23) suggests three general purposes, and twelve specific purposes (figure 1), but maintains that “the major split is often between proficiency tests intended for administrative purposes and achievement tests for assessment of instructional results”. the marking difference between these two types of tests is that the former is ‘theory-based’ (e.g., toefl, cambridge cpe, and elts), and the latter is ‘syllabus-based’ (bachman, 1990; henning, 1987). moreover, while proficiency tests may also be administered to assess students’ achievement in a particular course, achievement tests can rarely be suitable for assessing general learner proficiency (cohen, 1994). general purpose of the assessmentgeneral purpose of the assessmentgeneral purpose of the assessmentgeneral purpose of the assessmentgeneral purpose of the assessment specific reason for the assessmentspecific reason for the assessmentspecific reason for the assessmentspecific reason for the assessmentspecific reason for the assessment administrativeadministrativeadministrativeadministrativeadministrative general assessment placement certification exemption promotion instructionalinstructionalinstructionalinstructionalinstructional diagnosis evidence of progress feedback to the respondent evaluation of teaching or curriculum researresearresearresearresearchchchchch evaluation experimentation knowledge about language learning and language use figure 1.figure 1.figure 1.figure 1.figure 1. the purpose of assessment (cohen, 1994, p. 23) another vital distinction between achievement tests and proficiency tests is that, while there seems to be no irreparable damage to examinees when results diverge greatly from their actual language competence (either due to temporary instability on their part or inadequacy in achievement test construction), the profile and number of examinees and examiners, examiners’ limitations regarding candidates, and the purpose of the assessment make a large margin of error by both examinees and ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○59 profile profile profile profile profile the english component of the 2002 entrance examination of the federal university of amazonas test developers in respect to proficiency tests unavoidable (harris, 1969). in the last part of the 1960s, focusing mostly on proficiency tests and achievement tests, dr. david p. harris proposed a six-way division of language test contents, namely: listening, speaking, reading, writing, grammatical structure, and vocabulary. the first four categories being labelled complex skills, and the last two ‘components which may merit separate testing by virtue of their general importance and applicability to all four skills areas’ (harris, 1969). while no substantial change has affected the range of categories in language tests since harris’s six-way division, there have been major developments in the mapping of communicative language abilities as a result of a number of research studies conducted in this area. this is amply exemplified by the comparison between harris’s (1969) and cohen’s (1994) descriptions of components of oral communicative ability. for one thing, the former suggests that either four or five components are generally recognized in analyses of the speech process: 1. pronunciation (including the segmental features –vowels and consonants– and the stress and intonation patterns) 2. grammar 3. vocabulary 4. fluency (the ease and speed of the flow of speech). (harris, 1969, p. 81). whereas the latter divides components of communicative ability into four different categories: (sociocultural ability, sociolinguistic ability, grammatical ability, and strategic ability (figure 2), in passing, it seems worth observing that these categories characterise some of the essential elements of communicative competence (stern, 1992; bachman, 1990)). sociocultural abilitysociocultural abilitysociocultural abilitysociocultural abilitysociocultural ability the appropriateness of the strategies selected for realising communicative functions in given contexts, taking into account (1) the culture involved, (2) the age and sex of the speakers, (3) their social class and occupations, and (4) their roles as status in the interaction. sociolinguistic abilitysociolinguistic abilitysociolinguistic abilitysociolinguistic abilitysociolinguistic ability the linguistic forms that respondents use to express the intent of the communicative act (e.g. the grievance in a complaint). grammatical abilitygrammatical abilitygrammatical abilitygrammatical abilitygrammatical ability vocabulary, morphology, syntax, and phonology. strategic abilitystrategic abilitystrategic abilitystrategic abilitystrategic ability following bachman’s (1990: 100) suggestion, cohen divides this ability into three components: (1) set of communicative goals, (2) retrieval of relevant items from language ability, and (3) planning of use of items retrieved. figure 2.figure 2.figure 2.figure 2.figure 2. cohen’s communicative ability (cohen, 1994, p.1011) ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ 60 hitotuzi profile profile profile profile profile for another thing, while harris’s view of oral proficiency seems to focus strictly on surface structures of the target language, cohen clearly recognises other important aspects involved in communication, such as exophoric relationships (brown and yule, 1983), schemata (bransford et al., 1984; steffensen and joag-dev, 1984), and strategy (bachman, 1990). bachman (1990) also dismisses the ‘skill/ component model’ (to put it in his words) as being seriously limited. his (1990) detailed mapping of language abilities susceptible to testing underscores the increase in research achievements in the field towards the end of the millennium (figure 3). this seems to suggest that assessing learners’ language abilities, be it for administrative or instructional purposes, requires the development of tests so comprehensive as to embrace as much of the vast range of language competencies catalogued to date as possible. 2.2. t2.2. t2.2. t2.2. t2.2. testing methodsesting methodsesting methodsesting methodsesting methods there is a large variety of language testing methods (ltm) especially designed for assessing each and every language ability (for a detailed description of ltm, see harris, 1969; cohen, 1994; henning, 1987; and bachman, 1990). bachman (1990), for one, seems to have a broad view of ltm. so much that, in his ‘framework of test method stet’ (bachman, 1990, p. 116), aspects, other than the type of test administered, are considered important variables influencing test results. one such is time allocation: examinees not used to working under pressure may panic and thus score very little on their exams if they are told that they have, say, 42 seconds to answer a question, as is typical of speed tests (harris, 1969: pearson and buffa, 1994). the nature of the language, in terms of vocabulary, for example, is another influential aspect in test results: tasks having specialized jargon, for instance, may be too daunting for test takers. finally, the format of the test both in terms of input and output should be yet another concern for test developers. this is the case when examinees are asked to respond in writing to listening comprehension tests, for example. if, because of physical debility, psychological problems, or other latent factors, they have a short retention span, they will fail the test, not so much for failing to understand the target-language items, but because of memory problems. ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○61 profile profile profile profile profile the english component of the 2002 entrance examination of the federal university of amazonas 2.3. the matter of credibility2.3. the matter of credibility2.3. the matter of credibility2.3. the matter of credibility2.3. the matter of credibility notwithstanding the existence of a number of types of tests and a variety of aspects that can distinguish one test from another, there are some specific characteristics inherent in a test that make it reliable, valid, and feasible. 2.3.1. reliability2.3.1. reliability2.3.1. reliability2.3.1. reliability2.3.1. reliability reliability, in simple terms, is the precision of a measuring instrument (bachman, 1990; cohen 1994; harris, 1969; henning, 1987; hughes, 1989). other things being equal, as much as there are various types of such instruments, so are the ways in which their reliability can be estimated. one way the reliability of a test, language competence organisational competence pragmatic competence grammatical competence textual competence illocutionary competence sociolinguistic competence vocabulary morphology syntax phonology/graphology cohesion rhetorical organisation ideational function manipulative function heuristic function imaginative function sensitivity to dialect or variety sensitivity to register sensitivity to naturalness cultural references and figures of speech figure 3. figure 3. figure 3. figure 3. figure 3. bachman’s mapping of language abilities susceptible of testing (bachman, 1990, p. 87) for instance, can be established is by finding its reliability coefficient (rc). harris (1969) argues that while “a reliability quotient of 1.00 would indicate that a test is ‘perfectly’ reliable, a quotient of zero would denote a complete absence of reliability.” testing experts make the point that the test-retest method (trm) is a practical way of finding rcs (henning, 1987). it consists of the administration of the same test to the same subjects twice, and its rc can be obtained through the pearson product moment coefficient of correlation (ppm) formula (henning, 1987): r tt = r x,y = nσxy – σxσy [nóx2 – (óx)2] [nóy2 – (óy)2] “ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ 62 hitotuzi profile profile profile profile profile where, r tt = the reliability coefficient using the trm r x,y = the correlation of the scores of the number of respondents (n) of the first administration (x) with those of the second administration (y) of the same test. in statistics books, one can find detailed explanations on how to use this formula on paper. fortunately, with the help of personal computers or certain types of calculators, precious time can be saved, and laborious work can be avoided when determining r tt (owen et al., 1997). practical as the trm may be, one should be quick to recognise its inadequacy to account for the various facets posing a threat to test reliability. bachman (1990), for instance, maintains that the computation of reliability by this method can be undermined by two factors: practice effect and change in ability. the former occurs if, when taking the test for the second time, examinees become acquainted with the questions or the test format. the latter is characterised by an increase or decrease in respondents’ proficiency in the target language. this usually results from broadening the time span between the two administrations as an attempt to avoid practice effect. on account of that, henning (1987) suggests ‘an interval of no more than two weeks’ following the administration of the first test. other variables that can jeopardise test reliability are examinees’ psychological state and physical health (cohen, 1994). normally one would not be expected to perform well on a test on the day of their mother’s funeral, or when having a splitting headache, for example. similarly, administrative environment may also lead to inconsistency of test results (henning, 1987). overcrowded rooms, lack of proper ventilation, pneumatic hammers rattling outside test centres, room acoustics (in the case of verbal instructions or listening comprehension tests) are some examples of administrative elements that can pose a threat to test reliability. furthermore, raters’ estimates of examinees’ language ability may be subjective (bachman, 1990), which is another important variable affecting scores. many would agree that this may be even more evident with components such as written compositions and interviews. perhaps, the frequent use of multiple-choice test formats characterises an attempt at minimising subjectivity (bachman, 1990). finally – no suggestion of being exhaustive intended – the inadequacy of the sampling of tasks is bound to render a given test unreliable. as a countermeasure to this problem, harris (1969) maintains that, generally, the more samples of examinees’ performance are taken, the more reliable will be the assessment of their language competency. 2.3.2. v2.3.2. v2.3.2. v2.3.2. v2.3.2. validityalidityalidityalidityalidity testing specialists elaborate on a considerable number of types of validity (bachman, 1990; cohen, 1994; harris, 1969; henning, 1987; hughes, 1989), from which only four types will be examined in this paper, namely, face validity, content validity, construct validity, and criterionrelated validity. the first type, face validity, is established on the basis of impression; therefore, ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○63 profile profile profile profile profile the english component of the 2002 entrance examination of the federal university of amazonas without any empirical evidence, one assumes a given test measures what it is supposed to. however, although ‘this is not validity in the technical sense,’ as harris (1969) suggests, one significant aspect of face validity relates to how “testees” may translate teacher or school policy on the basis of test formats. thus, tests that look silly, for instance, are likely to undermine teachers or institutions’ credibility. the second type, content validity, relates to the representativeness of the knowledge a given test is designed to measure. if, for example, a group of l2 students have covered adjective building involving prefixes and suffixes in a given course, and the test they sit is restricted to adjective building only in terms of suffixation, one can hardly argue the content validity of such a test. likewise, if the test includes questions involving items such as a two-hour journey and caramelcum-butterscotch-cum-coffee-cum-toffee spread (kay and jones, 2001, p. 76), which are types of adjectives that have not yet been taught in the imaginary course, the test is said to have no content validity. nevertheless, a satisfactory paradigm for judging whether or not a test has content validity seems to be a specification of the language abilities which are bound to be covered in a course. hughes (1989: 22) maintains that ‘such a specification should be made at a very early stage in test construction.’ he also argues that although not all of the language items listed in the specification may appear in the test, this typology ‘will provide the test constructor with the basis for making a principled selection of elements for inclusion in the test’. briefly, the third type, construct validity, is verified by testing given abilities or subabilities in various ways. if, as a result, test scores correlate highly in line with the researcher’s theory of what the frameworks of those abilities or sub-abilities are, then the test is said to have construct validity (cohen, 1994; henning, 1987; hughes, 1989). nevertheless, while arguing that there is no sufficient evidence for determining construct validation in testscore correlations, bachman (1990) draws on messick (1988, cited in bachman, 1990, p. 258) to suggest other ‘types of empirical evidence’: “these may include any or all of the following: (1) the examination of patterns of correlations among item scores and test scores, and between characteristics of items and tests and scores on items and tests; (2) analyses and modelling of the processes underlying test performance; (3) studies of group differences; (4) studies of changes over time, or (5) investigation of the effects of experimental treatment” (bachman, 1990, p. 258). finally, the fourth type of validity, criterion-related validity, embraces two other types: concurrent validity and predictive validity. the determination of the first is on the basis of the relationship between a given test and a construct-validated external criterion measure administered concurrently. the second is normally conveyed as a correlation coefficient with some future criterion measure, as cohen exemplifies: “as an example of predictive validation, a language aptitude test may be validated by a test of a student’s achievement in the language class in which the student was ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ 64 hitotuzi profile profile profile profile profile placed on the basis of the aptitude test” (1994: 3940). there are some caveats, though, involving these varieties of criterion-related validity. in the case of concurrent validity, even if the criterion measure has construct validity and highly correlates with a given test, no guarantee is given whether or not test scores, indicators of a given ability, are not influenced by other abilities (bachman, 1990). on the other hand, tests developed to predict future performance cannot be considered ‘valid indicators of ability’ (bachman, 1990). in a sentence, the author underscores the limitations of criterionrelated validity: “information about criterion relatedness – concurrent or predictive – is by itself insufficient evidence for validation” (bachman, 1990, p. 253). reliability versus vreliability versus vreliability versus vreliability versus vreliability versus validityalidityalidityalidityalidity generally speaking, reliability and validity are closely related concepts and useful tools for test analysis (bachman, 1990, hughes, 1989). however, they can on certain situations be completely unconnected. thus, for example, a test that is considered reliable because of high correlation of scores may be dismissed as invalid due to lack of consistency in terms of its purported measurement objective. in other words, all valid tests are reliable, but not all reliable tests are valid (henning, 1987). 2.3.3. feasibility2.3.3. feasibility2.3.3. feasibility2.3.3. feasibility2.3.3. feasibility while reliability and validity are regarded by testing experts as essential measurement qualities, feasibility seems to be, as harris (1969) puts it, another sine qua non, without which the other two are rendered useless. this is mainly due to such things as administrative costs, availability of equipment, manpower, and appropriate facilities. while one cannot overlook other potential factors that may render a test unviable, in the last analysis, it seems the less costly the more feasible a test becomes, notwithstanding the danger of sacrificing quality for the sake of economy. 3. method3. method3. method3. method3. method 3.1. subjects3.1. subjects3.1. subjects3.1. subjects3.1. subjects the subjects were two groups of secondary school (ss) students (n 45) in the 17 to 20 age bracket. when the investigation was conducted, these 45 students were sitting their ss final examination at colégio amazonense dom pedro ii, a state school for primary (ef) and secondary (em) education1 in the state of amazonas (brazil). 3.2. materials3.2. materials3.2. materials3.2. materials3.2. materials for data collection, ninety copies were made of the ufam/2002 english test (appendix a). additionally, a copy of the candidate handbook (ch) was examined in terms of whether or not that particular english test sampled adequately the abilities (or sub-abilities) it purported to measure (figure 4). 1 ensino fundamental (ef) and ensino médio (em) respectively . ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○65 profile profile profile profile profile the english component of the 2002 entrance examination of the federal university of amazonas figure 4.figure 4.figure 4.figure 4.figure 4. psm/2002 candidate handbook: study guide (ufam-psm2002 – manual do candidato, 2001, p. 9) (my translation of the ‘study guide’ in the psm/2002 candidate handbook) study guide for the foreign language test (spanish, french or english) guia de estudo para a prova de língua estrangeira (espanhol, francês e inglês) for the foreign language test (flt), there is no specific study guide. the objective of this test is just to verify whether or not the candidate has basic knowledge of the selected foreign language. therefore, the flt will involve the experience the candidate may have acquired in secondary school (ensino médio). it will include reading comprehension, basic vocabulary, and grammatical structure of the target language. para a prova de língua estrangeira, não há um programa específico. o que se pretende é apenas verificar se o candidato possui os conhecimentos fundamentais do idioma que escolheu. assim sendo, a prova procurará levar em consideração a experiência que o ensino médio, geralmente, proporciona aos estudantes. ela versará sobre o domínio de um vocabulário básico e sobre a estrutura gramatical da língua. 3.3. procedure3.3. procedure3.3. procedure3.3. procedure3.3. procedure on the basis of the test-retest method, the ufam/2002 english test was administered twice to the forty-five students concluding ss at colégio amazonense dom pedro ii. in agreement with henning’s (1987) suggestion on time lag between test administrations, the first testing was held on 18 november 2002, and the retesting was sat on 26 november 2002, seven days after the first administration. the test was then rated on a scale of zero to ten marks, and its reliability was estimated on the basis of the ppm formula (see section 2.3.1). as more than twenty thousand candidates sat the 2002 entrance examination to ufam, 45 respondents is obviously an insignificant sample of the entire population of examinees. therefore, so that ‘the level of significance, or the pvalue of the statistic’ (henning, 1987) could be verified, the critical values of the pearson product-moment correlation coefficient (reproduced in henning, 1987, p. 170) was used (table 1, in appendix b). additionally, on the grounds that the correlation between the scores of respondents representative of the entire population aforementioned should be positive, a one-tailed test of significance was conducted. yet, if a positive or negative correlation would be equally acceptable, then a two-tailed test of significance would be adequate (henning, 1987). ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ 66 hitotuzi profile profile profile profile profile the content validity of the test was verified by comparing the ufam/2002 english test both with the specifications for the test outlined in the ch (figure 4) and the parameters for the teaching of modern foreign languages (pcn) found in the national curriculum parameters for secondar y school –modern foreign languages (parâmetros curriculares nacionais: ensino médio – pcn, 1999, p. 147153; see figure 5). representation and communication investigation and comprehension socio-cultural contextualisation nationalnationalnationalnationalnational curriculumcurriculumcurriculumcurriculumcurriculum parametersparametersparametersparametersparameters for secondarfor secondarfor secondarfor secondarfor secondaryyyyy school:school:school:school:school: modernmodernmodernmodernmodern foreignforeignforeignforeignforeign languagelanguagelanguagelanguagelanguage competenciescompetenciescompetenciescompetenciescompetencies and abilitiesand abilitiesand abilitiesand abilitiesand abilities to beto beto beto beto be developeddevelopeddevelopeddevelopeddeveloped • choose the adequate register and vocabular y for the occasion when communication occurs. • use coherence and cohesion devices in the oral/written production. • use verbal and non-verbal strategies to compensate for lack of ability in the target language both in production and reading. • know and use modern foreign languages as a means to have access to other cultures, and other social groups. • understand the various ways a given expression can be interpreted on the basis of socio-cultural aspects. • analyse verbal language expression resources considering the nature, function, organisation and the structure of the target language (tl). such analysis should be carried out on the basis of the proper conditions for production/reception of the tl (intention, time, place, interlocutors, and available technological resources). • distinguish linguistic variants. •understand to what extent oral/written texts reveal speaker traits such as behaviour, thought, and mood. ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○67 profile profile profile profile profile the english component of the 2002 entrance examination of the federal university of amazonas figure 5. figure 5. figure 5. figure 5. figure 5. the national curriculum parameters for secondary school – modern foreign language (parâmetros curriculares nacionais: ensino médio, 1999, p. 153. my translation). competênciascompetênciascompetênciascompetênciascompetências e habilidadese habilidadese habilidadese habilidadese habilidades a serema serema serema serema serem desenvolvidasdesenvolvidasdesenvolvidasdesenvolvidasdesenvolvidas em línguaem línguaem línguaem línguaem língua estrangeiraestrangeiraestrangeiraestrangeiraestrangeira modernamodernamodernamodernamoderna • escolher o registro adequado à situação na qual se processa a comunicação e o vocábulo que melhor reflita a idéia que pretende comunicar. •utilizar os mecanismos de coerência e coesão na produção oral e/ou escrita. • utilizar as estratégias verbais e nãoverbais para compensar as falhas, favorecer a efetiva comunicação e alcançar o efeito pretendido em situações de produção e leitura. • conhecer e usar as línguas estrangeiras modernas como instrumento de acesso a informações a outras culturas e grupos sociais. • compreender de que forma determinada expressão pode ser interpretada em razão de aspectos sociais e/ou culturais. • analisar os recursos expressivos da linguagem verbal, relacionando textos/ contextos mediante a natureza, função, organização, estrutura, de acordo com as condições de produção/recepção (intenção, época, local, interlocutores, participantes da criação e propagação de idéias e escolhas, tecnologias disponíveis). • saber distinguir as variantes lingüísticas. • compreender em que medida os enunciados refletem a forma de ser, pensar, agir e sentir de quem os produz. representação e comunicação investigação e compreensão contextualização sócio-cultural ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ 68 hitotuzi profile profile profile profile profile 4. resul4. resul4. resul4. resul4. results of correlts of correlts of correlts of correlts of correlaaaaationaltionaltionaltionaltional and documentand documentand documentand documentand documental analal analal analal analal analysesysesysesysesyses 4.1. estimating the reliability of the4.1. estimating the reliability of the4.1. estimating the reliability of the4.1. estimating the reliability of the4.1. estimating the reliability of the ufufufufufam/2002 english tam/2002 english tam/2002 english tam/2002 english tam/2002 english testestestestest on the basis of the ppm, the reliability coefficient of the ufam/2002 administered to the forty-five respondents at colégio amazonense dom pedro ii was r tt = 0.57 (table 2, in appendix b). furthermore, assuming that the sample of respondents was potentially comparable with samples chosen at random from the real universe of ufam/ 2002 candidates, and that the correlation of their scores should be positive, the onetailed level of significance was established. following table 1 (appendix b), the value of the ppm found with the sample would have to exceed 0.2428 at a desirable level of significance for one-tailed tests (p < 0.05) so that generalisation of the ufam/ 2002-candidate population could be made. since r tt emerged as 0.57, this correlation coefficient is considered significant and thus it could be generalised to that population if the respondents were a random sample of it. additionally, to achieve a level of significance of p < 0.01, which represents 99 percent confidence in the generalisation (henning, 1987), the ppm of the ufam/ 2002 sample would have to exceed 0.3384. as the correlation coefficient found with the sample did exceed those figures, it can be considered highly significant, thus highly generalisable to the entire population, were the samples chosen from the real universe of ufam/2002 candidates. 4.2. estimating the v4.2. estimating the v4.2. estimating the v4.2. estimating the v4.2. estimating the validity of thealidity of thealidity of thealidity of thealidity of the ufufufufufam/2002 english tam/2002 english tam/2002 english tam/2002 english tam/2002 english testestestestest for the sake of operational viability, the validity of the ufam/2002 was checked against the two simpler types of validity: face validity and content validity. the analysis based on ‘impression’ has revealed important facts about this all-reading comprehension test. following the typical multiple-choice format of four alternatives (cohen, 1994), the ufam/2002 english test was based on two texts: the first, a 211-word excerpt, apparently part of a newspaper feature article; the second, a 290-word passage, which might have been quoted from a magazine. furthermore, the former text was followed by three items and the latter by two items. however, as one of the items of the first text had eventually to be declared void (there was no correct alternative in it), the test was reduced to four items, most of which were badly written. for one thing, besides the fact that the respondents’ native language was the language of response (bachman, 1990), some distractors were either clearly absurd, or conflicting with one another: (26) according to the text: a. all of them are the same size, and larger than earth. b. there is no certainty about the discovery of these planets. c. there is certainty only about the existence of three new planets. d. there’s certainty about the discovery of eight new planets. ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○69 profile profile profile profile profile the english component of the 2002 entrance examination of the federal university of amazonas e. all of them can be seen from earth with the naked eye. (ufam – psm2002, prova 1, 2001, p. 5; see appendix a for complete translation of items – my translation). b and e represent the only real choices in this item for two reasons. one is that choice a can be instantly dismissed without reference to the excerpt (appendix a), since the idea of a planet being ‘the same size’ as another seems as untenable as the existence of the perfect circle. the other is that choices b, c, and d eliminate one another. thus, one might choose b on the optimistic assumption that no celestial body that can be seen ‘with the naked eye’ from earth has escaped astronomers’ records. for another thing, other distractors could also be easily eliminated particularly owing to bad semantics: (28) the text mentions brown dwarfs. brown dwarfs are: a. small stars similar to earth, but which have their own interior nucleus (sic). b. small planets which have little interior nuclear power source. c. stars which have nuclear mass interior (sic) above normal. d. celestial bodies without a nucleus of their own (sic), but which have large mass. e. celestial bodies lacking interior nuclear power source, and having less mass than planets. (ufam – psm2002, prova 1, 2001, p. 5; see appendix a for complete translation of items – my translation) the prime example of this is the use of the word próprio (own) in choices a and d, which admits the assumption that a celestial body can ‘borrow’ other celestial bodies’ nucleus. similarly, the word interior (interior) combined with núcleo (nucleus) in choice a generates blatant redundancy in portuguese. choice c is exemplary of the nonsensical quality of the item. additionally, while choice e is the correct answer, its opposition to choice b seems to undermine test credibility (harris, 1969). these facts appear to be crucial to determining the face validity of the ufam/2002. the comparison between the content of the ufam/2002 with the study guide outlined in the candidate handbook and the parameters in the pcn manual has also provided valuable data for estimating the content validity of this test. in the ch study guide it is claimed that “for the foreign language test (flt), there is no specific study guide. the objective of [the ufam/2002 english test] is just to verify whether or not the candidate has basic knowledge of the selected foreign language. therefore, the flt will involve the experience the candidate may have acquired in secondary school (ensino médio). it will include reading comprehension, basic vocabulary, and grammatical structure of the target language” (ufam-psm2002 – manual do candidato, 2001, p. 9 –my translation; figure 4). ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ 70 hitotuzi profile profile profile profile profile nevertheless, irrespective of the sentence structuring system and the load of latinate words typically found in academic texts written in english, which in passing favours portuguese speakers a great deal, no meticulous examination is required to notice that the two texts selected for the ufam/ 2002 are patently loaded with somewhat involved syntactic and morphological structures, and complex lexical items, thus demanding from the candidates far more than ‘basic knowledge’ of the target language. in terms of lexis, for instance, words and expressions such as ‘stars’, ‘hunt for’, ‘scan the heavens’, ‘pull’ ‘brown dwarfs’, ‘lack’, in the first text; and ‘hard’, ‘ought to’, ‘set up’, ‘entire’, ‘too early’ in the second seem to be challenging for most brazilians whose english was learnt solely at regular schools. regarding the complexity of syntactic and morphological structures found in the ufam/2002 english test, an example from the first text is: european astronomers on monday reported detecting signs that eight planets, some of them larger than jupiter, may be orbiting stars outside our own solar system. (ufam – psm2002, prova 1, 2001, p. 4; appendix a) the inexistence in the portuguese language of a structure similar to the type underlined here which would fit this particular co-text seems to contribute to potential misinterpretation of the sentence by brazilian learners of english. in this environment, the english -ing form would most certainly be replaced by the portuguese ‘compound personal infinitive’ (infinitivo pessoal composto), e.g., terem detectado sinais (cunha, 1986, p. 387). in the third paragraph of the second text, the sentence “because everyone has internet access, older people participate as much as younger ones, and everyone can visit distant libraries and museums as easily as nearby ones” (ufam – psm2002, prova 1, 2001, p. 5; appendix a) appears to be a good example of complex sentence structuring, mainly concerning the use of comparatives. a more complicating factor, however, seems to be the instances of test-writing negligence, which is transparent in this same paragraph: ‘where’ and ‘and’ are written as ‘ whwre’ and ‘end’ respectively. this inattentiveness is indeed more markedly noticed in the construction of item two following the first text, which was declared void for lacking a correct alternative. about the ‘experience’ the candidate may have acquired in em, this is a rather involved issue, inasmuch as, regardless of the pcn (figure 5), the efl classroom reality, especially in state schools, seems to indicate that students finishing em have only superficial knowledge of english – this is yet to be empirically investigated though. 5. discussion5. discussion5. discussion5. discussion5. discussion 5.1. the reliability of the uf5.1. the reliability of the uf5.1. the reliability of the uf5.1. the reliability of the uf5.1. the reliability of the ufam/am/am/am/am/ 2002 english t2002 english t2002 english t2002 english t2002 english testestestestest the reliability coefficient of the ufam/ 2002 found with the 45 respondents (r tt = 0.57) through the trm indicates an extremely low level of reliability. harris (1969) maintains that tests designed to ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○71 profile profile profile profile profile the english component of the 2002 entrance examination of the federal university of amazonas select candidates ‘should have a reliability quotient of at least 0.90, and preferably even somewhat higher’. nevertheless, as he points out, the limitations of this method should be considered when making decisions on the basis of correlation coefficients. in the case of these respondents, for instance, i noticed that some of them returned the test far sooner than the estimated time for them to answer it. considering the degree of difficulty of the passages, it was established that the respondents should be able to answer the test in twenty minutes. however, some of the respondents returned the test in about seven minutes after they were given it. this phenomenon seems to constitute a different source of inconsistency other than the classic ones: ‘differential practice effect and differential changes in ability’ (bachman, 1990, p. 182). perhaps these respondents’ attitude is an indication of disappointment. it is possible that they may have felt that the english they had been learning so far at school was not enough for them to understand the texts in the ufam/2002 english test. hughes (1989) seems to endorse this view: “now it might be argued that to base test content on objectives rather than on course content is unfair to students. if the course content does not fit well with objectives, they will be expected to do things for which they have not been prepared” (1989: 12). 5.2. the v5.2. the v5.2. the v5.2. the v5.2. the validity of the ufalidity of the ufalidity of the ufalidity of the ufalidity of the ufam/2002am/2002am/2002am/2002am/2002 english tenglish tenglish tenglish tenglish testestestestest in the light of the evidence provided in the previous section, it seems reasonable to say that the ufam/2002 english test lacks both face validity and content validity. in regard to the former, although the wordcount of the two selected texts fluctuates within the range of acceptable text length, both the number of texts, and items per text are far below testing experts’ prescription for this type of test. harris (1969) suggests about five passages, each ranging from 100 to 250 words, and followed by four to seven items or more. furthermore, the badly written items and the two spelling problems detected in the second passage also undermine the face validity of the ufam/2002 english test. at this point, it is important noting that the lead in (26) is rather vague, thus requiring that ‘them’ be replaced by a noun phrase in choice a (or a could be swapped for b), so that a could be clearly understood in isolation. this appears to be endorsed by harris (1969: 62): “the vocabulary and syntax of the items should be kept as simple as possible so that the real problem is the interpretation of the passage, not of the questions that are asked about it”. importantly, on the basis of harris’s (1969) ‘advice on item writing’, a suggestion for items following the first passage of the ufam/2002 english test is outlined in appendix c. to consider the next point, the content validity of the ufam/2002 english test, one has to partly assume a speculative stance, inasmuch as a study is yet to be conducted on whether or not the pcn are in fact followed in the efl classroom at both private and state schools in the state of amazonas. nevertheless, when collating the ch study ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ 72 hitotuzi profile profile profile profile profile guide with the two texts of the ufam/2002 english test there can hardly be any doubt about the gap between what is stated in the ch, and the actual level of proficiency required by those texts. this nonetheless seems to be mitigated by both the choice of the candidates’ native language as the language of response and the unchallenging quality of the items. albeit the suggestion in appendix c seems to offer more reliable items for the first passage of the ufam/2002 english test, many would be likely to agree that the test would still have no validation considering the argument on the comparison between the ufam/2002, the ch study guide and the pcn. as testing experts suggest, a test is valid only insofar as it constitutes a sample of what it purports to measure (bachman, 1990; cohen, 1994; harris, 1969; henning, 1987; hughes, 1989). 6. concl6. concl6. concl6. concl6. conclusionusionusionusionusion according to the results presented in this paper, the expostulation of elt teachers working at state schools in manaus was confirmed: the english component of the entrance examination to the federal university of amazonas administered in 2002 was neither reliable nor valid. in other words, the ufam/2002 english test was considered dispossessed of basic requirement to be qualified as a serious screening test of english. however, the weight of this conclusion is put into question on account of sample reliability. thus, to validate the findings reported here, the repetition of this investigation under more reliable conditions appears to be necessary. nevertheless, as tentative as this study may be, it is felt that, once confirmed, these results seem to have serious implications particularly for the english undergraduate course (euc) of this university whose unstated required level of proficiency in the target language is at least two years of comprehensive and continuous study – euc freshmen have to deal with new interchange 2 (richards and sandy, 1998) in a classroom where english is supposed to be the language of instruction. unfortunately, considering the length of the euc, the adoption of such a tacit policy is understandable: it is rather unlikely that beginners could become advanced learners in only eight terms of study. one can suggest two alternative solutions to this dilemma though. one solution would be the addition of two more terms to the euc, so that freshmen could start studying english as ‘real’ beginners. hopefully, they would achieve advanced level proficiency by the end of the course. the other solution would be the development of a reliable and valid screening test for candidates applying for the euc. however, this measure could be dismissed by both the university and the local community for different reasons. for one thing, lack of manpower and money to operate the logistics involved in the administration of such a test may potentially be ufam’s strong claims. for another thing, this new policy may attract widespread criticism from the amazonian community. for instance, one might argue against the discriminator y quality of the process, claiming that the seven years of efl learning at state schools (as well as private schools) fail to prepare candidates to succeed in this ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○73 profile profile profile profile profile the english component of the 2002 entrance examination of the federal university of amazonas type of test. from this perspective, then, it is likely that only those who could afford to study in a language institute would be apt to attend the euc at ufam. since no empirical study has been conducted on this issue to date, the suggestion that amazonian students cannot achieve an intermediate level of proficiency in english after having studied this subject for fourteen terms at state and private schools can only be speculative. however, the results presented in this paper seem to lead to a number of questions about the role of english (or any other modern foreign language) in the brazilian formal educational system, which may merit further research. for one thing, one might want to investigate, for instance, the extension to which the pcn are based on sound principles of foreign language teaching, or the validity of the assumptions underlined in figure 5 about the level of proficiency of em students. another concern is how closely the pcn are followed in the efl classroom of state and private schools. one way of verifying this would be through an analysis of the elt material used in these schools. this might determine whether or not the efl classroom of ef is conducive to the development of the target language in em. for another thing, assuming the english component of the entrance examination to the federal university of amazonas were decisive to admission not only to the euc, but also to the other undergraduate courses offered by this university, how would english compare with other subjects in the ef and em curricula? how seriously would ef and em students take it? what influence would these conditions have on school policy concerning the selection of efl teachers, and adequacy of environment for efl teaching? referencesreferencesreferencesreferencesreferences bachman, l. f. 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(1969). testing english as a second language. new york: mcgraw-hill. ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ 74 hitotuzi profile profile profile profile profile henning, g. (1987). a guide to language testing: development, evaluation, research. boston, mass: newbury house. hughes, a. (1989). testing for language teachers. cambridge: cambridge university press. kay, s. and jones, v. (2001). inside out upper intermediate: student’s book. oxford: macmillan heinemann. owen, c., et al. (1997). testing. birmingham: centre for english language studies (cels). pearson, l. and buffa, l. (1994). the princeton review: cracking the toefl, 1995 edition. new york: villard books. richards, j. c. and sandy, c. (1998). new interchange 2: student’s book. cambridge: cambridge university press. steffensen, m. s. and joag-dev, c. (1984). cultural knowledge and reading. in anderson, j. c. and urquhart, a. h. (eds.). reading in a foreign language. london: longman. stern, h.h. (1992). issues and options in language teaching. oxford: oxford university press. universidade federal do amazonas. (2000). processo seletivo macro – psm2001: manual do candidato. manaus: imprensa universitária. universidade federal do amazonas. (2001). processo seletivo macro – psm2002: prova 01, conhecimentos gerais i. manaus: imprensa universitária. universidade federal do amazonas. (2001). processo seletivo macro – psm2002: manual do candidato. manaus: imprensa universitária. universidade federal do amazonas. (2002). processo seletivo macro – psm2003: manual do candidato. manaus: imprensa universitária. ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○75 profile profile profile profile profile the english component of the 2002 entrance examination of the federal university of amazonas appendix a: the ufappendix a: the ufappendix a: the ufappendix a: the ufappendix a: the ufam/2002am/2002am/2002am/2002am/2002 processo seletivo macro – psm2002 prova de conhecimentos gerais iprocesso seletivo macro – psm2002 prova de conhecimentos gerais iprocesso seletivo macro – psm2002 prova de conhecimentos gerais iprocesso seletivo macro – psm2002 prova de conhecimentos gerais iprocesso seletivo macro – psm2002 prova de conhecimentos gerais i língua estrangeira inglês (passage one)(passage one)(passage one)(passage one)(passage one) leia o texto leia o texto leia o texto leia o texto leia o texto “eight new possible pl“eight new possible pl“eight new possible pl“eight new possible pl“eight new possible planets detectedanets detectedanets detectedanets detectedanets detected””””” e respond e respond e respond e respond e respondaaaaa adequadamente:adequadamente:adequadamente:adequadamente:adequadamente: washington (reuters) – european astronomers on monday reported detecting signs that eight planets, some of them possibly larger than jupiter, may be orbiting stars outside our own solar system. these discoveries bring the number of potential extrasolar planets to more than 40. the hunt for these planets candidates has intensified in the last year, as space scientists from around the world scan the heavens for sun-like stars and planets that might orbit them. the newest candidates were detected by astronomers working with the european southern observatory’s la silla observatory in chile. the scientists are based in geneva, switzerland. none of the planet candidates have ever been seen by humans, but scientists believe they are there because of the gravitational pull they exert on the stars they orbit. two of the eight new candidates may not be planets at all, the european scientists said in a statement, but could instead be brown dwarfs, which have a bit less mass than stars and completely lack a star’s interior nuclear power source. three of the new planet possibilities are about the size of saturn or smaller, three are one to three times the size of jupiter and two are 10 times the size of jupiter or larger. all of these are far larger than earth. 26. de acordo com o texto: a) todos são do mesmo tamanho e maiores do que a terra b) não há certeza quanto à descoberta desses planetas c) há certeza só quanto à existência de três novos planetas d) há certeza quanto à descoberta de oito novos planetas e) todos podem ser vistos da terra a olho nu. 27. os sinais detectados indicam que: (nula) a) os oito planetas seriam maiores do que júpiter e estariam fora de nosso sistema solar. b) os oito planetas seriam menores do que júpiter e estariam dentro de nosso sistema solar. c) os oito planetas seriam iguais a júpiter e estariam na orla de nosso sistema solar. ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ 76 hitotuzi profile profile profile profile profile d) os oito planetas são, na verdade, maiores do que a terra e dentro de nosso sistema solar (sic). e) os oito planetas são bem maiores do que a terra e próximos de saturno (sic). 28. o texto faz menção a “brown dwarfs”. “brown dwarfs” são: a) pequenas estrelas semelhantes a terra, mas com núcleo interior próprio (sic). b) pequenos planetas com pouca fonte de energia nuclear. c) estrelas com interior de massa nuclear acima do normal (sic). d) corpos celestes sem núcleo próprio(sic), mas grande massa. e) corpos celestes desprovidos de fonte de força nuclear interna e possuem menos massa do que os planetas. (my translation of instructions and items for the first passage) read the text “eight new possible planets detected” and answer adequately: 26. according to the text: a) all of them are the same size, and larger than earth. b) there is no certainty about the discovery of these planets. c) there is certainty only about the existence of three new planets. d) there’s certainty about the discovery of eight new planets. e) all of them can be seen from earth with the naked eye. 27. the detected signs indicate that: (voidvoidvoidvoidvoid).1 a) the eight planets would be larger than jupiter and would be out of our solar system. b) the eight planets would be smaller than jupiter and would be inside our solar system. c) the eight planets would be similar to jupiter and would be bordering our solar system. d) the eight planets are in reality larger than earth and inside our solar system (sic).* e) the eight planets are by far larger than earth and next to saturn (sic).* 1 because the existence of the eight planets is assumed in all choices, this item was cancelled. * in portuguese ser and estar (to be) convey different meanings. 28. the text mentions brown dwarfs. brown dwarfs are: a) small stars similar to earth, but which have their own interior nucleus (sic). b) small planets which have little interior nuclear power source. c) stars which have nuclear mass interior (sic) above normal. ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○77 profile profile profile profile profile the english component of the 2002 entrance examination of the federal university of amazonas d) celestial bodies without a nucleus of their own (sic), but which have large mass. e) celestial bodies lacking interior nuclear power source and having less mass than planets. (passage two)(passage two)(passage two)(passage two)(passage two) leia o texto leia o texto leia o texto leia o texto leia o texto “will technology repl“will technology repl“will technology repl“will technology repl“will technology replace school?”ace school?”ace school?”ace school?”ace school?” e respond e respond e respond e respond e respondaaaaa adequadamente:adequadamente:adequadamente:adequadamente:adequadamente: some people believe that soon schools will no longer be necessary. these people say that because of the internet and other new technology, there is no longer any need for school buildings, formal classes, or teachers. perhaps this will be true one day, but it is hard for me to imagine a world without schools. in fact, we need to look at how we can use new technology to make schools better-not to eliminate them. we should invent a new kind of school that is linked to libraries, museums, science centers, laboratories, and even corporations. corporations ought to create learning programs for schools in their area of expertise. independent experts could give talks on video or over the internet. tv networks and local stations could develop programming about things students are actually studying in school. laboratories could set up websites to demonstrate new technology so students could view it on the internet. is this just a dream? no. already there are several towns whwre (sic) this is beginning to happen. blacksburg, virginia, is one of them. here the entire city is linked to the internet, end learning can take place at home, at school, and in the office. businesses provide programs for the schools and the community. the schools provide computer labs for people without their own computers at home. because everyone has internet access, older people participate as much as younger ones, and everyone can visit distant libraries and museums as easily as nearby ones. how will this new kind of school change learning? it is too early to be sure, but it is very exciting to think about. technology will change the way we learn; schools will change as well; and we will all learn something in the process. 29. leia as colocações abaixo e assinale aquela com as quais o autor concordaria. 1. escolas não são necessárias. 2. as novas tecnologias irão substituir as escolas. 3. o uso de novas tecnologias é positivo. 4. a aprendizagem deveria se dar só nas escolas. 5. as empresas deveriam se envolver com a educação. a) 1 – 3 – 4 b) 3 – 5 c) 4 – 5 d) 1 2 – 5 e) 3 – 4 ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ 78 hitotuzi profile profile profile profile profile 30. na frase “perhaps thisthisthisthisthis will be true one day...” (1o. parágrafo), this this this this this refere-se: a) a um mundo sem mestres, só tecnologia. b) à necessidade de acabar com as aulas e com os professores. c) a não necessidade de prédios escolares, aulas formais ou professores. d) à invenção de uma nova escola sem estrutura e) à dominação dos prédios escolares pelos computadores (my translation of instructions and items for the second passage) read the text “will technology replace school?” and answer adequately: 29. read the statements below, and indicate the ones with which the author would agree. a) schools are not necessary. b) new technologies will eventually replace schools. c) the use of new technologies is positive. d) learning should take place only at school. e) companies should participate in the educational process. a. 1 – 3 – 4 b. 3 – 5 c. 4 – 5 d. 1 2 – 5 e. 3 – 4 30. in the sentence “perhaps thisthisthisthisthis will be true one day...” (1st paragraph), this this this this this refers to: a) a world without teachers, only technology. b) the necessity to banish lessons and teachers. c) the fact that school buildings, formal lessons or teachers are not necessary. d) the creation of a new school, without structure. e) the supremacy of computers in school buildings. ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○79 profile profile profile profile profile the english component of the 2002 entrance examination of the federal university of amazonas appendix b: tappendix b: tappendix b: tappendix b: tappendix b: tablesablesablesablesables tttttable 1. able 1. able 1. able 1. able 1. critical values of the pearson product-moment correlation coefficient (reproduced in henning, 1987, p.170) ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ 80 hitotuzi profile profile profile profile profile tttttable 2able 2able 2able 2able 2 ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○81 profile profile profile profile profile the english component of the 2002 entrance examination of the federal university of amazonas appendix c: new items for the ufappendix c: new items for the ufappendix c: new items for the ufappendix c: new items for the ufappendix c: new items for the ufam/2002am/2002am/2002am/2002am/2002 here is a suggestion of items for the first reading passage of the ufam/2002 english test. after this passage, you will find five unfinished statements about it, each with fiveafter this passage, you will find five unfinished statements about it, each with fiveafter this passage, you will find five unfinished statements about it, each with fiveafter this passage, you will find five unfinished statements about it, each with fiveafter this passage, you will find five unfinished statements about it, each with five suggested ways of finishing. ysuggested ways of finishing. ysuggested ways of finishing. ysuggested ways of finishing. ysuggested ways of finishing. you must choose the one which you think fits best.ou must choose the one which you think fits best.ou must choose the one which you think fits best.ou must choose the one which you think fits best.ou must choose the one which you think fits best. eight new possible planets detected washington (reuters) – european astronomers on monday reported detecting signs that eight planets, some of them possibly larger than jupiter, may be orbiting stars outside our own solar system. these discoveries bring the number of potential extrasolar planets to more than 40. the hunt for these planets candidates has intensified in the last year, as space scientists from around the world scan the heavens for sun-like stars and planets that might orbit them. the newest candidates were detected by astronomers working with the european southern observatory’s la silla observatory in chile. the scientists are based in geneva, switzerland. none of the planet candidates have ever been seen by humans, but scientists believe they are there because of the gravitational pull they exert on the stars they orbit. two of the eight new candidates may not be planets at all, the european scientists said in a statement, but could instead be brown dwarfs, which have a bit less mass than stars and completely lack a star’s interior nuclear power source. three of the new planet possibilities are about the size of saturn or smaller, three are one to three times the size of jupiter and two are 10 times the size of jupiter or larger. all of these are far larger than earth. 1. according to the information given in the passage about stars, one can argue that a. they can be larger than planets such as jupiter and earth. b. normally their gravitational field is less extensive than that of the planet earth. c. their interior nuclear power source is exhaustible. d. they are especially orbited by planets. e. they can be sun-like celestial bodies smaller than the sun. 2. the writer suggests that these discoveries a. evidence that celestial bodies can be precisely measured. b. may be stars orbiting outside our solar system. c. may be celestial bodies with narrow gravitational fields. d. increase the number of extrasolar planets to more than forty. e. were made from chilean ground. ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ 82 hitotuzi profile profile profile profile profile 3. the scientists who discovered the celestial bodies are a. swiss. b. spanish native speakers. c. north americans. d. south americans. e. europeans. 4. according to the text brown dwarfs a. are larger than earth. b. can be larger than some stars. c. can be characterised by their similarity with distant planets. d. can be confused with stars. e. are ten times the size of jupiter or larger 5. one may conclude from the passage that these celestial bodies a. are orbiting outside our solar system. b. are planets that can be confused with stars. c. total eight extrasolar planets. d. could be seen from the observatory thanks to modern technology. e. are planets which have more mass than earth. this article was received on may 12th, 2004 and accepted on august 22nd, 2004 profile 5.pmd ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○7 profileprofileprofileprofileprofile implicit and explicit teaching of grammar: an empirical study* enseñanza implícita y explícita de la gramática: un estudio empírico edgar mendoza lópezedgar mendoza lópezedgar mendoza lópezedgar mendoza lópezedgar mendoza lópez** universidad autónoma de bucaramanga emendozl@unab.edu.co this is a report on the experimental phase of a two-stage study on the effects of implicit-explicit grammar instruction regarding efl students’ performance. the purpose of this phase was to investigate whether the methodologies of implicit and explicit efl instruction account for the improvement of university students’ performance on a test over two grammar topics. three groups were selected. students in the implicit language classes had no explicit instruction on these topics which were taught through meaningful and contextualised listening, speaking, reading and writing activities. students in the explicit language classes were taught the regular course plus additional exercises and drills in order to practise the grammatical features, and a control group was taught the regular course. the results indicate that students in the explicit instruction group achieved significantly higher scores than both the students in the implicit instruction group and the students in the control group on the performance tests. kkkkkey worey worey worey worey words:ds:ds:ds:ds: grammar-input, implicit-grammar, explicit-grammar, grammarteaching, quantitative-research éste es un informe de la fase experimental de un estudio en dos etapas sobre los efectos de la enseñanza implícita y explícita de la gramática en el desempeño de los estudiantes. el propósito de esta etapa era investigar si las metodologías implícita y explícita se relacionaban con el mejoramiento de estudiantes universitarios en una prueba sobre dos temas gramaticales. se seleccionaron tres grupos: los estudiantes en el grupo de instrucción implícita no tuvieron ninguna instrucción explícita en los dos tópicos que se enseñaron a través de * findings reported in this paper are based on the research project “funciones de las conductas orales de los profesores de lenguas en el desarrollo de clases de inglés como lengua extranjera” funded by grants from universidad autónoma de bucaramanga-unab and the instituto colombiano para el desarrollo de la ciencia y la tecnología-colciencias, a colombian research granting institution. ** edgar mendoza lópezedgar mendoza lópezedgar mendoza lópezedgar mendoza lópezedgar mendoza lópez, ph.d. (university of manchester), m.ed. (universidad pontificia javeriana-universidad autónoma de bucaramanga), ba in languages (universidad industrial de santander). professor in the school of education at universidad autónoma de bucaramanga, bucaramanga, colombia. ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ 8 mendoza profileprofileprofileprofileprofile actividades significativas y contextualizadas en escucha, habla, lectura y escritura. el grupo de instrucción explícita tomó el curso regular ofrecido por la institución más actividades y ejercicios extras con el propósito de practicar los temas gramaticales enseñados; y el grupo de control tomó únicamente el curso regular. los resultados indican que los estudiantes en el grupo de enseñanza explícita lograron resultados significativamente más altos que los estudiantes en el grupo de enseñanza implícita y que los estudiantes del grupo de control. palabras claves:palabras claves:palabras claves:palabras claves:palabras claves: input-gramatical, gramática-implícita, gramáticaexplícita, enseñanza-gramática, investigación-cuantitativa introductionintroductionintroductionintroductionintroduction grammar has been and is at the core of the teaching of english as a foreign language (efl) and the way it is taught depends on the methodologies and approaches teachers make use of. there is perhaps no subject more hotly debated by language teachers than the place of grammar in language teaching; it has been in and out as the trend of fashion has fluctuated back and forth. some second or foreign language professionals do not consider grammar to be an important element in second or foreign language learning or teaching. they believe that grammar can be learned holistically through context without explicit instruction in grammar. krashen (1992: 410) claims that “the effect of grammar is peripheral and fragile” and that “direct instruction on specific rules has a measurable impact on tests that focus the performer on form, but the effect is short-lived”. others believe that grammar is the only substance in second or foreign language teaching. they would equate language learning and teaching with grammar. learning a foreign or second language is learning the grammar of that language. the traditional grammar-translation method is a typical example. if you can translate the target language according to its grammar into your own language, you are learning that language. but there is a consensus that grammar input given by teachers to learners could influence l2 acquisition. the counterpart notion concerning the learner is that those learners who initiate interactions will derive more benefit from the input than if they are exposed to the input in a more indirect manner. furthermore, grammar input not only can be explicit or implicit but also needs to be comprehensible. ‘comprehensible input’ is a term popularised by krashen. it refers to the fact that not all the target language to which foreign language learners are exposed is understandable: only some of the language they hear makes sense to them. input to the learners is the result of unplanned factors as well as the planned implementation of the syllabus. research theory and practical experience all point to the fact that input is crucial to language ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○9 profileprofileprofileprofileprofile implicit and explicit teaching of grammar: an empirical study learning. ‘input’ refers to the language which the learners hear (or read) -that is, the language samples to which they are exposed. conceiving second language acquisition without input in some way or other is impossible. models of language acquisition differ in the type of input which is regarded as most facilitative to second language development. on the one hand, induction models (krashen, 1985) see acquisition as a result of informal, message-focused input and bring into prominence the role of implicit acquisition of a second language. on the other hand, instructional models (ellis, 1990) emphasise the role of explicit acquisition and therefore formal instruction as an important part in second language acquisition. implicit and explicit acquisition, as mclaughlin (1990) has indicated, are controversial constructs in the theoretical study of foreign language (fl) teaching and learning, as are other terms such as conscious, unconscious, incidental, intentional, deductive, and inductive, mainly because they refer to language learning strategies and mental operations that cannot easily be identified. implicit acquisition of grammatical structures is a language learning process in which grammatical principles and lexical understanding are acquired by the language learner through experience with the second language (krashen, 1981). a number of premises underlie the instructional strategy of implicit language acquisition of which the following three are the most frequently cited. first, according to winitz and reeds (1975), thorough, accurate and comprehensive knowledge of grammatical principles is achieved best through implicit language acquisition. this claim is made because the grammatical rules in introductory fl textbooks are regarded as incomplete and inaccurate as well as their use as comprehensive statements regarding the linguistic knowledge a speaker must know in order to speak a foreign language. these limited sets of rules contain only a small number of the large number of grammatical rules that linguistic research has uncovered. second, the grammatical principles of an fl require knowledge of semantics and pragmatics. textbook descriptions of grammatical rules are primarily restricted to statements of syntax and morphology. the grammars of semantics and pragmatics are usually limited in scope and respectively provide the basis for the interpretation of sentences and for the understanding of discourse principles. nonetheless, there is support for the position that semantics and pragmatics can be acquired through experience with l2, generally in the context of communicative situations (loveday, 1982). third, psycholinguistic investigation has indicated that language acquisition involves the use of lexico-grammatical strategies that do not directly correspond to the grammatical principles of a language (taylor and taylor, 1990). these strategies are presumably put into operation by language learners without their conscious awareness and without an explicit understanding of when and under what circumstances they are used. ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ 10 mendoza profileprofileprofileprofileprofile over the past two decades there has been an open discussion about the role of teaching grammar and the main focus of l2 instructional research has shifted from whether or not instruction makes a difference to what types of instruction are most effective for fostering second or foreign language learning in formal contexts. the debate has led to theoretical issues such as how grammar should be taught: implicit or explicit grammar (called by scott (1989) implicit exemplification and explicit explanation respectively). mcdermott (1999: 32) points out that “implicit teaching is not or at least should not be the opposite of implicit learning. the teacher should know what s/he is doing and why, and s/he should remember what s/he did so s/he can either repeat or avoid it the next time. implicit teaching is simply providing opportunities for language use without any attention to form”. in relation to explicit teaching, he states that it “is teaching that overtly points out some feature of the language”. in dekeyser’s words (1994: 188), implicit teaching of grammar means that no rules are formulated; explicit means rules are formulated (either by the teacher or the student, either before or after examples/practice). it is worth noting that, according to ellis (1997: 84), “explicit and implicit instructions are not to be confused with explicit and implicit learning”. on the contrary, explicit and implicit instruction means it involves intentional learning on the part of learners –they are aware they are learning grammar. consequently, both explicit and implicit instruction imply explicit learning –while implicit learning ascribes to ‘learning that takes place without intention and, possibly, without awareness’. on the one hand, support of the implicit method of grammar instruction has been made on the basis that the development of the grammar competency needed to communicate effectively –from exposure to comprehensible, meaningful linguistic inputis done naturally. krashen’s distinction between learning (a conscious process) and acquisition (a subconscious process) provides the basis for his theory of implicit teaching strategies. he states that “second language acquisition can take place in the classroom without any explicit study of grammar if the students are exposed to enough comprehensible input” and adds that “the conscious study of grammar does not aid in the natural acquisition process” (scott, 1989, p. 14). winitz (1996) conducted a study to investigate whether the methodologies of implicit and explicit language instruction make a difference in the identification of grammatically well-formed sentences. one hundred and thirty-nine college students enrolled in the first semester of college spanish at a university in the u.s.a. participated in the study. the subjects were divided into two groups: the implicit instructional group and the explicit instructional group. the former, comprised of 67 students, was taught the comprehension of spanish sentences through the use of pictures, gestures, context-based materials and total physical response activities; the latter, with 72 students, was instructed in the grammartranslation approach wherein explicit ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○11 profileprofileprofileprofileprofile implicit and explicit teaching of grammar: an empirical study statements of the rules of grammar were taught. the data analysis was based on a grammaticality judgement test administered in the final week of the first semester of the course and on the students’ high school experience in spanish. overall, the results show that students in the implicit instruction group achieved significantly higher average scores than students in the explicit instruction group on this test. also, it was found that students in the implicit group who had had high school spanish did better on the test. krashen (1999) reviews some studies (master, 1994; leeman et al., 1995; robinson, 1995, 1997; de graff, 1997; manley and calk, 1997) claiming to show an effect for grammar and that grammar study is good for students. he raises some objections to these studies on the impact of formal instruction. firstly, all the subjects were experienced esl learners such as intermediate or advanced foreign language university students. secondly, some implicit groups doubtfully had an acquisition-rich environment during their instruction and some others were focused on form. finally, subjects were focused on form on all tests. he concludes that these studies “consistently show that more instruction result in, at best, modest increases in consciously-learned competence” (p. 245) and that “predictably, more focus on form and more information presented about rules result in more conscious learning”. on the other hand, there is also support for the explicit method of grammar instruction as ellis (1994, 1997) has pointed out. he states that grammar teaching is more than “providing learners with opportunities to produce target structure, initially under controlled conditions, and, then, increasingly in free or communicative activities” (ellis, 1993, p. 69). scott’s (1989) study compares implicit and explicit grammar teaching strategies with thirty-four advanced french conversation learners studying french as a foreign language at a university in the u.s.a. the class of students was divided into two groups and both groups were exposed to both implicit and explicit teaching conditions of two target structures, relative pronouns and subjunctive –both form and usage. the students taught through the explicit method heard rules and example sentences of relative pronouns while the students taught through the implicit method heard a story which contained the same grammar structure present in the text naturally and frequently, and heard ten times more examples than the explicit grammar group. for the second target structure, subjunctive, the group taught under the implicit condition was taught this time under explicit conditions, and vice versa. all the students in both groups were given a written and oral pre-test and post-test covering the relative pronouns or the subjunctive. overall, the results show that the students under the explicit teaching condition performed better than the implicit teaching condition group. on the written section of the test, the students under the explicit teaching condition performed better than the ones under the implicit method, t(33) = 1.74, p<.05. however, on the oral section of the test there was no significant difference in performance; the students performed ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ 12 mendoza profileprofileprofileprofileprofile equally well under both conditions, t(33) = 1.05, p>.05. scott herself explains that the differences between the written and oral performance are related to the students’ concentration in both the implicit and the explicit teaching conditions. students under the implicit method concentrated more on the content of the message they heard while the students under the explicit one concentrated on the form. however, she adds that the students will focus their attention on content of the message they hear regardless of whether it is a story or grammar rules. scott (1990) replicated her experiment described above but, in order to provide new empirical data, some changes were implemented. thirty-four advanced students of french as a foreign language at the same university in the u.s.a. were divided into two groups and were taught two target grammar structures, relative pronouns and subjunctive. as was done in the former experiment, both groups were exposed to implicit and explicit teaching conditions. during the first part of the experiment, one group was exposed to the implicit teaching condition and the other group to the explicit one; and for the second part, the former was exposed to the explicit teaching condition and the latter to the implicit one. two changes in both the teaching and testing procedures were made. the change in teaching procedure involved telling the implicit method group that they were hearing grammar structures in context –episodes full of relative pronouns for the first part of the experiment and episodes using plenty of subjunctive structures for the second part of the experiment. the change in testing procedure involved eliminating the oral exam in both the pre-test and the post-test (for the difference between the pre-test and the post-test was not significant in scott’s first experiment) and incorporating both convergent and divergent items such as multiple choice, completion exercises and open-ended questions. the results of this study show almost identical results to scott’s first experiment, and demonstrate that when explicit teaching of grammar is used in the classroom, students’ performance is significantly better. scott (1990: 785) points out that these data also “provide basis for continuing to develop explicit grammar teaching which are creative and efficient and which prepare students”. similar results to the above are shown by dekeyser’s (1994) exploratory study under laborator y conditions which aimed at clarifying the role of explicit teaching of different kinds of rules. he tried out three hypotheses on six fl undergraduate learners, three for the explicit and three for the implicit conditions who were administered a judgement and a production test. the results show that the first hypothesis (prototypes are harder to learn than categorical rules) was supported by two of the explicit subjects; and for the other ones, there was no difference between prototypical and categorical rules. the second hypothesis (and the most significant piece of evidence for the present study in which explicit learning is better than implicit learning for categorical rules) was fully confirmed: the three subjects in the explicit teaching condition did significantly better than the implicit group. and the third hypothesis (implicit learning is at least as good as explicit for prototypical rules) was ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○13 profileprofileprofileprofileprofile implicit and explicit teaching of grammar: an empirical study confirmed; however, all subjects performed poorly on the prototypes. in general, the study supports the idea that learners do better when grammar is taught under explicit conditions. due to the bias and limitations of this pilot study, dekeyser (1995) conducted a full-scale study with 61 college students, in which feedback was given during the learning sessions in order to increase students’ performance. moreover, explicit knowledge of grammar was formally tested. overall, the results show that explicitdeductive learning was more effective than implicit-inductive learning for the acquisition of categorical rules. green and hecht (1992) refer to one of their former studies where they looked at the grammatical competence and performance of learners and native speakers of english. the results show that fl learners achieved a good level of competence –understood as the degree of accuracy achieved by learners when their attention was focused on form – and that they did better than the group of native speakers, while their performance – the degree of accuracy achieved when the focus was on the transmission of meaning – was not as good as the native speaker group. for their current investigation, green and hecht (1992) replicated their former study but, realising the german learners of english as a foreign language were bringing conscious rules into play, they also looked at the rules themselves and not only at the products of them, by asking learners to make explicit the rules they were using or thought they were using. the results show that in 96 per cent of the possible cases, the native speakers of english produced the correction anticipated, as was expected. in relation to one of the expectations of green and hecht’s study, native speakers are worse at rules than fl learners. it was found that the former were less successful at formulating rules (42 per cent) than the latter (46 per cent), though not strikingly so. however, despite the slight difference, this piece of evidence lends support to the idea that explicit grammar does help fl learners. norris and ortega (2000), in their research synthesis and quantitative metaanalysis on the effectiveness of l2 instruction of 77 experimental and quasi-experimental study report publications published between 1980 and 1998, found that explicit types of instruction are more effective than implicit types. in conclusion, research provides ground to the voices who advocates either the implicit or the explicit instruction of grammar. there is no debate as to whether or not it is necessary to teach grammar but how it should be taught. there is not only enough evidence which supports either the implicit or the explicit teaching of grammar, but also enough scholars who advocate both as the most effective way of enhancing and improving fl learning. methodmethodmethodmethodmethod ttttteachers and subjectseachers and subjectseachers and subjectseachers and subjectseachers and subjects prior to the semester course work, two teachers from the department of languages at universidad autónoma de bucaramanga, colombia, with an experience of about 15 years in efl teaching, decided to use the implicit and the explicit system of instruction ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ 14 mendoza profileprofileprofileprofileprofile in their regular courses. these instructors, who were non-native english speakers and held a bachelor’s degree in language teaching (spanish, english, and french) and an m. ed., also took part in the planning of the activities and the designing of the class materials and tests for the experiment. sixty-six students aged 18 to 20 from three intermediate efl classes during the second semester of 2003 took part in the experiment. the course is available to students who have completed two previous courses –beginners and pre-intermediate. tttttarararararget structuresget structuresget structuresget structuresget structures two target structures were chosen for their level of difficulty as well as for their difference: if-clauses: real conditions and past simple -past continuous, both form and usage. procedureprocedureprocedureprocedureprocedure three groups of students in preintermediate efl classes were taught by a different instructor. each group was taught three sessions of two hours each for each one of the two target structures. the second structure was taught four weeks after the first one. the students involved in the research were not aware of the nature of the experiment. there was a pre-test (appendix 1) and a post-test (appendix 2) for each target structure. all the students in the three groups were given the same pre-test before the teaching of each target structure. following the intervention, the students were given the same post-test. one group, 24 students total, was exposed to an implicit teaching methodology during the teaching of both structures. the course content consisted of material specially designed for this experiment by the researcher and the two teachers in charge of the implicit and the explicit instruction groups. the target structures were taught through meaningful and contextualised listening, speaking, reading and writing activities. no explanation of or reference to the structure was made. the students were given the pretest and the post-test on each structure. the second group, 22 students in all, was exposed to an explicit teaching methodology during the teaching of both structures. the course content consisted of the current textbook selected by the language department at the university for the regular courses. both the students’ book and the workbook were used for the teaching of each of the target structures. additional exercises and drills on the structures were given to the students in class in order to practise them. the students were also given the pretest and post-test on each structure. the third group, 20 students, was the control group. the students in this class were taught the regular course at this university. the course content consisted of the current textbook selected for the courses by the language department. both the students’ book and the workbook were used for the teaching of each of the target structures. no additional exercises or drills were given to the students. the students were also given the pre-test and the post○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○15 profileprofileprofileprofileprofile implicit and explicit teaching of grammar: an empirical study test on each structure. the instructor of this group did not take part either in the planning or the designing of the study and the material used for the implicit and the explicit conditions. she was informed of the experiment and asked to participate as the control group instructor. findingsfindingsfindingsfindingsfindings un-paired, two-tailed t-tests were used to compare the mean gain scores of the three groups for the if-clauses: real conditions and past simple -past continuous under the implicit, the explicit, and the control conditions. table 1 shows the raw score and gain score means for the if-clauses: real conditions section of the experiment. the results of a two-tailed test show a statistically significant difference in performance of the three groups: the group under the explicit teaching condition performed better than both the group under the implicit teaching condition t=2.8, p<.05 and the control group t= 2.7, p<.05. the group under the implicit teaching condition did not perform better than the control group. pre-test, post-test and gain score means for subjects on if-clauses: real conditions tests under implicit, explicit, and control conditions: tttttable 1.able 1.able 1.able 1.able 1. pre-test, post-test and gain score means for subjects on if-clauses: real conditions tests table 2 shows the raw score and gain score means for the past simple -past continuous section of the experiment. the results of a two-tailed do not show a statistically significant difference in performance of the three groups, being p>.05. only the group under explicit teaching condition did better than the group under the implicit teaching condition at the 0.1 level, t= 1.6, p<.1. pre-test, post-test and gain score means for subjects on past simple -past continuous tests under implicit, explicit, and control conditions: pre-test post-test gain imp exp. contr. imp. exp. contr. imp. exp. contr. 2.5 2.5 2.7 2.7 3.7 2.8 .14 1.2 .13 tttttable 2.able 2.able 2.able 2.able 2. pre-test, post-test and gain score means for subjects on past simple past continuous tests pre-test post-test gain imp exp. contr. imp. exp. contr. imp. exp. contr. 3.1 2.6 2.6 3.1 3.4 3.2 -.06 .77 .65 ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ 16 mendoza profileprofileprofileprofileprofile conclconclconclconclconclusionusionusionusionusion the purpose of the experimental stage of this study was to investigate whether the methodologies of implicit and explicit language instruction account for the improvement of university students on a performance test on two grammar topics. overall, the findings indicate that at the end of the experiment, students in the explicit instruction group achieved significantly higher average scores than both the students in the implicit instruction group and the students in the control group on the performance tests. this demonstrates that when teachers use explicit grammar teaching strategies in the classroom, the students’ performance is significantly better. the difference in grammar teaching instruction has theoretical and practical implications. first, the difference in performance among the three groups provides indirect evidence that language instructional procedures of the implicit and explicit instruction result in the use of different language processes. second, the better performance of the students in the explicit instruction group suggests that explicit instructional strategies are very important in the development of foreign language educational programmes. also, these results support the value of explicit grammar instruction and suggest that the role of explicit grammar teaching strategies in the classroom has to be re-considered and re-defined. in relation to the colombian efl context, grammar teaching still remains a debate. also, there are many issues for teachers to consider in an attempt to render the teaching of grammar both more learnercentred and more effective, not least their own role in the choice, modification and pacing of tasks. teachers should retain an eclectic and open-minded approach, whereby, with a degree of experimentation and sensitivity to and close vigilance of their students, they can attempt to create the best possible conditions in which accuracy and fluency of language use can be developed simultaneously and complimentarily. further study is needed in order to value the overall effectiveness of explicit instruction in the long term and to determine which kind of linguistic structures are more suitable to be taught under explicit or implicit conditions. referencesreferencesreferencesreferencesreferences de graff, r. (1997). the experanto experiment: effects of explicit instruction on second language acquisition. studies in second language acquisition, 19, 249-276. dekeyser, r. (1994). implicit and explicit learning of l2 grammar: a pilot study. tesol quarterly, 28: 1, 188-194. dekeyser, r. (1995). learning second language grammar rules: an experiment with a miniature linguistic system. studies in second language acquisition, 17: 3, 379-410. ellis, r. (1990). instructed second language acquisition. oxford: blackwell. ellis, r. (1993). interpretation-based grammar teaching. system, 21: 1, 69-78. ellis, r. (1994). the study of second language acquisition. oxford: oxford university press. ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○17 profileprofileprofileprofileprofile implicit and explicit teaching of grammar: an empirical study ellis, r. (1997). sla research and language teaching. oxford: oxford university press. green, p. s. and hecht, k. (1992). implicit and explicit grammar: an empirical study. applied linguistics, 13: 2, 168-184. krashen, s. d. (1981). second language acquisition and second language learning. oxford, england: pergamon. krashen, s. d. (1985). the input hypothesis: issues and implications. london: longman. krashen, s. d. (1992). under what conditions, if any, should formal grammar instruction take place? tesol quarterly, 26, 409-411. krashen, s. d. (1999). seeking a role for grammar: a review of some recent studies. foreign language annals, 32: 2, 245-257. leeman, j., aregagoitia, i., fridman, d., and doughty, c. (1995). integrating attention to form with meaning: focus on form in content-based spanish instruction. in r. schmidt (ed.). attention and awareness in foreign language learning. hawaii: university of hawaii press, 217-258. loveday, l. (1982). the sociolinguistics of learning and using a non-native language. oxford, england: pergamon. manley, j. and calk, l. (1997). grammar instruction for writing skills: do students perceive grammar as useful? foreign language annals, 30, 73-81. master, p. (1994). the effect of systematic instruction on learning the english article system. in t. odlin (ed.). perspectives on pedagogical grammar. (pp. 229-252). cambridge: cambridge university press. mcdermott, j. e. (1999). implicit and explicit learning of languages. dialog on language instruction, 13, 27-44. mclaughlin, b. (1990). “conscious” and “unconscious” learning. tesol quarterly, 24, 617-634. norris, j. m. and ortega, l. (2000). effectiveness of l2 instruction: a research synthesis and quantitative meta-analysis. language learning, 50: 3, 417-528. robinson, p. (1995). aptitude, awareness, and the fundamental similarity of implicit and explicit second language learning. in r. schmidt (ed.). attention and awareness in foreign language learning. hawaii: university of hawaii press, 303-357. robinson, p. (1997). generalizability and automaticity of second language learning under implicit, incidental, enhanced and instructed conditions. studies in second language acquisition, 19, 223-247. scott, v. (1989). an empirical study of explicit and implicit teaching strategies in french. the modern language journal, 73: 1, 14-22. scott, v. (1990). explicit and implicit grammar teaching strategies: new empirical data. the french review, 63: 5, 779-789. taylor, i., and taylor, m. m. (1990). psycholinguistics, learning and using language. englewood cliffs, nj: prentice hall. winitz, h. and reeds, j. (1975). comprehension and problem solving as ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ 18 mendoza profileprofileprofileprofileprofile strategies for language training. the hague, the netherlands: mouton. winitz, h. (1996). grammaticality judgment as a function of explicit and implicit instruction in spanish. the modern language journal, 80: 1, 32-46. ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○19 profileprofileprofileprofileprofile implicit and explicit teaching of grammar: an empirical study appendix 1: pre-appendix 1: pre-appendix 1: pre-appendix 1: pre-appendix 1: pre-testtesttesttesttest if-clauses: real conditionsif-clauses: real conditionsif-clauses: real conditionsif-clauses: real conditionsif-clauses: real conditions choose the corchoose the corchoose the corchoose the corchoose the correct worrect worrect worrect worrect word(s) to fill in the blank.d(s) to fill in the blank.d(s) to fill in the blank.d(s) to fill in the blank.d(s) to fill in the blank. 1. i _______________ come to the university if i feel better today. a. will be b. might c. am d. was 2. if there _______________ a nuclear war, many people will die. a. be b. is c. will be d. were 3. if a store is out of a sale item, you _______________ get a rain check. a. could have b. would c. were d. can 4. i don’t answer the phone if i _______________ in the shower. a. were b. was c. am d. will be 5. _______________ you see a red light, stop. a. even b. if c. unless d. were 6. if you don’t do the homework, you _______________ get a good grade. a. wouldn’t b. not c. won’t d. weren’t 7. i _______________ my friend if i have some free time tonight. a. call b. will call c. were called d. would call 8. if the weather _______________ nice this weekend, i’ll go to the park. a. were b. will be c. is d. would be 9. if you are married, you probably _______________ longer. a. will live b. are live c. would have lived d. would be lived 10. i’ll go to the library if the teacher _______________ come tomorrow. a. not b. wouldn’t c. doesn’t d. weren’t past simple past continuouspast simple past continuouspast simple past continuouspast simple past continuouspast simple past continuous choose the corchoose the corchoose the corchoose the corchoose the correct worrect worrect worrect worrect word(s) to fill in the blank.d(s) to fill in the blank.d(s) to fill in the blank.d(s) to fill in the blank.d(s) to fill in the blank. 1. i was watching tv. i heard a knock on the door. when i heard the knock on the door, i _______________ it. a. open b. am opening c. opened d. was opening ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ 20 mendoza profileprofileprofileprofileprofile 2. boris lost his wallet while he _______________ through the park. a. will be jogging b. was jogging c. jog d. were jogging 3. i _______________ tv when gina called last night. we talked for an hour. a. watch b. watched c. was watching d. am watching 4. mike was in his bedroom last night. he _______________, so we needed to be quiet. a. is sleeping b. sleeps c. slept d. was sleeping 5. kate _______________ an accident yesterday. she was standing at the corner where the accident happened. a. saw b. see c. sees d. was seeing 6. paul broke his arm while he _______________ in the ocean yesterday. a. swim b. was swimming c. were swimming d. was swimming 7. _______________ the telephone ringing? i’m sorry but i didn’t hear anything. a. do b. did c. were d. was 8. while i _______________ dinner last night, i burned my fingers. a. cooking b. cook c. was cooking d. was cook 9. i _______________ home at 10:00 p.m. my brother was playing his guitar. a. arrived b. will arrive c. was arriving d. arrive 10. my cat jumped on the table while we _______________ dinner. a. eat b. were eating c. ate d. will eat ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○21 profileprofileprofileprofileprofile implicit and explicit teaching of grammar: an empirical study appendix 2: postappendix 2: postappendix 2: postappendix 2: postappendix 2: post-----testtesttesttesttest if-clauses: real conditionsif-clauses: real conditionsif-clauses: real conditionsif-clauses: real conditionsif-clauses: real conditions choose the corchoose the corchoose the corchoose the corchoose the correct worrect worrect worrect worrect word(s) to fill in the blank.d(s) to fill in the blank.d(s) to fill in the blank.d(s) to fill in the blank.d(s) to fill in the blank. 1. we _______________ late if you don’t hurry. a. will be b. were c. are d. would 2. if i _______________ well tomorrow, i’ll stay at home. a. will feel b. didn’t feel c. felt d. don’t feel 3. we’ll play tennis if it _______________ tomorrow. a. has rained b. doesn’t rain c. will rain d. has been raining 4. i’m sure they’ll understand if you _______________ wear a coat. a. have b. won’t c. don’t d. will be 5. if i can get a flight, i _______________ fly home on sunday. a. will b. will have c. wasn’t d. was 6. it _______________ nice if you can come to the party. a. wouldn’t b. not c. won’t d. will be 7. have something to eat. if you _______________ eat now, you’ll be hungry later. a. not b. will c. don’t d. would 8. if i _______________ you tomorrow, i’ll phone you. a. was seen b. will see c. won’t see d. don’t see 9. what _______________ you do if you don’t pass your examinations? a. will b. are c. would d. were 10. if you _______________ any problems, i’ll try to help you. a. has b. had c. have d. don’t have choose the correct form of the verbchoose the correct form of the verbchoose the correct form of the verbchoose the correct form of the verbchoose the correct form of the verb 11. it will be difficult to find a hotel if _______________ late. a. we arrive b. we’ll arrive c. we arrived d. we haven’t arrived 12. _______________ surprised if _______________ married. a. i’m b. they get c. i’ll be d. they’ll get ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ 22 mendoza profileprofileprofileprofileprofile 13. _______________ to the party if _______________ you? a. do you go b. will you go c. they invite d. they’ll invite past simple past continuouspast simple past continuouspast simple past continuouspast simple past continuouspast simple past continuous choose the corchoose the corchoose the corchoose the corchoose the correct worrect worrect worrect worrect word(s) to fill in the blank.d(s) to fill in the blank.d(s) to fill in the blank.d(s) to fill in the blank.d(s) to fill in the blank. 1. when we _______________ out, it was raining. a. go b. do go c. was d. went 2. _______________ television when i phoned you? a. will you watch b. you were watching c. were you watching d. you will watch 3. jane wasn’t at home when i went to see her. she _______________ . a. was working b. does work c. will work d. has been working 4. the postman _______________ while i was having breakfast. a. come b. came c. doesn’t come d. will come 5. we met joan at the party. she _______________ a red dress. a. does wear b. wears c. will wear d. was wearing 6. the boys _______________ a window when they were playing football. a. break b. broken c. broke d. were broken 7. when the accident happened, pat _______________ fast. a. not drive b. wasn’t driving c. not driving d. drives 8. while i was doing my homework, my little sisters _____________ in the back garden. a. were playing b. played c. don’t play d. play 9. i got up at 7 o’clock. the sun _______________, so i _______________ for a walk. a. shines e. was going b. was shining f. will go c. will shine g. go d. shone h. went this article was received on february 17th, 2004 and accepted on august 24th, 2004. profile 1.p65 ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ 34profileprofileprofileprofileprofile encouraging speaking through the use of storytelling edith díaz, claudia rodríguezedith díaz, claudia rodríguezedith díaz, claudia rodríguezedith díaz, claudia rodríguezedith díaz, claudia rodríguez and lucía tand lucía tand lucía tand lucía tand lucía trianarianarianarianariana while students were involved inenglish classes throughout lastyear (1998), it was noticed that all of them recognised isolated vocabulary, but were not able to apply it in oral or written sentences. some action research was carried out on how the literature approach and the continuous repetition of stories could increase oral production. it became clear that the students enjoyed and comprehended stories and answered questions in complete sentences. intrintrintrintrintroductionoductionoductionoductionoduction throughout 1998, we worked in different grades of nuevo gimnasio cristiano and we identified a lack of oral production in the vast majority of students, even though they had had five hours of english per week in the previous years. for this reason, we attempted to find a method that would integrate the four language skills in a way that would be more related to students’ interests and would encourage them to practise meaningful sentences instead of learning a list of disconnected vocabulary. we opted for the “spotlight on literacy” series, a method including all the characteristics mentioned above. the purpose of our investigation was to evaluate the progress of basic oral production like greetings, expressions, routines, asking and answering questions, which was reinforced by the continuous repetition of the stories involved in the series we opted for. the action research was carried out in second grade form february to june 1999. this report reveals the impact the stories had on the students. prprprprproceduresoceduresoceduresoceduresocedures fifteen students from second grade were evaluated at the beginning of the year and we detected a general frustration among the students because of their lack or oral production in english. therefore we changed the teaching method to a method centred on literature, called “spotlight on literacy”, which uses stores to teach grammar, phonic, spelling and speaking. students had their own set of story-books and they visualised the pictures and listened to the story at the beginning and, later on, expressed what they saw. role playing was introduced in order to motivate communication and to allow students to make their own recordings of the story, thereby improving their pronunciation. in february, the first questionnaire was applied to find out students’ attitudes towards english and diagnose their individual levels. from march to the beginning of june, ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○35 profileprofileprofileprofileprofile students expressed their likes and dislikes, difficulties and achievements in their journals. while the classroom teacher focused on the application of the context learned in stories in her own diar y, structured classroom observation was conducted alongside with video recordings that captured specific aspects such as students’ participation, comprehension, asking questions and telling the stories. resultsresultsresultsresultsresults students enjoyed the stories, which were illustrated to help understanding. in march, april, and the beginning of may, stories were read a number of times and the repetitive pattern encouraged speaking. students illustrated the stories on their own and wrote a short report which they recorded on a tape and told it in front of the class. therefore students felt more confident with their english during that period; in contrast, the last story was worked on only on a short period of time and was not repeated enough. this could explain why the numbers of positive answers in the questionnaires dropped in the last cycle, as well as the fact that students felt exhausted when they had to answer the last questionnaire on the last day of the first semester. regarding the observation charts, it can be noticed that students used expressions only when they had read a stor y that contained expressions. routines which include telling the date and daily weather were more frequent at the beginning of the obser vation because of the fact that the students did not respond correctly and others corrected or completed the answers. towards the end, only tow or three students answered questions regarding daily routines because by that time, students understood the questions well, answered correctly, and others did not have to intervene in order to correct their classmates. at the beginning, students never asked questions. once some simple question structures were taught, two students implemented questions to ask for information a number of times. in march, around 40% of the students were able to answer questions and the number increased in each class. it is important to notice that from april 27 on, children started answering in complete sentences instead of just one or two words. on may 6, two students told the story to the rest of the class and the video obser vation on may 13 shows that all students, except one, did an oral presentation of the story “any kind of dog”. each student told the story using complete sentences because they knew it by heart. about 50% were able to tell the stor y without difficulties and it was quite natural for them. one student who had only said one expression in the entire process was able to tell the story without problems. another student had written in his diary that it had been difficult for him to tell the story. yet, on the video, he was very eager to tell it and even volunteered in class, raising his hand when the teacher asked who wanted to be next. in his diary, he mentioned this activity as the one he had liked best in this class. ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ 36profileprofileprofileprofileprofile in the diaries students, in general, expressed that they like english and feel they are learning through stories. at first, some of the students felt frustrated because they did not understand anything, but by the end they had gotten used to stories and were able to understand in spite of not knowing all the vocabulary. they enjoy reading a lot and even though it was difficult to write the summaries, they liked to come up front and tell them to the rest of the class. the first three stories were frequently named in the diaries because they were repeated over and over again. the last story was only mentioned by two students. that story was not worked on in the same way but more quickly. the teacher’s journal confirmed that at the beginning, students had more difficulties understanding the stories, but the continuous repetition of the stories and analysing the illustrations, most students were able to answer the questions related to the stories. students liked the stories and enjoyed reading and analysing them. most of the students were able to summarise the story and tell it to the rest of the class even though some students still have difficulties answering questions. reflectionreflectionreflectionreflectionreflection the first attempts at language production result from repeating words frequently, practising their use and imitating words that others use, until students assemble learned components to express meaning. our research proved the validity of this principle, since we had observed how the students first practised by repeating isolated words and then used them in complete meaningful sentences. stories are very useful in this procedure since they apply many repetitive patterns. ellis and brewster (1991) claim that children want to find meaning in the story, so they listen with a purpose. they therefore need to develop a positive attitude toward not understanding everything and must build up the skills for searching for meaning, prediction and guessing. this could explain students’ frustration at not understanding everything in the beginning until they had gained a positive attitude towards listening for gists. as a result, at the end of the process, it was very evident that students were understanding the context even though they did not understand every word. according to the teacher’s journal and classroom obser vation, we were able to obser ve problems regarding answering questions. more students answered simple questions in every class and were able to respond in complete sentence structures by the last month. ellis and brewster describe how children enjoy listening to stories over and over again. this frequent repetition allows certain language items to be acquired while others are being overtly reinforced. many stories also contain natural repetition of key vocabular y and structures. this helps children to remember details, so they can gradually learn to anticipate what is about to happen next in the story. repetition also encourages participation in the narrative, ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○37 profileprofileprofileprofileprofile thereby providing a type of pattern practice in a meaningful context. this also helps them to produce summaries of the stories and report them to others. conclusions and implicationsconclusions and implicationsconclusions and implicationsconclusions and implicationsconclusions and implications regarding the results obtained at the end of the investigation, we can conclude that students used greetings, expressions, routines and answered simple questions because of the continuous repetition of the stor y-telling approach. at the moment, students are still unable to formulate a structured question. at the same time, we discovered that students greatly improved their listening, reading and writing skills; and their pronunciation is much more accurate now than at the beginning. their attitude towards english is very positive and two students even expressed repeatedly in their diaries that they would like more english classes. in order to help students with interrogative sentence structures, we suggest specific activities that focus on whquestions; for example: games and stories that include questions. bibliographybibliographybibliographybibliographybibliography ellis, g. and brewster, j. (1991). the storytelling handbook for primary teachers. london: penguin books. ellis, r. (1994). the study of second language acquisition. oxford: oup. rojas, l. (1997). los cuentos infantiles: una estrategia pedagógica en la enseñanza de los idiomas extranjeros. santa fe de bogotá: mimeo. take a closer look” spotlight on literacy. (1997). new york: macmillan/mcgraw hill.• profile 3.p65 ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ 15 profileprofileprofileprofileprofile i n the present article i describe my vision of what an english classroom should be like. for me, the vision is that of creating a communicative classroom. i define it as the space where participants (both learners and teachers) seek the learning of a foreign language bearing in mind specific objectives. i then point out its main characteristics. i conclude that the communicative classroom may facilitate learning because of its many advantages. intrintrintrintrintroductionoductionoductionoductionoduction there are many issues that affect the teaching of english as a foreign language for the public in general, and for the future professionals in this field in particular. among the most important are the roles of the student, the teacher, and the materials as well as the approach followed within the classroom and the curriculum. whether the teacher of english has clarity over the approach s/he follows in his/her class, the communicative english classroom: a fascinating quest maría claudia nietomaría claudia nietomaría claudia nietomaría claudia nietomaría claudia nieto foreign languages department, universidad nacional de colombia mcnietoc@007mundo.com s/he is certainly following a route that embraces a whole philosophy on teaching, learning principles and practice. the teaching of english has undergone many changes due to the great contributions in the field made by academics, researchers, and experienced teachers. it has been possible to see the move from a teacher-centred approach to a learnercentred one (block: 1994 and clarke: 1989), from a narrow focus on language as a formal system to the concept of competence by chomsky (1965), from a linguistic competence to a communicative competence proposed by hymes (1972). their contributions have helped to model new approaches to the teaching of english as a foreign language. definition and objectivedefinition and objectivedefinition and objectivedefinition and objectivedefinition and objective one of the emerging models is known as the communicative classroom. the communicative classroom is the space where the participants (learners and teachers) seek the learning and practice of a foreign language bearing in mind real purposes that give a true dimension to motivation the communicative classroom real purposes interaction authentic and varied materials competencies ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ 16profileprofileprofileprofileprofile the activities, tasks, and processes carried on in the classroom. the main objective of the communicative classroom is to provide the learner with the necessary tools and elements of thought for performing well in a foreign language. to do so, we need to take into consideration the language itself (linguistic performance), the functions of language (pragmatic competence), the ability to create coherent language in written as well as in spoken texts (discourse competence), the ability to cope in authentic communicative situations (strategic competence), and the ability to use units of speech together with facility (fluency). the communicative classroom is then the space where language is both received and produced. the curriculum of the communicative classroom must therefore reflect the real needs of students and how these are going to be settled. a lot of effort will be needed in order to reach the objectives proposed in the communicative classroom as it demands a lot of requirements many practitioners are not prepared or willing to follow. the language input in this type of approach takes into consideration the real needs of learners, the learning conditions, the context in which learning is taking place and the motivation present in each individual learner. the real needs are the reasons why the learner decides to study the foreign language. future professionals in the area of english teaching will certainly have clear the underlying reason for their studying of english as a foreign language: to have an excellent command of the target language as well as a deep knowledge of the cultures in which it operates, and its impact and importance in the society they are going to serve when they major in order to teach the language or to serve as vehicles of communication in very different arenas. the learning conditions refer to circumstances under which learners will be exposed to the foreign language. is the teacher prepared enough to deliver x course to a specific group? are learners going to be taught by native or non-native teachers? what type of materials do they have access to? what type of curriculum do learners depend on? will they have access to different kinds of media such as multimedia, internet, etc? will they have the possibility of crossing the barriers of the classroom and be able to have contact with the outside world? the communicative teacherthe communicative teacherthe communicative teacherthe communicative teacherthe communicative teacher the teacher is one of the most important learning factors in the learning-teaching context because s/he provides a lot of the input learners will receive. his/her personal teaching style will also make an impact on the learner. s/he may hinder or promote acquisition in learners in many different ways, depending also on their learning styles. in the communicative classroom, s/he takes many roles: providing and presenting new language, setting up activities, organizing material resources, guiding students in group work, encouraging contributions, monitoring activities, and diagnosing the further needs of students as established by hedge (2000). based on the varying number of roles assumed by the teacher in the communicative classroom, s/he does not remain at the front of the class but creates favourable circumstances for learners to become responsible for the activities developed, and in this way encouraging less dependency on him/her on the part of the learner. the teacher in the communicative classroom in conclusion must be very adaptable in order to fulfil the needs of learners and very creative and open so that they feel committed to do their best. ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ 17 profileprofileprofileprofileprofile the rthe rthe rthe rthe role of materialsole of materialsole of materialsole of materialsole of materials materials play an important role in the learning process as they are helping hands that may serve as guides and starting points for tasks and project works that seek to promote language learning. these include textbooks, in-house materials, multimedia material, brochures, newspapers, magazines, videos, documentaries, films, plane tickets, maps, leaflets, or any written and/or oral real piece of information. textbooks offer many benefits including a grammatical and functional framework which provides for the common needs of a group of learners as stated by o’neill (1982). however, textbooks are not the only resources teachers must use. allwright (1981) suggests that the use of textbook materials places emphasis on the teaching process perhaps at the expense of emphasis on the learning process. in the communicative classroom, the teacher must be very clear in what materials s/he is going to select and use in his/her class in order to attain the proposed objectives of the course. materials must be rich and varied in order to help the learners interact under many different circumstances in real life. as important as the materials are the types of activities promoted in the communicative classroom. examples include information-gap activities, reasoninggap activities, and opinion-gap activities. each gap activity attempts to create a real need on the learner, so s/he will be forced to contribute in a simulated but close to real situations. the colombian contextthe colombian contextthe colombian contextthe colombian contextthe colombian context the context refers to the social, educational, and local factors that affect or have an influence on the learner. our society as any other one is facing a growing need for professionals who are proficient in the english language so they will be able to fulfil their personal needs as well as those of the country. personal needs may take many forms: the simple desire for the acquisition of the language as a personal asset, the need to be able to communicate at a good level when travelling abroad, the requirement for a job application, the possibility of understanding a film without the dubbing, and so on. on an international level, the process of globalisation is exercising an enormous demand on people from all over the world to interact. that interaction has been carried out in english, which has become the lingua franca in the international arena. therefore, colombians must be ready to cope with this language in the best possible conditions to have equal opportunities. what does the above information mean for english teachers? on the one hand, it is one of the channels through which the personal needs of many people and the needs of the country may be satisfied. on the other hand, teachers must be prepared to contribute to the fulfilment of those goals. the english teacher has then the mission to empower his/ her students with the language and cultural competences that will enable them to perform well in the contexts of interaction they are dealing with. the communicative classroom may facilitate learning by exposing students to real situations, by providing authentic and varied materials, by promoting interactions that have real objectives, and by creating an atmosphere of confidence that will trigger students’ self-confidence and motivation. motivationmotivationmotivationmotivationmotivation motivation is the force that determines the impulse with which a learner arrives to the classroom and then the strength to carry on along the whole learning process. some people will be intrinsically motivated to be in the classroom as they have openly and honestly chosen to be there, while others haven’t still found a reason to be there. regardless of the level of motivation brought to class by learners, it is irrefutable that it goes hand in hand with successful learning. if learners are not motivated, the process is going to be tiresome for learners and teacher alike, and the end results will be disappointing. motivation is a highly complex phenomenon that deserves all the attention from language practitioners, whether learners arrive with it or whether they acquire it through classroom experiences. conclusionsconclusionsconclusionsconclusionsconclusions the communicative classroom aims at both the input and the output. the input refers to the learning process itself whereas the output implies the product obtained after the process has been carried out. the process must be rich in materials and supported by the practitioner. the output must then show the acquisitions and the reflections made by the learners. both are important and neither is neglected at the expense of the other. the communicative teacher adopts many roles, maybe the most important one being that of a source of empowerment that will permit his/her students to be at the centre of the process, and not only as individuals who receive knowledge but as creators of it. this entails a responsibility on the part of the learner to actively participate in the construction of his/ her learning inside and outside the classroom. in order to achieve the goals of the communicative class, the teacher is not alone for s/he can count on a wide range of materials (authentic among others) together with his/ her enthusiastic methodology and will to motivate the participants in the process. the colombian context is in need of teachers and methodologies that can contribute to the attainment of international standards that will ease the understanding of its citizens with the global community for business, friendship, co-operation, and all human interchanges that are part of people’s lives. the communicative classroom can greatly contribute to the empowerment students are in need of because of its many resources and vision of the teaching and learning processes. referencesreferencesreferencesreferencesreferences allwright, r.l. (1981). ‘what do we want teaching materials for’? elt journal. 36/1: 5-18. block, d. (1994). ‘a day in the life of a class: teacher/learner perceptions of task purpose in conflict.’ system. 22/4:473-86. clarke, d. (1989). ‘materials adaptation: why leave it all to the teacher?’ elt journal. 43/2: 133-41. chomsky, n. (1965). aspects of the theory of syntax. cambridge, mass.: mit press. hedge, t. (2000). teaching and learning in the language classroom. oxford: oxford university press. hymes, d.h. (1972). ‘on communicative competence’. in j.b. pride and j. holmes (eds.). sociolinguistics. harmondsworth: penguin. o’neill, r. (1982). ‘why use textbooks?’ elt journal. 36/2: 104-111. profile 3.p65 ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ 44profileprofileprofileprofileprofile i n this article the definition of writing as a means and as an end is analyzed in order to raise some concerns about the teaching of writing at different schools in general. from this definition i question other important issues that ultimately affect our students’ writing production. these have to deal with the use of writing in the mother language, writing activities in the textbooks, the realistic nature of the writing tasks, the other language skills input, and the production of texts. the article pretends to raise awareness in the teaching of writing by taking into account what is implied in the writing skill so teachers can be more attentive in the selection of written tasks for their students. writing is the most difficult language skill to master in both, the native language (l1) and the second/foreign language (l2). this is so because real effective writing requires that we be aware of a series of aspects essential to convey meaning: a high degree of accuracy to avoid ambiguity of meaning, the use of complex grammatical devices for focus and emphasis; a careful choice of vocabulary, grammatical patterns, and sentence structures to create a style which is appropriate to the eventual readers (hedge: 1988). besides the linguistic knowledge, cognitive and sociocultural (discourse and sociolinguistic knowledge) aspects also influence our capacity to produce good written texts. all this takes time, a good training in the writing process, lots of practice, and the writer’s intuition and skillful perception to materialize his/her thoughts on paper—if not an innate talent. we teachers of english in colombia usually deal more with the spoken language and feel challenged and threatened by the writing skill when we have to teach it. we rarely give much thought to the types of writing activities we use in the classroom and pretend to have our students involved in them without considering what underlies these activities. we even fear writing for our own purposes and this comes mostly from previous negative experiences in the process of l1 and l2 writing when we were in elementary and/or high school or as undergraduate students at university. in many occasions, this skill was taken for granted or assumed as something acquired in previous courses; therefore, there was seldom any real formal teaching of the process of writing. as many of us did not receive any formal training in this process in our native language, spanish, writing processes and expertise in this skill in spanish is often limited. this has serious implications for the process of writing in l2, since a nonexistent experience in l1 results in poor or no transfer of basic concepts to l2—as happens with the mechanics of writing, the organization of texts, the use of accurate vocabular y, the coordination of ideas, and other related issues. many teachers and students have usually experienced a painful process conducted under threatening conditions. some issues for the teaching of writing claudia helena lombanaclaudia helena lombanaclaudia helena lombanaclaudia helena lombanaclaudia helena lombana foreign languages departement, universidad nacional de colombia klauxis@hotmail.com ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ 45 profileprofileprofileprofileprofile the task of writing becomes even more dramatic when we have to teach it in english: we feel anxious and threatened due to little training in both, our own writing process and teaching strategies in this skill. this article, then, addresses the definition of writing and the different concerns that arise from this definition, so colombian teachers of english at different schools can be aware —and reminded—of what the writing skill implies in order to make this process more enjoyable for both, teachers and students. what is writing?what is writing?what is writing?what is writing?what is writing? the concept of writing has been widely discussed by many researchers and there is wide information on the topic. for the purpose of this article, i will briefly make reference to the differences between the spoken and the written language. then, i will concentrate more on the definition of writing as a means and as an end. as in speaking, the writing ability draws on many of the same linguistic resources, but relies on distinctly different mental processes. while linguists and other scholars have held that speech is primary and writing is a reflection of spoken language, educators have contended that the written language is more correct than the spoken language. recent studies, however, have tended to reconcile both views. “neither oral nor written language is inherently superior to the other, but oral and written texts do vary across a number of dimensions, including (but not limited to) textual features, socicultural norms and patterns of use, and the cognitive processes involved in text production and comprehension” (cushing weige: 2002, 15). moreover, “speaking and writing are frequently used in different settings, for different reasons, and to meet different communicative goals” (ibid: p. 16). one important difference between the spoken and the written language is the fact that the former is an innate phenomenon worldwide. unless a person is physically impaired, most human beings have the innate ability to acquire a language. this does not happen with writing, which is an academic skill learned at school and highly regarded in educational settings. although the modern world needs citizens who are functionally literate, so they can perform a series of daily activities where writing is necessary—filling out forms, writing correspondence, notes, reports, shopping lists, e-mails, etc.—, the type of elaborate writing indispensable in the academic world is seldom used. that is, out of the academic circle, most people’s daily routines do not demand the writing of elaborate descriptions, narratives, or essays, for example. it is important to underline the two types of settings mentioned above because according to the purpose of writing in each setting, the writing task varies, and so does the teaching of it. therefore, writing can be defined as a means or as an end. as a means, writing is seen as a form of learning (raimes: 1983), as a support skill in language learning (rivers: 1981), or as a testing device to diagnose grammar or comprehension errors. in this way, writing is the tool which enables the student to master the other language skills and allows the teacher to evaluate student’s progress and performance. hence, writing becomes the means by which students will learn vocabulary, grammatical forms and will carry out a series of other activities that involve the speaking, listening and reading skills. this is, writing is an important tool in the classroom for consolidation learning in other skill areas as well as knowledge of different subjects, and provides extra activities ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ 46profileprofileprofileprofileprofile in the classroom. then writing as a means rather than an end can include grammatical exercises, dictation, completion, cloze exercises, note taking, copying and reproduction of other texts, and exercises to learn vocabulary. on the other hand, writing as an end is an expressive form that deals with the text discourse and not merely the writing of isolated words, phrases, and sentences as in the other type. writing as an end takes two types according to its purpose: 1) pragmatic communication, and 2) creative writing. the first one includes the writing of informal and formal letters, reports, résumés, reviews, concrete descriptions, and other forms of writing connected with everyday affairs. in the second type, creative writing, a higher level of language manipulation and use is demanded out of both the teacher and the student in order to produce texts that make use of literar y devices: narratives, descriptions, essays and academic writing in general. this type of writing requires and implies a sort of fine language use and skillful linguistic competence which are seldom acquired in high school. moreover, “a minority of speakers of any language acquire the skill of writing with any degree of finesse, and then only after years of training in school and [extensive] practice out of school” (rivers: 1981, 291) people learn to manipulate the skill at ease. many people do not continue using this type of writing after completion of school or university studies, unless they get involved in an academic career that demands highly expressive writing. creative writing also implies a cognitive activity—planning, translating, reviewing, text interpretation, reflection and text production (writing models by hayes and floyer: 1980; and hayes: 1996 in cushing weigle: 2002)— and is usually easier for teachers and students who have an innate talent in the skill. people who have little or no talent for this skill usually find it painful, and even if they are taught how to produce a good essay, for example, the results are not always very satisfactory. this type of writing is not even achieved in university elective english courses, since it demands a higher artistic expression and creative involvement, being more the concern of bilingual and university english language programs. if we take a deeper look at the production of written texts in creative writing, we can also find that this activity goes beyond the fact of producing well written grammatical sentences, vocabulary and rhetorical devices. besides the linguistic and cognitive aspects involved in this activity, social and cultural issues also count in successful writing. as a cultural phenomenon, writing is influenced by sociocultural aspects that determine the way the discourse is organized thus creating distinctive styles in the way students from different cultures approach and produce pieces of writing. the discourse in english, for example, “can be described as a straight line” while the spanish one tends to be wordy, lengthy and the written text is usually full of digressions. this is influenced by our culture which is usually oriented to show ostentation of extensive knowledge on a subject. “spanish writers prefer lengthy introductions, and instead of focusing narrowly on the main ideas of an essay, as in english, spanish writers make use of digressions and asides to show their breadth of knowledge on the topic” (collado: 1981; cited in cushing weigle: 2002, 21). ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ 47 profileprofileprofileprofileprofile referring now to pragmatic writing—which is the most common type taught and practiced at high schools and universities—this type also needs some sparks of creativity and talent, but is not as demanding as the written production for creative writing. essay writing for example, is a type of artistic expression of creative involvement which is more difficult and demanding than the writing of an informal or formal letter in pragmatic writing. taking into account all the above, and considering the fruitless and bitter results of writing practices of the expressive type at different institutions, the next reflections on realistic writing in both l1 and l2 should be made in order to assess the type of writing activities teachers are introducing in the classroom. 1. is the teaching of writing focused1. is the teaching of writing focused1. is the teaching of writing focused1. is the teaching of writing focused1. is the teaching of writing focused on real experience?on real experience?on real experience?on real experience?on real experience? before deciding on the type of writing we want our students to perform in or out of class, we should ask ourselves several questions. 1.1 how much writing do the students1.1 how much writing do the students1.1 how much writing do the students1.1 how much writing do the students1.1 how much writing do the students do in their native language and what dodo in their native language and what dodo in their native language and what dodo in their native language and what dodo in their native language and what do they write about?they write about?they write about?they write about?they write about? it is necessary to consider that by the time six-year olds start their elementary schools; their l1 has a very wide repertoire from which they can draw experiences and aspects that they are able to refer to by using a very fluent communicative speech. the students then start learning the basics of writing through the alphabet and to produce short sentences. throughout elementary school, the students acquire knowledge in the different subjects and writing is the means by which they take notes, emphasize learning and, in the majority of the cases are tested. for the english language teacher it is essential to establish a connection with the other spanish speaking teachers in order to know what type of real instruction in writing is given in their spanish classes and content based courses, how the written skill has been taught, the mechanics, the grammatical structures and the type of texts that the students have been or are producing in their native language. students should be taught all the above before facing the writing skill in l2. in this way, elementary students would be able to transfer the basic concepts they have learned in l1 to l2 and the continuous progress in l2 writing could be enhanced through more advanced grades in high school. moreover, it is indispensable to know that the students in elementary school will not be able to produce full texts in l2, but will be exposed to the spelling of english words and the writing of phrases and short sentences. in other words, the written code is used in extra activities to emphasize the other language skills rather than using expressive writing in full texts. high school students, on the other hand, start producing texts of several kinds. students are usually exposed to some sort of expressive writing: letters, reports, note taking, short paragraphs, dialogues, guided and free compositions, narratives and descriptions. as with the elementary school students, the teacher should be aware of the previous training students have had in their l1 writing process. one way to do this could be by checking on the stages of writing the students usually have to go through: 1) notation: copying chunks of text from a text, reproducing parts of a text which has been read or heard. taking notes makes part of sensitizing students to a new ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ 48profileprofileprofileprofileprofile phonological system; 2) writing practice: doing grammatical exercises, writing simple dialogues, uncomplicated translation exercises, dictation and cloze procedure. students move form guided exercises (structures, vocabulary, sentences are expanded and transformed) usually for the preparation of oral activities such as reports and dramatizations; and 3) pragmatic writing: writing instructions, reports, résumés, concrete narratives and descriptions and correspondence connected with everyday affairs (rivers: 1981). this third stage would probably fit more accurately in 10th and 11th grades. free creative writing at a more advanced level in high school demands a higher students’ oral expression and more advanced receptive skills (reading and listening). if the students do not have a high level in the other skills, facing free creative writing can end up in the production of hybrid language that makes students believe they are writing acceptably, but what they are indeed producing are , as rivers says, “monstrosities.” “to be sure [of acceptable results], attempts at writing creatively can and should be encouraged from an early stage, so long as students have a clear realization of the limitations of knowledge within which they are composing” (rivers: 1981, 297). the ability of the l2 teacher to guide the student through this task successfully also becomes a key aspect. he/she should be able to sense how much his/ her students are capable of producing and judge the textbook activities. the second question here deals with this aspect. 1.2 what type of writing activities do1.2 what type of writing activities do1.2 what type of writing activities do1.2 what type of writing activities do1.2 what type of writing activities do the english textbooks include? how muchthe english textbooks include? how muchthe english textbooks include? how muchthe english textbooks include? how muchthe english textbooks include? how much of these activities have the studentsof these activities have the studentsof these activities have the studentsof these activities have the studentsof these activities have the students practiced in their native language?practiced in their native language?practiced in their native language?practiced in their native language?practiced in their native language? one aspect foreign language teachers should know about their students’ writing is the extent of practice students have had in l1 in the same type of written activities offered in the english textbook. as intended by most english textbooks, picture description, the narrative of a story or a movie, a written report about a graded reader, an informal or formal letter, all these types of writing activities are usually intended to test the knowledge of l2 with the purpose of making students rehearse what is expected from them especially in the eventual case of being tested internationally in their l2 proficiency. we have to remember that english textbooks are what english writers in their own experience expect students to produce in l2. but how well prepared are our students to do the same type of writing activities in our native language? let us take for example the activity of picture description, which is one favorite activity in most textbooks. how do your students describe pictures of people and landscapes, for example, in spanish? i do not think this is a typical activity in the spanish class, so how are the students going to face this type of written activity if they have seldom or never done it in l1. it is then the task of the l2 teacher to check on students’ capacity to generalize and to note the essentials in a picture, so they can do this activity with some décor. also, how much vocabulary does the student know in order to make reference to the parts of the picture? how about the grammar, the mechanics, the style and the organization of the text? once again, a student who makes a very good description of a photograph in spanish will be able to transfer some cognitive knowledge into english. this, added to an intermediate proficiency in l2 might result in a very good piece of free creative writing. nevertheless, one should question how realistic this activity is and if it is really useful in our daily lives, which leads us to our third question. ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ 49 profileprofileprofileprofileprofile 1.3 how many of these activities will1.3 how many of these activities will1.3 how many of these activities will1.3 how many of these activities will1.3 how many of these activities will be of realistic use in their future lives?be of realistic use in their future lives?be of realistic use in their future lives?be of realistic use in their future lives?be of realistic use in their future lives? one motivating factor is to realize how down to earth the writing activities offered in the textbook are. since the l2 teacher is dealing with activities that are most of the time culturally embedded, and that according to the authors might be of interest to the students, the teacher could in principle ask his/her students how motivating these tasks are and consider if they are really useful for the students’ particular interest. filling out forms, writing letters, shopping lists, reports, daily agendas, are some examples of the pragmatic writing most adults have to do in their daily lives in l1, for example. the writing of literary descriptions, narratives, essays, and more creative language is seldom used out of school in the native language. now, how about the l2 writing experience for most people in their daily lives? i question the relevance of the teaching of writing to most students with the rhetorical devices that are necessary to function in an academic world. the problem here is to see the purpose of the writing skill and how to teach it in such a way that the writing tasks become realistic and relevant. according to byrne (1988), the use of l2 “texts as a basic practice format… can make the writing activities more meaningful for the students and thereby increase their motivation to write well. the text provides a setting within which they can practise, for example, sentence completion, sentence combination, paragraph construction, etc. in relation to longer stretches of discourse. in this way they can see not only why they are writing but also write in a manner appropriate to the communicative goal of the text (p. 25). students could then be helped “by making writing tasks more realistic, by relating practice to a specific purpose instead of asking [students] to write simply for the sake of writing” (byrne: 1988, 25). teachers could explore more opportunities in order to integrate the writing activity with the other language skills. “writing tends to get relegated to the level of exercises partly because it is treated as a compendium to the lesson rather than a s worthwhile learning activity in itself. while it is convenient …to be able to set written work as homework and while writing may not come very high on the list of priorities, this does not mean that it cannot take its place as part of a natural sequence of learning activities” (ibid: p. 25). using texts is only one way to make the writing task more realistic. other forms to make writing more realistic and relevant include 1) the identification of some forms of writing which are likely to be relevant to the learners’ needs: institutional communication (letters written to the president of the school asking for school facilities, for example), communication among friends (invitation to events such as birthday parties, lectures, etc.), notes (apologies, warnings, etc.), and stories and narratives at fairly basic and intermediate levels (byrne: 1988). this type of production deserves some language input that is often taken for granted when students are asked to write “compositions.” therefore, l2 language exposure should be considered. 4. how much input and practice have4. how much input and practice have4. how much input and practice have4. how much input and practice have4. how much input and practice have you pryou pryou pryou pryou provided before facing the writingovided before facing the writingovided before facing the writingovided before facing the writingovided before facing the writing activities?activities?activities?activities?activities? one common characteristic in most compositions produced by students without the appropriate guidance is the “hybrid” type ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ 50profileprofileprofileprofileprofile of writing that is common among nonnative speakers—and which was mentioned previously. teachers usually complain about the low quality of written products they get from their students. what many of us have not realized is that oral production takes time and varies from one student to another, and that a good oral production can aid the written one. also the two receptive skills of listening and reading expose the non-native speaker to l2 examples, providing good basis for the speaking and writing skills. plenty of exposure to the l2 language through listening, reading and reinforcement of oral practice, a good guidance from the teacher emphasizing aspects of language, and using texts as linguistic models to copy and produce, can help the teacher and the students in the writing task. we should not expect our students to produce good pieces of writing before some internalization of vocabular y, grammatical structures, the mechanics of language, has taken place through the many exercises practiced in writing as a means of communication. once students have sufficiently dealt with such exercises, they can be introduced to the writing of short texts, which is in fact, what writing is about. 5. going beyond the pr5. going beyond the pr5. going beyond the pr5. going beyond the pr5. going beyond the production ofoduction ofoduction ofoduction ofoduction of right sentences: how are we dealing withright sentences: how are we dealing withright sentences: how are we dealing withright sentences: how are we dealing withright sentences: how are we dealing with the prthe prthe prthe prthe production of eoduction of eoduction of eoduction of eoduction of expressive texpressive texpressive texpressive texpressive texts?xts?xts?xts?xts? if we consider that successful writing goes beyond the ability to produce clear and correct sentences, our role as teachers demands a more serious involvement. we then teach to build communicative potential that can help the students to write whole texts which form connected, contextualized and appropriate pieces of communication (hedge: 1988). if this is really what we want to teach, then the teaching of writing will have to take into account the aspects of expressive writing in order to enable students to communicate ideas clearly, fluently and effectively. although creative writing demands a great command of the language, this does not mean that we can not use this type of writing at more basic and intermediate levels. this could be done only if students have previously worked the language in the other language skills and start out with a very good grasp of vocabulary and structures in l2. the more the students have successfully used writing in grammatical exercises, copying, reproduction, dictation purposes, the better chances they will have in the development of their expressive writing. as said before, appropriate input and manipulation of the other skills will also help them in the writing process, especially reading. also, we have to pay attention to the individual aspects of writing which involve working memory, motivation and affect, cognitive processes and long-term memory (hayes’ model, in cushing weigle: 2002), besides other sociocultural factors. once again, the teacher has to understand the difference between the conception of writing as a means, and expressive writing as an end, which is the most difficult one to teach and produce. teaching writing at public schools becomes particularly more difficult when the social context where english is taught does not reinforce the input of the other skills given in the classroom. the only exposure to l2 in most occasions is the classroom, rendering the experience subjected to the artificial situation of the classroom, thus making the learning of l2 even more difficult. the pressure of a monolingual spanish environment affects the instruction in l2 as well as students’ performance, so we have to provide for healthy l2 environments that can make the learning experience as vivid and real ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ 51 profileprofileprofileprofileprofile as possible: a friendly classroom where anxiety levels are low and assessment is used in order to learn and not for a grade. conclusionconclusionconclusionconclusionconclusion what this article intended to do was to explore the concept of writing which deals directly with the type of writing activities we develop in our classes. writing, on one side, is a means of instruction and can help the students to learn the other skills. however, writing as an end implies more skillful training, a high proficiency and creativity on the part of the teacher. as for the students, they could write better compositions in l2 (expressive writing) after being extensively exposed to exercises in copying, note-taking, grammatical structure training, combination of sentences, paragraph structure, analysis of texts, etc. and after having developed a higher proficiency in the oral, reading and listening skills—working memory is required. it would be advisable not to expose students directly to free writing in l2 at once, but prompt guidance in the stages of writing. well structured activities would also help students to enhance l2 compositions and render the teacher’s activity more productive and well focused. successful writing also depends on the practice students have had in their native language so they can be able to identify certain concepts and practicalities of the process of writing (mechanics, organization and coherence) into l2. one last concern deals with the triggering factor in writing: how motivating the textbook activities or the teacher’s writing tasks are for the students and how practical the writing practice is. although the writing skill is the most difficult to learn and master in l2, we have to remember that as native speakers of spanish (l1) our writing in our own language is often deficient too and that we tend to have a more oral oriented communication. therefore, handling writing in l2 should be strategic and realistic. referencesreferencesreferencesreferencesreferences byrne, d. (1988). teaching writing skills. london: longman uk. cushing weigle, s. (2002). assessing writing. us/uk: cambridge university press. hedge, t. (1998). (10th impression). writing. oxford: oxford university. r aimes, a. (1983). techniques in teaching writing. ny: oxford university. rivers, w. (1981) (2nd ed.). the writing skill. teaching foreign language skills. chicago: university of chicago. profile profile no. 7dic 5.p65 ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○5 profileprofileprofileprofileprofile editorial introduction “…much work has been done in identifying the distinctive characteristics and assumptions of teacher research, arguing strongly for the contributions that teacher knowledge can make to the educational community of both practitioners and academic researchers”.1 i am very pleased to start the presentation of the seventh issue of our journal by sharing with all of you our latest achievement: the indexation of profile in publindex – colciencias, in category b. with this, the national indexing system for colombian journals acknowledges our scientific and editorial quality as well as the visibility of our publication. once more, i should express my gratitude to the advisory and editorial committees as well as to my working team, whose contributions were vital to achieving that goal. in our search for reviewers from different parts of the world, i am proud to welcome professors stephen bax (canterbury christ church university college, uk), andy kirkpatrick (university of hong kong, hong kong institute of education), terence lamb (university of sheffield, england), susan noffke (university of illinois at urbana champaign, usa), and mark pegrum (the university of western australia). i am sure our journal will gain a great deal with the contributions of the new members of the advisory board. their expertise in language teaching, teacher education, applied linguistics, and research will surely help us monitor the quality of our publication and make it possible to have voices of experienced and novice teachers in future editions. i should also thank rocío monguí and angela corredor, who have participated as teacher educators in the in-service programmes we have run in the last two years in our university. their guidance to encourage some schoolteachers to publish their papers in this number has been really useful. this issue has evidenced the increased interest our publication has sparked throughout the seven years of existence. more than twenty-five articles received for this issue went through the reviewing process and, in the end, thirteen were recommended for publication. i am sure you will find them interesting and, most likely, applicable to your teaching situations. we open this number with three articles based on projects carried out by teacher-researchers in public schools in bogotá. in the first one we read about the designing of a foreign language curriculum which involved a group of 1 noffke, s. (1994). action research: towards the next generation. educational action research, 2(1), 9-21. ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ 6 profile profile profile profile profile elementary and high school teachers interested in improving the english-learning process at a technical school. then we get acquainted with the development of a small-scale research project implemented in the area of materials assessment and which arrived at determining the criteria a group of fourth graders used when assessing the worksheets provided by the teacher in the english class. on the other hand, the third article of the first section of this issue informs us of the use of songs as an alternative to encouraging secondary-school students to communicate orally in large classes –a challenge many teachers face nowadays. connected to the same topic of materials in english language teaching, the fourth article shows that representations of the anglo-american culture are still favoured in elt textbooks but that, in most cases, they have been transformed into “international” attitudes. as a result of critical discourse analyses done on textbooks in use in argentina, the author pinpoints representations of englishspeaking cultures found in current textbooks and which open to debate the apparent fairness of english as an international language. the next article, based on a brazilian context, focuses on the use of learner corpora as a means to investigate the usage of modals in the writing of advanced efl (english as a foreign language) learners studying at private language schools. the following two articles correspond to the area of teacher education. an interpretive research that involved language student-teachers from a public university in brazil tells us how language student-teachers construct their knowledge about language teaching and learning during pre-service teacher education. then we can find a report on a study regarding materials use in a teacher preparation programme in colombia and its effectiveness in the practicum. the author also proposes actions to include in local and national teacher education programmes. we have promoted the publication of papers by new teacher-researchers. this time we can learn about two studies conducted in colombian teaching contexts. the first one aimed at detecting the learning styles secondary school students with low academic performance used when learning english. findings provided an account of the role learning styles played in the learning process as well as the factors that allowed students to explore their styles. the second paper refers to a study which explored the development of children’s oral communication in english and the way in which the activities and the teacher’s roles created or expanded students’ opportunities for learning. the third section of our journal sheds light on a diverse range of issues teachers and teacher-educators often reflect upon or attempt to explore in our daily work. we begin with a paper on motivation. a framework to understand motivation in the tesol (teaching english to speakers of other languages) field gathers approaches used to conceptualise motivation and then draws on some practical and research implications for second or foreign language learning. the controversy over whether or not the learner’s mother tongue plays a positive role in the foreign/second language learning-teaching context constitutes the core of the following article. after revising the stances of language-oriented ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○7 profileprofileprofileprofileprofile theorists, the author presents some suggestions as to when and how learners’ native language can be capitalised on in the process of learning another language. the last two articles are related to teachers’ conceptualisation concerning educational change and pedagogical knowledge. a colombian educator and his student-teacher analyse the relationship among the concepts of change, transformation, and innovation concerning pedagogical knowledge. to do so, they resort to theoretical information from specialised sources and practical experiences that have taken the shape of thesis and monograph projects. afterwards, an australian teacher reflects upon some of the problem scenarios she faced as an efl teacher in pursuit of professional development and the dilemma over assumed contemporary teaching practices until finding a solution close at hand: using one’s own concurrent language learning experiences to inform others of one’s beliefs about teaching and learning. lastly, i should point out that facing today’s challenge of strengthening english proficiency in all educational levels poses key issues in language teaching and teacher education as well as highlights the need to revise how we teach english, in which circumstances, and for what real purposes. likewise, it is necessary to know with whom we can work to help learners achieve higher proficiency levels and to take advantage of what has been investigated vis-à-vis the teaching profession. all of these and other issues need serious studies and dissemination through publishing. thus, i extend the invitation to read this issue and to send your contributions to our eighth number. melba libia cármelba libia cármelba libia cármelba libia cármelba libia cárdenas beltrándenas beltrándenas beltrándenas beltrándenas beltrán journal editor profile 4 2003.p65 ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ 18profileprofileprofileprofileprofile communicative language teaching has long been controversial due to its lack of explicit grammar instruction. focus on form instruction (long, 1991), however, puts communication as the centerpiece of instruction, but addresses form on a need-toknow-basis; thus, focus on form instruction claims to balance communication and grammar. moreover, the concept of uptake (lyster and ranta, 1997; ellis, basturkmen, and loewen, 2001), or the process by which learners respond to correction initiated by teachers and/or other learners, has been used to demonstrate that focus on form instruction, and thus by extension, clt, gives sufficient attention to grammar. however, in this article, i will show that the concept of uptake is problematic, and demonstrate that focus on form instruction does not offer a feasible way of addressing grammar in efl classrooms. yet, before showing the technique’s inadequacy, i will highlight selected aspects of focus on form instruction and uptake research. kkkkkey wey wey wey wey wororororordsdsdsdsds: english-grammar-teaching-evaluation, second language acquisitionteaching, grammar instruction. la enseñanza comunicativa del lenguaje ha sido muy controversial debido no sólo a la carencia explícita de la enseñanza de la gramática, sino también a la carencia tangible para evaluar si los estudiantes han adquirido o no ciertas formas gramaticales. el enfoque de la forma (long, l991), sin embargo, ubica la comunicación como pieza principal de enseñanza, pero a la vez enfatiza en la enseñanza de la forma como parte importante que todo estudiante necesita saber. algunos autores han señalado la importancia de tener un balance entre la comunicación y la enseñanza explícita de la gramática. esto se debe en gran parte, al concepto de ‘uptake’ que ha sido usado para demostrar que el enfoque en la enseñanza de la forma y, por extensión el enfoque en la enseñanza comunicativa del lenguaje, facilitan la atención a la gramática. sin embargo, el concepto de ‘uptake’ es teórica y prácticamente problemático y demuestra que el enfoque de la enseñanza en la forma no es un camino viable para enseñar gramática en salones donde el inglés se enseña como idioma extranjero. mi propósito en este artículo es: (1) resumir las investigaciones concernientes a la enseñanza de la �� ��������!�������"�������#�$������ ��������������%������������������� nuevos rótulos para viejos problemas: la gramática en la enseñanza del lenguajenuevos rótulos para viejos problemas: la gramática en la enseñanza del lenguajenuevos rótulos para viejos problemas: la gramática en la enseñanza del lenguajenuevos rótulos para viejos problemas: la gramática en la enseñanza del lenguajenuevos rótulos para viejos problemas: la gramática en la enseñanza del lenguaje alealealealealexander pxander pxander pxander pxander poole, ph. doole, ph. doole, ph. doole, ph. doole, ph. d ***** western kentucky university, usa alex.poole@wku.edu * drdrdrdrdr. ale. ale. ale. ale. alexander pxander pxander pxander pxander poole oole oole oole oole is an assistant professor of english at western kentucky university, usa. his interests include focus on form instruction, world englishes, and spanish-english bilingualism. ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ 19 profileprofileprofileprofileprofile forma y ‘uptake’; (2) debatir que ‘uptake’ y la enseñanza en la forma no son elementos suficientes para aprender inglés como idioma extranjero ya que es muy difícil prestar atención a la gramática. palabras claves:palabras claves:palabras claves:palabras claves:palabras claves: inglés-gramática-enseñanza-evaluación, adquisición de una segunda lengua-enseñanza, gramática-instrucción introductionintroductionintroductionintroductionintroduction behind the closed doors of facultymeetings and within the pages ofacademic journals, efl researchers and teachers have often complained that communicative language teaching insufficiently addresses grammar and overemphasizes communication. however, long (1991) and long and robinson (1998) claim that focus on form instruction alleviates this problem by addressing grammar when it is problematic, thereby catering to learners’ individual needs. notably, the concept of uptake (lyster and ranta, 1997; ellis, basturkmen, and loewen, 2001), in its various interpretations, has been used to support long (1991) and long and robinson’s (1998) claims. however, the concept of uptake rests on tenuous theoretical grounds. uptake also reveals that focus on form instruction results in very little attention to grammar, in addition to being a mode of instruction that makes unrealistic logistical and linguistic demands on efl teachers and students. communiccommuniccommuniccommuniccommunic aaaaat i v e lt i v e lt i v e lt i v e lt i v e l a n g u a g ea n g u a g ea n g u a g ea n g u a g ea n g u a g e teaching: concepts and criticismsteaching: concepts and criticismsteaching: concepts and criticismsteaching: concepts and criticismsteaching: concepts and criticisms in efl settings, the credibility of communicative language teaching has long suffered because of its amorphous nature; that is, communicative language teaching has encapsulated anything from a total emphasis on ‘authentic’ communication to occasional classroom practice. while most efl teachers use—and most of the time, endorse—the latter, the former has been looked upon skeptically by efl professionals (see brown, 1994; 2000, and celce-murcia, britton, and godwin, 1996 for reviews of communicative language teaching), even though some of the more radical interpretations of communicative teaching, such as the natural approach (terrell and krashen, 1983), are presented in relatively straightforward and unambiguous terms. the reasons for this skepticism are, however, quite understandable: the native-like competency; purely communicative language teaching demands of teachers; the high degree of motivation and autonomy that it requires of students; the prerequisite of having access to authentic materials, such as newspapers, magazines, textbooks, video, and other expensive audio-visual materials, have all made communicative language teaching something that many efl professionals have felt hesitant about using. in addition, as a north american english language specialist who has taught both in the united states and abroad, i have long wondered whether or not clt, which has traditionally been exported from the native-speaking world (united states, great britain, canada, australia, new zealand, etc.) to efl (english as a foreign language) countries, is theoretically sound enough to replace more non-communicative, yet predictable approaches. moreover, it has concerned some that such an individualistic approach to language teaching infringes upon other cultures’ interpretations of authority and ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ 20profileprofileprofileprofileprofile respect for the teachers’ knowledge and tutelage (see li, 1998 for a thorough review of the cultural difficulties of clt in elf settings). however, my greatest concern—and that of many efl professionals and colleagues i have corresponded with in colombia, peru, russia, israel, and italy, to name a few—is that this “strong” version of clt (littlewood, 1981) places little emphasis on the explicit teaching and testing of grammar. some have even claimed that explicit grammar instruction is of little use and thus both instruction and testing should solely focus on language use (terrell and krashen, 1983). nevertheless, such beliefs often run contrary to many efl teachers’ intuition and classroom experience, which more often than not, tell them that not only do students need and want significant amounts of grammar instruction, but also that their acquisition of grammar must be periodically evaluated. fffffocus on focus on focus on focus on focus on form instruction: an overorm instruction: an overorm instruction: an overorm instruction: an overorm instruction: an over viewviewviewviewview some, however, have proposed solutions to this perceived lack of concern that communicative language teaching has for grammar. in a series of publications, long (1991) and long and robinson (1998), for instance, have promoted the concept of focus on form instruction. here, form –which includes not only grammar, but also lexical usage– is not the center of classroom lessons; instead, communicative tasks are carried out by learners. however, form is focused on by both teachers and learners, but only on a need-to-know-basis. better put, focus on form instruction ‘overtly draws students’ attention to linguistic elements as they arise incidentally in lessons whose overriding focus is on meaning or communication’ (pp. 45-46). long and robinson (1998) assert that such an approach steers clear of the other two instructional options: focus on forms and focus on meaning. the former is seen in traditional approaches such as grammar translation and the audiolingual method, in which form is the object of the lesson, rather than a tool to communicate more effectively; focus on meaning, in contrast, is seen in methods such as terrell and krashen’s (1983) natural approach, which expects that grammar will be acquired incidentally, and therefore makes no provision for explicit grammar instruction. an example of focus on form instruction could involve intermediate-level university students role-playing a telephone conversation to distant cousins living in the united states while working in dyads. the teacher notices that one of the students is frequently making an error with the thirdperson singular. the teacher could then opt to stop the students, explain the error, and follow it with an example. likewise, if the learner’s partner noticed such an error, he/ she could also engage in correction and modeling. uptakuptakuptakuptakuptake: ke: ke: ke: ke: key concepts and studiesey concepts and studiesey concepts and studiesey concepts and studiesey concepts and studies in short, focus on form instruction (long, 1991; long and robinson, 1998) has some appeal for efl teachers due to the middle ground it proposes. however, as opposed to other communicative approaches, a method to estimate students’ learning progress has evolved that justifies focus on form instruction’s utility. this method of measurement is known as uptake. while this concept has become popular within the last decade, its definition has passed through many metamorphoses. in fact, its roots go back to the early 1980s when allwright (1984) referred to it as a method in which students would retrospectively describe what they had learned at some stage of a lesson. however, lyster and ranta (1997) reengineered the term to pertain to how students react to ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ 21 profileprofileprofileprofileprofile corrective teacher feedback; in other words, the responses students generate when their teachers point out their grammatical and lexical errors. more specifically, they claim that uptake, “…refers to a student’s utterance that immediately follows the teacher’s feedback and that constitutes a reaction in some way to the teacher’s intention to draw attention to some aspect of the student’s initial appearance…” (pp. 49). an example of uptake could include a student using the past tense when they should be using the present tense while answering a teacher’s question. the teacher could elect to correct the error and explain the correct form. the actual uptake portion would occur with the student repeating or reformulating their original utterance using the correct form. ellis, basturkmen, and loewen (2001) adjusted the definition by claiming that instead of being teacher-initiated, uptake is a spontaneous and student-initiated phenomenon. in addition, while uptake includes correction, they expanded it to include situations in which “learners themselves preempt attention to a linguistic feature (e.g., by asking a question), thus eliciting not a teacher feedback move but a teacher response move” (pp. 286). on a theoretical level, lyster and ranta (1997) and ellis, basturkmen and loewen (2001) claim that there are strong reasons to believe that uptake is facilitative of l2 acquisition. first of all, swain, (1985, 1995) in her comprehensible output hypothesis, posits that actual l2 use forces learners to analyze the form-function relationship of l2 items. such analysis is particularly helpful for those forms with which learners frequently commit errors. likewise, lyster and ranta (1997) assert that uptake gives students practice opportunities that help students automatize the forms’ correct usage—something that most teachers desire. regardless of the justification used, both of the latter types of uptake are cited as strong support for the utility of focus on form instruction. not surprisingly, studies of teacher/student uptake claim to show that focus on form effectively addresses grammar. using elementary school students in a beginning french immersion program in canada, lyster and ranta (1997), for example, found that the majority of uptake occurred when teachers intentionally elicited certain forms and when they requested clarification from students. in addition, lyster (1998) discovered that recasts of 23% of all errors were subsequently used correctly by learners. finally, ellis, basturkmen, and loewen (2001) found that learners engaged in a high rate of uptake in both student-initiated questions (78.6%) and teacher corrective feedback (26.8%). significantly, learners successfully engaged in meaning-centered uptake 70.8% of the time, while they engaged in form-based uptake at the rate of 75.6%. u p t a ku p t a ku p t a ku p t a ku p t a k e : t h e o r e t i c a l a n d p r a c t i c a le : t h e o r e t i c a l a n d p r a c t i c a le : t h e o r e t i c a l a n d p r a c t i c a le : t h e o r e t i c a l a n d p r a c t i c a le : t h e o r e t i c a l a n d p r a c t i c a l problemsproblemsproblemsproblemsproblems the results of these studies, accompanied by theoretical arguments —as put forth by lyster and ranta (1997) and ellis, basturkmen, and loewen (2001)– suggest that uptake has revealed that focus on form instruction addresses sufficient amounts of grammar. however, there are many theoretical and practical problems with uptake that reveal that it falls short of demonstrating that focus on form instruction promotes l2 grammatical acquisition. more problematic, studies of uptake show that focus on form instruction gives minimal attention to grammar. first of all, lyster and ranta (1997) and ellis, basturkmen, and loewen (2001) acknowledge that simple uptake alone is no guarantee that ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ 22profileprofileprofileprofileprofile acquisition has occurred. seeing as though the concept of ‘acquiring’ has long been unsuccessfully debated, it is not realistic for these studies to lay claim to solving this problem (see mitchell and myles, 1998 for a discussion of learning vs. acquisition). however, they claim that swain’s (1985, 1995) comprehensible output hypothesis is strong support of the presence of acquisition. however, if simple output were enough, then there wouldn’t be learners who, in spite of years of exposure to english and active engagement with fluent speakers, still have fossilized and non-target like grammar (see mitchell & myles, 1998 for a review of fossilization). thus, using the grammatical form correctly once or twice may not have a significant impact of learners’ acquisition of it. in addition, forced output, as swain (1985, 1995) herself implies, may have to occur several times before acquisition takes place. however, it seems highly unlikely that most efl teachers, who, in many cases, have classrooms that range from 50-100 students (sheorey & nayar, 2002) have enough time to give each of their students’ individual errors attention more than one or two times per class period, if at all. a problem related to the amount of teacher accessibility to students is students’ accessibility to other students. for cultural reasons, many students do not feel comfortable correcting their peers or requesting help from their peers. shamim (1996) notes that in pakistan, for example, students who ask questions and actively participate in classroom discussions are often deemed to be show-offs and risk loosing face with the teacher and other students, especially if they commit errors. this type of scenario would hardly seem to encourage uptake. a further problem concerned with students involves competency. in order to initiate more than a token amount of corrective feedback or request help from teachers or other learners, students would need to possess threshold degree of competency; presumably, they would need to be fairly advanced in order (a) not to regress to the first language during communicative difficulties; (b) to be able to have a reasonable level of fluency so as to maintain the communicative flow of the lesson; (c) to be able to articulate their needs clearly to the teacher and/or students and (d) to be able to respond to other students’ needs. while uptake may be beneficial from an acquisition viewpoint, such requirements may be overwhelming for even advanced efl learners, especially if they have little experience with authentic communication and are not culturally accustomed to student-centered instruction. it is not surprising, then, to learn that uptake-based studies advocating focus on form instruction have often taken place in second language environments –lyster and r anta, 1997 in canada (french); ellis, basturkmen, and loewen, 2001 in new zealand (english). in the case of the former, students were in an immersion program where interaction was not only culturally appropriate, but pedagogically required and therefore they were accustomed to communicating with their teacher and peers in the second language. in the case of the latter, regression to the first language was probably not an option, due to the multilingual make-up of the classroom. in addition, the classroom was composed of international students at the intermediate level who, while far away from being fluent speakers of english, were living in an english-speaking country and thus were not unaccustomed to using the language. in any case, such second language settings are markedly dissimilar to those that many efl teachers and students confront on a daily basis. ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ 23 profileprofileprofileprofileprofile while studies that support uptake are problematic in terms of the population they exam, they are also problematic in terms of the amount of forms students attended to in them. in short, such studies show that, in comparison to the amount of hours of instruction the learners received, successful uptake happened relatively infrequently. for example: ellis, basturkmen, and loewen (2001) found that there were only 235 successful uptake incidents during 14 hours of instruction in a class of 12 students. on average, then, students engaged in 16.8 incidents of uptake per one hour of instruction; yet, on average, each student only engaged in uptake 1.4 times per one hour of instruction. such a minimal amount of attention to grammar is hardly sufficient for students to achieve grammatical competence (canale and swain, 1980). finally, well over half the forms students attended to in both studies dealt with vocabulary, not grammar. conclconclconclconclconclusionusionusionusionusion while theoretical and empirical arguments have been made claiming that uptake demonstrates that focus on form instruction offers students sufficient amounts of exposure to grammar, these are largely speculative. in addition, studies of student uptake have shown that, in general, focus on form instruction infrequently exposes students to grammar. moreover, the conditions under which such studies took place are most likely dissimilar to types of classes in which efl is commonly taught in terms of student/teacher linguistic abilities, time, and resources. thus, while focus on form instruction may be a useful approach in esl situations, efl practitioners should be aware that it, like the other types of communicative language teaching that came before it, has not bridged the gap between meaning and structure. more specifically, teachers in colombia should be hesitant to incorporate long (1991) and long and robinson’s (1998) ideas, for not only is there little evidence to show that they would help students learn more grammar, but also because such ideas make practical demands that many teachers and students may not be able to handle. referencesreferencesreferencesreferencesreferences allwright, b. (1984). why don’t learners learn what teachers teach? the interaction hypothesis. in d. singleton & d. little (eds.), language learning in formal and informal contexts (pp. 3-18). dublin: iraal. brown, h.d. (1994). teaching by principles: an interactive approach to language pedagogy. englewood cliff, nj: prentice hall regents. brown, h.d. (2000). principles of language learning and teaching. white plains, ny: addison wesley longman, inc. canale, m. & swain, m. (1980). theoretical basis of communicative approaches to second language teaching and testing. applied linguistics 1, 1-47. celce-murcia, m., britton, d., & goodwin, j. (1996). teaching pronunciation: a reference for teachers of english of speakers of other languages. cambridge: cambridge university press. ellis, r., basturkmen, h., & loewen, s. (2001). learner uptake in communicative esl lessons. language learning, 51 (2), 281-318. li, d. (1998). it’s always more difficult than you plan and imagine: teacher’s perceived difficulties in introducing the communicative approach in south korea. tesol quarterly, 26 (1), 27-56. ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ 24profileprofileprofileprofileprofile littlewood, w. (1981). communicative language teaching: an introduction. cambridge: cambridge university press. long, m. (1991). focus on form: a design feature in language teaching methodology . in k. de bot, r. ginsberg, c. kramsch (eds.), foreign language research in cross-cultural perspective (pp. 39-52). amsterdam: john benjamins. long, m. & robinson, p. (1998). focus on form: theory, research, and practice. in c. doughty & j. williams (eds.), focus on form in classroom second language acquisition (pp. 1563). cambridge: cambridge university press. lyster, r., & ranta, l. (1997). corrective feedback and learner uptake: negotiation of form in communicative classrooms. studies in second language acquisition, 19 (1), 37-66. lyster, r. (1998). negotiation of form, recasts, and explicit correction in relation to error types and learner repair in immersion classrooms. language learning, 48, 183-218. mitchell, r. & myles, f. (1998). second language learning theories. oxford: oxford university press. shamim, f. (1996). in or out of the action zone: location as a feature of interaction in large esl classes in pakistan. in, bailey, k., and nunan, d. (eds.), voices from the language classroom: qualitative research in second language education (pp. 200-236). cambridge, uk: cambridge university press. sheorey, r., & nayar, p. b. (2002). learning and teaching english in india: looking in from outside. indian journal of applied linguistics, 28 (2), 13-24. swain, m. (1985). communicative competence: some roles of comprehensible output in its development. in s. gass & c. madden (eds.), input in second language acquisition (pp. 235-253). rowley, ma: newbury house. swain, m. (1995). three functions of output in second language learning. in g. cook & b. seidlhofer (eds.), principle and practice in applied linguistics (pp. 125-144). oxford: oxford university press. terrell, t. & krashen, s. (1983). natural approach: language in the classroom. oxford: alemany press. the article was received on august 20ththththth, 2003 and accepted on october 11, 2003 and accepted on october 11, 2003 and accepted on october 11, 2003 and accepted on october 11, 2003 and accepted on october 11th th th th th , 2003, 2003, 2003, 2003, 2003 profile 10.indd the role of warming up activities in adolescent student’s involvement during the english class profile 10, 2008. issn 1657-0790. bogotá, colombia. pages 9-26 9 the role of warming up activities in adolescent students’ involvement during the english class* el papel de actividades de motivación inicial en la participación de estudiantes adolescentes en la clase de inglés rosalba velandia** porfirio barba jacob school, bogotá – colombia in this article we want to share the experience we had when we applied warming up activities to seven graders at porfirio barba jacob, a public school in bogotá, during 2004. our main objective was to get students’ attention at the beginning of the class by means of enjoyable and short activities as well as to observe how possible it was to engage them in the steps that followed. we sought to explore students’ involvement in the english class while we tried to motivate them through appropriate warm ups. we used journals, students’ surveys and field notes to collect data. the analysis of information collected showed us that the use of warm up activities increases students’ attention and helps us link the processes of the class. key words: warming up activities, students’ attention, students’ participation en este artículo compartimos la experiencia que tuvimos al aplicar actividades de motivación inicial con alumnos de grado séptimo del colegio porfirio barba jacob, una institución pública en bogotá, durante el año 2004. nuestro objetivo principal fue captar la atención de nuestros estudiantes mediante actividades cortas y divertidas al comienzo de la clase, que los comprometieran con las siguientes etapas de la misma. exploramos la participación de los estudiantes en la clase de inglés motivándolos a través de actividades de iniciación adecuadas. para la recolección de datos empleamos diarios, entrevistas a alumnos y el diario de campo. el análisis de la información recolectada mostró que el uso de actividades de iniciación incrementa la atención de los estudiantes y ayudan a conectar los procesos de la clase. palabras claves: actividades de iniciación, atención de los estudiantes, participación de los estudiantes * this paper reports on a study conducted by the authors while participating in the profile teacher development program, at universidad nacional de colombia, in 2004. the program was sponsored by secretaría de educación de bogotá, d.c. code number: 30102005346, universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas. it was a collaborative work conducted with the author of this paper and luz hasbleidy martínez melo. ** e-mail: rossyvel@gmail.com address: carrera 108 81a55 this article was received on march 30, 2007 and accepted on june 15, 2008. profile 10, 2008. issn 1657-0790. bogotá, colombia. pages 9-26 profile 10.indd 9 23/10/2008 8:46:03 velandia universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras10 introduction we decided to carry out this project when we formed part of the red profile pfpd (professional development program), at the national university in 2004. this work was implemented at the porfirio barba jacob school, a public school located in “la palestina” neighborhood of bosa, on the west side of bogotá (zone 7), with seventh graders who were usually bored or not interested in the english class and, if so, they did not engage enough in class work. as we looked for alternatives to support our pupils’ learning and motivation, we concluded that the use of warm up activities is a topic commonly mentioned in methodologies suggested for english classes. however, it has not been given enough importance as compared to other stages or phases of classes such as practice, students’ production or presentations, which mainly involve the warm up activity, an activity to identify the knowledge students have about the topic, and the introduction of new vocabulary. so, we decided to plan some lessons with warming up activities and to investigate our students’ learning of the foreign language. considering the aspects mentioned above, our main question was as follows: what is the role of warming up activities in students’ involvement in the english class? the execution of this project took six months. during this process, we analyzed and included the steps and principles of the communicative approach in our work with warming up activities, selected useful and interesting warm up activities, implemented them by means of the careful design of lesson plans that allowed us to involve students in the classes according to the topic we were working with, and, finally, analyzed and evaluated the results. the institutional project considers three axes: cognitive development, self-action and education in values. the english curriculum led to a special organization of students by levels per grade. this organization by levels, according to students’ performance, established basic, intermediate and advanced levels. we worked with intermediate and advanced groups of 7th grade with an average of 30 students each and took turns with the implementation stage. thus, we acted as teachers and observers in each other’s class. each class was designed by both of us, taking special care of the type of warm up and the close connection with the language focus. in the next sections you will find the theoretical bases that support our study, including the research design we implemented, the corresponding data collection instruments and analysis and, finally, the conclusions and pedagogical implications that our study yielded. literature review elements such as the role of motivation, the stages of classes in efl as well as aspects of a warm up activity were taken into consideration in the development of our project. they are considered in the following paragraphs. motivation and warm up activities first of all, it is necessary to consider the relation between motivation and warm up activities for it is the desired goal to enrich profile 10.indd 10 23/10/2008 8:46:03 the role of warming up activities in adolescent student’s involvement during the english class profile 10, 2008. issn 1657-0790. bogotá, colombia. pages 9-26 11 the learning of the subject matter, in our case, language learning. warming up activities can foster motivation and this is, in turn, an essential component when planning warming up activities. according to dornyei (2001), teachers need to try and actively generate positive students’ attitudes toward learning. he also claims that the key issue in generating interest is to widen the student’s appetite; that is, to arouse the students’ curiosity and attention and to create an attractive image for the class so that they will get more involved with it and a better learning process will take place. warming up and attention the importance of having warming up activities was mentioned at the beginning of this paper, but a question remains: what is a warming up activity? allwright (1984) considers that warm up activities are designed to attract students’ attention, to help them put aside distracting thoughts, and to get them ready to focus individually and as groups on whatever activities that follow. they will cause people to stop whatever they are doing or thinking and refocus their attention. we could say a warming up activity is a motivating starting point that will lead students to become animated to work efficiently in the language class. for the purpose of our study, it was the activity used to encourage students’ involvement and permeate the development of the whole lesson, so we avoided looking at them as isolated activities. these kinds of activities might also be called zealous, enthusiastic or suggestive activities. how we can include these activities in the process of a class will be the next focus in our discussion. the place of warm up in the english lesson when preparing lesson plans for our efl classes, we must include at least the following parts so that warming up activities can play a clear and meaningful role in our teaching. kay (1995) describes the stages of a lesson plan in the following way: warm up: “it is an effective way to help the students begin to think in english and to review previously introduced material. different types of warm ups help provide variety and interest in the lesson” (p. vi). a warm up to prepare students for a period of concentration may involve physical movement with activities that keep them active by standing up, walking, jumping, matching pictures with sentences or vocabulary, drawing or writing personal experiences or stories, and singing or listening to familiar songs and chants. these are, among others, enjoyable and motivating warms ups. presentation: the first part of the presentation often involves pre-teaching to encourage the flow of information. in this initial stage, we conduct activities to present the new language by providing a context for each situation. practice: it involves a wide variety of tasks that ensure the practice of the target language. these activities can range from controlled to less–controlled and free expressions. the activities must provide opportunities to work on a particular skill or to work integrated skill exercises. profile 10.indd 11 23/10/2008 8:46:03 velandia universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras12 application: the application provides students with hands-on opportunities to use what they have learned. this part of the lesson can also be considered part of the practice –particularly less controlled and free practice. assessment: some assessment activities like games, tasks or projects let students carry out the activity while the teacher is circulating in the classroom monitoring their use of the language, to examine students’ progress and achievement. also, a written assessment and a self evaluation section could be included. useful strategies when implementing warming up activities for the purpose of our project, we considered some specific aspects related to warm up activities which we thought could make students’ learning more stimulating. they were as follows: breaking the monotony of learning: • about this one, dornyei (2001) highlights the importance of the “motivational flow” when talking about the general rhythm and sequence of events in class and suggests starting it with a warmer, which can be a short stimulating game to set the tone. making the tasks more interesting: • the author claims that humans are able to produce concentrated effort if they want to. generating this interest involves a set of characteristics. most of them can be adaptable; thus, they become challenging for students since they have interesting content, novelty, and intriguing, exotic, fantasy and personal elements; they stimulate competition and humor. increasing the involvement of the • students: he considers that it is important to make students active participants and suggests selecting tasks which require mental or bodily involvement of each participant and creating specific rules and personalized assignments for everybody. diagram 1 shows some of the principles that a teacher must consider when preparing a warm up activity. it emerged as a result of our reflections upon our conceptual framework and the implementation process we designed. the principles contained in this diagram make us realize that warm up activities are not only processes to begin the class, but tools that help us catch students’ attention. if you start with an exciting and interesting activity you can be sure the other steps can be developed easily. this warm up must also be short because it is like a preparation for the other class stages. that is why it has to be related with the topic and centered in communicative aspects which could involve activities that emphasize the practice of different skills. in addition, a warm up must be prepared taking into account the students’ learning styles. according to cárdenas (2001), “students learn best when they can address knowledge in ways that they trust. they will learn best through doing, rather than reflecting” (p. 18). additionally, winters (as cited in cárdenas, 2001) suggested that incorporating the “play” profile 10.indd 12 23/10/2008 8:46:03 the role of warming up activities in adolescent student’s involvement during the english class profile 10, 2008. issn 1657-0790. bogotá, colombia. pages 9-26 13 element adds meaning to the issue of applying learning styles. learning english highly depends on pupils’ positive attitude toward the class. consequently, learning must be stimulating and enjoyable through breaking what might cause monotony in this process and strengthening what makes tasks more interesting, as well as what increases students’ involvement. the use of warming up activities implies features as the ones previously described in order to get students’ attention, to make them interested in what is going on, to focus on language items and to increase learners’ expectations by consciously arranging the conditions in a way that they put the learner in a more positive or optimistic mood. research design as has already been said, this research was developed with 68 students who belonged to two groups of 7th grade. thirtyfive belonged to the advanced level and the others to the intermediate. they were between 12 and 15 years old and did not participate a lot in class. most of them seemed bored or not interested in the activities. the study was carried out simultaneously by the two teachers participating in it, taking turns for implementing the project in the corresponding groups and observing each other’s class, so that each researcher acted as a teacher and as an observer. at the end of each lesson we implemented, students were asked to fill in a journal, which was then analyzed with the field notes taken by the observer. teachers had the possibility to work together because they only taught english and their professional experience had been in this subject for no fewer than 10 years. we decided to work based on action research because it is contextual, evaluative and reflective and it aims to bring about change and improvement in practice. we decided to follow kemmis & mctaggart’s diagram 1. aspects to be considered in a warm up activity. profile 10.indd 13 23/10/2008 8:46:04 velandia universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras14 model (as cited in nunan, 1989, p. 73), which considers four main aspects as follows: to develop a plan of action to • improve what is already happening. to do so, we designed a chronogram including the necessary aspects to be worked: the pedagogical strategy and the necessary tools to explore what happened during such implementation. to act to implement the plan. in • this step, we not only designed the lesson plans, including warming up activities, but also developed them with the chosen groups. to observe the effects of action in the • context in which it occurs. this was done by means of class observation, field notes and journals. to reflect on the effects of the use • of warm ups as a basis for further planning and subsequent action, through a succession of cycles. to do so, after each class we gathered information to analyze what we had observed in relation to the effects of the warm up and shaped our plan for the next one. the research involved reflection based on our experiences and on the literature. we reflected about what was happening in class, why this happened in that way, how we could take advantage of some activities that caused students to be motivated. this implied collaborative work between a pair of teachers. teachers found out what was going on in the classroom practice in order to make changes and produce actions. it meant to try to increase motivation and the students’ involvement during the class, so that they could have more tools to improve their language learning process. all of these efforts allowed teacher-researchers to have new available activities useful to be applied in the daily work as the ones included in the lesson plans (see a sample in appendix 1). it should be clarified that we took into account the ideas suggested by the students in the diagnostic questionnaire that we applied at the beginning of our project. the results can be seen in table 1. we also asked students about the activities that encouraged them to work in table 1. activities students liked the most to start the class. activity n° students percentage activity nº students percentage bingo 38 11% matching pairs 26 8% hangman 41 13% “concéntrese” 22 7% mimic 33 10% riddles 31 9% flash cards 18 5% contests 24 6% songs 23 7% stories 5 1% puzzles 22 6% brainstorming 5 1% stop 30 9% conversation 10 3% readings 13 4% profile 10.indd 14 23/10/2008 8:46:04 the role of warming up activities in adolescent student’s involvement during the english class profile 10, 2008. issn 1657-0790. bogotá, colombia. pages 9-26 15 class and the ones they liked the most to start it. the results were as follows: graph 1. activities that encouraged students to work in class. based on the information gathered in the diagnostic stage, we created six lesson plans for the implementation stage. these plans were developed during the last three months of 2004. they were organized according to the aspects we considered important for our research (see sample provided in appendix 1). similar to this example, we implemented some warm ups connected to the topic of the lessons (see table 2). data collection instruments the first instrument designed was a questionnaire. as we already explained, it table 2. warm up activities implemented during the project. topic warm up routines and daily activities matching pictures to expressions daily activities and their frequency bingo daily activities and their time memory game sensations and health habits hangman health habits duck into the water was elaborated in order to identify some aspects related to the students’ point of view about the class stages, the activities they liked the most, and the ones that helped them to become involved during the class process. according to this preliminary stage, we found that most of the students had more interest in activities that implied movement or those like hangman, bingo, mimics, or guessing, to start the class. in addition, they apparently preferred working in small groups. also, they suggested games or dynamics, and varied activities to have a good start in the lesson. it seemed that these activities could encourage them to understand better, increase their attention and interest and promote interaction among classmates. students appeared to have interest in activities that motivated, caught their attention and increased their understanding. those findings were very relevant when preparing the warm up as it could be noticed in the lesson plan sample included in appendix 1. each one of the lesson plans was designed according to the stages described before and taking special care of the warming ups selection process. based on the results of the questionnaire, profile 10.indd 15 23/10/2008 8:46:04 velandia universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras16 we continued the process of data collection as described in the next lines. students’ journals they were filled in and analyzed class by class. we programed 6 lesson plans and also collected an average of 60 journals per class. at the end of each session, students were asked to fill in his/her journal which included some headings that encouraged them to write (see appendix 2). they were motivated to do that because it did not imply a score or grade and also because we explained that they had the possibility of helping the teacher to improve the class and to control their own learning process. field notes they were taken by one of the teacherresearchers, the one who observed, and they allowed us to identify and reflect on the findings. as well as with the journals, field notes were written during the process of each class. data analysis and findings we based our observation on suggestions given by nunan (1989), who recommends organizing the findings in categories as they are analyzed. the collection and later analysis of the gathered information led us to identify key aspects in relation to the role of warm up activities in students’ involvement in the english class. we organized information into four main categories: strengthening knowledge about language, students’ involvement, interaction, and values (see diagram 2). 1. strengthening knowledge about language: this category is related to the language competence; that is to say, acquiring pronunciation, structures, and functions. this category is also closely related to cognitive processes like memorization, establishing relations and concentration, which emerged when students participated in the warm ups. we found in the students journals that they thought they learnt different aspects of language according to the warm ups worked in class. for example, in the class where the memory game was applied, students said they had learnt vocabulary. likewise, in the class where hangman was played, most of them said they had learnt to describe sensations and some others mentioned gains in spelling. graph 2 illustrates students’ answers at one of the times when journals were collected and highlights the language aspects they could reinforce. another interesting aspect that students mentioned in the journals was the identification of language functions as a diagram 2. categories found in data analysis. profile 10.indd 16 23/10/2008 8:46:04 the role of warming up activities in adolescent student’s involvement during the english class profile 10, 2008. issn 1657-0790. bogotá, colombia. pages 9-26 17 result of the learning process, as can be seen in the following examples: chiqui: i learned how food smell or taste. jordan: i learned to make recommendations related to a balanced diet daniel: i learned about how often my partners do some activities. pato: i learned about good and bad habits the aspect of paragraph construction and language structures learned was also evidenced in the data collected. this could be observed in statements like these: jacky: i learned to write a short paragraph about my partner felipe: i learned to place the adverbs of frequency in a sentence sandra: i learned to write questions using ‘how often…’ as can be noticed, functions and structures were learned easily as a result of the use of funny and enjoyable activities, combined with other important communicative aspects. that means the warm up let teachers link the way language can be used with its formal construction (structures). as mentioned by howatt (1994), it is not merely a question of activating and exciting but of stimulating the development of the language system itself. 2. students’ involvement: this refers to the range of engagement that students had with the whole class. here, two subcategories were drawn: participation and individual work. participation: this refers to continuous students’ contributions to the class, by answering questions related to particular topics or situations. they took part in the activities, encouraged each other and took turns participating in problem-solving activities. individual work: this refers to learners’ engagement with the activities in an individual way. students got involved in writing, drawing, speaking, trying to memorize, and getting information and being focused on fulfilling the objective of the lessons. making reference to individual work and written production, a good number of students appeared to be interested in doing activities in their notebooks. besides, it could be noticed that individual work later contributed to group work. after fulfilling the goals set out for individual tasks, when they worked as a group, students also contributed to task completion by looking for notes in their notebooks’ or just giving suggestions. we can illustrate students’ involvement in individual work with the following examples taken from the field notes during the lesson on sensations and health habits when we applied hangman as the warm up. the students worked in groups of 5 or 6. one of them directed the game based on the sentences given by the teacher in secret. each captain took two pictures of objects graph 2. language aspects students could strengthen. findings from the journal analysis (2nd lesson). profile 10.indd 17 23/10/2008 8:46:05 velandia universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras18 each captain was also given the blanks in a piece of paper and the different parts of a human body (puzzles) for the game. next we can witness some observations registered in a group: student 1: we had just said the “u” captain of the group: nooo… o yes?? (checking with the blanks given to complete) s1. good, la “ci” this is there oh no? la “ci” … no the “es”. ¿the “ci” it’s not? that is right so the “s” (the pronunciation was given in spanish) s2: (trying to remember the english alphabet) ei, bi, ci, di, ef, … in another class, after the implementation of the warm up ducks into the water, in the practice step, the students were organized in small groups and they had to classify all the habits from the board as good or bad ones as fast as possible. then we could observe the following: they looked very anxious to get the work finished. students were writing the habits from the board and trying to identify them. students asked a lot of questions in order to continue working in a right way ex: teacher, “are there the same number of bad and good habits?” the groups seemed to participate actively because they were organized quickly and also they developed the activities in the time planned. during the whole activities a big average of students participated actively, gave the answers and solved the tasks carefully. they tried also to be the winners all the time. they were raising their hands, paying special interest to class. (field notes. lesson 3). likewise, the analysis of the students’ journals, which included some headings to encourage them to write, showed that warm up activities produce positive feelings such as happiness, motivation and excitement. it could be noticed in the analysis we made about these aspects for each warm up. for example, in the the memory game warm up table 3. sentences for each group. group one the orange juice tastes sour. the pillow feels soft. group two the telephone sounds loud. the ice cream tastes sweet. group three the spaghetti taste delicious. the soap smells good. group four the hamburger tastes salty. the soccer ball looks hard. group five the t.v. set looks new. the stereo sounds loud. group six the rice smells good. the cake tastes sweet. group seven the tire feels hard. the toaster feels hot. – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – the telephone sounds loud (secret sentence) picture 1. warm up: hangman. to give clues to their partners about the sentence they could guess. profile 10.indd 18 23/10/2008 8:46:05 the role of warming up activities in adolescent student’s involvement during the english class profile 10, 2008. issn 1657-0790. bogotá, colombia. pages 9-26 19 (see appendix 1), students expressed that they felt as follows: table 4. students’ expressed feelings during the memory game warm up. feeling % very good 31% good 35% active 2% happy 14% excited 7% interested 2% relaxed 2% as usual 2% bored 2% afraid 2% 3. class interaction: this category is related to how the students tried to get information as well as how they shared knowledge or information. the students showed they interacted in order to get actively involved in the warm up activities. some examples of this category are shown in the following extract from field-notes (in lesson 2) while students were working on daily activities and routines. students try to get information asking to their partners and using simple expressions in english or in spanish. also, they asked the teachers: is this a good habit? t: you say: how often do you play tennis? javier: how can i make the question’ please repeat me. they correct each other. javier: yes, but here you`re wrong!!. daniel: the i. oh, you guess the letter. javier: la “yi”s2.noo!!..la “i” ya!!. some students also interacted with the teacher asking for a chance or criticizing her about organization or presentation of the materials. this shows a clear interest in the class, as can be seen in the following examples taken from lesson 4: t: bad habits to the center!! jordan: profe, ¿me da la revancha? (teacher, can you give me another chance?) (when the teacher showed the cards related with good and bad habits) student: profe, ¡let me see!…you only let see to this part of the room but you don’t let see to this side. during the implementation stage, we also observed that students continuously asked the teacher questions. the students wanted to be explained exactly what to do. during the class where the activity ducks into the water was used, students were asked to classify the good and bad habits that were stuck up on the board. some students from each group walked to the board trying to look at it carefully and went back to their groups to help their peers complete the activity. likewise, students’ attitude was remarkable during this time; it was always positive; they tried to answer the questions asked by the teacher in the different class stages. several students went to the center and a student helped to check who was right or wrong. on the whole, students seemed to actually enjoy the classes because the general vision was a class drawing, writing, talking or listening carefully whenever the class activities required doing so. 4. values’ reinforcement: values are understood as one’s principles, priorities, or standards. we refer here to how the warm up promoted the reinforcement of human profile 10.indd 19 23/10/2008 8:46:05 velandia universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras20 values like honesty, self-confidence and responsibility. during the development of the classes, students encouraged each other. also, when they participated in the activities they respected their turns and seemed to be engaged in the activities proposed. for instance, when they took part in the hangman contest, we gathered the following comments: briggitte: teacher, you have noticed that i am participating so much… lina: but not only briggitte… also jordan, who misbehaved all the time, is working well. when two groups got the same score, leidy said: teacher, they were the best because they used the right expressions from the beginning without help. if we examine the connection between values and the previous excerpts, we can infer that self-esteem is noticed in briggitte’s statement. likewise, lina evidences how students encouraged each other. in addition, leidy shows that students recognized the efforts made by others. conclusions and pedagogical implications at the end of this study, we as researchers could assert that using warm up activities is an effective way of helping students to begin the english class daily. in regards to this, we completely agree with allwright (1984) who concluded, based on her own experience, that “with warm ups students paid closer attention, asked better questions and seemed a bit more excited than before” (p. 162). this author also claims that “the proper presentation of warm ups will cause people to stop whatever they are doing or thinking and refocus their attention” (p. 164), an aspect that could be confirmed through the findings of this study. through the analysis of the findings gotten from the students’ journals and teachers’ field notes, we have come to the conclusion that the role of warm ups is one of being an attention injector for students. that facilitates their involvement in the class work by sharing answers, trying to participate, paying attention, giving the answers, encouraging to take part in the lesson, participating as volunteers, working on the exercises, drawing, and writing the exercises. based on the results collected mainly from the field notes, these kinds of activities really appear to promote students’ involvement in the english class. they must be used as a motivation and a means of preparing the ground for the various stages of the lesson. as could be noticed in the lesson plan (appendix 1), they are neither long tasks nor an explanation of the topic. in the same way, they must not be considered as isolated stages in the process or be centered on only one skill. that means we can prepare the warm up with the objective of involving students’ participation and letting them communicate at an early stage of the lesson. some important aspects to be considered for the warm up development are the classroom conditions and the clarity of the activity rules, particularly if they are games or competitions to avoid confusion among students. that means we have to explain the procedure carefully before starting, to have all the materials ready, to encourage students to participate and to profile 10.indd 20 23/10/2008 8:46:05 the role of warming up activities in adolescent student’s involvement during the english class profile 10, 2008. issn 1657-0790. bogotá, colombia. pages 9-26 21 motivate them by means of examples or guides. it is also important to remark that no matter how simple warm up activities can be, they should be well prepared. in addition, we need to examine the connection for the later activities so that we, as teachers, can take advantage of them to develop our lessons. for example, to prepare the warm up related to the use of a bingo in the topic daily activities and their frequency, the teacher only had to think about the sentences the students must include in the bingo and the right order to develop the activity. consequently, it did not demand a lot of time to prepare or complicated materials to be implemented. we can promote students’ involvement at the very beginning of the class by applying warm ups. and for warm ups to be effective they should be short, related to the topic, useful to continue later activities, interesting, and enjoyable. in doing so, we can prepare students to concentrate and to help them begin to think and focus their attention on the english class. references allwright, r. (1984). the importance of interaction in classroom language learning. applied linguistics, 5(2), 156-171. cárdenas, m. l. (2001). responding to children’s learning styles. how, 8, 17-22. dornyei, z. (2001). motivational strategies in the english classroom. cambridge: cambridge university press. howatt, j. w. (1994). our criteria for grading students’ programs. acm, sigcse bulletin, 26(3), 3-7. kay, c. (1995). scott foresman english series. baltimore, maryland: scott foresman. nunan, d. (1989). understanding language classrooms. new york: prentice hall. about the author rosalba velandia holds a b. ed. in modern languages (la salle university) and a specialization in applied lingüistics in the teaching of english (la gran colombia university). she has been an english teacher from secretaría de educación del distrito for 28 years. she also works in the areas of research and pedagogy at the incca university and in the alex program at universidad nacional de colombia – sede bogotá. profile 10.indd 21 23/10/2008 8:46:05 velandia universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras22 appendix 1: sample of a lesson plan date: october 7 session: first grade: seventh levels: intermediate and advanced. time: 110 minutes in each level topic: routines and daily activities language focus: to share information about routines and to identify specific information in a text general objective: to identify and use some expressions to talk about daily activities and routines specific objectives: to review specific vocabulary related to daily activities and routines to share information using drawings and expressions to identify specific information from a text previous knowledge: vocabulary about routines and daily activities using some requests to get information, like: do you have the picture of…? would you like to share your picture with me? let me see your picture, etc. simple present materials: pictures, pieces of paper using some expressions, photocopies. organization: at the beginning students will be organized at random in order for them to find his/her partner. then they will work individually using the photocopy. procedure: warm up: review the vocabulary about routine and daily activities using some pictures and their corresponding expressions. students are divided into two groups. one looks at its pictures and tries to find the partner who has the right expressions. the other does the same, but using the expressions. the pictures and expressions used for the activity are the following: profile 10.indd 22 23/10/2008 8:46:06 th e role of warming up activities in adolescent student’s involvement during the english class profile 10, 2008. issn 1657-0790. bogotá, colombia. pages 9-26 23 take a bath play soccer vacuum do homework cook made the bed listen to music have breakfast vacuum sleep watch tv. read listen to music get up at 8:00 a.m. sleep leave the house watch tv. have lunch get up at 8:00 a.m. brush her hair take a bath brush her teeth have lunch do homework cook play soccer brush her teeth have breakfast leave the house make the bed read brush her hair presentation: based on the pictures and expressions they matched, students have to remember the useful expressions to express daily routines and activities. practice: the teacher asks some questions about a partner they know. profile 10.indd 23 23/10/2008 8:46:06 velandia universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras24 reviewing knowledge name date grade level teacher: pre-reading: do you know who david mora is?1. what grade is he in? 2. what does he look like? draw a cartoon about him.3. (on a different piece of paper) reading: title: 1. david mora is a student of seventh grade. he usually gets up at 6 o’clock, takes a quiet shower and puts on his uniform. his mother is always saying: “david, have your breakfast!”, but he never eats anything because he is always late. when he finally is ready, he goes to school at 6:20 a.m. 6. this funny boy loves the english class so he generally does his homework and often participates in it although he talks a lot with his partners. 8. at noon, david goes home and has lunch. today he enjoyed some delicious soup that his mother cooked for him and for his sister daisy. “it tastes good, mom”, said david and asked for one more dish. 11. after lunch, the boy plays video games with his friends. at four thirty p.m., david goes back home and does his homework. 13. last night, his mom cooked string beans. she asked him: “would you like to eat some?” “no, mom, i am not hungry. i would prefer watching a reality show and then going to bed because i really had a hard day.” about the reading: i. write a title for the text. use the line at the top of the reading. profile 10.indd 24 23/10/2008 8:46:07 the role of warming up activities in adolescent student’s involvement during the english class profile 10, 2008. issn 1657-0790. bogotá, colombia. pages 9-26 25 ii. match according to the text information: david hates 1. . a. soup he 2. home at 6:20 am. b. watching t.v. he loves 3. . c. playing video games at night, the boy prefers 4. . d. string beans after lunch, he likes 5. . e. leaves iii. complete by writing what each word refers to: in line 3 “he” refers to: 1. in line 7 “it” refers to: 2. in line 9 “him” refers to: 3. in line 9 “it” refers to: 4. in line 13 “she” refers to: 5. iv. answer according to the text: what time does david get up? 1. how often does he have breakfast? 2. does he hate the english class? 3. why didn’t he eat last night? 4. how did the soup taste? 5. v. underline an invitation from the text vi. circle the verbs that are related to “likes” and “preferences” post reading: write some useful recommendations for david about his daily routines. production and evaluation: teacher goes around to the small groups in order to help them with doubts or questions. profile 10.indd 25 23/10/2008 8:46:07 velandia universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras26 appendix 2: student’s journal “learning acquired in youth is inscribed on stone.” indian proverb english journal my name is …………………………… the topic was …………………………. today is ………………………………. i learned ……………………………… ………………………………………… ………………………………………… ………………………………………… i felt…………………………………… ………………………………………… ………………………………………… ………………………………………… the activity i liked the most ………………………………………… ………………………………………… why? ………………………………………… ………………………………………… the difficulties i had were ………………………………………… ………………………………………… the beginning of the class made me ………………………………………… ………………………………………… i made these mistakes ………………………………………… ………………………………………… i didn’t like ………………………………………… ………………………………………… profile 10.indd 26 23/10/2008 8:46:07 profile 3.p65 ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ 72profileprofileprofileprofileprofile h uman behaviour has been a changing aspect during the historyof mankind. humanity has learned to get along with others; but the behavioural stage has been very difficult to control across the time, because everyone has his/her own interests. in this article, i will describe some factors that affect children’s aggressive behaviour when playing competitive games and some strategies that may be considered when guiding those types of games with young learners in the english class. these can lead, as i found in my study, to deeper understandings of children’s conducts as well as to improvement in classroom management. the researthe researthe researthe researthe research studych studych studych studych study in countries like colombia, which are going through violent conflicts, aggressiveness is a factor that people have to face all the time, mainly because of economical and educational troubles. it affects the children’s environment and there is no doubt that children reflect the reality that they live in every day events. hence, it is necessary to examine alternatives for dealing with children’s aggressive behaviour and to instil social-training skills to control it. the ideas presented in this paper are the result of a case study investigation with primary school children (third graders) whose level in the english language was beginners. i taught this group of learners over a short period of time (4 months, two hours a week) and was puzzled by the fact that they showed aggressive behaviour whenever they took part in competitive games in the english class. the following semester, i was allowed to attend their english class in order to follow this phenomenon in detail while they were working with another management of children´s aggressiveness when playing competitive games in the english class andrea castellanosandrea castellanosandrea castellanosandrea castellanosandrea castellanos universidad nacional de colombia admnavegante@hotmail.com children engaged in a competitive game ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ 73 profileprofileprofileprofileprofile english teacher. children were observed as they played games in the english class in order to account for their attitudes toward play activities developed in the learning process and to establish connections between kids’ behaviours and the factors that promoted them. in order to gather evidence from the participants of the study, the teacher kept a journal i could then have access to. additionally, aggressive kids were interviewed when lessons were over. it should be explained that the results of my observation period were analysed taking into account the principles of grounded theory proposed by glasser and strauss (1976) and triangulation procedures (cohen and manion: 1994). fffff a c t o r s t h a t p ra c t o r s t h a t p ra c t o r s t h a t p ra c t o r s t h a t p ra c t o r s t h a t p ro m o t e c h i l d r e no m o t e c h i l d r e no m o t e c h i l d r e no m o t e c h i l d r e no m o t e c h i l d r e n’ s’ s’ s’ s’ s aggressive behaviouraggressive behaviouraggressive behaviouraggressive behaviouraggressive behaviour antisocial behaviour including aggression appears to be a developmental trait that begins early in life and often continues into adolescence and adulthood. antisocial behaviour develops as a result of the child’s behaviour and interaction with the social environment (thomas and melloy: 1993, 346). during the first stage of aggressive behaviour development, family variables, such as harsh parental discipline and poor adult supervision, result in the child being trained to engage in aggressive behaviour such as hitting. this behaviour becomes functional in the sense that the child may be allowed to escape tasks when he or she acts aggressively. also aggressive behaviour may be positively reinforced through laughter, attention, and approval, which results in maintenance of the behaviour. children in these situations do not learn socially skilful responses from others, but they learn aggressive behaviour that results in meeting their needs (ibid: 351). the main cause of children’s aggressive behaviour is their environment; at home they learn rules to living by imitating adults’ behaviour. all those things that they learn at home are demonstrated at school; therefore these children become rejected because they do not demonstrate the social skills that allow them to be socially competent with peers. having learned aggressive behaviour in early childhood, other situations at school can also provoke an outburst of aggression. for instance, in the development of a competitive game, there are many factors taking part in children’s attitudes. according to florián (1993, 150) “play is the young child’s chief mode of interaction and development, children learn playing and by their own experience, play is a way of autoexpression”. a game is the representation of real life situations, games are governed by rules, which set up clearly defined goals; games involve a contest. through educational games children not only learn the language, they learn other important aspects like how they should behave in social situations, how to be respectful and to follow rules. for children this idea is sometimes difficult to follow because in a codecontrol or competitive game whose aim is to score more points than others, there is often a clear winner (brewster et al: 1992). if everyone wants to be the winner due to the positive feelings triumph produces, it is going to give birth to a competitive atmosphere which is going to result in contrasting situations. on the other hand, sometimes we as teachers ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ 74profileprofileprofileprofileprofile can make some mistakes that promote aggressive behaviour in children. for instance, our attitude can also encourage children’s aggressive behaviour, if we do not realise about cheating or if it is considered by students that we have certain favourites among them, or we give more attention to misbehaving students. children can react aggressively against those situations. it results in children’s complaints and children’s verbal or physical aggressive behaviour. the child’s body language for all of these aggressive behaviours is a stance that communicates anger, rage, humiliation or other feelings that motivate aggressive behaviour (thomas and melloy: 1993, 352). classrclassrclassrclassrclassroom managementoom managementoom managementoom managementoom management when a child demonstrates a problem with behaviour, adults are required to develop inter ventions that will both decrease inappropriate behaviour and increase appropriate behaviour. also, when a child engages in behaviour that is deemed inappropriate, everyone involved (the child, adults, peers) is placed in circumstances that are highly stressful and usually unpleasant. parents and we as educators should encourage children and reinforce them to use alternative behaviours to express affection and liking for others in order to control children’s aggressive behaviour in the english classroom. in order to achieve these goals, we can apply certain strategies as proposed by thomas and melloy (ibid: 2). researresearresearresearresearch findingsch findingsch findingsch findingsch findings according to previous investigation reports i examined to develop the research study i have referred to and the results i gathered throughout a semester, i could conclude that it is necessary to take into consideration tips to control children’s aggressive behaviour and create a better atmosphere in the english classroom as well as a better classroom management. some of these strategies were successful in the classes i observed and it is very likely that they can also be effective in other contexts. the strategies are the following: • f• f• f• f• focusingocusingocusingocusingocusing: the focusing technique means that we demand students’ attention before they begin; that is to say, we wait and do not start until everyone has settled down. • direct instruction• direct instruction• direct instruction• direct instruction• direct instruction: an affective way to join this technique to the previous one is to include time at the end of the period for students to do activities of their choosing. this strategy deals with students’ interests; it motivates then to partake in the learning process. • monitoring• monitoring• monitoring• monitoring• monitoring: this strategy implies that we are checking to be sure everyone is working without having problems. we do not interrupt the class or try to make general announcements unless we notice that several students have difficulty with the same thing. • modelling• modelling• modelling• modelling• modelling: if we want students to use quiet voices in the classroom, while they work, we have to use a quiet voice too as we move through the room helping youngsters. sometimes students try to imitate the teachers’ behaviour; this way, if we want to be respected by students, we also have to respect them. otherwise if we scream, students are going to do the same, and the classroom is going to be a chaotic place. • n o n v e r b a l c u e i n g• n o n v e r b a l c u e i n g• n o n v e r b a l c u e i n g• n o n v e r b a l c u e i n g• n o n v e r b a l c u e i n g: sometimes gestures can explain our intentions in a more polite way than using words. nonverbal cues ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ 75 profileprofileprofileprofileprofile can also be facial expressions, body postures, and hand signals. thus, we need to take time to explain what we want students to do when we use our cues. • envir• envir• envir• envir• environmental contronmental contronmental contronmental contronmental contrololololol: it has to do with the environment of the classroom. we should let students get to know us better by means of observing how we act. as they get to know us better, we will see fewer problems with discipline. during the learning process the teacher is the guide, s/he has to establish certain rules that have to be respected by everybody in the group. this way, students are going to accept their mistakes and regulate their behaviour. • low pr• low pr• low pr• low pr• low profile interofile interofile interofile interofile interventionventionventionventionvention: an effective teacher will take care that the student is not rewarded for misbehaviour by becoming the focus of attention. his/her approach to a misbehaving student is inconspicuous. others in the class are not distracted. if a child realizes that his negative behaviour acts also as a teacher’s distraction, it is going to reinforce his negative behaviour, and everybody in the group is going to wish to have the same attention. this proves that we should not dedicate too much time to troubles like that and to congratulate others’ positive behaviour. • assertive discipline• assertive discipline• assertive discipline• assertive discipline• assertive discipline: clear rules are laid out and consistently enforced. students also have to partake in the regulation process. children guided by the teacher to take turns to play ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ 76profileprofileprofileprofileprofile in this way they feel that they form an important part in the classroom as well. • assertive i messages• assertive i messages• assertive i messages• assertive i messages• assertive i messages: this strategy entails that we will focus the misbehaving student’s attention first and foremost on the behaviour we want, not on the misbehaviour. as i have already said, one of the important factors in the classroom should be students’ positive behaviour; it has to be recognized by teachers and students. • humanistic i messages• humanistic i messages• humanistic i messages• humanistic i messages• humanistic i messages: we can make students who behave negatively feel blamed and ashamed of their behaviour, by means of psychological traits. for instance, we can say: “you are an intelligent student; it is a pity that your negative behaviour does not allow you to use your intelligence more”. in this case, the teacher is using some psychology to create awareness in students. it can also work in positive situations: “excellent, you are working well as usual”. as we can see, we have no reason to begin with negative points if it is not necessary. • p• p• p• p• positive disciplineositive disciplineositive disciplineositive disciplineositive discipline: when we see good behaviour, we should acknowledge it. this can encourage students to take responsibility for their own actions. good classroom management allows students to get a clear picture of what is going on and what is expected of them, and allows them to see more clearly the consistent consequences of their own behaviour, both desirable and undesirable (aparicio et al: 1995, 56). the findings i have presented so far give us an idea about how important it is to work on students’ self-esteem. it encourages them to overcome and improve, and makes them feel that they are able to do whatever they want. furthermore, we can recognize the paramount role the teacher plays in situations when children act aggressively. we as teachers have to try to play fair all the time in any situation. it is going to be recognized by the students and they are going to try to behave in the same way. conclusionconclusionconclusionconclusionconclusion through this research study i have pointed out the importance of using games in the english learning process. games are motivating and exciting experiences for children. we know that playing games is a way of interaction. however, competition generates factors which promote aggressive behaviour. therefore, it is very important to have a way to control aggressive behaviour that “competition” may imply for children. in this article i have highlighted some factors that promote children’s aggressive behaviour. as adults need to take part in the children’s learning process which is both intellectual and social, i have also underlined our compromise as teachers, parents and adults in overcoming those types of acts. besides the strategies that proved effective in the class i worked with, i could state that there are important factors for further research. first of all, we could explore the influence of a negative environment in children’s aggressive behaviour. secondly, it could be useful to delve deeper into the way boys differ from girls concerning leadership while playing games –an aspect that caught my attention since most aggressive situations present in the class i observed involved boys. and finally, we could think of the construction of a social skill-training club as a means of constructing different social solutions without having to use violence. ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ 77 profileprofileprofileprofileprofile referencesreferencesreferencesreferencesreferences aparicio de e., b., benavides, j., cárdenas b., m. l., ochoa f., j., ospina n., c. m., and zuluaga h., o. (1995). learning to teach and teaching to learn working document 5. cofe project. london: thames valley university. brewster, j., ellis, g. and girard, d. (1992). the primary english teacher’s guide. england: penguin books. cohen, a. and manion, l. (1994). research methods in education. london: routledge florián, s. (1993). volvamos a jugar. bogotá: magisterio. glasser, b. and strauss, a. (1976). the discovery of grounded theory. chicago: aldine. thomas, z. and melloy, k. (1993). behaviour management / applications for teachers and parents. minnesota: mcmillan. profile 1.p65 ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○55 profileprofileprofileprofileprofile increasing students’ motivation by using computers aura stella rodríguez, rosa niño and carmen rojasaura stella rodríguez, rosa niño and carmen rojasaura stella rodríguez, rosa niño and carmen rojasaura stella rodríguez, rosa niño and carmen rojasaura stella rodríguez, rosa niño and carmen rojas the lack of motivation in the 9 th grade students of tomás rueda vargas school was the objective of this project, so we planned a series of workshops in microsoft word to apply in the computer lab. we observed that by working in groups of four in the computer lab, the students did the activities with enthusiasm. it could also be noticed that the workshops were effective in reinforcing english learning. intrintrintrintrintroductionoductionoductionoductionoduction in this project we aim to prove how using the computer in a rational and occasional way can contribute to more effective english learning. the use of technology as a tool of motivation gives us the possibility of reinforcing the topics studied in class in a real context, because the intention of technological education is to improve the quality of education by preparing the students to understand, use and apply technology. prprprprproceduresoceduresoceduresoceduresocedures * two surveys were used for the diagnostic stage. a group of fifteen students were selected to observe their work and behaviour. * it was decided to follow the teaching activity of stella by using two observers. at the end of the four workshops, the students completed a survey to conclude and do the triangulation. * classroom observations were carried out four times in two months. * four workshops were planned to apply in the computer lab using photocopied guides for each group. after each class, the observers and the teacher reflected on the lessons. * in the end, a survey was taken to find out if the students’ motivation had increased. resultsresultsresultsresultsresults in the diagnostic stage, two surveys were used, one to identify the students’ interests in order to use appropriate activities, and the other to detect the students’ expectations about computers. • ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ 56profileprofileprofileprofileprofile *ss = students in the following charts are the results of the surveys. as evident from the information above, the students were not motivated to participate in class, and the materials used by the teacher did not satisfy the expectations they had of english class; besides this, they were very enthusiastic about the possibility of using computers to learn english. most of the students did not have a computer at home and the school was the place where they had the chance to confront technology. all of them wanted to learn using computers and to follow instructions because the programs are in spanish now. they liked to work in small groups and this arrangement ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○57 profileprofileprofileprofileprofile is another kind of learning because students can share their knowledge and experiences. classrclassrclassrclassrclassroom obseroom obseroom obseroom obseroom observationvationvationvationvation through the workshops we observed that students had a good knowledge of computers in spanish; most of them knew how to use a computer and the vocabulary related to it. only a few words were unknown. in general, they enjoyed the activities and worked with enthusiasm and most of them did all the activities because they had had a previous lesson in the classroom on the topic. they practised writing in english there. they had to write letters, copy texts and create short paragraphs. different topics like present, past and future tenses were studied in class and reinforced in the computer lab. then, when the teacher checked the groups, she asked them to read the exercises and she corrected the oral mistakes. it is important to clarify that the students were more interested in the format of their work than in the content because they had different options to choose from in order to present their work (font, size, colour). to detect how the students used the computer lab, we applied a survey. they were asked to choose one of these answers: 1. always 2. usually 3. sometimes 4. never 1. do you like english in the computer lab? 2. do you do all the activities there? 3. do you learn new words using the computer lab? 4. in your group, do you use the computer? 5. do you use oral english in the computer lab? discussiondiscussiondiscussiondiscussiondiscussion the aim of this project was to involve the students in their english learning process by using computers. data was collected using sur veys, planning workshops and observation. the first finding is that the computer is a useful tool for teachers and students because they can exploit new technology in the language classroom. the second finding is the importance of selecting and planning the activities so that the students enjoy them and learn. a third aspect is concerned with group work; generally there is a more outgoing student that tries to do all the activities and the others only look and do not have the chance to use the computer. it would be necessar y to distribute the use of the computer for each student, possibly class by class, each one 20 minutes. finally, we consider it necessar y to plan more workshops to go on with the project using other programs such as power point or excel. conclusionconclusionconclusionconclusionconclusion the results of the study show that the students changed their behaviour in the computer lab, they worked with enthusiasm, and generally they did all the activities; moreover, they controlled the program with ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ 58profileprofileprofileprofileprofile confidence in spite of most of them not having a computer at home. on the other hand, at tomás rueda vargas school, there are good pedagogical materials that are really not properly exploited. consequently, it is necessary for the teachers to get involved in the new technology in order to innovate and change the learning and teaching strategies. therefore, teachers must be trained in the new technology and be able to use these tools. further research is needed on how to plan a more effective syllabus that considers students’ needs and likes. bibliographybibliographybibliographybibliographybibliography aparicio, b., benavides, j., cárdenas, m. l., ochoa, j., ospina, c., zuluaga, o. (1995). learning to teach. teaching to learn-cofe project document 5. london: thames valley university. educación en tecnología. documento 1. (1996). santa fe de bogotá d. c.: ministerio de educación nacional. nunan, d. (1991). language teaching methodology: a textbook for teaching. new york: prentice hall.• building and strengthening teacher communities: improvement plan for the profile journal 17profile: issues teach. prof. dev., vol. 24 no. 2, jul-dec, 2022. issn 1657-0790 (printed) 2256-5760 (online). bogotá, colombia. pages 17-30 https://doi.org/10.15446/profile.v24n2.103208 building and strengthening teacher communities: improvement plan for the profile journal generación y consolidación de comunidades docentes: plan de mejora para la revista profile melba libia cárdenas1 universidad nacional de colombia, bogotá, colombia scientific or academic publications have become the best accepted media for scientific and academic communities—mainly established in universities or research centers—to share the knowledge they create and give it greater visibility worldwide. that is, these journals are at the core of scientific communication, which requires permanent assessment of the editorial work and careful planning bearing in mind the responsibilities and needs of the stakeholders that are involved in the production and use of these periodical publications. in this article, i share an improvement plan for the profile journal, whose purpose is to strengthen the journal’s editorial management and, thus, support the generation and consolidation of communities of teacher researchers. keywords: communities, profile journal, teacher researcher las revistas científicas o académicas se han establecido como el principal medio para la difusión del conocimiento generado por comunidades académicas y científicas —ubicadas principalmente en instituciones universitarias o en centros de investigación—, y darle una mayor visibilidad internacional. es decir, esta clase de revistas se encuentran en el centro de la comunicación científica, lo que implica una evaluación constante de su labor editorial y una cuidadosa planeación que tenga en cuenta las responsabilidades y necesidades de los actores que participan en la producción y uso de una publicación periódica. en este artículo presentamos el plan de mejora de la revista profile con el que se busca fortalecer la gestión editorial y avanzar en el propósito de contribuir a la generación y fortalecimiento de comunidades de docentes investigadores. palabras clave: comunidades, docente investigador, revista profile melba libia cárdenas  https://orcid.org/0000-0003-0028-2506 · email: mlcardenasb@unal.edu.co how to cite this article (apa, 7th ed.): cárdenas, m. l. (2022). building and strengthening teacher communities: improvement plan for the profile journal. profile: issues in teachers’ professional development, 24(2), 17–30. https://doi.org/10.15446/profile.v24n2.103208 this article was received on september 30, 2021 and accepted on april 28, 2022. this is an open access article distributed under the terms of the creative commons license attribution-noncommercial-noderivatives 4.0 international license. consultation is possible at https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0 https://doi.org/10.15446/profile.v24n2.103208 https://orcid.org/0000-0003-0028-2506 mailto:mlcardenasb@unal.edu.co https://doi.org/10.15446/profile.v24n2.103208 https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0 universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras18 cárdenas introduction in past editorials we have referred to the profile journal’s national and international ranking achievements (cárdenas & nieto-cruz, 2021; cárdenas et al., 2020). however, gaining such recognition and being subjected to the logics of evaluation systems convey a risk: silencing some of the voices that have traditionally been welcomed in scientific journals. the profile journal is not exempt from this potential phenomenon. in fact, since 2020, when the journal was classified for the first time in the quartile 2 of the scimago journal rank, email queries from interested authors have increased, and so has the number of manuscripts submitted for peer review; and although contributions mainly come from diverse peripherical contexts, the challenge is to ensure the presence of the national and local professional communities that inspired the creation of the publication and that have contributed to its evolution. the profile journal remains committed to being an outlet for the opinions and ideas of a diverse community of educators with different educational levels and research experience and who are mainly immersed in social and educational contexts with complex circumstances. in this sense, the journal departs from the scheme followed by “mainstream” journals that usually feature renowned scholars or researchers with long trajectories. even so, a publication like profile, edited outside the dominant sphere of the english language teaching profession (i.e., the english-speaking countries), is forced to measure itself against such mainstream, high impact journals due to the current national evaluation system of colombian scientific periodicals defined by the ministry of science and technology (minciencias, 2020), which places great emphasis on the position colombian journals have in international rankings. thus, there is an imbalance to be addressed between the vision of the journal and institutional requirements. our interpretation of what can be regarded as “quality” indicators is not necessarily aligned with the instrumental and effective nature of colombian economic, scientific, or technological policies. in order to fully grasp the quality of a scientific journal, we need to learn more about the actors involved in its publication; especially from what the theory of symbolic interactionism (blumer, 2001; woods, 1983) can tell us about the processes those actors follow while performing a given role within scientific publishing. with all the previous considerations in mind, we carried out a case study with an ethnographic approach to gather the insights from novice writers and reviewers of the profile journal regarding the role scientific journals play in community building within knowledge society (cárdenas, 2021). the study focused on the experiences and beliefs of readers, authors, and reviewers, which has helped me identify elements that could be introduced into an improvement plan closely related to the english language teachers’ local realities. it is hoped that such a plan can contribute to strengthening our communities, our knowledge, and, ultimately, the teaching profession. in this article, derived from the abovementioned study, the focus is on the authors and the defining characteristics of the types of communities to which they belong. we will also discuss the analytical template followed in the elaboration of an improvement plan for the journal management. what can be understood by community? basically, a community can be defined by the relationships between its members: proximity (geographical location), commonalities (interests, functions), or any other sort of connection that may emerge and act as a cohesive factor (cárdenas-londoño, 2000). nevertheless, it should be noted that such a definition may imply certain ambiguity because it can be applied to both freedom movements and systems of opression (bautista, 2012). thus, when framing a concept of community, we should dispense with a notion of territory as well as with the idealist vision so often found in literature. krause (2001), for instance, proposes three elements that help 19profile: issues teach. prof. dev., vol. 24 no. 2, jul-dec, 2022. issn 1657-0790 (printed) 2256-5760 (online). bogotá, colombia. pages 17-30 building and strengthening teacher communities: improvement plan for the profile journal distinguish a community from other kinds of human societies: “belonging, subjectively understood as “feeling part of ” and “identified with”; interrelationship, that is, communication, interdependence, and mutual influence among the members; and common culture, or the notion of shared meanings” (p. 29; emphasis added, translated from spanish). here, we understand a community as a group of people with shared knowledge, visions, and goals, and who are committed to clearly defined goals, and interact to achieve them. this can be possible even if the members do not inhabit the same geographical area, without face to face contact. a community is not something established beforehand, but it grows thanks to mutual relationships, a disposition to cooperate, the performance of certain roles, and the value given to individual and collective potentiality. the intricacies that arise from the relationships among individuals and collectivities foster the development of educational, learning, academic, professional, and scientific communities. we will next define the last three communities since they have been found to be the main scenarios in which the authors of the profile journal interact. academic communities an academic community is usually associated to a university environment. in that regard, it consists of “a significant number of intellectually qualified individuals who undertake research and teaching activities and keep communication channels that allow them to share knowledge and control its value” (díaz, 1997, pp. 109–110; translated from spanish). díaz indicates that, in establishing these communities, five main conditions must be met: (a) a command of the written language for effective scientific communication; (b) a productive mindset that is prepared for the generation of knowledge; (c) the sustained effort of the members to get to know the academic output of national peers and to objectively assess it; (d) an expansion of the sources of reference to include not just books but also specialized journals; and (e) the capability of accessing knowledge in other languages. regarding the first condition, romero-serna (2000) sees writing as the communicative tool that facilitates the rearrangement of the paradigms shared by a community. for this author, interaction through writing helps “modify and generate theory, validate existing knowledge, accept or reject theoretical arguments, and foster the preservation or transformation of dogma for future generations” (p. 21; translated from spanish). an academic community is a particular way of academic organization that groups certain kind of individuals (students, educators, administrators, supervisors, and directors) for whom education is the main activity (cárdenas-londoño, 2000). its members have a particular view of the world and an approach to certain theories that is submitted to constant scrutiny (romero-serna, 2000). furthermore, as found by francis-salazar and marín-sánchez (2010) in a study on the role of academic communities in the construction of university teachers’ pedagogical knowledge, there are subcommunities within communities as a direct result of the environments inhabited by faculty members when performing their work, which is to say, based on professional, disciplinary, or work-related issues. thus, there are groups formed around, for example, the teachers’ contract type or their relationship with the institution. professional communities these types of associations seek group cohesion based on professions. such disciplinary boundary, present in academic communities as well, allows professional communities to set themselves apart from others and to gather their members around three substantial elements: (a) institutions, (b) disciplines, and (c) recognition and prestige (francis-salazar & marín-sánchez, 2010). such elements can be found in a community like tesol (teaching english to speakers of other languages), conceived by canagarajah (2016) as a professional community focused on pedagogy, research, and theory, and with an evolution from modern to postmodern universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras20 cárdenas orientations in its disciplinary discourse. this is clear in the way knowledge is made available through the tesol quarterly journal, which brings together authors from diverse geographical areas and features articles that report on a variety of studies with different research methods. we concur with canagarajah in that, while this diversity can be perceived as a threat to the overall cohession of tesol, it may contribute to expanding the range of the community’s knowledge base, thus fostering its growth. from this perspective, we suggest that teachers at primary and secondary levels can improve their professional practice as well as understand the specific details of research when they belong to professional communities; which, in our case, are teaching communities (cárdenas, 2002). these communities can emerge within the framework of professional development programs (precisely the kind in which the profile journal was conceived), which may require redefining the way the latter are designed and developed. in the communities thus established, teachers with different academic backgrounds and educational contexts can converge around common interests. wells (1999) calls this notion of collaborative collective work a “community of inquiry” or research community and differentiates it from a community of practice in that it broadens the point of view to focus not just on learning but also on knowledge building. for cochran-smith and lytle (1993, 1999), these are teacher-led research communities which have an impact on educational reforms. finally, we would like to underscore that the interactive work between teachers in basic education and teacher educators was the point of departure for the profile journal, which may help explain the role of scientific publications in the creation of communities within the knowledge society (cárdenas, 2021). scientific community for kuhn (1975), a scientific community is made up of professionals of a scientific discipline joined by common elements: permanent communication, unanimity in judging professional issues, and education. kuhn goes on to describe the composition of a scientific community through two types of factors: (a) values and norms and (b) theoretical and methodological elements. the former shape the relations among scientists, the way they work and organize themselves, their institutional enclave, and the nature of their leadership. as for the theoretical and methodological elements, these involve shared commitments of scrutiny derived from scientific activity. for kreimer (1998), scientific communities gather representatives who, in general, exercise great control over most institutions involved in research, including their funding. the development and consolidation of scientific fields are usually a consequence of dynamic interactions that take place within specific contexts. kreimer notes that many of those representatives tend to adopt conservative attitudes towards the emergence of new subject interests, research profiles, and disciplinary assignments. from our object of research, we distance ourselves from such concepts. while publishing in a scientific journal is a challenge and may provide access to a scientific community, it does not mean that one is part of an elite. to become part, as an author, of the community of a periodical journal coincides with the interest of that journal in sharing quality scientific knowledge. being a member of such a community implies an open attitude to be able to make contributions and accept the outcomes of making our work public. in fact, under current circumstances, indicators such as the number of studies and published articles, conference attendance and proceedings, the communication and relations with communities in the same or related fields, to name a few, are used to frame scientific communities within national and international contexts and to give faith of their existence. scientific journals help comply with most of these indicators, and their underlying plurality in scope functions as a way to regulate the relationships that arise “within scientific communities and among them and other social systems” (capurro, 2015, p. 17). nonetheless, the sense of cloister and exclusion that seems to surrond scientific communities indicates that relations of power are part of the scientific 21profile: issues teach. prof. dev., vol. 24 no. 2, jul-dec, 2022. issn 1657-0790 (printed) 2256-5760 (online). bogotá, colombia. pages 17-30 building and strengthening teacher communities: improvement plan for the profile journal ethos, which can be evident, for instance, among research groups and their impact on training researchers; in search of products that can help rate and classify scholars and their research groups; and, as indicated before, in national policies based on journal ranking systems administered by highly commercial companies. some of these inconveniences have been surpassed in time while others prevail and influence, with varying degrees, the classification of colombian scientific communities as “emergent” or “under development.” furthermore, despite the perception of superiority that society usually has towards academic and scientific communities, as elites in the production and advancement of knowledge, significant efforts are needed to strengthen them for “neither market forces nor other kinds of spontaneous social forces are enough, on their own, to foster the development of structures for the production and dissemination of a nation’s scientific and technological knowledge” (forero-pineda, 2000, p. 9; translated from spanish). this becomes even more necessary in communities like the one where the profile journal is edited, as well as in those to which the authors and readers of the journal belong. improvement plan for the generation of communities around the profile journal to move forward with the creation of communities, we should bear in mind the external circumstances that can impact the achievement of said goal. although we, as editors, may not have direct control over such circumstances, it is possible to assess the editorial and publication practices of the journal as well as the actions aimed at contributing to the communities where the authors—and, ideally, the readers—may have some influence. therefore, we have designed an improvement plan aimed at strengthening editorial management and, thus, advance our contributions to generating and consolidating communities. based on the protocol proposed by the national agency for quality assessment and accreditation (agencia nacional de evaluación de la calidad y acreditación, aneca, n.d.)1, the plan includes five elements: 1. identifying areas of improvement 2. detecting the main causes of the problem 3. defining goals for each area of improvement 4. selecting actions for improvement 5. scheduling a follow-up plan the workflow of the editorial process to produce a journal issue generally comprises two great areas: editorial management and visibility. the first includes (a) a call for manuscripts, (b) manuscript review and edition, and (c) design and publication. as for visibility, three post-publication stages are taken into account: (a) launching, (b) distribution, and (c) dissemination. in drafting the improvement plan, we resorted to the following input: (a) analysis of the editorial process and emails related to it from 2014 to the second semester of 2020 (this was carried out by the editor with the help of the editorial assistant); (b) records of institutional and national guidelines and initiatives that favored the visibility of colombian journals; (c) interactions with authos, reviewers, and other actors involved in the production of the journal (e.g., the editorial center of the faculty, the university’s library division, the indexing and referencing systems); and (d) the suggestions, collected via interviews and emails, made by the participants of the study on which this paper is based. identifying areas of improvement the starting point in detecting areas of improvement includes the set of strengths and difficulties drawn from the sources indicated above. since the editing stages are interrelated, and the strengths and difficulties were at times duplicated, these were grouped into the two great areas that make up the editorial workflow: editorial management and visibility (see tables 1 & 2). 1 aneca suggests a support document to help universities draft improvement plans once they have completed a process of evaluation. the protocol has been adopted here for its ample institutional dissemination without implying our complete alignment with said agency. universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras22 cárdenas table 1. areas of improvement in editorial management stage 1: call for manuscripts strengths difficulties areas of improvement • since 2016, an average of 30 manuscripts have been submitted per issue, with an average of 12 articles being accepted for publication in each issue. • the call for manuscripts remains open on the journal website, and it has been shared via email, academic networks (e.g., eltecs, publindex), and bulletins from the faculty of human sciences and the research vice rectory of universidad nacional de colombia. • information about academic events and the launching of new journal editions is ongoing. • to promote the second section of the journal (dedicated to research done by novice teachers and based on their theses or dissertations), we have taken into consideration the suggestions made by some reviewers to expand the submission criteria and allow the tutors of the theses to appear as coauthors of a manuscript. there is also the possibility of submitting manuscripts based on master’s theses whose authors have never published in a scientific journal. although tutors of undergraduate monographs have been invited to submit papers, there is still a lack of contributions for the second section of the journal (issues from novice teacher researchers). publication of articles from novice authors. stage 2: manuscript review and edition strengths difficulties areas of improvement • a solid team of peer reviewers has been set up. • we continue to extend invitations to possible new reviewers to respond to the growing number of submitted manuscripts. • there have been no inconveniences in the reception of manuscripts through the ojs system. • most reviewers prefer not to use the ojs system for manuscript review. in this sense, a successful strategy has been introduced whereby the editorial assistant sends the manuscripts to the reviewers by email and then registers their decisions in the system. this has allowed the review process to run smoothly, avoding the inconveniences experienced when the reviewers themselves were registering their recommendations (e.g., lost evaluations, undelivered notices, backlogs). • a template of the letter to the editor has been useful in obtaining full and homogenous submissions. • at times reviewers are insufficient. this is mainly due to the number of papers whose assessment usually requires more than two reviewers. • delayed responses from some of the reviewers. • greater awareness by authors of publishing guidelines and their compliance. increase the efficiency of peer review. 23profile: issues teach. prof. dev., vol. 24 no. 2, jul-dec, 2022. issn 1657-0790 (printed) 2256-5760 (online). bogotá, colombia. pages 17-30 building and strengthening teacher communities: improvement plan for the profile journal stage 3: design and publication strengths difficulties areas of improvement • definition of the workflow of the editorial process with the specific tasks and schedule for the actors involved at this stage (e.g. editorial team, editorial center). this guarantees complying with the stated publication frequency (january, for the first issue, and july, for the second). • designing the layout and cover of each issue following the publication style of the journal. • steps for facilitating online reading of published contents in different formats, including pdf (of the whole issue and of each separate article), and without restrictions to downloading or printing. in this way, readers chose the contents they prefer. eventual delays in the tasks of the editorial center due to insufficient workforce or because other faculty publications require attention in dealing with a backlog. earlier delivery of contents for layout. nb: this is not regarded as an improvement area since most of the activities at this stage depend on the managament of the editorial center. the corresponding requests are made to guarantee the timely publication of the journal. table 2. areas of improvement in visibility stage 1: launching strengths difficulties areas of improvement • each number is launched in a local event (face-to-face or online): after introducing the issue, two or three authors make a brief presentation of their articles. • starting with vol. 20, no. 1 (january, 2018) authors are asked to submit short videos about their papers that may be viewed during the launching event. these videos are later posted on the journal webpage and on the youtube channel (https://bit.ly/3prl0r1) • positive response from the attendees to the launching event and from the followers of the youtube channel. • at times, audiences are small. • technical issues with online streaming. capture a greater audience for the presentation of future editions. https://bit.ly/3prl0r1 universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras24 cárdenas stage 2: distribution strengths difficulties areas of improvement • some printed issues of the journal are available for distribution. authors and members of the editorial board are notified when a new issue has been published online. only one reviewer requests delivery of a printed copy. • authors receive an email with a copy of their article in pdf format and the recommendation to share it with colleagues and through academic networks. • readers can download from the journal website pdf files of the whole issue or of each individual article. the accumulation of printed issues. although the contents are freely available online on the journal website and on the databases that index the journal, some teachers still prefer the printed edition. it is therefore necessary for this option to remain available. • in order to reduce production costs, the number of printed issues has been lowered, with the possibility of asking the editorial center to print more, if needed. • promoting printed issues in different academic events. nb: this is not considered an area of improvement. stage 3: dissemination strengths difficulties areas of improvement • implementation of social media outlets, including youtube. • registering the contents or metadata of each published issue in bibliographical databases and international index systems. • making the articles available in the xml format so that search engines can more easily harvest their metadata. • creating expectation among readers on upcoming issues. • promoting contents by linking them to the authors’ professional and social networks. • delay in updating the contents in some bibliographical databases. ahead-of-print publication, that is, advanced online publication of some contents prior to the final print or online edition. alternatively, changes in the frequency of publication (from two issues per year to three). action plan for improvement once the four areas of improvement have been identified (publication of articles from novice authors, increasing the efficiency of peer review, capturing a greater audience for the presentation of future editions, and ahead-of-print publication or change in publication frequency), we establish the cause of the problem. next, we define goals of improvement, the actions to be taken within certain time limits, and the expected benefits. finally, we specify the follow-up tasks for each area with regard to the planned improvement actions. in our case, roles and responsibilities are not included since the editor and the assistant editor are in charge of all the improvement plan. in the following sections, we detail the action plan for each of the areas under scrutiny: editorial management and visibility. 25profile: issues teach. prof. dev., vol. 24 no. 2, jul-dec, 2022. issn 1657-0790 (printed) 2256-5760 (online). bogotá, colombia. pages 17-30 building and strengthening teacher communities: improvement plan for the profile journal table 3. improvement area no. 1: publishing articles by novice authors problem description for the journal, it is important to ensure the participation of teachers from different educational levels, among them, novice researchers. across a diversity of media (e.g., fora, communications with bachelor’s programs, social media), emphasis has been made on the opportunity the journal offers novice authors to publish the results of their first research endeavor in the second section (issues from novice teacher researchers). however, the submission rate for this section remains low. then, it is necessary to find alternatives that may help in keeping the section, since it is integral to the vision and mission of the journal. cause of the problem an overall lack of publishing culture among novice researchers (bachelor’s and master’s degree students). it has also been noted that it is rather uncommon for teacher educators in bachelor programs to resort to articles by novice researchers as material in research courses or as a guide for the monographs undertaken by future teachers. in contrast, the journal contents are known to be frequently used in master’s degree programs, especially in the colombian context. objective to guarantee the publication of articles from novice authors in the second section of the journal. actions for improvement • extend an invitation to the coordinators of bachelor’s and master’s degree programs to make students aware of the publication options offered by the journal. • maitain assertive communication with authors who inquire about guidelines for publication or who request an opinion on the texts they wish to send for evaluation. • tutoring novice writers through revision of first drafts. • panels with former novice writers, so they may share experiences. expected benefits • maintain the three sections of the journal • motivate new researchers • increase readership for articles by novice writers action plan for editorial management we found two areas that require attention to optimize editorial management. the first has to do with keeping one of the distinctive traits of the journal: the publication of articles from novice authors (teachers at the end of their undergraduate or master’s studies; see table 3). the second area refers to increasing the efficiency of peer review (see table 4).2 2 table 4 does not include the elements of academic writing and content that were also pointed out by authors and reviewers as publishing difficulties. these are discussed in cárdenas (2019), but they also are part of the editorial management of the journal. universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras26 cárdenas table 4. improvement area no. 2: increasing the efficiency of peer review problem description each manuscript must be assigned to, at least, two peer reviewers in the initial round of review so that the evaluation process is kept to a maximum of five months (including subsequent rounds of review). it is also necessary to bear in mind that some manuscripts will need the opinion of a third reviewer to solve any discrepancy between the recommendations of the two original reviewers. however, the efficiency of the peer review process can be affected by some reviewers when they do not respond to review requests, submit their feedback late, or perform poor reviews. it has been observed that late reviewer response is usually due to difficulties in understanding the manuscripts. all this has a negative impact in the time spent on evaluation since reminders need to be sent when there is not a prompt confirmation or additional reviewers have to be assigned in the absence of confirmation or due to poor reviews. therefore, the review process must be closely montired to ensure that authors receive opportune responses or instructions; on the contrary, the image of the journal may be affected. cause of the problem • lack of time on the part of reviewers. • discomfort with some authors’ neglect in the organization and style of their manuscripts. • according to the evaluation of the journal done by scopus in 2018, when the journal was first included in this database, “academic quality is not uniform across articles.” even though this may be debatable, depending on the views of this database reviewers with regard to the diverse focus of the journal, it is something to bear in mind when assessing the overall quality of the feedback submitted by the reviewers of the journal as well as when editing the final version of the manuscripts approved for publication. objective to increase the efficieny of the review process of the manuscripts submitted to the journal. actions for improvement • expand the number of reviewers. • send more detailed information to new reviewers on the nature of the journal and on the kind of papers expected for each section. • more guidance for the authors regarding the type of papers the journal publishes and the guidelines for submissions. • supervise reviewers’ performance. expected benefits • a fluid evaluation process to optimize the editorial workflow • assertive and prompt communication with authors and reviewers action plan for visibility even though the profile journal has made progress in terms of visibility, we acknowledge the need for improvement in two areas: a larger audience for the launching events and earlier publication of articles. with regard to this last issue, and as detailed below, the expectations of readers and the trends in scientific publication should be analyzed to help decide whether to opt for the ahead-of-print dynamics or change the publication frequency of the journal. tables 5 and 6 show the details of the plan for improvement in the mentioned areas. 27profile: issues teach. prof. dev., vol. 24 no. 2, jul-dec, 2022. issn 1657-0790 (printed) 2256-5760 (online). bogotá, colombia. pages 17-30 building and strengthening teacher communities: improvement plan for the profile journal table 5. improvement area no. 3: capturing a greater audience for the presentation of future editions of the journal problem description from 2000, when the journal was first launched, each published issue has been presented to the interested audience in biannual meetings and through electronic media. however, given the pedagogical interest of the journal in gathering around it the academic, professional, and scientific communities, it is a matter of concern that, even though a lot of teachers register for those launching events, the actual number of attendees is not as high as expected. causes of the problem it has been observed that the invitations to attend the launching events reach the potential audience through mailing lists or other media (social networks, print flyers, or radio announcements). nevertheless, the addressed professional communities seem to be unwilling to take advantage of academic spaces like the one offered by the journal. it is also the case that the teachers’ busy agendas may have a deterrent effect, making attendance to faceto-face events difficult. objective to increase visibility of the journal by ensuring the participation of members of reputed communities in the events organized periodically. actions for improvement • review the strategies to publicize events. • find alternatives to the dynamics of launching events. expected benefits • greater familiarity of professional, academic, and scientific communities with the publication. • early circulation of accepted articles. • keep the journal coverage active within databases and index systems. table 6. improvement area no. 4: ahead-of-print publication or change in publication frequency problem description while the journal has a semiannual publication frequency, current trends in early publication of accepted articles lead to other options that may secure prompt circulation. one possibility is the ahead-of-print publication aproach (e.g., the electronic publication of accepted articles prior to the complete printed or online edition). another option would be to increase the publication frequency, from semiannual to three issues per year. causes of the problem as the journal gains visibility, especially within reputed communities and databases and index systems, the number of manuscripts submitted for evaluation rises. at the same time, there is greater expectation with regard to the publication of upcoming editions. usually, such expectation is the result of pressure on the authors to display their academic output (e.g., for promotion within their institutions or as a requirement to be granted a master’s or doctoral degree). regarding the evaluation process, manuscripts are approved in a sequential manner, which can be used to publish them in less time. objective to promote an earlier dissemination of the contents of each journal issue in reputed communities. universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras28 cárdenas actions for improvement • evaluate the relevance of resorting to ahead-of-print publication. • evaluate the relevance of changing the publication frequency from semiannual to three issues per year. expected benefits • exploit the advantages of online publication. • meet the need of providing current contents (although this may not be as urgent given the characteristics of the disciplinary area of the journal). • greater familiarity of professional, academic, and scientific communities with the publication. • less time for the authors to be able to incorporate their articles to their academic output. incorporation of english language teachers’ academic writing into professional, academic, and scientific communities; thus, contribute to the field of english language teaching and learning. in that regard, “our aim of enriching the professional knowledge of our authors and readers and thus, create and strengthen an international academic community around the teaching and learning of english as a foreign/second language,” remains constant (cárdenas et al., 2020, pp. 9–10). the demanding editorial management of a journal includes complex processes that usually revolve around universal or particular publication norms. overwhelmed by the dynamics of the manuscript evaluation process, we usually forget that communication with authors and reviewers may offer a glimpse into circumstances worthy of study. in our case, interpreting the voices and experiences of the participants allowed us to have a closer look at the reconstruction of meanings derived from their beliefs and to unveil the personal and professional circumstances attributable to publishing in a scientific journal; circumstances that are somehow connected to the scientific and professional communities in the writers’ local or international contexts. we expect that the actions included in the improvement plan may also be a reference for studies on academic writing, the editorial processes of academic journals, and alternatives in supporting educators from different educational levels and geographical contexts interested in divulging their work through journal publishing. concluding remarks we can see that the elements included in the improvement plan demand great efforts to respond to the needs of national and international communities. publishing in peer reviewed journals allows members of a community to establish academic contact, to keep abreast of the latest development in their area of expertise, to evaluate the quality and relevance of the work they perform, and, ultimately, to establish collaborative relationships with peers. therefore, the job done by the editorial staff of scientific journals, as venues where communities emerge and grow, is of paramount importance, and special attention should be paid to permanently monitor specific editorial processes to identify areas of improvement and implement the necessary actions. the improvement plan described in this paper gathers some core issues that may allow us to move forward with the sustained publication of the journal, according to current editorial practices and the results of the study done with novice writers and reviewers (cárdenas, 2021). we can see that the areas of improvement are not just the result of the need to respond to the external metrics of journal evaluation systems. such areas are already an integral part of good practices in academic publications. above all, our interest is to foresee actions aligned with the journal’s socio-critical vision, which is fundamental in guiding the mission of the journal as a forum that facilitates the 29profile: issues teach. prof. dev., vol. 24 no. 2, jul-dec, 2022. issn 1657-0790 (printed) 2256-5760 (online). bogotá, colombia. pages 17-30 building and strengthening teacher communities: improvement plan for the profile journal references agencia nacional de evaluación de la calidad y acreditación. (n.d.). plan de mejoras: herramienta de trabajo. https:// bit.ly/3wydy7u bautista, r. (2012). ¿qué quiere decir comunidad? bolivian studies journal/revista de estudios bolivianos, 19, 159–189. https://doi.org/10.5195/bsj.2012.64 blumer, h. (2001). el interaccionismo simbólico, perspectiva y método. hora. canagarajah, s. (2016). tesol as a professional community: a half-century of pedagogy, research, and theory. tesol quarterly, 50(1), 7–41. https://doi.org/10.1002/tesq.275 capurro, r. (2015). ¿qué es una revista científica? informatio: revista del instituto de información de la facultad de información y comunicación, 20(1), 3–24. https:// informatio.fic.edu.uy/index.php/informatio/article/ view/165 cárdenas, m. l. (2002). teacher research as a means to create teachers’ communities in inservice programs. how journal, 9, 1–6. https://www.howjournalcolombia.org/ index.php/how/article/view/185/234 cárdenas, m. l. (2019). dificultades de docentes de inglés para publicar artículos científicos en contextos periféricos: percepciones de autores y evaluadores. íkala, revista de lenguaje y cultura, 24(1), 181–197. https://doi.org/10.17533/ udea.ikala.v24n01a11 cárdenas, m. l. (2021). papel de las revistas científicas en la generación de comunidades en la sociedad del conocimiento: percepciones de escritores noveles y de evaluadores de la revista profile [doctoral dissertation]. universidad de zaragoza. cárdenas, m. l., & nieto-cruz, m. c. (2021). profile in quartile 1 of the scimago journal rank. profile: issues in teachers’ professional development, 23(2), 9–14. https:// doi.org/10.15446/profile.v23n2.96647 cárdenas, m. l., nieto-cruz, m. c., & martínez, e. (2020). 20 years’ journey of the profile journal in elt research. profile: issues in teachers’ professional development, 22(1), 7–11. https://doi.org/10.15446/profile.v22n1.83884 cárdenas-londoño, r. (2000). espacios de comunicación que promueven la generación de comunidad científica. in grupo de estudio y trabajo con sentido (ed.), comunicación organizacional: monografías (pp. 123–183). pregón. cochran-smith, m., & lytle, s. l. (1993). inside/outside: teacher research and knowledge. teachers college press. cochran-smith, m., & lytle, s. l. (1999). the teacher research movement: a decade later. educational researcher, 28(7), 15–25. https://doi.org/10.3102/0013189x028007015 díaz, j. a. (1997). las comunidades académicas. revista colombiana de educación, (34), 109–114. https://doi. org/10.17227/01203916.5412 forero-pineda, c. (2000). de la trampa al desarrollo endógeno: limitaciones y potencial de la comunidad científica colombiana. colombia, ciencia y tecnología, 18(4), 3–11. francis-salazar, s., & marín-sánchez, p. (2010). hacia la construcción del saber pedagógico en las comunidades académicas: un estudio desde la opinión de docentes universitarios. revista electrónica “actualidades investigativas en educación”, 10(2), 1–29. https://doi.org/10.15517/ aie.v10i2.10134 krause, j. m. (2001). hacia una redefinición del concepto de comunidad: cuatro ejes para un análisis crítico y una propuesta. revista de psicología, 10(2), 49–60. https:// doi.org/10.5354/0719-0581.2001.18572 kreimer, p. (1998). publicar y castigar: el paper como problema y la dinámica de los campos científicos. redes, 12, 51–73. kuhn, t. s. (1975). la estructura de las revoluciones científicas. fondo de cultura económica. minciencias. (2020). modelo de clasificación de revistas científicas – publindex. https://bit.ly/3z1o7lo romero-serna, j. d. (2000). pequeñas comunidades académicas. editorial antillas. wells, g. (1999). dialogic inquiry: towards a socio-cultural practice and theory of education. cambridge university press. https://doi.org/10.1017/cbo9780511605895 woods, p. (1983). sociology and the school. routledge and kegan paul. https://bit.ly/3wydy7u https://bit.ly/3wydy7u https://doi.org/10.5195/bsj.2012.64 https://doi.org/10.1002/tesq.275 https://informatio.fic.edu.uy/index.php/informatio/article/view/165 https://informatio.fic.edu.uy/index.php/informatio/article/view/165 https://informatio.fic.edu.uy/index.php/informatio/article/view/165 https://www.howjournalcolombia.org/index.php/how/article/view/185/234 https://www.howjournalcolombia.org/index.php/how/article/view/185/234 https://doi.org/10.17533/udea.ikala.v24n01a11 https://doi.org/10.17533/udea.ikala.v24n01a11 https://doi.org/10.15446/profile.v23n2.96647 https://doi.org/10.15446/profile.v23n2.96647 https://doi.org/10.15446/profile.v22n1.83884 https://doi.org/10.3102/0013189x028007015 https://doi.org/10.17227/01203916.5412 https://doi.org/10.17227/01203916.5412 https://doi.org/10.15517/aie.v10i2.10134 https://doi.org/10.15517/aie.v10i2.10134 https://doi.org/10.5354/0719-0581.2001.18572 https://doi.org/10.5354/0719-0581.2001.18572 https://bit.ly/3z1o7lo https://doi.org/10.1017/cbo9780511605895 universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras30 cárdenas about the author melba libia cárdenas holds a phd in education (universidad de zaragoza, spain), an ma in tesol (edinburgh university, scotland), and a bed in modern languages (universidad de la salle, colombia). she is an associate professor at universidad nacional de colombia and a co-researcher in the groups profile and lexi. profile 2.p65 ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ 42profileprofileprofileprofileprofile this project was conducted in thefundación universitaria san martínwith night accounting students who were coursing sixth semester. they were taking 3rd level of english. the purpose of the study was to improve reading comprehension through the use of some reading strategies. a group of 6 students was chosen because of their low level and difficulties in understanding texts in english. data collection was conducted using questionnaires, teacher’s observation and teacher’s diary. results showed that students mostly liked to read topics related to their programs, despite their lack of vocabulary, and they improved reading comprehension through the use of adequate reading strategies, avoiding the overuse of translation. introductionintroductionintroductionintroductionintroduction the reader plays an active role in getting out of the text the message the writer has put into the text. understanding a written text means extracting the required information from it as efficiently as possible (nuttall:1982). the purpose of this study was to improve reading comprehension through the use of adequate reading strategies. some reading strategies taken into account in this project were: skimming, scanning, pointing out the main idea and supporting details, predicting and deducing meaning, non-text information and non-verbal information (ibid:1982). difficulties understanding texts included a lack of vocabulary and structure skills as well as a lack of motivation to read were detected. the former was confronted by implementing the reading strategies and distributing a questionnaire after each lesson in order to identif y strategies to improve reading comprehension. the latter was worked on by looking at the reading session in terms of three phases: pre-reading, while-reading and postreading (harmer: 1983). procedureprocedureprocedureprocedureprocedure since difficulties reading texts in english were detected, it was decided to carry out the research project based on implementing different strategies to improve reading comprehension. this was done from february to may, 2001. a group of 6 students was selected because of their problems understanding texts in english. the methodology used for this study was action research. the collection of data was carried out through techniques such as teacher´s diary, class obser vation and a completed questionnaire after the activities ended. simple readings about different topics were provided the students in order to apply adequate reading strategies e.g looking for specific information or the general idea of a text; making predictions about the reading and so on. then students answered a questionnaire to identify the strategies and the steps to be followed in the activity. understanding texts in english! a challenge for future professionals consuelo lópez medinaconsuelo lópez medinaconsuelo lópez medinaconsuelo lópez medinaconsuelo lópez medina ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○43 profileprofileprofileprofileprofile more difficult material over financial and accounting topics was included to work technical vocabulary. then the questionnaire was handed out and the results analyzed. a final questionnaire to get the students advances or deficiencies in the reading process was filled out in the last class. resultsresultsresultsresultsresults results of the study were presented in the following qualitative analysis. at the beginning of this research via questionnaires, students expressed their lack of vocabulary and structure skills and the difficulty of understanding a text in english as justification to translate word by word. the second questionnaire answered by students showed their preference for technical topics related to their interests and majors in spite of their language difficulties as well as their progress reading and understanding texts in english after having applied the reading strategies learnt in class. they were asked about what they liked most about the text worked in class. they said the topic because it was related to their majors and everybody paid more attention to the activity. the questionnaire filled out in the last class to identify progress or deficiencies in the reading process showed that most of the students evidenced progress in reading comprehension after having applied the reading strategies. they were asked whether they noticed any progress during the reading comprehension activities or not and which aspects contributed more to the successful reading of texts in english. one of the students said that he did not feel fear when facing a text in engish now; he did not stop when he found an unknown word and had learned to read and analyze a text globally. conclusionsconclusionsconclusionsconclusionsconclusions this study showed that when students applied the reading strategies learnt in class, the problem of translating word by word was avoided. they felt more confident of their abilities to understand a text in english and they improved their reading comprehension. the implementation of selected and useful texts related to students’ interests and necessities is a way to motivate them to enjoy reading and improve comprehension. an interesting activity for further research could be the designing of some software to learn vocabulary as a tool to understanding texts in english and improving reading comprehension. referencesreferencesreferencesreferencesreferences harmer, j. (1983). the practice of english language teaching. london: longman. nutall, c. (1982). teaching reading skills in a foreign language. london: heinemann. profile 2.p65 ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○25 profileprofileprofileprofileprofile this project was conducted in order tomotivate students of transition gradein hispanoamericano conde ansurez school to read through the use of strategies for story-telling. as the sample for this study, the five students who had the lowest language proficiency were selected. according to the results, students improved their english, evidenced understanding of stories read in class and expressed more interest in reading. however, the process has to be continued because reading skills under development need constant practice. introductionintroductionintroductionintroductionintroduction last year i noticed that my students of transition grade had difficulties in getting the meaning of the sentences. for this reason i attempted to find a method that would integrate the development of reading skills in a way that would be more related to students’ motivation and encourage them read in context, instead of learning a list of disconnected vocabulary. i opted for storytelling techniques that would motivate students and generate in them interest in reading. literacy development in kindergarten flor alba vflor alba vflor alba vflor alba vflor alba vanegas rodríguezanegas rodríguezanegas rodríguezanegas rodríguezanegas rodríguez ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ 26profileprofileprofileprofileprofile the purpose of my investigation was to enhance students’ motivation to read by getting meaning from the stories. i also wanted to explore how students evidenced understanding of the stories read in class and how they increased participation in the reading sessions. the action research project was carried out in transition grade from february to june 2001. this report reveals the impact the story-telling techniques had on the students. theoretical frameworktheoretical frameworktheoretical frameworktheoretical frameworktheoretical framework telling stories to children means reading stories aloud from big books with gestures, facial expressions and a variety of voices to make reading an enjoyable activity and language experience. reading aloud to our students every day encourages them to describe pictures, associate sounds and meanings with written symbols. reading aloud also stimulates the curiosity of children about characters, places, themes and actions. this is done by permitting only tantalizing glimpses of small selections from the text. these snippets can provide a need to read to complete an activity or to confirm an idea. here are some of the most important reasons why stories play a central role in teaching reading to children: • stories are particularly important in children’s lives. • stories help children understand their world and share it with others. • stories offer a major and constant source of language experience. • children want to find meaning in stories, so, they listen to stories with a purpose. ellis and brewster (1991) describe how children enjoy listening to stories by repetition. this frequent repetition allows certain language items to be acquired while others are being overtly reinforced. many stories also contain natural repetition of key vocabulary and structures. this helps children remember details and predict what is coming next in the story. repetition also encourages oral participation and the practice of meaningful contexts. this also helps children summarize stories and act out in front of the class. researresearresearresearresearch designch designch designch designch design this research was carried out in two cycles. in the first cycle, i determined the problem and planned story-reading sessions. in the second cycle i used story-telling techniques to motivate children and analyze students’ interest, ability to understand the meaning of the stories, ability to construct sentences, participation in the reading sessions and their work in groups. classes were held in the classroom, the reading center and the video room. information was gathered by means of daily class programmers (which were designed using audio-visual aids and story-telling activities), and the teacher’s diary observations, taking into account what the sample did and said during reading sessions. i also recorded some reading sessions in order to observe the motivation of the students and their reading improvement. ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○27 profileprofileprofileprofileprofile resultsresultsresultsresultsresults the story-telling techniques and activities were applied according to the children’s language level. each story was followed by ideas of activities that helped children focus on the context of the story such as memory game, word pictures matching, pleonasm, bingo, mastermind, unscrambling words with alphabet cards and story summary. during reading sessions i observed that the children were interested in the stories. when children took part in stories, they enjoyed them a lot. sometimes they had difficulties with pronunciation, but they got it right by repetition. the results of the analysis of how to motivated children to read showed a general improvement not only in reading but also in listening and speaking that can be part of future investigations. stories help children get language-item skills and sentence constructions without their necessarily having to use them productively. they can build up a reservoir of language this way. when the time comes to move the language items into their productive control, it is no great problem because the language is not new to them. when children retold or acted out the stories, they improved speaking. they could express likes and dislikes and exchange ideas and associations related to stories they heard or read. learning a language is useless if we do not know how to communicate, how to listen to others, and how to speak and write so that listeners and readers will want to listen and read and be able to understand. conclusionsconclusionsconclusionsconclusionsconclusions literacy development in kindergarten was an interesting and gratifying research because children were motivated by the stories read in class. students evidenced understanding of story moods and more interest in reading classes. story-telling techniques generated students’ interest in reading. i could get that motivation started by reading aloud to students every day, and these story-telling techniques helped children focus their minds on the contents of the story. the procedures that i followed help children want to read and promoted an atmosphere of confidence. children were involved with and showed an affective response toward stories referencesreferencesreferencesreferencesreferences ellis, g. and brewster, j. (1991). the storytelling handbook for primary teachers. london: penguin books. profile 4 2003.p65 ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ 66profileprofileprofileprofileprofile for many years, english has been studied apart from the other subjects in nonbilingual centres, isolating it from other knowledge areas, underestimating its nature as a vehicle for communication. english has thus been considered just as a set of rules to be memorized with no communicative purpose. as english teachers our objective to design this proposal, was to show this language as a useful tool, not only to be practiced in the classroom, but also in the context of other areas, in this case, science. throughout the piloting of this project at gustavo restrepo school, in the south of bogotá, english was used to learn science and science was used to practice english during the performance of some tasks with a communicative purpose so that the students of ninth grade had the opportunity to learn by doing. kkkkkey wey wey wey wey wororororords: ds: ds: ds: ds: english-high school-teaching, sciences-high school-teaching, english-teaching-methods por muchos años, el inglés ha sido estudiado aparte de las otras materias en instituciones no bilingües, aislándolo de otras áreas del conocimiento y menospreciando su naturaleza como vehículo de comunicación. el inglés ha sido entonces considerado simplemente un conjunto de reglas que se memorizan sin un propósito comunicativo. como profesores de inglés nuestro objetivo al diseñar esta propuesta fue mostrar este idioma como una herramienta útil, no sólo para ser usada en el aula, sino también en el contexto de otras áreas; en este caso ciencias naturales. a través del pilotaje de este proyecto en el colegio gustavo restrepo en el sur de bogotá, el inglés fue usado para aprender ciencias naturales y las ciencias naturales fueron usadas para practicar inglés durante el desarrollo de algunas actividades, con un propósito comunicativo ������������������,�������������������� ��� �������������������� ���������$���� creación de nexos curriculares entre las ciencias naturales y el inglés en grado novenocreación de nexos curriculares entre las ciencias naturales y el inglés en grado novenocreación de nexos curriculares entre las ciencias naturales y el inglés en grado novenocreación de nexos curriculares entre las ciencias naturales y el inglés en grado novenocreación de nexos curriculares entre las ciencias naturales y el inglés en grado noveno pppppedredredredredro antonio chala bejaranoo antonio chala bejaranoo antonio chala bejaranoo antonio chala bejaranoo antonio chala bejarano ***** pechab@hotmail.com diana mardiana mardiana mardiana mardiana marcela pcela pcela pcela pcela pedraza lealedraza lealedraza lealedraza lealedraza leal * ** ** ** ** * dianamarcelapedraza@hotmail.com universidad nacional de colombia ***** pedro antonio chala pedro antonio chala pedro antonio chala pedro antonio chala pedro antonio chala got a degree in philology and languages from the national university in 2002. he has taught english in the extension courses at this university. he works as an english teacher and director of the english department at la presentación luna park school in bogotá. ********** diana marcela pedrazadiana marcela pedrazadiana marcela pedrazadiana marcela pedrazadiana marcela pedraza also got a degree in philology and languages from the national university in 2002. she has taught english in the extension courses at this university. she works as an english teacher at colombo gales school in bogotá. ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ 67 profileprofileprofileprofileprofile de manera que los estudiantes de noveno grado tuvieran la oportunidad de aprender haciendo. palabras claves:palabras claves:palabras claves:palabras claves:palabras claves: inglés-enseñanza secundaria, ciencias naturales-enseñanza secundaria, inglés-enseñanza-métodos introductionintroductionintroductionintroductionintroduction traditionally, english has been studiedapart from the other subjects in non-bilingual centres. given this fact, students are not exposed to the wide range of opportunities that the foreign language can offer as a means to communicate and acquire knowledge through it. today, when english has gained an important place in the world in almost all fields, it is necessary for people to use it in any context. at school, teachers must be aware of this need, in order to correlate it to other areas. that way, students can realize the relevance that this language has in our society and that it cannot be isolated from other knowledge as it has been done so far. although in the last few years english has become a more important subject of the curriculum, it has not been yet considered a code through which we can learn, but just a set of rules to be memorized with no communicative purpose. this research was intended to get students to regard the foreign language as a useful tool not only to be practiced in the english class, but also in the context of other areas. this project was focused in the light of a crosscurricular approach where english could become a vehicle to learn contents of science. the main research question posed was: · what kind of tasks could be suitable for establishing cross-curricular links between science and english and to promote foreign language learning in ninth grade? in order to answer this question, we attempted to answer the following related questions: · what kind of materials contribute to the promotion of learning in the development of tasks? · what sort of attitudes do students manifest as a result of the implementation of tasks? 1. litera1. litera1. litera1. litera1. literature reviewture reviewture reviewture reviewture review for the design and development of such tasks, it was necessary to resort to a kind of methodology through which it could be possible to promote learning by means of the completion of tasks. this methodology is known as task-based learning and has to do with the processes of understanding language rather than with the products of instruction. bearing in mind widdowson´s notion that unlike science, history or mathematics, language is not a subject in its own right, but merely a vehicle for communicating something else, the tasks designed were centred on one specific subject area: science (1983, in nunan, 1988). in so doing we attempted to apply content-based learning principles. this perspective responds to the notion proposed by the national ministry of education regarding aprendizaje integral or whole learning, since the establishment of crosscurricular links “reinforces the concepts and knowledge developed and acquired in other subjects” (men, 1999, pp. 36). ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ 68profileprofileprofileprofileprofile 1.1 t1.1 t1.1 t1.1 t1.1 task-based learningask-based learningask-based learningask-based learningask-based learning nunan (1990) explains that the task is a piece of meaning-focused work, involving learners in comprehending, producing and/or interacting in the target language. in this sense, the performance of a task requires that learners take part in a communicative context in which grammar is not as important to the situation as meaning. the main purpose is to get the message across, taking risks and using english as a tool for communicating, not as the subject matter to be studied. 1.2 cross-curricular links1.2 cross-curricular links1.2 cross-curricular links1.2 cross-curricular links1.2 cross-curricular links taking into account that any foreign language is also a means for communicating, there arises then, a need for establishing an integrated curriculum whereby students have plenty of opportunities for using the new language in other subject areas such as science, math and art so that they are no longer learning a language for its own sake, but rather, extending their learning horizons crosscurricularly. so, it is necessary to overcome the notion of the foreign language class as an isolated situation and integrate it with different school activities. also, it is important to implement its use as a tool in the learning of other areas (men, 1999). 1.3 content-based learning1.3 content-based learning1.3 content-based learning1.3 content-based learning1.3 content-based learning in a content-based learning situation the topic becomes both the vehicle for language learning and the means to provide meaningful contents of educational value, so that it facilitates learning not only through language but with language (nunan, 1988). one important aspect of this type of learning is the fact that topics are not chosen arbitrarily. rather, by selecting subject areas the learning process is given a logic and coherent nature (ibid). 2. methodology2. methodology2. methodology2. methodology2. methodology this investigation was centred in classroom research, trying to understand what went on in the classroom setting addressing the issue of how suitable, regarding methodology and materials, the activities proposed were to establish links between english and science programs. the project carried out at gustavo restrepo school was heuristic or hypothesis-generating, since the objective was to generate hypotheses about the phenomena studied based on the data gathered; not to test hypotheses as in the deductive approach (seliger and shohamy, 1990). this practice of deriving theory from data gathered is known as grounded theory (nunan, 1993). keeping in mind that the main concern was to carry out the research in a real situation and setting (that is, in a classroom), this work was approached from an ethnographic perspective. ethnography, according to nunan, is contextual, since it takes place in context; it is unobtrusive, because the researcher does not manipulate the phenomena under investigation; longitudinal because it is relatively long-term. although the piloting of this project was not longitudinal since it took only one month, it was possible to draw important conclusions from the activities that were carried out. the project is also collaborative because it involved the participation of the teacher researchers, and the learners. it was also interpretative, taking into account that the researchers carried out interpretative analyses of the data. finally, it should be pointed out that our ethnographic study was organic due to the fact that there was interaction between questions/hypotheses and data collection/interpretation. ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ 69 profileprofileprofileprofileprofile 2.1 the participants2.1 the participants2.1 the participants2.1 the participants2.1 the participants the piloting of the tasks was carried out at gustavo restrepo school, a public institution located in localidad 18 (rafael uribe uribe), in the south of bogotá. there are two shifts, one in the morning and one in the afternoon, each with twenty-five courses of forty students approximately. the class we worked with was composed of thirty three middle and lower-middle class students, fifteen girls and eighteen boys between twelve and fourteen years old. they belonged to two different groups (901 and 903) who were put together on mondays and thursdays from 7:00 am to 8:15 am to take the english class due to their higher level of proficiency in this language in contrast to their other classmates (who were studying english at the same time in another classroom). the organization of those groups was according to a placement test and the english teacher’s observation and monitoring during the classes. taking into account the unobtrusive characteristic of ethnographic studies which states that the researcher does not manipulate the phenomena under investigation (nunan, 1993), none of the school teachers interfered with the normal performance of the students during lessons. we acted as teacher-researchers. the classroom observation, for example, was conducted alternately by the teachers; so, while one of us was doing an activity, the other was doing the observing (examining the behaviours while the tasks were going on). 2.2 data collection procedures2.2 data collection procedures2.2 data collection procedures2.2 data collection procedures2.2 data collection procedures three kinds of techniques were adopted. through them it was possible to gather an adequate amount of data to support interpretations from three different perspectives (teacher’s, students’ and observer’s). these were: introspective techniques (teachers’ diaries), elicitation (questionnaires), and obser vation (classroom obser vation) (mcdonough and mcdonough, 1997). 2.2.1 diar2.2.1 diar2.2.1 diar2.2.1 diar2.2.1 diar yyyyy the diary provided relevant written records of personal objective and subjective impressions of learning situations given by the observers (the teacher-researchers). in this diary, feelings and reflections regarding the different tasks during the process of piloting were noted down. the following points were considered to keep the diary: · students’ participation in the activities. · students’ use of english · students’ interest towards the materials · students’ problems during the development of the activities 2.2.2 questionnaires2.2.2 questionnaires2.2.2 questionnaires2.2.2 questionnaires2.2.2 questionnaires they were used in order to obtain concrete data from students. they provided quantitative responses to specific questions about the methodology and the tasks, and consisted of twelve questions that included multiple-choice questions, ranked questions, scales questions and open-ended questions. students were free to use their mother tongue so that they could express their thoughts more precisely. they were applied at the end of the lessons (see annex 1). 2.2.3 classr2.2.3 classr2.2.3 classr2.2.3 classr2.2.3 classr oom obseroom obseroom obseroom obseroom obser vationvationvationvationvation classroom obser vation was conducted alternately by the teachers. so, while one teacher was doing an activity, the other was ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ 70profileprofileprofileprofileprofile observing through checklists, numerical scales and rating scales. they were used to gather data at the very moment of the class. eight parameters were followed regarding students involvement in the activities, their oral participation, interaction with the materials and their attitudes towards the materials and the activities (see annex 2). 3. pedagogical design3. pedagogical design3. pedagogical design3. pedagogical design3. pedagogical design five tasks were designed to establish crosscurricular links between english and science in ninth grade. they were divided into three main stages: pre-task, while-task and post-task (willis, 1999). for their elaboration and organization we took into account the model presented by nunan (1988) about the components of a task. (see fig. 1) the part referring to goals was organized under two headings: english and science. this is because of the curricular nature of the project. the input, which nunan (ibid) presents as verbal and non-verbal, was organized as verbal (the vocabulary and grammatical structure to be studied during the tasks) and materials or nonverbal input. the following component was a set of activities which was formulated from students’ perspectives, that is, what students were supposed to do during the task. teachers’ and students’ roles referred to the different roles performed by teachers or students according to the different activities in which they were engaged. the last component of this model we took into consideration was the setting or the way students should be organized for the realization of the activities. the following are the topics on which the tasks were based: · task 1: paint colours · task 2: light colours · task 3: the solar system: stars · task 4: the solar system: the planets · task 5: energy from the sun goals teacher role input tasks learner role activities setting fig. 1. fig. 1. fig. 1. fig. 1. fig. 1. a framework for analysing communicative tasks nunan (1988, pp. 48) this is a sample of the pre-task designed for task number one. ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ 71 profileprofileprofileprofileprofile tttttask nº 1: pask nº 1: pask nº 1: pask nº 1: pask nº 1: paint colorsaint colorsaint colorsaint colorsaint colors pre-task goals:goals:goals:goals:goals: english: to share personal likes about colours. to describe objects in terms of colour. to practice reading comprehension through the answering of questions. science: to identify different colours that can be seen in the environment. to recognize why objects look coloured. input:input:input:input:input: verbal: names of different colours; reading “what colour is it?” grammar structures: my favourite colour is (yellow); what colour is it?; who has (dark blue)? vocabulary: paint colours (yellow, yellowish orange, reddish orange, red, reddish purple, purple, bluish purple, blue, bluish green, green, yellowish green, pink, black, white, brown, light green, dark green, light blue, dark blue). materials:materials:materials:materials:materials: poster with different colours, cards each one presenting a colour, classroom objects, worksheet number 1. activities:activities:activities:activities:activities: 1. observing a poster in which there are circles of different colours and identifying them. 2. sharing with the class one’s preferences in colours. 3. writing a list of the colours that appear on the poster. 4. matching colour cards with the corresponding written forms. 5. describing classroom objects by terms of colour. 6. looking for objects of a specific colour according to given instructions. 7. reading a text: “what colour is it?” ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ 72profileprofileprofileprofileprofile what color is it?what color is it?what color is it?what color is it?what color is it? a. read the following text. then, choose three objects in the classroom and describe their colour. say, according to the reading, why they look like that. most objects do not produce light of their own. they reflectreflectreflectreflectreflect the light that falls on them and our eyes see the reflected light. so the colour of an object depends on the colour of light that it reflects back into our eyes. colour objects reflect certain colours and absorbabsorbabsorbabsorbabsorb the rest. we see the reflected colour. a red shirt looks red because it absorbs most of the colours of light and only reflects red. white objects reflect allallallallall the colours of light and black objects reflect harharharharhardly anydly anydly anydly anydly any of the light that falls on them. b. answering questions about the reading. mark with an (xxxxx) the correct option. 1. objects a. don’t reflect the light that falls on them b. don’t absorb the light that falls on them c. don’t reflect white light that falls on them d. don’t absorb white light that falls on them 2. we see the colours that objects: a. reflect b. perceive c. absorb d. see 3. your teacher’s sweater is black because it: a. absorbs all the colours of light b. absorbs black light c. doesn’t absorb any light d. reflects black light 4. the sheet of paper that your teacher is holding is white because it: a. absorbs all the colours of light b. doesn’t absorb any light c. doesn’t absorb blue light d. absorbs white light 5. your teacher’s folder is blue because it: a. absorbs all colours except blue b. absorbs all shades of blue c. reflects all colours except blue d. doesn’t reflect blue ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ 73 profileprofileprofileprofileprofile 4. findings4. findings4. findings4. findings4. findings after the examination of the information gathered through the three techniques mentioned -diary, survey and observationwhich at the same time revealed some important data related to our research, it was possible to establish three main parameters or categories: language use in the activities, crosscurricular links between science and english and social interaction among the students. 4.1 language use4.1 language use4.1 language use4.1 language use4.1 language use one of the ways that raised students’ motivation and made them get involved in the development of the activities was the use of visual aids. this, apart from supporting the explanations given by the teachers and making the topics clearer for the students, prompted them to use english. as quoted by student e, the material “helped as a guide to understand and do the activity”. likewise, teacher b noted that “the activity in which they had to check the colours reflected on a cd was quite motivating for them to use english… given the fact that they enjoyed these kinds of activities, they participated a lot and used more english than in the other activities”. visual materials attracted students’ attention and helped them greatly to understand the topics and practice english. in the same sense, through the games and contests that were carried out, students had the opportunity to use the foreign language. these activities were an interesting and dynamic way to communicate and understand meanings both in written and oral form. since the students enjoyed these kinds of activities, they could grasp the concepts and structures better. the readings, on the other hand, lowered students’ motivation and willingness to participate actively. they found the texts complex in terms of structures and vocabulary and so the results were not as positive as expected. it seems also that they were not used to reading, and activities like these would not attract them as the others did. “perhaps the main problems that students had were related to english, in understanding the vocabulary of the reading. they kept asking the meaning of words” (teacher a). 4.2 cross-curricular links4.2 cross-curricular links4.2 cross-curricular links4.2 cross-curricular links4.2 cross-curricular links the students were motivated and interested in participating in activities which implied a certain level of knowledge about a topic. that could mean that apart from their interest in participating, students wanted to show how well they handled a topic: “i liked the lesson because i am interested in science and even more in english” (student g). on the other hand, colour mixtures were a real success for they could recall vocabulary about colours and relate it to colour mixtures, as expressed by student d: “““““ we learnt through a dynamic activity how we can get primary and secondary colours”. in general terms, students could link science and english when describing the rainbow’s colours or explaining why an object is red, black or white and not blue or yellow. student e’s remark illustrates this achievement: “i learnt some things like: new and different colours and why see things with colours”. again, the materials were essential for having students recognize vocabulary and use it within a specific context. they could recognize and name light sources keeping in mind that there are other objects that cannot produce light but that are illuminated by others. they could also ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ 74profileprofileprofileprofileprofile say what activities could be done according to weather conditions. even simple drawings were enough for having them recognize the process of light reflection and enabling them to explain why things in nature display different colours: “in these two lessons we have studied colours and from there, how they are reflected on objects, the mixtures, primary and secondary colours… and how you say that the mixture between yellow and green makes light yellow” (student g, commenting on post-task 2). 4.3 social relationships4.3 social relationships4.3 social relationships4.3 social relationships4.3 social relationships although there was a great individual participation in activities like describing, or expressing likes, there was also a special preference for working as a team. whether in small or big groups, they enjoyed working with their partners in a cooperative way: “something that caught my attention was the integration we had” (student h). given the fact that the group in which the piloting was carried out was made up of students from two different courses who got together only for the english class, they found a good opportunity for integrating the group in the activities that implied fun and competition. students also favoured working in small groups since the partnership atmosphere permitted them to overcome shyness at the moment of speaking, reinforcing in their relationship as a group. in addition, and according to the surveys, most of the students liked whole-class work (see tables 1 and 2) maybe because at the moment of participating they counted on the help and support of the teacher and because it could be the opportunity to show how much they knew or had learned in class. tttttables 1 and 2.ables 1 and 2.ables 1 and 2.ables 1 and 2.ables 1 and 2. students’ answers to the question “when did you use more english?”, in two different lessons 5. concl5. concl5. concl5. concl5. conclusionsusionsusionsusionsusions by means of this investigation the learning of the second language served students not only in memorizing and applying a set of grammatical rules (refer to introduction), but rather communicating meanings. according to the colombian national curricular guidelines for foreign languages (1999), the fundamental purpose in a foreign language curriculum is to get students to acquire and develop competence in this subject, so that they use the foreign language to relate knowledge, comprehend and interpret the reality around them, and to share ideas, feelings and opinions in communicative situations in which some linguistic and social-behavioural patterns rule. students enjoyed game-like activities which implied interaction within the group and introductory activities to the tasks which ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ 75 profileprofileprofileprofileprofile supported them in making connections to what they already knew. group work helped students to overcome shyness at the moment of speaking, and although sometimes the students made grammatical mistakes, our purpose of promoting second language learning in the students was fostered. as willis (1999) says, learners need to feel free to experiment with language on their own, and to take risks. at the same time, we realized the importance of connecting across the curriculum. students could describe different natural phenomena using english, and so they felt that they were doing something new, having the foreign language not as the subject matter to be studied, but as a vehicle for learning. as short, et al. (1996) point out, the subject areas are at the centre of the curriculum, but they just need to be integrated more. in order to solve the main question (what kind of tasks could be suitable to establish cross-curricular links between science and english and to promote the foreign language learning in ninth grade?), two related issues had been proposed. referring to the materials that contribute to the promotion of learning during the development of the tasks piloted, we found that visual and colourful materials, as well as sources that could be manipulated, were of a great importance to having students speak in english using the language intended to be practiced in the classes. this was also relevant for them, since they could analyse and practice the language closely and with real objects. one of them noted: “one can taste, feel what one says”. the students themselves agreed on the fact that the materials had been important in their understanding of the topics dealt with in class: “the materials helped us to understand what the teachers explained” (student a); “(the materials) helped as a guide to understand and do the activity” (student b). however, sources like readings did not have as much success as the ones mentioned above. students’ motivation decreased when they were asked to do these kinds of activities. they needed simpler language to understand the texts because their level of english was not very high. the following example illustrates this situation noted by one of us when acting as an observer: “although they showed interest towards understanding the reading their attitude towards the kind of activity itself was not as positive as we expected” (teacher b). in the same line, when they were asked in the surveys which difficulty they had during the development of the activity one student answered: “the difficulty of understanding the whole text because there were many unknown words”. referring to the second question about the sort of attitudes that students manifested as a result of the implementation of the tasks, we can say that they participated more actively when they were involved in activities that required interaction with their partners. games and contests became an important tool in the implementation of the tasks, since they encouraged the students to work cooperatively and reinforce their social relationships. learners’ interest and motivation were raised when they had to stand up and move around the classroom exchanging meanings with their classmates, as pointed out by student c: “we could participate and there was integration with the whole class. besides, it was really fun”. the main question that we intended to answer through this research had to do with the kinds of tasks that could be suitable to establish cross-curricular links between science ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ 76profileprofileprofileprofileprofile and english and promote foreign language learning in ninth grade. according to the characteristics of the tasks that arose as the most interesting for students and which were helpful to enhancing learning, it is possible to say that the most appropriate tasks were those that implied a challenge, not only in the linguistic realm, referring to the type of the language used, but also those that involved intellectual processes like matching, deducing, experimenting, and classifying. through them, students had the opportunity to interact in the classroom by expressing and interchanging ideas in english, and also learning or reinforcing some cognitive knowledge about colour mixtures. this way, english acted as the vehicle for conveying real and contextualised meanings. at the same time, it served as a means to study contents of another subject of the curriculum: science, providing the students with a new view towards the learning of english as a foreign, but useful language. according to the national curricular guidelines (1999), this will permit a more integral learning process because the establishment of these kinds of links reinforces concepts and knowledge developed and acquired in other areas, contributes to the consolidation of a pedagogical project and can even serve as a model for other institutions. it is important to realize then the necessity of correlating contents among the subjects of the school programs rather than keeping knowledge in isolated areas of the curriculum. through the development of cross-curricular projects, learning is held in a more integrative way and students feel that what they learn at school is helpful in any context. given the fact that english is essentially a vehicle of communication, it becomes a good tool to integrate other knowledge in class -rather than just the learning of structuresand focus more on contents of different subjects. referencesreferencesreferencesreferencesreferences dixon, l. (1994). light and sound. oxford: oxford university press. oxford primary science. hopkins, d. (1985). a teacher's guide to classroom research. great britain: open university press. mcdonough, j. and s. mcdonough. (1997). research methods for english language teachers. great britain: arnold. ministerio de educación nacional (1999). idiomas extranjeros lineamientos curriculares. áreas obligatorias y fundamentales. bogotá: men nunan, d. (1993). research methods in language learning. united states of america: cambridge university press. nunan, d. (1988). syllabus design. oxford: oxford university press. nunan, d. (1990). designing tasks for the communicative classroom. new york: cambridge university press. seliger, h. and e. shohamy. (1990). second language research methods. hong kong: oxford university press. short, k.g. et al. (1996). learning together through inquiry. from columbus to integrated curriculum. maine: stenhouse publishers. widdowson, h. g. (1983). learning purpose and language use. oxford: oxford university press. willis, j. (1999). a framework for task-based learning. malaysia: longman. the article was received on september 10th, 2003 and accepted on october 13th , 2003 ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ 77 profileprofileprofileprofileprofile annex 1: questionnaire applied aannex 1: questionnaire applied aannex 1: questionnaire applied aannex 1: questionnaire applied aannex 1: questionnaire applied at the end of the lessonst the end of the lessonst the end of the lessonst the end of the lessonst the end of the lessons universidad nacional de colombia research project developed at gustavo restrepo school please answer the following questions about the class in the most objective way. follow your teacher’s instructions: 1. how much of the lesson did you enjoy? all of it / some of it / none of it 2. how much do you think you learnt? in english: nothing / something / a lot in science: nothing / something / a lot 3. how much did you understand? in english: nothing / something / a lot in science: nothing / something / a lot 4. how was the lesson? boring / interesting why? _______________________________________________________________ _______________________________________________________________ 5. how did you find the activities? very easy / easy / a bit difficult / very difficult why? _______________________________________________________________ _______________________________________________________________ 6. write down any difficulty you had during the activity regarding: language required: _______________________________________________________________ _______________________________________________________________ the development of the activity: _______________________________________________________________ _______________________________________________________________ 7. write down anything you particularly enjoyed about the class: _______________________________________________________________ _______________________________________________________________ 8. how much english did you use? 0 1 2 3 4 5 ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ 78profileprofileprofileprofileprofile 9. when did you use more english? _____ working alone _____ working in small groups _____ working in pairs _____ working as a whole class 10. did you like the materials? yes / no why? _______________________________________________________________ _______________________________________________________________ 11. how much did the materials help you understand? 0 1 2 3 4 5 12. what other sources would have helped illustrate the topic? why? _______________________________________________________________ _______________________________________________________________ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ 79 profileprofileprofileprofileprofile annex 2: observannex 2: observannex 2: observannex 2: observannex 2: observaaaaation reportion reportion reportion reportion reporttttt universidad nacional de colombia research project developed at gustavo restrepo school date: ____________________ topic: _______________________________ activities: 1 _____________________________________________________________ _______________________________________________________________ 2 ______________________________________________________________ _______________________________________________________________ 3 _____________________________________________________________ _______________________________________________________________ 4 _____________________________________________________________ _______________________________________________________________ 5 _____________________________________________________________ _______________________________________________________________ 6 _____________________________________________________________ _______________________________________________________________ 1. students’ involvement in the realization of the activities: activity not very involved very involved 1 1 2 3 4 5 2 1 2 3 4 5 3 1 2 3 4 5 4 1 2 3 4 5 5 1 2 3 4 5 6 1 2 3 4 5 2. students’ oral participation in the activities: activity low high not applicable 1 1 2 3 4 5 ______ 2 1 2 3 4 5 ______ 3 1 2 3 4 5 ______ 4 1 2 3 4 5 ______ 5 1 2 3 4 5 ______ 6 1 2 3 4 5 ______ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ 80profileprofileprofileprofileprofile 3. students speak english: activity not applicable 1 frequently sometimes never ______ 2 frequently sometimes never ______ 3 frequently sometimes never ______ 4 frequently sometimes never ______ 5 frequently sometimes never ______ 6 frequently sometimes never ______ 4. students use the language required for the activity activity 1____________________________________________________________ _____________________________________________________________ 2____________________________________________________________ _____________________________________________________________ 3 ____________________________________________________________ _____________________________________________________________ 4 ____________________________________________________________ _____________________________________________________________ 5 ____________________________________________________________ _____________________________________________________________ 6 ____________________________________________________________ _____________________________________________________________ 5. students’ interaction with the material activity none a lot/much not applicable 1 1 2 3 4 5 ______ 2 1 2 3 4 5 ______ 3 1 2 3 4 5 ______ 4 1 2 3 4 5 ______ 5 1 2 3 4 5 ______ 6 1 2 3 4 5 ______ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ 81 profileprofileprofileprofileprofile 6. materials attract students’ attention activity not much a lot not applicable 1 1 2 3 4 5 ______ 2 1 2 3 4 5 ______ 3 1 2 3 4 5 ______ 4 1 2 3 4 5 ______ 5 1 2 3 4 5 ______ 6 1 2 3 4 5 ______ 7. do the materials encourage students to speak english? ___________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________ ___________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________ ___________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________ ___________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________ ____________________________________________________________ 8. attitude of students towards the realization of the activities: activity 1___________________________________________________________ _____________________________________________________________ 2 ___________________________________________________________ _____________________________________________________________ 3____________________________________________________________ _____________________________________________________________ 4___________________________________________________________ _____________________________________________________________ 5__________________________________________________________ _____________________________________________________________ 6____________________________________________________________ _____________________________________________________________ profile 3.p65 ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ 52profileprofileprofileprofileprofile t here are many ways to get students involved in the english learning process. telling stories is one of the most effective ones. this article attempts to gather some pedagogical and psychological reasons why this kind of activity is important, not only to improve students vocabulary and make them achieve a feeling of self confidence but to let them develop social values. intrintrintrintrintroductionoductionoductionoductionoduction english language teaching methodologies used in our schools often focus on understanding grammatical structures as well as on translating texts. they do not necessarily view communication as an essential part to effectively learn a second language. brumfit and johnson (1979) were some of the first linguists to draw our attention towards five main communicative functions: 1. personal (the individual inner thoughts); 2. interpersonal communication (social relationships); 3. directive (for persuading, convincing, suggesting); 4. referential (to talk about the past); 5. imaginative (the creative use of language). these aspects have had a great impact on current teaching practices as learning a language is seen not only as the acquisition of formal aspects, but also as the capacity to use them according to sociocultural variables. other important works like the ones by fillmore et al. (1979) and the colombian national curricular guidelines for foreign languages (1999) point out that we should be aware of three types of processes students need to experience in the english classroom: the social, the linguistic and the cognitive processes. in order to effectively activate these processes we also have to take into consideration individual differences in second language acquisition, for example: older learners vs. younger learners, social opportunities, and motivation, among others. having those ideas in mind, we can think of storytelling as a tool to ensure students engage in the said processes. why use stories in class?why use stories in class?why use stories in class?why use stories in class?why use stories in class? there are many reasons that justify the use of stories in class. first of all, they allow us to work with emotional and social aspects and this is something that helps us to maintain our traditional and cultural background. it is well-known that people have told stories as part of their tradition and with the purpose of transmitting and passing on their knowledge to the new generations. this has happened since the beginning of spoken language and in every civilization. many of these stories have been passed on from country to country over thousands of years. the storytelling the magic world of storytelling: some points for reflection martha castrmartha castrmartha castrmartha castrmartha castrooooo san martín de porres school marcas0828@hotmail.com ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ 53 profileprofileprofileprofileprofile tradition is one of the richest possessions of any culture and both children and adults love to hear the same story over and over again and learn to remember every detail. nowadays, it is possible to find some of these stories in books; but, the telling of short stories orally gives the readers a breath of life that printed word cannot. another reason why teachers should tell stories to their classes, and encourage children to tell the ones they know is that traditional stories introduce children to the main features and beliefs of their national culture. they give them an inheritance from the past, and thus a sense of history. telling stories exercises the imagination (ellis and brewster: 1991). children try to visualize what they hear to imagine what people, animals or spirits look like and how they sound. this imaginative experience helps to develop their own creative powers. listening to stories develops children's listening and concentration skills and their ability to receive and understand information expressed in words. also, stories expose children to new vocabulary and sentence structure which will enrich their thinking and gradually enter their own conversation. as mentioned above, children enjoy hearing stories over and over again and learn to predict what is coming next in the story. following meaning and predicting language are important skills in the development of reading. listening to stories in class is a shared social experience. reading and writing are often individual activities, done alongside others but completed alone. a shared response of laughter, sadness, excitement, etc. is not only enjoyable but important for social and emotional development. it is well known that most of the stories have a moral about human attitudes and behaviour. through listening and talking about these children begin to develop a sense of what is right and wrong and learn to appreciate other people's feelings. according to ellis and brewster (ibid.), storytelling can enhance work in ever y subject area and on any topic. religions are also rich in stories which can be enjoyed by ever yone. sharing these encourages children to respect other people’s beliefs and traditions. it is not necessary to restrict studentteacher to traditional tales because it is possible to make up stories about anything. young children particularly enjoy stories related to aspects of their own experience, for example, about the area in which they live, the animals they are familiar with and so on. through listening to such stories they will learn to think imaginatively and to create their own adventure to tell. conclusionconclusionconclusionconclusionconclusion the main objective of telling stories is to build the students’ confidence and develop in them a positive attitude towards english. storytelling is an authentic resource to be introduced because it gives students the opportunity to participate actively in the learning process. some teachers think that this learning process has to deal only with young learners but people from all ages love to hear and tell stories. we as a teachers have to realize that children do not lose their enjoyment of stories when they get older. this necessity becomes more intense. why? because they are part of our lives and they make them more interesting. by using stories we can have a way that will help us to give children a tool to achieve their success in school and in life. ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ 54profileprofileprofileprofileprofile references ellis, g. and brewster, j. (1991). the storytelling handbook for primary teachers. london: penguin english. fillmore, c. j., kempler, d. and wang, w.s.y. (eds.) (1979). individual differences in language ability and language behavior. new york: academic press. brumfit, c. j. and johnson, k. (eds.) (1979). the communicative approach to language teaching. oxford: oxford university press. ministerio de educación nacional. (1999). lineamientos curriculares. idiomas extranjeros. bogotá: ministerio de educación nacional de colombia. profile profile 1.p65 ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ 8profileprofileprofileprofileprofile helping students develop listening comprehension melba libia cármelba libia cármelba libia cármelba libia cármelba libia cárdenas b.denas b.denas b.denas b.denas b. foreign languages department universidad nacional de colombia listening practice is often neglected orhandled inappropriately in the teaching-learning process. this poses problems because listening is an integral part of conversations. oral skills without equally welldeveloped listening abilities are of little practical value. in this article, i will take a look at issues related to the area of listening that may be considered when guiding students toward developing listening comprehension. intrintrintrintrintroductionoductionoductionoductionoduction students of english are expected to interpret spoken messages related to cultural, technological and daily issues, among others. it is also assumed that learners demonstrate comprehension by developing assigned tasks. however, listening comprehension work is very often disregarded or neglected. in most cases, it is carried out through practices that produce boredom, panic or frustration: repetition of the whole text (word-for-word) by appealing to short-term memory, and answering a series of questions on the factual content of the listening text. as can be seen, more emphasis is given to the literal meaning of the message than to the speaker’s intended meaning. hence, it is necessar y to examine alternatives for dealing with listening practices. learning to listenlearning to listenlearning to listenlearning to listenlearning to listen bearing in mind that learners will find themselves in a variety of situations where they will need or want to listen to english being used in real life, one can start by examining what ‘learning to listen’ means. by ‘learning to listen’ we mean that “we want our students to attend to what they hear, to process it, to understand it, to interpret it, to evaluate it, and to respond to it. we want them to become active listeners” (underwood: 1989, 4). understanding happens because the listener assumes an active role by using different types of information sources such as knowledge of the language system, knowledge of the context or background, and knowledge of the socio-cultural event implicit in the spoken message being processed. following brown and yule’s (1985) analysis of the stages between listening understanding and the task response, we can look at the following sequence of abilities implicit in that process: 1.1.1.1.1. the listener interprets the message and constructs a representation of these items in memory • ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○9 profileprofileprofileprofileprofile 2.2.2.2.2. the learner has to interpret the listening task instructions which specify the kind of response required 3.3.3.3.3. the learner has to understand how to relate what is required by the task to the type of language input (i.e. what and how to present information) 4.4.4.4.4. the learner has to produce a task response. we could add a stage to the sequence given above: the learner has to respond to feedback coming from peers or from teachers, once a task response is produced. in so doing, the learner is not performing the role of a mere producer of responses, but of an active participant who can handle unexpected interactions that may appear in the language exchange. organising listening practices: planning aorganising listening practices: planning aorganising listening practices: planning aorganising listening practices: planning aorganising listening practices: planning a listening lessonlistening lessonlistening lessonlistening lessonlistening lesson in order to make our students aware of the abilities mentioned above, we should plan the amount and rate of the learning activities. we can note that the amount and rate of learning is influenced by the nature of the subject-matter itself, and the order in which it is presented. these two hints should be taken into account in listening practices car ried out in the english classroom, assuming that they may determine the effectiveness of the implementation of the activities. choosing the subject-matter of the listening practices. it is important to remark that very often, as teachers, we cannot distance ourselves too much from the book because we have to ‘cover’ certain amounts of contents within a restricted period of time. thus, it would be reasonable to take the same recorded-texts given by the textbooks in order to provide students with diverse opportunities to process them. in other words, we can use the tapes in a slightly different manner from that envisaged by the textbook writers in order to develop real-life listening skills. the way the listening activities are presented. in many cases, listening comprehension activities seem to aim largely at exposing students to the sounds of the language and at practising language items. these two aims are valid. however, although the process works in most classes -in the sense of question, answer and drill work-, it tends to be somewhat repetitive and mechanical. for this reason, very often we opt for supplementing the listening part by using communicative oriented tasks. a common-sense way of dividing up listening practices is into three phases: prelistening, while-listening, and follow-up (also named post-listening). the following sample illustrates the way the three stages can be integrated in a listening lesson: • profileprofileprofileprofileprofile ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ 10profileprofileprofileprofileprofile sample of a listening lesson achievement indicators:achievement indicators:achievement indicators:achievement indicators:achievement indicators: sings a song about animals’ protection and draws t-shirts with ecological messages related to the content of the song. writes a list of endangered animals in his/her country. takes part in the design of posters for an ecological campaign encouraging other members of the school to protect animals. materials:materials:materials:materials:materials: cassette, coloured pencils, a big sheet of cardboard or paper, cuttings from magazines or drawings about the protection of animals, scissors and glue. preprepreprepre-----listening: brainstorm and speculatelistening: brainstorm and speculatelistening: brainstorm and speculatelistening: brainstorm and speculatelistening: brainstorm and speculate 1. students brainstorm for suggestions to protect animals: protect all the species leave wild animals free get a home for pet animals help sick animals don’t mistreat animals respect animals’ habitats look after your pet / care for your pet. 2. . . . . students observe and comment on the picture accompanying the song ‘animal protectors’ club’. the teacher guides them through questions like these: what do you see? where are the children? what’s the name of the club? what are the children doing? while-listening: listen for detailwhile-listening: listen for detailwhile-listening: listen for detailwhile-listening: listen for detailwhile-listening: listen for detail 1. students listen to the song to answer the question: what do the children do in the ‘animal protectors’ club’? 2. students listen to the song again and read in their books to check answers. 3. the class sings the song. ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○11 profileprofileprofileprofileprofile song: animal prsong: animal prsong: animal prsong: animal prsong: animal protectors’ clubotectors’ clubotectors’ clubotectors’ clubotectors’ club i’m very happy i belong to a club we protect animals it is really fun! i’m very happy join us soon! just follow these rules you will see, it’s good! respect their habitat. protect the species. leave wild animals free care for them, please! i’m very happy i belong to a club we protect animals it is really fun! pppppost-listening: drawost-listening: drawost-listening: drawost-listening: drawost-listening: draw, design a poster and display it, design a poster and display it, design a poster and display it, design a poster and display it, design a poster and display it 1. students read the lyrics of the song and identify the rules or recommendations of the animal protectors’ club (respect animals’ habitat; protect all species, etc.). 2. students design messages on the t-shirts the children of the club are wearing. they draw and write the words corresponding to the club’s rules or recommendations. 3. students complete the statement: endangered animals in my country... they can consult science books or encyclopaedias. a list of endangered animals is written on the board. 4. students work in small groups. they make a poster with an ecological message and get ready to do an ecological campaign. 5. posters are pinned up in the school and students read or explain their work to their partners. (from cárdenas: 1999) ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ 12profileprofileprofileprofileprofile criteria for choosing and grading listeningcriteria for choosing and grading listeningcriteria for choosing and grading listeningcriteria for choosing and grading listeningcriteria for choosing and grading listening materials and tasksmaterials and tasksmaterials and tasksmaterials and tasksmaterials and tasks very often we argue we cannot integrate listening practice in class because of various constraints (e.g. limited resources, physical conditions of the workplace, students’ limited knowledge of english). additionally, provided that teachers commit themselves to exploiting the sources available, a mixture of ‘live’ and recorded material offers a wide range of listening experiences. in ‘live’ presentations, teachers and students fulfil the role of speakers, and these face-to-face exchanges contribute to the students’ learning experience. hence, the need for the teacher to provide as much genuine communicative input as possible. rixon (1986) proposes three ways of obtaining suitable materials: getting published materials and using them as they stand, adapting published resources, and making our own materials. in any case, it is suggested that we examine to what extent the listening texts fit the elements of gradation set out in the teaching-listening methodology. following the recommendations proposed by under wood (1989) and anderson and lynch (1988), in the coming paragraphs we will examine the main elements to be considered in the listeningcomprehension materials: authenticity. ‘authenticity’ -in widdowson’s view (1984) is a function of the interaction between the hearer and the text, which incorporates the intentions of the speaker. ‘genuiness’, on the other hand, is a characteristic of the text itself. given these concepts, we must say that choosing materials because they are genuine is not enough. genuine texts do not necessarily lead to authenticity. it does not imply that genuine texts cannot be used, but bearing in mind the circumstances of english language teaching in many of our places of work, i feel inclined to argue that materials should be chosen on the basis of usability rather than mere representatives of the target situation. in view of this, we can opt for presenting versions of some selected samples in which the idiosyncratic stylistic effects have been filtered out. as teaching proceeds (in the same level / course), more stylistic features are allowed to appear until the learner is eventually confronted with genuine samples. in so doing, we attempt to reach the point where genuineness corresponds to authenticity. the level of difficulty of the vocabulary. the idea here is to examine if the amount of new vocabulary is reasonable and whether it might constitute a problem for understanding the content of the text. besides, knowledge of vocabulary is not enough to make students good listeners. by contrast, if we over-emphasise the vocabulary work, we would lead students to focus on the language word by word. this does not mean that in practice our students might not face problems of vocabular y. in heterogeneous classes, some learners will need more guidance. therefore, we should make them realise that speakers often say things more than once or rephrase them; or another speaker echoes what has been said. moreover, we can appeal to techniques for vocabulary work (e.g. context, cognates, synonyms, mimics). by doing so, we can ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○13 profileprofileprofileprofileprofile prevent panic, which often incapacitates learners from performing efficiently in the listening tasks. the complexity of syntax. it is not always possible to match listening materials with the language being taught at any particular time of a course. however, we can select texts which provide comprehensible input and which are at a reasonable level of difficulty i.e. a flow of language which contains elements already known plus some which may have yet to be mastered. the following example, cited by anderson and lynch (1988: 83) illustrates that in presenting learners with what are intended to be grammatically ‘simplified’ versions of original texts, we may actually make the texts more difficult to understand. tttttapescript a (vapescript a (vapescript a (vapescript a (vapescript a (version a)ersion a)ersion a)ersion a)ersion a) introduction. this is a drawing of an island which is oval in shape, or eggshaped. it contains a number of land features which are indicated by words not pictures. description. in the middle of your paper draw a large oval, measuring roughly fifteen centimetres across, by about seven centimetres (or half its width) down. (jordan: 1982, 59) tttttapescript b (vapescript b (vapescript b (vapescript b (vapescript b (version b)ersion b)ersion b)ersion b)ersion b) ‘okay right i’ve got an island + a map of an island in front of me + and i’m going to tell you how to draw the island + and i want you to draw it on your paper + now um the island looks rather like a baked potato + and is about five inches in length + and about + has a diameter of about three inches + so the first thing if you could just draw that + could you just draw that kind of shape + that will give you the outline of the island’. (from lynch: 1984) as can be seen above, spontaneously produced speech (as in version b) is grammatically simpler in a general sense than written language produced for listening purposes (as in version a). similarly, the relatively simple structure of the spoken language has advantages for the listeners, who have to demonstrate understanding by performing a task or action (draw) under time pressure, just as they follow what the speaker says. length of the text or duration of the recording. though criterion of length is closely related to listener fatigue and effect on memory load, there can be no strict rules about the length of listening texts for a particular level (underwood: 1989). long texts are difficult when students struggle to grasp every word, or when they insist on short-term memory, when the information is not explicit, or when they are not familiar with the topic. provided there is a specific ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ 14profileprofileprofileprofileprofile task, long passages, however, give us more chances to understand what is being said. content. what ought to be appropriate for the students to understand might be content which they are most familiar with, and which interests them. the process of understanding the meaning of the message will be characterised by the use of background knowledge: grammar, vocabulary, information structure, topic of discourse, and situational / contextual knowledge. response required of the intended listener. since it is not feasible to find materials that interest ever y student, materials should be intended for doing a variety of things in class by involving listeners in reacting to language e.g. eavesdropper, participant, and different types of response. i will refer to this aspect later on, when addressing the issue of listening activities. speaker and style of delivery. aspects such as the number of speakers, speed of speech, accent, spontaneity (fillers, repetitions, redundant parts that permit processing time), and pauses between groups of words should be borne in mind. it is recommended that in the early stages of their learning, students not be faced with too many variables at once. the transition to material which incorporates a wider variety of styles and voices should be done gradually. regarding the issue of varieties of english, harmer (1998) argues that despite the desirability of exposing students to many varieties, common sense is called for. the number of different varieties (and the degree to which they are different from the one students are learning) will be a matter for the teacher to judge, based on the students’ level and needs, where the classes are taking place, etc. but even if students only hear occasional varieties of english which are different from the teachers’, it will give them a better idea of the globalised language which english has become. support. in order to ensure that students experience success in arriving at a reasonable interpretation of the foreign language, as many helpful support systems as possible should be provided (brown and yule: 1985). as students progress, reliance on external support (realia, visual aids, clues to solve tasks, overview of the ideas to be presented in the text, transcripts) can gradually be withdrawn. this will lead learners to rely more on language itself. with respect to transcripts, i must say that without restricting students from making an effort to understand, they are certainly important sources for checking as well as for remedial work. types of purpose. by types of purpose i mean that we choose and grade materials on the basis of the purpose of the course, and the purposes for which the text was produced. there are many other aspects that may appear when talking about selection and gradation of listening materials. however, i expect that the given criteria will serve as a guide in creating graded sequences of published materials, in designing our own tasks, or in searching for appropriate texts to be exploited. ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○15 profileprofileprofileprofileprofile integrating listening with other languageintegrating listening with other languageintegrating listening with other languageintegrating listening with other languageintegrating listening with other language skillsskillsskillsskillsskills “listening should be looked upon not as an appendage, but as integral part of the total package of learning, sometimes leading to and sometimes emerging from other work” (under wood: 1989, 93). all four conventional skills can be introduced simultaneously, so that practice in one can support and reinforce practice in the others. one cannot generalise that all language learning experiences should start from listening comprehension. in many cases, listening comprehension is added on to established stages of reading, writing and speaking. in reality, the order and organisation of lessons vary a great deal. whatever the circumstances, we should have opportunities to give our students listening experiences and to integrate these into the total programme. listening activitieslistening activitieslistening activitieslistening activitieslistening activities since listening comprehension is a complex activity involving a wide range of different skills, we need a large battery of varied activities that give learners opportunities to develop most, if not all, of these various skills. definitions, samples, classifications for activity-types and descriptions of procedures suitable for the issues that have been addressed in this article can be found in underwood (1989), ur (1990), and rixon (1986). among the possibilities pointed out in these sources we have: listen and repeat listen and discriminate listen and perform actions / follow instructions listen and draw / colour listen and predict listen and guess listen and label listen and match listen and sequence listen and classify listen and transfer information even though it is not the case that the activities mentioned here or in the said sources will be the answer to listening comprehension problems, they provide alternatives for teachers’ decision making. on the basis of learners’ needs and the particular teaching situation, we can choose those activities that help students to arrive successfully at a reasonable interpretation, and allow for experiences in which various strategies and skills can be mastered. assessing listening comprehensionassessing listening comprehensionassessing listening comprehensionassessing listening comprehensionassessing listening comprehension for some teachers, it is not ver y common to test listening separately from speaking, since the two skills work together in oral interaction. nonetheless, there are occasions in which no speaking is called for in order to ensure students’ progress in comprehending spoken messages. the same listening procedures or activities listed before can be used for testing purposes. what should be borne ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ 16profileprofileprofileprofileprofile in mind is that we should give students tasks in which we do not deduct points for errors of grammar or spelling, provided that it is clear that the correct response is intended. in addition, we should remember that listening activities should not rely too much on reading or writing, otherwise, students spend too much time deciphering the written messages or just writing long responses. if multiple choice is to be used, then the alternatives must be kept short and simple. on the other hand, provided that items are brief, and only short responses are called for, short-answer items can work well in listening tests. conclusionconclusionconclusionconclusionconclusion listening comprehension is a process that we cannot possibly pretend to teach. as the learner faces problems of syntax, speed, vocabulary and meaning to interpret english texts, it is the teacher’s job to offer all the facilitating devices and strategies at his/her disposal in order to ‘put the student in the most advantageous position to learn for himself how to understand what is said by people, with intentions to communicate in the foreign language’ (anderson and lynch: 1988, 69). in this article i have acknowledged the need for students to listen to more than just the sounds in order to develop listening skills. i have also underlined that the goal of including listening comprehension in our lessons is to help our learners cope with listening in real life by providing permanent access to listening experiences. these experiences may be effective if they are constructed round tasks. that is to say, our learners should be required to do something in response to what they hear that demonstrates their understanding. finally, i have made the point that listening activities do not take place in isolation. students can manifest their understanding through various ways, including speaking and writing. referencesreferencesreferencesreferencesreferences anderson, a. and lynch, t. (1988). listening. oxford: oup. brown, g. and yule, g. (1985). teaching the spoken language. cambridge: cup. cárdenas b., m. l. (1999). start up! book 6. santa fe de bogotá: mcgraw hill. harmer, j. (1998). how to teach english. essex: longman. rixon, s. (1986). developing listening skills. london: macmillan. underwood, m. (1989). teaching listening. london: longman. ur, p. (1990). teaching listening comprehension. cambridge: cup. widdowson, h. g. (1984). explorations in applied linguistics. oxford: oup. • profile 1.p65 ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ 38profileprofileprofileprofileprofile reading comprehension: a viable challenge for public school students rocío correales, olga mendivelsorocío correales, olga mendivelsorocío correales, olga mendivelsorocío correales, olga mendivelsorocío correales, olga mendivelso and flor santacruzand flor santacruzand flor santacruzand flor santacruzand flor santacruz this study was conducted in thediana turbay state school withstudents of one eighth grade class with a low english level. the group was chosen because of their special characteristics within this public institution: their number (just eighteen students) and their interest in and motivation for learning english as a foreign language. the motivation they show allowed the researchers to observe and collect more specific information for this study and for future research on reading comprehension. data collection was conducted using many different techniques, such as open observations, diary, surveys, students’ self-evaluation and field notes. all these techniques provided information as authentic as possible. the purpose of the study was to determine if students improved their reading comprehension in english by applying specific reading strategies. results showed that students from state schools can achieve good comprehension of english texts through adequate training despite the fact that they start their english learning so late. further research on this topic should study the relationship between reading comprehension in spanish and in english. it would also be necessar y to study how students can acquire language structures through reading activities. intrintrintrintrintroductionoductionoductionoductionoduction reading comprehension in english as a foreign language is a process where students need specific purposes to ferret out the information they require. reading is a communicative process, so the decodification is done by the reader according to the reasons he or she has to read (nuttall: 1982). the purpose of the study was to help the students develop reading skills by training them in the use of the reading strategies: predicting, skimming, scanning, ordering sequences, semantic context and deducing meanings (harmer: 1983). difficulties comprehending texts in english have been observed for quite some time. these difficulties include lack of vocabulary and structures. the first action implemented was a diagnostic test, which allowed the researchers to see the real picture of the subjects’ problem. then, a survey was answered by the students in order to show their interests in english learning. finally open observations were carried out through two videos, field notes, english teacher’s diary and students’ self-evaluation at the end of each lesson. reading strategies were chosen by taking into account the group needs. these strategies let the students increase their skills ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○39 profileprofileprofileprofileprofile in reading activities step by step. at the same time, reading activities develop students process thought and provide them with useful information. the study showed, too, that it is possible to change the dynamics of english-teaching in public schools. prprprprprocedureocedureocedureocedureocedure taking into account the pei of the institution chosen to carry out this project, it was decided to work on reading comprehension in english classes. the idea was conceived in october 1998 and the research was carried out between february and august 1999 following the framework described below: the methodology used for this study was classroom research. it let the researchers collect the information through techniques such as obser vation of different english lessons. first, a video was made using the retrospection technique based on the model proposed by nunan (1992). this lesson was part of the diagnostic stage. second, we collected information from field notes taken from other lessons by two teachers (observers) from different institutions and the qualified english teacher. a personal diary was kept by the english teacher. additionally, a survey was answered by the students and their evaluation written at the end of each lesson. to analyse the information obtained researchers used checklists in order to obser ve specific behaviour during the activities developed in class. the information collected was compared and analysed by the research group during their meetings after classes. classroom observation was carried out in english classes (three hours per week) over a six-month period. for this study, workshops guided by the teacher were designed in order to apply the strategies proposed by the researchers. the first one was a diagnosis and the others were applications of reading strategies. each student had his own material. there was a second video to analyse and reflect upon how successful the first workshop designed to solve the problem had been. results and analysisresults and analysisresults and analysisresults and analysisresults and analysis results of the study are presented in both qualitative and quantitative analyses. the former shows the group’s motivation, interest and expectations to learn english to be relevant aspects. we noticed in all observations of students working with reading comprehension workshops that most of them liked the activities proposed in spite of their english language difficulties. it was also noticed that students who concentrated on the different activities showed progress in the following classes. the latter shows similar aspects to the previous analysis; that is, high interest and motivation in english class (see figures 1 and 2). figure 1 shows high scores on students’ expectations in understanding texts in english (100%), in learning english (94.4%) and in working with their own material (88.8%). ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ 40profileprofileprofileprofileprofile figure 1. students’ interests in english language learning (survey). figure 2 shows similar aspects. students liked the activities designed for the workshop (93.7%) and they enjoyed the class (100%). *did you understand the instruction? *did you understand the reading? *did you like the workshop? *did you enjoy the class? figure 2. students’ reactions to the workshops (retrospection) ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○41 profileprofileprofileprofileprofile discussiondiscussiondiscussiondiscussiondiscussion the results of the analysis of the different information collected showed similar relevant aspects that allowed both students and researchers to establish a starting-point for developing this project over an extended period in order to obtain more concrete results. in other words, for both students and english teachers it is possible to acquire a good level of english reading comprehension through the implementation of appropriate material to work on reading activities. reading is a long-term process. so more accuracy and quality in the results on reading skills development would require more time. the results presented in this study are a good beginning toward innovating and changing ineffective methods often used by some state schools. conclusionsconclusionsconclusionsconclusionsconclusions this study showed that students from state schools can improve their reading comprehension in english by applying specific strategies for reading. workshops properly designed and guided provide the students with the possibility of retrieving information in a foreign language and, maybe in the future, of practising this activity in a real context. students’ motivation strengthened the application of strategies for learning the new language and at the same time it let them solve their initial problem in reading comprehension. public schools need to design programmes and projects in english subjects to increase low language ability levels. reading comprehension activities can help students reflect on their benefits in the real world. besides, reading activities in english should facilitate the practice of other language skills. referencesreferencesreferencesreferencesreferences harmer, j. (1983). the practice of english language teaching. london: longman. nunan, d. (1992). research methods in language learning. cambridge: cup. nuttall, c. (1982). teaching reading skills in a foreign l anguage. london: heinemann.• profile 2.p65 ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ 6profileprofileprofileprofileprofile a project was conducted in order to encourage oral participation in english through the use of games, with secondgrade students at liceo de la salle school in zipaquirá. they were between 6 and 7 years old. as the sample for this study, the eight students who had the lowest oral participation were selected. according to the results, it is clear that the activities have improved their oral english. introductionintroductionintroductionintroductionintroduction this project intended to help shy and slow students improve their oral production, or, basically, their participation in english class. this research was done at liceo de la salle school. the sample taken was a group of eight secondgrade students who were about six to seven years old. they took two hours of english a week at school. there was a need to choose games that motivated and involved them enough so that they used english for communication and followed commands. the students were observed during english classes for a period of six months, once a week. each class lasted ninety minutes. researresearresearresearresearch designch designch designch designch design the main purpose for carrying out this research was to identify games that would stimulate the participation of students in oral activities and to analyze the procedures that encourage students’ oral participation for a period of time. factors such as participation and pronunciation could be observed in detail in a small sample of students, so i could focus attention on selected aspects. the methodology used for this study was action research. it let me collect information through techniques such as observation of different english activities, teacher’s diary and audiotape recording over a six-month period. in februar y, the first game was implemented to find out students’ attitudes towards english and diagnose their individual levels. then lesson plans were made taking into account what type of games the students wanted to be included in the lessons. then, the lesson plans were applied including games that entailed the use of english. i used games to explain and practice in class. at the same time i observed the students and audio recorded almost all the lessons. after each lesson, i reflected on the lessons and kept field notes to register students’ attitudes, use of new vocabulary, use of commands, and in general any particular information that provided ideas about possible students’ participation through games. audiotape recordings were used as a procedure for acquiring information that could not be gathered in the teacher’s diary. interacting in english trough games emilsen ariza benavidesemilsen ariza benavidesemilsen ariza benavidesemilsen ariza benavidesemilsen ariza benavides liceo de la salle school ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○7 profileprofileprofileprofileprofile theoretical frameworktheoretical frameworktheoretical frameworktheoretical frameworktheoretical framework children learn through playing. in playing together, children interact and via interacting they develop language skills. games provide contexts for playing, reasons for playing and routines for playing. games create useful contexts, permitting an intensity of language practice. in addition to employing meaningful language, games also require gestures, handling of objects, touching, and many other forms of nonverbal communication. as they play games, students stop thinking about language and begin using it in a spontaneous and natural manner within the classroom. perhaps the main proposal for encouraging informal spoken interaction among children has been to promote games as a classroom activity. games can be designed to help develop structure, vocabulary, pronunciation, or writing. children naturally adopt different roles in their play (using their own language) and these classroom activities imitate natural learning processes. thus, we can set up a play situation and let the children use the language as they wish without much concern for language accuracy (brumfit: 1991). resultsresultsresultsresultsresults the results of the analysis of oral production showed a general improvement by the students. while i developed games, i could observe progress in the students’ oral participation. before i implemented games the students did not participate in any of the classes because they did not feel confident, and after the process of games, they participated all the time. for instance they showed more interest and involvement in what they were doing; they helped each other remember what to say, and so on. in the teacher’s diary, in general, it was noted that students said they liked english and felt they were learning through games. at first, some of the students had more difficulties understanding the vocabulary and participating in class, but by the end, they had gotten used to games and were able to understand in spite of not knowing all the vocabulary. at the moment, participation in class has increased as a result of the development of games and students look more confident and are willing to speak more often during the class. conclusions and implicationsconclusions and implicationsconclusions and implicationsconclusions and implicationsconclusions and implications i can conclude that games are good activities for developing participation in a funny and interesting way because they permit students to use the second language in communicative situations related to topics such as greetings, clothes, commands and likes/ dislikes. another important conclusion of the study is that controlled games help stimulate students’ oral participation because they help lower tension and anxiety that prevent students’ acquiring the language. for instance, many students speak english best in situations where their attention is focused on meaning rather than on language and they use the oral language through games that involve movement. however, it is necessary that we use games keeping in mind the following parameters (byrne: 1997 and brumfit: 1991): the focus of the game should match what the teacher wants to teach. ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ 8profileprofileprofileprofileprofile the game should be controlled by rules and the teacher should teach a number of phrases to enable them to participate and maintain communication in english organization of games (pairs, groups, teams, some with the whole class playing against the teacher or one leader). define clearly the starting and stopping time for doing activities. allow negotiation relating to dealing cards, taking turns, etc. playing games in our classes permits us to work with students who have different levels of english in the same class. i suggest that teachers work with games because participation in the activities is increased and students feel more selfconfident. referencesreferencesreferencesreferencesreferences brumfit, c. (1991). teaching english to children. from practice to principle. london: collins elt. byrne, d. (1997). teaching oral english. new edition. london: longman. profileprofileprofileprofileprofile profile no. 6 oct 13.p65 ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ profile profile profile profile profile 6 (2005): universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras teacher talking time in the efl classroom tttttiempo de participación oral del priempo de participación oral del priempo de participación oral del priempo de participación oral del priempo de participación oral del profesor en el aula de inglés como lengua eofesor en el aula de inglés como lengua eofesor en el aula de inglés como lengua eofesor en el aula de inglés como lengua eofesor en el aula de inglés como lengua extranjeraxtranjeraxtranjeraxtranjeraxtranjera nilton hitotuzinilton hitotuzinilton hitotuzinilton hitotuzinilton hitotuzi nhitotuzi@uea.edu.br universidad federal del amazonas, brazil classroom research may be simply defined as ongoing and cumulative intellectual inquiry by classroom teachers into the nature of teaching and learning in their own classrooms (cross and steadman, 1996, p.2). this paper reports on a piece of classroom research, aiming to support the hypothesis that most of the talk in my english-as-a-foreign-language elementary and intermediate classrooms was done by the teacher, presumably implying a more teacher-centred approach. in terms of the percentage of teacher talk, the results indicate that the discrepancy between the amount of teacher talk actually done in these classrooms and that which was hypothesized as being in conflict with a learner-centred approach was notably high. this appears to imply that, although i talked more than the learners on some occasions, my lessons were much more focused on them rather than on me, the teacher. kkkkkey worey worey worey worey words:ds:ds:ds:ds: classroom research, teacher talking time, learner-centred approach, english as a foreign language, teacher-centred approach este documento reporta sobre una investigación realizada en el aula, con el fin de comprobar la hipótesis de que el profesor hizo la mayor parte de las intervenciones orales en las clases de inglés como lengua extranjera en los niveles elemental e intermedio, lo que implica presumiblemente un enfoque más centrado en el profesor. en términos del porcentaje de intervención del profesor, los resultados indican que la discrepancia entre el volumen de su participación oral en las aulas y el que según la hipótesis conduciría a un conflicto con el enfoque centrado en el estudiante, fue notablemente alta. esto parece indicar que, aunque en ocasiones mi participación oral fuera mayor que la de los estudiantes, mis lecciones se centraron mucho más en ellos que en mí, el profesor. palabras claves:palabras claves:palabras claves:palabras claves:palabras claves: investigación en el aula, tiempo de participación oral del profesor, enfoque centrado en el estudiante, inglés como lengua extranjera, enfoque centrado en el profesor 97-106 this article was received on april 12th, 2005 and accepted on september 19th, 2005. ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ 98 hitotuzihitotuzihitotuzihitotuzihitotuzi profileprofileprofileprofileprofile introductionintroductionintroductionintroductionintroduction purpose and significance of the studypurpose and significance of the studypurpose and significance of the studypurpose and significance of the studypurpose and significance of the study for the wealth of information it can provide, gauging the amount of talk produced in the secondor foreign-language classroom (henceforth, l2 classroom) seems to be an interesting investigation. it can offer, for instance, feedback on the teaching approach actually adopted in a given classroom, despite the claims of the teacher. the piece of classroom research reported on this article aims to support the hypothesis that most of the talk in my english-as-a-foreign-language (efl) elementary and intermediate classrooms in the second semester of 2001 was done by the teacher, presumably implying a more teacher-centred approach. the verification of such hypothesis would contradict the teaching principles i purport to follow, namely, those of a learner-centred approach. benefits derived from the investigationbenefits derived from the investigationbenefits derived from the investigationbenefits derived from the investigationbenefits derived from the investigation at least two benefits derived from the investigation reported on this paper can be outlined here. one is that it can inspire other in-service language teachers to conduct research in their classrooms. the fact that classroom research is considered to be an important tool for professional development (cross and steadman, 1996) seems to suffice for its exploitation in the l2 classroom. the other is that it satisfactorily answered the question posed at the onset of the study, which allowed me to continue working with the groups under investigation reassured that, contrary to what had been hypothesized, my lessons revealed the adoption of a learner-centred approach if the amount of talk done in the classroom can actually indicate tendencies in terms of learner-centredness and teacher-centredness. some tenets of a learnersome tenets of a learnersome tenets of a learnersome tenets of a learnersome tenets of a learner-----centredcentredcentredcentredcentred approach (lcapproach (lcapproach (lcapproach (lcapproach (lca) towa) towa) towa) towa) towards l2 teachingards l2 teachingards l2 teachingards l2 teachingards l2 teaching second-language-acquisition (sla) literature provides a number of interesting discussions on the aspects that constitute the tenets behind a learnercentred approach as applied to l2 learning. first and foremost, capitalising on elicitation in the classroom is of prime importance in an lca lesson. students are not a tabula rasa on which supercilious teachers can record their knowledge; instead, they have knowledge and experiences of life and language which can contribute greatly to the learning process. rutherford seems to endorse this view. he argues that, when attempting to learn an l2, the learner is equipped with two kinds of prior knowledge, which he labels knowledge that and knowledge how. the first consists of an innate perception of the various possibilities of the target language (tl) and the learner's capacity to infer the unknown based on his/ her rudimentar y interlanguage. the second corresponds to the learner's first language (l1) learning experience, to wit: 'the ability temporarily to bend the new language into forms that will, with maximal efficiency, ser ve the initial desire for rudimentary communication' (rutherford, 1987, p. 7). the implication of rutherford's elaboration seems to be that the more learners contribute in the l2 classroom, the more they are likely to learn. hence, teachers should never underestimate the ability of their students. the focus of an lca lesson is on learners' experience and interests: the students may lose interest should the teacher choose an unattractive topic, or just follow the coursebook. if, however, teachers use the coursebook as an aid for the completion of tasks related to the students' areas of interest and experience, the students are more likely to become involved in the lesson, thereby learning more (nunan, 1989). more emphasis on communication than on accuracy is another feature of a learner-centred approach, since one of the aims of most students learning an l2 appears to be the achievement of aural/oral skills. moreover, it is likely that those learning an l2 will use it more frequently to communicate with other non-native speakers than with native speakers of that language. if that is the case, the ultimate goal then is to be able to understand and respond to each other. students, consequently, need opportunities to practise communicating in the ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○99 profileprofileprofileprofileprofile teacher talking time in the efl classroom tl without being haunted by the constant fear of making mistakes (nied, 1999). thus, in an lca lesson, teachers should not interrupt learners' interactions on the spot; instead, they should make notes and give feedback later. learners should learn by doing: the more actively involved students are in their own learning, the more likely they are to retain what they have learnt. activities such as tasks completed in small groups, in which learners are engaged in experimenting with the tl, and having to choose regarding learning, are examples of learning by doing. tasks appear to be, indeed, a major component of a learner-centred approach (nunan, 1988). in a lesson following an lca, tasks are openended; that is, there is more than one possible answer, different from traditional grammar-based tasks, for instance, which are either right or wrong and test only one skill at a time. they are generally unimaginative, often in the form of multiple-choice answers and totally divorced from 'real world' situations. open-ended tasks are wider in their focus and involve a variety of language skills (brodie et al., 2002). finally, in an lca lesson, learners are constantly exposed to the tl through the use of authentic materials such as electronic articles, magazines, newspaper, and audio and video recordings. this exposure seems to suggest that an approach centred on the learners helps them learn far more than the linguistic code. for one thing, besides being informed about current events, being able to explore cultural traits from other countries, and by being allowed to participate actively in the classroom, learners can be encouraged to think critically and develop problem-solving skills through creative tasks and group work (ministr y of education and culture, namibia, 1999). clearly, underlying these tenets is the idea that a learner-centred approach implies less teacher talk and more opportunity for students to speak in the l2 classroom. it seems, thus, that the rate of teacher talk vis-à-vis student talk plays a pivotal role in determining whether or not one's teaching methodology is in line with an lca, insofar as apparently the more learners talk, the more they are in control of learning. however, deciding on the ideal amount of time one should spend talking to one's students is a rather complex matter if the different levels of proficiency are taken into account. the paucity of information in sl a literature on appropriate proportions of l2 classroom talk across levels of proficiency is a strong indicator that more research needs to be conducted so that practitioners can make informed decisions about their talking time in the classrooms. regulregulregulregulregulaaaaators of the amount andtors of the amount andtors of the amount andtors of the amount andtors of the amount and t y p e s o f t e a c h e r tt y p e s o f t e a c h e r tt y p e s o f t e a c h e r tt y p e s o f t e a c h e r tt y p e s o f t e a c h e r ta l k i n t h ea l k i n t h ea l k i n t h ea l k i n t h ea l k i n t h e c lc lc lc lc lassroomassroomassroomassroomassroom it seems that the amount and type of talk l2 teachers do in their classrooms are largely dependent on both the specific goals of the syllabus adopted and their pedagogical principles. nunan and chaudron consistently underscore the following points: • "of course, whether or not it is considered a good thing for teachers to spend 70 or 80 per cent of class time talking will depend on the objectives of a lesson and where it fits into the overall scheme of the course or programme" (nunan, 1991, p. 190). • "what constitutes an interaction of a particular size or purpose, and the degree to which the nature of the interaction is negotiable, depends on the rules of speaking established by the teacher. enright found the two classroom teachers he studied differing in the degree to which student contributions and negotiation were possible. one teacher's constitution was the traditional teachercentered one of 'do not speak unless you are spoken to,' while the other's 'open or childcentered' constitution was characterized by 'if you have something to say, say it,' among other rules" (chaudron, 1988, p. 118-119). as regards nunan's suggestion, in case the lesson has a non-conversational purpose (e.g. a writing lesson), one may expect a period of teacher talk for lecturing the students on the processes involved in the construction of a paragraph, for instance, followed by a silent period allotted to ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ 100 hitotuzihitotuzihitotuzihitotuzihitotuzi profileprofileprofileprofileprofile the students to experiment with techniques of composition production. chaudron pinpoints the old-school and newschool principles as major regulators of teacher talking time and type of teacher talk in the l2 classroom. teachers who still maintain that students should be 'spoon-fed' probably put themselves on a pedestal in the classroom and believe that learners' contributions should be kept under control, or should not be verbalised whatsoever during their lessons. conversely, those who believe otherwise, besides allowing more freedom of expression in the classroom, also interact with the learners in various ways. findings on teacher tfindings on teacher tfindings on teacher tfindings on teacher tfindings on teacher talking timealking timealking timealking timealking time apparently it is a general belief in the teachinglearning world that teachers either talk or should talk more than learners. this belief is to a certain extent supported by research. bellack et al. (1966) and dunking and biddle (1974), all cited in chaudron (1988), found out, for instance, that about 60 per cent of the total amount of talk done in l1 classrooms is done by the teacher; and further investigation claimed that the figures are about the same as for l2 classrooms. in table 1 there is an outline of the results of four investigations reviewed by chaudron (1988) in each of which, although the researchers have applied different criteria, they underscore the prevalence of teacher talking time over student talking time: there seem to be two major arguments against these scientific pieces of evidence of the popular belief that teachers' speech either is or should be predominant in the classroom. on the one hand, the concept of the relationship between teachers and learners in the classroom environment seems to have changed a great deal since the time when those pieces of research were carried out. on the other hand, and most importantly, all of the subjects in those investigations were children. experience and common sense seem to lead one to assume that children, by their very nature, demand a great deal more of talking by the teacher than adults do. therefore, one might find it hard to believe that the teachers participating in these studies would do more than half of the talking in those classrooms were the subjects adult learners, let alone were the investigations carried out today. another point that might be important to consider here concerns types of classrooms. would teachers' moves be predominant in, say, content-oriented classrooms? do science subjects demand more teacher talk than, say, arts or social sciences subjects? regarding languageoriented classrooms, is it not compulsory that foreign-language teachers take more turns in their classrooms than do their second-language peers, notwithstanding their teaching style? these questions seem to be still lingering in the available literature on teacher talk. researresearresearresearresearcher/yearcher/yearcher/yearcher/yearcher/year contextcontextcontextcontextcontext % t% t% t% t% teacher talk (range)eacher talk (range)eacher talk (range)eacher talk (range)eacher talk (range) legarreta (1977) five bilingual education kindergarten classrooms representing two programme types ("concurrent 70% 80% translation" and "alternate days") median = 77%. enright (1984) two bilingual kindergarten classes similar in 42.9% 84.9% context to those in legarreta's. median = 64.5% bialystock, fröhlich one grade 6 french immersion class and one teacher talk: and howard (1978) grade 6 "core" french (fsl) class in canada. a. french immersion teacher: 68.8%. b. core french teacher: 6.3%. j.d. ramires et al. seventy-two kindergarten through grade 3 classes (1986) (l1 spanish children in english immersion, and not mentioned. early-exit transitional bilingual education classes). tttttable 1able 1able 1able 1able 1. investigations on teacher talking time (adapted from chaudron, 1988, p. 51-54). ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○101 profileprofileprofileprofileprofile teacher talking time in the efl classroom the investigathe investigathe investigathe investigathe investigation methodtion methodtion methodtion methodtion method the researthe researthe researthe researthe research question and hypothesisch question and hypothesisch question and hypothesisch question and hypothesisch question and hypothesis as the result of some reflection about my own praxis in the classroom in the year 2001, i noticed that i was talking more than i should when meeting my efl elementary (eg) and intermediate (ig) groups, since i believe that my teaching must be in line with the tenets of a learner-centred approach. this means, to a certain extent, more student and less teacher talk in the classroom (nied, 1999). i decided, thus, to investigate whether or not teacher talking time was excessively superior to student talking time in these two classrooms. the initial hypothesis was that teacher talking time was in the range of 60 to 80 per cent and 40 to 60 per cent during the elementar y and intermediate lessons, respectively (table 2). in my view, these figures are beyond the adequate level of teacher talking time at any level of l2 classrooms whose focus is on oral communication. tttttable 2able 2able 2able 2able 2: hypothetical amount of teacher talking time in the eg and ig efl classrooms. subjectssubjectssubjectssubjectssubjects due to its nature, this study involved both the teacher and the students. thus, on the one hand, one part of the population of the study consisted of a single subject: the teacher (myself), being a bilingual brazilian non-native teacher of english holding a ba in liberal arts from the federal university of amazonas (ufam), and serving as a supply teacher in the department of foreign languages and literature of this university. importantly, i capitalised heavily on jane willis's (willis, 1996) task-based learning approach (tbl) in my lessons during this investigation. on the other hand, two portuguesespeaking groups of efl students, both from the city of manaus, capital city of the state of amazonas in brazil, but characterized differently in several aspects, comprised the other part of the population. the first group consisted of 10 elementary-level students attending the closed caption project. this was a project which capitalised on massive video viewing in the classroom, and which was supervised by professor nelson josé fontoura de melo from ufam. the group met on saturday mornings in three-hour sessions. furthermore, this group was rather heterogeneous as regards age and literacy level: four students in their mid-teens, at the highschool level; two in their early twenties, at the undergraduate level; and four in their early thirties, at the postgraduate level. the second group was an intermediate-level group attending the liberal arts course at ufam. unlike the other group, these 22 students were fairly homogeneous regarding both age range (in the 19 to 25-age bracket) and level of literacy. additionally, another difference that appears to be worth pointing out is that this group met twice a week in 100-minute sessions. in terms of economic background, the groups were evenly balanced: there were members of the working-class and middle-class in both groups. materialsmaterialsmaterialsmaterialsmaterials in order to capture the amount of talk done in the two classrooms, a tp-m105 aiwa micro cassette recorder, and eight tdk-60 micro cassettes were used. the amount of talk was afterwards timed with a dw-003 casio stopwatch. data collection proceduredata collection proceduredata collection proceduredata collection proceduredata collection procedure there were considerable variations in the recordings involving the two groups. for one thing, only parts of four lessons were audiotaped in the elementary classroom. importantly, the parts of these lessons captured on tape amount to 240 minutes of recording. for another thing, four whole ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ 102 hitotuzihitotuzihitotuzihitotuzihitotuzi profileprofileprofileprofileprofile lessons were audiotaped in the intermediate classroom. however, due to some unexpected routine alteration, this group's tally was 165 minutes of lesson on tape. once the data were collected, the amount of talk that both the groups and i did was timed discretely without any elaboration on the types of moves produced by both sides (for details on some teacher talk statistics according to types of moves, see chaudron, 1988.). the percentage of the amount of talk i did in each classroom was then calculated (table 3). at this point, it may be worth drawing attention to the fact that the recordings in both classrooms were non-stop, so much so that they included pauses as well as all the activities that were being carried out at the same time in these classrooms, such as pair and group work, reporting, and listening to audiotapes. moreover, on the first day that the intermediate group was audiotaped, due to both a malfunction of the equipment and the spaciousness of the room, a great deal of student voice emerged unintelligible on tape. a solution to this problem was to tally as student talking time also all the recorded unclear chunks of student speech. data analysis proceduredata analysis proceduredata analysis proceduredata analysis proceduredata analysis procedure the following arithmetical formula was applied for reckoning the percentages of talking time in both classrooms: pttt = (ttt/ttcr) x 100 pstt = (stt/ttcr) x 100 where: pttt = percentage of teacher talking time. pstt = percentage of student talking time. ttt = teacher talking time. stt = student talking time. ttcr= total of talk in the classroom. the figures in tables 3 and 4 show the amount of talk done by me (ttt), the students (stt) and periods of silence (sl); this latter includes audiotape listening, videotape viewing as well as written exercise activities. these figures are expressed in minutes and as percentages against class length (cl). however, there are at least two aspects to be considered involving these timelength variables. the first is that, if the pttt and the pstt are achieved in relation to the cl as nunan (1991) suggests, it is impossible to tell whether or not the teacher makes more moves than the group, since there are occasions when teacher and students talk at the same time. the other aspect is that, through the calculation of the pttt and the pstt from the ttcr, the percentage of teacher talk versus student talk is rendered unambiguous. in addition, the sl percentage plays a pivotal role in determining the significance of the amount of talk done by the teacher, in comparison with that of the students. importantly, without taking this third variable into account, the pttt emerges as delusive. consider, for instance, the calculation of the pttt on the basis of a given cl; if the result is, say, 10%, it does not imply that the teacher has talked less than the group; if alternatively the sl equals 80%, the students will have talked as little as the teacher. it was thus decided that the calculation of ttt in both classrooms should be made based on the ttcr, rather than the cl (tables 3 and 4). comments on the resulcomments on the resulcomments on the resulcomments on the resulcomments on the results of thets of thets of thets of thets of the investigainvestigainvestigainvestigainvestigationtiontiontiontion the intermediate groupthe intermediate groupthe intermediate groupthe intermediate groupthe intermediate group as the audiotaped lessons were expected to be based on tenets of the communicative approach (larsen-freeman, 1986), the students were kept busy working on tasks (willis, 1996) either individually, in pairs or in small groups so much so that, as i was talking to a group or a single student, student-student interaction was taking place elsewhere in the classroom. these teacherindividual student, individual student-teacher or teacher-small group interactions originally amounted to another 25 minutes in the ttt slot in the first two lessons. however, these extra minutes were subtracted from table 3 later, since they would require different categorisations which might go beyond the scope of this paper. importantly, albeit some experts might dismiss this ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○103 profileprofileprofileprofileprofile teacher talking time in the efl classroom kind of interaction as non-teacher talk, there is no evidence whatsoever to the contrary in the literature reviewed. this dismissal might be ascribed to the overlapping figures: the pttt and the pstt can both tally, say, 80% of any given cl. this can be easily exemplified by the instance of a classroom where the learners are working in groups and, as they interact amongst themselves, the teacher is interacting with a particular group or a particular pupil; it is possible that the pttt can partially or entirely coincide with the pstt at the end of the lesson. thus, notwithstanding the fact that the teacher is not addressing the whole group, it seems reasonable to consider the turns taken by him or her in those particular instances as teacher talk, which in turn could well fall into some of milk's (1982) teacher-moves categories. in table 3, there is a distribution of the length of time (minutes) the students spent talking amongst themselves and to me, and the time i spent addressing the whole group against the length of the lessons (cl). moreover, the peculiarity of the four minutes in the ttt slot corresponding to my moves in the session comprising the first two lessons recorded is accounted for by the fact that all the details about the task carried out by the five small groups into which the students were divided on that occasion had been explained in the previous session. for this very reason, one can argue that the type of activities implemented in the classroom is a significant variable in the process of ttt/stt tallying. for one thing, in a lesson that should involve activities such as video viewing or composition writing for most of it, both teacher talk and student talk would be drastically reduced for obvious reasons. for another thing, the teacher should do most of the talking should the lesson focus on involved explanations of grammar rules, for instance. these arguments seem to be in line with nunan's comments on the amount of teacher talk in the l2 classroom (nunan, 1991). notice that the pttt and pstt in relation to the ttcr for this group were 15% and 85% respectively. the elementarthe elementarthe elementarthe elementarthe elementary gry gry gry gry groupoupoupoupoup two factors involving the audio recordings in the elementary group render them different from the data collection in the other classroom. for one thing, although lessons were merged into 180minute hebdomadal sessions, the data were collected from the beginning of each meeting up to the 120th minute of classroom activity. for another thing, the nature of the lessons in this classroom differs markedly from those given to the intermediate group. in this classroom, there was massive video viewing, which accounts for the large figures in the sl slot, as can be seen in table 4. for this group the pttt and pstt against the ttcr were 47% and 53% respectively. tttttable 3able 3able 3able 3able 3. the tallying of the amount of talk in four lessons to the ig. ttt stt sl cl minutes % minutes % minutes % minutes ttcr first two lessons 4 4.94 75 92.59 2 2.47 81 second two lessons 18 21.43 50 59.52 16 19.05 84 total 22 13.34 125 75.76 18 10.90 165 147 ttt stt sl cl minutes % minutes % minutes % minutes ttcr first two lessons 37 30.84 42 35 41 34.16 120 second two lessons 38 31.67 44 36.66 38 31.67 120 total 75 31.25 86 35.84 79 32.91 240 161 tttttable 4able 4able 4able 4able 4. the tallying of the amount of talk in four lessons to the eg. ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ 104 hitotuzihitotuzihitotuzihitotuzihitotuzi profileprofileprofileprofileprofile rejecting the hypothesisrejecting the hypothesisrejecting the hypothesisrejecting the hypothesisrejecting the hypothesis as table 5 illustrates, in the eg classroom, the actual amount of ttt was in the range of 40 to 60 per cent, and 0 to 20 per cent in the ig classroom. tttttable 5.able 5.able 5.able 5.able 5. actual amount of ttt in the eg and ig efl classrooms. the comparison between the figures in this table with those outlined in table 2 indicates that the initial hypothesis about the amount of teacher talk in the two classrooms investigated was not supported by the results of the research. for one thing, the 47 per cent of ttt represents 13 per cent less than the minimum hypothetical ttt (60%) in the eg classroom. this difference is even higher, if the analysis is conducted in terms of mean ( x 1 = 70% x 2 = 50% = 20%) . for another, the 15 per cent of actual ttt tallied in the ig classroom is twenty-five per cent less than the minimum ttt hypothesized for this group (40%). here, too, if the means are considered, the discrepancy between the hypothesized pttt and the actual pttt considerably high (x 1 = 50% x 2 = 10% = 40%)2. if ttt versus stt in the l2 classroom can be an indicator of the teaching principles adopted by me, these results seem to indicate the adoption of a more learner-centred approach towards the intermediate group, and the establishment of a balance between teacher-centredness and learner-centredness in the elementary classroom. this equilibrium can be explained by the type of activity carried out (video viewing) as well as the level of the students in this particular classroom it seems beginning level classrooms tend to demand more ttt. some conclsome conclsome conclsome conclsome conclusionsusionsusionsusionsusions issues arising from the results of the studyissues arising from the results of the studyissues arising from the results of the studyissues arising from the results of the studyissues arising from the results of the study while it might be the case that the type of investigation which involves the tallying of the amount of talk produced in the l2 classroom is undervalued by some language-oriented experts, it can be of considerable value to reflective teachers. the results of the study reported here, for instance, can unveil a number of postulations related to the relevance of the distribution of the amount of talk in the l2 classroom. one such postulation is whether or not the overlap between ttt and stt should be regarded as a negative aspect by lca advocates. many would be likely to agree that there is no negativity whatsoever in such concurrent tallying, since in student-student, student-teacher (or otherwise) interactions both parties (students versus teacher) are equally involved in the process of speech production even if in different proportions. considering the balance struck between ttt and stt in the eg classroom, for example, was those students' learning prejudiced by the fact that i was talking as much as the students in the classroom? if examined in the light of the nature of the activities carried out by the eg students, one might argue that, even when allotted a lesser share of the ttcr, students can still have their learning skills improved to a great extent and in various fronts from the type of lessons i have implemented, namely, (1) listening comprehension; (2) pronunciation; (3) intonation; (4) syntactical aspects and (5) vocabulary, just to cite a few. another issue that may be raised on the basis of these results is the question of whether or not the type of learner-centredness suggested by the high level of stt in the ig classroom contributes effectively to a solid development of l2 intermediate students. one might claim that at this level stt should not cover 85 per cent of the ttcr yet, since these students still need a great 1 x 1 = hypothesized pttt and x 2 = actual pttt for eg. 2 x 1 = hypothesized pttt and x 2 = actual pttt for ig. ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○105 profileprofileprofileprofileprofile teacher talking time in the efl classroom deal of exposure to native-speaking models for consolidating their aural/oral skills in the target language, mainly in a foreign-language learning environment, as is the case with the participants of this investigation. finally, considering my approach towards classroom management and my capitalisation on task-based activities mostly in the ig classroom, one tends to accept that, despite the tentativeness of the investigation, the results somehow indicate a greater focus on the learners. the creation of an environment in which learners learn by doing appears to be one of the concerns of a learner-centred approach, inasmuch as it seems the greater the involvement of the students in the process of learning, the higher the likelihood of retaining newly learnt items (stern, 1992). at this point, activities anchored in tbl, which in most cases have to be completed in small groups, appear to be a valuable tool to the development of learner-centred lessons (nunan, 1988; willis, 1996). the assumption that the classrooms investigated are in alignment with the principles of an lca in terms of ttt implies that lessons designed and implemented based on tbl are successful in keeping ttt at a low level in l2 classrooms aiming at the achievement of communicative competence in the tl. nevertheless, tbl, which currently seems to pervade l2 classrooms worldwide, should not be applied without caution. it is desirable that close monitoring of both the longand short-term outcomes of this teaching approach should be done in order to avoid responsibility for any sort of placebo effect in the classroom (pica, 2000). a safe course for dynamic and productivea safe course for dynamic and productivea safe course for dynamic and productivea safe course for dynamic and productivea safe course for dynamic and productive lessonslessonslessonslessonslessons as hixson and tinzmann (1990) anticipated some time ago, in the educator's world, only change remains the same. in other words, the teacher should never be satisfied with results indicating professional progress. instead, he or she must pursue the continuous development of their expertise as educators, as hixson and tinzmann (1990: 9) suggest: "(...) to remain effective, teachers (...) will need to continually upgrade their skills, expand their knowledge, and develop new strategies to meet the needs of increasingly diverse students and their parents". this seems to constitute a safe course for keeping one's lessons both dynamic and productive. it does not mean to say, though, that less ttt equals dynamic and productive lessons. good lessons seem to be resultant of a number of factors that can range from language theories favoured by the teacher to his or her personality traits (holland and shortall, 1997). but this, as well as most of the other issues raised from the results of this study, seems to merit the implementation of other classroom investigations (allwright and bailey, 1991; chaudron, 1988; nunan, 1992). about the authorabout the authorabout the authorabout the authorabout the author nilton hitotuzinilton hitotuzinilton hitotuzinilton hitotuzinilton hitotuzi holds an ma in tefl/tesl from the university of birmingham and a ba in liberal arts from the federal university of amazonas. currently he holds a lecturing position at the state university of amazonas. he is interested in the teaching of methodology and pronunciation. referencesreferencesreferencesreferencesreferences allwright, d. and bailey, m. (1991). focus on the language classroom. an introduction to classroom research for language teachers. cambridge: cambridge university press. brodie, k. et al. (2002). forms and substance in learner-centred teaching: teachers' take-up from an in-service programme in south africa. teaching and teacher education,18, 541-559. chaudron, c. (1988). second language classrooms. research on teaching and learning. cambridge: cambridge university press. cross, k. p. and steadman, m. h. (1996). classroom research: implementing the scholarship of teaching. san francisco, ca: jossey-bass publishers. hixson, j. and tinzmann, m. b. (1990). what changes are generating new needs for professional ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ 106 hitotuzihitotuzihitotuzihitotuzihitotuzi profileprofileprofileprofileprofile development? oak brook: north central regional educational laboratory (ncrel). retrieved august 07, 2001, from http://www.ncrel.org/sdrs/areas/ rpl_esys/profdev.htm holland, b. and shortall, t. (1997). classroom research and research methods. birmingham: centre for english language studies (cel). larsen-freeman, d. (1986). techniques and principles in language teaching. new york: oxford university press. national institute for educational development (nied). (1999). how learner-centred are you? okahandja, namibia: ministry of basic education and culture. nunan, d. (1988). the learner-centred curriculum. cambridge: cambridge university press. nunan, d. (1989). designing tasks for the communicative classroom. cambridge: cambridge university press. nunan, d. (1991). language teaching methodology: a textbook for teachers. hemel hempstead: prentice hall international. nunan, d. (1992). research methods in language learning. cambridge: cambridge university press. pica, t. (2000). tradition and transition in english language teaching methodology. system, 28, 1-18. rutherford, w.e. (1987). second language grammar: learning and teaching. new york: longman. stern, h. h. (1992). issues and options in language teaching. oxford: oxford university press. willis, j. (1996). a framework for task-based learning. essex: longman. profile 1.p65 ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○59 profileprofileprofileprofileprofile reading: a motivating and interactive process brigitte santoyo and lilia e. morales g.brigitte santoyo and lilia e. morales g.brigitte santoyo and lilia e. morales g.brigitte santoyo and lilia e. morales g.brigitte santoyo and lilia e. morales g. t his research was primarilyintended for those who areprofessionally concerned with the teaching of a foreign language, and especially for those who consider reading to be one of the most important sources for developing comprehension and production processes. we wanted our students to develop reading strategies by means of meaningful and motivating stories. meaningful, because interesting stories encourage them to improve, and motivating, because they open the doors to multiple possibilities, thereby reinforcing other abilities. intrintrintrintrintroductionoductionoductionoductionoduction the subjects were teenage girls from the liceo antonia santos state school, most of whom live in the south part of bogotá. they belong to a mid-low economic and cultural level and were in tenth grade. there were about 35 students in each class. they had three periods of english a week and their training in reading comprehension was poor. data interpretation described their reading preferences, texts, activities and ways of working. results suggested that students preferred to work in groups and read fairy tales, short stories, novels and horror stories as literary work. they asked for interpretation by drawing as a pre-reading activity and were not keen on predictions. vocabular y identification was very important for them throughout the whole reading activity. students suggested word searches, drawing, dramatisation and word games like crosswords and puzzles. and as post-reading activities, they preferred dramatising; they were not keen on developing guides, drawing pictures or summarising. it should be mentioned that some theoretical issues supported our research. first, we considered reading comprehension as the process through which the reader constructs the meaning of a text by interpreting textual information in light of prior knowledge and experience. learning a language through reading is not a matter of distinguishing letters and shapes, drawing those shapes, following a text with the eyes and so on; learning to read grows from a deeper layer of conceptual development and its success depends on careful selection of the type of text, reading strategies and motivation. we also took into consideration the cyclical process which explains the elements that interact in the reading process (visual input, perception, syntax and semantics, etc.). attention was also given to reading strategies. these are defined as conscious mental processes which depend on who is using them, with what text, at what point in the text, under what circumstances and with what purpose in mind. a fourth aspect we considered in our theoretical framework was that ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ 60profileprofileprofileprofileprofile corresponding to the categories of reading activities. they are a list of common possible activities to do in class. finally, we examined the ideal reader characteristics, which explain the two different processes used by readers: bottom-up and top-down. prprprprprocedure and resultsocedure and resultsocedure and resultsocedure and resultsocedure and results taking into account the points above, we prepared three workshops using simple readings, each one of them designed to be carried out in 70 minutes. in each workshop the students and the teacher wrote diaries which helped in the analysis of the activities and gave positive points of view, advice and feedback. the activities demonstrated that short and meaningful readings promote interaction, motivation and oral and written production. each workshop showed the importance of different aspects. first, team work, which is really relevant, since it gives students opportunities to interact, so improving oral and written skills. second, motivation which is the element that has to be present throughout the entire lesson. if motivation decreased, students’ interaction decreased and good behaviour declined. motivation is extremely important in that it enables the students to learn easily and rapidly – so much that they were conscious of their learning and demanded higher quality classes. third, vocabulary: if students did not understand the meaningful words they felt lost and their interest decreased. the teacher had to carry realia, lots of pictures and visual aids to explain the vocabulary. vocabulary is not a matter of the lesson presentation, but to be worked on throughout the class. finally, during our experience with this group of students we discovered that they expressed themselves orally better and without inhibition if they wrote their ideas first; this proves that reading is not an isolated skill. for better results in language learning, reading skills have to be worked on in an integrated way, with listening, speaking and writing. this ensures that the learner uses all his/her capacities. although the results were very clear, this research left us some questions that could develop into further research; for example, how to use literature such as poetry in teaching english?, or how to work on writing before speaking in a lesson? conclusionconclusionconclusionconclusionconclusion now that we have finished the research, we are convinced that reading is a complex but useful process that provides great opportunities for interaction and learning whenever other skills are integrated into such process. it would be a waste of time to work on reading in isolation. working on reading as a source for teaching is not as easy as it seems. working on reading in the classroom implies that the teacher has to know his/her students very well in order to select the topic to work on and know how to make a diagnosis of their preferences and select the most appropriate for the case. we cannot say that the activities we worked on here are the best and are applicable for all kinds of students. if the diagnosis was done at a male or coed school, the results could vary. profile 5.pmd ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○23 profileprofileprofileprofileprofile teacher correction versus peer-marking* corrección del maestro versus corrección por revisión de pares mariana correia mourente miguelmariana correia mourente miguelmariana correia mourente miguelmariana correia mourente miguelmariana correia mourente miguel** universidade federal do rio de janeiro, brazil mariana_mourente@yahoo.com.br written language is undoubtedly more often used than oral language in a variety of contexts, including both the professional and academic life. consequently, developing strategies for correcting compositions and improving students’ written production is of vital importance. this article describes an experiment aimed at assessing the two most widely used methods of correction for compositions –traditional teacher correction and peer marking and their effect on the frequency of errors. data was collected by asking students to write and revise a text. statistical tests were performed to analyse it. at the end of the experiment, it was found that no significant difference in efficiency existed between the two methods, contradicting expectations (cf. davies, 2002; levine et al., 2002 and ward, 2001). kkkkkey worey worey worey worey words: ds: ds: ds: ds: english-teaching, foreign language-teaching writing, evaluation, assessment el lenguaje escrito es sin duda usado con más frecuencia que el lenguaje oral en una variedad de situaciones o contextos, incluyendo tanto la vida profesional como la académica. en consecuencia, el desarrollo de estrategias para corregir composiciones y mejorar la producción escrita de los estudiantes es de suma importancia. este artículo describe un experimento cuyo objetivo es evaluar los dos métodos más usados para la corrección de composiciones, la corrección tradicional por el maestro y la corrección por revisión de pares, con respecto a su efecto en la frecuencia de errores. se recogió información haciendo que estudiantes escribieran y revisaran un texto y sobre esos textos se aplicaron pruebas estadísticas para analizar los errores. contrario a lo esperado, al final del experimento, no se encontró ninguna diferencia significativa entre los * this research project was carried out as part of a non-mandatory internship undertaken by the author during 2002-2003. this internship was offered by an institutional project called projeto cursos de línguas abertos à comunidade and was funded by universidade federal do rio de janeiro. ** mariana correia mourente miguelmariana correia mourente miguelmariana correia mourente miguelmariana correia mourente miguelmariana correia mourente miguel is a graduate student and teacher whose main interest lies in written production in english as a foreign language as well as its evaluation and assessment. she has co-edited a collection of essays on foreign language teaching in 2003 and is currently co-editing another volume to be published this year. ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ 24 correia profileprofileprofileprofileprofile resultados encontrados por los dos métodos, (cfr. davies, 2002; levine et al., 2002 y ward, 2001). palabras claves: palabras claves: palabras claves: palabras claves: palabras claves: inglés-enseñanza, idioma extranjero-enseñanza, composición, evaluación introductionintroductionintroductionintroductionintroduction nowadays, a great importance is attached to written language by many institutions since it is needed in order to succeed academically. entrance exams for both undergraduate and graduate university courses require mastery of it. written english is also more common than spoken english for many people both in their personal and professional lives. in brazil, the federal government has helped to give prominence to written over spoken language by publishing the national curriculum programme for the teaching of foreign languages (secretaria de educação fundamental, 1998). this document instructs teachers to focus on skills related to written language and states many reasons why they should be emphasised even when teaching students as young as ten years old. this state of affairs naturally leads teacher trainers and teacher trainees to consider the methods of correction for compositions. if teachers are supposed to devote a great part of their courses to the written language, they should equally make attempts to optimise the learning process of skills related to it. in this article, two of the most common methods of correction for written production –traditional teacher marking and peer marking– will be empirically assessed. theoretical backgroundtheoretical backgroundtheoretical backgroundtheoretical backgroundtheoretical background several studies such as ward (2001), levine et al. (2002), and davies (2002), state that peer-marking is more efficient than traditional teacher marking. according to these researchers, peer marking presents students with more opportunities to assume an active role in the evaluation process. in order to be able to detect mistakes in colleagues’ compositions, students must be at least familiar with the vocabulary and structures that were taught in class. besides that, these authors claim that students are more likely to pay attention in order not to make the same mistakes again. these authors also claim that this method provides students with opportunities to reflect on the learning process and critically evaluate it. last but not least, students are also exposed more to the foreign language they are studying and may learn new vocabulary items or grammar points. hypothesishypothesishypothesishypothesishypothesis in the present research project, the objective is to verify which method is the most efficient: the traditional correction, when only the teacher has the authority to correct students’ mistakes, or peer-marking, when the students themselves evaluate their colleagues’ production. the aspect under analysis is the efficacy of these methods ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○25 profileprofileprofileprofileprofile teacher correction versus peer-marking concerning the decrease in the frequency of errors after revision. the research question that was drawn from the cited bibliography is: would students who practised peer marking commit fewer mistakes when revising their texts? methodologymethodologymethodologymethodologymethodology in order to verify this hypothesis, two activities were conducted with groups of students belonging to the same level in order to gather the data required for our research. the students had had approximately 200 guided learning hours, being situated at the a2 level (or key english test level) according to the common european framework (see cambridge esol). all students were adults, from 18 to 27 years old. they were attending a general english course aimed at developing the four abilities. this course was offered by a public institution with an especially low fee to attract disadvantaged students. the activities designed to gather data involved the writing of a composition by the students working individually. after the compositions were written, they were collected. then each class was assigned a different procedure. in class a, the traditional method was used while in class b peer marking was chosen as the way of correcting the compositions. the corrected compositions were then given back to the students who were asked to check the mistakes that had been highlighted, as well as to try to assimilate the right answers. the next step for both classes was to give them an uncorrected copy of their compositions and ask them to rewrite it, eliminating the errors that had been corrected. this procedure is further clarified in the diagram below: step 1: students were instructed to write a composition step 2—a: teacher collected compositions and corrected them step 2—b: each student corrected a classmate’s composition step 3: students received their compositions and checked the markings step 4: students revised their compositions diagram 1.diagram 1.diagram 1.diagram 1.diagram 1. procedure for collecting data ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ 26 correia profileprofileprofileprofileprofile both the original and the revised versions of the composition were carefully read and compared by the researcher in order to determine how many mistakes had been made in the original and in the revised versions. the data collected from this activity were then submitted to statistical analysis because this type of analysis allows the detection of tendencies and the comparison of groups, which proved useful given the aims of the experiment. the data were not normally distributed, as one can see in the histogram below (graph 1), where “erorig” stands for the number of mistakes found in the first version of the composition (“erorig” is “erros no original”, or “mistakes in the first version”, shortened due to software limitations.). considering the data distribution, the next step was to perform the chi-square test to see whether there was a significant difference between students’ performance before and after the correction (cf. robson, 1975, for a detailed account of how to structure empirical research). as shown in the table below (table 1), the difference for both groups was not significant, which means that neither of the methods tested in this experiment was considerably more efficient than the other in making students able to identify and correct their errors. graph 1graph 1graph 1graph 1graph 1 ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○27 profileprofileprofileprofileprofile teacher correction versus peer-marking tttttable 1able 1able 1able 1able 1 discussiondiscussiondiscussiondiscussiondiscussion from the data analysed in the previous section, one can infer that the assumptions made about peer marking are not entirely well founded. the experiment did not have the deep impact it was expected to have on students’ use of the foreign language. mistake identification did not improve significantly when compared to students exposed to traditional evaluation methods, since there was roughly an equal improvement for both groups. therefore, it may be more appropriate for teachers to include both styles of correction in their courses. this way, students who eventually feel inhibited with one of the methods will be given opportunities to profit from the other. a shortcoming in this research that has to be acknowledged is the fact that it dealt specifically with brazilian students. as a result, this experiment does not account for the impact cultural background may have on students’ reaction to different evaluation methods. further research, including other english as a foreign language teaching contexts such as other latin american countries, is thus needed in order to reach a better understanding of how assessment functions during the foreign language acquisition process. it would also be pertinent to verify if these two methods vary in any other relevant aspect. acknowledgementsacknowledgementsacknowledgementsacknowledgementsacknowledgements the author would like to thank fellow teacher naíra figueiredo costa monteiro de almeida, for kindly discussing the design of the experiment in its early phase and helping to collect data as well as all the students who willingly participated in the experiment and consented on its publication under anonymity. the author would also like to thank in advance those who take an interest in this research and decide to conduct similar projects in their schools. referencesreferencesreferencesreferencesreferences cambridge esol. how many hours of study are needed to reach the levels of the main suite exams? retrieved from h t t p : / / w w w. c a m b r i d g e e s o l . o rg / f a q / ms_gen_faqs.cfm#1 davies, p. peer-assessment: no markings, just feedback? retrieved from http:// www.comp.glam.ac.uk/pages/staff/pdavies/ caa.htm ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ 28 correia profileprofileprofileprofileprofile levine, a., oded, b., connor, u., and asons, i. (2002). variation in efl-esl response. tesl-ej, berkeley 6: 3. retrieved december 2002, from http://www-writing.berkeley.edu/tesl-ej/ ej23/a1.html robson, c. (1975). experiment, design and statistics in psychology. harmondsworth: penguin education. secretaria de educação fundamental. (1998). parâmetros curriculares nacionais: terceiro e quarto ciclos do ensino fundamental: língua estrangeira. brasília: mec/sef. retrieved from http://www.mec.gov.br/sef/estrut2/pcn/pdf/ estrangeira.pdf ward, a. (2001). experimenting with webenabled peer assessment. retrieved from http:/ /www.dcs.warwick.ac.uk/~ashley/research/ oasys/forumarticle.html this article was received on may 11th, 2004 and accepted on august 23rd, 2004 profile no. 6 oct 13.p65 ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ profile profile profile profile profile 6 (2005): universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras the process-writing approach: an alternative to guide the students’ compositions el enfoque de escritura como proceso:el enfoque de escritura como proceso:el enfoque de escritura como proceso:el enfoque de escritura como proceso:el enfoque de escritura como proceso: una alternativa para guiar las composiciones de los estudiantesuna alternativa para guiar las composiciones de los estudiantesuna alternativa para guiar las composiciones de los estudiantesuna alternativa para guiar las composiciones de los estudiantesuna alternativa para guiar las composiciones de los estudiantes ana virginia ariza martínezana virginia ariza martínezana virginia ariza martínezana virginia ariza martínezana virginia ariza martínez anavirginiaarizama@yahoo.es institución educativa distrital república del ecuador with this report i intend to share an experience about the use of some strategies of the process oriented approach with which i guided 9th graders at república del ecuador school in 2004. this was a group of low-achieving teenagers whose writing was the least developed of the skills. connecting ideas and getting coherence in a text was a daunting task for them. it was not really very difficult to guide the learners to write. the best products were those in which pictures were involved. in general they showed great interest and better outcomes resulted from pictures than from words. the simpler the task given, the better the written results. the teacher’s role was essentially that of a model and facilitator. kkkkkey worey worey worey worey wordsdsdsdsds: process writing approach, writing skills, writing tasks con este informe pretendo compartir una experiencia acerca del uso de algunas estrategias de la escritura orientada como proceso, con la cual guié a estudiantes de noveno grado de la i.e.d. república del ecuador en 2004. se trata de grupo de adolescentes con bajo nivel de inglés cuya habilidad de producción escrita era la menos desarrollada de todas. conectar ideas y dar coherencia a un texto era para ellos una tarea titánica. realmente no fue difícil guiar a los estudiantes hacia la escritura. en general, los estudiantes mostraron gran interés; hubo mejores producciones a partir de imágenes que de palabras. cuanto más simple se mostrara la actividad, mejores resultados se obtuvieron. el papel del profesor fue esencialmente el de modelo y facilitador. palabras clavespalabras clavespalabras clavespalabras clavespalabras claves: enfoque de escritura por procesos, habilidades de escritura, tareas de escritura 37-46 this article was received on april 15th, 2005 and accepted on august 12th, 2005. ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ 38arizaarizaarizaarizaariza profileprofileprofileprofileprofile introductionintroductionintroductionintroductionintroduction writing for efl (english as a foreign language) students is not an easy matter, especially when the students’ english competence is not very well developed. on the other hand, there is reading, which entails out a big problem in comprehension. students are not used to “thinking” in english, they are not used to inferring meanings from context and they forget vocabulary, structures or chunks which had supposedly been learned. as reading and writing are two hand-in-hand processes, it makes the writing process even more difficult. however, since the human being has the capability to think, the possibility to write exists. the purpose of this project was to show how teachers of english can guide their students to develop this written communicative competence. i found white and arndt’s proposal (1991) an interesting, relevant and not difficult alternative which is not a linear but a cyclical process, and which offers a great variety of activities for each of the stages proposed. review of the literareview of the literareview of the literareview of the literareview of the literaturetureturetureture although i was conscious that the most important principle of process pedagogy is that writing is the result of a very complex, highly individualized process, the need to investigate or innovate regarding this topic was significant because the more time passed, the poorer the efl students’ production at school was. santoyo and morales (2000) connected written production to their project on reading. they stated relevant aspects to count on in the process such as teamwork, motivation, vocabulary and the practice of writing down ideas before speaking. their project is proof that listening, speaking, reading and writing must work in an integrated way. they got interesting results in interaction, motivation and oral and written production from reading. i found some other interesting proposals such as ortega and rodriguez’s (2000) titled “improvement of writing proficiency through creation of homogeneous groups in the classroom”, where they state that there is a lot of theory about writing skills, but these do not bear in mind the learners’ likes, interests, problems, age, attitude, etc., and i agree with them. it was interesting to create different working groups to establish the kind of work that functions better. however, it is noticeable that all the activities carried out based on a controlled writing situation provided good results, while freer compositions did not. silva (2003: 28) presents an overview of esl (english as a second language) writing throughout time in his article, “esl writing: past, present, and future”. he focuses on the four most influential approaches, controlled composition, currenttraditional rhetoric, the process approach, and english for academic purposes. in his article he refers to the process approach as a “non-linear, exploratory and generative process whereby writers discover and reformulate their ideas as they attempt to approximate meaning” according to zamel (1983: 165). precisely this research was based on this approach, the process-oriented one. white and arndt (1991) propose this framework in which there is a brief explanation about each stage. diagram 1diagram 1diagram 1diagram 1diagram 1. a model of writing (white and arndt, 1991, p.11). ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○39 profileprofileprofileprofileprofile the process-writing approach the focusing stage has to do with the purpose for writing, the real reasons for writing. structuring deals with the organization of ideas in an acceptable way for the reader. drafting shows the transition from writer-based into reader-based text because multiple drafts are produced and each one has feedback from the teacher or from peers. reviewing means standing back from the text and looking at it with fresh eyes and asking oneself: “is it right?” evaluation is given during the process to assist students permanently and not merely at the end. finally, it should be pointed out that generating ideas is the most important stage when the process is starting. here the writer looks for a topic and considers a purpose to initiate the writing task. to summarize, i will mention the following advantages offered by this approach: • it focuses on the process (not on the final product). • it is reader-based (not writer-based). • it finds a real audience. • it offers a variety of techniques. • the teacher plays the role of guide, facilitator, and reader. • the student’s role is one of sharing and collaborating. • grammar is a tool (a means, not an end). • meaning is essential (not form). • it is a creative process. • evaluation and feedback are given permanently (not only at the end). some of the literature found deals with the process approach itself. now i will report some findings about works based on it. as the current teaching practice at my work place is based on the communicative approach, i will mention calvache (2003), who explains important aspects of the communicative approach, the task-based approach and the development of competence in foreign languages. i liked calvache’s article and agreed with the point of view that the learner is the center of the process, so, for any educational action, we must keep in mind his/her previous knowledge, daily struggle, needs and interests, abilities and attitudes, which are aspects to take advantage of. task-based instruction (tbi) has also a lot to do with the development of my project since my work is focused on tasks, where learners interact and cooperate continuously to learn by doing. i found a reflection and proposal for l2 writing in ortiz (2003), where she demonstrates that questions can be used in writing activities to generate ideas. the topic and the kind of texts will depend on the students’ ages, interests and levels. she probably based her innovation on white and arndt’s (1991) suggestion in order to focus on the concept of “shared knowledge” between reader and writer. she asked questions related to friends, families, relatives, teachers, etc. in order to generate short texts about these specific topics. i think her proposal is interesting, but i would like to go further than merely writing as a “response” product. holmes (2004) in his article, “the use of a process-oriented approach to facilitate the planning and production stages of writing for adult students of english as a foreign or second language” identifies some features of this approach and provides some suggestions to develop activities in order to humanize and make a more positive and effective experience from writing. he also brings up white and arndt’s (1991: 5) remark that “activities include pair and group work, not to mention discussion and collaboration, so that the writing class becomes, in a very genuine sense, a communicative experience in which much more than skill in writing is practiced and developed.” we can find lots of information about the writing process and specifically the process writing approach. i have found different aspects which i think would work based on the characteristics of my students and there are some others that would work with higher-level students or with students from a different culture. i have found that process writing offers a positive, motivating and collaborative atmosphere for students to write in. it focuses on reader-based texts instead of writer○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ 40arizaarizaarizaarizaariza profileprofileprofileprofileprofile based texts. besides, this approach gives extreme importance to the learners’ needs, interests, problems, ages, motivation, and so on, which makes the student the center of the process. it requires real or authentic context and real readers. methodologymethodologymethodologymethodologymethodology this action research study involves the use of a series of activities related to the generation of ideas and focusing stages from the process writing approach. it was carried out with a group of 9th graders from república del ecuador school in 2004. about the participants, there were important aspects to bear in mind. first of all, we, as teachers, are not used to writing, so we cannot expect so much from students unless there is substantial change, mainly when we have not even adopted a systematic process for writing lessons. with those former aspects and the reality of large classes, so little interest in learning, so few hours of english classes a week (2 or 3), the waste of time because of different activities, and discouragement, among others, the result was obvious. students were low-achievers in general, and the least-developed skill was writing. i selected a group of 36 students from 9th grade (901) to work on the project. they were boys and girls aged 14 to 16. from this group i took a sample of five pupils who were average students but rarely missed classes, who worked in class, and made big efforts to improve. fortunately, this group was collaborative. the students accepted suggestions positively and worked in class as well as at home. the other participant was just me. the process began to be carried out in june when i started to identify and formulate the problem. later i got information about the topic and started to read and select relevant information. once i had identified the process-writing as the approach that would be the basis of the project, i introduced this to my students. they were asked to take an active part in the project development, and a consent form was sent to their parents. the activities with the students were carried out from september to october. some activities to guide the students to write were systematically presented and strategies were applied, beginning with the ones white and arndt (1991) suggest to generate ideas such as brainstorming, using pictures and cartoons, etc. during the process i was expected to be circulating among, focusing, structuring, drafting, re-viewing and evaluating permanently. however, i only tested the generation and focusing stages because of the lack of time. i selected them as the starting point because i think they are the basis of this process mainly to help students to establish writing habits. i hope the other stages can be progressively applied in the future. data were gathered from the collection of drafts and final products. the teacher played the role of observer, guide and facilitator. resulresulresulresulresultststststs since getting started is the most difficult part of any process, this research was just a starting point of the complex process of writing. most of the activities presented here have to do with the generation of ideas. some of them are guided and some are not. there is one more activity which has to do with the focusing stage. brainstorming (an unguided technique), first modeled by the teacher, then by the students, was useful to produce many individual ideas or words related to a specific topic quickly. i modeled this activity with the word “love” (because of the month –september). the students gave many related ideas (most of them in spanish) which were written on the board, and emphasis on their spelling was made. later on, they were involved in a kind of snowball activity for brainstorming, then, it was enlarged through cooperative work. the aim was to create a poster based on the most interesting topics for teenagers according to what they had brainstormed. this was the first part of the following class with a more productive activity based on reading. this time the objective was to create charts on their topic of preference using the newspaper “el tiempo”. they had to read the ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○41 profileprofileprofileprofileprofile the process-writing approach text and produce a text on their own. some of these productions were fantastic, but others were just copy of parts of the news. for most of them, the cooperative work functioned. some of them learned from others, they respected their roles and there was interaction. students showed a positive attitude towards these activities. they had fun and showed great creativity. however, english language was not used at all and there was difficulty in developing ideas. when students perceived that the task was getting complicated, most of them gave up and started getting bored, frustrated or unable. they did not make much effort. on the other hand, the other activities, i mean, using picture sequences and cartoons, fostered personal expressions since each student perceived and interpreted these visual aids differently. there was a great stimulus for vocabulary development. learners liked the activities where they did not have to write so much. these were creative and they could express their feelings and emotions without having to write very much. they expressed ideas, but it was not easy to develop them. if they were not pressed, they did not make any effort, or simply avoided doing things. some activities for the generation of ideas provided more successful results than others. it was necessary to implement the ones where students had to exercise their creativity and imagination since it was quite difficult for them, although they were interested. they were used to following patterns and it was hard for them to go beyond. in general they showed great interest and better outcomes from pictures than from words (see sample 1, in appendix 1). as it can be seen, errors in grammar, syntax and coherence were frequently made (the last monday camilo wants to call at 2:00 pm to his mother) but i did not focus on them, but on the process itself. it was hard for me because i was always trying to correct mistakes at first sight. regarding the focusing activity, i could notice that the students really understood that everybody writes with a specific purpose. with the pool of letters taken from “el tiempo” newspaper, they could observe the different purposes, the different writers’ attitudes, and the different language devices the writer uses to make his/her letters really effective. after analyzing the students’ written production and my observations, i could establish the following categories: within the application of two strategies to foster and focus on writing, i found the following four important categories: pictures help more than words: for the generation of ideas, several activities were posed. from these, students showed much more interest, creativity and production of ideas when the starting point was a picture or a sequence of pictures or cartoons, than when the starting point was just words. the simpler the task, the better the written outcomes: the students’ attention span is very short. about 15 minutes after starting an activity is enough time for them to get tired if they have not finished. they get bored or frustrated or feel unable and they simply give up. so, tasks must be short, clear and simple, appropriate for their proficiency. in this way the students will work with generation of ideas and focusing pictures tasks letters interaction diagram 2diagram 2diagram 2diagram 2diagram 2. categories found when analyzing data on writing strategies. ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ 42arizaarizaarizaarizaariza profileprofileprofileprofileprofile a positive attitude, they will feel confident and encouraged to write their own ideas (see sample 2, in appendix 2). letters: a good resort to make complaints: when learners receive news about decisions that can harm their life, they immediately react. letters help them to express their disagreement, and they know that most letters are effective when the language is used properly. it was a good activity to enable the students to understand what focusing means (see sample 3, in appendix 3). interaction: teacher’s role: the teacher must essentially be a model and a facilitator. a model because students need examples to be able to do something for the first time, and it is the teacher who must guide them with clear instructions; and a facilitator because students will need help either with vocabulary or any other aspect of organizational competence (cohesion, syntax, coherence, etc.) working with white and arndt’s proposal usually implies that the students are high achievers and that they are competent in the english language. however, the group of students of this study are neither high achievers nor have a good english level. in the end, things turned out positive. this proposal can also function with low achievers. obviously, it would be nicer and better if things were different. this study helped to create a willingness to learn in the students, most of them wished to be able to deal with a great deal of vocabulary, structures and coherent elements. they, as well as i, noticed how low their achievements had been so far, due to lots of circumstances that had affected the learning process. conclconclconclconclconclusionsusionsusionsusionsusions this was a project concerning how english teachers can help or guide their students to write or to improve their compositions in this foreign language. as i have said, writing is the most neglected of the language skills and i have wanted to return to its practice. consequently, i have planned the use of different strategies and activities that white and arndt pose in their work about the writing process. in spite of the short time i had to implement this study, i managed to try two of white and arndt’s proposed stages: generating ideas and focusing. with these two strategies and other activities carried out, i could realize that it is not really very difficult to guide the learners towards a good output. for the generation of ideas, i applied several activities where i could notice that the best results were those in which pictures were involved to help the students generate ideas. students began to get bored or discouraged when the activities proved too long or when they had to write a lot. so the activities for these types of groups should be short, visually aided and clear. for the focusing stage, it was important to get students to realize that nobody writes without a specific purpose or for a specific audience. with the use of community letters from a newspaper they understood that the writer’s attitude and the different tones of language he/she uses is very related to his/her purpose. the teacher’s role is also an important one. we must be guides and facilitators instead of judges or linguistic elements correctors. this type of correction should be left for subsequent studies. in summary, everything is a matter of creativity and the assignment of motivating activities in a step-by-step pace. the students’ reactions in general were quite positive. they liked the activities and did their best even when giving ideas in spanish. motivation was clear in some activities in particular. i obser ved an increase of interest in writing, and the idea of the work being for research helped a lot. limitlimitlimitlimitlimitaaaaationstionstionstionstions i had some difficulties especially with material because of little support from the principal. another difficulty was the students’ low level of achievement. i ended up with a very short time to apply all the activities i would have liked to. data analysis is not an easy matter to work with, so i had some problems understanding how to analyze the data. ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○43 profileprofileprofileprofileprofile the process-writing approach p o s s i b l e f u t u r e a c t i o n s o rp o s s i b l e f u t u r e a c t i o n s o rp o s s i b l e f u t u r e a c t i o n s o rp o s s i b l e f u t u r e a c t i o n s o rp o s s i b l e f u t u r e a c t i o n s o r researchresearchresearchresearchresearch it would be nice to be able to try all of white and arndt’s proposed strategies in a school year. i mean, not only for generation of ideas or focusing but reviewing, structuring, drafting and evaluating. an interesting aspect would be digging into the results of this proposal with high achievers and with students of other social levels. another important aspect to study in the future would be the way of correcting and/or evaluating students’ written compositions. about the authorabout the authorabout the authorabout the authorabout the author ana virginia ariza martínezana virginia ariza martínezana virginia ariza martínezana virginia ariza martínezana virginia ariza martínez holds a b. ed. in philology and languages, english-spanish, from the universidad nacional de colombia, 1987, and a b.a. in pedagogy of language from the universidad el bosque, 2001. currently she works at i.e.d. república del ecuador, in bogotá colombia. referencesreferencesreferencesreferencesreferences calvache, e. (2003). communicative approach, task-based approach and the development of competences in foreign languages. how. a colombian journal for teachers of english, 10, 716. holmes, n. (2004). the use of a processoriented approach to facilitate the planning and production stages of writing for adult students of english as a foreign or second language. retrieved august 02, 2004, from h t t p : / / w w w. d e v e l o p i n g t e a c h e r s . c o m / articles_tchtraining//processw2_nicola.htm moreno, s. et al. (1999). lenguaje significativo 6. bogotá: editorial libros y libros. ortega, l. and rodríguez, v. (2000). improvement of writing proficiency through creation of homogeneous groups in the classroom. profile. issues in teachers’ professional development, 1, 48-51. ortiz, r. (2003). question-based writing process: a reflection and a proposal to l2 writing. how. a colombian journal for teachers of english, 10, 35-43. santoyo, b. and morales, l. (2000). reading: a motivating and interactive process. profile. issues in teachers’ professional development, 1, 59-60. silva, t. (2003). esl writing: past, present, and future. how. a colombian journal for teachers of english, 10, 28-39. white, r. and arndt, v. (1991). process writing. longman: london and new york. ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ 44arizaarizaarizaarizaariza profileprofileprofileprofileprofile appendix 1: sample 1appendix 1: sample 1appendix 1: sample 1appendix 1: sample 1appendix 1: sample 1 activity: generation of ideas through a sequence of pictures. 1. order the pictures in a logical sequence. 2. explain what happens in each picture. 3. write a story based on the pictures. name: jhon erick cabra h. grade: 901 ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○45 profileprofileprofileprofileprofile the process-writing approach appendix 2: sample 2appendix 2: sample 2appendix 2: sample 2appendix 2: sample 2appendix 2: sample 2 name: name: jhon erick cabra h. date: 20-10 -04 use your imagination to complete the speech bubbles. ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ 46arizaarizaarizaarizaariza profileprofileprofileprofileprofile appendix 3: sample 3appendix 3: sample 3appendix 3: sample 3appendix 3: sample 3appendix 3: sample 3 discipline problems in the efl class: is there a cure? profile 8, 2007. issn 1657-0790. bogotá, colombia. pages 41-58 41 discipline problems in the efl class: is there a cure? problemas con la disciplina en el aula de inglés: ¿existe una cura? doris de almeida soares* brazilian naval academy, brazil this article discusses the findings of an action research project carried out to minimize the negative class participation of 10 efl pre-intermediate students, aged-11-14, in a language school in rio de janeiro, brazil. first, some theoretical issues concerning discipline in the language class will be discussed. second, the original project i developed in 1995 to minimize the negative class participation of 14 efl beginner students, aged 12-15, will be reviewed. next, the experiment with the 2003 group will be described. the results seem to confirm that, although some adaptations to the original project were necessary, when students reflect upon their importance in the lessons, they tend to behave better in class and to show a more positive attitude towards learning. key words: classroom management, discipline, awareness-raising activities este artículo discute los resultados de una investigación acción realizada para minimizar los problemas de disciplina en una clase de 10 alumnos de inglés, de nivel pre-intermedio, con edades entre 11-14 años, en un instituto de rio de janeiro, brasil. en primer lugar, se discuten algunos presupuestos teóricos; en segundo lugar, presento el proyecto original que desarrollé en 1995 para trabajar con la indisciplina en mi clase de 14 alumnos principiantes en inglés, con edad entre 12-15 años. a continuación, se describe el experimento realizado con el grupo de 2003. los resultados parecen confirmar que, aunque fueron necesarias algunas adaptaciones al proyecto inicial, cuando los alumnos reflexionan sobre su importancia para las clases, tienden a portarse mejor y demuestran una actitud más positiva hacia el aprendizaje. palabras clave: manejo del aula, disciplina, tareas de concientización * e-mail: enprofdoris@terra.com.br address: rua aylton vasconcellos, 201/207jardim guanabarailha do governador. rio de janeiro rj-brazil. cep: 21941-070. this article was received on march 31st, 2007 and accepted on july 17th, 2007. profile 8.indd 41 28/09/2007 12:42:14 a.m. soares universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras42 introduction the range of roles efl teachers play to ensure that learning takes place is undoubtedly wide. among these, we may see teachers as planners, deciding which aspects of the subject to teach and how to do it; as facilitators, providing learners with strategies to guide them in the quest for knowledge; and as managers, establishing the patterns of interaction among students and making sure they focus their attention on the lesson and engage in the proposed tasks. considering these roles, i think the latter seems to be the hardest one to perform since it involves managing people’s attitude and behavior, which means establishing and maintaining discipline in such way that it does not affect teacher–student rapport or create an unfriendly, threatening atmosphere in the classroom. this job seems to become even more demanding when instances of negative class participation1 such as disruptive talking, the use of l1 when l2 is expected, little concern about homework, tardiness and lack of attention and interest are commonplace in the classroom. in 2003, i took over a class of 10 preintermediate students aged 11-13 with a record of misbehavior and teacher confrontation in the language institute where i work in rio de janeiro, brazil. at this institution, the lessons are based on the communicative approach and taught in the target language right from the first class. however, the students in this group showed instances of negative class participation such as the refusal to use the target language and 1 the wide range of passive and active behaviors that are detrimental to classroom learning as contrasted with positive class participation such as using l2; taking notes and asking pertinent questions. (wadden & mcgovern, 1989, p. 2) lack of attention and interest in the lessons. moreover, they insisted that i teach the lessons in portuguese, their mother tongue, and not in english. upon analyzing this situation, i decided to revisit the principles and activities of another research i carried out in 1995, at the same language institute, in order to minimize the discipline problems i was facing when teaching a class of 14 efl beginner students, aged 12-15. their low motivation and the resulting teacher–student conflicts made me stop to think about my repertoire of techniques to establish discipline and to resort to literature in order to find new ways to deal with these problems. at that time, the statement that the occurrence of indiscipline can be minimized when students feel responsible for the lessons they are studying seemed to be the solution to my problems. in order to test this hypothesis, i carried out action research to investigate the causes of indiscipline in that group and devised / implemented awarenessraising activities which aimed at controlling the instances of negative class participation i had identified. the actions taken to improve discipline in my 1995 group proved to be so effective that i decided to replicate this study in order to test its validity with my 2003 group. the discussion of the underlying principles of the project, the actions taken and results obtained in both contexts are revealed in this article. review of literature the cambridge international dictionary of english (1995, p. 390) defines the word discipline as “the training which produces profile 8.indd 42 28/09/2007 12:42:14 a.m. discipline problems in the efl class: is there a cure? profile 8, 2007. issn 1657-0790. bogotá, colombia. pages 41-58 43 obedience or self-control, often in the form of rules and punishments if these are broken, or the obedience or self control produced by this training”. notwithstanding, it is common knowledge among efl teachers that obtaining “obedience and self-control” from students requires much more than “training” due to the diversity of settings in which efl teachers work. according to wadden & mcgovern (1991), factors such as the large numbers of students who are not in the classroom by choice; the number of students per class; the lack of importance students give to english in the school curriculum when compared to other school subjects such as math or science, and the fact that, in the same group, efl teachers work with students from different cultural and academic backgrounds, can affect discipline in class. the authors go on to say that applied linguists and teacher trainers tend to overlook this issue of classroom management in the genuine language classroom by putting forward theories and pedagogy which revolve around the concept of ideal learners, leaving teachers with little but their intuition to guide them as regards discipline. brown (1994, p. 417) adds to the complexity of this issue by stating that, “if all of your students were hard–working, intrinsically motivated, active, dedicated intelligent learners well, you would still have what we could label as discipline problems!” upon analyzing these facts, one may assume that the possible reasons why it is difficult to maintain discipline in the language classroom is that, although the phrase “classroom discipline” has for most teachers an immediate and clear meaning (ur, 1996), teachers and students do not always share the same views on what is or is not acceptable behavior. for instance, a more introverted and quiet student may associate the noise produced by group work with a lack of classroom management skills on the teacher’s part. consequently, he/she may think no learning can take place in such an environment while the teacher may view the same context as evidence that the students are motivated and engaged in the task, thus, learning is taking place. this situation may trigger restless behavior on the student’s part as he/she may be reluctant to engage in the activities and, at the same time, depending on the teacher’s and student’s personality, lead to confrontation because the teacher may interpret the student’s lack of willingness to participate as an undisciplined act. this touches upon an issue which is crucial if teachers and students are to live peacefully in the classroom –the need for the establishment of shared beliefs about teaching and learning a foreign language at a language school. about this issue, nunan & lamb (1996, p. 112) say that “many of the classroom management problems experienced by teachers working in unfamiliar cultural contexts arise from a mismatch between the roles and expectations of the teacher and those of the learners. in some cases, the mismatches and resulting management problems are a result of a clash of educational values and perceptions (for example, when teachers see themselves as facilitators, while students see them as dispensers of wisdom).” the authors’ observation about the clash of educational values and perceptions is also valid in a monolingual context if we take into account the two different learning environments to which brazilian efl students are exposed. on the one hand, we have profile 8.indd 43 28/09/2007 12:42:14 a.m. soares universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras44 english as a school subject, being taught the same way math, science, geography and other school subjects are: the teacher talks, the students listen and copy. on the other hand, we have english taught communicatively at specialized language schools. since students’ first contact with education is in primary school, early in life they master the traditional set of beliefs about what a class is like and how they are supposed to behave during this event. consequently, when these same students step into a foreign language classroom in a language institute, they expect to find a routine which reflects the set of educational beliefs they are familiar with. notwithstanding, depending on the method / approach adopted by the institution where they want to study, they are faced with procedures which are completely new to them. this “shock” may cause a mismatch between the teachers’ expectations, as they are aware of the rationale behind their practice, and the students’, who are unaware of the underlying principles regarding the method / approach in question. this happens because these teaching practices were, firstly, aimed at teaching a second language to americans and europeans, whose educational values do not always correspond to the values and beliefs shared by brazilian teachers and students. therefore, it is the teacher’s role to make it clear to the students what he/she means by discipline. consequently, “we must decide before stepping into the classroom what we expect our students to be doing, and we need to formulate a set of strategies for dealing with situations in which our expectations are not met” (nunan & lamb, 1996, p. 123). since prevention is better than cure, and indiscipline very often emerges as a result of confusion over rules and expectations, nunan and lamb (1996), harmer (1996), wadden & mcgovern (1991) and ur (1996) propose the establishment of an explicit code of conduct to clarify both students’ and teacher’s responsibilities in the classroom. the code of conduct in order to minimize discipline problems and to avoid unfairness / inconsistency when reprimanding students’ misbehavior, a list of guidelines that enables students to know, from the very beginning, what is expected of them and how their performance affects their test score and evaluations is a very useful tool. this list is usually referred to as the code of conduct. therefore, when misbehavior occurs, the teacher refers the student to the code and carries out the disciplinary process dispassionately. although the establishment of this code is a must to avoid mismatches between teacher’s and students’ expectations, it is possible that if imposed on the students, it will have little effect since teenagers, in general, do not enjoy the idea of being told what they must or must not do. instead, if the teacher proposes an activity aimed at raising the students’ awareness to the fact that their good behavior is crucial to learning and that negative class participation affects the learner’s work as well as the teacher’s, the code is likely to be followed. therefore, it can be assumed that when teachers and students work collaboratively to create their own code of conduct, the students tend to feel responsible for it and to conclude that their work is as important as their teacher’s for their success. having this belief in mind, i developed a set of procedures to establish a code of profile 8.indd 44 28/09/2007 12:42:14 a.m. discipline problems in the efl class: is there a cure? profile 8, 2007. issn 1657-0790. bogotá, colombia. pages 41-58 45 conduct to solve the problems i was facing with my teenage group in 1995. this is described in the next section of this article. methodology of the research the situation which led me to introduce the use of codes of conduct in my teaching practice was rather peculiar. in 1995, i was assigned to take over a group of students who had spent the first month of classes studying in another class with another teacher. as their original group had grown too large, the group was split and i was nominated to take over this second half. among the learners in my group were five special students: three teenagers, labeled “problem students” at their regular school due to their poor behavior in class and their lack of respect for the school rules, and two students who were extremely shy. due to the splitting of the original group, i had to deal with affective problems such as the students’ reluctance to study away from their peers as they had already gotten used to being in the larger group, and the fact that they were the ones that had to go and study with “the new teacher”. this situation generated frequent misbehavior such as the lack of interest in the lessons, refusal to try to use english in class, failure to do class / homework, and disruptive talking. a chaotic atmosphere had emerged and all my efforts to control the situation such as calling students’ attention, reseating them, scolding them, even shouting at them and giving “surprise tests” to make them do homework only created stress and confrontation between my students and me. at that point, i decided to review the literature on this issue and started to question myself about the possible reasons which led these learners to insist on negative class participation and why the measures taken to fight the problem had been in vain. this brainstorming resulted in a set of hypotheses which guided the action research project i carried out to reverse this situation. my original idea was that if i managed to make it clear to the learners, in a practical way, why their attitude towards the lesson was harmful to their learning process, they would understand that a disciplined atmosphere could only help them learn the language. besides, if i managed to make them feel committed and take responsibility for the good flow of the lessons, the misbehavior would be likely to diminish. after all these considerations, i decided to devise the following project, which is reviewed in the next section. the 1995 project originally, this was a three-phase project in which, by means of reflecting upon my students’ views on the classes and observing their behavior, i wished to understand the causes of their misbehavior and to plan and test a course of action to minimize it during the semester. the first phase aimed at identifying the possible causes for my students’ negative class participation. in order to do so, i devised a questionnaire containing seven open questions in l1 about the level of difficulty of the lessons, the use of portuguese in class, discipline control, homework assignments, interest in the lessons and disruptive talking (see appendix 1). next, i asked the students to answer the questions in l1, individually and anonymously, in the last 10 minutes of the day’s lesson. at home, i listed all the comments profile 8.indd 45 28/09/2007 12:42:14 a.m. soares universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras46 made on each question and tried to identify the subjects the students touched upon. my aim with this analysis was twofold: i wished to check if my assumptions about the causes of indiscipline matched the students’ ideas and i also sought for a better understanding of my students’ behavior in class. this procedure also enabled me to spot relevant issues for discussion with the whole group. in the subsequent lesson, i implemented the second phase of this project by proposing an awareness-raising activity devised by me so as to show the students the importance of their role in the lessons and to foster the learners’ commitment to the fulfillment of their duties. for this activity, which was carried out in l1, i divided the class into two groups and asked group a to list all the things a good teacher has to do in order to teach a good lesson, while i asked group b to list all the things a good student has to do in order to profit from a lesson. next, i divided the white board into two and listed under “teacher’s duties” all the ideas elicited from group a and, on the other side, under “student’s duties”, the ideas elicited from group b. at this point, i asked the students to work in pairs and to try and correlate each item from a’s column to b’s column (see appendix 2). while i elicited the answers, i pointed out the importance of the fulfillment of each duty if the lesson is to be successful and that both students and teacher must cooperate in order to have a profitable semester together. we also had the opportunity to go over the issues raised in the questionnaire and to discuss our views on the lesson and on the things that were hindering the learning process. the next activity was the proposal of a code of conduct in which the groups listed all the rules we (teacher and students) should observe in order to do our share to improve the atmosphere in class and to let learning take place. after groups a and b had finished, we compiled our code of conduct and i prepared a poster to fix on the classroom notice board to remind us of what we had agreed to do in class (see appendix 3). at the end of the activity, we all signed a contract promising to do our best in class. after that, i proposed that we monitor our changes in attitude throughout the lesson that term. in order to do that, five minutes before the end of every class, i asked each student to think about the grade they think they deserved for behavior in that lesson while i graded each of them, too. next, i invited each student to tell the group his/her grade and why he/she decided on that and i revealed my grade. we discussed the grades and came to a consensus about the average to be recorded on a wall progress chart. this monitoring went on until we had achieved a pacific relationship. that is, the instances of negative class participation which i had spotted in the beginning of the semester and which hindered the learning process had gradually disappeared. in this refreshed environment, the students showed respect for one another by understanding that there was a time for them to talk and a time for them to listen to their classmates’ contributions. therefore, they paid more attention to the classes and tried to interact in english as much as possible. in doing so, they demonstrated that they were willing to cooperate for the success of the group. based on this change in behavior, i concluded that the activities devised had been successful and the project aims had been achieved. from then on, i developed the habit profile 8.indd 46 28/09/2007 12:42:14 a.m. discipline problems in the efl class: is there a cure? profile 8, 2007. issn 1657-0790. bogotá, colombia. pages 41-58 47 of establishing the code of conduct with any new group i taught so that everybody would know “the rules of the game” right from the beginning and take personal responsibility for the lessons they were attending. 2003: a new challenge in august 2003, i took over a group of 10 pre-intermediate students, aged 11-13, who had been studying at this same language school for 3 years. in an informal conversation in the staff room, i learned that the group had given a lot of trouble to their former teacher, a newcomer but experienced professional. according to her report, the students were not motivated to study and seemed to pay little attention to the lessons despite all her efforts to make them engage in the activities and use english during the lesson. this situation strained their relationship as she had to call their attention all the time. in her opinion, the students were weak and difficult to control. in our first class of the term i noticed that the students did not make use of english at all and that they were more interested in talking to their friends, as eight of them belonged to the same class at secondary school, than in listening to me. the only two students who seemed to be following the lesson and were making use of the target language were the ones that did not study together at school. therefore, i believed that the establishment of our code of conduct would, in the short run, make them change their behavior in class. notwithstanding, after monitoring my students’ behavior in class for one month using the grade system i had adopted in 1995 and the code of conduct we had set on the first day of class, my efforts to raise the students` awareness about the importance of using l2 in class not only to complete the tasks, but also for communication, did not seem to be as effective as they had been with the 1995 group. this ineffectiveness was clear to me since i usually had to spend a considerable amount of time reminding the students about the code of conduct, mainly as regards the fact that they should not make use of l1 and that they were talking too much during the lesson. besides, whenever we carried out the grading session at the end of the lesson, some students would complain that i was being too strict and that they had had a good performance in class. in fact, i was unable to convince them that my point of view was right and the discrepancy between some of the grades was too high to be ignored, as shown in appendix 4. consequently, these results called for another approach in order to try and minimize the problem of disruptive talking and the students` insistence on the use of l1. at this point, i asked the students to answer individually, in written form, the same questionnaire i had prepared in 1995 (see appendix 1) and started to observe their reactions during the lessons so that i could understand the reasons they behaved that way. the data i collected are described and discussed in the next sections of this article. statement of results upon the analysis of the answers to the questionnaire, which followed the same procedure adopted in 1995, i learned that six of them regarded the lessons interesting while one said they were not very interesting and three found them boring. profile 8.indd 47 28/09/2007 12:42:14 a.m. soares universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras48 although the majority of the students liked the classes, seven stated that there were times when they clicked off. the reasons were boredom (one student); having to copy from the board (one student); daydreaming (two students); lack of interest in viewing activities (one student); lack of vocabulary to follow the lesson (one student) and a dislike of english (one student). among the reasons given by the three student who kept their attention throughout the class were the fact that, quoting the students’, “the games were relaxing” (one student) and that “the classes were really interesting” (two students). as regards the most serious problem i faced with this group, the questionnaire answers showed that all students admitted engaging in disruptive talking. through observation, i noticed that this talking was done mostly in l1 (portuguese) and signaled that students were not on task / paying attention to the teacher / classmates’ oral contributions. contrary to my beliefs, five students did not see this type of talking as harmful to the flow of the lesson as long as a) they spoke in a low voice (three students); b) they were doing nothing in class (one student); or c) when they were able to control themselves (one student). however, even the four students who believed it to be harmful engaged in this activity. instances of this unwanted talking took place, according to the answers to the questionnaire, a) during their “leisure moments”, as stated by one student; b) as soon as they had finished their exercises (four students); c) whenever possible (one student); when they had to copy something from the board (one student); or when i was not looking (one student). the reasons they talked in l1 may be connected to the fact that six of them believed that the lesson should be taught in portuguese, whereas three disagreed with the use of l1, and one student thought l1 should be used to explain more complex language items. as far as the level of difficulty of the lessons was concerned, four students thought the lessons were easy; three thought they were difficult because they were taught in english; two found them of average difficulty; and one believed that misbehavior hindered their understanding. concerning the measures taken to control discipline problems, that is, the implementation of the code of conduct, five of the respondents believed the code to be efficient and necessary; three stated that it was not always effective and that the teacher should a) phone the parents of the students who disturb the class (one student); b) allow the use of portuguese (l1) to prevent the students from getting tired of the lesson (one student); c) change the students’ desks for a table and a chair, which, according to the respondent’s view, would give “a more serious atmosphere to the class” (one student). one student did not know what to say and another thought that contracts and codes were childish measures. about the fulfillment of homework assignments, nine of the respondents always tried to do them and one sometimes did the assignments. seven of them found it easy to complete the tasks alone; two did them without any help most of the times, and one student usually asked a parent for help. although the striking majority did the assignments, two students said they did not regard homework as an important activity to help them learn. profile 8.indd 48 28/09/2007 12:42:15 a.m. discipline problems in the efl class: is there a cure? profile 8, 2007. issn 1657-0790. bogotá, colombia. pages 41-58 49 analysis and discussion of data based on the answers provided by the 2003 questionnaire, i confirmed my observation that i would not have to worry about completion of homework as i had done in 1995. this group seemed to accept homework as part of their duties and i could be certain that despite our discipline problems, which made the lesson not as effective as i had planned, at least while doing their homework, the students would practice the language items a bit further and bring their doubts to be solved in class. another piece of evidence that called my attention was their views on the role of l1, as illustrated in the following excerpts taken from the answers given to question a (do you think the lessons are easy / difficult to follow? why?), and to question b (do you think the teacher should use portuguese to explain new grammar/ vocabulary? why? why not?) st 1: …she should explain in english and tell us the new words in portuguese because this makes the lesson easier. (question c) st 2: the classes would be better if they were explained in portuguese (question a) it would be easier to understand the lessons. (question c) st 3: for those who have difficulty in english, the lessons are difficult (question c) st 4: i think the lessons are cool but they are a bit difficult because everything is explained in english. if the lessons were in portuguese, they would be easier. (question a) yes. because as i said, not always can we understand all that is taught in english. (question c) st 5: yes, because we can understand better. (question c) st 6: i think the classes would be better and we would learn more if the teacher taught the new subjects in portuguese. question a) yes. to understand the subject better and to consolidate learning to train later in english. (question c) as we can see from the quotes, the students believed l1 should be permitted and used even by the teacher, an idea which i personally did not agree with because this group had been studying english for about three years and, therefore, should be able to communicate in simple english without resorting to l1 at the first sign of difficulty. in theory, the students were conscious that they should be making use of the target language. however, they did not agree with this as they stated in their comments. therefore, this mismatch could be a possible reason the students had not been following the code of conduct as i had expected. through their answers, i also identified another mismatch between my views and theirs, this time regarding what we understood as “disruptive talking”. to me, any kind of talk that was not pertinent to the lesson, was done at moments in which someone else was talking, or distracted students’ attention in class, could be considered unwanted, thus disruptive. nonetheless, from what the students said, i could realize that the great majority of the group did not seem to feel they were being inconvenient when chatting to a friend. this evidence raised another issue that was crucial to the understanding of the differences between these students and the 1995 group. although one of the aims of the code was to minimize the mismatches profile 8.indd 49 28/09/2007 12:42:15 a.m. soares universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras50 between the practices adopted to teach english at school and the ones adopted to teach english at the language institute, this was a real challenge as eight of the students came to my class straight from school, only to meet the same people again. consequently, it was difficult for the group to accept that my classes were not an extension of theirs at secondary school, as there the lessons were carried out in portuguese and the students were required to make use of l2 only during the completion of the tasks. no matter what i did, students would resort to portuguese or initiate chats while doing listening, viewing or reading activities, just as they told me they did at school. it was at that point of the project that i had an insight about why the set of procedures which had worked very well with my 1995 group seemed to fail with them. if in 1995 i had students who were not familiar with the institute’s routine of the english lesson, did not know any english and did not want to be kept apart from their original group, i now had students who had been studying together at the language institute for three years and whose partners were best friends from school. moreover, they were used to the routine, although they deliberately had chosen not to follow it. the fact of the matter was that quite often i listened to comments such as “how can i talk about this it if i can’t speak english?” as an answer to my request to use the target language to communicate with their peers. furthermore, some of the students seemed to be frustrated and gave up paying attention when i refused to explain something in portuguese, or asked them to try to understand my explanation in english. on many occasions, they would say “forget about it, teacher.” when they asked questions in portuguese about the subject and i asked them to try and express that doubt in english. as this kind of behavior was common practice not only in my class but also in their former teacher’s, they had apparently got used to seeing themselves as “unable” to speak english well. consequently, this insistence on using portuguese in class caused their former teacher to label them as “difficult to control”. these observations, which were recorded in my project diary, seemed to contribute to my feeling that those students had a low opinion of themselves as learners of english and that this was a problem which needed attention. this reflection was corroborated by the following incident: after receiving the results of their first written test, one of the students said, “teacher, i have improved a lot because in the previous semester i got a 4 (out of 10 mark) and now i have a 7”. this comment took me back to what wingate (2003) says about negative messages. wingate (ibid.) establishes that “teachers should value the learner as an individual, show empathy by understanding the learners’ situation and be transparent, being “self ” not teacher, having no mask or pretence” (p. 27). he also suggests the use of messages that communicate “i value you” to the learners even while also communicating “… but i don’t value this bad homework or this behavior.” analyzing my behavior as a teacher, i wondered if i could be signaling “you are no good” when i refused to listen to their comments about their private / school life in portuguese, and also did not let this socializing happen among best friends who were working together. from this point on, i reconsidered my ideas about what to do in order to foster the use of l2 and to get their attention. profile 8.indd 50 28/09/2007 12:42:15 a.m. discipline problems in the efl class: is there a cure? profile 8, 2007. issn 1657-0790. bogotá, colombia. pages 41-58 51 therefore, i gave up the monitoring system and tried a bit of the “if you cannot beat them, join them” policy. that is, i started to allow occasional uses of l1 when they wanted to make a comment about themselves, about school or to make jokes. in doing so, the lessons became more relaxing since i tried to control myself and diminish my demands for the exclusive use of l2. this caused the incidents of disruptive talking to drop a bit because the students would listen to their peers` open class comments in portuguese, which i helped them to translate into english. this helped them realize that their english was not as bad as they had thought and that, with a little help from me and their partners, they were beginning to interact in english more often. besides, i also tried to identify with them by joining their conversations and replying to them in a mix of portuguese and english, thus trying to gain their attention by seeing them as people, and not just as “good” or “bad” learners. in doing so, eventually i was able to become part of the group and i even heard comments such as “you are a cool teacher”, which confirmed that i had managed to prove to them, through the establishment of rapport, that i was there not to punish them, but to share and help them grow. nevertheless, as i did not want to give up our code since i firmly believed in its principles, we came to a consensus that something more stimulating was needed. after this first move towards the students’ awareness that if they tried harder, they could communicate in english and enjoy the lessons, they were finally willing to accept a new challenge: to control themselves in order to drop the use of portuguese for good. the need for a follow-up to the code of conduct in order to help the learners make an effort to use the code and, hopefully, improve their behavior, i proposed a gamelike activity in which each student would be awarded 50 points at the beginning of the month and that, whenever they broke any rule of the code, they would lose a certain amount of points. the winner would be the student with most points left at the end of each month, and the prize would be one extra mark for the end-of-term oral test. all the students agreed to it and the following penalty system for breaking the rules was devised by the students: a) use of portuguese = -1; b) disruptive talking in portuguese = -2; c) disruptive talking in english = -1; d) chewing bubble gum = -2. in the subsequent lessons, i monitored the game by writing down in the teacher’s record next to the student’s name, the amount of points taken from each student whenever he/she broke a rule of the code of conduct. at the end of the class, i would inform the group how many points each of them had left and i proposed a system in which, if in the following class the student did not break any of the rules, i could give him / her back the points he / she had lost the previous class. this measure aimed at keeping their interest in the activity and also stimulated their willingness to try harder in future classes. positive outcomes the positive impact of the introduction of the competition was visible right from the beginning as illustrated in this extract from my research diary: profile 8.indd 51 28/09/2007 12:42:15 a.m. soares universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras52 day 16 sts seem to have bought the idea of the competition and looked enthusiastic. the moment we started it, marina, felipe, silvia and sandro2 stood up and spit their chewing gums3 into the dustbin! no more stress about it, i hope. they really made an effort not to use portuguese and not to engage in parallel talking. the few occasions i got hold of the class register to write the penalty, they asked me to forgive their peer because this first class was just a test-drive of the activity. i hope this works out! during the following classes, the results were really amazing as i could notice they were doing their best to fight for the right to have an extra mark in the oral test. this game went on for 15 classes and, generally speaking, the occurrences of code breaking dropped as they tried hard to control themselves and to stick to the agreed rules, as shown in the chart in appendix 5. at the end of the “competition”, i awarded everybody the mark because of their commitment and effort to change their behavior during the term. moreover, in the class before our end-of-term exams, i asked the students to assess the project by writing a short note to me. the answers given revealed that they were satisfied with the improvements made in those last 15 classes of the semester, and not only in terms of discipline as shown in these extracts: st 1: that mess which disturbed me during the lesson doesn’t happen now and the teacher is not stressed with us. so i think the project was good 2 fictitious names. 3 this is not allowed in the classroom by the institution. before the establishment of this activity, i always had to remind them to get rid of their chewing gum before entering the classroom. st 7: i admit i sometimes speak with my partner after i finish the exercise, but now i try to control myself more now. st 8: those students that disturbed the class are calmer now and i can concentrate on your explanation, teacher… but also in terms of their ability to speak the language. st 10: i don’t like english but i think the oral test will be easier this time because i tried to speak only english in class. st 9: i am happy because i can say a lot of things in english now. i’m not so bad as i thought i was in english! in the end, as the chart in appendix 5 shows, disruptive talking and the use of l1 were practically null as the students really made an effort to pay attention to the lesson and to use l2 at all times. therefore, although the establishment of certain agreed rules is a must, if we are to have an environment in which learning can take place, giving love, support and affection to our students, and making students feel able to overcome their obstacles is crucial. above all, i have learned through experience that these pre-adolescents may have looked tough from the outside, but deep inside they were little creatures who needed all our care in order to grow as human beings and to develop to their full potential. conclusion the action-research project described in this paper aimed at minimizing discipline problems in my group of 10 pre-intermediate efl students by replicating, in 2003, the set of measures i adopted with my group of beginner efl students in 1995, at the same language institution where i teach in rio de janeiro, brazil. profile 8.indd 52 28/09/2007 12:42:15 a.m. discipline problems in the efl class: is there a cure? profile 8, 2007. issn 1657-0790. bogotá, colombia. pages 41-58 53 recurrent episodes of disruptive talking, especially when i was eliciting students’ contributions, incomplete homework and unwillingness to speak only english in class deeply worried me as many learning opportunities were being wasted and i was unable to teach the lessons as i had planned. these incidents led me to investigate the causes of negative class participation and what could be done to minimize the problems i was facing. in addition, the literature i reviewed encouraged me to experiment with the use of a code of conduct and to develop awareness-raising activities in 1995, which were reconsidered in 2003 as alternative means to hinder misbehavior in my classroom. upon analyzing the results of this project, i can assume that, despite the adaptations to the original project to best cater for my 2003 students’ needs, above all we should value students as individuals and show them they are capable of going beyond their perceived limitations. we should also help them to understand that they are responsible for building up the learning atmosphere by contributing their share to the learning process. in doing so, misbehavior and negative class participation episodes are likely to be less frequent than when the students are unaware of their importance to the smooth flow of the lesson. in conclusion, it can be said that the issues discussed in this article are highly relevant to any teacher because discipline is definitely a key factor to make the lesson a profitable event for the students and a rewarding experience for the teacher. references brown, d. h. (1994). teaching by principles: an interactive approach to language pedagogy. nj: prentice hall. cambridge international dictionary of english (1995). cambridge: cambridge university press. harmer, j. (1996). the practice of english language teaching. usa: longman. nunan, d., & lamb, c. (1996). the self-directed teacher: managing the learning process. cambridge: cambridge university press. ur, p. (1996). a course in language teaching: practice and theory. cambridge: cambridge university press. wadden, p., & mcgovern, s. (1989). streamlining efl class administration and organization: a user’s guide for university instructors in japan. the language teacher, �3(10), 11-13. wadden, p., & mcgovern, s. (1991). the quandary of negative class participation: coming to terms with misbehavior in the language classroom. elt journal, 45(2), 121-127. wingate, j. (2003). the power of good teaching. english teaching professional, �7(27). about the author doris de almeida soares is a professor of english at the brazilian naval academy and a teacher of english in a language school in rio de janeiro, brazil. profile 8.indd 53 28/09/2007 12:42:15 a.m. soares universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras54 appendix 1: an english version of the questionnaire answered by the students hello, dear student! what’s your opinion about our lessons? could you answer the questions below, please? do you think the lessons are easy / difficult to follow? why? do you think the lessons are interesting? is there any part of the lesson in which you tend to switch off? why do you think it happens? do you think you do much parallel talking in class? in what moments do you do it? do you think it disturbs the lesson? why? why not? do you think the teacher should use portuguese to explain new grammar/ vocabulary? why? why not? do you think the measures the teacher takes to control discipline in class are appropriate? why? why not? do you do your homework? how often? why? do you think it is important? do you find it easy to do the homework on your own? does anybody help you? 1) 2) 3) 4) 5) 6) 7) profile 8.indd 54 28/09/2007 12:42:15 a.m. discipline problems in the efl class: is there a cure? profile 8, 2007. issn 1657-0790. bogotá, colombia. pages 41-58 55 appendix 2: teacher’s and students’ duties teacher’s duties ( list a ) students’ duties ( list b ) • correct homework do homework • teach in english speak only english • pay attention to what the students say pay attention to what the teacher says • teach the lessons and involve the students participate in class and learn the lessons • answer students’ questions ask questions • prepare the lessons study the lessons • give tests take tests profile 8.indd 55 28/09/2007 12:42:15 a.m. soares universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras56 appendix 3: an english version of our code of conduct (1995) the code of conduct to take advantage of our classes we promise to: 1. use english in class to do the activities and to talk to the teacher and classmates. 2. do our homework and respect the deadlines. 3. pay attention to the lesson and tell the teacher when we do not understand something. 4. respect the teacher and our classmates. 5. listen to our classmates when they are talking. 6. try to do our best in class. student 6th august 11th august 13th august 18th august t’s st’s t’s st’s t’s st’s t’s st’s andreas 6.0 9.5 10 10 9.0 9.0 9.5 9.5 antony a a 5.5 9.0 7.0 8.0 7.0 9.5 breno 3.0 8.0 4.5 9.0 6.0 8.0 7.5 9.5 felipe 3.0 7.7 5.0 7.0 5.5 8.0 5.0 8.5 jandira 9.0 9.0 10 10 9.0 9.0 9.5 9.5 jasmine 9.0 9.0 10 10 9.0 9.0 10 10 loredane 6.0 8.0 a a a a 7.5 8.5 marina 6.0 8.5 6.0 8.0 7.0 9.0 6.0 8.5 sandro 3.0 8.0 5.0 6.0 9.0 9.0 7.0 8.0 silvia 6.0 7.0 6.5 7.0 6.0 6.0 6.0 7.0 profile 8.indd 56 28/09/2007 12:42:16 a.m. discipline problems in the efl class: is there a cure? profile 8, 2007. issn 1657-0790. bogotá, colombia. pages 41-58 57 appendix 4: 2003 progress chart sample t’s = teacher’s grade st’s = student’s grade a= absent student 6th august 11th august 13th august 18th august t’s st’s t’s st’s t’s st’s t’s st’s andreas 6.0 9.5 10 10 9.0 9.0 9.5 9.5 antony a a 5.5 9.0 7.0 8.0 7.0 9.5 breno 3.0 8.0 4.5 9.0 6.0 8.0 7.5 9.5 felipe 3.0 7.7 5.0 7.0 5.5 8.0 5.0 8.5 jandira 9.0 9.0 10 10 9.0 9.0 9.5 9.5 jasmine 9.0 9.0 10 10 9.0 9.0 10 10 loredane 6.0 8.0 a a a a 7.5 8.5 marina 6.0 8.5 6.0 8.0 7.0 9.0 6.0 8.5 sandro 3.0 8.0 5.0 6.0 9.0 9.0 7.0 8.0 silvia 6.0 7.0 6.5 7.0 6.0 6.0 6.0 7.0 profile 8.indd 57 28/09/2007 12:42:16 a.m. soares universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras58 appendix 5: sample of points lost by the students on three first two weeks t’s = teacher’s grade st’s = student’s grade a= absent student 6th oct. -/+ t 8th oct. -/+ t 13th oct. -/+ t 15th oct. -/+ t andreas 0 50 0 50 0 50 0 50 antony a 50 a 50 5 45 4 41 breno -7 43 5 38 a 38 3 35 felipe -3 47 1 46 1 45 1 44 jandira 0 50 0 50 1 49 0 49 jasmine -1 49 0 49 -1 /+1 49 0 49 loredane -3 47 0 47 0 /+ 3 50 2 48 marina -3 47 -1 46 -1 45 0 45 sandro -6 44 -4 40 -1 39 -3 36 silvia -2 48 0 48 0 /+2 50 0 50 profile 8.indd 58 28/09/2007 12:42:16 a.m. profile 2.p65 ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ 44profileprofileprofileprofileprofile many times language learners arevastly deficient in listening masterywhile stronger in interpreting the written word or in speaking. this negative situation is oftentimes the result of insufficient opportunities available, for whatever reason, to language learners. repetitive listening on “familiar ground” might be one way to help improve this drawback. this article attempts to deal with that familiar ground by giving examples and pointers vis-à-vis how to incorporate local characters, local historical figures, and local history and geography into listening exercises. using this approach, students can more easily recognize in the second language facts and other data they already know in the first language. introductionintroductionintroductionintroductionintroduction the saying is, “necessity is the mother of invention.” several years ago i thought about the need for more listening activities to be implemented on a regular basis to complement some of those already available. then i thought about what students have access to or are engaged in nowadays. movies, songs on the radio and on cassettes, readings done aloud, interviews, lectures, and conversation are some of the many options the language learner has at her/his fingertips today. so, in a sense, language teachers, materials developers and students have “come a long way.” plotting the questions and answersplotting the questions and answersplotting the questions and answersplotting the questions and answersplotting the questions and answers i had to take into account the varied age groups i normally teach in the course of a day or week. for primary and elementary grades, roughly from transition to grade five, i decided on questions and answers a la “brainquest,” but limiting these to items culled from children’s literature, the world of cartoons and movie books. so, to get things rolling, i invited my kids in third and fourth grades to “help me out.” we got busy creating questions and answers over our favorite characters and stories. in just a few “sessions,” we had created anywhere from fifty to one hundred “usable” questions and answers. all the characters as well as sources were quite varied. i was pleased with the results and revised some of them by making necessary and/or judgemental changes then putting them on sheets of paper. every four or five days i would take out the sheets and call on individual students to answer. most of the time i found the kids interested in this kind of “break from routine.” many enjoyed themselves considerably. below are four sample questions and answers from children’s lit. from casper what kind of ghost in casper? answer: a friendly ghost from the lion king who is simba’s best friend? answer: nala drawing on the familiar to create new listening exercises rrrrr andall barfieldandall barfieldandall barfieldandall barfieldandall barfield ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○45 profileprofileprofileprofileprofile from bugs bunny how does bugs greet elmer fudd? a: “what’s up, doc?” from alice in wonderland what happens at the end of alice’s adventures? a: she is awakened by her sister. reflection and assessmentreflection and assessmentreflection and assessmentreflection and assessmentreflection and assessment as one can see, the information can be varied by drawing on a wide range of sources. hours have to be spent, of course, in the children’s section of the library re-reading the old classics as well as reading for the first time all the “new” or updated stories, such as mulan or tarzan. does the reading sound like such a bad deal? besides listening practice that isn’t all routine, kids are learning new vocabulary, mainly by detection. for example, in the bugs bunny question above, many kids would not identify “greet” out of context; yet, in context, many kids can. moreover, the teacher can allow for approximations in oral expression. this allowance ties in with cárdenas’ (2000) mention of not deducting points for grammar errors provided the “correct response” was intended. also, the answer to the alice in wonderland question includes the word “awakened.” only a few children would come up with this word in their answer, so, if a child says alice’s sister woke her up in the first language, it could be an opportunity for a brief explanation or demonstration of the word awakened. then the listening practice continues. improvementimprovementimprovementimprovementimprovement after a year or two, i decided i was bored with my typed sheets of questions and answers, now dog-eared and containing about 350 to 400 items, so got the idea to put them on blank business cards in handwriting. the cards were then covered front and back with transparent contact paper. this covering is a way to preserve them for a longer period of time. additionally, the cards are more attractive than the old sheets and children can hold them and read from them while standing individually before the class. i found that they liked to do this and liked choosing who was going to answer their question. beyond borbeyond borbeyond borbeyond borbeyond bordersdersdersdersders of course, these cards are useful internationally since children all over the world like the same movies, songs, stories, etc. sometimes, as mentioned already, i allow an answer in the child’s first language to count since i know the child understood the question in the target language. for example, the latin american learner of english might not know the word crab, but she/he knows sebastian is a “crangrejo.” within two or three sessions more, the kids usually learn almost all the vocabulary in the target language. when we like and are familiar with the information around which many activities are centered, we perhaps remember more lucidly. i think so. off to the left and rightoff to the left and rightoff to the left and rightoff to the left and rightoff to the left and right an extension of this listening exercise is the creation of other sets of cards involving nouns. these are “animal” cards and cards containing frequently-used nouns. i found it was almost effortless to come up with sixty or seventy animals by looking in dictionaries, almanacs, and other sources. below are two examples each of animal cards and frequently-used noun cards. ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ 46profileprofileprofileprofileprofile in london you can ride dreonuurngd it to work. you hear it on stormy days. rhutend isn’t it loud? animal card examples: i wag my tail and love attention. i’m a horse but have no legs i also like to gnaw on bones. do you or feet. and i don’t gallop on agree that i am man’s best friend(or land. i can swim and have a woman’s)? tail, though. what gives? dog sea horse only the noun cards have a front and back. the answers are scrambled. sometimes this hint helps the student figure the answer out. in this case, underground and thunder. with the other cards, no visuals are present. there is only auditory input. other card possibilities/ suggestions include yet more of the familiar. these are cards containing historical figures(both national and international) and qa’s on the country and its history and geography. some national and international sample cards are the following: i left my english husband for this i was a famous children’s fabu exciting venezuelan-born leader. list from colombia. some of my this man today is considered the forefables are “michín,” “simon the most liberator of south america. silly,” “the travelling tadpole,” and “the pool old woman.” manuelita sáenz rafael pombo i was a clarinet player and formed a in scotland i’m a national hero. great dance band. you won’t believe the it’s the north part of the uk. maybe hard work it took. i composed “carmen you saw “braveheart,” the movie de bolívar.” one of my wives was about my life. i fought hard for our matilde díaz. liberation. “lucho” bermúdez william wallace ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○47 profileprofileprofileprofileprofile into which sea does the magdalena when laureano gomez won the river empty? presidential election, was he opposed or unopposed? the caribbean sea unopposed of course, the more difficult history and geography questions are for bigger students, even adult students. however, simplified history and geography questions can be created for children in the same manner. as can be seen, the possibilities and variety of cards are great. listening phaseslistening phaseslistening phaseslistening phaseslistening phases the three listening phases that cárdenas refers to(pre-listening, while-listening, and follow-up) can be used with any of the cards at any level. in the case of the children’s literature cards, the pre-listening phase could include talking about the kids’ favorite books, stories, disney movies and/or cartoons as well as asking why a specific one is the favorite, what they like most about it, etcetera. while-listening, in the case where a student cannot answer, could include the teacher’s asking for a volunteer in the group. furthermore, new and/or difficult words from the descriptions/questions could be listed on the board for visual reinforcement. listening sessions should be limited to fifteen or twenty minutes, perhaps, in order to avoid boredom and to keep kids looking forward to the next session. one follow-up approach could be to pronounce aloud list words on the board and/or assign some sort of notebook exercise concerning meanings, if desired. conclusionconclusionconclusionconclusionconclusion listening activities should be a regular and consistent part of language learning. indeed, if learners are going to become capable and move, by degrees, toward independence, listening activities must take on more importance. and the general aim, as cárdenas points out, is for genuineness to correspond, eventually, to authenticity. preferably, there should be times when the activities are carried out as activities completely separate from any text or book. is this approach not more in keeping with the way we learned the first language? finally, i feel that listening activities do not have to be largely boring to students. they can be fun, stimulating, and even instructive. referencesreferencesreferencesreferencesreferences cárdenas b., m. l. (2000) “helping students develop listening comprehension.” profile. bogotá: universidad nacional de colombia. profile 2.p65 ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ 28profileprofileprofileprofileprofile a project was conducted in order to improve oral interaction in english by applying cooperative learning to students of seventh grade. these students have lower levels of oral production and attend marco fidel suárez public school. so, i decided to choose topics related to real life and to plan a series of activities of sensitization to create stable work groups and to increase oral interaction. according to the analysis and results, i can say that cooperative work and the oral activities help the students increase oral production, express better and use a foreign language with more security. in spite of the results, i consider that cooperative learning needs more time so that it can be successful. students must have the will to cooperate. only when students have that good will and can work together is the potential of acquisition of knowledge maximized. introductionintroductionintroductionintroductionintroduction one of the greatest failures of schools has been their inability to guarantee foreign language acquisition. the majority of the students never become fluent in the language they have studied. students memorize vocabular y words, conjugations of verbs, and grammar structures, but they don’t speak and don’t use the language in real situations. therefore, we should break with the traditional pattern and teach a foreign language in a communicative way so that students can learn to express their ideas with more freedom, interact with their partners, and understand by themselves the responsibility of their learning. the objective of this study is to organize teambuilding through real, meaningful and pleasant activities that lead to more efficient academic work and help students develop oral communication skill. the theory for this study is that of spencer kagan on cooperative learning. this theory considers that, teambuilding,,,,, as the name suggests, is the process of building teams. building teams is not merely putting four students together to work. it means turning a group of four students with different backgrounds and experiences into a cooperative and caring team. (kagan: 1990 and laurie and kagan: 1997). moreover, classbuilding itself abandons sequential organization of the class and adopts a simultaneous structure that allows interaction among the students. they have opportunity to speak in pairs, within teams or small groups. procedureprocedureprocedureprocedureprocedure feeling the necessity to change the methodology for the teaching of english as a foreign language, i decided to carry out this project. the idea consisted of working in groups to increase oral interaction. the investigation was carried out between february and may of 2001, following the pedagogical framework described below. encouraging interaction by applying cooperative learning sonia helena gonzálezsonia helena gonzálezsonia helena gonzálezsonia helena gonzálezsonia helena gonzález ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○29 profileprofileprofileprofileprofile the first step consisted of practicing teambuilding activities with the purpose of improving the relationships on the team to obtain better results in class. one of the activities that they liked most was flashcard game. it consisted of filling in the answers for themselves (favorite color, ice cream, dessert, etc). then, students circulated around the class and found another person and asked him/her a question for a match. if he/she got a yes, each one signed the other person’s hunt sheets. if he/she got a no, that person asked another question looking for a match. they continued alternatingly asking questions until they found a match, then they formed new pairs. the result of this exercise was positive because it helped create a comfortable atmosphere of trust and security to begin speaking in the foreign language. students liked to move in the classroom and to speak with their partners. in the second step we practiced oral language activities. the activity that facilitated them was complete the drawing. it consisted of forming pairs. one pair got a simple picture of a landscape and the other pair got a similar picture, but it was not complete. the pair with the complete picture had to describe what it saw while the other pair drew a picture based on the first pair’s oral description. when the drawing was complete, the two pairs compared it to the actual picture, discussing similarities and differences. speaking from experience, my students and i can say that the exercise was good because it helped increase oral interaction and made the acquisition of the foreign language easier. researresearresearresearresearch apprch apprch apprch apprch approachoachoachoachoach the investigative method for this study was action research because it allows the continuous reflection of students and teachers regarding the teaching-learning processes. the techniques used for the gathering and analysis of data were the teacher’s diary, recordings and questionnaires. i registered data in each class on behavior, feelings, reactions, likes, difficulties, hypotheses, suggestions, explanations about cooperative learning, and oral interaction. also, i recorded the exercises of each activity to observe difficulties and advances in the oral production and handed out the questionnaires upon finishing all teambuilding and oral language activities to gauge the opinions of the students of the practices carried out. the exercises were analyzed one by one and then analyzed, creating the appropriate triangulation for general conclusion. resultsresultsresultsresultsresults the results of this study confirms that group work, consisting of the ludic and oral activities, created a pleasant atmosphere in the group, generating an appropriate space, so that the students felt more relaxed, participated and spoke freely using both the mother tongue and the foreign language. the students understood the activities, previous explanations and homework. they worked well, had positive attitudes, came to an agreement and enjoyed the exercises. nonetheless, some of them had difficulties in pronunciation because they normally do not have opportunities to practice listening and pronunciation skills. the classes were active and amusing. here is a comment of one student: “between game and game we learn more”. one of the difficulties that we had was the group size. some students ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ 30profileprofileprofileprofileprofile lose the central objective of the exercise easily. so i decided to divide the class into two groups and first practice with some and then with the others, assigning tasks to each group. teams facilitate learning because “with each other’s help and unity they can learn much more” as the students said. during this task they help their partners to advance personally and academically because advanced students help those students who don’t understand . i found that topics connected to real life facilitated and increased oral interaction. some students found it easy to speak while others tried to speak with the teacher’s help. general conclusiongeneral conclusiongeneral conclusiongeneral conclusiongeneral conclusion the results reported in this study suggest that cooperative learning helps students acquire knowledge more easily because teambuilding activities create a flexible environment and students feel more relaxed. they could ask questions, solve problems, make suggestions and speak freely. cooperative work improves the social and affective development of the students. they have opportunities to be known, to have a good time with their partners and help each other. students with higher levels of proficiency help the students with lower levels. cooperative work increases oral interaction; the student has the opportunity to speak in pairs, within teams, or small groups. through the activities used in this project, they can express freely and use the foreign language with more security. teambuilding and oral activities helped the student increase vocabulary, express her/himself better, understand the language, and speak a little more. pppppedagogical implicationsedagogical implicationsedagogical implicationsedagogical implicationsedagogical implications i suggest that teachers work with cooperative learning class because it adds variety to the teacher’s repertoire. it helps teachers manage large classes with diverse needs. it improves academic achievement and social development. it maximizes the acquisition of second language by making the classroom more humane place to facilitate learning ( holt et al: 1991). fffffurther researurther researurther researurther researurther researchchchchch besides the results presented in this study, there are some topics that could be the object of study of future investigations: the consequences generated by application of cooperative work in traditional teaching, how this work affects the behavior of the students, and, how to implement cooperative learning in our institutions. referencesreferencesreferencesreferencesreferences holt d., chips, b., and wallace, d. (1991). cooperative learning in the secondary school: maximizing language acquisition, academic achievement, and social development. ncbe home page http: //www.ncbe.gwu.edu. kagan, s.(1990). cooperative learning: resources for teachers. san juan capistrano, ca: resources for teachers. laurie, m & kagan, s. (1997). cooperative learning structures for teambuilding. san clemente, ca: resources for teachers. editorial 9profile: issues teach. prof. dev., vol. 24 no. 2, jul-dec, 2022. issn 1657-0790 (printed) 2256-5760 (online). bogotá, colombia. pages 9-14 https://doi.org/10.15446/profile.v24n2.103336 editorial1 in the latest report of the scimago journal rank (sjr), updated in april 2022, our journal maintained its position in the quartile 1 of the linguistics and language area. furthermore, it was categorized in a higher position in the area of education, and it is now in quartile 2. the classification is reported every year and is based on the evaluation of the journals included in the scopus database. figure 1 shows the position of profile in regard to colombia, latin america, and all the publications in the corresponding areas classified in the sjr worldwide. figure 1. classification of profile in the scimago journal rank, according to the results published in april, 2022 the advancement of profile in the sjr evidences that it has gained visibility among the most prestigious publications in the areas of language, linguistics, and education in international scenarios. it also means that the journal is a source of reference for the teaching of english, teacher education, applied linguistics, and language. as we know, the classification is the result of the analysis of the impact of the journals as evidenced in citations received. thus, the more a publication is cited by a scientific community, the higher the possibility to escalate positions in the rank. this is based on the assumption that contents that are acknowledged via citations are part of active interactions or debates in a field, and thus effectively impact the way knowledge is constructed. how to cite this article (apa, 7th ed.): cárdenas, m. l., & nieto-cruz, m. c. (2022). editorial. profile: issues in teachers’ professional development, 24(2), 9–14. https://doi.org/10.15446/profile.v24n2.103336 this is an open access text distributed under the terms of the creative commons license attributionnoncommercial-noderivatives 4.0 international license. consultation is possible at https://creativecommons. org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/ source: scimago journal & country rank (http://www.scimagojr.com/journalrank.php) note. �e report published in 2022 is based on data from 2021. area: linguistics & language 2020 • worldwide: no. 196 (of 1,103) • latin america: no. 1 (of 46) • colombia: no. 1 (of 7) • worldwide: no. 578 (of 1,381) • latin america: no. 1 (of 60) • colombia: no. 1 (of 6) 2021 2020 2021 q1 q1 q3 q2 area: education https://doi.org/10.15446/profile.v24n2.103336 https://doi.org/10.15446/profile.v24n2.103336 https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/ https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/ universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras cárdenas & nieto-cruz 10 needless to say, such achievements are very satisfactory for a publication edited outside hegemonic publishing countries, that is to say, the center or anglophone regions. nonetheless, and as we have argued in other editions, this categorization is controversial. first, the ranking regimes are inequitable because they only process information from a selected group of publications—only those included in the scopus database. second, the impact of a journal is mainly measured by taking into consideration the number of citations it receives. this appraisal is extremely restrictive as it does not care for the actual use of articles by individuals or scientific and academic communities. in other words, indicators do not monitor the use of contents in different contexts and for various reasons: teaching practices, teacher education, papers that are not necessarily published, and academic events, among others. the fact that profile had been ranked in quartile 1 was decisive to regain the a1 category in the colombian national index for scientific journals, publindex. our publication shares this position with six other journals edited in the country and is number one in the areas of education and language. however, this new achievement is not in harmony with the mission and vision we have maintained since our publication started in 2000. once more, we stress that focusing exclusively on reaching high positions in indexing systems by prioritizing the accomplishment of their evaluation indicators is risky because those authors who do not always have the chance to get published in recognized journals can be excluded. our commitment is then the same: to foster the publication of research done by teachers, researchers, and novice teacher researchers from different contexts and educational levels, provided they comply with the parameters of quality publications and focus on topics related to english language teaching, innovation, research, and reflections that contribute to the development of this professional area. in this issue, we are very pleased to share with you 16 articles. nine correspond to the section issues from teacher researchers, two to the section issues from novice teacherresearchers, and five to the section issues based on reflections and innovations. the contributions come from eight countries: colombia (eight articles), with papers from 14 scholars; mexico (two articles), with the participation of five scholars; indonesia (two articles), represented by six scholars; iran (two articles), with four scholars (one of these articles is a joint effort with a turkish researcher); spain, with one article and the perceptions of three academics; and ecuador and the united states in a joint venture with one article and three participating researchers. the topics discussed by researchers in the current issue concern teacher training and teacher professional development, teachers’ identities and pedagogical beliefs, language teachers’ effectiveness and self-efficacy, assessment practices, and technology integration within the classroom. some articles also discuss language teaching methods—among which we find mentoring practices—and research methods such as collaborative autoethnography and the repertory grid technique for interviews. these topics take place both at pre and in-service teaching contexts. the section issues from teacher researchers opens with an article by melba libia cárdenas, the journal editor, from the universidad nacional de colombia, in bogotá, colombia. this profile: issues teach. prof. dev., vol. 24 no. 2, jul-dec, 2022. issn 1657-0790 (printed) 2256-5760 (online). bogotá, colombia. pages 9-14 editorial 11 paper offers a description of the steps taken to design an action plan to improve some areas within the editorial process of the profile journal. the guiding objective for the elaboration of such a plan was placing the journal at the core of the generation and consolidation of teachers’ communities, focusing on novice researchers who are starting their professional and academic lives. this article is followed by a contribution from ecuador and the united states in a joint effort. hazel acosta and diego cajas (universidad nacional de educación, ecuador) and elizabeth minchala (kansas state university, usa) present teacher training in ecuador as a method of multi-level replication and scaling-up for in-service english teachers. the article emphasizes the training input as a factor that influences the effectiveness and sustainability of an english as a foreign language (efl) program. the study highlights the crucial role of collaboration that facilitates collective efforts in contextualizing training input to achieve profound insight reflected in classroom practices. the second contribution from colombia is the result of joint work between jhon eduardo mosquera-pérez (universidad pedagógica y tecnológica de colombia) and jhon jairo losadarivas (universidad surcolombian). the two researchers carried out a qualitative narrative study with the potential of identifying the impact of a master’s program on their students by comparing their identities before and after their participation in the program. the results showed that teachers’ identities are part of an endless process nurtured by experiences at the academic, pedagogical, and personal levels. most teachers reported developing higher levels of social commitment, critical-reflective engagement, and research-oriented practices due to their graduate academic experience. the first article from iran comes from the hand of akram nayernia and rana nosrati (iran university of science and technology) together with hassan mohebbi from the european knowledge development institute (eurokd) in ankara, turkey. the joint project of these three scholars takes us to the field of english language teachers’ effectiveness. this was assessed through a variety of variables: literacy, content and pedagogical content knowledge, experience, oral proficiency, personality type, and self-efficacy. the results of these measurements are visible in a questionnaire with 19 items entitled “efl language teachers’ effectiveness.” burhanuddin yasin, usman kasim, faisal mustafa, saiful marhaban (universitas syiah kuala), and endang komariah (universitas lampung) represent the first contribution from indonesia to our current issue. the article touches the topic of self-efficacy of high school english language teachers with two levels of curriculum literacy. the findings show that teachers with higher curriculum literacy levels were more self-efficacious than those with a lower level of curriculum literacy. this implies that curriculum related courses in preservice teacher programs need to be improved, and in-service teacher training should focus on curriculum knowledge. the third contribution by colombian authors is carried out by indira niebles-thevening, angela bailey, and nayibe rosado (universidad del norte). the three researchers explored universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras cárdenas & nieto-cruz 12 a teacher evaluation tool to identify critical and reflective aspects of teachers’ practices for professional development. results suggest that teachers have strong procedural knowledge and perceptions of self but struggle with recognizing unique opportunities for critical approaches to their practice, thus indicating a lean toward more efficient ways of analyzing teachers and focusing on more specific contextual areas in teacher professional development. the contribution of spain to the current issue comes from elisa pérez-gracia, rocío serrano-rodríguez, and alfonso pontes-pedrajas (universidad de córdoba). these authors tackle the construction of the professional identity of teachers through their beliefs and from the point of view of both male and female teachers. results show that the participants consider that the teachers’ professional identity is connected to the ability to motivate students, manage the classroom, and worry about interpersonal relations. to conclude, this study brings the chance of reflecting on the importance of strengthening english as a foreign language teachers’ professional identity considering the gender perspective to introduce changes in the curriculum. edgar aguirre-garzón (pontificia universidad javeriana, bogotá) and diego ubaquecasallas (universidad distrital francisco josé de caldas) represent the fourth colombian contribution. their narrative study analyzes mentoring practices with language studentteachers. mentors’ narratives include life-story interviews and theorizing from praxis. for mentors, mentoring practices represent a space for knowledge reconfiguration, a locus of collective knowledge construction, and territories where student-teachers can mobilize and exercise their agency. the mentors show a distance from traditional logics and look for knowledge and the self in teacher education. the last article in this section is the second indonesian contribution with the article by i putu indra kusuma (universitas pendidikan ganesha). the paper discusses the integration of technology with language teaching in times of the pandemic. remote teaching was the means through which speaking skills were taught. it is evident that teachers used popular social media such as whatsapp, youtube, and educational tools such as google forms for classroom management and teaching speaking purposes. this study offers some implications to advance english language teacher education programs to prepare the future efl preservice teachers in the post-pandemic era. section two—issues from novice teacher-researchers—includes two articles. the first article is a contribution from cristian camilo peynado, maría camila morales-triviño (universidad distrital francisco josé de caldas), and jairo enrique castañeda-trujillo (universidad surcolombiana). this is the fifth article originated in colombia. this article analyzes, through collaborative autoethnography, the experiences of preservice english language teachers within their bachelor’s degree and their pedagogical practicum. this approach empowered the novel researchers to reflect on topics such as the methodologies followed in their undergraduate programs, mentor teachers, native speakerism, colonial ideologies, and decolonization processes. findings suggest that preservice english language profile: issues teach. prof. dev., vol. 24 no. 2, jul-dec, 2022. issn 1657-0790 (printed) 2256-5760 (online). bogotá, colombia. pages 9-14 editorial 13 teachers should be allowed to reflect, analyze, and thus contribute to understanding the social dynamics of what it means to teach and be a language teacher. the second article of this section is the first mexican contribution to this issue. in it, diana leslie castillo-nava and irasema mora-pablo (universidad de guanajuato) studied the implementation of an international bilingual model from the perspectives of the teachers’, the students’, and the coordinators’ experiences. they consider that the introduction of this model represents both benefits and challenges. with respect to the former, the authors indicated a positive change, focusing on improving teachers’ and students’ linguistic abilities in english. with respect to the latter, the scholars stated the lack of teachers’ training, the context of the university, and teachers’ knowledge of the language. our issue closes with the section issues based on reflections and innovations with the inclusion of five articles. jesús alirio bastidas (universidad de nariño), the sixth colombian contribution, questions if language teaching methods are extinct. the claim comes from many tesol authorities who questioned the method’s usefulness and scope and favor the arrival of a “post-method era.” professor bastidas reflects on this trend and argues that language teaching methods cannot disappear as they are an essential component of any teaching process. kenneth richter, patricia houde, and krisztina zimányi (universidad de guanajuato) represent the second mexican contribution to this issue. their reflection concentrates on a research method—the repertory grid technique—for conducting and analyzing interviews within the field of teaching efl. the research method was piloted, and the authors expect that it will have an impact in the field of applied linguistics and in efl teaching in particular. sonia patricia hernández-ocampo (pontificia universidad javeriana & universidad de los andes, bogotá) is colombia’s seventh contribution to this issue. professor hernándezocampo discusses assessment in the language teaching context. the paper presents a review of five colombian well-known journals during the period 2009–2020 aiming to identify the scholarly discussion regarding language assessment and testing in the country. the findings suggest that colombian researchers are concerned with fair and democratic assessment practices, and the involvement of students in peerand self-assessment practices to improve learning and promote autonomy. also, there is a perceived need for more teacher education in language assessment. the second iranian contribution comes from the hand of three researchers, zia tajeddin (tarbiat modares university), zari saeedi, and vahid panahzadeh (allameh tabataba’i university). the paper reflects on the development and validation of a classroom-based language assessment literacy scale to measure teachers’ perceived classroom-based assessment knowledge and practice. the scale items clustered around four factors: (a) purposes of assessment and grading, (b) assessment ethics, (c) student involvement in assessment, and (d) feedback and assessment interpretation. the findings suggest that the newly-developed scale can serve as a valid and reliable tool to explore language teachers’ classroom-based assessment literacy. universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras cárdenas & nieto-cruz 14 the last article, contributed by claudia patricia gutiérrez (universidad de antioquia), is colombia’s final representative. the author depicts the journey of preservice language teachers from a critical an intercultural perspective through the implementation of an english course containing these elements with first semester preservice students. the results indicate that this approach to language teaching allowed preservice teachers to affirm their multiple identities as they developed and strengthened their language skills in english. melba libia cárdenas journal editor maría claudia nieto-cruz journal director 55profile vol. 11, no. 2, 2009. issn 1657-0790. bogotá, colombia. pages 55-70 language testing in colombia: a call for more teacher education and teacher training in language assessment evaluación de idiomas en colombia: un llamado a mejorar la formación y capacitación de profesores alexis a. lópez mendoza*1 universidad de los andes, colombia ricardo bernal arandia** universidad piloto de colombia, colombia classroom assessment is an integral part of the language learning process and a powerful informed decision-making tool. unfortunately, not many language teachers in colombia are trained to make assessment decisions that will engage and motivate students and, as a result, enhance learning. in this article, we present the results of a study that examines teachers’ perceptions about language assessment and the way they use language assessments in their classroom. the findings suggest that there is a significant difference in the perceptions that teachers have depending on the level of training they have in language assessment. thus, we highlight the importance of providing adequate training in language assessment for all prospective language teachers in colombia. key words: teachers’ perceptions about classroom assessment, assessment use, assessment training la evaluación en el aula es parte integral del proceso de aprendizaje de una lengua extranjera y una herramienta poderosa para la toma de decisiones informadas. infortunadamente, no muchos profesores de lenguas en colombia tienen formación para tomar decisiones que permitan que el estudiante participe y esté motivado y, como resultado, promuevan el aprendizaje. en este artículo presentamos los resultados de un estudio que examina las percepciones de los profesores de lenguas sobre la evaluación y la forma en que la usan en el aula. los resultados sugieren que existe una diferencia significativa en la percepción que tienen los profesores, dependiendo del nivel de formación que tienen en evaluación en lenguas. por lo tanto, resaltamos la importancia de formar adecuadamente en evaluación a los futuros profesores de lenguas extranjeras en colombia. palabras clave: percepciones de los docentes sobre la evaluación en el aula, uso de evaluaciones, formación en evaluación * e-mail: allopez@uniandes.edu.co address: calle 18a no. 0-19, casita rosada piso 2. bogotá, colombia. ** e-mail: ricardo.bernal@yahoo.com address: carrera 9 no. 45a-44, área común de inglés. bogotá, colombia. this article was received on may 1, 2009 and accepted on july 25, 2009. 56 universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras lópez mendoza & bernal arandia introduction reynolds, livingston, & willson (2006) argue that while many teachers love teaching, many are not very interested in assessing students. as a result, teachers tend to have a negative view of assessment. more often than not, this negative view stems from personal experiences. terms such as assessment, testing and evaluation usually have a negative connotation as they are associated with anxiety, stress, pressure or failure. moreover, tests play a powerful role in the lives of language learners (hamp-lyons, 2000; shohamy, 2001). they provide information about both student achievement and growth, but tests are also used to provide rewards or sanctions for schools, teachers, and students. for instance, tests are used to determine who passes or fails a course, to control discipline, to threaten students, among other things (lópez, 2008a). this is in part why so many people have a negative view of assessment. something that could help minimize this negative perception is to understand the differences found in assessment, testing and evaluation. assessment is “a term often used interchangeably with testing; but also used more broadly to encompass the gathering of language data” (davies et al., 1999, p. 11). in other words, an assessment is any systematic procedure to collect information about students. this information is then interpreted and used to make decisions and judgments about the teaching-learning process. testing, on the other hand, is simply one way to assess, so it can be described as a procedure to collect and interpret information using standardized procedures (american educational research association [aera], american psychological association [apa], & national council on measurement in education [ncme], 1999). finally, evaluation can be described as a “systematic gathering of information in order to make a decision” (davies et al., 1999, p. 56). all these terms combined describe the classroom assessment process. teachers gather information about what students know and can do; they interpret this information and make decisions about what to do next. sometimes they quantify this data to assign grades and then make judgements based on them (e.g. pass/fail). what we, the authors, have learned from our experiences is that some teachers usually collect information at the end of the process and therefore the assessment cannot be used to enhance learning. furthermore, what some teachers lack the most is the ability to use and interpret this information to guide the decision-making process. another aspect that needs to be mentioned here is that the assessment component is recognized as an essential part of the curriculum, but it is the area in which many teachers express a lack of confidence and claim the least knowledge (nunan, 1988). moreover, teachers commonly conceive assessment as an isolated activity (separate from teaching); equate assessment to simply giving a grade or score, and view assessment as a summative process rather than an ongoing process (pérez, guerra, & ladrón, 2004). problem in our experience we have found that in some language classrooms, assessment is not a continuous process and it tends to be more summative than formative, in the sense that the only feedback students get is their grades (lópez, 2008b). when we observe foreign language classrooms, more often than not we notice that assessment is generally not used appropriately. likewise, we find that language testing is not given the importance it should have. an example of this is that some teacher education and teacher-training programs in colombia do not 57 language testing in colombia... profile vol. 11, no. 2, 2009. issn 1657-0790. bogotá, colombia. pages 55-70 offer extensive training in language assessment. as a result of this lack, tests and testing systems are often subject to abuse because test scores and test interpretations are put to a host of different uses (hamp-lyons, 1997). thus, tests are frequently used unethically for purposes other than those they were intended for originally and do not facilitate the language learning process. previous studies about language testing in colombia have highlighted the need for more research as regards the use of assessment practices in the colombian context (e.g. arias & maturana, 2005; rodríguez, 2007). during the 2009 language testing research colloquium (ltrc), the president of the international language testing association (ilta) made a public call for more work (research, publications, conferences, workshops) on language assessment in africa and latin america. we believe this applies specifically to colombia. for instance, there are very few presentations about language testing in national conferences. in last year’s asocopi conference there was only one presentation out of 57 (1.8%) about language testing, and in this year’s elt conference there were only three presentations out of 75 (4%). the number of publications on language testing is not very high either. in the last four volumes of the profile journal, only one article about language testing has been published (muñoz & álvarez, 2008). in the last six volumes of the colombian applied linguistics journal, only four articles have been published (lópez, 2002; muñoz et al., 2003; quintero, 2003; rodríguez, 2007). in the last 10 volumes of íkala, only five articles have been published (arias & maturana, 2005; barletta & may, 2006; frodden, restrepo & maturana, 2004; muñoz et al., 2006; murphy, 2002). therefore, we feel we need to begin a conversation about the role of language testing in the classroom and in the language learning process. this is why it is critical to examine the perceptions that english language teachers have about the purpose of assessment, the use and interpretation of assessments and the impact that these have on the educational system and individuals. research about teachers’ perceptions of assessment is important because teachers’ conceptions of teaching, learning, and curricula have a strong impact on how teachers teach and what students learn or achieve (brown, 2002). the main goal of this article is to create awareness among the language teaching community in colombia about the importance of adequately and effectively using assessments in the classroom to promote language learning. in particular, we want to focus on these two research questions: 1. what perceptions do colombian english language teachers have about classroom assessment? 2. how are colombian english teachers currently using language assessment in the classroom? literature review classroom assessment classroom assessment refers to a wide variety of strategies employed by teachers to get feedback from students about how they are experiencing the learning process (mcmillan, 2003). classroom assessments are also known as teacher-made assessments or alternative assessments (hughes, 2003). as the name implies, teacher-made assessments are assessments made by a teacher or group of teachers for a specific set of instructional outcomes for a particular group of students. alternative assessments, on the other hand, are broadly defined as any assessment method that is an alternative to traditional paper-and-pencil tests and requires students to demonstrate the skills and knowledge that cannot be assessed using a 58 universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras lópez mendoza & bernal arandia multiple-choice or true-false test (mcnamara, 1997). classroom assessment seeks to reveal students’ critical-thinking and evaluation skills by asking them to complete open-ended tasks that often take more than one class period to complete. some examples include portfolios, experiments, interviews, oral presentations, demonstrations, projects or exhibitions. assessment practices are currently undergoing a major paradigm shift mainly because of the emphasis on standardized testing and its perceived shortcomings (hamayan, 1995). alternative assessments were proposed as a response to large-scale assessment instruments with the idea that they would enable educators to attend to differences in learners, address learning over a period of time, and include communicative performances in a variety of ways. some of the most commonly used alternative assessment instruments or procedures are writing samples, journals, portfolios, classroom projects, and interviews (brown & hudson, 1998). wiggins (1992) advocated for building higher order thinking skills in both instruction and assessment to measure students’ ability to solve real problems. chamot & o’malley (1994) developed an approach that combines assessing thinking skills with language learning skills and content learning, so students would learn how to learn in an academic environment through english. similarly, short (1993) discusses the need for better assessment models for instruction where content and language instruction are integrated. she describes examples of the implementation of a number of alternative assessment or approaches such as checklists, portfolios, interviews and performance tasks. among some of the advantages we find in the use of alternative assessments are that they are more integrative than traditional tests, are more easily integrated into the classroom, provide easily understood information, are more responsive to each individual learner, promote learning and enhance access and equity in education (mcnamara, 1997). hamayan (1995) also points out that alternative assessments usually are low-stakes in terms of the consequences and supposedly have beneficial washback effects. alderson & wall (1993) define washback as the effects that tests have on teaching and learning. and unlike scores on large-scale assessments, alternative assessments are useful with english language learners because they can provide a multidimensional perspective of student progress and growth over time (o’malley & valdez pierce, 1996). alternative assessments also help make assessment an important component of the teaching-learning process (cárdenas, 1997). among some of the disadvantages we find in the use of alternative forms of assessments are that they are not easy to administer and score, are time consuming, and lack consistency in scoring (hamayan, 1995). so, their use does not guarantee that these assessment procedures are necessarily valid and reliable. by valid we mean that the interpretations we make based on test scores are appropriate and by reliable we mean that tests are scored consistently (bachman & palmer, 1996). brown & hudson (1998) present a critical overview of alternative assessment approaches. they point out that most of the research on alternative assessments are simply descriptive and persuasive in nature and are based on research on empirical studies examining the advantages and disadvantages of the alternative approaches to assessment. they claim that many studies, which advocate for the use of alternative assessments, present their value and validity without providing any evidence to support their claims. their main point is that these alternative assessment instruments need to also be reliable and valid. therefore, there is also a need for 59 language testing in colombia... profile vol. 11, no. 2, 2009. issn 1657-0790. bogotá, colombia. pages 55-70 more research examining how these alternative assessment instruments are used and interpreted. more research is also needed to examine how alternative assessment procedures can be used more consistently and how we can use them to enhance teaching and learning. uses and consequences of tests according to shohamy (2001), tests are very powerful instruments tests are powerful because they have the power to inform and the power to influence (li, 1990). they have the power to inform because they provide feedback and they also have the power to influence because they often force teachers and students to do things they would not otherwise do. but tests are even more powerful when they are used as the only indicator for determining the future of english language learners (spolsky, 1997). tests also serve a number of functions in society (wall, 2000). for instance, shohamy (1998) explains that tests are used, among other things, to define membership; to classify people; for developing curricula and textbooks, to determine criteria for success and failure; for power and control; and to influence teaching and learning. now there is a widespread use of language assessment as an instrument in government policy (davies, 1997; shohamy, 2001). assessment reform is sometimes used as a means for external control of schools and stems from a distrust of teachers (darling-hammond, 1994). language tests are also used as gatekeeping instruments (spolsky, 1997). that is, tests are often used as a means of political and social control. potentially, tests can provide valuable data for gatekeeping decisions, but they should not be used as the only instrument to achieve these decisions (spolsky, 1997). spolsky urges that “we must make sure that gatekeeping processes are under human and not automatic control” (p. 6). there has also been, in the language testing community, an increase in recognizing the social and political context of testing. hawthorne (1997) claims that the main purpose of many tests is largely political. in fact, many of the testing systems in the world are mostly political activities and show that there is a close relation between testing and politics and that there are often political reasons behind education reform initiatives. messick (1989) claims that tests are closely connected to a whole set of political and social values that affect the teaching, learning, curriculum, materials, politics, social classes and knowledge. but these political reasons are often in conflict with using tests to provide feedback about the learning process (brindley, 1998). messick (1989) argues that politicians need to consult with educators about such initiatives. this means that policy makers need to collect information about schools’ needs and realities directly from teachers before they impose new educational policies. unfortunately, tests and testing systems are subject to abuse because test scores and test interpretations are put to a host of different uses (hamp-lyons, 1997). for this reason, shohamy (2001) has developed a notion of critical language testing (clt) which “implies the need to develop critical strategies to examine the uses and consequences of tests, to monitor their power, minimize their detrimental force, reveal the misuses, and empower the test takers” (p. 131). shohamy (2001) uses the term ‘test takers’ to refer to any stakeholder group that is directly affected by the outcome of a test (e.g. schools, teachers, students, parents). critical language assessment looks at the social, cultural and political context of 60 universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras lópez mendoza & bernal arandia assessment and challenges the fairness of language assessment (pennycook, 2001). therefore, it is very important to examine how teachers use and interpret language tests in their classrooms and the consequences that they have. we believe that the lack of adequate training in language testing is one of the reasons some colombian english language teachers are not able to monitor the consequences (intended or unintended) of their tests. thus, it becomes particularly important in understanding how classroom assessments are going to be used (or misused) and interpreted (or misinterpreted). methodology participants eighty-two english teachers participated in this study. we used two sampling techniques to select our participants. first, we used purposeful sampling to select key participants. according to patton (1990), “the purpose of purposeful sampling is to select information-rich cases whose study will illuminate the questions under study” (p. 169). we established the following criteria to select key participants: 1) teachers currently teaching english in a colombian institution, and 2) teachers who were willing to participate in the study. we made a list of teachers who we thought would be willing to participate in this study by completing an online qualitative survey. once we had identified some key potential participants, we contacted them via e-mail. the rest of the participants were selected through a snowball sampling technique (patton, 1990). this technique “identifies cases of interest from people who know people who know people who know what cases are information-rich, that is, good examples for study, good interview subjects” (patton, 1990, p. 182). we asked all the teachers to identify other key potential participants that they felt would be willing to participate in this research study. all the participants currently teach english at different levels (primary school, secondary school, university, technical institutes or language institutes). teachers’ experience ranges from 3 to 17 years. only 32 of the participants have had previous training in language assessment. twentyseven of them had formal training in graduate programs (specialization, master’s or doctoral program). the other five teachers had received training through certificate programs such as icelt, tkt or ielts, or through workshops and seminars. more information about teachers is presented in table 1 below. table 1. additional information about participants highest degree earned number percentage (%) undergraduate degree in efl or related field 36 43.9 undergraduate degree in another field 6 7.3 specialization 13 15.9 master’s 25 30.5 ph.d 2 2.4 total 82 100 data collection online survey this research study adheres to the assumption that “the perspective of others is meaningful, knowable, and able to be made explicit” (patton, 1990, p. 278). therefore, we conducted a qualitative 61 language testing in colombia... profile vol. 11, no. 2, 2009. issn 1657-0790. bogotá, colombia. pages 55-70 online survey to gather information from teachers in colombia (see appendix 1). through the survey we wanted to obtain the participants’ perspectives, experiences and concerns (lincoln & guba, 1985), in this case about language assessment. this survey consisted of two parts. the first part was designed to elicit background information (e.g. educational background, teaching experience) about the participants and information about the teachers’ training (pre-service and in-service) in language testing. the second part was designed to elicit information about how they felt about assessment, how they used assessments, how they scored the assessments and how they provided feedback to their students. all of this information allowed us to answer the two research questions we stated earlier. university programs we downloaded curricula from 27 undergraduate programs and seven graduate programs aimed at training english language teachers in colombia. we selected public and private institutions all over the country to represent the diversity in programs. undergraduate programs included programs such as “licenciaturas” in modern languages, english, spanish and english, english and french, philology, or bilingual education. graduate programs included both specialization programs and master’s programs in areas such as autonomous learning in efl, applied linguistics, didactics in english teaching or bilingual education. these documents provided information about the number of language assessment courses offered in colombian institutions. data analysis the responses to the open ended questions were analyzed through a process of coding. these codes were not pre-set and emerged from the data collected as issues and ideas, which were important and relevant to the study. according to dey (1993), a natural creation of codes occurs with “the process of finding a focus for the analysis, and reading and annotating the data” (p. 99). consequently, we looked at all the data collected to search for meaningful patterns (patton, 1990). as part of the data analysis, we examined similarities and differences between perceptions from teachers with training in language assessment and teachers without training. we were also able to find tendencies in language assessment practices. conversely, the university programs were analyzed using enumeration. that is, we simply read each program and identified courses related to language assessment and counted the number of courses and number of institutions. findings and discussion teachers’ perceptions about language assessment in this study, we found that there was a significant difference between the perspective of teachers who have had formal training in language assessment and those who have not. trained teachers tend to view assessment more as an integral part of instruction and as a powerful tool to guide the learning process. for instance, one of the teachers with training in language assessment stated that he uses assessments “to keep track of the process, to measure achievement and to provide feedback”. likewise, another participant 62 universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras lópez mendoza & bernal arandia stated that she uses “assessment for learning”. these statements suggest that some teachers have a positive view of assessment. in this perception, assessment is used to gather information about what the students know and can do. then this information is interpreted to make decisions about teaching and learning. but the most important aspect is that this information is shared with the students so that they can all take steps to improve language learning. among the most important positive views we found about language assessment are the following: 1. assessment as a tool to align learning and instruction – “i also use the assessments to redirect my classroom practice” “i use assessments to evaluate my methodology”. 2. assessment as a tool to monitor learning – “to see the process of my students, their strengths and weaknesses”. 3. assessment as a tool to aid in communicating with students – “to test students to know if they are improving or not in class and be able to give them better feedback”. 4. assessment as a tool to empower students – “to encourage learners to study material covered in the course”. we also found that teachers with no training (pre-service or in-service) in language assessment tend to have a more negative view of language assessments. in this view, assessment is simply used a means to give a grade or to make judgments about the students, but not as a strategy to enhance learning. for example, some of the teachers, who have not had formal training in language assessment, stated that assessments are used “to get grades that i have to submit to the institution”. on a similar note, another teacher expressed that assessments are “tools to determine passing or failing”. from these statements, we can infer that assessments are simply equated with grades. this implies that grades are the only feedback students get. also, many teachers do not see the added value of assessment and only assess because they are required to do so. among the most noticeable negative views we found about language assessment are the following: 1. assessment as a summative process – “to generate a quantitative grade”. 2. assessment as a mandate – “to get grades that i have to submit to the institution”. 3. assessment as an instrument of power and control – “to force students to study what i teach in class”. we believe that the negative view of assessment that some teachers hold stems from a lack of adequate training in language assessment. for instance, 45 out of 48 teachers (93.8%) who had a negative view of assessment indicated that they had neither taken an assessment course in college nor had received any type of training in assessment (e.g. workshops, conferences, in-service training). on the contrary, 32 out of 34 teachers (94.1%) who had a more positive view of assessment had taken at least a course in assessment, had received language teaching training at work, or had attended a workshop on language testing. moreover, from our analysis of the university programs, we found that very few universities with education programs for teachers offered courses on language assessment or assessment in general. in the analysis, we found that out of 27 undergraduate programs only seven offered a course in evaluation (see table 2). some institutions have elective courses, but we were unable to determine what types of courses are offered. still, even if elective courses on language assessment are offered, there is no guarantee that all prospective teachers take these courses. we did find that these training 63 language testing in colombia... profile vol. 11, no. 2, 2009. issn 1657-0790. bogotá, colombia. pages 55-70 programs for teachers offered several methodology courses. although it is possible that some of these courses have a segment on language assessment, we feel more training is needed. from table 2, we can see that only two public universities with education programs for teachers offer courses on language assessment. this is worrisome because the majority of the english teachers in colombia are trained in these kinds of institutions. on the other hand, we found that five private universities with education programs for teachers offered a course on language assessment. this is a very promising finding in the sense that they are preparing prospective teachers to design, use and interpret assessments, and could contribute to creating a more positive view of assessment as well as starting a culture of using assessments to improve instruction. but in general, these results highlight the need for more training in language assessment in colombian education programs for teachers. table 2. undergraduate language assessment courses name of course type of institution assessment processes of learning* public evaluation in efl private educational design and assessment* private assessment private educational assessment* private english teaching and assessment* public evaluation in elt private *original name of the course in spanish table 3. graduate language assessment courses name of course type of program type of institution reflective evaluation; selfassessment masters private assessment and evaluation in english masters public curricular design, planning and assessment* masters private evaluation, testing and assessment masters public *original name of the course in spanish at the graduate level, we found that all the master’s programs related to english teaching are offering at least a course in language assessment (see table 3). this is also promising because all the students taking these courses will have an opportunity to apply this knowledge in their teaching and, hopefully, help their students and fellow colleagues develop a more positive view of assessment. unfortunately, the number of teachers who actually complete a master’s program in colombia is not very high. so we need to emphasize the importance of offering language assessment courses at the undergraduate level. language assessment courses are a professional development space for in-service teachers’ critical reflection upon their beliefs and practices regarding testing, assessment and evaluation (quintero, 2003). moreover, from our analysis of programs, we found three specialization programs related to english teaching in colombia, but none of them offer a course in language assessment. as specialization programs become more popular, especially for english teachers in primary and secondary public 64 universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras lópez mendoza & bernal arandia institutions in colombia, it is imperative that these programs also focus on language assessment. using language assessments we were also interested in gathering information about how english teachers in colombia use language assessments in the classroom. from the online qualitative survey we found that 71 teachers usually assess at the end of a unit or course. the other 11 teachers argued that they tend to assess regularly, at least once a week. sixty-four teachers reported that they tend to use traditional tests (e.g. paper and pencil, multiple-choice, fill in the blank types of tests). they also tend to use final exams and quizzes. only a few teachers (18) reported using authentic classroom assessments such as essays, presentations, interviews and others. in terms of scoring, 59 teachers explained that they scored tests by assigning numbers or letters. the other 23 teachers used qualitative descriptors to score their students’ tests. most of the feedback is provided at the end of the teaching-learning process and is usually given by assigning a grade. the feedback is usually provided by returning the marked exams. sixty-three teachers reported using mostly objective scoring in the form of scoring keys. a few teachers (19) reported using subjective scoring methods such as scoring rubrics. in general, assessment seems to be more summative than formative. it is important for teachers to learn to provide better feedback to students. in order for classroom assessment to be effective, teachers need to provide immediate, relevant and ongoing feedback in their assessments. the feedback needs to be descriptive and it should focus on students’ strengths and limitations and inform them about possible ways to reinforce or enhance learning (lópez, 2008b). from the responses we got on the online survey, we feel that teachers also need to empower the students. students should be the central focus of any assessment process, more so in classroom assessment (lópez, 2008b). so teachers need to make sure that students take ownership of their learning. but students also need to accept this responsibility and take control of this process. the best way to empower students is to share all the information about assessments with them, including what, how and when they are going to be assessed, how the assessment is going to be used and interpreted, and what decisions are going to be made based on the test. also, we need to educate students on using self-assessment and peer-assessment as a way to monitor their learning process. language teachers should also be concerned with issues of ethics (davies, 1997). ethical issues deal with how tests are used and how tests results are interpreted. language tests generally used ethically questionable and unstated political purposes that are often quite distinct from their stated purposes (shohamy, 2001). for example, tests are sometimes used as gatekeepers or instruments to exercise power and control (spolsky, 1997). in the last two decades or so there has been a rise in ethical awareness in language testing. this has resulted in an increased interest in considering all the participants in the testing process. mcnamara (1998) explains that the purpose of ethical language testing is to examine the role of language testers, the power they hold, the principles and structures in the use of that power, and the limits of that power. in a way, ethical language testing puts the burden of responsibility onto the tester (hamplyons, 1997). language teachers should set themselves high standards when they assess their students and take every step to ensure that these standards 65 language testing in colombia... profile vol. 11, no. 2, 2009. issn 1657-0790. bogotá, colombia. pages 55-70 are upheld. by standards we refer to “a code of professional practice or set of professional guidelines which could cover all stages of test development, from initial construction, through trialing and on to operational use” (davidson, turner & huhta, 1997, p. 303). this definition is similar to stansfield’s (1993) suggestion that language testers need to define ethics as a standard of appropriate professional practice and as a set of moral obligations. similarly, davies (1997) calls for a professional morality among language testers (i.e. english language teachers) to protect both the individuals from misuse and abuse of tests and to protect the profession’s members. corson (1997) argues that ethical principles for testing should be concerned with three important issues: that everyone is treated equally; that everyone is respected; and that everyone benefits from the test. as a reaction to all these ethical concerns, the code of ethics of the international language testing association (ilta, 2000), developed nine principles. the last principle states that “language testers shall regularly consider the potential effects, both short and long-term, on all stakeholders of their projects, reserving the right to withhold their professional services on the grounds of conscience” (p. 6). but davies (1997) argues that language testing professionals “have a hard task to influence other stakeholders, particularly the contracting stakeholders since the only real influences on them are their own prejudices and personal experiences” (p. 338). language testers should, to some extent, be at least accountable for ensuring that the information they gather is used for ethical purposes. for instance, when people use language tests to exercise control rather than to provide information about the language learning process, they are being unethical (shohamy, 2001). moreover, shohamy (1997) claims that language tests which contain content or employ methods which are not fair to all test-takers are not ethical, and discusses ways of reducing various sources of unfairness. she also claims that tests should be used to provide information on proficiency levels and not to exercise control and manipulate stakeholders. it is crucial that we examine ethical issues in the assessment of english language learners in colombia. we need to examine the ways assessment instruments are used and the consequences that are brought about with such uses. final thoughts in this study, we presented information about teachers’ perspectives on language assessment. we found that there seems to be a correlation between language assessment training and perceptions about language assessment. we believe that proper education and training of teachers will help change teachers’ perceptions about language assessment. if teachers have a positive view of assessment, they will be able to select or design appropriate assessment procedures for their context and students that will allow the assessments to provide useful information. we also presented information about how teachers use language assessment in the classroom. we found that there is a tendency to use traditional assessment instead of alternative assessment. moreover, we found that the majority of the feedback provided is in the form of a grade and is usually done at the end of the process. so from the finding in this study, we can argue that classroom assessment in english teaching in colombia tends to be more summative than formative. the findings of this study imply that teachers need to be familiar with different types of language assessments and the type of information they provide (hughes, 2003). another concern is for teachers to use assessment procedures that 66 universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras lópez mendoza & bernal arandia are both valid and reliable. by valid, we mean assessment procedures that provide accurate information about what is being measured. so a test is valid if the inferences we make based on test scores are appropriate (messick, 1989). and by reliable, we mean assessment procedures that produce consistent scores regardless of the situation or the context in which the assessment procedure is conducted (bachman & palmer, 1996). but the literature also shows that there is a lack of appropriate, valid, and reliable assessment measures for english language learners (valdés & figueroa, 1996). since we assess students for many different purposes, we need to examine whether or not the assessment instruments and procedures that are commonly used are valid and used appropriately. davies (1997) claims that in order for a test to be fair, it needs to involve all stakeholders in the assessment process. it is crucial for test makers to interact with other groups of stakeholders so they can better understand the assessment culture and context in which a test functions. we also need to conduct studies analyzing the real purposes of tests and compare them to the actual purposes they are used for. moreover, we need to examine how these assessment practices affect the lives of students and their families (lópez, 2008a). there is also a need for more studies examining the impact tests have on language learning and on language learners. we believe that the outcomes of research studies, such as the one we present here, may stimulate administrators, pre-service and in-service teachers, and the educational community as a whole, to update their professional development and improve their assessment practices to enhance the quality of language education and students’ motivation for learning. for now, it is important to remember that assessment is not simply measuring or assigning grades. we feel that it is more motivating and less threatening for language teachers to begin talking about assessment for learning rather than assessment of learning. we also think more research is needed on how tests are developed and how all the stakeholders are involved in this process, especially when this research takes into consideration the uniqueness of the colombian context. finally, we want to raise the issue of professionalization of the field of language assessment in colombia. this implies that both teachers and prospective teachers need more training in language assessment. we feel that the responsibility to train language teachers in how to develop, use, score and interpret language assessments lies in higher education institutions that have education programs for teachers, in the institutions that have language programs and in the language teachers themselves. it is imperative that all prospective teachers take at least a course in language testing before they start teaching, and should 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(2007). self-assessment: an empowering tool in the teaching and learning efl processes. colombian applied linguistics journal, 9, 229-246. shohamy, e. (1997). testing methods, testing consequences: are they ethical? are they fair? language testing, 14(3), 340-349. shohamy, e. (1998). critical language testing and beyond. studies in educational evaluation, 24(4), 331-345. shohamy, e. (2001). the power of test: a critical perspective on the uses of language tests. london: longman. short, d. (1993). assessing integrated language and content instruction. tesol quarterly, 27(4), 627-656. spolsky, b. (1997). the ethics of gatekeeping tests: what have we learned in a hundred years? language testing, 14(3), 242-247. stansfield, c. w. (1993). ethics, standards, and professionalism in language testing. issues in applied linguistics, 4(2), 189-206. valdés, g., & figueroa, r. a. (1996). bilingualism and testing: a special case of bias. norwood, nj: ablex. wall, d. (2000). the impact of high-stakes testing on teaching and learning: can this be predicted or controlled? system, 28, 499-509. wiggins, g. (1992). creating tests worth taking. educational leadership, 26, 26-33. 69 language testing in colombia... profile vol. 11, no. 2, 2009. issn 1657-0790. bogotá, colombia. pages 55-70 about the authors alexis a. lópez mendoza holds a ph.d in education from the university of illinois at urbanachampaign. currently, he is an assistant professor in the center for research and development in education at universidad de los andes (cife). his main research interest is language test development and validation. ricardo bernal arandia holds an m.b.a. (unab–itesm), a b.a. in business management (usta), a specialization in university teaching (unab), and a b.a. in languages teaching (uis). he has worked in languages education for over 18 years and is currently an english teacher at universidad piloto de colombia. 70 universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras lópez mendoza & bernal arandia appendix 1: online survey 1. educational experience. please complete each box by indicating the degree(s) you have completed or are currently completing. please write the area of concentration (e.g. licenciatura en idiomas). undergraduate: _______________________________________________________________ specialization:__________________________________________________________________ master’s: _____________________________________________________________________ ph.d: ________________________________________________________________________ other: _______________________________________________________________________ 2. employment history. tell us a little bit about your teaching experience. foreign language(s) you teach: ____________________________________________________ number of years teaching: _______________________________________________________ indicate grade/language levels you teach: ____________________________________________ 3. language testing education and training. please provide information about courses or workshops you have taken in language testing. write the name of the course(s) or workshop(s) and where you took them. courses: ______________________________________________________________________ workshops: ____________________________________________________________________ 4. for what purpose(s) do you use language tests in your classrooms? 5. how do you assess your students? what type of tests or instruments do you use? 6. how do you score (grade) the tests or assessment instruments? 7. what type of feedback do you give to your students? profile 9.indd keeping a critical eye on “lexical friends”: cognates as critical pedagogy in pre-service teacher education profile 9, 2008. issn 1657-0790. bogotá, colombia. pages 129-141 129 * e-mail: gerrymugford@yahoo.com address: universidad de guadalajara. centro universitario de ciencias sociales y humanidades. departamento de lenguas modernas. guanajuato no. 1049. colonia la normal. guadalajara. jalisco, méxico. this article was received on november 10th, 2007, and accepted on january 19th, 2008. keeping a critical eye on “lexical friends”: cognates as critical pedagogy in pre-service teacher education manteniendo una mirada crítica a los “amigos léxicos”: los cognados como pedagogía crítica en la formación inicial del profesorado gerrard mugford* universidad de guadalajara, mexico this research project investigates more productive, critical and reflective ways of teaching cognates and loan words. the main objective of the research is aimed at making teacher trainees aware of different ways of presenting and practising cognates and loan words in the second-language classroom. the participants in the investigation were studying in a ba programme in teaching english as a foreign language in a mexican public university. this study argues that cognates are a productive resource for second-language users at all stages and levels of language learning and are not just a tool for the random recognition of words. furthermore, i describe activities that offer ways for language learners to take control of language learning and not just rely on given knowledge from teachers and textbooks. key words: vocabulary, cognates, loan words, critical pedagogy este proyecto de investigación tiene como propósito buscar métodos productivos, críticos y reflexivos en la enseñanza de cognados y préstamos léxicos. el objetivo principal consiste en crear maestros más conscientes sobre las diferentes maneras de presentar y practicar los cognados y los préstamos. los participantes en este estudio están cursando la licenciatura de la enseñanza de inglés como lengua extranjera en una universidad pública en méxico. este estudio argumenta que los cognados son un recurso productivo para el alumno que estudia en cualquier nivel y no solamente una herramienta aleatoria para reconocer palabras. detallo actividades que ofrecen diferentes maneras para que los alumnos asuman el control del proceso de aprendizaje y que no dependan solamente de los conocimientos dados por maestros y libros de texto. palabras clave: vocabulario, cognados, préstamos y pedagogía crítica profile 9.indd 129 21/04/2008 07:43:47 p.m. mugford universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras130 introduction cognates and loan words have long been recognized as important lexical resources which the second-language learner brings from his or her first language to the language classroom. i consider cognates and loan words in a similar way because they are complementary first-language (l1) resources within the target-language learning context. teachers of english as a foreign language (efl) have tended to downplay the use of cognates and loan words, presenting them at the elementary level and merely using them to demonstrate to beginner students how much of the target language they already know. important as this may be, i argue in this research paper that cognates and loan words reflect a much more productive and critical dimension to language use. i build on the work of holmes & ramos (1993), who assert that cognates and loan words reflect natural learning strategies; and i argue that current teacher training programmes need to help future teachers to see how cognates are not mere lexical phenomena but also reflect social and cultural language use. therefore, i undertook classroom action research by: identifying a pedagogical problem; asking trainees to reflect on that problem; and examining possible solutions. this involved presenting and evaluating classroom activities aimed at raising the awareness of teacher trainees. from this research, i contend that a working knowledge of cognates and loan words offers secondlanguage (l2) learners an insight into how linguistic power and learner submission are often surreptitiously implanted in the classroom and second-language context. theoretical framework loan words and cognates are defined differently from a linguistic perspective and both are important to the language user as they reflect existing lexical knowledge that students bring to the efl classroom. although i will define each concept differently, i will argue from a functional point of view that they should be considered pedagogically in the same way in the efl classroom. at the same time, any attempt to define loan words and cognates is fraught with complications and it is even more difficult to relate the concept to the second-language classroom where teachers, students and efl specialists often have very contrasting definitions. i will now examine these competing definitions and adopt a working definition for the purposes of this study. loan words (or lexical borrowings) are both misleading terms since they refer to words that have been taken from another language without asking for the donor language’s permission. according to rodríguez gonzález (1996a, p. 3), approximately 50 per cent of the 750,000 words in american english entered as loan words. in spanish-speaking countries where students are learning english, the use of loan words can be seen as a twoway flow: english words have influenced spanish and, as argued by rodríguez gonzález (1996b), the spanish language is having an ever greater influence on both american and british english. the adoption of english-language loan words profile 9.indd 130 21/04/2008 07:43:47 p.m. keeping a critical eye on “lexical friends”: cognates as critical pedagogy in pre-service teacher education profile 9, 2008. issn 1657-0790. bogotá, colombia. pages 129-141 131 by the spanish language gives latin american efl students, for instance, an enormous advantage when encountering new vocabulary. by way of contrast, hatch and brown (1995, p. 171) point out that in romance languages lexical borrowing is not appreciated by language traditionalists trying to keep the language pure. at the same time, students need to be aware that loan words rarely enter the borrowing language without undergoing some semantic modification, especially when an equivalent word already exists in the borrowing language. besides modifying meaning, loan words may reflect different ways of expressing perceptions of prestige e.g. ‘top ten’ and ‘fashion’ or downplaying negative phenomenon e.g. ‘motel’ and ‘light’. in trying to identify cognates, applied linguists and teachers offer conflicting definitions. from a linguistic point of view, a cognate is a word that shares a common ancestry with another word (crystal 1987, p. 292). for instance, crystal (1991) defines a cognate as “a language or linguistic form which is historically derived from the same source as another language/form” (p. 60). meanwhile, richards and schmidt (2002) define a cognate as “a word in one language which is similar in form and meaning to a word in another language because both languages are related” (p. 829). the definitions offered by crystal and richards and schmidt appear to be fairly straightforward except that richards and schmidt (2002) add “sometimes words in two languages are similar in form and meaning but are borrowings and not cognate forms” (p. 82). they offer the examples of kampuni in swahili and english company. therefore, a language student would need to know the history of a word in order to label it a cognate. meanwhile, melka (1997) seems to use the terms cognates and loan words interchangeably: “the cross-linguistic equivalence is all the more easy to perceive when l2 items formally resemble l1 items (more or less cognates)” (p. 96). however, the second-language classroom requires a working definition which students can relate to. this has been provided by holmes and ramos (1993) who define cognates as “items of vocabulary in two languages which have the same roots and can be recognized as such” (1993, p. 88). this definition is much more understandable to students and can be applied to second language use. for the purposes of this paper, i will adopt this definition and usually employ the term cognate because cognates and loan words are generally understood as being the same in the efl classroom and, furthermore, for the sake of simplicity. students’ use of cognates as holmes & ramos (1993) point out, cognate recognition ‘is a “natural” strategy’ (p. 92) and as such it does not have to be taught. furthermore, as corder (1973, p. 227) argues, students use their own language experiences and resources to find connections between languages. besides running into problems with “false friends” or faux-amis (corder 1973, p. 231), students also encounter difficulties in using cognates at both the micro and macro levels. at the macro level, cognates need to be seen within sociocultural and affective contexts. for instance, gairns & redman profile 9.indd 131 21/04/2008 07:43:47 p.m. mugford universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras132 (1986, p. 20) argue that the use of ‘radical’ reflects different cultural meanings in different languages. i would argue that in mexican spanish, the word patio can be translated as ‘court’ or ‘yard’ into english. however, connotatively the word ‘patio’ in english reflects middle-class status since it is a paved area used by householders for eating or relaxing outside. meanwhile, a loan word such as gay in mexican spanish reflects acceptance of someone’s sexual orientation compared to the more judgmental homosexual. therefore, cognates can offer alternative ways of expressing cultural ideas. holmes and ramos (1993, p. 89) point out that, at a macro level, students often engage in ‘reckless guessing’ when they rely too much on selected cognates and familiar vocabulary to provide meaning and employ a limited analysis of the text to arrive at an overall meaning. at a micro level, a great deal of attention is focused on the problem of false friends, e.g. actual vs. actual or sensible and sensible in the english-spanish efl context. in many instances, the assumed problem of false friends may have been overrated since contextual use helps distinguish different meanings between words. perhaps a much more serious problem is that of partial synonymy between cognates (holmes & ramos 1993, p. 89). for instance, words such as ‘parents’ and parientes (relatives) and ‘educated’ and educado (wellmannered) overlap in meaning but do not hold the same meaning. teaching cognates in contrast to the largely discarded grammar-translation approach, the currently fashionable communicative method largely ignores the use of cognates. however, arguing that cognates are an important existing resource, haynes (1993) contends that “it would be foolish to teach spanish or french speakers to ignore the similarities between their native language and english. cognate recognition is too useful to be abandoned” (p. 56). in order for language learning to be successful and meaningful, teaching should start with what the students already know. when eliciting cognates in the efl classroom, there are still difficulties in arriving at an exact definition of a cognate. students may assert that there is a close relationship between two words which, from the teacher’s perspective, appears to be contrived. however, in the final analysis, teachers may decide that this is a satisfactory working strategy because students themselves are identifying cognates and the teachers’ input lies in identifying false friends or partial cognate synonymy. the aim of teaching cognates is to build learner confidence very quickly (rivers and temperley 1978, p. 193). within the efl classroom, cognate words are often selected at random or within given lexical sets. for instance, transport may include taxi / taxi; train /tren; ambulance / ambulancia; and bicycle / bicicleta. in the food and drink category, cognates consist of sandwich / sandwich; hamburger / hamburguesa; and coffee / café. these activities reflect a recognition approach to learning cognates. such lists tend to be found at the beginning of efl textbooks and are rarely followed up with further cognates at intermediate and advanced levels. profile 9.indd 132 21/04/2008 07:43:47 p.m. keeping a critical eye on “lexical friends”: cognates as critical pedagogy in pre-service teacher education profile 9, 2008. issn 1657-0790. bogotá, colombia. pages 129-141 133 a more reflective and productive approach can be achieved by asking students to search for lexical patterns. practice at this process potentially places students in a better position to negotiate new cognates in the future and outside the classroom context. for instance, both rivers & temperley (1978) and larsenfreeman (1986) point out that the spanishlanguage -ad termination as in libertad and caridad changes to -ity in english as in “liberty” and “charity”. similar patterns can be detected with adjectival endings so that -oso in spanish becomes -ous in english as in famoso / famous and nervioso / nervous. in order to take advantage of their own background knowledge, students can be asked to construct lists of nouns, adjectives, and verbs which have common terminations and then investigate whether a similar pattern emerges in english. this activity calls on students to participate in constructing their own knowledge of cognates. a historical approach to teaching cognates examines how world languages have contributed to each other’s development. for instance, students can examine the food-related words (e.g., anchovy, barbecue, chocolate, guacamole, etc.) that latin america has given to the world. students’ discussion can centre on how these words have affected lifestyles in english-speaking countries. a more modern historical approach examines how english as an international language has propagated such concepts as fast food (e.g., hamburger and hot dog); modes of transport (e.g., car and train); and technology (e.g., dvd and discman). a more critical approach to teaching and practising cognates examines how they have and continue to have a strong influence on current lifestyles and ways of thinking in latin america. cognates abound in current leisure activities (e.g., jogging and spinning) and in sociocultural phenomenon (e.g., baby shower and fashion). international influences on trade and commerce have led to the incorporation of cognates and englishlanguage loan words in economics (e.g., globalization and boom), in business (e.g., marketing and call centers) and in entertainment (e.g., rating and reality show). such a trend is a motive for reflection by language students on the influence of english on their first language. and even more critical approach to the use of cognates can be found in the work of hill (1995) who argues that spanish loan words are used to express negative concepts in english. for instance, the use of nada in english often means more than nothing or that something is completely worthless. meanwhile, the use of el cheapo means more than cheap. the use of spanish in this way indicates that cognates are used not only to insult but to express a lack of respect for the donor language. a critical approach asks students to examine the socio-cultural associations found in cognates and to determine whether the word fills a lexical gap or is charged with a socio-cultural meaning. classroom activities aim to raise students’ awareness of the impact of english on their own social and economic environment. the purpose of this approach is to help students recognise how much english has profile 9.indd 133 21/04/2008 07:43:47 p.m. mugford universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras134 influenced and continues to influence their lifestyles. furthermore, it gives an opportunity to talk about real-life contexts (e.g., in mexico or in colombia). raising pre-service teachers’ awareness pre-service teacher training courses have moved away from promoting the “traditional transmission model of learning” (irujo 2000, p. 209) as trainees learn and practice communicative methodologies, negotiated syllabuses, and student-centred learning practices. at the same time, there is still a strong emphasis on preparing future teachers: to follow a prescribed syllabus; to teach grammar, vocabulary, and pronunciation; to practise the four skills (reading, writing, speaking and, listening); and to adopt pre-determined classroom management techniques. however, teacher-trainees are not taught to take into consideration the individual learning circumstances of their future students and the attitudes, values, and personal histories that they bring to the efl classroom. this research paper takes one aspect of second-language teaching and learning, that of cognates, and offers one way to combine the teaching of vocabulary with students’ existing knowledge and experiences. by adopting a critical approach to teaching cognates, future teachers can encourage their students to use existing knowledge of their first language and reflect on how target language cognates are being employed in their sociocultural context. participants this study was undertaken at a public university in mexico. all the participants in the study were mexican students in the third year of their ba in teaching english as a foreign language (tefl). there were 21 teacher trainees participating in the activities: eleven women and ten men, and their ages ranged from 20 to 30 years. their language proficiency levels varied from low-advanced to near-native speaker. all the participants in the study were asked to sign consent forms which outlined the purpose of the study and their willingness to be quoted anonymously. therefore, i have used pseudonyms when quoting from the trainees’ written reflections. the signing of the consent forms further raised teacher trainees’ interest in the research project. classroom research in order to study cognates, i adopted an action research approach (nunan 2001) because i wanted teacher trainees to reflect on the teaching and learning of cognates. first of all, i discovered that the teaching of cognates was problematic for teacher trainees because they randomly linked english-language and spanish-language loans words without reflecting on possible contextual use. trainees recognized cognates with little difficulty but were not able to present them in any meaningful way in the efl classroom. in a second stage, i asked trainees to develop their own worksheets and gave them the opportunity to reflect on the usefulness and possible relevance of cognates for their future students. after critiquing their own worksheets, teacher profile 9.indd 134 21/04/2008 07:43:48 p.m. keeping a critical eye on “lexical friends”: cognates as critical pedagogy in pre-service teacher education profile 9, 2008. issn 1657-0790. bogotá, colombia. pages 129-141 135 trainees redesigned their worksheets and reflected in writing on the process of teaching cognates. data collection procedures in order to collect data, i used two classes from the lexical studies course i was teaching at the university to concentrate on the teaching of cognates. both classes had the stated objective of encouraging trainees to actively participate in designing activities for possible efl students. in the first class, trainees were given worksheets on cognates which reflect recognition activities but with the underlying objective of encouraging trainees to categorise and analyse cognates in different ways. therefore, trainees were expected to recognise and construct lexical patterns that would help students learn cognates. in the second class, trainees designed worksheets which related cognates to their futures students’ needs and secondlanguage use. as a result, trainees were expected to be much more purposeful and practical in designing activities. both approaches offer the opportunity for their future students to approach cognates in a more reflective way. therefore, this research aims to prepare future teachers to teach and practise cognates in more challenging ways in the second-language classroom. cognates as a topic were taught over two class periods of 120 minutes duration. the first class focused on student recognition and discussion activities whilst the second class explored ways in which teachers could present cognates in the efl classroom. therefore i pursued the following research question: how can teacher trainees be prepared to teach cognates in more meaningful and relevant ways to their students? classroom procedure before describing in detail classroom activities, i now outline how classroom procedures were set up. trainees were invited to form their own groups of twos and threes. i then adopted a guided discovery approach to teaching cognates: teacher trainees increased their own awareness, helped each other to find answers and jointly constructed the worksheets. in the first class, teacher trainees were given worksheets and they were expected to use individual and group knowledge to find the answers and identify cognate patterns. trainees engaged in lengthy discussions during this process and provided written answers. as the teacher, i evaluated the correctness of the answers and collected the written work at the end of the class. in the second class, trainees worked on the worksheets in groups but received no feedback from me as the teacher because i did not want to impose a particular method in teaching cognates. i did offer an alternative way of constructing the worksheets and trainees were asked whether they wanted to incorporate any changes. trainees opted to redesign the worksheet without any intervention on my part. i gave no feedback at any stage and collected their worksheets and written feedback at the end of the class. profile 9.indd 135 21/04/2008 07:43:48 p.m. mugford universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras136 recognition and discussion activities i will now outline how the recognition and discussion sessions were conducted and the purpose of the different activities. in the first part of this class, i asked teacher trainees, as a lead-in activity, to examine the source of cognates. using an activity taken from davis & rinvolucri (1988), i gave trainees a map of the world and asked them to locate the geographical source of well-known cognates such as tea, coffee and hamburger came from. this activity aimed to raise teacher trainees’ awareness of how loan words from different languages have influenced most languages in the world. in the second stage, a group activity focused more specifically on spanish and i asked trainees to reflect on which words the spanish language had given to english. students’ lists fell into different categories including food (e.g., tacos and tortillas), lifestyle (e.g., fiesta and piñata), and locations (e.g., plaza and barrio). trainees were asked to reflect on why spanish words had entered the english language and whether the meanings were the same in both languages. in written feedback, carla and armando commented: “we think that these words became part of english because people needed to express feelings in a different way”. a follow-up classroom discussion centred on whether words like macho and aficionado meant the same in english as they did in spanish. in the third and final stage, trainees were asked to find and work out cognate patterns. after i presented the -ad transformation to -ty as an example, teacher trainees produced their own examples including -or (as in actor / actor and error / error) and -ificar / -ify (as in justificar /justify and modificar / modify). presenting cognates in the efl classroom in the follow-up class, teacher trainees were asked to reflect on different ways of teaching cognates. since they teach efl students, from monday to thursday, as part of their ba programme, trainees were already likely to have had experience of teaching cognates. first of all, teacher trainees decided which cognates they were going to teach. with suggestions including animals, technology, phrasal verbs and school subjects, teacher trainees designed classroom activities to teach the cognates. in their proposed activity plans, teacher trainees asked their students: to talk about how new technology has – changed (e.g., the words tv and stereo have changed to flat tv and dvd); to choose school subjects for the next – academic year; to narrate a christmas story (involving – such cognates as chocolate, hospital, tv, radio, sofa); to brainstorm cognates in the kitchen – (e.g., refrigerator and microwave); to match phrasal verbs with cognates – (e.g., escape / run away and enter / go in; to talk about personal feelings using – cognates such as sensitive, sensible, embarrassed etc.; match animals such as elephant, – hippopotamus, lion and giraffe to pictures. profile 9.indd 136 21/04/2008 07:43:48 p.m. keeping a critical eye on “lexical friends”: cognates as critical pedagogy in pre-service teacher education profile 9, 2008. issn 1657-0790. bogotá, colombia. pages 129-141 137 teacher trainees were given no feedback at this stage for the already stated reason that i did not want to impose a particular method in teaching cognates. in the second part of the class teacher trainees were asked to reflect on different approaches to teaching cognates. teacher trainees were given a worksheet and asked to discuss and reflect on the historical and sociocultural factors in teaching cognates and loan words. these were categorised as follows: historical roots e.g., hospital / – hospital; difficult / difícil international use e.g., taxi / – taxi; cinema / cine; pizza / pizza lifestyles / leisure activities e.g., look / – look; aerobics / aerobics expressive / judgmental meanings e.g., – no problemo; el cheapo during the classroom presentation of the worksheet, teacher trainees were asked to examine the relevance of the categories for their students and whether they considered words such as nada and pesitos to be offensive. in the third part of the class, teacher trainees were asked to modify the previous activity they had designed and take into consideration historical and sociocultural factors that had been outlined in the worksheet. teacher trainees modified their worksheets by designing more studentcentred interaction activities and made changes in the selection of cognates. interaction patterns changed from teacherlead discussions and matching exercises to role plays and student-led discussions. one group altered their proposed activity plan from asking students to talk about feelings to asking them to participate in a debate examining the advantages and disadvantages of technology. another group abandoned the theme of animal cognates and developed a role-play scenario involving fast food. a third group discarded the topic of school subjects and asked their students to examine different forms of transportation because they felt that it was “a more real context for their students”. in the fourth stage, teacher trainees were asked to reflect on the activities seen in class and decide whether it was important to take into consideration historical and sociocultural factors when teaching cognates. all the groups agreed on the importance of teaching cognates. teacher trainee opinions varied from: “since they are obvious we wouldn’t dedicate a whole class teaching them”, to: “this activity is relevant because it provides students with information that they might use in real-life situations”. pedro and gilberto were even in favour of taking an historical approach, arguing that: “looking at cognates from a historical point of view could make ss [students] take a look at how language is created and operates: a lot of students want to know the reasons behind the language”. findings: recognition and discussion activities the lead-in recognition activity resulted in protracted group discussion as teacher trainees offered possible answers. as is to be expected, teacher trainees found it easier to recognise cognates from romance languages. nevertheless, the activity raised student awareness concerning the profile 9.indd 137 21/04/2008 07:43:48 p.m. mugford universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras138 constant traffic of loan words among the world’s languages. regarding this, in the efl classroom, teachers often need to give students considerable input regarding cognates. however, the source of food and drink cognates, for example, is often easier to detect. in the feedback on the second stage which asked teacher trainees to identify cognates given by spanish to english, participants identified different categories of cognates: food and drink (e.g. chilli, guacamole and tequila) and leisure-related (e.g. fiesta and piñata). lourdes wrote that using the spanish language would help her students “to get involved with the language because they see that their mother tongue has influenced the foreign language that they are trying to learn”. in the third stage, which asked teacher trainees to find cognate patterns, trainees encountered few problems in finding and guessing cognates forms. this activity encouraged a risk-taking approach to second language learning. findings: presenting cognates in the efl classroom teacher trainees’ initial approach to teaching cognates suggested that cognates do not have to be taught solely through recognition activities. however, trainees’ activities tended to be fairly controlled as students would be largely engaged in identifying visuals and undertaking matching exercises. after receiving input in the second part of the class, teacher trainees were given an opportunity to reflect on the exercises they had designed in order to decide whether they wanted to make the activities more relevant to their students’ needs. in the second part of the class, teacher trainees debated the sociocultural dimension of cognates and developed their critical awareness about how cognates are used in english. they were particularly interested in the phenomenon of ‘mock spanish’ perhaps because so many second-language users have suffered from rudeness in the target language (mugford, 2007). discussion centred on whether ‘mock spanish’ expressions, words, and phrases such as ‘dining for pesos’ or ‘adios’ (hill, 1995) were really insulting to spanish-language speakers. for example, hill argues that a newspaper advertisement in the united states which reads “dining for pesos” underscores the low value placed on mexican currency. blanca and adrian wrote that language learners should be aware of how these words were used because: “these words could be helpful for students to be aware of the use of words for insulting mexican people”. in the third stage, which reflected growing critical awareness, teacher trainees modified their activity plans to reflect more interactive and reflective activities (e.g., examining the history of cognates). the teaching-learning activities were more focused on producing language (e.g., student debates, role playing, and retelling stories). the selection and teaching of cognates were more centred on students’ language needs. in the fourth stage, teacher trainees reflected critically on two different ways of approaching cognates: recognition and production. teacher trainees argued that factors such as their students’ existing knowledge, language level, and profile 9.indd 138 21/04/2008 07:43:48 p.m. keeping a critical eye on “lexical friends”: cognates as critical pedagogy in pre-service teacher education profile 9, 2008. issn 1657-0790. bogotá, colombia. pages 129-141 139 individual context would have to be taken into consideration. although some trainees argued that “not all topics can be personalised”, pedro and gilberto contested that point of view stating that: “we think that personalizing the language is a good way to make it part of the ss themselves”. in examining the outcome of the two classes, i would argue that teacher trainees’ attitudes now reflect a more proactive stance towards the use of cognates and contrast heavily with typical textbook matching exercises and guessing activities. in conclusion, teacher trainees had thought seriously about how to make cognates more relevant to their future students’ lives. critical cognates although the previous exercises demonstrate how cognates can be practised in more productive and relevant ways than those currently offered in efl textbooks, i argue that there is a further step to be taken. cognates can be taught within a critical pedagogy. such an approach would ask students to examine how cognates reflect global economic, social and cultural expansion. for instance, students would be asked to reflect on the influence of fast food – brand names – product names in english etc. – students could use cognates as a springboard to reflect on their own attitudes and values towards the influence of english in their daily lives. such reflection also alerts students to the rate of change in contemporary language use. this approach to cognates asks students to consider critically whether the use of cognates reflects the encroachment of english into other languages or offers new ways for expressing ideas and emotions. instead of viewing cognates passively, students are encouraged to react to their proliferation in latin america. far from rejecting the use of cognates outright, students need to be encouraged to examine the motivation behind the use of cognate words. for instance, holmes & ramos (1993) argue that students should be “encouraged to look for the author’s purpose in writing the text and be alert for different points of view” (p. 93). as i have argued in this paper, cognates may be used to reflect status and prestige, or to insult and denigrate. conclusions in this paper i have tried to answer my research question: how can teacher trainees be prepared to teach cognates in ways that are more meaningful and relevant to their students? i have attempted to do this by highlighting recognition, production and reflection activities that reflect a critical mode to teaching and learning. however, in moving towards a critical pedagogy, cognates need to be seen as a productive resource for second-language users and not just a tool for the random recognition of words. in this research, i have argued that teachers need to engage their students interactively: students need to identify and reflect on patterns of use. furthermore, the activities offer ways in which language learners can take control of language learning and not just rely on given knowledge from teachers and textbooks. profile 9.indd 139 21/04/2008 07:43:48 p.m. mugford universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras140 the teaching and learning of cognates is not an all-or-nothing undertaking. students can improve their awareness of cognate words through the use of recognition, production or criticism activities. in conclusion, this paper has emphasised the importance of teaching and learning of cognates at all levels of language learning because they build confidence: by showing students – how much they already know; break down language barriers and help – learners to understand that a second language may not be that strange; underline how the student’s own – language may have contributed to the target language; help students to “become better – guessers” (holmes & ramos 1993, p. 90) and to improve vocabulary recognition and production strategies. the importance of the reflective, productive and critical ways of teaching cognates lies not only in that they raise teacher trainee awareness concerning different ways to approach vocabulary learning but also in that they encourage students to develop their own languagelearning strategies. furthermore, the reflective, productive and critical ways of teaching cognates allow teachers to help language learners develop wider vocabulary-learning techniques in terms of building student confidence, taking risks and carrying out educated guesses. cognates reflect the learners’ own input into the l2 context and, as lewis (1997) points out, it is inevitable that learners will use their l1 as a resource in the efl classroom. therefore, language teachers need to take advantage of this resource and not jettison cognates at the elementary level and purely focus on english-only approaches to language teaching. references corder, s. p. (1973). introducing applied linguistics. harmondsworth, uk: penguin. crystal, d. (1991). a dictionary of linguistics and phonetics. cambridge, ma: basil blackwell. crystal, d. (1987). the cambridge encyclopedia of language. cambridge: cambridge university press. davis, p., & rinvolucri, m. (1988). dictation. cambridge: cambridge university press. gairns, r., & redman, s. (1986). working with words. cambridge: cambridge university press. hatch, e., & brown, c. (1995). vocabulary, semantics, and language education. cambridge: cambridge university press. haynes, m. (1993). patterns and perils of guessing in second language reading. in huckin, t., m. haynes, & j. coady. (eds.). second language reading and vocabulary learning (pp. 46 64). norwood, new jersey: ablex. hill, j. (1995). mock spanish: the indexical reproduction of racism in american english. retrieved from http://www.deaflibrary.org/ nakamura/courses/linguisticanthro/hill1995slides/ holmes, j., & ramos, r. (1993). false friends and reckless guessers: observing cognate recognition strategies. in huckin t., m. haynes, & j. coady. (eds.). second language reading and vocabulary learning (pp 86 108). norwood, new jersey: ablex. irujo s. (2000). a process syllabus in a methodology course: experiences, beliefs, challenges. in breen j. p., & a. littlejohn. (eds.). classroom decisionmaking. cambridge: cambridge university press. larsen-freeman, d. (1986). techniques and principles in language teaching. oxford, uk: oxford university press. lewis, m. (1997). implementing the lexical approach. hove, uk: language teaching publications. profile 9.indd 140 21/04/2008 07:43:49 p.m. keeping a critical eye on “lexical friends”: cognates as critical pedagogy in pre-service teacher education profile 9, 2008. issn 1657-0790. bogotá, colombia. pages 129-141 141 melka, f. (1997). receptive vs. productive aspects of vocabulary. in schmitt n., & m. mccarthy. (eds.). vocabulary: description, acquisition and pedagogy (pp. 84 102). cambridge: cambridge university press, mugford, g. (2007). how rude! teaching impoliteness in the second-language classroom. elt journal, advance access published on september 29, 2007. nunan, d. (2001). action research in language education. in hall d. & a. hewings. (eds.), innovation in english language teaching. london: routledge. richards, j. c., & schmidt, r. (2002). longman dictionary of language teaching in applied linguistics. london: longman. about the author gerrard mugford works at la universidad de guadalajara, mexico, and holds a phd from the institute of education, university of london. his current research interests include critical pedagogy, interpersonal language use, and linguistic politeness. rivers, w. m., & temperley, m. s. (1978). a practical guide to the teaching of english as a second or foreign language. new york: oxford university press. rodríguez gonzález, f. (1996a). introduction. in rodríguez gonzález f. (ed.), spanish loanwords in the english language: a tendency towards hegemony reversed (pp. 1 12). berlin: mouton de gruyter. rodríguez gonzález, f. (ed.). (1996b). spanish loanwords in the english language: a tendency towards hegemony reversed. berlin: mouton de gruyter. profile 9.indd 141 21/04/2008 07:43:49 p.m. profile 10.indd action research on affective factors and language strategies: a pathway to critical reflection and teacher... profile 10, 2008. issn 1657-0790. bogotá, colombia. pages 195-210 195 * e-mail: yamithjose@gmail.com address: cra 78 j bis no. 57 b – 31 bogotá, colombia. this article was received on january 30, 2008 and accepted on september 22, 2008. action research on affective factors and language learning strategies: a pathway to critical reflection and teacher and learner autonomy investigación acción sobre factores afectivos y estrategias para el aprendizaje de lengua: una ruta hacia la reflexión crítica y la autonomía del profesor y del estudiante yamith josé fandiño parra* universidad de la salle this paper argues the importance of action research and critical reflection in the study of affective factors and language learning strategies in foreign language teaching. the starting point is a description of what affective factors and language learning strategies are and why colombian efl teachers should address these issues. critical reflection and action research are, then, presented as rigorous and systematic activities that teachers could engage in to help their students deal with the emotional difficulties of social interaction and language learning, to open their own work to inspection and, more importantly, to construct valid accounts of their educational practices. finally, action research is proposed as a powerful means for developing teacher and learner autonomy. key words: action research, teacher and learner autonomy, critical reflection, affective factors, language learning strategies (lls) en este artículo se argumenta la importancia de la investigación acción y la reflexión crítica en el estudio de los factores afectivos y las estrategias de aprendizaje en la enseñanza de idiomas extranjeros. se parte de una descripción de qué son los factores afectivos y las estrategias de aprendizaje de lengua y por qué los profesores colombianos de lengua extrajeras deberían investigar estos temas. luego se presentan la reflexión crítica y la investigación acción como actividades sistemáticas y rigurosas que los profesores pueden emplear para ayudar a sus estudiantes a enfrentar dificultades emocionales de la interacción social y del aprendizaje de lengua, para abrir su trabajo a inspección y, más importante aún, para construir relatos válidos sobre sus prácticas educativas. finalmente, se propone la investigación acción como un medio poderoso para desarrollar la autonomía del profesor y del estudiante. palabras clave: investigación acción, autonomía del profesor y del estudiante, reflexión crítica, factores afectivos, estrategias de aprendizaje de lengua profile 10, 2008. issn 1657-0790. bogotá, colombia. pages 195-210 profile 10.indd 195 23/10/2008 8:46:34 fandiño parra universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras196 introduction in the current economic climate of our country and the growing integration of the modern world, there appears to be a considerable degree of sociocultural pressure for colombians to become proficient at english. however, there also appear to be indications that many colombian efl learners do not know the relevance of beliefs, attitudes, anxieties, and motivations in language learning or the relevance of using proper use of language learning strategies (lls). in general, efl students seem to be unaware of the impact that certain affective and personal factors can have in their success in learning and speaking a foreign language (rubin & thompson, 1994). most of them tend to have poor or limited lls such as literal translation, rote memorization, inadequate note-taking, etc (griffiths, 2004). specifically, colombian efl students seem to lack the basic skills to start and maintain their language learning process successfully. many students, for instance, do not display awareness of how to use a dictionary, knowledge about how to store basic vocabulary, familiarity with the use of classroom instructions, etc. (fandiño, 2007). noticeably, efl students in general and colombian efl students in particular are not accustomed to paying attention to their own feelings and relationships in class or taking notice of their use of language learning strategies. this article argues the importance of addressing affective factors and language learning strategies in foreign language teaching by engaging in critical reflections and carrying out action research projects. not only can these reflections and projects provide students with appropriate activities to face up to the emotional difficulties of social interaction and language learning, but they can also help teachers open their work to systematic inspection and construct valid accounts of their educational practices. affective factors and language learning strategies the affective domain or dimension of learning has been neglected by traditional methodologies. according to feder (1987), affective factors have habitually depended on the teacher’s temperament. that is to say, considerations for beliefs, attitudes, anxieties and motivations have been incidental rather than integral to the teaching methodology and have not been grounded in a conscious philosophy of pedagogy. affective factors should not continue being considered the cinderella of mental functions, since they “link what is important for us to the world of people, things, and happenings” (oatley & jenkins, 1996, p. 122 cited in arnold, 1999, p. 2). concerning affection, caine & caine (1991, p. 82) noted: “we do not simply learn. what we learn is influenced and organized by emotions and mindsets based on expectancy, personal biases and prejudices, degree of self-esteem, and the need for social interaction[...]”. consequently, colombian efl teachers need to focus on tackling problems created by negative emotions and developing more positive, facilitative mindsets in the efl classroom. one effective way to work with affective factors in efl classes is the teaching of language learning strategies profile 10.indd 196 23/10/2008 8:46:34 action research on affective factors and language strategies: a pathway to critical reflection and teacher... profile 10, 2008. issn 1657-0790. bogotá, colombia. pages 195-210 197 (lls). according to oxford (1990, p. 1), language learning strategies are specific actions, behaviours, steps, or techniques that students (often intentionally) use to improve their progress in developing l2 skills and communicative ability. the past three decades have seen a growing interest in studying how language learning strategies help students acquire a second or foreign language (stawowy, 2004). lls theorists attribute students’ success rate in language learning to the varying use of strategies. furthermore, they believe that these strategies are teachable skills, meaning that teachers can help in the language learning process by getting students aware of strategies and encouraging their use. thus, colombian efl teachers can heighten learner awareness about affection and other relevant issues (memorization, cognition, metacognition, etc) by providing strategy training as part of the foreign language curriculum (see appendix 1). affective factors and language learning strategies as issues for colombian efl teachers the inadequate familiarity with lls and the negligible awareness of affective factors that efl students have are issues that colombian efl teachers need to address in order to aid their students in mastering english successfully; indeed, it is a tool that can assist them in satisfying certain personal, social, professional and cultural needs, wants, and goals. if colombian efl teachers want their students to develop their inherent potential to learn, affective factors such as anxiety, motivation, self-esteem, beliefs and attitudes can no longer be denied and the inner needs of their learners can no longer be neglected (andres, 2002). similarly, they can enhance the foreign language learning process by making students aware of lls, helping students understand good lls, training them to develop them and, ultimately, encouraging their use (graham, 1997; chamot & o’malley, 1994). as a result, affective factors and lls are issues that colombian efl teachers need to reflect on, not simply items with which to improve language teaching and education in the process, but, more importantly, means to help students live more satisfying lives and be responsible members of society by exercising reflection and autonomy. williams & burden (1997, p. 28) reinforce the idea of working on affective factors in language teaching when they affirm that education must focus on the learner as a developing individual making sense of and constructing meaning in his/ her own world. in their model, the learner is an individual with affective needs and reactions which must be considered as an integral part of learning, as also must the particular life contexts of those who are involved in the teaching-learning process. tooman (2006) concurs with these authors when she states that stimulating the affective dimension of learning is vital for (adult) education because learners become bored and may abdicate from sustained learning endeavors without the emotive stimuli in the affective dimension. to tooman, educators must deal with the whole person in and out of the classroom if they want to succeed in their efforts to facilitate human growth and development profile 10.indd 197 23/10/2008 8:46:34 fandiño parra universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras198 and the integration of the person’s mind, body, spirit, emotions, relationships, and socio-cultural context. the work on affective factors has been greatly supported by humanism. wang (2005) explains that humanism emphasizes the importance of the inner world of the human being and places the individual’s thoughts, feelings and emotions at the forefront of all human developments. affect is not one of the basic needs of human beings, but the condition and premise of the other physical and psychological activities. to wang, educators should focus their efforts on the development of human values, the growth in self-awareness and in the understanding of others, the sensitivity to human feelings and emotions and the active student involvement in learning and in the way learning takes place. with regard to humanism, stevick claims that “in a language course, success depends less on materials, techniques and linguistic analyses, and more on what goes on inside and between the people in the classroom” (1980, p. 4). attention to affective factors and interest in humanism show not only a desire (on the part of researchers and practitioners) to examine and adopt ideas from other disciplines (e.g. psychology, sociology and philosophy), but also an awareness of the expanding role of efl/esl as a vehicle of education and of “learning” per se. as an educational endeavor, efl/esl should aim at enabling people, without exception, to develop all their talents to the full and to realize their creative potential, including responsibility for their own lives and achievement of their personal goals. in this light, delors et al. (1996) maintain that educators should help students learn throughout life, which consists of helping students learn to know, learn to do, learn to live together and learn to be. accordingly, efl/esl should teach students to learn to learn in order to allow them to achieve their full potential as citizens of the world. in simple terms, esl/efl teachers need to contribute to every student’s complete development – mind and body, intelligence, sensitivity, aesthetic appreciation and spirituality. this new role of efl/esl, helping students learn throughout life, involves a broader understanding of what language teaching means and entails. language teaching should not simply be understood as a methodical effort to develop students’ communicative competence but as an educational commitment to helping students learn to learn throughout life. that is to say, language teaching should help students acquire the skills, knowledge, attitudes and strategies they need in order to interact with their learning in an informed and self-directed manner. in sum, language teachers should not only strive to help students become good language users, but also should help students become successful learners and fulfilled individuals. this broader understanding of esl/efl, esl/efl as an educational commitment to learning throughout life, calls for critical and systematic reflection from esl/efl teachers. thinking over their experiences as educators can allow esl/efl teachers to review critically their roles, challenges and responsibilities, which ultimately can open up space for transformation and improvement (see discussion on critical reflection below). however, colombian efl profile 10.indd 198 23/10/2008 8:46:34 action research on affective factors and language strategies: a pathway to critical reflection and teacher... profile 10, 2008. issn 1657-0790. bogotá, colombia. pages 195-210 199 teachers should not simply reflect to provide their students with appropriate activities, materials and methods to understand and face up to the emotional, personal and sociocultural demands of foreign language learning. their reflections must go beyond merely achieving instructional aims. colombian efl teachers should strive to observe, question and understand the teaching settings in which they work and the teaching practices they follow. in other words, teachers’ reflections should be directed toward bringing to light the implicit rationale behind things done in class and at examining the beliefs and values that form or shape actions in class. this way, colombian efl teachers can not only focus on the learner as an individual with affective needs and reactions that must be considered integral to language learning, but can also open their own work to critical inspection and to construct valid accounts of their educational language practices. critical reflection in the last 30 years, several authors have assumed that teachers are researchers who should permanently submit their daily practice to rigorous self-examination to overcome their repetitive routine by continuously reflecting on and transforming their practices (see stenhouse, 1993; elliot, 1994; mckernan, 1996; kemmis, 1998, etc.). educational research should aim to explain what actually happens inside the classroom, the direct and indirect influence of internal and external factors related to the student, the teacher and the elt curriculum (van lier, 1988). at the heart of teachers’ educational research, there should be a focus on critically inquiring into their own practice. in other words, teachers should use educational research to think about their own contexts, to analyze their judgments and interpretations and to distance themselves to make the basis of their work open to inspection. one critical way to open teachers’ work to inspection is what donald schön called practice-as-inquiry. this inquiry occurs when the practitioner reflects both while engaged in action and, subsequently, on the action itself as an attempt to make his or her own understanding problematic to him or herself. the teacher-researcher strives to test his or her constructions of the situation by bringing to the surface, juxtaposing, and discriminating alternate accounts of reality. the point is to see the taken-for-granted with new eyes, to be able to come out of this experience with an expanded appreciation of the complexity of learning, of teaching, and of a stronger sense of how external realities affect what the teacher-researcher can (wants to) really do (schön, 1983). another proponent of practice-asinquiry is whitehead. he regards it as a way to construct a living educational theory from practitioner’s questions of the kind: how do i improve my practice? valid accounts of a teacher’s educational development, explains whitehead, should be accepted when teachers ask themselves how to improve their practices, undertake to improve some aspect of their practice, reflect systematically on such a process and provide insights into the nature of their descriptions and explanations. with this standpoint, whitehead does not deny the importance of propositional forms of understanding. instead, he argues for a profile 10.indd 199 23/10/2008 8:46:34 fandiño parra universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras200 reconstruction of educational theory into a living form of question and answer which includes propositional contributions from the traditional disciplines of education (whitehead, 1988). in a similar vein, restrepo (2000) explains that teachers, in fact, do research when they submit their daily practice to rigorous self-examination to face and transform their everyday practices in ways that respond adequately to their working environment, the needs of their students and their sociocultural agenda. to him, teachers as educational practitioners can use retrospection, introspection and participative observation to clarify guiding theories and to specify pedagogical interventions in order to re-signify and transform unsuccessful practices. he argues that, if done systematically and consistently, the empirical doing of teachers can become a reflective doing, a reflective practice. this “pedagogical knowhow” can allow teachers both to overcome their repetitive routine and to objectify their practices, which can ultimately help them reflect on and transform their practices simultaneously. cárdenas & faustino (2003) discuss the importance of critical reflection and research when they show the necessity of preparing students and future teachers to possess not only linguistic competence in the foreign languages, but also competences that allow them to reflect, analyze and find ways of improving their professional practice. to them, more and more colombian efl teachers are looking into their practice –both in their classrooms and their educational institutions– to solve the problems they find or to improve their practice and their students’ learning processes. they are resorting to research as an informed way to lead action and change. similarly, gonzález & sierra (2005) assert that colombian efl teacher educators rely on six main alternatives to face the challenges in their professional growth. among these alternatives for professional development, doing research is regarded as the most important academic activity in order to maintain the standards set by the profession since it is the bridge between reality and change. systematic reflection on practice is another significant alternative colombian efl teacher educators have to enhance their professional development. according to gonzález & sierra, teacher educators report learning from their own successes and failures and becoming better teachers after confronting their ideal views and experiences. cárdenas (2002, 2004) shows that critical reflection in research has a series of positive effects for the colombian efl field. teachers become more active and interested in keeping an inquiring attitude in order to give meaning to their daily work. they look for connections between theories and practice and become more accurate and analytical observers. they also work cooperatively with students and colleagues to systematically construct personal and workable theories. to cárdenas, critical reflection and research empower colombian efl teachers because these allow them to become agents of change committed to developing a pedagogically grounded understanding of their areas of concern, their working conditions and their everyday practices. critical reflection is, then, a necessary profile 10.indd 200 23/10/2008 8:46:34 action research on affective factors and language strategies: a pathway to critical reflection and teacher... profile 10, 2008. issn 1657-0790. bogotá, colombia. pages 195-210 201 condition for teachers to understand the underlying principles of their practices and to open up space for professional and personal transformation. action research as stated before, colombian efl teachers should not simply aim at doing research to create new or improved activities, practices and principles; they should do research to bring to light the rationale behind those activities, practices and principles. in particular, research should allow teachers to engage in critical reflection about their set of beliefs or expectations about what language learning is, how a foreign language is learned and why certain practices or activities are acceptable or not in a foreign language classroom. evidently, the integration between teaching, researching and learning requires a type of research that proffers reflection and self-examination to teachers and students. this integration also requires a type of research in which teachers can search for solutions to everyday, real problems experienced in classrooms, or look for ways to improve instruction and increase student achievement. based on these requirements, colombian efl studies can use action research (ar) to provide for a type of research in which teaching, learning, reflection and self-actualization can take place in the classroom. rightly, parrot (1996, p. 3) defined ar as follows: […]not so much something that we do in addition to our teaching but as something that we integrate into it. in many ways it is a state of mind – it is skepticism about assumptions and a willingness to put everything to the test[…] it is a way of ensuring that we continue to learn even as we teach. it helps stave off staleness and routine. according to mcniff (2002), ar is a term which refers to a practical way of looking at one’s own work in order to check that it is as one would like it to be. because ar is done by oneself, the practitioner, it is often referred to as practitioner based research, because it involves one’s thinking about and reflecting on one’s work, it can also be called a form of self-reflective practice. the idea of self reflection is central because action researchers enquire into their own practices. to mcniff, ar is an enquiry conducted by the self into the self. one, as a practitioner, think about one’s own life and work, and this involves asking oneself why one does the things that one does, and why one is the way one is. as concerns mcniff ’s point of view, when one produces one’s research report, it shows how one has carried out a systematic investigation into one’s own behaviour, and the reasons for that behaviour. the report shows the process one has gone through in order to achieve a better understanding of oneself, so that one can continue developing oneself and one’s work. different scholars have discussed ar. in 1986, carr & kemmis stated that ar was a form of self-reflective enquiry that participants in social situations undertook in order to improve the rationality and justice of their own practices and the situations in which these practices were carried out. in 1988, kemmis & mctaggart defined ar as a combination of the terms “action” and “research” because it puts ideas into practice for the purpose of selfimprovement and increases knowledge profile 10.indd 201 23/10/2008 8:46:35 fandiño parra universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras202 about curriculum, teaching, and learning. to them, the ultimate result of ar is improvement in what happens in the classroom and school. more recently, mckernan (1996) explained that ar was systematic self-reflective inquiry by practitioners to improve practice. in mckernan’s opinion, ar is the reflective process whereby in a given problem area in which one wishes to improve practice or personal understanding, critical and systematic inquiry is carried out by oneself, the practitioner. a variety of procedural plans has been proposed by different scholars regardless of how ar is understood and why it is promoted. all adopt methodical and interactive sequences of research. these sequences are meant to offer a systematic approach to introducing innovations in teaching and learning. they seek to do this by putting the teacher in the role of producer of educational theory and user of this theory. the process of researching in ar brings theory and practice together. according to madrid (2000, p. 22), there are four classic developmental phases of ar, to wit: phase 1: develop a plan of action • to a) improve what is already happening or b) identify and examine a “puzzle” or problem area in your teaching; phase 2: act to implement the plan;• phase 3: observe the effects of action • in the context in which it occurs, and phase 4: reflect• on these effects. these stages are shown in the following diagram: cárdenas (2000, 2006) states that ar is a form of self-inquiry leading to the interpretation and improvement of teachers’ teaching practices as well as to understanding the situations where they take place. ar is an alternative that centres teachers’ reflection on their educational contexts and allows for the discovery of new disciplinary knowledge. to cárdenas, ar enhances feelings of responsibility, ownership and confidence because teachers can evaluate received knowledge and suggested innovations in light of their school life. based on the previous theoretical considerations, ar can be regarded as a reflective activity dealing with issues arising from the formative quality of the curricular experiences and about the pedagogical conditions that make them possible. reports based on ar can be found in colombian journals. in 2005, ríos & valcárcel used ar in their effort to show how english language learning can be developed from reading processes involving the other language skills and can help students to develop individual and social skills. they found ar to be an effective means to confront common problems including people who are involved in those diagram 1. basic stages of action research (madrid, 2000). profile 10.indd 202 23/10/2008 8:46:35 action research on affective factors and language strategies: a pathway to critical reflection and teacher... profile 10, 2008. issn 1657-0790. bogotá, colombia. pages 195-210 203 problems. forero (2005) decided to use steps of the ar model proposed by burns (1999) in a research project carried out in order to implement task-based learning with a group of 50 seventh graders to improve oral interaction. ar was also used by ariza (2005) in her research study involving the use of a series of activities related to the generation of ideas and the focus on stages from the process writing approach. these are just a few samples of works done by colombian efl teachers who have used ar in their personal efforts to enhance understanding and improve their educational contexts. when using ar to transform their educational contexts, teachers can be learners interested in studying the curricular and pedagogical considerations surrounding their practices and, at the same time, researchers who regard their practices as provisional and unsatisfactory and who use research to achieve changes that are educationally worthy. additionally, students can become active agents in their learning process; agents who take charge of their learning process by generating ideas and availing themselves of learning opportunities, rather than simply reacting to various stimuli of the teacher. in brief, ar can be regarded as an effective way to promote teacher and learner autonomy as a result of new and better pedagogical and methodological opportunities (see further discussion). teacher autonomy apart from systematization, documentation, understanding and knowledge, ar provides teachers with autonomy. here, i do not understand autonomy as a generalized “right to freedom from control” (benson, 2000) or as “a teacher’s capacity to engage in self-directed teaching” (little, 1995), but as a capacity for self-directed teacher-learning (smith, 2000). smith explained that the idea education should embrace teacher autonomy is not at heart a new proposition (advocates of teacher development, teacher-research, classroom-research and so on would appear to share this goal implicitly) (2000, p. 95). what might be a relatively new idea is the emphasis on the development of autonomy through reflective teacher-learning. this autonomy must be understood as a critical reflection that teachers do on when, where, how and from what sources they (should) learn. this type of autonomy mainly takes place when teachers monitor the extent to which they constrain or scaffold students’ thinking and behavior, when they reflect on their own role in the classroom, when they attempt to understand and advise students, and, ultimately, when they engage in investigative activities. actual engagement in and concern with reflective teacher-learning appear, then, to be a powerful means for developing teacher autonomy, particularly when it is explicitly linked to action research. reflective teacherlearning and ar are essential for teachers to construct autonomy. this autonomy takes place when teachers gain better abilities and a greater willingness to learn for themselves. it emerges when teachers develop an appropriate expertise of their own. the point i am trying to make here is that colombian efl teachers can become autonomous if they use ar and reflective teacher-learning as a methodology profile 10.indd 203 23/10/2008 8:46:35 fandiño parra universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras204 to develop a capacity to inspect their own work, to validate their educational development and, ultimately, to foster learner autonomy. usma (2007) explains that research on professional development as a means for teacher autonomy has revealed the positive effects that action research and study groups, among other alternatives of development, have on teachers’ knowledge, attitudes, and actions depending on the content and process of these types of endeavors. based on his comprehensive literature review, usma confirms the positive effects that teacher-directed research, continuous connection between theory and practice, practical workshops, discussions, continuous feedback, critical reflection, and conducting and reporting teacher research have on teachers’ engagement with professional development and exercise of autonomy. to him, effective professional development experiences allow participants to increase their awareness of innovative practices, improve their attitudes towards the teaching-learning process, use their power to generate change in their schools and, ultimately, exercise control over teaching and assessment, curriculum development, school functioning, or professional development matters. pineda & frodden (2008) state that making part of a collaborative action research project can transform an efl teacher from a thoughtful person into a reflective professional because he/she gets involved in continuous cycles to plan, carry out and evaluate actions, which helps him/ her to gain awareness of their teacher’s role and to renew their engagement with the profession. the authors explain that collaborative dialogue with colleagues or research groups is a major influence on teachers’ professional development since it helps them enhance their critical thinking, take into account the multiple contextual factors that a teacher needs to consider when making decisions, and reminds them of the social responsibility we have to improve our educational contexts. the authors claim that doing action research can be viewed as a means to be better prepared for the challenges we encounter in our profession, which ultimately give us space and opportunities to self-direct their professional learning and development. to sum up, ar can be the basis for colombian efl teachers’ autonomy. first of all, ar is a feasible effective form of selfinquiry to interpret and improve teaching practices and educational contexts. many efl teachers have demonstrated that as teacher-researchers they can reflect about what successful foreign language teaching involves and how effective practices can be approached in foreign language classrooms. their ar studies have not only contributed to the expansion of knowledge, but have also opened space for study groups. definitely, ar can and has helped colombian efl teachers develop their own expertise. learner autonomy cast in a new perspective and regarded as understanding the purpose of their learning programme, explicitly accepting responsibility for their learning, learners, autonomous learners, that is, are expected to reflect critically on and take charge of their own learning (little, 1995). for all profile 10.indd 204 23/10/2008 8:46:35 action research on affective factors and language strategies: a pathway to critical reflection and teacher... profile 10, 2008. issn 1657-0790. bogotá, colombia. pages 195-210 205 intents and purposes, the autonomous learner takes a (pro-) active role in the learning process, generating ideas and availing himor herself of learning opportunities, rather than simply reacting to various stimuli of the teacher. in other words, the autonomous learner is a selfactivated maker of meaning, an active agent in his own learning process. the learner is not one to whom things merely happen; the learner is the one who, by his own volition, causes things to happen (rathbone, 1971, p. 100 cited in candy, 1991, p. 271). however, learner autonomy does not mean that the teacher becomes redundant; abdicating his/her control over what is transpiring in the language learning process. instead, learner autonomy involves a dynamic process learned at least partly through educational experiences and interventions (candy, 1991, cited in thanasoulas, 2000, p. 115). what permeates this article is the belief that in order to help learners to assume greater control over their own learning, it is important that colombian efl teachers help them to become aware of and identify the strategies that they already use or could potentially use. in other words, autonomous learning is by no means teacherless learning. as sheerin (1997, cited in benson & voller, 1997, p. 63) succinctly put it, “[…]teachers have a crucial role to play in launching learners into self-access and in lending them a regular helping hand to stay afloat”. thus, the teacher’s role is to create and maintain a learning environment in which learners can be autonomous in order to become more autonomous. learner autonomy can, then, be promoted through ar studies on language learning strategies because, as thanasoulas (2000) explained, learner autonomy mainly consists of becoming aware of and identifying one’s strategies, needs and goals as a learner and having the opportunity to reconsider and refashion approaches and procedures for optimal learning. ar studies on language learning strategies can do just that. they can help students become aware of and familiar with thoughts, behaviors, mental steps or operations to learn a new language and to regulate their efforts to do so. they can also encourage them to assume greater responsibility for their own language learning and help them assume control over their own learning process. luna & sánchez (2005) explain that the classroom is one of the fundamental areas for gaining autonomy in the context of colombian efl learning. they explain that the promotion and education of people about autonomous learning implies a pedagogic approach which focuses on specific socio-cultural needs in and out of the classroom. that is to say, pedagogic innovations which guide the participants –both students and teachers– to discover their needs and individual learning styles, to tackle new learning strategies and to enhance cognitive, social and reflective processes required in the learning of a new language. to them, the use of learning strategies from the start of the learning process helps learners to be directors of their own learning, to plan, monitor and evaluate their learning tasks, which leaves room for self-regulation and the transfer of knowledge, skills and actions from the classroom to new social and cultural areas. similarly, habte-gabr’s (2006) research with university students in bogotá showed profile 10.indd 205 23/10/2008 8:46:35 fandiño parra universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras206 that language learning strategies in general and socioaffective language learning strategies in particular should be considered central to studying efl because, as he noticed in his study, students in colombia tend to seek a mentorship relationship with their teachers and tend to learn more when they are able to share aspects of their personal life and form strong bonds. he regarded socio-affective strategies as tactics to stimulate learning through establishing a level of empathy between the instructor and student. according to him, the enhancement of socio-affective strategies permits the student to eventually learn how to see the instructor as a resource for acquiring language and content and to assume greater responsibility for their own language learning at the same time that they are provided with options to obtain humane support. as can be seen, critical reflection and action research studies on language learning strategies and affective factors can launch students into generating new or improved behaviors and ideas in their learning process and into availing themselves of learning opportunities, which ultimately brings about their own autonomy. conclusion colombian efl teachers should address issues of affective factors and language learning strategies by engaging in critical reflection and carrying out action research projects. not only can these reflections and projects provide their students with appropriate activities to face up to the emotional difficulties of social interaction and language learning, but they can also open their own work to systematic inspection and construct valid accounts of their educational practices. critical reflection in general and ar in particular appear to be powerful means for developing both teacher autonomy and learner autonomy. on the one hand, critical reflection and ar projects can develop teacher autonomy because new methodological and pedagogical opportunities are opened up for teachers to develop an appropriate expertise of their own. on the other hand, learner autonomy is developed because students can become aware of and identify their strategies, needs and goals as learners in order to reconsider and refashion approaches and procedures for optimal language learning. in the end, action research studies on language learning strategies can help colombian efl teachers and students realize that they can and should be active, reflective and autonomous agents of their language teaching and learning processes. references andres, v. 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(2004, february). language learning strategies: theory and research. in school of foundations studies, occasional paper, 1. ais st helens, auckland: new zealand. retrieved august 20, 2006 from web site: http://www. crie.org.nz/research_paper/c_griffiths_op1. pdf gonzález, a. & sierra, n. (2005). the professional development of foreign language teacher educators: another challenge for professional communities. ikala, revista de lenguage y cultura, 10(16), 11-39. retrieved july 20, 2008 from íkala web site: http://quimbaya.udea.edu.co/ikala/ index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id =333&itemid=102 habte-gabr, e. the importance of socio-affective strategies in using efl for teaching mainstream subjects. humanising english teaching, 8(5), (sept. 2006). retrieved august 20, 2006 from web site: http://www.hltmag.co.uk/sep06/sart02.htm kemmis, s. (1998). el currículo más allá de la teoría de la reproducción. madrid: ediciones morata. kemmis, s. & mctaggart, r. (1988). the action research planner. (3rd edition). australia: deakin university press. little, d. (1995). learning as dialogue: the dependence of learner autonomy on teacher autonomy. system, 23(2), 175-181. profile 10.indd 207 23/10/2008 8:46:36 fandiño parra universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras208 luna, m. & sánchez, d. k. (2005). profiles of autonomy in the field of foreign languages. profile, 6, 133-140. madrid, d. (2000). observation and research in the classroom. teaching english as a foreign language, 1-100. mckernan, j. (1996). curriculum action research. a handbook of methods and resources for the reflective practitioner (2nd ed.). london: kogan. mcniff, j. (2002). action research for professional development: concise advice for new action researchers. jean mcniff, booklet 1(6). retrieved august 20, 2006 from http://www.jeanmcniff. com/booklet1.html#6 oatley, k. & jenkis, j. (1996). understanding emotions. oxford: blackwell. oxford, r. (1990). language learning strategies: what every teacher should know. new york: newbury house. parrot, m. (1996). tasks for language teachers: a resource book for training and development. uk: cambridge university press. pineda, d. & frodden, c. (2008). the development of a novice teacher’s autonomy in the context of efl in colombia. profile, 9, 143-162. rathbone, c. h. (1971). open education: the informal classroom. new york: citation press. restrepo, b. (2000). maestro investigador, escuela investigadora e investigación. cuadernos pedagógicos, 14, 97-106. ríos, s. r. & valcárcel, a. m. (2005). reading: a meaningful way to promote learning english in high school. profile 6, 37-46. rubin, j. & thompson, i. (1994). how to be a more successful language learner (2nd ed.). boston, ma: heinle & heinle. sheerin, s. (1997). an exploration of the relationship between self-access and independent learning. in p. benson & p. voller (eds.), autonomy and independence in language learning (pp. 54-65). london: longman. schön, d. (1983). the reflective practitioner: how professionals think in action. new york: basic books. smith, r. (2000). starting with ourselves: teacherlearner autonomy in language learning. in b. sinclair, i. mcgrath, & t. lamb, (eds.), learner autonomy, teacher autonomy: new directions (pp. 89-99). london: addison wesley longman. retrieved august 20, 2007 from web site: http:// www.warwick.ac.uk/~elsdr/teacher_autonomy. pdf stenhouse, l. (1993). la investigación como base de la enseñanza. madrid: ediciones morata. stevick, e. (1980). teaching language: a way and ways. rowley, mass: newbury house. stawowy d. m. (2004). learning strategies in the secondary foreign language classroom: an essential curriculum component for beginning students. master’s project in curriculum and instruction. the college of william and mary: school of education. retrieved july 10, 2006 from web site: http://web. wm.edu/education/599/04projects/diaz. pdf?&=&svr=www thanasoulas, d. (2000, november). what is learner autonomy and how it can be fostered? the internet tesl journal, 6(11). retrieved july 17, 2007 from web site: http://iteslj.org/articles/ thanasoulas-autonomy.html tooman, t. (2006). affective learning: activities to promote values comprehension. soultice training. retrieved august 20, 2008 from web site: http://www.soulsticetraining.com/ commentary/affective.html usma, j. (2007). teacher autonomy: a critical review of the research and concept beyond applied linguistics. ikala revista del lenguage y cultura, 12(18), 245-275. retrieved july 20, 2008 from íkala web site: http://quimbaya.udea.edu.co/ ikala/index.php?option=com_content&task=vie w&id=333&itemid=102 van lier, l. (1988). the classroom and the language learner. ethnography and second language classroom research. harlow: longman. wang, g. (2005). humanistic approach and affective factors in foreign language teaching. sino-us english teaching, 2(5), 1-5. retrieved august 10, 2006 from http://www.linguist.org.cn/doc/ su200505/su20050501.pdf whitehead, j. (1988). creating a living educational theory from questions of the kind, how do i improve my practice? cambridge journal profile 10.indd 208 23/10/2008 8:46:36 action research on affective factors and language strategies: a pathway to critical reflection and teacher... profile 10, 2008. issn 1657-0790. bogotá, colombia. pages 195-210 209 of education, 19(1), 41-52. retrieved august 20, 2006 from web site: http://www.bath. ac.uk/%7eedsajw/writings/livtheory.html williams, m. & burden, r. l. (1997). psychology for language teachers: a social constructivist approach. cambridge: cambridge university press. about the author yamith j. fandiño holds a ba in english philology from the national university of colombia and an ma in teaching from la salle university. he has taught efl to young and adult learners. he currently works at la salle and distrital universities in bogotá. profile 10.indd 209 23/10/2008 8:46:36 fandiño parra universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras210 appendix 1. affective factors and language learning strategies affective factors language learning strategies beliefs the constructed assumptions, opinions, conceptions and expectations that efl learners have about themselves as learners, the language, their classroom and the learning process. memory strategies creating mental linkages. applying images and sounds. reviewing well. employing action. cognitive strategies practicing. receiving and sending messages. analyzing and reasoning. note taking. deduction/induction. substitution. elaboration. summarizing. inferencing. transfer. attitudes the evaluative and socioaffective reactions, thoughts and predispositions that efl students have towards language learners, english and its culture, the value of learning the target language, and the learning situation itself. compensation strategies guessing intelligently. overcoming limitations in speaking and writing. anxiety a subjective state of apprehension, nervousness, and worry associated with an arousal of the autonomic nervous system which occurs when a student is expected to perform in a foreign language. metacognitive strategies centering your learning. arranging and planning your learning. evaluating your learning. selective attention. problem identification. self-management. self-monitoring. affective strategies lowering your anxiety. encouraging yourself. taking your emotional temperature. self-reinforcement. motivation the desire, the interest, the satisfaction, the persistence and the effort that learners have to achieve tasks or reach goals satisfactorily in a language classroom. social strategies asking questions. cooperating with others. empathizing with others. profile 10.indd 210 23/10/2008 8:46:36 profile 3.p65 ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ 55 profileprofileprofileprofileprofile s torytelling has been used as a means to help students of a private school improve their communicative skills. to achieve this goal, we have designed activities that enable students to use english actively and at the same time get in touch with literature. we expect to change students’ attitudes towards english and to motivate them to develop proficiency in the foreign language through storytelling. in doing so, we are innovating our teaching practices by incorporating a tool that can provide students with both the means and the motivation for using the language and thus develop their communicative skills. intrintrintrintrintroductionoductionoductionoductionoduction the idea of developing this classroom research is a form of self-reflection in order to improve our educational practices. it plays an important part in reflective teaching as personal and professional development occur when we teachers review our experiences in a systematic way, evaluating our teaching methods as well as the materials used in class to establish which ones best suit our students and our curriculum. it is then expected that this research will enable us to evaluate our pedagogical knowledge to use storytelling in the english class. kkkkkey theoretical principlesey theoretical principlesey theoretical principlesey theoretical principlesey theoretical principles the use of literature is an answer to the need to expose children from an early age to an understanding of the way language functions. stories are an essential part of all cultures around the world. the tolerance and comprehension of different cultures through a wide variety of cultures produce very positive results because all children enjoy stories, myths and legends. listening to tales recorded in foreign languages and telling tales and traditional legends nurtures their curiosity and their inner capacity to listen and read for meaning. as can be seen, storytelling helps us to change traditional classes into very interesting ones. there are further reasons why teachers use storybooks. among those reasons we can point out some listed by ellis and brewster (1991): • stories can help students develop positive attitudes towards language learning. • they exercise the imagination. children can become personally involved in a story as they identify with the characters and try to interpret the narrative and illustrations. • stories provide a way to link fantasy and the imagination with the child’s real world. • listening to stories in class is a shared social experience. storytelling can help build up the child’s confidence and encourage social and emotional development. • as children enjoy listening to stories over and over again, repetition allows natural language acquisition. • listening to stories allows the introduction or revision of new vocabulary and language patterns. storytelling: a path to imagination and creativity in the primary english class gloria barreto correagloria barreto correagloria barreto correagloria barreto correagloria barreto correa glorembar@hotmail.com ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ 56profileprofileprofileprofileprofile sample 1: rapunzel (used with permission) sample 2: rapunzel (used with permission) ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ 57 profileprofileprofileprofileprofile the prthe prthe prthe prthe processocessocessocessocess this project has been developed with students of 2nd elementary level at a public school located in the south of bogotá. to begin with, we have worked with two tales that have captured the attention of all the pupils and stimulated their interest: rapunzel and puss in boots. stories were read using different strategies to make students focus on meaning (inferring, predicting, and guessing). i showed the students the cover of the books to generate their desire to read the stories. in this activity my students used their linguistic intelligence by using language forms to ask for and give information. we also commented on the colourful pictures to help students grasp the ideas contained in the stories. also, we stimulated storytellers. their reports encouraged the class to check meaning and details and to exchange ideas about their understanding of the texts. furthermore, the students drew pictures about the plot of the stories. most of them accompanied their drawings with some sentences according to the reading. finally, their papers were displayed around the classroom and volunteers were invited to show them and to retell the stories to the whole class. as can be seen in the samples, some students focused on summarising the stories (sample 1) while others included in their written works the most significant aspects, that is to say, the details that caught their attention (sample 2). first findingsfirst findingsfirst findingsfirst findingsfirst findings so far, the results have shown that students like stories because they are exploited through varied and interesting activities during the whole class. stories have enhanced students’ motivation; they have helped us to keep the student’s attention, stimulated visual memory and improved their imagination and fantasy. likewise, they have reinforced their speaking skills through different exercises like: retelling the story, drawing and describing pictures, word exercises, remembering and describing some scenes of the stories. in addition, stories have provided meaningful alternatives to teach new vocabulary which is then recycled in the retelling activities we have engaged in. regarding comprehension i should point out that i have observed that students show understanding of the texts we read not only through formal linguistic patterns, but also by drawing pictures about them. to sum up, story telling is an authentic resource of the written language. children like hearing stories and they are always creating and telling them. storytelling is a great option to successful learning because it is a good way to interact with children and encourages interaction among them. also, the stories make children develop their imagination to be more creative and at the same time they awaken their interest and habits about reading. referencesreferencesreferencesreferencesreferences ellis, g. and brewster, j. (1991). the storytelling handbook for primary teachers. london: penguin english. profile profile 5.pmd ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ 128 profileprofileprofileprofileprofile key aspects for developing your instructional materials aspectos cruciales para elaborar materiales instruccionales astrid núñez parastrid núñez parastrid núñez parastrid núñez parastrid núñez pardododododo* faceduc@uexternado.edu.co clelia pineda báez, ph.dclelia pineda báez, ph.dclelia pineda báez, ph.dclelia pineda báez, ph.dclelia pineda báez, ph.d** clelia1@rocketmail.com maría fernanda téllez téllezmaría fernanda téllez téllezmaría fernanda téllez téllezmaría fernanda téllez téllezmaría fernanda téllez téllez*** mariafer80@tutopia.com universidad externado de colombia this article describes crucial aspects that efl teachers must consider for the elaboration of materials to support the instructional design component of their classes. it also emphasizes that language educators should not only maintain a balance between theory and practice when developing their didactic resources, but they also should keep themselves updated in terms of the latest research in the language education field. the article also addresses key questions teachers should formulate before beginning the process of design, and provides useful ideas to develop dynamic, content enriching, and visually attractive materials. kkkkkey worey worey worey worey words: ds: ds: ds: ds: course design, material design, motivational design, content enriching materials, attractive layouts, teachers’ creativity este artículo describe aspectos cruciales que los docentes de inglés como lengua extranjera deben tener en cuenta para la elaboración de materiales de apoyo del componente de instrucción de sus clases. también enfatiza que los *astrid núñez parastrid núñez parastrid núñez parastrid núñez parastrid núñez pardo,do,do,do,do, degree in hotel and tourism business management, universidad externado de colombia. postgraduate diploma in linguistic studies, university of essex, colchester, england. currently, english program coordinator, teacher-researcher and material designer, school of education, universidad externado de colombia and author of the series “economics and business readings for english 1, 2, 3, and 4” (publicaciones externado). **clelia pineda báez,clelia pineda báez,clelia pineda báez,clelia pineda báez,clelia pineda báez, phd in education and master of arts in tefl, southern illinois university at carbondale, usa. b.a. in philology and languages (spanish-english), universidad nacional de colombia. currenlty, english coordinator, teacherresearcher and director of the research group “english didactics”, officially recognized by colciencias, school of education, universidad externado de colombia. ***maría fmaría fmaría fmaría fmaría fernanda téllez téllez,ernanda téllez téllez,ernanda téllez téllez,ernanda téllez téllez,ernanda téllez téllez, b.a in teaching modern languages, universidad de los andes, bogotá, colombia. currently studying for a degree in business management, fundación universitaria san martín, bogotá. full-time teacherresearcher, and materials designer, school of education, universidad externado de colombia. ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○129 profileprofileprofileprofileprofile key aspects for developing your instructional materials docentes de lengua extranjera no solamente deben mantener un balance entre la teoría y la práctica al desarrollar sus ayudas didácticas, sino que también deben mantenerse actualizados en términos de los más recientes avances de la investigación en el campo de la educación en lenguas. el artículo discute preguntas claves que los maestros deben formular antes de comenzar el proceso de diseño y brinda ideas útiles para el desarrollo de materiales con contenidos enriquecedores y que resulten dinámicos y atractivos visualmente. palabras claves: palabras claves: palabras claves: palabras claves: palabras claves: diseño de cursos, diseño de materiales, contenidos enriquecedores, esquemas llamativos, creatividad docente why designwhy designwhy designwhy designwhy design yyyyyour own maour own maour own maour own maour own materials?terials?terials?terials?terials? there are a good number of commercial books that are used as support for the instructional component of many efl/esl classes. these textbooks have been developed considering learning principles and research on what works best for learners. there are many advantages to these commercial texts. inside those we find colourful pictures, nice layouts, variety of designs, etc. however, do we teachers not feel that sometimes the textbook is not enough? this may be due partly to the fact that through everyday experience, we become aware of our immediate realities. such consciousness allows us to become sensitive to the needs of our students and to examine if the materials employed are helping them to achieve their particular language objectives. according to kessler (as cited by menezes, 2001), “the need for materials developed by teachers in our field is essential because these individuals are the most immediate experts on the needs of esol learners, the cognitive abilities of different age groups and the learning process of their specific learners”. indeed, it is teachers in their contact with learners who perceive their most salient characteristics and needs. yet, how often do we, teachers engage in the task of adapting and/or creating our own materials? the answer may be that we very seldom do so. this article is intended to encourage teachers to develop their own materials and is an invitation to explore their own capabilities. it focuses on considerations for material design. developing materials for the efl/esl classroom should not be viewed as a task confined to textbook developers. however, we need to consider some limitations. one has to do with the fact that it is a timeconsuming activity that requires dedication, patience and some expertise. according to the ciel language support network (2000), prospective developers of materials should be skillful in relation to subject knowledge, awareness of language learning pedagogies, technical expertise and editing. in addition, the design of materials could turn into a costly enterprise. nevertheless, it is a unique experience in which teachers can cater to specific learning objectives and learning styles. moreover, materials designed by the teachers are more likely to be updated and manageable. that is, they have the possibility of prioritizing the learners and placing them ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ 130 núñez, pineda and téllez profile profile profile profile profile at the center of the language program while acquainting them with the current world. teachers, as innovative professionals, have the potential to explore their creativity by designing materials for their classes. notwithstanding, there is a word of caution for anyone interested in this field. it should not turn into a meaningless task with the sole purpose of enjoying and keeping the students busy. certainly, we should develop materials that motivate our learners. nonetheless, the fact that those activities are enjoyable does not automatically imply that students are learning properly (dick and reiser, 1989). as dewey (1938) once stated, an experience could be enjoyable and yet promote a careless attitude. this implies that the teacher must develop meaningful tasks that emphasize learning which is relevant for students’ lives and that helps them understand and challenge their own views of the world. prerequisitesprerequisitesprerequisitesprerequisitesprerequisites for mafor mafor mafor mafor material designterial designterial designterial designterial design it is also important to highlight that the process of material design is embedded in the sequence of a language course design. learners should know in advance what their learning process will consist of. therefore, objectives must be stated in the materials and should be clearly defined so that learners can accurately interpret them. the materials should reflect opportunities for the learners to achieve the objectives set up. in other words, there must be congruency between the objectives and the materials. materials designed by teachers should include prerequisites that are indispensable to promote an adequate atmosphere for learning. a crucial aspect here is the activation of prior knowledge. according to dick and reiser (1989), it helps students to feel confident when getting in contact with the information to be learned. this activation can be initiated by means of rich activities before the main topic is confronted. vocabulary exercises, visual aids, mental mapping strategies, and graphs are useful means by which we can explore prior knowledge. in addition to the activation of prior knowledge, we should also keep in mind the type of interaction that our materials foster. besides individual practice, there must be opportunities for pair and group work that could maximize their chances for exchange of information. finally, as with any other element of the curriculum, the materials must be constantly scrutinized for their effectiveness. hence, we can turn again to our point of departure which consists of the learning objectives and make the corresponding adjustments. the following diagram depicts the process and the types of questions we should ask ourselves regarding the role of our supporting materials. ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○131 profileprofileprofileprofileprofile key aspects for developing your instructional materials figure 1. figure 1. figure 1. figure 1. figure 1. the process of course and material design ��������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������� ��������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������� ��������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������� ��������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������� ��������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������� ��������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������� 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participation is included? �������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������� �������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������� �������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������� �������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������� �������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������� �������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������� 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��������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������� needs analysis: which competencies do my learners need to refine? the sequence shown here implicitly emphasizes the idea that teachers’ theoretical background must be at the heart of material design. teachers should posses a grasp of developments in the field of education and particularly in second language acquisition, and the ability to connect theory and research to practice. teachers must be connoisseurs of their field. they should not only be familiar with theories of foreign language learning and teaching, but also be acquainted with the most recent findings of research. materials could lack a solid rationale if they are not constructed considering principles in which the teacher believes. it is by combining their theoretical background and their teaching experience in the development of their materials that they create positive conditions for language learning. a combination of experience and theoretical background could guarantee a better developed product. mamamamamaterial designterial designterial designterial designterial design and motivand motivand motivand motivand motivaaaaationtiontiontiontion a central aspect in the design of appropriate materials for our efl classes is motivation. ideally, we should call and maintain our students’ attention by using meaningful, well-elaborated, updated, challenging, enjoyable and relevant materials. they must be designed so that they tap our learners’ feelings and background, and they should enhance learning acquisition by promoting autonomy. in this respect, small (1997) cites four elements proposed in the arcs model of motivational design that we consider pertinent aspects when dealing with ways to encourage our learners to learn. ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ 132 núñez, pineda and téllez profile profile profile profile profile tttttable 1. able 1. able 1. able 1. able 1. the arcs model of motivational design attention it deals with the creation of the concept of newness. it explores the way teachers activate curiosity am ong students and how to m atch students´ interest and needs through the use of different m ethods. relevance it focuses on goal orientation, m otive m atching, and fam iliarity emphasizing objectives. it is fundam ental for students to know what the objectives are and their im portance. the selection of objectives should be focused on learners’ needs. fam iliarity takes into account students’ experiences and values when designing the contents. confidence it is the link established between the learning process and students’ abilities. satisfaction it is the enjoyable experience faced by students when objectives are achieved. it is worth noting that small capitalizes on the importance of congruency among objectives, tasks and materials. however, the model also implies diversity. more concretely, materials should explore students’ personalities, learning styles, language development expectations, likes, dislikes, needs and the contexts they are embedded in. apparently, this seems an overwhelming task, but it is possible if we observe our learners meticulously and learn to appreciate who they are, how they see the world, and how they interact with each other. age in this sense is fundamental. generations change and therefore we must bear in mind that contents and purposes in materials can vary according to learners’ ages. a way to bridge the gap between you as a teachermaterial designer and your students is to plunge into their age and put yourself in their own shoes so that you understand the way they conceive life. contextualizacontextualizacontextualizacontextualizacontextualizationtiontiontiontion of contentof contentof contentof contentof content there are two more relevant aspects that teachers should keep in mind when designing materials for their classes. one of them has to do with the contextualization of all activities included in the materials. for instance, vocabulary and grammar exercises should be embedded in the topic that is being studied. activities should promote exposure to the target language and opportunities to recycle the grammar and vocabulary points to be learned. new words, for example, can be presented in an enjoyable crossword puzzle. then, students can be asked to use them to complete sentences while working on word transformation. finally, they can create their own sentences and put them together in a story or use the vocabulary learned in games. there are many options upon which to draw so that new forms can be acquired and put into practice. ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○133 profileprofileprofileprofileprofile key aspects for developing your instructional materials they include cartoon stories, matching exercises, memory games, board games such as taboo, stop and simulation of real conversations, games, etc. visual visual visual visual visual lalalalalayyyyyoutoutoutoutout finally, a crucial aspect in the design of materials concerns the visual layout. although this is the aspect that requires continuous practice and some familiarization with computer programs such as word and paint work, there are basic tips that aid in the elaboration of attractive materials. we will pinpoint the ones that have been of great usefulness for us: • include clear and short instructions using everyday, plain language. also, include a name or heading for each activity you plan in your materials. • provide a concise, straightforward example before letting the students work by themselves. in short, model the behaviour. • avoid being stuffy. distribute the information and pictures in a visuallyattractive layout so that looking at and reading the material do not become tiresome. • use legible fonts that are not too elaborated and can easily be read. • recreate your activities with visuals. those should portray the meaning of the words or situations meant to be learned. do not include pictures just for the sake of it with no relationship whatsoever to the content. design your own pictures or use resources from the internet, but be aware of copyrighted material. • include a varied set of activities. examples are: tic-tac-toe, memory games, lotteries, bingos, jig-saw puzzles, stop and so forth. you can also create materials that promote interaction and teamwork such as hexagon games, contests, wall-dictation and mutual dictation and simulation games. • use eye-catching color in your resources and make sure they are readable. samplessamplessamplessamplessamples at this point we would like to show materials that have been designed to recycle vocabulary. the first exercise reinforces lexis and helps students categorize words under general headings. it is worth noticing that the content of the template can be adapted for different levels and areas. the second example is a board game in which students are expected to ask for permission, give orders, give advice, express ability and invite politely. in short, it has been designed to internalize modal verbs. the exercise is presented as a game and it allows for grammar and vocabulary contextualization. it also stimulates the learners to create their own sentences. ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ 134 núñez, pineda and téllez profile profile profile profile profile answer key they are all (1) … answer key they are all (2)… 1. they are all functions of money 2. they are all imperfect market structures 3. they are all economic growth sources 4. they are all imperfect market features 5. they are all national income variables 6. they are all perfect market features 7. they are all acronyms 8. they are all business cycle phases 9. they are all macroeconomic problems 10. they are all international trade key words 11. they are all negative consumption externalities 12. they are all crimes 1. they are all flowers. 2. they are all family members/ relatives. 3. they are all insects. 4. they are all clothes 5. they are all continents. 6. they are all pieces of furniture. 7. they are all colours. 8. they are all sports. 9. they are all verbs. 10. they are all capital cities 11. they are all vegetables. 12. they are all fruits. ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○135 profileprofileprofileprofileprofile key aspects for developing your instructional materials play with a classmate. take turns deciding how to label the features / aspects that appear in each of the petals. if you don’t answer, you miss your turn. the winner is the student who labels the highest number of petals. 12. shoplifting, kidnapping, forgery, smuggling, murder, and rape. 1. means of exchange, unit of account and store of value. 7. imf, vat, gdp, gnp, cpi, l&pa, wb or ibrd, gatt and nafta. 11. cigarette smoke, loud music at 2 a.m. and pollution caused by local automobiles. 10. tariffs, quotas, exports and imports, trade balance, mutually beneficial trade. 9. unemployment, inflation, economic growth and business cycles. 8. the peak, the downturn, the trough and the upturn. 6. market forces interaction, price takers, many firms, many buyers, and a variety of products. 4. price makers, market entry barriers, unique product, differentiated products, a multitude of buyers and one, or a few firms. 5. total output, aggregate savings, total consumption and aggregate investment. 3. entrepreneurship, investment in technology and human capital, capital accumulation and institutions that foster growth. 2. oligopoly, duopoly and monopoly. ����������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������� 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label the things, places, words, names, items, etc. that appear in each of the petals. if you don’t answer, you miss your turn. the winner is the student who labels the highest number of petals 1. they are all ____________________________ 7. they are all _____________________________ 2. they are ______________________________ 8. they are _______________________________ 3. they _________________________________ 9. they __________________________________ 4. they are all ____________________________ 10. they are all ____________________________ 5. they are _ ____________________________ 11. they are ______________________________ 6. they _________________________________ 12. they _________________________________ 1. sunflowers, roses, irises, carnations, tulips and daffodils. 7. red, green, mauve, navy, pink, yellow, purple, black, brown, orange and grey. 12. pear, banana, orange, mango, pineapple and lemon. 11. carrots, cauliflowers, onions, cucumbers, green peas, lettuce and garlic. 10. london, rome, paris, bogotá, teheran, and washington. 9. to talk, to write, to call, to greet, to love, to enjoy, to give, to forgive, and to admire. 8. football, ice-hockey, swimming, tennis, basketball, hiking, and skating. 6. chairs, tables, desks, wardrobes, cupboards, sofas, a puff and an armchair. 4. shirts, jeans, scarves, blouses, underwear and jackets. 5. europe, asia, africa, north, central and south america, australia and antarctica. 3. bees, ants, mosquitoes, butterflies and grasshoppers. 2. uncles, aunties, mothers –in-law, cousins, siblings, and nieces. �������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������� �������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������� �������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������� �������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������� �������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������� �������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������� �������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������� �������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������� �������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������� �������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������� �������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������� �������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������� �������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������� �������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������� �������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������� �������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������� �������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������� �������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������� �������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������� �������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������� �������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������� �������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������� �������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������� �������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������� ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○137 profileprofileprofileprofileprofile key aspects for developing your instructional materials le t’s p la y th is b oa rd g am e w ith a d ie . t hr ow th e di e an d do w ha t i s a sk ed in e ac h bo x by u si ng m od al v er bs c or re ct ly. i f y ou fa il to d o th e ta sk , y ou m us t s ta rt a ga in . th e w in ne r m us t g et to th e bo x m ar ke d fin is he d. 1 4 . t e ll yo u r cl a ss m a te s a b o u t a p o ss ib le a p p lic a tio n fo r a n in te rn sh ip in a m u lti n a tio n a l f ir m . 1 3 . r e co m m e n d yo u r fe llo w s n o t to d ri n k a n d d ri ve b e ca u se it is d a n g e ro u s. 1 2 . y o u a re a ca ri n g p e rs o n . t e ll yo u r fr ie n d s to d e vo te m o re t im e t o th e ir s tu d ie s. 1 1 . in vi te y o u r fr ie n d s to g o f o r a w a lk . 1 0 . a sk y o u r te a ch e r p o lit e ly t o re p e a t th e la st in st ru ct io n s /h e g a ve . 9 . in vi te y o u r g ir lfr ie n d / b o yf ri e n d to h a ve d in n e r a t a q u ite f a n cy re st a u ra n t. 8 . t e ll yo u r co lle a g u e a b o u t th e m a in r e q u ir e m e n t to g o t o t h e u n ite d s ta te s. 1 5 . s a y yo u a re a b le t o s p e a k fiv e la n g u a g e s flu e n tly . 7 . t e ll yo u r cl a ss m a te s a b o u t a p o ss ib le t ri p t o c a n a d a . 1 6 . a sk y o u r b o ss fo r p e rm is si o n t o h a ve a d a y o ff . 6 . a sk s o m e o n e p o lit e ly n o t to s m o ke in t h e h a ll. 1 7 . y o u r g ra n d fa th e r is re co ve ri n g f ro m su rg e ry . t e ll h im t o st a y in b e d . 1 . a sk y o u r p a rt n e r p o lit e ly f o r a b ig fa vo u r. 2 . t e ll yo u r lit tle b ro th e r/ s is te r n o t to p la y w ith f ir e . 3 . a sk y o u m o th e r fo r p e rm is si o n t o st a y o u t la te . 4 . a d vi se y o u r b e st fr ie n d w h a t to d o t o st o p d ri n ki n g s o h e a vi ly . 5 . t e ll yo u r te a ch e r yo u w e re n o t a b le t o d o y o u r h o m e w o rk b e ca u se o f a la ck o f tim e . 1 8 . t e ll yo u r g ra n d m o th e r th e re is n o n e e d t o w o rk so m u ch . 1 9 . y o u h a ve ju st p la n te d s o m e se e d s. t e ll yo u r lit tle b ro th e r n o t to st e p o n t h e s o il. 2 0 . a d vi se y o u r cl a ss m a te s w h a t to d o t o im p ro ve t h e ir sp e a ki n g a b ili tie s. 2 1 . a sk t h e u n iv e rs ity p o rt e r w h e re y o u r cl a ss ro o m is . 2 2 . t e ll yo u r b e st fr ie n d t h e re is n o n e e d t o t a ke / si t th e e xa m t o d a y. 2 3 . a sk t h e s h o p a ss is ta n t to s h o w yo u s o m e le a th e r ja ck e ts . 2 4 . a sk y o u r te a ch e r p o lit e ly f o r yo u r e n g lis h g ra d e s. i th in k yo u sh o u ld a cc e p t th a t jo b . it ’s a n ic e o p p o rt u n ity . ����������������������� ����������������������� ����������������������� ����������������������� ����������������������� ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ 138 núñez, pineda and téllez profile profile profile profile profile some recommendsome recommendsome recommendsome recommendsome recommendaaaaationstionstionstionstions finally, we advise teachers to systematize their process. in other words, keep the template used for further reference so that more information can be adapted later. teacher-designers should compile their materials in a diskette or cd to have easy access and retrieval. they also should label their designs with pertinent information such as the type of activity and the target audience. besides, it is advisable to maintain a file with printed laminated copies of all materials and categorize them in a folder. thus, the process will turn into a versatile resource pack that not only assists teachers in their endeavours, but also helps them to visualize their creative side. it is also important to note that many textbooks and teaching resource packs contain materials that can be adapted according to the needs of the learners. teachers do not have to reinvent the wheel, and time and energy can be saved that way. however, there are ethical issues that must be considered. we strongly caution teachers about “piracy” and invite them to become aware of copyrights. any selected material that is adapted, even if it is slightly modified, must explicitly include a reference to the original sources. according to the purdue university online writing lab (2004), anybody using others’ work needs to document the reference when: • referring to somebody else’s words or ideas from a magazine, book, newspaper, song, tv program, movie, web page, computer program, letter, advertisement, or any other medium. • including information gained through interviews. • copying the exact words or a “unique phrase”. • reprinting diagrams, illustrations, charts, figures or pictures. • applying ideas that others have given you in conversations or via e-mail. it is by giving credit that we acknowledge and value the work of other people and begin fostering an ethical environment in our job. as can be inferred, creating and adapting materials is a challenging enterprise as it demands serious considerations in terms of curriculum and instructional alignment and ethical issues. it is also time-consuming and demanding. however, it provides teachers with opportunities to explore not only their teaching potential, but also their creative side. referencesreferencesreferencesreferencesreferences ciel project. (2000). resources for independent language learning: design and use. retrieved july 7, 2004, from http:// www.lang.ltsn.ac.uk/resources/goodpractice.aspx dewey, j. (1938). the theory of inquiry. new york: holt, rinehart & wiston. dick , w. and reiser, r. (1989). planning effective instruction. new jersey: prentice hall, inc. menezes, a. (2001). reflections on readings. retrieved august 4, 2004, from http:/ / w w w. g e o c i t i e s . c o m / a n n a _ k m 2 0 0 1 / reflections.html ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○139 profileprofileprofileprofileprofile key aspects for developing your instructional materials purdue university online writing lab. (2004). retrieved from http:// owl.english.purdue.edu/hadouts/research/rplagiarism.html small, r. (1997). motivation in instructional design. retrieved july 15, 04 from http:// w w w . i l s . u n c . e d u / d a n i e l / 2 1 4 / motivationsmall.html this article was received on may 10th, 2004 and accepted on august 22nd, 2004. profile no. 7dic 5.p65 ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ profile profile profile profile profile 7 (2006): universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras modals in brazilian advanced efl learners’ compositions: a corpus-based investigation1 los verbos modales en composiciones de alumnos avanzados de inglés como lengualos verbos modales en composiciones de alumnos avanzados de inglés como lengualos verbos modales en composiciones de alumnos avanzados de inglés como lengualos verbos modales en composiciones de alumnos avanzados de inglés como lengualos verbos modales en composiciones de alumnos avanzados de inglés como lengua extranjera de nacionalidad brasileña: una investigación basada en corpusextranjera de nacionalidad brasileña: una investigación basada en corpusextranjera de nacionalidad brasileña: una investigación basada en corpusextranjera de nacionalidad brasileña: una investigación basada en corpusextranjera de nacionalidad brasileña: una investigación basada en corpus vvvvvander viana*ander viana*ander viana*ander viana*ander viana* vander.viana@terra.com.br catholic university of rio de janeiro (puc-rio), brazil corpus linguistics has become a major trend in applied linguistics since the second half of the 20th century due to computing facilities. nowadays teachers can research and assess their students’ production by means of compiling learner corpora. this article describes how this technique was used to investigate the usage of modals in the writing of advanced efl learners studying at private language schools in brazil. when the research corpus is compared to the academic prose register studied by biber et al. (1999), the divergence becomes apparent. the findings, thus, suggest that subjects write in a non-proficient way, which runs counter to previous expectations. kkkkkey worey worey worey worey words:ds:ds:ds:ds: corpus linguistics, learner corpus, modals, proficiency, writing la lingüística de corpus se ha convertido en una de las principales tendencias en el área de lingüística aplicada desde la segunda mitad del siglo xx debido a la popularización de los ordenadores. actualmente, los profesores pueden investigar y evaluar la producción escrita de sus alumnos a través de la compilación de corpora. este artículo describe cómo se ha empleado esta técnica para investigar el uso de verbos modales en la producción escrita de alumnos de nivel avanzado de inglés como lengua extranjera de cursos libres en brasil. al comparar el corpus de investigación con el registro prosa académica estudiado por biber et al. (1999), se hace evidente una discrepancia. los resultados sugieren que los sujetos de investigación escriben de una manera no-proficiente, lo que se contradice con las expectativas iniciales. palabras claves:palabras claves:palabras claves:palabras claves:palabras claves: lingüística de corpus, corpus de aprendiz, verbos modales, proficiencia, escritura 1 i would like to thank sonia zyngier for her illuminating criticism of an earlier version of this article. *vvvvvander vianaander vianaander vianaander vianaander viana is currently a ma student in language studies at the catholic university of rio de janeiro (puc-rio), and has been teaching english as foreign language for several years. he has been a member of the aplierj committee (www.aplierj.com.br) since 2004 and of the redes project (www.letras.ufrj.br/redes) since 2003. this article was received on march 31st, 2006 and accepted on may 19th, 2006. 77-86 ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ 78 viana profileprofileprofileprofileprofile introductionintroductionintroductionintroductionintroduction whenever some kind of language activity is practiced nowadays, corpora tend to come into the picture. it is true, as one may argue, that most english teachers are not fully aware of corpora and corpus-based studies. however, this should not stop researchers from thinking of ways in which corpora may illuminate language teaching. in fact, corpus-based information is part of english teachers’ lives. one example is the recently launched six-level course top notch, a series which includes ‘corpus notes’ from the beginners’ level. in the concise methodology for this course, saslow and ascher (2006, p. txiii) write that informed by the longman corpus network – longman’s unique computerized language database of over 328 million words of spoken and written english as well as learner errors – top notch provides concise and useful information about frequency, collocations and typical native speaker usage. materials such as the one illustrated above may help teachers get to know a little bit about the advantages of using the principles of corpus linguistics in the classroom. another possible application of such principles concerns the mapping of students’ performance at any stage of the teaching/learning process, as leech (1998, p. xiv) points out in the preface to learner english on computer: let us suppose that higher education teacher x, in a non-english speaking country, teaches english to her students every week, and every so often sets them essays to write, or other written tasks in english. now, instead of returning those essays to students with comments and a sigh of relief, she stores the essays (of course with the students’ permission) in her computer, and is gradually building up, week by week, a larger and more representative collection of her students’ work. helped by computer tools such as a concordance package, she can extract data and frequency information from this ‘corpus’, and can analyse her students’ progress as a group in some depth. leech’s words reveal the assumption that teachers can do research in corpus linguistics. this may diminish the gap between teaching and researching. besides, findings are of a twofold nature: they fill a gap in the applied linguistics panorama and at the same time help teachers structure their teaching practices. this study makes use of corpus linguistics to investigate a specific area of english grammar, namely, modals. the objective here is to analyze the way brazilian advanced efl students from private language schools use modals in their compositions and contrast the results with those obtained by biber, johansson, leech, conrad, and finegan (1999) in their mapping of the oral and written production of speakers of english as a first language. private language schools were chosen because it is in this setting that the author of this paper works. the main questions which guide the present study are the following: (a) do brazilian efl learners at an advanced stage make use of modals in their writing in a way which is similar to that of speakers of english as a first language? (b) if not, what are the differences between these two groups? these questions will be addressed after the theoretical discussion below. review of literareview of literareview of literareview of literareview of literaturetureturetureture this section covers two main aspects focused on in this paper, namely, corpus linguistics and modals. the first sub-section offers a brief explanation of some terms such as corpus and corpus linguistics. in addition, it also spells out the purpose of corpus-based research. in the second part, the theory of modals is presented from the perspective of three different descriptions, and their subtypes are explained and exemplified. ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○79 profileprofileprofileprofileprofile modals in brazilian advanced efl learners’ compositions still, in this section, a review of two corpus-based studies is presented, covering, directly or indirectly, the usage of modals by efl learners. corpus linguistics: an overcorpus linguistics: an overcorpus linguistics: an overcorpus linguistics: an overcorpus linguistics: an overviewviewviewviewview the notion of corpus as a “collection of written or spoken texts” (wehmeier, 2000, p. 295) has been around for a very long time, but it was only in the 20th century that it took up new meanings in the area of linguistics. as mcenery and wilson (1996, p. 21) put it, in principle, any collection of more than one text can be called a corpus: the term ‘corpus’ is simply the latin for ‘body’, hence a corpus may be defined as any body of text. […] but the term ‘corpus’ when used in the context of modern linguistics tends most frequently to have more specific connotations than this simple definition provides for. a corpus, according to tognini bonelli (2001, p. 2), is “a collection of texts assumed to be representative of a given language put together so that it can be used for linguistic analysis”. corpus linguistics can be described “as the study of language based on examples of ‘real life’ language use” (mcenery & wilson, 1996, p. 1). it is this specific feature of exploiting natural language which distinguishes corpus linguistics from chomskyan tradition. while the former is actually interested in the investigation of real examples of language in use, the latter focuses on artificial, contrived samples. according to sinclair (2003, p. ix), “before large amounts of data were easily available, most of the generalisation had to be done by intuitive guesswork; pre-corpus linguists were not able to check their notions”. in other words, corpus linguistics deals with the probability of language use whereas the rationalist view is concerned with language abstractions. so far, they remain two different ways of looking at language and a common ground has not been arrived at. the present study is in tune with language use as it analyzes learners’ written production. by using such data, teachers can develop their own research, as is the case here, and find out, for instance, which aspects should be focused when teaching a specific language. this objective is in agreement with the following quotation in which granger (2004, p. 291) states that computer learner corpora (clc) allegedly serve two main purposes: (1) by providing a better description of interlanguage and a better understanding of the factors that influence it, they contribute to second language acquisition theory; and (2) they contribute to the development of pedagogical tools and classroom practices that more accurately target the needs of the learner. therefore, corpus-based studies are of great help to language teachers. once teachers are aware of their students’ needs, they will be able to fully achieve their goals. modalsmodalsmodalsmodalsmodals for a long time modals have had a relevant place in english grammars. here is, for instance, swan’s (1998, p. 333) description: the verbs can, could, may, might, will, would, shall (mainly british english), should, must and ought are called ‘modal auxiliary verbs’. they are used before the infinitives of other verbs, and add certain kinds of meaning connected with certainty or with obligation and freedom to act […]. need […] and dare […] can sometimes be used like modal auxiliary verbs, and the expression had better […] is also used like a modal auxiliary. swan considers ‘ought’ to be a type of “modal auxiliary verb”. he also holds the notion that ‘need’, ‘dare’, and ‘had better’ can be used as “modal auxiliary verbs” without distinguishing them from ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ 80 viana profileprofileprofileprofileprofile the ones listed in the beginning of the excerpt. this is perhaps due to the fact that swan’s (1998) practical english usage offers practical presentations of grammar topics. although it is stated in the introduction that “the book is intended for intermediate and advanced students, and for teachers of english” (swan, 1998, p. xi – my italics), he argues he is not “writing for specialists”. therefore, it is assumed that “where it has been necessary to use grammatical terminology, i [he] have [has] generally preferred to use traditional terms that are well-known and easy-to-understand” (swan, 1998, p. xi). in spite of being clear, swan’s explanation does not fit the purpose of this study, which requires a more detailed description of modals and their usage. a different approach to the analysis of the english language is offered by the collins cobuild english grammar (sinclair, 1990), which is corpusbased. it “attempts to make accurate statements about english, as seen in the huge birmingham collection of english texts” (sinclair, 1990, p. v). in other words, its information is derived from real samples of language in use. in this grammar, modals are described as “a special kind of auxiliary verb” (sinclair, 1990, p. 217) encompassing ‘can’, ‘could’, ‘may’, ‘might’, ‘must’, ‘ought to’, ‘shall’, ‘should’, ‘will’ and ‘would’. other verbs such as ‘dare’, ‘need’ and ‘used to’ are grouped in a subtype labeled ‘semi-modals’. from the perspective of a more recent corpusbased grammar – the longman grammar of spoken and written english (biber et al., 1999), modals are divided into three groups, namely, ‘modals’, ‘marginal auxiliary verbs’ and ‘semi-modals’. the first group encompasses ‘can’, ‘could’, ‘may’, ‘might’, ‘shall’, ‘should’, ‘will’, ‘would’ and ‘must’. these modals (biber et al., 1999, p. 483) have a number of specific features such as (a) being invariant forms, (b) preceding the subject in yesno questions and (c) being followed by a verb in the bare infinitive. marginal auxiliary verbs correspond to ‘need (to)’, ‘ought to’, ‘dare (to)’ and ‘used to’. according to biber et al. (1999, p. 484), these verbs are rare and almost only present in british english. fixed idiomatic phrases as ‘(had) better’, ‘have to’, ‘(have) got to’, ‘be supposed to’ and ‘be going to’ are called semi-modals by biber et al. (1999, p. 484). they differ from central modals because they can be marked for both tense and person. besides, they can also occur as non-finite forms. for the scope of this study, biber et al.’s (1999) description of modals is taken into account. their analysis seems to be more accurate since grammatical features are considered within each register analyzed in the grammar (academic prose, newspaper language, conversation and fiction). the nine modals which are grouped by biber et al. (1999) in their first category are also referred to as “central modal verbs” in wilson’s (2005) study. the author states these modals have received great attention from scholars due to their high semantic complexity (wilson, 2005, p. 151). one example of such type of study is mindt’s (1996) “english corpus linguistics and the foreign language teaching syllabus”. in this paper, mindt argues corpus linguistics has had an influence in dictionaries and grammars, but efl teaching materials remain unchanged. one of the sections of the paper covers the topic of modals. using a part of the london-lund corpus, he argues that ‘would’, ‘can’ and ‘will’ are the most common modals in his research corpus. considering that “the present forms occur more frequently in main clauses that the past forms” (mindt, 1996, p. 234) and that ‘will’ is an extremely frequent modal in conversations in english, he proposes that german efl textbooks should introduce such modal in the first year of study instead of doing it in the second year. in other words, the presentation of ‘will’ should not be postponed in favor of the infrequent modals ‘must’ and ‘may’. another study is ringbom’s (1998) compilation of vocabulary frequencies, which also covered some modals in the writing of learners of english from seven different nationalities (dutch, finnishswedish, finnish, french, german, spanish and ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○81 profileprofileprofileprofileprofile modals in brazilian advanced efl learners’ compositions swedish). the former seven sub-corpora, part of the international corpus of learner english (icle), were compared to the louvain corpus of native english essays (locness) which comprises argumentative essays written by american and british students. unfortunately, there is not a thorough explanation regarding the 110 most frequent words which are presented in the article. it is possible, however, to notice some differences in terms of usage by the different groups of subjects. it seems that all groups of learners overuse ‘can’ and underuse ‘would’ and ‘will’. one only exception remains with the french group, which overuses ‘will’. in relation to ‘should’, the french, finnish and germans tend to use it more than americans and the british whereas the spanish, finnish-swedish, swedish and dutch generally underuse it. as far as the modal ‘could’ is concerned, there are three distinct results, namely: (a) finnish learners use it as much as americans and british; (b) spanish efl students overuse it; and (c) all the other five ethnic groups underuse it. instead of offering a complete interpretation vis-à-vis the data presented in the article, ringbom (1998, p. 51) states in the conclusion that the chapter has tried to show that a seemingly simple word frequency count may provide a useful starting point for many interesting smallscale projects where the general characteristics of advanced learner language as well as the relative importance of transfer and universal features can be further explored. although modals have already been studied by a great number of corpus linguists (cf. wilson, 2005), there seems to be a lack of research focusing on the written production of brazilian efl learners. methodologymethodologymethodologymethodologymethodology as this study is concerned with the usage of modals in compositions by brazilian advanced efl learners, it was necessary to compile a corpus representing such production. to this purpose, compositions written in english were collected in three private language schools located in six distinct areas in the city of rio de janeiro, brazil.2 a decision was made to collect compositions which were parts of exams or tests in order to ensure that the research subjects did not have any help of third parties throughout the writing process or that they did not cheat and/or copy specific parts of their compositions. they could, nonetheless, make use of dictionaries and/or grammar books if they were allowed to do so by the rules of each language school. as the focus was on advanced students only, participants belonged to the last two terms in each of the three language courses. in other words, only students who were about to graduate were asked to contribute. there was an exception, though. one of the schools offered a specific writing course aimed at teaching students how to write effectively. in this specific language school, students from this special course were also invited to take part in the research. the topic of the compositions came from the materials chosen by each language school. therefore, freedom of choice was limited. writers could choose from a maximum of three topics, but in some occasions they had only one mandatory writing task. compositions varied greatly in terms of length. the shortest one had 112 words and the longest, 478 (average 288 words). after data collection, all compositions were typed so as to probe them by means of a computer program. the digital versions correspond to what was hand-written by students. mistakes were maintained because they are representative of learners’ writing. only spelling problems were corrected; otherwise, the computer would read, 2 i am thankful to the people and the institutions who made this research possible by granting their permission and helping me with data collecting. for reasons of privacy, they will be kept anonymous. ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ 82 viana profileprofileprofileprofileprofile for instance, ‘should’ and ‘shuld’ as two different words. this would make data analysis more difficult since it would be necessary to go through the list of words in order to identify these problematic cases. even though every effort was made to have students produce compositions which would be representative of their own linguistic accomplishments, a few repeated fragments were found in some compositions, e. g. titles. had these sequences been maintained, they would have constituted a problem in the final counting of lexical items. therefore, these over-repeated sequences were excluded because they were in fact just a copy of the prompt given by the teacher. at present the research corpus contains 155 compositions written by brazilian advanced efl students from three language courses in six areas of the city of rio de janeiro. the corpus totals 30,261 tokens (items) and 2,870 types (different words). analysis was performed with wordsmith tools (scott, 1999); more specifically, one of its tool, wordlist, in order to obtain a list of most frequent words in the corpus. this list allowed the identification of the nine modals to be analyzed (‘can’, ‘could’, ‘may’, ‘might’, ‘must’, ‘shall’, ‘should’, ‘will’ and ‘would’) and their respective frequencies. in the second stage, the tool, concord, was used to analyze the cotext3 of these modals. the reference corpus is the longman spoken and written english (henceforth lswe) corpus on which the longman grammar of spoken and written english (biber et al., 1999) is based. this grammar “describes the actual use of grammatical features in different varieties of english: mainly conversation, fiction, newspaper language, and academic prose” (biber et al., 1999, p. 4). in the present research, it was decided to compare the results being reported here to those obtained by biber et al. (1999) in their mapping of the academic prose register since both represent the written medium. dddddaaaaattttta anala anala anala anala analysis and discussionysis and discussionysis and discussionysis and discussionysis and discussion eight out of the nine modals analyzed here can be grouped into two categories: those which refer to non-past time and those which can refer to past time (cf. biber et al., 1999, p. 484-485). in the first group, there are ‘may’, ‘can’, ‘will’ and ‘shall’; and in the second, there are, respectively, ‘might’, ‘could’, ‘would’ and ‘should’. the difference in usage between modals which refer to non-past time and the ones which can refer to past time is noteworthy. table 1 summarizes this contrast. ‘may’, ‘can’ and ‘will’ are at least three times more common than their counterparts, namely, ‘might, ‘could’ and ‘would’. the only exception is the pair ‘shall’ and ‘should’, the latter being much more common than the former. as a matter of fact, there are no instances of ‘shall’ in the research corpus. these results are similar to the ones found by biber et al. (1999, p. 486) who state that “considering the pairs of central modals, the tentative/past time member is less frequent than 3 sinclair (2003, p. 174) defines cotext as “the group of words that occur on either side of it in a text”. tttttable 1. able 1. able 1. able 1. able 1. distribution of non-past/past modals in the research corpus. modal may can will shall percentage 86.96% 84.33% 75.94% 0.00% modal might could would should percentage 13.04% 15.67% 24.06% 100% total 100% 100% 100% 100% non-past time past time ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○83 profileprofileprofileprofileprofile modals in brazilian advanced efl learners’ compositions its partner in all cases except shall/should”. the difference between the results of their study and the one being reported here is that in the learner corpus there are no instances of ‘shall’ whereas in the reference corpus this modal is present albeit rarely. modals may also be grouped into three categories according to the ideas they convey (cf. biber et al., 1999, p. 489). they can express (a) permission, possibility or ability (‘can’, ‘could’, ‘may’ and ‘might’), (b) volition or prediction (‘will’, ‘would’ and ‘shall’), and (c) necessity or obligation (‘should’ and ‘must’). table 2 shows the number of times each modal occurs in the learner corpus. it is then possible to compare the results of the present study to the mapping of modals in academic prose carried out by biber et al. (1999, p. 489). graph 1 indicates that the brazilian learners of english investigated in this study tend to underuse modals which mark both permission, possibility or ability as well as necessity or obligation. on the other hand, they show a tendency to overuse modals signaling either volition or prediction, especially with the use of ‘will’, as illustrated in figure 1. according to biber et al. (1999, p. 489), ‘will’ and ‘would’ are least frequent in academic prose. the register which contains the highest frequencies of such modals is conversation. therefore, the overuse of such modals in the research corpus may suggest that the research participants write in a way which is similar to the way speakers of english as a first language talk. another feature biber et al. (1999) argue to be characteristic of academic prose is the use of verb phrases incorporating modals in the passive voice. as they hold, “passive voice with modals is rare in conversation and fiction, but relatively common for some modals in academic prose” (biber et al., 1999, p. 499). they also conclude that “with the graph 1.graph 1.graph 1.graph 1.graph 1. ideas conveyed by modals. tttttable 2.able 2.able 2.able 2.able 2. distribution of modals in the learner corpus. ideas modals can could may might will would shall should must occurrences 253 47 20 3 202 64 0 58 31 permission possibility ability necessity obligation volition prediction ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ 84 viana profileprofileprofileprofileprofile passive, can and should are particularly common, could and must are also fairly common”. in the learner corpus, however, the picture is quite different. most of the verb phrases which incorporate modals are actually in the active voice as can be seen in graph 2. there are few instances of verb phrases in the passive voice as illustrated by the following examples: 4 this example and all the following ones were taken from the research corpus and have not been corrected in any way as stated in the methodology section. the only exception concerns spelling. volition but, even so, i will try to reach happiness and success, no matter what this may cost. 4 after finishing my studies, i will start to work with my sister, who is a doctor, and has a little emergency hospital. i would try to help them anyway. prediction “christmas trees” will also be decorated with lights and christmas ornaments. i’m sure that this will be a great experience and we will never forget it! because the most powerful countr y would impose its culture and, consequently, its language. figure 1.figure 1.figure 1.figure 1.figure 1. examples of modals expressing volition and prediction. graph 2. graph 2. graph 2. graph 2. graph 2. distribution of modals in the active and passive voices. that is why death punishment it is not a good idea, this should not be accepted in any country, in any constitution. when a baby becomes a child, his or her growing must be accompanied attentively by his parents. there are a lot of things that can be done to better your health. if happiness brings health, friends and positive views of life, nothing could really be considered more important than it. ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○85 profileprofileprofileprofileprofile modals in brazilian advanced efl learners’ compositions altogether there are only 49 instances of modal verbs being used in the passive voice, which represents 7.22% of the verb phrases containing modals in the research corpus. once more it is possible to observe the gap between the learner corpus and the academic prose register investigated by biber et al. (1999). conclconclconclconclconclusionusionusionusionusion the results of the present study reveal that participants use modals in ways which diverge from those of speakers of english as a first language. when writing compositions, brazilian learners of english tend to use structures which characterize the oral production of speakers of english as a first language. one indication of such result is the frequent usage of modals which signal either volition or prediction, especially the modal ‘will’ in the writing of brazilian learners. another indication which was reported in this article is the rare frequency of marked voice in verb phrases containing modals, a feature of the academic prose studied by biber et al. (1999). besides the grammatical description, this study also has some pedagogical implications. the findings reported here may cast some light in the way modals should be taught to brazilian learners of english. teachers should raise their students’ awareness of the topics discussed in this article, namely, the overuse of ‘will’ and the underuse of marked voice. by doing so, these learners will be able to write more proficiently and communicate their ideas more fluently. conducting corpus-based studies is of great importance to language teachers. such a type of investigation makes it possible for the teacher/ researcher to spot the most troublesome areas of english language as regards particular groups of students. as tribble and jones (1990, p. 23) put it, “even with very small classroom-based studies it is possible to come to some very interesting conclusions about the way students are dealing with english”. these studies highlight learners’ production, that is, they are based on what students actually write or say instead of considering abstract models of language. this can only be accomplished by means of corpus linguistics. as a final comment, it is worth citing granger’s (2004, p. 299) words about the potential of learner corpora: learner corpora may not yet have given rise to a large number of teaching and learning applications, but the buzzing activity in the field and the clc-informed reference and teaching tools that have already been produced are concrete evidence of an ongoing trend which should result in highly innovative pedagogical application in the years to come. referencesreferencesreferencesreferencesreferences berber sardinha, a. p. (2004). lingüística de corpus. são paulo: manole. biber, d., johansson, s., leech, g., conrad, s., & finegan, e. (1999). longman grammar of spoken and written english. london: longman. granger, s. (1998). learner english on computer. london / new york: longman. granger, s. (2004). practical applications of learner corpora. in b. lewandowska-tomaszczyk (ed.), practical applications in language and computers: palc 2003 (pp. 291-301). frankfurt am main: peter lang. leech, g. (1998). preface. in s. granger (ed.), learner english on computer (pp. xiv-xx). london / new york: longman. mcenery, t., & wilson, a. (1996). corpus linguistics. edinburgh: edinburgh university press. mindt, d. (1996). english corpus linguistics and the foreign language teaching syllabus. in j. thomas & m. short (ed.), using corpora for language research (pp. 232-247). london / new york: longman. ringbom, h. (1998). vocabular y frequencies in advanced learner english: a cross-linguistic approach. in s. granger (ed.), learner english on computer (pp. 4152). london / new york: longman. saslow, j., & ascher, a. (2006). top notch fundamentals: teacher’s edition and lesson planner. new york: pearson longman. ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ 86 viana profileprofileprofileprofileprofile scott, m. (1999). wordsmith tools 3.0. oxford: oxford university press. sinclair, j. (1990). collins cobuild english grammar. london / glasgow: collins. sinclair, j. (1991). corpus, concordance, collocation. oxford: oxford university press. sinclair, j. (2003). reading concordances: an introduction. oxford: oxford university press. swan, m. (1998). practical english usage. oxford: oxford university press. tognini-bonelli, e. (2001). corpus linguistics at work. amsterdam / philadelphia: john benjamins company. tribble, c., & jones, g. (1990). concordances in the classroom: a resource book for teachers. harlow: longman. wehmeier, s. (2000). oxford advanced learner’s dictionary of current english. oxford: oxford university press. wilson, a. (2005). modal verbs in written indian english: a quantitative and comparative analysis of the kolhapur corpus using correspondence analysis. icame journal 29 (april 2005). retrieved march 19, 2006, from http:// gandalf.aksis.uib.no/icame/ij29/ij29-page151170.pdf profile 2.p65 ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○59 profileprofileprofileprofileprofile the process syllabusthe process syllabusthe process syllabusthe process syllabusthe process syllabus, (breen 1989) as its name suggests, is a ‘process plan’ that tries to ser ve the joint creation and implementation of a syllabus by providing a framework for planning and action that should emerge from decisions jointly made by teachers and learners during the classroom learning experience. due to its nature, it goes beyond a “propositional” syllabus like the ones known as functional or task-based . therefore, the process syllabus, providing a plan and a bank of resources, and requiring regular reflective and formative evaluation, facilitates the learners’ creation of their own syllabus in an on-going and adaptive way. elizabeth rodríguezelizabeth rodríguezelizabeth rodríguezelizabeth rodríguezelizabeth rodríguez::::: mikmikmikmikmike, coulde, coulde, coulde, coulde, could you please, give the reasons why a teacheryou please, give the reasons why a teacheryou please, give the reasons why a teacheryou please, give the reasons why a teacheryou please, give the reasons why a teacher m i g h t c o n s i d e r a d o p t i n g a p r o c e s sm i g h t c o n s i d e r a d o p t i n g a p r o c e s sm i g h t c o n s i d e r a d o p t i n g a p r o c e s sm i g h t c o n s i d e r a d o p t i n g a p r o c e s sm i g h t c o n s i d e r a d o p t i n g a p r o c e s s syllabus?syllabus?syllabus?syllabus?syllabus? michael peter breenmichael peter breenmichael peter breenmichael peter breenmichael peter breen: i think there are four main ones. the first one is that i am assuming the teacher is a teacher of language and therefore, language is the subject matter, one of its key characteristics is the negotiation of meaning and one of the objectives that most language teachers will have is to enable students to communicate and therefore, negotiate and create meaning with other people. a conversation with mike breen1 interinterinterinterinter view carview carview carview carview carried out by elizabeth rodríguezried out by elizabeth rodríguezried out by elizabeth rodríguezried out by elizabeth rodríguezried out by elizabeth rodríguez22222 foreign languages department, universidad nacional de colombia m i c h a e lm i c h a e lm i c h a e lm i c h a e lm i c h a e l pppppeter breen,eter breen,eter breen,eter breen,eter breen, t . c e r t . e d . (london), b.a. (lancaster), m.a. (lancaster). he has published on a range of issues within english language education. in addition to contributing to a number of edited collections, he has published in applied linguistics, studies in second language acquisition and several overseas journals. his current interests are the psychology of language learning, the process of interpretation, and the development of courses in english language. the question is: how, in the methodology in the classroom and how people work together in the classroom, can the negotiation of meaning and genuine communication be encouraged? one way i see this happening is that people communicate together, initially maybe in the mother tongue, but certainly as the work progresses more and more in the language being learnt, they negotiate about how the work should be done and who should do the work and so on and so forth. that is, they negotiate and communicate over the decisions that have to be made in order for the work to proceed in that classroom group. the 1 note from the director: given the importance of process syllabus in curriculum development, it was decided to include the complete text of the interview. it is hoped that it will contribute to our enlightenment and understanding of process as a means to improve our teaching practices. 2 this interview was carried out at the university of lancaster in 1989. ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ 60profileprofileprofileprofileprofile kinds of decisions that identify a framework. that’s one reason, negotiation of domain ; therefore, why not also define the means of achieving the work in the classroom ?. secondly, what happens to a normal syllabus ... an external syllabus? either one that is presented to teachers by the institution or a syllabus hidden within a textbook. no class follows the syllabus. and no class does everything the syllabus asks it to do. why ? because the teacher reinterprets the syllabus for her or his group of learners and the learners in turn reinterpret the syllabus against their own personal agendas, their own personal syllabuses. so a second reason would be that people working from any syllabus, a content syllabus, are going to reinterpret that syllabus in terms of their own learning preferences, their own learning stages and so on and so forth. so, all syllabuses are reinterpreted. sometimes, privately, but sometimes, also, in a public discussion in the classroom. so, an external content syllabus, a syllabus about aims and a syllabus about content, is made redundant, it is reworded and turned into the working syllabus of the classroom group and this is often done by accident, often in an unconscious and unpredictable way. i feel there is a need for the classroom group to be explicit and to go through the process of designing in public, their syllabus rather than struggling through an externally imposed syllabus that they are going to change in any case.then, the process syllabus is, therefore, one means for enabling teachers and learners together, to negotiate and construct together as they go along, their external syllabus or to use an external syllabus as a starting point to negotiate themselves through that syllabus. so, that’s the second reason: learners and teachers reinterpret any syllabus and the ps 3 is a way for them to do that in a more public and confident way. the third reason is the sort of problems teachers face in the classroom. i have worked with lots of teachers over the years, and one of the major issues that they see as a professional concern is the management of the classroom group, and the kinds of problems they have when looking after classroom groups. and so, i see the ps as one solution to a whole range of classroom management problems the teachers typically have in their lives. and in essence, what the ps does is to say: ‘look, classroom management is not just my responsibility as a teacher, it is our responsibility as a classroom group, and we have equal responsibilities to make sure things work well’ 4. so, a ps is a way of sharing classroom management with the learners, for whom the classroom exists after all. so, decisions about who should do what? what should be done? and so on and so forth, instead of becoming just the teacher ’s problem, becomes the whole group’s problem. that’s the third reason: managing the classroom and the kind of problems the teacher has. my questions are: why should the the prthe prthe prthe prthe processocessocessocessocess syllabus is onesyllabus is onesyllabus is onesyllabus is onesyllabus is one means formeans formeans formeans formeans for enabling teachersenabling teachersenabling teachersenabling teachersenabling teachers and learners toand learners toand learners toand learners toand learners to negotiate andnegotiate andnegotiate andnegotiate andnegotiate and constructconstructconstructconstructconstruct together as theytogether as theytogether as theytogether as theytogether as they go alonggo alonggo alonggo alonggo along 3 my abreviation 4 my italics and quotaions to refer to possible interactions between the interviewee and language teachers and learners. ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○61 profileprofileprofileprofileprofile teacher be the only person who has an opinion on this problem ? why should the teacher be the only person who tries to solve it ? i think it’s humanly impossible that teachers on their own can do this. so, why not share it ? and the fourth and final justification, i think, for the ps, is the whole notion of learner responsibility. one of the major things that teachers keep saying to me is: ‘we have unmotivated learners’ or ‘our learners don’t participate as much as we’d like them to’ or ‘our learners are rather immature and haven’t approached their learning of the language’ ‘they don’t take responsibility’. so, you need a means whereby sharing responsibility becomes more public so that learners will take on more overt responsibilities for themselves and, very important this, for the group of people around them. they are not only responsible in their classroom for their own learning but, also, for seeing themselves as responsible for the success of the learning of the other people in the classroom group. so, the fourth reason would be to encourage and to mobilize learners’ responsibility. e. r.:e. r.:e. r.:e. r.:e. r.: mikmikmikmikmike, i remember during a forume, i remember during a forume, i remember during a forume, i remember during a forume, i remember during a forum that you said the ps was not exactly athat you said the ps was not exactly athat you said the ps was not exactly athat you said the ps was not exactly athat you said the ps was not exactly a s y l l a b u s , t h a t i t w a s n o t e v e n a ns y l l a b u s , t h a t i t w a s n o t e v e n a ns y l l a b u s , t h a t i t w a s n o t e v e n a ns y l l a b u s , t h a t i t w a s n o t e v e n a ns y l l a b u s , t h a t i t w a s n o t e v e n a n apprapprapprapprapproach. howoach. howoach. howoach. howoach. how, in essence, would you, in essence, would you, in essence, would you, in essence, would you, in essence, would you define it?define it?define it?define it?define it? m.pm.pm.pm.pm.p.b..b..b..b..b.: in essence, it’s a framework for decision-making in the classroom. so, in a way, it’s a kind of plan for methodology. i use the word syllabus because syllabuses are something that people have a lot of interest in and people understand a syllabus to mean a plan for what has to be done in joint teaching and learning. so i adopted the word process syllabus because a ps is a plan for what has to be done in teaching and learning but not in terms of content, not in terms of what has to be achieved, in terms of the language or whatever, not in terms of what subject matter we should work on but in terms of procedure, ways of working:who will do what? when and on what? why should they do it? those kinds of decisions are made covertly by the teacher quite often in a lesson plan or as they go along in a lesson. so, syllabussyllabussyllabussyllabussyllabus is a useful word because it comes with the notion of a plan for what is to be done in joint teaching and learning. but the ps focuses much more on action and on decision-making. so, in a way, i suppose a more accurate description would be a kind of ‘decision-making f‘decision-making f‘decision-making f‘decision-making f‘decision-making framework’ramework’ramework’ramework’ramework’5. but, within a ps, of course, we will have sets of activities and sets of tasks, a bank of activities and tasks which will be partly preplanned ; there may be sets of textbooks that people would use as one resource, the usual sorts of materials would be in that classroom ; not just one set but several sets, there would be dictionaries and grammars and tapes and that sort of thing. but, i think the important thing is that these activities and tasks should be selected and chosen, as things progress, by learners, either in small groups or learners in the whole class sometimes, or learners individually at other times. that is, the activities and tasks and the materials that are there, the decision as to who should usewho should usewho should usewho should usewho should use t h e m . w h e n t h e y s h o u l d u s e t h e m .t h e m . w h e n t h e y s h o u l d u s e t h e m .t h e m . w h e n t h e y s h o u l d u s e t h e m .t h e m . w h e n t h e y s h o u l d u s e t h e m .t h e m . w h e n t h e y s h o u l d u s e t h e m . how long they should spend working onhow long they should spend working onhow long they should spend working onhow long they should spend working onhow long they should spend working on them. what they seek to get out of itthem. what they seek to get out of itthem. what they seek to get out of itthem. what they seek to get out of itthem. what they seek to get out of it6..... that’s what the ps is about. so, it’s a plan for decision-making. it’s a framework in which teachers and learners can jointly negotiate and decide on what they are doing and what they are achieving or what sort of difficulties they have, as the diagram suggests7. 5 my emphasis. 6 my emphasis. 7 see diagram: “the element of a process syllabus” ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ 62profileprofileprofileprofileprofile element 1element 1element 1element 1element 1 who does what ? with who ? to what purpose ? on what subject matter ? with what resources ? when and for how long ? how is it to be done ? element 2element 2element 2element 2element 2 agreed upon as the an agreed plan of aims and content working contract (possibly as a synthesis of an external of the classroom group syllabus & the negotiated purposes and subject matter of the classroom (changes over time) group.changes over time) element 3element 3element 3element 3element 3 to be selected from as appropriate to decisions agreed at elements 1 & 2. element 4element 4element 4element 4element 4 to be selected and undertaken for the achievement of a chosen activity . tasks are the focused teaching-learning work of the classroom group. element 5element 5element 5element 5element 5 evaluation of the outcomes from an activity and its tasks ; both the achievements and the difficulties. involving reflection on the appropriateness of decisions made at 1 & 2 with the view to adapttation wherever necessary. ©©©©© m.p. breen , 1989 key characteristics a framework for planning and action during classroom language learning. a process syllabus emerges from decisions jointly made by teacher and learners. involves the on-going complilation of a bank of activities and (entailed ) tasks to beselected from on the basis of decisions made. each element relates to the others ; element 1 shaping the actual nature of those below it. a process syllabus requires regular reflective and formative evaluation. this enables a crucial cycle of refinement from element 5 back to 1 and through to 5 again. the elements of a process syllthe elements of a process syllthe elements of a process syllthe elements of a process syllthe elements of a process syllabusabusabusabusabus decisions for classroom language learning working procedure (s) in the classroom group particular content syllabus of the classroom group alternative activities alternative tasks reflective and formative evaluation ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○63 profileprofileprofileprofileprofile e. r.:e. r.:e. r.:e. r.:e. r.: mikmikmikmikmike, considering that a pre, considering that a pre, considering that a pre, considering that a pre, considering that a processocessocessocessocess can be more important than a product,can be more important than a product,can be more important than a product,can be more important than a product,can be more important than a product, c o u l d y o u p l e a s e e x p l a i n h o w t h i sc o u l d y o u p l e a s e e x p l a i n h o w t h i sc o u l d y o u p l e a s e e x p l a i n h o w t h i sc o u l d y o u p l e a s e e x p l a i n h o w t h i sc o u l d y o u p l e a s e e x p l a i n h o w t h i s f r a m e w o r k e v o l v e d ? w h a t a r e i t sf r a m e w o r k e v o l v e d ? w h a t a r e i t sf r a m e w o r k e v o l v e d ? w h a t a r e i t sf r a m e w o r k e v o l v e d ? w h a t a r e i t sf r a m e w o r k e v o l v e d ? w h a t a r e i t s origins?origins?origins?origins?origins? m.pm.pm.pm.pm.p.b..b..b..b..b.: for me, it began as a good idea when working with a group of teachers in europe over quite a long period of time. when we first began teacher training we intended to train people very much through providing them with theory and evidence from research and getting them to evaluate designed materials ; what i would call the traditional ways of training teachers. and over a period of time, thanks primarily to their feedback and their feedback on their classrooms, we decided that the key thing worth trying was to bring the classroom much more into the training, to get the teachers to bring their experiences back from their classroom, to do research in their own classrooms and to report back to us in the teacher training workshops. from that process, which took about a good few years working with different groups of teachers in a particular european country, from that process, we felt that (and they did too!) a lot of their classroom management problems and a lot of the kinds of research they wanted to do needed some sort of framework within which they could work, within which they could do research, within which they could help their learners, advise them or help to sort out certain problems. and so, what came out of that was: why don’t we have the kind of syllabus that enabled on-going reflection, research, investigation to occur and the on-going decision and giving of responsibility by learners to be brought to the surface in classroom life in some way. and so, came out the idea of the ps, that teachers might work from a ps primary, to get their learners more engaged in their learning but also to free the teacher to do more investigative work and to get closer to their learners. so, it came out of, i think, a long period of experience working with teachers who were always looking for answers to classroom management problems and for ways of getting action research in their classrooms going. so, that’s where it came from. i think, in terms of philosophy or educational ideology, it clearly comes from the view of the learner as an active participant in shaping their own learning, and that teaching and learning is essentially a joint activity, a cooperative activity, especially if you are with a large group of people in a classroom and that the responsibility for oneself and for the others’ learning, both as a teacher and as a learner, is a very important element. all of this comes, i think, from humanistic approaches to education rather than behaviorist or classical approaches to learning and teaching. e. r.e. r.e. r.e. r.e. r.: in the framework you propose, in the framework you propose, in the framework you propose, in the framework you propose, in the framework you propose, there is a total recognition for learners’there is a total recognition for learners’there is a total recognition for learners’there is a total recognition for learners’there is a total recognition for learners’ rights, learners’ autonomyrights, learners’ autonomyrights, learners’ autonomyrights, learners’ autonomyrights, learners’ autonomy. who, in the. who, in the. who, in the. who, in the. who, in the end, makend, makend, makend, makend, makes the decisions?es the decisions?es the decisions?es the decisions?es the decisions? ttttteacherseacherseacherseacherseachers might workmight workmight workmight workmight work frfrfrfrfrom a ps,om a ps,om a ps,om a ps,om a ps, primarilyprimarilyprimarilyprimarilyprimarily, to, to, to, to, to get theirget theirget theirget theirget their learners morelearners morelearners morelearners morelearners more engaged inengaged inengaged inengaged inengaged in their learningtheir learningtheir learningtheir learningtheir learning but also to freebut also to freebut also to freebut also to freebut also to free the teacher tothe teacher tothe teacher tothe teacher tothe teacher to do moredo moredo moredo moredo more investigativeinvestigativeinvestigativeinvestigativeinvestigative workworkworkworkwork ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ 64profileprofileprofileprofileprofile m . pm . pm . pm . pm . p. b .. b .. b .. b .. b .: the classroom group makes decisions. the main decisions are made by the group. i don’t believe in learner-centered curricula and i don’t believe in autonomy. i mean, in the sense that i don’t believe a learner who is in a classroom can be genuinely autonomous. it’s a contradiction in terms. the learner is working with a group of people and that group of people includes the teacher. so, they are in a collective environment, they are in an environment where cooperation and mutual help is actually essential if anything is to happen at all. normally, the relationship is between the teacher as an individual and the learners as a group. so, i suppose i would replace this idea by the notion of collective responsibilitycollective responsibilitycollective responsibilitycollective responsibilitycollective responsibility8. but, respecting the individual within that, so, just as the learner can work with the group in a cooperative way to contribute to their opinion on what decisions should be made, contribute the kind of problems, difficulties and achievements they are having, as feedback, to the group. so, the group, each member of the classroom, should come to realize that their own work will benefit if they also see themselves as a part responsible for the good running of the group, and that the teacher is an equal member of this. clearly the teacher has, if you like, a guiding-coordinating responsibility and the teacher has greater wisdom in terms of the language and in terms of the experience of running a classroom. but, i see the teacher, put very simply, as a facilitator of this collective responsibility, of this cooperative endeavor. so, i’m not so sure about individual, i mean, i think, individual autonomy, fair enough; but, i think, the primary thing about the teacher is that i am working with groups of people and so, i am much more concerned with collective responsibility and cooperation. so, how can i get these things mobilized and then working for me. that’s the key question, and without, of course, allowing the group to dictate to the individual and similarly, without the individual dictating to the group, and that applies to the teacher just as much as anybody else. so, the basic answer to your question, “who mak“who mak“who mak“who mak“who makeseseseses the decisions”?the decisions”?the decisions”?the decisions”?the decisions”?, i think, for me, it’s very obvious that the decisions are made together by teachers and learners. e. r.e. r.e. r.e. r.e. r.: can activities such as grammarcan activities such as grammarcan activities such as grammarcan activities such as grammarcan activities such as grammar activities, or those typical of notional,activities, or those typical of notional,activities, or those typical of notional,activities, or those typical of notional,activities, or those typical of notional, functional or task-based syllabuses, befunctional or task-based syllabuses, befunctional or task-based syllabuses, befunctional or task-based syllabuses, befunctional or task-based syllabuses, be contained or developed within a ps ?contained or developed within a ps ?contained or developed within a ps ?contained or developed within a ps ?contained or developed within a ps ? m . pm . pm . pm . pm . p. b .. b .. b .. b .. b .: certainly. there is a big misunderstanding about this. people have interpreted the ps to be seen as a challenge to, or something quite opposite to other kinds of syllabuses—grammatical, functional, taskbased or whatever. those are syllabuses of content, they are the sorts of syllabuses that are about what should be achieved in terms of the target language, what we should work on, what aspects of the language and what types of skills we should focus on, and so on and so forth . a ps will contain within it activities and tasks which themselves will be, maybe, structural, they may be functional, they may be taskoriented or skill-oriented or whatever. there will be a range of very traditional sorts of things that learners might work on: grammar, vocabulary or pronunciation. there will be a range of communication activities and so on and so forth. in some sense, it doesn’t really matter what aspects of the language are focused on and what skills are selected in terms of the actual tasks that people do. they can be structural or functional or communicative or whatever. what does does does does does matter is who chooses these, why they choose them and how long they work on them. that’s what matters and it’s those sorts of decisions that are usually made 8 my emphasis ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○65 profileprofileprofileprofileprofile quite outside the classroom or by textbook writers and they are not actually considered and they are not actually worked on. so, what i am interested in is providing a framework where an individual learner in the classroom can work on either grammar or vocabulary or functions or a role play or a reading text or a communicative activity or a massive project with other people, with other learners, sometimes with the teacher in small groups or on their own. but, having chosen to do that, mainly on the basis of: (i) what that learner feels is most urgent to him/her in terms of the immediate learning needs on the way to achieving long term needs and (ii) what kinds of problems that learner has had, in working just before ; what sort of problems has the learner had in working with a text or in some kind of oral activity ? but that learner’s identified or other people in the group will help that learner to be identified. so, the kinds of content that people work on will depend on learner need, as i made clear, through negotiation of what the learner himself or herself identified the need as being the teacher advising on the basis of learner problems. so, the choice of what other kind of content syllabus, if you can choose on the way, is not a problem for me at all. it’s not a problem for me if, in fact, the teacher is working within a syllabus that is being externally imposed and the teacher has to complete that syllabus, say, the teacher has to complete the syllabus designed by the ministry of education or somebody and that syllabus is very structural or it is very functional or whatever. that doesn’t seem to me a problem either because, obviously, one of the first things you do with that syllabus is to negotiate it ; that is, you present it to the learners and say, ‘right, these are the things we have to achieve. what order should we take them in? what do we already know ? what would be the best way of achieving this?’ and so on and so forth. in fact, an external syllabus document would be a very good starting point for the process of negotiation. so, in essence, it is not process or structure, or function. the process is a framework within which the choice of whatever other syllabus, appropriate to learner need and learner problem, is actually made. so, i don’t see that there is any necessary conflict here. i have personal views about what the more useful or more helpful or more interesting content syllabus is but that, i think, is quite independent to the notion of the ps. it does not replace this. it provides a frame in which the best of this can be chosen by learners and teachers together. e. r. if we understand teaching as ae. r. if we understand teaching as ae. r. if we understand teaching as ae. r. if we understand teaching as ae. r. if we understand teaching as a r e s e a rr e s e a rr e s e a rr e s e a rr e s e a rc h i n g a c t i v i t yc h i n g a c t i v i t yc h i n g a c t i v i t yc h i n g a c t i v i t yc h i n g a c t i v i t y, i t l e a d s t o t h e, i t l e a d s t o t h e, i t l e a d s t o t h e, i t l e a d s t o t h e, i t l e a d s t o t h e assumption that teachers should beassumption that teachers should beassumption that teachers should beassumption that teachers should beassumption that teachers should be learners, that teachers researlearners, that teachers researlearners, that teachers researlearners, that teachers researlearners, that teachers research as theych as theych as theych as theych as they teach and learn. is it, then, possible thatteach and learn. is it, then, possible thatteach and learn. is it, then, possible thatteach and learn. is it, then, possible thatteach and learn. is it, then, possible that t h e p s , d e f i n e d a s a f r a m e w o r k f o rt h e p s , d e f i n e d a s a f r a m e w o r k f o rt h e p s , d e f i n e d a s a f r a m e w o r k f o rt h e p s , d e f i n e d a s a f r a m e w o r k f o rt h e p s , d e f i n e d a s a f r a m e w o r k f o r planning and action—as shown in yourplanning and action—as shown in yourplanning and action—as shown in yourplanning and action—as shown in yourplanning and action—as shown in your diagram—could be applicable not onlydiagram—could be applicable not onlydiagram—could be applicable not onlydiagram—could be applicable not onlydiagram—could be applicable not only to language learning but also to teacherto language learning but also to teacherto language learning but also to teacherto language learning but also to teacherto language learning but also to teacher development ?development ?development ?development ?development ? ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ 66profileprofileprofileprofileprofile m.pm.pm.pm.pm.p.b..b..b..b..b.: yes, absolutely. i think you’re being idealistic if you think that teachers see themselves as researchers, they may well see themselves as learners. i think you’d have to argue, to convince teachers, that they should be doing research or be researched, because people have different views of what they mean by research. if you mean by research that teachers diagnose learner problems, get feedback from learners in terms of the learners’ strategies, explore with their learners their conceptualization of learning, identify decision-making problems in their classroom, alternative ways of working, involvement in finding out which materials (with their learners) are best to work on, what sort of materials are most useful, evaluating progress; all these sorts of things which teachers do in a class in an indirect way quite often. if you say that’s research, it seems to me that it is almost synonymous with teaching, because, in essence, what i am doing is finding out, investigating as i work and exploring as i seek the best ways of helping learners to learn. if that’s research, i’m sure i agree with you. but, if on the other hand, you think that teachers should do action research with learners in their classroom in order to develop personally, i am not sure, i don’t know. i mean, i know teachers who dododododo do action research as part of their application of the process ; the sort of work that we’ve been talking about. but, if you are asking me, could a teacher training course be based on a framework of shared decision-making? i mean a ps, then, of course, i see no reason why no. in fact, i see lots of good reasons why it should be. e. r.:e. r.:e. r.:e. r.:e. r.: what reasons might you give forwhat reasons might you give forwhat reasons might you give forwhat reasons might you give forwhat reasons might you give for adopting a ps framework for teacheradopting a ps framework for teacheradopting a ps framework for teacheradopting a ps framework for teacheradopting a ps framework for teacher training?training?training?training?training? m.pm.pm.pm.pm.p.b..b..b..b..b.: the basic reason is, instead of saying to people, ‘don’ t do as i do, do as i say’. you are saying to people implicitly by adopting a ps with them, ‘look, this is how i work with you. might it be possible for you to consider working like this with your learners? i am working with you in a way that engages your responsibility, that asks you to participate in the cooperative work of the group. i am asking you to take responsibility on your learning and for the learning of others in this group and i’m asking you to engage in shared decision-making to select activities, to share your problems’ and so on and so forth. i have worked with teachers like that. it is just a chance. they would also say, ‘yes, this is the way i can engage learners’ responsibility and this is the way i can begin to implement shared decisionmaking in my classroom’. in fact, there’s far more of a chance of that happening rather than if i stand up and give lectures about the ps to a group of teachers and tell them about it. if i actually work in this way myself as a teacher trainer, then, it ceases to be an ideal thing and becomes a possible thing, and by example, i am enabling them to see an alternative way of working; by example, not just because i am telling them but because this is the way i work with these people. so, that for me is the major reason i would have for adopting a ps for teacher training, and for the very same reasons, you know, the rationale for teacher training would be just the same: the notion of cooperative work, responsibility, problems in me as a trainer, my own classroom management and sharing them with you. obviously, one of the themes of teacher training may not be the language, so i am not so much concerned with helping develop people’s negotiation of changechangechangechangechange happenshappenshappenshappenshappens thrthrthrthrthroughoughoughoughough actions ofactions ofactions ofactions ofactions of what i do aswhat i do aswhat i do aswhat i do aswhat i do as well as whatwell as whatwell as whatwell as whatwell as what i thinki thinki thinki thinki think ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○67 profileprofileprofileprofileprofile meaning or being better communicators, but i might be, i might be. it may well be that teacher training or workshops that i’ve run are also seen, by the teachers, as an ideal opportunity to work in the target that they are supposed to be teaching with fellow teachers and it may be one of the very rare opportunities they have. so, it may well be. if i run a workshop in english, i am helping the teachers to become more refined communicators and helping them to negotiate their meanings about classroom life and so on and so forth. it is also a good reason for adopting a ps because they have to talk about their experience and they have to negotiate what the best ways of solving their problems are. so, i think there are very good reasons for adopting a ps for teacher training, specially when you compare with how most teacher training is carried out in most parts of the world, basically, where you have situations in which the experts very rarely work inside an actual classroom. the experts tell the professionals what they should be doing without actually knowing what those professionals are doing in their classrooms and they assume that if they pass their expertise on, somehow things will be changed. changes very rarely happen that way. changes only happen when the individuals relate possible, meaningful alternatives to their own life experiences. so, change happens through actions of what i do as well as what i think. and therefore, a ps which enables active-taking responsibility and sharing decisions, doing things together, of a central nature, i think, is going to be more beneficial for people in terms of their professional development than merely listening to what experts think. e. r.:e. r.:e. r.:e. r.:e. r.: so, based on what you have justso, based on what you have justso, based on what you have justso, based on what you have justso, based on what you have just explained, can i say that teacher trainingexplained, can i say that teacher trainingexplained, can i say that teacher trainingexplained, can i say that teacher trainingexplained, can i say that teacher training leading to teacher development, could beleading to teacher development, could beleading to teacher development, could beleading to teacher development, could beleading to teacher development, could be seen as a problem-solving situation orseen as a problem-solving situation orseen as a problem-solving situation orseen as a problem-solving situation orseen as a problem-solving situation or activity requiring shared decision-making?activity requiring shared decision-making?activity requiring shared decision-making?activity requiring shared decision-making?activity requiring shared decision-making? m.pm.pm.pm.pm.p.b..b..b..b..b.: yes, of course. most teachers, specially experienced teachers, if you have a workshop with experienced teachers and you ask them to decide the content any time i’ve done this and i’ve done it quite a lot of times they define the content in terms of their problems in the classroom. so, that’s a very good place to start because their problems in the classroom are the things they sort of worry about. but those problems may be the tip of an iceberg. there may be lots of things under the surface that those problems express, but if you start with the teachers’ problems in their classroom management then share these in a trusting way, that should be the content of your work. from that you are going to say: ‘o.k.i may be running a workshop but i don’ t know, i have similar kinds of problems myself’. so, how can we, then, decide how we should work on things and who should work on them because you are not going to have the same problems. what sort of things we can do both in the classroom and in the workshop ? so, already you are locked into the ps. so, yes, i think it can be problem soiving ; the content should be solving problems. e. r.:e. r.:e. r.:e. r.:e. r.: and when does evaluation takand when does evaluation takand when does evaluation takand when does evaluation takand when does evaluation takeeeee place?place?place?place?place? m.pm.pm.pm.pm.p.b..b..b..b..b.: all the time. evaluation is a very, very important element. by evaluation i don’t mean testing progress. by evaluation i mean, at a certain point, if i was working on a workshop, say, a two-day teacher training workshop, at the end of each day at least. but if i was working over a long period of time, at the end of a class, at the end of a large activity, three lessons, at the end of the week or at the end of a period of work, but certainly very regularly. the evaluation would take two forms, or would answer three questions really: ‘what have we achieved? what have we done?. have we progressed? what have we gained so far?. what ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ 68profileprofileprofileprofileprofile have we learned ?’ and actually sharing those things and taking a good long time sharing them because we tend to emphasize the negative things; and equally spending a good long time looking at, ‘what are the problems? what are the difficulties? what still needs to be done? what are we achieving? what are we getting? what should be on our agenda? what should we focus on from now?’ so, that is the second question. the third question would be: ‘how can we improve the way we are working? are we satisfied with the way we are working? are there more efficient ways of doing things?’ so, there’d be achievements, problems and ways of working and that...as much time has to be spent on that, i think, as spent on planning and deciding, ‘what are we going to do?’ it must be regular and it must be, again, a shared activity. it’s quite often the sort of thing the teacher does when s/he goes home and mark assignments and worries about this and then think o.k. what, ah, the teacher very often is taking those decisions on herself or himself and that seems to be, again, an unnecessary burden. so, yes, evaluation is absolutely central, because the evaluation stage shapes the whole of the rest of the ps. evaluation is the way in which you construct your own group’s ps together. e.e.e.e.e. r . :r . :r . :r . :r . : i n o t h e ri n o t h e ri n o t h e ri n o t h e ri n o t h e r w o rw o rw o rw o rw o rd s , a s o r t o fd s , a s o r t o fd s , a s o r t o fd s , a s o r t o fd s , a s o r t o f s u m m a t i v e f o r m a t i v es u m m a t i v e f o r m a t i v es u m m a t i v e f o r m a t i v es u m m a t i v e f o r m a t i v es u m m a t i v e f o r m a t i v e evaluationevaluationevaluationevaluationevaluation. m.pm.pm.pm.pm.p.b..b..b..b..b.: yes, if you say, by a certain point, ‘we ‘have done this and have done that and have done the other’, there is an element of summative evaluation. because you are saying, ‘what have we achieved ? this is what we set out to do. have we achieved it ? which aspects did we set out to achieve and did so, which aspects are still unachieved ?’ so, yes, it’s both formative and summative, but fundamentally formative, formative in the sense of planning ahead, improving the way we are working together. e. r.:e. r.:e. r.:e. r.:e. r.: mikmikmikmikmike, why done, why done, why done, why done, why don’t we speak on a’t we speak on a’t we speak on a’t we speak on a’t we speak on a d e l i c a t e i s s u e ? d o e s t h e p s , a s ad e l i c a t e i s s u e ? d o e s t h e p s , a s ad e l i c a t e i s s u e ? d o e s t h e p s , a s ad e l i c a t e i s s u e ? d o e s t h e p s , a s ad e l i c a t e i s s u e ? d o e s t h e p s , a s a framework either for language learningframework either for language learningframework either for language learningframework either for language learningframework either for language learning or teacher development, have limitations?or teacher development, have limitations?or teacher development, have limitations?or teacher development, have limitations?or teacher development, have limitations? m.pm.pm.pm.pm.p.b..b..b..b..b.: well, a framework is always a limited thing. a framework is, in some sense, a piece of paper, with sort of areas of decision-making identified on it. so, as it stands as a document or as a set of proposals for teacher and learner action, it is ideal. i don’ t believe there is one ps. i believe that if teachers adopt a ps framework, there will be as many pses as there are teachers and classrooms that adopt them. ‘why would it be rejected?’ i think, is another way of looking at it. and i think, there are lots of answers to that. there are probably as many if not more answers, more reasons that people might offer to reject it than could be offered to support it. and, you know, i can think of several. a teacher reason might be, and this is just to have an example, a teacher main reason might be , ‘there is a fear here that i would loose a very strong element of control on what happens in my classroom, that i quite like to be the conductor of the orchestra or the main controller of activities and routes we take’. and that’s a genuine fear and it requires a confident teacher who’s willing to take risks, because i think the ps does involve the teacher in taking risks and having different kinds of responsibilities as a guide, as a facilitator, as a coordinator, as an evaluator and not just as a the psthe psthe psthe psthe ps requires arequires arequires arequires arequires a confidentconfidentconfidentconfidentconfident teacher who’steacher who’steacher who’steacher who’steacher who’s willing to takwilling to takwilling to takwilling to takwilling to takeeeee risksrisksrisksrisksrisks ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○69 profileprofileprofileprofileprofile transmitter of knowledge. so one teacher worry would be ‘can i take on the new responsibilities that the ps demands of me?’ and one of the risks is taking on these responsibilities. ‘i’m giving up familiar control that i used to have in my lessons’. and i think, that’s a genuine concern. i think, the answer i would give is, ‘well, what do you consider your main responsibility to be as a teacher?’ i would want to give that teacher back that question. the second objection might be from the learners. ‘o.k’. the learners might say, ‘look, you are asking me to make decisions that, i think, i see you as the teacher responsible for making’. and that’s a tricky one. what that learner is essentially doing is giving up or surrendering his/her autonomy and responsibility actually as a learner for their own learning back to the teacher, being teacherdependent. there may be very good reasons for this because, of course, learning a language is a rather threatening and a highly affective experience. but, i’m not just interested in what learners do in my classes. i am interested in how to help learners become good language learners and to carry on learning outside the class, and after they leave the class, and the only way that’s going to come about is if the learner recognizes the extent to which s/he exercises their responsibilities in good learning experiences in the past and, thus, realize that they are, in fact, responsible for their own learning and when they’ve learnt something they have taken the major role. secondly, to give them space to take responsibility for their learning and the best way of doing that is to make far fewer decisions on their behalf myself. and thirdly, to get them to become more and more independent of me as a source of the language but to use me as one possible thing to rely on because the pressure that that puts on me, as a teacher, is almost inhuman and rather hard to bear because i cannot meet the particular needs of a group of learners. it’s humanly impossible, because these needs are so diverse. so the learners may say, ‘you are getting paid to make decisions, please , make decisions’ my response to that would be, ‘what are the things that really help you to learn ?’ and if you think of good learning experiences in your past life , right through your past life, ‘what was your role in those experiences?’ and ‘how much did you have to depend on other people, including the teacher?’ and i think if learners can track that question, they’d realize that they are far more responsible for their own learning than they had assumed. finally, i think external bodies such as heads of departments, ministries, institutions might want certain aims achieved and certain content covered and that’s fair enough. i mean, teachers obviously have to, in some sense, achieve certain objectives and they may see the ps as something which has got nothing to do with this. it’s threatening to the established syllabus, or threatening to the established aims. i don’t see that. i think, that’s a shiver, that’s a false fear. but, they may see the ps, i’d be veri’d be veri’d be veri’d be veri’d be veryyyyy surprised ifsurprised ifsurprised ifsurprised ifsurprised if people wouldpeople wouldpeople wouldpeople wouldpeople would not accept thenot accept thenot accept thenot accept thenot accept the view that one ofview that one ofview that one ofview that one ofview that one of the mainthe mainthe mainthe mainthe main functions of afunctions of afunctions of afunctions of afunctions of a prprprprprofessionalofessionalofessionalofessionalofessional teacher is toteacher is toteacher is toteacher is toteacher is to facilitatefacilitatefacilitatefacilitatefacilitate successfulsuccessfulsuccessfulsuccessfulsuccessful learninglearninglearninglearninglearning ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ 70profileprofileprofileprofileprofile the whole notion of sharing decisions with learners—the teacher sharing responsibility—as not the business of a language teacher; that the language teacher is there to achieve the objectives of the course and to get students through the next or to a certain level. and my answer to that one is, ‘what do you see as the main of the professional teacher ? ’if you see it as the transmission of knowledge, fair enough. but, people may disagree that that’s the main function of the teacher. i think i’d be very surprised if people would not accept the view that one of the main functions of a professional teacher is to facilitate successful learning in the learning groups, and if they are working in the classroom, to facilitate that classroom process, and that’s exactly why i feel there is a need for a ps, to not put all the weight on the teacher’s shoulders to make sure things work well, but also to help things be more efficient and successful. but, sharing that load. because if you share it, it’s likely that you’ll a c t u a l l y h a v e m o r e efficiency because you’ll be meeting a wider range of p e o p l e ’ s n e e d s a n d expectations and preferred ways of working and the need to be committed. i am not denying that there may be conflicts and that there may be different priorities, but therein lies negotiation, t h e r e y o u g e t t h e opportunities to transform problems together. e. r.:e. r.:e. r.:e. r.:e. r.: thank you mikthank you mikthank you mikthank you mikthank you mike. ye. ye. ye. ye. your researour researour researour researour researchchchchch and contributions to language educationand contributions to language educationand contributions to language educationand contributions to language educationand contributions to language education will be an invaluable help for all of us.will be an invaluable help for all of us.will be an invaluable help for all of us.will be an invaluable help for all of us.will be an invaluable help for all of us. m.pm.pm.pm.pm.p.b..b..b..b..b.: i hope so. thank you. i am noti am noti am noti am noti am not denying thatdenying thatdenying thatdenying thatdenying that there may bethere may bethere may bethere may bethere may be conflicts conflicts conflicts conflicts conflicts and thatand thatand thatand thatand that there may bethere may bethere may bethere may bethere may be differentdifferentdifferentdifferentdifferent priorities, butpriorities, butpriorities, butpriorities, butpriorities, but therein liestherein liestherein liestherein liestherein lies negotiationnegotiationnegotiationnegotiationnegotiation profile 2.p65 ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○9 profileprofileprofileprofileprofile this project was conducted in orderto improve oral interaction inenglish through the practice of games that permit the development of communication. this provided us the opportunity to improve our methodology and to encourage 4th grades, at the henao y arrubla institute. at the end of this investigation, we observed that not only the sample had improved their oral production, but the rest of the students could interact in the process as well. introductionintroductionintroductionintroductionintroduction at the beginning of year 2000, we discerned a lack of oral production in the majority of our students. we worked three hours per week and we thought it was necessary to implement an adequate process for having a good and effective development of the class. we chose a sample at the henao y arrubla institute. it operates on calendar a offering elementary and intermediate grade levels. our sample showed a high desire to improve their oral interaction. they are not shy to speak, and on several occasions, they use “spanglish”. teaching speaking is perhaps the most demanding skill for the second language teacher. children want to express their emotions, communicate intentions and reactions, explore the language and make fun of it in their own language, so, they expect to be able to do the same in english. how the interaction is achieved in formal situations is a matter of technique or of classroom approach. in less formal situations, it involves imaginative planning with student input. how can games help learning?how can games help learning?how can games help learning?how can games help learning?how can games help learning? games can help people break down their learning barriers. for example, take the case of a person who is shy in a normal classroom situation and who is afraid or embarrassed to participate in class, but, in a game he/she can be creative and free to express his/her opinions without any problem. games are facilitators of knowledge and bring down tension and anxiety. games provide an enjoyable environment in situations where communication is necessary. games in the english class are a way to supply students with enjoyable situations in which they feel distracted and do not see themselves as if they were straighjacketed. however, we must realize that not all the games are appropriate or not all of them have the characteristics needed to teach best. the best games are those that favor communication and where the players find it essential to communicate. we can focus on words, discussion, action, problem solving and guessing, or a combination of these. the purpose of this investigation was to determine if the use of games in english teaching and learning was adequate and effective. the fun approach to english learning nancy idaly camarnancy idaly camarnancy idaly camarnancy idaly camarnancy idaly camargo vgo vgo vgo vgo v..... and bernice lacera d.and bernice lacera d.and bernice lacera d.and bernice lacera d.and bernice lacera d. ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ 10profileprofileprofileprofileprofile we developed this project keeping in mind three key questions. the principal question was: how can we encourage the elementary student to use english when playing games? and related questions were: 1. what kind of games can we use to make students interact in the english class? 2. what kind of processes can we follow to make the games effective? action research was chosen as the research approach. this method permitted us to apply processes spirally and all the time we could plan, act, analyze and reflect upon the data collected. the data for this study was collected for four months from february to may, 2001. the information was collected while developing the school’s syllabus with the constant use of games, according to topic, in each class. we took notes in the teacher’s journal and it was necessary to videotape in some classes to observe students’ behavior. also, two surveys were applied at the beginning of the process and at the end to determine needs, preferences, likes and dislikes concerning the games in the english classes. those instruments were applied to ten students who were our sample and who had shown a high interest in oral production and who, at the end of this investigation, showed themselves to be very motivated because they now knew that they should help their classmates. resultsresultsresultsresultsresults the results showed that the students can achieve a mastery of vocabulary and usual expressions with the constant use of games in the english class. for some weeks, when we played games in the english class, we observed similar behaviors or attitudes. we analyzed our journals in order to improve later classes. we observed that the majority of the students were anxious, creative and motivated. students were very interested in the english classes they were playing games in and we could see that they improved their vocabulary and in the use of expressions in and outside english class. constantly, students asked us, “teacher are we going to play games today, please?... teacher that class is great!”. these comments were very important to us because we could see that the use of games in the english class was effective. conclusionconclusionconclusionconclusionconclusion the principal purposes of the development of each english class were oral interaction and the consideration of games that suit the students’ learning process and their preferences. the sample (10 students) showed that games could be an excellent means to acquire knowledge of english and that students could help themselves improve because they are freer, and more active when playing games, especially those that come up with winners. so, it is easier and faster for them to manage or assimilate the learning situation. we conclude that games are good pedagogical tools because students learn a foreign language better with activities that were prepared according to their attitudes, needs, preferences, likes and dislikes. games are the most complete tools to make our students autonomous, free and creative. controlled games foment values such us honesty, justice, comprehension, acceptance whether winning or losing, respect and responsibility. we could infer that when students worked on exercises, topics and activities, they remembered the games played and practiced ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○11 profileprofileprofileprofileprofile them. they were motivated to participate more actively. for the development of the games, it is important to emphasize that the teacher must know how the students use knowledge and how they practice what they learn. pppppedagogical implicationsedagogical implicationsedagogical implicationsedagogical implicationsedagogical implications we are conscious that learning is a selective and individual process directed by specific needs. using games to achieve a good level of oral interaction requires an adequate educational environment generated by the teachers. we want to point out some recommendations in order to make effective use of games in our classes. · the teacher must know the students’ needs, preferences, likes and dislikes and based on those, she/ he can prepare the lesson plan for each class keeping in mind what kind of games can be used or which are the most adequate according to the topic being studied. · the teacher must determine clearly the objectives that she/he wants to obtain with the game that she/he uses. · we should choose games that respond to the needs and characteristics of the group as well as time limits, conditions, space and material, and make the necessary adaptations according to the situation. · we should prepare alternative games that permit us to achieve the objectives in case the program or time slot changes because of an unforeseen situation. · before starting a game, the teacher must be sure that all students have understood the rules and he/she must be located in a place where all his/her students can see and hear him/her when he/she speaks to them. · the attitude of the teacher in the classroom, his/her students, his/her behavior, his/her dynamism in the demonstrations and explanations of the games are the keys of progress in learning from games. profile 1.p65 ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ 42profileprofileprofileprofileprofile group work as a means of getting students to participate luz marina fluz marina fluz marina fluz marina fluz marina forerorerorerorerorero to to to to tovarovarovarovarovar three types of activities were workedon with a group of 15 shy and slow10th grade students at the centro educativo integral colsubsidio to get them to participate and talk more often and fluently than they were doing. activities selected for that purpose were : games, role-plays and inter views that had to be carried out in groups. students’ difficulties expressing their ideas fluently rather than accurately were confirmed by means of a questionnaire, then the activities listed above were piloted and the results of their effectiveness were measured by a teacher observer, by my own field notes and by interviews as well as a final questionnaire applied during and at the end of the piloting stage. results from these three sources were analysed and showed that some students benefited slightly from the activities while others just improved their pronunciation as a result of their work with different partners. also, some students were not keen on working in groups because they preferred individual work. speaking ability was not improved as much as expected but the kind of work (group work) helped students to participate more in class. it is also interesting to point out that female students preferred role-plays to the other two activities while male students enjoyed games the most. intrintrintrintrintroductionoductionoductionoductionoduction communicating ideas in our mother tongue is sometimes difficult and if you are shy or have a different speed of learning from your partners, participation is not going to be easy either in your mother tongue or in a foreign language. in trying to improve our students’ oral performance we as teachers often tend to give them grammar rules or vocabular y, but what is important is to integrate them in situations and activities where the student feels confident enough to forget about correctness or about mistakes in order to express what he thinks, feels, etc. this project intended to help shy and slow students to improve their oral production, basically their fluency rather than their accuracy. most of the time natural communication involves two or more participants, therefore activities should be as similar as possible to this reality. this research work was done at colsubsidio school (c.e.i.c.). the sample taken for it were 15 10th grade students who were particularly shy and/or slow. there was obviously a need to create, adapt or use interesting, motivating and challenging activities to involve them enough so that they felt the need to talk because they had a • • ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○43 profileprofileprofileprofileprofile purpose to do so. in order to achieve the main objective (oral communication), motivation and activities were always linked. participants or subjects of this project were mixed with partners of different abilities, the use of english was also promoted (as much as possible) because when non-native speakers converse with other non-native speakers, they experience a greater degree of involvement in their interaction, are more persistent in their attempts to get their ideas across, hence work harder to modify their language toward greater comprehensibility (pica: 1982). having in mind its well-know benefits, group work was chosen to help students. group work was understood as the kind of work carried out by more than two students at any stage of the class, orally, that is as integrative as possible, and that has as its main objective promoting students’ participation, focusing on fluency rather than on accuracy. oral fluency is the ability to express oneself with reasonably good or clear pronunciation using the language students know without, necessarily, mastering it perfectly. again, the subjects of this paper lack oral production and the way to increase speaking for shy and slow students is to get them to talk through group work with communicative activities. prprprprprocedureocedureocedureocedureocedure once the teacher realised the problem, it was confirmed by asking students about their confidence when speaking by using a questionnaire. then, several group activities such as: dictation, information gap, ranking, jigsaw, guessing activities, problem solving, role-plays, group discussion, project-based activities, prepared dialogues, etc., were tried but finally interviews, games and role-plays were chosen as the tools to help students. special attention was devoted to students’ output bearing in mind that “in a communicative activity, the student’s output and the degree of success that output achieves may provide valuable information about the language which is then internalised” (harmer: 1991, 42). then, to measure the suitability or effectiveness of the activities, a classroom observation sheet was designed and used, which was subsequently modified three times. a teacher-observer came to class to obser ve students’ oral performance and sometimes (at the beginning) she participated actively. the obser ver cared about students’ participation and motivation to talk and about what information they actually could communicate. she also gave valuable comments on the teacher’s performance. meetings after class were planned to discuss what she observed. another procedure used was the interview. this was carried out after some (not all) sessions. students were asked about their feelings during the class, if activities were useful, motivating or interesting and about their confidence when speaking. field notes were also kept to register students’ attitudes, use of new vocabulary, and in general any particular information that provided ideas about the possible improvement students were having. videorecordings were used as a supplementary ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ 44profileprofileprofileprofileprofile procedure. in some classes a teacher from a different area video-taped some role plays and interviews. information gathered from it was written down in the field notes notebook. a final questionnaire was applied to get students’ points of view about their improvement. resultsresultsresultsresultsresults from the data gathered from the different sources, some individual differences were noted. three students did not like the idea of working in groups. their learning style was individual. some of them were a bit lazy about talking at the beginning but by the end of this project, they showed more interest and involvement in what they were doing. it is difficult to say that they have improved their fluency a great deal because oral fluency takes longer to be developed, and because more activities need to be designed. the output provided by good or fast students encouraged slow and shy students to speak more often during the class. group work functioned as an integration tool. students knew more about their partners. although motivation was low at the beginning of the project, by the end most students found activities easier because group members cooperated and therefore the time spent on it was productive. role-plays and interviews were useful to get female students to talk while games served the same purpose in male students. obviously, there were students with whom the three types of activities did not allow reaching the goal because they favoured individual or working in pairs. conclusionsconclusionsconclusionsconclusionsconclusions to conclude, it could be said that group work bettered students participation while oral expression of ideas was slightly improved. participation in class increased as a result of the development of activities where good students backed up slow and shy students. shyness made it a bit difficult, for some students, to work with other people but it did not stop the development of activities that were carried out successfully in most cases. _____________ referencesreferencesreferencesreferencesreferences harmer, j. (1991). the practice of english language teaching. new edition. london: longman. p. 42. pica, t. (1992). language-learning research and classroom concerns. english language teaching forum. vol. 30/3: 2-9. • 11profile vol. 11, no. 2, 2009. issn 1657-0790. bogotá, colombia. pages 11-26 promoting oral production through the task-based learning approach: a study in a public secondary school in colombia*1 el enfoque de aprendizaje basado en tareas como medio para promover la producción oral: un estudio en un colegio público de secundaria en colombia mireya peña**2 amparo onatra*** francisco de paula santander school, colombia spoken language is used less confidently by learners in the english as a foreign language (efl) classroom in secondary schools, and this has become a challenge for most teachers. this article describes an action research experience carried out at francisco de paula santander, a public school in bogotá, in 2004. the study was developed with a sample of learners belonging to four groups of seven graders along nine months. data were collected by means of audio recordings, field notes and proformas. the results of the study let us analyze the different demands of transactional and interactional activities among novice efl speakers. they can also be considered an attempt to understand the implications of such activities within the framework of the task-based learning approach presented by willis (1996). key words: oral interaction, task-based learning (tbl) los estudiantes de los colegios de secundaria usan con menos seguridad el lenguaje oral en las clases de inglés como lengua extranjera y esto se ha constituido en un reto para muchos profesores. este artículo describe una experiencia de investigación acción adelantada en el colegio público francisco de paula santander en bogotá, en el año 2004. el estudio se realizó con una muestra de estudiantes pertenecientes a cuatro cursos de séptimo grado, a lo largo de nueve meses. los datos se recolectaron mediante grabaciones de audio, notas de campo y proformas. los resultados del estudio nos permiten analizar las exigencias diferenciadas de las actividades interaccionales y transaccionales para hablantes novatos del inglés como lengua extranjera. también se pueden considerar como un intento por comprender las implicaciones de dichas actividades en el marco del enfoque de aprendizaje basado en tareas, presentado por willis (1996). palabras clave: interacción oral, aprendizaje basado en tareas * this paper reports on a study conducted by the authors while participating in the profile teacher development program, at universidad nacional de colombia, in 2004. the program was sponsored by secretaría de educación de bogotá, d.c. code number: 30102005346, universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas. ** e-mail: mireyapereyes@yahoo.com *** e-mail: chalita97@yahoo.com address: calle 61 sur # 80i 40. bosa localidad 7a. bogotá, colombia. this article was received on november 30, 2008 and accepted on august 9, 2009. 12 universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras peña & onatra introduction it is very important to communicate, to express our ideas and to say what we feel in a comprehensible way. indeed, effective communication gives us the opportunity to create a better world. unfortunately, human beings do not always take advantage of this unique ability in everyday life. part of this weakness is observed in language classrooms because of various reasons that can include methodology selection, availability of resources and even teacher’s profile. in our case, due to the approach implemented in our institution as part of the curriculum, a higher emphasis on literacy has been given in english class. the oral skill is very often set aside and regular classes tend to develop cognitive processes mostly by reading and writing. most of the time we lack enough reflection on how to encourage learner’s potential in regard to their communicative competence. this situation gets worse when the institution’s concern is to have learners provided with tools to do well on future standardized tests. despite this emphasis, we observed how important and motivating it was for learners to get involved in communicative situations which allow them to express their own ideas and feelings about familiar topics. for this reason, our main purpose during this research was to design and implement tasks which encouraged students’ oral output. thus, having oral skills as the target of our project, we expected to identify starting points that may lead us to the answer of the following main query with its two supportive questions: • what do students’ performances tell us about oral output when they engage in activities that follow the task-based learning approach? • what happens when an oral activity implies individual performance? • what happens when an oral activity implies pair performance? in the present research report the reader will find some theoretical considerations concerning the importance of oral skills as one of the elements that constitutes communicative competence. we present the implications that framed our analysis and further reflection about the oral skill development. theoretical framework very often when we want to know about someone’s skills in terms of language, we ask whether s/he speaks english. this is probably the most evident way to demonstrate language proficiency. however, in an efl context like ours, speaking is not necessarily the easiest way to confirm familiarity with a language because of the prerequisites of such a skill. the oral skill speaking is something students do when they drill particular language patterns, but the oral skill is much more than this. it involves speaking and listening as a two-way process where responding is expected. according to byrne (1991), oral tasks involve the productive skill of speaking and the receptive skill of understanding. it means that learners have to be taught to speak as well as to listen. both listening and speaking are such common activities in the daily routine that we seem to confuse ourselves as being experts when we are only users. hence, when learners understand the difference between hearing something and listening attentively to someone, they can then grasp a variety of communication requirements that range from talking to an audience in a meaningful transactional mode, to speaking 13profile vol. 11, no. 2, 2009. issn 1657-0790. bogotá, colombia. pages 11-26 promoting oral production through the task-based learning approach: a study... with each other by building up the discourse as the conversation flows in an interactional task. the conjunction of these relevant elements in the classroom is a contribution to the gradual achievement of communicative competence. this is precisely what we want to clarify so that the outcomes of this research can be valued in their right dimension. we focused on analyzing the oral skill, which is just one of the aspects to be tackled when dealing with the umbrella concept of communicative competence. let us keep in mind that various skills constitute a competence. in this regard, when hymes (1972) refers to the capacity to communicate effectively within a particular speech community that wants to accomplish its purposes, we can take into consideration the tasks we propose in class as the context where learners start acting as members of a community. in general, despite students being exposed to l2 in class, they cannot express themselves effectively when they are asked to participate orally in communicative activities. according to nunan (1993), this may happen because there is no distinction between knowing various grammatical rules and being able to use them effectively and appropriately when communicating. by the same token, learners feel that they have to perform perfectly from the first time they try to speak partly because teachers sometimes highlight accuracy rather than fluency, and thus errors are not considered part of their learning process. as ran (2001) states, this results in learners losing confidence and in discouragement to speak english. in this regards, littlewood (1981) suggests that learners must develop skills and strategies for using the language to communicate meanings as effectively as possible in concrete situations. note that he highlights understanding meaning over the use of structures. this makes it crucial to include speaking activities in the english language class since they promote meaningful activities within a cooperative learning environment, strengthening self-esteem, and improving social relationships. transactional and interactional skills in oral communication transactional and interactional skills are both relevant elements in oral communication. regarding these aspects nunan (1993) states that they are related to skills in taking short and long speaking turns; skills in the management of interaction; skills in negotiating meaning and conversational listening skills. successful conversation requires good listeners as well as good speakers. brown & yule (2001) define the transactional aspect as the transfer of information, and the interactional as the key element for maintaining social relationships. this statement can be easily associated with the distinction established by nunan (1993), between monologue and dialogue, given that the ability to give an uninterrupted oral presentation is rather different from interacting with one or more speakers. in everyday situations, any speaker is able to use language in an interactional way. this means in a dialogue. however, when dealing with an oral presentation, which is a transactional skill, even a native speaker has to be trained and needs time for practice and preparation. for the purposes of this study, learners were motivated to participate in both kinds of communication tasks so that we could observe their performance in each situation. something that must be clarified and taken into account is that the learners’ oral performance demands time and student-teacher collaboration as well as attitudinal changes from both of them. brown & yule (2001) state that teachers should 14 universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras peña & onatra realize that simply training the student to produce short turns will not automatically yield him or her to produce long turns. although it may seem fashionable in language teaching to pay particular attention to the forms and functions of short turns, we have to be aware that students who are only capable of producing guided utterances may experience a lot of frustration when they try to communicate. the challenge for teachers then is to avoid learning practices that become frustrating or overloading. in this respect, the task-based learning approach constituted a useful source to balance the tension between doing well and feeling fine with what you do. task-based learning task based learning (tbl) was the methodology we adopted for this research. in this approach the basic and initial point of organization is the task. class work is arranged as a sequence of tasks and it is the task that generates the language to be used. thus, in tbl teachers ask learners to carry out a series of tasks for which they will need to learn and recycle some specific items of language. the focus is on the tasks to be done, and language is seen as the instrument necessary to carry them out. tbl highlights the instrumental value of language. under this approach, activities have a perceived purpose and a clear outcome. that helps students to keep in mind what they will be doing at the end of the task. students are initially accompanied by the teacher on activities which are similar to the ones they are supposed to work on autonomously, and thus can see the logic involved in the final task. the figure we used to represent the basic steps of tbl highlights the learners’ role in the process. in the first phase, the pre-task, they get acquainted with rich input about elements they will need later on. then in the phase called task cycle, learners start their first trials by observing the way the elements pre-task task-cycle final-task figure 1. pedagogical design based on tbl principles (sample unit summary) 15profile vol. 11, no. 2, 2009. issn 1657-0790. bogotá, colombia. pages 11-26 promoting oral production through the task-based learning approach: a study... previously presented work in contextualized tasks. in the final task they will have the teacher’s support, but it will be their own decisions and efforts that will make it possible to move forward. context francisco de paula santander school was founded sixty nine years ago as a public elementary school. it was only in the year 2000 that the levels of secondary started to be implemented. nowadays, our institution has one or two groups of each level from preschool up to eleventh grade. most of the students of our institution belong to the socio economic strata 1 and 2 (lower economic class). they live in a context with many social, economical and affective needs. in general, the students have a good attitude towards the school. many of them like to be there because they find other kids for social interaction, and in some cases, the affection they do not receive at home. the pei1 of our school is focused on the integral education of the learners under the philosophy of humanism as an opportunity for the learners to develop both their intellectual and social skills for active participation in society. as we previously mentioned, the teaching of english at francisco de paula school focused on developing activities in which students’ work was mostly centered on reading and writing processes. in the last levels of secondary school these activities had the additional purpose of training students for passing written tests. consequently, learners’ oral potential was not improved sufficiently. in others words, we identified that the elt curriculum at the school stressed writing and reading practices at the expense of speaking activities which could promote students’ oral skills. 1 pei = proyecto educativo institucional (school institutional project). we wanted to listen to students’ voices developing speaking activities in the classroom. as a result, an interview was administered and recorded. data gathered from this instrument informed that 84% of the students, most of them boys, were interested in activities which implied speaking. having this preference in mind we decided to promote students’ oral presentations which served as point of departure for analyzing their levels of speaking. during the activity, students seemed nervous when they forgot specific vocabulary or expressions. they laughed or simply did not talk, especially if they were in front of the tape recorder. most of the ones who dared to participate learned by heart what they wanted to say. although a few of them were confident doing the oral activity, other students did not want to participate since they felt panic in front of their classmates. we have to remark that recording those classes provided insights which let us identify situations that we usually could not notice, such us learners’ anxiety and difficulties when they expressed themselves orally. participants although all the students belonging to seventh grade participated in the activities as part of their habitual classes, only four students in groups 7a and 7b provided the data gathered for the present research. adding two groups in the morning and two in the afternoon made a total of sixteen students for the sample. they were selected at random once they and their parents were asked for consent to participate. for the purposes of this research, students were codified by giving them numbers which were used  in order to organize data more easily. 16 universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras peña & onatra pedagogical procedure as already stated, for the purpose of our research project we decided to implement taskbased learning activities, following the well-known proposal by willis (1996). the author claims that tbl has three phases: pre task, task cycle and language focus. the first phase introduces the class to the topic and the task by providing words and phrases related to the topic. the second one encourages the holistic use of the language which favors an inductive, cognitive style to re-create natural learning conditions in the classroom. the last phase allows a closer study and assessment of the features used during the task cycle. as we have pointed out, our interest in this research was to explore useful tasks for encouraging oral output so that they could be implemented as part of the habitual work in class. the implementation of these tasks took into account the following steps: 1. determine theme or interest area 2. plan final task or series of tasks (to be done at the end of the unit) 3. define unit objectives 4. specify contents and thematic aspects to be dealt with 5. plan the process determining communication tasks which lead to the final task 6. select appropriate materials and sources 7. plan instruments and procedures for the evaluation and assessment process. we decided to apply two different kinds of strategies to encourage oral production. some focused on interaction with peers, which involved conversation, formal and informal interviews, and dialogues. the other ones focused on individual presentations based on the topics they had suggested and were interested in (see appendix 3). research method and instruments for data collection we implemented a set of activities as part of an action research plan that provided us with a clearer picture of our students’ oral skill performance through time when working with the task based approach. among the varied interpretations of the action research cycle, which traditionally considers reflection, action and observation, as stated by kemmis & mctaggart (1998), we adopted the perspective given by carr & kemmis (1986). according to these authors, the dialectical tension between action and reflection strengthen each other through a process of planned change, monitoring, reflection and modification. we also described in a more informed way the social situation that occurred along the whole year of implementation at our school. at the beginning of the process we made a diagnosis with the purpose of discovering students’ speaking level. for that, students did oral presentations which served as a point of departure for analyzing their oral level. students gave oral reports dealing with “talking about my friend”, and “talking about my family”. grammar and pronunciation mistakes were evident. however, we observed learners’ positive attitude towards the use of english. this information was audio recorded and it allowed us to discover special situations which we usually could not notice such us the learners’ anxiety and their difficulties to express something. in short, the instruments we used for gathering data were audio recordings, field notes and proformas. we audio recorded most of the sessions as a way to complement the information gathered through our field notes according to lankshear & knobel (2004), audio recordings represent a good tool to “revisit” scenes and “find” more ‘things’ in 17profile vol. 11, no. 2, 2009. issn 1657-0790. bogotá, colombia. pages 11-26 promoting oral production through the task-based learning approach: a study... them. an audio recording and subsequent transcription of the lessons provided us with valuable information about students’ attitudes and speaking characteristics that we had not noticed during the classes. the rest of the information was collected by means of field notes (see appendix 1) and proformas (see appendix 2). these instruments gave us two kinds of information. firstly, data came from our direct observation and the analysis of our lessons and our students’ attitudes. secondly, information also derived from our students’ performance while interacting with their partners. burns (1999) claims that field notes provide the researcher with insights about events, participants and contexts in detail. they generally take into account non verbal aspects, characteristics of places, individual or group dynamics and interaction among participants. on the other hand, proformas helped us to identify in an easy and quick way the information emerging from data. in burn’s words (1999), proformas allow identifying the dayto-day issues that arise, the actions taken by the teachers as well as the evaluation of those issues. findings in this section we present the outcomes of our reflection and revision of data with a grounded approach based on creswell (1998). following his recommendations, we started relating particular situations in order to find the meanings that were finally summarized as shown in figure 2. after deep analysis of the patterns they were grouped into three categories according to the phenomena we observed. the first phenomenon refers to our students’ mistakes as a necessary step in the learning process; the second one has to do with some strategies they empirically used in order to keep on-task, and the third deals with the external elements implied in learners’ oral presentations which are closely related to their social character. figure 2. research questions and categories found in the data analysis 18 universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras peña & onatra making mistakes: a path for learning mistakes related to different language aspects were constant in our instruments and invited us to have a closer look at them as a recurrent message representing something else. they are neither negative nor positive elements of a particular task. after questioning our data we considered mistakes evidenced a learning process was going on. as krashen (1987) explains in his second hypothesis about language acquisition, the monitor skill is a conscious evidence of such process. it implies a learner making mistakes while s/he confirms what can be accepted as correct or appropriate. though it might sound obvious within a pedagogical context, mistakes in grammar, intonation and pronunciation are to be tolerated and even ignored when the objective of a task is to promote the oral skill. in the case of the seventh graders we worked with, their progress was relevant after lowering their anxiety by avoiding both teacher’s correction and peers’ critique. during the first months of our investigation, the students participated in oral activities talking about themselves, as reported in the research method section. later, they gained more confidence to prepare role plays and other presentations where they were supposed to act. in the examples below we can see how learners created words to replace the ones they did not know and to keep track of the message when they engaged in an interview: j: house eh… of colombia n: ah… eh…is an excellent eh… country j: yes, yes, /?/ -por supuestn: ahm… eh… which, which dress? j: is a pants eh… brown, he thin, eh… gooo, eh… hm… black shoes n: ah… unhhm… she is tall and she is /?/... ah extrangere-!! j: yes, yes – por supuestwe are in the park. extract 1 (transcription 08-10-04) j: naim (name) is claudia dominguez. profession model. eh from colombia description uhm… /?/ in the eyes black, hair brown eh… legs red t: you mean lips? j: no lips red eh… eh, pants, pants colours black, sandals, eh plataform [referring to a special kind of shoes] eh… black blouse in the blue. is she sobresalient [referring to famous, relevant] ¡gracias! extract 2 (transcription 25-08-04) the joy of sharing with others in a friendly environment made the difference. in this respect we could also observe that the use of disguises helped them in two ways: first, in getting learners’ engaged with the role they were playing and second, in giving them the option to speak about topics they were not used to. the fact of having a character speak up through their voices worked as the perfect excuse to take risks with the target language with the shelter that anonymity gives. it was their character making the mistakes while they were safely learning from such events. looking for strategies to maintain communication the second category has to do with the strategies that students used in order to maintain communication. we reflected on why phenomena such as word invention, transfer and overgeneralization occurred among the group of speakers and observed that they simply did not want to lose track of their ideas so that they used those strategies as a valuable resource. oxford (1990) has 19profile vol. 11, no. 2, 2009. issn 1657-0790. bogotá, colombia. pages 11-26 promoting oral production through the task-based learning approach: a study... made a detailed classification of many language learning strategies, which have been considered in the present data analysis stage so that we could see how important it is to be aware of these techniques independently from the characterization of the sample but relating them to their status of novice foreign language speakers. amongst the oral strategies used by students to express orally, we can also mention: word invention and the combination of english and spanish as a way to counteract their lack or vocabulary. additionally, they used “transparent words” to surpass the oral difficulties or the lack of repertoire. we found what we called solidarity between interlocutors. when speakers have a sense of solidarity, they simply need enough input to grasp the meaning of the sentence in order to give their interlocutor a hand by providing the information requested. the extracts below illustrate linguistic solidarity among interlocutors: a: excuse me eh... a little question, what do, what do they, eh… separate? b: eh… for problems and for construction …eh… of one …family… thanks extract 3 (transcription 08-10-04) s: // name is paola j: what is she from? s: he’s from cartagena j: what do she do? s : eh… j: she is a actress? s: she’s a actress j: what does good looking? s: eh… eyes brown ehm… short, short j: what’s she wearing? s: shirt brown and tank top yellow extract 4 (transcription 06-09-04) here it is clear that the interviewer wanted to know the reasons for the separation of the group and despite that it was not correctly organized, the interviewee understood and answered appropriately again without correctness. they do not wait to hear perfect questions in order to answer. oxford (1990) calls this phenomenon cooperating with others. what is important to consider is that in order to be able to cooperate with an interlocutor the listener must be aware of the other’s communicative intention or need. that is what really counts. this actual connection between their minds is the one that provokes dialogue and keeps communication flowing. t: now we have stefany and ehmm gloria g: ehm… what’s her name? s: manuel g: where is he from? s: francia g: what do… look like? ehmm... what do his good looking? s: ehm… medium, medium ehn talle hm… short, black hair g: ehmm what is he wearing s: ehmm (smiles nervously)… black jacket… ehm blue trousers ehn green coat… ehm blue… es esshirt t: ok that’s all. extract 5 (transcription 06-09-04) another common aspect dealing with language use was transfer, understood as the act of borrowing patterns and structures from the mother tongue and assuming they work the same way in the target language. transfers were observed in both pronunciation and grammar. in the case of overgeneralization the use of the verb ‘to be’ was very common. from a communicative perspective either “he is tall” or “he is short hair” reaches the goal of describing a person, and utterances like the 20 universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras peña & onatra ones shown below only demonstrate that certain linguistic aspects  have not yet been internalized. g: eh…she… is lo /?/ eh , ha hair... long is /?/.. eh your eyes… eh your }black... your nose is little, your mouth is colou pink.. your eh. little your.. she /?/ and has one clo clothes white and your name is nathalia paris extract 6 (transcription 9-12-04) here we can observe an increase of pet words, longer pauses, expressions of hesitation, and a big effort to express. however, the student did not lose track of talking until the end. furthermore, we noted that code switching, along with word invention and the use of false cognates, was basically attempts made by the students to hold on to their speech. those are positive resources students profited from, showing in this manner a desire not to break communication. talking with others and talking to others. that is a two-sided challenge! we confirmed in our context the idea stated by brown & yule (2001) about short and long turns in oral presentations. they state that having students participate coherently in short turns does not warrant the same results in longer participations. the individual participation time of the students who took part in our investigation ranged from 15 seconds to 1.5 minutes. however, longer turns did not mean better fluency. in fact, we noted that pauses were used better in short participations, whilst in longer turns many pet words and hesitation expressions occurred. having observed a good performance at a basic level in transactional activities did not necessarily mean the same speaker doing well in interactional tasks or in longer transactional ones. let us observe that in the first two presentations the students take just enough time to give basic information. there are no long pauses or relevant grammar mistakes; however, they did not seem natural taking into account that a casual speaker would not talk so correctly for an introduction like this. in these cases we could see how memorization favored fluency, but it was against natural speaking: time: 10 seconds s: he is carlos vives. he is from santa marta. he’s forty three years old and long hair. extract 7 (transcription 12-08-04) time: 1,5 seconds this is jorge villamizar… he is from barranquilla colombia… he is a singer. he is tall, thing and good loooking. he has short black hair and black eyes. extract 8 (transcription 27-08-04) time: 1 min and 5 seconds o: he is, she, he is name cumba, eh she is t: she or he? o: she or he, eh… vestid, jacket [chacket] eh… jacket brown, eh ten [maybe tennis] black eh… t-shirt white, eh… panta eh... black y shoes eh… brown eh… he is from... mexico. eh… hair... black… eh has mustache eh has eh arms ugly eh… finish. extract 9 (transcription 9-12-04) observing the development of the tasks in the first two presentations, the students took just enough time to give basic information. there are no long pauses or relevant grammar mistakes; however, their speeches did not seem natural if we take into account that a casual speaker would not talk so directly for a self introduction. we could observe that memorization favored fluency but worked against speaking naturally. in the other cases we observed an increase in pet words, longer pauses, expressions of hesitation and a bigger 21profile vol. 11, no. 2, 2009. issn 1657-0790. bogotá, colombia. pages 11-26 promoting oral production through the task-based learning approach: a study... effort to use the target language all the time. this was the case of extroverted students. as willis (1996) states, these kinds of learners appear to be more active and more willing to take risks with language. thus, although fluency decreased, they used the language purposefully. another relevant observation we made was that fast speaking did not mean accurate use of structures but good learning of vocabulary. conclusions and pedagogical implications one of the most relevant tenets of this research deals with our view of mistakes. based on the findings of this research project we consider that mistakes allow the individuals to monitor their learning process. the fact of being wrong, in some cases, causes humans to take actions and modify behaviors in order to establish changes and needed corrections. in other words, making mistakes represent a good opportunity to learn, recreate and complement individuals’ previous knowledge. looking at this research experience retrospectively we concluded that getting learners to speak in the efl classroom is both rewarding and demanding because there are many elements to be considered when dealing with oral skills. in order to see confident speakers in a task, we cannot take for granted the use of vocabulary, the practice of intonation patterns and other language aspects. but above all, we should keep in mind students’ awareness of their learning as a process, rather than a last stage product. it means that they have to learn how to cope with mistakes and drawbacks in the development of a task. not doing well in a task is just one of the options they may be faced with, and if it is the case, they should still consider it an opportunity to improve individual weaknesses. we understood that although learners must be exposed to ideal or accurate pieces of the target language, they are not obliged to reach the same level of expertise. in this case it is important for teachers to get to know their learners in advance. for highly motivated learners, this particular recommendation becomes really useful since their affective filter will decrease remarkably and will generate better results. however, in the case of demotivated or low achievers, the same suggestion would become the authorization for presenting a non-acceptable oral task. another conclusion we drew from our analysis is that letting learners observe a model during the task cycle is an excellent guide to better understand the purpose and possible outcome of a task. nevertheless, it is important to let learners know that although they have a sample, it is their own ideas with maximum use of their creativity that are still the focus. students should keep in mind that their goal is to challenge themselves for the pleasure of practicing their learning. that is what really counts for their lives since school should not be the place for doing what others command, but for trying under the auspices of their teacher their habit of acting autonomously and talking about their ideas according to the task life poses them. paraphrasing freire & macedo (1987), learners in the language class should speak about their world in their own words so that they can avoid unnatural utterances occurring during a task. it is important to provide the students with a confident learning environment to speak. this was the key to making classmates act in a sympathizing way. this meant that oral activities, both transactional and interactional, created less anxiety. finally, in relation to the new education policies, which have organized school work into cycles, we consider it important to reserve a space for discussion in regard to the implications 22 universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras peña & onatra of managing the process and practice of skills according to the cognitive, social and linguistic development of learners, and the way they contribute to the consolidation of the learners’ communicative competence. references brown, g., & yule, g. (2001). teaching the spoken language. cambridge: cambridge university press. burns, a. (1999). collaborative action research for english language teachers. cambridge: cambridge university press. byrne, d. (1991). teaching oral english. london: mc gill university. carr, w., & kemmis, s. (1986). becoming critical: education, knowledge, and action research. basingtoke: falmer press. cresswell, j. (1998). qualitative inquiry and research design: choosing among five traditions. london: sage publications. freire, p., & macedo, d. (1987). literacy: reading the word and the world. south hadley: bergin and garvey. hymes, d. (1972). on communicative competence. in duranti, a. linguistic anthropology: a reader (pp. 5373). massachusetts: blackwell publishers. kemmis, s., & mctaggart, r. (1998). the action research planner. australia: deakin university press. krashen, s. (1987). principles and practice in second language acquisition. london: prenticehall international. lankshear, c., & knobel, m. (2004). a handbook for teacher research: from design to implementation. glasgow: open university press. littlewood, w. (1981). communicative language teaching: an introduction. cambridge: cambridge university press. nunan, d. (1993). designing tasks for the communicative classroom. cambridge: cambridge university press. oxford, r. (1990). language learning strategies: what every teacher should know. boston: heinle & heinle. ran, a. (2001). travelling on parallel tracks: chinese parents and english teachers. educational research, 43(3), 311-328. willis, j. (1996). a framework for task-based learning. harlow: longman. about the authors mireya peña is a candidate for the m.a. in applied linguistics to the tefl from universidad distrital francisco josé de caldas. she currently teaches english at francisco de paula santander public school and at universidad libre. she is also a research tutor for the profile teacher development programme at universidad nacional de colombia. amparo onatra is a candidate for the m.a. in applied linguistics to the tefl from universidad distrital francisco josé de caldas. currently she teaches english at colegio bosanova. she received recognition as leader of one of the best proposals for the english area for the premio compartir al maestro 2003. 23profile vol. 11, no. 2, 2009. issn 1657-0790. bogotá, colombia. pages 11-26 promoting oral production through the task-based learning approach: a study... appendix 1: field notes sample 24 universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras peña & onatra appendix 2: proformas' sample proforma for task 3 teacher: amparo onatra. observer: mireya peña date: sep 8th 2004 group: 7a performance: pair work shift: afternoon. task: interviewing a famous character cassette no. 1 side a student pronunciation fluency performance student no. 8 good vocalization words clearly pronounced speaks aloud tendency to repeat the first word of the sentence as pet word participation in short turns knows the vocabulary about body parts and clothes some grammar mistakes was sitting during the interview he wears a costume, representing chavo 25profile vol. 11, no. 2, 2009. issn 1657-0790. bogotá, colombia. pages 11-26 promoting oral production through the task-based learning approach: a study... appendix 3: an example of a task-based unit designed to promote students’ oral production task-based unit contents a. thematic aspects -recycle topics: -body parts -clothes and accessories b. linguistic content -be -have -wear -look like -prepositions new topic: adjectives pre-task phase 1. reinforce vocabulary about clothes and body parts by associating image, pronunciation and spelling. students make a picture dictionary. 2. develop simple listening comprehension by means of word dictation. 3. create a bingo card including 24 pieces of vocabulary about parts of the body, clothes and adjectives. 4. increase vocabulary studying new words, including the bingo cards. 5. practice isolated pronunciation of words. 6. play tic-tac-toe with full group participation. 7. give a model in class on how to describe a famous character taking into account name, place of origin, occupation and physical appearance. task cycle phase 1. create a character with magazine cuttings, following a description given by the teacher with specific characteristics. 2. prepare and do an oral presentation of the character using a photo or a poster. 3. model questions and answers: what does he/she look like? what is he/she wearing? and yes/no questions by means of a dialogue. 4. wear costumes to present a famous person by means of an interview. whole class participation answering questions about the character. 5. create with magazine cuttings, the two characters described in the model. 6. share information about the posters they have made (team work). 7. a pair work activity in which students must identify differences between the two pictures. 8. prepare a tv show taking into account the following conditions: 26 universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras peña & onatra -the class is going to be divided into teams of eight: a model, a presenter and six participants divided into two sub-teams a and b. -presenters from all the teams select the character for the contest. -the day of the contest, presenters interview participants having in mind personal information for the public to know them. -the contest consists of participants asking questions about a secret famous person and the presenter answering yes / no. -the models give the points, help the presenter with the answers and point at the options chosen by the participant. language focus 1. present an advert with a missing person. students design a missing person flyer. 2. assessment of the final task. profile no. 7dic 5.p65 ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ profile profile profile profile profile 7 (2006): universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras the learner’s mother tongue in the l2 learning-teaching symbiosis la lengua materna del estudiante en la simbiosis entre enseñanza yla lengua materna del estudiante en la simbiosis entre enseñanza yla lengua materna del estudiante en la simbiosis entre enseñanza yla lengua materna del estudiante en la simbiosis entre enseñanza yla lengua materna del estudiante en la simbiosis entre enseñanza y aprendizaje de una segunda lenguaaprendizaje de una segunda lenguaaprendizaje de una segunda lenguaaprendizaje de una segunda lenguaaprendizaje de una segunda lengua nilton hitotuzinilton hitotuzinilton hitotuzinilton hitotuzinilton hitotuzi***** nvh2002@hotmail.com secretaria de estado de educação do amazonas, brazil this paper has a two-fold purpose. one is to review the stances of language-oriented theorists, who are practicing foreign/second-language teachers and learners from various parts of the world, regarding the long-standing controversy over whether or not the learner’s mother tongue plays a positive role in the foreign/second-language learning-teaching context. a second purpose is to offer, from a non-native-speaker l2-teacher standpoint, some suggestions on when and how learners’ native language can be capitalised on in the process of learning another language. this implies that the learner’s mother tongue can be a valuable tool at the disposal of foreign/second-language teachers in their classrooms worldwide. kkkkkey worey worey worey worey wordsdsdsdsds: language-oriented professionals, role of mother tongue, foreign/secondlanguage learning context el presente artículo tiene dos propósitos. uno es examinar las posturas de expertos en el área del lenguaje, docentes de lengua extranjera o segunda lengua y aprendices de varias partes del mundo en relación con la controversia que ha existido desde hace mucho tiempo respecto a si la lengua materna del estudiante desempeña o no un papel positivo en el contexto de la enseñanza y aprendizaje de una lengua extranjera o de una segunda lengua. un segundo objetivo es ofrecer desde un punto de vista de un profesor no nativo de segunda lengua, algunas sugerencias sobre cuándo y cómo la lengua materna de los aprendices puede ser una ventaja en el proceso de aprendizaje de otra lengua. esto implica que la lengua materna del aprendiz puede ser un instrumento valioso a disposición de profesores de lengua extranjera o segunda lengua de todo el mundo, en sus aulas de clase. palabras clavespalabras clavespalabras clavespalabras clavespalabras claves: profesionales del lenguaje, papel de la lengua materna, contexto de enseñanza/aprendizaje de una lengua extranjera o segunda lengua * nilton hitotuzinilton hitotuzinilton hitotuzinilton hitotuzinilton hitotuzi holds an m.a. in tefl/tesl from the university of birmingham and a b.a. in liberal arts from the federal university of amazonas. currently he is a doctoral student at the federal university of bahia. he is interested in teaching methodologies and formal pronunciation teaching. this article was received on february 27th, 2006 and accepted on may 3rd, 2006. 161-171 ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ 162 hitotuzi profileprofileprofileprofileprofile the opposite of a correct statement is a false statement. but the opposite of a profound truth may well be another profound truth. neils henrik david bohr introductionintroductionintroductionintroductionintroduction in this paper, there will be some considerations on the role of the learner’s mother tongue (l1) in the foreign/second language (l2) classroom in light of both foreign/second language learning/ acquisition theories and research findings. although worldwide language-teaching professionals and l2 learners have held widely divergent views on this issue to date, scrutinising it may help both l2 teachers and learners decide whether or not l1 plays a positive role in the l2 classroom. thus, amongst the issues addressed herein, there will be some elaboration on (1) the origin of the controversy over the learner’s mother tongue in the context of foreign/secondlanguage learning/teaching; (2) some popular beliefs thence generated, as against languageoriented theorists’ dissenting points of view about learner l1 in the l2 classroom; (3) the contrastive analysis hypothesis (cah), and (4) the significance of language universals to its credibility. then, worldwide in-ser vice l2 teachers’ and learners’ views over the role of learner l1 in the context of l2 classrooms will be examined. lastly, from a non-native-speaker l2-teacher standpoint, there will be some suggestions as to what extent, how, and why learner l1 should be used in the l2 classroom, assuming learner l1 does play a role in the l2 learning-teaching symbiosis. tracing the controversy overtracing the controversy overtracing the controversy overtracing the controversy overtracing the controversy over t h e r o l e o f l e a r n e r l 1 i n t h et h e r o l e o f l e a r n e r l 1 i n t h et h e r o l e o f l e a r n e r l 1 i n t h et h e r o l e o f l e a r n e r l 1 i n t h et h e r o l e o f l e a r n e r l 1 i n t h e context of l2 clcontext of l2 clcontext of l2 clcontext of l2 clcontext of l2 classroomsassroomsassroomsassroomsassrooms first and foremost, one should want to go back in time to the origins of the dissention as regards the role of the learner’s first language in the process of foreign/second language learning/acquisition (l2 learning)1 . apparently, it can be traced back to the late nineteenth-century reform movement (howatt, 1984), which arose from the excesses of the grammar-translation method, which enjoyed widespread acceptance until the world war ii (bowen, madsen, and hilferty, 1985). but the extremisms over the use of the mother tongue came from the direct method (howatt, 1984), a movement on the rise at the twentieth century shortly preceded by lambert sauveur’s natural method (howatt, 1984) and followed by the army’s method, or the audiolingual method (alm), as it is widely known. deeply rooted in structural linguistics, the alm is also cemented on the behaviourist school whose main contributor was the russian psychologist, ivan pavlov (newton, in celce-murcia & l. mcintosh, 1979). this trend in psychology, which was meant to account for the process of general learning, spread its roots to l2 learning; so much so that, in 1957, after watson (1913) had termed pavlov’s findings behaviourism, b. f. skinner (1957) established a new milestone in the world of l2 learning with his verbal behaviour. thus, as the pendulum of methods and approaches swung forwards, bearing on the skinnerian view of both language and language learning, the alm was born; and for over two decades (from the 1950’s to the first quarter of the 1970’s), underrating the importance of learner l1 in the process of l2 learning, its sovereignty was indisputable. yet, back in the 1960’s, the cognitive psychologist david ausubel (ausubel, 1964) made some sound criticism about the alm. he pointed out, amongst other things, that the rote learning practice of alm drills could benefit neither l1 nor l2 learners; that l2 learners could potentially benefit from learning grammar deductively, and that learner l1 could function as a facilitator in the process of l2 learning. a number of other theorists also adduced 1 henceforth l2 learning will be used as an umbrella term for learning/acquisition to avoid the theoretical technicalities that set them apart. for the same reason, elsewhere learn will be used to cover the learn/acquire opposition. ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○163 profileprofileprofileprofileprofile the learner’s mother tongue in the l2 learning-teaching symbiosis evidence that cognitive paradigms (on which l2 teaching was now based) favoured the use of learner l1 in the developmental process of l2 learning. one such is rivers (1972; 1981), another eloquent critic of the alm. she underscores that learner l1 is ubiquitous in the process of l2 learning; therefore, teachers can capitalise on their pupils’ l1 mainly for giving instructions or clarifying difficult language. it is implied in her work (1981) that use of learner l1 may help accelerate the process of learning a target language. during these centuries of controversy over the role of l1 in the l2 learning context, many ‘untested’ teaching practices involving (or excluding!) learner l1 have been adopted; they rely essentially on popular beliefs. populpopulpopulpopulpopul ar beliefs regarding thear beliefs regarding thear beliefs regarding thear beliefs regarding thear beliefs regarding the role of learner l1 in the process ofrole of learner l1 in the process ofrole of learner l1 in the process ofrole of learner l1 in the process ofrole of learner l1 in the process of l2 learningl2 learningl2 learningl2 learningl2 learning that learner l1 has a bearing on l2 learning, and that this influence is always negative are two salient beliefs about its role in the l2 classroom (ellis, 1985, p. 19). l2 learners’ accented utterances seem to evince the former assumption. in fact, that l2 learners’ phonology ‘betrays’ their non-nativeness is hardly questionable. some, like medgyes (1992, p. 342), even hold extreme views about it: ‘(…) for all their efforts, non-native speakers can never achieve a native speaker’s competence. the two groups remain clearly distinguishable.’ the latter is clearly expressed in the prescription of the alm as a remedial measure to gradually eradicate ‘sequelae’ of learner l1 interference. some people assume that learner l1 in l2 classrooms is like, as prodromou (1992) puts it, a “skeleton in the cupboard, (…) a taboo subject, a source of embarrassment, and on the part of teachers, a recognition of their failure to teach properly, i.e. using ‘only english’”. seemingly, this prejudiced view of the use of learner l1 is deeply rooted in the native-speaker l2 instructor’s (nsi) ideology disseminated worldwide as a safeguard device (consciously or otherwise) against the inconvenience, or unfeasibility of having to learn several languages in his/her ‘linguistic crusades’ throughout the world (harbord, 1992). the role of l2-learner l1 in thethe role of l2-learner l1 in thethe role of l2-learner l1 in thethe role of l2-learner l1 in thethe role of l2-learner l1 in the perspective of lperspective of lperspective of lperspective of lperspective of language-anguage-anguage-anguage-anguage-orientedorientedorientedorientedoriented researchersresearchersresearchersresearchersresearchers ironically, some of the notions about learner l1 conceived of as popular beliefs spring from the discussion forum of language-oriented theorists. however, holding those notions does not mean to say that the controversy fostered by them over the role of the l2-learner l1 is uninformed by research. in this section, some of their divergent views will be discussed. ellis (1985) suggests that learner l1 is one vital determinant in the process of l2 learning, and that its contribution lessens gradually as the l2 learner closes the range towards native-like proficiency. marton (1981, quoted in ellis, 1985), however, maintains that from a psychological perspective not only at the moment of cognition but also when amassing fresh knowledge for his/her ‘linguistic reservoir’, the learner is faced with a belligerent conflict between his native language and the l2 system. larsen-freeman and long (1991, p. 53) seem to share marton’s views as to the negative effects of l1 interference: foreign-language learners are all too familiar with the interfering effects of their nl [native language] causing everything from accented speech to inappropriate non-verbal behaviour. felix (1980, p. 107, quoted in ellis, 1985, p. 19), in turn, dismisses ‘the notion of [l1] interference as a natural and inevitable phenomenon in l2 acquisition’. in other words, felix sees learner l1 as a kind of ‘thorn in the flesh’ that the teacher has to manage to cope with in the course of his/her career. like ellis, a number of other theorists suggest that the learner’s mother tongue can be a valuable contribution to the l2 classroom. one such is krashen and terrell (1983), who suggests that learners should resort to their l1 to bridge the ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ 164 hitotuzi profileprofileprofileprofileprofile gaps in communication due to their interlanguage insufficiency to initiate utterances. o’malley and chamot’s (1990) cognitive academic language learning approach (calla), which is partly based on their investigations into learning strategies, also evinces that learner l1 can be used as a useful learning aid. corder (1981) seems to concur insofar as he considers the use of l1 as a ‘heuristic technique’ resultant from learners’ strategies to master the target language (krashen, 1981; brown, 1987). lado is another defender of the positive role of learner l1, not without presenting some caveats though. he suggests that, when learning a foreign culture (fc), the learner ’s ‘native-culture experience will facilitate learning’ (lado, 1964, pp. 27-30) insofar as ‘patterns’ of the new culture are comparable with those of his/her culture. learner cultural experience, however, will interfere with the learning of fc ‘patterns’ that function differently in the learner’s culture. an upper-class gentleman, for instance, in his morning dress at the horse race at ascot would probably be said to be wearing a saia in a description of such british cultural trait provided by a portuguese-speaking learner of english. thus, since wearing saias is a prerogative of women or transvestites in brazil, such depiction would certainly bear a pejorative connotation in that student’s culture. although focusing on culture, this argument can be extended to language learning. one should be quick to point out that lado considers the cultural aspect an intrinsic part of other aspects in the process of l2 learning. therefore, the limited role of l1 in the l2 classroom as seen by lado has much to do with the fact that ‘elementary meaning units (…) differ from culture to culture and therefore from language to language’ (lado, 1964, p. 27). yet another l1 supporter is rutherford (1987, pp. 7-14), who favours the thesis that no human being embarks on learning an l2 as a tabula rasa. furthermore, he argues that, when attempting to learn an l2, the learner is equipped with two kinds of prior knowledge, which he labels knowledge that and knowledge how. the first is, as he puts it, ‘an unconscious “foreknowledge” or innate “inkling” of what shapes the organisation of the target language can assume’. this capacity is at the learner’s disposal and is activated whenever he/ she needs to infer the unknown in the target language on the basis of his/her rudimentary interlanguage. then, the second, knowledge how, mirrors the learner’s l1 learning experience: ‘the ability temporarily to bend the new language into forms that will, with maximal efficiency, serve the initial desire for rudimentary communication’. rutherford sounds quite adamant about learner l1’s positive contribution to l2 learning: ‘both of these cognitive capacities are crucial, for without them, no language learning would be possible at all’ (rutherford, 1987, p.8). in light of the views presented above, it is clearly seen that the inevitable presence of learner l1 in the l2 learning environment, instead of being a ‘natural nagging pain’ one is doomed to bear throughout one’s career, is likely to be considered a valuable learning/ teaching aid to both teachers and learners. learner l1 and the contrastivelearner l1 and the contrastivelearner l1 and the contrastivelearner l1 and the contrastivelearner l1 and the contrastive analanalanalanalanalysis hypothesisysis hypothesisysis hypothesisysis hypothesisysis hypothesis according to ellis (1985), from the point of view of behavioural learning theory, error had to be avoided at all cost lest it became a habit in the learner’s interlanguage. as l1 was regarded as a plausible source of error, behavioural researchers set out to establish a typology of l1 transfer so that negative transfer (transfer that led to error) could be tackled successfully. the procedure used to predict potential errors is known as contrastive analysis. lado (1957) suggests that awareness of the differences and similarities between learners’ l1 and the target language reveals their real problems, and therefore materialises as an essential teaching tool. defenders of the alm tried to use this tool so that they could identify and help learners eliminate errors as they struggled to learn the l2. nevertheless, by applying contrastive analysis (ca) ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○165 profileprofileprofileprofileprofile the learner’s mother tongue in the l2 learning-teaching symbiosis to this end, they could not be less successful. for one thing, as ellis (1985, p. 23) points out, ‘the psychological aspect of ca that should deal with the conditions under which interference takes place’ failed to do so for sheer lack of a well-developed psychological theory. for another, while the ideal ca necessitates drawing on variable-fromlanguage-to-language universal categories, actual ca was carried out on the basis of the structuralists’ surface structures, which again could not account for students’ learning difficulties on the basis of linguistics differences. but it was only when it came under the empirical scrutiny of researchers that the contrastive analysis hypothesis became drastically discredited, as larsen-freeman and long (1991, p. 55) point out as follows: moreover, when predictions arising from cas were finally subjected to empirical tests (see, for example, alatis 1968), serious flaws were revealed. while ca predicted some errors (see, for example, duskova 1969; chamot 1978; arabski 1979), it clearly did not anticipate all, i.e. it underpredicted (e.g. hyltenstam 1977). furthermore, some errors it did predict failed to materialize, i.e. it overpredicted (e.g. dulay and burt, 1974). therefore, contrary to what cah purported, in many cases, the more similar the items collated in two languages the greater the possibility of the existence of learning difficulty. this view is endorsed by skaggs and robinson (1927, as cited in ellis, 1985, p. 35), who suggest that while enhanced by similarity, interference is mitigated by ‘neutral resemblance’. if cah could not account for what caused learner errors (and the source should be found, inasmuch as has been mentioned, error was not tolerated by alm advocates), who was the ‘culprit’ then? ellis (1985, p. 35) argues that ‘any particular error may be the result of one factor on one occasion and another factor on another. there is no logical or psycholinguistic reason why a given error should have a single, invariable cause’. in other words, l2-learner errors can occur any time for any particular reason. needless to say then, learner l1 interference in the learning of an l2 is just one minuscule source of error. if that is the case, why should interference be treated as a fiendish foe? could interference errors not help learners in the process of l2 learning? l e a r n e r l 1 a n d ll e a r n e r l 1 a n d ll e a r n e r l 1 a n d ll e a r n e r l 1 a n d ll e a r n e r l 1 a n d l a n g u a g ea n g u a g ea n g u a g ea n g u a g ea n g u a g e universalsuniversalsuniversalsuniversalsuniversals chomsky’s (1964) theory on the acquisition of the native language, which focuses on the child’s continual brainwork regarding hypotheses (e.g. forming, testing, revising, reshaping, or even departing from them) (brown, 1987), sheds light on the understanding of how useful interference errors can be for the development and strengthening of the l2 learner’s interlanguage. seemingly, this may be successfully achieved by resorting to language universals (rutherford, 1987), which appear to have come to the rescue of contrastive analysis. shortall (1996) underscores that ca can indeed regain credibility if the process of collating learner l1 and a given l2 is undertaken on the basis of universal principles as well as in terms of parameters (e.g. head parameter, pro-drop and non-pro-drop parameter). furthermore, he argues that apparently languages are strikingly symmetrical in that they display a universal, regular pattern of behaviour. shortall sounds quite enthusiastic about prospective findings in the area of language universals and their applicability in the process of ca; and he goes on to say that perhaps, in the future, there will be agreement on chomsky’s (1964) claim that, when stripped of the lexicon, human languages merge into a single one. it is likely that many l2 teachers worldwide would share shortall’s enthusiasm insofar as the results of such a study may be seen as a prospective powerful tool for both l2 teachers and learners. thus, from the perspective of raising l2 learners’ awareness ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ 166 hitotuzi profileprofileprofileprofileprofile on language universals (for a discussion of language universals, see rutherford, 1987.), one might sense that the jigsaw of the systems of known languages can finally be assembled. apparently, lado had the correct insight as to the necessity of l2 teachers’ substantial understanding of the system of their pupils’ mother tongue so that they could function better in the classroom – only the focus should be on universal factors rather than forms per se. weschler (1997), for instance, in his introduction of the functionaltranslation method, advocates that instead of a word-for-word translation (when helping students understand difficult language) an idea-for-idea approach should be employed. a further point he makes is that there are phrases or expressions that cannot possibly be translated verbatim from a given language into another anyway. this seems to be in accordance with jakobson’s (1966) assertion that although most lexical units are impossible to translate, every utterance can be translated. practising teachers’practising teachers’practising teachers’practising teachers’practising teachers’ contributionscontributionscontributionscontributionscontributions on the face of it, the fast-changing l2 learning/ teaching world (primarily in terms of methodology) is demanding from language-oriented researchers and teachers a relentless focus on what is currently happening in the classroom. thus, many of these professionals would concur that such ‘fresh’ data have significant implications for the process of constructing one’s teaching principles against l2 learning/teaching theories. if the discussion vis-àvis the role of learner l1 in the l2 classroom can contribute to this end, then the views of practising teachers should be worth reviewing. one is likely to agree that, throughout the world, there are many highly qualified (native and nonnative) l2 teachers with each and every one of them holding his/her particular views on the role of their pupils’ l1 in their classrooms. while to some this role may be played down, to others the learner’s mother tongue is a valuable tool in the developmental process of l2 learning. amongst the most eloquent advocates of the ‘return’ of learner l1 to the l2 classroom environment is prodromou (1992), for instance, who holds the view that the learner’s mother tongue lends itself as an excellent instrument for the activation of his/ her cultural schemata in the process of learning an l2 (auerbach, 1993; lado, 1964). the article on the internet titled how i changed my mind and started using the mother tongue in the foreign language classroom amply exemplifies butzkamm’s (nd) adherence to a positive role of learner l1. in his opinion, the use of the mother tongue in the l2 classroom is justifiable to the extent that it accounts for quick explanations of difficult words, and student preparation for l2-only activities. another educator voicing his support of l2learner l1 is buckmaster (2000), from the english teaching centre at the british council in warsaw. his main argument is that the use of l1 empowers the l2 learner. moreover he underscores that, by using the pupils’ native language (in a monolingual environment) the teacher not only expresses appreciation but also shifts to their standpoint as his/her l2 ‘imperfections’ surface. perhaps echoeing cook’s (1999) thoughts, buckmaster also suggests as follows that (again, especially in monolingual adult classes) the students can capitalise on the use of their l1 by the teacher: the use of this language by the teacher allows students to compare and contrast english with the language they know best, to use translation as a means to study form and meaning, to understand jokes, to check comprehension, to understand complicated instructions, to check exercises with their partners and to learn vocabulary with direct equivalents. (buckmaster, 2000, p. 2) matsuda (1996) is yet another supporter of learner l1 in the context of l2 learning. she nonetheless gears the l1 contribution to the acquisition of writing skills in her capacity as an english composition instructor at purdue university. ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○167 profileprofileprofileprofileprofile the learner’s mother tongue in the l2 learning-teaching symbiosis drawing heavily from her l2 learner/teacher experience, she overtly allows her pupils to avail themselves of their l1 as a technique to unleash creativity and reflection. furthermore, being herself very much in favour of a target-language-only approach in the early stages of her schooling as a student of english, she does not discourage those amongst her pupils who choose such learning mode. in short, she maintains that the various common aspects between learner l1 and an l2 (if worked at on a consciousness-raising basis) can evolve into precious interchangeable material to amass qualitative composition skills in both languages. tuck (1998) shares the same stance on this issue. however, he observes that l1 should be used primarily ‘for writing practice with lower levels and/or children’. the teachers presently in action who dismiss learner l1 as harmful to the l2 classroom are mostly ‘spectral creatures’: they are more often than not alluded to, but rarely materialise. after an unsuccessful search through a number of papers written by contemporar y teachers for some defender of the over-decanted targetlanguage-only approach, a questionnaire was randomly emailed to practising teachers around the world. while the 23 emails in reply to the questionnaire cannot be assumed to be representative of the views of in-ser vice l2 teachers throughout the world, the results of the enquir y only reinforce the notion of the phantasmal character of those amongst these professionals who see an insignificant, or no role at all, for learner l1 in the l2 classroom: only one japanese teacher, one teacher in italy, and one american teacher admitted overtly favouring the ‘direct method’. another teacher, in taiwan, who may be prototypical of a large section of l2 teachers in action worldwide and whose classroom performances reflect their compliance to administrative guidelines, admitted to following the institution’s target-language-only policy. he also added the fact he does not speak chinese, and that a chinese teacher remains in his classroom ninety-five per cent of the time. thus, one might concur that the notion that (…) the role of l1 in language classrooms is extremely limited, if not nonexistent, as vented in pellowe (1998), is unlikely to be tenable in most l2 learning/teaching environments nowadays. nevertheless, in the administrative quarters of some language teaching institutions, the kind of phobia about l2-learner mother tongue, as vented in the response of the teacher working in taiwan, seems to be nourished indeed (klevberg, 2000; kent, 1996; cummins, 2001; weschler, 1997). what seems to emerge from the targetlanguage-only policy, as was mentioned heretofore, is an attempt to accommodate the native-speaker teacher in settings where s/he is not prepared to cope with the learner’s mother tongue (weschler, 1997). in other words, the filtering through of the bana2 countries’ ideology (holliday, 1994; see also auerbach, 1993, p. 29 on ideological implications in the l2 classroom). the learnerthe learnerthe learnerthe learnerthe learner’s st’s st’s st’s st’s standpointandpointandpointandpointandpoint because of their pivotal position in the learning/ teaching scenario, l2 learners seem to be inevitably affected by this torrent of discrepant views on whether or not their mother tongue (mt) is of any value as to somehow facilitating l2 learning/ acquisition. thus one might argue for the extreme relevance of their opinions on the issue. schweers jr. (1999) has carried out a study on the role of spanish (l1) in the english classroom (l2) at the university of puerto rico, bayamon campus, where he presently lectures in english. as part of the research, he enquired of teachers and students regarding the role of spanish. the results show an overwhelming 88.7 per cent of the students concurring as to the viability of their mother tongue in the english classroom, primarily to explain difficult concepts. in another study, terence doyle (1997, as cited in schweers, 1999) demonstrates that 65 per cent 2 britain, australasia, and north america ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ 168 hitotuzi profileprofileprofileprofileprofile of the students in the enquiry would accept the use of their mt either sometimes or often during their english lessons. for one thing, the kind of l2 classroom described in kent’s (1996) investigation into the factors influencing the learning of foreign languages in s5 and s6 in scottish schools is prototypical of l2 classrooms in many parts of the world as much as is the quintessential hostile mood of many students when faced with an l2 teacher reluctant to resorting to their native language, to wit: “i had a teacher who never spoke a word of english (l1) and it nearly drove me nuts. you sat there going ‘what?’… i think it’s better to have a balance between the two (foreign language and mother tongue).” “you might think that you have picked up some meanings but they might be the wrong meanings.” (scottish students quoted in kent 1996: results – part 1) yet another study revealing students’ viewpoints on the role of l1 for enhancing the process of l2 learning is that carried out by burden (2000), of the okayama shoka university. when 290 university students, ranging from preintermediate to advanced, were asked whether or not they and their teachers should use mt in the l2 classroom, 211 (73%) of them said ‘yes’. nonetheless, there are l2 learners who prefer other wise. matsuda, mentioned previously, testifies to that herself, to wit: i felt my japanese was nothing but an obstacle in learning english, because i thought english and japanese were two completely different languages that had nothing to do with each other. this attitude toward english learning and japanese language encouraged me to come to the us where i could be immersed in an english-speaking environment. (matsuda, 1996, pp. 1-2) however, it is apparent that the level of proficiency in the target language is brought to bear on the learner’s ‘eagerness’ to participate in foreign language-only programmes, as burden (2000, p. 4) observes ‘(…) the ability level differences create marked changes of opinion and seem to support the truism that the better the student, the less support needed from the mother tongue’ (see also ellis, 1985). some suggestions on the role ofsome suggestions on the role ofsome suggestions on the role ofsome suggestions on the role ofsome suggestions on the role of learner l1 in the l2 cllearner l1 in the l2 cllearner l1 in the l2 cllearner l1 in the l2 cllearner l1 in the l2 classroom fromassroom fromassroom fromassroom fromassroom from the stthe stthe stthe stthe standpoint of a non-naandpoint of a non-naandpoint of a non-naandpoint of a non-naandpoint of a non-native-tive-tive-tive-tivespeaker l2instructor (nnsi)speaker l2instructor (nnsi)speaker l2instructor (nnsi)speaker l2instructor (nnsi)speaker l2instructor (nnsi) on the surface, one is tempted to say that the status of nnsis in the learning-teaching symbiosis (widdowson, 1992) makes them apt to adopting somewhat authoritative stances on a number of classroom-related issues, amongst which is the one grappled with throughout this paper. in passing, perhaps one wants to recall brown’s (1987) elaboration on the principle of intuition. he presents it as an effective tool for both nsis and nnsis in their pursuit of the ‘ideal’ approach towards learning/teaching a foreign/second language. furthermore, brown appreciates intuition as a resultant concoction of knowledge and experience: ‘intuitions are formed at the crossroads of knowledge and experience’ (1987, p. 250). accordingly, being caught in the middle of such ‘crossroads’, and assuming that one can also claim one’s rightful share in the discussion both as an educator and as a learner, this final section of the paper will draw a great deal upon teacher/learner ‘hunches’. the moot point over the role of learner first language in a foreign/second-language classroom context is clearly established between languageoriented researchers and educators as well as amongst the members of each of these two groups themselves. however, irrespective of the theorists and other professionals in the field, it seems that, in the end, one has to hold on to one’s own beliefs and intuitions insofar as they are formed by ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○169 profileprofileprofileprofileprofile the learner’s mother tongue in the l2 learning-teaching symbiosis classroom experience as well as by reflection. thus, one might like the idea of resorting to the students’ mother tongue in the l2 learning/teaching context. in this perspective, it seems learner l1 is a tool that neither the teacher nor the learner can afford to dispense with. nevertheless, some cautious steps should be taken as to the amount of use, when and by whom it should be used; otherwise, the recourse to l1 might be counter-productive. with beginning groups, when approaching vocabulary, for instance, one can use props such as flashcards, cutout figures and realia for words representing concrete items; as for the representation of abstract items, drawing on l1 equivalents might solve the problem whenever contextualisation, mimicry, and other techniques fail to gloss them convincingly. moreover, at times l1 can be used in l2 classrooms as a mnemonic strategy – e.g. association of meanings in the two languages. by and large, at this level the l1 can be used for almost every move in the classroom, both teacher-initiated or student-initiated, such as organisation of the class and tasks, maintainance of discipline and clarification as regards testing material (for a comprehensive elaboration on teacher/student initiated talk, see, for instance, allwright & bailey, 1991; chaudron, 1988; nunan, 1991; and thornbury, 1996). it is important to point out, though, that l2 learners should be encouraged to using the target language from this very first level lest they become overwhelmed by complacency; this practice may be achieved by involving students in activities such as languagebuilding tasks (nunan, 1999). however, even in a task-based l2-learning context, learners can avail themselves of the l1 in problem-solving activities for the pivotal role it appears to play in the cognitive and metacognitive processes, as centeno-cortés and jiménez’s (2004) experiment on private verbal thinking3 seems to indicate. perhaps resorting to l1 in this kind of private speech is a major factor in the cognitive control of tasks demonstrated by the l2 learners investigated by dicamilla and antón (2004). furthermore, at beginning levels, l1 can be used as the ‘blueprint’, so to speak, of any text produced in the target language. thus, for instance, in a monolingual classroom the first draft of a scripted conversation would be written in the l1, whereas the final version would be written in the l2. in the concoction of the conversation, both the teacher and the classmates as well as dictionaries should be instrumental. in other words, learner l1 can be used as a starting point in the production of oral/written l2 texts in the classroom. needless to say, this technique represents a swing backwards of the pendulum of methods and approaches, since it is deeply rooted in the community language learning approach (larsen-freeman, 1986). of course, a different modus operandi seems to be more productive as learners become more proficient (intermediate upwards): from a quasitarget-language-only, to a target-language-only approach. while this is true for the overt classroom environment, it might be a good idea, from the perspective of the learner, to use the l1 as an overt strategy in self-study sessions, and as a covert strategy on ‘stand-by’ in the classroom. in other words, on the one hand, more proficient students (especially advanced students) could freely resort to their l1 when reflecting and working on their own on the target language (e.g. activities such as doing homework, writing essays, consulting grammar books, and trying to understand involved language and metalanguage). on the other, they should focus almost exclusively on the target language for interaction in the classroom. the relevance of this exercise is seen especially in terms of aural/oral fluency. one has to say, though, that even at this level the use of l1 in the classroom is subordinate to the ultimate aim of the l2 course. english for specific purposes, for instance, might demand capitalisation on both l1 and l2. 3 private verbal thinking is defined by these authors as ‘a particular type of private speech characterized as being the externalization of the process of reasoning during a problemsolving activity’ (centeno-cortés & jiménez, 2004, p. 31). ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ 170 hitotuzi profileprofileprofileprofileprofile conclconclconclconclconclusionusionusionusionusion while useful insight is provided by the controversy over whether or not the learner’s mother tongue has any role in the context of second language learning, one might be inclined to follow one’s own beliefs and intuitions when challenged by it. by the same token, perhaps it is by dint of these very same ‘gut feelings’, to put it in brown’s (1987) terms, that butzkamm sanctions the ubiquity of learner l1 in the developmental process of the l2 learning-teaching symbiosis, to wit: teachers can banish the native language from the classroom, but cannot banish it from the students' minds. it would even be counterproductive since it would mean trying to stop them thinking altogether. (butzkamm, w. the bilingual method an overview) in the end, the classroom praxis of l2 teachers should always allow for their pupils’ idiosyncrasies and needs ultimately to determine the approach towards their mother tongue, since its use may lend itself to be essential for them to achieve their specific goals in the target language. referencesreferencesreferencesreferencesreferences allwright, d., &. bailey, m. (1991). focus on the language classroom. an introduction to classroom research for language teachers. cambridge: cambridge university press. auerbach, e. (1993). re-examining english only in the esl classroom. tesol quarterly 27(1), 9-32. ausubel, d. (1964). adults vs. children in second language learning: psychological considerations. modern language journal 48, 420-424. bowen, j. d., madsen, h., & hilferty, a. (1985). tesol techniques and procedures. rowley, ma: newbury house publishers. brown, h. d. (1987). principles of language learning and teaching (2nd ed.). new jersey: prentice hall. buckmaster, r. (2000). using l1: what kind of sin? iatefl pre-conference edition 18. retrieved september 16, 2001, from http:// www.iatefl.org.pl/nletter/nletter18/nlet18_2.html burden, p. (2000). the use of the students mother tongue in monolingual english ‘conversation’ classes at japanese universities. tlt online editor. retrieved september 25, 2001, from http:// www.jalt-publications.org/tlt/articles/2000/06/ burden butzkamm, w. (nd). the bilingual method an overview. unpublished paper. celce-murcia, m., &. mcintosh, l. (eds.). (1979). teaching english as a second or foreign language. rowley: newbury house. centeno-cortés, b., &. jiménez, a. f. j. (2004). problem-solving tasks in a foreign language: the importance of the l1 in private verbal thinking. international journal of applied linguistics, 14(1), 7-35. chaudron, c. (1988). second language classrooms: research on teaching and learning. cambridge: cambridge university press. chomsky, n. (1964). current issues in linguistic theory. in j. a., fodor & j. j., katz (eds.), the structure of language: reading in the philosophy of language. englewwod cliffs: prentice-hall, inc. cook, v. (1999). going beyond the native speaker in language teaching. tesol quarterly, 33(2), 185210. corder, s. (1981). error analysis and interlanguage. oxford: oxford university press. cummins, j. (2001). bilingual children’s mother tongue: why is it important for education? retrieved october 02, 2001, from http:// w w w . o i s e . u t o r o n t o . c a / m l c / m o t h e r tonguedk.pdf dicamilla, f. j., & antón, m. (2004). private speech: a study of language for thought in the collaborative interaction of language learners. international journal of applied linguistics, 14(1), 36-69. ellis, r. (1985). understanding second language acquisition. oxford: oxford university press. felix, s. (ed.). (1980). recent trends in research on second language acquisition. tübingen: gunter narr. harbord, j. (1992). the use of the mother tongue in the classroom. elt journal 46(4), 350-355. holliday, a. (1994). the house of tesep and the communicative approach: the special needs of state english language education. elt journal 48(2). ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○171 profileprofileprofileprofileprofile the learner’s mother tongue in the l2 learning-teaching symbiosis howatt, a. p. r. (1984). a history of english language teaching. oxford: oxford university press. jakobson, r. (1966). on linguistic aspect of translation. in r. a. brower (ed.), on translation. oxford & new york: oxford university press. kent, d. m. (1996). an investigation into the factors influencing the learning of foreign languages in s5 and s6 in scottish schools. retrieved september 30, 2001, from http://www.scre.ac.uk/ scotresearch/kentinves/index.html klevberg, r. (2000). the role of translation in japanese young learner classrooms. tlt online editor. retrieved september 30, 2001, from http:/ /www.jalt-publications.org/tlt/articles/2000/10/ klevberg krashen, s. (1981). second language acquisition and second language learning. oxford: pergamon press. krashen, s. d., &. terrell, t. d. (1983). the natural approach: language acquisition in the classroom. hayward: alassany press. lado, r. (1957). linguistics across cultures: applied linguistics for language teachers. ann arbor: university of michigan. lado, r. (1964). language teaching: a scientific approach. new york: mcgraw-hill, inc. larsen-freeman, d., &. long, m. h. (1991). an introduction to second language acquisition research. new york: longman. l arsen-freeman, d. (1986). techniques and principles in language teaching. new york: oxford university press. marton, w. (1981). contrastive analysis in the classroom. in j. fisiak (ed.), contrastive linguistics and the language teacher. oxford: pergamon. matsuda, a. (1996). using the l1 in the esl composition classroom. paper presented at intesol ’96 as part of the colloquium perspectives on nes and nns teachers in esl writing classrooms. retrieved september 29, 2001, from http://pubpages.unh.edu/~amatsuda/ vita/vita.html medgyes, p. (1992). native or non-native: who’s worth more? elt journal, 46, 340-349. newton, a. c. (1979). current trends in language teaching. in m. celce-murcia & l. mcintosh (eds.), teaching english as a second or foreign language. rowley: newbury house. nunan, d. (1991). language teaching methodology: a textbook for teachers. hemel hempstead: prentice hall international. nunan, d. (1999). go for it!. boston: heinle & heile publishers/itp. o’malley, j., & chamot, a. (1990). language learning strategies. new york: cambridge university press. pellowe, w. r. (1998). negotiation, noticing, and the role of selective crosslingual strategies in foreign language classrooms. ma in tefl thesis. retrieved september 27, 2001, from http://www2.gol.com/ users/billp/thesis/index.html prodromou, l. (1992). from mother tongue to other tongue: what is the place of the student’s mother tongue in the efl classroom? tesol greece. retrieved october 03, 2001, from http:// www.tesolgreece.com/index.html rivers, w. m. (1972). speaking in many tongues: essays in foreign-language teaching. chicago: chicago university press. rivers, w. m. (1981). teaching foreign-language skills (2nd ed.). chicago: chicago university press. rutherford, w. e. (1987). second language grammar: learning and teaching. new york: longman. schweers, c. w. (1999). using l1 in the l2 classroom. forum (37)2. retrieved september 28, 2001, from http://exchanges.state.gov/forum/ vols/vol37/no2/p6.htm shortall, t. (1996). language knowledge in language acquisition: universal grammar and second language teaching. in j. willis & d. willis (ed.), challenge and change in language teaching. oxford: heinemann. skinner, b. f. (1957). verbal behaviour. new york: appleton century crofts. thornbury, s. (1996). teachers research teacher talk. elt journal, 50(4), 279-287. tuck, r. (1998). translation – still taboo? the journal 9. retrieved september 20, 2001, from http:// www.britishcouncilpt.org/journal/j0922rt.htm watson, j. b. (1913). psychology as the behaviourist views it. psychological review, 20, 158-177. weschler, r. (1997). uses of japanese (l1) in the english classroom: introducing the functionaltranslation method. the internet tesl journal, (3)11. retrieved september 06, 2001, from http://iteslj.org/articles/weschler-usingl1.html widdowson, h. g. (1992). elt and el teachers: matters arising. elt journal, 46(4), 333-339. profile 4 2003.p65 ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ 82profileprofileprofileprofileprofile a research project was conducted in a public high school in bogotá, colombia, with forty high school students of eighth grade. the main purpose of this research was to study teachers’ attitudes towards students and methodologies and to assess which of them may affect their students’ development, performance, academic selfesteem and, as a consequence, their motivation. some recommendations were suggested in order to increase the adolescent students’ motivation and self-esteem and for teachers to assess their attitudes. we observed that the need for affection is an important characteristic for an adequate atmosphere that avoids social distance and facilitates learners’ acquisition of new knowledge. kkkkkey worey worey worey worey word sd sd sd sd s: educators-high school teaching, methodology-evaluation, englishteaching-methods, second language acquisition-methodology-evaluation, englishteaching-psychological aspects un proyecto de investigación fue llevado a cabo en un colegio público de bogotácolombia, con cuarenta estudiantes de grado octavo. el objetivo principal de esta investigación fue hacer un estudio acerca de las actitudes y metodologías de los docentes, y evaluar cuáles de éstas podrían afectar el desarrollo, desempeño y autoestima académica de los estudiantes y, como consecuencia, su motivación. sugerimos algunas recomendaciones con el fin de incrementar la motivación y autoestima de los estudiantes (adolescentes), y además, la auto-evaluación de los docentes frente a sus actitudes. pudimos observar que la necesidad de afecto es una característica importante para crear una atmósfera adecuada que impida el �� ���������*� �������������-������������ !!������������*����!,��������� ������������������������������������. ����������+� �����������$������ cómo influyen las actitudes de los docentes y sus metodologías en la autoestima de los estudiantes en el aprendizaje de la lengua inglesa. un estudio de caso con estudiantes de octavo grado luz brigith sarmiento pérezluz brigith sarmiento pérezluz brigith sarmiento pérezluz brigith sarmiento pérezluz brigith sarmiento pérez ***** luzbrigith@yahoo.com adriana sanabria herreraadriana sanabria herreraadriana sanabria herreraadriana sanabria herreraadriana sanabria herrera * ** ** ** ** * adriasa76@yahoo.es universidad nacional de colombia * luz brigith sarmiento pérezluz brigith sarmiento pérezluz brigith sarmiento pérezluz brigith sarmiento pérezluz brigith sarmiento pérez, b. ed. in phylology and languages, english, from the universidad nacional de colombia, has worked as an english teacher in gimnasio el lago for nearly one year. ** adriana sanabria herreraadriana sanabria herreraadriana sanabria herreraadriana sanabria herreraadriana sanabria herrera, b. ed. in phylology and languages, english, from the universidad nacional de colombia, has worked as an english teacher in liceo español pérez galdós for nearly one year. ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ 83 profileprofileprofileprofileprofile introductionintroductionintroductionintroductionintroduction in light of our colombian context and inaccordance with ‘lineamientoscurriculares para idiomas extranjeros’ (men, 1999), the access to a foreign language will let the individual be aware of his mother tongue values, limits, and qualities. it also claims that there are many indications that language is a vehicle of personality as well as of thought, for when the person speaks, he tells not only about the world but also, through both form and content, about himself. so, we think that through the use of a foreign language people have the opportunity to express their points of view, thoughts and feelings. for many years studies have focused on the importance between self-esteem and the learning process. most of these investigations have proved that the level of esteem influences students’ attitudes and achievements towards new knowledge. hence, ames (1984) has stressed the importance of the relationship between academic failure or success as regards esteem and how it is accentuated or attenuated as a function of the social context. the fact related to teachers’ attitudes was something we could appreciate from our experience of a foreign language and is a thought-provoking experience as teachers. hence, we noticed that a student with a poor image of himself /herself has difficulties when interacting and sharing information with others. this is because the low self-esteem and the lack of security a person has disrupts his/her productivity and motivation to learn. 1. methodology1. methodology1. methodology1. methodology1. methodology we developed a case study. to do so we chose a specific group to do a research project about the topic we were interested in. the case study researcher typically observes the characteristics of an individual unit –a child, a class, a school or a community. the purpose of such observation is to analyse intensively the multifarious phenomenon that constitutes the life cycle of a unit with a view to establishing generalisations about the wider population to which that unit belongs (cohen & manion, 1980). to find out in what way teachers’ attitudes might affect students’ self-esteem in the learning of english, we formulated questions to be answered during the research process: • how do teachers’ attitudes and methodologies affect students’ self-esteem when learning the english language? in order to answer this main query, we posed two related questions: • what is the relationship between teachers’ attitudes and students’ self-esteem when learning the english language? • how do teachers’ methodologies inform us about the students’ self-esteem when learning the english language? distanciamiento social y facilite que los alumnos adquieran los nuevos conocimientos de la lengua. palabras clavespalabras clavespalabras clavespalabras clavespalabras claves: personal docente-enseñanza secundaria-metodología-evaluación, inglés-enseñanza-métodos, adquisición de segundo lenguaje-metodologíaevaluación, inglés-enseñanza-aspectos psicológicos ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ 84profileprofileprofileprofileprofile during this research we worke d collaboratively, so one of us was the teacher and the other one was the observer. in this way we had the opportunity to observe the group and jot down notes about the students’ performance and feelings generated in the class. following principles of classroom research and case study we collected the information using different techniques. first, we created a questionnaire from which we could gather detailed information about learners’ attitudes toward english at the beginning of the course, together with pupils’ emotions, and feelings generated by the teacher’s attitudes. second, we designed an interview that was recorded and which complemented the questionnaire because the students had the opportunity to express their opinion on the teacher’s methodology. another instrument was the rosenberg selfesteem scale that measured the level of selfesteem students had (see annex 1). nevertheless, as rosenberg (1965) said, this scale does not assess students’ self-esteem completely; therefore it needs to be correlated with other instruments in order to give support to the findings. we translated the scale to let students understand it and express better all their feeling through their mother tongue. this scale has been widely used in studies in countries such as turkey. it was developed by morris rosenberg in 1963 who is widely known for his comprehensive and theoretically rich work on the self-concept (owens & king, 2001). the rosenberg scale consists of 12 subscales and 63 questions. there are 10 items in the self-esteem category that we applied without modifying because they analysed what we wanted to observe. moreover we used video-recordings in which we could capture, through pupils’ words and physical reactions, many details of a lesson such as learners’ attitudes in group work or their interaction with the teacher. a personal diary was kept by the english teacher in which the teacher noted her impressions about students’ performance and attitudes regarding the activities in each class. we also designed three schemes to facilitate taking notes in the peer observation technique (four hours per week) over a six month period by means of which we could jot down ideas about the learning process. 2. theoretical framework2. theoretical framework2. theoretical framework2. theoretical framework2. theoretical framework to find out in what way teachers’ attitudes and methodologies affect students’ self-esteem to learn the english language, we took as the constructs of this project: self-esteem, adolescence, and attitudes. 2.1 self-esteem2.1 self-esteem2.1 self-esteem2.1 self-esteem2.1 self-esteem the level of self-esteem is derived from the feelings a person has about his own image and people’s reactions towards him. pope, mc hale, & craighead (1988) define the concept as an evaluation of the information contained in the self-concept, which is the constellation of things a person uses to describe himself. so esteem involves loving, respect, and dignified caring. self-esteem is a common element and present in the classroom setting because of students’ competitiveness, in the sense that it provokes feelings of success and failure. thereby, teachers as well as parents can play an important role in strengthening children’s self-esteem by treating them respectfully, taking their views and opinions seriously, and expressing appreciation for them. many authors have studied the emotional aspects that the learning process implies and how these aspects affect the management of ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ 85 profileprofileprofileprofileprofile behaviour. for instance, if a student feels frustration when he/she is not able to perform an activity well, this becomes a competitive failure for the students whose level of selfcriticism will increase while his/her motivation will decrease. as a consequence, he/she will direct his/her attention to other things not related to the class. hence, motivation is important because a person learns more easily and quickly if he/she has a motive to do it. 2.2 adolescence2.2 adolescence2.2 adolescence2.2 adolescence2.2 adolescence it is the transitional period between childhood and adulthood. it is a stage of not only physical changes but also of cognitive maturity and personal and social adjustment. according to demo (2001), some authors regard that self-concept during adolescence is dominated by a psychological interior of private thoughts, desires, fears, beliefs, attitudes, and expectations. this way, there are many factors conditioning the healthy development and growth of adolescents that not only affect their personality but also their social behaviour and performance. thus, one type of influence is the adolescents’ image of their bodies that often influences their level of self-esteem and selfconfidence. according to the age and level of english learners, there are some motivational differences as regards its learning. adolescents, for example, are perhaps the most exciting students to teach, but they can also present the teacher with more problems that any other age group. teachers have to remember that adolescents are often brittle. they will probably no longer be inspired by mere curiosity, and teacher approval is no longer of vital importance, while peer approval and being involved in the task are vital for them (harmer, 1990). 2.3 attitudes2.3 attitudes2.3 attitudes2.3 attitudes2.3 attitudes de souza & elia (1988) define attitudes as the individual’s prevailing tendency to respond favourably or unfavourably to an object (person or group of people, institutions or events). attitudes can be positive (values) or negative (prejudice). so, the word attitude defines outward and visible postures and human beliefs and determines what each individual will see, hear, think and do. furthermore, attitudes are formed from an individual’s negative and positive experiences that predispose him/her to act favourably or unfavourably to a situation or thing, and that are learned and, as a consequence, can be modified. thus, it is not only students’ behaviour that may affect the learning process, but also teachers’ attitudes. there are certain behaviours that are problematic to students, parents and teachers. these behaviours are termed “challenging behaviours” because when a student demonstrates a behavioural problem, adults are required to change inappropriate behaviours and promote the appropriate ones (zirpoli and melloy, 1993). 3. findings3. findings3. findings3. findings3. findings for data analysis, the instruments were classified by categories and subcategories, and two of them (the questionnaire and the scale) were statistically analysed using percentages. in order to follow the triangulation method, we used the correlation technique to relate the characteristics of the categories that appeared repeatedly in all of them. the first category in this dissertation is students’ academic self-esteem, the second one is students’ attitudes and feelings generated in the classroom, the third one is teachers’ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ 86profileprofileprofileprofileprofile attitudes toward students, and the last one is good atmosphere and students’ motivation. 3.1 students’ academic self-esteem3.1 students’ academic self-esteem3.1 students’ academic self-esteem3.1 students’ academic self-esteem3.1 students’ academic self-esteem in the first category we found that students’ attitudes toward english are positive because they like it and find it very interesting especially when they are learning through games because they can compete, learn while having fun, and interact in an unstressful way and in an atmosphere of confidence. it means that pupils have in general, a good commitment to the class. “me gustan las actividades que hace la profesora porque son variadas y no siempre es la misma.”, “eh! a mí me gustan las guías que nos da la maestra para poder desarrollar…”, “me gustó el juego de concéntrese porque se integra más el curso y…pues sí, se integra uno con los compañeros que… que uno no se hablaba y eso.” moreover pupils feel demotivated when they cannot express themselves orally in english and show rejection and feelings of fear toward individual work and oral participation. also, we observed that pupils greeted the teacher as a friend and looked for her after class to talk and share ideas, which could reflect that learners like to have a close relationship with the educator. 3.2 students’ attitudes and feelings3.2 students’ attitudes and feelings3.2 students’ attitudes and feelings3.2 students’ attitudes and feelings3.2 students’ attitudes and feelings generated in the classroomgenerated in the classroomgenerated in the classroomgenerated in the classroomgenerated in the classroom for the second category we found that students who usually do not participate do so when interacting in games or in communicative activities through topics that interest them, because they feel confident and important. maybe they feel challenged and encouraged by their partners when they are competing; hence they feel motivated. “pues algunos compañeros lo tienen en cuenta a uno, pero algunos no. algunos se preocupan por ellos y no se preocupan por…por los demás, por el curso, entonces…”, “ellos me han demostrado mucho el afecto que me tienen…”, “ellos me aconsejan que siga adelante con los trabajos para que salga bien, que no… que no me vaya a echar para atrás, que siga siempre para adelante.” students like to learn in a fun way, with didactic materials and through activities that let them interact because they can express themselves. this aspect is vital for pupils because it helps them to perform in the social context that they daily have to face and affects, in some way, their self-esteem as well as their performance. on the other hand, pupils feel bad, rejected and demotivated when the teacher does not appreciate their effort. 3.3 t3.3 t3.3 t3.3 t3.3 teachers’ attitudes towareachers’ attitudes towareachers’ attitudes towareachers’ attitudes towareachers’ attitudes toward studentsd studentsd studentsd studentsd students in the third category we could observe that teachers have self-concepts that affect their own conduct, students’ conduct, and their ability to construct healthy relationships. moreover, we consider pupils have a good level of what maslow (1970) called a need for love and belonging because they consider themselves important for the teacher: “mi profesora… ¡uhmm! nos apoya, eh! a todos las opiniones las acoge y son muy respetables...”, “me lo demuestra cuando hago las tareas o cuando por ejemplo es una de las pocas profesoras que se sabe mi nombre.” on the other hand, students feel bad and demotivated when teachers have negative attitudes, both verbal (scornful words) and nonverbal (wry faces and gestures). “sí un profesor le dijo a mi compañero que no fuera sapo.” 3.4 good atmosphere and students’3.4 good atmosphere and students’3.4 good atmosphere and students’3.4 good atmosphere and students’3.4 good atmosphere and students’ motivationmotivationmotivationmotivationmotivation finally, in the last category our findings are that repetitive work and classes where pupils ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ 87 profileprofileprofileprofileprofile cannot interact actively provoke their lack of attention. there are many motivational aspects for students to learn english like: the activities, the partners, the importance of language in life and the necessity. we could realise that one of the most difficult problems a new teacher faces is classroom management. when classroom management is not working well, discipline problems often result. both issues are enormous challenges for any teacher, new or veteran. we should all be careful of cluttering an ideal classroom up with funny questions and sarcastic remarks. in order to create an atmosphere of mutual respect, we should not say things in a manner that sets up the student or ourselves for a fall. 4. concl4. concl4. concl4. concl4. conclusions andusions andusions andusions andusions and pedpedpedpedpedagogicagogicagogicagogicagogic al implical implical implical implical implic aaaaationstionstionstionstions with the reviewed theory and the findings of the analysed data, we could answer the questions posed in connection to the relationship between teachers’ attitudes and methodologies and students’ self-esteem when learning the english language. we could conclude that it is of vital importance for pupils that educators treat them as friends and make efforts to avoid placing hierarchical barriers. students expressed how important it was for them that teachers knew their names and that they were allowed to express their thoughts and feelings. also, students need to receive feedback on their work and performance in class promptly. likewise, we discovered that when the teacher corrects students kindly and takes into account their efforts and progress and not only their results, he/she creates a warm atmosphere. so, teachers need to bear in mind that learners, before being good students, are human beings. as far as pedagogical implications, we think it is important that teachers develop a reflective way of thinking about their work as teachers in all aspects of their profession. therefore we want to point out some recommendations in order to make us –teachersobserve, reflect about their attitudes, and develop a position of self-awareness toward their role. additionally we suggest adopting some strategies that could help us to foster learners’ academic self-esteem and willingness to learn english in order to maintain an adequate educational environment in the teaching-learning process. pupils feel demotivated with repetitive classes where they cannot interact actively and also when they cannot express themselves orally in english. these could be the reasons learners show rejection and feelings of fear toward individual work and oral participation. we suggest teachers take into account students who usually do not participate. this situation could be overcome if they are given opportunities to interact in games or in communicative activities through topics related to their interests. on the other hand, teachers have selfconcepts that affect their own conduct, students’ conduct, and their ability to construct healthy relationships. this stresses the importance of creating a close relationship with the students. referencesreferencesreferencesreferencesreferences ames, r. c. (1984). research on motivation in education: students’ motivation, (1). u.s.a.: academic press inc. cohen, l., & manion, l. (1980). research methods in action. new york. routledge. demo, d. (2001). self-esteem of children and adolescents. u.s.a.: cambridge university press. ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ 88profileprofileprofileprofileprofile de souza, s., & elia, m. (1988). physics teachers’ attitudes: how do they affect the reality of the classroom and models for change? retrieved on june 16, 2002 from the world wide web: http://mentalhelp.net harmer, j. (1990). the practice of english language teaching. london: longman. maslow, a. (1970). motivation and personality. new york: harper & row. ministerio de educación nacional de colombia (1999). idiomas extranjeros: lineamientos curriculares. bogotá: dirección general de investigación y desarrollo pedagógico. owens, t., & king, a. (2001). measuring self-esteem. in t. owens, s. stryker, & n. goodman (eds.), extending self-esteem theory and research: sociological and psychological currents. u.s.a.: cambridge university press. pope, a., mc hale, s., & craighead, e. (1988). self-esteem enhancement with children and adolescents: psychology practitioner guidebook. new york: pergamon press. rosenberg, m. (1965). society and the adolescent self-image. princeton: princeton university press. zirpoli, t., & melloy, k. (1993). behaviour management: applications for teachers and parents. new york: mcmillan publishing company. the article was received on september 10th, 2003 and accepted on october 13th , 2003 ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ 89 profileprofileprofileprofileprofile annex 1: rosenberg selfannex 1: rosenberg selfannex 1: rosenberg selfannex 1: rosenberg selfannex 1: rosenberg self-esteem sc-esteem sc-esteem sc-esteem sc-esteem sc alealealealeale (rosenberg, 1965) con este cuestionario intentamos conocer algunas de tus actitudes en general hacia tí mismo. si estás completamente de acuerdo, marca ca. si estás de acuerdo, marca a. si estás en desacuerdo marca d. y si estás completamente en desacuerdo, marca cd. marca una sola respuesta. 1 2 3 4 completamente de acuerdo desacuerdo completamente de acuerdo en desacuerdo 1 siento que soy una persona que vale ca da d cd mucho o al menos que tengo el mismo valor que los demás. 2 siento que tengo muy buenas ca da d cd cualidades. 3 usualmente siento que soy un fracaso. ca da d cd 4 soy capaz de hacer las cosas tan bien ca da d cd como los demás. 5 siento que no tengo mucho de qué ca da d cd sentirme orgulloso. 6 usualmente, tomo una actitud positiva ca da d cd hacia mí mismo. 7 en general, me siento satisfecho ca da d cd conmigo mismo. 8 desearía poder tener más respeto ca da d cd conmigo mismo. 9 algunas veces siento que soy inútil. ca da d cd 10 algunas veces pienso que no soy ca da d cd del todo bueno como persona. profile no. 6 oct 13.p65 ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ profile profile profile profile profile 6 (2005): universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras tasting teaching flavors: a group of student-teachers’ experiences in their practicum saboreando el gusto de la enseñanza:saboreando el gusto de la enseñanza:saboreando el gusto de la enseñanza:saboreando el gusto de la enseñanza:saboreando el gusto de la enseñanza: experiencias de un grupo de estudiantes-maestros en su prácticaexperiencias de un grupo de estudiantes-maestros en su prácticaexperiencias de un grupo de estudiantes-maestros en su prácticaexperiencias de un grupo de estudiantes-maestros en su prácticaexperiencias de un grupo de estudiantes-maestros en su práctica liliana prada castañedaliliana prada castañedaliliana prada castañedaliliana prada castañedaliliana prada castañeda shakepaul@yahoo.com xatlí zuleta garzónxatlí zuleta garzónxatlí zuleta garzónxatlí zuleta garzónxatlí zuleta garzón mi_zule@yahoo.com universidad nacional de colombia student-teachers expect their experience in the practicum to show them what teaching truly involves. most of them are willing to put into practice all the theories and concepts they have learned and to find out if these actually work. this article reports on a study conducted on the experiences of four primary school student-teachers. the study led to the identification of their difficulties, to looking at how they felt about those difficulties, and to how they dealt with them. instruments for data collection were the journals and group conferences used by the practice counselor and a semi-structured interview. the study revealed that a constant reflective practice allows practitioners to deal with all the different situations they have to face, and more so, to go beyond them. kkkkkey worey worey worey worey words:ds:ds:ds:ds: teacher preparation, teaching practice, student-teachers, difficulties los estudiantes-maestros esperan que la práctica docente les muestre lo que es realmente la enseñanza. la mayoría de ellos están deseosos de poner en práctica todas las teorías y conceptos aprendidos y averiguar si verdaderamente funcionan. este artículo da cuenta de un estudio en el que se describe la experiencia de cuatro estudiantes-practicantes. el objetivo principal del estudio fue identificar las dificultades que enfrentan, examinar qué actitudes tuvieron frente a esas dificultades y cómo las superaron. los instrumentos utilizados para la recolección de datos incluyeron diarios, charlas en grupo e individuales realizadas por el director de práctica y una entrevista semi-estructurada. el estudio reveló que una constante reflexión permite que los practicantes superen las dificultades y vayan más allá de las mismas. palabras claves: palabras claves: palabras claves: palabras claves: palabras claves: formación de maestros, práctica docente, estudiantes-practicantes, dificultades 157-170 this article was received on april 15th, 2005 and accepted on august 12th, 2005. ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ 158 pradpradpradpradprada and zuleta and zuleta and zuleta and zuleta and zuletaaaaa profileprofileprofileprofileprofile introductionintroductionintroductionintroductionintroduction there is a growing interest in preparing students to become effective teachers. therefore, some teacher preparation and teacher education programs have been developed in order to enhance this process. the principles of some of these programs for pre-ser vice teachers state that “student-teachers need the opportunity to experience how to teach concepts at first hand. they also need the time to reflect on how new concepts affect their own thinking and principles within their own teaching situation. in addition, they need time to put them into practice in their own classrooms” (vale and feunteun, 1995). bearing in mind this interest in achieving effective preparation and development during the first teaching experience, we saw the importance of observing a specific aspect perceived during the practicum, namely, difficulties faced and solutions applied by student-teachers in order to overcome them. as a result of this reflection, we decided to inquire into the experiences a group of primary school student-teachers had during their practicum, and to describe those so that future student-teachers could review this study, and, also, discover alternatives for dealing with their practicum experiences. this was possible thanks to the collaboration of the counselor who monitored the process by collecting data and sharing it with us to fulfil our goals. it should be clarified that we got permission from the participants to use the data their counselor had collected as well as to interview them in order to explore certain aspects in more detail. literaliteraliteraliteraliterature reviewture reviewture reviewture reviewture review we started by making a distinction between teacher preparation and teacher education approaches. after that, we presented the models for professional teacher education, but we focused on the reflective model. this was due to the fact that our participants were involved in this approach throughout their teaching practice experience. then, we presented the perspectives on teacher preparation and finally, the importance of the practicum in the preparation and development of student-teachers. distinction between tdistinction between tdistinction between tdistinction between tdistinction between teacher preparationeacher preparationeacher preparationeacher preparationeacher preparation and tand tand tand tand teacher educationeacher educationeacher educationeacher educationeacher education teacher preparation or pre-service teacher education should establish the bases for professionals to engage in ongoing development. there is a process of preparation towards the achievement of a range of results, which is specified in advance (widdowson, 1990). it means the practicum provides the opportunity to observe some difficulties and find possible solutions which could be applied in many other teaching settings. in other words, it is the teaching experience that helps teachers to gain awareness of their performances, and gives them tools to become effective managers of their classrooms. thus, future teachers acquire the “practical knowledge” that is defined as the knowledge that teachers generate as a result of their experiences as teachers and their reflections on these experiences (fenstermacher, 1994. in chiou-hui, 2001). on the other hand, teacher education provides for situations which cannot be accommodated into preconceived patterns of response but which require a reformulation of ideas and the modification of established formulae (widdowson, 1990). so, each teacher should make use of the preconceived patterns taking into account his or her own situation and making the necessary changes so that those patterns work. nonetheless, we cannot assert that we have precise divisions between one and another. for instance, from our experience in our teaching preparation program, we could mention that we acquired some theory-based knowledge and some tools we could use when we did our teaching practice. however, we found that those tools were not enough to deal with the teaching situations observed in the practicum because the context varied depending on students’ needs and the classroom. therefore, these situations required a reformulation of previous knowledge and tools in order to identify what we ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○159 profileprofileprofileprofileprofile tasting teaching flavors had to change or improve in order to achieve effectiveness in teaching. models for professional preparationmodels for professional preparationmodels for professional preparationmodels for professional preparationmodels for professional preparation wallace (1990) describes three models of professional development, the craft model, the applied-science model and the reflective model. in the following paragraphs we briefly describe the first two models as the latter was the main approach followed by the counselor in the teaching practice. 1. craft model according to this model, the practitioner is supposed to learn by imitating all the teaching techniques used by experienced teachers. the most relevant strategies are those provided by experts, thus the student-teachers play a passive role. 2. applied science model in this model, student-teachers in their different situations put into practice the findings of scientific knowledge. changes at the practical level applied by practitioners are not taken into account; therefore, their value is underestimated, thereby creating a separation between research and professional practice. 3. reflective model this model consists of two kinds of knowledge development. received knowledge, that is related to all the theories, concepts and skills that are studied during the student-teacher’s elt methodology lessons, and, experiential knowledge which is developed by the trainees throughout their teaching practice. wallace (1990), presents the reflective model as a cyclical process (see figure 1) in which the trainees are involved throughout their teaching experience. there is an assumption that they already have some knowledge that they acquired as students and during the development of their english program. once studentteachers have the opportunity to enter the classroom environment, they discover the actual framework of teaching and become aware of the different classroom situations. thus, they start thinking about their performance during the teaching practice, how some experienced teachers deal with those situations, and also, how they themselves could manage them. so, they make some decisions and think about possible actions they could apply to their context. we consider the craft and the applied-science models somewhat limited as they do not foster student-teachers’ self-development or awareness of their role not only as teachers but as teacherresearchers in their classrooms, which is a very important issue of professional development as expressed by camargo (2003), who states that research in the elt education field has become an important aspect which has contributed to reflection and action to qualify teacher education processes. figure 1figure 1figure 1figure 1figure 1. reflective practice model of professional education/development (wallace, 1990, p. 49). ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ 160 pradpradpradpradprada and zuleta and zuleta and zuleta and zuleta and zuletaaaaa profileprofileprofileprofileprofile wallace (1990) puts forward the three current models for professional preparation in language teacher preparation. he states that all three are necessary, particularly the reciprocity between the applied science and the reflective model. due to the limitations of the former, what most teachers have always felt is confirmed: that their pre-service preparation has not fully equipped them for teaching and that the real business of being a teacher is bound up with the classroom (houten, m., in mclean, a.c., 1997). in addition, huberman (1996) says that education at the university level provides some methodological procedures that are supposed to deal with theory and practice, but in the real context of the practicum, student-teachers find some difficulties related to teaching that they have to solve by themselves. we agree that pre-ser vice training should provide student-teachers with the necessary tools to refine their abilities in order to create their own teaching style. however, we can say from our teaching experience in the practicum that this is not totally accomplished because we had to face different situations we were not prepared for. we believe there is a gap between theory and practice and we did not acquire strong theoretical knowledge that helped us to successfully develop, deal with a particular topic or with a particular group of students at a particular time and place (johnson, 1996). as said by frodden and lópez (1998), the disconnection between theory and practice is a consequence of the isolated use of the applied science model which causes some difficulties for the student-teachers when solving problems in a real professional context. also, we can cite a study carried out in a university in colombia concerning studentteachers’ perceptions about their teaching experiences. in this study, the researcher mentioned that one of the main problems that the student-teachers had was the inability to integrate theory and practice. “they did not find a clear way to articulate the theory they had learned at university to the reality of their classrooms” (camargo, 2003, p. 7). in short, the reflective model is considered the most appropriate approach because it integrates the strengths of the other two models, and emphasizes the process of reflection in order to improve teaching practice. it is supported by studies conducted in our country. for instance, a study developed in order to update the b.a. program at the universidad tecnológica del chocó (kalil, 2003) highlights the importance of adopting the reflective model in the curriculum in order to avoid the gap between what is taught in the methodological component and what is practiced in the language classroom. as a result of the study, the university staff concluded that they should apply the reflective method to their program and make some changes in the student-teachers’ and supervisor’s roles such as from recipients to demanding and challenging ones. thus, the reflective model is considered to be a means of professional development which involves the need to become a reflective practitioner and to develop abilities in learning how to teach. ppppperspectives in terspectives in terspectives in terspectives in terspectives in teacher preparationeacher preparationeacher preparationeacher preparationeacher preparation the main purpose of teacher preparation is to prepare students to become effective language teachers. richards and nunan (1990) propose general principles that account for effective teaching, the variables that can appear in language teaching and how they are interrelated. they mention that it is important to study the teaching process achieved by the micro and macro approaches. the former defines the effective teacher as one who commands a set of intellectual abilities that contribute to improving the teaching practice. it also examines the teacher ’s characteristics such as interests, attitudes, judgment, self-control, enthusiasm, adaptability, personality, and how these factors influence learning outcomes. the macro approach is the examination of the total context of classroom teaching and learning in an attempt to understand how the interactions among the teacher, learners and classroom tasks affect learning. ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○161 profileprofileprofileprofileprofile tasting teaching flavors in short, the aim of these approaches is to provide opportunities for student-teachers to acquire skills and competencies for effective teaching as well as to discover by themselves how experienced teachers manage their classes. on the other hand, vale and feunteun (1995) share wallace’s point of view about teacher preparation and the importance of reflecting. they agree that student-teachers need the opportunity to experience how to teach concepts first hand and that they also require time to reflect on how new concepts affect their own thinking and principles within their own teaching situations. in addition, student-teachers need time to put those concepts into practice in their own classrooms, and it is strongly recommended that they regularly set aside time for the purposes of reflection and assessment, in particular for teachers to consider how the course content may affect their own teaching. the practicumthe practicumthe practicumthe practicumthe practicum the importance of the practicum in the practitioners’ development as future teachers is recognized by teacher educators, who add every day to what has already been said about this, and propose new approaches to preparation programs as well as to the teaching practice itself. wallace (1990) states that the practicum gives student-teachers the chance to apply knowledge and skills gained elsewhere or to develop strategies for handling the different dimensions of the language lesson. practitioners are expected to develop a critical view of the teaching situation and to implement their previous knowledge in order to create new strategies for becoming effective teachers. in this teaching practice, student-teachers face and respond to difficult situations (woodward, 1992), but they have many possible actions, reactions and strategies to choose from. therefore, it is necessar y to place first-time teachers in situations where they can listen to students, find out about them as human beings, find out their level, and get used to being with them in a classroom and come out unscathed. thus, the practicum would become a relevant teaching experience in which students apply their received knowledge and learn by themselves how to handle daily situations in the classroom. research questionsresearch questionsresearch questionsresearch questionsresearch questions we intended to inquire into the experiences a group of primary school student-teachers had during their practicum. therefore, our main question was: how do primary school studentteachers react to difficulties they face during their practicum? and our sub-questions were: what are the most frequent difficulties primar y school student-teachers find in the teaching practice? what are their attitudes towards difficulties? and what kind of strategies do they use to overcome difficulties in the practicum? research designresearch designresearch designresearch designresearch design a case study describes what happens in a specific context with a specific group of individuals (wallace, 1998). this research method gave us the opportunity to have a very detailed contextual analysis of the events (yin, 1984) that took place during the practicum and the professional processes in which student-teachers got involved throughout it. in addition, we believe that the results of our study could be a reference for future practitioners, to help them to clarify some doubts related to the teaching practice. contextcontextcontextcontextcontext in the b. ed. in philology and languages english program at the universidad nacional de colombia, students are required to do their teaching practice in the 7th or 8th semester after having studied some theoretical components of the program. the students must have taken and passed the following: teaching principles (fundamentos de la educación), psychology and language, the sixth level of the basic english courses, and elt methodology i and ii (guidelines for the teaching practice, 2003). the practicum is considered one of the basic components of the academic curriculum whose ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ 162 pradpradpradpradprada and zuleta and zuleta and zuleta and zuleta and zuletaaaaa profileprofileprofileprofileprofile main goal is to enhance teaching-research. it takes place over a period of six months (one semester), in which the practitioners’ role is to design the syllabus and the different lesson plans which will be taught during the classes. it can be developed in primary, high-school, university classes (electives) or courses for university employees under the supervision of a counselor in charge of guiding, assessing and evaluating the student-teachers and helping them during the entire process. participants’ profileparticipants’ profileparticipants’ profileparticipants’ profileparticipants’ profile our project was focused on four primary school student-teachers whose teaching practice was developed at the iparm (instituto pedagógico arturo ramírez montúfar). the participants did their practicum in 4th and 5th grades. they were students in 8th semester majoring in english. they were four females between the ages of 20-23 years old. three of the student-teachers had not taught before. the counselor in charge of the practicum was a teacher of the english program at the university. he implemented the reflective method and developed some specific tools to promote student-teachers’ self-assessment and reflection. these instruments were journals, class observation sheets and one-on-one/group conferences. data gathering proceduresdata gathering proceduresdata gathering proceduresdata gathering proceduresdata gathering procedures • student-teachers and practice counselor’s journals: these were “a written exercise in which teaching practitioners describe their routine and conscious actions in the classroom for later reflection” (richards & lockhart, 1994). • student-teachers and practice counselor’s conferences: according to the practice counselor’s reflective approach, the conferences were key tools that helped student-teachers to develop themselves as teachers and be critical about their teaching performance. these conferences were audiorecorded by the practice counselor and took place in group and individual sessions which were held once a week throughout the teaching practice. • student-teachers and practice counselor’s audio-recorded semi-structured interviews: our interview was designed in order to validate the information we had examined through the journals and conferences. we decided to use individual interviews in order to create a confidential atmosphere for the participants to express their feelings about the practicum and the whole process during that experience. dddddaaaaattttta anala anala anala anala analysisysisysisysisysis the first stage of our data analysis was carried out individually. this procedure is called teaming (stake, 2000) and its main goal is to compare different perceptions regarding a particular aspect in order to validate and enrich its analysis. we considered teaming and multiple methods of data collection and analysis to accomplish triangulation, the process of using multiple perceptions, so it helped us to clarify meaning by identifying the different ways in which the phenomenon was observed by each one of us (stake, 2000). in addition, we understand triangulation strengthens reliability as well as internal validity (as said by merriam, 1988). we carried out the process of triangulation in the following way: first, we gathered the information from the student-teachers’ journals, then compared it with the recorded conferences. we compared our findings after an individual analysis of the data, and finally, we related these previous findings to the information gathered from the interviews. categories and sub-categoriescategories and sub-categoriescategories and sub-categoriescategories and sub-categoriescategories and sub-categories the process of categorization was followed by a constant revision and re-organization of the categories, but after that work, we classified the findings (see figure 2). tttttasting teaching flasting teaching flasting teaching flasting teaching flasting teaching flaaaaavorsvorsvorsvorsvors we consider this to be similar to the experience of tasting different types of food, you like some, but you might not like some others; it is part of life and you learn from it. student-teachers lived in a ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○163 profileprofileprofileprofileprofile tasting teaching flavors new world, the classroom, and learnt how to deal with all the new situations they had to confront in it. in our study, through examining the frequency of our data, we found situations that were “new flavors” for the student-teachers. these were related to language use, how to organize children in the classroom, materials choice and organization, management of mixed ability groups, how to give instructions, and topic introduction; aspects belonging to classroom management, what is considered to be the effective way in which the student-teachers develop their classes in order to ensure that children work and learn in a comfortable and productive environment. regarding these classroom management issues, we found samples like the following: firstly, “i changed the organization of the class, but it didn’t work.” (andrea, j, p. 7, line 11) shows a concern about seating arrangement, as it either facilitated or hindered the learning process; to some extent the development of the class depended on it. according to gower and walters (1983), the organization of students in the classroom might determine their attitude toward each other and toward the teacher, the teacher’s attitude toward them, how students interact and the types of activities they can complete. “...half of my class was o.k. and the other was a disaster. first, i asked children to arrange desks in a u shape. with this organization children can see everybody’s faces and i avoid the children’s talking too much or giggling or just bothering all around the room” (camila, j, p. 4, line 1). sometimes student-teachers complained about their own materials design or when the children forget to bring their materials to complete certain activities. a student-teacher said: “the material was wrong, they could not see anything from the back of the room” (camila, j, p. 2, line 20). we called this stuff planning, which we defined as the importance of working with the necessary and appropriate materials. also, student-teachers experienced difficulties when managing different kinds of activities and appropriating time in order to get good results during the lessons. as a matter of fact, the student-teachers noted that careless materials planning and organization affected the development of their lessons. “the main problem here is that i only have one copy per group, and it makes the work with some students difficult” (andrea, j, p. 3, line 20); “i had a terrible problem figure 2.figure 2.figure 2.figure 2.figure 2. emerging categories and sub-categories. ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ 164 pradpradpradpradprada and zuleta and zuleta and zuleta and zuleta and zuletaaaaa profileprofileprofileprofileprofile with some activities because i did not bring enough copies for all the children” (sandra, j, p. 1, line 3). the previous samples evidence how materials selected by the student-teacher, their design, shape and size could help to develop a good lesson or to cause disruption and suddenly cause the children to lose interest. our participants were concerned about the way they could handle the lessons when there were students with different abilities: “my class was not good today, kids are very active and heterogeneous” (camila, j, p. 2, line 2). they wondered about possible ways to facilitate dealing with mixed levels and being able to help those students who seemed to work at a different pace or level than the majority of the children in the course. “some kids finished quickly and i had to give them an extra activity. others took a lot of time to finish, so i had to collect the papers” (andrea, j, p. 15, line 6). handling mixed-levels represented a challenge for the student-teachers. however, it led them to maximize class participation, try to increase the children’s confidence, and help in their learning process. even though the student-teachers tried to make their words and expressions full of meaning but uncomplicated in order to establish effective communication in the lessons, the kids sometimes did not understand or did the opposite. “i asked them to bring clocks and make the cards there, problems came...they didn’t understand what they had to do. i had to explain again and again. (camila, j, p. 2, line 12) and “i noticed they even didn’t know what to do and when i tried to explain, they didn’t understand me” (sandra, j, p. 18, line 8). these two samples show the relevant aspects that classroom management theory states about giving instructions..... the teacher’s instructions must be precise and clear in order to avoid wasting time and uncertainty (gower and walters, 1983). actually, one sample from our data confirmed this tenet. “...i was thinking about yesterday in that meeting but i can’t complain about my kids because they’re noisy. it’s because i don’t give instructions at the right time...” (camila, conf-01: p. 3, line 132). introducing topics became another difficulty the student-teachers had to face. “introducing a topic is very difficult for me” (camila, j, p. 12, line 10). some of the student-teachers believed that they should work hard on this in order to capture the students’ attention from the beginning of the lesson. “i tried to explain some habits but some of them did not pay attention” (andrea, j, p. 19, line 2). they also mentioned that it was very important to introduce the different topics in a very creative way. children like colorful things and visual aids that help them to understand what is going on in the class and what the teacher wants them to do. “i brought different visual aids in order to make the topic more comprehensible” (sandra, j, p. 12, line 1). misbehavior commonly took place in the classroom when the students were not really engaged in the learning activity or when they did not understand the tasks they had been assigned, as we interpreted from our data. student-teachers faced difficult situations which caused a lack of discipline and did not allow them to achieve the goals set for each class. this was one of their main concerns. on the other hand, according to our findings, code-using dilemma was another student-teachers’ concern. it referred to the use of the second language during the lessons. the participants expressed the necessity to use the mother tongue most of the time in order to avoid misunderstanding and make students feel at ease. “i used the mother tongue in order to avoid misunderstanding, to diminish students’ affective filter and to feel closer to them” (alejandra, j, p. 1, line 7). moreover, other examples arose regarding using spanish and english during the lessons. “i have problems about talking in spanish and english. that constant code switching makes me mad....” (camila, j, p. 3, line 13) and “in this class, i spoke in english, but i used spanish many times” (andrea, j, p. 1, line 4). then, we concentrated on our second question: what are the student-teachers’ attitudes towards ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○165 profileprofileprofileprofileprofile tasting teaching flavors difficulties? so, we gave the name swinging into action to this category in order to explain how they reviewed and evaluated their performance as teachers when they had to react to and cope with difficulties. we found in the data that the studentteachers were in a constant process of reflection that made them question their actions regarding solving problems. “...entonces era un pensar todo el tiempo en qué se iba a hacer, en cómo lo iba a hacer, en qué les llevo y tengo que prepararles esta actividad” (i constantly thought about what to do in class, how to do it, what to take to the class, and also that i had to plan an activity for the student) (camila, int.: p. 5, line 145). this process was led by the practice counselor with the different tools he applied. “i used to ask them things like, ah, what would you say for your case? learn about this or what you have seen is important in this experience, so they come to conclusions; for instance, what might be implied by, what they have learnt, or what they were learning. so, all of this is... is a cycle that i tried to prepare in terms of the students’ reflection” (juan, int.: p. 2, line 18). we could see that this process helped them to improve their teaching by themselves and also helped them to be constantly thinking about what should be done to cope with difficulties. in other words, the student-teachers had the opportunity to think deeply about their performance and learn from their own practice how to deal with the new environment they were facing. “siempre nosotros los estudiantes estamos acostumbrados a que el profesor nos diga qué debemos hacer, y en este caso nadie me dijo que debía hacer, mi asesor fue una guía, fue muy importante, pero él nunca me impuso nada, yo misma tuve que diseñar y tuve como que entender en qué estaba fallando, entonces para mí fue muy interesante porque me di cuenta que siempre voy a tener la respuesta soy yo, pues obviamente uno se tiene que basar en muchas teorías y pedir ciertos consejos, pero básicamente uno mismo puede controlar y puede buscar una solución a esos problemas que se van a encontrar en el aula de clase” (we, students, are used to having the teacher tell us what to do, but in this case, nobody said it. the counselor was a guide. he played a very important role, but he never imposed anything on us. i had to plan, and i also had to identify by myself what i was doing wrong. thus, this experience was very interesting for me. i realized that i would always have the answer, based on theory and following some advice obviously, but mainly it is oneself who can take control and can deal with difficulties found in the classroom.) (andrea, int.: p.4, line 99). wallace’s reflective cycle (1990) shows this progressive learning as a method student-teachers should apply while carrying out their teaching practice. throughout the data analysis, we noticed that student-teachers’ attitudes towards difficulties evolved during their teaching experience. they reflected upon their difficult teaching situations, they set objectives in order to deal with those situations, and finally, after the implementation of some strategies, they reflected once more upon the results. 1. reflecting upon experiences and knowledge bearing in mind that the english program at universidad nacional states that students-teachers must complete some academic requirements before doing the teaching practice, we can say that, to a certain extent, this previous theoretical knowledge helped them to deal with problems in the practicum. the student-teachers tried to define the way they were conducting the lessons by means of constant and deep reflection, and they felt confident enough to express their feelings, and to try to find solutions based on their experiences and knowledge. “i think that the last two classes i haven’t conclude the topic. i think were very superficial, maybe the parts of the house and this part of my clothes, i think they were very superficial so i need to improve on that this class because sometimes, we have to... o.k. for example, you want to teach something new ever y class, so i think that sometimes is not good,... it could be a mistake to continue without checking some aspects, some ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ 166 pradpradpradpradprada and zuleta and zuleta and zuleta and zuleta and zuletaaaaa profileprofileprofileprofileprofile important aspects” (andrea 02, conf.: p. 4, line 205). once more, we conclude that the reflection process helped student-teachers to appropriately respond to the difficulties related to their actual teaching context and gave them the necessary tools to become very analytical and critical teachers as well. 2. setting goals for immediate action the student-teachers realized the importance of establishing goals and finding solutions in order to manage problems which emerged in their classrooms. “...there’s one thing that worries me, they are becoming reluctant to the teacher speaking in english, so i think, i will have to monitor them in english” (camila, j, p. 10, line 13). they established specific goals to overcome the weaknesses and difficulties they identified in their teaching practice. “…next class i’m going to use a u-shape, because i finally noticed that the old group desk arrangement doesn’t work during individual activities, but the ushape does” (sandra, j, p. 9, line 9). after observing and reflecting on the problems that arose, the student-teachers evaluated their work as teachers and noticed what was going wrong in their classrooms and looked for certain strategies to cope with problems. “...obviously i have to improve in many aspects; for example, how to catch their attention without screaming, how to organize the class, the organization of topics and the development of those aspects…” (andrea, j, p. 3, line 18). 3. feeling relieved after taking action overcoming difficulties was a transition similar to a pendulous movement. student-teachers reflected, set goals and examined if their actions had been successful. we can illustrate this with the next excerpt: “...they find the rewarding moments because what they plan worked, because students have set certain attitudes, that reveal that they are learning, ah!, because they feel that they have done a lot to help students...” (practice counselor, int, p. 3, line 23). after dealing with the process of overcoming difficulties, the participants felt relieved. it was difficult for some of them, but that could be associated with the personal construct theory that says: “there is often a difference between espoused theory (theory claimed by a participant) and theory in action (what a participant actually does in the classroom)” (donaghue, 2003). one of our participants commented that she felt discouraged when she noticed that her strategies had not worked as expected “...ah, really disappointed... because i imagined i had done a... better job, no...i imagined i had done better, but when i saw the video i felt that i hadn’t done my best yet, i felt like... oh, my god... i felt frustrated” (sandra, conf-01, p. 01, line 38). however, we consider it of the utmost importance to mention that the student-teachers’ attitudes evolved during their teaching practice and that evolution caused them to feel more comfortable and secure with their role as teachers, as shown in this excerpt: “...he aprendido a organizar, igual preparando clases, yo me acuerdo que era todo un día y por ahí escribí que era frustrante, saber que duraba horas y horas y buscaba información y al final o no la usaba o no era relevante en ese instante,…ahorita no” (i have learned to organize. preparing classes, i remember that i spent all day long, and i wrote that it was frustrating to know that i used to spend hours and hours, and i looked for information, but at the end i did not use it or it was not relevant at that moment, ... now, it’s different) (alejandra, conf.01, p. 9, line 408). we consider that future teachers in their first teaching experience are similar to a caterpillar that has been in a chrysalis for a long time. it grows and changes. suddenly, it emerges to contemplate the world and tries to survive by implementing different strategies. the student-teachers had theoretical backgrounds, but once they faced the teaching experience, they found a new world waiting for them to experiment and apply what they had learnt previously. furthermore, they created new strategies for overcoming difficult or unknown situations in their classrooms. therefore, we called our third category leaving the chrysalis; a category made up of three sub○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○167 profileprofileprofileprofileprofile tasting teaching flavors categories which helped us identify the kind of strategies student-teachers used to overcome difficulties. 1. going through literature we noted the tendency of student-teachers to turn to research published on topics related to the class difficulties that they had. “…i read about cooperative learning and i was very interested in …try to enhance students to cooperate among themselves and to work not for the purpose of grading but just for learning” (alejandra 02, conf01, p. 4, line 210). according to their factual teaching context, they adapted some theor y-based methods and strategies. then, they applied them in their classrooms in order to observe and analyse if they really worked or not. “…luego lo aplicaba otra vez, ya como más adaptándolo, y luego traía cosas que había leído, entonces era una búsqueda constante de cómo hacer las cosas, …y me la pasaba leyendo. ahí estuve en una búsqueda bibliográfica extensiva en eso” (...then, i implemented it once more trying to adjust it, and i brought some information i had read. so, it was a constant search for understanding how to carry out the class, ...and i used to read a lot. it was an exhaustive literature review.) (camila, int. p. 6, line 173). we could conclude that their wish to learn and to implement strategies that could help them is like the story of “the very hungry caterpillar”. they looked for more and more useful literature; sometimes they followed it, other times they adapted it to suit their needs in order to overcome their teaching problems. 2. getting experts’ advice the student-teachers expected that experienced people like teacher educators, peers, and homeroom teachers would provide them with some strategies and solutions to be applied in their classrooms and specific situations like the following: “...i’m trying to improve this by asking friends who have already taught kids, recycling a lot about classroom management”. (camila, j, p. 3, line 9) and “...they ended up talking about their personal circumstances, a couple of pieces of advice” (juan, j, p. 8, line 27). additionally, the involvement of the studentteachers in reflective sessions with the practice counselor helped them to get acquainted with some knowledge that they could possibly apply in their lessons. this process was carried out implicitly, by means of their practice counselor’s assessment when dealing with classroom management. “siempre nosotros los estudiantes estamos acostumbrados a que el profesor nos diga qué debemos hacer, y en este caso nadie me dijo que debía hacer, mi asesor fue una guía, fue muy importante, pero él nunca me impuso nada, yo misma tuve que diseñar y tuve como que entender en qué estaba fallando...” (andrea, int.: p. 4, line 99). 3. creating and experimenting with solutions from any sources they could consult such as colleagues, teacher educators and theory from books, the student-teachers chose solutions they thought would work best in each of their contexts. sources became important tools for received knowledge. this fostered in the student-teachers an interest in sharing concerns with peers and experienced teachers in order to find some solutions already tested in similar contexts. “...igual frente a situaciones adversas y superar esas situaciones, aprendes muchísimo, y que igual el superarlas te demanda crear estrategias...” (likewise, when you face difficult situations and then overcome them, you learn a lot, but also, overcoming those situations forces you to create strategies...) (alejandra, int: p. 14, line 431). based on their received knowledge and their experiential knowledge, the student-teachers created strategies. after experimenting with some of them, and redesigning them, the main strategies we identified through our data analysis were the implementation of discipline codes by using color cards, the use of cooperative learning, counting, writing names on the board, and a competitive game. ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ 168 pradpradpradpradprada and zuleta and zuleta and zuleta and zuleta and zuletaaaaa profileprofileprofileprofileprofile “...actually the only strategy that i used was to count and it worked at the beginning, but maybe at the end, it didn’t work anymore, and i’ve tried to do it now, but it is not the same like at the beginning” (sandra conf-01, p. 5, line 191). “...a veces quedaban perdidos, hacían lo contrario, entonces tuve que hacer eh!, muchas ayudas visuales, de pronto repetición eh!, escribir en el tablero, pero tocaba hacer de todo para que entendieran” (sometimes, the students got lost. they did the exercise the other way around, then i had to make... many visual aids, to repeat, write on the board, but i had to do different things to make them understand.) (sandra int, p. 2, line 23). “in this class i introduced a new system of rules related to discipline. i chose three words ‘silence’, ‘warning’ and ‘game over’. the first one had the purpose of achieving students’ silence. ‘warning’ is like an “aviso”, if they continue talking i showed them ‘game over’. the group loses the point related to discipline. i’m also going to give them an extra point if they are quiet in the class” (andrea, j, p. 24, line 1). “...tuve que inventarme un sistema de tarjetas con los niños, de puntos y de certificados al final, de tal modo que los niños estuvieran motivados y haciendo lo que estaban haciendo para que yo pudiera llevar un proceso pedagógico de las actividades” (i had to make up a card system for the kids, using points and certificates at the end, for them to be motivated and work so i could accomplish a pedagogical process through the activities.) (camila, int, p. 6, line 191). conclconclconclconclconclusionsusionsusionsusionsusions the findings revealed that at the beginning of the practicum the student-teachers had plenty of expectations about the teaching experience and their reactions included anxiety, doubt and stress. however, when they observed a difficulty they took into account what they thought would suit the situations. also, they tried to search for solutions from different sources. nonetheless, as they faced this experience, their feelings changed. it was hard at the beginning, but at the end, they were very happy with their results. moreover, we found that the reflective approach chosen by the practice counselor helped studentteachers to critically and analytically assess their practice. this approach provided some tools which allowed student-teachers to take a look at their process and become aware of their strengths and weaknesses, so they established objectives in order to change or improve their teaching. it also encouraged them to create their own strategies and search for solutions by themselves in order to overcome classroom difficulties. and not only difficulties as we had thought, but they also created strategies in order to improve their teaching practice and provide children with a better and more productive environment. we can also conclude that the most frequent difficulties were mainly related to classroom management. it is therefore evident that most of these difficulties were related to an effective way to control how the lessons were carried out. this is, in turn, related to the macro approach to teacher education (richards & nunan, 1990) because this model for professional preparation seeks to develop effective teachers by means of applying dimensions (classroom management, structuring, tasks and grouping) in an effective way. regarding student-teachers’ strategies to overcome problematic situations, we can mention some discipline codes applied through games, symbolic cards and the use of cooperative learning. the use of strategies showed their interest in overcoming situations that were not so easy and their creativity to combine elements from theory, colleagues’ advice, and input provided by the practice counselor and peers’ reflections made during the conferences. most of the studentteachers created some strategies not only to get the children to be silent, but to start developing values and reflective attitudes among the children. implicimplicimplicimplicimplicaaaaationstionstionstionstions we found that one of the reasons studentteachers faced these problems was that the teacher education program failed to provide them with a ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○169 profileprofileprofileprofileprofile tasting teaching flavors realistic view of teaching that adequately prepared them to cope with the realities of the classroom. we think that a seminar or another subject should be included in the b. ed. english program. besides, more attention should be given to classroom management in order to make student-teachers conscious of the classroom environment, to familiarize them with real context and to examine implications of possible courses of action. furthermore, an earlier implementation of the research component should be obligatory in our english program. classroom research would give student-teachers some tools to become autonomous and to raise their awareness. thus, the b. ed students from the beginning of the program could learn how to deal with different situations which arise in the classroom. further researchfurther researchfurther researchfurther researchfurther research based on our findings, we consider that it would be invaluable to all involved to carry out future research on how the method applied by a practice counselor influences the students-teachers’ decisions and attempts to cope with difficult situations throughout the practicum. along the same line, we could further study how that approach could develop teaching skills and professional competence in student-teachers. in addition, we find it very interesting to study the impact of the student-teachers’ roles in their practicum. finally, we highlight the relevance of being aware of the student-teachers’ transition throughout the teaching practice as well as their beliefs vis-a-vis that experience in order to become effective teachers. the authorsthe authorsthe authorsthe authorsthe authors liliana prada castañedaliliana prada castañedaliliana prada castañedaliliana prada castañedaliliana prada castañeda, b. ed in philology and languages, english, from the universidad nacional de colombia, is currently an english teacher in the extension programs at the universidad nacional de colombia, and also at john dewey school. in addition, she was research assistant for the project “investigaciones pedagógicas en la carrera de filología e idiomasárea de prácticas docentes”. xatlí zuleta garzónxatlí zuleta garzónxatlí zuleta garzónxatlí zuleta garzónxatlí zuleta garzón holds a b. ed in philology and languages, english, from the universidad nacional de colombia. she is an english teacher at rosario de santo domingo school. also, she is currently a tutor for the profile in-service programs. in addition, she is a member, as a research assistant, of the research group “profile”, officially recognized by colciencias, universidad nacional de colombia. referencesreferencesreferencesreferencesreferences camargo, c.a. (2003). voices of studentteachers about their experiences in learning to teach. master ’s thesis, universidad distrital fancisco josé de caldas, bogotá, colombia. fenstermacher (1994). in chiou-hui, j. (2001). exploring english teachers’ beliefs and practical knowledge about communicative language teaching in efl contexts. retrieved october 14th, 2004, from http://www.hiceducation.org/edu_proceedings/ joyce%20chiou-hui%20chou.pdf donaghue, h. (2003). an instrument to elicit teachers’ beliefs and assumptions. retrieved october 14th, 2004, from http://www3.oup.co.uk/ eltj/hdb/volume_57/issue_04/pdf/570344.pdf frodden, c. and lópez, a. (1998) university schools collaboration through the teaching practicum. íkala 3 (6), 47-68. gower, r., phillips, d., and walters, s. (1983). teaching practice handbook. great britain: heinemann. houten, m. (1997). teacher development. reflective practice-starting the cycle. in a.c., mclean, sig selections. special interests in elt (pp.97). kingsdown, uk: iatefl. huberman, s. (1996). ¿cómo aprenden los que enseñan?. buenos aires: aique. johnson, k.e (1996). the role of theory in l2 teacher education. tesol quarterly, 30 (4), 765-772. kalil, m. (2003). criterios para una propuesta reflexiva en la práctica docente. universidad pedagógica nacional, bogotá, colombia. ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ 170 pradpradpradpradprada and zuleta and zuleta and zuleta and zuleta and zuletaaaaa profileprofileprofileprofileprofile lineamientos generales para la práctica docente. (2003). resolución del csu –consejo superior universitario. “por la cual se reglamentan las prácticas docentes para la carrera de filología e idiomas”. universidad nacional de colombia, bogotá. merriam, s.b. (1988). case study research in education: a qualitative approach. san francisco: jossey-bass. richards, j. and nunan, d. (1990). second language teacher education. cambridge: cambridge university press. richards, j.c., and lockhart, c. (1994). reflective teaching in second language classrooms. cambridge: cambridge university press. stake, r.e. (2000). case studies. handbook of qualitative research. thoushand daks-london. new delhi: sage. vale, d., and feunteun, a. (1995). teaching children english. a training course for teaching of english to children. cambridge: cambridge university press. wallace, m. j. (1998). action research for language teachers. cambridge: cambridge university press. wallace, m.j. (1990). training foreign language teachers. a reflective approach. cambridge: cambridge university press. widdowson, h.g. (1990). aspects of language teaching. oxford: oxford university press. woodward, t. (1992). ways of training. singapore: longman. yin, r.k. (1984). case study research: design and methods. newbury park, california: sage. profile 11, 2009. issn 1657-0790. bogotá, colombia. pages 57-77 57 the use and functions of discourse markers in efl classroom interaction los usos y las funciones de los marcadores del discurso en la interacción en el aula de inglés como lengua extranjera claudia marcela chapetón castro*1 universidad pedagógica nacional, colombia the aim of this paper is to investigate classroom interaction in the context of english as a foreign language being the teacher a non-native speaker of the language. one specific aspect of classroom interaction and language use is the focus of attention, namely discourse markers (dms). using data from an efl class, this study describes the occurrences and frequencies of dms. it also provides an account for the main functions of dms as they were used by a non-native teacher of english and five adult students of efl. a qualitative analysis reveals that discourse markers fulfill a number of textual and interpersonal functions which may contribute greatly to the coherent and pragmatic flow of the discourse generated in classroom interaction. key words: efl classroom interaction, discourse analysis, discourse markers, non-native teacher, adult efl students el artículo que aquí se presenta intenta investigar la interacción que ocurre en el aula de inglés como lengua extranjera cuando el profesor de inglés es no-nativo. un aspecto específico de la interacción en el aula y del uso del lenguaje es la presencia de los marcadores del discurso (md). con base en datos empíricos, este estudio pretende describir las ocurrencias, la frecuencia y las funciones principales de los md. el análisis cualitativo de los datos revela que los md cumplen funciones tanto textuales como interpersonales que pueden facilitar y contribuir al flujo coherente y pragmático del discurso generado en la interacción de aula. palabras clave: interacción en el aula, análisis del discurso, marcadores del discurso, profesor de inglés no nativo, estudiantes adultos de inglés como lengua extranjera * e-mail: cchapeton@pedagogica.edu.co address: c/. colli vehi 95 p. 3-02 (08026), barcelona-spain. this article was received on november 17, 2008 and accepted on march 10, 2009. chapetón castro universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras58 introduction english is considered as the major international language in various areas such as science, communications, business, entertainment, and even on the internet. knowledge of english is required, at least at a basic level, in many fields, professions, and occupations throughout the world. consequently, english language teaching is increasingly taking place not only in englishspeaking countries, but in the student’s own country. teaching english as a foreign language usually occurs inside the classroom which is a setting that has particular contextual characteristics that deserve special attention. one common characteristic of english as a foreign language (efl) classrooms is that the teachers may be non-native speakers of the language they are teaching. from my experience as a non-native teacher of english as a foreign language and, as a student-teacher educator, i consider that research on classroom interaction based on an analysis of the discourse can be very illuminating for two main reasons: first, it may contribute to gaining a better understanding of what happens inside the efl classroom and second, it provides a valuable possibility to examine and describe the language used by non-native teachers and students of efl. of course there has been research on this issue. a seminal publication on classroom interaction by sinclair & coulthard (1975) provides a comprehensive review, traced back to the late 1940s, of the considerable amount of research on the language used by teachers and pupils in classroom practices. an important contribution on discourse analysis for language teachers was made by mccarthy (1991) who provided not only a sound theoretical framework and descriptions based on research but also practical activities which sensitized teachers towards the language used inside their own classrooms. on the same line, celce-murcia & olshtain (2000) propose a discourse and context based perspective on language teaching and learning to redefine the roles for teachers, learners and materials. with the exception of the notable work by llurda (2005) who explicitly addresses and puts together the research conducted in different efl settings such as catalonia, the basque country, hungary and brazil, the language used by non-native english-speaking teachers and students remains largely unexplored. the aim of this exploratory study is to investigate classroom interaction in the context of english as a foreign language being the teacher a non-native speaker of the language. one specific aspect of classroom interaction and language use is the focus of my attention, namely discourse markers. therefore, the occurrences of discourse markers will be explored and described both quantitatively and qualitatively with a grounded approach method in mind. thus, i did not formulate, and seek to validate, hypotheses but rather took simple statistical analyses as a starting point for a qualitative analysis of the functions served by discourse markers in this particular classroom setting. the research questions guiding this smallscale study are: • how frequent are discourse markers (dms) in the efl classroom discourse sample under scrutiny here? • which dms occur? how frequently do they occur? • which dms are used by the teacher? • which dms are used by the students? • what are the prevailing functions of the dms employed in classroom interaction by the teacher and by the students? the use and functions of discourse markers in efl classroom interaction profile 11, 2009. issn 1657-0790. bogotá, colombia. pages 57-77 59 the next section will present a brief literature review on the main concepts which are central to this study followed by a description of the characteristics of the participants and setting, the instruments and procedures for data collection and the analysis of the data. the article finally closes with a discussion of the results and the conclusions. literature review according to van dijk (1997) discourse is a form of language use which includes the functional aspects of a communicative event. it means that people use language in order to communicate ideas, beliefs or emotions in social events and situations such as an encounter with friends or a lesson in the classroom. this also suggests that in these communicative events, the participants do not limit themselves to using the language or communicating: they interact. as douglas (2001) points out, discourse analysis is the examination of language used by the members of a speech community which involves looking at both language form and language function. in this study language is viewed as social interaction that takes place within a classroom community, among adult students and a non-native teacher of efl. as mentioned earlier, one specific aspect of classroom interaction and language use is the occurrence of discourse markers. this literature review deals with the two central concerns of this study: discourse markers (dms) and studies on the discourse of non-native efl teachers. discourse markers: definition, characteristics and functions in her influential work on discourse markers schiffrin operationally defines them as “sequentially dependant elements which bracket units of talk” (1987, p. 31). she suggests that dms are used in discourse because they provide “contextual coordinates for utterances”. that is, they contribute to building the local coherence which is jointly constructed by speaker and hearer in their discourse structure, context, meaning and action during interaction. they serve to show how what is being said is connected to what has already been said, either within a speaker’s turn or across speakers’ turns. in her research, she focuses on eleven discourse markers: oh, well (particles), and, but, or, so, because (conjunctions), now, then (time deictics), and you know, i mean (lexicalized clauses). in the relevant literature, there are studies which deal, whether generally or specifically, with a wide scope of dms, however, difficulties arise as there is no agreement among scholars when they refer to their terminology, classification and functionality1. brinton (1996) points out that dm has been the most common name suggested for “seemingly empty expressions found in oral discourse”, however, she proposes the term pragmatic markers, as pragmatic “better captures the range of functions filled by these items”2. although brinton acknowledges the fact that there has been little agreement on the items that can be called pragmatic markers, she compiles an inventory of thirty three markers3 that have received scholarly attention and proposes a broad number of characteristics typical of these words. those 1 for a comprehensive review on a whole range of terms, definitions, features and functions assigned to discourse markers by different scholars see brinton, 1996; jucker & ziv, 1998; gonzález, 2004; müller, 2005. 2 brinton (1996, pp. 30-31) presents a detailed examination of the various definitions given to dms in relation to the different functions identified as central and therefore assigned to dms by different scholars. 3 the complete list will be shown later on (table 3a) as it served as the basis for the quantitative data analysis of the present study. chapetón castro universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras60 characteristics were later taken up by jucker & ziv (1998) who reordered them to combine features that pertain to the same level of linguistic description: phonological and lexical, syntactic, semantic, functional and sociolinguistic features. some characteristics of dms, according to brinton (1996) and jucker & ziv (1998) are: a. dms are predominantly a feature of oral rather than of written discourse. b. they appear with high frequency in oral discourse. c. they are short and phonologically reduced items. d. they may occur sentence initially, sentence medially and finally as well. e. they are considered to have little or no prepositional meaning, or at least to be difficult to specify lexically. f. as dms may occur outside the syntactic structure or loosely attached to it, they have no clear grammatical function. g. they seem to be optional rather than obligatory features of discourse. their absence “does not render a sentence ungrammatical and/or unintelligible” but does “remove a powerful clue” (fraser, 1988, p. 22 as cited by brinton, 1996, p. 34). h. they may be multifunctional, operating on the local and global levels simultaneously though it is difficult to differentiate a pragmatically motivated from a nonpragmatically motivated use of the form. the different studies of dms distinguish several domains where they may be functional, in which there are included textual, attitudinal, cognitive and interactional parameters. accordingly, as stated by jucker & ziv (1998) dms have been analyzed as text-structuring devices that serve to mark openings or closings of discourse units or transitions between them. also, they serve as modality or attitudinal indicators, as markers of speaker-hearer intentions and relationships, and as instructions on how given utterances are to be processed or interpreted. thornbury & slade (2006) argue that dms and other interactional signals such as response elicitors (right?, ok?) and attention signals (hey!) are crucial to the collaborative organization that takes place in conversation as streams of talk are segmented into “loose topically coherent” macrostructures: topics are broached, commented on, developed, extended, replaced, retrieved... and all this conversational flux is continuously shaped and negotiated by interactants. crucial to this collaborative organizational “work” is the inserting of discourse markers and other interactional signals into the stream of talk. (thornbury & slade, 2006, p. 57) as brinton (1996) claims dms are grammatically optional and semantically empty but they are not pragmatically optional or superfluous, instead, they serve a variety of pragmatic functions. she presents an inventory of ten functions which she groups into two main categories (based on the modes or functions of language identified by halliday, 1973). first, the textual function which is related to the way the speaker structures meaning as text, creating cohesive passages of discourse, using language in a way that is relevant to the context. and second, the interpersonal function which refers to the nature of the social exchange, that is, the role of the speaker and the role assigned to the hearer. table 1 presents my understanding of the inventory of functions devised by brinton: the use and functions of discourse markers in efl classroom interaction profile 11, 2009. issn 1657-0790. bogotá, colombia. pages 57-77 61 table 1. pragmatic functions of discourse markers adapted from brinton, 1996, pp. 35-40. textual functions to initiate discourse, including claiming the attention of the hearer opening frame marker to close discourse closing frame marker to aid the speaker in acquiring or relinquishing the floor. turn takers (turn givers) to serve as a filler or delaying tactic used to sustain discourse or hold the floor fillers turn keepers to indicate a new topic or a partial shift in topic topic switchers to denote either new or old information information indicators to mark sequential dependence sequence/relevance markers to repair one’s own or others’ discourse. repair markers interpersonal functions subjectively, to express a response or a reaction to the preceding discourse including also back-channel signals of understanding and continued attention while another speaker is having his/her turn. response/reaction markers back-channel signals interpersonally, to effect cooperation or sharing, including confirming shared assumptions, checking or expressing understanding, requesting confirmation, expressing difference or saving face (politeness). confirmation-seekers face-savers central for the development of this study is hellerman & vergun’s (2007) approach to dms as they incorporate pragmatic functions in their definition. as these authors state, dms are words or phrases that function within the linguistic system to establish relationships between topics or grammatical units in discourse, that is words such as so, well, and then. dms also serve pragmatic functions, as a speaker uses them to comment on the state of understanding of the information about to be expressed using phrases such as you know, i mean. they may also be used to express a change of state, such as the particle oh; or for subtle commentary by the speaker suggesting that what seems to be the most relevant context is not appropriate e.g. well. thus, the dms are understood in this paper as lexical items that serve textual, pragmatic and interactional purposes. and, as schiffrin (1987) and brinton (1996) claim, their usage is optional, not obligatory as dms could be taken out of an utterance without altering neither its structure nor its propositional content. research on dms has abounded since the 1980s4. studies include analyses and descriptions of their use in different languages. dms have also been examined in a variety of genres and interactive contexts, and in a number of different language contact situations as pointed out by schiffrin (2001), who provides a rich discussion on the three different perspectives to approach dms and summarizes recent studies that have contributed to understanding how dms work. 4 for a summary of the most significant research see schiffrin (2001, pp. 54-67) who addresses the most remarkable authors and their focuses on research regarding dms. chapetón castro universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras62 müller (2005) analysed the use of seven dms in conversations of native and non-native speakers of english in germany and usa. regarding the study of dms in classroom settings, chaudron & richards (1986) investigated the comprehension of university lectures by nonnative speakers of english living and studying in the united states, that is, in english as a second language (esl) contexts. chaudron & richards (1986) made use of four different versions of the same text with different categories of discourse markers (baseline, micro, macro, or micro-macro versions). overall results showed that macromarkers produced better text recall than micromarkers. it was hypothesized that micro-markers do not provide enough information to help in making content more salient. implications for the teaching of listening skills in esl settings were discussed as well. de fina (1997) analysed the function of the spanish marker bien in classroom interaction. she argued that bien has two main functions: a transitional and an evaluative one. transitional bien is used to signal upcoming transitions between or within activities, while evaluative bien is used to signal a positive response by the teacher in the feedback move of an initiation/ response/feedback cycle. she compared the use of this specific dm in classroom discourse to its use in conversation and discussed both similarities and differences of situational variations. in their aim at determining if consultation of a corpus of classroom discourse can be of benefit in language teacher education, amador, o’riordan & chambers (2006) examined the uses of discourse markers in french and spanish. a quantitative analysis showed the low number of occurrences of dms in both a french class and a spanish class while a qualitative analysis described the main functions of dms identified in classroom discourse. these functions were categorized into five groups considering mainly the role of the teacher in the classroom: to introduce a new topic or activity; to motivate or encourage the pupils; to call the pupils’ attention; to recap or clarify what has been said; to rephrase what has been said. in a recent research hellerman & vergun (2007) investigated the frequency of use and some functions of three particular discourse markers, well; you know; and like in classroom interaction and in-home interviews. 17 adult learners of english as a second language at the beginning level, provided the data of this 5-year research project. their results suggest that the students who use more discourse markers are those who are more acculturated to the us and use them outside their classroom. after this overview on discourse markers, a brief account on research regarding non-native efl teachers discourse will be presented. non-native efl teachers to address this issue, it would be perhaps important to refer to what is meant by native speaker of english. in this study, a native speaker of english would be a person who speaks only english, or a person who learned another language later in life but still predominantly uses english as l1. the teacher participating in this study is a non-native english speaker as his l1 is spanish (as it will be later dealt with in section 3.1). the language used by non-native teachers in the efl classroom has been addressed by relatively few scholars. by applying standard discourse analysis procedures, cots & diaz (2005) studied the nonnative teachers’ classroom performance looking mainly at the construction of social relationships and the way linguistic knowledge is conveyed. the use and functions of discourse markers in efl classroom interaction profile 11, 2009. issn 1657-0790. bogotá, colombia. pages 57-77 63 their analysis suggested that teacher talk might be a continuum that locates teachers’ discourse somewhere between a discourse of power and a discourse of solidarity and that gender variables may be more relevant than nativeness in order to understand interactional styles in the efl classroom. frodden, restrepo, & maturana (2004) conducted a research project on foreign language teachers’ discourse and practices with respect to assessment in two colombian universities. their main aim was to contribute to the improvement of non-native english teachers’ assessment practices. pineda (2004) examined how adult efl students and non-native teachers constructed meaning in the classroom when dealing with critical thinking related tasks, the meta-cognitive processes involved, the types of interactions built around the tasks and how they influenced language competence and critical thinking. chang (2004) explored the relationships between five efl non-native teachers’ identities and the impact on their teaching practices in taiwan. the study proved that the five participants' knowledge of multiculturalism and language awareness, their chinese-centered education, and their educational and personal experiences were evident in their teaching. as müller (2005) asserts little is known about dms usage by nonnative speakers and, as i see it, even less is known about their usage by non-native efl teachers. methodology the participants the participants in this study are adult male and female students of english as a foreign language, and one male non-native efl teacher. the total number of students in this class is five. there are two male and three female students. their ages range from 19 to 22. they live in spain but they come from different places: three of them come from catalonia, having catalan and spanish as their first languages. another student is from italy, his mother tongue is italian. the other student comes from a latin-american country and his first language is spanish. they are in their fourth year english course and their current proficiency level, according to the classification parameters of the institution where they currently study, is upper-intermediate. they attend efl classes every saturday morning from 10:00 to 13:15 during each academic semester. the teacher is a 27 year-old man. he is from colombia and his native language is spanish. he has been a non-native english teacher for seven years, both at school and at university levels. he holds a masters degree from kent state university, ohio, in the united states and he is currently a doctorate student in barcelona. last year he participated as one of the speakers in a congress in manchester university in england. he has been a member of a research group in colombia and a research assistant in the usa. the setting the efl class analysed to develop this study was located at a language center functioning in the city of barcelona, spain. it is a language school with 15 years of experience in language teaching. they offer reduced groups with a maximum of eight students and a communicative approach to the language with the purpose of helping their students achieve a good command of both spoken and written english. teachers monitor the students’ progress by means of regular exams, attendance records and pedagogical advice. there are efl classes scheduled during week days and also on saturday mornings. every session on saturday morning lasts three hours. chapetón castro universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras64 instruments and procedures for data collection the class recorded was the first session after christmas holidays and the students talked about what they had done during their holidays. participants talked about the traditions to celebrate christmas in their countries: spain, italy and colombia. after that, they talked about “worstcase scenarios and ways to prepare for disasters” which is a topic developed in their textbooks as part of the initial program of the course. this classroom activity combined reading with speaking practice; that is, with oral interaction. two different instruments were used to gather the data. first, i designed a questionnaire in order to collect background information of the course and to create a profile of the students. this form, used once with the group of students under scrutiny, was filled in by the teacher and consisted of two main sections: information regarding the nature of the course and students, and, a second section in which a brief description of the particular tasks developed in this class was required. this instrument was really important as it provided valuable information which contributed to a better understanding of the interaction that took place in the classroom. audio-recordings were also used. as the data were collected in an indoor setting, the type of recording equipment was selected accordingly. with the consent of the participants, a light, portable audio-recorder of professional quality was tested before the recording session and used to record the participants’ oral interaction. following calsamiglia & tusón’s (1999) suggestions on how to deal with oral data for discourse analysis, the quality of the recording was verified at the end of the session in order to make sure that it was intelligible. once the recording session had been completed, a digital copy was made and kept for backup. then, an initial process of transliteration of the audiorecorded class began. afterwards, a 25-minute fragment of the session was taken as the main focus of attention in order to develop this paper. the fragment was chosen because it constituted the most representative and richest section in terms of oral interaction among the participants. this selected fragment was transcribed using specific transcription conventions which were very useful in providing the maximum transmission of contextual information and to ensure accuracy. the audio recording was transcribed directly into a computer file using the sound scriber program created by breck (1998) at the university of michigan, which aides in the transcription of digitized sound files and has several userconfigurable features. occasional speech errors made by participants were not corrected; instead, they were transcribed as they had actually occurred. an instrument for the transcript was designed including information about the date, site, and key issues regarding the participants, context and the sample transcription. data analysis bearing in mind the research questions posed to develop this small-scale study, i aimed at quantitatively and qualitatively relevant results. the quantitative side of the analysis was performed by the use of descriptive statistics. it consisted of simple statistical analyses such as lexical size and frequency counts in order to show the occurrences and distribution of discourse markers in the discourse. taking brinton’s (1996) inventory of 33 items that can be considered dms, i developed the quantitative analyses using the latest version of a computer-research tool called antconc, a freeware multi-purpose the use and functions of discourse markers in efl classroom interaction profile 11, 2009. issn 1657-0790. bogotá, colombia. pages 57-77 65 corpus analysis toolkit designed by laurence anthony at waseda university. the qualitative analysis consisted of the identification and description of the pragmatic functions of discourse markers. to complete these tasks, i based my analysis mainly on the functions proposed by müller (2005), brinton (1996) and schiffrin (1987). results and discussion regarding the first research question posed to carry out this exploratory study, i first analyzed the general lexical size and frequency. as shown in table 2a, the total number of words in the sample taken for the development of this paper (of transcribed oral data) is two thousand one hundred. the most frequent word of this sample is the definite article the, with 93 occurrences accounting for 4.43% of the data. it was followed by the nominative pronoun i with 90 occurrences (4.28%). the fourth most frequent word is the dm and with 74 occurrences (3.52%). this information may be unsurprising. words such as the, i, and and are highly frequent in spoken communication. to give an example, mccarthy & carter (1997), who used a far bigger sample (330,000 words), identified the, i, you and and as the four top words used in spoken english. however, a distinction between content and function words might be relevant. thus, table 2a shows the distribution of content words and function words in this sample of efl classroom talk. most of the high-frequency words are function words which consist of the 66% of the whole sample, while content words represent 34% and comprising words such as family, day and have, the first to appear with 19 occurrences each. mccarthy & carter (1997) also found that over sixty percent of their data consisted of function words. a closer look at the data reveals that dms occur 398 times. these occurrences correspond to 19% of the total corpus and to 30% of function words as shown in table 2b. concerning the occurrence and frequency of dms, brinton’s (1996) inventory of 33 items was considered as a basis. using the concordance lines provided by the antconc computer program, i analyzed each one of the instances in which dms occur. since some items from brinton’s inventory may also serve other functions different from their use as discourse markers, it was relevant to distinguish dms from those cases. i made a distinction between non-discourse marker and marker functions based on the list of features given in table 1. the following extracts from my data illustrate that a) some items function as discourse markers and, therefore, were included table 2a. distribution of words. table 2b. distribution of dms. total no. of words 2,100 100% discourse markers: 398 content words 720 34% 19% of the total function words 1,380 66% 30% of function words chapetón castro universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras66 as part of the analysis and b) some cases in which the items were serving as non-discourse marker functions were excluded: item: “well” a) (1) 107 tt: uh ↓ok, and did you get any presents? 108 s3: yeah, 109 tt: ↑what 110 s3: well 111 tt: [presents.] 112 s3: i: *for my mom a: portable dvd excerpt (1) shows the use of well as a discourse marker: in line 107, the teacher asks s3 a question which is answered in line 112. “well” has been previously used by the student to mark his/her response (in line 110). here, well is used as a response marker by the student, thus, it was included in the analysis. b) (2) 50 s2: so. ah: (-) i don’t remember very well in this example, well collocates with very and is an adverb. it is not fulfilling any discourse marker function. therefore, it was excluded. item: “so” a) (3) 86 tt: excuse me one second because (.) i know where i have the marker. (xxx) 87 so↓ remember, noche vieja, would be (-) <teacher writes on the board> excerpt (3) shows that so is used by the teacher to initiate a new stage in the classroom discourse and to get the attention of the students. so, here, is therefore working as an opening frame marker. b) (4) 173 tt: =everything is so cheap but i don’t have ((any)) ↓money ↓((left)). in this case, so is qualifying the adjective cheap. it was excluded because it was used as an adverb of degree or manner. item: “if ” a) there were no excerpts from my data to exemplify the use of “if” as a discourse marker. b) (5) 279 s4: i think lightning is not a disaster. 280 tt: ↓well, if it hits you it is a disaster. in this case, if was excluded because it was used as a conditional. the above excerpts (1)-(5) illustrate that the use of lexical items is dependent on the local context and sequence of talk in classroom interaction. thus, these are two important factors to consider when making decisions on what to exclude or include as a discourse marker in the analysis. table 3a shows the occurrences and frequencies of dms in this study. the most frequent dm (and) occurs 74 times. among other very frequent dms we have uh huh / mhm (44 occurrences), ok and so (23 each), followed by but (19 occurrences). it is interesting to see that some dms occurred only twice (now, and stuff/things like that, sort/kind of) or once (actually, just). in addition, some other markers from brinton’s inventory did not occur (after all, almost, anyway, basically, go “say”, if, mind you, moreover, say, therefore, you see). the use and functions of discourse markers in efl classroom interaction profile 11, 2009. issn 1657-0790. bogotá, colombia. pages 57-77 67 table 3a. occurrences of dms based on brinton's inventory of items. dm occ dm occ dm occ 1. ah 10 13. if 0 23. right/all right 6 2. actually 1 14. i mean / think 6 24. so 23 3. after all 0 15. just 1 25. say 0 4. almost 0 16. like 19 26. sort/kind of 2 5. and 74 15. mind you 0 27. then 8 6. and (stuff, things) like that 2 17. moreover 0 28. therefore 0 7. anyway 0 18. now 2 29. uh huh/ mhm 44 8. basically 0 19. oh 7 30. well 14 9. because 7 20. ok 23 31. yes/no 25 10. but 19 21. or 6 32. you/i know 3 11. go “say” 0 22. really 3 33. you see 0 based on the characteristics assigned to dms by scholars such as schiffrin (1987), brinton (1996) and jucker & ziv (1998), i identified three more items that served as discourse markers in this sample taken from classroom interaction. table 3b shows the occurrence and frequencies of these three dms. the most frequent items are um / e with 50 occurrences. yeah occurs 42 times and eh? only once. as stated by thornbury & slade (2006) and by schiffrin (2001), dms often become combined. in my data, i found combinations such as and then (7 occurrences), ok and (3 occurrences), oh yeah, oh really, mhm and, well but, well um, and well, ok well, yeah mhm, well now, yes i know, ok so, ah ok, ah yeah, like yeah and so ah. summarizing, the occurrences and frequencies of thirty six discourse markers were analysed as shown in tables 3a and 3b. the most frequent dm was and with 74 occurrences. among other very frequent dms we have um / e (50 occurrences), uh huh / mhm (44), yeah (42) ok and so (23 each). few or zero occurrences of about 16 markers were also accounted for. chapetón castro universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras68 table 3b. occurrences of other dms. dm occ dm occ dm occ 34. eh? 1 35. yeah 42 36. um / e 50 teacher uses a great deal of dms once, and some dms are repeatedly used, as shown in table 4. in contrast, amador, o’riordan & chambers (2006) found that “the four native speaker teachers use a relatively limited number of dms (9, 4, 10, 8)”. the total number of dms used by the teachers in amador, o’riordan & chambers’ study came to 253, accounting for 97% of the total (ibid.). though this raw number (253) is very close to the occurrences identified in the discourse of the non-native teacher participating in this small-scale research (244), it instead accounts for 61% of the total. this may suggest that the non-native teacher’s role might not be as “dominant”, in de fina’s words, and thus may allow a slightly more space for students to participate in classroom interaction. however, differences in the quantity of dms used by native and non-native teachers and students in classroom interaction may be related table 4. discourse markers used by teacher and students in this efl class. discourse marker tt ss discourse marker tt ss discourse marker tt ss and 38 36 ah 5 5 and stuff like that 2 0 um / e 20 30 yes 3 5 kind of 2 0 uh huh / mhm 31 13 then 7 1 i know 2 0 yeah 19 23 because 3 4 you know 1 0 ok 21 2 oh 5 2 actually 1 0 so 19 4 i mean 2 1 just 1 0 but 16 3 i think 0 3 eh? 0 1 like 17 2 right / all right 6 0 anyway 0 0 no 7 10 now 2 0 if 0 0 well 6 8 really 3 0 you see 0 0 discourse markers were used differently by the participants in this study. in relation to the third and fourth research questions posed to develop this study, table 4 shows two categories in which dms were classified according to whether they were used by the non-native teacher (tt) or the adult efl students (ss). the total number of dms used by the teacher was 244 (61%) while students used them 154 times (39%). the fact that students used 39% of the total dms may confirm de fina’s (1997, p. 337) concern on the “dominant role of the teacher in the classroom”. however, these results contradict those obtained by amador, o’riordan & chambers (2006, pp. 90-91), who found that pupils “use hardly any discourse marker” (3%) being the teachers the ones who used 97% of the dms identified in classroom interaction. regarding the use of dms by the teacher, this study shows that this non-native the use and functions of discourse markers in efl classroom interaction profile 11, 2009. issn 1657-0790. bogotá, colombia. pages 57-77 69 to a variety of factors and methodological issues. in amador, o’riordan & chambers’ study, the classes recorded were “intended simply as examples of classroom interaction” (2006, p. 86), but no clear details were given on the kind of tasks or activities developed while recording. in contrast, as explained in section 4.3, the particular sample analysed to develop this paper consisted of 25 minutes in which students were asked to talk about a recent experience. although this activity was proposed and guided by the teacher, it was mainly student-centered and pupils were free to participate, intervene and express themselves using the target language. this issue may explain the high number of times in which students use dms like and, um/e, yeah, mhm, no and well as shown in table 4. after having looked at the occurrences, frequencies and distribution of dms, i decided the following section of this paper would address the last question related to the general functions of dms in classroom interaction. in order to identify and describe their main functions, i analyzed each discourse marker in its context of use; that is, i considered both the local context and the sequence of talk in which they occurred during classroom interaction. the initial twenty two lines of the whole transcript are included in table 5 in order to illustrate the qualitative analysis that was performed on the entire dataset. as is shown in table 5, a variety of dms are present to aid the speakers in the construction of their discourse and meaning-making during classroom interaction. the functions i identified are both textual and interpersonal. the textual functions of markers are more related to the construction of discourse coherence. for instance, so, in line one is used by the teacher in order to initiate his discourse. so is also used by the teacher in cases 4 and 8 as a result marker and with the purpose of emphasizing and structuring his discourse coherently. he also uses a couple of fillers such as um to fill a momentary hesitation probably occasioned by “the demands of real-time processing pressure” (thornbury & slade, 2006, p. 56). in line seven, the teacher uses and then to signal continuity and to mark the temporal connection and sequential dependence on the discourse. student 1, in line 10, takes the turn and volunteers to interact by using the dm yeah. the teacher assigns the turn using the dm ok. s1 uses the filler um, in lines 12 and 20, as a delaying tactic to fill a momentary hesitation, to sustain discourse and to hold the floor. most of the uses of the dm and in this extract are related to its textual function of showing continuity and adding new information (cases 17, 21 and 27). however, and, in case 25, is used by the student not only to mark continuity and thematic connection but also as a turn keeper showing that even though she has been interrupted, she still holds the floor. the use of because in line 16, as a marker of cause, not only has the textual function of introducing new information (exams at the university) but also provides an explanation or reason connected to the previous information (“i tried to study”) which, as i see it, contributes to the coherence of the discourse as it expresses the relation of relevance between the preceding utterance and the context. case 30 in line 22 shows the way the student indicates the end of her turn. however, she uses the lexical phrase “that’s all” which is not considered a dm by any of the scholars previously referred to. another example that illustrates this issue is observable in the following excerpt: chapetón castro universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras70 table 5. sample analysis of discourse markers' functions (from the author's data). 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 tt: so1. the first thing we are gonna do is (-) we are gonna do a little bit of u:m2 speaking (.) practice, right?3 so4, u:m5 (.) as we usuas you always do in (bis) english courses e:m6 we are gonna talk about what you did during the holidays, [ok?7 ] ss: ................................<laugh> t: ................................[very original] <laugh> so8. you are gonna tell me= s2: .................................=i forget. tt: =you forgot, <laugh> you are gonna tell me what you did, and then9 i’ll tell you what i ↓did s1: ok10 tt: ok?11 (-) who wants to begin? (0.3) volunteers (-) <clearing of throat> s1: ↓yeah12 tt: ok13, alexandra, tell us (.) what did you do? s1: in my holidays a-, um14, in the mornings, i had to: go to work. tt: ...............................[mhm15].............[mhm16] ↑wow s1: a:nd17 in the evening, i tried to study <laugh> tt: [mhm18] s1: because19 now20 i have ↑exams (.) a:nd21= tt: ................................[mhm22]............ =at the university? s1: yeah23 tt: ↓ah24 s1: and25 the day of um26 christmas i ate ((natela)) a:nd27 i ate all the days <laugh> tt: oh yeah28 s1: and29 that’s all30. (footnotes) 1 opening frame marker 2 filler 3 checking understanding / soliciting agreement 4 result marker and emphasizer 5 filler 6 filler 7 checking understanding / soliciting agreement 8 result marker and emphasizer 9 dm signalling continuity and temporal connection 10 dm expressing understanding and agreement 11 as 3 and 7 12 turn taker 13 a response form conveying agreement and acceptance / turn giver 14 filler /turn keeper 15 dm working as a back-channel device (feedback and continued attention) 16 as 15 17 continuity and addition marker 18 as 15 and 16 19 marker of cause: explanation/reason. relevance marker. 20 time adverb (not considered as dm) 21 as 17 the use and functions of discourse markers in efl classroom interaction profile 11, 2009. issn 1657-0790. bogotá, colombia. pages 57-77 71 22 as 15 and 16 23 response marker 24 response / confirmation marker 25 turn keeper / continuity and thematic connection 26 as 14 (6) 127 tt: y-you (bis) went to visit your family. 128 s3: si.(.) yes. to visit ↓yes. ↓and no more. 129 tt: uh. ↓cool. and what about you ester? <clearing of throat> 130 s4: e: well i: i sleep a lot. student 3 closes her turn using the expression “and no more” as shown in line 128 of the transcription. the student’s indication of the end of her turn makes the teacher assign a new one (line 129) to student 4 who uses the discourse marker well preceded by a filler as a turn taking signal. the analysis of the data showed that relinquishing the floor is sometimes unmarked; that is, sometimes students do not use any dms to indicate a close but instead, it is the teacher who closes their turn by using dms such as ok or well. the interpersonal functions of dms are precisely more related to the reactions, responses and relations built by the participants during interaction, that is, to the role of the speaker and hearer during the social and communicative exchange. interpersonal functions of dms are revealed in the following examples as shown in the excerpt in table 5: in line 2, the teacher uses right, and also ok (in lines 3 and 9), both with rising intonation, in order to check understanding and seek the students’ agreement on his proposed activity. student 1 responds in line 8 using ok to express understanding and agreement. it is interesting to see that the teacher uses mhm (cases 15, 16, 18 and 22) as a back-channel signal, thus, providing permanent feedback to student 1 “signaling that the message has been understood and confirming that communication is on course” (thornbury & slade, 2006, p. 58) while s1 continues to hold the floor. cases 23 and 24, yeah and ah, are examples of dms used by the interactants as response markers. as i see it, the teacher uses ah also to confirm his previous assumption which had been expressed as a question in line 17 (at the university?). the combination of two dms as in case 28, oh yeah, is used by the teacher as a reaction marker which also has the interpersonal function of conveying agreement. he agrees with the student about the common act of eating a lot during christmas. the following excerpts (7), (8) and (9) taken from the data further illustrate the textual and interpersonal functions of dms in the interaction of this efl class: (7) 38 tt: try to: remember, you said you forgot but= 39 s2: .........................=it w-was u:m molto good <laugh> 40 tt: [<laugh>] 27 as 17 28 reaction marker, conveying agreement 29 continuity, turn keeper 30 closing frame (marker) chapetón castro universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras72 41 s2: because i: traveled to my island, u:m the twenty two of december, and then 42 i come back the e: the 26th [so, it was 43 tt: ...............................[you went to] to your what? e: 44 s2: [eh?] 45 tt: to your island? 46 s2: yeah. i’m from (.) e: sardegna 47 tt: ↑oh really? [oh] i thought you were from (bis) the main land, from italy= 48 s2: .............................[yeah]=no, no (bis). i stayed in my island, it is in the mediterraneo 49 tt: yeah, i know excerpt (7) shows that participants use dms such as um (lines 39, 41) and e (lines 42, 43, 46) as pause fillers to indicate they keep holding the floor. in lines 41 and 42, the student uses three dms that aid in the construction of his discourse: because indicates the inclusion of new information; and then marks temporal connection and so is used as a sequential marker. in line 44 the dm eh? fulfills an interpersonal function: it is used by the student to express a reaction to the preceding question of the teacher, signaling his lack of understanding and his need to listen to the question again. the teacher also uses reaction markers in line 47: oh really, with upward intonation, is both expressing a response (of surprise) and requesting confirmation from the student. in lines 46 and 48 the student uses yeah as a response and confirmation marker of the ongoing discourse. the dm oh used by the teacher in line 47 as a reaction to the confirmed information overlaps with the students’ response marker yeah. excerpt (8) is preceded by a communicative event in which student four is mainly narrating what she did during christmas and on her birthday at the beginning of january. s4 is interrupted by s2 who says that his birthday was also at the beginning of january. in line 148, student 2 tells the participants that his mom’s birthday was on the same day: (8) 148 s2: ((like my mother)) the same day. 149 s4: ↑u:h nice. <laugh> a:nd 150 tt: -and my birthday was the 13th (.) =of january= 151 s1: ................when?=...........=↑u:h 152 s2: congratulations! 153 ss: <laughing> 154 tt: <laughs> ↓ok 155 s4: a:nd i invited my friends to: to lunch (.) no (.) to dinner. 156 tt: to have dinner, mhm. in line 149 student four responds with the dm uh and, in her attempt to re-gain her turn, she uses the dm and to signal her willingness to continue with her narration. as shown by the transcription conventions, s4 is interrupted by the teacher who takes the floor also using the dm and. student 1 shows his response to the on-going discourse about birthdays by using the reaction marker uh in line 151. after some natural laughing, the teacher uses the dm ok, in line 154, as an explicit turn giver which aids student four in acquiring the floor. the dm and in line 155 signals that s4 still holds the floor even if she has been interrupted (turn taker and turn keeper) and it also shows continuity, thematic connection and the addition of new information. finally, in line 156, the teacher uses the dm mhm after providing some corrective feedback to the student. the use and functions of discourse markers in efl classroom interaction profile 11, 2009. issn 1657-0790. bogotá, colombia. pages 57-77 73 this dm was used many times by the teacher as a back-channel signal. moreover, mhm was also used by students, as illustrated by the following example: (9) 175 tt: what about you (.) carlos? 176 s5: well, the same of m-my partners here [ i (bis) ate a lot, 177 s1: .............[mhm <laughing>] 178 s5: and i worked [also on the kings’s day [i ↓worked until six or seven[ 179 tt: ................[mhm].............. [mhm]........[mhm] in line 177, student one interacts with student 5 by using mhm as an agreement marker while the teacher uses mhm to provide permanent feedback and as a confirmation marker that the communication is on course. as the analyses reveal, discourse markers fulfill a number of textual and interpersonal functions which contribute greatly to the coherent and pragmatic flow of the discourse generated in classroom interaction. the above described functions of markers such as so, because, and, ok and yeah are examples of “their apparent multifunctionality” (schiffrin, 1987, p. 64). as previously shown, dms may be used simultaneously in several different ways. research has revealed, as müller (2005) argues, that generally the discourse markers studied by scholars fulfill more than one function or at least have sub-functions as is the case here. i do agree with schiffrin on her assertion that dms are context-dependant so that they “can gain their function through discourse” (2001, p. 60). these and other examples from the data illustrate how dms function. table 6 summarizes the functions of dms used by participants in this specific class sample. again, it is clear that they can be multifunctional and that they serve both textual and interpersonal functions. table 6. summary of dms functions. textual functions opening frame marker so; ok; now closing frame marker ok; right; well turn takers /(turn givers) ok; yeah; and; e; well fillers/turn keepers um; e; and topic switchers ok; well; now new/old information indicators and; because; so sequence/relevance markers so; and; and then; because repair marker well; i mean, you know; like interpersonal functions back-channel signals mhm; uh huh; yeah cooperation, agreement marker ok; yes; yeah; mhm disagreement marker but; no response/reaction markers yeah; oh; ah; but; oh yeah; well; eh; oh really? checking understanding markers right?, ok? confirmation markers ah; i know; yeah; mhm; yes. chapetón castro universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras74 nevertheless, it is important to point out that sometimes it was difficult to classify the function of the dm. for instance, the case of the dm like, which was used mainly by the teacher, fulfilled three main functions which coincided with those previously identified by müller (2005): to introduce an example (6), to search for the appropriate expression (7), and, also, to mark an appropriate number or quantity (8). (10) 70 …special dates, the holidays like the: 24th (.) 25th (11) 242 …that is a very (.) like (.) the most important day of the holidays in colombia, (12) 253 and then i spent, a month, less than a month, like yeah twenty some days um in as regards the distinct functional uses of discourse markers, it was observable that both the students and the teacher made use of these items to fulfill textual and interpersonal functions in the efl classroom. generally, students mainly used dm to serve textual functions. specially, they made great use of pause fillers and turn keepers (e.g. um, and, e) and of the dm and to signal new information and continuity. in relation to interpersonal functions, cooperation and agreement markers were the most commonly used by the students (e.g. yeah). textual functions of dms were highly used by the teacher as well. in the construction and organization of classroom discourse, the teacher used the dm and to indicate sequences, continuity and new information. ok was often used as an opening and closing frame marker and it was very useful in the organization and assignment of turns during interaction. the teacher also used a variety of dms that fulfill interpersonal functions such as back-channel signals, checking understanding markers, response and reaction markers and confirmation markers. on the whole, the prevailing uses of the discourse markers identified and analyzed in this small-scale study fulfill textual functions that aid the participants in structuring the classroom discourse coherently. finally, there was another element present in classroom interaction worth mentioning: laughter. even though it is not considered a dm, it has attracted my attention; first, because it is very frequent; it appears 32 times and also, because it is used both by the non-native teacher and the five adult efl students. in agreement with coates (1997), i consider that laughter was used by the participants to signal their constant presence, a way to say “we are here, we are participating”. laughter also occurred to signal amusement and surprise, but as i see it, one of the most important functions of laughter in classroom interaction may be to release tension and to create a relaxed, comfortable atmosphere in which everyone is welcome to participate. that is, the joint creation of a relaxed setting where the main goal is not only the exchange of information but the construction and maintenance of good social relations. conclusion dms have been widely studied by researchers even if discussions on terminology and definable issues are still unresolved. however, there seems to be general agreement on the fact that the production of coherent discourse is an interactive process that requires speakers to draw upon communicative knowledge and pragmatic resources. the fact that most of the studies on dms have focused their attention on native (or bilingual) speakers of english who acquire this pragmatic competence in their childhood might be an indicator of the need to further explore the use and functions of discourse markers in efl classroom interaction profile 11, 2009. issn 1657-0790. bogotá, colombia. pages 57-77 75 and systematically investigate the language used by non-native english teachers. one of my goals with this exploratory study was to describe the occurrences and frequencies of dms in efl classroom interaction with the teacher being a non-native speaker of the language. results showed that dms occurred 398 times, which corresponds to the 19% of the total sample of recorded and analyzed classroom data. it was also found that most dms were used by the non-native teacher (61%) while students’ use of dms accounted for 39%. it was also observed that and was the dm most frequently used by both the teacher and the students and that some dms such as say, therefore, you see or anyway were never used. i also aimed at providing an account for the main functions of dms in classroom interaction. in general, dms were used by the non-native teacher and the five adult students of english as a foreign language to serve structural, pragmatic and interactional purposes. as i see it, and in agreement with müller (2005), dms contribute to the pragmatic meaning of utterances and thus play an important role in the pragmatic competence of the speaker. as schiffrin (2001) explains, dms tell us not only about the linguistic properties (semantic and pragmatic meanings and functions) and the organization of social interactions, but also about the cognitive, expressive, social and textual competence of those who use them. this small-scale study showed that dms were effectively used by the non-native teacher to organize his discourse in the classroom and to fulfill interpersonal, pragmatic functions as well. these findings might be useful to non-native efl teachers and practitioners. on the one hand, increased awareness on the textual functions of dms could facilitate the structuring and organization of the practitioners’ lesson as they work as signals of the main segments (e.g. frame markers) and perform a number of organizational functions such as floor management (e.g. turn takers and turn givers). on the other hand, teachers might find the pragmatic uses of dms useful since they help to establish more interpersonal relationships in the classroom and may help to create a more inviting atmosphere for active participation. even though the adult efl students from this small-scale study used less that 40% of the total dms, they in fact used them with several textual and interpersonal purposes as previously discussed in the analysis. however, this might be an indication of the need to conduct further research in order to make informed decisions about the implicit or explicit teaching of dms in the efl classroom. studies along this line might be an important contribution to the development of the pragmatic competence of the learners. though this exploratory study may not allow for generalizations on the discourse particularities of the non-native speaker community, it might serve as an awareness raiser for the need to consider further research along the line of nonnative speakers of the language and mainly on efl classroom interaction. it is true, as llurda (2004) points out, that the transformation of english as an international language has brought with it many changes to the teaching profession which should not be overlooked. further research on the differences and similarities between native and non-native teachers’ discourse might help us identify and characterize those changes llurda refers to. more specifically, research on dms and classrooom interaction may be illuminating, first, because the functions and contexts of dms are so broad and are part of the basic tools through which discourse can be understood and, second, because this kind of research agenda may throw chapetón castro universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras76 light on the multifaceted reality in which the english language is used both by non-native teachers and learners. references amador, c., o’riordan, s., & chambers, a. (2006). integrating a corpus of classroom discourse in language teacher education: the case of discourse markers. recall, 18(1), 83-104. breck, e. (1998). soundscriber transcription program for windows. michigan: the university of michigan regents. retrieved january 27, 2008, from the micase homepage. web site: http://www. lsa.umich.edu/eli/micase/soundscriber.html brinton, l. (1996). pragmatic markers in english. grammaticalization and discourse functions. berlin/new york: mouton de gruyter. calsamiglia, h., & tusón, a. (1999). las cosas del decir. manual de análisis del discurso. barcelona: ariel. celce-murcia, m., & olshtain, e. (2000). discourse and context in language teaching: a guide for language teachers. cambridge: cambridge university press. chaudron, c., & richards, j. (1986). the effect of discourse markers on the comprehension of lectures. applied linguistics, 7(2), 113-127. chang, s. (2004). a case study of efl teachers in taiwan: identities, instructional practices and intercultural awareness. dissertation abstracts international: the humanities and social sciences, 65(4), 1218-a-1219-a. cots, j., & diaz, j. (2005). constructing social relationships and linguistic knowledge through non-native speaking teacher talk. in e. llurda (ed.), non-native language teachers: perceptions, challenges and contributions to the profession (pp. 85-106). new york: springer. coates, j. (1997). the construction of a collaborative floor in women’s friendly talk. in t. givón (ed.), conversation: cognitive, communicative and social perspectives (pp. 55-90). amsterdam: john benjamins. de fina, a. (1997). an analysis of spanish bien as a marker of classroom management in teacherstudent interaction. journal of pragmatics, 28(3), 337-354. douglas, a. (2001). discourse analysis for language teachers. retrieved june 13, 2008, from the center for applied linguistics: digests. web site: http:// www.cal.org/resources/digest/0107demo.html frodden, m., restrepo, m., & maturana, l. (2004). analysis of assessment instruments used in foreign language teaching. íkala, revista de lenguaje y cultura, 9(15), 171-201. gonzález, m. (2004). pragmatic markers in oral narrative: the case of english and catalan. amsterdam: john benjamins. halliday, m. a. k. (1973). explorations in the functions of language. london: edward arnold. hellerman, j., & vergun, a. (2007). language which is not taught: the discourse marker use of beginning adult learners of english. journal of pragmatics, 39(1), 157-179. jucker, a., & ziv, y. (1998). discourse markers: descriptions and theory. amsterdam/ philadelphia: john benjamins. llurda, e. (2004). non-nativespeaker teachers and english as an international language. international journal of applied linguistics, 14(3), 314-323. llurda, e. (2005). non-native language teachers: perceptions, challenges and contributions to the profession. new york: springer. mccarthy, m., & carter, r. (1997). written and spoken vocabulary. in n. schmitt, & m. mccarthy. (eds.), vocabulary: description, acquisition and pedagogy (pp. 20-39). cambridge: cambridge university press. mccarthy, m. (1991). discourse analysis for language teachers. cambridge: cambridge university press. müller, s. (2005). discourse markers in native and nonnative english discourse. amsterdam: john benjamins. pineda, c. (2004). critical thinking in the efl classroom: the search for a pedagogical alternative to improve english learning. íkala, revista de lenguaje y cultura, 9(15), 45-80. schiffrin, d. (1987). discourse markers. cambridge: cambridge university press. schiffrin, d. (2001). discourse markers: language, meaning and context. in d. schiffrin, d. tannen, the use and functions of discourse markers in efl classroom interaction profile 11, 2009. issn 1657-0790. bogotá, colombia. pages 57-77 77 & h. hamilton (eds.), the handbook of discourse analysis (pp. 54-74). massachusetts: blackwell publishers. sinclair, j., & coulthard, m. (1975). towards an analysis of discourse: the english used by teachers and pupils. london: oxford university press. thornbury, s., & slade, d. (2006). conversation: from description to pedagogy. cambridge: cambridge university press. van dijk, t. (1997). discourse as structure and process. london: sage publishers. about the author claudia marcela chapetón castro is an assistant professor in the language department at universidad pedagógica nacional. she received her m.a. in applied linguistics from the universidad distrital “francisco josé de caldas” and she is currently a phd student at the university of barcelona. she has co-authored efl textbooks and efl teaching materials. profile 3.p65 although our ultimate goal is to enable our learners to become autonomous and efficient in their use of the foreign language, whether or not they have the opportunity to ever live and interact in a foreign language setting, our work as teachers must involve a conscious analysis of the different factors involved in this process, as well as the conscious effort to put all the intervening factors into action. furthermore, it is our responsibility to develop the learners’ thinking skills as they increase their competence in the target language and at the same time make them aware of their responsibility for their own processes and success by enhancing their autonomy and making them aware of the value of learning strategies. it is our task as teachers to be present on this journey and guide our learners towards becoming architects and masters of their own foreign language construct. in order for this journey to be a successful one, we must make sure we provide the learner with a correct supply of building blocks. in this paper we present an analysis of the main components comprised in teaching english as a foreign language, including a historical overview of methods, approaches, s t r a t e g i e s , t h e c o n c e p t o f l e a r n e r ’ s autonomy, social and psychological factors, aiming at contributing to every teacher’s reflection on his/her task in the school context. from building blocks to architects empowering learners for success juana mahissa reyes m.juana mahissa reyes m.juana mahissa reyes m.juana mahissa reyes m.juana mahissa reyes m. foreign languages department, universidad nacional de colombia juana.reyes@cyclelogic.com 1. f1. f1. f1. f1. foreign language acquisition in theoreign language acquisition in theoreign language acquisition in theoreign language acquisition in theoreign language acquisition in the classrclassrclassrclassrclassroom, a historical overoom, a historical overoom, a historical overoom, a historical overoom, a historical over viewviewviewviewview throughout the years, teachers of a foreign language have been trained according to certain beliefs, theories and methods which at the time have been considered the most effective and successful ones. however, not one of those different approaches or methods has lasted longer than a few years. why does the way of teaching change so much? it may be due to the fact that mankind is evolving constantly and the ways of our ancestors have become obsolete nowadays, when learners are surrounded by a completely different world. let us take a look at some of those predecessors to the ways of teaching we favour today in order to later on analyze why we have moved forward since then. 1 . 11 . 11 . 11 . 11 . 1 behaviourists: learners as parbehaviourists: learners as parbehaviourists: learners as parbehaviourists: learners as parbehaviourists: learners as parrrrrrotsotsotsotsots what is the nature of learning, and how can we determine if learning has successfully taken place? for behaviourists (skinner: 1957) language learning was the result of imitation, feedback, reinforcement and habit formation. these ideas originated in the audio-lingual method, which considered the mother tongue as a problem when learning a new language. ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ 20profileprofileprofileprofileprofile corder (1967) proposed the notion of contrastive analysis, which defended the idea that learners would produce some mistakes which were predictable, and they were tackled using drills, mimicking, memorization, and repetition. the role of the learner was similar to the one of a parrot, and there was little or no real communication taking place. his/her only responsibilities consisted of memorizing expressions and vocabulary. perhaps the only benefit of this method was practicing pronunciation and intonation patterns, but it is difficult to imagine that the learners were ever able to successfully transfer any of the classroom “knowledge” to the real world. the role of the teacher consisted of supplying material, assessing the students, and being a model for the target language, with little reflection on the task or its use for the learner. 1.2 innatism, the genetic capacity for1.2 innatism, the genetic capacity for1.2 innatism, the genetic capacity for1.2 innatism, the genetic capacity for1.2 innatism, the genetic capacity for learning languageslearning languageslearning languageslearning languageslearning languages a different perspective on learning came from innatism, on which noam chomsky based his theories on language acquisition (chomsky: 1959). according to this view, human beings have a language acquisition device (lad), and the environment which they grow up in provides them with samples which will trigger this device. chomsky also refers to a universal grammar (ug) which exists in the human brain since birth, and which has some common underlying principles to all existing human languages. through exposure, children will activate their ug with the specific characteristics of their native language. according to this view, there was a critical period for learning, after which it seemed, the opportunity to learn a language would be gone. for foreign language learning, the implications of this model would be that the learner would benefit from exposure in order to activate his ug for a new language. however, it has not been clarified whether there exists a critical period for second or foreign language acquisition. based on chomsky’s concepts of competence and performance, learning of a foreign language was a process for creating the means for the formation of competence in l2 through exposure to real language (performance). in this view, the role of the student was similar to the role of a plant: being exposed to the sun rays and carrying out internal processes, with little idea of his own role. the teacher’s responsibility in this case consisted of providing a graded series of materials and oral instances of the target language, but other essential aspects such as psychological and social factors were ignored. 1.3 learning vs. acquisition1.3 learning vs. acquisition1.3 learning vs. acquisition1.3 learning vs. acquisition1.3 learning vs. acquisition within the framework of innatism, stephen krashen (1982) thought that the development of knowledge by learners of a second/foreign language occurs in two possible ways: learning vs. acquisition. learning takes place when the student has gone through a conscious process of study, and acquisition occurs when the learner is exposed to language he understands. in his view, only through the process of acquisition will the learner be successful in fluent, natural communication. acquisition takes place only through exposure to what krashen called comprehensible input, which is input slightly above the student’s level of competence. learning would not lead to success in the ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ 21 profileprofileprofileprofileprofile target language, as students would be too focused on form rather than meaning, and they would be blocked by what krashen defined as the monitor (a self-correcting mechanism used by the learner), and also by an affective filter which would block the natural evolution in the language. communicative language teaching based itself greatly on krashen’s ideas. in this view the learner is involved in more meaningful interaction, and he receives comprehensible input. he/she is also involved in activities which lower his/her affective filter, and focus on rules is no longer required. from this perspective, the learner’s needs are given more consideration, and we can say that the teacher becomes more involved in the learning process by providing opportunities for real communication, and coming up with more enjoyable lessons. although some of these contributions have enlightened the field of efl/ esl teaching, and are still valuable, it is also true that the value of explicit instruction cannot be ignored. the concept of comprehensible input alone may not be enough to cover all the dimensions of language teaching and learning, and the fact that the process of acquisition is considered to be an unconscious one does not cover the development of students’ autonomy and self awareness of their learning processes. another problem within this conception lies in the fact that social interaction is not given importance. further developments in this area would help eliminate these weaknesses. 1.4 interaction and affective factors1.4 interaction and affective factors1.4 interaction and affective factors1.4 interaction and affective factors1.4 interaction and affective factors the interactionist position, supported by ellis (1984a, 1986), hatch (1978), teresa pica (1987) and michael long (1983), among others, stated that although input was an important component in the acquisition and development of a second/foreign language, it is not enough in itself. conversational interaction plays an essential role in this task. for ellis, a key factor in the language acquisition process is “the opportunity afforded the learner to negotiate meaning with an interlocutor, preferably one who has more linguistic resources than the learner and who is adept at ‘foreigner/teacher talk’” (1984a, p.184). learners need an opportunity to interact with other speakers allowing modification of speech to take place, leading learners to negotiate meaning through interaction. these ideas were also similar to vygotsky’s socio-cultural theory of human mental processing (vygotsky: 1978): through interaction with “better peers”, the learner makes progress and moves on to what he called the zone of proximal development (zpd). in order for this collective construction of negotiated meaning to take place, the learner should be involved in cooperative activities and project work which are interesting to them. the implication of these ideas is that learners are indeed able to transform the knowledge of the target language and fulfil communication tasks for the purpose of negotiating and processing information in a cooperative situation. the role of the teacher in this perspective would be providing students with opportunities for meaningful interaction, and establishing content which motivates the students, so there is a real need and willingness to negotiate meaning. effectiveness of communication would be favoured over accuracy in order to allow for the development of automaticity. this perspective would also shed light on the concept of autonomy. by enabling learners to take responsibility for their tasks we are allowing them to explore their own problem-solving skills and sociopragmatic competence, which is essential if they are to negotiate meaning in the foreign language setting. ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ 22profileprofileprofileprofileprofile 2. comprehensible output2. comprehensible output2. comprehensible output2. comprehensible output2. comprehensible output in addition to the relevance of input and interaction, swain (1985) defines the importance of output in the process of acquisition. comprehensible output allows the learner to confirm or correct hypotheses about the target language, and reinforce the idea of meaningful interaction. through exchanges with peers, or native speakers of the target language, the learners are not only receiving meaningful input, but they are also testing the efficiency of their output and the ability to “get the message across”. besides, they are testing their ideas about the language and creating meaning through negotiation: “comprehensible output…. is a necessary mechanism of acquisition independent of the role of comprehensible input. its role is, at least, to provide opportunities for contextualized, meaningful use, to test out hypotheses about the target language, and to move the learner from a purely semantic analysis of language to a syntactic analysis of it (swain: 1985, 252). here we can think about the syntactic aspect of language, and the importance of interacting with “good models” in order to improve accuracy. in an efl situation, the opportunities for interacting with native speakers are limited, and therefore, there is a risk of developing pidginized forms of the language which even the teacher could suffer. in order to minimize this risk, instruction on form should be given its own place in the classroom. this area could also be the object of the students’ autonomy and self-assessment, so they become aware of the importance of accurate form after succeeding in “getting the message across”. it is also the responsibility of the teacher to keep up to date with the mastery of the target language, and not content him/herself with being a successful facilitator of the learning situation. 3 . m e t a l i n g u i s t i c a w a r e n e s s . h o w3 . m e t a l i n g u i s t i c a w a r e n e s s . h o w3 . m e t a l i n g u i s t i c a w a r e n e s s . h o w3 . m e t a l i n g u i s t i c a w a r e n e s s . h o w3 . m e t a l i n g u i s t i c a w a r e n e s s . h o w important is it?important is it?important is it?important is it?important is it? allowing for opportunities to engage the learners in successful communication, negotiated interaction in a foreign language learning situation, together with explicit grammar instruction helps develop metalinguistic awareness, which is the ability to see language as the object of inquiry. this awareness is associated with an increased ability to learn a language. within the classroom situation, metalinguistic awareness is developed by involving the learners in negotiation. as gass and selinker explain: “….learners are made aware of errors in their speech (…) through the questioning and clarification that often goes on in negotiation. in other words, negotiation is what makes effective learners aware that there is incongruity between the forms they are using and the forms used by the native speaking community. in order to respond to an inquiry of non-understanding, the non-native speaker must modify his or her output. for this to take place the learner must become aware of a problem and seek to resolve it. (…) one can presume that negotiation, because it leads to heightened awareness, ultimately leads to increased knowledge of the second (foreign) language”. (gass and selinker: 1994, 220) so far, we have explored the different conceptions involved in the acquisition of knowledge in the target language and the implications of setting up a successful learning situation. now we are going to analyze the components, or “building blocks” which will give our learners the ability to become efficient transformers and creators of knowledge in their use of the foreign language. ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ 23 profileprofileprofileprofileprofile 4. assembling the building blocks for4. assembling the building blocks for4. assembling the building blocks for4. assembling the building blocks for4. assembling the building blocks for a successful constructa successful constructa successful constructa successful constructa successful construct communicative competence (comprising grammatical, discourse, sociolinguistic, pragmatic and strategic competence) is a key element in human interaction, and all its aspects are present in l1 or l2 interaction. while grammatical competence involves the capacity to make correct use of the devices a language has in order to create native-like pieces of language, discourse competence refers to the capacity to create language that fits naturally within larger pieces of language known as discourse. sociolinguistic competence, on the other hand, refers to the ability to produce language which responds to the needs of a specific social group or situation, involving the cultural aspects necessar y to achieve communication. pragmatic competence is the capacity to make use of the language in order to achieve a practical purpose, such as fulfilling a basic need or getting something done, whereas strategic competence refers to other resources a speaker might turn to in order to achieve his goal, including gestures, body language, and so on. grammatical competence, which comprises the study of morphology and syntax, seems to be the least popular among both teachers and students. first of all, this component of foreign/second language learning is unpopular among learners, who think of rules and vocabulary as being boring, monotonous components of a process that eventually leads them to a kind of plateau. for teachers and experts in the efl/esl field, the role of grammar has been controversial, dreaded by some, and favoured by others. it is our view that in an efficient second/foreign language learning situation, grammar (or rather, the study of grammatical competence) should be given the status of an essential component. the first reason why an optimal efl/esl situation should involve the explicit study of grammar lies in the fact that learners in the classroom are building up their competence in the target language. as explained earlier, meaningful interaction will allow the learners to develop their communication skills. it is essential to provide explicit guidance on form, so students do not fall into pidginized uses of the language, and fossilize in a form of language that is communicatively effective, but which is not accurate. by enabling learners to develop their target language in an accurate way, we are allowing them to internalise the target language code in a manner that is not alienating to them, and which will eventually allow them to interact successfully with the users of that language at a dignified level. secondly, as suggested earlier, the study of morphology and syntax develops metalinguistic awareness in the learner. this awareness is not a hindrance, as krashen suggested with his monitor model. on the contrary, by enabling the learner to be aware of certain standards required for the code to be efficient, we give him the tools for selfcorrection and self-adjustment, thus developing his autonomy as a language user, and expanding his possibilities for success in his continued transformation and creation of knowledge in the target language. this idea stresses the importance of setting the study of grammar within a context and content, so the process of constructing the language takes ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ 24profileprofileprofileprofileprofile place in a way that makes sense to the student and their mental processes, and fits in with their idea of the target language as a whole. the integration of grammatical competence in an interactive way with the other areas of communicative competence is essential. although this paper does not focus on the other components of communicative competence (discourse, sociolinguistic, pragmatic and strategic competence), we want to stress their fundamental role in establishing a solid model for our students and in making the learning process communicatively meaningful. 5 . c o n s t r u c t i n g s u c c e s s t h r5 . c o n s t r u c t i n g s u c c e s s t h r5 . c o n s t r u c t i n g s u c c e s s t h r5 . c o n s t r u c t i n g s u c c e s s t h r5 . c o n s t r u c t i n g s u c c e s s t h ro u g ho u g ho u g ho u g ho u g h learning strategieslearning strategieslearning strategieslearning strategieslearning strategies according to chamot and o’malley (1994), students can learn to use learning strategies through instruction, and the use of learning strategies can improve performance on language learning tasks. this component of the second/foreign language instruction has recently been the object of a great deal of analysis. successful learners, consciously or sub-consciously make use of a series of strategies that facilitate their learning. the choice of strategy seems to be made according to the learner’s intelligence type, the type of task, and the level of complexity. in addition, the use of learning strategies for language learning transfers to new tasks, promoting the development of autonomy in learning, and improving the organization of the thinking processes. for douglas brown (1994), “successful mastery of the second (or foreign) language will be due to a large extent to a learner’s own personal “investment” of time, effort and attention to the second language in the form of an individualized batter y of strategies for comprehending and producing the language”. (brown: 1994, 20) this is what brown refers to as “strategic investment”, which is an essential component in the development of learners’ autonomy. o’malley and chamot (1990) have identified three major categories for learning strategies: metacognitive strategies, cognitive strategies, and social and affective strategies. as we can see, the scope of learning strategies goes beyond the organization of content or skills, in order to involve awareness of mental processes themselves, as well as the social and affective domains, thus expanding the conception of the learner as a whole human being whose multiple dimensions interact towards his success or failure. in order to promote learner awareness and involvement in their own development processes, we should favour the explicit study of learning strategies in developing autonomy. 6. skills integration6. skills integration6. skills integration6. skills integration6. skills integration integration of the “four skills” is another basic component of second/foreign language instruction. the integration of the four language skills is essential in meaningful learning and communication. language in the “outside world” occurs naturally as a whole, and one mode feeds on another. skills interrelate and derive from each other, and production and reception are two sides of the same communication and negotiation process. listening provides opportunities for speaking and writing, reading leads itself to writing and speaking responses (comments, discussions, feedback), so this integration flows naturally. skills integration allows for a motivated and dynamic classroom atmosphere, maintaining a connecting thread through meaningful content, cooperative learning, and the development of the social and affective components. with respect to the written mode, the negotiation and creation of meaning ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ 25 profileprofileprofileprofileprofile take place as an interactive process between the writer and the reader. the reader constructs new meaning after relating to the written text, and at the same time is able to produce comprehensible output, after making sense of what has been read, thus developing his own construct. when the reading material comes from other members of the class, students can become more engaged in the cooperative construction of meaning, and their response to their classmates’ writing is more “loaded” with their personal experience. the living nature of the written word becomes evident in this way, and from there, endless opportunities for getting involved and developing other skills flow naturally. we thus favour the ideas of the whole language approach, which believes that “language should not be separated into component skills, but rather experienced as a whole system of communication.” (o’malley and chamot: 1994, 20). adding to the idea of integrating the four language skills, we can mention the integration within the classroom of other “modes” which, in spite of their non-linguistic nature, are nevertheless means of expression which lead themselves to creating responses from the learners. music, painting, and dancing, for example, can be incorporated into the classroom as ways of promoting involvement from the students, and evoking their responses at a different level compared to the stiff, traditional educational models. in this way we give opportunities for other intelligence types to relate in the target language and make it their own. a poem, for example, would elicit a drawing response which later on could become the topic for written or oral communication. allowing the learning situation to incorporate other manifestations of human expression provides the students with new ways of appropriating the language and makes it a part of their own personal expressive power and their individual nature. 7. can we contribute to cognitive7. can we contribute to cognitive7. can we contribute to cognitive7. can we contribute to cognitive7. can we contribute to cognitive development?development?development?development?development? traditionally, second/foreign language teachers have considered it their responsibility to be limited to the teaching of a code, and assess the learner’s grasp of such code, and then hope the learners will transform that code for their own use in an effective way. however, we have become aware of the importance of incorporating other dimensions in order to compound the possibility for learner success. sl/fl teachers are also responsible for the cognitive development of their students, and the way in which a second/foreign language is learned can serve as a means to develop the learner’s thinking skills, both in l1 and l2. within the framework of cognitive academic language learning (better known as the calla approach) (o’malley and chamot: 1994), the language needed by a student in a content area requires a certain number of functions, such as explaining, informing, justifying, and comparing. the successful accomplishment of these functions requires the use of what o’malley and chamot call lower-order and higher-order thinking skills. in an efl setting, contents have traditionally been somewhat “light”, and therefore, many of the language functions and development of higher-order thinking skills have been neglected. efl textbooks have in general failed to provide the learners with opportunities to develop their cognitive academic language skills. learners who later on incorporate themselves into an academic setting using the target language often lack the necessary skills to interact in the language at a demanding cognitive level. even if learners never find ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ 26profileprofileprofileprofileprofile themselves in an academic setting of the target culture, they are often dealing with cognitively demanding english in their areas of study. it is in this area where content-based language instruction would be most useful. (for further discussion on how to develop thinking skills through academic content see o’malley and chamot, the calla handbook, addisonwesley publishing company, 1994). 8 . h o w i s a u t o n o m y b a s i c i n o u r8 . h o w i s a u t o n o m y b a s i c i n o u r8 . h o w i s a u t o n o m y b a s i c i n o u r8 . h o w i s a u t o n o m y b a s i c i n o u r8 . h o w i s a u t o n o m y b a s i c i n o u r constructconstructconstructconstructconstruct another important component in the architecture of foreign/second language learning and also the object of reflection and consideration is the concept of learner autonomy. in the words of david little, autonomy is “a capacity –for detachment, critical reflection, decision-making, and independent action. it presupposes, but also entails, that the learner will develop a particular kind of psychological relation to the process and content of his learning. the capacity for autonomy will be displayed both in the way the learner learns and in the way he or she transfers what has been learned to wider contexts” (little: 1991, 4). it is our goal as foreign/second language teachers, to ensure our learners become successful in the creation of their own construct of the target language. learners must develop independence, selfconfidence, and competence to interact within the foreign language setting. the development of autonomy involves awareness raising in students and accepting responsibility for their own learning, needs, preferences, weaknesses, cognitive style and intelligence type. allowing learners to take part in the decisions with respect to content, materials, assessment and follow up are ways to promote this independence and selfresponsibility. related to this idea we find the promotion of cooperative learning to enhance student autonomy. by allowing for a variety of different associations (as opposed to teacher-centred instruction) to take place in the classroom, learners become aware not only of their own strengths and weaknesses, but also develop a kind of “cooperative autonomy”. being aware of their peer ’s different styles and strategies, learners devise new ways for negotiation within a group, and thus reflect upon their own strengths and weaknesses, and assess their own hypotheses about what works for them as individuals and what does not. autonomy also refers to the learner’s capacity to develop mastery of the range of discourse roles that a native speaker of the target language is involved in “real life”. in order for this kind of autonomy to develop, all the range of possible discourse roles should be made available in the classroom. this does not mean that we should involve our students in role-play situations all the time (although role play does have its place and value in the methodological scope). student interaction takes place in cooperative work, project work devised by the students, peer teaching and assessment, research and meaningful content through students’ selection of topics, activities, materials, and even assessment tools. this type of involvement develops autonomy because it engages the students’ personal construct systems (little: 1991, 32). this notion relates to the idea of comprehensible output and within this concept, the activities and cooperative work are well-structured to achieve an end goal. in order to promote autonomy the learner’s goals, assumptions and attitudes must be made explicit. students’ prior knowledge is activated, so that they realize what their point ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ 27 profileprofileprofileprofileprofile of departure and their goals are. according to little, “successful language learning requires language to be medium and content” (little: 1991, 33). these ideas fit in well within the framework of natural language, the interactional view, and content-based instruction. an additional enrichment to an approach which aims for learner autonomy is syllabus negotiation. by involving the students in the decisions made prior and during their learning, their individual wants and needs are considered, and their awareness as to the components of their learning process is raised. motivation enhancement would bring about greater engagement from the part of the students, and they will also become responsible for their own process. fulfilling the students’ suggestions and requests during the course by means of reflection and feedback sessions is important in making them feel respected and valued. students can also be made responsible for presenting some of the content to peers, and carr ying out the assessment in a way they think appropriate. projects could involve research work outside the classroom as well as exchanges with experts within the university or through the world wide web. finally, learners might need to be made aware of the endless possibilities they have when asked to participate in the decisions for their own course, and also be guided so that the possibilities remain at a realistic level. questionnaires and reflection sessions at the beginning, middle and end of the course can help narrow down the number of goals and specific objectives the students want to accomplish, and define the kinds of activities and cooperative work they prefer. self-assessment worksheets, journal writing and follow-up charts will provide concrete information in order to define what needs to be reinforced, what needs to be taught again, and what skills have to be improved. by becoming creators and transformers of their learning situation in a warm, cooperative atmosphere, learners will be capable of further evolving as independent and autonomous human beings. 9. empowering learners for cultural9. empowering learners for cultural9. empowering learners for cultural9. empowering learners for cultural9. empowering learners for cultural awarenessawarenessawarenessawarenessawareness our analysis of the components of the efl/ esl situation takes us to the dimension where the target language is derived from, and in which we aim for our learners to evolve successfully: the cultural dimension. as mentioned earlier in this paper, we strive to make our learners efficient transformers and creators of knowledge in the foreign language, and, if need be, in the foreign language setting. we are aware of our responsibility in the transmission of the target culture through its language and vice-versa. but how can we empower the learner to successfully integrate with a foreign language culture in addition to teaching him the “code”? is there a way, for example, to prepare a student of english for interacting successfully within an englishspeaking community, when english-speaking communities themselves are so diverse, and made up of so many different colours, backgrounds and interpretations in different parts of the world? our aim then is to develop in our learners some kind of sensitivity called cultural awareness. the first way in which the cultural dimension of the target language appears to the student ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ 28profileprofileprofileprofileprofile is through content. language and content are the windows through which the learners will expand their view of the foreign language setting, and we cannot isolate, even from the first stages of the learning process, the target language from a meaningful, culturallyembedded context. in the case of english, the sources of cultural information flood our senses with images and role models coming from the united states of america, so we can say, the american culture as a target is not unknown or exotic to our learners. how much of that image is the real image of the north american people, and how distorted is the view presented by the movie industr y, consumerism and the idea of perfection? furthermore, what about the millions of english-speaking people who live in canada, australia, great britain, south africa, and so many other diverse places around the globe? raising cultural awareness in our learners will expand their views on the planet as a whole, developing ideas of tolerance, and breaking away from pre-conceived ideas and propaganda. it will also prepare them for conflict and adjustment, and for dealing with acculturation. through discussion and reflection, learners can become aware of the fact that not all cultures interpret the world in the same way, and that in cultural terms, there is no right or wrong. becoming aware of different patterns of communication also involves becoming aware of non-linguistic devices which different cultures interpret and use in different ways: body language, publicity, religion, social and political tradition, they are all relative and variable concepts. understanding these concepts and being aware of their scope will provide our learners with enough baggage to allow them to integrate successfully, and to get over clichés and over-generalizations with respect to other cultures. as language teachers we have the possibility to integrate the cultural dimension into our classrooms through content: readings, movies, publicity, native speaker presentations, news, etc, can all be subjects of reflection and discussion, and we can enhance a critical and tolerant view of other cultures and our own, inside our think-tank, the classroom. finally, it is also our task to open roads for the students into diverse aspects of the target culture, such as literature, history and arts, keeping at the same time a sense of proportion and respect for our own colombian and latinamerican values, and establishing comparisons for the purpose of understanding that there is no better or worse, just different, and that failing to develop this sense of cultural respect and self-respect has been the cause of much suffering throughout the history of mankind. conclusionsconclusionsconclusionsconclusionsconclusions we have considered the different components of the second/foreign language learning situation, from a historical perspective, and also through the analysis of those aspects which determine success in the process of acquisition. theoretical developments have enlightened teachers on the nature of second/foreign language acquisition, and the processes involved therein. advances in the study of the different components of the teaching/learning situation have expanded our views and defined broader paths for learners to become fully engaged in their own processes. the integration of skills ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ 29 profileprofileprofileprofileprofile and the importance given to meaningful interaction have shifted the focus of lessons towards a more humanistic and holistic approach. in addition, the realization of the prime importance of learning strategies and the development of thinking skills have broadened the learner’s role and empowered him/her to take active part in his/her own transformation and construction of knowledge in the target language. the road towards learner autonomy is open, and it is the task of the teacher to keep an open mind and a self-critical frame, so that he/she can incorporate new developments into his/her teaching. a reflective position will also allow teachers and students to consider the cultural dimension of the language teaching and learning situation, and nurture cooperative learning in the construction of success. the task might seem complex, but the rewards of this common endeavour are worth the effort. referencesreferencesreferencesreferencesreferences brown, d. (1994). teaching by principles: an interactive approach to language pedagogy. london: longman. celce-murcia, m. and hilles, s. (1988). techniques and resources in teaching grammar. oxford: oxford university press. corder, s.p. (1967). “the significance of learner’s errors”. in richard-amato, p. (1996). p.26 chamot, a. and o’malley, j.m. (1994). the calla handbook. new york: addisonwesley publishing company. chomsky, n. (1959). review of verbal behavior by b.f. skinner. language 35/1:26-58. in lightbown, p.m. and n. spada. (1999), p.15 dickinson, l. (1987). self-instruction in language learning. cambridge: cambridge university press. ellis, r. (1984)a. classroom second language development. oxford: pergamon. ellis, r. (1986). understanding second language acquisition. oxford: oxford university. gass, s. and selinker, l. (1994). second language acquisition: an introductor y course. hillsdale, new jersey hove and london: lawrence erlbaum associates, publishers. goodman, k. (1982). “acquiring literacy is natural: who skilled cock robin?”. in richard-amato, p. (1996). p.63. hatch, e. (ed.) (1978). second language acquisition: a book of readings. in lightbown, p.m. and n. spada. (1999). p.43. krashen, s. (1982). principles and practice in second language acquisition. oxford: pergamon. in lightbown, p.m. and n. spada. (1999). p.38 lightbown, p.m. and n. spada. (1999). how languages are learned. oxford: oxford university press. little, d. (1991). learner autonomy. 1: definitions, issues and problems. authentik language learning resources ltd, trinity college, dublin: authentik, books for language teachers. long, m. (1983). “inside the ‘black box’: methodological issues in classroom research on language learning”. language learning 30/ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ 30profileprofileprofileprofileprofile 1: 1-42. in lightbown, p.m. and n. spada. (1999). p.43. nunan, d. (1988). syllabus design. oxford: oxford university press. o’malley, j. and chamot, a. (1990). learning strategies in second language acquisition. cambridge: cambridge university. in richardamato, p. (1996). p.53. pica, t., r. young, and c. doughty. (1987). “the impact of interaction on comprehension.” tesol quarterly 21/4: 737-59 in lightbown, p.m. and n. spada. (1999). p.43. richard-amato, p. (1996). making it happen: interaction in the second language classroom. london: longman. skinner, b.f. (1957). verbal behavior. new york: appleton-century-crofts. in richardamato, p. (1996). p.11. vygotsky, l. (1978). mind in society. cambridge, mass.: har vard university. in richardamato, p. (1996). p. 38. profile profile 4 2003.p65 ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ 25 profileprofileprofileprofileprofile this article intends to report on a small research project carried out with a group of adult efl learners at the national university extension program, in bogotá. founded on a needs analysis process, some activities based on students’ strengths were proposed and developed in order to meet the students’ main need: oral skills. the proposal was implemented and evaluated revealing oral portfolios and debates as useful tools in the development of oral proficiency as well as support in students’ self-regulation processes. kkkkkey worey worey worey worey words:ds:ds:ds:ds: adult second language acquisition-methodology-evaluation, englishteaching-evaluation, oral communication-teaching-methodology, teaching adultsprograms el objetivo del presente artículo es dar a conocer un proyecto de investigación a pequeña escala, desarrollado con un grupo de estudiantes adultos de inglés como lengua extranjera en la unidad de extensión de la universidad nacional de colombia, en bogotá. a partir de un proceso de análisis de necesidades, se plantearon y desarrollaron algunas actividades basadas en las fortalezas de los estudiantes con miras a suplir la principal necesidad de los estudiantes: las habilidades orales. la implementación y evaluación de la propuesta mostró que los portafolios y los debates son herramientas claves en el desarrollo de la proficiencia así como en el apoyo de los procesos de autorregulación de los estudiantes. palabras claves: palabras claves: palabras claves: palabras claves: palabras claves: adquisición de una segunda lengua-metodología-evaluación, inglés-enseñanza-evaluación, comunicación oral-enseñanza-metodología, educación de adultos-programas &�����������������'���������# $���������������� �����������%���(���� �!������������ de las destrezas hacia las debilidades:de las destrezas hacia las debilidades:de las destrezas hacia las debilidades:de las destrezas hacia las debilidades:de las destrezas hacia las debilidades: guiando a los estudiantes a través del desarrollo de sus habilidades oralesguiando a los estudiantes a través del desarrollo de sus habilidades oralesguiando a los estudiantes a través del desarrollo de sus habilidades oralesguiando a los estudiantes a través del desarrollo de sus habilidades oralesguiando a los estudiantes a través del desarrollo de sus habilidades orales aleida ariza arizaaleida ariza arizaaleida ariza arizaaleida ariza arizaaleida ariza ariza ***** universidad nacional de colombia aleariza71@yahoo.es ***** judith aleida ariza ariza judith aleida ariza ariza judith aleida ariza ariza judith aleida ariza ariza judith aleida ariza ariza , b.ed in philology and languages, english–spanish from the universidad nacional de colombia, has worked with different students from kindergarten to university levels. she was a research assistant for the red project and worked for one year as a spanish assistant in the weald of kent in tonbridge, england. she is currently a professor in the foreign language department at the universidad nacional de colombia and in the extension programme. in addition, she is in her second year of the master programme in applied linguistics to tefl at the universidad distrital francisco josé de caldas. ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ 26profileprofileprofileprofileprofile introductionintroductionintroductionintroductionintroduction being a teacher implies adoptingdifferent roles from guides tocounselors, from obser vers to promoters. this great variety of roles implies commitment and responsibility towards our teaching practice. through our teaching experience we have learned to identify the main needs in every group of students we have under our guidance and its our responsibility to make the right decisions along the process in order to meet those needs and best help our learners. a common characteristic i have noticed among advanced efl learners is the difficulty in observing progress in terms of achieved goals. this appreciation may cause frustration and lack of motivation in learners and, at the same time, a prevailing atmosphere of uncertainty as teachers do not know how to most efficiently help advanced students to notice their progress and to work on their weaknesses. this article deals with a proposal to meet adult efl learners’ linguistic needs in terms of guiding their development of oral skills and taking advantage of their strengths. needs analneeds analneeds analneeds analneeds analysis: a decision –ysis: a decision –ysis: a decision –ysis: a decision –ysis: a decision – making processmaking processmaking processmaking processmaking process needs analysis refers to the process of gathering information from the students with a view of identifying what they need in their english learning process as well as determining what students need english for. once the needs are identified, they are classified according to the area they belong to thus, some of the information collected might center on the students’ human aspects. these type of needs are referred to as situation needs. on the other hand, some of the information gathered relates to the language aspect which is conceived as language needs. the third step in this process is to analyze the information found and arrange those needs according to priorities in order to focus on the most frequent and important ones (brown, 1995). the main purpose of a needs analysis is to make decisions on curriculum design, choosing appropriate instructional strategies and designing materials which will respond to the students needs. a needs analysis process was carried out in a group of eleven efl learners from different professional backgrounds taking part in an advanced sixty–hour course at the “unidad de extensión” at the national university. other participants who were extremely important in this first stage of identifying students needs were three colleagues who have been working for the university, giving classes to students in the same english level. they answered a survey which served as an instrument to verify information gathered by means of other instruments. four main instruments were used in order to collect data on the learners’ needs. first, an oral group interview (appendix 1) was developed in order to explore students’ previous experiences with english learning as well as the aspects they consider as their main strengths and weaknesses. the second instrument was a written questionnaire (appendix 2) adapted from a format suggested by hadfield (1992). this tool explored students’ beliefs on their learning of english and the aspect(s) they needed more guidance with. this questionnaire had two main objectives. on the one hand, i wanted to contrast the information i had collected by means of the group interview in order to identify similarities and discrepancies. ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ 27 profileprofileprofileprofileprofile on the other hand, i wanted to know more about the social aspects of their learning process and what they expected from the course. the third instrument was a short written interview (appendix 3) applied two weeks after the initial information was collected. the main purposes of this tool was to account for the information collected through the other instruments and to inquire about activities students carried out outside the classroom in order to help their learning process. finally, a written interview (appendix 4) was applied to three colleagues from the institution who had had experience with advanced courses in the same setting. the main goal of this tool was to look at the same aspects explored through the other instruments from a different perspective, the teachers’ one. theoretical frameworktheoretical frameworktheoretical frameworktheoretical frameworktheoretical framework “only when there is cooperation between both sides involved in the interaction can communication effectively take place, and learning occurs.” malamah-thomas (1987, pp. 11). this quote states the idea of interaction as a process that goes beyond the concept of an action followed by a reaction. interaction presupposes a reciprocal acting which has certain influences in all the participants. this draws our attention to a specific concern we, teachers, share: how to make students interact actively. tsui, a. (1995) provides a very complete review of multiple factors influencing the low rate of learners’ interactions. among the most important issues i want to highlight students’ low english proficiency; “face-saving” which entails students being afraid of making mistakes and being laughed at; the pressure students may feel to give “right answers”; and teachers’ intolerance of silence. my conviction is that natural language learning processes can enhance learning in classrooms as it implies tackling real life situations and using problem-solving procedures to interact and carry out communicative tasks effectively. willis (1996) states that using the language freely to learn to speak is a way to guarantee real interaction among learners. the rationale behind this conviction is that this is the way we learn to speak when acquiring another language naturally. students need opportunities to express their ideas, feelings and experiences as well as to test hypotheses they have about ways the language works in a non-threatening and supportive atmosphere. within this conception of language learning and use, a task-based learning framework offers opportunities for students to experiment with both written and spoken language. in task-based learning, communication tasks involve learning in a different mental process as students create what they want to express. this is the theoretical support for one of the activities my innovation proposed: debates. o’malley and valdez (1996) present debates as oral assessment activities. the authors also acknowledge the potential debates have: “debates present opportunities for students to engage in ongoing extended chunks of language for a real purpose: to convincingly defend one side of an issue” (pp. 87), and i would add, to argue other peers’ positions. debates require a great amount of preparation by learners. they also promote interaction in groups and promote the use of diverse language functions such us explaining, describing, negotiating information, persuading, agreeing and disagreeing. findingsfindingsfindingsfindingsfindings in order to analyze the data gathered, i established the similarities in the information ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ 28profileprofileprofileprofileprofile provided by the four instruments implemented and arranged them in order of the ones most frequently mentioned. the following chart outlines the results found. based on the findings i decided to address speaking as the most highlighted need shown in the multiple instruments used for data collection. the innovationthe innovationthe innovationthe innovationthe innovation the first cycle of the innovation was the design process which entailed looking for suitable material, classifying it, categorizing material according to difficulty, elaborating activity guides and writing the format for the debates as well as for the cassette recordings. the second stage entailed the implementation of the activities that will best meet the students’ main need: to improve their oral expression. two activities were selected for this purpose, the first one initially proposed was to record four readings on a cassette. the topics were negotiated with students. as a result of this negotiation process, two readings on cultural aspects of the united states together with two readings about critical issues in society were selected. each reading was handed out on mondays, was read in class on wednesdays and students recorded it at home on the cassette, to be collected on thursdays. i listened to students’ recordings on the weekends and recorded individual feedback on each cassette focusing on pronunciation, intonation, stress, fluency and accuracy, along with my reading of the article. additionally, individual written feedback was prepared and given to students the following week. for the last two recording exercises, students were asked to record a four-minute talk about two of the topics included in the readings. the second task, designed to work on students’ oral ability, involved two debate sessions. the topics of the debates were the main themes of the last two readings concerning some critical issues for society taken from a book by alexander (1970) entitled for and against. the students were given the main guidelines of what debates were about and the purpose of the activity. a week before each debate was held, they divided the group into two teams, one made up of students for the topic and the other of those against it. the students also decided on the organization of the debates and the main aspects to be tackled. the teacher introduced the task and played the role of moderator. the first debate was developed around the information presented in the article entitled ‘world governments should conduct serious campaigns against smoking.’ it was held on november 6 and lasted one hour even though it was programmed for forty-five minutes. the second debate was based on the reading ‘television is doing irreparable harm’. it was developed on november 14 and lasted forty minutes. the rationale supporting this part of the innovation is based on two main facts. firstly, i considered it appropriate to take advantage of 1. all the students have more than one year of experience with the language 2. they need english for their professional development, because they want to study abroad, or just because they like it 3. students’ main strengths are reading, grammar and writing 4. students’ main weaknesses are speaking, listening and pronunciation 5. the person who can help them best is the teacher, themselves and their classmates. 6. among the most useful ways to learn are practicing as much as possible, having access to extra materials, thinking in english and listening to materials 7. learning a language is interesting but involves hard work ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ 29 profileprofileprofileprofileprofile reading as one of the aspects detected as a strength through the needs analysis. secondly, i do believe that oral production is a process which may be developed gradually. i base this conception on the premises of scaffolding knowledge proposed by vigotsky. students started using one of their main strengths in english: reading in order to move toward working in one of their common weaknesses: speaking. finally, i want to highlight that constant and constructive feedback supported students in their process and made them feel confident in order to start a dynamics of self-assessment and self-regulation. this is demonstrated in one of the instruments used to evaluate the innovation. innovation evaluationinnovation evaluationinnovation evaluationinnovation evaluationinnovation evaluation there were three main instruments to evaluate this innovation implementation. there was continuous and systematic feedback from students after every task implemented, as suggested by rodgers (2002). i prepared a guide to carry out informal oral group interviews (appendix 5), the main aspects of which were the way students felt after performing the task, what they liked and disliked about the task, advantages and disadvantages they could detect in the task-cycle, and the importance of the activity in their learning process. students evaluated the cassettes exercises as very challenging and time consuming but it was rewarding for them to be able to listen to their first recording and to the last one and detect progress in aspects such as pronunciation and fluency. four students reported to have felt nervous when recording the exercises at home. the main cause for their apprehension was to know that it was going to be listened to and ‘evaluated‘ by me. the rest of the students stated that they felt very comfortable with this activity as they could take as much time as they wanted to record the exercises. an aspect which was highlighted by students was that they liked the idea of having feedback both on the cassette and as a written report. the idea behind this comment is that they felt they were helped on an individual basis which gave them a sense of confidence and motivation. the tasks concerning debating were first evaluated through the same instrument. i consider it important to report the aspects mentioned in students’ feedback on the activity. first, students highlighted the importance of having had an article as an initial source of information on the topic. some others said this task was valuable since it allowed them to form coherent sentences. another student commented on how the task gave him the opportunity to use prior knowledge as well as to speak freely to express what he thinks about the topic. for him it was very important to have the possibility to interact in a real-life situation in which ‘you can’t prepare’. a third learner reported on the importance of spontaneous use of language and various opportunities to participate, while a disadvantage she encountered was that the topic was not limited so there were many aspects to talk about and that they were not able to discuss due to time constraints. regarding the same task, another learner found it ver y useful in terms of vocabulary and listening practice as well as a way to try to think in english. finally, a student emphasizes the fact that this task promoted ‘speaking without pressure’ and it became a profitable opportunity to overcome the lack of practicing the language outside of the classroom. the second instrument to evaluate the innovation was the teacher’s field notes on the analysis of the cassettes recorded by students and the video recordings of the debates. the ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ 30profileprofileprofileprofileprofile cassette recording tasks was rewarding as i noticed progress in most students who carried it out according to the guidelines we had agreed. learners’ improvement in features such us pronunciation and fluency was noticeable. there were three cases in which the task was not carried out effectively. in two cases students did not hand the cassettes in on time and did not complete the sequence of six exercises proposed. in one case a student recorded all the first four exercises at once with the idea of catching up with deadlines. in this case progress was not perceived as the task was not progressive and changed in nature and purpose. a drawback of this task was the fact that not all learners may have access to the equipment required to perform the activity. regarding debates i can conclude that they have many advantages. all students participated actively, coherently fulfilling the purpose and achieving the goal desired. i want to reflect on the fact that at the beginning of this course, two students used their native language in some instances, they did not participate very actively in oral activities during lessons and tended to be isolated from the rest of the students. during the course of all the activities their behavior changed, and in the debates they participated on more than one occasion, they used english most of the time and i could notice they had researched the topics to be debated, which entails motivation to be prepared in order to take an active role in the task-cycle. the last instrument used to evaluate the varied tasks which constituted the innovation was a written questionnaire (appendix 6), which students answered after the implementation of the last activity. the heading of the questionnaire collected some personal information. then there was an introduction which explained the purpose of the interview followed by ten different questions which addressed features such as the aspects they liked and disliked most about the class. there were two questions about the positive and negative aspects of the cassette recording exercises. the following two questions collected information about the benefits and drawbacks of the debates. next, there was a question about the way the oral tasks help learners in their process –if it happened. later, students were asked to list other activities developed in class which contributed to their english learning. the following item explored what students would change about the class. the last question encouraged the learner to write any additional comments regarding the advantages and disadvantages of the multiple activities carried out in class. the following chart shows the most relevant data collected through this instrument. 1. aspects students liked the most ab1. aspects students liked the most ab1. aspects students liked the most ab1. aspects students liked the most ab1. aspects students liked the most about the english clout the english clout the english clout the english clout the english class:ass:ass:ass:ass: debates 9 listening exercises 6 news shared 6 tape recording 5 2. aspects students disliked ab2. aspects students disliked ab2. aspects students disliked ab2. aspects students disliked ab2. aspects students disliked about the clout the clout the clout the clout the cl ass:ass:ass:ass:ass: nothing 8 some activities lasted too long 1 ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ 31 profileprofileprofileprofileprofile 3. positive aspects of the cassette recording exercises:3. positive aspects of the cassette recording exercises:3. positive aspects of the cassette recording exercises:3. positive aspects of the cassette recording exercises:3. positive aspects of the cassette recording exercises: be aware of mistakes 6 good opportunity for improving pronunciation and fluency 5 build confidence for speaking 1 they were really challenging 1 receive individual feedback 1 4. nega4. nega4. nega4. nega4. negative aspects of the ctive aspects of the ctive aspects of the ctive aspects of the ctive aspects of the c assetassetassetassetasset te recording exercises:te recording exercises:te recording exercises:te recording exercises:te recording exercises: lack of time for more dedication 4 nothing 4 lack of equipment 1 feeling nervous in front of the cassette recorder 1 5. benefits of the deba5. benefits of the deba5. benefits of the deba5. benefits of the deba5. benefits of the debates:tes:tes:tes:tes: improve speaking 5 be able to defend one’s ideas 5 need to think in english 3 best way to improve fluency 1 opportunity to use all you have learned 1 confidence to speak without feeling stressed 1 realize mistakes through feedback given 1 6. dra6. dra6. dra6. dra6. dra wbacks of the debawbacks of the debawbacks of the debawbacks of the debawbacks of the debates:tes:tes:tes:tes: nothing 5 not having more than two 2 feeling nervous 2 7. the oral execises helped students in their learning process:7. the oral execises helped students in their learning process:7. the oral execises helped students in their learning process:7. the oral execises helped students in their learning process:7. the oral execises helped students in their learning process: yes 11 no 0 8. the w8. the w8. the w8. the w8. the w aaaaay the oral exercises helped:y the oral exercises helped:y the oral exercises helped:y the oral exercises helped:y the oral exercises helped: they promoted speaking 6 students realized mistakes and worked on them 4 students lost fear to speak in english 4 they promoted listening 3 feedback was important 2 they promoted thinking in english 2 9. other activities in cl9. other activities in cl9. other activities in cl9. other activities in cl9. other activities in cl ass which helped students in their learning:ass which helped students in their learning:ass which helped students in their learning:ass which helped students in their learning:ass which helped students in their learning: listening exercises 6 games 5 cassette recordings 4 ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ 32profileprofileprofileprofileprofile 10. wha10. wha10. wha10. wha10. what students would change in the clt students would change in the clt students would change in the clt students would change in the clt students would change in the cl ass:ass:ass:ass:ass: nothing 8 the english level of some partners 1 11. general comments:11. general comments:11. general comments:11. general comments:11. general comments: ‘i would like to have more time for debates’ 2 ‘i liked this course because i learned a lot’ 1 ‘i think we have a lot of opportunities and ways to learn, but unfortunately i didn’t enough time to take advantage of those activities’ 1 ‘aleida has a good performance like a teacher, we could enjoy and learn in this level’ 1 ‘i liked a lot the course. this was my first course and i liked all the activities and the teacher ’s way to do the activities and to prepare the feedback’ 1 ‘i think that the course and the activities were goods’ 1 a task-based approach to teaching and learning proved to be useful in this innovation proposal as it involves using english in the process with the aim of achieving a goal. thus, activities within this framework became opportunities for students to express their ideas, feelings and experiences freely and meaningfully. an advantage of the task-based approach is the combination of the four basic communicative skills as they are the tools students have to reach the task goal. the cassette recording task –oral portfoliowas useful in detecting progress in oral production as well as in building students’ confidence when using the target language with a meaningful purpose. furthermore, authentic assessment of oral language should focus on the students’ ability to interpret and convey meaning in contexts which are authentic. using students’ strengths in order to work on their weaknesses proved to be a successful technique in order to tackle those aspects students need more help or practice with. both the teacher and students found opportunities in the debates to express their ideas and experiences, to defend their positions the results found in the evaluation of the innovation, through the multiple instruments used, show that students’ needs were met up to a certain point. students acknowledged the benefits obtained through the tasks proposed in specific aspects such us improving oral skills, highlighting mistakes in order to work on them, building confidence when communicating in english and thinking in the target language. conclconclconclconclconclusionsusionsusionsusionsusions the needs analysis process demonstrated to be a key aspect when making decisions on curriculum, as well as on instructional strategies and materials to be implemented in a course. carrying out a needs analysis at the beginning of a course allows the teacher to identify what students most need in their english learning process and to set up a proposal to tackle those needs. classroom innovation does not necessarily mean to change every single aspect in a curricular plan or to start from zero. an innovation proposal can be designed in a way in which it can be an integral part of curriculum supporting its key components. ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ 33 profileprofileprofileprofileprofile and to argue respectfully other’s points of view about key issues in our society. likewise, this activity promoted speaking as well as listening which led to working on specific problems students have in these fields. pedpedpedpedpedagogicagogicagogicagogicagogic al implical implical implical implical implic aaaaationstionstionstionstions • one of the teachers’ duties is to select tasks and materials that will motivate students, engage their attention, entail an intellectual and linguistic challenge and promote their language development. • feedback must be valued beyond its evaluative aspect. continuous and systematic feedback helps teachers to redirect their learning tasks and allows students to become critical informants of their own process, and to be more committed with what learning a language implies. • teachers should lead learners to regard their errors in a positive way, treating them as a normal and important part of learning. there should be a supportive atmosphere in the classroom in order to encourage learners to take risks when participating actively in the multiple tasks proposed by teachers regardless of possible mistakes. the rationale behind this implication is that all learners need to experiment and make errors. referencesreferencesreferencesreferencesreferences alexander, l.g. (1970) for and against. london: longman brown, d. (1995) the elements of language curriculum. boston: heinle and heinle publishers. hadfield, j. (1992). classroom dynamics. oxford: oxford university press. malamah-thomas, a. (1987). classroom interaction. oxford: oxford university press. o’malley, j. & valdez, l. (1996). authentic assessment for english language learners. addison-wesley publishing company. rodgers, c. (2002). voices inside schools. seeing student learning: teacher change and the role of reflection. harvard educational review, 72 (2), 230-252. tsui, a. (1995). introducing classroom interaction. london: penguin books. willis, j. (1996). a framework for taskbased learning. england: longman. the article was received on august 25 th, 2003 and accepted on october 10th , 2003 ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ 34profileprofileprofileprofileprofile appendix 1: needs analappendix 1: needs analappendix 1: needs analappendix 1: needs analappendix 1: needs analysis oral group interviewysis oral group interviewysis oral group interviewysis oral group interviewysis oral group interview protocolprotocolprotocolprotocolprotocol 1. how long have you been studying english? 2. why are you studying english? 3. what aspects of english are you good at? 4. which aspects of english do you fell you need more help with? ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ 35 profileprofileprofileprofileprofile appendix 2: needs analappendix 2: needs analappendix 2: needs analappendix 2: needs analappendix 2: needs analysis exploring beliefs and weaknessesysis exploring beliefs and weaknessesysis exploring beliefs and weaknessesysis exploring beliefs and weaknessesysis exploring beliefs and weaknesses what kind of language learner are you? (adapted from hatfield, 1992) name: ____________________ date: ______________ sex: _______ 1. tick the three activities you think are most similar to language learning, and say why. learning a language is like... learning to ride a bike _____ learning mathematics formulae ____ learning to play chess _____ learning to swim _____ learning to walk _____ learning dates in a history exam ____ learning words in a play _____ learning to play cards _____ learning to play the piano ____ 2. try to number the sentences in order: 1: most useful way for me. 12: least useful way for me. learning lists of vocabulary by heart _____ writing down the translation of every new word or phrase _____ learning grammar rules with examples sentences _____ reading as much as possible in class _____ speaking as much as possible in class _____ writing everything down in a notebook and learning it _____ forgetting about grammar and listening to people instead _____ doing lots of grammar exercises ____written _____ ____ oral _____ getting the teacher to correct you every time you say sentences _____ trying to think in english and not translate into your own language _____ writing essays and getting them corrected by the teacher _____ 3. which aspect of language do you think / feel you need most help or practice with? number them in order: 1: need to practice most 7: need to practice least grammar _____ listening _____ writing _____ vocabulary _____ speaking _____ pronunciation _____ reading _____ 4. how do you think the following people can help you best? your teacher _____ the other people in the group_____ yourself _____ your family _____ workmates _____ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ 36profileprofileprofileprofileprofile appendix 3: needs analappendix 3: needs analappendix 3: needs analappendix 3: needs analappendix 3: needs analysis – writysis – writysis – writysis – writysis – written interviewten interviewten interviewten interviewten interview name:________________________________ date: ______________ age: __________ male: _________ female: __________ how long have you studied english? ___________________ this questionnaire has been designed to identify the different needs you have as an advanced student of english. please respond to each sentence accurately and precisely. 1.in your experience what works best to learn english? · · · · 2.how important is it practicing english outside the classroom? why? 3.what are your strengths as an english student? · · · 4.what aspects of english language do you feel/think you need most help or practice with? · · · 5.how do you work on the aspects you mentioned in the previous question outside the classroom? mention the activities as well as the procedure. ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ 37 profileprofileprofileprofileprofile appedix 4: needs analappedix 4: needs analappedix 4: needs analappedix 4: needs analappedix 4: needs analysis questionnaire to professorsysis questionnaire to professorsysis questionnaire to professorsysis questionnaire to professorsysis questionnaire to professors name: ______________________________ date: ______________ 1. how long have you been teaching english in the advanced courses at extension? 2. what have you noticed as students’ main strengths? 3. what aspects of english have you noticed your students have more problems or need more help with? 4. how have you helped your students work on the aspects they have more problems with? appendix 5: innovappendix 5: innovappendix 5: innovappendix 5: innovappendix 5: innovaaaaation evtion evtion evtion evtion evalalalalaluauauauauation – informal oral group interviewstion – informal oral group interviewstion – informal oral group interviewstion – informal oral group interviewstion – informal oral group interviews 1. how did you like this task? 2. how did you feel about your participation in it? 3. what are the advantages of the activity? 4. what are the disadvantages of the activity? 5. what would you change about the task? 6. do you have any additional comments on the task? explain ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ 38profileprofileprofileprofileprofile appendix 6: evappendix 6: evappendix 6: evappendix 6: evappendix 6: evalalalalaluauauauauation – questionnaire to studentstion – questionnaire to studentstion – questionnaire to studentstion – questionnaire to studentstion – questionnaire to students name:_________________________ date: ______________________ age: __________________ male: _________ female: ___________ this questionnaire has been designed to evaluate the multiple activities carried out in the english class and the possible benefits you may have obtained through your interaction in the different class activities. please answer each sentence accurately and precisely. 1. what aspects do you like the most about the english class? · · 2. what aspects did you dislike the most about the english class? · · 3. what are the positive aspects of the cassette recording exercise you did in this class? 4. what are the negative aspects of the cassette recording exercise you did in this class? 5. what were the benefits of the debates we carried out in class? 6. what were the drawbacks of the debates held in the class? 7. do you think that those oral exercises helped you in your english learning? how? why? explain your answer. 8. which other activities developed in class helped you in your english learning? 9. what would you change in this class? why? 10. write in the space below any additional comment you may have regarding the advantages or disadvantages the diverse activities in the english class have. profile no. 7dic 5.p65 ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ profile profile profile profile profile 7 (2006): universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras on materials use training in efl teacher education: some reflections aaaaacercercercercerca de la capacitación en el uso de los materiales en la formación para la enseñanzaca de la capacitación en el uso de los materiales en la formación para la enseñanzaca de la capacitación en el uso de los materiales en la formación para la enseñanzaca de la capacitación en el uso de los materiales en la formación para la enseñanzaca de la capacitación en el uso de los materiales en la formación para la enseñanza del inglés como lengua extranjera: algunas reflexionesdel inglés como lengua extranjera: algunas reflexionesdel inglés como lengua extranjera: algunas reflexionesdel inglés como lengua extranjera: algunas reflexionesdel inglés como lengua extranjera: algunas reflexiones adriana gonzález moncada*adriana gonzález moncada*adriana gonzález moncada*adriana gonzález moncada*adriana gonzález moncada* agonzal@quimbaya.udea.edu.co escuela de idiomas, universidad de antioquia, colombia this paper reports on the findings of a case study carried out at universidad de antioquia as well as explores training on materials use in our teacher preparation program and its effectiveness in the practicum. the data analyzed suggest that, although teacher educators having new approaches to train future teachers in materials use, they still need to revise the way they include this component in teacher preparation curricula. training in the use of materials should include their use in settings with limited resources as well as those with greater possibilities in technical and non-technical materials. lastly, the author raises awareness about the need to include materials use as an issue in local and national efl teacher education agendas. kkkkkey worey worey worey worey words:ds:ds:ds:ds: materials use, training, teacher education, practicum este artículo presenta los resultados de un estudio de caso llevado a cabo en la universidad de antioquia en el que se exploró la capacitación que damos a nuestros estudiantes de pregrado en el uso de materiales y su efectividad en la práctica docente. el análisis de los datos sugiere que a pesar del avance en la forma como los formadores de docentes tratamos el uso de los materiales, se hace necesaria una revisión de la forma cómo los estudiantes son expuestos a este uso. la formación en el uso de los materiales debe incluir contextos escolares en los que haya recursos limitados y aquellos donde haya mayores posibilidades en materiales técnicos y no técnicos. finalmente, la autora llama la atención sobre la necesidad de incluir el uso de los materiales como un punto en las agendas de formación de docentes a nivel local y nacional. palabras claves: palabras claves: palabras claves: palabras claves: palabras claves: uso de materiales, entrenamiento, formación docente, práctica docente *aaaaadriana gonzález moncadadriana gonzález moncadadriana gonzález moncadadriana gonzález moncadadriana gonzález moncada holds a doctoral degree in linguistics (tesol) from state university of new york at stony brook. she is a teacher educator and researcher interested in foreign language teacher education and professional development issues. she is currently the director of the school of languages at the universidad de antioquia. this article was received on march 30th, 2006 and accepted on august 26th, 2006. 101-115 ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ 102 gonzález profileprofileprofileprofileprofile introductionintroductionintroductionintroductionintroduction this paper reports on the findings of a case study carried out at the universidad de antioquia as well as explores the way our future foreign language teachers are trained in the use of teaching materials. this reflection is based on my role as a teacher educator, and it presents an analysis that includes both a retrospective and current assessment of how our institution has approached materials training. literaliteraliteraliteraliterature reviewture reviewture reviewture reviewture review materials are an essential component in teaching. as a starting point, i present some definitions found in literature. ramírez (2004, p. 2) defines materials as “anything used by teachers or learners to facilitate the learning of a language.” tomlinson (1998, p. 2) includes the following in the list of possible materials: “cassettes, videos, cd-roms, dvds, dictionaries, grammar books, readers, workbooks, photocopied exercises, all kinds of realia, lectures and talks by guest speakers, internet sources, and so on.” brinton (1991) defines materials, “the media” as she calls them, into non-technical and technical media. in the first categor y she proposes the following items: “blackboard/whiteboard, magnetboards/ flannelboards/pegboards, flashcards, index cards, wall charts, posters, maps, scrolls, board games, mounted pictures, photos, cartoons, line drawings, objects/ realia, pamphlets/brochures/leaflets/flyers, equipment operation manuals, puppets, newspapers/ magazines.” she says that these items have many advantages in places where technical resources are scarce. they are also cheap and userfriendly. the technical media category is composed of the following: “audiotapes/audio-recorders/ players, records/record players, cd’s/cd players, radio/television, telephones/teletrainers, films/film projectors, computer software/hardware, overhead transparencies/overhead projectors, language lab/ multimedia lab, opaque projectors, slides, filmstrips/slide and filmstrip projectors.” contrary to those from the first group, the latter are expensive and less user-friendly. mcdonough and shaw (1993, p. 9) list the following materials as needed in the english classroom: “books and paper, audio-visual material (hardware and software for cassette and video), laboratories, computers, reprographic facilities and so on.” they also argue: “the design and choice of teaching materials will be particularly affected by the availability of resources as well as the capacity to teach effectively across a range of language skills.” for this paper, materials will refer to textbooks, computer software and visual aids as well as video and audiotape equipment. i decided to focus on their use for two reasons: one, these materials are available in all the teacher preparation programs in colombia; and two, they are cited by efl teachers as the basic devices to teach an effective english lesson. teachers and students recognize the importance of using materials, since the teaching process is made easier and materials may be used to explain, exemplify or practice the content presented to students. materials can represent a source of motivation for students when these materials change the dynamics of the class routines through the possibility of manipulating objects, accessing audiovisual material or promoting interaction with others. materials, if chosen adequately, can promote the integration of language skills by addressing language and content in a holistic way (hinkel, 2006). in terms of learning styles (reid, 1995) and intelligences (gardner, 1993; armstrong, 1994), materials can also help the teacher address the individual differences of students. additionally, the use of materials helps teachers motivate students by “bringing a slice of real life into the classroom and presenting language in its more complete communicative situation” (brinton, 1991). presently, the rapid growth of technology offers many more options than those proposed by allwright in the 1980s or by brinton, mcdonough and shaw in the 1990s. supyan (2004), tomlinson (2005), harmer (2001), kitao and kitao (1995), among others, report on the benefits of various options provided by call, especially concerning ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○103 profileprofileprofileprofileprofile on materials use training in efl teacher education the possibility of responding to students’ needs in a more individualized way. as a part of the new materials available now for language teaching, we can find an overwhelming amount of papers reporting on the advantages and disadvantages of the use of the new technologies in language teaching. materials are considered a key element in language teaching and may have the same status in language instruction as students, teachers, teaching methods and evaluation (kitao & kitao, 1997). these five elements are interrelated. thus any change introduced to any of these elements will affect the others. defining a closer relationship between materials and students’ motivation, peacock (1998) found that materials considered “enjoyable” and “useful” increased the on-task behavior in english classes. consequently, students became more involved in the learning tasks. mcdonough and shaw (1993) state that course planning, syllabus design, the appropriateness of methods as well as the selection of materials and resources, will be affected by the following factors: the role of english in the country, the role of english in schools, teachers, management and administration, available resources, support personnel, number of pupils, available time, physical environment, socio-cultural environment, types of tests used as well as procedures for monitoring and evaluating the program itself. arias (1994) included materials as one of the factors in the dynamics of teachers’ professional development, since materials may exert some influence on the teachers’ work with colleagues. she invites teacher educators to consider materials to be a powerful variable that may affect learning and teaching, since they are particular to the different settings. although the literature reviewed stresses the importance of materials, there is no evidence of studies carried out in colombia that critically review how efl teacher education programs address training on materials use in the curricula. this paper intends to provide a description of a particular teacher education program to enable teacher educators to reflect critically on the training given to undergraduates in our local and national contexts. some elt methodologies have based their implementation on the use of certain kinds of method or approachmethod or approachmethod or approachmethod or approachmethod or approach audiolingual total physical response the silent way community language learning the natural approach suggestopedia communicative language teaching materialsmaterialsmaterialsmaterialsmaterials • tapes • visuals • language labs (often used) • no basic text • voice, actions and gestures are required in initial stages • materials and media required later • colored rods • color-coded pronunciation charts • no textbook • materials are developed as course progresses • realia • texts with literary quality • tapes • classroom fixtures • music • authentic materials • task-based materials tttttable 1.able 1.able 1.able 1.able 1. materials required for the main approaches and methods of foreign language teaching. ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ 104 gonzález profileprofileprofileprofileprofile materials. without access to those resources, teachers may have serious difficulties with carrying out their teaching under the principles of the given methodology. brown (1994, pp. 70-71) summarizes the materials required for the main approaches and methods of foreign language teaching as shown in table 1. subsequent approaches to foreign language teaching such as task-based language teaching (tblt) (nunan, 1993) or the natural approach (krashen & terrell, 1983) claim the use of authentic texts, oral and written, as a requirement in their implementation. although methods may require a specific set of materials that may be indispensable for their effectiveness, textbooks became an alternative because they were apparently eclectic alternatives to save time and money. pictures and graphic materials presented in textbooks may be more efficient than teachers’ descriptions, and can represent all kinds of objects that may be hard to take to the classroom. the critical evaluation of textbook use is nowadays a must (seldon, 1988) as teachers are the main participants in their process of reflective teaching. after decades of trying to find a method that works in different settings and significant analyses of the failures of some methods, language teachers and teacher educators understood the need to become eclectic. language teachers are to make informed choices based on what works for them in their particular setting (brown, 1994). newer approaches in teacher education reveal that we have moved away from the conception of the existence of one single “method” to teach languages. we recognize the value of post-method pedagogies in which teachers are reflective practitioners that use what they find effective for their classes (kumaravadivelu, 2003; 2005; 2006). the framework proposed by kumaravadivelu includes three operating principles that apply to the needs, wants and situations faced in diverse settings, which of course include materials, and these are particularity, practicality and possibility. the author defines these principles as: particularity seeks to facilitate the advancement of a context-sensitive, location specific pedagogy that is based on a true understanding of a local linguistic, social, cultural, and political particularities. practicality seeks to rupture the reified role relationship between theorizers and practitioners by enabling and encouraging teachers to theorize from their practice and to practice what they theorize. possibility seeks to tap the sociopolitical consciousness that students bring with them to the classroom so that it can also function as a catalyst for identity formation and social transformation (kumaravadivelu, 2006, p. 69). as a logical consequence of these principles, teacher educators must study more closely how they can help future teachers in using materials in the efl classroom. the particularity principle is important in our materials training as teacher educators need to provide student teachers with alternatives to their particular contexts, since they may be efl teachers in rural settings, underprivileged neighborhoods in urban areas or private schools with various types of teaching materials. in the search for practicality, teacher educators need to help students find a situated, eclectic, personal approach to using materials in their teaching. this may allow them to reflect on their experience and write about new ways to teach with and without materials or to look for alternative ways to use traditional materials. the possibility principle may have an application in the awareness training possibility of changing the paradigm of efl teachers from mere materials consumers in esl settings to teachers capable of creating effective teaching conditions regardless of the availability of certain teaching materials. context of the studycontext of the studycontext of the studycontext of the studycontext of the study as an attempt to help future teachers become better qualified for teaching, undergraduate programs give a very special role to training in materials use. teacher education programs in ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○105 profileprofileprofileprofileprofile on materials use training in efl teacher education colombia include this training as part of the content of the course “methods of foreign language teaching”. however, in a quick review of the twenty-four undergraduate programs in foreign language teaching available in colombia, i found that only two universities list on their web pages courses that deal explicitly with materials.1 the courses are “foreign language pedagogy and materials production” at the universidad del cauca2 and “course and materials design” at the universidad de antioquia. the program at the universidad de antioquia has increased the importance given to materials in the foreign language teacher preparation program. since 1996, materials are included as a component of the curriculum. as a faculty member, i have been in contact with the following course programs: • 1996-1998: medios auxiliares de la enseñanza y evaluación de l2/l3 (materials and assessment in l2/l3). this was a mandator y course taught twice a week using computers at least once. two samples of the programs implemented for this course are presented in appendix 1. regarding the materials component, the main scope of the course was to train students in the use of computers, as it was a growing need for efl teachers. students learned to type their own papers using “word” and to use electronic mail (something quite new in colombia at the time). • 1998-1999: medios auxiliares de la enseñanza y evaluación. in 1998, i became a faculty member at the universidad de antioquia. after analyzing the previous program and talking to student teachers, i came up with a new version of the program (see appendix 2). the materials component was taught in the first part of the course, devoting less time to assessment. • 1999-2000: medios auxiliares de la enseñanza y evaluación. after having reviewed the students’ suggestions and comments from the previous semester, i introduced some changes to the program for both semesters in 1999. one, the same topics were organized according to the students’ ranking. based on their needs in the practicum, the students proposed, first, having the assessment component and then, the materials component. two, i decided to focus more on the use of technical materials as my students insisted on their need to be familiarized with computers. most of them did not have a computer at home; therefore, using them in class was one of their main motivations. and three, the use of the internet, email and multimedia software became the topics on which i spent more time. in the first semester 2000, i stopped teaching the course. from then and throughout 2002, the course was taught by another faculty member who did not introduce any changes. in 2002, a deep revision of the curriculum motivated the program curriculum committee to separate the topics of materials from assessment. materials became part of a new elective course called “syllabus design and materials development” (see appendix 3). this course was designed as a possible way to help students overcome some of the problems they faced in the design of a research project for the practicum and to use materials better in their classes. assessment was reorganized as a new core course. its main objective was to provide students with more elements to understand and apply testing and alternative assessment in their classes. the ongoing evaluation practice in the curriculum has made professors adjust the course to the students’ needs. the presentation of materials as part of the elective course was seen by the students as an academic asset from 20022004. in 2004, some variations were introduced to the program. the unit proposed for the materials component in the 2004 version is presented in appendix 4. in a review of the archives, the students’ evaluations for the academic years 2000-2001 show the benefits of this course to be an important 1 the other twenty-two programs reviewed include some elective courses. it was not possible to identify the names and content of these courses; therefore, it might be possible that some of them address the use of materials. 2 i tried to obtain the course program to analyze its content for this paper. unfortunately, it was not possible. ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ 106 gonzález profileprofileprofileprofileprofile element in their practicum. they acknowledged the importance of gaining awareness about the use of materials as well as the principles for adapting them. yet, there is no documented evidence of the real impact the course may have had on their teaching, as there were no reports from practicum supervisors or cooperating teachers regarding the students’ use of materials. methodologymethodologymethodologymethodologymethodology as a teacher and teacher educator, i have always been challenged by the students’ and teachers’ ongoing complaints about not having enough materials to teach with and needing more training on how to use and design them. based on this need, i decided to explore training on materials use at the universidad de antioquia. the research questions that led the study were 1) how effective is the training on materials use for our students’ performance in the practicum? and 2) what elements should teacher educators include to improve that training? i decided to do a case study since it allowed me to explore in some detail the particular setting of the universidad de antioquia with a limited number of participants in some detail (tellis, 1997; yin, 1994). participantsparticipantsparticipantsparticipantsparticipants participants were student teachers from the undergraduate program, practicum supervisors and efl teachers. the students from a “materials and course design” class were invited to participate, but only five of them expressed willingness to do so. these five students were doing their practicum in different public schools in medellín in 2003. efl teachers were contacted to participate in a larger study on their professional needs. eighteen public school teachers offered to share their insights. their interviews on materials were used to contrast and complement the students’ views. three of the teachers were also cooperating teachers in the foreign language teaching practicum. all of them signed a consent form in which they allowed me to use their testimony and were informed of the research conditions. i used fictitious names in this paper to guarantee confidentiality. the students informed me of their training regarding materials use. cooperating teachers informed on the effectiveness of the students’ training and efl teachers on their needs regarding materials. the three sets of views were intended to improve the efficiency of our undergraduate program regarding materials use. data collectiondata collectiondata collectiondata collectiondata collection data collection included a documentary analysis of versions of the programs of “materials and assessment”, “course design and curriculum development” and “course and materials design.” it also included the course evaluation files, two indepth interviews (kvale, 1996) with student teachers and cooperating teachers as well as two focus group sessions with efl teachers (debus, 1990)3 . data analysisdata analysisdata analysisdata analysisdata analysis the interviews and the focus group sessions were transcribed using standard orthography. then, i read the texts looking for common patterns and identifying meaningful units. then, the units were labeled and grouped to construct categories. my epistemological assumptions were interpretive (miles & huberman, 1994; bassey, 1999; silverman, 1993), as i based my analysis of the training on materials use in our program through a semiotic analysis of the data collected. i constantly compared the categories obtained with the units highlighted in the transcriptions to understand their relationship. i based the analysis on a grounded approach (freeman, 1998) as i constructed the categories taking into account what the participants reported. 3 the focus group transcriptions belong to the study “professional needs of efl teachers from public and private schools in the metropolitan area of medellín” sponsored by codi, universidad de antioquia. ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○107 profileprofileprofileprofileprofile on materials use training in efl teacher education data were validated through participant triangulation and data triangulation (freeman, 1998), contrasting the opinions of the student teachers, cooperating teachers and efl teachers. three versions of the course program were analyzed. findingsfindingsfindingsfindingsfindings the data analyzed reported some contradictory issues regarding the training on materials use in the teacher preparation program at the universidad de antioquia. student teachers seem to believe that they know enough about using materials; however, once they become teachers in real classrooms, they report it as one of their main professional needs. the following ideas are the main ones concerning materials use: a. lack of materials: the different teachers’ statements report this as the main issue. although this may be a reality in colombia, it is important to treat this limitation separately. materials do not seem to be sufficient either as part of the resources for the practicum in our university or as part of the resources available at practicum settings as well as in the majority of the public schools in colombia. student teachers said repeatedly that they would like to have a resource center on campus where they could borrow different materials to bring to their practicum settings. the resources available at the university are mainly intended to teach in extension programs or to be used in the foreign language training of undergraduates. martha states: “i wish we had more materials to take to the practicum schools. the videos available are too long and difficult to our beginner students in high schools and the themes are more for our interest as university students… the games and flashcards are to be used only on campus in the english program for children and adolescents.” eduardo, a student doing his practicum at a public school in a low-income neighborhood, states the problem of the lack of materials at the university as: “student teachers have access to very limited material, much of which is too geared for children or too advanced for our real needs, nothing specific for teenagers, our students in the practicum. we have english textbooks, grammar books, dictionaries and some very old and long story books, a lot of theoretical material, but no practical material.” to solve the problem of lack of resources, student teachers try to make their own material. however, besides being a challenge for students, it may be a problem as practicum settings may not have materials either. all access to materials may depend on the english teacher or the student teacher. eduardo also states: “this involves time, money and effort on our part, with little or no help from the school or the cooperating teachers. in the end, most of this material remains locked in a drawer and hardly ever gets to be used again. is this worthwhile? sometimes we get the material, we make it, and then ask the school for scotch tape or minor things to be able to use in the classroom and most of the time schools don’t even provide us with this.” every day, efl teachers face the limitation of access to materials. budgetary cuts in colombian education have consequences for the quality of the support provided to schools. the sad reality of almost no resources is contrasted with the ideal school in which teachers have access to many technical and non-technical materials. more recently, the idea of a “bilingual classroom”4 , in other words a classroom equipped with computers and software to teach english, seems to be the dream of the majority of schools. the demand for 4 some schools have been provided with these classrooms. they may be a set of computers that have access to the “english discoveries” software. there is no evidence of any local study regarding the benefits of counting on this resource. ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ 108 gonzález profileprofileprofileprofileprofile resources may be as strong as the fundamental issues in the profession. from the eighteen efl teachers interviewed, eleven reported the need for more materials as one of their main professional needs. some of the teachers’ remarks were the following: “i’d like smaller classes, a xerox machine, a tv set, a vhs/dvd player, a tape recorder, and more expertise in english teaching methodology.” (luisa) “i’d like to study abroad, to have a language lab in my school and to have the opportunity to attend professional development programs for free.” (rosa) “i’d like to count on more teaching resources. in the majority of schools we work with there is nothing to develop my fluency in english and to be able to motivate my students.” (ana) “first, having an ideal environment to carry out my job as an english teacher. second, having access to the appropriate resources to teach, like language labs… third, having total freedom to create, change, improve… a space without administrative restrictions.” (darío) “i’d like to have a vhs/dvd player and a tv set for each classroom…and one classroom used exclusively in english class where i can have the materials. students will come to this classroom. i won’t have to go to their classrooms.” (dora) “i’d like to have a library with a considerable number of books and videos in english, we may think about some classics. if students have access to the internet, they may also learn about shakespeare or joyce.” (marcos) b. limited access to existing resources: as a consequence of the budgetary constraints, also identified by brinton (1991) as a teachers’ difficulty in the use of materials, resources have to be shared by a great number of teachers, and not only by english teachers. a tape/cd player may be a common element in foreign language classrooms in developed countries. nevertheless, many efl teachers may experience difficulties accessing this item. gonzález (2000) cites the case of an english teacher and her daily struggle to use some material in her classes. the teacher said: “in my school, we have a single tape recorder for the whole school. sometimes i find myself reser ving the tape recorder two weeks in advance because the music teacher, the french teacher and the physical education teacher would also like to use it at the same time i had planned to do so.” there are also some additional factors that may affect the use of resources such as the lack of electricity or the lack of a socket, plug or switch to operate any kind of electronic device. these factors may be a challenge that interferes with the development of the planned lesson, as it may not be anticipated. some schools may have the resources suggested in the literature, but it is not possible for teachers to use them. they may not even know the existence of those teaching aids. some teachers have repeatedly reported in informal conversations and professional meetings that their schools have computer labs5 that are more a “sanctuary” than a learning resource for students. those rooms are locked and equipment is hardly used. they are open when district supervisors visit the institution. elkin, a student teacher, reports on his experience in one public school: “in my school there is a computer room. there are five computers and i have forty-five students. one day i wanted to take them to the “lab”, but i found out that no one knew where the key was. apparently the principal had it. one week later, my cooperating teacher found the key. we turned the computers on 5 some schools have been provided with these classrooms. they may be a set of computers that have access to the “english discoveries” software. there is no evidence of any local study regarding the benefits of counting on this resource. ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○109 profileprofileprofileprofileprofile on materials use training in efl teacher education and discovered that there was no internet connection. my brilliant idea was just a dream.” unless the schools have someone in charge of administering, lending, repairing and keeping the resources in a place accessible to teachers, those aids become part of the school’s decoration. c. lack of awareness of their limitations in materials use: although syllabi have changed in the place granted to materials in teacher preparation at the universidad de antioquia, most students tend to consider their training as something not really necessary when it has to do with non-technical material. in a few cases, student teachers acknowledge their limitations in the choice, use, adaptation or design of materials. even in their teaching experience, they believe they adequately employ teaching aids. in my reflection notes6 , from the materials and assessment course i taught, i highlight: “at the end of the course, students in their evaluations reported having more interest in learning about the assessment component than about materials.” (course evaluation semester 1998-i) “negotiating the course content with the students showed me once again that the materials component was considered less important for them than the assessment component. when i invited them to support their ideas, students reported having had “enough training” in the use of non-technical materials from the methods i and ii courses taken previously. their main interest was evident as we started using the computers.” (course evaluation semester 1999-i) my reflections from that time seem to be still relevant. erica, a student teacher, commented on her personal training on materials: “in the methods courses we studied about skills integration and communicative language teaching, as well as the materials we should use, but when i teach my english class sometimes i feel confused. i am not quite sure how to adapt a good reading from the internet or how to design some games to practice certain language structures. the course and materials design course was very good, but i need more time to share ideas with classmates and the teacher.” contrary to the positive view of some student teachers, some cooperating teachers have a quite negative outlook. the three cooperating teachers agreed on the following issues as problematic for some student teachers in their practicum settings: 1. overusing “work sheets” to practice grammar structures; 2. insufficiently and ineffectively using the board; 3. making material (flashcards, mounted pictures) that are not quite useful; 4. choosing inappropriate material for the students’ cognitive and linguistic level; 5. having difficulties in the design of effective activities using computers. they also said that students do not seem to be aware of these limitations in their self-assessment and have diverse opinions on the need to have longer and deeper training in materials use. d. exposure to unrealistic settings: undergraduates in our program are trained in the use of materials in the methods i and ii courses and in the “course and materials design” course. the first two are mainly theoretical courses that provide students with some principles to face their future teaching. the reflections held in these classes may be based on unreal classrooms portrayed in literature or in retrospective analyses of their own learning conditions. the third course, scheduled at the same level of the practicum, contains only one unit on materials use. this could take only about 20 hours of the instruction time 6 i kept a teaching diary for the courses from 1998 through 2000 as a way to reflect on my new job as a teacher educator in a public university. ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ 110 gonzález profileprofileprofileprofileprofile (see appendix 4). in this class, students carry out a small scale project in a resource center at an institution, mainly private language centers in medellín. there the students become familiar with the materials available and the curriculum as well as the students’ needs to be able to design a course or a unit. although this course shows some improvement in the quality of the training in materials use, students may not experience teaching in these institutions because the practicum handbook at the university stipulates that the settings for the efl practicum must be public schools. darío, a teacher in a public school that has a “bilingual classroom”, made the following suggestion to improve teacher education programs regarding materials use: “you should expose students to the use of multimedia software and the adaptation of internet pages to our classrooms. they could go to the schools and help us because we have some problems using and adapting technology.” rosa, a teacher who works in a very poor neighborhood, said this about the training required by student teachers: “as a student, one needs to learn to work with nothing. i cannot ask my students to buy a textbook, a dictionary, or to get some money to pay for copies. i just have the board and chalk. it’s very hard to be creative under these circumstances. i wish student teachers could visit my school and face the reality of displaced people who have nothing. i’m sure the university does not expose them to that kind of reality.” there is another reality that the universidad de antioquia may not be taking into consideration, namely, the private schools and language centers that possess lots of technical and non-technical materials. students need to be exposed to the use of new technologies and to the multiple applications of call. they ask for more time in the curriculum to use the language lab and express the need to acquire more software in order to be prepared for the job market in private institutions. due to the limitation of resources at the universidad de antioquia, our students are trained to use some “standard” resources such as the internet, videos, tapes, flashcards and games. the use of specialized software for language learning or the immense possibilities of virtual learning is not our program’s strength. i would mention one last issue regarding the complexity of finding an effective approach to materials use in teacher education. in the search for this, teacher educators may easily forget simple issues such as the use of the board, the design of a handout or the construction of cheap materials because technology seems to impose a more striking demand. we cannot forget that the diversity of efl settings in colombia ranges from classrooms with no materials to classrooms with the latest technology in language learning. both settings are real and deserve the analysis of teacher educators. conclconclconclconclconclusionsusionsusionsusionsusions this case study is an introductory exploration to the training on materials use in teacher preparation programs in colombia. it has some limitations that may have contributed to the conclusions drawn. on the one hand, as mentioned previously, access to the programs regarding materials use in colombian universities was quite limited. it may be possible that more institutions address this topic explicitly as part of their teacher preparation program. on the other hand, the analysis of the course content dealing with materials at the universidad de antioquia from the point of view of a teacher educator was restricted to the retrospective analysis of the author from 1996 to 1998. it was not possible to compare my own notes with the students’ course evaluations because they were not available in the archives. more student teachers and practicum supervisors as well as ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○111 profileprofileprofileprofileprofile on materials use training in efl teacher education teachers need to be included in a broader study. additionally, more research on the implications of the changes implemented in the curricula is needed to comprehend better the impact of the training on the students’ performance in the practicum. further research needs to be done on the professional needs of efl teachers regarding materials use, including technical and non-technical materials. the documentary analysis demonstrated that our treatment of materials use may require some deeper reflection as a part of local and national teacher education agendas. this may not be only an aspect to be improved in our university. it may apply to other teacher education programs in colombia and in other efl settings. as conclusions, i highlight the following issues: efl teachers see materials as a very important component in effective teaching. they tend to associate effective teaching with the availability of different kinds of materials, mainly technical. student teachers require longer and deeper training in the use of technical and non-technical materials. they must be acquainted with different possibilities to make adequate choices in their classroom settings. teacher educators need to expose students to real school contexts in which students face the limitations in the use of materials experienced in regular efl classrooms. additionally, they need to train future teachers in the use of applications of multimedia in teaching and learning foreign languages as private schools and language centers include the use of these materials as strengths in their efl programs. i would stress the following aspects as tasks to be considered by teacher educators in local and national agendas regarding materials use: 1. present “materials” as an independent component in teacher education in the form of a course. this may include aspects such as the reflective use of technical and non-technical materials, the adaptation and design of tasks as well as a more intensive and critical exposure to call. this course should be complementary to the practicum so that students have the opportunity to connect effectively and authentically the theory with the practice. 2. envision scheduling short internships in schools that have no resources as well as in ones with lots of resources so that students may be acquainted with both realities. 3. include materials use as an issue to be studied by teacher educators in the professional agendas. a comprehensive analysis of the training used in diverse settings may contribute to theorizing on better ways to prepare efl teachers. the challenges faced by our teachers may be the same in many developing countries. acknowledgementsacknowledgementsacknowledgementsacknowledgementsacknowledgements i am deeply thankful to the anonymous reviewers whose suggestions improved this paper enormously. i am also thankful to my colleague, clara arias toro, for her insights. referencesreferencesreferencesreferencesreferences allwright, r. l. (1981). what do we want teaching materials for? elt journal, 36, 15-18. arias, c. (1994). teacher development: meeting the challenge of changing worlds’ keynote speech at the 29th asocopi congress. medellín, colombia. armstrong, t. (1994). multiple intelligences in the classroom. alexandria. association for supervision and curriculum development. bassey, m. (1999). case study research in educational settings. london: open university. brinton, d. (1991). the use of media in language teaching. in m. celce-murcia (ed.), teaching english as a second or foreign language (pp. 454472). boston: heinle & heinle. brown, d. (1994). teaching by principles. englewood cliffs: prentice hall. debus, m. (1990). handbook for excellence in focus group research. academy for educational development: washington, dc. ellis, r. (1997). the empirical evaluation of language teaching materials. elt journal, 51, 36-42. freeman, d. (1998). doing teacher research: from inquiry to understanding. heinle & heinle. ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ 112 gonzález profileprofileprofileprofileprofile gardner, h. (1993). multiple intelligences: the theory in practice. new york: basic books. gonzález, a. (2000). the new millennium: more challenges for efl teachers and teacher educators. colombian applied linguistics journal, 2, 5-14. harmer, j. (2001). the practice of english language teaching. (3rd ed.). harlow, uk: pearson education. hinkel, e. (2006). current perspectives on teaching the four skills. tesol quarterly, 40(1), 109132. kitao, k., & kitao, k. (1995). english teaching: theory, research and practice. tokyo: eichosha. kitao, k., & kitao, k. (1997). selecting and developing teaching/learning materials. the internet tesl journal, iv(4). krashen, s., & terrell, t. (1983). the natural approach. hayward, ca: alemany press. kumaravadivelu, b. (2003). beyond methods: macrostrategies for language teaching. new haven, ct: yale university press. kumaravadivelu, b. (2005). (re)visioning language teacher education. paper presented at the fourth international conference on language teacher education. minneapolis, university of minnesota june 2-4. kumaravadivelu, b. (2006). tesol methods: changing tracks, challenging trends. tesol quarterly, 40(1), 5981. kvale, s. (1996). interviews: an introduction to qualitative research interviewing. london: sage publications. mcdonough, j., & shaw, c. (1993). materials and methods in elt. cambridge: blackwell. miles, m., & huberman, m. (1994). qualitative data analysis: an expanded sourcebook. london: sage publications. nunan, d. (1993). communicative tasks and the language curriculum. in s. silberstein (ed), state of the art tesol essays (pp. 5268). alexandria: virginia. peacock, m. (1998). usefulness and enjoyableness of teaching materials as predictors of on-task behavior. the internet tesl journal, 3(2). ramírez, s. m. (2004). english teachers as materials developers. revista electrónica actualidades educativas en investigación, 4(2), 117. reid, j. (ed.). (1995). learning styles in the esl/efl classroom. boston: heinle & heinle. rossner, r., & bolitho, r. (eds.). (1990). currents in language teaching. oxford: oxford university press. seldon, l. (1988). evaluating elt textbooks and materials. elt journal, 42(4), 237246. silverman, d. (1993). interpreting qualitative data: methods for analyzing talk, text and interaction. london: sage publications. supyan, h. (2004). web-based language learning materials: a challenge. internet journal of elearning & teaching, 1(1), 3142. retrieved march 2006, from http://www.eltrec.ukm.my/ ijellt/archive.asp tomlinson, b. (2005). the future of elt materials in asia. electronic journal of foreign language teaching, 2(2), 513. retrieved march 2006, from http://e-flt.nus.edu.sg/v2n22005/ tomlinson.pdf tomlinson, b. (ed.). (1998). materials development in language teaching. cambridge: cambridge university press. tellis, w. (1997). introduction to case study. the qualitative report, 3(2). retrieved may 2005, from http://www.nova.edu/ssss/qr/qr3-2/tellis1.html yin, r. k. (1994). case study research: design and methods. (2nd ed.). thousand oaks, ca: sage publications. ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○113 profileprofileprofileprofileprofile on materials use training in efl teacher education appendix 1: medios aappendix 1: medios aappendix 1: medios aappendix 1: medios aappendix 1: medios auxiliares de luxiliares de luxiliares de luxiliares de luxiliares de la enseñanza y eva enseñanza y eva enseñanza y eva enseñanza y eva enseñanza y evalalalalaluaciónuaciónuaciónuaciónuación (1996-1998)7 objectives:objectives:objectives:objectives:objectives: at the end of the course the students will be able to: 1. determine which materials need to be used in an effective teaching process to facilitate learning; 2. creatively use the different materials, adapting them to the adopted teaching method. the topics proposed in the course are listed below: materials:materials:materials:materials:materials: a. tape recorder 1. introduction 2. aspects to consider in teaching 3. teaching techniques b. video 1. introduction 2. aspects to consider in teaching with videos 3. criteria and selection 4. planning and teaching 5. teaching techniques c. computer-assisted language learning 1. fundamentals 2. introduction to computer use 3. methodological aspects 4. teaching grammar 5. teaching vocabulary 6. teaching writing 7 i selected only the “materials” component from the programs. ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ 114 gonzález profileprofileprofileprofileprofile appendix 2: medios aappendix 2: medios aappendix 2: medios aappendix 2: medios aappendix 2: medios auxiliares de luxiliares de luxiliares de luxiliares de luxiliares de la enseñanza y eva enseñanza y eva enseñanza y eva enseñanza y eva enseñanza y evalalalalaluaciónuaciónuaciónuaciónuación (1998-2000) general objectives:general objectives:general objectives:general objectives:general objectives: 1. critically analyze the use of materials in the teaching of foreign languages; 2. explore the use of computers in the learning of foreign languages and in (specific objectives); 1. select the most adequate materials for the teaching setting; 2. rationally use the materials to which teachers have access. materials:materials:materials:materials:materials: 1. board 2. tape recorder 3. video 4. flashcards, posters, games and other materials 5. textbook 6. handouts and other copies 7. computer: a. electronic mail b. web c. multimedia software appendix 3: ‘course design and maappendix 3: ‘course design and maappendix 3: ‘course design and maappendix 3: ‘course design and maappendix 3: ‘course design and materials development’terials development’terials development’terials development’terials development’ general objectivesgeneral objectivesgeneral objectivesgeneral objectivesgeneral objectives: 1. acquire theoretical and practical principles to select, design and adapt teaching materials; 2. evaluate their use. the content is presented below. 1. framework of materials and methods (mcdonough & shaw, 1993); 2. empirical evaluation of language teaching materials (ellis, 1997); 3. evaluating elt materials and adapting materials (mcdonough & shaw, 1993). ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○115 profileprofileprofileprofileprofile on materials use training in efl teacher education appendix 4: ‘course and maappendix 4: ‘course and maappendix 4: ‘course and maappendix 4: ‘course and maappendix 4: ‘course and materials design’ programterials design’ programterials design’ programterials design’ programterials design’ program unit 3: criteria for the selection, adaptation and design of materials, activities, and tasksunit 3: criteria for the selection, adaptation and design of materials, activities, and tasksunit 3: criteria for the selection, adaptation and design of materials, activities, and tasksunit 3: criteria for the selection, adaptation and design of materials, activities, and tasksunit 3: criteria for the selection, adaptation and design of materials, activities, and tasks for a course or a unit of a coursefor a course or a unit of a coursefor a course or a unit of a coursefor a course or a unit of a coursefor a course or a unit of a course • mcdonough & shaw (1993) ch.5: adapting materials chapter 4: evaluating elt materials (optional) • tomlinson, b. (1998) glossary for basic terms for materials development in language teaching (pp. viiixiv) introduction (pp. 124) • autonomy and self-access centers: http://ec.hku.hk/autonomy http://www.hayo.nl • long, m. (1989) task, group, and task-group interactions (pp. 4050) profile 1.p65 ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○17 profileprofileprofileprofileprofile communicative grammar : analysis of the word “however” in the lob corpus elizabeth rodríguez r.elizabeth rodríguez r.elizabeth rodríguez r.elizabeth rodríguez r.elizabeth rodríguez r. foreign languages department universidad nacional de colombia the present analysis of the wordhoweverhoweverhoweverhoweverhowever, as a practical rather thantheoretical activity, draws on insights from everyday talk and information from both native speakers of english and efl students as well as from the invaluable help of mainly “a communicative grammar of english”1 , “a grammar of contemporary english”2 and above all, “a comprehensive grammar of the english language” .3 the emphasis in this analysis is, therefore, on the meanings and uses of the word however (semantics and pragmatics) rather than on its syntax. nevertheless, this aspect of the language underlying however is also taken into consideration. 1. however: meanings and uses1. however: meanings and uses1. however: meanings and uses1. however: meanings and uses1. however: meanings and uses a fortunate comment in a cafe was the starting point of my hypothesis about the meanings and uses of the word however: “however many biscuits you eat, you never gain a stone” 1.11.11.11.11.1 however in its core meaning expresses contrast4 between the pieces of information in which it occurs (it is difficult, at this point, to determine the different positions it may have). it can be replaced by other markers such as but, nevertheless, yet... . this meaning of contrast is illustrated in the following text extract :5 “ the rehabilitation of the refugees from west pakistan has been more or less completed, howeverhoweverhoweverhoweverhowever, rehabilitation of refugees from east pakistan still remains to be accomplished.” in this example there is a clear contrast between the fate of those people who are living in west pakistan and those in the east. 1.1.11.1.11.1.11.1.11.1.1 very often , when however expresses contrast , it also involves a selective alternative . let us examine this fact in light of the following example taken form the corpus: “ in this brief study, however, what interests us is not the direct 1 leech ,g. and svartvik, j. (1975). a communicative grammar of english. singapore: longman. 2 quirk, r., greebaun, s., leech, g. and svartvik, j. (1972). a grammar of contemporary english. london: longman. 3 quirk,r., leech , g. and svartvik , j. (1985). a comprehensive grammar of the english language. london: longman. 4 leech and starvick, op. cit., p. 98. they classify the word however expressing contrast as a linking construction-adverbial link. 5 all extracts are taken from the corpus, except for the example in point 1.1.3. ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ 18profileprofileprofileprofileprofile significance of these musical conventions in themselves, but their indirect influence upon the fate of moliere”. however in the text above, keeping its meaning of contrast, involves two alternatives as well: (i) the study of the direct significance of the musical conventions in themselves and (ii) the study of the indirect influence upon the fate of moliere’s. 1.1. 2 1.1. 2 1.1. 2 1.1. 2 1.1. 2 however expressing contrast, on rare occasions, might emphasise the part of the sentence in which the word appears. it may, in effect, imply that what has been written or said previously, although correct, is not the main point of the text. the example below could be an illustration of this, even though, it is not possible to be certain without further details of the passage. “... it was not necessary to understand marxism in order to understand socialism, though at this time he was a keen member of the b.s.p., george, however, never deviated from his belief that it was the economic basis of society which needed to be changed , for the conditions of the people were appalling, there being only slight...” the position of however in medial position following george puts the contrastive emphasis on george, contrasted with “other people”. this is because george is followed by the comma juncture. in addition, from what i can deduce, the writer wants to acknowledge the complexity of marxist theory but stresses that what is really relevant is merely george’s opinions regarding economics. with access to the whole text, i might, of course, have interpreted the message in a different way. 1 . 1 . 3 1 . 1 . 3 1 . 1 . 3 1 . 1 . 3 1 . 1 . 3 however expressing conditioncontrast 6 may be seen as a derived or extended use of the meaning of contrast considered in 1.1 above. nevertheless, historically, it seems to be the other way round. for a better understanding of the use of however expressing condition-contrast, let us consider the following example taken from “a communicative grammar of english”: “however much advice we give him, he (still) does exactly what he wants”.7 in this example, however expresses condition-contrast: the condition implying that we try to advise him as much as possible, which “contrasts” with the behaviour or response of the person advised. however expressing condition-contrast may be replaced by the expressions “it doesn’t matter how” / “no matter how”, but, according to different informants, the use of however is much more formal and therefore much more used in written texts. going back to the comment in the cafe, although however also expresses conditioncontrast and thus can be replaced by the expressions “it doesn’t matter how” / no matter how”, it seems to imply something more than condition-contrast. reading trough the corpus, as one of the best sources 6 ibid ., p. 160. 7 ibid ., p. 160. ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○19 profileprofileprofileprofileprofile of information and looking for more examples of “however many” as well as for an explanation of its implication, it was found that “however many” only occurs in two examples considering all the categories available. “finally, mention may be made of a letter which is sent out at christmas time to every boy and girl whose address is known, however many years ago they have left our care” . as there is not enough information in the corpus about what “however many “ may imply, it is not evident to me if it is to be interpreted differently from other expressions such as “however long”, “however much”, etc. this low frequency of occurrence will be taken into consideration later on. as a result of a careful and systematic study and examination of the comment in the cafe “however many biscuits you eat, you never gain a stone”, the following two issues emerged: (i) however is preceding a noun phrase8 : adjective + noun → many biscuits (ii) there is not a comma after the word however, something that is more or less fixed when however means contrast (see point 3, however: punctuation marks). the two issues above led me to the following questions: (i) is the word however playing the role of a modifier of the noun phrase “many biscuits”? (ii) if so, is it giving more force to the meaning of the noun phrase? (iii) or on the other hand, is however diminishing the meaning of the noun phrase by emphasising the second clause: “ you never gain a stone”? (iv) is the word however in the context in turn (preceding an adjective: “many”) much more emphatic than the expressions “no matter how / it doesn’t matter how”? looking in the corpus for more examples of the sort of “however many...” and asking some informants about the possible and different meanings of the word however in similar contexts, i found the answers to the questions raised above. let us consider them in light of the following example: “as you read those slender greenish volumes of the pseudonym library, pausing to discover the peculiar merit of some emotions and a moral, you felt that however obscure the meaning, the style was superb”. • however + adjectivehowever + adjectivehowever + adjectivehowever + adjectivehowever + adjective the word however in the example above seems to be diminishing the importance of the degree of obscurity (any point on the scale is valid). thus, however is emphasising the importance of the style by diminishing the importance of the degree of obscurity. at this point, it may be said that however + adjective (however obscure) is equivalent to saying “whatever + noun; in this instance whatever the obscurity”. 8 quirk, leech and svartvik, op. cit. , p. 39. • ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ 20profileprofileprofileprofileprofile i will try to verify the role of however as a “diminisher emphasiser ” when it precedes an adjective, by analysing another example: “it will be argued here that procedures for setting rates, however refined, do not by themselves solve any of the problems raised by the existence of differing notions of the proper day’s work”. however, here too, seems to be diminishing the importance of the degree of refinement. so, it is emphasising the fact that the procedures for setting rates do not solve any of the problems mentioned in the text. and again, in the following text, however preceding an adjective is playing the same role which, i consider, may confirm its use as a “ diminisher-emphasiser ” . “first we must have a constitution which gives full protection to the various interests in the countr y, however diverse they may be so as to ensure that they can play a full part in the life of the country”. however diminishes the importance of the degree of diversity of the interests and emphasises the need for having a constitution. with these considerations, the questions raised before may be answered. 1.1.41.1.41.1.41.1.41.1.4 however plays the role of a “diminisher-emphasiser ” rather than a modifier when it precedes an adjective. there is not much evidence to assure that however in this context is more emphatic than the expressions “no matter how /it doesn’t matter how”, but according to different informants however is both more emphatic and more frequent than the expressions which i previously referred to. • however + adverbhowever + adverbhowever + adverbhowever + adverbhowever + adverb however does not only precede adjectives but also adverbs. the use of however + adverb appears to be a little more complicated due to the fact that sometimes it seems to play the same role of a “diminisher-emphasiser” as in the cases where however precedes adjectives. ... he usually obser ved a private fatalism, which made speculation superfluous, and in the deaths of others, however deeply he might feel a personal loss, he knew that it was useless to lament or do anything but hide his feelings in a situation where death came all the time and hardly...” in this context, however can also be replaced by “no matter how / it doesn’t matter how”. the word however seems to be diminishing the importance of the sort of feeling by emphasising the uselessness of lamenting. however, some other times seems to play the role of an emphasiser of the adverb it precedes. in order to study this possible use of however, let us consider the following text: “ morand decides that the ringing repetition of me in the speech of sacrifice of the son is a little too grotesque, however perfectly in character” ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○21 profileprofileprofileprofileprofile i associate this text with the comment somebody made about the repetition of a word in the script of a play. i might be wrong, but what i see is that the word me is repeated constantly in a speech which makes it “a little too grotesque, however perfectly in character ”. here, the word however is reinforcing the meaning of “perfectly in character” referred back to the repetition of the word me. in this context and with the role of a “reinforcer”9 , however may not be replaced by the expressions “ no matter how / it doesn’t matter how” because it would probably change the meaning. maybe “although” could be used instead. 1.1.51.1.51.1.51.1.51.1.5 with the analysis of these examples i could deduce that however preceding adverbs may play the role of a “ diminisheremphasizer ”, on the one hand, and of a “reinforcer” on the other. however, i think this impression of reinforcement may depend a lot on the final position of the however clause, which here comes at the end of the main clause. if i insert “however perfectly in character” after “son” , , , , , it will be noticed that the reinforcing effect will have more or less disappeared. summarising this first point it could be said that however has three different meanings and uses10 : (i). however expressing contrast which i will call hchchchchc. (ii). however preceding adjectives or adverbs and playing the role of a “diminisheremphasiser” which i will call hd-ehd-ehd-ehd-ehd-e. (iii). however preceding adverbs and playing the role of a “reinforcer” which i will call hrhrhrhrhr..... 2. however: p2. however: p2. however: p2. however: p2. however: position, occurosition, occurosition, occurosition, occurosition, occurrence andrence andrence andrence andrence and frequencyfrequencyfrequencyfrequencyfrequency 2.1 p2.1 p2.1 p2.1 p2.1 positionositionositionositionosition h ch ch ch ch c may occur in any position in an utterance. nonetheless, the position of however in the second clause seems to be the most common. let us consider the following examples taken form the corpus. 9 the term “reinforcer” is not likely to be used very commonly . it doesn’t appear in the longman dictionary of contemporary english” and, according to informants, it is sometimes used while in others it is not. 10 it is important to remember that hc and hd-e are, syntactically speaking, very different. ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ 22profileprofileprofileprofileprofile there are many more different structures in which hchchchchc occurs in a second clause after the first clause. however, it is rather unlikely to find examples where hchchchchc, in the second clause, appears before the first clause. the high variable positions of hc hc hc hc hc may be shown by means of the following example where (*) indicates the possible positions of hchchchchc, although some are considered more common than others. * “for me, * aesthetics * seemed to be * a more civilised mode guidance * than theology * ” 2.22.22.22.22.2 occurrenceoccurrenceoccurrenceoccurrenceoccurrence 2. 2.1 hd-e before adjectives2. 2.1 hd-e before adjectives2. 2.1 hd-e before adjectives2. 2.1 hd-e before adjectives2. 2.1 hd-e before adjectives “where there is a passionate and constant love of a book and rereading, then, however bad we think the book and however immature or uneducated we think the reader, it cannot...” there are 46 cases in the corpus in which hd-ehd-ehd-ehd-ehd-e occurs before adjectives: (hd-ehd-ehd-ehd-ehd-e + unpopular, horrific, impressive, arbitrary, educative, well-hidden...) 2. 2.2 hd-e before adverbs2. 2.2 hd-e before adverbs2. 2.2 hd-e before adverbs2. 2.2 hd-e before adverbs2. 2.2 hd-e before adverbs “what we can and do object to, however carefully landscaped and however beautifully designed this power station...” there is a total number of 11 cases in the corpus in which h d eh d eh d eh d eh d e occurs before adverbs. 2.2.32.2.32.2.32.2.32.2.3 hr before adverbshr before adverbshr before adverbshr before adverbshr before adverbs “ morand decides that the ringing repetition of me in the speech of sacrifice of the son is a little too grotesque, however perfectly in character” there are 10 cases in the corpus in which hrhrhrhrhr occurs before adverbs: ( h r h r h r h r h r + briefly, reluctantly, much, beautifully...). 2.3 f2.3 f2.3 f2.3 f2.3 frequencyrequencyrequencyrequencyrequency considering the frequency of however according to its possible meanings and uses, it was found that: 2.3.12.3.12.3.12.3.12.3.1 in general terms, however seems to be more frequent in texts related to scientific writings (28 %) and in belles-lettres, biographies and essays (18%) than in any other category of texts which may show that however is mostly used in formal writings. it is surprising that in science fiction, it occurs only one time (0.17 %). the second lowest frequency of however occurs in adventure and western fiction with a percentage of 1.2.11 2.3.22.3.22.3.22.3.22.3.2 hchchchchc is much more frequent than hd-hd-hd-hd-hde e e e e or hrhrhrhrhr. . . . . among 566 texts in which however occurs, there are 499 cases of hc hc hc hc hc which is the 88.2 % . . . . . 11 other categories in the corpus: press: reportage, press: editorial, press: review, religion, skills, trades and hobbies, popular lore, miscellaneous, general fiction, mystery and detective fiction, romance and love story, humor. ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○23 profileprofileprofileprofileprofile 2.3.32.3.32.3.32.3.32.3.3 hd-e hd-e hd-e hd-e hd-e is much more frequent when it precedes adjectives than when it precedes adverbs. there are 46 cases of the former (8.1%) compared with 11 of the latter (1.9%). as can be clearly seen, there is some evidence to show that h d eh d eh d eh d eh d e preceding adjectives is more frequent. i can see no linguistic reason why this should be the case, but i suspect that this result may be due to the fact that there are more adjectives than adverbs being used. alternatively, and perhaps more likely, this result may be due to the fact that adverbs tend to be placed towards the end of a sentence, whereas however is mostly placed towards the beginning. 2.3.42.3.42.3.42.3.42.3.4 hr hr hr hr hr seems to be the least frequent. of 21 texts in which however occurs before adverbs, there are 10 cases of hr hr hr hr hr (1.8%), but none at all with the fiction categories which suggests that hr hr hr hr hr is a device of formal writing. 3. however: punctuation marks3. however: punctuation marks3. however: punctuation marks3. however: punctuation marks3. however: punctuation marks punctuation seems to play an important role especially when however expresses contrast. in general terms it could be said that: 3.13.13.13.13.1 hc hc hc hc hc generally occurs followed by a comma ”however, it must be re-emphasised that we have included hours worked in our computation....” 3.23.23.23.23.2 hc hc hc hc hc can also occur between commas “the public services, however, are commited to a different view.” 3.3. 3.3. 3.3. 3.3. 3.3. there are some cases in which hc hc hc hc hc is not followed by or between commas “it may however be argued that (...) .places overmuch weight on the influence of average unemployment.” it could be considered that hchchchchc followed by or between commas emphasises the subject more, whereas, generally speaking, hc hc hc hc hc without commas emphasises the verb. this might be so because the use of commas may portray the intonation with which the piece should be read and thus makes the meaning clearer. however, the use of commas depends, to some degree, on the writers’ decision; they might think that the use of commas can make the sentence overcrowded with punctuation and they leave the commas out when the meaning is clear enough. the cases of hchchchchc followed by or between commas seems to be more common and therefore more frequent. of 499 texts of hchchchchc, there are just 39 cases in which hc hc hc hc hc appears without commas. this makes only the 7.8% of the cases of hc.hc.hc.hc.hc. 4. conclusions4. conclusions4. conclusions4. conclusions4. conclusions however hard the writing of this essay was, it has been definitely influential in the development and strength of an awareness of what “communicative grammar” and the “teaching of grammar in a communicative way” mean. grammar cannot be seen as a separate, “cold” piece of a given language. conversely, according to leech, it is closely related to the study of language from the point of view ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ 24profileprofileprofileprofileprofile of the users, especially of the choices they make, the constraints they encounter in using language in social interactions, and the effect their use of language has on the other participants in an act of communication, which helps the learner to figure out how the language works when interacting with other people. in the case study of however, , , , , it is surprising to discover the different aspects the word presents and the possible meanings the word suggests. it should be noted, however, that there must be more issues underlying the word than i could uncover. bibliographybibliographybibliographybibliographybibliography collins cobuild. (1990) english grammar. the university of birmingham: collins publishers. crystal , d. (ed). a dictionary of linguistics and phonetics. oxford: basil blackwell ltd. leech, g. and stvartvik, j. (1985). a communicative grammar of english. singapore: longman. procter, p. (ed) (1978). longman dictionary of contemporary english. london: longman. quirk, r, greebaun, s., leech, g. and svartvik, j. (1982). a grammar of contemporary english. london: longman. quirk, r, leech, g. and svartvik, j. (1985). a comprehensive grammar of the english language. london: longman. swan, m. (1980). practical english usage. oxford: oup. • profile 9.indd the virtual forum as an alternative way to enhance foreign language learning profile 9, 2008. issn 1657-0790. bogotá, colombia. pages 219-236 219 * this paper reports on a project conducted by the authors: “alfabetización digital en la escuela: narrativas hipermediales”. the study was sponsored by the centro de investigaciones y desarrollo científico, universidad distrital francisco josé de caldas. code number: 2406203706. ** e-mail: aclavijoolarte@yahoo.com address: avenida ciudad de quito no.64-81 oficina 607 y 704 bogotá, colombia *** e-mail: nhine@computing.dundee.ac.uk **** e-mail: luzmaq03@yahoo.com address: avenida ciudad de quito no.64-81 oficina 704 bogotá, colombia. this article was received on november 15th, 2007 and accepted on january 20th, 2008. the virtual forum as an alternative way to enhance foreign language learning* el foro virtual como una alternativa para incrementar el aprendizaje del idioma extranjero amparo clavijo olarte** universidad distrital francisco josé de caldas – sede postgrados facultad de ciencias y educación, colombia nicolas alexander hine*** university of dundee. dundee, scotland. luz mary quintero**** universidad distrital francisco josé de caldas – sede macarena a, colombia a web-based story sharing forum has been established to provide students in bogotá, colombia, new brunswick, canada and dundee, scotland with the opportunity to exchange cross-cultural stories as a complement to the regular elt curriculum. this paper will describe the process through which the exchange experience was established and the progress achieved by the group of colombian students in their regular interaction through blogs, theme-based wikis, social forums and online debates. the teaching practices utilized in the forum have fostered the creation of communities of interest and practice among teachers and students in the forum. early results suggest that this innovative way of implementing the elt curriculum has promoted student involvement and language development through the use of icts. key words: efl learning mediated by icts, learning communities, blogs as tools for language learning el propósito de este artículo es compartir las experiencias de intercambio lingüístico y cultural que a través de un foro virtual (www.ourdigitalculture.net) se realizaron entre un grupo de estudiantes colombianos aprendiendo inglés como lengua extranjera y un grupo de estudiantes de new brunswick, canadá y escocia a través de interacción regular con el uso de blogs, wikis, foros sociales y debates. el objetivo es mostrar el proceso de intercambio y los beneficios en el aprendizaje del grupo de estudiantes colombianos. las prácticas de enseñanza utilizadas en el foro han promovido la creación de comunidades de interés y comunidades de práctica entre los profesores y los estudiantes del foro. los resultados preliminares sugieren que esta forma alternativa de implementar el currículo de inglés como lengua extranjera ha fomentado la participación activa de los estudiantes y el desarrollo de lengua extranjera mediante el uso de las tics. palabras clave: aprendizaje de inglés como lengua extranjera mediado por las tics, comunidades de aprendizaje, blogs como herramientas para el aprendizaje de lengua profile 9.indd 219 21/04/2008 07:44:05 p.m. clavijo olarte, hine and quintero universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras220 introduction the traditional foreign language curriculum in colombia has, for many years, focused on the development of language skills and structures as a way for students to master some knowledge about the language. within this framework, language teachers believe that knowing the structures of the target language is the most important source required to speak it. foreign language acquisition research, however, has demonstrated that language structures need to serve a real purpose for language use in order for the language to be learned. in this regard, halliday (1979) proposes three basic principles to language learning: learning about language (structural aspects of language), learning through language (literature group discussions, book reviews) and learning language (inquiry projects, book talks, storytelling). the integration of these three principles makes language learning a more integrated, realistic experience. in the context of this study, we are interested in providing learning environments that offer students and teachers new opportunities to use language to learn, mediated by information and communication technologies (icts). for this purpose, an international collaborative project with teachers and students was established, supported by a virtual forum, as a platform for the teaching of language. the case we report here corresponds to the pedagogical activities developed by two groups of initial preparation courses in colombia and canada during an academic year. the virtual forum is a space in which currently nearly 1,200 students and teachers from five different countries participate using english and spanish, to communicate and learn together. it is structured for the four educational levels: elementary, middle and high school and university. four main spaces were created to promote learning and interaction among students: personal blogs, theme-based wikis, social forums and online debates. students were introduced to the personal blog to start getting to know each other and to exchange information about themselves and their home countries. teachers in the different geographical locations also communicate to negotiate themes and objectives for the pedagogical tasks proposed to the students. through the use of personal, theme-based and debate spaces, participating students maintain interaction in the forum and their learning is extended beyond learning about language. their exchanges contain information related to cultural and personal interests that motivate the creation of communities of interest. the frequent use of language to communicate helps efl students gain understanding of the target language and become involve in communities of practice. in practical terms, these interactions take the form of asynchronous dialogues using a variety of media such as words, pictures, video and audio clips, and music. they also take the form of the construction of narratives and stories, either by individuals or as collaborative groups, covering topics of interest or topics being proposed within the participants’ wider curriculum. the learning environment of the virtual forum provides a place where authentic, living and profile 9.indd 220 21/04/2008 07:44:05 p.m. the virtual forum as an alternative way to enhance foreign language learning profile 9, 2008. issn 1657-0790. bogotá, colombia. pages 219-236 221 everyday language can be exchanged, which in turn has contributed to building virtual communities of interest and communities of practice amongst the three groups of students. the topics addressed in the forum are proposed and negotiated by the teachers and the groups of students. this participatory way of deciding the contents of the interactions helps consolidate the existing communities and generates a nontraditional way of extending the language learning beyond the curriculum which means expanding spheres of free spaces for decision making on the part of the students. the participative agenda for curriculum exploration encouraged students to find their own voice to speak and negotiate with others in the forum, and to decide upon the curricular activities. it illustrates that when individuals participate in decisions that directly affect them, they develop the confidence that such action is possible as well as the desire to participate in even broader public activities in school and outside of it. (beyer & apple, 1998). student-teacher participation also required a change of role of the teacher in planning the instruction to use the virtual forum and create learning spaces for the communities to interact. it implied fostering dialogue rather than controlling it and encouraging instead of controlling the learning process. engaging in a participatory dialogue with students allowed them to critically examine their previous experiences to investigate topics that mattered to them and to transform their views of themselves as learners and teachers (wolfe-quintero, 2000). principles underlying the forum thinkers and educators such as freire (1970) have provided a foundation of challenges and practical recommendations that are not only firmly rooted in the realities of the spectrum of latin american contexts, but also continue to have relevance to the situation prevailing in european and north american countries. the forum builds on these principles and provides a learning environment that addresses the following pedagogic issues within a culture of peer-based learning and situated learning activities. humans are social creatures (read & miller, 1995). gossiping and storytelling is the means by which social interactions affect the balance of communities and societies (emler, 2001). social interaction implies interaction with people within society. we learn from others, and we share with others what we have learnt. we interact with others in various ways that influence our status and roles in social communities. humans have more complex patterns of social interactions than any other species. read & miller’s work builds on that of schank (1990) who explored many aspects of storytelling, considering it central to not only social interactions, but also as the essential organising mechanism of knowledge in memory. one aspect of this work is the idea that conversations often follow context specific “scripts”, with associated “goals” and “plans”, demonstrating and leading to “understanding”. whilst some of schank’s work has been criticised as being insufficiently supported by experimental data (brewer, 1995), it has catalysed a strong profile 9.indd 221 21/04/2008 07:44:05 p.m. clavijo olarte, hine and quintero universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras222 debate that has lead to renewed interest in the role of stories in human social interaction and in learning. one further aspect of the various possible roles of storytelling as part of social interactions is that people live in societies that have specific cultures that govern the way that they live. ember & ember (in segall et al., 1999a) defined culture as “the shared customs of a society, the learned behaviors, beliefs and attitudes that are characteristic of people in a particular society or population”. miller (1995) reports substantial evidence showing that storytelling takes place in many different cultures and between people of all ages, in support of social interaction. the type of narrative may be highly culturally specific. this may not be simply a matter of vocabulary. in some cases it is manifest in culturally specific turn-taking behaviors between the communicating parties, with perhaps more than one person relating the story to other members of the conversation. the manner employed to emphasize an aspect of the story may differ from culture to culture. these attributes of storytelling identify the teller as someone who can communicate according to the norms of the culture or not. given that storytelling is a primary method of participating in social interaction, the cultural specific aspects of storytelling may determine the success of a social interaction with people from a specific culture. knowing the stories of another culture is a bridge into another culture. scott (1995), in reviewing the work of schank & abelson (1995), makes the point that storytelling does not automatically imply the use of words. other forms of representation are possible; for example, using pictures or images, symbols, objects or even mathematical equations. in the context of technology-supported education, storytelling is a creative process that enables young people to express themselves (individually and collaboratively) by bringing together information into an engaging and coherent argument (bruner, 1986). stories are the basis for case-based memories (schank, 1990) and are, therefore, essential for healthy cognitive development. stories are also vehicles for meaningful social interactions and for learning. learning through stories happens best when accompanied by socializing through stories. the sharing of stories, both personal and those exploring different topics within the formal curriculum, is the basis for the interactions within the online forum. in addition, teachers and educators in scotland, canada, chile and in colombia have been consulted to expose the wider issues associated with the use of ict in education. the following points have emerged as being important in education today, and to some extent neglected in the way educational technology is implemented and deployed: reflective thinking prensky (2001) and others have suggested that students who are constantly handling information in the form of short and easily accessed blocks seem to be losing the ability to think deeply about the meaning of the information, or to construct sequenced or coherent arguments. it is proposed, therefore, to explore the use profile 9.indd 222 21/04/2008 07:44:06 p.m. the virtual forum as an alternative way to enhance foreign language learning profile 9, 2008. issn 1657-0790. bogotá, colombia. pages 219-236 223 of multithreaded and networked blogs and hypermedia support as a means of promoting brain-forming functions in young people, where reasoned arguments are practiced and rehearsed and where knowledge is appreciated and constructed through associations between informational elements. early experiences in the forum do suggest that students become more selective in their use of materials, knowing that others will be reading and linking to their contributions. 1. media literacy young people are growing up in an informational age where the principle commercial commodity is information. information is available in a wide variety of media, including, but not exclusively, text, pictures, photos, drawings, video, animations, speech and audio. these media are delivered via a variety of platforms including books, magazines, newspapers, telephones, personal digital assistants (pdas), computers, games consoles, tvs, radios, cds and dvds, etc. many different people are producing and delivering information for a wide variety of reasons. not only do young people need to have skills in making and using media, they need to be able to understand the message being conveyed to them by others. (meyrowitz, 1998; frechette, 2002). so, media literacy curricula should be revisited to ensure that they are comprehensive enough to equip young people with the skills to comprehend the message delivered by all these media, both alone and in combination, and in having the skills to express themselves with these media, again both alone and in combination. 2. cross-cultural integration the appreciation and respect for cultures is becoming an essential attribute for citizens of global communities, if they are to maintain their local, national, and global cultural memberships as well as their individual subjectivities. the peer group within which stories will be created, presented and defended is multicultural, which will involve the students in crosscultural interchange, an interchange that will inevitably lead to a degree of crosscultural understanding. 3. online experience the nature of the communication and information access inevitably involves the use of the internet, videoconferencing and other remote communication technologies (mobile telephony, short messages, community tv, etc.). turkle (1997) and joinson (2003) explore at length the new relationships and subjectivities that arise in these modalities of interaction. the collaboration opportunities available in the storytelling forum will enable these issues to be sensitively and comprehensively explored. 4. heterogeneous learners in conventional education contexts, the academic differences between students are recognized and accommodated as far as resources allow. in general, when technology is deployed, however, a single system, profile 9.indd 223 21/04/2008 07:44:06 p.m. clavijo olarte, hine and quintero universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras224 interface and learning path is prescribed for all learners. even using systems such as adaptive hypermedia, the end goal is often to bring all students to a common learning outcome. there is a need, however, to provide a platform where all students are able to learn in ways that are appropriate for each individual learner. 5. multilingualism the ability to converse, interact and exchange information in various languages is becoming increasingly important in a world where these interactions are no longer bound by time or distance. the learning platform used in this study, therefore, provides opportunities for these issues to be explored. in this paper, early experience in the context of language learning will be presented. theoretical considerations enhancing language learning through the use of icts a recurring theme in the literature on computer-mediated communication is that information and communication technologies (icts) offer opportunities for treating teaching and learning as truly social activities where knowledge is built through interaction and dialogue rather than lectures and recitation (brown, 2000; hardwick, 2000; rice, 2003). technology goes beyond the delivery of information and lies instead in the power to create collaborative, learner-centered educational spaces (dietering & huston, 2004). thanks to technology, language teachers have a new tool that can provide students with opportunities to interact with a virtual community, they can construct knowledge and exchange cultural issues with the participants, at the same time that they encourage social and communicative behaviors to construct knowledge and language learning. weblogs were not designed to re-create the traditional classroom but to create a learner-centre environment where the learner actually owns his or her learning (oravec, 2003, cited in deitering & huston, 2004). weblogs as social and communicative tools weblogs are a relatively new web tool that have spread all over the world during the last few years. however, as mentioned by ward (2004), it was only after 2003 that language teachers started to use them for teaching/learning purposes. the general online consensus, according to ward (2004) is that “a weblog is a website that is updated regularly and organized chronologically according to the date, and in reverse order from most recent entry backwards. weblogs can also provide decentralized access rights which allow(s) multiple authors” (p. 2). however, these are only technical definitions of what a blog is; there are other considerations that deal with the use of the blogs. from other perspectives, a weblog is a personal webspace where learners can post any kind of information they want. ward (2004) states: “the weblogs are usually motivated solely by the need of self-expression, and often communicate profile 9.indd 224 21/04/2008 07:44:06 p.m. the virtual forum as an alternative way to enhance foreign language learning profile 9, 2008. issn 1657-0790. bogotá, colombia. pages 219-236 225 something about the personality, or adopted person, behind the blog, through the style of writing and choice of topics.” (p. 2). certainly, the writings each blogger posts suggest the kind of person he/she is. as it is a very personal space, students can write about things they like and want to write about. behind each piece of writing, there is increasing competence in terms of the language and also in terms of technology, and media literacy. blood (2000) highlights that: “blogs are nothing less than an outbreak of self-expression. each is evidence of a staggering shift from an age of carefully controlled information provided by sanctioned authorities (and artists), to an unprecedented opportunity for individual expression on a worldwide scale” (p. 7) there are some studies that have shown the advantages of using weblogs to enhance students’ language development. ward (2004) carried out a short-term study with forty non-native english speaker students with an intermediate language level. the study was developed in order to see how weblogs could benefit his composition class. the teacher chose four different tasks for students to write. he says that even though blogs are thought of as spaces where little attention is paid to form, he wanted his students to advance in their writing, so he helped them in the process of writing each text. the audience for the students was peers from the same class. his findings suggest that students enjoyed the experience a lot, and they said that it had helped them a lot in improving their english level. other students expressed that the blog was a forum for self-expression, something similar to a diary where they could put all the things they wanted to share with others. in general, according to the author, students were highly motivated to write. some of them continued keeping their blog after the course finished. a similar study was undertaken by deitering & huston (2004) at western oregon university with a group of students from the geography and film intensive writing courses offered in spring 2004. there were eighteen students enrolled in this class. a class weblog, filmtalk, was created as a space for students to publish their own ideas about course content, and also to share with the others their ideas and writings. this was a collective weblog where all students wrote at least three times a week. based on the comments students created discussions which provided a space for informal writing. however, they were also required to write formal pieces of writing such as film reviews and critiques. the instructor only used the blog to write announcements and new tasks, the rest was entirely created by the students. similarly to the study previously mentioned, students felt it was a great opportunity to express themselves outside the classroom and at the same time, keep a record of the discussions to be reused later. the authors point out that the weblog, filmtalk, worked well as a community forum where every student contributed to the enrichment of the discussions. additionally, the blog provided the medium for informal writing in the course without excessive attention to the mechanics or disciplinary specifics of their fields. these two experiences suggest that weblogs can change the dynamics of our classes, especially writing classes, which sometimes appear to be a heavy load profile 9.indd 225 21/04/2008 07:44:06 p.m. clavijo olarte, hine and quintero universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras226 for students and teachers. weblogs are particularly easy to use and to integrate in traditional classes, affording students’ freedom, creativity, the use of their own voice and self-learning in ways not easily achieved in normal classes. thus, as pointed out above, using weblogs to enhance writing provides opportunities to communicate with a real audience, which offers constant feedback on the published entries in students’ blogs, fosters peer work and contributes to creating and consolidating communities of interest and of practice among learners as users. building virtual communities wenger (1998) in his foundational work “communities of practice: learning meaning and identity” lays out the principles of how being part of a learning community profoundly affects and enhances the learning experience. wenger’s presentation of learning within “communities of practice” and the broader “communities of interest” builds heavily on a refined model of a social theory of learning and depends on social interaction between learners. mercer (2003) understands community as a group of people who have some common knowledge and similar interests which are shared basically through language. from a socio-cultural perspective of learning, it is believed that all learning takes place in a community. if we think of children we find that the first social milieu in which their life is embedded is their family, which is also the first community they belong to. this small but powerful community for those first stages of their lives is the one that helps them construct all their knowledge. children certainly learn thanks to the active interaction among the members. as they grow up, their community also grows. thus, the neighborhood, the school and the group of friends become communities too; all of them are sources for children’s learning and knowledge construction. within these communities, knowledge resources are basically shared and developed through language because knowledge commonly exists in the form of language (mercer, 2003). with the avenue of technological changes and thanks to the great variety of resources the information and communication technologies (ict) offer, it is now possible to think of a community not only in terms of people who interact in the same geographical place but also in terms of virtual communities which share similar interests. rheingold (1993) suggests that: “virtual communities are social aggregations that emerge from the internet when enough people carry on … public discussions long enough, with sufficient human feeling, to form webs of personal relationships in cyberspace.” (p. 5). for this particular study, we focus on a community of individuals that share similar interests in learning about language and culture, maintain regular contact and dialogue and decide together upon the common goals for learning. as this is fundamental to any of the pedagogic objectives of the forum, it is essential to verify that students participating in it develop language competence in their foreign language and interaction is achieved. profile 9.indd 226 21/04/2008 07:44:06 p.m. the virtual forum as an alternative way to enhance foreign language learning profile 9, 2008. issn 1657-0790. bogotá, colombia. pages 219-236 227 learning platform and practices the context in which the pedagogical practices that we describe in this section took place is bogotá, colombia. a group of trainee teachers in colombia (17 students), and a group of senior high school students in canada (24 students) agreed to use the forum platform to practice their foreign language skills as part of their language training courses. the students were of the same age, even though they were in different phases in their educational path. the colombian students agreed to post in english rather than their native spanish. the canadian students agreed to post in spanish rather than their native english. the material posted included words, photographs, video clips and music. the two groups interacted during a period of seven months and they explored topics of local culture, music and natural disasters. towards the end of this period, a small number (6) of senior high school students the same age as the other students in colombia and canada in dundee joined the community, contributing principally within the debating spaces in the forum. the dundee students started becoming acquainted with the dynamics of the forum in order to fully join it the following semester. a key part of the student interaction, therefore, was the experience of attempting to converse with students using their foreign/target language. it was anticipated that the forum could provide a valuable platform for the native english-speaking students to practice spanish, and for the native spanish-speaking students to practice english. teachers from each country played an important role in designing pedagogical activities that allowed students to have a space to meet and interact. some pedagogical tasks were implemented during the pedagogical project in order to set an environment for the students to interact considering the principles of the forum. during the early phase, each student had a personal blog in which they wrote about topics of their personal interest as well as the topic of local culture agreed with the other group. some students wrote stories and poems, others about personal experiences, and some others about current cultural aspects. through the exploration of students’ local culture, they showed their perspectives about their own culture, learned about different lifestyles in other countries, while using the target language for regular communication. in this initial phase, the teacher played a crucial role to assist students in the uses of icts, appropriate ways to generate dialogue with peers and conventional uses of the language they were learning. in addition, however, peer feedback was valuable to maintain communication in the blogs. for example, in this posting that occurred early in the study period: posted at apr 07/2006 10:28pm: hi!!! i am paula andrea; i was born in bogotá, colombia in 12th /august/1988, so i am 17 years old. i have one sister her name is lizeth and she is 14. posted at apr 19/2006 10:05pm: paula i’m paula andrea i’m 17 years old and i’m studyng for be a teacher at universidad distrital i live in bogotá colombia and i love all kinds of music, my favorite color is blue and i love my country because it is wonderful and exciting, but i would like go to your country and see many new things. i love the salads and the candies, and i love the novels and poems. tell me about you. profile 9.indd 227 21/04/2008 07:44:07 p.m. clavijo olarte, hine and quintero universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras228 posted at apr 20/2006 05:30pm: amandassed: well, i love to read and travel. i am now reading through all jane austen’s work. the novels are all classic english novel, set in the 1800’s. i am a lacto-ovo vegetarian, which means i eat milk and egg products but not red meat, chicken or fish. i am planning to attend mount allison university in sackville, new brunswick. i will be majoring in political science and business. i hope to attend mcgill university for a law degree. posted at apr 26/2006 09:49pm: paula: the last photos are about the10th iberoamerican theater festival: in bogotá every two years, we celebrate the theater festival. it is a wonderful carnival; it always starts the first saturday of april with a beautiful parade. this year i went there and it was fantastic. there were big puppets, musical groups, dance, music, theater, etc. there were foreign performances from: bolivia, republica dominicana, cuba, usa, etc. finally there was a concert of andres cabas. from 31st march to 15th april at all the theaters of bogotá, parks and at some malls many groups from all the world showed their performances which were successful. at corferias, a place for expositions, was located “ciudad teatro” a big theater, there were: performances, concerts, clowns, puppets, lectures about theater, etc. if you don’t want to go to a performance because you don’t understand its language, calm down!!, the foreign performances are4 subtitled or translated simultaneously. it’s only a bit of what the theater festival is. it is the most important theater festival of the world. it is very famous in many countries. the festival finished on 16th april with a german performance, fireworks and colorful lights. it was shown at simon bolivar park. posted at apr 27/2006 05:25pm: amandassed: wow! i love the pictures. i have never seen anything like it in canada. although when i was in china, they were a lot of show that i believe would create the same type of amazement that this festival does. this interaction is between a colombian trainee teacher and a student of the same age in canada. it is an example of a dialogue that took place in english, and is similar to those that took place in spanish between the cohorts of students that these two students belonged to. it shows a genuine spontaneous exchange of common themes and a real exchange and connection between the peers. the materials exchanged between students are authentic texts which are embedded in communicative tasks planned by the teacher or initiated by the students. as students understood the dynamics of the forum and acquired more knowledge on the target language, their language competence also increased. this was evidenced in the kind of texts and language that they wrote. the later texts were longer and more complex structures were used than in the earlier ones. they moved from writing short personal passages to writing short articles about their chosen topic. the contribution posted below occurred approximately six months after the previous example, and is typical of the greater diversity of topics being discussed at that time. posted at oct 25/2006 08:22pm: this is me. i’m edward murillo moreno,i was born, and actually i live in bogota with my parents, one sister and one dog. actually i’m a trainee teacher at distrital university francisco jose de caldas. 2 years ago i lived in nyc. i’m a 19 year old teenager. i’m a freak-o guy, and i hate normal people. i love to eat human meat every saturday and my favorite band is slayer. are u scared? . well, i’m not that kind of guy. i love life and laughing a lot, telling jokes and drawing my life in cartoons.writing is my favorite hobby, also reading and see some fashion mags in my profile 9.indd 228 21/04/2008 07:44:07 p.m. the virtual forum as an alternative way to enhance foreign language learning profile 9, 2008. issn 1657-0790. bogotá, colombia. pages 219-236 229 free time, and i’m a big fan from capote’s and sartre’s books.my life is so simple, i dont know what can i say in an autobiography.i don’t have good memories about my childhood and my teenage is traumathic. i’m catholic, but i don’t believe in a painkiller god and a world full of sins.i’ve worked with british and american issues of vogue.i love good music and books.that’s all that i can say, later on i’ll tell u about my favorite stuff. posted at dec 13/2006 06:28pm: historic luxury is loewe. for me, luxury is not a brand; it is a tradition that was developed for many generations of artists and designers searching perfection and quality as a main goal. luxury is not the quantity of money that you spend on something; it is the way that you live and the accessories that you use. it is a personal mood who is showed in many different ways: art, furniture, houses… not only for high society, just for people with good taste. today’s world is filled of trademarks who believe that they sell the “true” meaning of luxury, but one of them really does and this is loewe. the spanish leather, fashion and cosmetics house whose goal is to seduce the costumer with fancy and weird pieces. always with a big touch of class and sophistication in materials and design. loewe started to work 160 years ago when a craftsmen group decided to work together celebrating the madrid commercial’s opening and the brides of two very important spain duchesses. they started to create small leather goods as wallets and tobacco packs. at 1872 mister enrique loewe roesswerg, a german craftsman decided to associate with them in this moment the trademark loewe started to grow and its evolution is the mix between the spanish handmade work and the knowledge about leathers of mister loewe roesswerg. time goes by and in 1892 the spanish – german brand became a hit in the madrid’s high society thanks to its work with uncommon materials as snake, crocodile and iguana’s leather; and the handmade in accessories as female bags and male luggage. this “fur fever” is the beginning of one of the most precious tradition of loewe the research of exotic materials to create its accessories, clothes and perfumes. at twentieth century loewe started to expand their horizons and they opened two stores in barcelona, one of the most famous spanish cities and the iconic store located at gran via 8. this store is very important because many famous actors like liz taylor, audrey hepburn and zsa zsa gabor (just naming some of them) and writers like ernest hemingway loved to visit that store every time that they could be in madrid. years later, spain suffered the fascism and military government and loewe brought some shin in a very polemic spain full of war and chaos with their shop windows full of color and exotic influences. that was the first visual merchandising technique. it is the selling activity with good shop windows, well decorated and full of imagination. years later north american department stores like neiman marcus and saks fifth avenue copied it. the time goes on and loewe started to gain new costumers around the world. in 1985 the spanish leather and fashion house (they incorporated a ready to wear line in 1966 for women and 1984 they incorporated men’s clothing line.) decided to associate with the lvmh (louis vuitton moet hennesy) only to share the loewe’s spirit with all the world. nowadays loewe counts with almost 160 stores around the world that sells the leather accessories, the clothing line and the perfumes (a hit in the entire world). tradition is meaningful for loewe. all the accessories, clothing pieces and perfumes preserve the crafts spirit and the history of the spanish brand. you can be sure that every item is handmade with the best materials and designed by the best designers. its history is full of very known names in fashion business whose designs appeared in this house, like giorgio armani (loewe hombre: the men’s clothing line of the spanish brand), karl profile 9.indd 229 21/04/2008 07:44:07 p.m. clavijo olarte, hine and quintero universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras230 lagerfeld, laura biagotti and narcizo rodriguez. actually the designer in chief is the spanish jose enrique oña selfa. today, loewe works with 300 craftsmen whose goal is bring it to us the best fashion pieces in the world. also their perfumes are the best sells in every department store in the world and the brand is a meaning of luxury and elegance. this is the true meaning of luxury; a mix between history, class, power and tradition. luxury is the best way to show how you really are with an accessory as a bag or an exclusive perfume. loewe is the best choice to show the fact about luxury, you can see in every item the tradition, the history and the well handcraft. this is my point of view about luxury. as the students gained confidence as users of icts, they were encouraged to participate in the different activities in the forum autonomously and creatively. in addition to the personal blog, two different web spaces in the forum were created. one space was designed to have students work in groups to explore two main topics proposed in the forum: music and natural disasters. students could choose one, or simply alternate and write on both. the other new space was a blog used for a weekly debate which provided students with the opportunity to select any topic of their interest, present their opinions and discuss different points of view with others. posted at dec 07/2006 01:42am: popular tunes of colombia the colombia’s music is the richest and most promising that can be found anywhere in the hispanic-american world. music is the art that best expresses the feelings of our people, it is also one of the element that most accurately reflects the racial and cultural attributes of our nation. in reference to the general characteristics of the national soul, and sharply-defined variations of pacific regions, we can cite the following predominant aspects: the first place, there is noble lyric sadness of the andean tunes, in contrast to the joyous rhythmical ebullience of the costal tunes. secondly there are the psychological differences exhibited by the different regional types of colombian men. these are demonstrated in ballads, those the districts of antioquia, santander, and tolima, for example, reveal an enormous contrast in such sentiments as the idyllic sense of love, the tragic feeling of existence, and the humorous reaction to the vicissitudes of everyday existence. as regards tradition, there are numerous examples which testify the faithful manner in which the people have preserved the literary and musical heritage of spain. this was specially true of the “romance” literature and ballads acquired during the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. these were transmitted from generation to generation, relatively unchanged, except for minor modifications which resulted from adjustment to differing cultural and geographical conditions. examples: three memorable examples will suffice to establish the presence of music in our country’s history: “la vencedora”, which resounded on the battlefield of boyacá, “la marcha fúnebre del libertador”, the noble elegly which evokes powerful emotion, and “the himno de la nueva granada”, which was probably sung by the parents of our grandparents. as a logical consequence of colombia’s racial composition, the country’s popular music clearly shows three influences: indigenous, spanish and negro. part of this information was acquired in the book about the introduction to the noble song book of colombia by joaquin piñeros as the illustration shows students wrote an expository text to tell the story of bambuco, which is a kind of colombian profile 9.indd 230 21/04/2008 07:44:07 p.m. the virtual forum as an alternative way to enhance foreign language learning profile 9, 2008. issn 1657-0790. bogotá, colombia. pages 219-236 231 music. they provided clear information about the history, the tradition and meaning of this music in a way that was richer than in the first writing exchanges of the students. the preparation of the texts by students also required from them reading and searching for information about national history, local culture and traditions. it made them aware of the value of telling other people, from other parts of the world, about their own idiosyncrasies and cultural traditions. this cross-cultural experience contributed to raising awareness about one’s own culture as well as others’ cultures. the following example shows students’ participation in the weekly debates that were related to the influence of current music on people’s behaviours. because the debates are a different type of asynchronous dialogue from the personal chats within the personal blog pages, the postings were presented with the most recent postings first, in common with the conventional practice for forum blogs elsewhere on the internet. posted at oct 28/2006 01:02am: jamesm5sjhsd: hi, i’m james from st. johns high school in scotland, i feel a bit hesitant about commenting on this debate seen as firstly i can’t speak spanish and therefore don’t know or understand the music you are talking about, and secondly, because i’m not a trainee teacher. i would make a general comment by saying that music is a big thing in people’s lives, some may say that it doesn’t have an influence, i would disagree. if we look at battle scene’s from history we will always see troops singing their national anthem in order to boost the morale of their comrades, a clear sign music affects one’s psyche. an example which is closer to home would be a new mother singing a song to her baby to send them off to sleep. music here is having a calming effect, and i’d argue that this is another clear sign music is having a psychological effect on people. it can be argued that if these instances show the truth, and music is having a psychological effect on people, can it not therefore have a negative psychological effect on the person who is listening to said music, if said music is of this violent type which we have discussed? i am however a supported of civil liberties, and would say that its somewhat a matter of personal choice. no one should tell you what to listen to, or what to do, its a step closer to the nanny state. however, when we look at songs like the one quoted in this form (el doctor), and consider the evidence i have put forward, i ask you, do we really want children as young as 12 to be unconsciously fed bad messages about health workers. no!! i say be real, and whilst defending your civil liberties, censor this type of material from the younger members of society, and let them have an innocent childhood just like the rest of us had!!! james m 5 sjhsd (st. john’s high school dundee) posted at oct 03/2006 08:02pm: pilarica: the music must be a good expression of the art... is a comunication form,the music espress each life style.. and “tell me what do you listen and i will tell you who are you” simple.. i think that people that always listen reggaeton ... only thinks on sex... but in their brains there isn´t something of sencibility and art...like poetry ... altough some songs of reggaeton have a message , and a good rhythm... in the end we are latinamericans and this rhythm is latin (although it has some influences from another continents ) but i think that young people should listen contructive music posted at oct 03/2006 07:57pm: music is culture, is art. i love the feelings you can get when you are listening music, or on the other hand, the kind of music profile 9.indd 231 21/04/2008 07:44:07 p.m. clavijo olarte, hine and quintero universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras232 you want to listen depending on your mood. i`m agree with edward, the chilhood has to be watched by its parents. not all the music is good, even though, in this moment there are more bad music than good music. the comercial world just try to sell, no matter what the human being think what he wants be, and his growing as a being of cultural man. in fact, we have to be concieous , and try to not help that comercial world, looking for another kind of music, which base doesn`t be sex or boys, or rythms without meaning. we should look for music that believe in man and his differents cultures around the world. on that way maybe chlidren of today and tomorrow can be more sensibilities. posted at sep 29/2006 07:58pm: joanthan: also i think that the music is a form to read the world, see the violence and listen to the heart then is the music bad posted at oct 03/2006 07:56pm: gabriel: in this moment some singers make music for finding money and becoming famous but they don`t make true music posted at oct 03/2006 07:50pm: jonathan: there are things bad in the music, as for example the regeton singers, and every vallenateros, because they are “guisos, ñeros and paracos” almost they degrade our culture “posted at oct 03/2006 07:41pm: edward murillo moreno: but reggaeton is not the only music genre that gives a wrong behavior impression. excessive sexuality in popular music in divas like britney spears, jessica simpson, paris hilton or christina aguilera give a new conception of feminity in girls, but in a wrong way. today’s music shows a very wrong image to our children’s behaviour and we need to educate them to listened to it and understand their inner message; don’t matter if it is good or wrong. posted at sep 29/2006 07:57pm: edna angel: okay gabriel, i agree with you, it is true, although really current music are harmful for young people, nowadays some children prefer listening to this kind of music posted at sep 29/2006 07:53pm: jaime to edward: thanks for your opinion, i don’t like the reggaeton i only think that is a stupid kind of music, but another people love it for something. posted at sep 29/2006 07:49pm: gabriel: i think that reggaeton doesn´t have messages, but its rhytm is cool and nice for latin people, because reggaeton dancing is hot. this sample was taken from the set of over 30 contributions that were posted during the two week period that the topic was open for debate, and it consists of a set of contributions from a number of colombian trainee teachers, and a scottish high school student of the same age. it is remarkable for the range of more or less personal vs formal postings that the contributors made, and the range of linguistic competencies that the contributors possessed. one characteristic of language classes is that students often lack the confidence to contribute. in this case, however (in common with the debates of that period), the students had opinions that they felt sufficiently strongly about that they wanted to share them, even when their language skills were relatively weak compared with their peers. some of the idiomatic and linguistic constructs more profile 9.indd 232 21/04/2008 07:44:07 p.m. the virtual forum as an alternative way to enhance foreign language learning profile 9, 2008. issn 1657-0790. bogotá, colombia. pages 219-236 233 commonly associated with mobile phone messaging and online chatting dominated over the more conventional literary styles. this, therefore, was a conversation, a dialogue, rather than a formal presentation or prepared narrative material. in this sense, it pushed the linguistic competence of the contributors in a different, but equally authentic direction. taken as a whole, the contributions by the students showed a clear progression in the extent of the language used, both in volume and in complexity. they are accompanied by interactions from native language peers, and demonstrate a growing competence and confidence in the use of the non-native language. the increasing use of language associated with an increase in the breadth of content can be seen in the contributions quoted above as they are presented in chronological order. for any one student, an increase in language complexity is also discernable over the study period. the contents of the examples presented above support our discussion about the use of a virtual forum to enhance a participatory way to explore the language curriculum. the pedagogical experience planned and organized by the teachers and students required thoughtful action and guidance. it differs from a traditional language curriculum focused on learning language structures in the way that a participatory curriculum includes activities that engage teachers and learners in challenging learning situations that promote their language development and their learning to use the icts to communicate with other students in another part of the world. it is also evident that students explore contents beyond the basic input provided by their teacher in a regular class. conclusions the regular interactions of students and teachers from the two groups have fostered the creation of communities of interest and learning. such communities have been consolidated thanks to the writing exchanges based on cultural issues such as festivals, places, celebrations, music and the like as well as on personal interests. this learning community has promoted collaborative language learning and democratic participation on the part of students. collaborative, because the teacher also became a member of the community whose role was to mentor students by providing them feedback in terms of language use and how to manipulate technology. democratic, because students were allowed to choose the topics they wanted to discuss and the activities they wanted to carry out in the virtual space. this type of learning community does not just happen, however. it needs to be nurtured and supported with activities that both encourage learning and motivate participation. technology was the principal element that permitted the creation of this kind of community. the learning environment empowered and encouraged colombian students to use the target language for real communicative purposes. this new learning environment raised curiosity and motivation for students to self-express and to write their own stories to be shared with someone else who was interested in reading them, so that writing was not a profile 9.indd 233 21/04/2008 07:44:08 p.m. clavijo olarte, hine and quintero universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras234 mechanical practice to be graded by the teacher, but instead actually the creation of meaning. in the attempt to communicate students sought strategies to overcome their language difficulties while at the same time, they gained more understanding of the language. students’ writing increased appreciably, since they were motivated to write for an audience which, in most cases, was interested in reading their texts. therefore, students used language with real communicative purposes. this pilot study has therefore demonstrated that this type of community does seem to promote language learning. one of the most powerful insights of this study is that this environment is student centered and owned; therefore students are empowered to use their own voice to say whatever is important to them. they feel freedom to tell the stories that cannot be normally told in the traditional language classroom as classes are restricted to specific contents, times and schedules. from a teachers’ perspective, however, this type of learning community does not simply happen. it requires additional work on the part of the teacher to promote interactions and to catalyse the formation of the community. students with limited access to the internet away from the main university computer labs might be at a disadvantage, although students in this case tended to seek internet cafés to continue to post outside classroom hours. this pilot study will be followed up with a more in-depth consideration of the tangible outcomes and evidence of language use, and content of the writing exchanges, perhaps utilizing the “thinking together” techniques pioneered by mercer (2003). in particular, the on-going study will seek to explore the extent to which the on-line experience is stretching students to use language that is increasingly more powerful than that covered up to that point by the student in their language curriculum. references beyer, l., & apple, m. (eds). (1998). the curriculum: problems, politics and possibilities. albany: state university of new york press. blood, r. (2000). weblogs: a history and perspective. rebecca’s pocket. 07. retrieved 25th october 2006, from: http://www.rebeccablood.net/essays/ weblog_history.html brewer, w.f. (1995). to assert that essentially all human knowledge and memory is represented in terms of stories is certainly wrong. in wyer, r.s. (ed.), knowledge and memory: the real story (pp. 109-119). hillsdale, new jersey, usa: lawrence erlbaum associates, publishers. brown, d. (2000). educational beliefs: an overview. in d. brown (ed.), interactive learning: vignettes from america’s most wired campuses (pp. 3-7). boston, anker publishing co. bruner, j. (1986). actual minds, possible worlds. cambridge, ma: harvard university press. dietering, a., & huston, s. (2004). weblogs and the “middle space” for learning. academic exchange quarterly, 8(4), 273-278. emler, n. (2001). gossiping. in w.p. robinson & h. giles (eds.), the new handbook of language and social psychology (pp. 317-340). chichester, england, uk: john wiley and sons ltd. frechette, j.d., (2002). developing media literacy in cyberspace: pedagogy and critical learning for the 21st century classroom. westport, ct: praeger publishers. friere, p. (1970). the pedagogy of the oppressed. new york: continuum. halliday, m.a.k. (1979). three aspects of children’s language development: learning language, learning through language, learning about language. in y. goodman, m. haussler, & d. strickland. (eds), oral and written language profile 9.indd 234 21/04/2008 07:44:08 p.m. the virtual forum as an alternative way to enhance foreign language learning profile 9, 2008. issn 1657-0790. bogotá, colombia. pages 219-236 235 development research: impact on the schools. urbana: national council of teachers of english. hardwick, s. (2000). humanising the technology landscape through a collaborative pedagogy [electronic version]. journal of geography in higher education, 24(1), 123-129. joinson, a. (2003). understanding the psychology of internet behaviour: virtual worlds, real lives. great britain: palgrave macm. mercer, n. (2003). words & minds. london: routledge. meyrowitz, j. (1998). multiple media literacies. journal of communication, 48, 96-108. miller, p.j. (1995). personal storytelling in everyday life: social and cultural perspectives. in wyer, r.s. (ed.), knowledge and memory: the real story (pp. 177-184). hillsdale, new jersey, usa: lawrence erlbaum associates, publishers. oravec, j. (2003). blending by blogging: weblogs in blended learning initiatives [electronic version]. journal of educational media¸ 28(2/3), 225-233. prensky, m. (2001). digital natives, digital immigrants. on the horizon, 9(5), 1–2. retrieved from www.marcprensky.com/writing/ prensky%20-%20digital%20natives,%20 digital%20immigrants%20-%20part1.pdf read, s.j., & miller, l.c. (1995). stories are fundamental to meaning and memory: for social creatures could it be otherwise? in wyer, r.s. (ed.), knowledge and memory: the real story (pp. 139-152). hillsdale, new jersey, usa: lawrence erlbaum associates, publishers. rheingold, h. (1993). the virtual community: homesteading on the electronic frontier, reading, ma, mit press. rice, j. (2003). writing about cool: teaching hypertext as juxtaposition . computers and composition, 20, 221-236. schank, r.c. (1990). tell me a story: a new look at real and artificial memory. new york, new york, usa: scribner’s, macmillan publishing company. schank, r.c., & abelson, r.p. (1995). knowledge and memory: the real story. in wyer, r.s. (ed.), knowledge and memory: the real story (pp. 1-85). hillsdale, new jersey, usa: lawrence erlbaum associates, publishers. schank, r.c., & cleary, c. (1995). engines for education. hillsdale, new jersey, usa: lawrence erlbaum associates, publishers. scott, l.m. (1995). representation and narrative: a commentary on schank and abelson’s “knowledge and memory. in wyer, r.s. (ed.) knowledge and memory: the real story (pp. 165-176). hillsdale, new jersey, usa: lawrence erlbaum associates, publishers. segall, m.h., dasen, p.r., berry, j.w., & poortinga, y.h. (1999). human behaviour in global perspective: an introduction to cross-cultural psychology. needham heights, ma, usa: allyn & bacon. turkle, s. (1997). life on the screen: identity in the age of the internet. new york: simon & schuster. ward, j. (2004). blog assisted language learning (ball): push button publishing for the pupils. tefl web journal, 3(1), 1-16. wenger, e. (1998). communities of practice: learning, meaning, and identity. cambridge: cambridge university press. profile 9.indd 235 21/04/2008 07:44:08 p.m. clavijo olarte, hine and quintero universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras236 about the authors amparo clavijo olarte holds a phd in education from the university of arizona and is currently the head of the masters program in applied linguistics and the director of the colombian applied linguistics journal from universidad distrital. her research interest is the development of literacy and biliteracy and the applications of technology for the development of literacy in educational contexts. the research group she directs is developing the project digital literacy in schools: hypermedia narratives in six schools in bogotá. nicolas alexander hine holds a phd in applied computing from university of dundee. he is currently a professor at the department of applied computing at the same university. he is a researcher in the group of telecommunications and is responsible for the virtual forum that operates to make the research project on digital literacy in schools: hypermedia narratives possible with different countries. luz mary quintero is currently a teacher of english in the initial teacher education program at universidad distrital and a candidate to the m.a. in applied linguistics from the same university. her research interest is the development of writing with efl students and technology applications in education. profile 9.indd 236 21/04/2008 07:44:08 p.m. profile 5.pmd ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○83 profile profile profile profile profile reading aloud activities as a way to determine students’ narrative template reading aloud activities as a way to determine students’ narrative template actividades de lectura en voz alta como una forma de determinar el modelo narrativo de los estudiantes josé aldemar álvarez vjosé aldemar álvarez vjosé aldemar álvarez vjosé aldemar álvarez vjosé aldemar álvarez valenciaalenciaalenciaalenciaalencia* universidad pedagógica nacional aldecho@hotmail.com this article focuses on the description of a methodological innovation implemented in a beginner’s english class at university level in bogotá, colombia which had two aims: first, to explore the role of reading aloud activities in the teaching of english, and second, to describe the narrative template students use when retelling a story in writing. data collection sources for this smallscale project incorporated class observation during the reading aloud activity, students’ written samples as the means for them to retell the story, and interviews that were held at the end of the research process. this experience allowed both the teacher and the learners to approach english and see themselves playing a different role in the classroom. moreover, it helped students foster their communicative competence as well as their motivation toward english language learning. thus, this study promotes pedagogical debate about literacy processes in english in adults and the applicability of this kind of innovation in an efl context. kkkkkey worey worey worey worey words:ds:ds:ds:ds: literacy, reading aloud, storytelling, narrative template, english innovation, foreign language-innovation el objetivo de este artículo es describir una innovación que se implementó en un curso de inglés básico a nivel universitario en bogotá, colombia y el cual tuvo dos objetivos: primero, explorar el rol de de las actividades de lectura en voz alta para el aprendizaje del inglés y segundo describir el modelo narrativo que usan los estudiantes cuando narran una historia. los métodos de recolección de datos para este proyecto a menor escala incorporaron observación de clases durante las actividades de lectura en voz alta, producción escrita de los estudiantes como un medio para que ellos narraran las historias y entrevistas al final del proceso de investigación. esta experiencia permitió al profesor y a los * josé aldemar álvarez vjosé aldemar álvarez vjosé aldemar álvarez vjosé aldemar álvarez vjosé aldemar álvarez valenciaalenciaalenciaalenciaalencia is a teacher of english graduated from universidad pedagógica nacional. currently he is a fourth semester student of the master in applied linguistics at universidad distrital in bogotá. he works at universidad pedagógica nacional and universidad de ciencias aplicadas y ambientales u.d.c.a as a teacher of english. ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ 84 alvarez profile profile profile profile profile estudiantes acercase al inglés de una manera diferente y verse a sí mismos asumiendo otro rol en el aula de clase. además, incentivó el desarrollo de la competencia comunicativa así como la motivación hacia el aprendizaje de la lengua. en consecuencia, este estudio promueve la discusión pedagógica acerca del proceso de desarrollo de lectura y escritura en inglés en adultos y la aplicación de este tipo de innovación en un contexto de enseñanza del inglés como lengua extranjera. palabras claves: palabras claves: palabras claves: palabras claves: palabras claves: proceso lecto-escritor, lectura en voz alta, narraciónhistorias, modelo narrativo, inglés-innovaciones, innovaciónlengua extranjera introductionintroductionintroductionintroductionintroduction this paper describes the development of a small-scale project that was part of the assignments of two seminars of the master in applied linguistics of the tefl program of universidad distrital. the interdisciplinary work on both subjects –the seminars on discourse analysis and classroom interaction and teacher preparation about theory and on methodology of foreign language teaching– prompted carr ying out an innovation grounded on the articulation and generation of pedagogical knowledge between these two areas in order to enrich the teachinglearning task. the study carried out during the second semester of 2003 aimed at promoting the literacy process not only in its linguistic dimension (reading and writing) but also in its socio-cultural dimension since any literacy practice constitutes a social practice (baynham, 1995). next, i describe the background and the basic constructs that support this study; then i report on the methodology, participants and site, the data collection procedure, and analysis. later, i discuss the findings in order to describe, first, the components of the narrative template that students use to retell a story and second, the impact of the reading aloud activity upon the students and language learning. finally, i examine the conclusions and pedagogical implications of the experience. review of literareview of literareview of literareview of literareview of literaturetureturetureture when i started thinking about the innovation that i was required to develop in my teaching context, i became interested in providing my students with exposure and interaction in a different language source. my first step was to carry out an informal needs analysis whose results revealed the students felt that reading aloud activities gave them more possibilities to interact with the foreign language. thus i found it interesting to integrate reading aloud with discourse analysis. hence, the reading aloud of a story would act as the input to enable students to use the components of the narrative genre. in this sense, i posed these two research questions: • what are the components of the narrative template students deal with when they retell a story in writing? ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○85 profile profile profile profile profile reading aloud activities as a way to determine students’ narrative template • what is the role of the reading aloud activity in the foreign language teaching-learning process of a beginners class? reading aloud as part of a literacy process attempts to encourage students’ oral and written production. in this sense it agreed with the basic concept that literacy is the mastery of the written and oral language forms. nevertheless, being literate is not only having the ability to read and write; it is a social practice (kramsch, 1998; baynham, 1995). as stated by zuñiga (2001), it is a social and cultural construction built up within the interaction of individuals. therefore, literacy is interpreted either in a linguistic dimension or in a socio-cultural dimension. thus, reading aloud nurtures both dimensions in a teaching-learning context. the process that underliesthe process that underliesthe process that underliesthe process that underliesthe process that underlies read-aloudsread-aloudsread-aloudsread-aloudsread-alouds according to ellis and brewster (2002), a person can retell a story in several ways; for instance, s/he can tell a tale without a book, an anecdote, a joke or can tell a story from a book by reading it aloud. when you read aloud, you open a space for retelling a story. retelling is part of our culture and daily life; we retell jokes, songs, poems, plays, and stories. for this reason, reading aloud comprises the bases for students to start performing retelling little by little in the second language (wright, 1997) thus prompting at a more interactional rather than transactional approach (mccarthy, 1991). as such, it will enhance the establishing of roles and relationships between and among the teacher and the students, the teaching and the learning process. during my experience as a language teacher, i have noticed that reading aloud or read-alouds, as named by campbell (2001), is a term that is generally used to refer to children’s literacy processes. however, i consider that the scope of this activity goes beyond this limited perception. it can provide an innovative approach to literacy instruction not only for children but also for adults (nurss, 2000 as cited in smallwood, 1992). readings can be adapted to any kind of language command and the characteristics of the students. children’s literature, for example, widely used with elementary esl students can be adapted to teach literacy skills to adult esl learners as well (smallwood, 1992). read-alouds help the literacy process of foreign language learners in many ways according to ellis and brewster (1991). some of these are as follows: • stories are motivating and funny and can help develop positive attitudes toward language learning. • they exercise the imagination as listeners become engaged and interpret and infer issues related to the narration. • they constitute a source for sharing social experiences different from the individuality that the writing and reading activity demands. this agrees with trealease (1989), as cited by campbell (1998), who claims that story reading supports emotional, social, and psychological development. ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ 86 alvarez profile profile profile profile profile • students learn more because they learn about language -new words, new syntactic forms, new meanings, and new ways of organizing discourse (dombey, 1988 as cited by ellis and brewster, 1991). • they also support the teacher whenever s/he wants to address any kind of topic because stories provide cross-curricular links. • they allow the teacher to convey her/ his love and excitement for both reading and learning and that starts building up the knowledge required for eventual success in reading (cooper, 1993). • it helps us to change traditional classes into perhaps ver y interesting ones (barreto, 2002, p. 55). there are different aspects that play a paramount role in the reading aloud activity. they are the kinds of stories the teacher chooses and the procedure used to carry out the reading. the former refers to the types of storybooks. according to ellis and brewster (1991) you can select humorous, rhyming, animal and everyday stories. the latter relates to the reading aloud model utilized in this study. ellis and brewster (2002) propose a model made up of three components: plan (pre-activity), do (whileactivity) and review (post-activity). the pre-activity refers to all of the strategies the teacher uses to introduce the story, creating an environment and raising interest and motivation toward the reading aloud of the story. the while-activity is the reading aloud activity itself in which the teacher prompts students to infer, make relations, draw conclusions and so forth. during the postactivity, students will engage in different activities of retelling orally or in writing, discussions, games, presentations, etc. essentially, reading aloud constitutes a great source to enable students to improve in regards to their learning of the foreign language (reading, writing, grammar, spelling, listening, speaking, socio-cultural issues, etc.). in other words, learners will not be learning the language but living it when engaged in meaningful activities. narrative genre on the spot ofnarrative genre on the spot ofnarrative genre on the spot ofnarrative genre on the spot ofnarrative genre on the spot of discoursediscoursediscoursediscoursediscourse ‘discourse analysis’ is defined as a variety of procedures for examining chunks of language, whether spoken or written, that are the product of different interactions in different contexts (allwright and bailey, 1994; hatch, 1992; mccarthy, 1991). in this sense, discourse is made up of the pragmatic context and it embraces various domains such as socio-cultural, political and ideological issues. hatch (1992) describes three streams that function as the umbrella terms that cover the different approaches to analyzing discourse. first of all, those streams that explain the structure of a text (linguistic cognitive templates); second, those that show the text structure as the result of the speakers’ or writers’ goals and intents (linguistic and cognitive processes); and finally, those that depict structure as evolving from socially and cooperatively built communication (social, linguistic and cognitive processes). ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○87 profile profile profile profile profile reading aloud activities as a way to determine students’ narrative template this study is grounded in a rhetorical genre analysis that comprises part of the first group of methods of discourse analysis. rhetoricians have traditionally divided genres into narrative, descriptive, procedural and persuasive discourses (hatch, 1992). since this particular study focuses on storytelling, i decided to work on the narrative genre; hence, narrowing down its scope towards the narrative text. narration is thought to be the most universal genre because all cultures have storytelling traditions. according to research done in this area (labov, 1972; labov and waletsky, 1967) and mandler (mandler, 1978; mandler and johnson, 1977; and mandler et al., 1980) as cited by hatch (1992), there is a basic universal template for the narrative based on the analysis of storytelling tasks of different languages. narrations usually begin with an orientation that includes the time, the spatial setting and the characters as well as their role in the story. later, when the story setting is complete, the storyteller sets up the story line. in general, the story lines revolve around a hero who has a goal which involves a problem, an adversary and some steps to resolve it. in addition, there is a resolution and a coda that includes a possible moral which represents an evaluative component that might also occur at various points throughout the narrative. as a final component of the narrative template we have the abstract. this is what we know as the title of the story. the components of the narrative template can either be described in an oral or written text; however, the current study decided to concentrate only on the written text. methodologymethodologymethodologymethodologymethodology the researcher acted as a participant observer and followed a qualitative study under the scope of a social constructivist approach as the means for students to grow as language learners and social beings who construct meaning through their interaction. social constructivism deals with the construction of knowledge and understanding that the learners make out of the social and interactional environment in a classroom context (wells, 1995). participants and siteparticipants and siteparticipants and siteparticipants and siteparticipants and site the participants of this study were 19 efl students from the extension courses at a public university in bogotá. the class, a beginners english level, was made up of 13 female students and 6 male students whose ages ranged from 16 to 40. in general, the target participants were professionals or students of different majors. data collection and analysisdata collection and analysisdata collection and analysisdata collection and analysisdata collection and analysis the data collection procedure was made up of class observations that were carried out during the four reading aloud activities, the students’ written samples, summaries of the stories read, and a semi-structured interview at the end of the semester. data analysis aimed at describing the incidence of the reading aloud activity regarding students’ language development and also to determine their narrative template. to this end, i used a coloring code in order to see the common patterns in all the instruments applied. ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ 88 alvarez profile profile profile profile profile tttttable 1.able 1.able 1.able 1.able 1. categories found when analyzing the data 1 during the class i read four stories: “leo and pip”, “going to school”, “the raven and the fox” and “the three billy goats gruff ”. narrative componentsnarrative componentsnarrative componentsnarrative componentsnarrative components abstract characters goal and problem steps to resolve the problem climax and resolution language issueslanguage issueslanguage issueslanguage issueslanguage issues speaking pronunciation writing listening grammar vocabulary interactionsinteractionsinteractionsinteractionsinteractions teacher-student student-student findingsfindingsfindingsfindingsfindings in order to analyze the data gathered, i took written samples that the students had completed after the reading aloud activity was carried out (see one sample in annex 1). in addition, i used class observation sheets (see annex 2) and three interviews (see annex 3). the chart below displays the categories found in order to answer the two main questions. narrative componentsnarrative componentsnarrative componentsnarrative componentsnarrative components in the table above we can see that for the first category the students included in their written texts only four of the seven components of the universal narrative template proposed by labov. with few exceptions, the samples included an abstract: “summary of the story ‘leo and pip’.”1 there was always the introduction to the characters: “they are a family; there are three billy goats…” although in some of the samples the students incorporated the time and setting, it was only in a few of the retold stories that these components were included. the stories always presented a goal, a problem and, therefore, a hero: “three billy goat, they are hungry… the small billy goat sees grass”. in addition, the written samples showed cohesion through the components of the steps to resolve the problem: “the hunter ran and he found a fisherman they planned to catch the lion with the fisherman’s net and fish. leo fell in the net and her mouse friend cut the net with the teeth”. in reference to the climax or resolution, i saw that the students considered it an important component as a way to bring the story to a conclusion. “he hits the troll and continues his road.” finally, the last component of the narrative template, the coda, was barely included in some of the papers. in short, the written samples showed that the students took into account what they considered most important to retell the story in writing. for example, they ignored some characters that are not significant for the development of the story or omitted places and actions that would scarcely affect the meaning of the story. this finding was also validated through the interviews in which they talked about the beginning, the plot and a resolution: ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○89 profile profile profile profile profile reading aloud activities as a way to determine students’ narrative template ----¿qué aspectos debe tener una historia para que sea fácil de entender o para poderla narrar? what aspects should a story have for it to be easy to understand or narrate? ----“hay unos personajes que hay que definir, qué pensamos acerca de ellos y qué pueden hacer… una historia tiene un inicio, que es donde se atrapa a la persona para crear interés y un problema principal; una trama, que es lo que acontece para desenredar el problema principal y un desenlace, un final feliz para los buenos.” “there are some characters that we need to define, and say what we think about them and what they can do… a story has a beginning which is where the interest of the person is captured and where there is a principal problem; there is a plot that happens to disentangle the principal problem, and there is a resolution that is a happy ending.” (interview in spanish) this inter view also showed that the setting and the time were not a concern in the kind of narrative template that they dealt with. although not all of the summaries included the setting and the time, they were accurate in describing and contextualizing the reader in order to guide her/him through the process of finding a goal, a problem, some steps to resolve the problem and a resolution. by the same token, the coda is not mentioned as an important factor in the development of a story. this one component could tell more about the amount of reflection that a story stimulates when listening to it or when retelling it. in general, the lack of reflection displayed in the writings uncovers the shallow or literal kind of reading and interpretation that students do when they are involved in this kind of literacy event. this outcome represents a call for teachers to consider critical reading an important tool in the development of reflective minds that go beyond what is at first sight visible in a written or oral text. to sum up, i would assert that the narrative template posed by hatch is to a certain point universal, yet it is shaped by the different literacy processes that make up the experience of every learner of a given culture. language issueslanguage issueslanguage issueslanguage issueslanguage issues now i will concentrate on the second category –language issues. the analysis of the students’ written samples and their dynamics during the reading aloud shed light on this categor y and sub-categories. considering that the second question refers to the role of reading aloud in the students’ language development, i came up with the sub-categories of speaking, pronunciation, writing, listening, grammar and vocabulary. first of all, i will deal with the subcategory of speaking. the application of the model proposed by ellis and brewster (2002) to carry out the reading aloud activity plan (pre-activity), do (while-activity) and review (post-activity), represented the best strategy for students to improve their oral skills. the pre-activity allowed students to recall previous knowledge in terms of experiences and predictions; and because of this activity, ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ 90 alvarez profile profile profile profile profile they used vocabular y, structures or expressions they knew beforehand. the while-activity exposed them to new grammatical structures, lexicon, stress and intonation patterns where they interacted asking and answering different kinds of questions. during the post-activity, the students discussed and gave their opinion about the story and finally wrote a summary of it. the reading aloud model applied served the purpose of increasing the students’ oral interactions. this is one excerpt taken from the first reading activity of the story “leo and pip”: teacher (t): (showing the cover of the book) what do you see? student (s): a lion and a mouse. t: (reads the title) “leo and pip”. who is leo and who is pip? s1: leo is the lion and pip is the mouse… t: what is the story about? s1: the lion and the mouse friends. s2: the lion eats the mouse. t: what do you imagine when i say lion? (they all started recalling different words as long as the teacher wrote them down on the board: big, furious, wild, jungle, hunter…) … what happened to the hunter? (the teacher asked individually) s3: the lion eat the hunter. s4: the hunter run… s5: escape… the excerpt shows how the students participated using what they knew about the l2 and feeling free to take risks and make mistakes since the teacher was not overcorrecting. additionally, we observe how they inferred, guessed, agreed or disagreed when constructing meaning through negotiation. thus, the dynamics of participation and inquiry about new vocabulary enhanced the possibility for them to improve their pronunciation. in general, all the unknown words were written on the board and were pronounced by the teacher. the students asked for repetition either of the teacher or of their classmates or they looked up the words in the dictionary. at the end of every activity the teacher often required the students to read the words aloud by themselves. he would only correct when it was necessary. “finally, i ask for the repetition of the words that i wrote down on the board. they read them and i only have to correct the pronunciation of the words: anxious, disease and rabies.” (excerpt from the first class observation) in brief, they achieved better results in terms of their oral production and pronunciation. they interacted among themselves and with the teacher and that helped them improve in terms of their accuracy and fluency. the next sub-category shows that their listening understanding increased during the process. although this ability draws upon other language issues such as knowledge of grammar, vocabulary and pronunciation, i consider their level of understanding grew not only when they listened to the teacher’s register but also to their partners’ register. moreover, another indicator is their capacity to rephrase what the teacher had just read. in the two last reading aloud activities the use of the board was not very necessary on ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○91 profile profile profile profile profile reading aloud activities as a way to determine students’ narrative template account of the understanding they were depicting as the reading was being done. this is one extract from a class observation: “… the students are not asking me to write the words on the board as they used to. some of them write what they hear and confirm with their classmates.” in regards to the writing sub-category, i would say that this aspect of the literacy process in l2 experienced a major improvement. the students were always making notes on what i read or wrote on the board. they asked for the spelling when they did not know how to write a word. however, the part that most contributed to their improving their writing skill was the postactivity of the reading aloud exercise. during this phase they were asked to write a summary of the story which they successfully did. writing is the conjunction of what one knows about grammar and vocabulary and it also constitutes a way to check on students’ understanding through their cohesion and coherence. due to the relevance of vocabulary and grammar for the writing task, i will address these other two sub-categories. the summaries of the different stories comprised the best source of information to find out about grammar and vocabulary. the reading aloud served as the means to introduce new syntactical items and vocabulary related to them. the students tried to make use of the structures learned in class: t: where is the lion? s4: near the tree. s5: behind the tree. (other students nod their heads agreeing with him) the excerpt above describes how the students used prepositions, one of the topics that had been studied the previous classes in the reading aloud activity. in addition, they utilized a great deal of the vocabulary introduced during the reading: “once upon a time three billy goats gruff in the forest. they are very hungry, but in this place there is no food. they have to cross a bridge because in the other place there is grass green. however, in the bridge is the troll, a hungry monster…” this passage from the third read-aloud presents different issues related to vocabulary, grammar and management of written devices such as cohesion and punctuation. although the introductory sentence needs the inclusion of the expletive “there is”, we can see the use of the narrative device “once upon a time” that the students retained from the reading aloud. besides, this group of students used connectors such as “but” and “however” as well as punctuation and capitalization in order to give cohesion to the story. by the same token, there is a considerable use of vocabulary like billy goats gruff, bridge, troll and grass taken directly from the story read. the written production shows how students profit from the readings-aloud to reinforce or approach new vocabulary, grammar and written devices. this is also expressed through the interviews: t: “¿qué opinión tiene de las actividades de lectura en voz alta?” what do you think of the reading aloud activities?” ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ 92 alvarez profile profile profile profile profile s: “muy bien, muy acordes con el nivel que estamos utilizando, poco a poco se introdujo el vocabulario. con las últimas historias era mucho más fácil participar y se entendía más.” “very well, very in accordance with the level we are dealing with, little by little the vocabulary was presented. in the last stories it was much easier to participate and more understandable.” t: ¿en qué manera relacionas el uso de estas actividades (lectura en voz alta) con respecto a tu aprendizaje del inglés? how do you relate the use of these activities (reading aloud) regarding your english language learning? s: enriquece el vocabulario, crea estructuras básicas para crear oraciones, se relacionan imagen y palabra y se utilizan. la pronunciación también mejora. “vocabulary is enriched, basic structures are provided to create sentences; image and words are related and used. pronunctiation is also improved.” t: ¿te ayudó a mejorar en esos aspectos, cierto? ¿en algún otro aspecto? it helped you improve in those aspects, right? any other aspect? s: “la escritura con la actividad (la escritura del resumen), el habla uno se atrevía a decir cosas, a inventar, a inferir. también, la pronunciación y la escucha cuando se narra la historia”. “the writing with the activity (the writing of the summary), the speaking, one dares to say things, invent, infer. also, the pronunciation and the listening when the story is narrated.” (interview in spanish) broadly speaking, the reading aloud activity contributed as the means to promote the development of the students’ receptive and productive skills. likewise, it helped them approach english language in an unconventional way so as to have a more accurate and fluent command of it. compared to previous classes that i had, there was more improvement regarding language issues such as speaking, pronunciation, writing, listening, grammar and vocabulary. i could see how throughout the process of the reading aloud the students began to write and utter longer and better constructed sentences: “there are three goats and they are hungry…”. “they have to cross a bridge because in the place there is grass green”. they made fewer spelling mistakes and showed more listening understanding as long as the reading-aloud activities were carried out. on the other hand, the sense of achievement that students experienced fostered different interactions in the classroom that i discuss in the third category. interactionsinteractionsinteractionsinteractionsinteractions the third category that i established was interactions. there are two sub-categories that underlie this last category: studentstudent and teacher-student interaction. during the read aloud activities the students’ interactions tended to be more collaborative and supportive. they felt confident to ask questions among themselves. an excerpt from a class observation illustrates this: ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○93 profile profile profile profile profile reading aloud activities as a way to determine students’ narrative template “some of them are asking the partners for any meaning of words”. not only did they interact to ask their classmates about a word’s meaning or pronunciation, but also to play jokes about the reading. there was a lively and enthusiastic environment that facilitated their participation and promoted cooperative learning among the students. for instance, when they gathered in groups to write the summary of the story, they helped each other and divided the tasks such as using the dictionary, drawing and writing. also, they clarified doubts among themselves or shared different experiences related to the story. the interaction depicted in the classroom allowed the students and i to see ourselves playing a different role as participants of an educational process. i acted as a facilitator and promoter of an appropriate classroom environment. the aim of the reading was to encourage students to participate in an informal and voluntary way since they were not being graded or overcorrected. in this sense, students perceived me as a support during the classes where i would sit down to work with them as another participant of the work group. as a whole, i found myself as a co-participant (wells, 1995) who should provide a suitable context for students to interact in the l2 without any kind of pressure. to conclude, i would like to quote some extracts from two interviews where the students refer to my participation and their roles: s1: “me sentí bien, traté de participar, hubo un buen ambiente. su actitud frente a la narración fue muy buena entonces uno se siente seguro de participar.” s2: “…bien, todos participaban y uno pone atención.” s1: “i felt good, i tried to participate, it was a good environment, your attitude towards the narration was very well so one feels confident to participate.” s2 : “... good... everybody participated and one pays attention.” (interview in spanish) there is a positive outcome concerning the last category of student-student and teacher-student interactions. students accomplished a different role where they supported each other cooperatively. they considered the teacher an important factor in the encouragement of a favourable environment for the class. therefore the role of the teacher was that of a facilitator for students to improve as language learners and human beings. the experience helped the teacher grow as a professional. besides, it provided both the teacher and the students with a different view of how to approach foreign language teaching-learning. conclconclconclconclconclusionsusionsusionsusionsusions and implicand implicand implicand implicand implicaaaaationstionstionstionstions this study has provided information regarding students’ narrative components through the use of reading aloud activities in the language classroom. the written samples analyzed showed that students omitted narrative components which would not affect the general understanding of a story. on the other hand, it described how the use of reading aloud activities improved ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ 94 alvarez profile profile profile profile profile the students’ learning process of l2. the data collected pointed out that students made progress in order to handle different language aspects like speaking, pronunciation, writing, listening, grammar and vocabulary. in short, read alouds helped determine the student’s narrative template; nevertheless, it can also be used to enhance the inclusion of the elements that students disregard when they retell a story. it can become a way for students to enrich the way they handle the narrative genre and represent another source for language improvement. the interaction among and between the students and the teacher; and the learningteaching process projected a sense of classroom community. there was a supportive and cooperative environment that played a significant role in students’ motivation. they learned in a social constructivist way sharing and helping each other. as a result, this small-scale research provides worthwhile input for further study and poses some pedagogical implications that i discuss below. first of all, there seems to be a belief that reading aloud is an activity exclusively regarded for children. it is easy to find masses of literature about reading aloud for children; however, it is not so for adolescents or adults. perhaps there is a belief that only children enjoy this activity and consequently, that it is uniquely used in the process of first language acquisition. the experience described illustrates how this kind of activity motivates students and provides another way to approach language. likewise, it is necessary to pinpoint the relevance of read alouds to promote the reading literacy process in l2. it constitutes the point of departure for learners to start negotiating meaning, constructing knowledge and reaching an understanding of what reading is conveying. there are some other issues that are to be considered regarding reading aloud. first, we need to bear in mind the role of the teacher. the teacher as the reader will in part determine the students’ role. his/her attitude toward the activity of reading aloud has to aim at the creation of an enjoyable atmosphere. the use of different intonation and kinesthetic patterns as strategies will contribute to the students’ understanding and enrollment in the activity. second, it is advisable to think about the type of reading. illustrated books of short stories can provide a good source for introducing or rehearsing grammar, vocabulary or pronunciation items. as a third aspect, using a reading procedure helps obtain better response from the students. for this purpose, ellis and brewster’s (2002) model for reading aloud may supply an organized and logical sequence for the activity. time is another component that needs to be addressed. in this specific study, time constituted a constraint. i had initially planned five reading aloud activities but only four were carried out due to the little space that a daily one-hour class leaves for other activities different from the completion of a textbook’s units. although reading-aloud can be adapted to any english learning program, it is necessary to make a balance between the amount of time the teacher spends on this activity and the fulfillment of the program of any institution. thus, read-alouds ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○95 profile profile profile profile profile reading aloud activities as a way to determine students’ narrative template can work as a very valuable complementary activity for any program. this article only presents the results of the implementation of read-alouds as a complementary activity in an english program that uses an efl text. it opens the doors for further research to explore on the development of a reading aloud-based program. referencesreferencesreferencesreferencesreferences allwright, m. and bailey, c. (1994). focus on the language classroom. cambridge: cambridge university press. barreto, g. (2002). story-telling: a path to imagination and creativity in the primary english class. profile 3, 5557. baynham, m. (1995). literacy practices: investigating literacy in social contexts. london, new york: longman. campbell, r. (1998). facilitating pre-school literacy. united kingdom: international reading association. campbell, r. (2001). read-alouds with young children. united kingdom: international reading association. cooper, d. (1993). literacy: helping children construct meaning. usa: houghton mifflin company. ellis, g. and brewster, j. (1991). the storytelling handbook for primary teachers of english. england: penguin books. ellis, g. and brewster, j. (2002). tell it again: the new storytelling handbook for primary teachers. edinburgh gate: penguin english. hatch, e. (1992). discourse in language education. new york, cup: cambridge university press. kramsch, c. (1998). language and culture. oxford: oxford university press. mccarthy, m. (1991). discourse analysis for language teachers. great britain: cambridge university press. smallwood, b. (1992). children’s literature for adult esl literacy. national clearinghouse on literacy education, washington dc. adjunct eric clearinghouse on literacy education for limited-english-proficient adults, washington dc. retrieved from http://www.ericfacility.net/databases/ eric_digests/index/ wells, g. (1995). language and the inquirybased cur riculum. cur riculum inquir y. cambridge and oxford: blackwell publishers, 233-269. wright, a. (1997). creating children’s stories. london: oxford university press. zuñiga, g. (2001). constructing literacy from reading in first and second languages. neiva: oti impresos. ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ 96 alvarez profile profile profile profile profile annex 1: sample of a summaryannex 1: sample of a summaryannex 1: sample of a summaryannex 1: sample of a summaryannex 1: sample of a summary storstorstorstorstoryyyyy: : : : : the three billy goats gruff (used with permission) ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○97 profile profile profile profile profile reading aloud activities as a way to determine students’ narrative template annex 2: observannex 2: observannex 2: observannex 2: observannex 2: observaaaaation sheettion sheettion sheettion sheettion sheet date ________ time ______ place __________ class observation no. ______ teacher _________________________ number of students ________ male___________ female _________ activity _________________________________________________ observations annex 3: interview annex 3: interview annex 3: interview annex 3: interview annex 3: interview ***** objetivo: saber acerca de las percepciones de los estudiantes con relación a las actividades de lectura en voz alta de cuentos que se realizaron a lo largo del semestre e identificar los componentes del modelo narrativo que son mencionados como necesarios para narrar una historia. student’s name: ______________________________ date: ____________ 1. ¿qué opinión tiene de las actividades de lectura en voz alta que se realizaron en clase? 2. ¿cómo se sintió durante este tipo de actividades? 3. ¿en qué manera relaciona el uso de estas actividades (lectura en voz alta) con respecto a su aprendizaje del inglés? 4. ¿en qué habilidades o áreas del inglés cree que mejoró? 5. ¿qué aspectos debe tener una historia para que sea fácil de entender o para poderla narrar? * * * * * the interview was of a semi-structured type; therefore, these questions only constituted the general guidelines for the interviewer. this format was not submitted to the interviewee. this article was received on april 6th, 2004 and accepted on august 23rd, 2004. profile 5.pmd ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○29 profileprofileprofileprofileprofile interactive communicative teaching and the young indian learner enseñanza comunicativa e interactiva y el joven estudiante de la india deepti guptadeepti guptadeepti guptadeepti guptadeepti gupta* panjab university deptipu@eth.net in classrooms where english is not the mother tongue and where age-old teaching methodology rules the roost, it is not easy to make changes, especially radical ones. this case study shows how these reforms can be self-defeating if they are imposed without an attempt at a gradual, gentle and well thought out implementation. this is a slightly modified and revised version of a paper presented at the “language in the mind” international conference organized by the singapore university, singapore in september 2000. kkkkkey worey worey worey worey wordsdsdsdsds: communicative, task-based, interactive, learner-centered, structural, lecture-based, pedagogy en las clases en las que el inglés no es la lengua materna y en las que predomina una metodología anticuada de enseñanza, no es fácil efectuar cambios, especialmente cambios radicales. este caso demuestra cómo estas reformas pueden fracasar si se las impone repentinamente sin una implementación gradual y bien planificada. esta es una versión modificada y revisada de un documento presentado en la conferencia internacional “idioma en la mente” organizada por la universidad de singapore en singapore en septiembre de 2000. palabras claves: palabras claves: palabras claves: palabras claves: palabras claves: enseñanza-lenguas extranjeras, enfoque comunicativo, enfoque basado en tareas, enfoque interactivo, enfoque centrado en el estudiante, enfoque estructural * deepti guptadeepti guptadeepti guptadeepti guptadeepti gupta is one of the first indian c.a. teachers, setting up the first undergraduate language laboratory in chandigarh. an m.phil: in stylistics and a phd in elt, interests are methodology, classroom observation and action research. with 19 years of teaching experience, she teaches postgraduates and supervises research. ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ 30 deepti profileprofileprofileprofileprofile introductionintroductionintroductionintroductionintroduction the development of english language teaching methods bears close resemblance to a cone, as shown in figure 1. the apex of the cone begins with the reform movement when applied linguists and teachers worked together to give a scientific orientation to elt in the 1880’s. communicative language teaching, language -literature integration and interactive teaching form the broad end of the cone. emphasis on the individual led to the widening of the cone, a widening that continues to be evident in classrooms ever ywhere. the learner became the pervasive factor in language teaching. with the advent of communicative language teaching and interactive teaching came an awareness of new modes of teaching. figure 1.figure 1.figure 1.figure 1.figure 1. the elt cone colleges in north india, in chandigarh and punjab were quick to pick up the change and introduced two new courses at the bachelor degree level –english as communication and functional english. although much still needs to be worked out in terms of the perfect implementation of communicative and interactive teaching, it can be said with a reasonable degree of confidence that changes in elt pedagogy and methodology are around the corner. five signposts of these changes were identified in an earlier study (gupta, 1993). 1. reduction in chalk-talk routines. 2. more active participation by learners in classroom interaction. 3. better acceptance of new teaching techniques by teachers. 4. increased frequency of inter-active tasks in the classroom. 5. improvement in fluency levels of college students. changes in teaching pedagogy found their way to the schools too. in the 1990’s schools in chandigarh, the city of my birth, 1880-1880-1880-1880-1880-wwwwworld orld orld orld orld wwwwwar iar iar iar iar i •direct method •primacy of speech •applied interwinterwinterwinterwinterwararararar years toyears toyears toyears toyears to 19401940194019401940 •elt as an autonomus profession wwwwworld orld orld orld orld wwwwwararararar ii to 1970ii to 1970ii to 1970ii to 1970ii to 1970 •structural linguistics •language laboratory 1970 to the1970 to the1970 to the1970 to the1970 to the presentpresentpresentpresentpresent •clt language •literature integration •inter-actiional approach ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○31 profileprofileprofileprofileprofile interactive communicative teaching and the young indian learner went through a process of introspection with a special focus on their teaching methods. there were workshops on ‘learner-centered teaching’, seminars on ‘task-based teaching’ and discussions on ‘teaching without the traditional textbooks’. an over-riding concern was the heavy school bag. the development that is of interest here was a questioning of old teaching methods. after these sessions came a virtual blitzkrieg on school teaching. school boards prepared english textbooks that were communicative-task based. schools prescribed these. in some schools, english came to be taught through worksheets and assignments. by 1992, most schools had introduced changes in their teaching methods and teachers could look forward to better-equipped students at the master’s level. the first batch of students taught under the new methods reached the master’s level in 1998. as a teacher, one had high expectations of this group. they had only been thirteen-years-old in class viii, when the changes had been introduced in schools. they had also taken functional english in college. functional english in the indian context is an english course designed as per the communicative approach. methodologymethodologymethodologymethodologymethodology surprisingly, these learners had not reached the level of communicative competence expected. through classroom observation, a set of tendencies emerged in these learners, namely: 1. heavy dependence on guidebooks and reference books to tackle literary texts. 2. use of minimal language to achieve the bare minimum of communication. paul seedhouse1 calls this tendency indexical interaction i.e. context bound, inexplicit interaction. 3. constant repetition of utterances like you know, i mean, as to say and so on, as fillers. 4. low level of enthusiasm for reading literary texts outside the curriculum. 5. avoidance of long, written assignments that demand a good command of language and a well-developed critical faculty. by no means do learners display these tendencies for the first time, but this situation was unique because here was a batch of learners who came from schools where taskbased teaching is the norm, where communicative methods have replaced the traditional chalk-talk methods and the textbooks provided have been prepared by elt experts well-versed in the latest currents of change. to get to the crux of the matter, in the summer vacation of 1999, this author got together a group of 20 learners from 13 to 15 years old. they were from 10 schools in chandigarh. over a period of five weeks, there was interaction with them, inspection of their school textbooks and elicitation of 1 seedhouse writes: “what we also find in task-based interaction is a tendency to produce very indexical interaction, i.e. interaction that is context-bound, inexplicit, and hence obscure to anybody reading the extracts without knowledge of the task in which the participants were engaged. interactants in a task seem to produce utterances at the lowest level of explicitness necessary to the successful completion of the task… l2 teachers who are reading the tasks tend to find the actual language produced in task-based interaction to be impoverished and esoteric” (1999: 153). ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ 32 deepti profileprofileprofileprofileprofile information from them. this exercise revealed that their schools had worked hard in the following areas: 1. generation of elgeneration of elgeneration of elgeneration of elgeneration of elt materialst materialst materialst materialst materials: teachers regularly planned interactive tasks for their classrooms. well-stocked school libraries with seminal works in elt and the latest pedagogy were at the teachers’ disposal. worksheets were also generated for classroom use on a regular basis. 2. ttttteaching methods:eaching methods:eaching methods:eaching methods:eaching methods: elt experts conducted workshops and orientation programmes regularly to update the teachers’ methodology. 3. mode of examinationmode of examinationmode of examinationmode of examinationmode of examination: schools cut down on long-winded occasional examinations and introduced shorter, more frequent examinations. 4. method of evaluationmethod of evaluationmethod of evaluationmethod of evaluationmethod of evaluation: through constant discussion and exchange of ideas, teachers were encouraged to change fixed notions about good and bad answers. 5. i n t r o d u c t i o n o f d i a g n o s t i ci n t r o d u c t i o n o f d i a g n o s t i ci n t r o d u c t i o n o f d i a g n o s t i ci n t r o d u c t i o n o f d i a g n o s t i ci n t r o d u c t i o n o f d i a g n o s t i c strategies and error analysis:strategies and error analysis:strategies and error analysis:strategies and error analysis:strategies and error analysis: teachers decided to keep track of learner errors by maintaining records for individual learners and going through them regularly. this made the rectification of learner errors easier. all this information was collected after visits to the 10 schools and conversations with principals and teachers. the situation seemed an ideal learning situation. if the scenario continued, one could imagine the production of perfect language learners after some years. but this did not tally with the learners who came to this author at the master’s level. they were also the products of the same system and represented a wide spectrum of learners. by now, it was clear that the situation demanded a closer analysis. providentially, st. john’s high school, a boys’ school of chandigarh, organized an orientation programme on learner-centered education in december, 1999. the special interest of the programme was elt. as a part of the exercise, parents of the schoolboys were invited to a session. a discussion and interaction with the resource person ensued. during this event, very strong parental opposition to any change in teaching methods emerged. it was more than obvious that the parents were opposed to any kinds of changes in the traditional classroom methods, an amalgam of structural and lecture-based approaches. they wanted the teacher to lecture at least eighty percent of the time. task-based teaching met with complete rejection and stiff opposition, even as an idea. worksheets were given a skeptic’s welcome. the fact also came to light that this particular school was the only one that invited parents to be a part of the process of change. in other schools, teaching methodology had been changed overnight without any notice given to parents. interaction with parents afterwards revealed that parental approval is indispensable if any change is to be made in teaching methodology. if this approval is not granted, young learners cannot benefit from new methods because they are not encouraged to discuss classroom interactive tasks at ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○33 profileprofileprofileprofileprofile interactive communicative teaching and the young indian learner home, which gives them the idea that interactive tasks are not ‘real education’. findingsfindingsfindingsfindingsfindings the learner in this part of north india is already at a disadvantage due to being part of a bilingual and, at times, trilingual2 society. if the learner has the advantage of being able to understand two or three languages, s/he also faces the distinct disadvantage of living in an environment where english is not a language for everyday communication. using english outside the classroom is essential in order to develop fluency in the language skills, but the environment, coupled with parental disapproval, may make the learner feel inhibited and out of place while doing so. in india, parental intervention still remains a part of the education structure in schools. education is still assessed in terms of marks and positions. in this scenario, tasks and interactive teaching seem to be a waste of time to most parents. this results in a situation where parents cannot perceive how fluency can be transcribed into good marks in the examination. therefore, whenever some activities require inputs beyond the classroom or are not connected with the prescribed textbooks, they are frowned upon. this problem can be remedied if parents are taken into confidence in advance and schools take the trouble to explain in detail the rationale behind task-based, interactive teaching. in the area of teacher training, some distinct shortcomings emerged. as mentioned earlier, the virtual bombardment of workshops, seminars and orientation programmes gave a rosy tinge to the whole picture. it seemed as if, overnight, teachers and classrooms had undergone a sea-size change. the actual situation was somewhat different. one, for years these teachers had relied upon the lecture method and their teaching had been examination-oriented for achievement type testing. the need of the hour was a systematic training programme spread over weeks, with practical demonstration lessons and lesson plans to show the efficacy of the new methodology. instead, teachers were pelted with information and training without being given the time to judge for themselves the rationale behind this changeover. the school administration in every school invited resource persons without formulating a clearcut plan for the teacher training. the result was that one week was devoted to learnercentered teaching, another to evaluation strategies, yet another to tasks and the teacher became a sort of jack-of-all-trades, master of none. these teachers had been in the profession for a good twenty years or so, and had not kept in touch with the winds of change in elt. two, teacher training, in order to be effective, has to be an ongoing process. the concept of ‘preset’ and ‘inset’ teacher training is still foreign to india. once the resource persons had left, there was no one to coordinate the teaching programme and the only guidance came from libraries stocked at random. three, in theory, reams of paper bore witness to teachers being trained in elt material generation, but, in practice, they felt at sea when faced with the 1 north indian society uses both punjabi and hindi in social interaction. day by day, english is becoming a part of everyday conversation, but only in exclusive areas like banking or education. by and large, hindi and punjabi remain the mother tongue and it is not surprising to find smatterings of urdu in families who have parents or grandparents who lived in pakistan before the partition (1947). ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ 34 deepti profileprofileprofileprofileprofile task. left to fend for themselves, they turned to their old methods or restricted themselves to the limited range of tasks provided by the textbooks. since the teachers were a confused and overburdened lot in the absence of welldirected training, they could not drum up enough enthusiasm in the learners for the changed methodology. students for years had divided their classroom materials into two groups required for examination and not required for examination. unfortunately, in the absence of parental encouragement and proper teacher guidance, they catalogued communicative tasks and interactive activities under the heading “not required for examination”. these were performed for the satisfaction of the teacher and were look upon as purposeless, entertaining, less educational and conveniently relegated to the back burner. in spite of so many changes in other areas, curriculum development still remains an ivory-tower exercise in schools. there is a communication gap between those who teach and those who frame the syllabus, those who implement it and those who evaluate. the teacher has no autonomy. the syllabus-framer is one person, the policymaker another, while the paper setter and the examiner still others. even when the examination is not one conducted by a high school board, all schools follow this hierarchical system. over a span of time, it is possible to train teachers in a different teaching methodology, but to make mindset changes in a complete hierarchy is a next to impossible task. and unless the whole system is ready to accept and adopt changes, the learner cannot be blamed for being suspicious of new classroom techniques. the level of implementation of new methodology is an important factor, too. some schools introduced task-based, interactive teaching for six-year-old learners, some for ten and some for thirteen. postevaluation results were most encouraging with very young learners. the relationship is one of inverse proportion: the younger the learner, the greater the success achieved through teaching in the interactive, taskbased mode. to quote rivers (1998: 13), “collaborative activity of this type should be the norm from the beginning of language study” (rivers, 1998). once the learner gets used to the audio-lingual, structural, lecture method approach, weaning is difficult and learners take quite a long time to get used to a changed classroom environment in which the teacher is the facilitator and not the boss of the whole show. young and unconditioned minds are best for innovations. conclconclconclconclconclusionusionusionusionusion this study has helped me, as a teacher, to understand the tendencies shown by my students in the classroom. when some schoolteachers learnt about this research, they expressed their interest in classroom observation as a tool for applying diagnostic strategies. later on, this can lead to remedial teaching, too. the relationship among the student, teacher and research has been emphasized often enough. teachers and students can be co-researchers in the process. indeed, they are the ultimate beneficiaries in any research. ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○35 profileprofileprofileprofileprofile interactive communicative teaching and the young indian learner when it is an established fact that every classroom is unique and, as such, has unique demands, no methodology or pedagogy can be thrust lock, stock and barrel upon a set of learners. surely, one cannot simply lift a model for language teaching and impose it upon a classroom without tr ying to understand the environment in which the model would be expected to take root. if changes are imposed without due thought and planning, the result is ‘a goodly apple rotten to the core’. in the newspapers and journals, the adoption of a communicative, task-based, interactive methodologies look and sound very good. but without the requisite optimal conditions to support them, constant research to modify them and increase their efficacy, it can lead to confused teachers and learners, giving rise to disappointing outputs. glossaryglossaryglossaryglossaryglossary 1. blitzkrieg: an intense series of inputs. 2. chalk-talk routines: the method of teaching with the teacher’s lecture at the centre, that perceives teachers as givers of a package called education; learners are purely at the receiving end with no expectation or opportunity of interaction. 3. communicative language teaching: method of teaching that aims to develop communicative competence, as opposed to simple knowledge of grammatical and similar structures. 4. fluency level: measure of the ability to express oneself accurately and articulately in a language. 5. interactive teaching: method of teaching that treats language as a tool for the creation and maintenance of interpersonal relationships and social transactions. 6. learner-centred teaching: learners are not treated as passive participants at the receiving end; they are a part of the whole classroom experience and contribute actively to it through tasks and activities. 7. lecture-based: the antithesis of learner-centred teaching; learners are totally passive listeners. 8. pedagogy: the method and practice of teaching, especially as an academic subject or theoretical concept. 9. preset and inset teacher training: training of this kind is the norm in the west, where english is the mother tongue. preset refers to pre-service training and inset refers to in-service training for teachers. 10. structural: the approach or method that views language as a system of structurally related elements for the encoding of meaning; in which the system of speech is primary. 11. task-based teaching: based on the communicative approach, it uses tasks and activities as the core units of planning and instruction in language teaching. acknowledgementsacknowledgementsacknowledgementsacknowledgementsacknowledgements the author would like to thank alastair murray for translating the abstract of this article. referencesreferencesreferencesreferencesreferences allwright, d. (1988). observation in the language classroom. london: longman. gupta, d. (1993). the teaching of english literature and communicative language teaching ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ 36 deepti profileprofileprofileprofileprofile in the indian classroom. unpublished doctoral dissertation. chandigarh: panjab university. mc donough, j. and mc donough, s. (1997). research methods for english language teachers. great britain: arnold. rivers, w.m. (1998). interactive language teaching. cambridge: cambridge university press. seedhouse, p. (1999). task-based interaction. elt journal. 53 (3), 149155. this article was received on may 10th, 2004 and accepted on august 27th, 2004 profile 3.p65 ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ 58profileprofileprofileprofileprofile a fter having applied a needs analysis in an eleventh grade course of english, i could notice that there was a big lack of security and self-confidence in the students. they expressed in different data-gathering instruments their fear when speaking in front of the class. also, they talked about their insecurity when pronouncing english and the need for more opportunities for developing speaking. therefore, the implementation of an innovation in class was carried out in order to respond to the students’ needs and make them discover their talents. the implementation was successful and students improved some areas of their communicative competence. intrintrintrintrintroductionoductionoductionoductionoduction while my students were immersed in the english class, i could obser ve in them insecurity when they had to perform an oral presentation in class. through the needs analysis that was applied i could detect the students’ necessity for feeling accepted and respected by others. their insecurity at doing oral presentation was not just grounded in their level of english but in their low selfesteem. the individual needs to have a very well constructed self-confidence and also believe in him/herself. it is within this reflection that i consider of great importance to rethink again my role as a teacher: how can the teacher help the students to believe in themselves? i believe that one of the most important contributions is to construct an appropriate atmosphere inside the classroom where the students can discover their multiple intelligences and their capabilities. furthermore, they can learn, through their self knowledge, how to respect and value their peers. as can be seen, the classroom has to be a community in which the students can construct meaning and can develop their personality. it is in the hands of the teacher the search for strategies and the planning of effective activities that enhance students’ performance inside the educational setting in order to construct bonds of confidence among the class’ participants that help them to make their learning meaningful in and outside the classroom. therefore, students have to discover their own talents for the benefit of their own learning; one strong intelligence can help them develop another. p rp rp rp rp rocedureocedureocedureocedureocedure participantsparticipantsparticipantsparticipantsparticipants this innovation was implemented in an 11th grade course in a public school located in the 19th zone of bogotá (ciudad bolívar). the school is named cedid guillermo cano isaza. it has three shifts with approximately 800 students in each one. this school offers elementary and secondar y education. its educational goals are based on education in growing self-esteem and discovering intelligences through oral production dora liliana ochoadora liliana ochoadora liliana ochoadora liliana ochoadora liliana ochoa cedid guillermo cano isaza fabilily@yahoo.com ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ 59 profileprofileprofileprofileprofile technology in three modalities: industrial, science and commerce. this sort of education attempts to make people capable of solving daily problems as well as to project and develop themselves in their own social environment. the target population selected for this innovation was the highest level course of the industrial modality. this course is comprised of thirty-four students: twenty-six males and eight females with ages ranging from 16 to 19; they take two-80 minutes english lessons per week. in this innovative educational proposal the students were encouraged to plan carefully an activity in which they could relate their previous english language knowledge with something they really wanted to do. activities such as singing a song, playing a role, writing and presenting a story, dancing and doing a mime, presenting a monologue, writing and performing a dialogue, translating and presenting a poem, were carried out. each one of the students’ activities was monitored, taking enough care to give them the space in class for rehearsing and asking questions about their doubts. during the preparation of the activities, the students were provided with feedback that encouraged them to continue developing their idea. a video of fernando botero’s life was presented with the purpose of making them reflect upon the different obstacles he has had to surpass in order to reach his goals in life. the students wrote about their insights. the most relevant aspect of this classroom innovation was the fact that i had to take into account the developmental process of each student’s proposal. in most of the cases, teachers are focused on the final result but it is in the process where we can value the students’ effort and discover also our students’ strengths and weaknesses. theoretical frameworktheoretical frameworktheoretical frameworktheoretical frameworktheoretical framework in this brief framework i would like to tackle the following aspects that i consider important as a point of reference for this classroom innovation. the first one is the concept of multiple intelligences which has been a ver y useful theor y in cur rent educational processes. the second area has to do with the importance of self-confidence and self-efficacy beliefs in students’ performance inside the classroom and in the construction of a community where respect and tolerance should be valued as principles for getting along with each other. when gardner (1993) speaks about the multiple intelligences’ theory, he makes us reflect about the importance of considering the individual as a unique being among other individuals. the intelligence, he says, is not only one and unique inside the person’s mind. there are endless possibilities of intelligence according to the culture and society where the individual exists. therefore, it is of undisputable importance to look for activities inside the classroom in which students can discover and take advantage of their more developed intelligences in order to enhance the other ones. in traditional educational practice we can observe that students are evaluated and valued according to their linguistic and logicalmathematical skills (mettetal et al.: 1997). there is a need to reflect upon different talents that the individual possesses and which are also important. the appreciation of the type of intelligence required by athletes, musicians ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ 60profileprofileprofileprofileprofile and corporate leaders has to be taken into account inside the classroom to make all the students feel accepted and valued and also to enrich learning with different talents and possibilities. guiding students to develop social skills for admiring and respecting differences has to be one of the most important goals to achieve in the pedagogical process. in this innovation, one of the purposes was to help the students to take the risk of performing oral second language production in front of an audience so that they could feel that they were able to develop their own ideas. as dulay et al. (1982) say the students who are eager to try new and unpredictable experiences, and who are willing to guess before knowing for sure, are likely to seek out situations that require real communication in the new language. thus, the teacher who intends to encourage students to take some risks in life has to create an appropriate classroom atmosphere to make the students feel confident in order to try to construct their own knowledge. this makes us realize that the self-confident, secure person is a more successful language learner (ibid). self-efficacy beliefs influence students’ performance inside and outside the classroom to a great extent. bandura (1997) points out that people’s judgements of their capabilities to organize and execute courses of action are required to attain designated types of performances. self efficacy beliefs provide the foundation for human motivation, well being and personal accomplishment. this is another important task of the teacher; guiding students toward a proper belief of themselves, creating activities in which the students can prove and discover their own abilities to perform something. bandura also pinpointed a portrait of human behaviour and motivation in which the beliefs that people have about their capabilities are critical elements (pajares: 2002). these reflections make us realize that to construct a community inside the classroom where students know how to value themselves as well as others, it is necessary to guide them toward their own knowledge, toward the discovery of 11th grade students from cedid guillermo cano isaza taking part in a speaking activity ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ 61 profileprofileprofileprofileprofile their own capabilities and the construction of strong beliefs of confidence and efficacy. findingsfindingsfindingsfindingsfindings through the implementation of this classroom innovation it was possible to observe a positive change toward oral activities. students began to show attitudes of dedication and respect for what they and others were preparing. they were interested in doing good presentations. likewise, collaborative work took place inside the classroom. i could also see that very often they opted for writing their ideas before they were asked to present monologues or opinions regarding given topics in front of the class. they felt that english learning could have strong relation with what they like and enjoy in life. likewise, they gained a positive attitude toward this subject. in the evaluation instrument i applied at the end of the activities, students expressed that they felt more secure and confident when doing their presentation because they became aware of their capabilities. i could notice that they improved their pronunciation. nonetheless, they admitted their need to learn more vocabulary. as a teacher, it was rewarding looking at my students as actors in the class; i was aware of the multiple talents they have and i was able to learn from them. i could observe a sample of ideas prepared by one of the students before expressing her ideas to the class (used with permission) ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ 62profileprofileprofileprofileprofile class where discipline was achieved because of the respect and support they showed for each other. at the end of the class presentations, a proposal was made for presenting their activities in the main auditorium to the whole school and the students accepted this challenge without any pressure on my part. c o n c l u s i o n s a n d p e d a g o g i c a lc o n c l u s i o n s a n d p e d a g o g i c a lc o n c l u s i o n s a n d p e d a g o g i c a lc o n c l u s i o n s a n d p e d a g o g i c a lc o n c l u s i o n s a n d p e d a g o g i c a l impl ic a t io n sim pl ic a t io n simpl ic a t io n sim pl ic a t io n simpl ic a t io n s • selfconfidence is a factor that really influences the way students learn and perform their activities inside the classroom. thus, as teachers, we need to plan activities in order to help the students believe in themselves. • the experiences students live inside the schools have to be meaningful for their lives. the classroom is one of the contexts where people, since a very early age, learn how to get along with others and how to work with others. it means, they learn about cooperation and collaboration. activities based on the principles i have gathered in this paper can help adolescents change their attitudes towards their peers, building bonds of respect and tolerance. • when students are trying to perform an activity, it is important to value not only the final result but the process they have to follow in order to achieve their goal. • it is of great importance to research about the different intelligences students have developed through their life’s experiences in order to look for strategies to foster new capabilities in them. • the creation of a good atmosphere inside the classroom has to be one of the teacher’s main purposes if he/she intends to construct a classroom community in which all the participants are valued and accepted. here, language learning serves two purposes: the development of communicative competence and the construction of each individual. references gardner, h. (1993). estructuras de la mente: la teoría de las inteligencias múltiples. new york: harper collins. mettetal, g., jordan, c. and harper, s. (1997). attitudes toward a multiple intelligences curriculum. the journal of educational research. vol. 91 (2) nov. / dec. p. 115-122. dulay, h., burt, m. and krashen, s. (1982). effects of personality and age on second language acquisition. in language two. boston: oxford university press, p. 74-93. pajares, f. (2002). self-efficacy beliefs in academic context. an outline. retrieved month, day, year. found in: http//www.emor y.edu./ education/mfp/efftalk.html. profile profile 11, 2009. issn 1657-0790. bogotá, colombia. pages 143-158 143 intercultural competence: another challenge competencia intercultural: otro desafío norma barletta manjarrés*1 universidad del norte, colombia this paper intends to draw the attention of language teachers and educational authorities to the area of culture teaching in foreign language education at a time when the recently issued basic standards of competencies in foreign language have conferred modest attention to this aspect of language education. the paper first describes the notion of intercultural communicative competence. it then discusses the tensions between this new understanding of the teaching of culture and the prevailing teaching practices, approaches, beliefs and discourses associated with the learning and teaching of culture. third, it reports on the results of a study which critically analyzed the academic discourses of in-service teachers in colombia regarding the cultural component of foreign language programs; finally, it proposes ways to start taking new directions. key words: intercultural competence, standards, culture, culture teaching, ideologies, discourses el presente artículo intenta llamar la atención de maestros y autoridades educativas sobre el área de la enseñanza de la cultura en lenguas extranjeras en un momento en el que los recientemente publicados estándares básicos de competencias en lenguas extranjeras inglés prestan modesta atención a este aspecto. primero se describe la noción de competencia comunicativa intercultural. luego se discuten las tensiones entre este nuevo concepto de la enseñanza de la cultura y las prácticas de enseñanza, los enfoques, creencias y discursos asociados con el aprendizaje y la enseñanza de la cultura. se reportan también los resultados de un estudio que analiza críticamente los discursos académicos de profesores colombianos acerca del componente cultural en la enseñanza de lenguas extranjeras. finalmente, se proponen formas de iniciar nuevos rumbos. palabras clave: competencia intercultural, estándares, cultura, enseñanza de la cultura, ideologías, discursos * e-mail: nbarlett@uninorte.edu.co address: km 5 carretera puerto colombia, departamento de lenguas, barranquilla-colombia. this article was received on march 27, 2008 and accepted on january 31, 2009. barletta manjarrés universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras144 introduction with the likely increase in intercultural contacts in the future as well as of the changing educational demands following technological developments, it appears that the need to rethink the concept of teaching for ‘communicative competence in a foreign language’ is more pressing than ever. though it has for some time been accepted that communicative competence involves more than the mastery of a language’s grammar and lexis, and that the sociolinguistic and pragmatic components are an essential part of it, educators have found themselves with a limited notion of culture and culture teaching within the communicative approach. sociocultural competence, the cultural component in the notion of communicative competence, refers to “how to express messages appropriately within the overall social and cultural context of communication” (celce-murcia, 1995, p. 701) and it “represents the speaker/listener’s background knowledge of the target community” (p. 703). a table in which celce-murcia summarizes the components of the communicative competence as conceptualized by 1995 presents culture competence in brackets. the interest was mainly on speech acts, language functions, and register variation. the communicative approach focuses on the target culture norms, and often treats the regulation of interaction as a fixed body of knowledge. students in this approach learn how to greet, invite, and request information, but these verbal functions are many times not sufficiently contextualized. more recent insights from communication theory have revealed that successful communication between individuals from different cultural backgrounds can be conditioned, also, by the interaction between partners’ intercultural competence. most of the models developed recently seem to coincide in emphasizing the importance of learners’ awareness of own culture, an understanding of the relations between language and culture, and in providing insights into ways to explore, analyze and compare cultures (paige, jorstad, siaya, klein & colby, 1999; bennett, 1993; kramsch, 1993). if foreign language and culture teaching intends to prepare learners for the future, it needs to contribute to promoting learners’ acquisition of the attitudes and skills required for interacting with people from differing cultural and linguistic backgrounds. it needs to present learners with opportunities to acquire plurilingual and multicultural competence. this paper is a critical review of the tensions between recent developments in the field of culture and language teaching and learning towards designing a learner-oriented curriculum for the acquisition of intercultural communicative competence, as well as current foreign language and culture teaching practices. first, it briefly describes byram’s model for communicative intercultural competence; second, it discusses some of the factors that contribute to this perceived tension; third, it reports on a study which analyzed the academic discourses of in-service teachers regarding the cultural component of foreign language education; and finally, it proposes ways to start taking new directions. byram's model of communicative intercultural competence one of the most influential approaches for the teaching of culture is the one developed by byram and his european colleagues. intercultural competence, a part of byram’s intercultural communicative competence, entails five types of competencies, which he calls ‘savoirs’. the competence has two preconditions. one is in intercultural competence: another challenge profile 11, 2009. issn 1657-0790. bogotá, colombia. pages 143-158 145 terms of knowledge (savoirs) about the foreign society and social processes, about self and other, and about interaction and all that goes into it in a given situation. the other precondition is in terms of attitude (savoir être). this refers to features like openness, flexibility, empathy, awareness of others, and the ability to relativize one’s perspective and overcome dysfunctions and resistances, all of which allow establishing and maintaining relationships with other cultures. intercultural competence also involves two skills. savoir comprendre means the ability to interpret, compare and contrast texts and events. the other skill is savoir apprendre, which is the ability “to analyze data from one’s own country as well as from another and the potential relationships between them” (p. 33 in ware, 2003, p. 69). finally, savoir s’engager is a central subcompetency which draws on all the others and implies the development of critical political cultural awareness; that is, awareness of one’s own values, how they influence one’s view of others, a relativization of what is apparently natural, and an orientation towards action. the notion of intercultural competence or competencies in foreign language teaching, according to neuner (1997), should not be considered a new method of teaching, but a more comprehensive view of communicative competence that goes beyond functional or mere pragmatic aspects of foreign language use and that recognizes that fl teaching has to do with development of the personal and social identities of the learners. byram (1989) and alfred & byram (2002) referred to this type of competence in terms of tertiary socialization, which ideally should comprise part of the foreign language learning experience. it is about socializing with the norms of behavior, beliefs and values of another culture; it should also help learners to integrate other modes of thinking into the schemata, beliefs and concepts acquired during first and second socializations; it should develop the ability to live and grow in a multicultural environment. challenges in foreign language and culture teaching practices the cultural aims of foreign language teaching in the sense proposed by byram do not seem to have been met. one of the reasons mentioned in the literature is the absence of systematic methodology for helping learners get knowledge, develop attitudes, awareness or insights (wright, 1996). but, in fact, the new notion is complex, subjective, relative and requires more than methods. here are some of the difficulties: a superficial view of culture culture has often been viewed as the fifth skill (kramsch, 1993); that is, it has been considered as separate from language, and it has consisted of teaching big c culture (literary classics, works of art) and/or small c culture or the culture of the four fs: foods, fairs, folklore, and statistical facts (kramsch, 1991). the concept of intercultural competence requires relevant knowledge, skills and attitudes for intercultural encounters for which most teachers may not be prepared. in our context teachers have practically no opportunities to go abroad long enough to get real experience in the target culture(s). additionally, a widespread structuralist approach to language teaching or misconceptions about the teaching of communicative competence attach occupy a secondary place for culture teaching. furthermore, cultures have been assumed to be fixed and homogenous and what is taught and evaluated is usually facts that can be easily presented by teachers and learnt by barletta manjarrés universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras146 students. textbooks adopted by institutions that teach foreign languages are rarely evaluated in terms of how they promote the development of intercultural competence. a review by paige et al. (1999) indicated that students were satisfied with the culture as knowledge approach, partly because they know what to study and how to obtain good marks. a change of approach definitely destabilizes current learning situations and it is understandable if teachers do not want to assume it. language programs and the light approach although there is acceptance of the idea of the need for integration of culture and language in many foreign language departments, what one finds is domination and division between language and literature (steele, 1996). culture is not seen as an equally important aspect. cultural competence has not been defined and operationalized in a straightforward way, as many teachers would like to have it. moreover, programs usually have limited time, so, for many it is rather difficult to include a new component and develop it within the same time limits. this is especially true when there are public discourses popularizing a pragmatic view of language, according to which it is possible to learn a language in a few days, enjoyably, almost effortlessly and be successful in business, negotiations, etc. (steele, 1996). teachers are then faced with the challenge of making culture teaching enjoyable but critical enough (kramsch, 1993). besides, learning a foreign language is associated with ‘survival’ (wright, 1996) skills, which means that the language is learnt for tourism or short encounters with no transcendence. these approaches are not likely to challenge ethnocentric attitudes and do not contribute to making education a pillar for “learning to live together” as proposed by the report to unesco of the international commission on education for the twenty-first century (delors, 1996). peaceful coexistence on the planet relies on how all human beings are prepared to interact with others, understand the point of view of the other, see it as different from one’s own, but also on being able to suspend negative judgment and find “third places” where mutual recognition and respect results from the interaction. foreign language education has a crucial role to play in making conflicts less likely to happen, in making human interactions less confrontational, more constructive and mutually reinforcing. the need to change the paradigm educating the intercultural speaker means for the teacher and student to move from what sifakis (2004) calls the traditional n-bound perspective, with its emphasis on norms, standards and regularities, into c-bound approaches that focus on perception of language, attitudes, values, belief systems, and behaviors in order to stress crosscultural comprehensibility among learners as a communicative goal. for many, learning a foreign language means learning the language of an idealized educated class which speaks a ‘standard’ variant (see also saville-troike, 2003). this stands in contradiction with what your learners are usually interested in. they are more into urban culture and its manifestations as seen in musical videos and movies. especially concerning the teaching of english, the challenge is to teach it as an intercultural language; that is, as one that has many variants (cf. byram & feng, 2005) and is spoken by people that are the ‘owners’ of english as much as the learner him/herself. the task is to help students understand that the interaction that takes place between interlocutors is in reality far from the ideal norm taught inside n-bound classrooms (the idea that every communicative intercultural competence: another challenge profile 11, 2009. issn 1657-0790. bogotá, colombia. pages 143-158 147 situation engages interlocutors differently, constructs and makes different uses of context, and thus is not regularized or normativized). part of the challenge to change the current paradigm has to do with the requirement in byram’s model of intercultural competence to link foreign language education with a social, political and ethical enterprise. a number of foreign language educators (byram & feng, 2005; guilherme, 2002; reagan & osborn, 2002) are arguing for citizenship education, which means “critical engagement with one’s own position in society and an awareness of the wider forces to which all of us as individuals are responding” (giddens, 2000, p. 25 in guilherme, 2002, p. 162). this dimension in byram’s model is in fact related to the deepest meaning of education, especially in the modern world with high levels of mobility and intercultural exchanges. the ultimate goal of all these exchanges should be the possibility of communicating in order to construct a better world. not only do teachers now have to teach culture facts, skills to interact, and positive attitudes, but they also have to develop commitment to the education of citizens that are “reflective, critical, sensitive and committed to issues of human suffering and dignity both at local and global levels (wringe, 1984 cited in guilherme, 2002, p. 165)”. it implies that we, as teachers ourselves, have to change. assessment there is no clear answer about how to assess intercultural competence. paige et al. (1999) found challenges related to what to assess in culture, which and whose criteria to use, how to avoid homogenized views of a foreign language culture and stereotypes, and what tasks to design for culture assessment. sercu (2004) developed a framework for systematic test development in intercultural competence in which he deals with how issues such as validity, reliability, and authenticity need to be accounted for in assessing culture. however, he does not present either a concrete instrument or a list of criteria or rubric. it seems that the assessment of culture will always be imbued with subjectivity. the following are some of the challenges of the assessment of culture: teachers often rely on their own experiences to make judgments related to culture; there is a positivistic tradition in testing which does not agree with the nature of the competence; there is little interdisciplinary research and collaboration; and the evaluator needs to be flexible in accepting students’ own interpretations, which, at the same time, would go against the concept of objective, reliable testing (paige et al., 1999). this is even more challenging for many teachers in colombia. most of them have never been abroad: they may not have experienced the challenge of interacting with a representative of another culture in the cultural context of the interlocutor. these teachers may not know embarrassment when dealing with other cultures, for example. these teachers may have never been culturally challenged! other important questions are whether the strategies proposed in class and used for solving or describing an intercultural encounter should be the ones considered correct or adequate; whether education should prescribe attitudes; whether intercultural competence should be evaluated separately from linguistic competence; whether the “saviors” can function independently, one from the other and, lastly, how levels of intercultural competence can be defined (sercu, 2004; byram, morgan et al., 2004). or, even more general, whether culture should be assessed by the teacher or by the students themselves (damen, 1987). barletta manjarrés universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras148 technologization of discourse teaching another problem derives from the tendency to technologize approaches. for example, fantini (1997, cited in de capua & wintergerst, 2004) has developed a seven-stage process which addresses a number of aspects of intercultural competence such as presentation of material, control practice, grammar rule explanation, less controlled production, exploring sociolinguistic interrelationships, assessment of appropriateness, and cross-cultural comparisons. the mechanization of the teaching of culture can lead to routinizing processes, mechanization of answers and stereotyped ways to explain cultures and cross-cultural encounters. moments in the class that can be used for developing intercultural competence can arise unexpectedly and the teacher will need to be able to handle them without ready-made recipes. this inclusion of technology in the teaching of culture can also be identified in the popularity of cultural primers; that is, handbooks explaining foreign cultures for business relations. it has been found that these primers are more likely to construct or solidify negative stereotypes of the target culture because of the mechanistic simplification of the target culture (boehringer & preece, 2002 cited in boehringer, gongartz & gramberg, 2004). many times, however, information about countries that are more developed economically fosters idealization of the culture of those countries. fallacy of technology a great challenge is posed by the spread of modern technology. one aspect was described by kramsch (1991) at a time when the internet was not so common or integrated with fl learning. she pointed out how television creates the illusion of immediate mediation among cultures. a number of countries and cultures are presented today in commercial movies, television programs, popular icons, etc. however, these programs are presented without any distancing or perspective-taking from national culture. this can lead to the stereotyping of other cultures (although this is also true for the american culture(s) as presented in other countries) and the belief that one already knows what the spanish, arab or chinese speaking world is like, without really experiencing any part of it. a study by ware (2003) demystifies the potential of on-line communication per se for the development of intercultural competence. he found that the foreign language learners in his study were more concerned with communicative competence than with intercultural competence. although the students were involved in conversation, they were ‘disengaged’; that is, they missed opportunities to engage in cultural understanding such as they did not exhibit critical inquiry or willingness to suspend judgment, they did not take risks, stay emotionally involved or view culture as language. textbooks in general, there is a shortage of textbooks that can deal appropriately with the challenge of teaching culture for the new demands. after all, as lafayette (1997) argues, textbooks are not designed to change the teaching of foreign language. a review by paige et al. (1999) concluded that the information in textbooks is biased, fragmented, limited and simplistic. it is argued, however, that important as authenticity of texts may be (galloway, 1997; garcía, 1997), what matters is what is done in the classroom with the texts. moreover, as feng & byram (2002, cited in byram & feng, 2005) argue, inauthentic context need not be an obstacle because it can be pedagogically treated, it can encourage students to discuss the discourses, the context, and intended meanings, intercultural competence: another challenge profile 11, 2009. issn 1657-0790. bogotá, colombia. pages 143-158 149 for example. thus, what matters then depends to a large extent on the teacher. teachers' competence the types of activities that kramsch (1993) proposes for the development of intercultural competence demand that the teachers possess deep and wide knowledge of language and culture. the new vision of culture teaching indicates the need for teachers to enlarge their philological or literary focus and to gain knowledge and perspective from other disciplines like anthropology, sociology, history, semiotics, etc., in order to be able to discuss culture and do contrastive analyses (kramsch, 1991). “it is mistaken to assume that teachers can competently provide explanations of complex issues to their students by simply drawing on text information and personal experience” (byram & feng, 2005, p. 914). teacher beliefs and methodologies teacher development in matters of culture teaching, in fact, poses a key challenge. while there seems to be very little known about what actually happens in the classroom in regard to the cultural component of communicative competence (paige et al., 1999), it is clear, however, that teacher beliefs are an important variable in the teaching of culture. a study by klein (2004) about teachers’ beliefs as regards culture and culture teaching showed that the participants in her study had a vague conceptualization of culture and of the relation between culture and language. for them culture learning meant basically knowledge of facts about the target culture and gains in tolerance and understanding. they considered culture learning as an automatic process, especially in immersion experiences. klein’s study also showed that culture materials are used as opportunities for language practice and that discussions are done at a superficial level, which leads to the reification of facts which students had to learn. students in her study were never asked to question their assumptions and sometimes stereotypes were reinforced. two methodological features that may be characteristic of a number of teachers were 1) the translation into l1 when explanation about cultural connotation was required of a word or expression and 2) that in cultural discussions the procedure was for the teacher to ask for a description of the understanding of an event, passage or issue, and then to ask about the opinion of that phenomenon. that is, the intermediate stage of interpretation from the perspective of the target culture was skipped. the findings by klein highlight the need for teacher training. discourses finally, one apparently minor issue but which can be of great importance is the following: in order to change the perspective of teaching culture, it seems necessary to start by questioning the way culture, language and the relation between language and culture are all talked about. the conduit metaphor for language is still largely used even by those scholars that try to give guidelines for foreign, bilingual and second language teacher education and culture training (e.g. de capua & wintergerst, 2004). statements like “language is the primary medium for transmitting among its speakers a culture’s beliefs, values, norms, and worldview” (p. 25), would solidify the general belief that information is shunted and/or transmitted, as if through a pipe, from one person to another. metaphors like “language and communication are more than words and grammar; they are also a reflection of the cultural and social context of the speakers” barletta manjarrés universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras150 (p. 69) could encourage a mechanistic view of the relation between language and culture. fl and culture teaching: what some academic discourses convey the discussion so far has focused on general difficulties related to the teaching of the cultural component of foreign language and the development of intercultural communication as described by scholars in other contexts, especially europe and north america. while their descriptions of the challenges seem to apply to a number of contexts around the world, it is necessary to have a closer look at the situation in colombia. in this section i will provide examples of how the culture dimension and its teaching in foreign language programs are represented across 20 monographs of inservice teachers upon completion of a one-year teacher development course in english language teaching. each monograph is approximately 80 double-spaced pages long. altogether the corpus examined is made up of about 400,000 words. in the monographs, the teacher writers describe the process of collecting information about the needs of a specific teaching context and the design of a course as well as of a sample of the materials that would meet the identified needs of the teaching situation. the brackets after each excerpt indicate the number of the monograph (e.g. t1 means text 1) and the page number from which the excerpt was extracted. culture is seldom defined target language culture is defined in one of the works analyzed: “the traditions and culture of the country whose language is being studied” (t20: 124). notice the ambiguous and static representation conveyed in this definition. culture knowledge is not a usual goal in general, though the notion of culture is found multiple times in most of the monographs, it is not discussed and is rarely considered a goal to be attained in the courses designed. one of the writers practically discarded the cultural aspects of the language as a valid objective for language learning today. previously, learning a foreign language was a cultural or an academic issue; at that moment, learning english became the only tool to have access to the information in the different fields that were transforming the world (hutchinson & waters, 1987) (t16: 4). intercultural competence is automatically achieved the notion of intercultural competence is found very few times in the writings and is never defined. one assumption is that intercultural competence or awareness is achieved almost automatically together with linguistic competence and the earlier the language is taught the better. moreover, the general law of education also cites the access to science, technique and research, especially in articles 3, 5, 22, 23, 31 and 91 where comprehension and the capacity of expressing ideas in a foreign language is considered an objective of basic education because through the knowledge of the language students have the opportunity to achieve an intercultural competence (t5: 3). the hope is that early childhood exposure to another language within a “natural environment” will facilitate the students’ speaking and understanding abilities when they study it further. in this way, they might develop an early consciousness of culture and of the diversity of human beings (t1: 4). linguistic competence and cultural awareness go hand in hand; and both are vital necessities for today’s children (t11: 15). intercultural competence: another challenge profile 11, 2009. issn 1657-0790. bogotá, colombia. pages 143-158 151 access, presumably understood as contact with others, seems to be the alleged cultural aim in several texts. some of these discourses represent the learners of the foreign language as outsiders and the users as if locked and protected. an alternative view would represent both the learner and the representative of the target culture as interested in intercultural exchanges and both making efforts to engage in successful communication. i am referring to the english teaching – learning process, not only because english is one of the most spoken languages in the world, but also because it allows you to have access to technology, to other cultures and to professional success (t15: 10). […] because thanks to the use of the language and new technologies, learners can access lots of cultures (t5: 9). culture as context and established norms of interaction in other monographs, culture is the context and sociocultural norms, important variables to construct meanings and communicate appropriately. words also change meaning according to the culture in which they are expressed and students should be aware of this. even in our own language, expressions or words change their meaning according to the area in which they are being said or written. in a foreign language, the meaning or the appropriateness of the words or expressions varies from the ones in our first language context (t2: 44). further, when working with oral proficiency, social cultural norms are of prime importance because they enhance the communicative competence when speaking the target language. they consist of formal and informal ways to address others (t6: 27). respect and understanding as the goal of culture teaching on the other hand, [name of institution] has its own institutional educational project (pei) which searches for the development of communicative competences to use the language as a medium of communication to exchange knowledge, understand and respect other cultures (t20: 4). the program goal for students is to acquire command of a second language and to understand other cultures because globalisation is part of our world; therefore, communication also turns global (t9: 9). culture as a homogenous and teachable object in the examples below the writers not only imply that there is an english culture and that the purpose is to learn ‘about’ that culture, but also that countries where english has been traditionally established as the official means of communication have one homogeneous and stable culture. the english program encompasses literature, grammar, listening, speaking and writing; and the material used in the different grades gives students opportunities to learn about english culture and make connections between and across subject areas (t17: 4). […] the institution wants to generate leadership and cultural transformation in its students, teaching them not only the culture of countries whose native language is english, but respect for their own culture as well. this way, the school educates citizens who value their own identity, while keeping a global vision (t11: 5). ideological representation of interlocutors though concrete interlocutors for the users of english are not often found in the texts, these were often represented as native english speakers. barletta manjarrés universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras152 those people in the context are all teenagers who have to be trained for job situations at tourist settings where they will have to deal with native speakers of the target language (t6 ap ln: 26). since they are going to be involved in personal interactions with foreigners in a tourist environment, it is necessary (according to the results) that the students receive very good instruction in the understanding of the american culture as regards the tourist situations (t6 res: 14). these discourses imply that there are certain cultures that are worth studying presumably because the learners will be dealing exclusively with their representatives. this certainly leaves out the greater part of the potential international interlocutors and their cultures. the limited representation of potential interlocutors may be influenced by wider ideologies at the institutional level regarding who colombians need to or should establish communication with. in the following example the teacher endorses her school’s initiative to encompass wider cultural goals for the students. this initiative includes respect for two types of culture: their own culture and that of “native english countries”. on the other hand, considering education as a long-term process, the institution leaders want to generate leadership and cultural transformation in their students, teaching them not only the culture of native english countries, but respect for their own culture as well. this way, the school educates citizens who value their own identity, while keeping a global vision (t11: 4). associated with the ideology that learners of english are to interact with the representatives of the “native english countries” is the idea that native speakers are the prototype of the english users. […] the efl student needs abundant, authentic models of native speech (t6: 19). it is very important that students have opportunities to develop strategies for interpreting language as it is actually used by native speakers (t17: 28). in the case of english, one of the purposes of developing intercultural communicative competence should be, precisely, to enable and encourage communication with wider communities across the planet, to leave aside the idea that there are owners of the language and outsiders, or that there are encounters with certain individuals who are superior to others. some discourses seem to suggest that advanced levels of competence are necessary if interaction is likely to take place with native speakers. there is concern about their command of english; some are worried about their ability to speak to and listen to people, so they want to be on an advanced level of interaction due to the fact that they would probably be in touch with native speakers and that the abilities mentioned above are definitely of help (t4: 12). this type of categorization of communities and individuals strongly opposes the ideals of harmonious co-existence in a multicultural world. the discourses contribute to consolidating the current tendency to downgrade the relevance of what happens in certain latitudes and hemispheres of the planet, to ignore the variety of cultures within english-speaking countries, to disregard the increasing number of non-native speakers who are using english for international communication, and to assume that the world is the english-speaking world. perhaps this has to do with a limited (western-centered) conception of the world. discomfort with unfamiliar cultural material/facts one idea found in four works is that instructional materials that reflect or depict other intercultural competence: another challenge profile 11, 2009. issn 1657-0790. bogotá, colombia. pages 143-158 153 cultures and not colombian or latin american ones are deficient or not interesting enough. in regard to cultural aspects, the material seems to be culturally biased in the sense that topics (sports) like cricket may not be common for a student or appealing (t18: 25). as said before, readings are culturally oriented to different ethnic social groups with easy to read paragraphs that may not be of adolescents’ interest (t20: 22). the presentation of the units is good; lots of white space, pictures; the colors of the cover may not be motivating, though. also, the choice of cultural aspects is quite good, but there are no local references. the context and illustrations are biased (only americans and asian people). they may make students feel like aliens, culturally speaking (t4: 23). there is not a uniform representation of the relation between language and culture, of what the cultural dimension is or should be in the teaching of a language and what the concrete achievements for foreign language teaching should be in terms of cultural gains. more often than not culture is an important and necessary aspect to mention when talking about english and english teaching. these verbalizations, however, do not find concrete implementation when it comes to the design of the courses and the materials. in text 20, for example, the author, after stating the importance of intercultural development proposed by the curricular guidelines emanating from the ministry of education, soon switches to the urgency of preparing learners to get good scores on the standardized test that high school students must take before entering any higher education institution and he stays with it. this exam, as the teacher writes, is about reading comprehension, not intercultural competence. it is very important, too, to keep in mind the main objective of the lineamientos curriculares which intend that colombian students learn the language as a medium of intercultural development, a tool to build knowledge and mainly as a means of acquiring specialized information in different fields that could help us in our scientific, technological and commercial development, and according to this objective, high school students must be prepared for the icfes national exam which is rather oriented to reading comprehension. considering these aspects it is necessary to design a course in which students should be able to develop reading comprehension abilities as a medium of knowledge acquisition and the development of communicative skills such as speaking and listening through reading that enable them to be prepared for the icfes examination (t20: 16-17). while some teachers seem to entirely neglect the inclusion of teaching culture or developing intercultural competence, others make statements in the course design section of their monographs, which could make the reader believe there is still some preoccupation for culture. for the author of monograph 1, culture was not an aspect to mention in the entire text until approaching the description of the materials she designed. she wrote: the role of these materials is summarized as follows: attract students’ attention engage students with other universal cultures (t1 cd met: 40). interestingly, culture-teaching is not a goal or topic discussed in her writing, but she seems to expect that this culture component will, nevertheless, be present in her course because she selected readings in english which deal with people, events and problems in other countries. it is clear, however, that whatever is achieved is not really central to her purposes, but more likely a ‘side-effect’. barletta manjarrés universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras154 conclusions the features of the challenges facing the development of intercultural competence and the seemingly narrow and often ideological views on culture and culture teaching in the discourses of in-service teachers point to the need to address the topic seriously, especially in view of the recent publication of standards for english teaching in the country. much as the basic standards of foreign language competencies in colombia was worked out following the european model, the concept of intercultural communicative competence did not find a place in it, and, in general, the cultural component was relegated to occupy an insignificant position. students up to 8th grade are meant to recognize cultural elements (big and small c approach) and in 10th and 11th grades they should be encouraged to construct their interpretation of others’ identity and “appreciate the value of the english-speaking culture (note the singular)”. (estándares básicos de competencias en lenguas extranjeras inglés, 2006, p. 26). 1 if english in our country, as advertised today, is a basic skill from which to construct success and one that is going to “insert the country in the processes of universal communication, the global economy and the cultural opening” (programa nacional de bilingüismo cited in estándares básicos de competencias en lenguas extranjeras inglés, 2006), there is a need to think together about how we want to represent ourselves in interacting with other cultures, how we represent 1 from the official document: grados 8 a 9. lectura: identifico elementos culturales presentes en textos sencillos (p. 24); conversación: demuestro que reconozco elementos de la cultura extranjera y los relaciono con mi cultura (p. 25). grados 10 a 11. lectura: en un texto identifico los elementos que me permiten apreciar los valores de la cultura angloparlante (p. 26). monólogos: opino sobre los estilos de vida de la gente de otras culturas, apoyándome en textos escritos y orales previamente estudiados (p. 27). other cultures in the foreign language classroom, what are the types of interactions that we would like to engage in and in which contexts. this effort implies that conferences, symposia, seminars and other academic events should be organized within the country to discuss these issues, to think together about how to incorporate the cultural dimension into the curricula or even in the national standards, how to evaluate it, to share and assess the larger or discrete attempts at developing intercultural competence. international events within the country would bring together representatives of different cultures and have them interact in an environment where there is no superior culture, but where, perhaps, a new, hybrid one can be constructed on the bases of mutual recognition and understanding. if these decisions are not taken, we will continue reading and hearing myths about what english can do for the country and its citizens. we do not need to consider ourselves the other, the outsiders, the backward, the different. neither do we need to think that the entire world speaks english, or that there is such a thing as “the english-speaking culture”. the importance of foreign language education then could lie in preparing citizens to have more flexible views of the other and of the self and in the attempt at having more mutually reinforcing encounters. this is especially true of colombia which is a multicultural country. this issue, however, is hardly tackled in day-to-day english classrooms. and instead, it is a superficial approach to the teaching of culture that prevails. the task of the english teacher is multifarious: teaching about the cultures of english speaking people, thus helping students gain understanding of their own culture; contributing to the understanding and appreciation of different world views conveyed through the foreign language intercultural competence: another challenge profile 11, 2009. issn 1657-0790. bogotá, colombia. pages 143-158 155 and the cultural practices associated with groups that speak the foreign language; helping students compare these cultures and their own culture; establishing relationships between the cultural practices and products of peoples around the world; and envisioning possible mutually enriching encounters with representatives of other cultures. it is not possible to make concrete proposals for measures that work across contexts; rather, one should start from the perspective of the specific learning context and decide on sensible things to do, considering factors like time, resources, goals of the program, teachers’ competencies, etc. an awareness raising approach from within, led by committed enthusiastic and eager-to-know-more teachers, could help. needless to say, the teaching of intercultural competence should be an area in the curriculum of undergraduate language education. depending on the state of the art in a specific place, one could argue that one or several of the following measures should be undertaken: • exploration of the concept of culture and intercultural competence. though undoubtedly a step in the right direction if included in english language programs, it is necessary to move beyond the teaching of cultural products or the 4 fs approach (see above). interdisciplinary work with disciplines such as anthropology, sociology, cultural studies, economics, and the arts could give special impetus to the cultural component in language programs or in language teacher education programs. • re-examination of the images of the foreign cultures. research into how certain foreign cultures are idealized and even worshipped (while others are discarded) by language teachers is urgently needed. it is particularly important to have young people reflect on the economic strings attached to the export of cultural products and icons, especially concerning the multi-billion dollar entertainment business and to explore other less advertised but equally important aspects of the cultural life of other communities. • problematizing the stereotypes and the smooth representation of intercultural encounters in the textbooks. dialogues and conversations seldom include the misunderstandings, frustrations and resentments that often arise when individuals from different backgrounds, expectations, values and world views come together. learning to communicate in a second language must include dealing with the unexpected, coping with uncertainties, acting in flexible manners, and de-centralizing one’s own perspective. • development of syllabi that integrate language and culture with special focus on contrastive analysis of behaviours, responses, reactions, and values of individuals from different cultures. • development of materials conducive to culture teaching as well as assessment criteria and instruments. • capitalizing on the study abroad experiences of colombians who travel as part of the educational experience of their curricula. • it is essential to renew efforts towards teacher education with a strong component of reflection on culture, cultural encounters, the relation between language and culture and focus on the knowledge, skills and attitudes that are part of intercultural competence. • more research about culture teaching, learning and evaluation. we need to abandon the consumerist approach, carry out our own research and socialize it within the academic community. teachers should be encouraged to venture into the unexplored land of teachbarletta manjarrés universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras156 ing and evaluate the cultural component of a class. considering the current state of confrontation and vulnerability as well as fragility of citizens in the country, we may profit from research leading to suggesting better ways of communicating. the study of ways in which intercultural communication can alienate or include, empower or disempower some individuals or groups of people should result in raised awareness among learners of the importance of responsible use of the language. • organization of national conferences on the topic; encouragement of the production and publication of working papers dealing with this specific aspect of foreign language teaching. educational authorities should consider the serious inclusion of a cultural component in the standardized examinations. given the perceived washback of these exams in the country, they may prompt interest and research on these issues. equally important is the need to formulate concrete standards regarding the development of intercultural competencies so as to orient teachers regarding the knowledge and abilities their students need to develop in order to become efficient communicators and “insert the country in the processes of universal communication, in the global economy and cultural openness” (estándares básicos de competencias en lenguas extranjeras: inglés”, 2006). for the language teacher interested in the topic, one could propose a systematic examination of his or her own teaching practices. some of the issues to put under scrutiny are as follows: what is the role of culture in the class? what is favored cultural knowledge, skills, attitudes? how is it taught? what kinds of interactions are favored in the class? whose opinions are valued? how are the others represented and spoken about (or spoken to if that is the case)? is difference considered and discussed? what is the role of conflict and misunderstanding? how is that dealt with? what are the opportunities missed? such observations should be followed by reflection and action towards change in small steps. one could also propose that teachers be required (and funded) to study abroad and do ethnographic studies, for example, which would include interviewing, describing, analyzing, interpreting and reporting the culture and intercultural encounters, challenges, disappointments and successes. beyond immediate pragmatic considerations, the teaching of foreign language in general should contribute towards the general achievement of better relationships among human beings on earth for the mutual benefits of all who interact in order to make our planet a better place to live. references alfred, g., & byram, m. (2002). becoming an intercultural mediator: a longitudinal study of residence abroad. journal of multilingual and multicultural development, 23(5), 339-352. bennett, m. j. (1993). towards ethnorelativism: a developmental model of intercultural sensitivity. in r. m. paige (ed.), education for the intercultural experience (pp. 21-71). yarmouth, me: intercultural press. boehringer, m., & preece, s. (2002). culture for dummies: evaluating for the impact of international business primers. journal of language for international business, 11(2), 11-21. boehringer, m., gongartz, c., & gramberg, a. k. (2004). language learning and intercultural training: the impact of cultural primers on learners and nonlearners of german. the journal of language for international business, 15(4), 1-18. intercultural competence: another challenge profile 11, 2009. issn 1657-0790. bogotá, colombia. pages 143-158 157 byram, m. (1989). intercultural education and foreign language teaching. world studies journal, 7(2), 4-7. byram, m., morgan, c. et al. (1994). teachingand-learning language-and-culture. clevedon: multilingual matters. byram, m., & feng, a. (2005). teaching and researching intercultural competence. in e. hinkel (ed.), handbook of second language acquisition research (pp. 911-930). mahwah, n. j.: lawrence erlbaum. celce-murcia, m. (1995). the elaboration of sociolinguistic competence: implications for teacher education. in j. e. alatis, c. straehle, c. a. gallenberger, & m. ronkin (eds.), georgetown university round table on languages and linguistics: linguistics and the education of language teachers: ethnolinguistic, psycholinguistics, and sociolinguistic aspects (pp. 699-710). washington d.c.: georgetown university press. colombia. ministerio de educación nacional [men]. (2006). formar en lenguas extranjeras: ¡el reto! lo que necesitamos saber y saber hacer. estándares básicos de competencias en lenguas extranjeras: inglés. bogotá: autor. damen, l. (1987). culture learning: the fifth dimension in the language classroom. reading: addison-wesley. de capua, j. a., & wintergerst a. (2004). crossing cultures in the language classroom. the university of michigan: ann arbour. delors, j. (1996). la educación encierra un tesoro. informe a la unesco de la comisión internacional sobre la educación para el siglo xxi [learning, the treasure within: report to unesco of the internacional comission on education for the twenty-first century]. madrid: santillana. ediciones unesco. fantini, a. (1997). developing intercultural competence: a process approach framework. in a. fantini (ed.), new ways in teaching culture (pp. 40-44). alexandria, va: teachers of english to speakers of other languages. feng, a. w., & byram, m. (2002). authenticity in college english textbooks: an intercultural perspective. relc journal, 33(2), 58-84. galloway, v. b. (1997). toward a cultural reading of authentic texts. in p. r. heusinkveld (ed.), pathways to culture: readings on teaching culture in the foreign language class (pp. 255-302). yarmouth, me: intercultural press. garcía, c. (1997). using authentic reading texts to discover underlying sociocultural information. in p. r. heusinkveld (ed.), pathways to culture: readings on teaching culture in the foreign language class (pp. 303-326). yarmouth, me: intercultural press. giddens, a. (2000). citizenship education in the global era. in n. pearce, & j. hallgarten (eds.), tomorrow’s citizens: critical debates in citizenship and education (pp. 19-25). london: institute for public policy research. guilherme, m. (2002). critical citizens for an intercultural world: foreign language education as cultural politics. clevedon: multilingual matters. klein, f. (2004). culture in the foreign language classroom: teachers’ beliefs, opportunities and practice. (doctoral dissertation, university of minnesota). dissertation abstracts international, a: the humanities and social sciences, 64(4), oct, 1235-a, 319. kramsch, c. (1991). culture in language learning: a view from the u.s. in k. de bot, r. b. ginsberg, & c. kramsch (eds), foreign language research in crosscultural perspective (pp. 217-239). amsterdam/ philadelphia: john benjamins. kramsch, c. (1993). context and culture in language teaching. oxford: oxford university press. lafayette, r. (1997). integrating the teaching of culture into the foreign language classroom. in p. r. heusinkveld (ed.), pathways to culture: readings on teaching culture in the foreign language class (pp. 119-138). yarmouth, me: intercultural press. neuner, g. (1997). the role of sociocultural competence in foreign language teaching and learning. in m. byram, g. zarate, & g. neuner (eds.), sociocultural competence in language learning and teaching. (pp. 47-110). germany: council of europe publishing. paige, m. r., jorstad, h., siaya, l., klein, f., & colby, j. (1999). culture learning in language education: a review of the literature. in r. m. paige, & d. lange (eds), culture as core: integrating culture barletta manjarrés universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras158 into the curriculum (pp. 47-114). carla working paper series #15. minneappolis, mn: university of minnesota, the center for advanced research on language acquisition. retrieved from http://www.carla.umn.edu/resources/workingpapers/#culture2 reagan, g., & osborn, t. a. (2002). the foreign language educator in society: towards a critical pedagogy. mahwah, nj: lawrence erlbaum. saville-troike, m. (2003). extending communicative concepts in the second language curriculum: a sociolinuistic perspective. in d. l. lange, & r. m. paige (eds.), culture at the core: perspectives on culture in second language learning (pp. 3-18). greenwich connecticut: information age publishing. sercu, l. (2004). assessing intercultural competence: a framework for systematic test development in foreign language education and beyond. intercultural education, 15(1), 73-89. sifakis, n. c. (2004). teaching eil-teaching international or intercultural english? what teachers should know. system, 32(2), 237-250. steele, r. (1996). developing intercultural competence through foreign language instruction: challenges and choices (pp. 70-83). georgetown university round table on languages and linguistics. ware, p. d. (2003). from involvement to engagement in online communication: promoting intercultural competence in foreign language education (pp. 371). doctoral dissertation, university of california, berkeley. wright, m. (1996). the cultural aims of modern language teaching: why are they not being met? language learning journal, 13, 36-37. wringe, c. (1984). democracy, schooling and political education. london: allen and unwin. about the author norma barletta manjarrés, ph. d in second language acquisition and teaching and master of arts in education. she is an assistant professor at universidad del norte, barranquilla, and a member of the research group language and education. her research interests are discourse analysis and language pedagogy. profile 10.indd designing and implementing content-bases courses in enflish with non-language faculty... profile 10, 2008. issn 1657-0790. bogotá, colombia. pages 113-134 113 * this paper reports some of the findings of a bigger study focused on “teaching content-based english in the undergraduate programs at the universidad de antioquia”. funded by comité para el desarrollo de la investigación codi. code: tem 2003 e00951 ** e-mail: fabioarismendi@yahoo.com address: carrera 29 no 43-13 medellín, colombia *** e-mail: arcanosaba@gmail.com address: calle 67 no. 53-108, bloque 11-407. universidad de antioquia, escuela de idiomas. medellín, colombia **** e-mail: natas22@gmail.com address: calle 25 no 58 dd 32 bello-antioquia, colombia this article was received on january 29, 2008 and accepted on september 20, 2008. designing and implementing content-based courses in english with a non-language faculty at a public colombian university* diseño e implementación de cursos basados en contenido en inglés con docentes no expertos en lenguas en una universidad pública colombiana fabio alberto arismendi gómez** claudia patricia díaz mosquera*** leidy natalia salazar valencia**** universidad de antioquia, colombia this article reports the findings of an investigation into the experience of a group of eight professors from undergraduate programs in hard sciences who participated in a multi-site study to implement content-based (cb) courses in english. the professors, who had a high level of proficiency in english, worked in collaboration with language faculty. the data gathered from focus groups, class observations and in-depth interviews reveal some factors which influence the professors’ teaching practices, and the academic and professional gains they derived from this experience. founded on the results, the researchers propose a mentoring program that supports professors in the development of cb courses in english. key words: content-based teaching in efl, mentoring programs, professional development este artículo presenta los resultados de una investigación sobre la experiencia de un grupo de ocho docentes de pregrado de ciencias exactas y naturales quienes participaron en un estudio de caso múltiple para implementar cursos de contenido en inglés. los profesores, quienes tenían un alto nivel de competencia en inglés, trabajaron en colaboración con docentes de lenguas. los datos que se obtuvieron de los grupos focales, de las observaciones de clase y de las entrevistas a profundidad muestran algunos de los factores que influyen en sus prácticas pedagógicas y los logros académicos y profesionales que se derivaron de esta experiencia. a partir de los resultados, los investigadores proponen un programa de apoyo tutorial que apoye a los docentes en el desarrollo de cursos de contenido en inglés. palabras claves: enseñanza del inglés a través de contenidos, programas de desarrollo profesional, desarrollo profesional profile 10, 2008. issn 1657-0790. bogotá, colombia. pages 113-134 profile 10.indd 113 23/10/2008 8:46:20 arismendi gómez, díaz mosquera and salazar valencia universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras114 introduction at the universidad de antioquia, a public research university, there are a growing number of subject area professors who are highly knowledgeable in their field, proficient in at least one foreign language and who are willing to merge into one course these two areas of their expertise. a group of faculty researchers from the school of languages recognized the potential in this situation and decided to attempt to organize, within the context of the undergraduate programs of the university, a framework for constructing content based curricula that simultaneously promoted the learning of a foreign language. this kind of experience has been documented by scholars in other efl contexts (rosenkjar, 2005; stewart, sagliano & sagliano, 2005) but at public universities in colombia, there is little evidence of this approach. thus, the process of planning and implementing content-based (cb) courses at university level in a foreign language context becomes an alternative that challenges the grammar translation and communicative methodologies that prevail at most levels of education when learning a foreign language (freeman & freeman, 1998; díaz, 2002). in addition, factors such as limited access to resources and the restricted possibilities for using the language for meaningful purposes (gonzález et al., 2002) highlight the need for more critical reflection on the efl teaching approaches used in colombia and for the discussion of proposals that respond to the reality of this context. the main aim of this paper is to examine the possibilities of developing a mentoring program for non-language faculty to teach cb courses. this includes an account of (a) the mentoring sessions conducted with non-language faculty, (b) the factors that influenced the teaching practice of the eight participant professors when implementing the content courses in english, and (c) the gains non-language faculty claimed to derive from this experience. the paper concludes with a proposal, drawn from the research, with guidelines for carrying out a mentoring program that would enable subject area professors to enhance their teaching practices when implementing this kind of methodology. literature review in this section, the principles that support cb teaching, the models and strategies teachers require to balance language and content in their classes, as well as the holistic impact this methodology has on both teachers and students, will be elucidated. the socio-psycholinguistic orientation is the foundation of the cb methodology under a common umbrella of principles related to learning, social issues, teaching, curriculum, and language, which contribute to the holistic development of both young and adult learners (whitmore & goodman, 1996). learning is defined as an ongoing process, unique for each learner, which occurs in supportive, collaborative contexts where life experiences of learners are valued and related to learning experiences. therefore, teachers consciously work to create a sense of shared involvement, supporting learning opportunities that invite students to participate and assume profile 10.indd 114 23/10/2008 8:46:20 designing and implementing content-bases courses in enflish with non-language faculty... profile 10, 2008. issn 1657-0790. bogotá, colombia. pages 113-134 115 responsibility for their own learning. the curricular framework for these processes is a dual integrated curriculum that advocates the construction of knowledge and concepts, at the same time that it builds thought and language. language is therefore understood as the medium of communication, thought and learning when it is comprehensible and authentic, and when it promotes cognitive development and serves real purposes. this grass-roots movement is described and defined by individual teachers according to their professional and personal background. the work of lev vygotsky (1934, 1978), louis rosenblatt (1978), brian cambourne (1988), john dewey (1938), kenneth goodman (1986,1996), halliday (1985), frank smith (1998) and yetta goodman & ann marek (1996), as well as the experiences of scholars in the field of foreign and second language learning and teaching at different levels of education, such as yvonne and david freeman (1994,1998), katiuska salmon (1998), adelina arellano (1992), amparo clavijo (2000) among many others, provide the foundations for the implementation of cb teaching. as mentioned above, in cb teaching, it is evident that the essence of human learning for either adults or young learners at all school levels entails the company of experienced learners for the construction of knowledge and language. cambourne (1988) identified a group of conditions that are rooted in the natural process that takes place in all kinds of learning. the author states that immersion is required to constantly illustrate learners with samples of those issues they are going to learn; accompanied with demonstrations performed by significant others who are more experienced learners in the community on how to make use of those tools available. learners should see this display of models as ‘doable’ and meaningful in order to be engaged in the learning process with delineated expectations expressed by both the apprentices and the experienced learners. both of them evidence mutual commitment through acts of responsibility to the process. approximations to the conventions of language use and knowledge construction are encouraged because supportive responses will be provided by more knowledgeable learners. besides considering these conditions, teachers in efl settings should bear in mind the benefits they may derive from the expertise and knowledge students have already acquired in their native language to implement cb methodology. cummins (1996) argues the existence of a common underlying proficiency (cup) opposed to a separate underlying proficiency (sup). he explains that the academic concepts or the skills acquired through one language build a cup that can be accessed and enriched as learners incorporate different language systems. the information does not lie completely separately in the brain; therefore, what an individual learns in one language is not restricted to that sign system and is transferred among languages, as it is required by the language user. for curricular purposes, the array of possibilities teachers have available as regards the programs, models, and approaches for integrating language and content in second and foreign language profile 10.indd 115 23/10/2008 8:46:20 arismendi gómez, díaz mosquera and salazar valencia universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras116 settings ranges from a tendency to highlight language in the adjunct model, in themebased courses, and in language classes with frequent use of content for language practice (snow, 1993; brinton et al. 1989; genessee, 1994; met, 1999); to those that emphasize content in immersion and sheltered courses. according to stoller (2002), planning lessons for cb courses requires teachers to allow students to derive a deeper content knowledge and better language skills since, as cummins also clarifies, content and language learning are reciprocally related. stoller presents a set of techniques teachers may use to balance language and content in their classes. those strategies are as follows: 1. extended input, meaningful output, and feedback on language and grasp of content. 2. information gathering, processing, and reporting. 3. integrated skills. 4. task-based activities and project work, enhanced by cooperative learning principles. 5. strategy training. 6. visual support. 7. contextualized grammar instruction. 8. culminating synthesis activities. experiences in efl settings have revealed that where content and language specialists worked together to teach cb courses there is a need for a professional orientation program on language teaching and learning, since many of the professionals in other fields have not taken any methodological course that demonstrates the “use of active learning approaches and discipline in cb language teaching” (stewart & sagliano, 2005, p. 30). in the implementation of cb courses, teachers are encouraged to participate in a learning continuum that, unlike training courses, favors long-term reflections about principles, methods and strategies that empower participants to make their own informed decisions (woodward, 1997). the study the methodology followed in this project was a multi-site case study (yin, 1994, tellis, 1997) framed within an interpretive paradigm (arnal et al. 1994, pring, 2000) given that the language faculty researchers tried to understand how the science professors from three different settings experimented, perceived, modified and interpreted the educational practice they were experiencing. the specific research question that guided this part of the study was the following: how can faculty from hard sciences benefit from a mentoring program in the process of designing and implementing content-based courses in english with the support of language faculty in the undergraduate programs at a public university? among the objectives of this project, the language faculty researchers considered the design of a framework for mentoring non-language faculty in cb teaching and learning methodologies. data collection before starting the project, four science professors were observed while teaching their regular courses in spanish in order for the language faculty researchers to get acquainted with their methodologies. similarly, they were observed while they taught their content courses in english. throughout the project, the role of the profile 10.indd 116 23/10/2008 8:46:20 designing and implementing content-bases courses in enflish with non-language faculty... profile 10, 2008. issn 1657-0790. bogotá, colombia. pages 113-134 117 observer was non-participatory. the language faculty researchers designed an open format in which they took into account student-student and teacherstudent interaction as well as the resources employed in the course and the different strategies the science professors implemented (see appendix 1). in the school of veterinary medicine, there were seven members of the language faculty research team (three students and four professors) who took turns observing those classes. they observed 10 out of 16 sessions of the course. in the chemistry institute, seven members of the language faculty research team (two students and five professors) took turns and observed 10 of the 16 sessions. in these schools, the observations were carried out approximately every two weeks. in the school of microbiology, nine language faculty researchers (three students and six professors) took turns and observed 15 of the 16 sessions devoted to the course, which means that the language faculty researchers observed weekly. observations in the three schools were mostly done by two different observers at the same time; nevertheless, sometimes there was only one observer due to schedule restrictions. the notes taken during the class observations and the mentoring sessions helped for the triangulation of the data gathered. when the courses finished, focus group sessions (debus, 1988; dendinger, 2000) with the science professors and students were held in order to obtain their perspectives on the development of the courses and to triangulate the information gathered in the observations. finally, in-depth interviews (kvale, 1996; berry, 1999) were conducted with the science professors in order to validate the data gathered and, also, to confirm some specific aspects about the processes they underwent as professors, learners, users of the foreign language and about the support of the language faculty researchers (see appendix 2). data analysis at the beginning of the project an a priori analysis (freeman, 1998) helped in the definition of concepts such as curricula for cb, acquisition of english, collaborative work and mentoring that would be the crucial points during the project. the focus groups and the in-depth interviews were tape recorded then transcribed. each researcher had an individual reading of those transcriptions to pre-establish the categories. recurring themes were recognized and emerging categories (freeman, 1998, altrichter et al. 1993) were defined concerning teachers and students in terms of tensions in collaboration, students’ linguistic improvement, students and teachers’ beliefs, and non-language faculty professional development. this consensus was reached based on several group discussions and having taken into account the saturation found in the data. then the language faculty researchers decided to form some sub-groups to deepen the analysis of those specific categories. this article presents the results concerning that of non-language faculty professional development. the language faculty researchers triangulated the data obtained from the instruments and derived some interpretations (freeman, 1998, burns, 1999). finally, the results were disseminated profile 10.indd 117 23/10/2008 8:46:20 arismendi gómez, díaz mosquera and salazar valencia universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras118 in the university and in some academic events at other institutions. context the universidad de antioquia is one of the biggest in the country with more than 30,000 students and one of the leaders in research in most of the academic fields. the main language of instruction is spanish but learning a foreign language is fostered in order to facilitate academic exchange with the international academic community and expand the cultural and personal horizons of the students. for undergraduate students, it is mandatory to certify proficiency in reading comprehension in a foreign language either by taking the two level course offered by the school of languages, by taking a test designed at the university or, by demonstrating a passing score on an international standardized test in order to get their degrees. they may also study different foreign languages to develop their communicative competence through a 400hour course sponsored by the presidency of the university. professors are required to demonstrate proficiency in the fl through an average score on standardized tests in order to be hired as fulltime instructors. the school of languages also offers several possibilities for faculty to learn and improve their language proficiency in a fl. participants in this experience, eight fulltime professors from three different schools at the university, namely the school of veterinary medicine (four professors), the institute of chemistry (one professor) and the school of microbiology (three professors) worked collaboratively with the language faculty researchers from the school of languages to design and implement the content courses. all the science professors fulfilled the requirement of having a high proficiency level in english. there were 26 students1 attending these courses. they fulfilled the requirement of having an intermediate level of communication in english necessary to follow the course. there were 12 from the school of veterinary medicine, seven from the chemistry institute and seven from the school of microbiology. the demographic information of the science professors who participated in the study is provided in table 1. the language faculty research team was composed of six fulltime professors, one adjunct teacher, three undergraduate students from the foreign language teaching program, and two professors that joined the research group for this project from two other universities. the group met once a week for four hours in order to discuss theoretical aspects concerning the project, to exchange ideas about classes observed, to design, implement and evaluate the mentoring sessions and to analyze the data collected in focus groups with the science professors and the students. initially, two of the researchers were in charge of conducting the mentoring program and giving feedback to the science professors. the whole group, including the undergraduates, attended the weekly meetings, read the articles, and took 1 this article does not provide a lot of information concerning the students since the authors only concentrated on professors’ professional development. profile 10.indd 118 23/10/2008 8:46:21 designing and implementing content-bases courses in enflish with non-language faculty... profile 10, 2008. issn 1657-0790. bogotá, colombia. pages 113-134 119 turns participating in the data collection process and their subsequent analysis. the students had the extra task of transcribing the data gathered from the instruments and writing the minutes of the meetings. mentoring sessions and implementation of the courses the language faculty researchers designed and implemented a 20hour framework for mentoring on cb teaching and language teaching strategies that varied from course to course as the language faculty researchers gained expertise in this kind of professional development, and learned to adapt the logistics for each school. most of the time, sessions were conducted in english by the language faculty researchers, and the science professors felt compelled to use the foreign language amongst themselves. these sessions were aimed at opening academic discussions about this collaborative task and were adjusted according to faculty availability, questions and expectations. the following were the basic aspects the language faculty researchers considered for these sessions: a historical account of foreign – language teaching philosophies and methodologies, from grammar translation to the sociopsycholinguistic orientation. an overview of the principles that – support teaching language through content. a set of guidelines for designing a – cb course. a compilation of learning strategies, – classroom management techniques and graphic organizers. during these sessions, the science professors made personal connections with table 1. demographic information of the participative professors name* last degree languages spoken language learning experiences teaching experience course taught in the research project bertha ph. d** english, french and german emphasis in french in high school. immersion in germany and france. 30 years physiology of animal reproduction (from the school of veterinary medicine) sara ms** english and russian immersion in russia non obtained*** marcela ph. d** english and french emphasis in french in high school. immersion in canada two years camilo ph. d** english and french language institutes in colombia and immersion in france seven years sebastian ph. d** english language institutes, self-access materials and immersion in england six years colloidal systems (from the chemistry institute) rodolfo ms english and french language institutes, assistantship in france, self-access materials two years assessment in molecular diagnostic (from the school of bacteriology) lucia ms** english immersion in england and usa four years linda ph. d** english, french and portuguese self-access materials and immersion in usa 12 years * fictitious names were used to protect professors’ identities ** studies pursued abroad *** limited information was obtained from this professor since she enrolled in a doctoral program abroad during the last stage of the project.. profile 10.indd 119 23/10/2008 8:46:21 arismendi gómez, díaz mosquera and salazar valencia universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras120 their own experiences as language learners and with the strategies they use in their teaching practice. in the school of veterinary medicine, these sessions were held before the implementation of the course, and the program was designed at the end of these sessions where the language faculty researchers and the science professors established linguistic and content goals (see appendix 3). this four-hour course was held once a week and the science professors chose the topics and the sequence to teach the content. the language faculty researchers offered students advisory sessions to support their linguistic process but, due to time and public transportation constraints, they could not attend. in the chemistry institute, one of the researchers addressed the specific queries of the professor in non-structured meetings since he adapted the program from the same course he usually teaches in spanish; in fact, he was the only professor who did not show variations in his strategies for delivering his courses in spanish or english, probably because of the fact that he learned english in a very formal way; similar to the way you learn mathematics or science. then he could have considered that his course in english did not need any adjustments. besides, it is important to mention the fact that from the science professors involved in the study, he and lucia are the only ones who speak just one foreign language, so they have been exposed less than the other professors to a foreign language learning process. students attended this course twice a week for two hours. duties related to their program did not allow them to attend advisory sessions. in the microbiology school, initial sessions focused on the general topics designed for these mentoring sessions and on evaluating the program the science professors had previously designed for this course. essentially, the content addressed topics that were new for the students. in order to provide them with challenging, but not overwhelming, learning opportunities, rodolfo, one of the science professors, suggested organizing the program around themes students were already familiar with. actually, he spontaneously endorsed this without having acquired any formal knowledge of the psycholinguistic approach which asserts that one of the ways in which efficient learning can be induced is by working on topics students are already familiar with. once the course started, the two-hour mentoring sessions were held every two weeks during the sixteen-week course. these sessions opened discussions about logistics, feelings and ideas connected to teaching strategies they were implementing and to the outcomes of the individual feedback sessions after the class observations. the four weekly hours assigned to this course were split into two two-hour sessions, one for the content with the science professors and the other for an adjunct course (snow, 1993) led by the language faculty researchers. findings the implementation of these three courses revealed a variety of patterns concerning the language learning processes of the science professors as well as the issues related to their professional development. profile 10.indd 120 23/10/2008 8:46:21 designing and implementing content-bases courses in enflish with non-language faculty... profile 10, 2008. issn 1657-0790. bogotá, colombia. pages 113-134 121 the factors that influenced the construction of their beliefs about learning and language learning, as well as the influences on their practices, were elucidated through the indepth interview then triangulated with the information derived from the observations and mentoring sessions. these professors also acknowledged the positive aspects they added to their teaching practices and to their process as language learners as a result of their participation in this new teaching scenario. factors the language faculty researchers noticed that the way the science professors named and described their methodology derived from their previous experiences with learning and teaching in their specific field, as well as from their methods of learning a foreign language. clavijo (2000, p. 22) asserts that professors’ past experiences “[…]are a very important way to compile teachers’ knowledge and to understand their practices and their social, historical and cultural values”. those stories also “provide information and tools to understand how their education may influence the education of future generations”. having been involved in immersion and demonstration (cambourne, 1988) exercises abroad, as part of their academic careers, the professors thus embarked upon this project with pre-existing expectations about the learning process. significant others around them played different roles responding to their attempts as they tried to use the foreign language in academic or informal situations. engagement, the condition that cambourne (1988) and smith (1981) explain as the one that initiates any learning process, was a constant factor, maintaining the belief of these professors that they could become successful doers of the process which was demonstrated to them. furthermore, freeman & freeman (1998) offer an explanation of the circumstances that may have influenced the current teaching practices for cb courses in this group of professors in five categories under the question: what influences how professors teach? in order to explain the learning processes of the science professors, the language faculty researchers analyzed their past experiences, both educational and academic. using this analysis they were able to conclude that the influences on the participants’ processes as foreign language learners and as teaching practitioners could be grouped under four headings: academic experience, materials used, colleagues and table 2. what influences how professors teach? past experience educational experience colleagues/ administrators changes in teaching situation materials teach as we were taught teach as we were taught to teach teach as others teach, or as we are required to teach adjust teaching to new school or level or new students teach using available or required materials profile 10.indd 121 23/10/2008 8:46:21 arismendi gómez, díaz mosquera and salazar valencia universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras122 administrators and, finally, changes in teaching circumstances due to academic demands. academic experience a. past experience the experiences of science professors as foreign language learners at high school level, and in undergraduate and graduate programs in their specific fields, both in colombia and abroad, provided them with some insights into the roles teachers and students play in class. as high school students, rodolfo, camilo, sebastian and linda learned english with notionalfunctional methodologies; lucia in an immersion experience abroad; and bertha and marcela learned french through the content of their school subjects. rodolfo and camilo learned english in regular high school courses, and both english and french in private institutes and with self-access resources where the emphasis was on the conventions of the written language. as oral interaction was scarce, this aspect became a challenge when living and studying in france. their communication needs prompted them to take risks in the company of other foreigners, creating a zone of proximal development (vygotsky, 1978) that facilitated understanding, and meaning construction both in academic and informal conversations. as a result of these experiences, both professors encouraged discussions, presentations and the use of classroom language in their cb courses to encourage an oral proficiency that, according to them, will allow students to participate in international events. bertha and marcela studied all their elementary and high school subjects in french. the relevance of the interactions they had in the foreign language through the curriculum, and outside the school when they met with peers, became more evident during their graduate studies. throughout their academic interactions in germany and canada, they realized that learning language, in line with one of the perspectives described by halliday (1985), makes more sense when it is used for real and specific purposes. in fact, bertha was the only one who used a song as an alternative strategy to motivate the participation of the students. sebastian learned english in language institutes and with self-access resources in colombia before going to england. there, he took a six-month language course in order to prepare himself to use the argumentative discourse that the university demanded in his doctoral program. he stated that in england professors presented the content of their classes, and at the end of each session, they handed out exercises in order to promote autonomous learning. that is why in the cb course in english, he focused on argumentation and gave his students some techniques to write academic papers in english –as he usually does with his courses in spanish. this strategy training (stoller, 2002) that the professor used to prepare his students in the language of argumentation is evidence of the need students have to manage a specific repertoire of knowledge and activities in order to merit membership to this academic ‘club’ (smith, 1988). profile 10.indd 122 23/10/2008 8:46:21 designing and implementing content-bases courses in enflish with non-language faculty... profile 10, 2008. issn 1657-0790. bogotá, colombia. pages 113-134 123 for lucia, the experience of sink or swim in england revealed that language learning involves both socio-affective and cognitive dimensions. being the only latin-american girl in a boarding school, she became a curiosity among peers, and a student who required individual teacher support due to the communications difficulties she had. her schooling in colombia allowed her to overcome these linguistic demands through the cognitive strategies she had developed there. cummins (1996) explains this process, arguing that what people learn in one language transfers into a new language because concepts build the common underlying proficiency (cup) that allows users of the language to access these concepts as needed in order to be able to express themselves in oral or written form. in addition, lucia’s experiences as an undergraduate student in the united states allowed her to understand language learning and learning through language (halliday, 1985) as overarching goals that deal with many dimensions that transcend the mere knowledge and use of language conventions. for the implementation of the cb course, lucia put into practice some strategies of problem-based learning (pbl) with the support of her dean who is an advocate of this methodology; however, this is an isolated effort that students struggle to accept. linda learned english in colombia through self-access materials such as textbooks and tapes, focusing her attention on learning about the language (halliday, 1985). this experience provided the necessary knowledge to pursue her graduate studies in the united states where she consciously decided to become acquainted with only native speakers in order to maintain and improve her proficiency in the foreign language. in the cb course, she devoted part of her lessons to providing feedback on language (stoller, 2002) to tackle the difficulties she identified as students read or wrote texts. to deal with the approximations (cambourne, 1988) students made at using the language, she responded by focusing on vocabulary lists and on practicing pronunciation using the round robin strategy. b. educational experience none of these professors has any formal training to teach; nevertheless, they have attended the courses on diverse areas of pedagogy offered every year by the university they work for. they consider these as options which enhance their teaching strategies under the principle of freedom of teaching allowed by the university. however, they consider that these courses often do not fulfill their expectations or might only lead to personal reflection on their classes. through the implementation of these cb courses the science professors voiced their concern about their coming to the profession only because of their knowhow, since professional development in pedagogy or teaching strategies have been scarce for them. they confirmed that they have derived their principles as teachers from their experiences as learners, and their experience as practitioners in their field. profile 10.indd 123 23/10/2008 8:46:21 arismendi gómez, díaz mosquera and salazar valencia universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras124 academic demands a. colleagues and administrators the language faculty researchers also confirmed that working collaboratively among teachers is hindered most of the time by their busy timetables, the different calendars at the university –eight in total– or the lack of a clear definition of common and complementary goals among schools of different areas of knowledge. b. changes in teaching situation “in undergraduate programs, students are lectured at, in the graduate levels, the work is more autonomous”2 (bertha). this quote summarizes a repetitive pattern most of the science professors identified for graduate and undergraduate levels that directed them to adjust to those two teaching circumstances. they described the role of the undergraduate students as passive because the number of students per group did not allow one to one interaction. on the contrary, in graduate programs groups are smaller and students are considered colleagues with an active role in class interactions, and are very committed to the acquisition of their own knowledge and learning. c. materials the way the science professors perceived their students in undergraduate and graduate programs established a pattern for selecting the materials they used with these distinct groups. this situation applied both for their regular courses taught in 2 testimonies were originally stated in spanish. for the purposes of this article, they were translated into english. spanish and for their cb courses in english. for undergraduate courses, the science professors tend to take articles to class that concern the topics under exploration. sometimes, the articles in english are suggested as part of the references in order to prepare students for academic challenges in the future. for graduate programs, articles and research studies in english are a must, and the expected responses to those readings should exceed a mere regurgitation of information from the text and go beyond drawing conclusions that could be derived from the context. gains the science professors agreed that this study offered an opportunity to challenge their practices and to incorporate strategies that would enhance their performance as professors, learners and users of the foreign language. as professors as mentioned above, most science professors merged the methodologies they used for undergraduate and graduate courses, although some of them said the courses were more focused on graduates. as a consequence, they assigned more responsibility to students than they usually did in the courses taught in spanish, shifting from a teacher centered classroom to a more student centered one. landis et al. (1998) found that in order to help students achieve an authentic learning experience, there must be a change in the traditional roles of students and instructors. in this regard, rodolfo affirmed, “later when i met separately with the students, we realized that profile 10.indd 124 23/10/2008 8:46:22 designing and implementing content-bases courses in enflish with non-language faculty... profile 10, 2008. issn 1657-0790. bogotá, colombia. pages 113-134 125 we had to do other kinds of things so that they could participate more, so three of the subsequent classes were only presentations”. these presentations were culminating synthesis activities (stoller, 2002) which permitted students to review how the language they gained through the course allowed them to explain the knowledge they already had or the knowledge that was clarified through the course. the language faculty researchers found that some of the strategies the science professors implemented during this experience corresponded to those delineated by stoller (2002). regarding the extended input, meaningful output, and feedback on language and grasp of content, the science professors increased their confidence in modeling language use for the specific field of knowledge as they planned their lessons and read the texts they took to class. the output the science professors demanded from students changed as the course progressed in order to adapt to students´ real needs related to language and content for presentations and class discussions. the science professors said that they incorporated new teaching strategies not only in the course they taught in english but also in the regular courses they taught in spanish. strategies that persisted through this implementation included the use of the board for writing key concepts, the implementation of visual support strategies (stoller 2002), and the use of the lcd projector to illustrate new ideas. camilo acknowledged having improved the content of the classes, and sara said she had included the use of the three columnskwhl-chart(ogle, 1986) as a meaningful strategy to improve students´ understanding of ideas. the science professors recognized that they incorporated wait-time strategies (johnson, 1996). for instance, sara stated, “then, i remembered something you told us: when you ask a question, do not answer it by yourselves, give them (the students) time”. issues explored during the mentoring sessions, such as time management, turn assignment, questioning and group work were even implemented in their regular courses in spanish. additionally, some science professors also admitted to having improved the design of the materials they use in their classes. camilo said, “part of the learning material that i presented in english helped me think over that i could present that same material for my classes in spanish”. for all the science professors, lesson planning was a big challenge. bertha and marcela practiced in front of a mirror to check their pronunciation and refine the expression of their ideas to students in class. this exercise many times doubled the time they spent preparing for their classes in spanish. microbiology professors found peer observation to be a useful tool in identifying specific elements that could contribute to each other’s class planning and development. as users of the foreign language all science professors understood foreign language learning as a life-long process. that is why some of them expressed their need for more feedback on the conventional use of language so that their communicative competence (bachman & palmer, 1996) could become more effective and efficient. linda said she profile 10.indd 125 23/10/2008 8:46:22 arismendi gómez, díaz mosquera and salazar valencia universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras126 would like to continue with the experience of teaching these courses in english because “it keeps oneself alive, it makes one think constantly, be speaking and listening constantly”. for the science professors, the main area of development in the foreign language was in terms of vocabulary in their specific areas. for example, bertha said, “i learnt loads of vocabulary because i had never studied such an amount of vocabulary on physiology in english”. more specifically, camilo said he had improved his pronunciation, and asserted, “in my case, i consider it improved (the language) because i also did a big effort for the pronunciation, to pronounce appropriately”. in terms of bics (basic interpersonal conversational skills, cummins, 2000), content-faculty members recognized the classes as meaningful opportunities to practice the language, to maintain their fluency and to gain self confidence. lucia affirmed, “it helped in the sense that it is useful to practice, to keep the level of fluency in the language”. in the same way, rodolfo declared, “regarding english, what you really gain is confidence […]. for example the first class i never thought i was able to speak two hours in a row but the pressure leads you to that. then, when i left class, i left with my ego high above”. he also admitted to having improved his bics through the learning of colloquial language in the interactions with lucia and linda who studied abroad. even though some professors thought they were not prepared enough to correct students’ mistakes, they became more aware of language usage. bertha mentioned her improvement in language awareness, to wit: “after i listen to myself, i identify the mistakes i make”. according to the data analyzed, there is not a clash between the way the science professors perceive themselves and their teaching practices, but over their level of awareness and reflection on their own practice. as a consequence, the language faculty researchers give some suggestions on how mentoring programs should be guided, so that they would enhance subject area professors’ abilities and confidence to implement this methodology. this way, they contribute to the development of the linguistic and cognitive skills of the students and to their understanding of the academic content as well as to their own professional development. proposal for mentoring sessions the following proposal takes into account the conclusions the science professors and the language faculty researchers derived from this study. these professors would have liked to have seen more demonstrations of strategies they could have used before starting the course. camilo summarizes this query as he states, “i think that perhaps what one expected unconsciously was to have had some classes previously with you about how we should teach, right? i think it would be very interesting, maybe that you start first being our teachers to try to set those key points about pedagogy […]”. the science professors are then aware of the fact that demonstrations, as explained by cambourne (1988) and presented in the literature review, are one of the most important conditions to learning. in the case of the mentoring program, these demonstrations should include both profile 10.indd 126 23/10/2008 8:46:22 designing and implementing content-bases courses in enflish with non-language faculty... profile 10, 2008. issn 1657-0790. bogotá, colombia. pages 113-134 127 language content and methodology content. in the same vein, lucia expressed the need to start working with the course material and “provide with it the teaching examples that can be given. of course there are some introductory talks that are necessary but i think that they could have been less and work more on planning the material for the course”. the stages suggested by the language faculty researchers for the mentoring program address the professional support subject area professors require to balance language and content, to establish the goals for those two aspects, and to review or incorporate teaching and learning strategies in their teaching practices. subject area professors need to take into account that within the framework of the adjunct model (snow, 1993), half the time they will be in charge of the content and the other half of the time assigned for the course will be devoted to language support in separate lessons with language faculty. introductory stage through individual quickwrites, small group sharing, large group discussions or alternative activities, language faculty will support subject area professors in becoming aware of the varied influences they have had throughout their academic life as students and as teachers, as well as how these factors have defined their teaching identity. the events implemented by facilitators during this first stage need to encourage reflection on the strategies they favor for the promotion of learning. they would also be encouraged to identify their pedagogical position through a historical account of pedagogical approaches in education and those specific to foreign language teaching. demonstrations once subject area professors have an initial picture of their own history as teachers and learners, they will agree that language faculty need to model strategies for language learning. subject area professors will be part of these demonstrations with three different roles: as participants, as participant observers, and as facilitators. in their role as participants, subject area professors would take part in events that allow the exploration of subject matter of interest to them. the events will create real class conditions and they will need to participate and accomplish real tasks related to language use and acquisition of content. in these sessions, other sources of information and materials that may be nontraditional for their field such as pictures, games, or literature would be integrated in order to offer subject area professors alternatives they might incorporate in their practice. being participant-observers will allow them to play the double role of insiders and outsiders in a teaching process that will require new standpoints and risktaking. they will take turns participating as learners and as critical observers of all the strategies facilitators use to balance both language and content. they will also be required to reflect upon the way subject area professors react in their role of students. as they describe the process of both groups of participants, they will consolidate a repertoire of strategies that they will use for the following step where they will facilitate the lessons. in a teamprofile 10.indd 127 23/10/2008 8:46:22 arismendi gómez, díaz mosquera and salazar valencia universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras128 teaching format, subject area professors will plan lessons as a whole group. they will then go on to use these planned activities on their own with real classes. language faculty will guide them in defining an agenda with events that allow students to tap into their background knowledge and be ready for the topics they will explore, followed by other activities that introduce the topic, and finally those that allow students to practice what they learned for both language and content. in the course of this activity, a reflection cycle will start again to define the similarities and differences with their current teaching practice. this reflection should analyze teaching strategies such as wait time, defining types of questions, classroom management, the use of visual and audio resources, and turn assignment. at the same time, it is necessary to review the adjustments required for their double role as content and language professors. seminars are a suitable forum for this purpose. similarly, there is a need to address the terminology of the field, the role of the mother tongue, the selection of material, and follow-up strategies for assessment. defining content and linguistic goals for the definition of content goals, subject area professors need to organize the topics in a progression that allows students and themselves to move from familiar to more unfamiliar knowledge. existing cb programs have to be adapted, or new ones created, that are paced in a way that will allow the insertion of relevant connections to the types of discourses and topics defined for the language class. feedback sessions throughout the development of the content course in english, language faculty will arrange periodical meetings with subject area professors in order to give them the opportunity to share their experiences. it is hoped that these sessions would include decision making about adjustments to the strategies implemented, discussions of materials used, as well as reflection on the performance of the students and logistical issues. conclusion through this project, the language faculty researchers realized that when implementing cb courses, non language faculty require clear demonstrations of the strategies they need to balance language and content. they also require effective support at the moment of defining content and linguistic goals for their courses, and constant feedback that together promote reflection on the influences the science professors have had on their language learning and teaching during their academic years. this process of professional development needs explicitly to validate the experiences of these professors as learners, language users, and their power to make decisions about how to enrich their teaching practices. in so doing, subject area professors will define the guidelines for the cb course in such a way as to help students gain confidence in using the discourse of their field in a foreign language. finally, the foreign language policies at the university need strongly to support the profile 10.indd 128 23/10/2008 8:46:22 designing and implementing content-bases courses in enflish with non-language faculty... profile 10, 2008. issn 1657-0790. bogotá, colombia. pages 113-134 129 actions taken by deans or directors of the different schools when planning this type of courses, in order to be consistent with the expectations of the university policy makers, whose priority is to support both students and professors to achieve an accomplished professional life. references altrichter, h., posch, p., & somekh, b. (1993). professors investigate their work: an introduction to the methods of action research. london: routledge. arellano-osuna, a. (1992). el lenguaje integral: una alternativa para la educación. mérida: editorial venezolana. arnal, j. et al (1994). investigación educativa: fundamentos y metodologías. barcelona: labor. bachman, lyle f. & palmer, a. (1996). language testing in practice-designing and developing useful tests. oxford: oxford university press. berry, r. (1999). collecting data by in-depth interviewing. paper presented at the british educational research association annual conference, university of sussex at brighton, september 2-5, 1999. retrieved on may 15, 2005 from education-line web site: http://www.leeds. ac.uk/educol/documents/ brinton, d.m., snow, m.a., & wesche, m.b. (1989). content-based second language instruction. new york: harper & row. burns, a. (1999). collaborative action research for english language professors. cambridge: cambridge university press. cambourne, b. (1988). the whole story: natural learning and the acquisition of literacy in the classroom. auckland: ashton scholastic. clavijo, a. (2000). formación de maestros: historia y vida. bogotá: plaza & janés. cummins, j. (1996). negotiating identities: education for empowerment in a diverse society. ontario: california association for bilingual education. cummins, j. (2000). language, power and pedagogy. bilingual children in the crossfire. clevedon, buffalo, toronto, sydney: multilingual matters ltd. debus, m. (1988). manual para la excelencia en la investigación mediante grupos focales. washington d.c.: academy for educational development. dendinger, m. (2000). how to organize a focus group. meetings and conventions. retrieved on may 15, 2005 from bnet web site: http://www. findarticles.com dewey, j. (1938). experience in education. new york: collier. diaz, c. (2002). teacher training in colombia: reflective and experiential practices in efl. unpublished master thesis: fresno pacific university. freeman, d. (1998). doing teacher research: from inquiry to understanding. newbury house: heinle and heinle. freeman, y. & freeman, d. (1994). between worlds: access to second language acquisition. portsmouth: heinemann. freeman, y. & freeman, d. (1998). esl/efl teaching: principles for success. portsmouth: heinemann. genesee, f. (1994). integrating language and content: lessons from immersion. educational practice report 11. national center for research on cultural diversity and second language learning. retrieved on july 5, 2004 from http:// www.ncela.gwu.edu/pubs/ncrcdsll/epr11.htm gonzález, a., montoya, c. & sierra, n. (2002). what do efl teachers seek in professional development programs? voices from professors. íkala, revista de lenguaje y cultura, 7, 29-50. goodman, k. (1986). what’s whole in whole language? portsmouth: heinemann. goodman, k. (1996). on reading. portsmouth: heinemann. goodman, y. & marek, a. (1996). revaluing readers and reading: retrospective miscue analysis. katonah: richard c. owen. halliday, m. (1985). three aspects of children’s language development: learn language, learn about language, learn through language. unpublished manuscript, department of linguistics, sidney. profile 10.indd 129 23/10/2008 8:46:22 arismendi gómez, díaz mosquera and salazar valencia universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras130 johnson, k. (1996). understanding communication in second language classrooms. new york: cambridge university press. kvale, s. (1996). interviews: an introduction to qualitative research interviewing. london: sage publications. landis, et al. (1998). the new traditions consortium: shifting from a faculty-centered paradigm to a student-centered paradigm. journal of chemical education, 75, 741-744. retrieved on january 29, 2006 from jce online web site: http://jchemed.chem.wisc.edu/ hs/journal/issues/1998/jun/clicsubscriber/ v75n06/p741.pdf met, m. (1999). content-based instruction: defining terms, making decisions. nflc reports. washington, dc: the national foreign language center. retrieved on december 1, 2006 from http://www.carla.umn.edu/cobaltt/ modules/principles/decisions.html ogle, d. (1986). kwhl: a teaching model that develops active reading of expository texts. the reading teacher, 39, 564-570. pring, r. (2000). philosophy of educational research. new york: continuum. rosenblatt, l. (1978). the reader, the text, the poem: transactional theory of the literacy work. carbondale, southern illinois, united states: university press. rosenkjar, p. (2005). adjunct courses in the great books: the key that unlocked locke for japanese efl undergraduates and opened the door to academia for efl. in j. crandall & d. kaufman (eds.). content-based instruction in higher education settings (pp. 13-25). alexandria, va: professors of english to speakers of other languages, inc. salmon, k. (1998). ciclos temáticos: una alternativa para el desarrollo de la lectoescritura bilingüe. lectura y vida, 19, 26-34. smith, f. (1998). the book of learning and forgetting. new york: professors college press. smith, f. (1988). joining the literacy club: further essays into education. portsmouth, nh: heinemann. smith, f. (1981). demonstrations, engagement, and sensitivity: a revised approach to language learning. language arts, 103-112. snow, m. (1993). teaching english through content. in m. celce-murcia. teaching english as a second or foreign language (pp. 315-327). boston: heinle and heinle. stewart, t.; sagliano, m., & sagliano, j. (2005). merging expertise: developing partnerships between language and content specialist. in j. crandall & d. kaufman (eds.), content-based instruction in higher education settings (pp. 2944). alexandria, va: professors of english to speakers of other languages, inc. stoller, f. (2002). content based instruction: a shell for language teaching or a framework for strategic language and content learning? keynote presented at the annual meeting of professors of english to speakers of other languages (tesol) 2002, salt lake city, ut. retrieved on december 1, 2006 from carla web site: http://www.carla.umn.edu/cobaltt/modules/ strategies/stoller.html tellis, w. (1997). introduction to case study. the qualitative report, 3(2). retrieved on may 15, 2005 from nova web site: http://www.nova.edu/ ssss/qr/qr3-2/tellis1.htm vygotsky, l. (1934). thought and language. cambridge: mit press. vygotsky, l. (1978). mind in society: the development of higher psychological processes. cambridge: harvard university press. whitmore, k. & goodman, y. (1996). whole language voices in teacher education. york: stenhouse publishers. woodward, t. (1997). models and metaphors in language teacher training. cambridge: cambridge university press. yin, r. k. (1994). case study research: design and methods. thousand oaks, united states: sage. profile 10.indd 130 23/10/2008 8:46:23 designing and implementing content-bases courses in enflish with non-language faculty... profile 10, 2008. issn 1657-0790. bogotá, colombia. pages 113-134 131 about the authors fabio alberto arismendi gómez holds a b. ed. in foreign language teaching from universidad de antioquia. he is a candidate for the master’s degree in language sciences from université stendhal, grenoble iii. he currently works as a part-time instructor at universidad de antioquia and alianza francesa de medellín. claudia patricia diaz mosquera holds a master’s degree in tesol from fresno pacific university. she also has a b.a. in languages from universidad de antioquia. she works as a fulltime teacher and researcher at universidad de antioquia. leidy natalia salazar valencia holds a b.ed. in foreign language teaching from universidad de antioquia and she works as a full-time teacher in a private school in medellín. profile 10.indd 131 23/10/2008 8:46:23 arismendi gómez, díaz mosquera and salazar valencia universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras132 appendix 1. format for class observation in the different schools university of antioquia school of languages content based teaching – thematic research teacher: no of students: course: school: date: classroom: time: observer: time activities, attitudes, interactions comments and questions (observer) teacher students classroom agenda resources profile 10.indd 132 23/10/2008 8:46:23 designing and implementing content-bases courses in enflish with non-language faculty... profile 10, 2008. issn 1657-0790. bogotá, colombia. pages 113-134 133 appendix 2. questions asked in the focus groups and in the in-depth interviews with the professors focus group what would you do differently if you could teach this course again?1. did you notice any difference between the way you teach your 2. regular courses and the ones of this project? within the framework of collaborative work with the school of languages, do you 3. consider that there is something to be improved in the school of languages? did you experience any change or improvement regarding 4. english? regarding the contents of the course? how did you perceive the pupils of this course to be positive 5. regarding their learning of the contents? the following is an example of the questions asked in an in-depth interview: what kind of didactic resources did you introduce specifically for the english classes? 1. how would you define yourself as a language user in terms of 2. oral, written, formal and informal situations? how do you value the mentoring sessions offered by the researchers and 3. what would you suggest for future mentoring processes of this kind? what is the students’ role in your classes?4. which interaction dynamic do you propose for your classes?5. which methodology do you use for your spanish and english classes?6. do you use the same methodology for your undergraduate and graduate courses?7. which way were your teaching practices in spanish enriched 8. after the experience of teaching this content course? how did you learn english?9. how was your learning process in your professional field as a teacher? 10. profile 10.indd 133 23/10/2008 8:46:23 arismendi gómez, díaz mosquera and salazar valencia universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras134 appendix 3: linguistic and content goals grupo de investigación: enseñanza-aprendizaje en lenguas extranjeras content-based language teaching project ciencias agrarias linguistic goals throughout the course, students will be exposed to and actively participate in language and • content exploratory events that will encourage them to use oral and written language for describing processes related to the physiology of reproduction in bovines. throughout the course students will use oral and written language to give and follow ins-• tructions related to the procedures needed for the practicum of reproduction in bovines. throughout the course students will read article reviews that will allow them to understand • and use strategies for creating their own reviews. throughout the semester students will read reports regarding procedures related to repro-• duction and create a report in the company of the teacher in order to present a final one individually in which they state goals, methodology and conclusions. content goals throughout the semester students will become aware of the physiology of reproduction of • bovines in order to replicate and differentiate procedures with other species. profile 10.indd 134 23/10/2008 8:46:23 profile no. 6 oct 13.p65 ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ profile profile profile profile profile 6 (2005): universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras using students’ analysis in teaching public speaking for business uso del análisis de los estudiantes en la enseñanza del discurso oral en negociosuso del análisis de los estudiantes en la enseñanza del discurso oral en negociosuso del análisis de los estudiantes en la enseñanza del discurso oral en negociosuso del análisis de los estudiantes en la enseñanza del discurso oral en negociosuso del análisis de los estudiantes en la enseñanza del discurso oral en negocios m ashraf rizvim ashraf rizvim ashraf rizvim ashraf rizvim ashraf rizvi ashrafrizvi@yahoo.co.uk indian school of mines, dhanbad, india this paper investigates a particular aspect of learner participation – students’ analysis (sa) in an oral communication program of an undergraduate business and commerce curriculum in sultan qaboos university, sultanate of oman and examines its role in improving and promoting learning effectiveness in english for academic purposes (eap) classroom discourse. drawing on the results of a set of surveys into needs analysis, students’ peer response and student feedback, it is suggested that sa can play a significant role by providing wider input into the content, design and implementation of an eap course by creating opportunities to engage students in interesting and meaningful classroom experiences and providing essential data for reviewing and evaluating the course to improve and promote its effectiveness. kkkkkey worey worey worey worey words:ds:ds:ds:ds: students’ analysis, english for academic purposes, needs assessment, students’ peer evaluation este artículo investiga un aspecto particular de la participación del estudiante – análisis de los estudiantes en un programa de comunicación oral del currículo de un pregrado en negocios y comercio de la universidad sultan qaboos del sultanato de oman – y examina su rol en el mejoramiento y promoción de la efectividad del aprendizaje en el discurso del aula de inglés con propósitos académicos. basado en los resultados de una serie de encuestas sobre análisis de necesidades, respuesta a pares y retroalimentación del estudiante, se puede sugerir que el análisis de los estudiantes (sa) tiene un papel significativo en cuanto proporciona un insumo más amplio en el contenido, diseño e implementación de un curso de inglés con propósitos académicos, ofreciendo así mayores oportunidades para involucrar a los estudiantes en experiencias interesantes y significativas en el aula y brindando información esencial para la revisión y evaluación del curso, para así mejorar y promover su efectividad. palabras claves: palabras claves: palabras claves: palabras claves: palabras claves: análisis de los estudiantes, inglés con propósitos académicos, evaluación de necesidades, evaluación de pares 107-118 this article was received on april 15th, 2005 and accepted on august 22nd, 2005. ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ 108 rizvirizvirizvirizvirizvi profileprofileprofileprofileprofile introductionintroductionintroductionintroductionintroduction with the information revolution, globalization and other social and economic changes in the new millennium, the importance of effective oral communication skills has increased. as the professional world becomes more diverse, competitive and result-oriented, success in the highly competitive environment today will depend not just on one’s professional knowledge but on the ability to present that knowledge in an appropriate oral form. moreover, oral communication skills are cited as the single most important criterion in hiring professionals as most of the professionals are hired through a selection process, which involves oral interaction in the form of a personal interview, group discussion, seminar presentation or some other form of oral communication. media reports frequently highlight employers’ complaints that graduates’ oral skills leave considerable room for improvement. as vaughan (2004) rightly argues, “knowledge of highly sophisticated technical or professional skills will be useless if the employee does not know how to communicate with others about the information and insights which result from the use and application of these technical and professional skills”. students, thus, need specific oral communication skills if they are to be successful in their careers. normal teaching constraints as well as the assumption that a traditional teaching framework may not work with a professional oral communication course made us experiment with innovative means to involve students in the teaching process through students’ analysis. it has been largely felt that a very important, rather the most important, element in the process of teaching any language course is the learner and his/her learning needs. the emphasis on needs analysis in eap course design and program implementation has been rightly justified over the years (jackson, 2005; johns & price-machado, 2001; dudley-evans & st. john, 1998; west, 1997; jordan, 1997; ellis & johnson, 1994). several new approaches such as target-situation analysis, presentsituation analysis, strategy analysis, means analysis, deficiency analysis, genre analysis, and language audits have been advocated by eap course designers (dudley-evans & st. john, 1998; jordan, 1997; west, 1994, 1997; bhatia, 1993; allwright, 1982; holliday & cooke, 1982; richterich & chancerel, 1980; munby, 1978). however, most of the studies that have focused on needs analysis in esp have largely ignored the possible implications of integrating needs assessment with other aspects of learner participation. the present study is an attempt to explore the integration of needs analysis with other aspects of learner participation in an eap oral communication program i.e. “public speaking for business”. it is suggested that by integrating needs analysis with peer response and student feedback, teachers can provide wider input into the content, design and implementation of an oral communication eap course and also create opportunities to engage students in interesting and meaningful classroom experiences. although the subjects of the present investigation are from a country in the middle east, the focus and approach have a wider implication for esp/eap practitioners in other parts of the world. students’ analstudents’ analstudents’ analstudents’ analstudents’ analysis (sa)ysis (sa)ysis (sa)ysis (sa)ysis (sa) the term students’ analysis (sa) is used here to denote a systematic analysis of the target group of students to get relevant information about their perception of their communicative needs and learning-style preferences, peer response and feedback in order to improve the quality of teaching. it is an attempt to explore the implications of using needs analysis in a simple form with other aspects of learner participation. sa, thus, integrates needs analysis, peer response, and student feedback. needs analysisneeds analysisneeds analysisneeds analysisneeds analysis needs analysis, as rightly claimed by jackson (2005), has been ‘the cornerstone of esp course design, materials development, and program implementation and assessment’. needs analysis is “the process of determining the needs for which ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○109 profileprofileprofileprofileprofile using students’ analysis in teaching public speaking for business a learner or group of learners requires a language…” (richards et al., 1992). theories in adult learning have made it clear that adult students seem to be less interested in learning for learning’s sake than in learning to achieve some immediate life goals. this seems to be more appropriate for business students. thus, students’ needs analysis is an attempt to make students aware of their learning needs. i am using the term students’ needs to refer to subjective student needs, which are derived from students themselves. i have basically focused on the following three questions: • do students need public speaking skills? if yes, • why do they need public speaking skills? • what are their learning-style preferences in a course in public speaking? pppppeer responseeer responseeer responseeer responseeer response peer response, as defined by liu & hansen (2002), is “the use of learners as sources of information, and interactions among each other in such a way that learners assume roles and responsibilities normally taken on by a formally trained teacher, tutor, or editor…” peer response is increasingly being used by esl and business communication teachers in writing classes (rollinson, 2005; liu and hansen, 2002, 2005; bartels, 2003; braunstein, meloni and zolotareva, 2000; berg, 1999; hedderich, 1997; villamil and de guerrero, 1996; mendonca and johnson, 1994; mittan, 1989), and could be successfully used in oral communication teaching. using peer response in eap oral communication classes enables students to understand the purpose of the oral communication process more profoundly than they do with most of their oral assignments. rizvi (2004: 22) rightly claims that “there are several advantages to having our students give oral feedback to their peers in a group setting”. advantages of peer response • it can be very useful in a variety of oral communication classes. • it creates opportunities for oral interaction. • it provides instant feedback on students' oral communication performance. • every student gives and receives oral peer response. • monitoring peer response is easy with written feedback. • assessing students' speaking is easier with quick oral responses. • it saves time, especially in large classes. • it provides material for review. • it is good practice for future teachers. student feedbackstudent feedbackstudent feedbackstudent feedbackstudent feedback we used student feedback primarily as an informal method of collecting students’ feedback on the teaching process. the main purpose of the feedback is to get students’ opinions on the functioning of the course. i used informal discussions and inter views to get students’ feedback. i met students on a regular basis and encouraged them to voice their opinions on the following aspects of the course: • teaching method • teaching materials • classroom activities/tasks • course assignments • evaluation there may be different ways of finding information about students. it can be done through various questionnaires, surveys, group discussions, individual talks, interviews, etc. well, i have used questionnaires, informal discussions and interviews as effective tools in sa. methodmethodmethodmethodmethod participantsparticipantsparticipantsparticipantsparticipants the participants of the analyses discussed in this paper were 20 omani students enrolled in an undergraduate commerce program in sultan qaboos university, sultanate of oman. the english curriculum required teaching intensive language support programs in the first year and three eap courses, i.e. business communication, public speaking for business and technical writing in the ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ 110 rizvirizvirizvirizvirizvi profileprofileprofileprofileprofile second, third and fourth years, respectively. the participants were in their third year taking the course “public speaking for business”. as calls have been made in recent years for graduates to be proficient in oral communication skills so that they can function effectively in the workplace, “public speaking for business” (psb) is quite a popular course among the students in the university here. moreover, the changing nature of business further underscores the importance of oral communication skills. although eap courses often target the development of discussion skills for seminar-type classes, public speaking for business involved teaching public speaking skills with an emphasis on developing oral communicative competence in a business setting. although the four popular published works on academic speaking (james, 1984; lynch & anderson, 1992; madden and rohlck, 1997; rignall & furneaux, 1997) offer guidance to students for structuring and signposting oral presentation and discussion practice tasks, squ students used a textbook on public speaking for business. data collectiondata collectiondata collectiondata collectiondata collection all the data collection of the study was carried out within the framework of the students’ regular classes. first the students were asked to fill in two needs assessment questionnaires. the first (appendix 1) asked students to provide input on their perceptions of their needs and long-term goals in the area of public speaking while the second questionnaire (appendix 2) asked the students to comment on their learning style preferences in a course in public speaking. in the middle of the course, students were given structured peer response sheets (appendix 3) to complete while they listened to the first three oral assignments of their classmates. next, they were asked to give their comments on the performance of their classmates in the remaining oral assignments as an open evaluation. finally, through personal interaction and pre-arranged meetings and discussion sessions with the students, the teacher tried to get students’ feedback by encouraging the participating students to comment on the teaching method, teaching materials, classroom activities/tasks, course assignments, use of textbook and evaluation system. resulresulresulresulresults and discussionts and discussionts and discussionts and discussionts and discussion this discussion focuses on students’ responses in three main areas, namely: (1) their learning needs and preferences in public speaking, (2) peer response in public speaking classroom assignments, and (3) their feedback on the teaching process. students’ pstudents’ pstudents’ pstudents’ pstudents’ pe re re re re rceptions of their learningceptions of their learningceptions of their learningceptions of their learningceptions of their learning needs in public speakingneeds in public speakingneeds in public speakingneeds in public speakingneeds in public speaking the results of the small-scale needs analysis survey provided some key information about students’ learning perceptions. as you can see (refer to table 1 below), the overwhelming consensus from all those responding to the questionnaire reveals a strong awareness of their long-term goals in taking a course in public speaking. one hundred percent of the students agrees that business students need the ability to speak english with confidence and almost ninetyfive percent agrees that they need to present a wellorganized, dynamic speech. ninety to ninety-five percent of the students agrees that they need the ability to participate in classroom seminars and group discussions. as to the long-term goals of taking a course in public speaking, one hundred percent of the students agrees that they need public speaking skills to get a good job and ninety percent of them agrees that public speaking skills are needed in order to pursue a career in business. eighty-five percent of the students agrees that public speaking skills are needed to enhance their career. eighty-five percent of them thinks they need public speaking skills to participate in educational decision-making while seventy-five percent of the students thinks they need these skills to be respected. students’ pstudents’ pstudents’ pstudents’ pstudents’ pe re re re re rceptions of their learningceptions of their learningceptions of their learningceptions of their learningceptions of their learning ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○111 profileprofileprofileprofileprofile using students’ analysis in teaching public speaking for business students needstudents needstudents needstudents needstudents need agreeagreeagreeagreeagree disagreedisagreedisagreedisagreedisagree neutralneutralneutralneutralneutral 1 the ability to speak with competence and 100% nil nil confidence. 2 to present a well-organized, dynamic speech. 95% nil 5% 3 to be able to participate in a classroom seminar. 90% 5% 5% 4 public speaking skills to get a good job. 100% nil nil 5 to be able to take part in group discussions. 95% nil 5% 6 public-speaking skills to be respected. 75% 20% 5% 7 to be able to speak in public in order to enhance 85% nil 15% their career. 8 public speaking skills to participate in educational 80% nil 20% decision-making. 9 public speaking skills to pursue a career in business. 90% nil 10% tttttable 1able 1able 1able 1able 1. students’ needs profile in public speaking. preferences in public speakingpreferences in public speakingpreferences in public speakingpreferences in public speakingpreferences in public speaking results of the survey of students’ learning preferences in a course in public speaking (refer to table 2) show that students need more small group work and individualized teaching and want to know the relevance of the subject material to their chosen profession with clear course objectives. they want involvement in assessment and demand a variety of assessment methods. they need enough time to do good quality work and need to know about their progress frequently. moreover, they need to talk to their teachers as they want direction from them. thus, the students’ needs analysis survey does focus on information about learners’ perception of needs and their learning style preferences. from the sna data, it would seem that • students are highly motivated and are aware of a need to take a course in public speaking. • they are aware of their long-term goals for taking a course in public speaking. • they have strong learning-style preferences. tttttable 2able 2able 2able 2able 2. students’ learning preferences in public speaking. students’ needstudents’ needstudents’ needstudents’ needstudents’ need agreeagreeagreeagreeagree disagreedisagreedisagreedisagreedisagree neutralneutralneutralneutralneutral 10 less emphasis on lectures. 55% 35% 10% 11 more small group work. 85% 10% 5% 12 more individualized teaching. 65% 30% 5% 13 less emphasis on the textbook. 75% 15% 10% 14 clear course objectives. 90% nil 10% 15 involvement in assessment. 95% nil 5% 16 variety of assessment methods. 90% nil 10% 17 to know the relevance of the subject material 95% 5% nil to their chosen profession. 18 talk to their teachers. 95% 5% nil 19 to know about their progress. 100% nil nil 20 enough time to do good quality work. 100% nil nil 21 direction from teachers. 90% 10% nil ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ 112 rizvirizvirizvirizvirizvi profileprofileprofileprofileprofile pppppeer responseeer responseeer responseeer responseeer response through peer response we involved students in the process of student assessment by asking them to assess the performance of fellow students in different students’ presentations and assignments. it included structured peer evaluation, and open evaluation. in structured evaluation, students are provided an evaluation form to complete whereas in open evaluation they are simply asked to grade and write their comments. a careful analysis of student evaluation sheets of my students provided the following crucial information: • 80% of the students stated that it created an interested audience for students' public speaking assignments. • 75% of the students claimed that instant feedback from their classmates helped them to improve their next assignment. • about 70% could correctly evaluate different aspects of public speaking. • 70% of the students were able to apply theoretical concepts of public speaking while evaluating the oral performance of their fellow students. • 45% of the students were able to evaluate delivery techniques in oral presentation assignments. • 60% of the students did reflect a clear understanding of strategies for creating credible oral presentations and were able to make correct evaluation. as involving students in meaningful classroom experiences through peer response promotes classroom motivation, we found that our students evaluating the oral performance of their classmates were genuinely interested in communicating their response and comments clearly because they wanted to provide useful feedback. likewise, the oral presenters eagerly received the peer comments because they wanted to do better on their next assignments and genuinely felt that the comments would highlight their problems and they would be able to improve their performance. student feedbackstudent feedbackstudent feedbackstudent feedbackstudent feedback student feedback focused on the learners’ perceptions of learning in the course. as the main purpose of this exercise was to get students’ opinions on the functioning of the course, i devised several mechanisms to encourage students to freely comment on the weaknesses and strengths of the course. in particular, they were asked to give their impression about how well the teacher implemented the program as planned. the students were asked if the teaching method used by the teacher was appropriate. i also elicited the learners’ views about the effectiveness of the teaching and course materials to take care of students’ needs and their learning preferences. the students were also asked to pinpoint the positive and negative features of classroom activities, learning tasks, course assignments, use of textbook, and the method of evaluation. teaching method many of the students revealed that the method of teaching was simple and they were able to follow the lectures easily but they demanded more involvement of the students in the classroom. they felt that the teacher ought to provide students opportunities to speak on general topics in the classroom on a regular basis. they also wanted a reduction in the discussion on the theoretical concepts of public speaking and felt that they needed more practice in public speaking. some of them indicated that they had inadequate communication skills and were reticent in classroom discussions because they had little or no opportunity to speak english in public. some students wanted more emphasis on individualized teaching because they felt that the students in the classroom had different proficiency levels in english speaking due to their differing social and educational backgrounds. teaching materials many students felt that the textbook used in the classroom was very difficult. most expressed the view that they needed simplified course materials ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○113 profileprofileprofileprofileprofile using students’ analysis in teaching public speaking for business and teaching notes to understand the basic concepts discussed in the course. although many students suggested that the textbook could be supplemented by appropriate remedial study materials, some students felt that the textbook could be replaced by simple course materials to be developed by the teacher. however, the provision of simplified course materials and teaching notes seemed to be a major concern of all students. classroom activities/tasks students held differing views about classroom activities. some students acknowledged that the classroom activities were useful and the teacher did everything possible to make these activities meaningful as well as useful to students. however, some students did not believe this and felt that smaller group activities were needed. some of them suggested that the activities needed to be more interactive and student-centred. many students felt that they needed more classroom discussions and oral exercises. a few students expressed the view that the number of non-credit classroom presentations should be increased. course assignments many students noted that the course assignments were well organized and their implementation was effective. however, they needed more time before each presentation. some students felt that the gap between two presentations should be longer. many students suggested that the number of assignments should be reduced to give students more time to prepare for a presentation. some students wanted flexibility in the time-frame chosen by the teacher and opposed the idea of penalizing students who submitted the assignment late. evaluation and grading students held differing views about evaluation and grading. some students acknowledged that the teacher was ver y impartial in evaluating the assignments and presentations but a few students did not agree. they felt that the teacher was slightly biased towards good and regular students. some students believed that they deserved better grades than those they were awarded by the teacher. many students suggested that peer evaluation should also be considered while evaluating the individual performances of students. a few students commented that the marking was too rigid. better grading seemed to be a major demand of all students and they made several suggestions to liberalise marking and the grading system. all the comments of students were noted. a systematic analysis of these comments gave me enough ideas to make changes within the framework. i could implement some of the suggestions given by the students. conclconclconclconclconclusionusionusionusionusion we believe that by the use of a framework of students’ analyses as described here, teachers can involve the students in the learning process and provide essential data for reviewing and evaluating the course to improve and promote its effectiveness. as any eap oral communication course should be not only need-based, but also learner-centered, students’ analysis can play a very significant role by providing wider input into the content, design and implementation of the course. moreover, it can provide opportunities to engage students in interesting and meaningful classroom experiences. teachers can effectively use students’ analyses as a tool to improve learning effectiveness in their classes. firstly, an integration of needs analysis, peer response and students’ feedback can prove to be an effective means of obtaining wider input into the content, design and implementation of an eap program as it provides essential data for reviewing and evaluating an existing eap program to improve and promote its effectiveness. secondly, by getting learners involved in the learning process through peer response and student feedback, it can promote reflective learning. reflective learning encourages, as argued by mezirow (1990: 366), ‘critical reflection in order to precipitate or facilitate transformative learning ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ 114 rizvirizvirizvirizvirizvi profileprofileprofileprofileprofile in adults’. similarly, schon (1991) claims that reflection can change traditional learning into a transformative and emancipatory experience. by analyzing their communicative needs, expressing their learning preferences, and by giving peer feedback, students become more aware of what they need as course participants and develop skills to reflect on their learning process. finally, students’ analyses can motivate students by engaging them in interesting and meaningful classroom experiences. although the study presented here is limited to a particular context as the subjects of the present investigation are from a country in the middle east, the focus and approach have a wider implication for esp/eap practitioners in other parts of the world. in fact, the results would seem to be compatible with second language acquisition studies concerning the creation of learning experiences and opportunities. on the basis of this, the conclusion is that encouraging learner participation through sa may have positive outcomes on successful language learning, and eap teachers, particularly those teaching oral communication courses, should therefore seek practical ways of introducing this into the eap classroom. the authorthe authorthe authorthe authorthe author m ashraf rizvim ashraf rizvim ashraf rizvim ashraf rizvim ashraf rizvi is an assistant professor of english at the department of humanities and social sciences, indian school of mines, dhanbad. his previous assignment was with sultan qaboos university, the national university of the sultanate of oman, where he taught business communication courses as assistant professor and program coordinator. he has been an external at central institute of english and foreign languages, hyderabad and a course writer of indira gandhi national open university, new delhi. he has authored a series of textbooks for business and technical communication. he has also written articles in the area of oral language development and elt. his special interests include students’ analysis, learner autonomy, material production, and error analysis. referencesreferencesreferencesreferencesreferences allwright, r. (1982). perceiving and pursuing learners’ needs. in m. geddes and g. sturtridge (eds.), individualisation (pp.24-31). oxford: modern english publications. bartels, n. (2003). written peer response in l2 writing. english teaching forum, 41 (1), 34-37. berg, e.c. (1999). the effects of trained peer response on esl students’ revision types and writing quality. journal of second language writing 8 (3), 215-241. bhatia, v. (1993). analysing genre: language use in professional settings. london: longman. braunstein, b., c. et al. (2000). the u.s.siberlink internet project. tesl-ej, 4 (3), 1-23. dudley-evans, t. & st. john, m. (1998). development in english for specific purposes: a multi-disciplinar y approach. cambridge: cambridge university press. ellis, m. & johnson, c. (1994). teaching business english. oxford: oxford university press. hedderich, n., (1997). peer tutoring via electronic mail. unterrichtspraxis, 30 (2), 141-147. holliday, a. & t.cooke. (1982). an ecological approach to esp. lancaster practical papers in english language education, 5 (issues in esp). university of lancaster. jackson, j., (2005). an inter-university, crossdisciplinar y analysis of business education: perceptions of business faculty in hong kong. english for specific purposes, 24 (3), 293-306. james, k., (1984). speak to learn: oral english for academic purposes. london: collins. johns, a. & price-machado, d. (2001). english for specific purposes: tailoring courses to students needsand to the outside world. in m. celcemurcia (ed.), teaching english as a second or foreign language (pp.4354). boston: heinle and heinle. jordan, r.r., (1997). english for academic purposes. cambridge: cambridge university press. liu, j. & hansen, j.g. (2005). guiding principles for effective peer response, elt journal 59 (1), 31-38. ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○115 profileprofileprofileprofileprofile using students’ analysis in teaching public speaking for business liu, j. & hansen, j.g. (2002). peer response in second language writing classroom. ann arbor, mi: university of michigan press. lynch, t. & anderson, k. (1992). study speaking: a course in spoken english for academic purposes. cambridge: cambridge university press. madden, c.g. & rohlck, t.n., (1997). discussion and interaction in the academic community. ann arbor, mi: university of michigan press. mendonca, c.o. & johnson, k.e. (1994). peer review negotiations: revision activities in esl writing instruction. tesol quarterly 28 (4), 74-769. mezirow, j. (ed.). (1990). fostering critical reflection in adulthood. san francisco: jossey-bass. mittan, r., (1989). the peer response process: harnessing students’ communicative power. in d. johnson and d. roen. (eds.), richness in eriting: empowering esl students (pp. 207-219). new york: longman. munby, j., (1978). communicative syllabus design. cambridge: cambridge university press. richards, j.c., et al. (1992). longman dictionary of language teaching and applied linguistics. london: longman. richterich, r. & j.l. chancerel. (1980). identifying the needs of adults learning a foreign language. oxford: pergamon press. rignall, r. & furneaux, c. (1997). speaking. hemel hempstead: prentice hall. rollinson, paul. (2005). using peer feedback in the esl writing class. elt journal, 59 (1), 23-30. rizvi, m.a., (2004). teaching oral communication skills to business english learners. journal of communication practices, 1 (1), 13-24. schon, d.a., (1991). the reflexive turn: case studies in and on educational practice. new york: teachers’ college. vaughan, d.k. (2004). the impact of the new global economy on business communication skills. journal of communication practices, 1 (1), 3-11. villamil, o.s. & de guerrero, m.c. (1996). peer revision in the l2 classroom: social, cognitive activities, mediating strategies, and aspects of social behaviour. journal of second language writing 5 (1), 51-75. west, r. (1994). needs analysis in teaching: state of the art. language teaching, 27, 1-19. west, r. (1997). needs analysis: state of the art. in howard, r., & brown, g. (eds.), teacher education for lsp (pp. 68-79). clevedon, uk: multilingual matters. ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ 116 rizvirizvirizvirizvirizvi profileprofileprofileprofileprofile appendix 1: students’ needs profile in public speakingappendix 1: students’ needs profile in public speakingappendix 1: students’ needs profile in public speakingappendix 1: students’ needs profile in public speakingappendix 1: students’ needs profile in public speaking read the following statements and give your comments by ticking (√) on any one of the two options ‘agree’ / ‘disagree’. if you can not make any comment, please tick on the “neutral’ option. students need students need students need students need students need agreeagreeagreeagreeagree disagreedisagreedisagreedisagreedisagree neutralneutralneutralneutralneutral 1 the ability to speak with competence and confidence. 2 to present a well-organized, dynamic speech. 3 to be able to participate in a classroom seminar. 4 public speaking skills to get a good job. 5 to be able to take part in group discussions. 6 public speaking skills to be respected. 7 to be able to speak in public in order to enhance their career. 8 public speaking skills to participate in educational decision-making. 9 public speaking skills to pursue a career in business. your name ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○117 profileprofileprofileprofileprofile using students’ analysis in teaching public speaking for business appendix 2: students’ learning preferences in public speakingappendix 2: students’ learning preferences in public speakingappendix 2: students’ learning preferences in public speakingappendix 2: students’ learning preferences in public speakingappendix 2: students’ learning preferences in public speaking read the following statements about your learning preferences in public speaking and give your comments by ticking (√) on any one of the two options ‘agree’ / ‘disagree’. if you can not make any comment, please tick on the “neutral’ option. your name students needstudents needstudents needstudents needstudents need agreeagreeagreeagreeagree disagreedisagreedisagreedisagreedisagree neutralneutralneutralneutralneutral 10 less emphasis on lectures. 11 more small group work. 12 more individualized teaching. 13 less emphasis on the textbook. 14 clear course objectives. 15 involvement in assessment. 16 variety of assessment methods. 17 to know the relevance of the subject material to their chosen profession. 18 to talk to their teachers. 19 to know about their progress. 20 enough time to do good quality work. 21 direction from teachers. ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ 118 rizvirizvirizvirizvirizvi profileprofileprofileprofileprofile appendix 3: speech evappendix 3: speech evappendix 3: speech evappendix 3: speech evappendix 3: speech evalalalalaluauauauauation form (peer evtion form (peer evtion form (peer evtion form (peer evtion form (peer evalalalalaluauauauauation)tion)tion)tion)tion) listen to the presentation of the student and give your comments in the following format. use the following scale to evaluate elements of the presentation: outstanding good aoutstanding good aoutstanding good aoutstanding good aoutstanding good average fverage fverage fverage fverage fair pair pair pair pair poorooroorooroor 1 2 3 4 5 1 2 3 4 5 1 2 3 4 5 1 2 3 4 5 1 2 3 4 5 youryouryouryouryour namenamenamenamename elements of the presentationelements of the presentationelements of the presentationelements of the presentationelements of the presentation introductionintroductionintroductionintroductionintroduction the introduction caught my attention and provided an overview of the main ideas. organizationorganizationorganizationorganizationorganization the presentation had an introduction, body, and conclusion. the speaker used transitions and signposts to clarify the organization. the main ideas were clear me. supporting materialsupporting materialsupporting materialsupporting materialsupporting material the supporting material was credible and interesting. visual aidsvisual aidsvisual aidsvisual aidsvisual aids the visual aids were attractive and understandable. they were introduced at appropriate points. deliverdeliverdeliverdeliverdeliver yyyyy the speaker made eye contact with the audience, used appropriate gestures and effective body movement. conclusionconclusionconclusionconclusionconclusion the speaker summarized the key points. overall effectivenessoverall effectivenessoverall effectivenessoverall effectivenessoverall effectiveness the presentation was effective. profile 9.indd editorial profile 9, 2008. issn 1657-0790. bogotá, colombia. pages 5-8 5 editorial “if teachers are to commit themselves to research, they need to know that there is the possibility that their inquiries will be made public so that others can benefit from their findings. moreover, as most academic researchers acknowledge, the prospect of publication is a major incentive for conducting a study. thus, a final condition for teacher research is that mechanisms be in place to disseminate the results of the research”.1 the growing importance of teacher research and the necessity to make our investigations, innovations and reflections public have positively influenced the work we have been doing in profile for nine years. more and more teachers of english now submit their works to evaluation, evidencing a willingness to receive feedback from peers and more experienced academics and to reach a wider community through publications. in addition to this interest in having their work published, teacher researchers demonstrate as borj (2006) states, that they are sure others can benefit from their findings. visibility of teacher researchers’ work published in our journal goes beyond the printed documents we circulate. recently, our journal was included in the llba linguistics and language behavior abstracts database. this will surely contribute to universal visibility and accessibility on the internet. the increasing interest of the english language teaching (elt) community, who steadily submit more and more papers to our journal, has been the steering force in changing the periodicity of our journal. hence, from this number on, profile will be published twice a year, thanks to the support of the publications division of the human sciences faculty at our university. to face this new challenge, i must count on the continued support of our evaluators, reviewers, and administrative services assistants. editing two issues per year implies more collaboration from our advisory and editorial boards, to which i am very grateful. in order to ensure peer reviewing, we have extended invitations to colleagues from other universities in colombia and overseas. this time i want to welcome professors richard smith (university of warwick, u.k.), nilton hitotuzi (secretaria de educação do estado do amazonas, seduc-am, brazil), franca poppi and marina bondi (university of 1 borj, s. (2006). conditions for teacher research. english teaching forum online, 44(4). retrieved february 10, 2008 from http://exchanges.state.gov/forum/vols/vol44/no4/p22.htm profile 9.indd 5 21/04/2008 07:43:12 p.m. cárdenas beltrán universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras6 modena and reggio emilia, italy). i also want to welcome claudia ordóñez and maría eugenia lópez from universidad nacional de colombia. i offer many thanks to them for having accepted to accompany us in this academic endeavour. this number gathers thirteen articles concerning elt and language policies, which are the result of systematic research and innovation processes as well as of careful revision and analysis of pertinent bibliography in their fields of study. we begin with eight issues from teacher researchers. in the first two articles we can get acquainted with projects carried out in secondary schools while their authors took part in the professional development programmes led by the profile research group at universidad nacional de colombia, bogotá. adriana norato peña and jeny mirella cañón tell us how they used reading of short stories with sixth graders in order to develop their learners’ cognitive processes. then, rocío amparo buitrago tinjacá and ruth ayala contreras report on a study implemented in a public school to explore some learning strategies to overcome speaking fears and anxiety. as part of their findings we can mention some possible strategies to reduce those drawbacks and to promote oral interaction in the classroom. the next paper, written by odilia ramírez contreras, shows the results of research dealing with sixth-graders’ perceptions of english language learning and the impact of active learning approaches in a public school in manizales, colombia. it also points out the effect the model had on the language learning process, particularly in the increase of students’ participation, language production, and class interaction. after that, in a report written by sergio antonio duarte and leonardo alberto escobar, we can learn about the use of adapted material and how it influenced, in a positive way, university students’ motivation. this article is followed by two papers dealing with writing. the first one is a preliminary evaluation of the impact of a writing assessment system on teaching and learning at university level. in it, ana patricia muñoz and martha e. álvarez describe the kind of improvement observed in students’ writings. they also remark that teachers need to provide a better response to students by appropriately using the required assessment tools. afterwards, we can read judith castellanos’ action research account which was conducted with preservice teachers in an upper intermediate english as a foreign language class and who had the chance to experience journal writing and its benefits. profile 9.indd 6 21/04/2008 07:43:12 p.m. editorial profile 9, 2008. issn 1657-0790. bogotá, colombia. pages 5-8 7 the next two papers belong to the pre-service teacher education area too. gerrard mugford investigated from a critical perspective what happened when he worked with teacher trainees to make them aware of different ways of presenting and practising cognates and loan words in the second-language classroom. the study stresses that cognates are a productive resource for second-language users at all stages and levels of language learning and not just a tool for the random recognition of words. this argument is supported by practical ideas we can employ to make language students take control of language learning. subsequently, we present the experience of a novice english teacher and her development of autonomy. the authors, diana pineda and cristina frodden, describe how reflection, collaborative work and critical thinking were promoted and enabled the teacher to find alternatives in her teaching, to gain a new understanding of this approach, and to develop autonomy. in the section, issues from novice teacher researchers, we include an article that focuses on the use of rock music as a teaching-learning tool. in camilo morales’ study we can find how he documented his experience working with two adult students in private classes in which the materials were based on the lyrics of rock songs. once more, we can confirm that classroom research has also captured novice teachers’ attention who not only endeavour to investigate as regards their teaching job, but to share their findings in scientific journals. next, we have four papers based on reflections and innovations. ana clara sánchez and gabriel vicente obando’s concerns about the colombian government’s policy that attempts to implement programs like “colombia bilingüe” (bilingual colombia) draw our attention towards several factors which have to do with academic requirements and issues. the authors examine the academic needs that have to be met in order to achieve the government goals in a fair and rewarding way for teachers, students and stakeholders. then we present two innovations in the area of technology that have been systematized by university teachers. on the one hand, aaron rogers informs us how we can foster the innovative use of word processing software, process writing and interaction among adult students. this experience is supported with relevant literature and a lesson plan containing stages and examples on how technology can be implemented in practice. on the other hand, amparo clavijo, nicolas alexander hine and luz mary quintero write about the virtual forum as an alternative way to enhance foreign language learning. they tell us how a web-based story sharing forum has been established to provide profile 9.indd 7 21/04/2008 07:43:13 p.m. cárdenas beltrán universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras8 students in bogotá (colombia), new brunswick (canada), and dundee (scotland) with the opportunity to exchange cross-cultural stories as a complement to the regular elt curriculum and as a means to promote student involvement and language development through the use of icts. finally, i wish to share with you that our journal has been indexed in the llba – linguistics and language behavior abstracts database. this is another opportunity to guarantee visibility on the internet. as can be seen, an important number of teachers are committed not only to doing research, but to making certain their inquiries will be made public so that others can benefit from their findings or establish some kind of dialogue around the views available in periodicals like ours. i wish you a good reading of this first issue of 2008 and hope you can find inspiration in our colleagues’ work so that more voices can be heard in future numbers of our publication. melba libia cárdenas beltrán journal editor profile 9.indd 8 21/04/2008 07:43:13 p.m. profile no. 6 oct 13.p65 ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ profile profile profile profile profile 6 (2005): universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras technology in teacher education: developing online teacher education programs tttttecnología en formación de docentes:ecnología en formación de docentes:ecnología en formación de docentes:ecnología en formación de docentes:ecnología en formación de docentes: desarrollo de programas en línea para la formación de docentesdesarrollo de programas en línea para la formación de docentesdesarrollo de programas en línea para la formación de docentesdesarrollo de programas en línea para la formación de docentesdesarrollo de programas en línea para la formación de docentes khalil motallebzadehkhalil motallebzadehkhalil motallebzadehkhalil motallebzadehkhalil motallebzadeh kmotallebzadeh@yahoo.com islamic azad university, iran many esl/efl teachers in the middle east and central asia find themselves isolated not only geographically but also professionally from esl colleagues. they often teach at rural schools where, in some cases, they are the only esl teachers in the school or even district. these teachers, unlike their counterparts in large urban settings and developed countries, have fewer avenues for obtaining advice, sharing experiences, or finding collegial support. to help such teachers (as well as many novice teachers or even teacher trainees), the most inexpensive and easy-to-do method seems to be to develop a professional online esl network. this paper, which is part of a study conducted in iran in 2002, discusses the major considerations and problems one may find developing an online program. kkkkkey worey worey worey worey words:ds:ds:ds:ds: information technology (it), information communications technology (ict), teacher education, theory of change, website, language teaching muchos docentes de inglés como segunda lengua o como lengua extranjera en el medio oeste y asia central se hallan apartados, no sólo geográfica sino también profesionalmente de otros colegas. usualmente enseñan en escuelas rurales donde, en algunos casos, son los únicos maestros de inglés de la escuela e incluso del distrito. estos docentes, a diferencia de sus homólogos de grandes contextos urbanos y países desarrollados, tienen menos oportunidades de obtener consejo, compartir experiencias o encontrar apoyo. para ayudar a esos docentes, principiantes e incluso educadores de maestros, la manera más económica y fácil es desarrollar una red profesional de enseñanza del inglés como segunda lengua. este artículo hace parte de un estudio realizado en irán en el año 2002 y discute las consideraciones y problemas más importantes que se pueden hallar al desarrollar un programa en línea. palabras claves:palabras claves:palabras claves:palabras claves:palabras claves: tecnología de información, tecnología de información en comunicación, formación de docentes, teoría y cambio, sitios web, enseñanza de lenguas 171-175 this article was received on april 15th, 2005 and accepted on july 25th, 2005. ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ 172 motmotmotmotmotallebzadehallebzadehallebzadehallebzadehallebzadeh profileprofileprofileprofileprofile introductionintroductionintroductionintroductionintroduction the world is witnessing great changes in many areas in the new millennium. one area is the use of technology which is so evasive and influential that it has affected the whole world. in the last century, everybody talked about industry and the economy had an eye on new industrial advancements to invest money and to earn interest. today, however, the world is looking at information technology (it) or information communications technology (ict) and waits for the changes it can bring about. new terminologies have also been coined such as internet, world wide web, website, and so on. thanks to it we have a new form of literacy: electronic literacy. as warschauer (2000) maintains, there are several kinds of literacy that make up electronic literacies. there is information literacy. we are able to navigate the internet and find, critically analyze, and then make use of information found there. there is what might be called computer-mediated communication literacy. it means being able to use the internet as an information tool to send an email message that has an impact and is appropriate for the circumstances. also, there is multimedia literacy, which is the knowledge of how to create texts on the internet by combining different multimedia and also being able to read and interpret media to create a message. one area, for example, is the scholarly production of knowledge. it used to be, only 20 or 30 years ago, that if a scientist came up with a new discovery, most people would not hear about it until it was published in a journal and that process might take a year or two. now, a scientist is communicating with other scientists around the world immediately on the internet. just think about how much faster the production of knowledge can take place. so, it seems we are going through a revolutionary period in communication that matches the development of the printing press. we are going much faster, however, because the printing press took hundreds of years to spread and have an impact. it is claimed that over 10 percent of the people in the world are using the internet right now and in another 20 years, it could be 30, 40, or 50 percent! ict and fict and fict and fict and fict and future shockuture shockuture shockuture shockuture shock using ict in educational settings requires change. it requires change in the way teachers think about teaching and their teaching practices. van de ven and poole (1995) say: “the task of making the transition from traditional teaching to teaching with technology is much tougher than it seems. this is because the transition is as much a cultural one as one of mere methodologies. it involves a shift in teaching paradigms, a shift in the way of thinking about teaching (p. 198)”. truly, different teachers will handle this change differently and attitudes will play a major role in this difference. toffler (1970) noted that human beings have shown themselves to be very adaptable creatures, but he warned that their ability to absorb change is not infinite. he suggested that we were, in 1970, approaching something he called ‘future shock’, which he defined as ‘the human response to overstimulation’ (p. 290). in toffler ’s view, the symptoms of this future shock include anxiety, hostility, senseless violence, physical illness, depression and apathy. it has been 30 years since toffler wrote this and many of us probably feel that we, and perhaps most of the world, are in terminal future shock. widdowson (1990) made a distinction between teacher training (regarding teachers as technicians who seek standard operating procedures and manuals) and teacher education (considering teachers as interpreters of contextual factors and decision-makers in the english classroom). thus, teachers play the most important role in the tefl field and we need explicit teacher education discussion forums (as opposed to participating in conferences/teaching demonstrations or workshops, seminars, assuming that teachers develop professionally and automatically via those activities) and research (investigating what teachers know, ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○173 profileprofileprofileprofileprofile technology in teacher education believe, value, and do). there should be a harmonious relationship between teachers and researchers: teachers inform researchers of provisional specifications and researchers provide feedback regarding what teachers are concerned about in their teaching practice (ellis, 1997). the need for a nationwide projectthe need for a nationwide projectthe need for a nationwide projectthe need for a nationwide projectthe need for a nationwide project to bring harmony and to accelerate the change, the officials and language designers should arrive at the heart of the project. it should be considered a national project, since it deals with a fundamental subject: english as a second or foreign language, the language of international relations and communication. when the time comes for policy making, officials are usually concerned about three significant and determining factors: budget, work force, and culture. money, the major concern, is essential to be invested in the project. at the beginning, it may seem to be wasting money, but when one expands the scope, it is nothing compared to the benefits gained. work force includes both language designers and it professionals. an ideal project requires cooperation of the two sides. culture, as a determining factor, is highly dependent on how much the traditional teachers are willing to change their classical approaches (from chalkboards to websites). this needs more reflection. in the newly independent regions such as central asia, in which the desire and courage for development are at their highest level, developing an online program would not be impossible. it is true that the increased pace of technological development in the region requires more investment, but one thing is crystal clear: the authorities have recognized the importance of the issue and are providing the necessary help. features of an online programfeatures of an online programfeatures of an online programfeatures of an online programfeatures of an online program to enhance teachers' knowledge and skills in an authentic way, a developed and well-organized web site seems inevitable. through such sites teachers can address their own particular issues and use the available resources. these teachers or teacher trainees can also attend virtual training classes focusing on new esl approaches, classroom management, language assessment, prop application, and/or material preparation. also, they can take advantage of entering a chatroom and discuss a topic of current interest, or leave questions on a message board to be answered by others. how to make an e-portfolio, for example, can be discussed with professionals in one room. the online plan should focus on both theoretical and practical aspects of language teaching. that is, the program should foster a survey to find out the most frequent problems teachers are faced with. hence, needs analysis would have a focal role in such development. meanwhile, websites with good-quality materials which are designed for teacher education and teacher training are very rare nowadays. or at least the existing sites do not settle the major local problems of the teachers over here. therefore, a well-organized and qualified website is the one which, apart from any commercial interest, tries to develop teachers' awareness, cooperation, and interaction more than does the printed element. to design an interactive website, yeh et al. (2000) argue that a qualified one should include the following features: • accommodating a variety of learning styles (text, graphics, high quality audio and video media) • designing meaningful and real world tasks (the communicative and authentic activities) • encouraging exploratory learning (interactive tasks) • providing sequence instruction (in the web pages) • providing feedback (in the web pages) • encouraging metacognition (design of learning strategies in the web pages) • using graphics to show relationships • providing useful academic and scholarly links (teachers' resources) • designing places for sending and receiving messages (chatroom, mail board) ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ 174 motmotmotmotmotallebzadehallebzadehallebzadehallebzadehallebzadeh profileprofileprofileprofileprofile • providing downloadable educational software (games and songs) • providing links to digital journals and newsletters (online forum) also, as a survey done among iranian english teachers (motallebzadeh, 2002) shows, most teachers believe that a quality website is one which can satisfy their needs, among which the following were identified as the immediate ones: • providing links to other educational sites to develop teachers’ pedagogical knowledge • helping them share their knowledge with other colleagues and scholars in other regions for developing more interactive and practical tasks • getting access to authentic materials required for a language class • providing downloadable games, worksheets, and formative tests when an online program is called for, we expect an up-to-date and modern team of experts who are always busy constructing, developing, and reconstructing the components of the plan. therefore, selecting such a team requires great care. as mentioned earlier, the team should include a group of language designers and it professionals. this team needs to work with teachers in an action plan to analyze the teachers' immediate needs and to get feedback regarding what they have already designed. the program should be multifunctional and have more interactive potential to prepare the groundwork for enhanced electronic literacy, elearning, virtual education, and e-book fashion. providing the teachers and teacher trainees with enough and effective instruction is another important dimension which needs consideration. to start a nationwide program, we need to prepare users to get the most out of the new technology. as shown in a survey by yeh (2002), many teachers complain about their practical knowledge on how to use the internet. they also stated that they didn’t receive sufficient instruction on how to surf and browse the web pages, how to locate the required information through the search engines, and how to download the things they wanted. hence, it is recommended that the program establishes several workshops for training and educating teachers and teacher trainees to maximize the effective use of the internet. conclconclconclconclconclusionusionusionusionusion in a changing world in which the people live with up-to-date information and in an age where the new technology has changed the world into a global village, everyone has the right to have an opportunity to be more and more dynamic. the language teachers are no exception. teachers need to access information that will enable them to carry out their responsibilities more successfully. to help such energetic and enthusiastic teachers, developing an online website seems inevitable. such innovation, when supported and financed by the government, would enable language teachers to share their experiences with colleagues in other parts of the country or world. this in turn improves the general level of english proficiency in the region. about the authorabout the authorabout the authorabout the authorabout the author khalil motallebzadehkhalil motallebzadehkhalil motallebzadehkhalil motallebzadehkhalil motallebzadeh is assistant professor at islamic azad university, iran. he has a ph.d. in tefl and is especially interested in language testing, language teaching and call. he has been a committee member of asia call since 2004. he has published articles in national journals such as roshd (iran’s journal of the ministry of education) and the journal of medical sciences. he has also participated in national and international conferences on efl, translation, and applied linguistics as a presenter and attendee. referencesreferencesreferencesreferencesreferences ellis, r. (1997). sla research and language teaching. oxford: oxford university press. motallebzadeh, k. (2002). teacher development through online program. unpublished project, islamic azad university at torbat-e-heidarieh, iran. toffler, a. (1970). future shock. usa: random house. ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○175 profileprofileprofileprofileprofile technology in teacher education van de ven, a.h., and poole, m.s. (1995). explaining development and change in organizations. academy of management review, 20 (3), 510540. warschauer, m. (2000). online learning in a second language classroom: an ethnographic study. in m. warschauer and r. kern (eds.), network-based language teaching: concepts and practice. new york: cambridge university press. widdowson, h.g. (1990). aspects of language teaching. oxford: oxford university press. yeh, h.y. (2002). applying clt to web english learning in taiwan’s primary schools (p.128-137). proceedings of the 9th international symposium on english teaching. november 10-12. taipei. yeh, h.y., et al. (2000). development process of a tefl website, elt in taiwan. (in chinese). proceedings of the 4th international conference on multimedia language education. yuan ze university, october 27-29. taiwan, roc. profile 3.p65 ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ 31 profileprofileprofileprofileprofile t he theory of multiple intelligences by howard gardner is enlighteningand extremely useful in the efl (english as a foreign language) classroom. for starters it helps the teacher in understanding the individual differences found in the classroom and to comprehend how students go about learning. multiple intelligences are not always taken into account even though they are very observable in children, since they are still so innocent and honest in their learning process. the purpose of this article is to discuss the importance of approaching the individuals encountered in our classroom, giving them the equal opportunity of learning another language and above all making our classes fun and resourceful so that these young learners are motivated for a lifetime. intrintrintrintrintroductionoductionoductionoductionoduction children are wonderful learners, their minds are open to new experiences and they are motivated to learn in a genuine fashion. being a teacher of efl young learners is a very gratifying experience because at this stage in their life it seems as if their brains are wired to learn languages. even for the ones that seem like they are not learning, in the long run they will obtain proficiency in the language. taking into account their eagerness to new learning experiences, it is of utmost managing multiple activities for specific themes in the efl classroom (prek-grade 2) ttttterererererrrrrr y hughes m.y hughes m.y hughes m.y hughes m.y hughes m. corporación universitaria de santander and let’s (learning english together services for young learners) tmhughes@col1.telecom.com.co importance to be very creative in each lesson that we teach them. children learn easily but we should never overload them with information. that’s why working with specific themes facilitates second language acquisition, because they become comfortable with the language and they truly assimilate it. theoretical frameworktheoretical frameworktheoretical frameworktheoretical frameworktheoretical framework it is based on the multiple intelligence theory, in which each human being has his or her own way of learning and using his or her intellect. there are 7 identified intelligences: • visual/spatial intelligence:• visual/spatial intelligence:• visual/spatial intelligence:• visual/spatial intelligence:• visual/spatial intelligence: ability to perceive the visual. these learners tend to think in pictures and need to create vivid mental images to retain information. they enjoy looking at maps, charts, flashcards, pictures, videos, and movies. • v• v• v• v• verbal/linguistic intelligenceerbal/linguistic intelligenceerbal/linguistic intelligenceerbal/linguistic intelligenceerbal/linguistic intelligence ability to use words and language. these learners have highly developed auditory skills and are generally elegant speakers. they think in words rather than pictures. they enjoy storybooks, videos, and nursery rhymes. • logical/mathematical intelligence• logical/mathematical intelligence• logical/mathematical intelligence• logical/mathematical intelligence• logical/mathematical intelligence ability to use reason, logic and numbers. these learners think conceptually in logical and numerical patterns making connections between pieces of information. always curious ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ 32profileprofileprofileprofileprofile about the world around them, these learners ask lots of questions and like to do experiments. they enjoy games such as concentration, matching pairs, counting and categorizing objects. • bodily/kinaesthetic intelligence• bodily/kinaesthetic intelligence• bodily/kinaesthetic intelligence• bodily/kinaesthetic intelligence• bodily/kinaesthetic intelligence ability to control body movements and handle objects skilfully. these learners express themselves through movement. they have a good sense of balance and eye-hand coordination (e.g. ball play, balancing beams). through interacting with the space around them, they are able to remember and process information. they enjoy dancing, games that involve physical motion and role playing. • musical/rhythmic intelligence• musical/rhythmic intelligence• musical/rhythmic intelligence• musical/rhythmic intelligence• musical/rhythmic intelligence ability to produce and appreciate music. these musically inclined learners think in sounds, rhythms and patterns. they immediately respond to music either appreciating or criticizing what they hear. many of these learners are extremely sensitive to environmental sounds (e.g. crickets, bells, dripping taps). they enjoy activities that involve music like singing and dancing. • interpersonal intelligence• interpersonal intelligence• interpersonal intelligence• interpersonal intelligence• interpersonal intelligence ability to relate and understand others. these learners try to see things from other people's point of view in order to understand how they think and feel. they often have an uncanny ability to sense feelings, intentions and motivations. they are great organizers, although they sometimes resort to manipulation. generally they try to maintain peace in group settings and encourage co-operation. they use both verbal (e.g. speaking) and non-verbal language (e.g. eye contact, body language) to open communication channels with others. they really enjoy group activities and are usually the ones that like to be the teacher’s assistant. • intrapersonal intelligence• intrapersonal intelligence• intrapersonal intelligence• intrapersonal intelligence• intrapersonal intelligence ability to self-reflect and be aware of one's inner state of being. these learners try to understand their inner feelings, dreams, relationships with others, and strengths and weaknesses. they enjoy activities where they have to work alone and usually make strong bonds with their teachers. exactly how does managing multiple activities for specific themes work? this paper focuses on how to exploit these intelligences that are so obvious in preschool and elementary children and to use them as an advantage for their learning process. the specific themes that we choose to work with must be interesting to us and to the children. american holidays are a good bet, the ones that are in common with our colombian holidays are easier to work with because they can relate to them in real life. others such as thanksgiving are a little bit more challenging. the time we schedule for each theme differs for each one. we can work with one theme during the whole course or it can be a matter of only weeks. it entirely depends on what we are looking for. p rp rp rp rp rocedureocedureocedureocedureocedure as a teacher we must know everything there is to know about the theme and what vocabulary to teach to the children depending on their age and level. we must feel comfortable with the words and themes. once we have the vocabulary, we start designing the basic commands and sentence ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ 33 profileprofileprofileprofileprofile structures we are going to use. we have to remember that these totally depend on the activities we choose. the games, videos, music, stories, dramatic play should be linked to each other. this gives the opportunity to use the language over and over again. children learn through repetition and it is our task to be creative and not to become boring, which can be a bit challenging since the vocabulary is recycled over and over again. once we have the activities we are going to use, we need to organize them so that they go from basic to more challenging. resources may be a problem for some teachers but handmade flashcards, storybooks and puppets are just as good as store bought materials. several publishers have some very resourceful books on teaching strategies that have some interesting hand-on activities and are very practical for our lesson plans (i highly recommend ideas like the ones proposed by hayes, k. and creange: 2001). the internet is also a very powerful tool in this aspect and there are endless sites for early education and they even have downloadable resources, in most cases they are free of charge. apprapprapprapprapproaching multiple intelligencesoaching multiple intelligencesoaching multiple intelligencesoaching multiple intelligencesoaching multiple intelligences with small children it is important to have a routine in our classes and to be consistent throughout the course and especially inside the classroom. • begin with the introduction of new vocabulary; forget about the old fashion way of showing the flashcard and repeating it. be creative. use games where they have to move (bodily/kinaesthetic intelligence). run, walk, and jump to ....flashcard. • memory games are excellent for visualspatial and logic-mathematical intelligences, just make two sets of cards with the same picture of the vocabulary you are teaching, and have them flip them over and match two of a kind. ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ 34profileprofileprofileprofileprofile • for the musical and auditive intelligence make up words using the vocabulary with children’s traditional tunes. they are easily found on the internet in the preschool sites; make sure they are adequate for your group. it is important the music you use be authentic and very repetitive, not to have too many new words in them. for example itsy bitsy spider is very easy because first of all they usually already know it in their mother tongue and it repeats itself so it is easy to relate to. you can make a storybook or felt board puppets of the song, this way children get to “see” what they are singing. finally make a small class play where they become characters from the songs or stories. • and to wrap up the theme make a craft that is allusive to the theme. this is great for intrapersonal and interpersonal intelligences because it gives them the opportunity to work alone and in groups. be sure that the instructions to make the craft be given in english. demonstrate each step by making one for yourself. for example, give the order “fold your paper” while you are holding up a paper and showing them what you are saying. through repetition, these instructions will be assimilated. crafts approach all the different intelligence because it is a hands-on activity where children experience through their eyes, ears and hands what you are teaching. conclusionconclusionconclusionconclusionconclusion you may be thinking that it is a lot of hard work in designing multiple activities for specific themes but once you get the hang of it, it will be impossible to work in any other manner. you’ll have just as much fun as your students are and before you know it, you’ll have identified your students and what they like and dislike in your class. of course language learning is a long and slow process but through multiple activities children truly live the language and it becomes meaningful to them. they will use it to communicate with you and their classmates and they will enjoy their classes and have fun in them. referencesreferencesreferencesreferencesreferences hayes, k. and creange, r. (2001). scholastic teaching strategies. jefferson city: scholastic inc. the explanation of the 7 mi was abstracted from: http://www.ldpride.net/ldpride.htm profile profile no. 6 oct 13.p65 ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ profile profile profile profile profile 6 (2005): universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras the process of writing a text by using cooperative learning el proceso de escribir un texto por medio del uso del aprendizaje cooperativoel proceso de escribir un texto por medio del uso del aprendizaje cooperativoel proceso de escribir un texto por medio del uso del aprendizaje cooperativoel proceso de escribir un texto por medio del uso del aprendizaje cooperativoel proceso de escribir un texto por medio del uso del aprendizaje cooperativo alexandra aldanaalexandra aldanaalexandra aldanaalexandra aldanaalexandra aldana alexangie1999@hotmail.com colegio departamental “el tequendama” this research project was carried out in order to get ninth graders of the departamental school “el tequendama” involved in their writing tasks and to improve their writing skills, following the process that a professional writer enables students to write cooperatively and reduces their writing anxiety. cooperative writing enables the participation of students with a mixture of proficiency level, thus providing greater opportunities to make achievements and therefore greater opportunities to be more deeply involved in their writing tasks. kkkkkey worey worey worey worey wordsdsdsdsds: teaching writing, teaching techniques, students as writers, team work este proyecto de investigación se llevó a cabo con el propósito de lograr que los estudiantes de noveno grado del colegio departamental “el tequendama” se comprometieran con sus actividades de escritura y mejoraran sus habilidades escriturales. el reproducir el proceso que un escritor realiza permite a los estudiantes escribir cooperativamente y reduce la ansiedad provocada por el acto de escribir. la escritura cooperativa potencia la participación de estudiantes con niveles bajos de dominio, brindándoles mayores oportunidades de lograr mejores resultados y por tanto mayores oportunidades de comprometerse con sus actividades de escritura. palabras claves: palabras claves: palabras claves: palabras claves: palabras claves: enseñanza de la escritura, técnicas de enseñanza, estudiantes escritores, trabajo en equipo 47-57 this article was received on april 06th, 2005 and accepted on august 16th, 2005. ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ 48 aldanaaldanaaldanaaldanaaldana profileprofileprofileprofileprofile introductionintroductionintroductionintroductionintroduction in my experience as a teacher in the departamental school “el tequendama”, i noticed that students neglected the foreign language writing classes and i did not know how to help them to foster their engagement and participation in these classes and, at the same time, to improve their writing skills. before the sixties and seventies writing language classes usually ignored the writing process. teachers used to focus on the product so they attended to clarity and originality, but they did not attend to the writing process nor the writers. currrent approaches to teaching writing view it as the culmination of several steps in a long laborious process in which writers address several questions ranging from what to write about, who the audience is, how to organize the text, and how to write it? esl teachers need to become familiar with this recent approach as it is certain that writing-as-a-process can improve students’ writing skills. this research intends to help a group of 40 ninth graders with great problems of apathy and a lack of engagement in their writing tasks. this group also showed great difficulties in their writing skills such as making incomplete and meaningless sentences, establishing incorrect topic sentences, adding ideas which do not support the topic sentence, and ordering words and ideas up so their writings were not consistent. in order to improve their writing skills, the principles of process writing were applied by using the cooperative learning technique. on the other hand, this report reveals the implications and advantages of cooperative learning as a teaching strategy that provides students with the appropriate environment to foster concentration on the learning process itself and the process of writing a text as well as examines the advantages and implications as a teaching strategy to get students involved in each one of the stages of the writing process. review of literareview of literareview of literareview of literareview of literaturetureturetureture this section includes relevant theoretical aspects related to my research topic: the writing process approach and cooperative learning. the writing process approach views writing not as a result but as a process that attempts to get students writing as professional authors do, so they choose their own topics and genres, and write from their own experiences and obser vations. as writers, students think before deciding what to say and how to say it. according to raimes (1983), during the writing process, students engage in several stages that include pre-writing, planning, drafting and postwriting activities. it means that students first try to generate ideas so as to organize them by considering the purpose, audience and genre of the text, then they make word choices, adding or deleting ideas by reviewing organization, grammar, logic and verifying if there is enough information, and last they share their ideas with a real audience so this stage involves students with designing and publishing a final draft. review is understood as diverse steps of self, peer and teacher assessment in order to improve the final writing and present it to the audience. as white and arndt (1991) assert, it is seen as a cyclical process. consequently while students are revising, they might have to return to the prewriting step to develop and expand their ideas. the diagram proposed by white and arndt (ibid.) (figure 1) shows the nature of the writing stages. learning to write is a natural process via cooperative learning because it provides the social structure for students to work cooperatively as teams and enhances their academic achievement. in this case, the achievement is the improvement of the writing skills. according to kagan (1994), on a cooperative team each member of the group has a unique contribution to get the goal (positive interdependence) so each one is responsible for a role, or a task (individual accountability). this way of working gives students equal chances to participate ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○49 profileprofileprofileprofileprofile the process of writing a text by using cooperative learning (equal participation) and major opportunities for providing each other with feedback, challenging conclusions, and teaching and encouraging each other (simultaneous interaction). the positive interdependence develops trusting and respectful relationships among group teammates, so they feel more comfortable and secure writing because they feel part of a group of writers in the classroom. cooperative learning builds up the students’ needed confidence in their knowledge about writing because they realize that they do not have to write alone so they feel less terrified of writing a text. moreover, cooperation enables the participation of students in a classroom with a mixture of proficiency levels, ages and interests. cooperative work provides major opportunities to gain achievements. as kagan (ibid.) claims, “cooperative learning promotes higher achievement than competitive and individualistic learning structures across all age levels, subject areas, and almost all tasks”. this mixture of levels allows "weaker" writers the benefit of working with teammates who are "stronger" writers. when strong and weak students share the same goal, both are favored. as strong students explain how the task is and clarify organization mistakes or language problems to weaker students, they improve their own knowledge. as weaker students are guided in filling their gaps, they strengthen their attitude and view about writing. each one of the stages of the writing process requires that students work with a group of peers to converse and to collaborate until they can together compose a writing that represents the views of all the teammates. this kind of collaborative task embraces retrieving information from various sources, exploring the topic by means of prewriting activities (discussion, reading, brainstorming and list making, among others), planning, giving feedback and editing a final text (raimes,1983). on the other hand, cooperative learning as a writing process approach changes the traditional role of the teacher. as kagan (ibid.) claims, cooperative classrooms change the view of the teacher from evaluator to adviser so the correction is not an evaluation but feedback. in conclusion, cooperative learning and the process approach of writing can work together in the achievement of a common goal when writing a text. both promote self-confidence, low levels of anxiety, high opportunities to make achievements and, also, both are stressed on the reflection of how students can improve their concentration on a specific learning task. methodologymethodologymethodologymethodologymethodology i developed a case study because it allows the researcher to examine a particular issue, understand it and describe it. my particular issue was the low figure 1.figure 1.figure 1.figure 1.figure 1. the writing process (white and arndt,1991). ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ 50 aldanaaldanaaldanaaldanaaldana profileprofileprofileprofileprofile level of interest and engagement in writing tasks as was mentioned before. about this type of research, nunan (1997: 8) says that “case studies center on a single individual number or limited number of individuals, documenting some aspect of their language development, usually over an extended period of time” thus, i focused my investigation on a group of ninth graders who rejected doing writing tasks and it was carried out in a professional context over a period of observation of three hours per week, for three months. in this study i was the only teacher involved so i was both participant and observer. subsequently, this case study let the researcher organize and collect a wide range of information, then analyze it in search of patterns and themes found among the data. this information was gathered through different instruments such as surveys, classroom observation and field notes. surveys were applied on two occasions of the research: at the beginning (appendix 1) in order to discover the cause of the ninth graders’ lack of participation and engagement and at the end (appendix 2) in order to know if team work increased their engagement in the writing process. classroom observation was carried out by using checklists (appendix 3) and later my own field notes to observe students’ behavior and attitudes to the writing process and team work (appendix 4). the diagnostic stage consisted of applying the first survey and my field notes where i described each class from july 27 to november 5, 2004. the second stage consisted of having the field journal and applying the final survey. here, i named the categories according to the patterns found by using the instruments mentioned above and my interpretation. so i established a close relationship between them, and finally, i displayed my findings. resulresulresulresulresultststststs the diagnostic stage suggested that the lack of participation and engagement of the ninth graders was due to their fear of making mistakes, the low interest in the english language and that only a few participated in order to get good grades. it also suggested that students preferred to work in pairs or in small groups than work individually. these results supported my hypothesis based on kagan’s theory (1994): working cooperatively, students will strengthen positive attitudes towards learning the writing process and will increase motivation and the self-esteem they need to get involved in their writing task so they will improve their writing skills. according to johnson and johnson (1984), cooperative teams increase students’ self esteem and motivate students to participate in their learning process. to illustrate this assertion, a ninth grader wrote in the last survey about cooperative team, el que no participaba ahora sí lo hace (the one who did not participate, now does it). additionally, in the process of writing a team’s presentation for the whole class a student said: todos aprendimos del tema porque los que entendían más nos explicaban a los que teníamos dudas para que pudiéramos cumplir con nuestro trabajo. (everybody learned the topic because the ones who understood more helped those who had doubts. thus, the team could complete the task). as can be seen, when students share their success with their groups, the individual’s and the group’s self-esteem are enhanced. from the data taken from the field journal, i identified three main categories and these were related to the development of the classes before and during the application of cooperative learning techniques and the writing process. 1. whole class 2. cooperative commitment 3. becoming a writer the whole class category is understood as a class activity in which students sit down in lines in front of the teacher and listen to his/her explanation. here, as kagan (1994) asserts, there are very few opportunities to take turns and participate. the last word is had by the teacher and students are passive subjects in the process of learning. the results of an analysis of the field journal suggested that whole class environment gives ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○51 profileprofileprofileprofileprofile the process of writing a text by using cooperative learning students less opportunities to express themselves and fewer opportunities to make achievements so they tend to be disruptive (appendix 4). the cooperative commitment category refers to the dedication that cooperative learning and each one of its elements get from the students. a real cooperative team has to fulfill four elements (kagan,1994) in order to promote higher achievement and class attendance, to create an active and involving learning environment and to develop adequate social skills. interpersonal relationships are especially important because they build self-esteem and reduce classroom anxiety (ibid.). the information that was taken from the field notes, the team checklist and the last surveys evidenced that roles allowed having a more expanded knowledge about the topic, and gave equal participation to each team member concerning interaction (positive interdependence). the following excerpts exemplify the point: con cada cargo (función) teníamos que cooperar. we all had to cooperate according to our roles. al tener una función debíamos cumplirla y por lo tanto participar más activamente. we had to fulfil our work depending on our specific roles, so we had to participate more actively. todos opinaban lo que querían porque se sentían con responsabilidades y además no sentíamos tanto temor a equivocarnos como en las clases usuales. we gave our opinion because we felt responsible for it. besides, we did not feel afraid of making mistakes, as in the usual lessons (self-confidence). el encargado repartía lo que debían averiguar y cada uno investigaba mejor un aspecto del tema central. there was one in charge of assigning the topics, and the others searched about one of the aspects related to the main topic (individual accountability). problems emerged during the team building because of their heterogeneity. most of the teams expressed their inconformity by talking to the teacher and by gestures of disapproval. so some of them had personal conflicts that affected the group task. despite these problems, team work was positive because it created chains of friendship among the members of the group and allowed them to work in a more spontaneous and committed way. some students in the final survey said nos conocimos más y descubrimos esa parte que no habíamos visto. (we learned more about each other, and we discovered that part we had not seen before), y compartimos con personas que casi nunca lo hacemos. (we worked with classmates we seldom do). the becoming a writer category refers to the process of writing a text by using cooperative learning. so i will clarif y the troubles and advantages in each of the stages of the writing process. students had difficulties in establishing connections among each one of the stages of the writing process (pre-writing, planning, drafting and post-writing). the prewriting stage refers to the stage in which students ask themselves, “how do we write this? how do we get started?” data gathered from field notes show that in this stage of the writing process students found the different techniques they learned to be useful. most of the students brainstormed but when i, the teacher–researcher, helped them develop ideas, they found that depending on the purpose there were other techniques they could apply for getting started such as graphic organizers. in the final survey a student said, ahora tengo más ideas sobre cómo escribir sobre un tema (now, i have more ideas for writing about a specific topic). another claimed: así es mas fácil empezar a escribir (this way, it is easier to start writing); and another affirmed, esta forma de escribir me ayuda en otras materias. (this writing exercise helps me for the other subjects). most of the students gathered information by inter viewing other students, relatives and neighbors. the planning stage refers to the organization and form of the information gathered in the pre-writing stage. the field notes evidenced some great ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ 52 aldanaaldanaaldanaaldanaaldana profileprofileprofileprofileprofile difficulties in organizing the information because they did not organize them according to the purpose, audience, genre or the main idea they had planned. the drafting stage consists of putting ideas into sentences and paragraphs. in this stage, one of the most important actions is reviewing and this was one of the major problems that students faced. the problem resides in the misconception of the reviewing stage due to the fact that it is seen as the correction of the writing mistakes and the indication that students have not succeeded. this misconception is held not only by the teacher but by the students. field notes support this mistaken belief when students’ attitudes towards reviewing are examined. they looked reluctant to make global changes in their writings such as adding or deleting ideas, rewriting the text or starting again. they usually asked the teacher to correct grammar, spelling or word choice instead of giving comments about the structure and meaning of the text. as a means of giving feedback both verbally and in writing, assessment focusing on processes, product, and attitudes was used. this information was gathered by means of checklists in order to get information about the team's progress in the writing process, abilities, and interests. the results of this tool suggested that assessment gives writers the occasion to improve writing because it allows writers to find mistakes and correct them. it also allows students to prepare for a real audience. checklists also revealed that were some problems with the performance of the teams such as the interpersonal relations among team participants. some groups manifested intolerance and disrespect, but as the time passed, they were getting along better. the post writing stage refers to the act of sharing writings. publishing students’ writings helps them to build an awareness of the function of writing. in this stage i could notice that the attitudes were more gratifying than those in the last two stages. students feel that their final product was the reward for their effort. that was why their emphasis on the decoration of their writings and the place they published them was vital (english wall). in conclusion, the categories that emerged from the data collection showed that the use of cooperative learning in connection with the writing process approach provides students with the right environment to write a text because of the advantages both promote such as reduction of writing anxiety, greater possibilities to get started, improvement of writing skills and the development and practice of building trust, leadership, decision-making, communication, and conflict management skills. conclconclconclconclconclusions and implicusions and implicusions and implicusions and implicusions and implicaaaaationstionstionstionstions the results of this research were similar to the expectations. so after applying cooperative learning in the writing process classes, my ninth graders improved their attitudes toward the writing task and obtained a higher level of proficiency in their writing skills. moreover, writing which follows a process created the students’ awareness of writing communicatively, which means to write for a real audience. the results and the theoretical framework both support the benefits of applying cooperative learning in the classroom and both coincide in that these are expanded into various issues such as the ones described below. first, cooperative learning creates an environment of active, involved and exploratory learning because it asks students to interact with each other, share ideas and information, search for additional information, make decisions about the results of their consideration and present their findings to the rest of the class. second, cooperative learning demands a high degree of responsibility. students need to attend meetings prepared with assignments completed in order to function within their groups. they also must understand the material which they are going to contribute to their groups so that the cooperative team functions as a challenge regarding their responsibilities as a group member. ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○53 profileprofileprofileprofileprofile the process of writing a text by using cooperative learning third, weaker language students improve their performance when they work with strong ones and stronger students reaffirm their abilities when they help others. at the same time a good performance builds higher self-esteem and interest in the subject. the act of sharing success with the group enhances both the individual’s and the group self-esteem. fourth, anxiety is reduced because the focus of attention is distributed among the team’s members. in the cooperative classrooms, the results of the team making a presentation correspond to the work of the whole group. even though there are advantages, both of these teaching approaches (cooperative learning and writing process approach) must be worked longer in order to get students highly involved in their process. it is not the last point because students need to be trained completely. moreover, a new technique needs time to be assimilated. at the moment students showed a considerable change in their opinions about the writing task and a slight change in their concentration, and this is the first step to achieving the best outcomes in the future. about the authorabout the authorabout the authorabout the authorabout the author alexandra aldana:alexandra aldana:alexandra aldana:alexandra aldana:alexandra aldana: b. ed. in english and spanish from the universidad distrital francisco josé de caldas in 1996. she has worked as an english teacher in some private and public high schools in bogotá. also, she has worked at the gobernación de cundinamarca, colegio departamental el tequendama for three years. referencesreferencesreferencesreferencesreferences johnson, r.t. and johnson, d.w. (eds.). (1984). structuring cooperative learning: lesson plans for teachers. minneapolis, mi: interaction book company. nunan, d. (1997). research methods in language learning. cambridge: cambridge university press. kagan, s. (1994). cooperative learning. san clemente: kagan cooperative learning. raimes, a. (1983). techniques in teaching writing. new york: oxford university press. white, r. and arndt, v. (1991). process writing. london: longman. ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ 54 aldanaaldanaaldanaaldanaaldana profileprofileprofileprofileprofile appendix 1: lappendix 1: lappendix 1: lappendix 1: lappendix 1: lack of pack of pack of pack of pack of parararararticipticipticipticipticipaaaaation and engagement surveytion and engagement surveytion and engagement surveytion and engagement surveytion and engagement survey 1. ¿te gusta el inglés? a. mucho c. nada b. poco d. me es indiferente 2. ¿con qué frecuencia participas en clase? a. siempre c. algunas veces b. usualmente d. nunca 3. expresa la opinión que te merece la siguiente afirmación: “las clases de inglés deberían proporcionarnos espacios donde el alumno sea quien descubra sus conocimientos”. a. totalmente de acuerdo c. en desacuerdo b. de acuerdo d. totalmente en desacuerdo. e. me es indiferente 4. las razones por las cuales participas son: a. porque deseo obtener una buena c. porque me gusta hacer conocer mis habilidades. calificación. b. porque me puede ayudar a pasar el d. porque deseo resolver las inquietudes y dudas año académico que el tema me genera 5. las razones de tu baja participación son: a. porque temo equivocarme c. porque soy muy tímido(a) b. porque creo que mis conocimientos d. porque no entiendo los temas explicados del idioma son insuficientes 6. indica tu opinión acerca de la siguiente afirmación, teniendo en cuenta la siguiente escala del 1 al 5, donde 1 expresa la menor preferencia y 5 la mayor preferencia. “me siento más activo y responsable de mi aprendizaje, cuando desarrollo actividades” a. con toda la clase. ______ c. en parejas. _____ b. en grupos pequeños. _____ d. individualmente. ____ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○55 profileprofileprofileprofileprofile the process of writing a text by using cooperative learning appendix 2: exploring team work progress surveyappendix 2: exploring team work progress surveyappendix 2: exploring team work progress surveyappendix 2: exploring team work progress surveyappendix 2: exploring team work progress survey 1. escribir siguiendo un proceso, como lo hace un escritor profesional, mejoró mi forma de expresarme en forma escrita. si___ no___ ¿por qué? 2. después de haber participado en este proyecto siento que tengo mayores habilidades para organizar la información que voy a escribir. si___ no___ ¿por qué? ii. de acuerdo con el siguiente enunciado, contesta las siguientes preguntas sinceramente: el trabajo cooperativo (cada uno de los integrantes del grupo tiene una función) permitió: 1. tener un conocimiento más amplio del tema. si___ no___ ¿por qué? 2. debatir opiniones que permitieron un mayor entendimiento del tema. si___ no___ ¿por qué? 3. compartir ideas acerca de la organización de la información. si__ no___ ¿por qué? 4. identificar más claramente los aspectos más importantes de la información. si___ no___ ¿por qué? 5. que todos los integrantes del grupo participaran por igual. si___ no___ ¿por qué? 6. enriquecer la visión del tema debido al aporte de todos los miembros del grupo. si__ no___ ¿por qué? 7. interactuar con los integrantes del grupo. si___ no___ ¿por qué? 8. participar más activamente. si___ no___ ¿por qué? 9. comprometerme más con el trabajo. si___ no___ ¿por qué? ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ 56 aldanaaldanaaldanaaldanaaldana profileprofileprofileprofileprofile appendix 3: cooperaappendix 3: cooperaappendix 3: cooperaappendix 3: cooperaappendix 3: cooperative team checklisttive team checklisttive team checklisttive team checklisttive team checklist 1. ¿se dieron turnos para tomar la palabra? si___ no___ ¿por qué? 2. ¿las decisiones se tomaron teniendo en cuenta las opiniones de todos los miembros del grupo? si___ no___ ¿por qué? 3.¿los puntos de vista de cada uno de los integrantes fueron discutidos respetuosamente? si____ no__ ¿por qué? 4. ¿se dieron sugerencias útiles? si___ no___ ¿por qué? 5. ¿se motivaron las ideas propuestas por los compañeros? si___ no___ ¿por qué? 6. ¿se presentaron problemas en la toma de decisiones? si___ no___ ¿por qué? 7. ¿se resolvieron pacíficamente los conflictos? si___ no___ por qué? 8. ¿respondieron a la señal de atención de la profesora? si___ no___ ¿por qué? 9. ¿trabajaron con entusiasmo y dedicación? si___ no___ ¿por qué? 10. ¿todos aportaron en la investigación del tema? si___ no___ ¿por qué? 11. ¿se tomaron notas de las actividades realizadas por el grupo? si___ no__ ¿por qué? 12. ¿definieron las responsabilidades y funciones de cada uno de los integrantes del grupo? si___ no___ ¿por qué? 13. ¿definieron los propósitos para cada encuentro? si___ no___ ¿por qué? 14. ¿controlaron sus reacciones emocionales manejando la ira? si___ no___ ¿por qué? 15. ¿resumieron los resultados de cada encuentro? si___ no___ ¿por qué? 16. ¿usaron efectivamente los recursos de investigación? si___ no___ ¿por qué? 17. ¿manejaron adecuadamente el tiempo? si___ no___ ¿por qué? ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○57 profileprofileprofileprofileprofile the process of writing a text by using cooperative learning appendix 4: field notesappendix 4: field notesappendix 4: field notesappendix 4: field notesappendix 4: field notes 1. teacher asks students questions about what writing is, its importance, and how they write. 2. students and teacher brainstorm about love and friendship day. students brainstorm individually. students show low interest in the class. they do not want to answer the teacher’s questions, only five students participate actively. some of them are doing other things and others are copying again. lesson plan tlesson plan tlesson plan tlesson plan tlesson plan twowowowowo date: july 29th topic: pre-writing a tti tu de s to w ar d w ho le c la ss la ck o f i nt er es t a nd e ng ag em en t lesson plan five lesson plan five lesson plan five lesson plan five lesson plan five date: august 12th topic: topic sentence teacher asks students to read the main idea of each paragraph of the reading of the last class. (they are underlined). teacher writes on the board and explains what the topic and the controlling device are. teacher writes other examples and asks students to identify them. teacher explains what a paragraph is, the main and supporting sentences. students work in groups, teacher chooses a monitor and she gives each one a sentence so each group has a sentence. the monitor has to find the three sentences missing to compose a paragraph. there are two paragraphs. then they have to identify the topic sentence pointing out the topic and controlling device. it was difficult to explain. students were talking all the time and most of them did not pay attention to the explanation. most of the students were confused. the teacher had to explain again but they did not pay attention. the teacher walked by the groups and explained again. the class looked disorganized and there were some students who were not working. a tti tu de s to w ar d tr ad iti on al c la ss . d is re ga rd ed a nd lo w le ve l o f en ga ge m en t pr ob le m s id en tif yi ng t op ic s en te nc e profile 2.p65 ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○71 profileprofileprofileprofileprofile this article deals with the problem ofovercrowded classes. ideas fromresearch findings are given in an attempt to approach the teaching of reading at tertiary and secondary levels. this study is m a i n l y b a s e d o n t h e a n a l y s i s o f f i v e pedagogical principles that emerged from the lancaster-leeds language learning in large classes research project in the united kingdom (19861999). emphasis is also made on two important general principles emerging from the project: being realistic and giving more responsibility to the learner. practical suggestions from research on reading are made based on the principles stated. introductionintroductionintroductionintroductionintroduction the purpose of this article is to give some insights for the teaching of reading in large classes based on the analysis and evaluation of proposals made by research in this field. first, i will take into account the five specific pedagogical principles which have emerged from research and the analysis made by teachers in the m.ed tesol group in leeds university to explore possibilities of teaching reading to large groups. next, i will try to make my own proposals based on my experience and insights from literature in the field as well as from suggestions made by teachers and researchers for reading. last, i will draw some conclusions from this analysis. 1. the problem1. the problem1. the problem1. the problem1. the problem for a long time the problem of overcrowded classes in language teaching has been neglected or overlooked. perhaps it was assumed that it was a lack of economical resources in our third world countries and, therefore, there was nothing to do to tackle this problem. furthermore, all research work in tesol advocated the “ideal” number as being 10-15 or 10-20 for successful teaching. teachers got used to feeling guilty about the kinds of teaching the students were receiving and kept struggling with such a perception of the “ideal number”. as a result of this state of affairs, many attempts to solve the problem, at least in an empirical way, had been carried out. also, different approaches have been proposed. for example, through individualised instruction (fedyk et al: 1979, 44-45), programmed instruction and open education (itzen: 1986, 27). it was not until 1986 when the lancaster — leeds language learning in large classes research project began to grow and expand with four major tasks: creating a bibliography, networking, organising colloquia and promoting and undertaking research (coleman: 1989, 2). through these activities, the project received not only support from teachers and researchers but also raised a lot of interest and responses to their inquires. in addition to these activities, the project was in charge of encouraging research, performing research and disseminating research findings. teaching reading in large classes leyla maría rojas b.leyla maría rojas b.leyla maría rojas b.leyla maría rojas b.leyla maría rojas b. foreign languages department, universidad nacional de colombia ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ 72profileprofileprofileprofileprofile 2. p2. p2. p2. p2. pedagogical implications of researedagogical implications of researedagogical implications of researedagogical implications of researedagogical implications of researchchchchch the lancaster-leeds language learning in large classes research project, abovementioned, conducted research in order to investigate the teachers’ perceptions of class size and the difficulties involved in teaching large classes through questionnaires administered to groups of teachers from different countries. based on the analysis of the responses, the project identified the following main difficulties as perceived by teachers of large classes: discomfort, control, evaluation, individual attention and learning. these are the five specific principles derived from the analysis of the outlined difficulties: 2.1 specific principles2.1 specific principles2.1 specific principles2.1 specific principles2.1 specific principles about discomfort. they suggest that if teachers feel exposed and stressful when they are “performing” in front of a large class, then we should consider ways of organising the class so that the teacher is not always exposed and in the spotlight. this principle, according to coleman (1989), means asking learners to work as individuals or immediate neighbours or — if classroom space allows it — in groups and also implies giving more responsibility to learners to organise their own learning. about control. according to their findings, they suggest that if teachers feel that it is difficult to monitor everything that happens in the class, then it is necessary to consider ways of organising the class so that the teacher does not need to control everything that happens in the class. again this principle implies giving more responsibility to the learner. about evaluation. in relation to this principle they suggest that to avoid teachers feeling that it is a strain to evaluate everything that learners do, write or say, it should be advisable to organise in-class activities and out-of-class activities so that the teacher does not need to evaluate everything that is produced. this principle also suggests deciding either to give more responsibility to learners by asking them to evaluate some of their own or peer’s work or deciding that not everything which is produced actually needs to be evaluated. about individual attention. according to this principle, if teachers feel that it is difficult for them to know their learners as individuals, then they suggest considering ways of organising activities so that learners and teachers have increased opportunities to address each other as individuals. if we adopt solutions for the former situations, such as allowing learners to work alone or in pairs or larger groups, then the teacher is released from the obligation of addressing and controlling the whole class. this, in turn, leaves space for the teacher to observe individual learners or groups of learners and to work with them. there might be situations in which the size of the class is extremely large and the teacher can not make individual contact in every lesson. however, by giving responsibilities to the learners, the teacher increases the opportunities to get to know them and their learning. about learning. if teachers feel that traditional ways of teaching in large classes are not effective in helping most learners to learn, then they should consider ways of organising activities so that emphasis is placed on promoting learning by learners rather than on teaching by teachers. 2.2 p2.2 p2.2 p2.2 p2.2 pedagogical implicationsedagogical implicationsedagogical implicationsedagogical implicationsedagogical implications be realistic. they consider that most teachers feel that there are certain things, which they ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○73 profileprofileprofileprofileprofile ought to do in their classes (or before their classes). these ideas might be derived from their initial teacher training and could be done if they are teaching small classes. they suggest that as teachers of large classes, we have to be realistic; that is, we have to recognise that there are some things, which are simply impossible in large classes. they say that we should not feel guilty if we can not do everything we would like to be able to do. therefore, feeling guilty is not useful and is a waste of emotional energy. give more responsibility to the learners. according to this principle, they consider that teachers feel that they have to be responsible for everything that happens in the language learning class and for a lot of things that happen outside it as well. the bigger a class is, the more difficult it becomes to deal with all of this responsibility. therefore, one of the things which we have to look at is the possibility of sharing some of this responsibility with the learners. this may be difficult at first, but it can be very exciting. 3. practical suggestions to deal with3. practical suggestions to deal with3. practical suggestions to deal with3. practical suggestions to deal with3. practical suggestions to deal with reading in large classesreading in large classesreading in large classesreading in large classesreading in large classes 3.1 dealing with reading3.1 dealing with reading3.1 dealing with reading3.1 dealing with reading3.1 dealing with reading when planning reading activities, the teacher must bear in mind the objective of the activity. it is important to think about the nature of the course. it could either be integrated into a language-focussed course or for academic purposes. if we consider that it is important to get students involved in the selection of their readings according to their interest and level of language, we also have to get the students to know the rationale of reading, its purposes and the use of strategies for efficient reading. tomlinson and ellis (1987) have designed some reading tasks which are based on passages and excerpts from nuttall (1982). they devised these tasks using introductory passages about what reading is, reasons for reading, getting a message from a text and the communication process. i personally have devised materials based on this rationale for intermediate courses in the university mainly for the initial stage of this level. i consider this task useful since it makes the student aware of the important principles of reading such as reading with a purpose, the reader’s role in the process of reading, techniques and strategies to make sense of the text, organisation of the text, study skills, etc. littlejohn (1987: 38-39) also suggests some procedures to work with when there are large groups: the class is divided into six groups. there is one “upper” group (group blue), three “middle” groups (groups yellow, brown, and red) and two “lower” groups (groups orange and green). the class is about to work on a reading passage: • through a general discussion with the whole class, the teacher stimulates the pupil’s interest in the topic and elicits some of the new vocabulary that will come in the passage. • the teacher puts two or three pre-reading questions on the board. • pupils read silently to find the answers. • the teacher elicits the answers from the pupils and continues with a few more general comprehension questions. • groups orange and green do a gap-filling vocabulary exercise. yellow, brown and red write their answers to some questions on the board. group blue writes a dialogue of what the characters in the passage would have said to each other. • the teacher moves around the class, helping the pupils. if they finish before the ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ 74profileprofileprofileprofileprofile others, they move to further exercises or try the next level of difficulty. • the lesson concludes with the teacher getting feedback on the answers from each group. 3.2 dealing with group work3.2 dealing with group work3.2 dealing with group work3.2 dealing with group work3.2 dealing with group work several articles on magazines and journals have been published with suggestions about organisation of large groups. for example, sarwar et al. (1985) give the following suggestions: • students can be divided into groups of not less than four and no more than eight in numbers. the groups can either be made using students’ own choice or after a test of students’ english proficiency level. if the teacher decides to form groups on the basis of english proficiency level, a test would have to be given before forming the groups. on the other hand, groups using students’ own choice can be made by students themselves. • ask students to choose a permanent group-leader group-leader group-leader group-leader group-leader or for shorter periods such as for one month or one week. the teacher has then only to remain the “group-leader ” occasionally to give the weaker ones a chance to perform when the students work in groups. they can choose group-captains group-captains group-captains group-captains group-captains who have a better language proficiency than the others. they can help in peer-teaching as well as in organisational matters. for instance, if there are twenty groups, four groups can be assigned to each “group-captain”. they can check on the “ongoing activities”, attendance, and bringing teaching materials to class, etc. • the students should be asked to sit with their own groups so that they can be either in the classroom or in places that are available outside the classroom for tasks that do not require integration of all the groups. littlejohn (1987) suggests grouping students according to shared common interests: a topic to write about or in our case, to get information from reading or according to their needs as either you or they perceive them. for instance, one group could be involved in a grammar exercise, another some writing or reading practice according to their ability in english so that they can work at their own pace and level. following littlejohn, the easiest way to form groups according to their level of english is to divide the pupils into roughly three or four bands based on the teacher’s experience with the class; for example, “upper”, “middle” and “lower”. then with each band, divide the class into smaller groups — six or seven pupils in each. it might be useful to give each group a name such as a colour, geographical places, neighbourhood, etc. he advises avoiding letters or numbers as this can have a negative effect on motivation. as tasks can be performed individually at the beginning stage of a class, then by pairs and finally by large groups, it would be advisable to see some suggestions for pair work organisation. samuda and bruton (1978) propose pair work as a means of developing students’ confidence in a command of both the spoken and written forms of language and as a tool for foreign language teachers. they refer to problemsolving tasks with a language focus. each student is given information, some of which is shared with his/her partner and some of which is different. samuda and bruton suggest t a n g o s e a t i n gt a n g o s e a t i n gt a n g o s e a t i n gt a n g o s e a t i n gt a n g o s e a t i n g for classroom arrangement as a means of overcoming the problem of large classes. this organisation has two steps. first they are put in five rows of pairs four deep. the teacher then has one ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○75 profileprofileprofileprofileprofile student in each pair turn his/her chair around to face in the opposite direction, while still being able to talk to his/her partner. the result is that half of the class is now facing one way and the teacher can now show the other half a different way, by placing the stimuli at opposite ends of the room. this arrangement is not only useful for language-focused classes, but also for reading tasks to work in larger groups since all the teacher has to do is ask every other pair to turn around and face the pair behind them, thus forming a group of four. the teacher also benefits from this quick maneuver, but the main benefit or advantage is that he can divide the information by producing only two large cards. the value for reading, according to samuda and bruton (ibid), is limited, but there are tasks which require only sharing the information that each member has. teachers can also use maps, diagrams, graphs, forms, etc. to provide interesting and valuable input for dividing information between pairs and feeding it into activities that require pair work. 3.3 dealing with group work outcomes3.3 dealing with group work outcomes3.3 dealing with group work outcomes3.3 dealing with group work outcomes3.3 dealing with group work outcomes allwright (met), gives some suggestions to deal with the findings of a whole class group, mainly related to oral presentations which are sometimes “tedious but deserve to be shared by some form of reporting”. i personally find the following procedures very useful for organising information resulting from some reading/writing activities. he suggests two alternatives: either use the blackboarblackboarblackboarblackboarblackboarddddd as response chart or use posterspostersposterspostersposters. in the first case, he advises to adapt or to design tasks so that they require the groups to reduce their discussions to a set of answers to multiplechoice questions. for example, the task could be to make collective sense of a text or to work through a cloze passage. while the groups are working, he prepares the blackboard as a chart on which all the groups can enter their choices as they finish their discussions. the result, according to allwright, for twelve groups working on five questions may look like this: groupsgroupsgroupsgroupsgroups 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 _________________________________ q 1 a a a b a a a a b b a b q 2 b c c c a a b c c c c d q 3 d a d c d c b a c d a c q 4 a a a a d d b b c d a c q 5 c c c b c c d d a c b c __________________________________ the aim of this display of all the groups’ choices is to spark off considerable discussion and allow the groups to defend their decisions. when the blackboard space is inadequate, he suggests using the ohp or an alternative portable response chart. this is considered to be an alternative only when all the groups have been given the same task. allwright also suggests the use of posters as a possible solution when there are groups of more than 80 students. groups are asked to produce a poster recording its discussions and conclusions. these are then displayed around the walls of the room as they are finished. each group is asked to find a representative to stand by and respond to questions about its poster, while the others circulate and ask questions about all the posters. the advantage of the poster display technique, quite apart from the avoidance of tedium and tension, allwright says, is that the process of designing a poster display seems itself to be more stimulating than that of composing a group report in purely verbal form. i find these two techniques very useful for analysing reading outcomes, specially ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ 76profileprofileprofileprofileprofile at the advanced level when the students are given entire scientific or humanistic articles to read and then produce some kind of information gap or filling. 3.4 individualised instruction for large3.4 individualised instruction for large3.4 individualised instruction for large3.4 individualised instruction for large3.4 individualised instruction for large groupsgroupsgroupsgroupsgroups one of the principles of education commonly suggested for dealing with large groups is individualised instruction, even though its implications must be carefully examined. however, fedyk and williams (1979) propose individualised instruction as a solution for large groups based on their experience at the university of san carlos in guatemala. they started their project by investigating several areas such as defining individualisation, examining the roles of teachers and students, writing performance objectives and developing materials, designing a curriculum, making the transition from a traditional to an individualised classroom and evaluating testing procedures. among the interpretations given to individualised instruction, fedyk and williams report the common practice of allowing the individual student to learn at his/her own pace and of having the student select and use materials that fall within his/her area of interest. when examining the teacher-student relationship, they point out altman’s (1972: 209) principle — “ the three r’s of individualisation: re-education, responsibility and relevance”. they quote altman: “we must show the learner how to assume the major responsibility for his learning”. altman also delineates the student’s responsibility, concluding that “each student must bear the primary responsibility for his/her own learning”. from their research project, they came out with the following ideas: teaching mini-courses in english, organising extracurricular clubs, providing a variety of scheduling possibilities, using teaching assistants, promoting team teaching, and using english speakers in the community. this project required students to participate in various activities, including reading assignments for discussion and reports, roleplaying and individual projects. for these projects the students made individualised learning packets, analysed textbooks and made appropriate adaptations for the individualised class, visited schools and interviewed the school directors about the possibility of implementing an individualised programme, and prepared various types of texts. 4. conclusions4. conclusions4. conclusions4. conclusions4. conclusions i have tried to cover important aspects of teaching skills in large groups but have focused my interest on reading, since my main concern is to propose some ideas for the implementation of projects at tertiary and secondary levels. having this objective in mind, i overviewed the general and common problem of teaching english to large groups to discover that there is research going on in an attempt to solve this problem. based on this initial research, two important general principles of action to cope with the problem of large groups have come out: being realistic and giving more responsibility to the learner and also, some suggestions to deal with the five specific principles identified in the leeds-lancaster research were evaluated. the reader should take into account that the research project formerly mentioned two important general principles (being realistic and giving more responsibility to the learners) and that suggestions for the five specific principles ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○77 profileprofileprofileprofileprofile of action to cope with the problem were analysed and evaluated. these suggestions are based on teachers’ published literature and my own experience. referencesreferencesreferencesreferencesreferences altman, h. b. (1972). “the three r’s of individualisation: reeducation, responsibility, and relevance”. foreign language annals, 6,2 206-213. allwright, d. “reporting group work. met “. (data of publication is not available). coleman, h. (1989). “the relationship between large classes research and class teaching”. spelt, newsletter, vol. v, no 1. fedyk, c. and williams, t. l. (1979). “dealing with large classes: a course in individualised instruction”..... english teaching forum, 44-45. itzen, r. (1986). “teaching at an open university”. tesol newsletter,,,,, 20 (6). littlejhon, a. (1987). “using group work with large classes”. practical english teaching,,,,, march, 38-39. nuttall, c. (1982). teaching reading skills in a foreign language, practical language teaching. london: heinemann. sarwar, z., facizia, s., and ambenia, m. k. (1985). “group work and pair work”. a thinkout on oxford english. urdu bazar, karachi: lifayat academy. samuda, v. and bruton, a. (1981). “tangoseated pairs in the large classrooms”, english teaching forum, jan. tomlinson, b. and ellis, r. (1987). reading, advanced, oxford supplementary skills. oxford: oxford university press. profile 10.indd bilingual colombia: what does it mean to be bilingual within the framework of the national plan of bilingualism? profile 10, 2008. issn 1657-0790. bogotá, colombia. pages 27-45 27 * e-mail: helenaguerreron@gmail.com address: 555 e limberlost dr. apt. 2073 tucson, az 85705 this article was received on january 30, 2008 and accepted on september 3, 2008. bilingual colombia: what does it mean to be bilingual within the framework of the national plan of bilingualism? colombia bilingüe: ¿qué significa ser bilingüe en el marco del plan nacional de bilingüismo? carmen helena guerrero* universidad distrital francisco josé de caldas, colombia this article is a partial research report of a critical discourse analysis of the document “estándares básicos de competencias en lenguas extranjeras: inglés. formar en lenguas extranjeras: ¡el reto!” (basic standards for competences in foreign languages: english. teaching in foreign languages: the challenge!). the analysis was informed by theory on critical discourse analysis (cda) and on symbolic power (particularly language as symbolic power). in an attempt to interpret what it means to be bilingual in colombia according to this document, the data show that 1) being bilingual means speaking english; and 2) bilingualism is constructed as a packed, monolithic and homogeneous concept. key words: bilingual colombia, bilingualism, critical discourse analysis (cda), symbolic power el presente artículo es un reporte parcial de un análisis crítico del discurso del documento “estándares básicos de competencias en lenguas extranjeras: inglés. formar en lenguas extranjeras: ¡el reto!”. el análisis estuvo iluminado por teorías en análisis crítico del discurso (acd) y la teoría de poder simbólico, particularmente la lengua como poder simbólico. en el intento por interpretar qué significa el bilingüismo en colombia de acuerdo a este documento, los datos muestran lo siguiente: 1) ser bilingüe significa hablar inglés y, 2) el bilingüismo se presenta como un concepto monolítico y homogéneo. palabras clave: colombia bilingüe, bilingüismo, acd (análisis crítico del discurso), poder simbólico profile 10, 2008. issn 1657-0790. bogotá, colombia. pages 27-45 profile 10.indd 27 23/10/2008 8:46:07 guerrero universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras28 introduction as stated by phillipson (1992, 2000), the british council has worked on a campaign to spread the use of english around the world since the early years of the 20th century. this campaign has rendered very positive results (for them) and today english is a widely spoken language; crystal (2000) estimates that 1.5 billion people use it as a first, second, or foreign language, and it has more non-native speakers than native speakers. speaking english has been deified as an asset in the sense that it only brings benefits to those who learn it, mainly as the access to a modern world characterized by technology, wider communication, economic power, scientific knowledge, and the like (maurais, 2003). colombia, like some other countries in latin america and in the world, has adopted language policies aimed at spreading english as a foreign language, the program being “colombia bilingual in 10 years”. among the many actions taken by the ministry of education (men) and the british council to promote and run the project is the publication of the “estándares básicos de competencias en lenguas extranjeras: inglés. formar en lenguas extranjeras: ¡el reto!” (basic standards for competences in foreign languages: english. teaching in foreign languages: the challenge!)1. this document comprises the data to conduct a critical discourse analysis looking at how “bilingualism” is constructed from the perspective of the ministry of 1 all translations are mine. i tried to keep the grammar and language choices as similar to the original as possible in order not to alter the meaning. for this reason, in some cases the translations sound awkward. education (men thereafter) and the british council (bc thereafter). the reason to specifically look at these two institutions lies in the fact that both have leading roles in the publication of the “estándares”2, and the means to control and regulate the circulation of a particular discourse (foucault, 2005). this study looks at how these two powerful institutions –the men and the bc– construct a discourse that redefines what it means to be bilingual in colombia and, at the same time, regulates its spread through the aforementioned document. the analysis of data was illuminated by two major theoretical frameworks, critical discourse analysis (cda) and symbolic power (especially language as symbolic power). the reasons to bring these two traditions together are the following: 1) the very nature of the document (an official guideline with a specific purpose) and the particular context in which it is produced subject the document to scrutiny under the lens of cda; and 2) one of the main concerns of cda is the exploration of power relations. in this respect, the theory of language as symbolic power enriches the analysis of the statements made in the document regarding english in colombia and in the world. 2 in fact, on page 2 there is the following statement: estos estándares básicos de competencias en lenguas extranjeras: inglés están enmarcados en el trabajo que ha realizado el ministerio de educación nacional para la formulación de estándares básicos de competencias y en su programa nacional de bilingüismo en convenio con british council. [sic] (basic standards for competences in foreign languages: english. teaching in foreign languages: the challenge are framed within the worked done by the ministry of education to state the basic standards for competences and within its national bilingualism program in agreement with the british council) (the translation is mine). profile 10.indd 28 23/10/2008 8:46:07 bilingual colombia: what does it mean to be bilingual within the framework of the national plan of bilingualism? profile 10, 2008. issn 1657-0790. bogotá, colombia. pages 27-45 29 critical discourse analysis is now an established approach to discourse analysis that has been around since 1980. cameron (2005) considers that the main task of cda is to uncover “hidden agendas” in discourse in order to unveil power relationships. for van dijk (2005, p. 352), “cda is a type of discourse analytical research that primarily studies the way social problems abuse, dominance, and inequality are enacted, reproduced, and resisted by text and talk in the social and political context”. power is at the core of cda, which makes it different from any other approach to discourse. fairclough (1995) states that cda’s main objective is to denaturalize ideologies that have become so naturalized that individuals are not aware of them. as such, the purpose of cda is to show how social structures shape the form of discourse and at the same time how discourse shapes social structures. symbolic power is the concept developed by the french sociologist pierre bourdieu. he defines it as “that invisible power which can be exercised only with the complicity of those who do not want to know that they are subject to it or even that they themselves exercise it”. symbolic power, in order to be effective, rests on two conditions, to wit: 1) it is based on symbolic capital; this means that only the ones who have recognition (accumulated from previous struggles) can demand respect and, consequently, can count on the other’s belief that the view of the world presented by the dominant groups is the legitimate one; 2) it depends on the validity of the view of the world the dominant groups want to impose; this means their view of the world must be founded in reality (bourdieu, 1989; 2003). in a further explanation of symbolic power, bourdieu (1977b, p. 117) states the following: symbolic power, being the power to constitute the given by stating it, to create appearances and belief, to confirm or transform the vision of the world and thereby action in the world, and therefore the world itself, this quasi-magical power which makes it possible to obtain the equivalent of what is obtained by force (physical or economic) thanks to the specific mobilizing effect being only effective if it is recognized as legitimate (that is to say, if it is not recognized as arbitrary). according to this, bourdieu (1989) concludes that “symbolic power is the power to make things with words” (p. 23) and he explains it with the fact that a group, a class, a region a nation, starts to exist when they are recognized as such by receiving a name, by being differentiated from others. the ideological perspectives of these two theoretical frameworks indicate that no discourse is neutral; there is always a purpose to serve the interest of specific individual or groups presented in a hidden or subtle way. as my findings will show, the aforementioned document intends to serve the interest of a very few at the expense of the majority by constructing and spreading its own concept of bilingualism. research methodology the research methodology was framed in cda, particularly the textual analysis approach proposed by fairclough (1995, 2001, 2003). fairclough’s approach aims at bridging a gap between discourse analysis inspired by social theory on the one hand, and pure linguistic analysis on the other. in a textual analysis approach these two profile 10.indd 29 23/10/2008 8:46:08 guerrero universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras30 perspectives are put together to offer a more comprehensive picture of the analysis of a text. to develop his methodology, fairclough draws from halliday’s systemic functional linguistics (sfl). in an sfl approach, halliday (1974) establishes three main functions of language, to wit: ideational, interpersonal and textual; fairclough (1992, 2003) introduces a more explicit social element for each one of them and proposes identity, relational and ideational functions of language. to unpack how these functions are enacted in discourse, fairclough (2001) designed a methodology that consists of three stages: description, interpretation, and explanation. description deals with linguistic analysis; the second stage, interpretation, has to do with an analysis of the text in its relationship with other texts, other discourses, and the background in which it is produced and will be interpreted. this stage of the analysis brings together the formal features of the text and combines it with the analyst’s own set of beliefs, assumptions, experiences and background to unveil the meaning of the texts. explanation is the third stage and it is concerned with the analysis of the relationship between texts and the social context to explain how a text can reproduce or contest social structures, especially with regard to struggles over power. these three levels of analysis complement each other and allow the researcher to unpack ideologies that are not apparent to the consumers of these texts. based on fairclough’s methodology to analyze the data, in general terms i observed the following steps: an extensive review of literature 1. about bilingualism, particularly from a sociolinguistic perspective. this was very important to confront what i found in the data with the literature on bilingualism. a close examination of 2. data by reading and re reading the document. a fine grained analysis of 3. sentences and paragraphs to unveil assumptions. a search of other sources to confront 4. my interpretation of data. a categorization of my findings.5. findings bilingualism as a concept and as a practice is very complex. in a review of the literature about it one finds multiple issues such as what is bilingualism, how can it be measured, what are the types of bilingualism, who can be called bilingual, what are the effects of bilingualism, what is bilingual education, whose interests does bilingual education serve, and so on. these issues are examined from different fields like linguistics, second language acquisition, sociolinguistics, education, and psycholinguistics; also, different ideological positions influence the way bilingualism is conceived, planned for, or constructed (baker, 2001; baker & jones, 1998; bialystock, 2001; butler & hakuta, 2004; de mejía, 2002; grosjean, 1982, 1994; hakuta, 1986; romaine, 1989). this complexity has a double effect in the analysis of data because, on the one hand, it provides a full range of points of view from which to examine what profile 10.indd 30 23/10/2008 8:46:08 bilingual colombia: what does it mean to be bilingual within the framework of the national plan of bilingualism? profile 10, 2008. issn 1657-0790. bogotá, colombia. pages 27-45 31 bilingualism means for the ministry of education (men) and the british council (bc), or put in other words, what they want it to mean in the colombian context. on the other hand, this same wide range becomes a constraint because it is not possible, given the time, data, and objectives of this research report, to deal with all the aspects involved in this matter. bearing this in mind, the analysis presented below is by no means exhaustive; that is, i concentrated only on some aspects of bilingualism and the door is open to continue working on the interpretation of further elements. regarding the question that leads this study, three main categories emerged as follows: bilingualism means speaking english; bilingualism is a packed, monolithic and homogeneous concept; and bilingualism is based on a set of myths. in this paper i will deal only with the first two categories due to space limitations. bilingualism means speaking english starting from the title of the handbook “estándares”, the idea the authors want to institutionalize is that the foreign language to be taught, learned and therefore used by colombians is english: estándares básicos de competencias en 1. lenguas extranjeras: inglés (men, 2006, cover) basic standards for competences in foreign 2. languages: english formar en lenguas extranjeras: inglés ¡el 3. reto! (men, 2006, cover) teach in foreign languages: english. the 4. challenge! having “english” after the colon might mean two things: 1) there are more handbooks in the series that will deal with other foreign languages like french, german, italian, chinese, or hebrew which are the languages usually taught in colombia (de mejía, 2006). notice that by saying “foreign languages” the possibility of “second languages” is excluded, which in colombia could be any of the indigenous languages spoken3. this is the first hint that for the men indigenous languages do not represent any sort of capital, in bourdieu’s terms; henceforth, not worthy of investment, incentives, promotion, etc.) or 2) english encapsulates and represents the ideal of foreign languages and it is more than enough working on it and ignoring other languages (vélez-rendón, 2003). it is the second meaning that has been more pervasive. as documented by vélez-rendón (2003), despite the fact that law 115 of 1994 mandates the teaching of a foreign language, most people involved in education assume that law 115 states that it is english that is the foreign language by default. the same discourse circulates in japan, where foreign language teaching unambiguously means english language teaching (kubota, 2002; liddicoat, 2007). judging from the context in which this handbook is produced in colombia, within the framework of the programa nacional de bilingüismo (pnb = national plan of bilingualism), more likely the intended meaning is the second. besides, up to the publication of this article, there are no handbooks in this series that deal with any other foreign language. 3 within the “estándares” the authors state the difference between foreign and second language. the former is the l2 that is not spoken in the immediate context, usually only in the classroom; the latter is the l2 used for every activity outside the classroom. profile 10.indd 31 23/10/2008 8:46:08 guerrero universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras32 the concept that being bilingual means speaking english is further emphasized as these following excerpts demonstrate: 3) ser bilingüe es esencial en el mundo globalizado (men, 2006, p. 5) being bilingual is essential in the globalized world. 4) en el contexto colombiano y para los alcances de esta propuesta, el inglés tiene carácter de lengua extranjera. dada su importancia como lengua universal, el ministerio de educación ha establecido como uno de los ejes de la política educativa mejorar la calidad de la enseñanza del inglés…” (p. 5) in the colombian context and for the sake of this proposal, english is considered a foreign language. given its importance as a universal language, the ministry of education has established, as one of the core points of its educational policy, the improvement of the quality of the teaching of english… 5) el programa nacional de bilingüismo se orienta a “lograr ciudadanos y ciudadanas capaces de comunicarse en inglés, de tal forma que puedan insertar al país en los procesos de comunicación universal, en la economía global y en la apertura cultural con estándares internacionalmente comparables” (p. 6). the national bilingualism program is oriented toward “having citizens able to communicate in english in such a way that they move the country into universal communication processes, into the global economy, and into a cultural openness with internationally comparable standards. in excerpt number 3) the collocation of the phrases “being bilingual” and “globalized world” trigger the idea of replacing the first phrase by “speaking english”, because that is the way it is usually structured. the author/s are equating bilingualism with globalization, playing with the assumption that being a speaker of english carries with it the positive meanings ascribed to globalization like broader communication, economic power, capitalism, multinational companies, foreign investors, better jobs, better living conditions, no geographical boundaries and so forth (tollefson, 2000; valencia, n/d) in excerpts 4) and 5), although the connection between being bilingual and speaking english is made explicit, the authors still rely on assumptions to reinforce their point. fairclough (2003) defines “assumptions” as how particulars come to be represented as universals. that means that while for some people something might be true, for others it is not. english is portrayed here as the “universal” language, but as stated by barletta (2007), this is a naïve construction that ignores the fact that in certain parts of the world english is not the first choice as a second or foreign language. in a similar way, the “universality” of english can be challenged within the same colombian context; a child in a remote area in colombia might not consider english as the universal language because his/her universe differs from the universe in which english is the only language. one important characteristic of assumptions is that the author/s of a text establish/es relationships with “what has been said or written somewhere else, with the ‘elsewhere’ left vague” (fairclough, 2003, p.40). this is what the authors of the “estándares” do when they draw on discourses that associate english with “globalization”, “modern world”, “technology”, and the like. the double function of this assumption is that, on the one hand, it serves to strengthen this association as a “universal truth” and, on profile 10.indd 32 23/10/2008 8:46:08 bilingual colombia: what does it mean to be bilingual within the framework of the national plan of bilingualism? profile 10, 2008. issn 1657-0790. bogotá, colombia. pages 27-45 33 the other, the wording in each one of the five excerpts presented above, which are agentless, helps to liberate the authors from the responsibility of being the creators of that association; it was already there, they are just repeating what everybody knows. the same happens with the following quote that starts with “the current world is characterized”; by not having an agent the authors take for granted that the modern world has its current state because it is natural and not because of the influence of various power structures that have legitimized their views of the world. 6) el mundo actual se caracteriza por la comunicación intercultural, por el creciente ritmo de los avances científicos y tecnológicos y por los programas de internacionalización. estas circunstancias plantean la necesidad de un idioma común que le permita a la sociedad internacional acceder a este nuevo mundo globalizado” (men, 2006, p. 7). the current world is characterized by intercultural communication, by the growing rhythm of scientific and technological advances and by programs of internationalization. these circumstances pose the need for a common language that allows the international society to access this new globalized world. the assumption here is fortified by a semantic relationship of the “problemsolution” type (hoey, 1983; fairclough, 2003) in which the authors of the text start by describing “today’s world” from a very partial angle, where the current world responds to only one characteristic: scientific and technological progress. other characteristics of the modern world like war, famine, extreme poverty, new forms of slavery produced by savage capitalism, and others are not included in this account of “today’s world”. in the second sentence, they introduce the problem and, at the same time, hint at the solution: we have to gain access to that world through a common language and that common language is english. in the same page, third paragraph, the authors add force to this assertion by explicitly mentioning english as the language that will give colombians the opportunity to enter the modern world. in direct opposition to this association of english with the modern world, the other implication is that even though spanish is the third language with more speakers in the world (outnumbered by english and arabic) which makes it one of the languages of wider communication (thomason, 1988; skutnabb-kangas, 2001), it is not enough for colombians to have access to the “current world”. this assumption made by the authors of the “estándares” contributes to the perpetuation of certain attitudes towards languages; for example, that english is superior (and everything associated with it) and other languages are inferior (and everything associated with them). grosjean (1982) reports a study about language attitudes conducted by lambert and colleagues in 1960 in montreal, in which a group of english-speaking students and a group of french-speaking students evaluated a recording made by balanced bilinguals. the results showed that both groups evaluated the english speakers more favorably than the french speakers. as the nature of the experiment shows, these evaluations do not respond to any inherent characteristic of either language but are the result of socially constructed ideas about the speakers of each language. ideas like profile 10.indd 33 23/10/2008 8:46:08 guerrero universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras34 these have been around for centuries and have influenced or shaped people’s opinions (pennycook, 1998a, 2000; phillipson, 1992, 2000). besides the strategies discussed above, the authors of the “estándares” reinforce the idea that being bilingual equates speaking english by excluding other languages from their bilingual project. the first big absentees are our indigenous languages. starting from the title (example number 1), the challenge is to teach “foreign languages”. no mention is made of the potentiality and profitability of teaching any of the more than sixty indigenous languages spoken in colombia at this moment (except on the first page where they are briefly referred to). this type of enrichment bilingualism (fishman, 1976a, 1977; hornberger, 1991) is neither considered nor promoted within this project, which is not new if we take into account the fact that since the spanish colonization of the americas, the policy has been to make natives speak spanish; the same policy prevailed after independence when the new republics felt the strong need to construct their national identity, and since the independence leaders were monolingual in spanish, they adopted the philosophy spread by von humboldt in 1820s of one nation/one language, and spanish was promoted as a national identity marker (escobar, 2004; mar-molinero, 2000). finally, despite the fact that as recent as 1991 in the new national constitution indigenous communities and minority groups were recognized as legitimate colombian citizens and their languages recognized as official in the indigenous territories, there is no stimulus for spanish speakers to learn indigenous languages. by and large, if indigenous languages were not promoted during those times where their main competition was spanish, within this new project, their possibilities are even less. the second group that has been excluded from this project, and which strengthens the concept of “bilingualism equals speaking english”, is formed by the other foreign languages that have been taught in colombian schools and universities; those are french, german, italian and hebrew (de mejía, 2005) and a growing interest in mandarin. these languages seem to be included in the title, but very soon in the “estándares”, the authors make it clear that the language chosen is english: 7) en el contexto colombiano y para los alcances de esta propuesta, el inglés tiene el carácter de lengua extranjera. dada su importancia como lengua universal, el ministerio de educación ha establecido como uno de los ejes de la política educativa mejorar la calidad de la enseñanza del inglés, permitiendo mejores niveles de desempeño en este idioma. (men, 2006, p. 1) in the colombian context and for the sake of this proposal, english is considered a foreign language. given its importance as a universal language, the ministry of education has established, as one of the core points of its educational policy, the improvement of the quality of the teaching of english, leading to better performance levels in this language. some pages further down, the authors state the following: 8) teniendo en cuenta esta reglamentación y haciendo uso de su autonomía, las instituciones educativas colombianas han optado por ofrecer a sus estudiantes la oportunidad de aprender el inglés como lengua extranjera. con ello pretenden brindar una herramienta útil que permita a niños, niñas, y jóvenes mayor acceso profile 10.indd 34 23/10/2008 8:46:08 bilingual colombia: what does it mean to be bilingual within the framework of the national plan of bilingualism? profile 10, 2008. issn 1657-0790. bogotá, colombia. pages 27-45 35 al mundo de hoy. este hecho se ve confirmado por los datos suministrados por el icfes respecto a las pruebas del 2004, según los cuales el noventa y nueve por ciento de los estudiantes seleccionaron el inglés en el examen de estado. (p. 7) taking into account this ruling and making use of their autonomy, colombian schools have opted to offer to their students the opportunity to learn english as a foreign language. with this they intend to offer a useful tool that allows kids and youngsters a broader access to today’s world. this fact is confirmed by the figures provided by the icfes exam in relation to the 2004 test, according to which ninety nine percent of students chose english in the national test. the regulations referred to in this excerpt is law 115, issued in 1994, in which one of the objectives of elementary and secondary education is to be able to speak and read in at least one foreign language. the text of example number 8 is constructed in what fairclough (2003) calls the logic of appearances, which he defines as the tendency of certain types of texts to portray things as given, unquestionable, and inevitable. in example number 8, the authors of the “estándares” present two events as unquestionable facts: 1) schools made a free choice because they are autonomous; this meaning it is accentuated by the other words used in the sentence: han optado (have chosen); por ofrecer (to offer); la oportunidad (the chance, the opportunity), all of them loaded with a sense of freedom and choice. 2) ninetynine percent of students chose english in the national standardized test. a look at the local context in which these two events took place demonstrates that neither schools nor students have much of a choice. the teaching of english started informally in colombia after the end of the second world war and it became official in 1974. by decree, the teaching of english was established in all levels of secondary school –that is from 6th grade to 11th grade. for a short period of time french was taught in 10th and 11th grade, but then english took over again (de mejía, 2005). schools of education, within their modern languages programs, prepared mainly teachers of english. therefore when law 115 was issued, schools had to choose english because that was the language their teachers could teach. for students, when the option of a foreign language was open, ninety-nine per cent selected english because this was the language they studied in school. the remaining one percent might be composed of students who attended other private bilingual schools (french-spanish, germanspanish, italian-spanish or hebrewspanish). all and all, the reasons exposed by the men to support their decision to select english for their bilingual project prove to be based on a vicious cycle where the cause originates the effect and the effect is the origin of the cause. bilingualism is a packed, monolithic and homogenous goal the previous category showed that for the promoters of the pnb, being bilingual means speaking english; the promoters of the project oversimplified the amount of languages that could be learned in a bilingual program and reduce it to one. this same pattern of oversimplification can be found in the way this so called bilingual project is set as a packed, monolithic and profile 10.indd 35 23/10/2008 8:46:08 guerrero universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras36 homogenous goal in mainly two areas: who this project is addressed to (and whom it is not) and what is expected to be achieved with it. due to space constraints, in what follows i will deal only with the former area. students as a monolithic population in relation to the question of who this project is addressed to, on the surface it seems that it is for all colombian school aged children, as can be seen in the excerpts below: 9) así pues, se pretende que los estudiantes al egresar del sistema escolar, logren un nivel de competencia en ingles b1. (men, 2006, p. 6) therefore, it is intended that students, at the time of finishing school, attain a b1 competence level in english. 10) los estándares presentados se articulan con esas metas, estableciendo lo que los estudiantes deben saber y poder hacer para demostrar un dominio b1, al finalizar el undecimo grado. (p. 6) the standards presented are stated with these goals, establishing what students must know and must be able to do to demonstrate the mastery of a b1 level, alter finishing eleventh grade. 11) como ya se explicó en la página 6, el marco común europeo propone seis niveles de desempeño. en la educación básica y media, nos concentraremos en llevar a los estudiantes a alcanzar el nivel b1. (p. 10) as explained on page 6, the common european framework proposes six levels of performance. for elementary and middle school, we will concentrate on helping students attain level b1. the lexical choices in these paragraphs deserve attention. the use of the word “student”, within the context of elementary and secondary education (egresar del sistema escolar, finalizar undécimo grado, educación básica y media), triggers two main assumptions. first, that in colombia every child between five and seventeen or eighteen years old is a student; and second, that every student has access to a good quality education (in the form of time, material and human resources, location, conditions, environment, and the like) and, therefore, every child must be able to attain level b1 at the end of their high school studies. the first assumption is far from the truth; the promoters of the pnb fail to acknowledge that not all children enjoy the same opportunities or access to education, especially in a society like the colombian one afflicted by so many social and economic problems. giving an account of all the situations that keep children out of the school system would make a long list, but here i will just mention a few examples. the disparity between living conditions in rural and urban areas is huge (some schools do not have electric power or water supply); therefore, the possibility of attending school and the quality of education available there vary enormously. in rural areas children are more exposed to the abuse of guerrilla and paramilitia who recruit them for their armies. human rights watch (2005) reports that there are more than 11,000 children fighting in these groups, with at least one out of four being minors, and a huge number of children are under fifteen; these figures are among the highest in the world according to the same report. in some circumstances children can attend school, but usually rural schools (particularly the ones in remote areas) have only one teacher. profile 10.indd 36 23/10/2008 8:46:09 bilingual colombia: what does it mean to be bilingual within the framework of the national plan of bilingualism? profile 10, 2008. issn 1657-0790. bogotá, colombia. pages 27-45 37 another situation that affects both rural and urban areas the same is child labor (cortina, 2000; sarmiento, 2006). according to a report from the programa internacional de erradicacion del trabajo infantil (ipec), in colombia one out of five children between the ages of five and seventeen work or are looking for a job (bbcmundo.com, 2005); as a consequence, 13% out of the total population of children between these ages can not attend school and the figures keep increasing each year (procuraduria general de la nación, 2005). the latest report produced by fabio arias, president of cut (central unitaria de trabajadores), is that 25% of children work in colombia; the most usual forms of work are as maids, street vendors, agriculture, and sexual workers; one million four hundred children can not attend school (caracol radio, 2008). an additional group of school aged children excluded from the pnb is the boys, girls and adolescents displaced from their hometowns due to violence. forced displacement in colombia is a complex phenomenon whose causes and consequences are multiple so it is almost impossible to generalize them. nevertheless, some of the most overt causes are dispossession of lands; terrorist attacks; and control by paramilitia, guerrilla, or drug dealers in conducting illegal activities. these three causes are interwoven to create several modalities of forced displacement in colombia. the official figures do not show the totality of the displaced population and the estimate is two million people; that is, four hundred families. the red de solidaridad social de la presidencia de la república, rss, reports that 50% of displaced people are women, 42% are children under eighteen years old, and 90% are from rural or semi rural areas. according to the same report, the most vulnerable members of the population are women, children, indigenous peoples, and afro-descendents4 (forero, 2003; men, 2001). the second assumption, that all students who attend public schools have access to the same kind and quality of material and human resources, is misleading. there are deep differences between public schools in the big cities and those in the small cities; also, just comparing schools in a city like bogotá, the dissimilarity is enormous (ayala & alvarez, 2005). in this sense, it is not the same to learn english in a privileged area in bogotá where children are surrounded by information in english (stores’ names, parents who speak english, cable tv, movies, etc.) and enjoy better school buildings and better resources than learning english in a deprived area in bogotá, where streets are not even paved, and the family income does not afford proper food, much less any type of entertainment. the following excerpt supports the assumption that the pnb is addressed to an elite group of students that exists in the minds of the proponents of this project and who could achieve the standards proposed and, thus, profit from “the opportunity to learn english” as stated in example number 8 and reinforced by the following one: (12) [el inglés] es la lengua que se usa con mas frecuencia en los medios de comunicación y, por ello, permite acceder a la internet, la televisión, 4 while the official figure is two million, acnur (oficina del alto comisionado de las naciones unidas para los refugiados) states that the figure is three million people. (caracol radio, 2008) profile 10.indd 37 23/10/2008 8:46:09 guerrero universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras38 el cine, la radiodifusión, el turismo, los diarios de mayor circulación y las revistas especializadas (académicas, científicas, literarias, tecnológicas y deportivas, entre otras) (men, 2006, p. 9) [english] is the most frequently used language in mass media and, therefore, it allows access to the internet, television, movies, radio, tourism, newspapers and specialized journals (scholarly publications, scientific, literary, technology and sports, among others). the “other” group of colombian children, the invisible group for the pnb, students and non students, will remain excluded from taking advantage of being bilingual (speaking english) because they do not have the economic resources to purchase access to the internet, cable tv, movies, tourism, and all the other wonders the authors of the handbook mention in the previous excerpt5. a program like this will contribute to making the gap between the haves and have-nots bigger, to promoting inequality and injustice, and to maintaining the privileges of the very few (vélezrendón, 2003). all students will attain level b1 (and along with that, they will become legitimate users of l2) another instance in which bilingualism is constructed as a homogeneous goal is in relation to what is expected to be achieved in terms of competence in english. as stated in examples number 9), 10), and 11) the objective is that every student attain a b1 level – the first of two levels to become an independent user according to the 5 as an illustration, the coverage of internet broad band in colombia was 0.8 users out of 100 in 2002 (ministerio de educacion, 2007). terminology of the common european framework (cef)6. the idea behind this goal is that learners/students can become ideal proficient speakers because language is conceived of as a good that can be obtained and used by anyone at any moment. a conception like this fails to see language as a social practice in which participants are constantly struggling over issues like power or identity because any linguistic exchange implies a power relationship (bourdieu, 2003). besides, communication can break down or lead to misunderstandings. instead, language is portrayed as “neutral”, as an instrument for communication that automatically enables its speakers to participate in any linguistic event. such events presuppose an ideal speaker-hearer interaction detached from social reality where both parts have equal status (lippi-green, 1997). furthermore, it is assumed that there is a direct relationship between competence and performance (as defined by chomsky, 1965), so learning the rules of the language is enough to allow students to produce flawlessly an infinite number of sentences; or, as one of the assumptions criticized by tumposky (1984) in the history of behavioral objectives goes, “successful language learning can be accomplished by mastering pre-specified, hierarchically 6 the global scale presented in the cef states that the independent user: can understand the main points of clear standard input on familiar matters regularly encountered in work, school, leisure, etc. can deal with most situations likely to arise whilst traveling in an area where the language is spoken. can produce simple connected text on topics which are familiar or of personal interest. can describe experiences and events, dreams, hopes and ambitions and briefly give reasons and explanations for opinions and plans. (cef pg. 24) profile 10.indd 38 23/10/2008 8:46:09 bilingual colombia: what does it mean to be bilingual within the framework of the national plan of bilingualism? profile 10, 2008. issn 1657-0790. bogotá, colombia. pages 27-45 39 arranged, discrete items” (p. 303). the following descriptors help to illustrate this point: (13) demuestro conocimiento de las estructuras básicas del inglés (men, 2006, p. 19) i demonstrate knowledge of the basic structures of english. (14) describo algunas características de mi mismo, de otras personas, de animales, de lugares y del clima. (p. 19) i describe some characteristics of myself, of other people, animals, places and weather. (15) uso adecuadamente estructuras y patrones gramaticales de uso frecuente (p. 21) i appropriately use structures and grammatical patterns of frequent use. (16) interactuó con mis compañeros y profesor para tomar decisiones sobre temas específicos que conozco (25) i interact with my classmates and teacher to make decisions about specific topics that i know. (17) participo espontáneamente en conversaciones sobre temas de mi interés utilizando un lenguaje claro y sencillo. (p. 25) i participate spontaneously in conversations about topics of my interest using clear and straightforward language. (18) escribo diferentes tipos de textos de mediana longitud y con una estructura sencilla (cartas, notas, mensajes, correos electrónicos, etc.) (p. 27) i write different types of texts of medium length and with a straightforward structure (letters, notes, messages, emails, etc.). these descriptors, as well as all the others used in the standards, are written in present tense, first-person singular; possible implications of this grammatical choice are the immediateness of the mastery of the language. it is here and now when the learner can use it; the fact that the verb is in first person puts the learner in control and gives him/her complete agency not only of his/her learning but also of his/her use of the language. since the verb is in present and indicative mode (demuestro, describo, uso, interactúo, participo, escribo), the speaker is situated in a statement that shows that the action is doable; the subject of the sentence indicates or supposes he/she can achieve the action. what it implies in the standards is that the master of the l2 is a fact and that the learner is naturally entitled to use the language anytime and with anybody. this is a very simplistic view even for native speakers of a language. pennycook (1998) provides the example of a woman in a business meeting who cannot get her point across because she does not speak the men’s variety of language. interpreting this situation from bourdieu’s perspective, it could be said that despite the fact that all are native speakers of the same language, these men do not recognize the woman as a legitimate speaker because she does not have the right sort of linguistic capital. in addition, gender discrimination enters into play as another element that makes linguistic interaction complex and not as simple as implied in the “estándares”. although in the standards proposed by the men all students are assumed to be legitimate speakers, the truth is that they are not because their legitimacy is not only acquired by speaking the “right” variety of the language, that is, the variety sanctioned and evaluated by the dominant groups as the valuable one and transmitted through the education system (bourdieu, 2003), but by the persons they talk to. the linguistic form chosen to write the standards profile 10.indd 39 23/10/2008 8:46:09 guerrero universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras40 automatically assumes the interlocutors to be cooperative people; the writers of the standards take it for granted that the speaker (student, learner) will be able to perform freely all the activities set in there and in their interactions they can count on the cooperation of the other person/s. pennycook (2004) considers that this consensual conversation partner can exist in a society seen from a liberal point of view, where the members of the social world share goals and, despite some conflicts, they should be able to interact in a cooperative way. but from a critical perspective, social relations are mediated by class, gender, race, or ethnicity in which power is always present so speakers do not always find a cooperative interlocutor. if the descriptors were written using a different conjugation, for example using modal verbs like can, could, or should, it would diminish the categorical implication of the indicative mood where the capacity and right to use the language falls merely on the speaker. all students will be equally proficient proficiency has been a controversial issue in the field of bilingualism because it is strongly attached to the concept of who can be called bilingual. a very restricted view is bloomfield’s (1933), who defines bilingualism as the native-like control of two languages. this conception would imply the iderejected by grosjean (1982, 1994) that a bilingual person is conceived to be two monolinguals, which means that the individual must be able to attain, in both languages, the same proficiency and fulfill the same functions a monolingual would do. now, the concept of monolingualism can not be essentialized either because all monolinguals do not have the same command of the language; some people master one vernacular variety of the language but not the standard, or vice versa; some are illiterate; or some are literate but do not write/read academic/scientific pieces, etc. on the other hand, macnamara (1967) produces a rather open concept and considers bilinguals to be “persons who possess at least one of the language skills even to a minimal degree in their second language” (p. 60). he acknowledges that individuals do not necessarily have to master both languages equally; one person can be equally skillful in the syntactic system of two codes and yet have different abilities in understanding the spoken l2. the question here is what is “minimal” because it can mean different things to different people in different contexts. for grosjean (1994) “[...]bilinguals [are] those people who use two (or more) languages (or dialects) in their everyday lives” (p. 1656). he explains that his definition ranges from the migrant worker who interacts in the l2 with some difficulty to the interpreter who is fluent in both languages; in between is the spouse who uses his/her first language in some contexts or the scientist who reads and writes articles in the l2 but does not speak it. these bilinguals share one feature in common and it is that all of them use two (or more) languages to lead their lives. considering these three definitions, out of many, one sees evidence that proficiency is equally complex; nevertheless, the authors of the “estándares” set up the goals of the pnb as a packed whole, implying that the proficiency level must be the same for everybody regardless of the needs, resources, profile 10.indd 40 23/10/2008 8:46:09 bilingual colombia: what does it mean to be bilingual within the framework of the national plan of bilingualism? profile 10, 2008. issn 1657-0790. bogotá, colombia. pages 27-45 41 context, socio-economic situation, and/or motivation of students. the standards are set in five groups (or skills): listening, reading, writing, monologues, and conversation. in each group there are between seven and eleven descriptors; looking at them in a vertical way, it can be observed that each one is per se a categorical objective, that is, the descriptors are not flexible and are not written in a continuum where teachers could draw on according to the particularities of their contexts. for example, the following are some of the goals to be achieved in the skill “conversación” for tenth and eleven grades: 19) participo espontáneamente en conversaciones sobre temas de mi interés utilizando un lenguaje claro y sencillo. (men, 2006, p. 27) i participate spontaneously in conversations about topics of my interest using clear and straightforward language. 20) respondo preguntas teniendo e cuenta a mi interlocutor y el contexto. (p. 27) i answer questions taking into account my interlocutor and the context. 21) utilizo una pronunciación inteligible para lograr una comunicación efectiva. (p. 27) i use an intelligible pronunciation to achieve effective communication. 22) uso mis conocimientos previos para participar en una conversación. (p. 27) i use my previous knowledge to participate in a conversation. 23) describo en forma oral mis ambiciones, sueños y esperanzas utilizando un lenguaje claro y sencillo. (p. 27) i describe orally my ambitions, dreams, and hopes using clear and straightforward language. the same pattern is used for the other skills where goals are presented as wholes and students are supposed to achieve them. the assumption of the authors is that all students will be equipped with exactly the same tools and therefore will reach the same proficiency7. once again the conception of learning a language is reduced to learning and applying a set of rules. looking at the standards in a horizontal way to see what learners are expected to achieve for each group of skills, one sees that the concept of proficiency as something that can be attained equally in all language skills is apparent, to wit: 24) identifico la idea principal de un texto oral cuando tengo conocimiento previo del tema. (escucha, p. 26) i identify the main idea in an oral text when i have previous knowledge of the topic. 25) identifico palabras clave dentro del texto que me permiten comprender su sentido general. (lectura, p. 26) i identify key words within a text that allow me to understand their general meaning. 26) estructuro mis textos teniendo en cuenta elementos formales del lenguaje como la puntuación, la ortografía, la sintaxis, la coherencia y la cohesión. (escritura, p. 27) i structure my texts taking into account formal elements of the language like punctuation, orthography, syntax, coherence and cohesion. 27) narro en forma detallada experiencias, hechos o historias de mi interés y del interés de mi audiencia. (monólogos, p. 27) i narrate in detail experiences, facts or stories of my interest and of my audience’s interest. 7 the metaphorical use of “equipped” and “tools” is deliberate to match an instrumental and neutral view of language portrayed along the document. profile 10.indd 41 23/10/2008 8:46:09 guerrero universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras42 28) participo espontáneamente en conversaciones sobre temas de mi interés utilizando un lenguaje claro y sencillo. (conversación, p. 27) i participate spontaneously in conversations about topics of my interest using clear and straightforward language. according to these descriptors students have to develop the same level of proficiency in each one of the skills and this idea is reinforced by the use, once again, of the indicative mood. proficiency, then, is misunderstood because people, in general, do not have the same level in each of the language skills, and if this is not true for the l1, it is even less true for the l2. some people might need a high command of listening and speaking skills but very little writing or reading skills; some might be able to explain a complicated scientific issue in the l2 but have trouble explaining their symptoms to the doctor during a medical appointment. furthermore it seems that the pnb expects students to develop a proficiency that mirrors that of their l1 because there is no specialization of the functions fulfilled by each language. both are intended to be used for academic activities and for everyday activities but, in fact, bilinguals do not use their languages in the same way for the same purposes. if this were the case, people would cease to be bilingual (fishman, 1967; grosjean, 1994; romaine, 1999). the following excerpt illustrates this point: 29)…los estándares presentan temas y relaciones con los que los estudiantes ya están familiarizados en su primera lengua. (men, 2006, p. 29) …the standards present topics and relations with which students are already familiar in their first language. in the same line of thought, between the ideal speaker constructed in the “estándares” and the real learner who faces society with all its imperfections, there is a huge gap because the latter might have trouble interacting in real life with real people. the monolithic concept of language as one fixed system leaves out all the shades language takes on in different speech acts. in the school setting students are exposed mainly to the academic variety of the l2, because the school, in general terms, is an academic setting. in a large monolingual and monocultural context like colombia, where the majority of students are native speakers of spanish and are exposed to only the cultural practices of colombian society, there is very little (or none) opportunity to acquire pragmatic and sociolinguistic competence in the l2 to perform as expected by the pnb. by and large, the standards described in the “estándares” are envisaged for an imagined and ideal group of students who differ greatly from the real students who attend schools. the project is offering “tangible benefits of a few but only symbolic ones for the many” (edelsky, 2006, p. 6). references ayala, j. & alvarez, j.a. 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(2000). english in the new world order. variations on a theme of linguistic imperialism and “world” english. in t. ricento (ed.), ideology, politics and language policies (pp. 87-106). amsterdam/philadelphia: john benjamins publishing company. procuraduría general de la nación (2005). palabras en la celebración del décimo aniversario del comité interinstitucional para la erradicación del trabajo infantil, especialmente en profile 10.indd 44 23/10/2008 8:46:10 bilingual colombia: what does it mean to be bilingual within the framework of the national plan of bilingualism? profile 10, 2008. issn 1657-0790. bogotá, colombia. pages 27-45 45 sus peores formas y la divulgación de la ratificación del convenio 182. retrieved may 14, 2008, from procuraduría general de la nación web site: http://64.233.167.104/ search?q=cache:l8mr2umkocwj:www. procuraduria.gov.co/descargas/eventos/ discurso_10anivcomiteipec.doc+programa+int ernacional+para+la+erradicaci%c3%b3n+del+ trabajo+infantil+(ipec)+colombia&hl=en&ct =clnk&cd=8&gl=us romaine, s. (1989). bilingualism. oxford and new york: basil blackwell. romaine, s. (1999). early bilingual development: from elite to folk. in g. extra & l. verhoeven (eds.), bilingualism and migration (pp. 61-73). berlin, new york: mouton de gruyter. sarmiento, a. (2006). una estrategia para aumentar la retención de los estudiantes. retrieved june 2, 2008, from ministerio de educación nacional web site: http://www.mineducacion.gov. co/1621/articles-122720_archivo_pdf.pdf skutnabb-kangas, t. (2001). linguistic human rights in education for language maintenance. in l. maffi, (ed.), on biocultural diversity. linking knowledge, and the environment (pp. 397411). washington and london: smithsonian institution press thomason, s.g. (1988). languages of the world. in c. b. paulston (ed.), international handbook of bilingualism and bilingual education (pp. 17-45). new york: greenwood press. tollefson, j. (2000). policy and ideology in the spread of english. in jk, hall & w. eggington (eds.), the sociopolitics of english language teaching (pp. 7-21). clevedon, england, tonawanda, ny: multilingual matters. tumposky, n.r. (1984). behavioural objectives, the cult of efficiency, and foreign language learning: are they compatible? tesol quarterly, 18, 295310. valencia, s. (not dated). el bilingüismo y los cambios en políticas y prácticas en la educación publica en colombia: un estudio de caso. retrieved april 8, 2008, from bilinglatam web site: http:// www.bilinglatam.com/espanol/informacion/ silvia%20valencia%20giraldo.pdf van dijk, t. (2005). critical discourse analysis. in d. schiffrin, d. tannen, d & h. hamilton (eds.), the handbook of discourse analysis (pp. 352-371). malden: blackwell publishing. vélez-rendón, g. (2003). english in colombia: a sociolinguistic profile. world englishes, 22(2), 185-198. about the author helena guerrero is a ph.d candidate in the second language acquisition and teaching (slat) program of the university of arizona. she holds an ma in applied linguistics to tefl from universidad distrital francisco josé de caldas. her research interests are critical theory, identity and ideology, and critical discourse analysis. profile 10.indd 45 23/10/2008 8:46:10 profile 4 2003.p65 ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ 91 profileprofileprofileprofileprofile �!������������������%���(������!�����&�� ������ "���������!���-�����������������������!�/����� ��%�����!�������� reflereflereflereflereflexiones acerxiones acerxiones acerxiones acerxiones acerca del desarca del desarca del desarca del desarca del desar rrrrrollo de un prollo de un prollo de un prollo de un prollo de un programa de lectura para estudiantesograma de lectura para estudiantesograma de lectura para estudiantesograma de lectura para estudiantesograma de lectura para estudiantes de educación media con diversos niveles de inglésde educación media con diversos niveles de inglésde educación media con diversos niveles de inglésde educación media con diversos niveles de inglésde educación media con diversos niveles de inglés rrrrrandall barfieldandall barfieldandall barfieldandall barfieldandall barfield ***** universidad nacional de colombia booksdavis@yahoo.com this personal-experience article attempts to share with the reader an efl reading and grammar programme that was designed in 2002 for a group of 12 to 14-yearolds (6th and 7th graders) whose english levels varied from almost nil to semiconversational. multi-levels of english in any given group present a considerable challenge to either the efl or esl teacher, needless to say. more than one of these students exhibited evidence of a learning disability, not only in l2 but in l1 as well. for instance, transposition of letters (b instead of d and vice versa) in both languages, poor spelling in l1 and l2, and in l2, writing on the level of a second or thirdgrade native speaker. a considerable number of these students had been forced to leave other, larger schools for academic and/or disciplinary reasons. so, this teacher swallowed then rolled up his sleeves to go to work (in fear of what the year would bring?). in other words, the teacher accepted the challenge. kkkkkey worey worey worey worey wordsdsdsdsds: english-teaching high school-programs, reading-teaching-programs, books and reading for children-teaching high school-programs este artículo de experiencia personal tiene como objetivo dar a conocer al lector un programa de efl sobre lectura y gramática que fue diseñado en 2002 para un grupo de niños entre los 12 y 14 años de edad (grados 6 y 7), los cuales tenían niveles de inglés que variaban entre cero conocimiento del idioma y semi-conversacional. los multi-niveles en inglés en cualquier grupo presentan un desafío considerable para el profesor de efl o esl. adicionalmente, más de un estudiante demostró tener problemas de aprendizaje no sólo en l2 sino en l1. por ejemplo, la transposición de letras (b en vez de d o viceversa) en ambos idiomas, pobre ortografía en l1 y l2 y en l2 la escritura en un nivel igual al de un estudiante nativo que cursa segundo o tercero de primaria. un número considerable de estudiantes han sido obligados a abandonar otros colegios grandes por razones académicas y/o disciplinarias. así que me alisté para ir a trabajar, remangándome la camisa (¿quizá con el miedo de pensar qué traería el nuevo año?). en otras palabras, acepté el desafío. * randall barfield,randall barfield,randall barfield,randall barfield,randall barfield, b.a. from georgia state university and m.a. from the university of alabama, has been has been teaching efl for about 15 years in various well-known primary and secondary schools in bogotá as well as 2 universities and the centro colombo americano. ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ 92profileprofileprofileprofileprofile palabras clavespalabras clavespalabras clavespalabras clavespalabras claves: inglés-enseñanza secundaria-programas, lectura-enseñanzaprogramas, libros y lecturas para niños-enseñanza secundaria-programas getgetgetgetget ting stting stting stting stting stararararartedtedtedtedted f irst, the main textbook needed to bedecided on. “real” bilingual schoolsseem to prefer texts that are designed for native speakers and that is what the small school where i work prefers. small schools with this preference are actually copying the biggest, most prestigious schools in bogotá, whose students are exposed to a minimum of six to seven hours of l2 per day. this is a lot of exposure. moreover, the students travel a lot and most of their parents are bilingual. the situation is quite different for students in other, less-bilingual schools (in every sense of the term). the students’ parents, for the most part, not only do not speak l2 but the students are not usually exposed to more than two or three hours of l2 per day, if that much. these “semi-bilingual” schools would do better to use efl materials, in my opinion. it is a common practice here in colombia, though, and i can cite at least three very large (more than 1,500 students), “semibilingual” schools who engage in it. anyway, the textbook choice has never been mine at the school in reference; however, as a trained teacher, i did not have an enormous problem with such a preference because i felt the teacher should be able to “adapt” practically any text to fit her or his students’ needs. consequently, the text assigned was scott foresman’s literature and integrated studies for grade seven (1997). this book would suffice for the 2 grades i was assigned—sixth and seventh, i had decided. the book has more than 45 short stories and articles in it, both fiction and non-fiction. most of the stories (fortunately, it proved) are 2 and 3 full pages long; therefore, while not easy for the majority who had a sort of “intermediate” level, the stories were not too burdensome either. the “light” at the end of the tunnel could be seen by the students. this meant that the weaker students did not feel completely overwhelmed by the task of reading and understanding a story of such length. the academic year consisted of 4 bimonthly marking sessions so i chose 7 stories for each one. the last session’s required reading was more flexible since i was not sure about timing, year-end activities, etc. (it turned out one group completed 6 stories and the other 5.) have most students ever enjoyed reading? i suspect not—in any language—and more so nowadays with all sorts of videos and other visually-challenging entertainment vying for their time and attention (not to mention spending money). this crisis meant that much encouraging, motivating, rewarding, and reasoning had to be resorted to on my part. i would say, “c’mon, guys. good reading skills are a necessity nowadays,” or “who’s definitely planning to go to university?” sixty to seventy percent would raise their hands. “you see?” i said, “and what do you think you are going to do there? yes, read, read, read!” (students’ smiles and giggles). additionally, in an attempt to identify students who would experience the most difficulties, i periodically gave them checks on vocabulary by having them listen to and spell (in pairs or small groups of three) commonly-used words (25 words each check). those who achieved 14, 16, and 18 correctly-recognised and correctly-spelled words were the students who could usually manage the readings with little or no teacher ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ 93 profileprofileprofileprofileprofile assistance (other than the reading activities carried out in the classroom in which every student participated). this situation put to use their previously-acquired/learnt vocabulary. those students scoring fewer than 14 correct words were found to need assistance and received priority when timing became “tight” (close to the end of the session and close to grade-reporting day). structuring the readingstructuring the readingstructuring the readingstructuring the readingstructuring the reading programmeprogrammeprogrammeprogrammeprogramme many classes were centered on the stories, although, ultimately, a lot of the reading was done at home, especially in those homes in which parents were actively involved in their child’s learning (such as enforcing consistent study habits). also, the reading was done partly at home because some of the weaker students had tutors who could help them, some weaker students worked at the home of a stronger student (classroom friend), time was needed for the grammar portion of the programme, and, in the case of the “large” sixth-grade group (23 students), classroom discipline was not the best while we tried to read aloud. (the problems with discipline are another story/article and involve not only a school’s administrative philosophy, but solid parental support as well. in my school, the administrative philosophy was fairly normal but sometimes lacking in enforcement—again, due to the school’s size and dire need of each student—but parental support both for the older child and teacher was, if anything, sporadic). some days we read parts of the stories aloud in class. on the board we almost always listed the main events in a story. these events included some of the characters and some of the stories’ special vocabulary. teachers will note that when students are given the freedom, they will consciously and unconsciously help each other with unknown vocabulary. this help is a natural result of the presence of many levels of the second language in the classroom. it is a natural result of two students’ enjoyment of working together (brother/sisterhood?) as well. also, the stronger student is oftentimes proud of his/her previously-acquired knowledge of the language and likes to be a “star” while helping the weaker student, with whom she/he gets along well socially. i, personally, found this activity quite moving. it convinced me that this was the way we humans were actually meant to work and or play together from the beginning. in 2 or 3 stories students had to work in pairs to list the story ’s nouns or verbs under the corresponding letter of the alphabet. for instance, one story had 4 verbs that began with b, two with c, etc. this activity served to get the students more involved in the body of the story. of course, some days we did not want to think about reading at all. we needed a deserved rest! evevevevevalalalalaluauauauauation of readingtion of readingtion of readingtion of readingtion of reading since i was mainly interested in ascertaining whether the student did the required reading, i devised 3 true-false quizzes for each reading— versions a, b, and c. each quiz had 12 sentences regarding main events or main characters in the story. for the first and second marking sessions, students could pass the quiz with 8 correct answers (66%). for the third and fourth marking sessions, 9 correct answers were required to pass (75%). many students failed on version a then passed on versions b or c. the strongest and best students passed on version a. however, when an able student (as in having already evidenced ability to comprehend the readings without special teacher assistance) did not pass any of the 3 versions, a new story had to be read. ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ 94profileprofileprofileprofileprofile in a few cases for very slow students, i allowed the students to read aloud at my side during a recess or lunch break (the mutually-agreed upon time slot). a lot of coaching had to be done, but, as the student obviously read the whole story at my side, no test was needed to “prove” it. comprehension (or the lack of) was evaluated orally during the reading session(s) since the language level was so low. (the language level was low for these students because they had been admitted to the school in spite of their level. it is a practice that larger, more prestigious schools do not usually engage in, especially when economic times are better than they are at present. of course, finances are much less of an issue for larger schools.) so, we would read a paragraph or two, and i would ask the student questions to gauge comprehension. when we saw we were getting behind, i occasionally gave the whole class an “openbook” or “investigative” quiz. after all, i was not interested in the students’ capacities for memorization; quite the contrary. the weaker students were so happy and excited about these quizzes. of course, many of them worked in pairs or in threes. i did not mind this method. instead, i considered it quite appropriate for foreign-language learning. seeing “real” learning take place in which stronger students were teamed with weaker ones gave me considerable satisfaction. not only that, i realised the students were reading not only the stories, but the one, two or three versions of the stories’ quizzes at test time. to encourage individual responsibility (something not plentiful at their ages!), i often allowed students to make an “appointment” to take a certain quiz during a recess or lunch break. when requests got too heavy to handle, i would slack off and make the students wait a while. this method works in a small school where a teacher has, say, 30 to 40 students maximum throughout the year. however, in big schools, in which some english teachers have as many as 200 to 300 students, this method of evaluating is practically, not to mention physically, impossible. reading resulreading resulreading resulreading resulreading resultststststs at year’s end, five of the six students in seventh grade had completed all required work and were excused from school on the days in which make-up work (“recuperaciones”) took place. sixth grade was a different matter. of its 23 students, about 13 owed either reading or grammar points’ achievements (“logros”). fortunately, most of those 13 students owed only 1 or 2 stories or the same number of grammar points as opposed to 6 stories or 8 or 9 grammar points. basically, making the work up was a matter of reading that one story or learning that one grammar point. no grave danger. implicimplicimplicimplicimplic aaaaations and concltions and concltions and concltions and concltions and concl usionsusionsusionsusionsusions overall, the programme pleased me, especially my attempts, although imperfect, to encourage reading responsibility among the students. next year i plan to concentrate on portions of a story for the weaker students, as opposed to a complete story. this approach will lessen some of the pressure on those students as well as foment productivity. most of the students not only reinforced previouslyacquired knowledge, but learned a lot of new vocabulary as well as sentence structures and punctuation, among other items. critical analysis took place when the students asked questions about the story (aloud in class—some time before the day of the quiz) or faced one or more of the quiz versions and had to decide whether a particular sentence ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ 95 profileprofileprofileprofileprofile could be applied to the story or not. for example, in reading the sentence, “mr shaw’s wife worked in the factory five years.” on the quiz, the student must work her/his knowledge of the characters in the reading and not only conclude that mrs shaw was or was not part of the story, but choose also to respond (true or false) to the part about place of work as well as length of time at that place. it was seen early on that the biggest part of the “bilingual” burden (which is the learning of not only traditional subjects such as math and science, but learning them in the foreign language as well as learning the language itself as an additional subject) for the weakest students lay with the parents, who had taken the decision to enrol the child in a “bilingual” school (in one or two cases, it was the child’s first experience in such a school!) in the first place. the message was conveyed to the parents that it was their responsibility to hire a tutor to work with the child at home and to try to bring the child’s level up to that level constituting the group “average” (which meant a level that was functional and enabled the child to complete the work we were doing). unfortunately, we also witnessed a few cases (even a few are too many) in which the parents were uninvolved almost completely in their child’s education, and the child suffered—usually in bitter and humiliating silence. referencesreferencesreferencesreferencesreferences scottforesman’s literature and integrated studies for grade seven. (1997). scottforesman and company: glenview, illinois. the article was received on august 20 th, 2003 and accepted on october 16th , 2003 profile no. 7dic 5.p65 ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ profile profile profile profile profile 7 (2006): universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras 9-29 revising a foreign language curriculum: a challenging and enhancing experience at a public school in bogotá revisión del currículo de lengua extranjera: un reto y una experiencia motivanterevisión del currículo de lengua extranjera: un reto y una experiencia motivanterevisión del currículo de lengua extranjera: un reto y una experiencia motivanterevisión del currículo de lengua extranjera: un reto y una experiencia motivanterevisión del currículo de lengua extranjera: un reto y una experiencia motivante en un colegio público en bogotáen un colegio público en bogotáen un colegio público en bogotáen un colegio público en bogotáen un colegio público en bogotá aurora ortiz caurora ortiz caurora ortiz caurora ortiz caurora ortiz c., auroraortiz@hotmail.com, martha camelo gmartha camelo gmartha camelo gmartha camelo gmartha camelo g., mantistarantis@hotmail.com, maria nelly martín dmaria nelly martín dmaria nelly martín dmaria nelly martín dmaria nelly martín d., marianellymartin@hotmail.com, marisol sarmiento smarisol sarmiento smarisol sarmiento smarisol sarmiento smarisol sarmiento s., marisol_sarmiento@hotmail.com, maritza ruiz mmaritza ruiz mmaritza ruiz mmaritza ruiz mmaritza ruiz m., mruizm0@yahoo.com* instituto técnico industrial francisco josé de caldas, colombia curriculum design essentially improves education standards; however, for teachers it remains a taboo kept for academics. nevertheless, curriculum design begins with teacher’s reflections. it goes from examining situations to piloting and adjusting proposals. this project involved teachers interested in improving the english learning process at a technical public school. the objective was designing a curriculum that conveyed community interests. first, documents describing existing curricular guidelines were analyzed, then surveys were applied, they evidenced strengths and weaknesses of the current program. data interpretation showed mixed perceptions regarding the english programme among community members. even teachers had different perceptions about curricular elements presented in school documents. this phenomenon leads us to consider the implications of a project regarding curriculum design. kkkkkey worey worey worey worey wordsdsdsdsds: curriculum, curriculum design, community interests, data analysis el diseño curricular es esencial para el mejoramiento educativo, pero los docentes lo creen exclusivo de académicos. éste parte de la reflexión docente, implica entre otras cosas el diagnóstico de una situación y la implementación de una propuesta. el proyecto fue realizado por docentes interesados en mejorar los procesos de aprendizaje del inglés en un colegio técnico. se pretendió diseñar un currículo acorde con los intereses de la comunidad. inicialmente se analizaron los documentos escolares existentes, se aplicaron encuestas que evidenciaron fortalezas y debilidades del programa. la interpretación de datos mostró las diferentes percepciones de la comunidad respecto al programa de inglés; incluso los profesores concebían de manera diferente los elementos curriculares. esto impulsó la reflexión sobre el diseño curricular. palabras clavespalabras clavespalabras clavespalabras clavespalabras claves: currículo, diseño curricular, intereses de la comunidad, análisis de datos *aaaaaurururururora ortiz c.ora ortiz c.ora ortiz c.ora ortiz c.ora ortiz c. holds a b.a. in english and spanish from the universidad pedagógica y tecnológica de colombia. her studies have dealt with foreign language teaching, including the current “red profile” in-service programme. she teaches english on the primary level at i.t.i. francisco josé de caldas in bogotá. martha camelo g. martha camelo g. martha camelo g. martha camelo g. martha camelo g. holds a b.a. in modern languages from the universidad la gran colombia. her studies have dealt with foreign language teaching, including “red profile” in-service programme in 2005. she works at i.t.i. francisco josé de caldas school in bogotá. maría nelly martin d.maría nelly martin d.maría nelly martin d.maría nelly martin d.maría nelly martin d. holds a b.a. in philology and languages from the universidad libre. then she got her specialization in educational management. she participated in the “red profile” in-ser vice programme. she is working at i.t.i. francisco josé de caldas. marisol sarmiento s.marisol sarmiento s.marisol sarmiento s.marisol sarmiento s.marisol sarmiento s. holds a b.a. in spanish and languages (english, french) from the universidad pedagógica nacional de colombia. then she got her specialization in higher education teaching and enrolled in the “red profile” in-ser vice programme in 2005. she works at i.e.d. campestre monteverde. maritza ruiz m.maritza ruiz m.maritza ruiz m.maritza ruiz m.maritza ruiz m. holds a b.a. in philology and languages from the universidad nacional de colombia. then she got her specialization in applied linguistics in the teaching of english. she works at i.t.i. francisco josé de caldas and as a professor of the universidad de la sabana. this article was received on january 30th, 2006 and accepted on june 14th, 2006. ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ 10 ortiz, camelo, martín, sarmiento, and ruiz profileprofileprofileprofileprofile introductionintroductionintroductionintroductionintroduction curriculum conceived as a systematic plan for instruction that can provide the educational community with meaningful learning experiences in both in-school and out-of-school activities (moore, 2001), proves to be essential since it can give english its place as a subject which allows students to communicate in another language rather than merely obtaining a set of grammar structures. in our case, we decided to study our curriculum because we realized schools are facing rapid changes and learning english plays an important role in students’ educational and future life. designing a curriculum is a time-consuming task since it implies analyzing the needs of a community, revising existing curriculum, reviewing sources of information related to similar endeavors, conveying community contributions, putting together experiences and expectations and, finally, building a new curricular platform proposal. every year teachers write documents which contain the guidelines for the school year, but we wonder to what extent we really are doing something other than fulfilling a requirement, and to what extent is what we plan adequate, effective, practical and contextualized. now we know no matter how serious these efforts have been, they have also ignored many participants and contributions which could have made our teaching programmes better. we expect that the road we have traveled so far and which we will describe in this document, will become a real and tangible contribution to our school curricular platform and will inspire other teachers, even from other subjects, to look at their practice with a critical eye. we also hope that the process we have followed can help other teachers to start processes that can respond to their specific concerns. the ultimate result of these efforts should be a curricular proposal able to take into account state policies, current authors, publications and models, community member contributions, students’ background and our experience as teachers. a curriculum with the former characteristics can produce positive changes in students’ beliefs, attitudes, values and behavior. needless to say, a curriculum that succeeds in developing students whose beliefs, attitudes and behavior are guided both by values and critical thinking can make a difference in colombian society. this document reveals a challenge which involves a group of english teachers who want to innovate their daily practice, improve the students’ performance and design a plan that include specific aspects of the curriculum. along the following pages, we will describe what motivated us to turn to curriculum design and the process we followed once we made the decision to propose a new curriculum for english as a foreign language at instituto técnico industrial francisco josé de caldas. furthermore, we include the theoretical principles behind our study, the results of the analysis we made of our curriculum and the conclusion to take into account what we plan to do in the future. theoretical frameworktheoretical frameworktheoretical frameworktheoretical frameworktheoretical framework designing a suitable curriculum for our context means not only making contributions based on our experiences or opinions as teachers, but also developing a researcher profile. this profile requires certain actions regarding the exploration of our area of interest -curriculum planning and design. among these research actions, the next lines summarize the core concepts of our project. each of them has provided us with information concerning the development of a relevant proposal. curriculum designcurriculum designcurriculum designcurriculum designcurriculum design the core of the present project has been curriculum design. our main concern has been building a practical and accurate curricular proposal for the school, but to be able to do that we have had to walk a long path and to work hard just to see the first shapes of a possible proposal. let’s begin with what a practical curriculum means for the team. a practical curriculum is the application ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○11 profileprofileprofileprofileprofile revising a foreign language curriculum of a coherent theoretical and methodological framework built in order to guide learning and teaching processes according to a specific context. this is why a needs analysis and the contributions of the members in our community were –and are, in any casefundamental. according to the previous panorama, we found moore’s curriculum definition suitable for our project. he defines curriculum as a systematic plan of instruction that should provide our educational community with meaningful learning experiences in both in-school and out-of-school activities (moore, 2001). we consider the development of a curriculum essential since it can give english its place as a very important subject which will allow students to obtain knowledge about the world, other cultures and the latest advances, which respond to the modern world requirements and education policies that exist in our country. according to them, students should be able to use technology to build their knowledge of the world (m.e.n., 2003). thus, a curriculum based on a community’s contributions produces a sense of ownership and probably makes a plan of instruction more practical, easy to understand and follow since it should be understandable to everybody. these characteristics can encourage teachers to follow and apply a new curriculum by means of which teaching-learning processes can be enhanced with innovative proposals and strategies. participation can also encourage pupils to take a more active role in their learning processes (santos, 2001). the most suitable curriculum definition for our purposes is the following: an operative curriculum means making decisions about the elements it may include and which are relevant according to the situation at school. it also implies suggesting courses of action rather than criticizing existing proposals. a curriculum becomes suitable as it takes into account students’ needs, human resources, critical viewpoints about existing conditions and the need for adjustment and innovation. regarding curriculum design and models, we have found data-based literature that confirmed what we can call “our beliefs and assumptions”. in other cases, information obtained about this area provided us with understanding platform elements and design processes. authors like nunan (1992) offer an insight in to the design of a curriculum according to necessities of the students, whereas authors like moore (2001) consider the components of a curriculum to include a needs analysis, syllabus design, task selection and materials design, methodology, assessment and evaluation, ongoing program support such as teacher instruction. we also looked for cur ricular proposals in the colombian context and feel that colombian experiences might be worth reviewing or replicating. we considered a model proposed by iafrancesco (1998) which seemed to be a source of enrichment for our project. let’s review briefly the model this colombian author developed based on his concerns on how to make the general law of education more practical and down-to-earth. his model has been put into action in different universities, high schools, primary and pre-school institutes, which shows its potential. according to iafrancesco’s model, it is necessary to create a curricular proposal that responds to the quality education requirements demanded by colombia in the xxi centur y. iafrancesco’s model shows some characteristics that correspond to the guidelines we want for guiding our proposal. in the first place, iafrancesco’s curriculum focuses on the person, not on the contents: it is student-centered. this implies students’ participation in decision making about topics and tasks, among others. in consequence, participative and appealing learning experiences are brought to light. it also means contents are organized and developed according to students’ needs and interests. another important contribution of his work is his invitation to engage in critical evaluation, adjustment and redesign of curriculum to fulfill colombian context needs. having read his proposal, we decided to look carefully at some of the key concepts ianfrancesco ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ 12 ortiz, camelo, martín, sarmiento, and ruiz profileprofileprofileprofileprofile (1998) discusses since these ideas could enlighten our understanding and the revision plan for our curriculum: • anthropological and axiologic inspiration: values are the axis of the human being “as a whole”. knowledge and skills need to be directed by consistent beliefs. • democratic participation: democracy allows community members to participate and creates a sense of “ownership” and commitment so people are willing to assume responsibilities. • cross curricular nature: respectful, open and consistent attitudes take an important role here, since a cross curricular proposal embodies various communities’ group expectations and also affects everybody’s actions. • flexibility: the curriculum can be modified without losing its axis and should always be guided by a serious, conscientious plan of action. • coherence: it is given by the community’s needs. a coherent curriculum provides settings and experiences that foster development and that guides a process with, hopefully, a minimum of traumas. • realism: decisions should respond to the reality of the community. realism goes from the conception of an idea to the actions which reveal it. • project for the future: the course of a process should be respected and evaluated. evaluation provides information that can enhance future processes, since it allows determining what was successful, or what was not successful. keeping an eye on process helps us to change the future. • projection: no process can be conceived without the awareness of its future impact, even if the manifestations are not immediate. • personalization: support with new ideas and concepts that can be integrated with the context. these principles respond to many of our concerns since they focused on some of the weaknesses of the english programme we had experienced along our practice. let’s take cross curricular nature, for example. to many teachers, this concept has to do with only a coherent dynamic of contents among the various subjects taught at school. bearing in mind that the school’s pei (institutional education project) is “education of industrial leaders”, going beyond the academic connections seems more than relevant. negotiation, tolerance and acceptance become core concepts and practice which permeate all community members from every group at school. cross curricular nature becomes, then, a positive practice which is enhanced and promoted from every in-school and out-of-school scenario. a curricular platform for language learning involves reflection and coherence regarding the views of language, language learning, and the general educational philosophy we hold. the previous elements would result in a model to put the curriculum into operation. that is the reason we also have to establish some guidelines on aspects like second language acquisition, teaching methodology and teaching processes. we will review these aspects in the following paragraphs. second language acquisitionsecond language acquisitionsecond language acquisitionsecond language acquisitionsecond language acquisition next, we focused our attention on the second language acquisition process. it is a long process which involves several essential social and cultural components in order to develop communicative competence in the specific context. to brown (1994), the following are aspects of a theory of second language acquisition: • a theory of second language acquisition includes understanding, in general, of what language is, what learning is, and for the classroom context, what teaching is. • knowledge of children’s learning of their first language provides essential insights to an understanding of l2 acquisition. • second language learning is a part of and adheres to general principles of human learning and intelligence. • inevitable aspects of this process are errors, from which learners and teachers can gain further insight. ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○13 profileprofileprofileprofileprofile revising a foreign language curriculum these aspects are central to our proposal since they will shape decisions about teaching-learning approaches and methodology and permit choices regarding guidelines of a curricular platform. ttttte a c h i n g m e t h o d o l o g y a n d te a c h i n g m e t h o d o l o g y a n d te a c h i n g m e t h o d o l o g y a n d te a c h i n g m e t h o d o l o g y a n d te a c h i n g m e t h o d o l o g y a n d te a c h i n ge a c h i n ge a c h i n ge a c h i n ge a c h i n g processesprocessesprocessesprocessesprocesses reflecting on what language is and how it is learnt, let us find common ground, reach agreements and make decisions on how a foreign language is taught and how it will be taught at our school. taking into account the schools’ population and the context of the school, we looked for approaches to guide learning processes successfully and flexible enough to let students and teachers work freely according to their needs and skills. teachers at school work with the communicative approach, but we believe that using elements from other approaches will enhance teaching and learning processes. just as important as raising awareness on learning processes is raising awareness on teaching processes. teaching is more than a practice: it is a process that requires preparation and commitment because the way teaching goes affects the way people learn. in consequence, teaching must be contextualized, adjusted to pupils’ needs and to resources available, so advantages can be taken from every possible situation (katz & chard, 1989). in the end, the purpose of teaching is guiding learning processes and making them easier and more effective. the following section deals with the instruments and procedures we used in order to establish the community’s needs regarding the existing english programme. the sources of data will be presented briefly along with the results and discussion. our needs analour needs analour needs analour needs analour needs analysisysisysisysisysis defining the focus of this project was a process which took us from realizing our interests to proposing a preliminary study for further innovation (see appendix 4). the needs analysis we carried out had as its main purpose designing a curricular platform based on the community’s contributions. we took two different sources of data for the needs analysis. the first one was the analysis of the state of the existing curriculum and the second one was a set of sur veys applied to different community members. the existing curriculumthe existing curriculumthe existing curriculumthe existing curriculumthe existing curriculum teachers’ experience is always a good source of information and questions. when we gathered to take part in a profile in-service programme, we realized how similar our concerns were as well as how rich and varied our backgrounds were. one of the activities within that programme was analyzing the existing curriculum at school. we had to present its elements to other colleagues. we believe this was our first experience as a team since we could share our opinions on strengths and weaknesses of the english programme. then we were asked to write a document to report on the state of the existing curriculum. this was the starting point since we got interested in the ideas that came up when writing this document. the next step was engaging in a project in order to improve the existing curriculum at our school. at this point we realized how important it was to explore other community member’s beliefs about the school’s english curriculum. we decided then to design a set of surveys to carry out that exploration. the following paragraphs show this process in more detail. first of all, we focused on the current situation at school such as strengths, weaknesses and limitations of the area plan submitted by the humanities department, which is in charge of spanish and english. this document embodies both subjects within a single framework. therefore, there are no different objectives for the subjects, no difference between the processes of learning the mother tongue and a foreign language. also, both subjects had the same methodology. although both subjects have a communicative purpose, we think each of them deserve to have an identity given by suitable strategies for developing students’ competences according to the requirements their natures entail. ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ 14 ortiz, camelo, martín, sarmiento, and ruiz profileprofileprofileprofileprofile sursursursursurveysveysveysveysveys regarding the surveys, we mainly focused on the student’s performance, strengths, weaknesses and needs. nevertheless, we also submitted the survey to parents, teachers and managing staff. as mentioned previously, we wanted to explore the community’s beliefs. the surveys also had the objective of creating an inclusive environment where different viewpoints and contributions could enhance a future curriculum. questions in the surveys varied from 10 to 18 depending on the population they were given to (see appendixes 1, 2, 3). there were three types of questions. in the first type people were asked to rank various possibilities from 1 to 5, where 1 was the minimum score and 5 was the maximum. in the second type people were asked to assign number 1 or 2, where 1 represented a strength and 2 a weakness. finally, there were yes/no questions which required people to justify their answers. at the end of the survey, there was a space where participants could write any contribution they considered relevant. the topics of the questions were oriented mainly to methodology, perceptions about regular english lessons, efficiency of the existing programme, evaluation, objectives, students’ role and profile and, finally, resources. after applying the surveys, each member of the team had to codify a set of them (see appendix 4). when codifying, we began noticing some relevant facts at the same time we were interpreting data. in the next stage we gathered and discussed our findings. at this point, we noticed that some information appeared to be contradictory. this fact made us look for an explanation to such results in order to identify possible causes and solutions in order to avoid drawbacks in a curricular platform. resulresulresulresulresults and discussionts and discussionts and discussionts and discussionts and discussion the existing curriculumthe existing curriculumthe existing curriculumthe existing curriculumthe existing curriculum an analysis of the state of the existing efl curriculum permitted us to identify interesting information regarding aspects like goals, objectives, time, methodology, programmes, materials, evaluation and so on. we analyzed the sections of the document and, as we did so, perceived a lack of connection among them; the reader will probably experience it too as he/she reads the findings in each section. objectives: the objectives of the humanities department are expressed with modern pedagogical terminology, but there is no clear evidence of the impact of all this modernity in students’ learning process. the next elements presented are the mission and vision of the department. although the contents of these items are coherent with the school’s mission and vision, there is not a key contribution from the language department to the school’s pei. implementation of activities which are intended to facilitate pupils’ integrated development is mentioned, yet there are no clear strategies related to language skills development which contributes to school mission and vision. it seems more than fair to ask if the intentions expressed are realistic, bearing in mind what realism is for iafrancesco (1998). justification: it shows the relation between communicative competences development and the promotion of social processes, but there are no tangible examples or any results from that relation. another aspect that called our attention was that both processes, learning a mother tongue and learning a foreign language, are embodied under the same justification. moreover, a list of five communicative competences appears unified under the heading of “competences development” in both of the processes mentioned above. these facts show that the two languages are seen and treated as one issue. it is problematic since communicative competences are directly related to mental processes and thinking structure. nevertheless, “thinking” in a foreign language does not seem as easy, fast or effective as “thinking” in our mother tongue. the previous also applies to communication skills. clearly, listing a set of competences to develop (in both the explicit or in the hidden curriculum) is not enough. there also ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○15 profileprofileprofileprofileprofile revising a foreign language curriculum should be included suitable strategies which allow pupils and teachers to begin developing competences to a certain extent according to age, grade, strengths, weaknesses, needs, etc. ideally, teachers and students should revise and discharge useless or unsuccessful strategies and replace them with new ones. there is no clear projection in the sense expressed by iafrancesco (1998). there is no evidence of awareness of these learning processes’ impact on future learners. diagnosis: here it is stated that pupils experience difficulties in both oral and written levels. there is a possible cause suggested, however, there is no evidence to support either the difficulties or the causes. the instruments to conduct the diagnosis are not mentioned. the results of a diagnosis point out weaknesses rather than strengths or needs. methodology: constructivism is shown as the leading approach. action research is also mentioned here, but there is not a clear link between them. in spite of these facts, it is worth pointing out that approaches which give a central role to students’ awareness are mentioned here. cross-curricular connections among subjects are also mentioned in this section. the next item deals with strategies derived from these approaches mentioned. the cross-curricular connections and strategies are used as a cohesive element that will be employed in academic and technical subjects to contribute to pupils’ academic and personal development. nevertheless, there is not a single reference as to how teachers came to choose these methods and strategies. topics and methods unification is also mentioned as a way to integrate subjects and unify knowledge. articulation between the efl curriculum and the school pei: the first concept presented is that effective communication is a distinctive feature of leaders. after that, some extra curricular activities which promote values are shown as another contribution to the main goal of the pei. finally, some key constructivist principles are brought to light as another commonality with the pei. although the former concepts and principles are core concepts to the pei, it seems there is something lacking, probably some coherence. there is not a clear path that shows how this curriculum provides settings and experiences that foster pupils’ development and that guide a learning process. curriculum: this part contains a brief reference to three different ways of evaluation but it does not give any consideration to assessment, neither does it mention instruments for evaluating. moreover, evaluation is used only for making judgments on what is good, acceptable or desirable as regards pupils’ performance. it is never considered a process for providing feedback to improve instructional activities, programmes or courses of action (bailey, 1998). this fact is a big loss since evaluation is never considered a tool for adjusting a course of action or the curriculum itself. in iafrancesco’s words (1998), we could say that there does not seems to be a clear project for the future which, based on serious evaluation, allows determining what can be replicated and what should be modified. sursursursursurveysveysveysveysveys surveys analysis implied a process that required our ability to observe and explain our ability to generate theory and, more relevant, the ability to implement practical actions such as interventions, program designs, action models, social and organizational policies, and change initiatives. practical solutions would be derived from a critical, empirically-grounded, action-oriented research. regarding surveys, we also conducted a detailed analysis of their results. reading, coding and interpreting the answers was a challenge. since we had three groups of participants –because the managing staff did not participatewe divided ourselves into three teams. each had a set of surveys and each member of the team had to codify a group of them in a format we designed to keep a record of the findings. while we were codifying, we began noticing some relevant facts as we were also interpreting data. next, we met and began talking ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ 16 ortiz, camelo, martín, sarmiento, and ruiz profileprofileprofileprofileprofile about the experience and asked others for help with the tricky questions, since action research focuses on understanding the research situation rather than on proving or disproving a theory. a format which allowed us to keep a record of the answers was designed. initially, it permitted us to read information horizontally but suddenly we realized we could also read information vertically (see appendix 4). thus, we read data collected in more than one way. in qualitative research, researchers are to examine each component of a study, constantly framing questions and theories as they progress in the research process. grounded theory does not attempt to prove a hypothesis. a theory “grounded” in the data emerges from obser vation and constant comparison (simmons & gregory, 2003). this let us realize facts which were rather contradictory at first glance. for example, although teachers subscribe their practice to the communicative approach, students perceive classes as grammar lessons rather than functional-based lessons. we put results under the categories we designed bearing in mind the aspects we wanted to have an insight. these headings allowed us to have a clear reference on the topics they conveyed. the next lines summarize our findings. each heading corresponds to an aspect explored in the surveys. methodologies usedmethodologies usedmethodologies usedmethodologies usedmethodologies used the perception parents had about the most used methodology in english classes strongly differed from the methodology teachers in general assert they use. parents see teaching based on academic contents as the generalized methodology, while teachers assert they use communicative approach methodology. on the other hand, they agreed on the fact that the natural method and whole language approach are less used. regarding students, sixth grade students said they enjoyed methodologies that include interest centers and clubs, ninth grade students said they liked methodologies that include reading activities, eleventh grade students, curiously, said they liked playing games. the three groups of students liked methodologies which include activities regarding translation and videocassettes. writing was the least-mentioned aspect regarding activities or methodologies. in general, students are keen on the concept of a methodology based on teaching language as a tool for knowledge acquisition, which corresponds to whole language principles as understood by authors like butler (1987) and weaver (1984). when it comes to teachers and parents, they do not share the same opinion. it also became clear that neither group is keen on methodologies based on teaching focused on academic contents. regarding preferences about modes of work, this varies with the age group. this could mean that a wide variety of activities combining different modes of work can be used in english classes. its success and students’ involvements will depend on teachers’ planning and skills for managing the classroom. communicative skills priority in englishcommunicative skills priority in englishcommunicative skills priority in englishcommunicative skills priority in englishcommunicative skills priority in english classesclassesclassesclassesclasses concerning this aspect, parents pointed to speaking skills as the most important, maybe because they see it as the least developed skill in their children. teachers and most students give equal importance to all skills. some students marked the box indicating that the four skills are equally important, but at the same time marked reading and writing skills as the least relevant. this is a phenomenon worth exploring. strengths and wstrengths and wstrengths and wstrengths and wstrengths and weaknesses of the englisheaknesses of the englisheaknesses of the englisheaknesses of the englisheaknesses of the english programmeprogrammeprogrammeprogrammeprogramme this item conveyed various topics like teaching effectiveness, contents relevance, real impact of the programme in students’ daily life, evaluation, methodologies, community participation in programme design, among others (see appendix 1). the purpose of these items was, in the first place, to determine the aspects perceived as successful in the existing english programme so we could keep them in a new proposal. secondly, ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○17 profileprofileprofileprofileprofile revising a foreign language curriculum determining the ones seen as weaknesses so they could be improved. we obtained varied, even opposite, answers to the items. for instance, parents and teachers’ opinions regarding weaknesses and strengths were contradictory. teachers believe pupils’ role in their own learning process is a weakness because, apparently, students do not do anything more that what they are instructed. on the contrary, parents see pupils’ learning as a strength. this viewpoint is supported by the obser vation of their children doing homework. on the other hand, regarding community participation, both groups agreed on the fact that educational community participation in programme designing is a weakness. regarding participation, most students said they contribute to the elaboration of english programmes and teachers accept their contributions. while most students believe the effectiveness of english teaching is a strength, there is still a group that believes it is a weakness. the perception as regards the effectiveness of english teaching as a weakness could possibly be caused by the lack of a sense of achievement, among some students. despite the fact that no markers were established to indicate effectiveness, the answers show how students have a different perception vis-à-vis the effectiveness of english teaching. this is also true for students’ role in their own learning process. some of them see it as a strength, while others consider it a weakness. there are also mixed opinions about evaluation processes and contents sequencing. another not evident aspect that can be considered a strength of the english programme is the variety of strategies and activities used in class. this contributes to promoting a positive attitude among students towards the subject since some of them are able to say they have had “positive experiences” regarding english. this can also increase self-confidence and motivation regarding performance in a foreign language. the aspect mentioned above can be the explanation for students’ preference concerning english. this works both ways. successful experiences foster motivation and commitment, while negative experiences result in students’ dislike of english. ffffformal evaluation of students’ pormal evaluation of students’ pormal evaluation of students’ pormal evaluation of students’ pormal evaluation of students’ performanceerformanceerformanceerformanceerformance results regarding evaluation were also varied. parents think teachers give a lot of relevance to behavior in the classroom, followed by attitude and creativity as criteria to assess their children’s performance/skill, while tasks and extra class activities are not that relevant. teachers also give relevance to creativity, but do not consciously accept the importance they give to extra class activities and homework. most pupils differ with both perceptions; they think values, contents and teamwork are central to evaluation done by teachers. students’ individual attitudes and learning processes are poorly mentioned in the evaluation processes. it is possible that the different perceptions identified show that evaluation is still seen as an accumulative process rather than a formative one. this could also be why students’ individual attitudes, learning processes and, in many cases, values appear to be neglected. highly related with evaluation is the students’ profile for each grade. most parents agreed that they did not know what the students’ profile was for each grade. on the contrary, teachers and students say they have a clear picture of the profile each grade requires. these opposing answers can be explained by the lack of socialization of this aspect with parents. although this aspect seems perfectly clear, there still remains the weak relation between evaluation processes and students’ profile. a formative process should contribute to profile students according to the level they are on. since evaluation appears to be an accumulative process, questions such as the following emerged: is there really such clarity regarding students’ profile? is the profile grounded on grammar topics rather than on skills management? ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ 18 ortiz, camelo, martín, sarmiento, and ruiz profileprofileprofileprofileprofile english programmeenglish programmeenglish programmeenglish programmeenglish programme regarding programmes and objectives for english as a subject, parents manifested they do not know them; they do not know of the resources that can support the learning processes at school either. teachers pointed out the main objective of english to be the development of communicative skills and competences. according to them, english should serve as support for learning other subjects. this can be explained by the fact that teachers agree on the general objective of english, but they have not established a clear set of objectives according to grades. although teachers said it was important to make english a cross-curricular subject, there is not an objective in the programme towards this aim. the lack of a formal set of objectives, rather than a hidden one, explains parents’ lack of knowledge about the objective and the programme itself. when asked about the need for a new and specific curriculum for english, many teachers said it was not pertinent, while others said it was necessary. these apparent contradictions can be a consequence of the various views regarding curriculum and its components. those teachers who want a separate programme for english support their claim on the need of better instructional programmes. teachers who do not want a separate programme support their claims on the argument that the unified english-spanish curriculum benefits the learning process, since both entail languages linguistic skills. another aspect that must be taken into account for the accomplishment of programmes is the resources available at school. based on teachers’ answers, it can be said that there are resources at school, but they are probably not used as they should be. teachers also mention the need of training for using different resources and support for those resources. these elements can be linked as follows: although the school has resources such as the language laboratory, not every teacher uses it because they are not trained or because it is not properly functioning, resulting in a waste of time. learning attitudes and strategieslearning attitudes and strategieslearning attitudes and strategieslearning attitudes and strategieslearning attitudes and strategies parents were asked if they considered that their children had independent learning attitudes according to their age. most of them said yes. only a small group of parents said they did not believe their children were independent learners. parents mentioned the use of audiovisual aids, repeated reading and asking older people for help as some of the learning strategies of their children. according to the contradiction shown in the teachers’ answers regarding learning strategies, it is possible to say that there is not a clear idea of what learning strategies are, how to use them or in which skills they may be more successful. it is also possible that teachers do not have a clear distinction among learning and teaching strategies. keeping in mind these results, it is also possible to contradict parents’ belief regarding their children’s independent learning attitude. parents may have a misconception about what learning strategies are and what independent study is, or, at least, they have no total clarity about these processes. if the objective of schools’ p.e.i. is fostering industrial leadership, it is clear that a process and attitude which promote students’ ownership of their learning processes should be enhanced. this is why teachers, parents and students should be encouraged to direct attention to learning attitudes and strategies that will eventually promote independent learning. fffffurther suggestionsurther suggestionsurther suggestionsurther suggestionsurther suggestions there was a space left for participants to write further suggestions or contributions. information submitted in the space dealt mainly with time devoted to english lessons, technical english regarding schools’ context, innovation in programmes and methodology, and, finally, the implementation of “bilingualism” in public schools. all these suggestions appear to be more demand-oriented than commitment-oriented. teachers and parents asked for improvement, but did not contribute with ideas for achieving what they proposed. ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○19 profileprofileprofileprofileprofile revising a foreign language curriculum regarding time devoted to english lessons, some parents and teachers commented on the need for more lessons per week. the fact that it was not a generalized suggestion may be interpreted in many forms. anyway, we think this aspect requires further exploration. other comments alluded to the need of a serious and qualified technical english programme regarding the school’s context. however, no one expressed a clear definition or purpose for such programme, neither what “qualified” meant to them. innovation in programmes and methodology was also mentioned in this section, but there was no further development on this topic. finally, some participants referred to the implementation of bilingualism at public schools, focusing on how important it could be for pupils, but there were not any proposals or contributions. conclconclconclconclconclusions and implicusions and implicusions and implicusions and implicusions and implicaaaaationstionstionstionstions when analyzing the existing curriculum, we wondered why it did not seem successful. the answer relied on the fact that, according to our findings, a successful curriculum requires that community members become active participants, researchers and authors and not only “evaluators” or “performers”. a curriculum is meaningful to the people who have helped design it. the next concern was why it did not seem to be operative. this could be a result of the multiplicity of beliefs and attitudes towards english as a subject. even among teachers, who are supposed to agree on the instructional programme, there are various interpretations of the same item. we do not try to omit the importance of multiplicity, but we think the lack of agreement and commitment causes teachers to follow different and improvised instructional programmes. regarding the results of the surveys, we can begin with the mixed reactions among students, parents and teachers. this phenomenon can be caused by the lack of unified criteria regarding english as a subject which relates with the lack of communication among different groups of the community. it can also be caused by the different experiences towards english learning. for example, students’ preferences regarding english can be based on successful experiences that foster motivation and commitment, or negative experiences that result in students’ dislike of english. consequently, the different reactions and perceptions that community members had about some aspects of the english programme showed the need of providing scenarios for discussing curriculum and curricular proposals, where teachers, parents, students and even managing staff can get unified criteria for english teaching. the different opinions regarding evaluation processes can be the result of the lack of a unified evaluation process, the lack of unified criteria when evaluating and the lack of a new vision on evaluation. then, clear evaluation guidelines become a central element when designing a curricular platform. regarding the correlation between the english programme and the school’s p.e.i., it is clear that if the objective of schools’ p.e.i. is fostering industrial leadership, processes and attitudes which promote students’ ownership of their learning processes should be enhanced. the fact that students see reading and writing skills as the least relevant and that parents see speaking as the least developed could be explained by a lack of confidence in pupils’ performance regarding speaking. it could also be related to a lack of practice in listening. whatever the cause may be, the implementation of an english programme whose contents and methodology favor the equal development of the four skills can contribute to defeat the idea that one skill is more important than the other. the varied preferences shown by community members made us think that it is imperative to look for methodologies which can satisfy the wide range of needs and likes. the methodologies chosen should be able to encompass teachers’ different practices, students’ backgrounds and parents’ quests and policies demands. they should be also ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ 20 ortiz, camelo, martín, sarmiento, and ruiz profileprofileprofileprofileprofile coherent enough to guide processes successfully. moreover, these methodologies should also be flexible enough to allow participants’ contributions. bearing in mind the multiplicity of teachers’ backgrounds and interests, we decided to use an eclectic methodology based mainly on the project work approach, task-based approach and whole language approach. they become a suitable complement for a communicative approach. project work gives pupils a “set of steps” they can follow at their own pace in order to accomplish an objective. these steps provide them with a learning path and permit them to see the results of their learning process in artifacts. this approach responds to the understanding of classroom context and human learning and intelligence mentioned by brown. the task-based approach helps teachers to guide intellectual development through suitable learning experiences which can promote the development and refining of communicative competences. this approach takes advantage of successful experiences and skills used when learning a first language in order to learn a second one, as shown in one of the principles mentioned above. the whole language approach answers questions about the role of english. english as a language and subject is now conceived as a source of information about any topic and whose mastery is achieved by practicing with communicative purposes. this means errors and correction build language. this concept agrees with the place errors are given in brown’s work (1994). finally, the communicative approach can be successfully combined with contributions from the other approaches, enhancing the understanding of second language acquisition. changes that will allow for improvement in the teaching and learning processes at i.t.i francisco josé de caldas school are urgently needed. all community members should take part in it, but teachers are the ones that should lead the process. bearing in mind the need of an operative curriculum, we should begin decisions about the elements it may include and which are relevant according to the situation at school. we should also suggest courses of action rather than criticize the existing programmes. all community members should take an active role in the design of instructional programmes. the school should provide scenarios for parents’ and students’ contributions in order to foster a sense of ownership. the methodology presented in the project provides a relevant role to pupils in their learning process and their responsibility towards knowledge acquisition. learning can no longer be only teachers’ responsibility. pupils should be instructed not only on contents but also on how they can learn better. independent learning should be part of the pedagogical model at i.t.i francisco josé de caldas school. teachers should also begin with this process by implementing independent learning strategies and a learning environment in their teaching practice. in order to improve teaching practice, teachers need to find the opportunities for continuous training. this will provide innovation and success to both learning and teaching processes. this can furnish teachers with more information, knowledge and tools to change their contexts, taking into account that english learning is relevant in our environment. this project has been a huge task to accomplish. we are not finished yet, but we do believe change is possible by having the community participate, using what we have, setting clear goals, simplifying processes to make them more effective, evaluating actions taken, etc. this assertion can be interpreted as dreaming about better perspectives, if you wish, but the only way to make this dream come true is taking action, taking the first steps towards improvement. teachers tend to be dreamers. the task is now to become executors. limitlimitlimitlimitlimitaaaaationstionstionstionstions when analyzing results from the surveys, it was clear that some concepts had various interpretations according to the group that was ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○21 profileprofileprofileprofileprofile revising a foreign language curriculum answering it. this represented a problem since it did not let us clearly establish facts as opposed to beliefs. management staff was not involved enough in the process of this project. only two coordinators answered the survey. teamwork is interesting but sometimes it is not easy since getting an agreement can be complex and time-consuming, especially when such complex topics are tackled along the whole process. it was not possible to gather information from students and parents of primary school because of time restrictions. something similar happened with parents of eleventh grade students who did not send back the surveys. as a consequence, it was impossible to include their opinions and contributions. at writing this article, we had just begun considering the contents for each grade, since doing this implies an active participation of all teaching staff at school in order to define a pertinent and satisfactory sequence of contents from preschool to eleventh grade. further researchfurther researchfurther researchfurther researchfurther research hopefully, we will be able to continue with the present project with the participation and support from the community. that is why we plan to socialize the project at school and invite the community to continue with us in the effort to establish cross-curricular relationships and achieve english being combined with other subjects. we would also like to continue receiving support from the sed with programmes like english teachers networks, pfpd programmes and proficiency programmes. acknowledgementsacknowledgementsacknowledgementsacknowledgementsacknowledgements the authors would like to thank fellow teachers john jairo viáfara, melba libia cárdenas and other members of profile pfpd programme for kindly helping to foster our project development as well as the students, parents and teachers who willingly participated in the project. referencesreferencesreferencesreferencesreferences bailey, k. (1998). learning about language assessment. boston: heinle & heinle publishers. brown, h. d. (1994). teaching by principles: an interactive approach to language pedagogy. san francisco state university: prentice hall regents. butler, a. (1987). whole language: a framework for thinking. crystal lake, il: rigby. iafrancesco, v. g. (1998). la gestión curricular: problemática y perspectivas. bogotá: libros & libres. katz, l., & chard, s. (1989). engaging children’s minds: the project approach. new jersey: ablex publishing corporation. m.e.n. (2003). lineamientos curriculares. idiomas extranjeros. bogotá: editorial unión. moore, d. k. (2001). classroom teaching skills (5th ed.). eastern new mexico university: mcgraw hill. action oriented research: grounded theory and grounded action. praxis inquiry. (n.d.). retrieved october 15, 2005, from http:// home.earthlink.net/~edreforum/id1.html nunan, d. (1992). collaborative language learning and teaching. cambridge: cambridge university press. santos, d. (2001). the making of a foreign language curriculum: telling the story. colombian applied linguistics journal, 3(1), 49-68. simmons, o. e., & gregory, t. a. (2003). grounded action: achieving optimal and sustainable change. forum: qualitative social research. retrieved octuber 15, 2005, from http://qualitativeresearch.net/fqs-texte/3-03/3-03simmonsgregorye_p.html weaver, c. (1984). reading process and practice: from socio-psycholinguistics to whole language. porthsmouth: heinemann. ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ 22 ortiz, camelo, martín, sarmiento, and ruiz profileprofileprofileprofileprofile appendix 1: encuestappendix 1: encuestappendix 1: encuestappendix 1: encuestappendix 1: encuesta pa pa pa pa para estudiantesara estudiantesara estudiantesara estudiantesara estudiantes en la actualidad un grupo representativo de maestros del departamento de humanidades está llevando a cabo un proyecto de investigación-innovación en la enseñanza y aprendizaje del idioma inglés como lengua extranjera con el fin de reestructurar la plataforma curricular de esta asignatura. en este proceso la participación de los estudiantes es garantía de validez y confiabilidad, por este motivo lo invitamos a diligenciar de la manera más completa y con el máximo de objetividad posible la siguiente encuesta. agradecemos su colaboración. fecha __________________ jornada: mañana ___ tarde ___ nivel: básica primaria ___ básica secundaria ___ media ___ 1. asigne un puntaje a cada una de las siguientes actividades de acuerdo a su gusto por ellas, el número 5 representa el mayor puntaje, mientras el número 1 representa el menor. item 1 2 3 4 5 a. presentaciones orales. b. lectura de textos. c. producción escrita. d. traducciones. e. actividades con casetes y videos. f. actividades que involucran trabajo manual. g. juegos. 2. marque con una x la forma en que más le gusta realizar las actividades propuestas en clase. item 1 2 3 4 5 a. individual. b. en pareja. c. en grupo. 3. asigne un puntaje a cada una de las siguientes metodologías de acuerdo a la efectividad que usted le atribuye, el número 5 representa el mayor puntaje, mientras el número 1 representa el menor. item 1 2 3 4 5 a. aprendizaje basado en actividades con una finalidad comunicativa. b. aprendizaje basado en actividades físicas. c. aprendizaje basado en clubes y centros de interés. d. aprendizaje basado en tareas y proyectos. e. enseñanza enfocada en los contenidos académicos. f. enseñanza del idioma como instrumento de adquisición de conocimiento. 4. asigne un puntaje a cada una de las siguientes habilidades comunicativas de acuerdo a la prioridad que usted le otorga, número 5 otorga el mayor valor y el número 1 el menor. item 1 2 3 4 5 a. hablar b. leer c. escribir d. escuchar e. todas las anteriores ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○23 profileprofileprofileprofileprofile revising a foreign language curriculum 5. ¿sus sugerencias son tenidas en cuenta por el docente en la programación de la asignatura? si__ no__ 6. califique los siguientes aspectos del programa de inglés vigente como fortaleza o debilidad. el número 1 representa una fortaleza mientras que el número 2 representa una debilidad. item 1 2 a. efectividad de la enseñanza del inglés b. pertinencia de los contenidos c. rol de los estudiantes en su formación. d. sistema de evaluación. 7. marque con una x los aspectos que son tenidos en cuenta por el docente en el momento de la evaluación. item a. contenidos de la asignatura b. tareas y trabajo extraescolar c. trabajo en equipo d. procesos de aprendizaje e. aptitudes individuales f. comportamiento dentro de la clase g. actitud disciplinaria h. creatividad i. valores j. otro __ ¿cuál? 8. ¿cuáles de las siguientes modalidades de evaluación se aplican en su clase de inglés? item a. autoevaluación. b. coevaluación. c. heteroevaluación. 9. ¿cree usted que el aprendizaje del inglés es importante para su vida? si___ no___ 10. escoja la opción que representa el nivel de preferencia que ocupa el inglés entre las asignaturas que cursa en el instituto. item a. está entre las primeras. b. está en la mitad de mis preferencias. c. está en el último lugar de mis preferencias. 11. ¿ha trabajado en actividades variadas y nuevas en la clase de inglés? si___ no___ gracias por su valiosa colaboración. ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ 24 ortiz, camelo, martín, sarmiento, and ruiz profileprofileprofileprofileprofile appendix 2: encuestappendix 2: encuestappendix 2: encuestappendix 2: encuestappendix 2: encuesta pa pa pa pa para docentesara docentesara docentesara docentesara docentes en la actualidad un grupo representativo de maestros del departamento de humanidades está llevando a cabo un proyecto de investigación-innovación en la enseñanza y aprendizaje del idioma inglés como lengua extranjera con el fin de reestructurar la plataforma curricular de esta asignatura. en este proceso la participación de los docentes es garantía de validez y confiabilidad, por este motivo lo invitamos a diligenciar de la manera más completa y con el máximo de objetividad posible la siguiente encuesta. agradecemos su colaboración. fecha ____________________ jornada: mañana ___ tarde ___ nivel: básica primaria ___ básica secundaria ___ media ___ 1. asigne un puntaje a cada una de las metodologías, dando prioridad a la(s) que más utiliza en su práctica. marque con una x la casilla de su elección, recuerde que el número 5 otorga el mayor valor, mientras que el número 1 otorga el menor valor. item 1 2 3 4 5 a. enseñanza comunicativa b. respuesta física total c. método natural d. aprendizaje basado en tareas y proyectos e. enseñanza enfocada en el contenido académico f. lenguaje integral h. ¿otro? ¿cuál? 2. ¿a cuál de las habilidades comunicativas le da prioridad en su clase? asigne un puntaje teniendo en cuenta que el número 5 otorga el mayor valor y el número 1 el menor. item 1 2 3 4 5 a. hablar b. leer c. escribir d. escuchar e. todas las anteriores 3. califique los siguientes aspectos del programa de inglés vigente como fortaleza o debilidad. el número 1 representa una fortaleza mientras que el número 2 representa una debilidad. item 1 2 a. efectividad de la enseñanza del inglés b. pertinencia de los contenidos c. secuencia de los contenidos d. rol de los estudiantes en su formación e. metodologías utilizadas f. sistemas de evaluación g. participación de la comunidad educativa en la programación h. otro__ ¿cuál? 4. ¿ha notado motivación en su hijo para el aprendizaje del inglés? ___________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○25 profileprofileprofileprofileprofile revising a foreign language curriculum 5. asigne un valor a cada uno de las siguientes opciones de acuerdo a la que usted otorga mayor importancia o énfasis en su evaluación del estudiante. el número 5 otorga el mayor valor y el número 1 el menor. item 1 2 3 4 5 a. contenidos de la asignatura b. tareas y trabajo extraescolar c. trabajo en equipo d. procesos de aprendizaje e. aptitudes individuales f. comportamiento dentro de la clase g. actitud disciplinaria h. creatividad i. valores j. otro __ ¿cuál? 6. ¿conoce usted el perfil que debe tener el estudiante al finalizar cada grado? si___ no__ 7. ¿conoce usted la programación y los objetivos de la asignatura? si___ no__ 8. ¿sabe usted si la programación anual se cumple? si___ no__ 9. ¿conoce usted los recursos con los que cuenta la comunidad educativa para apoyar la enseñanza del inglés? si___ no__ 10. ¿está usted de acuerdo con la intensidad horaria de inglés (dos horas semanales)? si___ no__ 11. ¿considera usted que su(s) hijo(s) puede(n) definirse como estudiante que, de acuerdo a su grado y edad, ejerce(n) un aprendizaje independiente? si___ no__ 12. ¿considera usted que los estudiantes a su cargo pueden definirse como estudiantes que, de acuerdo a su grado y edad, ejercen un aprendizaje independiente? si___ no__ 13. ¿qué estrategias de aprendizaje ha visto que sus hijos empleen? mencione dos. __________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________ 14. organice jerárquicamente las habilidades de acuerdo a la importancia que usted le otorga en el mundo actual. el número 5 otorga el mayor valor, mientras que el número 1 representa el menor valor. item 1 2 3 4 5 a. conversación b. escritura c. escucha d. lectura 15. si usted tiene un aporte relevante que no se haya tenido en cuenta, por favor regístrelo en este espacio. ____________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________ gracias por su valiosa colaboración. ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ 26 ortiz, camelo, martín, sarmiento, and ruiz profileprofileprofileprofileprofile appendix 3: encuestappendix 3: encuestappendix 3: encuestappendix 3: encuestappendix 3: encuesta pa pa pa pa para para para para para padresadresadresadresadres en la actualidad un grupo representativo de maestros del departamento de humanidades está llevando a cabo un proyecto de investigación-innovación en la enseñanza y aprendizaje del idioma inglés como lengua extranjera con el fin de reestructurar la plataforma curricular de esta asignatura. en este proceso la participación de los padres de familia es garantía de validez y confiabilidad, por este motivo lo invitamos a diligenciar de la manera más completa y con el máximo de objetividad posible la siguiente encuesta. agradecemos su colaboración. fecha ____________________ jornada: mañana ___ tarde ___ nivel al cual pertenece su hijo: básica primaria ___ básica secundaria ___ media ___ 1. marque con una x las metodologías que usted está enterado los docentes emplean en las clases de inglés con sus hijos. item a. enseñanza comunicativa b. respuesta física total c. método natural d. aprendizaje basado en tareas y proyectos e. enseñanza enfocada en el contenido académico f. lenguaje integral g. ¿otro? ¿cuál? 2. ¿a cuál de las siguientes habilidades se le da prioridad en las clases de inglés de su(s) hijo(s)? asigne un puntaje teniendo en cuenta que el número 5 otorga el mayor valor y el número 1 el menor. item 1 2 3 4 5 a. hablar b. leer c. escribir d. escuchar e. todas las anteriores 3. califique los siguientes aspectos del programa de inglés vigente como fortaleza o debilidad. el número 1 representa una fortaleza mientras que el número 2 representa una debilidad. item 1 2 a. efectividad de la enseñanza del inglés b. pertinencia de los contenidos c. secuencia de los contenidos d. rol de los estudiantes en su formación e. metodologías utilizadas f. sistemas de evaluación g. participación de la comunidad educativa en la programación h. otro__ ¿cuál? ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○27 profileprofileprofileprofileprofile revising a foreign language curriculum 4. ¿ha notado motivación en su hijo para el aprendizaje del inglés? si ___ no ___ 5. asigne un valor a cada uno de las siguientes opciones de acuerdo con su percepción de lo que prima al momento de evaluar al estudiante. el número 5 otorga el mayor valor y el número 1 el menor. item 1 2 3 4 5 a. contenidos de la asignatura b. tareas y trabajo extraescolar c. trabajo en equipo d. procesos de aprendizaje e. aptitudes individuales f. comportamiento dentro de la clase g. actitud disciplinaria h. creatividad i. valores j. otro __ ¿cuál? 6. ¿conoce usted el perfil que debe tener el estudiante al finalizar cada grado? si ___ no ___ 7. ¿conoce usted la programación y los objetivos de la asignatura? si ___ no ___ 8. ¿sabe usted si la programación anual de la asignatura se cumple? si ___ no ___ 9. ¿conoce usted los recursos con los que cuenta la comunidad educativa para apoyar la enseñanza del inglés? si ___ no ___ 10. ¿está usted de acuerdo con la intensidad horaria de inglés (2 horas semanales)? si ___ no ___ ¿por qué? _______________________________________________________________ ____________________________________________________________________________ 11. ¿qué estrategias propone para optimizar el uso de la sala de bilingüismo? a. _______________________________________________________________ b. _______________________________________________________________ c. _______________________________________________________________ 12. ¿considera usted que sus hijos pueden definirse como estudiantes que, de acuerdo a su grado y edad, ejercen un aprendizaje independiente? si ___ no ___ 13. ¿qué estrategias de aprendizaje ha visto que sus hijos empleen? mencione 2 a._______________________________________________________________ b._______________________________________________________________ 14. organice jerárquicamente las habilidades en las que cree que puede emplear mayor número de estrategias de aprendizaje. el número 5 otorga el mayor valor, mientras que el número 1 representa el menor valor. ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ 28 ortiz, camelo, martín, sarmiento, and ruiz profileprofileprofileprofileprofile item 1 2 3 4 5 a. conversación b. escritura c. escucha d. lectura 15. organice las estrategias de acuerdo a la aplicación en sus clases, comience por la de mayor aplicación. el número 5 otorga el mayor valor, mientras que el número 1 representa el menor valor. si hay algunas que no emplee deje la casilla en blanco. item 1 2 3 4 5 a. toma de apuntes b. mapas semánticos c. mapas mentales d. categorización e. nemotécnica f. elaboración g. auto-evaluación 16. si usted tiene un aporte relevante que no se haya tenido en cuenta, por favor regístrelo en este espacio. __________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________ gracias por su valiosa colaboración. ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○29 profileprofileprofileprofileprofile revising a foreign language curriculum a pp en d ix 4 : w a pp en d ix 4 : w a pp en d ix 4 : w a pp en d ix 4 : w a pp en d ix 4 : w aaaa a ys t o r ea d t h e in fo r m a ys t o r ea d t h e in fo r m a ys t o r ea d t h e in fo r m a ys t o r ea d t h e in fo r m a ys t o r ea d t h e in fo r m a t io n c o ll ec t ed i n t h e st u d t io n c o ll ec t ed i n t h e st u d t io n c o ll ec t ed i n t h e st u d t io n c o ll ec t ed i n t h e st u d t io n c o ll ec t ed i n t h e st u d yyyy y ex pe rie nc e in te re st s pf pd a na ly si s d is cu ss io n pr es en ta tio n fe ed ba ck d isc us sio n c ur ri cu la r d es ig n c ur ri cu la r d es ig n c ur ri cu la r d es ig n c ur ri cu la r d es ig n c ur ri cu la r d es ig n to pi c te ac he rs ’ ex pe rie nc e an d ob se rv at io n ex is tin g cu rr ic ul um su rv ey s tttt t e ac he rs ea ch er s ea ch er s ea ch er s ea ch er s sc ho ol s’ r ea lit y sc ho ol s’ r ea lit y sc ho ol s’ r ea lit y sc ho ol s’ r ea lit y sc ho ol s’ r ea lit y so ur so ur so ur so ur so ur ce s of in fo rm at io n ce s of in fo rm at io n ce s of in fo rm at io n ce s of in fo rm at io n ce s of in fo rm at io n d at a d at a d at a d at a d at a tutorial plan to support the english speaking skill of an inga student of an initial teacher education program profile 8, 2007. issn 1657-0790. bogotá, colombia. pages 121-130 121 tutorial plan to support the english speaking skill of an inga student of an initial teacher education program* plan tutorial para apoyar el desarrollo de la habilidad oral en inglés de un estudiante de filología e idiomas que pertenece al grupo indígena inga deissy angélica velandia moncada** universidad nacional de colombia this paper reports on a case study consisting of the implementation of a tutorial plan as a way to support the improvement of the speaking skill of an inga indigenous student who had difficulties learning english as a third language. this study reveals the similarities of the learning process of the student to a traveler’s journey. on the way, the student asks his tutor for direction and support so he can get to the end of his journey on his own. likewise, it is described and analyzed how the student was helped to improve his oral communication skill in a more natural and meaningful way through tutoring sessions that incorporated principles of autonomous and task-based learning. key words: tutoring, oral skills, autonomous learning, task-based learning este documento reporta un estudio de caso que consistió en la implementación de un plan tutorial basado en la metodología de aprendizaje por tareas, para apoyar el desarrollo de la habilidad oral de un estudiante indígena inga quien presentaba dificultades en aprendizaje del inglés. el estudio revela la similitud del proceso de aprendizaje del estudiante, con el camino de un viajero. en el trayecto el estudiante solicita orientación y apoyo de la tutora para llegar a su destino por sus propios medios. así también, se describe y analiza la manera como se promovió y apoyó la producción oral de una manera natural y significativa por medio de sesiones tutoriales enmarcadas en el uso del aprendizaje por tareas y el aprendizaje autónomo. palabras clave: acción tutorial, la habilidad oral, el aprendizaje autónomo, el aprendizaje por tareas * this is a report of a monograph project to opt for the degree of b. ed. in philology and languages – english. universidad nacional de colombia, 2006. ** e-mail: davelandiam@unal.edu.co address: carrera 16 no.10-20 zipaquirá cundinamarca, colombia this article was received on march 31st, 2007 and accepted on july 16th, 2007. profile 8.indd 121 28/09/2007 12:42:24 a.m. velandia moncada universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras122 after years of concerted efforts, colombian indigenous groups have achieved, to a certain extent, inclusion and recognition in different socio-political spheres. we are starting to value their wide range of cultural and ethnic diversity. public universities of the country, aware of the continuing discrimination and disappearance of the colombian native communities, have facilitated their desires to study and to get professional degrees. this has brought about different expectations and needs that have not fully been taken into consideration yet. for instance, universities lack official tutoring services and follow-up for students coming from these communities who may find themselves in learning distress and in need of assistance. regarding this situation and taking into account a teacher’s report that his indigenous student had difficulties with the english language –especially his oral performance, we decided to use a formula teachers have to enhance learning processes and to generate changes that go beyond the classroom, which is classroom research in languages. we aimed to enquire for the reason of his difficulties by describing and analyzing the features of his oral communication in english and to guide and support him by implementing a tutoring plan. in order to protect the identity of the student, we assigned him a pseudonym: andrés. literature review since in this study we aimed to understand an issue that had unique and singular distinctions, we started by finding out about the cultural, social and political background of the student’s community. after that, as a way to improve the teaching and learning process, we studied tutoring techniques and the task-based learning approach. we also examined the nature of speaking and its implications. inga community this community is located in the department of putumayo, in the amazon region (arango & sánchez, 2004). the members descend from a peruvian in-digenous group: the kitchua. the community is divided into reservations. andrés belongs to the inga reservation of mocoa, whose current population is 609 inhabitants. their native language is inga but the community has almost lost it. inga is taught in schools as a curricular subject and is mostly spoken by the elderly and adult members of the group. young people usually understand it but cannot speak it fluently. spanish is broadly spoken by everyone in the community. the inganos believe in the everlasting bond between nature, life and spirit. they are respectful toward plants and the environment and have a strong sense of belonging. as in others indigenous communities, inganos are concerned about their representation in the political and social fields of the country and their presence in the universities is still low. they are also alarmed about the loss of their cultural uniqueness when they are to leave their communities to go to urban contexts in pursuit of professional education. indigenous students frequently find it difficult to adapt to this different environment, a fact that increases the percentage of desertion. tutoring programs that assist in-need students could be an answer to this crisis. profile 8.indd 122 28/09/2007 12:42:24 a.m. tutorial plan to support the english speaking skill of an inga student of an initial teacher education program profile 8, 2007. issn 1657-0790. bogotá, colombia. pages 121-130 123 tutoring and autonomy this aspect is of special interest since it is one of the foundations of the study. first, it must be highlighted that the tutor is to increase the confidence of the tutees, help them to learn autonomously, and assure that effective learning takes place. “tutoring is a pedagogic and educational strategy that is provided to guide and assist students to achieve integral learning. it also intends to stimulate the development of skills so that the learning of their discipline advantages students. to sum up, tutoring seeks the enhancing of students’ abilities and the overcoming of weaknesses in their learning process” (universidad colegio mayor de nuestra señora del rosario, 2000). the effectiveness of the tutorials was also revealed by a research study done in the universidad nacional de colombia in 1995 with students of a public high school who showed poor performance in the english class. researchers implemented a tutoring plan for them. in this study, the researchers found out that students who were helped via tutoring showed themselves more confident, motivated and engaged in class. they also acquired positive learning strategies and, in general, performed better academically (chirivi & jiménez, 1995). on the other hand, the role of the tutor is to promote learning processes by giving the students the tools to take responsibility for their own learning. a tutor is not supposed to tell but to make a student find answers. “your job as a tutor is to eventually become unemployed... actually, one of your best successes could be that a student no longer needs your services” (alves, 2002). the tutor has to get the student to find his/her own weaknesses. in this perspective, tutoring techniques are closely related to autonomous learning. one of the most important aims of tutoring is to promote autonomy and self reflection so that students become active in their own learning process. according to scharle & szabó (2000), becoming an autonomous learner is a gradual process achieved due to the changing of attitudes towards learning. in this study, besides helping the student to become independent, we needed to understand what kept andrés from being an effective communicator in english. for this reason, we acutely studied the nature and implications of speaking. oral production as stated by brown & yule (1983), the nature and functions of written language and spoken language are quite different; the former is distinguished by carefully planned explicit ideas, grammar and syntax. however, the latter implies that you have to decide on what to say next and how to state it while you are speaking. on the other hand, depending on the function, oral communication can be interactional (as in dialogues) or transactional (as in talks or monologs). brown and yule (ibid., p. 25) remark that these functions entail different factors and abilities e.g. fluency, pronunciation, rhythm, listener’s feedback, oral comprehension, discourse structure, turn taking, etc. all these aspects, among others, may affect the organization of the speakers’ utterances and the information communicated. bygate (1997) considered the differences between native oral production and efl learners’ oral production. he asserts that profile 8.indd 123 28/09/2007 12:42:24 a.m. velandia moncada universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras124 even when native speakers are believed to have an impeccable oral performance, they may also apply strategies to overcome time constraints and other factors that the nature of oral production involves. some of these strategies are hypostasis, parataxis, ellipsis, formulaic expressions, time creating devices and compensation strategies. on the other hand, efl students more likely may use achievement and reduction strategies. achievement strategies involve guessing, paraphrasing and cooperation. guessing occurs when a student, having some knowledge of the operation of the language, invents, “foreignizes” or creates words. the learner paraphrases when, instead of using the exact word, he gives its definition, an example, or, he/she subordinates it (lexical substitution strategy and cirlocution). finally, examples of cooperation strategies are miming, pointing, eliciting/asking for help from the interlocutor. reduction strategies happen when students definitely cannot find a way to express an idea; so, they decide to either communicate an imperfect message or communicate a message other than the one intended initially (a message that the speaker finds easier to manage). these strategies mentioned here should be considered when analyzing and assessing oral communication. students should recognize them as positive aids to avoid resorting either to the l1 or silence. nevertheless, students should aim to get to a level where they do not need the aids as often. besides, efl teachers should also be conscious that to expect perfect oral performance from an efl learner is unnatural and irrational. these ideas related to autonomous learning, tutoring and oral skills let us understand andrés’s difficulties in oral production and help him overcome them better. research questions the leading question for this research project was how can i effectively help and support an indigenous student to cope with his oral communication difficulties in english with tutoring? from this question, two secondary questions emerged: what are the features of a tutorial plan, which aims to enhance the oral skill of the student? and what are the features of his oral production during the tutoring sessions? researh method this study is framed in the qualitative research paradigm. this study has a dual nature. on the one hand, it is a case study given that it describes the happenings within a certain group of individuals in a specific context (wallace, 1998). a comprehensive and exhaustive study of the learning process of the student and the features of his speaking performance would give us a holistic view of the factors affecting his oral production. on the other hand, this study shared principles with action research since it aimed to take part in this problematic situation by identifying the problem, reflecting, making decisions and taking actions (kogan, 2004). in this study, i, as the researcher, played a mixed role: one as an observer-researcher and one as a tutor. context the b. ed. in philology and languages (english, german or french) is a curricular profile 8.indd 124 28/09/2007 12:42:24 a.m. tutorial plan to support the english speaking skill of an inga student of an initial teacher education program profile 8, 2007. issn 1657-0790. bogotá, colombia. pages 121-130 125 program provided at universidad nacional de colombia in bogotá. this university grants members of indigenous communities of the country the opportunity to study a professional career through the programa especial de admisión para bachilleres miembros de comunidades indígenas (special admissions program for high school students who are members of indigenous communities). an important number of indigenous students have benefited from this program since it was implemented in 1986. description of the participant andrés was a second semester student of the b. ed. in philology and languages, english. he had to repeat the english basic i course (equivalent to a pre-intermediate level) because he did not fulfill the requirements to pass to the next course. his teachers identified some difficulties mostly in the areas of grammar, speaking and listening. in this study, we focused on his oral performance whose main features were hesitation, use of spanish or hispanic constructions and difficulties organizing ideas and getting the message across. however, his attitude towards the language and the tutoring plan was very positive, showing commitment, interest and enthusiasm. he is a member of the inga community of putumayo. his close family remains there. his first language is spanish; he understands and speaks inga fairly well. he uses it mostly when speaking to his grandparents, aunts and uncles. he started to study english in secondary school two hours a week where the teacher barely had communicative activities in the class. data collection and methodology the data came from different sources, a tutee survey, a teacher’s survey, direct observation, and a follow-up format. this study was conducted from march to november, 2006. the first step was to carry out the surveys with andrés and his current and previous teachers in the university (four teachers in total) to become aware of the problem and state of the art. the tutor-researcher observed andrés’s oral performance in the communicative tasks and recorded details in the follow up format as they happened in the tutoring session. at the end of the session, the student reflected upon his learning process and strategies and recorded his thoughts in the follow-up format. pedagogical design taking into account the report of andrés’s past and current teachers in english basic i course, the decision made was to focus on assisting the student to enhance his speaking skill and to complement the tutoring by helping him to work on his learning strategies and autonomy. the tutoring sessions were arranged twice a week for one and a half hour each. the first part of the tutoring session was based on task-based learning (tbl) in order to give the tutee the opportunity to use the language creatively and spontaneously and to reflect meaningfully on its use. the features of the tbl approach by willis (1995) were appropriate for the purpose of this part of the tutoring since it focuses on the achievement of an outcome. the completion of the tasks was done in three stages or cycles: pre-task, profile 8.indd 125 28/09/2007 12:42:24 a.m. velandia moncada universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras126 when the topic and instructions were given. the task cycle, when the student planned, developed and reported the task. and finally, the language analysis cycle, that included a reflection and practice of the language used and its features. the second part of the tutoring session focused on the methodology of the learner’s autonomy as it provided andrés with important and resourceful methods to approach and reflect on language learning. andrés was asked to self-evaluate his performance in the session and in his regular classes. with the guidance of the tutor he stated his weaknesses and strengths and committed himself to put into practice on a regular basis some action plans. data analysis the data was gathered, analyzed and validated to ensure reliability. the validity was confirmed with the method of triangulation. the data came from surveys, direct observation and the follow-up format which was complemented with the tutee and tutor’s thoughts and reactions towards the process being carried out. thus, the researcher has a general view of the perceptions of all the participants involved in the process (teachers, tutee and tutor-researcher). the teacher’s surveys were a key instrument to identify andré’s weaknesses and strengths. his teachers agreed that his oral performance in class was not satisfactory due, in part, to poor previous preparation in the language. they stated that he required assistance and extra work. they also answered that the highest priority was helping the student to improve his speaking, pronunciation, grammar and listening skills. on the other hand, this survey helped to rule out the possibility of the student being affected by affective factors. teachers stated that he showed himself to be a confident, hard-working and motivated student, attitudes that were confirmed during the tutoring sessions. as for the analysis of the data collected by observation, journals and the student survey, we established the following categories. each of them are divided into two. showing the way traveling the way of the oral communication task-based learning: a way to promote oral production enhancing autonomy and self-reflection – – factors affecting oral production communication strategies – – chart 1. categories established in data analysis. showing the way is a metaphor that implies what we intended to achieve through tutoring, which included equipping andrés with the necessary tools to develop and improve his oral production and language learning autonomy. the first subcategory, task-based learning: a way to promote oral production tells us how tbl was a useful methodology when trying to involve the student in meaningful tasks that help him to recycle, extend, create and self-monitor the language he was using. most importantly, it reproduced the way the student learnt inga. andrés stated that learning inga was easier given that at the age of 8, he had lived for a long period of time in a community where spanish was barely spoken. profile 8.indd 126 28/09/2007 12:42:24 a.m. tutorial plan to support the english speaking skill of an inga student of an initial teacher education program profile 8, 2007. issn 1657-0790. bogotá, colombia. pages 121-130 127 he also took inga classes in the primary school where it was taught through stories and was usually connected to other subjects such as science and religion. during the tutoring sessions, it was clear that by trying to achieve the goal of the tasks, andrés interacted creatively, naturally and spontaneously. he was no longer worried about “correct” grammar but about getting the message across. during the tasks, the tutor let andrés speak freely but wrote down grammar or pronunciation mistakes so, in the second part of the session, they could discuss the problems. this helped the student not to feel intimidated or prevented to express his ideas. the student was also assigned listening to some audio books and commenting on them in the tutoring sessions. he was also given the corresponding reading, which provided him with language patterns and vocabulary. in a short time, the incorporation of new vocabulary, pronunciation and expressions from the reading and audio was evident. the continuous evaluation of the whole process allowed us to make decisions about learning strategies, study skills, learner preferences, etc. at the appropriate time. the discussions of the learning process taking place in the second part of the sessions revealed big advantages: the student increased his autonomy and self-reflection. for instance, he was aware that responsibility, commitment and work outside of class was vital in order to achieve real progress. in every session, the tutor guided the tutee through activities and discussions to reflect upon his own performance and progress. for instance, in the early sessions he stated: “in this tutorial session, i realized i still have problems with being more confident, and take risks to talk without fearing of making mistakes. so i commit to participate and interact more in classes and start using a monolingual dictionary”. our second category, trajectory to the oral communication, refers to what is involved and implied when speaking. we aimed to describe and analyze features of andrés’ oral production. bearing this in mind, we established two main issues to be taken into consideration: the factors affecting oral production and communication strategies. throughout the sessions, some factors that interfered with communication were evident. at the beginning, andrés had difficulties applying basic grammar rules at the moment of speaking even when he was aware of their existence. he used to void the auxiliaries in the questions and to structure his utterances with the wrong word order. in addition, he lacked understanding about informal and formal ways to express ideas; he was likely to use informal forms and chunks of language such as “yes” instead of “yes, i do” and “what?” when asking for clarification. andrés presented some pronunciation problems, especially with the following phonemes: /ð/ /æ/ /ə/ /e/ and in the final position of the words the phonemes: /ө/ /p/ /v/ /z/. the reason for this, almost certainly, was the lack of these phonemes in spanish or inga. in order to get the student to pronounce better, we decided to start practicing isolated phonemes, phonetic patterns, linking, assimilation, etc. we used the book “ship or sheep” (baker, 1997) and the “sky pronunciation suite” software. another factor that characterized the student’s oral communication was the use of spanish patterns. andrés had a tendency to do direct translations from spanish rather profile 8.indd 127 28/09/2007 12:42:24 a.m. velandia moncada universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras128 than looking for an equivalent meaning. for instance, he said “the sundays” instead of “on sundays”. in the survey, andrés answered that he frequently tried to translate expressions from spanish and that he found it difficult to think in english. he needed to internalize the target language and become aware of its features, but his reduced contact with english would not allow him to master the language. however, as time passed, andrés showed great progress. he frequently built complex utterances (subordinating) and started applying strategies to make communication flow. that is why a second subcategory of analysis was established: communication strategies. these strategies largely determined the success of the tutee; they were used in order to compensate for his imperfect mastery of the language when faced with a communicative task. based on bygate’s (1997) analysis of communication strategies, we could conclude that he recurrently used time creating devices, such as hesitations, false starts, pauses, repetitions. the following is a sample of this occurrence: tutee: mmm… fred don’t... don’t... (self-monitoring) doesn’t have… he doesn’t have… (hesitating and pausing) what do you say..? (tutor interrupts) tutor: how do you say? tutee: yes… how do you say: rencor? (follow-up format nº 16, october 20th). in this case, while andrés was trying to structure a correct sentence and remember the story, he self-monitored his utterances. as one can discover, he was also using a cooperation strategy in asking his interlocutor for the translation of “rencor”. in occasions, being aware of the morphology of the target language, the learner made up or translated words from spanish. for instance, he used “familiars” to mean “relatives” or “what more?” as opposed to a more appropriate english expression “what else?” the progress of the tutee was also evident when he avoided resorting to spanish but tried to find a way to express himself even taking the risk of making mistakes. we also took into consideration that according to brown & yule (1983), long transactional turns like retelling or reporting a story might be more demanding even for native speakers than interactional turns. in the tutoring, andrés was guided to be able to manage both situations. for instance, every week he had to listen to a chapter of an audio book “william wilson” by edgar allan poe. he was also given the book with an easier version of the story so he could understand the audiobook better. in the tutoring, he was to retell the chapter of the story he had listened to in the week so he had the opportunity to work on strategies to manage transactional turns and it was also a good way to reproduce the way he had learnt inga in his primary school. conclusions we could see that the personalized environment created in the tutoring sessions allowed andrés to be more confident and let him progress at his own pace, according to his specific needs. in addition, as opposed to the regular classes, the tutoring was a pressure-free activity in which the student did not worry about grades. tutoring also helped andrés to take responsibility for his learning process. the learner progressively discovered a great deal of profile 8.indd 128 28/09/2007 12:42:24 a.m. tutorial plan to support the english speaking skill of an inga student of an initial teacher education program profile 8, 2007. issn 1657-0790. bogotá, colombia. pages 121-130 129 “magic wands” for language learning. among the most important are self-reflection, selfevaluation, learning strategies, setting of goals and action plans. in the end, these tools became essential for the learner as he realized they enhanced his ability to learn the language. the findings obtained in this research proved that tbl and autonomous learning are suitable and efficient methodologies as they helped the tutee to shed his inhibitions and gradually started turning him into a fluent communicator. during the tutoring sessions, the learner was encouraged to communicate orally without focusing on syntactic and grammar accuracy but on getting the message across. although shortcomings of vocabulary, pronunciation and grammar were encountered during the tasks, with the tutor assistance and increased exposure to the language, the learner progressively started to internalize the language and felt more confident to use it spontaneously and creatively. for this reason, the use of communication strategies was more evident towards the end of the tutorial plan, as the student started to get engaged in meaningful communicative tasks and employed more frequently communication strategies in order to achieve the goal. although communicative strategies are short-term solutions, as soon as the student attains a higher level of mastery of the language, he starts reducing its use. the analysis of the features of andrés’s oral production indicated that his mother tongue, spanish, (and probably inga) was interfering with the learning of english. he used to transfer language patterns from l1 and was inclined to translate from spanish into english instead of thinking in the language. his difficulties with the language would be the result of several aspects. firstly, the way in which he was meant to acquire the english language was artificial as opposed to the way he had learnt spanish and inga. secondly, his previous preparation in the language was lower in relation to the one of the majority of his classmates and for teachers the class is not an appropriate setting to give individual assistance for students in-need. thirdly, andrés was not used to self-monitoring his oral performance and in general his use of the language. this experience made us reach the conclusion that tutors can assist the oral production and language learning process by promoting learner’s autonomy and language learning strategy awareness and use. likewise, the tutoring plan complemented the learn. ing process originated in the classroom. nevertheless, there is a long way ahead and andrés needs to continue by himself. pedagogical implications as a result of this teaching assistance experience, we were able to determine that lessons focusing only on vocabulary, grammar or pronunciation do not benefit a student with low academic performance. on the contrary, they would benefit more from lessons complemented with notions on learning strategies, communication strategies, study skills, and learner autonomy. bearing this in mind, the basic course’s teachers have a huge responsibility to be aware, understand and follow up each student process so that they can detect difficulties at the right time and help students to determine an action plan to overcome them. we also need to recognize the need of a tutoring program in the foreign language department of the universidad nacional de profile 8.indd 129 28/09/2007 12:42:24 a.m. velandia moncada universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras130 colombia. the university should guarantee the integral education of students by providing help for those who are in academic disadvantage. further research this study raises a few queries that remain unstudied but could be considered in further research. in colombia, little attention has been given to multilingualism due to the expansion of globalization; some members of indigenous communities are using three or more languages; spanish, their indigenous tongue and a foreign language. this multilingual process may present very interesting challenges and implications for our society which we are not aware of yet. likewise, there is quite a deal of studies about the inga community of sidmundoy but very little research has been done on the inga community of mocoa. this aspect made it difficult to corroborate possible interferences of inga in andrés oral performance. equally important, we need to study further repercussion of the role of language teachers as tutors who promote learners´ autonomy beyond regular classes. these unexplored fields are also worth studying. references alves d. (2002, december). tutorial and academic skills center deanza collage. retrieved may 02, 2006, from http://faculty.deanza.edu/ alvesdelimadiana/stories/storyreader$29/ arango, r., & sánchez, e. (2004). los pueblos indígenas de colombia: en el umbral del nuevo milenio. bogotá: departamento nacional de planeación. (pp. 33-34). retrieved june 14, 2006, from http://www.dnp.gov.co/archivos/ documentos/ddts_ordenamiento_desarrollo_ territorial/3g16librocapitulo8.pdf/ baker, a. (1997). ship or sheep? cambridge: cambridge university press. brown, g., & yule, g. (1983). teaching the spoken language. cambridge: cambridge university press. bygate, m. (1997). speaking. oxford: oxford university press. chirivi, r., & jiménez, m. (1995). ventajas de un plan tutorial ofrecido a estudiantes de secundaria que presentan un bajo rendimiento en inglés: estudio de caso. bogotá: universidad nacional de colombia. cohen, a., & fass, l. (april 2001). oral language instruction: teacher and learner. beliefs and the reality in efl classes at a colombian university. university of minnesota. retrieved march 15, 2006 from http://www.carla.umn.edu/about/ profiles/cohenpapers/cohen_paper2.pdf/ kogan, l. (2004). el lugar de las cosas salvajes: paradigmas teóricos, diseños de investigación y herramientas. espacio abierto, 3(1). venezuela. retrieved july 20, 2006, from http://redalyc. uaemex.mx/redalyc/pdf/122/12201302.pdf/ scharle, a., & szabo, a. (2000). learner autonomy: a guide to developing learner responsibility. cambridge: cambridge university press. sky pronunciation suite. (2000). sky software house universidad colegio mayor de nuestra señora del rosario. (2000). política de programa de tutoría. comité coordinador de tutores. bogotá. wallace, m. j. (1998). action research for language teachers. cambridge: cambridge university press. willis, j. (1995). a framework for task-based learning. essex: longman. about the author deissy angélica velandia moncada holds a b. ed. in philology and languages –english, from the universidad nacional de colombia, bogotá. she currently works in the alex program (aprendizaje autónomo de lenguas extranjeras) at the same university. profile 8.indd 130 28/09/2007 12:42:24 a.m. 95profile vol. 12, no. 1, 2010. issn 1657-0790. bogotá, colombia. pages 95-106 teaching english through stories: a meaningful and fun way for children to learn the language la enseñanza del inglés a través de historias: una forma divertida y significativa para que los niños aprendan el idioma nohora inés porras gonzález* universidad cooperativa de colombia this article presents the results of a study on utilizing stories for teaching english as a foreign language to children in first, second and third grades. it was carried out in a colombian public elementary school in bucaramanga, colombia. the proposal was initiated by a group of student-teachers at universidad cooperativa de colombia, seccional bucaramanga. during the research process the student-teachers were required to plan the course syllabus, create their own stories according to the children’s interests and likes, plan the lessons, and collect and analyze data. although the student-teachers worked in different grade levels, the results of the study present similarities such as the children’s motivation when the stories were told or read, increased participation in the different activities, comprehension of the stories, and acquisition of the new vocabulary. key words: storytelling, story, reading, teaching, children este artículo presenta los resultados de un estudio sobre el uso de historias para la enseñanza del inglés a niños en los grados primero, segundo y tercero. el estudio se llevó a cabo en una escuela pública de bucaramanga, colombia. la propuesta fue iniciada por un grupo de docentes en formación de la universidad cooperativa de colombia, seccional bucaramanga. durante el proceso de investigación los docentes elaboraron e implementaron una propuesta de intervención, y además recolectaron y analizaron datos. aunque los docentes trabajaron en diferentes grados, los resultados del estudio presentaron similitudes, tales como gran motivación de los niños al escuchar o leer las historias, alta participación en las diferentes actividades, comprensión de las historias y adquisición de vocabulario. palabras clave: narración de historias, lectura de historia, enseñanza a niños * e-mail: niporrasg@yahoo.com this article was received on august 1, 2009 and accepted on january 11, 2010. 96 porras gonzález universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras introduction the present study was carried out in order to implement children’s stories for teaching english to young learners in a public elementary school. the study was part of the research project of a group of student teachers who will become elementary school teachers with a specialization in teaching english to young children. during the research process the student teachers became very interested in making the english learning process fun, enjoyable and meaningful for children. they found stories to be a great tool for teaching english in context and developing children’s cognitive and language skills. teaching the language through stories allowed them to use varied strategies from different language methods. this combination had a great impact on learners because learning became fun, motivating, rememberable and lasting. before starting the process, the student teachers became familiar with the context through direct observations, surveys and interviews. once they knew the school, the curriculum and the school’s english program, as well as the classes they were going to work with, they began the research process. first they collected data in order to learn the context; then, they created and implemented a teaching proposal. during the implementation of the proposal, the student teachers collected and analyzed data which helped them improve their teaching practice. on the next pages there will be a description of some theoretical bases taken into consideration by the student teachers before starting the project, the procedure of the project, the results and the conclusions they came up with after finishing the research project. the problem teaching english in public elementary schools in our country is a job that has been haphazard. english in these schools can be taught by people with no english language proficiency, not to mention any language teaching background. this situation is affecting the quality of the english programs in the schools and the approach to students’ learning of that foreign language. in order to make this situation a little better for a specific public school and its community, a group of student teachers at universidad cooperativa de colombia decided to implement a pedagogical proposal for teaching english in the first, second and third grades. although the fundamental purpose of the proposal was focused on teaching english in a fun and meaningful way for the children, it also included the donation to the school of all the teaching materials used in the teaching proposal and a workshop for the teachers in charge of teaching english in those grades. the proposal was called implementation of story reading and storytelling as a teaching tool for teaching english to young learners. the main objective of the project was to use story reading and storytelling for teaching english to young learners in a fun and meaningful way. the specific objectives were as follows: to create stories based on students’ interests and likes, to teach the language in context around stories, and to make foreign language learning a fun and lifelong process for the young learners. theoretical foundations children are considered natural language learners; according to second language acquisition theory, they can learn faster and with much 97 teaching english through stories... profile vol. 12, no. 1, 2010. issn 1657-0790. bogotá, colombia. pages 95-106 less difficulty than adults, but they should be exposed to natural learning environments, to real communication situations and to special teaching practices that make learning a meaningful, enjoyable and lifelong process. teaching should be focused on children and on the development of their communicative skills that will enable them to communicate meanings and messages in real social contexts. some outstanding methods such as total physical response (tpr) and natural approach help children to learn the language in such a way. taking into consideration that language was going to be taught to three groups of young learners at the beginner level, the methods mentioned above were chosen as the basic ones in this project. the natural approach is based on the following five hypotheses: the input hypothesis, the natural order hypothesis, the acquisition learning hypothesis, the monitor hypothesis and the affective filter hypothesis (krashen & terrell, 1983). for this study the input hypothesis took great importance since at the beginner levels, students develop receptive skills before starting to produce the language. the quantity and quality of the input children receive during their first learning stage is really important because it helps them to lay the foundation for their future learning. this is the reason teachers should give them a lot of qualitative input, which means that children should be surrounded by lots of listening and reading materials that will allow them to get familiar with the new language. this input should be comprehensible, natural and meaningful, and should be introduced little by little. a teacher should help children to understand the information they are exposed to, and also include new elements that permit children to advance in their learning process. two main sources from which students receive input are listening and reading. storytelling and story reading become two powerful strategies in the early stages of language development because they provide learners with a lot of interesting and enriching input. storytelling the use of storytelling in the l2 classroom creates a good learning environment and provides meaningful and comprehensible input. through stories, the language acquisition device is activated and it is easy for children to induce the language elements from the data provided by the stories (krashen, 1981). storytelling has special pedagogical values for the foreign language classroom, as rossiter (2002, p. 1) points out below: stories are effective as educational tools because they are believable, rememberable, and entertaining. the believability stems from the fact that stories deal with human-like experience that we tend to perceive as an authentic and credible source of knowledge. stories make information more rememberable because they involve us in actions of the characters. in so doing, stories invite active meaning making. language learners can benefit from storytelling because stories help them to develop the ability to understand spoken language and engage in thinking skills. in connection to this, castro (2002, p. 52) reports on a study carried out in colombia and stresses that “listening to stories develops children’s listening and concentration skills and their ability to receive and understand information expressed in words. besides, with the stories children develop learning strategies such as listening for general meaning, predicting, guessing meaning and hypothesizing”. through the stories, the learners become aware of cultural values different from theirs, sharpen their memory and develop the ability to predict and 98 porras gonzález universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras infer. telling stories provides the opportunities for students to speak the foreign language creatively, integrate information and knowledge they learn from other sources, and become more confident in the ability to express themselves spontaneously. according to curtain & dahlberg (2004), storytelling can provide experience with the interpretive mode for children, even at very early stages of language acquisition, when the stories meet the following criteria: the story is highly predictable or familiar to the children from their native culture, with a large proportion of previously learned vocabulary. in early stages it is especially helpful to choose stories that include vocabulary representing the home and the school environments of the children. the story is repetitive, making use of formulas and patterns that occur regularly and predictably. in the best stories chosen, these repeated elements provide language that children can use later for their own expressive purpose. cameron (2001, p. 163) defines this repetitive pattern in a story as parallelism. “the pattern of predictability + surprise, or repetition + change is often reflected in patterns of repetition of the language. this repeated pattern, or parallelism, creates a way into the story for the active listener, as well as providing a natural support for language learning.” the stories are memorable, as the language is repeated, and this encourages students to participate. this recycling of patterns incites students to predict what is coming next in the story and, at the same time, exercises their imagination. in addition, lipton (1998, p. 129) echoes the idea of active participation on the part of the students by saying that the ideal story “should have a short refrain that is repeated periodically throughout the story, so that after a while the children naturally chime in and repeat the refrain without being asked”. when stories meet these criteria it is much easier for students to make meaning clear not only because the stories are related to their real life environment but also because the use of pantomime and body language makes the story more comprehensible for the students. on the other hand, stories contain patterns that help students to get familiar with and internalize the new language. story reading reading stories aloud allows children to make connections between oral language and the print that represent that oral language. while reading aloud, the teacher should point to the word or line to emphasize those connections. the purpose of reading stories is to give students oral language input and a bridge to literacy in the new language. for reading stories in the early language stages, the teacher should first do a lot of pre-reading work which prepares the learner to be able to understand the story. this pre-reading work is focused on building up vocabulary through different kinds of activities such as games, puzzles, matching activities, songs and other sorts of activities that help students to become familiar with the new language. after reading the story aloud, the learner can be involved in a variety of post-reading tasks and language activities which can make the story more comprehensible and move them from receptive skills (listening and reading) to productive skills (speaking and writing). a very good tool for reading stories aloud is the use of big books. curtain & dahlberg (2004) describe what a big book is: “a big book is an enlarged piece of commercial or student-made literature, intended to recreate the intimacy and good feelings of one-on-one “read-aloud” sessions with an entire class. so they 99 teaching english through stories... profile vol. 12, no. 1, 2010. issn 1657-0790. bogotá, colombia. pages 95-106 are large enough so that the entire class can see and share in the experience. most big books have a predictable story line with strong rhythm, rhyme, repeated patterns, logical sequence and supportive illustrations.” when reading aloud, big books play an important role since they can be a good source for teacher and students to make connections between the pictures and the written text. the pictures in the big books help children a lot because they can associate pictures and words and arrive at a better understanding of the story. a story is more memorable if it can be related to a sequence of pictures. big books become a very engaging tool for reading aloud; they are made up of great illustrations that help students make sense of the story as well as make predictions. they include short texts with repeated patterns that allow students to internalize the new vocabulary and structures in an enjoyable and unconscious way. children like listening to stories over and over again; this repetition allows them to acquire certain language items and reinforce others unconsciously. using stories allows teachers to introduce new vocabulary by exposing children to the language in different contexts, thereby enriching their thinking skills and introducing them to the productive skills. also, as noted by ellis & brewster (2002), many stories have natural repetition of key vocabulary and structures that helps children remember details and learn to anticipate what is about to happen next in the story. repetitive stories are particularly easy for children to memorize. repetition helps children learn the patterns and structure of a story and, eventually, word recognition. repetition makes books predictable and helps develop vocabulary and sequencing. repetitive patterns can be the schema for students’ comprehension of the children’s story and for being able to predict the action in the plot and the ending. the recurring phrases and events can aid their understanding and memory. in addition, the repetition featured in the text is a great way for children to improve their reading skills. it also gives them a strong base to develop the confidence to move on to more interesting and complex texts. research methodology this research can be classified as an action research project. according to cohen & manion, cited in nunan (1990), action research can be utilized as a means of remedying problems diagnosed in specific situations, or improving in some way a given set of circumstances; as a means of in-service training, providing teachers with new skills and methods and heightening selfawareness. also, it can be used as a means of injecting additional or innovative approaches to teaching and learning into a system which normally inhibits innovations and change. the purpose of the project was to implement a proposal with innovative language teaching methodologies in order to make the language learning process fun and meaningful for children. during this process the student teachers reflected on these new practices, analyzed what worked or did not work, and made changes based on the reflection. the research project was carried out by eight student teachers at universidad cooperativa de colombia who were divided into three groups. they started their research project a year before its actual implementation. during this time they became familiar with research techniques, syllabus design, and story teaching methodology. once they became acquainted with the process and theoretical background, they went to the public elementary school to familiarize themselves with the context 100 porras gonzález universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras and meet the children they were going to share this research and teaching experience with. after meeting the kids, the student teachers performed the needs analysis through direct observation, a survey and a diagnostic test. the test was designed in order to ascertain students’ prior knowledge in the foreign language. it examined basic topics and had two parts: the first part consisted of vocabulary games planned for creating a relaxing environment and making students feel more confident. the second part consisted of a handout with different vocabulary activities selected according to the grade. once the student teachers analyzed the results of the needs analysis, they started to design the course syllabus and create the stories, thus designing the proposal. as mentioned before, the proposal was made taking into consideration children’s interests and likes. the stories were created around characters selected by the children such as cartoon and fairy tale characters. after creating the stories, the student teachers designed a syllabus around those stories and then started the planning stage. during this stage the teachers chose strategies from different teaching methods such as tpr, natural approach, clt and whole language. the purpose of the proposal was to teach the language in a meaningful, funny and interesting way for children. in order to reach this goal, the student teachers planned classes around the stories which they wrote and illustrated as big books. for reading each story, the student teachers followed the steps of pre-reading, while reading, and post reading. during the pre-reading stage they created a good environment to introduce the story by decorating the room with big posters about the story. then they did some vocabulary work through games, songs, poems and matching activities. after that they started reading the story using body language and pictures in order to help students understand better. also during reading, the students activated their prior knowledge by making connections between the story and their life, making predictions about what could happen next, and answering questions about the story. through predicting and questioning, the student teachers could check comprehension and determine which students started using the new language (speaking). after reading the story, follow up activities such as little books were utilized where guided writing was introduced. during the implementation of the proposal, one of the student teachers was in charge of teaching the lesson while the other one(s) observed and took the field notes about the process. the next lesson they exchanged roles. after each lesson the student teachers met, analyzed the notes in the journal, discussed the strengths and weaknesses of the lesson, the activities and strategies that worked or did not work, as well as the children’s learning process. based on this information the student teachers wrote a reflection about the lesson. if they found any difficulties during the lesson related with classroom management or teaching strategies, they needed to implement new strategies in order to improve and get better results next time by reading new bibliography or by following their supervisor’s advice. as a student teacher supervisor and project coordinator, my role consisted of guiding student teachers in the research process and also supervising the implementation of the teaching proposal in the school. at the beginning of the whole process, i helped student teachers locate and study resources. then i guided them in the design and implementation of the teaching proposal. once the student teachers started implementing their lessons, i was in charge of supervising their work and helping them in the reflection stage. my being involved in this process allowed me to get information and data to systematize the experience. 101 teaching english through stories... profile vol. 12, no. 1, 2010. issn 1657-0790. bogotá, colombia. pages 95-106 findings after implementing the pedagogical proposal, collecting data through direct observation and journals, and analyzing the data, the following two main categories arose: table 1. categories drawn from the analysis of data teaching english through stories what helps children learn in a fun and meaningful way what allows children to comprehend and show comprehension 1. stories created based on children’s likes and interests 2. games and other kinds of motivating activities 1. reading process a. pre-reading stage b. while reading stage: connections predicting questioning c. postreading stage oral and written activities what helps children learn in a fun and meaningful way and what allows children to comprehend and demonstrate comprehension? each category will be explained and supported by field notes taken from the student teachers’ journals below. what helped children learn in a fun and meaningful way stories created based on children’s likes and interests the needs and interests analysis was very important because knowing students’ preferences and interests helped to implement a pedagogical proposal that children found meaningful and interesting. children got involved in the process. learning was interesting and enjoyable for them because the teachers took into account their likes and interests, and also because they connected the new learning with their real lives. (o) then juan carlos asked the children1: (t1) do you like the stories? (o) and the children answered all together: (ss) yes! (o) and juan carlos took the story “snow white and the seven dwarfs” out and when they saw it, a girl said: (ss1) hooray! they are going to read us a new story! most of the characters in the stories were familiar to the children. this helped them to understand the stories because they already had some prior knowledge about them in their first language. the children’s schema let them have a better comprehension of the stories and allowed them to succeed when reading because they made connections from their previous experience with the text. according to curtain & dahlberg (2004, p. 85), “meaningful reading experiences in both first and second-language classrooms are dependent on students’ oral language comprehension and also on the students’ existing background knowledge and experience. as students develop their listening comprehension, they begin to make connections between the oral language and the print that represents this oral language”. in order to help students have a better comprehension of a reading text, it is very helpful to prepare them by activating their schemata or prior knowledge, not only in the target language but also in their first language. reading comprehension depends a lot on previous experiences and information already stored in the students’ memory. on the other hand, there must be intensive work through different kinds of oral activities before reading to ensure students’ understanding and comprehension of 1 the samples from the student teachers’ journals were gathered in spanish and translated into english. the following codes were used to register information in the journals: o = observer; t = student teacher; ss = students; ss1 = student 1. 102 porras gonzález universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras what they will read. once the students are familiar with the new language through oral activities, they are ready to face the written text. games and other kinds of motivating activities for the children games were also a great help because while children were playing, they felt relaxed and comfortable and learned easily; games allowed them to interact not only with the teachers but also with their classmates, which helped them to develop their communicative, social, and thinking skills. curtain & dalhberg (2004) state that games and gamelike activities are among the most natural means available to develop a context for communicating with children. play is often described as a child’s work, and games form a natural part of the child’s most important work setting, the classroom, as shown in the following sample: (t1) let’s play the wolf, let’s make a circle and sing the song of the wolf. when i whistle, everybody comes and makes the circle again. (t1) let’s play in the forest to see if the wolf is there. is the wolf there? what is he doing? (t1) i’m taking the shower… (o) [...] later they started to play simon says. the students had to mime the action viviana said. this way, they started the activity. games were a very good tool for students to practice and reinforce the new vocabulary needed to achieve a better understanding of the stories. we could observe that the use of games in the classroom has many advantages: they are a welcome break from the usual routine of the language class; they are motivating and challenging; they provide language practice in the various skillsspeaking, writing, listening and reading; they encourage students to interact and communicate; they create a meaningful context for language use; and, equally important, games involve the productive and receptive skills simultaneously. the games used in class also helped the student teachers to create a relaxing environment. after presenting and practicing the new vocabulary, the children had the opportunity to use the language in a non-stressful way thanks to the games in which they could participate. what allowed children to comprehend and demonstrate comprehension during the implementation of the proposal, the student teachers followed three stages for reading the stories: a pre-reading stage, a while-reading stage and a post-reading stage. these stages allowed student teachers to prepare children for reading the story and checking comprehension. pre-reading stage the student-teachers arranged the classroom for story reading which allowed more interaction not only with the teacher but also with the text. before reading the stories, the children received interesting and comprehensible input through teacher’s talk, games, reading and listening activities which helped them to become familiar with the new language. during this time, the children did a lot of vocabulary and syntactic practice through a variety of activities which prepared them for the approach of the stories. as can be seen in the following excerpt, once children identified the new words, the student-teacher started reading the story. (o) amparo continued reading and asking questions while she was reading the story. (t1) what part of the house is it? (ss1) living room, it is a dining room. (o) children answered the questions depending on the part of the house she pointed out. 103 teaching english through stories... profile vol. 12, no. 1, 2010. issn 1657-0790. bogotá, colombia. pages 95-106 in connection to new language we might find in a story, cameron (2001, p. 169) states: a story can include some new language, but not so much that the story becomes incomprehensible. the number of new words that listeners can cope with within one story is not clear cut; it will depend on how well the pictures and discourse organization support the meaning of the words, how central the new words are to the plot, and the overall total of new words, which should not be too high. in preparing to use a story, new words and phrases that are crucial to understanding the story should be pre-taught, and support offered by pictures and context for the meaning of other new language should be checked to ensure it is adequate. if necessary, further support can be provided. bearing this in mind and in order to facilitate reading comprehension, the student teachers selected certain words that were essential for the understanding of the story and pre-taught them through different activities. this step was very important as it allowed the children to understand better a given part of the story and get involved in the reading process. student teachers worked on helping students to understand the meaning utilizing a variety of activities such as visuals, puzzles and games. this made the reading process proceed smoothly for the children, allowing for involvement, participation and a more meaningful reading experience. while-reading stage in this stage the student teachers introduced and read the stories. while reading them the student teachers focused on the following three main strategies: the connection between illustrations and written text, predictions, and questions. first, the student teachers introduced the text, making comments about the story and asking students about it in order to assess their prior knowledge. then they started reading the text. while reading they pointed to the words and showed the pictures to make connections between the printed text and the illustrations. all the stories were written and illustrated in big books. the student teachers considered big books a powerful tool to help children understand because they allowed them to read the text of the story as well as easily see the pictures. this connection helped children understand the story better, as can be read in the following excerpt: (o) at the end of the matching activity viviana asked: (t1) do you like stories? (ss) yesssss! (o) immediately, viviana pulled out a big book called the pig who was a hog and showed it to them. in regards to this practice, cameron (2001, p. 168) states that “the role of the pictures in combination with the text to form the story as a whole should be considered. if the pictures are indispensable, as is often the case, then somehow there will need to be enough copies or they will need to be made big enough for everyone to see”. in the stories, pictures had a central role to play. they were a stimulus for forming hypotheses, predicting, sequencing and exercising memory. in the stories used for the project the pictures were closely related to the text, sometimes even structuring the text. this supported the children’s understanding and guided them to the key points of the texts. also, the pictures were a useful tool for the design of activities, especially oral or written ones. a second strategy used in the project -mainly for checking comprehension while readingwas predicting. it involves thinking ahead while reading and anticipating information and events in the text. this strategy engages students and connects them to the text by asking them what they think might occur in the story. making predictions activated children’s prior knowledge about the text by helping them make connections between 104 porras gonzález universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras new information and what they already knew. by making predictions about the text before, during, and after reading, children used what they already knew as well as what they supposed might happen to make connections to the text. through the predictions children made during and after reading the stories, the student teacher could verify children’s comprehension of the stories. owocki (2003, p. 14) considered that in order to predict, “readers must activate their prior knowledge and use it to think about what they are about to read. in this way, predicting helps readers connect what they are reading with what they know already and brings meaning to the text in order to get meaning from it. background knowledge used for predicting comes not only from the reader’s previous experience but also from meaning that is built during the reading. throughout the text, readers continually generate new predictions”. by applying this strategy, students were given the opportunity to integrate what they knew not only about the stories but also about the language with the new knowledge presented in the stories and then build comprehension of them. the third strategy taken into consideration for checking children’s comprehension of the stories while reading was that of questioning. according to owocki (2003), questioning is an important strategy because it helps children move deeply into a text, think more about what they read, organize their thinking, frame the pursuit of new understandings, locate specific information, and think about unstated ideas such as themes, author goals and intents, and underlying meaning. this can be illustrated as follows: (o) juan carlos started reading the story and asked the children, (t1) what color is it? what will happen next? what is her name? (o) and the children answered the questions juan carlos was asking. suddenly a boy said, (ss1) teacher i do not understand anything. (o) and a boy started explaining to him what was happening in the story. questioning was a strategy used before, during and after reading a story. the student teachers constantly posed questions in order to verify children’s understanding. questions helped children clarify and deepen understanding of the text they were reading. this was a very good strategy for the student teachers since it allowed them to check comprehension. while reading, the student teachers would stop and ask questions about the characters, the setting and the pictures. the answers the children gave allowed them to verify comprehension. post-reading stage after reading the text, learners did a variety of speaking and writing activities related to the text. although the speaking and writing production in these grades is guided, this helped the student teachers better assess students’ understanding and comprehension of the reading process. during the implementation of the proposal, student teachers observed that children really enjoyed the lessons and began to communicate in english. although they only produced words and small phrases, they noticed the children understood most of the input they had received. children not only produced the language orally but also in writing. at the end of each story, children had to dramatize the story and complete a little book where they used the language learned during the teaching process, thus allowing the student teachers to verify comprehension. in this way, the student teachers could integrate the language skills around reading one text; first with the receptive skills of listening and reading, then the productive 105 teaching english through stories... profile vol. 12, no. 1, 2010. issn 1657-0790. bogotá, colombia. pages 95-106 skills of speaking and writing. this can be observed in the following example: (o) viviana started to show the flash cards and some students answered. (ss) sleeping… having lunch. (o) juan carlos gave some handouts to the children with the same story amparo had just read. the story had blanks that children had to complete according to the story. the children started. although comprehensible input played a great role in the understanding of the stories, it was also necessary to engage children in post-listening or post-reading tasks and language-related activities in which they talked and wrote about the stories. such activities made the stories more comprehensible while helping the children to move from receptive competence needed for listening and reading to the productive competence necessary for speaking and writing. the variety of activities made the lessons interesting and fun and motivated the children to participate in an active way. they wanted to sing, answer questions, play the games, and be part of all the activities. the combination of all the elements mentioned above let teachers observe that the learning process was really meaningful and interesting for the children who could make great progress in learning the language while enjoying the process. reading stories was a very useful strategy for teaching the language to children for many reasons. first, they knew and liked the characters in each one of the stories and each caught their attention and got them involved in the lessons. also, thanks to the stories, the teacher could contextualize the new language, and students could get meaning easily and understand the use and functions of the language. conclusions based on the diagnosis, analysis, and implementation of the research process, the following can be noted: teachers should select the appropriate methodology and didactics in order to make learning interesting and meaningful for children. the use of stories and the ludic methodology around them made the language learning process meaningful and fun for the children. during the implementation of the lessons, students showed a lot of motivation for learning; first, because they loved playing the games and second, because the stories were appealing and interesting to them. when the children were playing games, the student teachers could verify that when using well-planned games with a pedagogical purpose, children learn while having fun. games also helped the student teachers to create a confident and stress-free learning environment where children felt secure and relaxed during the learning time. on the other hand, stories became the central component of the process. at the beginning of the process the student teachers thought stories could be a good tool for children to learn the language, but once the proposal was implemented, they were surprised by the children’s response every time they read a story. the children were not only motivated by the stories but, also, they demonstrated their understanding of the stories and their language learning. the great success of using stories was due to the fact that first, they were created taking into account children’s likes and interests; and second, because the student teachers followed each stage of the reading process appropriately. another important consideration is that in the early learning stage, children need to be surrounded 106 porras gonzález universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras by a lot of meaningful, interesting and comprehensible input to help them grow in the learning process. the great amount of input received by the children before and during the story time helped them to become more successful while reading and after reading the stories. it also helped them predict, infer and answer questions, thereby showing comprehension and understanding of the stories. stories were an ideal tool to utilize in learning the language as they were the central axes of the whole process. stories made the children’s learning the foreign language more interesting, amusing and memorable. students have an amazing ability to absorb language when activities are familiar and enjoyable to them. hence, teaching foreign language using stories as a basis creates a learning environment that is both familiar and fun. finally, it should be stressed that research is a very important way for teachers to improve their pedagogical practices. through this project the student teachers could reflect on their practice, be aware of what works or does not work when teaching the language, as well as discuss, analyze and find ways to create better lessons. all of the above helped them to improve their teaching practices by finding better strategies in order to help children become successful in their learning process. references cameron, l. (2001). teaching languages to young learners. cambridge: cambridge university press. castro, m. (2002). the magic world of storytelling: some points for reflection. profile, issues in teachers’ professional development, 3, 52-54. curtain, h., & dahlberg, c. a. (2004). languages and children: making the match. boston: pearson education. ellis, g., & brewster, j. (2002). tell it again: the new storytelling handbook for primary teachers. united kingdom: pearson education. krashen, s. d. (1981). second language acquisition and second language learning. oxford: pergamon press. krashen, s. d., & terrell, t. (1983). the natural approach: language acquisition in the classroom. hayward, ca: alemany press. lipton, g. (1998). practical handbook to elementary foreign language programs. lincolnwood, il: national textbook. nunan, d. (1990). second language teacher education. cambridge: cambridge university press. owocki, g. (2003). comprehension “strategic instruction for k-3 students”. portsmouth, nh: heinemann educational books. rossiter, m. (2002). narrative and stories in adult teaching and learning. (report no. edo-ce-02241). washington, dc: education resources information center. about the author nohora inés porras gonzález holds a ba in languages from universidad industrial de santander, colombia, and a master’s degree in education from instituto tecnológico de monterrey – universidad autónoma de bucaramanga, colombia. english coordinator for the language teaching program at universidad cooperativa de colombia for 4 years, she currently works for lexington school district 5 in south carolina, usa. her interests include issues related to world language teaching methodology. an inquiry project: a way to develop a meaningful learning context profile 8, 2007. issn 1657-0790. bogotá, colombia. pages 59-74 59 an inquiry project: a way to develop a meaningful learning context la indagación: un camino para desarrollar un contexto significativo de aprendizaje norha esperanza pineda torres* universidad distrital francisco josé de caldas, colombia actions speak louder than words. anonymous the main purpose of this article is to share an inquiry experience from efl (english as a foreign language) classes, and the reflection that deals with the practical benefits participants have when they are involved in an inquiry proposal. firstly, there is an introduction to this inquiry process describing the main question that guided this paper. secondly, a theoretical framework and the authoring cycle description is presented considering the way the inquiry process took place within my classroom by means of meaningful actions and contexts. thirdly, a data collection section by some reflective responses regarding participants’ learning during the process of developing the inquiry project; and the analysis of findings are explained with some samples. finally, there are some pedagogical implications as well as some conclusions. key words: inquiry, learning, question, participation, project and interests el propósito principal de este artículo es comunicar una experiencia de indagación que desarrolló un grupo de estudiantes de inglés como lengua extranjera. durante este proceso, los participantes lograron aprender varios aspectos educativos, de los cuales se obtuvieron muchos beneficios y enseñanzas. este artículo consta de una introducción al tema central y las preguntas que generaron este trabajo. después de esto, se presentan algunos aspectos teóricos importantes sobre el tema, así como una descripción del proceso significativo de indagación que se aplicó en el contexto de clase. luego se describen y analizan la información y los datos recogidos durante el estudio. por último, se presentan algunas implicaciones pedagógicas y conclusiones finales. palabras clave: indagación, aprendizaje, pregunta, participación, proyecto e intereses * e-mail: norha@eudoramail.com address: universidad distrital francisco josé de caldas. programa l.e.b.e.i carrera 3a no. 26a-40. bogotá, colombia this article was received on march 5th, 2007 and accepted on june 16th, 2007. profile 8.indd 59 28/09/2007 12:42:16 a.m. pineda torres universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras60 approach to this research commonly, we as teachers have seen that there is a wide range of problematic issues regarding the way education is being conducted within some academic institutions. in some schools in bogotá, efl teachers spend a lot of time instructing students in the rules of english grammar. traditional practices need to be evaluated and new approaches to teaching efl considered as a way to transform foreign language pedagogy. why not to start by exploring students’ areas of interests through english classes? the previous consideration led me to design and apply this learning experience in teaching english via inquiry-based practices and at the same time, in orienting my students to become actors of their own learning process. i suggest that students and teachers generate through their participation and engagement, constant actions and alternatives to promote changes that improve their daily practices, not instructing them but letting them build their own knowledge by means of their own inquiries and learning experiences. i consider it urgent and necessary that schools instigate their own transformation towards a friendly space, which promotes certain democratic practices such as tolerating and listening to others, not as a favour but as an obligation to respect the decisions made by the majority (freire, 1998). that is why this teaching experience deals with one of those pedagogical proposals that has to do with the issue of learning through inquiry practices, to developing efl classes by including the participants (teacher and students) in significant learning environments. theoretical framework we make the road by walking. from a song by joan manuel serrat the main theories reviewed to enlighten this study were basically about language learning, learning from inquiry, a curricular framework, literacy process and conceptions about learners’ beliefs. this literature revision also includes a description of the authoring cycle model as a curricular structure, which involves seven stages of learning from inquiry. this article contains only the essential approaches to some of these theories. language involves wide complex issues that help us to understand, constitute communities and live in societies. language allows us to interact, communicate, generate culture, knowledge and to transform all around us, including human nature. in general terms, it is a great tool to know, experience, discover and change reality. a child who learns the language learns many other things at the same time through the language, thus s/he might form a real picture of what is around and also his/her own picture inside. language is a social fact. it emerges in the individual’s life by continuous, meaning interchanges with others; in this sense language is a product of the social process. during this social process, the construction of reality is inseparable from the construction of the semantic system in which codified reality exists. moreover, language is a potential of shared meaning as well as an inter-subjective interpretation of the experience (halliday, 1994, p. 9). for halliday, language does not consist of sentences or of bits of discourse: meaning profile 8.indd 60 28/09/2007 12:42:16 a.m. an inquiry project: a way to develop a meaningful learning context profile 8, 2007. issn 1657-0790. bogotá, colombia. pages 59-74 61 is constructed in interpersonal contexts of any type. the contexts in which meaning is interchanged are not devoid of social value; a verbal context is a semiotic construction that tends to provide understanding among the members of a group (halliday, 1994, p. 10). in this sense, the context relies on the participants involved in the discursive situation, which means that learning is provoked under the same conditions. to develop a learning process, it is necessary to provide contexts in which students can interact and construct their own concepts, ideas, thoughts and social image. “through the language use in situations like those is the way s/he constructs and amplifies his/her potential of meaning” (ibid, 1994, p. 45). learning from inquiry is a style of conceiving the way people learn from reality and all the aspects involved as relevant components that provide them a wide range of experiences and opportunities of expanding knowledge. this means that there are many situations and contexts that provoke multiple interactions to understand and discover what is going on and also to find different alternatives to learn and to solve problems, questions, dilemma, issues, etc. constantly we are having new learning experiences from reality that help us increase our knowledge in order to uncover and transform it. learning from inquiry activates our natural curiosity about the world and about ourselves. this highlights the value of starting from curiosity to discover real learning. thus, inquiry might be the first step to explore our students’ curiosities in order to satisfy them. inquiry practice requires a willingness to achieve an environment that induces learning by group participation. it has to do with an attitude towards wondering, asking questions, understanding alternatives and sharing with others’ attempts in terms of uncovering answers for them (short, harste, & burke, 1996). in this sense, the purpose of inquiry “is not ‘knowledge for its own sake’, but the disposition and ability to use the understandings so gained to act informedly and responsibly in the situations that may be encountered both now and in the future” (wells, 1999, p. 121). definitely, inquiry practices and their implications are an option oriented to letting students assume an active position, to encouraging them to think and to decide by themselves. inquiry is a constant state of curiosity and learning through an active exploration of the world. the inquiry process might provoke tensions and questions that matter in the life of the inquirer whose investigation generates new understandings, new issues, some more questions and possibilities than when it was started (short et al., 1996). the authoring cycle presentation there will be an illustration of an inquiry practice, which is characterised by the operation of all conceptions, interests and needs articulated in an explicit scenario. thus, the model called the authoring cycle (short et al., 1996) was applied in this inquiry practice because it was one whose stages were based on a process that guided and encouraged the participants to think and decide by themselves throughout this project (see the following diagram). the first stage developed in this authoring cycle, “building from the known”, deals profile 8.indd 61 28/09/2007 12:42:16 a.m. pineda torres universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras62 with students’ life experiences, perceptions, current concepts, levels of understanding, and all the knowledge they bring to the institution. additionally, it connects students’ background and their engagements to build up knowledge from the known. teachers and students should be patient when they look for inquiries. “taking the time to find questions for inquiry” takes time, but they have to work together to find inquiries to be uncovered gradually through different conversations and observations. it means that it is a bit difficult to arrive at inquiries all at once. it has to follow a process based on wanderings and wonderings in the sense that the field of interest has to be selected, explored and examined from multiple perspectives in order to focus the inquiry on the questions that are most significant to the student. “gaining new perspectives” is the next stage, when the participants, educator and the learners explore their issues more deeply and intensely support each other. there is a tactic that is to work by groups to gain new visions, to facilitate co-operation among the teams’ sources of inquiry, to share strategies and to connect multiple understandings and different people’s experiences in order to keep investigating and exploring their own questions. in the stage “attending to difference”, they are invited to be reflective in order to have fully in mind their own reconsiderations, what they really believe and understand about their inquiry by interacting with others, receiving ideas, strategies and many perspectives to be considered in the project from different agents such as partners, diagram 1. the authoring cycle model (short et al., 1996, p. 262). profile 8.indd 62 28/09/2007 12:42:17 a.m. an inquiry project: a way to develop a meaningful learning context profile 8, 2007. issn 1657-0790. bogotá, colombia. pages 59-74 63 revision of information, interviews, etc. thus, learners’ quiet reflection provides strength to revise their ideas and, consequently, to define their own thinking. “sharing what was learned” is a great opportunity that students have for the inquiry presentation. their presentations reflected formal drafts of their thinking about their inquiries because most of the times when the ideas are shared they are transformed by the participants’ understandings and experiences. “planning new inquiries” is inferred from the previous one due to the fact that “sharing what was learned” enlightens students to engender new inquiries, which can be planned to follow the authoring cycle that never ends. then, “taking thoughtful new action” means that students can go beyond the significant findings to broader directions. through new inquiry planning, they are engaged constantly in a wide range of inquiries because this cycle follows a process that flows continuously. participants and setting a group of 22 male eleventh graders who were between 16 and 19 years old, from a semi-private school ruled by the catholic jesuit priests, located in bogotá and i, the teacher, doing classroom research for six months, designed and developed this learning experience by applying different activities, which were framed in an inquiry project. this case study is guided by the qualitative research characteristics, having in mind that this qualitative way of researching carries on with a systematic spectrum of aspects which are explicitly explained by nunan (1995). one of the most important aspects is that it tends to understand human behaviour and assumes a dynamic reality; also, it is subjective, close to the data and impossible to generalise upon. this study was conceived based on the following question: how do 11th grade students manage inquiry projects in efl classes? according to this question, the general objective of this experience was to explore and describe the way a group of eleventh graders developed inquiry practices in the english classes. so far i have introduced the main purpose of this experience by integrating some educational dimensions, a theoretical framework based on an inquiry conception, an alternative model in which to apply this particular conceptualisation in a described setting with specific participants, which let us understand the context. now, in order to continue the procedure planned, a pedagogical proposal will be presented to follow up on this reflection. organizing pedagogical actions we first uncovered the learners’ interests and needs to propose, plan and implement the whole project in order to have a clear road to follow. this inquiry project was the means of involving my students in learning and literacy practices, helping them to construct meaningful contexts, uncovering their interests, needs and wants, and becoming active participants in an efl program. this inquiry project started from the students’ life experiences, perceptions, current concepts, levels of understanding, and all the knowledge they brought to the institution. besides, it connected students’ background and their efforts to build up knowledge from the known. students profile 8.indd 63 28/09/2007 12:42:17 a.m. pineda torres universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras64 brought their experiences and knowledge to the school and, through inquiries, could gain and build a wider range of personal and social knowledge. the first stage had to do with defining and putting into action some activities to observe and deduce the students’ common interests and needs in order to have a clear starting point for the inquiry project. then, this proposal was explained to my students, as soon as they were invited to belong to this project. what is more, as a teacher i started by describing and exploring students’ inquiries in order to formulate and to establish a clear plan to begin the inquiry project. then i started to explore their needs and interests by allowing them to think, prepare and present their dreams. one key activity, called future plans, had to do with presenting through images one’s future plans in terms of doing, being and having (castillo, 2001). the purpose of this activity was to learn of the students’ wants for their immediate future and explore their interests. in addition, they asked themselves questions about their own plans presented in the class. after some sessions, we noticed together that they wanted to go to university to study different careers. this first moment involved two actions that are called by short et al., (1996) “building from the known” and “taking the time to find questions for inquiry”. during these two actions, the learners made connections between their own life experiences and their wonders about their future plans as professionals. one of those interests had to do with going to university after graduating from high school. in this sense, some of their questions were the following: where am i going to study after school? what is the best university to attend? what is the process to enter the university? keep in mind that all their inquiries referred to the university and also that in their future plans they all mentioned studying at the university as the main goal to reach after high school. we agreed on exploring the university as a new educational context through an inquiry project that included interviews, searches in the web, visits, reports, etc., before choosing a major. knowing the main topic of this inquiry project, the sessions to carry out were planned and developed around the socialisation of activities. together students and teacher identified ways to design and agree on the activities to develop in the efl classes and apply a proper way to guide the students’ questions and needs. many activities were implemented in class such as interviews, brochures design, poster zone, computer section, essays, presentations, and class discussions, among others, to uncover the inquiry project proposed. all of them allowed us, in some way, to explore possible answers to the questions posed, to examine different kinds of information, to increase our knowledge about students’ life in the university and to gain new perspectives and to augment the range of knowledge about our colombian university system in this project. these characteristics are strongly related to the third stage explained in the authoring cycle model which deals with “gaining new perspectives” because the students, at this point, looked for information through different sources that matched the questions. through the activities programmed to uncover their inquiries, i could notice that profile 8.indd 64 28/09/2007 12:42:17 a.m. an inquiry project: a way to develop a meaningful learning context profile 8, 2007. issn 1657-0790. bogotá, colombia. pages 59-74 65 the students observed what happens in some universities to decide the best alternative for them and to have arguments to select the best answer to those questions that they had formulated. after looking at different sources and obtaining a wide range of information, the students planned oral and written reports for the class in order to socialise and share all their findings with the rest of the classmates. in this sense, there were many discussions about the diversity of data gathered and about the distinctive points of view regarding the inquiry project. those different alternatives led us to observe a phenomenon. the students also evidenced, through their discourses, that they took into account several ideas, comments, and reflections from their partners, teacher and many other people that helped them to understand not only the topic of the project, but also to ask many more questions about it. regarding the authoring cycle model, i observe that the above-mentioned is related to two stages they called “attending to difference”. the first has to do with challenging our perspectives and ideas through interaction with others and the reflections to better understand, transform or reconsider the inquiry. the second, “sharing what was learned”, means that at this point, the learners socialise their current findings by presenting them to share their ideas, understanding and all the information gathered throughout the project. even though the authoring cycle model has two more stages to follow, we could not go on with these stages in this study because of time constraints. however, the teacher could continue planning new inquiries by having students reflect on what they learned through their experience and think about their continuing questions because some possible connections to new actions were proposed and thought of by the students from ideas such as to uncover other kinds of options to ponder after school: the diversity of technology institutes, the international scholarships available to them, the military service, and tolerance in the universities. all those inquiries raised by the participants are considered in the next stage called “planning new inquiries” of the model in mention. there were some inquiries generated by this inquiry project which are related to the university. for example, “how is university life?” and “why are not some people receptive to being interviewed in the university?”, “is the university a social requirement to get some kind of prestige? even though student one considers that: it is not enough to know the university life from outside, the most important part is to face this life, the inquiry project was just an introduction to the university, but there are many questions still to answer (st.1, interview, 2001). those are the main inquiries that emerged from the students’ perceptions and it seems to me that this project was the beginning, really, to start inquiring themselves as people leaving the school and facing other contexts. maybe beyond the classroom we will explore particular inquiry actions students want to take in their lives, which will keep the inquiry practices active. this would be the final step in the cycle that is “taking thoughtful new action”, which is the moment to start another inquiry project based on the remaining inquiries in the previous project. profile 8.indd 65 28/09/2007 12:42:17 a.m. pineda torres universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras66 in addition, considering the model applied, i think that there were three moments that were significant in developing and implementing this inquiry project. they were “gaining new perspectives, attending to differences and sharing what was learned” because they represent the fundamental part and involve substantive moments of the whole cycle. in this case, their manifestation was repetitive. this means that multiple times, in the development of this project, we carried out these three stages constantly. even to close this project, the students were asked to present their findings to other eleventh graders in order to share what was learned and disseminate the information they gathered by telling them their own experience developing this inquiry project. data collection to answer the main question in this study, it was necessary to take into consideration some specific methods, instruments and sources of data collection. some of the methods rely basically on elicitation techniques, others consist mainly of observation, while others were based on introspection. i used some primary data sources in this study according to each of the methods presented above. by the elicitation techniques, i took into account the interviews and class discussions, which were audio recorded. through observation techniques, i carried out field notes and video recording when the students presented their findings. finally, the introspection technique has to do with teacher’s diary, students’ diaries and artifacts, whose purpose is to obtain a snapshot of attitudes, beliefs, intentions, reactions, reflections, conditions and/or events at a single point in time. furthermore, weekly lesson planning, field notes and students’ writing samples were also sources which were taken into account. these sources to gather data were important to observe, describe, analyse, evidence the main features and respond to the general question that guided the research process. moreover, the data was gathered through the stages of the authoring cycle model by means of engaging the participants in collaboration in the study giving comments, opinions, points of view, suggestions, questions and general ideas, most of which were written in their diaries. the diaries played a really important role due to their having registered personal accounts about our specific topic of interest. they contain observations, feelings, reactions, interpretations, reflections, hypotheses, and explanations about new material, things learned, different classroom activities, and other kinds of teaching materials, homework and so on. in some students’ diaries were the excerpts quoted below: st5: i think that this project is very important, because we can investigate more about the careers that show the different universities. (august, 2001) st4: i think that this project is good, is another way to make education. (august, 2001) st3: i think that the interviews are important because they have important information about the university. (september, 2001) st2: the work we have done up to now has been really uplifting. the way the group has worked has been really good. despite some difficulties in the interviews, i think we have worked very well. (september, 2001) st1: today was a class very interesting because we made a conversation about the interviews. profile 8.indd 66 28/09/2007 12:42:17 a.m. an inquiry project: a way to develop a meaningful learning context profile 8, 2007. issn 1657-0790. bogotá, colombia. pages 59-74 67 also we maked (made) a time-table with all the activities for evaluation. i consider that the classes go for good way. (september, 2001) st6: this class was very important and interesting because we can know more about different universities in colombia and the cost of each career. (august, 2001) st1: the commentary about my essay is very good because i learn to improve my redaction in english. (october, 2001) st2: i think that all classes were good. in the middle of the classes i felt fine, because in all the activities i learnt something new. (november, 2001) the main purpose of the interview was to gain students’ insights into inquiry project to understand the individual experiences and to establish a conversation with the participants by listening to them, their questions, perspectives, suggestions, feelings and reactions in a flexible, respectful and open environment. the questions planned for this classroom discussion prompted me to examine the key aspects that guide this research, which were an attempt to provide a portrait of what was going on in this particular classroom about all that had to do with the purpose of proposing, developing and implementing inquiry practices. interviewing was also an opportunity to listen to the students’ learning experiences, attitudes towards inquiry practices, self-reflection and to what extent their participation in the development of an inquiry project helped them think and question their own decisions regarding their future education and what they want. the interviews and the group discussions allowed the participants to express themselves openly about the inquiry project and, mainly, they gave a lot of information about how the inquiry project was proposed, implemented and developed in the efl classes. thus the central purpose of interviewing the participants was to determine the practices they followed to uncover their inquiries and, also, to perceive the structures modified by the project in terms of their learning process. they were interviewed once at the end of the project individually, and there were two group discussions guided by the researcher during the course, one in the middle and the other immediately after the whole process. many reasons motivated and induced them to develop the project through finding different sources of information and obtaining a spectrum of ideas to deal with the university context. it was part of the questions posed in the interview in november, 2001. for example, some students expressed the following statements: st1: we are interested in this activity because we need to know what our country offers in terms od higher education. that is what we are interested in. st2: to know all the changes, the things one is going to experience when entering the university, which is going to be different from being at school. it was important for me to meet some people who i am going to be in contact with, to know that environment and to develop other skills like body expression. st3: it was a tool for entering the university. it gave me some principles and basis to have a wider vision of the real higher-education context in colombia. st4: my motivation to work on the project was to have a taste of the environment that i will surely have to face next year, knowing about universities, people and programs and have a clearer picture of what i want to study. st5: to know the opinion of students and their university, to know another point of view about university, solve some doubts, and to know how trustworthy the information i have is. profile 8.indd 67 28/09/2007 12:42:17 a.m. pineda torres universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras68 other sources of data such as field notes registered some students’ attitudes and interactions in the classroom, their participation in the development of the project, and also allowed the researcher to consider the students as efl learners and users. additionally, the students’ artifacts provided information on how they conceive university education, the way they produced and activated their knowledge and how they developed and participated in this project. analysis of findings the data collected were observed, classified, analysed and triangulated before arriving at a specific system of emerging categories according to the type of content found in each instrument applied. firstly, the information was analysed several times to be described and classified coherently. additionally, there was a general list of some of the most relevant characteristics that emerged in the whole data gathered. then i grouped them according to the frequent meaning among them. due to their discourse (written & oral) they expressed common ideas, utterances, similar statements and expressions that served as a guide to classify the data collected. after that, i named them by the main trait of the group, which allowed me to organize the information. the next chart illustrates the categories obtained and analysed through this section. 1. students’ learning experiences the first category reflects an interpretation of the students’ statements on what they have learned in the efl classes, their learning experiences and the activities that generated those learning moments. in this sense, the evidence seems to highlight the students’ learning the english language through the development of their linguistic and communicative competencies based on language skills defined in terms of reading, writing, speaking and listening, which seem to have been improved according to students’ responses. at the same time, that data established that the students also assured that they had learned many other things. they learned through language. this category refers to the students’ learning experiences, which includes the statements related to their achievements in terms of learning the english language and also learning many other significant matters related to themselves and their project. besides, there is evidence of some of the participants’ statements that describe their performance as language learners and how their competencies were developed. category subcategories 1. students’ learning experiences a. learning about language b. learning through language 2. students’ reactions and responses to the inquiry project chart 1. categories found in the data analysis process. profile 8.indd 68 28/09/2007 12:42:17 a.m. an inquiry project: a way to develop a meaningful learning context profile 8, 2007. issn 1657-0790. bogotá, colombia. pages 59-74 69 as presented in the chart, this category is structured into two subcategories that deal with learning about language and learning through language, which will be explained in the next paragraphs. a. learning about language this first subcategory contains the students’ statements that deal with their explanations about how they improved their learning of the english language by participating in this project. in this sense, this subcategory introduces the students’ learning about language regarding their own responses, artifacts and the spectrum of samples, which reveal their english language growth. the following chart will present some student’s excerpts that demonstrate the characteristics of this subcategory: these are also some statements that reflect a general appreciation and corroborate the benefits provided by this project, whose main objective was to allow students to practise and improve the use of english as a foreign language. student one stated the following: this helps to let us realise that not matter how much grammar we have covered, it is very little what we know how to apply it, because many people made many redaction errors, didn’t they? i think that this could improve by doing exercises of this type, such as written comments or writing co-evaluation; because it is very important for the future life, isn’t it? nowadays, english is an indispensable requirement wherever for, whatever job or for studying. so i believe that the students should reinforce the writing culture in english or any other foreign language, because this language is absolutely different from ours (st1, group discussion, october/2001). the student included many aspects in this information. firstly, he focused on the difference between knowing grammar and using it by writing several compositions. after that, he changed the first idea and he highlighted the importance of learning a foreign language, fundamentally english, by reinforcing the writing process. student’s excerpts instrument/date st.2: “we develop the communicative competence through written essay, interviews, presentations and to express coherently in english”. diary/september, 2001. st.3: “to do presentation in english, the oral part requires from me high effort, i think that this has improved with practice, i learnt that oral part, the verbal expression”. group discussions/october, 2001. st. 4: “the speaking and interviewing ability to someone, to have a fluent conversation, i think that is good and important because one is going to do it in the future...” interview/november, 2001 st.5: “i learnt to make a good editing, to carry a good connection of ideas”. diary/october 2001. st.6: “i learnt to develop my writing process”. diary/october,2001 st.1: “…to write better and more vocabulary”. interview/ november 2001 chart 2. some students’ explanations about how they improved their learning. profile 8.indd 69 28/09/2007 12:42:18 a.m. pineda torres universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras70 b. learning through language the second subcategory refers to students’ own learning through language, whose main focus is to describe and to illustrate the way students have learned much more than the english language; how they went beyond the language to develop other learning, and how they expressed their own individual growth through different fields. this subcategory evinces different issues students learned in our english classes by inquiry practices that provided them with more elements to reflect upon their interests and to uncover what they really want to study after school. particularly, all the participants expressed their enrichment by being the main actors in the development of these experiences. the following are some excerpts that exemplify their explanations: st5: through the development of this project i had the opportunity to know a new world of the universities, by the way to learn english oral expressions... to look at different options of the universities and the careers they offer. (st5, group discussion, october/2001). st6: i learnt many things, i learnt more vocabulary and the most important i learnt to express myself and to talk better. all the activities were good because we the students learnt something. (st6, interview, november/2001). st4: i learnt to prepare a conference, to make good questions for an interview... (st4, diary, october/2001). in examining these statements, we can infer that the project permitted students to learn different kinds of aspects of universities, careers and also ways to find out information to improve their answers to the inquiries announced before. in this sense, the students expressed significant appreciation about how the project helped them not only to increase their knowledge of english and to improve their performance, but at the same time to explore many other aspects that concern views of education. 2. students’ reactions and responses to inquiry project this second category displays the participants’ feelings and perceptions of the whole inquiry process since proposing, implementing and developing it through the activities planned and focussed on to uncover their inquiries. besides, this category describes their interpretations regarding the advantages of developing the efl classes by uncovering the students’ inquiries. the following samples present some students’ excerpts that demonstrate the characteristics of this category: st4: i have felt really good in this class, since we have applied learning modalities that are not conventional and that allow the easier assimilation of knowledge and a more fluent expression through practice or conversations (group discussions/october 2001). st1: the expositions help me to understand that there are many differences between all the universitites and to see other posibilities of university and career. (diary /september, 2001). st2: today, i learn that existing many types of universities and careers for many different people in colombia. there are universities expensive and other very cheap. universities very good and others very bad. (diary /november, 2001). st3: i think that the interview and this process are very important because give aspects that can help me to choose better my university and my career. (interview/ november, 2001). st5: in this opportunity, i know many things about current situation of the universitites in bogotá. (diary /october, 2001). profile 8.indd 70 28/09/2007 12:42:18 a.m. an inquiry project: a way to develop a meaningful learning context profile 8, 2007. issn 1657-0790. bogotá, colombia. pages 59-74 71 this category presents a spectrum of students’ perceptions and reactions as regards the inquiry project and the way it was proposed and implemented. it means that there are many responses in terms of working through inquiry: the way they see themselves as learners, the way they perceive and interact as a co-operative group or simply their participation in the activities. the participants explicitly expressed those responses when they wrote in their diaries and when they were interviewed. now let us have a look at this response: st7: i think it was very good [the inquiry project], because i think that it is a good way to round off the process we have had from sixth grade even up to eleventh grade. to have a better command of tenses and english writing, since it is not that easy for us. i think it was useful to develop those aspects and to round off all that has to do with that (st7, interview, november/2001). by this response, it seems to me that the student conceived this project as a way to complete the school process in the sense that it integrated different types of activities that put into action all they have learnt in terms of the english language. in the next affirmation, student three states that he has obtained several experiences during this project implementation, perhaps some negative and positive but somehow, he seems to appreciate them due to the fact that they are very worthy. let us observe it. st3: well, my motivation was the fact that one could have access to more information about the university, right? and i could know my own specific expectations about that, right? the fact that we could have information moved me a lot since it was going to be useful and we had general information from many universities and the ones that each one wanted to study at. i could have a brief view of the way people live in universities and, although not very deeply, the way many people think. so i had a good picture of people’s perspectives and of what is vital in university, right? how to behave there and how to deal properly with situations, right? it was very important for me that we could develop this because the different activities allowed us to know more about everything. that is very important because it gives you tools to make a better decision later. as i said before, it was really important for me that, at the moment of the interviews, people talked to you and told you what you needed in spite of their attitude and that is what i think that was important. (st3, group discussion, october/2001) i firmly believe that making informed decisions greatly contributes to the growth of a community. being informed is what enables people to make better, critical and more informed decisions. likewise, an informed student greatly enhances his understanding of the possible decisions about the university. besides that, my students wanted to share the results of this learning experience and give different alternatives to their partners to guide them to collect ideas and gain new perspectives that could contribute to their future decisions. the participants honestly mentioned that by sharing and giving these explanations, they also learnt the way to prepare oral presentations, employ body movements and use the videobeam and transparencies. in general, they learnt to express themselves in english coherently to a large audience, as we can observe in the following two excerpts: st2: in english what demands me much more effort is the oral part, so it seems to me that by practising it is going to improve. then i consider that i learnt that oral part and the verbal expression. before we used to focus the theoretical part and the grammatical structures, but in this project we profile 8.indd 71 28/09/2007 12:42:18 a.m. pineda torres universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras72 emphasised the oral, written and spoken. (group discussion, october/2001). st1: i learnt not to have scenic panic, to be sure if one did a good job and to overcome through the constant practice the nervousness when you give an oral speech. (group discussion, october/2001). in general terms, this inquiry experience was achieved by exploring what learners already knew and what they wanted to know along with their inquiries. then, their active participation in the classroom provoked significant experiences beyond sharing beliefs, findings and multiple activities. after that, students had the opportunity to move into the selected inquiry to investigate it, seeking different kinds of sources that provided new perspectives to understand and reflect upon the issues related to the inquiry. thus, all together could share what they had learned, their experiences in the process of inquiry development, confronting their previous ideas about the inquiry and how they were transformed. from this participative meeting, students could integrate real facts and understandings in order to follow the project and plan new inquiries. at the end of applying this cycle, the learners considered many positions for evaluating their performance in the project. for example, some students said the following: st.1: my uncovering was very good, because i found out enough information for the investigation and i did the interviews to students and teachers. besides my determinations and interest were very good. (st1, interview, november/2001). st. 2: i think that my process is excellent because i could project myself in my future career and do a short research on it. (st2, interview, november/2001). st. 3: my performance in the project was very good because i was interested to develop it in a good way and working hard. (st3, interview, november/2001). st. 4: that is very good because is the opportunity to know the professional education and our ideas and dreams for the future. (st4, interview, november/2001). st. 5: i feel that my performance in the project was very good because i learnt so much about the educational system. (st5, interview, november/2001). the students attested they felt satisfied because they learned a lot by developing this project and focusing on what they really wanted. not only have they learned about the topic of the project, but also to express their thoughts, feelings, opinions, etc. in english and to study the structure of this target language. moreover, they said that they learned to know each other, to listen to others, and to question themselves about social aspects. in this sense, not only were students learning english but were also achieving a wide view and many alternatives to answer their main concern, which was to become familiar with the university context. most of them evaluated their performance as good because they accomplished satisfactorily the steps proposed at the beginning of the project. some others thought they learnt a lot about the topic of the universities, educational system, secondary education, etc. besides, they expressed that they were interested and highly motivated in developing this project which means that was an advantage to implement it and students learnt a lot from the different moments of this project. constantly, students were relating and building their experiences as well as their profile 8.indd 72 28/09/2007 12:42:18 a.m. an inquiry project: a way to develop a meaningful learning context profile 8, 2007. issn 1657-0790. bogotá, colombia. pages 59-74 73 knowledge. inquiry practice enriched also our experiences by providing opportunities to inquire about their questions. firstly, to determine the inquiry process, learners became aware of their wants in order to think about the significant curiosities in their lives. then, they chose and wrote the questions that mattered to them in terms of being definitely motivated to look for the information for their inquiries and gaining the experiences of creating a proper way to find important answers. after that, they presented their findings to the whole group and discussed more meaningful issues in order to define new and interesting inquiries for them. in consequence, they had the chance to integrate significant experiences looking for their authentic inquiries, to gain a lot of understanding and to develop their particular issues of interest in order to strengthen their own learning process. consequently, the authoring cycle never ended. taking thoughtful new action was the last step that allowed the students to go beyond the significant findings to broader directions. through new inquiry planning, they were engaged constantly to assume a wide range of inquiries because this cycle follows a process that flows continuously. conclusion and implications this study is an important aid to support the learning and teaching processes because through inquiry projects we, as teachers, can promote students’ learning experiences. this exploration could be considered a source of information for teachers of all areas and especially for efl teachers because it could help them start attending to their students’ needs or interests from their contexts. to plan the activities in the inquiry project, it is relevant to understand and consider our students’ suggestions, wants and needs in order to have a significant program to develop in the classes. inquiry project should be regarded as an integral part of any learning and teaching practice. considering this experience, i must conclude that i have learned many teaching and learning aspects through dealing with this exploration. the types of tasks used are very different compared with the ones i used in my traditional classes because all of them have to be connected in order to uncover the inquiry project. the classroom management and learners’ roles have their focus on the project guided by the teacher due to the fact that the students are the ones who construct the sessions, based on their own learning process through their reports, presentations, consultations, group interactions, discussions, interviews, debates, portfolios, and readings, among others. in this sense, the evaluation is made with them through the realisation of significant activities, which motivates them to uncover their inquiries. from this view, this project could have a very wide impact as a teaching methodology since it is based on a democratic process that involves all the participants in a negotiation around the stages to be followed throughout the project in order to satisfy the students’ needs and interests. the inquiry-based practices increased the students’ motivation, active participation, and relevance of suggestions and ideas, among others, which made them critical and creative agents of their own learning autonomy. finally, i can say that this inquiry project involved positive results. experiencing an profile 8.indd 73 28/09/2007 12:42:18 a.m. pineda torres universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras74 inquiry project helped students reflect on the way they were learning and how they could apply the findings in their future decisions. this was an enriching project that granted us many learning experiences by joining efforts to grow together. references castillo, r. (2001). workshop about english teaching. seminar in the m.a. program of applied linguistics. bogotá, d.c: universidad distrital francisco josé de caldas. freire, p. (1998). pedagogy of the oppressed. new york: continuum. halliday, m.a.k. (1994). el lenguaje como semiótica social. bogotá: fondo de cultura económica. nunan, d. (1995). research methods in language learning. cambridge: cambridge university press. short, k., harste, j., & burke c. (1996). creating classrooms for authors and inquirers. portsmouth, nh: heinemann. wells, g. (1999). dialogic inquiry: towards sociocultural practice and theory of education. cambridge: cambridge university press. about the author norha esperanza pineda torres holds an ma in applied linguistics to tefl, universidad distrital francisco josé de caldas, where she is currently an english teacher in the l.e.b.e.i program. profile 8.indd 74 28/09/2007 12:42:18 a.m. 5profile vol. 13, no. 1, april 2011. issn 1657-0790. bogotá, colombia. pages 5-9 editorial “we envisage our role as building a culture of significant possibility, that is, a culture where beliefs and choices are both context-bound and transformative, and where discourses and practices are situated somewhere between dominant and ideal realities.”1 i am delighted to present this new number of our journal. with this version we start the second decade of our publication and surely this will bring new challenges. the quote above, taken from the work by vieira and alfredo moreira, perfectly fits the philosophy and policies we have built in profile during the time we have been working in its publication. the editorial team, our reviewers, contributors and authors have joined efforts and provided support to maintain our publication because we also envisage our role as community builders. we believe in the importance of circulating our reflections and investigations through publishing. to do so, we have engaged in collaborative endeavours and received insights from advisors and our readership. the spread of the work we have carried out so far and the receptive attitude of our readers give us hints on how we are progressing toward building a culture of significant possibility. even though we now have more options for getting published nationally and internationally, the chances for different voices to be considered –to be published and then read– are not always tangible. in several cases, teachers and teacher-researchers have regretted the fact that chances are scarce for non-experienced writers. for that reason, it has been our decision to open our journal to voices that come from different academic arenas, from teachers and educators from different countries and contexts, and with different profiles and expertise. as can be read in the papers we include in this edition and in the previous ones, the works evidence beliefs and choices that are both context-bound and transformative. this means that in all the cases, authors aim at understanding and transforming particular teaching conditions. no matter if they question dominant discourses and practices or speak up for ideal realities, teacher-authors all aim at providing better opportunities for students to have access to english language learning. the authors’ decision to submit their manuscripts and make their work public to then go through demanding evaluation processes also evidence their awareness of the contributions research, reflections and innovations can make to our field. despite the fact 1 vieira, f. & alfredo moreira, m. (2008, p. 267). reflective teacher education towards learner autonomy: building a culture of possibility. in m. jiménez raya & t. lamb (eds.), pedagogy for autonomy in language education. theory, practice and teacher education (pp. 266-282). dublin: authentik. 6 cárdenas-beltrán that those processes are time-consuming and sometimes even painful, our contributors come to grips with the peculiarities of our requirements. no doubt, these professionals clearly understand that knowledge resulting from research and innovations has real value when shared and what teachers’ production mean to the academic community. this issue includes twelve papers concerning english language teaching (elt), language policies –this time in connection with the theme of the teacher as a researcher–, pre and in-service teacher education, teacher recognition, teachers’ knowledge base and language teaching in high schools and undergraduate programmes. in keeping with the mission of profile, the articles are derived from research, reflective practices, and innovations. we open the first section, issues from teacher researchers, with a paper by two public school teachers who work in bogotá. lorena jaramillo urrutia and ana stella medina gutiérrez’s article is based on an action research and innovation project conducted while participating in a teacher development programme at universidad nacional de colombia. starting from the assumption that it is necessary to approach environmental topics in class, the authors engaged in an interdisciplinary work intended to make high school students aware of the care and preservation of the environment. to do so, they planned and monitored the processes and products obtained along the steps of writing short descriptive texts in english. this process entailed four stages: motivation, knowledge of ecological vocabulary, production of sentences and paragraphs, and construction of short descriptive texts with the help of guidance questions and their publication in the school newspaper. data collected through questionnaires and a collection of papers written by students allowed the teachers to document how they managed to enlighten students about the care of the environment and, at the same time, provided opportunities for them to improve their communication skills, particularly when writing in english. afterwards, isobel rainey reports on the results of a study that focused on the examination of the action research topics and topic preferences of two groups of grassroots teachers –active researchers and potential researchers. the study carried out by the author sheds light on how action research carried out by grassroots teachers has been understood by the elt community as well as on the implications to make this research methodology more visible and inclusive. we can also find reflections upon the participation expected from stakeholders and traditional researchers in the professional development activities undertaken by schoolteachers so that all really get engaged in collaborative endeavours. undoubtedly, this article means a lot not only to teacher educators, teacher researchers and educational authorities, but to those of us working in the publication field. as editor, i wish to express my gratitude to the author for her support as a former member of the advisory board and for having selected our journal to conduct the study reported here. editorial 7profile vol. 13, no. 1, april 2011. issn 1657-0790. bogotá, colombia. pages 5-9 the following articles are connected to the area of teacher education and teachers’ knowledge base. first, john jairo viáfara shares with us an investigation around a common concern among teachers and teacher educators: how efl (english as a foreign language) student teachers face the challenge of using l2 in public school classrooms located in colombia. notes, interviews and the student teachers’ portfolios were used to explore attitudes and strategies regarding said issue. in the discussion of the findings, the author draws our attention towards the student teachers’ history as learners, their teaching context and the preparation behind their decisions. we continue with an issue concerning recognition in the lives of teachers of english as a foreign language (tefl) in a mexican university context. barbara scholes gillings de gonzález gives us the opportunity to learn about the findings of a qualitative research study into collective responses of teachers of english as a foreign language to an extended change process along a period of time. the complexity of educational change is evident in the participants’ responses and perceptions and shows elements of the teachers’ transformative understanding of their professional identities as a result of the growing recognition obtained in their context. next, we can find a narrative experience which concentrates on the theme of teachers’ knowledge about language teaching and curriculum. jenny alexandra mendieta aguilar, who conducted a research study with a group of three teachers working at a colombian university, informs us about the characteristics of the knowledge these teachers hold about language teaching and learning processes as well as the role this knowledge plays in the construction and evaluation of curriculum. claudio h. díaz larenas, andrea victoria rodríguez moran and karen jocelyn poblete rivera are the authors of the following article, which contains information about a comparative study carried out in chile around the topics of teaching styles and personality types of efl teachers in the public and private sectors. the readers will find out how a teaching style inventory and a personality type index were administered to the participants. interestingly, the results indicate that public sector participants show a facilitator teaching style and an extrovert personality type, whereas private sector participants reveal a more authoritative teaching style and an introverted type of personality. the next article, by sasan baleghizadeh and mehdi dadashi, comes from the iranian context and depicts the effect of direct and indirect corrective feedback on junior high school students’ spelling errors. the researchers developed their study on two classes who received different kinds of feedback during a given period of time and took into consideration written work dictated by their teacher from their textbooks. it is expected that the findings raise awareness among practitioners about the effectiveness of feedback as a means to have students overcome spelling errors. we close this section with an article by ana cristina biondo salomão. it deals with the area of technology, particularly with language learning in teletandem in precárdenas-beltrán universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras8 service teacher education. the study reported in this paper was conducted within the framework of a large brazilian project (teletandem brazil: foreign language for all). the author describes the influences of the pedagogic strategies used by a mediator in the supervision process of a teletandem partner on her pedagogical practice. additionally, we can learn how this kind of work can become an opportunity for reflective teacher education in initial teacher preparation. the article included in the second section, issues from novice teacher researchers, also deals with the area of technology. rosa isabel gonzález moreno addresses the role of discussion boards in a university blended learning program. the use of surveys and reflection in which tutors and teachers provided information about learning experiences and their perceptions allowed the researcher to account for the characteristics discussion boards have when used in a particular context. the author also draws our attention towards the main advantages and disadvantages of the use of said tool as well as alternatives for the improvement of their use in higher education programmes. the last section of our journal gathers three issues based on reflections and innovations, which were contributed by colombian authors. first, isabel cristina cadavid múnera, claudia patricia díaz mosquera and diana isabel quinchía ortiz concentrate on the application of a given set of conditions for learning in a professional development programme for elementary school efl teachers. the article derives from an action research project that sought to establish the impact of a professional development proposal for elementary school english teachers. the reflections presented along the document give us the opportunity to examine cambourne’s conditions for learning from theoretical and practical perspectives. in addition, we can read about the findings along a given period of time, particularly in terms of the participant teachers’ pedagogical practices and their use of the foreign language. subsequently, we can read about peer interaction within a social framework intended to foster the development of foreign language learning. as july carolina gómez lobatón states, the pedagogical innovation carried out with undergraduate students looked for discovering new ways of interaction that could go beyond traditional or common unidirectional relationship. peers as active agents in the construction of knowledge, new ways to arrange groups in the classroom, the importance of new dynamics of interaction among students and meaning negotiation were the main conceptual considerations borne in mind to accomplish the goals of the project. we close this edition with a paper by juan d. gómez, who focuses on academic writing. the author focuses on a common concern we face when teaching english: writing compositions. in this case, we can get acquainted with struggles experienced by advanced students of english as a foreign language when working on english composition. among the aspects the author highlights are cultural, academic, and disciplinary influences that may obfuscate students’ assimilation of the conventions of written english. it is hoped that the examination of those variables and written editorial 9profile vol. 13, no. 1, april 2011. issn 1657-0790. bogotá, colombia. pages 5-9 evidences highlighted by the author will lead us to think about the conditions needed to help students in their development of academic writing in english. finally, i wish to share with all of you that the number of papers submitted for evaluation purposes has increased. i am sure this is not only the result of the recognition we have been granted in different databases and indexing systems but also due to the participation of the authors, readers, potential contributors, and the members of the advisory and editorial boards, who all have expressed their interest in our work. this time i wish to welcome professors paula golombek (university of florida, usa) and rebeca elena tapia carlín (benemérita universidad autónoma de puebla, mexico), who kindly accepted our invitation to be part of the advisory and editorial committees, respectively. i am sure their experience in the areas of teacher education and elt as well as in the publication field will be of great help to us. we are pleased to offer the present publication of volume 13 no. 1 to the colombian and international academic community in the hope that it shall contribute to a greater spread of the topics dealt with in this issue and to the further development of the elt profession. as always, we look forward to publishing more research reports, reflections, and innovations. melba libia cárdenas-beltrán journal editor 117profile vol. 11, no. 2, 2009. issn 1657-0790. bogotá, colombia. pages 117-134 interaction in online tutoring sessions: an opportunity to knit english language learning in a blended program la interacción en las tutorías en línea: una oportunidad para tejer el aprendizaje de la lengua inglesa en un programa mixto rosa alejandra medina riveros*1 universidad nacional de colombia, sede bogotá this article reports a research study which intended to describe the interaction taking place between a tutor and her students during the online tutoring sessions (ots) in the alex virtual english program at the universidad nacional de colombia, in bogotá. students’ surveys, chat transcriptions and tutor’s journals were used to collect data. the results showed how language itself, the methodology of the course, reflection upon learning, and social and personal issues made up the conversational topics prevailing in these sessions. it was also found that the main interactions between the tutor and the learners consisted of double-way dynamics. key words: interaction, online tutoring sessions, alex virtual english program, blended program este artículo reporta un trabajo investigativo que buscó describir la interacción que tuvo lugar entre una tutora y sus estudiantes durante las tutorías en línea (tl) en el programa alex virtual-inglés de la universidad nacional de colombia, en bogotá. para recolectar información se usaron encuestas a los estudiantes, transcripciones de chat y diarios de la tutora. los resultados mostraron cómo la lengua en sí misma, la metodología del curso, la reflexión sobre el aprendizaje y los asuntos sociales y personales configuraban los temas de conversación predominantes en estas sesiones. también se encontró que las interacciones principales entre la tutora y los estudiantes consistían en dinámicas de doble vía. palabras clave: interacción, tutorías en línea, programa alex virtual–inglés, programa mixto * e-mail: ramedinar@unal.edu.co address: carrera 33 no. 23-51, apto 307. bogotá, colombia. this article was received on april 30, 2009 and accepted on august 9, 2009. 118 universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras medina riveros introduction the ways of teaching and learning have been rapidly evolving due to the spread of technology over the last few years. learning management systems, chats, discussion boards, multimedia applications, blogs, wikis and social networks are new resources for english teachers and learners. incorporating these technological tools into the learning environments implies the development of innovative educational programs. in colombia, the universidad nacional in bogotá created the alex virtual english program, which mixes technological and faceto-face components to help undergraduate students develop their communicative competence. alex virtual english is a modality of the alex program. alex, which stands for programa dedesarrollo del aprendizaje autónomo de lenguas extranjeras, was created in 2001 with the purpose of developing communicative competence in a foreign language, emphasizing reading comprehension through intensive pedagogy, semi-autonomous learning and the use of new educational technologies (consejo superior universitario, 2001, acuerdo 023). in 2007, six years after the alex program began, the university faced challenges such as financial constraints, lack of space and heavy demand of undergraduate students who needed to fulfill the language-graduation requirement. hence, the foreign languages department of the universidad nacional and the direction of academic and virtual services of the university, (dnsav) dirección nacional de servicios académicos virtuales de la universidad nacional de colombia, joined together to design virtual courses for the language most in demand at the university: english. this design resulted in the beginning of a new modality of the alex program. in addition to the face-to-face courses, semi-virtual courses were offered. as well as being an alternative for the lack of space and the heavy demand of english, the alex virtual english courses represented an opportunity to promote the use of the technological resources the university had acquired; in this case, the blackboard learning management system. efl teachers, tutors (pre-service teachers from the last semesters of the philology and languages-english program) and undergraduate students of the different majors of the university were the main participants in the semi-virtual courses. discussion boards, e-mail writing, online multimedia contents (modules), face-to face meetings, exams, online and attending tutoring sessions were the main elements of these courses. in such context, and while working as a tutor of the alex virtual program during the second semester of 2008, i wondered how my students and i would interact during the tutoring sessions. both attending and online sessions were unique learning experiences, different from traditional classes. these experiences portrayed a new kind of learning in which tutor and students should create new ways of interaction. furthermore, interaction was a defining characteristic of the alex virtual modality as based on the humanistic and pedagogical model of constructivism and blended learning. alex virtual was supported on two main educational constructs: blended learning and constructivism. blended learning is a combination of several pedagogies, tools and methods to create efficient courses that give more responsibilities to students. it is defined by bliuc, goodyear & ellis (2007) as the mix of traditional methods of teaching, such as face-to-face teaching, and online teaching. another definition of this type of learning is given by graham (2006): “the combination of the instruction from two historically separate models of teaching and learning: traditional faceto-face learning systems and distributed learning 119 interaction in online tutoring sessions... profile vol. 11, no. 2, 2009. issn 1657-0790. bogotá, colombia. pages 117-134 systems with an emphasis on the role of computerbased technologies” (p. 5). moreover, the humanistic and pedagogical model of constructivism states that knowledge is built through social interaction and the knowledge of language is not an exception to this premise. as vygotsky, quoted by beaty (2002) claimed, social interaction is the basis of language acquisition –for the first language– and also in the case of foreign languages learning. therefore, interaction is the mechanism by which language is spread. the interactional hypothesis by krashen (1977; 1982; 1985) and long (1985) as quoted by barcárcel (2003) states that the input received is transformed into meaningful output through interaction. furthermore, levy & stockwell (2006) affirm that one of the consequences of constructivism in computer mediated education deals with the fact that “learning occurs within a social context, and interaction between learners and their peers is a necessary part of the learning process” (p. 123). without interaction, language acquisition and learning are impossible. due to the relevance of interaction as an inherent component of knowledge construction in innovative environments, this paper aims at describing the interaction taking place between the tutor and her learners in the online tutoring sessions in two courses of alex virtual during the second semester of 2008. in order to achieve the aim of the study, these research questions were posed: 1) what do the students and the tutor talk about in the online tutoring sessions? 2) which interactions are evidenced during the online tutoring sessions? research setting the study was conducted at the universidad nacional de colombia in bogotá during the piloting stage of the alex virtual english program in the second semester of 2008. in this period, the university was affected by closures and riots due to some students’ discomfort towards the implementation of a new academic reform. the piloting stage of the alex virtual program was held in the first and second semesters of 2008. it was conceived as the fourth stage of the project of design of semi-virtual courses. the previous stages of this project were analysis, initial evaluation for planning, drafting, and designing (rodríguez, cárdenas & aldana, 2008). participants students those who attended the online tutoring sessions during the second semester of 2008, were students of english of the alex virtual level iv groups 1 and 2. most of them were between 18 and 25 years old. they came from different undergraduate programs such as engineering, medicine, human sciences, agronomy, sciences and economics. they were finishing their undergraduate programs and some of them were working either at the university or at companies. regarding language proficiency, these students were at an intermediate level. they were supposed to use all the simple and compound verbal tenses; however, they sometimes made a few grammatical and spelling mistakes that were noticeable in their written participations. tutor i played the role of the tutor and thus, i was a participant-observer. this is my profile: a 20 year-old and 8th semester student of philology and languages-english, with previous experience working at alex as an auxiliary student in the 120 universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras medina riveros attending courses and then as tutor in the virtual courses, level i and iv in the second term of 2008. theoretical framework the alex virtual english program the program objectives and methodology were based on the principles of the alex program and were presented to the university community in december 2007. the objectives of the program are to create new spaces for english language learning and to promote awareness of autonomous learning, strategies for a culture of autonomy and the use of virtual resources to support english language learning (departamento de lenguas extranjeras, 2007). projects, academic and cultural meetings, work at the resources center and work within the virtual environment are the main components of alex virtual methodology. they are described in more detailed as follows: 1. projects. students have the possibility of finding out and analyzing information in the foreign language so they can gather knowledge about either the culture or their discipline in the foreign language. this helps students to develop collaborative work, practical knowledge and language skills. 2. cultural and academic meetings. these meetings include academic, cultural or recreational activities related to the foreign culture, the colombian culture or different academic disciplines. these activities help students reflect upon the relationships among cultures and disciplines. they can also participate in online meetings through video chat at the cultural and academic meetings, english learning clubs, and special lectures. 3. work at the resources center. access to the virtual courses and tutoring are the main goals intended there. traditional resources such as books, videos, and audio material are also kept there for students’ independent or assisted study. 4. work within the virtual environment. this is the main novelty of the program. it consists of the tools given by the learning management system blackboard-online course, discussion boards, online assessment, e-mail, etc. and other tools developed at the universidad nacional video chat application for online tutoring (departamento de lenguas extranjeras, 2007). tutoring the cambridge dictionary of american english (2005) defines the action of tutoring as “to teach by working with one student or a small group, especially because they need special help”. this definition provides some essential elements to build up a concept of tutoring such as working, teaching, student and a vague reference to a certain special help required by the student or a group of students. however, these elements are not enough to shape a complete concept of tutoring. correa (2004) provides other elements such as orientation and human relationship to enrich this concept. for him, tutoring consists of “a guidance service for students made by specialized teachers” (correa, 2004, p. 45). he also points out the importance of tutoring as an educational process in which the main media are human relationships and interaction between personalities in a spontaneous and educational environment. for this reason, tutoring involves an individualized or group relationship with the students, structure and dynamics of their attitudes, aptitudes, knowledge, 121 interaction in online tutoring sessions... profile vol. 11, no. 2, 2009. issn 1657-0790. bogotá, colombia. pages 117-134 experiences in several educational environments, and “collaboration” to sum up both academic experience and daily life (correa, 2004, p. 45). another definition of tutoring given by mechén (1999) shows the importance of tutoring, not just as a teaching process alone, but as a teaching-learning process. the tutoring function is a complex process of teaching-learning in which the student must discover reality and culture. the significance in students’ evolution is not the final result but the way, care and quality of several interventions during the process. this process creates a relationship between teacher and learner, in which not only students learn, but teachers gain knowledge of this process too. according to these definitions, a concept of tutoring deals with these basic elements: a) tutoring is an inherent activity of tutors. b) it implies a relationship between tutor and learners. c) it is a teaching-learning process. interaction malamah-thomas (1987) defines interaction by pointing out its differences between classroom action and reaction. classroom action deals with the lesson plan and objectives given by the teacher. this action provokes a reaction in students shown in the learning results which, in turn, causes a new action by the teacher and so on. the process occurs as shown in the following figure. figure 1. classroom interaction (malamahthomas, 1987, p. 7) however, malamah-thomas (1987) also explains that interaction is more than action after reaction. thus “interaction means acting reciprocally, acting upon each other” (p. 46). the teacher acts upon students; they act upon the teacher, modifying his/her behavior and so on. in this case, “there is a constant pattern of mutual influence and adjustment” (ibid.). online tutoring at alex virtual the video chat developed at the university was intended to enable visual and spoken synchronic communication (tovar & ruiz, 2006). however, the students did not use a camera or microphone very often because they did not have it or because the system did not work efficiently for voice transmission. the communication was mainly written. the number of students participating in the ots varied from 3 to 10 participants per session. students accessed the video chat from their homes or from “internet cafes” on wednesdays and thursdays from 8:00 to 9:00 pm. research methodology this research was a participant-observational case study. merriam (1988) defines a case study as a bounded system limited by physical and concrete boundaries. in this specific study, the physical boundaries were the online tutoring sessions of alex virtual level iv groups 1 and 2 during the second semester 2008. the concrete boundary was the construct of verbal, written and online interaction. according to the role of the researcher, this case study followed a participant observational approach. in this study, the researcher played the role not only of tutor while participating in the online tutoring sessions, but also of observer. this 122 universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras medina riveros approach also allowed the researcher to “develop a more intimate and informal relationship with those who are being observed and provide a superior grade of naturalness to the data gathering” (cohen, manion & morrison, 2000, p. 188). regarding the research procedure, five stages were established to develop this study: unstructured participant observation and open gathering of data; identification of the phenomenon to be studied and research questions; selection and application of data collection instruments; data analysis and interpretation, and report writing. the process of data analysis for this investigation consisted of the following techniques: open and axial coding, and triangulation of instruments (neuman, 1997). the following instruments provided the data for the study of interaction: chat transcripts, tutor journals, and students’ surveys. the transcript of six tutoring sessions were collected and analyzed to find the actions and reactions noticeable in the video chat. the extracts were not modified and were copied and pasted from the beginning to the end of the session in order to be analyzed later on. in addition, the names of the students were changed in the report to protect their identity. the tutor’s journals were collected after every session. they gathered records of actions that occurred during the tutoring sessions and some of the tutor’s reflections upon the process that occurred in the video-chat. the survey was carried out through a questionnaire which included open and closed items. open-ended questions helped us elicit information about students’ perceptions and commentaries on the procedure and activities done during the tutoring sessions. closed items were used in order to corroborate a range of categories emerging from the other two instruments. the specific question type here was frequency ranking. closed questions provided information about what the students did during the online tutoring they have attended, as well as their opinions about the activities they had participated in. findings interaction during the online tutoring sessions is like knitting. at first there must be enough wool to start knitting. the wool can be in yarns of diverse colors that will provide the shades of the final tissue. the sources for the knitting of interaction in the ots were four conversational topics that were common for all the sessions. methodology of the course, personal and social issues, language itself and reflection upon language learning made up the wool for the knitting. however, wool alone cannot become the tissue of language learning. hence, the intervention of needles is necessary for the process. the needles are the main actors of the process of learning construction. in the case of ots at alex virtual, both students and tutor were the needles of the knitting process. it is due to teamwork that the tissue of language learning was created. nevertheless, having wool and needles are not enough to knit. movement and interaction between the needles and the wool are required to transform wool into tissue. these interactions between students and tutor along with topics are like stitches of the knitting project. knitting the language for learning purposes is not a simple process. needles and wool must interact stitch by stitch. these stitches are the students’ and tutor’s interactions which create a special macro stitch between the participants and the topics. this is the learning event, as described by malamah-thomas (1987). interaction in the ots at alex virtual is the knitting of students’ and tutor’s actions to construct the tissue of language learning. the wool yarns are the sources for the knitting. the needles are the students and the tutor. the stitches are the students’ 123 interaction in online tutoring sessions... profile vol. 11, no. 2, 2009. issn 1657-0790. bogotá, colombia. pages 117-134 and tutor’s interactions during the online tutoring session. these elements together make up the tissue four wool yarns: conversational topics as sources of interaction the first thing to do when knitting is to look for the materials for the project, the wool. the wool yarn for the knitting is the conversational topics of the online tutoring sessions. according to coulthard (1985), a conversational topic is a “tellable event”. tellability or newsworththiness is related to “why now and why to me” (p. 79). in other words, tellability is the relevance of a certain event for everyone or for a restricted audience –students and tutor in this case. the importance of a certain event for a certain audience defines whether this is or not a topic. in this study, the journal, the transcripts and the open-ended questions in the survey showed four main conversational topics that served as sources of the interaction during the online tutoring sessions. these conversational topics are language itself, the methodology of the course, reflection upon language learning and personal and social issues. the four topics described above were not perceived as equally frequent in the ots. in the stuof language learning through the complex process of interaction, as shown in figure 2 . figure 2. categories and subcategories from the research 124 universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras medina riveros dents’ survey carried out in this study, the students were asked to identify the most frequent topics during the online tutoring. they chose, first and foremost, language itself; followed by methodology of the course (organization and technical constraints) and then reflection upon language learning. the least frequent conversational topic, from the students’ point of view, was personal and social issues. students could select more than one checkbox in the survey, so percentages added up to more than 100%, as we can see in table 1. table 1. students’ answers to the question: what is the most frequent topic in the ots? students’ answers: frequent topics in the ots number of responses percentage language itself: grammar, vocabulary, reading, writing 42 78% methodology of the course: platform, discussion boards, cultural and academic events, activities for the week , etc. 22 41% reflection upon learning: learning strategies information about extra sources and how to learn. 17 31% personal, social and informal issues 14 26% other 5 9% these results show that the students perceived the online tutoring sessions as environments in which the main source of conversation was language itself. students at the fourth level of alex virtual thought that they spent much time in the online tutoring sessions talking about linguistic topics. students used to talk about grammar, reading, writing, etc. the second most frequent topic of conversation had to do with the methodology of the course. this topic was more recurrent because the students and the tutor took advantage of the ots to clarify the activities of the week and to organize the academic and cultural meetings. even though students had other resources of study and communication such as discussion boards and e-mail, they preferred the synchronous communication in the ots to solve their most relevant doubts regarding language form and organization of the course. the least frequently chosen, reflection upon language learning and personal and social issues, illustrated that students seem to overlook the importance of learning awareness, intersubjectivity and context when studying a language. these findings could evidence a different point of view about how to learn, since the students’ results show that learning a language seems to be a matter of acquisition of linguistic knowledge and organization rather than an intersubjective, reflective process, as proposed by the communicative approach. language itself references to language itself, grammar, vocabulary and reading were very frequent among the participants of this investigation. the students were particularly concerned about their language accuracy regarding grammar and vocabulary. this was also influenced by the grammatical contents of the modules of study like conditionals and wish clauses. this category is related to halliday’s textual function. as the author claimed, “the textual function is not limited to the establishment of relations between sentences; it is concerned just as much with the internal organization of the sentence, 125 interaction in online tutoring sessions... profile vol. 11, no. 2, 2009. issn 1657-0790. bogotá, colombia. pages 117-134 with its meaning as a message both in itself and in relation to the context” (halliday, 1973, p. 107). the following are statements taken from the answers to the question, what do you do in the ots? in the two sessions in which i had participated i solve questions about grammar. i felt ok. (camila. sr, 3). […] we talked about topics of the week, as wishes and enquiry concepts. to review these topics each classmate gave an example of the topic related to their life, the tutor was a guide and she corrects us […] the topic we were talking about was wishes. we made some exercises about the topic. i talked with my classmates using the the online chat. i started the tutoring and the teacher explained me the topic and i start to participate in this activity. i felt fine. (paola sr, 21) first i say hello to the tutor, then i told her about some doubts that i had, than she answered me, then we practice for the exam. we practice some of wishes and conditionals, finally i say bye bye, and that’s all. (juan sr, 26) as can be read in the samples provided, most of them related to grammar contents of the modules of alex level iv. for example: conditionals and wish clauses. another topic had to do with the reading concepts studied in the reading section of the modules, in this case how to identify elements of enquiry texts. methodology of the course this wool yarn is composed of questions and explanations about the methodology of the course. the use of the blackboard platform, the activities of the week, the organization of the cultural meetings and other technical problems made up this topic. students considered they were the ones who asked more about this topic in the online tutoring sessions. asking the tutor about the procedures of the course seems to be the most frequent students’ activity in the ots, as shown in figure 3. figure 3. students’ most frequent activities in the ots 126 universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras medina riveros these results may indicate the relevance of course methodology in blended learning programs like alex virtual. in the online tutoring sessions, students focused on gathering clear and complete information about the tasks they had to develop throughout the course, even when they had other communication tools such as internal e-mail, platform announcements and discussion boards. methodological issues were taken into account in the students’ answer to the question: what do you do in the online tutoring sessions? this can be seen in the following excerpt1: in the last session we speak about the second exam, about the doubts that we had, also we speak about the cultural meeting, the groups, the topic, the date, the hour and the activities that we must do for it. (jose, sr, 7) the methodology then must be comprehensible for the students and the tutor to work on the other topics of the course: language, learning and personal or social issues. reflection upon language learning learning how to learn, learning strategies, extra sources and reflection upon language are contained here. these aspects have been traditionally associated with metacognitive awareness. according to ellis (2000), metacognitive awareness includes the following strands: “language awareness, cognitive awareness, social awareness and cultural awareness. these overlap in class self-awareness and self confidence” (p. 75). positive attitudes, values and beliefs provide a solid and positive foundation for the future and contribute to the motivation to learn, as well as 1 samples included hereafter have not been edited. they are presented as produced by the participants, who are identified with initials or pseudonyms. to the realization of the students’ ability to learn. traces of metacognitive awareness and, more specifically, reflection upon language learning can be identified in these samples: […] j. said: “i’m agree” and i explained to him that “ to agree” is a verb like any other action verb, so it wasn’t necessary to use “to be “ there. ok “sorry” said him. i told him not to worry or to be afraid of making mistakes, anyway it was good for him to make mistakes, but it was better if he identifies them and corrects them. he must not apologize for his mistakes but he must recognize them, understand why certain structures are not accurate and study more to get over his difficulties. (tutor’s journal, november 12th 2008) in this journal fragment, the tutor encouraged the students to reflect upon their fear of making mistakes, and expresses her point of view about errors. these are seen as normal elements of the learning process, which must be identified and corrected, but not reasons to apologize. there was also a reflection upon new learning strategies. students asked about extra sources apart from the ones proposed in the course. they were more aware of their needs and asked for help, as showed in this example: my tutor recommended me some pages to practice and improve my english and actually i feel great because it’s a very good space and the tutor is very helpful. (anderson, sr, 23) in the next transcript, students were asked to use wish clauses to express regrets and the tutor emphasizes the importance of the authentic use of language: tutor: so, john your regret is missing john: i’m in white john: i wish i hadn’t been in that concert tutor: which concert? tutor: good example john: whatever 127 interaction in online tutoring sessions... profile vol. 11, no. 2, 2009. issn 1657-0790. bogotá, colombia. pages 117-134 john: is a lie tutor: i was asking for real regrets tutor: because, when you learn a language it’s for real communication john: but i can’t remember any regret john: from my life amy: he is perfect he had not regreats jaja john: yes john: exactly jejeje harold: that is so good!! tutor: i wish he remembered his regrets tutor: ok, good john: i’m not perfect but i have a good life (online tutoring session, december 4, 2008) personal and social issues this category corresponds to the interpersonal function coined by halliday (1973). this function occurs when “the speaker is using language as the means of his own intrusion into the speech event: the expression of his comments, his attitudes and evaluations, and also the relationship that someone sets up between himself and the listener” (halliday, 1973, p. 106). although the students perceived this as the least frequent aspect they talked about in the tutoring sessions, there is evidence of tutor’s references to social or personal issues as icebreakers of the conversation. short talks about social or current issues of the university were presented as ice-breakers or before leaving the tutoring. the university was one of the social topics discussed on the session. punctuation, exclamation marks, laugh, emoticons and jokes were used to fulfill the interpersonal function. the context of the ots provided opportunities to talk about socio-cultural topics at the university such as strikes, closures, riots or social events. in this example, the tutor and the students discuss the strikes at the university, which led to the closure of the campus for several days. tutor: what do you think of the situation at the university? nancy: normal maría p: terrible maría p: !!!! tutor: they said we’re not having classes maría p: yes i know sussy: why? tutor: but remember we go on with alex tutor: today there were riots on the 262 tutor: alex virtual never stops  nancy: riots??? jajaja” bonche?”3 harold: yes tutor: yeahp, so we continue working maría p: pedrea maría p: ok nancy: don’t worry tutor we never stop too jejeje (online tutoring session, october 23, 2008) in the ots, students were also able to express how they felt during the course. the tutor could understand the students’ feelings and together the students and the tutor looked for strategies to improve the learning experience. sometimes humor was incorporated when talking about these issues. this phenomenon has also been studied by darhower (2002). the author highlights the importance of intersubjectivity and sociocultural theory in a similar context of synchronous online written interaction medium as the chat. intersubjectivity is defined as “the establishment of a shared perspective between an expert and a learner in a problem-solving task” (darhower, 2002, p. 253). in the following fragment of a conversation, two 2 the 26th street is a road fronting a side of the university campus. note from the editor. 3 “bonche” is a colloquial spanish word colombian students use to name a riot or a fight. note from the editor. 128 universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras medina riveros students and the tutor negotiated a perspective about the final exam. john: i’m scered for the exam john: scared harold: jeje tutor: you too harold? harold: so so john: i don’t remember anything john: i’m forget all harold: because i cant lose it tutor: oh oh, mm tutor: *fail an exam harold: fail harold: o john: i’m have clean my mine harold: jajaja tutor: jiji, do you suffer from amnesia? john: yes tutor: great, this always happens before exams, let’s find a solution (online tutoring session, december 3, 2008) as can be read in the conversation, the students were expressing their fears of taking the final exam. the students and the tutor made jokes about the students’ amnesia before the test. at the end, the tutor encouraged them to find a strategy to enhance students’ confidence in what they had learned. in a traditional class, this close communication of feelings and social issues between students and teacher rarely appears and, if it does, it is overlooked. stitch by stitch: tutor and students’ conversational interactions in the ots, interactions appeared as two-way processes: greeting and leave taking, asking and answering, explaining and exemplifying, praising and repairing. greeting and leave taking are the framework interactions of the learning event. in these interactions students tended to use informal ways of greeting and leave taking. however, such forms were generally very basic. for instance, learners may produce greetings and leave takings like “hello” and “bye” instead of more complex structures : “how have you been?”, “talk to you later”, etc. also, students may use emoticons and jokes as ice-breakers. this simplification of the language seems to appear to be placing emphasis on the phatic function of language to create the necessary intersubjectivity among the participants before dealing with the new teaching points. in the askinganswering dynamic, many possibilities are offered. for instance, the tutor asked the students if they had doubts regarding specific contents such as reading or grammar. the tutor asked the students to give examples or explanations to their classmates or the students asked for information about language itself or the course methodology (cultural event, progress exam, etc.). another type of interaction occurred when the tutor and the students explained and exemplified. most of the time, the tutor explained the language or the methodology. students also gave examples and explanations. the students’ feedback was necessary to complement the explanation and verify their understanding. this is seen in the following example when the students and the tutor kept asking, answering, exemplifying and explaining noun phrases: david: i have a question i don’t understand very well the difference between noun phrase and sentence [question] tutor: for example you have a sentence like this: david who is studying at alex virtual doesn’t have to buy expensive english books. 129 interaction in online tutoring sessions... profile vol. 11, no. 2, 2009. issn 1657-0790. bogotá, colombia. pages 117-134 [example] tutor: this is my sentence and here you have 1 sentence and two noun phrases […] tutor: a sentence is composed by subject, verb and complement tutor: while a noun phrase is made up by a noun and other words that modify the word david: the noun phrase is like a topic david: yes? [question] tutor: this is a noun phrase: david, who is studying at alex virtual [example] tutor: noun phrases are very used in titles […] topics, events, titles of researches etc, are usually expressed through noun phrases [explanation] david: ok lore___-_01: i need other example tutor: what was the title of the last book you’ve read? [question] esmeralda alvarez: essay about blindness [example] john_carlos_almeciga,_group_2: the election lore___-_01: language disorders in children: an evidence-based approach to assessment and treatment. [example] tutor: you have a main word and modifiers of that word [explanation] tutor: digo, what was your book? [question] david: the metamorphosis [ example] esmeraldaalvarez: hey!!! david?? tutor: a very good book | tutor: “the metamorphosis” is not a sentence tutor: that’s a noun phrase [explanation] (online tutoring session october 24) praise deals with positive feedback which may consist of repeating the correct answer, or expressing a comment such as “great”, “perfect”, “well done”, etc. this interaction is mainly performed by the tutor to reinforce students’ motivation, confirm their understanding and enhance self awareness of learning. in the example above the tutor praised a student’s answer in the sentence “a very good book”. finally, one of the most complex types of interactions was error repairing or noticing. chapelle (1998) states that by noticing, “learners internalize new forms and improve the accuracy of their existing grammatical knowledge” (p. 24). she also affirms that “the process of noticing can occur through learners’ own reflection and monitoring or through triggers provided by others” (chapelle, 1998, p. 24). there were three ways in which students noticed their linguistic problems in the ots: tutor’s repairing, peer repairing and self repairing. tutor’s repairing most of the students considered this as very frequent interaction in the ots. there were two main ways of tutor’s repairing: direct and indirect correction. sometimes the correction of the mistake had a negative feedback expressed through a joke. in this case, the tutor’s comment made the student notice his problem. j. 02: what we can to do to use the reactive power and have a better power factor david: what? esmeraldaalvarez: *what can we j 02: ohh yes... jeje i am sorry tutor: can is a modal, so can to is wrong tutor: and please, for god’s sake don’t put “can to” in your exams your teachers will cry next time (online tutoring session october 23) also, the tutor sometimes looked for ways of indirect repairing. in this example, the tutor wanted the other students to repair amy’s errors. 130 universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras medina riveros amy: i wish i had travelling around the world tutor: ok, let’s analyze these sentences tutor: help me to find the errors there harold: i wish i had travel around the world (online tutoring session december, 2008) self repairing according to the survey, most of the students (70%) thought they sometimes, very frequently or almost always repaired their errors in the ots. this occurred due to the nature of written communication. in this type of communication, students become more aware of their mistakes since they have more time to think about what and how to say something than in oral communication. this is an example of self repairing. in this case, the misspelling may change the meaning of the sentence: jose: ok.... tutor one question; know our cultural meeting will be also with the other levels? jose: *now (online tutoring session, november 21, 2008) peer correction peer correction was not perceived as a very frequent activity in the ots. though 40% of the students expressed that they never or almost never corrected their peers, transcript evidence shows how it occurred. in the following example, harold corrected john’s sentence, “i wish i would pass the exam” to express a wish in the present. harold provided a correction and the tutor confirmed it. tutor: let’s see john’s example: i wish i would pass the exam tutor: john, is that a wish, a regret or something annoying? tutor: what’s that? harold: i think this is a wish tutor: yes, it is harold: i wish i passed the exam tutor: yes, it is (online tutoring session, december 2008) knitting interaction in the ots was composed of several stitches. these stitches or interactions were two-way processes which involved the tutor and the students: greeting and leave taking, asking and answering, explaining and exemplifying, praising and repairing. from these stitches, repairing is a very complex interaction which includes tutor, peer, and self repairing. two needles: the students and the tutor knitting interaction in the ots is a human process which requires two needles or actors who develop the topics of conversation (wool yarn of the knitting) through the performance of some interactions (stitches). these actors or needles are the students and the tutor. the students are the main actors of the ots. the session is based on the students’ inquiries about language and course methodology. besides, students can express their ideas, doubts and feelings about their learning process. they can also interact with peers and the tutor to discuss social or personal topics. the students’ usual interactions consisted of asking, answering, exemplifying, joking, laughing and repairing. they almost never explained mistakes or praised their classmates. students asked about the methodology of the course and the language mainly to gather new information. they also answered the tutor’s verification questions about language as a follow-up move. also, they used the ots to talk more informally. students told jokes and laughed, exchanged personal information (e-mails, mobile numbers, etc.). finally, students 131 interaction in online tutoring sessions... profile vol. 11, no. 2, 2009. issn 1657-0790. bogotá, colombia. pages 117-134 corrected themselves and sometimes their peers, but they never corrected the tutor. the tutor in the ots is the learners’ helper and the actor responsible for providing the guidelines of the course. rather than a figure of authority, the tutor is an empathetic actor. students felt free to express their feelings in the tutor’s presence. the tutor’s typical interactions in the ots were asking, explaining, praising and repairing. the tutor asked students about personal or social issues to break the ice at the beginning of the conversation. furthermore, the tutor formulated questions to verify the understanding of a methodological topic or a linguistic concept. the purpose of these types of questions was not to get new information but to receive students’ feedback regarding a previous explanation. the tutor also asked the students to exemplify and explain to their peers. for instance, in indirect correction, the tutor might start by asking for an example before explaining the communicative function and structure of the statement. this is an inductive process from the instances to the generalizations. the tutor was also in charge of the reflection upon learning. praising and repairing were also typical tutor’s interactions. conclusions the alex virtual program at the universidad nacional de colombia provides environments for students to get familiar with technological tools and take advantage of them to study english as a foreign language. the online tutoring sessions are part of these technological tools. these spaces create opportunities for social and linguistic interaction between the tutor and the students. it is due to this social and linguistic interaction that students receive input and transform it into communicative output. the interaction taking place during the online tutoring sessions at alex virtual was studied from the perspective of the following questions: 1) what do the students and the tutor talk about in the online tutoring sessions? and 2) which interactions are evidenced during the online tutoring sessions? in response to the first question, what do the students and the tutor talk about in the ots?, the students’ survey, the tutor’s journal and the chat transcripts showed that four topics composed the core of the talk. these topics were the language itself, the methodology of the course, learning, and personal and social issues. the first topic, language itself, has to do with the participants’ need to focus on the form of the foreign language. for example, students were more aware of linguistic mistakes than in a traditional class and received feedback about them. grammar topics like the use of conditionals, gerunds and wish clauses were discussed in the ots. the tutor and the students also worked on doubts about vocabulary and reading. these linguistic points correspond to the contents of the modules that make up the course. language itself was the most frequent topic of the conversations according to the students’ survey. the second topic of conversation in the ots was the methodology of the course. chatting about organizational constraints fulfilled the students’ need for clear information about what they had to do in the course. the main methodological issues discussed were the planning and organization of the cultural and academic meeting, the activities of the week and the exams. in general, we could observe that having a clear idea about the methodology of the course is a key issue for the development of the virtual course; it reinforces students’ responsibility in their learning. learning was the third topic found in the conversations of the ots. despite the student’s 132 universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras medina riveros lack of awareness of their learning process, in the ots students could get information about learning strategies and extra sources. most of the time, the tutor was the one who reflected upon language learning. the function of mistakes in learning, the authenticity of language and extra sources for learning were the main issues discussed regarding learning. hence, it is necessary for tutors and students to invest more time reflecting upon learning in order to identify their weaknesses and strengths. social and personal issues were the last topic of conversation discussed in the ots. students felt free to express their feelings about their process, which improved the relationship between the tutor and the students. together, they could create strategies to solve problems. social issues are also included in this category. the most prevalent social issue in the ots was the university. in the second semester of 2008, several social events took place at the university such as strikes, riots, university closures and the indigenous meeting called “minga” which became sources of conversation in the ots. regarding the second question of this study, which interactions are evidenced during the online tutoring sessions?, it was concluded that the main interactions that made up the learning event in the ots were greeting and leave taking, asking and answering, explaining and exemplifying, praising and repairing. greeting and leave taking were very informal interactions. students and tutor use simple language and talk about personal and social issues as ice-breakers and wrap-ups. asking and answering are the most common interactions. the students and the tutor asked and answered with different purposes. the students asked about language itself to solve their doubts about grammar or vocabulary while the tutor asked the students to confirm they had understood the topics. other interactions used as strategies to solve doubts were explaining and exemplifying. the tutor was the person who explained more about language and methodology and both participants wrote examples about the topic discussed. praising and repairing were ways in which the tutor and the students provided feedback. though the tutor was in charge of giving positive feedback to the students, both the tutor and the students provided negative feedback or repairing. moreover, repairing was a typical feature of the online conversations because of the written nature of the chat. this kind of interaction improved the quality of the output produced by the students through constant feedback. the current study showed that in the online tutoring sessions, interactions taking place between the tutor and the students are slightly different from those of traditional classes. although the tutor and the students did not have a lesson plan, they found other ways to study the language. limitations and further research the context of the university and the use of the video-chat tool were the most relevant limitations of this study. strikes and university closures did not allow students to participate with the same frequency in the ots. it also affected the topics of conversation during the online tutoring. for this reason, the students participated in the online tutoring sessions mainly to know what to do (methodological constraints) and to discuss the situation at the university. some of the students did not have the required tools for the tutoring session such as a camera or a microphone, making the communication mainly type-based. other results could have appeared if students would 133 interaction in online tutoring sessions... profile vol. 11, no. 2, 2009. issn 1657-0790. bogotá, colombia. pages 117-134 have used microphones and cameras. in that case, this research could have gathered extra features, besides the written chat. such features would have included pronunciation, turn taking and silence, which were not observable in the written interaction. the current study has implications regarding the study of the information and communication technology (ict) area in colombia, the development of the alex virtual program and the interaction in the ots in future courses. it is necessary to strengthen and support research initiatives on ict applied to education in developing countries like colombia to improve students’ and teacher’s abilities to access knowledge. there should be more programs like alex virtual in other institutions with similar characteristics. with respect to the ots, students and teachers/tutors from other efl programs can implement ots in their courses to interact around language itself, methodology, learning, and personal and social issues enhancing their learning experience. for further research it may be fruitful to study interaction in other courses where other variables such as the use of spanish could appear. future tutors and students of alex must take advantage of the online tutoring sessions to raise their awareness about language learning. a better understanding of how students learn would imply a better understanding of students’ strengths and weaknesses. more detailed studies on ict applied to efl will improve the quality and the quantity of opportunities for colombian students and tutors/ teachers to learn and teach using technology. in addition, more research about the alex virtual english program will contribute to a better implementation of the program at the university and its replication in other institutions. finally, studying in depth the interaction between students and tutors in the ots will imply a better use of this tool in efl contexts. references balcárcel, g. (2003).teacher talk at three colombian higher education institutions. profile issues in teachers’ professional development, 4, 9-14. beaty, k. (2002). teaching and researching computer language learning. cambridge: cambridge university press. bliuc, a.-m., goodyear p., & ellis, r. (2007). research focus and methodological choices in studies into students’ experiences of blended learning in higher education. internet and higher education, 10, 231-244. doi:10.1016/j.iheduc.2007.08.001 cambridge dictionary of american english. (2005). tutor definition. retrieved on august 9, 2008 from web site: http://dictionary.cambridge.org/define. asp?key=tutor*1+0&dict=a chapelle, c. (1998). multimedia call: lessons to be learned from research on instructed sla. language learning & technology. 2(1), 22-34. retrieved on may 8, 2008 from web site: http://llt.msu.edu/vol2num1/ pdf/article1.pdf cohen, l, manion l., & morrison k. (2000). research methods in education. london: routledge falmer. colombia. universidad nacional de colombia [un]. (2001). reglamentación en el proceso de institucionalización del programa alex. acuerdo 023 de 2001 (acta 10 de diciembre de 2001). bogotá: consejo superior universitario. correa, c. (2004). la universidad y la educación a distancia. santa marta: universidad del magdalena. coulthard, m. (1985). an introduction to discourse analysis. new york: longman. darhower, m. (2002). instructional features of synchronous computer-mediated communication in the intermediate l2 class: a sociocultural case study. calico journal, 19,249-277 retrieved on march 27, 134 universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras medina riveros 2009, from web site: https://www.calico.org/html/ article_426.pdf departamento de lenguas extranjeras (2007). folleto divulgativo lanzamiento, alex virtual. bogotá: universidad nacional de colombia. graham, c. (2006). blended learning systems. definitions, current trends and future directions. in: c. j. bonk, & c. r. graham, (eds.), the handbook of blended learning: global perspectives, local designs. san francisco: pfeiffer. ellis, g. (2000). is it worth it? convincing teachers of the value of developing metacognitive awareness in children. in: sinclair b, mcgrath i., & lamb, t. (eds.). learner autonomy, teacher autonomy: future directions. london: longman. halliday, m. a.k. (1973). explorations in the functions of language. london: edward arnold publishers. levy, m., & g. stockwell. (2006). call dimensions: options and issues in computer-assisted language learning. new jersey: mike lawrence erlbaum associates inc. malamah-thomas, a. (1987). classroom interaction. a scheme for teacher education. oxford: oxford university press. mechén, f. (1999). el tutor. dimensión histórica, social y educativa. madrid: editorial ccs. merriam, s. b. (1988). case study research in education. a qualitative approach. california: jossey-bass. neuman, w. (1997). social research methods. qualitative and quantitative approaches. needham heights, boston: allyn & bacon. rodríguez, m., cárdenas m. l., & aldana, c. (2008). the design of alex virtual courses: challenges and implications for elt. plenary session 8 at asocopi conference, tunja 2008. [power point slides]. tovar, j., & ruiz, l. (2006). implementación de un espacio colaborativo virtual de aprendizaje. retrieved on may 20, 2008 from web site: http://www.virtual.unal.edu. co/unvportal/articles/articlesviewer.do?reqcode=vi ewdetails&idarticle=3 about the author rosa alejandra medina riveros holds a b.a. in philology and languages from universidad nacional de colombia, sede bogotá. she participated as an auxiliary student in the alex program and then as tutor in the virtual modality of the same program. this article reports on her monograph project as a graduation requirement at the same university. 71profile vol. 11, no. 2, 2009. issn 1657-0790. bogotá, colombia. pages 71-84 exploring teachers’ practices for assessing reading comprehension abilities in english as a foreign language exploración de las prácticas de los profesores para evaluar las habilidades de comprensión lectora en inglés como lengua extranjera jorge hugo muñoz marín*1 universidad de antioquia, colombia this paper reports the findings of an exploratory study that aimed at identifying the assessment practices that english teachers have in the reading comprehension program at universidad de antioquia. data collection included documentary analysis and interviews of 15 teachers and of the head of the program. findings suggest diverse practices in assessing reading comprehension, the use of quantitative instruments to evaluate qualitatively, students’ lack of familiarity with qualitative assessment practices, teachers’ lack of familiarity with alternative assessment and teachers’ concern for verification of achievement of learning objectives. conclusions highlight the need to expand the teachers’ assessment repertoire through in-service programs designed for the specificity of teaching reading comprehension skills. key words: foreign language reading, reading abilities, reading comprehension, assessment criteria, teachers’ assessment practices este artículo reporta los hallazgos de un estudio exploratorio que buscó identificar las prácticas evaluativas de los profesores de inglés en el programa de comprensión lectora de la universidad de antioquia. la recolección de datos incluyó un análisis documental y entrevistas con 15 profesores y el coordinador del programa. los hallazgos sugieren prácticas diversas en la evaluación de la comprensión lectora, el uso de instrumentos cuantitativos para evaluar cualitativamente, la falta de familiaridad de los estudiantes con las prácticas de evaluación cualitativa, la falta de familiaridad de los profesores con la evaluación alternativa y la preocupación de los profesores por verificar el cumplimiento de los objetivos de aprendizaje. las conclusiones señalan la necesidad de expandir el repertorio evaluativo de los profesores por medio de programas de desarrollo profesional centrados en la enseñanza de habilidades en la comprensión lectora. palabras clave: lectura en lengua extranjera, comprensión de lectura, habilidades de lectura, criterios de evaluación, prácticas evaluativas * e-mail: hugomu74@gmail.com address: universidad de antioquia, escuela de idiomas, calle 67 no. 53-108 bloque 11. medellín antioquia, colombia. this article was received on november 19, 2008 and accepted on august 20, 2009. 72 universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras muñoz marín introduction this paper starts by introducing a literature review to frame key issues in the study. then, it will describe the context of the study, data collection and data analysis. the main findings are discussed and supported with excerpts from participants’ testimonies. finally, i will state some conclusions. colombian universities have experienced an increasing number of programs that promote the acquisition of reading skills in undergraduate curricula. these programs intend to provide students with the necessary skills to access information in english that is pertinent for understanding scientific literature in their fields of training as well as non academic texts. the universidad de antioquia requires the acquisition of reading skills in a foreign language in all its undergraduate and graduate programs. to fulfill the requirement, the school of languages offers reading comprehension courses taught according to some general guidelines that some professors have constructed collaboratively. in my experience as a professor in the program for the last 4 years, i have faced the challenge of assessing the reading comprehension skills of my own students. some other colleagues have shared my concerns. in an attempt to improve my teaching practice and contribute to the academic growth of the program, i became motivated to explore in more detail the current assessment practices that english teachers have in our program. i hope that the study reported in this paper will contribute to the consolidation of better approaches in the development of reading comprehension skills in our context. literature review in this section, i will present some theoretical points related to reading comprehension and its assessment in a foreign language to frame the study. to start analyzing the assessment practices of efl teachers in a reading comprehension program, i will present a definition of reading. dubin & bycina (1991) explain reading as a selective process taking place between the reader and the text, in which background knowledge and various types of language knowledge interact with information in the text to contribute to text comprehension. grabe & stoller (2002, p. 17) view reading as “the ability to understand information in a text and interpret it appropriately”. the authors state that this definition does not account for the true nature of reading abilities because it does not consider four main issues: one, the ways to engage in reading; two, it does not define fluent reading abilities; it does not explain reading as a cognitive process that takes place under intense time constraints; and four, it does not explain how reading varies according to one’s ability in the second language. alyousef (2005) states that reading is an “interactive” process that takes place between a reader and a text and that leads to automaticity (reading fluency). in this process, the reader interacts dynamically with the text as he/she tries to elicit the meaning. additionally, various kinds of knowledge are used: linguistic or systemic knowledge as well as schematic knowledge. consistent with the definitions presented above, research on reading comprehension focused on describing the processes to understand reading. this is how alyousef (2005) identified six general skills and knowledge areas necessary for reading 73 exploring teachers' practices for assessing reading... profile vol. 11, no. 2, 2009. issn 1657-0790. bogotá, colombia. pages 71-84 comprehension, namely: automatic recognition skills, vocabulary and structural knowledge, formal discourse structure knowledge, content/world background knowledge, synthesis and evaluation skills/strategies and metacognitive knowledge and skills monitoring. additionally, grabe & stoller (2002) identify different components and knowledge areas in the process of reading. they classify them as two different processes for skilled readers: lowerlevel processes, which are related to vocabulary and grammar recognition when reading; and higher level processes, which are concerned with comprehension, schemata and interpretation of a text. according to these authors, a fluent reader may need the combination of lower and higher level processes; otherwise, their reading skills may not be as efficient and reliable as they should be. these definitions and considerations have provided the guidelines and principles for establishing the competences a successful foreign language reader should have. in my experience as a teacher of reading comprehension in efl, i find that grabe & stoller (2002) provide a complete and accessible theory of reading. i believe that their description of the lower and higher reading processes allows us to construct a better understanding of reading, and therefore, an informed approach to teaching reading comprehension. the appropriate use of the reading processes presented above determines if a reader is successful or not. several authors define the conditions for success in reading. block (1986) finds that more successful readers use general strategies such as anticipating content, recognizing text structure, identifying main ideas, using background knowledge, monitoring comprehension, and reacting to the text as a whole. less successful readers rely on local strategies such as questioning the meaning of individual words and sentences, seldom integrating background knowledge with the text, and not focusing on main ideas. singhal (2001) concludes that successful readers tend to use cognitive, memory, metacognitive, and compensation strategies far more than less proficient readers. less successful readers generally focus on local concerns such as grammatical structure, sound-letter correspondence, word meaning, and text details. finally, saricoban (2002) examines the use of strategy of post-secondary esl students and finds that the successful readers engaged in predicting and guessing activities, made use of their background knowledge related to the text’s topic, guessed the meaning of unknown words, and skimmed and scanned the text. less successful readers focused on individual words, verbs in particular. brown (2004) calls an efficient reader, the one who is able to master fundamental bottom-up and top down strategies; as well as an appropriate contents and formal schemata. the identification of successful and not successful readers is regularly a task that teachers develop in the classroom through assessment practices. in the case of foreign language reading, assessment should aim at collecting information from students’ reading abilities, and then using that information for planning and implementing better reading classes (gersten, 1999). in that sense, teaching reading comprehension and assessing it should go hand and hand. similarly, aweiss (1993) states that assessment is a necessary component of effective instruction as it should help teachers answer many questions about students’ learning and, therefore, make it possible to prepare and implement more effective teaching. foreign language reading assessment should focus on the idea of identifying readers in the classroom so that those called “non-proficient” can receive more attention in order to improve and those called “proficient” can enhance their abilities. according 74 universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras muñoz marín to cross & paris (1987), reading comprehension assessment should be implemented based on three specific purposes. the first one is sorting, used to predict a learner’s academic success or to indicate mastery of an instructional program. the second one is diagnosing, intended to gather information from learners’ strategies and processes so that the teacher can make decisions about the instruction process. the final goal is evaluation, which calls for determining the effect of a program on a specific community. i agree with these ideas because assessment certainly informs teaching and this belief motivated me to explore the assessment practices in our reading comprehension program. grabe & stoller (2002) state how the major goal of foreign language reading assessment should be to introduce assessment practices that incorporate the following: fluency and reading speed, automaticity and rapid word recognition, search processes, vocabulary knowledge, morphological knowledge, syntactic knowledge, text structure awareness and discourse organization, main ideas comprehension, recall of relevant details, inferences about text information, strategic processing abilities, summarization, synthesis skills and evaluation and lastly, critical reading. the authors explain that assessment tasks should be based on real world reading needs and activities. teachers implement the assessment practices described above using specific assessment instruments. according to aweiss (1993), assessment instruments range from the unstructured and spontaneous gathering of information during instruction to structured tests with specifically defined outcomes and directions for administration and scoring. aebersold & field (1997) recognize some forms of assessment as informal, alternative, developmental, learning-based, and studentcentered. others are considered formal, teacher controlled, traditional, and standardized methods. these assessment forms range from small forms, such as a quiz to recall information or an exercise at the end of the reading, to much larger forms, such as a presentation of a project or a unit examination that measures learning throughout an entire course. in a study of assessment instruments used for foreign language teaching, frodden, restrepo & maturana (2004) classified assessment instruments as hard and soft. hard assessment instruments are a traditional way to assess that emphasizes objectivity, precision, and reliability focusing on product rather than process. soft assessment instruments, on the other hand, deal with a naturalistic, alternative and purposeful ways of assessment. alderson (2000) classifies new and old trends for assessing reading, but explicitly asks for the need to dedicate extra thought to how informal assessment can replace more formal testing, so that informal assessment procedures can appropriately substitute more standard assessment practices. to better understand the assessment practices described in this study, it is important to identify alternative and traditional assessment methods. aebersold & field (1997) proposed six alternative assessment methods for reading comprehension focusing on students’ learning products, students’ participation in the classroom and making learning processes observable. these methods are the following: (1) journals (audio and written), used to keep learners involved in the processes of monitoring comprehension, making comprehension visible, fitting new knowledge, applying knowledge, and gaining language proficiency; (2) portfolios, provide a number of elements that could serve as a part of the evaluation of the students’ work in the reading course; (3) homework, used to let students learn what they do not know or what they need to ask questions about; this can be a valuable part of an assessment plan in a classroom; (4) teacher 75 exploring teachers' practices for assessing reading... profile vol. 11, no. 2, 2009. issn 1657-0790. bogotá, colombia. pages 71-84 assessment through observation consists on taking advantage of different classroom situations, group work, pair-work, students’ reading exercises evaluate students’ comprehension and participation; (5) self-assessment, which asks students to reflect on their practices and achievements when reading; and (6) peer assessment, which looks for the sharing of insights among classmates to assess participation, attentiveness and work produced by another classmate in a given activity. the traditional method for assessing reading comprehension is testing. aebersold & field (1997) recognize the misuses and misconceptions that traditional tests have had on learning experiences, but they have also acknowledged that tests may provide valuable information on students’ reading performances if they are designed and used with a more educative purpose. testing depends not only on the teachers’ abilities to convey the authority they exercise in a test, but also on their responsibility as educators to provide a learning atmosphere in which students can achieve as much as possible without unproductive tension and anxiety (aebersold & field, 1997). testing in reading comprehension includes using materials which are closely related to the type of practice material implemented by the teacher to develop the reading skills (heaton, 1998). hughes (1999) also remarks on teachers’ ability to design tests that can actually match specific assessment interests and students’ abilities with the language. this is why heaton (1998) remarks on the need for greater awareness of the actual process involved in foreign language reading comprehension, so that it is possible to produce appropriate exercises and test materials to assist in the mastery of text comprehension. although there may be a great variety of assessment and testing procedures to measure the reading ability, no method should be singled out as the best, as explained by alderson (2000, p. 204) “it is certainly sensible to assume that no method can possibly fulfill all testing purposes... certain methods are commonplace merely for reasons of convenience and efficiency, often at the expense of validity, and it would be naïve to assume that because a method is widely used it is therefore valid”. therefore, the author believes “it is now generally accepted that it is inadequate to measure the understanding of text by only one method, and that objective methods can usefully be complemented by more subjectively evaluated techniques. this makes good sense, since in real life reading, readers typically respond to texts in a variety of different ways” (alderson, 2000, p. 207). finally, aebersold & field (1997, p. 167) claim the need for “[…] reading teachers to become thoughtful, attentive, reliable assessors, able to use both alternative and traditional assessment measures that are beneficial to all”. i believe that efl teachers should be aware of the possibilities that traditional and alternative assessment bring to their classrooms. it is not a matter of choosing one over the other, but of being able to recognize the benefits each one has for making informed decisions. context of the study as stated in the introduction, the foreign language reading comprehension program at the universidad de antioquia demands from undergraduate students the demonstration of reading comprehension abilities in a foreign language as a requirement for graduation. to fulfill the requirement, students may take a twolevel reading comprehension course. each level consists of 80 hours of instruction in english for developing students’ reading abilities. the course has no academic credits and its final grade is 76 universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras muñoz marín reported as “pass” or “fail”. students may also take a foreign language reading proficiency test instead of taking the two-level course. the purpose of the courses is that “students acquire the ability to extract implicit and explicit information from authentic reading materials by using the reading skills acquired during the courses”1. the objectives specify what students should be able to do when reading a text in english or french in terms of vocabulary, grammar, discourse and comprehension. the content is divided in units and it also specifies the number of hours to be devoted to each part of the content in the instruction. finally, the syllabus states the way teachers should assess their students during the course, 50% a follow up, 25% a mid-term test and 25% a final test. these assessment practices and their corresponding percentages constitute students’ final grade for passing or failing the course. the program has around 5,000 students from all the academic departments of the universidad de antioquia. between forty and fifty teachers are currently involved in the program. the majority of teachers are hired as hourly-paid instructors. many of them also teach in other programs that include english for general purposes. six fulltime professors also work in the program. they and the headperson constitute the program’s academic committee in charge of designing and leading the implementation of the reading comprehension policy. methodology this case study (creswell, 2007; leedy & ormrod, 2001) attempts to explore the assessment practices that teachers in the reading comprehension 1 translated from the foreign language reading comprehension courses syllabus at universidad de antioquia. program use. the research question that led the study could be stated as follows: “what are the assessment practices of efl teachers of the foreign language reading comprehension program at universidad de antioquia when measuring reading abilities?” this methodology allows me to have a closer understanding of the teachers’ practices in our context. the analysis of the data will enlighten my personal reflection on teaching and assessing reading comprehension. it will allow me to contribute to future improvements in the program as well as to the construction of local knowledge on teaching reading skills. participants fifteen english teachers and the head of the foreign language reading comprehension program at universidad de antioquia participated in this study. teachers were chosen based on the following criteria: (a) those who had worked in the program for more than two years; and (b) those who had taught both levels of the reading comprehension courses. i decided to include their experiences and opinions because they have had closer contact with the students and with the assessment practices in the program. fourteen of the english teachers are hourly-paid instructors and one is a full-time professor. the headperson is a full-time employee with teacher training and experience teaching reading comprehension. these opinions allow me to have a comprehensive view of the program and the assessment component seen from the administration perspective. participants were identified as teachers 1 through 15 to protect their identities and keep the anonymity of their testimonies. 77 exploring teachers' practices for assessing reading... profile vol. 11, no. 2, 2009. issn 1657-0790. bogotá, colombia. pages 71-84 data collection data collected come from three different sources: (1) a documentary analysis of foreign language program regulations. these documents are the general framework for the foreign language reading comprehension courses. the official documents consulted were the following: (a) acuerdo académico # 0114 de 1997, proposed by the academic council of the university. this is the document that creates the foreign language reading comprehension program; (b) orientación pedagógica y didáctica programa de competencia lectora (2002), written by teachers and administrators of the escuela de idiomas. these documents provide some general teaching guidelines for the reading comprehension courses; (c) memorando (2003), written by the program administrators, is a paper that presents a set of practical information for new and experienced teachers in the program; and (d) reading comprehension syllabi (level i and ii) (1998), designed by program administrators and teachers in the program (2) a semi-structured interview with the head of the foreign language reading comprehension program. this instrument attempted to get information about the opinions and thoughts of the head of the program regarding teachers’ assessment practices and the information provided by the program for teachers to assess the foreign language reading ability (see appendix 1). (3) a structured interview with 15 teachers from the reading comprehension program. it focused on the exploration of the practices they have when assessing foreign language reading comprehension in the classrooms (see appendix 1). data analysis interviews were audio-recorded and transcribed. for the data analysis, i used the cycle proposed by burns (1999). it consists of a 5-step process: i assembled the data collected from different sources and i devoted time to explore and examine data collected starting with developing codes to identify patterns about the different issues implicit in the study. this process of coding information helped me to reduce the data collected and identify specific categories of concepts or themes. i could make comparisons to see whether themes or patterns were repeated or developed across different data gathering instruments. in this part of the process it was necessary to triangulate all the information collected as a way to test the trustworthiness of the data and ensure ongoing reflections (burns, 1999). according to burns (1994, p. 272), “[…] triangulation is a way of arguing that if different methods of investigation produce the same result then data are likely to be valid”. when i finished categorizing and comparing, i started interpreting and making sense of the meaning of the data in step four. finally, in step five, i began presenting an account of the research findings. once i identified the major categories, i chose the excerpts that best suited them and translated them into english. findings data analysis showed the following main findings regarding the teachers’ practices in assessing reading comprehension skills: 78 universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras muñoz marín diverse practices in assessing reading comprehension the interviews showed that there are shared beliefs regarding assessment in the reading comprehension courses. each teacher uses his/ her own criteria and a great variety of instruments and emphasis on qualitative or quantitative approaches appear. fourteen participants said that they implement quantitative assessment as well as the combination of qualitative and quantitative assessment for measuring foreign language reading comprehension. one can find a major difference in the teachers’ explanation about what they include in the “follow-up” component. while some teachers use quizzes, multiple-choice tests, class participation or the reading of reports, others include presentations, workshops or assign a grade for attendance and interest shown in the activities. teacher 13 describes his approach as follows: [...] i have different forms of work. first, tests can be about all topics studied in the follow – up, or it can be an individual workshop. then, we start working in groups, so that it is possible for students to have an individual reflection and then in groups…later, we can start working with workshops in or out of the class. teacher 6 seems to have a different approach to assessment. he says: […] 50% of the grade is assigned to the follow up. there i include the workshop students have to complete in class. i observe students’ interest in doing the exercise or if students do not pay enough of attention to the exercise. these are details that are taken into account for the grade. teacher 12 describes her assessment practices for the follow-up component: […] the follow up grade is obtained during class time. i usually do workshops, mid-term tests, quizzes, class participation, homework… i believe everything is valid. as it is possible to perceive, there may be as many assessment practices as there are teachers in the program. one possible explanation for this may be the fact that the program has not defined clearly one assessment approach, even if there are some guidelines referring to the percentages for a midterm-exam, a final exam and follow-up. another explanation may come from university autonomy that allows every teacher to design his/her program based on his/her own criteria for content selection and assessment. diverse practices for assessing english reading may affect the achievement of the program’s objectives. use of quantitative instruments to evaluate qualitatively as the reading comprehension courses do not end with a numerical grade, many teachers seem to have difficulties assessing qualitatively. they tend to use instruments that allow them to calculate a number and then try to approximate it to a qualitative concept. they have to do it because the reading program asks them to do so. teacher 10 acknowledges her use of quantitative instruments for obtaining a qualitative grade. she translates the numbers into a concept. describing her assessment practice, she says: [….] for designing the exams i use quantitative grades, but when i have to hand in the grade to the program administration i use pass or fail, because it has to be qualitative. according to all the participants, the process of assessing students’ reading abilities in the classroom consisted of a mixture between institutional regulations and teachers’ decisions. the institutional documents and the interview with the head of the program reported clearly that assessment should be qualitative. the headperson expresses this condition: 79 exploring teachers' practices for assessing reading... profile vol. 11, no. 2, 2009. issn 1657-0790. bogotá, colombia. pages 71-84 […] the courses have a qualitative assessment, as they are not part of any curriculum. the courses don’t have credits for students, and therefore students’ performance is expressed in terms of pass or fail. additionally, the “memorando”, a set of guidelines that the teachers receive to frame their work in the program, states clearly that the final grades are reported as “pass”, “fail” or “dropped out”. although the program calls for qualitative assessment, the guidelines given to the teachers include percentages. the headperson explains the percentages: […] the assessment criteria stated for the foreign language reading comprehension program is based on the university rules, therefore none of the assessment components in the course should be higher than 25% from the grade. this is why the program proposes 25% of a mid-term exam, 25% of a final exam and a follow up of 50%. another issue that may get the teachers to mix quantitative and qualitative instruments comes from university program syllabi. it is a common practice in most universities and language centers where the majority of our teachers work to propose a quantitative assessment for all the undergraduate and graduate programs. ours is maybe one exception to that tendency because the academic council from universidad de antioquia stated it like that in acuerdo académico 334 of 1997 as these courses require special skills. nevertheless, the headperson of the foreign language reading comprehension program had a different perception of teachers’ decisions for implementing quantitative assessment instead of qualitative assessment. she acknowledges the problem in the teacher’s practice of mixing qualitative and quantitative instruments: […] for teachers it has been a problem to assume a qualitative assessment. we have had meetings for discussing qualitative and quantitative assessment .we have discussed issues on both kinds of assessment. we have also made clear that teachers should be assessing qualitatively, but you will probably find a lot of teachers doing quantitative assessment… i believe teachers know what qualitative assessment means. the problem is that assuming qualitative assessment implies that they must evaluate their own teaching principles. it is not only a matter of defining institutional guidelines for assessing; it is also about the teachers’ decision on how to assess… one can see that in her opinion teachers may find qualitative assessment as problematic because it is more demanding and challenging for them. apparently, even if there has been training in the two kinds of assessment, the difficulty remains. students' lack of familiarity with qualitative assessment practices although the major focus of this paper is the teachers’ assessment practices, i would like to address the students’ lack of familiarity with qualitative assessment as a major finding. the reason i claim the importance of this issue comes from the fact that teachers’ assessment practices were affected by this. in other words, this may have made teachers choose quantitative instruments rather than qualitative instruments as can be seen in the teachers’ voices reported below. for the majority of the teacher-participants in this study, their students were not familiar with qualitative assessment as they are used to being graded quantitatively in all the undergraduate programs. students often claimed that they did not know how well or bad they performed in the course and asked teachers for clearer grades. they preferred a number rather than a grade expressed qualitatively. teachers 2, 3, 6 and 11 share this opinion. teacher 2 describes her students’ 80 universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras muñoz marín discontent with their performance expressed as “pass” or “fail”: students do not seem to understand what “pass” means, so they usually ask... what does “passing” mean. so, i try to explain them, but they understand easily when they receive a number as a grade. for example, if a student gets a 4.0 grade for the course, i translate that 4 into “pass”. to face this challenge, teachers try to make the qualitative assessment equivalent to the numbers students are used to. they usually design their own equivalency chart. this was found in the testimony of teacher 10, presented above. likewise, teacher 14 describes his assessment practice: […] the reading comprehension program has the goal of assessing students qualitatively: pass or fail. however, i have seen how students do not understand these procedures, as they are used to quantitative assessment, therefore i assess quantitatively, but i hand in students results qualitatively. the grade is probably one of the main motivational sources for our efl students and in our university setting, it is better expressed with a number. this teacher uses a number rather than a word so that students have a clear idea of their performance. it seems that quantitative grades allow students to understand whether they were performing good or bad in the course. teacher 11 believes the use of quantitative grades enhances his students’ motivation in the course. his opinion is expressed as follows: […] i gave students quantitative grades because that is a cultural practice. if the student doesn’t see grades, he/she starts losing interest in the subject, therefore it is necessary to provide qualitative grades. if you don’t do it, students start asking for them. teachers' lack of familiarity with alternative assessment aebersold & field (1997) state that it would be advisable for teachers to be familiar with alternative and traditional assessment. however, participants in this study seemed to have little knowledge about alternatives to tests and quizzes to assess reading comprehension. none of the participants mention assessment practices such as self-assessment, peerassessment, journals or portfolio (hancock, 1994). these assessment instruments are recognized as informal, alternative, developmental, learningbased and student-centered as they pay more attention to the process; that is to say, the interaction between the reader and the text (alderson, 2000). the data analyzed also revealed a tendency of teachers to use traditional assessment instruments to measure students’ reading comprehension. these assessment instruments are recognized as formal, teacher controlled, and standardized methods for measuring students’ reading abilities (cohen, 1994). teachers’ interviews showed the implementation of multiple-choice tests and quizzes as the most common reading assessment procedures in the classroom. teacher 6 explains that tests represent the best alternative for assessing his students’ skills: […] i applied the assessment proposal from the program by doing tests. this is how i identified if students were able to infer, to write a summary from a reading… i always do workshops, quizzes, a mid-term and a final exam, so that i can have some order and control over the assessment of students... i usually do quizzes and workshop for units. for the majority of teachers, tests are easier to design because they can anticipate the answers. moreover, they can have the feeling they have more control over the learning process because every student has the same right answer. assessment is 81 exploring teachers' practices for assessing reading... profile vol. 11, no. 2, 2009. issn 1657-0790. bogotá, colombia. pages 71-84 also less time consuming because the grading time is shorter if the answers are known in advance. many of the participants believe that issues such as students’ attitude, behavior or motivation in class may serve the purpose of alternative assessment. teacher 13 explains how he approaches some alternatives to testing and quizzes: [...] i assessed students every class. each workshop students complete, i try to assess it. when students start completing the exercise, i usually walk around the classroom; i observe students’ work and that is how i realize if students are learning. if i notice that some students do not understand the exercise or the topic of the exercise, i try to explain by introducing some general comments. teacher 10 considers students’ attitude in class as part of the grade too. she states: […] as part of the assessment i do during the course, i usually observe students’ interest in class activities, class attendance and homework as important factors to complete students’ grades. this teacher, like many others in the study, finds a sign of interest in class behavior, homework completion and attendance. these features of positive attitude are compensated by a grade that complements the tests and quizzes. this is included as an assessment practice mainly because other instruments such as portfolio or journal are unfamiliar to many of our teachers. teachers' concern for the verification of achievement of learning objectives most of the participants expressed a common concern for verifying the students’ achievement of the learning objectives stated in the program. eleven teachers stated that they tended to implement traditional assessment instruments, not only because they provide more precise information of what students can do when reading, but also because they assess what students are actually learning in the classroom. they believed that using these instruments favored objectivity, precision, reliability and a focus on product rather than process (frodden, restrepo & maturana, 2004). one important issue highlighted by teacher 15 is the teacher’s control of learning through the control of assessment in the use of tests. he says: […] i always implement workshops, quizzes, a mid-term exam and a final exam. this is for me to have an order and a good control of students’ assessment. the testimonies of teachers 10 and 13 reveal another interesting practice for achieving accountability. one of them describes that one of her classroom practices implies teaching for the test as a way to help students succeed in the course. […] i assess the topics presented during the classes. there is a complete preparation for quizzes or any test…there are usually workshops and exercises on the topics we have studied in class, then students should be prepared for the assessment. […] i try to focus on what we are teaching in class for assessing students… those are the topics i take into account for a midterm or a final exam. the teachers believed that a test, whether midterm or final, should include all reading strategies learned during instruction. therefore, the results of the test should provide a clear picture of students’ performance when reading in a foreign language. teacher 7 explains it as follows: […] i prefer to have a 25% mid-term exam and a 25% final exam so that students have some minimal standards to pass or fail the course. if students do not pass both tests, they should not pass the course. the teachers’ beliefs concerning accountability in the tests may be the result of their interpretation of the memorando. 82 universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras muñoz marín it is necessary to establish if the objectives of the courses were achieves, therefore we need to perform tests (exams, report, homeworks, quizzes, etc) that prove the achievement of objectives. these tests need to be as precise, reliable and valid as possible. according to the document, learning is verified through tests and quizzes because the information resulting from these instruments is more precise and valid. conclusions the analysis of the assessment practices used by efl teachers of the reading comprehension program at the universidad de antioquia who participated in this study let me conclude that: 1. teachers have diverse practices in assessing reading comprehension. 2. teachers use quantitative instruments to evaluate qualitatively. 3. their students lack familiarity with qualitative assessment practices. 4. teachers lack familiarity with alternative assessment. 5. teachers are concerned about the verification of achievement of learning objectives. therefore, it is necessary to promote teachers’ reflection on foreign language reading assessment practices not only for implementing better assessment practices with students, but also for introducing new guidelines for the reading program at universidad de antioquia. although the study’s results do not claim that teachers’ professional development is a solution, it may be quite possible that assessment difficulties and misconceptions in the program may decrease if the program promotes discussion about reading assessment practices. as a final remark, i would like to say that more studies are required to validate or reformulate these results. the sample and the instruments used reflect the situation at our university, but some of the assessment practices described here may be used somewhere else. i hope this study motivates other colleagues to explore their assessment practices and construct local knowledge around teaching reading comprehension in english. references aebersold, j. a., & field, m. l. (1997). from reader to reading teacher. cambridge: cambridge university press. alderson, j. c. (2000). assessing reading. cambridge: cambridge university press. alyousef, h. s. (2005). teaching reading comprehension to esl/efl learners. the reading matriz, 5(2), 143-154. aweiss, s. (1993). meaning construction in foreign language reading. atlanta, ga: paper presented at the annual meeting of the american association for applied linguistics (eric document reproduction service no. ed360850). block, e. (1986). the comprehension strategies of second language readers. tesol quarterly, 20, 436-494. brown, h. d. (2004). language assessment: principles and classroom practices. new york: pearson education. burns, a. (1999). collaborative action research for english language teachers. cambridge: cambridge university press. cohen, a. (1994). assessing language ability in the classroom. boston: heinle & heinle publishers. colombia, universidad de antioquia. (1997). acuerdo académico no. 0114 de septiembre de 1997. documentos jurídicos: normas jurídicas universitarias. colombia, universidad de antioquia. (2002). orientación pedagógica y didáctica programa de competencia lectora. sección servicios. escuela de idiomas. 83 exploring teachers' practices for assessing reading... profile vol. 11, no. 2, 2009. issn 1657-0790. bogotá, colombia. pages 71-84 colombia, universidad de antioquia. (2003). memorando. sección servicios. escuela de idiomas. colombia, universidad de antioquia. (1998). programas de competencia lectora (nivel i y ii). sección servicios. escuela de idiomas. creswell, j. w. (2007). qualitative inquiry and research design: choosing among five approaches. thousand oaks, ca: sage. cross, d. r., & paris, s. g. (1987). assessment of reading comprehension: matching tests purposes and tests properties. educational psychologist, 22, 313-322. dubin, f., & bycina, d. (1991). academic reading and esl/efl teacher. in m. celce-murcia (ed.), teaching english as a second or foreign language (pp. 195-215). boston: heinle & heinle publishers. frodden, c., restrepo, m., & maturana, l. (2004). analysis of assessment instruments used in foreign language teaching. íkala, revista de lenguaje y cultura, 9(15), 171-201. gersten, r. (1999). lost opportunities: challenges confronting four teachers of english-language learners. the elementary school journal, 100(1), 3756. grabe, w., & stoller, f. l. (2002). teaching and researching reading. harlow: pearson education limited. hancock, c. r. (1994). alternative assessment and second-language study. retrieved on november 2008, from eric digest web site: http://www.eric.ed.gov/contentdeliver y/ser vlet/ ericservlet?accno=ed376695 heaton, j. b. (1998). writing english language tests. new york: longman. hughes, a. (1999). testing for language teachers. new york: cambridge university press. leedy, p. d., & ellis ormrod, j. (2001). practical research: planning and design. upper saddle river, nj: merrill, prentice hall. saricoban, a. (2002). reading strategies of successful readers through the three phase approach. the reading matrix, 2, 1-13. singhal, m. (2001). reading proficiency, reading strategies, metacognitive awareness and l2 readers. the reading matrix, 1, 1-9. about the author jorge hugo muñoz marín holds a master’s degree in english teaching from universidad de caldas and a specialization in foreign language teaching from universidad de antioquia. he is a teacher in the reading comprehension program at universidad de antioquia and a member of the research group eale (enseñanza y aprendizaje de lenguas extranjeras) at the same university. 84 universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras muñoz marín appendix 1: forms for the interviews*2 interview 1: with the head of the foreign language reading comprehension program 1. what type of assessment is being implemented in the foreign language reading comprehension program? 2. what are the guidelines given to teachers to assess foreign language reading comprehension? 3. what are the strengths and weaknesses while assessing the foreign language reading comprehension program? interview 2: with the teachers of the reading comprehension program this information is for the exclusive use of the interviewer. date: _________________________________________________________________________________ name of the interviewer: _________________________________________________________________ length of interview: _____________________________________________________________________ number of the interview: _________________________________________________________________ general information about the teacher: name of the teacher undergraduate and graduate studies experience in foreign language teaching experience in foreign language reading comprehension teaching foreign language reading comprehension courses the teacher is currently teaching assessment: 1. do you know the assessment proposal for assessing foreign language reading comprehension? yes / no how do you implement it in the classroom? 2. how do you assess reading comprehension? what type of assessment do you use –qualitative or quantitative? explain. 3. what do you assess in a reading comprehension course? 4. what criteria do you take into account when designing your assessment instruments? 5. what do you assess in the reading course follow–up? 6. what types of activities do you use for assessing the follow-up of the reading course? 7. how often do you assess your reading courses? * all interviews were designed in spanish. they were translated for publication purposes. profile 4 2003.p65 ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ 39 profileprofileprofileprofileprofile in order to evaluate if there were discrepancies or not among the methodology proposed in the english program, students’ needs and what the teacher was actually doing in her classes, 13 ninth graders were asked to answer two questionnaires and they were also observed while they were in their english classes at the institución educativa departamental el vino (cundinamarca, colombia). the english teacher was also interviewed and a selfassessment questionnaire was given to her. the analysis of data showed that there were matches and mismatches among those three aspects. kkkkkey worey worey worey worey words: ds: ds: ds: ds: english-teaching-methods, english-teaching-programs-evaluation, second language acquisition-teaching-programs, students-teaching-evaluation, selfevaluation-methodology con el propósito de evaluar si existía o no concordancia entre las metodologías propuestas en el programa de inglés, las necesidades de los estudiantes y lo que la profesora realizaba en clase, trece estudiantes de noveno grado respondieron dos cuestionarios y fueron observados mientras estaban en su clases de inglés en la institución educativa departamental el vino (cundinamarca, colombia). de la misma forma, la profesora fue entrevistada y respondió un cuestionario de auto evaluación. ������� ������ ������������������� !��������" �������#������� ����������������$����������� ����%� �� ����������� ��������� & reflejo de las necesidades de los estudiantes en el programa de inglés comoreflejo de las necesidades de los estudiantes en el programa de inglés comoreflejo de las necesidades de los estudiantes en el programa de inglés comoreflejo de las necesidades de los estudiantes en el programa de inglés comoreflejo de las necesidades de los estudiantes en el programa de inglés como lengua extranjera: una evaluación a pequeña escalalengua extranjera: una evaluación a pequeña escalalengua extranjera: una evaluación a pequeña escalalengua extranjera: una evaluación a pequeña escalalengua extranjera: una evaluación a pequeña escala de las metodologías propuestas en un programa de inglésde las metodologías propuestas en un programa de inglésde las metodologías propuestas en un programa de inglésde las metodologías propuestas en un programa de inglésde las metodologías propuestas en un programa de inglés lisbeth mora acostalisbeth mora acostalisbeth mora acostalisbeth mora acostalisbeth mora acosta ** institución educativa departamental el vino isisramco@yahoo.com bertha rbertha rbertha rbertha rbertha r amos holguínamos holguínamos holguínamos holguínamos holguín *** universidad distrital francisco josé de caldas profamos@hotmail.com * this article was part of a presentation at national elt conference “beyond evaluation”, september 2003, bogotá. ** lisbeth mora acostalisbeth mora acostalisbeth mora acostalisbeth mora acostalisbeth mora acosta is a teacher of english at the institución educativa departamental el vino. graduated from licenciatura en filología e idiomas from the universidad libre, she is a current fourth semester student of the master program in applied linguistics at universidad distrital. *** bertha ramos holguínbertha ramos holguínbertha ramos holguínbertha ramos holguínbertha ramos holguín is an english teacher graduated from the universidad distrital. currently she is a fourth semester student of the master program in applied linguistics at the universidad distrital. she works at the universidad distrital, universidad externado and universidad pedagógica as an english teacher. ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ 40profileprofileprofileprofileprofile introductionintroductionintroductionintroductionintroduction students’ needs have been a big concernfor teachers. however, we tend toforget them when planning our classes. as the objective of this project was to establish if there were any discrepancies or not among the methodology proposed in the english program, students’ needs and what the teacher was actually doing in her classes, this article presents the evaluation of the methodology proposed in the english program at the institución educativa departamental el vino (iedev), which is located in inspección el vino, la vega (cundinamarca, colombia). 1. research method1. research method1. research method1. research method1. research method we focused on an educational aspect of the english program at the said school and one which had not been analyzed. this aspect was the english program, and more specifically, the methodology for the classes proposed in it. thus, we looked at students needs’ regarding language and methodology. this evaluation was carried out in a 9th grade class. the group was composed of 13 students, aged between thirteen and eighteen years old. students were observed while they were in their english classes. the students belong to rural areas close to the school and they take three hours of english per week. the english teacher has been working there for three years, during which time she has been in charge of teaching english to the whole school. firstly, we designed two questionnaires. in the first one, we looked for the language needs students had (see annex 1). in the second one, students’ needs regarding methodology were investigated (see annex 2). also, during a month, we video and audio recorded english classes with 9th graders to see the methodology used by the teacher. after that, the teacher was interviewed to clarify some aspects of the class and to discover some of her perceptions related to methodology. as well as this, a self assessment questionnaire was given to her for fostering awareness and making-decisions (see annex 3). finally, we looked at the methodologies proposed in the english program. 2. theoretical framework2. theoretical framework2. theoretical framework2. theoretical framework2. theoretical framework evaluation is a topic that has been defined and studied by many different authors over a vast period of time because of its implications in education, particularly in the teaching/ learning process. according to lynch (1996, pp. 3) evaluation is a systematic attempt to gather information in order to make judgments or decisions. brown (1989, pp. 223) points out that evaluation is the systematic collection and analysis of all relevant information necessary to promote the improvement of a curriculum and assess its effectiveness within the context of the particular institutions el análisis de la información recogida mostró que había discrepancias y concordancias entre los tres aspectos anteriormente mencionados. palabras clave: palabras clave: palabras clave: palabras clave: palabras clave: inglés-enseñanza-métodos, inglés-enseñanza-programasevaluación, adquisición de segundo lenguaje-enseñanza-programas, estudiantesenseñanza-evaluación, auto evaluación-metodología ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ 41 profileprofileprofileprofileprofile involved. however, for the improvement of the curriculum, aspects such as materials, activities, projects and programs among others must be taken into account and as the english program at iedev had not been evaluated for a long period of time; it was the focus of this project. 2.1 defining programs2.1 defining programs2.1 defining programs2.1 defining programs2.1 defining programs lynch (1999) argues that the word program tends to evoke the image of a series of courses linked with some common goal or end product. he also suggests that a language education program generally consists of a slate of courses designed to prepare students for some language-related endeavor. this might mean preparing them to pass a language proficiency exam, to function in a second language culture or to be effective when communicating in english. however, when dealing with foreign language programs, ashworth (1985), proposes that the objectives of the efl programs may vary according to the age, ability and aims of the students, and the short and long term goals of the community or nation. for example, the goals may be to give students a basic knowledge of spoken english, some simple reading and writing skills, and a little understanding of the culture of the english language so that they can read literature and research reports in english, conduct business transactions, or take part in the international conferences carried on in english. in relation to program evaluation, brown (1989) states that it is the process of (1) defining program standards; (2) determining whether a discrepancy exists between some aspect of program performance and the standards governing that aspect of the program; and (3) using discrepancy information either to change performance or to change program standards. this project focused on determining the discrepancies among students’ needs, the methodology proposed in the english program and the current practices of the english teacher. for our specific purpose the term methodology is seen as the procedures, principles, and beliefs themselves that are seen when teaching and learning a language (richards and rodgers, 1985, pp. 177). many authors, such as nunan (1989, pp. 25) and richards (1990, pp. 54), among others, have been struck by the discrepancy between the prescriptive statements by methodologists about what ought to go in the classroom, and what actually went on in the classrooms. nunan (1991, pp. 10) suggests that teachers must not only plan the programs but also put them into action considering the realities of each classroom. he proposes that methodology needs to be based not on ideology or dogma, as it is often the case, but on evidence and insight into what constitutes students’ necessities and meaningful learning. in addition, it should be noted that as this project was carried out with the english teacher as a participant, she made a self assessment, which is defined as the “…self-awareness that the efl teacher should experience when reflecting upon their own teaching” (quintero, 1996, pp. 7); “…the ability for teachers to judge their own teaching honestly and to see clearly how much learning is taking place in the class” (doff, 1988, pp. 278 in quintero, 1996, pp. 7). those definitions state clearly that for self-assessment we need to make the teacher aware about his/her own teaching practices in order for him/her to judge them critically and make decisions about them. reynolds & salters (1998) claim that reflection is the departure point for changing teacher’s practices. they state that “reflection provides a means of ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ 42profileprofileprofileprofileprofile evaluating goals, purposes and methods, thereby clarifying the values which lie at the root of successful practice” (pp. 199). 3. findings3. findings3. findings3. findings3. findings as it was mentioned previously, the data was collected through questionnaires, a selfassessment questionnaire, an interview with the teacher, the printed english program (ep) and video and audio recordings of the classes. the following diagram summarizes the findings in relation to the matches and mismatches among students’ needs, the e.p. and the teacher practices. we analyzed the methodologies stated in the program using the definition that richards and rodgers (1985) state for methodology. in light of this definition we found that the ep does not establish clearly the methodologies to be used. in general, there was a match in terms of methodology between students’ needs and some activities proposed in the english program (ep), such as listening and speaking practices. also, some of the english teacher’s practices (reading and speaking activities) were in accordance with what was stated in the e.p.: “teacher: ok. today, we are going to read some texts…please make groups of three and then we are going to discuss and… make questions… students: in spanish. (they raise their voice) t: ok. groups of three and read this (teacher shows the reading) ”. however, we found many mismatches in terms of methodology among students’ needs, the e.p. and english teacher practices, since the teacher did not take into account what students proposed in their classes to develop the e.p. at the beginning of the year and in that way, she was not doing what was relevant to the students. defining methodologies as procedures, principles and beliefs about teaching and learning, it was clear that: english program evaluation methodology students’ needs teacher practices matches mismatches matches mismatches listening and speaking activities reading and writing activities •reading activities • motivation to speak • listening and writing activities • cultural issues of the target l anguage ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ 43 profileprofileprofileprofileprofile · procedures are seen when the program presents texts, exercises, oral practices, games, readings, listening and writing activities, role plays, dialogues, use of computer labs, and materials such as dictionaries and english books. procedures are also evidenced in workshops, and guides such as tools for the teaching and learning of english. the previous aspects are considered in the program where it refers to "estructura general del área de inglés (general structure of the english area gsea): “...en las clases se desarrollarán las habilidades básicas ... por medio de textos, ejercicios, practicas orales, juegos.” those aspects are also seen in “los componentes del proyecto de inglés (english project components epc)”: “se prevé que los estudiantes utilicen el aula de sistemas para desarrollar algunos temas”. · principles are stated as the contextualization, communication and the learning of grammar and cultural issues of the target language in the gsea: “...en las clases se desarrollarán las habilidades básicas ... teniendo en cuenta el aprendizaje gramatical, contextual, comunicativo, y cultural del idioma, ...” · beliefs are present in the program when it relates to the usefulness of knowledge by arguing that it is not separated. on the contrary, knowledge and the human being are seen as a whole: “...el estudiante estará en contacto con todas las áreas del conocimiento separadamente y juntas a la vez, partiendo del principio de que el conocimiento y la persona no son segmentados, sino que son parte de un todo.” (in correlación e integración por áreas, english program). having stated the methodologies in the e.p., we analyzed them in light of what brown (1989) states for program evaluation in relation to determining whether a discrepancy exists among some of the aspects of the program and the change that can be applied when analyzing that information. that analysis led us to the following findings: 3.1 e.p3.1 e.p3.1 e.p3.1 e.p3.1 e.p. students’ needs. students’ needs. students’ needs. students’ needs. students’ needs matches: through the two questionnaires given to students, we noticed that what they preferred for their english classes were listening activities (see questions 2, 5, 19 in annex 1 and 2). also, they gave some importance to speaking and both skills were mentioned in the english program (see questions 4, 9, 17 in annex 1 and 2). mismatches: the e.p. proposed mainly reading activities for the teaching of english in the classroom. this part did not fit the student’s needs since they expressed a dislike of them in the questionnaires (see questions 6, 10, 22 in annex 1 and 2). another mismatch seen between students’ needs and the e.p. is that in it, it is stated that the use of english outside the classroom would be encouraged and in the questionnaires, students’ preferences in relation to the use of english were focused on its use only in the classroom, since in questions 14, 21, 22, 23, 24 of annex 1 and 2, the answers given by students were mostly negative. 3.2 e.p3.2 e.p3.2 e.p3.2 e.p3.2 e.p. – t. – t. – t. – t. – teacher practiceseacher practiceseacher practiceseacher practiceseacher practices matches: as we have said, we audio recorded during the course of a month 9th grade english classes and we also interviewed the english teacher. looking at the data gathered from these instruments, we could find that there was coherence between what was stated in the program in terms of reading activities and what ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ 44profileprofileprofileprofileprofile was done in the classroom. also, the teacher tried to implement some speaking activities as role plays and she encouraged students to talk in english. mismatches: although one part of the methodologies proposed in the e.p. had already been implemented in the classroom, there were many aspects missed in the english teacher’s practices, for example listening and writing activities. moreover, cultural issues about the target language were not taught. 3.3 t3.3 t3.3 t3.3 t3.3 teacher decision makingeacher decision makingeacher decision makingeacher decision makingeacher decision making because one of the most significant aspects when evaluating is decision-making, the teacher involved in this project decided to make changes in order to improve her teaching practices and to see to what extent what was stated in the program, what students asked for and her teaching were focusing on the same aspects in relation to methodology. then, having considered the results of the english program evaluation, the teacher made some decisions in relation to the way she was teaching her english classes. she decided to have a lesson plan in which she is going to write the objectives of the class as well as the activities that are going to take place so that she can be conscious about the activities she is carrying out in the classroom. she has also decided to design more listening and speaking activities as well as to include some aspects related to the english culture. at the same time, she is going to tape record her classes to see if what she has planned is what actually takes place in the classroom. 4. concl4. concl4. concl4. concl4. conclusions andusions andusions andusions andusions and pedpedpedpedpedagogicagogicagogicagogicagogic al implical implical implical implical implic aaaaationstionstionstionstions small scale projects can be carried out in order to evaluate specific aspects of our teaching practices so that we can make decisions and improve our practices. as we are all the time faced with having to make decisions, it is important for us to promote a change in the way evaluation has been seen in the institutions where we work. in the case of our project, it was clear that the evaluation we carried out helped the teacher to reflect upon her teaching practices and so she wanted to improve it. seeking the improvement and the growth of the teaching and learning processes, it is important to mention that reflective teaching can be seen as an approach to teacher education to empower teachers to manage their own professional development (wallace, 1991). by means of this reflective teaching, teachers surely would have enough tools to raise their standards of teaching, not only the improvement of their skills, but also in their ability and motivation to better their practices. in the project, after observing, analyzing and evaluating her teaching practices the teacher decided to change the way she was teaching so that she could improve. also, this reflective teaching can be seen by means of self-assessment which helps teachers to design which aspects of their teaching must be improved and then, make decisions. in terms of the program itself, the evaluation has useful implications because one of the decisions the teacher implemented was to consider her students’ needs when writing the program for the next school year. referencesreferencesreferencesreferencesreferences asworth, m. (1985). beyond methodology. cambridge: cambridge university press. brown, g. (1989). teaching talk: strategies for production and assessment. cambridge: cambridge university press. ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ 45 profileprofileprofileprofileprofile doff, a. (1988). teach english: a training course for teachers. cambridge: cambridge university press. english program at the institución educativa departamental el vino (iedev). inspección el vino, la vega (cundinamarca, colombia). lynch, b. (1996). language program evaluation. cambridge: cambridge university press. lynch, b. (1999). evaluating a program inside and out. harvard educational research, 72 (3), pp. 61-95. nunan, d. (1989). understanding language classroom: a guide for teacherinitiated action. englewood cliffs: prentice hall international. nunan, d. (1991). action research in language education. in edge, j. & k., richards (eds.), teachers develop teachers research: papers on classroom research and teacher development. oxford: heinemann. quintero, a. (1996). self-assessment of two efl teachers: an inset experience of change and improvement through reflection and action. unpublished master’s thesis. universidad distrital francisco josé de caldas, bogotá colombia. reynolds, m. & salters, m. (1998). the reflective teacher and the teacher training agency. journal of further and higher education, 22 (2), 193-200. richards, j. c. (1990). the language teaching matrix. cambridge: cambridge university press. richards, j. & rodgers, t. (1985). approaches and methods in language teaching . cambridge: cambridge university press. wallace, m. (1991). training foreign language teachers: a reflective approach. cambridge: cambridge university press. the article was received on september 5 th, 2003 and accepted on october 12th , 2003 ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ 46profileprofileprofileprofileprofile annex 1: students’ needs (skills)annex 1: students’ needs (skills)annex 1: students’ needs (skills)annex 1: students’ needs (skills)annex 1: students’ needs (skills) colegio departamental el vino encuesta n° 1 nombre: carlos andres mora llanos edad: 15 ¿hace cuanto que estudia ingles? 9 años grado: 9 instrucciones: este cuestionario ha sido diseñado para ayudarle a identificar las competencias que usted prefiere desarrollar durante su clase de inglés y la forma en la que le gusta aprender. por favor responda a cada pregunta de manera rápida sin pensarlo mucho. trate de no cambiar sus respuestas después de que las haya escogido. por favor use un esfero para marcar su elección. 1. en la clase de inglés me gusta aprender leyendo no un poco mucho es lo mejor 2. en clase, me gusta escuchar y usar cassettes no un poco mucho es lo mejor 3. en la clase de inglés, yo aprendo por medio de juegos no un poco mucho es lo mejor 4. en la clase, yo aprendo por medio de conversaciones no un poco mucho es lo mejor 5. en la clase me gusta aprender por medio de dibujos, videos y películas no un poco mucho es lo mejor 6. yo quiero escribir todo en mi cuaderno no un poco mucho es lo mejor 7. me gusta que la profesora nos explique todo no un poco mucho es lo mejor 8. me gusta que la profesora nos de problemas para resolver no un poco mucho es lo mejor 9. me gusta que la profesora me ayude a hablar sobre lo que me interesa no un poco mucho es lo mejor 10. me gusta que la profesora me diga todos mis errores no un poco mucho es lo mejor ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ 47 profileprofileprofileprofileprofile 11. me gusta que la profesora me deje encontrar mis errores no un poco mucho es lo mejor 12. me gusta estudiar inglés por mí mismo no un poco mucho es lo mejor 13. me gusta aprender hablando con mis compañeros no un poco mucho es lo mejor 14. me gusta salir con mis compañeros y practicar inglés no un poco mucho es lo mejor 15. me gusta estudiar gramática no un poco mucho es lo mejor 16. me gusta aprender nuevas palabras no un poco mucho es lo mejor 17. me gusta practicar sonidos y pronunciación no un poco mucho es lo mejor 18. me gusta aprender palabras en inglés mirándolas no un poco mucho es lo mejor 19. me gusta aprender palabras en inglés escuchándolas no un poco mucho es lo mejor 20. me gusta aprender palabras en inglés haciendo algo con ellas no un poco mucho es lo mejor 21. en la casa me gusta aprender leyendo periódicos no un poco mucho es lo mejor 22. en la casa me gusta aprender viendo t. v en inglés no un poco mucho es lo mejor 23. en la casa me gusta aprender usando cassettes no un poco mucho es lo mejor 24. en la casa me gusta aprender estudiando en los libros de inglés no un poco mucho es lo mejor 25. en la casa me gusta aprender hablando con mis amigos en inglés no un poco mucho es lo mejor ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ 48profileprofileprofileprofileprofile annex 2: students’ needs (learning styles)annex 2: students’ needs (learning styles)annex 2: students’ needs (learning styles)annex 2: students’ needs (learning styles)annex 2: students’ needs (learning styles) colegio departamental el vino encuesta n° 2 nombre: edwin alonso amortegui perilla edad: 15 ¿hace cuanto que estudia ingles? 6 años grado: 9 instrucciones: este cuestionario ha sido diseñado para ayudarle a identificar las competencias que usted prefiere desarrollar durante su clase de inglés y la forma en la que le gusta aprender. por favor responda a cada pregunta de manera rápida sin pensarlo mucho. trate de no cambiar sus respuestas después de que las haya escogido. por favor use un esfero para marcar su elección. 1. cuando el profesor me da instrucciones, aprendo mejor. no un poco mucho es lo mejor 2. prefiero aprender haciendo algo en clase. no un poco mucho es lo mejor 3. trabajo más cuando trabajo con otros. no un poco mucho es lo mejor 4. aprendo más cuando estudio en grupo. no un poco mucho es lo mejor 5. en clase, yo aprendo mejor cuando trabajo con otros. no un poco mucho es lo mejor 6. yo aprendo mejor cuando leo que cuando el profesor explica en el tablero. no un poco mucho es lo mejor 7. cuando alguien me dice cómo hacer cosas en clase, aprendo mejor. no un poco mucho es lo mejor 8. cuando hago cosas en clase aprendo mejor. no un poco mucho es lo mejor 9. recuerdo cosas que he escuchado en clase mejor que las cosas que he leído. no un poco mucho es lo mejor 10. cuando leo instrucciones, las recuerdo mejor. no un poco mucho es lo mejor ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ 49 profileprofileprofileprofileprofile 11. aprendo más cuando puedo hacer un modelo de algo. no un poco mucho es lo mejor 12. entiendo mejor cuando leo instrucciones. no un poco mucho es lo mejor 13. cuando estudio solo, recuerdo mejor. no un poco mucho es lo mejor 14. aprendo más cuando hago un proyecto en clase. no un poco mucho es lo mejor 15. disfruto aprendiendo cuando hago experimentos. no un poco mucho es lo mejor 16. aprendo mejor cuando hago dibujos mientras estudio. no un poco mucho es lo mejor 17. aprendo mejor en clase que cuando el profesor nos da una lectura. no un poco mucho es lo mejor 18. cuando trabajo solo, aprendo mejor. no un poco mucho es lo mejor 19. entiendo mejor cuando participo en representaciones. no un poco mucho es lo mejor 20. aprendo mejor cuando en clase escucho a alguien. no un poco mucho es lo mejor 21. disfruto trabajando con dos o tres compañeros. no un poco mucho es lo mejor 22. aprendo más leyendo que escuchando a alguien. no un poco mucho es lo mejor 23. disfruto haciendo un proyecto en la clase. no un poco mucho es lo mejor 24. aprendo mejor cuando en la clase puedo participar en diferentes actividades. no un poco mucho es lo mejor 25. en clase trabajo mejor que cuando trabajo solo. no un poco mucho es lo mejor 26. prefiero hacer todo yo mismo. no un poco mucho es lo mejor ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ 50profileprofileprofileprofileprofile annex 3: teachers’ self assessment questionnaireannex 3: teachers’ self assessment questionnaireannex 3: teachers’ self assessment questionnaireannex 3: teachers’ self assessment questionnaireannex 3: teachers’ self assessment questionnaire survey no.: 1 this questionnaire has been designed to help you to reflect on your daily practice and to improve it. answer the questions as sincerely as possible. 1. what do you take into account to prepare your classes? the topic, materials that i’m going to use, activities (they need to be in sequence), time. 2. are those aspects included in your english program? yes. only the time was not taken into account. 3. what information did you use to design your english program? i used the previous program, some table of contents that a colleague gave me and my experience in the school. 4. write the aspects stated in the program that are used the most in your classes. readings, group work (it is not stated in the program) writing activities, sometimes speaking act and games. (role plays, expositions). 5. how can you include in your classes the other elements of the program? by distributing in a better way the time and having more materials; giving… space to implement activities to develop all skills. simbols and meanings used in the transcription t: teacher … : short pause ( ) : to explain what it is going on in the class profile 5.pmd ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ 140 profileprofileprofileprofileprofile curricular units: powerful tools to connect the syllabus with students’ needs and interests unidades curriculares: herramientas poderosas para conectar el programa con las necesidades e intereses de los estudiantes aleida ariza arizaaleida ariza arizaaleida ariza arizaaleida ariza arizaaleida ariza ariza* universidad nacional de colombia aleariza71@yahoo.es a basic component of any language program is the construction of the curriculum. there is a variety of approaches to curriculum planning and implementation from the technical production perspective to the critical view. the current article emerged from the analysis of the syllabus in a basic english course in the undergraduate program at universidad nacional de colombia and the design and implementation of a curricular unit. such unit proved to be a powerful tool to connect what was set in the program, what students needed in terms of language and what they were interested in terms of culture. kkkkkey worey worey worey worey words: ds: ds: ds: ds: curriculum, curricular unit platform, constructivism, teachingcommunicative language, task-based approach un componente esencial en un programa de idiomas es la construcción del currículo. existe una gran variedad de enfoques en términos del diseño y la implementación del currículo; desde una perspectiva reducida a la producción técnica, hasta una visión crítica y transformadora. el presente artículo se gesta a partir tanto del análisis de un programa correspondiente al curso inglés básico i en la licenciatura ofrecida por la universidad nacional de colombia, como del diseño y la implementación de una unidad curricular. dicha unidad curricular se caracterizó por convertirse en una herramienta de conexión entre los contenidos y procedimientos planteados en un programa y las necesidades comunicativas e intereses culturales de los estudiantes. palabras claves: palabras claves: palabras claves: palabras claves: palabras claves: currículo, plataforma curricular, unidad curricular, constructivismo, lenguas extranjeras-enseñanza comunicativa, enfoque basado en tareas * judith aleida ariza ariza,judith aleida ariza ariza,judith aleida ariza ariza,judith aleida ariza ariza,judith aleida ariza ariza, b.ed in philology and languages, english – spanish from the universidad nacional de colombia, has worked with students from kindergarten to university levels. she was a research assistant for the red project and worked for one year as a spanish assistant in the weald of kent in tonbridge, england. she is currently a professor in the foreign language department at the universidad nacional de colombia and a tutor for the pfpd “profile”. in addition, she is a master candidate in the master program in applied linguistics to tefl at universidad distrital francisco josé de caldas. ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○141 profile profile profile profile profile the hidden curriculum introductionintroductionintroductionintroductionintroduction “schooling is assumed to be a process whose main purpose is to promote or produce learning... thus, schooling is conceived as a production system in which individual learning outcomes are the primary products. after all, if learning is not what schooling is for, then what could be its purpose? (posner, 1998, p. 81). this quote reflects a clear position which develops the idea of the technical production perspective of curriculum. within this perspective, teachers become technicians who plan and implement activities geared toward students’ production. one of the main concerns teachers have spins around the way to best plan our lessons so that they are coherent with the objectives set in the syllabus and, at the same time, meet our students’ needs and interests. one of the options teachers have is the construction of didactic units based on a clear curricular platform. such platform must tackle key issues such as the theory of education, the theory of learning, the theory of teaching, the approach, the method and the general goals to be achieved. therefore it constitutes the base on which the curricular unit is built upon. based on my experience as a teacher and learner of english as a foreign language, and on literature reviewed, i strongly believe in social interaction as the key factor in any learning process. my curricular unit platform has been constructed on this premise and it contains a specific philosophy of education, a theory of communication, a theory of teaching, a theory of learning and the general goals which will frame the curricular unit design. theoretical frameworktheoretical frameworktheoretical frameworktheoretical frameworktheoretical framework curricular platformcurricular platformcurricular platformcurricular platformcurricular platform a curricular platform is conceived as the basic principles underlying the construction and implementation of a curriculum. it emerges from the query of how a curriculum is planned. thus, a curricular platform construction is led by three main questions as stated by posner (1998). the first concerns the procedural questions which aim to go deep into the stages a teacher follows to plan a curriculum. the second query leads towards the description of the way a curriculum is planned. lastly, one should consider the elements present in the curriculum planning process and the way they are related to one another. in order to design and implement a curricular unit, i searched for those principles underlying the curriculum of my educational setting and proposed some elements which guided me in the construction of the platform. such elements were a theory of education, a theory of learning, a theory of teaching, and an approach. constructivismconstructivismconstructivismconstructivismconstructivism as a theoras a theoras a theoras a theoras a theory of educationy of educationy of educationy of educationy of education the curricular unit i developed had as a general conceptual framework constructivism, and specifically, social constructivism. the philosophical pillars of ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ 142 onatra and peña profile profile profile profile profile this theory have been set by authors like bruner, ausubel, piaget and vygotsky, among others. this philosophical position has been influenced by postmodernism supporting the idea that any reality is the mental construction of those who believe they have discovered it. the basic principle of constructivism is that we construct our understanding of the world and its phenomena by reflecting on our experience. thus the teaching –learning dynamics have different principles defining new paradigms in both teachers’ and learners’ roles. the two main principles within this philosophy are that knowledge is actively built up by learners and “the truth” is not found, but constructed through the explanation and socialization of our own experiences. expanding on the previous statements, brooks and brooks (1993) as cited by morison (1997) defined five main issues within this philosophical position: • use relevant problems for instruction • learning is constructed around primary concepts • value students’ points of view • adapt curriculum to address students’ suppositions • assessing students’ learning in the context of teaching social constructivism considers that the culture gives the child the cognitive tools needed for development such as cultural history, social context, language and, in these modern times, electronic forms to have information access. it emphasizes education for social transformation and reflects a way of conceiving individuals within a sociocultural context. in the same train of thought, individual development originates from social interactions as cultural meaning are shared by the group and later they are apprehended by the individual. as stated by schütz (2002), vygotsky is one of the representative authors within this framework. he emphasizes the importance of culture and social context for individuals’ cognitive development. there are four main principles supporting social constructivism. first, learning and development is a social collaborative activity. then, school learning should occur in meaningful context and there should be a connection between the world at school and the “real world”. the third pillar emphasizes the idea that experiences lived out of school should be connected to those promoted and carried out within the school context. finally, the zone of proximal development1 (zpd) can be a guide for curricular and lesson planning. within this conceptual framework, knowledge is a construction made by each learner regarding what he or she has experienced before and is linked to social interaction. with social constructivism as the theory of education, learning is viewed as a process of adjusting our mental models in order to accommodate new experiences we are exposed to by means of daily social interaction in a cultural context. within this process, learners invent rules, discover concepts and build representation of the 1 zone of proximal development: the stage a person can reach when being involved in social interaction. ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○143 profile profile profile profile profile the hidden curriculum world going through a process of enculturation into a community of practice. although wolffe and mcmullen (1996) consider constructivism as a theory of learning due to its essence, there are some important teaching principles to bear in mind when selecting this philosophy of education. a constructivist teacher creates a context for learning where students can engage in interesting activities that promote and facilitate the process. among the implications this philosophy presents, it is very relevant to mention: • the transition of the teachers’ roles from transmitters to facilitators: teachers guide students when tackling the learning challenges; they encourage learners to work in groups and support them in their modification of previous cognitive schemes. • teachers are called on to enable learners to learn how to learn: teachers should provide students with instructional settings in which learners can live the language and use it to modify their world and conditions around them. thus, autonomy and self-directed learning is encouraged. • there are more open-ended evaluations of learning outcomes: learning is conceived as a process of modification in which there is not one “correct” way to interpret phenomena around us. approach and methodapproach and methodapproach and methodapproach and methodapproach and method brown (1995) cites anthony (1963) to clarify the difference between an approach and a method. an approach is considered to have a ground assumption dealing with the nature of language and learning while a method is a general plan for the presentation of language materials. thus, an approach is more axiomatic while a method is more procedural as it deals with putting theory into practice, it being the level at which choices are made about the particular skills to develop, the contents to be explored, and the order of such exploratory tasks. the view of language within this approach is an interactional one. language is conceived as a vehicle for the realization of interpersonal relations and for the performance of social exchanges between individuals. according to richards and rodgers (1982), as cited by brown (1995), some of the most relevant characteristics of this vision are that language is a system for the expression of meaning and its primary function is for interaction and communication. such communication should be meaningful and purposeful within a specific social context. accordingly, language is perceived as a social practice in which the focus is the empowerment of the learner through the critical analysis of the social situations and the development of skills to face power differences. ffffframework: tramework: tramework: tramework: tramework: task–basedask–basedask–basedask–basedask–based tasks are conceived as activities where the target language is used by the learner for a communicative purpose in order to achieve a specific outcome (willis, 1996). this author makes references to six types of tasks: listing, ordering and sorting, comparing, problem solving, sharing personal experiences, and creative tasks. among the possible starting points for task ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ 144 onatra and peña profile profile profile profile profile work are learners’ personal knowledge and experiences, problems, visual stimuli, and spoken or written texts. as proposed by willis (1996) and highlighted by rooney (2001), the task – based learning framework has three main components: pre-task, task cycle and language focus. the pre-task component relates to the introduction to the topic and task. the task cycle has three moments. in the first part, students do the task collaboratively; afterwards, during the planning stage, students prepare to report to the whole class the way they developed the task informing on the decisions taken. finally, students report on the process carried out. the last component refers to the language focus, which contains the analysis and the practice. in the former, students examine and discuss specific features of the texts and in the latter, practice of new concepts is carried out. one of the advantages this framework offers for learning is the confidence learners develop from trying out the language they know. it also promotes and opens spaces for spontaneous interaction. furthermore, students are given the chance to notice the way others express similar meanings, getting them engaged in using language purposefully and cooperatively, concentrating on building meaning. additionally, this framework gives learners more spaces to tr y out communication strategies. curriculcurriculcurriculcurriculcurricular unit design andar unit design andar unit design andar unit design andar unit design and implementimplementimplementimplementimplementaaaaationtiontiontiontion based on the curricular platform previously described, a curricular unit was designed to develop a specific topic: eating habits and food celebrations. the next section of the article will account for the unit design, implementation and evaluation. ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○145 profile profile profile profile profile the hidden curriculum curricular unitcurricular unitcurricular unitcurricular unitcurricular unit unit author first and last name: aleida ariza e – mail address: aleariza71@yahoo.es /aleariza71@latinmail.com institution name: universidad nacional de colombia institution city: bogotá unit plan title: food time! curriculum framing questions: essential question: how different or similar are english speaking countries’ eating habits compared to colombian ones? unit questions: • what do people in the class like eating? • what do people in britain and the united states normally eat? • what is the relation between food and a local and an international celebration? unit summary this unit was concerned with the topic of food habits and the relation of food and celebration. students built up new knowledge in terms of some vocabulary and grammatical structures as well as in social and cultural features based on their experiences and those experiences narrated by people from english speaking countries. subject areas english, civilization. level students from english basic i course registered in the undergraduate english program (“licenciatura”). key words: food, celebration, eating habits, thanksgiving, meals, dishes, eating preferences. approximated time needed ten hours a week, one week. previous knowledge • ability to express existence (there is /there are) • ability to describe objects (is/ are /have got / has got) • reading skills (skimming /scanning to a certain extent) unit overview ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ 146 onatra and peña profile profile profile profile profile materials and resourmaterials and resourmaterials and resourmaterials and resourmaterials and resources required for the unitces required for the unitces required for the unitces required for the unitces required for the unit· • food cards. • video (interchange pre-intermediate chapter 8 video)· • video player. • two texts related to food habits in english speaking countries. tttttararararargeted university fgeted university fgeted university fgeted university fgeted university frameworkrameworkrameworkrameworkramework the following english basic i course program standards were taken into account: • picks out main ideas and key words in familiar material. • comprehends the gist of the message with adequate competence and confidence. • handles a narrow range of language. • comprehension of most adapted material and simple authentic texts. • needs constant repetition and repair. • responds to simple speech situations in moderate level contexts with limited confidence and competence. • presents false starts and hesitations. goalsgoalsgoalsgoalsgoals • students will construct knowledge by relating new information with previous experiences. • students will interpret phenomena around them through using the target language. • students will be able to interact with certain accuracy in different daily life, academic and personal situations. • students will use the vision given by their culture in order to better understand the world around them and to set a clear position towards the social context which surrounds them. students objectives / learning outcomesstudents objectives / learning outcomesstudents objectives / learning outcomesstudents objectives / learning outcomesstudents objectives / learning outcomes linguistic:linguistic:linguistic:linguistic:linguistic: • to review structures already studied such as there is /there are, have got/ has got, simple present : do/wh questions • to get to know and use vocabulary related to food items· • to master quantifiers such as a, an, some, any culturalculturalculturalculturalcultural • to acknowledge food habits in colombian culture • to be aware of cultural differences regarding food habits, specially between colombia and two english speaking countries: the united states and great britain. affective:affective:affective:affective:affective: • to share information related to personal preferences in terms of food items • to value team work • to acknowledge partner’ skills and the way they can learn from one another ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○147 profile profile profile profile profile the hidden curriculum assessmentassessmentassessmentassessmentassessment assessment was included along diverse tasks within the unit mainly because evaluation should be continuous and systematic. students used self, co-evaluation and peer assessment. the teacher also collected students’ sample of the activities developed and gave individual feedback. samples of the exercises were kept in students’ portfolios as this means had been used all through the term as an alternative way to evaluate both students’ performance and materials used to meet course aims. proceduresproceduresproceduresproceduresprocedures tttttask 1 task 1 task 1 task 1 task 1 type: listingype: listingype: listingype: listingype: listing pretask: the teacher asked students about food items they remembered, wrote them on the board and showed the group of students a poster with a lot of food elements. students were asked to find out names of food items by predicting, asking each other or by using their dictionaries. the poster was stuck on the wall next to the board. task. in groups of three, students were asked to write on a piece of paper as many words related to food as possible in two minutes depending on the category mentioned by the teacher (fruit, vegetables, beverages, meat, seafood, dairy products, seasoning). once time was over, students counted the number of words written and the member of the group with the highest number read aloud their examples. groups with the same word crossed it out. at the end of each category reading, students counted the number of words left and added each number to get a total score at the end of the “game”. while students were reading the written words aloud, the teacher wrote the words on the board in two different columns: a/an — some post task: students were asked to look at the way the words they had mentioned had been grouped and to express their own hypothesis about the reason for such classification. the language focus was addressed to testing students’ hypothesis about the use of aaaaa, an an an an an and somesomesomesomesome, related to those food items. tttttask 2 task 2 task 2 task 2 task 2 type: orype: orype: orype: orype: ordering and sortingdering and sortingdering and sortingdering and sortingdering and sorting 1. students were given flashcards with pictures of varied food items and their names. they had to stand up and look for another person who had item characteristics on a card that were similar to his /hers under the criteria given by the teacher (color, size, taste, food category). the teacher asked two students (who may be strong in their language use) to model using different questions such us: “have you got a/an some...?” “what have you got?” “i’ve got an apple”. “i’ve got some wine”. assessmentassessmentassessmentassessmentassessment students were asked to evaluate three aspects orally: first, the activities carried out up to this stage. second, they evaluated the material used and finally –the most important ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ 148 onatra and peña profile profile profile profile profile one. if objectives were achieved (to have a reflective look at their own learning process). the most relevant comments on these aspects were written down and kept in their portfolios. having the space for assessment at this stage of the curricular unit gave me the opportunity to make informed decisions about the process and reorient the teaching – learning process. tttttask 3. task 3. task 3. task 3. task 3. type: listing, sharing pype: listing, sharing pype: listing, sharing pype: listing, sharing pype: listing, sharing personal experience, comparingersonal experience, comparingersonal experience, comparingersonal experience, comparingersonal experience, comparing 1. in a whole class arrangement, students brainstormed about their eating preferences when asked about giving the first idea that came to their minds to the questions: “which type of food do you like the most?” “what kind of food do you dislike?” 2. students received a chart (see appendix 1) “food i like... food i dislike”. they filled out the first column by writing five things they liked in relation to the topic. in the second stage of this task students constructed the appropriate questions, stood up and found someone to fill out the rest of the chart by searching, through questions, for people in the classroom who liked and disliked the same type of food. 3. criteria for preparing and assessing the oral account on the information gathered are set in a process of negotiation and construction with students. tttttask 4 task 4 task 4 task 4 task 4 type: skimming / scanningype: skimming / scanningype: skimming / scanningype: skimming / scanningype: skimming / scanning pretaskpretaskpretaskpretaskpretask: in the session before, i asked students to search for information about eating habits in both the united states and great britain along with visual support on their findings. students formed groups of three and exchanged some information they found, then everybody changed groups until they had been part of three different groups. afterwards, students shared what they had learned through these dynamics in a plenary session. tttttask:ask:ask:ask:ask: half the students were given the reading “meals in britain” taken from headway elementary on page 66. the other half received the text “food in america” taken from contact usa on page 52. they were asked to read silently, and to deduce the meaning of new words using the context as a first strategy, then to try a second option (using a dictionary, asking a partner, asking the teacher). students reading the first article were asked to read again in order to match the photographs with the appropriate paragraph and, in pairs, to prepare three comprehension questions for the reading. they gave the small questionnaire to the teacher. at the same time the other half of the course followed the same process with their reading but the mini-task was to write a subheading for each paragraph according to the most relevant piece of information given in each of them. later students were asked to prepare a small reading comprehension questionnaire based on the text in pairs. once they had finished, their pieces of work were given to the teacher. ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○149 profile profile profile profile profile the hidden curriculum every student looked for a partner who had read the opposite article and gave a concrete oral account, guided by the questionnaires and paragraph headings they had elaborated previously, of the main aspects tackled in the text. in a whole class session students discussed eating habits in the usa and great britain, establishing similarities and differences and what those implied in terms of cultural values. the teacher shared with students some of the anecdotes that she experienced while living in the united kingdom when she was part of a teacher assistantship in 2000 – 2001. students were asked to brainstorm by writing extra questions they wanted to ask on this topic for the following session. a guess speaker was invited to the class for a fifteen-minute period. he was an english citizen named neil alexander who was teaching at the university as part of an assistantship program in colombia. students used their notes from the brainstorm activity carried out during the session before in order to ask about any interesting aspect related to food habits of the native speaker. assessmentassessmentassessmentassessmentassessment classroom-based assessment was carried out taking into account both sources of information, notes taken by me during student performance of the activities and students’ self-written evaluation, guided by the following heading given by the teacher: what i did... what i learned... working in pairs was...what i liked and disliked the most was... tttttask 5 task 5 task 5 task 5 task 5 type: prype: prype: prype: prype: problem solvingoblem solvingoblem solvingoblem solvingoblem solving pretask: pretask: pretask: pretask: pretask: students brainstormed on various types of food from different places around the world. tttttask: ask: ask: ask: ask: students were given a copy of an activity adapted from new headway elementary (see appendix 2) in which five pictures of dishes are shown. students made predictions about the countries those dishes were from. they took notes while listening to a tape in which five native english speakers talked about their favorite dishes. they listened to the tape for a second time and completed the chart. they needed to complete information under the headings: name of the speaker, favorite dish and additional information. pppppost task: ost task: ost task: ost task: ost task: students selected a partner to compare their notes with so they could both comment and complement the information. the teacher displayed an empty model of the same chart on the board and volunteers were required to fill the chart out. through guided questions the teacher led students to the identification of new vocabulary and the way it supported the topic being developed all through the curricular unit assessmentassessmentassessmentassessmentassessment students wrote their comments on a sheet of paper to evaluate their performance during the task in terms of quantity (how much information was written individually), and quality (how accurate the listening task was). the piece of paper was collected along with the ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ 150 onatra and peña profile profile profile profile profile chart and individual written feedback was given. in order to give students space to reflect upon the task and its performance, students sat in a “u” shape and the teacher asked them to evaluate the activity as a group. some of the criteria given to do so included degree of difficulty, information interest degree, pair work dynamics, and self-evaluation. tttttasks 6 tasks 6 tasks 6 tasks 6 tasks 6 type: listing, prype: listing, prype: listing, prype: listing, prype: listing, problem solvingoblem solvingoblem solvingoblem solvingoblem solving pretaskpretaskpretaskpretaskpretask: the teacher distributed pieces of paper with words related to thanksgiving on them. when every student got his/her card, they stood up and read to as many members of the class as possible the words written on the cards in two minutes. then, students were given five minutes to tell two partners as many words or expressions he/she remembered, so that they exchanged information collectively. in a whole class arrangement students were asked to predict what the video was about based on the information shared before. students’ predictions were written on the board. tttttask: ask: ask: ask: ask: students received the video guide titled “thanksgiving!” taken from interchange, pre-intermediate video book (see appendix 3) and followed the procedure explained in it and mentioned below. before ybefore ybefore ybefore ybefore you wou wou wou wou watchatchatchatchatch • read the two short texts related to cultural aspects in the united states. • is there a similar celebration in colombia? which date is it? • look at the vocabulary and put the words given in the appropriate place on the chart. while ywhile ywhile ywhile ywhile you wou wou wou wou watchatchatchatchatch • watch the first part of the video and complete the chart on the board with more information. • students are asked to watch the first part of the video and answer some questions very clearly. • students watch the second section of the video and tick the food product based on pictures of the people who took part in a survey applied in the u.s.a. • participants watch the last part of the video and complete some sentences related to untraditional food. aaaaafter yfter yfter yfter yfter you wou wou wou wou watchatchatchatchatch students were asked to think about a special holiday in our country and share their information with a different partner. they had to talk about types of food in those holidays and the way they were related to the celebrations. assessment:assessment:assessment:assessment:assessment: the video guides were collected and individual feedback given. students were asked to self evaluate the activity under negotiated criteria: importance, pertinence, interest level, positive aspects, negative aspects, and strategies to overcome difficulties. ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○151 profile profile profile profile profile the hidden curriculum evevevevevalalalalaluauauauauationtiontiontiontion of the curriculof the curriculof the curriculof the curriculof the curricular unitar unitar unitar unitar unit • the current curricular unit was perceived as very complete by students even though some of the activities could not be carried out due to time constraints. • all the objectives proposed were achieved in terms of language (regarding cooperative work as well as the cultural ones). • acknowledging students’ previous knowledge proved to be a very useful part of both the curricular platform and the curricular unit. students felt more confident when they could tackle a new aspect of english using what they had already mastered and had practiced with along the term. • learning by doing is a key feature in this unit. students enjoyed the activities in which they could participate actively. having students competing against each other proved to be an effective tool in terms of motivation and quality in students’ production. • a strength in this curricular unit and, at the same time, a reflection of the curricular platform, is the variety of communicative tasks which involved the four communicative abilities: listening, speaking, reading (not only texts, but pictures and images) and writing. abilities like ordering, listing, and guessing, among others, were also present. • a drawback observed in the unit by both students and the teacher was the design of too many tasks for the period of time set. students felt they were “in a hurry” most of the time and that pressure affected some students’ pace of learning. this limitation can be overcome when implementing the unit again by means of selecting the best and most complete tasks and adjusting the unit to the time needed to develop it. conclconclconclconclconclusionsusionsusionsusionsusions working within the framework of curricular units proved to be very beneficial as i could bridge the gap between what was proposed by the curriculum and what was needed by students. it is worth mentioning that decisions made to build the curricular unit were based on the principles underlying the syllabus for the course as well as on students’ needs in terms of language and cultural knowledge. the curricular unit designed encouraged students to value their own culture in various aspects such as eating habits and festivities. students were able to reflect upon different cultural expressions in our society while getting to know cultural aspects of the target language communities. as pointed out by the constructivist theory, students recreated the knowledge they had based on their experiences and compared it to the new information worked on in the curricular unit. i consider this process a very enriching one in terms of language learning and cultural awareness. likewise, the task-based framework ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ 152 onatra and peña profile profile profile profile profile encouraged students to use the target language for a communicative purpose in order to achieve a specific product. thus, students faced diverse types of tasks which moved them to use english in purposeful activities. referencesreferencesreferencesreferencesreferences abraham, p. and mackey, d. (1989). contact u.s.a. reading and vocabulary book. new jersey: prentice hall, inc. brown, d. (1995). the elements of language curriculum. boston: heinle & heinle publishers. morison, d. (1997). reviews and commentaries section. retrieved april 2003, from http://www.scientificamerican.com/ 1997issue/1997review1.html posner, g. (1998). models of curriculum planning. in beyer, l. and apple, m., the curriculum: problems, politics and possibilities. albany: state university of new york press, 79100. richards, j. (1996). new interchange. video activity book 2. cambridge: cambridge university press. rooney, k. (2001). redesigning non-taskbased material to fit a task-based framework. retrieved december 2002, from http:// iteslj.org/techniques/rooney-task-based.html schütz, r. (2002). vygotsky and language acquisition. retrieved may 2002, from http:// www.sk.com.br/sk-vygot.html soars, liz and soars, john. (1993). headway elementary. oxford: oxford university press. soars, liz and soars, john. (2000). new headway elementary. oxford: oxford university press. willis, j. (1996). a framework for task-based learning. essex: addison wesley longman limited. wolffe, r. j., and mcmullen, d.w. (1996). the constructivist connection: linking theory, best practice and technology. retrieved april 2003, from eric clearinghouse on teaching and teacher education, washington dc. ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○153 profile profile profile profile profile the hidden curriculum appendix 1: food i like... food i dislikeappendix 1: food i like... food i dislikeappendix 1: food i like... food i dislikeappendix 1: food i like... food i dislikeappendix 1: food i like... food i dislike i like i dislike find someone who has the same taste specific information i like chicken i don’t like spinach do you like chicken? how do you like it? carolina c. roasted ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ 154 onatra and peña profile profile profile profile profile appendix 2: tappendix 2: tappendix 2: tappendix 2: tappendix 2: task 5: food round the worldask 5: food round the worldask 5: food round the worldask 5: food round the worldask 5: food round the world 1. look at the picture of food below. where is each dish from? which do you like? pictures taken from new headway elementary, p. 72 2. listen to the tape in which five native speakers talk about their favorite dishes. take notes. tttttapescript:apescript:apescript:apescript:apescript: marian:marian:marian:marian:marian: well, i love vegetables, all vegetables i eat meat too – but not much. i think this is why i like chinese food so much. there are lots of vegetables in chinese food. yes, chinese is my favourite food. i like the noodles too. can you eat with chopsticks? i can! graham:graham:graham:graham:graham: now in my job, i travel the world, and i like all kinds of food...but my favourite, my favourite is... er ... i always have it as soon as i come home... is a full english breakfast. bacon, eggs, sausage, mushrooms, tomatoes, and of course toast. i love it, not every day but when i’m at home we have it every sunday. mmmm! i’d like it right nowdelicious. lucy:lucy:lucy:lucy:lucy: oh, no question, no problem. i know exactly what my favourite food is. pasta. all pasta. especially spaghetti. pasta with tomato sauce – and i like it best when i’m in italy. i went on holiday to the italian lakes last year. the food was wonderful. gavin:gavin:gavin:gavin:gavin: ...er... i’m not sure. no, i know what it is. my... favourite... food is indian food. friday night i like to go to the pub with friends from work and ... have a few beers...er... no, not too ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○155 profile profile profile profile profile the hidden curriculum many... and after we always go to an indian restaurant and i have a chicken curry with rice. it’s the best! i like it more than chips! sally:sally:sally:sally:sally: well! shhh! but my very, very favourite food is chocolate. chocolate anything, i love it. chocolate ice-cream, chocolate biscuits, chocolate cake, but especially just a big bar of chocolate, mmmmm! terrible, isn’t it? go on! have some of this! my friend brought it back from switzerland for me! tapescript taken from new headway elementary, p. 120. 3. listen to the tape for the second time and complete the following chart. 4. talk to a partner and swap information so you can finish completing your chart. no. name of the person favourite food additional information 1 2 3 4 5 marian graham lucy gavin sally ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ 156 onatra and peña profile profile profile profile profile appendix 3: thanksgiving!appendix 3: thanksgiving!appendix 3: thanksgiving!appendix 3: thanksgiving!appendix 3: thanksgiving! before ybefore ybefore ybefore ybefore you wou wou wou wou watchatchatchatchatch 1. culture read the following text and comment on it with a partner. on the fourth thursday in november, people in the united states celebrate thanksgiving. they get together with family and friends, share a special meal, and “give thanks” for what they have. the tradition goes back to 1620, when the first group of europeans, called pilgrims, settled in north america. the pilgrims didn’t know how to grow crops in the new world, so the native americans helped them. later, they celebrated the good harvest with a special meal. today on thanksgiving day, families and friends do the very same thing. text taken from interchange pre-intermediate p. 30, unit 8 is there a similar holiday in our country? comment on it. 2. vocabulary • look at the chart below. what is “main dish”, “side dish” and “dessert”? can you give examples of them? • complete the chart with the dish names shown in the pictures. main dishes side dishes desserts activity adapted from interchange pre-intermediate p. 30, unit 8 pictures taken from interchange pre-intermediate p. 30, unit 8 ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○157 profile profile profile profile profile the hidden curriculum while ywhile ywhile ywhile ywhile you watchou watchou watchou watchou watch 1. finish completing the chart above while you watch the whole video. 2. look at the first section of the video and answer the questions below individually: • how did native americans help the pilgrims? • where is the best place to find people getting ready for this holiday celebration? • who do people usually invite for this celebration? 3. what do these people eat on thanksgiving? tick on the right square. chart taken from interchange pre-intermediate p. 31, unit 8 4. untraditional food! some people have different types of food to eat on thanksgiving which are not considered traditional. watch this section of the video and complete the sentences below. • sopa is ___________________ in a ________________ and garlic sauce. it has carrots, _______________, corn, and sometimes _______________ in it. • greens is a tradition from the _____________________. • dirty rice is __________________ mixed with rice. exercise taken from interchange pre-intermediate p. 31, unit 8 compare you answers with a partner’s and complement your exercise. after you watch think about a special holiday in our country and discuss with a partner the type of food eaten and its importance in the celebration. write down some of the information from the discussion you consider valuable. this article was received on may 10th, 2004 and accepted on august 23rd, 2004. profile 5.pmd ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ 98 profileprofileprofileprofileprofile strategies to support high school students’ reading comprehension in the english language estrategias de apoyo para la comprensión de lectura del idioma inglés en estudiantes de educación secundaria y media fffffreddy oswaldo zabala palacioreddy oswaldo zabala palacioreddy oswaldo zabala palacioreddy oswaldo zabala palacioreddy oswaldo zabala palacio* universidad nacional de colombia fredzabalpa@hotmail.com teachers are often concerned about the low reading level of their students in both english and spanish. one way to solve this problem is by using reading strategies. promoting the development of reading competences in english will offer the students tools that allow them to comprehend texts and will contribute to a closer relation with the second language culture. this article reports on a study carried out when doing my teaching practice in a public high school in bogotá, colombia, in 2002. the main objective of my research project was to support the development of eleventh graders’ reading comprehension competence in english. hence, i refer to the group’s views on english reading comprehension, their handling of strategies to develop reading competence in english and their progress after having applied those strategies. kkkkkey worey worey worey worey words: ds: ds: ds: ds: foreign language-teaching, reading strategies el bajo nivel de lectura en los estudiantes de inglés y español es una de las preocupaciones comunes de los docentes. una forma de solucionar este problema es a través del uso de estrategias de lectura. de tal manera, promover el desarrollo de competencias lectoras en los estudiantes de inglés les ofrecerá herramientas que les permitirán comprender los textos y contribuirá a crear una relación más cercana entre ellos y la cultura de la segunda lengua. este artículo reporta un estudio llevado a cabo durante mi práctica docente en una escuela pública de bogotá, colombia, en el año 2002. el objetivo principal de mi proyecto de investigación fue apoyar el desarrollo de la competencia en comprensión de lectura en el idioma inglés en estudiantes de undécimo grado. por lo tanto, menciono los puntos de vista de los estudiantes sobre la comprensión de lectura, la forma como utilizan las estrategias para desarrollar esta competencia en inglés y su proceso después de su acercamiento a la comprensión lectora a través del uso de las mismas. palabras claves:palabras claves:palabras claves:palabras claves:palabras claves: lengua extranjera-enseñanza, estrategias de lectura *freddy oswaldo zabala palaciofreddy oswaldo zabala palaciofreddy oswaldo zabala palaciofreddy oswaldo zabala palaciofreddy oswaldo zabala palacio holds a b. ed. in philology and languages from universidad nacional de colombia. ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○99 profile profile profile profile profile strategies to support high school studentes’ reading comprehension in the english language introductionintroductionintroductionintroductionintroduction while doing my teaching practice, i explored the area of reading comprehension in english. through a sur vey i found information about the way teachers incorporated learning strategies, their reasons to incorporate them, the frequency of working with reading strategies, and the contribution of the reading strategies in supporting the development of students’ reading competence (see annex 1). in relation to students’ perceptions of the methodology introduced by the teachers, they stated that lessons were taught mainly through reading workshops and definitions on the blackboard. students said that contents were introduced according to their own difficulties, the topic of the class and their preferences. regarding the frequency of working with reading strategies, most of the students mentioned that the teacher rarely incorporated new reading strategies. additionally, students acknowledged the contribution of reading strategies in the development of reading competences. they highlighted the use of the following strategies when reading texts in the foreign language: passage completion, scrambled stories, cloze tests, hypothesis identification, propositions extraction, argumentative nets construction, and semantic relations. research problemresearch problemresearch problemresearch problemresearch problem based on the results mentioned above, my interest in examining the group’s views regarding reading comprehension experiences in the english class, the way they handled strategies to develop reading competences and their progress after approaching reading comprehension using those strategies, led me toward a main question: how to support the development of the reading comprehension competences in the english area for eleventh graders? in order to answer that query, i posed two related questions, namely: * how could i incorporate the use of reading strategies to support the development of reading competences in the students? * what kind of competences do students develop through the use of reading strategies? likewise, the main objective of the study was to support the development of reading comprehension competences in english for eleventh graders. this, in turn, guided me to achieve two specific objectives: to foment the use of reading strategies’ application by the students and, second, to promote the development of reading competences through situations related to the social context of the students. research frameworkresearch frameworkresearch frameworkresearch frameworkresearch framework this research has followed the qualitative case study principles. this kind of research allowed me to study an aspect in depth for a period of time. “in particular, qualitative case studies are ideal designs to understand and to interpret the observations made on an educational phenomenon in a second language acquisition” (merriam, 1998, p. 40). the data techniques used were: questionnaires, recordings, diaries and interviews. the participants were eleventh ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ 100 zabala profile profile profile profile profile graders at a public school in bogotá, colombia, and who had only studied english for six years in a non-intensive program (three hours per week). the institution belongs to a social zone of the 2, 3 and 4 strata. the course was made up of 31 students: 24 males and 7 females. the average age was seventeen years old. in connection with the foreign language school project, i took into consideration the following achievement indicators that were part of the english area for the eleventh course and which had to do with reading comprehension processes, namely: 02 analyze information provided by different types of texts in english. 05 deal with reading comprehension strategies in english. 06 go in depth in the argumentative, propositional and interpretative aspects in the foreign language. 09 identify the main topic of the different english readings and apply new vocabulary to daily life. i did this study during my teaching practice. i made an agreement with the teaching practice director, the class teacher and students to apply a plan that allowed them to develop their reading skills. i developed 13 workshops in which we used texts with topics such as holy week and international conflicts. to approach these texts i designed materials applying different reading strategies discussed by tanner and green (1998). they were: skimming, scanning, contextual guessing, outlining, paraphrasing, scrambled stories, extensive reading and cloze. (relevant guidelines on extensive reading are also provided by bamford and day, 1998). i also included three of the six levels of reading decodification proposed by miguel de zubiría (1995): the primary, secondary and third decodification. moreover, i considered the auxiliary mechanisms that operate in each of the previously mentioned levels. the auxiliary mechanisms were the synonymy, the antonymy, which constitutes part of the primary decodification; the pronominalization, the propositional inference and the chromatism from the secondary decodification; and the proposition extraction, and the semantic structure discovery, levels that make part of the third decodification. these mechanisms were complemented following the ideas proposed by julia baquero (1994, 2002) in the courses on text comprehension and production. from those courses, i adapted two types of reading: first level reading and functional reading. the former is approached through different types of questions like referent questions and contextual questions –both used in this research. in the latter, the student should be able to extract the hypothesis and the argumentative propositions that support the reading. the students were guided at theoretical and practical levels. at the theoretical level, i explained a determined number of strategies by session. practical guidance was given in workshops composed of a reading followed by exercises related to it in which the students had to put in practice each one of the explained strategies in order to decode the reading passages. (see a sample workshop, in annex 2). ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○101 profile profile profile profile profile strategies to support high school studentes’ reading comprehension in the english language theoretical frameworktheoretical frameworktheoretical frameworktheoretical frameworktheoretical framework i took into account the following aspects that made up part of this research: the notion of the concept of competence and communicative competence as well as the analysis of competence in the school and a revision of the aspects of reading, reading comprehension and reading strategies. also, i found practical recommendations for handling reading lessons in the studies carried out in colombian public schools by correales, mendivelso and santacruz (2000) as well as by santoyo and morales (2000). regarding the concept of competence, chomsky relates it to grammatical rules and to the generation of knowledge. this author, as pointed out by maldonado (2001), founded two dimensions which are competence as an inherent capacity to know grammatical rules and to demonstrate it in concrete speech events. on the other hand, maldonado (ibid.) states two definitions of competence: the first relates competence with terms such as achievement, indicator and capacity, whereas from the labor point of view, competence is defined as production, honesty and efficiency. according to torrado (2000), competence can be understood as the knowledge someone has and the use s/he makes of that knowledge to solve a task in a specific situation and in relation to context, needs and concrete demands. miguel de zubiría (1995) points out the different mechanisms that occur in the reading process and proposes that the teacher should introduce them instead of teaching them. due to the fact that decodification mechanisms play an important role in the reading process, my main interest was to reinforce these in the belief that students could find in them the strategies that allowed them to comprehend an english text. in my opinion the strategies proposed by tanner and green (1998) support the development of reading competences, particularly when dealing with the form of the text (aspects of textual cohesion) while the strategies stated by de zubiría (1995) look for a semantic approximation. likewise, i consider the strategies stated by these authors to be similar in their functioning as can be observed in the following chart. contextual guessing keeps up a relation with propositional inference. on the other hand, outlining and unscrambling stories correspond in a certain way to the macro-propositions extraction mechanism and semantic structure discovering, respectively, because they all support the reader’s comprehension at a structural level of the text. ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ 102 zabala profile profile profile profile profile chart 1chart 1chart 1chart 1chart 1. comparison of some reading strategies proposed by tanner and green (1998) and de zubiría (1995) strategies prstrategies prstrategies prstrategies prstrategies proposed by toposed by toposed by toposed by toposed by tanner andanner andanner andanner andanner and greengreengreengreengreen contecontecontecontecontextual guessing: xtual guessing: xtual guessing: xtual guessing: xtual guessing: to make conjectures about the meaning of the words’ meaning looking at the words that surround the unknown word or situations that are being dealt with. outlining:outlining:outlining:outlining:outlining: it is a note taking strategy that helps us to see the organization of the overall text. unscrambling stories:unscrambling stories:unscrambling stories:unscrambling stories:unscrambling stories: the reader must reorganize the mixed pieces of a text to show that s/he understands how the components fit together. strategies proposed by de zubiríastrategies proposed by de zubiríastrategies proposed by de zubiríastrategies proposed by de zubiríastrategies proposed by de zubiría propositional inference:propositional inference:propositional inference:propositional inference:propositional inference: its goal is to discover the meaning found in phrases and sentences. macro-proposition extraction:macro-proposition extraction:macro-proposition extraction:macro-proposition extraction:macro-proposition extraction: it consists of extracting the macropropositions and eliminating the remaining information. the macro-propositions’ structure must explain the relationships among phrases/sentences. semantic structure discoveringsemantic structure discoveringsemantic structure discoveringsemantic structure discoveringsemantic structure discovering: it is the system of the linked macro-propositions respecting the linkage among them. findingsfindingsfindingsfindingsfindings to collect data, i used questionnaires to diagnose the students’ reading comprehension domain in english, their knowledge of reading strategies in a second language and the reading strategies’ effectiveness. field-notes were also used to register aspects such as students’ progress and difficulties, evidenced skills and attitudes, and their success when working with reading strategies. through videorecordings i looked for identifying students’ problems, participation, differences among students’ performance, their progress in reading, their reasoning, and the use of meta-language in the english class. an analysis of the data gathered through the procedures mentioned above led me to the subcategories shown in the following diagram under a core categor y: incorporation of strategies for the pedagogic process. ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○103 profile profile profile profile profile strategies to support high school studentes’ reading comprehension in the english language diagram 1diagram 1diagram 1diagram 1diagram 1. categories found when analyzing data on reading comprehension incorporaincorporaincorporaincorporaincorporation of stration of stration of stration of stration of strategies for the pedtegies for the pedtegies for the pedtegies for the pedtegies for the pedagogic processagogic processagogic processagogic processagogic process strategies used by students to comprehend the readings in english students’ difficulties in the reading process progress shown by the students after a theoretical and practical approach to reading comprehension in english • students’ acceptance of the workshops • interest in reading • handling of implicit information • difficulties found regarding students’ mistakes • progress in using formal strategies • progress in semantic strategies within the core category incorporation of strategies for the pedagogic process, i found three important subcategories. the first one is related to the strategies usedstrategies usedstrategies usedstrategies usedstrategies used by students to comprehend theby students to comprehend theby students to comprehend theby students to comprehend theby students to comprehend the readingsreadingsreadingsreadingsreadings. results showed that the strategies most used were studying vocabulary and analyzing the main idea. this can be seen in one of the students testimonies, to wit: well, first at all the words i more or less know…to have an idea, if it has dates, by the dates one can have a guide, translation also and to translate to comprehend the text and by the words that one more or less knows how to guide oneself and by the title (anibal andrés). the use of the dictionary and imagination was also evidenced: my strategy is to imagine every action of the text in english (isauro). in addition, students turned to prediction, translation, and attempted to use inference to make sense of what they read. i could also obser ve the students’ acceptance of the workshops when i adapted the argumentative model proposed by baquero (2002). this acceptance could be evidenced through the familiarization of strategies such as semantic structure discovering and their interest in reading processes. as i wrote in my journal, students were motivated when they found functionality in the different topics as evidenced by the following: as every point of the exercise was explained, students found this exercise practical for the reading comprehension in english. ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ 104 zabala profile profile profile profile profile i could note that students’ motivation for the functionality of the topics was due to the application of topics from different fields such as biology, history and anthropology. this shows us that, as stated by maldonado (2001: 22), we have to promote the development of cross-curricular competences which implies decoding technical language that characterizes areas like physics, chemistry and linguistics. in addition, the students were motivated when a new strategy was introduced as shown by the following: when i taught some types of questions such as referential and contextual ones, the students were “amazed” because these types of questions had not been commonly used in the english class (field-note, april 1). they also got engaged in reading activities when these were not too long or when exercises were not too numerous. a second important subcategory has to do with students’ difficultiesdifficultiesdifficultiesdifficultiesdifficulties in the reading process. i could observe that the students had difficulty with the handling of implicit information as shown by this statement: even they have not comprehended that there is implicit information that is also relevant. the students also showed difficulties with the intensive reading, outlining and unscrambling stories strategies. in relation to this point, i think that the students are guided unconsciously and easily toward prediction than toward the fulfillment of strategies whose objective is the comprehension of the structure of the text (including intensive reading). this might be due to the nature of language itself because, as torrado (2000) states, language is more than a system of signs that allows us to communicate and to decompose the sentences in their grammatical elements. language is used to live reality in other ways, from multiple and magical possibilities of approaching, removal and construction of the world. difficulty in making outlines was another pattern found as revealed by the following: outlining was another strategy used to comprehend this text; however, most of the students did not make an outline. for the comprehension of a text, the students were asked to make an outline of the text; however, a great number of the students left this point out of the workshop (field-note, april 1). they had also difficulties with the domain of the grammatical tenses. on several occasions i found that students had not understood clearly the concept of proposition. lastly, they also demonstrated problems identifying the hypothesis and main idea, as shown in the following excerpt from a video recording: t: …underline the main idea of the text… the students start to speculate… (later on) t: which is the main idea?… other students look at their texts to find the main idea and to express themselves in english… steve: that a couple goes to a party, and then the girl, and then the girl looks quite beautiful to them… t: and assign titles… and the title?. you can give an option for the title… a student raises her hand… t: o.k. can you write it please? ... the student writes a title for the outline… t: all agree? some students do not agree… t: why not?… they do not answer. ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○105 profile profile profile profile profile strategies to support high school studentes’ reading comprehension in the english language the students also evidenced difficulties concerning their own mistakes. for instance, they answered meaninglessly with parts of the text as can be seen in this extract from a video-recording: well, actually what is this paragraph talking about?… yeah, that a lot of salmon is found…in spanish we will say that the main idea of the text is?… a girl. some students answer. on the other hand, it should be pointed out that sometimes low achievers copied answers from high achievers. this could be seen as a strategy to fulfill the tasks and not necessarily as an application of the reading strategies being promoted in class. in other cases, they copied bits from the text itself and no real extracts of propositions. obser ving their own difficulties, i identified some students’ attitudes towards reading comprehension. some students simply did not continue working in class when they faced difficulties, to wit: juan camilo continues working and checking with the text. andrés quits (from video recording). another reaction to difficulties was evidenced by fear, to wit: let us listen to paola’s conclusion. do you have any idea? who has another idea? who wants to come to the board to write a logical conclusion? a volunteer. german, can you pass? all of us are going to help him (video recording). in brief, i could notice that prediction was the main mechanism used by students to solve their difficulties. they analyzed the text superficially and from this analysis predicted its possible meaning. this showed they had not worked effectively in the use of those reading strategies that could guide them to a deeper analysis of the text. as a third category, i can talk about students’ progress. the students showed progress as a result of using strategies like prediction and scanning. this was seen in their ability to complete outlines and to correct wrong sentences by using the cloze strategy. with respect to the process evidenced by the students in the fulfillment of certain strategies, i could say that there was progress in their argumentation skills and in establishing connection among propositions, illustrated as follows: here we have the bears can not survive without a forest but could not prosper without it. that is because the bears eat salmon and provide nitrogen for the forest when they defecate or take parts of bits…when this passes defecations or parts of meat three times faster than others… (juan camilo). students also showed progress in the comprehension of the concept of proposition and recognition of argumentative texts characteristics, to wit: it has a hypothesis…some propositions…that argue…(steve). through the data analysis, i could conclude that imagination, prediction and translation were the most important mechanisms used by the students to comprehend the reading texts. dealing with the incorporation of strategies into the classroom, i could notice three elements such as a preference for the novelty of new strategies; their functionality, and the students’ preference for short tasks. it was in the incorporation of unknown strategies ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ 106 zabala profile profile profile profile profile in which students presented bigger difficulties and evidenced fear. conclconclconclconclconclusionsusionsusionsusionsusions the results showed that reading comprehension competences in eleventh grade can be supported through the incorporation of strategies which strengthen those mechanisms they already use to comprehend a text; which raise their awareness regarding the utility of the reading strategies; which follow a systematic methodology that promotes the application of reading strategies, and which motivate them to read texts. it is also important to take into account the role of the teacher as a guide and the students as protagonists of reading processes. moreover, we should bear in mind that the importance given to the students’ previous knowledge and to the english reading skills is an essential part in the learning process of a foreign language as it constitutes an important support for the development of reading competences in english. as pointed out previously, by incorporating the reading strategies, we can witness development of competences like the improvement of oral and writing skills, the increase of the capacity to organize texts as well as to establish relations between propositions and terms, a better performance in workshops and presentations, and the enrichment of vocabulary. referencesreferencesreferencesreferencesreferences bamford, j. and day, r. (1998). extensive reading in the second language classroom. cambridge: cambridge university press. baquero, j. (2002). apuntes de clase. bogotá: universidad nacional. baquero, j. (1994). textos científicos y argumentativos. una didáctica para su comprensión y reseña. bogotá: lambda. correales, r., mendivelso, o. and santacruz, f. (2000). reading comprehension: a viable challenge for public school students. profile journal, 1, 3841. de zubiría, m. (1995). teoría de las seis lecturas. bogotá: fondo de publicaciones bernardo herrera merino. maldonado, m. (2001). las competencias. una opción de vida. bogotá: ecoediciones. merriam, b. (1997). case study research in education. san francisco: jossey-bass publications. santoyo, b. and morales, l. (2000). reading: a motivating and interactive process. profile journal, 1, 5960. tanner, r. and green, c. (1998). tasks for teacher education. essex: longman. torrado, m. (2000). educar para el desarrollo de las competencias: una propuesta para reflexionar. competencias y proyecto pedagógico..... bogotá: universidad nacional. cd rom. ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○107 profile profile profile profile profile strategies to support high school studentes’ reading comprehension in the english language annex 1: diagnostic surveyannex 1: diagnostic surveyannex 1: diagnostic surveyannex 1: diagnostic surveyannex 1: diagnostic survey objective: to identify options according to the methodology carried out during the incorporation and development of reading strategies in the classroom. instructions: read the following questions and choose the option(s) that apply to you. 1. in which way has your teacher introduced reading strategies in the classroom? adefining them on the board bthrough reading workshops cas investigation carried out by the students dother(s). specify ________________ 2. how often does your teacher incorporate new reading strategies in english? aevery class bonce a week crarely dseldom 3. the teacher introduces the use of reading strategies depending on: athe topic of the class bstudents’ difficulties in comprehending a text cstudents’ request dother(s). specify ________________ 4. what do you understand by competence in reading comprehension? ato know a lot of vocabulary bto handle grammatical structures ca set of skills that allows you to comprehend a text dother(s). specify ________________ 5. what reading competences do you believe you can develop when you read a text? grade them from 1 to 4. note: 1= the least important and 4= the most important __ to determine relations that are present among the different terms of the text __ to be aware of established relations among the text’s propositions __ to know the overall organization of the text __ to make outlines of the text __ other(s). specify ________________ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ 108 zabala profile profile profile profile profile 6. which reading strategies have contributed to the development of reading competences? note: 1= the least important and 4= the most important __ fill in the gaps __ unscrambling stories (paragraph organization) __ hypothesis extraction and argumentative nets creation __ semantic relations (e.g. synonyms, antonyms) __ other(s). specify ________________ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○109 profile profile profile profile profile strategies to support high school studentes’ reading comprehension in the english language annex 2: reading workshopannex 2: reading workshopannex 2: reading workshopannex 2: reading workshopannex 2: reading workshop notes:notes:notes:notes:notes: 1. the strategies proposed by tanner and green (1998) and the mechanisms proposed by baquero (2002) were used through interdisciplinary topics: ecology, biology and chemistry. 2. text adapted from the “text comprehension and production course” taught by prof. gloria mora, universidad nacional de colombia, 2002. 1. organize with numbers the paragraphs of the text.1. organize with numbers the paragraphs of the text.1. organize with numbers the paragraphs of the text.1. organize with numbers the paragraphs of the text.1. organize with numbers the paragraphs of the text. __ barry gilbert, ecologist of the state university of utah, and ___ colleague arthur morris penetrated the forest that borders the koeye river, in british columbia, and discovered that the feces of the bears and the terrain around ____ contained high concentrations of a heavy isotope of nitrogen, found usually in the meat of salmon. __ jim helfield, of the university of washington, found that the trees nearest to the rivers with plenty of salmon in alaska grew three times faster than the ones nearest to the rivers without great quantities of that ____. __ gilbert and morris believe that the bears ___ salmon and provide the forest with nitrogen when they defecate or leave parts of uneaten fish. ________ is a powerful fertilizer. __ the brown bears of the pacific northwest in the united states cannot survive without a forest as home. but a forest could not prosper without them ______. 2. fill in the gaps in the te2. fill in the gaps in the te2. fill in the gaps in the te2. fill in the gaps in the te2. fill in the gaps in the text above with the following worxt above with the following worxt above with the following worxt above with the following worxt above with the following words:ds:ds:ds:ds: his either fish them eat nitrogen 3. extract the hypothesis and the argumentative propositions from the text.3. extract the hypothesis and the argumentative propositions from the text.3. extract the hypothesis and the argumentative propositions from the text.3. extract the hypothesis and the argumentative propositions from the text.3. extract the hypothesis and the argumentative propositions from the text. 4. construct the argumentative net.4. construct the argumentative net.4. construct the argumentative net.4. construct the argumentative net.4. construct the argumentative net. 5. complete.5. complete.5. complete.5. complete.5. complete. a. the brown bears and the forest... b. gilbert and morris analyzed... c. the trees nearest to the rivers grow faster because... 6. 6. 6. 6. 6. predict a logical conclusion related to the future of the brown bears and the forest.predict a logical conclusion related to the future of the brown bears and the forest.predict a logical conclusion related to the future of the brown bears and the forest.predict a logical conclusion related to the future of the brown bears and the forest.predict a logical conclusion related to the future of the brown bears and the forest. this article was received on april 15th, 2004 and accepted on august 24th, 2004 editorial profile 8, 2007. issn 1657-0790. bogotá, colombia. pages 5-8 5 editorial “we are talking about new forms of ‘research’, until recently an elite practice — we need professors to back off a little to create communicative space”.� “orlando fals borda is one of the great leaders of the participatory action research (par) movement in south america. moreover, he has succeeded in making his work and ideas known in the northern hemisphere. this is no mean feat when ideas have tended to flow from north to south. one of borda’s great skills has been his ability to network educationalists and intellectuals from the world of education across the boundary that divides the so-called ‘developed world’ from the ‘underdeveloped world’. his work has particularly attracted the attention of university-based educationals trying to reconstruct educational research in a form that places it at the service of hope for greater social justice”.� the quotes above gather some of the lessons we have learned from some of the most well-known pioneers of teacher research. their ideology, as well as those of the practitioners, researchers, professors, and preservice teachers who have developed an array of papers, unites many people all over the world and has been the steering force to maintain our publication. our efforts to strengthening investigation in the area of english language teaching have in turn had an impact on communicating what is done by professionals of different educational levels and with different degrees of expertise in the teaching and research arenas. more and more contributors have evidenced their interest in our journal by sending their contributions and thus accepting the norms of our evaluation process. thanks to their reliance on profile as a communicative space and the rigor and dedication of the members of our advisory and editorial committees, i can now introduce the contents of this year’s number. 1 mctaggart, r. (2007). the role of professors in participatory action research. seminario internacional investigación acción y educación en contextos de pobreza. cd memorias. bogotá: universidad de la salle. 2 elliot, j. (2007). reinstating social hope through participatory action research. in c. o’hanlon, j. elliott, o. zuber-skerritt, s. grundy, r. mctaggart, & s. kemmis. action research and education in contexts of poverty. a tribute to the life and work of professor orlando fals borda (pp. 35-47). bogotá: universidad de la salle. profile 8.indd 5 28/09/2007 12:42:10 a.m. cárdenas beltrán universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras6 i am very pleased to welcome professors robin mctaggart (james cook university, australia) and john elliot (university of east anglia, united kingdom). their ideas have been vital for those of us who practice classroom research and believe in the possibility of working together to make education stronger through investigation, academic discussion and sharing. encouraging practitioners, with little or no experience in writing academic reports, to publish the results of their classroom inquiries has been the cornerstone of our publication. to do so, teachers who have participated in the teacher development programmes led by the foreign languages department of the universidad nacional de colombia, need constant communication with their tutors and assistance. this is precisely the support given by elizabeth gonzález and maría eugenia lópez. many thanks to them too. the eleven articles contained in this number reflect teachers’ interests in areas such as the implementation of given methods, innovations, and teacher education. let us take a look at the aspects they address. our first section – issues from teacher researchers – begins with two papers by school teachers who carried out action research in public schools in bogotá. two teachers share with us their analysis of children’s english language learning evidences when engaging in project work. their paper is the result of an attempt to explore this approach by integrating the contents of the syllabus for fifth grade. the other paper tells us how a group of teachers used the skimming technique as a means to guide students in decoding written texts. the next three articles inform us about the handling of certain issues with adolescents in different teaching contexts. we present the results of an action research project carried out to minimize discipline problems and negative class participation in a language school in brazil. after that we can learn about the way an inquiry project was developed as an alternative to promoting a meaningful learning context. then, we come across another action research report on the use of cooperative learning strategies to improve students’ oral production in the english class. the last two articles of the first part of our journal are written by teacher educators. observing the professional development of a group of foreign language teacher educators and preservice teachers constitutes the focal point of an investigation that accounts for the knowledge, skills and attitudes these teachers developed through their participation in a study group. reference is also made to the skills and attitudes the facilitator of the study group developed through her role in it. then, we include the results of an exploration of public schools in-service profile 8.indd 6 28/09/2007 12:42:11 a.m. editorial profile 8, 2007. issn 1657-0790. bogotá, colombia. pages 5-8 7 teachers’ implementation of cooperative learning. the study uncovers how a group of teachers set the conditions to create a cooperative learning environment as well as some perceptions their educators have of themselves as initiators in guiding their students in this pedagogical experience. the section on issues from novice teacher researchers makes us think not only on the importance of disseminating the work carried out by teachers who are just finishing their undergraduate studies, but on the way they could work collaboratively to help solve problems faced by their own partners. i would like to draw your attention to the paper included in this part of our journal, because it focuses on the course of action undertaken in a tutorial plan to support the english speaking skill of an inga indigenous student who had difficulties learning english as a third language in an initial teacher education programme. we close this number with three papers referring to innovations conducted in three different countries. we find two experiences on the design and implementation of in-service programmes for primary school teachers. to start with, a holistic professional development program for elementary school english teachers in colombia directed towards target language improvement and pedagogical reflection is described. schoolbased and learner-centered, the program is characteristic of a synthetic, progressive, process-oriented curriculum which, according to the authors, can be considered as a viable professional development effort at the elementary school level in our country. after that, we present a paper which examines how the common european framework of reference was employed as a tool for the purpose of devising a language certificate meant to assess the competence needed for effective teaching at primary school level in italy. i am sure these two papers will generate rich discussion and reflection upon the definition of ongoing teachereducation programmes. i hope they also shed light on decisions to adopt tailor-made programmes or to account for those created on the basis of knowledge of our teaching realities and local expertise. the last paper touches on an important aspect in english language teaching: pronunciation. though we cannot deny that working on intonation in a foreign-language learning environment may pose a serious challenge for teachers whose mother tongue differs from the target language, the author highlights the importance of the intonation system for formal pronunciation teaching and challenges us to try out david brazil’s discourse intonation approach with beginners. finally, i wish to share with all of you that our journal has been indexed in scielo-scientific library online. this is not only a profile 8.indd 7 28/09/2007 12:42:11 a.m. cárdenas beltrán universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras8 recognition of our scientific standards, but an opportunity to guarantee universal visibility and accessibility on the internet. from now on, you can read our traditional printed version as well as the full papers by accessing http://www.scielo.org.co/scielo.php/script_sci_alphabetic/lng_pt/nrm_iso i do hope you enjoy this publication and look forward to your continuing contributions and comments on our work. melba libia cárdenas beltrán journal editor profile 8.indd 8 28/09/2007 12:42:11 a.m. profile 11, 2009. issn 1657-0790. bogotá, colombia. pages 79-90 79 evaluation in the teaching practicum of the english program at the universidad de la amazonía la evaluación en la práctica docente del programa de licenciatura en inglés de la universidad de la amazonía claudia rodríguez ferreira*1 universidad de la amazonía, colombia the following article summarizes the research study which sought to examine the process of evaluation in the teaching practicum of the undergraduate program in english language teaching at universidad de la amazonía, in florencia, caquetá, colombia. the purpose of this project was to establish which evaluation paradigm promotes the professional development of the student teacher whilst inside the actual conditions of her/his work. the research process was based on participant, nonparticipant observations and interviews with a group of 17 student teachers and their counsellor. the results showed some features of the critical paradigm of evaluation that contributed to the professional development of the subjects involved in the practicum (student teachers and counsellor). it was also found that it is very important to encourage the formation of critical and progressive professionals. key words: critical evaluation, professional teacher development, teaching practicum, action research el siguiente artículo resume la investigación que buscó examinar el proceso de evaluación en las prácticas de formación profesional docente en el programa de licenciatura en inglés de la universidad de la amazonía, en florencia (caquetá colombia). el propósito de este proyecto fue establecer qué paradigma de evaluación promueve el desarrollo profesional del maestro en formación en medio de las condiciones en las cuales desarrolla su labor. el proceso de investigación se basó en las observaciones participantes y no participantes, y en una entrevista a profundidad con un grupo de 17 maestros en formación y su consejero. los resultados mostraron algunas características del paradigma crítico de evaluación que contribuyeron al desarrollo profesional de los sujetos involucrados en la práctica (maestros en formación y consejero). también se encontró que es muy importante promover la formación de profesionales críticos y progresivos. palabras clave: evaluación crítica, desarrollo profesional docente, prácticas de formación docente, investigación acción * e-mail: claudiar9@yahoo.es address: calle 12 # 4a-02 casa 6. conjunto villa laura. florencia, caquetá – colombia. this article was received on september 4, 2008 and accepted on march 15, 2009. rodríguez ferreira universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras80 introduction the importance of the teaching practicum which, in the case of this study, consists of the physical, temporal and symbolic considerations required in the formation of teachers, is particularly significant in the teacher formation process as it takes advantage of the school environment in order to support and develop the processes used for the professional development of teachers in the educational and pedagogical fields. in this particular project, it was initially necessary to establish the complex nature of the current world in which the english teacher is bound. this reflection enabled us to define a conception of an english teacher as a critical and reflective professional inside her/his educational context. a process of training teachers was then established that both encouraged the formation of a critical and progressive professional and, at the same time, promoted the evaluation of this very process. finally, the roles of action research and other such strategies were defined in order to establish in what way they promote the evaluation of the teacher training and, therefore, the teacher formation process. by determining both, the methods and the role of evaluation in the teaching practicum (tp), we can reflect on the professional development process and the impact that working in an educational context (in a real life context) has on this process. the problem some student teacher weaknesses were identified at the beginning of the tp in the following areas: first of all, the teacher’s labour was focused exclusively on teaching english in the classroom. second, there were deficiencies in the communicative competence in the english language, particularly in areas related to the organizational, pragmatic and illocutionary competences. third, the teaching practices were being developed through non-reflective processes, based mainly on the application of teaching techniques supported by empirical knowledge acquired through implicit experiences students had. finally, a definitive process of evaluation of the tp had not been established. the research questions upon consideration of these problems, the following questions were constructed to guide the study: what are the historical, economic, social, cultural and educational conditions in which the english teacher develops her/his work? what conception of the english teacher should guide the development of the teaching practicum? what kind of evaluation of the teaching practicum would promote the professional development of critical and reflective teachers? what is the role of action research during the teaching practicum and in its evaluation? the thesis a critical and formative evaluation of the english teacher during the teaching practicum promotes the development of a critical and transformative teacher which, as a consequence, has implications for their conceptions and practices, for their school environment, as well as for the people involved in their work. research objectives the objectives of the present study were as follows: evaluation in the teaching practicum of the english program at the universidad de la amazonía profile 11, 2009. issn 1657-0790. bogotá, colombia. pages 79-90 81 • to establish a conception of formation that promotes an english teacher as a critical and transformative teacher. • to determine the conditions of the teaching practicum in such a way that they would promote the professional development of teachers. • to define both the conception of evaluation and its process in order to enhance the professional development of teachers. • to determine the role of action research as a tool of critical reflection in the teaching practicum. theoretical framework in order to establish a paradigm of evaluation that supports and promotes processes of professional teacher development, it was necessary to reflect on the context in which the teacher develops her/his work. this is a world characterized by fast moving and changing economic, scientific, political, cultural, and environmental conditions, according to hardgreaves (1996). these varying conditions often directly impact on the living situation of the world’s inhabitants. they impact job markets and work stability; they affect the struggle for the most basic needs such as food and health care; they increase the pace of technological advancement which can have both the obvious positive impact but also an implicit negative impact (particularly in the area of communication); they rapidly change the struggles of cultural minorities as they seek acknowledgement and respect. all these factors and the impact they have on people’s living situations directly relate to the fundamental nature of politics and how the world is currently governed, this being characterized by the subordination of politics to economic considerations —a cause, amongst others—, of violence in several regions in the world. teaching english in the particular conditions of the globalized, complex and critical world determines new and urgent demands on the educational context, on the school and on the english teachers. this study focused on these three areas: professional teacher development, teaching evaluation, and the teaching practicum with an emphasis on action research. the considerations made in the study regarding the professional development of teachers were supported by the concepts of carr & kemmis (1988), who established that the actions of a professional are based on a theoretical and conceptual knowledge. they also stated that the teacher must subordinate her/his interests to those of the clients. other conceptions used were taken from ferreres & imbernón (1999), who mentioned the need for autonomy and social prestige. these are the conditions that characterize a profession and, when applied to the teaching profession, lead us to the next question: what kind of process of teacher formation is necessary in order to address the educational demands of today? historically, the aims of teacher formation have responded to the intentions and goals of a society’s governing sector and to the model of person they have wanted to create, argued by birgin (1998). in the middle ages, with the religious sector having the responsibility of directing society, the system of teacher formation was developed through a traditional organization of workshops with the master and his apprentices. in the xix century, with the focus of creating civilized children, it was necessary to train teachers to be able to work with children. in the modern capitalist world, it became necessary to mould a person’s character in order to create rodríguez ferreira universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras82 productive and autonomous people. in that way teachers were trained through models of technical efficiency. during the post modernist age, in which we now live, the school has to prepare people to be competitive and able to work in the globalized world, and, as such, teachers have been trained in order to develop established competences and standards that enable them to operate in this world. these models of teacher training —practical, academic, technical, and by normative standards— have not been able to promote the development of democratic, responsible, peaceful, critical, and respectful citizens. however, through alternative models of teacher formation, this is possible to achieve. this alternative approach of people and teacher formation includes characteristics such as taking account of people’s emotional spheres; recognizing the complex and unpredictable life of the school; promoting personal and collective participation of everybody involved in school life; integrating and producing knowledge; developing critical thinking in the teachers in order to prepare them to be able to influence both the people with and the environment in which they work; having a connected evaluation process; and, finally, operating through action, reflection and collective work. this kind of teacher formation requires a process of evaluation that guides and demonstrates the accomplishment of the above expectations. conceptually, the field of evaluation has been defined by two main approaches based on álvarez (2003): the traditional which uses concepts such as measure, correction, classification, examination; and the alternative which determines evaluation as assessment, reflection and value. both approaches differ in their purposes, resources, and uses. the people doing the evaluation and their roles also differ. the first approach corresponds to the technical paradigm and the second to the critical. one important difference among the two paradigms of evaluation is the role that subjects have in the process. according to niño (2006), educational evaluation is a notion and a practice that is thought out and focused, having as its center the human being. table 1. the two main approaches in evaluation proposed by álvarez (2003). evaluation in the technical paradigm evaluation in the critical paradigm a classification purpose. results based and thus temporal. looks for reliability, validity and objectivity. restricted participation. heteronomous, external to subjects. excludes certain people and factors. a formative purpose. continuous. allows for comprehension of reality. democratic. autonomous, seeks the comprehension, participation and emancipation of the subjects. includes everyone and recognizes all factors and processes in order to comprehend and transform the educational context. evaluation in the teaching practicum of the english program at the universidad de la amazonía profile 11, 2009. issn 1657-0790. bogotá, colombia. pages 79-90 83 historically, the role of subjects in the process of evaluation has changed, depending on the interests of society’s governing sectors. it is common to find the subjects being considered as just one more element in the process of checking the results of a financial investment. in some cases, the subjects are objects who are classified, described, and studied by the same experts who must also take decisions concerning them. in other situations the subjects are elements in a standardized chain of developing a range of competences. consequentially, in these examples, the subject is an object without subjectivity, consciousness, and autonomy, who cannot express his identity, culture, conditions, knowledge or history. tendencies in teacher evaluation the aforementioned paradigms of evaluation are reflected in the different approaches by which teachers have been evaluated. based on niño (2006), there are four different approaches: evaluation as accountability, evaluation as payment for achievement, evaluation as professional development, and evaluation as institutional improvement. the first one makes a contrast between educational results and financial investment. the second establishes rewards for teachers according to their achievement in previously defined parameters. these two approaches were created to respond to economic and bureaucratic goals and do not develop qualitative changes in the pedagogical, teaching and educational fields. as an alternative option to these two approaches, evaluation as a means of professional and institutional improvement was developed. this process requires a different role for both teacher and institution as they are parts of a whole that create a total growing environment. in this way, growth is a collective aim in the institutional organization and in the performance of the teachers. the teaching practicum for this study, we earlier conceptualized the teaching practicum based on schön (1992), as the different social actions habitually developed inside the school context that affects the symbolic, conceptual and practical knowledge of the teachers. the social, historical, institutional and cultural conditions in which the teacher develops her/his work will determine the nature of these actions and the impact they have on the development of the teacher. • in order to successfully achieve teacher development, the tp requires some certain characteristics like the following: • it must be developed through a process of praxis, idea taken from vasco (1990). this implies a process that uses informed actions which, evaluated reflectively, can enhance knowledge and, as such, support the positive modification of these actions as well as the conditions in which they exist. • it must enable reflection on the problematic conditions of the reality studied and allow for the suggestion of ways and actions to improve it. • it must encourage the development of a teacher’s higher psychological processes through social and mental interaction with people and through symbolic tools such as language and concepts, or technological tools such as texts and computers. • teachers should be taught through situated learning, a strategy proposed by lave (1991) in which they learn day by day through their actions and reflections in the educational rodríguez ferreira universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras84 context. these actions and ways of thinking are modified by the way each teacher reflects, acts and communicates and by the norms that govern their lives in society. • the teaching practicum should promote the formation of various communities of practices as human groups that seek community welfare and collective progress in their relative contexts. • the use of two main strategies that contribute to the professional development of teachers is necessary. the first, called reflection in practice, analyzes the uncertain and complex world of teaching practice. the second is an action-research process that tries to cultivate and transform the pedagogical practices by cycles of observation, reflection, planning, and action. this action-research process establishes links between the particular conditions and the general conditions, between individuals and society, between theory and practice and between thought and action. • other strategies such as reflective teaching, self-awareness, observation, writing, portfolio, retrospection, introspection and prospection are also required. the research process this research corresponded to the reflection on the evaluation of the teaching practicum in the undergraduate program in english at universidad de la amazonía during the second semester in 2004 and 2005. the study was conducted on the teaching experience of a group of 17 student teachers and the counsellor of the practicum in 6 public educational institutions (sagrados corazones, siglo xxi, san francisco de asís, 1.º de mayo, normal superior y jorge eliécer gaitán) and one private school (domingo savio) in primary and secondary levels in florencia, caquetá . this group of student teachers attended the last part of their academic career conducting a reflective teaching practicum supported by the methodology of action research. the research process on the evaluation of the teaching practicum was developed under the strategy of grounded theory. according to strauss & corbin (1994), this strategy was created by glaser & strauss and focuses on “developing theory that is grounded in data systematically gathered and analyzed” (p. 273). the research process went through three main practices: description, conceptual ordering, and theorizing of data collected from the following sources: • the student teachers’ and teaching practicum counsellor’s diaries based on their participant and non-participant observations during the lessons. • their personal reflections written after their lessons and before preparing their new lesson plans. • a semi-structured interview with the student teachers based on two actions; naming the activities conducted during the teaching practicum that can be considered as practices of evaluation: •  choosing from those abovementioned activities the ones that impacted the most in the process of teachers’ professional development. •  in addition, the research process included the use of two computer programs as supporting tools for the analysis of qualitative information lifa 2000 and atlas-ti. the first one —and its tools ssa and msa— was very useful for the analysis of the information found in the interview which corresponded to student teachers’ introspections and retrospections about the strategies of evaluation applied evaluation in the teaching practicum of the english program at the universidad de la amazonía profile 11, 2009. issn 1657-0790. bogotá, colombia. pages 79-90 85 during the tp and their impact on the student teachers’ professional development. the second one, atlas-ti, facilitated the analysis of the diverse and wide amount of information from diaries, observations and reflections by supporting the coding and establishment of conceptual networks which were a result of the inductive analysis of the fields, conditions, agents, and events of evaluation of the teaching practicum and their role in teachers’ professional growth. findings there was very little reference about the contexts in which the student teachers developed their teaching practicum (tp) in the information collected. the political, economic, cultural, social, educational or scientific conditions in the world and their effects on school and teaching contexts were not mentioned during the reflections about planning, development and evaluation of the student teachers’ work. this situation could imply that student teachers presumed a standardized environment without any relationship to the authentic and contextual circumstances of their teaching. according to the information found in diaries and written reflections, the growth process of the student teachers and counsellor in the course of the development of the teaching practicum in some fields was clear. this opinion was formed from perceptions in the changes found in the contents, language and concepts used in the diaries and reflection logs during the teaching practicum. these changes are evidence of improvement in the following issues: during the first semester of the tp, the data collected from diaries and reflections described student teachers’ and counselors’ interests in carrying out of some the english teaching strategies, the development of students’ language skills and the relationship between the teaching and learning processes. teaching strategies 1 (28) ~ “this is a group of the different aspects related to the teaching strategies observed and expressed through the counselors’ diaries. in this information we can find different observations about teaching grammar, dialogues, pronunciation, vocabulary, reading, as well as the aims and development of language functions and language skills. other aspect is referring to some students’ processes: cognitive, affective, and their participation, practicing and grouping arrangements in the classroom. the last one refers to aspects related to lessons: planning, stages, and language activities”. (description of the network view from the counsellor’s diaries in the second semester-2004) during the first semester of 2005 the information was focused on three main topics: the classroom interaction —and a strong interest in creating an appropriate language learning environment—, the relationship between the teaching and learning strategies and the action-research process. it was mentioned, for the first time, as an important topic. in addition to the changes found in the topics, there were changes in some features of the documentary information (diaries and written observations). these were more descriptive during the first stage of the practicum, but more explanatory and reflective in the second part. pedrojohn. 18-09-05 “this activity permitted the students’ performance in a real context (the high school). the examples were always related to the real situations. it let us have a view about how the context influences learning”. (taken from studentsteachers’ reflections, september 2005) rodríguez ferreira universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras86 while at the beginning of the tp the student teachers and counsellor were more concerned about what to do and how to do it, as the process advanced they included the notion of why; in other words, the reasons for their actions and choices, and established some causes for the english classroom situations. pedrojohn. 01-09-05 “for this class we took into account the difficulties we had and we reflected on those; then, in order to overcome those problems we applied a strategy. grammar is very important to teach but it is not the best way to teach the structure, because it turns into a mechanical system not just for the students but for the teacher. it must be related to the real situations. in this way students can learn in an easier form”. (student teacher’s reflection, october 2005) throughout the tp, most of the student teachers progressively started supporting their actions and decisions related to methods, procedures, use of resources and teaching actions in concept with intentions of improving and transforming the situations. jorge 13-05-05 “remember not to explain in a deductive way but to induce your students to the comprehension of the topic through the activities”. (partner’s suggestions taken from student teacher’s non-participant observation in may 2005) the student teachers recognized the unpredictable, paradoxical and unstable conditions of their work and prepared themselves through reflections and expectations for possible problems. in that way, they developed a positive attitude towards problems, viewing them as opportunities to propose diverse solutions to the situations that they faced in the language classroom. in the field of evaluation, the information was mainly taken from the interview and the classifications that the student teachers did of the actions that they considered were activities for which their work was evaluated during the tp. hence, the student teachers established the characteristics of those actions and their effects on the student teachers’ professional development. the following list presents the actions during the tp that the student teachers considered as evaluative: 1. illuminative reflection with the counsellor 2. students’ spontaneous opinions 3. surveys for parents 4. student teachers’ observations of their students’ attitudes and opinions 5. selfreflection 6. partner’s feedback 7. lesson planning 8. work with partners 9. writings based on classroom observations 10. reflections with the students 11. analysis on students’ homework based on the mentioned list of evaluative actions, the student teachers established a classification of the actions according to some characteristics that they recognized in each of the items. the different characteristics that student teachers assigned the evaluative actions were grouped into the following categories: • impact on their formation • quality of the information • pleasant accomplishment evaluation in the teaching practicum of the english program at the universidad de la amazonía profile 11, 2009. issn 1657-0790. bogotá, colombia. pages 79-90 87 the analysis of this information established that the evaluation process conducted during the tp could be considered part of the critical paradigm of evaluation, which included the following characteristics: a reflection on what has been done, what is being done and what will be done. • an interaction amongst people as well as between people and technological resources. • a valuable feedback process. • a tracking and recording of the continuing advancement of the subjects, processes and contexts. • an inclusion of a wide range of educational processes. • flexibility in the contents, tools, instruments and sources. • the collection of valuable information. • the use of subjective, personal and emotional information regarding the subjects involved. • the writing of diaries, journals, observations, protocols, etc. as an instrument of reflection. all of those features of the evaluation process conducted during the tp reflect the strengths found in two fields: aims and processes of evaluation. the former seeks student teacher formation, improvement of the teaching and learning of english, and comprehension of the classroom reality. the latter are open to participation of different actors, integrative of different factors and situations, and flexible. in terms of weaknesses, the tp lacked an evaluation plan that had been predetermined and what is more, the evaluation process was centered exclusively on the student teacher labor in the english classroom. another important factor during the study was the impact of the action-research process in the evaluation of the tp and on the student teacher formation. the most important achievement of that process was that it fostered critical thinking among the student teachers. additionally, it promoted coherence between theory and practice in the work of student teachers. as a consequence of the mentioned highlighted aspects, it developed student teachers’ autonomy. finally, this research strategy enabled student teachers to bring together table 2. example of one student teacher classification. core category sub-category cards impact on teaching formation 1. a lot of impact. 5 8 6 1 9 2. impact 7 4 10 11 2 3. little impact 3 pleasant implementation 1. very pleasant 2 5 8 6 1 2. pleasant 4 10 11 9 3. unpleasant 3 7 valuable information 1. a lot of information 5 8 6 1 9 2. enough information 2 4 11 10 3. little information 7 4. no 3 rodríguez ferreira universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras88 different aspects of the classroom work with their own reflections and practices. the study also demonstrated that the combination of action research and evaluation is a positive factor for the teacher formation process. the cycle of observing a particular teaching or learning procedure, reflecting on its positive and negative characteristics, planning proposals, developing strategies for its improvement, and reinitiating a new cycle based on the conclusions found —as was part of the action research strategy— corresponded to the process and purposes of the critical evaluation approach: reflection, comprehension, improvement and transformation of reality. conclusions and implications teacher formation requires a reflection on the conditions in which teachers develop their work; a reflection that goes beyond the institutional context to different aspects of human life such as the social, cultural, economic, political, scientific, technological and environmental fields. the nature of the world today dictates that teachers should make an effort to participate in its improvement. figure 1. context, fields of knowledge and interactions present during the processes of formation of the english student teachers. the previous diagram intends to show the most relevant contexts, fields of knowledge and interactions related to the educational field in which the student teachers develop their processes of formation and, consequently, the factors needed to be considered during their tp. it is vital for the professional formation of teachers and for the educational system that the role of teachers is extended beyond the classroom, especially the role of english teachers, who are currently being trained, almost exclusively, to focus on the language standards of the students. instead, they should be trained to use the language in order to develop critical thinking in students as an important means of practicing the language as they learn it. the exercise of extending the physical parameters in which english teachers work could promote the formation of different communities of practices; for example, with their community of professionals (colleagues), the educational community, the institutional community, the academic community and so on. this inclusion of different subjects in the communities of practices demands the use of different communicative strategies with the aim of enriching the professional and personal experiences of their members. widening teachers’ physical and social contexts will —through the employment of reflective and critical thinking strategies— permit the enhancement of theoretical and conceptual knowledge and promote teachers’ personal and professional development. any teacher formation program requires a plan of evaluation based on a critical approach with the purpose of establishing a democratic, critical, participatory, formative, comprehensible and emancipatory environment that permits teachers to assess, value, reflect on and transform the processes, as well as fostering the devel evaluation in the teaching practicum of the english program at the universidad de la amazonía profile 11, 2009. issn 1657-0790. bogotá, colombia. pages 79-90 89 opment of the subjects involved in the different areas of education. in this sense, the evaluation should be developed initially by the subjects of the teaching practicum themselves, inside the working conditions, and with the purpose of improvement, advancement and development. in order to verify the value of the evaluation process in the teaching practicum, it is necessary to develop a process of evaluation of the evaluation —meta-evaluation— with the aim of analysing its advantages and finding ways to solve its problems. the conditions of the world today determine that a teacher has a high degree of responsibility in the following areas: • recognizing, reflecting upon and integrating the complexity of the post-modernist world into the process of the formation of her/his students, with the purpose of contextualizing her/his teaching and developing a transformative capability. • participating efficiently in the construction of curricula and syllabi which must be developed through an open, democratic, and participative process, connected to the world of the students and to the goals of development. • preparing students for the critical and responsible use of the information and communications technology (ict), which includes the responsible selection of information for critical reading and ethical reflection which can turn non-critical and passive students into students of an inquisitive, pensive, and pro-active nature. the critical evaluation of the teaching practicum will serve its purpose if the professional and institutional aims are connected from the beginning and if they have been established based on student teachers’ needs and interests in the professional, personal, institutional and educational fields. seen in this way, evaluation will become a process that exists in harmony with the professional development of the student teachers as it will demonstrate their progress but also, if necessary, their deterioration. the evaluation of teachers in the teaching practicum should include a review of the following areas expressed by duke & stiggins (1997) as the most integral to the teaching profession: pedagogical (didactics, use of resources, curriculum), professional (development as an english teacher), organizational (use of strategies for improvement of the institutional and classroom organization), and personal (development of personal characteristics that support her/his teaching competence). the acknowledgement of cultural, economic, political, and social processes that contextualize learning, in our case learning english, as well as the recognition of ethical, cognitive, emotional, socio-cultural, and physical characteristics of the students, are both inexorably linked to the learning of english for each student. these factors should be taken into account when teaching, in the development of curricula and syllabi, in the development of materials, in the creation and development of the process of evaluation, and in all the decisions that the teacher takes in her/his labour. references álvarez, j. m. (2003). evaluar para conocer, examinar para excluir. madrid: morata. birgin, d. d. (1998). la formación docente. cultura, escuela y política. buenos aires: editorial troquel. carr, w., & kemmis, s. (1988). teoría crítica de la enseñanza. barcelona: ediciones roca. duke, d., & stiggins, r. (1997). más allá de la competencia mínima: evaluación para el desarrollo profesional. in j. millman, & l. darling-hammong. rodríguez ferreira universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras90 manual para la evaluación del profesorado. barcelona: la muralla. ferreres, v., & imbernón, f. (1999). formación y actualización para la función pedagógica. madrid: editorial síntesis. glasser, b., & strauss,  a. (1967). the discovery of  grounded  theory: strategies for qualitative research. nueva york: aldine. hardgreaves, a. (1996). profesorado, cultura y modernidad. cambian los tiempos, cambia el profesorado. madrid: ediciones morata. lave, j. (1991). situated learning. retrieved september 26, 2008 from tip; theories web site: http://tip.psychology.org/lave.html niño, l. s. (2006). el sujeto en la evaluación educativa en la sociedad globalizada. revista opciones pedagógicas, 32, 39-53. niño, l. s. (2006). las tendencias predominantes en la evaluación de los docentes. revista opciones pedagógicas, 24, 45-65. schön, d. (1992). la formación de profesionales reflexivos. barcelona: paidós. scientific software development. (1997). atlas/ti: the knowledge workbench. short user manual. berlin. strauss, a., & corbin, j. (1994). grounded theory methodology, an overview. in n. k. denzil, & y. s. lincoln, (1994). handbook of qualitative research. new york: sage publications. vasco, c. (1990). algunas reflexiones sobre la pedagogía y la didáctica. en m. díaz, pedagogía, discurso y poder. bogotá: corprodic. about the author claudia rodríguez ferreira holds a b.a. in philology and languages from universidad nacional de colombia bogotá, a specialization in didactics in teaching english from universidad surcolombiana and an m.a. in education from universidad pedagógica nacional. she currently works in the area of teaching practicum and research in the undergraduate program in universidad de la amazonía, in florencia, caquetá colombia. profile 4 2003.p65 ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ 96profileprofileprofileprofileprofile * rocío mahecha sánchezrocío mahecha sánchezrocío mahecha sánchezrocío mahecha sánchezrocío mahecha sánchez holds a b. ed. in philology and languages, english-spanish from universidad nacional de colombia, 1992. she has worked at politécnico gran colombiano and at the universidad javeriana. professor mahecha also has taught in the extension programme at the universidad nacional de colombia. in addition, she has worked with children at the sed-bogotá in the english programme and in secondary schools. -+��0(����������������������������1������������� �������������#������ �!�������� enseñanza de la lengua inglesa a niños y adolescentes:enseñanza de la lengua inglesa a niños y adolescentes:enseñanza de la lengua inglesa a niños y adolescentes:enseñanza de la lengua inglesa a niños y adolescentes:enseñanza de la lengua inglesa a niños y adolescentes: algunas reflealgunas reflealgunas reflealgunas reflealgunas refle xiones acerxiones acerxiones acerxiones acerxiones acerca de mi eca de mi eca de mi eca de mi eca de mi experienciaxperienciaxperienciaxperienciaxperiencia rocío mahecha sánchezrocío mahecha sánchezrocío mahecha sánchezrocío mahecha sánchezrocío mahecha sánchez ***** i.e.d. policarpa salavarrieta rossymas@yahoo.com in spite of the harsh environment teachers from the official sector have had to work in, teaching english to children and young learners is a challenging, demanding, hard, but pleasant activity. i am going to write about my experience teaching primary and high school, the difficulties i have encountered, and also the satisfaction of doing my best in this profession. kkkkkey worey worey worey worey words:ds:ds:ds:ds: english-teaching, children second language acquisition, adolescents second language acquisition, teaching-primary school, teaching-high school a pesar de la difícil situación que han vivido los maestros del sector oficial, la enseñanza de la lengua inglesa a niños y adolescentes es una actividad desafiante, exigente y sumamente gratificante. en las siguientes líneas escribiré sobre mi experiencia en la escuela primaria y secundaria, las dificultades que he encontrado y además, la satisfacción de hacer lo mejor en mi profesión. palabras claves:palabras claves:palabras claves:palabras claves:palabras claves: inglés-enseñanza, adquisición de segundo lenguaje en niños, adquisición de segundo lenguaje en adolescentes, enseñanza-escuela primaria, enseñanzaescuela secundaria the challenge of primarythe challenge of primarythe challenge of primarythe challenge of primarythe challenge of primary teachingteachingteachingteachingteaching i have been learning english since i was inhigh school. then, when i left school, ifelt i could not say i had learned it. before leaving the university, i started teaching english at a university where i learned a lot. i met interesting people and all kinds of students: those who hated the language, and others who changed their minds because of the imprint i left on them by teaching a subject i like very much. there i understood what being a teacher means. some years later, i applied for a job at the secretaría de educación del distrito capital bogotá (sed). i was assigned teacher of english for the primary level. i was required to teach english in four primary schools. at the beginning it was difficult for me because i was afraid of that challenge, since i had not been prepared to teach children. ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ 97 profileprofileprofileprofileprofile that challenge meant starting from scratch. at university we were never taught how to teach children nor what to teach them. teachers who got a job at sed were sent to different schools to fulfill the demands of the general law of education, but without any training, pedagogical knowledge, and, worst of all, without the most basic amenities. the principals did not know what we were going to do. fortunately, that situation only lasted 6 or 8 months for me. nevertheless, what was unknown to me became an important part of my life. thanks to the training workshops the teachers of english in the elementary level were given by the sed under the leadership of a teacher educator who knew what to do with all these human resources, we started to learn how to implement english at that level. we also discovered alternatives to foster the students’ motivation and to offer them an opportunity that only pupils from some private schools have been given: having access to english learning. through monthly meetings, the teachers of the program shared experiences on methodology. we also examined activities and resources used with our students or to be used with them. we studied different reference books and articles on the key aspects we needed to keep in mind when teaching primary; for example, students’ ages, likes and interests. we learnt that children have the necessity to move constantly and to participate in short and meaningful activities. we also realized that kids love singing, playing, and competing, as well as receiving immediate encouragement. however, as always happens, good things come to an end. the project was stopped by the sed; the teaching materials that were purchased as a result of the english in primary programme remain packed away in boxes in many schools. furthermore, most of the teachers participating in it were transferred to high school levels. this programme was never evaluated in spite of the good results it was showing. consequently, its lack of continuity confirmed once again that many projects related to education remain at “planning” level. that is to say, they are stopped for financial reasons without prior evaluation or consideration of socio-pedagogical implications. this case shows that the government often considers coverage instead of quality. nowadays, classrooms are filled with almost 50 students and we teachers are not provided with resources to effectively do our job in class. besides, the number of hours for english teaching at schools has been reduced, in many cases, from four to three hours per week, and we are not trained or updated on current or necessary pedagogical issues. this is the case of several schools that were supplied with the “red de english discoveries” programme and whose teachers have not been given guidance as regards implementing it appropriately. exploring options withexploring options withexploring options withexploring options withexploring options with adolescentsadolescentsadolescentsadolescentsadolescents despite all the negative aspects mentioned above, things are still comforting. i was assigned to teach english in sixth and seventh grades at the school i currently work at. for the first group of learners, whose ages ranges between 11 and 16, i have planned activities similar to the ones i had implemented with the elementary levels i previously worked with. those included songs, rhymes, games, modeling, and drawing, among others. so far i have noticed that they liked them a lot. with the second group of students, whose ages range from 12 to 15, i have developed activities based on the topics they choose. it ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ 98profileprofileprofileprofileprofile was not easy at the beginning because they were used to getting mainly lists and basic structures. my teaching is influenced by my belief in the importance of learning by doing and through play activities. i do not want my students to learn things by heart. on the contrary, i hope they enjoy what they are doing and love english. thus, the lessons are developed around meaningful topics. examples of this are the topic “clothes to wear according to the weather” and the activity involving a fashion show. likewise, i try to speak english all the time, even for the most common expressions used in the classroom. additionally, and keeping in mind the number of students in every classroom as well as the time provided, i have introduced principles of the autonomous learning philosophy. by autonomy i mean students are the ones who organize the groups, no more than five students per group. the topics are chosen through an agreement between them and me, but also considering their age and interests. every member of the group is responsible for his/her own work and also for the team’s. i ask them what they need to achieve and they determine what they need to communicate. after that, i advise them and solve their doubts or answer their questions. i provide them with dictionaries and some books from the school’s library. in addition, they can take any basic english book to the class. at the very beginning the students from seventh grade asked me to give them vocabulary lists, but i inquired about what they were going to do with all those words. what you need, i said, is to communicate in english. as a result, they have shown motivation. they have learnt some english, but more importantly, they are enjoying it. i asked some students about the class, the topics, the activities, and the methodology. they found them interesting, pleasant and different from the other subjects. these are samples of their responses: rocío nos enseña con gusto y alegría, que tiene un buen método para evaluar y además me brinda seguridad... me parece que el método que ella está usando le puede resultar. no me gustaría que la profe se fuera porque su clase es divertida. lo que más me gusta es que la profe dicta las clases con cariño y con ánimo. la clase me parece súper chebre (sic) la profe también nos hace divertir mucho porque es re genial. despite those achievements, there is only one problem we share: to keep good discipline. i have always had difficulties maintaining it in my classes. probably because i like listening to everybody and i allow them to be themselves during the activities. the students themselves ask me to be more demanding in that respect. if someone could help me, by offering some advice, i would appreciate it. thanks. my quest for clear policiesmy quest for clear policiesmy quest for clear policiesmy quest for clear policiesmy quest for clear policies in conclusion, i think i have done some good things in my english classes. my students have noticed how much i love teaching english, but i also recognize that there are many aspects i need to change, improve and learn. however, the first thing that must be changed and improved is the way in which the national and the local governments adopt a programme regarding education and stop it with no evaluation. i am always ready to adopt changes supported by experienced teachers, or by my own experience or according to students’ interests. i would like to have, as many teachers, better conditions to do my best in class. nevertheless, the challenge is to try to work responsibly with what we currently have. the article was received on august 30th, 2003 and accepted on october 10th , 2003 11profile vol. 12, no. 1, 2010. issn 1657-0790. bogotá, colombia. pages 11-31 encouraging teenagers to improve speaking skills through games in a colombian public school* motivación de adolescentes para mejorar su expresión oral mediante el juego en un colegio público colombiano william urrutia león** esperanza vega cely*** federico garcía lorca school, colombia our project was implemented with tenth grade students of a public school located in the usme zone in bogotá. we decided to develop this action research project because we were concerned about our students’ difficulties when attempting to speak english. they felt inhibited with activities that involved oral interaction mainly because they were afraid of criticism and jokes about what they said. to develop our project we used video recordings, the teacher’s journal and questionnaires answered by the students. the results showed that students felt better, free and confident when they participated in oral tasks, particularly during games. we saw collaboration, solidarity and interaction among them. in addition, they were relaxed and happy at the time they had to perform in small groups. key words: oral communication, games, motivation, adolescents, teenagers el mejoramiento de las habilidades lingüísticas a través del juego se adelantó con estudiantes de grado décimo de un colegio público ubicado en la localidad de usme, en bogotá. se decidió desarrollar este proyecto de investigación-acción porque las dificultades de los estudiantes para hablar en inglés eran preocupantes. éstos se sentían inhibidos en las actividades que involucraran interacción oral, principalmente porque sentían temor ante las críticas y las bromas acerca de lo que dijeran. para el desarrollo del proyecto se utilizaron videograbaciones, el diario de profesor y cuestionarios que respondieron los estudiantes. los resultados mostraron que los estudiantes se sintieron mejor, libres y seguros cuando participaron en actividades orales, particularmente en juegos. así, se observó colaboración, solidaridad e interacción entre ellos. además, estuvieron motivados y contentos a la hora de actuar en grupos pequeños. palabras clave: comunicación oral, juegos, motivación, adolescentes * this paper reports on a study conducted by the authors while participating in the profile teacher development programme, at universidad nacional de colombia, in 2006. the programme was sponsored by secretaría de educación de bogotá, d. c. code number: 30101007234. ** e-mail: willy_urrutia@yahoo.com *** e-mail: evegacely28@yahoo.com this article was received on july 17, 2009 and accepted on january 15, 2010. 12 universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras urrutia león & vega celis introduction the students of english at the federico garcía lorca school had the ability to communicate their ideas in writing. furthermore, they were able to understand commands and simple instructions through listening exercises. additionally, they could read and comprehend basic texts. however, we saw that they had difficulties with their speaking production because they looked apathetic and inhibited in activities which involved oral skills. many of them felt afraid of being criticized and humiliated in front of their partners. as a result, they avoided being part of this kind of activities. for this reason, we considered it necessary to implement an innovative and action research project that fostered the development of the oral ability. research questions our main question was this one: how can games encourage teenagers to improve speaking skills? to account for this query, we posed two sub-questions, namely: • what kinds of games can we use to improve students’ speaking skills? • what happens to students’ oral production when they are engaged in games? context in 2006 when we carried out the present study, our school community was made up of a principal, 2,600 students and 86 teachers. the teaching staff included 4 coordinators, one psychologist, one phonoaudiologist, and 13 teachers of the english area. the school was divided into three locations: one for pre-school, another for primary and the last for high school. nowadays the federico garcía lorca school is organized according to the educational laws, and it has its own curriculum. our curriculum is everything that involves the teaching-learning process in a school, including government policies, institutional guide-lines, the pedagogical principles it follows, institutional emphasis, study plans, resources, needs, the zone context, assessment and evaluation. our curriculum consists of some fundamental components: needs analysis, the teaching learning program, objectives, implementation and interpretation of programs, assessment and evaluation. all of these are related to the pedagogical model that takes into account the students’ education as its main goal (inside a socio-economic context where students’ needs, likes, differences and interests are very important to the development of the teaching-learning process. the school institutional project (pei)1 is called “values as the core of human growth”. our mission is to help students to become committed to society, to changing our reality through the use of science, philosophy, technology and values in a responsible way (pei, federico garcía lorca, 2009). at the same time, our school vision aims at improving the students’ way of living in order to produce men and women with the capacity to lead construction processes and transformation of the community. the pei of federico garcía lorca has a studies plan in the process of improvement which takes into account the philosophy and principles of the cultural-historic model. this studies plan has its areas of fundamental knowledge established by the ministry of education via law 115 (ministerio de educación nacional [men], 1994), and others enacted during the last few years related to programs and cross-curricular projects. the 1 pei = proyecto educativo institucional (school institutional project). 13profile vol. 12, no. 1, 2010. issn 1657-0790. bogotá, colombia. pages 11-31 encouraging teenagers to improve speaking skills through games in a colombian public school studies plan includes the workings of the different areas (we work in humanities), which is divided into spanish and english. in regard to english, it is taught in our institution as a foreign language. in first and second grades, english is studied according to the communicative approach method, emphasizing the acquisition of new vocabulary related to the context in which students find themselves. in third, fourth and fifth grades we continue with the same method, but with a special emphasis on the reading and writing processes related to short narrative texts (descriptions, simple sentences, etc.). in high school, english is studied based on the four skills: reading, writing, listening and speaking. we see different levels of complexity with regard to the syntactic and semantic components from sixth to eleventh grade. we try to use english in the class most of the time. in tenth and eleventh grades, we try to teach students strategies to help them get good results in the icfes exam (a university entrance exam). it’s important to say that in our institution we do not follow an english text, so our methodology is based on games, workshops, songs, role play, grammar guides, etc. fortunately, we have different materials to develop our classes with such as theatre, library, audiovisual rooms, support texts, books, videos, cassettes, posters, flash cards, tape recorders, etc. all these aids help us to better develop the teaching-learning process. in addition, it is important to say that we evaluate the four skills daily via different kinds of activities during the class. unfortunately, english does not occupy an important place in the community in which our school is located, so it is difficult to involve each one of the members in the pedagogical process. besides, the hours allotted for the english lessons are not sufficient for developing the best strategies to learn a foreign language. participants this project was carried out at the federico garcía lorca school, in the afternoon shift, with group 1007. there were 20 girls and 20 boys from 14 to 18 years old in this group. they belonged to the first and second socioeconomic level in colombia. we faced many obstacles in developing this project, such as the number of students in the class, the arrangement of the classroom, the number of hours available to teach the language (which could not all be devoted to oral work), and perhaps even the syllabus itself, which could discourage us from giving adequate attention to the spoken language. consequently, it was not easy to provide effective oral practice under these conditions, especially in the large classes. this was why it was important to have a clear understanding of the wide range of strategies and games through which spoken language can be practiced. they were, in a sense, an attempt to accommodate language learning to the unfavorable environment of the classroom. taking into account the aforementioned reasons, our students had difficulties expressing their ideas orally. another problem our students had when trying to express their ideas orally was when they did not know the meaning of each word. this created interferences among students when trying to communicate effectively. to solve some obstacles and develop the students’ speaking skills it was important to generate opportunities for students to use the foreign language in a fun and comfortable way. methodology this was an innovative and action research project because, as markee (1997, p. 46) concluded, curricular innovation is “a managed process of 14 universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras urrutia león & vega celis development whose principal products are teaching (and/or) testing materials, methodological skills, and pedagogical values that are perceived as new by potential adopters”. from this point of view, the project we described here was an action research project because it consisted of the implementation of activities focused on oral games for promoting the development of students’ speaking skills. we can also say that in our school this kind of project had never been carried out, and in that way it was an innovation. in addition, as this was the implementation of games in order to explore the possibility of solving a problematic aspect, namely the low level of students’ speaking participation, this project was also research. burns (1999) stated that action research is a process that implies the participation and collaboration of each one of the members of a given community by showing evidences which may provide different changes in a specific situation. techniques for collecting data we used different techniques in order to develop our project. they were video recordings, teacher’s journal, and questionnaires. we chose them to provide validity and reliability to our action research. video recording we used video recordings because we wanted to analyze the features of students’ oral production in games as well as to record students’ impressions, feelings, and attitudes towards the games applied during the lessons in which the data were collected. cunningham (1985), in hubbard & power (1999), states that “video is a natural choice for data collection”. we considered video recording an invaluable tool in an action research project because that consists of a free selection in which we could examine not only the student’s linguistic patterns, but the role of body language, facial expressions and many other things that are happening at the same time while the action research activities are taking place. teacher’s journal about journals, wallace (1998, p. 62) argues that “they have been written to be read as public documents”. journals must have a process of composition and can be written during or after the teaching activity is over. the teacher’s journal shows impressions, descriptions and processes in students’ work while the research activities are being carried out. thus, we used the teacher’s journals in order to register the details related to our research questions. questionnaires with regard to questionnaires, cárdenas (2006) stated that questionnaires and interviews can be used to elicit many different kinds of data. we used questionnaires and an interview to inquire into people’s knowledge, opinions, ideas and experiences. for that reason, we thought a questionnaire was a useful instrument for collecting data. the teacher needs to pay attention to the way in which he/she writes the questions; they can not be complex or ambiguous or they cannot ask about more than one topic at a time; furthermore, questionnaires can be closed or open according to the needs of the project or the teacher’s purposes. we used questionnaires because, thanks to them, we could learn in a written way how students felt after the game applications, and in which games they felt more confident and free to speak with 15profile vol. 12, no. 1, 2010. issn 1657-0790. bogotá, colombia. pages 11-31 encouraging teenagers to improve speaking skills through games in a colombian public school fluency. additionally, these three techniques helped us to work under the triangulation principles for validating data. in connection to this, burns (1999) stated that when different research techniques are used in the same problematic situation and we obtain the same results, the investigation is valid. we also followed silverman (1993, cited in burns, 1999) when he argued that triangulation helps us to see if different research techniques in collecting data produce similar results with regard to the same investigation question. in the process of collecting the data, elliot & edelman (in burns, 1999) asserted that triangulation is a research method that involves three participants with their different points of view: the teacher, the students, and a participant observer. we considered that triangulation was to help us gather and analyze data in a less subjective way. stages to develop the project first, we asked for permission of our students’ parents with a consent form; in this way, we knew which students we could observe and from then on, the evidences from these students could be collected and analyzed. second, we diagnosed our students’ attitudes and impressions in terms of speaking through a questionnaire (see appendix 1). after that, we applied a questionnaire in which we asked students about the activities they preferred to carry out in the english class (see appendix 2). next, we selected and organized the games according to the students’ level and their interest, taking into account a coherent sequence of topics and structures from simple forms to complex ones. afterwards, we applied the games and at the same time kept a teaching journal (see appendix 3). we also video recorded our students during speaking activities (see appendix 4), and applied questionnaires at the end of the class (see appendix 5)2. then, we analyzed the data in order to assess the progress of our students’ speaking skills and learn about their impressions. literature review for the development of our project, we studied some important aspects about the speaking skills, games and motivation. in order to do it, we explored different theories, explained below, that are related to these topics. speaking skills every language has two kinds of skills. the first one is the receptive skill which involves two aspects: understanding and reading; and the second one is the productive skill, which involves writing and speaking. bygate (1987) stated that “speaking is a skill which deserves attention as much as the literary skills in both native and foreign languages”. when students speak in a confident and comfortable way, they can interact better in real daily situations. because of this, the purpose of this project was to encourage the development of fluency in spoken english. it’s even for students with elementary english language abilities. for us, developing fluency implies taking risks by using language in a relaxed, friendly atmosphere –an atmosphere of trust and support. speaking fluently, of course, involves speaking easily and appropriately with others. to develop this project, it was not necessary to concentrate on particular aspects such as the differences between key sounds with basic stress forms and intonation patterns or to master 2 in the questionnaires, data were gathered in spanish to ensure students’ understanding. the instruments and the information collected through them were translated by the authors for the purpose of this publication. 16 universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras urrutia león & vega celis grammatical items. the main idea was to focus on those general oral items to communicate in a foreign language. therefore, the idea was to invite our students to talk to each other by using games as the main strategy. being in a classroom learning a language is essentially a social experience and should be memorable. in part, this is because of the relationship forged during a time of being and learning together. in fluency work, our aim was to make learners less conscious of their vulnerability in the target language by challenging them to become interested in participating. along with this, byrne (1984, p. 9) stated that “the main goal in teaching the productive skill of speaking will be oral fluency: the ability to express oneself intelligibly, reasonably, accurately and without undue hesitation (otherwise communication may break down because the listener loses interest or gets impatient). to attain this goal, the students had to move from the stage where they merely imitate a model or respond to cues to the point where they could use the language to express their own ideas”. taking into account byrne’s concept, we used fun and interesting games in our project in order to motivate and help students move from the imitation stage to the production stage. games and motivation keeping in mind that our 10th grade students felt afraid of speaking during the classes, we considered games as the best motivation to help them speak in an appropriate atmosphere. the games also provided them with opportunities for free expression. according to the idea mentioned above, mora & lopera (2001) stated that “games and fun activities have always been one of everybody’s favorite things to do in a class, both for teachers and students”. we think that motivation plays an important role when we apply a game, not only to get students’ concentration but also to produce better learning conditions. during the game atmosphere the teacher has to influence the whole class in an active and positive way. as we know, teenagers are apathetic and difficult to be motivated. for this reason, this project intended to find a way in which students could find it easy and fun to speak english. the use of games is the strategy we chose to develop the students’ speaking skills. before talking about the role of games to improve the student’s speaking skills, we introduced some definitions of game. a game is an activity of sport involving skill, knowledge or chance in which a person follows fixed rules and tries to win against an opponent. according to collins cobuild english language dictionary (1987), it is a contest played according to rules and the winner is recognized by skill, strength or luck. it is an activity engaged in for amusement. it can also be defined as the manner of playing in a contest, a situation that involves rivalry or struggle. in addition, a game can be defined as an enjoyable activity with a set of rules or terms against each other (webster’s new dictionary, 1994). certainly, games can be related to language learning. language games can add fun and variety to conversation sessions if the participants are fond of games. in addition, games are especially refreshing after grammar activities. also a game is a wonderful activity to break the routine of classroom drills by providing relaxation while remaining within the framework of language learning. a game can in fact be stimulating and entertaining. in the same way, according to this, byrne (1984, p. 99) stated “the maximum benefit can be 17profile vol. 12, no. 1, 2010. issn 1657-0790. bogotá, colombia. pages 11-31 encouraging teenagers to improve speaking skills through games in a colombian public school obtained from language games if they form an integral part of a program, at both the practice and production stages of learning. used in this way, they provide new and interesting contexts for practicing language already learnt –and often for acquiring new language in the process”. one of the purposes is to introduce an element of competition in the english class. but we agree with byrne (1984, p. 99) when he stated, “we do not wish the students to become excessively competitive, but we want to recognize that the competition provides a valuable force to a purposeful use of language”. this is because we are looking for students to develop their speaking skills by avoiding a frustrating situation in the classroom. some procedures mentioned by byrne, which can be taken into account for playing games are the following: first, choose games on the basis of their suitability in terms of the language the students practice. second, prepare the games carefully beforehand. third, explain to the students the purpose of and rules for the games. fourth, give students one or more opportunities to practice before the games are played. fifth, involve as many students as possible, dividing the class into teams. sixth, if games are played in teams, points should be awarded for each correct answer and the scores written up on the board. (1984, p. 100) for the development of our project, we chose the following classification of games provided by wright, betteridge & buckby (1984): • picture games: most of these games involve the learners in the relative free use of all language at their command. they involve comparing and contrasting pictures, considering differences or similarities and possible relations between pictures. • psychology games: these games let us work with the human mind and sense. they involve telepathy, visual perception, characters, imagination and memory. they also encourage the students’ concentration and language use. • magic tricks: language can sometimes be exemplified in a concise and memorable way through a magic trick. these tricks always attract attention and invite comments. • sound games: sound effects can create in the listeners an impression of people, places and actions. there is a demand for the listeners to contribute through imagination. this inevitably leads to individual interpretations and interactions as well as the need to exchange points of view and to express ideas and opinions. • card and board games: these games can be adaptations of several well-known card games and board games like snakes and ladders. • word games: these games are used for spelling, meanings, using words for making sentences, words in contexts and word for categorizing according to grammatical use. students, in many cases, have to communicate in full sentences, give new ideas and argue at the same length. • true-false games: in these games someone makes a statement which is either true or false. the game is to decide which it is. • memory games: these games measure the players’ ability to remember different events which, in turn, leads to discussion, in which opinions and information are exchanged. • caring and sharing games: these games pretend to encourage students to trust and get interested in others. they have the participants share personal feelings and experiences with other class member. • guessing and speculating games: in these games someone knows something and the others must find out what it is. there are many games and variations based on this simple idea. 18 universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras urrutia león & vega celis • story games: these games provide a framework for learners to speak as well as write stories and share them with classmates. for our project we chose three kinds of games: caring and sharing, guessing –speculating, and story games because we think these games are useful in order to encourage the students’ participation, and develop the students’ speaking skills taking into account the games’ characteristics and our pupils’ behavior when engaged in games. there are certain studies conducted in various classrooms that can help us better explain our interest in games. in her study about interacting in english through games, ariza (2001) conducted a project with second grade students in order to encourage oral participation in english through the use of games. this project intended to help shy and slow students improve their oral production. through the implementation of this project she could conclude that role plays and dramatizations are good activities for developing speaking in a fun and interesting way because these help students to use the language in communicative situations that are related to their lives. in her study, “growing self-esteem and discovering intelligences though oral production,” ochoa (2002) noticed that there was a big lack of security and self-confidence in her students. they expressed via different data-gathering instruments their fear when speaking in front of the class. at the end of the project, ochoa concluded that self-confidence is a factor that really influences the way students learn and perform their activities inside the classroom. the experiences students live inside the schools have to be meaningful for their lives. the creation of a good atmosphere inside the classroom is important for getting participants to develop a communicative competence. mora & lopera (2001), in their project called “games in the classroom: more than just having fun”, stress that game and fun activities have always been one of everybody’s favorite things to do in class, both for teachers and students since games can contribute to the development of a series of skills and competencies. they think that games in a classroom are useful and even necessary. games promote socialization, group work, and the creation of values; it implies mutual respect and cooperation. in fact, what we intended to do in our project was to use games as the best way to motivate students’ speaking production by following a systematic process in which we could observe the learners oral progress during the project application. pedagogical design our project was focused on encouraging teenagers to improve speaking skills through games by taking into account that our students didn’t speak fluently or freely because they felt afraid of their partners’ jokes. besides, many of them were very shy and nervous about expressing themselves in front of the class. to avoid students’ difficulties related to the speaking skills, we chose some kinds of games; they are story games, caringsharing and guessing and speculation games. we implemented our project with three lessons. the first one was based on a story game, the second one on a caring and sharing game, and the last one on a guessing and speculative game. for the development of each game we designed a lesson plan (see appendix 6). it followed the scheme of a topic, strategy (name of game) objective, resources, warming up and activities (procedures to develop the game). the class was divided into three important moments. first, the warm-up in which the teachers 19profile vol. 12, no. 1, 2010. issn 1657-0790. bogotá, colombia. pages 11-31 encouraging teenagers to improve speaking skills through games in a colombian public school broke the ice with a fun activity by presenting the general topic to the class. second, the instructions and rules of the game were given to students and the game was carried out (during this part students had the chance to speak even more). third, students filled out a questionnaire in which they registered some impressions about the game played during the english class. data analysis and results as was described in the “techniques for collecting data” section, three techniques were applied in order to get information for solving the research questions. these were questionnaires, teacher’s journals and video recording. we decided to use three kinds of games to develop our project. these were comparison games, story games and guessing and speculative games. during the implementation of the project, william was in charge of developing the activities with students while esperanza was taking notes for the teacher’s journal. at the same time, another teacher (maria luz capador) was video recording the class. taking into account students’ opinions about difficulties with regard to the english language skills (see appendix 1), we asked them which english language skills they considered difficult to put into practice and why. the results are shown in table 1. as the results show, the majority of the students considered that speaking is the most difficult skill to develop. in connection with this, we found some interesting impressions such as the following: to talk, because english is spoken in one way and written in another way. (student 1) of course to speak, because one usually memorizes the things as they are written, i mean as it is in spanish. (student 2) to speak and read; speaking because it produces shyness and reading because i am not attentive in class. (student 28) table 1. students’ responses to the question “which language skills do you consider difficult to put into practice?” skill students percentage listening 1 3% speaking 27 82% reading 0 0% writing 3 9% no answer 2 6% the second question of the diagnostic questionnaire gave us information about how often students used english in oral communication during the class. this can be seen in table 2. table 2. students’ responses to the question “how often do you speak english during the class?” item students percentage always 2 6% almost always 1 3% sometimes 25 76% never 5 15% from the results shown in table 2 we could infer that the majority of our students just sometimes spoke english, and an important number of students never participated or spoke english during the class. with question 3 we wanted to know what factors interfere in the students’ speaking skill when the class was taking place. the results are presented in table 3. 20 universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras urrutia león & vega celis table 3. students’ responses to the question “what factors interfered in your speaking skill or made it difficult to speak during the english class?” item students percentage fear of humiliation 5 15% lack of vocabulary 16 48% shyness 9 27% put it in practice 1 3% didn’t answer 2 6% according to the table above, we could see that there were three important causes which interfered or disturbed the students’ oral participation. these were the lack of vocabulary, shyness, and fear of being humiliated. it should be noted that in the diagnostic questionnaire, when we asked students about favorite strategies to employ for developing the english class, 58% of the students expressed that they preferred games and highlighted advantages of playing them. this is evidenced in the following testimonies: to express, to avoid the shyness and to use the vocabulary. (student 17) we would like to learn english but not in a boring way. we felt confident to express better the english language and if we make mistakes it doesn’t matter, we lose shyness. (student 15) to develop the language more in students and their capacity of surpass the shyness. (student 21) ok. i consider that i lost the shyness, it helps us to feel more confident to develop our speaking and our english in general. (student 29) in addition, when we asked them about the importance of games during the english class, some of them said the following: the games would help us to express ourselves and of course to understand much more. (student 19) yes, because with games is funnier and when we play we learn to speak by learning vocabulary. (student 27) yes, because we integrate each other by thinking in the game, we forget the shyness and we pay more attention in class. (student 30) after the first game was over, we gathered some opinions by using the questionnaire shown in appendix 5 about how they felt during the class. the following testimonies evidence the positive effect games had on students: funny because is another way to have a class and to learn more. (student 1) excellent! i liked too much the activity, we smiled too much, i mean we enjoyed the class a hundred percent .we learnt to complete a story and we did it in spite of we didn’t know the whole text. (student 2) good, because we weren’t in a stressful environment. (student 16) fine. i enjoyed the class, i participated, i was close with my partners, and i learnt. (student 19) good, because i could say words in english and because i felt more confident to speak. (student 26) after examining the information gathered through the three different techniques —questionnaires, video recording and teacher’s journal—, we found one category and two subcategories as shown in figure 1. encouraging teenagers to improve speaking skills through games games from different perspectives students’ perspectives 1. cooperation and involvement 2. self con�dence 3. teachers’ classroom management teachers’ perspectives 1. motivation 2. improvement in speaking participation 3. free and con�dent students’ performance figure 1. categories drawn from data analysis 21profile vol. 12, no. 1, 2010. issn 1657-0790. bogotá, colombia. pages 11-31 encouraging teenagers to improve speaking skills through games in a colombian public school games from different perspectives this category offered us the opportunity to realize how games could be useful for the participants of our study. among the games mentioned in the literature review we chose three kinds: caring and sharing, guessing and speculation, and story games. we considered these to be the most appropriate ones for encouraging students to improve their speaking skill. we could observe that students tried to improve their oral participation when they were involved in the games. for example, when we asked students “what does a forest have?” a student answered with the following words: “flowers, sun, animals, rivers” (video recording, file 4). another student answered “azul, verde [blue, green], blue, red” (video recording, file 6) when the teacher asked about the color of the dwarfs in the fairy tale “snow white and the seven dwarfs”. we wanted for students to construct short phrases by asking, “can you say the complete title for the short story?” to this question, a student provided the answer. after this, the students in groups had to organize some phrases of the story in a chronological and coherent way. we noticed that students needed to speak in spanish in order to communicate their ideas about the story: “esta es la primera, esta es la segunda, esta es...” [this is the first, this is the second, this is…] (video recording, file 13). when they had to perform in front of the whole class, they used english for presenting their story organization. the students’ opinions above gave us some evidences about the important role of games for improving the speaking skills. students’ perspectives under this category we placed the student’s perspectives or opinions about the role games played in the development of speaking skills during the english class. when asked about it, we found the following patterns as the most important aspects in the implementation of this innovative and action research: cooperation, involvement, self-confidence, knowledge of vocabulary, better english understanding, improvement of pronunciation and speaking, and an english class environment that was more fun, as shown in table 4. table 4. students’ opinions when asked about the role games played in the development of speaking in the english class i consider that games during the english class permit... item students percentage not to speak much in english 1 1.56 to learn vocabulary 7 10.94 to overcome shyness 12 18.75 to help to understand english better 5 7.81 to learn more 15 23.44 to get the students interest 2 3.13 students’ integration 4 6.25 self-confidence to express him or herself 6 9.38 to be evaluated during the class 1 1.56 to improve the speaking of english 6 9.38 more concentration 1 1.56 to have fun in class 1 1.56 to learn to pronounce 1 1.56 to develop creativity 2 3.13 in regard to the information obtained from the students’ opinions, we established three sub22 universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras urrutia león & vega celis categories that embraced what they thought about games as promoters of speaking: 1. cooperation and involvement: taking into account the percentages shown above, we could observe that we achieved integration because students worked with each other while participating in the different games; they helped each other in order to understand english better. in addition, students were involved in the activities because the games were always motivating for them. 2. self-confidence: we could notice that self-confidence was one of the most important aspects mentioned by students after the games were developed. besides, the percentages presented in table 4 showed that students overcame their shyness considerably. finally, they expressed their being able to develop their creativity by performing different roles during the story game. 3. teacher’s classroom management: students admitted that they learnt more english thanks to the fun activities we implemented in class and to the teacher’s management during them. also, students manifested that they could learn new vocabulary. all of this helped them improve their speaking skill. teachers’ perspective at the time we implemented the games we observed that the good atmosphere we promoted as well as students’ motivation made it possible for students to speak and perform in a freer and more confident way. in addition, the students who didn’t like to speak or participate during the english classes lowered their tension and anxiety and thus took part in the games (see in appendix 3, observation 6, comment 6). in connection with this category, three subcategories emerged: 1. motivation: at the time we implemented the games we observed that a good atmosphere and motivation made it possible for students to speak and perform more freely and confidently. students looked motivated and happy because they had the opportunity to share with others. for example, during the story game, “snow white and the seven dwarfs”, students were actors and they could perform by saying words or short phrases related to the main characters’ characteristics. 2. improvement in speaking participation: the students who did not like to speak or participate during the english classes lowered their tension and anxiety and thus took part in the games. they were enthusiastic with the activity and used some short sentences in order to introduce the characters and the dramatization. all in all, most of the students, including those who were usually shy and apathetic, participated happily in the activity. 3. free and confident students’ performance: when the teacher used jokes and mimicry in order to explain vocabulary or events, students felt comfortable and motivated (see some observations recorded in the teacher’s journal, in appendix 3). they felt free and confident to make other jokes as well. conclusions games have been and will always be an important part of learning a second or foreign language. we have pointed out the importance of using games in the english learning process. games are motivating and exciting experiences for students to develop the speaking skills in a 23profile vol. 12, no. 1, 2010. issn 1657-0790. bogotá, colombia. pages 11-31 encouraging teenagers to improve speaking skills through games in a colombian public school fun and comfortable way. besides, we noticed that games helped students to believe in themselves, thanks to the creation of a good atmosphere inside the classroom. through this innovative and action research project, we implemented some kinds of games: caring-sharing, guessing and speculative games and a story game. they encouraged students to communicate orally and to gain confidence in speaking. in addition, during the process of implementation, students overcame their fear of making mistakes and perceived speaking as a natural process when they were playing. the majority of students could express and communicate orally without the pressure of time or constant evaluation. in our research questions, we also aimed at describing what happened with students’ oral production when engaged in games. in fact, students took part in the activities in a free, comfortable and motivating way. as a consequence, they learnt more vocabulary, short sentences, and pronunciation. they managed to get the messages across while playing, though in some cases students mixed spanish and english expressions to communicate their ideas or feelings. on the other hand, our project let us reflect on our pedagogical practice and look for new alternatives to encourage oral communication among the learners through games. the problems of the lack of an interactive and communicative context and speaking skills were addressed during implementation of the games. our students had the opportunity to be active participants throughout the course of the project. at the time students played games, they interacted with others thus improving their oral production in english. finally, we consider that games, in general, encouraged teenagers to improve their speaking skills, especially when these included group work, motivation and competition. also we discovered that games are more than a function in the classroom; they helped our students to perform better, to feel confident and free in order to improve their english speaking skills. further research for the purpose of our study, we chose and implemented just three of the ten kinds of games provided by wright, betteridge, & buckby (1984). based on our findings, we consider it necessary to take into account the area of encouraging teenagers to improve speaking skills through games and the complete classification of games listed by these authors for future research studies. equally important for researchers in another project would be to keep in mind not only encouraging students to speak in a confident and free way through games, but also to approach them with the knowledge of particular oral english features such as fluency, pronunciation, and intonation. additionally, it would be useful to do further research into the use of games for creating a good atmosphere in which students have the opportunity to work on teams by helping and collaborating with each other. recommendations first of all we recommend for further researchers to have enough time to develop each one of the games, at least four times, in order to get better results. also, we suggest organizing groups of students from the first class so that the teacher researcher can focus on specific aspects to monitor in each class. we think that these groups must have students with different english levels (high, medium and low) in order to look for the possible changes in students’ speaking skill. finally, we recommend the use of different visual aids (pictures, flash cards, 24 universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras urrutia león & vega celis etc.) in order to develop even more the ability to speak in a free, comfortable and motivating way. references ariza, e. (2001). interacting in english through games. profile, issues in teachers’ professional development, 2, 6-8. burns, a. (1999). collaborative action research for english language teachers. ny: cambridge university press. bygate, m. (1987). speaking. oxford: oxford university press. byrne, d. (1984). language learning in the classroom: teaching oral english. hong kong: longman. cárdenas, m. l. (august 12, 2006). uses of interviews and questionnaires [handout]. classroom research and innovation. pfpd “red profile”. bogotá: universidad nacional de colombia. mimeo. colombia. ministerio de educación nacional [men]. (1994). ley general de educación (ley 115 del 8 de febrero de 1994). santafé de bogotá: autor. federico garcía lorca school. (2009). pei proyecto educativo institucional. bogotá: mimeo. game. (1994). in webster’s new dictionary. ny: sales books. game. (1987). in collins cobuild english language dictionary. london and glasgow: harpercollins. hubbard, r. s., & power, b. m. (1999). living the questions. a guide for teachers-researchers. york, maine: stenhouse publishers. markee, n. (1997). managing curricular innovation. ny: cambridge university press. mora, r. a., & lopera, m. c. (2001). games in the classroom: more than just having fun. how, a colombian journal for teachers of english, 8, 75-82. ochoa, d. l. (2002). growing self-esteem and discovering intelligences through oral production. profile, issues in teachers’ professional development, 3, 58-62. wallace, m. (1998). action research for language teachers. cambridge: cambridge university press. wright, a., betteridge, d., & buckby, m. (1984). games for language learning. cambridge: cambridge university press. about the authors william urrutia león holds a b.ed. in spanish and english from the universidad pedagógica nacional. esperanza vega cely holds a b.ed. in spanish and english from the universidad distrital. the authors have worked for several years in primary and high school respectively at the federico garcía lorca school, bogotá, colombia. 25profile vol. 12, no. 1, 2010. issn 1657-0790. bogotá, colombia. pages 11-31 encouraging teenagers to improve speaking skills through games in a colombian public school appendix 1: questionnaire to diagnose students’ attitudes and impressions about speaking date: ___________________________________ dear student, we ask you to answer the following questions sincerely: 1. which of the following english language skills do you consider difficult to put in practice and why? (listening, speaking, reading and writing). _____________________________________________________________________________ _____________________________________________________________________________ mark with an (x) the answers for questions 2 and 3. 2. how often do you use oral english during the class? a. always b. almost always c. some times d. never 3. what factors interfere in the students’ speaking skill or make their oral performance difficult during the english class? a. fear of humiliation b. lack of vocabulary c. others _____________________________________________________________________ d. which ones? ________________________________________________________________ 26 universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras urrutia león & vega celis appendix 2: questionnaire used to inquire about strategies preferred by students in the english class date: ___________________________________ dear student, we ask you to answer the following questions in a sincere way: 1. what strategies do you prefer to develop in the english class? mark the answer(s) with an (x). a. classes in which teacher is the person who speaks most b. individual workshops c. work in groups d. games 2. you consider that games in the english class permit: _____________________________________________________________________________ _____________________________________________________________________________ 3. would you like games to be an essential part during the english classes? why or why not? _____________________________________________________________________________ _____________________________________________________________________________ 27profile vol. 12, no. 1, 2010. issn 1657-0790. bogotá, colombia. pages 11-31 encouraging teenagers to improve speaking skills through games in a colombian public school appendix 3: sample of a teacher’s journal entry class no. 1 date: october 6th game: story game topic: snow white and the seven dwarfs story. objective: to observe the students’ oral participation thanks to a game based on a short story. line observation comments 1 william started the class with a warming up by showing different feelings: happiness, sadness with regards to snow white. he asked questions about colors, adjectives and nouns. the students were timid and nervous they were worried they didn’t participate. 2 teacher made jokes related to colors about to colombian soccer teams. students felt better and they made other jokes as well. 3 the teacher used mimics in order to be understood by students for asking some questions. students could understand the questions easier. 4 students had to participate in groups of 8 in order to performance a short story. students looked motivated and happy because they had the opportunity to share with others. 5 students dramatized the short story with characters and some elements of snow white and the seven dwarfs. students were enthusiastic with the activity and they used some short sentences in order to introduce the characters and the dramatization. 6 all the groups participated in the dramatization in a free and confident way. most of the students including whose are usually shy and apathetic participated in the activity happily. 28 universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras urrutia león & vega celis appendix 4: sample of a video recording during speaking activities class no. 1 date: october 6th game: story game topic: snow white and the seven dwarfs story objective: to observe the students oral participation thanks to a game based on a short story. file speech acts comments 1 the teacher asked: who is the character? students understood the question but they couldn’t say the name in english.2 students answers: “blanca nieves” [snow white] 3 the teacher asked: what does a forest have? students named words without constructing phrases.4 students answered: flowers, sun, animals and rivers. 5 the teacher asked: who are with snow white with? students answered: los enanitos [the dwarfs]. they answered with the word in spanish. 6 the teacher asked: what colors are the dwarfs? students answered: “azul… verde”… blue, red… “amarillo” [yellow]. at first they mentioned the colors in spanish but then they did it in english. 7 the teacher asked: how do you say “madrastra” [stepmother] in english? student answered: madastra. he didn’t know the word in english. 8 the teacher asked: how do you say “bruja” in english a student answered: “witch”. she knew the word in english. 9 the teacher asked: how do you say “príncipe” in english? two students answered: princess and prince. two students tried to say the word prince correctly. 10 the teacher asked: can you tell the complete title for the short story? by taking turns some students could say the title of the story with some difficulties.11 a student answered: snow white and the seven dwarfs. 12 the teacher asked for students to do groups in order to organize coherent phrases about the story. when students were working in groups they spoke in spanish trying to organize the phrases the best they could.13 students tried to do it by using: “esta es la primera” [this is the first] “esta es la segunda” [this is the second] “esta es…” [this is…]. 29profile vol. 12, no. 1, 2010. issn 1657-0790. bogotá, colombia. pages 11-31 encouraging teenagers to improve speaking skills through games in a colombian public school appendix 5: questionnaire used to find out students’ opinions at the end of the lessons date: ___________________________________ dear student, taking into account the activities developed today, answer the following questions in a sincere way: 1. how did you feel during the english class? ____________________________________________________________________________ 2. did you like the game developed today? yes___ no___ why? ________________________________________________________________________ 3. when did you have the chance to express yourself orally during the english class? _____________________________________________________________________________ 4. do you consider that the game promoted your partners’ participation during the class? yes___ no___ why? ________________________________________________________________________ 5. do you consider that the game motivated students’ oral participation today? _____________________________________________________________________________ 6. would you like for the teacher to continue using games during the english class in order to motivate students’ participation? yes ___ no___ why? ________________________________________________________________________ 30 universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras urrutia león & vega celis appendix 6: lesson plans used to encourage teenagers to improve speaking skills through games lesson plan 1 time: 85 minutes course: 1007 topic: talking about “snow white and seven dwarfs”. strategy: story game. objective: to develop the speaking skills by using the story “snow white and the seven dwarfs”. resources: pictures of the snow white and the seven dwarfs story. warming up: we will show students some pictures in which snow white and the seven dwarfs appear. then we will ask student for their names and characteristics by trying to speak in english the best they can. activities: – we will divide the group into three small groups. – we will give the students some sentences about the most important events of the story in order to be organized in a chronological way. – students, in groups, will retell orally the story in front of the whole class. lesson plan 2 course: 1007 time: 85 minutes topic: likes and dislikes strategy: caring and sharing game “let me know about you”. objective: to develop the speaking skills through the game “let me know about you”. resources: photocopies of the chart (game) dices, pictures and counters. warming up: we will talk about juanes and juan pablo montoya “likes and dislikes”. we will ask students if they know the famous people shown in the pictures and some details of their live: who is he? who are they? where have you seeing him / her? what does he or she do? what do you think they like or don’t like to do in their free time? activities: – we will divide the class in groups of three students. then, we will give each group a photocopy of the game. the game consists of a chart in which the students will solve some personal questions about likes and dislikes by taking turns. – to develop the game students will throw the dices, in order to move their chips advancing according to the number given by the dice? in each space students will get and specific yes, no, wh questions that they have to answer. 31profile vol. 12, no. 1, 2010. issn 1657-0790. bogotá, colombia. pages 11-31 encouraging teenagers to improve speaking skills through games in a colombian public school – examples: do you like music? what kind of music do you like? do you like to read? what is your favorite book? – after the game is over, each group will choose the best speaker player to represent it, in a whole class competence. the chosen student is going to answer two more questions in order to win points for the final score of the game. after that, we will organize new groups of 12 people, in which each group is going to decorate a specific place (restaurant, mall, video, and store) with materials given by the teachers. they will perform like people who are commonly in these places. students have to use yes, no, wh and questions to ask and answer for likes and dislikes. lesson plan 3 time: 85 minutes course: 1007 topic: describing and talking about objects. strategy: guessing and speculating game. objective: to develop the speaking skills through the game describing and talking about objects resources: 20 objects warming up: we will give students an object by saying it is not... and each one of them is going to use the same structure but changing the final word: it is not a cat. it is not a beautiful dog. activities: – we will divide the whole class in small groups of four students. – we will give each group a different object: ruler square triangle. after that, one student of the group will say the real name of the object, the second one will change the real name for another creative word, the third one is going to say an imaginative use of the new object, and the fourth one will say another use of the object. profile 11, 2009. issn 1657-0790. bogotá, colombia. pages 159-167 159 intercultural communication between colombian and american teachers in colombian institutions comunicación intercultural entre docentes colombianos y norteamericanos en instituciones colombianas georgia costalas*1 wilkes university, usa this article, which is based on observations from working in multicultural environments for twentyfive years and a review of sources on intercultural communication, addresses the intrinsic difficulties that arise from communication among people of different cultures. the connection between language and culture is so close that communication among internationals creates challenges of intercultural communication even when communicating in the same language. in colombia, especially in institutions that teach english, there are bicultural or multicultural groups of teachers that work together. some misunderstandings arise because of an inadequate understanding of colleagues’ values systems. this article includes three common work situations, the possible problems arising from inappropriate communication and some suggestions for overcoming intercultural communication difficulties. key words: intercultural communication, globalization, challenging intercultural relationships, foreign language teachers este artículo, basado en mis observaciones de 25 años de trabajo en ambientes multiculturales y en una revisión de fuentes sobre la comunicación intercultural, trata sobre las dificultades intrínsecas que surgen de la comunicación entre gente de distintas culturas. el lenguaje está tan relacionado con la cultura que la comunicación entre internacionales crea desafíos de comunicación intercultural, aún cuando se comunican en el mismo idioma. en colombia, especialmente en instituciones donde se enseña inglés, se encuentran grupos de docentes de distintos países que trabajan juntos y cuyos valores son diferentes. surgen malos entendidos a raíz de una falta de comprensión del sistema de valores del otro. este artículo incluye tres situaciones comunes en el lugar de trabajo, algunos problemas que pueden aparecer en él debido a una comunicación inapropiada y algunas sugerencias para superar dificultades en la comunicación intercultural. palabras clave: comunicación intercultural, globalización, relaciones interculturales desafiantes, docentes de lenguas extranjeras * e-mail: georgia.costalas@wilkes.edu address: 84 west south street, wilkes-barre, pa, usa 18766. this article was received on july 22, 2008 and accepted on january 10, 2009. costalas universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras160 introduction sensitive awareness of the feelings and perceptions of others and devotion to detail are needed to communicate among cultures. north americans are not generally known for that type of attention in their interpersonal relationships though such dedication is often given to their technical or work related tasks. conversely, colombians will sacrifice other values in order to devote the time and energy needed for maintaining harmony in their relationships. at institutions in colombia and all over the world, people of different cultures work together in education, research, business and for other purposes. working together with international colleagues is often a rocky process due to the challenges of cross-cultural communication. a congenial work environment is a challenging goal when colleagues come from different cultures. intercultural communication is the communication of both verbal and non verbal messages among people of different cultures. communication is perceived through one’s cultural lens and every communicator tends to be egocentric (elmer, 1993) or ethnocentric, which tyler (1979) defines as “the concept that one’s own culture is of central importance and is a proper basis for judging other peoples and cultures” (p. 28). when people of different cultures interact, they judge the customs and actions of the other culture based on how they see the situation as they look through their own cultural lens (elmer, 1993). when communicating, people automatically apply their own assumptions to a situation, unless they are knowledgeable about the assumptions of the other culture (gordon, 1974). at international schools and national universities in colombia, different cultures, commonly colombian and north american, interact on a daily basis. to create a harmonious and effective work environment requires understanding intercultural communication, specifically how perspective and interpretation depend on the cultural lens through which communication is received (elmer, 1993). for twenty-five years i worked at two private bilingual schools and a university in bogotá and cali, colombia. as a teacher, counselor, principal, and program director, i had the privilege to work with faculties, staffs, school committees and interschool associations, whose members were mainly colombian and american, and included a few people from other countries. in those working environments, richness arose from the diversity of perspectives, and the institutions, as well as the individuals, were benefitted. at the same time, conflicts due to intercultural misunderstandings often hampered communication, limited productivity and strained relationships. the following questions are explored in this article: • what are some culturally-based communication differences that can lead to conflict? • how do the colombian and american values which impact intercultural communication compare? • what are some common misunderstandings that arise when colombians and americans are together in typical work situations? • what are some suggestions for how americans and colombians can work towards better intercultural communication? anthropologist hall writes that the context of all communication is the culture or cultures of those involved, “communication is culture and culture is communication”, (1959, p. 191). a communicator’s culture provides the “framework” in which communication takes place. communication is not only the culturally influenced “words, intercultural communication between colombian and american teachers in colombian institutions profile 11, 2009. issn 1657-0790. bogotá, colombia. pages 159-167 161 actions, postures, gestures, tones of voice, [and] facial expressions” but communication is framed by the speaker’s culturally bound values, such as the way the communicator “handles time, space and materials, and the way he works, plays, makes love and defends himself ” (hall, 1976, p. 42). a thorough understanding of the communicated message requires an understanding of “behavior in its historical, social and cultural context” (ibid.). for the sake of convenience, in this article the conventions north american, in the preceding paragraphs, and american, from here on, refer to those with a mainstream us culture. neither term is satisfactory as north american includes canadians and mexicans and american includes those from north and latin america. also, please note that some of edward t. hall’s research about the high context latino culture is referred to in this article even though his contact was with latin americans from many countries and not just from colombia. high and low context cultures hall’s culture context model (1976) identifies and compares high context and low context cultures. a high context culture is characterized by long lasting relationships, clearly identified insiders and outsiders of the culture, spoken agreements, and ingrained and slow-to-change cultural patterns. though what is said is important, the context, that is, how and where it is said, is significant and gives meaning to what is said. colombia is an example of a high context culture. low context cultures, of which mainstream us is an example, are characterized by comparatively shorter relationships, preference for written agreements, less clearly identified insiders and outsiders, and quicker change in cultural patterns. what is said is less dependent on the context; that is, the content is more important than how or when it is said (hall, 1976; hall & hall, 1990; hall as cited in cagle, 2004). in a work environment, a low context culture expects work before friendship, the earning of credibility through performance, formal agreements and efficient management of time. on the other hand, the high context culture seeks to create a cordial and congenial atmosphere where credibility is earned due to the relationship, agreements are spoken and rituals surround aspects of business (hutchison, poznanski & todt-stockman, 1987; cagle, 2004). what may seem like small differences in how work and other relationships are addressed can negatively affect work teams and the office ambience. conflict due to communication styles the handbook for foreign students and scholars (2004) of the university of iowa identifies generalizations about the communicative style of americans to which most americans can easily assent. when the american style of communication is compared with that of the colombian’s, it is easy to find sources of possible conflict. 1) in their informal chats, americans converse about the weather, sports, jobs, mutual acquaintances, and past experiences, especially those shared by the person with whom they are speaking (u iowa, 2004). they avoid talking about topics they consider personal such as their income, age and how much they paid for something. colombians often enter into topics of conversation, even with those they know only casually, which seem personal and delicate to americans, such as, people’s age, weight, salary and other personal information; colombians readily enter into discussions of politics and even topics that are particularly controversial costalas universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras162 such as drug trafficking, guerillas, corruption (hutchison et al., 1987). 2) americans prefer exchanges that are comprised of short statements, alternating between speakers. rituals, such as greetings, are kept to a minimum (u iowa, 2004). colombian spanish is full of rituals. saying hello is a lengthy exchange and might be repeated several times a day between the same people (hutchison et al., 1987). “¿qué tal?” “¿qué más?” “¿cómo estás?” “¿qué hay de nuevo?” are all ways of saying “what’s up?” and colombians use them all, perhaps in the same exchange and do not really need or expect a detailed answer. 3) americans tend to try to support their opinions with facts and evidence (u iowa, 2004). for colombians, exact evidence and facts are much less important in informal exchange than maintaining a harmonious relationship and congenial conversation (hutchison et al., 1987). conflict arising from different cultural values comparing american values to colombian values reveals themes for possible conflict in the normal work situations found in bicultural settings. kohls’ work, “values americans live by” (1984), provides a summary of the assumptions and values by which americans judge situations. living in colombia by hutchinson et al. (1987), as well as my firsthand experience of twenty-five years working in bicultural and multicultural settings in colombia, provide many of the colombian values summarized here. 1. colombians have a higher tolerance for ambiguity than americans. they are ready to believe that there could be other possible explanations than the immediately obvious. they can be very flexible when they see problems arise. they are tolerant of difficulties with and interruptions to a schedule. hall says that in high context cultures such as those of latin america, the importance of the relationship between people is so great that in order to preserve that value, the culture permits flexibility in how things are done and ambiguity in how things are perceived (hall, 1976). americans prefer exactness and want to exert control over their environment (kohls, 1984). elmer writes that for the american, the ambiguity of an “unanswered question is scandalous", forcing him to supply a logical explanation from his own perspective (elmer, 1993, p. 18). 2. colombians and americans interpret differently how to help others. the american value of self-reliance (kohls, 1984) leads to the belief that helping someone means empowering them to help themselves. colombians approach offering help on a more direct, personal level. helping someone is not necessarily seen as an opportunity to teach her or him, but to solve her/ his immediate need. 3. americans have a compulsive time orientation compared to the one of colombian extended time. americans structure their lives around time and schedules (kohls, 1984). colombians have a flexible orientation towards time (hutchison et al., 1987) and structure their lives around people much more than around time and schedules. one description of the differences of the use of time is that americans have a monochronic time scheme and colombians, like other latinos, a poly-chronic time (hall, 1976). monochronic time is perceived as a line of time with events being scheduled in a row, happening one at a time, beginning and ending at precise moments. poly-chronic time permits several events to transpire at the same time. there is intercultural communication between colombian and american teachers in colombian institutions profile 11, 2009. issn 1657-0790. bogotá, colombia. pages 159-167 163 much less compartmentalization of activities and they occur simultaneously (hall, 1959). 4. colombians hedge their conversations for the sake of relationships whereas americans prefer directness in conversation and honesty at all costs. in their relationships and discussions, americans speak directly (kohls, 1984) and also allow for disagreement. they can “agree to disagree”. colombians avoid giving a direct negative response when it would cause discomfort for the speaker or listener (hutchison et al., 1987). in order to avoid giving an answer that may disappoint, colombians may answer with a “relational yes” to a request that they know cannot be fulfilled (elmer, 1993). they prefer “avoidance at all costs of face-to-face confrontations or unpleasantness with anyone with whom [they] are working or with whom [they] have a relationship” (hall, 1976, p. 158). while directness is a strong american value, most people in the world do not value such a straightforward manner; “such directness is considered crude, harsh, uncultured and certainly disrespectful if not cruel” (elmer, 1993, p. 50). 5. american’s have a stronger sense of ownership, including control of their possessions, their ideas, their time and their personal space compared to colombians. whereas colombians are more flexible in their sense of control, americans are more possessive with their material property and ideas of their creation (althen, 1988). for colombians, personal space is less important and ownership of possessions and ideas is less guarded. for example, an american will find it more difficult to have his work criticized or edited by others than will a colombian and a colombian will be less possessive about her/his workspace than her/his american counterpart. 6. americans prefer change and newness; colombians celebrate the past and prefer continuity to change. americans tend to plan for and live for the future, orienting their present activities to future results; tradition and the past tend to be ignored or pushed aside (kohls, 1984). americans look for ways of overcoming resistance to change (hall, 1959). colombians are more tied to the present and past. it is harder for high context cultures, like that of colombia, to embrace and accommodate change (hall, 1976). 7. americans highly value practicality and efficiency whereas colombians value harmony and congeniality. americans prefer to finish tasks in as timely a fashion as possible (kohls, 1984), regardless of the development of the relationships of those with whom they work. americans do not regard unity as highly as they do other values (elmer, 1993). colombians are very concerned that their relationships remain intact and congenial while they get tasks done (hutchison et al., 1987). that tasks are finished quickly is less important than the congeniality of those who are working together. conflicts in common work situations looking at communication styles and values, there are many areas for possible conflicts in normal working situations. below are three examples of common interactions that can lead to misunderstandings. initiating a project in university settings, especially in the english language departments, colombians and americans work together to complete tasks. generally, the behavior of the americans in the group is such that they arrive at the announced time and begin to work immediately. their costalas universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras164 mode of communication is direct, with an eye on efficiency and based on provable facts. they want to receive credit for ideas and work and get the job done as well and as soon as possible. for colombians, the beginning of a major project requires some ceremony. their good breeding leads them to find out how their colleagues are doing. family or other personal information will be shared, as well as elaborate plans made about how to begin the task. that the job is done quickly is not of great importance. however, that everyone feels a part of the process and feels good about the work is of utmost importance. that individuals receive credit for their specific contributions is less important for the colombians. possible negative interpretations when americans work with their eye on the clock of efficiency, they can be seen as rushing the process and being insensitive to important family happenings they are not interested in hearing about. the colombians can be seen as taking work lightly and preferring to talk about personal issues. americans may feel that it is a waste of precious time to use a communication style that beats around the bush (or irse por las ramas, as the idiom is in spanish) or to have an inordinate interest in how everyone is feeling. idea proposal and critique in the course of proposing ideas and suggestions for the development of the project, the american will directly ask if anyone disagrees with a proposal. an american who disagrees would probably directly express an opposing point of view. however, a colombian will probably not directly contradict the idea. a colombian may gently question if the idea is a good one. those questions will be the hint that there is an opposing opinion and in a colombian setting, the original idea may eventually be discarded, although no direct criticism or overt evaluation took place. possible negative interpretations the american who directly criticizes an idea could be seen as insensitive to people’s feelings and as needlessly interrupting the harmony of the work team. likewise, she or he would be seen as pushing forward ideas when she/he directly asked if people agreed and then blundered on even though others tried to indicate that there were differing opinions. for the american, it may be a surprise that a developing idea was discarded when no obvious opposition was presented. in addition, when the colombians do not seem to offer a contrary perspective, the american may view the colombians as not having an opinion or not caring about the development of the project. greeting two people are talking in the hallway. they have assumed a conversational pose and seem to be speaking intimately. a third person walks by. should this third person greet the other two? the colombian custom is for the third person to greet the other two. american custom would probably direct the third person to half look at the couple speaking. if they initiate a greeting, the third person would greet them. if the engaged couple do not acknowledge the third, then he/she would walk by without greeting. possible negative interpretations in colombia, saying hello and good-by are important social rituals. the failure to greet properly causes strained relationships that affect work environments. those who do not greet well are seen as having bad manners and those who are not greeted may feel slighted or rejected (hutchison et al., 1987). people expect to greet intercultural communication between colombian and american teachers in colombian institutions profile 11, 2009. issn 1657-0790. bogotá, colombia. pages 159-167 165 and be greeted even when they are engaged in conversation or working; colombians greet each other every time they meet, not just the first time they see each other in the day (condon, 1975). therefore, it would be rude for the third person to walk by the other two without greeting them. from the american point of view, the third person could be seen as interrupting the other two, especially if the greeting turned into a two or three minute chat. colombians often say that americans “don’t greet”, as a people who are generally stereotyped as “friendly”, this might be seen as an odd criticism, but the colombian custom of greeting every time people meet makes the american practice of one “hello” per day seem cold, aloof or indifferent. overcoming the conflicts of intercultural communication as the world continues to shrink and communication among people of different cultures increases, it is necessary that all parties become sensitive to the challenges and follow through with those actions that can help ease the conflicts inherent in communicating cross culturally. knowing the cycle of culture shock (for example, see oberg’s work, 1954), understanding one’s own culture and having some knowledge about the culture of colleagues can be helpful to intercultural communication. here are some suggestions that can encourage good cross cultural communication. the informal conversation patterns of americans make it very difficult for non-native speakers of english, or even for non-american native english speakers, to understand american speech. likewise, the indirect speech of colombians, including much use of passive voice and many pronouns, make spanish communication difficult for non-native speakers. keeping conversations simple and direct will help increase communication. here are a few practical solutions to the difficulties of informal intercultural conversation pointed out on the “listening and culture” website: 1. keep language as unadorned and standard as possible. figures of speech have hidden meanings and confuse second language speakers. 2. keep sentences short with subject, verb and object in close proximity. 3. alternate speakers to offer opportunities to check on understanding. 4. keep in mind that the lack of understanding of certain rituals may lead to confusion about why a particular subject is being discussed. 5. expect and be ready to correct misunderstandings. if a speaker finds him/herself in a difficult intercultural conversation, especially one in which the “foreigner” is being asked to defend her/his native country, it is important to try to turn the conversation around and get the focus away from stereotypes and the history of a country’s wrongs and wrongdoings. in intercultural settings, she/ he should try to avoid arguments and remain courteous even if the tone of the conversations seems to become conflictive (tyler, 1979). in cross cultural communication it is easy to misinterpret what is going on, as tone and attitude are culturally bound (hall, 1976). a listener who is being criticized can disarm a verbal aggressor by turning the focus of the conversation, perhaps by stating something positive about the critic’s country or agreeing with him. the criticized person might speak about the discomfort she/he is feeling (tyler, 1979). in his book, the handbook of foreign student counseling, gary althen studied successful foreign student advisors and found that those who enjoy their work had the characteristics that make people costalas universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras166 better communicators. those characteristics are intelligence, patience, tolerance for differences (what he calls “nonjudgementalness”), interest in cultural difference, respect for others, tolerance for ambiguity, sociability, self awareness, and kindness (althen, 1995, pp. 31-40). of course, not all people or even all cultures have all these characteristics, but those people who possess or develop them will find it easier to communicate with people of different cultures. conclusion there are cultural differences between colombians and americans that can stress communication among them. colombia has a high context culture where meaning is greatly influenced by the context in which the communication is made and by the relationship among those who are communicating. the american culture is lower context, where meaning is less influenced by the situation and those involved in the communication. in addition, there is a contrast between conversation styles, including topics of casual conversation, intervals between speakers, and the use of external evidence versus affect. differences in how time, assistance, and the importance of harmony are valued can cause conflicts. the values that govern priorities of colombians and americans can impact negatively on understanding and, consequently, there are misunderstandings in work groups. however, the benefits of their different perspectives as regards the project or work group make it worth the hard work of overcoming the difficulties of intercultural communication. bicultural or multicultural work teams benefit the communities they serve and provide wonderful learning opportunities for the people involved. the difficulties intercultural communication causes are small compared to the advantages of teaching or working with colleagues from diverse cultures. attention to cross cultural challenges can help all members of the community communicate better and provide an enriching experience for all. elmer (1993) sums up the disadvantages of refusing to look through the cultural lens of others: when i resist [cultural adaptation], i wallow in my myopic ignorance, forfeiting the joy of learning from others and the exhilaration of discovering that god’s world far exceeds my experience. when i resist [cultural adaptation], i remain firmly anchored in egocentrism, mistakenly believing that my cultural patterns are the best and only way (p. 53). the culturally diverse work team has the unique advantage of looking at challenges and problems inherent in the work situation from different cultural perspectives. the best characteristics from those cultures can be exploited for the development of a successful work team for the benefit of the community and those who make up the team. references althen, g. (1988). american ways: a guide for foreigners in the united states. yarmouth: intercultural press. althen, g. (1995). handbook of foreign student counseling. yarmouth: intercultural press. cagle, j. (2004). a communication and culture, a power point presentation. retrieved may 2008 from http:// zimmer.csufresno.edu/~johnca/spch100/03culture. ppt condon, j. c., & yousef, f. (1975). an introduction to intercultural communication. new york: macmillan. elmer, d. (1993). cross-cultural conflict: building relationships for effective ministry. downers grave: intervarsity press. gordon, r. (1974). living in latin america: a case study in cross-cultural communication. skokie: national textbook co. intercultural communication between colombian and american teachers in colombian institutions profile 11, 2009. issn 1657-0790. bogotá, colombia. pages 159-167 167 hall, e. t. (1976). beyond culture. new york: anchor books. hall, e. t. ( 1959). the silent language. new york: doubleday & co., inc. hall, e. t., & hall, m. r. (1990). understanding cultural differences. yarmouth: intercultural press. hutchinson, w. r., poznanski, c. a. & todtstockman, l. (1987). living in colombia. yarmouth: intercultural press. kohls, l. r. (1984). the values americans live by. washington, d.c. the washington international center. oberg, k. (1954). culture shock & the problem of adjustment to new cultural environments retrieved may 2008 from the worldwide classroom: consortium for international education & multicultural studies. website: http://www.worldwide. edu/planning_guide/culture_re-entry_shock/ tyler, v. l. (1979). intercultural interacting. provo: brigham young u. university of iowa. (2004). handbook for foreign students and scholars. retrieved may 2008 from http://www.uiowa.edu/~intl/oiss/documents/ hfss04.pdf about the author georgia costalas, a native new yorker, is the associate director for global education, wilkes u, p. she held administrative positions and taught, 1982-2008, at usb cali, colegio bolivar, and colegio nueva granada. she has an m.a. in educational supervision, western carolina; an m.a. in history, columbia, ny; a b.a. in literature, barnard, ny. 27profile vol. 11, no. 2, 2009. issn 1657-0790. bogotá, colombia. pages 27-42 integrating the coffee culture with the teaching of english integración de la cultura cafetera con la enseñanza del inglés carmen tulia zuluaga corrales*1 margarita maría lópez pinzón** josefina quintero corzo*** universidad de caldas, colombia the present article gives account of the results of a research project developed at the university of caldas with a group of preservice teachers and advisors. the purpose of the work was to sensitize the academic community about the importance of rescuing the cultural identity of rural school students. to achieve this goal, advisors and preservice teachers innovated the school curriculum by integrating the coffee culture to the english program. the study revealed that preservice teachers became skillful at designing content-based tasks that were more meaningful for the students; likewise, they became more sensitive to the problems that affected rural students and their families. it was also found that these students became aware of the commitment they had with the region and its surroundings; furthermore, because classes were more appealing, their motivation increased significantly. key words: cultural integration, curriculum, preservice teacher, foreign language teaching-learning process, rural school este artículo da cuenta de los resultados de una investigación desarrollada en la universidad de caldas con un grupo de educadores en formación y sus asesoras, con el fin de sensibilizar a la comunidad académica sobre la importancia de rescatar la identidad cultural de los estudiantes de las escuelas rurales. para lograr este objetivo, las asesoras y educadores en formación realizaron innovaciones en el currículo al integrar la cultura cafetera a los contenidos de los cursos de inglés. el estudio demostró que los docentes en formación desarrollaron habilidades para diseñar actividades que integraran los contenidos de inglés con la cultura cafetera y que fueran más significativas para los estudiantes. asimismo, se mostraron más sensibles hacia los problemas que afectaban a los estudiantes y a sus familias. se encontró también que los estudiantes de las escuelas rurales se concientizaron acerca del compromiso que debían tener con la región y sus alrededores. puesto que las clases fueron más atractivas, los niveles de motivación de los estudiantes incrementaron significativamente. palabras clave: integración cultural, currículo, practicante, procesos de enseñanza-aprendizaje de una lengua extranjera, escuela rural * e-mail: proespe@ucaldas.edu.co ** e-mail: margarita.lopez@colombomanizales.com  *** e-mail: josefina.quintero@ucaldas.edu.co  address: calle 65 # 26-10. facultad de artes y humanidades. universidad de caldas. manizales, colombia. . this article was received on april 15, 2009 and accepted on june 8, 2009. 28 universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras zuluaga corrales, lópez pinzón & quintero corzo introduction one of the most recent innovations in the curriculum of teacher preparation at the university of caldas in manizales has been the design of an educational project whose main purpose is to improve the quality of the learning and teaching process. this project is developed along the teaching practicum, and it was completed during the last academic year in different schools of the region. the practicum model in the modern languages program requires the formation of small collaborative groups of 4 or 5 students and advisors with experience in doing educational research. collaborative groups of this kind allow all the participants to learn, teach and carry out research simultaneously. considering the importance that b.a. programs have in state universities for the formation of highly qualified teachers, a group of practicum advisors from the modern language program of the university of caldas started questioning themselves about ways to improve preservice teachers’ performance in rural institutions, where they were carrying out their teaching practicum. thus, being aware of the fact that the curricula must respond to the social, political, economic and cultural necessities of the country and the region, advisors began to make preservice teachers aware of the importance of comprehending the relationship between the rural context and the teaching-learning processes of a foreign language. at the same time, preservice teachers were instructed to design contextualized english classes in those rural institutions in order to transform the current social, cultural and educational situation. thus, the relationship amongst language, learning and culture was constantly enhanced. the project “integrating the coffee culture with the teaching of english” arose from the importance of rescuing rural students’ roots and origin, and the need for rescuing their cultural identity. researchers are aware that people from rural areas have adopted new patterns and lifestyles which have been imposed on them through the modernization of their society. moreover, considering that the teaching of a language requires the learning of culture, lessons were designed including contents associated with the coffee culture. context of the research the present study was conducted at rural schools, located in the nearby areas of manizales. these institutions have an average of 251 students and their socioeconomic stratum is classified as middle-low and low. students’ parents have different kinds of occupations such as housewives, street vendors, farmers or factory employees. some of the teachers hold bachelors of arts degrees and others hold masters’ degrees. the methodology that the institutional educational project (proyecto educativo institucional: pei) proposes for these rural institutions is “new school”. this methodology takes into account the necessities and perspectives of students, teachers, parents and rural communities. the pei’s main objective is to foster the development of skills and values such as autonomy, freedom, democracy, responsibility, sincerity, respect, justice, honesty, cooperation and tolerance. rural schools have the mission of offering a modern and democratic education, suitable for dealing with the latest technological and scientific advances. furthermore, these schools intend to provide students with an education for local development, aimed at recognizing their own culture. in addition, students are expected to participate in community projects. the responsibilities derived from their involvement in those projects help 29 integrating the coffee culture with the teaching of english profile vol. 11, no. 2, 2009. issn 1657-0790. bogotá, colombia. pages 27-42 them to become critical and reflective individuals so that they can make their own decisions for improving their standard of living. one of the main characteristics of the rural curriculum is its relationship with the community and the implementation of interactive pedagogy which allows learners to incorporate their previous knowledge into their learning process. in the meantime, this approach gives them the tools to face situations that affect their communities. consequently, “new school methodology” emerges as an alternative to solve the most common problems of remote rural schools with disperse populations and low income students. this pedagogical model helps students to undergo a significant learning process. summarized below are some concepts given by psacharopoulos, rojas & vélez (1993) which establish the difference between traditional and new school methodology. • new school methodology attempts to integrate institutions and the community by encouraging teachers, students and parents to participate in school activities. the main objective is to actively involve parents to support their children’s learning. • the new school curriculum is rural-oriented. the guides, developed by teachers themselves, help them adapt the national curriculum to regional and local needs, and encourage the practical application of what is learned in school about community life. • new school methodology requires specially trained teachers in two areas. they should know both the subject matter, as well as the application of the program’s methodology. • teachers and administrators are taught to involve the community and use new educational materials, students’ self instructed textbooks, and the school library. the training, as well as the design of materials, is done sequentially so that teachers can gradually apply what they learn. training becomes an active learning process about how to implement the program. • a curriculum component consists of guides for students and manuals for teachers and supervisors. the guides facilitate individual as well as group work. • rural institutions using new school methodology are multigrade, meaning that one or two teachers instruct children of different grades, who are all working in one or two classrooms. • students are promoted to the next grade once they have achieved the minimum educational objectives, which could take more or less than the traditional academic year. • there is a lot of interaction in new school methodology. peer work is very common in which the older students help younger ones. • schools have study corners and a small library. these study corners are established as areas for activities focusing on different subjects, such as math, science, social studies, etc. the library provides support not only for students, but also for the whole community as it is, of course, an information center. the colombian coffee region located in the central part of the country and surrounded by the departments of antioquia, caldas, risaralda and quindío, the coffee region is one of the most beautiful areas in the country with coffee plantations, streams, small valleys and fertile volcanic soils. it also has a pleasant climate and a landscape of gentle hills which allow or foment rich agricultural production. cities and towns were built along the mountains by the first settlers coming from antioquia, and the new generations have preserved, to a large extent, their ancestors’ traditions, especially those that 30 universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras zuluaga corrales, lópez pinzón & quintero corzo deal with myths and legends, food, home remedies, and housing styles. the region’s colorful landscape is characterized by coffee farms and products such as plantains, corn, bananas, cassava, sugar cane and fruits like oranges, tangerines, lemons, and passion fruit, among others. the land, however, is used not only to grow products, but also to build parks, hotels, museums, and ecological trails. reasons for the coffee crisis coffee production and exports have had a significant impact on the colombian economy and employment; however, one reason for the crisis is that most coffee growers depend mainly on the production of a single crop with no other sources of income; consequently, if there is a loss in the production or a drop in the international price, coffee growers cannot cover their expenses. another reason is that some farmers have migrated to cities in order to search for better opportunities. this has affected both the farmers’ families and the society in general because they do not have either the education or the preparation to work in anything other than agriculture. as a result, this migration has increased the unemployment level in the city. considering the problems mentioned above and bearing in mind that rural students are directly affected by the migration of their parents to the cities, the researchers intended through this work to sensitize the academic community and to develop awareness of the importance of rescuing the cultural identity in rural classrooms. then, meaningful research questions were posed. research questions • in which ways do preservice teachers and advisors incorporate the students’ cultural background in the english curriculum? • in which ways does the teaching process engaged in by preservice teachers in rural schools contribute to enhance the students’ knowledge and cultural identity of the coffee culture? • how can preservice teachers promote meaningful learning in rural schools? purposes for conducting the study • to encourage preservice teachers to integrate the coffee culture into the teaching of english in rural schools. • to incorporate rural students’ cultural background in the english curriculum. • to enhance students’ awareness of their cultural identity in rural schools. • to promote meaningful learning in rural schools through the design, implementation and evaluation of teaching guides considering new school methodology. previous research projects previous studies have been done by other researchers at the university of caldas (arenas, cardona & quintero, 2000; cardona & quintero, 1996). these studies have demonstrated that teacher-centered classes still prevail in most of the schools in manizales. hence, the tasks and activities designed by the teachers are frequently repetitive and meaningless; these permit neither enough student interaction nor communication. activities are not in context, cultural aspects are rarely included, and language skills are not integrated. 31 integrating the coffee culture with the teaching of english profile vol. 11, no. 2, 2009. issn 1657-0790. bogotá, colombia. pages 27-42 results obtained from these previous projects have suggested some modifications in which teachers should change their role as controller and provider of knowledge to that of guide or counselor; therefore, students should take a more active part in the learning process. these studies have also recommended promoting learner autonomy, so that teachers can give more responsibilities to students in such a way that they can solve problems and make decisions about what, where, when and how to learn. culture as an essential component of an english program design it is clear that teaching a language is not just teaching linguistics, phonetics and vocabulary. learning a language involves more than that, it involves culture and communication. when people communicate, they share a particular system of cultural meanings such as feelings, memories, experiences, values, customs and beliefs. “because language is the primary means for transmitting culture from one generation to the next, much of any culture is encoded in linguistic form” (spradley, 1980, p. 12). back to the latin root, “cultura” means to cultivate, and the german root “volksgeist”, refers to “the spirit of a people”. culture generally refers to patterns of human activity and the symbolic structures that give such activity significance. in general, the term culture includes knowledge, technology, art, customs, as well as moral systems and many other practices and capacities acquired by men which are transmitted from one generation to another. in the 20th century, social researchers paved the way for the modern understanding of culture. notable anthropologists began studying culture as an object of scientific analysis. spradley (1980, p. 6) defines culture as “the acquired knowledge people use to interpret experience and generate behavior”. as a result, children are able to acquire their culture in an ongoing and endless process by observing adults, doing things and using language. they observe what people do (cultural behavior); they observe things people make and use such as clothes and tools (cultural artifacts); and they listen to what people say (speech messages). geertz (1973) states that culture is a coherent system of meaning. he provides educational researchers with a theoretical and methodological framework called “deep description”. “deep description” of culture has implications not only for social sciences but, in our case, for educational practices. according to geertz, human actions and cultural meaning vary according to the patterns of life. social actions and social events, behaviors, institutions, or processes can be intellectually described. researchers constantly make cultural inferences from what people say, from the way they act, and from the artifacts they use. spradley (1980, p. 3), one of the most outstanding researchers, argues that ethnography is the work of describing a culture. the central aim of ethnographers is to understand another way of life from the native point of view. the essential core of ethnography is this concern with the meaning of actions and events to the people we seek to understand. some of these meanings are directly expressed in language; many are taken for granted and communicated only indirectly through word and action. but in every society people make constant use of these complex meaning systems to organize their behavior, to understand themselves and others, and to make sense out of the world in which they live. these systems of meaning constitute their culture; ethnography always implies a theory of culture (spradley, 1980, p. 5). 32 universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras zuluaga corrales, lópez pinzón & quintero corzo useful meanings concerning the relationship amongst culture, language and school practices can be summarized in the following list: • educators can be provided with a set of useful tools to understand school life. • the acquisition of language accelerates the learning process. • people use their culture to interpret experience and do things. • the total way of life of a people is considered. • the way of thinking, feeling, and believing affects the relationships between teachers and students. • a deeper comprehension of the classroom offers mechanisms for the normative regulation of behavior. • cultural knowledge is so important in generating behavior and interpreting our experience. the abovementioned definitions of what culture is and what culture implies for educators are coherent with law of education 115 (men, 1994) and the colombian political constitution, which are the basis of the school curriculum. thus, to orient the teaching-learning process in terms of multicultural demands, it is necessary to overcome language barriers. according to the ministry of national education (men, 1999), education should transcend political and economic differences, and should emphasize the cultural values that promote respect for cultural diversity. in colombia, the curriculum guidelines for foreign language teaching, according to the ministry of national education (men, 1999), claims that a person who learns in an intercultural environment is an individual that possesses his own culture, but is open and tolerant towards other cultures. he perceives the foreign culture from his own perspective and observes the outside world by taking into consideration his selfawareness and personal values. during the process of language learning and acquisition, learners become familiar with different cultures, are able to understand the difference between the way other people think, feel, and see life from the other people’s perspective. grabe & stoller (1997, p. 7) point out that: “it is possible to understand other cultures without losing respect for one’s own”. in this way, foreign language teaching and learning become a valuable means to acquire and produce new knowledge, to have access to scientific and technological advances and to enjoy the sociocultural integration as a whole. theories that support the relationship amongst language, learning and culture content-based instruction, according to grabe & stoller (1997), is a method that gives importance to the different skills associated with the language, and to meaningful learning; however, its main emphasis is on the content rather than the linguistic component of the language. as students learn the language they also learn about different cultural topics that relate to their own experiences and needs. the class atmosphere facilitates individual and social learning because students interact with each other. the activities in class are meaningful and significant as they involve other methods and techniques such as cooperative learning, which is based on experiential learning, project work, constructivism, interactive school environment, authentic material and communication. the whole language movement (freeman & freeman, 1992; goodman, 1989; newman, 1985; watson, 1989) has a philosophical foundation based on varied research carried out in linguistics, sociology, anthropology, and child development, 33 integrating the coffee culture with the teaching of english profile vol. 11, no. 2, 2009. issn 1657-0790. bogotá, colombia. pages 27-42 among others, with the purpose of creating a conducive classroom environment for learning. the whole language approach is based on two historical traditions: social reconstruction and studentcentered classes. students are encouraged to ask questions and answer them grounded in their own experiences, needs and expectations. the language is taught through specific contents and topics. the sociolinguistic competence theory (canale & swain, 1980) refers to the capacity a student has to communicate linguistically and meaningfully. the student follows the socio-cultural rules of the language as culture represents different dialects, idiomatic expressions and individual characteristics of each region. this competence is demonstrated by appropriate use of the language according to the context. from a socio-linguistic point of view, language is real, natural, interesting, comprehensible and relevant when it has social application for the students. vygotsky’s sociocultural theory (1964) affirms that learning takes place in social interaction. the environment where the individual lives and the social interaction determine the intellectual capacities which are crucial to the learning process. when the individual learns about the culture of the language, he changes his way of thinking and these changes allow him to successfully adapt to the values and traditions of the other culture. research methodology this project followed the action-research model because the researchers were aware of the importance of becoming reflective, observant and transformative teachers. in addition, this was a research experience in which advisors, preservice teachers and rural school students had the opportunity to observe, describe, reflect and develop some learning and teaching strategies in order to improve the english learning process. likewise, action-research gives teachers and students the opportunity to be conscious of their educational practice in the classroom by dealing with the needs and the problems of the social, economical and political context that affect rural school life. the definitions given below support the process carried out by preservice teachers and advisors during the project. action-research is a form of collective self-reflective enquiry undertaken by participants in social situations in order to improve the productivity, rationality, and justice of their own social and educational practices, as well as their understanding of these practices and the situations in which the practices are carried out (kemmis & mctaggart, 1988, p. 28). elliott (1991, p. 69) states that “action-research is the study of a social situation with a view to improve the quality of action within it”. likewise, corey (1953, p. 6), one of the pioneers in actionresearch, claims that: “action-research is a process in which practitioners study problems scientifically so that they can evaluate, improve and steer decisionmaking and practice”. this project also assimilates the features and principles of case study. this approach is used because it is compatible with action-research which demands a comprehensive moment, and because it is research on a small-scale. a case is “the bounded system or the object of study, it might be an event, a process, a program, or several people” (stake, 1995, p. 82). as classroom research simply tries to investigate what actually happens inside the classroom, creswell (1998, p. 249) states that: “a qualitative case study provides an in-depth study of this system, based on a diverse array of data collection materials, and the researcher situates this system or case within its larger context or setting”. 34 universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras zuluaga corrales, lópez pinzón & quintero corzo participants the participants of this research project included 3 advisors from the b.a. program in modern languages, 5 preservice teachers, ages ranging between 20 and 25 years, 3 rural schools and an average of 175 rural school students (approximately thirty-five students per group). their geographical origin was rural schools located in nearby zones of manizales, and their ages ranged between 10 and 17. data gathering, instruments and techniques throughout the development of the project, the researchers used several instruments and techniques to collect classroom data such as observation, informal talks, audio, video recordings, field notes, transcripts and document reviews. diagnostic stage the first step was to review the institutional educational project–(pei) of the rural schools involved in the research. then some observations were carried out to get acquainted with the way english classes were taught and to find out about the type of materials used to develop lessons. the first aspect found in the diagnosis was the difficulty rural schools had achieving the objectives stated in the institutional mission and vision, so that students could develop their awareness to value their own culture. although rural schools have specific guidelines, they do not focus on the importance of coffee cultural, social, economical and political implications. only the subjects of history and biology included some topics concerning coffee culture. it was also found that english teachers were unable to accomplish the pedagogical principles proposed by the new school methodology. concerning students’ english level, it was found that it was very low, and did not respond to the parameters established by the ministry of national education. the lack of motivation and interest in learning english depended on several factors such as an inadequate methodology: teacher-centered classes, use of the grammar translation approach and lack of sequential and relevant topics. in addition, it was found that resources such as videos, films, recordings or materials that could promote active participation in class were not used. thus, the diagnosis confirmed once more the absence of a contextualized curriculum that could enhance language learning and promote intercultural communication. action stage once the diagnostic stage was completed, researchers planned some actions to be taken in the action stage. at this point the collaborative group –advisors and preservice teachers– developed lesson plans and designed materials to be used in the english classes. these lesson plans were intended to integrate language and content with topics related to the coffee culture, such as the farmers’ lifestyle and their surroundings, housing, clothing, health, economy, and the coffee growing process. once the class was over, preservice teachers reflected upon the effectiveness of the activities and methodology used as well as on the achievements students obtained. finally, researchers decided on what to improve or change. in the meantime, advisors observed trainees’ classes, described in detail the process and included comments and suggestions about their strengths and weaknesses. 35 integrating the coffee culture with the teaching of english profile vol. 11, no. 2, 2009. issn 1657-0790. bogotá, colombia. pages 27-42 the extracts below (samples 1, 2, 3, and 4) give an account of the lessons developed by preservice teachers: sample 1. means of transportation topic: means of transportation grade: 9th communicative goals: to talk about the different means of transportation in the coffee region, describe ways of living, differentiate uses of transportation. linguistic goals: to review the simple present, to practice some adjectives, and to learn vocabulary about transportation. presentation what are the different means of transportation in the coffee region? how are they classified? what means of transportation do you use? practice task 1. reading comprehension there are some different means of transportation in the coffee region which are classified by people according to their most frequent usage. for example, jeeps are commonly located in the town’s square, and their main activity is to transport peasants, farmers and visitors to the country houses. sometimes the jeeps are used to carry agricultural products like coffee, plantains, tomatoes, etc. although most jeep drivers are very rigid about the transportation fares, people try to bargain from time to time. task 2. answer the following questions according to the former reading: 1. where do drivers usually park their jeeps? 2. who usually travels by jeep in the coffee region? 3. what kinds of products are transported in jeeps? 4. do jeep drivers ever bargain fares? task 3. look at the vehicles below and circle the most common in your region. draw some others you know in the empty squares. production choose one of the vehicles above and describe it in the same way as the former reading about jeeps. share your description with your classmates. 36 universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras zuluaga corrales, lópez pinzón & quintero corzo sample 2. cristian camilo can grow coffee topic: cristian camilo can grow coffee grade: 7th communicative goal: to ask and answer questions about what one can do or cannot do. linguistic goals: to practice the auxiliary can in affirmative and negative sentences. presentation what activities can you do at the farm? can you milk a cow? can your father drive a truck? practice task 1. writing activity the teacher models some activities she can and cannot do. ex “i can milk a cow but i cannot play the guitar”. she writes the examples on the board; then, she instructs the students to write similar sentences about what they can or cannot do. task 2. the students practice creating questions using the structures can and can’t and then writing the answers. task 3. the students complete a chart about their abilities to do different activities (climb a tree, play tejo, grow berries, plant beans and pick coffee beans) individually. then they get in groups and ask each other if they can do or not these activities. finally they ask the teacher. production the teacher introduces the use of can in past tense “could” ex. “when i was five i could run but i couldn’t ride a bike”. then she asks the students to write similar sentences. (when i was seven i could climb a tree but i couldn’t plant coffee). 37 integrating the coffee culture with the teaching of english profile vol. 11, no. 2, 2009. issn 1657-0790. bogotá, colombia. pages 27-42 sample 3. eating at my uncle's farm topic: eating at my uncle’s farm grade: 8th communicative goal: to express preferences, to use vocabulary related to typical food. linguistic goals: to practice simple past, likes and dislikes. presentation what plants of the coffee region do you know about? what kind of food do people eat in the coffee region? what fruits do people eat at the coffee farm? practice task 1. reading activity the teacher gives the students a reading. my uncle’s farm today i was with my family at my uncle’s farm. there i could see many things i liked very much; for instance, some animals and the landscape. but best of all it was the food because i ate delicious fruits and dishes i had not eaten for a long time. my uncle offered us oranges, avocados, guavas, tangerines, papayas and plantains that he cultivated in his farm. the students read and in groups write a list of all the fruits and plants that are mentioned in the text. task 2. the teacher gives the students a handout where they have to match a drawing of a fruit with the corresponding word. then they color the drawings and talk about the fruit they like most. production the students write a short paragraph about their own farm including the products they cultivate. 38 universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras zuluaga corrales, lópez pinzón & quintero corzo sample 4. description of the coffee plant topic: description of the coffee plant grade: 7th communicative goal: to describe the coffee plant. linguistic goals: to practice simple present and vocabulary related to the coffee plant. presentation the teacher brings a real coffee plant to the classroom. she shows the students its different parts: root, stem, leaves, grains, flowers and branches. she then asks them the following questions: what other plants of the coffee region do you know about? what fruits do they produce? describe their parts. practice task 1. reading activity the teacher gives the following reading to the students: description of the coffee plant a big coffee tree has thick foliage with dark green leaves. as it grows they change to a light green. the size and the shape of the leaves depend on the varieties and the cultivation system. in colombian varieties the tree has oval leaves, opposite to each other. the most common varieties of coffee plants in colombia are caturra and arabic. the flowers are white and small, the fruits are green when they are not mature and red when they are ripe; they are called “cherry coffee beans”. each bean has two grains facing each other. the trunk grows vertically and may reach up to 1.5 meters. task 2. the students answer some reading comprehension questions and then complete some sentences with information from the text. task 3. the teacher distributes some handouts among the students with illustrations of the different parts of the coffee plants. they have to label the diagrams according to the information from the reading. production the students choose one of the illustrations and describe it to the class. 39 integrating the coffee culture with the teaching of english profile vol. 11, no. 2, 2009. issn 1657-0790. bogotá, colombia. pages 27-42 findings once the data gathered were analyzed, a great improvement was found in both preservice teachers and their rural students. the information is summarized in the sample below: sample 5. achievements of both preservice teachers and rural school students preservice teachers rural school students acquired knowledge about the culture of the region (customs, economy, geography, history, health, agriculture, technology, etc.). became aware of the commitment they have with their region and its surroundings. became aware of the richness the coffee region possesses. developed an ecological conscience by taking better care of nature and protecting their soil, flora and fauna. developed a real sense of belonging due to the cultural aspects of the region. developed a real sense of belonging due to the cultural aspects of the region. contributed to the updating of the school’s curriculum. became aware of the richness the coffee region possesses. learned how to integrate language and content. learned more about their culture in their english classes. the english classroom became a space for reflection about the problems and limitations that the region has. became more motivated to learn english since they found that their classes were meaningful and included topics that were familiar to them. became skillful at designing appropriate materials such as guides, flashcards, posters, pamphlets, maps, games, picture dictionaries, etc. became less dependent on grammar learning and interacted more in class. became aware of the properties of coffee and its use. had the opportunity to create materials that contributed to their learning english. became sensitive to the problems that affected the students and their families. internalized language and content. promoted changes and improvements in the class processes. made connections between english and other subjects (math, science, social studies, etc.). learned how to use research tools properly (diaries, surveys, observational entries, interviews, etc.). became more involved and more responsible for their own learning by doing extra class activities. preservice teachers also became skillful at: -becoming more reflective and critical. -making decisions and solving problems. -learning to accept and tolerate constructive criticism. -designing content-based tasks that were more meaningful for the students. finally, the students concluded that it was important to learn english to have a better future; they were very enthusiastic to study the coffee region because they said that it was a new way to learn easier and to know more about the place where they live; they could enjoy the english class. 40 universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras zuluaga corrales, lópez pinzón & quintero corzo the following testimonies reflect the achievements obtained by both preservice teachers and their students: preservice teachers we really learned new things about our region and culture; for instance, we found that the country people know when to sow and when to harvest. i was able to understand the difficulties the students have to go through to attend school and to finish their studies. it was very interesting to adapt the class contents to the rural students’ real life situations. the materials i designed for my classes helped me to involve the students in their own learning process since they referred to topics that were familiar to their own rural context. i became more analytical and reflective about the class process. the research instruments that i used helped me not only to gather data, but also to analyze and compare the results obtained. the strategies that we as modern languages trainees are committed to are the educative ones because we have the possibility of generating solutions from the classroom to problems we all are involved in. on the other hand, students require clear goals to learn a language, goals related to their own interests and context. students what the teacher taught us was very good [interesting], specially the vocabulary and expressions. now i love my country and my region even more because we have many beautiful plants and animals. we get our food from the crops we grow. i learned a lot, especially about things you can make with coffee and the benefit it gives to our families. the readings that the teacher gave us in class were very cool. i had a lot of fun in the english classes because i learned english and also about our land, plants, and different crops such as coffee, plantains and bananas. i learned to take care of the water, our land and animals. conclusions and pedagogical implications integrating language, culture and curriculum in the b.a. program through research is a clear way to demonstrate how the university can project and develop curricular proposals that contribute to problem solving in the educational community and to promote their own identity and values. therefore, it is of vital importance to integrate the culture of the region in which the students live with learning english so that the rural students can learn in a more meaningful way. this type of research contributes to the development of awareness about the importance of preserving the colombian culture and the traditions of its ancestors in the coffee region. teachers must stimulate rural students to value their customs by encouraging them to talk about their surroundings and the richness of their culture. in this way, their learning english becomes more meaningful because the students constantly relate their daily experiences to the activities carried out in class. strategies implemented in rural schools with the students such as project work, collaborative and cooperative work, contribute to a successful learning process. on the other hand, it is important for rural school english teachers to consider the students’ social background and their previous knowledge acquired in their surroundings to make learning more successful. instead of replicating mechanical drills coming from the textbooks, teachers should assign their pupils relevant tasks, not only to develop their sense of autonomy, but to raise their enthusiasm and commitment, and thus, make the learning process more fun. 41 integrating the coffee culture with the teaching of english profile vol. 11, no. 2, 2009. issn 1657-0790. bogotá, colombia. pages 27-42 the curriculum in programs that educate teachers must include subjects in the research field which guide students toward the development of competences such as critical thinking, interpretation, context recognition, analysis, and the creation of questions. by so doing, preservice teachers can develop a descriptive research competence that allows them to solve problems or improve situations in the rural communities. research practices enable university professors and preservice teachers to design projects that integrate research, pedagogy and their discipline to solve problems and increase cultural knowledge. these types of projects strengthen the relationship between the university and public education, and respond to the policies stated in their institutional educational project. this is a requirement of the colombian law of education 115 (men, 1994), for basic education. finally, this study impacted preservice teachers, schools, students and the region since it transformed the traditional methodology previously used. it also changed the relationship between advisors and trainees, and improved the relationship between the university and rural schools. the authors hope that this research will give ideas to other teachers and encourage them to integrate culture with the teaching of english not only in the coffee region but all over colombia. references arenas, j. h., cardona, g., & quintero, j. (2000). prácticas evaluativas en el aula de inglés. revista universidad de caldas, 20(1), 49-94. canale, m., & swain, m. (1980). theoretical bases of communicative approaches to second language teaching and testing. london: longman. cardona, g., & quintero, j. (1996). una mirada investigativa al aula de inglés. manizales: centro editorial universidad de caldas. colombia. ministerio de educación nacional [men]. (1994). ley general de educación (ley 115 del 8 de febrero de 1994). bogotá: author. colombia. ministerio de educación nacional [men]. (1999). idiomas extranjeros: lineamientos curriculares, áreas obligatorias y fundamentales. bogotá. author. corey, s. m. (1953). action research to improve school practice. new york: teachers college, columbia university. creswell, j. w. (1998). qualitative inquiry and research design. thousand oaks, london: sage publications. elliott, j. (1991). classroom action research. cambridge: cambridge institute of education. freeman, d., & freeman, y. (1992). is whole language teaching compatible with content-based instruction? the catesol journal, 5(1), 103-108. geertz, c. (1973). description: toward an interpretive theory of culture, the interpretation of culture. retrieved august 18, 2007, from web site: http://academic. csuohio.edu/as227/spring2003/geertz.htm goodman, y. m. (1989). roots of the whole language movement. the elementary school journal, 90(2), 113127. grabe, w., & stoller, f. l. (1997). a six-t’s approach to content-based instruction. retrieved november 13, 2008, from web site: http://www.carla.umn.edu/ cobaltt/modules/curriculum/stoller_grabe1997/6ts. pdf kemmis, s., & mctaggart, r. (eds.) (1988). the action research planner (3rd ed., substantially revised). geelong: deakin university press. newman, j. (ed). (1985). whole language theory in use. portsmouth, n. h.: heinemann educational books. psacharopoulos, g., rojas, c., & vélez, e. (1993). achievement evaluation of colombia’s escuela nueva: 42 universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras zuluaga corrales, lópez pinzón & quintero corzo is multigrade the answer? comparative educational review, 37(3), 263-276. spradley, j. p. (1980). participant observation. new york: holt, rinehart & winston. stake, r. (1995). the art of case study research. thousand oaks, london: sage publications. vygotsky, l. s. (1964). lenguaje y pensamiento. buenos aires: lautaro. watson, d. j. (1989). defining and describing whole language. the elementary school journal, 90(2). university of chicago. retrieved november 14, 2008, from web site: http://www.jstor.org/pss/1002025. about the authors carmen tulia zuluaga corrales teacher educator and director in the master’s program in didactic. she has been involved in the teaching practicum of the modern languages licenciatura program at the university of caldas. b.a. in modern languages. m.a. in tesol, west virginia university. she has been doing educational research for several years. margarita maría lópez pinzón m.a. in language teaching from the university of caldas. she has been a professor, adviser and researcher at the same university in the school of modern languages and at the english didactics master’s program. she is currently the academic director at the centro colombo americano in manizales. josefina quintero corzo head professor and researcher at universidad de caldas. she holds a doctoral degree in education. b.a. in modern languages. author of national and international articles including academic papers such as interdisciplinary curriculum, qualitative research, classroom research, ethnography applied to education. peer evaluator of the national system of science and technology. profile no. 7dic 5.p65 ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ profile profile profile profile profile 7 (2006): universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras a case study of the learning styles in low-level learners in a private school in bogotá un estudio de caso sobre los estilos de aprendizaje de estudiantes de bajo rendimientoun estudio de caso sobre los estilos de aprendizaje de estudiantes de bajo rendimientoun estudio de caso sobre los estilos de aprendizaje de estudiantes de bajo rendimientoun estudio de caso sobre los estilos de aprendizaje de estudiantes de bajo rendimientoun estudio de caso sobre los estilos de aprendizaje de estudiantes de bajo rendimiento académico de un colegio privado en bogotáacadémico de un colegio privado en bogotáacadémico de un colegio privado en bogotáacadémico de un colegio privado en bogotáacadémico de un colegio privado en bogotá david abella*david abella*david abella*david abella*david abella* adavid372002@yahoo.com yyyyyakakakakakelin salinas**elin salinas**elin salinas**elin salinas**elin salinas** yakida3008@yahoo.com universidad nacional de colombia this paper aims to report on a study carried out with eighth graders at a private school in bogotá. the main focus of the research was to determine the learning styles characterizing lowachievement students when learning english. it also gives an account of the role learning styles played in the learning process as well as the factors that allowed students to explore their styles. instruments used to collect data were field notes, students’ work and focus-group interviews. considering students’ interests, their needs and providing them with different environments for learning were the silent results of the implementation of this research. kkkkkey worey worey worey worey words: ds: ds: ds: ds: learning styles, low-achievement learners, learning environments, reinforcement el propósito de este artículo es presentar un estudio que se llevó a cabo con estudiantes de octavo grado en un colegio privado en bogotá. el objetivo principal de la investigación fue determinar los estilos de aprendizaje que caracterizan a los estudiantes de bajo rendimiento académico cuando aprenden inglés. también dar cuenta del rol que éstos juegan en el proceso de aprendizaje, así como de los factores que les permitían a los estudiantes explorar sus estilos de aprendizaje. los instrumentos que se emplearon para recolectar datos fueron: notas de campo, trabajos de los estudiantes y entrevistas de grupos focales. como resultado de la implementación de esta investigación se logró considerar los intereses de los estudiantes y sus necesidades, proporcionándoles diferentes ambientes para el aprendizaje. palabras claves: palabras claves: palabras claves: palabras claves: palabras claves: estilos de aprendizaje, estudiantes de bajo rendimiento académico, ambientes de aprendizaje, refuerzo *david abelladavid abelladavid abelladavid abelladavid abella holds a b. ed. in philology and languages, english, from the universidad nacional de colombia. he is a primary english teacher at iparm school and is also an english teacher in the extension programs at the universidad nacional de colombia. **yyyyyakakakakakelin salinaselin salinaselin salinaselin salinaselin salinas, b. ed. in philology and languages, english, from the universidad nacional de colombia. she is currently an english teacher in the extension programs at the universidad nacional de colombia. furthermore, she was a tutor for the profile in-service program. this article was received on march 14th, 2006 and accepted on may 16th, 2006. 117-129 ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ 118 abella and salinas profileprofileprofileprofileprofile introductionintroductionintroductionintroductionintroduction during our teaching process,,,,, we noticed that students learn in different ways. in order to meet students’ needs in terms of their different learning styles, it became necessary to use certain activities; this was especially so in the case of learners with low academic performance. we, as teachers, should take advantage of our students’ learning styles and create an environment in which all the members of the classroom feel comfortable. considering what was obser ved in the classroom that we chose for our project, the main focus of this paper was to detect the learning styles students with low academic performance used when learning a foreign language and afterwards give an account of the role they played in the learning process as well as the factors that allowed them to explore their styles. literaliteraliteraliteraliterature reviewture reviewture reviewture reviewture review within the field of learning styles several studies have been undertaken with the purpose of identifying individual learning styles, interests and likes. some authors have approached this topic by giving a definition of the term ‘learning style’ and by providing a classification of the different learning styles, from both pedagogical and psychological perspectives. students’ learning processes and the differences among them is also important. these differences have to be taken into account for planning classes and for the different activities that can be implemented according to their respective learning processes. richards and lockhart (1994, p. 59) refer to learning styles -also known as cognitive stylesas “some of the views learners hold about language learning and language teaching”. those styles are strongly related to personality types. cognitive styles also refer to the preferred way individuals process information. our students have different ways of perceiving the world and that is influenced by their environment and by the way they manage to solve problems in their everyday lives. from the pedagogical point of view, the following seven types of styles are identified by winters (as cited in cárdenas, 2001, p. 18-19): plays with words: this person learns best when given the opportunity to hear, see and say words associated with the desired outcome. it is also known as an auditory learning style. plays with questions: this learner is usually good at math and logic/problem solving and learns best when given the opportunity to classify, categorize, and work with abstractions and their relationship to one another. plays with pictures: this person is especially proficient at imagining, manipulating pictures and colors, doing puzzles, and reading charts and maps. plays with music: this learner gets new information via melodies, musical notation or rhythm. plays with moving: this learner is a dancer, plays sports, and participates in producing a variety of crafts. this person remembers the new information through the body. it is also known as a kinesthetic learning style. plays with socializing: this learner is always with a group of people and talking with friends. organizing, mediating, communicating and understanding people are characteristics of this person. it is also known as a communicative learning style. plays alone: this person learns best when the projects are individual, self-paced, and singularly oriented. in order to identify the learning styles of our students, we based our study on two previous studies carried out at institutions in indonesia and at a public school in bogotá. a person’s learning style can be determined by learning-styles inventories (lsis). nur and ruru (davis, nur, and ruru, 1994) administered and interpreted two learning-style instruments to students in one of their efl classes at a university in indonesia. another project, carried out by aguilar (2001) at barranquillita public school in bogotá with seventh-grade students, aimed at finding how to motivate students to learn english as ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○119 profileprofileprofileprofileprofile a case study of the learning styles in low-level learners a second language through classroom activities that corresponded to their interests and learning styles. based on what the researchers found, they began to make instructional changes by modeling the different types of learning strategies through exercises, activities, role-play, demonstrations, etc., in order to fulfill students’ needs. the previous studies based on learning styles helped us to conduct this research because they shed light on the way styles can be identified and how activities can be implemented to stimulate such styles. however, learning styles are also characterized by the way they work and how dependent on or independent of the field a person can be. in other words, from a psychological perspective, there is a classification that distinguishes two different styles of learning: field-independence and fielddependence. persons with a field-independent style are able to distinguish parts from a whole and are also able to concentrate on something without being disturbed by surrounding variables. in contrast to field-independence, people with a field-dependent style are able to see the whole situation as a global perspective and can analyze it in a general context (witkin, as cited in ellis, 1995). the classifications of field-dependence and field-independence give us insights into the way we can manage students’ differences from both pedagogical and physiological perspectives. they can also help us observe how students explore their learning styles according to their environment and their ways of working and perceiving things. according to capel, leask, and turner (1995), it is important to take into account students’ differences in terms of culture, expectation, knowledge and experience because those aspects play a paramount role in planning. these authors also claim that learning processes are highly influenced by cultural aspects. that is why each child responds to the curriculum differently; therefore, the teacher has to make the curriculum not only interesting and relevant, but also easy to understand. when the studies and theories mentioned above are taken into account, it can be seen that there are various processes that occur during learning. both perspectives, pedagogic and psychological, gave us a background framework for exploring new paths in the search for an improvement of the learning-teaching process. they were also useful for the planning and implementation of activities that matched students’ preferred learning styles. research questionsresearch questionsresearch questionsresearch questionsresearch questions 1. what roles do learning styles play in the english language learning process for students with low academic performance? 2. which factors allow students with low academic performance to explore their learning styles during the english language learning process? research designresearch designresearch designresearch designresearch design in order to conduct our research, we chose a combination of case study and action research. the advantage of working with case studies is that “case studies in education can focus on individual students and seek to understand specific issues and problems of practice” (merriam, 1988, p. 23). a wider method that allowed us to perform the research was action research. according to cárdenas (2000), action research involves the collection and analysis of data and is characterized as being participator y, self-reflective and collaborative, which makes this method different from traditional research methods. after we had identified the students whose academic progress was slow, they signed a consent form giving us permission to undertake the research. after this process, a survey was applied in order to identify the learning styles of these students (see appendix 1). the survey was interpreted and, according to that interpretation, some activities were designed, and implemented in the classroom. the classes were observed and notes were taken about the students’ performance during the development of the activities. along the process, some samples of the students’ work were collected in order to see how they were doing in the activities proposed. at the end of some lessons, a five-to○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ 120 abella and salinas profileprofileprofileprofileprofile ten-minute time period was allocated to have students interact and give their opinions about the development of the activities in a focus-group interview. the interview was audio-taped in order to have detailed information about the students’ talking. context and pcontext and pcontext and pcontext and pcontext and parararararticipticipticipticipticipantsantsantsantsants the research project was carried out at a private school located in the north of bogotá. students had 6 hours of class a week and these were divided into 3 blocks of two hours each. though 6 hours a week of english class is a good number of hours, it is important to mention that it was not a bilingual school. twenty two students, whose ages ranged from twelve to fifteen, attended the english class which was the object of this study. to develop our case study, we worked with five students whose learning processes in the english class were slow. those students were selected based on previous teaching observation. instruments for dinstruments for dinstruments for dinstruments for dinstruments for daaaaattttta collectiona collectiona collectiona collectiona collection the instruments for collecting data that suited the purpose of our project were the following: a survey: it helped to gather initial information about the students’ preferred ways of learning. it was also useful for implementing activities that corresponded to the students’ learning styles (see appendix 1). field notes: we observed that the classes and notes were written on a recording sheet. the notes taken included information about the students’ performances and their attitudes towards activities and materials prepared according to their learning styles. students’ work: these were useful tools for analyzing the ways in which students completed the activities assigned in class. a focus-group interview: its main purpose was to generate discussion and interaction among the participants. the students with low academic performance were grouped and they were asked some questions that allowed us to know their opinion and the way they felt during the development of the class activities (see appendix 2). pedagogical designpedagogical designpedagogical designpedagogical designpedagogical design after identifying the students’ learning styles via the survey, we planned some lessons with activities that included those styles and preferences. we implemented eight lessons for a period of one month and a half. the activities were useful in the collection of the information we required. the topics of the lessons were taken from the textbook that students used in the school (my choice 2). some of the activities were taken from english language teaching books and others were created by us. those lessons were written in a style that might allow teachers to use them if they are interested (see appendix 3). dddddaaaaattttta anala anala anala anala analysisysisysisysisysis having collected the data by using the instruments already mentioned, we began the process of data analysis. the focus-group interview was a fundamental guide for the data analysis. aspects such as the students’ feelings, opinions, ideas and perceptions were taken into account as the main unit of analysis. based on that, some other units from the notes and samples of students’ work emerged. from the notes, the students’ reactions and behavior were analyzed. the samples from the students’ work were complementary material to the analysis of those units. the internal validity of this research was ensured through triangulation. triangulation is defined by merriam (1988, p. 169) as “using multiple investigators, multiple sources of data or multiple methods to confirm the emerging findings”. the three instruments -interviews, notes and students’ workwere contrasted with one another to find common aspects. such aspects were interpreted in light of the research questions. cccccaaaaategories and subtegories and subtegories and subtegories and subtegories and subcccccaaaaategoriestegoriestegoriestegoriestegories taking into account our research questions, two categories and four subcategories (two for each category) emerged. ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○121 profileprofileprofileprofileprofile a case study of the learning styles in low-level learners learning styles: a vlearning styles: a vlearning styles: a vlearning styles: a vlearning styles: a vehicle for lehicle for lehicle for lehicle for lehicle for languageanguageanguageanguageanguage learninglearninglearninglearninglearning a metaphor was the best way to support the title of this first category. the main function of a vehicle is to transport people and goods from one place to another. in the same vein, learning styles can be used as a vehicle that helps conduct the english language learning processes in different ways. that is to say, the students were equipped with some linguistic and didactic elements to go through the english language learning process. such elements were given by implementing different activities that conveyed learning styles to give the students the opportunity to choose the kind of activities they felt comfortable with. every activity was made up of both a linguistic and didactic element, thus giving students the chance to learn the language in their preferred way. when the students were asked if the activities used in class had helped them to learn, one of them replied: “well… at the beginning the activities were entertaining for us to get adapted to the group…after that, we began to learn through very dynamic activities and i think that we have really learnt a lot because at these moments when anyone wants to start a conversation or when anyone wants to reinforce what has been studied, then he can do it without any problem.” (daniela, focus-group interview 1) something we obser ved during the development of the classes was that the students themselves chose the activities that conveyed their preferred ways of learning. for instance, if they did not feel interested in participating or in taking notes, which was a very common situation among those students, they were not obliged to do so. this situation made the students feel freer and more autonomous in class. even though the students enjoyed the activities and advanced in their learning process, it is important to mention that at the beginning they virtually did not understand the teachers’ instructions and the spoken language. in the second focus-group interview that we applied to the students, some of them said that it was difficult to understand the spoken language: “well…what seemed difficult for us and for the rest of the group were the instructions. for example, in class work because many students do not know some words. so they do not understand the whole paragraph just because they do not know a single word.” (daniela, focus-group interview 2) tttttable 1.able 1.able 1.able 1.able 1. categories and subcategories found in the data analysis process.1 1 these metaphors were the product of the creative process and were not taken from any other source. ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ 122 abella and salinas profileprofileprofileprofileprofile during the note-taking process, we also realized that the students had problems understanding instructions. some of them had to ask the teacher or their classmates for explanations, and it was a very common situation in the development of classes. hederich and camargo (2001) state that, as a teacher, you might have had the frustrating experience of being misunderstood by students when you tried to explain to them a topic, no matter how clear you might have been. from a psychological perspective, they also say that the way cognitive styles operate can help to understand and face those kinds of situations. it means that stimulating the students with their preferred ways of learning helps them assimilate teacher talk. implementing activities that consider the students’ interests and preferred ways of learning was part of the process we followed in order to give the students the chance to overcome difficulties. besides, students also contributed with their own ideas for “moving forward” in the learning process. this move-forward process explains the first subcategory which is related to the students’ interests as the engine of the vehicle. a. students’ interests: the engine of the vehicle: the engine is an essential part of the vehicle because, with the adequate elements, it makes the vehicle move and work. in order for the learning of the language to be meaningful, it is necessary to take into account students’ interests. in our lessons, we observed that when students were involved in topics dealing with their interests, such as trendy movies, young culture and sports, they responded better to the activities proposed. hence, the students’ interests are related to the engine as that essential part that makes them work. lindstromberg (2004, p. 2) affirms that “the members of a class are quite disparate, especially in their interests and in their level of proficiency”. the students’ interests were taken into account in the design of the lessons and they also showed their own interest in the learning of the language. students showed interest in learning the language for their own communicative purposes. it included the need these students had for acquiring meaningful and interesting vocabulary so that they could express themselves the way they wanted. when the activities implemented in class took into account the different interests students had, the learning of the language became more meaningful. even though interests made the students move on in the learning process, there was still another aspect to be considered in order to complement this step of the learning process. this aspect is what we have called the “rear-view mirror”, which is part of our second subcategory. it is described below. b. using the “rear-view mirror ” to move forward: the rear-view mirror is an element that the car has for the driver to be able to see what is behind him and, therefore, be able to move forward. reinforcement in the class was the rearview mirror because its main function was to allow the students to review contents through different activities by taking into account their learning styles. the main functions of reinforcement were to strengthen and to review contents. the students themselves emphasized the importance that reinforcement had in overcoming the difficulties they had in understanding the spoken language. in one of the focus-group inter views, some of the students said: “i think it is better to reinforce first and then one understands. reinforcing pronunciation more than reading would make it easier to understand oral explanations.” (francy, focus-group interview 2) it was interesting to see that the students themselves became involved in their own learning process by proposing different ways of reinforcing contents in order to overcome difficulties. hederich and camargo (2001), who have studied learning styles in depth from a psychological perspective, state that when a person is conscious of his learning style, he can develop strategies to manage his strengths effectively and limit the effect of his weaknesses. ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○123 profileprofileprofileprofileprofile a case study of the learning styles in low-level learners in the samples from the focus-group interview cited above, the students proposed useful strategies in order to understand spoken language and spoken instructions better. they looked for strategies that helped them overcome their weaknesses. the students considered that one way to reinforce contents was by designing materials that allowed them to practice such reinforcement. in one of the lesson plans that we implemented, we suggested the design of a mini-dictionary. this served as a means to reinforce contents as the students themselves expressed: “i think that the dictionary can be a means for learning and it seems good to me {…} because one indeed reinforced topics that were not understood.” (francy, focus-group inter view) implementing activities that integrate the students’ different learning styles was of paramount importance for the development of the students in terms of language learning. the students’ interests and learning styles were taken into account and reinforcement was a useful tool to solve doubts and to learn new vocabulary, as evidenced in the following excerpt from the focus-group interview when one of the interviewers asked about what the students had learnt in the english class: “the adjectives, the verbs, the comparisons and the way they are used daily and paying close attention to the teacher and reinforcing those adjectives in several class activities.” (pedro, focus-group interview 2) exploring vexploring vexploring vexploring vexploring various learning envirarious learning envirarious learning envirarious learning envirarious learning environmentsonmentsonmentsonmentsonments a learning environment refers to the conditions that may influence the work that the students carry out in class. the different stages that were proposed in the lesson plans such as warm-ups, presentations, practice and production gave the students the chance to explore several environments for learning. harmer (1998, p. 5) claims that if we provide different topics, tasks and activities related to the students’ likes, “students are much more likely to remain interested.” when the students were asked in one of the focus-group interviews about the way they had felt about the various activities implemented previously in class, one of them said that it was boring to do only workshops all the time. he then affirmed that he felt better when classes were made up of different activities such as songs, movies and games. we noticed that the students remained more interested in classes in which we implemented game-like activities, and when they were in the video-room looking at videos and movies and listening to songs. the students also showed a great preference for activities in which they could work in groups, share opinions and talk to friends. the students’ interest in the activities arose because those activities incorporated their preferred ways of learning. what we observed relates to the notion of diversity that characterizes students and its importance for planning lessons as well as for making the curriculum interesting and relevant for students (capel et al., 1995). besides providing different environments for learning, we thought that it was also necessary to set clear instructions and specific goals for every activity. if the students knew what to do exactly and what the purpose and the outcome of the activity were, they engaged more in the activity. we observed that in most of the classes the students looked for clear instructions and the teacher had to monitor the students’ work, guide them and clarify doubts and confusions. the previous ideas taken from our observations and from the students’ own opinions are related to hederich and camargo’s (2001) psychological theory about learning styles. these authors assert that for students who are field-dependent, the teacher is like “a mediator between them and knowledge” (p. 31). field-dependent students show a preference for those activities that are guided by the teacher. taking into account the definition of ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ 124 abella and salinas profileprofileprofileprofileprofile various learning environments and its properties, we will make reference to some of its components. the components are what we called the fun element and collaboration for task completion. a. the role of the fun element in learning: the fun element is part of the various learning environments mentioned above. something fun involves enjoyment, cheerfulness, amusement and a series of activities that may inspire joy in learning. this element entails games, movies, songs and videos. such kinds of activities were not only a way of having a fun and entertaining time but also a way of learning. the students showed a preference for games that allowed them to have fun and learn english at the same time without being aware of the actual process. all of the students interviewed agreed on the affirmation that learning through games was one of the best ways to learn. lindstromberg (2004, p. 7) states that “activities with game-like elements are usually very good for generating interest” in teenage students. in the case of our research with eighth graders from a private school in bogotá, we observed that when we implemented games as part of the lessons, the students’ participation increased a lot. those students especially liked those games in which they had to compete and move. besides, those games made the students become interested in the activities and in the language itself since they tried to produce language on their own. it should be noted that in our particular case, our teenage students liked doing games in class and acknowledged that those activities helped them learn; something that might not happen with other age groups or cultures. additionally, the students not only expressed interest in games but also in other activities including movies, videos and songs. those interests depended also on the students’ styles for learning. for instance, the students who tended to be visual learners preferred movies and those who were auditory learners preferred songs. that way, the students could explore their preferred ways of learning and enjoy themselves too. the students’ preference for activities which involved the fun element was part of their preference for using the english language laboratory. using the laboratory was for them a different space to study, a space in which they could have fun and learn at the same time. working in the laboratory or outside the classroom was relaxing and it was a good way to change the usual environment for teaching and learning. the other factor concerning the exploration of the learning styles has to do with teamwork and peer help. these concepts are widely discussed and described in the following lines. b. collaboration for task completion: when we mention the words collaboration for task completion we refer to both teamwork and peer help. as part of the process of learning a language, teamwork was essential in bringing about communicative situations in which the students had to interact to carry out different tasks. the students used peer support in order to help one another, to correct one another, to share opinions and to solve problems and doubts about instructions that had not been clearly understood. this characteristic is related to the description of fielddependent people. according to hederich and camargo (2001), field-dependent people are sociable and they like to join others when working. they are also emotional and receptive to the feelings and opinions of others. this description of a field-dependent person fits well with the kind of personality of the low-level learners from eighth grade we worked with. we obser ved that when group work was assigned, the students worked well with their classmates and tasks were completed better as they were working cooperatively. hofstede (1999) classifies cultures into several dimensions. in his work he identifies individualism and collectivism as characteristics of some of the cultures of the countries that he studied. he obser ved that the colombian culture is characterized as being highly collective. this means that collective interests are more important than ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○125 profileprofileprofileprofileprofile a case study of the learning styles in low-level learners individualistic ones. it has implications for the colombian educational context. getting together in groups of students to carry out a specific task is a very common characteristic of most collective societies. we found that there is a correlation between hofstede’s classification of the colombian culture and the characterization of low-level learners of eighth grade at the private school in which we carried out our research project. such correlation is better explained in the following lines. when the students worked in groups, they had the opportunity to take advantage of other classmates’ learning styles since: one learns from others and others learn from us. (pedro, focusgroup interview 1). we observed that when the students were asked to work in groups, they were never reluctant to do it. moreover, when group work was done, the students cooperated a lot and the final outcome was better than if they had worked alone. the students always gave very positive comments towards group work and considered it important for the learning of the language. for example: “i think that working in pairs would be good because one learns mutually from the other person and it is possible to do a better work.” (pedro, focus-group interview 2) as we have already pointed out, the students had problems understanding spoken language. peer help was a way to overcome this problem because, as we obser ved, when the students did not understand instructions or when they needed help from their classmates, they requested extra support or explanations. it was very common among the students to look for help from other classmates in order to complete tasks and share ideas about the development of some activities. the main purpose of collaboration was to let the students know other styles for learning and to share their own styles with classmates. working with classmates, in groups or in pairs, gave students the opportunity to explore their styles. as the students were given a specific task, they showed how they could develop it by using their styles and, at the same time, they could observe the styles used by their partners. this way of working let the students develop a specific task in a complementary way; that is to say, every student contributed with his own learning styles to carry out the task. conclconclconclconclconclusionsusionsusionsusionsusions regarding the role that learning styles play in the english language learning process, we can conclude that the incorporation of learning styles facilitated the learning process. besides, learning styles helped the students move forward in their learning process. reinforcing and reviewing contents through different activities supported this forward-moving process. concerning the research question about the factors that allow students to explore their learning styles, we concluded that providing students with different learning environments allows them to explore their learning styles. activities that involve the fun element for learning were part of the environment for exploring learning styles. teamwork and peer help were part of collaborative work, another environment in which the students could also explore their styles. the students remained more interested in classes when the “fun element” was present in the activities implemented. games, movies, songs and activities that were developed outside the classroom or in the english laboratory room were motivating for the students because through those activities they could explore their preferred styles for learning. the role that the fun element played in the learning process went beyond merely giving the students an entertaining time. this role allowed them to participate more in class and change the traditional setting for carrying out the lessons. when planning the classes, we tried not to skip the fun element from every single activity. this was a way to give them the opportunity to play and learn at the same time. ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ 126 abella and salinas profileprofileprofileprofileprofile bearing in mind the students’ differences for implementing class activities was useful for creating a pleasant learning environment. the view that capel et al. (1995) hold about the relevance of the curriculum and its importance for engaging students is particularly useful when we refer to the creation of a pleasant environment for the exploration of learning styles. the fact that low-level learners had different preferences and styles for learning allowed us to implement activities that benefited not only them, but also the rest of the class. implicimplicimplicimplicimplicaaaaationstionstionstionstions for teaching low-level learners, a teacher must bear in mind several parameters for a more effective and motivating class for students. first, it is necessary to design and implement activities that take into account students’ interests and that also awake their interests for learning the language. those kinds of activities must consider the age of the population, the topics to be taught, the lifestyles of students and the goals and the expected outcomes of the teacher. evidence of this can be observed in the sample of the lesson plans we designed and implemented in class (see appendix 3). implementing cooperative work is also highly recommended because it allows the completion of tasks by grouping students with different learning styles. it is also recommended because it promotes discussion and sharing of ideas among students, thus allowing them to take advantage of other styles and to learn from them. that way low-level learners manage to explore and share their styles and learn from more advanced students. the class is an appropriate space to let students make use of their styles for learning the language. since classes are full of students with mixed abilities and ways of learning, teachers can take advantage of that in order to plan more motivating classes. it is advantageous to have mixed-ability classes because when implementing varied activities not only low-level learners but also high-level learners will benefit. though this task is demanding and timeconsuming for teachers in the planning of the class, at the end of the road students will be deeply grateful for being taken into account. referencesreferencesreferencesreferencesreferences capel, s., leask, m., & turner, t. (1995). learning to teach in the secondary school: a companion to school experience. london: routledge. cárdenas, m. (2000). action research by english teachers: an option to make classroom research possible. colombian applied linguistics journal, 2(1), 15-20. cárdenas, m. (2001). responding to children’s learning styles. how: a colombian journal for english teachers, 8, 17-26. davis, c., nur, h., & ruru, a. (1994). helping teachers and students understand learning styles. english teaching forum, 32(3), 12-14. downie, m., & taylor, s. (2000). my choice 2. london: richmond publishing. ellis, r. (1995). the study of second language acquisition. oxford: oxford university press. harmer, j. (1998). how to teach english. addison wesley longman limited. hederich, c., & camargo, a. (2001). estilos cognitivos en el contexto escolar: proyecto de estilos cognitivos y logro educativo en la ciudad de bogotá. universidad pedagógica nacional – idep, bogotá. hofstede, g. (1999). culturas y organizaciones. el software mental. la cooperación internacional y su importancia para la supervivencia. madrid: alianza editorial s. a. lindstromberg, s. (2004). language activities for teenagers. cambridge: cambridge university press. merriam, s. (1988). case study research in education. san francisco: jossey-bass publications. moreno, m. (2001). motivating students to learn english by responding to their interests and learning styles. profile journal, 2, 31-33. richards, j., & lockhart, c. (1994). reflective teaching in second language classrooms. cambridge: cambridge university press. ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○127 profileprofileprofileprofileprofile a case study of the learning styles in low-level learners appendix 1: learning styles surveyappendix 1: learning styles surveyappendix 1: learning styles surveyappendix 1: learning styles surveyappendix 1: learning styles survey por medio de la siguiente encuesta queremos conocer la forma como más te gusta aprender en la clase de inglés, para hacer actividades que se ajusten a tus preferencias. responde las siguientes afirmaciones y marca una x en la casilla que más corresponda a tu gusto (nunca, casi nunca, casi siempre, siempre) en la clase de inglés: based on: cárdenas, m. (2001). responding to children’s learning styles. how: a colombian journal for english teachers, 8, 17-26. richards, j., & lockhart, c. (1994). reflective teaching in second language classrooms. cambridge: cambridge university press. nunca casi nunca casi siempre siempre 1. me gusta que el profesor nos enseñe por medio de dibujos 2. me gusta que el profesor me diga lo que tengo que hacer 3. me gusta hacer manualidades en clase 4. me gusta trabajar en grupo 5. me gusta escuchar música en inglés 6. me gusta resolver crucigramas y sopas de letras 7. me gusta que el profesor nos ponga a hacer mímicas, bailar y actuar 8. me gusta que me den instrucciones de forma escrita 9. me gusta que mis compañeros me expliquen lo que no entiendo 10. me gusta trabajar con materiales como plastilina, recortes, carteleras, etc. 11. me gusta que el profesor nos ponga a trabajar en parejas 12. me gusta que el profesor nos ponga canciones en inglés 13. me gusta hacer preguntas en clase 14. en la clase de inglés me gusta desarrollar todas las actividades de forma individual 15. me gusta que el profesor nos ponga a repetir palabras y frases en coro 16. me gusta completar oraciones 17. me gusta que el profesor nos deje tareas para realizarlas en forma individual 18. me gusta hacer tareas con otros compañeros 19 me gusta más leer en inglés 20. recuerdo mejor lo que escucho que lo que leo 21. me gusta más trabajar solo que en grupo ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ 128 abella and salinas profileprofileprofileprofileprofile appendix 2: questions for the focus group interviewappendix 2: questions for the focus group interviewappendix 2: questions for the focus group interviewappendix 2: questions for the focus group interviewappendix 2: questions for the focus group interview sample 1 1. ¿cómo consideran ustedes que aprenden mejor? 2. ¿qué les gusta aprender en la clase de inglés? 3. hablemos ahora con respecto a las actividades que se realizaron durante la semana en la clase de inglés. ¿cuál actividad les ha gustado más, con cuál actividad se han sentido mejor? 4. ¿ustedes creen que han aprendido algo con las actividades de esta semana? hablemos sobre eso. 5. durante el desarrollo de las actividades, ¿ustedes sintieron que podían desarrollar las actividades solos/solas o necesitaron la ayuda del profesor o de algún compañero? ¿por qué? sample 2 1. ¿cómo creen ustedes que les queda más fácil aprender y entender el inglés? 2. ¿qué les parece difícil aprender o entender en la clase de inglés? ¿por qué? ¿qué solución proponen ustedes para que esas dificultades disminuyan? 3. ¿cómo se han sentido con las actividades que se han realizado en la clase? ¿qué tipo de actividad los hace sentir bien en la clase? contémosle al grupo por qué se sienten así. 5. ¿qué han aprendido en la clase de inglés hasta el momento? ¿cómo han logrado aprenderlo? 6. ¿a ustedes les hubiera gustado que el examen se hubiera hecho en parejas? ¿por qué? *la última pregunta se formuló de esta manera ya que se realizó un examen para evaluar los temas vistos durante el primer bimestre. ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○129 profileprofileprofileprofileprofile a case study of the learning styles in low-level learners appendix 3: sample of a lesson plappendix 3: sample of a lesson plappendix 3: sample of a lesson plappendix 3: sample of a lesson plappendix 3: sample of a lesson plananananan time: ninety minutes topic: verbs in present simple. aims: students will be able to identify and use verbs such as look, can, see, hold, change, kill, come, take, lay, rest, want and love. grammar: simple present presentation (10 min) (for auditory style learners) write on the board the word ‘verbs’ and ask students what they understand by that word. ask them to give you a definition and some examples. tell them the grammar definition of a verb. write the following verbs that are present in the song “november rain”: look, can, see. give the definition of each one of them within the context of the song. practice (30 min) (for auditory and individual style learners) ask students to identify all the verbs that are present in the song “november rain” and to look for their definition in the dictionary. production (20 min) (for visual and kinesthetic style learners) ask students to form two groups and tell them that you are going to play a competitive game. the card contains one verb and the person in front has either to draw or to mime the verb that is on the card. the opposite group has to guess what the verb is (within a time limit). the group that guesses the most verbs is the winner. production (20 min) (for analytical, individual and communicative style learners) give students back the handout of the movie “shrek” and ask them to finish completing it with the verbs which best suit the actions of the characters. once students have finished, ask them to form groups of four and to share their information of the handout with the group. worksheet on the movie “shrek 2” describe the following characters from the movie. write an adjective that describes the character, then use a comparative adjective to compare the character and finally use a verb to describe their actions in the movie. look at the example given. character fiona puss in boots shrek fiona’s father fiona’s mother donkey fairy godmother charming adjective • she is fat. comparison • fiona is fatter than her mother. verb • fiona loves shrek. profile 2.p65 ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ 78profileprofileprofileprofileprofile the use of supplementary materials inthe classroom has always been anessential part of the teaching and learning process. to restrict our teaching to the scope of one single textbook means to stand behind the advances of knowledge, in any area and context. young learners appreciate any new and varied support that expands their knowledge of the world: diaries, letters, panels, free texts, magazines, short stories, poems or literary excerpts, and articles taken from internet are materials that will allow learners to share more and work more collaboratively. in this article we are going to deal with some of these materials, with the criteria to select, adapt, and create them that may be of interest to the learner and that may promote reading and writing processes. since no text can entirely satisfy the needs of students and teachers, the creativity of both parties will be necessary to improve the quality of teaching through the adequate use and adaptation of supplementary materials. rationalerationalerationalerationalerationale the general law of education (ley general de educación) has given schools more autonomy to decide what models of education to follow. this autonomy implies a new trend in the choosing of textbooks in the schools. there is no fixed and unified official curriculum, and the texts do not have to follow any rigid sequence from beginning to end. the idea of using a “frozen text” that has to last for years has to be left aside. and here we are not speaking about all the texts but particularly the english texts used in public schools. nowadays, it is necessary to articulate the texts with the teachers’ needs since there isn’t any fixed or unique curriculum for all schools. textbooks have become more a help and a guide than a straight jacket. on the other hand, it is important to establish a relationship between the school text and the audio-visual media the students might have access to, both inside and outside the classroom, thanks to television, internet, videos, etc. we have to redefine the role of different media to supplement and even replace, if necessary, the strict use of the textbook in the classroom. some school texts have been criticised all over the world for being elitists, sexists, racist, ethnocentric, very urban, and oriented by just one ideology. for these reasons it is necessary for teachers to be able to analyse critically both the contents and the formats of our children’s books and to enrich them with extra material that enhances the kids’ knowledge of the world. we don’t want to appear as opposing textbooks per se. of course, they are the most common form of learning materials for language teachers. it is hard to think of a new teacher trying to sort out all the situations that are present in a classroom as well as teaching without the help of that useful tool. what we are questioning here is the use of textbooks as the only answer for all the things a guide text or many texts? “that is the question” sonia delgado de vsonia delgado de vsonia delgado de vsonia delgado de vsonia delgado de valenciaalenciaalenciaalenciaalencia foreign languages department, universidad nacional de colombia ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○79 profileprofileprofileprofileprofile kids may require and need. sometimes they are used in such a way that they do not permit the interaction of the learners or the possibilities for discovering other media. the proposal is to enrich books with other alternatives taken from the environment of both students and teachers. producing texts with a didactic function that does not offer challenges, but that offers a standardised and restricted vocabulary, and explanations that simplify concepts and do not allow the learner to work with the texts is not the ideal situation. often teachers accept what the publishing houses offer without questioning the organisation or the contents of the books. if the books were chosen with the criteria of having them just as a guide for the teacher and the students, things would be very different. sometimes books are so rigid that they do not allow any other possibility or direction to the learner or the teacher. fortunately, things have begun to change and this might be the moment to make the decision of introducing many and varied materials in our teaching, materials that have to be relevant and interesting for the students and that permit kids to analyse, discuss, interact, and, of course, allow the young learners to be creative and motivated during their process of learning english. if we really want to be up-to-date in relation to what is happening in the world, we can’t follow a textbook in a fixed manner or as the only source of information. this will make everybody uniformly shaped, unifying text, teacher, and context. at times we find that both teachers and students are thinking and interpreting the world in the same way, to finally discover that their thinking corresponds to the proposals of a text. we need dynamic and proactive individuals for changing stereotyped visions of life. in opposition to some schools’ policy of not using diverse didactic materials but only the guide book, we have learned from freinet (in fandiño, 1993) that it is a good idea to use the school library, free texts invented by the learners, the school press, the school newspaper, audiovisuals, and still dialogues and personal experience, as complementary materials to enrich the process of learning languages. nowadays, the use of new technologies such as television, cable tv, overhead projectors, computers, internet, videobeam, etc., make up part of the daily lives of schools, and it is a good idea to take full advantage of them. however, a question arises on the part of the teachers: if we are going to use all these materials as part of our common practice, how do we organise the contents around the objectives we, necessarily, have to follow? this is a valid question because we not only have to take into account the objectives, the contents, and the way we structure them to fulfil the requirements of the m.e.n., but it is our responsibility as teachers to develop in the kids a scientific feeling that they may need in their future as professionals and individuals of a new world. inserted in this perspective is the development of knowledge around the english language. as was proposed by richards and rogers (1986), after choosing an approach for teaching, that offers an explicit basis in theory, teachers have to think about methodology and then decide on the materials to be used to develop their classes. however, it is possible to make the decisions by focusing first on materials (design) and methods (procedure) to try to show how they respond to a theory (approach). the materials will be different if we choose a grammatical or structural approach; if the selection goes for the functional-notional; if the ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ 80profileprofileprofileprofileprofile syllabus is situational, topic-based, skill-based, task-based; or, if we decide to work with projects. the methodology designed by project work, allows teachers to use technological resources plus others like signs, schedules, calendars, advertisements, menus, memos, notes, posters, etc., since for dealing with projects it is necessary to find information in many places: by asking people, checking in libraries, downloading from internet, among others. what is clear is that materials and methods cannot be seen in isolation, but are embedded within a broader professional context, as explained by mcdonough and shaw (1993) and represented in the figure below. it means that materials should be the result of the construction of a syllabus, which permits implementation of the goals proposed by the institutions and teachers and has taken into account both the learners and the educational setting; or, in other words, the context. the selection of materials and tests, the planning of individual lessons and the management of the classroom itself may agree and match the decision made around the syllabus design. following the same authors, before choosing complementary materials it is important that teachers consider the learners’ age, specially for selecting topics and types of learning; interest of the kids in the subjects and in the language; level of proficiency in english, to avoid making mistakes in relation to difficulty; aptitude, since learners may be good in some areas and not so good in others; mother tongue, that may affect the treatment of errors; academic and educational level, that will determine the intellectual content, the topic and the depth of study of the material; and lastly, attitude towards learning —teachers, institution, target language and its speakers are all related closely to motivation. motivation might be affected by internal or external factors and people react to them very differently. skehan (1998) says that motivation is related to success, but that it is difficult to distinguish if it is motivation that leads to success or success what incites motivation. other aspects to take into account while preparing and using materials are, for example: the reasons students have for learning, their personality and learning styles. these aspects can affect methodological decisions on the part of the teachers. working with projects and respecting the different learning styles of students may result in an optimal combination to develop a curriculum that accomplishes actual educational demands. learners implementation of goals context syllabus construction educational setting materials, classroom methods, etc ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○81 profileprofileprofileprofileprofile project work or project learning corresponds to an educational philosophy that provides the direction and possible routes to a more democratic and participatory society : theme and task-centred modes of teaching and learning which results from a joint process of negotiation between all participants. it allows for both individual and small groups of learners. process and product realise a dynamic balance. it is experiential and holistic bridging the dualism between body and mind, or in john dewey’s words, “experience and thinking”. working with projects permits the use of complementary materials that can be chosen to favour the development of the eight recognised intelligences distinguished by gardner, precursor of the theory of multiple intelligence. these intelligences are : linguistic, logical-mathematical, bodily-kinaesthetic, musical, spatial, intrapersonal, interpersonal, and naturalistic. in hernandez (2000), for making classes more humanistic and respectful of the learners’ mental characteristics, it is necessary to perform activities that enhance not only the mathematical and the linguistic intelligences, but take care of other perspectives. that is why we, as teachers, have to deal with materials that enhance the development of other ways of learning and constructing knowledge. if our interest is to make classes more linguistic, related to a linguistic approach to learning, materials like books, tape recorders, typewriters, stamps, books on tape, among others, might be considered appropriate enough. but, if the emphasis lies on a mathematical mind, the materials to select might be calculators, science equipment, math games, etc., for the kids to learn english with a mathematical base. for rhythmic-musical intelligence, the best kinds of materials to use both outside or in class should be melodies and chants, and the promotion in the learners of the expression of their feelings through songs and playing musical instruments. the collection of information using physical sensations, such as touch, smell, taste and sight and through the manipulation of objects is appropriate for learners with kinaesthetic intelligence. children who possess spatialvisual intelligence prefer to work with maps, drawings, pictures, colours, videos and to think in a tri-dimensional mode. natural intelligence has received some importance in the last few years and it permits the person to appreciate the specificity of nature, promoting the observation of the different phenomena that occur in the world. and, last but not least, we can recognise emotional intelligence, which beholds the interpersonal and the intrapersonal. the interpersonal has to do with the interpretation of the feelings of others and showing a lot of empathy for the happenings of those who surround them. activities like discussions and social relations and roles of leadership would be very welcome for kids with this kind of intelligence. the intrapersonal, on the other hand, has to do with the understanding of oneself, an ability that permits its possessors to become independent and analytical learners. materials that permit the students to work on their own and that encourage quiet time would be the most relevant for these kinds of children. if we as teachers were conscious that human beings do not all think the same way, due to the different development of their minds, when preparing our syllabuses we should take care of bringing to the classroom activities that facilitate the kids’ learning and which correspond better to their learning styles, other ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ 82profileprofileprofileprofileprofile than mathematical or linguistic, which have been prevalent in our educational system for decades. the spectrum of human abilities is very wide, so that misusing the learners possibilities is a waste that we can not afford any longer. finally, the proposal of introducing project work in our elt will permit both teachers and learners to bring to the classroom other materials, different from a “frozen” text book, that will enhance the eight human intelligences in the schools ; and if we ally them to an ethical sense, at the same time that we make our classes more varied, ludic, and more related to the reality of the students of the xxi century, we can be contributing toward working for the broader good. referencesreferencesreferencesreferencesreferences fandiño c., g (1993). el texto escolar en la pedagogía freinet, en revista educación y cultura, fecode, número 31, bogotá. hernández, l. o. (2000). seminario: multiple intelligence in the e.f.l.classroom. inédito. mcdonough, j. and shaw, c. (1993). materials and methods in elt. london: blackwell. richards, j. c. and rogers, t. (1986) approaches and methods in language teaching. oxford: oxford university press. skehan, p. (1998). a cognitive approach to language learning. oxford: oxford university press. profile vol. 12, no. 2, october 2010. issn 1657-0790. bogotá, colombia. pages 153-164 153 screenwriting: a strategy for the improvement of writing instructional practices la escritura de guiones: una estrategia para mejorar las prácticas instruccionales de escritura hernán amado* american way school (aws), colombia this article presents a pedagogical experience that addresses the use of an instructional strategy called screenwriting aimed at improving the teach ing of writing in an educational context. this pedagogical intervention took place in a private english language school, where three adult students willingly participated to create their own short scripts. the idea was to introduce and reinforce the importance of screenwriting to observe its usefulness in education. students participated in writing workshops for a 3-month period. the workshops included the respective screenwriting theory and activities that helped them to achieve completion of their final stories. students’ final pieces proved that the writing instructional practices were enriching and beneficial. key words: screenwriting, creative writing in english, screenplays. en este artículo se presenta una experiencia pedagógica sobre el uso de una estrategia instruccional llamada "la escritura de guiones", y cuyo objetivo es mejorar la enseñanza de la escritura en un contexto educativo. esta intervención pedagógica tuvo lugar en una institución privada, dedicada a la enseñanza de lengua inglesa, donde tres estudiantes adultos participaron en la creación de sus propios guiones cortos. la idea era introducir y reforzar la importancia de la escritura de guiones para observar su utilidad en la educación. los estudiantes participaron durante tres meses en talleres de escritura creativa. estos incluyeron teoría y actividades para la escritura de guiones respectivos que los ayudaron a lograr sus historias finales. los trabajos finales de los estudiantes mostraron que las prácticas instruccionales de escritura fueron enriquecedoras y benéficas. palabras clave: escritura de guiones, escritura creativa en lengua inglesa, guiones. * e-mail: hernan_amado@hotmail.com this article was received on august 1, 2009, and accepted on april 6, 2010. 154 universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras amado introduction innovative and powerful strategies for the improvement of learners in an academic setting have required constant research over the past years. a teach er-researcher usually looks for what best suits his/her particular educational context and considers potential teach ing options to overcome students’ learning challenges. in constant observations, i could analyze that writing became a challenging process for students due to the fact that it was not the main focus as speaking was. i consider writing an important vehicle that should be taught for self-expression and determination as a way to support students’ creative process. in this article, i present screenwriting as a strategic tool to improve the teach ing of writing. i start by describing the setting and the participants of this pedagogical intervention as well as the justification; then, i present an assortment of theory based on creative writing and screenwriting. in addition to that, i include the design and implementation. next, the results obtained in the process and, finally, the respective conclusions. setting and participants this pedagogical intervention was carried out in a private school. it offered several personalized english programs aimed at executives of diverse companies in bogotá, colombia, as well as students of all ages who wanted to perfect their english or live abroad. personalized courses were a priority since students’ performance was thoroughly analyzed and assessed according to their needs. courses were usually made up of 1, 2, 3 or 7 people at the most to be able to help students on a personal basis. three adult participants voluntarily agreed to be a part of this study. the students’ level was upper-intermediate. participants were not familiar with the use of screenwriting in an educational context and agreed to write what they wished to tell using screenwriting as the main focus. besides that, i realized that they were excited about improving their most common limitations in writing skills with a different writing perspective. this group of people motivated me to develop this strategy as well as possible. justification according to the policies of the institution, students who enter this school are promised a well-rounded education in the english field, which covers the four skills –read ing, writing, speaking and listening. although this promise is fulfilled as far as speaking is concerned, i considered that the students did not receive the full spectrum of writing benefits. most of the time, the school emphasized oral skills, overlooking writing. the participants had very few writing exercises, in which they had to answer questions about the current political/economical situation in colombia or fill in the blanks. for the above mentioned reasons, i could infer that their few writing exercises were not inspiring enough and students usually ended up with confusion and inconsistencies. i came to that conclusion because most of the time after the questions they were asked, participants limited themselves to short sentences such as “colombia is poor and had problems” or “colombia is poor”. these answers may not be complete enough due to the lack of explanation participants give for such statements. these sentences need a better process of elaboration. when one of the students wrote “had problems”, he used the past tense when he was not supposed to, or he could have given an explanation as to why he thought it was poor. why is it poor? has he had any personal experience with poverty in colombia? can he offer any solution to that problem? for this reason, i used a different teach ing strategy for the participants’ writing so that they could write and profile vol. 12, no. 2, october 2010. issn 1657-0790. bogotá, colombia. pages 153-164 155 screenwriting: a strategy for the improvement of writing instructional practices... express more, expanding their knowledge on the topics of their own interest. with screenwriting, teach ers may see that students choose what they want to write about and their imagination takes wings, floats around and puts everything in writing. therefore, the more students are permitted to select what they want to write about, the more they become engaged in what they are writing. to accomplish this pedagogical intervention, i present the theory i considered pertinent for the development of this strategy. theoretical framework below, i will present a series of studies and theory, which have focused on screenwriting and its usefulness in an educational context. since harper (2006) suggests that screenwriting is one of the forms of creative writing, i start with creative writing as one of the key themes in this intervention and consequently screenwriting. creative writing in order to improve the writing instructional practices in my context, i did a lot of read ing as to which strategies would work best for the aspects i observed and analyzed in my setting. in a research study, vecino (2007) tackles the problem of writing with an appealing strategy, which is creative writing. the author suggests creative writing as further research to improve students’ feelings towards writing, which made me think i could go in the same direction to see improvement in the way writing had been taught in my teaching context. harper (2006) states that creative writing is an art, an action, and an activity as a mode of engagement with the world, as the producer of artifacts in the form of book, plays, poems, television and films, websites, and much more as well as a site of knowledge where there is teaching and learning. regarding harper’s definition, i consider creative writing as the artistic vehicle that fosters self-expression in different forms. for this reason, constant research has been done concerning this writing perspective. pardlow (2003) claims that creative writing should be used for further research due to the benefits and impact it has on the participants’ writing, such as improving it considerably. in addition to that, atchity (1984) focuses upon the use of creative writing as a universal discipline for advance in the writing process. his in-depth study of the english language in all its different dimensions of variation led to creative writing. the highest priority in this research is given to the cultivation of a strong feeling for words, including different tones, weights, nuances, and registers. students were encouraged to stretch their boundaries and extend themselves in terms of writing techniques. the studies i have read enabled me to consider the use of creative writing in an educational context to improve teach ing strategies regarding writing. after read ing and analyzing some pedagogical studies concerning creative writing, i decided to use one of the forms of creative writing as an alternative to improve the teach ing of writing. i wanted to show the merit of letting students create their own personal pieces and analyze how useful this creative writing strategy is for participants. harper (2006) states that short stories, poetry, and screenwriting are some of the categories of creative writing. i recognized that with creative writing, a variety of teach ing options was available, options such as the writing of poetry, short stories and screenplays. i wanted to focus on only one and decided to do so by using screenwriting. screenwriting the implementation of screenwriting was a very strategic step for me as an educator in order 156 universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras amado to let students enjoy a writing perspective they had not been familiar with. according to argentini (1998), screenwriting is a document that outlines every aural, visual, behavioral, and lingual element required to tell a story. would it not be positive if students had an idea, and from that simple idea, wrote more pages? johnson (1999) states that screenwriting involves visual elements that captivate emotions of the reader. while students carry out screenwriting activities they learn to visualize a story they are interested in and create tension, obstacles and challenges for their characters. besides that, they turn a simple sentence or idea into a properly formatted screenplay. other researchers take screenwriting as their object of study, since it is one of the forms of creative writing. studies regarding screenwriting have been done by johnson (1999) who allowed a group of 10 students to write screenplays to make short movies and grade them according to the accuracy involved in the dialogue, acting, scenarios, etc. students wrote in a sequence of scenes from beginning to end. this showed that they elaborated more on the writing process, learning the rules of screenwriting. this research has shown that it has encouraged and developed imaginative and original forms of creative writing for the participants; besides that, they visualized their own stories, and had fun writing what they wanted. they enjoyed sharing the short movies after writing the screenplays. i conclude that when writing stories or scripts, students should take into account what it takes to carry this out for their own benefit. screenwriting is a writing variety that i strongly suggest for further research and pedagogical practice. it is a way students can learn a different format and strategy. wolff (1991) states that screenwriting is left aligned, font courier 12, and scenes are divided into exterior and interior slug lines. this kind of format was innovative for the three participants i worked with and showed the impact it had on the students for the enhancement of their skills. trottier (1998) suggests that screenplays involve three acts. in act one, characters and conflict are introduced. the conflict deepens in act two until it reaches a climax or breaking point. in act three, the conflict resolves and leads to a denouement, or conclusion. wolf (1991) states that the three acts will probably lead learners to more coherent narratives and exciting creative texts from start to finish. this allows students to understand the importance of an organized piece of paper. to facilitate this pedagogical practice using screenwriting as the main focus, i present the design and implementation of this pedagogical strategy. design and implementation in order to design the teach ing strategy, i used writing workshops throughout the whole screenwriting process. rothermel (1994) states that when writing in workshops, students learn to write with focus and direction to develop their ideas and descriptions, to discover their voices and apply grammar conventions. i considered the writing workshop a great space for students to communicate their feelings through creative exercises including worksheets that helped them develop the creative texts they wanted to write. the workshops i planned for them intended to teach the theory behind creative writing through practical activities regarding the use of movies, pictures, and other visual examples. those activities enabled participants to grasp what was needed in order to create the stories they showed as their final results. three workshops were planned according to the time i had with the participants. it was a 3-month period. the purpose of the activities was to introduce students to a range of creative exercises supported by theory whilst developing their ability to use language accurately and imaginatively. in the profile vol. 12, no. 2, october 2010. issn 1657-0790. bogotá, colombia. pages 153-164 157 screenwriting: a strategy for the improvement of writing instructional practices... workshops developed in this teach ing experience, students found exercises that led their writing in various directions, as well as strategic steps to use their imagination. besides that, students found techniques to support their views to acquire a solid foundation on how to write screenplays. there were three workshops throughout the whole study; students were given worksheets with which to get acquainted with creative writing and screenwriting. hedge (1991) states that worksheets involve a process of filling in the forms that helps students organize their thoughts and kick-starts the creative writing process. i used worksheets as a means to get a student started on creating a universe all his or her own. in the second workshop, i used a worksheet called “writing my own story”. in this part of the workshop students were encouraged to explore their imagination and understand the art of story creation. i wanted students to discover and strengthen their unique writing voice, as well as understand how to tap into their creativity improving their most common problems in english writing. at the end of the workshops, the pieces students created were essential to obtain analytical results. these creative texts were used to see how they improved normal aspects of writing, and to observe the way they wanted to convey their message through characters, locations, dialogue, and using their imagination. those aspects helped students think of the stories they created as their own universe, one which they had total control over. all the sessions i had with the participants were recorded in an orderly manner. a summary of the results that emerged can be found in figure 1. results the results of this pedagogical intervention are presented based on the three writing workshops. i followed a systematic process from workshop no. 1, where i started with simple creative writing exercises and advanced to screenwriting activities to achieve the final products in workshop no. 3. writing more than expected in the first activity of the workshop, i planned a very simple activity where participants wrote a story about the picture of pegasus. i had planned only 20 minutes for the story, but it took them the whole hour. it was due to the fact that they wanted to complete the worksheet and add more. furthermore, i only gave them a few paragraphs to write, but all of them wrote more than that –they even continued the story on the back of the page. they had a lot to say about pegasus. in this part of the workshop, student 1 wrote, “i escaped to the forest alone, the forest was thick, full of plants and high arches of flexible branches”. it proves that the participant tried to make his writing appealing and gives descriptions of the forest, without just saying “the forest”. with that simple but effective activity i observed that from a simple picture, students were able to use their imagination, writing appealing sentences with creativity. as for creativity, hamptom (1989) suggests that creativity is the ability to write freely anything the learner wants to write. pedagogical strategies autonomous and critical students committed to the transformation of society build a public counter-sphere based on mass media analysis consider students’ subjectivities, identities and signifying practices build social projects cooperatively and collaboratively approach denotative, connotative and ideological levels of analysis reverse stereotypes visibilize marginal cultural manifestations figure 1. results that emerged in the workshops. 158 universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras amado in the example above, the student had a tale to tell about the picture he saw. whether it was an incident that actually happened or one that was a complete fantasy, the story in his mind was being told in his own words. i consider this writing process very strategic for the enhancement of writing instructional practices. student 2 wrote, “there were people, angels, pegasuses all around, beautiful, beautiful horses with exquisite wings that took to the most incredible journey of my life”. this excerpt showed me that the student writes about a journey he dreamed of, and words poured out. he even repeats the word “beautiful” twice placing emphasis on the beautiful paradise he is portraying in his vision of pegasus. he envisions his journey and gives descriptions of the paradise and what is found there such as the angels, people, other animals, etc. i observed that the participant’s writing flowed naturally, his creativity was enriched by imagining his idea of what a paradise and an incredible journey is for him. legrandis (2006) states that creativity is the stunning imagery the writer shows us on his journey. would it not be beneficial if students shared that imagery with educators and peers? they would show others personal experiences and inherent creativity to craft an inspirational piece of work. lannon (2000) states that creativity in writing is like painting a rich picture pallet of words taking us along, enveloping us in the feeling and emotion that emanates from each line. this creates feelings and thoughts from students to expand on their writing, which is helpful for educators who want to look for instructional writing approaches. another useful excerpt i obtained from this exercise was when student 3 wrote in the text, “the mother carry to mariana at the farm and she show her the pony” and “she had a sick. she had a degenerative sick. so she be died in any moment”. although he made grammar mistakes, his writing was understandable. this participant wrote what he wished to tell in his own words. engel (2000) suggests that the creative writer is free of the ‘tyranny of perfectionism’ that strangles people who want to express thoughts and emotions. i find engel’s position valuable since, in this specific activity, i was not looking for perfectionism, but for the free choice, determination and expression of words. from the abovementioned excerpts, i observed that students had the freedom to express their feelings, expanding their voice and thoughts towards the picture of a fantastic animal. sharing and learning from our writing after students wrote the story, they were asked to share their pieces. sharing and learning the activity of pegasus proved to be very useful because i observed aspects that fostered awareness of accuracy. for instance, students were excited to tell their stories, but when they told them, there were confusing sentences such as “a girl fligh with the pegasus with hers pony”, “a poney with wings to be died”, and “a poney was he in love”. the other participants were wondering what the student meant due to the inconsistencies in grammar. of course there was a misunderstanding and the sentence was not clear for the student, not even for me. i clearly told students that these aspects happen when words, expressions and sentences are not accurate, clear or coherent. if writing is not accurate with the proper grammar conventions, there will probably be misunderstandings and confusion. gaining awareness of accuracy in creative writing is essential because students want their voices to be heard, but if what they read or write is not understandable, it is because there is no clarity. lester (1994) states that creative writing is not about imagining stories. students will best serve the reader if their creative writing addresses profile vol. 12, no. 2, october 2010. issn 1657-0790. bogotá, colombia. pages 153-164 159 screenwriting: a strategy for the improvement of writing instructional practices... a central issue or theme about life. what lester states is quite reasonable. i do not consider creative writing as solely the imagination of stories, but view it as wanting to write and create, which requires the elements such as accuracy, punctuation and grammar to be understood clearly. writing accurately is relevant in creative writing. this could be evidenced when vecino (2007) states, “how can we express ourselves if what we are writing does not please the reader in all the dimensions that make a piece of writing readable?” (p.  14). expressing ourselves and wanting to be heard require skills and the proper way of conveying the message. educators may encourage students to use creative writing while understanding the mechanics of structure and punctuation for proper characterization and plotting in the final stories of their choice. asking for freedom to choose the stories my students and i participated in a discussion about what suggestions they would make to improve the workshops. i knew i had to be open-minded to enhance the teach ing strategy i proposed. the participants agreed that pegasus’ picture was a topic imposed on them by the teach er. one student said, “although the activity was nice, i did not want to write about pegasus, but about my own story, i feel that the picture was imposed on us”. student 2 said, “the activity of the pegasus was interesting, but i was getting ready for my fictional story”. student 3 agreed with the other students, stating, “i liked the pegasus, but i hope the teach er let us create our own things”. after their comments, i realized that although pegasus was not the topic they expected to write about, they imagined interesting stories with this character and wrote more than expected. i view this activity as waking up in the creative writing process. participants wanted to make their own decision as to what to write, say and feel. it could be evidenced when student 1 stated, “i want to select my own topic, not the teach er”. i realized that participants’ opinions were valid, which enabled me to pose the question: “who would not like to do what one likes freely?” in this pedagogical intervention, their views and insights allowed me to know what i could change. after their testimonies, i decided to teach the theoretical background of screenwriting so that they could create their own scripts as they claimed. learning from screenwriting i planned an activity in which we watched a movie and then analyzed the screenplay of the movie afterwards. i would advise future researchers and educators who want to focus on the improvement of writing to use that strategy because the students understood the screenplay easily and quickly. this is due to the fact that they had already seen the movie. it was an appealing and useful strategy in this study because the students learned a new perspective they had not been familiar with. in this section, students learned the format of screenwriting, and the movie helped them to realize that stories needed aspects such as dialogue, locations, and the three acts stated by trottier (1998). students were led through the planning, writing and completion of a variety of fiction with the ultimate goal of helping them to write creatively and to write well for a specific audience. one of the abilities that i could observe that makes screenwriting useful for writing instructional practices is that students are presented with a wide variety of words which lends itself to vocabulary building. this build-up could be evidenced when i asked the students what new words they had learned from the screenplay. student 1 said, “i did not know what ‘pulls up in bmw’ meant, but i remembered 160 universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras amado the scene in the movie and inferred that it was like stopping the car”. “pulls up” is a very idiomatic phrasal verb, and learners benefit greatly from those expressions to write with better structures. in the screenplay, participants underlined the unknown vocabulary and cohesive devices such as “clockwise direction”, “chapel”, “whispering”, “kneeling”, “lights in the windows flick on”, “stretcher”, “pulls up in bmw”, and “moves off ”, among others. these are just some of the words that could evidence how much vocabulary students are faced with when the teach er has a screenwriting strategy. after students read a screenplay, teach ers can see the effect it produces on the participants. not only do students get acquainted with new words and expressions; they also learn cohesive devices, dialogues, idioms, linking words, and visualize the movie they have already seen. development of coherence and cohesion and gaining confidence to write in the written work, students wrote their outlines for the final stories. this is an excerpt of one of the stories they wrote: “once upon a time, there was a vain woman who always looked at herself in the mirror. mirrors were her life, and looking at herself was her pride”. in this sentence, we can see that the participant used the linking words “once upon a time” to start a sentence; then, he continued coherently with “mirrors”. besides that, there is a two-word-rhyme which is “life” and “pride”. they learned more vocabulary because i constantly suggested the use of a thesaurus. the same student later wrote, “days pass by, and eloisa feels better, eloisa, with frustrated red eyes, looks at her face teary, stained, and fairly bruised”. with this excerpt, i could recognize that this participant likes telling a great deal about the character. the student gives a lot of descriptions of the character, especially when he says “frustrated red eyes” and specifies that his character’s face is “teary, stained and fairly bruised”. the student looked for synonyms and wrote all those descriptions instead of saying the plain “she cries”. in addition to that, he wrote a coherent story using words such as “in the next day”, “days pass by”. the story is coherent, has a beginning, middle and ending. the participant used the appropriate linking words and described the characters and the situation coherently. as for the creative dimension of the student’s work, i could observe a commitment toward fostering and expanding the exuberant writing talent the student possessed in order to write about an appealing character. it was a vain woman and the effect mirrors had on human beings’ lives. with this artistic vehicle that is screenwriting, students were able to explore and show worlds they had not been to before, bringing into existence something genuinely new that should be valued enough to be added to the culture and the language classroom. another participant wrote, “christian relaxes on a lamp-lit bench. he smokes and shivers from the cold. his eyes are close to shedding tears”. in this example, i observed that not only does the participant want to write interesting adjectives such as “lamplit bench”, but new vocabulary such as “shivers” and “shedding tears” came from a thesaurus. these are visual examples of parts of their stories and these have been worthy in this second workshop. i could also observe the level of coherence and cohesion in this student when he wrote, “the next day, christian drives into the hotel’s garage, shows his id to the attendant. the attendant nods, gives it back, and lets him in. christian looks around the garage and makes sure no one’s looking. christian goes straight to his blue car. he opens the trunk and removes a lot of rugs. he sees the explosives”. this profile vol. 12, no. 2, october 2010. issn 1657-0790. bogotá, colombia. pages 153-164 161 screenwriting: a strategy for the improvement of writing instructional practices... excerpt is up for analysis because it shows that he followed a sequence of events coherently. his character was lively and took action when he wrote “he drives, shows id, looks around, opens the trunk, removes the rugs, sees the explosives”. in order to achieve cohesion and coherence, hamptom (1989) suggests that every phrase must contribute to the meaning of the whole piece. in this example, i could observe he used all the sentences with the proper organization and his ideas were connected, which kept me guessing what was going to happen to christian. the text was readable, had proper grammar, accuracy and vocabulary. this piece of text was easily comprehended by both the writer and the reader. i could observe that student 3 wrote a logical sequence of events, and gave the reader a clear understanding and appreciation of the story. i could see that when he wrote, “mariana and her husband go on a trip to chapultepec and when they stop at a red light. a man approaches the door and points a gun at her. mariana faints, and dies of a heart attack. her husband is crazy, and doesn’t know what to do, he’s despaired, the criminal panics and leaves”. this part of the text is cohesive because the sentences are well structured, well linked and there is no unnecessary repetition. the participant is consistent with the story. the three students developed coherence and cohesion because their stories were logically laid out and connected, so one sentence led to another. they were gaining confidence writing and they had clear plots as to what to write in the final workshop. in order to do so, students were given individual tutorials for talking about their stories. it was like friendly conversation between the participants and me. student 1 told me he wanted to write a story about a mirror, and the impact a mirror could have on somebody’s life. it was very creative and was something i did not expect he would be writing. from an analytical point of view, i can see that this student considers that any inert object can have either a positive or a negative effect on human beings and he wants to express that in the story. student 2 told me he wanted to write about the terrorist attacks in club el nogal. club el nogal is one of the most important business and social clubs in latin america. it is located in bogota, colombia, and offers a variety of social and cultural entertainment for its members. on february 23, 2003, club el nogal was attacked by terrorists who planted a bomb, which killed 36 people and wounded more than 200. student 2 decided to write a short screenplay about how it happened and the effects it had on people. this person was becoming more serious about writing of the fatality that happened 7 years ago in bogotá, colombia. it was very impressive to see that they wanted to show real life through screenwriting. student 3 wanted to share a real life story about what happened to a famous actress who died in mexico city after being robbed. this student wanted to write about an actress he liked and admired. it was based on a true story, which required an in-depth analysis. creating believable characters and bringing them to life on the page required observation, understanding, imagination and skill in the techniques of character development and characterization. in this workshop, students showed the characters, locations, and tension they created for the stories they devised. they were using their creativity for the final piece, which was the screenplay. dyson (2003) suggests the following five steps to achieve creativity: (1) preparation: arousing curiosity of a problematic situation; (2) incubation: ideas fly below the threshold of consciousness; (3) insight: the moment when the puzzle starts to come together; (4) evaluation: deciding if the insight is valuable and worth pursuing; and (5) 162 universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras amado elaboration: translating the insight into its final work. i could observe that all three participants aroused curiosity about their characters, the vain woman, the terrorist and the famous actress. students became curious to know what was going to happen to them. ideas flew in the participants’ minds, ideas such as the characters’ behavior, motivation, goals, etc. insight emerged when students organized their stories and understood what their stories were like and in what direction they were heading. evaluation occurred when they assessed their characters, learning what moved them forward in the story and how they would end. finally, elaboration occurred when students transferred their ideas into a final piece of writing. creating the story students yearn for and writing from head and heart students finally created a short screenplay at the end of the workshop after all the process we followed in the previous workshops. it proved to be a very enriching experience in this research. when students were creating the stories they yearned for, i observed that the three participants had two natures: the heart and the head. the heart was the passionate creator, the emotional artist, the child, the intuitive subconscious. on the other hand, the head was the detached critic or editor, the parent, the logical and analytical scientist or surgeon. as a researcher, good writing utilizes both natures. for this reason, with this teach ing intervention, i could observe the technical and creative dimension of writing. technical being the head, while the heart was the creative dimension. creatively speaking, students presented the stories their heart told them to write. it could be seen in student 1 who wrote the following text in screenwriting format. this text is coherent, organized, and well-structured. the student wrote what his desire to tell was, and did it from both natures: head and heart. the following excerpt shows a scene student 2 wrote in his final screenplay: this part of the screenplay showed that the student had control over the story, had a linear sequence, and gave the reader excellent details, knowing what he wanted to write and what for. student 3 did a good job with the screenwriting format using a series of shots to explain how his main character turns from a child into an adolescent: i could observe that the student was clear with his portrayal of how mariana turns 18 and becomes an adolescent. this participant wrote with accuracy, knowing what he wanted to put in and int. mirror store day (1860) elegant and exotic mirrors of all sizes and shapes hang on the walls. eloisa, 28, beautiful, tall and stylish, peers into the biggest, most exquisite mirror and proudly stares at herself. next to her, annette, 27, short, attractive and elegant looks at the mirror. int. garage – minutes later the garage has three floors, each with assorted cars. christian drives up the three floors. he finally finds a parking spot on the top floor, which is rather empty. he parks his car. series of shots mariana, 7, splashes talina in a swimming pool. a smiling mariana, 8, poses for a picture in her first communion dress and veil. talina proudly watches mariana, 10, perform on stage. mariana, 15, models a prom dress for talina in their living room. mariana, 18, stands at the bathroom mirror, puts on makeup. profile vol. 12, no. 2, october 2010. issn 1657-0790. bogotá, colombia. pages 153-164 163 screenwriting: a strategy for the improvement of writing instructional practices... leave out. he expanded and polished his own work effectively. in the 3 workshops students showed a range of ideas that demonstrated their development of skills, fluency gained comprehension of their own stories and others’. thus, the use of vocabulary, accuracy, grammar and such in this particular setting was productive. in the examples above, i realized that students wrote freely and with great skill and self-assurance. students prepared their characters already determining the physical and emotional aspects of them, incubating ideas, evaluation and elaboration of the development of the story with the description of the place and locations. even student 1 makes an impression writing a story that took place in 1860, when he was not even born, but allows his creativity to flow and imagines what it was like to live in that era, creating his own world of fiction. with screenwriting in an educational context, i found that the three students revealed their having constructed a writing process based on what interested them; they produced creativity and then put it into practice. the writing world belonged to them as well as the journeys they envisioned and wanted to share. conclusions screenwriting used as a teach ing technique permits me to conclude that it allows students’ free choice. as seen in the excerpts, they had the opportunity to exercise a degree of independence, which involved exercising free expression in selecting the stories they explored and wished to tell. that is a strategic step for educators to let students strengthen their voices and share their writing process. i could observe that students experienced the need to tell more about the stories and characters they were exploring. besides, students experienced screenwriting as a writing perspective they had not been familiar with and, at the same time, as a tool for learning and improving their writing. i found their final pieces vivid, abstract and yet challenging in their screenwriting format. when carrying out this pedagogical inter vention, students followed a systematic process from workshop no. 1 to workshop no. 3 that allowed for clarity and better organization. from starting with a simple creative writing activity like the picture of pegasus, participants ended with the writing of their own scripts based on the theory previously given. teach ing screenwriting systematically provides participants with better tools for their final products. in this pedagogical experience, writing creatively was not only about imagining stories. it was about understanding the critical implications it conveyed for the participant who was not only a passionate creator or an emotional artist, but a detached critic and a logical and analytical writer. the function of the target language in the relation between writing and creativity implied the participants’ need to be heard and analyzed in response to their work. therefore, it ensured an engaging and critical process in which students were faithful to their own screenplays using their creative and analytical side. with this teach ing strategy for the improvement of writing instructional practices, i was able to see beyond the mere reality, expand my knowledge with participants’ contributions and learn that this writing perspective has helped the participants to pour out words, open the gate of imagination, gain understanding of accuracy, and most importantly, experience the sheer joy of writing. references argentini, p. (1998). elements of style for screenwriters. boulder, co: lone eagle press. atchity, k. (1984). a writer’s time: a guide to the creative process from vision through revision. new york, ny: penguin books. 164 universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras amado dyson, f. (2003). cracking creativity: the secrets of a creative mind. new york, ny: oxford university press. engel, c. (2000). composing choices for writers: a cross disciplinary rhetoric. new york, ny: mcgraw hill book co. hamptom, l. (1989). writing skills in efl. cambridge: cambridge university press. harper, g. (2006). teach ing creative writing. new york, ny: continuum. hedge, c. (1991). rbt: writing (resource books for teach ers). cambridge: cambridge university press. johnson, d. (1999). word weaving in scripts. a creative approach to teach ing and writing. urbana, il: ncte. lannon, m. (2000). the writing process: a concise rhetoric and reader (9th ed). cambridge: cambridge university press. legrandis, m. ( 2006). enhancing writing through imagery. new york, ny: trillium press. lester, j. (1994). writing, style and grammar. urbana, il: scott foresman. pardlow, d. (2003). finding new voices: notes from a descriptive study of how and why i learned to use creative writing pedagogy to empower my composition students and myself. marion, in: wesleyan center for educational excellence. rothermel, d. (1994). starting points: how to set up and run a writing workshop and much more! columbus, oh: national middle school association. trottier, d. (1998). the screenwriter’s bible: a complete guide to writing, and formatting your script. los angeles, ca: silman-james press. vecino, a. m. (2007). exploring the wonder of creative writing in two efl writers. unpublished master’s thesis. universidad distrital francisco josé de caldas, bogotá. wolff, j. (1991). top secrets: screenwriting. boulder, co: lone eagle press. about the author hernán amado currently works as an english teach er at golden bridge institute. he has a master’s degree in applied linguistics to the teach ing of english. his concern has always been the improvement of writing through different methodologies, especially screenwriting. profile 9.indd overcoming fear of speaking in english through meaningful activities: a study with teenagers profile 9, 2008. issn 1657-0790. bogotá, colombia. pages 23-46 23 overcoming fear of speaking in english through meaningful activities: a study with teenagers* superación del temor a hablar en inglés a través de actividades significativas: un estudio con adolescentes rocío amparo buitrago tinjacá** ruth ayala contreras*** colegio distrital josé asunción silva, colombia this article reports on a study implemented in a public school to explore some learning strategies to overcome speaking fears and anxiety. after a preliminary inquiry to find out the possible causes of the problem, we proposed an artistic and academic space called cultural moment, adapted from the spanish class. it is a task-based cooperative learning environment. the students have the possibility to try their aesthetic abilities and interact in english within an unstressful and enjoyable atmosphere. to gather information we used interviews, field notes, and audio and video recordings. this study suggests some possible strategies to reduce language anxiety and promote oral interaction in the classroom. keywords: learning strategies, cultural activities, overcoming fears, cooperative learning, oral interaction este artículo da cuenta de un estudio que se realizó en un colegio oficial para explorar algunas estrategias de aprendizaje con el propósito de superar el miedo y la angustia al hablar. a partir de una indagación respecto a las posibles causas del problema se abre un espacio artístico y académico denominado momento cultural, inspirado en la clase de español. las actividades de clase se desarrollan en un ambiente de aprendizaje cooperativo basado en tareas. los estudiantes tienen la posibilidad de mostrar sus habilidades estéticas e interactuar en inglés en una atmósfera de confianza y alegría. la recolección de información se hizo a través de entrevistas, grabaciones de video y audio y notas de campo. el estudio sugiere algunas posibles estrategias para reducir la ansiedad y promover la interacción oral. palabras clave: estrategias de aprendizaje, actividades culturales, interacción oral, superación de miedos, aprendizaje cooperativo * this paper reports on a study conducted by the authors, while participating in the profile teacher development programme, at universidad nacional de colombia, in 2005. the programme was sponsored by secretaría de educación de bogotá, d.c. code number: 30501006055. ** e-mail: rocibuit@hotmail.com address: transversal 91 no 114-02 torre a ap. 401 *** e-mail: rayalaco@hotmail.com address: cra. 105 a no 70d-90 in. 1 ap. 301 this article was received on october 1st, 2007 and accepted on january 8th, 2008. profile 9.indd 23 21/04/2008 07:43:21 p.m. buitrago tinjacá and ayala contreras universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras24 “the only thing we have to fear is fear itself.” franklin d. roosevelt introduction throughout our experience as efl (english as a foreign language) teachers we have found that speaking is one of the most desirable skills that english learners want to develop. bygate (1987) claims that speaking deserves more attention due to its importance in students’ current lives. however, in our context they do not see english as a necessity but rather as a curious task they want to pursue. it is important to mention that even though bygate’s insights were different from ours, some of the strategies to teach speaking outlined in his study are found in our colombian efl situations. in some public schools the students have had prior courses that instead of promoting oral communication are, unconsciously, promoting boredom. in addition, the majority has not had english classes in primary. in our case, we met a group of adolescents in secondary with great expectations and high motivation towards the foreign language in the first grades, but those who are in ninth to eleventh grade felt insecure and nervous about speaking. it was during the preparation and celebration of the first english day that the idea to explore some strategies and activities to help them overcome these barriers emerged. their recognition of this event, called the cultural moment, as an enjoyable and pleasant experience constituted the starting point to explore and implement a series of cultural activities to achieve the goal. the cultural moment is an artistic and academic environment, which has been developed in spanish classes for several years. furthermore, it is an opportunity for the students to show their artistic abilities in different areas like dance, music, chants, cartoons, literature, and drawing. the learners are required to participate and everybody must do it. they prepare their own presentations and show the final result once each term. after some time we proposed doing it in english. once they had the experience to perform in english as they do it in spanish classes, both, the students and the teachers agreed to implement the cultural moments in english classes as well. as part of our project we decided to focus on answering a main question: what strategies do the students use to overcome their fears to express themselves orally? the first objective of this project is to promote oral communication in english by reducing the language anxiety and nervousness in the classroom created by the insecurity of being teased for making mistakes. secondly it is to identify the causes of speaking fears, and explore some strategies to see if they are effective in diminishing these fears. we intended to adopt and adapt enjoyable and meaningful activities to create a relaxed atmosphere thus helping students have an interactive role within a cooperative environment. in order to carry out our proposal we have been working within the constructs of cooperative learning and meaningful learning. these constructs will trace the path to follow during this challenging journey, bearing in mind that teachers profile 9.indd 24 21/04/2008 07:43:21 p.m. overcoming fear of speaking in english through meaningful activities: a study with teenagers profile 9, 2008. issn 1657-0790. bogotá, colombia. pages 23-46 25 must be aware of the social responsibility of helping students develop their capacities and communication abilities. they expect to qualify their possibilities now and then, when they are at the university or become part of the workforce. context and participants this study was carried out at josé asunción silva public school in the afternoon shift; it is located in zone 10 of bogotá, colombia. there are about 1,500 secondary students in two shifts. despite one of the emphases of the ministry of education being english, some institutions devote insufficient time to english class. at this school there are only three hours weekly. it should be pointed out that speaking is the ability that our students prefer, but it is the one to which some teachers devote less attention. we have been implementing activities in order to foster oral interaction in different grades but the specific population selected to work on this project was a group of thirty-three tenth graders, sixteen female and seventeen male, between fifteen and nineteen years old. it is important to mention that three students did not participate actively in the process due to their fears of speaking in public. in spite of the support of teachers and partners, they did not even try. the learners’ prior experience in speaking, as they said in the interviews, was limited (appendix 1), they were used to the traditional grammar classes, having to learn lists of words or to conjugate verbs; they also expressed that their previous teachers did not use spoken english. it was noticeable that this group was eager to talk and listen to the foreign language. once they engaged in the project to face their fears and overcome them, developing the speaking skill became their challenge. now let us describe how we have accomplished this endeavour. the first part contains the literature review. in the second, we examine the findings of the study “language anxiety and classroom dynamics” reported by anna turula; then we outline the pedagogical procedure we implemented at the school, and the last part deals with the findings and the conclusions. literature review we begin with two studies related to oral interaction carried out by inservice teachers of public schools, and the theoretical support of our project: cooperative learning, meaningful learning, and learning strategies. the key aspects we have found in the works we have revised are: the necessity to change the methodology, an interest in promoting oral communication, the use of games and enjoyable activities to create a relaxed atmosphere that helps the students overcome their fears, insecurity and nervousness about speaking in english within a cooperative environment. in addition, we can see teachers are concerned about how to engage the learners in this process, giving them an interactive role. to reach that goal we explore different strategies such as cognitive, methodological, psychological and socio-affective. castrillón (2003) in her project “encouraging the development of children’s oral communicative competences through profile 9.indd 25 21/04/2008 07:43:21 p.m. buitrago tinjacá and ayala contreras universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras26 play” shows that activities such as linguistic games, drama, songs, sketches, presentations of little tasks, constitute useful tools for the students participate actively and require them to work cooperatively. she also suggests taking into account relevant aspects when using games for learning purposes such as the learner’s characteristics, their lives, interests, and cultural contexts in order to define and “contextualize the language through the use of concrete activities related to the children’s lives” (p. 64). we sometimes use games to motivate them or at the end of a term, but diminish their pedagogical use not just as an essential axis around which language is learnt and oral production can be promoted; we often forget that many other abilities and values can be acquired. on the other hand, some findings highlighted by gonzález in her project “encouraging interaction by cooperative learning” (2001) confirmed it is possible to increase oral production of secondary students through team-work and ludic activities. furthermore, it provides some ideas about the way to build teams and to be aware of the concept it entails. it fosters the rupture with traditional sequential organization of the classes and the adoption of a new structure. cooperative learning (cl) is more flexible and more time-demanding too, but useful in order to negotiate with the students how to work on helping each other to overcome difficulties, to make decisions about the tasks, to plan, and to solve conflicts. some of the advantages and principles of cl are examined below. cooperative learning according to nunan (1989), adopting cl means facing a challenge and changing. in cl students are not considered as relatively passive recipients of knowledge, but rather active participants and responsible for their own learning. kohonen (2000) compares the traditional structure of secondary schools with the experiential model. this theory is summarised in his own words: “in cooperative learning situations learners work together to accomplish shared goals… can foster learner growth both in terms of academic achievement, personal growth and the development of social and learning skills” (cited by nunan, 1989, p.33). he highlights five factors which are necessary for successful cl: positive interdependence, a 1. sense of working together for a common goal and caring about each others’ learning; individual accountability, whereby 2. every team member feels in charge of their own and their teammates’ learning and makes an active contribution to the group. thus there is no ‘hitchhiking’ or ‘freeloading’ for anyone in a team –everyone pulls their weight; abundant verbal, face-to-face 3. interaction, where learners explain, argue, elaborate and link current material with what they have learned previously; sufficient social skills, involving 4. an explicit teaching of appropriate leadership, communication, trust profile 9.indd 26 21/04/2008 07:43:21 p.m. overcoming fear of speaking in english through meaningful activities: a study with teenagers profile 9, 2008. issn 1657-0790. bogotá, colombia. pages 23-46 27 and conflict resolution skills so that the team can function effectively; team reflection, whereby the teams 5. periodically assess what they have learned, how well they are working together and how they might do better as a learning team. there are certain limitations to face in our educational system, for they are opposite to the characteristics of cooperative learning. one of them is the way we are used to evaluating and grading students’ progress. based on pre-established achievement indicators, teachers define the objectives, we also decide what, how and where learning takes place, we are the ones who select materials and decide on levels and criteria of acceptable outcomes, monitor the learning program and process too. the challenge consists in the willingness to change these roles. fortunately the process has started and we are determined to carry it out and we have reflected on how we have done it until now. we also have to work against automatic promotion of the decree 230 (ministerio de educación nacional de colombia, 2002) which establishes that at least 95% of the students should pass the school year. this has had a negative impact on many students who feel they will be promoted even though they do not learn or do anything. meaningful learning our school adopted meaningful learning as a paradigm to orientate it. according to brunner (1980), the learner incorporates the new ideas into his/her previous knowledge through a process by which he/she develops critical thinking and the ability to make decisions about what is relevant and meaningful, so new knowledge reinforces previous knowledge. furthermore, vigotsky (1978) states that to be meaningful, learning should be articulated both in a social context and in the daily life of the learner, thus children have an active and creative participation in the construction of knowledge. using games: an option to create the right atmosphere to talk we consider this is the most accepted strategy by learners; they are always requesting to play. lee (1979) highlights its relevance and utility to promote spontaneous communication, since during a game learners are not thinking about correct grammar or syntax. when fun activities are used to improvise a class, the pedagogical value is ignored; they ought to be the axis of teaching foreign languages. other voices have expressed the contributions of games. richard–amato (2005) recognizes their advantages as an entertainment strategy which can lower anxiety and permits a foreign language acquisition without stress. lewis (1999) has also described various reasons in favour of games: students show acceptance because they create a learning environment where students can experiment, discover, interact, promote new ideas games; such as increase motivation and break the monotony in the classroom; besides, a game fits perfectly as a way to stimulate adolescents, even those who are shy or extremely nervous; and a game brings the target language to profile 9.indd 27 21/04/2008 07:43:21 p.m. buitrago tinjacá and ayala contreras universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras28 life. games may be used to provide an appropriate environment to speak. language anxiety jones (2004) defines this phenomenon in language learning situation as a fear provoked when the learner is asked to speak in the second or the foreign language in public, with the risk of social embarrassment. oxford (1990), jones (2004), von worde (2003) and turula (2004) conclude that anxiety has a negative effect in language learning. fears, nervousness, insecurity and lack of selfconfidence are related to language anxiety. causes of english speaking fears although some authors recognize anxiety occurs during test taking, writing and reading, we focused our study in speaking skill since it is when fears are more evident in our context. turula (2004) identifies four categories of possible causes: academic, cognitive, social and personal. based on the studies reviewed we identify some factors that may cause language anxiety in our context, which can be summarized within four categories shown in the following diagram: psychological, cognitive, methodological and socialaffective. although it is not possible now to describe each factor in detail, we include diagram 1. causes of english-speaking fears and language anxiety in our classrooms. profile 9.indd 28 21/04/2008 07:43:21 p.m. overcoming fear of speaking in english through meaningful activities: a study with teenagers profile 9, 2008. issn 1657-0790. bogotá, colombia. pages 23-46 29 some relevant considerations related to teenagers, which is the population we deal with. speaking is a stressful skill when they have to interact or do an oral presentation. furthermore, in public schools not many teachers devote time and effort to develop the speaking skill, perhaps because it is not required in learners’ current lives, while in first and second language contexts it does deserve more attention. “our learners often need to be able to speak with confidence in order to carry out many of their most basic transactions. it is the skill by which they are most frequently judged, and through which they make or lose friends. it is the vehicle... of social ranking, professional advances and of business” (bygate, 1987, p. 1). anxiety and nervousness these relevant issues have been analyzed in the literature as key factors that reduce motivation and achievement. anxiety is the result of different situations that students live daily at school; they are accountable for responding to teachers’ questions, completing assignments, taking tests, organizing presentations, etc. most of the time these performances are monitored, graded and reported to their parents. these accountability pressures might be tolerable under conditions of privacy and consistent success, but they become threatening in classrooms where failure carries the danger of public humiliation (brophy, 1998, in dörnyei, 2002, p. 82). lack of confidence this is another remarkable factor of anxiety and fears. students need to have a healthy self-respect and need to believe in themselves as learners. “self-esteem and self-confidence are like the foundations of a building: if they are not secure enough, even the best technology will be insufficient to build solid walls over them. the teacher can employ the most creative motivational ideas, but if students have basic doubts about themselves they will be unable to ‘bloom’ as learners” (dörnyei, 2002, p. 87). moreover, people with a low sense of self-efficacy do not perceive difficult tasks as challenges but as threats, and in this situation they become more concentrated on their personal deficiencies and obstacles rather than on how to perform the tasks successfully. consequently, this kind of people can likely give up on whatever activity because they lose faith in their capabilities and a shadow is always behind them, presenting them from getting past the insecurity and fear. effects and manifestations or symptoms of language anxiety we know that language anxiety has a negative effect on learning. von worde (2003) identifies some physical behaviours such us playing with hair, objects, nervously touching object, hiding behind a partner or looking at the ceiling; and internal symptoms like forgetting what to say, petrified, voiceless, trembling, tears and anger. some of them were noticeable in the video and audio recordings we gathered in our project and others were reported by the students during the evaluation after each activity, as illustrated below: teacher (t): what is the cause of the nervousness and fear? profile 9.indd 29 21/04/2008 07:43:22 p.m. buitrago tinjacá and ayala contreras universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras30 students (several): laughter, criticism and taunts. (field notes) suggestions to reduce language anxiety and fears the mission for teachers is helping students to diminish language anxiety providing the right tools and avoiding problematic situations for them. dörnyei formulates the key question: how can we turn the language classroom into an anxiety-free-zone? the answer is obvious: by removing the factors that can lead to anxiety and fear. therefore: “avoid social comparison, even in its subtle forms, promote cooperation instead of competition, help learners to accept the fact that they will make mistakes as part of the learning process and make tests and assessment completely transparent and involve students in the negotiation of the final mark” (dörnyei, 2002, p. 92-94). since reducing language speaking fears does not only depend on the teachers, let us look at what concerns learners, what learning strategies exist and how they can be classified (o’malley & chamot, 1990; dörnyei, 2002). learning strategies “these are the specific procedures learners use with individual learning tasks” (richards & lockhart 1994, p. 63). each student looks for and uses his/her functional method in order to succeed in the proposed tasks. another definition of learning strategies is “specific actions taken by the learner to make learning easier, faster, more enjoyable, more self-directed, and more transferable to new situations” (oxford, 1990, p. 9). o’malley & chamot state that “strategies begin as declarative knowledge that can become proceduralized with practice and, like complex cognitive skills, proceed through the cognitive, associative, and autonomous stages of learning” (p. 85). dörnyei aims to illustrate to teachers how to motivate learners in the language classroom through thirty-five specific strategies. next we include two taxonomies of strategies: language learning strategies (o’malley & chamot, 1990) and motivational strategies (dörnyei, 2002). language learning strategies based on their descriptive studies, o’malley & chamot (1990) outlined two classifications of language learning strategies (lls). one for the strategies used by second language learners (slls) and the other for the strategies used by foreign language learners (flls). for our purpose, to identify what strategies our students use to overcome their fears to express orally, we chose the first group: metacognitive, cognitive and social / affective. in connection to metacognitive strategies, “metacognition has been used to refer to knowledge about cognition or the regulation of cognition... examples of metacognitive strategies are directed attention, or consciously directing one’s own attention to the learning task, and self-evaluation...” (o’malley & chamot, 1990, p.99). within this category we have taken four: functional planning, self-management, self-monitoring and evaluation. once our students select the topic, they start planning and rehearsing; we profile 9.indd 30 21/04/2008 07:43:22 p.m. overcoming fear of speaking in english through meaningful activities: a study with teenagers profile 9, 2008. issn 1657-0790. bogotá, colombia. pages 23-46 31 made initial agreements about respect and support to assure the conditions that help them learn and do their presentations with permanent monitoring and evaluation. cognitive strategies refer to those specific learning activities that would include using operations or steps in learning or problem solving that require analysis, transformation, or synthesis of learning materials. the students carried out actions such as resourcing, deduction, use of visual images, previous auditory representations, note taking, summarizing and translation. on the other hand, social-affective strategies help learners interact with other people. when students are asked to work with other students most of them enjoy and celebrate since they think the work will be easier and faster working in groups. it is not the same as an individual presentation in public. working together with one or more peers to solve a problem, pool information, check a learning task, model a language activity or get feedback on oral and written performance constitutes one of the pillars of our study. motivational strategies dörnyei, (2002) identifies motivational strategies as the relevant actions to make learning stimulating and enjoyable. we took into account the ones that are closely related to reducing language anxiety in the classroom. they are: breaking the monotony of learning, making the tasks more interesting, increasing students’ involvement, making learning stimulating, and using contracting methods so that we agree with the learner on what to learn and how to assess, protecting the learner’s selfesteem and increasing their self-confidence. this last strategy was the most relevant in our study. we know that “teenagers are the most insecure people in the world, their lives vulnerable to a host of different pressures: pressures about dating, pressures about drugs, pressures about gangs, pressures about parents, pressures about clothing, pressures about sexuality, pressures about race, pressures about grades” (scheidecker & freeman, 1999, in zoltán, 2002, p. 87). the students that decide to participate in speaking in english take a real risk of losing their image, so we as teachers must protect it, encourage them with motivating classes and interesting materials and engage them in challenging activities by providing opportunities to succeed, reducing language anxiety and teaching learning strategies. research design we carried out this study under the principles of qualitative case studies (merriam, 1988) and action research (burns, 1999). they allowed us to focus on individuals, identify a problem of practice and collect data seeking to understand the phenomenon. once we noticed that the students refused to participate in speaking activities because of anxiety and nervousness we engaged in this project. first we defined the research question and the objectives, and then we presented the proposal to the chosen group, which consented to participating actively. we planned the pedagogical design on the basis of meaningful learning, brunner (1980) and the steps for project work suggested by ribe & vidal (1993). second, we revised the literature about language anxiety, language learning strategies and profile 9.indd 31 21/04/2008 07:43:22 p.m. buitrago tinjacá and ayala contreras universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras32 motivational strategies. then we discussed the proposal with the learners to adjust the tasks and made some agreements on having an appropriate learning environment. to collect data we started with a survey to identify students’ needs and preferences. we decided one of us would carry out the class sessions while the other observed, took notes and recorded. lastly, we organized the reflections and preliminary findings, product of permanent discussions and analysis, to validate them. techniques to collect data the instruments and procedures we used were firstly surveys, to collect information about the students’ interests, needs and likes regarding language learning; their experiences in oral practices, their emotions during performances and learning strategies (appendixes 1, 2 and 3). secondly, we used classroom observation because “it enables researchers to document and reflect systematically upon classroom interactions and events, as they actually occur rather than as we think they occur” (burns 1999, p. 80). in addition, to register what we observed we used field notes and recordings. a teacher observed the class and took notes while the other developed the activity. this instrument was very useful because we could look more deeply into different situations that happen in a common class since the teacher is concentrating on teaching or explaining a topic included in the general program, rather than on researching her own process or the variables surrounding the classroom process. finally, it should be mentioned that we used audio and video recording to identify the level of students’ security or insecurity. this permitted us to discover if students liked to speak in public and to be listened to by others. for the students it constituted an innovation and awakened their curiosity to hear their own voices in english. video recording helped us to see the students’ manifestations of fears and anxiety. since the students had the opportunity to watch themselves performing, they became conscious about what they had to refine in their presentations. pedagogical design our proposal, the cultural moment, which is an artistic and academic environment inspired by spanish classes in our school, is illustrated in diagram 2. it is the result of experience, observation, analysis and judicious literature review. as can be seen, we worked on some strategies to make english enjoyable and attractive to promote oral communication. we never did it systematically in previous years; we have just tried some strategies and activities and chose the ones that worked, and then included them in the program and shared the ideas with other teachers in order to persuade them to apply them in their classes. songs. at the beginning we selected – one or two songs per year. the lyrics are related to the topic or grammar we are studying. then we ask the students to participate in the election according to their knowledge and preferences in music. this year they were required to choose a song per period, that’s four songs a year. first they sing in the group, then they learn the lyrics profile 9.indd 32 21/04/2008 07:43:22 p.m. overcoming fear of speaking in english through meaningful activities: a study with teenagers profile 9, 2008. issn 1657-0790. bogotá, colombia. pages 23-46 33 and perform in smaller groups in front of others; they also illustrate it with posters or their clothes and body language. videos and movies. the students – also participate in the election of the movie. while we watch it, we combine some tactics like audio in english and subtitles in spanish or vice versa. after that, they work in groups to reconstruct the story by defining and illustrating the characters, actions and places; then they combine the words to make sentences and present the story in a defined number of scenes. finally they do their presentation orally in front of the group; some prefer to do it in front of the teacher. they are allowed to do so. dancing. the majority of them love – dancing, so they are encouraged to perform a dance and they have to present its history, characteristics, main exponents, etc. in english. poetry. they choose an author and one – of his/her poems. then they memorize it, practice the intonation and finally recite it. furthermore, the students illustrate the author’s biography. this can be done individually or by groups. games and contests. according to the – topics, the students choose one and they design a kind of game (board games, contests, lotteries, bingo, etc). then they explain the rules to their partners and guide the game. they previously have to research vocabulary and ask the teacher how to write instructions. diagram 2. pedagogical design. profile 9.indd 33 21/04/2008 07:43:22 p.m. buitrago tinjacá and ayala contreras universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras34 sketches and plays. this is a more – complex task that requires selection, adaptation, and many rehearsals of the text. the group accepted the challenge to perform “the happy prince”. some students acted it out and the others designed the scenery. finally, at the end of the year the best performance in each category is rewarded and they are given the honor of being presented in a general celebration called the cultural moment during the english day of the school. findings the main objectives of this project were to find out what kind of strategies help the students overcome their fears of expressing themselves orally, to explore meaningful activities to help students feel confident and to provide opportunities to strengthen oral communication. the analysis of data led us to four main categories summarized in diagram 3. they were based on the studies on language anxiety carried out by turula (2004), jones (2004), dörnyei (2002), brophy (1998), davies & rinvolucri (1990), von worde (2003); and on the studies about learning strategies by oxford (1990) and o’malley & chamot (1990), and learning strategies for communication by bygate (1987). one important finding was that despite students and teachers’ willingness and efforts to build an appropriate learning environment, it is not possible to have perfect classrooms for everybody. there were three students who really did not want to participate, and nor did they make a different proposal. this is one of their comments: “i really did not participate in any activity because i felt fear of my partners and i was very ashamed” (field notes transcription). this deserves more attention for further research. another finding worth remarking on may be that in the activities of reciting a poem, reading a text or singing there is not really oral interaction in terms of “real communication” (bygate, 1987) since they just memorize a text or read it. therefore, it is necessary to complement this proposal bearing in mind this factor. let us now comment and illustrate with samples some of the strategies implemented by the students and teachers engaged in this study. 1. psychological strategies in relation to this, it is necessary to bear in mind our learners’ age and its implications. “the self issues (self-esteem, self-confidence, self-efficacy, and self-worth) are particularly sensitive areas in primary/ secondary school learning because students are often in the developmental age... let’s not forget that the foreign language is the only school subject in which one cannot even say a simple sentence without the danger of making a serious mistake” (dörnyei, 2002, p. 87). though one of the agreements was that nobody would laugh at or tease each other, some of students do not trust their partners. in fact they did laugh at times but we intervened to reduce the impact. one participant commented after the third task that he/she felt “a little bad because of the criticisms, but i felt good at the same time”. furthermore we emphasized profile 9.indd 34 21/04/2008 07:43:22 p.m. overcoming fear of speaking in english through meaningful activities: a study with teenagers profile 9, 2008. issn 1657-0790. bogotá, colombia. pages 23-46 35 in classes that they were in the process of learning, so mistakes are part of it; and that peers may encourage each other and strengthen each others self-confidence, as shown below. diagram 3. categories found in the data analysis. description teacher’s comment 1:40 another student passes, the class encourages him. they laugh when he starts. lu1 declaims “england in 1819” students say wooo, buena. students are worried about pronunciation rather than meaning. ps. extract from a field note, during the presentation of poetry. 2. methodological strategies within this category, some motivational strategies deserved recognition. to begin with, we should point out that the activities used with students helped in breaking the monotony of learning as je expressed: “the activities are funny and very appropriate to avoid the fear of speaking in english, we have also increased confidence and the self-esteem; moreover we have the teacher’s help”. another student expressed: “this experience was terrific; it is fantastic to live different experiences and to speak in english more than writing. during the activities i practiced my pronunciation and i was able to become less timid. i also discovered that fun activities help me to avoid fear and i can learn more easily” (field note after the presentation of “the happy prince”). this sample evidences that students recognized variety is an important element to making tasks more interesting. we also witnessed increasing students involvement: “the classes were very amusing, i was very glad, especially when i danced, i think these activities help us to learn easily, thanks” (di). learners were active participants in different stages of the project. 1 we identified students with the first two letters of their names to protect their identities. profile 9.indd 35 21/04/2008 07:43:23 p.m. buitrago tinjacá and ayala contreras universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras36 some got the information required on the web, others read, others acted and made presentations. our activities also provided more opportunities for success. students’ answers when we celebrated the english day and they shared the final outcome of a chosen activity highlighted the evolution in gaining security to interact in english. as they were frequently exposed to oral activities they became more secure; the more they practiced the better they felt. as these students’ quotes revealed in the second task: “it was the first time so i felt very strange but fine”, “i felt better than the last time” (line 28); “i discovered that i like these activities more and more and i increase in self-confidence” (line 60); “i feel more confidence in english classes” (line 49), “finally, i felt very well” (line 35); “excellent, i enjoyed it very much and i overcame my fear and nervousness” (line 37). security was also witnessed in the survey about how they felt in class activities: “i enjoyed it very much”, “this year the classes have been very appropriate to overcome our shyness and fears to speak english in public” (taken from appendix 3). in addition, students liked challenging tasks and demonstrated that they faced the obstacles to overcome them: “we were a little nervous because we had not done it but it was fantastic” (line 31, field note after the second task of poetry). rehearsal and repetition were the most-used strategies to learn and become more secure for presentations in public. learners devoted hours repeating, reading aloud and asking for confirmation of pronunciation. certainly, rehearsing was present during the development of these activities; in a certain way it constitutes the umbrella which covers other cognitive strategies such as simplification, inventing words, speed elaboration or identifying mistakes. providing opportunities, time and frequency are relevant conditions to have students communicate orally. first of all, the frequency of the presentations was a positive influence in reducing their nervousness: “i would like dancing and theatre activities to be performed with more frequency and not only in the classroom but in the whole institution” (da, field note). other students felt more time was required to prepare, because the duration of english classes was not enough: “some students do not participate because they feel shame” (transcriptions of audio recordings of the evaluation). sometimes, we had to the ask others teachers for time, in other classes, and also during the break, to rehearse. finally, we should refer to difficult texts. probably suggesting poetry was not a very appropriate task. students searched about this topic and chose shakespeare’s sonnets, and some texts written by walt whitman, oscar wilde, emily dickinson and charles bukowski among others. these texts were not easy for them to pronounce and memorize; as ka expressed after her performance of poetry: “i felt ashamed because poetry is much more difficult in english”; “the pronunciation was complicated” (field notes). in the initial survey we did about preferences students never mentioned poetry as one of their favorite activities. even so, we intended to make literature part of each task, but it did not work this time. profile 9.indd 36 21/04/2008 07:43:23 p.m. overcoming fear of speaking in english through meaningful activities: a study with teenagers profile 9, 2008. issn 1657-0790. bogotá, colombia. pages 23-46 37 3. cognitive strategies in some situations, more than one strategy is present almost simultaneously, such as in these examples, which evidence the use of social, psychological and metacognitive strategies. line description teachers’ comments 29 30 31 32 33 34 1:30 two students ask me for pronunciation and they wrote in spanish the way they heard the pronunciation. ka declaims “mother to son”. she was very nervous, so she stopped. (students say: “relax, let her”, she sits and waits some time to be quiet). students look for useful and practical strategies to pronounce well. their fellows’ support encourages whoever. extract from a field note, during the presentation of poetry. line description teachers’ comments 1 2 3 4 5 6 12:30 the teacher organizes the classroom and asks the students to be ready for the poetry presentation. some students are practicing softly (reading on the cards) pao and kar read the poem in front. the class listens seriously. each student is concentrated on his/her poem and presentation. extract from a field note, during the presentation of poetry. students were very interested in identifying errors or difficulties in pronunciation. it was evident students’ main concern was to pronounce well. the learners were constantly asking about it and listening to the cassette or reading aloud in small groups, this is illustrated by some of the answers to the question: how did you feel in each activity? (appendix 3): “nervous because i don’t know how to pronounce well”; “i felt a little nervous, the pronunciation was difficult for me”. “metacognition has been used to refer to knowledge about cognition or the regulation of cognition. knowledge about cognition may include applying thoughts about the cognitive operations of oneself or others” (brown & palincsar 1982, in o’malley & chamot 1990, p. 99). students engaged in these tasks through the use of planning, identifying errors, solving the problems and self-management. in this process students also evidenced the use of the mother tongue to gain confidence and as a tool to learn the english pronunciation. l1 as a tool to get confidence in pronunciation is probably another important finding in our study. learners made transcriptions of the pronunciation in spanish. they seemed to be more confident when they knew they were pronouncing correctly. pronunciation was one of their main concerns, as one of the participants said during an informal interview during breaktime (october, 2005): profile 9.indd 37 21/04/2008 07:43:23 p.m. buitrago tinjacá and ayala contreras universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras38 what are you practicing nicolas? – the pronunciation. – how can you learn to pronounce? – first of all i ask my teacher and she – reads, then we practice reading aloud, if we have any doubt or question we ask you again or we take advantage of the best students in the group and they help us with the pronunciation.” which activities can help you? – songs and all those related to music. – likewise, some students took notes on the pronunciation while the teacher read. the following are some examples: between they wrote bituin 1920 – 1994 = naitin to naitin naity for august 16, 1920 – march 9, 1994 = ogost sixtin to … nain life = laif main= mein tribulations = tribuleichion reviews = revius we can say they made some equivalences between the spanish and english phonetics by using their own notes or formulas and previous knowledge. we consider this action as a metacognitive strategy due to the fact that the learners are employing a tool (spanish) to help them remember pronunciation; in other words, they are learning how to learn. furthermore, they participated in actively planning, setting goals and objectives, and evaluating their learning by selfmonitoring. 4. social strategies friends’ support and relationships are vital. we cannot deny the existence of sub groups in a class and other communities. they share some specific common interests, and they are close friends. so when one of the group presented, their friends supported them even if their performance was not the best, and each participant was especially encouraged by the others: “i felt more relaxed because i was with my friends” (field notes). line description teachers’ comments 29 30 31 32 33 1:30 two students ask me for pronunciation and they wrote in spanish the way they heard the pronunciation. kar declaims “mother to son”. she was very nervous, so she stopped. (students say: “relax, let her”, she sits and waits some time to be relaxed). after she would try again. students look for useful and practical strategies to pronounce well. the fellows’ support encourages each other. extract from a field note, during the presentation of poetry. nevertheless, there were also some tensions and rivalry among the groups of the class. therefore, when a member or a group, which did not get along with the rest, did his/ her presentation, the encouragement and recognition diminished, despite the quality. sometimes the buzz during the activity or the apparent indifference made them feel bad. on the other hand, drawing on of observation and the analysis of the second survey (see appendix 2) about their feelings and perceptions after the first three tasks (songs, poetry and dancing) we can say profile 9.indd 38 21/04/2008 07:43:23 p.m. overcoming fear of speaking in english through meaningful activities: a study with teenagers profile 9, 2008. issn 1657-0790. bogotá, colombia. pages 23-46 39 that some causes of fears in our learners of speaking in english in front of a group are: lack of preparation some students did not participate in the activities and they recognized the cause was they did not prepare the task: “i was nervous because i didn’t learn the song”;“fine, because we knew what we had to do”. laughter the following chart illustrates this item. it contains a summary of feedback and assessment done after the presentation of the second task on poems and the authors’ biography. lack of meaning becoming familiar with the pronunciation and intonation of poetry was not easy; getting the meaning was even more difficult, in some cases impossible. therefore, students were attentive to how not what they were saying. but they accepted the challenge to declaim. since we had clearly established the main purpose was to recite a text, sometimes they read it aloud in front of the group; meaning was not a condition. as has been shown so far, cultural moments are promoters of social interaction. our pedagogical proposal was accepted enthusiastically by the students. they perceived it as a replacement of classes: “well, this year the classes were really good, they were different and they fortunately changed for us, we hope this can follow in future years with the other teachers because it would be terrible if the project is developed only this year.” “the classes are odd but very nice. we can participate a lot in the class. each student can show the personal ability” (answers gathered when we applied the survey included in appendix 3). as can be seen, students perceived tasks as a space to enjoy and show their talents and abilities in communicating through dancing, singing or acting. conclusions the suggestion for pedagogical practice made by von worde (2003) seems to fit perfectly: “a relaxed classroom atmosphere or environment is significant in reducing opinions, hunches, ideas participants we know what we have to say, but we forget everything because of nervousness. nic it was impossible for me to declaim because of the fear of being teased. shi i felt more secure and relaxed declaiming at home when nobody was looking at me. lu what is the cause of the nervousness and fear? teachers asked the laughter, criticism and taunts. different students answered chart 1. students’ opinions after a task development. profile 9.indd 39 21/04/2008 07:43:23 p.m. buitrago tinjacá and ayala contreras universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras40 anxiety. this might include the teacher’s individual personality as well as attitude toward both the language and the students. the participants stressed that anxiety decreases when teachers make the class interesting and fun. similarly, using topics and themes relevant to the students’ own lives and interests appeared to reduce anxiety and increase learner motivation” (von worde 2003, p. 16). the results reported in this study show that cultural activities constitute a valuable option to contribute to freestress environment and encourage english learning in the classroom. students get involved more easily in the tasks when they do what they are good at because the enjoy doing it. this kind of activity breaks the monotony of learning. it means changing the way we usually develop current classes, which is the first type of motivational strategies proposed by dörnyei (2002). this was recognized by most of the participants “ok, the activities were good, it was something different for a class, luckily for us, the english activities have changed, i hope this to be continued since just class and class is too boring” (answers gathered in the survey included in appendix 3). however, three students were not engaged and they did not dare to participate in any of the activities proposed, and neither did they propose anything different. during the final meeting to decide about promotion, teachers confirmed that these students had the same attitude in other subjects. their lack of motivation and commitment might be a matter of a further study. if we make these learners identify their learning strategies, it may be possible to engage them in autonomous learning and they might have a better and more rewarding performance. it should also be said that others, six students approximately, participated only because of the evaluation; they just wanted to pass the subject in their final school report. regarding one of the main objectives of this study, we observed the cultural moments permitted not only an increase in the level of participation but also a reduction in learners’ fears which contributed to the loss of confidence in expressing themselves orally in english in public. humor is also a way to reduce anxiety. the study also revealed that the teacher can use some embarrassing situations or mistakes to have fun and show it happens to others; that she/he is not the only one. when the students have a certain security that they are not going to be judged they are more likely to participate in the events. from the beginning we made agreements with respect to this in the group. we emphasized they were in a stage of the learning process, that it was common and normal to make mistakes in pronunciation or spelling; that they occur everywhere. “mistakes are okay because without mistakes there is no learning and there is a lot of learning from mistakes” (dörnyei, 2002, p. 93). they knew the teachers were going to support them and we were not going to accept any taunts. if something was funny we could laugh and enjoy the situation, but it was not against the person; it was necessary to understand it in this way, not with the intention to mock. a common funny speaking situation is when someone refers to some local places, food or proper names, the contrast of sounds of profile 9.indd 40 21/04/2008 07:43:24 p.m. overcoming fear of speaking in english through meaningful activities: a study with teenagers profile 9, 2008. issn 1657-0790. bogotá, colombia. pages 23-46 41 mother tongue with foreign language makes them laugh. one of the most significant findings in this study was the use of mother tongue, a strategy that permitted them to get confidence in pronunciation. as found through the surveys, pronunciation was one of their main concerns when they expressed themselves orally in front of the group. thus, to improve, they asked us to read the difficult words or expressions aloud and slowly while they wrote in spanish how to pronounce them. this evidences the use of cognitive strategies described by oxford (1990, in richards & lockhart, 1998), which imply using formulas and patterns for learning. another strategy students used to learn pronunciation was singing; they followed the lyrics and imitated the artists. they also asked the students who were considered to have good pronunciation to read the texts aloud. after having practiced the learners asked us to listen to them privately and correct if necessary. in relation to the second objective of our study, which aimed to provide opportunities to strengthen oral communication, it is certain that cooperative work and project work increase it. in each stage of the tasks they had to speak, read aloud and participate in making decisions (this last one was done in spanish). there were plenty of opportunities during the whole process: they had to rehearse permanently, so they practiced during an extra class; then we had a general pre-presentation in the classroom in order to give them feedback and suggestions on the materials and language they were going to use for the final outcome; after that, they did their presentations in the classroom, and, finally in front of the school community. the same process was used during the four terms, from february 2005. it is evident the students got confidence through these different opportunities and that there might be continuity in the near future. further research during the implementation of the alternative activities described in this paper, there were some common and fixed patterns that made us foresee further studies. one of them is competition, which is one of the causes of anxiety. within competitive practices there is a winner and the others are left behind. the alternative is a long-term process of learning to work by teams, among the groups; the learners still need to learn how to work cooperatively, rather than being competitive. to achieve this goal it is necessary to change some criteria so that we evaluate their processes rather than the contents or results. in other words, the evaluation system established in the school seems to promote competition because they are attentive to who got a “five”, “three”, “one” or their equivalent “e”, “a”, “d”. perhaps achievements could be recognized and expressed in a descriptive or analytical way. we also noticed that it is necessary to provide the opportunity for all the participants to be presented in front of the community, not only the best performances. to achieve this, teachers might be aware of the capacities of each student in order to search for the way to give them chances to succeed, that is, to assign tasks according to abilities. another factor is how to handle the pressure and power relationships among profile 9.indd 41 21/04/2008 07:43:24 p.m. buitrago tinjacá and ayala contreras universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras42 the groups which may inhibit others performing because they sometimes intend to diminish other presentations; they tend to support just their friends and those they get along with, ignoring the others, even though their presentations and performances are good. these kinds of relationships exist among the groups and how to manage them should be taken into account in the future. pedagogical implications and limitations despite time limitations, carrying out this project was of great value since we had the possibility to socialize this project with our colleagues in order to persuade them to implement some of these strategies in their classes, although they were not convinced by all of the strategies. in addition, the principal was willing to support us and permitted to have some meetings to coordinate actions and plan the presentations while the students were working on other assignments. it is important to bear in mind that teachers should be flexible. a few students in the group reject the tasks proposed by the majority, so it is necessary to negotiate with them how they will participate. for example in music, there are some students who really do not like to sing or dance, even in their private lives. therefore we had to encourage them and coordinate another option to participate. project work provided this; 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(1998). failure syndrome students. eric digest. retrieved june 27, 2007 from http://ceep.crc.uiuc.edu/eecearchive/digests/ 1998/brophy98.pdf bruner, j. (1980). la elaboración del sentido. la construcción del mundo por el niño. buenos aires: paidós. burns, a. (1999). collaborative action research for english language teachers. cambridge: cambridge university press. bygate, m. (1987). speaking. oxford: oxford university press. castrillón, o. (2003). encouraging the development of children’s oral competences through play. profile, 4, 58-64. davies, p., & rinvolucri, m. (1990). the confidence book. harlow, u.k.: longman. dörnyei, z. (2002). motivational strategies in the language classroom. cambridge: cambridge university press. gonzález, s. (2001). encouraging interaction by applying cooperative learning. profile, 2, 28-33. jones, j. f., (2004). a cultural context for language anxiety. ea journal, 21(2). retrieved june 17, 2007 from http://qa.englishaustralia.com.au/ index.cgi?e=hsvalidator&template=journal&efil e=admin&x=s&lev1=5&lev2=3 kohonen, v. (2000). experiential learning in foreign language education. london: pearson education. lee, w. (1979). language teaching games and contests. cambridge: cambridge university press. lewis, g. (1999). games for children. oxford: oxford university press. merriam, s. b. (1988). case study research in education. san francisco: jossey-bass publications. ministerio de educación nacional de colombia. (2002). decreto 230 de 2002. bogotá: men. profile 9.indd 42 21/04/2008 07:43:24 p.m. overcoming fear of speaking in english through meaningful activities: a study with teenagers profile 9, 2008. issn 1657-0790. bogotá, colombia. pages 23-46 43 about the authors rocío amparo buitrago tinjacá holds a b.a. in spanish and modern languages from the universidad pedagógica nacional. she has participated in different studies for improving her teaching practice including the “red profile” in-service program. she works at i.e.d. josé asunción silva, where the project this article refers to was developed. ruth ayala contreras holds a b.a. in modern languages from universidad distrital francisco josé de caldas and a specialization in edumática from universidad autónoma de colombia. besides the school, she currently works at universidad pedagógica nacional in the faculty of physical education and at universidad distrital francisco josé de caldas in the pedagogical component of licenciatura en educación básica con énfasis en inglés. nunan, d. (1989). designing tasks for the communicative classroom. cambridge: cambridge university press. nunan, d. (1993). collaborative language learning and teaching. cambridge: cambridge university press. o’malley, j., & chamot, a. (1990). learning strategies in second language acquisition. cambridge: cambridge university press. oxford, r.l. (1990b). language learning strategies: what every teacher should know. ribe, r., & vidal, n. (1993). project work. porstmouth, nh: heinemann. richard-amato, p. (2005). academic success for english language learners: strategies for k-12, mainstream teachers. london: pearson education. richards, j.c., & lockhart, c. (1998). reflective teaching in second language classrooms. cambridge: cambridge university press. turula, a. (2004). language anxiety and classroom dynamics: a study of adult learners. english teaching forum online, 40, 1-10. retrieved june 26, 2007, from http://exchanges.state.gov/ forum/ vigotsky, l.s. (1978). mind in society. the development of higher psychological processes. cambridge, ma: harvard university press. von worde, r. (2003). student’s perspectives on foreign anxiety. inquiry, 8, 1-17. retrieved june 28, 2007, from http://www.vccaedu.org/inquiry/ inquiry-spring2003/i-81-worde.html profile 9.indd 43 21/04/2008 07:43:24 p.m. buitrago tinjacá and ayala contreras universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras44 appendix 1: survey to diagnose some students’ preferences in english class1 name age 1. who do you live with?: parents grandparents uncle or aunt others 2. do you like english? yes no 3. what is your favorite activity in english? writing speaking reading listening 4. do you practice english in other places or institutions? yes no 5. do you have a relative or any friend to help you in english homework? yes no 6. do you enjoy the english classes at school? yes no why? 7. which specific activities do you prefer in english classes? 8. what would you like to do in your classes? 9. which topics would you like to develop? – sports – science and technology – music – fashion – movies – others 1 it was administered in spanish to ensure students’ understanding. profile 9.indd 44 21/04/2008 07:43:24 p.m. overcoming fear of speaking in english through meaningful activities: a study with teenagers profile 9, 2008. issn 1657-0790. bogotá, colombia. pages 23-46 45 appendix 2: second survey for students to find out how they felt in each activity grade: 1006 september, 2005 1. answer bearing in mind the following activities. activity did you participate? how did you feel? songs yes no poetry yes no music yes no 2. what is your opinion in relation to the activities implemented this year? thanks! profile 9.indd 45 21/04/2008 07:43:24 p.m. buitrago tinjacá and ayala contreras universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras46 appendix 3: third survey for the assessment of the cultural activities grade: 1006 october, 2005 1. describe the english classes during the last years. 2. do you believe those classes created an appropriate atmosphere to speak in english? did you sing, dance or play? 3. do you like the new proposal? yes no why? thanks! profile 9.indd 46 21/04/2008 07:43:24 p.m. profile no. 6 oct 13.p65 ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ profile profile profile profile profile 6 (2005): universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras the mediated learning experience and the mediator’s implications la experiencia de aprendizaje mediado y las implicaciones del mediadorla experiencia de aprendizaje mediado y las implicaciones del mediadorla experiencia de aprendizaje mediado y las implicaciones del mediadorla experiencia de aprendizaje mediado y las implicaciones del mediadorla experiencia de aprendizaje mediado y las implicaciones del mediador fffffanny stella tanny stella tanny stella tanny stella tanny stella torororororres vigoyares vigoyares vigoyares vigoyares vigoya fanito80@yahoo.com gimnasio los andes and universidad nacional de colombia it is clear that educators can affect learning positively or negatively, that a personal or professional attitude will immediately change the awareness pupils have toward our classes. furthermore, as educators, we can not encourage in our pupils the development of good cognitive and socioemotional strategies if we do not constitute ourselves as a model to be followed. on account of these considerations, this article focuses on what feuerstein (1986) has termed “mediation”, its conditions and the mediator’s profile. thus, as language teachers, we have to think about the way we could improve and enrich the experience we are offering our pupils in order to make them feel and be intelligent cognitively and emotionally. kkkkkey worey worey worey worey wordsdsdsdsds: mediation, mediator, cognitive development, socioemotional development, intention, reciprocity, transcendence, meaning, competence, complexity, shared conduct, individuality, psychological difference, belonging, awareness es claro que como educadores podemos afectar el aprendizaje de manera positiva o negativa y que una actitud personal o profesional podría cambiar de manera inmediata la disposición que tienen nuestros estudiantes hacia nuestra clase. además, como educadores no podemos promover en nuestros educandos el desarrollo de estrategias cognitivas y socio-emocionales positivas si nosotros mismos no nos constituimos en un modelo digno de ser seguido. teniendo en cuenta estas consideraciones, este artículo se enfoca en lo que feuerstein (1986) llama “mediación”, sus condiciones y el perfil del mediador. como profesores de idiomas debemos reflexionar acerca de las maneras como podríamos mejorar y enriquecer la experiencia que le estamos ofreciendo a nuestros estudiantes para que ellos se sientan y se hagan inteligentes tanto cognitiva como emocionalmente. palabras clavespalabras clavespalabras clavespalabras clavespalabras claves: mediación, mediador, desarrollo cognitivo, desarrollo socio-emocional, intencionalidad, reciprocidad, trascendencia, significado, competencia, complejidad, conducta compartida, individualidad, diferencia psicológica, pertenencia, disposición 177-185 this article was received on april 15th, 2005 and accepted on august 22nd, 2005. ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ 178 torrestorrestorrestorrestorres profileprofileprofileprofileprofile introductionintroductionintroductionintroductionintroduction from the time a child is born, his learning processes are guided and shaped through the intervention of adults who are significant in the newborn’s life. these important people in the child’s development are known as mediators. they are the people who select, organise and present stimuli they consider most appropriate for the child. they also decide on the most convenient ways to use them in the cognitive, social and emotional development of the infant. moreover, these mediators, at the beginning parents, but later educators, take part in the first attempts children make to respond to a stimulus. they lead and motivate the corresponding answers while explaining why one answer is more useful and effective than others. in this way, it is evident how the interaction among these meaningful adults and the child allows the latter to shape his world progressively and comprehend his place within it and its wide variety of contexts. at first, the infant has direct interaction with just his parents, siblings and relatives, but later his context is widened and enriched in the educational environment, the community and neighbourhood, peers and friends, the media and culture. it is here where the child starts establishing connections between his family experiences and those he is already acquiring at school and some other contexts that allow him to continue adding more elements to his life and knowledge, from birth to maturity. (see figure 1) it is undeniable the impact these family and scholastic experiences have on the kids’ attitudes, and, consequently, on the achievement of their short and long-term learning goals. that is why it is so important that the experiences offered in one field or the other be the most meaningful, positive and formative. regarding this, reuven feuerstein (1986), proposes a mediation process, in which teachers, more than going beyond the transfer of knowledge, set up an action plan to encourage pupils learn to learn. in order to do so, it is essential that pupils learn to think by solving problems and doing research, gain knowledge by using strategies that permit them to learn using well-defined purposes figure 1.figure 1.figure 1.figure 1.figure 1. children and their mediators. every child develops, in part, as all children; in part, as some other children; and in part, as any other child! ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○179 profileprofileprofileprofileprofile the mediated learning experience and the mediator’s implications by them and for them, know their cognitive styles and develop all the potential they have for increasingly complex and abstraction levels of knowledge, have the leading role in their own personal and academic growth and, lastly, to be more effective, independent and critical people. in connection with feuerstein’s characterisation of mediation, williams and burden (1997) state that “mediation is to find ways of helping the other to learn. particularly, this involves helping learners to move through the next layer of knowledge or understanding”. m e d i am e d i am e d i am e d i am e d i at i o n c r i t e r i a a n d t h et i o n c r i t e r i a a n d t h et i o n c r i t e r i a a n d t h et i o n c r i t e r i a a n d t h et i o n c r i t e r i a a n d t h e mediamediamediamediamediatortortortortor’s implic’s implic’s implic’s implic’s implicaaaaationstionstionstionstions before going specifically into the issue of mediation criteria, i wish first to state that the purpose here is not to draw “an ideal teacher profile”, but to consider some aspects which would help us qualify our teaching practice. martinez (1991), prieto (1992), and williams & burden (1997) discuss feuerstein’s mediation criteria which are fundamental to carry out any teaching-learning activity. integrating the criteria proposed by these authors, in diagram 1, i present the twelve main actions of mediation a mediator is recognised for. it means that by taking all these elements into practice, mediators would dare to say that their teaching is as effective and efficient as their pupils’ learning is. intentionality and reciprocityintentionality and reciprocityintentionality and reciprocityintentionality and reciprocityintentionality and reciprocity this first criterion has to do with establishing the mediation experience purposes within the teachinglearning process. the mediator shares his intentions with the learner to involve him in a mutual process of enrichment and development. at the same time, it is vital to ensure and verify that our students have understood what is required and what is expected of them, and that both parts are capable and welldisposed to achieve the intended goals. tttttranscendenceranscendenceranscendenceranscendenceranscendence objectives and goals, apart from being clear, reachable and meaningful, should guarantee that the mediator is confronting his learners with learning experiences and proposed academic tasks that are not only useful to carry out, but to confront efficiently a wide variety of real and authentic situations in any other context. the fact is that the pupils should learn, internalise and use something of a more general value than what is being taught by the task, the project or the class. diagram 1diagram 1diagram 1diagram 1diagram 1. actions of mediation (based on martínez, 1991; prieto, 1992; williams & burden, 1997). ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ 180 torrestorrestorrestorrestorres profileprofileprofileprofileprofile significancesignificancesignificancesignificancesignificance learning situations need to be presented in an organised, sequenced, interesting and relevant way, encouraging learners’ active and emotional involvement in the processes. therefore, the mediator has to explain the intention of the activities in order to give them sense. he/she should discuss the importance tasks have, and look for mechanisms that raise interest in the task itself. s e a rs e a rs e a rs e a rs e a rc h i n g , p l a n n i n g a n d ac h i n g , p l a n n i n g a n d ac h i n g , p l a n n i n g a n d ac h i n g , p l a n n i n g a n d ac h i n g , p l a n n i n g a n d ac h i e v i n gc h i e v i n gc h i e v i n gc h i e v i n gc h i e v i n g objectivesobjectivesobjectivesobjectivesobjectives this criterion implies guiding pupils to achieve their individual and group goals in the short, medium or long term by setting real work plans. to make this process easier, the mediator helps children to set their objectives and the way they will approach them with perseverance, patience and hard work. at the same time, it is the mediator’s duty to keep pupils’ attention focused on the stated teaching-learning goals. sense of competencesense of competencesense of competencesense of competencesense of competence this mediation characteristic is related to the effectiveness and efficacy an educational process should have when learners feel competent and capable of learning. it is the mediator ’s responsibility to create an environment where learners can develop a positive self-image, high self-esteem and self-confidence. we need to motivate in our pupils the feeling of “i can” or “i’m capable of doing this...” we facilitate the acquisition of competencies through adapting learning according to our pupils’ interests and ages, selecting the right material, presenting and sequencing the information and providing relevant teaching-learning strategies that allow the development and reinforcement of the students’ capabilities. it is necessary to say that it is not enough for our pupils to feel competent, they have to become competent by acquiring the necessary abilities and strategies to take control of their own learning process. awareness of changeawareness of changeawareness of changeawareness of changeawareness of change modification implies that through the experience of mediation, learners should be conscious that they can change, improve and strengthen not only their cognitive functions but also their behaviours and strategies in order to achieve their objectives. in this way, the mediator is s/he who encourages pupils to have an objective knowledge of themselves and their learning processes. at the beginning, it is the mediator who guides, controls and evaluates the way pupils internalise information, but students must gradually transform themselves into active, dynamic and autonomous individuals, able to generate selfevaluation mechanisms that will allow them to take the initiative to direct their own learning processes. novelty and complexitynovelty and complexitynovelty and complexitynovelty and complexitynovelty and complexity this is characteristic of mediation to promote intellectual curiosity, originality, innovation and creativity or divergent thought. the mediator encourages challenge and hard work through the selection and assignment of activities that are sufficiently difficult to provide a challenge, but are achievable. apart from that, the mediator should propose a wide range of interactions and confrontations of diverse points of view that invite his/her children to participate actively. the mediator might use methodological, didactic and pedagogic strategies that form students willing to learn. active participation and shared conductactive participation and shared conductactive participation and shared conductactive participation and shared conductactive participation and shared conduct sharing and working in a co-operative way are part of our social existence; that is why we are encouraged to share not only behaviours and attitudes but also knowledge. the educator-mediator promotes collaborative work, self-confidence, and active participation among pupils in order to make them socialise, negotiate, agree, respect differences and achieve working in harmony. the teacher must be part of the group in order to increase the opportunities of reflective discussions and to tighten the empathetic relationships necessary to increase motivation. all this contributes to the learners’ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○181 profileprofileprofileprofileprofile the mediated learning experience and the mediator’s implications cognitive and socio-emotional growth. when learners develop their abilities in the acquisition and development of concepts and cognitive operations, they also learn social strategies for the development of competencies that permit them to establish, coordinate and cultivate good personal and work relationships. regulation and control of conductregulation and control of conductregulation and control of conductregulation and control of conductregulation and control of conduct the mediation experience provides alternatives that allow pupils to consider possibilities before making any decision. it means that through appropriate mediation, children also learn to have logical and systematic processes to solve problems by making use of previously acquired knowledge, by using it with form and coherence, and by expressing it through reasoning procedures. the mediator’s contribution is to provide pupils with all the necessary tools for them to take control of their own learning and behaviour in such a way that, besides being “effective learners”, they also become more independent to decide what to do, how, when and why. individuality and psychological differenceindividuality and psychological differenceindividuality and psychological differenceindividuality and psychological differenceindividuality and psychological difference mediation is based on learning models that are based on individual differences, cognitive functions and styles, which characterise pupils according to their age and developmental stage. the mediator accepts, helps and motivates his children as unique beings with independent and divergent thought processes with regard to other pupils and even the teacher. at the same time kids learn to co-operate, their individuality may emerge and it should be accepted and supported as they need to assert the fact that they think and feel differently from others. sense of belongingsense of belongingsense of belongingsense of belongingsense of belonging while pupils feel unique and different, they also need to feel they are a recognised part of a work team, a group, an educational institution, a society, and a culture. what the mediator can do at this point is to promote team work (more than group work) with specific and meaningful purposes for the students; to propose activities in which they interchange and reinforce not only academic knowledge but also social and cultural knowledge. in order to achieve these goals, it is, first of all, necessary that the teaching-learning process occur in a positive climate created by reciprocal support, tolerance, respect, confidence, empathy and productive work. the atmosphere in which a learning process takes place and the nature of the personal and group interactions through which it is carried out, have a powerful influence on what, how and why a child learns. optimistic awarenessoptimistic awarenessoptimistic awarenessoptimistic awarenessoptimistic awareness although the learning process starts with the conviction that any individual is able to become a highly effective learner regardless of his age and possible difficulties, we are always raising artificial barriers in the way of the learning processes. we always tend to make it more difficult than it really is. the mediation experience espouses that is not important how difficult an activity or task seems to be to some pupils, all of them are capable of doing it. williams & burden (1997) state the importance of encouraging a strong belief in learners that there is always a solution to any problem so that they learn to be persistent rather than giving up. as long as the educator believes that his pupils are capable of accomplishing any task, he will continue to seek effective and efficient ways and actions of helping them to achieve the learning goals. mediamediamediamediamediation through the eyes oftion through the eyes oftion through the eyes oftion through the eyes oftion through the eyes of the teaching-learning practicethe teaching-learning practicethe teaching-learning practicethe teaching-learning practicethe teaching-learning practice at this point, it is necessary to state that teachers do not need to consider how to include the twelve aspects of mediation in each proposed activity. they have to contemplate the particular characteristics of their pupils to decide which areas of mediation to involve. the following two examples of mediation applied to language teaching activities are not intended to give a teaching formula but to illustrate some of the different ways in which educators might mediate. ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ 182 torrestorrestorrestorrestorres profileprofileprofileprofileprofile activity 1 (see figure 2) is a role-play for groups of four students. it is based on talking about a recent holiday. each pupil in the group is given a handout (figure 2); they have seven minutes to read and to work out where he/she went on holiday. before starting, chairs are arranged to resemble a train compartment, with pairs of students facing each other. intentionality and reciprocity the teacher explains the purpose of the activity in order to help learners to see the value at a learning level. so, the mediator tells pupils that the intention of this simulation is to reinforce and internalise past tenses, to talk as fluently and accurately as possible without writing a word but practising the mental organisation of the ideas. at the same time, the mediator checks if the instructions are clear enough to start. transcendence the activity itself makes pupils use english in a different setting. they will feel they are speaking for different purposes, not only to accomplish an academic task. although it is a semi-controlled activity, pupils might feel free to talk about the different given items and come up with their own ideas. sense of competence teachers present all their students the same material, the same information and the same teaching strategies. in spite of that, it is quite rare to find cognitive homogeneity in the learning groups. not all pupils have the same knowledge and level of understanding, but all of them can do what is proposed. thus, the mediator needs to deal with the situation by adapting and creating activities according to her/his students’ cognitive level. the mediator has to pre-teach what is necessary to carry out this activity and guide, support his/her pupils (mostly those with learning difficulties). through this exercise, teachers can benefit their teaching-learning practise by paying attention to the co-operation of “more advanced” peers in the group. novelty and complexity this activity provides certain guidelines the pupil needs to consider in order to use specific knowledge in terms of verb tenses and vocabulary, but they do not limit students’ oral production. through this activity, the mediator is encouraging a wide range of interactions and confrontations that invite pupils to be creative and inventive. holidholidholidholidholidaaaaay ty ty ty ty talkalkalkalkalk you are in a train compartment with three other people. you have just been on holiday and are on your way home. you get into conversation with your fellow-passengers and find out that they, too, have just been on holiday. before you start, think about the following: • where you went and for how long • what the weather/food was like • where you stayed • the best thing about the holiday • what you did in the day/evenings • one bad thing that happened • any interesting people you met • anything else you can think of • any interesting excursions you went on when someone talks about his/her holiday, encourage him/her by asking questions, e.g. was the hotel very modern? was anything there worth buying? what were the local people like? figure 2figure 2figure 2figure 2figure 2. sample of mediation applied to a language teaching activity (taken from watcyn-jones, 2000, p.20). ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○183 profileprofileprofileprofileprofile the mediated learning experience and the mediator’s implications active participation and shared conduct group work activities are one of the most effective strategies mediators have to develop and encourage a sense of self-confidence, co-operation and participation in their pupils. through an activity like this, students are not only socialising but negotiating, sharing knowledge, attitudes, and are learning to respect what the others say. they are guided to talk but to let their classmates talk too. mediators need to control the activity by guiding pupils (directly or indirectly) to listen attentively, to take turns, to avoid aggressive or disrespectful attitudes. regulation and control of conduct this criterion is closely related to the previous one; the success of the activity depends on the self-control pupils have. mediators might help by discouraging impulsive behaviour in their students. thus, it is important that mediators provide time and strategies to approach this activity in an organised way. it means that students must have time to understand the activity and its purpose, to organise their ideas before starting the activity, to organise information in a logical and coherent way and to choose the best moment to start. activity 2 (see figure 3) is a guessing activity whose function is to describe objects. it is to be done individually. the teacher cuts up pictures so that there is a different one for each student in the class (see some examples given in figure 3, but if the mediator prefers, he/she can make his/her own collection, using magazine pictures). the teacher gives the pictures out, and tells students not to show their picture to any one else. they should write a descriptive paragraph about the object in the picture (without naming it). they should use have got, looks like, adjectives for physical description (colour, texture, shape, size, breadth, length, weight, materials, pattern, etc), in the present simple. when they have finished, the mediator collects the descriptions, pins them up around the classroom and asks students to walk around, reading the descriptions and making a list of (at least) ten described objects. significance mediators need to be careful to choose the activities for their pupils. they should not only be meaningful for the mediators’ teaching purposes but for the learners’ motivation and interests. in this activity, the mediator might choose objects that mean something to their pupils (for instance, part of their surroundings and things that may touch their feelings). additionally, teachers need to organise the activity from the beginning to the end. to do that, they should consider the number of pupils in the class, the objects to be described, what to include in the description in terms of grammar items and functions, the length of time pupils need to write the paragraph, the time pupils need to read some descriptions in order to make their lists, and the time teachers need to check the answers. searching, planning and achieving objectives as this criterion implies guiding students to achieve their individual and group goals (in the given activity, the individual goal is to write a descriptive paragraph. the group aim is to provide information that allows others to make their lists.), mediators have to provide all the information and strategies figure 2figure 2figure 2figure 2figure 2. sample of mediation applied in a language teaching activity. ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ 184 torrestorrestorrestorrestorres profileprofileprofileprofileprofile for them to do so by pre-teaching vocabulary and guiding pupils in how to write descriptive paragraphs. it is easier for pupils to plan how to accomplish the objectives if they have all the elements (or at least most of them) required for carrying out the activity beforehand. awareness of change the teaching-learning process makes evident the weaknesses and strengths our pupils have. it is the mediator’s duty to let them know about their potentials as well as their difficulties, and to encourage them to reflect on the way they are learning in order to improve their processes. through this activity mediators have the opportunity to see how their pupils are “tackling the activity”; how they are using the vocabulary; how they are organising sentences and ideas; how they are using punctuation; and how they are reading and understanding their classmates’ texts. it is a chance pupils have to become aware of their reading and writing processes and strategies, and to establish an action plan for changing or improving what they are doing wrong by practicing self-evaluation. individuality and psychological difference it is an individual activity and it may reflect a particular style, way of thinking and feeling. all the pupils know the objectives of the activity and everyone will accomplish them by using different learning strategies and mental operations. mediators have to accept and encourage their pupils’ individuality and let them express their thoughts and feelings freely. teachers need to make it clear to the students that they have a right to their own uniqueness. sense of belonging although the proposed activity implies an individual task at the beginning, later it is promoting the interchange of ideas, thoughts and feelings among the group. this activity implies that every piece of information given by each member in the group is important and necessary to bring the activity to its end. mediators promote the active participation of their pupils in an atmosphere of respect, tolerance, reciprocal support and confidence. optimistic awareness during the activity, mediators are encouraging the strong belief in their students that they can do what they need to, that the objectives of the activity are achievable. furthermore, students might feel especially optimistic when they know they have all the capabilities and skills to participate effectively and efficiently. mediators could facilitate the performance of the activity by giving one or two examples of paragraphs describing objects. in this way, pupils may realise that it is not as difficult as it seems to be. conclconclconclconclconclusionusionusionusionusion given the necessary and sufficient conditions (criteria) to carry out a mediation process, it seems to be the characterisation of what is and has been a good teacher’s work. furthermore, it is the mediator who is and should be the main stimulus that propels his learners towards learning, being whole people and knowing how to exist side by side with others. it is the teacher who is in charge of giving validity to the mediation experience purpose that is none other than to provide the learners with a wide range of stimuli, strategies and processes that lead them towards the development of intelligent behaviour, which is a prerequisite for effective cognitive functioning. as language teachers we can enrich and qualify our teaching process by facilitating the learning processes of our pupils with all the tools and strategies provided by the mediation. “as potential educators-mediators we should ensure ourselves of being a stimulus of high human and professional quality to our pupils.” ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○185 profileprofileprofileprofileprofile the mediated learning experience and the mediator’s implications about the authorabout the authorabout the authorabout the authorabout the author fffffanny stella tanny stella tanny stella tanny stella tanny stella torororororresresresresres studied philology and languages at the universidad nacional de colombia. then, she got her specialization in applied linguistics to the teaching of english. she also received her as/a diploma in english language and literature in england. her professional life has been developing in the teaching field at the universidad nacional, where she has worked in the extension programme for seven years, but also in the field of training and guiding pedagogic, methodological and didactic trends at gimnasio los andes school. referencesreferencesreferencesreferencesreferences feuerstein, r. (1986). mediated learning experience. jerusalem: hadassan-wizo-canadian research institute. martínez, j. et al. (1991). metodología de la mediación en el p.e.i. madrid: editorial bruño. prieto, m. (1992). modificabilidad cognitiva y p.e.i. madrid: editorial bruño. watcyn-jones, p. (2000). group work intermediate. london: pearson education limited. williams, m. & burden, r. (1997). psychology for language teachers: a social constructivist approach. cambridge: cambridge university press. profile 10.indd error analysis in a written composition profile 10, 2008. issn 1657-0790. bogotá, colombia. pages 135-146 135 * e-mail: davidlondono@coomevamail.com address: carrera 27 b no. 39 a sur 57 centro de idiomas envigado, antioquia, colombia. this article was received on november 27, 2007 and accepted on april 30, 2008. error analysis in a written composition análisis de errores en una composición escrita david alberto londoño vásquez* institution universitaria de envigado, colombia learners make errors in both comprehension and production. some theoreticians have pointed out the difficulty of assigning the cause of failures in comprehension to an inadequate knowledge of a particular syntactic feature of a misunderstood utterance. indeed, an error can be defined as a deviation from the norms of the target language. in this investigation, based on personal and professional experience, a written composition entitled “my life in colombia” will be analyzed based on clinical elicitation (ce) research. ce involves getting the informant to produce data of any sort, for example, by means of a general interview or by asking the learner to write a composition. some errors produced by a foreign language learner in her acquisition process will be analyzed, identifying the possible sources of these errors. finally, four kinds of errors are classified: omission, addition, misinformation, and misordering. keywords: error, mistake, clinical elicitation research, incidental sample los aprendices comenten errores tanto en la comprensión como en la producción. algunos teóricos han identificado que la dificultad para clasificar las diferentes fallas en comprensión se debe al conocimiento inadecuado de una característica sintáctica particular. por tanto, el error puede definirse como una desviación de las normas del idioma objetivo. en esta experiencia profesional se analizará una composición escrita sobre “mi vida en colombia” con base en la investigación a través de la elicitación clínica (ec). esta se centra en cómo el informante produce datos de cualquier tipo, por ejemplo, a través de una entrevista general o solicitándole al aprendiz una composición escrita. se analizarán algunos errores producidos por un aprendiz de una lengua extranjera en su proceso de adquisición, identificando sus posibles causas. finalmente, se clasifican cuatro tipos de errores: omisión, adición, desinformación y yuxtaposición sintáctica. palabras claves: error, equivocación, investigación a través de elicitación clínica, muestra incidental profile 10, 2008. issn 1657-0790. bogotá, colombia. pages 135-146 profile 10.indd 135 23/10/2008 8:46:24 londoño vásquez universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras136 introduction in this investigation, based on personal and professional experience, i focused on a composition entitled “my life in colombia”. i followed clinical elicitation research, by asking the research participant to produce some data which was then analyzed. this incidental sample is taken from one of my students. her name is erika and she is a high-beginner student (level 2 at a public university in antioquia, colombia). she has four two-hour lessons a week, from tuesday to friday in the morning. she is 18 years old and does not feel confident with her english learning process, but her professional goals require a good command of it. she participates in all the class activities and i consider her a responsible student. even though she commits the same errors in both oral and written english, she often tries to express her ideas and feelings in english. in order to highlight her errors and how they work, i use the surface strategy taxonomy to describe them. literature review learners make errors in both comprehension and production. corder (1974, p. 25) has pointed out: “it is very difficult to assign the cause of failures in comprehension to an inadequate knowledge of a particular syntactic feature of a misunderstood utterance”. indeed, an error can be defined as a deviation from the norms of the target language. in this literature review, firstly i briefly show the five steps in error analysis suggested by corder. secondly, the collection of a sample, in fact massive, specific and incidental samples, is briefly mentioned. thirdly, i introduce the identification of errors and its four divisions. fourthly, the category taxonomy and surface strategy taxonomy, which we can apply to a corpus, is presented. fifthly, i continue with the explanation of error, showing the two main positions on the source of error in foreign language learning. finally, i introduce the evaluation of ideas as the last step in errors analysis. let me start, then, with corder’s five steps in error analysis. corder (1974) suggests that many of the researchers who carried out error analyses in the 1970s continued to be concerned with language teaching. indeed, many of those who attempted to discover more about l2 acquisition thought the study of errors was itself motivated by a desire to improve pedagogy. that is why corder proposes five steps in error analysis research in order to reach that objective. these steps are: collection of a sample 1. of learner language identification of errors2. description of errors3. explanation of errors4. evaluation of errors.5. collection of a sample of learner language the first point in error analysis is the collection of a sample of learner language. researchers have identified three broad types of error analysis according to the size of the sample. these types are: massive, specific and incidental samples. all of them are relevant in the corpus collection but the relative utility and proficiency of each profile 10.indd 136 23/10/2008 8:46:24 error analysis in a written composition profile 10, 2008. issn 1657-0790. bogotá, colombia. pages 135-146 137 varies in relation to the main goal. in other words, in this first step, the researcher has to be aware of his research, and the main objective of this stage is selecting a proper collection system. the first type of sample mentioned involves collecting several samples of language use from a large number of learners in order to compile a comprehensive list of errors, representative of the entire population. a specific sample consists of one sample of language used, collected from a limited number of learners. finally, an incidental sample uses only one sample of language provided to a single learner. in practice, the most common samples used by researchers are specific and incidental in order to avoid the difficult task of processing, organizing and evaluating the large quantities of samples taken in a massive sample collection. identification of errors once a corpus of learner language has been collected, the errors have to be identified. therefore, it is necessary to know how to identify them. indeed, the identification of errors depends on four crucial questions. the first question is to set up what target language should be used as the point of evaluation for the study. the second is related to the differences between “errors” and “mistakes or slips”. an error is made when the deviation arises as a result of lack of knowledge while a mistake or slip occurs when learners fail to perform to their competence in the target language. normally, a mistake or slip is immediately corrected by the learner. the third question is about interpretation. there are two kinds of interpretation: overt and covert. the former is easy to identify because there is a clear deviation in form (she selled her car) and the latter occurs in utterances that are syntactically and semantically well-formed but pragmatically odd (where do you go?). the fourth question is focused on deviations. there are two kinds of deviation: correctness and appropriateness. their difference is very simple: the first is a deviation of the rules of the language usage (i did ate with her) and the other is a deviation of the language use (she can to do whatever she wants). description of errors the description of learner errors involves a comparison of the learner’s idiosyncratic utterances with a reconstruction of those utterances in the target language. researchers propose that there are two descriptive taxonomies of errors: linguistic categories and surface strategy. linguistic categories are associated with a traditional error analysis undertaken for pedagogic purposes; they can be chosen to correspond closely to those found in structural syllabi and language text books. this type of description allows a detailed description of specific errors and also for a quantification of a corpus of errors. linguistic categories, as richards says (1971), state that learners’ errors were the result of l1 interference. from another point of view, surface strategy taxonomy highlights the ways in which surface structures are altered by profile 10.indd 137 23/10/2008 8:46:24 londoño vásquez universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras138 means of such operations as omissions, additions, misinformations and misorderings. omission is considered as the absence of an item that should appear in a well-formed utterance (he cooking); addition is defined as the presence of an item that should not appear in well-former utterance (she doesn’t works at hospital); misinformation is the use of the wrong form of the morpheme or structure (the chair was maked by the carpenter) and finally misordering is regarded as the incorrect placement of a morpheme or group of morphemes in an utterance (what is doing my mother?). explanation of errors there are two main positions on the source of errors in foreign language learning. one holds that errors are due to interference from the mother tongue. the other, the “creative construction” theory, proposes that the processes used in acquiring a first and a foreign language are identical and that foreign language learners’ errors will resemble those of a child learning the language as his mother tongue. a third possibility is that at least some errors can be related neither to l1 interference nor to l2 developmental strategies. it has been proposed by corder (1967) that language learners develop inter-language grammars, idiosyncratic dialects or approximate systems, and that errors will not necessarily be based on either the mother tongue or the target language. these views do not need to be incompatible. in particular, inter-language systems might involve errors based on l1, l2 and other forms. however, a strong view of the creative construction theory, as maintained by dulay & burt (1972; 1974) holds that, in children below puberty who are learning a foreign language, almost all errors will be developmental. in support of this position, they found that only 4.7% of their child subjects’ errors were due to interference, while 87.1% were developmental and the rest were “unique” (dulay & burt, 1974). a weaker view of either of the two main positions, outlined above, would still, presumably, predict something about the proportion of errors to be expected from each source: if errors are due mainly to interference, one would expect more interference errors but if they are due mainly to developmental strategies, a majority of developmental errors should occur. in error analysis, a difficulty arises in trying to assign source of error, especially as many errors seem to have multiple origins. developmental errors are those which resemble forms produced by children learning the language in question as their mother tongue. for example, many learners of esl will produce “the king food” instead of “the king’s food”, where the absence of possessive /-’s/ is not due to interference but occurs in the speech of children learning english as their first language. interference errors are ones which clearly reflect interference from l1, for instance, forms such as “i have hunger” produced by speakers whose source language is french or spanish. dulay & burt (1974) class as ambiguous errors which might be due to either source, such as “jose no wanna go”, which, when produced by a spanish speaker, could be either interference or developmental. unfortunately there appears profile 10.indd 138 23/10/2008 8:46:24 error analysis in a written composition profile 10, 2008. issn 1657-0790. bogotá, colombia. pages 135-146 139 to be no way, at present, to decide which source is operating in such cases or whether both are. a further problem occurs in trying to analyze inter-language errors, by which i mean those not due to l1 or l2. indeed, as frith (1975) points out, it is very difficult to discover what the proponents of interlanguage systems consider to be the characteristics of such systems. it is not clear what they would describe as interlanguage errors, whether they would expect such errors to be systematic or idiosyntactic and what proportion of them might be expected. because of such difficulties with error analysis, some researchers (krashen & pon, 1975) have abandoned altogether the attempt to find sources of errors. assuming, however, that analysis by source is still possible, it would be interesting to find out how adults perform as regards error production. if the creative construction theory is correct, should adults also be expected to produce a high proportion of developmental errors? this study was undertaken partly to find out what proportion of adults’ errors would be developmental, assuming (from observations on teaching adults) that a greater proportion than 4.7% would prove to be interference errors, and to see if any common inter-language forms would occur. other people who have analyzed adult errors have found both developmental and interference errors arise. taylor (1975) suggests that beginners may have to rely more on their source language in formulating hypotheses about the target language grammar, whereas more advanced students could be expected to have reached a stage where they are capable of making generalizations based on the target language itself. he found that beginners made more interference errors than intermediate students. the fact that students may use different learning strategies at different stages of acquiring a language could have implications for language teaching and it would be useful to know if there are similar differences between intermediate and advanced students, a point studied by krashen & pon (1975). it is also possible that sources of errors are relevant for studies of the ability to correct errors. krashen & pon (1975) found that an adult advanced esl student could correct 95% of his/her errors (mistakes) immediately after production if utterances containing the mistakes were presented to him/her. krashen (1975) proposes that adult learners acquire language in ways similar to children (naturally) and that they also learn language more consciously as a result of more formal teaching methods. what they learn is used to monitor their language production, given situations where they have occasion to monitor, such as in written work as opposed to informal conversation. where monitoring is not possible, the errors that occur tend to be developmental (i.e. related to acquisition). this suggests a need to find out whether this implies that developmental errors are actually harder to monitor than those from other sources. the problems of ascribing errors to different sources have already been mentioned. even if one can definitely describe an error as due to interference, there may still be difficulties in deciding whether the interference is phonological, profile 10.indd 139 23/10/2008 8:46:24 londoño vásquez universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras140 syntactic or semantic. error corrections may be useful in determining the precise form of interference, for instance in deciding between phonological and syntactic origins. this is crucial for the creative construction theory, which refers to syntactic errors when it claims that most errors will be developmental. an error due to phonological interference is not considered a counter-argument to the theory. one error which is common amongst spanish learners of english occurs in the structure: pronoun –be – x, where the subject pronoun is omitted, to give forms such as: is crazy too is the man’s mop is washing the floor most commonly, the omitted pronoun is “it” but it may also be “he”, “she” or “they”. cancino, rosansky & schumann (1975) suggest that in the case of “it” omission the interference is probably phonological. they reject the idea that it is due to syntactic interference from spanish which allows a subject np to be omitted, given a clear context. instead, they suggest that it may arise because in spanish “it’s x” would be expressed as “es x”, with phonological similarity leading spanish speakers to say “is x” instead of “it’s” in english. as evidence, they show that subjects produce “is” instead of “it’s” in imitation tasks, and when they asked their subjects orally to correct sentences of the form “is x”, they would insert “he” or “she” if possible but would otherwise repeat the same form; for example, they would give “is a book” as a correction of “is a book”, as though they thought that they had in fact made a correction. evidence from written, rather than spoken, error corrections may help to clarify this issue. there are, then, several problems in the field of adult foreign language learning as far as error analysis and error correction are concerned. the present study seeks to follow up some of the issues raised by previous investigations in this area and to suggest further research. evaluating errors error evaluation studies proliferated in the late 1970s and in the 1980s, motivated quite explicitly by a desire to improve language pedagogy. in these studies, judgments were based on three basic categories: comprehensibility, seriousness and naturalness of the grammar and the lexis. in this judgment process, judges have to keep in mind that there are two kinds of errors: global and local. global error is the error which affects overall sentence organization (my house beautiful red), and local error is the error which affects single elements in a sentence (i want an hot dog). the evaluation of learner error poses a great number of problems. it is not clear what criteria judges have used when asked to assess the categories of an error. indeed, error evaluation is influenced by the context in which the errors occurred. the study based on the above literature, errors produced by a foreign language learner in her acquisition process will be analyzed identifying their possible producers. then, the research methodology is presented, and in the results, as will be seen afterwards, profile 10.indd 140 23/10/2008 8:46:24 error analysis in a written composition profile 10, 2008. issn 1657-0790. bogotá, colombia. pages 135-146 141 four kinds of errors are classified. they are: omission, addition, misinformation, and misordering. objectives general objective: to analyze the errors produced by a foreign language learner in her acquisition process. specific objective to identify the errors produced by a – foreign language learner. to describe the errors produced by a – foreign language learner. to explain the errors produced by a – foreign language learner. to evaluate the errors produced by a – foreign language learner. methodology the subject is a spanish-speaking student from colombia who is studying at a public university in antioquia, colombia. she has been studying english in the above university for five months. she passed english 1 level with a grade of 4.0. this course was taken at the university this year with a different teacher. currently, she is finishing english 2 level. in her english class, there are only eight students. all of them are colombians and none speaks english fluently. this research is a case study. yin (2003, p. 13) defines a case as “an empirical inquiry that investigates a contemporary phenomenon within its reallife context, especially when the boundaries between phenomenon and context are not clearly evident”. he then adds: “in other words, you would use the case-study method because you deliberately wanted to cover contextual conditions believing that they might be highly pertinent to your phenomenon of study”. the student was assessed using the clinical elicitation method (ce). corder (1981, p. 29) states that: “the ce requires the learner to produce any voluntary data orally or in writing, while experimental methods use special tools to elicit data containing specific linguistic items”. the ce method involves getting the informant to produce data of any sort, for example, by means of a general interview or by asking the learner to write a composition. during the study, the learner wrote a composition entitled “my life in colombia” where she was able to use simple present, simple past and present perfect, which are the tense formation topics studied in english levels i and ii. their description was based on surface strategy taxonomy due to the fact that i focused on omissions, additions, misinformations and misorderings. i also kept in mind overt and covert errors and possible learner deviations related to correctness and appropriateness. erika’s errors also were analyzed in terms of whether they were due to interference from spanish or to developmental strategies. this sample took place two weeks after she wrote this composition. she was given as much time as she needed to make corrections before i checked it. the main goal was to identify how many errors she really wrote and which of them were only mistakes or slips (performance). the results as i said above, the student was assessed using the clinical elicitation method profile 10.indd 141 23/10/2008 8:46:24 londoño vásquez universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras142 table 1. samples of omissions and additions. sentence error analysis i known the city of cartagena1. i gone there last vacations 2. she omitted to use the auxiliary verb “have”, because she probably wanted to express her sentences in simple present and use the preterit. my mother buying underwear 3. clothes . and she sleeping a lot at the hotel.4. she was using “past progressive” but she omitted the verb “to be”. my father did not wanted to study…5. she added the ending of the simple past of the regular verbs “ed” to the main verb in a negative sentence, forgetting that when you use the auxiliary verb “did”, the main verb is in infinitive form. (ce), using a personalized composition. corder (1973) classifies errors in terms of the difference between the learner’s utterance and the reconstructed version and proposes four different categories: omissions, additions, misinformations and misordering. the presentation of the error analysis is developed in the following way: firstly, introduction of the 1. strategy taxonomy of the error. secondly, a specific example of 2. the error taxonomy presented in erika’s composition. thirdly, error analysis.3. finally, other errors made by erika 4. in her composition, classified in the same strategy taxonomy. omission “first, live in the country very beautiful of south america” in the underlined part of this sentence, erika omitted the subject pronoun “i” before the verb, as a result of the spanish influence since in this language people normally use tacit subject pronouns. as mentioned, omission is considered to be the absence of an item that should appear in a well-formed utterance. in this sample, l1 verbal conjugation influenced erika’s l2 grammatical structures, affecting directly the rules and modifying the usages of l2 grammar categories. based on spratt et al. (2005, p. 44), this indicates interference. the authors point out that “an interference or transfer is an influence from the learner’s first language (l1) on the second language”. other omission errors are presented in table 1. additions “i am study administration” in the underlined part of this sentence, erika added the verb to be to a present simple sentence because she probably assumes that the verb to be has to be in all the sentences. as outlined earlier, addition is considered to be the presence of an item that should not appear in a well-formed utterance. this error was unconsciously made, because her learning process has just started and she had been working out profile 10.indd 142 23/10/2008 8:46:25 error analysis in a written composition profile 10, 2008. issn 1657-0790. bogotá, colombia. pages 135-146 143 table 2. other misinformation errors. sentence error analysis “first, live in the country 1. very beautiful of south america” she used “very” instead of “the most”. she probably confused this quantity adverb with the superlative. “first, live in the country very beautiful 2. of south america” she did not use capital letters in the continent “south america”, because she did not know this grammatical rule. how to organize the elements that comprise l2. as can be seen, her process was not yet complete. this kind of error is called developmental error (spratt et al, 2005). misinformation “i known the city of cartagena there the clime is hot” in the underlined part of this sentence, erika used two incorrect forms. the first one is “there” instead of “where” and the second one is “clime” instead of “weather”. these errors are the result of the lack of english vocabulary, and the wrong use of the meanings provided by the dictionary. on the other hand, we should also remember that misinformation is considered to be the use of the wrong form of the morpheme or structure. this same example could have another interpretation and on equally convincing explanation. in other words, the learner’s perlocutive act could be different, possibly she meant to say: “i know the city of cartagena. there the weather is hot”, but she was not aware of the correct english punctuation and this misinformation, added to vocabulary problems, changed the sentence meaning. in this case, the word “clime” meets interference error requirements, and becomes a false cognate. other misinformation errors are shown in table 2: misordering “first, live in the country very beautiful of south america” in the underlined part of this sentence, erika incorrectly ordered the words in this sentence. the correct syntactical order was “… in the most beautiful country of south america”. in connection to this, we should bear in mind that misordering is considered to be the incorrect placement of a morpheme or group of morphemes in an utterance. in addition, misinformation is present in the sample above. this is evidenced in the use of “very” instead of “the most”. in this case, l1 syntax influenced erika’s l2 grammatical structures, modifying the position of l2 grammar categories, affecting meaning, and indicating interference. on the other hand, the student composition makes us realize that it is important to keep in mind overt and covert errors and possible learner deviations related to correctness and appropriateness. overt and covert errors in erika’s composition all her errors were overt. an overt error is a clear deviation in form; for example: my father 1. did not wanted to study… i 2. known the city of cartagena profile 10.indd 143 23/10/2008 8:46:25 londoño vásquez universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras144 table 3. samples of interference and developmental errors. error classification justification and possible translation food of my father interference errors that reflect the structure of the l1: la comida de mi papá my parents house developmental error similar to l1 acquisition: la casa de mis padres ... and i had hungry interference errors that reflect the structure of the l1: … y yo tenía hambre … country very beautiful interference errors that reflect the structure of the l1: … país muy hermoso is possible … interference errors that reflect the structure of the l1: es possible… i 3. gone there last vacations my mother 4. buying underwear clothes … and she5. sleeping a lot at the hotel. erika’s composition did not have covert errors due to the fact that the wellformed sentences meant that she expressed her ideas appropriately, according to the context. finally, erika’s errors were also analyzed in terms of whether they were due to interference from spanish, due to developmental strategies. interference and developmental burt (1974) classified errors collected into three broad categories: developmental (i.e. those errors that a. are similar to l1 acquisition). interference (i.e. those errors that b. reflect the structure of the l1). unique (i.e. those errors that are neither c. developmental nor interference). i present some samples taken from erika’s written composition and which are classified in two main categories: developmental and interference (see table 3). as can be seen in the table, the composition does not have a “unique” error type. additionally, the samples evidence the learner’s will to get the message across. conclusions learning a foreign language demands not only willingness, but also practice and commitment by both learner and teacher. that’s why, indisputably, error analysis is a fundamental and relevant tool in language teaching, in order to reorganize and transform the teacher’s point of view and readdress his/her methodology, with the aim of fixing and filling the students’ gaps. when a teacher realizes the nature of his/her students’ errors and their possible sources, s/he can make better decisions, which will positively affect his/her performance and fulfill current pedagogical and professional demands. in addition, the work of error analysis theoreticians (burt et al, 1973; cancino et al, 1975) who focused on collecting, categorizing and analyzing students’ errors, has been developed and has shown teachers how they can apply theory in the development of their courses (cohen, 1990; schulz, 1991; spratt et al, 2005). profile 10.indd 144 23/10/2008 8:46:25 error analysis in a written composition profile 10, 2008. issn 1657-0790. bogotá, colombia. pages 135-146 145 as far as error analysis, in some cases, its category divisions are not so precise, because they can be placed in different options due to the fact that a lot of sources appear as possible influences in an error. therefore, multiple explanations could possibly appear in an error analysis process, and socio-cultural context also has a valid role. in other words, l1 affects the l2 learning process not only syntactically, but also meaningfully. prior knowledge (ausubel, 1963) and cultural background (canale & swain, 1980) are two important elements in a foreign language learning process, and both appear in developmental and interference errors. in this study, the use of category and surface strategy taxonomy facilitated erika’s written composition classification and analyses and became a great tool in error analysis. in other words, omission, additions, misinformation and misordering were identified in some cases in the corpus. other errors were related to spanish interference. the experience described in this paper tells us that error analysis supports the purpose of language teaching. it can also contribute to changes in students’ awareness of errors, lead to the acquiring of extra knowledge, and help them gain communicative expertise. by making students conscious of errors, we can also contribute to cognitive processes and to other changes that teaching can bring about. indeed, the process of language learning depends on the decisions and involvement of the students, based on their experience of life and of language as individuals. a better understanding of the learner can help the teacher understand what elements are playing a role in the students’ learning process. likewise, by analyzing and recognizing students’ errors we may come to value the fact that errors are the most significant evidence of their efforts to follow the path of the learning process. references ausubel, d.p. (1963). the psychology of meaningful verbal learning. new york: grune & stratton. burt, m.k., dulay, h.c., & hernandez, e. (1973). bilingual syntax measure. new york: ed. harcourt brace jovanovitch. canale, m., & m, swain. (1980). theoretical bases of communicative approaches to second language teaching and testing. applied linguistics. london, longman. cancino, h., rosansky, e. j., & schumann, j. h. (1975). testing hypotheses about second language acquisition: the copula and negative in three subjects. working paper on bilingualism, 3, 80-96. cohen, a. (1990). language learning: insights for learners, teachers, and researchers. new cork: newbury house/harper row. corder, s. p. (1981). error analysis and interlanguages. oxford: oxford university press. corder, s. p. (1973). introducing applied linguistics. middlesex: penguin. corder, s. p. (1971). idiosyncratic dialects and error analysis. iral 9(2), 147-160. corder, s. p. (1967). the significance of learners’ errors. reprinted in j.c. richards (ed.) (1974, 1984) error analysis: perspectives on second language acquisition, pp. 19-27. [originally in international review of applied linguistics, 5(4)] london: longman. dulay, h. c., & burt, m. k. (1974). natural sequences in child second language adquisition. language learning, 24(1), 37-53. dulay, h.c., & burt, m.k. (1972). error analysis: perspectives on second language acquisition. london: longman. profile 10.indd 145 23/10/2008 8:46:25 londoño vásquez universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras146 frith, m.b. (1975). second language learning: an examination of two hypotheses. iral, 13(4), 327-332. krashen, s. (1975). a model of adult second language acquisition. paper presented at lsa. krashen, s., & pon, p. (1975). an error analysis of an advanced esl learner: the importance of the monitor. working papers on bilingualism, 7, 125-129. richards, j.c. (1971). error analysis and second language strategies. language sciences, 17, 12-22. schulz, r. (1991). second language acquisition theories and teaching practice: how do they fit? the modern language journal, 75(1), 17-26. spratt, m., et al. (2005). the teaching knowledge test course. cambridge: cambridge university press. taylor, b. p. (1975). adult language learning strategies and their pedagogical implications. tesol quarterly, 9, 391-399. yin, r.k. (2003). case study research: design and methods. thousand oaks, ca: sage. about the author david alberto londoño vásquez studied english-french-spanish translation at the university of antioquia, a graduate program in english teaching at universidad pontificia bolivariana, and a master in linguistics at universidad de antioquia. currently, he is a full-time teacher at institution universitaria de envigado. he is a member of the knowledge management and specialized communication research group (gecco). profile 10.indd 146 23/10/2008 8:46:25 profile 9.indd the development of a novice teacher’s autonomy in the context of efl in colombia profile 9, 2008. issn 1657-0790. bogotá, colombia. pages 143-162 143 * e-mail: dianapineda72@hotmail.com address: avenida 41 no. 62 74 bello antioquia ** e-mail: cfrodden@hotmail.com address: eduardo castillo velasco 3634 depto. b-2, ñuñoa, santiago de chile this article was received on november 15, 2007 and accepted on january 2, 2008. the development of a novice teacher’s autonomy in the context of efl in colombia el desarrollo de la autonomía de una profesora principiante en el contexto de la enseñanza de inglés como lengua extranjera en colombia diana pineda* cristina frodden** universidad de antioquia, colombia this article reports the experience of a novice english teacher taking part in a collaborative action research project with a group of children in a bi-national language center in colombia, where a theme-based approach to teaching had been recently introduced. the purpose of the study was to learn how to solve problems encountered with the approach and to develop learner and teacher autonomy. the findings show how reflection, collaborative work and critical thinking were promoted and enabled the teacher to find alternatives in her teaching, to gain a new understanding of this approach, and to develop teacher autonomy. key words: action research, professional development, novice teachers, foreign language teaching, theme-based teaching, collaboration, reflection este artículo informa acerca de la experiencia de una profesora principiante de inglés que formó parte de un proyecto de investigación acción colaborativa con un grupo de niños en un centro binacional en colombia, en el cual se había introducido recientemente un enfoque basado en temas. el propósito del estudio fue aprender a resolver los problemas encontrados con el enfoque y desarrollar la autonomía de los estudiantes y de la profesora. los hallazgos muestran cómo se promovieron la reflexión, el trabajo colaborativo y el pensamiento crítico de manera que hicieron posible que la profesora encontrara vías alternativas en su enseñanza, comprendiera mejor el enfoque y desarrollara su autonomía como profesora. palabras clave: investigación acción, desarrollo profesional, profesor principiante, enseñanza de lenguas extranjeras, enseñanza basada en temas, colaboración, reflexión profile 9.indd 143 21/04/2008 07:43:49 p.m. pineda and frodden universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras144 introduction when i was an undergraduate student, i joined a study group on the development of learner and teacher autonomy in efl classrooms. the discussions held in that group led me to believe that through collaborative dialogue with the other group members and by learning to carry out action research, i would be better equipped to tackle the problems i was encountering with my students, and would develop professionally in order to become a more autonomous teacher. after a while the group decided to conduct a collaborative action research project in which we followed a series of interrelated experiences that included the following phases: exploring, identifying, planning, collecting data, analyzing/reflecting, hypothesizing/ speculating, intervening, observing, reporting, writing, and presenting (burns, 1999). the aim of the project was to observe and understand the processes of promoting learner autonomy and developing teacher autonomy through critical examination of each of the group member’s actions (kemmis & mctaggart, 1988, p. 5). in this paper i will focus on how collaborative work, critical thinking, and reflection contributed towards enhancing my professional autonomy. autonomy seems to be a very idealistic and abstract concept, difficult to measure, quantify, observe and define. in the field of foreign language learning, some experts have defined learner autonomy as “the capacity to take control of one’s own learning” (benson, 2001, p. 47), and in this sense it has been used to refer to both learner and teacher autonomy. freeman & cornwell (1993) state that learning to teach “remains principally the responsibility and work of the learner” (xii), and mcgrath (2000) takes a similar stance when he asserts that being an autonomous teacher involves exercising some kind of freedom over the curriculum, and taking responsibility for our own professional development. huang defines teacher autonomy as “teachers’ willingness, capacity and freedom to take control of their own teaching and learning” (2005, p. 4) and usma further expands it to include “the exercise of control over school matters, including teaching and assessment, curriculum design, school functioning, and professional development, which is shaped by different personal and environmental factors, and is limited by the educational project of the school community” (2006, p. 63). the relationship between learner and teacher autonomy has been highlighted by the shizuoka group (barfield, 2001). according to them, since society assigns different roles, rights and responsibilities to teachers and students, there is no perfect match between the processes of learner autonomy and teacher autonomy; however, there exists a similarity between them, since both emphasize the value of co-learning, self-direction, collaboration and democratic participation regarding three principles of action: critical reflective inquiry, empowerment, and dialogue. it is via observing, inquiring, negotiating and evaluating our performance as teachers with our students and colleagues that these principles are put into action and we develop professionally. this type of inquiry is clearly related to action research, whose contribution profile 9.indd 144 21/04/2008 07:43:49 p.m. the development of a novice teacher’s autonomy in the context of efl in colombia profile 9, 2008. issn 1657-0790. bogotá, colombia. pages 143-162 145 to teacher autonomy has been widely discussed. hopkins (1993) states that, although action research is not a panacea, its practical applications help teachers to have more control of their professional and personal life, providing them with logic and method. stenhouse (1991) stresses the use the teacher can make of action research in curriculum improvement, and proposes a “broad” practitioner, i.e. a teacher with a capacity for self-development by means of systematic self-analysis, the study of other teachers’ work and the testing of ideas by means of classroom research. schön (1983 as cited in hopkins, 1993) establishes a relationship between teacher autonomy and their participation in research processes by proposing a “reflective practitioner”, one who controls knowledge instead of being subjugated by it, and one who is committed to theorizing and reaching self-knowledge. this self-knowledge involves the clarity and power we obtain when we understand a concept and can use it in our personal and professional lives. also zeichner (2003) advocates teacher research in professional development endeavors, because of its impact on the transformation of schools and for the effects it has on those who conduct it. among the reasons for this are that teachers become more self-directed and proactive, their attitudes and skills for self-analysis are enhanced, and they engage in more collegiate dialogue with other teachers, which are all features of an autonomous teacher. this article intends to show in practice how a novice teacher, like me, first developed professionally by carrying out action research; second, how collaborative dialogue with colleagues and members of the research team contributed to the development of my critical thinking and reflection, which led to a new understanding and transformation of the teaching situation; and third, how all this enhanced my willingness and capacity to take control of my teaching and learning, i.e. my autonomy. the starting point in the year 2000, when i still was a student, i was invited to attend an english language teaching conference that took place in medellín, where i lived. i had recently finished a course on academic writing where the professor in charge, cristina frodden, had carried out action research. she invited me to attend that conference to see what she and two other classmates had prepared. during the presentation i was greatly impressed by the way she had analyzed and reported on some actions that had been taken during this course relating to the importance of educating future teachers in values (frodden, picón, & usma, 2001). i agreed with what i saw that day, knowing that i myself had experienced those events and validated them as true. after the presentation, another former student of cristina’s and i joined her and the two other students and built a study group to learn about action research. i was very happy with the idea of being part of this group because the work proposed would give continuity to the topic of the presentation i had attended. targeting the development of students’ autonomy in foreign language teaching, and learning how to carry out action research was a new field for me, due to the fact that the profile 9.indd 145 21/04/2008 07:43:49 p.m. pineda and frodden universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras146 teacher education program i pursued at that moment didn’t include research in the course work. at the beginning, the idea was that i act as a critical friend for my partners, since i was the only one who didn’t have any experience in teaching. the other two, although still studying, had already begun teaching. that year, while cristina was abroad for her sabbatical, the four of us met every week to discuss what we had read about autonomy and action research. we wrote a report of our discussions in each meeting, and sent it to cristina via e-mail in order to receive feedback and orientation, such as this: this is a brief summary of what you read. as such, it does not tell me much of how you connected what you read with what you do/are doing or what you found strange/surprising, difficult to understand or unbelievable. i need to know what you all think. i already know what altrichter et al. and nunan think. besides, there seems to be a misunderstanding of altrichter et al. they talk about different relationships between knowledge and action, not about three stages of action research. in fact, teachers may be involved with tacit knowing-in-action and reflection-in-action, and are involved in reflection-on-action, i.e. take distance for some time from what they do to reflect (write a diary, invite somebody to observe, ask students how they view their teaching), are teachers and researchers because by analyzing this information they are creating knowledge, which they later disseminate. (cristina’s e-mail, october 20, 2000) for this first year we kept on meeting every week for about two hours, reading and sharing our reflections based on our experiences, and also contrasting them with theory, and receiving comments from cristina: i think that reflection is the first part that has something related to research. that is to say, the teacher observes what she does, what happens in her classroom, and analyzes what she observes. (there are still some things missing, but i would like you to discover them by yourselves through reading or in the practice itself.) (cristina’s e-mail, september 28, 2000) in july 2001, when cristina came back from her sabbatical leave, we became a more formal collaborative action research group that now had the responsibility of carrying out a project developing our own investigations in four different settings under cristina’s guidance. by that time i had already been teaching in a private language institute in medellín which was moving from working with a textbook designed for teaching english in second language contexts, to implementing a theme-based approach based on halliday’s (1984) principles for children’s language development, further elaborated by short (1997, p. 31); namely, that children learn language through language, and about language. (children) learn language through the “doing” of language — talking, listening, reading, and writing. they learn about language as they explore how language functions and the conventions that support communication. they also learn through language as they focus on what it is they are learning. in this case, language just happens to be the tool they are using about topics and questions that are important to them. this approach, which was originally meant for children learning their mother tongue, was adopted by the institution and further developed in in-service training sessions. teachers were encouraged to divide classes into three sessions in order to tap these three principles: theme profile 9.indd 146 21/04/2008 07:43:49 p.m. the development of a novice teacher’s autonomy in the context of efl in colombia profile 9, 2008. issn 1657-0790. bogotá, colombia. pages 143-162 147 exploration to learn through language, literacy development to learn the language, and language awareness to learn about the language. however, although each session focuses on one principle, they sometimes overlap, as can be seen in the following diagram. research question and procedures as a starting point to my inquiry i stated the following question: how does collegiate dialogue, reading, observation and reflection on classroom events allow me to develop the skills needed to implement the theme-based approach and become a more autonomous teacher? at the beginning of the course i asked my students if they wanted to participate in this research project and they agreed. i took notes in class, and right after class in my lesson plan notebook in order to keep track of my pedagogical practice and research process in the classroom. i also kept a journal where i expanded and reflected on what i was experiencing. in the three-hour meetings our research group held every week, other members commented on the diary entries we read; we discussed the experiences and difficulties we were having carrying out research; and we discussed articles related to research procedures, language learning and teaching, and the development of teacher and learner autonomy. after i carried out a short-cut analysis of the memos and of my journal in order to present my experience in a conference in bogotá, i realized that i needed to know how students were viewing this experience. therefore, i asked a member of the research group to interview figure 1. literacy circles (adapted from short, 1997, p. 32). profile 9.indd 147 21/04/2008 07:43:50 p.m. pineda and frodden universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras148 my students in order to triangulate the information. i also shared the preliminary findings of this experience in a meeting with the students’ parents. the setting the institution where i carried out this research is a bi-national center which offers courses of english as a foreign language and promotes multiculturalism through a wide array of cultural activities. the multimedia learning center, the library and the bookshop offer students and the general public opportunities to access information in english that is scarce elsewhere in the country. english courses are organized into two programs; one for adults, and another one for children and teenagers. most students belong to the middle and upper-middle class. because of the high number of students, the institution has rented additional space in two schools in neighborhoods far away from its premises. the children and teenagers’ program, where i taught, was divided into three main levels: basic, intermediate and advanced. the group i carried out the research with was an intermediate ii class which met once a week on saturday morning for two hours and consisted of thirteen students: six boys and seven girls ages 11 and 12. this program was directed by the academic coordinator and the professional development team (pdt), which was a group of senior teachers in charge of training development assistants (das) and organizing preand in-service courses for the rest of the teachers. a da was assigned to each teacher in order to support her/him in their pedagogical practice. in pre-service courses the pdt presented the philosophy and methodology of the institution to the new teachers, as well as offered some practical hints on how to work with thematic teaching. in the in-service courses, teachers shared and discussed their experiences and the pdt tried to solve doubts that might arise in the implementation of the approach. teachers had to keep a diary where they wrote general information about students: one initial observation that served as a diagnosis of the students, and two followup observations. teachers met das at least four times during the semester to share the information written in the diaries, and to discuss students’ learning processes before handing in mid-term and final pedagogical reports to parents. the problems i encountered and how i tackled them the main problems i encountered when i started teaching with this new approach were classroom management related to the implementation of social skills and the negotiation of the theme with the whole class. having control of the class is one of the concerns that characterizes novice teachers; as we become more experienced, observe, and reflect on our actions with the collaboration of peers, this issue is overcome. in order to work successfully using theme-based teaching, i felt i needed to learn how to develop students’ social skills and how to negotiate the theme for students’ projects. profile 9.indd 148 21/04/2008 07:43:50 p.m. the development of a novice teacher’s autonomy in the context of efl in colombia profile 9, 2008. issn 1657-0790. bogotá, colombia. pages 143-162 149 classroom management and social skills: listening, dialogue even though i had understood theme-based teaching, i had difficulties implementing it in my classes. i wondered if these were due to particular students’ characteristics or because of my limited teaching experience. since this was not a regular school, i presumed that students were intrinsically motivated towards learning english. however, to my surprise, some of them were there because they were doing poorly in english at school, because their parents considered it important for their children to learn english, or simply because they needed to keep them busy. when students failed to do their homework, i attributed it to their low motivation. i thought this was probably the reason they were not taking charge of their learning. due to all this, i could not apply the teaching approach as i expected. since they had not done the homework, they could not share information as i asked them. they did not propose ideas when choosing a text holder to present the project. i thought this was because they lacked the social skills needed to negotiate and reach a consensus on a topic they wanted to work on, i.e. make decisions in small groups and in the whole class. i also thought i needed to help them to be more critical persons; for example, help them to analyze their classmates’ ideas, to ask and answer clarification questions, and to follow appropriate steps to solve a problem (ennis, 2000). when working in groups or as a whole class, students rarely listened to each other. they gave simplistic answers to my questions, and when they gave their opinions, they did not support their points of view. instead of discussing in order to reach a consensus, they wanted to vote immediately. it is necessary to develop social skills such as listening to each other when someone is speaking, when one wants people to grow; even more so when we are dealing with children or adolescents. this is learnt by teaching them, correcting them and making them aware of the instances when errors occur. (diary, july 29, 2002, p. 37) one strategy i used to develop their social skills and improve my classroom management was to implement small group work. i had observed that this group had difficulties paying attention to an activity that i was leading, and i had reflected that i had them paying more attention to what i was doing instead of what they were doing. so i thought i should promote more group or pair work. (diary, april 22, 2002) it was easier for them to listen to each other when they worked in small groups. they worked more quietly, and i could monitor their work better. i think that i needed to do more personalized work with the students. i thought i could work with all of them at a time, but their unruliness made me reflect; it was like a signal. (with group work) the class environment is less tense. students needed to be listened to, and individualization helps them to feel more selfconfident. (lesson plan notes and observations, april 13, 2002) on saturday i decided to make them work in groups… i could monitor almost all the students’ work, how they were dealing with the planning and implementation of their project, and how they were reading. miriam2 said: hm, it’s a miracle that the group is working in silence! i felt very pleased; i felt that group work was profile 9.indd 149 21/04/2008 07:43:50 p.m. pineda and frodden universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras150 working and we had created a positive learning environment. (diary, april 22, 2002) in whole class activities, however, students still had more difficulty listening to the teacher and to each other. as another strategy to improve their responsibility and social skills, i asked my students to reflect on their behavior: (i must improve) my listening because sometimes i don’t pay attention. (information collected from students on april 20, 2002) on four occasions, after a very difficult class, i collected students’ written reflections to obtain their perceptions on it. writing their names on the sheets of paper was optional. with this action i intended to promote reflection in my students and, at the same time, obtain valuable information to validate my perceptions. i thought that if they became aware of the factors affecting their learning, then they could pose solutions and change. for example, in order to avoid the problem of students being lost because they had missed a class, i asked them to write down their classmates’ telephone numbers so that they could get in touch and make up for their absences. since some of them were not taking notes, either because they were not paying attention or because they did not understand the numbers, i asked them to review numbers and programmed a test for the following week. after they had peer-corrected their quizzes, i asked them to reflect on how they had done and why. if i had done the homework i would have done better in the test. (student’s reflection, april 6, 2002) in trying to solve discipline problems, at the beginning i paid a great deal of attention to interpersonal factors and neglected the task-related factors that make up the teachers and learners’ roles (wright, 1987 as cited in voller, 1997). i was showing a rational-procedural pattern to authority which is related to impersonal authority (stevick 1976, as cited in voller, 1997). i followed the institutional guidelines that stated that we had to use a book which was designed for an esl context and chose topics from there. trying to be more democratic, i had students decide the punishments for not following the rules of the institution, but i never questioned the rules or asked students to set up their own. according to aebli (1991, p. 217), there are three conditions that are necessary to maintain discipline in the classroom: an appropriate learning offer to the student, a capacity to present and guide an activity not only with one single student but also with the whole class, and a repertoire of simple actions that triggers students who do not participate. learning may not take place because the activities are overor underestimating students’ capacity, so they become distracted in other things that might be considered indiscipline. i could improve my classes in these three aspects when i realized that advanced students needed to have extra work to practice their strengths and work on their weaknesses, as well as how the low proficiency level students needed to work more on their own and fulfill certain goals. besides, with experience, i had also learned to discover what students’ real interests were. profile 9.indd 150 21/04/2008 07:43:51 p.m. the development of a novice teacher’s autonomy in the context of efl in colombia profile 9, 2008. issn 1657-0790. bogotá, colombia. pages 143-162 151 negotiating the topic: reaching consensus to reduce teacher’s work in theme exploration students negotiate one theme at the beginning of the course, pose questions about it, investigate throughout the semester, and at the end of it decide on a project to show what they have learned about the theme to an audience, usually their parents. students engage in activities such as writing down what they already know about a certain theme, bringing sources of information on the topic to class, or sometimes reading information in advance either in english or in spanish. i noticed that students had troubles choosing the theme for the course. they did not propose their own ideas and did not ask for clarification when they did not understand their classmates’ points of view, and they were especially shy to defend their preferences when we were negotiating a theme. between july 2001 and july 2002, since students had already bought their books, the institution decided to use the textbook and the theme-based approach. the instructions they gave us were to select the topic for the project from the ones included in the units of the book, but sometimes they didn’t match students’ reality since these books were developed for second language learning contexts and differed from students’ realities and interests. i always followed the instructions given in the preand in-service courses. i tried every strategy the pdt and da suggested because i believe in learning by doing. when they did not work, i felt frustrated as evidenced by the following diary entry: i’m worried about how students are working on the project. i question myself if i have provided them with enough elements to work on it and if i’m guiding them in a right way. it seems to me that they feel pleased with the fact that they came to an agreement to work on rock music, but i’m still questioning myself about how i’m guiding their learning and their success in their project, since i don’t see the project focused on a question. (memo, august 27, 2001) i think i have to devise some strategies to be able to manage the class better, that is to say, to control it, especially children’s classes, because i think that when one has to read everything there is to be as informed about the topic as the students, teaching conditions change. one has to take into account that as a teacher one has no control of the material, both what the students are reading and what is available for the teacher. that is to say, with thematic exploration both teacher and students tend to look for information in the institution’s library and to fight for the material, or they go to different sources of information to which they will not have access simultaneously. the fact that students choose different topics for their projects also makes one feel a loss of power, because one cannot control everything at the same time, and if one tries to work with everybody at the same time, it is very difficult, because the ones who are not interested in that topic tend to do other things. i think that students’ attention is focused on the topic they have chosen and not on the transversal functions that this topic could accomplish. (diary, nov 15, 2002, p. 44) by the second semester of 2002, we were not working with the textbook anymore, so i felt freer to engage students in negotiation of topics according to their real interests by asking them to bring a reading they liked and write why they did so. since i felt that our projects lacked a guiding question, profile 9.indd 151 21/04/2008 07:43:51 p.m. pineda and frodden universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras152 maybe because students needed to improve their critical thinking skills, i discovered that i could trigger these young learners’ inquiry through asking them what they would like to ask a wise person if there were one in the classroom. so they started to pose very interesting questions. then i grouped the questions that had a relationship and presented them to students in order to make a decision together. when they saw the topics organized in question groups they could make a decision more easily. i explained to pupils very clearly that we needed to come up with one topic for the project and that was the reason we were doing those activities. then, as homework, i asked them to investigate in english about the topic they had chosen: extreme sports. the first task consisted of listing what extreme sports they could recall, what they knew about them, and investigating other extreme sports that existed. they were expected to bring their ideas written in their notebooks in english or in spanish and, if they were going to bring printed information, it had to be preferably in english. this change in the activities i used to negotiate the theme came to my mind through reflecting on what didn’t work and trying out new things. as i started focusing more on taskrelated factors, i also changed my approach to authority. i provided psychological support by being patient and nonjudgmental, and encouraging them to be committed, helping them to overcome obstacles and engaging in dialogue with them instead of manipulating them. now i realize the importance of reflecting on my teaching and of guiding students in order for them to reflect too, instead of just imposing things. (diary, april 27, 2002, p. 18) in literacy development, students work on their cognitive and linguistic skills through reading and writing. typical activities to promote literacy are storytelling and language experience approach (lea). storytelling can be developed in different ways: the teacher reads aloud from a big book while tracking and asking questions that help students to anticipate what is going to happen in the story; other times, students read in silence, individually or in pairs, either from the same book or from different books. lea involves students sharing their comprehension and impressions from the reading with the whole class, and the teacher writing the ideas they expressed on the board or on a poster. when i asked students to look for information for the theme they had chosen, i found that they had difficulties working independently. some didn’t have access to the internet, and they did not use the library either because they attended classes in sites far away from it, or just because they were not used to visiting it. when they found some information, they did not read it in advance because they had trouble extracting the information they needed to share in class. this was because they could not read authentic texts so they read in spanish and then translated the information literally into english. i began engaging the whole class in reading, sharing and extracting key and simple information to present to the class. i also modeled the building of mind maps, which helped them to understand the texts profile 9.indd 152 21/04/2008 07:43:51 p.m. the development of a novice teacher’s autonomy in the context of efl in colombia profile 9, 2008. issn 1657-0790. bogotá, colombia. pages 143-162 153 better and provided a scaffold in order to speak about the topic later on. i promoted work on metacognitive strategies such as planning and selfassessing (oxford, 1990). for example, i showed them samples of project work of students from previous courses, so that they could have an idea of what they were expected to do. they worked in groups examining them and writing down the steps they thought the other students might have followed. we shared the results of the activity and came up with detailed steps to do their projects. then i asked them to write a plan of action using a format with six columns: objective, activity, person in charge, evidence, date, and difficulties. another strategy i introduced to improve metacognition was selfassessment. students carried out interviews in pairs, i transcribed them, and they self-corrected their mistakes. i also provided technical support when i helped them to plan and carry out their plans, to select materials, to organize interactions and also when i encouraged them to selfand peer-assess. in this way, i was acting more as a facilitator (holec, 1985 in voller, 1997) and helping to develop their autonomy. by 2003, i had gained more expertise: classroom routines became easier; it was clear then that my class had its own momentum established by me with the negotiation and participation of students based on what i had to do and what they had to accomplish. at the beginning of each class we played short games. i oriented them to reviewing the previous class topics or structures worked, or introducing vocabulary related to an upcoming theme. i also developed a planning guide of the tasks to be done every class that reminded my students of their responsibilities. i encouraged them to do pleasurable activities at home as part of their english practice, such as watching a movie in english, reading something of their interest or listening to music. then we would share those experiences and keep them in a poster that helped each student to self-monitor what they were doing. students became more motivated towards choosing one single topic of their real interest. i observed how through negotiation, encouraging students to support their points of view and listening to each other, thus avoiding the easy way, students could come up with an agreement. i learned that i needed to know how to elicit students’ real interests and help them focus on the work done in class. we applied selfand peerassessment, compared these with my evaluation of students’ performance and showed their parents the process. parents appreciated the results since they saw progress in their children’s learning. one parent once mentioned that his son liked my classes very much because from the beginning he knew where he was heading. that was very satisfactory. i realized that changes take time and that teachers need to develop to be good observers of what is around them and also of themselves. getting involved in collaborative networks helps one to gain confidence in order to try out things and to face the challenging world of teaching today’s generations. profile 9.indd 153 21/04/2008 07:43:51 p.m. pineda and frodden universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras154 findings three members of the research group contributed towards the analysis of the information. after comparing and contrasting the information i had gathered in my journal with the minutes and the students’ perceptions, one member of the research group compared my analysis with hers, and the other one looked again at the information and helped me to realize that the categories needed to be grouped in broader ones. then, i worked with my research advisor on the interpretation of the data and on the statement of the hypotheses which has been grouped into the themes that constitute the findings of this research: collaborating with peers, developing as critical thinkers, and reflecting on my teaching. collaborating with peers novice teachers usually feel that their problems are unique and tend to try to solve problems on their own. teacher isolation, which has been linked to formal teacher preparation programs (goodlad et al. 1990a, as cited in fullan & stiegelbauer, 1997), makes beginning teachers’ first years of experience the most difficult ones in their careers and lives (mcdonald & elías (1980, as cited in fullan & stiegelbauer, 1997). stanulis, campbell &hicks (2002) write about a novice teacher’s uncomfortable feelings making the transition from student to teacher, as she felt isolated from her previous teachers, and found no support from her mentor at school. perhaps because of this, fullan & stiegelbauer (1997) emphasize the importance for novice teachers to work collaboratively in order to guarantee their stay and success in the profession. something positive is that through the work of the group i have had the opportunity to obtain valuable support that has helped me grow as a professional and as a person; for example, when i have had to listen to constructive criticism or when they question my pedagogical and professional practice. this has allowed me to have a wider vision of my context, where i include my students and colleagues as well as the society i take part in (diary, february 18, 2002, p.4). since i started teaching, i shared the difficulties i had regarding classroom management and students’ irresponsibility with the research group. i tried to find action strategies to solve these problems in books on teaching and learning english as a second language (esl), because in our context it is difficult to find literature on english as a foreign language (efl). reflecting on what i normally did in my classroom in my diary, and sharing those reflections with my peers who were more experienced, was more productive. as we worked in similar contexts, they had had similar experiences and could provide advice and support; but above all, their comments helped me question what i was doing and to restructure my way of thinking. the idea of asking gloria to interview my students was a good one; we killed two birds with one stone. on the one hand, she practiced her interviewing skills, helped me collect information because i had no way of doing it, and also provided her perception of what was happening. the fact the she did the interviews with my students was good because the students said things that they might not have told me. profile 9.indd 154 21/04/2008 07:43:51 p.m. the development of a novice teacher’s autonomy in the context of efl in colombia profile 9, 2008. issn 1657-0790. bogotá, colombia. pages 143-162 155 after the interviews, although we did not manage to do all the ones we had planned, we listened to them and commented on them (diary, may 12, 2002, p. 22). as external interviewer, because she did not know the class, but as an internal one because she knew about the research and about my way of thinking and acting, she had a very important role in the collection of information, since i had tried to obtain written responses from my students. for example, specific information about their attitude in class with no success. i don’t know if it was because gloria was an external agent or because of the technique we used, but we obtained very valuable information both about my students and my own pedagogical practice (diary, may 12, 2002, p. 22). ginns, heirdsfield, atweh, & watters (2001), in their participatory action research project with novice teachers, found that having teachers work collaboratively with others prompted a critical reflection on their practice. this is similar to what happened to me. in the research group, when we shared our experiences through reading our diaries and having conversations, we asked questions that prompted reflection, supported our points of view, and learned to be open to giving and receiving feedback. the other interesting thing was to get gloria’s critical vision about my teaching practice and what could be going on in my class. also, about the members of the group’s level of english and about what we should and could do in order to improve it, because being so involved with the critical intellectual and the reflective practitioner, as presented by contreras (1997), we cannot and should not neglect the technical expert (diary, may 12, 2002, p. 23). as aebli (1991) mentions, a group of teachers becomes a social support system that accompanies novice teachers while they have difficulties. ginns, heirdsfield, atweh, & watters (2001) reported how collaboration was fostered when novice teachers worked in small groups. these teachers stated that working with others gave them an opportunity to talk freely about what was successful or not in their classrooms, to be more reflective, analytical and critical, emphasizing the importance of the social dimension in their transition as new professionals. professional communities are formed because they have interests in common and work voluntarily together to achieve individual and group objectives. sharing with the research group, i realized that my colleagues had had similar problems. knowing how they overcame them contributed to my understanding and helped me make appropriate decisions. as short and burke state, “individual knowledge, experience, and understanding become a pooled resource as members confer on any question” (1991, p. 26). in this way, collaboration in the research group contributed to developing my identity as a teacher and taught me that i can also learn from my peers, not just from my own experience and from theory in books. developing as critical thinkers collegial dialogue with the research group also contributed to the development of my critical thinking. according to ennis (2000), being a critical thinker involves, among other things, discovering and listening to others’ views and reasons, considering seriously other points of view, supporting arguments, seeking profile 9.indd 155 21/04/2008 07:43:51 p.m. pineda and frodden universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras156 for alternative explanations, plans and sources, analyzing and devising solutions for problems and issues, and taking into account the total situation. interaction in the research group meetings was rich and lively, as can be seen in this excerpt from the minutes: jorge says that emancipation involves taking distance from imposed educational ideologies and making our own decisions according to our context. diana says it means to liberate oneself from slavery, from the oppression from those above. then gloria says that in order to become a critical intellectual, you have to acquire conscience. cristina asks: how does a person become critical? mauricio answers: by asking themselves questions. another question is posed: does a person become critical naturally? (minutes, feb 11, 2002). discussions in the collaborative action research group helped me to develop and expand my way of thinking as i was immersed in an environment where i could take advantage of what others had to offer and interact and learn from them (short & burke, 1991). when i started in the group my concerns were quite limited to what went on in the classroom; later on, i started connecting issues of power in the classroom with the wider world: diana says that no matter how autonomous we are, we must work and i cannot just start in a new institution and change its norms at once. diana says there are three types of rules: (1) those imposed by the system, (2) those imposed by the school, and (3) those imposed by the teacher. different processes are required to debate a teacher’s rule or a rule of the system (minutes, april 8, 2002). according to beas, santa cruz, thomsen & utreras (2000), critical thinking is a process from which conclusions are drawn based on evidence. for cromwell (1986) it is “a critical consciousness of the thinking process itself and of its products”. critical thinkers are willing to be informed, are inclined to be reflective, are curious to look for evidence and are eager to establish relationships among information that appears to be isolated. they have an open attitude, respect others’ opinions, want to know various perspectives of the same phenomenon, and tend to be reserved with judgments. working collaboratively in the research group, i learned the importance of members listening to each other and discussing points of view before making a decision. we tried to reach a consensus and to avoid imposition. reflecting on my teaching i became analytic through observing my own performance in the classroom and reflecting in my diary. keeping memos after class, writing ideas about what i should have done in my journal, i kept them in mind and tried them out later. i listened to teaching strategies suggested in preand in service sessions, tested those procedures one by one, registered how i used them, and also tested my own ideas regarding my teaching practice. by doing this, i realized how they were working. i could also realize my strengths and weaknesses, and establish my own objectives for professional growth in line with stallings (1989; quoted in fullan & stiegelbauer, 1997), who emphasizes learning by doing, linking previous knowledge with new knowledge, learning through reflection and solving problems, and learning within a collaborative profile 9.indd 156 21/04/2008 07:43:52 p.m. the development of a novice teacher’s autonomy in the context of efl in colombia profile 9, 2008. issn 1657-0790. bogotá, colombia. pages 143-162 157 environment. had i not been engaged in this collaborative action research, i could not have been able to carry out such a systematic process. the importance of working with others is that they help us to have another perspective of what we have already observed. there are certain events that could not take place if we did not have the critical and supportive view of others that share similar experiences as ours. our ability to empathize with others provides our only opportunity to stand outside ourselves and observe who we are and what we are doing. these socially provided observation points lend flexibility to our personal worlds. they create choices that would not be available to us if we were isolated from others. we have potential for learning that would never be realized without these social relationships (short & burke, 1991, p. 14). according to elliot (1990), academics do not translate their theories into a practical form that can help teachers solve the problems encountered in their classrooms. this is why stenhouse (1991) stressed teachers’ role as curriculum researchers and the development of teachers’ reflection. altrichter, posch & somekh (1993) discuss professional knowledge and professional action based on schön’s models of reflection: tacit knowing-in-action, reflection-in-action and reflection-onaction. tacit knowing-in-action deals mainly with routines and has its value because it gives organization to teachers’ work and allows them to do more than one thing at a time. it has three characteristics: (1) thinking and acting are not separate; (2) the teacher is unaware of her/his practical knowledge or how it is learnt, and (3) the practitioner is not able to give a straightforward verbal description of her/ his practical knowledge. in reflection-in-action, knowledge is implicit in what we do. confronted with a problem, the teacher reflects on what is happening and makes decisions on the spot. the teacher acts at the moment the events occur and, based on that action, constructs knowledge for that specific situation; therefore, making decisions and reflecting go hand in hand. reflection-on-action allows the teacher to think back on what has happened to formulate and express explicitly the knowledge obtained from the event. this viewing on previous action permits teachers to be more analytic and to organize the knowledge obtained from the reflective practice. reflection-on-action enhances professional competency because actions are no so mechanical, but converted into an objectified point of reference. this process allows us to see a complex situation from various perspectives, and in that way, we can see it better. reflection-on-action is the basis of action research. working on this research project enabled me to experience reflection-inaction and reflection-on-action. because of my lack of teaching experience, i had not developed much knowledge-in-action, but my natural capability to reflect helped me make proper decisions in class. later, through systematic observation, diary writing and discussions with the research group, i could reflect back on what i had done. this allowed me to gain more knowledge and a better understanding of the theme-based approach. besides, profile 9.indd 157 21/04/2008 07:43:52 p.m. pineda and frodden universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras158 working with the research group helped me to realize the importance of theorizing on my experiences in order to share them with my colleagues, which is also a characteristic of reflection-on-action (schön, 1983, in altrichter et al., 1993). when i attended the in-service courses in the institution, i could observe that some teachers were still having similar difficulties as the ones i had already overcome, so i had the opportunity to share the ways in which i had dealt with them. i realized that reflection is an important skill that can be developed. another thing i realized in the research group was the advantages of working collaboratively, so i promoted those advantages among my students. diana is reading articles about learner autonomy. she found out that autonomy is not an end but a means. one is in the process of learning. as a teacher one is constantly learning, thanks to reflecting on one’s practice. learner autonomy has been understood as students working on their own. being part of this group has helped diana see her progress; she has acquired criteria to decide the role of the student and the teacher. there are environments that favor the development of autonomous learners, and her institution has worked in that direction (minutes, march 11, 2003, p. 36). discussion i think that through thematic teaching students can learn about the world in a meaningful way when the teacher is not the only person who manages the information, and authority is shared between teacher and students. thematic teaching prepares students to become good citizens because negotiating different alternatives, listening to others’ points of view, and expressing opinions and supporting them can be a basis to tackle real life issues later. another asset of this approach is that the teacher can exercise autonomy regarding the curriculum because decisions on what to teach are open to negotiation between the teacher and the students. it may be argued that by giving such freedom to the teacher, the institution may lose direction and control of what students learn in each level; however, in the institution i worked in, teachers who belonged to the pdt or who had fluent dialogue with their das could exchange ideas and, thus, could maintain some curricular unity, showing the benefits of collaborative work. thematic teaching requires that the teacher establish good rapport with students in order to discover their real interests, and to guide a project that motivates them. in this regard, beginner teachers, who tend to adopt a strict stance in order to manage discipline problems, may find difficulties starting to teach with this approach. on the other hand, thematic teaching can become very time consuming for teachers since it requires them to devote a great deal of time to investigate and read about different topics in order to manage the information brought by the students. whereas a textbook provides support to the teacher, especially a beginner teacher; in a theme-based approach, with no textbook, the support should be provided by a community of teachers. in my case, besides the das, i had the research group to support me. exercising autonomy did not mean isolating myself, but entailed interdependence, mutual support, and commitment with the educational community (usma 2006). profile 9.indd 158 21/04/2008 07:43:52 p.m. the development of a novice teacher’s autonomy in the context of efl in colombia profile 9, 2008. issn 1657-0790. bogotá, colombia. pages 143-162 159 the professional growth i achieved working in a collaborative action research group had an effect on my role as a teacher. collaborative dialogue helped me to examine my beliefs regarding teaching, to reflect on the teaching strategies that were not being effective, and moved me to teach differently, focusing more on the children than on myself. i realized that i had a group of students who were all different, and that i had to work with them in different ways. according to maruny (1989, as cited in díaz & hernández, 1998), teaching is not only administering information, but also helping students to learn. cromwell (1986) also points to the fact that teachers who want to develop critical thinking in their students should not see themselves merely as transmitters of information, but as developers of abilities. doing this implies that teachers know their students very well. according to gil et al. (1991, as cited in díaz & hernández, 1998), going through processes of collaborative research contributes to transcending the original role of transmission of knowledge and becoming a facilitator of students’ learning. according to berliner (1988, as cited in kagan, 1992), teachers pass through five stages in their professional development: novice, advanced beginner, competent, proficient and expert. novice teachers need to concentrate on their performance and plan their teaching through making rational decisions, which are rather inflexible because they are based on context-free rules. teachers take two to three years to move from the novice stage to the advanced beginner, a stage characterized by teachers making decisions based on their prior experiences and the recognition of similarities across contexts. in the third stage, competent teachers know what is important and what is not, and can make conscious decisions about their teaching; however, their teaching still lacks fluidity and flexibility. i feel that when one has the opportunity to participate in an action research group, one passes from the first to the second stage faster. for example, in 2001, i took all the responsibility for establishing course goals and assessing students’ achievement, but in 2002, i also asked my students to selfand peer-assess with those same goals. i cared about what my students could do to realize what they had learned so that they would start to take charge of their learning. having the opportunity to participate in a collaborative action research project provided me with the chance to learn how to carry out research by doing it, and become what schön (1992) calls a reflective professional, a teacher able to test theories through practical action, to solve problems in their own context and to develop their own theory based on practice. my experience also supports liston and zeichner’s (1989; as cited in fullan & stiegelbauer, 1997) view that by carrying out action research, beginning teachers become more aware of their own practices, of the gap between their beliefs and their practices, and of the way their students learn and think. collaborative dialogue in the weekly meetings with the action research group is perhaps the activity that impacted most on the development of my autonomy. according to woodcock, lassonde, & rutten (2004), collaborative reflection is rooted in trusting relationships. such profile 9.indd 159 21/04/2008 07:43:52 p.m. pineda and frodden universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras160 relationships allowed me to learn that i was not alone in this new field of teaching, to open my mind to other perspectives, and to receive criticism without being offended because the critics were my colleagues and friends and wanted me to strengthen my qualities and overcome my weaknesses. collaborative groups need to foster characteristics such as values, goals, vision of teaching, trust, care, mutual respect, comfortable sharing of doubts, celebration of success, constructive feedback, serious commitment and free decisions (lee & anthony, 2001). working collaboratively with the research group, i became more aware of my own thoughts, developed new routines in order to implement theme-based teaching, and learned to solve teaching problems as i encountered them, which are features that according to kagan (1992) pertain to professional development experiences. above all, this collaborative research experience became a motivation for me to learn and try out things that helped me to have more control of my classes and my learning process as a teacher, acting on the social-motivational dimension of autonomy mentioned by huang (2005). this is extremely important since it has been found that novice teachers’ attitudes towards teaching and learning play a crucial role in their staying in or leaving the profession. to summarize, this experience included the features usma (2006) mentions in order to enhance teachers’ professional autonomy, professional competence and attitudes towards teaching and learning: collaboration, experiential learning, shared decision making, risk taking, and reflection. conclusion when i started this research project, i wanted to explore how collegiate dialogue, reading, observation and reflection on classroom events would help me to develop the skills i needed to implement the theme-based approach in the institution where i was working and to become a more autonomous teacher. however, as i started observing and reflecting on my teaching i discovered new issues that were impinging on my performance as a teacher and took action on them, which led to improvement in the implementation of the approach. i found that my concern moved from the troubles i had with the approach to the relationship i had with my pupils and their learning. i realized that thematic teaching can be beneficial for students, teachers and the administration. it is an approach that engages students as part of the learning experience; moreover, it is a tool that can be used not just to instruct learners but to educate them integrally in order to become democratic citizens. on the other hand, teachers exercise their autonomy making their own decisions, negotiating contents, preparing materials and selecting appropriate teaching and assessment procedures. finally, thematic teaching represents a challenge for the administration since in-service training sessions have to be transformed from a more traditional model where teachers are given guidelines and instructions to a more socio-cognitive constructivist model where their shared reflection on their practices is as important as the information provided by experts or books. profile 9.indd 160 21/04/2008 07:43:52 p.m. the development of a novice teacher’s autonomy in the context of efl in colombia profile 9, 2008. issn 1657-0790. bogotá, colombia. pages 143-162 161 making part of a collaborative action research project transformed me from a thoughtful person into a reflective professional. i was involved in continuous cycles where i planned systematically, carried out actions and evaluated them. collaborative dialogue with my colleagues and the research group was a major influence on my professional development since it helped me to enhance my critical thinking, to take into account the multiple contextual factors that a teacher needs to consider when making decisions, and it reminded me of the social responsibility we have to improve our educational contexts. i learned the importance of doing action research as a means to be prepared better for the challenges we encounter in our profession. but perhaps most important of all is the awareness i gained of a teacher’s role and my renewed engagement with the profession. becoming a reflective teacher is a long path –as is learning for students– where action research can make an immense contribution. notes when we use the first person 1. singular we refer to diana pineda, who was the teacher directly involved with the english class. cristina frodden was the research advisor and, as such ,gave constant support and feedback to diana in all the phases of the research, including the writing of this article. proper names have been 2. substituted by pseudonyms in order to preserve anonymity. references aebli, h. (1991). factores de la enseñanza que favorecen el aprendizaje autónomo. madrid: narcea, s.a. de ediciones. altrichter, h., posch, p., & somekh, b. (1993). teachers investigate their work. an introduction to the methods of action research. londonnew york: routledge. barfield, a., ashwell, t., carroll, m., collins, k., cowie, n., critchley, m., head, e., nix, m., obermeier, a. & robertson, m.c. (2002). ‘exploring and defining teacher autonomy: a collaborative discussion’. in a.s. mackenzie & e. mccafferty (eds.) developing autonomy. proceedings of the jalt cue conference 2001. tokyo: the japan association for language teaching college and university educators special interest group, pp. 217-222. retrieved from http://www.encounters.jp/mike/ professional/publications/tchauto.html beas, j., santa cruz, j., thomsen, p., & utreras, s. (2000). enseñar a pensar para aprender mejor. santiago de chile: ediciones universidad católica de chile. benson, p. (2001). teaching and researching autonomy in language learning. harlow, england: pearson. burns, a. (1999). collaborative action research for english language teachers. cambridge: cambridge university press. contreras, j. (1997). la autonomía del profesorado. madrid: ediciones morata. cromwell, l. (ed.). (1986). teaching critical thinking in the arts and humanities. milwaukee: alverno productions. díaz, f., & hernández, g. (1998). estrategias docentes para un aprendizaje significativo: una interpretación constructivista. méxico: macgraw hill. elliot, j. (1990). la investigación acción en educación. madrid: ediciones morata. ennis, r. h. (2000). a super-streamlined conception of critical thinking. retrieved march 4, 2000 from http://www.criticalthinking.net/ ssconcctapr3.html profile 9.indd 161 21/04/2008 07:43:53 p.m. pineda and frodden universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras162 freeman, d., & cornwell, s. (eds.). (1993). new ways in teacher education (new ways in tesol). alexandria: tesol publications. frodden, c., picón, e., & usma, j. (2001). developing values, strategies and skills in future teachers. how, a colombian journal for english teachers, 8, 63-73. fullan, m., & stiegelbauer, s. (1997). el cambio educativo: guía de planeación para maestros. méxico: trillas. ginns, i., heirdsfield, a., atweh, b., & watters, j. (2001). beginning teachers becoming professionals through action research. educational action research, 9(1), 111-133. halliday, m. (1984). three aspects of children’s language development: learning language, learning through language, learning about language (mimeo). paper presented at the ohio state university. hopkins, d. (1993). a teacher’s guide to classroom research. buckingham-philadelphia: open university press. huang, j. (2005). teacher autonomy in language learning: a review of the research. research studies in education, 3 (the eighth postgraduate research conference, 2005, faculty of education, the university of hong king), 203-218. kagan, d. (1992). professional growth among preservice and beginning teachers. review of educational research, 62(2), 129-169. kemmis, s., & mctaggart, r. (1988). the action research planner. deakin university press. lee, d., & anthony, d. (2001). collegiality and its role in teacher development: perspectives from veteran and novices teachers. in teacher development, 5(3). mcgrath, i. (2000). teacher autonomy. in sinclair, b., i. mcgrath, & t. lamb. learner autonomy, teacher autonomy: future directions. harlow: longman. oxford, r. (1990). language learning strategies. what every teacher should know. boston: heinle and heinle publishers. schön, d. (1992). la formación de profesionales reflexivos. hacia un nuevo diseño de la enseñanza y el aprendizaje en las profesiones. barcelona: ediciones paidós. short, k. g. (1997). literature as a way of knowing. york, me: stenhouse. short, k., & burke, c. (1991). creating curriculum. teachers and students as a community of learners. portsmouth: heinemann. stanulis, r.n., campbell, p.e., & hicks, j. (2002). finding her way: a beginning teacher’s story of learning to honour her own voice in teaching. educational action research, 10(1), 45-65. stenhouse, l. (1991). investigación y desarrollo del currículo. madrid: ediciones morata. usma, j. (2006). teacher autonomy: a review of the research literature. unpublished masters thesis. cedar falls, ia: university of northern iowa. voller, p. (1997). does the teacher have a role in autonomous language learning? in benson, p., & p. voller (eds.) autonomy and independence in language learning. london-new york: addison wesley-longman ltd. woodcock, c., lassonde, c., & rutten, i. (2004). how does collaborative reflection play a role in a teacher researcher’s beliefs about herself and her teaching?: discovering the power of relationships. teaching and learning: the journal of natural inquiry and reflective practice, 18(2), 55-73. zeichner, k. (2003). teacher research as professional development for p-12 educators in the usa. educational action research, 11(2), 301-325. about the authors diana pineda, b. ed. in foreign language teaching from universidad de antioquia, member of the grupo de investigación acción y evaluación en lenguas extranjeras (giae) and master’s candidate in tefl at funiber. she has taught english in private and public institutions in medellín. cristina frodden, m.a. in applied linguistics, former professor at universidad de antioquia, where she participated in the education of foreign language teachers and coordinated the giae. currently she comprises part of the editorial review board of ikala and profile journals. profile 9.indd 162 21/04/2008 07:43:53 p.m. profile no. 7dic 5.p65 ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ profile profile profile profile profile 7 (2006): universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras conceptualizing as regards educational change and pedagogical knowledge: how novice teacher-researchers’ proposals illustrate this relationship conceptualizando acerconceptualizando acerconceptualizando acerconceptualizando acerconceptualizando acerca del cambio en la educación y el conocimiento pedagógico:ca del cambio en la educación y el conocimiento pedagógico:ca del cambio en la educación y el conocimiento pedagógico:ca del cambio en la educación y el conocimiento pedagógico:ca del cambio en la educación y el conocimiento pedagógico: cómo las propuestas de profesores-investigadores principiantes ilustran esta relacióncómo las propuestas de profesores-investigadores principiantes ilustran esta relacióncómo las propuestas de profesores-investigadores principiantes ilustran esta relacióncómo las propuestas de profesores-investigadores principiantes ilustran esta relacióncómo las propuestas de profesores-investigadores principiantes ilustran esta relación carcarcarcarcarolina piñerolina piñerolina piñerolina piñerolina piñeros pos pos pos pos pedraza*edraza*edraza*edraza*edraza* carpi2381@yahoo.com álvarálvarálvarálvarálvaro quintero quintero quintero quintero quintero po po po po polo*olo*olo*olo*olo* ***** quinteropolo@gmail.com universidad distrital francisco josé de caldas, colombia our insights regarding the relationship among the concepts of change, transformation, and innovation concerning pedagogical knowledge are present throughout the manuscript. we focus on the conceptualizations of change resulting from experiential and academic knowledge. our shared perspectives as a teacher educator and a student teacher from which to see teaching, learning, language, and literacy are also at the core of the discussion. we complement our discussion with theoretical information from specialized sources and practical experiences that have taken the shape of thesis and monograph projects. in them, we looked at reflections and questions about language and literacy in pedagogical practices, alternatives for school life experiences, the balance between theory and practice in educational contexts, and the social dimension of knowledge. kkkkkey worey worey worey worey wordsdsdsdsds: educational change, pedagogical knowledge, pedagogical innovation, teacher research este artículo contiene la relación entre los conceptos de cambio, transformación e innovación relacionados con el conocimiento pedagógico. nos concentramos en las conceptualizaciones de cambio resultantes del conocimiento experiencial y académico. la enseñanza, el aprendizaje, el lenguaje y la lectoescritura son vistas desde nuestras perspectivas compartidas como formador de educadores y docente principiante. complementamos estas discusiones con información teórica y experiencias prácticas que han tomado la forma de tesis y monografías. en éstas, miramos el proceso de reflexión, el proceso de indagación acerca de lenguaje y lectura y escritura en prácticas pedagógicas, alternativas para experiencias de vida escolar, balance entre teoría y práctica en contextos educacionales y la dimensión social de conocimiento. palabras clavespalabras clavespalabras clavespalabras clavespalabras claves: cambio educacional, conocimiento pedagógico, innovación pedagógica, investigación por profesores * carolina piñeros pedrazacarolina piñeros pedrazacarolina piñeros pedrazacarolina piñeros pedrazacarolina piñeros pedraza holds a b.a. in teaching of english as a foreign language from universidad distrital. she is a graduate student of the master’s program in applied linguistics to tefl at the same university. her area of interest is literacy development. she is currently working as a university efl teacher. ** álvaro quintero poloálvaro quintero poloálvaro quintero poloálvaro quintero poloálvaro quintero polo earned a b.a. in english and spanish at universidad de nariño, pasto. he is a graduate and professor of the master’s program in applied linguistics to tefl at universidad distrital, bogotá. he is a member of the colciencias-recognized research group, lectoescrinautas. this article was received on januar y 31st, 2006 and accepted on june 14th, 2006. 173-186 ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ 174 piñeros and quintero profileprofileprofileprofileprofile p r e l i m i n a r y i d e a s f o r o u rp r e l i m i n a r y i d e a s f o r o u rp r e l i m i n a r y i d e a s f o r o u rp r e l i m i n a r y i d e a s f o r o u rp r e l i m i n a r y i d e a s f o r o u r discussiondiscussiondiscussiondiscussiondiscussion initially, our personal positions about the need for language educators to implement transformations in their current pedagogical practices relate to our images as follows: a teacher educator who favors a humanistic, inquiring, and critical approach to language teaching and learning. a teacher educator who opposes the rigidity of a technical view of language curriculum. a teacher educator who conceives language curriculum as the set of school life experiences in which both teachers and students find opportunities to share, activate, and build new understandings of the world. a novice teacher who has undergone change as an opportunity to explore teaching duties in the near future. a novice teacher who has expanded on concepts such as language, learning and teaching as more than mere instructional tasks. a student teacher who has also had the opportunity to interact and learn about new pedagogical perspectives that transformed beliefs in terms of theory and school life experiences. as part of the expectations we had when writing this article, we can mention our intention to make known to the elt community members the need to have a reflective component in teacher education programs and a research agenda that result in an exploration of alternatives for changing and constructing new knowledge regarding literacy and language education. we also expect this to be an opportunity to make sense of reflective and research experiences beyond the university classrooms. the theoretical review for this article includes our conceptualization regarding change supported by freire, nieto, lerner, fullan, shamin, ballenilla, and shor. likewise, our conceptualization as regards knowledge is supported by giroux, mclaren, ladson-billings, golombek, pineda, richards, schulman, and clavijo. the issues tackled in the literature review are the politics of change, the collective and individual dimension of knowledge, alternatives for transformation, crisis, critical pedagogy, resistance to change, and construction. in connection with our conceptualization, the theme of knowledge transformation became appealing to us since we started to observe the need to find alternatives for viewing language as a means rather than a purpose. besides, we discovered new ways of being educators in contrast to being only instructors of language. we started to designate terms for situations we did not know had a name before. this happened as a consequence of the interaction with the literature that shaped the discussions. this led us to analyze the reflective component in our academic daily practices in teacher education programs and, subsequently, analyze some actions that also became research projects (i.e. theses or monographs) by student teachers. these practical projects that serve as ways to illustrate our points are theses developed by ochoa and alvarez. similarly, we include the monographs whose authors are bonilla, mendieta, ospina and muñoz, piñeros and mendez, and moreno, rojas and urrutia. one of the factors to examine in the projects we have selected for the practical component in our article is how teachers’ practices have generated change and how that change is conceptualized by educators through their declarative statements. these declarative statements reveal the way teachers themselves make sense of change and innovation that is socially and culturally situated from a language curriculum perspective. the declarative statements are reflective practices in the dynamics of change (clavijo, 2001 and clavijo guerrero, torres, ramírez, and torres, 2004). in order to be focused when looking at practical experiences, we examined the following aspects in the theses and monographs: the reflection upon the balance between theory and practice regarding teaching, learning, and language, and the social dimension of knowledge (i.e. individual and collective dimensions) in the literature review and data analysis; then, alternatives for school life experiences in the instructional design. ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○175 profileprofileprofileprofileprofile conceptualizing as regards educational change and pedagogical knowledge change, transformachange, transformachange, transformachange, transformachange, transformation, andtion, andtion, andtion, andtion, and innovinnovinnovinnovinnovaaaaation in eduction in eduction in eduction in eduction in educaaaaational settional settional settional settional settingstingstingstingstings our conceptualization of the transformation of pedagogical knowledge has evolved out of an initial review of the literature vis-à-vis change and knowledge where the terms transformation, change, and innovation are closely related to one another and mutually determinant in this article. we use the term innovation to refer to the individual and collective intentions to implement new alternatives in educational practices. as for change, we will refer to the perspectives from which both researchers and practitioners see their own implementation and the duration of their innovations. the accounting for this situation by the protagonists of educational practices constitutes what we call transformations. in our same initial conceptualization, we have seen change to be the emergence of alternatives to improve school life experiences (i.e. from a perspective of experience; change is due to observed needs or aspects we considered to be reevaluated, reexamined). these alternatives might result from different sources, but particularly from experiential and academic knowledge. these two sources make any change experience informed. change, in this sense, needs to be procedural, systematic, dynamic, lasting, natural, spontaneous, and balanced by both internal and external factors. we refer to these internal and external factors in what follows in this section. we agree with the ideas found in literature that, among the players necessar y to understand change, there are students, members of the educational community, educational communities as a whole and teachers themselves. from these players, we highlight the presence of both teachers and students as agents of change. for instance, teaching is an activity that consists primarily of social relationships and is seen as a political commitment rather than a technical activity; it is then unquestionable, according to nieto (2003), that what educators need to pay most attention to is their own growth and transformation as well as the lives, realities, and dreams of their students. we would like to illustrate this aspect by acknowledging the description of the profile of the participants in a monograph project by mendieta1 (2004). regarding the socio-cultural background of the group, i can state that most seventh graders’ families belonged to socioeconomic level two, and they lived in neighborhoods close to the school; their parents were workers who had the opportunity to study secondary school but not all of them reached superior education. the kind of jobs the parents had were traders, sellers, nurses, employees in industries or textile factories, etc. among them were two mothers in charge of the family and house cleaning. the families were composed of the father, mother and siblings, some of them studying also in the same school in lower or higher grades. but in spite of being a public school, it did not reveal high conditions of poverty; on the contrar y, children lived in a good environment that permitted them to do well at school. and they had the necessary things they needed to study with as well as their parents’ supervision (p. 67). in order to make sense of mendieta’s description, let us refer to what nieto (2003) calls individual and collective stories of teachers as a useful reminder that, just as schools need to undergo an institutional transformation if they are to become places where all students learn, teachers need to experience a similar transformation. specifically, teachers need to learn about their students, identify with them, build on their strengths, and challenge head-on the many displays of privilege and inherent biases in the schools where they teach. mendieta’s work can also relate to what lerner (2001) shows as a concern that transformative 1 mendieta, j. is a former student-teacher who worked on literacy practices that connected home and school as part of her monograph project. ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ 176 piñeros and quintero profileprofileprofileprofileprofile teachers have about the use of traditional methods for teaching reading and writing. these methods, maintains lerner, have promulgated an aversion in students towards literacy development practices in both academic and nonacademic settings. lerner also shows a concern for the “instructional” responsibility that demands from students physically acquired skills. this responsibility relates to the education of individuals able to read and write. we can also see in the participants’ profile of mendieta’s work one factor regarded as a crucial one in studies concerning educational community development: parent involvement in schools. izzo, weissberg, kasprow, and fendrich (1999) maintain that teachers need to reach out to parents and communities with empathy, and interact meaningfully with them. they also assert that being a teacher can no longer mean remaining isolated in the school. in turn, nieto also shows aspects that constitute critical issues in the personal and professional transformation of teachers. among these issues, she discusses the confrontation of one’s own identity, the role of teachers as learners who learn from their students, identification of teachers with students, the cultural dimension of teachers, biases in the teaching practice, and the development of critical communities. as an example, in the following quote, ochoa2 (2005) gives an account of the professional dimension as a critical issue identified in her thesis. even though those who teach in primary school must be prepared, teachers think that it is a choice that involves many people and institutions (human beings and material resources). they think that teachers must be more committed to the community. besides, the transformation must be in order to improve and certain conditions are necessary. as kagan (1992) says, developmental tasks depend on at least three major factors. one of them is the context in which practice teaching occurs, the nature of pupils, beliefs of, and relationships with other teachers in the school, availability of material, principal’s beliefs, relationship with parents (p. 155). continuing with nieto’s presentation of the critical issues of the professional dimension of teaching, the next excerpt illustrates how a student teacher’s conception of teaching and learning evolved after her experience with students. bonilla3 (2005) presents in the literature review of her monograph project her view of teaching and learning as follows: this project gave me the opportunity to open my mind to different perspectives regarding the educational part, teaching and learning. teaching is not only what a teacher proposes without noticing students’ needs and interests, it is a negotiation between teacher, students and the institutions’ needs while learning is the process in which students and teacher participate in all the decisions about the class in order to improve their process of acquiring a foreign language. that is the conception i had built from the application of my research study and it encouraged me to continue improving english teaching and research (p. 14). the professional dimension we discuss above also relates to a two-way relationship between a person and the members of a group to which that person belongs. this relates to what we call the individual and collective dimensions of change. concerning the individual and collective dimension of change in education, we quote fullan (2001), who maintains that change cannot be managed. it can be understood, led, but it cannot be controlled. “real change, then, whether desired2 ochoa, m. is a public school teacher and an m.a. in applied linguistics to tefl. her thesis is an account of the reflections of a public school teachers’ study group on teaching english to children without having received any education in order to do so. 3 bonilla, t. is a former efl student teacher who developed her monograph project over communicative teaching and learning. ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○177 profileprofileprofileprofileprofile conceptualizing as regards educational change and pedagogical knowledge or not, represents a serious personal and collective experience characterized by ambivalence and uncertainty; and if the change works out it can result in a sense of master y, accomplishment, and professional growth” (p. 32). he also explains that change involves loss, anxiety, and struggle; that change may occur either voluntarily or be imposed on us. he cites morris and schön, who equally agree that change, besides being individual, is a social phenomenon. in addition, fullan remarks on the importance of sharing with others because, that way, teachers have the possibility to come up with new ideas. this is what he calls shared meaning and program coherence. interaction is a key point for transforming tacit knowledge into shared knowledge. regarding this collective dimension of change, ballenilla (1999) describes three levels involved in the process of initiating change. those levels are as follows: the students, the context and the teachers. in the first level, he names students’ motivation, adaptation to change, and organization of activities, among other classroom intricacies. concerning the second level, ballenilla mentions contents, directors, colleagues, and parents as main components of change initiation process. these two levels deal with the external factors of change. in the last level, that is, the teacher, it will only depend on the teachers’ willingness to change. he remarks that change is a matter of being consistent and practicing our professional autonomy. ochoa in her findings shows us an example that illustrates the collective dimension of change that emphasizes the relationship between teachers and students: sharing teaching experiences were part of the meetings. teachers narrated an episode of their lives in order to illustrate their points of view in an aspect of discussion. when teachers reflected, they referred to their experiences. they remembered students and events that were appropriate for the meetings and that enriched the pedagogical knowledge experiences (p.72). one of the main factors in the implementation of transformations is the nature of pupils and their relationships with other teachers in the school. in this way, teachers analyze their responsibility as societal leaders who hold education in their hands. concerning our conceptualization of change, we have learned that change is not only the result of common sense. rather, it needs to be systematic and procedural in order to take place. the need for strategies to document and substantiate change is what makes it systematic. these strategies are, among other things, thought of, designed, implemented, and evaluated. this occurs systematically, i.e. in a procedural fashion. in the following excerpt, we show how a pedagogical innovation related to critical literacy practices and developed by piñeros and mendez4 (2005) uses research procedures to make it systematic: we carried out a research with students and their lives, the relationships among the individuals and their realities. we inquired about issues related to the reading of literature and life experiences observing the connections among them and the way students revealed their understandings through their expressions. for that reason, qualitative research was a key element to support our project methodology. in connection to this, merriam (1998) says that “all types of qualitative research are based on the view that reality is constructed by individuals interacting with their social worlds. qualitative researchers are interested in understanding the meaning people have constructed, that is, how they make sense of their world and the experiences they have in the world” (p.6). this assumption sustained our research interest due to the fact that human beings and the society establish a strong and dynamic connection, which allows individuals 4 piñeros, c. and mendez, j. are former student teachers who developed their monograph project over the implementation of literature circles to explore students’ life experiences. ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ 178 piñeros and quintero profileprofileprofileprofileprofile to reflect on themselves and the world around them. being able to understand this phenomenon requires a deeper abstraction which is explored and supported by the qualitative approach. furthermore, we focused on the description of a specific situation. then, we constructed meaning from students’ responses and our theoretical foundations. we and the participants had a constant voice in the research because we negotiated some aspects related to the project. besides, data were taken from different sources: students’ responses, teachers’ obser vations and students-teachers’ expansions. merriam explains (1998) that “the key concern is understanding the phenomenon of interest from the participants’ perspectives, not the researcher’s. this is sometimes referred to as ‘the emic’, or insider’s perspective” (p. 6). we also collected data to analyze, interpreted the participants’ voices and recognized the abstractions students presented in their responses. in that sense, we used the students and our own interpretations because we described social interactions expressed through experiences and the way students made sense of them (pp. 56-57). we can explain this example by referring to lerner (2001) who says that the current educational situation requires an urgent change. for the implementation of changes, it is of paramount importance to consider that teachers need to be formed under the principle that literacy does not consist of reproducing language but creating new meanings as a consequence of the interaction of different views expressed through texts. literacy also extends the formal coding and decoding practices to alternative ways of self-expression. this is how literacy teachers then could turn into generators of change in their students’ literacy practices. the change of conceptions of literacy that teachers may have constitutes an influencing factor in the change of the conceptions of literacy that students may also have. these conceptions, in turn, will affect the school curriculum. this can also be evidenced by an excerpt taken from the monograph work that ospina and muñoz5 (2005) developed regarding the way students observed reading and writing practices after their pedagogical implementation took place. they assert that students perceived literacy practices as a way to recreate their experiences and perceptions of the city: consequently, students perceived that reading and writing were learning tools in which they could recreate their background and their perceptions of the city. moreover, these practices contributed to their critical construction of knowledge. students observed the city could also be part of a significant reading and turn into an argumentative writing practice. they showed sensitiveness and imagination during the spontaneous realization of their tasks and explored different languages to communicate their particular vision of the world by using different materials (p. 39). lerner discusses continuous teacher development as a strategy to start, maintain and follow up on transformations in literacy education. to remark the need for teachers to transform, both teachers and students need to broaden the conception of literacy as that of search, exchange, and the transmission of information. literacy emerges as a critical activity that identifies, creates problems, and solves issues relevant for social reality. in this sense, the exploration of a broadened conception of literacy implies a challenge to take a critical position about it and leads to change. change, then, is dynamic and evolving as teachers and students grow and expand on their own conceptions. the above ideas imply the necessity to evolve from traditional literacy practices to educational 5 ospina, l. and muñoz, d. are former student teachers who developed their monograph project over the development of critical literacy through the exploration of students’ experiences living in bogotá. ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○179 profileprofileprofileprofileprofile conceptualizing as regards educational change and pedagogical knowledge innovation and research activities. real innovations in education start in schools. lerner affirms that when these innovations take the shape of research and become procedural and systematic, it is when teachers can lead to transformation in literacy education. research involves acts of reading, writing, interpreting, reflecting, analyzing, etc. interpretation leads readers to start personal, social, and cultural transformations. it promotes independent readers and writers as well. ospina and muñoz illustrated this as they obser ved their students’ difficulties in literacy practices. the research project that they developed supported their students’ needs and opened spaces for opinion and reflection: one point to initiate our project was the observations carried out at the school. we perceived that the students presented difficulties at the moment of writing and interpreting free texts. they wrote limited informative pieces. their writing did not include their opinions or points of view. the implementation of critical literacy activities supported them in their expression of a personal sense of a diverse set of experiences. besides, learning was incorporated into ever yday practice and a reflective process (p. 10). making a transition now from valid and wellsupported changes in school curriculum, we turn our attention to the resistance and obstacles that teachers might encounter. the complexities that change in the curriculum can bring about are related to the openness of participants in school life experiences. we would like now to address some complexities that teachers might encounter when leading towards a culture of change. among those difficulties, we encounter learners’ resistance to change, education policies, and reforms in education laws. in our review of pedagogic literature, we have seen that the authority structure and the norms of interaction at the different levels of society, including academic contexts, learners’ beliefs about knowledge, learning and classroom as well as larger community behavior, relate to the issue of learners’ resistance to teachers’ classroom innovations. shamin (1996) reports on a case study of her experience in tr ying to introduce change in methodology. she maintains that her attempt failed due to learners’ resistance. she examined the factors that contributed to this failure to innovate. she argues that this resistance was influenced by students’ beliefs derived from their culture as well as the short preparation students received to accept this type of innovation in the classroom. we learn from this that teachers need to prepare students and help them engage in the practices that constitute innovation in order to lessen the pressure that is present when something new is brought into the classroom. in that way, according to shamin, teachers might perceive a different attitude in students as well as cope with tensions when implementing new practices. in the same line of thought, shor (1987) affirms that learners’ resistance is a consequence of alienation at schools, alienation which is seen as the inequality in teaching and learning interaction that spawns teaching inequality, literacy problems and an educational crisis. however, learners’ resistance is not the only difficulty that teachers face. new policies and governmental laws are requiring teachers to do more than they are prepared to, and this, of course, causes uncertainty and brings in questions and doubts related to teaching and learning chores. two excerpts taken from ochoa show how teachers are being affected by new polices in terms of rights, duties and experience: as a consequence of the new reorganization of the teachers of bogotá (distrito capital) and the rest of the country, many have had to move to other schools, work different schedules, different levels and to teach subjects that are not their specialization or else they have had to quit to their jobs. elementary schools have ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ 180 piñeros and quintero profileprofileprofileprofileprofile been specifically affected by this phenomenon, so teachers now have more teaching hours (previously 20 hours of 45 minutes, and now 22 hours or more of 50 minutes), more courses, more groups and more classroom students (around 45) (men, 2002); in other words, more work. although they do not have better salaries or work stimuli and their jobs are not as permanent as in previous years, they are teaching all the subjects, including english; they do not have enough experience or knowledge for teaching this subject (p. 5). the policies seem contradictory because they want the educational sector to generate an important contribution by teaching english in schools, but each day, the conditions of public schools are worse such as lack of teachers, more classroom students, not enough classrooms and schools, bad salaries, no specialized rooms, and so on (el tiempo, 2003). teachers also have other problems that affect teaching; for instance, lack of teacher updating courses, more class hours for teachers, fewer for students (men, 2002, p. 9). teachers have to deal with difficulties that government generates. shor thinks that different agencies of the government complain about the quality of teacher formation with regard to literacy and work discipline. shor explains that there are only a few teachers in the profession and the quality of education decreases due to this lack of teachers. although teachers are blamed for this low quality, we are conscious of the fact that the roots of the problem stem directly from the state with continuous budget cuts in public schools, short supply of materials and classes too large to manage. then, inequalities exist because the government demands from schools the same results without taking into account that not all schools have the same possibilities. after we have conceptualized as regards innovation, transformation, and change, we now turn to the discussion of pedagogical knowledge. pedagogical knowledgepedagogical knowledgepedagogical knowledgepedagogical knowledgepedagogical knowledge to start this section, we would like to state our understanding of knowledge. knowledge relates to the constant and dynamic interaction of experiences between theory and practice. theory gathers many of the fundamental aspects we need to have in teacher education as well as the concepts we construct along this process. practice includes not only experiences as educators but also a learner’s perspective in educational contexts. this also relates to an individual dimension of knowledge that implies a mental attitude towards everything that comprises our sensitivity to the world. the state of mind an individual might have can be cause and consequence of knowledge construction. individuals put forward their knowledge in order for others to understand, debate, acknowledge or refuse. this relates to the collective and interactional traits of knowledge which is known in educational literature as the social dimension. in relation to the above, we are here interested in general pedagogical knowledge and pedagogical-content knowledge (not information). the former addresses the generic teaching strategies, beliefs and practices related to classroom management; in other words, to methodology of teaching. the latter is related to the means of representing and communicating the subject clearly and comprehensively to other people. it represents the methods for teaching simple and complex topics in the subject. fullan makes a distinction between information and knowledge. he maintains that information is machines and knowledge is people. information becomes knowledge when it acquires “social life”. he also comments on the humanistic dimension of knowledge that has to do with emotions, aspirations, hopes, and intentions. this is what distinguishes knowledge from information. knowledge sharing implies giving and receiving with the understanding of some responsibilities by the parties and the existence of some opportunities. knowledge creation refers to the roles played by members in exchanging knowledge. ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○181 profileprofileprofileprofileprofile conceptualizing as regards educational change and pedagogical knowledge it takes place in what fullan calls knowledge activation (i.e. enabling, not controlling) and knowledge creation. he adds that in education, knowledge needs to be contextualized and shared, too. knowledge sharing takes the shape of educators’ networks in which the more that educators model it themselves in their daily work, the more their students will learn to do so. we would like to present an excerpt of the abstract of the research project developed by ochoa where she describes how a group of elementary teachers gathered around some reflective meetings in order to discuss topics of concern in terms of the teaching of english as a foreign language in the school as part of the new policies given by the government for the project “bogotá y cundinamarca bilingües en diez años”: a group of elementar y school teachers’ reflections on teaching english is significant considering the current condition of public schools, in which in-service teachers have to teach english without having received education english or enough knowledge of this language. in a public school located in bogotá, a group of elementar y school teachers has decided to meet and reflect as a way to overcome these situations. thus, this study focuses on the experience of their reflections, their contextual knowledge, their expectations and beliefs regarding teachinglearning experiences. in addition, teachers’ grouping generates collaboration, autonomy, individual or group decision-making and transformation (p. 2). in relation to the connections likely to be established between our general conception of knowledge and pedagogy, can be explained by analyzing what mclaren (2003) discusses concerning critical pedagogy. what we would like to remark on from mclaren’s discussion is his academic approach to critical theory by explaining that dialectical thinking enables the researcher to view schools not only as places for instruction but also as a cultural terrain that promotes students’ empowerment and self-transformation. it is well known that schools function as a means of potentially empowering students around topics such as social justice; then, it can well sustain dominant class interests in order to create reproducers of capitalist models in which some are dominant and some are subordinate. mclaren explains that critical educators do not believe in only one side of the question; rather, there are many sides that are usually linked up with class, race, gender interests, among others. mclaren quotes giroux to make a distinction between microand macro-objectives. the distinction relies on what he calls productive knowledge and directive knowledge. the former relates to micro-objectives and is about the manipulation of data. the latter deals with macroobjectives and has to do with the dialectical mode of inquiry and the sociopolitical application of knowledge; in other words, the social function of particular forms of knowledge. the purpose of this dialectical educational theory is to provide students with a model that permits them to examine the underlying political, social, and economic foundations of the white supremacist capitalist society. we can make a distinction between the productive and directive knowledge teachers have based on giroux’s proposal. on the one hand, there is the knowledge student teachers acquire along the process of teaching formation in terms of form and function of the language and all the basic principles and theories of pedagogy. all of this is visible in practice when they face school situations that challenge and allow them either to reproduce or create alternatives in order to handle such situations. on the other hand, our beliefs and the transcendence we give to language as a means and not as a purpose, and what it could be used for in order to empower students to become active members of the society, is what we call directive knowledge. this can be illustrated as follows by ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ 182 piñeros and quintero profileprofileprofileprofileprofile the monograph project developed by moreno, rojas, and urrutia6 (2005): however, for us, critical literacy relates not only to the role of the reader. for the purposes of this research process, we have concentrated more on the role of the writer and the idea of using the language with an objective. in this case, expressing students’ perceptions about their identity and not reproducing paragraphs in which the writing process is a repetitive mechanism without sense; on the contrary, critical literacy practices imply going deeper in a text by means of examining, questioning, interpreting, believing, valuing, and contextualizing (pp. 22-23). we see in the excerpt above how moreno et al. show their position concerning the alternative to instrumental and mechanical use of language in writing. this position relates to the opportunities the authors of the monograph give their learners to use language as a window for self-expression. their position and their practices imply knowledge not only of language, but also of the learners and their contexts (ladson-billings, 1998). among the perspectives that we have found as related to knowledge of learners and knowledge of educational contexts is the use of dialogue in assessing knowledge claims and conceptions of knowledge. about the former, we agree with ladson-billings in that knowledge emerges in dialectical relationships. these dialectical relationships are healthy to exist as long as they do not perpetuate the tradition of the teacher as an authoritarian figure of knowledge promoting transmitionist models of knowledge replication, and repetition instead of knowledge creation. knowledge creation is an alternative of meaning making, as a product of dialogue between and among individuals, that is known as dialogical relationships. the latter relates to how teachers think about knowledge, e.g. knowledge is not static, it is shared, recycled, and constructed. knowledge must be viewed critically. knowledge is about doing. participants in educational activities learn from one another. knowledge and expertise must not be only a given (ladson-billings, 1998). as a way to illustrate the conceptions educators have of knowledge, a thesis project by alvarez7 (2005) shows us the following in his findings: building knowledge: an ongoing process this category refers to how teachers conceived their knowledge construction as an ongoing process that has been nurtured by learning throughout their pedagogical journey. the pedagogical journey is explained as the process that entails the formal instruction and all the experiences that help teachers shape their knowledge base during their educational life; that is to say, during their elementary, middle, high school, university or other, and continuing along their teaching practice. in order to explain this category, two subcategories came up, namely, foot prints in the sand and a bridge between theory and practice (pp. 50-51). in the same line of thought, pineda (2002) establishes that educators center their interests in a definition of what is called knowledge base in teaching as a profession; however, to understand what knowledge base means requires more than a simple definition. she explains that it is difficult to determine the nature of teachers’ knowledge base. for a long time, this base was associated with the basic skills required for teaching, the competency of teachers in the subject matter and the use of pedagogical skills. but educators have found other variables that are part of this complex term where classroom context, physical and psychological characteristics of the learners, personal and 7 alvarez, j. is an m.a. graduate in applied linguistics to tefl who studied teachers’ knowledge base through reflections in his thesis. 6 moreno, rojas, and urrutia are former student teachers who worked on a monograph related to the exploration of children’s perceptions of their colombian identity through literacy practices. ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○183 profileprofileprofileprofileprofile conceptualizing as regards educational change and pedagogical knowledge practical experiences, reflective practices and research skills are included. richards (1994) proposes a theoretical model that embraces some of the following categories for defining a knowledge base: content knowledge, general pedagogical knowledge, pedagogical content knowledge, curriculum knowledge, knowledge of the learner, and knowledge of educational goals and their philosophical bases. the dynamic traits of teachers’ knowledge base can show a balance between abstraction and generation of meaning by teachers through reflective practices. pineda suggests that to possess every kind of knowledge is not enough. it is necessary to allow different types of knowledge to interact and establish relationships. teachers are required to reflect constantly in order to build this teaching knowledge base. she adds that reflection entails thoughtfulness about educational theories and practices. this allows the teachers to examine educational traditions and make a decision on what is favorable for learners, thus, leading to more critical positions regarding the old and new proposals for teaching and learning. it also implies reflection upon practices to construct a solid conceptualization of teaching. teachers’ reflections upon their knowledge determines the conceptualization of what they know. concerning this issue, golombek (1994) maintains that what constitutes appropriate teachers’ knowledge depends on how teachers’ knowledge is conceptualized. the problem is that traditional research on teachers’ thinking has focused on teachers’ knowledge as external to the teacher and has attempted to quantify and categorize what the teacher needs to know. such an approach to teachers’ knowledge, furthermore is based on assumptions about what constitutes valid knowledge and how teachers should be valued as learned people. conversely, we think that teachers’ knowledge cannot solely be conceived in cognitive terms. it is permeated with an affective, moral, and aesthetic component and is always used in response to one’s purpose and values, among other personal factors. golombek insists on making clear that researchers should attempt to understand teachers from their own perspectives. teacher-as-researcher is one alternative to conducting research and implies a different theory of teacher knowledge in which the systematic inquiry of teachers by the teachers themselves can generate individual and public knowledge about teaching. in the process, teachers create their own voice in research and its application. actively integrating teachers’ stories and interpretations and using a language that is close to teachers’ experiences provides a way to bridge the gap between theor y and practice. the concluding chapter in alvarez’s thesis project exemplifies this situation as follows: the main objective of this research was to evidence the issues that arise in regards to teachers’ knowledge base when they reflect upon their pedagogical life experience. in addition, this study aimed at describing the most salient aspects of knowledge base that foreign language teachers consider to be the components of their professional competence. …the construction of their professional knowledge was a lifelong process that started from the moment they set up their pedagogical journey. this ongoing process was enriched by all the critical people and experiences that had formed part of their lives before deciding to become teachers; and after ward, as preservice and inservice teachers (p. 103). after reading the above excerpt, one may think that it is teachers, and not mainstream researchers, who should be the principal generators of the knowledge needed to understand the profession of education. moreover, this knowledge leads educators to transform classroom practices and to reform curricula. this is one reason why we need to value teachers’ knowledge (golombek, 1994). the alternatives for the implementation of transformations in classroom practices and ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ 184 piñeros and quintero profileprofileprofileprofileprofile curriculum count as knowledge in teachers’ innovations. these innovations can be related to the different ways of approaching language and literacy teaching and learning. teachers and learners reciprocally approach this as an experiential dimension of knowledge that includes reading not only written texts but also the world. in relation to this, clavijo et al. (2004) found in a research project that teachers and learners approached language and literacy through experiences that included “reading” the city of bogotá as a text and relating it to other types of school learning. literacy became understood as a way of constructing knowledge in all the areas of the curriculum by building students’ awareness of the importance of local history through the exploration of oral traditions or constructing life histories as knowledge that serves to reflect upon societal values. in terms of knowledge, teachers’ innovations showed that knowledge that they provided the students with through different possibilities for learning to learn, learning to think, and learning to solve present and future problems, was most valuable. in the section below, we expand on the relationship between change and pedagogical knowledge that relates to the issue of education as a change agent. final ideas thafinal ideas thafinal ideas thafinal ideas thafinal ideas that serve as pointerst serve as pointerst serve as pointerst serve as pointerst serve as pointers for further reflectionfor further reflectionfor further reflectionfor further reflectionfor further reflection we have now started to discuss jointly the topics of pedagogical knowledge and innovation. we think it is suitable, then, to put forward our position in regards to what shor (1987) proposes as a change agency in education. he stands for community empowerment and community school reform. he affirms that equality empowers people, and that power and hope foster motivation. motivated people, in turn, are involved and this helps people learn. then, this motivation together with learning and empowerment increases teachers’ morale and interest in the profession. inspiring classrooms can also encourage both learners and teachers to see themselves as intellectuals who critically see the world and struggle against crisis, thus, improving the school quality life. it clearly shows how influenced education is by determining factors, which are economics, politics, community life, and literacy. this is arduous work because it requires paying attention to many different grounds of school life, and it is inevitably accompanied by conflict. nieto (2003), based on freire, maintains that conflict is necessary for change to take place. one aspect worth discussing further and that is related to our article is that the implementation of transformations by teachers is not free from despair and pain since teachers need to abandon the “comfort” of readymade answers and recipes in teaching in order to explore the “far-possible” of risking their own selves both as people and professionals. in connection with these thoughts, mclaren (2003) points out that educators need to have an agenda for an equal education through a freirean pedagogy which is more participatory, critical, values-oriented, multicultural, student-centered, experiential, research-minded, and interdisciplinary. this pedagogy focuses on the equality of the activity rather than the equality of the skills or facts memorized. therefore, he suggests dialogue teaching to reduce students’ withdrawal and teacher talk in the classroom, critical literacy to provoke critical awareness and desocialization in all the subjects, giving a more important role to reading, writing, thinking, speaking, and listening to others in order to produce self-inquiry about the society and the subject under study. critical literacy invites teachers and students to reflect deeply on all subjects of study. mclaren invites educators to consider “situated pedagogy” as a way to situate learning in students’ culture and lives. in this sense, learning is more experiential and knowledge is seen as something real and tangible. change agency makes sense to us because educators need to study the community where they will be agents of change and the consequences it might bring. in the practical experiences we have used as illustration, we see that one way to provide a theoretical ground for the decisions the authors ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○185 profileprofileprofileprofileprofile conceptualizing as regards educational change and pedagogical knowledge of the monographs and theses have made for the implementation of instructional strategies is the proposal by cummins (2001) regarding what he calls “transformative pedagogy”. the author prefers the term transformative pedagogy to the term critical pedagogy because it more clearly communicates that an active focus on social change is its central goal. interactions between educators and students ser ve as the means to realize transformative pedagogy. in turn, these interactions are ways of fostering collaborative relations of power. the creation of these interaction patterns is one aim of transformative pedagogy. these patterns effectively challenge and transform the ways in which schools have traditionally reproduced social and economical inequalities. collaboration, critical inquir y, and transformation are only three factors that are common to the monographs and theses we have used as examples. cárdenas, nieto, and martín (2005) point out that educators and learners live research as part of their daily routines and construct pedagogical knowledge. we agree with that view because we realize that educators are the ones who live the classrooms realities to enable learners to analyze and understand the social realities of their own lives and of their communities. where transformative pedagogy goes beyond the notion of “effective instruction” is in its understanding that sustained effectiveness requires that students engage actively in the instructional process and this will happen among subordinated group students only in contexts where their identities are being affirmed. transformative educators acknowledge that educational structures are rooted in a sociopolitical context that traditionally has disempowered subordinated group students and these educators arrange interactions with their students that challenge these forms of disempowerment. in short, their conception of what education is all about and why they are in the classroom is fundamentally different from that of most policy-makers who see education primarily in terms of the efficient delivery of a service. the struggle between these very different conceptions of education will ultimately determine the extent to which schools continue or not to reproduce social inequalities or, alternatively, effectively challenge the roots of inequality (cummins, 2001). we truly believe that there is change when educators come to question and are able to change beliefs and habits. for us, the meaning of educational change relates to change in practice. to accomplish this, change needs to be multidimensional (fullan, 2001). that is to say, it is viewed from different perspectives. educators can think of changes in materials, changes in approaches, methodologies, and styles of teaching as well as changes in beliefs, as in the theories that lead teaching practices. all these aspects are necessar y to achieve change in practice or effective change. referencesreferencesreferencesreferencesreferences alvarez, j. 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(2005). the exploration of colombian identity through the development of critical literacy practices. unpublished b.a. monograph, universidad distrital francisco josé de caldas. nieto, s. (2003). the personal and collective transformation of teachers. in p. richard-amato (ed.), making it happen. from interactive to participatory language teaching. theory and practice (pp. 170-175). white plains: longman. ochoa, m. (2005). reflective elt meetings of a public elementary school teachers’ group. unpublished master’s thesis, universidad distrital francisco josé de caldas. ospina, l., & muñoz, d. (2005). bogotá inside the school: critical literacy portrayed experiences. unpublished b.a. monograph, universidad distrital francisco josé de caldas. pineda, c. (2002). knowledge base for esl/efl educators: what does it mean? profile journal, 3, 9-14. piñeros, c., & mendez, j. (2005). revealing fifth graders’ life experiences through literature circles. unpublished b.a. monograph, universidad distrital francisco josé de caldas. richards, k. (1994). teachers’ knowledge. from guessing what teachers think to finding out what teachers know: the need for a research agenda. tesol quarterly, 28(2), 401-404. shamin, f. (1996). learner resistance to innovation in classroom methodology. in h. coleman (ed.), society and the language classroom (pp. 105121). cambridge: cambridge university press. shor, i. (1987). freire for the classroom: a source book for liberatory teaching. portsmouth: nh: boynton/cook heinemann. profile 5.pmd ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ 158 profileprofileprofileprofileprofile the hidden curriculum el currículo oculto amparamparamparamparamparo onatrao onatrao onatrao onatrao onatra* chalitaz96@yahoo.com mireya pmireya pmireya pmireya pmireya peñaeñaeñaeñaeña** mppryes@yahoo.com institución educativa distrital francisco de paula santander this article shows the way hidden curriculum goes farther than just being the conscious and unconscious setting within the formal instruction context. it also shapes students personality and assigns to each individual the role they are supposed to play in society. in this process, interaction with the teacher is crucial since he/she is the one who directly moulds and cultivates the singularity of students according to the specific demands of the social class to which they belong. this phenomenon is well described in research conducted by jane anyon (1980) which is referred to in this paper as an example of the influence of the hidden curriculum on school life. kkkkkey worey worey worey worey wordsdsdsdsds: hidden curriculum, unconscious setting, teacher’s role, singularity, society este artículo muestra cómo el currículo oculto va más allá de ser simplemente el escenario consciente e inconsciente en el que se desarrolla la instrucción formal. el currículo oculto define la personalidad del estudiante y asigna a cada uno el papel que se supone debe ocupar en la sociedad. en este proceso, la interacción directa con el docente es decisiva ya que es éste quien directamente moldea y cultiva la singularidad de los estudiantes según las exigencias específicas de la clase social a la que pertenecen. dicho fenómeno se describe *amparo onatraamparo onatraamparo onatraamparo onatraamparo onatra holds a b.a. in modern languages from universidad distrital and she is currently enrolled in the pfpd profile. she is working at c.e.d. francisco de paula santander, bosa. she has been a teacher for the district secretariat of education since 2000 as well as other secondary schools. since she graduated she has been interested in implementing new techniques leading to improve her teaching practice and she has received recognition as one the best proposals for the premio compartir al maestro 2003. **mireya peñamireya peñamireya peñamireya peñamireya peña holds a b.a. in spanish and languages from universidad pedagógica nacional. recipient of the scholarship by university of new mexico, u.s.a. all her studies have dealt with foreign language teaching including the current pfpd profile. she teaches english at c.e.d. francisco de paula santander, bosa. she has worked at different universities in bogotá for the last eleven years as teacher of english for in-service/pre-service teachers and other undergraduate professionals. ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○159 profile profile profile profile profile the hidden curriculum muy bien en la investigación adelantada por jane anyon (1980), a la cual se hace referencia en este escrito, como ejemplo de la influencia del currículo oculto en la vida escolar. palabras clavespalabras clavespalabras clavespalabras clavespalabras claves: currículo oculto, escenario inconsciente, rol del docente, singularidad, sociedad it is clear that learning at a school implies much more than the single fact of transferring a bunch of information, and that we teach not only the things we do but also the ones we avoid doing. the hidden curriculum is that set of attitudes which filter the teachinglearning process during everyday lessons as well as the other activities of school life. the hidden curriculum implies habitual interaction with students having academic knowledge as an excuse for showing off lifestyles and social behavior. hence, one of the main ideas behind this concept is that students learn not only from what they are being taught through formal instruction but also, as jackson (1968, in seaton, 2002) says, from conscious and unconscious settings of the learning process. according to this author, the learning process is organized consciously by having the school itself as a place separate from the home, and the classrooms with the teacher standing at the front and pupils seated in arranged rows, for example. on the other hand, an unconscious organization refers to individual teachers interpreting the behavior of students in class and the expectations that they (the teachers) have facing such behavior. therefore, it is evident that the hidden curriculum is a very broad concept that entails different theoretical viewpoints because the socialization process underlying “education” involves the transmission of norms and values as well as a body of knowledge approved by the society in which the school functions. the hidden curriculum may range from the way knowledge is organized in particular subjects to the way teachers and students address each other. in this respect the schoolwork suggests characteristics of education in every social setting that has been worth being studied by different experts. as a matter of example, in research conducted and reported by jean anyon (1980), she concluded that “students of different economic backgrounds are being prepared to occupy particular ranks on the social ladder” and that is thanks to the hidden curriculum that operates in their academic life. of course, while some schools focus on vocational education, others are geared to produce future doctors, lawyers and business leaders. anyon describes how in a working-class school the work consists of following the steps of a procedure. the procedure is usually mechanical, involving very little decision-making or choice. the teachers rarely explain how the work might be connected to other assignments or what idea lies behind the procedure. available textbooks are not always used and teachers prepare their own material or put work ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ 160 onatra and peña profile profile profile profile profile examples on the board. most of the rules regarding work prescribe what children are to do. the rules are steps to follow that students copy in their notes and memorize for further evaluation. teachers continually give orders and control students’ time. meanwhile, in a middle-class school, work is done by accumulating right answers to get a good grade. students follow directions for some figuring or some choice. answers are usually found in books or the teacher gives them without leading to controversial topics. teachers’ decisions are usually based on external rules and regulations. anyon also observed over the same year some schools that she called affluent professional schools, where work is creative and carried out independently, as well as executive elite schools, where work is developing one’s analytical and intellectual powers. children are continually asked to reason through a problem. a primary goal for them is to conceptualize rules and to prepare for life. this is the only school where the bells do not demarcate periods of time but everybody changes classes because they had made specific plans for each session. children are not rigidly controlled by teachers but brought in line by reminding them to control themselves as part of their own responsibilities. in classrooms children get the material they need and use it at their convenience. teachers are polite to the children but never call them “honey” or “dear” as she observed in other institutions. we have found the above mentioned situations as an excellent example to illustrate how complex the hidden curriculum is and the way it becomes a tacit preparation for interaction in wider social contexts. here we can also deduce the crucial role that teachers play in the school system since we are the closest interactors of our students. we could say that there is like a “ghost” dialogue, which directs the intention of the adults to the young learners modeling their personality. dealing with the development of personality in our public schools in bogotá, we could summarize the hidden curriculum into three main aspects: the teacher’s attitude as possessor of knowledge, the teacher’s attitude as possessor of authority and the teacher’s attitude as possessor of acceptance and denial by means of evaluation. that makes our students “marked” or influenced by the objective and subjective points of view of their tutors. the previous idea makes the hidden curriculum responsible for the process that we would call “personalization” where we teachers mold the singularity of a plural personality. a defined culture governs our living as citizens; that is to say, the plural personality; but regarding that process each one of our students has his/her own way to live it; that is the singularity we have to cultivate. as a matter of fact, we do so not only as professionals of education but also as human beings with particular likes, desires and viewpoints towards life. unconsciously, we teach them about ways of living during everyday interaction. going upwards in our school system we would also have to analyze the same phenomenon on the part of administrators influencing teachers by means of tools such as the pei (the school project) and the way it ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○161 profile profile profile profile profile the hidden curriculum implies the sur veillance of a hidden curriculum on a great scale. this could be seen as negative or positive depending on the level of consciousness we had about it. and this conscience makes us socially active citizens but not always intellectually creative because we could just influence new tendencies from other fields “borrowing” pedagogy. that is the case of the so-called competences, which are concepts officially coined by the business world but because of focused economic demands, they have been assumed by the school as appropriate criteria for evaluation and assessment. in consequence, every member of a social group must be aware of the influence that s/he exerts on the rest of the community and therefore must assume her/his role responsibly. hence, we obser ve that although we do not refer all the time to an explicit task, it will always leave its fingerprint in our students’ lives. referencesreferencesreferencesreferencesreferences anyon, j. (1980). social class and the hidden curriculum of work. journal of education. 162, 2832. seaton, a. (2002). reforming the hidden curriculum: the key abilities model and four curricular forms, curriculum perspectives. retrieved march 23, 2004, from online curriculum home page http:// online.curriculum.edu.au/mindmatters this article was received on april 2nd, 2004 and accepted on september 15th, 2004 181profile vol. 12, no. 1, 2010. issn 1657-0790. bogotá, colombia. pages 181-201 the design and development of online course materials: some features and recommendations el diseño y desarrollo de materiales para cursos en línea: algunos rasgos y recomendaciones liliana cuesta* universidad de la sabana, colombia this article discusses various features in the design and implementation of online course materials. the author provides a critical review of some instructional design patterns and expands on the alignment among instruction, motivation and learners’ performances as part of a curriculum design process. in this context, the author emphasizes the value of permanent analysis and assessment to support an efficient management of online environments in which knowledge construction and interaction find common ground on which to evolve. the author argues in favor of steady and competent efforts to implement varied educational strategies posed both for online instructors and learners. practical recommendations are espoused for the designers of online courses. key words: instructional design, online environments, addie model, interaction este artículo discute distintos rasgos relacionados con el diseño y el uso de materiales en cursos virtuales. la autora ofrece una reseña crítica de algunos patrones del diseño instruccional y ahonda en la alineación existente entre instrucción, motivación y desempeño de los estudiantes como parte de un proceso de diseño curricular. en este contexto, la autora hace énfasis en el valor que tienen el análisis y la evaluación permanentes para apoyar el manejo eficiente de los ambientes virtuales en los que la construcción de conocimiento y la interacción encuentran un lugar común para su evolución. la autora defiende la idea de hacer esfuerzos constantes y competentes para usar distintas estrategias educativas, planteadas tanto para instructores virtuales como para sus estudiantes. finalmente, se presentan recomendaciones prácticas para los diseñadores de cursos virtuales. palabras clave: diseño instruccional, ambientes virtuales, modelo addie, interacción * e-mail: lilianamar@yahoo.com this article was received on july 17, 2009 and accepted on december 14, 2009. 182 universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras cuesta introduction there has been a significant increase in the proposals aimed at integrating information and communication technologies (ict) in colombian educational institutions in the last five years. however, there remains a need to align many of these attempts with one of the main goals projected in the plan sectorial de educación 2006-2016: to guarantee people’s access to ict and generate opportunities for them to fully use and benefit from this. according to fullan (1997, p. 5), curricula that use online environments to draw on the capacity of ict to transform society can provide a more qualified and accessible means of delivering education. moreover, the implementation of such curricula offers opportunities to construct actively networked learning communities that grow consistently in response to the demands of a global need. this article intends to provide readers with some considerations regarding the creation and implementation of online materials as part of a curriculum design process for virtual environments. in acknowledgment of this, and following an interdisciplinary perspective, some considerations will be outlined with respect to the creation and implementation of online materials for courses presented by means of virtual environment platforms. the author presents some views in the field of course design based on her experience as a course designer, moderator of virtual learning environments, and also as a head researcher in two studies which primarily sought to discover effective features and strategies to design and implement virtual courses for graduate students. rationale instructional design is a process that entails the creation or adaptation of instruction. most research evidence concerning instructional theories relies on underpinning principles that address and respond to learning needs and goals. the basic aim is to identify conditions of instruction, which will optimize learning, retention and learning transfer (gagne & briggs, 1974). most models of instructional design require covering certain stages throughout their implementation. those phases move from determining needs assessment to design, development and implementation of materials. this article focuses particularly on the latter stage and presents some features that could make the design process a dynamic and achievable target. for the author, the design process is seen as a continuum that has the following characteristics: • is based on determining a target audience that benefits from instruction. • determines objectives and needs assessment according to the audiences’ needs and styles. • selects, designs and sequences content and learning activities based on these foregoing features. • evaluates and implements changes dynamically. the field of instructional design (id) has emerged from a combination of varied academic disciplines such as psychology, system theory, computer technology and communication (yukavetsky, 2003). id has also shifted from behaviorist to cognitive-constructivist1 conceptions (sarmiento, 2007; schuman, 1996) in the sense that increasing emphasis has been placed on discovering how successful learning can be devised by analyzing why learners behave differently, how learners construct meaning from individual experiences, and how they are able to sort situations out, rather than being able to execute automated practices without 1 sarmiento makes reference to the works developed by gagne, r., skinner, b. under the behaviorist trend and to bruner & ausubel, under the cognitive-constructivist trend. 183 the design and development of online course materials... profile vol. 12, no. 1, 2010. issn 1657-0790. bogotá, colombia. pages 181-201 understanding how these are carried out. needless to say, when designing materials, the decisions about whether to create learning materials using a behaviorist, a cognitive or constructivist approach are in the hands of the designer, keeping in mind that the major point of departure for building the project outline is a conscientious analysis of what the learner may need, pursue and enhance. when we think of instructional design, we typically think of the term “models” which, as defined by ryder (2008, p. 1), “give structure and meaning to an id problem, enabling the would-be designer to negotiate their design task with a semblance of conscious understanding”. working from ryder’s definition, this article seeks to identify a blend of components that leads to a purposeful and practical design process. the initial point of departure is a consideration of an already useful approach to course design: the analysis, design, development, implementation, and evaluation (addie) model (figure 1). this generic model2 facilitates universal id guidelines that are structured in five stages: analysis, design, development, implementation and evaluation. the stages of the addie model are explained as follows: analysis as in any project, this is a crucial planning stage. its main purpose is to identify the target 2 according to molenda, m. (2003, p. 1) the acronym addie does not have a single author. it is an umbrella term that appears to “have evolved informally through oral tradition”. audience and its characteristics. apart from planning the timeline for the project, designers can use this stage to formulate needs and tasks analysis instruments that allow close examination of decisive criteria beforehand. these may include instructional objectives, types of learners (i.e. in terms of their learning styles and intelligences), delivery options, instructional content, material usability and accessibility. in this stage, designers need to bear in mind that the design of materials should target meeting the institutional needs (including both program and course) and requirements. some data collection instruments -such as oral interviews, questionnaires or surveys used with faculty and staffcan help designers build and strengthen the rationale behind the material design process. a systematic data collection stage prior to the design phase also assists designers to establish the infrastructure needed to carry out the project and, therefore, depict the procedures to be implemented in subsequent phases. design this stage calls for aligning what was encountered in the needs analysis stage with the actual structure of the instructional content. the design stage has two major characteristics: being systematic and being specific. it is systematic because it needs to establish a logical method to identify, develop and evaluate strategies to achieve an instructional objective and, it is specific because each design development implementation evaluationanalysis figure 1. the addie model 184 universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras cuesta constituent of the general plan must be carefully set up in this stage, attending to specific details. design also implies defining solutions in terms of arrangement of resources, strategies and assessment procedures that will best suit instruction. prestera (n.d.) establishes that the assessment items are derived from the criteria (learning objectives) written in the analysis stage. he suggests that designers work with a design strategy document containing discoveries from the analysis stage and, in any case, a set of scripts/ storyboards that could apply. creating a design strategy document is not a difficult task but it is one of the central parts of the design. it will indicate the team members participating in the materials design project, the navigation route to follow, and inform of the distinctive features the materials will have. it will also help to develop the strategic planning in order to meet the objectives traced. the following are some core items to include in a design strategy document: • what type of learning materials are we creating? • what sections will our materials contain? • what is the intended audience to use the materials? who will benefit from them? • what resources are available for us to design materials? • who will comprise our pilot group? • how will we assess students while/ after they use the learning materials? • how will we evaluate the effectiveness of the materials we designed? development the development phase deals with the creation of authoring tools and products3 required to 3 among the products that can be created we find storyboards, graphic user interface, multimedia elements, coding, etc. meet the instructional objectives planned in the earlier stages of the model. in this stage, designers elaborate an action plan composed of specific procedures, participant / responsible agents as well as timelines to get the plan done. figure 2 includes a sample of an action plan of a course design and research project developed by the author of this article during 2008 and 2009 in the department of foreign languages and cultures, universidad de la sabana, colombia. note that varied agents are involved, as well as corresponding tasks for every stage of the project. it should be noted that the team developing the course design project needs to agree on the procedures to monitor a smooth development of the project. likewise, roles, functions and times need to be agreed upon and met. implementation once the development phase is complete, the next stage of implementation puts the planning into operation. there are three necessary circumstances to make this stage efficient: a) determining a previous training procedure for preparing both teachers and learners, b) promptly assessing learners and c) setting up all the necessary conditions (tools, spaces, personnel). the implementation stage calls for a high degree of involvement by the participants (facilitators) who lead this stage of the project. evaluation evaluation in addie model is formative and summative. it is seen as a wide-ranging process that becomes consistently wider all through each one of the stages. the evaluation determines if there was 185 the design and development of online course materials... profile vol. 12, no. 1, 2010. issn 1657-0790. bogotá, colombia. pages 181-201 success in planning/using the products created and/or if further improvements may be needed. formative evaluation takes place in the early stages in order to identify product weak points, evaluate them and decide on working out a mid-project plan that can surpass any obstacles encountered in these stages. according to strickland (undated), there are six stages of formative evaluation. these are: evaluation goal specification, preparation, data collection, data analysis, revision and recycling. summative evaluation is done once development and implementation phases are completed. this type of evaluation seeks to collect and analyze data4 to determine whether end-users found the implementation stage efficient and if it was wellaligned with the instructional aims. i personally recommend visualizing addie stages cyclically, considering that the progression of each phase will determine the emergence of 4 summative evaluation validity can be measured with the use of criterion-related instruments selected by the project participants. action plan of the project “design, implementation, and evaluation of an instructional model for application in online language teacher development courses” phase 1: analysis needs analysis stage literature review selection of instructional models phase 2: development course content, components and resource selection instructional strategies selection development of product training of course moderators i phase 3: implementation action plan development human and technical resource monitoring students’ counseling plan training of course moderators ii course implementation and trialing design of data collection instruments data collection phase 4: evaluation data analysis dissemination of findings: intra-interdepartmental professional development actions figure 2. sample of a project action plan 186 universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras cuesta interventions that the material designers will undertake as the course materials are created. addie model serves as a practical guide for a materials design process, which when followed sequentially can assist designers in implementing actions leading to improvements throughout the project. it is recommended to devise a project timeline aligned with the various stages of the addie model, constantly revising and adjusting it based on emergent needs and developments in the process itself. agents involved… once such a timeline is traced, course designers need to devise the agents that will put ideas into action. any successful planning stage involves the participation of a dynamic team that actively works on the project. some case studies developed by honey & macmillan (1996) demonstrate that high levels of productivity can be achieved if the participants in virtual projects uphold committed working relationships with their peers. the authors address the importance of maintaining interdisciplinary work and shared planning time in order to achieve the expected results. they also stress the value of comprehensive training from experts and steady support from coworkers. cradler & cradler (1995) also determine that a crucial aspect attending the process and ensuring its goals is followup assistance from both the educational team and the technical support team working on the project. once the agents have been identified and the team is in place, there are four basic conditions for effective integration of technology into materials design: 1. technical assistance: this involves the availability and expertise of technicians who will help as situations arise. 2. planning time: there have to be mechanisms to ensure teachers will have sufficient planning time scheduled to develop the project endeavors, to be documented on subject matters regarding the targets of the project, and, of course, to be ready to implement technology applications during the mission. 3. staff development: the possibility of having different kinds of training (short term, long term) helps to integrate technology and instruction and enriches the professional development of every team member. 4. technology access: there has to be a prompt access to technology while all the stages are being completed and the corresponding deadlines are being met. this adherence would guarantee that project tasks are not limited by the scarcity or malfunction of technological resources. when planning materials for online courses, designers need to think strategically and flexibly about technology and education. technology should be the means by which educational processes are enhanced. every agent and device used in the design, development and implementation of materials need to facilitate the retrieval and processing of information by the end-users. an online environment should establish the learning space that allows students, assisted by tutors and technicians, to find a self-controlled scenario. moreover, the administration of the institution where the project is taking place should provide the design team with the necessary tools and should also contribute actively to minimize any difficulties that might be encountered throughout the development of the project. clearly, participants in an e-learning project need to have certain ict competencies, which can be defined as “knowledge and skills that the workers need to be able to perform tasks related to the information society” (hernández, 2005). hernández (2005) states that “every project participant must 187 the design and development of online course materials... profile vol. 12, no. 1, 2010. issn 1657-0790. bogotá, colombia. pages 181-201 have a minimum of competencies in order to be familiarized with online environments, and also maintain a positive and active attitude to manage the systems and services used” (p. 34). there is indeed a big challenge in terms of preparation, which in olcott’s (2006) words is seen as a primary commitment to comply with the faculty’s expectations. faculty members are the principal agents who will deal with the transition from traditional classroom practices to those required by online environments. they need assistance in acquiring ict skills and know-how in order to pursue the objectives and schemes that need to be accurately incorporated into their teaching and learning practices. dillon & walsh (1992) assert that placing sufficient importance on faculty assistance, training and support helps ensure future success when creating and teaching online courses, thus building up a new trend in pedagogy to view these as risk-taking but enriching experiences. there are different roles that can be assumed by the participants in any e-learning project. hernández (2005) comments that some of the roles can sometimes be performed by the same “agent”, depending on each institution’s policies, the availability of both resources and staff members. fernández & montes de oca (2003) agree that any e-learning project should create a multidisciplinary team in which content specialists, technicians, designers, and others can integrate their expertise in a timely and constructive manner. the following list of roles is based on hernández’ reflections (2005), as well as on the perspectives i want to highlight in this paper: 1. director: guides the team members to fully achieve the goals established. designs an action plan to be accomplished according to the institutional needs. 2. an academic team: creates and adapts course contents. composed of the following: • an e-learning specialist: is committed to the methodological design and plans training activities oriented to the usability of services and tools. • a pedagogic coordinator: plans, selects and revises content created by the academic team; leads activities within the academic team. • tutors: they move from a role as “knowledge providers” to one of “knowledge facilitators”. they are dynamic agents who enhance the autonomous learning that students develop. figure 3 below shows the roles hernández (2005) depicts for an online tutor. roles of an e-learning tutor socialize promote communicate motivate facilitate figure 3. roles of an e-learning tutor 3. a technical team: in charge of all the technical components in the project. composed of the following: • a technical coordinator: supervises the technical team; assesses the academic team and the e-learning specialists in the design of the course and of the virtual learning objects5. 5 a virtual learning object is considered as an alternative to content production for e-learning (chiappe, 2007). 188 universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras cuesta • platform administrator: responsible for the optimal functioning and maintenance of the platform. • campus administrator: responsible for the campus management. gives account of access permission and policies. • graphic designer: expert in multimedia; competent person in the management of tools used in the materials design process (e.g. animations, photography, etc.). the end-users… in order to align a refined instructional design proposal with the creation of online materials, teachers who become designers6 need to be aware of the shift that the 21st century knowledge society faces, where one of the major dilemmas is to envision how the conception of learning and instruction advances from a teacher-centered to a learner-centered instruction standpoint. sandholtz, ringstaff, & dwyer (1997) consider that a crucial element in the successful use of technology relates to the following challenge: teachers need to change the beliefs about teaching and learning. they need to acquire certain skills or comply with certain conditions to ensure that their students are engaged in their learning and work efficiently by taking on more autonomous and active positions. according to castrillo, garcía & ruipérez (2005), in online environments, a “tutor” is an academic professional who guides the students’ learning process by fostering autonomy and stimulating their constructive and analytical attitude towards the processes that are oriented. however, there has been another broader sense of the term 6 levy & stockwell (2006) establish that foreign language teachers could be also considered as designers. “tutor” as noted by cornelius & higgison (2000), who strongly believe that an online tutor could include, amongst others, academics, faculty, instructors, corporate trainers, facilitators, moderators, subject specialists and learning support staff. it is believed that anyone who is able to assume a role to support and facilitate students’ effective online learning could be denoted as a tutor. some of the key skills that an online instructor/ tutor needs are the following: 1. clear and steady communication: • by offering different communication channels, both synchronous and asynchronous. (e-mail, forum, chat, skype, etc.) • by providing students with clear instructions. • by determining the most appropriate moments to intervene in discussions and to continuously have and promote interaction with groups/individuals. 2. information technology (it) and content area competence: • by being able to mentor learners and troubleshoot others when difficulties arise. • by keeping in mind that an online tutor needs three things to succeed and reach greater levels of expertise: preparation, discipline and procedural coherence. 3. management: • by setting up a personal planning schema that will allow the e-tutor and e-learners to deal with expected performances (in terms of time and production). • by being able to make sound decisions that benefit all the agents involved in the course. 189 the design and development of online course materials... profile vol. 12, no. 1, 2010. issn 1657-0790. bogotá, colombia. pages 181-201 4. vision: • by having the ability to look for resources and methodologies that will ensure the quality of the course. • by critically analyzing strengths and weaknesses encountered during the course, whether over a shortor long-term period. 5. open-minded attitude: • by working cooperatively with the elearning group. • by being capable of accepting suggestions, providing solutions, and attending to learners’ requests. 6. leadership: • by understanding that innovation and the willingness to implement strategies constitute the motor that facilitates processes within the virtual educational community that the e-tutor leads. • by being a coach, a learning navigator and co-learner (united nations educational, scientific and cultural organization (unesco), 2002. see table 1), the tutor can promote the institution of knowledge societies7, where knowledge is dynamically viewed and highly structured. with these criteria in mind, it should likewise be recalled that learners also play a determining role in the change of mentality required to meet new educational challenges in non-traditional learning environments. stokes (2000), dede (2000) and ernest (2003) establish that a coherent preparation for online learners must be devoted not only to training in it skills but also to the application of strategies that will enhance learners’ self-motivation, self-discipline, independence, and willingness to learn from errors. learners are seen as risk-takers and constructive members in a learning community. 7 abdul waheed khan, former unesco general sub-director defined knowledge society as “a concept linked to the idea of ‘technological innovation’, and includes a dimension of social, cultural, economical, political and institutional transformation, and a more pluralistic and developmental perspective ‘knowledge societies’ is preferable to that of the ‘information society’ because it better captures the complexity and dynamism of the changes taking place” (2003, para. 1). table 1. changes in student and teacher roles in learner-centered environments* changes in teacher role a shift from a shift to knowledge transmitter, primary source of information, content expert, and source of all answers. learning facilitator, collaborator, coach, mentor, knowledge navigator, and colearner. teacher controls and directs all aspects of learning. teacher gives students more options and responsibilities for their own learning. changes in student role passive recipient of information. active participant in the learning process. reproducing knowledge. producing and sharing knowledge, participating at times as expert. learning as a solitary activity. learning collaboratively with others. * table reprinted with permission from unesco (2002). information and communication technologies in teacher education. france: division of higher education: all rights reserved. 190 universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras cuesta accordingly, if learners are given the tools to analyze and understand the principles that underlie the construction of learning that occurs in online environments (but that is of course not limited to online settings), they will know how to organize a set of strategies and/or procedures to build on success based on target goals and competences. such significant changes concerning their roles as active learners should help them achieve increased expertise in lifelong learning. particularly, i suggest intertwining five major online action categories8 that provide learners with the appropriate foundation to facilitate their performance in an online setting. these categories could also assist teachers in devising fundamental guidelines throughout the analysis, design, development, implementation and evaluation stages of designing online course materials. the categories are the following: 1. organizational: this basically refers to the way in which e-learners develop a plan that permits them to organize their time and manage it in order to comply with the demands9 of the course. 2. technical: it is projected that e-learners understand the purpose and function of different information and technology systems and their corresponding applications in order to eventually troubleshoot and solve any technical difficulties that may arise. if the learners understand how systems operate, apart from getting the know-how to sort situations out, they will be more than likely able to implement emergent technologies that can harmonize with or improve their performance. 8 harris, s. (2008) established the names of the five categories with the purpose of addressing some guidelines that could fulfil the main needs and constitute, to some extent, the main skills that an online learner needs to develop. in this document, i expand on the definitions and purposes of these sortings. 9 the different requirements in an online learning course include a wide array of activities such as participating in forums, communicating with peers and tutors, building up documents or creating and interacting with any virtual learning object(s), etc. 3. procedural: once learners are familiar with the technical implications of the lms10 they will use in the course, it is vital that they follow the instructions imparted by the tutor and/or the system to assure that they carry out the specific tasks and routines planned. therefore, it is important that they have the opportunity to explore the system, try out its tools, familiarize themselves with the procedures and types of interactions involved, reflect upon their performance, and make any necessary adjustments. 4. interactional: taking into consideration the two different types of interaction referred to previously—person-to-person and personto-group—it is argued that e-learners, as the major participants in the learning experience, be advised to create and maintain an enjoyable and collaborative class atmosphere based on common core principles such as mutual respect, good attitude, clear communication, and appropriate rapport with peers and tutors11. indeed, it is also suggested that tutors have a substantial role to play in modeling and guiding learners towards the acquisition and development of this philosophy. such interaction, mediated by language in online environments, implies that individuals use asynchronous and/or synchronous means by which individuals communicate online, and tutors should evaluate the relative effectiveness of these different means as learners use them to interact in a social and academic learning community. 10 lms stands for learning management system. some examples of lms are moodle™, blackboard ™ and webct ™. 11 we can consider brown & yule (1983) reference to this category in their discourse analysis and sociolinguistics literature production, where they primarily state that interactional uses of conversation focus on the social needs of the participants. 191 the design and development of online course materials... profile vol. 12, no. 1, 2010. issn 1657-0790. bogotá, colombia. pages 181-201 nevertheless, regardless of the means by which messages12 are conveyed, in order to avoid misunderstandings, the community of participants (including tutors and learners) must nurture agreed interactional channels. these channels should respond to ongoing needs analysis and a framework of continuing evaluation throughout the different phases of the course and should contribute to building social relations that work in partnership with life-skills practices. 5. transactional: according to brown & yule (1983), when individuals communicate, they do so for two main purposes: either to exchange information (transactional) or to establish and uphold social relations (interactional). the transactional function13 refers to the transfer of information and focuses on the message rather than on the individual (as could be in the case of the interactional function of language). they argue that while interactional language is “listener-oriented”, transactional language is “message-oriented”. bearing this in mind, and transferring this idea to the art of communicating and exchanging knowledge in online environments as proposed by harris (2008), a substantial element in the accurate and meaningful transfer of information is conciseness and clarity in the expression of ideas. e-learners may comprehend that their e-readers first need to get the general gist of their discourse in order to reach a clear understanding of the main message and to create further negotiation of meaning. accordingly, 12 the existing gap between verbal and non verbal interaction online could be bridged with the use of emoticons, color coded fonts and visual aids (pictures, animations and/or cartoons). 13 the same distinction has also been pointed out by mccarthy (1991), who states that “transactional talk is for getting business done in the world, i.e. in order to produce some change in the situation that pertains. it could be to tell somebody something they need to know, to effectuate the purchase of something, to get someone to do something, or many other world-changing things” (p. 1). it is recommended that, apart from building understandable texts, learners make use of text formatting tools such as bullets and charts to exemplify ideas and that they use different fonts or bold/italic formatting to emphasize main points. such techniques help make the flow of ideas respond to what the text of the message communicates. interaction in online learning environments the need to develop and empower learning abilities and the continuous intervention and assessment of the tutor will be two essential constituents that contribute to the learners´ success in the course and their satisfaction in the newly adopted learning mode. tutors need to employ practices that focus on fulfilling their learner’s needs, ensuring their engagement, motivation and positive response. success in this depends on the presence and effective use of interactional patterns and practices generated in the learning environment in which technology acts as a mediating agent. wagner (1994) and gilbert & moore (1998) describe interaction as “an exchange in which individuals and groups influence each other occurring when there are reciprocal events requiring two objects and two actions” (p. 20). in a comparable view, accepted by roblyer (2000), the assertion that “technologies that allow high interactivity seem necessary to allow high person-to-person, personto-group, and person-to-system interaction” (p. 2) matches with ur’s concept of interaction (1990) to the extent that the teacher is not considered the only one who takes the initiative to build interaction in a class, since this could take place amongst students –or even between the student and the material. 192 universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras cuesta note that the former authors are mainly referring to online interaction while the latter refers to interaction that takes place in face-to-face environments. this reaffirms another general premise in the field of e-learning developed from the current study: students can be given the possibility to adapt or adopt learning skills acquired and/or developed in face-to-face contexts to circumstances that allow them to be active participants, competent users and motivated learners in virtual learning environments. with respect to this, it seems likely that a major role for teachers (both viewed as course designers and tutors) involves smoothing the progress of learners through the incorporation of highly interactive practices that transfer well from synchronous to asynchronous learning scenarios. in fact, the emergence of interaction in the three cited levels (person-to-person, person-togroup, and person-to-system) implies that learners must make a profound commitment in their plans to accomplish learning in a non-traditional but cooperative manner. designing materials when principles, plans, agents and resources have been set up, designers move to determine how the course materials’ underpinning features are connected in order to develop the project. important decisions about material and strategy selection need to be made. the following are recommended areas of consideration at this stage: content the first area of concern for material designers deals with finding a framework that aids the procedures to tailor the material in such a way it responds to the learning objectives, to the cognitive processes to be developed and to the topics and subtopics the material will, per se, cover. furthermore, material designers need to regard it as imperative that the following will take place: • the expected products are defined in accordance with the curriculum of the institution in which they will be used. • the expected products are subject to a continuous evaluation stage14, which could possibly result in further modifications in order to ensure an offering of high quality, resourceful, up-to-date and pedagogically-based material for the educational community. structure the structure of the material will be determined based on its organization and its interactivity, since both components allow the users to have not only accessible routes to utilize the materials but also to find appealing and practical modes for presenting content. the organization of the material must take the following into account: 1. information: defining sections and activities contained in the material. 2. classification of the material: ordering metadata to help learners find the material they need, when they need it. day (2005) observes that metadata are used to help support a vast range of operations: resource description and discovery, the management of information resources (including rights management) and their long-term preservation. 3. navigation: plotting how content moves from one point to another in the course material to 14 this evaluation needs to be conceived to be done by all parties involved: students (end-users), teachers and/or designers. there may be cases in which there are also peer reviewers of the material who belong to different educational institutions and who can contribute to the evaluation process. 193 the design and development of online course materials... profile vol. 12, no. 1, 2010. issn 1657-0790. bogotá, colombia. pages 181-201 ensure that the content is accessible to learners in a wide array of forms. ukoln project participants (2005) argue that the access to the material should be via buttons (e.g. previous, next, home/menu). they advise the following: • that buttons should be located in the same position on all screens for ease of navigation. • that content units should be presented in small elements. the pages (visualized on the screen) need to be organized into “meaningful, self-contained chunks” that do not spread out onto the next page. in this way, learners are provided with a concise flow of information that enables them to understand the content presented on a screen before progressing to the next one. • that a bookmarking facility or system of menus should exist that permits learners to control the progress of the material (stopping, restarting, pausing, rewinding material, etc.) and also to move within the menus and exit the current section in which they are working as needed. • that help and hint buttons exist that help learners resolve doubts regarding material content and technical issues. 4. material design: clarity, aesthetics and neatness are three features that help the material be appealing to the eye, legible and understandable. designers can achieve these by observing the following: • combining images and text, but avoiding excessive use of texts and images onscreen. • presenting the information in a clear, standard and labeled way (by using bullet lists, charts, different fonts, etc.). • using clear and succinct language in the texts.15 • using appropriate colors16 to help learners identify main ideas and to discriminate different kinds of information. • having icons that help learners to visualize and recall recurrent information. • choosing clear images/graphics, multimedia for specific and well-defined purposes.17 the interactivity18 of the material will, in turn, promote responses by users, allow them to work with multiple resources presented in different formats (for example, image/text combinations, drag and drop options, or scrolling text19) and let them customize the mode in which the material is presented. management and support apart from carefully selecting and structuring how materials will be sequenced, it is recommended that designers deliberate on how to help learners successfully access information sources that facilitate their learning. this kind 15 it also includes: 1. published material needs to be errorfree. it needs to comply with punctuation and academic style patterns. 2. excessive use of abbreviations and acronyms and capitalization should be avoided. 16 the ukoln technical advisory site suggests to take into account color blindness, the use of high contrast colors such as white on a black background and not to use more than 5 colors since it could be confusing. 17 if the graphic/video is not created by the designers, they need to acknowledge its source. this is done in order to be in compliance with established institutional /individual copyright policies. 18 there are many authoring tools that have been created in the past 20 years which provide different interaction models. these could be classified under varied categories i.e. games, puzzles, simulation tools (i.e. adobe flash player), presentation and organization tools (i.e. powerpoint, cmap tools, mind manager), etc. 19 the author of this article suggests avoiding the unnecessary use of scrolling. in case this is needed, she recommends opening a new window to present the material. 194 universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras cuesta l department of foreing languages and cultures master in english language teaching autonumus learning environments subject: autonomous learning environments week no. 2, e-activity 1 topic: ethics in technology subtopic: acceptable use policy (part 1) average online time: 1 hour average oine time: 1 hour total of posts: 1 hour deadline: tuesday’s midnight lesson objectives: to find out about different regulations regarding ilegal activities performed in the cyberspace. to write an acceptable use policy document that will be shared in the classroom and educational communities where de master candidates currently work. copyright © 2009 universidad de la sabana, department of foreign languages and cultures, master in english language teaching autonomous learning environments autonomy and learning environments course (second edition). created by bryan n., cuesta, l. kimoto s. (2008). edited by cuesta, l. (2009). all rights reserved. no part of this material shall be reproduced, transmitted, distributed or commercialy exploted, except with express writen permission from the copyrigth holders. enquiries for the permission to reproduce all of parts of this material should be direct to: master�d@unisabana.edu.co figure 4. sample of an e-activity: model layout. the activity was used in the “autonomy and learning environments course 2009”, a virtual course which is part of the masters in english teaching-autonomous learning environments program, being developed at universidad de la sabana, colombia. 195 the design and development of online course materials... profile vol. 12, no. 1, 2010. issn 1657-0790. bogotá, colombia. pages 181-201 of management and support can be aided by including the following elements: • a tutorial that guides the students in handling the online course. • a section containing the core documents of the course: syllabus, schedules, etc. • a list of bibliographic sources/links that complements the course content. • a glossary of relevant terms used in the course. • a frequently asked question (faq) section that serves as a reference to learners about both content and technical troubleshooting situations in the course. • a contact list that provides learners with information for their tutors, their peers, and for the it specialists and course administrators who can help them in case they need support (with cmc tools such as e-mail, chat, forums, etc.) • a copyright compliance notice that guides the learners in the appropriate use, treatment and distribution of course materials. in addition to these components, it is recommended that each set of course materials include the following subsections: title of the lesson: this should be motivating, as well as appealing to eye and ear. presentation of the objectives and instructions: these have to be clear, brief and specific for the students. learners need to know about the lesson requirements and expected performances and products. instructions must be devised in such a way that there is no room for ambiguities or misunderstandings. the sample in figure 4 shows the model layout followed in a virtual course. the introductory section materials of the lesson provide participants with information related to the topic and objectives of the lesson, the expected time learners will spend on the activity/ies, the amount of posts (responses) required in the activity and the deadline for its completion. warm-up activity: this engages students’ attention and allows them to recall prior knowledge; it encourages them to learn and study the new topic by stimulating their minds. with the advent of new authoring tools, designers can easily create interactive activities in varied formats, including word games, picture games, fill-in the blank tasks, multiple choice items, puzzles, mazes, mind maps, videos, and audio files. depending on the nature of the course, designers can also create selfassessment activities that serve as lesson activators. the inclusion of selected reading extracts can also help engage learners in the lesson. central activities: these are activities in which the core lesson material is presented to the students. concepts and definitions are introduced and accompanied by different sets of exercises that expand students’ knowledge of the subject matter. this material needs to be sequentially organized according to the complexity of its features. it is expected that the students understand and handle the basics before moving to more complex issues. designers should vary the ways in which materials are presented. for example, they could observe the following: • start a lesson with a short text that outlines the central points of the topic at hand, keeping in mind the material design criteria outlined above. • promote the use of hypermedia sources such as video clips, podcasts, and powerpoint presentations. these can help students pursue the objectives of the lesson and can also form part of an effective approach to an audience of mixed-ability learners. the sample presented in figure 5 is part of lesson 12 in the formerly mentioned course. 196 universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras cuesta week12e1 de janeth liliana arciniegas londoño miércoles, 3 de junio de 2009, 07:41 my ideal blended pronunciation course would have a 4 hour-f2f-session per week and a virtual component so that stronger learners would �nd more content to challenge them and the weaker ones would review and �nd material that they could cope with. pronunciation is a skill that can be better developed by means of dividing phonology in sounds, words, and connected speech (joining the words together), therefore, i would use formative assessment −on going assessment− because it entails a process-focused system in which learners can show the way they have improved and developed their skills in pronunciation. in this system “teachers regularly check for underestanding, [so that] students become increasingly aware of how to monitor their own understanding” (fisher and frey, 2007, p. 14). i will use e-portfolios in wich students could interact with other students and with the teachers around products (podcasts, charts, e-activities, etc.). regarding this aspect, barret (2006) has stated that by using this tool: ∙ students can create, store artifacts and re�ections, and organize their work, preferably with hyperlinks ∙ teachers [and students, peers] can review the work and provide feedback in narrative form (based on a rubric, if available). in http://www.podomatic.com/featured, students could upload their artifacts and those could be read, checked and commented not only by the teachers but by peers. this webside is easy to use and this fact would de�netly help my adult learners to feel con�dent when using it. it has been used for many researchers and professionals around the world as a tool for their professional development. eager to see your comments, janet references barrett, h., c. (2006). authentic assessment with electronic portfolios using common software and web 2.0 tools. retrived june 2, 2009, from electronicportfolios.org website: http://electronicportfolios.org fisher, d., & frey, n. (2007). checking for understanding: formative assessment techniques for your classroom. virginia: association for supervision and curriculum development figure 5. sample of an e-activity used in a lesson. the sample was taken from a virtual course, part of the masters in english teaching-autonomous learning environments program, at universidad de la sabana, colombia. this course covers theoretical foundations and practical applications in the field of educational technology, both from a virtual and hybrid environments perspective. the samples included here and in the following pages are used with permission. 197 the design and development of online course materials... profile vol. 12, no. 1, 2010. issn 1657-0790. bogotá, colombia. pages 181-201 week12e1 de cuesta medina liliana marcela miércoles, 3 de junio de 2009, 17:21 dear j, peer reviewing and self assessment practices constitute a perfect blend. i perceive you have a clear and detailed purpose with these features. may you please comment more on the use of the e-portfolio for your own particular phonology scenario? give two ideas please... i have something in mind l p.s.1 nice references shared out there! p.s.2 please check your typos before posting figure 7. sample of response by the course moderator week12e1 de víctor elías lugo vásques miércoles, 3 de junio de 2009, 14:17 dear janet, your strategy relies on the concept of peer review as a key component of formative assessment because it helps learners re�ect on their own work, think of objective elements to assess their peers’ production and become tolerant to the criticism -both fair and unfair, which can be posted. the fact of having everyone watching what you made also increases the possibilities for them to do high-quality products, so the general e-portfolio strategy seems appropriate to me. i also like the element of having the teacher monitor quality and amount of the work in the individual portfolios. congratulations sincerely, víctor lugo mostrar mensaje anterior | editar | partir | borrar | responder figure 6. sample of response given by a course participant 198 universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras cuesta week12e1 de janeth liliana arciniegas londoño miércoles, 3 de junio de 2009, 23:29 dear lili: thanks you for your comment. that last week has been really tough... i was i kind asleep. sorry for the typos. regarding the e-portfolio, instead of have students upload just text, i want have them record their voices and then start �ling the podcasts in podomatic. there, we could have “a purposeful collection of student work that exhibit the student’s efforts, progress, and achievements in one or more areas” (barrett, 2000). these areas could be segmental features like consonants, vowels, diphthongs, and suprasegmentals like word stress, sentence stress, connected speech, etc. students could have the possibility of review not only their own work but their partner’s. they could also resubmit the task in which they do not feel con�dent, previous teacher and peer feedback. i really like the way barrett (2000) state suggest a process for developing the portfolio. in stage 4, students re�ect upon the have been doing, having the possibility of improve, re�ne, reshape what have been done. eager to see what you have in mind. it sounds good!! hugs portfolio development portfolio development stage of electronic portfolio development table 1. stages of electronic portfolio development purpose & audience decide, assess1. de�ning the portfolio context & goals collect, interject design, plan2. the working portfolio inspect, perfect, connect respect (celebrate) implement, evaluate4. the connected portfolio present, publish5. the presentation portfolio figure 8. sample of response by participant 1 199 the design and development of online course materials... profile vol. 12, no. 1, 2010. issn 1657-0790. bogotá, colombia. pages 181-201 participants (graduate students) had to think of an imaginary blended learning population and plan an effective assessment activity they would use, being assisted by technology. learners were encouraged to search for academically reliable web sites to enhance the lesson they had in mind. the excerpt below shows the rationale of the source a student chose. the subsequent messages correspond to a course forum thread moderated by the course instructor. a comment by one of her peers and her teacher are also shown. assessment and wrap-up activities: every lesson should conclude with activities that wrap up the issues covered in the introductory and central sections. these wrap-up activities can include reflections or extra practice assignments such as project work, literature reviews, surveys, interviews, portfolios, and presentations that lead students to work autonomously and that contribute to their developmental practices. note that these activities are also assigned as either collective or individual work but that all activities must be designed to include corresponding feedback. designers and course instructors need to agree on types of assessment and interaction to be implemented throughout the process. the student in the thread shown in figures 6, 7 and 8 used the comments made by her peer and teacher to reflect upon and also find more support for the arguments previously developed. the excerpt shown in figure 8 shows the expansion of her thoughts in her response to her tutor. in an online discussion, tutors should attempt to foster the development of elaborate arguments and critical responses that generate discussion and real interest to all participants. learners should be shown how to develop these competences gradually. it should be noted that later on this student used the cited resource to create learning materials (podcasts), which she used to complement her classes, for her students. conclusion in the modern learning environment, course designers are continuously exposed to an ever-widening range of pedagogical implications, models and strategies. however, if tactically put together, the right combination of elements and emphasis in the design can provide the means to implement course materials that respond to the necessities and performance goals of the specific target audience. it is essential that, regardless of the model chosen, designers plan for and meet the instructional objectives necessary for an effective course process, developed through a gradual but steady instructive mode. every participant in the process needs to acknowledge the value of continuous analysis and assessment that determine whether the technical and educational features of the material are aligned with the course, with the material objectives, and with the learners’ expected outcomes. the different strategies examined and the recommendations proposed in this study offer designers a holistic approach to the development and support of online learning and instruction. further research is currently in progress to further examine how the selection of particular instructional components, strategies and models can be applied to enhance the ways in which learners and instructors access knowledge in online environments. references brown, g., & yule, g. 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(2003). towards knowledge societies. an interview with abdul waheed khan. communication and information sector’s news service. retrieved march 4, 2008 from http:// portal.unesco.org/ci/en/ev.php-url_id=11958&url_ do=do_topic&url_section=201.html wagner, e. d. (1994). in support of a functional definition of interaction. the american journal of distance education, 8(2), 6-26. ur, p. (1990). a course in language teaching. cambridge: cambridge university press. yukavetsky, g. (2003). la elaboración de un modelo instruccional. centro de competencias de la comunicación universidad de puerto rico en humacao. retrieved march 25, 2008 from http://www.ccc.uprh. edu/download/modulos/ccc_ledumi.pdf about the author liliana cuesta is a candidate for the doctorate of english philology at uned (universidad nacional de educación a distancia, spain). she works as a lecturer and researcher in the master in english teaching-autonomous learning environments at universidad de la sabana. her central research line is e-learning. profile vol. 12, no. 2, october 2010. issn 1657-0790. bogotá, colombia. pages 69-85 69 teaching reading comprehension in english in a distance web-based course: new roles for teach ers* la enseñanza de la comprensión de lectura en inglés en un curso a distancia en la red: nuevos roles para los docentes jorge hugo muñoz marín** adriana gonzález moncada*** universidad de antioquia, colombia distance web-based learning is a popular strategy in elt teaching in colombia. despite of the growth of experiences, there are very few studies regarding teach ers’ participation in these courses. this paper reports preliminary findings of an on-going study aiming at exploring the roles that a teach er plays in an efl reading comprehension distance web-based course. data analysis suggests that teach ers play new roles solving technical problems, providing immediate feedback, interacting with students in a non traditional way, providing time management advice, and acting as a constant motivator. the authors conclude that efl teach ers require training for this new teaching roles and the analysis of webbased distance learning environments as an option under permanent construction that requires their active participation. key words: distance web-based learning, reading comprehension, efl, teach ers’ roles, technology. el aprendizaje a distancia con apoyo de la red se ha convertido en una estrategia popular en la enseñanza del inglés en colombia. a pesar de ser una experiencia en crecimiento, hay pocos estudios relacionados con la participación del docente en estos cursos. este artículo presenta los hallazgos preliminares de un estudio que busca explorar los roles que un docente de inglés como lengua extranjera tiene en un curso de competencia lectora en un programa a distancia basado en la red. el análisis de los datos sugiere que los docentes enfrentan aspectos como la resolución de problemas técnicos, la provisión inmediata de retroalimentación, la interacción con los estudiantes en una forma no tradicional, la asesoría en el manejo del tiempo y el ser un motivador constante. los autores concluyen que los docentes de inglés como lengua extranjera requieren formación para estos nuevos roles y el análisis de ambientes de aprendizaje a distancia como una opción en permanente construcción que demanda su participación activa. palabras clave: aprendizaje a distancia en la red, comprensión de lectura, inglés como lengua extranjera, roles del docente, tecnología. * the on-going study on which this paper is based was sponsored by comité para el desarrollo de la investigación (codi), from universidad de antioquia. the grant was approved in acta no. 536 from november 18, 2008. ** e-mail: hugomu74@gmail.com *** e-mail: adrianamariagonzalez@gmail.com this article was received on march 1, 2010, and accepted on july 13, 2010. 70 universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras muñoz marín & gonzález moncada introduction the use of new information and communication technologies (icts) in teaching is growing dramatically. one of the major forms of icts use is distance web-based teaching and learning. some empirical studies claim the effectiveness of web-based teaching and learning due to the fact that students’ satisfaction, performance, attitudes and scores are similar to a traditional classroom environment. nevertheless, phipps and merisotis (1999) argue that “it may not be prudent to accept these findings at face value” (p. 3). we decided to explore how distance web-based learning and classroom-based learning influenced students’ reading comprehension in english as a foreign language (efl) in a graduate program at the universidad de antioquia taking into consideration the growing demand of the academic community to access higher education programs that are not restricted to the traditional classroom (wallace, 2003) and the need to learn english, mainly in our university setting. in this paper, we report the preliminary findings regarding the roles efl teach ers may play using a distance web-based approach to teach reading comprehension. from the literature reviewed, we found a quite limited amount of information about those roles. in the case of colombia, there are no publications documenting any study on this topic. the paper contains four parts: one, the literature review; two, the methodology; three, the preliminary findings; and four, the conclusion and implications. our aim is to shed light on the use of web-based teaching in reading comprehension in efl to contribute to the improvement of english teaching in our country. the first author of this paper was the instructor in the web-based course. the second author played the role of methodological advisor in the case study. she is a teach er educator and mentor of the research group conducting the study. she also participated in the course design. literature review in this section, we will focus on two main theoretical topics: web-distance learning and reading comprehension in a foreign language. in web-based distance learning, we will provide some basic definitions of terms and introduce the roles of teach ers in this learning environment. in the second topic, we will define reading comprehension and address the processes of efficient reading comprehension. web-distance learning literature in education has different names to refer to the use of computers and internet to support teaching and learning. web-based learning, elearning, computerized-learning, on-line learning or virtual learning are some of the most popular ways to call the instructional procedure that uses icts. in this paper, we will use the term “distance web-based learning” to refer to a course taught through the web and that does not have face-toface contact between the teach er and the students. according to sampson (2003) distance learning referred mainly to students’ independent learning at a distance, developed through the means of self-study texts, non-contiguous communication, and not controlled by the teach er. keegan (1990) defined distance learning by identifying five main elements: the separation of teach er and learner; the influence of an educational organization; the use of technical media (usually print) to unite the teach er and learner and to carry educational content; the provision of two-way communication so that the student may benefit from or even initiate dialogue; and the possibility of occasional meetings for both didactic and socialization purposes. holmberg (1986) explained how “distance education includes the various forms of study at all levels profile vol. 12, no. 2, october 2010. issn 1657-0790. bogotá, colombia. pages 69-85 71 teaching reading comprehension in english in a distance web-based course: which are not under the continuous, immediate supervision of tutors present with their students in lecture rooms or on the same premises, but which, nevertheless, benefit from the planning, guidance and tuition of a tutorial organization” (p. 26). distance web-based learning benefits from the opportunities and advantages the world wide web has to offer. according to lawhead et al. (1997), the new technology involves uses of the web and hypermedia that have shown promise in providing classroom instruction superior to the current methods of instructional delivery. innovative use by educators has allowed the web to be used to develop viable alternatives for distance education. (p. 1) the implementation of web resources has provided answers to the criticisms aimed at distance learning, mainly the lack of interaction between teach er and students. lawhead et al. (1997) explained how the many tools readily available in most browsers allow users to interact using many different modalities. these can be either be teach er initiated or student initiated. the richness of the web provides the distance learner with an aspect that may often be lost in traditional distance education delivery modes. (p. 2) the increasing implementation of distance webbased learning programs imposes the necessity of identifying new roles of teach ers and students. the identification of these roles may start by recognizing characteristics that are common to face to face classroom and web based teach ing. this is how, shelton, lane, and waldhart (1999) suggested that the role of classroom teach ers is more effective as facilitator than as knowledge dispenser. the role as facilitator is essential for a web-based teach er. easton (2003) stated that web-based teach ing is not about “putting up a website or turning one’s lectures into text and then stepping back” (p. 89) because this approach is not effective for learning. wallace (2003) made explicit the growing interest in understanding the role of the web-based teach er in courses in which communication and interaction among students and teach er is a must. she states how web-based teach ers should be able to “create presence in online discussions through a number of techniques including facilitating discussions, providing direct instruction, and giving feedback to students” (p. 260). salmon (2000) presented a model for teach ing and learn ing in webbased environments that includes five components: access and motivation; web-based socialization; information exchange; knowledge construction; and, develop ment. berge and collins (1995) stated that the qualities of a web-based teach er are: written presentation skills, technical competencies, virtual management techniques, and the ability to engage students in virtual communication. wallace (2003) described what people believe are obvious tasks for the webbased teach er: designing the course materials, interacting with students, giving feedback and assessing students’ work. she explained that tasks such as class discussions, small group activities and lectures may not be so obvious in the web-based environment, but they were necessary in the teach ing process. berge (1995), paulsen (1995), and mason (1991) agreed on three basic roles for teach ers in a webbased environment. organizational: refers to what the teach er should do in order to manage logistics of the course such as instructional procedures for registration, dates of assignments and tests, deadlines for tasks, and so forth. social: encompasses interaction and communication. pedagogical or intellectual: relates to create ways for delivering the course content and supporting students’ learning. berge (1995) identified an additional role for the teach er as skillful in technical knowledge. this technical knowledge means that the teach er should be able to assist students in the use of computers and web resources. 72 universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras muñoz marín & gonzález moncada offir, barth, lev and shteinbok (2003) illustrated six different roles for teach ers in web-based environments. social: means that the teach er should be able to create a positive atmosphere and support students’ motivation students through the course; procedural: requires the teach er’s willingness to provide information regarding administrative and technical issues; expository: includes the teach ers’ skill to present content; explanatory: considers the teach er’s ability to elicit students’ questions and participation in the different topics of the course; cognitive task engagement: refers to the teach er’s need to promote students’ involvement in discussions and tasks for understanding content; learning assistance: consist of the teach ers’ ability to support students’ learning through interaction. goodyear, salmon, spector, steeples and tickner (2001) saw teach ers’ roles in web-based environments: (1) as facilitator, assisting students in web-based activities for learning; (2) advisercounselor, offering advice to help students through the development of the course, (3) assessor, providing grades, feedback and validating students’ work, (4) researcher, producing new knowledge for enriching the course content; (5) content facilitator, making course content accessible; (6) technologist, supporting students’ choices and work with technology; (7) designer, creating tasks and activities to promote learning. one of the most popular options to develop web-based distance courses is the use of course management systems (cms). according to cole and foster (2008), these were web applications that allow teach ers to create a course web site and provide access to only enrolled students. the systems not only can offer “a wide variety of tools that can make your course more effective”, but also “provide an easy way to upload and share materi als, hold online discussions and chats, give quiz zes and surveys, gather and review assignments, and record grades” (p. 1). one of the most popular cms used in colombia is moodle. universities, schools, businesses and individual teach ers prefer this open source cms in order to enhance learning with technology resources. regarding the specific use of the moodle for language learning, ardila and bedoya (2006) described its pedagogical applications in a contrastive grammar course at the universidad de antioquia. they concluded that using this type of learning environment has various benefits for students such as “promoting abilities and skills that allow students to self-construct knowledge through collaborative work; search and self-discovery skills; and the access to multiple and different sources of informa tion” (p. 199). read ing comprehension in foreign languages dubin and bycina (1991) defined read ing in foreign language as a selective process taking place between the reader and the text, in which background knowledge and various types of language knowledge interact with information in the text to contribute to text comprehension. alyousef (2005) expanded the definition for read ing. he describes it as an interactive process that takes place between a reader and a text and that leads to automaticity, or read ing fluency. the reader and the text interact dynamically as he/she tries to elicit the meaning. in read ing comprehension, various kinds of knowledge are used: linguistic or systemic knowledge as well as schematic knowledge. alyousef (2005) identified six general skills and knowledge areas necessary for read ing comprehension: automatic recognition skills; vocabulary and structural knowledge; formal discourse structure knowledge; content/world background knowledge; synthesis and evaluation skills/strategies; metacognitive knowledge; and skills monitoring. grabe and stoller (2002) classified two different processes for skilled readers: lower-level profile vol. 12, no. 2, october 2010. issn 1657-0790. bogotá, colombia. pages 69-85 73 teaching reading comprehension in english in a distance web-based course: processes, which are associated to vocabulary and grammar recognition when read ing; and higher level processes, which are comprehension, schemata and interpretation of a text. these authors said that a fluent reader may need the combination of lower and higher level processes, otherwise his/her read ing skills may not be as efficient and reliable as they should be. block (1986) found that more successful readers use general strategies such as anticipating content, recognizing text structure, identifying main ideas, using background knowledge, monitoring comprehension, and reacting to the text as a whole. less successful readers relied on local strategies such as questioning the meaning of individual words and sentences, seldom integrating background knowl edge with the text, and not focusing on main ideas. singhal (2001) concluded that successful readers tend to use cognitive, memory, metacognitive, and compensation strategies far more than less proficient readers. less successful readers generally focused on local concerns such as grammatical structure, soundletter correspondence, word meaning, and text details. saricoban (2002) examined the strategy use of post-secondary esl students and found that the successful readers engaged in predicting and guessing activities, made use of their background knowledge related to the text’s topic, guessed the meaning of unknown words, and skimmed and scanned the text. less successful readers focused on individual words, verbs in particular. read ing comprehension and icts read ing and read ing instruction are redefined through the use of internet and other icts as new literacies (leu, 1997; leu & kinzer, 2000; leu, kinzer, coiro & cammack, 2004). leu et al. (2004) stated that teach ers will find as a challenge guiding students’ learning in information environments because they are richer and more complex than the traditional printed material. these new environments also bring richer and more complex learning opportunities for students and teach ers themselves. the conceptual transition from foundational literacies (leu et al., 2004) to new literacies makes teach ers and teach er educators ask themselves whether the new literacies are “traditional skills being used in new environments” (boling, 2008, p. 90). we believe that these new literacies require a new view of read ing and teach ing read ing in efl. as boling (2008), citing lemke (1998), stated it “in today’s informationrich, digital age society, being literate involves much more than simply being able to read and write the written language” (p. 95). however, a more thorough review of the emerging literature in the field goes beyond the scope of this paper. context of the study in 1997, the universidad de antioquia issued an internal language policy to promote foreign lan guage learning among students, faculty, and staff. the promotion of foreign language learning aimed at increasing students’ and faculty’s opportunities for accessing cutting-edge scientific information, applying to scholarships, pursuing graduate stud ies, and expanding their cultural and personal horizons, among others. moreover, the policy targeted the expansion of the university’s contact with the international academic community. as part of the policy, students in undergraduate and graduate programs had to show proficiency in certain skills in a foreign language. although the majority of students choose english due to its importance, students may also certify their proficiency in french, italian, german, or portuguese. italian and portuguese are very popular languages because many students believe these languages are easier than english. in the case of the law school, students and professors favor learning of 74 universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras muñoz marín & gonzález moncada english and italian because most of the literature in the field is written in these languages. the language policy stated that undergraduate students need to certify read ing comprehension in a foreign language to obtain their degrees; graduate students in especializaciones1 have to certify read ing comprehension to be admitted to their second semester; master’s programs’ students need to demonstrate read ing comprehension skills in the admission and listening comprehension before completing their degree; and doctoral students have to demonstrate skills in read ing comprehension to be admitted and listening and speaking abilities to register for the third semester. it is important to clarify that students and faculty have the opportunity to take courses at no cost or to take a test to demonstrate the skills. in order to assist the academic community in the fulfillment of the requirements, the escuela de idiomas designed courses for the different needs of the students. although we have gained experience in the teach ing of these skills, our main challenge comes from the growing demand for english courses. the most recent academic undertaking in the read ing comprehension area originated in the need to provide english read ing comprehension courses for a distance web-based program in the school of veterinary medicine. as a response to that need, we designed the course described in this paper. it has been offered to graduate students since 2007. however, this experience has not been analyzed systematically in order to improve the course. this motivated our case study. 1 especialización (specialization) is a graduate program that lasts two or three semesters. its objective is to provide students with up-dated information to improve their professional practice. the read ing comprehension course the web-based distance course and the classroom-based read ing comprehension courses have the same syllabus. five professors participated in the design of the activities for the cms moodle course. the authors of this paper were part of the designing team. the course encompasses 5 units aiming at developing read ing comprehension abilities in students using moodle as a learning platform. each unit has four components: (1) a set of videos, audios, power point presentations, web-sites and texts designed to provide explanations and examples about the content of the unit; (2) a group of exercises for students to development their read ing skills; (3) a test for assessing students’ development of read ing skills; and (4) some resources for students to communicate with the teach er, such as discussion forums, wiki, and chats. the course was 14 weeks long. every class has around 40 students registered. since 2009, graduate students have had the opportunity to choose between a traditional course taught in a classroom and a web-based distance course. in this study, the same teach er was in charge of the classroom-based course and the distance webbased course. we decided to have the same instructor for both courses in order to avoid the possible differences in the development of the courses due to the teach ers’ personality or teach ing methodology. methodology our general framework in this study is the view of teach ers as researchers (freeman, 1998). we car ried out the exploration of the impact of distance web-based learning and classroomin struction on the development of reading comprehension in a graduate course using an exploratory case study (cresswell, 2007; merriam, 1998; tellis, profile vol. 12, no. 2, october 2010. issn 1657-0790. bogotá, colombia. pages 69-85 75 teaching reading comprehension in english in a distance web-based course: 1997; yin, 2003). the research design included yin (2003) and creswell (2007) approaches to case studies. we chose case study methodology because it allowed us to consider personal insights from the students and the teach er as well as documents and data records from a learning platform. additionally, a case study allowed us to approach data from an interpretive point of view (merriam, 1998) including the constant involvement of participants (willis, 2007). participants participants in the study were graduate stu dents registered in an english reading comprehension course and their professor. the original class was composed of 38 individuals registered in different especializaciones in the faculty of law at the universidad de antioquia. all of them were involved in the practice of law in areas such as criminal law, family law, and administrative law. the student group consisted of 25 colombian female students and 13 male students between the ages of 23 and 49. although the program is open to graduates of any law university program, most of them are alum ni from universidad de antioquia. from the initial group admitted, 29 students completed the course requirements. during the development of the 5 units, 9 students withdrew from the course because they took the proficiency exam and obtained a passing grade. they felt that after having fulfilled the requirement of the certification they had no need to stay in the course. one student failed. the first author of this paper was the instructor in the web-based efl reading comprehension course. he has been an english teach er for 12 years, mainly in efl classroom-based courses. he has taught reading comprehension for 6 years, but it was only until 2007 that he had the opportunity to become a distance web-based teach er. he had no further training to do so. he had only his personal experience and motivation as an enthusiast of icts because he was once enrolled in an undergraduate program in journalism. data collection and analysis data presented here were gathered through data records in the cms moodle, focus group sessions, in-depth interviews of two key respondent students and the teach er, and the teach er’s journal. data were collected in the second academic semester (july-december) of 2009. the purpose of each instrument is explained below: data records in the cms moodle: we analyzed the course content organization, evaluations, assignments, forums and chats sessions, as well as the e-mail exchanges that occurred between the teach er and the students. the course content in the platform, assignments and evaluations were presented in english. students used spanish in the forums, chats and e-mail communication with the teach er. they chose their native tongue because they found that their proficiency in english was not enough to express their opinions, ask questions or request clarifications and explanations. the teach er accepted spanish as the means of communication to facilitate the learning process. the course content, readings and exercises were presented in english. focus groups sessions: we invited the students registered in the course to participate in focus groups sessions to comment on their academic experience in the course. the guiding questions for this instrument related to the positive and negative aspects of the course, the content, evaluation, use of the platform, interaction with the teach er, and their suggestions to improve the course. the two groups were scheduled at different times so that students could choose the best alternative for them. we selected this technique because it allows groups 76 universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras muñoz marín & gonzález moncada to share insights about a given experience or topic, facilitates sharing ideas among participants, and gives voice to individual opinions (debus, 1990; kamberelis & dimitriadis, 2005; krueger & casey, 2009; palmer, 1994). the sessions were conducted in spanish because the students did not feel comfortable discussing in english the issues proposed. these sessions were audiotaped and transcribed using regular orthographic transcription. we tested our interpretation and conclusions of the issues discussed in the focus groups sessions through member checks (angen, 2000; lincoln & guba, 1985). this preliminary analysis with students allowed us to validate our on-going analysis. in-depth interviews: we scheduled in-depth interviews (allmark et al., 2009; kvale, 1996, 2007; mcnamara, 2009) with two students we selected as key respondents: the one who obtained the best score and the one who expressed the highest number of difficulties in the course. we used this technique to explore in more details the students’ perceptions about the platform, their motivation to be part of the course, their reading comprehension improvement, and the advantages and disadvantages of this learning modality. in these interviews we also used member checks. the interviews were audiotaped. additionally, we had an in-depth interview with the teach er to clarify his perceptions about the course and the roles he played to triangulate them with the information gathered from his teaching journal. all the interviews were conducted in spanish. the teach er’s journal: the teach er kept a journal to record his thoughts and reflections along the course in order to construct an academic view of his practice (bailey, 1990; jeffrey & hadley, 2002; mcdonough, 1994). we used this technique to understand the instructor’s point of view, the challenges, and roles he experienced in teaching reading comprehension under this learning environment. the teach er wrote his journal in english. six members of the research team participated in the data analysis, but only two wrote this paper. researchers did individual readings of the data to identify patterns and themes in the transcripts. then, these notes were compared in a researchers’ group meeting to code the data. we constantly compared and contrasted the data to construct the categories. we used researchers’ triangulation and data triangulation to validate the data (freeman, 1998; lincoln & guba, 1985). we performed researchers’ triangulation in the research group meetings where the authors of the paper compared our interpretations of the data with our peer researchers. for data triangulation, the focus groups sessions, interviews and the teach ers’ journal gave us a recurring perspective and complementary aspects of the issues addressed. for this paper, the authors translated into eng lish the excerpts selected from the data to support the findings. we shared our translation of the texts with our colleagues to make sure our interpretation was accurate. findings the data analysis allowed us to identify some roles for the teach er. we define as roles the characteristics and teaching behavior expected from the teach er. those behaviors may demand from him/ her certain skills or training. the lack of preparation to play those roles may originate in lack of knowledge, lack of skills, limited experience or insecurity, among others. in these situations teach ers may become creative and resourceful finding an effective solution or may feel stressed and frustrated. the best alternative to face teaching challenges is to learn from the own experience and share the learning outcomes with peer teach ers. from the data analysis performed, we profile vol. 12, no. 2, october 2010. issn 1657-0790. bogotá, colombia. pages 69-85 77 teaching reading comprehension in english in a distance web-based course: identified the following 5 roles a regular english teach er encounters when he/she starts teaching in a web-based course as categories. 1. technical knowledge expert: in this category we place knowledge related to computers, the web, and the learning platform. in our study, we assumed that students registered in the reading comprehension course had the necessary skills to accomplish the objectives proposed because they were all active professionals in a graduate program. however, the reality of the course showed big differences in the skills, familiarity and confidence to use computers and the web among students. the main factor in this difference was age. students who were in their mid and late twenties and thir ties experienced less difficulty than those older. the teach er journal shows several entries in which he claims that he spent a considerable amount of time helping students with basic questions about their computer configuration, how to navigate the web, and how to access the learning platform. the problems with the platform use resurged even after having had an introductory training course to use moodle. the following journal excerpts show the teach ers’ challenge: “i had to pay more attention to difficulties related to the use of the platform rather than focusing on the language learning itself ”. additionally, the teach er said: i realized that the teach er not only needs to be able to help stu dents through content and grade their activities, but also be able to provide technical support to students’ on the different issues concerning the platform. i realized that a teach er should have a good knowledge of the platform so he/she may be able to help students through different situations that are common in the development of the course. a lot of the questions coming from students are not related to content or exercises, but about some technical difficulties students have during the development of the course. the teach er believes that some adequate training in technical aspects is not commonly seen as a requirement. he says, “i guess this is an activity that is not taken into account when you become a virtual teach er; however, it is an important one, as it makes students’ work in the course easier”. in the focus group sessions some students reported having difficulties to understand the dynamics of the learning platform. we highlight the opinions of three of them. one male student commented on his frustration with some of the exercises assigned. the program allowed students to correct a wrong answer, but he could not change it. he asked the teach er for help. likewise, a female student said that she had problems sending her answers in one of the exercises. to resolve them, she wrote an e-mail to the teach er explaining the situation and to get extra time to do send homework to him. another male student said that he used to do the exercises on the platform near the deadline because he was usually pretty busy with his legal work. on various occasions he had to file lawsuits that kept him so engaged he had very little time to work on the course. after several unsuccessful trials, he often did not know what to do when the platform did not work well. he said, “i felt desperate because it was the last minute and i had to send whatever, if it let me do it. many times it denied access to the new tries and they were not open. i had to call the teach er and ask him what to do”. in our study, we were particularly lucky because the teach er had enough technical knowledge to help students with their problems. he was also patient and clear in the explanations he provided to students. they valued that help and considered it one of the best aspects of the course. most efl teach ers use computers effectively and may be able to manage a learning platform, but some technical problems may go beyond our regular training. if we do not solve them, they may affect the learning 78 universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras muñoz marín & gonzález moncada and teaching processes and cause some distress for students. this situation may be particularly often in our educational contexts because very few institutions have a computer technician or engineer to provide assistance. 2. immediate feedback provider: although the learning platforms may be used to assess students’ performance and provide immediate feedback in activities such as multiple-choice exercises or tests, video conferences, chats, and forums, these options may not work for all the learning tasks. for our reading comprehension course, we designed some exercises and tests that required open answers or that required some argumentation from students. these activities were not graded automatically by moodle. they became part of the teach er’s tasks in the course. even if we realized that it gave the teach er some extra work, we agreed on doing it to have a better picture of the students’ reading comprehension process. the teach er wrote in his journal that “being a virtual teach er requires a lot of time dedicated to the course. it is necessary to review constantly what students are doing, the difficulties they are having and think about different strategies for getting them to participate in the course”. in the in-depth interview, the teach er said that the greatest difference between a classroom course and a web-based distance course was error correction: “i found correcting students complicated at the beginning. finding some language clear enough to help them understand their mistakes and correct them” took him a while. as the teach er had other academic commitments besides the course, he did not send his corrections and feedback as promptly as students expected it. in fact, many of them did assume that the platform was programmed to correct every single activity. that delayed the provision of feedback. many students said they felt frustrated when they did not obtain immediate feedback from the teach er, even if they knew he could not be in touch with them 24 hours a day, 7 days a week. regarding this issue, one student expressed his opinion in the focus group session: some of my classmates did not take the virtual course because they needed… uh, if they had any question, who would solve it? i had the same concern, but once i took the course i realized that the teach er’s guidance was excellent. well, i would say that he did not solve it immediately because it is impossible for him to be connected 24 hours, but his support was very important for me. one asked him anything and he took one or two days at most. two students stated in the focus group session that one of the main differences between the webbased course and the classroom-based course was the feedback students received. one of them said: “in the classroom course, you know the mistakes or the teach er tells you it’s like this or it’s not like that. in the other course, you ask for an explanation, but not all the time. if [the answer] is wrong, you let it go”. the other one commented that she would change the grading system. she said, “i’d like either to have everything graded by the system, but providing feedback about correct answers, or everything graded by the teach er, even if we have to wait”. about the students’ anxiety to get immediate feedback, the teach er wrote on his journal: students seemed to be very worried when they finished an exercise and they did not find an automatic grade. they immediately wrote an e-mail or a note in the forum asking why they did so badly in the exercises if they thought they were doing o.k. when they received an answer with an explanation, they felt relieved. after analyzing the students’ opinions and the teach er’s reflection, we concluded that teach ers and program designers need to work closely to be able to make the necessary adjustments to provide the feedback or assessment students and teach ers profile vol. 12, no. 2, october 2010. issn 1657-0790. bogotá, colombia. pages 69-85 79 teaching reading comprehension in english in a distance web-based course: would like to have. we also believe that students may require some additional training in the academic and technical possibilities of a web-based course so that they do not feel frustrated or disappointed about the quality and promptness of feedback. 3. interlocutor in non traditional student-teach er communication: interaction in the web is definitely very different from teach er-students face-to-face encounters. seeing the person to whom one talks makes a difference for many people as it has advantages and disadvantages. in classroom-based instruction, students and teach ers establish a relationship based on meeting each other. teach ers usually identify each learner and know the particularities of his/her leaning process. students learn to relate to classmates and to the teach er. the class may exchange ideas, ask and answer questions, and monitor learning. however, some students do not feel comfortable sharing their questions or showing lack of understanding on a topic. chats, forums, and e-mails may facilitate communication in web-based learning, but students had diverse opinions about the new type of interaction proposed in the web-based course. in our case, students tended to avoid displaying their learning process. this finding is similar to the experience boling (2008) described for her class. she reported that her students hesitated to use blogs and other forms of online public communication with their own students. some thinking about it allowed her to conclude that “online forms of public writing could still fall under the scrutiny and judgment of teach ers and classmates” (p. 93). in our study, some students liked the possibility of saving face as they did not have to expose themselves asking questions, being corrected or acknowledging their lack of understanding in front of their peers, as it happens in a face-to-face classroom interaction. a female student referred to this saying: in a face to face course you can’t tell the teach er, “i don’t understand the texts, so please repeat that” because your classmates get bored and say, “who is she? is she the owner of the class?” in the web course you have that individual rapport between the teach er and the student. the teach er commented on this face saving resource in his teaching journal. he believes that: students do not use the forums. it seemed to be a more complicated solution to communicate with me. besides, some students have the feeling that some other students may have a higher level of proficiency because they participate in english in the chats, even if this is not a requirement. those who feel insecure would use e-mail rather than forums and chats. e-mail seemed a quicker way to have an answer from the teach er, and they didn’t have to expose themselves to the other classmates. some students found the web-based course as a more personalized learning experience. one male student said, whenever i have a doubt, the teach er always answers back trying to solve it while in a classroom, one may find it difficult to, let’s say, ask a question, you know, or to make a suggestion. it is easier through the internet. for the teach er, the web-based course limited his interaction with students. his idea of effective interaction included meeting the person or at least being able to connect a name with a face. even if he had constant communication with some of his students, he found very difficult to respond just to a name or even to a picture because some of them did not use a picture to identify themselves. in some of the journal entries he said, i don’t have the possibility to interact with students as i have used to. i only have the opportunity get to know the students through the virtual environment. there are some students that do not participate either for technological reasons, they don’t know how to use the platform) or because they really don’t think that the teach er’s guidance is necessary. that’s why i considered 80 universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras muñoz marín & gonzález moncada necessary to be available for students in an advisory session. i though students would like the idea of having someone helping them with some of their difficulties, at least the ones they considered as a problem to continue in the course. being a good teach er meant to him making sure students felt the teach er’s presence and support and that definitely meant some face-to-face rapport at some point in the course. he stated that: “it sis not enough to answer e-mails or participate in the forums. you need to be in contact with students as much as possible so that students feel they have a teach er in the course”. he also wrote: i must say that the virtual environment limits student-student and studentsteach er interactions. although students have a lot ways to communicate or to express what they are feeling, they don’t seem to be comfortable to express their feelings using the tools the platform provides… i still believe there are many stu dents who are too “quiet”, those students you never know what they are doing. i have the feeling virtual students are not quite willing to participate; they are more concerned on completing the exercises and finishing their activities. this non traditional interaction imposed by the web-based environment represented a benefit for students as they felt they had more interaction and feedback from the teach er in this course than in any other classroom-based course. however, for the teach er, it represented some source of anxiety because he could not establish the sane rapport he was traditionally used to have with his students. this journal entry reflects his initial discomfort with the interaction he had to use in the course, but how he adjusted to the new condition by the midterm: a simple detail such as uploading a student’s picture for personalizing his/her profile in the course, becomes an important issue for identifying students. it was easier for me to remember stu dents who had a picture than those who did not. special features in the pictures, faces or colors help you remember their names. as the course goes on, you focus more on the language. at this time of the course, identity is not an issue anymore. 4. time management advisor: many of the students had not studied english for a long time and mentioned that their only motivation to take the course was to obtain the mandatory certification. all of them reported time management as the most difficult part of the course. two reasons seem to motivate them to assert this: one, the amount of work expected from them in the course; and two, their extremely busy schedule in the graduate program. the difficulties to cope with the course tasks and tests often became a source of stress for students. regarding the amount of work, the teach er wrote: “some students joked about being in a graduate program english instead of being in a graduate program in law”. the teach er has an additional explanation for their problem to meet the deadlines. he thinks that it may be a consequence of a cultural phenomenon. he wrote in his diary: i don’t know if cultural reasons or the design of the course make students leave all the activities for the last minute. they ask for a day or a two day-extension to complete the exercises. i used to think it came from their lack of experience using the web, but as the course went on, i don’t think so anymore… students believe that exercises and activities can be activated whenever they need to, but there is no way a course like this would work. although the course is flexible, it needs some time limits. if there are not deadlines for completing the activities, it would impossible to handle the course. as a consequence of the students’ difficulty to manage time effectively, the teach er had to remind students about the platform possibilities, mainly to correct their answers and resend them to improve the grades. in his diary, he also said that he took advantage of the chats, forums, and e-mails to tell students how to distribute their time to accomplish profile vol. 12, no. 2, october 2010. issn 1657-0790. bogotá, colombia. pages 69-85 81 teaching reading comprehension in english in a distance web-based course: the objectives. when we designed the course, we assumed that students would devote two hours a day to the readings and tasks, but this was not true. the teach er said about it: this is a very ambitious program taking into account that these graduate students have a lot of things to do… i wonder if all these exercises and the little time students have to dedicate to this web course are enough for developing foreign language reading comprehension. although web-based courses are supposed to promote the students’ autonomy because they can make decisions regarding the content organization, learning pace, and resources used, the lack of adequate time management may interfere with the students’ accomplishments. very few students reported that time management was a positive aspect of this course. a male student stated that he particularly liked the course because he could commit himself to his own learning. he said, “you know you have certain time to do the exercises and that it’s a must. in a classroom course, you do the exercises just because you are there and you learn something just for a moment”. 5. constant motivator: some students reported that they had difficulties adjusting to the course. as mentioned above, some of them found the content distribution, the time required to do the activities, and the access to the platform as problematic issues for them. these problems affected their motivation in certain units and made them consider canceling the course as an alternative. they stayed registered because the certification in reading comprehension ability was a requirement to be part of the program in the second semester. facing these drawbacks required a constant participation of the teach er as motivator. he had to contact students who did not participate in the chats or those who did not seem to be at the same pace of the class. in the interview, he addressed this role saying: i think that the virtual student is more likely to be unmotivated and to lose his/her enthusiasm in the course because he/she may not find timely answers… he/she may lose his/her interest to stay in the course. it is to the teach er to find the space to keep the students’ interest in the course. what the teach er wrote was particularly evident in the in-depth interview with the student that showed the lowest motivation in the course. she commented on her troubled contact with english and her lack of motivation to be in the course: i have taken different english courses, but i have not finished any of them. i was ten months at the binational center, but i could never go beyond level 2. i have bought english courses, and last year i registered at the online course offered by sena2, but the experience wasn’t good because the program was very difficult… i don’t like english… i am here because it is a requirement for the especialización. if i didn’t have to, i’d never take the course… never. although she was not very motivated in the course, she admitted that the teach er’s encouragement meant a lot to her. she referred to his assistance indicating that “the teach er had permanent communication with us. that sir, jorge hugo, was excellent. everything we asked him… he responded immediately or the following day. nothing was at loose ends…”. conclusions and implications in this paper we have explored how teaching a reading comprehension course using a distance 2 sena is the national learning service institute in colombia that offers vocational and technical training for students that cannot enter higher education. for the last four years, this institution has of fered free massive english training as part of the national language policy for bilingualism called “bilingual colombia”. 82 universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras muñoz marín & gonzález moncada web-based demands new roles of efl teach ers. even if he/she has previous training in teaching reading comprehension in classroom environments, his/her expertise may not be enough to meet the challenges of this situation. we have shown that the teach er has to play some roles additional to the ones he/she has in a traditional classroom. these roles as technical knowledge expert, immediate feedback provider, interlocutor in non traditional student-teach er communication, time management advisor, and constant motivator are a challenge for regular efl teach ers, and even for those who have specific training in the use of learning platforms or the web to teach english. as the use of the web-based distance programs in teaching english is expanding, we have a first implication. teach er education and professional development programs should include a training component that prepares teach ers to be and teach ers to face the challenges of these new alternatives of teaching and learning. this means that we need to expand the view of the teach ers as acquainted with technology and promote their view as efficient us ers of the technology for pedagogical purposes. leu and kinzer (2000) sees this challenge related to the need to see literacy and literacy instruction from a new perspective as reading and icts converge more and more often. by the same token, the new roles for teach ers presented in this paper have a second implication. efl teach ers, teach ers to be, and teach er educators should be aware of the fact that these roles are necessary because there is no cms or web-based program that fulfills the particular need of every context. under this view of technology as a tool under permanent construction, and not as a panacea, teach ers play different roles, but they must have a word in the design and evaluation of distance web-based programs and materials. to achieve this goal, a different training is required and that is a permanent challenge for everyone involved in the teaching and learning of english. we have just taken the first step to explore this area. we hope to have more studies expanding efl teach ers’ knowledge regarding the use of computers in reading comprehension. in a further phase of the study, we expect to refine the existing methodology to teach reading comprehension in english to graduate students using icts. we also expect to offer an improved version of the program taking advantage of the new resources that we can incorporate in moodle. limitations of the study there are three main limitations in this study that need to be addressed. the first limitation concerns the fact that the reading comprehension certification in english is mandatory graduate for students at the universidad de antioquia. this is sue exerted pressure on the students and affected their motivation, commitment, and anxiety to pass the course. if we had a student population that did not have to certify their proficiency in such a stressful situation, we would probably have a different response in the course. the second limitation has to do with the students’ background and field of study. it seems to be that graduate and undergraduate students of law tend to show a general rejection to the learning of foreign languages, mainly english. we base this comment on the fact that many of them request exemptions and even institute proceedings against this academic requirement. informal conversations with colleagues from other universities confirm this argument. we need to undertake further studies of this phenomenon in our local context. the final limitation deals with our own nov ice experience teaching foreign language reading comprehension in english in a web-based distance course. we are aware of the need to deepen our understanding of this learning modality to better use the cms moodle. profile vol. 12, no. 2, october 2010. issn 1657-0790. bogotá, colombia. pages 69-85 83 teaching reading comprehension in english in a distance web-based course: references allmark, p., boote, j., chambers, e., clarke, a., mcdonnell, a., thompson, a., & tod, a. 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(1997). introduction to case study. the qualitative report, 3(2). retrieved august 29, 2010, from http://www.nova.edu/ssss/qr/qr3-2/tellis1.html. wallace, r. m. (2003). online learning in higher education: a review of research on interactions among teach ers and students. education, communication, and information, 3(2), 241-280. profile vol. 12, no. 2, october 2010. issn 1657-0790. bogotá, colombia. pages 69-85 85 teaching reading comprehension in english in a distance web-based course: willis, j. (2007). foundations of qualitative research: interpretive and critical approaches. thousand oaks, ca: sage publications. yin, r. k. (2003). case study research. design and methods (3rd ed.). thousand oaks, ca: sage publications. about the authors jorge hugo muñoz marín holds a master’s degree in english teaching from universidad de caldas. he has taught efl and reading comprehension courses. his area of interest is icts in language learning and reading comprehension. he is a member of eale (enseñanza y aprendizaje de lenguas extranjeras) research group. adriana gonzález moncada holds a doctoral degree in linguistics (tesol) from state university of new york at stony brook. she is an associate professor at the escuela de idiomas at universidad de antioquia. her areas of interest and publications focus on efl teach er education and professional development, and language policies. profile 4 2003.p65 ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ 51 profileprofileprofileprofileprofile this research project aims at exploring, understanding, and analyzing second graders’ development as writers in a private school of bogotá. group reading, writing stories, hyper-stories (non-linear stories) and messages as literacy activities were carried out with these children and allowed them to grow as writers in an efl context. the findings are the result of data triangulation collected through interviews, teacherstudent conferences and second graders’ samples and show evidence of the significant growth in the type of texts written by children and in the quality of interaction they had when they constructed texts. kkkkkey worey worey worey worey words: ds: ds: ds: ds: children as authors-primary school, creative ability in childrenresearch, writing-teaching, reading-teaching, reading readiness-teaching este proyecto de investigación pretende explorar, entender y analizar el desarrollo como escritores de los estudiantes de segundo de primaria de un colegio privado de bogotá. las actividades de lecto-escritura como la lectura en grupo, la creación escrita de historias, hiper-historias (historias no lineales) y mensajes permitieron que los niños se desarrollaran como escritores en un contexto extranjero. los hallazgos como resultado de la triangulación de datos a través de entrevistas, conferencias entre el profesor(a) y el estudiante, y los trabajos elaborados por los estudiantes de segundo evidencian el crecimiento significativo en la clase de textos escritos por los niños y en la calidad de interacción presente cuando construyeron los textos. palabras claves: palabras claves: palabras claves: palabras claves: palabras claves: niños autores-enseñanza elemental, aptitud creadora en niñosinvestigación, escritura-enseñanza, lectura-enseñanza, facilidad de lecturaenseñanza )�� ������������������%���(���� �!�������������'������ obserobserobserobserobser vación de los niños y su desarvación de los niños y su desarvación de los niños y su desarvación de los niños y su desarvación de los niños y su desar rrrrrollo como escritoresollo como escritoresollo como escritoresollo como escritoresollo como escritores nubia cecilia ruíznubia cecilia ruíznubia cecilia ruíznubia cecilia ruíznubia cecilia ruíz ***** student master program in applied linguistics to tefl universidad distrital francisco josé de caldas nruiz27@hotmail.com * nubia cecilia ruíz c.nubia cecilia ruíz c.nubia cecilia ruíz c.nubia cecilia ruíz c.nubia cecilia ruíz c. holds a b.a. in modern languages from the universidad distrital in bogotá. she is candidate to the ma in applied linguistics to tefl at the same university. in addition, she attended the seminar about “critical pedagogy” at the university of arizona in tucson, usa. currently, she works at the colegio franciscano del virrey solís. ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ 52profileprofileprofileprofileprofile introductionintroductionintroductionintroductionintroduction children’s writing has caught myattention because during myexperience as a teacher i have noticed that the pedagogy of writing usually focuses on mechanics. new perspectives that perceive writing as a dynamic process involving thought, language and interaction need to be implemented by teachers in their classrooms. these new perspectives consider the connections that exist between reading and writing, as well as the connections that should exist between students’ home and school experiences. this paper reports on my experience as a kidwatcher with a group of second graders developing as writers in an efl context. i hope that it invites you to reflect upon your teaching practice, challenging you to create and adapt literacy activities that fit in with your students’ interests, needs and context. the research questions addressed in the qualitative research i conducted with second graders aim to answer the following: · how do second graders’ writing inform teachers about writing in an efl context ? · what do second graders’ writings tell teachers about their knowledge of writing in two languages (english and spanish)? the following sections include a brief review of literature, the methodology , the findings and the conclusions. review of literareview of literareview of literareview of literareview of literaturetureturetureture learning a language is much easier by exposing learners to a variety of meaningful experiences in which they use language, expressing and sharing thoughts to create and re-create knowledge. similarly, learning to write is a complex process that requires a rich meaningful environment as well as lots of input and support from others (teachers, parents, and peers). in other words, writing is a creative social practice (vygotsky, 1978; street, 1984; goodman, 1996; clavijo, 2001). providing students with a rich literacy environment in which teachers support students’ learning deals with kidwatching. goodman (1996) defines kidwatching as the conscious process that takes place when teachers watch and interact with their students in order to know and understand how they learn, what they are interested in, what motivates them, and how they perform a task. similarly, short & harste (1996) define kidwatching as looking beyond the text to find deep meaning. as i watched second graders, i gained significant insights for planning new experiences and creating possibilities for children to become creative and autonomous readers and writers. literature was one of the experiences i provided second graders with during this study. neuman (1998) states that story reading contributes to literacy process in terms of understanding how print functions, constructing meaning or making sense of the reality and in learning language patterns. by using story reading as a curricular activity, students had the opportunity to expand their previous knowledge in terms of language, thinking and culture. through the different stories students selected for reading, they had the opportunity to explore the target language and to get familiar with new vocabulary, and its semantics and syntax (cooper, 1993; hudelson, 1996; short, 1999). in addition, stories allow students ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ 53 profileprofileprofileprofileprofile to organize their thinking relating the content of the stories to their experiences (campbell, 2001). examining reading and writing development in different contexts, goodman (1996), in first language, and clavijo (2001), in second and foreign language contexts, share similar ideas and define writing as a dynamic and creative process that occurs in a context which gives writers the opportunity to interact among them and to express their perceptions about their world and what happens around them. a dditionally, dyson (1989), following vygotsky’s perception of writing, assumes that “it is a complex social tool that functions in varied ways in our society ” (pp. 3). in regards to foreign language learning, it is essential considering the knowledge learners have of their mother tongue. learners start using their mother tongue in constructing hypothesis about how written language works (hudelson,1996; vygotsky, 1978). considering all the above, it is important that we, as teachers, support our students’ writing by understanding it and providing them with a variety of literacy opportunities that enhance their knowledge of the written language and at the same time allow children to read and to write their worlds. in other words, being a teacher “who is committed to discovering what each of my student knows, cares about, and can do… a teacher who respects the language and culture my students learn at home, and who respects the expansion of this knowledge at schools” (owocki, g & goodman, 2002 pp. ix). methodologymethodologymethodologymethodologymethodology this study was conducted in a private catholic school in bogotá, colombia from april 2002 to march 2003. taking into consideration the characteristics of qualitative research, this study followed the principles of qualitative case studies. it is descriptive in nature and it is concerned with exploring, understanding and analyzing second graders’ development as writers in a rich efl literacy environment. participantsparticipantsparticipantsparticipantsparticipants: the participants in this study were a group of second graders and the teacher as a researcher. the second graders were 26 students: two females and twenty four males aged between 8 and 9 years old. second graders receive 6 english classes of 45 minutes per week. from the group i selected four of them at random in order to observe and analyze their growth as writers closely. three of the students selected began their pre-school studies three years ago. the other student enrolled in the school last year. in this research the four children will be named with their factious authors’ names they chose to be identified. their names are the following: michael douglas, johan breen, tom cruz, and michael peter hamtaro. in this study, as a teacher-researcher, my role was that of a participant observer. as a second graders’ homeroom teacher i was privileged in spending the majority of the time with them and knowing more about their daily experiences, feelings, interests, and needs. according to heath (as cited by hubbard and power, 1999) the teacher–researcher is the most important tool: “you are the key instrument, and you must keep that instrument on all the time” (pp. 104). taking into account that this study deals with the characteristics of a qualitative case study, i ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ 54profileprofileprofileprofileprofile selected the following methods or sources to collect data: interviews, teacher-student conferences, students’ samples and the teacher’s journal. procedures and findingsprocedures and findingsprocedures and findingsprocedures and findingsprocedures and findings along this study i read to second graders “thomas’ birthday; little red riding hood; sunny’s birthday; hippo’s birthday; franklin’s neighborhood; the rainbow fish; souvenirs; that’s not santa!; and the true story of the little pigs” stories. in addition, i implemented the following pedagogical activities in order to motivate children to brainstorm and to infer aspects dealing with the story we were going to read: describing the cover and giving a title to the story and making predictions about the story. later on, i read the story loudly and invited children to draw their favorite part of it, to write a sentence related to it, to write a message or to draw and decorate a card to one of the characters of the story, to write their own story or hyperstory, and finally, to make their own storybook. additionally, i handled oral activities such as “retelling the story, asking me a question…, i think that…, presenting and reading my stories, interviewing authors; asking how to say and write in english; i think that…; presenting and reading my stories; and finally, interviewing authors”. the first one dealt with inviting children to retell the story i read to them. the second one focused on asking comprehensive questions about the story as well as asking for the children’s personal opinion about the story we had read. the third one engaged children in expressing their own opinions in terms of meaning, presentation, and creativity related to the students’ samples displayed on the blackboard. the fourth one encouraged children in reading and making oral presentations of their own stories in front of the group. for this activity children used the overhead projector. finally, the fifth one was a complement of the previous one. the purpose of this activity was to give children the opportunity to interview their partners in order to enrich the story read, to know more information about the author’s feelings when writing in english and to talk and to reflect upon non-conventional spelling. the oral activities mentioned above encouraged children to express spontaneously their ideas, concerns, feelings, and points of view about the story and how it related to their lives. furthermore, the children had the opportunity to interact with their partners when they did not know how to say or write a word or expression in english or when they had doubts related to the content of the stories. taking into account their interest in participating in these activities and the limited amount of time to handle them orally, i let the children do them in a written form. watching the children during these activities i realized that oral activities allowed them to become more confident in using written english in their messages, stories, and hyper-stories. from my point of view, as a teacherresearcher, the pedagogical and research activities that i conducted in this study revealed students’ knowledge of the target language and the importance support has in the development of their writing. additionally, these activities highlighted for both students and i the vital role of understanding the process in the development of writing. the triangulation of interviews, students’ samples and teacher’s journal, as research ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ 55 profileprofileprofileprofileprofile resources provided me with valuable information that allowed me to identify the following categories and subcategories that emerged: 1) becoming an author by writing about my own experiences; 2) children’s creative forms to represent meaning, and 3) collaborative work in children’s meaning construction processes. becoming an abecoming an abecoming an abecoming an abecoming an author by wuthor by wuthor by wuthor by wuthor by writing aboutriting aboutriting aboutriting aboutriting about my own experiencesmy own experiencesmy own experiencesmy own experiencesmy own experiences the first category depicted how children view themselves as authors by writing about their own experiences. second graders highlighted the importance their experiences have both in expressing their ideas when they were talking formally and informally and also in the construction of the new written texts. the following quote from the first interview illustrates this category: cuando escribo me acuerdo o tengo en cuenta: “de mis amigos. o sea... de los lugares también que yo he conocido, que he ido, qué personas he visto y de todo eso para hacer historias de los animales... de todo. ” (michael douglas). childrenchildrenchildrenchildrenchildren’s creative f’s creative f’s creative f’s creative f’s creative forms to representorms to representorms to representorms to representorms to represent meaningmeaningmeaningmeaningmeaning the second category illustrates children’s use of language when they communicate orally or in written form. this category includes the subcategories: uses of two languages in children’s writing and children’s own orthography. the following story written by johan breen illustrates his creative form to represent meaning. hippos in islhippos in islhippos in islhippos in islhippos in isl andandandandand 1. one day stiler invito a your friends a one paseo in your 2. boat and your friends going a home of stiler, fueron postem, 3. bakey, doctor, astronaut, judge, magician. and descembarcaron 4. and the boat se estrello in one island and estaban lejos 5. the city and the stiler se enfermo and doctor fue a buscar 6. ones plants medisinales and postem is hangry and bakery 7. it plants se puede eating mientras go a pescar fish and pescaron 8. more fish and is delisius fish and pasaron three day and 9. isieron one busqueda and pilot is buscandolos in helicopter 10. and stiler todabia nose recuperaba and pilot los incontro 11. and dijo lla vengo voy a traer one helicopter mas big 12. and les isieron one sorpresa. 13.the end observation: in line 1 it is evident the use of code-switching “one day stiler invito a your friends a one paseo”, whereas in lines 6 and 8 the child used his invented spelling to the words hungry /hangry/ and delicious /delisius/. ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ 56profileprofileprofileprofileprofile c o l l a b o r a t i v e wc o l l a b o r a t i v e wc o l l a b o r a t i v e wc o l l a b o r a t i v e wc o l l a b o r a t i v e wo r k i n c h i l d r e no r k i n c h i l d r e no r k i n c h i l d r e no r k i n c h i l d r e no r k i n c h i l d r e n’ s’ s’ s’ s’ s meaning construction processesmeaning construction processesmeaning construction processesmeaning construction processesmeaning construction processes the third category deals with the importance and value collaborative work has in constructing and reconstructing meaning. the following quotes from children illustrate how useful and significant it was for them to work together in constructing knowledge: “es incómodo cuando los otros no hacen nada. pero chévere, nice eh... la de pareja, que es de hartas personas porque eh... uno le da más ideas a otro y si eso no le gusta entonces dice otra... le ayudan a uno a pensar a hacer cuentos con otras personas o cosas. juan ma me ha ayudado a escribir said, wake up y yo le he enseñado a él. (tom cruz) “en el trabajo en grupo pues que se me hacen las cosas muy fáciles porque mis compañeros me ayudan. también pues chévere porque me aprecian yo así me siento como en familia con mis compañeros y contigo. y además es muy bueno porque uno trabaja en equipo uno se da idas uno expresa lo que sus sentimientos hacia lo que está haciendo. cuando escribo claro que me ha servido, pues sí porque yo aprendo cosas. por ejemplo la pronunciación birthday yo decía/ birdei/. aprendí a escribir happy day! y también a pronunciar /wan / yo decía /one/.” ( michael peter hamtaro) conclconclconclconclconclusionsusionsusionsusionsusions throughout this study i gained a lot of insight into children’s language development. in my journey through kidwatching i realized how vital it is to provide students with a rich literacy environment in which the teacher takes into consideration his-her students needs, interests, concerns, previous knowledge and context. additionally, responding to students’ writings and valuing the use of their mother tongue when writing texts in english makes them feel confident. from my point of view, i believe that teachers need to bear in mind that in the development of language, children move gradually from unconventional to conventional language. pedpedpedpedpedagogicagogicagogicagogicagogical implical implical implical implical implic aaaaationstionstionstionstions some of the pedagogical implications of this study are related to the transformations observed in children’s attitudes and perceptions towards writing in my class. their changes in attitude informed me of the type of relationships that benefit their growth as writers. that is, teachers need to be supportive and respectful of children’s ideas as readers and writers. finally, kidwatching opens the door to understanding and exploring “how children learn”. that allows teachers to enrich their teaching practices. references campbell, r. (2001). read-alouds with young children. uk: university of hertforshire watford. clavijo, a. (2001). from teachers’ literacy histories to classroom practices. proceedings second international teacher education conference. minneapolis, m. n. cooper, d. (1993). literacy: helping children construct meaning. new york: houghton mifflin company. dyson, a. (1989). multiple worlds of child writers. friends learning to write. new york ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ 57 profileprofileprofileprofileprofile and london: teachers college, columbia university. goodman, y. (1996). notes from a kidwatcher. portsmouth: heinemann.. hubbard, r. & power, m. (1999). living the questions. a guide for teacher-researches. york, maine: stenhouse. hudelson, s. (1996). children’s learning and the design of english teaching programs. how. journal. pasto: asocopi. neuman, s. (1998). how can we enable all children to achieve? in s. b. neuman & r. a. roskos (eds.). children achieving: best practices in early literacy. portsmouth, nh: heinemann. owocki, g. & goodman, y. (2002). kidwatching. documenting children’s literacy development. portsmouth, nh: heinemann. street, b. (1984). literacy in theory and practice. england: cambridge university press. short , k & harste, j (1996). creating classrooms for authors and inquires. portsmouth, nh: heinemann. short, k. (1999). the search for “ balance” in literacy instruction. english in education, 33 (3), 43-53. vygotsky, l. (1978). mind in society. cambridge, ma: harvard university press. the article was received on september 1 st, 2003 and accepted on october 12th , 2003 profile 5.pmd ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○37 profileprofileprofileprofileprofile elementar y english language instruction: colombian teachers’ classroom practices* enseñanza del idioma inglés en primaria: prácticas de aula de docentes colombianos isabel cristina cadavid múneraisabel cristina cadavid múneraisabel cristina cadavid múneraisabel cristina cadavid múneraisabel cristina cadavid múnera** ccadavid@idiomas.udea.edu.co maría mcnultymaría mcnultymaría mcnultymaría mcnultymaría mcnulty*** mariam@idiomas.udea.edu.co diana isabel quinchía ortizdiana isabel quinchía ortizdiana isabel quinchía ortizdiana isabel quinchía ortizdiana isabel quinchía ortiz**** dquinchia@idiomas.udea.edu.co universidad de antioquia an in-progress ethnographic research project about teachers who are facing the complex task of teaching english to children in 7 public elementary schools in the metropolitan area of medellin is presented in this article. first, the need for this research is outlined by researchers; second, the methodology of the project is described; third, up-to-date findings which include a profile of the 12 teachers who are participating in this study, and an analysis of their class methodology in terms of activities, materials, teacher and student roles are reported. lastly, implications of this research project related to early foreign language instruction are highlighted. kkkkkey worey worey worey worey wordsdsdsdsds: public elementary-english-language instruction, englishforeign language, ethnography-research-method, teaching-methodology este artículo presenta los resultados preliminares de una investigación etnográfica acerca de las estrategias metodológicas utilizadas por profesores de básica primaria que enseñan inglés como lengua extranjera en 7 escuelas públicas del área metropolitana del municipio de medellín. en la primera parte se resalta la importancia de esta investigación en nuestro medio y en la segunda, *project developed by the “grupo de investigación en enseñanza y aprendizaje de lenguas extranjeras”, school of languages, universidad de antioquia. **isabel cristina cadavid múneraisabel cristina cadavid múneraisabel cristina cadavid múneraisabel cristina cadavid múneraisabel cristina cadavid múnera, master in tesol, west virginia university. teacher-researcher in the undergraduate fl teaching program at the school of languages, universidad de antioquia. ***maria mcnultymaria mcnultymaria mcnultymaria mcnultymaria mcnulty, visiting professor at universidad de antioquia. diploma in tesl, university of toronto, canada. honours b.a. in psychology, wilfrid laurier university, canada. teacher-researcher in the undergraduate fl teaching program at the school of languages, universidad de antioquia ****diana isabel quinchía ortizdiana isabel quinchía ortizdiana isabel quinchía ortizdiana isabel quinchía ortizdiana isabel quinchía ortiz, b.a. in teaching foreign languages. teacher-researcher in the undergraduate fl teaching program at the school of languages, universidad de antioquia. ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ 38 cadavid, mcnulty and quinchía profile profile profile profile profile se describe la metodología empleada en el proyecto. la tercera incluye un perfil de los 12 profesores participantes y un análisis de la metodología empleada por ellos con respecto a las actividades de clase, los materiales y el rol del estudiante y del profesor. finalmente, se discuten algunas de las implicaciones de este proyecto de investigación en la enseñanza de lenguas extranjeras a niños. palabras claves: palabras claves: palabras claves: palabras claves: palabras claves: inglés-enseñanza-básica primaria, lengua extranjera-inglés, estudio etnográfico-investigación, enseñanza-metodología introductionintroductionintroductionintroductionintroduction ten years ago, the teaching of english as a foreign language (efl) in public elementary schools started to be introduced in colombia as a result of a general educational law related to early foreign language instruction. this educational endeavour would extend over five years of study –from grades 1 to 5– and include a space for foreign language instruction in public elementary schools each year. to date the colombian government has undertaken efforts to help schools and teachers. curriculum guidelines for foreign language instruction have been established and promoted by the ministry of education (ministerio de educación nacional: 1999). teachers have access to teacher education programs and professional development courses concerning early foreign language instruction. university-public elementary school partnerships through the teaching practicum have been encouraged and developed. additionally, some schools have enriched their teaching resources to include computer-based technology and training to teachers. the government has recognized the need for curriculum design, academic preparation of teachers, university-schools’ pre-service and professional development initiatives, and technology-based instruction. colombian public elementary schools and teachers have responded to this exciting challenge but not without encountering difficulties. cárdenas (2001) reports that teachers may have studied the foreign language and/or how to teach foreign languages, but they often lack specialized academic preparation for teaching children. the author recognizes governmental support but claims a lack of planning and standards in the implementation of foreign language programs at the regional and national level. this finding has also been cited by gonzález et.al. (2001) in their study designed to assess the professional needs of efl teachers who work in the public and private sector in colombia. public school teachers consider themselves lacking an adequate level of proficiency in english, background knowledge of the subject matter and previous training. in addition to the need for pre-ser vice and professional development, inadequate funding to implement government educational policies in latin america, asia and north america, ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○39 profile profile profile profile profile elementary english language instruction: colombian teachers’ classroom practices has been cited by nunan (1999) as an adverse factor affecting schools and teachers. murphey (2003) labels this challenge for professionals as the ‘cartbefore-the-horse situation’ where teachers are required to teach english before they are capable of doing so. although previous studies have explored who english language teachers are in different contexts and the limitations they have, there is a need for colombian studies which explore the reality of teaching english in the public, elementary school classrooms. given the above situation in colombia, researchers proposed the following questions for their research project: how have schools assumed this educational mission? who are the public elementary efl school teachers in medellín? which methodological practices do these teachers use to teach english? how do the teachers understand their own practices? what methodological principles do they report as forming their teaching practices? is there a relationship between the teachers’ practices and principles, and the government’s curricular guidelines concerning early foreign language instruction? in order to answer these questions, a group of researchers in the school of languages at the university of antioquia are conducting a small-scale, particularistic ethnographic investigation with 12 efl teachers in grades 1, 3 and 5, in seven public elementary schools in the metropolitan area of medellín. researchers are carrying out field work that includes observations and teacher inter views about the teachinglearning processes in context. the data from the teacher interviews will give researchers the teachers’ points of view about their classroom and their principles which guide their actions in class. a qualitative approach to the data collection and analysis is being used in order to enable researchers to describe, understand and reflect on the teacher ’s classroom methodology, influenced by the class activities, the materials in class, the teacher and student roles, and the grouping arrangements. description of the project’sdescription of the project’sdescription of the project’sdescription of the project’sdescription of the project’s methodologymethodologymethodologymethodologymethodology to address the above questions raised, the project was designed with four overlapping stages. prior to the first stage, the number and the location of schools were decided based on a preliminary list of public elementary schools where english is being taught in medellín. the schools were chosen based on their typicality or common characteristics i.e. the schools are public and are located throughout medellín in the north, south, and central areas. furthermore, schools were selected based on their convenience in terms of transportation for each researcher. in the first stage, researchers began to analyze important documents related to foreign language instruction. they read and discussed the lineamientos curriculares to find out how the ministry of education is promoting the teaching of english as a foreign language in public elementary schools. in addition, they started to review the literature related to early foreign language instruction. ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ 40 cadavid, mcnulty and quinchía profile profile profile profile profile the second stage consisted of researchers contacting the schools to give them information about the project, confirm their participation, and determine which teachers would participate in this study. at that time, researchers began to gather a profile of the teachers concerning their educational background and teaching experience with a questionnaire. the third stage consisted of observing and interviewing teachers about their classes. each teacher was observed 3 times in each grade reaching a total number of 63 observations. while observing, researchers wrote detailed objective descriptions of class events in a diary (see appendix 1: classroom observation format). after obser ving, researchers interviewed teachers in a semistructured interview format to find out what principles guide their actions in class (see appendix 2: teacher interview format). the majority of the interviews were recorded and transcribed to facilitate the data analysis. in the fourth stage, researchers are completing the data analysis of the observations and interviews. researchers have completed the class observations but are currently analyzing the teacher interviews. to analyze the data from the observations, a thematic analysis was used. in the data gathered, researchers identified and named thematic codes using a theorydriven approach. for example, researchers categorized the data concerning class activities using a taxonomy of language teaching techniques proposed by brown (2001), richards and lockhart (1996), and vale and feunteun (1995). to analyze the data from the teacher interviews, a datadriven approach is being used. during the last step of the research, the findings will be shared with the participants in this study and the community at large. findingsfindingsfindingsfindingsfindings this section will begin with a profile of the teachers in this project. the questionnaire showed the following information which has been divided into two parts: teachers’ personal information, their work and educational experience, and information about their english classes. concerning the tconcerning the tconcerning the tconcerning the tconcerning the teachers’ educationeachers’ educationeachers’ educationeachers’ educationeachers’ education and wand wand wand wand work experienceork experienceork experienceork experienceork experience the teachers’ ages range from 20 to over 50 with the majority of teachers in the range between 31 and 50 years of age. concerning the teachers’ academic preparation, all of them hold bachelor of education degrees in different areas: five teachers hold a b. ed. in elementar y, preschool or childhood education; four in areas such as mathematics, spanish, methodology and social studies; and three in foreign languages. seven out of the twelve teachers have completed a specialization, but not one is related to teaching english. regarding the teachers with degrees in foreign languages, although they possess the language preparation and the theoretical and practical preparation related to the methodology of teaching english, they neither possess knowledge about pedagogical principles and procedures in teaching children nor have the background in child language development, or experience in teaching groups of children. this situation has been previously reported by cárdenas (2001) as she questions who is ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○41 profile profile profile profile profile elementary english language instruction: colombian teachers’ classroom practices in charge of teaching english to children in colombia. in her study, she found that the majority of elementary english teachers were lacking in pedagogical and linguistic preparation. although cárdenas describes the situation in colombia, it is striking to see how similar characteristics of teachers in other countries have been found. for example, murphey (2003: 1) has described the situation in asian countries as follows: “the reality of the efl situation in many asian countries is that ministries are demanding that regular content teachers in primary schools teach english to their students with little or no training in english”. likewise, crooks (1997: 68) has stated that “almost all the public sector elementary fl instruction in my home state of hawaii is conducted by untrained teachers because there are no permanent full-time positions”. many of the teachers in our study have taken professional development courses related either to learning the english language or to the methodology of teaching english. with respect to learning english, just 1 teacher with a b. ed. in languages, 5 elementary and preschool teachers, and 2 teachers from different areas were involved in this type of instruction. those with a b. ed. in languages and in other areas did not pursue any english language training. concerning professional development related to the methodology of teaching english, two teachers with a b. ed. in languages and one from a different area did have this type of training. teachers with a b. ed. in elementary or preschool did not pursue this kind of training because of the nature of their undergraduate programs. a few teachers have had no further academic preparation at all. the majority of teachers have had from 10 to 29 years of general teaching experience, while only a few have been teaching for fewer than four years. most teachers have had a least 1-to-4 years of experience teaching english at the school where they are working now. in addition to teaching english, many teachers are required to teach other subjects such as physical education, mathematics, spanish, social studies, etc. in terms of job stability, most teachers have a permanent teaching position at their school while a few are working with yearly contracts. c o n c e r n i n g t h e e n g l i s h c l a s sc o n c e r n i n g t h e e n g l i s h c l a s sc o n c e r n i n g t h e e n g l i s h c l a s sc o n c e r n i n g t h e e n g l i s h c l a s sc o n c e r n i n g t h e e n g l i s h c l a s s aaaaactivities, materials and tctivities, materials and tctivities, materials and tctivities, materials and tctivities, materials and teacher andeacher andeacher andeacher andeacher and students’ rolesstudents’ rolesstudents’ rolesstudents’ rolesstudents’ roles as it is the case in many public schools in our country, the english classes in the schools researchers visited have approximately 40 to 49 students and the classes are offered once a week for 45 minutes. interesting issues were identified when researchers started exploring the different ways in which teachers spend this time with their students. the activities observed were classified according to their purpose within the framework of the class as a whole. as previously stated in the methodology section, in order to carry out such analysis, we designed a chart using and adapting taxonomies presented by various authors (see appendix 3: chart of observed classroom ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ 42 cadavid, mcnulty and quinchía profile profile profile profile profile activities). the broad categories in the chart are presentation, practice, memorization, comprehension, application, affective, feedback, strategy, assessment, and organizational. within each broad category, there is a list of different activities which teachers use in the foreign language classroom. based on the data analysis, other activities that were recurrent in the observed classes needed to be added to the chart such as giving instructions, praising, assigning homework, peer correction, building sentences, and translation as a strategy for presentation, etc. even though some of them are not activities per se, we found that they are widespread practices among teachers and therefore need to be included in the chart. researchers also found that most of the class period is spent on activities that are either organizational (giving instructions or disciplinary actions), presentational (introducing the lesson topic) or affective (warm-ups). even though giving instructions and organizing the children are paramount in the elementary school context, these are carried out in spanish and therefore children are being exposed more to spanish than english in class. teachers tend to use the target language only when presenting a topic or reviewing vocabulary with children in class. another common characteristic of these classes is that the presentation activities, mentioned above, often take place in the middle of the class period and are not usually accompanied by practice or application exercises in the same lesson. a very common strategy for presentation of topics or related vocabulary is the use of flashcards and translation at the same time. translation seems to play a very important role in these classes. it is used as a strategy to present new material, to explain content, or to check comprehension. it is interesting to note that activities we expected the teachers to use in class were either not frequently used or they were not observed in the number of classes we visited. games and singing songs are not so frequently used by the teachers. there were only two games with an affective purpose; one as a practice activity, and another as an application activity. singing songs were used as both practice and affective activities. other activities that are not being used by teachers include role-plays, story-telling, referential question-answer exercises, meaningful drills, problem-solving activities, and information exchange activities, etc. this might be due to the fact that most of these activities are so specifically related to the field of foreign language teaching that probably the teachers participating in this study are not familiar with them. finally, if we look at the activities in terms of language skills and sub-skills, we can see that classes are focused mainly on vocabulary, pronunciation and grammar. reading and writing are seen as recognition of words and copying them down. in very few cases is there comprehension of oral or written texts. concerning resourconcerning resourconcerning resourconcerning resourconcerning resourcescescescesces in terms of resources, although the schools have equipment such as televisions, ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○43 profile profile profile profile profile elementary english language instruction: colombian teachers’ classroom practices vcrs and tape recorders, they are lacking video or audio tapes that can be used with this equipment. classroom materials such as worksheets and paper products are available, but books, posters, flashcards, and games are scarce in most of these schools. teachers often have to adapt and/or create materials like flashcards, worksheets, or booklets, using their own abilities and resources. a small percentage of the schools have computers and multimedia. confronted with this lack of resources, teachers try to do their job mainly with visual aids like the board, classroom realia, and a few teacher and/or student-made flashcards. vocabulary is presented through these materials and then worksheets or exercises in a booklet are used to practice the words. in some schools, even though there are audio or videotapes, listening comprehension is not developed with these aids, and it is the voice of the teacher that students listen to most of the time. it is important to note that children are exposed mainly to isolated words and not to complete sentences or texts. in many cases, a textbook becomes the basis of the course. teachers rely on it to establish the sequence of contents, to structure the lessons, to design activities and even to choose the interaction patterns to be used in class. role of trole of trole of trole of trole of teachers and studentseachers and studentseachers and studentseachers and studentseachers and students according to richards and lockhart (1996), the roles of teachers can be considered from two different perspectives: one is the role of the teachers within the institution and the educational system in general, and the other is their role inside the classroom. concerning the first aspect, it is interesting to see how these teachers are alone in their duty of teaching english. school principals and even the ministry of education recognize the importance of including a foreign language in the regular school curriculum, but they have not promoted the establishment of clear guidelines to help teachers design syllabi, materials or activities to be used in their classrooms. the ministry of education published the lineamientos curriculares (general guidelines for the teaching of foreign languages) and school principals have given teachers the autonomy to make all the decisions about how english is taught at their schools. teachers are, therefore, free to do what they consider best, but they are also alone, without any support to do their job appropriately. concerning the role of teachers and students in the classroom, researchers observed that the teacher is mainly the model, class organizer and class controller. children are usually repeating individually or chorally after the teacher, answering the teachers’ questions or responding to the instructions s/he gives. individual work in their notebooks, booklets or worksheets is a general pattern. as there are many students in the classes, the most common interaction patterns are whole-group and individual work, with little pair or group work. significance of the studysignificance of the studysignificance of the studysignificance of the studysignificance of the study this research project is an attempt to become aware of our reality and understand ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ 44 cadavid, mcnulty and quinchía profile profile profile profile profile it in order to find ways to work with teachers to improve what they do. we recognize that our view as outsiders is important but not sufficient in this endeavor. however, our purpose goes beyond exploring and describing the reality observed. we want to work together with the teachers on the basis of what we have learned through this research experience and what they know about their own classrooms, their experience and pedagogical knowledge. based on these aspects, we are planning to offer a professional development course for those teachers and simultaneously carry out an action research project with them. this study is also a contribution to research in the field of teaching english as a foreign language to children that is scarce in our country where most of the literature available deals with teaching english as a second language, and/or research in this field. a brief reference to the concepts of esl (english as a second language) and efl (english as a foreign language) might be useful here to support this point. when we speak about esl we refer mainly to the situation of learners who learn a second language in a country where the language is used in commerce, education and politics. a colombian who is learning english in the united states is an example of this concept. in this scenario, learners can have varied opportunities being exposed to the language and using it out of the classroom. in colombia, we refer to efl because learning english takes place in formal classroom situations and is not within the target language culture. this foreign language context offers the learners ver y few opportunities to be in contact with the language outside the classroom. therefore, the concepts of esl and efl imply very different approaches to language teaching and learning. even though second language acquisition and teaching have been explored, more research on foreign language teaching in colombia and its specific characteristics is needed if our aim is to improve the quality of education we are providing our children. this study is also an invitation to teachers, teacher educators and administrators to become more sensitive and critical towards our own reality. educational policies should not be implemented blindly without a careful analysis of our contexts, and without knowing the real needs of our teachers and students. conclconclconclconclconclusionusionusionusionusion this study has shown that even though public elementary schools in medellín have adopted the new education act, their teachers who are willing, enthusiastic and committed, require encouragement and support in this endeavor. teachers with either limited or unrelated educational preparation, and insufficient training and target language preparation are working against all odds. educational processes in colombia need to be obser ved from a reflective perspective that will lead to a determination of characteristics of such a process, its strengths and weaknesses, and suggestions for improvement. exploring teachers’ methodological practices through class observations and ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○45 profile profile profile profile profile elementary english language instruction: colombian teachers’ classroom practices teacher interviews can provide a starting point for this task. several methodological issues have come to light as a result of this process. we found that the english that is being taught to children in public elementary school is rather limited, or is comprised of basic vocabulary, grammar and pronunciation. also, the use of english in the classroom is restricted to affective activities, presentation of vocabulary items by the teacher, and repetition of simple words or phrases by students. comprehension of these items is often done through translation in class. therefore, students’ exposure to english in class is reduced because of this and also a high incidence of teacher talk (for example, organizing the classroom, giving instructions, disciplining students, and assigning homework, etc.) which is carried out in the native language. this is not surprising, given the teachers’ low proficiency in english. supportive actions directed towards the teachers could focus on target language development and pedagogical enhancement related to teaching-learning strategies as well as resources, and teacher and student roles in the foreign language elementary classroom. even though the importance of teaching english as a foreign language in the regular elementary school curriculum is undeniable, it is also important to be aware of the broader implications that go hand in hand with this. this means that education policies should no longer come only from the analysis of literature on the topic, but also from a realization of actual needs of teachers and students. classrooms, schools, and the education system at large need to become a community in which the voices of students, teachers, administrators and policy-makers are heard. thus, a process of inquiry should enlighten not only the learning processes of students inside the classroom, but also all the decisions made by schools, by municipal education boards, and by the ministry of education as well. teachers cannot become reflective if they are not given the chance to participate in decision making; they cannot be agents of change if their voices are not heard. a process of critical reflection leading to principled actions is required in our schools. in murphey’s (2003: 1) analysis of a similar situation facing english teachers in asia, he states that we need to “develop materials and methods to acknowledge the situation of these teachers and to support and encourage them as they grow more professionally through their own learning and teaching of english. in some cases, this will require a shift in beliefs, strategies, and methods, our own as well as those of the teachers and local administrators.” in colombia, it is important for elementary school english teachers and policy makers to gain understanding of our reality if we are to attend our real needs and the specific challenges of teaching english as a foreign language in elementary public schools. referencesreferencesreferencesreferencesreferences brown, d. (2001). teaching by principles. new york: addison wesley longman. cárdenas, r. (2001). teaching english in primary: are we ready for it? how: a colombian journal for english teachers, 8, p. 18. ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ 46 cadavid, mcnulty and quinchía profile profile profile profile profile crooks, g. (1997). what influences what and how second and foreign language teachers teach. the modern language journal, 81, p. 6769. gonzález et al. (2001). efl teachers look at themselves: could they grow together? how: a colombian journal for english teachers, 9, p. 2733. ministerio de educación nacional de colombia. (1999). lineamientos curriculares: idiomas extranjeros. santafé de bogotá. men. murphey, t. (2003). nns primary school teachers learning english with their students. retrieved april 2004, from http:// www.tesol.org/pubs/articles/2003/tm13-402.html nunan,d. (1999). does younger=better? tesol matters, 9: 3. richards, j.c. and lockhart, c. (1996). reflective teaching in second language classroom. cambridge: cambridge university press. vale, d. and feunteun, a. (1995). teaching children english. cambridge: cambridge university press. ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○47 profile profile profile profile profile elementary english language instruction: colombian teachers’ classroom practices appendix 1: clappendix 1: clappendix 1: clappendix 1: clappendix 1: class observass observass observass observass observaaaaation formation formation formation formation formattttt investigación: estado de la enseñanza del inglés en la básica primaria del sector público del área metropolitana. escuela de idiomas, universidad de antioquia. date school time teacher grade observer items: activities; teacher/student roles; grouping arrangements; materials interpretation/reflectioninterpretation/reflectioninterpretation/reflectioninterpretation/reflectioninterpretation/reflection narrativenarrativenarrativenarrativenarrative x ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ 48 cadavid, mcnulty and quinchía profile profile profile profile profile appendix 2: teacher interview formaappendix 2: teacher interview formaappendix 2: teacher interview formaappendix 2: teacher interview formaappendix 2: teacher interview formattttt investigación: estado de la enseñanza del inglés en la básica primaria del sector público del área metropolitana. escuela de idiomas, universidad de antioquia. entrevista para los profesores de inglés en la escuela primaria el propósito de esta entrevista es identificar y entender los principios que fundamentan su proceso de enseñanza y aprendizaje en su clase de inglés. nos gustaría tener información acerca de la planeación de sus clases, las actividades, materiales y patrones de interacción. esta información será confidencial y se usará solo con propósitos investigativos. gracias por sus comentarios y su tiempo. a. ¿qué razones lo llevaron a usted a enseñar inglés en la básica primaria? ¿es importante para usted la enseñanza de inglés en la básica primaria? si_ no_ ¿por qué? ¿cuáles dificultades cree usted que tiene para la enseñanza del inglés en esta institución y por qué? b. ¿existe en el colegio un plan de estudios para el área de inglés? si_ no_ ¿por qué? ¿si su respuesta es positiva, cómo es ese plan? ¿si su respuesta es negativa, cómo decide el contenido del curso? ¿está su colegio planeando con base en lineamientos curriculares propuestos por el men? ¿qué criterios tiene usted en cuenta para la enseñanza del inglés en cada uno de los grados? ¿qué logros espera alcanzar a través de la clase de inglés? c. ¿cómo describiría su forma de trabajar el inglés con niños? ¿cuáles son las actividades que usted utiliza con mayor frecuencia para la enseñanza del inglés y por qué? ¿qué tipo de actividades le parecen efectivas y por qué? ¿cuáles son las materiales que usted utiliza con mayor frecuencia para la enseñanza del inglés y por qué? ¿qué tipo de materiales le parecen efectivos y por qué? ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○49 profile profile profile profile profile elementary english language instruction: colombian teachers’ classroom practices ¿qué tipos de interacción utiliza con mayor frecuencia en sus clases de inglés y por qué? ¿qué tipos de interacción le parecen más efectivos y por qué? d. ¿qué estrategias usa para el manejo de la disciplina en la clase de inglés? ¿integra usted el trabajo de unas materias con otras? (opcional) ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ 50 cadavid, mcnulty and quinchía profile profile profile profile profile a pp en d ix 3 : c h a r a pp en d ix 3 : c h a r a pp en d ix 3 : c h a r a pp en d ix 3 : c h a r a pp en d ix 3 : c h a r t o f o b se r v ed c l t o f o b se r v ed c l t o f o b se r v ed c l t o f o b se r v ed c l t o f o b se r v ed c l a ss a c t iv it ie s a ss a c t iv it ie s a ss a c t iv it ie s a ss a c t iv it ie s a ss a c t iv it ie s in ve st ig ac ió n: e st ad o de la e ns eñ an za d el in gl és e n la b ás ic a pr im ar ia d el s ec to r p úb lic o de l á re a m et ro po lit an a. re gi st ro g en er al d e re cu rr en ci as d e a ct iv id ad es c ol eg io p ro fe so r g ra do a c t iv id a d e s o b se rv a ci ó n 1 o b se rv a ci ó n 2 o b se rv a ci ó n 3 w a rm -u p s e tt in g c o n te n t e xp la n a tio n r o le -p la y d e m o n st ra tio n d ia lo g u e /n a rr a tiv e p re se n ta tio n b ra in st o rm in g s to ry t e lli n g q u e st io n -a n sw e r/ re fe re n tia l. g a m e s t ra n sl a tio n c o p yi n g q u e st io n /a n sw e r d is p la y p r e s e n t a t i o n ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○51 profile profile profile profile profile elementary english language instruction: colombian teachers’ classroom practices r e a d in g a lo u d c o p yi n g m e a n in g fu l d ri ll c u e d n a rr a tiv e /d ia lo g u e in fo rm a tio n e xc h a n g e p re p a ra tio n d ia lo g u e /n a rr a tiv e re ci ta tio n r e co g n iti o n s im u la tio n g a m e s d ri ll r e p e tit io n (w o rd / se n te n ce ) p r a c t i c e b u ild in g s e n te n ce s d ri ll c o p yi n g n a rr a tio n /e xp o si tio n g a m e s m e m o r i z a t i o n s o n g s ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ 52 cadavid, mcnulty and quinchía profile profile profile profile profile d ia lo g u e /n a rr a tiv e p re se n ta tio n q u e st io n a n sw e r/ d is p la y d ic ta tio n id e n tif ic a tio n r e co g n iti o n s to ry t e lli n g in fo rm a tio n t ra n sf e r in fo rm a tio n e xc h a n g e w ra p – u p n a rr a tio n e xp o si tio n r e p o rt p ro b le m s o lv in g d ra m a d is cu ss io n a p ro p o s t ra n sl a tio n g a m e s s o n g s c o m p r e h e n s i o n q u e st io n -a n sw e r re fe re n tia l ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○53 profile profile profile profile profile elementary english language instruction: colombian teachers’ classroom practices q u e st io n a n sw e r/ re fe re n tia l in fo rm a tio n t ra n sf e r n a rr a tio n /e xp o si tio n r o le -p la y r e p o rt p ro b le m s o lv in g s im u la tio n in te rv ie w d is cu ss io n c o m p o si tio n a p ro p o s a p p l i c a t i o n g a m e s s e tt in g r o le -p la y d e m o n st ra tio n id e n tif ic a tio n t ra n sl a tio n q u e st io n a n sw e r/ re fe re n tia l w ra p u p p re p a ra tio n a ss o ci a tio n p e e rco rr e ct io n h o m e w o rk s t r a t e g y e xp la n a tio n ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ 54 cadavid, mcnulty and quinchía profile profile profile profile profile w a rm -u p s to ry te lli n g q u e st io n a n sw e r/ re fe re n tia l w ra p -u p g a m e s r e p o rt p ro b le m so lv in g d ra m a p ra is in g a f f e c t i v e s o n g s c h e ck in g r e vi e w t e st in g in fo rm a tio n e xc h a n g e w ra p -u p in te rv ie w t ra n sl a tio n p ra is in g p e e rco rr e ct io n c h e ck in g h o m e w o rk f e e d b a c k t e a ch e r co rr e ct io n ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○55 profile profile profile profile profile elementary english language instruction: colombian teachers’ classroom practices this article was received on may 15th, 2004 and accepted on august 23rd, 2004. d ic ta tio n t e st in g c u e d n a rr a tiv e /d ia lo g u e d is cu ss io n a s s e s s m e n t g ra d in g s o n g s g iv in g in st ru ct io n s g re e tin g s d is ci p lin a ry a ct io n s s e a tin g m o n ito ri n g t a ki n g a tt e n d a n ce a ss ig n in g h o m e w o rk o r g a n i z a t i o n a l c o lle ct in g h o m e w o rk profile 11, 2009. issn 1657-0790. bogotá, colombia. pages 9-27 9 an english syllabus with emphasis on chemistry: a proposal for 10th graders of a public school in colombia* un plan de estudios en inglés con énfasis en química: una propuesta para estudiantes de grado décimo de una institución pública en colombia sandra juanita lópez clavijo**1 ied fernando mazuera villegas, bogotá colombia this article describes the process followed to design an english syllabus with emphasis on chemistry. it was focused on 10th grade students as they started a connection with a program named “chemical samples analysis”. in that attempt, esp (english for specific purposes) and creative thinking theories were taken into account. a students’ questionnaire, teacher’s audio-taped interviews and a teacher researcher journal comprised data for the research. it was found that the english class needs to be reorganized by taking into account students’ needs and interest and by integrating the four language skills. this way the english language process can become more meaningful. key words: english for specific purposes, creative thinking, chemistry, curriculum design este artículo describe el proceso que se siguió al diseñar un plan de estudios de inglés con énfasis en química, el cual se enfocó en estudiantes de grado 10.º, quienes iniciaron una conexión con el programa “análisis de muestras químicas”. se tomaron en cuenta las teorías de inglés para propósitos específicos y pensamiento creativo. para la recolección de datos se emplearon un cuestionario para los estudiantes, entrevistas grabadas a los docentes, cuestionarios para los estudiantes y un diario de campo de la docente investigadora. se concluyó que la asignatura de inglés necesita reorganizarse teniendo en cuenta las necesidades e intereses de los estudiantes y mediante la integración de las cuatro habilidades del lenguaje. de esta manera el proceso de aprendizaje del inglés puede ser más significativo. palabras clave: inglés para propósitos específicos, pensamiento creativo, química, diseño curricular * this paper reports on a study conducted by the author while participating in the profile teacher development programme at universidad nacional de colombia in 2006. the programme was sponsored by secretaría de educación de bogotá, d.c. code number: 30101007234. ** e-mail: sjuanitalop@yahoo.com address: carrera 2 # 30b-52, torre 3, apto. 106, parque residencial barbados iii. san mateo. soacha, colombia. this article was received on december 15th, 2006 and accepted on march 23, 2009. lópez clavijo universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras10 introduction the new trends in our global world have turned the use of english into a must; for this reason, esp-english for specific purposescourses are now considered an excellent strategy to work on. in my school context, it is expected that english in high school fulfills special needs in chemistry because a group of 10th grade students started a connection to a sena (servicio nacional de aprendizaje, an institution for technical education) program called “chemical samples analysis”. creative thinking theory is the core of fernando mazuera school’s institutional project and, as a consequence, an elt syllabus with emphasis on chemistry was designed. a chemistry teacher helped with the classification of topics and to sequence them according to her knowledge and experience. for the development of this project, principles of action research and innovation were used taking into account the students’, teachers’ and researcher’s views and needs. review of literature the theoretical constructs that illuminated this study cover aspects of syllabus and course design, creative thinking, and esp (english for specific purposes). “syllabus is a statement of content which is used as the basis for planning courses of various kinds” (nunan, 1998, p. 6). in other words, it is the teaching-learning program which includes the hours of instruction, activities, resources, competences and materials in a creative way. in table 1. kinds of syllabuses (based on graves, 2000). type of syllabus definition structural or formal it contains the grammatical notions of simplicity and complexity phonology / grammar / lexicon and seeks for the development of linguistic skills. situational it is related to the context in which language is used and is focused on situations. topical / thematic it refers to the language used to talk about a topic, such as family, food, hobbies. functional it talks about the purpose for which a person uses the language: to persuade, apologize, express preferences… in other words, it has to do with communicative functions. competency-based it attempts to specify and teach the language and behaviours needed in a given situation. task-based it refers to interactions whose purpose is to get something done. tasks were seen as a way to promote classroom learning that focused on the processes of using language rather than language products and on meaning as opposed to form (nunan, 1998). content based it includes subject matters other than language itself, where the students learn another subject such as history or math through the l2. skill based it consists of the use of channels or modes for applying and understanding the language for purposes such as reading, writing, listening, or speaking. texts based it focuses on understanding and analysing texts on a number of levels; among them are lexical, grammatical, discourse, and sociocultural. an english syllabus with emphasis on chemistry: a proposal for 10th graders of a public school in colombia profile 11, 2009. issn 1657-0790. bogotá, colombia. pages 9-27 11 order to lend accuracy towards its design and functionality, graves (2000) mentions some key aspects to take into account. a syllabus has to respond to students’ expectations of the course and needs; it has to take into account teacher’s opinions on contents that students can learn; and it must keep in mind resources and constraints, and the organizing principle(s). the next concept to be considered was the type of syllabus, an important issue in order to decide upon the one to be designed. as a way of providing a general picture on the different kinds of syllabuses and to understand key aspects of each one, i took into consideration graves’ proposal (2000). the different kinds of syllabuses are shown in table 1. the next aspects to be examined in order to design the syllabus were creativity and thinking, two factors that are particularly important for my school institutional project (pei = proyecto educativo institucional). they are described in the following paragraphs: “creativity is the trigger that gets the technological, cultural, financial, intellectual and personal advances. it is the product of an interaction between a person and his/her context” (sternberg, 1997, p. 26). thinking, on the other hand, “is the cognitive and affective process that trains mental aptitudes which are to remember, classify, infer, characterize, interpret, distinguish, evaluate, summarize, compare, discuss, propose, and value” (romero & pineda, 2001, p. 24). according to sternberg (1997), creative work consists of the application of three types of thinking which are extremely connected. they are as follows: synthetic ability, the possibility to generate new and interesting ideas and to make spontaneous connections between ideas, or groups of things; analytical ability includes convergent thinking. it requires critical thinking and appraisal as a person analyzes and evaluates thoughts, ideas, and possible solutions; and practical ability refers to the capacity to translate abstractions and theories into realistic applications. creative thinking is also tightly linked to divergent and convergent thinking, but mostly to divergent, which allows learners to be aware of the facts that are common to most people but inside, provides different perspectives to understand instead of memorizing, and to discover and solve different situations that multiple contexts have (romero & pineda, 2001). in addition to that, creative thinking involves inventing something new or original. it also includes skills such as flexibility, originality, fluency, elaboration, brainstorming, modification, imagery, associative thinking, attribute listing, metaphorical thinking, and forced relationships. the aim of creative thinking is to stimulate curiosity and promote divergence (lamb, 2001). the application of creativity is the ability to generate new ideas by combining, changing, or reapplying existing ideas. creativity is also an attitude: the ability to accept change and newness, a willingness to play with ideas and possibilities, a flexibility of outlook, the habit of enjoying the good, while looking for ways to improve it. creative people work hard constantly to improve ideas and solutions by making gradual alterations and refinements in their works (harris, 1998). the previous aspects showed that the syllabus based on chemical sample analysis needed to be well oriented, using and adapting authentic material in a well-displayed way, and allowing students to apply creative thinking. the next theoretical aspect considered in this study was that concerning english for specific purposes or esp. due to the convenio that my school made with sena, and taking into account government programs like “teenagers in action” lópez clavijo universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras12 and “labor competences”, a new academic tendency arose which consisted of giving technical studies and job opportunities to the students as soon as they finished high school. for this reason i wanted to give those learners the possibility to learn english with emphasis on a specific field such as chemistry. according to johns (in uscategui, 1996), esp courses are divided into english for occupational purposes (eop) and english for academic purposes (eap). i concentrated on the latter one as it includes eap and est (english for science and technology). an esp course demands serious and organized work, the analysis of students’ needs to design a syllabus, and the pedagogical adaptation of the materials. that course may also have to develop specific kinds of knowledge, in my case chemistry, as well as knowledge of the english language. in regard to this, kennedy & bolitho (1984) offer a wide explanation on the effectiveness of using and teaching vocabulary and, at the same time, provide examples for us, as teachers, to develop this ability. summarizing, in a text we have to take into account technical abbreviations, symbols and formulae, highly technical vocabulary, subtechnical vocabulary, the formation of a word, its grammatical identification, and the relations between words. sometimes it is easier to think that vocabulary is an easy issue or merely a list of words but, on the contrary, it is enriched with lots of meanings and uses that we, as teachers, have to be aware of. when examining research conducted on esp, i found two studies: one of them took place in a high school environment using english with emphasis on electronics and the other one used accounting for first semester students in a university setting. uscategui (1996) conducted a study on english with emphasis on electronics for high school students at the don bosco center, in bogotá. the researcher wanted to help students to understand readings on electronics in english and to find the best material according to students’ interest and needs. at that institution, students in 9th level choose a vocational course in mechanics, drafting, electricity, or carpentry. in contrast, at my school the students in 10th grade select a technical subject in electronics, chemistry, accounting or design. the author also highlighted the lack of esp courses in technical schools and the huge necessity of the students to use science and technology information in english. he also found that students’ motivation in english increased when he, as the english teacher, used some readings on electronics in his classes. besides that, team work with a subject matter teacher was essential to guarantee the content’s effectivenes. finally, uscategui (1996) chose a content based syllabus, used authentic materials, and adapted texts to reinforce and develop english language skills. another study was conducted by rico & talero (1997), titled “a syllabus and material design for first level english students of the accounting faculty at universidad san martín”. one characteristic of this project was that they chose a functional syllabus with the intention of responding to students regarding the accounting area’s needs and expectations. they also used cooperative learning theory and designed special materials to work on. it was found that the syllabus fostered an increase in students’ motivation and application of the language in real communicative situations. an english syllabus with emphasis on chemistry: a proposal for 10th graders of a public school in colombia profile 11, 2009. issn 1657-0790. bogotá, colombia. pages 9-27 13 research method fernando mazuera villegas is a coeducational school located in bosa. it has three shifts and a total of 5,800 students, 2,000 in elementary and 3,800 in secondary. this project was focused on 10th grade students because they started the implementation of the new chemistry syllabus based on the modules given by sena. there are 7 courses, in both the afternoon and morning shifts with an average of 45 48 students per class. they are between 14 and 16 years old. there is a total of 279 students on the afternoon shift, 160 of them are female. as mazuera school has a major degree in technology, at the beginning of the year 2006, each student in 10th grade chose a field to specialize in technology (chemistry, design, accounts, and electronics). currently on the afternoon shift there are 112 students in accounts, 183 pupils in design, 39 in electricity, and 33 participants in analysis of chemistry samples. this study is characterized by being innovative and following action research procedures. first, as an innovation and research project it offers something really new which is the application of esp theory in english with emphasis on chemistry for students of a public high school. and it looks for the improvement of one’s standard of living as regards working or for academic goals. secondly, action research procedure, as defined by burns (1999), has the following three main characteristics: 1) it is carried out by an in-service teacher; 2) it is collaborative because it involves people from the community; and 3) it seeks a social change. in action research, i can provide evidence of the aspect of community when the students participate expressing their ideas and needs. besides that, teachers get involved in the solution of academic issues which may give support in students’ future jobs and professional lives. finally, to fulfill one of the objectives of this project, i looked for improvement in our students’ life through the implementation, application and monitoring of a new academic program which would offer our community different options towards labor and career expectations after students leave school. as a way to provide our students a different approach towards english, and taking into account their academic and employment needs, the idea of designing a technology-based syllabus for 10th grade students to develop the english learning processes involved seven steps. the first one had in mind the necessity of using english for specific purposes, with high school students who would apply this knowledge in their future life. second, some meetings with teachers in charge of technology at school were organized in order to learn the contents required by sena. third, the documentation processes about theories on syllabus design, english for specific purposes and creative thinking were taking into consideration. fourth, the collection of specific chemistry literature in english as resource materials to sequence and develop the course allowed me to examine authors like wentworth (1996), porcaro (2001), willett (1987), perry (1963), eisenbert (1978), and hess (1955), among others. fifth, i designed the instruments to collect data and applied interviews and questionnaires to teachers and students while keeping a journal. then, i analysed and organized the data gathered. finally, i designed the english syllabus for 10th grade students by using preliminary measurements for trials and sample analysis in the first semester, and chemical analysis based on samples during the second semester. it should be noted that i took into account the curricular guidelines for the chemical samples analysis program and followed the steps suggested by graves (2000) in syllabus design. lópez clavijo universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras14 before designing the syllabus for 10th grade, i organized the contents for high school as shown in figure 1 below: figure 1. chemistry contents for high school. at school, our teaching plan is 40 weeks per year divided into four academic terms, each one two months approximately. for this reason, i organized 1 unit per term on a weekly basis of three-hour classes. at the end, the design of the english language teaching syllabus with emphasis on chemistry for 10th grade was accomplished, taking into account the curricular guidelines for the chemical samples analysis program and following the steps suggested by graves (2000) in syllabus design. i decided to work with 10th grade students on the afternoon shift as that shift coincided with my work. one friday, i went to their chemistry lab class, introduced myself, and explained the study i had started. i shared with them the consent forms for their parents as they were not older than eighteen. i also gave the consent forms to my colleagues at school and to the sena teacher. i designed a letter explaining the project and asking for their permission to participate in the research by recording four main questions. furthermore, i emphasized the fact that their answers would provide ideas for the design of an english syllabus with emphasis on chemistry and would probably be reported in an article. of the 33 students enrolled in the chemistry program, i received 15 authorized consent forms. i obtained data from three sources in order to triangulate them. first, a piloted questionnaire that intended to obtain specific information about students’ interest in english and their opinion about the application of english with emphasis on chemistry, was administered (see appendix 1). the second instrument was teacher’s audiotaped interviews which were applied in the afternoon school shift to three chemistry teachers, two english teachers, and a design teacher who had had experience abroad as a graphic designer (see appendix 2). the interview included four questions which tended to gather information about their teaching experiences and points of view towards english with emphasis on chemistry. later on, i interviewed a sena teacher who had been working on the program “analysis of chemistry samples”. he gave examples of applying english outside the school, especially in the working environment. finally, the last instrument was a teacher-researcher journal which i carried out describing the processes and insights of this research study. results i analyzed the data, first by doing a summary of each one of the items gathered using mind maps. then i established the patterns from which i constructed the categories and finally, i supported them with examples presented in different ways. to identify each one of the participants (teachers) i used the first letter of their names as follows: an english syllabus with emphasis on chemistry: a proposal for 10th graders of a public school in colombia profile 11, 2009. issn 1657-0790. bogotá, colombia. pages 9-27 15 • school chemistry teachers: m.f, c.s, and d.c. • design teacher: a.m. • school english teachers: e.o. and m.b. • sena chemistry teacher: j.c. as their answers were typed and organized following an indexation system, the interview number and line number was provided when i mentioned a piece of data as evidence. from the analysis of the information gathered i found three categories, they were named in a metaphoric way: the joy of communication, opening paths, and life projection. the joy of communication one big concern in students and teachers’ answers throughout the questionnaires and in the interviews was the view of english as a useful tool in order to get information. “[…] it is necessary to reinforce english in 10th grade because the specialized bibliography comes in this language” m.f. (in. 1 l. 11-12). “[…] it would allow students to acquire a big knowledge as the majority of technical books are in english, besides that this is a universal language” a.m. (in. 2 l. 66-68). “[…] it would be important since it consists of widening the literature… to acquire technical vocabulary and furthermore the most specialized books are in english” d.c. (in. 5 l. 292-293). as noticed in the previous pieces of data, there is a big understanding in the community that most of the science and technology news, reports, essays and literature are written in english and, as this language is considered universal, it is essential to manage it mainly for academic purposes. another aspect that can be deduced from the evidence is that from teachers’ experiences at universities and in life, they fece the application of english in academic matters through different resources such as books, manuals, magazines and the internet. in contrast to teachers’ answers, the students’ view of english is that 37.5 % considered this language useful, 18.75% important and very important, and 12.5% important (see figure 2). figure 2. students’ views about english. this means that english is viewed as a tool for performing specific tasks. another important issue analyzed is the relevance given by teachers to manage specific vocabulary as evidenced in the following comments: “[…] it would be more convenient to give scientific vocabulary focused on that subject and at the same time reading comprehension on chemistry”. e.o. (in. 3 l. 197-198). “[…] numbers are fundamentals, the numbers related to chemistry language like mol, atomic weight, and abrogate number”. c.s. (in. 4 l. 259264). and j.c. states the same as he uses translations in his chemistry classes; in addition to that, he says: “[…] as colombians do not develop science and technology we need to acquire them through the lópez clavijo universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras16 official language that is english” j.c. (in. 6 l. 348350). some people think that when we talk about technical english; we are only talking about a list of words. however, it is more than that. it goes further and has to do with reading without translating with a certain level of understanding and applying strategies to get information. it should be mentioned that the majority of teachers is focused on the idea of developing skills such as reading with understanding in order to foster students’ getting and using written information. nevertheless, only one teacher, the one who had been abroad, thinks that it is essential to work on three main skills; first, to understand what a person says; second, to speak; and third, to read with a certain level of understanding. a.m. (in. 2 l 107-119). in contrast to that, one of the chemistry teachers sees oral production as a complicated task to carry out. it could be convenient that our students acquire abilities in the english language to be used for getting information on the latest innovations, research, and creations in the chemistry field; and, at the same time, that students understand and do new things with that. it could also be possible that learners develop one language skill more than another, but our duties as teachers are to develop the english learning process that includes the four language skills. according to students’ answers, i noticed that they are more interested in learning english by applying all language skills. as shown in figure 3: 86.67 % of the students think listening, speaking, reading and writing must be taken into account for the development of the course. figure 3. language abilities to learn. opening paths the second category, opening paths, is related to course organization. thirteen students over 15, that is 86.67%, agree on the idea of reinforcing english by using the technology subjects. this fact demonstrates the necessity of changing the way english is currently taught, especially in high school. according to the analysis of the information gathered, the best way to organize the course is to teach basic contents from sixth to ninth levels and provide specialized english in high school as this organization will allow using english in a communicative way instead of as an isolated subject. “[…] first, we need to change the way we learn, here (in colombia) we emphasise grammar too much, i think it is very important and must be the firs step, but then we need to apply grammar and in that point we have failed” a.m. (in.2 l. 146-159). “[…] one of the advantages of organizing the course in this way is to get better results and also keeping in mind the bilingual bogotá’s goals” m.f. (in. 1 l. 47-48). “[…] this organization (specialized english in high school) would allow more time for the learning process” e.o. (in. 3 l. 227). an english syllabus with emphasis on chemistry: a proposal for 10th graders of a public school in colombia profile 11, 2009. issn 1657-0790. bogotá, colombia. pages 9-27 17 to be proficient in english is a long life process and to accomplish it english has to be taught following the way we learn spanish. first, listening; then, speaking; next, reading, and finally, writing. the organization of the course in this way seems to be the best option to accomplish the goal of learning and performing the language by using all the linguistic skills. based on the meetings i held with c.s., one of the chemistry teachers, i was able to understand and organize the contents for the syllabus; for this reason, it is recommended that team work with the chemistry teacher be established and maintained as this work allowed teachers to correlate topics and turn the application of english into a real context. the permanent coordination between chemistry teachers and english teachers could be important. “[…] the idea would be that the chemistry syllabus will be taught at the same time as the english one and that a chemistry teacher have a good command of english” c.s. (in. 4 l 246-250). the last category mentions the future views and implications in students. life projection another theme that emerges from the data analysis was the effectiveness of this kind of courses in the students’ future life. english with emphasis on chemistry is seen as a way to gain a better quality of life in academic or working fields as this population may have more knowledge in terms of foreign language usage in a content area. fifty-three percent (53.33%) of students answered that they chose the specialization in chemistry based on personal challenge and 40%have done it as a working project goal (see figure 4). figure 4. purposes to reinforce chemistry. in our school context, there are very few students who will receive financial support from their parents to pursue an undergraduate career. most of the parents, due to their social condition of poverty and lack of basic needs, demand that their children work as soon as they finish 11th grade. therefore, the opportunity to finish high school with a working or study option has opened minds and different perspectives about the family economical condition. this situation also turned the motivation of our students towards english in a meaningful way as they would be reinforcing the specialization they chose by using chemistry concepts, theories, vocabulary, experiments and information. it also allowed improving students’ english performance after having studied the language for six years. mazuera students are aware of their strength in reading, but at the same time, their expectations regarding this new course are focused on developing chemistry knowledge, reading strategies, management of technical vocabulary and the use of communicative abilities (see figure 5). in other words, they want to take advantage of the learning possibilities to be applied in future life projects. lópez clavijo universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras18 figure 5. students’ expectations about the course. syllabus proposal to accomplish my main objective in this study, which was to design an elt syllabus with emphasis on chemistry and according to the categories for conceptualizing content, proposed by graves (2000), the language focus of this syllabus is content; students will learn and acquire specific skills in another subject through english. for this reason, i choose a content-based syllabus (see appendix 3). nevertheless, i need to clarify that my biggest concern was not to teach chemistry but to give students a different approach to english as an important tool to search and understand chemistry. as the pei of my institution is based on creative thinking, i decided to bring advertisements, taken from english magazines, to be analyzed and used as a starting point to open students’ minds toward creativity in other contexts. as creative thinking is also important for the development of meaningful learning, and in order to apply all of the theories mentioned in the literature review, i included a variety of graphic strategies such as conceptual maps, synoptic maps, spider webs, diagrams, and graphic micro essays, which allow developing divergent thinking. for the syllabus with emphasis on chemistry see appendix 3. discussion at the beginning of this research, the main objective stated was to design an english language syllabus with emphasis on chemistry including theories on creative thinking and english for specific purposes. the opinions and expectations of students and teachers were analyzed and taken into account. even though the development of this investigation was very demanding, i considered it worthy as it has established a new proposal for my school context and the students’ current needs. first of all, this study has reinforced the idea of re-organizing the english course in high school as students and teachers have also corroborated it while doing an analysis on their needs and experiences during their teaching-learning process. another important conclusion is that sometimes we as english teachers have forgotten the way we learnt this language. it was not done working on isolated drills on each skill, but in a permanent and holistic process. although most teachers agree on the idea of developing reading skills, students are also interested in learning english for communicative purposes. equally important has been the fact that this new course organization intends to provide different approaches towards the effectiveness and application of english in meaningful contexts and, at the same time, offers better opportunities for an early job option; it also intends to facilitate students’ enrolling in undergraduate programs. in fact, the final product of this investigation was the syllabus with emphasis on chemistry, which was expected to fulfil the community interests. i have included contents as the base starting point and have proposed different kind of activities that seek the activation of creative thinking. besides that, i have reviewed a lot of concepts, subject structure and chemistry vocabulary while working with another teacher. an english syllabus with emphasis on chemistry: a proposal for 10th graders of a public school in colombia profile 11, 2009. issn 1657-0790. bogotá, colombia. pages 9-27 19 although the idea of creating something new is welcome by teachers, the question that arises is who else will want to be in charge of guiding english with emphasis on chemistry? as one of the english teachers mentioned: “[…] the majority of english language teachers have not been trained to teach a content area” m.b. (in. 7 l. 495-498). limitations in spite of the fact that i was able to interview different teachers, i could evidence that some of the other colleagues from both shifts were not interested in participating in the process as if their opinions might generate some kind of commitment, especially for the english teachers. consequently, as regards creative thinking theories, the generation of new ideas and their acceptance is a process that requires time. it was not easy to find chemistry material in english. all of it must be adapted to the students’ needs and expectations by doing it in a way that involves the development of the four language skills. according to the syllabus designed, there are plenty of activities in which the compiled text can be used. there are still many libraries to visit, such as andes, externado, salle, and nacional in order to look in depth for more bibliography. besides that, some of the libraries which have excellent english literature on chemistry require an affiliation while the public ones (tintal, virgilio barco and tunal) do not have specialized literature in english. another limitation was the lack of time to gather chemistry resources and to meet with sena teachers outside of the school. fortunately, some other interviews could be conducted with sena teachers and students enrolled in the program “chemical samples analysis” as a way to contrast opinions and experiences inside and outside the school context. furthermore, english audiovisual material with emphasis on chemistry needs to be imported and it is too expensive. hence, for the sustainability of this project, the school administrators need to provide financial support to buy videos, tv conferences, shows, interviews and programs, experiments and other resources related to this field. finally, one of the biggest limitations was the english teachers’ commitment towards their engagement in the process of doing an investigation as the teacher researcher worked alone. pedagogical implications for the development of this syllabus it is necessary that english teachers, first, reach a consensus on the importance of changing the current way english is taught; that is, not only for one language skill but for all of them. second, english teachers must get familiar with chemistry lexis, concepts and reading style; indeed, that implies a change in their attitude towards teaching english with emphasis on a subject matter and third, collaborative work agreement among english teachers must be reached. besides that, a reorganization of the schedule when students attend english classes is needed due to the fact that only 33 over a total of 280 learners are taking the specialization of “chemical samples analysis”. this means that in a 10th grade course of 42 students, only 4 or 5 are attending this technology specialization. all 10th grade students go to technology classes at the same time and while some of them go to a design class, others go to electricity, accounting or chemistry. taking that into account, the english teachers need to be placed in charge of other specialized english courses with different emphases, and the lópez clavijo universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras20 language department should design syllabuses for the other subjects. this implies that english teachers work collaboratively among themselves and with technology teachers as well. some other opinions outside my school context may be taken into account. first, an interview with mr. uscátegui, the english teacher who conducted a study in 1996 based on syllabus design and electronics material adaptation for teaching english, can be done as he, based on his experience, has some practical recommendations on the application of esp courses in high school. secondly, an interview with diana montenegro, an english teacher who works at sena, who agreed to participate in the interview, would be advisable. third, sena students enrolled in the program, of “chemical samples analysis”, could be interviewed in order to get information about their english needs during their undergraduate studies. as this project was the first attempt to apply esp in connection to a science course using english as a means of acquiring knowledge meaningfully, the same process could be done with the other subjects like accounting, design, and electricity but in both 10th and 11th grades. however, a similar commitment to the one i have demonstrated is needed to support the challenges of our pedagogical practices as well as to fulfil students’ expectations. along with this, the school has to make a big economical effort by investing in magazines and other periodicals and by acquiring books and audiovisual resources that enrich the teaching – learning process in this new course. as a last recommendation, this research would be enriched further by implementing and monitoring the elt syllabus with emphasis on chemistry and by designing lesson plans and adapting chemistry material in guides for the coming year, to ensure the development of the goals proposed. an english syllabus with emphasis on chemistry: a proposal for 10th graders of a public school in colombia profile 11, 2009. issn 1657-0790. bogotá, colombia. pages 9-27 21 references burns, a. (1999). collaborative action research for english language teaching. cambridge: cup. eisenbert, a. (1978). reading technical books. how to get the most of your readings. nj: prentice hall. graves, k. (2000). designing language courses a guide for teachers. boston: newbury house teacher development. harris, r. (1998). introduction to creative thinking. retrieved july 15, 2006 from http://www. virtualsalt.com hess, f. (1955). chemistry made it simple. ny: doubleday publishing group. kennedy, c., & bolitho, r. (1984). five skills and activities in esp. london: macmillan. lamb, a. (2001). critical and creative thinking. bloom’s taxonomy. retrieved august 30, 2006 from eduscapes web site: http://eduscapes.com/tap/ topic69.htm nunan, d. (1998). syllabus design. cambridge: cambridge university press. perry, j. (1963). chemical engineer’s handbook. tokyo: mcgraw-hill. porcaro, j. (2001). forum. integrating authentic materials and language skills in english for science and technology instruction. forum, 39(4), 30-32. rico, f., & talero, n. (1997). a syllabus and material design for first level english students of the accounting faculty at universidad san martín. ma. in applied linguistics in teaching english as a foreign language. santafé de bogotá: universidad distrital francisco josé de caldas. romero, i., & pineda, j. (2001). cómo desarrollar el pensamiento creativo. bogotá: afán gráfico ltda. sternberg, r. (1997). la creatividad en una cultura conformista, un desafío de las masas. barcelona: paidós. uscátegui, r. (1996). design, adaptation and implementation of electronic texts to improve reading comprehension skill and proficiency in electronics. ma program in applied linguistics to teaching of english as a foreign language. facultad ciencias de la educación. santafé de bogotá: universidad distrital francisco josé de caldas. wenthworth, r. a. d. (1996). experiments in general chemistry. usa: houghton mifflin company. willett, j. (1987). gas chromatography. london: john wiley & sons. about the author sandra juanita lópez clavijo holds a b.a. in spanish and english from universidad la gran colombia and a specialization in english as a second language. she is currently a master’s candidate in applied linguistics to the tefl at universidad distrital. she works at fernando mazuera villegas public school in bogotá. lópez clavijo universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras22 appendix 1: students' questionnaire ied fernando mazuera villegas elt syllabus design with emphasis on technology for 10th grade dear students, i am developing a research project about an elt syllabus design with emphasis on technology for 10th grade as part of the professional development program “red profile” at the universidad nacional de colombia. for this reason, your opinion is very important to add elements to the syllabus. write an x in front of the best option for you. 1. you consider english to be: __ useful __ interesting __ boring __ difficult __ easy __ important __ not important __ very important 2. how do you rate your english level? __ excellent __ good __ regular __ bad 3. how do you prefer to express yourself in english? __ orally __ in a written way __ both 4. at which language skills do you perform the best? __ listening __ speaking __ reading __ writing 5. what was your personal reason for choosing the program “analysis of chemical samples”? __ personal challenge or knowledge __ working projection __ school requirement __ other 6. do you consider changing or reorganizing the english course necessary, in order to take into account the technological specializations? __ yes __ no why? _______________________________________________________________ 7. if we reinforce english with emphasis on chemistry, what do you think must be included in that course? an english syllabus with emphasis on chemistry: a proposal for 10th graders of a public school in colombia profile 11, 2009. issn 1657-0790. bogotá, colombia. pages 9-27 23 __ chemistry knowledge __ reading comprehension strategies __ management of technical vocabulary __ performance of communicative skills __ all of the above 8. which abilities should be included in that course? __ reading and listening __ reading and writing __ reading and speaking __ listening, speaking, reading and writing lópez clavijo universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras24 appendix 2: teachers' interview protocol ied fernando mazuera villegas elt syllabus design with emphasis on technology for 10th grade dear teacher, i am developing a research project about an elt syllabus design with emphasis on technology for 10th grade as part of the professional development program “red profile” at the universidad nacional de colombia. for this reason, i ask for your participation in this interview. i know the analysis of this interview will provide meaningful insights and ideas for designing the syllabus with emphasis on chemistry for 10th grade students. 1. do you consider it necessary to reinforce english with emphasis on chemistry for 10th graders? __ yes why? ______________________________________________________ ____________________________________________________________ __ no why? ______________________________________________________ ____________________________________________________________ 2. from your academic and pedagogical background, which could be your contribution to the development of this english with emphasis on chemistry subject? 3. what are the communicative skills that the subject in question should develop? 4. with the english course we want to reinforce the knowledge and use of this language in the technology area. in your opinion, what procedures would be the most appropriate for the organization of this course? a) in 10th and 11th grades create a different subject called “technical english with emphasis on chemistry ”. b) what advantages would this subject organization bring? c) to join the english contents from 6th to 9th levels and in 10th and 11th teach english with emphasis on the technology specializations (chemistry, design, accounting and electronics), what implications would this have? d) other. which one(s)? why? thank you for your collaboration and opinions. an english syllabus with emphasis on chemistry: a proposal for 10th graders of a public school in colombia profile 11, 2009. issn 1657-0790. bogotá, colombia. pages 9-27 25 a p p e n d ix 3 : e n g li sh l a n g u a g e t e a ch in g s y ll a b u s w it h e m p h a si s o n c h e m is tr y f o r 1 0 th g ra d e u n it s 1 -3 : p re li m in a ry m e a su re m e n ts f o r tr ia ls a n d s a m p le a n a ly si s (fi rs t se m e st e r) . u n it 4 : c h e m ic a l a n a ly si s b a se d o n s a m p le s (s e co n d s e m e st e r) . u n it to p ic s v o ca b u la ry g ra m m a r & e x p re ss io n s li st e n in g , sp e a k in g & p h o n ic s r e a d in g & w ri ti n g g a m e s, p ro je ct s & e x p e ri m e n ts 1 sc ie nc e an d c he m is tr y m ea su re m en t le ng th , m as s, v ol um e, d en si ty , te m pe ra tu re la bo ra to ry m an ua l. li st in g te ch ni ca l vo ca bu la ry u si ng c on te xt to un de rs ta nd w or ds -c om m on gl as sw ar e eq ui pm en t -a ss oc ia tin g w or ds w ith im ag es . g re et in gs i’d lo ve to so lo ng li ke w is e it’ s a pl ea su re to m ee t y ou v er b to b e q ua nt ifi er s th er e’s / th er e ar e w h – q ue st io ns i b eg y ou r pa rd on ? si m pl e pr es en t te ns e im pe ra tiv es pr es en t pr og re ss iv e h ol d on a s ec on d m ay i he lp y ou h ow m uc h is it ? -g et tin g to k no w e ac h ot he r -f in d so m eo ne w ho … -l is te ni ng fo r sp ec ifi c in fo rm at io n -p ro no un ci ng p ai re d co ns on an ts : w h /c h /p h /t h /s h . -h av in g sh or t c on ve rs at io ns de sc ri bi ng o bj ec ts a nd a na ly zi ng m ea su re m en t c ha ra ct er is tic s -l is te ni ng & fi lli ng in a g ap pe d di al og ue -f iv e –e r s ou nd s ar e no t s pe lle d th e sa m e: m ot he r/ fir st /n ur se /d oc to r/ ea rn -th e se cr et s ci en tis t a ge nt a ct iv ity -e xp re ss in g ro ut in es in a la bo ra to ry -r ol e pl ay : b uy in g c om m on gl as sw ar e & e qu ip m en t -f ou r ei le tt er s do n ot s ou nd th e sa m e: r ec ei ve /n ei gh bo r/ tu rk ey / th ey . -r ea di ng : w ha t’s th is m ad e of ? -a pp ly in g sk im m in g & sc an ni ng o n a re ad in g. -r ea di ng & u nd er st an di ng co m ic s -r ea di ng s ab ou t m ea su re m en t -i de nt ify in g de fin iti on s -d efi ni tio ns v s. e xa m pl e id ea s an d ex am pl es -c la ss es o f a dv er tis em en t -r ea di ng : m er cu ry r is ks -s af et y an d ho us ek ee pi ng ru le s. -m ak in g a cl as s bo ok u si ng te ch ni ca l vo ca bu la ry -d es ig n ph on ic s fla sh ca rd s -th e w or d or de r ga m e -p os te r de si gn w ith lin ea r, sq ua re a nd c ub it m ea su re m en t c ap ac ity an d w ei gh t. -th e na m e ga m e -d es ig n a ph on ic s fli pfla p -e xp er im en t: so m e m ea su re m en ts o f m as s an d vo lu m e -t ri – fo ld la b ru le s. -a dv er tis em en t c re at io n. lópez clavijo universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras26 2 m at te r -p hy si ca l an d ch em ic al pr op er tie s an d ch an ge s -k in ds o f m at te r st ru ct ur e of m at te r: -e le ct ro ns -p ro to ns -n eu tr on s pe ri od ic ch ar t o f t he el em en ts : -g ro up s -p er io ds a ss oc ia tin g w or ds by u si ng m in d an d cl us te r m ap s -i de nt ify in g tr ue an d fa ls e co gn at es -l is tin g ad je ct iv es (a nt on ym s) el em en ts ’ g ro up w eb m ap si m pl e pa st te ns e pa st p ro gr es si ve w ha t’s u p w ha t’s th e m at te r? le t’s … w ha t d oe s he lo ok lik e? -p re se nt & p as t pe rf ec t -c om pa ra tiv es & su pe rl at iv es -c an , b e ab le to , be g oo d at , b e af ra id o f. ta g qu es tio ns h ow a bo ut w ha t a bo ut w hy d on ’t w e… -a sk in g fo r an d de sc ri bi ng ph ys ic al a pp ea ra nc e of p eo pl e -u si ng fo rm al a nd in fo rm al qu es tio ns in s ho rt in te rv ie w s -i nv iti ng fr ie nd s to d o di ffe re nt ac tiv iti es -p ro no un ci ng o w s ou nd s : h ow vs . l ow -u si ng p un ct ua tio n in o ra l pr od uc tio n. -u nd er st an di ng in fo rm at io n fr om a v id eo -t al ki ng a bo ut fe el in gs -e a sp el lin g do es n ot s ou nd th e sa m e: g re at /m ea ls /f ea th er . -e xc ha ng in g kn ow le dg e ab ou t th e in si gh ts o f t he a rt ic le “ w ha t ab ou t fl uo ri de ?” -a ct in g an d fil m in g m en de le v’ s lif e -d ou bl e <o o > sp el lin g do es n ot so un d th e sa m e so un d: s ch oo l vs . b oo k. -t ra ns fe rr in g in fo rm at io n fr om a te xt to a c ha rt -a dv er tis em en t a na ly si s: li fe s av er s g um m ie s so ur s -l in ki ng p ar ag ra ph s by us in g se qu en ce c on ne ct or s -u si ng il lu st ra tio ns to un de rs ta nd a te xt -i de nt ify in g pr on ou ns in a te xt -a dv er tis em en t a na ly si s: “s on ic ar e in te lli cl ea n sy st em ” -r ea di ng : a to m h is to ry a nd th eo ry -b io gr ap hi es : d em oc ri tu s an d le uc ip pu s -a dv er tis em en t a na ly si s: “m ot or ok r w ith it un es ” -k ey c on ce pt s yn th es is -d es ig n a ph on ic s fli p fl ap g am e: w ha t a re th es e pe op le d oi ng ? -e xp er im en t: se pa ra tio n of a m ix tu re b y pa pe r ch ro m at og ra ph y -c re at e a fo ld o ve r w ith o ne o f t he m od el s: b oh r, th om ps on , r ut he rf or d, s tr od ng er , o r su m m er fie ld . -s pe lli ng g am e -d es ig n a ph on ic s fli p fl ap -p er so na lit y qu iz -c re at io n of a m on ol in gu al d ic tio na ry w ith c he m ic al le xi s -e la bo ra te a la dd er w ith c om pa ra tiv es a nd su pe rl at iv es -d es ig n a ph on ic s fli p fl ap -o pp os ite s ga m e 3 c he m ic al b on d n om en cl at ur e -o xi de s -b as es -s al ts -a ci ds st oi ch io m et ry te ch ni ca l ab br ev ia tio ns sy m bo ls a nd fo rm ul ae u si ng c on te xt to un de rs ta nd w or ds w or d fo rm at io n fu tu re te ns es m od al a ux ili ar ie s i d on ’t th in k so th at ’s ab su rd so d o i i d o to o c on di tio na ls if i w er e yo u… . i w ou ld u se d to i h at e it w he n… i a m ti re d of … i’m s or ry fo r -t al ki ng w ith a fr ie nd a bo ut fu tu re pl an s -a sk in g fo r pe rm is si on a nd g iv in g ad vi ce . -t w o < o i> s ou nd s ar e no t s pe lle d th e sa m e: v oi ce v s. b oy -r ep or tin g fin di ng s of in or ga ni c co m po un ds in c hi ps -d o an in te rv ie w b as ed o n le w is fo rm ul ae . -th e si le nt le tt er s w r , k n , g n , an d g h : w ri st , k no w , g no m e, a nd ni gh ts . -e xp re ss in g un re al c on di tio ns -th e pr on un ci at io n of : d ra w v s. ca ug ht -r ep or tin g w eb s ite s sp ec ia liz ed in c he m is tr y. -l is te ni ng to a d ia lo gu e ab ou t ch em is tr y ap pl ic at io ns in d ai ly li fe . -h is to ry o f p er io di c ch ar t o f el em en ts -o cc ur re nc es o f t he e le m en ts -r ea di ng : m er cu ry : o ur pr ef er re d po is on -s um m ar iz in g an d or ga ni zi ng in fo rm at io n in a b ox -a dv er tis em en t a na ly si s: “th e to ug he st to pe o n pl an et ea rt h” -f ol lo w in g st ep s to w ri te la bo ra to ry re co rd s -k ey c on ce pt s yn th es is -i de nt ify in g th e di ffe re nt ty pe s of te xt s -a dv er tis em en t a na ly si s: “th e to ug he st ta pe o n pl an et ea rt h” . -d es ig ni ng a l ot te ry w ith p er io di c ch ar t o f t he el em en ts . -d es ig n a ph on ic s fli p fl ap -c re at io n of a n ew g am e us in g th e fa m ily e le m en ts -c re at io n of s ec re t c od es to id en tif y pe ri od ic c ha rt el em en ts g ro up s. -w or d an d pi ct ur e id en tifi ca tio n ga m e -d es ig n a ph on ic s fli pfla p -p ic ni c br ai n te as er -d oi ng a n ex pe ri m en t a nd pr es en tin g th e re su lts . -d es ig n a ph on ic s fli p fl ap . u n it to p ic s v o ca b u la ry g ra m m a r & e x p re ss io n s li st e n in g , sp e a k in g & p h o n ic s r e a d in g & w ri ti n g g a m e s, p ro je ct s & e x p e ri m e n ts an english syllabus with emphasis on chemistry: a proposal for 10th graders of a public school in colombia profile 11, 2009. issn 1657-0790. bogotá, colombia. pages 9-27 27 4 -c on se rv at io n of m at te r -d efi ni te pr op or tio ns g as es d en si ty o f g as es so lu tio ns -s ol ut e -s ol ve nt -s ol ub ili ty -s us pe ns io n -c on ce nt ra tio n -m et ho ds o f ex pr es si ng ph ys ic s an d ch em is tr y co nc en tr at io n. -m ol ar ity & m ol al ity -c ol lo id pr op er tie s b as ic c on ce pt s fo r sa m pl e an al ys is -c ol lo ca tio ns -p re fix es a nd su ffi xe s -o rg an iz in g pi ct ur es in to th e co rr ec t o rd er id en tifi ca tio n of w or d cl as s sy m bo ls a nd fo rm ul ae g ro up in g w or ds in to c at eg or ie s fi nd th e co rr ec t de fin iti on s u si ng b lo ck di ag ra m s u nd er st an di ng ta bl es u si ng li ne dr aw in gs a ss oc ia tin g w or ds us in g w eb m ap s. m od al s m us t/ h av e to a n ea t i de a i’m n ot s ur e i g ue ss pa ss iv e vo ic e g et a lo ng w ith b e fa m ili ar w ith k ee n on b e go od a t r ep or te d sp ee ch c on ne ct or s a lo ng w ith , a ls o, b y th e w ay , in de ed , a lth ou gh , ho w ev er , ne ve rt he le ss , de sp ite , m ea nw hi le , aft er w ar ds , u nl es s g er un ds a nd in fin iti ve s to b e fe d up -m ee tin g w ith g as es re se ar ch er s (r ol e pl ay ): b oi le , c ha rl es , a vo ga dr o, a nd g ay -l us sa c -d oi ng a s ho rt p re se nt at io n ab ou t th e en vi ro nm en t d am ag e ca us ed b y ch em ic al p ro du ct s. -f ou r ou le tt er s do n ot s ou nd th e sa m e: g ro un d /s ho ul de r / y ou / do ub le . li st en in g to a c on fe re nc e ab ou t th e co nt en ts o f h ea vy m et al s in m ar in e se aw ee ds fr om th e eg yp tia n co as t o f t he r ed s ea . -n ot e ta ki ng in a te ch ni ca l l ec tu re -i de nt ify in g ke y w or ds in a lis te ni ng a ct iv ity -e xp la in in g co llo id p ro pe rt ie s in je lly , e gg s an d bu tt er . -t w o ie le tt er s do n ot s ou nd th e sa m e: c hi ef /p ie . d es cr ib e pr oc es s an d pr oc ed ur es ex pr es si ng o pi ni on s ab ou t l iv in g in b og ot á -p ro no un ci ng : o r an d ar le tt er s: h or se /c ar /c ar ro t. -c on ne ct in g pa ra gr ap hs b y us in g se qu en ce c on ne ct or s -s um m ar iz in g an d or ga ni zi ng in fo rm at io n in a c ha rt . -a dv er tis em en t an al ys is :“ 10 0% w ho le g ra in n ew to n ba rs ” -u nd er st an di ng p ar ts o f a n ex pe ri m en t s uc h as p ur po se , pr oc ed ur e an d te st in g -u si ng c ap ita l l et te rs . -u nd er lin in g id ea s in te xt s. -c he m ic al e vo lu tio n of ga se ou s ai r po llu ta nt s do w nw in d of tr op ic al m eg ac iti es : m ex ic o c ity c as e st ud y. u si ng m ar gi na l n ot es -a dv er tis em en t a na ly si s: “n ew c re st le m on ic e to ot hp as te ” -r ea di ng : “ m es sa ge in a bo tt le ” -a dv er tis em en t a na ly si s: “th e be st r ad ar d et ec to r ev er m ad e” -r ea di ng s on m et ho ds o f ex pr es si ng p hy si cs a nd ch em is tr y co nc en tr at io n -c om m on m ar ki ng s an d sy m bo ls in a te xt -u si ng c ap ita l l et te rs . -h an di ng in e xp er im en ts re su lts -i de nt ify in g ca us eeff ec t no ta tio n in te xt s r ea di ng “ c on ta m in at ed m ilk ” -w ri tin g m ai n id ea s ab ou t qu al ita tiv e an al ys is . -a dv er tis em en t a na ly si s: “th e be st e xe rc is e eq ui pm en t” -c om m on e xp re ss io ns ga m e -e xp er im en t: th e em pi ri ca l f or m ul ae o f a n ox id e -e xp er im en t: b oy le ’s la w an d th e em pt y sp ac e in a ir. g am e: w ho d id w ha t? -c on tr as t b et w ee n re al an d id ea l g as es in a n ob se rv at io n ch at . -d es ig n a ph on ic s fli p fla p -d oi ng a n ex pe ri m en t: so lu tio n pr ep ar at io n -t im e ca te go ri es g am e -d ra w in g ow n ill us tr at io ns -d oi ng a s ci en ce fa ir pr oj ec t. -m em or y ga m e -e xp er im en t: h ow m uc h ac et ic a ci d is in v in eg ar ? -e xp er im en t: th e id en tit y of a n in so lu bl e pr ec ip ita te -e xp er im en t: q ua lit at iv e an al ys is fo r ch ro m iu m , ir on & c op pe r. -c la ss b oo k, ad ve rt is em en ts & fl ip -fl ap co nt es t. u n it to p ic s v o ca b u la ry g ra m m a r & e x p re ss io n s li st e n in g , sp e a k in g & p h o n ic s r e a d in g & w ri ti n g g a m e s, p ro je ct s & e x p e ri m e n ts profile no. 6 oct 13.p65 ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ profile profile profile profile profile 6 (2005): universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras teachers in a public school engage in a study group to reach general agreements about a common approach to teaching english profesores de un colegio público participan en un grupo de estudioprofesores de un colegio público participan en un grupo de estudioprofesores de un colegio público participan en un grupo de estudioprofesores de un colegio público participan en un grupo de estudioprofesores de un colegio público participan en un grupo de estudio para acorpara acorpara acorpara acorpara acordar un enfoque común en la enseñanza del inglésdar un enfoque común en la enseñanza del inglésdar un enfoque común en la enseñanza del inglésdar un enfoque común en la enseñanza del inglésdar un enfoque común en la enseñanza del inglés gloria álvarez aguirregloria álvarez aguirregloria álvarez aguirregloria álvarez aguirregloria álvarez aguirre gloalva24@yahoo.com consuelo sánchez pradaconsuelo sánchez pradaconsuelo sánchez pradaconsuelo sánchez pradaconsuelo sánchez prada consuelospra@yahoo.es institución educativa distrital josé asunción silva, bogotá this is an initial report on a study which aimed to know what happened at our school, as teachers engaged in a study group to reach general agreements about a common approach to teaching english. the first step consisted of establishing teachers’ and students’ perceptions of their needs through surveys and interviews. discussion and analyses of the data revealed that the most focused and most favored approach by the group for teaching english is, in our specific context, the communicative approach and the development of the four basic skills using meaningful learning activities. having agreed on this essential fact, we started the task of discussing some of the main principles of the communicative approach and what is meant by meaningful learning activities. kkkkkey worey worey worey worey words: ds: ds: ds: ds: agreement, study group, english-teaching, pedagogical experiences, collaborative work éste es un informe inicial de un estudio que buscó develar qué ocurrió en nuestro colegio cuando los profesores participaron en un grupo de estudio para alcanzar acuerdos generales sobre un enfoque común de enseñanza del inglés. el primer paso consistió en establecer las percepciones que los profesores y estudiantes tenían de sus propias necesidades, mediante el uso de encuestas y entrevistas. la posterior discusión y análisis de datos reveló que el enfoque más favorecido por el grupo para la enseñanza del inglés, en nuestro contexto específico, es el comunicativo y el desarrollo de las cuatro habilidades básicas utilizando actividades de aprendizaje significativas. a partir de este primer e importante acuerdo empezamos la discusión de algunos de los más importantes principios del enfoque comunicativo y lo que se entiende por actividades de aprendizaje significativas. palabras claves:palabras claves:palabras claves:palabras claves:palabras claves: acuerdo, grupo de estudio, enseñanza-inglés, experiencias pedagógicas, trabajo colaborativo 119-132 this article was received on april 15th, 2005 and accepted on august 24th, 2005. ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ 120 álálálálálvvvvvarez and sánchezarez and sánchezarez and sánchezarez and sánchezarez and sánchez profileprofileprofileprofileprofile the problemthe problemthe problemthe problemthe problem nowadays, international technology and communications require deep knowledge and competence in english. our students need to understand the importance and real necessity of learning this language for their future studies and jobs. one necessity is to be able to manage the scientific advances and high technology around us. according to students’ academic results analyzed at the last teachers’ meetings, english teachers at school have noticed some difficulties in maintaining students’ interest in learning english. thus, we realized the necessity to come to an agreement about a common pedagogical approach that meets students’ expectations, improves students’ communicative abilities, and raises students’ performance on the icfes exam. that is why we decided to develop a proposal to encourage our colleagues to sit and discuss the best way to teach english. we wanted to carry out a variety of activities and design strategies in an initial attempt to address our main question: what happens at the state school, josé asunción silva, as teachers engage in a study group to reach general agreements about a common approach to teaching english? bearing this question in mind, we were convinced we must invite our colleagues to make up this study group to deal with the following questions: how much english can our students learn? how can we continue improving our teaching practices? what are the best types of practice to develop the communicative skills? contextcontextcontextcontextcontext our school is located in quirigua, in the northwest of the city, zone 10. the public bus services provide several routes. in front of the school there is a farmer’s market whose sanitary conditions are deficient, specially garbage management. quirigua has a health center that belongs to the pami program (programa de atención médica inmediata) and some other private medical and dentist centers. the school has about 800 students who belong to the social residential zones one, two, and three. their ages are from 11 to 20. they are studying in 6th to 11th grades. most of them come from a poor socio-cultural environment because their parents just had the chance to complete their elementary studies (46%); secondary studies (34%); and university studies (20%) according to a survey developed by the orientation department (pei, 1998), and they often have some difficulties getting a good job. many more live in bad financial and family conditions; that is, they present nutritional problems, illnesses, low motivation and selfconfidence, signs of solitude, or even, they need to go out to work and take money home or their homes and neighborhoods are quite violent. nevertheless, a minority of the students (30%) has a better family, financial, and cultural situation. their views of life and academic behavior tend to be different. they have a house, clothing, food, and enough resources to study efficiently. observing all of those aspects, we have noticed that the students often have doubts about the relevance of foreign language study; that is a problem, especially nowadays when the technology and communication systems are evolving faster than us. teachers are responsible for changing that mind. at the school, we have three english hours a week which are not enough for getting an accurate idea of the teaching-learning process, taking into account that the school’s pei has an emphasis on english (obviously in theory). in 1995, the community was asked about their academic and labor interests. according to the results, the school directors decided to start the conversion of the school to an institution with a commercial orientation, emphasizing secretarial science and accounting and having computers and english as basic tools (pei, 1998). but, our reality is different. here, there is no time for teachers who plan together and share experiences and strategies or who wish to take advantage of the class time and do teamwork. we are five english teachers with different english levels and different communicative abilities. that is why our classes have different criteria. the pedagogical approach is not defined at all. observing that reality, we decided to ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○121 profileprofileprofileprofileprofile teachers in a public school engage in a study group develop a project about how language teachers can participate actively in the discussion to establish a common approach to teaching english, taking into account the school resources and the students’ needs and interests. the number of students per group is 40 47. one positive point is that the school adapted a room for the english laboratory where we can use the english discoveries network software. we also have the possibility to go to the audio-visual room. those are useful tools for teaching. literaliteraliteraliteraliterature reviewture reviewture reviewture reviewture review what is a study group?what is a study group?what is a study group?what is a study group?what is a study group? the first and maybe the most important aspect is that a study group is composed of a voluntary group of teachers. according to birchak et al. (1998: 16), “study groups are based on the belief that teachers need to take charge of their own learning and transformation and this belief is violated when they are forced to attend the group”. secondly, it is important to consider that a study group involves multiple purposes, including a sense of community and a challenge to our thinking as educators. based on murphy and lick (1998) and wasserman (1999 cited in robb, 2000), we can characterize a study group as a small number of individuals joining together to increase their abilities through new learning for the benefit of students. the study group process grows in complexity while its members implement new practices, change behaviors, and demonstrate new skills, knowledge, and activities in the job setting. a study group responds to students’ and teachers’ needs. the teachers must have a theoretical knowledge base and apply it in their daily pedagogical experience. teachers should be able to make negative and affirmative comments, take decisions, try new strategies, and exchange ideas in the teachinglearning process. in this way, teachers keep informed about the most recent changes in educational research and discuss professional books and articles. teachers learn by doing, they learn from different kinds of learning experiences students receive and at the same time they improve the students’ learning, the teaching process and enlarge their theoretical base. how to create a study group?how to create a study group?how to create a study group?how to create a study group?how to create a study group? below we spell out some guidelines for forming a study group which exemplify the framework on which our project was based. we also describe how we established our particular study group. concerning time, administrators and teachers need to establish how they use school time. administrators publish items related to scheduling, visitors, and teachers’ meetings. teachers can choose one or two forty-five minute periods each month for professional study (robb, 2000). these meetings should be part of the school schedule as a normal time for the teachers who belong to the group. after the meeting time has been agreed upon, it is important to organize teachers’ and administrators’ responsibilities. participants in the study group can negotiate their meetings monthly, bimonthly or weekly. they can share learning strategies, professional articles, plan lessons and reflect on teaching and evaluating practices. methodologymethodologymethodologymethodologymethodology we consider our project to be collaborative in which teachers were actively involved in the process development. this type of work has an important role in developing skills and knowledge. here, teachers work together to validate and support what they are doing (cambourne, 1988 cited in robb, 2000). our reasons for using collaboration were to provide an opportunity for the development of key skills such as communication, group working, and problem solving. also, we wanted to encourage students’ active learning and to increase their enjoyment of the topics, hence, their desire to learn. we saw collaborative work in the context of the school’s improvement. our study group took about three months till the end of the in-service program, in which we were enrolled, and the academic year. after doing the needs analysis and having the first general agreement with teachers about the communicative approach as constituting the main ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ 122 álálálálálvvvvvarez and sánchezarez and sánchezarez and sánchezarez and sánchezarez and sánchez profileprofileprofileprofileprofile focus to teach english at the school, we saw the teachers’ necessity to know and manage its principal elements and its classroom applications. then, we decided to hold a workshop with that objective. we presented the english teachers the model of a class applying some of the principles of the communicative approach (micro-teaching). teachers participated by playing the role of students. in addition, we created a question-answer activity concerning class development. after that, we gave teachers a list of the main communicative approach principles (see appendix 1) and teachers wrote if they applied them in class or not and gave examples about how they have done it. that was an interesting way to discuss different opinions and points of view. needs analysisneeds analysisneeds analysisneeds analysisneeds analysis in our group, after considering different aspects to work on, we identified a concrete situation, namely, it was necessary to create a new way of communication among teachers to analyze, discuss, and improve some pedagogical issues in order to have a good impact on the students’ learning process. at this stage, through our participation in the profile in-service program, we realized we needed to foster study group work among our colleagues. then, teachers signed the consent form in which they were in agreement with their active participation/cooperation. we started designing and applying two different surveys to make a diagnosis of the actual conditions of the english class at the school. we used the survey as the main instrument to collect a lot of information. moreover, we used a journal to register the events occurred and the decisions taken during the study group meetings. additionally, we analyzed the information collected using graphs and statements. the first survey was for the students to express an idea about their opinions and necessities related to their english learning. the other one was for our colleagues in order to know what they were doing and how they were developing their lessons (see appendix 2 and 3). the results gathered from the surveys and the discussions generated by the teachers allowed us to identify the big themes to be dealt with in our study group. they are shown in the following diagram: diagram 1diagram 1diagram 1diagram 1diagram 1. big themes found when analyzing data on “improving our teaching-learning process”. ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○123 profileprofileprofileprofileprofile teachers in a public school engage in a study group at the same time we analyzed the information about the needs we had, we read and found literature about study groups and meaningful learning to connect theory with practice. we had two meetings per month with teachers of english in order to show them the surveys’ results, discussed some pedagogic issues, and practiced communicative skills in english. after that, we interviewed teachers about the work we had done up to that time and their feelings concerning our study group. with that information we could obtain some conclusions about the project which you will see later in this article. all of those elements about study groups were the basis of our project development. we desired to take action and move into a reflective gear by exploring and considering possible changes in our teaching practices. we needed to integrate personal experiences and theory. in addition to evaluating conditions for learning english, as we have mentioned before, our school was in the process of adopting meaningful learning as its main axis for teaching. that was one of the elements we had to consider in the study group if we wanted to find strategies for teaching english. moreover, we had to revise teaching and learning goals established by the administrators at the school. based on that, we found out that for effective, dynamic and meaningful learning to occur, we should design and structure the learning environment for the interaction of people involved (mora, 2001). in this environment the following aspects are very important: activities, tasks, students’ interests, students’ motivation, materials, careful explanations on the student’s level, the assimilation of what we teach, the use of knowledge in an active and creative way to solve problems or to create students’ own situations through different exercises. teachers must make an effort to encourage their students to take in the new information meaningfully and to use it actively and coherently in a specific situation. according to mora (2001: 51), “meaningful learning gives learners the opportunity to associate the new learning task to previously learned material”. so they continue retaining new information all the time and using their experiences and previous knowledge. at this stage, we were conscious about the importance of meaningful learning as the basis of our school pei. it is necessary to discuss and internalize the aspects we have seen above with our study group in order to encourage students to make real sense of the english learning. findingsfindingsfindingsfindingsfindings at the same time we started working in our study group, we began collecting data to know more about our main question. at this stage of the project, and taking into account the limitations of time, we decided to record a personal interview with teachers in order to learn their impressions and feelings concerning the last activity and corresponding to the work done up to that moment (see appendix 4). with this instrument we could get important and interesting opinions from teachers. here we used a coding process for categorizing qualitative data and for describing their implications. we established some initial categories through the consideration of the data. later, while analyzing the data in detail, we moved to a more selective coding. the following diagram shows four categories derived from the data analysis: diagram 2diagram 2diagram 2diagram 2diagram 2. categories found in the data analysis. ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ 124 álálálálálvvvvvarez and sánchezarez and sánchezarez and sánchezarez and sánchezarez and sánchez profileprofileprofileprofileprofile 1. study group to update professional1. study group to update professional1. study group to update professional1. study group to update professional1. study group to update professional knowledgeknowledgeknowledgeknowledgeknowledge our data analysis reveals that a study group is an ideal way to keep abreast of educational research, pedagogical knowledge and language proficiency. it also provides opportunities for teachers to exchange ideas, try new strategies, and obtain feedback on teaching practices (robb, 2000). here we have one example of that statement taken from the teachers’ interviews: .../ nos damos cuenta de cómo organizar mejor una clase / en qué estamos fallando / reafirmamos algunos conocimientos y reafirmamos la pronunciación de algunas palabras / estamos hablando el mismo lenguaje. (lulú, interview). we realize how we can better organize a class / what we are failing on / we reinforce some previous knowledge and the pronunciation of some words / we are speaking the same language. (lulú, interview). 2. the study gr2. the study gr2. the study gr2. the study gr2. the study group to build poup to build poup to build poup to build poup to build positiveositiveositiveositiveositive expectations regarexpectations regarexpectations regarexpectations regarexpectations regarding students’ learningding students’ learningding students’ learningding students’ learningding students’ learning we also found that teachers will have the chance to practice and analyze strategies in the study group and try them with students. in addition, teachers will have the opportunity to build deeper knowledge together, which is going to affect positively their teaching process. in our case, teachers argued that this practical knowledge made them feel more secure and innovative in their classes. as an example, a teacher said: desde luego que va a tener impacto en los estudiantes porque en el momento que para nosotros se nos den cosas nuevas / también las vamos a revertir en los alumnos. (pedro, interview). of course it is going to have an impact on the students because in the moment we receive new things / we are also going to pass them on to the students. (pedro, interview). 3. a study group as an interesting and3. a study group as an interesting and3. a study group as an interesting and3. a study group as an interesting and3. a study group as an interesting and enjoyable interactionenjoyable interactionenjoyable interactionenjoyable interactionenjoyable interaction we found that sharing mini-lessons and ludic activities provides a good environment for the group. playing the role of students is an enjoyable way to identify what activities they like to have in an english class. it also helped teachers identify the easiest and most useful teaching practices, taking advantage of our own resources at the school. fue una actividad bastante interesante por lo lúdica / porque permite la interacción de los educandos / es una forma muy sencilla pero muy práctica de trabajar. (pedro, interview). it was a very interesting activity because of the ludics / because it allows students’ interaction / it is a very simple but practical way of working. (pedro, interview) teachers felt comfortable asking us for different materials and practical exercises to adapt and apply in their classrooms. our colleagues were interested in improving their teaching practices and acknowledged the friendly atmosphere the study group generated, as shown in the two examples below: creo que la propuesta es muy interesante / el grupo está bien encaminado / bien dirigido / hay unos parámetros bien diseñados y se enfoca perfectamente con esta nueva metodología que estamos buscando implementar. (pedro, interview). i think this proposal is very interesting / the group is well-guided / well-directed / there are some well-designed parameters and it is perfectly focussed with this new methodology that we are trying to implement. (pedro, interview) el grupo de trabajo es muy bueno porque todos laboramos bastante / nos entendemos y no hay ninguna discusión malsana. (yiya, interview). this work group is very good because we all work a lot / we understand each other and there are no unhealthy discussions. (yiya, interview). 4. a study gr4. a study gr4. a study gr4. a study gr4. a study group as a toup as a toup as a toup as a toup as a tool to developool to developool to developool to developool to develop professional qualitiesprofessional qualitiesprofessional qualitiesprofessional qualitiesprofessional qualities our study group developed professional qualities in the way that teachers who were experts in specific areas plan professional sessions into the school calendar; carry out a research activity about problem solving; share meaningful ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○125 profileprofileprofileprofileprofile teachers in a public school engage in a study group pedagogical experiences; have time to discuss, reflect, review, and study professional books, articles, and journals; provide feedback from different points of view. as cambourne (1988, cited in robb, 2000) says, teachers have the responsibility of negotiating the study group’s learning and assessment agenda with the facilitator. teachers discussed their weaknesses and strengths in learning experiences and suggested adjustments. their feedback validated what they were doing. a teacher said: es un grupo muy activo / es responsable / las monitoras cumplen a tiempo / tratan de que no se pierda el hilo de los temas que están manejando / se ha seguido el proyecto bastante bien. (lulú, interview). this is a very active group / it is responsible / the monitors fulfill on time / they try not diverting from the topics they are dealing with / the project has been done very well. (lulú, interview). through the inter views we became more convinced of the idea of starting a professional study group. we could notice the interest of our colleagues in discussing pedagogical practices and learning together. using those activities, we tried to apply some of the main aspects of the study group characteristics such as team and voluntary work, sharing pedagogical experiences, new practices implementation, and language abilities practice. conclconclconclconclconclusionsusionsusionsusionsusions based on time available and the processes that could be developed with our colleagues, the study group revealed some of the ways in which teachers’ development could be effected at the school. as cambourne (1988, cited in robb, 2000) holds, teachers must look for professional books, journal articles, and students’ literature to present minilessons using different strategies and background knowledge. in our case, we were a small group of teachers of english at high school discussing a pressing necessity: which is the best way to improve our english teaching practices in our institution bearing in mind our students’ needs and interests and using the school’s resources? we took into account some conditions that cambourne (ibid) proposes for successful language acquisition; for example, printed material for reading and writing; demonstration or modeling mini-lessons, setting high expectations based on students’ needs to improve their performance in english. as we decided to establish a study group through our participation in the in-service program in which we were enrolled, we questioned what happens at school as teachers engage in a study group in order to discuss and reach a general agreement regarding a common approach to teaching english. in this section we explain what answers could be given to that question. this study has helped us to create a sense of teamwork like the unique way to establish important elements for the teaching-learning process. all our colleagues participated actively in the activities of the project. therefore, we created a study group at the school as an instrument to improve teaching techniques and we hoped we could get a professional group of investigators. teachers had the opportunity to explore different topics and record a list of ideas they wanted to explore more deeply. that affected their teaching in a positive way. in our case, teachers realized the importance of communicative approach principles and the need to apply them in classes. teachers’ attitudes changed because they recognized themselves as learners. they were more conscious of the students’ needs and interests. in this way communication among teachers will support their learning and identify their specific interest. for example, after the microteaching we did, our colleagues expressed their conviction that students like those kind of activities because they interacted among them using suitable material as the material we used in the activity. the study group created expectations to change teaching practices. we observed in the microteaching that teachers were interested in the exercises they had to do and they asked us about the doubts they had. they enjoyed the class ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ 126 álálálálálvvvvvarez and sánchezarez and sánchezarez and sánchezarez and sánchezarez and sánchez profileprofileprofileprofileprofile because they interacted and clarified some language aspects. it is now hoped that the study group will move on to possible ways to solve difficulties or problems that learners might have and that it will involve all the members in research. teachers might learn other strategies to develop communicative skills, share samples of students’ work, and learn from one another. in doing so, they will feel safe in their teaching practices. as a final conclusion we want to say that without a doubt our study group is contributing to helping us reach general agreements. teachers agreed in applying the communicative approach as the main focus to teach english, using the four basic skills in their teaching practices. that was the first consensus we got within the group. teachers wanted to know other strategies to use in specific situations. our colleagues are willing to continue working as a team. pedpedpedpedpedagogicagogicagogicagogicagogical implical implical implical implical implicaaaaations andtions andtions andtions andtions and limitlimitlimitlimitlimitaaaaationstionstionstionstions it is known by all of us that for teachers at public schools it is hard to work together or plan common teaching strategies mainly because of time restraints. in trying to determine the focus of our project, we reflected on the fact that we, teachers, were the experts and the best coordinators of our professional growth. now we are sure the study group is the best decision to work as a team for improving our teaching and the students’ learning. study groups open the possibilities for having communication and mutual support from the administrators of the school. teachers can negotiate the school curriculum according to their background and pedagogical experiences. it is important to clarify that a successful study group must be voluntary; otherwise, it will be so difficult to get the goals teachers propose. we noticed that it is necessary for teachers to examine their class activities from the students’ point of view so that they can understand what to do and make sense of the new language in a specific activity. a common obstacle schools face in the study group process seems to be finding time for planning and learning together. that was one of the limitations we had because some teachers had class at the meeting time and they needed to leave worksheets for the students. one of the teachers left the project after the second meeting. she considered she had nothing to do in the group because she was a spanish teacher. the other teachers did not agree with that, but it was her decision. according to rosenholtz (1989, cited in murphy & lick, 1998), what grade or subject a teacher teaches is secondar y to the adult relationship forged around teaching. furthermore, it was necessary to plan the schedule for our meetings in advance which was a little bit difficult because we could not find a common free hour among us and our colleagues. the principal of the school urged us to do it and to leave an assignment for the students at the meetings time as a requirement to develop the project. further studyfurther studyfurther studyfurther studyfurther study we and our colleagues created the sense of team work as a unique way to establish important elements for our teaching-learning process. we established a study group as a manner to improve teaching practices with the hope of eventually setting up a group of professional investigators. we will keep analyzing how to help our students to reinforce their learning process. we want to make a contribution toward the improvement of the teaching-learning development through a study group organization in order to discuss and define a common approach to teaching english as a foreign language in our institution. we want to continue having a group for sharing teaching experiences and reaching the goal of a professional study group. acknowledgementsacknowledgementsacknowledgementsacknowledgementsacknowledgements the authors would like to thank fellow teacher john jairo viáfara for kindly helping to focus our project development as well as the teachers at ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○127 profileprofileprofileprofileprofile teachers in a public school engage in a study group school who willingly participated in the project and consented to its publication. about the authorsabout the authorsabout the authorsabout the authorsabout the authors gloria álvarez aguirregloria álvarez aguirregloria álvarez aguirregloria álvarez aguirregloria álvarez aguirre holds a b.a. in english and spanish languages from the universidad pedagógica nacional. she was recipient of a scholarship by university of new mexico, u.s.a. her studies have dealt with foreign language teaching including the current “red profile” inservice program. she teaches english at i.e.d. josé asunción silva, quirigua, in bogotá. consuelo sánchez pradaconsuelo sánchez pradaconsuelo sánchez pradaconsuelo sánchez pradaconsuelo sánchez prada holds a b.a. in modern languages from the universidad distrital francisco josé de caldas and she enrolled in the “red profile” in-ser vice program in 2004. she works at i.e.d. josé asunción silva and at universidad distrital francisco josé de caldas. she has been interested in improving her teaching practice and language abilities through immersion in english native environments in the u.s.a. referencesreferencesreferencesreferencesreferences birchack, b. et al. (1998). teacher study groups. national council of teachers of english. illinois, usa. institución educativa distrital josé asunción silva. (1998). proyecto educativo institucional (pei): hoy hombres y mujeres en convivencia y comunicación para el mañana. bogotá, colombia. mora, e. (2001). promoting meaningful learning in the english class. how. a colombian journal for english teachers, 8, 5156. murphy, c. & lick, d. (1998). whole faculty study groups. california: corwin press, inc. robb, l. (2000). redefining staff development. a collaborative model for teachers and administrators. portsmouth, nh: heinemann. ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ 128 álálálálálvvvvvarez and sánchezarez and sánchezarez and sánchezarez and sánchezarez and sánchez profileprofileprofileprofileprofile appendix 1: communicappendix 1: communicappendix 1: communicappendix 1: communicappendix 1: communicaaaaative approach principlestive approach principlestive approach principlestive approach principlestive approach principles ied josé asunción silva jm “red profile” in-service teachers’ development program universidad nacional de colombia submitted by gloria alvarez and consuelo sánchez you will find a list of principles related to the communicative approach. express your views about the feasibility or opportunities you have to follow in your own classes. include one more. principlesprinciplesprinciplesprinciplesprinciples yyyyy nnnnn sssss example/reasonsexample/reasonsexample/reasonsexample/reasonsexample/reasons 1. contextualization 2. communication needs to be encouraged from the start. 3. translation can take place if students need it. 4. meaning negotiation. 5. expressing ideas and opinions. 6. toleration of errors. 7. using authentic language. 8. grammar and vocabulary are taught in context. 9. fluency and acceptable language is the primary goal. 10. ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○129 profileprofileprofileprofileprofile teachers in a public school engage in a study group appendix 2: survey given to studentsappendix 2: survey given to studentsappendix 2: survey given to studentsappendix 2: survey given to studentsappendix 2: survey given to students ied josé asunción silva jm “red profile” in-service teachers’ development program universidad nacional de colombia encuesta a estudiantes con esta encuesta pretendemos conocer un poco más sobre tus inquietudes, necesidades e intereses acerca del aprendizaje del inglés. por favor responde con objetividad y sinceridad. nombre: _______________________curso:__________edad:_____ 1. ¿te gusta el inglés? si no 2. de 1 a 5 ¿qué valor le das al hecho de aprender inglés? 1 2 3 4 5 ¿por qué?______________________________ 3. ¿en qué nivel de aprendizaje del inglés consideras que te encuentras? alto______ medio______ bajo______ 4. marca con una x las actividades que te gusta realizar en la clase de inglés. a) ejercicios escritos b) diálogos orales c) canciones d) dramatizaciones e) repetición f) traducción g) evaluaciones h) representación de situaciones i) crucigramas, sopas de letras j) juegos k) trabajo en grupo l) trabajo individual m) comprensión de lectura n) actividades manuales o) otra(s)____ indica cuál(es) __________________________ 5. ¿consideras que la intensidad horaria (3 horas semanales) es suficiente para tener un buen desempeño en inglés? si no ¿por qué? _________________________________________________ 6. ¿te parece que los recursos con los que cuenta el colegio son suficientes para el aprendizaje del inglés? si no ¿por qué? _________________________________________________ 8.¿qué otros recursos a nuestro alcance se podrían utilizar? ¡gracias por tu colaboración! profesoras responsables del proyecto:gloria álvarez y consuelo sánchez bogotá d.c. septiembre de 2004 ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ 130 álálálálálvvvvvarez and sánchezarez and sánchezarez and sánchezarez and sánchezarez and sánchez profileprofileprofileprofileprofile appendix 3: survey given to teachersappendix 3: survey given to teachersappendix 3: survey given to teachersappendix 3: survey given to teachersappendix 3: survey given to teachers ied josé asunción silva jm “red profile” in-service teachers’ development program universidad nacional de colombia encuesta para profesores con esta encuesta pretendemos conocer un poco más tu quehacer como docentes en cuanto a enfoques y metodologías de enseñanza del inglés utilizadas en el salón. este es un primer paso en búsqueda del mejoramiento académico de nuestra institución. por favor responde con objetividad y honestidad de acuerdo con tu experiencia. nombre:_________________________________________________ intensidad horaria de inglés:___________grado:___________ intensidad horaria de español: _________grado:___________ a. responde las siguientes preguntas. 1. ¿cuál consideras debe ser el principal enfoque de enseñanza de una lengua extranjera? ¿por qué?_______________________________________________________ 2. ¿crees necesario utilizar la traducción dentro de la clase de inglés? ¿por qué?___________________________________________________ 3. ¿qué clase de actividades sueles practicar en tu clase de inglés? 4. ¿consideras importante llegar a un consenso entre profesores sobre la mejor forma de enseñar inglés en nuestra institución? si no ¿por qué? b. marca con una x la respuesta que creas más apropiada. 1. enseñar a los estudiantes a utilizar sus propias estrategias de aprendizaje es a. útil y productivo b. ineficiente c. sólo se les debe decir qué aprender d. no es importante 2. los errores que los estudiantes cometen al hablar a. son informativos b. son útiles para el aprendizaje c. deben ser erradicados d. son irrelevantes 3. los diálogos, si son utilizados, requieren a. memorización de estructuras gramaticales b. centrarse en funciones comunicativas c. exactitud en la pronunciación d. conocimiento previo ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○131 profileprofileprofileprofileprofile teachers in a public school engage in a study group d. valora los siguientes aspectos de 1 a 5 de acuerdo con su importancia. aspecto / vaspecto / vaspecto / vaspecto / vaspecto / valoraloraloraloralor 11111 22222 33333 44444 55555 una clase de inglés debe comprender el aprendizaje significativo una clase de inglés debe comprender el aprendizaje por repetición o memorización la retroalimentación del profesor hacia el estudiante es necesaria una clase comunicativa debe proporcionar especial atención a la fluidez en el discurso e. las siguientes preguntas tienen como finalidad describir el contexto de los participantes del proyecto. 1. ¿qué estudios has realizado? 2. ¿qué título(s) has obtenido? 3. ¿cuánto tiempo llevas en el ejercicio de la docencia? 4. ¿en qué niveles de educación te has desempeñado? a. primaria b. secundaria c. técnico d. universitario 5. ¿estás desarrollando algún tipo de proyecto académico en estos momentos? si no ¿cuál? ¡muchas gracias por tu colaboración! profesoras responsables del proyecto: gloria álvarez y consuelo sánchez. bogotá d.c. septiembre de 2004 ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ 132 álálálálálvvvvvarez and sánchezarez and sánchezarez and sánchezarez and sánchezarez and sánchez profileprofileprofileprofileprofile appendix 4: key questions used for the interview with teachersappendix 4: key questions used for the interview with teachersappendix 4: key questions used for the interview with teachersappendix 4: key questions used for the interview with teachersappendix 4: key questions used for the interview with teachers ied josé asunción silva jm “red profile” in-service teachers’ development program universidad nacional de colombia interview for english teachers (bogotá, november 16th, 2004) 1. ¿te gustó la actividad que acabamos de realizar? ¿por qué? 2. ¿cómo te sentiste durante la actividad? 3. ¿cómo te ha parecido hasta el momento el grupo de estudio? 4. ¿consideras que el trabajo de nuestro grupo de estudio se relaciona con el trabajo de los estudiantes? ¿tiene algún impacto? 5. ¿alguna vez habías pertenecido a un grupo de estudio (study group)? profile 5.pmd ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ 110 profileprofileprofileprofileprofile ethnography in foreign language teaching etnografía en la enseñanza de lenguas extranjeras ilona husztiilona husztiilona husztiilona husztiilona huszti* transcarpathian hungarian pedagogical institute in south ukraine huszti@kmtf.uz.ua the aim of the present article is to describe ethnography as a qualitative approach frequently applied in foreign language acquisition research (pollard, 1985; smith, 1992; robinson-stuart and nocon, 1996). reviews of two studies having used ethnographic techniques are presented in the paper to highlight the theoretical background for such an investigative method. the first study discusses issues about participant observation, while the second depicts the language learner in the role of the ethnographer. the paper also tries to throw light on the various tasks of the ethnographer as well as the values (emic and holistic view) and limitations (the insider/outsider dilemma) of ethnography. kkkkkey worey worey worey worey wordsdsdsdsds: culture, ethnography, ethnographer, qualitative researchtechniques, participant observation el objetivo de este artículo es describir la etnografía como un método cualitativo que es utilizado frecuentemente en la investigación de la adquisición de una lengua extranjera (pollard, 1985; smith, 1992; robinson-stuart and nocon, 1996). en el documento se presentan reseñas de dos estudios que implementaron técnicas etnográficas, con el propósito de resaltar los antecedentes históricos de este tipo de método de investigación. el primer estudio trata acerca de temas relacionados con la obser vación de los participantes, mientras que el segundo estudio presenta al aprendiz de lengua en el rol de etnógrafo. el documento también da varias pautas sobre las tareas del etnógrafo, así como los valores (el punto de vista émico y holístico) y las limitaciones (el dilema interno y externo) de la etnografía. palabras clavespalabras clavespalabras clavespalabras clavespalabras claves: cultura, etnografía, etnógrafo, técnicas investigación cualitativa, observación participativa * ilona husztiilona husztiilona husztiilona husztiilona huszti is an english teacher at the transcarpathian hungarian pedagogical institute in south ukraine, where she has taught for eight years. her research interests include teacher training, teaching and developing reading skills, and the use of oral reading in lessons of english as a foreign language. ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○111 profileprofileprofileprofileprofile ethnography in foreign language teaching 1. introduction1. introduction1. introduction1. introduction1. introduction without being aware of it, every person is an ethnographer in that he or she tries to make sense of the environment surrounding him or her “through observation, listening and eventually talking” (barro, jordan and roberts, 1998, p. 76). people learn how to behave or what to say in different situations and how to act within their own social milieu. this is very close to the tasks of ethnography, with the difference that ethnography is “the study of ‘other’ people and the social and cultural patterns that give meaning to their lives” (ibid.). ethnography is tightly linked with culture because the main purport of ethnography is to describe it (spradley and mccurdy, 1972, in hornberger, 1994). ethnography is a research approach widely used in foreign language investigations (see, for example, pollard, 1985; smith, 1992; robinson-stuart and nocon, 1996). the present paper discusses issues regarding ethnography as an important tool in foreign language teaching and acquisition research. it also aims at emphasizing the crucial role of this technique by reviewing two recent studies that have used ethnographic research techniques. 2 . e t h n o g r a p h y a n d t h e2 . e t h n o g r a p h y a n d t h e2 . e t h n o g r a p h y a n d t h e2 . e t h n o g r a p h y a n d t h e2 . e t h n o g r a p h y a n d t h e tttttasks of the ethnographerasks of the ethnographerasks of the ethnographerasks of the ethnographerasks of the ethnographer 2.1 what is ethnography?2.1 what is ethnography?2.1 what is ethnography?2.1 what is ethnography?2.1 what is ethnography? before making an attempt to define ethnography as a research approach, one should look at the definition of culture because the target of ethnographic investigations is the description of culture. geertz (1975) defines culture as “an historically transmitted pattern of meanings, embodied in symbols, a system of inherited conceptions expressed in symbolic forms by means of which men communicate, perpetuate and develop their knowledge about and attitudes towards life” (pp. 89; cited in byram, 1989, p. 60). according to valette (1986), this “historically transmitted pattern of meanings” consists of two major constituents. the first component is what she calls “anthropological or social culture: the attitudes, customs and daily activities of a people, their ways of thinking, their values, their frames of reference” (p. 179). valette describes the second component of culture as “the history of civilisation”. she states that the first component’s framework is formed by the second component itself, which symbolises the heritage of a nation and “as such must be appreciated by the students who wish to understand the new target culture” (valette, 1986, p. 179). in order to obtain information on the culture of this or that people, one can make use of an anthropological method which can prove to be of help in this intention. this descriptive technique is ethnography. it is a qualitative type of research that makes use of non-quantitative techniques (e.g. openended interviews) and/or naturalistic data (e.g. diary studies, participant observation, etc.) (larsen-freeman and long, 1991; nunan, 1991). it is a common view (considered to be a major problem by quantitative researchers) that qualitative studies (ethnographic ones, too) do not result in “hard”, replicable and generalisable data as do quantitative studies. ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ 112 huszti profile profile profile profile profile an answer to this criticism is the view of davis (1995), who believes that “just as with experimental or statistical research designs, each and every legitimate qualitative method is dependent on particular conceptual and methodological procedures to ensure credibility, dependability, and transferability” (p. 432). in robinson’s view (1985), “ethnography is a method of describing a culture or situation from the ‘emic’ or native’s point of view, i.e. from the point of view of the cultural actor” (p. 73). therefore, the ethnographer (i.e. the person carrying out an ethnographic research) is present in the daily lives of people either explicitly or implicitly “for an extended period of time, watching what happens, listening to what is said, asking questions, in fact collecting whatever data is available to throw light on the issues with which he or she is concerned” (hammersley and atkinson, 1983; cited in wallace, 1991, p. 76). sperber (1985) thinks that ethnography as an anthropological approach to culture “answers the legitimate curiosity as to what it is like to belong to another culture” (p. 10). he believes that ethnography is a “curiosity” which focuses on how facts are experienced by the individual and which requires interpretations of these facts rather than only their descriptions. what is more, byram (1989), in his comparison of reading an ethnographic account and reading a critical analysis of a novel or a film, argues it is descriptions, photographs and films by which the writer of the ethnographic account tries to make the reader understand the object described. 2.2 the t2.2 the t2.2 the t2.2 the t2.2 the tasks of the ethnographerasks of the ethnographerasks of the ethnographerasks of the ethnographerasks of the ethnographer it has been mentioned that the ethnographer is the participant of the culture he attempts to depict and that he describes it from the insider’s perspective at an emic level. he has to explain and “interpret the significance of particular phenomena as they operate within the semantic system of a particular culture at the emic level” (guthrie and hall, 1981, in byram, 1989, p.66). thus, the tasks of the ethnographer are to participate in a culture and observe it, then interpret what he has seen or heard or experienced. one may criticise this kind of observation as being subjective. robinson (1985) responds to this criticism by saying that “to the extent that the ethnographer loses objectivity and interprets things from the native’s point of view, we are getting an inside, emic account of culture” (p. 74) which is the aim of those interested in ethnographic accounts. 3. ethnography in ped3. ethnography in ped3. ethnography in ped3. ethnography in ped3. ethnography in pedagogyagogyagogyagogyagogy::::: a review of two studiesa review of two studiesa review of two studiesa review of two studiesa review of two studies 3.1. the t3.1. the t3.1. the t3.1. the t3.1. the teacher in the role ofeacher in the role ofeacher in the role ofeacher in the role ofeacher in the role of ethnographerethnographerethnographerethnographerethnographer pollard (1985) reports of a teacherethnographer who conducted an ethnographic study of his own school while teaching full-time teacher at the same institution. the account aims at giving a thorough description of what it means to be a participantobser ver, and what opportunities and difficulties a teacherethnographer has when trying to fulfil the duties of the teacher and of the researcher. ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○113 profileprofileprofileprofileprofile ethnography in foreign language teaching the research method applied in this study was that of participant observation. it was evident from the circumstances that the investigator could easily function as a participant because of his teaching position. he also had to fulfil the role of the “observer” (pollard, 1985). when doing so, it was essential to avoid “going native”, which meant that while the investigator got very much involved in the whole research and identified himself with its participants, he did not manage to meet the requirements of the investigation itself. before the investigation began, permission from the head teacher, who was very supportive throughout the research, was obtained. the attitudes of the teachers and children regarding the study were similar to that of the head teacher i.e. both teachers and children were helpful and willing to participate, although some teachers had fears when being interviewed. they were afraid because they thought the head teacher would not like their answers about the school and the administration of the school, even when they were told that the interviews were anonymous. some major difficulties emerged while teaching full-time and conducting the research at the same time. one of these was time. although the researcher had easy access to classrooms for observation, his biggest problem was that during teaching time he himself was fulfilling his teacher role. this he thought to be the origin of a “considerable methodological weakness”, because, for some parts of the research, he had to depend solely on data from interviews (pollard, 1985). data were collected from seventy-five caucasian children and fifteen children of asian parentage via one and a half hour long interviews during dinner breaks. during the data collection procedure, the researcher was helped by children who volunteered to play the part of ‘interviewers’ and be the member of the moorside investigation department (mid) (the study was conducted at moorside middle school, england, between 19761978). the reason for having children interviewers help in collecting the data was that the respondents would answer questions like what do you think of your school? or who is your favourite teacher? more sincerely from children interviewers (i.e. their peers) than from a person who is a teacher at the institution where they studied (pollard, 1985). the conclusion pollard draws is that to carry out a study in which the researcher is a full participant-observer is exhausting and difficult, but at the same time it is “fascinating and rewarding to identify patterns in the data” (pollard, 1985, p.105) and to arrive at an in-depth understanding of events and surroundings in which the researcher participates. 3.2. the language learner in the3.2. the language learner in the3.2. the language learner in the3.2. the language learner in the3.2. the language learner in the role of ethnographerrole of ethnographerrole of ethnographerrole of ethnographerrole of ethnographer the second study introduced in this section is about second culture acquisition and the use of ethnographic interviewing techniques in the language learning process “to promote positive attitudes towards the speakers of the language studied” (robinsonstuart and nocon, 1996, p. 431). the study was conducted at san diego state university, ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ 114 huszti profile profile profile profile profile san diego, usa, in a multinational and multicultural area, where knowledge of a language other than english was a useful tool in understanding cross-cultural interactions. the participants were twenty-four students in a third semester university spanish class (robinson-stuart and nocon, 1996). the subjects’ task comprised of conducting interviews with a native spanish speaker (these usually were mexican friends or acquaintances of the students living in the san diego area). the writing up of the findings was the students’ term assignment. they were pre-trained in order to be able to conduct an inter view involving the ethnographic technique of active listening (robinson-stuart and nocon, 1996). concerning this interviewing technique, one must bear in mind that the questions in an ethnographic interview are open ones. there is no pre-composed inter view protocol. the questions are “built upon the utterances of the inter viewee … the interviewer must continually listen to and interact with what the speaker has said” (robinson-stuart and nocon, 1996, p. 436). after each answer of the interviewee, the interviewer has to probe by asking the question what do you mean? (ibid.). before students carried out their tasks, they were pre-surveyed, and after they had done the practical part of their assignment, they were also post-surveyed. to be able to compare preand post-survey results, the subjects were given codes. this was also useful for preserving anonymity. in these sur veys, students were asked questions like why did you begin to study spanish?, do you have mexican friends? or how would you describe your goal in your study of spanish?, etc. there was a separate post-survey in which the researchers wanted to know how the subjects perceived the task of doing an ethnographic interview and whether their attitude towards the spanish language and the mexican people living in san diego changed because they had undergone such a task. the findings proved that a positive change occurred in the students’ attitudes towards the speakers of the target language and their culture, and what is more interesting, greater desire emerged to learn the target language itself. another important conclusion was that by taking part in the ethnography project, students acquired the life skill of active listening, which can make communication between various cultures better and make understanding of the other culture easier (robinson-stuart and nocon, 1996). 4. the v4. the v4. the v4. the v4. the valalalalalue and limitue and limitue and limitue and limitue and limitaaaaationstionstionstionstions of ethnographic researchof ethnographic researchof ethnographic researchof ethnographic researchof ethnographic research so far it has been shown how ethnography works in real life situations in educational contexts and what responsibilities the ethnographer has. this section intends to show the value and limitations of ethnography as a research approach. in hornberger’s (1994) opinion, “the value of ethnography lies in its holistic and emic view” (p. 688). the holistic view is ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○115 profileprofileprofileprofileprofile ethnography in foreign language teaching associated with the objective of the ethnographer, which is to create a full picture of the culture or event he is observing and analysing, “a picture that leaves nothing unaccounted for and that reveals the interrelatedness of all the component parts” (ibid). what is appreciated here is that the approach provides the opportunity to compare and contrast what actors of the given culture say and do in order to receive a whole, detailed and realistic description and interpretation of the processes within that culture (hornberger, 1994). the emic view implies the intention of the ethnographer to show the point of view of the insider, the cultural actor. he tries to depict the thoughts, feelings, experiences of the members of the given culture. the value in this perspective is “the potential for new, unexpected, and unpredictable understandings to emerge” (hornberger, 1994, p. 689). one of the most obvious limitations of ethnographic studies is the insider/outsider dilemma (hornberger, 1994) i.e. how the two perspectives can be balanced. hornberger mentions several dimensions as part of the dilemma e.g. being too familiar with the culture under examination may cause distortion in interpretation, while the insider explanation and understanding may be inhibited by the ethnographer’s being a total stranger to the culture. another issue that is raised by byram (1989) when discussing the value and limitations of ethnographic research is that of representativeness in ethnographic studies. he states that ethnographers do not select their subjects applying statistical sampling; therefore, their informants cannot be representative of the population. in contrast, boster claims that “individuals’ acquired cultural competence is a version of society’s shared culture” (byram, 1989, p. 118). if so, then the informants in an ethnographic account can be considered representatives of their own culture. 5. summary5. summary5. summary5. summary5. summary the present paper has intended to throw light on what ethnography as a research approach in the educational context means. it is “the study of the ‘other’ people and the social and cultural patterns that give meanings to their lives” (barro, et al., 1998). the main task of the ethnographer is to explain these social and cultural patterns to those who have never experienced them (byram, 1989). the paper has given summaries of two ethnographic studies. in one of them, the purpose was to show the problems the participant-obser ver has to face when carrying out such a research type. the other summary was an account of a study, the findings of which showed a positive change in the subjects’ attitudes towards members of another culture. the value and limitations of ethnographic research were also described in the paper, the main value being in its emic and holistic view, while a major limitation being the insider/outsider dilemma. ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ 116 huszti profile profile profile profile profile referencesreferencesreferencesreferencesreferences barro, a., jordan, s., and roberts, c. (1998). cultural practice in everyday life: the language learner as ethnographer. in m. byram and m. fleming. language learning in intercultural perspective: approaches through drama and ethnography. cambridge: cambridge university press. byram, m. (1989). cultural studies in foreign language education. clevedon, philadelphia: multilingual matters ltd. davis, k. (1995). qualitative theory and methods in applied linguistics research. tesol quarterly, 3, 429-453. hornberger, n. h. (1994). ethnography. in a. cumming. (ed.). alternatives in tesol research: descriptive, interpretative and ideological orientations. tesol quarterly, 4, 673-703. larsen-freeman, d., and long, m. h. (1991). an introduction to second language acquisition research. new york: longman. nunan. d. (1991). methods in second language classroom-oriented research: a critical review. studies in second language acquisition, 13, 249-274. pollard, a. (1985). opportunities and difficulties of a teacher-ethnographer: a personal account. in b. burgess. (ed.). field methods in the study of education: strategies of educational research. new york: the falmer press. robinson, g.l.n. (1985). cross-cultural understanding. new york: prentice hall. robinson-stuart, g., and nocon, h. (1996). second culture acquisition: ethnography in the foreign language classroom. the modern language journal, 80, 431-449. smith, d. (1992). anthropology of education and educational research: cae presidential address. anthropology and education quarterly, 23, 185-198. sperber, d. (1985). on anthropological knowledge. cambridge: cambridge university press. valette, r. m. (1986). the culture test. in j. m. valdes. (ed.). culture bound: bridging the cultural gap in language teaching. cambridge: cambridge university press. wallace, m. j. (1991). training foreign language teachers. a reflective approach. cambridge: cambridge university press. this article was received on february 12th, 2004 and accepted on august 20th, 2004 profile no. 6 oct 13.p65 ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○5 profileprofileprofileprofileprofile “…teachers, by reporting on their research, become both critical consumers and disseminators of research”. 1 our readers might have seen several changes in the layout and organization of our journal in the last three years. this has been done not only to fulfil the requirements of international scientific journals, but to respond to the increasing interest of pre and in-service teachers from colombia as well as from other countries, and those who want to learn about the teaching and learning experiences reported in our publication. this has shown, as ann burns states, our teacher community acknowledges our work and, in turn, has been encouraged to publicize projects carried out in our field. in 2004, 180 teachers from bogotá and cundinamarca, colombia, took part in in-service programmes led by the profile research group2 . they promoted the development of projects around innovation and research in english language teaching. in tune with the idea of encouraging the publication of projects carried by school teachers, this issue contains six articles which report on classroom research. we begin this issue with an article which describes and analyses the concerns of efl secondary school teachers who do, or who would like to be doing research in their classroom practices, and whose concerns are still not being accounted for in mainstream tesol. this paper is followed by three articles about the writing processes in secondary schools in our country. the first one determines the way process writing is taught, focusing especially on the planning, composing, and revising activities, and based on the understanding of writing as a process-oriented activity. the findings indicate that writing and reading are product oriented, and that class activities privilege listening and speaking over writing and reading. the second article reports on an experience about the use of some strategies of the process-oriented approach with a group of low-achieving teenagers, whereas the third one accounts for the process of writing a text by using cooperative learning principles, which enhanced 1 burns, a. (1999). collaborative action research for english language teachers. cambridge: cambridge university press, p. 182. 2 this group, officially recognized by colciencias (a colombian research agency), has worked in the areas of pre-service and in-ser vice teacher education, evaluation, and elt for young learners. its expertise has been the result of the group’s participation in the three main activities colombian universities are expected to integrate: teaching experience, extension courses and activities, and research projects. editorial introduction ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ 6 profileprofileprofileprofileprofile production and reduced writing anxiety. then, two teachers tell us how english language learning can be developed from reading processes that also involve the other language skills. the results place reading as a useful alternative to enable students to learn english more easily and accurately. another familiar topic, oral communication, is addressed in the following three articles. we can find how teachers used task-based learning to help secondary school students improve oral interaction. in connection with the same area, another look at the topic of teacher talking time in the efl classroom, based on a piece of classroom research conducted in brazil, is presented by nilton hitotuzi. a novel approach to using students’ analysis in teaching public speaking for business at a university in oman is reported on afterwards. as we will read, this investigation examines its role in improving and promoting learning effectiveness in english for academic purposes (eap) classroom discourse. in this issue we also present some reports pertaining to teachers’ decision-making and perceptions. an article written by two in-ser vice teachers tells us what happened at a school as teachers engaged in a study group to reach general agreements about a common approach to teach english. after that, we include a paper concerning some characteristics of the autonomous learner, especially in the foreign language classroom and the most common profiles observed in a particular group of pre-service teachers. the following pages deal with an experience in which observation was given an alternative perspective in the preparation of future teachers. explanations account for the student teachers’ use of this preparatory tool. next, two novice teacher-researchers look at the experiences of four primar y-school studentteachers during their practicum, the difficulties faced and the way they dealt with the problems. the section about issues based on reflections and innovations starts with the major considerations and problems one may come across when developing an online teacher education program, as witnessed in a study conducted in iran. finally, there is an item on the mediated learning experience, its conditions, the mediator’s profile, and some pedagogical implications. as you can see, we’ve rounded up a variety of articles for this issue. we hope you enjoy reading them. and remember: you can become a critical consumer and a disseminator of research by publishing in upcoming issues. finally, i am very pleased to welcome professors isobel rainey de díaz, ann burns, penelope robinson, jill burton, raúl alberto mora vélez, gloria cardona, alvaro quintero, and maria helena vieira to the advisory board. i also want to thank all the members of the editorial committee and the advisor y board whose suggestions and evaluations have made this publication possible. melba libia cármelba libia cármelba libia cármelba libia cármelba libia cárdenas beltrándenas beltrándenas beltrándenas beltrándenas beltrán journal editor improving eleventh graders’ oral production in english class through cooperative learning strategies profile 8, 2007. issn 1657-0790. bogotá, colombia. pages 75-90 75 improving eleventh graders’ oral production in english class through cooperative learning strategies mejora de la producción oral de estudiantes de grado undécimo en clase de inglés, a través de estrategias de aprendizaje cooperativo claudia yanive prieto castillo* universidad nacional de colombia & colegio de bachillerato patria this paper aims to report on research carried out with eleventh graders at colegio de bachillerato patria in bogotá. the main objective of the research was to establish strategies to help students to improve their oral production in english. instruments used to collect the data were: field notes, students’ and teachers’ surveys, students’ interviews and audiotapes recordings. considering the data gathered, this research prompted a more cooperative environment among students in the oral process. finally it was a way to motivate other teachers in the school to work with these kinds of strategies. key words: cooperative learning strategies, oral interaction, interaction activities, collaborative learning el propósito de este artículo es presentar una investigación que se llevó a cabo con estudiantes de grado undécimo del colegio de bachillerato patria en bogotá. el principal objetivo consistió en establecer estrategias que ayudaran a los estudiantes a mejorar su producción oral en inglés. los instrumentos utilizados para recolectar información fueron diarios de campo, encuestas a estudiantes y profesores, entrevistas a estudiantes, grabaciones de audio y video. considerando la información recolectada, este estudio promovió un ambiente de más cooperación entre los estudiantes. finalmente fue una manera de motivar a otros docentes en el colegio a trabajar con este tipo de estrategias. palabras clave: estrategias del aprendizaje cooperativo, interacción oral, actividades de interacción, aprendizaje colaborativo * e-mail: cyanivep@gmail.com address: carrera 23 no. 22 a-13 bogotá, colombia this article was received on march 30, 2007 and accepted on september 1st, 2007. profile 8.indd 75 28/09/2007 12:42:18 a.m. prieto castillo universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras76 introduction through this project i wanted to use some cooperative learning strategies to help my students better express themselves orally. globalization, the opening up of the economy and scientific and technological process are factors which have influenced the new world order in different fields. nowadays, it is necessary to improve students’ performance as workers in facing future labor challenges. one of those challenges is the development of communicative competence in one or more foreign languages, to be able to interact on equal footing with the rest of the world. according to these new demands, today will depend not just on one’s professional knowledge but on the ability to present that knowledge in an appropriate way. drawing on my experience and after checking some school policies, for example to get the students to level b2 in eleventh grade, it was necessary to find strategies to help our students to practice and improve their oral production, and for achieving the desired oral level. many strategies were available to be applied if we wanted to work on oral production but, taking into account the heterogeneous population in the school, the most appropriate strategies were provided by cooperative learning. this research was carried out at colegio de bachillerato patria. this school is located in the north of bogotá in chico neighborhood. it was approved in 1967 by the education ministry (ministerio de educación nacional – men) and it was classified as a state school but with special character (which means that it follows the men’s educational policies but is administered by the defense ministry). this school belongs to liceos del ejército (army schools), and its mission is to educate the children of members of the different armed forces: army, navy and air force. in some cases, the school has foreign students. the school has different working conditions in comparison with other schools, because the students’ families in the patria school need to move frequently from one place to another, and during the year it is necessary to receive students from different parts of the country. this school is co-educational. the total number of students in the school is 1050, and in each course there are 35 students on average. considering all those aspects, our school was a special context for working on the project with our students. my main question was: to what extent are cooperative learning strategies effective in reaching the desired oral production level of eleventh graders at colegio de bachillerato patria? my secondary questions were: what are the appropriate strategies to develop oral production? what kinds of factors are necessary for cooperative learning strategies to work? how can teachers encourage good group dynamics and create a comfortable atmosphere where students are not afraid to speak and enjoy communicating with each other? literature review the problem described in this research required special theoretical support. the theoretical elements included in this research were closely related and provided a clear path for developing processes and steps. cooperative learning cooperative learning has been defined by various professionals from different fields. profile 8.indd 76 28/09/2007 12:42:18 a.m. improving eleventh graders’ oral production in english class through cooperative learning strategies profile 8, 2007. issn 1657-0790. bogotá, colombia. pages 75-90 77 johnson (2001) defines cooperative learning as a successful teaching strategy in which small teams, each with students of different levels of ability, use a variety of learning activities to improve their understanding of a subject. artz & newman (1990) define cooperative learning as small groups of learners working together as a team to solve a problem, complete a task, or accomplish a common goal. furthermore, different researchers and academics give special characteristics and qualities to cooperative learning. cooperative learning strategies have been shown to improve academic performance (slavin,1990), to lead to greater motivation to learn (garibaldi, 1979 in kagan 1986), to increase time on-task (cohen 1988), to improve selfesteem (johnson and johnson, 1989) and to lead to more positive social behaviors (lloyd, 1988). cooperative learning, according to another expert, promotes language acquisition by providing comprehensible input in developmentally appropriate ways and in a supportive and motivating environment (kagan, 1995). the model of johnson & johnson (2001) was taken in this research because they focus on developing a specific structure that can be incorporated in a variety of curriculums with an emphasis on integrating social skills and academic tasks. for them there are four steps that teachers must follow in teaching cooperative skills: students must see value in group work, students must be aware of the necessary skills for successful group work in order to know what they are supposed to do, students must practice the skill (in this case speaking) and students need to process the skills they have practiced (in order to improve them). during the research it was also necessary to learn how to apply different techniques according to cooperative learning, because it is not only for group-work. some of the techniques are: jigsaw groups with five students are set up. each group member is assigned some unique material to learn and then to teach diagram 1. the theoretical elements of this research. profile 8.indd 77 28/09/2007 12:42:18 a.m. prieto castillo universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras78 to his group members. to help the learning, students across the class working on the same sub-section get together to decide what is important and how to teach it. after practice in these “expert” groups, the original groups reform and students teach each other. think-pair-share involves a three-step cooperative structure. during the first step individuals think silently about a question posed by the instructor. individuals pair up during the second step and exchange thoughts. in the third step, the pairs share their responses with other pairs, other teams, or the entire group. round robin brainstorming class is divided into small groups (4 to 6) with one person appointed as the recorder. a question is posed with many answers and students are given time to think about answers. after the “think time,” members of the team share responses with one another round robin style. the recorder writes down the answers of the group members. the person next to the recorder starts, and each person in the group gives an answer in order until time is called. numbered heads a team of four is established. each class member is given a number between one and four. questions are asked of group. groups work together to answer their question so that all can verbally answer the question. the teacher calls out a number (for example, two) and each two is asked to give the answer. speaking skill this was other topic that was considered to give theoretical support to the research. according to chastain (1998, pp. 330358), speaking is a productive skill and it involves many components. speaking is more than making the right sounds, choosing the right words or getting the constructions diagram 2. language competencies speakers can develop (based on chastain, 1998). profile 8.indd 78 28/09/2007 12:42:18 a.m. improving eleventh graders’ oral production in english class through cooperative learning strategies profile 8, 2007. issn 1657-0790. bogotá, colombia. pages 75-90 79 grammatically correct. one of the problems that teachers need to face in order to teach a foreign language is to prepare students to be able to use the language. how this preparation is done, and how successful it is, depends very much on how well teachers understand their aims. for that it is necessary to recognize that a certain amount of grammar and vocabulary is required and to clearly understand, the difference between knowledge about a language and skill in using it (bygate, 1987). speakers also use their background and linguistic knowledge to create a message that will be meaningful to the audience. speakers can develop language competencies. canale & swain (1980) and canale’s framework (1983) in chastain (1998) describe these abilities: speaking activities when we are going to work on speaking, the types of activities chosen (performance, controlled/guided and creative or freer activities) depend on what we want learners to do. performance activities provide students with opportunities to communicate in the language. teachers and students at this point should concentrate on the meaning and intelligibility of the utterance, not the grammatical correctness. with practice, grammar errors should disappear. controlled activities, such as repetition practice or set sentences prompted by picture or word cues, aim to improve the accurate use of words, structures and pronunciation. in controlled and guided activities the focus is usually on accuracy, and the teacher makes it clear from feedback that accuracy is important. some examples of activities for controlled practices are: find someone who, questionnaires, information gap etc. guided activities include model dialogues which students can change to talk about themselves and to communicate their own needs and ideas, and tasks which the students carry out using language taught beforehand. finally creative or freer activities are usually designed to give either creative practice opportunities for predicted language items, or general fluency practice, where the specific language focus is less relevant. some activities for freer practice are: interaction or information gap, role-plays, simulations, discussions and games. these activities were combined with cooperative techniques to motivate students to use and improve their english. another necessary area of research was interaction, and how it can affect the effectiveness of different applied techniques. oral skills and interaction interaction skills involve making decisions about communication, such as what to say, how to say it, and whether to develop it, in accordance with one’s intentions, while maintaining the desired relations with others. our notions of what is right or wrong now depend on such things as what we have decided to say, how successful we have been so far, whether it is useful to continue the point, what our intentions are, and what sorts of relations we intend to establish or maintain with our interlocutors. in spoken interaction the time constraint can be expected to have observable effects. brown & yule (1983) suggest that it is possible to distinguish between “short speaking turns” profile 8.indd 79 28/09/2007 12:42:19 a.m. prieto castillo universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras80 and “long speaking turns”. the former are the more common. in this case the wording and the subject matter tend to be worked out extempore as the speaking proceeds. the differences in form undoubtedly reflect the differences in decision-making on the part of the speaker. the later tend to be more prepared, such as an after dinner speech or a talk on the radio. the combination of those theories gave clear strategies to use with the students, according to their needs, in order to improve their oral production. research design action research is the type of research design i followed since it is one of the most appropriate to carry out this investigation. it is conducted in naturally occurring settings. this kind of research collects information in a spiral way in order to solve problems, understand, change or innovate classroom processes. many researchers have designed different models to apply action research. i adopted cohen & manion’s (1985) model. they proposed eight stages in the action research process: identify the problem. develop a draft proposal based on a discussion and negotiation between interested parties. review what has already been written about the issue in question. restate the problem or formulate hypotheses. select research procedures, resources, materials, methods etc. choose evaluation procedures. collect data, analyze it and provide feedback. 1. 2. 3. 4. 5. 6. 7. interpret the data, draw out inferences and evaluate the project. one advantage of action research that we identified at this point was the spiral process, which provided us the opportunity to develop, improve and consider different elements at every step. fifty-three students participated in the project: eighteen girls and thirty-five boys, whose ages ranged from 14 to 17 years old. students had similar socio-economic status (middle-high). the students from this level showed a positive attitude to the english class. they knew that it was a requirement in their future professional development and they tried to improve it every day. data collection instruments for this research i adopted hopkins’ concepts (1993) to collect data. following these concepts, i used various methods including: field notes i took field notes for each english class; they allowed the identifying of reflections on and reactions to classroom problems. surveys i conducted one survey with fifty three eleventh graders, including the selected groups who participated in the research. these surveys were applied in english. the other was a survey taken by the english teachers. the objective of these surveys was to canvas different opinions about problems and methodology in the english class. 8. profile 8.indd 80 28/09/2007 12:42:19 a.m. improving eleventh graders’ oral production in english class through cooperative learning strategies profile 8, 2007. issn 1657-0790. bogotá, colombia. pages 75-90 81 audiotape recordings these audiotape recordings gave a general diagnosis and provided detailed evidence about oral production problems. two kinds of activities were recorded. one was a free practice in class and the other one was a controlled activity. in the free practice students prepared an oral activity, and the teacher noticed that the students did not use english during their preparation; but when they presented the controlled activity in front of the teacher, they used english. another characteristic of the situation was the method used to prepare the activity, because, although they were supposed to work in groups, the activity was actually developed by one student. finally i checked some school documents to find more information about the students’ problem. i found the results of a qpt (quick placement test) given to the students three years ago, when the british council was contacted by the school to make a diagnosis of the english level in the school. according to the test, most of students were in level a1 with a few in level a2. these results generated some changes in the way english was approached as a subject. some class hours were modified, as was the number of students per class. in addition, the placing of students in levels was discontinued. during the cooperative activities, other instruments were needed to find out information on the oral production process. students’ diary: after each lesson, students answered some questions about their opinions of and attitudes towards the activities done in class. – lesson speaking activities cooperative learning strategies 1. what is the point? jigsaw discussions guessing games jigsaw numbered heads think pair share 2. advertisements jigsaw discussions three step interview round robin brainstorming jigsaw 3. the power of nature jigsaw discussions problem solving exchange of opinions presentations jigsaw numbered heads think pair share 4. on the phone exchange of opinions discussions interviews round robin brainstorming think pair share 5. telephone messages guessing games discussions interviews jigsaw round robin brainstorming think pair share table 1. topics and activities used in class. profile 8.indd 81 28/09/2007 12:42:19 a.m. prieto castillo universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras82 diagram 3. data collection instruments. profile 8.indd 82 28/09/2007 12:42:19 a.m. improving eleventh graders’ oral production in english class through cooperative learning strategies profile 8, 2007. issn 1657-0790. bogotá, colombia. pages 75-90 83 those opinions were kept on file in a diary during the time the cooperative strategies were used. (see appendix 1). field notes and audiotape recordings: to monitor the students’ development and the effects of the strategies used. implementation of cooperative learning strategies during this stage of the research, five lesson plans were designed (see appendix 2), in which i combined cooperative learning and speaking strategies. each lesson developed a particular topic and also took into account specific grammatical structures. the topics and the cooperative learning and speaking activities used were: each topic was selected according to the students’ interests and needs. also it was important to look for and design special material as an important factor in motivating students to participate. in each lesson the achievements, indicators, possible problems, previous knowledge, materials and specific objectives for each stage of the class were also stated. findings all the students at the end of the implementation showed a different attitude towards group work and the skill of speaking. at the beginning of the process students did not like to work in groups and felt uncomfortable speaking english. after the experience of sharing and learning with others, they found real and concrete reasons to work with their partners. they could – learn through teaching. many values were learned during the process, such as solidarity, responsibility, team spirit, etc. the first time they used the cooperative learning strategies was not easy, as they wanted to work only with their friends and, in some cases, did not follow the rules. in the first session some groups delegated one student to do the activity, but when the teacher asked another student for the answers they understood why it was important that everyone in the group managed the information. competition among the groups was an important factor to motivate students to work as a group, because it is important for them to be the best and to be recognized. after revising the students’ diaries, and also observing the class session by session, various issues showed up in the students’ answers. for example, they changed their concept of group work. it was no longer a case of a group of friends where only one person had the responsibility of working and giving all the answers. the oral production improvement gave students the opportunity to help and to learn from their partners. they noticed that all of them had something to share and something to be valued in the group. students were aware of their responsibility in the speaking process. they understood that one way to improve speaking is practicing with others, interacting with others, and learning from others. in addition, they noticed their progress, in that at the beginning of the experience they were shy when they needed to communicate something orally but then they discovered that their partner was the teacher in some cases and they felt more comfortable asking for clarification of concepts or vocabulary. profile 8.indd 83 28/09/2007 12:42:19 a.m. prieto castillo universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras84 a good attitude was an element that students included in their strengths, because they noticed that good relations among them were important if they wanted good results in the activities. they valued and respected their partners and, in some cases, discovered new friendships through the work. the roles assumed by students during the cooperative learning activities were fluid. roles were given by the teacher at the beginning to explain to students how they worked but after practicing those elements they were assigned by the students for each session, and they also created new ones. for example one student was the recorder, another was the leader or the spokesperson, and they fulfilled those functions according to the task. students could rotate the functions in different groups. this helped to reinforce self-esteem in some students. materials, topics and special equipment resources were motivating factors in the experience. these elements gave students tools and encouragement in their work. the topics generally allowed them to discuss and think about their real life. their personal and previous knowledge were always taken into consideration. they found reasons to express themselves and to share. discipline requirements and other behavioral rules were given at the beginning of the process by the teacher. the students needed to know how to work in a group and at the end of each class they reflected on that day’s process in order to improve next time. they were responsible for their discipline during the process. students were aware of their own responsibility in the process. they identified the fact that the project’s successful result was achieved through their good attitude and the contributions of all the class members. the cooperative learning activities most used by the students for improving oral production were: round robin brainstorming, think pair share, three step interview, numbered heads and jigsaw. the teachers’ survey indicated that: the activities, topics, materials and group work helped students in their oral improvement; the responsibility for the teaching role was not the teacher’s as the students in each group learnt through teaching others; in some cases, the time given for activities was not enough, as students wanted to continue with the activity. conclusions and implications having analyzed and worked through this research project, i have concluded that cooperative learning strategies helped students to improve oral production and interaction, but it was a gradual process. i confirmed that speaking is a productive skill and it involves many components. it is more than making the right sound, choosing the right words or getting the constructions grammatically correct, as chastain (1998) stated. during the experience students found reasons to express themselves orally and a path to use their previous knowledge through learning and teaching actively. the starting point for speaking was the appropriate input given by other communicative skills. there are four main causes why students did not practice speaking during the experience: they did not have an appropriate input; in some cases, they did not have enough vocabulary or the correct grammatical structures to express something; another profile 8.indd 84 28/09/2007 12:42:19 a.m. improving eleventh graders’ oral production in english class through cooperative learning strategies profile 8, 2007. issn 1657-0790. bogotá, colombia. pages 75-90 85 cause was the teacher lacking attractive and appropriate activities to motivate students to express themselves; and finally it was necessary to create an environment where mistakes were not important. based on the results gathered i can say that there are five factors necessary to work with cooperative learning in the classroom: first, small groups are required; second, different levels of ability had to be considered; third, it was good practice to establish the group’s rules according to each activity; fourth it was important to work on one skill for each stage; and finally, it was important to evaluate students performance. the control of students’ discipline was difficult at the beginning of the process because they were not in the habit of working with each other, in the sense that the teacher stipulated. during each class the objective of the activity and the rules to be used needed to be explained. for example, when the teacher raised her hand they knew that they needed to do the same, and to be quiet. also, at the beginning they wanted to work with their friends, while in the first session they were shy during the activities because of their new partners. students were aware of their responsibility in the speaking process. activity by activity, they noticed that they had many elements at their disposal to express themselves and to be successful in communicating. they understood that practicing speaking is the only way to develop it, obviously using an appropriate input. listening and reading skills were used as a vehicle to develop students’ oral production. cooperative learning has four main strategies to help the speaking process: jigsaw, numbered heads, think pair share and three step interview. these strategies allowed and encouraged students to speak. at the end of the process students were able to identify the type of cooperative strategy that worked best for them. the feedback given by the teacher at the end of the session helped students keep on talking in their groups, and they corrected errors unconsciously because, during the activity, they checked the expressions, vocabulary and pronunciation used. but the feedback couldn’t be applied in the way stipulated in the theory, because there was not enough time in each session to apply the special techniques. in addition, many values and social skills were put into practice by the students: honesty, responsibility, solidarity, team spirit and self-esteem. finally, cooperative learning was an appropriate method for improving oral production. it was enjoyable for the students and teacher because it used many elements contributed by the students and encouraged them to improve their process. students said that they learnt more and had more opportunities to participate orally in the class; they felt comfortable using english in class. i noticed that my students attained a certain level of knowledge and proficiency in language use. but the most important point was that they could express themselves and communicate orally without the pressure of grades or other students’ opinions. the pedagogical implications of this research are relevant on different levels: students, teachers, school, and even national educational policies. for the students: students discovered that speaking is fun and easy when it involves working with others, and practiced values such as respect, tolerance, team spirit, and profile 8.indd 85 28/09/2007 12:42:19 a.m. prieto castillo universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras86 the importance of interacting with others. students also established new relationships with their classmates through cooperative learning. for the teachers: teachers found different strategies through cooperative learning for helping students to improve their oral production. those cooperative strategies could be taken up by the school as tools to help the bilingualism process. this experience, at the same time, helped teachers to encourage their students into oral production, giving a real purpose for speaking and using other communicative skills as input. these activities created a different environment in the class. that environment was free of anxiety and pressure; students were free to express themselves. finally it is important to mention some issues concerning the school where this project was developed: the school is going to begin a bilingualism process and, as such, it is very important to identify and apply strategies that could bring about a more homogeneous population using the current heterogeneous one, to achieve the desired level; the school is also adopting the new demands of the colombia bilingüe program from the men, and so it is very important to adopt strategies that help the institution face and fulfill those demands. references artz, a. f., & newman, c. m. (1990). cooperative learning. mathematics teacher, 83, 448-449. bygate, m. (1997). speaking. oxford: oxford university press. brown, g., & yule, g. (2001). teaching the spoken language. cambridge: cambridge university press. canale, m., & swain, m. (1980). theoretical bases of communicative approaches to second language teaching and testing. applied linguistics, �(1), 1-47. chastain, k. (1998). developing second language skills (2nd ed.). chicago: harcourt brace publishers. chastain, k. (1991). developing second language skills. chicago: harcourt brace publishers. cohen, a. (1994). assessing language ability in the classroom. boston: heinle and heinle publishers. cohen, l., & manion, l. (1985). research methods in education. london: croom helm. johnson, d. w. (1991). circles of learning. cooperation in the classroom. m.n.: interaction book company. johnson, d. w. (1988). cooperation in the classroom. edina: interaction book company. johnson, d., & johnson, r. “cooperative learning.” [online] retrieved 15 october 2001 from http:// www.clcrc.com/pages/cl.html kagan, s. (1986). cooperative learning and sociocultural factors in schooling. california: california state university. kemmis, s., & mctaggart, r. (1988). the action research planner. geelong: deakin university press. nunan, d. (1989). understanding language classrooms. new jersey: prentice hall. nunan, d. (1999). second language teaching and learning. boston: heinle & heinle publishers. slavin, r. e. (1990). cooperative learning: theory, research and practice. new jersey: prentice hall. about the author claudia yanive prieto castillo holds a b.ed in modern languages from the universidad distrital francisco josé de caldas. specialist in applied linguistics and tefl from universidad la gran colombia. she currently works in the language department of the universidad incca de colombia and alex program at universidad nacional de colombia. she also works at patria school. profile 8.indd 86 28/09/2007 12:42:19 a.m. improving eleventh graders’ oral production in english class through cooperative learning strategies profile 8, 2007. issn 1657-0790. bogotá, colombia. pages 75-90 87 appendix 1: students’ diary this instrument was used after each session to find out the students’ opinions and attitudes towards the activities done in class. it was an important introspective tool kept by learners and focused on students’ performance, cooperative learning and speaking strategies. profile 8.indd 87 28/09/2007 12:42:20 a.m. prieto castillo universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras88 profile 8.indd 88 28/09/2007 12:42:20 a.m. improving eleventh graders’ oral production in english class through cooperative learning strategies profile 8, 2007. issn 1657-0790. bogotá, colombia. pages 75-90 89 stage/timing procedure/activities stage aim materials warm up activity “on your toes” -think pair share (7 minutes) teacher gives each student a card with a part of the body, and they have to find a partner with the same part. after that, teacher gives them a worksheet where they need to match information and draw the pictures according to instructions. then they share their answers with other pairs. whole class feedback. to motivate students. worksheets. written cards. preteach vocabulary (5 minutes) teacher divides the class in groups of four students. each student receives a piece of information (it could be a picture or a word). they need to match the pictures with the correct words. whole class feedback. teacher asks students to think about the topic of the class. whole class feedback. students discuss if they would consider having some of those things shown before. whole class feedback. to clarify vocabulary. to make predictions to discuss a specific situation. pictures, written cards. presentation pre-reading activity -jigsaw teacher gives each student in each group a unique material that they need to explore and explain to the rest of the group without showing it. students discuss the topic of the text and confirm the prediction they made before. to set a context. to check predictions. strip papers reading activity text: “body language” students read the text and answer some questions about it. one student is the recorder of the group. then all members of the group change their group to share their responses. whole class feedback. to check reading comprehension to share information reading cards round robin brainstorming (10 minutes) the groups of four are divided in two groups, each pair of students receives special material that they need to learn and then to teach to their group members. they use the text in order to find examples of defining and non-defining relative clauses. to prepare special aspects of language. to practice the topic orally. worksheets. jigsaw (10 minutes) according to the groups each member is given a number between 1 and 4. questions are asked of the group. groups work together to answer the question so that all members of their group can verbally answer it. teacher calls out a number to give the answer. to practice in a controlled activity. worksheets. profile 8.indd 89 28/09/2007 12:42:20 a.m. prieto castillo universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras90 stage/timing procedure/activities stage aim materials speaking activity numbered head (15 minutes) each group receives a worksheet; there are two situational exercises with different definitions. each team has a list of words with two definitions and one space to invent other one. first they decide their answers and then they ask the other group for the correct definition. teams read the definitions by turns. they can discuss if the definition is correct or not. to produce something new using previous knowledge. group work (15 minutes) students in pairs choose two words and write three definitions for each one. they change partner and ask orally for the correct definition. to produce something new using previous knowledge. wrap up (20 minutes) students in pairs choose two words and write three definitions for each one. they change partner and ask orally for the correct definition. profile 8.indd 90 28/09/2007 12:42:20 a.m. profile 5.pmd ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ 162 profileprofileprofileprofileprofile is the hidden curriculum a relevant issue in educational processes? ¿es el currículo oculto un aspecto importante en los procesos educativos? esther pataresther pataresther pataresther pataresther patarrrrrroyooyooyooyooyo* espama61@latinmail.com juan carlos díazjuan carlos díazjuan carlos díazjuan carlos díazjuan carlos díaz** karlosxuan@hotmail.com susana barsusana barsusana barsusana barsusana barreto de quinterreto de quinterreto de quinterreto de quinterreto de quinterooooo*** susana_barreto_c@hotmail.com institución educativa distrital francisco de miranda, bogotá this paper explores some ideas about the hidden curriculum as an amount of ideas and beliefs which are implicit in an indirect way into the scholar life. those ideas are regarding to gender equality, social status and racial difference, among others. we consider teachers are able to integrate the hidden curriculum as a pedagogical strategy in the classroom. examples of integration include activities such as observation techniques, role-plays, peer modeling and particularly, the portfolio as a useful tool for reflection which reveals the hidden curriculum. kkkkkey worey worey worey worey wordsdsdsdsds: hidden curriculum, pedagogical strategy, portfolio, elt processes, stereotypes este documento explora algunas ideas acerca del currículo oculto como una suma de ideas y creencias que están implícitos de una forma indirecta dentro de la vida escolar. estas ideas están relacionadas con la equidad de género, diferencias sociales y raciales, entre otros. *esther patarroyo amaya: esther patarroyo amaya: esther patarroyo amaya: esther patarroyo amaya: esther patarroyo amaya: b. ed. in english and spanish from the universidad la gran colombia. she has a specialization in internal control strategic administration from the universidad libre. **juan carlos díaz parjuan carlos díaz parjuan carlos díaz parjuan carlos díaz parjuan carlos díaz pardododododo: teacher of english graduated from universidad pedagógica nacional. ***susana barreto de quinterosusana barreto de quinterosusana barreto de quinterosusana barreto de quinterosusana barreto de quintero: b.ed. in philology and languages from the universidad nacional de colombia. specialist in applied linguistics to tefl at universidad la gran colombia. ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○163 profile profile profile profile profile is the hidden curriculum a relevant issues in educational processes? consideramos que es posible para los docentes integrar el currículo como estrategia pedagógica en el aula. ejemplos de esta integración incluyen técnicas de observación, juegos de roles, modelamiento en parejas y particularmente, el portafolio como herramienta de reflexión que permita hacer evidente el currículo oculto. palabras claves:palabras claves:palabras claves:palabras claves:palabras claves: currículo oculto, estrategia pedagógica, estereotipos, enseñanza de inglés, portafolio many ideas spring up when we, as teachers, talk about curriculum. we think of syllabuses, plans of study, approaches, methodology, evaluation, resources and others. but have you heard about the hidden curhidden curhidden curhidden curhidden curriculum? riculum? riculum? riculum? riculum? maybe you have, maybe not. we want to reflect on some key ideas concerning this issue. the hidden curriculum refers to all the actions or situations developed in class unconsciously, not prepared by the teacher; they are the product of myths or assumptions people have concerning teaching-learning processes. it involves all the teachings which are presented to students but are not consciously received by them, students never see it so they are not aware of it. haralambos (1991) defines it as consisting of “…those things pupils learn through the experience of attending school rather than the stated educational objectives of such institutions.” it can be said that some aspects related to the “hidden curriculum” are constructive and positive, but others can be destructive and negative; that is, some of them help students to learn good and fruitful things unconsciously but in other cases, they learn things or assume wrong attitudes because of stereotyped thinking of teachers or situations concerning school processes. here we have some patterns regarding the english language teaching (elt) hidden curriculum: • learning a new language gives cachet and style. • english is a very strange language; it is very difficult to learn it. • state school students have more problems learning a new language; it is easier for private school students. • teachers cannot ask for textbooks to state school students; they are too poor to buy them. taking into account that education is a socialization process, there are some specific social aspects highly affected by the hidden curriculum such as gender equality, social classes, racial differences and so on. concerning gender equality, the hidden curriculum generally transmits a lot of ideas, concepts and attitudes that carry out many implications on the treatment given to pupils considering their gender differences. we mention some examples below. ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ 164 patarroyo, díaz and barreto profile profile profile profile profile • boys are more intelligent than girls. • girls are supposed to be more tender and cuter than boys. • girls deserve better treatment than boys. • some sports like soccer are appropriate only for boys while some activities like cooking are more appropriate for girls. • some subjects like math are special for boys; girls must prefer languages and artistic areas. • teachers are more confident with girls than with boys. • girls must behave better than boys. considering the powerful influence the hidden curriculum has on students’ learning, the control teachers must exert in their classrooms situations is very important. since teachers cannot ignore the importance of the hidden curriculum, they must make the best use of it for the benefit of the students. firstly, they must look for strategies to improve this hidden curriculum by addressing it in a constructive and meaningful way. after detecting cases or situations in which the hidden curriculum is causing a negative influence on students, teachers must change their attitudes or assumptions when trying to better the teaching processes according to each case. they must be more demanding but, at the same time, have more motivated classes; they must also be tolerant and confident with students so that they can be closer to the english teacher, participating dynamically and actively. moreover, they must make the hidden curriculum explicit to students; they may use some observation techniques such as diaries and video recording, among others. thus, teachers collect experiences from their classroom practice and may note what happens there in an unconscious and unprepared way. consequently they can improve or correct situations they consider negative or inappropriate in the teachinglearning process. other strategies such as role playing, peer modelling and teacher modelling, are all good tools for teaching some social skills that change stereotyped or ambiguous views about social actions or habits. taking into account our own experience, we want to remark here on another tool we can use in order to address the hidden curriculum: the portfolio. the portfolio can be used as an evaluation tool in which students participate directly in the processes developed in class. students collect all the materials (guides, support material, quizzes, essays, etc.) used and produced in class, organize them coherently and meaningfully, and, observing their processes and results, make their own reflection about their strengths and weaknesses in order to seek improvement and commitment plans. besides, they make comments about the class development and give suggestions or recommendations whenever necessary. here, we have a great opportunity to watch “inside” our classroom practice and conduct the “hidden curriculum” in a useful and correct way. in general terms, we consider the hidden curriculum an issue of great relevance when talking about teaching-learning processes. ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○165 profile profile profile profile profile is the hidden curriculum a relevant issues in educational processes? a good management of this issue can lead us to better the quality of educational and cultural processes in our schools. referencesreferencesreferencesreferencesreferences haralambos (1991). themes and perspectives. retrieved april 23, 2004 from http://www.sociology.org.uk/tece1tl1.htm this article was received on april 1st, 2004 and accepted on september 15th, 2004 designing a holistic professional development program for elementary school english teachers in colombia profile 8, 2007. issn 1657-0790. bogotá, colombia. pages 131-143 131 designing a holistic professional development program for elementary school english teachers in colombia* diseño de un programa holístico de desarrollo profesional para docentes de inglés de primaria en colombia maria mcnulty ferri** diana isabel quinchía ortiz*** universidad de antioquia, colombia the design and implementation of a holistic professional development program for elementary school english teachers in colombia concerns target language improvement and pedagogical reflection. school-based and learner-centered, the program is characteristic of a synthetic, progressive, process-oriented curriculum as teachers’ language and pedagogical needs determined the learning and pedagogical activities for the program. the teachers improved their use of conventional english and became aware of an alternative approach for early foreign language instruction. they reported increased confidence using english and implementing new methodological strategies by getting positive feedback from their learners. positive changes in teachers’ and students’ attitudes towards english suggest that this holistic approach be used as a viable professional development program for elementary school teachers in colombia. key words: efl teacher professional development, elementary school efl teachers, program design, target language development, pedagogical reflection el diseño y la implementación de un programa holístico de desarrollo profesional para profesores de inglés de la básica primaria en colombia está dirigido hacia el mejoramiento de la lengua extranjera y la reflexión pedagógica. el programa, situado en el contexto escolar y centrado en el docente como aprendiz, se caracteriza por ser sintético, progresivo y orientado hacia procesos debido a que las necesidades lingüísticas y pedagógicas de los profesores determinaron las actividades pedagógicas y de aprendizaje del programa. los profesores mejoraron el uso del inglés convencional y adquirieron conciencia de un enfoque alternativo para la instrucción temprana en lengua extranjera. informaron un aumento en su confianza para utilizar el inglés y para implementar nuevas estrategias metodológicas al recibir realimentación positiva de sus estudiantes. los cambios positivos observados en las actitudes * grupo de investigación en aprendizaje y enseñanza de lenguas extranjeras (eale). escuela de idiomas. universidad de antioquia. the research study – un enfoque holístico para el desarrollo profesional de maestros de inglés de la básica primariawas financed by the comité para el desarrollo de la investigación (codi) universidad de antioquia, and the secretaría de educación de itagüí, antioquia. acta 3, centro de investigación de la escuela de idiomas. ** e-mail: mariam@idiomas.udea.edu.co address: calle 37 b sur no. 28 c-02 envigado antioquia, colombia *** e-mail: dquinchia@idiomas.udea.edu.co address: calle 116 no.67 b 48 medellínantioquia, colombia this article was received on january 15th, 2007 and accepted on july 17th, 2007. profile 8.indd 131 28/09/2007 12:42:25 a.m. mcnulty ferry and quinchía ortiz universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras132 de los profesores y estudiantes hacia el inglés indican que este enfoque holístico puede constituirse en un programa de desarrollo profesional para profesores de básica primaria en colombia. palabras clave: desarrollo profesional de profesores de inglés como lengua extranjera, profesores de inglés de la básica primaria, diseño de programas, desarrollo de la lengua extranjera, reflexión pedagógica by public elementary school teachers in medellin. teachers had limited or unrelated educational preparation, insufficient training and target language preparation. a major finding of this study was the need for the teachers’ target language development and pedagogical enhancement related to themebased instruction. berry (1990) points out that effective in-service programs for teachers can integrate language improvement with a methodological component. vélez-white (2005), the colombian minister of education, presents findings of a diagnostic study to determine the level of communicative competence of english school teachers in six regions of colombia. results indicate that a high percentage of teachers are at a basic level of proficiency in english according to the common european framework of reference for languages. this led vélez-white to conclude that both primary and secondary school teachers are in need of programs to improve their proficiency in english and their methodology. the fact that teachers may be required to teach a foreign language before they have acquired the language skills to do so has also been recognized by murphey (2003, p. 1) in the asian context. this author believes that “we need to develop methods and materials to acknowledge the situation of these teachers and to support and encourage them to grow more professionally through their own learning and teaching of english”. introduction more than ten years ago, the teaching of english as a foreign language (efl) started to be introduced in the curriculum of public elementary schools in colombia resulting from the ley general de educación, (general education act), 1994. to date, the colombian government has undertaken numerous initiatives to support these teachers such as designing and promoting curricular guidelines for foreign language instruction at the secondary school level, providing teacher education programs and professional development courses focused on early foreign language instruction, and giving computer-based resources to schools, among others. despite these governmental initiatives directed towards helping primary schools and teachers, local research studies have shown that primary school english teachers and their learners continue to face difficulties with this educational endeavour. cárdenas (2001) reports a lack of planning and standards in the implementation of efl programs at the regional and national level. in a study to determine the needs of efl teachers in medellin, gonzález, montoya & sierra (2001) cite teachers’ needs related to inadequate levels of proficiency in english and knowledge of the subject matter and pedagogical strategies. these issues were also highlighted in a study (cadavid, mcnulty & quinchia, 2004) that explored the methodological strategies used profile 8.indd 132 28/09/2007 12:42:25 a.m. designing a holistic professional development program for elementary school english teachers in colombia profile 8, 2007. issn 1657-0790. bogotá, colombia. pages 131-143 133 taking into consideration the reality of efl teachers in our context, our curriculum development effort focused on the implementation of a holistic professional development program with a group of public elementary english teachers in medellin. this initiative explored the possibility of integrating strategies directed towards improving the teachers’ target language and reflective practice based on principles of theme-based instruction as part of an action research study. curriculum development would be contextualized, progressive, and process-oriented in nature while focusing on learning and pedagogical activities (nunan, 1994; rabbini, 2002) to support the integration of the target language component with the pedagogical. we aimed towards a shift in program delivery from a “campus-based-lecture-tutorial mode to a problem-based-learning-within-aschool-site” mode of program delivery (cambourne, kiggins & ferry, 2003, p. 35). we believed that this program model would enable university researchers to respond to the needs of the elementary school teachers and adopt the role of co-learners who facilitate and participate in the shared learning and construction of knowledge for that community. our paper is organized as follows: first, the background of the professional development program, and a description of the teachers; second, a description of the methodology of the program and its implementation; third, reflections on teachers’ language and pedagogical development; fourth, theoretical considerations from the perspective of curriculum design; and fifth, our final reflections. 1. background of our professional development program our program has been part of an ongoing larger professional developmental effort directed towards giving public elementary and secondary school english teachers courses focused on target language development, methodology, and evaluation, in medellin. the proposal for our program was initially written by us and two colleagues. it was included in a participatory action research project that was submitted to the university of antioquia funding board –codi– and the school of languages for funding in 2005. our director of the school of languages presented the professional development proposal to the secretary of education, itagui, a locality of medellin, for additional financial support. as a condition of approval, the secretary of education requested that we submit an outline of our course with general objectives, content, methodology, and evaluation which was prior to meeting our teachers. to guide this draft of our program design, we relied on findings from our previous study in which we compiled a profile of public elementary school english teachers and determined the methodological strategies they used in their classes and the principles that guided their actions. our program duration was ninety hours: eighty hours of face-to-face work and ten hours of independent work. we considered that we could meet with the teachers twice a week for three-hour sessions over a five-month period at a school in itagui. based on our work schedules at university, we contemplated holding the sessions on mondays and wednesdays, from 3:00 to 6:00 profile 8.indd 133 28/09/2007 12:42:25 a.m. mcnulty ferry and quinchía ortiz universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras134 p.m. we also knew that most of the teachers worked in the morning timetable at their schools. each session was facilitated by one of us, along with one of two other colleagues and the support of our student researchers. the first presentation of our professional development program to teachers from many public elementary schools was held at the educational institution pedro estrada in itagui, in february of 2006. at that meeting, teachers were informed of the general objectives of this initiative, and that their participation in our program would give them a number of credits which they could use to increase their salary scale. we invited interested teachers to volunteer and sign a research consent form which would allow us to collect data from them and the classes. 1.1 background of our elementary school teachers the teachers who participated in this program are all elementary teachers. although twenty-one teachers registered for the program, sixteen from 9 schools began (two men and fourteen women), but due to personal reasons, only thirteen finished the course. at the beginning of our course, we asked participants to complete a questionnaire that explored their personal and educational information, and some aspects related to their experiences teaching english as well as the resources available at their institutions. their ages range from thirty to fifty years. most of them are fulltime teachers; just one holds a part-time job. two of them have been teaching for thirty years while the others have between 10 to 14 years of teaching experience. most teachers have been teaching english from 1 to 4 years at their schools. the majority of the teachers are “normalistas” as they completed their secondary education in “escuelas normales”1. they also hold a bachelor of education degree in different fields such as spanish and literature, pedagogy, psychology, history and geography, preschool and elementary education, social sciences and ethics. many of the teachers have undertaken postgraduate programs in different areas. most teachers have taken english courses and just two of them completed methodology courses to teach english. at their schools, they teach english in preschool and grades 2, 3, 4, and 5, for 1 to 2 hours a week. their average class size is 30 to 49 students. the teachers primarily use english to teach greetings and vocabulary, and do activities such as games, singing songs, repetition exercises, and reading and copying words and phrases. their personal interests include syllabus and materials design and efl methodology, specifically reading and writing. 2. description of course methodology and its implementation in our first class with the teachers, we, the university researchers and research students, shared professional information about ourselves, findings from our previous research, our vision of this professional development program, and general logistics. teachers shared personal and professional information about themselves as well. this was very important for us to get to know each other and understand that this project 1 secondary high school training for teachers in colombia. profile 8.indd 134 28/09/2007 12:42:25 a.m. designing a holistic professional development program for elementary school english teachers in colombia profile 8, 2007. issn 1657-0790. bogotá, colombia. pages 131-143 135 would begin with a mutual understanding of their teaching and learning contexts and perceived needs as primary school english teachers. once the teachers heard about other efl teachers’ needs, all of them identified themselves with the teachers in our previous study and expressed their enthusiasm to continue with this professional development program. they believed that our in-service development program could help them to improve their english and widen their methodological strategies. teachers were advised that they would receive a certificate from the secretary of education and two credits upon completion of this program. teachers agreed to meet as a group in two weekly sessions for five months. we told them that each three-hour session, divided into two equal parts, would be focused on language development through themes and then on their pedagogical practice and theory, but that these two aspects would be inevitably connected. we also informed them that during the sessions we would write some reflections and that the student researchers would mainly observe and take notes. the teachers also agreed to write a weekly journal in spanish and/or english based on their experience in our sessions and subsequent work in their classes at school. teachers were informed that their journal entries would be guided by questions at times, and that they would share what they wrote with us and their peers. during the five months, we, university researchers, met with our student researchers at the university after each session to evaluate our experience with the teachers, plan upcoming sessions, design materials, and discuss theory. it was clear to us that we would have to adapt our original proposal once we had a better understanding of the teachers’ ability to use english and information about their teaching and learning contexts. in the first session, we designed and administered a diagnostic language instrument that consisted of the following four components: listening to a fable under the format of reader’s theater and completing two charts – one about general and specific information and the other about what the characters said; reading a short text of a teacher’s description about her experience with her first graders and answering comprehension questions; writing a short description about a poster of people at a picnic based on prompts; and speaking about personal information based on prompts in a handout. their speech production was recorded. this diagnostic tool enabled us to check the teachers’ skills in english, and to determine that most teachers appeared to be at a lowto-middle-beginner level of proficiency. we found that most of the teachers were able to communicate their ideas at a word and phrase level, while only a few could communicate using short, simple sentences. from our discussion with the teachers and with this information, we began to revise our proposal and plan our first sessions. concerning english, we thought of topics which could be introduced at a beginnerlevel. the topics were usually formulated in personal questions such as what’s my name?, what’s my nickname?, how old am i?, what are important numbers in my life?, who is my family?, are our families different? how?, what do i look like?, what am i like?, who am i like in my family? how?, what are my daily routines?, what is my favourite day of the week?, what do i do every day?, what are some daily routines around the world?, what profile 8.indd 135 28/09/2007 12:42:25 a.m. mcnulty ferry and quinchía ortiz universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras136 are my likes and dislikes? what food do i like? dislike?, what are my abilities?, etc. in addition, we had teachers explore different story genres such as fantasy and science fiction. a few topics related to the vocabulary that teachers presented to their learners in their schools. a variety of activities were carried out with the teachers to develop their four language skills further and explore these topics. the following activities were identified as appropriate for young learners: drawing pictures to describe one’s names; reading and writing rhymes and poetry; describing family pictures; singing songs, making big books; engaging in reader’s theater, doing information-gap activities; doing role-plays; reading and writing stories of different genres such as science fiction, fantasy and horror; playing game-like activities, puzzles, and board games, etc. the materials we used were authentic; for example, children’s literature books, and big books, board games, labeled pictures, and props for roleplaying fables, made by us and the teachers. during these sessions, the teachers had an opportunity to interact with their peers and us, and actively use english to communicate meaningful information. we adopted seven conditions of learning that emphasize language immersion, real language use, demonstration, and language approximation, among others, as guiding principles for our implementation of the activities with the teachers (in cambourne et al., 2002). as we started developing the teachers’ language skills, we began to look more closely at who they were as teachers and their social contexts of teaching. we focused on their pedagogical practice and encouraged the teachers to reflect on the experiences they were having as english learners in our sessions. teachers first wrote entries in their journals describing themselves as people and professionals. after that, we asked them to complete charts with information about their english curriculum at the school, grade syllabus including content, activities, evaluation, resources, and learners. teachers usually shared this information in small groups according to their grades as a preparation for plenary session discussions. with this work, teachers were able to identify why and how english was being taught to young learners in their contexts, describe their young learners, and see samples of syllabi with different aims, etc. in another activity, we asked teachers to think of one of their learners and reflect on his/her characteristics and necessary conditions for learning english. with this activity, teachers were introduced to the concept of learner needs analysis as a strategy for planning, implementing, and evaluating their instruction. over numerous sessions, we continued exploring similarities and differences as to how they were teaching english as a foreign language in their classrooms. once teachers had discussed and reflected on their own social contexts of teaching and on their learners, we linked this information to the curricular guidelines proposed by the colombian ministry of education, and theory. at this point, the theory considered what influences what and how foreign language teachers teach, and children’s reading and writing processes across different ages and grade levels as well as possible teacher actions in the classroom. to introduce theory and key concepts, we used practical, exploratory activities with the teachers. profile 8.indd 136 28/09/2007 12:42:25 a.m. designing a holistic professional development program for elementary school english teachers in colombia profile 8, 2007. issn 1657-0790. bogotá, colombia. pages 131-143 137 after teachers had participated in a variety of activities as learners of english, we usually asked them to reflect on their language development in their journals. we also encouraged teachers to tell us whether they had used any of the activities in their classrooms. it was important for all of us to share these experiences. this was motivating for the group as teachers could evidence their colleagues’ work. in fact, we believed that the teachers’ voices and direct teaching practice should be taken as the starting point for reflection on methodological change. after this, we directed them to reflect on the possibilities of adapting and implementing some of the activities with their learners. this generated a lot of enthusiasm, group discussion, and questions as to how the activities could be implemented in their classrooms. teachers started to implement a number of the activities such as the alphabet picture name game, reading and writing poetry, the reader’s theater, etc., and discussed how their learners reacted to these. it seemed that the teachers felt encouraged to take risks with the new methodological strategies and enjoyed learning from each other’s experience. after a period of time, we thought that we could begin to introduce some theory about reading and writing in children, and link the development of these skills to the concept of thematic cycles as an alternative methodology for them. in fact, the teachers had raised various questions over a number of sessions related to this. one of the researchers shared her past experience with practicum students who had taught english in a primary school through a spiral thematic curriculum in a session. this gave our teachers a practical, realistic example of a curriculum which integrated themes and language over different grade levels in our context. during our sessions, we brought more activities to develop the teachers’ reading and writing connected to themes and this gave them ideas as to how to develop these skills with their learners. after this, we gave the teachers some theory. for example, teachers read a few short articles in spanish to illustrate reading and writing processes. two of the articles were the following: la escritura en primera y segunda lengua: un proceso, dos idiomas (clavijo & torres, 1999) and ciclos temáticos: una alternativa para el desarrollo de la lectoescritura bilingüe (salmon, 1999). teachers began to have a deeper understanding of key concepts related to student-centered learning, thematic cycles, cooperative learning, real language use in reading and writing, and pedagogical implications, and reflected on these in their practice. teachers requested additional material which they could use with their learners in their schools. they were specially interested in how they explore english with the computer and develop reading and writing skills. therefore, a few sessions were organized with them in the language lab at the school. there they explored reading and writing, for example, with short stories having a language model through an interesting esl/ efl children’s web site. teachers were also provided with a list of other sites they could use, given information about them, and had the opportunity to browse through them. towards the end of the program, we began to look again at the teachers’ syllabuses and have them work in groups according to their grade levels and adapt these based on their practical experience in our program and their pedagogical knowledge. teachers profile 8.indd 137 28/09/2007 12:42:25 a.m. mcnulty ferry and quinchía ortiz universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras138 were able to draw diagrams with a few topics they could include in their courses, activities with which to explore the topics and develop language skills, and a few strategies for evaluation. these teachers began to reflect on how to reshape their syllabuses and future teaching and learning practices. in order to reflect on the teachers’ progress in language and change in their practice, we gathered teachers’ work from the language activities, their journal reflections and ours, their answers to a self-assessment questionnaire, and a group conference that was held at the end of the program. in addition, teachers were given the same diagnostic test as an additional measure of their language improvement. 3. reflections on teachers’ language and pedagogical development we are currently in the process of reading through the data from their final diagnostic test in order to compare the results of the initial and final tests. in addition, we are reviewing the teachers’ class work, journal entries, and responses to the self-assessment questionnaire. the final group conference with the teachers to evaluate the program has been transcribed and a preliminary analysis has been done. it seems that most teachers showed improvement in speaking and writing on the final test and during the activities in the sessions. teachers were able to use the language in a more conventional way to give personal information and express their ideas. while in the initial diagnostic test they were using words and short phrases to communicate, at the end of the program they were able to use sentences and longer pieces of discourse. we also noticed that many teachers used more vocabulary and accurate structures. the teachers’ responses to the selfassessment questionnaire show that they have reflected on their processes as language learners and teachers. as language learners, teachers began to reflect on their language proficiency level and recognized that they need to continue with their language development so that they will be able to go beyond the word level and use the language to express their ideas in their classrooms. they believe that they need to be exposed to english more often and to be able to use and monitor the language previously learned. throughout the course, teachers reported that despite their level of proficiency with english, they felt confident taking risks, making mistakes, and correcting themselves. they understood that they were in a process of improving their english by using it creatively and making approximations towards more conventional language (cambourne et al., 2002). as language teachers, they also took risks to implement the methodological strategies they had experienced in this program in order to improve their learners’ use of english. a number of teachers reported that their learners liked the activities and materials they had brought to class and that their learners were more motivated to study english. also, the teachers pointed out that they are more tolerant and understanding of their learners’ mistakes when trying to use english in class activities. the impact of this program was not only seen in their classrooms. one teacher reported that she profile 8.indd 138 28/09/2007 12:42:25 a.m. designing a holistic professional development program for elementary school english teachers in colombia profile 8, 2007. issn 1657-0790. bogotá, colombia. pages 131-143 139 had shared her experience and materials in our program with another teacher at her school, and that this teacher also reported positive changes in her students’ attitudes and work in the english class. all teachers shared an interest in continuing to work with this type of professional development program because it enabled them to improve their english and apply new methodological strategies in their teaching and learning contexts. teachers believed that this holistic approach was quite different from the traditional training experiences as their individual differences and interests were acknowledged. all of us believed that the group was very cohesive and that we were able to learn from each other in a supportive environment. we considered that these teachers had taken responsibility for their own learning in this knowledgebuilding community model of professional development (cambourne et al., 2002). also, teachers reported that they valued the practical nature of this course from two perspectives: first, they were able to experience the activities and see their own language improvement; and second, they could apply what they learned in these sessions and see their learners respond positively to learning english. teachers recognized that they could integrate english with other areas. overall, this professional development experience enhanced teachers’ confidence to continue developing their language and exploring how they can move towards a more theme-based approach. 4. theoretical considerations in this section, we related our experience by designing a holistic program to the theoretical concepts of learner-centered curriculum, negotiation in curriculum development, and synthetic curriculum design, in order to connect practice and theory. 4.1 learner-centered curriculum designing this professional development program based on our educational reality supports (nunan et al. 1994, p. 1) conceptualization of curriculum as that of “what teachers actually do” related to planning, implementing and evaluating. our curriculum development was a localized or ‘school-based’ plan of study for a group of teachers. although our initial proposal could be associated with that of the traditional model (taba, 1962, cited in nunan, 1994), as our general objectives and methodology were predetermined before having contact with the teachers, we believe that it was much more learner-centered as our prior decisionmaking was not binding in terms of content selection, grading, specific activities, and materials (nunan, 1994). in fact, our program was reshaped from the initial stage to its end based on information from the teachers’ language development, subjective needs, and pedagogical needs as they experienced the learning activities and pedagogical reflection tasks. we consider that our program was an example of a progressive, process-oriented curriculum having a focus on the learning and pedagogical activities and not a product (nunan, 1994; rabbini, 2002). in addition, the evaluation of our program was carried out parallel to other curriculum activities in an ongoing process, whereas traditionally, it occurs at the end of a course (shaw & dowsett 1986, cited in nunan, 1994). throughout our profile 8.indd 139 28/09/2007 12:42:25 a.m. mcnulty ferry and quinchía ortiz universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras140 teaching and learning processes, we and the teachers informally monitored our process in journal reflections and shared this in class discussions and research meetings. 4.2 negotiation in curriculum development at the beginning of our program, having the teachers complete the questionnaire enabled us to get some biographical data and subjective information related to their proficiency level and interests, etc. as efl teachers. richards (1984, p. 5, cited in nunan, 1994) suggests that “needs analysis is a means of obtaining wider input into the content, design and implementation of a language program”. at that point, we realized that a few of these interests related to efl methodology were part of our course proposal and, later on, we understood that these had contributed towards teachers’ personal investment throughout the learning process. through group discussions, we also negotiated a few general parameters for this course related to the number of contact hours per week and the duration (concerning school holidays), homework, and whether the language component or the pedagogical component should be presented first in the sessions (nunan, 1994). during the course, teachers’ needs related to how to teach english in the language lab, how to find computer materials to teach reading and writing, and how to modify their syllabuses to become more theme-based, were taken into account and a number of sessions focused on these aspects. this negotiation enabled us to attend to the teachers’ needs and build an atmosphere of mutual respect, trust, sharing and co-operation (linder, 2000, cited in breen & littlejohn, 2000). another factor related to negotiation and autonomy for making decisions was having the teachers group themselves during the language development activities, although we encouraged them to change partners as much as possible. 4.3 synthetic curriculum design this professional development program is more characteristic of the synthetic approach to curriculum design process than the analytic one. we did not begin designing our course with specific language performance objectives (shavelson & stern, 1981, cited in nunan, 1994). our program was not based on a subject-centered approach to language course design where a linguistic content analysis (nunan, 1994) leads to specific stated objectives concerning the teachers’ language development or skills to be developed. rather, we worked within a broad competency view of language proficiency which stern (1992) recommends for beginners in the early stages of learning languages. we viewed the teachers’ language proficiency in terms of a progression of stages on a continuum from beginners to intermediate to advanced (stern, 1992). to derive content (selecting and grading) for the language development component, we included two perspectives. initially, we relied on the teacher profile from our previous research, which we considered as a realistic recurring teacher-type (nunan, 1994); but also, we viewed teacher data to be important from this group as these teachers are unique, having varied interests and needs. with this in mind, we considered why the teachers were attending our program and profile 8.indd 140 28/09/2007 12:42:25 a.m. designing a holistic professional development program for elementary school english teachers in colombia profile 8, 2007. issn 1657-0790. bogotá, colombia. pages 131-143 141 their teachers’ goals were checked against the general objectives in our proposal. the goals identified for our program were the following: cognitive goals -relating to explicit pedagogical and conceptual knowledge; communicative competencedevelopment of the skills and linguistic knowledge; affective goalsrelated to how the teachers feel about their foreign language learning experience; and transfer goalswhere the teachers could implement some activities they had experienced as language learners with us and in their classrooms with their learners (stern, 1992). whereas nunan (1994) proposes that specifying the communicative tasks and language skills comes before contextualizing them in topics, our process was slightly different. we seemed to reflect on the teachers’ goals, topics that are common for beginners and those which could relate to their english course syllabi in their schools, and our knowledge of and experience with efl methodology for young learners. considering their goals, we were able to design a more integrated framework with appropriate topics, materials and activities (nunan, 1994). the organization of the topics followed a cyclical format rather than a linear one (nunan, 1994), and that gave us the opportunity to integrate topics and recycle language and content. in a cyclical syllabus, topics can be reintroduced at different times, in progressive levels of difficulty (dubin & olshtain, 1996). in our program, teachers had multiple opportunities to experience the topics during the following three thematic cycles which were developed: thematic cycle 1: ‘who i am’, which included basic personal information related to the teachers and their families; thematic cycle 2: ‘we are alike, we are different’, which recycled topics in the previous cycle and introduced differences among the teachers related to physical descriptions, personality, daily life, personal interests, etc.; and, thematic cycle 3: ‘the good old days’, which reintroduced topics and included childhood memories, etc. in terms of grading the content, while we planned and implemented our sessions, we asked ourselves questions which reshaped our original proposal, to wit, what motivates our teachers? how confident are they with their english? how do they feel about themselves as language teachers? do they have familiarity with our activities? do they have the necessary skills for the activities? what linguistic knowledge do they need? are we moving too quickly or too slowly? are they finding the language tasks too easy or difficult? are these activities relevant for their learners? are they able to process language for the tasks? how much time will it take them to work on these activities? how much help will they need?, etc. (nunan, 1994). these questions guided our actions and shaped the direction of our program. we extended some topics and gave teachers more experience with some activities and the chance to work with different materials. as evaluation is part of progressive curriculum development, we have begun to evaluate this program by gathering and analyzing both qualitative and quantitative data. with respect to the qualitative data, we are using the thematic or conceptual framework proposed by lynch (1992). as we read through the data, for example, from the teachers’ journal entries and their responses to the self-assessment form, we are identifying recurring themes and concepts. profile 8.indd 141 28/09/2007 12:42:26 a.m. mcnulty ferry and quinchía ortiz universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras142 concerning the quantitative data from a few sections of the diagnostic tool, we are reporting performance from a before and after perspective. having these two types of data will hopefully enrich our final reflections on the effectiveness of this program. 5. final reflection we believe that we have begun a journey developing ourselves as teacher curriculum developers. having designed and implemented this course was an enriching and rewarding experience. this course was first based on the specific needs of some teachers who had participated in our previous research, and became relevant for other teachers having the same or similar needs. according to dubin & olshtain (1996), the beliefs of all those involved and concerned with a program need to be addressed. narrating our process of planning, developing and evaluating this course has given us not only a sense of accomplishment, but also the idea that there is still a lot to be done. sharing this work with others has helped us to believe in the work we are doing. we are grateful for the ongoing insights of the participant teachers and their constant feedback in this process. in our experience, collaborating with the teachers required not only curriculum, language and pedagogical considerations, but also administrative, organizational, and curriculum-support (nunan, 1994). as the teachers showed their satisfaction, they also expressed that there was an urgent need of continuing with this course. we believe that these teachers are willing, enthusiastic, and committed to continue working against all odds to improve efl teaching and learning in their contexts. we think that professional development is an ongoing and lifelong process, and that it goes hand–in-hand with personal growth. educational policies and administrative support sensitive to efl teachers’ realities and needs can help create the conditions for future professional development efforts and research inquiry in this field. references berry, r. (1990). the role of language improvement in in-service teacher training: killing two birds with one stone. system, �8(1), 97-105. breen, m., & littlejohn, a. (2000). classroom decisionmaking: negotiation and process syllabuses in practice. new york: cambridge university press. cadavid, c. (2003). teaching english in a primary school through a spiral thematic curriculum. íkala, 8(14), 81-97. cadavid, c., mcnulty, m., & quinchía, d. (2004). elementary english language instruction: colombian teachers’ classroom practices. profile, 5, 37-55. cambourne, b. (2002). the conditions of learning: is learning natural? the reading teacher, 55(8), 758-762. cambourne, b., kiggens, j., & ferry, b. (2002, july). the kbc odyssey: knowledge building teachers for the e-classroom. forum conducted at the meeting of the 30th annual australian teacher education association conference, toowoomba, queensland, australia. cambourne, b., kiggens, j., & ferry, b. (2003). replacing traditional lectures, tutorials, and exams with the knowledge building community (kbc): a constructivist, problembased approach to pre-service primary teacher education. english teaching: practice and critique. �(3), 34-48. cárdenas, r. (2001). teaching english in primary: are you ready for it? how, 8, 1-9. clavijo, a., & torres, e. (1999). la escritura en primera y segunda lengua: un proceso, dos idiomas. profile 8.indd 142 28/09/2007 12:42:26 a.m. designing a holistic professional development program for elementary school english teachers in colombia profile 8, 2007. issn 1657-0790. bogotá, colombia. pages 131-143 143 lectura y vida, �0(4), 33-41. dubin, f., & olshtain, e. (1996). course design. new york: cambridge university press. gonzález, j., & darling-hammond, l. (2000). programs that prepare teachers to work effectively with students learning english. retrieved november 5, 2006, from http://www.cal.org/ resources/digest/0009programs.html gonzález, a., montoya, c., & sierra, n. (2001). efl teachers look at themselves: could they grow together? how, 9, 27-33. lynch, b. (1992). evaluating a program inside and out. in j. charles alderson & alan beretta (eds.), evaluating second language education. cambridge: cambridge university press. murphey, t. (2003). nns primary school teachers learning english with their students. tesol matters, �3(4), 1-3. nunan, d. (1994). the learner-centered curriculum. n.y.: cambridge university press. rabbini, r. (2002). an introduction to syllabus design and evaluation. the internet tesl journal, 3(5). retrieved november 24, 2006, from http://iteslj. org/articles/rabbini-syllabus.html salmon, k. 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[transcript] retrieved may 25, 2007, from www.mineducacion.gov.co/cvn/1665/articles90123_archivo_doc.doc about the authors maria mcnulty ferri: instructor in licenciatura en lenguas extranjeras program and member of research groupeale (teaching and learning foreign languages) at universidad de antioquia. master’s candidate in teaching english as a foreign language, universidad de caldas, manizales, colombia. diploma in teaching english as a second language, university of toronto, canada. honours psychology degree, wilfrid laurier university, canada. diana isabel quinchía ortiz: coordinator and instructor of the licenciatura en lenguas extranjeras at universidad de antioquia. member of the research groupeale (teaching and learning foreign languages). master’s candidate at universidad de caldas. profile 8.indd 143 28/09/2007 12:42:26 a.m. 139profile vol. 13, no. 1, april 2011. issn 1657-0790. bogotá, colombia. pages 139-156 collaborative language learning in teletandem: a resource for pre-service teacher education* aprendizaje de lenguas colaborativo en teletándem: un recurso para la educación de profesores en formación inicial ana cristina biondo salomão** são paulo state university, brazil this article presents some of the results of a qualitative research project about the influences of the pedagogic strategies used by a mediator (graduate student in applied linguistics) in the supervision process of a teletandem partner (undergraduate student in languages) on her pedagogical practice. it was done within the project “teletandem brazil: foreign language for all”. based on the reflective teaching paradigm and collaborative language learning, with special emphasis on tandem learning, we analyzed the contributions of the collaborative relationship established between the graduate student and the student-teacher in her first teaching experience. the results bring about implications for the field of language teacher education in a perspective of education within practice, evidencing the experience of collaborative learning in teletandem as an opportunity for reflective teacher education of pre-service teachers. key words: collaborative language learning, practicum, supervision, teacher education, teletandem. este artículo presenta los resultados de una investigación cualitativa sobre los reflejos de las estrategias pedagógicas usadas por la mediadora (alumna de posgrado en lingüística aplicada) en el proceso de supervisión de una practicante de teletándem (alumna de graduación en un curso de letras). el estudio formó parte del proyecto “teletándem brasil: lenguas extranjeras para todos”. basándonos en el paradigma del profesor reflexivo y del aprendizaje colaborativo en tándem, analizamos las contribuciones de la relación colaborativa establecida entre ellas, en la primera experiencia práctica de enseñanza de la alumna-profesora. los resultados muestran implicaciones para el campo de la formación de profesores de lenguas, en una perspectiva de formación en la práctica, evidenciando la experiencia colaborativa del teletándem como una oportunidad de educación reflexiva para futuros profesores. palabras clave: aprendizaje colaborativo, educación de profesores, práctica docente, supervisión, teletándem. * this paper contains results of the research project grant entitled “teletandem brazil: foreign languages for all” (www.teletandembrasil. org), funded by são paulo research foundation (code: 2006/03204-2). the study was conducted at unesp – são paulo state university, brazil, between 2006 and 2008. ** e-mail: anacbsalomao@yahoo.com.br this article was received on july 16, 2010, and accepted on january 25, 2011. 140 universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras biondo salomão introduction technological advances over the last few years, especially those related to the internet, have brought to our language classroom a myriad of new resources for language teaching. in the field of applied linguistics, we now feel the necessity of understanding how this new scenario changes what happens inside our classrooms and teachers’ and students’ roles. research has been conducted on these issues in an attempt to grasp the nuances of the new contexts shaped by technological changes, but we still have to take a closer look at how technology has assisted teacher education in preparing pre-service teachers to be reflective professionals and face the new challenges they might encounter in their classrooms. the necessity of educating student-teachers to be constructors of knowledge increases the responsibilities of future teacher educators and it appears to us that the possibility of reflecting on theory and practice should be guided by reflection models and supervision strategies that may lead to autonomy. in this sense, we present here part of the results of a qualitative research study for a master’s degree in applied linguistics (salomão, 2008) conducted under the influences of a reflective supervision process during a student-teacher’s pedagogical practicum within a technological environment, the project “teletandem brazil: foreign languages for all” (www.teletandembrasil. org). this is a thematic research project from unesp –são paulo state university, brazil–, in which professors, graduate and undergraduate students participate as researchers, mediators and teletandem partners. teletandem is a collaborative learning model based on tandem learning. foreign language learning in-tandem involves pairs of (native or competent) speakers whose aim is to learn each other’s language by means of bilingual conversation sessions (telles & vassallo, 2006). within this autonomous, reciprocal and collaborative learning context, each partner becomes both a learner of the foreign language and a tutor of his/her mother tongue (or language in which he/she feels proficient). teletandem is an alternative proposal of tandem learning which makes use of technological tools available in the internet for videoconferencing, such as skype, msn, oovoo, among others. the partners have an online tandem session which usually takes two hours a week (one for each language) in which they talk about a topic (which can be previously chosen), exchanging cultural information about their countries and giving each other feedback on language use, and reflect on their own learning (reflections may focus on content, culture, form, lexicon and the process of teletandem interaction itself ). teletandem procedures are carried out on bases of commonly agreed and shared principles of reciprocity and autonomy between the participants (vassallo & telles, 2006). they are autonomous in their learning but they may resort to a teacher’s professional mediation or counseling if they wish. in the first years of the teletandem brazil project at unesp, mostly undergraduate students participated as teletandem partners with undergrad uate students from a number of different countries whose native languages were spanish, french, english or italian; and graduate students (master and phd candidates) took on the role of mediators (vygotsky, 1994) of the tandem relationships. based on the reflective teacher paradigm, on supervision models and on collaborative language learning theories with special emphasis on tandem learning, we analyze in this article the influences of a mediator’s supervision on a teletandem partner’s practice and its influences for her pedagogical practice. the text is organized as follows: first, an 141 collaborative language learning in teletandem... profile vol. 13, no. 1, april 2011. issn 1657-0790. bogotá, colombia. pages 139-156 overview of the literature on the reflective teaching paradigm is presented, as well as supervision models for practicum work with student-teachers. then, the methodology and context of the study are laid out. in the next session, the findings are outlined and discussed according to the influences noticed from the use of different supervision models. finally, we put forth our final considerations. the reflective teaching paradigm reflective practice theory originates from the works of dewey (1933, in schön, 1983; zeichner & liston, 1996), and provides teachers with a basis for analyzing their actions in the classroom as well as rationally justifying their decisions. dewey (1933, in zeichner & liston, 1996) brought great contributions to education when he envisioned the teacher as a reflective professional who should play an important role in curriculum development and educational reform. schön (1983) used dewey’s idea of reflective practice to elaborate two very important notions of how this could be realized in our pedagogical practice: reflection-inand -on-action. as schön puts it: the practitioner allows himself to experience surprise, puzzlement, or confusion in a situation which he finds uncertain or unique. he reflects on the phenomenon before him, and on the prior understandings which have been implicit in his behaviour. he carries out an experiment which serves to generate both a new understanding of the phenomenon and a change in the situation. (1983, p. 68) the work of the reflective practitioner in the language classroom, then, involves reflection before, during and after action e.g. he/she can firstly reflect on the planning and later on what actually happened in the classroom, but during the actual class there will also be reflection and decision-making. van mannen (1977), cited in williams (1999), differentiated between three levels of reflection: technical, practical and critical. these levels would imply that one should go from simple reflection to more complex ones, as in a scale, and the last level includes moral and ethical issues, deemed the most complex. zeichner and liston (1996) criticize such hierarchical treatment of the levels and prefer to understand them as reflection domains, which should be considered equally important in teachers’ professional development. these authors claim that we have to recognize that teachers bring their own ideas, beliefs and theories, which are filters and contribute to their professional learning. although the reflective practitioner theory appears to be a good start for working with preservice teachers, it seems to lack some practical notions of how the reflective process happens. some authors have tried to suggest actions which might be taken in order to accomplish it. zeichner and liston (1996, p. 6) claim the actions are: examining, framing and trying to solve the dilemmas of classroom practice; being aware of and questioning assumptions and values brought to teaching; being attentive to the institutional and cultural contexts; taking part in curriculum development and being involved in school change efforts; and taking responsibility for one’s own professional development. bartlett (1990) created a model which suggests the following phases for the reflection process: mapping (collecting evidence about practice), informing (searching for meaning and intention in practice), contesting (contesting the ideas which underlie practice), appraisal (considering new ways to renovate practice) and acting (implementing the changes). from these ideas, many proposals of models for supervision in teacher education were created in the 1990s, an era when the perspective of teacher 142 universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras biondo salomão training started to coexist with a new perspective of teacher development (freeman, 2002). models of supervision concerning the supervision of classroom activities and actions, freeman (1990) brings the directive, alternative and nondirective models in a continuum which should take the student-teacher from training to development. the author indicates the supervisor as the one in charge for using the models and leading the student-teacher to effective and independent teaching. gebhard (1990) expands on freeman’s ideas by proposing models to be chosen according to the needs perceived. he criticizes the directive model, in which the supervisor directs, models and evaluates behaviors and actions, stating that this approach does not help student-teachers to make decisions, but to do what the supervisor wishes or tells them to do. therefore, he proposes other models which aim at involving the student-teacher in reflection and may generate autonomy as a language teacher. according to the author, in the alternative supervision model, the supervisor helps in the decision-making process by proposing alternatives to the student-teachers which will demand from them the analysis of their context in order to make such decisions. this would provide the opportunity for guidance with a window for reflection, especially interesting for inexperienced teachers. in the collaborative supervision model, the supervisor’s role would be to engage in a collaborative dialogue but not to overtly direct the studentteacher’s work. gebhard (1990, p. 159) states that in this model “the supervisor actively participates with the teacher in any decisions that are made and attempts to establish a sharing relationship”. the author notes here that cultural issues are involved in this kind of supervision since not all teachers may be willing to “share equally in a symmetrical, collaborative decision-making process”. in the non-directive supervision model, the supervisor does not provide answers, but an “understanding response”, in an attempt to establish trust and freedom for the student-teacher to be able to express him or herself. in this model, the studentteacher has the power to guide the conference and make decisions without the supervisor’s suggestions. gebhard (1990, p. 161) cautions that some teachers report feeling anxious and alienated with this kind of supervision, especially inexperienced teachers. the creative supervision model involves a combination of the former models according to student-teachers’ needs, which may also involve the change of responsibility from the supervisor to other sources, or the use of ideas from different areas which do not appear in the models, such as peer supervision, use of metaphors, among others. self-help-explorative supervision involves both supervisor and student-teacher in self-observation and self-exploration. according to the author, “the goal to ‘see teaching differently’ is achieved not because the supervisor has helped the teacher to do so, but because the teacher has discovered a way to view his or her own teaching differently through self-exploration” (p. 163). the bottom-line for a decision on the supervisory option seems to be the locus of power in each one of them. while in a directive supervision model the power rests completely at the supervisor’s hands, in the non-directive the student-teacher has power to choose and manage the conference and make independent decisions. the other models would be included in a continuum that provides opportunity for jointly negotiated discussion of topics and a decision-making process that requires more or less involvement of the supervisor (the collaborative and creative models seem to generate more involvement 143 collaborative language learning in teletandem... profile vol. 13, no. 1, april 2011. issn 1657-0790. bogotá, colombia. pages 139-156 of the supervisor in decision-making while the alternative and self-help explor ative seem to involve the student-teacher’s own gain of awareness of his or her context and teaching behaviors). korthagen and kessels (1999) and korthagen (2001) also focuses on the role of reflection, stating the teacher educator’s approach should be nondirective and related to the discovery of the student-teacher and of his or her own ways of learning and teaching, reminding one of the cores of gebhard’s self-help explorative supervision. his model seems to operationalize the search for real life experiences that would help the student-teacher to gain awareness of his or her teaching behaviors by a set of steps, entitled alact, presented in figure 1. it may be observed that the inner part of the circle contains the phases, whose initials create the name given to the model, whereas the outside presents the competences which are connected to each step. help continuing the learning process help in finding useful experiences acceptance empathy genuineness concreteness looking back on the action action trial a separate learning-programme (if necessary) creating alternative methods of action awareness of essential aspects all the previous skills + help in finding and choosing solutions acceptance empathy genuineness concreteness confrontation generalizing utilizing the here and now help in making things explicit 4 2 1 53 figure 1. alact model (korthagen & vasalos, 2005, p. 49). in this perspective, the teacher educator should start the reflection process by focusing on a practical experience of the student-teacher (action). the next step (2) involves looking back at that practical experience in search of elements which could be discussed or questioned, and adopts some specific attitudes such as acceptance, empathy, genuineness and concreteness. the same attitudes should also be present in the next step (3), which involves bringing about awareness of the essential aspects to be discussed from practice. other attitudes that might be added to further develop the problematization of the situations in this step are confrontation, generalizing, utilizing the here-and-now, and helping to make things explicit. the next step (4) involves creating alternative methods of action, which may involve a theoretical program to work as a bridge between practice and theory. the final step (5), named trial, completes the circle by returning to the starting point and aims at giving continuity to the reflection process by a return to practice where new efforts will be made for achieving the objectives established during supervision. the new practical experience might work as fuel for new reflection development. it seems to us that gebhard’s and korthagen’s models complement each other by bringing about the attitudes and power relations that might comprise the dynamics of a supervisory relationship which starts from practice (action) and goes back to it for a new trial after the reflective process. having overviewed the models of supervision in teacher education, we now present the context of the research and its methodology within the project teletandem brazil. methodology and context of the study teletandem brazil is a research project from unesp –são paulo state university, department of education (unesp –assis), and the graduate program in language studies (unesp –são josé do rio preto), which aims at investigating computer assisted language learning as well as the development of language teachers within a technological context. 144 universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras biondo salomão its general objectives are: (1) describing the use students make of videconferencing and instant messaging as tools and multimedia contexts for language learning in teletandem; (2) describing, from multiple perspectives, the features of the interaction and the learning process between teletandem partners; and (3) verifying preand in-service teacher education of the mediator in the context of teletandem, with emphasis on his/her role and the processes of mediation. the study presented in this article was one of the subprojects inserted in the third objective. it was a case study of one pair of teletandem partners and their mediator and it specifically aimed at investigating the role of the mediator by analyzing the supervision strategies used and their influences on the pedagogical practice of the teletandem partners (salomão, 2008). the data collection involved aspects of qualitative studies of an ethnographic basis (bogdan, & bilken, 1982; erickson, 1986; silverman, 2001), such as intense and long term participation of the researcher in the studied context, careful register of all facts and events by means of a number of different instruments (autobiographies, questionnaires, interviews, the recording of the teletandem and mediation sessions) and analytical reflection over the material gathered. the teletandem partners were a brazilian undergraduate student of languages (portuguese and spanish) in the second year of the course, named fictitiously1 here dani, with no prior experience in teaching; and an argentinean undergraduate student of languages (portuguese) with little experience in teaching. 1 all the names are invented in order to protect the participants’ privacy, as stated in the term of informed consent. the teacher educator, supervisor of the brazilian teletandem partner in the study, andrea, had a major in languages and 6 years of experience as a language teacher, but no previous experience as a teacher educator. at the time of the study she was a future teacher educator who was working on an ma in applied linguistics. the research involved the teaching and learning relationship established between the brazilian teletandem partner and the supervisor, student teacher and teacher educator respectively, as shown in figure 2. virtual learning environment teletandem reflection on theory and practice reflection on theory and practice brazilian partner mediator argentinean partner figure 2. context and participants. the brazilian and argentinean teletandem part ners met regularly (usually twice a week) for 1-hour sessions of teletandem, in which they taught each other their native languages (portuguese and spanish, respectively). the brazilian teletandem partner also met regularly with the mediator for supervision sessions. both the teletandem and the mediation session were seen as opportunities for reflection on theory and practice (figure 2) for the 145 collaborative language learning in teletandem... profile vol. 13, no. 1, april 2011. issn 1657-0790. bogotá, colombia. pages 139-156 brazilian teletandem partner as they provided her with a first practical experience as a teacher of her own language being supervised by the mediator (a practicum situation in a virtual learning environment). during the 8 months of data collection (may to december, 2006), there were 22 teletandem interactions and 9 mediation sessions scheduled according to necessity and negotiation between the brazilian partner and the mediator, as graphically represented in figure 3. interactions 1 a 6 mediations 1 interactions 7 mediations 2 interactions 8 mediations 3 interactions 9 a 10 mediations interactions 11 a 13 mediations interactions 14 a 16 mediations 6 interactions 17 a 19 mediations 7 interactions 20 mediations 8 interactions 21 a 22 mediations 9 figure 3. interactions and mediations. figure 4 shows the dynamics used, which was based on korthagen’s alact: both dani and andrea looked back on the teletandem session (previously recorded) and separately took notes in their diaries on points to be discussed during the mediation session; after this process occurred in some interactions, they scheduled a mediation session in which they discussed the most important points that they had selected and then wrote new diary entries on their reflections. dani restarted the cycle then by continuing to interact and trying to put in practice some of the decisions originated in the mediation session. reflective diary (brazilian partner) reflective diary (mediator) reflective diary (brazilian partner) reflective diary (brazilian partner) interaction(s) mediation figure 4. dynamics of reflective work. the data, which consisted of the interactions, mediations, diaries and questionnaires, were analyzed through an interpretative approach by re constituting the participants’ views of the events during the course of the 8 months of teletandem sessions. the excerpts, which will be shown in the next section, were translated into english. findings since we guided our analysis by the reflective teaching paradigm, we attempted to find movements and traces of change in the pedagogical actions of the brazilian partner (dani) through her reflections in the diaries and questionnaires. it is not our intention to associate one specific mediation session or action to a specific change, as a direct cause and effect movement; thus, we divide them here according to the most salient characteristics in three moments: influences of alternative and non-directive supervision, influences of self-help explorative supervision, and influences of the use of theory and reflection brought by self-exploration. 146 universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras biondo salomão influences of alternative and non-directive supervision before the mediations began, all mediators were prepared through meetings with professors and coordinators of the research project to discuss guidelines which could direct their work, since most of them had never worked as teacher supervisors before. these meetings were guided by the reading of korthagen (1999) and sól (2004), and some directions for the mediation sessions were created collectively. during the first four mediation sessions, andrea’s work seemed to be guided by the nondirective and alternative supervision models, since she did not pressure dani or made any judgments. she did, however, offer some alternatives of action. some of the topics addressed were error correction and feedback, negotiation of meaning and translation, preparation of themes, tandem principles (bilingualism and reciprocity), talking time of argentinean partner, use of audio, use of visual resources, practice of the four skills, use of microphone and benefits of oral practice, linguistic transference, moments of silence, importance of pedagogical focus in tandem learning, principles and directions of teletandem, and lack of institutional support from the institute in argentina. andrea tried to put forth concreteness by pointing out specific moments in dani’s practice to be discussed. her strategies for being nondirective during supervision involved questioning dani about her actions and showing empathy and acceptance for her answers and comments. she also appeared to assist dani by offering scaffolding for reflection and not giving ready answers or directing her work, as well as led the conversation to moments of confrontation trying not to overwhelm the student-teacher. table 1 contains an excerpt of mediation 1 where some of andrea’s attitudes are illustrated based on korthagen’s alact. table 1. excerpt from mediation 1 mediation session attitudes andrea i saw that you ask her many questions and i think it is nice. concreteness/acceptance dani yes, hum-hum. andrea and i also saw that there are moments in which you correct her and there are moments that you don’t. why is that? questioning/utilizing the here and now dani when we are speaking portuguese you mean? andrea yes. i just want to know what you think. there is no problem. it’s because sometimes i notice that you correct her and sometimes you don’t and sometimes you do it using the caps lock on. concreteness/acceptance dani well, yes, i noticed this too and then there was that day [in a meeting] when somebody mentioned the caps lock. then i don’t know if i should keep on doing that or just correct her normally. andrea well, it is an option… do you remember the meeting when we discussed the types of error correction and so? which type of correction do you think you are making? remember? there was the direct one, the one with reformulation, the one with questions… which one do you think you use more? help in making things explicit 147 collaborative language learning in teletandem... profile vol. 13, no. 1, april 2011. issn 1657-0790. bogotá, colombia. pages 139-156 dani hum, there are times when she puts something wrong and i reformulate it as an answer, you know? andrea hum-hum. showing that she is listening and engaged in the conversation dani then i put the correct word thinking that in this way she will see how i am writing it… andrea hum, ok. acceptance dani then she will realize that it was wrong, you see? andrea and do you think she can usually realize it? confrontation dani well, then i don’t know. the problematization generated by the discussion during the mediation session led dani to think about the subject considering different perspectives which she had not contemplated before and understand that there was not one simple answer to the matter. during this period of teletandem interactions, dani started to create new strategies for error correction and make them explicit in her diaries. she also tried to structure the session according to the teletandem principles. in terms of procedures, dani experimented with some of the suggestions of the mediator, as well as created her own, such as sending the correction through e-mail after the sessions. some of the first reflections dani makes during this period are concerned with the difficulty she had in teaching her own language, as might be seen in this extract from her diary: as incredible as it may seem i have been finding difficulty in teaching portuguese, since there are things i do not know how to explain, and that is making me feel bad, because i know how it should be said, but i can’t explain why it has to be that way. (diary of interaction 7) when dani viewed the recordings of the teletandem sessions in order to write her diaries, these first mediations were more centered on a procedural level of dani’s work as a teacher, since she complained about not knowing how to deal with error correction and the teletandem session parts (interaction, feedback and evaluation of the session) and principles (autonomy and reciprocity). as dani had little experience in teaching, the mediator offered some alternative in terms of suggestions so that dani would have to think about what would suit her context better. these kinds of supervision seemed to be understood by dani as suggestions that might take her to reflect on possibilities and adapt them to her context. in the next extract, we can see how she expresses her view on the use of pre-prepared themes for the interactions after a mediation session: the mediator and i reflected on the use of themes for the interactions. many hypotheses appeared, but none excluded the other. (...) if we eliminate the use of themes there is the worry that by opting for spontaneous conversation the session could exclude the pedagogical intent and become a simple chat between two friends. moreover, themes are productive for learning about the culture and ideological aspects of a people and in this sense we need our partner’s collaboration and involvement (a situation addressed in the mediation since it sometimes does not happen). however, we run the risk of trying to force our partners to keep on themes they are not really involved with. (diary of mediation 2) 148 universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras biondo salomão she also had some insights into the probable causes of the errors she had been spotting in her partners’ output and related it to her own performance in the foreign language: it is interesting how much we resort to our own language in order to express ourselves in a foreign one. (…) doubtlessly, if my partner analyses my speech, she will find many of these resorts from my mother tongue. i believe our challenge is to try to separate our language from the foreign one, as much as possible. (diary of interaction 10) the mediation also seemed to have influenced this reflection above, since it was a topic of conversation during the sessions. the influences of self-help explorative supervision will be addressed next. influences of self-help explorative supervision in the first mediations, as presented in the previous section, the discussions seemed to involve a more technical domain related to procedural issues and difficulties. in the mediations that followed (5 and 6), there were signs of a transition to reflection over the action implemented so far and to dani’s perception of her role as a language teacher. the main topics addressed were error correction, procedures, evaluation of the session, use of themes, parts of the session and pedagogical purposes, use of pedagogical resources, issues related to phonetics and pronunciation, communication strategies, technical and technological issues, context of interaction created by msn, role as a teacher and a learner in the teletandem interaction, tandem principles, and use of e-mail for scheduling and sending material. it is noticeable that some of the topics addressed are the same ones from the previous phase; however, during these mediation sessions andrea attempted to help dani explore the new actions she was trying to implement in her pedagogical practice by reflecting on her role as a teacher in the teletandem partnership. andrea’s strategies for self-help explorative supervision involved adopting a more questioning attitude that could lead dani to analyze her pedagogical choices as a portuguese tutor in the teletandem session and understand and evaluate the efficacy of her procedures. table 2 shows an excerpt of mediation 5 in which they were discussing different procedures used in two interactions. table 2. excerpt from mediation 5 mediation session attitudes andrea i would like to talk about something with you. there was an interaction when she read the material proposed, it was about the use of commas. and then there was this other one when you made a feedback right on the moment. which one do you think was more productive? questioning/utilizing the here and now dani the one she read and the one i explained, you mean? andrea yes, for example this last interaction and the other. which one do you fell [sic] was more positive? concreteness dani ah, well, i think it was this last one, because i think it was more natural, you know, when i explained. 149 collaborative language learning in teletandem... profile vol. 13, no. 1, april 2011. issn 1657-0790. bogotá, colombia. pages 139-156 andrea hum. showing that she is listening and engaged in the conversation dani you see, it is a difficulty i have to explain because i don’t know if i am 100% to explain things to her. but i try to explain and then i think i start to understand it even more and then i will know how to pass it to her in a better way. i think it is better, but now i don’t know, maybe it would be interesting to ask her for her opinion on this too… andrea yes. acceptance dani if she prefers reading or me explaining. it is noticeable that dani during this stage feels freer to express her actions and analyze her insecurities. she also starts to consider the opinion and beliefs of her partner as an important factor for the success of her procedures. the influences of this kind of supervision were observed in dani’s attitudes during the teletandem sessions, where she tried to establish some teaching procedures and reflect upon them, and also in the way she expressed her doubts and thoughts in her diaries on this first experience as a teacher (schon’s reflection on action): when we were speaking portuguese, i tried to explain the use of commas, since it was something she’d asked for. it was a good experience, but i felt rather insecure and nervous, since it is a part of grammar that i do not cognize as i wish i could. if i had studied more or explained better, the interaction could have been better. i was insecure and afraid of confusing her. i don’t know if i explained things well. (diary of interaction 12) she blames the lack of success of the activity proposed on her lack of knowledge of the topic and inability to explain it, which demonstrates concern with formal aspects of the language. this seems to be a first move in the direction of more complex reflections than the ones she was practicing before. mostly, her reflections during this phase seemed to cover a practical level (van mannen, 1977), since she explored more and more in her diaries the new procedures she had been trying to incorporate into her practice according to the needs expressed by her partner and to the insights that the mediation and this practical pedagogical situation were giving her. the changes in error correction during this phase can be mainly observed in relation to the fact that dani could finally establish a moment to focus on this as she wanted, and in the attempts that she made in correcting and pointing out errors in different ways. while her preoccupation with error correction during the first phase seemed to be influenced by the mediator and by dani’s own beliefs on what teaching a language is, in this phase it also appeared to come from her perception on the gains of such practice for herself and her partner as learners. another peculiarity of this phase is that dani seemed to incorporate the discourse of the mediator, noticed by her usage of academic terms in her reflections in the diaries, as shown in this excerpt: we also addressed the difficulty of communicating when we do not know something or cannot express what we are thinking. these difficulties may be related to the knowledge of the lexicon of the language or to the lack of expressions. on the other hand, we may not be able to articulate our speech in portuguese and it 150 universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras biondo salomão could get worse, because nervousness can take place if we cannot maintain our turn once it is given us. (diary of mediation 5) when she writes about the “difficulties related to lexicon” and “turn taking”, her words seem to come from the mediator’s discourse in her questionings during the mediation sessions (the mediator’s research focus is interlanguage and she often uses this kind of academic vocabulary in her speech). ultimately, this phase is mainly characterized by dani’s perception of her role as a teacher, a very important experience for her in the second year of her undergraduate course, as stated in her answer to the questionnaire: researcher: how did the teletandem experience contribute to your education as a future language teacher? dani: sincerely, i can say that after this experience i started to see in another way the “being a teacher”, and this is probably due to the difficulties found in the interactions, which are doubtlessly a very important practice for us to act as teachers even before we graduate. even so, dealing with the difficulties did not unmotivate [sic] me; on the contrary, it only made me reconsider some aspects of my education as a teacher. (final questionnaire) it is also interesting to note that dani sees the mediation sessions as key to the insights she had been having on the interactions, as she states in her diary: mediation is certainly the moment of interaction (as i believe it is a continuation of the teletandem interactions), which gives us clues so we can draw conclusions about our position as a teletandem partner, and also as a student and teacher. with these reflections in every new interaction we become more able and more willing to improve. (diary of mediation 5) through her words, it seems that this collaborative work between the teacher educator and the student-teacher creates a process through which the student-teacher can explore his or her beliefs in a practicum environment, in a reversion of the classical top-down theoretical approach for educating future teachers. in the next part of the article, the influences of the use of theory to bridge, understand and inform practice are discussed. influences of the use of theory during the third phase of mediations, andrea started to offer theoretical support which could help dani with the difficulties she was having in the interactions. these mediations continued to present the self-help explorative supervision characteristics; however, it was observed that a collaborative atmos phere was also being constructed through the scaffolding provided by andrea to help dani relate theory and practice. the main topics addressed were affective issues and their relation with interaction and culture; error correction (causes for recurrence of treated errors; elaboration of correction; the use of implicit signaling or explicit correction; differences of error correction in chats and oral interactions; motivation and correction; interference from l1), interruptions of other people during interaction; motivation for the preparation of materials (how they were used and partner’s feedback); theory (looking back at practice, how it has helped reflection); technical and technological issues (the benefits of audio, comparisons with face to face tandem, pedagogical issues); influence of linguistic theories; knowledge acquired in undergraduate courses and observation of former teachers and professors on her practice in the interactions, perception of interactions with chat versus interactions with audio for language development, friendship (help or interference in communication and teaching). some of the topics addressed during these meditations continued to be the same ones already 151 collaborative language learning in teletandem... profile vol. 13, no. 1, april 2011. issn 1657-0790. bogotá, colombia. pages 139-156 discussed in the previous phases, but the difference now is that andrea was conjugating them with theory according to the needs perceived in the interactions, such as the relationship between error correction and motivation, or error correction and affective issues, and dani was having the opportunity to explore her role as a teacher and the influences of her previous experiences as an undergraduate student. table 3 shows how andrea proposed a preactivity for dani, for mediation 7, by conjugating theory about error correction and prompting her reflections through questions related to her practice during the teletandem interactions. table 3. use of theory for reflection in mediations pre-activity for mediation 7 attitudes the next mediation involves as a pre-activity the reading of the following texts: http://www.lume.ufrgs.br/bitstream/handle/10183/1518/000300608.pdf?sequence=1 (pp. 17-28) http://www.ufsm.br/labler/publi/iienpletrabs01.html firstly, i would like to ratify the last message sent to you and your partner congratulating both for your linguistic development and for taking on responsibilities during this project. i believe your effort is substantial and, therefore, it was recognized by your partner, who has been dedicated to the interactions despite the problems she is facing. and, by the way, how do personal problems experienced and shared by you both in the interactions influence them? do they help to understand more about the other’s culture too? you and your partner are getting closer and closer. how does this assist communication between you two? since the first interaction, what do you think of the feedback given? have you noticed that your partner produces errors which have already been commented or corrected? how have you felt about it? what do you think could be lacking for a more thorough understanding? how do you evaluate yourself in a tandem session: as a friend or as a teacher? if both, explain in which moments you see yourself in each role. i have observed that are both trying to send files through e-mail. why don’t you try to send it through the msn? do you still find problems in using the technological tools? during the interactions, there are people who enter the room and disturb the conversation, how do you react to this? recommendation of theoretical texts for reflection based on the difficulties dani was having in the interactions with error correction. showing empathy and acceptance genuineness and helping making things explicit utilizing the here and now and questioning 152 universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras biondo salomão i congratulate you again for your intense search for material and the cartoons sent to your partner. i believe they were important. that is why i would like to know what factor in the interaction motivated you to send them. have you tried to search for other materials to help your teaching? how did you partner react to that and how did you use them in your practice? in relation to the texts read, do you believe they helped you in your reflections? how? thanks for your attention! your mediator concreteness, empathy and confrontation bridging theory and practice clear step forward from her previous attitude. during the mediation session, andrea addresses this topic and recommends that dani read a text on motivation in order to be able to think about how to deal with the problem. here is how she describes the experience: another important aspect of this mediation was the discussion of personal issues influencing the development of interaction. obviously personal problems interfere with our work and in this case with our studies. my partner has been through some personal problems recently and i think it may have affected a little her motivation during the interactions. in this sense it would and will be necessary for me through the preparation of interaction materials to be able to motivate her to continue our interactions and get good results. after reading the second chapter of the book “psychology for language teachers”, suggested by my mediator, i could pay attention to this aspect of motivation and how it is closely related to learning. i think i’ve got to be more attentive to the problems of my partner and know how to adapt the interaction in those moments, since if she is psychologically shaken, a session of corrections will be a little discouraging. (diary of mediation 8) it is interesting to observe that dani’s concern with error correction before aimed only at establishing a moment for it to occur, and then on different ways of doing it. but now it also included aspects related to motivation or lack of motivation generated by correction. she also started to reflect the influences are mainly felt in the way dani expresses the importance of linking theory to practice. she finds it very interesting that the theory is related to the problems she is facing in her practice. i found the text on feedback and the one on interaction in chats very productive. it’s a way to incorporate the theory more productively. (diary of mediation 7) during this phase, dani’s diary entries show that she is now reflecting on her own choices and actions as a teacher and on the probable effects of those on the learner: in the interactions in portuguese, i am always careful not to miss any mistakes so that i can tell my partner later, since that is what i would like to happen when i speak spanish, but i think the corrections are making my partner a bit daunting or it is even being a little boring. in this situation i do not know if i should let some little mistakes pass and correct only the most visible ones or if i should go on doing what i do. i’m also wondering if i am correcting her well or if there is a better way to do it. if it was her who was correcting me this way, i would like it, but i understand that people are different and that it is perhaps being a bit “heavy”. (diary of interaction 20) one noticeable change in dani’s posture in this extract is that she states a problem that she herself noticed in relation to her partner’s motivation and her possible solutions for it, which seems to be a 153 collaborative language learning in teletandem... profile vol. 13, no. 1, april 2011. issn 1657-0790. bogotá, colombia. pages 139-156 more on the strategies she had been using for error correction and described them in her diary. but this time, instead of only outlining the corrections made, she commented on the moments she decided to interfere, which shows that she was considering other aspects besides accuracy during interaction (reflection in action), as can be seen in this excerpt: we began our interaction with the portuguese language and i believe it was a good interaction. on the issue of corrections, which i’ve been concerned with, everything went well. i tried to make indirect corrections when i realized that my partner was confused with how to write something in order to provide the vocabulary she was looking for at one point. i interfered at times i thought it would be appropriate to show the way a certain word should be written, and the rest which demanded further explanation i left for the final moments of our interaction. (diary of interaction 22) one of the reasons we believe may explain the fact that dani started expressing her corrective choices this way now is because she is more aware of them, and the mediation was key to directing her attention to the different levels of reflection she should have as a teacher concerning error correction. this first experience as a teacher may have helped dani to start constructing an identity as a language teacher and to make a link between practice and theory, reflecting on teaching and learning from a practical perspective. she herself states that this experience brought her into contact with applied linguistics, an unknown subject for her at the time (she would have this subject in her undergraduate course only in the following year), and helped her to reflect on her role as a teacher and learner in the teletandem experience she had been through: the readings provided the opportunity to know theories of language teaching and even about applied linguistics itself, totally unknown to me before. after each reading, i reflected on the learning process of my partner, trying to apply what i thought was relevant and would assist in her learning process. i also tried to draw from the readings points that i thought would help me learn and develop my skills on the foreign language (spanish). (final questionnaire) for dani, this contact with theory contributed to her incorporating in her discourse academic terms related to language teaching. this first contact with applied linguistics through the needs originating in her practice appeared to be extremely favorable in terms of her motivation and interest in theory which could inform her pedagogical practice as a language teacher (and even as a language learner as she states). this resonates with what brazilian authors and researchers, such as gimenez (2005), paiva (2005), vieira-abrahão (2006; 2007), claim about the early conjugation of theory and practice in pre-service education. in general, the supervision strategies used by the mediator seemed to generate a growing motivation for dani to build her identity as a language teacher by looking for different ways to improve her practice as well as to better understand the reasons for her choices in the practical teaching situation she was experiencing. as she was an inexperienced student-teacher, the offering of alternatives in the beginning of the mediation sessions seemed to bring concreteness in terms of procedures that were fundamental for her to establish pedagogical objectives to the interactions and, at the same time, the non-directive stance of the mediator made her feel free to customize the changes implemented. then, the use of self-exploration helped her to reflect on these changes and to take a more active role in the interactions, increasingly seeing herself as a teacher. finally, the conjugation of theory, chosen according to the needs arising from practice, brought her opportunity to bridge theory and practice based on the situations experienced 154 universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras biondo salomão and aroused her interest for theories of language teaching, with which she had not yet had contact during her undergraduate course. final considerations our results showed that teletandem seems to be not only an environment aimed at teaching and learning foreign languages in a virtual and collaborative way, but also an environment that may help pre-service teacher education, due to the possibility of making mediation a collaborative and knowledge-building work between teacher educator (mediator) and student-teacher (teletan dem partner). the opportunity of combining teaching and learning within this context seems to bring to the teletandem partners the opportunity for a first teaching practice, within which they can look at their own language through the contact with a foreign one. the exchange of roles also appears to help the student-teacher to make a more critical observation of practice since, in our study, the brazilian teletandem partner began to observe not only her own pedagogical methods and motivations, but also her partner’s. this opportunity to observe the practice of another teacher is configured differently in teletandem from regular practices: the teletandem partners observed each other and swapped roles as student and teacher, which appeared in the data as something very positive. in addition, the opportunity created by the partnership between two student-teachers also seemed to enable the discussion of issues related to their undergraduate courses, as well as the comparison of curricula. furthermore, having a first teaching experience supervised by a more experienced person, the mediator, in the role of a teacher educator who offers scaffolds for knowledge building, contributed to enable a bridging between theory and practice that starts in practice and relates it meaningfully to theory. the supervision models used by the mediator seemed to provide support for the brazilian teletandem partner as a student-teacher, to find elements in her practice that could lead her to see herself as a teacher and establish pedagogical objectives to her teaching in-teletandem. they also provided the opportunity for her to gain confidence and explore her pedagogical practice on different levels: in practical terms, by paying more attention to techniques and procedures used, changing or substituting the ones that she found to be ineffective; and, in more reflective terms, by exploring her decisions and actions pedagogically and relating them to the theory she had been reading. we can conclude that the mediator’s supervision in this relationship provided scaffold for learning by means of resolving procedural, technical, pedagogical and organizational problems that arose from an authentic teaching situation, without being directive or having a pre-established syllabus in mind. the importance of such findings lies in the fact that much of the theory on supervision has been grounded on a theoretical basis with short instances of practical examples. the experience reported here shows that the establishment of partnerships between undergraduate and graduate students for collaborative work may be useful for pre-service education in a reflective teaching paradigm and that the complexity of the relationship between the supervisor and the student-teacher is a fertile ground which still needs further mapping and investigation. references bartlett, l. (1990). teacher development through reflective teaching: in j.c richards, d. nunan (eds.), second language teacher education (pp. 202-214). cambridge: cambridge university press. 155 collaborative language learning in teletandem... profile vol. 13, no. 1, april 2011. issn 1657-0790. bogotá, colombia. pages 139-156 bogdan, r. d., & bilken, s. k. (1982). qualitative research for education. boston: allyn and bacon. erickson, f. (1986). qualitative methods in research on teaching. in m. c. wittrock (ed.), handbook of research on teaching (pp. 119-161). 3rd ed. new york: macmillan. freeman, d. (1990). intervening in practice teaching. in j. c richards, d. nunan (eds.), second language teacher education (pp. 103-117). united kingdom: cambridge university press. freeman, d. (2002). the hidden side of the work: teacher knowledge and learning to teach. language teaching, 35, 1-23. gebhard, j. g. (1990) models of supervision. in j. c richards; d. nunan (eds.), second language teacher education (pp. 156-166). uk: cambridge university press. gimenez, t. (2005). desafios contemporâneos na formação de professores de línguas: contribuições da lingüística aplicada. in m. m. freire; m. h. vieira-abrahão; a. m. f. barcelos (orgs.), lingüística aplicada e contemporaneidade (pp. 183-201). campinas: alab/pontes. korthagen, f. a. j. (1982). helping student teachers to become reflective: the supervision process. in korthagen, f. a. j. leren reflecteren als basis van de lerarenopleiding [learning to reflect as a basis for teacher education]. ‘s-graven-hage: svo. korthagen, f. a. j., & kessels, j. p. a. m. (1999). linking theory and practice: changing the pedagogy of teacher education. educational researcher, 28(4), 4-17. korthagen, f. a. j. (2001). linking practice and theory: the pedagogy of realistic teacher education. paper presented at the annual meeting of the american educational research association, seattle. korthagen, f., & vasalos, a. (2005). levels in reflection: core reflection as a means to enhance professional growth. teachers and teaching: theory and practice, 11(1), 47-71. paiva, v. m. o. p. (2005). o novo perfil dos cursos de licenciatura em letras. in l. m. b tomich; m. h. vieira-abrahão; c. daghlin; d. i. ristoff (orgs.), a interculturalidade no ensino de inglês (pp. 345-363). florianópolis: ufsc. salomão, a. c. b. (2008). gerenciamento e estratégias pedagógicas na mediação dos pares no teletandem e seus reflexos para as práticas pedagógicas dos interagentes. 2008. 316 f. dissertação (mestrado em estudos lingüísticos) instituto de biociências, letras e ciências exatas, universidade estadual paulista unesp, s. j. do rio preto. schön, d. (1983). the reflective practitioner: how professionals think in action. london: temple smith. silverman, d. (2001). doing qualitative research. londres: sage. sól, v. s. a. (2004). a natureza da prática reflexiva de uma formadora de professores e duas professoras em formação. 2004. dissertação (mestrado em lingüística aplicada). faculdade de letras, universidade federal de minas gerais, belo horizonte. telles, j. a., & vassallo, m. l. (2006). foreign language learning in-tandem: teletandem as an alternative proposal in callt. the especialist, 27(2), 189-212. vassallo, m. l., & telles, j. a. (2006). foreign language learning in-tandem: theoretical principles and research perspectives. the especialist, 27(1), 83-118. vieira-abrahão, m. h. (2006). a formação inicial e o desenvolvimento profissional do professor de línguas estrangeiras: práticas e pesquisas. horizontes, 5(2), 3-23. vieira-abrahão, m. h. (2007). a formação inicial do professor de língua estrangeira: parceria universidade e escola pública. in m. l. o. alvarez; k. a. silva (orgs.), lingüística aplicada: múltiplos olhares (pp. 155-166). brasília, df: unb/finatec; campinas, sp: pontes editores. vygotsky, l. s. (1994). a formação social da mente. são paulo: martins fontes. williams, m. (1999). learning teaching: a social constructivist approach – theory and practice or theory with practice? in h. trappes-lomax; i. mcgrath, theory in language teacher education (pp. 11-20). england: longman. zeichner, k. m., & liston, d. p. (1996). reflective teaching: an introduction. new jersey: lawrence erlbaum associates publishers. 156 universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras biondo salomão about the author ana cristina biondo salomão holds an ma in appled linguistics. she is currently a phd candidate at são paulo state university (unesp), post-graduate program in linguistic studies, são josé do rio preto, brazil. her research interests are language teacher education, language teaching and technology, culture and intercultural communication. profile no. 7dic 5.p65 ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ profile profile profile profile profile 7 (2006): universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras materials assessment: a shared responsibility among teachers and students evaluación de materiales: una responsabilidad compartida entreevaluación de materiales: una responsabilidad compartida entreevaluación de materiales: una responsabilidad compartida entreevaluación de materiales: una responsabilidad compartida entreevaluación de materiales: una responsabilidad compartida entre profesores y estudiantesprofesores y estudiantesprofesores y estudiantesprofesores y estudiantesprofesores y estudiantes claudia yclaudia yclaudia yclaudia yclaudia yolanda becerolanda becerolanda becerolanda becerolanda becerra*ra*ra*ra*ra* claudiayolandab@yahoo.com institución educativa distrital ied naciones unidas ii, colombia this article focuses on the development of a small-scale research project implemented in a public school in bogotá, colombia with a group of fourth graders who study english as a foreign language. the main goal of this research is to determine the criteria my fourth graders use when assessing the worksheets i provided them with in the english class. the data collection techniques that support the proposal are questionnaires, semi-open interviews, and the teacher’s journal. this study prompted a more collaborative environment among teacher and students regarding a basic activity of the curriculum as the materials used in class. finally, this paper emphasizes the importance of creating classrooms that are more democratic to enrich the educational process. kkkkkey worey worey worey worey wordsdsdsdsds: materials assessment, evaluation, assessment, democratic classrooms, english innovation, foreign language innovation, curriculum este artículo se centra en el desarrollo de un proyecto de investigación a pequeña escala implementado en un colegio público en bogotá, colombia con un grupo de cuarto de primaria que estudia inglés como lengua extranjera. el principal fin de esta investigación es determinar el criterio usado por mis estudiantes de cuarto de primaria cuando evalúan los talleres que yo diseño para la clase de inglés. las técnicas de recolección de datos que soportan esta propuesta son cuestionarios, entrevistas semiabiertas, y el diario del profesor como fuente secundaria. este estudio promovió un ambiente de mayor diálogo entre profesor y estudiantes, teniendo en cuenta una actividad básica del currículo como son los materiales usados en clase. finalmente, este trabajo enfatiza en la importancia de crear salones más democráticos para enriquecer el proceso educativo. palabras clavespalabras clavespalabras clavespalabras clavespalabras claves: evaluación de materiales, evaluación, seguimiento, salones democráticos, innovación-inglés, innovación-lengua extranjera, currículo *claudia yclaudia yclaudia yclaudia yclaudia yolanda becerolanda becerolanda becerolanda becerolanda becerrarararara holds a b.a. in modern languages from universidad distrital and she is a candidate for the masters in applied linguistics. she has been working at institución educativa distrital ied naciones unidas ii, ciudad bolívar, bogotá, colombia, and as a tutor of the profile teacher development programme. this article was received on march 31st, 2006 and accepted on may 9th, 2006. 3145 32 becerra profileprofileprofileprofileprofile ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ introductionintroductionintroductionintroductionintroduction during the six years i have been working in my current institution, i have seldom used textbooks because of the following two reasons: first, textbooks cannot be required by teachers since it is a public institution and the population we work with cannot afford them; and second, the series we have at the school library is out of date and there are not enough volumes for the number of pupils we teach (about forty children per classroom). having in mind these factors, i have designed my own worksheets and activities. however, i have never formally evaluated them. actually, i do not know yet if they are appropriate or not and why. regarding this reflection and considering the fact that for the second semester of 2005 i had to design and pilot a printed curricular unit, i believe that it is the best opportunity to assess the printed materials i provide my children with. that is why the two main purposes of this research study are to gather information about my students’ perceptions of the printed materials i am using in class, and to reflect upon the appropriateness of these printed materials in light of my students’ needs. on the one hand, i think that giving my pupils the chance of stating the criteria to assess the printed materials i present them increases our communication (the dialogue among us) and contributes to the building of more democratic classrooms as opposed to authoritarian ones, in which students only obey and follow commands. on the other hand, this type of project fosters the reflective process i have to conduct in terms of the printed materials i implement in my classroom settings because it gives me the opportunity to become more sensitive and aware of my students’ needs, and as it is one important component of curriculum planning, it will steer my teaching-learning process toward a more accurate and informed one. literaliteraliteraliteraliterature reviewture reviewture reviewture reviewture review as part of the theoretical platform, i decided to include three main constructs. firstly, i will introduce the concept of evaluation from a humanistic perspective. secondly, i will discuss the concept of assessment. and finally, i will present some key aspects of materials assessment. evaluationevaluationevaluationevaluationevaluation to begin with, i will refer to one interesting component of what evaluation entails. for readickins and germaine (1992) and quintero (2003), evaluation is part of our daily lives and involves making decisions. in other words, we make decisions about a lot of aspects such as what to watch on tv, what kind of music to listen to, and, in the case of this article, what to include in the theoretical framework. then, in words of readickins and germaine (1992, p.3): “evaluation is not restricted to the context of education; it is part of our everyday lives”. however, evaluation in education could not be based only on our intuition or our common sense. conversely, quintero (2003) states that evaluation, as a curricular activity, “needs to be less casual and more systematic, less trivial and more critical, less technical and more human and emerges as a way to generate informed decisions” (p. 124). that is to say that we, as teachers, need to move from thinking of evaluation as grading and testing students to consider this curriculum activity hand-in-hand with an ongoing process. in the same train of thought, rea-dickins et al. (1992) claims that evaluation in education “should be systematic and undertaken according to certain guiding principles using carefully defined criteria” (p. 5). besides, evaluation is also seen as “an activity of gathering information to be used in making educational decisions” (genesee & upshur, 1999, p. 140). nevertheless, those decisions in light of a humanistic approach to evaluation go beyond deciding if a student passes of fails. those decisions relate to instructional practices as well, and take into consideration a lot of information about the students’ context, background, personality, etc. that is why evaluation is considered to be an informed practice, too. ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○33 profileprofileprofileprofileprofile materials assessment to conclude, and after presenting some definitions of evaluation, i would like to introduce my own understanding about it. i consider evaluation to be a curricular activity that helps us to make decisions about the rest of curriculum activities, decisions like learning needs, objectives, testing, materials, and teaching (brown, 1995, p. 20). these decisions are based upon several sources of information such as students’ journals, portfolios, teacher’s journal, interviews, etc, which provide us with the perspective of others rather than only the teachers’ and who are as important as we are in the educational process. the interpretation of this information gears us toward confirming that our educational practices are well-oriented or that we should innovate them (rea-dickins et al., 1992, p. 10). finally and foremost, evaluation is an ongoing process that demands from teachers a careful and systematic planning that reflects this fact. assessmentassessmentassessmentassessmentassessment in general terms, assessment is part of the evaluation process. it attempts to collect relevant information about the decisions you want to make as a result of evaluation (genesee et al., 1999, p. 36). for instance, my students and i plan to make decisions about the printed materials i provided them with, based on their opinions and criteria. then, having in mind this purpose, i have to collect information that enlightens this process. the latter step is what assessment is. moreover, it is worth stating that assessment is not only related to achievement. assessment includes also “processes and factors that affect students’ achievement” (genesee & hamayan, 1994, p. 216). as a result, i consider that one factor that can affect students’ achievement is the types of materials we are introducing in our classroom settings. nonetheless, sometimes we are not aware of this fact and we try to find out the causes of our students’ weaknesses. that is why i think it is valuable to assess classroom materials as well. furthermore, genesee et al. (1994) enumerate three components of classroom-based assessment, which i find closely-related to the evaluation process. they are first, the collection of information, bearing in mind factors such as students’ background, learning processes, and instructional factors. the second component is the interpretation of the information “comparing it with some desired state of affairs, goals, or other information that you have that is relevant to your decisions” (genesee et al., 1999, p. 36). and the third one is the decision-making process about instruction, students, or both of them. that is why, after identifying the need of assessing the printed materials i use with my students, i began following the stages i mentioned previously, namely: first, the collection of information by means of some alternative assessment instruments such as questionnaires, interviews, and teacher’s journal. second, i interpreted the information collected in light of my query and finally, i plan to make decisions about the instructional materials i use hand in hand with my students’ opinions and perceptions. finally, i want to highlight that assessment is quite important in the evaluation process under a humanistic approach because otherwise we, as educators, will move from collecting information to make decisions. and this type of process is more related to evaluation seen from a technical perspective. materials assessmentmaterials assessmentmaterials assessmentmaterials assessmentmaterials assessment so far, i have defined two main constructs: evaluation and assessment. they have been presented from a humanistic approach, stating basically that evaluation is a curriculum activity which must be informed to make sound decisions, and that the gathering of information of this process is called assessment. thus, these two terms are interwoven. now, as the main purpose of this article is to shed light on the printed materials assessment from the learners’ perspective, i will introduce some relevant aspects of materials assessment. 34 becerra profileprofileprofileprofileprofile ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ to begin with, it is important to note that materials, as evaluation, are a curriculum activity. then, being part of curriculum, materials might be assessed as well. also, as materials are a component of instruction, we, as teachers, are invited to make decisions about them. however, and as i illustrated at the beginning, it is not only our responsibility: it is the students’ responsibility, too. regarding the materials assessment, santos guerra (1996) states some key concepts. although he basically discusses the assessment of textbooks, there are certain insights which i find relevant to my attempt. first, the author finds some materials assessment formats dangerous and prejudicial because they do not account for their real contribution to the students’ learning process. those formats concentrate the attention on secondary aspects such as topics, cost, durability, layout, etc. when assessing materials, santos guerra claims that one should reflect upon their explicit and implicit purposes, the theoretical foundations on which they were designed, and especially the contexts and the population they intend to address. that is why he considers that we, as users, should assess the materials having in mind our specific needs and contexts. second, in terms of who assess the materials, santos guerra (1996) mentions two possibilities we should keep in mind. they are first, external evaluators understood to be people who are not part of the teaching-learning process and who can give us other perspectives. and second, the students, as the ones who use and work with the materials we implement. this fact, for him, leads to more democratic processes and demands from teachers an open-minded attitude in order to change current practices, if necessary. third, the author asserts the importance of designing our own classroom materials rather than following the materials that the publishing houses offer. he criticizes the way in which sometimes the textbooks provide everything for teachers and students as if telling the academic community that we, as teachers, are unable to do anything without guidance. conversely, he affirms that by creating and designing our own materials, we are making a systematic reflection, we are enriching our own processes. in his own words: “[en ese sentido] los materiales producidos tienen unas características inversas a las de los materiales impuestos. su misma elaboración requiere un esfuerzo de reflexión sistemática, su discusión compartida, un enriquecimiento para los mismos profesores que los elaboran” (santos guerra, 1996, p. 242). “[in that sense] the produced materials have opposed characteristics to the imposed ones. the elaboration of them by itself requires an effort of systematic reflection, its shared discussion, an enrichment for the teachers who make them.” finally, i would like to highlight that in our daily practices we do not usually recognize the importance classroom materials have. that is one of the reasons for addressing this topic. i consider that by giving the chance to my students to assess the materials i use in class, i have the possibility of enriching my practice and, at the same time, help my students to understand that they are important and that their opinions certainly count. moreover, by means of these types of activities, students can develop a critical stance towards their learning process. research methodologyresearch methodologyresearch methodologyresearch methodologyresearch methodology settingsettingsettingsettingsetting ied naciones unidas ii is a public school located in the ciudad bolívar zone, one of the highest, farthest and poorest of bogotá. in the morning shift, there are twenty-one primary groups. also, there are eighteen secondary groups, two pre-school and one first grade in the afternoon shift. most of the students come from neighborhoods near the school. some of these are naciones unidas, la estrella, el tesoro, la cumbre, villa flor, vista hermosa, lucero alto, among others. these children and teenagers suffer ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○35 profileprofileprofileprofileprofile materials assessment from a wide variety of socio-economic problems such as dysfunctional families, violence, forced displacement, hunger, poverty, unemployment, malnutrition, maltreatment and lack of love, to mention some of them. however, these students do have a high capacity for resiliency since they are respectful, kind, friendly, funny, and warmhearted with others. participantsparticipantsparticipantsparticipantsparticipants i selected six primary students out of the group of 44 by sampling. i considered two aspects when making the selection: their teams should have answered the first questionnaire completely and they should belong to different teams. as a result, the first condition was fulfilled by six teams. then, i selected one student per team, according to the list they made at the beginning of the first questionnaire. in other words, from the first team, i selected the first child who appeared in the list. in the second list, i selected the second student, and so on until i had the six participants. before implementing the data collection techniques, i asked their parents for their written permission. dayana is an eleven-years-old girl. she has a sister who is in the same course. she is very intelligent and she usually fulfils all the tasks assigned. besides, she is monitor of the course. however, at times, she seems bored in class. daniela is eleven years old, too. as the previous participant, she has a brother in the same course. even though she seems interested in class, she sometimes does not understand clearly the instructions for carrying out the class exercises. she is shy and respectful. felipe is a nine-years-old boy. he works very well on teams. he understands really fast and encourages his team to complete and finish the activities. he likes to participate and contribute to the class. kathy is ten years old. she is one of the best students in the course. she is in a group which is really good: they understand easily and complete the tasks really fast. she has excellent pronunciation, but she is shy at times. yenny is ten years old. she works only with another girl on her team. she does not participate too much in class, but whenever she does not understand something, she asks the teacher. she is very kind and sweet. nelson is ten years old. he is very serious and is the one who organizes his team. last year he had some problems in the english class because he was frequently distracted. nowadays, his attitude is changing. for instance, he is working on teams right now while last year he preferred to work alone. instruments to collect datainstruments to collect datainstruments to collect datainstruments to collect datainstruments to collect data i decided to work with the following three data collection instruments: questionnaires, interviews, and teachers’ journal. the first two were my primary sources, and the final one was a secondary source. questionnairesquestionnairesquestionnairesquestionnairesquestionnaires first of all, in the field of research, questionnaires and interviews are seen as similar procedures to collect data. in broad terms, questionnaires “are printed forms for data collection, which include questions or statements to which the subject is expected to respond, often anonymously” (seliger, & shohamy, 1989, p. 172). in my particular case, i used open-ended questions, and i asked my participants to write down their names (see appendix 1). i decided to implement questionnaires because i needed to elicit information about the way my students assess the printed materials i provided them with. i needed to know their feelings, thoughts, and impressions. in the words of seliger et al. (1989, p. 172), “questionnaires are used mostly to collect data on phenomena which are not easily observed, such as attitudes, motivation, and selfconcepts”. that is why i implemented this technique. however, as it is advisable to have another data instrument to validate the data analysis, i used interviews as well. then, after analysing the answers provided by my six participants in the 36 becerra profileprofileprofileprofileprofile ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ questionnaires, i prepared some questions to expand more on the data provided by the three questionnaires i applied. interinterinterinterinterviewsviewsviewsviewsviews as i have already pointed out, i decided to implement interviews, more specifically, semi-open interviews because i wanted to account for my participants’ impressions and further comments about what they wrote down in the questionnaires. as a result, i planned some questions regarding the answers provided in the questionnaires in order to have a deeper understanding of their criteria when assessing materials (see appendix 2). as genesee et al. (1999) assert, interviews can be applied for gathering information about instruction, and, of course, materials are an essential component of instruction (p. 129). besides, as i wanted my students to expand on their criteria, this instrument was quite useful. another important element of this technique is that interviews “permit the interviewer to probe the respondents for additional information in response to interesting or important answers that arise unexpectedly from the planned questions” (genesee et al., 1999, p. 133). this characteristic was helpful to me because i could ask questions that were not in the questionnaire but which were important in eliciting the information i needed from my students. ttttteachereachereachereachereacher’s journal’s journal’s journal’s journal’s journal as stated at the beginning, i decided to keep my journal as a secondary source because, as has been highlighted along the discussion, my main interest is to gain understanding about the criteria my pupils use for assessing printed materials. however, i wanted also to collect data about the way my fourth graders develop their tasks with the printed material i prepared for them. in short, my main interest when jotting down my impressions and feelings at the end of the classes was to reflect upon the manner in which my students responded to the instructional materials i prepared for them. teacher’s journals are “used to record hunches, feelings, assumptions about people or processes and the like as part of the reflective and verification process” (lankshear, c. & knobel, m., 2004, p. 36-37). the collection of feelings, impressions, and further thoughts is one feature of teachers’ journals. they can be used in the evaluation process too. in the same train of thought, genesee et al. (1999) consider it important to keep a teacher’s journal according to what you are evaluating. for instance, you should keep one for “recording insights and feedback pertinent to instruction that arises from portfolios and conferences in a separate notebook” (p. 114). in addition, they mention the usefulness of a teacher’s journal for keeping notes on instructional issues like materials and students’ feelings about them, activities, and so on. in sum, using a teacher’s journal can provide elements to assess the impressions teachers can perceive from their students in terms of instructional materials as well. instructional designinstructional designinstructional designinstructional designinstructional design as i mentioned at the beginning, i am used to preparing my own classroom materials. they have evolved during my teaching practice. i have realized that they may respond to my students’ needs and to the context in which i teach. due to the fact that my institution is a public school, sometimes there are not enough resources i can use. however, i have tried to focus my attention on the development of the four language skills, taking advantage of the overhead projector, the audiotapes, the photocopy machine, and my creativity, since my students cannot afford textbooks and the school library lacks enough printed materials like short stories in english, informational texts in the foreign language and so on. i designed and implemented part of a curricular unit about the family, based on a needs analysis i carried out at the beginning of the term, which indicated that my pupils were interested in this topic. the material was based on tasks and the ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○37 profileprofileprofileprofileprofile materials assessment special cycle you should follow when you teach real beginners, as i do. i designed fourteen lessons (see appendix 3). so, the printed materials they assessed were three tasks related to the pre-task cycle, in which they were introduced to the topic, and the vocabulary they needed in order to carry out the task cycle in the second session (see appendixes 4 & 5). so, the idea was that my students helped me to assess the printed materials i provided them with for the development of the three tasks. in short, i want to reflect constantly about the appropriateness of those materials in light of their needs, preferences, understanding, and knowledge. findingsfindingsfindingsfindingsfindings after analysing the answers provided by my six participants and their teams in the three questionnaires, i discovered certain criteria they include when assessing printed material. the names of the controversial issues were taken from my students’ words. that is to say, it is a grounded type of analysis. in general terms, i found out about three main issues for the assessment my students completed over of the printed materials i provided them with. they are, namely: nice, enjoyable, the printed materials have lots of questions and they do not have drawings for us to guide, and very difficult vs. easier. nice and enjoyablenice and enjoyablenice and enjoyablenice and enjoyablenice and enjoyable first, they assess the instructional materials in terms of how they feel when developing them. in other words, if they are enjoyable or not. for example, when asking them about their feelings in terms of a puzzle they developed and why, four of them answered that it was enjoyable or nice. nevertheless, these answers did not allow me to know more about the actual meaning of nice or enjoyable. that is why i asked them directly about what was enjoyable and nice when developing the activities proposed in the printed materials we worked on. the interview was valuable for this purpose. they provided different ideas of something nice. for instance, for felipe nice means that i like to do it. that is very funny. that i get lots of fun (interview, may 25th, 2005). furthermore, for kathy the guides about the family we worked on were nice because i can know the names from, from my classmates’ fathers, from their mothers, their siblings too (interview, may 25th, 2005). similarly, felipe expanded on his classmate idea and asserted: for example, as you are doing here, one can know for instance karol’s name, her father’s name, her family [sic] when one meets karol and greets her [sic] (interview, may 25th, 2005). this final statement reinforces what he answered in the third questionnaire, when he was asked about the chart they had to fill in with their classmates’ information. there are two more interpretations of nice. for example, when yenny was asked about something nice, she mentioned that everything is nice because she knows something in english and she can learn something, as well: everything is nice to me because, for instance, i know something of english and i learn something of english (interview, may 25th, 2005). finally, dayana and yenny found the english guides nice because of the puzzles and the drawings. in addition, kathy mentioned an important element that makes the english printed material nice: its length, and because the guides are short, and the others are three, four pages long (interview, may 25th, 2005). now, in terms of how they define enjoyable, they mentioned different aspects. some of them considered nice and enjoyable as something similar, as the example provided by felipe when he was defining nice. for him, they seem to be the same. nonetheless, daniela and felipe answered in the third questionnaire that they found the puzzle an enjoyable activity because they had to look for the words in english. meanwhile, yenny considered this activity enjoyable because they coloured. moreover, when they were asked about how they had felt when developing the activities we had carried out, dayana considered them enjoyable 38 becerra profileprofileprofileprofileprofile ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ because one can learn english (interview, may 25th, 2005). in the same train of thought, felipe stated that for him they were enjoyable because one can learn to look for english words in letter soups. and one can recognize family, lots of things (interview, may 5th, 2005). finally, kathy thinks they were enjoyable because one knows how to spell father in english, mother, siblings, aunts, uncles, grandparents (interview, may 25th, 2005). in synthesis, my participants found that a task which is chévere and divertida possess certain features, namely: it is enjoyable to develop, it helps to learn more vocabulary, it provides possibilities of knowing more about their classmates’ lives, it is not so long, and it helps to learn english. t h e p r i n t e d m a t e r i a l s h a v e l o t s o ft h e p r i n t e d m a t e r i a l s h a v e l o t s o ft h e p r i n t e d m a t e r i a l s h a v e l o t s o ft h e p r i n t e d m a t e r i a l s h a v e l o t s o ft h e p r i n t e d m a t e r i a l s h a v e l o t s o f questions and they do not have drawingsquestions and they do not have drawingsquestions and they do not have drawingsquestions and they do not have drawingsquestions and they do not have drawings for us to guidefor us to guidefor us to guidefor us to guidefor us to guide second, they assess the printed material in terms of what they like and dislike to do, bearing in mind the format and the content of it. for instance, when asking them about the written guides that they dislike the most, most of them said that they do not like the guides in which they have to write a lot. these opinions also arose in the interview. i wanted to expand on this finding and when we talked about the other subjects, and the opinions they had in terms of the guides they developed, some of them mentioned the fact that they are plenty of questions, that they are long: “t: ok, when i talk about those guides, you tell me there is too much text, how are they? how can you describe them? what are they? kathy: questions and questions. t: are they sheets of paper with questions, or are they in the notebooks? kathy: one sheet of paper like this, and on the other side, has more questions. t: a lot of questions. dayana: and one little picture by chance. t: yes. and what do you think of those guides? kathy: horrible. dayana: the english guides are funnier. t: and why do you consider that those written guides are horrible? kathy: because i do not like writing too much. i prefer to colour.” interview, may 25th, 2005. conversely and hand in hand with the previous analysis, they like to solve puzzles, to colour, and to answer questions. moreover, when they were asked about what they should include in an english guide about the family, they mentioned drawings to colour, puzzles, games, questions, and photos. likewise, in the interview, they mentioned that they liked to colour, and especially to draw: “t: what is your opinion about the written guides in the other subjects? which ones catch your attention? how do you feel about them? yenny: the art class guides. t: how are they? i haven’t seen them. yenny: you have to do lines. kathy: lines, shapes without lines and colours. felipe: teacher! i like the computer science subject too, because you have to draw. group of students: ah, yes... yenny: and you learn to work better on the computer.” interview, may 25th, 2005. vvvvvererererery difficult vs. easiery difficult vs. easiery difficult vs. easiery difficult vs. easiery difficult vs. easier third, when students assess printed material, they include the clarity in the instructions of it. in the final questionnaire, i asked them about how they had felt when carrying out the exercises proposed. most of them felt pleased and happy because they had understood what they had to do and as a consequence they solved it successfully. this level of difficulty is also related to the knowledge they have of the topic. for example, when implementing the interview, i noticed that they considered the first matching task quite difficult because they did not know the vocabulary related to that topic. in words of my students: ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○39 profileprofileprofileprofileprofile materials assessment “t: for instance, in deisy’s team, how did you do the first one? the first one about the guide, do you remember? it was a guide and then you had to match the photo, that first one, how did you do it? how did you feel when doing it? dayana: it was very difficult. t: yes? why was it difficult for you? dayana: because we were very confused. t: uhm! nelson: teacher, and no one had studied the names. t: ahh! dayana: if you do not know them, then you will get confused. (...) nelson: we got confused because we did not know the names.” interview, may 25th, 2005. on the contrar y, they found the second matching task (which was the same one, but it was carried out individually) easier because they already knew the words and had had certain training in the vocabulary they needed to solve: “t: and in the second one, you did it individually. group of students: yes... dayana: it was easier. kathy: though the first one was easy to me too. t: yes, why was it easy for you? kathy: because we began by matching the brother and sister with the photo. then there were two missing and so these were the grandmother… and, then we had a better guide for the word mother. t: yes. kathy: then we thought that it was granny. (...) t: the second one, you told me that it was not so difficult like the first one, right? felipe: it was easy; it also helped us to answer the other question. kathy: because we already knew. yenny: we already knew that we had done another task so we can develop another one that is similar.” interview, may 25th, 2005. in the previous extract, one can also see how one team on the first try did it well because they used their previous knowledge and took the risk of inferring things and putting these hypotheses in the task. it was something really worthy for me because it has to do with the learning strategies they implement when solving problems. conclconclconclconclconclusionsusionsusionsusionsusions bearing in mind that materials are a curriculum activity, they should be assessed and evaluated as well. however, sometimes teachers implement them without considering students’ needs, preferences, and learning styles. it may occur because we are not used to assessing them. even more, we hardly consider the possibility of giving our students the voice to assess them. that was perhaps the most important purpose of this research process: to open spaces in order to build more democratic classrooms in which everyone has the right to be heard. thus, based on the findings presented previously, i can conclude the following: firstly, my participants found certain printed materials nice and enjoyable because they were enjoyable to develop, they helped them to learn more vocabulary, they provided possibilities to know more about their classmates’ lives, they were not so long, and they helped them to learn english. in summary, they liked to develop them and they were learning at the same time. so, for them, having a good time does not mean not learning. it means learning in a way that i consider everyone loves: having joy. secondly, the six fourth graders who were my main participants stated that certain printed materials were not so appealing for them because they had to write a lot, because they had lots of questions, and due to the fact that they did not have pictures, or 40 becerra profileprofileprofileprofileprofile ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ things to colour, and so on. that is why i took one of my participants’ words to label this second criterion: “the printed materials have lots of questions and they do not drawings for us to guide”. finally, my fourth graders considered that some criteria to assess the printed materials they use daily had to do with their level of difficulty. that is why they asserted that there was some instructional material which was really difficult because they did not understand what to do, or because they did not know vocabulary (in the english subject particularly). in other words, some kinds of instructional materials were more difficult because they did not have the previous knowledge to develop the tasks effectively. conversely, they found that there were easier instructional materials because they had the tools to develop the activities proposed successfully, or because there were certain hints that helped them to solve the tasks easily. pedpedpedpedpedagogicagogicagogicagogicagogical implical implical implical implical implicaaaaationstionstionstionstions i consider this research project to have enlightened my professional development and my daily practice in different aspects. moreover, i think that this project can enrich other teachers’ understanding. i will illustrate the most relevant aspects that giving students the possibility of assessing printed materials may provide our practices. first, letting your students speak about something that may affect in a positive or negative way their learning, like the materials you provide them with, may help you to rethink them. at times you forget the population you teach to. you just adapt or design a guide thinking about what you consider they should learn. but, what about the children or adolescents you have in your class? they have the right to give their opinions and to be considered when a curricular decision is being made, such as the materials to be used. by the same token, when you research the criteria students use when assessing materials, you might get closer to them. you learn about their preferences, their styles, the activities they enjoy, among other issues. besides, as happened in this project, when you implement activities in which you get closer to their lives, they find their learning to be more meaningful. this is even more the case when they are learning a foreign language such as english. they find these types of activities valuable and nice. in addition, this type of projects aims at the development of learning skills that nunan (1988) discusses. for instance, teachers may help students identify their learning preferences, in this case, in terms of materials. also, english teachers can “develop skills needed to negotiate the curriculum” (nunan, 1988, p. 3). all these considerations go hand in hand with a learner-centred curriculum, since it implies including students in the curricular decisions that may affect their learning process. in the words of nunan (1988, p. 2): “the key difference between learner-centred and traditional curriculum development is that, in the former, the curriculum is a collaborative effort between teachers and learners, since learners are closely involved in the decision-making process regarding the content of the curriculum and how it is taught”. finally, when you teach children (and i would say, when you teach anyone), you are invited to make learning a fun experience. learning must not be seen as a burden. going to school may be a synonym of going to a party, or going to a place in which you will learn from and with others in an enjoyable way. in synthesis, as teachers, we may consider it of utmost significance the fact that we are educating people to be happy. in our particular case, happy colombian citizens; something that our country is claiming and requiring. referencesreferencesreferencesreferencesreferences brown, d. j. (1995). the elements of language curriculum. boston: heinle & heinle publishers. genesee, f., & hamayan, e. (1994). educating second language children: the whole child, the whole curriculum, the whole community. cambridge: cambridge university press. ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○41 profileprofileprofileprofileprofile materials assessment genesee, f., & upshur, j. a. (1999). classroom-based evaluation in second language education. cambridge: cambridge university press. lankshear, c., & knobel, m. (2004). a handbook for teacher research: from design to implementation. new york: open university press. nunan, d. (1988). the learner-centred curriculum. cambridge: cambridge university press. quintero, a. (2003). teachers’ informed decisionmaking in evaluation: corollary of elt curriculum as a human lived experience. colombian applied linguistics journal, 5, 122-137. rea-dickins, p., & germaine, k. (1992). evaluation. oxford: oxford university press. santos, m. (1996). evaluación educativa 2. un enfoque práctico de la evaluación de alumnos, profesores, centros educativos y materiales didácticos (2nd ed.). buenos aires: magisterio del río de la plata. seliger, h., & shohamy, e. (1989). second language research methods. oxford: oxford university press. 42 becerra profileprofileprofileprofileprofile ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ appendix 1: questionnairesappendix 1: questionnairesappendix 1: questionnairesappendix 1: questionnairesappendix 1: questionnaires first questionnaire. april 18th 2005 this first questionnaire was answered per teams because my students voted and they decided to do so. the questionnaire was applied from 11:35 to 11:55 in the morning, last class hour. as one can guess, they were eager to go home. the questions were: 1. ¿entendimos el trabajo que había que hacer en la copia? 2. ¿cómo me pareció el material que recibimos? ¿por qué? 3. ¿qué tipo de material me gustaría recibir la próxima clase? 4. ¿qué le faltó al trabajo de hoy para que lo hubiéramos podido desarrollar todo? second questionnaire. april 25th 2005 after checking the data gathered in the first questionnaire, i realized that it was not a good idea to apply it by teams because the data was not as fruitful as i had expected. besides, i found that the questions were not appropriate for my purpose. that is why i made two decisions: on the one hand, i decided to apply the questionnaire at the beginning of the class, and individually. and on the other hand, i changed my questions completely, looking for more general information. so the new questions were: 1. ¿qué tipo de cosas te llaman más la atención cuando recibes una guía para trabajar en clase? 2. ¿cuál es la actividad que más te gusta desarrollar cuando trabajas en una guía? 3. ¿qué tipo de guías son las que menos me gustan? 4. ¿q ué debería tener una guía para que fuera agradable y divertida de hacer? 5. ¿de las guías que te entregan, ¿cuáles son las que más te gustan? 6. ¿cómo harías guías con el tema de la familia para la clase de inglés? third questionnaire. may 16th 2005 after discussing the questions of the two previous questionnaires with professor quintero, i asked my students more general and open questions on an individual basis at the end of the class. the questions were: 1. ¿cómo les pareció la actividad de la sopa de letras? ¿por qué? 2. ¿cómo se sintieron? ¿por qué? 3. ¿cómo les pareció la actividad del cuadro y la foto? 4. ¿cómo solucionaron la sopa de letras? ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○43 profileprofileprofileprofileprofile materials assessment appendix 2: questions for the semi-appendix 2: questions for the semi-appendix 2: questions for the semi-appendix 2: questions for the semi-appendix 2: questions for the semi-open interviewopen interviewopen interviewopen interviewopen interview may 25may 25may 25may 25may 25ththththth, 2005, 2005, 2005, 2005, 2005 1. ¿cómo te has sentido en este tiempo, digamos en estos últimos meses desde que empezamos con el trabajo de la familia, cómo te has sentido en la clase de inglés? 2. ¿qué significa, qué quieres decir cuando dices chévere? ¿qué es chévere para ti? dame ejemplos. 3. ¿cómo te has sentido desarrollando las guías? ¿cómo te has sentido haciéndolas? ¿cómo las has visto? 4. ¿por qué te pareció fácil? ¿por qué te pareció difícil? 5. ¿qué significa divertidas para ti? 6. cuando yo digo una guía, ¿qué entiendes por una guía?, ¿qué te imaginas?, ¿cómo las describes? 7. ¿cómo te parecen las guías de otras materias? ¿cuáles te llaman la atención? ¿cómo te parecen? appendix 3: sample of a lesson plappendix 3: sample of a lesson plappendix 3: sample of a lesson plappendix 3: sample of a lesson plappendix 3: sample of a lesson plananananan pre-pre-pre-pre-pre-tttttask cyask cyask cyask cyask cycle second sessioncle second sessioncle second sessioncle second sessioncle second session students’ role: partnersstudents’ role: partnersstudents’ role: partnersstudents’ role: partnersstudents’ role: partners ttttteachereachereachereachereacher’s r’s r’s r’s r’s role: guideole: guideole: guideole: guideole: guide tttttask 2: orderingask 2: orderingask 2: orderingask 2: orderingask 2: ordering this task works as the second introductory task and as the way to collect data related to students’ prior knowledge about family members’ vocabulary. this task will be developed by cooperative teams, using a cooperative learning activity called roundtable. this cooperative learning activity can be described as follows: each team receives only one photocopy and one marker. the objective is that each team member matches a photo with the corresponding sentence and then he/she passes the copy and the marker to the team member who is at his/her left. the next member repeats the process until the team matches all the photos with the balloons. assessmentassessmentassessmentassessmentassessment::::: after all the teams have finished, the teacher will show a transparency with the information the photocopy contains, and he/she will ask volunteer students to match the photos and the balloons. this is a way of correcting the task and, at the same time, it is an opportunity to assess students’ understanding and knowledge. finally, students will complete the self-assessment format. homework:homework:homework:homework:homework: students will have to look up the following adjectives in their dictionaries: tall, short, beautiful, pretty, handsome, heavy, slim, intelligent, tender, responsible, shy, talkative, funny, and serious. 44 becerra profileprofileprofileprofileprofile ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ a pp en d ix 4 : m a a pp en d ix 4 : m a a pp en d ix 4 : m a a pp en d ix 4 : m a a pp en d ix 4 : m a tttt t c h in g t c h in g t c h in g t c h in g t c h in g t a sk a sk a sk a sk a sk ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○45 profileprofileprofileprofileprofile materials assessment appendix 5: problem-solappendix 5: problem-solappendix 5: problem-solappendix 5: problem-solappendix 5: problem-solving tving tving tving tving taskaskaskaskask ied naciones unidas ii. english guideied naciones unidas ii. english guideied naciones unidas ii. english guideied naciones unidas ii. english guideied naciones unidas ii. english guide name______________________________ course__________________________ r a h l f a m i l y w e b i m p u a f m q x h c j n q m o t h e r t d r ñ r v b g n r y o e e o s w c h ñ d z m f h c t x d i o s v d g t r e h t o r b s n a a s t y e j p t y a b f w u z d k e u f r c k s i s t e r v p g r a n d f a t h e r 75profile vol. 13, no. 1, april 2011. issn 1657-0790. bogotá, colombia. pages 75-87 the nature of recognition in tefl teachers’ lives* la naturaleza del reconocimiento en la vida de los maestros de inglés como lengua extranjera barbara scholes gillings de gonzález** universidad veracruzana, xalapa, mexico this article aims at sharing a vital issue that emerged from the findings of a qualitative research study into collective responses of teachers of english as a foreign language to an extended change process in their mexican university context from 1989 to 2003. the data generation process employed was comprised of semi-structured interviews as well as the concurrent analysis of the data, based on aspects of grounded theory. the results of this inquiry demonstrated features of the complexity paradigm of educational change. in particular, how teachers’ receptivity to change was strongly influenced by the teachers’ transforming construal of their professional identities owing to the growing recognition they acquired in their context. key words: educational change, professional development, professional identity, recognition. en este artículo se aborda una problemática vital, descubierta en los resultados de una investigación cualitativa. dicha investigación se enfocó en las respuestas colectivas de maestros de inglés como lengua extranjera, en el contexto de una universidad mexicana, entre 1989 y 2003, hacia un proceso de cambio. en la recolección de datos se emplearon entrevistas semiestructuradas, así como el análisis concurrente de los datos con base en la teoría fundamentada. los resultados mostraron características del paradigma de la complejidad del cambio educacional. específicamente, se observó que la receptividad hacia el cambio fue influenciada fuertemente por la construcción positiva de identidad profesional propia de los maestros, cimentada en el desarrollo de su reconocimiento como profesionales dentro de su contexto. palabras clave: cambio educacional, desarrollo profesional, identidad profesional, reconocimiento. * this article emerged from the findings of a doctoral qualitative research study (scholes gillings de gonzález, 2010). ** e-mail: scholesbarbara@yahoo.co.uk this article was received on august 1, 2010, and accepted on december 15, 2010. 76 universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras scholes gillings de gonzález introduction an important issue that interrelates with, and possibly influences, how teachers respond to change is the sense they have of their own professional identity. according to the findings of this study, this understanding is strongly influenced by the achievements teachers perceive during their struggle for recognition as professionals. all human beings … we need to be given a pat on the back … to be told that we’re doing well ... that kind of thing gives you strength. (irma/16/02/05) the above is an extract from my research data that succinctly sums up the importance of the main topic of this article. we all need to feel accepted for who we are, as well as identified, singled out, respected, taken into consideration and esteemed; in short, ‘recognized’, especially by ‘significant others’ (heikkinen, 2003, p. 4). by ‘significant others’, i am referring to the members of our family, our friends, our colleagues and work authorities in our social context. the different degrees of recognition that we perceive ourselves to have achieved from these ‘others’ may influence or affect our personal construal of our professional identities regarding our self-confidence, self-respect and self-esteem (zembylas, 2003). this in turn may also influence our productive performance in our work context. for example, positive reinforcement may motivate us to interact and collaborate more with others (beijaard, verloop & vermut, 2000). however, in contrast, when we do not receive this vital feedback, we may often feel undervalued, and so reluctant, to make any kind of effort at all to interact with others and participate in change initiatives (giacquinta, 2005; greenberg & baron, 2000). even worse, it has been argued that a lack of recognition may contribute to a teacher’s burn out (cano-garcía, padilla-muñoz & carrasco-ortiz, 2005). however, it is not easy to achieve recognition. this is especially the case of language teachers whose standing as professionals is not often taken seriously by other teachers, especially in a university community where, more often than not, the study of languages is not considered a real discipline or science and, therefore, worthy of respect (johnston, 1997). this article provides the basis of my argument. first it introduces the research context. this introduction is followed by a summary of the methodology and the research process i employed. then it reports on and interprets the findings regarding the lived experience of eleven tefl teachers and me while engaging in educational change from 1989 to 2003 in our university context in mexico. finally, it concludes with a discussion of the implications for practice and educational research. research context in this inquiry in particular, i am focusing on a small number of teachers in the school of languages at a mexican university where the lingua franca is spanish. since the beginning of the 1990s, these tefl teachers have been involved in a series of changes including innovation in curriculum design and, perhaps even more importantly, teacher development and professionalization. these changes in teachers’ work contrast strongly to the situa tion in former years when teachers commonly lacked any training at all, even of first degree status, and the principal change in the institution itself was the inclusion of english language teaching in the university, first as a subject and then as a ba degree at the new school of languages1, which took a full 30 years to accomplish. 1 at that time, even though it was called a school of languages, the only language that was taught at the beginning was in fact english. 77profile vol. 13, no. 1, april 2011. issn 1657-0790. bogotá, colombia. pages 75-87 77 the nature of recognition in tefl teachers’ lives investigating lived experience i employed aspects of a life history approach in my research process, given that life history research specifically has as its focus the “phenomenal role of lived experience and the way in which members interpret their own lives and the world around them” (plummer, 1983, p. 67). that is, from this viewpoint, the researcher is interested in exploring …how individuals or groups of people who share specific characteristics, personally and subjectively, experience, make sense of, and account for the things that happen to them. (goodson & sikes, 2001, p. 39) furthermore, in teacher education (feuerverger, 2005; lyons & laboskey, 2002; phillion et al., 2005), and especially in the field of language teacher education, it has been affirmed that not only the researcher, but also the informants may profit in various ways from participating in narrative inquiry (doecke, 2004; golombek & johnson, 2004). for instance, one of the benefits is that the relating of a lived experience requires both reflection and meaning making that lead to teachers’ understanding their practices (freeman, 2002; jay & johnson, 2002) and their experiences. during the process of narrative inquiry, the researcher has access to this understanding that will enable him or her to both analyze, and interpret, the teachers’ experience, sometimes with the informants’ help (barkhuizen & wette, 2008). research procedure the first step in my research procedure consisted of identifying the informants who would be involved in this inquiry. given my inside knowledge of and experience in the context, this was not a difficult task. the most obvious choice owing to her crucial involvement in the changes was the person who had been dean from the beginning of the change process up to 1995. the rest were the ten teachers who were the original focus of my inquiry. that is, the small number of teachers who, like myself, had become involved in the changes in which i and most of my informants participated in together from the beginning of the long change process. this occurred when all but two of my informants, who were not yet teachers in our context, worked together during the design and implementation of the curriculum ‘plan ‘90’, the in-house ma in tefl, the distance ba in tefl and the first design stage of a further new curriculum for the ba. these were in addition to different projects (e.g. the setting up of a s.a.c. and engagement in research) in which some of us became engaged while at the same time participating in professional development (postgraduate tefl diploma, msc in tefl, and phd studies). methods of data generation and analysis in life history studies, the most common strategy used in the generation of data in order to gain knowledge of an informant’s context and career (drever, 2003; gillham, 2000; kvale, 1996) is the interview-conversation between informant and researcher (goodson & sikes, 2001). in other words, what goodson (2001a) has referred to as ‘grounded conversation’. that is, conversations prompted by the general concerns of the researcher with the purpose of affording “individuals with the opportunity of telling their own stories in their own ways” (hitchcock & hughes, 1995, p. 186). these conversations have the purpose of encouraging informants “to reflect on the past and to look again at their own life and experiences in an introspective and subjective fashion” (hitchcock & hughes, 1995, p. 192). as a complementary tool, i employed an interview method known as the critical incident technique. ‘critical incidents’ may be understood, 78 universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras scholes gillings de gonzález on the one hand, as occurrences that have marked an important change in a person, institution or social phenomenon. on the other hand, they may not be so dramatic or obvious. however, the fact that the person recalls them “reveals, like a flashbulb, the major choice and times of change in people’s lives” (sikes, measor, & woods, 1985, p. 57). this interview method is useful as not only did it generate data regarding my informants’ perceptions, but it also permitted me to probe further into their responses in previous interviews, as well as to triangulate and verify the issues that were emerging. based on kelly’s personal construct theory (kelly, 1955), i also employed a repertory grid interview technique as another complementary tool in order to explore, triangulate and thus verify my informants’ personal constructs that had emerged during our other interview sessions. kelly uses the term personal constructs to refer to “the dimensions that we use to conceptualize aspects of our day-to-day world” (cohen, manion, & morrison 2000, p. 338). according to kelly, a person’s construct system represents truth as they understand it. throughout the research process i also kept a personal log. these notes proved to be very useful. they not only provided support for both a critical and reflective approach to my research process, and a means of balancing the subjectivity of my interpretations (deshkin, 1988), but they also assisted in my analysis process. the methods of data generation and data analysis were initially two overlapping and interrelated procedures throughout my field work (figure 1). carrying out both these procedures concurrently helped to inform me concerning what questions to ask and which issues to pursue in subsequent interview sessions. data generation process conversations with a purpose progressive focusing personal log critical incident work repertory grids · transcription · preliminary microanalysis · preliminary constant comparison generative co-creation of knowledge and meaning analysis process figure 1. research process. stage one: while in the field. later, when i had concluded my field work, i revisited my data as a whole and employed a more systematic approach in order to reduce, arrange, analyse and interpret the data more thoroughly (figure 2). to this end, i used aspects of the grounded theory approach to data analysis (charmaz, 2003; goodley, lawthom & moore, 2004; strauss, 1987; strauss & corbin, 1998;). empirical data: transcripts back to whole: theoretical re-outlining of findings · micro analysis · constant comparative analysis · analysis grids theories began to emerge or crystallise figure 2. research process. stage two: systematic approach to analysis. 79profile vol. 13, no. 1, april 2011. issn 1657-0790. bogotá, colombia. pages 75-87 79 the nature of recognition in tefl teachers’ lives as a result of the methods i employed during my analysis and interpretation of the data, theories began to emerge or crystallize (richardson, 1997). according to richardson (1994), the notion of a crystal …combines symmetry and substance with an infinite variety of shapes, substances, transmutations, multi-dimensionalities, and angles of approach. crystals grow, change, and alter, but are not amorphous. crystals are prisms that reflect externalities and refract within themselves, creating different colors, patterns, arrays, casting off in different directions. what we see depends upon our angle of repose. (p. 522) depending on the different ‘angles of repose’, that is, interest and attention, i focused on my informants’ perceptions, first verbally, and then later as i examined and re-examined the transcripts, first informant by informant and then collectively, comparing and contrasting the different informant responses, the different facets of the crystal became more and more apparent. as a result, this process enabled me to understand more clearly, though arguably not completely (richardson, 1994), the interrelated and dynamic nature of the issues encapsulated in my informants’ responses. this subsequently led me to re-examine my data from the point of view of the complexity theory. interpretation of findings my findings appear to support kemmis’ (n.d.) view that …changing a practice requires not only changing the knowledge and actions of individual practitioners but also changing extraindividual features and elements of situations that are necessarily implicated in practices. (p. 26) in particular, they reveal both the kinds of recognition needed by teachers as well as the impact these have on the formation and transformation of teachers’ professional identities. in order to interpret these perspectives, i will refer to honneth’s (1995a) theory of recognition based on his interpretation of hegel’s writings (1979), as well as huttunen and heikkinen’s (2002) and heikkinen’s (2003) subsequent adaptation of this theory to educational practices. in an attempt to protect my informants’ identities, i have replaced all their names with pseudonyms. recognition of our limitations firstly, ‘recognition’ in one sense refers to what we acknowledge regarding our limitations. “what we acknowledge –that is realize, admit or confess– is our commitments, obligations or responsibilities, and our flaws, mistakes, sins or guilt in failing to meet these (ikäheimo, 2002, p. 142). most of the teachers recognized that before the 1990s we had had no formal teacher training and so we believed that we had been ill prepared to be teachers. although we had several years of teaching experience, we felt at a disadvantage. some of the mexican teachers believed that they lacked both oral and teaching skills due to the fact that they were a ‘product’ of the old system having previously studied at the school of languages. furthermore, we had no contact with the ‘outside’ e.g. the tefl community in mexico and abroad or even any real contact with the other teachers at the school. thus, as my informants acknowledged, during our conversations, both they and i had felt isolated, alone and insecure. this lack of professional confidence and professional esteem as teachers culminated in a lack of professional respect and mutual recognition of ourselves as teachers. however, it also resulted in being a motivational force that greatly contributed to our desire to become actively involved in professional development and the institutional change process given that, as honneth (1995b) affirms, “the experience of personal disrespect represents a moral driving force in the process of societal development” (p. 248). 80 universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras scholes gillings de gonzález recognition of self by significant others according to honneth (1995a), the first level of recognition most human beings desire is a basic recognition of our existence in social interaction as this signifies for us that we have the right to exist, that we are accepted for who we are. thus, if we are successful at this level, we may achieve self-confidence. …relation of recognition thus also depends on the concrete physical existence of other persons who acknowledge each other with special feelings of appreciation. the positive attitude which the individual is capable of assuming toward himself if he experiences this type of emotional recognition is that of selfconfidence. (honneth, 1995b, p. 253) in short, at this first level we need to feel that we are accepted by ‘significant others’ who care about us and have an interest in our welfare (heikkinen, 2003). when people respond in kind, this may result in what huttunen and heikkinen (2002) refer to as a “positive circle of recognition” (p. 3) that as a result may create a strong sense of solidarity among those who are involved. reciprocal recognition of work creates a strong feeling of solidarity in the community. this is the case of a positive working atmosphere where individuals give their best and recognize each others’ work....this positive circle of recognition is very fruitful both for the individual and the community. (huttunen & heikkinen, 2002, p. 5) this view was corroborated by the data that emerged in my inquiry. the level of recognition that we received from each other was decisive. it was especially important given that at first we did not receive this from anyone else at all in our professional context; that is, from either the university authorities or from the tefl community in general. our particular “positive circle of recognition” was based on the following aspects. we recognized and respected each other’s. • strong work ethic • honesty and reliability • commitment strong work ethic our conscious or unconscious evaluation of each other’s strong work ethic is evident from the different terms we used when describing each other. at the same time, these descriptions revealed the characteristics we valued, both in ourselves as well as in others. we identified each other as hard workers, that is • people who do not give up easily • people who do not ‘fall asleep’ on the job • people who willingly devote their time to their students, colleagues, and the school • people who cared about their students and what they, as teachers, were doing, not for personal gain, but because, for them, teaching was more than just a job. in other words, according to one of my informants these are the people that still care. these are the people that do make an effort. these are the people that are involved in things that seem to be for the good of others rather than for themselves. these are the people who don’t just take teaching as a pay check. i mean they’re into it. (chela/10/12/04) that is, we ‘still’ had a strong sense of moral purpose. our first priority was the educational welfare of our students. consequently, we did everything within our power to improve the standards of learning and teaching at the school; for example, the design and implementation of standardised examinations. our honesty and reliability other vital elements of our interrelationship are that we do seem to have identified each other as people who were honest and reliable. these conceptions of each other’s trustworthiness were 81profile vol. 13, no. 1, april 2011. issn 1657-0790. bogotá, colombia. pages 75-87 81 the nature of recognition in tefl teachers’ lives grounded in the types of behaviour we had witnessed during our experiences together. carlos provided an example of such behaviours in the following extract. i know that they are honest. they are the people you’re always going to be with you. i know that once they get involved with you, with the project, they are going to be there, they are going to participate until they finish it. and you can’t find that in other people. (carlos/12/02/05) apart from honesty, jorge also referred to other aspects regarding why he felt he could rely on each of the other informants. i knew they were bright people with brilliant ideas and so i liked working with them because i knew that they would work and they would pull you to work at the same pace. (jorge/14/06/03) here jorge appears to be referring to a sense of trust that emerged from the recognition of each other’s worth that i am labelling competence. this competence that we perceived in each other was not only based on our identification of each other “as bright people with brilliant ideas”, but also, as jorge implies here, echoing the previous extract, that it was further influenced by our perceptions that we were all equally reliable. that is, jorge was not only certain that we would work hard, but also that we had the competence to sustain one another’s involvement in the changes. therefore, it would appear that we evaluated each other as trustworthy colleagues based on our observations of each other’s behaviour while engaging in what wenger (1998, p. 78) refers to as “joint enterprises” during the change process. our commitment furthermore, we recognized and valued each other’s sense of commitment. in particular, we recognized in each other a constant “task commitment” (kelly & spoor, 2005, p. 4) to our professional growth on the one hand, and the effective implementation of the institutional changes that we designed and implemented together on the other. our sense of commitment to the change projects never seemed to waver, even when our goals appeared to be difficult to achieve and when we were faced with obstacles, such as lack of time allotted to work on the projects and the absence of adequate funding to finance them. we were ‘happy’ to participate because we wanted change and were convinced that it would produce positive outcomes. in addition, we realized that we were working with people who were equally committed because they shared this same belief in, and desire for, change. this was noted by veronica in the following extract. if they also believe in what you believe, you’ll be working with people who are really also committed. they really want to change. they are the ones that work hard, because sometimes you don’t get extra money. the higher authorities, they don’t even meet you to say thank you. so it’s something that you have to believe in and you have to have the right people, the people who also believe in what you believe. i mean to be successful comes from the people involved who are committed to being successful themselves. (veronica/02/03/05 [bold is informant’s emphasis]) in short, we identified each other as hard working, trustworthy and committed teachers who believed in change and who were also intrinsically motivated by a shared set of values that we all respected. recognition of professional self by others at the second level of recognition referred to by honneth (1995a; 1995b), teachers need to feel recognised as such by others (heikkinen, 2003). if teachers are successful at this level, they may achieve self-respect (honneth, 1995a; 1995b). “selfrespect grows out of the responsibility which the individual gains in the struggle for recognition at the level of the civil society” (huttunen & heikkinen, 2002, p. 5). 82 universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras scholes gillings de gonzález according to heikkinen (2003, p. 1), in education, a teaching qualification “is the most official authorisation to work as a teacher, the epitome of the second-level recognition of a person as an autonomous professional”. in mexico, educational authorities are now beginning to encourage teachers to sit examinations in order to acquire a teaching qualification. however, during the time frame of this inquiry (1989-2003) there was no such qualification. in fact, our postgraduate tefl programme was one of the first for obtaining teaching qualifications in the country. to gain respect as a professional in mexico, teachers needed only to have an advanced degree in their field. thus, at the beginning of the 1990s when my mexican colleagues were given the opportunity to study for a postgraduate tefl diploma and so gain first degree status, they were highly motivated to participate as it meant that not only would they learn more and enhance their own self-respect as teachers, but by this means they could become recognized by others as a teacher in their context. professional self-esteem professional self-esteem is the third and highest level of recognition (heikkinen, 2003; honneth, 1995b; huttunen & heikkinen, 2002). success at this level is based principally on others; that is, on your particular “value community” (heikkinen, 2003, p. 4) e.g. acknowledgement of your abilities and accomplishments at work (honneth, 1995b). self-esteem is built through the respect one receives for one’s work. here it is essential that one is recognised for some work through which one expresses oneself… self-esteem means that one sees one’s work being acknowledged and recognised… one really becomes recognised as a person who has something to give to the community. (huttunen & heikkinen, 2002, p. 5) in our context, prior to the 1990s we were very much treated as “ugly ducklings” (aide/01/04/04) by the members of our university context, that is, “as nobodies who had no research interest and no academic interest” (aide/01/04/04). it would appear therefore, that when some of my informants were singled out and offered grants to study an msc in tefl by distance in 1994, they perceived this as proof that there were people who believed in their ability to succeed. for example, as maría remembered, what most motivated me was my self-esteem because i was officially invited by the british council. well, that [invitation] made me want to study. because i said, ‘well if the british council feels that i can do it, i can do it’. so i applied for the masters and i was accepted. (maría/13/10/03) this extract affords a clear example of how teachers’ beliefs about their competencies may be influenced by their perception of the opinions of ‘significant others’. in addition, it appears to be an example that yet again corroborates bandura’s (2001) view that efficacy beliefs may influence the choices we make. the fact that an institution such as the british council, that we all respected, had taken interest in, and had contacted maría, was a motivating force for her to enroll in postgraduate studies. more specifically, maría seems to have interpreted the british council’s ‘invitation’ as their recognition of the fact that she was capable of obtaining an msc. these beliefs not only motivated maria in her receptivity to continue studying, but also appear to have influenced her own evaluation of her professional self. another factor that was emphatically reiterated in the data was the way in which my colleagues’ self-confidence as teachers also grew because they could now achieve the status, standing and recognition that they had always desired. firstly, within our context, by having obtained further degrees, they were now also officially awarded first degree status and so became eligible for full-time, 83profile vol. 13, no. 1, april 2011. issn 1657-0790. bogotá, colombia. pages 75-87 83 the nature of recognition in tefl teachers’ lives tenured teaching positions, giving them complete job security. i was happy because, well, as i say, it helped me to get degree status. in other words, we could say that it was a radical change because i had been working as a teacher employed by the hour. so on finishing the tefl diploma i could get degree status and then i could put in for a full-time position. (rosario/05/12/03 [bold is informant’s emphasis]) as rosario remembered, studying a further degree and subsequently achieving first degree status made her “happy” because she now achieved access to significantly greater financial security and secured a highly coveted full-time tenured position. this situation appears to corroborate hargreaves’ (1998) view that “when our status increases, we feel happiness, satisfaction and contentment along with pride” (p. 326). in other words, as a full-time position in our context meant honour, prestige, and the right to be involved in the academic decisiontaking process, it would appear that her sense of professional self-esteem was enhanced by this achievement. professional self-esteem is regarded by many as the highest level of recognition that may be achieved. this recognition, therefore, helps us to understand why rosario emphasised so strongly that she felt “happy”. for her, obtaining a full-time position symbolised that her ability and accomplishments had been fully recognised by her employers, the university authorities who constituted her particular “value community”. in fact, my colleagues’ ambition to gain full-time tenured positions seems to have been another of the motivating forces that initially encouraged several of my informants to study first for the tefl postgraduate diploma and then for an msc in tefl. for example, maría commented that the only possibility that she had of gaining a full-time position was by having a master’s degree. secondly, our status and standing improved through the recognition we gained both within the university itself and among similar institutions elsewhere. the other schools on our campus now seemed to respect us more, thanks not only to our evident academic achievements, but also to the changes we had effected, including the relationships that we had developed with the educational world outside our immediate context. even more impressively, other educational institutions in the country also began to recognise our institution as a ‘good’ school. rosario mentioned the following: the school began to have a name in the republic. so different states in the republic began to call for people, because they said, ‘well, they have a solid education. it is a school that has a name’. and so we can now find our graduates in the entire republic. (rosario/15/10/03) due to this recognition, both we and graduates of our courses began to receive invitations to participate in programmes run by other institutions and to advise them on their proposed curricular changes. consequently, at the present time, we often find ourselves coming across our ex-students and peers to whom we have given consultancy services when we attended conferences at other institutions in many other parts of mexico. thus, it would appear, as raphael mentioned, that “working at the university of veracruz and being involved in these projects has given us a lot of prestige” (raphael/14/06/03[bold is informant’s emphasis]). raphael’s emphasis of the word ‘prestige’ implies the importance we had placed on being reified as professionals. in contrast to the pre-1990s, we no longer felt completely isolated within our context, but rather felt we had now achieved wide recognition. this new turn of events obviously contributed to the strengthening and transformation of our personal construal of our professional identities. my findings, therefore, seem to concur with honneth (1995b), huttunen 84 universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras scholes gillings de gonzález & heikkinen (2002) and heikkinen (2003) that professional self-esteem is based principally on the acknowledgement of your abilities and your accomplishments at work by “significant others”. recognition of our social identity i would add a fourth level to honneth (1995a; 1995b) and heikkinen’s (2003) proposed levels of recognition that needs to be focused upon: namely, the recognition of our social identity. our social identity is enhanced by our social integration. that is, our personal internal recognition that we belong to a group with whom we can identify and be identified. regarding my informants and i, we recognized each other as members of a group with whom we had not only grown both on a personal and professional level and with whom we had collectively shared experiences of change, but also as a group by means of which we had managed to achieve so many of the changes in our educational institution. this was important, because as maría noted: the school has grown a lot. i believe that it is because we have worked not individually, but as a group. it’s a personal satisfaction, but it’s also satisfying that we have worked together as a group … if we hadn’t worked together as a group, well, nothing would have been accomplished. even if we had had all the support from the university it wouldn’t have been worth anything. (maría/14/07/03) in sum, our collective pride, based on the development of our confidence, respect and esteem both in ourselves and in the other members, seems to be a highly relevant aspect of the emotionality that bonded us together. this emotionality, to a large extent, was not only dependent on our accomplishments but, perhaps more importantly, on the recognition these afforded from the ‘significant others’ in our community. this is supported by honneth (1995b), who claims that an individual …can only learn self-confidence and self-respect from the perspective of the approving reactions of partners to interaction, their practical ego is dependent on intersubjective relationships in which it will be able to experience recognition … these relationships establish the moral infrastructure of a social lifeworld in which individuals can both acquire and preserve their integrity as human beings. (p. 253) in our case, the most significant ‘others’ with whom we had “intersubjective relationships” that enabled us “to experience recognition” (honneth, 1995b, p. 253) and so develop an increased sense of self-confidence, self-respect and self-esteem were the other members of our small culture with whom we identified and still to this day identify. conclusion while i would not presume to generalize my findings, as each educational context will necessarily have some idiosyncratic dynamically interacting characteristics and thus context-specific ‘change frames’2; what i can now confidently confirm is that my findings seem to point to the need for changeoriented policymakers, managers and leaders to thoroughly review their current practices in order to look at the nature of change, as well as teachers’ practices in a less technicist (schön, 1983, 1987; kemmis, n.d.) and managerially oriented way. in particular, my findings seem to concur with tsui’s (2007) conclusions that an efl teacher’s identity formation is “highly complex relational as well as experiential, reificative as well as participative, and individual as well as social (p. 678). this is strongly influenced by a fundamental need to be recognized as a professional. “recognition 2 by ‘change frames’ i am referring to the “multiple foci or lens for understanding the dynamic and interrelated nature of the change process” (hoban, 2002, p. 35). 85profile vol. 13, no. 1, april 2011. issn 1657-0790. bogotá, colombia. pages 75-87 85 the nature of recognition in tefl teachers’ lives is an essential element in the formation of a person’s identity” and as such “it could even be called a vital human need” (heikkinen, 2003, p. 1). however, this “fundamental struggle for recognition…is not an easy challenge” (heikkinen (2003, p. 1). in addition, honneth (1995b) suggests that in education the basic first level of recognition (recognition of self by significant others) is often ignored, whereas the second and third levels of recognition (recognition of professional self by others and professional self-esteem) are more high-ranking. therefore, heikkinen (2003) points out the need to focus more on the basic level of recognition, especially when it is an element that can influence a teacher’s work. however, i would also like to add to this by pointing out that although there is a wealth of research that has focused on the importance of understanding teachers’ professional identities, there still seems to be a lack of inquiry regarding the specific personal and professional factors, such as the all important role of recognition that may influence the formation and transformation of our identities. therefore, a lot more attention needs to be paid to exploring these factors and the possible impact that they may have on both teachers’ practices, as well as on teachers’ responses to change in different contexts of educational change. this could then lead to further research regarding what educational authorities could do to enable and support the necessary processes involved in the formation and positive transformation of teachers’ professional identities which may hopefully, in turn, motivate our educational authorities to create at least some of the conditions necessary for our personal and professional well-being as teachers. these conditions are essential to enable us not only to transform our sense of professional identity and become more efficient in our daily practices, but also to become more positive in our responses to the many change initiatives that are nowadays a frequent occurrence in our professional lives in the field of education. references bandura, a. 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(2002). why narrative inquiry or exemplars for a scholarship of teaching? in lyons, n. & laboskey, v. k. (eds.), narrative inquiry in practice: advancing the knowledge of teaching (pp. 11-27). new york: teachers college press. phillion, j., he, m. f., & connelly, f. m. (eds.), (2005). narrative and experience in multicultural education. thousand oaks: sage. plummer, k. (1983). documents of life. london: unwin hyman. richardson, l. (1994). writing: a method of inquiry. in denzin, n. k. & lincoln, y. s. (eds.), handbook of qualitative research, pp. 516-529. thousand oaks, ca: sage. richardson, l. (1997). fields of play: constructing an academic life. new brunswick, nj: rutgers university press. in denzin, n. k., & lincoln, y. s. (eds.), (2003a). the landscape of qualitative research. theories and issues (pp. 26-35). thousand oaks, london, new delhi: sage. scholes gillings de gonzález, b. (2010). discovering complexity: teachers’ collective responses to change. doctoral thesis registered at exeter university: eric http:// hdl.handle.net/10036/93790 schön, d, (1983). the reflective practitioner: how professionals think in action. london: falmer press. schön, d. (1987). educating the reflective practitioner. san francisco: jossey-bass. sikes, p., measor, l., & woods, p. (1985). teacher careers: crises and continuities. london: falmer press. straus, a., & corbin, j. (1998). basics of qualitative research. techniques and procedures for developing grounded theory. thousand oaks, london, new delhi: sage. strauss, a. (1987). qualitative analysis for social scientists. cambridge, england: cambridge university press. tsui, a. b. m. (2007). complexities of identity formation: a narrative inquiry of an efl teacher. tesol quarterly, 41(4), 657-680. wenger, e. (1998). communities of practice. learning, meaning, and identity. cambridge: cambridge university press. zembylas, m. (2003). emotions and teacher identity: a poststructural perspective. teachers and teaching, 9(3), 213238. about the author barbara scholes gillings de gonzález has spent over 30 years teaching at universidad veracruzana (xalapa, mexico), where she has developed materials and participated in the design of the in-house and virtual bas, tefl diploma and ma programmes. during this time she has completed a phd in education at exeter university, england. 33profile vol. 12, no. 1, 2010. issn 1657-0790. bogotá, colombia. pages 33-45 watching teacher candidates watch themselves: reflections on a practicum program in turkey observación de candidatos a profesores que se observan a sí mismos: reflexiones sobre un programa de práctica docente en turquía sumru akcan* boğaziçi university, turkey this article presents the findings of a study that investigates pre-service english teachers’ reflections on their teaching performance after watching their videotaped lessons in company with their university supervisor. this study, conducted during the spring semester practicum program in the 2007-2008 academic year, examines how the teacher candidates felt about their teaching while watching a video of a real lesson taught in a classroom. the findings of this study suggest that after the teacher candidates watched their own teaching with the supervisor, they made specific comments about teacher talk and about students’ participation and interest in the lesson. the findings also show that the use of video recording in the practicum program provided opportunities for reflection and helped teacher candidates evaluate their performance more critically. key words: non-native speaker pre-service english teachers, practicum, reflective teaching, videobased reflection sessions este artículo presenta los hallazgos de un estudio que investiga las reflexiones de futuros profesores de inglés respecto a su desempeño docente después de haber visto con su asesor de práctica de la universidad las grabaciones de sus propias clases. este estudio, realizado durante la práctica semestral de primavera en el periodo académico 2007-2008, examina cómo se sintieron los practicantes respecto a su forma de enseñar cuando veían un video de una clase dictada en un salón de clase real. los hallazgos del estudio sugieren que después de que los practicantes o futuros docentes observaron en compañía de su supervisor su forma de enseñar, hicieron comentarios relacionados especialmente con la forma de hablar de los profesores y con la participación e interés de los estudiantes en la clase. los hallazgos también muestran que la grabación en video en el programa de práctica docente generó oportunidades para reflexionar y ayudó a los practicantes a evaluar su desempeño de una forma más crítica. palabras clave: profesores de inglés no nativos en formación, práctica docente, enseñanza reflexiva, sesiones de reflexión basadas en videos * e-mail: akcans@boun.edu.tr this article was received on august 1, 2009 and accepted on november 7, 2009. 34 universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras akcan introduction reflection on one’s teaching should be encouraged from the beginning of the “learning to teach” process in order to help teacher candidates to become reflective practitioners. reflective teaching helps teachers become more confident in their actions and decisions and enables them to make more informed decisions about their teaching practice. reflective teaching helps teachers to reflect critically on their work and to develop strategies for change (farrell, 2007; lee, 2007). “the reflective practice movement involves a recognition that teachers should be active in formulating the purposes and ends of their work” (zeichner & liston, 1996, p. 5). as zeichner and liston indicate, a reflective teacher makes the effort to solve the challenges of classroom instruction and takes responsibility for his or her own professional development. historically, john dewey provides the foundation for understanding reflective teaching. according to dewey (1933), reflective action involves active, consistent and careful consideration of any practice or belief. for instance, the issue on which the teacher reflects must take place in a social context where teaching occurs. the issue should come from a teacher’s own practice and his/her ideas need to be confirmed through the practice of teaching. once ideas about teaching are tested through practice, this should lead to an action. dewey views reflection as a holistic way of responding to problems. it involves more than rational problem-solving processes; reflective action also involves intuition, emotion, and passion (zeichner & liston, 1996; barlett, 1997). schön (1983) expanded the meaning of reflective practice and showed how reflection can operate in a daily teaching practice. according to schön (1983; 1987), “reflection-on-action” can occur before and after any teaching situation. reflection-on-action may occur before a lesson when teachers plan their lesson and also after instruction when they think about what happened during their lessons. schön indicates that reflection can also occur during classroom instruction, or “reflection-inaction”. practitioners might be in a situation in which they need to identify and find solutions to the problems that occur at that moment. teachers might adjust instruction based on the students’ reactions while they are teaching. farrell (2007) also points out the third type of reflection, “reflection-for-action”, in which teachers think about their future approaches. farrell states that reflection-for-action is the outcome of reflectionin-action and reflection-on-action, since teachers can prepare for future professional action by using actual classroom experiences and their reflections after they have finished a lesson. reflection-on-action might be seen as a kind of metacognitive action, while reflection-inaction is the ability to identify problems based on previous experiences. experienced teachers can use their background knowledge of various teaching strategies in order to solve problems that might appear on the spot, but novice teachers may have difficulty reflecting-in-action because they do not have such a developed repertoire of teaching routines (schön, 1987; hatton & smith, 1995). schön (1983) thinks that the process of understanding and improving one’s own teaching depends on reflection on one’s own experience. schön has been criticized for his lack of emphasis on the interactional dimension of teacher learning. although he emphasizes the reflective conversations that teachers have about the conditions under which they teach, schön does not discuss how teachers and other practitioners can reflect together on their work (day, 1993). day criticizes schön’s notion of reflective practice saying that reflection needs to be analytic and involve dialogue with 35 watching teacher candidates watch themselves: reflections on a practicum program in turkey profile vol. 12, no. 1, 2010. issn 1657-0790. bogotá, colombia. pages 33-45 others. solomon (1987) also stresses the idea of reflection as a social practice and argues that without discussion of ideas, teacher development will be inhibited. ideas become more real and comprehensible when we can speak about them with others. opportunities for reflection there are different ways of reflecting on one’s beliefs about classroom practices, interaction, classroom communication patterns, and language proficiency. these can be explored by the use of journal writing, classroom observations, group discussions, or video recording of a teaching performance. for instance, lee (2007) conducted a study with pre-service language teachers to show the effect of dialogue and response journals. data were collected from journal entries and interviews. the findings showed that dialogue and response journals provided opportunities for pre-service teachers to engage in reflective thinking; thus, all of the student teachers found the experience of journal writing useful. garmon (2001) also noted that the pre-service teachers gave importance to the advice and suggestions from the teacher mentor. the teacher candidates who used a dialogue journal appreciated and valued the opportunities to communicate with the teacher mentor regularly during the journal writing process. according to some teachers, the need to share their reflective discourse with peers can be met by the use of electronic communications, such as blogs (ray & hocutt, 2006). ray & coulter (2008) examined 21 language arts blogs created by inservice language arts teachers to find randomly selected entries within the blogs which showed reflection on teaching practice. results indicated that all teachers in the study used blogs as reflective journals in which they could write and reflect on the events taking place in their classrooms. in support of ray and coulter’s study, richardson (2006) indicated that electronic environments can facilitate thinking and collaboration for reflection and decision-making. the use of blogs may provide pre-service teachers the opportunity to discuss their concerns with peers, cooperating teachers, and university supervisors. the opportunity to use video-based technology has also been considered to be useful for student teachers to reflect on their own teaching performance. according to lefevre (2004) and perry & talley (2001), there are numerous benefits of using video in a teaching context. for instance, a video may provide a natural source for increasing the sense of context and realism. it can help student teachers to see the dynamics of classroom interaction and allow teacher candidates to replay events that are not noticed on first viewing. dymond & bentz (2006) and robinson & kelley (2007) think that videos taken during teaching performance are trustworthy data for student teachers to engage in post-lesson reflection that is based on the actual records. student teachers may improve the levels of reflective thoughts about their teaching after they watch video recordings of their lessons. many of these methods of reflective practice can be used alone or they can be used in combination (farrell, 2007). farrell adds that teachers should be willing to give a time period for reflection. during the reflection period, the external input can come from different sources such as peer observations and journals kept by teachers. teachers can also attend conferences or seminars and report their findings to other teachers. for peer or group discussions on a teaching practice, a nonthreatening environment should be encouraged. building up trust and empathy is essential if peers are observing each other. 36 universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras akcan as an external input for the reflection period, a video recording can be replayed and examined several times and can reveal many details of a lesson, such as details of the language used by teachers and learners. recording a lesson might provide a choice of focus, such as focus on the teacher or on a particular group of students (richards & lockhart, 1996). according to schratz (1992), audio-visual recordings are powerful tools in the development of a teacher’s self-reflective competence. schratz expresses this power by saying: “they confront him or her with a mirrorlike ‘objective’ view of what goes on in class” (p. 89). in this study, the researcher (also the supervisor in the study) aims to explore the use of videotaping as a tool for reflection and to show how videotaped lessons of teacher candidates encourage reflection. the two research questions of this study are these: (1) what are the teacher candidates’ opinions about their teaching performance after they watch themselves in company with the university supervisor? and (2) what are teacher candidates’ attitudes towards watching themselves on the video? methodology research context: language teacher education program coordinators of the practice teaching program in this particular elt department placed each fourth-year teacher candidate with three cooperating teachers teaching at three different grade levels in both state and private primary and secondary schools in istanbul. four university supervisors were also in charge of the supervision of the teacher candidates. the ages of the 27 (21 female, 6 male) senior-year teacher candidates who participated in the study ranged from 21 to 24. in this particular language teacher education program, teacher candidates take courses in the areas of english language, linguistics, literature, methods and skills courses for teaching a foreign language (english). at the end of the program, they are expected to become qualified teachers of english in primary schools, secondary schools, and higher education institutions in turkey. teacher candidates take their school experience course (practice teaching) during the seventh and eighth semesters of the program. for the duration of the two academic semesters of the fourth year of the undergraduate program, the student teachers visit the schools regularly and observe the classes of their three cooperating teachers. in total they observe 45 hours of class and teach six 40-minute lessons in three different grades both at the primary and secondary levels. the teacher candidates are also asked to videotape one of their 40-minute lessons. the supervisor provides the equipment for the recording and peers help to record the lesson. the teacher candidates also do micro-lessons (10-15 minutes of teaching) and peer observations and discuss their experiences with their peers and university supervisors. at the end of the practicum program the teacher candidates submit to the university supervisor a portfolio which includes their lesson plans, selfevaluations, peer evaluations, journal entries about their observations, reaction papers to the articles read in the practice teaching seminar course, and the certificates of the conferences or seminars they attended during the practicum. the university supervisors work regularly with teacher candidates during the fourth year of the program. besides observing the teacher candidates in the classroom, the university supervisors interact constantly with the teacher candidates about 37 watching teacher candidates watch themselves: reflections on a practicum program in turkey profile vol. 12, no. 1, 2010. issn 1657-0790. bogotá, colombia. pages 33-45 their teaching experience, providing oral and written feedback after each teaching performance, helping the teacher candidates develop lesson plans, grading the teacher candidates’ performance based on a pre-established teacher performance rubric used in the program, analyzing the portfolios teacher candidates submit at the end of the teaching practice, and conducting seminars for school experience courses. cooperating teachers also work closely with the teacher candidates they supervise during the teaching practice, most importantly providing feedback about their teaching performance. the cooperating teachers are appointed by their school administrators, who select from teachers with 4 to 10 years’ experience. data collection the data were collected in the spring semester of the 2007-2008 academic year in a language teacher education program of a well-established research university in istanbul, turkey. the teacher candidates were senior students who were doing their practicum at various primary and secondary schools in istanbul. twenty-seven pre-service english teachers and a university supervisor participated in the study. data collection instruments included (a) videotaped samples of the teacher candidates’ teaching performance in real classrooms, (b) lesson plans, (c) records of retrospective feedback sessions based on video-based reflection sessions, (d) interviews conducted at the end of reflection sessions to get candidates’ opinions about how they felt while watching themselves, and (e) self-evaluation journals kept by teacher candidates during the practicum. in the video-based feedback sessions, a teacher candidate and university supervisor first watch the 40-minute lesson together in the supervisor’s office. since the supervisor is not present in the actual classroom while the candidate is teaching, the supervisor asks the teacher candidate to bring a copy of the lesson plan (see appendix 1 for a sample lesson plan prepared by a teacher candidate). before watching the lesson together, the supervisor examines the lesson plan briefly and asks about the profile of the class, such as the number of students, age of the students, and their language proficiency level. the objectives of the lesson are also presented in the lesson plan so that the supervisor has some background knowledge about the lesson before viewing the tape. then the candidate and the supervisor start to watch the lesson. both during and after the video, the supervisor asks the teacher candidate some questions about the nature of activities, the choice of materials for that particular group of students, and the rationale for teaching the strategies used by the candidate. while watching the video, the teacher candidate also reflects on her/his teaching performance by making comments that she/he notices while watching the lesson. after watching the whole lesson, the supervisor makes comments on the lesson and makes some suggestions intended to improve the quality of instruction. at the end of the feedback session, the supervisor asks the teacher candidate to write a self-evaluation journal about the video-taped teaching experience and about the experience of watching the video. data analysis to investigate the opinions and attitudes of teacher candidates as regards watching themselves on video, a qualitative approach was employed. qualitative data were coded and categorised by using the constant comparison method based on grounded theory (glaser & strauss, 1967). the post-lesson videotaped feedback sessions and interviews conducted at the end of the feedback 38 universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras akcan sessions were transcribed and analyzed by the researcher/supervisor in order to find the most common emerging patterns. the transcriptions of videotaped feedback sessions and interviews were read and reviewed by the researcher several times for accuracy. the lesson plans were also analyzed in order to understand the content and focus of the lesson. at the end of the triangulation of the data, which come from the video-based reflection sessions, retrospective interviews, and journals, recurring categories (i.e. teacher talk, maintaining students’ attention and interest in the lesson) emerged in two themes for reflection sessions, to wit: (1) “reflections on the videotaped lesson” and (2) “reactions about the use of videotaping”. the emerging categories are explained in detail within the themes of reflections on the videotaped lesson and reactions towards the use of videotaping in the next section findings the findings of this study show that watching videotapes of their own teaching helped the teacher candidates notice particularly strong and weak points in their teaching, their use of the target language (english), and the students’ involvement and interest in the lesson. the videobased reflection sessions consisted of participating with the university supervisor in a dialogue that required thinking about aspects of the lesson and teachers’ teaching practice, reflecting on these, and exploring possible ways of improving the lesson. reflection-on-action: teacher candidates’ opinions on their videotaped teaching performance while watching the teaching performance with the university supervisor, the teacher candidates made comments particularly focused on teacher talk, on maintaining students’ attention, and on increasing students’ interest and communication. while watching themselves, the teacher candidates noticed immediately how they looked in front of the class i.e., whether they were nervous or confident. they reported that they had not been really aware of how they looked since they needed to concentrate on the flow of the activities while teaching. the teacher candidates also made comments about their gestures and the tone of their voice. some of the comments they made are presented below: watching yourself is something really different, um, you see yourself as a separate person from you. you realize that sometimes you behaved very differently from what you thought... um, i always thought that i was very confident... i was not stressed; um, while watching the video, i saw that if i did not think in the same way, it could be understood i was very stressed. (reflection session) um, it was a bit irritating to watch myself and see that it was totally different from what i had visualized in my mind: a strange tone of voice, incomplete bodily movements and no clear facial gestures... um, it was quite different from what i had in my mind... i could have used my voice more effectivel. voice is the most important factor that affects students’ thoughts about the lesson in general. um, as a teacher, i need to improve the way i control my voice; it should be audible enough so that every student in the classroom can hear what i am talking about. when i was asking questions to the whole class, i could have raised my voice and got their attention. i should improve my use of gestures and especially my voice, because these two factors will contribute to my teaching. (retrospective interview) when i watched the video record of my practice teaching, i realized that i made mistakes which i couldn’t realize during the lesson. the videotape helped me to think about my english. i had never had the chance before to listen to myself while speaking in english but the record helped me recognize that i made some pronunciation and grammar mistakes. (journal) 39 watching teacher candidates watch themselves: reflections on a practicum program in turkey profile vol. 12, no. 1, 2010. issn 1657-0790. bogotá, colombia. pages 33-45 video-based reflection sessions increased the teacher candidates’ awareness of their use of english during classroom instruction. teacher candidates noticed their grammatical and pronunciation mistakes while watching their videotaped lessons and worked on correcting those mistakes with the university supervisor. ‘watching oneself teaching’ increased awareness of a teacher candidate’s own teaching practice reflection sessions based on videotaped lessons and the interviews conducted at the end of the these sessions show that watching their taped lessons made teacher candidates more aware of how they teach in actual classrooms during the practicum. the teacher candidates answered the question, “how useful is it to watch yourself teaching?” with such statements as this: um, when i watched my lesson, i could evaluate myself... my awareness towards my teaching increased... i was a little bit quick while passing from one activity to another... um, videotaping gave me the chance of revising my way of teaching critically and noticing the parts that need improvement. now i know which parts of my lesson need improvement, and if i do it once again i would make necessary changes. (retrospective interview) the teacher candidate and supervisor analyzed the nature of the activities and how those activities went during classroom instruction. the candidates reflected on how they would teach differently or more effectively if they taught the same lesson again. the teacher candidates also realized what went well and what they needed to do in order to improve the instruction. during and after video watching the candidate and supervisor discussed the actions the candidate would need to take to achieve a better performance. the supervisor made her comments while watching the video and suggested ways to improve teaching. for instance, time management and tactics to increase students’ use of english might be discussed in reflection sessions. the quotations below show how teacher candidates expressed their feelings toward their own teaching performance: because of time limitations i had covered the lesson more rapidly than i had planned and as a result of this situation the lesson seemed too activity-oriented rather than communicationoriented... i could have skipped one of the activities and completed the rest of the activities in a more communicative way. (reflection session) while they (students) were answering the questions, there was a great silence in the classroomum, a silence not ordinary for a language classroom. i gave them 10 minutes to read the text and answer the questions; during the lesson i thought that it was normal; but while i was watching the video i saw that silence period was too long. besides, i realized that i was so quiet during the lesson; it would have been better if i had been more active and energetic. (reflection session) my students were too shy and introverted and as their level of english wasn’t sophisticated enough, they didn’t want to speak and join the discussions. but i could have changed the situation by asking more questions, giving prompts, eliciting responses from them. um, i was too nervous especially at the beginning of the class, i didn’t think of doing any of these... as they didn’t speak, i had to rush between the activities running from one to another quickly so the class wasn’t as natural as it should have been. (reflection session) the candidate shared what she/he thought and how she/he performed in the class. if the lesson plan did not work, the candidate tried to explain what had caused the lesson to go astray. the candidates could understand the reasons behind 40 universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras akcan their actions better by watching themselves and thinking about their teaching performance. ‘watching oneself teaching’ helped candidates notice students’ behaviors and participation in the class by watching the video the candidates became more attentive to how students behave and respond to the lesson. the teacher candidates reported that while teaching the lesson, they were not really aware of how students were doing during the instruction, what their participation patterns were and how they responded to the lesson. the candidates were too occupied by completing the activities they had prepared and by the need to follow their lesson plans step by step. the teacher candidates enjoyed watching students’ behaviors that they had not noticed while teaching. in the reflection sessions, the supervisor made comments by pointing out the students’ behaviors and responses in the lesson. for example, some students were silent and some of them spoke turkish most of the time during group work. the teacher candidates, both in their reflection sessions and journals about their students’ responses and behaviors, offered such statements as these: another issue that i have realized with the help of my supervisor’s comments is that mostly i allowed male students to talk. it may be because of that their numbers are more than the girls and also they were more willing to speak. but if i had the lesson again, i would encourage the girls to speak more. maybe i could have tried harder to involve them. through the recording i also had the chance to see the students who danced during the song i played. i saw how much students enjoyed the song. (journal) um, during the lesson i did not realize that they were speaking in their mother tongue that much while working in groups. of course, i was aware of that some of them were speaking in l1, but when i watched the video, actually there were also some other students who used turkish while speaking to their friends. (reflection session) ‘watching oneself teaching’ gave teacher candidates the chance to evaluate themselves more critically as an “outsider” the teacher candidates were highly engaged and interested in watching their lessons on the video with the supervisor. the candidates reported that they analyzed their lessons more critically and tried to understand the reasons behind their actions. the teacher candidates were excited to watch their videotaped lessons since they could see the positive and weak sides of their teaching. watching the taped lesson helped the teacher candidates see what went well or what did not go well during the lesson. both in interviews after the video-based reflection sessions and in the journals they kept during the practicum, the teacher candidates used the term “outsider” to describe their perspective while watching themselves. the majority of the candidates reported that videotaping made the reflection process more objective and critical for them. they could see their mistakes more clearly and therefore work toward improvement. teacher candidates expressed their feelings regarding the watching of their own performance on the video in positive terms as follows: watching my own performance on the video really helped me since it gave me the chance to critique myself as an outsider. (retrospective interview) what is different and special about videotaping is that you have the chance of watching yourself again and again which will give you useful ideas and help you look from the perspective of others that observe you. (retrospective interview) 41 watching teacher candidates watch themselves: reflections on a practicum program in turkey profile vol. 12, no. 1, 2010. issn 1657-0790. bogotá, colombia. pages 33-45 teacher candidates reported that they benefited a great deal from watching their videotaped lesson with the supervisor. they thought that they might become more objective in future evaluations of their performance since they see themselves as an “outsider, another person” when they watch the tape. the teacher candidates became observers of their own lessons rather than the mere teachers of the lessons, and evaluated themselves as an outsider would, one who was watching a lesson for the purpose of improving the instruction. discussion and conclusion videotaping can be used as a tool to increase opportunities for reflection in teacher education programs. the teacher candidates watch themselves and reflect on their own teaching performance in company with a university supervisor. reflection through video watching can create an environment in which both the teacher candidate and the supervisor listen to each other and reflect on the lesson in order to improve instruction and add to the candidate’s professional development. this study suggested that videotaping can play a significant role in making teacher candidates aware of their strengths and weaknesses, in helping candidates notice students’ behaviors and responses (which may not have been noticed during the lesson because of the candidate’s nervousness or anxiety), in analysing students’ use of the target language, and in helping them to notice details of their own ‘teacher talk’. the main purpose in video-based reflection sessions is to create an opportunity for a teacher candidate to understand the way he/she teaches and improve teaching through reflection. the video-based reflection sessions also provide an interactional dimension to teacher learning in which the supervisor and the teacher candidate listen to each other, make comments, and discuss issues raised in the lesson. in this particular language teacher education program, different ways of reflection are used as “external input” (farrell, 2007) to enrich reflection opportunities for teacher candidates. the teacher candidates are expected to engage in reflection from the beginning of the practicum program by incorporating practices and tools such as observation, journals, microand macro-teaching, and retrospective feedback sessions with university supervisors. these sources of external input for reflective practice can help teacher candidates deepen their reflections and be more critical about how they teach. using various tools for self-reflection enhances opportunities for self-inquiry and teacher candidates can collect extensive data about their own teaching performance in order to understand the way they teach. in this particular teacher education program, video-based reflection sessions were used to provide opportunities for pre-service language teachers to understand the dynamics of how they think and act as they learn to teach. providing teacher candidates equipment (video camera, tripod) for recording is useful and enhances the quality of recording. peers might help out by recording the lesson as long as they are as unobtrusive as possible, recording the lesson from the back of the classroom, for example, so as not to disrupt the flow of the lesson. for ethical concerns, permission needs to be obtained from the school administration for videorecording the lessons. the purposes of videotaping should be clearly explained to the head of the department and cooperating teachers in order to make it clear that the video-taped lessons will be used only for teacher training and research purposes in order to improve teacher learning and development. 42 universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras akcan acknowledgements an earlier version of this paper was presented at the sixth international conference on language teacher education between may 28-30, 2009, in washington dc, usa. the author thanks the audience of this conference for their thoughtful comments. also, the author would like to thank dr. jeremy harmer, who gave a speech on “watching teachers watch themselves” at the 41st annual conference of the international association of teachers of english as a foreign language (iatefl) in aberdeen, scotland, in 2007. his talk guided this study and inspired the author to investigate the issue in an efl context. references barlett, l. (1997). teacher development through reflective teaching. in j.c. richards & d. nunan (eds.), second language teacher education (pp. 202-214). cambridge: cambridge university press. day, c. (1993). reflection: a necessary but not sufficient condition for teacher development. british educational research journal, 19, 83-93. dewey, j. (1933). how we think: a restatement of the relation of reflective thinking to the educative process. chicago: d.c. heath. dymond, s. k., & bentz, j. l. (2006). using digital videos to enhance teacher preparation. teacher education and special education, 29(2), 98-112. farrell, c. s. t. (2007). reflective language teaching: from research to practice. new york: continuum. garmon, m. a. (2001). the benefits of dialogue journals: what prospective teachers say. teacher education quarterly, 28(4), 37-50. glaser, b. g., & strauss, a. l. (1967). the discovery of grounded theory: strategies for qualitative research. chicago: aldine. hatton, n., & smith, d. (1995). reflection in teacher education: towards definition and implementation. teaching and teacher education, 11, 33-39. lee, i. (2007). preparing pre-service english teachers for reflective practice. elt journal, 61(4), 321-329. lefevre, d. m. (2004). designing for teacher learning: video-based curriculum design. in j. brophy (ed.), using video in teacher education (pp. 235-258). amsterdam: elsevier. perry, g., & talley, s. (2001). online video case studies and teacher education. journal of computing in teacher education, 17(4), 26-31. ray, b. b., & coulter, g. a. (2008). reflective practices among language arts teachers: the use of weblogs. contemporary issues in technology and teacher education, 8(1). retrieved from http://www.citejournal. org/vol8/iss1/languagearts/article1.cfm. ray, b. b., & hocutt, m. m. (2006). teacher-created, teachercentered weblogs: perceptions and practices. journal of computing in teacher education, 23(1), 11-18. richardson, w. (2006). blogs, wikis, podcasts, and other powerful web tools for classrooms. thousand oaks, ca: corwin press. richards, j. c., & lockhart, c. (1996). reflective teaching in second language classrooms. cambridge: cambridge university press. robinson, l., & kelley, b. (2007). developing reflective thought in preservice educators: utilizing roleplays and digital video. journal of special education technology, 22(2), 31-43. schratz, m. (1992). researching while teaching: an action research in higher education. studies in higher education, 17(1), 81-95. schön, d. a. (1983). the reflective practitioner: how professionals think in action. new york: basic books. schön, d. a. (1987). educating the reflective practioner: towards a new design for teaching and learning in the profession. san francisco: jossey-bass. 43 watching teacher candidates watch themselves: reflections on a practicum program in turkey profile vol. 12, no. 1, 2010. issn 1657-0790. bogotá, colombia. pages 33-45 solomon, j. (1987). new thoughts on teacher education. oxford review of education, 13(3), 267-74. zeichner, k. m., & liston, d. p. (1996). reflective teaching: an introduction. new jersey: lawrence erlbaum associates, inc. about the author sumru akcan is an assistant professor in the department of foreign language education at boğaziçi university, istanbul, turkey. she teaches undergraduate and graduate courses in teacher education and second/foreign language teaching methodology. her research focuses on pre-service language education and second/foreign language teaching pedagogy. 44 universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras akcan appendix 1: a sample lesson plan prepared by a teacher candidate to be used in video-based feedback sessions reading: ice cream machine grade: 3d class size: 20 level: elementary topic: reading-ice cream machine objectives at the end of the lesson students will be able to do the following: – understand the reading text. – understand, recognize and pronounce the new vocabulary. – answer comprehension questions. – practice simple present and phrasal verbs. materials for warm-up: listening to the story – cd2 of incredible english 3. for reading: – incredible english student’s book, pages 60-61. – phillips, s., & morgan, m. (2007). incredible english 3. oxford university press. for miming gamepracticing vocabulary – vocabulary cards. for quizchecking comprehension – set of questions prepared to check reading comprehension. – true and false statements, on page 61. warm-up: listening to the story (3 min.) – the teacher (t) announces that students (ss) will listen to a story. – after the story listening is over, the teacher asks where the story takes place and what the people are doing in order to check students’ listening comprehension. – if needed, the story can be heard again. reading (10 min.) – tasks ss to read the story. after it is read, t writes the words “faraway” and “traffic jam” on the board in order to introduce the new vocabulary. – t asks for ss to underline the two words. t takes two students to the board in order to illustrate 45 watching teacher candidates watch themselves: reflections on a practicum program in turkey profile vol. 12, no. 1, 2010. issn 1657-0790. bogotá, colombia. pages 33-45 what faraway means by locating students in close and away positions. t does the same thing in order to illustrate traffic jam, but this time with more students at the board. – after that, t asks for students to underline set up, plug in, switch on and put in. t wants ss, looking at the pictures in the book, to work in pairs and try to guess the meanings of the pictures. – t elicits answers and mimes the meaning of the words. miming game-practicing vocabulary (3 min.) – t announces that they will play a miming game and gives the instructions and then t gives the vocabulary cards on which phrasal verbs are written. – working in pairs, ss mime the verbs. quiz-checking comprehension (20 min.) – t asks for ss to read the text again carefully because, t says, she will have a quiz between two teams. – after ss read it, t gives instructions and forms the two teams in order to set the scene for the quiz. – t asks each group questions student by student. if a student in a group gives a wrong answer, then someone in the other group should answer it. – after the questions are over, t tells them that this was the first round. before beginning the second round, the teams should read the true/false items on page 61. – after ss read them, t continues the quiz with true/false items. for each correct answer, teams earn1 point. t gives ice-cream stickers to the winning team. profile no. 6 oct 13.p65 ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ profile profile profile profile profile 6 (2005): universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras reading: a meaningful way to promote learning english in high school la lectura: una forma significativa de promover el aprendizaje del inglésla lectura: una forma significativa de promover el aprendizaje del inglésla lectura: una forma significativa de promover el aprendizaje del inglésla lectura: una forma significativa de promover el aprendizaje del inglésla lectura: una forma significativa de promover el aprendizaje del inglés en la educación secundariaen la educación secundariaen la educación secundariaen la educación secundariaen la educación secundaria sonia rocío ríos olayasonia rocío ríos olayasonia rocío ríos olayasonia rocío ríos olayasonia rocío ríos olaya sonrorios25@yahoo.com ana milena vana milena vana milena vana milena vana milena valcáralcáralcáralcáralcárcel goyenechecel goyenechecel goyenechecel goyenechecel goyeneche anagoye@yahoo.com institución educativa distrital luis lópez de mesa this project involved three different groups of seventh grade, at the luis lópez de mesa state school in bosa, bogotá (colombia). thinking of a way to adapt the foreign language learning-teaching process to our real conditions, we found reading very useful to enable students to learn english more easily and accurately. we show how english language learning can be developed from reading processes involving the other language skills and can help students to develop individual and social skills. we conclude that reading becomes a meaningful way to learn a foreign language when teachers choose reading material according to learners’ interests, age and needs, and other content areas. kkkkkey worey worey worey worey words: ds: ds: ds: ds: reading, english language, meaningful reading, action research este proyecto involucró tres grupos diferentes de estudiantes de grado séptimo del colegio distrital luis lópez de mesa en bosa, bogotá (colombia). pensando en una manera de adaptar el proceso de enseñanza-aprendizaje de un idioma extranjero a nuestras condiciones reales, encontramos que la lectura es muy útil para que los estudiantes aprendan inglés de manera más fácil y precisa. mostramos cómo se puede desarrollar el aprendizaje del inglés a partir de la lectura involucrando las otras habilidades del lenguaje y ayudando a los estudiantes a desarrollar habilidades individuales y sociales. concluimos que la lectura es una forma significativa de aprender una lengua extranjera cuando los profesores eligen el material de acuerdo con los intereses, edades y necesidades de los estudiantes, y otras áreas del conocimiento. palabras claves: palabras claves: palabras claves: palabras claves: palabras claves: lectura, lengua inglesa, lectura significativa, investigación-acción 59-72 this article was received on april 15th, 2005 and accepted on july 27th, 2005. ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ 60 ríos and vríos and vríos and vríos and vríos and valcárcelalcárcelalcárcelalcárcelalcárcel profileprofileprofileprofileprofile introductionintroductionintroductionintroductionintroduction reading strategies are associated with different aspects of language learning and cognitive processes, and the effects can only be observed if reading becomes a habit. we have observed that it is necessary to consider aptitudes, motivation and the learners’ capacity to understand any type of text. it is also important to develop strategies to motivate students to read as well as to help them achieve a good comprehension level. that is why the readings have to be selected taking into account the readers’ needs, interests, experiences, previous knowledge and their real environment to make the language learning process meaningful, useful and practical. in fact, reading is an individual process which develops self-study habits. our concerns are related to how students can be motivated to read, what kind of activities should be carried out and how, the development of the other language skills from reading, and the possible difficulties we can have when applying, making or choosing a reading activity. theoretical frameworktheoretical frameworktheoretical frameworktheoretical frameworktheoretical framework reading is a receptive language process in which the reader recognizes and decodes any kinds of symbols. this process ends when the reader gives sense and meaning to the decoded written language and transfers the information understood in his experience and thought. r e a d i n g c o m p r e h e n s i o n i s e x t r a c t i n g efficiently what is essential in a written text. it is a gradual process, which includes different skills and depends on readers’ previous knowledge and experiences. it is through language that people make things meaningful to each other, interact and communicate ideas. the social environment along with the experiences pupils have affect the development of the reading skill because reading operates in a social context. according to the readers’ background and individual characteristics, each reader gives his own meaning to the reading; thus, there may be a lot of different meanings for the same text. every reading process takes place in different stages (carrell et al., 1988) and involves symbol recognition, prediction, confirmation, correction, and termination. teachers must be conscious of these different stages and, depending on people’s awareness of these stages, help students develop reading skills successfully. having a reason to read is very important when developing reading skills. reading has a communicative function which lets us improve and reinforce knowledge. it also offers us opportunities to entertain and broaden cultural appreciation. native speakers can learn more easily to read the tongue they have understood and spoken since birth, then they transfer this previous knowledge to the english reading process. some of them are: 1. sensitizing: its aim is to provide the reader with unfamiliar words, new structures, complex or obscure sentences. 2. inferring: it is the use of syntactic, logical and cultural clues to find out the meaning of unknown elements. 3. prediction: it is given in the images, pictures, charts, etc., that accompany the reading. it implies confirmation of expectations. 4. skimming: it is getting the general idea of a text. 5. scanning: it is to focus on specific information. 6. extensive reading: it is to read, for your own pleasure, without understanding every word. 7. intensive reading: it is the act of reading short texts pointing out specific information (bowen and marks, 1994, p.45). just as techniques, strategies to read must be selected according to the nature of the text and the purpose of the reading, reader’s age, interests, environment and other aspects named before. on the other hand, when we evaluate reading skill development, we not only evaluate students’ results, but a complete process which involves all members in it, such as teachers, peers and the student him/herself. to ensure effective evaluation we estimate the process as well as the results obtained through different strategies. evaluation shows teachers’ and students’ strengths and ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○61 profileprofileprofileprofileprofile reading: a meaningful way to promote learning english in high school weaknesses regarding different strategies employed in class. “evaluation is an integral part of the learning process. the role of evaluation is to give teachers and students feedback that will determine adjustments and re-planning of the work in hand to ensure that learning takes place effectively and efficiently” (estaire and zanon, 1994, p.34). our concern had to do with the development of the reading skill in a meaningful way. for carrying out this project we started with these questions: • what do students like and not like reading? • how can students be motivated to read? • what obstacles appear when getting students interested in reading? • what obstacles appear when developing reading skills? • what do reading processes tell us about english language learning? methodologymethodologymethodologymethodologymethodology we think that reading is a very good resource to make students become conscious of their own learning processes. through this skill, they are sometimes able to realize what weaknesses or strengths they have in the target language. this research was developed with students of seventh grade in both shifts at luis lópez de mesa school: in the morning, room 701; in the afternoon, rooms 701 and 702. the first group, 701 morning, has 42 students between the ages of 11 and 15. the other groups are almost the same, 701 with 39 students, ages 10 – 13, and 702 with 43 students, ages 12 – 14. these students belong to a low socio-economic level. their english level is very low because they only have the opportunity of learning english at school. moreover, in their social context, learning a foreign language is not of much use. we also wanted to innovate because this was the first time a reading project was developed as such. moreover, this project definitely helped us to improve our job as teachers because we consider reading to be a very useful means to get enough input in order to learn a language. that is why this study was developed following the actionresearch approach. we incorporated a possible solution for the lack of interest in learning english as a way to improve our job by involving learners, teachers and researchers. the findings were based on our daily work and students’ constant evaluation, adaptation, and improvement. action research addresses our efforts regarding group social situations in order to confront common problems including people who are involved in them. this kind of research has been very useful regarding educational problems. action research carries out a rationalized six-step procedure, to wit: identifying problems, analysis of problems, formulating ideas or hypotheses, gathering and interpreting data, implementation action and evaluating the results of action (burns, 1999). this research allows a very practical and continued improvement of the learning processes. we started out with a questionnaire and found out what students like reading. at the same time, we designed a consent form in which students and parents were informed of the project, and they gave us permission to develop the project with their participation. we chose and selected reading material taking into account the results of the sur vey about students’ preferences. after that, we planned guides to work the different readings, containing pre, while and post reading activities. then, we applied some readings and evaluated the students’ reading skill in the foreign language through different activities developed in class. we checked on students’ processes in the application of the readings, students’ performances, the achievement of objectives laid out at the beginning of every activity, and finally, the resulting materials from all the activities applied. we monitored students’ behavior and acceptance of this project. we also thought about the way in which we could integrate the different subjects and language skills. data collection was obtained from different sources, to wit: ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ 62 ríos and vríos and vríos and vríos and vríos and valcárcelalcárcelalcárcelalcárcelalcárcel profileprofileprofileprofileprofile a. a survey: it was applied before selecting the reading material. this allowed us to learn of students’ likes, dislikes and the activities they like to do. b. an inter view: it was applied after the implementation of some readings. its purpose was to know how students felt about the project, what progress they had experienced and a critical evaluation of their own processes. c. field notes: we took field notes as we were developing the project. they were taken during and after the classes. they contained our perception of some of the students’ reactions or feelings about the readings. they also showed our perception of the students’ progress in their learning processes. d. recordings: all class activities were recorded using videos or tapes. those were done to observe in detail students’ attitudes, reactions and behavior during the application of the readings. findingsfindingsfindingsfindingsfindings we focused our project on the students’ likes, motivation towards reading, the possible ways to get students interested in reading as well as the difficulties or strategies to foster english language learning. the analysis of our findings led us to four categories as shown in the following diagram. students’ likstudents’ likstudents’ likstudents’ likstudents’ likeseseseses after analyzing the results and conclusions the survey revealed, we started to look for and make reading material. we started to select, elaborate and apply reading activities, and the success students had was because they fulfilled many requirements that make a good reading exercise such as readers’ interest, age, visual support as well as students’ likes and activities they like to develop during and after the readings. the reading process must be learnercentered. we also tried to include the application of more than two reading techniques which guaranteed a better development of this skill. four guides were applied. the topics worked were the seasons, the olympic games, daily activities and halloween (see appendix 1, 2, 3, and 4). while using these guides we realized that students liked them a lot because all these readings were related to their reality. they had already seen t.v. news about the olympic games in athens so it was interesting for them to know about this in english. besides, sports is one of the topics they prefer. the guides also included some questions which intended to get some information about themselves. the post-reading activities let them talk about their own reality. for instance, they had to talk about their daily activities; they had to describe their or another partner’s clothes or the way they used to celebrate halloween. in another case, they had the opportunity to describe themselves, the teacher or other people in a fashion show which was funny and enjoyable. according to what students said after the implementation of the guides, they learnt to read and speak about other topics using the english diagram 1diagram 1diagram 1diagram 1diagram 1. categories found as a result of data analysis. ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○63 profileprofileprofileprofileprofile reading: a meaningful way to promote learning english in high school language. this shows that teachers can get better results in the learning process when activities are learner-centered. motivation in readingmotivation in readingmotivation in readingmotivation in readingmotivation in reading during the whole process we realized that there are aspects connected to the motivation for reading. these aspects are shown in the following diagram: motivation has become one of the key concepts to take into account in any learning process. a person who is motivated to do something can get better outcomes. that is why we must show our students the sense and reasons for reading. reading is not just a process of identifying letters and the main idea of a paragraph. reading has a broader context. reading is a way to communicate and understand our environment; consequently, it must have a specific intention or purpose. it is a way to open our minds to other cultures and fields of knowledge. reading can be a tool to explore the world, other cultures and compare them with our own. thus, teachers must show that we always read to give meaning to the world and the world comes to us through reading, too. if the reading material is elaborated taking into account the learners’ interests, age, likes and level we can guarantee at least the learners’ attention. we applied this principle to select and elaborate the readings and the activities. the guides not only expanded students’ vocabulary and reinforced the use of structures more properly, but they also promoted learner’s creativity and imagination; they encouraged them to produce different speeches in the target language. as far as extrinsic aspects are concerned, reading material must call students’ attention; it needs to be very creative, clear and specific. the material must also be designed with pre, while and post-reading activities which ensure the comprehension of the text. the post reading activities point at students’ reality. these activities encourage students to talk about one aspect of their lives which not only makes the learning process more meaningful, but also allows students to reinforce the structures and vocabulary learnt. the guides also promoted meaningful reading because the topics and activities were based on real situations or events that were happening. some students became conscious that they were using english to communicate ideas, to receive and give information. in that way english was being useful and meaningful, a tool to communicate. here there are some comments students made after the implementation of the project: student j: me gustaría continuar con esta actividad el otro año porque, porque entre más aprendamos lecturas y eso, y textos en inglés más estamos avanzando; el otro año me gustaría leer sobre las universidades y todo eso. i would like to continue with this activity next year because the more we learn with readings and texts in english, the more we improve; next year i would like to read about universities, and the like. diagram 2diagram 2diagram 2diagram 2diagram 2. aspects related to motivation for reading. ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ 64 ríos and vríos and vríos and vríos and vríos and valcárcelalcárcelalcárcelalcárcelalcárcel profileprofileprofileprofileprofile student b: me gustaría más lecturas de deportes, y de comparaciones con otros países, porque a mí sí me gustó la de halloween, puesto que nos hacía pensar en nuestras costumbres ¿sí?, y compararlas con otros países. i would like more sports readings and comparisons with other countries. i liked the halloween reading because it made us think about our customs, and compare them with those of other countries. we have also found the implementation of these guides as a tool to encourage students’ selfstudy and team work. students helped each other when necessary and they also concentrated on their tasks. in addition to this, some students wanted to learn english because they like it; they had a good attitude towards this language, which encouraged them to do their best, too. another aspect that motivated them was the use of tape and video recordings; they were a new experience for them, so, they got excited and wanted to participate more. students don’t have money to buy textbooks so working with the guides lets them have and handle their own material and keep it in a folder. the guides have also encouraged students to practice reading and realize that they can improve their reading comprehension skills by themselves, by doing what they like best, namely: coloring, looking at pictures, completing puzzles, ordering sentences, etc. all this has made reading an entertaining activity for the students. progress in students’ learning processesprogress in students’ learning processesprogress in students’ learning processesprogress in students’ learning processesprogress in students’ learning processes the guides were designed with several activities that involved, in a certain way, the four language skills which are listening, speaking, reading and writing. reading is a process to get some input but we think it also helps students to produce simple writings. students were asked to write some paragraphs about the topics studied in the readings, and as already mentioned above students were interested in doing those short writings because they encouraged them to express ideas about themselves. students spoke mixing both languages, the native and target one, even though some students have got some problems pronouncing some words and sentences. they tried to create some simple questions using what they knew. for example: student x: teacher, what is winter? student y: teacher y el three? student z: question teacher, please! student g to student f: ¿cierto que esto es un sweater? (this is a sweater, isn’t it?) the activities designed for the guides as well as the way they were developed promoted the enhancement of the speaking skill. some students really liked to participate by reading aloud, discussing, doing the corresponding dialogues or just reading on their own. others were very shy and preferred being quiet, listening to the others and repeating when they were asked to do so. the listening skill was also promoted. activities like listening to the teachers’ pronunciation, listening to themselves or to other students motivated the development of this skill. they had to listen to the explanations or instructions and this way we could evaluate their comprehension too. students really improved their pronunciation and in the last reading were more comfortable reading and participating. it was also important to see students realizing and correcting mistakes their partners made in pronunciation. however, those students who were not very outgoing kept on making some mistakes not only with the pronunciation but also with the structures. this shows that it is very important to pay attention to all students, and especially to those who have more difficulty with the language. trying to promote everybody’s participation is relevant and necessary. writing was also worked during the application of the guides. students were asked to write short paragraphs, to answer questions, to make posters, to do some grammar exercises and to practice spelling the new vocabulary. the writings showed the association students established between the mother tongue and the target language structures. they mixed them up. it was also difficult for them to differentiate the spelling from the pronunciation. ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○65 profileprofileprofileprofileprofile reading: a meaningful way to promote learning english in high school difficulties during the application of thedifficulties during the application of thedifficulties during the application of thedifficulties during the application of thedifficulties during the application of the projectprojectprojectprojectproject we also had some difficulties during the implementation of the project. to present them we divided them into two groups. the first one refers to some external obstacles and the second one has to do with some difficulties students have in the english learning process. a. external difficulties time was short because some activities at the school were scheduled at the same time we had the english class. many english classes did not take place so the application of the guides had to be put off many times. some conditions of the building such as the lack of electrical plugs and the distribution of the classrooms made teachers and students move to another classroom, which made teachers waste time. b. english learning process even though some students were very focused when working on the guides, a few students did not stop bothering, interrupting the normal development of the tasks and creating some discipline problems. according to what we observed in the classes those students do not really like english. they gave different reasons, which were recorded in surveys and the field notes and are the following: • english is not necessary for their lives. • english is very difficult. • they do not understand. • they are not interested in learning english. • they have no skills for foreign languages. we faced these problems by persuading them of the importance of learning a foreign language and tr ying to break up some false ideas or conceptions they had towards the english language. assimilation of the mother tongue structures to the structures of the target language is a very common problem in students’ written and oral productions. some of the difficulties found in our project were the following: order of words: students made up sentences based on the mother tongue structures, in this case spanish: (subject = noun (adjective)) + verb + complement (noun + adjective). they sometimes left out the subject, (especially when it was a pronoun), perhaps because in spanish you can do it. for example: when they had to name a noun with an adjective they used to write the adjective after the noun. here are some samples of this difficulty: sample 1sample 1sample 1sample 1sample 1. student x’s composition about the weather and clothes. used with permission. ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ 66 ríos and vríos and vríos and vríos and vríos and valcárcelalcárcelalcárcelalcárcelalcárcel profileprofileprofileprofileprofile many techniques were used to correct that common mistake. writing exercises where students had to describe an object or a person using certain adjectives were given. as they were speaking, the teacher made a sign with her fingers to show that they had to change the order and they corrected their mistakes. when students were telling time, it was also common to prefer the structure similar to spanish; besides, it was the easiest way to tell time. another big problem with the language was the use of third person singular in present tenses. they wrote sentences without paying attention to this grammatical rule. the articles a, ana, ana, ana, ana, an and thethethethethe became a problem for some students. some of them not only did not differentiate their use with a singular noun but also sample 2.sample 2.sample 2.sample 2.sample 2. student y’s composition about the weather and clothes. used with permission. sample 3.sample 3.sample 3.sample 3.sample 3. student r’s composition about physical description. used with permission. ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○67 profileprofileprofileprofileprofile reading: a meaningful way to promote learning english in high school used them with plural nouns. this difficulty was worked on by doing several exercises in which students were asked to name some nouns using the indefinite articles and some adjectives. for example: a red jacket an intelligent boy the intelligent students an airplane a beautiful girl a university an orange umbrella an eraser the schools as far as pronunciation, we could see that students are used to reading words in english as they are written. this is because of the process they have experienced acquiring the mother tongue. this difficulty was worked out with some students by having them repeat the word(s) several times until they got the correct pronunciation. another difficulty was the lack of vocabulary. in spite of doing some pre-reading activities where new vocabulary and some structures were presented, many students asked for the meaning of words or structures. as a result, we could confirm that teacher guidance and the use of dictionaries are relevant. discussiondiscussiondiscussiondiscussiondiscussion using reading as a meaningful tool to learn english is an important way to promote two aspects which not only ensure the quality of the process but also support the development of values. extending reading to other content areas was also possible. as students have already found that reading english is fun, useful and easy, we can start to apply different reading texts involving the other content areas. they can learn more not only about the language but also about other subjects like social sciences, physical education, religion, philosophy, and biology, among others. this process not only guaranteed the use of english to read in other subjects (making it meaningful), but also the application and reinforcement of the other fields of knowledge. in addition, we were able to promote self-study by creating reading habits. students were motivated to choose their own readings to be applied to themselves. they could also participate in the design of the guides. these facts encouraged them to improve on some values like responsibility and autonomy. additionally, they did some extra exercises they had not been asked to do, like drawings about some topics. they also collected all the material given out in a folder as well as some extra pages that a few of them had downloaded from the internet. conclconclconclconclconclusionsusionsusionsusionsusions from the application of the project we can conclude that reading activities have to be selected according to students’ likes. this means readings should be learner-centered. we have realized that reading is an interesting way to motivate the english learning process in students because they can learn more in an entertaining way. this is also a very interesting project to be implemented by english teachers because other language skills may be developed from the reading activities. another relevant aspect to take into account is to design the guides properly in relation to students’ likes, level, interests and contexts. with better planning and design of reading resources, there will be better results in the english language learning process. the application of these reading activities not only reinforces vocabulary, grammar and other knowledge but also students’ values such as responsibility, autonomy and respect for others. the reading process is developed better when the reader has a specific intention or purpose; thus, reading becomes a meaningful action. lastly, it should be stressed that when learners realize that english can be a tool to access other content areas, they find it useful and motivate themselves in the english learning process. about the authorsabout the authorsabout the authorsabout the authorsabout the authors sonia rocío ríos olayasonia rocío ríos olayasonia rocío ríos olayasonia rocío ríos olayasonia rocío ríos olaya: b. ed. in spanish and languages from the universidad pedagógica nacional. she is currently doing a specialization in ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ 68 ríos and vríos and vríos and vríos and vríos and valcárcelalcárcelalcárcelalcárcelalcárcel profileprofileprofileprofileprofile pedagogía de la comunicación y medios interactivos at the universidad distrital francisco josé de caldas. ana milena vana milena vana milena vana milena vana milena valcáralcáralcáralcáralcárcel goyenechecel goyenechecel goyenechecel goyenechecel goyeneche: b. ed. in philology and languages from the universidad libre. she has a specialization in edumática with emphasis in multimedia sources from the universidad autónoma de colombia. she has worked with students from kindergarten to technological levels. since her graduation she has been interested in elt and has participated in several in-service courses. referencesreferencesreferencesreferencesreferences bowen, t. and marks, j. (1994). inside teaching. oxford: macmillan. carrell, p. et al. (1988). interactive approaches to second language reading. cambridge: cambridge university press. estaire, s. and zanon, j. (1994). planning classwork. a task-based approach. oxford: heinemann elt. burns, a. (1999). collaborative action research for english language teachers. cambridge: cambridge university press. ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○69 profileprofileprofileprofileprofile reading: a meaningful way to promote learning english in high school appendix 1: teaching guide “appendix 1: teaching guide “appendix 1: teaching guide “appendix 1: teaching guide “appendix 1: teaching guide “olololololympic games”ympic games”ympic games”ympic games”ympic games” adapted from: flinders, s. (1999). factfiles the olympic games. oxford: oxford university press. ie d l u is l o pe z d e m es a re ad in g a ct iv ity pr er ea di ng pr er ea di ng pr er ea di ng pr er ea di ng pr er ea di ng m at ch th e fo llo w in g w or ds a bo ut s po rt s w ith c or re sp on di ng p ic tu re s 1 .g ym na st ic s 2 .f oo tb al l 3 .s w im m in g 4 .b as ke tb al l 5 .t ra ck 6. w ei gh tli fti ng d o yo u kn ow o th er s po rt s? s ha re w ith y ou r pa rt ne r an d w rit e th e na m e of t he se s po rt s in t he c ar ds . w hi le r ea di ng w hi le r ea di ng w hi le r ea di ng w hi le r ea di ng w hi le r ea di ng wwww w el co m e to t he o ly m pi cs el co m e to t he o ly m pi cs el co m e to t he o ly m pi cs el co m e to t he o ly m pi cs el co m e to t he o ly m pi cs ev er y fo ur y ea rs s in ce 1 89 6, e xc ep t du rin g tim es o f w ar , th e be st sp or ts m en a nd s po rt sw om en i n th e w or ld h av e m et t og et he r fo r th e o ly m pi c ga m es . i n th e ga m es o f t od ay , t he re a re m or e th an te n th ou sa nd a th le te s fro m n ea rly tw o hu nd re d co un tr ie s. t od ay th er e ar e m or e th an 2 5 sp or ts t o co m pe te in . t he o ly m pi c ga m es is t he g re at es t sp or ts m ee tin g in t he w or ld . be in g at t he o ly m pi c ga m es is t he li fe ’s d re am f or t ho us an ds o f at hl et es : w in ni ng a n o ly m pi c m ed al is t he ir hi gh es t go al . i t is n ot ea sy to b e an o ly m pi an . a r un ne r en te rs th e st ad iu m c ar ry in g th e o ly m pi c to rc h, th e fla m e bu rn s ov er th e st ad iu m fo r t he tw o w ee ks of t he g am es . tr ac k is th e bi gg es t o ly m pi c sp or t, sw im m in g is th e se co nd b ig ge st o ly m pi c sp or t; g ym na st ic s is t he m os t po pu la r sp or t at t he o ly m pi cs . t he re a re o th er s po rt s in th e o ly m pi c ga m es li ke b ox in g, w ei gh tli ft in g, h or se ba ck r id in g, f oo tb al l, ba sk et ba ll, c yc lin g, ba se ba ll, s yn ch ro ni ze d sw im m in g, s ho ot in g, a nd o th er s. p eo pl e of a ll co un tr ie s en jo y th is e ve nt e ve ry f ou r ye ar s. t hi s ye ar t he o ly m pi c ga m es a re in g re ec e in a ug us t. (f lin de rs . f ac tfi le s. 1 99 9) 1. r ea d th e te xt a ga in a nd c irc le t ru e or f al se i n fro nt o f th e fo llo w in g st at em en ts : 1. t he o ly m pi c ga m es a re e ve ry fo ur y ea rs . f t 2. t he m os t p op ul ar s po rt a t t he o ly m pi cs is fo ot ba ll. f t 3. d ur in g tim es o f w ar th er e ar en ’t an y o ly m pi c ga m es . f t 4. a n o ly m pi c m ed al is t he d re am o f m an y at hl et es . f t 5. t hi s ye ar w e en jo y o ly m pi c ga m es . f t 6. t hi s ye ar t he o ly m pi c ga m es a re in s id ne y. f t po st r ea di ng 1 . d ra w t he o ly m pi c fla g. 2 . w ha t do es e ac h ci rc le r ep re se nt o n th e fla g. 3 . w ha t is y ou r fa vo rit e o ly m pi c ga m e? 4 . m ak e a po st er w ith s om e in fo rm at io n ab ou t th at . u se dr aw in gs a nd s ho rt s en te nc es . ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ 70 ríos and vríos and vríos and vríos and vríos and valcárcelalcárcelalcárcelalcárcelalcárcel profileprofileprofileprofileprofile appendix 2: teaching guide “halloween”appendix 2: teaching guide “halloween”appendix 2: teaching guide “halloween”appendix 2: teaching guide “halloween”appendix 2: teaching guide “halloween” adapted from a copy gathered in a course. all efforts have been made to trace the source. lu is l ó pe z d e m es a s c h o o l en g li sh a s a f o re ig n l a n g u a g e re a d in g e x er c is e st u d en t ’s n a m e: _ __ __ __ __ __ __ __ __ __ __ __ __ _ d at e: _ __ __ __ __ __ __ _ l ev el : __ __ __ __ __ __ __ 1 . 1 . 1 . 1 . 1 . m at ch th e fa ct s w ith th e dr aw in gs . w rit e th e nu m be rs o n th e lin es . a . _ __ t he y pr ed ic t t he fu tu re , u se m ag ic w or ds a nd c as t s pe lls o n p eo pl e. b . _ __ t he y ar e bl in d bu t c an fl y in th e da rk . c . _ __ p eo pl e be lie ve th at th es e sp iri ts re tu rn to th e ea rt h to v is it th ei r h om es . d . _ __ p eo pl e w ea r th es e on th ei r fa ce s. e . _ __ p eo pl e w ea r th es e on h al lo w ee n ev e. f . _ __ h e is th e m as te r o f t he w itc he s. g . _ __ t he s cr ee ch in g cr ie s of th es e an im al s sc ar e pe op le a t n ig ht . h . _ __ a la rg e, r ou nd y el lo w o r or an ge v eg et ab le . th er e ar e gh os ts , w itc he s, g ob lin s, b la ck c at s an d pu m pk in s. it is o ct ob er 3 1s t . it is h al lo w ee n, a nd th e ni gh t i n th e ye ar w he n th e ch ild re n an d yo un g bo ys a nd g irl s go ou td oo rs in th e ev en in g. in th e m or ni ng th e fir st th in g jo hn a nd s us an d o af te r t he y w ak e up is to lo ok o ut th e w in do w to c he ck th e w ea th er . r ai n ca n sp oi l t he fu n. t he s un is o ut . s us an a nd jo hn hu rr y no w a nd g et d re ss ed fo r s ch oo l. h al lo w ee n is n ot a h ol id ay fr om s ch oo l, bu t t he re a re p ar tie s in th e cl as sr oo m s. t he w in do w s ar e de co ra te d w ith p ap er p um pk in c ut -o ut s m ad e by th e ch ild re n. a fte r sc ho ol jo hn a nd s us an g o ho m e ve ry fa st t o he lp c ut a r ea l p um pk in . t he y cu t a fu nn y fa ce o n on e si de a nd p ut a b ig c an dl e in si de . a t s ix th irt y, th ey li gh t t he c an dl e an d pu t t he p um pk in in fr on t o f t he h ou se . a fte r jo hn a nd s us an h av e di nn er , t he y pu t o n th ei r co st um es a nd m as ks . s us an is w ea rin g a q ue en o f h ea rt s co st um e. jo hn is w ea rin g a co w bo y co st um e. t he y ta ke a bi g pa pe r b ag a nd jo in th ei r f rie nd s. t he n th ey g o fro m h ou se to h ou se sa yi ng : “ tr ic k or t re at ”. p eo pl e us ua lly a cc ep t th e tr ea t an d gi ve t he m c an dy o r pe nn ie s. if t he y do n’ t a cc ep t t he tr ea t, ch ild re n ch al k th e si de w al k or s oa p th e w in do w s! w he n th ey fi ni sh , j oh n an d su sa n ge t h om e, c ou nt a nd c om pa re th e tre at s. (a da pt ed te xt ) 3 . 3 .3 . 3 . 3 . a ns w er th e fo llo w in g qu es tio ns : a. d o yo u ce le br at e h al lo w ee n in y ou r co un tr y? b . i s it si m ila r o r d iff er en t f ro m th e ce le br at io n in th e u ni te d st at es ? c . i s th er e an y di ffe re nc e? e xp la in d . d o yo u lik e h al lo w ee n? e . w ha t c os tu m es h av e yo u w or n? 4 . 4 . 4 . 4 . 4 . s ha re y ou r an sw er s w ith y ou r pa rt ne r. 5 . 5 . 5 . 5 . 5 . c om pl et e th e fo llo w in g cr os sw or d us in g th e na m es fr om e xe rc is e 1. ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○71 profileprofileprofileprofileprofile reading: a meaningful way to promote learning english in high school appendix 3: teaching guide “dappendix 3: teaching guide “dappendix 3: teaching guide “dappendix 3: teaching guide “dappendix 3: teaching guide “dailailailailaily activities”y activities”y activities”y activities”y activities” source: original. luis lópez de mesa school english as a foreign language reading exercise students’ names: _______________________________________________ date: ________________ level: ________________ topic: daily activities 1. 1. 1. 1. 1. look at the pictures and identify the daily activities by writing the corresponding verb on the line. 2. 2. 2. 2. 2. read the following paragraph about a normal day for sandra. then match each activity with the corresponding picture and draw the time in the clocks. sandra is a student. she is eleven years old and she’s very responsible. 1.1.1.1.1. first of all, she gets up at seven o’clock in the morning. 2.2.2.2.2. then she takes a shower at ten past seven. 3.3.3.3.3. she has breakfast at a quarter to eight. 4.4.4.4.4. later sandra goes to school at eight thirty in the morning. 5.5.5.5.5. at school, sandra studies from nine o’clock to four ten in the afternoon. 6.6.6.6.6. sandra has lunch at one o’clock in the cafeteria at the school. 7.7.7.7.7. she also plays with her friends at school after lunch at one thirty. 8. 8. 8. 8. 8. she arrives home at ten to five. 9.9.9.9.9. after school, sandra watches t.v. for one hour, from five to six in the afternoon. 10.10.10.10.10. after watching t.v. sandra does her homework at seven o’clock. 11.11.11.11.11. she has dinner at eight thirty five and 12.12.12.12.12. finally she goes to bed at nine thirty after finishing her homework and cleaning the kitchen. 3.3.3.3.3. now make a poster describing your daily activities, telling the time and drawing each activity. prepare a presentation of the poster. ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ 72 ríos and vríos and vríos and vríos and vríos and valcárcelalcárcelalcárcelalcárcelalcárcel profileprofileprofileprofileprofile appendix 4: teaching guide “the seasons”appendix 4: teaching guide “the seasons”appendix 4: teaching guide “the seasons”appendix 4: teaching guide “the seasons”appendix 4: teaching guide “the seasons” luis lópez de mesa school english as a foreign language reading exercise students’ names: _______________________________________________ date: ________________ level: ________________ source: original. 107profile vol. 12, no. 1, 2010. issn 1657-0790. bogotá, colombia. pages 107-123 reading strategies to develop higher thinking skills for reading comprehension estrategias de lectura para el desarrollo de habilidades de pensamiento para la comprensión de lectura luz marina echeverri acosta* unidad educativa san marcos, colombia maria mcnulty ferri** universidad de antioquia, colombia this paper reports an action research project which examined the foreign language reading comprehension of public school eighth graders who experienced a directed reading-thinking approach with strategies for comprehension and application. the strategies used were prediction, prior knowledge, graphic organizers, and questions. data analyzed included participants’ perceptions of the usefulness of the strategies and students’ work on the graphic organizers and reading worksheets. findings showed that participants thought that the strategies and an interactive reading task improved reading comprehension. the majority of students used english to answer knowledge, comprehension and a good number of application questions. the answers to the application questions provided by the less proficient students were, despite their use of spanish, unclear. key words: foreign language teaching, reading comprehension, directed reading-thinking approach, thinking skills, reading strategies en este artículo se hace un reporte sobre un proyecto de investigación acción que examinó la comprensión de lectura en lengua extranjera de estudiantes de grado octavo de un colegio público, quienes vivenciaron un enfoque de lectura dirigida hacia el pensamiento, con estrategias para la comprensión y la aplicación. se utilizaron las estrategias de predicción, conocimiento previo, organizadores gráficos y preguntas. el análisis de datos incluyó las percepciones de los participantes sobre la utilidad de las estrategias y el trabajo de los estudiantes en organizadores gráficos y en talleres de lectura. los resultados mostraron que los participantes consideraron que las estrategias y una actividad de lectura interactiva permitieron mejorar la comprensión de lectura. la mayoría de los estudiantes usaron el inglés para responder a preguntas de conocimiento, comprensión y un buen número de preguntas de aplicación. se encontró además que las respuestas que dieron los estudiantes con bajo nivel de inglés a las preguntas de aplicación no fueron claras, a pesar del uso de español. palabras clave: enseñanza de lenguas extranjeras, comprensión de lectura, enfoque de lectura dirigida hacia el pensamiento, habilidades del pensamiento, estrategias de lectura * e-mail: lumacheve@hotmail.com ** e-mail: mariam@idiomas.udea.edu.co this article was received on may 13, 2009 and accepted on november 23, 2009. 108 universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras echeverri acosta & mcnulty ferri introduction being able to understand what one reads is important for learning in school and for life in general. in secondary education, reading in english as a foreign language (efl) requires teachers to explore strategies that can improve students’ reading comprehension. in colombia, students in public high schools tend to have low levels of english which makes reading comprehension challenging (ríos & valcárcel, 2005). often, instructional approaches promote reading as a product rather than as a process. the former focuses on the text, while the latter explores the readers, their background knowledge and experience, predictions, and interaction with the text (wallace, 2001). in addition, reading is often equated with students’ knowledge of facts (echeverría, 2008), which is the lowest thinking skill (bloom, 1956, as cited in wong & wong, 1998). thus, the thinking skills of comprehension and application which require interpretation and association of information in one’s life tend to be left aside. making a shift in reading instruction was part of this action research project focused on helping eighth grade efl students to understand the content better. i wanted to achieve this by restructuring reading lessons with strategies in before, during, and after reading activities. during these stages, students would be more active and make connections between their own knowledge and experience, and the new content. students would predict information with visual aids, titles, and questions. moreover, students would use graphic organizers to identify prior knowledge, make predictions, and organize important information from the readings. additionally, teachers’ questions would check students’ knowledge of the topic, help them to communicate their ideas and demonstrate their level of comprehension, to connect and apply what they learned to their lives, as well as reflect on learning. with this interest, i decided to explore if reading strategies could develop the thinking skills for improved reading comprehension in high school efl students. theoretical framework in the literature, using higher thinking skills has been associated with increased reading comprehension for junior high school l1 learners (hendricks, newman, & stropnik, 1996; bowman, carpenter & paone, 1998). reading strategies such as higher thinking techniques for questioning, graphic organizers, and collaborative learning groups were found to increase students’ reading comprehension. norato & cañón (2008) reported increased reading comprehension for junior high school fl students with higher thinking skills developed through questioning and cooperative work. helping efl students improve their reading comprehension beyond knowledge required an understanding of bloom’s (1956, as cited in wong & wong, 1998) higher thinking skills of comprehension and application, and strategies to develop them. these skills have been classified into a hierarchy of educational objectives from less to more complex: knowledge, comprehension, application, analysis, synthesis, and evaluation. the author suggests that teachers integrate and develop the skills in order to direct students’ level of thinking in learning activities. according to bloom, the lowest thinking skill, knowledge, requires students to recognize and recall information. for comprehension in learning, the author explains that students can retell or translate what they understand in their own words in written or oral form, put information in order, compare and contrast it, and interpret it. concerning application, he recommends that teachers set learning objectives 109 reading strategies to develop higher thinking skills for reading comprehension profile vol. 12, no. 1, 2010. issn 1657-0790. bogotá, colombia. pages 107-123 for students to apply what they learn to their lives, and to solve a problem. strategies to develop comprehension and application in this study were activating students’ background knowledge, having them make predictions, complete graphic organizers, and answer questions. these strategies were suggested in the literature and by knowledgeable others, and related to personal interest. activating background knowledge for learning involves helping english learners make “connections between their own knowledge and experiences and the new information being taught” (rumelhart, 1994, as cited in echevarría, vogt, & short, 2008, p. 23). these connections can be made with motivating and relevant materials for students (echevarría et al., 2008). cummins (2009) affirms that activating and building prior knowledge helps esl (english as a second language) students learn content, and suggests strategies such as brainstorming or discussion, using both visuals and graphic organizers. moreover, visuals in the form of pictorial contextual organizers “depicting action from the beginning of the story” has improved english students’ reading comprehension in french at the college level (omaggio, 1993, p. 144). in addition, combining visuals with questions has facilitated comprehension for efl college students in brazil (raglieber, johnson, & yarbrough, 1988, as cited in omaggio, 1993). prediction as a strategy for improving comprehension “…helps the reader set a purpose for their reading” (mckown & barnett, 2007, p. 17). pesa & somers (2007, p. 31) expand that before reading, prediction can “…activate prior knowledge, set a purpose for reading, and engage the reader from the outset”. introducing the title of the reading, pictures associated with its content, and key words can prompt prediction (mckown & barnett, 2007). during reading, pesa & somers (2007) assert that prediction can help students monitor their comprehension and continued interest. block & israel, 2005 (as cited in mckown & barnett, 2007, p. 18) agree that “…good readers use their experiences and knowledge to make predictions and formulate ideas as they read”. also, students can compare their predictions with information in the actual text (mckown & barnett, 2007). the importance of students revising their predictions when necessary is highlighted by teele (2004, as cited in mckown & barnett, 2007), who links this to improved reading comprehension. teachers who read aloud in class can guide students’ predictions with questions. oczkus (2003, as cited in mckown & barnett, 2007, p. 17) emphasizes that, “this strategy also allows for more student interaction, which increases student interest and improves their understanding of the text”. after reading, this strategy can “… help students to interpret, analyze, and deepen their understanding” (pesa & somers, 2007, p. 32). without prediction, students’ comprehension can be difficult to develop. graphic organizers have been linked to the development of higher thinking skills for reading comprehension (gil-garcía & villegas, 2003). in a pre-reading activity, graphic organizers “…help prepare students for reading” (french & landretti, 1995, as cited in ben-david, 2002). gil-garcía & villegas (2003) cite benefits of this strategy in helping students to link and organize their background knowledge to new knowledge, think divergently, and recall, transfer and apply what they have learned. similarily, cassidy & hossler (1992, as cited in bowman et al., p. 8) affirm that students can organize and recall information better from a reading. ben-david (2002) expands these benefits to helping students recall and display information, and show relationships in content. alvermann & boothby (1986, as cited in ben-david, 2002, p. 13) suggest that “…the effects upon comprehension are increased when graphic organizers are partially 110 universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras echeverri acosta & mcnulty ferri constructed by students as a during-reading or post-reading activity”. moreover, students can show personal understanding and response on graphic organizers (buehl, 2001, reported in echevarría et al., 2008). questioning as a strategy can develop different levels of thinking skills for deeper learning (marzano, pickering & pollock, 2001) and help students to prepare for reading and to understand while reading (hendricks, et al., 1996). questioning can be facilitated with the directed reading-thinking activities approach (drta) described by haggard (1985, as cited in hendricks et al., 1996) whereby the teacher reads a text with students, stops at intervals, and asks questions. students discuss their answers in a whole-class activity in order to have a better understanding of what they are reading1. a question-answer relationship (qar) technique proposed by raphael (1984, as cited in hendricks et al., 1996) has been linked to improved students’ reading comprehension after reading (sorrell, 1990, as cited in kelty, 1999; spivey, 2000). kelty (1999) explains four types of questions that differ in how their answers are related to the material. ‘right there’ or literal questions have answers stated directly in the reading, and help students to focus on knowledge by finding and recalling information. ‘think and search’ or comprehension questions also have their answers in the text, but require inference as students have to search for information in various parts of the reading and describe, compare, organize and explain ideas. ‘author and you’ and ‘on your own’ questions require students to respond and look within themselves to find the answers. the former relates students’ prior knowledge and inferences from the text, while the latter is related to students’ life experiences. with these 1 drta is also known as shared reading according to the curriculum and standards produced by the department for education and skills in the united kingdom (2005). questions, students apply what they read to their lives before and after reading. context and participants this study was carried out with an eighth grade efl class in a public, elementary-high normal school2, in envigado (department of antioquia), colombia. participants were 30 students, aged 13 to 15, a cooperating teacher (ct), a practicum advisor (pa), and me as the teacher-researcher. for research purposes, students were divided into three groups: group 1 with 10 students who participated a lot in class and had a good level of reading comprehension; group 2 with 10 students who participated sometimes and had average reading performances; and group 3 with 10 students who rarely participated and had problems understanding texts. these students were identified by using creswell’s (1998) qualitative sampling techniques of typical case and maximum variation. students were “average” or “typical” or showed “diverse variation” with respect to the given criteria of class participation and reading performance. method this action research study included various stages, namely, problem identification, literature review, planning and implementation of action strategies, data collection and analysis, and report writing (johnson, 2005). data were collected from four different sources. my reflections on how the students and i developed the reading activities and strategies were included in a journal (crookes, 2003), which includes teachers’ thoughts, feelings, clarified ideas, and experiences. students, the ct and the pa completed an attitude and rating 2 an “escuela normal” is a school that trains high school students to become teachers. these students can teach with their high school diploma or they can get additional teacher training at university. 111 reading strategies to develop higher thinking skills for reading comprehension profile vol. 12, no. 1, 2010. issn 1657-0790. bogotá, colombia. pages 107-123 checklist (johnson, 2005) to identify which of 6 strategies were used, their perceived usefulness, and an explanation of the response3. an “other” option was included. a sample item for both participants is in tables 1 and 2. students also completed a feedback card (freeman, 1998) to give their opinion about the readings and if they understood them, their preferred activities and strategies, and their importance for their lives. students’ reading performances on the graphic organizers and reading worksheets (johnson, 2005) were collected, and their answers were read and assessed by the ct and me based on the reading content as well as their ability to link the readings to their lives. the following three types of graphic organizers were used in this study: a descriptive pattern organizer to represent events and describe people; a timesequence pattern organizer to order events; and a problem-solution pattern organizer (marzano, pickering, & pollock, 2001; gil-garcía & villegas, 2003). a reading about the history of jeans was used in a unit on inventions for our class. my adapted 3 checklists were used in spanish and translated into english for the purpose of this publication. version of this informational, nonfiction story taken from a reading resource center had 335 words in 6 short paragraphs. it was accompanied with pictures related to key concepts and vocabulary. a class discussion was used to activate students’ background knowledge, and story pictures for student prediction. the graphic organizer was used initially for students to organize their ideas about the story and what they wanted to know. i read and asked students questions based on the question-answer technique. students worked in pairs, shared their answers to the questions, and added and corrected information on their graphic organizers. later they expressed their opinions about the reading and the strategies used. the second reading i adapted was a highbeginner fable —“the man, the boy, and the donkey”— about people pleasing others, taken from using folktales by taylor (2000), which is a cambridge handbook for language teachers. this fable has 308 words with 7 short paragraphs, and was designed with an interactive format to guide students’ reading and responses to the text the holt reader for elements of literature (holt, reinhart & winston, n.d.). the material had lefttable 1. sample item from students’ attitude and rating checklist reading strategies yes no a lot! a little! nothing! why? thinking of what i know about the theme before reading table 2. sample item from the ct’s and the pa’s attitude and rating checklist reading strategies yes no a lot! a little! nothing! comments (how students used the strategies) predicting when they start reading 112 universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras echeverri acosta & mcnulty ferri side column notes that asked students to make predictions, underline parts of the text, write responses to questions, and organize pictures. important vocabulary was boldfaced in the text and a definition was provided in a right-side column note. in pairs, students read the fable. they predicted the events of the fable and the title with pictures. then in pairs students read the fable with the interactive material, made more predictions, and answered questions with the question-answer technique. they drew the story on a graphic organizer and expressed their opinion about the reading and strategies. all thirty students completed the attitude and rating checklist during the two reading lessons. thirty students completed a feedback card during the first lesson, and twenty-eight during the second. one student from both groups 2 and 3 did not complete this instrument. written and oral comments from the students and the ct were gathered in spanish and translated into english for the purpose of this paper, whereas the comments of the practicum advisor were written in english. data analysis consisted of tallying responses to the rating checklists, and analyzing open-ended items using a grounded approach that included coding, categorizing, and comparing data from different sources (burns, 1999). findings from two reading lessons were shared with the participants during a class to check my interpretations and to see if students identified with them. participants stated that they agreed with them but they did not offer additional information. findings in this section, i present findings related to students’ perceptions about the reading topics, participants’ perceptions about the usefulness of the reading strategies and other strategies reported, the development of students’ thinking skills of comprehension and application for reading, and language development. students’ perceptions about the readings most students reported positive perceptions about the readings for both lessons, as shown in tables 3 and 4. table 3. student attitude towards ‘the story of jeans’ did you like the reading today? students yes no grp 1 10 grp 2 10 grp 3 9 table 4. student attitude towards ‘the man, the boy, and the donkey’ did you like the reading today? students yes no grp 1 10 grp 2 9 grp 3 8 1 students thought the readings were interesting, informative, and relevant. students reported that they liked the first reading because they were able to clarify their ideas about the topic. students thought the second reading, a fable, was relevant for their lives: “i liked to read the fable because i learned a moral for my life” (group 2 student); “the text teaches us things that we must learn for our lives” (group 3 student). likewise, i perceived that students were motivated and engaged with the readings we read in class (teacher journal, july 29, 113 reading strategies to develop higher thinking skills for reading comprehension profile vol. 12, no. 1, 2010. issn 1657-0790. bogotá, colombia. pages 107-123 august 12, september 4, 11, 18, october 30, 2008). students’ motivation towards the reading topics was important as it is a factor that influences the understanding of information (martin, 1991). despite these positive perceptions, one student from group 3 reported dissatisfaction with the readings, commenting that the second one was too long. concerning this issue, sasson (2007) recommends that readings be short and interesting for junior high school esl students with a lower level to facilitate comprehension. participants’ perceptions about the reading strategies making predictions the majority of students reported that they liked to make predictions more than the other strategies on the feedback cards during both reading lessons. also, most students believed that making predictions before reading was a useful strategy for reading comprehension. the results are presented in tables 5 and 6. various reasons were cited by students as to why making predictions was helpful before reading. many students commented that making predictions allowed them to figure out what the topic of the reading was, and to express what they thought about it. i, too, considered making predictions a very useful strategy as it helped students to explore the topic before they read and thus understand it better: “i think they made predictions that helped them to understand the story better since they had an idea about the topic of the text before reading it” (teacher journal, july 29, august 12, september 18, october 30, 2008). students thought this strategy helped them to focus their concentration, develop their thinking, and check their expectations about the content of the reading. these are cited benefits by duke & pearson (2005, as cited in mckown & barnett, 2007). one student wrote: “it is amusing, and i can compare my predictions when we read” (student feedback card). two students in groups 2 and 3 reported that making predictions helped to guide them and to advance in the reading. table 5. student predictions about ‘the story of jeans’ if used usefulness students yes no a lot a little none grp 1 10 7 3 grp 2 10 7 3 grp 3 10 8 2 ct √ √ advisor √ √ table 6. student predictions about ‘the man, the boy and the donkey´ if used usefulness students yes no a lot a little none grp 1 10 9 1 grp 2 10 9 1 grp 3 10 8 2 ct √ √ advisor √ √ the effectiveness of making predictions was also linked to additional reading strategies of discussion, teacher questions, visual content support, modeling, and creative language use. four students in group 1 liked making predictions with my guide questions in the first reading lesson because it gave them an opportunity to work together by discussing possible answers and listening to their classmates’ opinions, while students in group 3 preferred more general predictions. in addition, a few students from groups 1 and 3 reported that they especially 114 universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras echeverri acosta & mcnulty ferri liked to make predictions with pictures because it helped them to understand the text better. using pictures for prediction has been identified as a good reading strategy by mckown & barnett (2007) for middle-school l1 learners, and omaggio (1993) for l2 learners. the pa also thought that modeling predictions while using pictures, which is a strategy recommended by chamot, barnhardt, el-dinary, & robbins (1999), motivated students to become more engaged and to share their ideas: i noticed that you modeled thinking about the pictures, repeated what students said, and wrote it on the board. i think that all the students were engaged and many of them had a chance to share their ideas with the class (rating checklist). furthermore, the ct perceived that students enjoyed making predictions and creating interesting stories: “it is fascinating! students enjoy it a lot. they create wonderful stories. (personal communication) notwithstanding these positive perceptions, a few students (two from group 1 and one from group 3) reported that they did not like to make predictions and questioned its usefulness. in the first reading lesson, one student from group 1 commented that this had been a routine activity for many classes, and the other student wrote that the text was easy enough to understand without using this strategy. the group 3 student did not provide any comment related to their response for the second reading. likewise, two students (one from both groups 1 and 2) reported that they preferred not to make predictions with pictures without any explanation. the student from group 2 explained her position by writing that she was not focused and did not understand what she had to do: “because i get [sic] distracted”. activating students’ previous knowledge a second important strategy for participants was the exploration of students’ previous knowledge before reading. on the rating checklist, most students perceived having used this strategy in both readings as very useful (see tables 7 and 8). table 7. student background knowledge of ‘the story of jeans’ if used usefulness students yes no a lot a little none grp 1 10 10 grp 2 10 10 grp 3 10 9 1 ct √ √ advisor √ √ table 8. student background knowledge of ‘the man, the boy and the donkey´ if used usefulness students yes no a lot a little none grp 1 10 9 1 grp 2 10 9 1 grp 3 10 9 1 ct √ √ advisor √ √ many students gave diverse reasons why this strategy helped them understand what they read better. two students from group 2 explicitly referred as follows to their previous knowledge as a contributing factor for reading comprehension: “many times, i knew the topic”; “when we answer questions, we can use what we think before reading”. both groups 1 and 2 students reported on the first 115 reading strategies to develop higher thinking skills for reading comprehension profile vol. 12, no. 1, 2010. issn 1657-0790. bogotá, colombia. pages 107-123 reading rating checklist that this strategy enabled them to think more about the topic, to generate more ideas, and to promote their curiosity: “it makes us think and to open up our imagination to do the activity”. in the first reading lesson, some students from group 2 reported that their background knowledge helped them identify the main idea of the reading: “because we have an idea what the text is about”. in addition, students in group 1 also reported that this strategy was useful for focusing their attention and letting them share their ideas. this supports an important feature of instructional activities “to discuss ideas, drawing out students” thoughts and linking them to the text (echevarría et al., 2008, p. 56). according to the u.k. department for education and skills standards – understanding reading comprehension 2(2005, p. 1), “activation of prior knowledge can develop children’s understanding by helping them to see links between what they already know and new information they are encountering”. i also thought that having my students think about the topic by drawing on what they knew was very useful for understanding the readings better. the ct agreed that this strategy was useful before reading: “for them, it is very pleasing to check their previous knowledge” (personal communication). i also perceived that it gave me the chance to build their knowledge: the activities developed to check students’ previous knowledge were helpful for students because they increased their background knowledge before reading; students could share their opinions, and they were familiarized with some words and information related to the content. (teacher journal, october 23, 2008) christen & murphy (1991, as cited in echevarría et al., 2008) recommended that teachers introduce new vocabulary and concepts when students lack prior knowledge. however, this strategy was perceived as not very useful by a few students across all groups. they commented that they did not have any prior knowledge to contribute, and that sometimes they did not understand the language. echevarría et al. (2008) recognize that students have different background knowledge, and failure to activate and/ or build on this can lead to poor comprehension. completing graphic organizers some students from all groups reported that they liked this strategy during the first reading lesson on the feedback cards as it helped them to learn more and to understand better. they thought it was enjoyable, interesting, important and useful. fewer students from groups 1 and 2 reported this perception for the second reading lesson, although one student from group 1 commented as follows: “i like the graphic organizer because it is easy to complete it, and it helps me to understand”. regarding the usefulness of graphic organizers, many students expressed having used them on the rating checklist, and that this strategy was very helpful in organizing prior knowledge about the topic before reading (tables 9 and 10). table 9. graphic organizer before reading ‘the story of jeans’ if used usefulness students yes no a lot a little none grp 1 9 1 9 grp 2 9 1 7 1 1 grp 3 8 2 6 2 ct √ √ advisor √ √ 116 universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras echeverri acosta & mcnulty ferri table 10. graphic organizer before reading ‘the man, the boy, and the donkey’ if used usefulness students yes no a lot a little none grp 1 10 8 2 grp 2 10 10 1 grp 3 10 9 1 ct √ √ advisor √ √ students reported different reasons to justify the usefulness of this strategy. in both reading lessons, students believed that completing a graphic organizer before reading was a helpful strategy to prepare them to read and to understand the text better at the moment of reading it. they were able to form ideas and organize them about the topic, to clarify doubts, to develop their thinking and imagination, and to learn more. other authors have referred to these benefits when using graphic organizers for reading comprehension (ben-david, 2002) and gil-garcía & villega (2003). one student from group 2 perceived using graphic organizers with predictions as a creative activity: “you can create, and you inspire your imagination”. moreover, groups 1 and 2 students in the first reading lesson believed that it helped them remember information about the topic as well as check the accuracy of their prior knowledge and predictions: “because this strategy helps us to remember the topic and to understand it better at the moment of reading it”. three other students from group 2 perceived benefits from this strategy related to taking into account a student’s opinion, preparing students to answer comprehension questions after reading and reaching conclusions. as for my personal point of view, i reflected on the usefulness of graphic organizers in helping students to associate their predictions with prior knowledge, and to remember and use information in writing, which has also been cited by alvermann & boothby (1986, as cited in ben-david, 2002): students completed the graphic organizer with their previous knowledge about the topic, and what they learned from the predictions component… i think the graphic organizer can be useful to help students to remember information since they have it in a written way [sic], and can use it during and after reading. (teacher journal, september 18, 2008) moreover, the ct linked the use of graphic organizers with the development of the thinking skills of comprehension and application: “the use of the graphic organizers has led to the achievement of the development of some thinking skills, especially comprehension and application” (personal communication, september 9, 2008). the pa perceived contributions related to enhanced student participation and engagement during the reading lesson: “… i saw them very engaged completing this tool…”; “i saw that students were very motivated and focused doing this activity” (rating checklist). however, a small number of students across all groups reported on the feedback cards that they did not like to complete the graphic organizers and equally questioned the usefulness of the strategy on the rating checklists. their difficulties completing the graphic organizers related to a lack of understanding as to how to complete them, the individual nature of the activity without the help of a classmate, and a lack of some words in english as well as interest in completing them. a small number of students across all groups reported not having used this strategy in the first reading lesson and believed that this strategy would have been better after reading. 117 reading strategies to develop higher thinking skills for reading comprehension profile vol. 12, no. 1, 2010. issn 1657-0790. bogotá, colombia. pages 107-123 answering questions most students reported on the rating checklists that they used the strategy of writing answers to questions after reading, and that they perceived this as useful (tables 11 and 12). only one student did not check the usefulness item for the first reading, and two students likewise did not for the second reading. table 11. answering questions after first reading if used usefulness students yes no a lot a little none grp 1 9 1 9 grp 2 10 10 grp 3 10 10 ct √ √ advisor √ √ table 12. answering questions after second reading if used usefulness students yes no a lot a little none grp 1 10 9 1 grp 2 9 1 7 2 grp 3 9 1 9 ct √ √ advisor √ √ most students reported that answering questions helped them to learn more. one student of group 3 reported that: “when i answer the questions and do the activities, i learn more”. more importantly, students reported that answering questions while they were reading was helpful to have clarity about the text, and to understand it better after reading, which has been cited by hendricks et al. (1996). in addition, students expressed that the strategy was useful to show their comprehension, to demonstrate that they learned how to predict, identify and make comparisons, to remember information about the topic, and to increase their knowledge. one student from group 3 reported that the strategy helped him to go deeper into the topics and to facilitate development of the target language: “because it was to improve my english and to deepen my understanding of the topics”. concerning my point of view, i considered that students’ performances on the reading worksheets were affected by the different types of questions associated with the thinking skills. most group 1 students demonstrated their understanding of the text by answering accurately the four types of questions (‘right there’, ‘think and search’, ‘on my own’, ‘author and me’) in both reading lessons. some group 2 and 3 students had a few problems demonstrating their understanding for ‘think and search’ or ‘comprehension’ questions because they wrote simple answers that were not accurate enough. group 2 students’ answers to ‘on my own’ and ‘author and me’ questions were clear, while group 3 students’ answers to these questions were simple and some a little ambiguous. regarding ‘on my own’, and ‘author and me’ questions, i reflected on students’ performances in my journal as follows: students answered those questions easily because students read the text; they understood the main idea, and then, they expressed their opinions, and they connected the topic of the text to their own lives. (september 30, october 30, 2008) students from group 2 who considered the strategy a little useful explained that they understood the text without having to answer the questions. in addition, one student from group 1 expressed that although she enjoyed answering questions to demonstrate her understanding, she 118 universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras echeverri acosta & mcnulty ferri preferred to imagine and predict content. on the feedback card in the first reading lesson, only a few students wrote that they did not like to answer the questions on the worksheet. one group 3 student wrote that it was difficult to answer them: “i did not like the worksheet because sometimes i am not good at it, and it is difficult to answer it”. other strategies for reading comprehension participants reported strategies related to roles of the reading teacher and students, and an interactive reading material to help students understand what they read better. role of the reading teacher and students reading comprehension was associated with a reading teacher who dramatizes and discusses content while reading aloud in class, and who motivates students to read (echevarría, et al., 2008). on the rating checklists, students and the ct commented how i had helped students to understand content better by talking about it, and using gestures to convey concepts and information. the ct reported: “another strategy was the gestures and actions luz marina did [sic] while she was reading aloud”. one group 2 student reported during the first reading lesson that he liked the way i read: “because she explains more and better”. one group 3 student reported in the second reading lesson that she liked to listen to me when i read aloud: “because she explains what characters want to say”. motivating students to read with visual aids and questions, and encouraging active student participation during reading activities was also an important role that has been raised by cummins (2009). the pa reported during the second reading lesson that my materials and questions motivated students to participate in class: you showed students six beautifully drawn, colored pictures… i heard students making comments as soon as you put the first picture on the board. you also motivated them by asking, ‘now, do you want to read the story?’ students said, ‘yes’, and made noise by applauding in class. perhaps your question focused students’ direction in reading, and helped create an initial enthusiasm in students to read and find out specific information. (rating checklist) the ct expressed the importance of students as active classroom readers: reading activities let students participate in their learning process because they share their ideas, opinions, and experiences. in this way, the class is a space for reflection and contrast of thoughts and opinions. (personal communication, september 9, 2008) interactive reading material participants perceived that the use of interactive reading material in the second lesson was instrumental in enabling students to read more independently, when accompanied by teacher modeling and the support of a classmate and the teacher during paired reading. after reading, students answered ‘on my own’ and ‘author and you’ questions, enabling them to relate and apply what they read to their lives. a few students from groups 1 and 2 reported on the feedback card that they liked reading with this material in the second reading lesson, and that it was a strategy for comprehension. students from group 1 reported that they could reread the text, ask themselves questions and work in pairs, which helped students become more independent readers. the pa reported that letting students read in pairs improved comprehension: “i think that 119 reading strategies to develop higher thinking skills for reading comprehension profile vol. 12, no. 1, 2010. issn 1657-0790. bogotá, colombia. pages 107-123 letting students read the text and questions in pairs and discuss their answers helped them”. she also commented on the importance of the teacher’s role in monitoring and supporting guided student reading: “i noticed that you and your ct monitored during the activity, answered students’ questions, reviewed their answers and praised, which was a support for them too”. i reflected in my journal that students benefited from my modeling on how to work with the reading material first, and later from their classmates’ support to help them to understand. the pa considered that promoting reading with this kind of worksheet was an effective strategy for facilitating students’ understanding: “students responded very favorably to reading with the worksheets used in the class today”. after she spoke to a few students, she concluded that they thought reading was easier and that they understood the content of the fable better with this material. she further added, “i believe that you have helped your students to read more independently and successfully in the efl class” (rating checklist). using english for reading comprehension even though students were able to use both languages to demonstrate their comprehension, i noticed that most students chose to write their answers in english on the reading comprehension worksheets: “only a few students wrote something in spanish. the rest of the students made an effort to write their answers in english (teacher journal, july 24, august 5, september 4, 30; october 2, 30, 2008). on the graphic organizers, my advisor also observed students’ efforts to use english when answering the comprehension questions on the worksheet: “i noticed that most students were writing in english…only 8 students were writing their answers in spanish” (rating checklist). it is also significant to take into account that students perceived that the reading strategies and activities helped them to improve their english. one group 1 student reported on the rating checklist as follows: “reading using the strategies helps me to learn english better”. one group 2 student reported on the feedback card in the first reading lesson that “i like the reading because i am learning how to write in english”. a few students also reported on the rating checklists from both reading lessons that the reading strategies were helpful to improve their english related to vocabulary, grammar, and pronunciation. one group 2 student reported that “it is general culture, and i learned new words in english”. yet, a few students across all groups reported problems with their reading comprehension on the feedback cards due to their lack of familiarity with english (see tables 13 and 14). according to fielding and pearson (1994, as cited in o’malley & valdez pierce, 1996, p. 94), “reading comprehension depends heavily on knowledge of language and print”. table 13. student comprehension of ‘the story of jeans’ did you understand the reading today? students yes no grp 1 10 grp 2 10 grp 3 9 1 table 14. student comprehension of ‘the man, the boy, and the donkey’ did you understand the reading today? students yes no grp 1 9 1 grp 2 8 1 grp 3 7 2 120 universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras echeverri acosta & mcnulty ferri likewise, on the rating checklist for the first reading lesson, two students from groups 2 and 3 reported that the strategy of checking their background knowledge helped them just a little because sometimes they did not understand the language. also, completing the graphic organizer in the second reading lesson was difficult for one student from group 3 as he did not know some words in english. after analyzing students’ work, i concluded that students across all groups showed differences using english to answer the different types of questions on the worksheets. groups 1 and 2 students used english to answer knowledge or ‘right there’ questions as well as comprehension or ‘think and search’ questions. these two groups of students used english to answer most application or ‘on my own’ and ‘author and you’ questions, and spanish for only a few questions. group 3 students differed from these two groups by combining english with some words in spanish to answer the first two question types. concerning application questions, group 3 students initially tried to use english in the first reading lesson, but their answers were not clear. during the second reading lesson, only a small number of these students answered the application questions in spanish. i believe that group 3 students needed more time to read the new material. developing comprehension and application skills in general, participants believed that the reading selections, strategies, and material helped students to begin developing the thinking skills of comprehension and application. the ct thought that my reading lessons were planned with this purpose: “the reading materials you present to students are not only motivating them, but also they are guiding the reading process developing the levels of comprehension and application” (personal communication, september 9, 2008). some students reported in both reading lessons that the strategies and materials used in class helped them to improve their comprehension. students perceived that they understood the readings better, were inspired, and had developed their thinking. one group 3 student reported in the first reading lesson that “i develop my thinking and i inspire my imagination”. one group 1 student reported in the second reading lesson that “we can grow mentally everyday in the language that dominates the world”. some students also reported that they could apply what they read to their lives, which included learned information related to the topics, general culture, and the moral of the texts. my advisor also perceived the following: “students have read for knowledge, comprehension, and in some way, for a chance to apply what they know about the topic and the reading. in other words, they have had the opportunity to reflect on the topic and reading material and relate it to their lives (rating checklist)”. regarding my personal point of view, i considered that reading strategies were useful to promote these thinking skills: “through the reading strategies, students have the opportunity to show that they understand what they read and that they apply what they learn from the text to their own lives” (teacher journal, august 19, 2008). discussion and conclusion english as a foreign language teachers in public high schools can design and teach different reading strategies, determine which strategies students find useful, and give students opportunities to use the strategies to develop the skills of comprehension and application. the findings of this study indicated that using the reading strategies of activating 121 reading strategies to develop higher thinking skills for reading comprehension profile vol. 12, no. 1, 2010. issn 1657-0790. bogotá, colombia. pages 107-123 background knowledge, making predictions, completing graphic organizers, and answering questions with the drta and with interactive material, led students to be motivated to read, learn more, and understand better. in classrooms, teachers can bring interesting readings based on students’ interests and language ability. they can prepare their students to read and develop their thinking by showing attractive visual aids related to the topic and content, modeling predictions, asking students’ questions to guide their prediction, and encouraging student discussion. it is equally important that teachers activate students’ background knowledge with visual aids, questions, and class discussion (cummins, 2009) to help them focus their attention, think more and generate ideas about the topic and main ideas as well as link what they know with the new content and share with classmates. when students have little prior knowledge about the topic or have low language abilities, teachers can build up background knowledge by introducing key concepts and vocabulary needed prior to reading (cummins, 2009). teachers can introduce graphic organizers and help students write, organize and compare their prior knowledge, ideas, and predictions to the reading, increase their knowledge, remember information, develop language, and understand the reading better. teachers can model using an organizer (robertson, 2008), let students work together with this strategy, and extend the time for the activity so that it is more useful for students with limited english. these strategies combined with reading comprehension questions after the readings, help students to recognize that they are understanding better, learning more, developing language, and being able to show this. teachers can use interactive reading material to help students move from a drta to more independent reading when accompanied with teacher modeling and student paired reading. this interactive material directs students’ reading process and gives them the opportunity to practice predicting, highlighting, asking themselves questions, reading and rereading with a peer along with seeking help from others. robertson (2008) highlights these strategies for increased comprehension. combining all these strategies, teachers can encourage students to stay interested and engaged with the reading by asking them to say something about the reading aloud. this can be directed towards their interest in the topic, or simply towards giving a personal response to the text (zimmerman & hutchins, 2009). with interesting readings, strategies, and material, teachers can help efl students to start developing the thinking skills of comprehension and application. while students may be motivated to demonstrate their reading comprehension in english, a low level of english can compromise students’ ability to demonstrate application. thus, teachers can remind students to use their native language when needed in order to maintain their engagement with the reading. through the development of this project, i learned that the way strategies are integrated into the reading lesson has an important influence on students’ level of understanding. implementing multiple reading strategies is effective for public high school efl students’ comprehension. i hope that the results of this study will provide ideas for other efl teachers who are interested in improving their students’ reading comprehension. references ben-david, r. 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(2007). improving reading comprehension through application and transfer of reading strategies (master’s thesis, saint xavier university). retrieved from http://www.eric.ed.gov/ericdocs/data/ericdocs2sql/ content_storage_01/0000019b/80/28/0c/59.pdf ríos, s. r., & valcárcel, a. m. (2005). reading: a meaningful way to promote learning english in high school. profile, issues in teachers’ professional development, 6, 59-72. robertson, k. (2008). increasing ell student reading comprehension with non-fiction text. retrieved october 15, 2008 from http://www.colorincolorado.org/article 29035 sasson, d. (2007). six tips for teaching lower level junior high school esl students. the internet tesl journal, 8, 7. 123 reading strategies to develop higher thinking skills for reading comprehension profile vol. 12, no. 1, 2010. issn 1657-0790. bogotá, colombia. pages 107-123 retrieved may 8, 2009 from http://iteslj.org/techniques/ sasson-lowerleveljhs.html spivey, j. (2000). an investigation of reading comprehension at the primary level (master’s thesis). saint xavier university, retrieved from eric database. (ed449492) taylor, e. k. (2000). using folktales. cambridge: cambridge university press. wallace, c. (2001). reading. in r. carter, & d. nunan (eds.), teaching english to speakers of other languages (pp. 21-27). cambridge: cambridge university press. wong, h. k., & wong, r. t. (1998). the first days of school. mountain view, ca: harry k. wong publications, inc. zimmerman, s., & hutchins, c. (2009). seven keys to comprehension: how to help your kids to read it and get it! retrieved october 13, 2008 from http:// www.readinglady.com/mosaic/tools/7%20keys%20 parent%20handout%20from%20sandi.pdf about the authors luz marina echeverri acosta is a full-time efl teacher at unidad educativa san marcos in envigado, and a part-time teacher at colegio de capacitación de envigado. she is about to graduate from the undergraduate foreign languages teaching program at universidad de antioquia. maria mcnulty ferri is a teacher educator in the undergraduate foreign languages teaching program and member of the research groups grupo de investigación acción y evaluación en lenguas extranjeras (giae) and enseñanza y aprendizaje de lenguas extranjeras (eale) at universidad de antioquia. she holds a master’s degree in teaching english as a foreign language, universidad de caldas, manizales, colombia; a diploma in teaching english as a second language, university of toronto, canada; honorary degree in psychology, wilfrid laurier university, canada. profile 11, 2009. issn 1657-0790. bogotá, colombia. pages 91-105 91 improving pronunciation through the use of karaoke in an adult english class mejorando la pronunciación mediante el uso del karaoke en una clase de inglés para adultos andrés roberto rengifo*1 universidad nacional de colombia, sede bogotá students often have difficulty and experience lots of problems with pronunciation in english. this article is based on a research project which intended to show how students can improve their pronunciation through the use of karaoke in their english class. by using karaoke, the teacher designs activities and involves students to improve their pronunciation. students’ progress is analyzed in order to arrive at a conclusion of the effectiveness of the karaoke sessions. it is also shown that the karaoke classes offer a lot of fun and creativity while students cooperate with each other to achieve their pronunciation goals. key words: improving pronunciation, karaoke activities los estudiantes frecuentemente tienen dificultades y experimentan muchos problemas al pronunciar en inglés. este artículo se basa en un trabajo investigativo que buscó mostrar cómo los estudiantes pueden mejorar su pronunciación mediante el uso del karaoke en sus clases de inglés. con el uso del karaoke, el profesor diseña actividades e involucra a los estudiantes en el mejoramiento de su pronunciación. se analiza el progreso del estudiante para alcanzar una conclusión sobre la efectividad de las sesiones de karaoke. también se muestra que las clases de karaoke ofrecen mucha diversión y creatividad mientras los estudiantes cooperan entre ellos para alcanzar sus metas en cuanto a la pronunciación. palabras clave: mejoramiento de la pronunciación, actividades con karaoke * e-mail: andres_reng@yahoo.com address: calle 1 sur # 72 b 63, bogotá, colombia. this article was received on february 2, 2009 and accepted on february 25, 2009. rengifo universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras92 introduction commonly, activities that are fun and innovative are now widely used during all phases of learning within the english classroom; finding interactive and entertaining tasks is a fundamental mission for all teachers in order to complement their classes. the challenge comes when looking for activities that students can enjoy and learn from at the same time. oftentimes teachers and students are stuck with the same traditional procedures which, indeed, can be good, but still might be too repetitive for students and teachers. a good way to solve this problem is to listen to students’ likes and dislikes. another fine approach is to bring technology into our classroom; nowadays, access to technology is easier than ever before, and the class can be a lot more interactive and fun. taking all these factors into account and noticing the main challenges that students face when learning english, i realized that english students recurrently had a lot of difficulty with their pronunciation. many students were afraid of talking because of their faulty pronunciation; in addition, due to this problem, students could not understand different words in dialogues because they did not know what they were listening to and did not understand although they could have known the vocabulary. there are many books and exercises of great quality for pronunciation, but i still noticed that students needed another context to put all of these exercises into practice as an extra activity. they needed to connect the phonetic symbols with practice of actual sounds. stern (1992) states that in learning a foreign language, pronunciation has always been an early obstacle to overcome, and for kelly in stern (1992), the language pedagogy since time immemorial has attempted to come to grips with the pronunciation problem either intuitively or by an analytic approach. as a result, the idea of setting up activities in a different setting and approach took place. from personal experience, i realized that many activities which included music were used in classes with good levels of acceptance. i also perceived that many students liked to sing. some were keen on certain types of music in english or enjoyed certain songs. one student was even learning english because he wanted to sing in this language for a project of a rock band; that was one of the many reasons i proposed the integration of available technology into the class; in this case, as a means to help improve students’ pronunciation. the research problem karaoke is a japanese invention where, by looking at a screen, students can read the lyrics and listen to music without a voice being heard; thus, it allows students to read the lyrics, sing and go through the melodies. they can also listen to books and read the scripts from karaoke, so there are many possibilities. karaoke is not a new technique for learning english. it has been used in many countries for different intentions and also in some institutes in colombia, mostly for social and enjoyment purposes. unfortunately, it has not been exploited in our country as it should be in the english classroom. i consider karaoke to be a great tool to help students improve their pronunciation, among other skills. karaoke is mainly intended for singing. singing can be a fun activity for some and threatening for others. nevertheless, singing is an extra activity that can bring joy and relaxation to a setting that normally has lots of pressure such as some english classes. miguel de cervantes in don quixote said: “he who sings improving pronunciation through the use of karaoke in an adult english class profile 11, 2009. issn 1657-0790. bogotá, colombia. pages 91-105 93 frightens away his ills” and henry giles once said: “a song will outlive all sermons in the memory”. hence, music and singing are universal for all humans. we might learn things and concepts faster when we sing, just as we usually remember chants and songs from our childhood stemming from church or from play at home. once i had the idea of using karaoke, i wanted to enquire about the effectiveness of using karaoke to improve pronunciation. as a result, this main question emerged: to what extent can the use of karaoke help students improve their pronunciation skills in the english classroom? in addition, sub questions appeared in order to inquire about the activities that could be used effectively to boost students’ pronunciation, students’ reactions, to what extent they used the english language while performing certain activities and the benefits that these activities brought to their pronunciation skills. theoretical framework learning english can be a great challenge for many students. most of them consider speaking to be one of the most difficult abilities. others consider listening to be much harder to accomplish; nevertheless, they would like to improve their pronunciation as a mean to develop security and fluency during the speaking sessions and, as a means to understand more during the listening sessions. pronunciation challenges most pronunciation challenges come from the fear of speaking with an accent different from those of native english speakers. sometimes we do not talk because we do not want to reveal our country of origin and our first language. so, the first step was to talk to the students to inform them that accents are perfectly normal in today’s world. we must strive to make ourselves understood and understand each other. dale & poms (1986) say the following about this problem: “you should be proud of having an accent. yes, we said proud. a foreign accent tells listeners that you speak at least two languages”. and later they added: “variety is the spice of life”. sadly, our accents can pose some problems when we want to communicate: misunderstandings can appear on both sides. that is why it is very important to pronounce well and to improve pronunciation day by day in order to communicate better. nonetheless, it is also very important not to confuse good pronunciation with having an accent. stern (2002) enunciates that many successful learners will retain an ‘accent’. he says: “the goal, in most cases, should be intelligibility and acceptability rather than native-like perfection”. that is why teachers and students ought to work harder in this skill of pronunciation and clarifying the differences between pronunciation and accent. in addition, for us teachers, it is very common to be asked the question: “teacher, how do you pronounce this word?”. this is a frequent question and we can make our lives easier by providing more pronunciation practice. furthermore, students, especially those in an adult institution, want to learn english for communication and speaking purposes at any cost, which explains their concern about correct pronunciation. davies & pearse (2000) describe communication as the main goal of the courses, and also the conviction that english should be used for real communication as much as possible; hence, most of the activities are related to speaking activities in modern classrooms. as noted before, communicating involves good pronunciation in order to rengifo universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras94 make sure our sentences are heard clearly. the challenge comes when our set of sounds (vowels and consonants) are not the same. for spanish speakers, we discovered from our early sessions that there is a disparity in english between how words are spelled and how they are pronounced. furthermore, there are sounds in the english language that do not exist in our mother tongue. that is when our problem just begins, when many people give up their will to learn, and when many get frustrated and struggle with their pronunciation. wong (1993) enumerated some myths and facts about pronunciation. i found that these applied to my class prior to embarking on a pronunciation activity using karaoke. for instance, one myth says that pronunciation is boring. professor wong declared that pronunciation was not boring, but that teaching pronunciation had been boring because it had been done in a boring way; later, she added that teaching which employed material that was irrelevant to the students was boring. furthermore, practice that was monotonous and unvaried was boring. those facts about this specific myth led me to reflect on the need to use authentic material in class with the benefit of offering students some fun and varied activities to promote pronunciation-learning within the classroom. why use karaoke to improve students' pronunciation? karaoke is a versatile tool; it is a cultural sensation in japan, and in colombia many night clubs and bars use it to attract customers. the machines are not so expensive, and the discs are pretty easy to find and are affordable. apart from the cost, the real function of karaoke is that it mutes the voice and shows one the lyrics so one can listen to the rest of the musical instruments along with reading the words to pronounce or sing, depending on the activity. the misconception exists that karaoke is only for singing, which is pretty inaccurate due to the fact that one can also play an audio-book and immediately use it for reading the script. the first step was for me to gain students’ confidence and interest in the activity, to show them how karaoke could help them improve their pronunciation. it is well known that music is present in our lives from the time we are children: we heard chants and songs at school, we learned them and even if they were in a different language we sang them and memorized them. unfortunately, by the time we were nearly grown music was disappearing from our schools. we also experienced the feeling when we heard a song many times: it got into our head and we felt that we had memorized the lyrics or the rhythm. that was why i felt music and karaoke could bring good results to improving pronunciation. maley in murphey (1992) states that music is highly memorable. he explains that music creates a state of relaxed receptivity due to basic body rhythm or deep emotional chords. he concludes by saying that whatever the reason is, music ‘sticks’ in our heads. more important was the student involvement and attention karaoke promised. as an anecdote, one student registered with the institute because he saw how people were enthusiastic in the karaoke room. he even paid full tuition under the promise that the institute would continue with the karaoke activities the whole semester. as a result, karaoke seemed to be a promising aid for attracting students, and to achieve the great goal of helping them improve their pronunciation while at the same time having a good experience. murphey (1992) concludes that songs are fun; they encourage harmony within oneself and within a group. he said that songs improving pronunciation through the use of karaoke in an adult english class profile 11, 2009. issn 1657-0790. bogotá, colombia. pages 91-105 95 are tools used in sustaining cultures, religions and even revolutions. that is why i believe in the importance of music and the use of karaoke to improve a skill in my students. method to guide this project, i took into account the desire to challenge a current problem experienced by most students in a specific context. this problem was related to pronunciation; hence, the need to create innovative tasks to attract students’ attention and help them overcome this particular issue. for these reasons, i had chosen to go after a method that allowed me to transform a particular problem: action research was the approach to be developed during the project. action research was supposed to assist me by creating a change in this setting and improving it. kemmis & mctaggart (1982) say: “action research is trying out an idea in practice with a view to improving or changing something, trying to have a real effect on the situation” (p. 8). administrative staff, teachers and students discussed the main problem in their learning process as being a pronunciation problem. thus, in this way, with a problem to solve on our hands, the task was to challenge a particular problem, turn it into something to be reflected upon and improve it or solve it. this was a reason to specifically choose the action research approach. carr & kemmis (1986) in mcdonough & mcdonough (1997) said the following about this type of research: “[it is] a form of self-reflective enquiry undertaken by participants in social situations in order to improve the rationality and justice of their own practices, their understanding of these practices, and the situations in which the practices are carried out” (pp. 26-27). using the methods of action research, the study was divided into cycles in order to get the different categories of analysis. according to lewin (1946) in hopkins (1993), there are four phases to action research: planning, acting, observing, and reflecting. it was imagined as being based on principles that could lead ‘gradually to independence, equality and cooperation’. these phases are shown by burns (1999), based on hopkins (1993) as follows: figure 1. data collection and analysis cycle (burns, 1999, p. 72). rengifo universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras96 action research is a cycle that leads the teacher to act and to change a problem into a possible solution that the class could benefit from. the challenge or problem, as described before, was to be able to help students with their pronunciation difficulties. the process followed during this research involved hypothesizing and reinterpreting the results after each activity. initial interpretations were always tested after implementing the next activity as a way to see what needed to be improved or changed. as a result, the teacher could put these hypotheses into practice in order to implement the strategies in the classroom. in order to define the categories of analysis, data triangulation and time triangulation were used. for brown (2001), data triangulation involved using multiple sources of data to mediate and understand biases interjected by people in different roles. in this research, i took into account different points of view to reach the categories of analysis and a conclusion. for instance, i interviewed administrators and the school staff and used the opinions of other observant teachers at the school. although the latter were not present during the entire length of the sessions, they could observe and participate during portions of the activities and some of them gave me their points of view about the activities. in addition, time triangulation was vital to reach the validity of study in this research. according to burns (1999) “time triangulation is data that are collected at one point in time (cross-sectional) or over a period of time (longitudinally) to get a sense of what factors are involved in change processes”. participants the project was initially designed to subsidize the specific needs of, a group of around 12-15 adult students in an adult english education institute; their ages ranged from 18 to 60. most of them were studying english for communicative purposes (traveling to the usa or canada; marrying a foreigner, etc.), academic purposes (passing the toefl or ielts exam), and to enhance economical opportunities (find a highpaying job where english is a plus or a requirement, etc). the students’ economical background also varied: some were students of public and private institutions or universities, others were professional workers, and a couple of them were retired. this background data were very important in choosing the activities and songs, and in learning about their likes and dislikes as well as their reasons for studying english, among other aspects. observation techniques used in this project my intention was fundamentally to observe and account for these characteristics: • to what extent is students’ pronunciation improved. • to analyze how helpful the use of karaoke in the class was. • to evaluate the use of english in the class. • to inquire about students’ and teacher’s reaction during the karaoke sessions. the main effort, however, would always be to find out the progress of students within the pronunciation contexts. for this reason, i needed to use qualitative gathering techniques. nevertheless, improving pronunciation through the use of karaoke in an adult english class profile 11, 2009. issn 1657-0790. bogotá, colombia. pages 91-105 97 techniques that could gather quantity characteristics were to be used in order to reach a conclusion during the analysis. as a result, i decided to use a video recorder, interviews and teacher’s diary. pedagogical procedure before every task, we had a special conversation: a warm-up activity in order to relax and begin functioning in english; teachers reviewed some topics or clarified/introduced others for a short period of time. next, students were told that the karaoke sessions were about to begin. we discussed the set of songs available and asked if anyone had listened to them before. we discussed the type of music, some background information on the group and song, as well as other possible information that students possessed that the teacher did not know about. usually, the teacher had to sing the first karaoke song as many students were not confident enough during the first sessions to start up; once the teacher sang it, students were asked to sing it again sometimes all together and sometimes a sole volunteer appeared. once we sang the song, we had the activities with the lyrics included; students often asked about unknown words or looked them up in the dictionary by themselves. the activities included the lyrics as noted before and some discussion items about parts of the lyrics. later we had a set of pronunciation activities, and for this specific purpose i used the ipa nomenclature or symbols on phonetics and phonology. we tried to establish a set of activities that included the most popular accents of english: american and british, to know the differences and similarities. it was important to notice that american english was mainly used in the institute and the activities, but it was imperative to observe that a lot of good quality streamline music is created in the united kingdom. after the pronunciation explanation, we conducted a series of exercises ranging from minimal pairs to intonation, or matching the correct sound in the sentence in order to add variety. usually, students had to find models of the pronunciation activities in the song as we had studied some samples and patterns of pronunciation beforehand; later we began to look for those patterns during the song. once we reviewed the song, we started to sing again with the correct intended pronunciation. we noticed the difference between the singer’s pronunciation of certain vowels, and our pronunciation to see how different or similar they were, and how we differed from our first version. at the end of the karaoke song, we usually had a mini-quiz in order to measure how much we had learnt from this activity. we also had a qualitative period of reflection to talk about the prior activities and the results of the tasks. finally, students filled out or answered orally the interviews given by the teacher about the karaoke activities in class. davies & pearse (2000) emphasized the importance of these conditions in this paragraph: “more important for successful language teaching and learning are other, less tangible conditions; for example, plenty of opportunities for learners to participate in class and an atmosphere in which they feel motivated to learn” (p. 12). taking into account davies’s paragraph, the class was set up to present learning in a relaxed and friendly ambience where mistakes were tolerated and in which humor and friendship were vital to create this kind of mood, where trust and respect for each other were encouraged. rengifo universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras98 results the research was divided into five cycles in order to develop a plan to face the possible problems presented in each stage or cycle. the first step consisted of collecting the data; once the problems were identified, the hypotheses were created and the karaoke activities were devised (stage of planning). after karaoke activities had been implemented, new hypotheses emerged. finally the categories appeared and teaching strategies were drawn up to solve the problem originally projected. the categories and subcategories that were found were connected to the research questions proposed in this project and, in addition, took into account the analysis of the instruments which were identified as follows: assessing and tackling the problems, learning and fun go hand in hand, and in english, please. assessing and tackling the problems before the karaoke took place during the different stages of the study, there were two main karaoke activities with a set of procedures to be developed taking into account the fields students wanted to improve in. the activities were designed taking into account students’ needs and the problems they experienced with pronunciation. with the interviews, their main worries and challenges regarding this topic became known. i used interviews (both written and oral) in order to be more personal and to establish a rapport with all my students. the data was very spontaneous as the directions could be explained and re-explained; with the video camera, i could also observe their facial movements while they responded to the interview questions. the importance of this interview resided in focusing on their problems; hence, gaining their categories assessing and tackling the problems learning and fun go hand in hand in english, please meaningful for me expanding the tasks and exploiting i used english rating the progress cooperating with each other figure 2. categories and subcategories that appeared during the research. improving pronunciation through the use of karaoke in an adult english class profile 11, 2009. issn 1657-0790. bogotá, colombia. pages 91-105 99 attention as they discovered that the karaoke activities could help them with their problems in pronunciation. according to the results, i was able to begin to identify and categorize a set of problems students wanted to overcome. for instance, during the first interview, students were more worried about pronouncing new words, and during the next sessions, they discovered that minimal pairs were their favorite part to practice. using the questionnaires, interviews and comments in the different classes allowed me to reflect upon the different problems students experienced. first, a print interview was handed out in order to learn their views. the focus was on a specific question developed in the interview: what aspects of english pronunciation are the most difficult in your opinion? this was an open question. students expressed that the most difficult aspects were unknown vocabulary, linked sounds, contractions, minimal pairs and other aspects such as intonation. the results during the 5 sessions were the following: meaningful to me one of the main results that appeared in the interviews developed before every karaoke activity was related to the differentiation consonants or vowels sounds (minimal pairs). for example, why is the same letter pronounced differently in different sets of words? we know the pronunciation of the phoneme “i” changes so frequently that it is difficult for us to know the correct pronunciation. for the records, during the first interview, the students’ main concern was how to pronounce words they did not know; for this reason, i had to include vocabulary tasks within the first activity to later explain their meaning and their pronunciation taking into account students’ needs, i was able to get them interested in the activities of karaoke; also, i was able to establish some meaning for them regarding how karaoke and singing can provide great benefits. in the other activities, students were more concerned about minimal pairs. a few students did not know figure 3. difficulties in pronunciation. rengifo universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras100 to what extent the differences in the vowel pronunciation could alter the total meaning of a word; thus, they became more enthusiastic about learning these kinds of differences. in an interview carried out in spanish after one karaoke session, one student says1: interviewer: we’re here with armando perez, student of praxis. tell us what you think about this karaoke experience? armando pérez: the karaoke experience was good due to the fact that writing is different from pronouncing. we tend to confuse certain words when we speak, and this helps us make clear many facts, and also helps us clarify many aspects of pronunciation, and sounds we make when we speak. the interview above evidenced the worry that students shared in all our classes: the disparity between writing and pronouncing, one of the main challenges we face when we study english. this sub-category was important in order to analyze the main interests of students in the pronunciation area. expanding tasks and exploiting in this subcategory, students and teachers studied other real life examples of the previous activities: their expected and unexpected findings about where and when they could find these kinds of pronunciation tasks in a conversation, or in a book or lesson, etc. also, it was possible to find out how we could integrate the contents of a song with the contents of the activities. the tasks were important in order to establish a feeling of achievement among students; it could be observed that activities should not have a short-term impact, but a lasting one. hence, 1 data collected in spanish. translations belong to the author. the participants’ names have been changed. to test students’ pronunciation, practice and discussion were put into the activities as a way to measure students’ improvement. many of the tasks consisted of finding similar words that had the same/similar pattern of pronunciation or just making some kind of conversation and doing a more involved reading of the lyrics after having sung the song. students were able to find real life contexts where they could use the phonetics previously studied. in my diary i gathered that students often collected words that applied to the phonetic patterns using their textbooks, words they knew but that did not appear in the karaoke activity. they were able to converse fairly well as well as recognize how minimal pairs worked. other students, by hearing other conversations, could observe how minimal pairs worked in a real life context such as a conversation. for instance, in the activity number 4 (song: “bohemian rhapsody” by queen), students were supposed to find words with phonemes given in the activities; later they had to match the teacher’s pronunciation to finally make up a rule. sample activity 1. pronunciation practice. 1) the teacher will pronounce one of the two words. select the right one. [θ] thank tank both boat thin sin bath bat thick sick 2) select the right word according to the teacher’s pronunciation. [ð ] they day improving pronunciation through the use of karaoke in an adult english class profile 11, 2009. issn 1657-0790. bogotá, colombia. pages 91-105 101 breathe breed there dare than dan learning and fun go hand in hand in this category, i intended to describe students’ thoughts about the karaoke activities before, during and after implementation. i also contemplated promoting students’ participation and learning by bringing in exciting activities that led the students along a more efficient path of learning. this category also dealt with students’ feelings and strove to depict how much they enjoyed the activity in conjunction with how much they think they learnt. as i said during the description of the student population, many of them work or study full time; their english classes were an important complement to their life but not the main component. it is essential to note that some of them expected karaoke to be only singing, to have a good time on the sofa and wait for the brave student to sing in front of the class. others expected karaoke to perhaps be the opportunity to sing their favorite song and prove that they had a good voice. the different misconceptions about karaoke activity result from the institution’s never having put into practice this kind of karaoke activities related to aspects of the english language. another aspect was that students had gone to karaoke bars singing songs in spanish and relating this activity with heavy drinking and dancing. during the interviews, i received these kinds of comments: • karaoke is singing and listening to favorite songs. i hope they play the songs that i like. • with karaoke, we can get to know each other. i don’t know many people so i want to see who is attending. • i’d like to sing any song, i consider myself to have a good voice. • i want to see what the songs are about, the lyrics, and to join. in english, please this category intended to account for the degree students used english in the activity, their struggles as well as how well they coped with the different tasks and finally to rate their progress regarding pronunciation after the karaoke activities. this category was divided into the following three sub-categories: i used english, cooperating with each other and rating the progress. i used english in this subcategory, the main benefits of creating an environment in which english could be used to the maximum extent were studied. generates an atmosphere to promote students’ use of english in class as well as identification of the problems they had related to the activities. one of my concerns was if students really could use english all or most of the time during the karaoke activities. this was also useful for checking their advancement in pronunciation and their understanding of the tasks. according to the video transcripts, i realized that students were able to identify the purpose of the tasks; they used english mostly when interacting with the instructor and when they had to ask questions. unfortunately, spanish was mostly the choice when they worked with a partner or their last resource to check understanding. rengifo universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras102 extracts from the video transcripts showed me that the students who sat down in the front of the class were also the students who used english most of the time in contrast with the ones sitting in the back. another good opportunity to check their english usage was when students asked questions, for instance: vannessa pérez: teacher, what is the meaning of “baby, light my fire”. i do not understand. alexandra sanabria: i did not know about different pronunciations of [i]; in spanish we only have one. the conclusion was that karaoke was a good strategy not only to improve pronunciation, but also to promote the use of english in the classroom. thanks to this, the students had a meaningful time in which they could learn and practice the language. cooperating with each other one of the strategies that i wanted to enhance during the activities concerned cooperating with each other. by doing so the intention was to answer one of the questions related to what students’ reactions towards the activities were and the social behavior they reflected, which is important in recreating a good environment for learning english. as singing in front of a class or group could be a threatening situation for many of the participants, some were naturally shy and did not enjoy participating. others were afraid of looking silly in front of the class. that was why i chose activities and tasks which involved student cooperation. lightbown & spada (1999) explained that cooperative learning activities had been found to increase the self-confidence of students, including weaker ones, because every participant in a co-operative task had an important role to play. for instance, i collected this dialogue in spanish; two students were working together trying to solve a task. this dialogue caught my attention: jorge: help me complete this exercise, what option did you choose? narda: i put the first one, you see it sounds different to the others. jorge: true, we learn a lot with these activities. narda: that is why i always try to attend. karaoke activities proved to be a very good way to integrate people, to get them to work together and achieve good results in self-esteem, as many showed that they were capable of doing something previously unthinkable in front of the class such as singing, answering questions and so forth. rating the progress one of the main questions dealt with the effectiveness of karaoke to improve pronunciation. first to establish the fact that karaoke was fun, to create multiple activities and to get people to work together, i needed to research if karaoke was truly effective for improving students’ skills at pronunciation. to analyze this activity i used two techniques: one was a verbal technique in which students had to speak in front of the class, repeating and reading the sentences and also participating in open communication in the normal classes. the other one was based on the activities after singing the song and explaining the facts. first, thanks to the video and the diary, i could keep a record of their progress. many students, class after class improved their pronunciation by recognizing the different phonemes and their variations, learnt how to identify word, tasks and so forth, and with these activities i could tabulate their progress or their failure concerning the improving pronunciation through the use of karaoke in an adult english class profile 11, 2009. issn 1657-0790. bogotá, colombia. pages 91-105 103 karaoke activities. for instance, after listening to the song “one” by metallica, we performed a little test. the objective was to circle the word that was not pronounced with the phonemes [au]. the results were as follows: figure 4. correct answers in the test while listening to a song. it was the first time they had this kind of exercise. they did not know many words, but could recognize some patterns explained in the song and in the exercise. for an exercise with 10 questions, the results were outstanding. they also mentioned that they had advanced a lot during these exercises. their answers to the next question also showed the degree of conformity for the karaoke activities. figure 5. responses to the question: how would you rate your advance in pronunciation after the karaoke activities? this was during the first class and during the last class. these were the results to the same question. figure 6. answers gotten in the last class. the results were outstanding. most of the student stated that they had learnt a lot from the activities; also they stated that the karaoke activities were clear, important and vital to this progress. on the test, they did pretty well. the majority understood the basics, the phonemes and how the same phonemes can be pronounced differently. during the tests, no student had fewer than 6 questions correct out of 10. during the discussions, speaking activities, their pronunciation advanced greatly. conclusions taking into account the research question proposed for this project and based on all the information collected, it could be concluded that karaoke activities promoted learning in a laidback environment. karaoke, by itself, could be monotonous and a quick plan to have fun; but complemented with activities and tasks, karaoke itself could be the leading point to bring more original activities into the classroom without neglecting communicative, intellectual rengifo universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras104 and social factors. therefore, activities could be implemented into a serious and responsible syllabus. karaoke activities, then, could be and must be taken seriously. they were challenging for both students and teachers, not only because we needed to sing, but especially because teachers needed to prepare tasks and activities that were meaningful and related to the song and, at the same time, create a good atmosphere to accomplish these same tasks. students at the same instance were required to ponder the effectiveness of the activities. for purposes of these studies, students were eager to know about the activities more than the song itself after a series of sessions as, step by step, they discovered that the activities brought a lot of knowledge and good practice to enhance their pronunciation, independent of their musical tastes. the karaoke activities were and should be pertinent to the learning of english. in this project, pronunciation was the skill i focused on. teachers could implement lots of exercises from books or invent their own exercises, and using and exploiting these exercises with the purpose of singing could be more effective than using the books or exercises alone. one of the goals was that students and teachers use english most of the time that they interacted, responded and solved the exercises using the target language to learn. karaoke itself provided a lot of motivation to students to try to imitate the sounds and specially to find a relaxed atmosphere where they could use their english without fear of being criticized. feelings of selfachievement were so high that many students felt very comfortable speaking english even though they had limitations. it is important to conclude that karaoke brought tons of motivation into the class; nobody felt threatened or discouraged. comprehension and production on the part of the students were greatly positive and, for the results of this study, most of the students who attended the sessions enhanced their pronunciation notably. another aspect that was established in the objectives was to prepare a common ground to study students’ feelings and their responses towards the karaoke activities. the main result was that feelings of inhibition, fear or discouragement were totally eliminated. fortunately, thanks to the karaoke, students followed most of the “ten commandments” for good learning proposed by brown (2000) such as: lower inhibitions, encourage risk taking, develop intrinsic motivation, engage in cooperative learning, promote tolerance, among others. it was very important to take into account that the karaoke was used primarily to enhance students’ pronunciation and to be able to design, re-design, and adapt activities that could be integrated to the songs or to complement the karaoke songs. english phonetics and phonology are subjects that need discretion to be taught. my intention in this study was to show the basics and to help solve more doubts and uncertainties students have. the limitations come to my mind are the cases where i could not integrate more profound elements such as tone, pitch or risefall intonation. another intention was to be able to prepare students to distinguish the basics, to be able to immerse them in an appropriate but familiar way in the world of phonetics and phonology. for further research, i would like to integrate aspects such as those named above using the karaoke. let us remember that karaoke can also be used to read texts. references brown, d. (2000). principles of language learning and teaching (4th edition). white plains, ny: longman. improving pronunciation through the use of karaoke in an adult english class profile 11, 2009. issn 1657-0790. bogotá, colombia. pages 91-105 105 brown, j. (2001). using surveys in language programs. cambridge: cambridge university press. burns, a. (1999). collaborative action research for english language teachers. cambridge: cambridge university press. dale, p., & poms, l. (1986). english pronunciation for spanish speakers. englewood cliffs, new jersey: prentice hall regents. davies, p., & pearse, e. (2000). success in english teaching. oxford: oxford university press. giles, h. (n.d.). personal quotes. retrieved on march 3, 2009 from http://www.giga-usa.com/quotes/ authors/henry_giles_a001.htm hopkins, d. (1993). a teacher’s guide to classroom research. london: open university press. kemmis, s., & mctaggart, r. (1982).the action research planner (2nd edition). waurn ponds, vic: deakin university school of education. lightbown, p., & spada, n. (1999). how languages are learned. oxford: oxford university press. mcdonough, j., & mcdonough, s. (1997). research methods for english language teachers. new york: st. martin’s press, inc. murphey, t. (1992). music & song. oxford: oxford university press. stern, h. (1992). issues and options and language teaching. oxford: oxford university press. wong, r. (1993). pronunciation myths and facts. forum, 31, (october), 45-46. about the author andrés roberto rengifo is an english teacher interested in didactics, computer, networking, cisco networking, and music. graduated from sheridan tech college in networking and support services. comptia certified in a+ and n+. tofl certified by noorwood english, ireland, special education studies at broward community college. currently finishing his b.a in english at universidad nacional de colombia as well as finishing his mcsa certifications. profile 4 2003.p65 ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ 7 profileprofileprofileprofileprofile ����� � �� ��� �� ����� “publishing is a way for members of the academic community to share ideas and possibly contribute something to the world’s store of knowledge. to publish is to engage in a dialogue with unseen and often unknown others”. 1 education is constantly seeking change, innovation and higher standards. this can be possible if, besides other factors, teachers are committed and willing to achieve target goals. this is the case of teachers who have opted to expand their teaching role by writing their reflections on their daily job, by innovating current practices and systematising them or by being researchers who then share what they have found. it is well-known that teacher researchers are uniquely positioned to provide a truly emic, or insider’s, perspective that makes visible the ways that students and teachers construct knowledge and curriculum together. they can also confront established theories against particular teaching conditions and, what is perhaps more important, come up with new foundations. this advantageous position gives validity to findings from classroom research, which in the end widens the scope of existing knowledge. luckily, and despite difficult working conditions, an increasing number of teachers in colombia have decided to base decisions on systematic inquiries whose results are then disseminated in formal or informal forums and, what is perhaps more important, through publications. before introducing the various articles in this issue, it is important to add that the profile journal is highly committed to encouraging novice and experienced teachers and teacher researchers to share the findings of their innovations and investigations as well as their reflections through publishing. this way, we are sure, we can validate theories and enrich pedagogical knowledge in english language teaching and teacher education. 1 benson, m. j. (2000). writing an a cademic article: an editor writes… forum english teaching, 32 (2), 33-35. ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ 8profileprofileprofileprofileprofile the articles included in this number cover a variety of issues. we begin with an article which reports on the first part of a larger research project in progress, whose main purpose is to investigate functions of language instructors’ oral behaviours in the development of english as a foreign language (efl) classes. the findings of this project reveal that teachers do most of the talking. the study also demonstrates that oral teaching strategies in the classroom affect the participation process of students. then, two articles based on small-research projects concentrate on the evaluation of curricular issues in practice. one of them informs us about the implementation and evaluation of teaching practices in the area of oral communication and concludes that oral portfolios and debates help students develop oral proficiency and support their self-regulation processes. the second article reports on a collaborative research project. it evaluates if there were discrepancies or not among the methodology proposed in the english program, students’ needs and what the teacher was actually doing in her classes at a rural school in cundinamarca (colombia). the analysis of data showed that there were matches and mismatches among those three aspects. a fourth article explores second graders’ development as writers through different literacy activities and shows evidence of the significant growth in the type of texts written by children and in the quality of interaction they had when constructing texts. continuing with our initiative to promote the publication of research findings by novice teacher researchers, in the second part of this issue we have three articles related to projects carried out by teacher researchers while teaching english in public schools, specifically in primary and secondary levels. the tendency in colombia to focus education on the development of students’ basic competences has motivated future english teachers to inquire about the way they could be fostered in the foreign language classroom. this is the case of a study carried out with 5th graders in order to encourage the development of children’s oral communicative competence through play. after that, an article concerning the development of tasks intended to link english and science in a secondary school is presented. as the research study was carried out in a public school where english is just one area of the curriculum, we can find practical implications for the integration of other areas in the english classroom. finally, we include an article concerning the effects teachers’ attitudes and methodologies can have on students’ self esteem. the last section of our journal includes reflections and innovations which can shed light on three common concerns among english teachers. the first one has to do with the problem of grammar in communicative language teaching. the author highlights selected focus on form instruction and uptake research and argues that uptake shows that focus on form instruction does not offer sufficient attention to grammar for efl students. next, a teaching experience regarding an efl reading programme for a group of 12 to 14year-olds (6th and 7th graders), whose english levels varied from almost nil to semiconversational, is presented. finally, a school teacher reflects upon her experience teaching english in primary and high schools. we hope that you will find the contents of this number relevant to your teaching context and cordially invite you to consider sharing your reflections, innovations, and research experiences through this publication. melba libia cármelba libia cármelba libia cármelba libia cármelba libia cárdenas beltrándenas beltrándenas beltrándenas beltrándenas beltrán journal editor analysis of children’s english language learning evidences when engaging in project work profile 8, 2007. issn 1657-0790. bogotá, colombia. pages 9-23 9 analysis of children’s english language learning evidences when engaging in project work* análisis de las evidencias del aprendizaje del inglés en niños, cuando se involucran en un trabajo por proyectos alix argenis cáceres arbeláez** institución educativa distrital gustavo restrepo, colombia diana rocío unigarro millán*** ied liceo femenino mercedes nariño, colombia in this article we want to share the great experience of working by projects because our fifth graders showed us the huge potential they have to explore, investigate, create and learn english. teachers have to motivate students to work in class because they are anxious to acquire new knowledge. we can do this by integrating the contents of the syllabus for fifth grade, by contextualizing it and putting it into action. of course, we have to take into account our students’ needs, likes and expectations in order to steer them into a project. in this way, we can prepare our students to face the learning processes in an easy, funny and enjoyable way. key words: project work, contextualized learning, managing learning process en este artículo queremos compartir una gran experiencia de trabajo por proyectos, porque nuestros estudiantes de quinto grado nos mostraron las enormes potencialidades que tienen para explorar, investigar, crear y aprender inglés. los docentes tienen que motivar a los estudiantes a trabajar en clase porque ellos están ansiosos por adquirir nuevas cosas. nosotros podemos hacerlo a través de la integración de contenidos del programa para grado quinto, su contextualización y su puesta en acción. por supuesto, debemos tener en cuenta las necesidades, gustos y expectativas de nuestros estudiantes para enfocarlos en un proyecto. de esta manera, podemos preparar a nuestros estudiantes para enfrentar el proceso de aprendizaje en forma fácil, divertida y agradable. palabras clave: trabajo por proyectos, aprendizaje contextualizado, administración del proceso de aprendizaje * this paper reports on a study conducted by the authors, while participating in the profile teacher development programme, at universidad nacional de colombia, in 2005. the programme was sponsored by secretaría de educación de bogotá, d.c. code number: 30501006055. ** e-mail: alixargenis@gmail.com address: carrera 24a no. 11-80 sur interior 7 apto 404. bogotá, colombia *** e-mail: dyayis75@hotmail.com address: carrera 115 no. 89b 20 interior 10 apto 203. bogotá, colombia this article was received on february 1st, 2007 and accepted on july 16th, 2007. profile 8.indd 9 28/09/2007 12:42:11 a.m. cáceres arbeláez and unigarro millán universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras10 introduction considering that our students have not had a good language learning process for many reasons; namely, the absence of a permanent teacher, lack of english syllabus, low intensity, a big number of students per course and the necessity to make students level with a proper, practical and fast teaching-learning strategy, and in order to guarantee a better performance at the secondary level, we decided to incorporate project work into our teaching. according to cuspoca (2002, p. 28), it is defined as a “set of teaching strategies that includes multi-skill activities, ideas and resources. it allows teachers to guide students through an in-depth investigation of a real world topic worthy of children’s attention and efforts because it tries to solve one of their problems or any other of their daily activities that require a previous plan”. we noticed that our students needed a change in the way english was taught, and this type of process could be implemented because of our children’s good attitude towards the english class. besides, we consider the most important issue is to make our classes and knowledge meaningful and contextualized. we believe that when our students can participate and be responsible for their teaching-learning process, this can leave a positive print on them and in our community. another important aspect that we considered when selecting this type of work was that we wanted to integrate the contents of the syllabus for fifth grade, contextualize it and put it into action with the intention of getting good results. in our case, we chose the “creation of a new planet” as the backbone of the project with topics such as “physical and personal description”, “solar system”, “relief and housing” and “weather”. we worked on those themes having in mind easy-to-follow steps and the creation of a final product as well as an oral presentation. taking into account all the previous description, we established a main research question and two secondary questions as our concern. they are the following ones: how is the students’ english language learning evidenced when engaging in project work? secondary questions: what features can be seen in the student’s production when she/he is taking part in the development of the project? what does students’ production tell us about their learning? review of literature this section includes relevant theoretical aspects related to our research project; namely, children’s characteristics and project work. children’s characteristics based on piaget’s book, seis estudios de psicología (1955), and on our experience working with children for several years, we can assert that when a child is seven years old and begins the scholarliness, his mental development has transcendental changes. when talking about children’s behavior and their socialization, we find interesting things. for example, it is really difficult to establish the differences among individual and collaborative work/learning because children talk but they do not really listen to each other. sometimes, many students do – – – profile 8.indd 10 28/09/2007 12:42:11 a.m. analysis of children’s english language learning evidences when engaging in project work profile 8, 2007. issn 1657-0790. bogotá, colombia. pages 9-23 11 the same work but we do not know if they are helping each other or if they are talking about their daily situations. after seven years old, children can distinguish between individual and group work because they can concentrate when they are working alone, but at the same time, they know how, when and where to cooperate when they have a social or common life, and because of the knowledge of their own point of view and the others’. we can notice children’s negotiation throughout the dialogue. they justify, discuss and take decisions of their thought and not of their writing productions. the interesting point of these contrasts is that kids begin to be more social and intellectual and, at the same time, are able to coordinate new things that influence their thought and affectiveness. in other words, children are engaged in logical thinking at one stage of their thought development, so it implies children’s actions are a materialization of their intelligence and their will is an expression of their affectiveness. in addition, when children are growing up, we can notice the transformation of their thought when they talk about some perceptions or conceptions of time, space, action and reaction, as well as expressions of their intuition. this is a high level of thought development and here we can see the balance it can achieve. some deep transformations happen in the second stage of childhood affectiveness. when children cooperate among themselves, they coordinate their points of view and secure their autonomy and cohesion. so, the affectiveness between seven and twelve year olds looks like new moral feelings and mainly like a voluntary act that reflects a better integration. the reciprocal respect reflects new kinds of moral feelings; this is evidenced in their obedience to the internal (family) and to the external (small groups) patterns. because of all of these children’s characteristics, the implementation of a proper strategy in education and in social life guarantees success in children’s intelligence and personality development. about project work project work is a set of teaching strategies based on students’ needs and interests that complements the teacher methodology, and can be part of the grade syllabus or the general curriculum. in project work, students participate all the time by choosing the main topic, developing and presenting it, sharing responsibility with the teacher and improving the teaching-learning process. in addition, it is the opportunity to begin, especially in our case with primary, the sensibilization of the research process. as chard (1999) defines in cuspoca (2002, p. 26), “a project is an in-depth investigation of a real world topic worthy of children’s attention and efforts. this study can be carried out by a class or by small groups of children of any age.” also, this type of work allows creating a plan and designing some specific steps to arrive at a final product. according to fried-booth (1990), in cuspoca (2002, p. 26), “project work is a systematic plan that includes multi-skill activities, ideas and resources, among others, having the tendency to solve a problem or any other daily activity that requires a previous plan. otherwise, it will be a set of disorganized incoherent activities. for this reason, project work must have a logical organization with curriculum profile 8.indd 11 28/09/2007 12:42:11 a.m. cáceres arbeláez and unigarro millán universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras12 objectives to avoid teachers carrying out activities without a specific purpose or orientation and to prevent the teachers’ from improvising their work”. of course, we are not developing a new methodology; instead, we are using a way to complement and enrich our teaching style or method in order to make it enjoyable for our students. it is primarily an approach to learning which complements mainstream methods and which can be used with almost all students’ levels, ages and abilities. for haines (1989, p. 33), “project work provides students with opportunities to recycle known language and skills in a relatively natural context. project work can consist of intensive activities which take place over a short period of time or extended studies which may take up to one or two hours a week for several weeks, depending on the children’s ages and the nature of the topic”. characteristics project work allows children to feel a real sense of achievement. as highlighted by cuspoca (2002), its main characteristics are: student–centered, not syllabus-centered: when you decide to work by projects, it has to start with the base of children interest; for this reason, the contents of the syllabus could change depending on that, and it can become a secondary element. the project is not designed to suit a syllabus, and the language required derives not from the textbook, but from the nature of the project itself. cooperative not competitive: for a project to succeed, a good working relationship needs to be established. the students must be able to cooperate not only with each other, but also with the teacher. skill-based, not structure-based: in a traditional way, the teacher worries about the grammar structure as the main basis of english learning, but in project work, students learn grammar unconsciously. during this process and through their questions, students understand the implicit structure in a meaningful way. the importance of the end product: it is the opportunity for students to show their talent and learning. it should be carefully planned for and has to be the children’s work, not the teachers’. it is the important evidence of their learning process. the influence of project work on students’ personality and knowledge: as ribé & vidal (2003, p. 6) mentioned, “a project involves the development of the whole child, rather than focusing narrowly on teaching language. within the framework of a project we can include the full range of skills that children are developing in their other classes and during their time out of school such as: the intellectual skills of describing, drawing conclusions, using imagination, hypothesizing, reading, and planning. the physical/motor skills of coloring, painting, cutting, folding, gluing, and writing. the social skills of sharing, cooperating, making decisions together, and appreciating how individual contributions can make a successful whole. learner independence skills such as making responsible choices, deciding how to complete tasks, getting information, trying things out, and evaluating results”. – – – – profile 8.indd 12 28/09/2007 12:42:11 a.m. analysis of children’s english language learning evidences when engaging in project work profile 8, 2007. issn 1657-0790. bogotá, colombia. pages 9-23 13 this approach encourages emotional and personal development. wherever possible, children are given an opportunity to produce work which is personal and individual, which reflects their ideas, tastes, and interests; they are encouraged to express their feelings, and their opinions are sought and valued. types of project work project work can be classified into different types or categories. the most suitable format for a given context depends on a variety of factors, including curricular objectives, course expectations, students’ proficiency levels, students’ interests, time constraints, and availability of materials. the type of project work we implemented was a production project proposed by henry (cited in stoller, 1997, pp. 2-9). for this reason, we want to explain in the following lines what it entails. production projects are the most popular types of work since they can be adapted to suit any age or level of students. students may create a bulletin board display, a poster session, a writer’s report, a letter, a handbook, a brochure, a travel itinerary, or a banquet menu. students may also produce a traditional style publication or design their own ideal newspaper, concentrating on the kinds of stories or features they feel are missing from existing publications. this kind of project offers plenty of scope to students with artistic talents. in addition to writing, there are opportunities for individuals to work on design and layout, photography and illustration. students can also produce music, news stories, comedy, interviews, educational games and radio programs. in our case, we decided to work with our students on this kind of project because in primary school they need to be motivated to present or show their improvements and results through a final presentation and because it can be adapted to elementary school easily. research procedure we decided that our project was a combination of innovation and action research because we changed the way english had been taught in our schools and we applied a systematic process in order to solve some particular problems such as low level of learning, few hours per week, large classes, ways to assess students’ learning process and the difficulty in meaningful learning. at the same time burns (1994, p. 293) says “action research is the application of fact finding to practical problem solving in a social situation with a view to improving the quality of action within it involving the collaboration and cooperation of researchers, practitioners and laymen”. the application of this research methodology allows implementing strategies, reflecting and evaluating to develop a better learning process in the classroom and to solve everyday problems. setting and participants we developed our project in two schools: ied gustavo restrepo and ied liceo femenino mercedes nariño, in different shifts. the level we worked with was fifth grade and we found that their population belonged to 1, 2 and 3 social strata. students families’ economy is based on informal jobs and the majority of them have no professional studies. it means that in these profile 8.indd 13 28/09/2007 12:42:11 a.m. cáceres arbeláez and unigarro millán universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras14 institutions there are children with a great necessity of a good education that provides them the opportunity to earn a university title or a better lifestyle. on the other hand, talking about english level, we could see that the previous process of language learning in ied gustavo restrepo had many difficulties because of the lack of a long-term teacher and the differences among students’ rhythm of learning; some of them (1.2 %) had professional support (psychology and therapy) because of their low cognitive level and the integration that some students (0.6 %) had from special to regular education. in ied liceo femenino, where there was not always a teacher nor a syllabus that fulfilled the children necessities, we found pupils who were exposed to many lists of isolated words without a communicative purpose. last year, when a teacher was appointed, it began to change a little. it means that for the project pupils had better conditions compared to the group of the other school. however, the main problem here was the lack of continuous classes because of the quantity of institutional activities. so, our selected population had a low level of english in both cases, not only for the reasons aforementioned but because of the particular conditions, too. techniques used for data collection video recordings we decided to apply this technique because, as hubbard (1999, p. 95) says, videotaping is useful for a detailed look at many unnoticed facts that occur at the same time during the development of a class, even more when unrolling a project work. video recording was the first technique for data collection because when we explored students’ interests, we could see the high level of motivation and decided to capture those attitudes through recording. in addition, and in order to prepare students for the final presentation, we video recorded them doing the presentations about their products at the end of each unit. journals in spite of the differences among diaries and journals, one commonality wallace (1998, p. 62) observes is “the main attraction of the diary, as opposed to other ways of articulating reflection, is that the writer can be totally honest and forthright in his or her comments”. this technique for data collection was useful for our action-research project, because we could compare the experiences in each school, we could make an analysis of the students’ language learning process throughout the development of the guides and many other planned activities, and at the end, we could have evidence of students’ results working by projects. immediately after having a class with the selected population, we wrote the activities, details, attitudes, feelings, behaviors and the development of the class providing the corresponding comments or analysis. tape recordings in order to register students’ oral production, we decided to record their voices in a previous exhibition to prepare students for the final presentation. at the same time, we wanted to let them listen to the tape to check tone of voice, pronunciation, some possible mistakes and reinforce their performance. profile 8.indd 14 28/09/2007 12:42:11 a.m. analysis of children’s english language learning evidences when engaging in project work profile 8, 2007. issn 1657-0790. bogotá, colombia. pages 9-23 15 as hubbard & power (1999) claim, “when teachers do transcribe tapes, they often choose snippets of conversations to illustrate key points in their research” (pp. 95-96). students’ works taking into account the type of project (production project) and the elementary school level we worked with, this technique was one of the most important in this process because it was our main evidence of the students` progress and motivation. pedagogical design once we read different authors and their model proposals and having in mind our expectations, our population, topic and type of project, we considered that the friedbooth model fit our needs. fried-booth (1990) proposes an easy-tofollow multiple-step process that can guide teachers in developing and sequencing project work for their classroom as follows: 1. stimulus this is the initial discussion about the main topic and possible suggestions to work on it. the most used language skills involved are speaking and listening, with possible reference to prior reading. 2. definition of the project objective during this stage, it is possible to develop activities such as discussion, negotiation, and argumentation. the longer the total time available for the project is, the more detailed this phase will be. the main language skills involved are speaking and listening, probably with some note-taking. 3. practice of language skills this stage includes those parts of the language the students feel are needed for the initial stage of the project, e.g. for data collection. it also includes a variety of language functions, e.g. introductions, suggestions, asking for information, etc., and may involve any of the four skills (particularly writing, in the form of notetaking). 4. design of written materials some examples of these (questionnaires, maps, grids, etc.) are required for data collection. reading and writing skills are prominent here. 5. group activities these are designed to gather information. students may work individually, in pairs or in small groups, inside or outside the classroom. their tasks include conducting interviews or surveys and gathering facts. all four skills are needed at this stage. 6. collecting information this activity can be done in groups in the classroom. the skills that are emphasized at this stage are reading, specially notes, and speaking when explaining visual material such as graphs. the emphasis is on discussion. 7. organization of material at this stage the students are developing the end-product of the project and emphasize profile 8.indd 15 28/09/2007 12:42:11 a.m. cáceres arbeláez and unigarro millán universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras16 discussion, negotiation, reading for crossreference and verification. however, the main skill practiced is writing. 8. final presentation the manner of presentation depends on the form of the end product such as chart, booklet, video display or oral presentation, and on the manner of demonstration. the main skill required is likely to be speaking, but it could be backed up by other skills. we considered ribé & vidal’s web (2003, p. 11) composed of vocabulary, grammar functions, motor skills, etc., in a diagram useful in order to have a complete view of the project process, activities and language skills. in addition, it made it easier to understand the implications and to do the lesson planning. as a consequence, our lessons were planned taking into account a series of activities and themes that is listed below. throughout the adaptation of the above-mentioned project web to the theme, we chose for the project: “wow, we have a new planet in our solar system”. we discovered that it was possible to fulfill a part of the syllabus depending on the topic of the students’ project. for this reason, our students worked on the proposal of a new planet and we developed four units with the main topics that we considered important in terms of students’ required knowledge for the next grade. then, we organized the units’ contents in a web in order to see easily the topics the project developed through its implementation (see diagram 2 and appendix 1). diagram 1. project web: lesson activities (based on ribé & vidal, 2003, p. 11). speaking: repeating words, asking and answering questions, singing songs, discussions, explanations/ arguments, oral presentations. weather reports. vocabulary: adjectives, colors, parts of the body, clothes, planets, relief, parts of the house grammar/ functions, to be – simple present, adjectives, articles, possessive adj. writing: copying from the board, descriptors, weather reports, completing guides evaluations. listening to: instructions, questions, songs, explanations. reading: short articles, guides, lyrics, instructions, books, encyclopedias, internet information. curriculum areas: science, literature, social sciences motor skills: coloring, drawing, playing games, modeling, cutting, gluing. “wow! we have a new planet in our solar system” profile 8.indd 16 28/09/2007 12:42:12 a.m. analysis of children’s english language learning evidences when engaging in project work profile 8, 2007. issn 1657-0790. bogotá, colombia. pages 9-23 17 data analysis and findings sometimes, starting an english learning process with children from a public elementary school is difficult because of their conditions and the context we mentioned before, especially when you try to speak all the time in english and you do not have enough time to work with them. bearing in mind the strengths of project work and that ied liceo femenino mercedes nariño had programmed in the syllabus one unit named “the universe”, students and the teacher talked about the different elements that comprise the solar system. children mentioned that in the news they had talked about the existence of one or two more planets in our galaxy. without being conscious of that, we began a conversation about the possibility of the existence of life on other planets, how children imagine these worlds, the differences between earth and other planets, etc. so, the teacher proposed their working with this theme in a project in future classes and they immediately accepted it happily. later, this decision was also made by the teacher working at ied gustavo restrepo and her group. considering this exploration of the topic, we decided to stimulate our students by giving them the opportunity to expand the selected topic using information and discussing it in spanish. it was very meaningful for them and for us, so, we video recorded this to register the results of this teaching and learning strategy. then, during the development of the project, we used a journal to collect and record aspects that we felt very important, little details that teachers usually do not pay attention to in a normal class. parallel to that, we did a tape recording of students’ final presentation to register students’ oral production; it was a practice of the final exhibit and a way for children not to feel nervous. finally, the day when pupils made diagram 2. project web: unit contents. relief and housing relief components, earth description, parts of the house, creation and description of a new planet relief and houses. physical and personal description: people, aliens, creation of a new alien. 33 solar system: components, planets and sebna description, creation and description of a new planet into the solar system. reading: short articles, guides, lyrics, instructions, books, encyclopedias, internet information. “wow! we have a new planet in our solar system”and houses. 3 3 profile 8.indd 17 28/09/2007 12:42:12 a.m. cáceres arbeláez and unigarro millán universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras18 the final presentation, we did a second video recording to compare with the first one and to see if there was progress. it was very interesting to read, share and compare the results from both schools in our meetings though sometimes there were difficulties of time and scheduling. we had the opportunity to establish differences and commonalities in the project development from both schools. on the other hand, these discussions allowed us to analyze and specially to validate the impact of the project because we applied the same project in two different contexts with similar and, in some cases, the same results in the four techniques for data collection. in the following paragraphs, we present the analysis of the data that we obtained in this experience, keeping in mind our main question and secondary questions. what can be seen in the student’s production when s/he is taking part in the development of the project? bearing in mind that the word “production” has a narrow meaning when talking about project work, we analyzed many aspects that are involved in it. thus, we considered that aspects like oral expression, writing process, artistic creations, etc. could show us our students’ strengths and weaknesses in the whole process and conclusion of the project. thus, when examining students’ production we divided our analysis in three main aspects: oral, writing and artistic production. oral production in our case, we worked with fifth graders under some special conditions that we explained before; so, it was difficult for them to express themselves orally and to talk english clearly. in the development of the first part of the project, students had the opportunity to look for information in spanish about aliens and held a discussion about their existence. students showed a high level of motivation throughout this activity. although this exercise was not in english, it allowed us to see their need to acquire the corresponding vocabulary in the foreign language. then, when the teacher gave them this vocabulary, students began to participate in class without the fear of making mistakes. during the unrolling of the other stages, student’s oral production was characterized by grammar and syntactic errors e.g. student a: it has one flower green. (class no.15, line 7. 2005). in other cases they had some phonological and semantic problems e.g. student a: this planet has hate rooms… eight rooms… moons… eight moons. (class no.15, line 8. 2005). another important aspect to remark upon regarding other students’ oral productions was that they were silent when they did not feel secure to talk or present some description, maybe because of the lack of specific vocabulary and simple structures, but throughout the teacher’s questions they gave the correct answers e.g. student b: teacher cómo se dice calvo en inglés? student c: teacher cómo se dice antenas o tentáculos? (class no.12, lines from 13 to 16. 2005). profile 8.indd 18 28/09/2007 12:42:12 a.m. analysis of children’s english language learning evidences when engaging in project work profile 8, 2007. issn 1657-0790. bogotá, colombia. pages 9-23 19 this means that they could express orally but with mistakes e.g. “finally, groups began to present their works but they were so shy and, because of that, they did it through teacher’s questions”. teacher: what is its name? how old is it? is it tall or short? is it fat or thin? how many eyes? (class no.12, lines from 30 to 33, 2005). the success of working by projects in english was evidenced in the students’ oral production because they could evidence their learning. as seen in the final presentation, student d, who looked nervous, said: “my house doesn’t have bedrooms, doesn’t have kitchen, doesn’t have bathroom…” to mean that his house has those dependencies. nevertheless, the audience understood what he said. we consider that the most important thing is to transmit a message, in this case, to their partners, parents and teachers. in the last classes, we could also see that students look for the way to make people understand what they wanted to say. in addition, their motivation to talk arrived via other contexts; for example, the use of some english expressions to ask for permission or to comment something short in math class or in the others. likewise, in the final presentation, in spite of their anxiety to speak in english and the wish to achieve the goals of the project, students could transmit the message; they talked taking into account the audience and felt satisfied with the results. student e: different courses and teachers had visited us and they had congratulated us because of our english and job. student f´s mother: teacher, i am really surprised to see my son’s performance because he is very shy and he could speak in front of the audience and even more in english. teacher, what did you do? student a´s mother: wow our girls are bilinguals. (final presentation, 2005) during the presentation of the planets, many girls pointed out the planet’s characteristic by saying the following: student g: it has big head, six arms… student h: the name of the planet is bobbylandia, it is green and red, it is round… student i: our planet thunder has eight moons, two suns, one ring… (final presentation, different lines, 2005). as can be seen, they made sure the children from first grade and teachers visiting the exhibit could understand the main idea of the whole presentations. on the other hand, in the final presentation of ied gustavo restrepo, fifth graders could let the audience see their knowledge in connection to their proposal of planets, houses, aliens, relief, etc. some of them did it slowly, maybe because they were nervous or because they did not want to make mistakes. in one group we could especially see different features in the students’ oral production when they presented their final products; one of them was a very shy kid, but in spite of this, he could describe his alien without mistakes. he had a challenge not only with himself, but with his friends. the second boy performed well in all areas and was motivating his classmates to make their presentations with effort, enthusiasm, security, and excellence. but this kid was saying the opposite. it means that he wanted to say that his house had different dependencies but using the expression “it doesn’t have…” fortunately everybody understood. profile 8.indd 19 28/09/2007 12:42:12 a.m. cáceres arbeláez and unigarro millán universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras20 writing production taking into account the students’ previous learning process where they only learned isolated words and did not write whole sentences nor paragraphs, when we applied the project we could note progress in both schools. in ied liceo femenino mercedes nariño, the teacher guided students to work on key vocabulary and then asked them to write a descriptive paragraph of their alien without a specific model. the results were that some students wrote a list of sentences and others tried to build a paragraph, but both with grammar and syntactic errors / problems e.g. natalie’s group: “the alien has curly, hair red and long”. in this case, the teacher identified positive aspects: students needed to look for more vocabulary because they tried to follow a model from spanish texts. they wanted to be very specific and although students who wrote paragraphs had many grammar mistakes, they were not limited in their imagination and production. at ied gustavo restrepo the teacher applied a different strategy to explore the writing process: students had to use the learned vocabulary in a model paragraph by writing specific information in the corresponding blanks. this strategy allowed students to make fewer errors or mistakes than in free writing of descriptive paragraphs. in addition, students could internalize simple structures to build a paragraph. for instance, they learned about the right order to describe body parts: subject + verb + quantity + size or length + body part (e.g. “our alien has three long arms and two short legs.”) and they learned to use the auxiliary “does” to write a negative statement (e.g.“r-7 does not have hair.”, “tutti does not have legs.”). nevertheless, there were limitations in expressing all they wanted and they sometimes preferred not to mention any other aspect to widen their description. likewise, for the final presentation students could understand and value the importance of organizing their thoughts in writing to improve their expression, while they could become spontaneous in their communication. in the case of ied liceo femenino, girls made a folder with four pages, each one with a paragraph describing the product of each unit. for example, in the first unit the paragraph was about alien’s description. it was amazing to see how they improved; and they were able to build a complete paragraph using not only simple structures. also, students lost their fear of writing in english. artistic production when kids are engaged in a production project (haines, 1989), they have the possibility to show their artistic abilities by creating an alien, a new planet, a relief and a house. in our case, it was a good starting point to catch students’ attention and motivate them to work enthusiastically. in that sense, students with low levels of participation in class could increase their oral production, write better, and increase their knowledge throughout imaginative tasks. the importance of this kind of production is that students could evidence their knowledge in an artifact and acquired new vocabulary. in other words, the artistic production encouraged them to learn more and better, as we mentioned in the literature review. profile 8.indd 20 28/09/2007 12:42:12 a.m. analysis of children’s english language learning evidences when engaging in project work profile 8, 2007. issn 1657-0790. bogotá, colombia. pages 9-23 21 our students’ artifacts were characterized by big models in which they used recycled materials combined with plasticine, paints, lané, styrofoam, etc. sometimes they made their models out of proportion; it means that they built a big alien but its planet was small, or their aliens were bigger than their houses. they usually used the third dimension where they could stand the scale models up and exhibit them easily. comparing the results at ied liceo femenino and at gustavo restrepo, we could find meaningful differences. the first is a female school and in the second one, the population is mixed. productions differed in terms of details and points of view, and they were connected to students’ gender. for example, the kind of materials they used were different: girls used fine paper in several colors, some candies or some detailed objects as part of their works, while in the second school, some boys used simple paper without many objects. girls were more worried about the aesthetic part and the mixed groups were more practical in terms of resources. final presentations were also different. for instance, at ied liceo femenino, girls organized an exhibition similar to the science fair, where each group were located in a specific place in their classrooms and the visitors walked around to listen to their presentation with the guide girl. in some cases, it was curious to see students’ interests and motivation demonstrated in beautiful works, in the classroom decoration and in their disguises that some of the girls used for the final presentation (make up, antennas, etc.). on the other hand, at ied gustavo restrepo, students prepared the technology room to present their final products. there, kids organized their scale models in some big tables and presented them according to the program they had established. students presented in front of the coordinators, some parents, teachers and classmates. kids expressed their artistic skills not only with their products but with the exhibition of large posters of relief, solar system and some big signs or labels they had done for the final purpose. what does their production tell us about their learning process? during the development of this action research and its corresponding analysis, we were worried about the learning process or the process that students followed to acquire knowledge in a permanent and continuous way. working by projects showed a great increase of motivation because students were inspired by their topics of interest and the process was not based on curriculum contents. almost all teachers are worried about following a specific sequence of themes that children have to receive and manage according to age and scholarly maturity, but sometimes the results are children with little vocabulary that is not meaningful for them. in our case, we could complete most of the contents without a specific order but in a meaningful way because students had the opportunity to propose the theme and to be responsible for its development. students respected the internal (small groups/ classroom) and external patterns (teachers/parents) and it helped to establish rules, to cooperate and coordinate their points of view, and, as a consequence, they achieved better integration that allowed them to work profile 8.indd 21 28/09/2007 12:42:12 a.m. cáceres arbeláez and unigarro millán universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras22 together in order to complement and learn collaboratively. the living together troubles were solved during the development of the project. during the process we could see how students integrated their roles or functions into the group in order to obtain good results and they had the responsibility of working satisfactorily in front of the whole group; of course, in some cases, groups broke up maybe because one of the members could not assume his / her responsibility and maybe because he or she felt insecure; but finally they could face this reality without fighting and the results were significant. on the whole, students’ level of participation in class increased. in addition, we could say that it is necessary to prepare or stimulate students by giving them vocabulary and grammar explanations as a warm-up or to support them in order to have more results not only in their productions, but also in their emotional part so that they feel secure in their performance in class. conclusions taking in to account our research questions and the development of our project, we found english language learning evidenced in fifth grade students when engaging in project work via two main aspects: their behavior and their production. about students’ behavior we can say that when children are motivated, everything is possible. in our specific case, pupils were interested in the project all the time; they chose the topic, and they were responsible and happy with the process, although at the end, they were worried about showing their progress in it. in addition, we were surprised to see students’ ability to analyze, deduce and think logically. they could establish some simple comparisons; they could speculate about the weather of an imaginary planet according to its location in space and deduce the clothes that the inhabitants should use according to the climate conditions, etc. our pupils were not afraid to propose a new planet using a foreign language. likewise, students learnt to work together, to solve their differences and to join together as a team to elaborate a product collaboratively, respecting other’s opinions. in a community like ours, it is important to work in groups, to know how to live with others, to contribute, and to take advantage of others’ knowledge. about the children’s production, it was delightful to report that they had a great improvement in their writing, oral and artistic performance. our pupils, in this moment, do not have a fear of talking or writing in english, neither of showing their artistic talent. actually, they wrote complete paragraphs describing people, a relief, a house or a planet and presented their production orally as well. also, they used recycling material in the creation of their manual artifacts. of course, they made mistakes but they are conscious that they are in a process and maybe later on they are going to do it better. references cuspoca, j. (2002). project work in early literacy in an efl context. thesis, master program in applied linguistics for the teaching of english as a foreign language. bogotá, d.c.: universidad distrital francisco josé de caldas. fried-booth, d. (1990). project work. resource books for teachers. hong kong: oxford university press. profile 8.indd 22 28/09/2007 12:42:12 a.m. analysis of children’s english language learning evidences when engaging in project work profile 8, 2007. issn 1657-0790. bogotá, colombia. pages 9-23 23 haines, s. (1989). projects for the efl classroom. china: thomas nelson and sons, ltda. hubbard, r., & power, b. (1999). living the questions. a guide for teacher-researchers. york, maine: stenhouse publishers. katz, l., & chard, s. (1989). engaging children’s minds: the project approach. new jersey: ablex publishing corporation. maines, s. (1989). project for the efl classroom. edinburgh: thomas nelson and sons, ltda. phillips, s. (2003). young learners. oxford: oxford university press. piaget, j. (1955). seis estudios de psicología. barcelona: seix-barral. ribé, r., & vidal, n. (2003). project work. step by step. handbooks for the english classroom. portsmouth nh: heinemann. stoller, f. (1997). project work. a means to promote language content. english teaching forum, 35(4), 41-42. wallace, m. (1998). action research for language teachers. cambridge: cambridge university press. about the authors alix argenis cáceres arbeláez, b. ed. in modern languages of the universidad de la salle in 1996, has a specialization in “information systems and documents management” from the same university. she has been working as a teacher in the private sector and public schools during the last 17 years. she has worked with students from kindergarten to adults. nowadays, she is working in ied gustavo restrepo with the primary section. diana rocío unigarro millán holds a b.a. in modern languages from the universidad pedagógica nacional and participated in the pfpd at the universidad nacional de colombia. she is working at the i.e.d. liceo femenino mercedes nariño. she is a student in the specialization in bilingual education at the universidad el bosque. profile 8.indd 23 28/09/2007 12:42:12 a.m. cáceres arbeláez and unigarro millán universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras24 appendix 1: unit contents unit two topic: solar system. date: from september 5 to september30, 2005. objetive: to locate their own created planet and make a description of the solar system. contents: solar system solar system components planets and sebna description creation and description of the new planet in the solar system activities: 1. introduction of the topic through the comic strip, “we live in the solar system”. there are different ways to do it: for example, • teacher’s monologue. • reading activity. • students’ role-play. 2. then, the teacher makes an exploration about the students’ understanding. after that, students write, in their english notebooks, the word bank and the graphic representations of the solar system components. 3. students develop the guide “awesome planets”. according to the planets’ features written on the sheet, students have to decorate the drawings. 4. evaluation: students complete a table where they have to organize the whole information about planets in the solar system. 5. at the end, they have to establish the characteristics of their own planet by writing the special features through the guide “our planet”. 6. finally, students model or build their own planet taking into account the features they have mentioned before. at the same time they are going to be able to place it in the solar system. • • • • profile 8.indd 24 28/09/2007 12:42:12 a.m. profile vol. 12, no. 2, october 2010. issn 1657-0790. bogotá, colombia. pages 165-178 165 task-based language learning: old approach, new style. a new lesson to learn aprendizaje basado en tareas: un antiguo enfoque, un nuevo estilo. una nueva lección para aprender mónica rodríguez-bonces* universidad central & única, colombia jeisson rodríguez-bonces** universidad central & unitec, colombia this paper provides an overview of task-based language learning (tbl) and its use in the teach ing and learning of foreign languages. it begins by defining the concept of tbl, followed by a presentation of its framework and implications, and finally, a lesson plan based on tbl. the article presents an additional stage to be considered when planning a task-based lesson: the one of formal and informal assessment. the rubrics and a self-evaluation format appear as an additional constituent of any task cycle. key words: task-based learning, framework, teach ers’ roles, students’ role. este artículo presenta una visión general del aprendizaje basado en tareas y su uso en la enseñanza y el aprendizaje de las lenguas extranjeras. comenzamos por definir el concepto de aprendizaje basado en tareas, seguido por una presentación de sus fundamentos e implicaciones. finalmente, presentamos una lección fundamentada en el aprendizaje basado en tareas. el artículo presenta una fase adicional cuando se planea una lección basada en tareas: la relacionada con la evaluación formal e informal. así mismo, se explica que una parte importante del enfoque por tareas es un componente de evaluación, el cual debe contener rúbricas y un formato de autoevaluación. palabras clave: aprendizaje basado en tareas, fundamento, papel del docente, papel de los estudiantes. * e-mail: mrodriguezb2@ucentral.edu.co ** e-mail: jeijeto@hotmail.com this article was received on march 1, 2010, and accepted on july 20, 2010. 166 universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras rodríguez-bonces & rodríguez-bonces what do we mean by task-based learning? overview recently, the popularity of task-based learning (tbl) has made many researchers, teach ers, and methodologists evaluate the effectiveness of this approach. although it has been used for many years, its popularity has increased. one of the main reasons for this attention is the desire of educators to promote real communication or the exchange of meanings rather than forms. another reason for such interest is the fact that practitioners advocate better language learning when students are not focused only on linguistic forms. researchers believe there is less anxiety and learning is more effective if language form per se is not the priority. if task-based instruction takes place, language learning is more meaningful and natural. the task is currently considered to be the most effective means of promoting second language acquisition (sla) in the classroom. according to richards and rodgers (2004), “engaging learners in task work provides a better context for the activation of learning processes” (p.  223). these authors say the negotiation of meaning in tbl provides the input and output necessary for language acquisition. if one wants to define a task, there is not a single definition. here are some examples of how individuals in the field have characterized “task”. nunan (1989) considers a task as “a piece of classroom work which involves learners in comprehending, manipulating, producing or interacting in the target language while their attention is primarily focused on meaning rather than form” (p. 10). according to this definition, students will use prior knowledge in order to achieve their goal; if any new information is needed (e.g. linguistic forms or vocabulary), the teach er will act as a knower who provides it so that students do not interrupt the process and achieve the expected outcome. for willis (1996) a task is an activity “where the target language is used by the learner for a communicative purpose (goal) in order to achieve an outcome” (p. 23). it is more effective to use a meaning-based approach than a form-based approach. students express their thoughts even if some of the language is inaccurate. in this respect, skehan (1996) adds that tasks primarily focus on meaning and resemble real-life situations. since tasks are goal-directed activities, participants decide which language forms to use to achieve the goal. van den branden (2006) explains how in second language research, tasks have been used to study language production, interaction, negotiation of meaning –all aspects to improve second language acquisition (sla). this author defines a task as “an activity in which a person engages in order to attain an objective, and which necessitates the use of language” (p. 4). it is evident in this definition that there is a language form needed to perform a task; however, the language is the means not the end. language is the vehicle to reach successful communication when having real-life communicative situations. nowadays, the most commonly used and widely accepted definition of task is that of language activity in which there is a focus on meaning. we define task-based learning as an approach that requires teach ers to plan lessons, not merely class activities, for real communication. all the definitions given above share the idea that tasks are goal-oriented activities and meaningcentered; tasks are designed to facilitate students’ participation in meaningful activities. language involves communication and this communication occurs only when the environment offers the opportunity to exchange real and meaningful thoughts. some of the differences rely on the fact profile vol. 12, no. 2, october 2010. issn 1657-0790. bogotá, colombia. pages 165-178 167 task-based language learning old approach, new style... that a task has many purposes depending on the student and teach ers’ needs. despite the fact that tbl emphasizes meaning, form is not put aside. each of the task models have a period in class to focus on form which is different from focusing on language as will be explained later in this paper. for example, willis and willis (2007) focus on forms at the end of each task cycle, which is defined as a sequence of tasks related to one another. there are three reasons to focus on language form at the end of any task sequence. first, learners understand language within a context. when performing the task, students undoubtedly prepare and make use of language. second, students focus their attention on language use rather than language form. each task, during the cycle, has different purposes and characteristics which capture the students’ attention and interest in the language that will be used when achieving the target task. third, students are exposed to language production and reception. learners engage in real world activities that demand speaking and/or writing and understanding by listening and/or read ing. in order for successful communication to take place, teach ers do not have to correct every mistake. teach ers have to see language as a tool instead of an end, which means that errors are part of the learning process and not necessarily the result of bad learning or teach ing. therefore, meaningful tasks imply meaningful learning and end with meaningful communication. likewise, the conditions under which a task is performed will have important consequences for the type of language used by learners in communicative tasks. ellis (2003) refers to this situation when he says that task-based learning and teach ing call for classroom participants to forget they are in the classroom, a teach ing-learning setting, and imagine themselves in a more communicatively effective environment where negotiation of meaning is taking place. the reason would seem obvious: the goal of language teach ing is or should be the enabling of students to express personal meanings. certain researchers such as long (1983) underscore the fact that a task needs to include negotiation of meaning in order to effectively propel language acquisition forward. so, it is argued, we should provide our learners with meaningful tasks which include plenty of opportunities for the negotiation of meaning. teach er and students’ roles when engaging in task-based learning teach er and students’ roles change within a taskbased approach. tbl presents learning and teach ing as collaborative work. classes are student-centered. teach ers address students’ needs and interests by becoming facilitators. according to willis and willis (2007), teach ers who engage in task-based learning promote real language use; when doing so, they become leaders and organizers of discussion, managers of group or pair work, motivators to engage students in performing a task and language experts to provide language feedback when needed. the main issues here are the degrees to which the teach er is responsible for content. the role of the students is far from being one of the passive recipients of comprehensible input; students are now seen to take the leading role in their own learning. van den branden (2006) agrees with the fact that taskbased lessons are student-centered, which means students take the main part in the learning process. learners are autonomous to negotiate course content or to choose linguistic forms when performing a task. negotiation is done by providing options for the learners; for example, the teach er may suggest a series of topics and students decide which one to begin with. learners are also group participants. many of the tasks are done in pairs or groups which 168 universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras rodríguez-bonces & rodríguez-bonces will require adaptation for those students used to working individually or those used to whole class instruction. another role for learners is the one of risk takers. students constantly face challenges that involve the use of the target language. students need to make the most of every opportunity to develop language while performing the task. richards and rodgers (2004) say that both teach ers and learners in task-based learning are responsible for the development of classroom interaction. task-based learning models there have been many task-based tbl models for class lessons. ellis (2003) presented a model that focuses on meaning and real-world activities that demand learners to process language for real situations: according to this model, english language development occurs when learners are given enough time to prepare and perform a task. there is some attention to form while communication takes place. communicative tasks reflect three main approaches: consciousness-raising activities, focused communication activities and interpretation activities. as can be seen from table 1, the pre-task shows students the grammar they will master in the future and form is engineered by the design of the task. on the other hand, during task stage focuses on communication activities, which means performance is crucial. the way teach ers handle error correction and how students react to the task are important. teach ers are expected to let communication flow and find strategies to make error correction in such a way that indirect focus on form is accomplished. finally, students report to class. they may be exposed to any kind of input and then share with the group their understanding. ellis’ model also shows the conditions under which a task is performed (2003). he suggests a number of ways to regulate tasks: for example time pressure, which is regulated by the amount of time given to learners to perform the task. familiarity with a topic also influences task performance. if a topic is relevant to students’ own experiences, there are more chances of having engagement and intrinsic motivation. another task-based model was outlined by willis (1996, p. 38), who used the format of pretask, task cycle and language focus. this model will be used for the lesson plan exemplified in this paper (table 2). the table clearly shows three stages: pre-task, task cycle and language focus. during the pretask stage the teach er identifies and introduces the topic and learners feel motivated to perform the task. the teach er recalls and activates existing knowledge by exploring the topic and highlighting useful words and phrases which might be needed during task performance. the second stage, task cycle, gives learners the opportunity to perform real world tasks with the teach er’s monitoring. it is advisable to have students work in pairs or in small groups at this stage. also, while planning, the teach er should provide all the necessary input by acting as a facilitator. learners plan how to present the outcome of their work, generally by exchanging and comparing final products. students table 1. a framework for designing task-based lessons (ellis, 2003) pre-task (consciousness-raising activities) framing the activity (e.g. establishing the outcome of the task) regulating planning time doing a similar task during task time pressure regulating topic post-task (focused communication activities) number of participants learner report repeat task reflection profile vol. 12, no. 2, october 2010. issn 1657-0790. bogotá, colombia. pages 165-178 169 task-based language learning old approach, new style... report the conclusions they have reached. the final stage, language focus, places emphasis on language features used during the two previous stages. the language focus provides opportunities for students to analyse and practice specific linguistic features arising from task. all in all, task-based learning moves from fluency to accuracy and fluency again, which demonstrates that although form is important, it is not the central part of the task model. willis’ (1996) three-stage task model does not clearly state the evaluation component. the teach er’s monitoring during the task cycle is a kind of informal assessment since s/he provides indirect feedback. however, we would suggest a four stage called assessment as shown in table 3. ellis (2003) considers different issues related to task assessment. one of the considerations is that tasks have to be meaningful and show how and what the learning is. we propose two kinds of assessment: first, formal assessment using rubrics and second, informal assessment using a self-evaluation format. rubrics evaluate task performance. the rubric will consider sequence of tasks, group participation and outcome. the teach er will make this formal assessment by giving a score to each one of the important aspects when performing the task. douglas (2000, as cited in ellis, 2003, p. 289) considers target language use and task characteristics when assessing tasks. as a result, rubrics state the objective of the task, the procedures, the use of time for completing the task and the format, all aspects involving the use of a target language. another kind of assessment we propose is a self-assessment form which will provide students’ table 3. assessment stage assessment 1. students complete the task evaluation form (see sample in appendix 3). 2. the evaluation form considers previous stages and desired outcome. 3. teach er uses a rubric to evaluate students’ outcome. table 2. task-based lesson plan model (willis, 1996, p. 38) pre-task introduction to topic and tasks teach er explores the topic with the class, highlights useful words and phrases. learners may be exposed to examples. task cycle task planning report students do the task in pairs or small groups. teach er monitors; mistakes do not matter. students prepare to report. accuracy is important, so the teach er stands by and gives advice. students exchange or present report. teach er listens and then comments. laguage focus analysis practice students examine then discuss. teach er conducts practice of new words. 170 universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras rodríguez-bonces & rodríguez-bonces feedback and attitudes towards the given task. this evaluation is done individually, even if students worked in pairs or groups. appendix 3 shows an example of a self-assessment form in which students have the possibility to reflect on their own learning process before, during and after a specific task. the first aspect to consider is the “goal” where students reflect upon their final understanding of the task. on the second aspect students analyze their performance during the task cycle. following that, students choose what the best way to work is for them (individually, pair work or group work). on the fourth aspect, students think about their linguistic and functional learning, and finally, students have the opportunity to give their opinions, suggestions and recommendations based on the task developed. this validation tool guarantees the lesson plan has achieved a clear goal. besides, the teach er will count on at least two kinds of evidence to validate the success or failure of the lesson. nunan (2004, p. 6) states that “assessment/evaluation is concerned with the selection of assessment and evaluation instruments and procedures” in our specific case: rubrics and self-evaluation form as illustrated in appendix 3. it is advisable to adjust the form to the outcome of each one of the tasks. the form will have students assessing task performance and achievement. this evaluation form will provide insights about four different aspects: task goal, task performance, kind of interaction, language focus and future actions. the task goal is stated in terms of language use and functions. also, it has students reflect if they truly reached the desired outcome. task performance has students reflect on the strengths and weaknesses during the task cycle. teach ers may use this feedback to improve input and monitoring future tasks. although tbl advocates cooperative learning, there are instances in which students might prefer to work on their own. by indicating the kind of interaction students prefer, teach ers identify how to plan future lessons: individually, in pairs or group work according to the students’ performances and interests. the language focus provides information on how students are doing in term of language and finally, future tasks give feedback on the how and what plan for upcoming task-based lessons. ellis (2003) points out that self-assessment fosters students’ autonomy, and “can serve as a means of developing a reflective attitude in the learner and can stimulate goal setting” (p. 302). in this respect, english language development, which is seen more as a process than a product, will be supported by a component of formative formal and informal assessment. as nunan (2004) states, it is not only important to “know that” but also “to know how”, the two proposed assessment instruments evaluate the “what” and the “how”. task-based lessons richards and rodgers (2004) say that taskbased learning is an approach that uses tasks as the main unit for planning and instruction. language is meaningful so that learners engage in tasks and thus learning takes place. the previous models show that a lesson could be a series of tasks or a task may be developed in more than one lesson, which means there may be multiple tasks or mini-tasks within the main task. goals and objectives will be stated in terms of language use (functions) rather than linguistic forms. lessons will be a sequence of different tasks, one related to the other, reaching a goal or outcome (willis & willis, 2007); all the communicative tasks are the vehicle of communication. the best way to integrate a task-based approach is by going from topics to tasks. topics are relevant to the students’ lives and make a sequence of different tasks feasible. in order to raise awareness, teach ers can not merely choose a topic from the textbook, examination papers, or social contexts but can also ask pupils to suggest their own topics profile vol. 12, no. 2, october 2010. issn 1657-0790. bogotá, colombia. pages 165-178 171 task-based language learning old approach, new style... from a list given by the teach er. when the topic has been chosen, teach ers can set up different types of tasks which are classified according to cognitive processes (table 4). willis and willis (2007) say that “a good task not only generates interest and creates an acceptable degree of challenge, but also generates opportunities for learners to experience and activate as much language as possible” (p. 70). at this point it is necessary to distinguish among focus on meaning, focus on language and focus on form. the teach er begins by choosing a topic, narrows it down and designs the different kinds of tasks; while developing the tasks there will be different language needs. focus on language and form depends on how tasks are graded. pupils begin with a simple task and during the task cycle perform more challenging cognitive and linguistic tasks. there will be different instances to focus on language and form; however, the main focus is on meaning since students want to achieve an outcome. focus on language occurs when learners “pause their process for meaning and switch to thinking about the language itself ” (willis & willis, 2007, p. 113). learners are working independently with meaning and highlight any language they need to draw upon. for example, students look up table 4. taxonomy of task types in willis and willis (2007) task types examples of specific tasks listing brainstorming fact-finding games based on listing: quizzes, memory and guessing. ordering and sorting sequencing ranking ordering classifying comparing and contrasting games finding similarities and differences graphic organizers problem-solving tasks logic problem prediction projects and creative tasks newspaper posters survey fantasy sharing personal experiences story telling anecdotes reminiscences matching words and phrases to pictures table 5. main differences between focusing on language and form (willis & willis, 2007, p. 114) focus on language focus on form • students’ initiative and needs. • takes into account the context of the communicative activity. • students explore what they need. • student-centered. • teach er’s initiative and need. • outside the context of the communicative activity. • teach er provides what students need. • teach er-centered. 172 universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras rodríguez-bonces & rodríguez-bonces table 6. sample of a lesson lesson topic: celebrations the following is an example of a task-based lesson having speaking development as one of its main purposes. time: 80 minutes level: high intermediate grade: undergraduate studentsalthough it may be used at any level task sequence: task-based speaking this is a speaking lesson on the theme of organizing a celebration. students, in groups, will plan a celebration. pre-task introduction to topic and tasks (10 min) aim: to introduce the topic of celebrations and to give the class exposure to language related to them. it is important to highlight new words and phrases. introduction to topic and tasks (10 min) aim: to introduce the topic of celebrations and to give the class exposure to language related to them. it is important to highlight new words and phrases. priming: show students pictures of a celebration. for example, photographs of the family celebrating christmas or someone’s birthday. tell how the celebration went. use the pictures to provide as many details as possible. when you finish sharing your personal experience, distribute a card with the following questions and have students answer them: when was your last family celebration? which are some of the special occasions you celebrate with family or friends? what is your favorite celebration with friends or family? what was the last celebration you had with your family or friends? how was it? what details make a celebration a success? do you remember an especially happy celebration with friends or family? what happened? a word, choose the best expression or word, check sentences for accuracy or improve the main idea. focus on form occurs when the teach er isolates a specific structure and explains it outside the context of the communicative activity (willis & willis, 2007, p. 114). table 5 summarizes the main differences. as can be seen, choosing, sequencing and implementing tasks will combine a focus on meaning and a focus on form. the lesson presented in table 6 shows how learners go through a series of tasks in order to attain a final goal, which is to have a class celebration. each one of the stages prepares learners for the next. the pre-task stage is the shortest in the cycle. the teach er will introduce the topic of celebrations and learners will activate previous learning and meaningful experiences. this stage creates interest since learners will share life experiences about celebrations. during the task profile vol. 12, no. 2, october 2010. issn 1657-0790. bogotá, colombia. pages 165-178 173 task-based language learning old approach, new style... task cycle task (10 min) planning ( 40 min. keep in mind the task involves writing) tasks may take longer to prepare report ( 8 min. per group) tell students, in groups of four, that they will plan a celebration including all aspects around it like invitation cards and/or a newspaper article to report all the facts about the celebration. give some minutes to think it over. the groups discuss possibilities for a celebration, brainstorm vocabulary (e.g. kinds of celebrations, objects used for certain celebrations). give rubrics at this point so students know how they will be assessed (see appendix 1 for rubrics on this lesson). teach er monitors and answers questions. students in groups plan the chosen celebration. for example, christmas, halloween, birthday, or 4th of july. (see appendix 2: task card which explains the process and requirements). students prepare to report. it is advisable to check how roles and assignments are distributed within the group. everybody needs to be involved. accuracy is important, so the teach er stands by and provides feedback to each one of the groups. homework is to be ready to report next class. the classroom is divided. each group is assigned a place in the classroom to decorate and provide the environment for their celebration. students present, classmates listen and participate in their celebration. they can ask after the presentation. teach er gives feedback on the content and quickly comments. students vote and choose the best celebration. language focus analysis (10 min) practice write sentences given by students on the board. highlight language you want to address. students review phrases in context and take notes of the language they need. option a (in the classroom). exit card: in pairs. each student asks two questions about one of the celebrations. option b (at home). teach er assigns homework to practice new words or structures. evaluation students complete the task evaluation form (see appendix 3 for celebrations task evaluation form) teach er completes rubrics phase students will make decisions based on their likes and needs. they will choose what celebration to organize and how to present it to the class. each learner will be responsible for one aspect to make this celebration a success. students may use their knowledge of the topic and language structures to accomplish the task; the teach er will act as a facilitator by providing feedback as needed. when using the previous task-based lesson, learners are more motivated and engaged in the learning process. learners make decisions according to their interest which ends in meaningful learning. for example, during the pre-task phase they talk about their own celebrations and ask about their classmate’s which make them appropriate to learn with. learners are more responsible for their own learning which will end in autonomy. 174 universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras rodríguez-bonces & rodríguez-bonces although there is time for writing, students will be focused on speaking activities. conclusion as a way of conclusion, task-based learning offers more advantages than disadvantages. a tbl framework focuses on language acquisition and learning through different tasks that pursue a goal. when carrying out the tasks, learners do not concentrate on language features, but on reaching their goal. learners are engaged in each one of the tasks since life experiences and previous knowledge support learning. language is used in everyday life and accounts for students’ interests. students are autonomous and teach ers monitor and facilitate learning or language acquisition. learners are given clear guidelines and make decisions on roles and how to present the final result. after the task completion, language should be analyzed. this analysis is done by using examples from the tasks performed. students will be required to do some kind of practice in or outside the classroom. since there are many kinds of tasks, classes are varied, which increases students’ motivation. finally, language is used for communication. however, the difficulties of following a task-based learning approach lay in teach ers’ and students’ attitudes. practitioners need to be prepared to use language as a means not as an end. also, teach ers have to differentiate real tasks from mere class activities. this differentiation may take time, especially if one considers the fact that many class activities look like tasks; for instance, role plays. a role play is a task only if students have a clear goal and during the interaction there is a kind of negotiation of meaning. a role play is not a task if students only recite a part of a conversation. there is only language learning if students are using language to reach their communicative purposes. the last criticism of a taskbased approach is the apparent lack of focus on grammar. as has been stated and seen in the lesson plan provided, there is a focus on form; it is just not the main point and it is influenced by the students’ needs. task-based learning is a new style of having students perform goal-oriented activities which demand real purpose, sequence and grading. task-based learning (tbl) is a new way of having students use the language according to their communication needs. references ellis, r. (2003). task based language learning and teach ing. new york: oxford university press. long, m. (1983). native speaker/non-native speaker conversation and the negotiation of comprehensible input. applied linguistics, 4, 126-141. nunan, d. (1989). designing tasks for the communicative classroom. cambridge: cambridge university press. nunan, d. (2004). task based language teach ing. cambridge: cambridge university press. richards, j., & rodgers, t. (2004). approaches and methods in language teach ing. cambridge: cambridge university press. skehan, p. (1996). a framework for the implementation of task-based learning. applied linguistics, 17, 38-62. van den branden, k. (2006). task based language education. from theory to practice. cambridge: cambridge university press. willis, d., & willis, j. (2007). doing task based teach ing. oxford: oxford university press. willis, j. (1996). a framework for task based learning. harlow: longman. profile vol. 12, no. 2, october 2010. issn 1657-0790. bogotá, colombia. pages 165-178 175 task-based language learning old approach, new style... about the authors monica rodríguez-bonces is currently pursuing her ph.d in education. she has done research in the areas of autonomy, culture and language learning. part of this experience can be reviewed in published articles in national and international publications. she is also the co-author of two text-books. she is a teach er at universidad central and universidad única. jeisson rodríguez-bonces is doing an m.a. in applied linguistics to tefl and ele. he is a teach er at universidad central, unitec, and universidad pedagógica nacional. adults and teenagers have been part of his teach ing experience as well as experience outside colombia. 176 universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras rodríguez-bonces & rodríguez-bonces appendix 1: rubrics for a lesson about celebrations name ______________________________________ date ___________________ beginning 0-1 developing 2 accomplished 3 exemplary 4 visual art sloppy, used pencil/ pen. hard to see and/or read. not very creative or appealing. project is somewhat neat, but needs work. words are not easily read and more color is needed to catch the eye of the reader. project is very neat, but the organization is not as good as it could be. words were readable and neat. project is mostly creative and appealing. the project is neat and orderly. there are many visuals and an excellent text for cards and newspaper articles. the information is easy to read. everything is creative and appealing. task design students did not plan any celebration. students are still planning their celebration. students planned most of the aspects of the celebration. students planned the celebration. coverage of topic (invitation card, newspaper article, party decor) includes few or none of the required aspects includes many of the required aspects includes most of the required aspects includes all required aspects class time did not use time to focus on the project or often distracted used some of the time well. there was some focus but occasionally distracted. used time well. usually focused on project and never distracted. used time well. always focused on project. never asked to get to work. participation and preparation there is not any activity prepared. only a few members of the group participated. it was somewhat prepared, organized and creative. most of the students were involved. it was very organized, creative and prepared. everybody was involved in the activity. it was very organized, creative and prepared. profile vol. 12, no. 2, october 2010. issn 1657-0790. bogotá, colombia. pages 165-178 177 task-based language learning old approach, new style... appendix 2: task card with processes and requirements introduction do you like celebrations? what is your favorite celebration? how do people around the world celebrate major holidays? now it is time to organize your own celebration for the class. task in groups you are going to organize your own celebration. decide what you want to celebrate and invite your classmates to attend this magnificent event. procedure in groups decide the celebration you want to have (wedding, anniversary, mother’s day, father’s day, saint valentine’s, new year’s, etc.). organize all the aspects to consider in order to make this celebration a success. the following is a list you need to bear in mind when planning: a. write an invitation. b. write a newspaper article about the details. c. organize an activity to do during the celebration. d. bring and explain some décor and food. for example: thanksgiving: turkey and orange colors. conclusion vote for the best celebration. make a chart comparing and contrasting all the different celebrations. task card: celebrations 178 universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras rodríguez-bonces & rodríguez-bonces appendix 3: task evaluation form (to be completed by each student) topic: celebrations read the following sentences and check (√) yes, no or sometimes. read the following sentences and check (√) yes, no or sometimes. aspect yes no sometimes 1. goal a. i reach the task outcome __________________ b. i provide information about ________________ c. i know all the aspects around _______________ d. i ask and answer about ____________________ e. i understand all the information about a ______ 2. task performance during the task cycle: a. i had problems with vocabulary b. i had difficulties understanding what my classmate was saying c. i had difficulty expressing my thoughts d. i forgot expressions related to _______ e. i was relaxed 3. interaction a. i liked working in groups b. i prefer working individually 4. language focus a. i used new vocabulary b. i used the grammar i needed c. my classmates provided language support when needed d. my teach er provided language support when needed e. i learned new grammar, vocabulary and/or expressions f. i had the right amount of time to do my task 5. in the future a. i would like to be assigned similar tasks b. i would like to do a task having the same topic but different outcome c. i want to place emphasis on: writing speaking vocabulary read ing listening 135profile vol. 11, no. 2, 2009. issn 1657-0790. bogotá, colombia. pages 135-150 english as a neutral language in the colombian national standards: a constituent of dominance in english language education*1 el inglés como idioma neutral en el marco de los estándares nacionales en colombia: un elemento constitutivo de dominación en la educación en inglés carmen helena guerrero nieto**2 álvaro hernán quintero polo***3 universidad distrital francisco josé de caldas, colombia this article attempts to problematize the way the english language is used in official documents. we will focus on the “estándares básicos de competencias en lenguas extranjeras: inglés” (basic standards of competences in foreign languages: english), a handbook issued by the colombian ministry of education. we deem it as a vehicle used to spread a hegemonic and ideological influence and to alienate teachers’ beliefs and practices within english language education. to be concise, here we discuss only neutrality as one broad category that emerges in our close examination of how the english language is constructed within the handbook. in this paper, we construct our main points around three forms of neutrality: prescription, denotation, and uniformity. key words: english as a neutral language, english language education, foreign language standards, critical discourse analysis, symbolic power, language policies este artículo intenta problematizar la manera como el idioma inglés es construido en documentos oficiales. concretamente, nos centramos en los “estándares básicos de competencias en lenguas extranjeras: inglés”, una cartilla emitida por el ministerio de educación colombiano. consideramos este manual un vehículo usado para difundir la influencia hegemónica e ideológica y para alienar las creencias y prácticas de maestros dentro del campo de la educación de la lengua inglesa. aquí, por razones de espacio, sólo se discute la neutralidad como una gran categoría que surge de un examen detallado de cómo el idioma inglés es construido dentro de la cartilla. en este escrito, presentamos nuestros puntos principales alrededor de tres formas de neutralidad: prescripción, denotación y uniformidad. palabras clave: inglés como un idioma neutro, educación del idioma inglés, estándares de idiomas extranjeros, análisis crítico del discurso, poder simbólico, políticas lingüísticas * we wrote this article as part of the initial activities in the construction of a research proposal, which is now under evaluation in the centro de investigaciones y desarrollo científico of the universidad distrital francisco josé de caldas. ** e-mail: helenaguerreron@gmail.com *** e-mail: quinteropolo@gmail.com address: avenida ciudad de quito no. 64-81 oficina 607. bogotá, colombia. this article was received on april 30, 2009, and accepted on august 13, 2009. 136 universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras guerrero nieto & quintero polo introductory theoretical considerations on neutrality and dominance the discourse that portrays english as a neutral language has been around for a long time. on the one hand, there is the designation of english as the official language of the countries of the outer circle (kachru, 1997), where many languages disputed this status. this situation has contributed to the construction of the notion of english as a neutral language based on the argument that by choosing english over all the local languages, conflicts would be avoided (myers-scotton, 1988; skutnabb-kangas, 2001). on the other hand, pennycook (1994) asserts that the neutrality of english emerged from two main discourses: the discourse of linguistics and applied linguistics, where language was seen as a medium for communication (where “communication” was also constructed as a “neutral” activity); and the discourse of marketing where english, along with all the activities related to it, such as teaching methodologies, textbooks, teacher training, tests, materials and the like, are portrayed as a service industry. neutrality of english language emerged as an issue that we were motivated to discuss while defining our main concern in a new study. this new study should add to the understanding of how language teachers in public schools in the district of bogotá position themselves as regards government policies such as the ones related to language education. one main concern in the new research agenda is the need for language educators, from different regions in colombia, to share and take a stand on the implementation of those policies. consequently, from the legitimization of their voices, we can construct a discourse community (gee, 1996) committed to national educational policies that value teachers’ daily teaching experiences. it is justifiable to propose here a debate about the dominance expressed through the imposition of english as a neutral language. in our paper, we understand dominance as related to a dominant discourse of a reduced group of people i.e. elite, composed of terminologies established as norms and fallacious and reified ways of expression which influences the thought processes of the members of a community. control and surveillance executed by those in power are characteristic activities of a domineering elite over a vast number of dominated ones. since language is a significant constituent of the whole range of activity implicit in the teaching and learning of the english language, a dominant discourse represents, according to fairclough (1995), a naturalized, hegemonic, ideological influence. applied linguistics makes an important contribution to this understanding through critical discourse analysis. that is how we also intend to deconstruct the restricted view of english as a neutral language as presented in official documents from the perspective of our professional-academic orientation: a young academic tradition in applied linguistics that focuses on language as a key element in social issues. our orientation is divergent from a dominant non-academic culture of english language teaching (elt) which has been produced by an expansion from the anglo north american paradigm of teaching english as a second language or teaching english as a foreign language (tesl or tefl)1. the anglo north american paradigm imposes demands on accountability and quality, bringing increased government instrumentalism. government instrumentalism, in turn, relates to the decisions made by its representatives at the top level 1 elt, tesl, and tefl, among others, are typical acronyms that represent discoursally loaded concepts that deserve being further analyzed rather than taken for granted (holliday, 1998). 137 english as a neutral language in the colombian national standards... profile vol. 11, no. 2, 2009. issn 1657-0790. bogotá, colombia. pages 135-150 of a hierarchy of planning functions in the language-teaching operation (quintero, 2007). these decisions affect not only the treatment of children and adults learning english, but also the careers of english language educators in schools and universities around the world, and colombian settings cannot be an exception. this happens when english is “brought in” by a certain government or international policy as a force that affects wider curricular and administrative practices (ruiz, 1984). for example, the implementation of the national program of bilingualism (pnb by its acronym in spanish) carried out in colombia through the “aid” of the british council (i.e. the positioning of products of british publishing houses, the marketing of standardized tests that have the seal “certification of quality” of british universities, and imposition of short non-academic and skill-based teacher training courses) affects what happens in schools or universities. the presence of the british council as foreign agents who control “aid” projects, such as the pnb in colombia, a developing country, represents a political issue that has little to do with language per se. nowadays the issues surrounding english language education become critical internationally, politically, and institutionally (pennycook, 2004). in colombia, we are preparing for the commemoration of the two-hundredth anniversary of independence from spaniards. this event will take place next year. this connects post-colonial discussions of various types of imperialism that sustain themselves after the decline of an empire. curiously, these discussions often turn to become centered around the role of english (phillipson, 2008), not only in a national language policy, but in its influence on how education generally should be administered, whether from classroom practices of both teachers and students to curriculum decisions and actions of policymakers. because of the imposed idea of english as a symbol of success within the world of international labor and as a symbol of educational status in many parts of the world (shohamy, 2004), the aspirations of a wider community will also come into the picture. the object of discussion in this paper the official document we analyze in this paper is the “estándares básicos de competencias en lenguas extranjeras: inglés” (basic standards of competences in foreign languages: english). from this point on, we will use the spanish term estándares to refer to this official document issued by the colombian national ministry of education (men by its acronym in spanish) within its pnb (men, 2006a; 2006b)2. we decided to engage in a discussion of the way the power of english language is present in this official document. like any other official document, it is a vehicle used to maintain and legitimate dominance and inequality (phillipson, 2007). in this case, this presence relates to technical academic standards in the light of the “late capitalist society” (fairclough, 1995) that is directed by a macro global-political, anglo north american imperialism and its overall political and economical supremacy of which english language education is a part (phillipson, 1992; pennycook, 1994). the estándares has been an object of evaluation, not necessarily support, in colombian academic events and publications in the last five years (e.g. usma, 2009; guerrero, 2008; vargas, tejada & colmenares, 2008; sánchez & obando, 2008; gonzález, 2007; quintero, 2007; cárdenas, 2006; 2 the word “estándares” is used to refer to the document “estándares básicos de competencias en lenguas extranjeras”; the word “standards” will be used to refer to the actual standards (descriptors) adopted by the ministry of education, and presented in the document “estándares”. 138 universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras guerrero nieto & quintero polo ayala & álvarez, 2005, among others). the points some colombian authors make about the estándares relate to the need for genuine democratic participation of different sectors of the colombian academic community and the need for an analysis that calls for positions from a socio-political perspective. vargas, tejada, & colmenares (2008) refer to the estándares as framed within the so called “revolución educativa” (educational revolution) and the “plan de desarrollo educativo” (plan of educational development), official programs of the men that are based on three dictates: “ampliar la cobertura educativa, mejorar la calidad de la educación y mejorar la eficiencia del sector educativo” (broadening educational coverage, improving quality of education and improving the efficiency of the educational sector), according to the very colombian minister of education, cecilia maria velez white, in her “carta abierta” (open letter) that appears as an introduction to the estándares. these three dictates result from industrialized models that contrast the view of education as a democratic activity. furthermore, the colombian authors who evaluate the estándares agree on the need for an intraand inter-textual perspective from which its fundamental goal of being “criterios claros y públicos” (clear and public criteria) that serve the purpose of guiding the educational community can be analyzed. it is obvious that the two perspectives mentioned above are so complex that it is impossible to discuss them fully in only one article. for this reason, we would like to focus on section three of the estándares and three types of neutrality found in this document. section three of the estándares, entitled “¿por qué enseñar inglés en colombia?” (why teach english in colombia?), is devoted particularly to highlighting the benefits of learning english. the authors start by establishing connections between internationalization and the need for a common language; then they present the advantages of learning a foreign language and, in the last part, state the reasons it is important to speak english. a close examination of the discourse used in the section aforementioned shows that english is deemed as having a neutral construction. this label is not new in terms of how english is regarded around the world, but is particularly salient in this document. the way in which english is constructed within the estándares contributes to the enhancement of the neutrality attached to it and does so in three main forms: 1) english is neutral in the sense that throughout the document there is a strong emphasis on a prescriptive approach to the use of the language. 2) it is neutral because it only fulfills a denotative function. and 3) it is neutral because by presenting the language as one single standard variety, issues of social differentiation are erased and searches, rather, for uniformity. in the following section, we will discuss each of these forms of neutrality (see figure 1). figure 1. neutrality as a prescriptive approach neutrality as a prescriptive approach one’s consideration of a prescriptive approach to teaching language as a form of neutrality arises from the idea that when the intention is to transmit a language as a set of fixed rules, which are detached from any relationship with the speakers of that lan139 english as a neutral language in the colombian national standards... profile vol. 11, no. 2, 2009. issn 1657-0790. bogotá, colombia. pages 135-150 guage, the assumption is that language is not a vehicle by which inequality, discrimination, sexism, racism, and power can be executed. a prescriptive approach presents a language that does not have real speakers and, therefore, no conflicts of any sort. along the document, the emphasis is on the appropriate ways of doing things with language such as the rules students must know and how they must apply them, as stated in this excerpt: al igual que en otras áreas, los estándares de inglés son criterios claros que permiten a los estudiantes y a sus familias, a los docentes y a las instituciones escolares, a las secretarías de educación y a las demás autoridades educativas, conocer lo que se debe aprender. sirven, además, como punto de referencia para establecer lo que los estudiantes están en capacidad de saber sobre el idioma y lo que deben saber hacer con él en un contexto determinado (estándares, p. 11) (bold in original). as in other areas, english standards are clear criteria that allow students and their families, teachers and schools, the local and other education authorities, to know what must be learned. they also serve as a benchmark to establish what students are able to learn about the language and know what to do with it in a determined context. in this excerpt, the authors of the document define the estándares as “clear” criteria; this means that all the members of the school community must understand the same thing to ensure that everybody will follow the same patterns. the objective of these criteria is to inform everybody of what “must” be learned. by using specifically the verb debe and deben (must) in lines 3 and 5, the message is that of an imposition; the possibility of doing things differently does not exist. a variation in the word choice would give a different message; for example, using “should” or “could”. the verb deber implies the obligation of doing something, and therefore establishes from the beginning an asymmetrical power relationship where those who “know” (men and its consultants) determine what those who do not know (school community) “must” learn. behind statements such as the one in the excerpt above lies a behavioral concept of education. the interest of the authors of the estándares is to direct people’s behavior by limiting what students “must” know in terms of the language. they still believe that it is possible to predict the result of instruction (tumposky, 1984), that students will learn whatever teachers (or the state) define in the curriculum. the banking model of education (freire, 1970) and the computer metaphor input=output are still in effect, regardless of all the controversy and more interactive and creative ways of looking at teaching, in general, and teaching languages, in particular. to ensure that students will not deviate from the standards but continually observe the rules, the descriptors used within the document follow a pattern of controlled language. the following examples, taken from the descriptors set for the writing skill, serve to illustrate this point: a) copio y transcribo palabras que comprendo y que uso con frecuencia en el salón de clase (estándares, escritura, p. 19). i copy and transcribe words i understand and which i use frequently in the classroom. b) escribo mensajes de invitación y felicitación usando formatos sencillos (estándares, escritura, p. 19). i write messages of congratulations and invitations using simple formats. c) estructuro mis textos teniendo en cuenta elementos formales del lenguaje como la puntuación, la ortografía, la sintaxis, la coherencia y la cohesión (estándares, escritura, p. 27). i structure my texts taking into account formal elements of language such as punctuation, spelling, syntax, consistency and cohesion. example a) above offers the most obvious narrow conception of what writing is within the estándares. here, the text conceives writing as a mechanical activity of “transcription” and students 140 universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras guerrero nieto & quintero polo “copy” words from textbooks or boards; as such, writing is the lifeless and meaningless activity of putting isolated words on paper. furthermore, writing, in this sense, responds to the concept that it is simply the transcription of the spoken word. we believe that this view of writing is not emancipatory but functional as can be inferred from unesco’s (1970) policies for literacy for developing countries. a functional concept of writing is concerned more with economic productivity than it is with human agency. this functional concept of writing implies learning writing skills such as copying or transcribing, which make one likely to become a functioning member of society who can enter the labor market (blake & blake, 2002; papen, 2005), but not necessarily a critical person. the excerpts that follow, b) and c), resemble the writing approaches in fashion before the 1980s where the emphasis was on the product of writing. brown (1994) states that in the product approach, students’ written pieces should a) meet certain standards of prescribed english rhetorical style; b) reflect accurate grammar; and c) be organized in conformity with what the audience would consider conventional. the focus of writing instruction was in imitating models of different types of texts, and the final products were evaluated according to the similarity with the original. in the examples mentioned above, students find themselves limited by “formats” they have to follow in order to preserve the correct form of the language. the common factor in these three examples, as in all the two hundred and eighteen descriptors included in the estándares, is the absence of real meaning and purpose. the way the descriptors were written suggests that the activities held in class have the purpose of mastering patterns, structures, and formats. students are asked to write an invitation for the sake of practicing the structure of an invitation; the content, purpose, addressee, relationship between them and the writer, occasion, media and other aspects are not included or considered. instead, there is always stress on form (reinforced in the textbooks used in colombia, such as the one in table 1 below). table 1. example from an english textbook 7 a. fill in the gaps with the correct prepositions. (p. 11) 8 use the verbs below in their correct form to complete the paragraph. (p. 11) 10 using the information you have learned in this unit, write one of the letters above. you should write between 120 and 180 words. (p. 22) taken from: upstream. upper intermediate. student’s book (evans & obee, 2007) the same pattern of “modeling” is used to direct students’ oral production. the following examples belong to the first and second level (first to fifth grade of elementary school) in relation to what must be achieved in monologue skill: a) recito y canto rimas, poemas y trabalenguas que comprendo, con ritmo y entonación adecuados (estándares, monólogos, p. 19). i recite and sing rhymes, poems and tongue twisters that i understand with appropriate rhythm and intonation. b) participo en representaciones cortas; memorizo y comprendo parlamentos (estándares, monólogos, p. 19). i participate in short performances; i memorize and understand speech. c) digo un texto corto memorizado en una dramatización, ayudándome con gestos (estándares, monólogos, p. 20). i recite a short, dramatic text, helping myself with gestures. d) recito un trabalenguas sencillo o una rima, o canto el coro de una canción (estándares, monólogos, p. 20). i recite a simple tongue twister or a rhyme, or sing the chorus of a song. 141 english as a neutral language in the colombian national standards... profile vol. 11, no. 2, 2009. issn 1657-0790. bogotá, colombia. pages 135-150 rote learning, highly criticized lately in sla theories, seems to be in effect here where students are encouraged to take in bits of language relying on memory skills, and then produce them observing the right rhythm and intonation. rote learning is disguised by the inclusion of the word comprendo in the examples a) and b) above, but not in c) and d). the implication is that students should imitate the native speaker’s3 accent and pronunciation, and the more similar the better. this strategy, one that is not overtly explicit in these standards, was used by the british colonizers in trinidad and tobago (london, 2001). london discusses that during the late colonial period, the dominance of english was assured by certain curriculum and pedagogic practices. it is interesting to see that the same strategies used in the early 1900s to anglicize people in trinidad and tobago, are the same suggested in the estándares such as “hand-writing, spelling, recitation, rhymes, ‘chats’, and story telling” (p. 409) whose purpose was “to ensure acceptable pronunciation even at the expense of textual comprehension” (p. 410). linguistic creativity is then completely excluded and prevented by telling students to use non-verbal resources to get their messages across as stated in the excerpts below. the proponents of the pnb aim to preserve the standard variety as pure as possible because that is the one sanctioned as valuable in the linguistic market (bourdieu, 1991): a) utilizo el lenguaje no verbal cuando no puedo responder verbalmente a preguntas sobre mis preferencias. por ejemplo, asintiendo o negando con la cabeza (estándares, conversación, p. 19). i use non-verbal language when i cannot respond verbally to questions about my preferences; for example, to deny or accept by nodding the head. 3 conceiving of the native speaker of english as one, single, ideal speaker. b) refuerzo con gestos lo que digo para hacerme entender (estándares, conversación, p. 19). i reinforce with gestures what i say to make myself understood. c) utilizo códigos no verbales como gestos y entonación, entre otros (estándares, conversación, p. 23). i use non-verbal codes such as gestures and intonation, among others. d) formulo preguntas sencillas sobre temas que me son familiares apoyándome en gestos y repetición (estándares, conversación, p. 23). i ask simple questions on familiar topics relying on gestures and repetition. a prescriptive ideology of the estándares ignores the very nature of language as a live and dynamic entity that is in constant flux and change; it is impossible to maintain an unchanged and unchangeable language regardless of the efforts of purists and prescriptivists (bhatt, 2001; makoni & pennycook, 2005). otherwise, there would not be an explanation for the emergence of the world englishes. only to cite an example, de mejía (2006) documents the nativization of english in an elite bilingual (english-spanish) school in paraguay, where students have developed a new variety of english (and spanish) called asa english (after the acronym of the school: american school of asuncion: asa) which they use on a daily basis at school. unfortunately, a prescriptive ideology has been motivated and supported by the popular view that other varieties of english are corrupted or degenerated and therefore they have no place in the classroom (siegel, 1999). as a result, learners of english who are exposed to this narrow approach become believers that english is a neutral language because there are patterns to be followed, the same for everybody, in every occasion, and in any part of the world. 142 universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras guerrero nieto & quintero polo neutrality as a denotative function in a speech event, when the focus is on the context, the function is called “referential”; this function is denotative (jackobson, 1990) since it is used to talk about the world as it is. english around the world has been presented as a language that serves a mere denotative function in the sense that it is used to talk about the world in an unproblematic way. one probable cause of this is that the content of english language education is, in many cases, dictated by the textbooks, which are produced by the anglo north american companies (canagarajah, 1999; valencia-giraldo, 2006; vélez-rendón, 2003). these textbooks are characterized by an aseptic portrayal of reality that is transmitted to students as a fact so the topics of textbooks are about leisure, travel, celebrities, and the like (pennycook, 1994). london (2001) states that during the late colonization period in trinidad and tobago, all the textbooks used were identical to those used in ireland, scotland and the west indies. this pattern is maintained nowadays because the more “neutral” the textbooks are, the easier they can be marketed anywhere in the world (pennycook, 1994; valencia-giraldo, 2006). another probable reason is the spread of english language teaching methodologies that originated in the anglo north american countries and whose main concern is to train teachers to be efficient instructors; these methodologies are exported around the world in an identical format, regardless of the context, culture, or resources of each particular location (canagarajah, 1999; cárdenas, 2006; gonzález, 2007; pagliarini & de asis-peterson, 1999; pennycook, 1994; valenciagiraldo, 2006). as a consequence the english classroom is a site to practice forms that are, in nature, detached from the local reality. likewise, in the estándares there is no attempt to promote the use of the language to fulfill a purpose different from the denotative one. for example, the ‘listening” descriptors aim at developing the skill to understand what is said in order to follow instructions, or to understand a story, or to identify connectors, and so on, as can be seen in the following descriptors taken from different levels: a) entiendo instrucciones para ejecutar acciones cotidianas (estándares, escucha, p. 26). i understand instructions to perform everyday actions. b) reconozco los elementos de enlace de un texto oral para identificar su secuencia (estándares, escucha, p. 24). i recognize the linking elements of an oral text to identify its sequence. c) comprendo preguntas y expresiones orales que se refieren a mi, a mi familia, mis amigos y mi entorno (estándares, escucha, p. 22). i understand questions and oral expressions that refer to me, my family, my friends, and my surroundings. for the other skills, the descriptors work in the same way: d) comprendo relaciones establecidas por palabras como and (adición), but (contraste), first, second… (orden temporal), en enunciados sencillos (estándares, lectura, p. 22. italics in original). i understand relationships between words such as and (addition), but (contrast), first, second ... (temporary order), in simple statements. e) escribo mensajes en diferentes formatos sobre temas de mi interés (estándares, escucha, p. 25). i write messages in different formats on topics of my interest. f ) utilizo una pronunciación inteligible para lograr una comunicación efectiva (estándares, escucha, p. 27). i use intelligible pronunciation to achieve effective communication. 143 english as a neutral language in the colombian national standards... profile vol. 11, no. 2, 2009. issn 1657-0790. bogotá, colombia. pages 135-150 descriptors constructed in this way help to perpetuate the idea that english is a neutral language because in our mother tongue we are aware of the different ways in which social relationships are established through language (for example, we are aware of which accents have prestige and which ones do not, how to address people of higher or lower hierarchy, etc. (thompson, 2003). throughout the two hundred and eighteen descriptors of the estándares there is no sign that english is inextricably linked to social life (bourdieu, 1991; fairclough, 1992; 1995; halliday & hasan, 1985; norton, 1989). by obscuring the relationship between language and social life, the authors of the estándares are also establishing a barrier between the language and the learners (as part of the society). when the standards limit what can be said and how it can be said, they are telling the users that the language does not belong to them and that the language serves only certain purposes. speaking a language is a matter of making meaning (halliday, 1974; norton, 1989) but if speakers are constrained by formats, models, rules, etc., there is a risk of silencing them (norton, 1989) because they cannot relate to the language. in the estándares students are told they can write about their interest but using specific formats; they can tell a story but observing the grammatical rules; they can participate spontaneously in a conversation but with good pronunciation. all in all, the estándares privileges form over content because, in that way, it is easier to perpetuate the idea that english is a neutral language. if its function is merely denotative, the stance of the speaker is not considered nor the multiple interpretations triggered by a text. the authors of the estándares state that according to the level (básico, pre-intermedio i and pre-intermedio ii), a particular function of the language will be emphasized: a) en el nivel principiante se hace mayor énfasis en las funciones demostrativas del discurso (estándares, p. 29). b) in the beginners level the emphasis is greater on the referential functions of language. en los niveles básicos se busca fortalecer el dominio de funciones expositivas y narrativas (estándares, p. 30). in the basic levels the aim is to strengthen the mastery of expository and narrative functions. c) en los últimos grados se busca fortalecer el dominio de funciones analíticas y argumentativas, aunque no con el mismo nivel de su lengua materna (estándares, p. 30). in the upper grades the objective is to strengthen the dominance of analytical and argumentative functions, but not on the same level as students’ mother tongue. underneath this graded function emphasis lies on the concept that a limitation in a linguistic code is the same as a limitation in thinking ability; consequently, six to ten-year-old children are only capable of using language in a denotative way, to describe their surroundings without taking a stand. for this reason, only the referential function receives attention, although the superficial structure of example a) suggests something different. by stating that se hace mayor énfasis (there will be greater emphasis), the implication is that all language functions will receive attention, but the emphasis will be on the referential one. if we suppose this is true, there should be descriptors aimed at developing all functions. however, there is a mismatch between that statement and the descriptors set for this level because none of them refer to using the language with a purpose different from denotation. the same situation happens with the statement in example c) because, although the authors warn that the analytic and argumentative functions 144 universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras guerrero nieto & quintero polo cannot have the same level as has the mother tongue, there are only three descriptors that remotely relate to the goal: a) expreso mi opinión sobre asuntos de interés general para mí y mis compañeros (estándares, monólogos, p. 25). i express my opinion about issues of general interest for my classmates and me. b) asumo una posición crítica frente al punto de vista del autor (estándares, monólogos, p. 26). i take a critical position regarding the views of the author. c) identifico los valores de otras culturas y eso me permite construir mi interpretación de su identidad (estándares, monólogos, p. 26). i identify the values of other cultures and this allows me to build my interpretation of their identity. it is interesting that the three descriptors above are included in the monólogo skill, which means that students do not interact with others to develop or challenge their opinions. if there were a real interest in promoting argumentative and analytic functions, these would be included in all the skills to give students the opportunity to strengthen their abilities by using different modes of language for their purposes. besides, it is unrealistic that after nine years of controlled production in the l2, students will feel comfortable presenting their opinions and critiques in english. neutrality as uniformity uniformity is another type of neutrality in english. the aim is to reproduce uniformity in two ways: language variety and social behavior. we have stated earlier that textbooks present an aseptic portrayal of reality. in the same line, english is presented as an aseptic language that exists in a vacuum, free of any kind of contamination in a pure and fixed state (and as such it must be kept), where everybody speaks in the same way. students are not made aware that, as in any other language, english presents different varieties that respond to regional origins, gender, sex, education, age, and context in which the language is used. with english being one of the most used languages in the world, there is wide variability within it. the problem is that english is conceived as having one single variety that by default is standard american english or standard british english, but whatever the standard, it cannot be matched to any real group of people; it is an imaginary language that resides in an ideal speaker (lippi-green, 1997). this is the language introduced in the classroom through international textbooks (pennycook, 1994), and through the estándares in the pnb. the following excerpts, serve to illustrate this point: a) identifico elementos culturales como nombres propios y lugares, en textos sencillos (estándares, lectura, p. 20). i identify cultural elements such as proper names and places in simple texts. b) identifico el tema general y los detalles relevantes en conversaciones, informaciones radiales o exposiciones orales (estándares, escucha, p. 22). i identify the general topic and the relevant details in conversations, information on the radio or oral presentations. c) comprendo relaciones de adición, contraste, orden temporal y espacial y causa-efecto entre enunciados sencillos (estándares, lectura, p. 24). i understand relationships of addition, contrast, spatial and temporal order, and cause-effect between simple statements. d) identifico personas, situaciones, lugares y el tema en conversaciones sencillas (estándares, escucha, p. 26). i identify people, situations, places and the topic in simple conversations. these descriptors for reading and listening, where students could be exposed to different varieties of the language and encouraged to appreciate its differences, do the opposite. in 145 english as a neutral language in the colombian national standards... profile vol. 11, no. 2, 2009. issn 1657-0790. bogotá, colombia. pages 135-150 example a) the cultural experience is reduced to the identification of people’s names and to the names of places. these types of activities give way to stereotyping because students might get the idea that certain names are attached to certain cultures along with certain social practices, particularly considering that english textbooks tend to be very ethnocentric, e.g. portraying only the positive characteristics of the anglo north american people; as a consequence, students will see the world in black and white in spite of the colorful layout of textbooks (pennycook, 1994). the same is true in examples b) and d). besides, the use of the verb identifico restricts the intellectual activity students perform; they are simply expected to pinpoint information they hear or read without engaging their personal beliefs or ideas. example e) shows a recurrent pattern in the descriptors: that the relevance of the activity is given to the structure of a text; students have to identify the relationships among the components of the text, but there is no mention of why it is written in a particular way; in this sense, the relationship between the author and the text is ignored. the insistence on denying the existence of other varieties of english (along with denying the existence of the speakers of those varieties) nurtures an ideal state in which one day we all will be able to speak exactly the same way and live in endless harmony. this plan is already in progress as in some workplaces employees are asked to modify their own linguistic persona and adopt a more homogeneous corporate one (cameron & block, 2002). the second aim of the neutrality of english in relation to uniformity is to perpetuate, reproduce or promote a pattern of social behavior where students are positioned as passive consumers of social norms enacted via language (auberbach, 1993; pennycook, 1994). the following excerpts show how specific language choices and grammatical structures indicate the role of students as users of the language: a) utilizo variedad de estrategias de comprensión de lectura adecuadas al propósito y al tipo de texto (estándares, lectura, p. 26). i use a variety of reading comprehension strategies appropriate to the purpose and type of text. b) utilizo estrategias adecuadas al propósito y al tipo de texto (activación de conocimientos previos, apoyo en el lenguaje corporal y gestual, uso e imágenes) para comprender lo que escucho (estándares, escucha, p. 26). i use appropriate strategies according to the purpose and text type (activation of prior knowledge, body language and gestures support, and use of pictures) to comprehend what i listen to. c) monitoreo la toma de turnos entre los participantes en discusiones sobre temas preparados con anterioridad (estándares, conversación, p. 25). i monitor turn-taking among participants in discussions on topics prepared in advance. the three examples use action verbs to give the idea that students are active participants in the process, autonomous individuals who are in control of their own learning; but looking at the predicate of each one of the sentences, the message is different. in examples a) and b), the purpose is to use strategies to understand a text (written and oral). therefore, students are supposed to become efficient readers or listeners (see table 2). these types of goals can be associated with the language of business in the capitalist world, where efficiency is a “must” to assure economic profit (tollefson, 1991; tumposky, 1984). the instrumentality of these descriptors is apparent because there is a preeminence of technique over enjoyment. 146 universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras guerrero nieto & quintero polo table 2. reading instructions in a textbook 2 read the text. for questions 1-7, choose the most appropriate answer (a, b, c or d) strategy point read the text quickly to get a general idea of what it is about. look at the first part of the question, and underline key words. don’t read the options a-d yet. find the part of the text the question refers to. go through the choices and underline the key words. choose the answer that best fits. keep in mind that the information may be rephrased. even if you think you know the correct answer, always check that the others are not appropriate. check your answer against the text. taken from: upstream. upper intermediate student’s book, p. 14 (evans & obee, 2007). in example c) students’ future behavior in any conversation is being directed by observing how turn taking occurs. the implication of monitoring is that students have to pay attention and replicate the pattern; they are not asked or expected to problematize turn taking practices, to question unfair distribution of talk time depending on age, gender, regional origin, hierarchy, social status, and the like (norton, 1989). consequently, the intention by choosing the verb “monitor” is to hide the fact that turn taking and all the day-to-day social practices are sites where asymmetric power relationships are enacted (auberbach, 1993). leaving social practices unexamined contributes to the perpetuation of forms of inequality, submission, and discrimination, particularly taking into account that learning a language implies acquiring a way of looking at the world (goke-pariola, 1993). if schools serve the interests of dominant groups interested in maintaining the status quo, they are facilitating their task of exerting symbolic power, because one cannot resist or contest what one does not perceive as unfair, and therein lies the strength of symbolic power (bourdieu, 1989). writing is another skill in which students’ use of language is highly controlled in order to preserve the uniformity of their written production according to the norms set by the estándares: a) escribo mensajes en diferentes formatos sobre temas de mi interés (estándares, escritura, p. 25). i write messages in different formats about topics of my interest. b) diligencio efectivamente formatos con información personal (estándares, escritura, p. 25). i fill in forms with personal information effectively. c) organizo párrafos coherentes cortos, teniendo en cuenta elementos formales del lenguaje como ortografía y puntuación (estándares, escritura, p. 25). i organize coherent short paragraphs, taking into account such formal elements of language as spelling and punctuation. students are directed to follow the rules so that, although the action verb possesses the students as agents, it is the format and conventions that are in control of what is produced and how. students are positioned as mere instruments, by which texts are written, and in this way, their agency is not acknowledged; they are not constructed as the verbs misleadingly indicate, in control of their own learning and owners of the language, but as submissive consumers of norms. a final note of caution needs to be made regarding this last point: students might be conceived of as passive by the authors of the estándares but they are certainly not, as stated by canagarajah (1999): “whatever policies the colonies adopted, the locals carried 147 english as a neutral language in the colombian national standards... profile vol. 11, no. 2, 2009. issn 1657-0790. bogotá, colombia. pages 135-150 out their own personal agendas, and foiled the expectations of their masters” (p. 64). conclusion to provide a rationale of why the men chose english over other languages for its pnb, the authors of the “estándares” relied on the discourses about the neutrality of english that have been produced since the 18th century. bringing that universal discourse to the local context seems unproblematic because the men can pretend they are providing the solution to the deep needs of our country by including the teaching of the “magical” language. one of the forms of neutrality is the dominance of a prescriptive approach in the standards. the descriptors aim at producing students who use the language within strict limits that control what they can do with it. the so-called productive skills (speaking and writing) establish the appropriateness of students’ outcomes. when speaking, learners have to produce correct sentences and observe appropriate pronunciation; the definition of “appropriate” responses contrasts students’ pronunciation with that of native speakers of the variety approved as the standard. when writing, they have to follow the patterns given, where the predominance is on the form and not on the content. ideas of meaningful and purposeful learning do not have a place in these standards. the neutrality of english is also embodied by attaching to it only a denotative function. the different activities students are expected to perform in the english class are aimed at perpetuating an idealized image of english and everything associated with it, as a “fantasyland” where everybody is happy and lives in a perfect world. these descriptors are written in such a way that students are not invited to interrogate social practices. rather, they are asked to remain passive and submissive and participate diligently in the social order. it is ironic that something as inherently social as language is introduced in a national program as just an innocent and isolated tool. preventing students from playing with the l2, from getting contact with other varieties of the language, and from interacting with different speakers, that is, keeping them in a vacuum makes neutrality take another form: uniformity. the purpose of uniformity is to fulfill the dream of purists to maintain the language as unchanged as possible, where every speaker observes the rules and sounds exactly the same. a second purpose is to promote a single view of the world where social behaviors are dictated by the dominant groups; we all should copy the rules for the social practices of these groups and assume our roles to maintain an undisruptive social system. the estándares in its third section contains examples of how a dominant discourse in english language education favors a professionalism that incorporates prescriptive views of teaching and excessive needs for accountability and controlled quality. this is channeled through foreign agents that belong to the private sector, who are fine tuned to commercial survival (quintero, 2003). behind the estándares there are principles of learner-centeredness. they are derived from skillbased and non-academic education that turns into manipulative activities and objective competences used to control the users of the language. if the search is for a shared language, then an explicit declaration of what it implies should be made. to share a language means to be part of a discourse community, not for speaking the same tongue, but for sharing the same values and beliefs this discourse community has and, even more, for performing a role within this specific group of people (gee, 1996). this performance can be 148 universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras guerrero nieto & quintero polo achieved through the construction of empowering settings in which every actor can access the discourse and can make of it a linguistic capital in order to understand the challenges of their tasks and their alternatives for redefinition from their teaching and learning practices. nevertheless, some characteristics of the official document that we read hinder the construction of such settings. the audience to whom the estándares is addressed is composed mainly of colombian teachers. they are affected by the nonaligned status of english, which has been a key aspect in the promotion of the official document. it contains a language that serves mere instrumental purposes instead of enriching teachers’ discourse. it limits their access to other characteristics of the english language as a vehicle to broaden the ideological and cultural practices of the anglo north american countries. references auberbach, e. 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(2001). linguistic human rights in education for language maintenance. in l. maffi (ed.), on biocultural diversity. linking language, knowledge and the environment (pp. 397-411). washington, d.c.: the smithsonian institute press. thompson, j. (2003). editor’s introduction. in j. thompson (ed.), language and symbolic power. pierre bourdieu. cambridge, ma: harvard university press. tollefson, j. (1991). planning language, planning inequality: language policy in the community. london: longman. tumposky, n. (1984). behavioural objectives, the cult of efficiency, and foreign language learning: are they compatible? tesol quarterly, 18, 295-310. unesco (1970). functional literacy: why and how. paris, france: unesco. usma, j. (2009). education and language policy in colombia: exploring processes of inclusion, exclusion, and stratification in times of global reform. profile issues in teachers’ professional development, 11, 123141. valencia-giraldo, s. (2006). literacy practices, texts, and talk around texts: english language teaching developments in colombia. colombian applied linguistics journal, 8, 7-37. vargas, a., tejada, h., & colmenares, s. (2008). estándares básicos de competencias en lenguas extranjeras (inglés): una lectura crítica. lenguaje, 36(1), 241-275. vélez-rendón, g. (2003). english in colombia: a sociolinguistic profile. world englishes, 22(2), 185-198. about the authors carmen helena guerrero nieto, holds a ph.d in second language acquisition and teaching, university of arizona and an m.a. in applied linguistics to tefl, universidad distrital francisco josé de caldas. she is an assistant professor at universidad distrital, bogotá, and a member of the research group lectoescrinautas. her research interests are discourse analysis and language pedagogy. álvaro hernán quintero polo, holds an m.a. in applied linguistics to tefl, universidad distrital francisco josé de caldas. he is an assistant professor at universidad distrital, bogotá, and a member of the research group lectoescrinautas. his research interests are discourse analysis, language pedagogy, and curriculum evaluation. profile 9.indd the english language learning inside the escuela activa urbana model in a public school: a study of sixth graders profile 9, 2008. issn 1657-0790. bogotá, colombia. pages 47-62 47 the english language learning inside the escuela activa urbana model in a public school: a study of sixth graders el aprendizaje del inglés en el marco del modelo escuela activa urbana en un colegio público: un estudio en grado sexto odilia ramírez contreras* liceo cultural eugenio pacelli & universidad de caldas, colombia this study reports the findings of research dealing with sixth-graders’ perceptions of english language learning and the impact of active learning approaches in a public school in manizales, colombia. participants in the research were involved in lessons planned according to the principles of task-based learning and active learning, inside the escuela activa urbana model implemented by some private and public institutions in this city. the findings reported a positive impact of the model on the language learning process which was reflected in the increase of students’ participation, language production, and class interaction. key words: english as a foreign language, task-based learning, active learning, teamwork este estudio reporta los hallazgos de una investigación sobre las percepciones del aprendizaje de la lengua inglesa por parte de alumnos de sexto grado y el impacto de enfoques de aprendizaje activo en un colegio público en manizales, colombia. los participantes en la investigación tomaron parte en clases planeadas de acuerdo con los principios del aprendizaje basado en tareas y de las metodologías activas en el marco del modelo escuela activa urbana implementado por algunas instituciones públicas y privadas de la ciudad. los hallazgos reportan un impacto positivo del modelo en el proceso de aprendizaje de la lengua el cual se refleja en el incremento de la participación, la producción lingüística y la interacción de los estudiantes. palabras clave: inglés como lengua extranjera, aprendizaje basado en tareas, aprendizaje activo, trabajo en equipo * e-mail: odiliarc@yahoo.com address: calle 66c no. 41b-21 barrio las colinas, manizales, colombia.. this article was received on november 15th, 2007 and accepted on january 8th, 2008. profile 9.indd 47 21/04/2008 07:43:24 p.m. ramírez contreras universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras48 introduction teachers in public schools in colombia are permanently challenged by young learners’ attitudes towards english: lack of motivation or discouragement due to the belief that english pronunciation and grammar are unbearable are two of the comments teachers frequently make about their daily teaching. in fact, it is this challenge that makes teachers work hard on the planning of lessons that really attract the students’ attention and that help them feel that learning english is not so unendurable. this is something most teachers try to do with the implementation of the communicative approach (mcdonough & shaw, 2003) and the learner-centered curriculum (nunan, 1994), as in the public school where this research project was conducted and in which active methodologies are being applied as part of the new pedagogical model it recently adopted for the middle and high school levels. theoretical framework the theory supporting this research project includes aspects related to teaching methodology and language learning; the former refers not only to teaching english as a foreign language (efl), but to the process of teaching as a school approach, common to all subjects; the latter directs the attention to the specific process of learning a foreign language, in this case the learning of english in a public school that follows the urban active learning school model (escuela activa urbana). a current trend in public schools in manizales is the implementation of the active learning approach that refers to the level of engagement by the student in the learning process (fern, anstrom, & silcox, 1994). based on the principles stated by different pedagogues throughout history, this model was given the name escuela activa urbana (urban active learning school) as an educational project locally promoted by fundación luker1 and secretaría de educación de manizales2. according to gallego & ospina (2002), the active learning approach this project is based on cites different educators in history and claims the following: education must be individual, – spontaneous and natural, as stated by rousseau in the 18th century. in the same vein, nature is a learning resource for the students. observation and manipulation of – words and objects lead the kids to learning, (comenius, 1670, as cited in gallego & ospina, 2002). education means the building of – the kid’s personality within natural and spontaneous environments, as pestalozzi (1820) claimed in the 19th century. pragmatic learning based on – permanent activity and stimulation, as dewey (1950) concluded, facilitates progress. 1 fundación luker (luker foundation) is a private institution belonging to the production sector of the national economy. 2 secretaría de educación de manizales is the board of education belonging to the municipality administration. profile 9.indd 48 21/04/2008 07:43:25 p.m. the english language learning inside the escuela activa urbana model in a public school: a study of sixth graders profile 9, 2008. issn 1657-0790. bogotá, colombia. pages 47-62 49 group work with assigned roles, as – stated by montessori (1950), facilitates learning. learning and instruction are more – effective when situated within the students’ context and view of the world around them, as stated by freire (1965) in his philosophy of education. learning is better achieved when new – information is just beyond the students’ previous knowledge, as proposed by vygotsky’s zone of proximal development theory. teachers are guides or facilitators of – learning. since one of the most important features in the active learning methodology is group work, the physical environment of the classroom with this methodology is completely different from the traditional rows in which the students faced the board and the teacher. according to gallego & ospina (2002), furniture is now arranged so that students can move from learning centers or group discussion to plenaries in which they socialize knowledge and experiences. according to fundación luker (2007), the use of hexagonal moveable tables helps class distribution. thus, roles are assigned within each group such as moderator, time controller, spokesperson, essayist, logistics chief, and note-taker. besides class distribution, lesson planning also reflects some changes within the escuela activa urbana model (gallego & ospina, 2002). chart 1 shows the five stages identified in a lesson: stages of a lesson in the escuela activa urbana model stage 1 experience previous knowledge is activated and contextualization of the new language contents is guaranteed with engaging activities in which the students start using the language stage 2 scientific foundation students go through the new language through exemplification and illustrations from the textbook, expanded by the teacher. stage 3 practice students rehearse the new language based on the activities in the textbook or adapted by the teacher. stage 4 application students put into practice the new language with activities included in the textbook, which are expanded with tasks proposed by the teacher. stage 5 complementation independent assignments are given to the students to come up with language production through mostly artistic tasks. chart 1. stages in a lesson in the active learning model. profile 9.indd 49 21/04/2008 07:43:25 p.m. ramírez contreras universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras50 concerning the learning of english as a foreign language, this project focuses on the theory about task-based learning (tbl). willis (1996), cited by mcdonough & shaw (2003), stated that “tasks are always activities where the target language is used by the learner for a communicative purpose… in order to achieve an outcome” (p. 48). as can be seen, there is a strong stress on a product, on the achievement of a goal. due to its emphasis on communication, tbl deals with accuracy and fluency and comprises the following three phases (ibid): pre-task phase: the learner is 1. introduced to the new topic and given new language. the task cycle itself: the learners 2. do the task and plan how to tell or show the class their production; finally they report what they did. language focus: learners analyze 3. and practice the language learned. context the school where this study was conducted is a public school in manizales which serves a low socioeconomic stratum community in the south of the city. the school works under the guidelines of a cultural and environmental-oriented pedagogical project from pre-school to eleventh grade; it has about 850 students, 320 of which belong to middle and high school. the study was conducted with three 37-student sixth grade groups (46 girls and 65 boys, average age 13 years old) to whom i taught english as a foreign language three classes a week. for the school year 2007, the school adopted the escuela activa urbana methodology in the middle and high school levels, which implied a series of changes in the classroom including class distribution, self-instruction principles, textbooks, teamwork, and leadership, among others. the english as a foreign language syllabus is based on language functions which derive from the standards stated by the national ministry of education (2006). for seven years the school has offered middle and high school education and the english classes have been taught mainly within traditional grammar-oriented practices. sixth graders’ background in english at the beginning of the school year was restricted to vocabulary about animals, family members and colors. as a teacher researcher, my main concern dealt with the impact of the methodology adopted by the school for the efl class, since both the students and i were not very familiar with this model’s procedures. i started to reflect on my own teaching style, which i have always tried to make fit the principles of the communicative approach, and on what is expected from a teacher inside the escuela activa urbana methodology. i found several similarities and realized that my main role was supposed to be that of a facilitator, a guide, an observer, at times a judge, but one always open to the students’ learning needs. considering this, i decided on a task-based approach to my classes which helped me meet the expectations and needs of both the institution and the students. in the same way, as a permanent participant observer of the teaching-learning process, i decided on a qualitative descriptive approach to research, profile 9.indd 50 21/04/2008 07:43:25 p.m. the english language learning inside the escuela activa urbana model in a public school: a study of sixth graders profile 9, 2008. issn 1657-0790. bogotá, colombia. pages 47-62 51 taking advantage of the various possibilities for data collection later on described. research questions with the purpose of reflecting on the changes the school was going through, the following research questions were asked: how do sixth grade students perceive – the learning of english as a foreign language (efl)? what is the impact of – escuela activa urbana methodology on sixth graders’ english language learning process? methodology this research project corresponds to the qualitative descriptive research since, as seliger & shohamy (2003) claim, it attempts “to present the data from the perspective of the subjects or observed groups” and it “involves a collection of techniques used to specify, delineate, or describe naturally occurring phenomena without experimental manipulation” (p. 124). the project was carried out during the second and third academic terms of the 2007 school year; the research started at the end of the first term of the school year with a survey (appendix 1) in which the students were asked about the kind of attitudes and emotions that the english class elicited from them and the level of difficulty of each one of the language skills (listening, speaking, reading and writing). in the second and third terms, various classes were observed by a teacher trainee from a local state university whose observations were recorded in a journal. as a teacher researcher –participant observer– i completed my own journal in which i recorded my personal views of each observed and taught lesson. i tried to focus on the students’ attitudes, perceptions, or reactions to the new methodology i was implementing in my classes, keeping in mind my role as a guide and facilitator of the learning process in response to the pedagogical principles of the model and to the principles of the chosen research methodology. at the end of each lesson, a questionnaire was administered to the students (appendix 2) in which their perceptions about the learning process were recorded according to the tasks conducted. the students’ language production was analyzed through the collection of artifacts from classwork or extra assignments. three lessons were observed: the first one dealt with the use of language functions for descriptions of personality and physical appearance; the second one referred to the use of numbers for various purposes (time, math operations, quantities, and prices); and the third one dealt with clothing. every lesson ended with a task in which the students were expected to use the language functions studied. chart 2 presents the tasks corresponding to each lesson: the analysis of the information collected was conducted through the domain analysis technique proposed by ryan & bernard (2002); pieces of information were ferreted out, using colors to identify the different categories arising from the analysis. as already stated, data analysis aimed at the identification of the students’ perceptions about the english learning process and the impact of escuela activa urbana methodology on the students’ efl learning process. profile 9.indd 51 21/04/2008 07:43:25 p.m. ramírez contreras universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras52 data collection techniques stages of the lesson survey of students observation by a teacher trainee teacher’s diary artifacts collection stage 1 experience stage 2 scientific foundation stage 3 practice stage 4 application artifacts collection stage 5 complementation questionnaire after the completion of the lesson, a questionnaire was administered to students about their perceptions of the lesson. data analysis (pawing) chart 3. research project procedure. procedure according to escuela activa urbana, the process of the observed lessons followed the stages shown in chart 1; data were collected during the different stages of the lessons and artifacts collected from both in-class and extra-class assignments. chart 3 summarizes the procedure followed: findings to answer the research questions stated, the findings were divided in two main sections: the students’ perceptions about the english class and the impact of the escuela activa urbana methodology on the learning process. according to the analysis of the students’ survey, the questionnaires, the journals, and the artifacts, the students’ perceptions of the english language learning process were classified into two main categories: expectations and difficulties, as shown in diagram 1 below: sixth grade students expressed a strong belief that english is important and that it can help them meet their own expectations of personal and professional progress, learning of other subjects, provide job opportunities, access to world culture, travel, and facilitate the use of tics, mainly chatting on the internet. some of their comments in the initial survey stated that: it is a way to get new jobs.3 to be able to travel abroad. 3 to ensure understanding, the survey and questionnaires for students were administered in spanish. academic term language functions task 2 describing people’s personality and physical appearance oral presentation of avorite characters 2 using numbers in everyday life role play at the store 3 talking about clothing fashion show chart 2. language functions and tasks included in the observed lessons. profile 9.indd 52 21/04/2008 07:43:25 p.m. the english language learning inside the escuela activa urbana model in a public school: a study of sixth graders profile 9, 2008. issn 1657-0790. bogotá, colombia. pages 47-62 53 it makes me feel like learning in order to succeed in the future. it helps me be a more efficient person. i can succeed and get new job opportunities. i get interested in other cultures. i might be able to chat on the internet. these comments provided evidence of what was stated by freire (as cited in fundación luker, 2007) when referring to taking into account students’ views of the world in the classroom, since it is they who determine the areas of interest in the learning process; these views also reflect the desire to achieve high levels of personal and professional growth, which is one of the main purposes of active learning approaches. when talking about the difficulties they encountered in the learning of english as a foreign language, the students mentioned four specific factors affecting their learning process: differences in pronunciation and spelling on the one hand, and a lack of vocabulary and knowledge of grammar, on the other. it seemed to be really hard for them to figure out complete sentences according to the english language grammatical and phonetic systems. the first two aspects referred to the differences between the pronounced and the written forms of words in english. the observed lessons reported a permanent struggle on the part of the students to overcome the difficulties that the differences between the english and the spanish languages diagram 1. students’ perception of english language learning. profile 9.indd 53 21/04/2008 07:43:26 p.m. ramírez contreras universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras54 represented. these differences were insistently argued as the main reasons for their lack of understanding, their confusion, and sometimes desperation. they can be illustrated with some comments from the survey and the questionnaires, to wit: words are written a different way than they are pronounced. one gets confused when pronouncing words because they are written in a different way. it’s difficult to remember the spelling since words are written and pronounced in a different way. words are written one way and pronounced a different one. the same concern was referred to in my journal where i wrote the following: most students’ confusion stems from the difference between written and pronounced forms. lots of questions about pronunciation and spelling were asked. the other two aspects mentioned by the students when referring to difficulties in the learning process dealt with vocabulary and grammar. most of them had trouble when expressing ideas due to their lack of vocabulary. that is why most of the time they asked for translation by the teacher or looked up in the dictionary the words they needed to complete the tasks assigned. they also referred to the fact that word order is different in english and spanish which makes english learning confusing, boring, and excessively challenging. the following are some excerpts from the survey and questionnaires: many times words go backwards in comparison to spanish word order. you must know a lot of verbs and prepositions. it’s difficult because you have to put words in an order opposite to spanish word order. i know very little vocabulary and not knowing much grammar makes english nonsense to me. english is like a labyrinth. the teacher trainee and i reported similar comments in our journals: the students always wanted to translate word by word. they wanted the teacher to give all the vocabulary they needed. vocabulary seemed to be the most relevant difficulty among the students. these subcategories dealing with difficulties in the learning process reflected the language learning background of the students. they proved to be excessively dependent on translation and grammar; their main concern seemed to be the achievement of accurate language in terms of grammar, pronunciation, spelling, and vocabulary; the last one guaranteed by translation, ignoring communication in real life situations. in spite of the students’ constant complaints about the abovementioned difficulties and differences, they got to interact with their peers and help each other in the achievement of each language lesson, as expected inside the escuela activa urbana model and as proposed by comenius (1670), montessori (1950), and vigotstky (1917) (as cited in gallego & ospina, 2002). profile 9.indd 54 21/04/2008 07:43:26 p.m. the english language learning inside the escuela activa urbana model in a public school: a study of sixth graders profile 9, 2008. issn 1657-0790. bogotá, colombia. pages 47-62 55 the impact of escuela activa urbana methodology the categories that had to do with the impact of the escuela activa urbana methodology included the following two main aspects: class interaction and language issues, as shown in diagram 2. according to diagram 2, one of the main concerns on the part of both the students and the teacher was the class distribution which was referred to as the most remarkable change in the class scheme. according to the teacher’s and the students’ comments, the group distribution in hexagonal tables promoted conversation, distraction, and a lack of concentration on the tasks, mainly because most of the students lacked the necessary basic listening skills to follow instructions; in fact, the students complained that the class did not listen to them when speaking english, that the class was too noisy, or that they did not concentrate on the language which was used in class. the following are some comments taken from the questionnaires: the members of the group speak too much and they do not pay attention. the class lacks listening skills. it’s difficult because sometimes everybody talks and it is impossible to hear. it is difficult to get concentrated when somebody else talks to you. the noise does not let you concentrate. the same comments were made by the observer and me; we wrote the following in our journals: it was necessary to stop the exercise for requesting the student’s attention. most of the students were talking about personal issues. very few students followed the instructions at the beginning. diagram 2. the impact of escuela activa urbana methodology in the english class. profile 9.indd 55 21/04/2008 07:43:26 p.m. ramírez contreras universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras56 the groups talked among them while the teacher tried to give instructions. at some point, i was concerned about the noise the neighbor teachers might have heard. according to the people involved in the class (students and teacher), this new distribution demanded more time and effort for the achievement of the objectives of the lesson, but at the same time fostered interaction because students were more willing to help and support each other or ask the teacher questions when conducting the tasks; some comments in the questionnaires stated: i liked the fact that i had more classmates around to whom to ask about the class stuff. we helped each other and if i didn’t know, the good-at-english students would give me the vocabulary. things are easier when you can ask questions about vocabulary and pronunciation. the teacher and the classmates clarified the translation to me. this fact was also noticed by the observer who wrote in her journal: some usually quiet students dared to ask questions about vocabulary. students shared ideas about the answers and possible designs. posters helped students interact when designing them. another important finding reveals the increase of teamwork skills among the students; in spite of the difficulties related to time and student talking, the roles established in the groups according to the escuela activa urbana methodology helped students recognize and respect responsibilities and rights among themselves: it is good to have responsibilities; this way you are not bulled. when we help each other we are more productive. sometimes i understand better with the help of my classmates. in small groups i am not afraid of speaking up and i give opinions. i was ashamed to stay quiet so i had to speak up. the group almost forced me to participate. i had to collaborate. once again, class interaction arose as an important improvement in the language class since the students became aware of the importance of their roles within a group and of their previous knowledge, as respectively stated by montessori and vigotsky when cited by gallego & ospina (2002); students also realized the significance of their own achievements in relation to both their linguistic performance (willis, 1996), and of their personal growth (fern, anstrom, & silcox, 1994). the active learning picture 1. class distribution in the escuela activa urbana model. profile 9.indd 56 21/04/2008 07:43:27 p.m. the english language learning inside the escuela activa urbana model in a public school: a study of sixth graders profile 9, 2008. issn 1657-0790. bogotá, colombia. pages 47-62 57 approach to my lessons proved to be beneficial because it fitted the stages of the new model (gallego & ospina, 2002), which helped the students go up the ladder in a sequential way. one of the most satisfying aspects reported with the use of the escuela activa urbana methodology in the english class was the raising of students’ selfesteem and confidence when conducting or participating in the tasks; some students commented as follows in the questionnaires: i had never participated in class and this time i dared to do it because i knew what i was going to say. nervous but i was able to speak in public; it felt good. when you show what you do you feel confident to speak in english. the journals reported this aspect, too: when students showed their production (posters) they felt confident…girls who never spoke were able to participate in the fashion show and speak in public…although they looked a little nervous the students were strong enough to speak aloud. concerning language, i could see that the students showed significant progress in their english language use; one important finding deals with vocabulary increase as a result of class interaction and task-based learning; in general, students liked the kind of activities conducted in the observed lessons and they enjoyed expressing their own likes, views, and creativity; that is, working with meaningful tasks that made them use the language for real communication. picture 2. sixth graders getting prepared for the role play at the store. some of the comments the students made in the questionnaires after they performed the tasks acknowledged are as follows: i like to do real life things. it is easy to fix ideas according to what you do. i liked writing about my favorite singer; it was easy. it’s like playing; we were playing the store in english. although i was nervous, i liked going on the runway and describing myself in english. i was not afraid of expressing myself as a model. i didn’t like the fact that some students had fun on me. however, i could participate in the fashion show and speak in public. as an additional gain, accuracy was also reported as a significant improvement on the part of the students since they used the functions dealt with for the particular purposes of each lesson with accurate language. this finding was reported in the questionnaires where the students wrote the following: it was easy to write the sentences with the examples the teacher provided us with. profile 9.indd 57 21/04/2008 07:43:27 p.m. ramírez contreras universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras58 with the pictures and the vocabulary we can come up with ideas in a better way. the journals reported similar facts: in general, the language production was good, fewer mistakes were found…simple and at the same time correct sentences were used to present the posters…the students introduced themselves with correct sentences…vocabulary about clothes was easily used in the fashion show. concerning language use, probably the most outstanding improvement in the class was oral and volunteer participation; in spite of the messy and noisy atmosphere described in the data collection instruments, most of the instances corresponded to the willingness of volunteers to socialize their language production; the students referred to this in the questionnaires: sometimes you cannot hear because everyone wants to respond. many times you are not allowed to speak. since i had the sentences, i could participate several times. the journals showed the same facts concerning class participation: the class had to be stopped to assign more orderly turns among students. some students ran to the front of the class to give their examples. some kids yelled their answers without following instructions. it is important to highlight the direct relationship between the subcategories belonging to class interaction, mainly the one related to the students’ self-esteem and confidence, and the subcategories dealing with language issues. definitely, the more secure the students are the better their language production is. as the research progressed, i could observe that my students became more self-confident, which led them to higher levels of language production and, subsequently, to higher levels of participation. conclusions although changes in the colombian educational system have become quite frequent in the last decades (valencia, 2005), teachers must be prepared to adapt their teaching practices to the new trends and guidelines adopted by their schools; every change is a challenge, and as such, teachers need to keep in mind that the core of the educational artistry remains: our students, those challenging subjects who permanently demand variety, flexibility and motivation. the mixture of an active learning approach and a task-based orientation proved to help efl teaching professionals cope with the many difficulties that traditionally placed the english class in the list of boring or stressful subjects in the curriculum. teamwork, as one of the main goals of the escuela activa urbana model, must be the result of effective communication among peers in the classroom who work together for the achievement of objectives and the completion of tasks that reflect appropriate, sequential, and contextualized lesson planning. teamwork skills must become part of the curriculum goals so that the future generations can actively participate in their own learning in class environments in which speaking up as regards their own ideas, opinions, and profile 9.indd 58 21/04/2008 07:43:27 p.m. the english language learning inside the escuela activa urbana model in a public school: a study of sixth graders profile 9, 2008. issn 1657-0790. bogotá, colombia. pages 47-62 59 experiences can be done in the foreign language through the implementation of task-based activities. the learning of basic listening skills in the classroom and inside the groups in the escuela activa urbana methodology takes time, especially for young efl learners; active learning approaches completely change the class atmosphere since students are permanently interacting and participating as agents in their own learning process. teachers and administrators must be aware of their new role as facilitators and of the need for a clear understanding of what really happens in the classroom: active learning. this way, frequent noisy or messy class activities will not be judged as lacking classroom management or discipline. efl theory can be easily incorporated into wider teaching models like the escuela activa urbana in manizales. in this particular case, task-based learning in the english class was effectively taken advantage of for the accomplishment of school goals aimed at the education of young learners through teamwork, contextualization, participation, and so on. this is a key point teachers can take into consideration when making decisions about their teaching. schools working under the same guidelines (escuela activa urbana) are recommended to take advantage of the adaptability of taskbased learning into the stages of this model so that the principles of the learner-centered curriculum and the communicative approach can be put into practice and fostered permanently. meaningful and active classes help teachers change the students’ negative perceptions of english as a foreign language. when students feel that they can use the language for real communication of their own experiences or views of the world, their self-esteem and confidence grow and the process of the class flows more efficiently, making learning happen. this is the most important reflection from this piece of research. references brown, d. (1994). principles of language learning and teaching. englewood cliffs: prentice hall regents. canale, m., & swain, m. (1980). theoretical bases of communicative approaches to second language teaching and testing. london: cambridge. fern, v., anstrom, k., & silcox, b. (1994). active learning and the limited english proficient student. directions in language and education national clearinghouse for bilingual education, 1 (2). retrieved november 10, 2007, from http:// www.ncela.gwu.edu/pubs/directions/02.htm fundación luker. (2007). memorias segundo seminario de escuela activa urbana. manizales: fundación luker. gallego, l., & ospina, j. (2002). escuela nueva. dimensionada en la educación básica. manizales: litógrafos asociados. mcdonough, j., & shaw, c. (2003). materials and methods in elt: a teacher’s guide. oxford: blackwell publishing. ministerio de educación nacional (2005). bases para una nación bilingüe y competitiva. al tablero, 37, bogotá d.c.: men. (2006). formar en lenguas extranjeras: ¡el reto! estándares básicos de competencias en lenguas extranjeras: inglés. serie guías no. 22. bogotá d.c.: imprenta nacional. nunan, d. (1994). the learner-centered curriculum. n.y.: cambridge university press. ryan, g., & bernard, h. r. (2000). techniques to identify themes in qualitative data. retrieved june, 2006 from http://www.analytictech.com/ mb870/readings/ryan-bernard_techniques_to_ identify_themes_in.htm profile 9.indd 59 21/04/2008 07:43:28 p.m. ramírez contreras universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras60 about the author odilia ramírez contreras, m.a. in english didactics, universidad de caldas, specialist in english didactics, universidad del tolima, and specialist in edumática, universidad autónoma de bogotá. she is a full-time teacher in liceo cultural eugenio pacelli and part-time professor in caldas university in manizales. she is currently a member of the research group redi (researchers in english didactics) in the same university. seliger, h.w., & shohamy, e. (2003). second language research methods. oxford: oxford univerity press. valencia, s. (2005). el bilingüismo y los cambios en políticas y prácticas en la educación pública en colombia: un estudio de caso. retrieved april 4, 2007 from http://www.bilinglatam.com/espanol/ informacion/silvia%20valencia%20giraldo.pdf willis, j. (1996). a framework for task-based learning. harlow, essex: longman. profile 9.indd 60 21/04/2008 07:43:28 p.m. the english language learning inside the escuela activa urbana model in a public school: a study of sixth graders profile 9, 2008. issn 1657-0790. bogotá, colombia. pages 47-62 61 appendix 1: survey given to students at the end of the first academic term4 dear student, please answer the following questions precisely and honestly. your answers will be taken into account for the improvement of the english learning process in our school. what kind of attitudes or feelings do you experience in the 1. learning of english as a foreign language? why? according to your experience in the learning of english as a foreign language, 2. what is the level of difficulty in each one of the language skills? rate them from 1 to 5, being 1 the lowest and 5 the highest level of difficulty. listening 1 2 3 4 5 why? speaking 1 2 3 4 5 why? reading 1 2 3 4 5 why? writing 1 2 3 4 5 why? 4 to ensure understanding, the survey was administered in spanish. profile 9.indd 61 21/04/2008 07:43:28 p.m. ramírez contreras universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras62 appendix 2: questionnaire given to students at the end of each lesson5 class: date: considering the lesson and the english learning processes, please answer the following questions as precisely as possible. what are the aspects that you liked the most concerning 1. the performance of the tasks in the lesson? how did you like group work/teamwork in this lesson?2. what effect did the working system of this lesson have on your english learning process?3. 5 to ensure understanding, the questionnaire was administered in spanish. profile 9.indd 62 21/04/2008 07:43:28 p.m. some relevant aspects of the constituents of the english tone unit for formal pronunciation teaching profile 8, 2007. issn 1657-0790. bogotá, colombia. pages 165-178 165 some relevant aspects of the constituents of the english tone unit for formal pronunciation teaching* algunos aspectos importantes de los componentes de la unidad tónica inglesa para la enseñanza formal de la pronunciación nilton hitotuzi** universidad federal del amazonas, brazil […] the question of how people know what is going on in a text is a special case of the question of how people know what is going on in the world at all (de beaugrande, 1980, p. 30). this paper is an attempt to provide evidence that the semantics of utterances can also be offered by intonation, and thus to point out some important aspects of the english intonation system for formal pronunciation teaching. furthermore, on the assumption that this system plays a major role in aural/ oral communication, it argues for the necessity of long-term experiments on the applicability of david brazil’s discourse intonation approach with beginners. it nonetheless recognises that applying it to students in a foreign-language learning environment may pose a serious challenge for teachers whose mother tongue differs from the target language. key words: intonation system, formal pronunciation teaching, oral/aural interaction este artículo pretende evidenciar que la semántica de los enunciados también puede estar dada por la entonación, y de esa manera señalar algunos aspectos importantes del sistema de entonación del inglés para la enseñanza formal de la pronunciación. además, partiendo del supuesto de que este sistema juega un papel importante en la comunicación oral, este artículo clama por la necesidad de experimentos a largo plazo sobre la aplicabilidad con principiantes del enfoque de entonación del discurso, de david brazil. sin embargo, se reconoce que la aplicación del mismo a estudiantes en un contexto de aprendizaje de lengua extranjera puede resultar un gran reto para profesores cuya lengua materna difiere de la lengua objeto. palabras clave: sistema de entonación, enseñanza formal de la pronunciación, interacción oral * this project was sponsored by fundação de amparo à pesquisa do estado do amazonas (fapeam); decisão no. 026, 2006. ** e-mail: nvh2002@hotmail.com address: rua joaquim ferreira, cond. 84, c/06. jd. das margaridas. cep: 41.502-200. salvador-ba, brazil. this article was received on march 31st, 2007 and accepted on july 15th, 2007. profile 8.indd 165 28/09/2007 12:42:28 a.m. hitotuzi universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras166 introduction apparently, the interpretation of a given message is dependent on a series of interrelated conditions. first, a crucial aspect for that appears to be the profiles, or the “interpenetrating biographies” (coulthard, 1985, p. 106) of the participants: the writer/ speaker on the one end of the channel, and the reader/hearer on the other. it seems, thus, that the way in which the participants perceive the world and the socio-cultural relationships involved in the process of communication is pivotal in determining how they interpret a given proposition. schank strongly concurs with this view: “humans understand what is said to them in terms of their own knowledge and beliefs about the world” (schank, 1979, p. 400, quoted in brown & yule, 1983, p. 207). secondly, context appears to be another key element for understanding both spoken and written texts. firth (1957; see also sadock, 1978, both quoted in brown and yule, 1983, p. 37) endorses this point by suggesting that situational contexts play an important role in understanding verbal exchanges. furthermore, cauldwell’s (1999) findings on his judgements of attitudinal meanings in isolation and in context also lend credence to the relevance of contextual factors in communicative situations. the idea that context variation may be tantamount to meaning variation seems to be a tenable one (fillmore, 1977). consider the meaning of the word storm in the following utterance in two different contexts: the storm began five minutes after the politician had started his speech. context 1: a politician is delivering a public speech in the winter in a city in the amazon rainforest. in this scenario, storm may be synonymous with a violent disturbance of the atmosphere with strong winds and …with thunder and rain … (allen, 1990, p.1202). context 2: the mayor of rio de janeiro is publicly outlining his plans for coping with drug trafficking in that city. at this juncture, it is likely that the word storm is being employed as an umbrella term to describe the disturbance resultant of an assassination attempt perpetrated by members of drug trafficking gangs. finally, brown & yule (1983) make the point that intonation can be yet another nonformal meaning constrainer. one should be quick to admit, though, that predicting meanings in this way can be hard for the listener, especially because the construction of meaning based on intonation seems to be realised on a moment-to-moment basis by the speaker in real-time interactions. perhaps this is why discourse analysts would rather focus on teacher talk than conversation outside the classroom (sinclair & brazil, 1982; mccarthy, 1991; coulthard, 1985). this fact, however, should not discourage language teachers from paying particular attention to the intonation system to raise awareness in their classrooms of the pivotal role it plays in oral communication. according to jenkins (2004), pronunciation and intonation teaching are emerging from the peripheral position to which communicative language teaching relegated it since the last quarter of the twentieth century. in the following sections, there will be an attempt at presenting some features of the intonation systems of prominence, tone, key and termination, and their significance for satisfactory aural/oral interaction in the english language. to this end, the transcript of an original text fragment from an interview with an oyster farmer on bbc radio 4’s profile 8.indd 166 28/09/2007 12:42:28 a.m. some relevant aspects of the constituents of the english tone unit for formal pronunciation teaching profile 8, 2007. issn 1657-0790. bogotá, colombia. pages 165-178 167 the food programme (dillon, 1991) will be analysed. the objective of this paper is thus to raise awareness of the importance of these systems to the foreign and second language (henceforth l2) classroom contexts, insofar as suprasegmental features can be as important as linguistic expressions for conveying meaning in specific contexts. as wichmann puts it: “it is well known that intonation can convey many nuances of meaning: it has the power to reinforce, mitigate or even undermine the words spoken” (wichmann, 2005, p. 229). meaning through intonation some features of the intonation system according to cauldwell & allan (1998), there are three basic dimensions involved in the oral/aural communication system, namely articulatory, acoustic and auditory. they also point out that the perception of pitch, loudness, and duration is resultant of the interaction of the three dimensions in question (table 1). moreover, they go on to say that these prosodic features are the phenomena through which intonation is commonly studied. nevertheless, perhaps due to the daunting intricacy of the matter, many discourse analysts have chosen to describe intonation in terms of pitch alone (coulthard, 1985). underhill (1994, p. 76) presents some pragmatic comments on pitch: the vocal cords vibrate during speech. this vibration is heard as sound, and the pitch of this sound varies according to the frequency of the vibration of the cords: the higher the frequency of vibration the higher the pitch that you hear. when you sing a pitch or note you usually hold it for a time before jumping or sliding to the next note. but in speech the pitch of your voice varies continuously so that your speech is not heard as a tune. this pitch variation extends over single phonemes, sequences of phonemes, and whole utterances. many phoneticians believe that the stream of speech can be divided into tone units within which pitch moves (mccarthy, 1991). furthermore, pitch movement and pitch level are intrinsically associated with four micro systems within the intonation system, which, according to brazil (1983), comprise the constituents of the tone unit, namely prominence, tone, key, and termination (brazil, 1994a, 1994b). put simply, the tone unit is in its turn “produced as the smallest stretch of speech without a break in it” (brazil, 1994b, p. 150). the articulation of these four micro systems seems to constitute the communicative value of a given tone unit (brazil, 1983). articulatory acoustic auditory vibration of vocal folds fundamental frequency pitch physical effort amplitude (intensity) loudness timing of movements time duration table 1. dimensions of spoken communication (adapted from couperkuhlen, 1986, p.7, quoted in cauldwell & allan, 1998, p. 4). profile 8.indd 167 28/09/2007 12:42:28 a.m. hitotuzi universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras168 the significance of prominence prominence, as brazil (1994b, p. 9) points out, “is better regarded as something one can recognise only within the overall pattern of the tone unit of which it is part”. thus, it can only be associated with pitch movement insofar as it lends itself to be the key element upon which pitch moves. in addition, it seems prominence can be described, in many cases, in the same way stress in dictionary entries is. compare: word uttered in citation form, as in a), is spoken as a tone unit, its stressed syllable is labelled tonic syllable. for another, if it has both a secondary and a primary stress, as in b), the syllable on which the secondary stress is laid is coined onset (underhill, 1994, p. 78), or onset syllable, according to brazil (1985, p. 23) (e.g. communication), and the one where the primary stress is placed continues to be called tonic syllable (e.g. communication), when the word is spoken as a tone unit (brazil, 1985, 1994b; mccarthy, 1991). however, the very fact that the tonic syllable is always the last prominent syllable in a tone unit seems to prevent further analogy between dictionary entries and tone units in terms of prominence. notice what happens in the rare case when the secondary stress occupies the usual place of its counterpart in dictionary entries containing more than one stressed syllable: apparently, there is only a shift in terminology in the comparison above. for one thing, when a one-prominent-syllable thus, it is evident that, in the case of words having the same citation-form pattern as cheeseparing, the second prominent syllable either becomes non-prominent when spoken as a tone unit, since there can be no prominence after the tonic syllable within a tone unit (brazil, 1994b), or becomes the tonic syllable of the tone unit, eliminating then the similarity between dictionary entry and tone-unit stress pattern. mccarthy seems to concur with that as follows: many other polysyllabic words may only have one prominence but may still have primary and secondary word stress (e.g. 1cata2lyst, 1confis2cate, 1wherea2bouts). (mccarthy, 1991, p. 95) the distinction between dictionaryentry and tone-unit stress patterns appears to have relevant implications for formal pronunciation teaching. for one thing, if learners are denied this notion, they may have difficulty in both producing intelligible and profile 8.indd 168 28/09/2007 12:42:29 a.m. some relevant aspects of the constituents of the english tone unit for formal pronunciation teaching profile 8, 2007. issn 1657-0790. bogotá, colombia. pages 165-178 169 non-stilted utterances and in understanding native-speaker production. this is very much the case when the misleading belief that dictionary-entry phonemic notations provide the only correct pattern for pronunciation is part of the learner’s conception of language learning. for another thing, even with those mature learners trained to notice the difference between these two systems of stress pattern, there is some risk of evasiveness of meaning if they lack the awareness of the significance of prominence. a speaker’s decision of giving prominence to certain words seems to be dependent on the available choices in the existential paradigm, i.e., the set of options available in a given context. this is amply exemplified in a set of three question/response pairs provided by brazil (1985), and revisited in coulthard (1985, p. 102), which is quoted here: q: which card did you play? r: //the queen of hearts// q: which queen did you play? r: //the queen of hearts// q: which heart did you play? r: //the queen of hearts// 1. 2. 3. considering the composition of the pack of cards, as coulthard (1985) suggests, in (1) the speaker had a universe of thirteen possibilities to choose from on the one hand and another of four possibilities on the other. however, in (2) the number of possibilities drops to four, since “queen” is a given term, that is, “queen” is part of the shared knowledge between the speakers. in the third example, there is a universe of 13 possibilities, inasmuch as the newly shared information is no longer focused on the suits. in sum, the relevant aspect about prominence is that a speaker will make prominent items that have an existential paradigm to draw on based on what he or she considers as not part of the listener’s common ground, or (to use coulthard’s terms) not “interactionally given” (coulthard, 1985, p. 104). the significance of tone there is a moot point over the characterisation of tone. it seems though that brazil’s (1994a, 1994b) simplified terminology is appropriate for work on suprasegmentals in the l2 classroom (table 2). additionally, although there is also broad disagreement amongst phoneticians as to tone symbol shape falling p rising r+ rise-fall p+ fall-rise r level o table 2. system of pitch movement. profile 8.indd 169 28/09/2007 12:42:29 a.m. hitotuzi universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras170 the exact meaning pitch movement conveys, the relevance of tone variation seems to be precisely that it may have a different meaning whenever it occurs. the prime example of this is the one choice speakers seem to make between, say, a falling tone and a fall-rise tone – proclaiming, symbol p, and referring, symbol r, respectively, to use brazil’s terminology. compare these examples (adapted from brazil, 1985, p. 106): suggestion is that, being “teachers” the topic of the conversation, the potential hearer is “told” that the acquaintance is in the teaching profession also. there is therefore an obvious correspondence between interlocutors’ shared knowledge and referring tones on the one hand, and what is “news” and proclaiming tones on the other. importantly, the notion of common ground between interlocutors can be at the speaker’s service for the purpose of ideological manipulation. underhill points out that this is very much the case “in the speech of advertisers and politicians who may use intonation to suggest that what they are saying is already negotiated and agreed by us, and part of our common ground, even when it isn’t” (underhill, 1994, p.86). moreover, brazil (1994b) also adds some equally important facts about proclaiming and fall-rise tones. he points out that while r is the preferred tone in (i) “making-sure” questions and in (ii) “social” enquiries, p is normally the choice in (iii) enquiries about matters unknown to the enquirer and (iv) when information asked for is provided. compare:1 1 utterances (i) and (ii) are quoted from brazil (1994a, p. 42-43; 45). in these examples, brazil (1985) demonstrates that referring tones are chosen when the speaker wants to convey parts of his/her message as part of the shared knowledge with the listener, and that proclaiming tones are used as an indication of addition of new items to the area of shared knowledge. thus, in example (a) a potential hearer is “told” that the mary brown who is a mutual acquaintance of both speaker and hearer is a teacher, whereas in (b), the profile 8.indd 170 28/09/2007 12:42:29 a.m. some relevant aspects of the constituents of the english tone unit for formal pronunciation teaching profile 8, 2007. issn 1657-0790. bogotá, colombia. pages 165-178 171 the choice between fall-rise (r) and rising (r+) tones equally exemplifies amply the fact that a slight shift in pitch movement may represent a shift in meaning. although not exploring the subconscious ideological edge involved in the r/r+ system, sinclair & brazil (1982) suggest that the choice of either one is likely to be related to the role of the speakers involved. hence, the choice of r+ is likely to be made by members of a specific class of interlocutors, such as teachers, interviewers, employers, and senior officers/employees, or by anyone who arrogates to themselves the role of dominant speaker. this seems to occur in extremely restricted environments, and occurs mostly because of the strength of long-established social rules as, for instance, is the case of teacher/pupil interactions. as coulthard (1985, p. 109) makes the point: this is not to say that pupils can’t [reciprocate what teachers do], it is just that it is unusual and if they do so they are seen as doing something different from the teacher, usually they are ‘being cheeky’. the option realised by p+ in substitution for p may be an indication of at least three factors involved in conversational contexts: (1) addition of new information to the speaker’s own store of knowledge; (2) signalisation of turn continuation, and/or (3) “dominant-speaker status” (brazil, 1985, p. 151). furthermore, coulthard (1985, p. 110) demonstrates that p+ is also used to express feelings, such as surprise, disappointment, and enjoyment. nevertheless, it appears that the decision on whether p+ signals surprise, disappointment or enjoyment is commonly reinforced by situational context and body language (e.g. facial gestures) as seems to be the case in the aforementioned example. at this point, many would be likely to agree that discourse analysts would capitalise much more on crystal’s (1995) comprehensive description of tone forms than on brazil’s simplified description of pitch movement. the significance of key sinclair and brazil point out that key “has to do with the pitch level of the voice” (sinclair and brazil, 1982, p. 41), and that it describes utterances in three levels, each conveying a different meaning (table 3). the examples offered by brazil (1983), and further discussed by coulthard (1985, p. 111), quoted in table 3, seem to lend credence to that. in the light of these examples, it seems safe to suggest that key is a constituent of the intonation system that speakers can use to convey meaning at any given pitch level at which a sentence is uttered. additionally, apart from the three meanings described in table 3, key can also be used to express attitudes such as politeness, assertiveness and indifference (coulthard, 1985). the significance of termination finally, there is termination. sinclair & brazil (1982) demonstrate that termination is intrinsically related to key, and that the number of termination choices is limited, as demonstrated in table 4. the information conveyed in this table suggests at least two assumptions: one is that termination can move only one step up or one step down from the chosen key level (sinclair & brazil, profile 8.indd 171 28/09/2007 12:42:29 a.m. hitotuzi universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras172 1982); and the other is the fact that dominant speakers seem to capitalise on termination level (brazil, 1985; coulthard, 1985). sinclair and brazil (1982) maintain that discourse analysts can choose to focus on a few termination choices, namely those involving the transition of turns in an interaction. furthermore, they argue that in such instances termination is meaningful insofar as one speaker’s termination choice suggests his/her expectation about the other interlocutor’s termination choice when responding to him/her in a conversation. additionally, it seems that this is the case even when a turn is handed over with low termination, since the speaker’s expectation here is exactly not to expect his/her listener response in any particular key-level choice. the examples in table 4 are adapted from sinclair and brazil (1982, p. 154-155). pitch level meaning example high key contrastive //p he gambled// p and lost// (contrary to expectations; i.e. there is an interaction-bound opposition between the two) mid key additive //p he gambled// p and lost// (he did both) low key equative //p he gambled// p and lost// (as you would expect, i.e. there is an interaction-bound eqivalence between them) table 3. the key system. key level termination level meaning example high high expectation on the part of the speaker of a contrastive answer: yes/no. t: //p do you think this one’s larger// p: //p yes// mid pressure from the speaker for a favourable response by the other interlocutor. t: //p do you think this one’s larger// p: //p yes// mid high expectation on the part of the speaker of a contrastive answer: yes/no. t: //p do you think this one’s larger// p: //p yes// mid pressure from the speaker for a favourable response by the other interlocutor. t: //p do you think this one’s larger// p: //p yes// low the speaker imposes little or no constraint on the next “turn taker”. //r and the question i want to put to you//r+ is//p do we need//p an income policy// low mid pressure from the speaker for a favourable response by the other interlocutor. t: //p do you think this one’s larger// p: //p yes// low the speaker imposes little or no constraint on the next “turn taker”. //r and the question i want to put to you//r+ is//p do we need//p an income policy// table 4. the termination system. profile 8.indd 172 28/09/2007 12:42:29 a.m. some relevant aspects of the constituents of the english tone unit for formal pronunciation teaching profile 8, 2007. issn 1657-0790. bogotá, colombia. pages 165-178 173 choices speakers make in the intonation systems of prominence, tone, key and termination this section has a two-fold goal. first, the focus will be on a tentative analysis of the transcript of an authentic excerpt from an interview on bbc radio 4’s the food programme (dillon, 1991) (table 5). the analysis will be in terms of the choices speakers make in the intonation systems of prominence, tone, key and termination. nevertheless, only those examples that are clearly explicable in terms of discourse intonation will be analysed. the analysis the conversation that takes place in this excerpt reveals an attempt of an oyster farmer to undermine the argument that, when oysters are eaten, there are still alive. thus, on the one hand, the interviewer (a), apparently trying to give the farmer an opportunity to address the concerns of those antagonising the consumption of molluscs alive, prompts him to make his case at his discretion. on the other hand, the oyster farmer (b), presumably as an attempt to protect his business, tries to convince the interviewer (as well as the audience) that oysters are dead when they are eaten. additionally, he suggests that the table 5. an oyster farmer on the bbc radio 4 food programme (quoted from cauldwell & allan, 1998, p. 45). profile 8.indd 173 28/09/2007 12:42:30 a.m. hitotuzi universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras174 fact that oysters are killed just before they are eaten is to the advantage of the consumer: it is guaranteed freshness. in order to achieve their intent, both a and b, in addition to linguistic expressions, avail themselves of the systems of prominence, tone, key and termination. in tu 01, for instance, the speaker uses low termination, which seems to be a typical feature in the questioning style of interviewers. this is in accordance with sinclair & brazil’s (1982, p. 154-155) suggestion that the speaker imposes little or no constraint on the hearer by using low key and termination levels (table 4; see also cauldwell & allan, 1998, p. 45). the use of a proclaiming tone also lends credence to the response-prompting strategy to which many interviewers resort. by using this tone, a voices, in a non-aggressive manner, the key question: “are oysters alive or not when we eat them?” in terms of prominence, “eat” and “alive” are stressed in tu 01. eat is the onset syllable, the selection choice within the existential paradigm involving oyster farming in a broad sense; and alive contains the tonic syllable; it is the choice within the existential paradigm involving the mollusc (e.g. as opposed to “dead). both key and termination are low in tu 02. perhaps a’s termination choice has influenced that of b’s in this tone unit. moreover, by using a proclaiming tone to give a negative response to a, b seems to express strong disagreement with the suggestion in a’s enquiry. at this point, the meaning underlying the proclaiming tone in tu 01 needs to be revisited. in reality, what a appears to convey is the question: “oysters are indeed still alive when they are eaten, aren’t they?” thus, the second speaker follows suit by contradicting a politely when using low key (coulthard, 1985) and termination in conjunction with a proclaiming tone. the monosyllabic negative expression in tu 02 limits prominence to the tonic syllable (i.e. no as opposed to “yes”). seemingly, the low termination in tu 03 accounts for the repetition of information contained in the previous statement (brazil, 1994, p. 95). thus, “that’s a fallacy” means the same as “no, it isn’t true that oysters are eaten alive”. similar to its occurrence in b’s previous utterance, the proclaiming tone here is used to politely contradict the assumption in a’s prompting. furthermore, by giving prominence to that’s, b seems to signal a clear-cut delimitation of the target of his assertion. in other words, b wants to emphasise that what is “a fallacy” is the fact that “oysters are eaten alive”. finally, the fact that “fallacy” carries the tonic syllable (i.e. fallacy) indicates that it was selected from the range of expressions available within the “false-true” existential paradigm, such as “truism”, “true”, and “a lie”. in tu 04, the high key seems to indicate the beginning of pitch sequence (brazil, 1985). it marks the starting point of b’s argumentation against the misleading notion, posed by a, regarding the way oysters are eaten, which appears to account for the contrastive value of key, as demonstrated in table 3. by using a level tone in this tu, b seems to be “mentally preparing” what to say next (brazil, 1994b, p. 55; cauldwell & allan, 1998). it appears that b strategically marks “when” as the onset syllable in order to call a’s attention to a precise moment, which is extremely relevant to the point b is trying to make. moreover, the tonic syllable (i.e. oyster) in this tu indicates that, from the range of choices available, it is the oyster profile 8.indd 174 28/09/2007 12:42:30 a.m. some relevant aspects of the constituents of the english tone unit for formal pronunciation teaching profile 8, 2007. issn 1657-0790. bogotá, colombia. pages 165-178 175 which concerns b, not any other mollusc (coulthard, 1985). apparently, the proclaiming tone in tu 05 is an indication of the assumption of an unshared perspective on the part of the speaker (brazil, 1994b), i.e. b is now feeding new information into the conversation. on the other hand, it appears that the reoccurrence of this tone in b’s speech throughout the excerpt in table 5 is caused by his desire to make his point convincingly, as suggested by l. taylor (personal communication, october 31, 2002). in terms of prominence, opened is marked as having the tonic syllable in opposition to “closed”, for instance. while the same comments about the choice of tone in tu 05 applies to tu 06, its onset syllable (i.e. when), and the tonic syllable (i.e. opened) seem to be a corollary of the relevance of “when” and “opened” in the “co-text” (the phrase is from brown and yule, 1983, p. 46). seemingly, b feels the need to reiterate the emphasis on these words, which appear to be key elements leading up to the strong point he wants to make. on the other hand, one might wonder why “shell” is not prominent here. perhaps, at this point, “shell” is synonymous with “oyster” in tu 04; there is, therefore, no need to make it prominent in tu 06 again. it appears that the level tone in tu 07 can be equated with that of tu 04. for one thing, in both tus, the focus seems to be on the wording of the utterance rather than on the interpersonal interactivity (cauldwell, 2002). thus, b appears to be mentally preparing what to say next (brazil, 1994b; cauldwell & allan, 1998). for another, as l. taylor (personal communication, october 31, 2002) indicated, both are conducive to the point that b strongly wants to make about “opened” and “both”. by marking the onset syllable (i.e. oyster), b now means the meat, not the shell of the oyster. and the tonic syllable in this tu (i.e. detached) accounts for the speaker choice within the existing experiential paradigm. key and termination are high in tu 08, which might indicate b’s assumption of the popular view that oysters are attached only to one shell; and, as an oyster connoisseur, therefore, in a dominant role, as demonstrated by sinclair & brazil (1982), he clarifies things. thus, here, b is contrasting what he knows is the case with the popular view, viz. “the oyster is attached to both shells, not to one shell only” (brazil, 1994, p. 89). the comment about the choice of a proclaiming tone in tu 05 seems to be applicable here. both is marked as the tonic syllable as opposed to “one”. in tu 09, the suggestion made by l. taylor (personal communication, october 31, 2002) is that, differently from that in tu 04 and tu 07, the level tone is a list. in terms of prominence, flat is used as opposed to “cup”. the use of a referring (fall-rise) tone in tu 10 seems to signal a confirmation of the comments on tu 08: b assumes it is general knowledge that oysters are attached to their cup shell; therefore, the matter must be also known to a. the expression “cup” is made prominent here in opposition to “flat”, for instance. the peculiarity of the referring (fall-rise) in tu 11 may be due to b’s decision to use it instead of a level tone for creating more rapport with a (and/or the audience) (l. taylor, personal communication, october 31, 2002). it shows, however, that “oyster” is shared knowledge between b and a (coulthard, 1985) (i.e. it has been mentioned profile 8.indd 175 28/09/2007 12:42:30 a.m. hitotuzi universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras176 earlier in the interview). the tonic syllable, oyster seems to be a means of referring a back to tu 06. termination is low in tu 12, which appears to be essentially a reiteration of b’s conviction conveyed in tu 02 and tu 03. in other words, “no. that’s a fallacy” means “the oysters are well and truly dead when they are eaten”. additionally, this choice of termination seems to mark the end of a pitch sequence (brazil, 1985). the comments about the choice of tone in tu 05 also seem to account for the use of a proclaiming tone here. in tu 13, the referring (fall-rise) tone is used to reiterate the idea put forth in the opening line (i.e. oysters are still alive when they are eaten). the occurrence of the tonic syllable in this tu (i.e. alive) indicates the choice from a limited universe, since there are only two options: one must be either alive or dead. by using a high termination in tu 14, a seems to be contradicting what the audience might expect to hear, viz. the confirmation that oysters are still alive “a second after” they are eaten (table 4). a proclaiming tone here appears to signal that a’s suggestion is presented as if it were not shared, i.e. it goes against expectations (brazil, 1994b). on the other hand, it can be said that a pitches this tone as a prompting strategy. in terms of prominence, second is used in opposition to “minute”, for instance; and before, as opposed to “after”. a low termination in tu 15 appears to indicate that b imposes no “constraint” on a (sinclair and brazil, 1982, p.155). furthermore, this choice of termination equally reinforces the confirmation of a’s statement (brazil, 1994): “absolutely”, thus, means the same as “yes, it was alive a second before it was eaten”. in tu 16, a pitches a proclaiming tone in order to find out whether the matter is really true (i.e. “i want to know if that’s the case.”) (brazil, 1994a). again, it also functions as a prompting strategy employed by the interviewer. the occurrence of two onset syllables in a tone unit appears to be a rare case (brazil, 1985, 1994b). but in this tu one can find (1) that and (2) guarantees, which are made prominent before freshness. in (1) a’s seems to want to call b’s attention to the relevance of the senses conveyed by tu 13 and tu 14; in (2), by selecting guarantees, a emphasises freshness, which indicates b’s choice from the existential paradigm – the oyster’s “bad smell” could be guaranteed instead. finally, in tu 17, termination is low, indicating, as brazil (1994a) suggests, a reiteration of the information contained in the previous statement. thus, “yes” means “freshness”. by using a proclaiming tone here, the interviewee provides the information the interviewer asked for (brazil, 1994a). similar to the dead-alive dichotomy, “yes” is made prominent in opposition to “no”. conclusion in light of the analysis of the excerpt in table 5, many would be likely to agree that the introduction of suprasegmentals in the l2 classroom, especially that of the intonation systems of prominence, tone, key and termination, cannot be seen as an easy task – and this may be much more the case for non-native teachers because of the limitations of target-language linguistic experience, a phenomenon that profile 8.indd 176 28/09/2007 12:42:30 a.m. some relevant aspects of the constituents of the english tone unit for formal pronunciation teaching profile 8, 2007. issn 1657-0790. bogotá, colombia. pages 165-178 177 is part of foreign language learners’ reality (harnsberger, 2001). nevertheless, since these systems can both determine and add meaning to linguistic items in spoken texts, it seems that committed l2 teachers would be likely to accept this challenge irrespectively of their mother tongue and the degree of difficulty involved in the task. it is not the case of encouraging language teachers to assign the kind of analysis conducted here to their students, inasmuch as its adequacy may be questionable even to advanced classrooms. however, teachers can always make an effort to become acquainted with the intonation system of the language that they teach, since it may help them devise sound pronunciation exercises to tackle specific pronunciation problems that might emerge in their classroom, and to help their students further develop their aural/oral communication skills. the notion of tone unit, for instance, appears to be an important tool for developing consciousness-raising exercises on various aspects involved in the production and reception of oral texts. it is possible that the failure to notice the significance of this “smallest stretch of speech” (brazil, 1994b, p. 150) will be one of the causes foreign/second language learners (even at advanced levels) usually have difficulty in understanding the spoken target language. prominence is another constituent that seems to have some significant implications for the language classroom. among other measures, teachers can devise, for instance, remedial exercises to tackle the problem of stress misplacement, and exercises to get the students more aware of the importance of prominence for good aural/oral communication. finally, key and termination can also be capitalised in the language classroom. through these constituents, teachers can call their students’ attention to different ways of expressing themselves, and the way in which their pronunciation may affect their social intercourse when using the target language. fortunately, because of advances in the investigations in the field of phonetics and phonology, language teachers have at their disposal a number of publications to deepen their knowledge of these intonation systems. brazil’s (1994a, 1994b) pronunciation for advanced learners of english, for instance, seems to be such a useful aid. the assumption behind it is that awareness of these systems is not only pivotal for the enhancement of aural/ oral fluency, but also for the development of skills in the field of semantics at an advanced level. the adaptation of the wealth of information in the discourse intonation model (di), shared by its original pioneer, david brazil, and the other aforementioned authors, to beginner-level l2 classrooms poses another challenge to language teachers. however, given the importance of suprasegmental features for successful communication, it appears that the earlier l2learner consciousness about di is raised, the earlier pronunciation quality and ability to express and perceive meanings are improved (anderson-hsieh, johnson & koehler, 1992; derwing, munro & wiebe, 1998, all quoted in rossiter & derwing, 2002). therefore, a longterm investigation of the effects of di on l2 beginners, considering the development of appropriate techniques to help them enhance their aural/oral proficiency, seems to be an interesting task yet to be conducted. profile 8.indd 177 28/09/2007 12:42:30 a.m. hitotuzi universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras178 references allen, r. e. (ed). (1990). the concise oxford dictionary of current english (8th ed.). oxford: clarendon press. brazil, d. (1985). the communicative value of intonation in english. birmingham: bleak house books & english language research. brazil, d. (1994a). pronunciation for advanced learners of english: student’s book. cambridge: cambridge university press. brazil, d. (1994b). pronunciation for advanced learners of english: teacher’s book. cambridge: cambridge university press. brown, g., & yule, g. (1983). discourse analysis. cambridge: cambridge university press. cauldwell, r., & allan, m. (1998). phonology. birmingham: the university of birmingham. ma tefl/tesl open distance learning. cauldwell, r. (1999). judgements of attitudinal meanings in isolation and in context [brief research report]. retrieved march 28, 2007 from http://www.phon.ucl.ac.uk/home/johnm/cauld. htm cauldwell, r. (2002). streaming speech: listening and pronunciation for advanced learners of english [british/irish version]. birmingham: speechinaction research centre. coulthard, r. m. (1985). an introduction to discourse analysis (2nd ed.). london: longman. couper-kuhlen, e. (1986). an introduction to english prosody. london: edward arnold. crystal, d. (1995). the cambridge encyclopedia of the english language. cambridge: cambridge university press. de beaugrande, r., & dressler, w. u. (1980). text, discourse and process. norwood, nj: ablex. dillon, s. (senior producer). (1991, september 30). the food programme [radio broadcast].united kingdom: bbc radio 4. fillmore, c. j. (1977). topics in lexical semantics. in r. w. cole (ed.), current issues in linguistic theory (pp. 76-138). bloomington: indiana university press. firth, j. r. (1957). papers in linguistics. oxford: oxford university press. harnsberger, j. d. (2001). the perception of malayalam nasal consonants by marathi, punjabi, tamil, oriya, bengali, and american english listener: a multidimensional scaling analysis. journal of phonetics, �9(3), 303-327. jenkins, j. (2004). research in teaching pronunciation and intonation. annual review of applied linguistics, �4, 109-125. mccarthy, m. (1991). discourse analysis for language teachers. cambridge: cambridge university press. rossiter, m. j., & derwing, t. m. (2002). esl learners’ perceptions of their pronunciation needs and strategies. system 30(2), 155-166. sadock, j. m. (1978). on testing for conversational implicature. in p. cole (ed.), syntax and semantics, pragmatics (pp. 281-298). new york: academic press. sinclair, j. mch., & brazil, d. (1982). teacher talk. oxford: oxford university press. underhill, a. (1994). sound foundations. oxford: macmillan heinemann. wichmann, a. (2005). please – from courtesy to appeal: the role of intonation in expression of attitudinal meaning. english language and linguistics, 9(2), 229-253. about the author nilton hitotuzi holds an ma in tefl/tesl from the university of birmingham and a ba in liberal arts from the federal university of amazonas. he has taught general english and composition at the federal university of amazonas, and general english at the state university of amazonas. currently, he is on sabbatical from the amazonas state department of education, studying for a doctorate in tefl at the federal university of bahia. he is interested in teaching methodologies, formal pronunciation teaching, process drama, and classroom research. profile 8.indd 178 28/09/2007 12:42:30 a.m. 59profile vol. 13, no. 2, october 2011. issn 1657-0790. bogotá, colombia. pages 59-72 understanding and facing discipline-related challenges in the english as a foreign language classroom at public schools comprensión y tratamiento de los retos asociados a la disciplina en el aula de lengua extranjera en escuelas públicas josefina quintero corzo* universidad de caldas, colombia odilia ramírez contreras** universidad de caldas & institución educativa atanasio girardot, colombia complying with school regulations and teachers’ instructions is a basic principle of an excellent class; both novice and experienced teachers face challenging situations when getting into real classrooms, especially those related to classroom management. there are various reasons that explain discipline problems in public schools, as well as varied strategies beginning teachers create and try when coping with those challenges. this article reports an action research study on how this methodology helped a group of teacher-trainees overcome indiscipline in english as a foreign language classrooms at public schools, and align with professional development initiatives which focus on reflection and decisionmaking processes that the new colombian policies demand from new teachers seeking a higher quality of education. key words: action research projects, class disruption, classroom management, discipline problems, english as a foreign language. responder a las normas escolares y a las instrucciones de los profesores es un principio básico de una clase excelente. tanto los profesores novatos como los experimentados enfrentan situaciones problemáticas en las aulas de clase reales, especialmente en relación con la disciplina. hay varias razones que explican la indisciplina en los colegios públicos y también estrategias variadas que los profesores principiantes crean y ensayan para superar tal reto. este artículo reporta un estudio de investigación acción que ayudó a un grupo de profesores principiantes a superar la indisciplina en el aula de inglés en colegios públicos y a responder a iniciativas de desarrollo profesional con base en procesos de reflexión y toma de decisiones que las nuevas políticas educativas colombianas demandan de las nuevas generaciones de profesores para mejorar la calidad de la educación. palabras clave: dominio de grupo, indisciplina, inglés como lengua extranjera, problemas de disciplina, proyectos de investigación acción. * e-mail: josefina.quintero@ucaldas.edu.co ** e-mail: odiliarc@yahoo.com this article was received on august 6, 2010, and accepted on june 13, 2011. 60 universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras quintero corzo & ramírez contreras introduction teacher education (te) programs comprise a wide range of aspects that determine the personal and professional development of young generations of teachers. te programs at caldas university have in mind the real needs and problems teacher trainees face when getting into real classrooms; that is why the university has adopted important curriculum reforms (universidad de caldas, 20092018) to provide teacher trainees with strategies that equip them with the methodological tools and research skills to solve immediate problems concerning their pedagogical practicum3. most colombian public schools are open to research (quintero, buitrago, gallego, infante, lópez & zuluaga, 2007). a large number of innovative proposals have emerged from educational settings. according to sánchez (2011), “it is worth reflecting upon the preparation that teacher education programs are providing since adjustments could be made in order to enhance this preparation and avoid potential problems and frustration on the part of student-teachers or novice teachers” (p. 7). however, the applicability of research processes is limited by different factors. some go from administrative to pedagogical constraints such as lack of stimuli, traditional teacher-centered models based on instrumental procedures, a content-based curriculum, lack of time, crowded classrooms, scarcity of didactic materials and technological resources, and changing policies (ministerio de educación nacional [men], 2008). despite the constraints mentioned above, there has been some research that looks at and explores the classroom phenomena. in that vein, 3 the project reported here and its publication were approved by the vicerectoría de investigaciones y postgrados whose main objective is the participation of students and professors in research projects, according to the institutional development policies. this research proposal intends to describe the reasons that explain discipline problems (e.g. class disruption) in public schools and varied strategies beginning teachers try when coping with those discipline problems. the following sections give an account of how five modern languages teacher trainees put into practice their research skills to lessen the levels of indiscipline in the english classroom, giving a great value to their reflective processes. action research helped them to cope with indiscipline in the classroom based on the cycle approach of observing, questioning, decision-making, planning, acting, reflecting, and documenting (kemmis & mctaggart, 1995). the article starts with a brief literature review on issues dealing with teachers’ role in classroom management; it proceeds with the statement of the problem area, the research questions, and a short description of the real context of colombian public schools. then, the research methodology is described with its data collection and analysis techniques and instruments; finally, findings and conclusions are presented under the scope of the research questions previously posed. literature review classroom management is frequently referred to as the number one challenge student teachers face in their classrooms and “having control of the class is one of the concerns that characterizes novice teachers” (pineda & frodden, 2008, p. 148). prada and zuleta (2005, p. 168) refer to classroom management, too, and highlight the fact that most novice teachers are extremely concerned about the way they exert control in the class. according to fontana (1997), “the feeling of insecurity to keep class control in a thirty-student group turns threatening in the minds of most novice and experienced teachers. children, considered a mass, could offer a threatening –even intimidating-image” (p. 16). 61profile vol. 13, no. 2, october 2011. issn 1657-0790. bogotá, colombia. pages 59-72 61 the nature of recognition in tefl teachers’ lives kyriacou (2000, p. 22) links students to frequent sources of stress among teachers; when listing the top ten reasons why teachers get stressed, the author starts with “teaching pupils who lack motivation” and “maintaining discipline”. thus, teachers find it difficult to encourage students who do not see the school setting as an interesting place to learn; these students do not necessarily misbehave, they just do not do their best, thus demanding more time and effort on the part of the teacher to accomplish their tasks. referring to this kind of students, kyriacou further states: they [the students] will take every opportunity to work at as slow a pace as possible, they will be unresponsive when asked questions, they will lack the initiative to do anything other than what they are explicitly told to do, they will take every opportunity to engage in social conversation, and they are quite happy to hand in work that is incomplete and unfinished (p. 23). kyriacou insists that when teachers are challenged to cope with unmotivated classes their journey feels harder due to the “physical and emotional tiredness at the end of a school day” (2000, p. 23). the lack of interest or motivation lead learners to get engaged in activities different from what they are instructed like chatting, playing, walking around, sleeping, throwing paper balls, or littering. what starts with simple indicators of lack of motivation frequently ends up shaping discipline problems; at this point, teachers are stressfully called for different actions that kyriacou refers to as follows: alertness and vigilance […] to prevent pupil misbehavior occurring in the first place. this means that, with some classes, a teacher feels they can never relax. they continually need to be on the alert for a sign that there is a problem which if not dealt with quickly could lead to misbehavior (p. 24). this means that teachers need to pay very close attention to everyday class moves to identify those that may seriously disrupt the class; for example, “trivial incidents, such as not paying attention […] or serious incidents such as pupil swearing” (kyriacou, 2000, p. 25) require immediate actions to keep the control of the classroom and the calm atmosphere that the teaching-learning process demands. in this sense, duarte and jurado, (2008) consider: “pedagogical processes are an essential part of school life and they ought to be thought out by people who work in education, in order to create proper environments for students’ integral development and the construction of a more civilized society” (p. 62). teachers need to take into account the differences among learners considering age, sex, aptitudes and socioeconomic and cultural background. fontana (1997) further explains how these five factors represent the basis for the interpretation of students’ conduct: continuing with fontana’s rationale, students, when growing up, change their expectations about and patterns of interaction with teachers and adults, becoming more critical and, sometimes, blaming them for their own mistakes or failures. they are also affected by their concern or need for a good reputation and prestige among their peers, although sometimes they find it difficult to ask for help among colleagues because as pineda and frodden (2008) state, “novice teachers usually feel that their problems are unique and tend to try to solve problems on their own” (p. 154). concerning their aptitudes, fontana (1997) states that teachers need to plan their teaching according to the students’ aptitudes in order to avoid frustration; levels of difficulty on task should match students’ learning differences and pace. the author also reminds teachers to avoid any kind of discrimination in the classroom because of sex differences, but also to understand the changes proper to puberty and adolescence. concerning 62 universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras quintero corzo & ramírez contreras socioeconomic and cultural background, fontana also highlights that a classroom is a place where varied views of the world merge and, depending on the teacher’s moves, those views may sometimes alter the learning atmosphere. disruptive behavior as one of the most common discipline problems is one of the main concerns for student teachers. sureda (1989) reports that “the lack of discipline in the classroom is a common factor around the world: what makes the difference is the teacher’s capability to maintain classroom management” (p. 3). in fact, teacher trainees “can sometimes be overwhelmed by a feeling of panic when faced by an unruly class whom they feel they cannot control” (kyriacou, 2000, p. 36). the author also refers to disruptive behavior as a source of stress for both experienced and inexperienced teachers. inexperienced teachers “become worried about the brutalizing effects on their personality of becoming strict disciplinarians” (p. 37) since the ways to display authority most of the time imply feeling uncomfortable and rude. mcdaniel (1986) comments on a humanistic view of discipline where “discipline is related to self-concept and communication” (p. 63). this idea explains why classroom management is so demanding for new teachers. the author reports how research has shown that “certain teaching techniques lead to better learning and better behavior. teachers must master these techniques, the researchers say, if they hope to have wellmanaged and effective classrooms” (p. 63). this means that classroom behavior depends on or is determined by teaching (i.e. by the kind of strategies teachers implement to work on both academic and disciplinary issues at the same time). in his ten principles for classroom discipline, mcdaniel (1986) suggests class procedures and patterns of interaction to raise and maintain students’ motivation, interest, and desire to learn. ramírez (2004) elaborated on discipline problems when referring to disrespect in the classroom. she found that “students demanded more rules, actions, and intervention from the authority figures in the classroom” (p. 139). this means that students are frequently aware of the consequences of their moves in the class, but they also expect to be disciplined by their teachers or parents. ramírez emphasizes that students expect teachers “to take immediate disciplinary actions based on the school table 1. differences among learners (according to fontana, 1997) differences among learners changes with aging aptitudes sex socioeconomic background cultural background students’ expectations. students’ interaction patterns. reputation and prestige. critical thinking levels. perception of adults. positive or negative attitudes towards school and teachers are determined by students´ aptitudes. success criteria and class planning and resources should meet their aptitudes. boys and girls display features that respond to stereotypes. students react according to discrimination indicators. self-esteem, values and standards vary according to socioeconomic conditions. in most cases, school success is related to socioeconomic background. religious, ethic, social, ethnic codes may affect school interaction. cultural differences may have an impact in the classroom dynamics. 63profile vol. 13, no. 2, october 2011. issn 1657-0790. bogotá, colombia. pages 59-72 63 the nature of recognition in tefl teachers’ lives code in order to make them be aware that their role also implies the observance of an authority system they agreed with when entering the school” (p. 139). although classroom management and discipline issues are related to both pedagogical and academic aspects in the teaching learning process, it is true that those issues lead teachers to transformations in their classrooms, and as piñeros and quintero (2006) state, “the implementation of transformations by teachers is not free from despair and pain since teachers need to abandon the comfort of readymade answers and recipes in teacher in order to explore the far-possible of risking their own selves both as people and professionals” (p. 185), especially at early stages in their teaching career. additionally, sánchez (2011) argues that: classroom management may be a tricky topic to describe. it certainly cannot be mastered by reading about it, and it encompasses diverse elements such as discipline, teacher’s roles, class size, time management or cheating. when student-teachers start their practicum and their experiences are discussed as part of methodology courses, it is surprising to notice that this is the most challenging part of their performance. (p. 7) the present study focuses on the views and actions teacher trainees take on the basis of reflection in action (kemmis & mctaggart, 1995) when interacting with challenging classrooms in public school settings in colombia. as we know, this demands high levels of transforming initiatives. the problem a wide area of research among scholars in the educational field is the experiences and challenges teacher trainees encounter in the beginning of their professional lives; discipline issues top lists of complaints, worries, and concerns among teachers and administrators in public settings (ramírez, 2004; duarte & jurado, 2008; sánchez, 2011). that is why the present study was conducted, aiming at the following research questions: • how do efl (english as a foreign language) teacher trainees understand and explain discipline-related challenges in public school classrooms? • how do efl teacher trainees characterize discipline problems in public schools? • what kind of strategies do teacher trainees use when they encounter discipline problems in the efl class? • what impact does action research have on the treatment of discipline problems in efl public school classes? context a typical public classroom in colombia holds an average of 45 students; most classes last 50 minutes, and in some cases, classes are extended to 90 minutes, to be taken once or twice a week. students stay in the same classroom the whole day and teachers travel around the school building according to stated class schedules. a regular classroom is composed of a set of chairs, a teacher’s desk and a board. teaching materials are scarce and the existing ones are not always accessible or available due to their location, normally away from the classrooms. teacher-trainees generally identify different constraints and learning problems in their daily school life ranging from students’ lack of attention, hyperactivity disorder, misbehavior, dyslexia, stress, lack of parental support, and low socioeconomic resources. teacher-trainees make big efforts to balance their disciplinary and academic moves in the classrooms. “even though, classroom management has surely been a source of concern for many generations of teachers. it is a recent subject of discussion among lt [language teaching] authors” (sánchez, 2011, p. 7). the research problem related 64 universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras quintero corzo & ramírez contreras to discipline challenges in the efl classroom was identified by means of the follow-up procedures conducted by the practicum advisors in the modern languages program. in caldas university, advisory is provided on a weekly basis in traineeadvisor conferences in which they discuss lesson planning and assess the implementation of such plans; the pre-service program starts in the third year of the undergraduate program when studentteachers start observing classes in real settings and establish communication with their future head teachers; the program continues with two semesters of practicum in which the trainees shadow and substitute for their head teachers in their classrooms and become part of the school life as regular members of the school community. during these stages, observations, journals, interviews, transcripts, and evaluation forms reported that classroom management was the most important concern of advisors, teacher trainees, head teachers, and administrators. this problem con sisted of a lack of teaching methodological strategies on the part of novice teachers to solve immediate problems related to discipline. table 2 contains a summary of the reasons for discipline problems from the teacher trainees’ perspective, as identified in the data collected. methodology the present study was conducted following an action research methodology, taking into consideration that the teacher trainees involved im plemented research proposals aimed at problems dealing with discipline-related issues, which were intervened on a cyclical basis (kemmis & mctaggart, 1995). data collection techniques such as observations, interviews, journals, focus groups, video/audio taping, transcriptions and documentary analysis were applied (spradley, 1980). the researchers played their roles as nonparticipant observers both in the practicum process and the advisory committees in the modern languages and master’s in english didactics programs at caldas university. the population involved in the study corresponded to five teacher trainees, ages ranging from 21 to 25; as part of the requirements for graduation, they conducted action research projects at public schools in urban areas that serve low social stratum neighborhoods. these trainees went through a complete research preparation process before they started their practicum. they got a view of their settings by means of preliminary observations to state a diagnosis of possible intervention points. as teacher trainees, they shadowed head teachers for a while and got involved in school life reporting to assignments as regular teachers. complying with the chosen methodology, data were collected in six cycles in each trainee’s research project by means of different techniques: six classes per trainee were observed, five journals and 30 class-assessment forms were analyzed; the five head teachers were interviewed as well as the advisors and trainees themselves; informal talks and documentary analysis of their field notes were also conducted. the researchers completed observation forms and transcribed the lessons and interviews. data were submitted for categorization in which codes were used to identify relevant issues emerging from the class phenomena described in the instruments. the identified categories/themes were used to characterize classroom phenomena according to the research questions and objectives presented in the preceding sections. quintero et al., (2007), following spradley (1980), describe the process of data analysis as segmentation, coding, categorization and theme identification. ryan & bernard (2000) refer to a similar process with the term identifying themes. 65profile vol. 13, no. 2, october 2011. issn 1657-0790. bogotá, colombia. pages 59-72 65 the nature of recognition in tefl teachers’ lives table 2. reasons for indiscipline in efl classes according to teacher trainees reasons for discipline problems interpretation from trainees perspectives heterogeneous groups very often classes hold a large number of students with different levels of language proficiency and personality traits. their ages range from very young to kids who are too old (11 to 16). students also display different academic levels; good achievers and low achievers are promoted from one year to the other without having the same command of the language or a command according to their level. lack of academic interest in spite of the efforts the ministry of education (men, 2008) has been making to involve public education in the trend of bilingualism, the students still fail to value the importance of english in their academic and future professional life. affective factors a high percentage of students come from disintegrated families in which both verbal and physical abuse are common; they live with single parents, grandparents or other relatives; others live in foster homes. family crises frequently drive kids to misbehave in class and display disruptive behavior. parental neglect teachers do not have enough support from parents to follow up and cope with discipline problems. parent-teacher conferences are not always effective because parents do not devote the necessary time to check on their kids’ progress. communication is also difficult because of time, location or number of students to supervise. it is also common that parents neglect or ignore school policies in the treatment of discipline problems e.g. failing to follow stated guidelines. this fact implies a lack of respect for school authority. parents’ socioeconomic situation is another factor that indirectly determines discipline problems. most of them work long shifts and do not have time to attend conferences; others are unemployed who experience high levels of stress and hardly make a living out of occasional jobs. educational policies a complete educational legal system that is intended to protect children, not leaving them out of school, has been misunderstood; public schools do not always have the personnel and resources they need to guarantee the implementation of stated policies; one recent example is the ley de inclusion, decreto 36 (ministerio de educación nacional [men], 2009) for which some schools do not have professionals to help teachers provide the expected treatment of special needs among the students. the student population the teacher trainees dealt with corresponded to seventh and eighth graders with a high percentage belonging to dysfunctional or disintegrated families. the students’ ages ranged from 12 to 16 years old. they come from single or no-parent families and they belong to a low social stratum. findings the findings from this study were classified into three different and at the same time related issues. in the first place, the follow-up and analysis of data from the participants and their teaching experiences built an interpretation of classroom settings. in the second place, the insights and reflections 66 universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras quintero corzo & ramírez contreras helped the researchers characterize indiscipline in public schools; and thirdly, important and useful strategies were operationalized in order to provide efl teachers with tools to understand and face the daily discipline-related challenges in the classroom. such findings are presented below. an interpretation of classroom settings categories were built based on the pieces of data that were segmented and coded according to the relationships they stated. these data reported two particular views of the classroom from the perspective of teacher trainees. first, the classroom is a place full of life, experiences, and stories to discover; it is an opportunity to explore and try new things every day. the teachers’, administrators’ and students’ testimonies in interviews and focus groups provided evidence that what is perceived as noisy and disruptive by people outside the classroom might be a real learning environment where the students have the chance to express themselves and fulfill learning activities. public school classrooms are seen as a difficult world because of the many everyday situations that arise in a class period, situations that involve complaints, arguments, varying emotions, confusion, conversation, and playing. this flow of human experiences challenges teachers to make on-the-go decisions that deal with both pedagogical and non-pedagogical issues. second, that picture of a classroom suggests that the classroom is anything else but a place to learn. in general, trainees reported their feeling that students attend school with only the purpose of socializing with peers, to make friends, to enjoy life. that is why the teacher trainees felt that it was a challenge for them to transform the classroom from a peermeeting spot into a place where students learn with the guidance from a teacher. the comments presented below taken from the trainees’ journals and the interview transcripts reflect the teachers’ concerns about the situations they face in their classes when they try to teach learners who are not interested in the class: the class was a chaos. i did not have a single moment to teach in an orderly manner. students always make teachers feel bad and sad. the most common is mess, confusion, lack of attention. while i am trying to teach the class, the students are always talking, laughing, yawning… very frequently, the students ask questions that have nothing to do with the class with the only purpose of interrupting and bothering me. as shown in their comments, the trainees described how one of the most challenging roles of teachers in public schools is getting students’ attention. words like chaos, mess, and disruption suggest a picture that by far distorts that of the ideal classroom. indiscipline in the classroom is understood as any particular event in the classroom that prevents the teacher from completing the planned lesson. most trainees complained that their enthusiasm and eagerness to learn and teach are cruelly smashed by sometimes minor, sometimes serious students’ moves that hurt their self-esteem making them feel frustrated. the teacher trainees felt that due to their youth and inexperience, the students do not recognize them as an authority in the classroom; some of the comments they made in the interviews or wrote in their journals are presented below: i don’t know why they do that. they don’t care about anything. the students do not take advantage of what i can teach them. they do not recognize the importance of my class. they just laugh at me and ignore the efforts i make to help them learn. i felt very bad because they do not see me as a real teacher. these comments provided evidence of the teacher trainees’ desperation and concern for the 67profile vol. 13, no. 2, october 2011. issn 1657-0790. bogotá, colombia. pages 59-72 67 the nature of recognition in tefl teachers’ lives problems of indiscipline they faced in the classroom. the expressions used to talk about these class phenomena involved a high emotional load that led them to reflect on the actions to take to overcome such situations, which was the main contribution of the action research approach implemented in their research project. it was through reflection in action that the trainees got to turn the views of their classrooms into a more balanced teaching and learning interaction, in which they captured their students’ attention and connected them to meaningful learning experiences that changed the interpretations that the school community used to make of their classes; at the same time, they reported that their learners became more aware of the role that the efl class might have in their lives, going beyond the initial conception that it was only a site for socializing. characterization of indiscipline reflective teacher trainees used different words and situations to describe what they interpreted as indiscipline; they referred to specific behaviors or features displayed by the students, e.g. hyperactive, restless, talkative, playful, aggressive, rebellious, violent, disobedient, liar, and snappy. again, all these descriptors emphasize attitudes inside the classroom during the teaching learning process, and they sometimes show how desperate and concerned the trainees feel. some of the trainees’ written comments say the following: that group is terrible! this is the noisiest group in school… they get out of control very easily; whatever activity you do with them becomes a big mess; this group has driven me up of the wall. on the other hand, trainees reported their concern about the different view of discipline from the perspective of administrators; they stated that they only focus on a few aspects related to social behavior, expecting children to be nice and respectful to others, to protect school property and to wear their uniform properly (without make-up or accessories). this concern reflected the fact that the classroom is somehow seen as a separate setting where teachers are assumed to have total control of discipline issues, for which most school policies do not have clear rules. minor disruptive behaviors such as chatting or playing while in class have become part of the daily routine of the classroom, since no consequences follow due to the lack of time and staff to implement school code regulations in large classes. what most school handbooks state for the management of class discipline problems in public schools is to use a control book, generally called observador del alumno (student record book), in which teachers register the events that deal with class disruption; in this book, students and parents are supposed to sign and make commitments to improve on the recorded situation. nevertheless, as mentioned before, the size of the groups, the lack of school staff to follow up on each case, and the school policies themselves make it difficult to discipline students. some of the comments made by the trainees include the following: the discipline coordinator is just a figure most students are afraid of; the students’ behavior and attitudes change when classes are visited by him, and due to his heavy work load he does not have time to supervise classes. students almost laugh at me when i mention the ‘observador del alumno’. they don’t care about it. john ignored me when i warn him that i would report him to the coordination office. these comments give a sense of despair or discouragement that reflects the gap between the stated discipline policies and what really happens in the classroom. concerning this aspect, trainees reported face-to-face dialogue more effective when trying to get changes in students’ behavior. they 68 universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras quintero corzo & ramírez contreras also said that the more engaged they were in the language activities, the less discipline problems they would have. this fact leads to the more effective strategies described in the following section according to which it could be inferred that discipline problems are not only the students’ responsibility; teachers trainees also reported their concern about not being able to meet the students’ expectations in terms of teaching strategies; they said that they needed to try varied class activities to keep the kids engaged and motivated. these findings match some teaching concerns in previous studies of authors like duarte and jurado (2008), kyriacou (2000), mcdaniel (1986), pineda and frodden (2008), piñeros and quintero (2006), prada and zuleta (2005), and ramírez (2004), to mention just seven examples of re search in the field. the observed classes where the teacher trainees conducted their research projects are not described as violent or malicious in terms of interaction. no sign of delinquent or abusive behavior was identified; what the data reported was frequent or permanent noise, lack of attention and interest, interruptions, all of them representing disruption that prevents teachers from accomplishing learning objectives in the way and within the time frame planned. strategies to deal with discipline problems in the efl classroom the most common questions among teacher trainees when dealing with discipline problems are: “what can i do to make them work?” and “how can i get their attention?” always looking for the magic formula, teacher trainees reported a varied collection of actions in their attempts to make their classes better each day. the first one was direct talk with the involved students. this technique arose as a result of their frustration when failing to get their attention by means of the school handbook policies or guidelines. most procedures or school regulations/guidelines take too long and the trainees felt that they needed immediate action to get immediate results. talking to the students on a face-to-face basis provided better results since both trainees and students established a closer relationship in which they shared a sense of mutual support; some of their comments were as follows: it was very difficult to get changes with the school rules in the handbook. i preferred to talk to the students and make them aware of the importance of the class for their future. i warned the students several times and wrote different comments on their records, but they seemed not to care about anything. so i decided to talk to them and negotiate. i noticed that the students preferred to talk to me instead to go to the office. they promised to improve and a good deal of students complied with them. along with the need for a smooth class atmosphere based on negotiated mutual support, the trainees highlighted the importance of lesson planning. lessons should include different activities using attractive materials, drawings, games, songs; they claimed that the variety of activities determined the levels of attention they could get from the students. according to the trainees, a good lesson plan is expected to have a logical sequence and very clear instructions. effective lessons should aim at the students’ expectations, interests and needs which in most classes appear to be missing. the following is the list of the most highlighted strategies trainees proved to be effective: • giving clear explanations for given exercises. • making instructions clear and giving them before grouping students. • organizing lessons in a sequence so that students know the steps to follow. • keeping learners busy, always giving them something to do within the allotted time. • managing time wisely. 69profile vol. 13, no. 2, october 2011. issn 1657-0790. bogotá, colombia. pages 59-72 69 the nature of recognition in tefl teachers’ lives • including and preparing attractive materials. • stating rules for class procedures and activities, emphasizing the consequences for breaking rules. • giving the students responsibilities. • changing activities frequently. • monitoring students walking around the classroom. • respecting differences among learners, always taking into account their background and learning paces and styles. • integrating language skills. conclusions and implications for reflection in action teacher trainees referred to reflection as a time consuming activity, but they also found it re warding. the whole practicum process is a cyclical reflection; the challenges a class with discipline problems poses demand a high level of reflection for which new teachers need to be prepared (fontana, 1997). the trainees in this study gave a great value to the preparation action research provided them with; according to them, when conducting ar they are not reproducers of stated formulas but feel they are inquisitive and transformative in their own classrooms. the situations inexperienced teachers have to solve every day demand high levels of decision-making skills they get throughout their practicum. although teacher trainees get plenty of recommendations from advisors and head teachers, their suggestions do not always work due to the fact that every class context is different. that is why teacher trainees are asked for new strategies, building up their own teaching repertoire as a result of their reflective action. as suggested in the action research methodology (kemmis & mctaggart, 1995), they get skillful in identifying problems, recording them in their diaries or journals, stating proposals for action, designing lesson plans to solve the situations that bother them, implementing those strategies and then observing the effects in the improvement of class objectives and procedures. that is the main contribution of action research in the teacher education process. there are big differences between theory and real classroom practice. some student teachers enter the profession as novice professionals in teaching, go through challenges that lead them to find a balance between what they learned from theorists in teaching and learning literature and what really happens when they deal with young learners. theory from regular methodology classes is not enough to understand classroom settings. the direct contact with real students is what most helps beginning teachers comprehend, try alternatives, and explain causes and effects in class phenomena. this implies a need for teacher education programs to prepare new teachers for those challenges providing them with skills to cope with the unexpected events that might arise in a classroom with discipline problems and also expose them to teaching as early as possible in the corresponding education program. the pedagogical foundation of teacher education needs to go beyond academic or disciplinary knowledge and explore psychological and social issues to foster classroom management skills that positively affect the teaching learning process. the words discipline problems are a polysemic term. depending on the perspective of the people involved in the teaching process, its meaning may vary. teachers, administrators, and students usually have a different interpretation of discipline problems in the classroom, and in the same way, different ways to react to them due to the different circumstances they perform in their roles. for teachers, discipline deals with class control, management and active interaction; for 70 universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras quintero corzo & ramírez contreras administrators, discipline relates to quietness, good behavior and calm; for students, discipline connects with rules, instructions and policies. this varied interpretation of discipline implies the fact that, since it is mostly the teachers who work faceto-face with large classes, policy makers and school administrators need to provide teachers with consistency and support, stating clear guidelines that guarantee a smooth teaching atmosphere at all levels. discipline is an issue that deserves attention and immediate actions in order to achieve the standards of quality the educational system aims at. in most school settings the roles of the people involved in the educational process are determined by the system itself and, sometimes, by the subjects who recognize and accept particular hierarchies. new teachers are not always recognized as real teachers and in most settings they are given a lower status that the students misunderstand as lack of authority, as reported in this study when the trainees expressed their despair and concern when being ignored by the students in their own classrooms. this implies that teacher trainees must be given the status of regular teachers and be recognized as professionals who nurture schools with new pedagogical knowledge and trends with which they update the learning process inside the classroom; students must be instructed to welcome student teachers and see them as professionals with the same status as their regular teachers and not to waste their contributions to their setting and damage their self-esteem. differences among learners determine the characterization of classrooms with discipline problems; so do the different perceptions that the people involved in the educational process have of what might be a discipline problem. that is why there should be consistent policies according to which learners, parents, teachers, and administrators make decisions when participating in or assessing class phenomena. although good teaching depends on good planning, it is always an on-the-go decision making process. teachers need to be prepared to pedagogically solve the academic and disciplinary problems that arise in their classrooms. hence, it is mandatory that teachers build up a rich repertoire of possibilities to cope with situations that alter plans of action as well as to consider all kinds of moves: teaching strategies, classroom management techniques, psychological approaches, social standardized practices, cultural trends, and the like. the investigative training prior to the teaching practicum in the modern languages program gives new teachers the scientific tools they need to solve daily problems in the classroom. with action research, beginning teachers acquire research habits that strengthen their professional profiles; they become good observers to describe their context, look at events reflectively and critically, make comments and express opinions about the current situation in the educational system, look for support when they need it and, at times, they themselves are a source of advice for head teachers and administrators and share their experiences with those who go along the same path. action research was reported and is suggested as a way to reflect and search for tentative solutions to discipline problems because it provides teachers with the opportunity to try and assess strategies to provide the students with better learning experiences to lessen behavioral or attitudinal problems. this contribution of action research results in more mature professionals, who contribute to the nation’s progress. discipline problems are difficult to be absolutely solved; that is the reality of most public schools and the complaint of lot of public school teachers have. it is not fair for the community to 71profile vol. 13, no. 2, october 2011. issn 1657-0790. bogotá, colombia. pages 59-72 71 the nature of recognition in tefl teachers’ lives expect perfect classroom management on the part of teacher trainees. therefore, it is definitely a must that teacher education programs prepare them to be able to identify, manage and overcome classroom challenges with methodological and interpersonal skills that meet the expectations of 21st century students. what the school members should do is take advantage of the strengths and knowledge they bring to their classrooms and, with them, research the teaching learning process more so that all together can overcome limitations and provide students with better learning experiences. references colombia, universidad de caldas. plan de desarrollo de la universidad de caldas 2009-2018 “para el desa­ rrollo de la región y el avance de la ciencia y la cultura”. retrieved from http://www.ucaldas.edu.co/foropdi/ pdi/docs/plandedesarrollo2009-2018ucaldas.pdf colombia, universidad de caldas. (2008). reglamento de prác­ tica e investigación educativa de los programas de licencia­ tura. manizales: departamento de estudios educativos. colombia, ministerio de educación nacional [men]. (2008). bilingüismo una meta para la competitividad. retrieved from http://www.mineducacion.gov.co/cvn/ 1665/article-120867.html colombia, ministerio de educación nacional [men]. (2009). ley de inclusión. decreto 366. por medio del cual se reglamenta la organización del servicio de apoyo pedagógico para la atención de los estudiantes con discapacidad y con capacidades o con talentos excepcionales en el marco de la educación inclusiva. retrieved from http://www.cntv.org.co/cntv_bop/ basedoc/decreto/2009/decreto_0366_2009.html duarte, j., & jurado, j. c. (2008). pedagogical processes and their school coexistence relationship. revista colom­ biana de educación, 55, 62-81. fontana, d. (1997). la disciplina en el aula: gestión y control. buenos aires: santillana. kemmis, s., & mctaggart, r. (1995). the action research planner. victoria: deakin university press. kyriacou, c. (2000). stress­busting for teachers. cheltenham: stanley thornes publishers, ltd. mcdaniel, t. (1986). a primer on classroom discipline: prin­ ciples old and new. phi delta kappan, 68(1), 63-67. pineda, d., & frodden, c. (2008). the development of a novice teacher’s autonomy in the context of efl in colombia. profile, issues in teachers’ professional development, 9, 143-162. piñeros, c., & quintero, a. (2006). conceptualizing as regards educational change and pedagogical knowledge: how novice teacher-researchers’ proposals illustrate this relationship. profile, issues in teachers’ professional development, 7, 173-186. prada, l., & zuleta, x. (2005). a group of student-teachers’ experiences in their practicum. profile, issues in teachers’ professional development, 5, 157-170. quintero, j., buitrago, s. h., gallego, l. p., infante, g. e., lópez, m. m., & zuluaga, c. t. (2007). formación científica ini­ cial de educadores. manizales: coedition colciencias & centro editorial universidad de caldas. ramírez, o. (2004). the value of respect on the basis of coop­ erative learning (unpublished master’s thesis). universidad de caldas, manizales. ryan, g., & bernard, h. r. (2000). techniques to iden­ tify themes in qualitative data. retrieved from http://w w w.analytictech.com/mb870/readings/ ryan-bernard_techniques_to_identify_themes_in.htm sánchez, a. c. (2011, april). the importance of classroom management for novice language teachers. conference presented at vii encuentro de universidades formadoras de licenciados en idiomas. medellín: universidad de antioquia, colombia. spradley, j. p. (1980). participant observation. new york, ny: holt, rinehart & winston. sureda, r. (1989). la disciplina en el aula: actividades para situaciones problemáticas. buenos aires: landeira ediciones. 72 universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras quintero corzo & ramírez contreras about the authors josefina quintero corzo, head professor and researcher at universidad de caldas, holds a phd in education and a ba in modern languages. she has published articles about interdisciplinary curriculum, qualitative research and classroom research. she is an evaluator of the colombian national system of science and technology and director of a research group classified by colciencias under category a1. odilia ramírez contreras, ma in english didactics and ba in modern languages, is a research professor at universidad de caldas and the principal of institución educativa atanasio girardot, one of the public schools in the local project manizales ciudad bilingue. she has taught foreign languages in the united states as a fulbright and vif exchange teacher and has been part of research groups in universidad de caldas. she is currently studying for a phd in education with concentrations in efl and esol with northcentral university, arizona. profile 10.indd unveiling students’ understanding of autonomy: puzzling out a path to learning beyond the efl classroom profile 10, 2008. issn 1657-0790. bogotá, colombia. pages 47-73 47 * this paper reports on a research study conducted in 2003 and constituted the thesis of my master’s studies. ** e-mail: aleariza71@yahoo.es address: avenida central norte, tunja, boyacá. cra 16 no 36-30 apto 102 balcones de la calleja this article was received on january 30, 2008, and accepted on august 12, 2008. unveiling students’ understanding of autonomy: puzzling out a path to learning beyond the efl classroom* descubriendo cómo comprenden los estudiantes el concepto de autonomía: descifrando un camino de aprendizaje más allá del aula de clase de inglés j. aleida ariza ariza** universidad pedagógica y tecnológica de colombia (uptc) this paper aims at reporting a research project on students’ understandings of autonomy evidenced in their learning experiences while in the efl classroom and outside of it in a colombian public university. this research study is conceived as a response to the new paradigm we are exposed to in our social and educational settings in which decision making becomes a key feature of individuals. data were gathered through field notes, video recordings, a questionnaire, interviews, students’ logs and audio-recorded plenary sessions. the results of the study indicated that students conceived autonomy as an opportunity to find a key to learning beyond the classroom. when walking on this path, students faced a dilemma between detachment and teacher dependence; they showed independence in decision making taking advantage of learning opportunities beyond the classroom and engaging in reflection. they also constructed knowledge through experience and carried out learning self-evaluation processes. key words: autonomy, learning experiences, learning beyond the efl classroom, self-evaluation este artículo reporta un proyecto de investigación sobre las concepciones de autonomía de estudiantes evidenciadas en experiencias de aprendizaje de inglés dentro y fuera del aula de clase en una universidad pública colombiana. este estudio de investigación responde al nuevo paradigma al que estamos expuestos en nuestro entorno social y educativo en el que la toma de decisiones es un elemento primordial para los individuos. los datos se recolectaron mediante notas de campo, video-grabaciones y bitácoras de los estudiantes. los resultados del estudio indican que los estudiantes conciben la autonomía como una oportunidad para su aprendizaje más allá del aula de clase. a lo largo de este camino, los estudiantes enfrentaron un dilema entre distanciamiento y dependencia del profesor y mostraron independencia al tomar decisiones utilizando oportunidades de aprendizaje fuera del aula de clase y reflexionar. asimismo construyeron conocimiento a través de su experiencia y llevaron a cabo procesos de auto-evaluación. palabras clave: autonomía, experiencias de aprendizaje, aprendizaje fuera del aula de clase, autoevaluación profile 10, 2008. issn 1657-0790. bogotá, colombia. pages 47-73 profile 10.indd 47 23/10/2008 8:46:10 ariza ariza universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras48 introduction this article attempts to report the results of a descriptive research project focusing on students’ understandings of autonomous learning and the way these were evidenced in multiple learning experiences both in and outside the classroom in a basic english course of the undergraduate program in philology and languages at a public university in colombia. thus, the research question that guides this study is this: what do efl undergraduate students’ learning experiences contribute to our understanding of learner autonomy in the colombian university context? the problematic area of the current study was identified through my teaching experiences in different places in which i have shared learning spaces with different types of learners. a recurrent situation in efl classrooms is the high level of dependence on the teacher that most students display. we, as learners, have been exposed to learning environments where the ones who are entrusted with making most of the decisions are teachers. thus, students go through the learning process performing a passive role which does not allow them to be part of richer classroom dynamics. this philosophy of education, in which students are considered merely recipients of knowledge, has been questioned for many years, but its discussion nowadays is at the core of our educational system with the implementation of the credit policy in most of the universities in colombia. this policy was conceived as a tool for boosting students’ independent work, so that they may become more active and committed to their learning process. the credit system implies that for every class hour students attend, they are expected to work two hours independently. considering credits as the basis of our curricula implies understanding what a credit is and what independent work implies. under this vision teachers are encouraged to design syllabi considering students’ autonomous practices as a crucial element in the development of courses. bearing this idea in mind, one sees that clarity in concepts such as autonomy and independent work becomes a must. in the coming sections of this article i will provide a brief discussion of some basic concepts in relation to autonomy, autonomous learning experiences and autonomous learners’ characteristics, information about the context and participants of the project, and the research design. in the same fashion, the findings will be presented along with their pedagogical implications and conclusions. key concepts autonomy and autonomous learning society changes all the time and education should accept the challenges that the ever changing society brings with it. learner independence has become a key issue in today’s world. nowadays, one of the main aspects in our educational environment is the individual’s development. each learner has a potential and a series of abilities which enables her/him to take an active role in her/ his learning. our goal, as educators, is to raise our students’ awareness about their learning capacities, their responsibility in the learning process, and the importance profile 10.indd 48 23/10/2008 8:46:10 unveiling students’ understanding of autonomy: puzzling out a path to learning beyond the efl classroom profile 10, 2008. issn 1657-0790. bogotá, colombia. pages 47-73 49 of taking control over the process in order to be able to cope with the new challenges society presents. holec (1981) supports this idea when reflecting on the importance of autonomy. his position focuses on the fact that in order to achieve freedom as individuals, one has to develop those abilities which enable him/her to take more responsibility in handling the diverse matters of the society he/she lives in. within a general perspective, autonomy can be used in different ways. it can refer to situations in which learners study on their own. it is used to refer to a set of skills that can be learned and applied in “selfdirected learning”. autonomy is also defined as a capacity we are born with which, in the majority of the cases, is suppressed or disavowed by educational institutions. benson & voller (1997) highlight the concept of autonomy as a feature of individuals or of social groups. autonomy as a characteristic of individuals is thought of as detachment from education as a social construction; while as a quality of social groups, autonomy entails reconsidering the distribution of power among the members of that social group. this dichotomy is connected to benson’s (1997) versions of autonomy. benson argues that there are three different versions of autonomy, to wit: the technical, the psychological and the political. in the technical version, autonomy is regarded as “the act of learning a language outside the framework of an educational institution and without the intervention of a teacher” (p. 19). in the psychological version, autonomy is considered an ability learners have to take charge of their own learning. these two versions are closely connected to the perception of autonomy as a characteristic of individuals. on the contrary, the political version emphasizes autonomy as the control a learner exercises over the process and content of learning. then, this last version is related to the conception of autonomy as a characteristic of social groups. according to little (1991), autonomy can be considered as “the capacity students have for detachment, critical reflection, decision making and independent action” (p. 4). reflecting on the same issue, dickinson (1995) emphasizes that autonomy is an attitude toward learning in which students are prepared to take responsibility for their learning. i would like to highlight this author’s reflection on the various degrees of autonomy as self-directed behavior concerning decisions about what to learn, when and where learning should be developed, materials to be used, ways to monitor the learning process and how to carry out assessment of the process. my own conviction is that autonomy is closely related to motivation; if people have a sense of autonomy, they may be more motivated by the things that are important to them. then, intrinsic motivation enables the learner to be self-motivated. supporting this argument, dickinson (1995) highlights the role autonomy plays in students’ motivation, as learners’ independent and active participation in their own learning increases motivation and the process becomes meaningful. after the exploration of various concepts on autonomy, it is important to highlight the idea of autonomy as a multidimensional concept which is linked to different disciplines. in psychology and philosophy, motivation is conceived as the profile 10.indd 49 23/10/2008 8:46:10 ariza ariza universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras50 ability a person has to act as a responsible unit within a social group. in politics, this concept is regarded as the freedom from external control. for the purpose of this study, autonomy is considered as the ability and attitudes students evidence when taking control of their learning process. factors to consider when exploring autonomy in efl settings nowadays, education focuses its attention on methods of learning rather than methods of teaching; that is, students should be regarded as active agents vis-a-vis their own learning process, which would imply being the ones who make the most decisions about their learning. however, in most colombian educational contexts, the traditional teacher-dependent paradigm is the one we may find in efl classrooms. then, the dynamics within the efl classroom are challenged as both teachers’ and students’ roles are expected to take on a new dimension. in what can be considered the traditional vision of teaching and learning, teachers have been considered the owners of knowledge which gives them authority to act as directors, judges, controllers and even managers of all that happens in classrooms. under the vision of autonomy in the teaching-learning process, teachers are perceived as facilitators, guides, counselors and coordinators. when students are faced with new challenges in their learning, teachers even coach them. as suggested by aparicio, benavides, cárdenas, ochoa, ospina & zuluaga (1995), teachers’ capacities “must include identifying students’ learning styles, conducting training in learning strategies and helping learners become more independent” (p. 116). along the same line, cárdenas (2006) discussed what teacher autonomy involves and the way it supports the development of autonomous attitudes in students. this author highlights self-awareness, awareness, responsibility, challenges, participation, collaboration and the changing of roles as necessary elements when implementing change towards more autonomous individuals. under the new paradigm, teachers are to be more supportive and collaborative with students’ processes, including the definition of their learning objectives based on the identification of specific needs; the definition of contents to be explored; the selection of methods and techniques and the process of evaluation of what has been achieved. therefore, teachers will be valued according to the quality and type of relationship they have with learners. furthermore, teachers’ new roles imply getting actively involved in the process or construction and reconstruction of knowledge as well as providing challenging tasks which motivate students in the decision making process. exploration of autonomous learners’ characteristics there are a good number of research studies which explore autonomous learners’ characteristics. in this article i concentrate mostly on latin american experiences as they share a common research focus with the experience i intend to describe. among research exploring autonomous learners’ characteristics, chan (2001) profile 10.indd 50 23/10/2008 8:46:11 unveiling students’ understanding of autonomy: puzzling out a path to learning beyond the efl classroom profile 10, 2008. issn 1657-0790. bogotá, colombia. pages 47-73 51 reports on a research project that aims at exploring undergraduate students’ attitudes and expectations of autonomous learning and how ready they are for undertaking this learning approach. the participants are 30 first-year undergraduates studying in a ba program in contemporary english language at the hong kong polytechnic university. the main findings of this study show that autonomous learning is perceived as a method in which a student decides what, how, when and where to learn. at the same time, participants are aware of their commitment to exploit the opportunity to learn on their own. it is important to highlight students’ concept of autonomy as opposed to working in isolation. on the contrary, they appreciate the teacher’s help when they face autonomous activities. cardona & frodden (2001) developed a multi-site case study in two universities in english language teaching programs. the researchers detected conflict arising from the mismatch between teachers’ and students’ expectations. students who found it difficult to develop their autonomy wanted the teacher to be a know-it-all and resented teachers who gave students the opportunity to be active agents in their construction of knowledge. similarly, more autonomous students conflicted with “traditional teachers” and blamed them for lack of collaborative work and not taking part in research. teacher teamwork was necessary in order to expand teachers’ and students’ concepts of autonomy and to make decisions leading to bridging the gap between beliefs and behavior. in the same spirit, luna & sánchez (2005) described the characteristics of autonomous learners in an efl setting and identified dependent students as the most common profile in a group of prospective teachers. there are different characteristics autonomous learners may display when facing efl learning experiences. among these characteristics, it is worth mentioning involvement in the management of their learning process, the use of life-long learning strategies, and negotiation of various aspects of learning situations. autonomous learning is a long process which needs time to be developed and means to be facilitated and fostered in efl classroom settings. it is both the responsibility of teachers and students to work together for a better atmosphere and proper conditions so that learning processes can be more meaningful and long-lasting. the exploration in this section sheds light on multiple issues regarding the main aspects to consider in the study of autonomy in language learning. learning experiences which favor autonomous learning the research studies mentioned in this section emphasize the importance of bearing in mind what autonomous learning entails regarding the methodological aspect. it has been proved that there are a number of conditions which favour autonomous learning processes. thus, these research experiences were considered in the stages of planning and implementation of the current research project. as a reference point of what should be conceived as ways to encourage students’ autonomy, nunan, as cited by benson & voller (1997), proposes five levels to foster students’ autonomy in relation to profile 10.indd 51 23/10/2008 8:46:11 ariza ariza universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras52 the content and the process of learning. learners should be aware of the goals, contents and strategies of the materials being used so they can select content and procedures according to their personal objectives, learning styles and strategies. the next step implies learners’ interventions in the modification or adaptation of the goals and content. later, students create their own objectives. in the final stage students go beyond the classroom and search for opportunities such as self-access centers and continue their process of material creation. this model was considered in the study reported by zorro, baracaldo & benjumea (2005), that aimed at establishing the relationship between autonomous learning and english language proficiency. in the same spirit, scharle & szabó (2000) provide a guide for teachers on how to develop a sense of responsibility in students causing them to take an active role in the learning process. three main phases related to the autonomous learning process are presented. first, they propose an awareness raising phase which is directly connected to the way students can become autonomous learners. second, they emphasize the importance of changing attitudes in our students, a topic which is related to the environment promoting autonomous learning. finally, they focus on transferring roles through practical, graded, well-structured activities which for me shed light on strategies that students may use to become engaged in an autonomous learning process. we can observe the clear relation of this proposal with nunan’s levels of encouraging learners’ autonomy. ruiz (1997) reports on an autonomous learning experience carried out at universidad pública de navarra in the foreign language courses taught from 1991 to 1993. in this experience the threehour courses were complemented with the creation of a self-access center where students could count on diverse materials with which to work autonomously and the support of teachers who guided them on an individual basis in counseling sessions. the results of the experience showed students’ proficiency level progress as well as changes in students and teachers regarding their roles. students assumed a more independent and curious role in relation to the language and the way to learn it. on the other hand, teachers gained understanding about the shift of control as a necessary condition to foster students’ autonomy. it is also important to highlight the research carried out by sharp, pocklington & weindling (2002). this is a report of a qualitative project of study support in twelve secondary schools in the united kingdom. among the factors they reported, it is relevant to mention students’ enjoyment, the possibility of getting help with learning, the absence of persons who would cause distraction, and the opportunity to be in a different atmosphere. the study concludes that providing highquality study support is beneficial but requires commitment, investment and a clear understanding of its potential contribution to the work of the school. the conditions featured in the projects previously summarized are directly connected to the psychological preparation students may need in order to face a new learning situation, the type of materials and activities proposed for students, the selfaccess resources available to them, and the profile 10.indd 52 23/10/2008 8:46:11 unveiling students’ understanding of autonomy: puzzling out a path to learning beyond the efl classroom profile 10, 2008. issn 1657-0790. bogotá, colombia. pages 47-73 53 importance of aspects such as cooperative learning and reciprocal teaching. the context i got involved in a year long research project in 2003 that sought to explore students’ understandings of autonomy and the way those conceptualizations were evidenced in students’ learning experiences inside and outside the classroom. the investigation was carried out in the program for obtaining a bachelor of education in philology and languages, with emphasis in english, at a public university located in bogotá. the program takes an integrated approach to language teaching, which means it is communicative oriented and flexible in terms of methodology. participants twenty one students who attended a course of basic english 1 were informed about the nature and purpose of the project. nine, four female and five male students, volunteered to partake in this study. i decided on this criterion of selection as it has been proven to be practical, not biased and motivating for those students who may decide to participate in the project. participants were from 16 to 24 years of age and had a basic command of the target language. even though they were full-time students, two of them had to work and one participant was in the last year of an engineering program at a different public university. they were from different places in colombia which made the experience more interesting for both teachers and learners. they registered in the program and attended fifteen hours of english a week, three hours per day, which is a great advantage for their learning process. this type of course is usually directed by two teachers, one in charge of the first two hours of instruction and the other directs one hour of class a day. i had the responsibility of directing the first two hour session of instruction once a week during the second term of the academic year in 2003. i was also in charge of supporting students’ work in the computer room. the possibility of using the computer room was part of the design of the research project though the regular courses do not necessary have this tool for their classes. the five one hour sessions of instruction were guided by a professor who, once she knew about the nature and objectives of the project, offered her help and support in the process of data collection. my colleague’s role was crucial due to the fact that in these one hour sessions students were given the option to go to the computer room. then, students who wanted to continue working in the classroom could do so and the data collection procedure was undertaken by her. also, those participants who wanted to work with the computer were able to do that as i was there in case they needed any support or help. instructional guidelines for the implementation of the autonomous workshops taking into account the nature of the study, a general instructional guideline was needed. the current plan is not a structured instructional design but a picture profile 10.indd 53 23/10/2008 8:46:11 ariza ariza universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras54 of classroom atmospheric characteristics which permitted this study to be carried out. the program for the basic english i course is grounded in a topic based syllabus with specific objectives related to the macro communicative skills: listening, speaking, reading and writing and objectives at micro-skill levels: grammar, vocabulary, pronunciation, stress patterns, and spelling. for the exploration of students’ understanding of autonomy and the way it is evidenced in their learning, the following methodological principles were applied: working with contextualized • language and authentic material to carry out communicative and cooperative tasks. considering the students as the • center of the process and as active participants in the multiple activities through individual, pair and group work. understanding the role of the • teacher as that of a facilitator, guide, motivator, counselor and permanent co-evaluator in the learning process, creating a rich environment in order to facilitate the communicative process among learners and encouraging students’ work. giving students a great variety of • opportunities to contribute with opinions, experiences and feelings in order to activate their background knowledge and use it effectively. encouraging students to set • their own objectives, to assume responsibility for their own learning and to develop learning skills, thus developing learner’s autonomy. in the three hours per week allocated for the development of the project, one autonomous workshop was implemented. a total of ten autonomous workshops were planned and developed. the workshops were designed based on the information collected through an initial questionnaire which aimed at exploring participants’ previous english learning experiences, in general, and autonomous practices in particular. it also explored students’ perceptions regarding their strengths and weaknesses as learners of english. the syllabus of the course in terms of topics, language functions and language skills was also considered for the design of the workshops. then, every workshop included various tasks on the given topic. students were provided with listening, reading, speaking, writing, functional grammar and vocabulary activities distributed on separate worksheets, so that they could decide on the task(s) they wanted to do. some of the activities were designed by the teacherresearcher and some were adapted from various sources. in every session, instructional objectives were stated by the teacher along with students’ setting their personal objectives. the two sets of objectives were considered equally important and complementary. then, i informed students about the various possibilities for autonomous learning tasks for that session, taking into account types of materials (pictures, posters, newspapers, stories, games), types of arrangements (individual, pair and group work), various sources (readings, listening material) and suggestions for extra-class activities (video, songs, internet, call). profile 10.indd 54 23/10/2008 8:46:11 unveiling students’ understanding of autonomy: puzzling out a path to learning beyond the efl classroom profile 10, 2008. issn 1657-0790. bogotá, colombia. pages 47-73 55 students decided what materials to use, arrangements to work with and sources to resort to. during the sessions i was attentive to support participants in the development of the activities when necessary. after the time allotted for the task was over, i asked students to share their learning experience orally in a plenary session which served the purpose of data gathering on the way autonomy is evidenced through learning experiences carried out by learners in the efl classroom. as a closing activity, the last part of the lesson was spent on written, sometimes written and oral, peer assessment and self-evaluation. once the assessment process for the lesson was finished, the teacher provided students with multiple suggestions to be explored and implemented outside the classroom so that students could take advantage of the suggestions and make decisions as to how to go about the extracurricular activities proposed. diagram 1 below shows the main characteristics of the autonomous sessions. research method and instruments for data collection as the aim of the study is to explore what the participants’ learning experiences inside and outside the classroom contributes to our understanding of learner autonomy, i selected case study as the research methodology to undertake since it provided me with the opportunity to observe and analyze this situation in depth. merriam (1988) conceives a case study as a research design used systematically to study a phenomenon by approaching it from a holistic perspective. within this paradigm, the researcher is the primary instrument as we are part of the context to be interpreted. thus, the type of observation was that of participant observation as i engaged in the activities set out to be observed. considering the main aspects of this project, i determined that the principal instruments to collect proper information were basically the following six: field notes, video recordings, questionnaires, recorded audio interviews, students’ logs and audio-recorded plenary sessions. all the instruments were designed and piloted during the first semester in 2003 and were applied in the second semester of the same year. data were systematically collected in every three-hour session a week over a period of eleven weeks; thus, rich data could be gathered making it possible to triangulate the information. two types of triangulation were implemented. first, methodological triangulation is evident as six ways to collect information on the same issue were used. secondly, there was investigator/researcher triangulation as i was given the opportunity to have the diagram 1. characteristics of classroom atmosphere to explore autonomy. profile 10.indd 55 23/10/2008 8:46:11 ariza ariza universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras56 support of a colleague in the data collection process, specifically with field notes and video recordings. field notes were a primary source of data collection. i took notes on-site as i was working with the participants. a special format was used in this process (see appendix 1). it included information on the number of the session, the place, the duration of the observation process, the name of the observer and the date of the observation session. the format also included a section to takes notes on what participants did during the autonomous sessions and a parallel column for the researcher to write initial comments on what the notes may mean taking into account the research focus. sixty-six formats were used during the development of the study. the second instrument was video recordings of the sessions. this was a secondary instrument as it became a supportive device to complement and enrich the note making process. as a result, six video cassettes were recorded, transcribed and analyzed. an initial instrument for data collection was a questionnaire1 which was elaborated, piloted, readjusted and implemented (see appendix 2). the main purpose of this instrument was to explore students’ learning experiences and their beliefs related to their processes of learning english as a foreign language. this instrument provided the researcher with valuable information for planning the autonomous workshops as 1 the questionnaire was originally in spanish taking into account both the purpose of the instrument and the participants’ basic english proficiency. it informed me about students’ previous experiences and their needs and preferences regarding activities and materials. likewise, the information collected through this tool shed light to guide the interviews. the fourth instrument used for data collection in the research process was a semi-structured interview2 (see appendix 3). in this type of interview a schedule is prepared, but most of the questions are open. such protocol has certain prompts in terms of comments or follow up questions so the interviewee’s time is respected (wallace 1998). an adaptation of seidman’s phenomenological interviewing was designed. the main objective when using this type of interview is “to have the participant reconstruct his or her experience within the topic of study” (seidman 1998, p. 9). the questions designed dealt with exploring students’ affective dimension of their learning process, and students’ reflections and understandings in two main areas: self-exploration as learners and their understanding of autonomy. another instrument used was students’ logs3, which can be defined as structured journals as they follow a particular format previously established. student logs were developed with the guidance of certain headings such as what students learned in that specific lesson, factors that eased the learning process and ways in which students have worked on problems or difficulties in their process. finally, some space for 2 the interview was done in spanish taking into account both the purpose of the instrument and the participants’ basic english proficiency. 3 students’ logs were kept in spanish taking into account both the purpose of the instrument and the participants’ basic english proficiency. profile 10.indd 56 23/10/2008 8:46:12 unveiling students’ understanding of autonomy: puzzling out a path to learning beyond the efl classroom profile 10, 2008. issn 1657-0790. bogotá, colombia. pages 47-73 57 afterthoughts or comments was provided so students could also reflect on what they did and set a plan of action to overcome possible difficulties. each participant wrote one entry per week, from the last week in august to the last week in november, 2003. one hundred and five entries were collected along the research. this type of guided diary may be perceived as a tool for fostering students’ autonomy as they are asked to examine their processes and reflect upon what they have experienced both in and outside the classroom. the last instrument for data collection was the audio recording of plenary sessions4. as stated before, once each autonomous session was over, participants were asked to participate in a plenary session which aimed at unveiling students’ reflections on the decisions they had made during those autonomous practices. plenary sessions were also used by the participants as a space to express their feelings and concerns regarding the type of activities they had 4 plenary sessions were held in spanish taking into account both the purpose of the instrument and the participants’ basic english proficiency. decided to develop and the outcomes of such practices. findings after taking some time to decant data, we analyzed and categorized these using strauss & corbin’s theory (1990). the key concept in their proposal is the coding procedures which are conceived as plans of action by which data are cleft, conceptualized and recombined in new, different ways. once this procedure was completed, one core category, two main categories and four sub categories with defined properties emerged. diagram 2 represents the categories and their relationships. to guide the reader in this section, some abbreviations were used to indicate the source of each piece of evidence5 presented. fn stands for field notes, v stands for video recordings, l stands for students’ logs, c stands for audio –recorded interviews and ps for plenary session. 5 evidence was translated into english so that non spanish-speaking readers would have access to this information diagram 2. categories emerging from the analysis. profile 10.indd 57 23/10/2008 8:46:12 ariza ariza universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras58 puzzling out a path to learning beyond the efl classroom this core category refers to students’ understanding of autonomy as a road to walk on along their learning process in and outside the classroom. on the one hand, participants in this research study were given the option to exercise their autonomy in various autonomous sessions. on the other hand, students were encouraged to share those experiences they created or looked for in order to contribute with their english learning process outside the classroom. there are two main categories explaining this phenomenon. on the one hand, participants struggled between showing dependence on the teacher or on other individuals who are part of the learning environment and being detached from the teacher and leading their own learning process. on the other hand, participants revealed independent action when facing decision making processes. thus, autonomy, as expressed by benson & voller (1997), has an individual and a social dimension. let us examine the first aspect which defines this core category. facing a dilemma: independence vs. teacher dependence this category refers to the predicament participants faced when given the option to handle, up to a certain point, their learning process. most participants went through a mixture of feelings when tackling this new proposal to carry out tasks. they were uneasy as they had not been exposed to a similar approach to learning in a classroom setting. this emotional aspect of both teachers and participants is highlighted by aparicio et al (1995) when they presented a proposal to promote awareness and confidence in teachers and learners when facing this new conception. through the analysis process, two subcategories were identified. i called the first one experiencing new learning possibilities and mixed feelings. the second one is relying on other people’s guidance. experiencing new learning possibilities and mixed feelings when participants faced the new learning experience they had a dilemma between detached work and teacher dependence. this entailed going through a great variety of learning possibilities experiencing multiple feelings. sometimes participants experienced happiness as evidenced during an activity based on a board game: “l: ‘and now what happens? m: ‘to jail’ everybody in the group started laughing at the analogy with a local game called ‘parqués’ (fn 28). whereas in certain occasions they showed confidence: “f starts working with the function – preposition guide. he works alone. no hesitation. he develops it completely, including the writing” (fn 37). the evidence also shows that some students’ attitudes reflect passivity when confronting a listening exercise. during the session on september 3, when a group of students were developing a listening exercise, this passive attitude was observed: “ma came in at 3:10 and joined the group working on the listening exercise. in this group ca was handling the tape recorder. cl finished first and mi began correcting the profile 10.indd 58 23/10/2008 8:46:12 unveiling students’ understanding of autonomy: puzzling out a path to learning beyond the efl classroom profile 10, 2008. issn 1657-0790. bogotá, colombia. pages 47-73 59 exercises with them. pa and le just looked and listened. they remained silent.” (fn 18) during the autonomous sessions, there were even moments of frustration due to feeling unable to carry out a task under students’ personal criteria: “c starts with the puzzle (vocabulary). he frowns and hits his desk. he goes to check something in his course book” (fn 37). at first instance i interpreted the situation as if the student had not felt comfortable with the material. in order to avoid drawing conclusions based on assumptions, the same participant was asked about this specific event during the plenary session and he acknowledged getting mad at himself for not being able to remember the pieces of vocabulary needed for the exercise: “it was frustrating to begin developing the exercise and .. i couldn’t remember... i was not able to remember” (ps 6). my own interpretation of the findings emerging in this category is based on two main aspects. on the one hand, in the autonomous learning experience, students assumed various positions such as active participation or passivity, depending on the way they approached this paradigm of work. aspects such as their language proficiency, their personal preferences and learning styles, and some personality features influenced students’ decisions during the autonomous sessions. as evidenced before, some students showed confidence or passivity due to the material they selected. participants felt more secure developing a grammar or vocabulary guide than one based on a listening exercise as they usually reported more difficulty understanding listening texts. participants also made decisions based on their learning styles; for instance, authority-oriented learners evidenced a greater need of teacher’s support than independent learners. this analysis is validated with the information collected through the first instrument used, the initial questionnaire. regarding the first item of the questionnaire, students reported practicing the language as the most efficient way to learn it (56%); 34% of the learners stated that meaningful learning and the possibility to enjoy the learning process were key factors in efficient learning. a low percentage of participants (12%) considered the use of various resources to practice the four communicative skills as a way to learn a language. fifty-six percent of the participants had had the support of friends, teachers or foreigners in the development of their english proficiency. on the contrary, 44% of the students said they had not had any support. in relation to the resources they use in their english learning process, 67% of the students reported the use of listening materials, especially movies and music, 56% said they read different types of texts such as readers or technical books, 12% reported the use the internet as a tool for practicing and 12% of the participants said they took advantage of having foreign friends with which to practice speaking. in relation to students’ perception of their strengths and weaknesses in the language, 45% reported having a good command of vocabulary, 23% perceived themselves as efficient listeners; 34% thought their motivation and commitment were the main advantages in their learning process. only one student considered that his analytical learning style had been of great help in understanding the mechanism profile 10.indd 59 23/10/2008 8:46:12 ariza ariza universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras60 of the language. regarding participants’ weaknesses, 34% of the learners reported having limitations with their pronunciation, and 23% pointed out grammar and writing as their main limitations. other problematic areas students mentioned were speaking, lack of discipline and low self-confidence. considering extracurricular activities, 67% of the students said they carried out extracurricular activities. listening to music and watching movies were the most common independent practices. reading, speaking and developing assignments were also common activities (12%) among the participants. two students considered the lack of time, motivation and not having the direction of someone knowledgeable as the main reasons for the absence of independent work. on the other hand, while students experienced and exercised autonomy, they moved constantly from working independently to looking for support from different individuals who were part of the work dynamics. participants looked for support from both the teacher and their peers. such interaction was framed by aspects such as the participants’ decisions concerning the activity selected, the material itself and the way to tackle it. regarding the activities selected, students evidenced the need of more support for writing exercises, listening tasks and internet site activities. participants also asked for support when they selected materials such as crossword puzzles or speaking tasks and topics. as evidenced in the questionnaire analysis presented above, this situation originated from a lack of previous learning experiences with this kind of resources. furthermore, learners considered that, concerning speaking activities, they needed someone– the teacher or a knowledgeable peer–to provide constant feedback on their pronunciation and accuracy. relying on other people’s guidance the second subcategory identified was: relying on other people’s guidance. the uncertainty this new experience brought made students move constantly between working by themselves and depending on other individuals who were present in their learning experiences. sometimes, they wanted to consult regarding their decisions. in the first two sessions participants expected me to direct them about what to do and how to do it: “m: ‘teacher, which activity should i do first?’ l: what do you want me to do?” (fn 1). they also asked for clarifications of their doubts: “m asks me about the use of ‘s with names such as james”, “m asks me about how to define oil. she is developing the reading guide” (fn 3). in the last two cases we can deduce that students’ dependence was caused by a lack of using leaning cognitive or meta-cognitive strategies such as resourcing, grouping or deduction (o’malley & chamot, 1990). participants also looked for teacher support with technical problems: “m is surfing in the english club internet site ‘teacher, please, help me... i don’t know how to get here –pointing to a specific link in the site” (fn 14). likewise, teachers are addressed as a source of unknown vocabulary: “m: ‘what’s the translation of weeknight?’ although he had the dictionary in his hands” (fn 22). as previously stated, the teacher’s support, help and guidance were needed for profile 10.indd 60 23/10/2008 8:46:13 unveiling students’ understanding of autonomy: puzzling out a path to learning beyond the efl classroom profile 10, 2008. issn 1657-0790. bogotá, colombia. pages 47-73 61 different reasons. participants looked to the teacher to accompany their decision making process regarding the selection of materials and exercises, as well as in the development of activities. the teachers became guides and advisors during the various decisions students made in the autonomous sessions and those carried out outside the classroom. teachers were also regarded as sources of knowledge and were constantly consulted to clarify doubts. similarly, as chan (2001) reports, participants shared the idea of regarding the teacher as an evaluator, as shown by ka in this interview excerpt when she was asked about her perceptions on the autonomous sessions: 26 i know what autonomous work is. all in all it is necessary, 27 it is also necessary that you assess us, i don’t know, i mean… 28 you can make….a, yes, an evaluation on what each one of us does. (c 3, p. 2, l 26-28) the transformation of the teachers’ roles in the methodological framework that autonomous work entails is evident. autonomy does not necessarily imply developing learning processes in isolation, under no guidance or support at all. on the contrary, in autonomous work, teachers are called to assume various important roles which have a great influence in the results of this experience. the following is an example of a participant who clearly states the importance of a figure who guides students’ autonomous processes. 264 t: do you think that it is necessary for the teacher to be there? the english teacher? 268 al: well, i do believe that the language teacher or someone who knows the 269 language should be there, because (inaudible) one may turn to him (inaudible)… 270 in fact, it would be a great idea to count on tutors for these sessions. (c 4, p. 23, l 264, 268-270) along the course this subcategory evolved in two directions. on the one hand, some participants maintained their need to have some support along the process that autonomous work entails. on the contrary, some other students became more independent in specific instances such as when developing extracurricular activities. some factors which influenced this position are evident. first, students’ learning preferences are a key aspect to bear in mind. there were some participants who preferred to work alone as stated by ca in the interview when being asked about his work preferences during the autonomous sessions: 172 c: i don’t know. this is, this is a very personal thing. 173 sometimes i prefer to work on my own, i mean 174i prefer to do the stuff by myself 175 in order to do them well, i do them all alone. 179 it is the way i am. (c 3, p. 19, l 172 – 175, 179) along the process students went through when looking for various possibilities to self-direct their learning, a systematic need to take independent action towards decision making was acknowledged. thus, a second category related to this aspect that emerged profile 10.indd 61 23/10/2008 8:46:13 ariza ariza universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras62 in the analysis will be examined in the next lines. independent action for decision making little (1991) states that when defining autonomy one must consider aspects such as the capacity learners have to work independently, to develop critical awareness, and to make decisions which guide their further action. these are key aspects which explain this category. in the current study, independent action for decision making refers to students’ understanding of autonomy as taking a position to lead their learning process. students started to make decisions regarding multiple aspects of both the workshop sessions and extracurricular activities. the analysis of the data collected showed that when students engaged in independent action, two big constructs emerged. first, students took a position towards action which was evident in a process of decision making regarding their practices. the second construct gears towards students’ engagement in reflection when facing learning experiences in and outside the classroom. similarly, these constructs are defined by two common dimensions. one the one hand, students built learning through experience which permeated decision making and reflection processes. on the other hand, participants carried out learning evaluation based on the decisions made and the additional reflection on them. i will proceed to describe each one of these subcategories. taking a position toward action beyond the classroom regarding independent action, participants decided to practice english in and/or outside the classroom, or not to practice at all. data analysis revealed four main factors which influenced these students’ decisions. students decided not to develop activities concerning their english learning due to constraints of time or other priorities different from academic ones. the following instance is the account of a participant in his first log. making reference to some written grammar exercises, da accounts for his decision of not completing them: “i think this exercise is very important, but i also consider it is necessary to complement it with some speaking practice so that you can internalize the information. i didn’t do it because i didn’t have time” (l 8). likewise, j m reports on the same factor in his fourth log, “i couldn’t spend time to do any extracurricular activity. it was the sports week” (l 28). another issue to consider is the difficulty students faced to carry out some of the activities proposed in the autonomous sessions caused by their novelty as stated by ed in his first log on august 22nd: “because it is the first time i develop a practice like this one, i had problems to listen and interpret certain words” (l 4). personal commitment and self-demand was an aspect participants highlighted as a cause for lack of motivation. in this regard pa reported: “little by little i have discovered and understood that learning implies personal commitment, then, the success or failure depends on oneself. it is really difficult to self-regulate” (l 25). profile 10.indd 62 23/10/2008 8:46:13 unveiling students’ understanding of autonomy: puzzling out a path to learning beyond the efl classroom profile 10, 2008. issn 1657-0790. bogotá, colombia. pages 47-73 63 on the contrary, participants’ needs were revealed as a crucial aspect to develop autonomous practices. the following is an excerpt of extracurricular activities carried out by al during the fifth week of the study: “this week i have been practicing english a lot because i have been looking for an opportunity to travel to england to study. i practiced with a pronunciation book…” (l 43). in the analysis of data, decision making is one of the most consistent elements which evidenced students’ understanding of autonomy in their real practice. considering dickinson (1995) and chan’s ideas (2001), participants in this project make decisions regarding what, how, where and when to develop the activities provided in the autonomous sessions or the ones participants looked for. in relation to decisions on activities and the methodology to develop them, a relevant piece of data is found when some students were in the computer room: “a enters games in englishclub.com; she starts developing a crossword. p is downloading an exercise from englishzone.com about simple present and is copying it in a diskette. al is working in the english program 1, he first listens to the photo story and starts clicking on specific words to listen to their pronunciation” (fn 5). participants also decided who to work with using varied criteria. in some cases students looked for peers who were much like themselves: 143 jo: ah, i work with nat because she makes me laugh and yeah, she is 144 less stiff. for example, i have worked with other partners 145 and...++ once i was working with ca and i told her 146 ‘let’s stop doing this exercise and let’s go outside’ but she said ‘no! we have to do this’. (c 4, p.6, l 143-146) students also took into account the level of english proficiency they considered they had in order select their partners: 152 i also prefer to work with nat because we have a similar level. with an, 153 with an i feel good, but she doesn’t ++ doesn’t have the vocabulary 154 so, she notices it and walks away to work by herself. 155 i always tell her ‘hey! come with us’ because i feel bad for her 156 but then i think…. it is better that way because we can practice speaking better, 157 and that is because nat and i speak easily. (c 4, p. 6, l 152-157) when students decided to work in pairs or groups, they adopted certain roles or positions i consider worth mentioning. some of the learners acted as leaders of small groups: “j used spanish to explain some things the members of the group didn’t understand. she performed as a guide of the activity” (fn 9). another role assumed was of directing specific activities: “pa manages the tape recorder. she says ‘again?’… pa wanted to compare her answers, but the group decided to listen to it once more” (fn 11). other participants preferred to model for their peers: “ma is telling the rest of the group what she understood –when developing a listening activityshe reports on different pieces of information. she models the pronunciation” (fn 31). decisions regarding the place to work were also made: “d, a, nat and jo are outside, on the steps. they are talking about profile 10.indd 63 23/10/2008 8:46:13 ariza ariza universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras64 the person of their dreams. they are using english.” (fn 18) in this case participants explained their choice of place on the grounds of respecting the silence their peers seemed to need in order to develop the activities. in other instances learners decided to take some of the materials home or to look for materials or learning opportunities in resource centers such as the one the british council has. some evidence enlightening this analysis was provided by al when asked about the reasons for his preference to work at home: 274 i prefer to go there (the british council resource center). it is connected to 274 what i told you once, in the plenary; i feel freer when i handle my time. then 275 i do not go there straightforward, i first go home, have lunch, and then 276 i go there. i start to develop the stuff and other things i wanted to do, so… 277 i notice i work harder +++ i felt free outside the classroom. (c 4, p. 25, l 274-277) as it was mentioned in the explanation of the second category, independent action for decision making, reflection and inquiry was also present along the process of facing learning experiences in and outside the classroom. i will proceed to describe and exemplify this subcategory. engaging in reflection leading to action being able to engage in reflection processes is at the core of autonomous learners’ characteristics (little, 1991). students engaged in reflection upon significant aspects of their learning process as well as on their view of the autonomous sessions carried out in this study. regarding reflection upon students’ learning process, data analyzed showed how extracurricular activities as well as activities carried out during the autonomous sessions lead participants to ponder their strengths and weaknesses in relation to their english proficiency level as well as in the way they tackled the activities. let me exemplify it with some evidence. in her log entry number seven, jo reports: “i studied the pronunciation symbols, because my main difficulty is the symbols. but, in the long run it was the same. i didn’t feel any progress… i guess it is a process” (l 59). ya also reported on her difficulties: “regarding my difficulties i have to say that self-observation is an important exercise for me. i am always trying to identify my mistakes and trying to find the things that i need to improve. i already found (for example) that i need more speaking and vocabulary and i need to remember a lot of things that i have probably forgotten”. the same participant kept on explaining the way personality factors have a direct influence on her difficulties with the language: “another important aspect, talking about my mistakes, is the intensive influence of nervousness. i think that i am a shy person. before i was extremely shy and now i am less shy due to the self-observation” (fn 6, 7). students’ reflection became a step which led them to take action regarding their process as shown in the following excerpt by a learner who shared the experience of attending a congress on english: “definitively, what i have to overcome is fear of speaking in english, because though i understood most of what people said to me, i profile 10.indd 64 23/10/2008 8:46:13 unveiling students’ understanding of autonomy: puzzling out a path to learning beyond the efl classroom profile 10, 2008. issn 1657-0790. bogotá, colombia. pages 47-73 65 replied in spanish. i guess this limitation can be tackled just by speaking and that is going to be my main objective” (l 67). once learners identified their limitations, they used a variety of strategies to overcome them. among the most common strategies students used, systematic practice, repetition, memorizing, revising, association and note taking are worth mentioning. the coming examples account for the way different participants worked on their difficulties. cla: “the way i worked on my limitations was trying to practice more, in my case listening” (l 5); ja: “i check new vocabulary or words i have forgotten on a daily basis. i compare the words i listened to in class or outside the classroom with the phonetic transcription in the dictionary in order to correct pronunciation” (l 57). pa: “i worked on my difficulties repeating words from a reading or a listening exercise on a given topic and then i associate the way they are written with the way they are pronounced” (l 16). an interesting issue of reflection is the way participants viewed the autonomous learning sessions. all the students who were asked about their perceptions on this topic agreed about the benefits it provided and how comfortable they felt with the experience: 176 ca: i like them (the autonomous sessions) i really like them 177 t: why do you like them? 178 ca: because +++ in my opinion they are fulfilling the objectives 179 you posed ++ that is, to be able to discover what is wrong and all the stuff 182 i work by myself, alone, nothing else matters, i mean, it is like 183 to unveil one’s soul and, yes, one learns. (c 3, p. 7, l 176-179, 182-183) in light of the data analysis process and regarding the two subcategories previously explained –taking a position towards action beyond the classroom and engaging in reflection leading to action– we can observe two dimensions which permeated both components. on the one hand, the process students undertook to make decisions and to carry out reflections leading to action allowed and, at the same time, led students to build their own learning through experience. on the other hand, students got involved in a dynamics of the evaluation of multiple aspects regarding their learning process. these dimensions will be addressed in the next paragraphs. building learning through experience when students decided upon practicing english in and outside the classroom, they built up learning continuously. this construction and reconstruction of knowledge, which has become a tenet of critical pedagogy, occurred through multiple phenomena. these dynamics will be explained in the coming paragraphs. students built knowledge through the autonomous experience taking advantage of aspects such as their background knowledge, the possibility to set clear purposes and objectives, the various opportunities to practice the language, the techniques and strategies to develop multiple tasks and the students’ capacity to profile 10.indd 65 23/10/2008 8:46:13 ariza ariza universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras66 acknowledge their difficulties and to find ways to overcome them. students used linguistic knowledge to tackle tasks in order to construct knowledge, as reported in the field notes. the following example refers to the way a student carried out a listening task. “when an completed the listening exercise, she decided to translate part of a song: ‘pero yo no te puedo sentir cerca ahora... no, thought is the past tense of think” (fn 2). this excerpt evidenced the way this participant relied on some knowledge of the language in order to cope with a task. setting clear objectives and having achievable purposes is a second dimension of both decision making and students’ reflection. participants acknowledge the importance of having clear objectives when engaging in the activities proposed in the workshop as well as in the exercises carried out outside the classroom. an interesting piece of evidence regarding this aspect can be found when a group of students was doing a listening task. their objective was to identify the use of prepositions of place through a listening exercise. they decided to start working on an individual basis: “ma and ka started with the first listening exercise. ka: “again”. ma nods her head. ka: “it is three words – again – near to the city hall.” ka talking to pa: “is interesting?” pa: “yes.” ka: “is in the park or on the park?” ma: “in”. they listen again to check and nod their heads” (fn 38). the next dimension relates to various strategies and tools students implemented while developing tasks in and outside the classroom. as highlighted by dickinson (1995), being autonomous implies developing an attitude toward learning in which students get prepared to take responsibility for their process. therefore, students are called to decide upon the way to direct their learning and the resources to do so. in the excerpt below we can perceive how a student used systematic work in order to develop different activities they selected during the sessions held in the computer room. “ale is working on a photo story. he pauses in every scene and then clicks on pronunciation. he asks about the expression ‘does that ring a bell?’ he says ‘i don’t see a bell’ he asks me for the explanation of it” (fn 6). a key element in students’ knowledge building process is their capacity to account for the outcomes of their autonomous learning experiences. this core aspect will be accounted for in the following paragraphs. carrying out evaluation processes participants showed a constant need to evaluate both their decisions during the autonomous sessions and their own learning process. in order to assess their learning process students use different tools and varied forms. thus, participants’ evaluation process was made through peer correction: “k, m and c did the listening before and now are comparing their answers” (fn 26); “k: ‘again?’ m nods her head – they are completing a chart about places, their location and interests. k: ‘it’s three words, again?’ they listened to it again. ‘near to the city hall’ (fn 38). another tool used to assess their performance was the answer key. initially, the activities proposed were adapted and, due to the amount of activities and all the work that having them ready entailed, i profile 10.indd 66 23/10/2008 8:46:14 unveiling students’ understanding of autonomy: puzzling out a path to learning beyond the efl classroom profile 10, 2008. issn 1657-0790. bogotá, colombia. pages 47-73 67 did not think about having an answer key for each one. later in the process, during a plenary session, a student suggested having answer keys. once answer keys were available, most learners used them as a tool to evaluate their performance: “k completes the first exercise on reading and grammar, the activity was individual, then she keeps on doing all the exercises. later she goes to check with the answer key” (fn 12). “most people are doing grammar exercises. paul is correcting some listening exercises. he has just finished, he is checking with the answer key” (fn 42). in a few cases students wanted the teacher-researcher to assess the performance of the task proposed for the autonomous workshop sessions: “m asked me to check her exercise copy. i did it and it was all correct” (fn 5). finally, participants used computerbased evaluations in order to assess their own learning progress: “a continues with another type of quiz but in the same web page” (fn 33). the examples provided so far have illustrated the idea that constant evaluation processes that look for assessing students’ progress comprise a key element within an autonomous framework. participants acknowledged the importance to evaluate multiple aspects entailed in autonomous work as well as their performance in the activities provided during the autonomous workshop, and the ones they developed outside the classroom. conclusions and pedagogical implications efl students’ understandings of autonomy were evidenced as the way they find a road to learning by expanding on the boundaries of the classroom setting. students evidenced their conception of autonomy in they way they faced the multiple activities proposed during the autonomous workshop and the ones they looked for outside the classroom. autonomous work is a new paradigm for both teachers and learners. being a new model, autonomous work generated uneasiness as learners faced a predicament between detachment and teacher dependence. a variety of feelings and states emerged. in certain specific moments of this process students felt happy, uneasy, confident, and even frustrated. we as teacher must be prepared to support students along the process so that they can face it easily and comfortably. in terms of the dilemma students faced within the new paradigm –autonomous learning –the current study showed aspects that contrasted with research made by thanasoulas (2000) regarding autonomy as a situation in which learners study on their own, without the intervention of the teacher. the findings of this study support the idea of autonomous work as another way in which teachers participate in students’ learning process (chan, 2001). within this framework, teachers are called to be guides, supporters, co-evaluators, and providers of materials and tasks which encourage students’ decisions to work on them. students’ role is a more active one. they are central in their learning process as they are the ones who make most of the decisions regarding the selection of materials and activities, the ways to develop them, partners to work with, places in profile 10.indd 67 23/10/2008 8:46:14 ariza ariza universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras68 which to carry out activities, strategies to use, and tools to evaluate their performance. another significant aspect of this study is students’ understanding of autonomy as an opportunity to take independent action in order to exercise decision making dynamics. there are some important factors that play a crucial role when students are faced with decision making regarding their learning process. motivation and students’ needs and plans regarding the use of the foreign language are among the most relevant factors students’ prioritize when organizing their work. a point related to decision making is students’ position towards action beyond the classroom. as described and analyzed above, in some instances learners decided not to carry out extracurricular activities due to the priority given to other academic activities or to a lack of time devoted to activities which might have fostered their english learning process. on the contrary, when participants decided on multiple aspects of learning, they assumed various roles depending on the type of decisions made. some learners might act as leaders of their partners while others might model for their peers. in this sense, i coincide with the idea of autonomy as a feature of social groups (benson & voller, 1997). continuous reflection leading to action is a nourishing component of autonomous learning. working within an autonomous framework promotes students’ engagement in reflection regarding core aspects of their learning process as well as relevant features of autonomous experiences. in the current study, students reflected upon their strengths and weaknesses. a second issue of reflection was connected to the way learners perceive the target language and the importance of developing communicative competence. students’ motivation and sense of achievement were also foci of reflection as well as their limitations when tackling specific activities proposed or carried out outside the classroom. an important dimension of autonomous work is the dimension of construction and reconstruction of knowledge which is essential in autonomous work. learners build knowledge through multiple phenomena such as activating their background knowledge. a second aspect to highlight is the possibility to set clear purposes and objectives. when students are encouraged to set their own goals related to specific functions, they engage in a rich dynamics of setting personal objectives the last aspect in the construction of learning through experience is related to the techniques and strategies students implemented in order to develop the tasks they selected in the autonomous sessions as well as in extracurricular activities. when tackling a task, students used strategies and techniques such as systematic practice, repetition, association, memorization and note taking. the type of strategy selected and implemented is closely connected to students’ learning preferences and to the type of activities participants decide to develop. in this study, evaluation processes proved to be a core component of students’ understanding of autonomy. students carried out evaluation at two different levels. on the one hand, learners evaluated their learning experiences and the results of the activities and tasks in and outside the classroom. here, students used peer profile 10.indd 68 23/10/2008 8:46:14 unveiling students’ understanding of autonomy: puzzling out a path to learning beyond the efl classroom profile 10, 2008. issn 1657-0790. bogotá, colombia. pages 47-73 69 correction, the teacher, answer keys and computer-based evaluation forms in order to assess their learning experiences. on the other hand, students evaluated aspects such as the way activities were developed, the materials used and the importance of the autonomous sessions held in the study. all participants agreed on the benefits that autonomous sessions had in their learning experience. autonomous sessions were regarded as very interesting spaces to exercise decision making related to most of the components of learning. as expressed by one of the participants, autonomous sessions allowed students to discover their weaknesses and to find a way to overcome them. it was the opportunity to unveil their souls. the implementation of autonomous work requires a proper atmosphere where students and teachers feel comfortable and supported when engaging in a new teaching-learning paradigm. thus, it is essential for spaces to be created so that students and teachers are able to express all the feelings they go through when facing a different learning dynamics. on the basis of this teacher-research, i have learned that plenary sessions are relevant spaces in which students could reflect upon the experience they lived. they had a cathartic dimension for both students and teachers. references aparicio, b., benavides, j., cárdenas, m. l., ochoa, j., ospina, c. & zuluaga, o. (1995). part ii. teaching to learn. colombian framework for english cofe project. london: thames valley university. benson, p. (1997). the philosophy and politics of learner autonomy. in p. benson & p. voller (eds.), autonomy and independence in language learning (pp. 18-34). london: longman. benson, p. & voller, p. (1997). autonomy and independence in language learning. london: longman. cárdenas, r. (2006). considerations on the role of teacher autonomy. colombian applied linguistics journal, 8, 182-202. cardona, g. & frodden, c. (2001). autonomy in foreign language teacher education. ikala, revista de lenguaje y cultura, 6, 11-12. chan, v. (2001). learning autonomously: the learners’ perspective. journal of further and higher education, 25(3), 285-300. dickinson, l. (1995). self-instruction in language learning. cambridge: cambridge university press. holec, h. (1981). autonomy in foreign language learning. oxford: pergamon. little, d. (1991). learner autonomy: definitions, issues and problems. dublin: authentik language learning resources ltd. luna, m. & sánchez, d. (2005). profiles of autonomy in the field of foreign languages. profile, 6, 133-140. merriam, s. (1988). case study research in education. san francisco: jossey-bass publications. o’malley, j. & chamot, a. (1990). learning strategies in second language acquisition. cambridge: cambridge university press. ruiz, y. (1997). aprendizaje autónomo en la adquisición de segundas lenguas: una experiencia en la universidad. didáctica, 9, 183193. scharle, a. & szabó, a. (2000). learner autonomy. a guide to developing learner responsibility. cambridge: cambridge university press. seideman, i. (1998). interviewing as qualitative research. a guide for researchers in education and social sciences. new york: teachers college press. sharp, c., pocklington, k. & weindling, d. (2002). study support and the development of the selfregulated learner. educational research, 44(1), 29-41. profile 10.indd 69 23/10/2008 8:46:14 ariza ariza universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras70 strauss, a. & corbin, j. (1990). basics of qualitative research. grounded theory procedures and techniques. london: sage publications. thanasoulas, d. (2000). what is learner autonomy and how can it be fostered? retrieved august 24, 2008, from the internet tesl journal web site: http:// iteslj.org/articles/thanasoulas-autonomy.html wallace, m. (1998). action research for language teachers. cambridge: cambridge university press. zorro, i.; baracaldo, d. & benjumea, a. (2005). autonomous learning and english language proficiency in a b. ed. in languages program. how, 12, 109-123. about the author j. aleida ariza ariza holds an ma in applied linguistics to tefl from universidad distrital and a b.ed. in philology and languages english-spanish from the universidad nacional de colombia. she has worked with students from kindergarten to university levels. she was a research assistant for the red program at the universidad nacional de colombia and worked for one year as a spanish assistant in the weald of kent in tonbridge, england. she is currently a full-time professor in the foreign language department at the universidad pedagógica y tecnológica de colombia. profile 10.indd 70 23/10/2008 8:46:14 unveiling students’ understanding of autonomy: puzzling out a path to learning beyond the efl classroom profile 10, 2008. issn 1657-0790. bogotá, colombia. pages 47-73 71 appendix 1: field notes observation no: place: duration: group: observer: date: what happens what it means comments: profile 10.indd 71 23/10/2008 8:46:14 ariza ariza universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras72 appendix 2: survey exploring students’ understandings of autonomy name: age: date: this questionnaire aims at exploring your experiences as students of english as well as your beliefs regarding efl learning process. read the questions carefully and provide clear and complete answers. how do you believe english can be learnt efficiently? 1. have you had the support of any person in your english learning process? 2. yes no if your answer is positive, who has helped you? how? what kind3. of materials /resources has helped you the most in your english learning process? (movies, books, cassettes.) what do you consider are your strengths as a student of english? 4. what do you consider your limitations are as a student of english? 5. do you develop activities outside the classroom as a complement for your english leaning process? 6. yes no if your answer was positive, describe the activities and the way you develop them. if you answered no, explain your answer. if you develop activities outside the classroom, do you do them on your own initiative 7. or as a requirement for the class? explain your answer in the following chart. activity(ies) you develop way you develop the activity activity as a class requirement (cr) or on your own initiative (oi) profile 10.indd 72 23/10/2008 8:46:14 unveiling students’ understanding of autonomy: puzzling out a path to learning beyond the efl classroom profile 10, 2008. issn 1657-0790. bogotá, colombia. pages 47-73 73 appendix 3: sample of the protocol for the audio recorded interview interview no. date: interviewee: purpose: contrast the information collected through the initial questionnaire, the field notes and the reflective logs developed by the participants of the study. questions what1. has your english process been like? based on your english learning experiences, what has been more effective 2. for your learning purposes? why was such results achieved? which areas of the english language do you consider yourself to be good at? 3. which areas of the english language are more difficult for you? what is the reason?4. what is your opinion of the autonomous sessions we sponsor every wednesday?5. what criteria do you use to select the activities you carry out in those autonomous sessions?6. what are the results of the work you have completed7. during these sessions? do you develop activities to reinforce your english learning process outside the classroom? 8. which ones? how do you develop them? which results have they had? why did you decide to select these activities for work outside the classroom? in the language learning process, we may refer to autonomy. 9. what is your understanding of autonomy? how would you describe an autonomous learner?10. which may be the characteristics of autonomous learning you have 11. noticed in your own experience during this term? why? profile 10.indd 73 23/10/2008 8:46:14 85profile vol. 11, no. 2, 2009. issn 1657-0790. bogotá, colombia. pages 85-104 interweaving autonomous learning and peer-tutoring in coaching efl student-teachers*1 la conexión entre aprendizaje autónomo y la tutoría entre pares como apoyo a estudiantes de inglés como lengua extranjera aleida ariza ariza**2 john jairo viáfara gonzález*** universidad pedagógica y tecnológica de colombia (uptc), colombia in this article we share the findings on the exploration of undergraduate efl (english as a foreign language) student-teachers’ professional preparation and autonomous practices. participants were tutees who attended tutorial sessions with peers in higher semesters. in this context, tutoring was based on a model we designed. as the model was implemented, they collected information by means of multiple qualitative research instruments. results indicate that tutees’ learning process was strongly influenced by their personality and attitudes. similarly, tutees expanded their views in regard to the english language, its learning, and their communicative competence. finally, we pinpoint some considerations for others interested in adopting this pedagogical strategy. key words: peer tutoring, university tutoring, autonomous learning, independent work en este artículo compartimos hallazgos relacionados con la preparación profesional y las prácticas autónomas de estudiantes de inglés en un programa de licenciatura. los participantes tutorados asistían a sesiones tutoriales con compañeros en semestres superiores. en este contexto, la tutoría se basó en un modelo que diseñamos. durante la implementación del modelo se recogió información a través de múltiples instrumentos cualitativos de investigación. los resultados revelan que el proceso de aprendizaje de los tutorados se vio fuertemente influenciado por su personalidad y sus actitudes. asimismo, los tutorados ampliaron sus puntos de vista sobre la lengua inglesa, su aprendizaje y su competencia comunicativa. finalmente, señalamos algunas consideraciones para los interesados en adoptar esta estrategia pedagógica palabras clave: tutoría entre compañeros, tutoría a nivel universitario, aprendizaje autónomo, trabajo independiente * this article reports on a study sponsored by the din (research department) at uptc. sgi 266 cdp 5456. ** e-mail:aleariza1971@gmail.com *** e-mail: jviafara@yahoo.com address: avenida central del norte. tunja boyacá, colombia. this article was received on may 1, 2009 and accepted on august 18, 2009. 86 ariza ariza & viáfara gonzález universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras introduction the initial idea to undertake this research process is rooted in various issues. to begin with, our students who were enrolled in the modern languages program at a public university evidenced limitations in their english proficiency. a second concern referred to national educational policies at the tertiary level based on decree 2566, issued in 2003 by the colombian ministry of education (men), which suggested the adoption of the credit system. a credit was defined in relation to the time students devoted for their independent work. thus, this policy led universities such as ours to open supportive spaces which fostered students’ autonomous work by means of tutoring. in this sense, it was expected that students could become more efficient in managing their academic time and optimize their learning process. in our university, professors started to provide this tutoring to their students. unfortunately, we lacked clear guidelines to support learners by means of this strategy. hence, our study aimed at understanding the relationship among tutoring, tutees’ professional development and their autonomous practices. bearing the previous considerations in mind, we embarked on an action-research journey. first, a diagnostic stage to locate the sources of problematic situations was conducted for about one academic term. by means of an initial survey applied to first and second semester students as well as professors in the language courses, the analysis of tutoring experiences as debutant professors, and the revision of the existent documents the university had produced about tutorials, we established the concepts this population had about autonomy and tutoring. the information collected in the diagnostic stage revealed that participants perceived tutorials as personalized spaces to get support through feedback. with regard to students’ perceptions about autonomy, we discovered that they conceived autonomy as an independent practice carried out in their free time guided by their initiative to make decisions. additionally, self-confidence and responsibility emerged as key features in facing personal limitations. the most remarkable hindrances behind tutorial development were that both professors and students had limited time for these meetings and only a few students attended tutorials due to their lack of confidence with educators. as a consequence of the former evidence, we were encouraged to plan tentative tutorial sessions. initially we decided that peer-tutoring would be the most suitable type of support for participants. we also decided to form an emerging research group with student-tutors of higher semesters. over a period of four weeks tutorial sessions were held and explored. information from tutors’ journals, interviews with tutors and tutees, audio and video recordings of sessions and tutorial description formats guided us to propose a threecomponent peer-tutoring model, suitable for the context of our research. this model is composed of the basic principles to conduct tutoring sessions, the tutoring cycle and the ideal tutor’s profile. the tutorial model we previously referred to was implemented for an academic year. thus, we could answer our peer-tutoring central query, which aimed at exploring what features of first semester modern languages students’ professional preparation emerged as they took part in an autonomous-learning based peertutoring model. to tackle this question we formulated three objectives. on the one hand, we sought to determine the role that the peer-tutoring model had in tutees’ language development. secondly, we explored how tutees’ participation in the model revealed socio-affective and teaching concerns. lastly, we examined the evidence of 87 interweaving autonomous learning and peer-tutoring in coaching efl student-teachers profile vol. 11, no. 2, 2009. issn 1657-0790. bogotá, colombia. pages 85-104 tutees’ autonomous practices revealed along their participation in the tutorial meetings. in the forthcoming sections, besides providing more details about the investigation process we undertook during the first phase, we will discuss the main pillars underlying this project from both theory and research experiences. moreover, we will include a description of the research design we implemented to answer the question, which constituted the second stage of this study. additionally, we will reveal the findings followed by our conclusions and pedagogical implications. defining and exploring peer tutoring and autonomy fields this literature review looks at several concepts related to peer-tutoring and autonomy. starting from these considerations, the principles of these two approaches will be discussed. finally, relevant research experiences in regard to the areas being studied will be commented on. peer-tutoring principles in the university context revising literature in the field, several concepts such as tutoring, peer learning and tandem can be useful to define peer-tutoring. in general tutoring implies supporting and monitoring students constantly so that they can achieve their integral preparation during their studies. within the previous framework, álvarez (2004) define tutoring as guiding and advising pupils. peer tutoring emerges as a specific category of tutoring in which two students, a tutor and a tutee, are involved. the tutor does not necessarily have to be an expert or a teacher in the target area since it is expected that his guidance will lead the tutee to find answers and solutions by himself (topping, 2002). peer-tutoring bears certain similarities with peer-learning (sampson & cohen, 2001) and tandem (stickler 2006); these approaches refer to the support that peers offer their equals in order to achieve learning goals. thus, several social and psychological factors around these experiences are alike. however, in tandem and peer-learning, peers mutually support each other’s knowledge building, whereas peer-tutoring implies one of the two becoming a permanent guide. peer-tutoring in the context of our study refers to a personalized extra-class space where a student guides another one in order to support him or her in his or her integral preparation (viáfara & ariza, 2008a). taking into account students’ status in peer-tutoring, gaustad (1993) has distinguished between peer-tutoring –in which peers are of similar age and academic status– and the ones in which the tutor might be older or more competent in the target area than the tutee. with regard to the organization of peertutoring, the following aspects were considered to design the model for this study (viáfara & ariza, 2008a). we started with a needs analysis to set suitable goals for the program (sampson & cohen, 2001; álvarez, 2004). then, careful planning of the logistics was required to arrange schedules and spaces, set pairs together and locate resources (topping, 2002; sampson & cohen, 2001; álvarez, 2004; stickler, 2006). finally, as sampson & cohen (2001) state, managing the process by introducing the program to participants, supporting them constantly and evaluating the tutoring experience strengthened our enterprise. 88 ariza ariza & viáfara gonzález universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras academic and social implications of peer tutoring: gauging research experiences studies in relation to peer-tutoring have revealed valuable information in the last years. álvarez & gonzález (2005) determined that peer-tutoring reduces the distance between participants since they are both students. this positive environment stimulates learning because they perceive each other as being part of the same group. in addition, as mynard & almarzouqui (2006) state, cooperation fosters a safe atmosphere where asking questions, solving doubts and discussing topics become easier. in regard to academic benefits, peer-tutoring favors at risk students because it promotes the practice of specific communicative and social skills. luca, cowan & clarkson (2003) highlight the role of peer-tutoring as a stimulator of critical thinking and, in general, cognitive processes. moreover, this type of experiences increases university program retention (torres, 2002; packham & miller, 2002). embracing learning strategies and study skills has also been pinpointed by beasley (1997) and mynard & almarzouqui (2006) as gains in this kind of experience. all the same, these spaces foster participants’ leadership and make both tutors and tutees more competent in regard to their instructional potentiality (álvarez & gonzález, 2005). likewise, torres (2002) underlines how peertutoring allows tutees to become more prepared when participating in classes and handling extra academic issues. conversely, investigators have detected some hindrances in peer-tutoring. the lack of administrative support and logistics problems regarding flexibility in schedules as well as spaces have a negative impact on tutees’ attendance to sessions (álvarez, 2002). on the other hand, tutees’ dependence on tutors and some tutors’ lack of preparation may cause a mismatch between their expectations about tutorial development (mynard & almarzouqui 2006; beasley, 1997). autonomy as a corner stone in peer tutoring: concepts and conditions peer-tutoring experiences imply that tutees gradually move from being supported by someone with higher expertise to become their own tutors. thus, as suárez (2002) mentions, there is a connection between tutoring and autonomous learning. expanding on the previous idea, autonomy is a concept that has been explored from many different perspectives. from philosophical and psychological perspectives, it means becoming responsible members of a social group, whereas in the political field, autonomy implies freedom from external control. at the educational level, there may be a risk of implementing autonomous approaches which favor a particular function of instruction. coleman (1996) emphasizes the threat of implementing autonomous hegemonies that deny individuals the possibility to develop their own meanings of education and their autonomous practices. as posed by riley (1988, p. 20), “learning is a social process and varies according to the nature of the society a learner is part of ”. autonomous practices are highly determined by the cultural patterns of a specific social group. as we explored the concept of autonomy, we learned that holec (1981) refers to this paradigm as a set of abilities an individual possesses to take more responsibility in various social matters. within this general framework, autonomy is conceived from narrow positions in which learners may face their process in isolation to social versions of autonomy in which assisted learning is the core. 89 interweaving autonomous learning and peer-tutoring in coaching efl student-teachers profile vol. 11, no. 2, 2009. issn 1657-0790. bogotá, colombia. pages 85-104 in the same spirit, autonomy can be understood as “the capacity students have for detachment, critical reflection, decision making and independent action” (little, 1991, p. 4). low (1996) and dickinson (1995) refer to autonomy as the ability and attitude learners apply to take charge of their own education. to our understanding, being autonomous implies optimizing a viewpoint towards knowledge construction to decide what to learn, when and where learning should be developed, materials to be used and ways to assess one’s process. little (2006) and vieira (2002) mention some attitudes and conditions which favored autonomy as one’s willingness to look individually and collectively at educational contexts from a critical perspective. this position may shift from negotiation to confrontation of authority. the previous implies that pondering our actions is essential to know oneself and to understand one’s role in education showing tolerance with uncertainty and ambiguity. moreover, another condition which affects autonomous practices might be the existence of suitable environments for students to master the language through its use. the previous conditions can be considered when moving to the practical implication of autonomy in educational settings. to begin with, when trying to create autonomous learning environments, scharle and szabó (2000) and vieira (2002) proposed an awareness that raises dynamics which may include attentiveness in learning how to learn and the social nature of language to foster communicative competence development. another stage is fueled by learners’ changing attitude towards their process, their roles and the factors involved in it. as a result, learners might face the challenge of transferring roles within class settings. revising research on autonomous practices and profiles among recent research reports in this area, luna & sánchez (2005) identified four learners’ autonomous profiles. the first one includes students who depend on others’ initiative about what and how to work. a second one refers to students who reveal certain attitudes of taking charge of their own learning outside the educational context. in third place students showing initial reflection towards autonomous learning are described. finally, they mentioned students who, by means of a high determination to take decisions, seek to reach their objectives. within the context of alex, a language learning program based on a self-access center at universidad nacional, lagos & ruiz (2007) explored some of the principal factors that affected the exercise of autonomy in this learning community. among these factors, they revealed participants’ conception of autonomy and their previous experiences. shortcomings such as the lack of programs to foster autonomous learning, limitations in logistics support and participants’ attitudes were detected in the exercise and development of autonomy. in the same spirit, ariza (2008) reports a study which aimed at identifying efl students’ understandings of autonomy evidenced through their learning in and outside the educational setting. students’ conceptions of autonomy were linked to learning beyond the classroom and facing a constant dilemma between detachment and teacher dependence. this situation generated feelings of satisfaction, frustration and uneasiness in participants. another core issue was students’ independence when making decisions supported in continuous reflection. this dynamic fosters 90 ariza ariza & viáfara gonzález universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras participants’ learning through experience and permanent evaluation processes. studying the literature and what researchers have previously shared in the field enlightened us in the observation of what happened when the peer-tutoring model was implemented in our setting. bearing the previous in mind, we will continue with sharing how peer-tutoring took place while it was investigated. a new action research cycle: examining peer-tutoring and autonomous learning as we stated in the introduction, by means of a first action research cycle, we studied our context to propose a tutorial model (viáfara & ariza, 2008a). the second stage of our research, which is described in this article, focused on studying what features of first semester modern languages students’ professional development emerged as they took part in an autonomous-learning based peer-tutoring model. study scenario our program, modern languages, prepares students for the teaching of english at secondary levels. it includes seven five hour-weekly english language courses, called communicative projects, to support pre-service teachers’ foreign language communicative competence. the methodologies implemented to guide students’ learning are basically the communicative approach and project work. since class time is reduced, students are expected to work independently to achieve the aims of courses. students also take grammar and phonetics classes. a course of applied linguistics, three courses of didactics as well as the teaching practicum, which constitute the pedagogical block, are expected to foster reflection and research. the program syllabus is supported by tutoring which aims at preparing students in their courses and is generally offered by teachers in their regular working schedule. these professors generally help students individually providing two tutoring hours a week per course. students attend these sessions to get support on specific tasks, in homework revision and sometimes to be evaluated. based on the experience gained during the diagnosis and piloting stages in 2006, during 2007 first and second semester students were invited to participate in the project. we agreed to continue offering tutorials to several former participants from third and fourth semesters. we expanded tutorial time from one hour to two hours weekly for former tutees. finally, sixth semester students enlarged the group of tutors. in relation to tutors, we continued a rigorous selection process to ensure that they had an integral profile to undertake their role. they submitted curricula vitae and had an interview. once the group was formed, the main researchers focused on organizing participants in pairs (tutor-tutee) based on their time availability and spaces accessibility. along the first and second semesters in 2007, the tutorials were implemented in the modern languages program. tables no. 1 and 2 summarize relevant information about the tutors and tutees that participated in the process. tutors’ preparation and implementation of the model tutors’ preparation involved their understanding of the tutoring model and the principles behind it. the first component of the model is rooted in three essential principles. to begin with, peer91 interweaving autonomous learning and peer-tutoring in coaching efl student-teachers profile vol. 11, no. 2, 2009. issn 1657-0790. bogotá, colombia. pages 85-104 tutoring session sought to support tutees in their english proficiency level. along with this academic objective, students might get support in aspects concerning their integral preparation as future efl teachers. the last principle was focused on empowering tutees as learners by means of strategies in learning how to learn. the second component of the model is conceived as a cycle (see figure 1). it describes the ideal process that might orient tutorial sessions development. a tutorial session is nourished from tutees’ immediate needs or their pre-established plans for long term improvement. during the sessions, tutors and tutees may explore and practice specific language aspects while feedback is constantly provided. the tutorial session is expected to encourage tutees’ independent work. a new cycle will start when self and peer evaluation provides information that would reorient the tutoring process. the profile of the tutor emerges as the last component in the tutorial model. as it supports a pre-service teacher preparation program, the tutor needs to display values, among them responsibility and respect as well as good communication skills, in order to keep a harmonious relation with the tutees. likewise, being enthusiastic about the foreign language and its teaching becomes essential. additionally tutors’ skills in providing information about material sources and learning strategies support tutees’ autonomous learning. as evidenced in the center of figure 1, we incorporated different tools within a reflective approach to guide tutors in handling the model. the richness of reflection through investigation strengthened the tutors’ learning when they table 1. tutors’ biographical information and tutorial session average term no. of tutors from 6th to 10th semesters ages no. of tutees per tutor average no. tutorial sessions first semester 7 men 11 women 21-24 21-24 3 5 second semester 7 men 12 women 21-25 22-25 3 5 table 2. tutees’ biographical information and tutorial session average term no. of tutees from 1st to 4th semesters ages origin average no. tutorial sessions first semester 14 men 43 women 1729 17-26 *main cities (boyacá) 21 *towns (boyacá) 18 *santander 7 *bogotá 2 *llanos 5 5 second semester 5 men 23 women 18-22 17-22 *main cities (boyacá) 13 *towns (boyacá) 9 *bogotá 4 *llanos 2 5 92 ariza ariza & viáfara gonzález universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras reported research findings, shared journals and attended academic events. we provided opportunities for real tutorial session video analysis and tutorial simulations which informed newcomers about real situations of interest. problem solving tasks involved critical incident analysis in which expert tutors’ experiences coached newcomers. additionally, reading about important theoretical principles underpinning tutoring and autonomy was central to lead participants in developing skills to connect theory and practice. figure 1. the tutorial cycle and tools for tutors’ preparation 93 interweaving autonomous learning and peer-tutoring in coaching efl student-teachers profile vol. 11, no. 2, 2009. issn 1657-0790. bogotá, colombia. pages 85-104 research framework in 2007 we simultaneously implemented the peer-tutoring model and conducted our investigation. qualitative research under an action paradigm was the base for our study. “the aim of qualitative approaches is to offer descriptions, interpretations and clarifications of naturalistic social contexts” (burns, 1999, p. 22). on the other hand, action research is conceived as “on-the-spot procedure designed to deal with a concrete problem located in an immediate situation” (cohen & manion, 1994, p. 192). thus, the starting point of this cyclical methodology is a diagnostic stage which leads to the planning and implementation of various strategies. while the action is in progress, constant reflection fueled by observation and other research techniques takes place. finally exploring the impact of strategies should guide investigators to start a new cycle. framed by this qualitative paradigm, primary and secondary instruments were used to collect evidence and achieve the objectives our study sought. by means of semi-structured interviews conducted at the end of each term, we elicited participants’ views about their experiences in the tutoring program. we guided the interviews on a pre-established set of questions (see appendix 1a, 1b). the two main researchers, with the help of some tutors, conducted 48 interviews for tutees and 24 for tutors along 2007. secondly, tutors’ journals provided substantial information since they described tutees’ attitudes, concerns, and actions during the tutorials. when tutors became members of the research group, we guided them in what a journal was and how to keep it in relation to our research focus. we all agreed on writing one entry after every tutorial session or once a week. thirteen journals were analyzed by the end of the first semester and 12 in the second term. finally, tutorial sessions were audio and video recorded. we aimed at observing how participants behaved while they were engaged in the tutoring model. we agreed on a specific schedule to record the sessions, depending on logistics. during the first semester in 2007, 33 sessions were audio or video recorded, while in the second term 10 sessions were registered. additionally we also counted on secondary instruments. to begin with, 168 tutorial sessions in the first semester, 2007, and 106 in the second term were described in the formats that the research group had designed. along with information to specify the participants’ identity, time and place of tutorials, the formats gathered descriptive data about the tutees’ needs, objectives, achievements, methodology of work, materials and suggestions. another secondary instrument was the minutes of the research group meetings, which contained records of discussions about tutorial development. following burns’ suggestions for data analysis (1999), our process included assembling, coding, comparing and building interpretations of data. we started by the exploration of tutors and tutees’ interviews to find common patterns to answer our question. individually we used color coding procedures to identify emerging features. we proceeded similarly in terms of journals, audio and video recordings. simultaneously, we used information from secondary instruments to validate what we had found. then, we confronted our embryonic findings. investigator triangulation gave weight to our findings. similarly, data triangulation was also evident as multiple sources of information were used (janesick, 1994). furthermore, as another strategy for internal validity (merriam, 1988), we collected data for a long period of time over two consecutive academic terms. 94 ariza ariza & viáfara gonzález universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras as a result of this first stage, 25 outstanding issues were identified as we related information by means of comparison and contrast. a second stage was guided by our research objectives which enlightened us to reduce and classify the patterns detected. this cycle continued until we established three main categories with their corresponding sub-categories which are fully discussed in the coming section. an autonomous learningbased peer tutoring model: a springboard for students’ professional preparation initially our research project’s main focus was examining the relationship among peer tutoring, autonomous work and tutees’ english proficiency level; however, as we dug deeper into the phenomenon, we realized that other issues were interwoven. thus, we expanded the scope of our study to include three dimensions which we identified as a core for tutees’ integral preparation as future efl teachers. the first feature is tightly connected to language learning and has been denominated, “gaining experiential knowledge in reaching and envisaging language learning goals”. the second issue involves socio-affective factors discussed under the heading of “brick by brick: building up confidence”. lastly, a core principle in autonomous learning, decisionmaking guides the discussion under the title, “from engaging to acting: shapes of tutees’ willingness to undertake their learning”. gaining experiential knowledge in reaching and envisaging language learning goals this first trait correlates with our intention to determine the role that the peer tutoring model had in tutees’ academic profile. in this line, data revealed that the primary drive for tutees to become involved in tutoring was to fulfill their language needs. they succeeded in broadening their gains in relation to their empowerment as learners as also reported by beasley (1997), mynard & almarzouqui (2006), and velandia (2007). additionally, tutees reflected upon themselves as future tutors or teachers which matches álvarez & gonzález (2005), who highlight the instructional potentiality participants can gain from tutoring. a sharing enterprise in valuing tutees’ learning styles along peer tutoring, tutors became aware of tutees’ styles and showed concern about helping them identify these preferences. thus, they counted on valuable information to support learners in their language improvement as much as to provide them with guidelines for sessions development. tutees acknowledged this effort of their tutors and they considered that their individual characteristics were respected. he was sensible about the fact that i was starting, then, step by step, he avoided forcing me to start at once. step by step he provided suitable explanations to me. (i te1 1-2007). 1 i te stands for tutees’ interviews. 95 interweaving autonomous learning and peer-tutoring in coaching efl student-teachers profile vol. 11, no. 2, 2009. issn 1657-0790. bogotá, colombia. pages 85-104 several participants mentioned how taking into consideration tutees’ learning styles contributed both to their skill development and comfort; d, a tutor, expresses: we start with their interest or what they perceive as prior need and then various activities considering the communicative abilities were developed. the aim was that the tutee himself looked for possible solutions to what he needed… the tutoring helped pupils to discover the way they learn – from the parts to the wholefor example (i tu2 1-2007). planning strategies to suit tutees’ needs the previous consideration of tutees’ presumable learning preferences led participants to explore their needs as a diagnostic stage in planning the tutorial spaces. in regard to reported limitations, language aspects and their incidence in tutees’ performance in classes appeared. these shortcomings originated from pupils’ eagerness to tackle many language aspects simultaneously, their high school fossilization and low proficiency since they lacked opportunities for language use in classrooms. needs were explored when tutors and tutees reflected during their examination of previous knowledge, their learning process. they also reflected on themselves as persons. additionally, they engaged in self and peer evaluation which provided feedback and fostered their selfmonitoring. the following excerpt from a tutorial session audio-recording evidences the dynamics described above: tu: and what have you done to improve your pronunciation? do you remember about the tips we mentioned two weeks ago? te: xxx i have read tu: do you have the piece of reading with you? (sound indicated that the tutee handed the document to the tutor) 2 i tu stands for tutors’ interviews. tu: have you identified any difficult words for you to pronounce? te: no. tu: ok, we are going to make the list of the possible words that are difficult for you to pronounce. i do not know how feasible it may be for you to get a voice recorder so that you can read and record yourself, and then you listen back and realize about your own mistakes. (tas3 1 2007) identifying tutees’ needs preceded proposing a working agenda. this agenda involved a good amount of real life topics and situations and was sometimes set by tutors or by the two of them. organizing this plan implied using various sources, techniques and strategies for learning such as videos, games, grammar exercises, detailed explanations, skill-based work, homework and dictation. this selection responded to tutees’ styles and proficiency levels. the previous route flowed into the tutees, achieving a range of goals. in relation to their immediate needs, tutors and tutees informed that tuteesr clarified doubts and corrected many of their problems. figure 2 below summarizes specific findings in relation to tutees’ main academic gains as they participated in tutorial sessions. a first area of the profits involved issues concerning language proficiency and understanding how english works, as the following sample reveals. “when i was listening to her, i almost couldn’t believe she was talking so fluent and with very few mistakes, i think she is making progress” (j4 tu 1 2007). closely connected with the previous gain, participants reported how incorporating certain study skills and strategies made them better not only at communicating through the language, but also at changing their learning styles for more 3 tas stands for transcription of an audio recorded session. 4 j stands for journal. 96 ariza ariza & viáfara gonzález universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras favorable ones as evidenced in the following excerpt when a tutor was asked about her tutees’ gains: “they gained not only in fluency but in taking risks in using english for communicating; to feel more secure so they feel they are able to communicate” (i tu ii 2007). in the same line, another aspect was identified regarding the changing nature of tutees’ beliefs. they realized that language learning is more than translating, grammar practice or memorization. in these sessions language was used for real purposes while the classroom was regarded as a space to be provided with input. likewise, in the excerpt below, tutees reflected on the connection between tutorials and autonomy “… to be aware of one’s willingness to reach a goal by one’s own means” (i te 1 2007). figure 2. tutee’s main academic gains as they participated in tutorial sessions 97 interweaving autonomous learning and peer-tutoring in coaching efl student-teachers profile vol. 11, no. 2, 2009. issn 1657-0790. bogotá, colombia. pages 85-104 this autonomous trait was also perceived in tutees’ transferring of their abilities to other classes taught in english as the following tutor revealed in an interview: “along the process my tutees told me that when they had to work on readings in english classes with their professors and they came across those words we studied during tutorials, they tried to remember how i told them to pronounce them”. they also shaped their attitudes and behaviors in order to build up character in facing learning and life in general as expressed by a tutee: “looking at the tutors’ proficiency to speak, i wonder when i would reach the same level… you know, and one realizes that what we do in classes and tutoring is not enough; one has to be self-demanding to achieve one’s goals” (i te 1 2007). though the general perception of tutees in regard to tutorial sessions was positive, tensions of a different nature emerged. to begin with, there were cases in which tutees questioned tutors’ knowledge of the language and procedure as well as the selection of relevant issues in the sessions as they claimed they trusted teachers more. sometimes i felt that he did not respect me… it seems to me that he did not believe what i was explaining. one day he said to me that he did not come to the tutorial sessions because he has a dictionary in his house. (j tu 2 2007) the previous was not the only mismatch between tutors and pupils’ expectations; others referred to aspects concerning the logistics such as tutees inviting another peer to the session or the extent to which a tutor had to support them in their duties. brick by brick: building up confidence though tutees’ main objectives ran towards english language practice and development and the socio-affective dimension that tutoring nourished became a pillar in what they gained. specifically, confidence was identified as the core building block around which several issues and opportunities were shared so that they grew as learners and future teachers. similar findings have been reported by álvarez & gonzález, 2005; mynard & almarzouqui, 2006 and packham & miller, 2002. in spite of the fact that tutors were simultaneously teachers and learning peers, being partners prevailed while working together. the previous considerations implied that the relation between the two actors in tutoring was less tense than with professors and more open to multiple options as to how tutors and tutees became acquainted. when tutorials started, feelings of uneasiness were common since tutees thought their tutors would judge them because of their limitations. however, they came across a working dynamic in which formal assessment was not used. the previous circumstances fostered a non-threatening atmosphere free from criticism and full of encouragement. one learns to express oneself in english, to put all that fear aside, it is like one always thinks that what one is going to say is wrong, but one finds the words as the tutor helps. i was very nervous at the beginning because i thought my tutor was going to think i did not know anything, but little by little she gave me confidence. (i te 1 2007) bearing the previous in mind, many testimonies of tutees expressing how they reduced their shyness, increased their self-esteem and selfassurance were found. an outstanding situation we witnessed involved a participant who belong to the project for about one year and a half. similar to many students from these regions who are of rural or semi-rural origins, he was characterized as being so shy that he would not speak to most people around or even keep eye contact while 98 ariza ariza & viáfara gonzález universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras communicating. in the following evidence, this participants’ tutor commented about his progress: […] for example xxx last semester b was my tutee and he was very shy, he barely spoke to me, and i think it was because of the friendship we built that now he is more open during tutorials. he speaks more, he also has more friends, last semester i realized he was lonelier, now he is around more people. tutoring seems to help participants to be more aware of themselves as persons who can relate to others and achieve their goals. (i tu 2-2007) student-tutors allowed a closer relationship with their pupils by accepting and promoting tutees’ free expression and being receptive to their common origin as in the next sample: i asked her some personal questions such as where are you from? what do you do in your free time?... she tried to answer, however i corrected some of her statements, it was nice when she told me she was from ráquira. ‘oh! ráquira’, i told her. i spoke about this town, because once i was there… here we shared personal experiences and beliefs, it was interesting to go beyond learning and teaching and getting to know the goals, dreams or expectations that each one of the tutees has. there is mutual learning. (j 1 2007) thus, little by little, in many cases, friendship bonds were bridged; they identified with each other since they were members of the same program and, in some cases, from the same geographical region. in spite of the strong identification among participants, some tensions were perceived due to personality clashes. for instance, while some tutees expected their tutors to be more open and share intimate issues with them, their guide may have kept reserved and limited her/his counseling to academic matters. in addition to the previous considerations, tutees usually shared with tutors their concerns regarding various components of the program. they wanted to know about the curriculum, the university services, and the dynamics of certain courses. this interest generated constant reflection on the suitability of the program and their performance in their studies. situations in which students considered staying in the program despite their difficulties were discussed in the sessions. tutees also expressed that this experience made them aware of the roles they could perform as future teachers or tutors since they analyzed how their tutors acted as guides. an issue to remark on at this point relates to tutees’ expectations in regard to tutors’ language knowledge and skills. they soon discovered that their guides might also have had some gaps in their competence to handle the language; however, their tutors’ eagerness to become more prepared made pupils build a realistic image of what a teacher is. this implies they viewed their tutors as models to be followed. their admiration for what the former ones did exemplified some of the qualities they could attain and the social commitment they would have to face when becoming teachers. one realizes about the mechanisms to develop a topic, the resources and strategies to make a class appealing. (i te 1 2007) (the tutorial sessions) motivated me to continue learning. when i saw my peers in this kind of class, i questioned myself about how i would perform as a teacher in the future. (i te 1 2007) from engaging to acting: shapes of tutees’ willingness to undertake their learning enrolling in the tutorial program was a free decision tutees took. as weeks passed, various situations revealed that their permanence in the program was tightly connected to their own inner drive to manage their learning. little (1991), low (1996), and dickinson (1995) refer to this aspect as an evidence of autonomy. thus, our interest in exploring how peer tutoring reveals pupils’ 99 interweaving autonomous learning and peer-tutoring in coaching efl student-teachers profile vol. 11, no. 2, 2009. issn 1657-0790. bogotá, colombia. pages 85-104 autonomous work is the core of this section. as this kind of tutoring was a novelty for students, we shaped the main findings into a metaphor based on the process one follows in deciding which new suit one wants to wear. trying on a new garment tutees’ possibilities to exercise their autonomy revealed various issues. these facets had as their main pillar tutees’ personality and learning factors. initially, pupils’ shyness, fear and lack of motivation restricted their autonomy. […] towards the second half of the term, tutees’ level of independence was more notorious. there was self-reflection and self-evaluation. in the case of a g, there was more dependence as she was very timid (i tu 1 2007). when pupils were asked about the relationship between peer tutoring and autonomy, different expressions connected to motivation were mentioned, among them: “to be willing to do something, to have more interest in a subject, and desire to develop something one wants” (i te 1-2 2007). becoming aware of what learning means, one’s process and the possibilities to achieve a successful performance was another dimension of students trying to wear that new garment. participants acknowledged the importance of attending tutorials as a step towards becoming agents of their own learning. likewise, diagnosing their weaknesses and strengths, knowing about the development of tutorials and the means tutors suggested them to work with, were stages in tutees’ journey towards autonomy. tailoring the experience to meet one’s needs and objectives as has been mentioned previously, one of the starting points in our tutoring cycle involved tutee’s identification of their own learning objectives through their personal improvement plans. data collected revealed that some pupils did not decide on their goals, but that these were set by tutors or born from immediate needs. on the contrary, a good number of tutees clearly expressed their aims to work on specific concerns from the beginning or progressively along their participation. i had a tutorial session with n, her main goal for that tutorial was to learn the auxiliary ‘do’ specially to make questions. i was very motivated; i could see that she wanted to learn by herself. (j tu 1 2007) tutees’ decision-making in regard to their scope of intervention to reach their learning goals disclosed three progressive levels as they engaged in peer-tutoring. figure 3 evidences our findings in relation to the possible connections between tutorials and pupils’ autonomous development. the figure has been conceived as a pyramid which describes how the group of participants evolves in their decision-making process to reach their aims and illustrates each case by means of a piece of evidence. on its base, we have placed a group of tutees who shows an initial intention to explore the various possibilities they have at hand for learning. pupils’ involvement in tutoring seemed to support their progression towards a more active role in terms of selecting their learning opportunities when they moved to the second stage. finally, tutees advanced towards developing a clear sense of what they needed and how to accomplish it on their own initiative. these pupils are located in the apex of the pyramid. 100 ariza ariza & viáfara gonzález universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras ' ' in this excerpt a tutee is seeking advice for self-practice figure 3. from engaging to acting: shapes of tutees' willingness to undertake learning conclusions along their participation in peer tutoring, first semester efl student-teachers worked in an environment which provided them conditions to assume more positive attitudes towards their preparation. pupils started to gain a more favorable view of their future roles as teachers; they regarded their guides as models to learn from. not only were tutors’ actions as language instructors analyzed by tutees, but they also paid attention to the values they bestowed thus tutees reflected upon important qualities for teaching. likewise, tutees also gained information about their program and how they could function in it. tutors played an essential role in tutees’ development of special learning characteristics along their participation in tutoring. student101 interweaving autonomous learning and peer-tutoring in coaching efl student-teachers profile vol. 11, no. 2, 2009. issn 1657-0790. bogotá, colombia. pages 85-104 tutors’ respect and interest in characterizing their pupils as learners and providing them with knowledge about strategies and resources guided these first semester students to understand and work on their strengths as well as limitations. the highest amount of information collected in our research accounted for tutees’ partial or total achievement of learning objectives they had set by themselves or with their tutors during the sessions. additionally, tutees understood better how english works and how the nature of language bears implications in regard to its learning. several misconceptions tutees held about language learning were initially reshaped due to their reflection on tutorial spaces. peer tutoring, as a practice opportunity space, supported tutees’ proficiency and their preparation since they transferred attitudes, skills, and knowledge from tutoring to the various classes taught in english. tensions were also experienced when tutees did not have a clear picture about the tutorial dynamics or the role they wanted to play in them. conflicts arose around the kind of support they would receive, the logistics of tutorials and/or the relevance of using the target language. in some cases tutees’ questioned their tutors’ qualifications to guide them. from proposing an agenda for reaching their objectives to evaluating their process, tutees always had the first chance to put their needs forward; that is why, as it will be inferred from the coming lines, several of the issues described up to now are factors which shaped tutees’ autonomous learning. progressing from a basic to a higher autonomous level, tutees moved along what can be compared to a pyramidal road. to begin with, some pupils depended excessively on their tutors and though they seemed to gain awareness about their process, most of their decisions in regard to their learning were made by their tutors. a second level included tutees’ gradual acceptance of their tutor’s initial support which moved them ahead into expanding what they could do by themselves. the tutorial spaces exhibited examples or models with which they discovered different options to follow later on their own. these situations involved tutees’ understanding of why and how they had decided to work in certain aspects or in a specific way. finally, we identified a third group of pupils characterized by their strong initiative to decide what to do and how to develop their tasks. they sought, elaborated and took materials of their preference to tutorials. they usually agreed with their tutors in having additional tutorial spaces. pedagogical implications and further research though the tutoring model has been shared and studied with tutors along various semesters, in some aspects there is still a gap between the theory behind it and the extent to which tutors follow its principles. in this sense, tutors can have a more solid component in their preparation to reflect upon crucial issues such as the attitudes which do or do not favor independence in tutees and the importance of being coherent with their role as a model. being this a two-way road to build, we have also planned to include an initial meeting with tutees so they become more aware of the tutorial model principles and their commitment. it is well-known, from theoretical sources in this area that peer tutors do not have to know it all since they are still consolidating their knowledge. nevertheless, we are always looking forward to reinforcing their english language skills. that is why, in order to support tutors’ language proficiency, we have organized english clubs, become ourselves their tutors or always had meetings in 102 ariza ariza & viáfara gonzález universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras english. the constant request that tutees made for materials confirmed the need we have for more suitable resources to support their autonomous learning. along the implementation of the tutoring model, we have worked in preparing many of the resources in our language laboratory to be used by tutors and tutees in our program (viáfara & ariza, 2008b). the results of this study have determined that tutors had an impact in guiding tutees to consider their decisions about dropping out of the program. bearing the previous finding in mind and that our university, as many others in our country, has looked for possibilities to retain students, we have planned to work more closely with specialized welfare departments in our university so that they can consolidate relevant orientation policies. since tracing in detail how tutorials impacted tutees’ perfomance in classes emerged as a limitation in our study, structuring a peer tutoring model which bears a stronger link with program courses can be the focus for further study. this can initially imply analyzing in depth the connections between tutoring and language competence identified in this study, so that specific courses of action can be taken in the planning of english related subjects. a fruitful area for further inquiry would be to determine how other variables interacted with tutoring in coaching students’ exercise of their autonomy. the specific scope of our study, which sought to explore tutees’ evidence of autonomous practices in tutoring, illuminated us exclusively to describe the tutees’ autonomous profile and work in these spaces. references álvarez, p. 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(pp. 13-34). hong kong: modern english publications in association with the british council. sampson, j., & cohen, r. (2001). implementing and managing peer learning. in d. boud, et al. (eds.), peer learning in higher education (pp.50-66). london: kogan page. scharle, a., & szabó, a. (2000). learner autonomy. a guide to developing learner responsibility. cambridge: cambridge university press. suárez, p. (2002). orientación y práctica tutorial. documento del programa de ciencias sociales. tunja: uptc. stickler, u. (2006). asesoramiento tándem centrado en la ayuda al estudiante. in a. sánchez & m. hölscher (eds.), el aprendizaje autónomo de lenguas en tándem (pp. 115-123). universidad de oviedo. topping, k. (2002). tutores y tutorías. bogotá: cooperativa editorial magisterio. torres, m. (2002). las experiencias del estudiante tutor en la división de ingenierías. in a. díaz, & b. pinzón (eds.), excelencia académica y formación integral: memorias del congreso internacional intercambio de experiencias en programas universitarios de tutorías (pp.35-46). bogotá: centro editorial universidad del rosario. velandia. d. (2007). tutorial plan to support the english speaking skill of an inga student of an initial teacher education program. profile issues in teachers’ professional development, 8, 121-130. viáfara, j., & ariza, a. (2008a). un modelo tutorial entre compañeros como apoyo al aprendizaje autónomo del inglés. íkala, revista de lenguaje y cultura, 13(19), 173209. viáfara, j., & ariza, a. (2008b). independent material design principles: main implications from a research project on peer-tutoring in the modern languages program at the uptc. paper presented in asocopi congress 2008. vieira, f. (2002a). learner autonomy and teacher development. a brief introduction to gt-pa as a learning community. in f. vieira et al. (eds.), pedagogy for autonomy and english learning. proceedings of the first conference of the working grouppedagogy for 104 ariza ariza & viáfara gonzález universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras autonomy (pp. 1-11). braga: centro de investigaciones en educación universidad de minho. vieira, f. (2002b). looking back and ahead. in f. vieira et al. (eds.), pedagogy for autonomy and english learning. proceedings of the first conference of the working grouppedagogy for autonomy (pp. 131-135). braga: centro de investigaciones en educación universidad de minho. about the authors aleida ariza ariza, b.ed in philology and languages, english–spanish from universidad nacional de colombia, m.a. in applied linguistics to tefl from universidad distrital francisco josé de caldas. she has worked with different students from kindergarten to university levels. she was a research assistant for the red project and worked for one year as a spanish assistant in the weald of kent in tonbridge, england. she is currently an assistant professor in the school of languages at universidad pedagógica y tecnológica de colombia (uptc). john jairo viáfara gonzález holds a b.ed in education (english) from universidad nacional de colombia. m.a. in applied linguistics to tefl from universidad distrital francisco josé de caldas. he has worked in several universities in colombia. currently he is an assistant professor at universidad pedagógica y tecnológica de colombia (uptc), where he has worked at the undergraduate and master programs level. profile no. 6 oct 13.p65 ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ profile profile profile profile profile 6 (2005): universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras profiles of autonomy in the field of foreign languages ppppperfiles de autonomía en el campo de las lenguas eerfiles de autonomía en el campo de las lenguas eerfiles de autonomía en el campo de las lenguas eerfiles de autonomía en el campo de las lenguas eerfiles de autonomía en el campo de las lenguas extranjerasxtranjerasxtranjerasxtranjerasxtranjeras myriam luna cortésmyriam luna cortésmyriam luna cortésmyriam luna cortésmyriam luna cortés myluna@unipamplona.edu.co university of pamplona diana k. sánchez lujandiana k. sánchez lujandiana k. sánchez lujandiana k. sánchez lujandiana k. sánchez lujan dianalujan2000@yahoo.com teacher at unad and universidad cooperativa in bucaramanga this paper describes the characteristics of the autonomous learner, especially in the foreign language classroom and identifies the most common profiles observed in a particular group of students training to be teachers at the university of pamplona. structured obser vations, questionnaires and interviews were used as data collection techniques. the study reported on this paper takes its source from the research, “la autonomía en el proceso de aprendizaje del inglés como lengua extranjera: un estudio de perfiles y prácticas de estudiantes y profesores”* , undertaken by the grupo interinstitucional de evaluación e investigación (giei), which consisted of six teachers from various universities in colombia. it reports on the study carried out at one of the participating universities. kkkkkey worey worey worey worey wordsdsdsdsds: autonomy, autonomous learning, profile, behavior, autonomous learner el presente artículo considera el perfil que caracteriza al aprendiz autónomo a la luz del concepto de autonomía en el aula de lenguas extranjeras y describe los perfiles identificados en un grupo de futuros profesores observados en la universidad de pamplona. para la recolección de datos se emplearon observaciones, cuestionarios y entrevistas. el estudio que aquí se reporta nace de la investigación “la autonomía en el proceso de aprendizaje del inglés como lengua extranjera: un estudio de perfiles y prácticas de estudiantes y profesores”, realizado por el grupo interinstitucional de evaluación e investigación (giei), integrado por seis docentes de diversas universidades de colombia. este texto reporta el estudio realizado en una de las universidades participantes. palabras claves:palabras claves:palabras claves:palabras claves:palabras claves: autonomía, aprendizaje autónomo, perfil, comportamiento, aprendiz autónomo * autonomy in english language learning: a study on students’ and teachers’ profiles. this article was received on april 14th, 2005 and accepted on september 19th, 2005. 133-140 ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ 134 luna and sánchezluna and sánchezluna and sánchezluna and sánchezluna and sánchez profileprofileprofileprofileprofile introductionintroductionintroductionintroductionintroduction autonomy in foreign languages is considered an important component for creative development in communication, moving away from conventional and restrictive contexts and moving towards selfdirection and self-regulation where the individuals reorganize, restructure and evaluate their learning experience. the introduction of these new contexts encourages them “to become authors of their own worlds”’ (benson & voller, 1997, p. 53). the concept of autonomy in the field of language learning has been understood from the outset as self-learning and, in the classroom, as the gradual transfer of the learning process from the teacher to the students. selflearning centers attention on the individual and on independence. nevertheless, developed independence through autonomy is conditioned to interdependence; this being one of the characteristics of social beings. autonomy, therefore, may be understood as freedom of control, not only of the teacher, but also of the curriculum; the preconceived ideas of learning a new language and the students’ weaknesses. then, the process of transfer presupposes the development of an active relationship among the learner, the process and the content of learning in the way in which he/she learns and the way in which he/she transfers this learning to contexts outside the classroom (little, 1991), thus, “empowering” the learner to be confident in new surroundings. interpretations of autonomy presented by different authors and researchers, leguthke & thomas (1991), little (1991), holec (1992), dickinson (1992), nunan (1997) benson y voller (1997), pennycook (1997), cotterall & crabbe (1999), zimmerman (2000), benson (2001), consider that the existence of tendencies, procedures and behaviors evidence a series of characteristics that help us to identify autonomous individuals. the following list states the characteristics that define the autonomous learner: • regularly participates in the definition of the objectives, understands the purpose of the task and influences the content and structure of the program • shows responsibility and initiative in the development of pre-planned actions. • collaborates in the orientation of work and with those who form a collective with learning preferences. • systematically reviews the agenda, reflects on what has already been learnt, evaluates effect, develops and uses self-evaluative criteria. • selfregulates his/her interaction with other participants and the proper employment of resources. • maintains a positive attitude and behavior despite possible learning difficulties and manages to generate high levels of motivation. • uses a series of strategies through which he/ she achieves a more spontaneous and effective degree of communication. easily handles different roles in discussion and enjoys a high level of social autonomy in his/her learning. • successfully transfers what has been learnt to new contexts. • is conscious of challenges and reflects upon his/her own contributions. • has a positive image of him/herself, is creative and disciplined. • undertakes and develops investigative processes. • enjoys activities that favor social interaction. • regards the teacher as a guide; prefers individual tasks, tutorials and distance/ off-campus learning. ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○135 profileprofileprofileprofileprofile profiles of autonomy in the field of foreign languages contextcontextcontextcontextcontext the university of pamplona is valued for its position in one of the boader zones of the country (colombia/venezuela), where it has become an axis, not only in education, but also in economic matters. for this study, a group of four students was selected, one female and three males (age range from 18 to 21), as a representative sample. they were fifth semester students in the undergraduate program in foreign languages at the university of pamplona. these students were in their fifth semester of english and attended six class hours of english a week (four hours in the classroom and two in the language lab). research methodresearch methodresearch methodresearch methodresearch method the four students were invited to participate in this study as part of their regular english classes. they agreed and gave permission to use the data. during a period of nine weeks, data were collected through structured observations, questionnaires and individual inter views in spanish that were conducted by the end of the second and the ninth weeks. classroom observations were recorded and transcribed as well as the interviews. the terms e1, e2, e3 and e4 were used instead of the students’ real names. data analysis consisted of searching for specific behaviors and characteristics orientated towards the analysis of autonomy in the classroom with future teachers of foreign languages. special attention was paid to emerging patterns used to construct the final profiles. it is necessar y to consider that to evaluate what is obser ved and heard from a student, in a particular situation and context, is a complex process. he/she will show not only the impact of that particular situation and / or context, but also the effect of some individual factors, such as past experiences, preferences, tendencies and habits which may determine the learning of a new language. resulresulresulresulresultststststs the four profiles presented below contain the main features of each of the students, identified with an image that resembles the observed behaviors: the searthe searthe searthe searthe searcherchercherchercher this individual is responsible, collaborative, happy, sociable, punctual, spontaneous and pleasant with those who share his/her day. he/she is known for wanting to succeed and normally brings the necessary materials to the classroom. the searcher associates autonomy with people he/she perceives to be extroverted, those who participate, those who are dedicated and responsible and those who enjoy the experience. “it is what each person has and shows … in a situation”. he/she spends time among academic, extracurricular and sporting activities, the latter being one of the favorites and resolves his/her own personal and academic problems responsibly. this student involves him/herself in decisionmaking regarding to the design of the program, selection of topics and demonstration of knowledge. he/she also takes the role of teacher with people who have a lower level of understanding with the aim of explaining, clarifying, reminding and learning at the same time. he/she prefers to work in small groups or individually. as far as learning strategies go, the searcher takes notes, clarifies instructions, asks questions, uses the dictionary and main text, audio and bibliographical resources as well as personal help. he/she shows concern and a desire to improve oral communication. this is evident when he/she repeats things to him/herself in the continual search and inquiry into effective strategies and in the questions he/she poses to the teacher and fellow students. “it is fundamental to know the strategies in time to have good work habits … to reach autonomy successfully”. he/she makes efforts to communicate in the foreign language, seldom using long utterances in english, but enjoying the learning experience nevertheless and undaunted by potential mistakes. “i don’t get embarrassed; if i ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ 136 luna and sánchezluna and sánchezluna and sánchezluna and sánchezluna and sánchez profileprofileprofileprofileprofile make a mistake, i don’t care…i learn from my mistakes…to see how i can improve [my language skills]. i think challenge is the best thing”. he/she corrects him/herself and evaluates his/her listening comprehension skills, compares answers and detects strengths and weaknesses. “i use tests. i transcribe everything i hear. later, to see if i’ve done o.k., i look at the book and compare … the writing … to see if i have made any mistakes with words or expressions”. this student is aware of the competence needed for his/her professional future, goes to the resource center daily and uses it as a place of study and practice. this subject has a high level of interest in learning and prefers discussion which is orientated towards debate, workshops, etc. which generate opportunities for social interaction. he/she assigns a traditional role to the teacher; that is to say, giving explanations, encouraging participation, motivating, giving constructive feedback, correcting and evaluating. the motivated but unreliablethe motivated but unreliablethe motivated but unreliablethe motivated but unreliablethe motivated but unreliable this student is an extrovert, open in dialogue and not punctual although he/she has the potential to take control in activities which, by and large, he/ she avoids. he/she doesn’t show much interest in the classroom and only contributes moderately during periods of interaction, but is attracted by the opportunity to learn new languages, by music and by the internet. his/her concept of autonomy lies in initiative, research and the establishment of challenges. “…to want to do…to know what for….to have set challenges, if he/she doesn’t have them, then … for what reason does he do things?” this subject knows his/her own responsibilities but punctuality is not one of his/her main practices. neither is time management, particularly when it comes to completion of academic tasks. “i know i arrive late … i try to be more punctual but sometimes other things get in the way”. as far as learning strategies are concerned, the motivated but unreliable takes notes when he/she feels like it, uses the dictionary and collaborates a little in group activities, shows a preference for individual work and is easily distracted. “i don’t have a work group. i prefer to work alone … sometimes i find it difficult to concentrate”. he/ she uses short fixed expressions most of the time when conversing with the teacher and speaks in the mother tongue when working in groups and prefers development of written communication. this student does not keep records of his/her own pattern of learning, nor does he/she demonstrate a capacity for self-correction or self-evaluation. he/ she frequently uses the technological resources of the institution, preferring to work selectively and to learn individually. “i go to the internet almost everyday, it’s great…i learn a lot with the computer”. he/she uses the resource center as a place to socialize more than a place for study and research, creates his/her own private space and expresses interest in working at home. the motivated but unreliable concentrates on the teacher, the design, the content, the development of the course and the protagonism of the learning process in the classroom. he/she emphasizes the role of authority, describing the teacher as “the power of the story”. the wind up dollthe wind up dollthe wind up dollthe wind up dollthe wind up doll this student is a quiet, punctual, timid, reserved and perceptive person. his/her passive personality means that he/she is sometimes lacking in initiative. the practical tasks in the classroom depend on the study group and the teacher. this character considers autonomous learning to be ”the freedom to do things” and describes the autonomous learner as “ responsible, disciplined, interested, conscious of what needs to be learnt and known, and capable of research in order to realize his/her own goals, to self-qualify and self-evaluate”. the wind up doll associates autonomy with an individualized style of work, seldom in a group, believing that sometimes he/ she lacks autonomy. this can be seen in his/her style of learning. “… most of the time i’m with my friends so…i study, learn and work with them”. ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○137 profileprofileprofileprofileprofile profiles of autonomy in the field of foreign languages he/she “mentally” plans work and tasks to achieve academic success with short term aims. he/she does not take notes when asked not to, uses the dictionary often, replies in a quiet voice, repeats to him/herself what he/she has heard and prefers to learn by reading. “i read about the culture of great britain… i take down expressions and vocabulary. i study verbal forms which i write in my notebook to remember”. when it comes to group work, he/she collaborates by formulating questions and carrying forward ideas that contribute to the development of the activities. although he/she believes that “when the teacher points out someone to participate, it is like a demand”. generally, he/she hopes to be picked, speaks monosyllabically, smiles and shows him/herself to be well-informed. he/she shows a preference for audio information, likes listening to others and goes to the resource center often with his/her work companions on whom he/ she depends academically and socially. this subject is conscious of his/her weaknesses in interactive processes, is aware of what is needed for active participation and considers self-evaluation necessary, with the aim of improving his/her level of learning. he/she is concerned about the image he/she projects and about what other people think about him/her. “a mark is the least of my concerns… it does not affect me on a personal level, but on a social level. i am talking about… when another person sees the mark and says something like ‘this student is mediocre’ ’’. the wind up doll’s role is to learn and act “like the beat of the music” (betancur, 2001:21), influenced by the teacher and the work group. he/ she believes that the teacher must share the benefit of experience, promote interactive processes and serve as a guide “… so that we use well what we have learnt”. the brainthe brainthe brainthe brainthe brain this is a responsible, active, extroverted, reflexive, collaborative, sociable, secure, and punctual student who is organized in his/her private life as well as academic life. he/she always has the relevant materials and is especially adept when it comes to leading processes of interaction in the classroom. this student relates the concept of autonomous learning to initiative, responsibility and investigation. “i always have to be very responsible… it is gratif ying. to be responsible is like being independent”. he/she has a natural ability for organizing time and completing the different weekly personal and academic tasks. “i have a timetable for everything, including when i get up and go to bed. i sometimes read before going to sleep so that i have time to do my university stuff as well as things for the congregation… i dedicate seventy hours every month to religious activities, but i have… an agenda. when i receive the timetable from the university, i take the hours i am not going to be in class into account… i balance my religious practices well with my university responsibilities”. he/she prefers to participate in the design of the program, in the selection and development of the content and enjoys working in small groups with others who share a similar level of communicative competence. as far as learning skills go, the brain takes notes, draws conclusions, uses resources like the dictionary and main text, carries ideas forward, formulates questions, gives answers, expresses opinions and never refuses to work with fellow students. he/she participates voluntarily in classroom tasks, displays confidence and independence and does not need constant attention from the teacher. this subject goes to the resource center every day to study and practice, to read texts or short stories, to consult grammar books, to use listening material, to listen to music and to write it down. he/she likes to monitor his/her progress when possible and evaluates his/her up to date performance in verbal communication, comparing it with past levels and reflecting on his/her progress. “i consider that as time goes by, one should evaluate oneself. i have had the opportunity to listen to recordings of myself when i was at a basic level and i have compared ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ 138 luna and sánchezluna and sánchezluna and sánchezluna and sánchezluna and sánchez profileprofileprofileprofileprofile them with what i am doing at the moment. i read texts and ask and answer questions about them; self-evaluation, for me, is reading something and being able to recount what i have read”. the brain detects the strengths and weaknesses in learning strategies and tries new techniques (zimmerman, 2000). self-reflection and self-correction allow him/her to understand how to study and work better. his/her personal confidence helps in the transfer of what has been learnt to new contexts. he/she is highly motivated and always communicates in the foreign language but uses long expressions only on some occasions. this character grants the teacher the role of tutor and guide and considers him/herself autonomous in areas in which he/she is more motivated, but recognizes that there are circumstances when help is needed. as can be seen in the previously mentioned cases, it is possible to identify characteristics that draw some students closer and distance others from the autonomous learning process. the searcher shows behavior that tends to favor the development of autonomy in an educational context. the motivated but unreliable, on the contrary, creates his/her own opportunities for selflearning outside the classroom, moving away from the responsibility and capacity to act as part of the interdependent social group. the wind up doll shows a tendency to make him/herself popular in the foreign languages classroom, but does not possess characteristics that indicate a level of autonomy. finally, the brain is a student who, due to his/her learning behavior, comes closer to achieving the autonomous learning profile, showing an initial level of autonomy and self-regulation and using important strategies for reflection on the learning process. conclconclconclconclconclusionsusionsusionsusionsusions the practical analysis of autonomy in the classroom of future teachers of foreign languages shows that the majority of students fall into the profile of “the wind up doll”. this group follows the established rules and procedures, the instructions for the completion of tasks and does the necessary work on the set texts. they prefer group activities and detailed text analysis, but have a lack of flexibility when it comes to ideas and consider the teacher or group leader as essential for achieving a successful level of learning. their contribution and participation in the classroom are subject to “the wind up mechanism”. this mechanism is initiated by the teacher through the type of input provided, the teaching and learning strategies applied and the resources used in the language learning process. students classified within this profile depend on those who around them. these students only “dance” when they are asked to. the classroom is perceived as one of the fundamental areas for gaining autonomy in the context of foreign language learning. it is there where the process of autonomy may be understood. teacher autonomy is considered a necessary condition for the development of learner autonomy, which permits him/her to be the author of his/her own learning, to maximize his/her individual potential and to become a successful performer in new surroundings. moving away from “the wind up doll” profile to more autonomous profiles should be the focus of foreign language teachers. this means, to center their attention on the practices of more effective learner roles, giving them new opportunities to exercise control over their own learning, to acquire new responsibilities, and to get actively involved in the management of their learning process. all these practices may lead the different roles for learners from that as negotiators, and users of lifelong learning strategies to risk – takers and innovators. the role of learners as negotiators emerges from themselves, the learning process and the object of learning. according to nunan, (1999), it involves, negotiation over the following issues: whether to work in groups or pairs for a particular task, how long a series of group reports should go on, whether a particular writing task should be done in or out of class, whether a series of reflection ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○139 profileprofileprofileprofileprofile profiles of autonomy in the field of foreign languages tasks should be completed every week or every two weeks, when the visit to the resource center should happen, etc. the use of learning strategies from the start of the learning process helps learners to be directors of their own learning, to plan, monitor and evaluate their learning tasks. learners are expected to create their own space according to their goals, needs and processes of adjustment and adaptation of individual characteristics in new contexts. they are expected to make use of a significant level of reflection about the learning process. reflection is an essential component in autonomy and reveals the differences among individuals, showing some to be more successful than others. previous studies suggest that efficient learners tend to exhibit specific characteristics as they go about learning a second/foreign language. for example, they like to identify their strengths and weaknesses to work on language problems, to reflect on the processes underlying their learning and to find their own way as regards good language learners. the role of risk–takers and innovators stems from the many tasks in which learners have to create and interpret messages. practice in guessing from linguistic and contextual clues, asking for clarification, consulting, creating, interpreting and restating messages, paraphrasing, and using paralinguistic signals may be seen as motivating tasks to encourage learners to become more autonomous in their approach to language learning. therefore, autonomy seems to be rooted in these identities which are found in individuals as new learners. it is also part of the interactive process through which, with group collaboration, the shared learning space is constructed. finally, to promote and educate people about autonomous learning within colombia implies a pedagogic approach which focuses on specific socio-cultural needs in and out of the classroom. that is to say, pedagogic innovations which guide the participants –both students and teachersto discover their needs and individual learning styles, using them to develop autonomy, tackle new learning strategies and to enhance cognitive, social and reflective processes required in the learning of a new language. this leaves room for self-regulation and the transfer of knowledge, skills and actions from the classroom to new social and cultural areas. about the authorsabout the authorsabout the authorsabout the authorsabout the authors myriam luna cortésmyriam luna cortésmyriam luna cortésmyriam luna cortésmyriam luna cortés, master of arts in applied linguistics for english l anguage teaching, university of lancaster, lancaster, uk; ba in foreign languages, university of pamplona. professor in the department of languages and communication at university of pamplona. diana k. sánchez lujandiana k. sánchez lujandiana k. sánchez lujandiana k. sánchez lujandiana k. sánchez lujan, specialized in intellectual development and education, universidad autónoma de bucaramanga; ba in foreign languages, university of pamplona. english tutor at universidad nacional abierta y a distancia and teacher in the department of foreign languages at the universidad cooperativa de colombia in bucaramanga. referencesreferencesreferencesreferencesreferences benson, p. and voller, p. (1997). introduction: autonomy and independence in language learning. new york: addison wesley longman limited. benson, p. (2001). teaching and researching autonomy in language learning. hong kong: longman group. betancur, m.c. (2000). dichosos los que saben hablar. santafé de bogotá: plaza & janés. boekaerts, m. (1999). self-regulated learning: where we are today. international journal of educational research, 31 (6), 445-457. cotterall, s. and crabbe, d. (1999). learner autonomy in language learning: defining the field and effecting change. frankfurt and main: peter lang gmbh. dickinson, l. (1992). learner autonomy 2: learner training for language learning. dublin: authentik language resources, ltd. grupo interinstitucional de evaluación e investigación (giei). (2001). la autonomía en el proceso de aprendizaje del inglés como lengua ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ 140 luna and sánchezluna and sánchezluna and sánchezluna and sánchezluna and sánchez profileprofileprofileprofileprofile extranjera: un estudio de perfiles y prácticas de estudiantes y profesores. (sin publicar) holec, h. (1992). apprendre à apprendre et apprentissage hétéro-dirigé. les auto apprentissages. recherches et applications. le français dans le monde. férier -mars. little, d. (1991). learner autonomy 1: definitions, issues and problems. dublin: authentik language resources, ltd. little, d. and dam, l. (1998). learner autonomy: what and why? retrieved from http:/// langue.hyper.chubu.ac.jp/jalt/pub/tlt/98/nov/ littledam.html legutke, m. and thomas, h. (1991). process and experience in the foreign language classroom. london: longman. nunan, d. (1997). designing and adapting materials to encourage learner autonomy. in p. benson and p. voller. autonomy and independence in language learning (pp.192-203). new york: addison wesley longman limited. nunan, d. (1999). second language teaching and learning. canada: heinle & heinle publishers. pennycook, a. (1997). cultural alternatives and autonomy. in p. benson and p. voller. autonomy and independence in language learning (pp.35-53). new york: addison wesley longman limited. richards, j.c. and rodgers, t.c. (2001). approaches and methods in language learning. usa: cambridge university press. zimmerman, b. (2000). attaining selfregulation: a social cognitive perspective. in m. boeckaerts, et al. (eds.), handbook on selfregulation. directions and challenges for future research (pp.13-39). san diego: academic press. profile no. 7dic 5.p65 ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ profile profile profile profile profile 7 (2006): universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras informing language teaching through language learning informando la enseñanza de lenguas a través del aprendizaje de lenguasinformando la enseñanza de lenguas a través del aprendizaje de lenguasinformando la enseñanza de lenguas a través del aprendizaje de lenguasinformando la enseñanza de lenguas a través del aprendizaje de lenguasinformando la enseñanza de lenguas a través del aprendizaje de lenguas shelley a. spencershelley a. spencershelley a. spencershelley a. spencershelley a. spencer***** shelley.spencer@postgrads.unisa.edu.au university of south australia teacher development texts generally work from the assumption that teachers have a number of colleagues and mentors available to share ideas with and seek guidance from. while this might be so in the esl context, efl teachers working outside of their culture can be very isolated. this reflective article looks at some of the problem scenarios faced by one efl teacher in pursuit of professional development and the dilemma over assumed contemporary teaching practices until finding a solution close at hand: using one’s own concurrent language learning experiences to inform others of one’s beliefs about teaching and learning. in the process, the relationship between teacher and learners changed dramatically. the practice of attending more consciously to one’s own language learning experiences may help other teachers in making certain decisions in their practice. kkkkkey worey worey worey worey wordsdsdsdsds: efl, isolated, language learner, fun, activities, adult learner, high school, university, teacher development, tesol los textos de desarrollo docente generalmente parten del supuesto que los profesores tienen a su disposición varios colegas y mentores para compartir ideas y buscar consejo. mientras esto podría ocurrir en el contexto de inglés como segunda lengua (esl), los profesores de inglés como lengua extranjera (efl) que trabajan fuera de su cultura, pueden estar muy aislados. este artículo de reflexión da una mirada a algunos de los escenarios de este problema, observados por un profesor de efl, en la búsqueda del desarrollo profesional y el dilema sobre supuestas prácticas contemporáneas de enseñanza, hasta hallar una solución más a la mano: el uso de sus experiencias personales de aprendizaje para explicar sus creencias sobre la enseñanza y aprendizaje. en el proceso, la relación profesor-estudiantes cambió dramáticamente. el prestar atención más conscientemente a nuestras experiencias personales de aprendizaje de la lengua puede ayudar a otros profesores a sustentar ciertas decisiones durante su práctica. palabras clavespalabras clavespalabras clavespalabras clavespalabras claves: inglés como lengua extranjera, desolación, aprendiz de inglés, diversión, actividades, aprendiz adulto, escuela secundaria, universidad, desarrollo docente, tesol * shelley a. spencershelley a. spencershelley a. spencershelley a. spencershelley a. spencer, an australian, commenced her efl teaching career in japan, teaching all ages in a variety of institutions. she has also taught in a university in china and an english centre in the czech republic. she is currently undertaking doctoral research on language learning and teaching. this article was received on march 22nd, 2006 and accepted on may 9th, 2006. 187-197 ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ 188 spencer profileprofileprofileprofileprofile during the process of my ‘becoming’ an efl teacher in unfamiliar cultures, one frequent concern was the lack of opportunity to dialogue within my professional field. without a sympathetic mentor or forum for discussion, i relied on constant experimentation, abandoning lesson ideas and implementing new initiatives until after a few years i acknowledged my own language learning experiences as a means of informing my teaching practice. in this article, i reflect on some of the contexts i have worked with to highlight the problems of isolation and follow through with the application of my approach. as a mature university graduate in adult education with some teaching experience in business and the community, my first tesol training was a one week course in the particular method of my conversation school in japan (1998). (the emphasis was on providing ‘fun’ lessons and teachers were admonished if students weren’t laughing enough.) i then completed a masters in tesol by correspondence whilst in japan (2001), gratefully receiving packets of readings in the post. during my studies, i changed companies, towns and student-base several times due to extremely difficult working conditions. continuity of research themes, access to academic books and to the internet were problematic. i generally lived alone, being perhaps the only ‘foreigner’ in my area, worked long hours and travelled up to two hours to reach some of the branch schools. rarely or never did the paths of any teachers cross. my first high school experience was particularly traumatic. in 2000, an english school assigned me twice weekly to a private boys’ high school situated in isolated rice paddies. (i travelled there by bicycle, bus and on foot.) i had no prior training or experience in the formal educational system. only one teacher there was able to communicate with me in english and my japanese was not yet at conversational level. the boys had serious behavioural problems that were infiltrating many japanese schools during this period, identified as ‘gakkyu hokkai’ (‘collapse of the classroom’). for the most part, they were unresponsive, sitting in comatose states with glazed-over eyes. i was advised where to find help if any of the boys turned violent. the former teacher, who gave notice shortly after his tie was cut off, gave me a handover of sorts. he introduced me to the boys and then produced a pack of cards displaying amusing pictures. “watch this!” he said, with a grin. as he held up each card, the boys looked up, laughed uproariously, then lapsed back into their sombre states. the humorous cards were the only thing he had found that animated the boys, if only briefly. during that semester, my boys remained a sea of faces. i did not get to know them. i was still finding myself as an english teacher. in an attempt to be professional, i decided to plan lessons using the prefectural textbook and thus support the efforts of the japanese teachers. i simply taught as though the boys were responding, partly because i did not know what else to do, partly for my own sanity and partly to develop my knowledge of teaching materials. my masters degree, with topics such as linguistic functional analysis, hardly seemed relevant. in one particular lesson, after an attempt to reach the boys, one spoke up and haltingly apologised on behalf of his peers, announcing that they were bad and that i was a good teacher and would i please continue. he promptly lapsed into the zombie-like state. problems were compounded by the japanese practice of doctoring grades and passing all students regardless, perhaps out of fear of losing face or provoking suicide by either teacher or student. my modus operandi was consolidated: plan a busy and structured lesson and teach as though the situation was ‘perfect’ with everyone attentive and responsive. this way, i preserved my sanity, put the onus on the learners to either join me or ignore me and continued to ‘find’ and ‘define’ myself as an english teacher. allowing my personality and nature to also guide who i was becoming as a teacher, i noticed a big drift from the fun and entertainment approach that i had been encountering in the field. students ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○189 profileprofileprofileprofileprofile informing language teaching through language learning described me as ‘earnest’. i took my teaching seriously, according to my natural inclination and i could really do nothing else. ‘to thine own self be true’ was my motto. besides the lessons at this school, i was also assigned an incongruous mix of classes throughout the prefecture: toddler’s classes, elementary-age classes, night school for children, private adult lessons, community classes for youths preparing for the prefectural english exam and weekend lessons in a family home. again, i had no prior experience or training for many of these assignments and relied purely on experimentation. compared with my later approach, i was fairly remote from the learners and felt no particular attachment to them, except the family where we all sat intimately on the lounge floor. contributing to my isolation were the working conditions; i often did not get home until 10 pm, which left no time for socialising. i had no office and no internet access. in my spare time, i worked on my masters and attended japanese lessons taught by a monk at the local temple. there was not much time to reflect on such a wide variety of teaching situations or put thought into lesson plans. the company brought all its foreign teachers together once a month at a noisy inn, which was not conducive to discussing professional matters, but merely an opportunity to socialise within similar cultures. many teachers were just passing through on their way to other careers. therefore, in life and in work, i was operating in survival mode: alert, watchful, experimenting and coping moment by moment, but wishing for more direction. fortunately, i stumbled across a national teachers’ association and attended its occasional seminars and subscribed to its magazine, which introduced me to the dialogue in the tesol field (however, tracking my changes of address proved problematic). my concerns at this time were with learning what constituted a good teacher, learning about the four language areas, getting acquainted with teaching materials, developing my own approach and philosophies and learning english grammar (which we were never required to teach because it was a given that foreigners did not know their own grammar). i also stumbled upon some publishers’ seminars which were packed with teachers thirsty for ideas. they were rather like evangelical meetings where the charismatic speakers would get everyone enthused about their activities and games (in the hope of classroom sales for their textbooks). the fundamentals underlying these programmes, which were directed also at adult learners, seemed to be communicative approach, games, activities, fun, minimum teacher talk time and no l1. by now, i had developed an aversion to the words ‘games, activities, fun’, particularly in relation to the application with adult learners because the approach seemed too childish and a ‘dumbing down’ of potential. as fun was not high on my list of priorities, i felt at odds with the philosophies around me, until noting a resonance with a mature-age teacher who dared speak up at one such event, saying: “as a child, i hated games. i was the studious type. i became a teacher because i liked learning and wanted to teach, not play games.” for me, also, the joy of learning was sufficient. i also hated the competitive element of games, whether at school or in management training classes and felt otherwise disgusted by the overwhelming personalities and extroverts who asserted their egos over others. in 2002, i finally succeeded in gaining a university position in japan in a new university, and therefore a new english department. there were only two other native english speakers, neither of whom was tesol trained. with a big challenge before me, i again sought out the nearest branch of the national teachers’ association. the nature of the seminars did not help with my specific issues, but they kept me in contact with contemporary dialogue. now having internet access, i also found a teachers’ chat line and could read about things other teachers were concerning themselves with. being in a university environment brought some relief to the isolation and meant more stability and ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ 190 spencer profileprofileprofileprofileprofile continuity for research about teaching and learning as well as access to literature in english. at last i could specialise in one age group instead of being a jack-of-all-trades and could also specialise in particular portfolios (which there changed each semester, from computer-based learning and public speaking to listening and academic writing). with my frequent relocating, however, my japanese language studies had suffered. always missing the next intake of learners in the council-run classes, i had resorted to private study and language exchanges, which were time-consuming and not structured. where i could join a class, i was always assigned to begin again with basic greetings and introductions. my goal was to sit national and regional exams, so i bought all the accompanying textbooks and tapes and taught myself. after passing the lowest level, but then failing the same regional exam three times in succession, i abandoned my japanese studies. for all my years of studying, in a real-life situation, i was still limited to broken sentences of pronouns, nouns and verbs. dishearteningly, my japanese acquaintances persisted in practising their english on me. it was all too much of a struggle. i had run out of incentive to continue. nevertheless, i felt uneasy that a language teacher could not learn a language. then came the major turning point in my language learning and teaching: i decided to resurrect my high school german, which gave me another opportunity to become a classroom learner. whilst browsing in a bookshop for class material, i came across a series of radio language programs, one of which was german, the language i had studied in high school. i recalled doing well at school, although that was the era of text memorisation and recitation, which i was good at since i possessed a photographic memory at that time. (the class would laugh as i stood out front reciting pages of text, my eyes scanning back and forth reading the text i visualised in my mind.) twelve years later, i tried to resurrect my german, undertaking two years of weekend courses and passing two international exams. i found that i could not relate to my high school knowledge at all because teaching methods had changed. (the teacher now spoke totally in the l2 and required us to speak, converse and debate in the l2.) my photographic memory was at a disadvantage because it was trying to associate the new learning with the visual pages of my high school learning. i could not make the connection. i could not see in my mind the learning i had done before. i had to begin again to create new images. but i also noticed something new: as an adult learner, i was spending more time analysing the language and working harder at depositing the learning into my mind. after the two years, my speaking was still mostly rehearsed speeches. i had not really made the leap to generating my own language – there was too much of a vocabulary and grammar gap for me to say what i wanted. at the end of the course, my link to german ended too. now ten years on, as i leafed through the text in the japanese bookshop, to my dismay i could recall nothing, neither the pronunciation nor even the alphabet. i assumed that if i could see the pages of my former textbooks, it would trigger some memories, but without them, i would have to start again. (puzzled by this state of affairs, i have since reasoned that as a visual learner, i need to see reminders of former learning to trigger associations and build upon that learning. without these props, i have to learn afresh and create new images. conversation-based learning gives me no images to recall later. i also reasoned that, as a younger person, i mostly ‘absorbed’ the language, but did not really ‘own’ it. as a mature adult, i am a different person with a different way of learning: i am more proactive. i analyse, compartmentalise, internalise and plan my learning. i hope my adult learning will remain with me far longer than previously.) this time i made a resolution to ‘master’ german, meaning to speak like a native. would it be possible? so in japan in 2002, i commenced the study of german via radio in japanese and german. i became so enthused by my progress with the radio course that i bought dictionaries, vocabulary ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○191 profileprofileprofileprofileprofile informing language teaching through language learning books, textbooks and grammar books. i leapt out of bed each morning to tune into the radio program. i taped it and replayed it whilst doing house chores. studying german became the highlight of my day and every spare moment was filled with advancing my vocabulary, reading grammar passages over and over, discovering new patterns of speech and reading aloud. this was an exciting time. however, i soon came to grief with the grammar, which the radio explained in japanese rather than german. my own textbooks just did not give enough examples with enough explanations to help me understand and apply topics. to address this problem, i decided to attend a one-month intensive course in germany as a learner. after learning german for only four months, i was placed in the high-intermediate class. it came as a great shock to be at the receiving end of a classroom teacher’s instruction, greatly impacting on my notions of teaching and learning. for one thing, personal control of my learning was taken away. i could no longer follow my own path and address the issues that were arising for me. i had to fit in with a teacher’s plans, do their assigned homework and have all my learning structured by them. i had come with a list of my own grammar topics, but they were not on the teacher’s agenda, so i tried to keep my own programme going in the school’s resource centre. the teacher’s programme generated other learning issues for me, so that i added these to my own learning programme (eg researching vocabulary, unclear grammar and unclear exercises). having my own agenda meant i did not always do the assigned homework, which required hours to complete and did not always add value. my classmates also complained that they had their own learning agendas to follow and that the teacher’s assignments did not always add value. as a learner, sitting in the library in a study circle collaborating with classmates, i was surprised at how quickly the hours went by in discussing, analysing, debating and answering some assignments. as a teacher, i had no idea of this time and effort as reviewing homework answers in class took only a few minutes. i, therefore, think twice now about any homework i might set and also give more time for discussing answers rather than flying through them in a round robin. from this and subsequent classroom learning experiences (in germany, japan and australia), i found that my learner persona did not always agree with the beliefs of my teacher persona (spencer, 2003). furthermore, the emotional highs and lows of being a classroom learner greatly disturbed me. i also had to learn to become a classroom learner, which meant being in cahoots with others against the all-powerful teacher (eg furtively consulting dictionaries under the desk, following the teacher’s directives but complaining about them outside of class, restraining one’s personality and comment for outside class and suffering the teacher’s rebukes and grimaces wordlessly, etc.). the experience served as a platform to shape my own teaching. from then on, my students became language learning peers and our mutual endeavours to learn a language brought us to a greater level of intimacy, understanding and concern for one another. for me, there has been more of a humanising effect, with a focus on ‘being’ together, of sharing our experiences of learning and in cherishing the time given to us. this is greatly different from my former remote approach and infers much more than just being ‘friends’ or being ‘friendly’. i am still the teacher with the responsibility of helping students reach their potential. all the minute detail i have observed and felt as a learner goes into my decisions and relations with learners as a teacher. it is perhaps at the detailed level that my learner experience is the most informative for my teacher persona. as a learner, i found it difficult to adjust to a teacher’s power. not yet in control of my language output, i felt my personality so restricted that i could not convey to others who i really was and what i was capable of. i felt dumb and also felt treated as the ‘dumb student’. (it seemed inappropriate to offer that i was a visiting professor at a university, but when my classmates queried, i ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ 192 spencer profileprofileprofileprofileprofile admitted to being ‘a teacher’.) i felt even less significant if the teacher did not even glance in my direction during the lesson. as a teacher, i know that a lot is going on in a teacher’s mind in attempting to get through a lesson plan, but i had not realised the impact on the learners. as a teacher, i now make more effort to look each learner in the eye, to make them all feel noticed and respected for whoever they are and to encourage their personalities and talents to be expressed. as a learner, i have felt the indignity of a teacher’s rebukes or grimaces and, as a teacher, make more effort to treat each student with dignity and to restrain my responses to their incorrect answers or blunders. some of these points seem obvious, but from the learner’s desk, the ramifications are magnified a million-fold. as for fun, games and activities, my learner persona dreaded many of them. as an adult who had invested a lot of time and money (flights, accommodations, tuition) in some of these courses, games and conversation tasks were not value for money. i hated listening to the bumbling, error-filled attempts of other learners with their atrocious accents. i wanted an opportunity to hear the rhythm, intonation, musicality and choice of words of a native speaker. moreover, in the time taken to get through a game or activity, i could have read a long text and absorbed lots of vocabulary in context and grammar in use as well as gained knowledge about a variety of topics. what struck me as a learner was the sheer amount of vocabulary to learn, not to mention the culture, history, literature, politics, etc. of my l2 countries. (these latter topics were barely acknowledged by my teacher persona.) the communicative and activities approach was just too slow, too childish, avoided much intellectual stimulation and did not acquaint me with the society of the l2. many activities took too long to explain, resulting in different interpretations by students as well as confusion, frustration and bad tempers. for example, in one activity, which i still encounter with tesol trained teachers, we had to throw a ball to each other and ask or answer a question. as a learner, it was agony sitting there doing very little and having to endure the struggling attempts of the speakers over trivial topics. (outside of class, we were conversing in the l2 about a classmate’s marital break-up, the impending iraq war and other news headlines from our individual countries.) similarly, in conversation board games, my partner and i ignored the given questions and began a normal adult discussion to get better acquainted with each other and strengthen our friendship, but the teacher kept admonishing us and ordering us back to the given questions (‘what animal do you want to be?’ ‘describe your most embarrassing moment’.). as an adult learner, i had absolutely no interest in such questions, yet as a teacher was guilty of forcing my students to answer similar ones. i also found that as a learner, i did not like being forced to rotate seating. once i found someone i liked, i wanted to stay with them, consolidate the friendship and reciprocate support in our learning endeavours. i also found we appreciated a few extra moments in class between segments to chat and check our learning. in other words, we did not need forced exercises to make us speak. i also found that, as a learner, i had little interest in the content of some given texts, regarding them instead as an invaluable tool for furthering vocabular y and grammatical understanding. therefore i had no interest in comprehension questions, particularly in fictional texts, because my brain was not at all bothered in memorising the story line. ‘why did hans hit fritz?’ – i did not even notice the story was about hans and fritz, but i did notice many unfamiliar words, new shades of meaning, useful patterns of speech, another example of the passive in context, a colloquial expression and an idiom, etc. my brain was totally engrossed in analysing the text and extracting its learning value, not with the story line, unless the content was non-fictional and taught me something about the culture, history, politics, etc. of l2 countries. as a learner, i hungered for short reading ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○193 profileprofileprofileprofileprofile informing language teaching through language learning texts for these reasons. in my japanese study, i could locate very few short reading texts for my level and felt my growth thwarted for lack of them. in germany, outside of class, i encountered my first graded reader as a learner and it was with great nervousness that i read my first book, checking every other word in a dictionary. i felt quite afraid of all the new words. however, the sense of achievement upon finishing was overwhelming and i hungered for more graded readers, which helped me become more and more fluent. i loved how they showed me patterns of language, grammar in usage and examples of conversation and interaction. for all these reasons, i was not yet ready for a lot of conversation practice and hated being forced to speak. i was quite content to go through a silent period, even two years or more, as i built up my vocabular y and made sense of the grammar. conversation was too fleeting and did not enable me to do the analysis my brain was instinctively performing. conversation called upon any and ever y grammatical pattern at random times. therefore, i learnt very little from conversation activities at this stage. (not until reaching the ‘advanced’ level did i really feel the desire to get conversation practice; prior to that, i wanted to focus on other foundational work.) i also rediscovered that i was a visual learner and needed to see texts and have time to digest them. any activity that did not give me the thinking and digesting space before, during or after was fruitless. (hence, as a teacher i sprinkle my lessons with ‘thinking time’.) for example, in activities requiring the matching of slips of paper (matching terms to definitions, matching opposites, etc.), i found that no time was given to digest the preparatory learning and that students were then so competitive to finish that there was no time for my brain to analyse and store the answers before we moved on to the next segment. then the emotional upset would begin, with a lump welling up in the throat. (‘i hate this. i do not know the work. the teacher did not give us time to digest our notes before starting the activity or after it. this is a waste of my time. i’m no good. i’ll never learn.’) i was shocked that i could experience such thoughts and all in the name of learning a language. as a teacher, i had no inkling students could sink to such lows – their faces did not show it. as a learner, i was privy to such emotional outbursts from fellow learners outside of the class, including from other teacher-learners. we vented our frustrations at some of the events in the classroom. in class, as a learner, i was able to sense the feeling of the other learners and to notice and read their signals and, furtively, to convey mine. as a teacher, i was engrossed in getting through my programme and did not notice these messages; everything seemed purely innocent and in order. i was totally oblivious to the double life of the learner. my learner persona was thus giving my teacher persona access to the world of the learner and triggering changes in belief and practice. as a result of my learning experiences, both in the classroom and privately, my patience with my own students was improving until the university recognised that i had an affinity with struggling learners and assigned all low level classes to me. we had a special relationship in these classes. the learners were originally quite demoralised at their public loss of face, but together we reasoned that the mighty could fall, whereas we could only stand still or go upwards. we sat around a table together studying and chatting about feelings and other things between segments. the learners said it was like being with their mother and they felt cosy and content. my teacher persona underwent another transformation that semester, growing closer to the learners. the learners loved the fact that i was also learning a language, that some of my struggles were the same as theirs and that i made study plans and worked hard to progress. because of my learner experiences, the desire to shift the focus from entertaining to educating grew stronger, particularly with adult learners. i tried to express my objection at one teachers’ seminar which was structured on ‘fun activities’ and frequent ‘high fives’ (based on the magnanimous philosophy ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ 194 spencer profileprofileprofileprofileprofile of spreading peace and happiness in the world) by refusing to join in a game. being forced to ‘play’ in group games really stressed and traumatised me – i just wanted to get on with the learning (independently) and at a faster pace. my group asked the internationally-renown presenter what to do with students like me who refused to ‘play’. the response: “don’t worry! fortunately, most of them are in jail.” by inference then, my teaching concepts and practices were fostering groups of criminals and deviants. how should i proceed? most foreign adult educators i met seemed dogmatic in their opinions and subscribed unquestioningly to the beliefs disseminated at the time: punishing students for using their l1 (fine them), no dictionaries, emphasis on conversation and activities and minimal grammar, etc. curiously, i was hearing different views from the japanese english teachers, who were of course long-time language learners themselves. my opinions struck a chord with them for the same reason – our teacher persona was shaped by our learner persona. in the process of associating the benefits of my language learning with teaching, i have come to feel more strongly that i ‘am’ a teacher, rather than i am ‘becoming’ a teacher. through my language learning experiences, i have found a means of feeling guided in my teaching. since i am also a learner, i play both roles with my students. my teacher persona tends to grow more serious and strict with the passage of time, knowing that learning a language is a long, complex process and the time available to attend classes is relatively short and precious. my learner persona adds the humanizing effect and maintains intimacy with learners’ needs. at the end of the university contract, the board changed policies and decided to employ only parttime teachers. i moved on to my most isolated post yet: a university in rural, mountainous china. on my arrival, i found that instead of the planned posting to a campus with other foreigners, i was being sent to a new english department in a very remote region and was to be the only foreign teacher. most of the citizens in town (mainly peasants) had never seen a foreigner before. conditions were dirty and primitive, with local women still washing clothes and vegetables in the local river and meat being sold unwrapped on dirty, fly-blown trestle tables. the students (undergraduates, whom i first met in military uniform and carrying guns as they underwent their compulsory national service on campus) had no showers, but washed in buckets. the water pumps to my apartment regularly failed so that i had no water at all. there were regular power failures. the students and i were often sick from food poisoning and diarrhoea. we raced each other to the bathroom. classrooms were so cold in the winter snow that we all wore gloves, hats and scarves and held bottles of hot water. i was not allowed to leave the campus for longer than 24 hours without getting written permission and informing the police of my whereabouts. despite the hardships, it was one of the happiest years of my life, mainly due to the way the students and i merged our lives and learning and supported one another. there were only a few foreigners in the entire region. i questioned why fate had it that i was constantly assigned to isolated and challenging posts. by now, i was well into a phd in language learning and teaching and the predicaments i found myself in added more than a little frustration to the research program. however, with my new-found confidence in relating my language learning to my language teaching, i felt i could cope. from my japanese experience, i had also been forced to confront myself and everything i believed in (ethics, morals, values and philosophies of life) so that i was at peace with who i was and content to be on my own in another unfamiliar culture. with teaching, studying german, working on the phd and music practice (cornet), i had enough to occupy my time. some students admitted that they hated english, but they were enjoying the presence of a foreigner and now wanted to know how to improve. together ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○195 profileprofileprofileprofileprofile informing language teaching through language learning we brainstormed in class all the things a learner could do to improve her/his language skills and those interested students made their own agendas: some found email pen-pals, some became english tutors to local school children (and then discussed their teaching problems with me) and others began diaries or english circles, etc. i took a train to shanghai (56 hours return trip) and brought back a load of graded readers to start a reading program. in class, i used the only textbook available (300 pages of short, witty text) and made an effort to extract the learning opportunities that my learner persona saw (reading and “meaning-making”; picture description; reading aloud with focus on pronunciation, rhythm, intonation, and accent; vocabulary; grammar; summary writing; verbal retelling in past or reported speech and topic discussion for the advanced students, etc.). i moved around the classroom (average 20 students) and spent time assisting each student, giving her/ him the opportunity to ask questions and express any concerns. on fine days we took a blackboard outside onto the roof top or under the trees by the lake and sat in a more intimate setting than the bolted down rows of desks in the classrooms. i also experimented with some team problemsolving activities, which mainly served to show the students they did not yet have enough foundational work and vocabulary, leaving only the very advanced ones to contribute and find enjoyment, so we always gravitated back to our short story routine. with only two days warning and no instructions other than ‘teach them english’, i was assigned a postgraduate class of 50 students. my initial attempts to provide a controlled/structured program failed. i was learning the hard way that mature students had their own learning agendas and needed me to fit in with their plans, rather than the other way around. after requesting feedback on the directions i was taking with them by trying to address all the elements of speaking, listening, reading, writing, grammar and vocabulary, i listened as one student spoke: “to tell you the truth, miss shelley, we just want to know and touch a foreigner.” i extended my arm and the students leaped forward to touch it. i later found out the students already had a strict diet of grammar lessons, vocabulary building and test taking with the chinese teachers. they were extremely focused on gaining higher scores on a national test. they already had their own learning agendas, as my learner persona had. yet they did not want to be forced to speak because they felt inadequate. what could i do? the students told me: “we just want to know you we want to ‘be’ with you speak to us tell us about your world read us some more stories we like when you do acting.” we were too constrained in the classroom with the bolted down pews. i also moved this class outside under the trees so that we could be closer together in a better setting. students brought their kids and dogs along and we all sat on the grass in a big group in the shade. (the kids got to introduce themselves in english.) we all shared in the sculpting of these lessons, which became creative performances. after my narrations and acting (which were centred on cultural, historical and news items from my country and with the students also interacting to ask about vocabulary, grammar, meaning and cultural issues), students voluntarily took the floor to introduce their act in english. they performed items from their cultural group, e.g. song, dance, poem, instrument recital, martial arts, etc. i discovered that spending time together and performing was a big part of the cultural groups of this area, where many peasant kids did not receive any education at all. (the local philosophy was that any person who could not sing or perform would remain single for a long time and no one batted an eyelid when a passer-by suddenly burst into loud song.) outside of class, a spontaneous series of outings with different groups of students began, such as a hike across the hills, ballroom dancing (compulsor y for graduate students), karaoke, badminton, jogging, family dinners and family weekend trips. quite special were the impromptu ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ 196 spencer profileprofileprofileprofileprofile moonlight performances on our mountain top under the street lamps (with the kids and dogs), where we gave music recitals, poetry recitations and solo singing, etc. without tv, people created their own entertainment. in these smaller groups, we also discussed and shared ideas about language learning. i got to know and have conversations with each student. this practice gave me enough evidence for the assessment. in an indirect way, far from my imagined strict academic structure as the distant teacher, our objectives were achieved. i continued my german studies alone as there were (obviously) no german classes in such a remote area. this strengthened my knowledge of how to advance one’s learning in the absence of teachers and courses and how to retain motivation when there is no opportunity or need to speak the language. i discovered that speaking was not the be-all and end-all of language learning. i was deriving great enjoyment from reading german literature and in listening to or reading german news over the internet. furthermore, i was corresponding in german with former german teachers and classmates. i relayed these findings to my students. the knowledge i was acquiring from my learner persona was perhaps not from the broader, distant teacher’s perspective, but from the minute, intimate details and feelings that arise daily from the learner’s perspective, e.g. the feeling of not being noticed by the teacher during a lesson; the lack of space in the teacher’s talk to formulate a sentence and work up courage to utter it; the loathing of being forced to speak, especially if one wants a silent period to make more sense of the language and grammar; the desire to hear the teacher talk and enjoy the rhythm, intonation and word choice; sensitivity to the teacher’s moods and students’ loss of respect when the teacher shows annoyance or anger; the feeling of loss of personal power by the teacher; the need to have topic introductions and changes repeated; the ‘unlearning’ when similar grammar points confused prior learning; the desire for more grammar in more contexts with more explanations (and preferably in the l1); the need to have ongoing meetings with the same grammar points; the obsession with new words and checking the dictionary even for familiar words because of the possibility of learning a different shade of meaning; the need for the teacher to linger a moment during breaks or at lesson end in case of questions; the joy of having relaxed conversations with the teacher during breaks; the need for thinking time to digest and review a topic before moving to the next and so on. it’s the acknowledgement and exploration of all these intimate details that have been slowly adding to my professional knowledge and that have influenced the relationship with my students. there are myriad tiny issues that cohorts would probably not concern themselves with unless they were learners themselves and, therefore, making the conscious connections with their teaching. at the completion of that tough contract, i could not secure another university posting so i returned to conversation school work, this time in a remote mountainous area in the czech republic. there were three other foreign teachers and two native czech teachers. all had been trained in tesol programmes with emphasis on ‘fun’, lots of games and activities. the students were all adults and mostly businessmen. since each teacher taught a minimum of 30 different classes per week (involving travel to suburbs and towns), there was a lot of stress and time spent in locating, creating, photocopying and cutting out these games and activities as students did not have textbooks. after observing a few lessons taught by other teachers, i still felt that the games and activity approach seemed childish for adult learners and a ‘dumbing down’ of their intellect and potential for growth. as they sat behind desks, many seemed to revert to immature school children. the teacher was a distant object holding all the power. i did not see a group of adults engaging in the sharing of knowledge. in my classes, i avoided such games and activities and did not put priority on having fun. feeling guilty, i did try some games with a couple ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○197 profileprofileprofileprofileprofile informing language teaching through language learning of classes, but found the students resorted to immature behaviour. they expressed a desire to return to my approach (which they said they had gotten used to) of short stories on science, nature, the environment and current affairs, and one even offered to give a talk the following week on global warming and the gulf stream. along with the readings, vocabulary checking and discussion, i also included grammar exercise sheets. i spent time sitting next to each learner and assisting them with grammar. i was required to alternate one small class of businessmen with another teacher, who used the contemporar y activities and fun approach. concerned about how my approach was being received, i questioned the students. their response: “we have discussed this point too. you are the teacher, but x is our friend. x’s lessons are more fun, but we learn faster in your classes.” the consensus was that the two approaches provided a good balance and there was nothing they wanted changed. i was surprised that i conveyed a ‘teacher’ image, but was perhaps becoming more resolute in my ideas of maximising time and learning opportunities. my approach failed disastrously in one class and, oddly enough, it was a class of czech english teachers. they did not want to be ‘taught’, nor to read or have intelligent discussions, but demanded to play games and have fun. i refused to oblige them and asked to be replaced. curiously, they complained that they had made no progress with their english in the past three years. their teacher during this period had followed the fun and activities approach but had finally burnt out from having to devise new activities. he was reinstated. i myself burnt out with the teaching schedule – the 4 a.m. starts to drive across the mountain ranges in the darkness and fog to deliver 6.30 a.m. classes and the 8 p.m. finishes. as i look back over these past 7.5 years and my struggles to ‘become’ an efl teacher, i sometimes feel saddened by the isolated and adverse conditions i had to endure. in the end, though, i developed a greater self-reliance and ability to tune into my own inner guidance that serves me wherever i may be and in whatever situation i may find myself. whether my teaching practices are right or wrong, they result from reflective personal experience rather than dictated contemporar y practices. from my languagelearning studies, i realise the effort that goes into acquiring and maintaining language skills. i know more about the range of options that are available for a learner to advance her/himself autonomously. through my experience, i have developed greater patience and tolerance towards learners. speaking is not the only goal or enjoyment, as i have found, and may even be the wrong goal for learners in some situations. as learning a language is a lifetime experience, there is time enough to worry about speaking. one should also enjoy the doors opened by reading l2 literature and exploring events in l2 news, arts, culture, history, etc. more than anything, i have cherished the love, concern and shared experiences of those learners who opened their hearts to me, a lone foreigner in unknown cultures. referencesreferencesreferencesreferencesreferences spencer, s. a. (2003). language teacher as language learner: identity loss and other issues. the language teacher, 27(1), 9-12. 11profile vol. 13, no. 1, april 2011. issn 1657-0790. bogotá, colombia. pages 11-30 adolescents’ awareness of environmental care: experiences when writing short descriptive texts in english* concientización de los adolescentes sobre el cuidado ambiental: experiencias al escribir textos descriptivos cortos en inglés lorena jaramillo urrutia** ana stella medina gutiérrez*** colegio distrital aquileo parra, colombia today it is necessary to approach environmental topics with students in an interdisciplinary manner to mitigate the environmental damages that the earth is suffering. in this paper we report an actionresearch and innovation study aimed at sensitizing students with respect to the care and preservation of the environment through the writing of short descriptive texts in english. the study had four stages: motivation, knowledge of ecological vocabulary, production of sentences and paragraphs, construction of short descriptive texts with the help of guidance questions and their publication in the school newspaper. the findings show that the procedure used in class promotes interdisciplinary work around environmental topics as well as the development of writing skills. key words: descriptive texts, environmental topics, guidance questions, interdisciplinary work, writing process. hoy en día, es necesario abordar temas ambientales con los estudiantes, de manera interdisciplinaria, para mitigar los daños ambientales que está sufriendo la tierra. en este artículo reportamos un estudio de investigación-acción e innovación que buscó sensibilizar a los estudiantes acerca del cuidado y la preservación del medio ambiente mediante la escritura de breves textos descriptivos en inglés. el estudio tuvo cinco etapas: motivación; conocimiento de vocabulario ecológico; producción de frases y párrafos; construcción de breves textos descriptivos –con la ayuda de preguntas orientadoras–, y la publicación de los textos en el periódico escolar. los resultados muestran que el proceso empleado en clase promueve el trabajo interdisciplinario en torno a temas ecológicos, así como el desarrollo de habilidades escriturales. palabras clave: preguntas orientadoras, procesos de escritura, temas ambientales, textos descriptivos, trabajo interdisciplinario. * this paper reports on a study conducted by the authors while participating in the profile teacher development programme at universidad nacional de colombia, bogotá campus, in 2010. the programme was sponsored by secretaría de educación de bogotá, d.c. code number: 1576, august 24, 2009, and modified on march 23, 2010. ** e-mail: lonajarruti@hotmail.com *** e-mail: chinchin@etb.net.co this article was received on july 29, 2010, and accepted on january 30, 2011. 12 universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras jaramillo urrutia & medina gutiérrez introduction planet earth is currently struggling with many environmental problems. the most critical is global warming. hence, it is necessary that from school students become aware of the existence of these problems, the changes in attitude they must accept, and the necessary habits to preserve life on this planet. the care and preservation of the environment is a responsibility of educational institutions since it is young people who can take appropriate actions to implement them in their homes and community, generating significant changes to positively influence their environment and their quality of life. students’ understanding of environmental problems depends on social, economic, cultural, physical and biological factors, among others. this can give students an overview of the issues and, thus, they may feel motivated to propose different and/ or possible solutions to environmental problems in their region. that is why we engaged in a project which aimed at raising awareness among ninth grade students about the care and preservation of the environment by producing short texts in english to then socialize them through the school newspaper planeta aquileo. by working on writing in english as a foreign language, we are strengthening thinking skills such as communication, synthesis, analysis, ability to relate and associate ideas, including encoding and decoding. in turn, by carrying out this integration, students strengthen communication skills and learn a foreign language, which are very important to be competitive academically and laborally. it also strengthens the sense of belonging that we have with mother earth and allows us to become aware of the role students have to play in the care and preservation of their environment. we report here an innovative and action research project because we sought to enlighten students about the care of the environment and, at the same time, provide opportunities for them to improve their communication skills, particularly when writing in english. in the following paragraphs we present the research problem, the description of the context and the literature review. then comes the procedure followed to develop the study; both in terms of the research methodology and the pedagogical intervention that allowed us explore our area of interest. after that, we concentrate on the data analysis and results and the corresponding conclusions. finally, we report on the recommendations for further research and the limitations faced to carry out the project. the research problem the study was conducted around the following research question: how can we sensitize ninth grade students at aquileo parra school (morning shift) towards environmental care and conservation by engaging them in the writing of short descriptive texts in english? description of the context the project was developed with forty students in course 903 (morning shift) at aquileo parra school, located in zone 1, bogotá. it is in the northeast of the city, near the northeastern mountains, the wetland and the river torca that have high levels of contamination. in the zone housing and commercial buildings are observed. the students were between 14 and 15 years of age; they had a weekly assignment of 3 hours of english and one hour of ecology (in spanish). in general, students had little english vocabulary and low levels in basic communication skills, but they showed interest in learning the foreign language. literature review our project is based on three important aspects: environmental issues, the development of writing 13profile vol. 13, no. 1, april 2011. issn 1657-0790. bogotá, colombia. pages 11-30 13 adolescents’ awareness of environmental care: experiences when writing... skills in english and the writing of short descriptive texts to be included in the school newspaper. in the following paragraphs we will describe the most important topics that we considered relevant for the planning, implementation and evaluation of the project. writing about environmental care using the english language the environment is an overall system consisting of natural and artificial, physical, chemical, biological, and socio-cultural elements and their interrelationships, which are constantly modified by human or natural action or conditions governing the existence or development of life (asociación civil red ambiental, 1999). according to this definition, it is important to emphasize the responsibility the human being has in regard to his environment because, with his actions, he can maintain the environment in the best conditions in order to foster excellent quality of life. all life on earth depends on its good condition as we cannot live in a devastated environment. but today it is not so. one of the biggest problems we see is environmental degradation. humanity has caused disasters that affect balance in the system. over the last two centuries, for example, forest destruction, extinction of various species, air, water, and soil pollution, as well as other damage are increasingly impacting the deteriorating quality of life of the human being. from school days it is necessary to be aware of the situation and to start environmental action, to sensitize students to conserve natural resources and prevent disasters. via activities such as the development of environmental guidelines, observations made in their environment, adoption of simple habits and common sense, and involvement in preparing environmental sections in english in the school newspaper, we can get students interested in identifying and taking small actions that can help them to become aware of preserving the surrounding natural environment. how to write a scholar text writing should be recognised as a special part of language teaching. it needs to be integrated with grammar and vocabulary learning (byrne, 1982). writing is clearly more than the production of graphic symbols. it has to consider formal aspects, thus it has to be coherent. “writing involves the decoding of a message of some kind: that is, we translate our thoughts into language” (byrne, 1982, p. 1). we are writing for a reader, and so reading involves the decoding or interpretation of the message. by writing we are able to communicate successfully with our reader. in view of this, we have to ensure that what we write can be understood without any further help from us. hence, writing should be as communicative or functional as possible (pincas, 1982). recent assumptions reflect that teachers begin to understand writing as an intellectual activity and as a method of learning and instruction. some of these assumptions are presented by urquhart and mciver (2005, p. 11) as follows: 1. writing is a recursive process, which means students revise throughout the process, frequently moving back and forth among the stages. 2. students should learn strategies for invention and discovery, and teachers should help students generate content and discover purpose. 3. audience, purpose, and occasion define all types of writing. 4. effective writing fulfills the writer’s intention and meets the audience’s needs. 5. all teachers can use writing to improve content learning. 14 universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras jaramillo urrutia & medina gutiérrez writing is important to share ideas and feelings, persuade and convince other people. it is a form of expression. writing requires an intellectual effort and needs a considerable period of time to learn structures for effective communication as some of them are less used in speech (white & arnolt, 1996). also, it is important to know how to organize the ideas in such a way that they can be understood by a reader (byrne, 1982). byrne also highlights various approaches to teaching writing which have been proposed in favor of a step-by-step mastery of the various difficulties involved in learning to write. it is suggested that we use controlled and guided exercises, for example, so that students are guided to write sentences, to combine them, and to move from that stage to the production of texts. the teacher’s role when teaching writing through the content areas in english the role of guidance in developing writing skills is very important because students often have difficulty learning how to write in a foreign language. it is important to develop the student’s ability to write a text. it is important to use the text as the basic format for practice because the teacher can teach within its framework all the rhetorical devices –logical, grammatical and lexical– which the learners need to master. teachers can make writing activities much more meaningful for the students plus their motivation to write well can be higher if the writing task is related to a specific purpose. it can also be more realistic. in addition, the teacher can integrate new and existing information (urquhart & mciver, 2005) in a way that is meaningful and accessible for students. it is important that the teachers look for opportunities to integrate writing with other classroom activities. a writing activity can be the consequence of a certain situation. then, the role of the teacher is very important because it is impossible to integrate writing with other activities without a radical change in material design (byrne, 1982). this shows the need to use different techniques, depending on goals and needs and the importance of variety in maintaining the students’ interest. the teachers have to encourage students to look critically at what they write and teach them to draft, correct and rewrite. then the teacher has to be willing to prepare material adapted to the students’ necessities and to relate them with real situations. that is why relating ecology to writing in english could be a way to offer different opportunities for students to improve their writing skills because it is a relevant topic and they can apply knowledge in their own environment. it is necessary to motivate students to effectively communicate their ideas, so that they orga nize their thinking, increase the ability to express themselves with originality, use as many sources of information as they can and care about presentation and their written texts (michel, 1994). this author also explains a technique for improving communication skills. it takes into account the following steps: • choose the issue properly. • concentrate on collecting data. • organize and classify information. • write a draft. • review the draft. • write the final draft. developing a school newspaper the school newspaper is an educational tool that allows the disclosure of different environmental situations occurring at school and in communities. it can be used as an instrument for students to publish their texts, articles, cartoons, and life stories related to environmental situations of their region. 15profile vol. 13, no. 1, april 2011. issn 1657-0790. bogotá, colombia. pages 11-30 15 adolescents’ awareness of environmental care: experiences when writing... it can also help students take positive action for themselves and for future generations. the use of newspapers in the classroom offers teachers a support tool to reinforce students’ communication skills (reading and writing), critical thinking and analytical skills, among others (eduteka, 2006). there are two interesting ways to use the newspaper in the classroom: through reading and analyzing some newspapers and by devel oping a new means of communication in the form of newspaper. when developing a school newspaper, students are required to develop basic skills for writing, organizing thoughts and making a first draft, editing and producing a neat final product. hyde (2007) highlights the importance of the scholar newspaper. she says that it is a great opportunity for teachers and students to work in process writing across the curriculum. within the context of the classroom, teachers can guide students to integrate different topics, textbook lessons on writing structure, grammar and me chanics into polished writing assignments fit for publication. teachers are advised to include all students in the process. they can organize classroom newspaper activities to promote imagination and critical thinking while the students can make progress in different contents. all these processes permit the development of skills for reading and writing. by publishing a newspaper students can share learning with other students and the community. in turn, this gives the students satisfaction because they can see their progress and their articles published. research and pedagogical procedures our project was focused on sensitizing ninth grade students at aquileo parra towards environmental care and conservation through engaging them in the writing of english short descriptive texts. to do so we took into consideration what innovation and action research entail. then, through the project, the students could learn what they needed to do to make a difference in their environment and help and protect the future of earth. this is an innovation teaching project because we faced the challenge of engaging students in processes intended to help them improve the use of english when writing descriptive texts on the subject of ecology. it is also an innovation because as teachers we used writing tasks specially designed or adapted to fulfill the ecology goals. it is an action research too because we applied the principles of this method and were systematic in data collection and analysis (wallace, 1998). in particular, we worked with a specific issue arising out of a professional practice, generating a research question that led to the development of three stages. they are based on the considerations and activities suggested by urquhart and mciver (2005), as follows: • sensitizing students about the environment including motivation and recognition of vo cab ulary. • improving writing skills in english and writing short texts about environmental care and conservation, which accounted for sentence construction and reading comprehension with questions. • writing short texts about environmental care and conservation, which took into consideration reading comprehension worksheets, construction of short paragraphs, making short descriptive environmental articles and publishing them in planeta aquileo, the school newspaper. our role during all the stages was to plan the lessons and develop them. throughout the process 16 universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras jaramillo urrutia & medina gutiérrez we observed the students’ responses so that we could reflect on the effectiveness of the method used and, hence, improve our professional practice. figure 1 shows how the pedagogical design was developed. this diagram emphasizes three steps connected to the subjects of care and environmental conservation, awareness and reflec tion on environmental issues, and writing processes. likewise, eight guidelines for work were developed, so each step leads to a written product that was considered for the analysis of results data collection for our work we relied on two techniques: questionnaires and a collection of papers written by students throughout the process up to their publication in the school newspaper planeta aquileo. based on wallace (1998), questionnaires should be designed in a clear, simple language, which responds to a single aspect without being irritating, irrelevant or intrusive. we used questionnaires (see appendix 1) to obtain data related to students’ opinions on local and global environmental problems, environmental issues and feelings regarding their progress in the process of writing short texts in english. to validate the data, we used data triangulation that involves the use of different data collection techniques. its objective is to verify the trends identified in a given set of observations. according to denzin (1970), the triangulation of data allows the purification of the deficiencies inherent to a single method of data collection and control of personal bias of the researchers. in particular, we applied the time triangulation procedure because we collected and validated the data at different times along the process. first stage sensitizing the students about the environment 1. writing words and short sentences 2. questionnaires b. vocabulary recognition video 3. matching words with images 4. matching words with the meaning 5. filling in the blanks with vocabulary 6. filling in the blanks with vocabulary and coloring the drawings 7. questionaries a. motivation writing about environmental care using the english language 9. reading comprehension with questions 8. unscrambling sentences 10. questionnaires production of sentences second stage improving writing skills in english 12. questionnaires researching information on some environmental topics 11. prewriting sheet using questions writing the draft socialization publishing in the planeta aquileo journal developing paragraphs and writing a short text second stage improving writing skills in english figure 1. stages of the project. 17profile vol. 13, no. 1, april 2011. issn 1657-0790. bogotá, colombia. pages 11-30 17 adolescents’ awareness of environmental care: experiences when writing... data analysis and results first of all it is necessary to recall that our project aims to raise awareness among ninth grade students at aquileo parra school towards the care and preservation of the environment through the production of short descriptive texts written in english and to be published in the school newspaper. the study was conducted with a group of 36 students in an ecology class which met one hour a week. participants were authorized by their parents, who signed a consent form. the information was gathered using two instruments: students’ written work such as guides and articles written for the newspaper and questionnaires administered at the end of each stage (see appendix 1). to validate the data we used the triangulation method of time, which suggests the data collected by the two instruments used over a period of time can be compared and analyzed to identify common factors confirming the progress achieved (burns, 1999). writing can be compared to the art of oil painting. it means being able to draw thoughts, visions, critiques or ways of seeing and understanding what happens in life “on canvas”. the first step that is done to paint is choosing the piece of canvas, then you think about the topic, the colors to be used, the forms and shapes to be detailed and immediately the plans are defined where the objects will be placed. later, by pencil, a sketch of what will be drawn in the sky and on the land is done. then follows the shapes of the trees, the mountains, the houses and their location; the ones that are close or far. little by little the painting polishes, erases, reorganizes and perfects itself until what wants to be expressed is defined. after this, the nice work begins. you start painting with the paintbrushes to get the mixture of colors; you decide upon the way you fuse those colors to create shades and embossments detailing trunks, branches, leaves, clouds, ceilings, walls, balconies, doors, windows, flowers, rocks, and pathways. you add all those details that identify the painting until you obtain the desired effect. the textures, the shades, the definite forms make the picture come to life. they make it real; they show its essence and the essence of the painter. at the end, the signed and frame picture is the maximum creation. similar processes take place when we write. it is necessary to think what we are going to write about, what way i use to spread it, which words or vocabulary i am going to use to communicate my ideas, how i am going to connect the sentences. it is a process of continuous review, rewriting, reorganizing, erasing and correcting mistakes until you obtain a final paragraph. then, as in the painting, it is necessary to find the harmony between one paragraph and the other so that the text makes sense and after all this hard work we present it to the others. writing, the same as painting, is not easy. it is necessary to develop a taste, a technique, a style which is only obtained through perseverance and practice, error correction, constant apprenticeship and exposure to critique and evaluation. at the end all this effort produces several different sensations, personal satisfaction and a point of view that can be shared with others. this is precisely what we wanted to enhance among our students so that they would be able to express their ideas, opinions, arguments or critiques in an organized, coherent and simple way and to communicate their appreciations to the others. the three categories identified are depicted in table 1. afterward, there is a detailed description of each one of them. 18 universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras jaramillo urrutia & medina gutiérrez resources for painting below are the results of the first category. it includes items that students needed to start their writing process. this embraces motivation, key related vocabulary and writing with grammar. motivation towards environmental issues we cannot forget that in writing, as in the art of painting in oil, the attitude, the willingness and motivation of the artist are very important. when you want you can. the use of visual material and prior experience in real contexts are important to motivate students, as it helps them understand and respond positively to the learning process. after watching the video global warming and implementing activity 1 (see appendix 2) and the questionnaire 1 (see appendix 1), we found that students have a basic vocabulary in english on environmental issues which allows them to adequately and easily understand the messages. this is evident in the students’ responses to the questionnaire applied at the end of motivation stage (see appendix 1), although at first in the motivation activity (see appendix 2), they write imitating as the words are pronounced in spanish. the following example illustrates this: globol waming in afmosfereints the dioxidi there inrevolution the industrints earty de gases over inget. (student 1)1 students expressed their awareness that the actions taken by people and industries contributed to the deterioration of the environment and increasing global warming. they also pointed out that we must care about resources and change attitudes toward water use and recycling as elementary forms of protecting the environment. one example of the messages written by students is presented below: the global wariming is killing our planet, we have to wake up! (student 2) the fact that students wrote words and environmental messages of the video indicates that they started with good motivation and a positive attitude to continue with the next steps. this activity was very important because the students opened their mind to the topic they were going to study in the other lessons. the video 1 samples of students’ written production were not edited. they are included from now in their original form. table 1. the art of oil painting categories sub-categories resources for painting: imagination, art, canvas, oil paint motivation towards environmental issues key related vocabulary writing with grammar picture structure: colors, blends and shadows; definition and location of forms making up sentences developing paragraphs the final paint: exposition the assembled article sharing the productions 19profile vol. 13, no. 1, april 2011. issn 1657-0790. bogotá, colombia. pages 11-30 19 adolescents’ awareness of environmental care: experiences when writing... helped them to understand the message because the images gave meaning to the words that appeared in the different video slides. so, although most of them could not write messages correctly, they tried to do their best. it could be a motivation to learn how to write. key related vocabulary for the various activities carried out in class, students required basic vocabulary related to the issue of global warming because it facilitated the understanding of texts. compared with the art of painting, we can say that without brushes, canvas, oils or watercolors we cannot start a painting. after carrying out activities related to vocabulary knowledge (see appendix 3) and applying a questionnaire to find out their perceptions about their enrichment of vocabulary related to environmental issues in the ecology class, we noticed that students find it easier to recognize the vocabulary when it relates to an image than when it comes to matching the words with the definition or when they have to work with complete paragraphs. this was evident in the high number of correct answers students got in the activities that included pictures, and which were applied in the key related vocabulary stage. when monitoring the results obtained by the students in the same stage, we compared the correct answers gotten in other activities which did not include images. this step indicates that the student knows only the basic vocabulary related to the environment and as the complexity of the activities increases, students have fewer hits on the use of vocabulary and that their correct answers can be higher when visual prompts are provided. complementing this, the analysis of the results of the questionnaire applied at the end of the “key related vocabulary” stage showed that most students believed they had acquired information related to the issue of global warming and the other students believed they had expanded their vocabulary. some examples of written messages are shown below2: he adquirido muchas palabras nuevas como global warming, atmosphere, earth y otras. i have acquired many words as ‘global warming, atmosphere, earth and others’. (student 3) hemos visto mucho sobre la atmósfera y sabemos que por medio de ella atraviesan los rayos solares donde la atmósfera absorbe algunos rayos que van a la tierra y los demás lo refleja hacia el espacio. we have seen a lot about the atmosphere and we know that the sun’s rays pass through it. the atmosphere absorbs some rays and the others are reflected back into space. (student 4) writing grammar just as in painting, it is required to have basic knowledge management techniques to brush for blending colors; their application can define the style of painting to be painted. grammatical concepts related to the writing of a sentence are also required for the handling of the verb tenses and the interpretation of questions and answers so that the resulting sentence has meaning. in the course of time and during the implementation of the guidelines, it was evidenced that students had problems with the correct use of grammatical structures in a sentence, in the handling of tenses, in the use of conditional form, the conjugation of verbs in third person and in the management of wh questions. here are some examples of those grammatical errors: 1. write five things that could happen if global warming intensifies: • the global warming defrost the poles • the global warming destruction that nature 2 questionnaires were answered in spanish, the students’ mother tongue. samples were translated for the purpose of this publication. 20 universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras jaramillo urrutia & medina gutiérrez • if global warming intensife culd to cause the disappearance of the some a animal • if global warming intensife could to cause the increase of that temperature • if global warming intencifies could to cause the increase of eart 2. what are the main sources of emissions of carbon dioxide? • the principal sources of emissions of carbón dioxide plants, cars and deforestation. (student 5) picture structure below are the results of the second category, which describes the first written students’ productions. this includes the process of making up sentences and developing paragraphs. making up sentences a written sentence needs to fully express meaningful information. this can be compared to the definition of a figure in painting. in the writing process with students like the ones who participated in our study, we can see the important role the teacher plays during the writing activities, particularly in providing feedback. therefore, the teacher must essentially be a model and a facilitator (ariza martínez, 2005). byrne (1982) said that the writing process is difficult; it is essentially a solitary activity without the possibility of interaction because we are required to write on our own. during the prewriting stage of the project, we noticed that students found the tasks difficult. there were many students with several mistakes, questions and problems, especially in grammar; so, we spent a long time on one activity in order to offer feedback to them. this was in accordance with ariza martínez (2005), who found in her research project that when the students perceived that the task was getting complicated, most of them gave up and did not make much effort. she also showed the importance of using short activities if the group required so. in our case, the students showed more interest when the activities used a picture than when the starting point was just words. as mentioned before, at this stage some problems are shown when writing correct grammatical sentences. we can enumerate the following: construction of sentences without a subject, changes in the order of the sentence in accordance with english syntax and inappropriate usage of the conjugations. these were evidenced in the reasons given by the students when asked about difficulties during the writing process. as found in the responses of the questionnaire applied at the end of the “making up sentences” stage, they considered their lack of understanding english grammar to be the main cause of their mistakes. another cause was the use of long texts. regarding the use of comprehension questions from a text (see appendix 4), we can say that students favored the writing of sentences and they were good resources for identifying problems in the use of conditional and time expressions. one example showing the processing of sentences is as follows: 1. write five things that could happen if global warming intensifies. • if global warming intensifies could increase the temperature in the earth • if global warming intensifies , the “wather” cycle could speed up, so it could generate heavy precipitations and floods • if global warming intensifies, could rise the sea level because melt the polar ice cap • if global warming intensifies, would have a great important in the life human • if global warming intensifies could finish “wich” the plants. (student 6) as we know, if students are not given the opportunity to work on grammar within the context of a specific subject, in our case environment, the students tend to have difficulty understanding a text message and therefore cannot express their 21profile vol. 13, no. 1, april 2011. issn 1657-0790. bogotá, colombia. pages 11-30 21 adolescents’ awareness of environmental care: experiences when writing... ideas clearly and concretely through writing. this difficulty, in turn, leads to a decline in their motivation and stagnation in the process. this was evident when a number of students tended to copy the answers of their peers. developing paragraphs in a pictorial composition figures are connected to transmit a message. in the writing process it is important to connect the different sentences to produce a paragraph or paragraphs describing a particular subject; in our case, a matter related to the environment. taking into account the results in the previous stage (problems with construction of sentences, grammatical errors and difficulties in reading comprehension), we tried to provide a space for students to explore the issue, clarify doubts and correct errors. by doing so, we could analyze the student production. thirty percent of the students completed their draft articles, which were very well prepared. in these students’ productions we can observe the correct use of sentences and the organization of information into paragraphs. these students clarified their doubts by asking the teacher. fortyfour percent of the students did not finish their draft article and twenty-four percent did not begin the drafting stage. they only developed the focused questions stage. although at the end of the project there were still students who felt too much difficulty and decided to stop working, we believe that it is necessary to continue doing the writing activities using a specific content without neglecting feedback. regarding this issue, urquart and mclver (2005) stress that it is important to give students enough time to engage in the writing process. they note students not only need time to write but, for the greatest benefit, they must also participate successfully in the process. it is important to note that at this stage it was very helpful for students to have brought reference materials to the class. they performed a process in which they could have a clear idea about the topic they would focus on and, subsequently, with the development of focused questions, they organized ideas giving a correct structure to organize the written information. urquart and mclver (2005) also highlight the importance of reading to increase the writing range as well as the importance of using prewriting strategies. in this stage we realized that they tried to do their best work. the most important point is that the students showed knowledge about the topic worked, as can be seen in the following examples taken from the questionnaire applied at the end of the “making up sentences” stage: write two ideas or messages that you have clear about the “global warming” reading in the last activity worked: • the causes of global warming is deforestations when the threes cut down and burn • the scienst predict the floods, wildfires and increase water level (student 7) • global warming is the increase of temperature in the earth • global warming is the principal cause of lack of water in planet. (student 8) the final painting the third category describes the findings on the process of writing a descriptive short text related to an environmental issue to be published in the school newspaper. this includes the assembled article and sharing the products. the assembled article in addition to painting figures, shadows are also related funds and textures that give the final boost and meaning. they also define the style that the painter wants to show. something similar happens with the writing process where the connectors are used to link ideas and paragraphs to produce short 22 universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras jaramillo urrutia & medina gutiérrez descriptive texts to show the reader an ecological message which reflects the writer’s particular style. the students worked in four sessions using the information from different sources brought to the class. they followed the writing task guide shown in appendix 5. when the fourth session was over, the students worked in groups and analyzed the different articles. they answered the following questions with reference to the article and the author: is the article clear and understandable? is the information requested complete? is the author’s writing good? is the information given relevant? the students chose one article from each group. they selected the ones that were more complete, well written, with easy vocabulary and in accordance with the topic requested. in them, we could see their progress and disposition to implement an innovative learning activity. the text shown in figure 2 contains one of the draft articles written by the students. after the description work the students answered the final questionnaire in groups of four. the students said that the activity had a medium difficulty level. they considered that the guides helped them a lot and felt that the ecology and english integration helps to improve english writing and reading comprehension skills. they also said that it helps to become sensitive about environmental care and conservation. in addition, the students gave different suggestions about the project such as “use practice activities as games, models, posters, videos and others to make the classes more interesting; work guides combining english and spanish to introduce the english step by step; work guides with different difficulty levels; and do not work only writing skills”. this shows that they want speaking activities too. students’ products gave us great satisfaction because we could see progress, their willingness in regard to a pedagogical innovation project, and the effectiveness of the activities planned by the teachers. we believe that engaging in the action research process contributed to the improvement of the pedagogical activity because the teachers could reflect on their pedagogical practice and systematize both processes and products. sharing the products the greatest satisfaction of an artist is to show his/her work and gather feedback from global warming is everyone’s global warming is the increase in average temperature of the earth´s near surface, air and oceans. this is caused by increased concentratios of greenhouse gases, as the result of human activity such as fossil fuels and deforestation. the effects brought by global warming are the melting of the poles of the earth, the rising of sea level. also the increases of the average precipitacion (rain and snow), floods, hurricanes and droughts in the world. to stop this situation we should try to minimiza emissions of carbon dioxide by planting more trees. they can capture the carbon dioxide. also, we can use smaller cars, to spend less fuel, avoiding ecosystem contamination. reference: http://environment.nationalgeografic.com/environment/global-warming/gw-overview.html (student 9) figure 2. sample of a draft article. 23profile vol. 13, no. 1, april 2011. issn 1657-0790. bogotá, colombia. pages 11-30 23 adolescents’ awareness of environmental care: experiences when writing... the audience. this feedback can generate different feelings, thoughts, questions, and future predictions. it can also generate the viewer’s senses and generate an identification with the painter. if we talk about the writing process we observe that, after producing an english text, its publication in the school newspaper fills its owner with pride in showing her/his skills and expectations, in addition to serving as a model for others. as the school newspaper is widely publicized in the school, it is indisputable that the published text messages might have an impact on the educational community regarding environmental issues and invite the community to take action to bring about change. conclusions as byrne (1982) said, students often have problems writing, even in their own language, because of the lack of interaction or feedback. the teacher’s action is important during the writing process, more so in a second or foreign language because she/he enhances the possibility of identifying grammar problems, providing suggestions and offering possibilities and activities to promote the strengthening of students’ writing skills. as zabala palacio (2004) notes in his research study, the students’ motivation for the functionality of the topic was due to the application of different fields such as biology, history and anthropology. in our project, the writing process through the content of the subject of ecology fostered motivation and gave functionality to the teaching process. this occurrence was due to the fact that we worked on two parallel processes: curricular content in ecology and, at the same time, the improvement of writing and comprehension skills in english. guiding students in the process of writing descriptive short texts through the development of controlled and focused activities is a good way to sensitize students towards environmental care and conservation because they improve their knowledge. also, the teacher can evaluate the given goals, identify strengths and weaknesses and plan new strategies in order to improve teachinglearning processes and writing skills specific to english. the collection of produced work is another way to follow students’ development as to the form of writing, use of vocabulary and development of ideas related to environmental issues in english. through this work, students practice what they have learned, share feedback with their teacher and classmates and make contributions to their community in terms of environmental conservation. needless to say, the workshops used in the project are guides and tools for students to improve their writing productions, to get information or to express opinions related to environmental matters. recommendations for further research as sciences teachers, we think it would be interesting to develop a similar project with two teachers who teach different subjects. the idea is to integrate the english teacher with the one of another subject. the english teacher would be the support for the teacher who could develop the content from his/her subject matter through different programmed activities. his/her main objective would be working on reading comprehension and the writing process and the english teacher would strengthen the language aspects that could be identified by the other teacher during the development of the content subject. limitations the principal limitation we faced was time because we had only one hour per week to work in class with the students in the development of the project. additionally, we identified different 24 universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras jaramillo urrutia & medina gutiérrez problems during the process, such as a lack of vocabulary knowledge, grammar mistakes, slow writing, delay in developing activities and reading comprehension activities, among others. so, we preferred to focus on one theme –global warming– in order to provide a space for students to become familiar with the vocabulary and themes and thus achieve true awareness of environmental care and conservation. references ariza martínez, a. v. (2005). the process-writing approach: an alternative to guide the student’s compositions. profile issues in teachers’ professional development, 6, 37-46. asociación civil red ambiental (1999, january). nuestro ambiente. retrieved from http://www.ecopibes.com/ ambiente/definicion.htm burns, a. (1999). collaborative action research for english language teachers. cambridge: cambridge university press. byrne, d. (1982). teaching writing skills. singapore: longman. denzin, n. k. (1970). sociological methods: a source book. chicago: aldine publishing company. didax educational. (2009). climate change. reproducible activities grades 5-8. united states of america: didax education. eduteka. (2006). elaboración de periódicos escolares [making school newspapers]. retrieved from http:// www.eduteka.org/periodicoescolar.php hyde, s. (2007). kids learn to write for a school audience. newspaper writing lesson plan. retrieved from http:// lesson-plans-materials.suite101.com/article.cfm/ fun_writing_standards michel, g. (1994). aprende a aprender. guía de autoeducación. mexico: trillas. pincas, a. (1982). teaching english writing. london: macmillan. popular teaching resources. (2008). global warming. canada: popular book company. urquhart, v., & mciver, m. (2005). teaching writing in the content areas. alexandria, va, usa: association for supervision & curriculum development, pp. 9-12, 53. retrieved from: http://site.ebrary.com/lib/bibliotecauniandes/doc?id =10083781&ppg=9 wallace, m. (1998). action research for language teachers. cambridge: cambridge university press. white, r., & arnolt, v. (1996). process writing. london: longman. zabala palacio, f. o. (2004). strategies to support high school students’ reading comprehension in the english language. profile, issues in teachers’ professional development, 5(1), 98-109. about the authors lorena jaramillo urrutia is a graduate in chemistry from universidad distrital francisco josé de caldas. she obtained a specialization in edumatics from universidad autónoma de colombia. she is a biology and chemistry teacher at aquileo parra school, zone 1, usaquén, morning shift, in bogotá (colombia). ana stella medina gutiérrez is a graduate in biology and chemistry from universidad incca de colombia. she obtained a specialization in education system from universidad antonio nariño. she is a biology and chemistry teacher at aquileo parra school, zone 1, usaquén, afternoon shift, in bogotá (colombia). 25profile vol. 13, no. 1, april 2011. issn 1657-0790. bogotá, colombia. pages 11-30 25 adolescents’ awareness of environmental care: experiences when writing... appendix 1. questionnaire used to find out student’s opinions at the end of the motivation stage* aquileo parra school date: __________ objective: to survey identify students’ opinions about the vocabulary and message given by the environmental video global warming dear student, mark with an (x) the answer that best corresponds to your opinion. your sincerity is of great help. please answer accurately. (marque con una equis (x) la respuesta que mejor se ajuste a su opinión. su sinceridad será de gran ayuda. por favor responda con precisión). 1. what do you think about the writing activity? (¿cómo le pareció la actividad de escritura?) a. very difficult (muy difícil) ______ b. difficult (difícil) ______ c. good (adecuada) ______ d. easy (fácil) ______ e. very easy (muy fácil) ______ 2. for me, it was ___________ to understanding the message about the environment (para mí, fue _______________ entender el mensaje acerca del medio ambiente) a. very difficult (muy difícil) ______ b. difficult (difícil) ______ c. good (adecuada) ______ d. easy (fácil) ______ e. very easy (muy fácil) ______ 3. what message do you get from the video about global warming? (¿qué mensaje le dejó el video acerca del calentamiento global?) * it was administered in a bilingual format to help students fully understand its contents. 26 universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras jaramillo urrutia & medina gutiérrez appendix 2. activity used in the motivation stage aquileo parra school first part goal: to sensitize students to current environmental problems through the video global warming. name:__________________________ grade:_________ date:____________ instructions: please complete the following activities after watching the video: • write some words that you remember from the video. if you remember more than one, write them. if you can write one sentence about the main idea in the video, do it. second part name: grade: ______________________ date:____________________________________ • form groups of four students and share the words that you wrote in the first part. then use those words to write one or more sentences about the video global warming that you saw. evaluation: after all the class finishes the activity, we will correct the answers together. 27profile vol. 13, no. 1, april 2011. issn 1657-0790. bogotá, colombia. pages 11-30 27 adolescents’ awareness of environmental care: experiences when writing... appendix 3. activity used in the vocabulary stage aquileo parra school goal: to identify the meaning of some common vocabulary used in ecology. name:_______________________________ grade:_______ date:________ instructions: relate the word(s) to the correct meaning. for each word(s) from the left column, match one specific meaning from the right column. put the corresponding letter in parentheses. use your dictionary to help you. a. atmosphere ( ) the solid dry part of the earth’s surface. b. sun ( ) the state or quality of being alive; the period of time between someone’s birth and death. c. surface ( ) it is a process when the solar energy is absorbed by natural atmosphere components that warm the earth. d. land ( ) it is the state of the atmosphere around us at a particular time. e. air ( ) it is the average weather pattern of a particular place over a long period of time. f. water ( ) a layer of gases that surrounds our earth. g. green house effect ( ) the liquid that falls from the sky as rain forms lakes, rivers, and oceans, and is necessary for life to exist. h. life ( ) the mixture of gases that we breath and that surrounds the earth. i. weather ( ) the star that emits solar radiation to the earth. j. climate ( ) the outside or top layer of something. evaluation: after all the class finishes the activity, we will correct the answers together. definition taken from: didax educational. (2009). climate change. reproducible activities grades 5-8. united states of america: didax education. popular teaching resources (2008). global warming. canada: popular book company. dictionary of american english. (2002).united states of america: longman. 2828 universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras appendix 4: activity used in the making up sentences stage aquileo parra school goal: • to elaborate short sentences about the global warming reading. • to answer different comprehension questions through a text. • to improve the knowledge about global warming. name: ___________________________________grade:_______ date:_____ instructions: read the text and answer the questions related to the reading below. global warning what is global warming? global warming refers to the increase of the average surface temperature of the earth, due to the increase in the amounts of greenhouse gases, such as carbon dioxide, methane, and nitrous oxide, in the atmosphere. these gases trap heat and prevent it from escaping from the earth. it leads to a warmer earth. the principal sources of emissions of carbon dioxide are power plants, cars, and deforestation. a huge amount of carbon dioxide is released when power stations burn fossil fuels to generate electricity for our daily uses. exhaust fumes from vehicles add to the amount of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere. when trees are cut down and burned, lots of carbon dioxide is released. with fewer trees, less carbon dioxide is absorbed from the atmosphere. over the past hundred years, global surface temperatures have risen 0.6 c – and they are still rising. scientists predict that over the next century, world temperatures would go up another 1.5 c, and probably higher. warmer temperatures would speed up the water cycle, which could lead to heavy precipitation, droughts, floods, rising water level, and wildfires. these abnormal changes would have a great impact on plants, wildlife, and humans. climate changes are happening because of what people are doing to the planet. to prevent the situation from getting worse, it is time for us to take action to protect our earth. 29profile vol. 13, no. 1, april 2011. issn 1657-0790. bogotá, colombia. pages 11-30 29 sun earth atmoshere space write the sentences: 1. write five things that could happen if global warming intensifies. • _____________________________________________________________________________ • _____________________________________________________________________________ • _____________________________________________________________________________ • _____________________________________________________________________________ • _____________________________________________________________________________ answer the questions: • what are the main sources of emissions of carbon dioxide? • how does deforestation intensify the effect of global warming? • how have global temperatures changed over the past century? and, how will they change in the future? evaluation: after all the class finishes the activity, we will correct the answers together. taken from: popular teaching resources (2008). global warming. canada: popular book company. 3030 universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras appendix 5: activity used in the developing paragraphs and assembling article stages aquileo parra school goal: to answer different comprehension questions about global warming using information from different sources. • write a short text about global warming. name:________________________________ grade:_______ date:______ instructions: write about global warming following the steps given. • prewriting: answer the following questions. a. what is global warming? b. what are the causes of global warming? c. what is the effect of global warming? d. what can people do to save the earth from global warming? • writing: write a first draft of the article. • evaluation: after all the class finishes the activity, we will correct the answers together. taken from: popular teaching resources (2008). global warming. canada: popular book company. profile 5.pmd ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○117 profileprofileprofileprofileprofile developing plurilinguism in slovakia: the clil method, a starting point developing plurilinguism in slovakia: the clil method, a starting point desarrollo de plurilingüismo en eslovenia: el método ‘clil’, un punto de partida silvia psilvia psilvia psilvia psilvia pokrivcákokrivcákokrivcákokrivcákokrivcákováováováováová***** spokrivcakova@ukf.sk eva maláeva maláeva maláeva maláeva malá emala@ukf.sk constantine the philosopher university in nitra, slovakia the paper deals with an introduction of the clil (content and language integrated learning) a newly invented and officially recommended method for the teaching of foreign languages in the european union. the authors describe its general characteristics and benefits as well as give examples of its application in slovakia, one of the new member states of the eu. since slovakia is not widely known in colombia, the authors have added a description of the situation in teaching foreign languages in their country, thus providing an important context for teaching objectives and conditions of applying the clil. kkkkkey worey worey worey worey words: ds: ds: ds: ds: plurilinguism, foreign language teaching-young learners, clilmethodology este documento trata sobre la introducción del método (contenido y lenguaje integrados en el aprendizaje) clil – una nueva metodología diseñada y oficialmente recomendada como método de enseñanza de lenguas extranjeras en la unión europea. las autoras describen las características generales del método y sus beneficios, así como ejemplos de su aplicación en eslovenia, uno de los nuevos miembros de la ue. debido a que eslovenia no es muy conocida en colombia, las autoras han incluido una descripción de la situación de la enseñanza de lenguas extranjeras en su país. de tal manera, proveen un contexto importante para los objetivos y condiciones de la enseñanza en la aplicación de esta metodología. palabras claves:palabras claves:palabras claves:palabras claves:palabras claves: plurilingüismo, enseñanza-lenguas extranjerasestudiantes-jóvenes, clil-metodología *silvia pokrivcákovásilvia pokrivcákovásilvia pokrivcákovásilvia pokrivcákovásilvia pokrivcáková and eva maláeva maláeva maláeva maláeva malá are teacher trainers in the department of foreign languages of the faculty of education constantine the philosopher university in nitra, slovakia. they are editors of the series foreign languages at school 1 (2003) and foreign languages at schools 2 (2004). ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ 118 pokrivcáková and malá profile profile profile profile profile introductionintroductionintroductionintroductionintroduction the aims of this paper are as follows: 1. to introduce the situation regarding teaching foreign languages in slovakia, one of the countries which has recently joined the european union; 2. to explain current trends and priorities in the field (including the latest methodological concepts); and 3. to illustrate the application of the clil method in language classrooms for young learners as an example of an innovative method leading to the development of plurilinguism. historical contexthistorical contexthistorical contexthistorical contexthistorical context o f o f o f o f o f teaching foreign lteaching foreign lteaching foreign lteaching foreign lteaching foreign languagesanguagesanguagesanguagesanguages in slovin slovin slovin slovin slovakia (the eu)akia (the eu)akia (the eu)akia (the eu)akia (the eu) slovakia, one of the smallest and youngest countries in europe (established in 1993 after the disintegration of the former czechoslovakia and inhabited by 5 million people), has during the last 3 years witnessed radical changes in teaching foreign languages in general, and in teaching languages to young learners in particular. however, its long history is interesting as well. up to 1989, when the country was a part of the former communist block in europe, the only compulsory language in slovak schools was russian. pupils started learning it from the 5th year of their compulsory elementary school attendance (while being 10+, i.e. isced 2 level1). other languages were taught in very limited circumstances because they were considered to be instruments of imperialistic propaganda. the only language that could be taught more extensively in those times was german (because of the existence of the former german democratic republic). after november, 1989, when the socalled velvet revolution in czechoslovakia defeated the communist government, the situation in teaching languages started to improve. the schools (mostly secondary) offered a wider scale of foreign languages that included english, french, spanish and italian. but, paradoxically, language education became available to a radically lower number of students. russian as a foreign language was generally refused by learners, although it was the only foreign language taught by qualified teachers. other foreign language teaching suffered from an extreme lack of teachers, even unqualified. the following table shows the amounts of pupils learning a foreign language on isced 2 level in slovakia in 1989 and 1991 (based on the data of the statistic annual book of education, 1991): 1 isced 2 – according to international standard classification of education (revised in 1997) it is a lower secondary level that forms an integral part of compulsory schooling. in slovakia it starts after finishing 4 years of isced 1 level. it lasts 5 years and its end corresponds with the end of compulsory full-time education . ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○119 profileprofileprofileprofileprofile developing plurilinguism in slovakia: the clil method, a starting point tttttable. 1able. 1able. 1able. 1able. 1 number of pupils learning foreign languages at slovak schools in 1989 foreignforeignforeignforeignforeign lllllanguagesanguagesanguagesanguagesanguages tttttaaaaaught aught aught aught aught at slovt slovt slovt slovt slovakakakakak schoolsschoolsschoolsschoolsschools russian german english french number of pupilsnumber of pupilsnumber of pupilsnumber of pupilsnumber of pupils learning a foreignlearning a foreignlearning a foreignlearning a foreignlearning a foreign language in 1989language in 1989language in 1989language in 1989language in 1989 (in %)(in %)(in %)(in %)(in %) 100 12.3 1.4 0.8 number of pupilsnumber of pupilsnumber of pupilsnumber of pupilsnumber of pupils learning a foreignlearning a foreignlearning a foreignlearning a foreignlearning a foreign language in 1991language in 1991language in 1991language in 1991language in 1991 (in %)(in %)(in %)(in %)(in %) 14.0 22.5 17.6 1.8 foreignforeignforeignforeignforeign lllllanguagesanguagesanguagesanguagesanguages tttttaaaaaught aught aught aught aught at slovt slovt slovt slovt slovakakakakak schoolsschoolsschoolsschoolsschools english german french russian number of pupilsnumber of pupilsnumber of pupilsnumber of pupilsnumber of pupils learning a foreignlearning a foreignlearning a foreignlearning a foreignlearning a foreign language in 2000language in 2000language in 2000language in 2000language in 2000 (in %)(in %)(in %)(in %)(in %) 51.3 45.1 1.8 7.0 tttttable 2:able 2:able 2:able 2:able 2: number of pupils learning foreign languages at slovak schools in 2000 it is clear that together with a decline in learning the russian language, the number of pupils learning all other languages increased more or less rapidly. the alarming fact was that more than 44.1% elementary school pupils were not, at that time, learning any foreign language. another very important impact on the teaching of foreign languages in slovakia occurred after 1993 when czechoslovakia split up and slovakia (as well as the czech republic) applied for membership in the european union. together with the “opening of windows and doors” to europe, the necessity of effective foreign language teaching has been emphasised. state educational institutions created an enormous activity to increase the number of qualified teachers of the most frequent/ popular foreign languages in slovakia (english, german, spanish, italian, and french) and to improve conditions for providing more available and effective language teaching at state schools on all levels. the first results became visible in 2000. table 2 shows the number of pupils learning foreign languages at slovak elementary schools in 2000 (according to the statistic annual book of education, 2000): ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ 120 pokrivcáková and malá profile profile profile profile profile a higher number of learners appeared in all the languages except russian; moreover, the number of pupils who did not learn any foreign language decreased to 0.4%. however, the situation was not so favourable in teaching/learning foreign languages on isced level 1 (primary level of education starting in slovakia at the age of six and lasting 4 years). by 2000, only 14.5 % of young learners in slovakia were learning one foreign language, which means that 85.5 % of pupils between the ages 6 and 10 were not taught foreign languages at elementary schools at all.2 current situacurrent situacurrent situacurrent situacurrent situationtiontiontiontion the preparatory processes regarding slovakia’s entering the eu included extensive and intensive education in foreign languages. although the slovak language (the national language of the slovak people) has become one of the 25 official languages of the eu, the necessity to acquire appropriate skills for communication with other member countries (there are currently 450 million europeans) has increased significantly. an interesting position is that the european authorities do not favour efforts to establish one official language of the union. the european document, “promoting language learning and linguistic diversity: action plan 20042006” (2003), declares that “learning one lingua franca alone is not enough”; on the contrary, it stresses the necessity of language diversity, stating that “diversity of languages is the richness of europe” (action plan, 2004, p. 4) and encourages people to learn, in addition to their mother tongue, at least 2 foreign languages on a level of mastery. moreover, the teaching/learning of rarelytaught languages (i.e. languages of small communities with a constantly decreasing number of speakers) is highly valued and extra-funded by european educational programmes. the reality is, however, a little bit different: the range of foreign languages frequently used by citizens is much narrower than the authorities would wish. the group of foreign languages most widely taught/ learned at european schools includes english, french, german, spanish and russian. in recent years, the european council extended its recommendations and declared an objective called m+2 “to improve the mastery of basic skills, in particular by teaching at least two foreign languages from a very early age”. in an adult age, the command of these two languages should be on an advanced level and, in addition to this, it is also recommended that europeans know another european language on the level of basic communication strategy. this rationale is connected with other important tasks to be fulfilled within national educational systems such as to build language-friendly schools and language-friendly educational environments, to extend the possibilities of teaching/ learning a wide range of foreign languages, to prepare qualified teachers for a wide range of foreign languages, to develop effective instruments for testing language skills, 2 precise numbers with detailed interpretations dealing with the situation in all the member states of eu were published in statistics annuals, or in eurydice and eurostat reports. ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○121 profileprofileprofileprofileprofile developing plurilinguism in slovakia: the clil method, a starting point to apply the ict in teaching more effectively, to develop new highly-effective methods of foreign language teaching/learning leading to so-called european plurilinguismplurilinguismplurilinguismplurilinguismplurilinguism (i.e. the ability of european citizens to speak at least 3 languages). the above ec development has manifested itself in the slovak educational system by the fact that the beginning of foreign language teaching has been permanently descending to lower age categories. this can be illustrated by the latest research carried out by a team from constantine the philosopher university in nitra which showed that in 2003, the number of schools where pupils learn at least one foreign language on isced level 1 as a compulsory subject increased to 79.8% (see table 3); as an optional subject to 41.7%; and that there was no elementary school in slovakia which did not provide foreign language teaching for young learners, which is a radical change when compared to the situation in 2000. (precise data and their detailed interpretation, which will result from the long-term research conducted by the research team of the department of foreign languages at the faculty of education of the cpu in nitra –whose members are also the authors of this paper– will be published in november 2004.) tttttable 3.able 3.able 3.able 3.able 3. the number of slovak elementary schools teaching foreign languages as a compulsory subject in 2003 (preliminary results) it is curious that the main propelling forces behind the above changes are the parents of pupils. however, the rule is very clear: if an elementary school does not offer foreign languages, parents refuse to sign up their children and the school loses its state subventions. this pressure helps extend possibilities of foreign languages teaching. on the other hand, the range of taught languages is extremely narrow: it is obvious that slovak parents are enormously interested in english lessons for their children (it is roughly estimated that nearly 92% of slovak pupils learn english.), dismissing foreignforeignforeignforeignforeign languagelanguagelanguagelanguagelanguage isisisisis cccccompulsoryompulsoryompulsoryompulsoryompulsory optionaloptionaloptionaloptionaloptional isisisisis notnotnotnotnot tttttaaaaaughtughtughtughtught tttttaaaaaughtughtughtughtught asasasasas aaaaa subjectsubjectsubjectsubjectsubject (in %) 79.8 41.7 0.0 other foreign languages that were popular in the past. clil–an effective instrumentclil–an effective instrumentclil–an effective instrumentclil–an effective instrumentclil–an effective instrument of foreign lof foreign lof foreign lof foreign lof foreign language learninganguage learninganguage learninganguage learninganguage learning the most relevant aspects of the european strategy for language learning, or building european plurilinguism, include the development of language diversity, application of learner-centred approacheslearner-centred approacheslearner-centred approacheslearner-centred approacheslearner-centred approaches as well as respecting learners’ autonomy respecting learners’ autonomy respecting learners’ autonomy respecting learners’ autonomy respecting learners’ autonomy. they are the reasons why the european authorities singled out clil from among ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ 122 pokrivcáková and malá profile profile profile profile profile numerous methodological approaches as one of the most effective, and thus recommended, methods in foreign language education (the white paper, “teaching and learning – towards the learning society”, 1995). at the same time, it was recognized as an appropriate approach for the teaching of foreign languages to young learners. historically, clil as an approach using content (subject matter) for the purposes of foreign language teaching continues in the tradition of english for specific purposes (esp) and content-based instruction (cbi). unlike other teaching methods, it integrates subject matter learning, which is usually provided in the mother tongue, and foreign language learning in which the foreign language is not a goal of learning, but a medium for the communication of its content. it thus enables students to practise foreign language communication skills through contextualized tasks. it means that through clil, a particular foreign language (in the european context it is usually english) is not taught/learned as only a subject, but as a crucial instrument for teaching other subjects (mathematics, geography, history, etc.) (clil compendium, 2001). more than other methodological approaches, the clil effectively fulfils the following important learners’ needs: • it provides learners with meaningful and everyday input (learners are not learning language for the sake of language alone, but language for learning, e. g. slovak pupils are learning about typical weather in great britain through appropriate english vocabulary, or spanish students are learning about english history through the english language.); • it gives learners opportunities to use language meaningfully and productively (learners communicate in a foreign language not for the sake of pure communication, but to give and receive new information.); • it gives learners opportunities to use a foreign language in natural or very close-to-real circumstances (while giving and receiving new information, learners really communicate!); • it shifts the attention of learners from a foreign language itself to the communicated content that could encourage less-skilled students to communicate in a foreign language. thus, one can ask whether clil is not too demanding for language teachers by asking them to become language teachers and content teachers in one person. it is important to note here, however, that at elementary schools (isced level 1), the curriculum content is not so demanding that language teachers cannot manage it. on higher levels, standard preparation of language teachers for esp is adequate. clil as a pclil as a pclil as a pclil as a pclil as a paaaaath to plth to plth to plth to plth to plurilinguismurilinguismurilinguismurilinguismurilinguism former definitions of clil stressed teaching non-language content. however, today clil is used also for teaching combinations of foreign languages (one target language and several complementary languages, e.g. teaching french through english for pupils speaking slovak as their mother tongue). in such a case, this approach integrates target language learning and content that ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○123 profileprofileprofileprofileprofile developing plurilinguism in slovakia: the clil method, a starting point is created by selected items (vocabulary, phrases, or functional elements –not grammar!) of complementary languages. as a typical example, a lesson in which learners collect familiar greetings in various languages (good morning! guten tag! zdravstvujte! dobrý den!, etc.) could be used. the main aim of clil in such context is to motivate young europeans through functional introductions of new foreign languages and to learn more foreign languages resulting in the development of plurilinguism and multiculturalism. the main benefits of such application of clil can be summarized as follows: • improving overall target language competence; • deepening the awareness of the mother tongue, target language and a wide variety of other languages; • increasing learner motivation for language learning through creating realistic, educational circumstances in the language classroom; • facilitating the eu integration and further internationalisation; • developing intercultural communication skills; • developing intercultural knowledge and tolerance; • getting informed about other countries, regions, cultural communities and minority groups (developing multicultural attitudes and interests); • learning how to live in a wider cultural context; • developing communicative skills in a target language as well as in other languages (developing plurilingual competences); • preparing for future studies and/or working life. the application of clil as an instrument of plurilinguism raises demands for foreign language teachers as they themselves should be able to speak several languages, or, at least, master selected elements. it must be noted here, however, that so far there are just a few of such teachers in slovakia. to cope with the new situation, special courses in complementary languages are prepared and provided for in-ser vice teachers, widening the scale of their plurilinguism. at the same time, curricula of faculties of education are being adjusted by increasing the number of foreign languages as well as the number of lessons dedicated to foreign languages (currently every graduate of a faculty of education must have a command of at least two foreign languages.). since the best way to explain something is to give a concrete example, we would like to present a lesson plan of a model lesson applying the clil method. the lesson was prepared for slovak pupils learning english as a target language, and, at the same time, getting basic vocabular y of other (complementary) languages. in a good teaching practice of clil, max. 2 complementary languages are required to avoid overloading children’s attention and memory. to better illustrate the example, we have decided to use in our model lesson 4 complementary languages: czech and polish are languages of the countries neighbouring slovakia, their sounding being very close to that of the slovak language; french and german languages are representatives of the most popular foreign languages in slovakia ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ 124 pokrivcáková and malá profile profile profile profile profile (in addition to english, understandably). although the lessons also introduce new vocabulary of complementary languages, the main aim is to improve communicative skills of pupils in the target language. in applying clil, it is important that the teacher be able to communicate not only in the target language, but s/he must know basic vocabulary and pronunciation of the complementary languages as well. to meet this condition, multilateral international partnerships of elementary schools (within the eu’s socrates programme) are created, with each partner school usually preparing suitable clil materials for both itself and its partner schools. model lessonmodel lessonmodel lessonmodel lessonmodel lesson tttttopicopicopicopicopic: weather in europe mother language: mother language: mother language: mother language: mother language: slovak medium language: medium language: medium language: medium language: medium language: english level of pupilslevel of pupilslevel of pupilslevel of pupilslevel of pupils: beginners (after 60 lessons of english) other languages involved: other languages involved: other languages involved: other languages involved: other languages involved: czech, polish, , , , , german, french objectivesobjectivesobjectivesobjectivesobjectives: to learn about weather conditions in europe through english as a foreign language. the secondary aim is to introduce related basic vocabulary of complementary languages grammar structuregrammar structuregrammar structuregrammar structuregrammar structure: practicing questions and answers in the target language: what is the weather like in germany today? it is sunny in germany today. what is the temperature in the czech republic today? it is 19 degrees centigrade. previous vocabularprevious vocabularprevious vocabularprevious vocabularprevious vocabulary revisedy revisedy revisedy revisedy revised: countries (slovakia, the czech republic, poland, germany, italy, great britain, france), numbers (0 – 30). new vocabularnew vocabularnew vocabularnew vocabularnew vocabularyyyyy: sunny, raining, windy, cloudy, snowing, stormy, tornado, degrees centigrade material aidsmaterial aidsmaterial aidsmaterial aidsmaterial aids: a map of europe, cards with weather symbols (see chart 1), weather forecast from a newspaper (weather map is necessary), multilingual weather chart (see chart 2). chart 1 � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○125 profileprofileprofileprofileprofile developing plurilinguism in slovakia: the clil method, a starting point chart 2 lesson steps:lesson steps:lesson steps:lesson steps:lesson steps: 1. introduction: motivating dialogue about weather (in slovak), using funny questions: what is the weather like today? what was the weather like when you were born? what was the worst weather you remember? what weather does your dog prefer? 2. introducing new vocabulary by using weather cards as visual aids, pronunciation drill 3. talking about weather in the target language (english). practising grammar structures: what is the weather like today? it is sunny. the teacher asks questions and shows the weather symbols as prompts for a pupil to formulate answers. 4. talking about weather in europe according to a weather map that the teacher took from a newspaper weather forecast. what is the weather like in poland today? it is cloudy. 5. completing the weather chart: language english czech polish german french ����� sunny sluneèno s³oneczno sonnenschein soleil ����� rainy déš• deszcz der regen pluie ����� cloudy oblaèno pochmurno bedeckt temps nuageux ����� snowy sníh œnieg der schnee neige ����� stormy bouøe burza der sturm orage ����� tornado tornádo tornado der tornado tornade ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ 126 pokrivcáková and malá profile profile profile profile profile 6. relaxing activity: mini-pexeso (card game) with weather symbols. 7. introducing vocabulary of complementary language through english questions: what would polish people say about today’s weather? how do polish people say it is sunny? (this is the possibility to fix english vocabulary and grammar structure in a very realistic situation: pupils repeat english phrases rather subconsciously as they are more focused on their content and on the sound of the polish words). 8. drawing pictures “beautiful/terrible weather in slovakia” for pupils of partner schools. 9. evaluation of the lesson; assigning homework. pppppossible vossible vossible vossible vossible variations of the lesson for pupils of a higher level of englishariations of the lesson for pupils of a higher level of englishariations of the lesson for pupils of a higher level of englishariations of the lesson for pupils of a higher level of englishariations of the lesson for pupils of a higher level of english proficiency:proficiency:proficiency:proficiency:proficiency: 1. introducing richer vocabulary 2. practicing tense changes: what was the weather like in slovakia today? what will the weather be like in italy tomorrow? 3. talking about a hypothesis: what would you do if there was a tornado in nitra today? ccccc o u n t r yo u n t r yo u n t r yo u n t r yo u n t r y slovakia germany great britain .... wwwww e ae ae ae ae at h e rt h e rt h e rt h e rt h e r �.................... .... cloudy � .................... .... ttttt e m p e r ae m p e r ae m p e r ae m p e r ae m p e r at u r et u r et u r et u r et u r e ininininin degreesdegreesdegreesdegreesdegrees c e n t i g r a d ec e n t i g r a d ec e n t i g r a d ec e n t i g r a d ec e n t i g r a d e .... 16 0c .... .... conclconclconclconclconclusionusionusionusionusion the aim of our paper was to explain the current situation in foreign language teaching in slovakia (in the context of the european union), with special emphasis on the development of plurilinguism. we have chosen one of the integrated approaches to languages teaching – clil (content and language integrated learning) which was proved to be an effective way not only of foreign language learning, but also for the development of plurilinguism and multicultural education; that is, the concepts representing main goals of european education for this decade. since the clil based teaching of foreign languages is relatively new and not verified ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○127 profileprofileprofileprofileprofile developing plurilinguism in slovakia: the clil method, a starting point in the context of slovak education, it has not been possible to offer any empirical research results so far. the department of foreign languages at the faculty of education of constantine the philosopher university in nitra is involved in an international comenius/socrates project focused on the measurement of effectiveness and identification of key circumstances relevant for a massive application of the method at slovak schools (using the method in the environment of “small” languages where the slovak language can be ranked, advantages and risks for young children resulting from the learning of several foreign languages simultaneously, psychological and pedagogical conditions of clil, a new role of the teacher, new impulses for teacher training, new ways of testing and evaluation, development of materials suitable for clil, etc.). the experience of the schools already applying the method has shown its great didactic potential which is, consequently, expected to improve the overall quality of language teaching to younger learners. referencesreferencesreferencesreferencesreferences clil compendium. (2001). retrieved februar y 2, 2003 from http:// www.clilcompendium.com education across europe. statistics and indicators 1999. (2000). european commision: eurostat. foreign language teaching in schools in europe. (2001). european commision: eurydice. the statistic annual book of education. (1991). bratislava: ústav informácií a prognóz školstva, mláde•e a telovýchovy. the statistic annual book of education srov. (2001). bratislava: úipš. communication from the commission to the council, the european parliament, the economic and social committee and the committee of the regions. promoting language learning and linguistic diversity: action plan 2004-2006. (2003). retrieved november 24, 2003 from http:// europa.eu.int/comm/education/doc/official/ keydoc/actlang/act_lang_en.pdf this article was received on may 06th, 2004 and accepted on august 27th, 2004 131profile vol. 13, no. 2, october 2011. issn 1657-0790. bogotá, colombia. pages 131-146 teacher: can you see what i’m saying? a research experience with deaf learners profe: ¿puedes ver lo que estoy diciendo? una experiencia de investigación con alumnos sordos olga lucía ávila caica* universidad pedagógica nacional, colombia this paper reports a study carried out with eleven deaf volunteers who belonged to different academic programs at a colombian public university but did not receive english instruction as part of their professional training. the main goal of the research study was to identify the effect of using internet resources as support for the design and development of a blended english course for deaf university students. the data were collected by means of surveys, artifacts, logs and a recorded interview to understand what worked well for deaf students and what barriers could interfere with their english learning. the study revealed some insights into the learning process of deaf students and their preference for collaborative learning and tasks linked to visual media. key words: blended learning, deaf learners, english as a foreign language, english learning, internet resources. este artículo da cuenta de un estudio que se llevó a cabo con once voluntarios sordos, quienes pertenecían a diferentes programas académicos de una universidad pública colombiana, pero no recibían clases de inglés como parte de su formación profesional. el objetivo principal de la investigación fue identificar el efecto del uso de recursos de internet como apoyo en el diseño y desarrollo de un curso híbrido (presencial y virtual) para estudiantes universitarios sordos. los datos se recogieron por medio de encuestas, evidencias documentales, notas de campo y una entrevista grabada en video con el propósito de conocer qué funcionaba con los estudiantes sordos y qué obstáculos podían interferir con su aprendizaje del inglés. el estudio reveló algunas percepciones respecto al proceso de aprendizaje de los estudiantes sordos, su preferencia por el trabajo colaborativo y las actividades ligadas al medio visual. palabras clave: aprendizaje del inglés, aprendizaje híbrido, estudiantes sordos, recursos de internet. * e-mail: olavilac@hotmail.com / olgavila70@yahoo.com this article was received on january 31, 2011, and accepted on june 16, 2011. 132 universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras ávila caica introduction since 1996 colombian sign language has been officially recognized as the first language of deaf individuals and their formal education has been ruled by standards in rehabilitation, inclusion and interpretation of academic environments that promote integration and equal opportunities for everybody. however, deaf undergraduates who have been accepted in the universities under an integration framework have faced some academic obstacles set by a hearing society that promotes inclusion and recognition of difference, but does not really know what the concept of integration involves in terms of academic flexibility and alternative teaching strategies. for instance, at universidad pedagógica nacional (upn), there are about fifty deaf students who were integrated into the academic programs but do not receive english instruction as part of their educational curriculum, making them feel at a disadvantage with their hearing peers. this article is based on a research study entitled “using internet efl resources as support in the development of a blended english course for deaf university students”, which was carried out as an attempt to diminish the disadvantage of some deaf students who were immersed in a spoken-language environment that uses english as a means to cope with a growing amount of information useful for personal and professional purposes. this study involved eleven deaf student volunteers in an english blended course –designed by the teacher-researcher– which combined faceto-face sessions and some autonomous learning activities which required using efl internet re sources in order to start or improve the english learning process of the participants. the pedagogical motivation for this study was to obtain some insights into what worked well for deaf students and what barriers could interfere with their english learning in order to design and implement an official english blended course using efl internet resources. it represented a good opportunity to explore the relationship between action research and teaching in a challenging situation such as working with people with hearing disabilities. it also responded to a real academic necessity for deaf students to obtain a different relationship with the english language as a tool of knowledge and communication to be used in a friendly atmosphere of equality. the research question addressed in this project was: what is the effect of using efl internet resources as support in the development of a blended english course designed for deaf university students? answering this question implied starting a research study with emphasis on the analysis of didactic and academic issues surrounding the contact of deaf students with english as a language different from sign language and spanish which are their first and second languages, respectively. the work with some volunteer deaf students was a valuable experience from which these two subquestions emerged: • what does the use of efl internet resources in a blended english course tell us about the language learning process of deaf university students? • what insights about collaborative learning can be identified in a blended english course for deaf students? thus, the study was a reflective exercise valuable for deaf learners and hearing teachers. the former had the opportunity to start their english learning process by trying a blended learning approach, including new strategies and resources that technology provided them and the latter could get some ideas on how to integrate deaf students who attended their regular classes to improve their general academic performance. 133profile vol. 13, no. 2, october 2011. issn 1657-0790. bogotá, colombia. pages 130-146 teacher: can you see what i’m saying? a research experience with deaf learners review of related literature some theoretical aspects identified as relevant to develop this research study were: blended learning, deafness, language learning and collaborative work. blended learning the term “technology” covers a wide range of recent resources and also includes “the use of computers as a tool to communicate through means like chat and email” (sharma & barrett, 2007, p. 7). advancements in technology have influenced our environments in many ways. in the educational field, for instance, technology is seen as “the potential to engage disaffected pupils, to allow them to take control of their own learning by enabling interactive, individualized learning at the pace and level appropriate for them” (lamb, 2004, p. 2). technology is not only useful for finding and sharing information, but also effective in helping individuals with special learning needs explore new learning environments in which they can learn through the use of their other senses and abilities. it has become an effective resource to support the teaching and learning process in creative ways. it also offers new alternatives for learning independently. teachers, for example, can design courses that combine face-to-face teaching with online sessions to attain the learning goals. this is called blended learning (bl) which, according to garrison (2004), implies “rethinking and redesigning the teaching and learning relationship” (p. 95). in general terms, blended learning is seen as the combination of face-to-face classes and online instruction. according to graham and bonk (2006), bl combines the “traditional face-to-face learning environment that has been around for centuries and the learning environments that have begun to grow and expand in exponential ways as new technologies have expanded the possibilities for distributed communication and interaction” (p. 5). internet technologies have become a good support for teaching practice because they enable users (both hearing and deaf individuals) to interact and exchange information with other users, thus fostering authentic communication and real use of the target language by e-mail or chat. in a blended teaching practice, students work on computersupported activities to complement their direct contact with the teacher and their peers during the face-to-face instruction. consequently, internet technologies can play the role of tutor for students because they can access interactive websites that facilitate the practice of different languages. in the blended english course developed with deaf students, face-to-face tutorials were combined with some autonomous virtual exercises that included efl internet resources which enabled the students to learn the language at their own pace. those activities previously structured and planned by the teacher are known as learning objects (lo) and are defined as “digital files used in educational settings to support instruction” (sosteric & hesemeir, 2004, p. 17). students had to explore some websites suggested by the teacher and complete the activities of the weekly learning object which included specific learning goals and a sequence of tasks designed to achieve them properly. these learning objects encouraged students’ curiosity about english and gave them the confidence necessary to become autonomous language learners. it is important to mention that the use of e-mail facilitated the asynchronous interaction between teacher and learners as the latter had quick access to english concepts, asked questions, shared information, solved language problems, and received teacher’s feedback. “the use of e-mail rather than paper based comments offers 134 universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras ávila caica potential for more interactivity and may lead to an ongoing dialogue with students and a sense of connectedness” (macdonald, 2006, p. 59). deafness and language learning in general, deafness is defined as the inability to perceive sounds. the world health organization defines it as “the complete loss of the ability to perceive sounds which can be caused by inherited or acquired factors” (2006). however, there are different explanations and classifications of this concept and most are based on the degree of hearing loss in terms of decibels (db) ranging from mild to profound hearing loss, which is about losing 85% of the hearing capacity. according to stephen and peter (1984), in their book language and deafness, “a person is considered deaf if the hearing impairment is so great, even with good amplification, that vision becomes the person’s main link to the world and main channel of communication” (p. 1). given that “all human beings are genetically equipped with abilities that enable them to acquire a language” (brown, 2000, p. 29), deaf learners also use this innate universal capacity to learn a language and support much of their knowledge on social interaction and communication. at upn, the colombian sign language is the deaf students’ first language, although they receive some written spanish instruction to facilitate their academic mainstreaming process. however, these students have manifested their personal needs, attitudes and motivations for learning english, not only because it is the international language for communication, business and information access, but also because english gives them a competitive edge and equal educational and social opportunities. brown (2000, p. 1) states that “learning a second language is a long and complex undertaking. your whole person is affected as you struggle to reach beyond the confines of your first language into a new language, a new culture, a new way of thinking, feeling and acting”. a deaf learner, as any human being, has innate abilities and a particular learning style to get and process information, solve problems and make decisions. “ideally, a foreign (written) language should serve the deaf the same way as it serves members of the hearing society and should, therefore, fulfill cognitive, interactive, and textual functions” (macurová, 2004, p. 28 ). the proposal for designing an english course for deaf university students is relatively new in colombia and required a review of international sources of information to support the argument that english can be learned by deaf students who use their visual channel, their sign language and their knowledge of the world. two brief descriptions of previous studies de veloped in the czech republic and brazil are mentioned below to support the necessity of helping deaf students meet the challenges of learning english. the seminar entitled “teaching english to deaf and hard-of-hearing students”, organized by janáková and berent (2005), is an example of the interest shown by some european institutions and universities to promote efl classes led by hearing teachers who work with deaf learners. these classes demonstrate that students who have not learned the language features of a spoken language can learn basic english skills by using alternative strategies ranging from traditional teaching methods and approaches to new high-tech learning environments. the lecturers who participated in this seminar emphasized the necessity for trying new methods and techniques to find the best ways of teaching english to deaf students. based on their own experience, experts provided some general aspects 135profile vol. 13, no. 2, october 2011. issn 1657-0790. bogotá, colombia. pages 130-146 teacher: can you see what i’m saying? a research experience with deaf learners to be considered for designing a course for deaf learners. from their lectures, it is possible to grasp and analyze effective didactic and linguistic strategies for teaching / learning english and practical recommendations for working with deaf students. another example of pedagogical work with deaf communities was developed by skliar and quadros, in the south of brazil. they studied a bilingual, bicultural model for deaf education which has been applied using sign language as a tool to open new doors towards the literacy of deaf communities. in their opinion, “school should be considering the qualifications of deaf people to play a role in deaf education” (2005, p. 35). this research project supports the importance of sign language as the principal communication possibility for deaf people to have an identity and interact with others. based on his training and experience working with deaf children, the researcher considers that education for deaf individuals depends on the collaborative work of deaf and hearing teachers, interpreters and all the stakeholders interested in a real policy of inclusion and equality for everybody. the research experience above supports the thesis that deaf university students at upn are able to use their native colombian sign language and all the language knowledge they have learned to start or improve their personal process of learning english, including taking advantage of some technological resources and going beyond the traditional classroom instruction given in their regular academic programs. collaborative learning human beings are social by nature and this creates interdependence among them, but such interdependence does not ensure that acting collaboratively will transform their lives. it is known that collaboration implies not only interaction, but also the personal decision of being responsible for one’s own actions, including learning and respect for the abilities and contributions of the other members of the group as well as taking advantage of such interdependence to foster common positive results. collaborative learning can be seen as an instruction method in which students work in groups toward a common academic goal. macaro (1997) states that a definition for collaborative learning is “when learners are encouraged to achieve common learning goals by working to gether rather than with the teacher and when they demonstrate that they value and respect each other’s language input” (p. 134). collaborative learning is related to social constructivism and its basic statement is that the culture and the social context are important for learners’ cognitive development because learning is a social activity in which individuals do not learn by isolation, but are part of a community where each member is responsible for the others’ learning as well as his/ her own learning. in other words, each learner learns from others, reflects on his/ her own learning process and makes decisions to improve his/ her personal and autonomous learning process. it involves actions like scaffolding, sharing goals, exchanging ideas, negotiating and involving the members’ perspectives, talents and learning styles. thus, the success of one student helps other students to be successful because the active exchange of ideas increases their interest and promotes meaningful learning. in the educational environment, collaborative learning can be seen as an opportunity in which students share their abilities and talents to reach common academic goals. although collaborative learning has been applied to different levels of education, a study entitled, “does collaborative 136 universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras ávila caica learning improve efl students’ reading comprehension?”, developed by momtaz and garner at the university of malayer in 2005, enabled researchers to emphasize the teacher’s and students’ roles within a collaborative classroom. the interchange of abilities and ideas made students’ work engaging and improved their interest in the learning process. the teacher was a mediator of learning who helped students interact and interchange information. in the blended english course designed for deaf students at upn, the students became a very “close” group that had its own language, cultural customs and work strategies. during the english face-toface sessions, they showed high social interaction and spontaneously helped each other in different ways, from looking up the meaning of a word in the dictionary to sharing a grammar explanation without asking for the teacher’s intervention. all participants had opportunities to learn from each other. the collaborative learning approach increased students’ interaction and stimulated their cognitive, linguistic and social abilities because they had more opportunities to share with their partners and more chances to identify grammar and vocabulary mistakes to be corrected by their peers. palloff and pratt (2007) state that “by learning together in a learning community, students have the opportunity to extend and deepen their learning experience, test out new ideas by sharing them with a supportive group, and receive critical and constructive feedback” (p. 158). the authors also stressed the fact that the students improve their social interaction in the group discussions and their collaborative reading, especially with regard to saving time and energy. these statements provide arguments to support the analysis of collaborative learning in the blended course designed for deaf students at upn. there, the role of the hearing teacher went beyond setting the class contents, designing the learning tasks and leading the process which are all common actions in a regular language class. deaf students had an active role because they usually worked in groups by taking the responsibility for their own learning. they used their background knowledge, learning strategies, personal experiences and innate skills as valuable raw materials to help and encourage each other to learn the new language concepts. this collaborative tendency was also evident when deaf learners found useful interactive resources or attractive english grammar web sites and interchanged them with their hearing and deaf partners by sending them via e-mail or adding announcements and comments to the project’s blog. this made e-learning resources useful and available for the deaf just as they serve members of the hearing society. in general, the teaching and learning strategies in which english knowledge is built –taking into account students’ opinions and own experiences to connect the language learning with their real language necessities– are now facilitated by online technologies. this demands reflection about the teacher’s role, the social interaction and the learning opportunities promoted by collaborative learning under a social constructivist approach. methodology the type of study followed in the project was action research (ar) which is defined by sagor (2000) as a “disciplined process of enquiry conducted by and for those taking the action. the primary reason for engaging in ar is to assist the actors in improving or refining his or her actions” (p. 1). the ar methodology applied in the project enabled a hearing teacher to conduct a classroombased study to explore issues related to the learning process of her deaf students in order to refine or adopt effective teaching strategies to fulfill their english language needs. 137profile vol. 13, no. 2, october 2011. issn 1657-0790. bogotá, colombia. pages 130-146 teacher: can you see what i’m saying? a research experience with deaf learners data collection the data collection instruments chosen for carrying out the study were an initial survey, re searcher’s logs, students’ artifacts, a video recorded interview and a final survey. surveys sagor (2000) considers surveys popular instruments because they “are efficient and versatile, useful to gather data concerning affective, cognitive or attitudinal issues” (p. 104). deaf students filled out an initial survey, useful to determine their profile, their motivation towards english learning and their use of instructional technology. they also filled out a final survey which was applied to learn their opinion about the blended methodology and their level of satisfaction after finishing the piloted english course. researcher’s logs sagor (2000) also defines logs as “an even simpler way to collect data on student involvement” (p. 103). the written notes taken by the researcher were useful to get some insights about the classroom interactions and the students’ reactions towards the tasks proposed during the face-to-face sessions. behaviors, responses, attitudes, gestures and other aspects were identified with direct observation and recorded in short logs which enabled the researcher to build a summary of significant findings that occurred in the classroom during the implementation of the project. artifacts along the course, the written products, known as “artifacts” and produced by students, were usually submitted to the teacher by e-mail. these descriptive texts assigned as homework were useful to check the students’ grammar and vocabulary improvement and compare their progress at the beginning, during, and at the end of the process. they also enabled the teacher to analyze some students’ personal reactions and motivations towards the course. according to burns (2005), “collecting samples of texts over a period of time enables teachers to assess the progress which students make as well as diagnose areas for further action in classroom research” (p. 140). video recorded formal interview the students and the researcher participated in a formal interview with the help of an interpreter to learn students’ opinions about the course and receive suggestions for improving the methodological strategies applied. this interview gave students the opportunity to freely share those points they felt were valuable and enabled the researcher to identify useful information to be linked with the project research question. this “allowed the teacher to observe many facets of her teaching quickly” (hopkins 2008, p. 132). the instruments mentioned above were complemented with the researcher’s notes and had the objective of collecting the data in a systematic way. while instruments like logs and interviews helped the researcher to register information about the events during the workshops, the surveys and interviews allowed her to verify and control the data given by the participants. the pedagogical intervention the project started as a proposal to address the identified interest of a group of deaf students who wanted english instruction as part of their professional qualification process. it required the presence of a sign language interpreter who listened to the spoken teacher’s instructions and explanations given in spanish and then signed the message to the deaf students so they could 138 universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras ávila caica understand what was being spoken and react to the signed message. the interpreter also acted as a communicative mediator who always accompanied the hearing teacher with deaf students during the face-to-face sessions. the first step was sharing the course proposal with the deaf students for their acceptance. the students completed an initial survey designed to get their insights about the english learning process and their internet and e-mail habits. then, the researcher explained the features of a blended course and the possible impact of the project in order to open an english course for them as an official elective subject. the face-to-face sessions were set according to the students’ time availability. the next step was to plan the lessons based on the information gathered which indicated that deaf participants were interested in learning basic grammar, vocabulary and expressions to get in contact with their friends, follow instructions, make descriptions and ask and give personal information. over two months, face-to-face classes took place once a week and were complemented by virtual efl activities designed by the teacher. classes were usually planned taking into account the students’ language needs and their progress in the previous lesson. during the face-to-face sessions some strategies from the grammar translation method such as using grammar charts to explain the language structure, doing written exercises for completing the gaps and translating sentences from english into spanish were useful to reinforce the topic or grammar structure studied. anderson (1993) states that “when grammar is viewed as functional, when it is explained to the deaf learner as an integral part of meaning, then, the acquisition of rules and forms will seem an essential part of the communicative process” (p. 275). for the teaching process, a variety of handouts, printed materials and learning objects produced with word processing software was designed by the teacher. this included grammar explanations and practical exercises linked to visual complements which enabled deaf learners to “visualize” the language, reinforce some basic concepts and enrich vocabulary. by e-mail, students also received a learning guide to explore efl internet learning resources including high visual input and interactive activities such as grammar tests and crosswords. this autonomous activity was useful for stimulating students’ interest in learning english, identifying their language progress and language needs and making decisions to support their professional growth. nunan (1996) proposes awareness as “the starting point to empower students’ role in their learning process and finding a new way of interaction with their peers and teachers to be more autonomous” (p. 298). data analysis the aims of the project were focused on designing and implementing an english course for deaf learners using efl internet resources to identify their effect on students’ learning process. to analyze such information, the content analysis method was chosen because it is a strategy for qualitative analysis that emphasizes meaning rather than quantification and helps the researcher to build an interpretation of important data sources like gestures and non-verbal communication which are important aspects to analyze when working with deaf participants. according to burns (2005), “content analysis is commonly used with written forms of data to uncover incidences of certain words, phrases or key themes. however, it also has been used in observations to focus on such things as gestures, touching, domineering behavior, and so on” (p. 156). 139profile vol. 13, no. 2, october 2011. issn 1657-0790. bogotá, colombia. pages 130-146 teacher: can you see what i’m saying? a research experience with deaf learners the content analysis technique enabled the researcher to make some inferences about the language learning process of deaf university students by examining the information trends and patterns obtained in several data collection instruments. this qualitative method was useful to systematically analyze and describe the language improvement effects of applying particular di dactics (internet resources) with a particular population (deaf students) in a particular context (blended course). once the data analysis approach was defined, it was necessary to assemble the data collected and develop a triangulation process to increase their validity. sagor (2000) defines the term triangulation as “the use of multiple independent data sources to corroborate findings” (p. 19). in order to do this, the researcher analyzed the data collected using different instruments. she also compared and contrasted the data to identify relevant aspects immersed in the project’s development. findings after comparing and contrasting the data gathered, the researcher set an open coding strategy which is a “process of attempting to reduce the large amount of data that may be collected to more manageable categories of concepts, themes or types” (burns 2005, p. 166). the coding strategy used was color coding which consists of assigning a different color to each group of patterns that make a category directly related to the research sub-questions. after exploring the data gathered and applying the color coding, three categories and two sub categories related to the research questions emerged. the first main category refers to the use of efl internet resources as an effective didactic strategy to support a blended english course designed for deaf students. the subcategories deduced from this category refer to students’ language improvement, autonomy enhancement and motivation as a result of the effectiveness of the didactic strategy. the second main category pinpoints the pedagogical strategy and internet tools linked to the visual and written necessities of deaf students during the development of the course. the last main category characterizes the work performed by deaf participants during the face-to-face sessions. figure 1 presents the categories mentioned above along with the subcategories which respond to the main question: what is the effect of using efl internet resources to support a blended course designed for deaf university students? an effective didactic strategy a tool that responds to visual and written excercises a tool to enhance collaborative work autonomy enhancement language improvement motivation categories !! figure 1. categories and sub-categories category 1. the use of efl internet resources as an effective didactic strategy data taken from the recorded interview supported the fact that most students used efl internet resources to complete the virtual activities assigned by the teacher and found them to be an effective didactic strategy to improve their language level, enhance their autonomy and maintain their motivation throughout the english learning proc ess. these three sub-categories are explained in the text below. 140 universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras ávila caica language improvement since the initial survey, deaf students manifested their necessity to learn the target language to cope with an increasing amount of written information in english and to communicate by means of messages and written texts. in addition, they manifested their tendency for using internet as an opportunity to leave the traditional learning environment and obtain knowledge autonomously. as tappscott (2009) states, “they need to expand their knowledge beyond the doors of their local community to become responsible and contrib uting global citizens in the increasingly complex world economy” (p. 119). the following extract shows how after the project’s implementation, students agreed on the effectiveness of the internet in a blended learning environment to reinforce the language concepts and develop independent work with a fast, free and useful tool. they expressed their main interest in learning grammar and developing their vocabulary from an english written text. specifically, they manifested their interest in enriching their vocabulary and understanding verbs as fundamental aspects of the language learning that are facilitated by internet tools like e-mail and online dictionaries. the questions and answers given by deaf students were in spanish which is their second language. the samples included hereafter were translated for the purpose of this publication. on the internet i can find verbs, i search verbs and images; then, i can corroborate what i’m thinking or correcting if i’m wrong. the same thing happens about spanish, i can look for verbs in english and the computer dictionary supports me in this process. on internet, i use search engines such as google and i learn words; this allows me to use different terms in english, practicing it. i use online dictionaries. i like it much because i can look for words quickly. (excerpt no. 1, video interview 1, students 6, 7, 9 and 10) the extracts above evidenced two aspects of the learning style of deaf students related to the use of internet as an effective tool to check vocabulary meaning and the role of grammar in their english learning process. the final survey provided data to support the use of the internet as an effective didactic strategy to improve english learning. the results indicated that a high percentage of students found the blended course (two face-to face hours and a weekly virtual session) effective and that the use of the internet had supported their language learning process significantly. in addition, most students confirmed that they had completed the virtual activities and many participants said that their english level had improved considerably after taking the course. autonomy enhancement smith (2000) defines autonomy as “the ability to develop appropriate skills, knowledge and attitudes for oneself as a teacher, in cooperation with others” (p. 90). deaf students, like hearing learners, can develop those abilities to achieve professional academic purposes. to do this, they need to see the variety of available strategies useful for exploring and expanding their own skills to find out what they really need to support their professional growth and encourage them to be autonomous. the following excerpts provide evidence de tailing students’ opinions about the use of the internet as a tool that promotes their autonomous learning of the target language. have you ever used the internet to learn english? why? (excerpt no. 2, video interview 1, interviewer’s question) yes, it supports english learning completely because i can practice it and i can learn it online; i can reinforce concepts for not just being dependent on what is taught in the class. i can use other strategies outside. 141profile vol. 13, no. 2, october 2011. issn 1657-0790. bogotá, colombia. pages 130-146 teacher: can you see what i’m saying? a research experience with deaf learners i think what my partner says is important. after all, we can learn by ourselves. (excerpt no. 2, video interview 1, students 9 and 11) in the excerpt, the students express their selfconfidence and autonomy towards self-monitoring and analyze their own learning processes by using the didactic strategy which also supports their language learning. motivation as deaf students themselves decided to participate in a project which pursued the study of english as a foreign language to meet a goal that was self-imposed, the researcher noticed that they were motivated towards learning the target language. the sample in figure 2 supports motivation as the third subcategory framed from the use of the internet as a didactic strategy. the log written by the teacher describes the students’ motivation towards the course in general, and the effectiveness of the blended strategy supported by internet resources in particular. october 27th, 2009 the university classrooms have been blocked. there are no regular academic classes. i have been in contact with my deaf students by e-mail. they have explored some efl internet resources to reinforce basic concepts like colors and adjectives. seven students wrote me back giving a positive opinion about the assigned tasks. they even want more links to practice by themselves. they are also worried about the face-to-face classes. figure 2. teacher’s log about students’ motivation the fact that students kept in contact with the teacher, did the assigned virtual tasks and asked for extra sources during a recess period evidenced their high intrinsic motivation towards learning english by using the internet resources suggested. in other words, they had “an internal desire and want to be engaged in an activity for the pleasure and satisfaction it produces” (deci & ryan, 1985, p. 116). the personalized interview also enabled the researcher to confirm the effectiveness of the inter net as a didactic strategy that fostered participants’ motivation. the following excerpt is an example of this: what role does the internet have in your english learning? how do you use it to support your learning process? (excerpt no. 3, video interview 1, interviewer’s question) this is my first time and i feel weak, but i know that all of this is making me stronger. although the work with internet, the images and the virtual guides have been surprising, they have been strengthening me. i like browsing in internet, i do not know, things like projects, things useful for teaching english for children. i like everything that appears with the word “junior”, i find it interesting because there are things that i can learn. (excerpt no. 3, video interview 1, students 6 and 8) the answers above show students’ tendency for using the internet as an effective and attractive strategy to complement the face-to-face sessions which are necessary to follow the course path. finally, the last survey also provided insights to support the students’ motivation after taking the english course in a blended modality. the results showed that most students were highly motivated towards language learning. in addition, nearly all the participants graded their level of satisfaction after the course as very satisfactory. as can be seen and accounted for in the explanations and excerpts above, english language learning, autonomy and motivation of deaf students who voluntarily participated in the study increased as a result of the use of the internet as a didactic strategy. 142 universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras ávila caica category 2. internet, a tool that responds to visual and written necessities the second main category emphasizes the internet as a useful tool linked to the visual and written necessities of deaf students during the development of a blended english course. for them, learning a language that is auditory-based can be an extremely difficult task. consequently, they require a high quantity of visual input to help them to improve their writing, particularly grammar and vocabulary, which are the basics for communicating their ideas and thoughts. writing is the most important ability to be developed in an english course for deaf students. and in this research study, students frequently demanded explanations about specific grammar or vocabulary during the face-to-face sessions. the extract in figure 3 describes the teacher’s reflection about the necessity of grammar explanation. today, i asked my deaf students to write descriptive texts and i found that some strategies from the grammar translation method were useful for them. for example, it was necessary to give them the grammar structure of a sentence subject + verb + complement to guide them in the writing of some simple descriptive sentences. i noticed that they asked for qualitative adjectives to be used in their text (next class i have to work on adjectives). students also found it difficult to use adjectives to describe attitudes or behaviors. in addition, spelling mistakes were common and the conjugation of verbs in third person needs to be explained once again. figure 3. teacher’s log about students’ grammar needs besides the difficulties described in the excerpt above, in the final interview students also pointed out their necessity for grammar and vocabulary in the course. the following excerpt shows some vocabulary and grammar difficulties mentioned by them about the writing process: what difficulties have you found in your english learning process? (excerpt no. 4, video interview 1, interviewer’s question) definitely, the vocabulary has been difficult for me. i get distressed when i’m not sure about a word. when writing i’m sure about the sentence structure; i know the exact place of each word, but i get confused about the vocabulary. what it has been difficult for me is that i have considered spanish as a long language. i mean, when writing spanish i usually write long paragraphs. however, i noticed that everything is short in english. everything is a kind of summary. i get confused because of that. the same as my classmates, the verbs, the vocabulary, and the sentence organization, have been difficult. i do not know where locating the words. (excerpt no. 4, video interview 1, students 1, 2 and 3) the extracts above show two features of the language which are difficult for any language learner: syntax and right word choice. students also manifested the use of spanish as a comparative structure to support their language writing process. another aspect that is remarkable in students’ samples is that because of their limited vocabulary and the lack of descriptors in their written expression, they require a high quantity of visual input to complement their writing and find the resources available on the web useful. the samples in figures 4 and 5 exemplify students’ preference for using visual support taken from the web when writing their short texts. figure 4. artifact 1 sent by e-mail, october 6th, 2009 • diana j is love. • she is skinng. • she have golden hair. • she is student. • she have andres´s married. 143profile vol. 13, no. 2, october 2011. issn 1657-0790. bogotá, colombia. pages 130-146 teacher: can you see what i’m saying? a research experience with deaf learners figure 5. artifact 2 sent by e-mail, october 6th, 2009 checking the samples above, the teacher could analyze some common vocabulary and grammar errors to identify a student’s particular stage in the learning process. by comparing the image with the descriptive text, teachers and students can identify errors easily and correct them, increasing the learners’ understanding of language aspects. given that deaf students do not “hear” the linguistic information and have to “see the language” expressed by images, gestures, body move ments and sign language, they found the use of visual aids for vocabulary to be the most effective teaching strategy during the course. the final interview also reinforced the use of internet resources as a useful source of iconic language that responds to the visual and written necessities of deaf learners. the following excerpt, taken from the final interview, confirms this fact: have you learned anything in this course? how much have you learned? (excerpt no. 5, video interview 1, interviewer’s question) for me the class has been good; the process and the vocabulary that we have used clarifying the male or female gender and the use of drawings to support the vocabulary enables me to match images and words. with this visual component i can learn quickly. i can develop my third language love drawings. for instance, i like concepts related to the woman’s description saying that she is very beautiful. this kind of things enables me to have a clear concept. i agree; the images in the worksheets give me clarity and enable me to have the ability. (excerpt no. 5 video interview n º 1 students 1, 3 and 5) the samples above show how future deaf teachers recognize their visual learning style and the written necessities to learn english for personal and professional purposes as well as the use of the internet as a strategy that responds to those needs. category 3. blended strategy: a tool that enhances collaborative work humans obtain knowledge through social interaction and communication and the group of deaf participants showed some strategies for spontaneous collaborative work to help them develop self-confidence and effectiveness in their personal and group english process. during the face-to-face sessions of the course, deaf learners demonstrated excellent group work skills and positive learning motivation. the course became a “meeting place” for some of them who belonged to different academic programs at the university and did not have frequent contact with their deaf peers. in addition, some students showed their teaching abilities by providing each other with grammar and vocabulary explanations using their first language. according to brown (2000), “collaborative learning aims at having students work with those students who have more knowledge to get guidance or orientation” (p. 122). the following excerpt was taken from a re corded interview and supported the deaf students’ preference for collaborative work in the face-toface session. how do you prefer working in the course? alone? on a team? is it insignificant for you? (excerpt no. 6, video interview 1, interviewer’s question) i think that working in groups is better because i can share, i can feed me from the others’ experience. there are some partners who know more than me and i learn from their knowledge. the university is to share the knowledge and it’s for everybody to improve. • he is strange • he is sad. • he is tall. • he is help the task with the friend. 144 universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras ávila caica i think that for this class specifically, it is easier working in teams because all of us are deaf. if we had a hearing person in class, he/she would get the information faster with his/ her hearing sense and i would feel in disadvantage. this class is very different from the others. in different subjects we work in different ways, but here as we are deaf, we like working in teams. it is easier working among deaf students because for working in a mixed group with hearing people i must agree with them and it is really necessary to have a sign language interpreter. however, if i am only with deaf partners, the class goes faster and i save time. (excerpt no. 6. video interview n º 1 students 1, 4 and 8) the samples above supported the design and development of an english course for deaf learners only who enhanced their identity as a particular group of people who do not use a spoken language to communicate with each other. students’ preference for collaborative work is also shown in the figure 6, based on a final survey in which most participants considered that the group’s collaborative work had a high positive influence on their personal english learning. figure 6. students’ opinion about collaborative work the greatest benefit of this collaborative work was reflected in the friendly class environment and the willingness to work that most of the students showed. this was also perceived by the researcher in one of her logs (see figure 7). october 18th, 2009 the familiarity and casual atmosphere fostered students’ participation making them feel included, valued, and respected. students enjoyed the activ ities and they showed highly collaborative work. they helped each other by explaining or giving examples of new concepts. i noticed that each student is explicitly conscious of self and others and all have a common objective: learning english. figure 7. teacher’s log about collaborative work in the text above the teacher emphasizes that students felt comfortable while learning from their peers, became actively involved in the process and promoted the importance of participating in a course led by a hearing teacher. conclusions and implications deaf students are people first, and deaf second and they arrive at university with a wide range of experiences, expectations, talents and skills. teaching these individuals implies much more than designing a lesson plan and implementing an “effective” strategy. it involves recognizing their innate learning abilities before mentioning their potential disabilities and being ready to deal with all the possible aspects and challenges that make every class and every group of students unique. deaf students consider english quite important to feel as equal members of a hearing society that uses english as a tool to grasp the world. they appreciate the opportunity to take an english course, interact directly with the teacher and their peers, and show a positive attitude towards the learning process. efl internet resources as support for the development of an english course designed for deaf university students allow the exploration of all the resources that technology provides to enrich their to what extend did the teamwork and your partners’ collaboration have an influence on your english learning proccess? it had a high incidence it had some incidence it had a low incidence it did not have incidence 0 0,5 1 1,5 2 2,5 3 3,5 4 4,5 145profile vol. 13, no. 2, october 2011. issn 1657-0790. bogotá, colombia. pages 130-146 teacher: can you see what i’m saying? a research experience with deaf learners learning process. it is an effective way of making the english teaching process more practical and dynamic providing, at the same time, students with flexible schedules and new learning strategies. deaf learners can take advantage of their expertise by surfing on the web to identify, process, organize, and prioritize new information for learning a language, using the internet tools that fulfill their learning needs of getting a high visual component and developing written communication. collaborative work is preferred by deaf stu dents who use only sign language to express their ideas and comments in a class that demand of them a similar rhythm and level of participation. when they work together they provide immediate feedback and make peerand self-corrections which contribute to the reflection and learning of the group. since deaf students have very different personn al, communicative and educational backgrounds, they feel comfortable sharing their experiences and learning from their peers. when they work together, they enjoy peer review and immediate feedback and are receptive to self-correction based on the comments or suggestions given by the teacher or another student. they feel that they learn better when they are actively involved in the process and prefer to interact and work collaboratively by using only sign language to express their ideas and comments in a class that demands from them a similar rhythm and level of participation. about the learning process of deaf students, a high visual support is required for a better understanding of grammar and vocabulary explanations, but also required is a different rhythm in the class to “capture” all the information given by the teacher and translated by an interpreter. in addition, like their hearing peers, deaf learners focus their language learning on aspects like grammar and vocabulary and find it difficult to conjugate verbs and write sentences syntactically correct. fortunately, internet resources used in a blended environment designed for deaf learners can provide teachers with effective strategies to deal with the visual and written necessities implied in their english learning process. the blended course with face-to-face sessions and online tasks is effective for deaf students in terms of flexibility, time management and autonomy. learners can set their own times and rhythms to complete the assigned written tasks, working at their own pace, without the interpreter’s help and with the possibility of reviewing by themselves several times to identify and correct possible mistakes. finally, the overall high ratings and positive comments given by the participants of the course confirm that the combination of technological resources available on the web, coupled with the traditional educational resources to teach efl as part of a blended course, improves deaf students’ motivation, autonomy and language learning. they feel immersed in an up-to-date teaching-learning process that recognizes their needs, promotes collaborative work and provides them with a learning environment that is flexible enough to learn english as a foreign language under an educational policy of inclusion and equality. references anderson, j. (1993). beyond “small words and grammar”: linguistic analysis and deaf writers: towards pedagogy of meaning and representation. michigan: linstok. brown, h. (2000). principles of language learning and teaching. new york, ny: pearson. burns, a. (2005). collaborative action research for english lan­ guage teaching. cambridge: cambridge university press. deci, e., & ryan, r. (1985). intrinsic motivation and self­ determination in human behavior. new york, ny: plenum. 146 universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras ávila caica garrison, r., & kanuka, h. (2004). blended learning: uncovering its transformative potential in higher education. the internet and higher education, 7(2), 2nd quarter, 95-105. graham, c., & bonk, c. j. (2006). the handbook of blended learning: global perspectives, local designs. san francisco: pfeiffer. hopkins, d. (2008). a teacher’s guide to classroom research. edinburgh: open university press. janáková, d., & berent, g. (eds.). (2005). proceedings 2004: the second prague international seminar on teaching english to the deaf and hard­of­hearing students. prague, czech republic: the karolinum press. lamb, t. (2004). learning independently? pedagogical and methodological implications of new learning environments. proceeding of the independent learning confer­ ence. retrieved from http://independentlearning.org/ tla/ila03.lamb.pdf macaro, e. (1997). target language, collaborative learning and autonomy. great britain: wbc book manufactures. macdonald, j. (2006). blended learning and online tutoring: a good practice guide. london: ashgate publishing. macurová, a. (2004). an introduction to principles of language learning. the second prague international sem­ inar on teaching english to deaf and hard­of­hearing students at secondary and tertiary level. university, prague, czech republic. retrieved from http://jc.ff. cuni.cz/mmp/smp.pdf momtaz, e., & gardner, n. (2010). does collaborative learning improve efl students’ reading comprehension? journal of linguistics and language teaching. 1(1), 1536. nunan, d. (1996). the self­directed teacher: managing the learning process. cambridge: cambridge university press. palloff, r., & pratt, k. (2007). building online learning com­ munities. london: wiley. sagor, r. (2000). guiding school improvement with action research. us: ascd publications. sharma, p., & barret, b. (2007). blended learning: using technology in and beyond the language classroom. london: macmillan education. skliar, c., & quadros, r.(2005). bilingual deaf education in the south of brazil. in a. de mejía (ed.). bilingual education in south america (pp. 35-47). great britain: cromwell press. smith, r. c. (2000). starting with ourselves: teacher-learner autonomy in language learning. in b. sinclair, i. mcgrath, & t. lamb (eds.) learner autonomy, teacher autonomy: future directions (pp. 89-99). london: longman. sosteric, m., & hesemeir, s. (2004). a first step towards a theory of learning objects. in r. mcgreal (ed.). online education using learning objects (pp. 17-82). london: routledge-falmer. stephen, p., & peter, v. (1984). language and deafness. boston: college hill press. world health organization [who] (2006). fact sheet 300 (march, 2006). retrieved from http://whqlibdoc.who.int/fact_sheet/2006/fs_300.pdf about the author olga lucía ávila caica holds a ba in modern languages from universidad pedagógica nacional, a specialization in literature teaching from universidad la gran colombia and a master’s degree in english language teaching from la sabana university. she also has a certificate in english language teaching (icelt) from cambridge university. profile 10.indd teacher collaboration in a public school to set up language resource centers: portraying advantages... profile 10, 2008. issn 1657-0790. bogotá, colombia. pages 147-162 147 * this paper reports on a study conducted by the author while participating as assistant to the profile research group during the development of the programa de actualización para el uso pedagógico de los centros de recursos de idiomas en la localidad cuarta de san cristóbal, in 2005. the program was sponsored by secretaría de educación de bogotá, d.c. code number: 30102004391, universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas. ** e-mail: javirse@yahoo.com.mx address: diagonal 146 no. 136a 59 int. 7 apto 528, suba. this article was received on march 25, 2008 and accepted on july 23, 2008. teacher collaboration in a public school to set up language resource centers: portraying advantages, benefits, and challenges* trabajo cooperativo de profesores de un colegio público para crear centros de recursos de lenguas: retrato de sus ventajas, beneficios y desafíos javier augusto rojas serrano** universidad nacional de colombia in the present article, the author attempts to describe the benefits, challenges, advantages and disadvantages experienced by teachers in a public school when working collaboratively to implement a language resource center in their institution. taking as a point of departure the development of a proposal to implement the resource center in their school, some teachers engaged in group work in order to attain the different objectives that were stated at the beginning of the process, thus encountering a number of difficulties and challenges. when overcome, these difficulties and challenges rendered good opportunities for teachers to develop further in their professional and personal life as well as to improve the school environment and classroom practice. key words: collaborative work, language resource center, teacher professional development en el presente artículo, el autor se propone describir los beneficios, desafíos, ventajas y desventajas que un grupo de profesores de un colegio público encontraron al trabajar colaborativamente para implementar un centro de recursos de idiomas. tomando como punto de partida la construcción de su propuesta de implementación del centro de recursos para la institución, algunos profesores decidieron trabajar en grupo para alcanzar los objetivos planteados al comienzo del proceso, encontrando una serie de dificultades y desafíos. al superar dichas dificultades y desafíos, los docentes hallaron oportunidades para su desarrollo profesional y personal así como para el mejoramiento del ambiente escolar y del ejercicio docente. palabras clave: trabajo colaborativo, centro de recursos de lenguas, desarrollo profesional docente profile 10, 2008. issn 1657-0790. bogotá, colombia. pages 147-162 profile 10.indd 147 23/10/2008 8:46:25 rojas serrano universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras148 introduction the teaching profession has always been regarded as an important milestone in modern society. francisco imbernón (1997), in the introduction to “la formación y el desarrollo profesional del profesorado” (teachers’ professional training and development) highlights the increasing interest in teacher development, which is reflected in several forms, such as publications, lectures, reports and academic studies in general. this fact may be due to the recognition of teachers as powerful social elements, whose commitment influences social change and development, work relations, values and citizenship, as well as historical and cultural identity. because of the multifunctional presence of teachers in society, the studies devoted to their actions, activities and practices focus on many specific and individual aspects regarding the profession, viewed by scholars from varied academic fields. although in colombia there is an increasing interest in teacher development issues in the area of languages, there is still a lack of studies related to practical and actual examples of actions undertaken by teacher development movements in the colombian educational panorama, though this does not mean that these are non-existent (gonzález, 2003, p. 88). given this context, the present paper describes one of those ongoing joint efforts of school teachers aiming to reach a common goal in their institution, highlighting, in particular, the advantages, disadvantages, benefits and challenges made evident in this type of interaction. undoubtedly, these attempts and activities are to be recorded, studied and analyzed because they will contribute to a large extent to the understanding of the colombian teaching context, with its particular characteristics, needs and requirements, as well as of the teachers who are key elements in this dynamic. as an assistant to a teacher updating program on the use of resource centers for language learning, i had the opportunity to work closely with teachers belonging to 5 public schools in the process of building proposals with the ultimate goal of setting up these centers in their institutions. this program, carried out in 2005 by the profile research group of the foreign languages department of the universidad nacional de colombia in bogotá and sponsored by the secretary of education of the city, focused on three major components; namely, language development, elt methodology and use of the resource centers. grupo de investigación profile & programa alex (2004) offer a very comprehensive perspective of this program in the project presented to the secretary of education of bogotá. the writing and implementation of proposals for these resource centers entailed the exploration and analysis of current english curriculum and syllabi, review of methodologies and pedagogical approaches, assessment and evaluation of students’ real levels of proficiency, and acknowledgment of resource center philosophies, among many other tasks. hence, undertaking group work and collaborative efforts was decisive and, furthermore, absolutely necessary among teachers belonging to the same institution. as a witness of the processes and outcomes of teachers’ cooperation and common pursuance of determined profile 10.indd 148 23/10/2008 8:46:26 teacher collaboration in a public school to set up language resource centers: portraying advantages... profile 10, 2008. issn 1657-0790. bogotá, colombia. pages 147-162 149 goals, i became greatly interested in their perceptions and challenges while engaging in collaborative endeavors during the program. the question leading the present study was: what does the process of group work undertaken in bogotá by teachers from a public school –in order to set up a resource center– tell us about teacher development activities and their characteristics within the colombian context? taking this question as a point of departure, the following other queries also arose: which are the most salient patterns of group work that emerge from such a process? how are those patterns of group work reflected in the proposal to set up the resource center? what are the feelings and perceptions of teachers with regard to teacher development activities and programs? in order to address these questions as accurately as possible, i will first offer a brief yet comprehensive description of the context in which this study was produced, followed by the theories and previous works related to the research questions. afterwards, i will explain the reasons for choosing a qualitative approach (case study) that helped me construct the subsequently delineated methodological framework. the research findings and their ensuing pedagogical implications and limitations will follow. finally, i will propose some paths for further research and draw some conclusions out from the study. context and research focus this study was carried out among teachers belonging to one of five public education institutions involved in the teacher updating development program1 called ‘programa de actualización para el uso pedagógico de los centros de recursos de idiomas en la localidad cuarta de san cristóbal’. this particular school was chosen because it had the most difficult geographical conditions as regards undertaking group work as well as the largest group of teachers taking part in the program among all the participating schools. this public school belongs to the localidad de san cristobal, in the southeast of bogotá, and has three campuses in different sectors of the zone, corresponding to the school headquarters or sede a, and sedes b and c. according to the information provided by the participating teachers throughout the process, this school serves a community from the lowest social strata, whose members are usually employees such as housekeepers, bricklayers, concierges, shop assistants, among others. most of them do not have steady jobs, are underpaid or unemployed. their levels of education generally do not allow them to help their children with academic assignments or to reinforce what children learn at school. the school population is about 3,000 students. in general, the most frequent problems found in the school have to do with violence, gangs, adolescent pregnancy, drugs, family violence, parental divorce, among others. this may produce, sooner or later, low academic 1 this program held as its main objective to update teachers in pedagogical and practical uses of resource centers, which also included new methodologies and approaches to the teaching of english as well as the philosophies and fundamentals of these centers. profile 10.indd 149 23/10/2008 8:46:26 rojas serrano universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras150 performance or even separation from all school contact. the academic activities in the school are based on its pei (school education project), which emphasizes science and technology. that is to say, the basis of this educational project is founded on subjects such as mathematics, biology, physics, and similar sciences. the area of languages (including the study of spanish, the mother tongue) has just an instrumental aim, as stated by the teachers themselves; this area is thought to serve in the achievement of high levels in the presentation and exposition of the “main subjects”. even though the main purpose of the updating program was to help teachers come up with a proposal to implement a resource center for languages in their institution, these teachers were not all teachers of languages. from a group of 35 teachers, only 3 were actually teachers of english; the others were primary all-round subject teachers who taught children of ages ranging from 5 to 10. these teachers were also interested in learning english or improving their proficiency, and regarded the program and the resource center as tools that they could also take advantage of. these 35 teachers, who represented one of the five participating schools, were part of the 125 teachers that partook of the whole program. all teachers were aware that the main purpose of their work was the setting up of the resource center to support the teaching of english at their schools. literature review based on the analysis of the objectives of this study, three main areas emerged as target constructs of research: teacher training and development, collaborative work among teachers, and the resource center philosophies and principles. these areas make up the spine of this research and lead the basic structure for subsequent analysis. teacher training and development according to molina (2000), “teacher training refers to preparation and professional development of teachers”, and he describes pre-service instruction as the best example of teacher training. it has to do with “basic teaching skills, techniques, and activities, and the teaching and exploration of the four language skills” (molina, 2000, p. 84). teacher development, on the other hand, refers to in-service programs which are directed to ongoing professional development and involves further reflexive and analytic skills. it means that the professional teacher needs to develop theories, awareness of options and decision-making abilities (richards & nunan, 1990). from my viewpoint, the factor that really makes the difference between teacher training and teacher development is, precisely, reflection. this perception is not far from molina’s ideas, in the sense that in pre-service instruction students cannot reflect upon a professional practice that they are not undergoing yet; so, they can just receive instruction in language use, methodologies and pedagogical skills from a theoretical perspective (even though many language teaching programs in colombia may offer teaching practice and profile 10.indd 150 23/10/2008 8:46:26 teacher collaboration in a public school to set up language resource centers: portraying advantages... profile 10, 2008. issn 1657-0790. bogotá, colombia. pages 147-162 151 microteaching, but not in a sustainable way). teacher development, on the other hand, is directed to in-service teachers whose real practice allows them to implement direct changes into their pedagogical activity. the profile research group has contributed to this study by doing research and publishing papers in the area of teacher development in colombia. this group has continuously offered valuable information on this matter since 1995, when it started to run teacher development programs in the public as well as private sector. the number of action research projects in these programs is outstanding. the program leads teachers that participate in the programs to carry out an action research project in order to tackle classroom problems. this means that a program for 120 teachers may yield 30 to 40 projects depending on the number of teachers in each group. many of these have also been published as research reports. research areas, according to cárdenas (2004), include topics as varied as approaches to language teaching, language skills, teaching aids (visual aids and computers), and curriculum. in the case of the present study, teachers were immersed in a teacher development endeavor in the colombian context since they were also in-service teachers who could apply the contents of the program to their daily teaching practice. even though language issues as well as methodological training are important areas for teachers, and were taken into account in this study as ways to apply pedagogical issues on teachers’ language development, we concentrated on networking and the collaborative work created by the participating teachers. collaborative work among teachers working in groups is one of the landmarks in contemporary work relations of our society. individuality can hardly be effective in a world where alliances and associations have to be attained in order to compete and gain major recognition. however, these relations have to be built very carefully since “the group is for human beings a primary need and a primary threat at the same time” (bonals, 2000, p. 5). the seed of group work also has to be watered in the school since, as imbernón (1997, p. 97) claims, “many collaborative efforts in the educational institutions may fail because some characteristics of collaborative work are not implemented”. some of these characteristics, according to the same author, are the following: changing the kind of teaching staff – development and getting a new organization based on collective interests organizing working groups among – teachers establishing clear processes of – educational collaboration in the school improving the communication process – among peers, including frequency and quality of interactions. according to imbernón, “the relationship between development and changing processes is given by the capacity of interaction among teachers” (imbernón, 1997, p. 97). one of the best assets of the updating program, in which this study was framed, had to do with the enhancement of group work among the teachers belonging to profile 10.indd 151 23/10/2008 8:46:26 rojas serrano universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras152 the same institution. the nature of the program was given by the understanding of the fact that no real change can be made in isolation. santos guerra, as quoted by imbernón (1997, p. 102), gives us some insights in this direction when saying that “when a project is founded on the teacher’s individual action in the classroom, the structures remain unchanged, they are neither transformed nor dynamized”. benefits and difficulties of teacher collaboration inger (1993, p. 1) highlights that, although the current major educational reforms call for extensive, meaningful teacher collaboration, teachers “work out of sight and sound of one another, plan and prepare their lessons and materials alone, and struggle on their own to solve their instructional, curricular and management problems”. however, according to his research, conducted in different schools in california, inger (1993) identifies some benefits and positive aspects from collaborative experiences. these benefits are as follows: there have been substantial – improvements in student achievement, behavior and attitude. collegiality breaks the isolation of – the classroom, brings career rewards and daily satisfactions, and stimulates enthusiasm. teachers who work closely together on – matters of curriculum and instruction find themselves better equipped for classroom work novice and inexperienced teachers – benefit from experienced colleagues. teachers take considerable satisfaction – from professional relationships that withstand differences in viewpoints and occasional conflict. teachers’ teamwork makes the – complexities of teaching issues (curriculum, classroom management, and so on) more manageable. in spite of the several benefits outlined above, inger also points out other aspects that become barriers and shortcomings when they are not adequately managed by the people involved in a cooperative project within the school. among the barriers shown by inger, the most important are: 1) the norms of privacy of teachers who are not accustomed to offering advice and support when they are not asked for it; 2) the departmental organization in which the only peer contact is given among teachers of the same areas and departments; 3) the barriers between vocational and academic teachers, which, in this study, can be paralleled to the barriers between secondary school teachers dealing with only one subject and primary teachers who usually have to teach topics of several subjects at the same time and with the same groups, and 4) the physical separation presented in schools like the one that is dealt with in this article. of course, the reader may find, when considering the analysis of the data collected during the process, other benefits and shortcomings that reflect the particular characteristics of the school and teachers participating in this work. in addition, other elements in this analysis may relate more to personal factors such profile 10.indd 152 23/10/2008 8:46:26 teacher collaboration in a public school to set up language resource centers: portraying advantages... profile 10, 2008. issn 1657-0790. bogotá, colombia. pages 147-162 153 as individual motivation and attitudes, which are not considered in inger’s work. previous works related to the topic different studies about collaborative teacher development activities have been made around the world. here, i have talked about the experiences described by imbernón in spain and inger in north america. whereas imbernón reports on the factors that impeded the attainment of the objectives stated by a group of teachers (imbernón, 1997, p. 104), inger analyzes the case of several schools in california in order to find out the benefits of and barriers to group work. in colombia, i found research done by clavijo, guerrero, torres, ramírez & torres (2004) from the universidad distrital, who report on a teacher development activity carried out together with research group. the researchers describe the process of primary and secondary teachers planning and implementing curricular innovation in their schools. their research is, therefore, quite similar to the research presented in this article in terms of the nature of the program, the participants and even the objective of the group work; that is, implementing innovations. however, the differences between the work led by clavijo et al. and the one presented here lie in the following aspects: cárdenas (2002) also shows how teachers’ collaborative efforts, particularly to establish teachers’ communities, are vital in the formation of teacher study groups, which will ultimately settle permanently to bring permanent change to schools in the shape of ongoing innovation, research and academic improvement for the whole school community. in this way, the challenge is not to have teachers work collaboratively, but to keep on doing so by forming steady groups of researchers who can think about their own pedagogical and professional challenges, question their own daily practice, and conduct action research to better the teaching and learning processes. the resource center and its basic principles the use of resource centers in elt practices is currently the object of a great deal of teaching-learning studies. table 1. contrast between the work led by clavijo and the present study. clavijo’s work present work focused on results of the work done by the – teachers focused on the impact of such a work on the – students based on the evidence obtained by the – participating teachers from their students seeks “the understanding of processes of – innovation.” (clavijo, guerrero, torres, ramírez & torres, 2004, p. 14) focused on the process of the work done by the – teachers focused on the impact of such a work on the – teachers themselves and on the school based on the perceptions of teachers about their – joint effort seeks the understanding of group work relations – among teachers. profile 10.indd 153 23/10/2008 8:46:26 rojas serrano universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras154 historically, resource centers caught the attention of many people even as early as the 70s. nowadays, the concept of resource center that we usually find is similar to the one expounded on in memfod (2005, p. 4) of “a total space, integrated to educational centers and prompter of regional cultures. resource centers are thought to be promoters of the teaching-learning process by enhancing pedagogical renewal and facilitating autonomous learning through a varied gamut of didactic materials”. the resource center, thus, is not just an organized collection of bibliographical, didactic or technological material that is categorized and classified according to determined criteria. what is important here is the pedagogical principle that is being developed through all those resources and tools. the teachers involved in this study, then, had to study some of the most important concepts and philosophies embedded in the use of resource centers. benavides (2000), when talking about these principles, particularly mentions the notion of autonomy –which was also fostered implicitly as well as explicitly in the sessions of language development and methodology–, call (computer assisted language learning) and curriculum adaptation to include the resource center in the school environment. even though every principle is fundamental in the setting up of language resource centers, the notion of autonomy seems to be the most complex, given the fact that it is not only a way of learning, but also a way of living. lagos & ruiz (2007), in their research, found many implications for autonomy that affected students and their beliefs and perceptions about autonomous work. in order to figure out how the language resource centers were to be implemented in the school, the program counted on the valuable experience of alex (program for the development of autonomous foreign language learning) in la universidad nacional, whose tutors explained in detail basic principles to implement a resource center. methodological framework as the main interest of this work was to get a better understanding of group relations among a specific group of teachers, case study research allowed for the study of “the peculiarity and complexity of a singular case in order to figure out its activity in important circumstances” (stake, 1999, p. 15). perhaps the best justification that i can offer for the use of case study is clearly stated by stake (1999, p. 15) in this enlightening paragraph: the cases that are interesting in education and social services are mostly constituted by people and programs. people and programs are similar in a way, but they are unique as well. these cases are interesting [to case study researchers] for their uniqueness as well as for their commonalities. we intend to understand them. we would like to listen to their stories. perhaps we may have some reservations about what people tell us; similarly, they may be suspicious about some things we say about them. however, we come into stage with the sincere interest to learn how people work in their habitual environments, and with the willingness to leave aside many presumptions while learning. profile 10.indd 154 23/10/2008 8:46:27 teacher collaboration in a public school to set up language resource centers: portraying advantages... profile 10, 2008. issn 1657-0790. bogotá, colombia. pages 147-162 155 the main characteristic of case studies is that they focus on a unique and particular case, and look deeply into it in order to acquire a profound knowledge of how this singular case works in a determined situation without paying much attention to surrounding situations and activities. in other words, case study “represents depth of information rather than breadth” (noaa coastal services center, 2005, p. 3). methodological design in order to come up with the written proposal, the participating teachers agreed on six objectives and started to work in groups of branches and shifts so that they could develop each of the objectives. each group was in charge of one objective and had to establish schedules and actions to achieve it. the objectives to be achieved were 1) to design the resource center of the school in all shifts and branches in order to support the english language teaching process; 2) to create pedagogical strategies to promote the students’ autonomous learning through the use of the resource center; 3) to involve all teachers in the school so that they can / will also support the resource center; 4) to sensitize the school community about the existence and use of the resource center; 5) to administer the resource center; and 6) to support the development of the four communicative skills in the resource center. instruments for data collection a survey was the instrument that informed us about the difficulties and benefits that teachers went through during the process, the way they faced the difficulties and the possible problems in the future. it also gave us ideas about the perceptions and beliefs teachers had about the program and its product. this was applied to the majority of teachers from the different branches or sites (sedes a, b and c) and shifts (morning and afternoon) of the school. interviews were also carried out to look more deeply into the results of the survey and to offer insights into more personal perceptions and specific data. this instrument was applied to one member in every group in charge of a specific objective. each group selected a spokesperson to respond to the interview. the questions formulated for the interviewees were the following: how do you feel about the process that – has been undertaken in order to come up with a resource center project in your institution? how has the interaction with the other – members of your group been? what kind of difficulties have – you found in this work? personal? professional? which advantages? – have these difficulties been completely – overcome? how? how have you contributed to group – work? do you think that the process of group – work has contributed to your personal and professional life? in which sense? would you like to add any other aspect – that has not been dealt with in this interview? profile 10.indd 155 23/10/2008 8:46:27 rojas serrano universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras156 field notes were also taken in the meetings provided within the program at the university and in the meetings held during the in situ visits in the school. mostly, the field notes were prepared in order to provide ideas about the steps given in every meeting and about the interaction and group relations among the teachers. all in all, the first two instruments show the perceptions of the teachers about the process they underwent. in contrast, the third instrument contains the perceptions of the researcher, which provide a balance between inside (the participating teachers’ views) and outside perceptions (the researcher’s view) that helps assure different perspectives of the same phenomenon. whenever i refer to samples taken from any instrument in the research findings section, it is referred to as follows: (surv.): survey (int 1, int 2, int 3, int 4): interviewee 1, interviewee 2, interviewee 3, interviewee 4 (fn 1, fn 2): field notes 1, field notes 2. data analysis and research findings data were collected throughout a five-month period, in which there was a follow-up of teachers’ interactions in the updating program, in the university and in their own school. to do the follow-up, we took advantage of the sessions that were scheduled in the university as well as of the in situ visits to the school. in the present study, methodological triangulation was used as a way of validating the research outcomes and results. the notion of methodological triangulation that was taken into account here is similar to the one stated by denzin, as mentioned in clavijo, guerrero, torres, ramírez & torres (2004), as the process of the combination of multiple techniques of data gathering such as observations, interviews, and others with the purpose of achieving validity. after comparing the different results drawn from the processing of data obtained from each instrument, it was found that most of the collected information had a direct connection to the theoretical constructs that guided our study, namely, teacher development activities, teacher collaboration and resource center implementation. consequently, each category also reflects these relations, as shown in table 2. developing professionally sounds good, but… the results of this study suggested that when teachers decide or are encouraged to be part of teacher development programs, they not only find a lot of advantages and help, but they also have to face several difficulties and challenges and have to look for strategies that allow them to overcome these difficult and challenging situations. the analysis showed that social and pedagogical advantages of teacher development were the most acknowledged by teachers. social and personal skills such as communication, respect for others’ ideas and listening abilities were the most important. as described by some teachers, the “relationship with other teachers has improved” (survey). similarly, when asked if they thought that the process of group profile 10.indd 156 23/10/2008 8:46:27 teacher collaboration in a public school to set up language resource centers: portraying advantages... profile 10, 2008. issn 1657-0790. bogotá, colombia. pages 147-162 157 table 2. categories found as a result of data analysis. teacher development 1. activities developing professionally sounds good, but… advantages (social and pedagogical) difficulties strategies to overcome difficulties collaborative work 2. among teachers two heads think (and act, and gain things, and create reflection, change and active participation) better than only one improvement of group relations important positions and spaces were gained active participation was motivated personal and professional reflection was fostered the resource centre 3. and its basic principles we know what we are working for, but we don’t know where it is and what it is made of… a project based on invisible resources a motive to work collaboratively resource centre principles can be applicable to other contexts work had contributed to their personal and professional life, one teacher said: “yes, of course. nowadays, for example, we not only work on the resource center, but, well, we have learned that the most important thing was communication as such”. (int 2) pedagogical advantages were also touched on, as responded by the same teacher: “i feel myself more spontaneous when teaching english. i have gained self-confidence”. (int 2) given that the advantages of teacher development activities are obtained after the overcoming of several obstacles, teachers also mentioned very often a number of difficulties seen during the process as well as the strategies they used to advance through their tasks. the most frequently mentioned difficulties have to do with lack of institutional support, either from colleagues at the school or from administrative staff, limited time, and mobility among teachers. the first two difficulties are dealt with in the intervention of a teacher during the interview: “i wish that the administrative staff, and more specifically, the principal, were more in contact, more in contact with the resource center, so that she realizes all the things we need, especially time...” (int 4) as an observer, i also noticed that “they found problems in agreeing on a schedule so that every member can attend. however, the teachers that could attend the meetings, worked together in order to have a report ready for the meeting”. (fn 1) changes in positions and mobility of teachers, which are very common in the public sector, were also regarded as great limitations for conducting collaborative profile 10.indd 157 23/10/2008 8:46:27 rojas serrano universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras158 endeavors, as pointed out by another teacher: ...it means that the former principal was involved in the program. afterwards, she was moved, and a process of transition came for us to know the new principal…so the administrative procedures are going to be a problem in the implementation of the resource center. (int 3) regardless of the different problems presented by teachers, it was also noticeable that they, as creative and innovative agents, were able to overcome difficulties by using different strategies according to the problems that appear in any pedagogical process. devoting personal time, activating emotional links with the school and engaging in dialogue and negotiation with administrative staff appeared among the most successful strategies. two heads think (and act, and gain things, and create reflection, change and active participation) better than only one despite the multiple problems and difficulties presented when teachers engage in teacher development programs, some of which were delineated above, the participating teachers paid more attention to the personal as well as professional benefits of group work. teacher development programs that are based on teacher collaboration and group work are more likely to create and improve the relationships of teachers inside as well as outside the school. programs of this nature evidence essential social and intercultural skills such as harmony, respect, negotiation of differing agendas, dialogue, etc, as commented on by one of the participants: of course, it has been good because we know each other for a long time, there is harmony, respect, support...besides, we are committed to this job because there is friendship, and with friendship the outcomes are better and the work to be done inspires more commitment. (int 3) in addition to the renewal of relations within the group of teachers, it was evident that collaborative work does have a real impact on the school structures and practices. in this case, the endeavors of teachers resulted in the gaining of acknowledgment in the school as well as a better negotiating position, regardless of other difficulties that may arise: “some opportunities of socialization have been gained but, still, apathy is a common feature among some colleagues”. (survey) talking about the role teachers have played in group work, participants showed a favorable move into activeness and participation. when teachers were asked in the survey about their role in their own group’s work, their responses showed that most of them thought of themselves as active participants fulfilling different roles such as leader, reporter, spokesperson, etc. furthermore, one of the most interesting outcomes of this case of collaborative work was that, when working in groups, teachers were able to reflect upon their own individual performance, to analyze the contributions from their colleagues and to implement suggestions and strategies used by others in order to apply them to their pedagogical settings with satisfactory results. this perspective is clearly stated here by one of the interviewees: profile 10.indd 158 23/10/2008 8:46:27 teacher collaboration in a public school to set up language resource centers: portraying advantages... profile 10, 2008. issn 1657-0790. bogotá, colombia. pages 147-162 159 gathering with other people makes the work to be enriching, doesn’t it? in other words, when hearing the contribution of another person, one says: ‘well, so i can do this too…’ then, there is a mutual enrichment...we have learned from the other, from the others’ experience... (int 3) we know what we are working for, but we don’t know where it is and what it is made of… the primary goal of this specific case of teacher development activity and teacher collaborative endeavors was the resource center. the center and its principles influenced teachers not only as a possible innovative tool to better the pedagogical processes in the school, but also as a way to explore new alternatives to improve classroom practices and social relationships of teachers, students and administrative staff. nevertheless, one of the most important difficulties found by the teachers in the construction of their proposal was that they were working on a project based on resources they had not seen. thus, apart from the difficulties shown above, the doubts about the resource center, its elements, administration and materials, which had not been introduced to the teachers, impeded a better and more realistic project. thus, teachers had to work on something unknown and blurred. despite their good performance in the process, it was by far the most recurrent complaint: and we have this problem of the resource center within the institution because it arrived at the school, and afterwards it was taken out again...in other words, we haven’t had the opportunity to know what the materials and components of the resource center are. (int 1) the lack of information about legal and administrative procedures was a big constraint. this information and data must be provided by the school administration and by the secretary of education. this information had to do with the stock of the resource center, the person to be in charge of it, and the security devices to be used in the resource center. (fn1) despite the issue previously mentioned, the resource center, in addition to being the final goal of this program, was regarded as a justification to work collaboratively in the school and establish new bonds among teachers, as one of them put it: “eh, because we are interested in the resource center working in the school, for the benefit of the students as well as of ourselves” (int 2). moreover, teachers in the program understood that the principles and philosophies underlying the resource center can be extrapolated to other contexts, fostering autonomous learning and the use of different sources of information to improve students’ communicative competence: this project has contributed to my profession because, apart from the fact that we learn to work collaboratively, we have kept on working autonomously, and we apply this manner of learning to practice, in the classroom and with oneself... (int 3) limitations this work has basically the same limitations that are likely to appear in any case study. it shows a unique case among many others, which is a feature that weakens the possibility to make generalizations, even when other cases may have similar characteristics. nevertheless, as noted by stake, it is important to understand that “from particular cases people learn about profile 10.indd 159 23/10/2008 8:46:27 rojas serrano universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras160 many things which are general” (stake, 1999, p. 78). another limitation of this study is that of the relativity based on the personal viewpoint and interpretation made by the researcher; that is, different researchers may find different things in the same scenario. in addition, attempts to apply the results of a particular case study to others are quite restricted because the nature itself of case studies is to delve into the features and aspects of a single case. in terms of data gathering techniques, although every technique was carefully selected in accordance with the time and other conditions of the study, i felt at certain moments of the inquiry process that some other things such as video recordings of teachers’ interactions or a longer observation process could have been implemented in order to give a clearer and less subjective perspective of the case. however, more instruments, artifacts and methodological tools would have meant more time and more interpretation too. nevertheless, the information shown here can be regarded as the basic triangulation needed to obtain validity and reliability. conclusions the study that has been presented on these pages is a factual example of the existence of teacher development activities in bogotá and evidence of teachers’ willingness to create positive change in schools. the project that was carried out by the participating teachers, in particular, is among the most complex. in the words of bonals, “building the educative project of the school, making the objectives fit into students’ levels or harmonizing work styles are supposed to entail the major difficulties” (2000, p. 43). however, these “major difficulties”, as shown in this project, are better handled when teachers work collaboratively and strive together to attain common goals. in this particular case, thanks to a collaborative endeavor, participants were able to present a comprehensive and coherent proposal to set up the resource center of the school by putting together their views regarding each objective and by discussing the results of each group’s efforts. gradually, educational authorities and theorists have acknowledged the constructive role of collaboration as opposed to competition in the achievement of pedagogical innovations within educative institutions. the case presented here should reaffirm this perspective. it is important to highlight though that a follow-up of teacher development activities (the resource center, in this case) needs to be implemented. when no followup is implemented, educational authorities, universities and school administrations cannot keep track of the outcomes and results of teacher development activities, are unable to evaluate them and, as a consequence, educational processes remain obsolete. in any case, all the aspects mentioned throughout this study cannot be adequately understood without looking at the crucial notion of professionalism. at a time when teachers are regarded as mere employees facing the same problems that are common to any other professional, it is important to show them that they are knowledge creators and promoters with a high scientific potential, rather than being solely ‘syllabus performers’ and followers of others’ ideas. profile 10.indd 160 23/10/2008 8:46:28 teacher collaboration in a public school to set up language resource centers: portraying advantages... profile 10, 2008. issn 1657-0790. bogotá, colombia. pages 147-162 161 teachers’ professional obligations go far beyond the reproduction of given models without reflection and analysis (imbernón, 1997, p. 145). pedagogical implications the present study attempts to offer researchers, program coordinators and university tutors a close view of what may happen when teachers get together to work collaboratively in the school. the perspective presented in this work can give program administrators some clues for them to adapt, improve or qualify the pre and in-service programs that they plan and develop, based on collaborative skills and abilities. in schools, principals and coordinators are often happy when teachers undertake actions in order to improve the academic situation of the institution. however, they are sometimes reluctant and rigid when teachers ask them to arrange spaces and time in the academic schedule to develop the activities planned to initiate innovation or research in the school, even though some committed teachers are willing to devote personal time and extra efforts. these personal efforts need to be acknowledged, valued and supported by the school. by examining the case that is depicted on these pages, school managers should ask this question: if teachers without much support and resources are able to attain such great things for the school, how would it be with full institutional support? finally, the message sent to school teachers from this study seems to be clear: regardless of all the difficulties they might find when working with colleagues, it is certainly worth it. when teachers learn that they can do more beyond their regular classes, their professional and personal self-esteem will increase to a large extent and their work atmosphere improves too. through the work that was observed, it was detected that the teachers’ attitude towards the teaching profession was improved. thus, this study aims to transmit the same attitude to the readers by showing them an endeavor that was successfully made by people with perhaps more social and work-related challenges than average teachers. further research bonals (2000) gives us some ideas for conducting further research when he highlights that there is a new and unexplored field for those involved in school consultancy, which encompasses, firstly, the preparation of trainers and tutors to enhance teachers’ networking, and secondly, the acknowledgment of the real importance of teachers’ interpersonal skills and teamwork on the side of the school administrations. these two aspects will be crucial in the improvement of group relations and pedagogical processes at school and, consequently, in the improvement of education in the country. it would be worth conducting research concerning the enhancement of group work among teachers either in the public sector or in the private one. references bonals, j. (2000). el trabajo en equipo del profesorado. barcelona: editorial grao. profile 10.indd 161 23/10/2008 8:46:28 rojas serrano universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras162 benavides, j. (2000). call, self-access, and autonomous learning. how. a colombian journal for english teachers, 116-118. cárdenas, m. l. (2002). teacher research as a means to create teachers communities in inservice programs. how. a colombian journal for english teachers, 9, 1-6. cárdenas, m. l. (2004). classroom research by inservice teachers: which characteristics? which concerns? research news, 3-7. grupo de investigación profile y programa de desarrollo del aprendizaje autónomo de lenguas extranjeras – alex (2004). programa de actualización para el uso pedagógico de los centros de recursos de idiomas en ieds de la localidad de san cristóbal. propuesta presentada a la secretaría de educación de bogotá, en convocatoria pública de diciembre de 2004. bogotá: mimeo. clavijo, a., guerrero, c. h., torres, c., ramírez, m., & torres, e. (2004). teachers acting critically upon the curriculum: innovations that transform teaching. íkala, 9(15), 11-41. gonzález, a. (2003). tomorrow’s efl teacher educators. colombian applied linguistics journal, 5, 86-99. imbernón, f. (1997). la formación y el desarrollo profesional del profesorado. barcelona: editorial grao. inger, m. (1993). teacher collaboration in secondary school. retrieved august 5, 2005, from ncrve national center for research in vocational education centerfocus web site: http://vocserve. berkeley.edu/centerfocus/cf2.html lagos, j. & ruiz, y. (2007). la autonomía en el aprendizaje y la enseñanza de lenguas extranjeras: una mirada desde el contexto de la educación superior. retrieved march 25, 2008, from revista electrónica matices en lenguas extranjeras, 1. web site: http://www.revistamatices.unal.edu.co/ numero1.html molina, o. (2000). teacher training: a multifaceted framework in language learning. how. a colombian journal for english teachers, 84-94. memfod (2005). programa de modernización de la educación media y formación docente. retrieved july 3, 2005, from memfod web site: http:// www.memfod.edu.uy/pages/acerca.php noaa coastal services (2005) case study research. retrieved march 27, 2006, from social science methods for marine protected areas web site: http://www.csc.noaa.gov/mpass/tools_ casestudies.html richards, j. & nunan, d. (1990). second language teacher education. cambridge: cambridge university press. stake, r. e. (1999). investigación con estudio de casos. madrid: morata. about the author javier rojas serrano holds a b.a. in philology and languages from universidad nacional de colombia – bogotá campus. he has worked as an assistant for teacher development programs in the same university and for the colombian association of teachers of english (asocopi). he currently works as a teacher for the centro colombo americano in bogotá. profile 10.indd 162 23/10/2008 8:46:28 profile 9.indd is colombia ready for “bilingualism”? profile 9, 2008. issn 1657-0790. bogotá, colombia. pages 181-195 181 * e-mail: acsanchez@udenar.edu.co ** e-mail: gobando@udenar.edu.co address: universidad de nariño. departamento de lingüística e idiomas. calle 8 no. 33-127 sede las acacias. bloque 2. san juan de pasto. this article was received on november 15th, 2007, and accepted on january 16th, 2008. is colombia ready for “bilingualism”? ¿colombia está lista para el “bilingüismo”? ana clara sánchez solarte* gabriel vicente obando guerrero** universidad de nariño currently, the colombian government is attempting to implement programs such as “colombia bilingüe”. the effectiveness of this type of project depends on a number of factors, some of which do not have to do with policies or standardization, but with academic requirements and issues that might be neglected while focusing on the outcome rather than on the process of expecting foreign language learners to become proficient in a second or foreign language (l2). this paper examines the academic needs that have to be met in order to achieve government goals in a fair and rewarding way for teachers, students and stakeholders. also, the way similar foreign language policies have been implemented in other countries is briefly described. key words: foreign language teaching, bilingualism, language policy, methodology en la actualidad el gobierno colombiano está tratando de implementar el programa “colombia bilingüe”. el éxito de este tipo de iniciativas depende de varios factores, algunos de los cuales no están relacionados con políticas o con estándares, sino con factores y requisitos académicos que pueden estar siendo dejados a un lado. este artículo trata sobre las necesidades académicas que deben resolverse para lograr las metas propuestas por el gobierno, pero de forma que el proceso sea justo y gratificante para estudiantes, profesores y directivas. así mismo se aborda brevemente la forma como políticas sobre el aprendizaje de lenguas extranjeras se han puesto en marcha en otros países. palabras clave: enseñanza de lenguas extranjeras, bilingüismo, políticas lingüísticas, metodología profile 9.indd 181 21/04/2008 07:43:56 p.m. sánchez solarte and obando guerrero universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras182 in colombia, the general education act 115 (1994) states that one of the objectives of education should be the acquisition of speaking, reading and comprehension skills in at least one foreign language, making it the starting point for the creation of new regulations regarding the teaching and learning of foreign languages in colombia. this objective is somewhat vague since in order to create curricula, syllabi, schedules, learning tasks and assessment, everyone should have a very clear idea of what we need to achieve in foreign language education. another example of inadequate law implementation is the resolución 2343 (ministerio de educación nacional de colombia, 1996) which gave the ministry of education (ministerio de educación nacional de colombia or men) the authority to regulate curricula through the implementation of achievement indicators, and was later partially replaced with ley 715 de 2001 in order to correct this situation. schools seemed to have autonomy once more, but then the basic foreign language competence standards: english (2006) were introduced to regulate teaching. as lightbown & spada (1999) express: “the decision about when to introduce second or foreign language instruction must depend on the objectives of the language program in the particular social context of the school” (p. 164). has this discussion taken place in the academic settings of colombia? have the decisions concerning the optimal time to start foreign language instruction considered what research has to say about this topic? the colombian government then started a series of actions towards the achievement of what they refer to as bilingualism. according to men publication “al tablero” (october 2005), it is expected that the “programa nacional de bilingüismo” (the national bilingual colombia program) will be fully implemented by the year 2019. this project has focused on adapting standards from europe to be applied in colombia, a bold move given the fact that the similarities between that context and the colombian one are basically non-existent, and that the common european framework (cef) was created under different circumstances and with different purposes. here a question arises: why did men choose this option and not others which might have been more culturally sensitive to colombian and even south american learners? ayala & álvarez (2005, p.12) address this issue as follows: “because colombian standards for foreign language teaching are barely structured, attention has been given to foreign models. in general, standards have been obtained by importing the ones that were developed in other places, under different circumstances and contexts. although those standards are valid and reliable for foreign academic communities, it does not mean that they would fit the particularities of our institutions, language learners and so on”. bilingual programs are not recent. they have been applied in countries like australia, canada and the united states since the 1970s under the names of immigrant on-arrival programs or immersion education. the reasons for the appearance of these programs were related to the need to teach immigrants to develop competences to adapt to their new society and be able to get a job and/or perform in different contexts. more specifically, profile 9.indd 182 21/04/2008 07:43:56 p.m. is colombia ready for “bilingualism”? profile 9, 2008. issn 1657-0790. bogotá, colombia. pages 181-195 183 in the case of canada, the goals of the program included: “1) developing a high level of proficiency in the foreign language; 2) developing positive attitudes towards those who speak the foreign language and toward their culture(s); 3) developing english language skills commensurate with expectations for student’s age and abilities; 4) gain designated skills and knowledge in the content areas of the curriculum” (richards & rodgers, 2001 p. 206). these programs were and are successful not only because the people involved in them are highly motivated to become proficient in the language given their personal and professional needs, but also because the purposes were clear and they were developed under favorable conditions that include, among others: the use of theme-based syllabi chosen according to language and learning goals, the use of meaningful and authentic material, and a minimum number of hours to achieve the initial goals (richards & rodgers 2001, morrow, 2004). it is necessary to stop for a moment and ask ourselves: what are the goals of language – teaching in colombia? are teachers aware of the purposes of – foreign language teaching in colombia? in the year 2006, the government introduced the “estándares básicos en competencias en lenguas extranjeras: inglés”. they are a set of basic standards that english teachers should follow to guarantee the levels of proficiency the cef presents for europe. the minister of education, cecilia maria velez white, in an open letter introducing the standards makes the following statement: the national government has the fundamental commitment to create the conditions for colombians to develop communicative competences in another language. having a good proficiency level in english facilitates the access to job and education opportunities that help ensure quality of life. to be competent in another language is essential in a globalized world, which demands better communication, to open frontiers, to understand other contexts, to make knowledge your own and make it circulate, to understand and make yourself understood, to enrich your being and play a decisive role in the development of the country. being bilingual broadens the opportunities to be more competent and competitive (translation of estándares básicos en competencias en lenguas extranjeras: inglés. men, 2006, p. 3). if we take some time to analyze what the minister of education of colombia says regarding the reasons why a good level of proficiency in english is needed in this country, it can be seen that she has certain goals in mind. the main reason for becoming bilingual is to facilitate access to employment and educational opportunities in a globalized world without any borders. are english teachers aware of the reason why english is taught in colombia? are we all aware that the main purpose is to help students get a job or go to school? cook (2001) makes an important distinction about the goals of teaching english. he classifies them into three major categories: local goals foster a second language within a society, international goals foster a second language for use outside the society, and individual goals develop qualities in the learner rather than language per se. (p. 173) profile 9.indd 183 21/04/2008 07:43:56 p.m. sánchez solarte and obando guerrero universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras184 it is important to think about the goals students have in learning a foreign language and from this, the goals teachers have when teaching these students. another important insight that cook has is the conclusion that many times it is taken for granted that everyone knows why they are teaching the second language, a conjecture that may affect the way they teach. no assumptions must be made when it comes to teaching and learning. clarity is key for designing a curriculum, a course, a syllabus, a lesson plan. this seems to be the case in colombia where policies are created in a top-down approach where only a few people (not necessarily teachers) know what “should be done and why” and the participation of school teachers in the creation of standards is virtually invisible. the first step in ensuring effective foreign language programs in colombia should be to inform everyone about not only the goals but also the rationale behind the goals for l2 teaching in this context. creating a conducive context for developing bilingual programs it was suggested before that bilingual programs in other countries were developed under certain conditions that favored teaching and learning. if policy makers in colombia truly want to be successful in their current endeavor they should pay less attention to the implementation of standards and more to the general learning conditions that are needed for the effective learning of a new language. important researchers and writers in the field of sla and tesol (clavijo, guerrero, torres, ramírez & torres, 2004; cross, 2003; ellis, 1994, 1997; lightbown & spada, 1999; cook, 2001; savignon, 1991 & 2001; rodgers, 2003 among others) have broadly discussed what it is that teachers, teacher educators, learners and administrators need to do and how to do it in order to achieve positive results in the task of acquiring a second/foreign language. it is not that colombian teachers want to look the other way and reject any change, but rather that changes must be introduced in a fair and academic way, supported by sound policies. as cárdenas (2006) states: “schools and universities welcome the idea of placing teacher education at the cornerstone of the programme, but serious concerns have also risen because we do not see clear policies to make language teaching conditions appropriate for the attainment of the defined goals (p. 2)”. here are some of these ideas that may be useful when analyzing the demands made by the government and the reality of colombian classrooms. exposure to the l2 first of all, in order to acquire an l2, it is necessary to have enough exposure to it. as lightbown & spada (1999) suggest as a result of extensive research, “one or two hours a week – even for seven or eight years – will not produce very advanced second language speakers. this ‘drip-feed’ approach often leads to frustration as learners feel that they have been studying ‘for years’ without making much progress” (p. 165). one might expect that men would take this advice and reorganize the schedule assigned to foreign language classes weekly in public schools and maybe devote at profile 9.indd 184 21/04/2008 07:43:56 p.m. is colombia ready for “bilingualism”? profile 9, 2008. issn 1657-0790. bogotá, colombia. pages 181-195 185 least four hours a week to the development of communicative competence in the l2. men, in its booklet presenting its standards, makes the following statement concerning the available time to expose learners to input in the colombian context: in primary school education, some institutions have one hour a week devoted to english teaching and other institutions still have no assigned time. even though the secretaries of education and each institution will decide, according to their possibilities, the way to do this job in the primary school, the design of the standards begins in the first grade in order to set goals in the long term for colombian boys and girls (translation of estándares básicos en competencias en lenguas extranjeras: inglés. men, 2006, p. 31) and one wonders: how can teachers apply foreign language standards starting in first grade in institutions where a schedule for english classes does not exist? clearly, more attention should be paid to research and current literature before making assumptions about standards-based education. on the other hand, in the ministry of education publication “al tablero” on the internet, one finds the following assertion: according to the study key data on teaching languages in schools in europe carried out in 2005 by the european education information network (eurydice), in the 25 countries of the european union in the educational system, the average time devoted to the study of a foreign language is of eight years, with five to nine hours a week, since the student is eight years old. in colombia the time devoted averages six years, from sixth to eleventh grade, beginning at the age of eleven, with three hours a week. a total of 270 hours devoted to the study of english, during junior and high school. this is enough for students to achieve the competence required in english (translation of bases para una nación bilingüe, men, 2005, p. 5). analyzing the numbers presented to support the use of the cef, from five to nine hours a week adding up to 720 total hours, another question arises: if studies like the one mentioned above and even the framework adapted by men state minimum requirements to be met, then why are they not taken into consideration? and even more so given that it is clear that our country still has underprivileged conditions in certain sectors? does it not seem that in our country we are taking the longest and bumpiest road? besides, teaching and learning are processes that cannot be reduced to mathematical calculations; the total number of hours is irrelevant if the exposure to the language is not continuous. learning conditions that are not easily met in a country that is, as cárdenas (2006) mentions, “mostly monolingual –with 2% (approximately 450) indigenous communities– without the same reasons and motivations for communication in foreign languages (p.3). then again, the standards brochure (men, 2006, p. 31) presents the statement cited below: during high and junior high school, english teaching is for an average of two to four hours a week. this number of hours allows students to achieve the standards. therefore, it is crucial to take advantage to the fullest of class time, proposing adequate pedagogical activities and using multiple resources that meet the needs of the students and the objectives proposed by the teachers. in the same way, it is recommended to explore all the possibilities offered by today’s modern world, using media, music, and the internet, among other aids, which profile 9.indd 185 21/04/2008 07:43:57 p.m. sánchez solarte and obando guerrero universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras186 are so relevant to the younger population (translation). unfortunately, even for men the number of hours of instruction and the conditions necessary for adequate foreign language teaching are still not clear. as cárdenas (2006) remarks, “the analysis of a working document makes us wonder to what extent the proposal has considered those regions where english is not a priority for the educational system, e.g. very remote rural areas, regions suffering socio-political conflicts, or those with hardly any chance to use the language for authentic purposes” (p.3). methods and approaches regarding methodology, the cef seem to advocate the adaptation of communicative approaches in order to achieve communicative competence. it is directly stated that: …the emphasis…is on how languages are used and what learners/users can do with the language – on language being action-based, not knowledge-based… language learning activities are based on the needs, motivations, and characteristics of learners: what will they need to do with the language? what will they need to learn in order to do what they want? what makes them want to learn? what sort of people are they? what knowledge, skill, and experiences do their teachers possess? what access do they have to resources? how much time can they afford to spend? (cef, 2001 p. 4) it can be suggested, then, that approaches such as content-based instruction, communicative language teaching or competency-based language teaching are needed in colombian classrooms, whether the goal is to achieve bilingualism or whether we just want to enhance foreign language teaching in this country at all levels. the characteristics of communicative approaches to l2 teaching in general have been widely described by influential authors both internationally and locally (brown, 2000; galloway, 1993; hedge, 2000; littlewood, 1981; nunan, 1987, 1999; nieto, 2002; reyes, 2002; richards & rodgers, 1986, 2001; savignon 1983, 1984, 1991, 2001; rodgers, 2003). it would take several pages to discuss these features, but the most recurrent can be summarized as follows: first of all, learner needs are targeted. teachers do not teach what they may be familiar with (grammar, vocabulary), but what learners need in order to perform different functions. as mcnamara (2000) explains, the planning of the course, the syllabus, and the choice of materials are based on the real ways in which the l2 will be used outside the classroom. moreover, systematic attention to functional as well as structural aspects of language is considered. focus on form is advocated as the most effective way to combine meaning and accuracy and to allow learners to discover grammar through real-life examples, rather than memorizing sterile rules. teachers confirm the hypotheses about grammar set forward by their students rather than giving them the rules, increasing participation and involvement on the part of learners. profile 9.indd 186 21/04/2008 07:43:57 p.m. is colombia ready for “bilingualism”? profile 9, 2008. issn 1657-0790. bogotá, colombia. pages 181-195 187 a wide variety of resources (especially task-based and authentic materials) are used. the textbook is a good support for a teacher and for the learners, but it is necessary to introduce additional authentic materials that are relevant and meaningful for learners. in an era of computermediated communication, teachers need to include in their instruction process materials related to technology: internet, multimedia, text-messaging, the reading of multimodal texts, and chat in order to keep their classes updated and appealing for students who are computer savvy. as farias, obilinovic & orrego (2007) highlight, reading and writing have been transformed by the multimodal revolution and texts come in different formats. hypertexts and hyperstories, two common tools in the digital age, which have been thoroughly studied in colombia, are seen as positive since they encourage creativity and they contribute to the improvement of the writing process in general. resources are endless and teachers need to start profiting from them. teachers have to have an adequate l2 language proficiency since they need to perform different roles and to conduct a class entirely in the l2. it is no longer aceptable for a teacher to enter a classroom and explain what a certain page in a book says. teachers are now needs-analysts and counselors, moving from direct instruction to be more learner-centered. these features are equally relevant for the colombian setting, as evidenced in different pieces of research (gonzález, salazar & sierra, 2005; cárdenas, 2006; gonzález, 2007) where the complexity of teaching is dealt with. the multiple needs and challenges posed for teachers are also addressed in these papers indicating that research and the creation of academic communities is a must for teachers and teacher educators. finally, it is implied that prescriptive, topdown practices and policies make a poor contribution to the development of a critical view of foreign language education in colombia. the need for constant updating is clear for teachers. with the advent of post-method trends teachers also need to reinvent themselves inside the classroom. stryker & leaver (1993) quoted by richards and rodgers (2001) add some new roles for teachers in communicative and contentbased instruction. teachers are in charge of: varying the format of classroom – instruction using group work and team-building – techniques defining the background knowledge – and language skills required for student success helping students to develop coping – strategies, using process approaches to writing using appropriate error correction – techniques developing and maintaining high – levels of student esteem (p.214). students are expected to interact in pairs and groups and interaction is initiated not only by teachers, but also by students. as classes move from teacher-centeredness to learner-centeredness, learners are expected to become autonomous through the application of interactive tasks based on authentic materials, realia and particularly profile 9.indd 187 21/04/2008 07:43:57 p.m. sánchez solarte and obando guerrero universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras188 project work, which requires students to collaborate, is focused on real-life topics and can be adapted to focus on formal aspects of language as alan & stoller (2005) propose. heyworth (2004) provides further sound reasons supporting the appropriateness of communicative approaches in the development of communicative competence: communicative approaches to language teaching and learning offer opportunities to choose the topics to be addressed. course books frequently reduce the content of language teaching to everyday banality and stereotyped situations and characters, whereas language teachers could choose to use the opportunity to provide useful information, stimulate reflection, address social issues, and promote values in ways which could contribute to both personal development and social awareness (p. 13). a word of caution is needed here. despite the many advantages of clt, and as tucker (1999), yoon (2004) and hiep (2005) mention, esl settings differ from efl ones and imported pedagogy can cause conflicts with learners’ social and cultural conditions. tucker calls it “importation of models versus importation of cycles of discovery”. that is, we need to focus on what processes have worked elsewhere, not on transferring finished products uncritically. assessment bilingual programs have made use of communicative approaches in order to guarantee the provision of opportunities for interaction. communicative approaches also make use of different types of assessment that move beyond the traditional paper-and-pencil tests which commonly feature multiple-choice items, to a focus on receptive skills and questions with only one right answer (brown, 2004). foreign language programs that intend to develop communicative competence or bilingualism tend to focus more on alternative assessment and/or performance-based assessment. this may be a difficult step to take in colombia where our learning experiences suggest constant use of the l1 in translation exercises in many tests, as well as directions written in spanish. immersion or bilingual programs are characterized by the exclusive use of the l2 during instruction and the productive use of this language in assessment tasks. colombian teachers might need training in performance-based assessment which goes hand-in-hand with communicative methodology. some of the salient features of this type of assessment are summarized by brown (2004): first of all, students make a constructed response, they also engage in higher-order thinking with open-ended tasks which are meaningful, engaging and authentic and that integrate skills. finally both the process and the product are assessed and the depth of learners’ knowledge is emphasized over breadth (p. 255). some activities explained by tannenbaum (1996) and that colombian teachers can use in order to foster the use of the l2 in meaningful assessment include portfolios (collections of students’ essays, reports, journals, and notes and so on over a period of time and with a specific purpose), journals, observations, presentations, project-work, self-assessment and peer assessment, k-w-l charts (i.e., profile 9.indd 188 21/04/2008 07:43:57 p.m. is colombia ready for “bilingualism”? profile 9, 2008. issn 1657-0790. bogotá, colombia. pages 181-195 189 charts with three columns where learners write what they know about a topic, what they want to know about the topic and what they learned during the class) and tests where students are expected to do something with the language rather than displaying their knowledge about formal aspects of language. why should colombian teachers start or continue to implement these assessment strategies? the answer is simple, but not easy: because the colombian government is implementing standardized tests (ket, fce, tkt) at different levels and production is what these tests demand from the test-takers. what makes this issue somewhat thorny is whether teachers can prepare learners to develop communicative competence and to face these tests successfully with the available time and resources in colombian schools. a quick glance at the learning conditions in this context might suggest that major curricular changes need to take place before this can happen. as hancock (1994) and rodríguez (2007) suggest, alternative assessment and self-assessment encourage learners’ participation, self-reflection and team work. taking on a project such as one including self assessment requires a curricular transformation since it is no longer an isolated activity, but an integral part of instruction and the syllabus; and at the same time student training for the implementation of these strategies is needed. current teaching and learning conditions in colombia throughout this paper it has been suggested that bilingual programs can be and are successful in different countries. some aspects of methodology and requirements have been discussed and it is clear that the common european framework is a well-organized, researchbased document that comes from a 30-year process. therefore, it must be clarified that the problem in colombia is not the adoption of foreign language policy and standards, but the learning and teaching conditions which the government seems to overlook. gonzález & quinchía (2003) and gonzález, sierra & salazar (2005) particularly explore the roles of teacher educators in colombia and suggest that knowing the local realities is as relevant as having a good command of the l2 when it comes to professional development. the adoption of a foreign framework clearly contravenes this last idea. in colombia, researchers like gonzález & quinchía (2003), cárdenas (2006), de mejía (2006) and gonzález (2007) among others have analyzed the way language policy is carried out in colombia and its implications regarding learning conditions in colombia. the conclusion seems to be that colombian idiosyncrasies were not fully considered when policy makers decided on the framework to be enforced and that multilingualism (rather than bilingualism), culture and identity need to be readdressed in order to achieve positive results in foreign language teaching. besides these general ideas on some of the issues that need to be analyzed in depth, here is a brief description of the characteristics of many efl classrooms in colombia. class size is the most evident problem in our current context. authors like brown (2001), locastro (2001) and profile 9.indd 189 21/04/2008 07:43:57 p.m. sánchez solarte and obando guerrero universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras190 sarwar (2001) have analyzed the difficulties of managing large-sized classes. locastro (2001) provides a list of problems related to class size and language learning, organized in three categories: among the pedagogical difficulties we find the carrying out of speaking, reading, and writing tasks, the provision of feedback and monitoring of work, the promotion of individual work, setting up of communicative tasks, and avoidance of demanding activities; regarding classroom management she mentions that correction of student compositions is virtually impossible, pair and group work are difficult to carry out, and there is a high noise level when classes are truly participative; finally, affective problems include not being able to learn students’ names, not being able to establish good rapport with students, and problems with weaker students who may get lost (p. 494-495). another problem whose future consequences require research and analysis on the part of teacher educators and policy makers is the fact that l2 classes may be taught by people who are not foreign language teachers. although native speakers or people from other professions have an outstanding proficiency, teaching is not only about being able to speak without an accent. teaching encompasses many aspects that sciences like psychology, sociolinguistics, linguistics and second language acquisition have analyzed and that a real teacher needs to know in order to adapt suitable teaching and assessment practices. on the other hand, the fact that an architect or an engineer can teach mathematics shows the little respect that the government has for the teaching profession and for those involved in it in colombia. but as gonzález (2000) quoted in gonzález & quinchía (2003) points out, teachers also face challenges such as “improving their language proficiency, being prepared to teach in diverse contexts, teaching with and without resources, implementing classroom-based research, having access to professional development, networking, and educating teacher educators” (p.88), which complicate even more the conditions for efl teachers. when student-teachers are asked to observe classes as part of their preparation to become teachers, they find a commonplace element that needs to be addressed in order to enhance teaching and learning conditions in colombia: foreign language classes are usually conducted in spanish. this might be due to the abovementioned problems (large classes), the lack of appropriate and available materials, or the lack of proficiency on the part of teachers (classes conducted by other professionals, not by foreign language teachers). the very fact of teaching a foreign language without using it extensively in the classroom limits the opportunities students have to be exposed to the l2, and hinder their chances for interaction and output production. macaro (1997) quoted by cook (2001) lists some purposes for teacher use of the mother tongue when teaching: for giving instructions, for translating and checking comprehension, to make individual comments to students, to give feedback and to maintain discipline (p.155). although these are perfectly rational, we must remember that in order to learn a language, learners must be exposed to input and the teacher becomes the main provider of it in classrooms with limited available profile 9.indd 190 21/04/2008 07:43:57 p.m. is colombia ready for “bilingualism”? profile 9, 2008. issn 1657-0790. bogotá, colombia. pages 181-195 191 materials and audiovisual resources, such as most public schools in colombia. a problem that was stated before has to do with the scarce time devoted in public schools to foreign language instruction. as it was stated before, the government acknowledges the fact that in some schools only one or two hours a week is devoted to foreign language classes. instead of pushing standards that are difficult to achieve with this schedule, a reorganization of curriculum that gives english teachers more space for their professional practice should take place. finally, these crowded classrooms, with little time to carry out effective learning practices and assigned to a teacher who may or may not be a certified foreign language educator, also contain students of mixed levels of proficiency and mixed ages. one more question appears: can teachers in colombia have an effective control over all these variables, and should they continue being blamed for all the problems that take place inside a class like this? one thing is clear; policy alone does not guarantee success. it may seem that the government holds the proficiency level of teachers responsible for everything that has to do with foreign language teaching. men reports on the “colombia aprende” web page provide the following information: in a diagnosis carried out in bogotá and cundinamarca in 2003 and 2004, teachers in bogotá are, on average, a2 level. 63% of the evaluated teachers show a basic level of mastery of english (a1 and a2 levels); 35% are located in intermediate level (b1, b2) and only 14% displayed an advanced proficiency level (c1, c2) (translation). these results, however, may not be the only basis on which to establish policies and implement changes in the way a country educates its people. other elements must also be considered. valencia (2007) gives important insights on the real situation. she states that “there is a pressing need for reflection on elt pedagogy and school culture in order to adapt to the new realities teachers must face in schools. the apathy of students and their lack of interest in learning in institutional contexts need to be dealt with” (p.15). it is a matter of coming to terms with what is really taking place; communication has to be the starting point of change. real communication is needed. one conclusion that valencia (2007) adds is that “teachers in particular need to be critical of the discourses of investing in english and also need to be aware of the misconceptions and promises of ‘bilingualism’ as it is understood by those who promote it” (p.15). conclusions it is true that teachers are essential in the teaching and learning process, but as has been explained, other factors can intervene in how successful foreign language instruction is. in the conditions described above, it does not matter if the teacher has reached a c2 level –an overcrowded classroom, scarce materials and students who might have different proficiency levels, ages and motivation, and a scant amount of hours per week for teaching are a challenge for any educator regardless of the goals set at the beginning of the instruction process. therefore, the words of the minister of education may sound unfair when she profile 9.indd 191 21/04/2008 07:43:58 p.m. sánchez solarte and obando guerrero universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras192 states that all we need are committed teachers: “… we can only achieve the set goals if we have convinced teachers, who are able to help students communicate in this language” (translation estándares básicos en competencias en lenguas extranjeras: inglés. men, 2006, p. 3). if the most essential tools are not at hand, no commitment on the part of teachers will be enough for developing successful foreign-language programs; needless to say, the goal of bilingualism looks more like a utopia than a feasible plan. after this brief discussion in the light of what several authors in the fields of tesol and sla have to say about effective principles for the implementation of foreign-language teaching programs and policies, the implementation of standards for colombia needs to be addressed. the first proposition is that starting a program like “colombia bilingüe” requires additional research, not just a simplistic enquiry done to evidence the weaknesses on the part of teachers and justify the alliance with external agents. it is important to say that having a document that serves as a reference for teachers is always positive if the document itself is sound and inclusive, and if it is the result of a well thought-out and academically oriented process. the colombian government started the “colombia bilingüe” project in 2004 (men, 2004) and according to “al tablero” it intends to finish its implementation by 2019. the booklet with the standards was published in 2006 which makes evident that the process in colombia was significantly shorter comparison to similar processes undertaken in other countries. for instance, the implementation of the standards present in the common european framework was carried out after extensive work that spanned a number of years. morrow states that: “…the ‘common european framework of reference for languages: learning, teaching, assessment’ – common european framework, or cef for short…is a product of the aims and aspirations of the council of europe, and is the development of work in this area that began in the late 1950s” (p. 3). similarly, the process that supported the publication of tesol’s esl standards for pre-k-12 students in 1997 was a long and participative one. gómez (2000) describes this process: since the 1983 publication of a nation at risk, organizations such as tesol, the center for applied linguistics and expert meetings congregating policy makers, teacher educators, administrators, and most importantly, classroom teachers discussed strategies to develop standards. these strategies were made public through conferences and monitored by special groups. only by 1994, when all the voices had been heard, was the conceptual framework for the esl standards developed. finally, a first draft was written by teams of experts and shared at the 1996 tesol convention in chicago. the feedback obtained here served to revise the draft and finally in 1997 the esl standards were published in a book supported by an academic organization such as tesol. the reaction to this publication was positive as gómez (2000) describes: finally, here was a document—published by a national professional organization for teachers of english—that defined what effective education for english language learners looked profile 9.indd 192 21/04/2008 07:43:58 p.m. is colombia ready for “bilingualism”? profile 9, 2008. issn 1657-0790. bogotá, colombia. pages 181-195 193 like. by reading the vignettes and seeing themselves mirrored in the pages of the esl standards, many teachers felt validated that they were on the right track (reaction section, 1). a document that serves as a basis to unify teaching practices across the country is a positive step towards ensuring equal quality in foreign-language teaching, but when one compares the colombian equivalent to the texts produced by the council of europe or tesol one wonders if the document “estándares básicos de competencias en lengua extranjera: inglés” (men, 2006) was the result of an equally comprehensive process. what is needed right now, besides an overall improvement of the conditions under which teaching and learning takes place in colombia and the serious revision of curricula at elementary and secondary levels in public schools, is the spread of information. in addition, teachers need to get support from the government so that, in turn, they can support the government in fulfilling the long-term goals proposed. the words of braslavsky (2006) regarding the ten most relevant factors for ensuring quality education should be mentioned here since they encompass many of the issues discussed in this article and they show that in order to successfully implement education policies, imposition is not the way. braslavsky summarizes a 2003 discussion and states that education should be pertinent for people; this leads us to self-esteem and conviction in learners and teachers ethics, competent administrators, team-work, the creation of academic communities, an adequate planning of curricula, the quantity, quality and availability of educational resources, the plurality and quality of teaching methodologies, and finally material, cultural and social incentives for teachers are, according to the voices of many education experts, what is needed to make a real and long lasting change in education. references alan, b., & stoller, f. l. 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(2001). teaching by principles: an interactive approach to language pedagogy. white plains, ny: longman. brown, h.d. (2004). language assessment: principles and classroom practices. white plains, ny: longman. cárdenas, m. l. (2006, september 14). bilingual colombia: are we ready for it? what is needed? proceedings of the 19th annual english australia education conference. retrieved from http://www.englishaustralia.com.au/ea_ conference2006/proceedings/pdf/cardenas.pdf clavijo, a., guerrero, c. h., torres, c, ramírez, m, & torres, e. (2004). teachers acting critically upon profile 9.indd 193 21/04/2008 07:43:58 p.m. sánchez solarte and obando guerrero universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras194 the curriculum: innovations that transform teaching. íkala 9 (15), 11-41. common european framework of reference for language: learning, teaching, assessment. 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(2000). language testing. oxford: oxford university press. mejía, a. m. de (2006). bilingual education in colombia: towards a recognition of languages, cultures and identitites. colombian applied linguistics journal, 8, 152-168. ministerio de educación nacional de colombia. estándares básicos de competencias en lengua extranjera: inglés. (2006). formar en lenguas extranjeras: inglés. [brochure]. santafé de bogota: imprenta nacional. ministerio de educación nacional de colombia. (1994). ley general de educación. bogotá: ministerio de educación nacional. ministerio de educación nacional de colombia. (2004). el programa nacional de bilingüismo. retrieved from www.mineducación.gov.co ministerio de educación nacional de colombia. (1996). resolución número 2343 de junio 5 de 1996. bogotá: men. morrow, k. (2004). background to the cef. in k. morrow (ed.), insights from the common european framework (pp. 3-11). oxford: oxford university press. nieto c., m. c. 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(2007). self-assessment practices: an empowering tool in the learning process of efl. colombian applied linguistics journal, 9, 229-243. sarwar, z. (2001). innovations in large classes in pakistan. tesol quarterly, 35, 497-500. savignon, s. j. (1983). communicative competence: theory and classroom practice. reading, mass: addison-wesley publishing company. savignon, s. j. (1984). initiatives in communicative language teaching: a book of readings. (eds.) reading, ma: addison-wesley publishing company, inc. savignon, s. j. (1991). communicative language teaching: state of the art. tesol quarterly, 25 (2): 261-277. savignon, s. j. (2001). communicative language teaching for the twenty-first century. in m. celce-murcia (ed.), teaching english as a second or foreign language (pp. 13-28). boston, ma: heinle & heinle. tannenbaum, j. (1996). practical ideas on alternative assessment for esl students. (eric document reproduction service no. ed395500). retrieved from eric database. tucker, r. (1999). a global perspective on bilingualism and bilingual education. (eric document reproduction service no. ed435168). retrieved from eric database. valencia, s. (2007, march). implications of ‘bilingüismo’ and globalization processes in colombia: insights from research on elt policy and practice. asocopi newsletter, 14-15. yoon, kyung-eun. (2004). clt theories and practices in efl curricula. a case study of korea. asian efl journal, 6 (3), article 1. retrieved january 10, 2008, from http://www. asian-efl-journal.com/ september_04_yke.html about the authors ana clara sánchez solarte is an assistant professor at the university of nariño. she holds a b.a. in english and french from the university of nariño and an ma in tesol/linguistics from the university of northern iowa as a fulbright scholar. she is a member of the colciencias recognized group “universidad y currículo”. gabriel vicente obando guerrero is an assistant professor at the university of nariño and currently the department head. he holds a b.a. in english and french and an ma in tesol/ linguistics from the university of northern iowa as a fulbright scholar. he is a member of the colciencias recognized group “universidad y currículo”. profile 9.indd 195 21/04/2008 07:43:58 p.m. profile 11, 2009. issn 1657-0790. bogotá, colombia. pages 41-56 41 guidance in reading strategies: a first step towards autonomous learning in a semi-distance education program guía en estrategias de lectura: un primer paso hacia el aprendizaje autónomo en un programa de educación semi-presencial jahir aguirre morales*1 bertha ramos holguín** universidad pedagógica y tecnológica de colombia this article aims at sharing the results of a research project focused on guiding students in the use of different reading strategies: reading nontext information, skimming and scanning, using contextual reference, predicting, and using true/false cognates as a first step towards autonomous learning. the project was conducted at a colombian university with two groups of business administration students who belonged to a semi-distance education program. informal talks with students, questionnaires, interviews and a teacher’s diary were used to collect the information in this action research study. findings revealed that by knowing several reading strategies the students could reflect upon their learning; meta-cognition processes were enhanced and confidence for students to work by themselves was built up. key words: autonomous learning, distance education programs, reading strategies este artículo discute los resultados de una investigación enfocada en guiar a los estudiantes en el uso de diferentes estrategias de lectura: información no textual, “skimming and scanning”, utilización de referentes contextuales, predicción y cognados, como un primer paso para promover el aprendizaje autónomo. este estudio se realizó en una universidad colombiana con dos grupos de estudiantes pertenecientes al programa de administración de empresas a distancia. para recolectar la información en este estudio de investigación acción, se emplearon conversaciones informales con los estudiantes, cuestionarios, entrevistas y el diario de campo del profesor. los resultados mostraron que la exposición a diferentes estrategias de lectura promueve reflexión respecto al propio aprendizaje; se incrementaron procesos de metacognición y se generó confianza para trabajar autónomamente. palabras clave: aprendizaje autónomo, programas a distancia, estrategias de lectura * e-mail: jahiraguirre@gmail.com ** e-mail: ramos.bertha@gmail.com address: avenida central del norte, uptc, escuela de idiomas, tunja boyacá. this article was received on november 19, 2008 and accepted on march 16, 2009. aguirre morales & ramos holguín universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras42 introduction we, as english teachers, have always been concerned with the way english is taught at institutions that work with semi-distance learning methodology. it is very attractive to university students to be involved in a program in which they can attend class during the evenings and on weekends because they can devote their daytime to working or performing other activities. once these students are registered, they need to deal with a semi-distance learning methodology, which is new for them because most of them are not trained to study using this methodology: they do not know the implications and difficulties they will face; hence, they need to work hard on their own because they partially attend some classes or tutorial sessions out of the total amount of hours devoted to a course. english is among the subjects students have to take. thus, english teachers have to lead students to become autonomous learners. in the institution in which this study was carried out, around thirty percent of the time is devoted to regular classes and the other seventy percent is assigned to independent work that the students have to complete outside of class. this is in contrast to the daily equivalent program in which students attend regular sessions more often. furthermore, the english class, or any other class, was not called ‘class’ or ‘lesson’ but “session” because the main objective is to help students to cope with trouble understanding the exercises. in every session the teacher was supposed to dedicate time to help students and avoid teacher-centered classes. considering the previous issues, this study was focused on helping students to initiate their autonomous english learning by guiding them in the use of some reading strategies in a semidistance education program. statement of the problem the business administration students of the university in which this research was carried out were enrolled in a semi-distance learning program. they attended sessions that cover 30% of the total amount of hours that students had to devote to reach the objectives of a course. the other 70% of the time was dedicated to independent work. in the english course, the two main components were grammar and reading. students did not know how to approach reading effectively in their independent work time. students were used to translating word by word in order to get a better understanding of the text that was given as homework. in order to tackle this situation, five workshops were designed to help students to initiate their autonomous english learning, guiding them in the use of some reading strategies. the research question that guided this project was as follows: what are the benefits for autonomy in an english semi-distance learning program from a reading strategy training? research setting and participants the context this research was carried out at a private university in colombia. this institution offers a semi-distance education program in business administration. students are supposed to take only two english courses. english courses consist of nine 2.5 hour sessions distributed throughout the semester. each session is attended every two weeks. each course offered the students a total of 90 hours per semester. theoretically, the students would devote 60 hours working on their own to fulfill the institution’s requirements of semidistance learning plus 30 hours in the sessions. the students attended classes every 15 days; in guidance in reading strategies: a first step towards autonomous learning in a semi-distance education program profile 11, 2009. issn 1657-0790. bogotá, colombia. pages 41-56 43 that way, they had time to do their homework outside of class. the english program had two main components: grammar, which was the backbone of the program, and reading. distance education, semi-distance education or low residency learning are names commonly used in the colombian educational context to refer to distance learning. each institution that offers distance learning in any way adopts one of the terms at random. semi-distance education or low residency learning happen when students partially attend classes or tutorial sessions from the total hour course. in distance education in the colombian educational context, students usually do not attend any classes or tutorials but receive the self-study guides and material for their learning. at a certain period of time, students are tested by a tutor to evidence learning and progress. the students the participants of this research were 54 students. the students were attending english i and ii courses in the distance business administration program. there were 28 students in english i and 26 in english ii. the students who attended these courses ranged in age from 19 to 45 years old. the courses offered to these students were held in the evenings and on saturdays. an average student would be in his or her late twenties and work during the day. in many cases, the students were housewives or husbands and had domestic responsibilities and, therefore, less time to devote to their academic careers than other students. consequently, when the students attended classes, they were often tired from their different activities before arriving to class. the majority of the students had very little or poor knowledge of the english language. although these students may have studied english while in high school, a typical student might not begin his or her career at the university level until they were in their mid-twenties or older. the teacher during the development of this research, there was a teacher–researcher (the first author of this paper), who held a b.a. in modern languages. he was enrolled in a master’s program. he was not trained in distance learning teaching. therefore, he did what he thought was best according to his own experience. he taught the topics that were required and brought new material to class. theoretical framework since this study was focused on guiding students in the use of some learning strategies related to reading as a way to promote autonomous learning in a semi-distance program, the following concepts are considered below: autonomous learning, distance education, and reading strategies. autonomous learning in a foreign language despite the existence of multiple definitions regarding autonomy and autonomous learning, there is a consensus in terms of what students should achieve when being autonomous learners. ariza (2004) mentions that autonomy refers to the exercise of learners’ responsibility for their own learning as well as the right of students to determine the directions and means of their own learning. dickinson (1987, p. 11) states that autonomy has to do with all decisions that the learner makes in order to accomplish her/his goals as a learner: if one decides to study a foreign language, one follows her/his own set of rules to fulfill the aguirre morales & ramos holguín universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras44 tasks. in other words, autonomy is related to the learner’s total decision and implementation of learning. he defines autonomy as follows: “this term describes the situation in which the learner is totally responsible for all the decisions concerned with his learning and the implementation of these decisions. in full autonomy there is no involvement for teacher or an institution. and the learner is also independent of specially prepared materials”. the autonomous learner does not register in any institution at all. the learner observes himself for grading and selects the material; in other words, s/he establishes the syllabus by which to study. things like time, material, tasks and levels are established by the learner her/himself. the same author also states that the learner does not become autonomous at once. the learner might go through a process, one step of which is semiautonomy that “conveniently labels the stage at which the learners are preparing for autonomy”. this research study aimed at being the first step towards autonomous learning since it prepared learners to build up their autonomy. different workshops, with associated selfaccess materials, were designed to cope with this objective. as dickinson (1987, p. 11) suggests, selfaccess materials “are materials appropriate and available for self-instruction” and are key aspects in the development of students’ autonomy. the same author further asserts that self-access material should be developed for a specific purpose and has some requirements to guide the learner through the task s/he should do. the workshops designed in the pedagogical intervention aimed at fulfilling some of dickinson’s (1987) statements regarding a checklist to evaluate self-access material. according to the author, self-access materials need to have a statement of objectives, meaningful language input, practice material, flexibility, instructions and advice for learning, feedback, tests, advice about progression, advice about record keeping, reference materials, indexing and motivational factors. the population for this study was composed of business administration students. for this reason, the content of the readings selected for the workshops had to do with business, economics, administration and marketing. thus, the contents of the readings were meaningful and motivational for the students. they connected those readings to the previous knowledge they already had about the subject matter. the tasks in the workshops provided exercises for practice and had multiple accurate answers; thus, students were not looking for a fixed correct response in the practice exercises. in this way, flexibility was promoted. the exercises were classified by numbers as a guide for them to follow. therefore, these workshops included some of dickinson’s requirements for selfaccess materials. the teachers’ role in autonomous learning núñez, pineda & téllez (2004), talk about the importance of having teachers ready to focus their teaching on telling students how they learn and use it for lifelong learning. in the same way, cárdenas (2006, p. 197) suggests that teachers should create new spaces and tasks to provide students with opportunities for the development of autonomy. furthermore, mentors need to prepare students methodologically, training them in the use of techniques and strategies and providing them with as much guidance as required (cárdenas, 2006; little, 1991; benson & voller, 1997). in this sense, the teachers’ role is seen as one of a guide and facilitator, in charge of giving students certain tools and strategies to enable them to become autonomous. guidance in reading strategies: a first step towards autonomous learning in a semi-distance education program profile 11, 2009. issn 1657-0790. bogotá, colombia. pages 41-56 45 distance education the terms “distance education” or “distance learning” relate to the separation of teacher and learner in space and/or time (perraton, 1988), the volitional control of learning by the student rather than by the distant instructor (jonassen, 1992), and noncontiguous communication between student and teacher, mediated by print or some form of technology (keegan, 1986; garrison & shale, 1987). willis (1993) argues that distance education programs are usually focused on adult learners due to various reasons: constraints of time, distance, finances, the opportunity to take courses or hear outside speakers who would otherwise be unavailable, and the ability to come in contact with other students from different social, cultural, economic, and experiential backgrounds. reading as a cognitive process carrell (1998, p. 2) explains that reading as a cognitive process must be related to other processes such as “thinking, reasoning, studying, or motivational strategies”. according to this author, reading is a process that involves many actions that the reader performs to have a better comprehension of the text. good readers use different types of strategies to access a text. not only should readers know how reading strategies work but, also, they should understand how to synchronize the strategies in order to use them more effectively and efficiently. carrell (ibid, p. 3) concludes that to “contextualize and operationalize” are the key actions to be able to read successfully. for this author, reading is a connection of different aspects that the reader might control to get the meaning of any reading. she says that a reading strategy is a tool selected flexibly by the reader. because the reader has the ability to select the correct strategy, he is improving his attention, memory, communication and learning, which are key elements for meta-cognition and motivation. reading strategies below, the reading strategies used in this research are defined. • exploiting transparent words: transparent words are the words that have similar spelling or pronunciation in two languages. the transparent words could be divided into two categories: true cognates and false cognates. a true cognate is a transparent word which has the same meaning in both languages. for example, the english word “international” is similar to the spanish word “internacional”. a false cognate keeps the same characteristics as transparent but its meaning is not the same in both languages. conductor is a false cognate, for instance. the english word conductor means person who directs an orchestra or “drives” a locomotive and the spanish word conductor means a person who drives a car. • reading non-text information: this strategy refers to getting the main ideas of the content of a text from the images that go with it. these images could be graphs, pictures, cartoons, etc. this reading strategy is accomplished by readers when reading in their native language. this strategy relates to what oxford (1990) has called transferring. she argues that transferring “means directly applying previous knowledge to facilitate new knowledge in the target language” (oxford, 1990, p. 85). • skimming & scanning: these reading strategies help the learner to comprehend what is being read. scanning has to do with looking for specific words or chunks of information. skimming deals with getting main ideas of the text without reading every single word. both reading strategies have in common the aguirre morales & ramos holguín universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras46 fact that the reader uses these two strategies to get acquainted with the text in a first reading. • using linguistic clues: “this strategy relates to previously gained knowledge of the target language, the learners’ own language, or some other language [that] can provide linguistic clues to the meaning of what is heard or read” (oxford, 1990, p. 90). in this action research, the linguistic clues were contextual references, which are words that replace, indicate or emphasize some other information in the text being read. they are usually used to refer to a previous idea in the text. some examples of those words are it, they, them, i, he, she, which, who, whose, that, such, one, and demonstrative adjectives such as this, that, these and those. • guessing: “it helps learners let go of the belief that they have to recognize and understand every single word before they can comprehend the overall meaning” (oxford, 1990, p. 90). by guessing, the learners can predict what the text is about. research methodology the type of research this research can be classified as an action research study because it comprises the three main characteristics of this type of project, according to cohen & manion (1994, p. 186): a diagnosis of a problem, the implementation of a proposal and the evaluation of the proposal. data collection procedures the instruments that were used in order to gather information were as follows: informal talks with students, two questionnaires, an interview and the teacher’s diary. these informal talks with students were held after each workshop. those talks were focused on listening to students’ perceptions regarding the tasks they had to engage in at home after being trained in terms of how to use reading strategies effectively. the questionnaires and the interview were also aimed at accessing students’ voices regarding the development of the five workshops and the homework assignments. the interview took place at the end of the data collection because it was necessary for the researcher to validate what he had observed. the teachers’ diary was kept during the time the data was collected. the teacher kept notes related to what was actually happening in the classroom while guiding students in the use of reading strategies. the pedagogical proposal the pedagogical proposal that was implemented was divided into three steps: a first part in which the diagnosis of a problem was made; a second one in which an action was taken, and a third one related to the evaluation of the action. stage i. after having analyzed a questionnaire and the information obtained from informal talks with the students involved in this research, we established the following findings for the diagnostic stage: • students had not been trained to do independent work. • students were not proficient in english. • students considered that having an english textbook designed specifically for a semidistance program, a module (self access material) was an important factor. • classes every fifteen days were not beneficial for the students. guidance in reading strategies: a first step towards autonomous learning in a semi-distance education program profile 11, 2009. issn 1657-0790. bogotá, colombia. pages 41-56 47 • neither the teachers nor the students were trained to work with semi-distance learning methodology. • teachers did not teach the students how to become autonomous. • students did not know how to use reading strategies. after the development of this stage, it was found that students needed more instruction on how to become autonomous learners and how to face the challenge of learning english as part of a semi-distance program. stage ii. in response to the above concerns, a proposal was drawn up and implemented to improve the students’ reading skills while they were working independently. five workshops were designed to help students with a semi-distance learning methodology trying to develop reading skills. each workshop had three main sections: the first part was the presentation of a reading strategy which included the description of the reading strategy and instructions to use it. the second part was an article in which the students practiced the reading strategy and the third part contained some exercises to be completed based on the reading (see appendix 1). the purpose of the workshops was to guide students on how to improve their reading skills to help them deal with the independent work they needed to do. the classes were to guide the students and clarify their questions. the readings adapted for these workshops were taken from magazines, articles on the internet, and one reading in the workshop was taken from an efl book. the design of these workshops was thought to meet the five steps proposed by winograd & hare (1988, cited in carrell, 1998). they claim that learners should be taught five essential steps to learn how to monitor themselves. these five steps were included in the teacher’s presentation of each reading strategy. these five steps were the following: • what a strategy is • why a strategy should be learned • how to use the strategy • when and where the strategy should be used • how to evaluate use of the strategy. in each of the workshops the teacher started the instructional part of the class by setting a specific objective; for example, identifying transparent words before reading. after that, the teacher selected different transparent words as examples. then, the students were asked to provide more examples of transparent words that they knew. afterward, the students read about the definition of the transparent words. next, they classified the examples of transparent words provided in the workshop and classified them into true and false cognates. subsequently, students read the text and answered the questions about it. usually, there was an extra exercise to be developed depending on the reading. as homework, they had to select a reading from a magazine related to their field of study: business administration, marketing, etc. and identify the transparent words from there. then, in the following session, students had the opportunity to comment if the transparent word selection helped them to understand the reading and if they did not have to use the dictionary as frequently as they used to. all the workshops followed the same pattern of instruction, practicing exercises and homework. stage iii. in the third stage of this study the workshops were evaluated. aguirre morales & ramos holguín universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras48 data from this stage were gathered and analyzed using the following instruments and techniques: questionnaires for the students after each workshop, which were given to the students in their native language, spanish, in order to get more accurate information (see appendix 2). also, informal talks with the students were included in the data. findings the data were collected during an academic semester. categories emerged after reading, analyzing, and reading the data again. the grounded approach as well as the process of dissembling and reassembling data mentioned by freeman (1998) was used during the whole process. overall, two main categories were found. the first one relates to meta-cognitive awareness and the second one to confidence building. towards meta-cognitive awareness after implementing and collecting data throughout this research study, we found that both the teacher and students reported increased meta-cognitive awareness. in the teacher’s diary, he mentioned that, while implementing the workshops, students seemed to focus more on comprehending the text and understanding it using different reading strategies. students focused on reading and comprehension more than paying attention to unknown vocabulary or grammar structures. thus, the students concentrated on continually reading to get main and general ideas from the reading passages without interrupting their reading process. they were using different reading strategies that were already practiced in class. in this session, the strategy used was reading graphs. a student, who was working with a partner mentioned that she did not know that the graphs contained basically all the information. she also said that what was written in the text was not more than somebody else’s interpretation of the graphs (teachers’ diary # 1). by knowing several reading strategies the students could switch or combine the different strategies to comprehend the passages by themselves. this process of switching from one reading strategy to another incorporated meta-cognition awareness skills. when i asked them to read the non text information included in the reading “colombian macroeconomics”, they immediately recognized the transparent words from the title. then, they started guessing and predicting the information in the text by just interpreting the graphs (teachers’ diary # 2). the contextual references workshop helped the students to link ideas together as they read the passages. they noticed that knowing the meaning of some words in a reading passage, e.g. they, his, itself was not enough to obtain concise information from the readings. they realized that they needed to link the contextual references and the ideas expressed in the passages. this exercise made them reflect at the same time as they were reading. by doing this, they were exercising a meta-cognitive reading skill (teachers’ diary # 4). in an interview, when asked about the workshops carried out and their usefulness outside the classroom, one of the students mentioned: the skimming and scanning workshop helped me to get general ideas about the passage before reading it. i was not concentrated on understanding and checking the meaning of new words, but on getting the main and general ideas of the passage. i think it was the most important strategy. i learned because after knowing how it works, i do not need to translate every single word and it is much easier to do the reading tasks at home (interview 1juan). this showed that students relied on using the transparent words strategy to guess the meaning of new vocabulary. in the same way, combining the transparent words with skimming and guidance in reading strategies: a first step towards autonomous learning in a semi-distance education program profile 11, 2009. issn 1657-0790. bogotá, colombia. pages 41-56 49 scanning reading strategies showed that students were selecting a reading strategy and using prior knowledge to understand the reading passages. in this sense, combining two or more reading strategies was evidence that the students were becoming autonomous because they not only used the reading strategy suggested by the teacher, but also incorporated one reading strategy they had learned before. in the interview, when asked their opinions about the usefulness of working with reading strategies, most students mentioned that the predicting workshop was not very positive. they said it was difficult and ambiguous. they also mentioned that the other reading strategies were more useful. these opinions illustrated that students contrasted what they had learned about reading strategies in the previous workshops. so, they contrasted this previous knowledge about which reading strategy was more effective. this is a characteristic of an autonomous learner. in autonomous learning, meta-cognition is a very important factor that affects learning. it is defined by carrell (1998, p. 4) as “cognition of cognition… thinking about thinking… and learning about learning”. the student in an autonomous learning context should be aware of the way s/he is learning. this capacity of metacognition should be developed to help students to deal with autonomy. if learners do not have metacognitive strategies, it would be harder for them to monitor themselves in the process of learning. building confidence to work by myself in addition to increasing their meta-cognitive awareness while they were reading passages in english, the students indicated an increasing level of confidence in working independently. the analysis of the questionnaires, interviews, informal talks with both teachers and students indicated that, as a result of the reading strategies, students were more adept and efficient learners. the analysis of questionnaires presented clear documentation of the students becoming less dependent after [///] the first two workshops. the following information was taken from the teacher’s diary while he was implementing the five workshops: the five designed workshops -transparent words, reading non-contextual information, skimming and scanning, contextual references, and predictinghelped the students to improve their reading level because they could read easier after they learned how to use each reading strategy. whenever i sent a task to be carried out at home, they were able to accomplish it (teachers’ diary # 3). the transparent words workshop helped the students to become less dictionary dependent because they tried to guess the meaning of new vocabulary. they did not interrupt the reading to stop and check for unknown words. thus, the students read more fluently and tried to grasp the main idea from the passages. consequently, the students started to show evidence of applying a learning skill as they did not use the dictionary as often as they did before. they felt confident guessing the meaning of new words while they read (teachers’ diary #5). when asked about the effectiveness of the workshops they had carried out, students provided the following answers: “the most significant issue about doing the exercises in the workshops was knowing how to read by myself. i felt great the first time i could do the reading task without having the teacher by my side” (interview 1angela). if i had known how reading could be addressed, i would have done every single task that was assigned by my english teachers. fortunately, now i know and i can do the homework (informal talk 3chris). aguirre morales & ramos holguín universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras50 in relation to this point, dawn (2003) mentions that when students know how they learn and the strategies that best work for them, their attitude and motivation increase. conclusions it is clear that prior to the workshops, the students that participated in the study were accustomed to a traditional classroom experience and were not prepared for the autonomous learning responsibilities associated with taking a semi-distance learning course. however, after conducting the five workshops, it was evident that the use of reading strategies did contribute to learning english in this semi-distance learning program. the students’ attitude and motivation changed towards english. through the guidance in terms of how to use reading strategies, students were able to develop meta-cognitive skills and, as a result, they were able to build confidence to work by themselves on the assigned tasks. the outcomes of this research also indicate that english courses in semi-distance learning programs can incorporate different reading strategies practices in their lessons as a way to provide the opportunity for students to select or combine them when reading a passage. then, when students know how to use a reading strategy, they build confidence among themselves. thus, building confidence among students is a big step towards autonomy. knowing different reading strategies does not give learners an automatic ticket to autonomy, but it initiates them into a broad path of learning since they are equipped with strategies for reading. they can choose the reading strategy they think is appropriate to use; therefore, selecting a reading strategy and evaluating its use while reading give the students the basic structure for meta-cognitive awareness. finally, some further practical implications which emerged from our study are as follows: • it is better to explain to students in l1 how the reading strategy should be used. then, students will better assimilate the hints written in english to use each reading strategy successfully. • english modules designed for students involved in semi-distance learning programs should include language contents and learning how to learn lessons, to develop meta-cognitive awareness in the students. in this way, students would know how to make efforts to study a foreign language autonomously. • regardless of the course offered as a part of semi-distance learning programs, orientation sessions or workshops should be conducted for the students to increase the level of confidence in working independently. instructions should be given to the students on how to become autonomous learners or a mandatory course in learning and study skills should be taken by students at the beginning of their programs. • english teachers should be trained in how to teach courses based on a distance learning methodology and how to design instructional material for reading, to help students develop meta-cognitive awareness and become autonomous learners. acknowledgment we would like to thank the members of the advisory board/editorial committee who provided feedback to improve this article. guidance in reading strategies: a first step towards autonomous learning in a semi-distance education program profile 11, 2009. issn 1657-0790. bogotá, colombia. pages 41-56 51 note this article was written by jahir aguirre morales and bertha ramos holguín. jahir aguirre morales was the teacher researcher and bertha ramos holguín helped in the shaping of the categories as well as in the writing of this article. references ariza, a. (2004). efl undergraduate students’ understanding of autonomy and their reflection in their learning process. universidad distrital francisco josé de caldas. unpublished master’s thesis. benson, p., & voller, p. (1997). autonomy and independence in language learning. london: longman. boeckner, k., & brow, ch. (1993). oxford english for computing. oxford: oxford university press. cárdenas, r. (2006). considerations of the role of teacher autonomy in the promotion of student autonomy. colombian applied linguistics journal, 8, 183-202. carrell, p. (1998). can reading strategies be successfully taught. retrieved, june, 26, 2006, from http:// w w w.jalt-publications.org/tlt/f iles/98/mar/ carrell.html cohen, l., & manion, l. (1994). research methods in education. fourth edition. london and new york: routledge. dawn, r. (2003). effects of traditional versus learning – styles instructional methods on middle school students. the journal of educational research, 97(1), 42-51. dickinson, l. (1987). self-instruction in language learning. cambridge: cambridge university press. freeman, d. (1998). doing teacher research: from inquiry to understanding. canada: heinle and heinle publishers. garrison, d. r., & shale, d. (1987). mapping the boundaries of distance education: problems in defining the field. the american journal of distance education, 1(1), 7-13. jonassen, d. h. (1992). applications and limitations of hypertext technology for distance learning. paper presented at the distance learning workshop, armstrong laboratory, san antonio, tx. keegan, d. (1986). the foundations of distance education. london: croom helm. little, d. (1991). learner autonomy: definitions, issues and problems. dublin: authentik. núñez, a., pineda, c., & téllez, m. (2004). unidades didácticas relacionadas con pensamiento crítico: una alternativa innovadora para fomentar la competencia lingüística en lengua extranjera. @puntes contables, 5, 65-78. oxford, r. (1990). language learning strategies: what every teacher should know. usa: newbury house publishers. perraton, h. (1988). a theory for distance education. in d. stewart, d. keegan, & b. holmberg (eds.), distance education: international perspectives (pp. 34-45). new york: routledge. willis, b. (1993). distance education: a practical guide. englewood cliffs, nj: educational technology publications. about the authors jahir aguirre morales is an assistant professor at universidad pedagógica y tecnológica de colombia (uptc). he holds an m.a. in english didactics from universidad de caldas. he belongs to the research groups “enletawa” and “bilingualism and autonomous learning”. he teaches in the school of languages and in the m.a. program in language teaching at uptc. bertha ramos holguín is an assistant professor at universidad pedagógica y tecnológica de colombia. she holds an m.a. in applied linguistics from universidad distrital. she belongs to the research groups “bilingualism and autonomous learning” and “enletawa”. she teaches in the school of languages and in the m.a. program in language teaching at uptc. aguirre morales & ramos holguín universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras52 appendix 1: workshop sample inglés ii workshop 1 transparent words are the words that have similar spelling or pronunciation in two languages. the word intelligent is a transparent word because its spelling and pronunciation is similar to the spanish word inteligente. transparent words could be divided into two categories: true cognates and false cognates. a true cognate is a transparent word which has the same meaning in both languages. for example, the english word international is similar to the spanish word internacional. a false cognate has the characteristics of a transparent word but its meaning is not the same in both languages. conductor is a false cognate, for instance. the english word conductor means person who directs an orchestra or someone who drives a train or a locomotive and the spanish word conductor means person who drives a car. does the name break any rule? if it does, try again. last year, 30,000 new brand names were registered in the u.s. with all that clutter, just fitting in won’t work. if you don’t want to be lost, you need to look different, sound different, offer a different message that’s unexpected and relevant to your customer. true cognate =diferente true cognate =registrado false cognate =costumbre =cliente guidance in reading strategies: a first step towards autonomous learning in a semi-distance education program profile 11, 2009. issn 1657-0790. bogotá, colombia. pages 41-56 53 five questions to ask before you approve* your next brand name does the name break any rule? if it does, try again. last year, 30,000 new brand names were registered in the u.s. with all that clutter, just fitting in won’t work. if you don’t want to be lost, you need to look different, sound different, offer a different message that’s unexpected and relevant to your customer. will it make your competitors grimace? since the registered brand name is the one thing your competitors can’t take away from you, it needs to make them wince every time they see it. if you think they will just shrug it off or create something better, take it off the list. does the name make a promise or tell a story? if it doesn’t, don’t approve it. great names are like small poems. every letter, word unit and sound work together to deliver strategic messages. too often, names are selected for what they mean at the moment, as opposed to messages that keep delivering. what would you rather have, antiglare sunglasses or a pair of ray bans? it’s tempting to select the comfortable solution. if you think about it, selecting the right brand name can be your toughest marketing challenge. but what could be mere important? the right brand name is the cornerstone of the productcustomer relationship. it is your single most powerful marketing tool. and it’s the one thing your competitors would love to steal. is the name descriptive or suggestive of features of benefit? if so, make sure it is the single most compelling benefit that consumers will need over the next ten years. this could make or break the brand. are you comfortable with the name? if you are, you might have a good name, but you don’t have a great one. oscar wilde once said that an idea that isn’t dangerous is hardly worth calling an idea at all. it’s the same with a name. a great name provokes. it takes chances. this attitude attracts customers and the market to your brand. let the other guys fit it in. for more information on these or other questions, give us a call. we’re the people who created the pentium processor, embassy suites hotel, zima, power book computer and deskjet printer brands. hewlett-packard’s pavilion pc, sony’s metreon center and subaru’s outback station wagon also came from us. when you call you’ll find a unique combination of personal creativity, structural linguistics and attribute-driven research waiting to help you.1 * )(( (adapted from: http://www.lexiconbranding.com). 1 2 3 4 5 aguirre morales & ramos holguín universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras54 underline the transparent words in the reading: five questions to ask before you approve your next brand name. then, classify them into true cognates and false cognates. based on the reading, answer the following questions: true cognates meaning false cognates meaning true false guidance in reading strategies: a first step towards autonomous learning in a semi-distance education program profile 11, 2009. issn 1657-0790. bogotá, colombia. pages 41-56 55 1. how many brand names were registered last year in the usa? 2. why do you need to think of your competitor when selecting a brand name for your product? 3. why do good brand names not tell a long story? 4. how long do you need to project the name of your product? 5. mention a characteristic of a good brand name. optional exercise: create a brand new name for a coffee shop, a soda, a restaurant, a software company or a car. aguirre morales & ramos holguín universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras56 appendix 2: students' questionnaire (adapted from: boeckner & brow, 1993, p. 1) name: ____________________________________ date: _____________________ please answer the following questions. 1. what is the name of the reading strategy practiced today in class? ______________________________________________________________________________ 2. what does this reading strategy consist of ? ______________________________________________________________________________ 3. did you practice this reading strategy before? yes____ no______ 4. do you think that practicing this reading strategy will help you to better understand the reading passages in english? yes____ no _____ 5. the reading exercises to practice this reading strategy were a. on a manageable level of difficulty b. not on a manageable level of difficulty 6. what other reading strategy do you remember? ______________________________________________________________________________ 7. how did you like this reading? a. interesting b. boring c. neither interesting nor boring 8. how did you like this reading? a. difficult b. easy c. in accordance with your english level thank you note: this questionnaire was given to the students in their native language: spanish. 11profile vol. 12, no. 2, october 2010. issn 1657-0790. bogotá, colombia. pages 11-32 promoting tenth graders’ reading comprehension of academic texts in the english class* promoción de la comprensión de lectura de textos académicos de estudiantes de grado décimo en la clase de inglés claudia quiroga carrillo** san josé de castilla school, colombia this article reports on an action research project conducted in a public school in bogotá, colombia, with tenth grade students. we decided to develop it because of the students’ needs as well as the em phasis of the pei (proyecto educativo institucional = school institutional project), which is based on the requisite of improving reading comprehension. the project focused on the implementation of four lesson plans in which five reading strategies were applied. they were reading speed, non-text information, word attack skills, text attack and discursive strategies. data collection was conducted by using observation, journals, interviews and questionnaires. these instruments provided information about the level of improvement in reading comprehension and evidenced advances in the students’ performance when they read an academic text in english. key words: reading strategies, reading comprehension, academic texts. el presente artículo trata sobre un proyecto de investigación-acción llevado a cabo en un colegio público de bogotá, colombia, con estudiantes de décimo grado. decidimos desarrollarlo tanto por las necesidades de los estudiantes como por el énfasis del pei (proyecto educativo institucional), el cual se basa en el mejoramiento de la comprensión lectora. el proyecto se centró en el desarrollo de cuatro sesiones de clase en las que se fomentó el uso de cinco estrategias: velocidad de lectura, información no textual, abordaje de palabras, abordaje del texto y estrategias discursivas. la recolección de datos se realizó a través de la observación, diarios de campo, entrevistas y cuestionarios. estos instrumentos suministraron información sobre el progreso en la comprensión de lectura y evidenciaron avances en el desempeño de los estudiantes al abordar un texto académico en inglés. palabras clave: estrategias de lectura, comprensión de lectura, textos académicos. * this paper reports on a study conducted by the author while participating in the profile teach er development program at universidad nacional de colombia in 2005. it was a collaborative work conducted by the author of this paper with azucena acosta, martha buitrago and yined padilla. the teach er development program was sponsored by secretaría de educación de bogotá, d.c. code number: 033, may 6, 2005. ** e-mail: claudiaquiroga2@yahoo.es this article was received on december 5, 2009, and accepted on july 4, 2010. 12 universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras quiroga carrillo introduction our students are required to make use of material in english for academic purposes. howev er, reading has been seen as a students’ weakness in their academic performance as well as in the re sults of the icfes exam1. they have not been the best. it is then our responsibility to give students some elements to improve their reading comprehension skills and, hopefully, have an impact on the results they get on that exam. having this in mind and taking into account that our school is interested in fostering higher command of the english language, a group of english teach ers decided to take a teach er development program at universidad nacional de colombia in bogotá. along this program we engaged in the development of a project called “let’s read and comprehend academic texts” so that students could improve their reading comprehension of ac ademic texts through the appropriate application of reading strategies. the long-term goal was also that this project continues as an important task to be developed by all the english teach ers in our school. we know that colombia is not a country of true readers and our students did not comprehend reading passages very well, even in our mother tongue, spanish. in addition, most of them did not like to read even in spanish. for that reason we considered this project could help not only students but also colleagues with the achievement of new ways for getting best results in reading comprehension. in the following paragraphs we present the focus of our study, the theoretical framework which was illuminated by nuttall (1982). there we define the following 1 students who are about to finish high school are required to sit a test which is administered by icfes (instituto colombiano para el fomento de la educación superior), which is the national institute for educational evaluation and testing in colombia. five reading strategies we chose: reading speed, nontext information, word attack skills, text attack, and discursive strategies. then the way we approached the lesson plans will be shown as well as the results and findings obtained at the end of this experience. the focus of our study which reading strategies can be implemented in tenth grade at san josé de castilla school to have 10th grade students comprehend academic texts in english? this is the question that led the project in order to develop reading comprehension in academic texts because the main needs of the students are related to reading instructions, obtaining information from the internet, admission to universities, and getting jobs, among others. theoretical framework the theoretical bases considered in order to get a solid foundation for our research were basically those that deal with reading strategies, reading comprehension and academic texts. reading comprehension and academic texts reading comprehension is the process of constructing meaning from a text. it involves decoding the writer’s words taking into account background knowledge. it means the reader’s knowledge of the topic, of language structures, of text structure and genders, which help him/her understand the mes sage. the process is also affected by motivation, the quality of the reading material and the strategies used. likewise, there are many factors that affect reading comprehension; for instance, students with low language skills and low development of the strategies required to decode a text. according to bernárdez (1982), a text is the fundamental linguistic unit, a product of verbal 13profile vol. 12, no. 2, october 2010. issn 1657-0790. bogotá, colombia. pages 11-32 promoting tenth graders’ reading comprehension... human activity. its main features are semantics and communication, but also its coherence that is formed from the speaker’s communicative intention in order to create an unabridged and structured text. when we talk about academic texts we refer to those texts that circulate in schools and that are related to an expert’s knowledge. one of her/his main functions is to explain (comprehend something, modify a stage) or to demonstrate knowledge. the majority of texts that students approach are academic ones. these texts have specific characteristics, very different from oral or written discourses, such as written reports, exams, notes, presentations, summaries, diagrams, outlines, reports, reviews, descriptions. in connection with this, pérez grajales (1999) states some features, to wit: (1) the general purpose is to show knowledge, (2) its content is based on lectures, presentations, experiments; and (3) the recipient of the text is the student. the kinds of texts that students use in the eng lish classroom are generally news, letters, postcards, articles, internet information, essays, and so on. because of this, it is important to teach students how to process information provided in academic texts so that they can have the opportunity to move forward in their learning in any area from the school curriculum. reading strategies reading strategies are necessary to successfully comprehend texts. cohen (1990, p. 83) distinguishes skills and strategies: “skill is an overall behavior or general class of behaviors and strategy is the specific means for realizing that behavior”. on the other hand, barnet, in jiménez (2000, p. 34), defines reading strategies as the mental process involved in accomplishing reading tasks. as can be seen, the goal of a specific strategy is to understand a text easily and students must be given opportunities to develop reading strategies effectively so that they can process different kinds of texts. based on our students’ most relevant needs in reading, and following the typology presented by nuttall (1982) and jiménez (2000), five strategies were chosen. reading speed, non-text information, word-attack skills, and text-attack skills were considered useful in order to reach positive results in reading comprehension. in each one of them we have some categories; that is to say, strategies that were chosen to guide the students along the reading comprehension processes developed in class. they are gathered in table 1 and briefly explained in the following paragraphs. reading speed as reading involves understanding and is the cause of speed, the speed depends on understanding. nuttall (1982) states that speed is useful, but not the main criterion. in addition, reading speed should not be developed as the most important part of comprehension. scanning and skimming skills help students to improve their speed in reading. it should be clarified that scanning deals with a rapid look in order to search for specific information or to get the required purpose. it also helps to identify what information is relevant for a specific purpose. skimming, in contrast, refers to looking over a reading passage quickly to get general information. it helps to find out what the text is about. non-text information it refers to the use of information that is not specifically included in the text. nuttall (1982) states three categories connected to this strategy: • reference apparatus, which makes reference to what can be learnt from a book before reading it. it refers to the parts of a text that can help the reader to locate information or predict what the text contains. 14 universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras quiroga carrillo • non-verbal information, which, in the authors’ words, is the information included in tables, charts and diagrams. it is also the information that accompanies the text but is not considered textual. • graphic conventions could be obvious for students but they need practice in identifying them in order to clarify and understand the texts (symbols, indentation, layout, punctuation, choice of type). word-attack skills it is related to the way we tackle difficult lexical items. we can do so through lexical items, structural clues, ignoring difficult words, and using a dictionary. lexical items refer to any word or group of words with a meaning that students have to learn as a whole (nuttall, 1982). structural clues establish the grammatical category of the words whereas inference from context deals with getting the meaning of a word by making use of the context in which it occurs (jiménez, 2000). on the other hand, we can ignore the words that are not relevant for a specific purpose in the reading or use a dictionary. this last strategy is important because students should know the correct use of the dictionary in order to save time and avoid interruptions when reading. table 1. reading comprehension strategies used in the project strategies categories function reading speed scanning to locate specific information skimming to get general information non-text information non-verbal information to support the verbal information given in the text (tables, charts and diagrams) graphic conventions to identify content of a reading (symbols, spacing, indentation, layout, punctuation, choice of type) word attack skills lexical items to identify the meaning of the words or groups of words structural clues to establish the type of grammatical category of the words inferences from context to understand the meaning from context the first time ignoring difficult words to ignore words which are not important for the immediate purpose text attack recognizing and interpreting cohesive devices to identify what the writer wants to express interpreting discourse markers to find out the meaning of difficult sentences discursive recognizing implications and making inferences to make use of syntactic, logical and cultural clues to discover the meaning of unknown elements prediction to make students think about the topic of the text based on the title and key words 15profile vol. 12, no. 2, october 2010. issn 1657-0790. bogotá, colombia. pages 11-32 promoting tenth graders’ reading comprehension... text-attack skills they are the ones that help us grasp some features of the text such as cohesion, functional value, and rhetorical organization. to do so we can use the following skills: understanding sentence syntax, recognizing and interpreting cohesive devices, and interpreting discourse markers. markers like linking words, connectors, discourse organization, and writers’ points of view relate the parts of the text and indicate the functional value of the sentence (nuttall, 1982). discursive skills in this group we have those skills related to recognizing information that is not explicitly stated in the text. skills associated with discourse are as follows: • recognizing the functional value: it deals with recognizing not only the meaning or the signification, but also what the writer intends to do with the utterances used in the text. • interpreting rhetorical structure: this refers to the structure of the underlying ideas and the connections between them. as noted by nuttall (1982), it is important to analyze the organization of aspects like content, information within a sentence, sequence of sentences and paragraphs. • recognizing the presuppositions underlying a text: this is related to the presuppositions that both writers and students could have when they read and understand the text. • recognizing implications and making inferences: this refers to the inferences students can make from other pieces of information in the text. • prediction: this skill embraces the ability to predict and helps students to understand the text (jiménez, 2000). context and participants the i.e.d. san josé de castilla is a public school located in castilla neighborhood, eighth zone, in bogotá, colombia. the school offers education from kindergarten to eleventh grade in four different places. in high school there is an average of forty-five students per class. the group chosen was one of the tenth grades, classroom 1002. it consisted of thirty-eight students: 21 boys and 17 girls. they were from 14 to 17 years old and had different english levels. method: how action research was implemented diagnostic phase at the beginning of the project we carried out a diagnostic task. to do so, we first applied a questionnaire in order to state the reasons for reading texts in english, how important reading in english was for students, the techniques most used when reading, and their reading comprehension level. next we gathered the main results of this base-line phase of our study. first, in figure 1, we can read what students said about the reasons for reading in english. 0 5 10 15 get information pleasure know about a topic do homework teacher asks figure 1. responses obtained when students were asked: what is the principal reason for reading in english? 16 universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras quiroga carrillo the main reason for reading texts in english was to get information and to fulfill a requirement set out by the teach er. the analysis of the information we gathered also showed that most of the students only read texts in english in class (see figure 2). this made us hypothesize that the students only read in english classes because they do not have or do not know how to use the strategies in order to process a reading text on their own. this confirmed that they needed some orientation for tackling a text. 0 5 10 15 20 25 everyday on weekends only in class when needed inf. never figure 2. answers gotten when students were asked: when do you read in english? in regard to the use of different techniques used by the teach er in the english class, we also found a variety of practices, as can be seen in figure 3. 0 5 10 15 20 games different activities individual work group work always the same figure 3. students’ responses to the question about activities used by the teach er in reading lessons. as shown in figure 3, when asked about the ways they used to approach a text in the reading lessons, students stated that teach ers explored different alternatives. furthermore, students highlighted that collaborative work played an important role in their lessons. we also asked students, “what do you think your reading level is?” and could identify a variety of responses in regard to their reading comprehension. their responses can be seen in figure 4. 0 5 10 15 20 25 low beginner intermediate high intermed. advanced figure 4. students’ perceptions of their level in reading in english. however, and as can be read afterwards, a diagnostic test we also administered in order to establish the real reading level of the students showed that the students’ real level was very low (see figure 5). it was a big problem and a cause of concern if we take into account that the students had studied english for at least five years. the diagnostic test was applied to 37 students and the results were scored from 0 to 10, being 0 the lowest score and 10 the highest one. in this test we included some questions intended to find out if they used the five strategies we had planned to apply in the project. we wanted to establish if students were familiar with them or not. to do so, a biology text related to the photosynthesis process was chosen. 17profile vol. 12, no. 2, october 2010. issn 1657-0790. bogotá, colombia. pages 11-32 promoting tenth graders’ reading comprehension... 0 5 10 15 20 25 0.0 2.0 2.5 -4.5 -6.0 6.5 8.0 8.5 10.0 4.0 figure 5. results of the diagnostic test. the test results confirmed that although the majority of the students considered their level to be high, they had a low reading comprehension level when required to answer questions about an academic text. in addition, in the responses to the diagnostic questionnaire we found that 60 per cent of them read in english only in class, and only when the teach er asked them to do so. that was why it was very important to develop a special project on reading comprehension. data collection when doing an action research project, it is important to choose data collection techniques in order to identify and justify monitoring or observing what happens in connection with the research problem itself (burns, 1999). that is why we decided to use a journal and questionnaires as the main techniques or instruments. likewise, we chose interviews and artifacts (reading worksheets) as complementary sources. in the following paragraphs we explain what we understand by each instrument and how they were used along the research study. a journal is a public document in which information about the class is registered in order to collect data related to the development of the class, activities, events, feelings, reactions, reflections, and explanations. in our case, there were two teach ers in the classroom; while one of them was doing the class observation and taking notes about the class environment, the students’ behavior, and the way they used the reading strategies, the other was directing the class, leading students to fulfill the lesson and applying the strategies selected for the specific class. the monitoring was very meticulous (see one sample in appendix 2). as we know, a questionnaire is a form containing a set of questions for gathering information. its goal is to ask people about their knowledge, opinions, ideas and experiences in order to get data for reflection and analysis of a specific topic. in this research, two questionnaires were used. with the first we wanted to identify how important reading was for students and how the reading process was held in class. it was applied before beginning the project. with the second one we wanted to state the students’ reading comprehension level in english; it was also applied at the beginning of the process. like the questionnaire, the interview is an instrument that helps the researcher to get information about participants’ opinions and experiences. we prepared the interview to be answered in writing. one interview was applied in the middle of the process in order to determine the advances of the project. finally, artifacts consisted of the work produced by students during the lessons. the first lesson plan was prepared to have students apply the reading speed strategy in order to develop the scanning and skimming skills to get specific and general information. they also applied the non-verbal information strategy to fill in charts and to label a scheme. in the second lesson plan students applied the non-text information strategy in order to develop their capacity to understand graphic conventions. 18 universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras quiroga carrillo for the third lesson plan students applied the reading speed and text-attack strategies for getting specific and general information. students also identified what the writer wanted to express and found out the meaning of difficult sentences. for the last lesson plan students applied textattack and discursive strategies in order to find out the meaning of difficult sentences and to make use of syntactical, logical and cultural clues. students were expected to discover the meaning of unknown elements. these data techniques allowed us the possibility to see the students’ behaviors or answers when asked which reading strategies they applied. in addition, we could contrast specific information in order to make the project objective and reliable. through the analysis of data provided by said instruments we could check the effectiveness of the proposal. pedagogical procedure according to the students’ needs and in order to improve their reading comprehension skills, we prepared four lesson plans and thought of activities that would encourage them to apply the strategies described beforehand: reading speed, non text information, word-attack, text-attack, and discursive. for the lesson plan design we took into ac count three stages each one with specific steps. they are shown in table 2. appendix 1 includes a sample of one of the lesson plans designed by the teach ers involved in the project, and which was developed with the group of students participating in our study. findings through the analysis of the different instruments used in our research, and which were mentioned before, we could identify three themes that are discussed in the following paragraphs: (1) using reading strategies to decode academic texts; (2) students’ involvement in the reading lessons; and (3) difficulties and challenges along the process. using reading strategies to decode academic texts as already mentioned, for the purpose of our project five reading strategies were selected in or der to design four lesson plans. each lesson plan intended to have students explore the use of one or two reading strategies. on the other hand, there was also an evaluation at the end of each lesson in order to determine the students’ performance or progress in reading comprehension. for the first lesson a biology text was used: “the ear: some physical and functional aspects”. the text was about how noise can induce hearing loss. the students worked with labels, charts, pictures and abbreviations. the strategies selected table 2. stages followed in the reading lessons stage steps or activities followed in each stage before reading • warm up: here students are motivated with different kind of activities, questions, among others. • presentation: the topic is presented to the students. while reading • practice: students read the text and do the different activities in order to apply the specific strategy they are expected to work with. after reading • evaluation: in this step students value their own comprehension of the text. • homework: it is an extra activity that helps to reinforce or to go deep into the reading. 19profile vol. 12, no. 2, october 2010. issn 1657-0790. bogotá, colombia. pages 11-32 promoting tenth graders’ reading comprehension... were reading speed to locate specific information and to get general information; and non-text information to identify content of a reading and to support the verbal information given in the text. it is important to say that the students worked in pairs. another important aspect is that they did not use the dictionary at all because the visual aids, as the ear poster, and some mimics used by the teach er helped students to comprehend the text. as shown in figure 6, the results of the evaluation carried out at the end of the lesson showed that most of the students felt confident when they used reading speed (scanning and skimming). they also used a scheme in order to clarify their comprehension about a text. the strategies selected for the second lesson were reading speed, and word-attack skills to identify the meaning of the words or sentences in the reading. music was the chosen topic and the text was ludwig van beethoven. in the first part of the worksheet used for the lesson, the students could read a text of his biography. in the second part, there was a chart with some information taken from the internet. the students worked with vocabulary from the context and filled in charts. they were also challenged to find definitions or synonyms. the low grades obtained in the evaluation (see figure 7) showed that the majority of the students had some difficulties identifying the meaning of unknown words in the context and the “fill in charts” task was not easy either. in this lesson, the students had to use the dictionary. they did so by pairs. from these results we could state that word-at tack skills are useful only when students have a wide range of vocabulary. also, it was concluded that they needed more opportunities to practice those skills with concrete tasks and teach ers’ guidance. the third lesson plan included a cultural topic. the text chosen was television, its advantages and disadvantages. the students worked with a long text, doing exercises about vocabulary. they also worked main ideas and text organization. the strategies selected were word-attack skills, in order to reinforce this strategy, and text-attack, to identify what the writer wants to express and to find out the meaning of difficult sentences. 0 2 4 6 8 10 12 14 16 0 2 0 2 2.5 4 4.5 6 6.5 8 8.5 10 figure 6. results of the evaluation carried out after working with the text “the ear: some physical and functional aspects”. 0 5 10 15 20 25 0-2 2.5 4 4.5 6 6.5 8 8.5 10 figure 7. results of the evaluation implemented after the read ing lesson based on the text “ludwig van beethoven”. 20 universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras quiroga carrillo the results showed better grades than in the previous lesson (see figure 8). students worked in pairs and understood the vocabulary in the text. the strategies applied seemed to help them with general comprehension. in this lesson, students were more interested in the topic, so we could establish that this was an important aspect for comprehension. hence, the topics of the texts have an impact on students’ motivation. the last lesson was related to geography. the text used was entitled stonehenge. in it, students could read about this megalithic monument. the class had a jigsaw activity, predictions, diagrams and maps. the strategies worked were text-attack to find out the meaning of difficult sentences and discursive to make use of syntactical, logical and cultural clues to discover the meaning of unknown elements. the results gathered in the evaluation of the fourth lesson (see figure 9) showed that students understood most of the text and improved their grades. at this point students had used not only the specific strategies for the lesson plan, but also a combination of all of the five that were chosen for the project. students’ involvement in the reading lessons as already explained, we used a journal (see appendix 2) as a way to collect information. through the observations carried out by an observer –by one of the teach ers participating in the development of the project– we could keep records of some actions and students’ behaviors during the development of every lesson. figure 10 gathers the evidence of students’ participation throughout the process. they are explained afterwards. figure 10. evidences of students’ involvement as registered by an observer in the journal. participation checking self evaluation translation scanning text comprehensioninquiring lesson plans 0 2 4 6 8 10 12 14 0-2 2.5 4 4.5 6 6.5 8 8.5 10 figure 8. results of the evaluation done at the end the lesson around the text television, its advantages and disadvantages. 0 2 4 6 8 10 12 14 16 18 0-2 2.5 4 4.5 6 6.5 8 8.5 10 figure 9. results obtained in the evaluation after the reading lesson based on the text stonehenge. 21profile vol. 12, no. 2, october 2010. issn 1657-0790. bogotá, colombia. pages 11-32 promoting tenth graders’ reading comprehension... participation participation was a constant in the four lessons. it shows that students were active in the learning and comprehension process, and it was also a way to confirm if the strategies applied were working. students felt confident to make comments during the classes in order to corroborate, read, give opinions, ask or give meanings for words or sentences in the text. text comprehension although students’ performance in the evaluations carried out at the end of the lessons were not always high, text comprehension was a constant pattern in the observations registered in the journal. text comprehension was a theme that gave us the basis to see the effectiveness of the strategies worked in each class and along the different pro cesses of our study. text comprehension was present in the development of the lesson plans. it was the focus of attention in all of them and an indicator of students’ understanding or difficulties to decode the contents of specific texts. checking this topic was also a constant in the implementation of the project because it was used by both students and the teach er as a tool to confirm, correct or corroborate the information that students got in a text. this was carried out not only in an individual way, but also in group work. self-evaluation during the process students did self-evaluation in a tacit way. in several cases, we could observe they corrected themselves after checking specific tasks or activities and also when they finished the evaluation of each lesson. scanning this was a skill that most of the students used in order to get a general idea from a text. along the processes of the different lessons, they learned how to use it and how to take advantage of it. translation this tool was used in order to confirm if the meanings or ideas that students had of a text were correct. translation was done by looking at the context of given words and the use of the dictionary as a resource to understand some vocabulary that was not very common. inquiry students used inquiry as a way to corroborate, confirm or change their opinions or questions about a text. they not only posed questions for the teach er, but also asked their classmates for help. besides, it was a tool to clarify general ideas, meanings or uses of a specific part of a text. difficulties and challenges along the process the analysis of the information collected in our study also indicated that students had difficulties when filling in tables. this shows that the non-text information strategy was not easy for them. additionally, we noticed that the use of the dictionary was less frequent because they identified many words from context or preferred to translate them. nonetheless, students demonstrated that the wordattack skill was successful after two lesson plans. they did not only use the five strategies defined in the literature review, but used other strategies such as translation, inquiry, and checking. all of them were tools brought into play in order to find out the meaning of the text. at this point, the teach er’s role was very important because through 22 universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras quiroga carrillo inquiring and checking she confirmed or clarified information. about the students’ role, the use of reading tools, that is to say, strategies, helped them to play an active role and thus decode information contained in academic texts, extract the required data and fulfill goals with more efficiency. as explained before, we used interviews as complementary sources to monitor the reading lessons. an interview was applied in the middle of the research process to a sample of 14 students and in order to determine the progress of the project and students’ opinions about the reading comprehension lessons. the responses gathered showed how the project offered the students elements in order to improve their comprehension of academic texts. also, findings posed challenges for both the teach ers and the students in the following lessons and in reading lessons in general. let us summarize what we found in the interviews. also, we can see the corresponding statistics in figures 11 to 20. most of the students considered that at this point of the process –in the middle of project development– they could comprehend more than half of a text. they also considered that their reading comprehension had increased. on the other hand, most students expressed that after reading a text they could keep in their minds or remember more than half of the information contained in it. in contrast, the students’ responses to the question how many unknown words do you identify by context? indicated that it was difficult for them to identify words by context. however, and as can be seen in figure 15, when students did not comprehend a text, they tried to read it. this shows that they were willing to face the challenges reading texts posed despite the difficulties they might have had with a lack of vocabulary. on the other hand, the fact that all the students were able to identify grammatical categories in a text indicated that the analysis of the passage structure was a source to decode it. likewise, although for them it was difficult to identify words from context, it was easier to get the meaning of a whole idea, instead of paying attention to word after word. in regard to the use of the mother tongue, all the students admitted they used translation in order to confirm that they comprehended a text. furthermore, most students expressed sometimes or always evaluating their advances in reading comprehension. finally, it was interesting to find that most students admitted they asked the teach er in order to check their answers to reading tasks; in other words, to know whether what they comprehended was right. 0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 nothing less than half more than half everything figure 11. students’ responses to the question: how much do you comprehend of an academic text in english? nothing less than half more than half everything 0 2 4 6 8 10 12 14 figure 12. students’ responses to the question: how much has your english reading comprehension increased? 23profile vol. 12, no. 2, october 2010. issn 1657-0790. bogotá, colombia. pages 11-32 promoting tenth graders’ reading comprehension... 0 2 4 6 8 10 12 nothing less than half more than half everything figure 13. students’ responses to the question: how much information can you remember after reading a text in english? 0 2 4 6 8 10 12 nothing less than half more than half everything figure 14. students’ responses to the question: how many unknown words do you identify by context? 0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 always sometimes never figure 15. students’ opinions when asked: do you refuse to read a text when you do not comprehend it? 0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 always sometimes never figure 16. students’ answers to the question: do you identify grammatical categories in a text in english? 0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 always sometimes never figure 17. students’ answers to the question: do you identify the meaning of ideas instead of reading word by word? 0 2 4 6 8 10 12 always sometimes never figure 18. students’ answers to the question: do you use the translation for confirming what you have comprehended of the text? 24 universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras quiroga carrillo conclusion and implications students had the opportunity to work with reading strategies and recognized those that helped them in their reading comprehension. for instance, they were more conscious of the importance of looking at titles, pictures and other visuals in order to identify the information they provided. also, they learned how important it was to get a general idea about the text. similarly, the students recognized that identifying the key words allowed them to find information in a short period of time. the results achieved with the implementation of the project showed that the five strategies chosen for developing reading comprehension skills of academic texts were useful for students. however, it is necessary to help them to discover which ones are the best in order to obtain better results. some strategies were difficult for students so it was necessary to work with them in different class es in order to reinforce all of them. the idea is that they get into the habit of using reading strategies. the dictionary cannot be seen as the first tool to comprehend. encouraging the students’ to look up only a few unknown words in the dictionary enables them to find other ways to understand. of course, it is necessary to work with the appropriate vocabulary techniques such as getting meanings by context so that they can discover or experiment with different reading strategies. we exploited academic texts for the pres ent project. when a person reads, s/he expands her/ his vocabulary and improves her/his general knowledge. moreover, it makes comprehension easier. the use of different types of texts not only strengthened our students’ knowledge about the language, the reading strategies or the topics contained in them, but also contributed to having more dynamic classes. when the learning process is not just a pro cess, but one also analyzed and systematized by using different data techniques, our pedagogical practice improves and it is possible to get a real view of the difficulties and advances of the students. the results showed the effectiveness of the project, because the students got better grades when we developed each new lesson plan, so we could conclude that the students improved their academic performance. 0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 always sometimes never figure 19. students’ answers to the question: do you evaluate your advances in reading comprehension? 0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 always sometimes never figure 20. students’ answers to the question: do you ask your teach er in order to check what you have comprehended? 25profile vol. 12, no. 2, october 2010. issn 1657-0790. bogotá, colombia. pages 11-32 promoting tenth graders’ reading comprehension... this project allowed the achievement of new actions in the reading comprehension processes; the most important action for us has been the engagement of other english teach ers in the application of the project. this way, we have supported the emphasis of our pei. reading is a long process so it is necessary to work with reading strategies for a longer period of time in order to get better results and to make sure students get familiar with them. the present proj ect was allocated only two months to be developed. thus, it was recommended that the school extend it, to improve it and to implement it afterwards. it is important to state that since we began with this project (in 2005), it has been enriched year by year, and has helped our students to get better results in the icfes exam. this was recognized later at the national level and our school got a prize for being the third best results in english in the icfes test, in 2007. because of this, our school was chosen for taking part in the secretary of education of bogotá distrito program related to specialized high school education, which aims at giving students in 10th and 11th grades the opportunity of intensifying the english classes with academic purposes –which means taking more hours of english per week– so that they can have better opportunities for university admission, travelling, getting scholarships abroad, and better performances on academic tasks. references bernárdez, e. (1982). introducción a la lingüística del texto. madrid: espasa-calpe. burns, a. (1999). collaborative action research for english language teach ers. cambridge: cambridge university press. cohen, a. (1990). language learning: insights for learners, teach ers, and researchers. new york: newbury house. haller, a. k., & montgomery, j. k. (2004). noise-induced hearing loss in children. what educators need to know. retrieved august 20, 2010, from: http://www. speechandlanguage.com/pdf/june20042.pdf. jiménez, p. (2000). teaching reading strategies. bogotá: editorial universidad externado de colombia – colciencias. nuttall, c. (1982). teaching reading skills in a foreign language. london: heinemann. pérez grajales, h. (1999). comunicación escrita. madrid: espasa-calpe. about the author claudia quiroga carrillo holds a b.ed in english-spanish from universidad distrital francisco josé de caldas. she teach es english in 10th and 11th grades at san josé de castilla school, afternoon shift, in bogotá, colombia. 26 universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras quiroga carrillo appendix 1: sample of a lesson plan lesson plan 1 level: tenth ages: 14 to 17 class: 1 goal: to apply the non-text strategy in order to identify content of a reading and to support the verbal information given in the text. strategy: non-text information. materials: tape-recorder, cds, posters (a drawing and a text), worksheet, text –the hearing loss. time guide: 2 sessions. before reading warm up: 10 minutes. 1. the students will listen to different kind of sounds e.g. water, birds, bulls, dogs, wind, drums and so on. they will try to discover what sound they are listening to. 2. the teach er will ask the students: what is the sense they used to discover those sounds? is it important? why? the students will give their opinions. presentation: 10 minutes. 1. the teach er will display posters about the ear on the board. 2. the teach er will read the text and show the different parts of the ear in the drawing. she will explain or clarify its meaning if necessary. the ear: some physical and functional aspects humans have two ears. each ear has four parts. the lobule is outside the skull. the outer part is located next to the lobule. the outer ear contains the eardrum and a thin membrane of skin. sound waves enter the ear and produce vibrations in the eardrum. the middle ear is between the outer ear and the inner ear. it contains three bones, which transmit sounds waves to the inner ear. the inner ear is next to the middle ear. it contains the cochlea. inside the cochlea is the corti, the “organ of hearing”. 27profile vol. 12, no. 2, october 2010. issn 1657-0790. bogotá, colombia. pages 11-32 promoting tenth graders’ reading comprehension... while reading warm up: 65 minutes practice: a. the ear 1. the students will work in pairs. the teach er will give a worksheet for each student. the students will be asked to label the diagram and to complete the summary. 2. the teach er will monitor the activity and help if necessary. 3. the teach er will draw the chart on the board. 4. one student from each group will go to the board and complete the diagram on the poster or will fill in the chart. if it is not correct another student can help him/her. worksheet diagram: label the diagram summary: complete the table system main parts location other parts ear outside the skull three bones inner ear lobule corti cochlea 28 universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras quiroga carrillo b. music to your ears? 1. the students will receive a copy of the text to work with. they will read the text with their partners’ help and get a general idea. music to your ears in 1987, the los angeles times told of pete townshend’s battle with tinnitus and his hearing loss. townshend (of the rock group, the who) said that the saddest circumstance of his hearing loss was not being able to hear his children speak to him. the high frequencies, where children’s voices are pitched, are usually the first to be affected by noiseinduced hearing loss (nihl), a problem largely ignored in the music industry since the advent of amplified music. some effects of noise may be physiological e.g. hearing loss, headaches, reduced vision, high blood pressure, higher cholesterol levels, stomach and intestinal ulcers, sexual impotence and hearing disease; others may be psychological, such as anxiety, nervousness and tension. noise-induced hearing loss may occur through occupational noise exposure or through exposure to modern urban noise. it is a gradual process progressing over a period of years, without any external signs at the outset. it causes cumulative and finally irreversible damage in the middle and inner ear. it is often characterised by difficulty in understanding speech and tinnitus, that is to say, ringing in the ear. after exposing the ear to sounds above 110 db or so for a few minutes, a hearing test will show a temporary hearing loss, and after a certain amount of exposure, this will become permanent. adapted from haller & montgomery (2004). 2. the teach er will ask students specific information. – when was the article published? – where was the article published? – what was the rock group’s name? – what does 110 db cause? 3. the students will read the text again in order to understand it better. 4. the teach er will ask students general information and the students participate randomly. – who/what did the article talk about? 29profile vol. 12, no. 2, october 2010. issn 1657-0790. bogotá, colombia. pages 11-32 promoting tenth graders’ reading comprehension... – what is the meaning of nihl? – what physiological effects can noise produce? – what psychological effects can noise produce? – where is irreversible damage produced? 5. the students will read the prevention for hearing loss and will solve the activity on their worksheets. 6. when the students finish, the teach er will select some of them in order to read aloud the answers and correct them. after reading evaluation: 20 minutes name: _________________________________ date: _________________________________ 1. write true (t) or false (f). a. the article about townshend helped to raise public awareness of nihl. ____ b. hearing loss is only one of the effects of noise on health. ____ c. nihl can be acquired or it can be congenital. ____ d. a person may not realize for a long time that s/he is suffering from nihl. ____ e. only people working in noisy environments suffer from hearing loss. ____ f. the degree of damage in the ear can only be determined through hearing tests or audiograms. ____ 2. complete the chart according to the information in the text. effects of noise physiological physchological 3. complete the table. ear main part damage cause middle ear hearing loss advanced age or infections 30 universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras quiroga carrillo appendix 2: journal sample. records gathered when lesson plan 1 was developed journal data analysis journal # 1 date: september 9th 2005 activity: reading speed strategy. non-text information strategy. observation line comments students arrive at class after a long break, so they are very noisy, 1 despite of this, they organize the classroom very fast. the teach er 2 asks students to work by pairs. 3 the class begins by listening different sounds (animals, things, 4 instruments.) they have to guess which instrument is playing. one 5 student says “it is a violin”, other says “it is a violoncello”, the 6 teach er says “o.k.” for the next sound she asks “is it a guitar?”, 7 students participate by rising their hands. 8 after this the teach er asks them what did they need to identify the 9 sounds, diego answers “the hear?” the teach er explains the 10 difference between hear and ear. yined asks again “what do you know 11 about ears?” a student says “tienen cera”, other student asks to his 12 partner –¿cómo se dice huesos? –bones. 13 then yined puts one poster on the board. it is a text about the ear and 14 its parts. 15 diego l. begins to read but he is translating. one student reads in oral 16 scanning way. most of them are taking notes. diego does the translation for his 17 translation friends. yined asks them for specific information: 18 t: “what do the waves produce?” 19 s1: “waves produce vibrations”. 20 inference t: “how many parts does the ear have?” 21 s2: “four parts”. 22 scanning t: “how many bones are there in the ear?” 23 s3: “three bones”. 24 scanning yined reads the text, students are very concentrated on the poster. 25 text following other student asks: 26 inquiring “what is skull?” his partner says “cráneo”. 27 translation then the teach er puts a poster with a drawing of the ear and she 28 begins to explain how the sounds are produced in it. while she is 29 speaking students say “yes” with their heads. rafael and his partner 30 text comprehension 31profile vol. 12, no. 2, october 2010. issn 1657-0790. bogotá, colombia. pages 11-32 promoting tenth graders’ reading comprehension... say “ahh, claro!”. 31 text comprehension one girl says: “ya entendí”. 32 the explanation finishes. 33 text comprehension t: “is this clear?” 34 inquiring ss: “yes!” 35 diego condia: “what are the parts of the ear?” 36 t: “lobule, inner ear, outer ear”. 37 now she passes the worksheet to each pair. students have to label in 38 a picture very similar to the poster, the parts of the ear according to 39 what they have read. 40 they read the text on the poster and compare their drawings 41 contrast with the picture on the board .they share ideas about what they 42 text comprehension understood from the reading and the explanation. they discuss 43 vocabulary disc. about the words that they should write on the labels. one pair 44 dictionary use look up words in the dictionary. 45 cristian and diego s don't know what to do. they ask for help to 46 the teach er. 47 scanning leonardo stands up and shows a word from the reading, his 48 partner says “sí, esa”. 49 now yined asks them to label the parts of the ear on the picture 50 participation that is on the board. many students want to participate. 51 comprehension julian writes middle ear. 52 checking diego s writes outer. 53 checking angélica writes inner ear. some students say “oh, yeah”. 54 rafael writes coclea. his partners say “con h”. so he writes 55 correction cochlea. 56 participation andrea writes skull. 57 they finish to write the parts. 58 corroboration rafael: “lo teníamos todo bien” 59 for the second part they have to complete a chart with specific 60 information that they have to take from the text. 61 inquiring daniel asks for an explanation. then they check the chart. some 62 self-correction pairs have mistakes and they correct them. 63 t: what did you learn today? 64 rafael: i learned the parts of the ear. 65 self-evaluation 32 universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras quiroga carrillo diego condia: i learned where those parts are located. 66 self-evaluation t: which are the parts of the ear? 67 ss: lobule, outer, inner, middle. 68 checking t: how many bones? 69 ss: three! 70 checking t: why is this topic related with music? 71 cindy: we need ear to listen to music. 72 t: what happened to beethoven? 73 rafael: he felt the vibrations. 74 yined asks to the students to take notes about the topic. 75 they organize the classroom, and give the worksheet to the 76 teach er. the class finishes. 77 they say goodbye and go out. 78 the professional development of a facilitator through a study group profile 8, 2007. issn 1657-0790. bogotá, colombia. pages 91-101 91 the professional development of a facilitator through a study group desarrollo profesional de un facilitador a través de un estudio de grupo ana maría sierra piedrahita* universidad de antioquia, colombia this article presents part of the results of a study that was conducted to observe the professional development of a group of foreign language teacher educators and preservice teachers. the study focused on the knowledge, skills and attitudes these teachers developed through their participation in a study group. this article reports specifically on the skills and attitudes the facilitator of the study group developed due to her role in it. key words: professional development, facilitator’s role, study group, skills, attitudes, foreign language teacher education este artículo presenta parte de los resultados de una investigación que se realizó para mirar el desarrollo profesional de un grupo de formadores de profesores y futuros profesores en el área de las lenguas extranjeras. el estudio indagó particularmente qué conocimientos, habilidades y actitudes desarrollaron los profesores a través de su participación en un grupo de estudio. en este artículo se reportan específicamente las habilidades y actitudes que la facilitadora del grupo de estudio desarrolló debido a su papel en éste. palabras clave: desarrollo profesional, papel de la facilitadora, grupo de estudio, habilidades, actitudes, formación de docentes en lenguas extranjeras * e-mail: sierrapiedra@wisc.edu address: 101 eagle heights apt. f madison, wi, 53705, u.s.a. this article was received on march 31st, 2007 and accepted on june 17th, 2007. profile 8.indd 91 28/09/2007 12:42:20 a.m. sierra piedrahita universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras92 introduction my interest in teacher professional development throughout my teaching career has led me to create two study groups. i created the first one when i participated in a collaborative action research project in 2001 that aimed at fostering teacher and student autonomy. i created this group with teachers at the english teaching program where i worked to promote teacher autonomy since i saw it as a good strategy to foster professional development and curriculum improvement. later, in 2003, when i became a teacher educator, i created another study group with some foreign language teacher educators and preservice teachers who were interested in developing a proposal of curriculum improvement related to the language performance standards for students in the program and to study research techniques. during the time i facilitated these two study groups, i observed that teachers appeared to develop some knowledge, skills and attitudes that are essential for their development as professionals and good performance as teachers. because of time constraints, i could never systematically study the professional development of these teachers through their participation in these two groups. i had to leave the coordination of the second study group in order to carry out my master’s studies in the u.s. and for my master’s thesis i wanted to study the professional development of some of the teachers of the second study group since it was still functioning. i also wanted to carry out this study because the idea of study groups in colombia is relatively new and rarely used in institutions as a form of professional development for teachers; so, i wanted to know how effective it could be. in addition, in the area of foreign language teaching, most of the few professional development experiences of teachers who participate in study groups in colombia have not been systematically studied in order to understand what teachers gain in these professional communities. the purpose of this study was to understand the knowledge, attitudes and skills that foreign language teacher educators and preservice teachers develop when they participate in a study group. knowledge is related to the “collective term for concepts, principles and practices in a particular field or professional specialty and the general data, information and experience that are essential to effective performance in learning and applying what has been taught” (the greenwood dictionary of education, 2003, p. 197). skills are related to the things “one knows how to do” and that are “attained by practice” (the greenwood dictionary of education, 2003, p. 325). attitudes have to do with the “disposition to behave favorably or unfavorably toward some object, person, event or idea” (the cyclopedic education dictionary, 1998, p. 21) and what guides “a person’s aspirations and ambitions” (the greenwood dictionary of education, 2003, p. 32). these aspects of teachers’ professional development are essential for them to carry out acceptable practice as teachers and professionals. the research question for this study was what knowledge, attitudes and skills, if any, do inservice and preservice teachers develop through their participation in a study group? though the purpose of my study was not to look at the skills and attitudes the facilitator of the group had developed due to her role in the profile 8.indd 92 28/09/2007 12:42:20 a.m. the professional development of a facilitator through a study group profile 8, 2007. issn 1657-0790. bogotá, colombia. pages 91-101 93 group, the research findings do show some specific skills and attitudes the facilitator developed due to her role in the study group. i present these results in this article. the results concerning the knowledge, skills and attitudes the members of the study group developed are reported somewhere else (sierra, forthcoming). a study group is an organization in which teachers, instead of an outside expert, negotiate and decide their own agenda, objectives and the activities to be carried out. they suggest the topics they want to discuss and decide how to address them. teachers’ questions, interests and concerns are a priority for their work and there is always time and opportunity for collaborative dialogue among teachers. it is also a democratic organization where teachers participate voluntarily, work collaboratively and share responsibilities and roles (hudelson, 2001; birchak et al., 1998). in addition, a study group is an organization in which teachers share their points of views and experiences about education and teaching and promote curriculum improvement and individual as well as professional development. a study group also promotes teachers’ reflection making their practice a reflective process that leads to curriculum improvement (birchak, 1998). theoretical framework sparks and loucks-horsley (1990) define professional development as the “processes that improve the job-related knowledge, skills and attitudes of school employees” (pp. 234-235). little (1997 cited in peixotto & fager, 1998) notes that the “test of effective professional development is whether teachers and other educators come to know more about their subjects, their students and their practice and to make informed use of what they know” (p. 6). sparks and louckshorsley (1989 cited in peixotto & fager, 1998), when referring to the characteristics of effective professional development practice, specify that activities are carried out in school contexts and are connected to other school improvement endeavors. teachers set goals, plan and select activities; there is an emphasis on self-instruction and an array of training opportunities is available; continuous assistance and resources are made available; and training is concrete and involves continuous feedback, directed attempts and support when requested. this definition of professional development, the way its effectiveness is measured and its characteristics, implies that there are professional development activities that are more appropriate than those that have been traditionally offered to teachers. the literature about staff development indicates that inservice teachers do not learn much from workshops, so they need to get involved in professional learning that is experiential (randi & zeichner, 2004). in his discussion on professional development for teachers, fullan (2001) states that professional development is not about workshops and courses; instead, it is about developing more powerful ways of learning that occur day after day. he also states that new professionalism requires teachers’ own learning. this learning cannot stop because demands continuously change and because after teachers’ preservice training, they probably work for more than 30 years. thus, teachers need to learn more on the job where they can continuously assess, refine and get profile 8.indd 93 28/09/2007 12:42:20 a.m. sierra piedrahita universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras94 feedback on their improvement. moreover, they need to be in contact with their colleagues in order to learn from them. finally, he states that since the teaching profession must become a better learning profession, teachers need to work in professional learning communities if educational change is to be achieved. besides, when teachers have opportunities to talk substantively with their colleagues, this helps them to find a way of dealing with isolation and to form communities of practice (feiman-nemser, 2001). along the same line, when discussing learning through continuous professional development, roberts & pruitt (2003) note that learning is not a fragmented approach but that it requires constant inquiry, experimentation and assessment as teachers try to increase their effectiveness. moreover, they indicate that study groups as a professional development strategy have the potential to help to build communities of professional practice and are a job-embedded approach for teachers’ professional growth. furthermore, opportunities for teachers’ professional development such as workshops and seminars are often based on externally perceived needs and although those perceptions can be right, they are not the perceptions of educators and, as a consequence, they are not as likely to be meaningful to them (schwarz, 2001). one of the big limitations of traditional models of professional development is that teachers are put into a passive role. they find it difficult to put ideas into practice because they do not fit them into their teaching practice and do not have the opportunity to work collaboratively with other teachers (burbank & kauchak, 2003). when teachers engage in professional development activities that are more meaningful to them, they are more willing to engage in them and collaborate with other educators. at the same time, this type of collaborative work helps teachers feel empowered to make decisions about schools and students. thus, it is clear that when designing professional development opportunities for teachers, we need to move from top-down models of professional development in order to facilitate teacher learning and, as a result, student achievement (lefever-davis, wilson, moore, kent, & hopkins, 2003). my view is that of all the many options teachers have to enhance professional development, study groups are some of the most effective ones since they normally take place during the regular school day. in addition, study groups allow activities of longer duration than traditional professional development activities and make it easier to encourage the collective participation of groups of teachers in the same school or department (garet, porter, desimone, birman, & kwang, 2001). teachers who work together are more likely to have the opportunity to discuss concepts, problems, etc., that emerge during their professional development activities. finally, study groups are needed because they help teachers carry out curricular and teaching innovations, plan school improvement collaboratively and study research on teaching and learning (murphy, 1992). method participants the participants of this study were six inservice and preservice teachers of the profile 8.indd 94 28/09/2007 12:42:20 a.m. the professional development of a facilitator through a study group profile 8, 2007. issn 1657-0790. bogotá, colombia. pages 91-101 95 nine who comprised the study group that i mentioned before. four teachers were women and all were colombian. they were between the ages of 22 to 42. three were fulltime teachers, one was an hourly teacher and two were preservice teachers. the full-time teachers had between 14 and 16 years of teaching experience in formal and informal language teaching institutions and at the university level. they held master’s degrees in ffl, efl, tesol and applied linguistics from well-known universities nationally and internationally. the hourly teacher held a foreign language teaching degree from the program the study group belonged to. she had taught english and french for 9 years in the program she graduated from, other informal language teaching institutions and at a school. one of the preservice teachers was in the last semester of the foreign language teaching program the study group belonged to. she had two years of teaching experience and had taught english and french in an informal institution and at a high school. the other preservice teacher was in the 9th semester of the same teaching program. he had taught french for a year and a half in a language program at the university level. data sources and analysis i collected data from five different sources. i used 27 minutes of the meetings of the study group, two observations of the meetings, two audio-taped meetings, eight self-assessment forms in which participants had assessed their individual and group process and i audio-taped participants’ interviews; one for each participant, which i transcribed for analysis. to analyze the data i carried out an inductive analysis following burnaford’s et al. (2001) & anderson’s et al. (1994) procedures for data analysis. i read all sources of data many times and highlighted the excerpts that i thought were important to my research question. those excerpts were related to the themes of my research question which were knowledge, skills and attitudes. to some extent, i had some preestablished categories for this analysis, with their definitions, because my experience as coordinator of the two study groups helped me to see some of the knowledge, skills and attitudes teachers in a study group may develop such as critical thinking, collaborative work, initiative and commitment. i also created new categories with their respective definitions such as knowledge of theory, knowledge of research, positive attitude towards research and risk taking. i coded those excerpts that represented the preestablished and new categories. i also coded excerpts that, though not related to the themes of my research question, appeared to be significant for participants or that might be related to the development of knowledge, skills and attitudes in teachers such as positive relationships among inservice and preservice teachers, relaxing atmosphere, teachers’ lack of time, teachers’ heavy workload and teachers’ lack of participation. as i analyzed the data, i wrote notes about things that called my attention concerning the three main themes of my research question and i utilized those notes to discuss my findings. i organized the coded excerpts from the various sources of data under preestablished and new categories. after that, i compared and contrasted categories to see how related or unrelated they were. then, profile 8.indd 95 28/09/2007 12:42:20 a.m. sierra piedrahita universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras96 i looked for relationships among these categories and formulated some preliminary interpretations. these categories changed into subtopics that i organized under the three main themes. i triangulated the various sources of data in order to ensure the validity or trustworthiness of my interpretations. that is to say, i compared my findings from the various sources of data and judged as valid those categories that appeared three or more times in at least three of the sources. later, i showed these preliminary findings to the members of the study group to make sure that my interpretations were accurate for them and that they felt identified with my description of their situation. moreover, i showed them the excerpts of the different sources of data that i would be using as evidence to support my findings in order for them to see what i would be using from their discourses. in general, teachers replied saying that they agreed with my interpretations. only one of the teachers recommended a little correction. findings in this section, i discuss the skills and attitudes the coordinator of the study group has developed due to her role in the group which include leadership skills, initiative and a democratic attitude. facilitator’s skills data indicate that the coordinator of the study group has developed certain skills related to her role in the group. these are leadership skills such as capacity to motivate people and capacity to promote roles and discussion in the group. although in her interview marcela talks about her leadership skills as separate from her motivational and organizational skills, they all can be grouped under leadership skills which are needed in a facilitator in order to be able to guide a group properly. as marcela recognizes that she has developed some skills that are characteristic of her role, she also recognizes that there are some aspects of her role that she still needs to improve in order to do a good job as coordinator. leadership skills when discussing the skills she has developed in the study group, marcela reported some related to her role as coordinator such as leadership and motivational skills. she also commented that her organizational skills were developed in other groups, but she has put them into practice a lot in this study group. the only thing i see different is the role i have in other research groups and in this one. here i have the role of coordinator which requires me to develop leadership skills, coordination, (and) organization. i have always had the organization ones, but not much the leadership ones. then, i think that i had to develop that part here in this group. but i think that here the leadership ones more, the (skills) to motivate people to participate, to help the other feel confident… i had to do this more in this group and i have developed this more here, which has helped me to do it in other groups (interview, marcela, 01/31/06). the organizational skills that the coordinator has put into practice in the study group, which are observed through her planning of the agenda for the meetings and the activities that the group needs to carry out to achieve its goals, have had a positive impact profile 8.indd 96 28/09/2007 12:42:20 a.m. the professional development of a facilitator through a study group profile 8, 2007. issn 1657-0790. bogotá, colombia. pages 91-101 97 on some of the teachers. one of the inservice teachers, for instance, mentioned how the coordinator has been an example for her in terms of organization and has motivated her to work in a more organized way. i believe that something to highlight a lot in this group is that organization part. i don’t know if it is something that is influencing me a lot, then i see it more. i think it is very important. i highlight a lot marcela’s role in that coordination because she gives a lot of herself. i believe that sometimes she dedicates too much of her time to this work and that motivates you a lot, so you feel bad if you are not responding in the same way because it is a very serious and organized work. she has very clear where we are going, we have this timetable, we have these activities, then let’s accomplish it, always being flexible, but trying to accomplish it. (interview, lina, 01/30/06). however, by coordinating the study group marcela has overcome her personal and professional weaknesses such as her leadership capacity. what you see in the group are… like weaknesses that you have in that (in being a leader), when you have to do it because i don’t think i am, as people say, a natural leader. i am (a leader) more depending on the circumstances. i mean, if i have to do it, i do it, but not because i say i am going to lead this, let’s do this, no, i am not that type of person. then it is more the circumstances which force me to do things. then, i react to those circumstances, but not because i say let’s change this, never (interview, marcela, 01/31/06). she thinks that the study group is going to help her to develop her role as coordinator. in other words, it is going to help her to develop her facilitator skills. there is another thing which is the coordinator role that i have to perform and that is one of the benefits i am going to get from this project because it is the first time i perform this coordinator role with a group. i have done it, but not officially named and that is different. i mean, the coordinator role has been much more balanced because it has been shared, but here i feel it is not (interview, marcela, 01/31/06). one of the things she considers she has to learn to do as coordinator is to confront members when they are not being responsible with what they committed themselves to do. the problem i see i have to learn (to deal with) here and that i have to make a reality is to confront the other in the positive terms. but this is something that is very difficult for me because i consider everybody as an adult. then to have to tell another person: what’s up with you? look at this! i don’t see myself in that role. i don’t need people all the time telling me what to do. i see almost unacceptable to have to tell another person what to do. you see? because there are things, that although i understand the situation, i consider unacceptable, that a professional who committed himself to a thing like this (the project) doesn’t do it. you see? but it is going to have to be like this. i mean, there will be a time in which (i will have to say). well, what’s up with you? are you here or not? but i don’t like that. i think that at this level, in these things… it shouldn’t be like this (interview, marcela, 01/31/06). on the other hand, data indicate that marcela has developed other leadership skills such as her capacity to promote the different roles needed in a group and that are important for the group’s dynamism. an example from one of the tape-recorded meetings illustrates this marcela: well, let’s get started. who wants to moderate? (the meeting) who is going to write the minutes? today’s meeting is quite heavy (observation, 01/17/06). she not only promotes varied roles among teachers but is also willing to help them to perform them. the following dialogue from one of the tape-recorded meetings profile 8.indd 97 28/09/2007 12:42:21 a.m. sierra piedrahita universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras98 shows how she guides one of the preservice teachers to perform his role as moderator of the meeting. marcela: who wants to moderate today? david: i (want to) moderate. marcela: ok david. then, let’s give an order to the meeting. the minutes, what else? david: do i have to say it? marcela: of course. i am going to read to you. (we have) minutes, assignments, action plan, and cecilia’s message. david: minutes, assignments, action plan and cecilia’s message. let’s begin with assignments. marcela: assignments? david: then, with cecilia’s (message) and then… action plan. lucia: but cecilia’s message is related to assignments, isn’t it? david: then, action plan and cecilia. marcela: well, then, three action plan and four cecilia’s message. david: and the last (thing) the party. marcela: and the last (thing) in others, (is) the party. gabriela: oh yeah! david: ok. let’s begin with the minutes. eh! the assignments. marcela: the assignments (meeting, 12/06/05). marcela has also developed her ability to promote discussion in the meetings. she normally does this by telling teachers that there are things they need to discuss so that they start to express their points of view or by asking teachers questions on how to proceed with certain things. marcela: and here in the part about writing of past events, could we write present, future, and past events? (observation, 01/17/06). the skills marcela has developed or has put into practice have definitely helped her to perform her role as proper facilitator to the extent that she has been able to motivate other teachers to develop certain skills as well. this shows how crucial it is for a study group to be able to count on a good facilitator who helps them achieve their goals. besides, it demonstrates that a good facilitator can be a motivator for teachers’ professional growth as they learn from a good example and start to apply what they learn. it is clear that for the facilitator of this group all teachers have the capacity, responsibility and right to become facilitators or leaders, and she is able to create situations that stimulate leadership in teachers in the group (lambert, 2003). facilitator’s attitudes marcela has also developed two important attitudes which are fundamental in a facilitator as they allow her to keep the group working to accomplish its goals and help teachers to perceive the group as a professional community where power relationships do not exist. these attitudes are initiative and a democratic attitude. initiative when discussing the attitudes she has developed in the study group, marcela argued that she has developed her initiative. she gives an example to illustrate how on one occasion her initiative helped the group to get back together in a time when it was stuck. i have developed here (in the group) the initiative. it is impressive the (initiative) i had developed here. there were moments in which people were very disperse and if there wasn’t anyone to say: profile 8.indd 98 28/09/2007 12:42:21 a.m. the professional development of a facilitator through a study group profile 8, 2007. issn 1657-0790. bogotá, colombia. pages 91-101 99 come on let’s do this…the presentation in cali helps the group to get back together. otherwise, the groups had stayed stuck. then, when i took the initiative (to tell members) look there is this event and we have to say something, it helped the study group to get together again. that initiative that i have not always had to take in other groups, i have developed it more here (in the study group) (interview, marcela, 01/31/06). the actions marcela has had to take within the group have offered her the opportunity to develop her initiative within her role as facilitator. as a result, she will be more capable of working with other colleagues during her professional life. teachers can perform leadership roles to support their colleagues’ learning. acting as facilitators of professional development experiences such as study groups is one way of doing do. thus, teachers’ capacity to guide these efforts is paramount (loucks-horsley, love, stiles, mundry & hewson, 2003). democratic attitude marcela has also developed a democratic attitude, which is manifested through her negotiation capacity. for instance, in one of the observations, it is possible to see how she negotiates the agenda for the meeting with the rest of the teachers. marcela: so, how do you want us to work? we have the assignments, the action plan and cecilia’s message. in what order? sandra: the assignments. marcela: or if you have any other topic, if you want to talk about something… and in others, how are we going to celebrate the project (approval)? (meeting, 12/06/05). her democratic attitude is not only represented by her capacity to negotiate things with the teachers, but also by her willingness to inform them about every single thing that affects the group. she informs teachers orally or through documents she shares with them. marcela informs that the letter about the standards has already been sent to the teaching committee with which we start the validation process. on may 12, the format with standards will be handed in to that committee (minutes, 05/04/05). moreover, marcela is always very willing to consider teachers’ points of view before making any decision or moving on with the activities the group is carrying out, as illustrated in the following extract from one of the observations. then, here are the questions, the proposal. we are also going to read this next. i am going to read question by question to see if you agree with these questions, or, if they are clear or not, or if you have any other type of questions, or what question you consider is not necessary here because this is not about imposing on you to assess like this but to have you participate in the formulation of the self-assessment criteria (observation, 01/10/06). being democratic is essential in a facilitator since it shows teachers that they are taken into account due to all the decisions that affect them and affect the group’s work. moreover, teachers feel that they are really part of a democratic community and that they all are responsible for the direction and the accomplishments of the group. discussion and conclusion although it is thought that the facilitator of a group should be someone who is very experienced so that she or he is capable of giving direction to the work of the group in order for it to achieve its goals, i would argue profile 8.indd 99 28/09/2007 12:42:21 a.m. sierra piedrahita universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras100 that a good facilitator can also be someone who learns on the job and assumes her or his role as facilitator seriously. when a facilitator commits to her/his job, she/he is able to push him/herself to perform her/his role the best she/he can, as the coordinator of this study group has demonstrated. as marcela works with teachers, she learns how to effectuate her role better as a facilitator, which certainly will help her to continue developing other skills and attitudes and to continue putting into practice those she has already developed inside and outside the study group. the findings of this study concerning the facilitator’s role indicate that for any group to succeed, it is necessary to count on a facilitator who possesses specific leadership skills and attitudes or is willing to develop the leadership skills and attitudes that are necessary to be able promote other teachers’ professional growth. the way the coordinator handles this study group makes it a democratic organization where teachers participate voluntarily, work collaboratively and share responsibilities and roles, all of which aligns with what hudelson (2001) and birchak et al. (1998) have suggested for study groups. in other words, a facilitator is someone who is able to empower teachers. five things that good leaders do are to look for possibilities to change the status quo and ways to improve; to envision the future and help others construct a vision of what a group can be; to promote collaboration and involve others; to create criteria of excellence and lead by being a model; to appreciate the contributions that others make, share the compensation of efforts, and celebrate achievements (kouzes & posner, 2001, cited in loucks-horsley, love, stiles, mundry & hewson, 2003). the coordinator of this group has definitely put into practice the last three items of the practices of a good leader presented above as the data in this study illustrate. certainly teachers in this study group will be more prepared to be facilitators in their own group and in others that they become part of or form in their future professional life due to the leadership skills they have been encouraged to develop by the facilitator in this group. the results of this study related to the facilitator’s role enable me to state that study groups can be an effective strategy for teachers’ professional development. the benefits that this professional community offers to those teachers who become facilitators, in terms of skills and attitudes, make it a good strategy to implement in educational institutions. not only those who play the role of facilitators in a group grow professionally, but also other teachers who participate when they are guided by colleagues who are able to share responsibilities and roles, work collaboratively and promote democratic work. furthermore, when we can count on teachers who experience these kinds of professional development, it is very likely that they promote the same practices in their students which leads to the improvement of students’ learning. for all the benefits study groups can offer teachers and as a consequence to students, administrators should consider encouraging teachers to create study groups in their institutions. however, they would need to give teachers time as well as reduce their workload so that they feel more motivated to participate in these types of learning communities. i hope that the results of this study concerning the facilitator’s role provide teachers, administrators and policy makers profile 8.indd 100 28/09/2007 12:42:21 a.m. the professional development of a facilitator through a study group profile 8, 2007. issn 1657-0790. bogotá, colombia. pages 91-101 101 with ideas about the kind of facilitators that are needed in educational institutions in order to foster other teachers’ professional development through study groups or other similar professional development programs. references anderson, g. l., herr, k., & nihlen, s. a. (1994). studying your own school: an educator’s guide for qualitative practitioner research. thousand oaks, california: corwin press, inc. birchak, b., connor, c., crawford, k. m., kahn, l.h., kaser, s., turner, s., & short, k. (1998). teacher study groups: building community through dialogue and reflection. urbana, il: national council of teachers of english. burbank, m. d., & kauchack, d. (2003). an alternative model for professional development: investigations into effective collaboration. teaching and teacher education, �9, 499-514. burnaford, g., fischer, j., & hobson, d. (2001). teachers doing research: the power of action through inquiry. mahwah, new jersey: lawrence erlbaum associates. collins iii, j.w., & o’brien, n. p. (2003). the greenwood dictionary of education. westport, connecticut: greenwood press. fullan, m. (2001). the new meaning of educational change (3rd ed.). new york: teachers college press. garet, m. s., porter, a.c., desimone, l., birman, b.f., & kwang s. y. (2001). what makes professional development effective? results from a national sample of teachers. american educational research journal, 38(4), 915-945. grossman, p.l. (1995). teacher knowledge. in l. w. anderson (ed.), international encyclopedia of teaching and teacher education (2nd ed.), (pp. 20-24). columbia: pergamon. herner, l. m. (2000). forming and benefiting from educator study groups. teaching exceptional children, 3�(5), 30-37. hudelson, s. (2001). growing together as professionals. how: a colombian journal for english teachers, special issue, 9, 20-26. lambert, l. (2003). leadership redefined: an evocative context for teacher leadership. school leadership and management, �3(4), 421-430. lefever-davis, s., wilson, c., moore, e., kent, a., & hopkins, s. (2003). trends in teacher certification and literacy, teacher study groups: a strategic approach to promoting student’s literacy development. the reading teacher, 56(8), 782784. loucks-horsley, s., love, n., stiles, k. e., mundry, s., & hewson, p. (2003). designing professional development for teachers of science and mathematics. (2nd ed.). thousand oaks: corwin press, inc. murphy, c. (1992). study groups foster schoolwide learning. educational leadership, 50(3), 71-74. peixotto, k., & fager, j. (1998). high-quality professional development: an essential component of successful schools. portland, or: northwest regional educational laboratory. randi, j., & zeichner, k. m. (2004). new visions of teacher professional development. in m. smylie, & d. miretzky (eds.), developing the teacher workforce (pp. 180-221). chicago: chicago university and chicago press. roberts, s. m., & pruitt, e. z. (2003). schools as professional learning communities: collaborative activities and strategies for professional development. thousand oaks: corwin press inc. schwarz, m. s. (2001). collaborative groups as professional development. teacher and teacher education, �7(6), 685-704. sparks, d., & loucks-horsley, s. (1990). models of staff development. in w. r. houston, m. profile 8.indd 101 28/09/2007 12:42:21 a.m. sierra piedrahita universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras102 haberman, & j. sikula (eds.), handbook of research and teacher education: a project of the association of teacher educators (pp. 234-250). new york: macmillan publishing company. sullivan, s. c., itzo pesce, a. j., & grosser, g. s. (1998). the cyclopedic education dictionary. albany: delmar publishers. about the author ana maría sierra piedrahita is a professor at the school of languages, universidad de antioquia. b.ed. in foreign languages, master of arts in secondary and continuing education, university of illinois at urbana-champaign, and phd student at university of wisconsinmadison, she is a member of grupo de investigación acción y evaluación en lenguas extranjeras, universidad de antioquia, colombia. profile 8.indd 102 28/09/2007 12:42:21 a.m. profile 11, 2009. issn 1657-0790. bogotá, colombia. pages 169-191 169 classroom research and professional development investigación en el aula y desarrollo profesional omaira vergara luján* fanny hernández gaviria** rosalba cárdenas ramos***1 universidad del valle, colombia this article intends to share the experience of a group of teachers in the classroom research seminar of the teacher development program in english carried out at universidad del valle, cali, from january to june, 2007. the seminar was part of a high-level in-service program for teachers of english of a network of private educational institutions. we would like to share the highlights and difficulties of the experience. we will start with the general framework of the program and the concept of professional development that underlies it. next we will focus on the classroom research seminar, its objectives, methodology and results. finally we share the voices of some of the participants, who talk about the influence this seminar had on their professional development and daily work. key words: classroom research, teacher development, teacher researcher, educational research este artículo recoge la experiencia de un grupo de profesores universitarios que tuvieron a su cargo el seminario de investigación en el aula con un grupo de docentes inscritos en el programa de formación y desarrollo profesional docente de la universidad del valle y pertenecientes a una misma red de instituciones. nuestro objetivo es compartir los logros y dificultades encontradas en el proceso de trabajar con los docentes, desde el aula universitaria, problemáticas de sus propias aulas a partir de objetivos e intereses diversos. primeramente presentaremos el marco general del programa y el concepto de formación que lo sustenta; posteriormente nos centraremos en el contexto específico del seminario, sus objetivos metodología y procesos de desarrollo; finalmente exploraremos la incidencia del trabajo desarrollado en el aula universitaria en práctica profesional de los docentes participantes. palabras clave: investigación en el aula, desarrollo profesional docente, docente-investigador, investigación educativa * e-mail: overgara@univalle.edu.co ** e-mail: fannyher@univalle.edu.co *** e-mail: roscarde@univalle.edu.co address: campus meléndez, edificio 315. aa 25360, cali-colombia. this article was received on september 11, 2008 and accepted on march 9, 2009. vergara, hernández & cárdenas universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras170 general framework for the program in order to respond to the challenges of our present-day society, the constitución política colombiana (1991), the general education law (1994) and the recommendations made by the “misión de ciencia, educación y desarrollo” or “misión de sabios” (1994), have included and made provisions for making changes in the educational system. these changes foresee the need to offer teacher education and development programs that prepare present-day educators for a professional and knowledgeable response to the new social and educational challenges. teachers need to have sound preparation in the following areas: • development of a good level of knowledge and competence in their field, concerning not only content but also pedagogic knowledge. • development of the tools to build a strong cultural and professional identity, evident in the knowledge of their social and cultural environment and in their roles as agents of social change. • a positive and decisive attitude to face the need to make research processes a part of their daily work and professional development. • capacity to integrate and participate in constructive processes in their area of work. • capacity to analyze, reflect and self-evaluate their own academic processes and those of their colleagues and students, with a constructive intention. • capacity to participate in educational management. • skills to integrate and make use of the resources and possibilities offered in their immediate environment. as a response to these needs and challenges, the colombian framework for english (cofe project), a bi-national agreement between the governments of colombia and the united kingdom (gómez, 1993), was set up to improve the quality of english teaching in the country. this aim was achieved through the work of colombian university teachers who taught in licenciatura programs to prepare english teachers. six groups of these teachers were sent to universities in the u.k. to work on proposals for the different areas that make up the licenciatura programs. the proposals included guidelines, plans and materials for the development of skills in the foreign language, the integration of theoretical and practical aspects in the licenciatura programs, which included the sociological, psychological, pedagogical, methodological and linguistics aspects of learning and teaching languages, and the research component and evaluation component. they also included reflections and guidelines to teach english at the primary level, guidelines for fostering autonomous behavior in language learners and for professional development and, finally, recommendations for the organization of resource centers (tdp document, programa de formación y desarrollo profesional docente (tdp) en inglés 1998-2004, pp. 4-5). resource centers were also created in about half of these universities in order to support the process of professional development of teachers, offering a place for study, discussion and discovery. it was in this framework that the teacher development program in english at universidad del valle was based. it started in 1994 as a result of the participation of the universidad del valle in this project. the tdp is open to individual teachers or, through contracts with governmental or private institutions, to groups of teachers. teachers in the program may work at the elementary level (they usually start teaching english to comply classroom research and professional development profile 11, 2009. issn 1657-0790. bogotá, colombia. pages 169-191 171 with the general education law), licenciados in languages who work at the elementary and secondary level, in language institutes and eventually, at the tertiary level. some of teachers have no methodological background and most of them (except for the younger ones) have no research experience beyond the monograph they had to write as a requirement for the completion of their licenciatura program. a requisite to join the program is to be an english teacher or to be in the process of becoming one. the objectives of the program include, among others, contributing to the construction of the new profile of the english teacher to enable her/ him to face the challenges of the present-day and future society; contributing to the generation of opportunities to share and build community, to motivate, in the case of teachers, the interest for using their classrooms as research areas as well as fostering a positive attitude towards study and well-founded innovation, and sharing knowledge and experiences which leads to the betterment of english teaching at all levels. the program’s duration varies between ten and twelve months, according to the level of competence in the language the teachers have when they join the program and their availability in terms of schedule. the program consists of two hundred and twenty five hours (225) and is valid for five credits. the curriculum of the program includes language courses, cultural aspects, language teaching methodologies, production and evaluation of materials, introduction to the use of communication and information technologies, ethical aspects of the teaching profession and classroom research. these topics are developed through a variety of activities which includes courses, seminars, workshops, study groups, advisory sessions, research activities, projects, production and the socialization of results (tdp document, 1998-2007). the research seminar aims at offering the teachers basic research elements which help them to know, understand, evaluate and improve foreign language learning and teaching processes. according to brumfit & mitchell (1989), educational research carried out by external agents runs the risk of ignoring the complex and, sometimes, contradictory experiences of classrooms and educational institutions. research carried out by the teachers is necessary if we want to understand the social experiences of students and teachers from an internal perspective. zabalza (2004) defines classroom research as a planned and systematic process that aims at understanding and improving their work; it is nurtured by a critical reflection on theory and practice. hopkins (1993) and cárdenas (2006) stress the fact that classroom research stems from the teachers’ own initiatives in order to improve their particular practice and that of their colleagues, to generate hypotheses and evaluate theory in practice. interest in the promotion of research done by teachers is not recent. dewey (1899; 1910; 1938) had developed and promoted progressive ideas concerning education; these ideas included the value (primacy) of self-determination, reflection, individual responsibility, and citizenship (in roberts, 1998), as well as the need to harmonize theory with practice. his contributions have deeply influenced teacher education and can be considered the beginning of the idea of the teacher as a researcher. after dewey, lewin (1946) continued developing the social perspective of education in some proposals that also influenced social psychology and professional education. he formulated the initial proposal for action research, which stems from action science, a third paradigm he developed as an alternative to positivism and phenomenology. vergara, hernández & cárdenas universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras172 the mid 80s and the beginning of the 90s witnessed a growing interest in the promotion of the teacher as a researcher. the work of authors like schön (1983; 1987), kemmis & mctaggart, (1988), nunan (1989), allwight & bailey (1991) hopkins (1993), stenhouse (1993), de tezanos, (1998) and freeman (1998), argue in pro of teacher education that includes research so they can use it as an alternative to transform their work, study their own reality and participate in the construction of understanding teaching and other processes that make up life in the school community. more recently, cárdenas (2007) reviewed the role of research in language teacher education. in the work of beck & kosnik (2006), it was found that research is part of social constructivism, one of the predominant models of teacher education today (williams & burden, 1997; beck & kosnik, 2006). her review also showed that other authors and their publications such as zeichner (1990), shulman (1998), darlinghammond & brandsford (2005), cochran-smith & zeichner (2005), and (unesco, 2006) stress the role of research in the education of teachers today as an important element in curricula and as a key element in professional development. roberts (1998) proposes the six basic elements in language teacher education; in what he calls “further independent development”, he argues for the provision of “understanding and skills for classroom research” and collaborative curriculum development for pre-service and inservice teachers. being a teacher and a researcher at the same time is not an easy task; tensions between the two processes are bound to appear while the teacher learns to balance them. nevertheless, the inclusion of research in language teaching curricula provides teachers with strategies to combine these two elements, to understand their relationships and to intertwine them in a practical and ethical manner. we feel strongly that research lends teachers the opportunity to confront knowledge generated in other areas, to develop the necessary confidence and security to transform their practice in a way that responds to the needs and possibilities of their particular contexts and to develop the feeling of being professionals, which fosters a sense of belonging to the teaching profession. the research element of the tdp is planned as a seminar in which teams are organized according to the interests of the teacher-students. these groups have the guidance of research teachers of the school of language sciences who have similar academic interests. on-going and final results of these research processes within the groups are socialized in the large group. the tdp considers that it is important to promote the participation of teacher-students in seminars and events in order to share the results of their research and, in the foreseeable future, it is considering the publication of a bulletin or magazine which will collect these productions. training vs. professional development teacher education is understood as a process of continuous development. this assertion is valid for all professions in a fast changing society. interests and needs change; knowledge increases and ways of doing things evolve. the teaching profession requires educators to keep abreast of the needs of learners in a changing society, of the proposals that result from the dialogue between the work of educators and that of applied linguists and professionals from other sciences, and of the latest developments in technology, among other aspects that affect the exercise of the profession. many important names in the language teaching field advocate the need for continuous classroom research and professional development profile 11, 2009. issn 1657-0790. bogotá, colombia. pages 169-191 173 or periodical updating of teachers (richards & nunan, 1990; maley in spratt, 1994); freeman & richards (1996); richards (1998); roberts (1998); crandall (2000); crookes (2003); and richards & farrell (2005), among others, both in formal, state or national development schemes, or through autonomous work. most of these authors emphasize the difference between training and education processes for teachers. cárdenas (2007) revised this aspect of language teacher education in the authors above and concluded that, although initial teacher education, teacher training and teacher development processes all seek to prepare teachers to do their job, their objectives are different because they are based on different conceptualizations of what teacher learning should be. some of these conceptualizations focus on the learning of skills while others focus on the development of cognitive processes or the development and exercise of reflective practice. in this line of thought, initial education processes are more thorough because they take longer and try to cover all the elements mentioned above. also, they are usually framed in institutional schemes which are, in principle, more rigorous. training processes generally respond to a pressing need, to the spur of the moment; the time devoted to the activities is short and the activities do not usually go beyond the level of skills development. there is no time for the consideration of philosophical or theoretical principles that underlie the practical aspects or the analysis of what is proposed. finally, professional development happens when teachers, after their initial education, get involved in updating programs that keep them in touch with new development in their area. these programs combine information with analysis, comparison, reflection and implications of what is learned. maley (in spratt, 1994) recognizes strong points in both training and development; among the reasons for professional development, he mentions the following: • the feeling that training courses cannot satisfy the needs of all those who take part in them. • the need to go beyond training or what comes after training. • the search for an orientation that characterizes the pressing need to professionalize english (language) teaching. • the growth in teacher confidence to develop autonomously. • the promotion of lifelong-learning as the final objective of education. table 1. maley’s comparison of training and professional development. teacher training (tt) teacher development (td) time-bound continuous learning related to needs of the course related to the needs of the individuals pre-determined final outcomes and products free final outcomes and products transmission-oriented problem-solving oriented fixed agenda (timeline) flexible agenda (timeline) top down oriented grass-roots oriented externally administered and oriented oriented and managed by colleagues top-down learning bottom-up learning vergara, hernández & cárdenas universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras174 in teacher professional development decisions are in the hands of the teachers and not in those of the academic leaders. this is probably the most salient feature that differentiates training from development. in tpd it is teachers who decide to join a research project or not and, in case they do, they make all the decisions related to the type of research, the methodology, the population they will work with, and the place, time and duration of project development. the classroom research seminar the rationale of the seminar is the need to prepare teachers who are capable of facing, confidently, the challenges they find in today’s classrooms and to transform their work and the mindsets of their students for future work. it is part of a social responsibility to educate dynamic, reflective and critical teachers with the best knowledge possible of their pedagogical task. the need for teachers who are proactive and propose solutions and innovative ideas based on sound knowledge of the specific contexts in which they are framed is a must in today’s society. the preparation of teachers with these characteristics takes into account the fact that passive knowledge of theory is not enough because it does not guarantee that they are able to generate transformations departing from this knowledge. consequently, it is necessary to help teachers to develop practical skills to apply and find the implications of theoretical knowledge in their daily classroom reality. it is commonly accepted that the capacity to carry out research can only be developed through the same research process as a problem-solving process; thus, the same research experience is a necessary element in any program that seeks to prepare students for research. according to kirschner & van vilsteren (1997), in pietersen (2002), what novice researchers need are learning experiencesmade up of knowledge, which includes facts, concepts, principles, procedures and theories about a subject and which is characterized by learning, memorization and reproductionand an element of skills development. the objectives of the seminar include the following: • the familiarization with what learning and teaching processes involve through observation and reflection. • the acquisition of theoretical elements for classroom research design and development. • the recognition of strengths and limitations of a variety of data collection instruments such as observation, interviews, surveys and diaries. • the practice and implementation of qualitative and quantitative data analysis, and of ways of organizing and presenting the information. • the incorporation of all these elements into the design and implementation of a research project in educational institutions. the syllabus of the research course articulates observation and reflection on the teacher’s own teaching processes, on those of her/his colleagues and on the interactions generated in the classroom. this action is complemented by a theoretical basis about research processes and leads to the design and development of a personal research proposal based on the reality teachers have observed. it is expected that the development of a research project will provide teachers with a methodology to face and solve diverse problems and situations that they encounter in their professional practice. it would not be enough to receive prescriptions about how to face specific situations; for the reflective and critical teacher, the classroom turns classroom research and professional development profile 11, 2009. issn 1657-0790. bogotá, colombia. pages 169-191 175 into a complex world of interrelations with varied foci of interest. among the benefits that the combination of theoretical knowledge and practical research experience offers to teachers we can mention the following: • the generation of a better level of communication with their students • an informed level of mutual cooperation with their colleagues • the skills to observe, reflect and draw conclusions from their own experience • the skills to identify and prioritize aspects that need to be solved • sensitivity to identify opportunities of intervention and the knowledge to do so • opportunities to work in teams with their colleagues these benefits turn into tools which strengthen the professional practice of teachers and encourage them to initiate innovative and transformational experiences. description of the experience in the present classroom research experience the group was made up of sixteen (16) inservice teachers (ist) who worked for the same institution in different sites in santiago de cali and in a neighboring town. most of them taught a wide range of levels going from basic elementary to high school. the research course in our tpd program is reserved for those teachers who classify at level iii in english because the bibliographic materials for the course are in english to contribute to the development and reinforcement of language competence in academic areas. if the teachers do not have the appropriate language level, reading in english will only add to the complexity of reading about research; this is not an easy task, especially for those teachers who have a degree in areas other than language teaching and have not had research courses before, which was the case of some of the teachers in the group. based on the needs that the teachers identify and on the research elements they receive, the seminar offers a reasonably wide panorama of the different types of classroom research to facilitate the understanding and discovery of research options in the educational context; however, this framework has to be deep enough not only to arouse teachers’ interest but also to sustain them through the development of a complete research process that is meaningful for them in practice. the seminar took place on saturday mornings from january 20 to may 19, in four-hour sessions. the teachers who oriented the seminar (four from universidad del valle and one visiting teacher from universidad nacional de colombia, bogotá, or ut) held several meetings to design and plan the units that were grouped in modules, following a thematic sequence. for the purpose of this publication, we name the modules as show in table 2. each of the first five modules were under the charge of one of the teachers; they were developed according to previous agreements and the experience of each instructor was shared with the other four. each module was developed in an average of twelve hours, in three sessions of four hours each. when all the modules and the research reports were done, there was an academic session in which the results of all the research groups were shared. the administrators and academic staff of the institution the teachers work for were invited to this session. in order to experience research based on their own needs and interests, teachers formed sub-groups according to research vergara, hernández & cárdenas universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras176 interests, level they taught, or any other criterion they judged valid for their association. eight subgroups were formed, each made up of two or three teachers, although there were two teachers who decided to work on their own. the first module, educational research, explored the concept of research in general and identified and characterized the two predominant research paradigms that have traditionally dominated educational research. the characteristics of qualitative and quantitative research were analyzed; types of research according to function, purpose, time and methodology were described and discussed, as well as the options offered by mixed methods. later the teachers’ attention and interest were focused on classroom research; in this area, different orientations were considered as alternative ways to get to know, describe and transform the day-to-day work of teachers and students in the classrooms and in educational institutions in general. practical work was done to identify different types of research design by their characteristics using abstracts and research reports published in national and international journals as well as local theses and monographs. also, the teachers offered possibilities of ways to develop research topics that were provided, justifying their choice of research type. teachers reflected on the characteristics of a teacher-researcher and on the advantages of enriching their professional practice through research. finally, sources of research problems linked with the educational setting were discusssed. the second module, two ways of doing, allowed us to present in detail two methodological orientations within the qualitative paradigm, ethnography and action research, which have been a focus of interest in the work of the school of language sciences for many years. their use in educational and classroom research has been widely documented in literature and in our own practice. the experience of other research seminars for teachers, of the work with preservice and graduate students and of our own research activities make these two methodologies our favorite alternatives to investigate schools and classrooms. malinowski (1884-1942), a polish anthropologist, shaped the methodology of fieldwork, fundamental in modern anthropology, and set the bases for ethnography. his approach, known as ‘participant observation’, is based on prolonged, detailed observation in the field; this field can be represented by a native commutable 2. modules of the research course. module units educational research • the concept of research; research approaches and types; the research process. types of classroom research. two ways of doing • ethnographic research • action research proposing • the research project learning to do • data collection instruments discovering • analyzing qualitative data • analyzing quantitative data formalizing discoveries • writing the research report • holding advisory sessions • socializing the research results classroom research and professional development profile 11, 2009. issn 1657-0790. bogotá, colombia. pages 169-191 177 nity, a group of inner city dwellers, a minority group or a school community. in ethnography, field diaries are used to record information; researchers usually complement data from observation with interviews which clarify and expand information from the point of view of community members. the information is described (descriptive ethnography), analyzed for recurrent patterns, interpreted and related with theoretical constructs. hypotheses are generated and a report is written. spradley (1994) embodies this process in five identifiable stages which seem more appropriate for ethnographic work in urban communities and schools: selecting the problem, gathering data, analyzing data (which is done along with data gathering), formulating ethnographic hypotheses and writing the ethnographic report. lewin (1890-1947), a polish social psychologist, coined the term ‘action research’ in 1934 to describe a form of research that made a connection between the experimental approach of social sciences and social action programs which responded to the main social problems of that time. this approach deals with ways of improving the social life of people by researching their present situation (now and here), and without excluding the influence on wider social structures. it was corey who, in 1953, associated this type of research with the educational field. in this seminar action research is not studied; it is used to understand teaching as a process of continuous exploration, in which the teacher has to integrate her/his classroom practice with reflection leading to its analysis. action research is seen as an essential component of the teaching profession; in this methodological research orientation the problems guide action and, at the same time, teachers’ reflection on their practice makes up the decisive element to solve these problems. it is reflection which serves to identify problems, plan action to take and introduce progressive changes to improve the situations. elliott, one of the main names in interpretive action research, understands it as “the study of a social situation that tries to improve the quality of action…” (elliott, 1993, p. 88). in the same line of thought, kemmis & mctaggart (1988) argue that education improves with changes and that learning derives from these changes. reflection, the planning of action and actions themselves allow teachers to explain and justify with sound arguments their ways of doing and acting in the classroom in the search for continuous improvement. all in all, action research constitutes a possibility to systematize reflection about everyday teaching for the betterment of learning and teaching processes because it offers the possibility of interpreting what happens in the classroom from the point of view of those who interact in it, students, teachers and administrators (elliot, 1993). once the foundations of research had been established and the analysis of the possibilities research offers in education had been done, the moment of connecting theory to practice had arrived. we are conscious of the essential role of practical knowledge in the establishment of links between theory and classroom work because it helps to discover possibilities of application and to understand its implications. module three, proposing, developed orientations to design a research proposal on a small scale, although rigorous and valid. the teachers’ interest and needs shaped research topics through exercises that combined analysis and reflection on their own observational records and their colleagues’. some of the exercises which had been done in previous units were reviewed to select topics of interest and design a research project. vergara, hernández & cárdenas universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras178 the next module, learning to do, provided teachers with the necessary elements, both theortical and practical, to design data collection instruments. having previously selected a topic, the design of instruments and the data collected were relevant to the situation and helped them to plan the necessary steps and actions to implement the project. there are different models for the construction of research projects and reports. the number and type of the elements they include depend on the theoretical and methodological orientations they follow. qualitative studies allow more flexibility in their model, which means the researcher has more room for proposing and introducing changes or additions to the initial project. in all cases, most of the contents of the projects are part of the body of the final report; this is a reason why a good writing effort should be done from the start. to guide the construction of the proposals, we agreed on a basic model based on freeman (1998) and creswell (1994). the document, which would also be the basis for the evaluation of the module, should contain the following elements: • research focus or problem • research questions • objectives • literature revision on the topic • methodological design • expected results • resources needed for implementation • timeline project design took a lot of extra class work because of time limitations. in our saturday sessions we could work as a group in defining of problems or topics of interest, the writing of research questions and objectives, and the definition of methodological designs, in which the teachers could select between ethnography or action research. literature review was only outlined with topics and authors that could be researched. research topics and questions do not exist in isolation. it is not a matter of identifying them in a given reality; they have to be built up depending on the needs of the context. however, the knowledge and interest of the researcher, research conditions, resources, the data collection and data analysis procedures that the investigator decides to use play an important role in their construction. in module four, learning to do, several data collection instruments were presented but attention was focused on familiarizing teachers only with the ones which are fundamental to qualitative research. briones (2001) states that classroom observation is useful when we search to obtain information about behavior and interaction among the participants in a given context. in this research experience teachers learned about observation, focusing especially on the processes of description and interpretation. they observed their own classrooms during the first two weeks of the project in order to become conscious of what seemed to be obvious: how life in their classrooms evolved. unstructured observation was used and observational records were kept in their field diaries; at the end of this two-week period they had already pinpointed an aspect of their classroom they wanted to research by means of analyzing the information recorded in their diaries. diaries are one of the most useful instruments in this type of research because they allow the researcher to make full, detailed and precise entries of an experience. diaries are used in combination with participant or non participant observation and interviews. in this experience classroom research and professional development profile 11, 2009. issn 1657-0790. bogotá, colombia. pages 169-191 179 teachers used both. through the use of these instruments we tried to help teachers describe their pedagogical experiences in depth and identify situations and problems that needed intervention in order to improve their daily work. a class diary allows inquiry into the teachers’ reactions concerning their work and their progress in the research processes, in relation to the comprehension and appropriation of the new knowledge, both theoretical and practical. in the practice of keeping a diary, rereading their entries and reflecting upon them, the teachers started to notice and record aspects of their work or information that was important to take into account in terms of structure or content of their courses. they were aware of the need to make detailed, accurate records in order to have complete and reliable information to systematize and analyze when looking at results. the entries in their own diaries showed them why it was so important to make thorough, systematic and periodical recordings of information (zabalza, 2004). through the writing of diaries and a preliminary analysis to identify specific problems or situations to investigate, teachers obtained elements to design an interview, another useful instrument to go deeper into what has been observed or to expand information generated by the curiosity of the researcher (cohen, manion & morrison, 2001). it is understood that many times, interviews stem from the fact that the information we have about a topic is not enough, and that the collaboration of one or several people who possess the knowledge we lack is of great importance in this process. with this view in mind, the interview was introduced and studied as a process in which they asked each other, as researchers, about aspects that generated their curiosity and interest according to the specific objectives of the situations they were studying. in addition to the formal elements of design and administration of interviews, we took into account several other aspects that are of great relevance in their use, such as ways to guarantee that they yield the necessary information and ethical aspects; among these, the voluntary participation of the subjects and confidentiality were especially stressed. teachers understood that, for an interview to be valid, it had to be an interaction in which cooperation is the key to obtain information that is necessary, relevant and sufficient and that it is presented openly and clearly by the interviewee. once the information was obtained through diaries, observational records or interviews, we proceeded to a final stage of analysis-preliminary, analysis had been carried out during data collection processes in order to confirm the focus of interest or to make possible changes in data collection. the module, discovering, started emphasizing the flexible nature of the procedure of analysis that adds to the difficulty of this stage in qualitative research. although nowadays some models of analysis in research reports are available, these processes are not all the same; in fact, it is difficult to find two qualitative investigations that share exactly the same process of analysis. as a result, there is no specific structure to follow because the process of analysis builds knowledge departing from the interpretation, inference and discovery of data which are linked to the specific context being researched. although there are differences in the steps and ways to carry out a process of analysis, according to the theroetical foundations of research, all authors coincide in the need to use procedures that guarantee validity and credibility of the information. burns (1999) asserts that vergara, hernández & cárdenas universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras180 qualitative research should respond to questions about the trustworthiness of the claims based on the outcomes of the process, and about the generalisability to other contexts or subjects. she cites the claims of other authors such as erickson (1986), davis (1995) and anderson et al. (1994), who claim that there are other questions qualitative research should answer that respond to new concepts of validity, namely “the credibility of the researchers’ interpretations”(p. 161); this refers to how much the participants in a research study consider true and believable the claims the researcher is making about their community. a way to ensure trustworthiness in qualitative processes is by the use of triangulation; the concept was defined by cohen, manion & morrison (2001, p. 112) as the use of two or more methods of data collection in the study of some aspect of human behavior. silverman (1993, p. 156, in burns 1999, p. 163) includes not only methods, but also kinds of data (quantitative and qualitative) and says that the purpose of triangulation is to see “whether the data and the methods corroborate one another”. freeman (1998) states that triangulation allows claims to stand on their own; tiangulated information is better balanced and interrelated with all the variables included in a research study. these concepts were studied and put into practice with the seminar group as a whole, making use of their own or other researchers’ information, and, as concepts and procedures became clear to teachers, the sub-groups initiated their own analysis with the assistance of the module orientator. the first steps of analysis (identification of general topics or wide categories) were presented in the large group with the aim of sharing ways to handle information to enrich the work of sub-groups. progress in the analysis and in the research process in general, varied from one group to another. nevertheless, it was guaranteed that all subgroups had a clear idea of the procedure they were carrying out so they could finish the research process within the time limits. while the individual processes of analysis were in progress, the revision of the research project written in the module proposing started as a preliminary action towards the writing of the final research report, which constituted the final module, formalizing discoveries. in most cases these initial projects had to be focused, reduced or transformed to advance in the process. in this new stage, the teachers had individualized advisory sessions from one of the teachers who oriented the seminar; they worked cooperatively in their own time, according to the availability and requirements of each of the members of the sub-groups. each of the seminar teachers accompanied the work of two sub-groups. once all the research and organizational guidelines were given, teachers continued with the process of analysis of their information: grouping, defining specific categories and sub-categories, eliminating initial categories that were found of little relevance for the study because of their low frequency or because they could be assimilated into others. emergent categories were revised and the final categories consolidated in the process. next, the interrelation between categories and the definition of significant chunks to illustrate analysis were selected. in the final writing process new theoretical requirements arose from the results and were met by the teachers who, at this stage of the process, were totally identified with their work and very enthusiastic about it; this attitude eased, in each case, the task of writing a theoretical frame of reference, a process that is usually daunting for similar groups of students. in this way, without setbacks and with the help provided by the reading of some final reports by classroom research and professional development profile 11, 2009. issn 1657-0790. bogotá, colombia. pages 169-191 181 other researchers, the teachers could finish the process of writing their own reports. as we expected, homogeneity was not the rule: among the sub-groups, some had a better pace and rapidly found their own working style, while others had a more complex acommodation process. also, incorporating theory in the analysis was an easier process for some groups than for others. however, all participants in the experience had significant achievements that were evident in their final reports and their public presentations. only one teacher did not finish his project. the projects that were carried out show the teachers’ concerns about their professional practice at the different levels they teach; they also show the methodological orientations that were proposed by the team of orientators. below are the topics of the research projects the teachers developed: • the effect of pop music in english language learning. • how students in group 10-5 perceive their english language learning. • how students in a group of 7th graders and one of 9th graders perceive the use of games in their english language learning. • developing writing in a foreign language in fifth grade through the use of short stories. • summarizing as a strategy to improve reading comprehension. • the role of games in the english class. • improving listening comprehension in english in a group of 5th grade students. the participants' voice in the following pages we will present the real experience of the classroom and that of research teachers concerning the classroom research seminar. to obtain information that allowed a genuine view of participants’ feelings and voices, two surveys for the two groups of teachers (ist and ut) were designed (see appendices 1 for is t’s, and 2 for ut’s surveys). the in-service teachers (is t's) the survey that was given to in-service teachers tried to establish their demographic information and the perceptions, feelings and projections generated by the experience in the classroom research seminar. it was sent to the fifteen teachers who participated in the experience but only seven of them filled it out and returned it. however, we can say that it constitutes a representative sample of the group because it covers most of the projects carried out. of these seven teachers, there were three women and four men between twenty-two and fifty-five years of age and they were in charge of all the grades in secondary school. four of them had previous experience in research courses, but mostly from a theoretical perspective; only three recognized having actually experienced research in their preparation to become “licenciados” in languages. the teachers stated that they had trust and confidence in the teachers who oriented the seminar; it was important for them to realize that they were heard, and that they could count on the seminar teachers for orientation not only in the saturday sessions but also at all other times in case they were uncertain or had doubts about their work. they created their own expectations to face the new theoretical contents and felt satisfied to work on real problems that were affecting their work as teachers at that time. also, they were satisfied to realize that the contents of the seminar were totally relevant in their profession. as one of the teachers put it, “i found the development course to be very important vergara, hernández & cárdenas universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras182 and enriching to my growth process as a foreign language teacher” (is t 5). among the difficulties that in-service teachers experienced, lack of time seems to have been the most difficult to deal with. this is a problem inservice teachers usually have to face when they decide to research their professional practice; they feel that their usual academic duties demand a great amount of time, making it very difficult to meet the requirements of a classroom process or seminar. in like manner, they found difficulties to accommodate their schedules at school to do their work and to get together and work collaboratively. (is t 7) expressed it this way: “especially the lack of time to comply with the number and extension of the tasks”. to a lesser degree, teachers recognized it was difficult for them to keep a constant pace, to stay focused and disciplined in order to complete the research process. concerning the incidence of the knowledge they acquired and the skills developed in the seminar in their professional life, teachers found that many of the aspects they covered in the seminar make part of teaching reality. these aspects are mostly related to the sense of responsibility in their professional exercise, which is in accordance to their students’ performance. they constantly evaluate their pedagogical practice in search for elements that could affect their students’ work; they constantly search for solutions and guidelines to improve the quality of education; they allow themselves to try and improve some teaching strategies that have an incidence in the good performance of their students. they also appreciate the new knowledge that they found, by themselves, during the development of their research. in the words of is t 1, “with this new knowledge i learnt a lot in terms of the development of reading and writing skills with my students”. teachers think that the theoretical knowledge they obtained in the seminar generated specific research questions about the educational context they work in; the search for answers to these questions benefited teachers as well as students and earned them institutional recognition. is t 2 expressed that… “by analyzing the theory presented in the course i could, with my colleagues, devise an investigation that was advantageous for me, my colleagues and my students, and it received recognition from the institution where i work”. it is also worth mentioning the recognition that some of the in-service teachers, who have not completed their licenciatura studies, gave to this process. they stated that not only did the seminar contribute to the betterment of their work; it also helped them in the process of completing their research monograph, the last requirement for them to graduate from college. according to is t 3, “i think that everything has helped me to develop my thesis study and also has made me curious and more investigative about what happens in the classroom”. finally, the teachers estimate that the learning derived from this seminar keeps making a contribution to the betterment of their work today because they were able to integrate theory and practice in their own working environment. in the words of is t 4, “we were able to make practical use of the course, a factor which enriched us and our students greatly”. further comments and opinions from the in-service teachers some other comments obtained from the in-service teachers are related to their interest in continuing to participate in similar seminars, for they think they learn and experience a sense of accomplishment when they witness positive classroom research and professional development profile 11, 2009. issn 1657-0790. bogotá, colombia. pages 169-191 183 changes in their students. as expressed by is t 5, “i learned a lot during this process. i also enjoyed doing the research and witnessing the results that were obtained”. teachers also expressed their interest for their research to get published in the immediate community in order to motivate other colleagues to do research. they appreciated the reduction that the team of university teachers made of the theoretical contents of the seminar, leaving more room for the development of practical activities. in addition, they found that the definition of research focus and instruments of data collection from the start was a sensible decision because it allowed them to be focused from the start, which was the best course of action taking into account the reduced duration of the experience. all in all, in-service teachers deeply appreciated the seminar experience, as expressed by is t 3: “in my own case, it was very enriching and it is serving my studies well”. nevertheless, there is still a great concern because of the lack of time to get involved in these kinds of activities, and to respond to the demands of educational regulations nowadays. comments, feelings and opinions from university teachers (ut's) the survey given to the university teachers was centered on discovering the impressions and feelings generated by the experience of teaching in-service teachers to do research, in contrast to teaching pre-service teachers. it also aimed at finding out the feelings that university teachers identified in in-service teachers, and the positive aspects and difficulties they encountered in the experience. five female university teachers, all with previous experience in teaching research seminars, answered the survey. although at the beginning the university teachers were anxious and worried about the responsibility they were facing, the enthusiasm and achievements of the in-service teachers made it a worthwhile experience. one of the teachers (ut 1) expressed her satisfaction with these words: “the fact that the teachers were able to rise above prejudices and advance in their proposals, shows that it is possible to integrate researching and teaching”. the university teachers found that most of the in-service teachers were responsible for the fulfillment of their duties as teachers; they also witnessed the respect they have for the work the university does, their surprise and enthusiasm concerning their new knowledge and, above all, the satisfaction they experienced after completing their work. this satisfaction is better understood when these feelings are contrasted with opposite feelings in-service teachers also experienced: resistance to change, fear regarding the theoretical contents, and anxiety in concerning the research task, fatigue at some moments, uncertainty, concern, and dependence on their teachers at the moment of making decisions about their projects. furthermore, the university teachers particularly appreciated the knowledge in-service teachers have about the real conditions of educational activities in the community; not only did they have the context to practice what they were learning about research, but they also had real needs and problems to solve and this fact motivated them because they saw the usefulness of research processes. on the other hand, classroom work is enhanced by research processes and this adds sense and value to it. ut 2 expressed that “[…] you see, feel and value the work, because the real classrooms give sense to classroom investigation”. another strong point of the process is related to the fact that all in-service teachers belonged vergara, hernández & cárdenas universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras184 to the same institution. they shared a teaching context and this allowed them to delve into interests and needs that were common to all of them. in addition, the institution got involved in the process and made it possible for teachers to work collaboratively and to find, as a group, a useful alternative to qualify teaching. although the teachers belonged to the same institution, their previous work made them participants with diverse experiences to contribute to the process. the previous experience, shared to a certain extent by the teachers who were in charge of the seminar, and the collaborative work they did to design and prepare the activities are valued as a strength and make possible the claim that work that is well-planned by teams groups the best of each of the members and allows significant advances in the processes. in spite of all this, it cannot be ignored that it is the same knowledge of reality, prejudices and the load of unfortunate previous experiences that causes fear, resistance and forewarning concerning the possibility of undertaking research. university teachers agreed with in-service teachers in considering time as the most difficult element to handle, both to cover the contents of their modules and to provide frequent and thorough individual advisory sessions. other difficulties university teachers mentioned included the heterogeneity of the group, especially because of the teachers who had a good level of english but no previous studies in didactics or pedagogy. this added difficulty to the handling and understanding of the reading materials that covered theoretical and conceptual issues in the seminar. the development of the research projects, their public presentation and the final report are, to a certain extent, indicators of the way the new knowledge has influenced the everyday work of teachers. during the seminar, the most experienced teachers improved their knowledge of research procedures, which was practically absent from their professional background up to that time, while younger teachers, who had had the necessary background in pedagogy, methodology and research in their undergraduate studies, showed creativity in analyzing their data, validating their results with theory and presenting their final reports. it is expected that the work they did in the development of the seminar will provide lasting tools and motivation to continue trying to improve their work in the classrooms. one of the groups reported having continued with research work on their own. by way of conclusion, we could say that this encounter of teachers with research responds to the new challenges of today’s society, the new political constitution of the country, the general education law and the recommendations made by the “misión de sabios de ciencia, educación y desarrollo”. this new knowledge brings about changes in education which can be seen in the positive and determined attitude of teachers to identify and solve problems in their educational contexts, departing from their own evaluation of academic processes. these changes are also reflected in the teachers’ interest in taking an active part in development programs, building up through them the ability to work cooperatively and establishing their cultural and professional identities and, in general, in exploring their capacity to participate in educational management. it is very important that in-service teachers and the institutions that offer development programs for them realize how pressing the need to involve teachers in classroom investigation is. apart from all the aspects we discussed in the development of this paper, the study of classrooms by teachers helps in the development of learning and teaching classroom research and professional development profile 11, 2009. issn 1657-0790. bogotá, colombia. pages 169-191 185 theories which makes sense in our immediate educational community and includes the teaching profession, among others, that are generators and not only consumers of knowledge. we may expect some resistance on the part of the teachers or the institutions. to do research requires, in addition to theoretical and conceptual preparations, personal motivation to overcome difficulties, finding time and accepting challenges. the programs offered nowadays have two main drawbacks: on the one hand, their seminars are compulsory because they are part of institutional initiatives and do not respond to spontaneous interest to do research on the part of teachers. as a result, theoretical and conceptual information, fundamental in research processes, become confusing and difficult to approach. on the other hand, working conditions do not usually allow teachers to find time to document, analyze, study in depth and develop in practice all the skills necessary to carry out systematic and rigorous research processes; their days are busy with teaching, planning and preparing, correcting and grading, attending meetings and completing reports. preparation for research with the characteristics we presented above helps in creating the appropriate academic 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(1993). la investigación como base de la enseñanza. madrid: ediciones morata. williams, m., & burden, r. (1997). psychology for language teachers. a social constructivist approach. cambridge: cambridge university press. unesco. (2006). modelos innovadores en la formación inicial docente. estudio de casos de modelos innovadores en la formación docente en américa classroom research and professional development profile 11, 2009. issn 1657-0790. bogotá, colombia. pages 169-191 187 latina y europa. santiago de chile: oficina regional de educación para américa latina y el caribe. retrieved january 26, 2007, from http:// www.unesco.cl zabalza, m. a. (2004). diarios de clase: un instrumento de investigación y desarrollo profesional. madrid: narcea. about the authors omaira vergara luján, licenciada in modern languages, universidad del valle; diploma in translation. universidad del valle. m.a. candidate in linguistics and spanish. universidad del valle. teacher of french and classroom research at universidad del valle. member of the equipo de investigación en lingüística aplicada (eila). fanny hernández gaviria, licenciada in modern languages, universidad del valle; m.a. in linguistics and spanish. universidad del valle. teacher of english and classroom research at universidad del valle. member of the equipo de investigación en lingüística aplicada (eila). rosalba cárdenas ramos, m.a. interdisciplinary studies in linguistics and foreign language education. university of louisville, usa. research attachment: english language testing and programme evaluation. university of reading, england. diploma in language teacher development. thames valley university, england. professor of applied linguistics, didactics and classroom research. universidad del valle, cali. coordinator of the english teacher development program. member of the equipo de investigación en lingüística aplicada (eila). zeichner, k. m. (1990). changing directions in the practicum: looking ahead to the 90’s. journal of education for teaching. 16(2) 105-132. vergara, hernández & cárdenas universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras188 appendix 1: teacher development program survey-sample this survey aims to explore the perception of participants in our classroom research seminar. this seminar is part of the teacher professional development program at universidad del valle (desarrollo profesional docente), which was carried out from january to june 2007. we intend to find out how you, as participants, felt during the process and how this experience has contributed to your work as a teacher. the information collected through this survey, together with other seminar related aspects, will be analyzed and systematized; we will present the results at the v encuentro nacional de universidades formadoras de licenciados en lenguas extranjeras to be held in cali in march, 2008. we thank you in advance for your cooperation. please, send this forward to omarirav@univalle.edu.co or fannyher@univalle.edu.co in –service teacher survey (is t) personal information 1. name: x x 2. sex: m 3. age: 58 4. institution: x x 5. course(s): several levels seminar related information 1. have you attended research development courses before? yes ____ no _x_ if yes: a. in theoretical terms _____ b. in classroom practical terms _____ explain briefly: i hadn’t receive any kind of research training before registering this course. 2. what is the balance in relation to the feelings that arose during the research development process? excitement, fear, uneasiness ________________________________________________________ _______________________________________________________________________________ _______________________________________________________________________________ 3. what were the greatest difficulties you had to face during the process? lack of time to fulfill the seminar requirements, due to the pedagogical daily activities. 4. did the acquired new knowledge of research affect, in any way, your today’s professional practice? yes x no__ explain. we achieved to put into practical use different research elements learned in the seminar. this learning enriched our pedagogical practice and also benefited the students. classroom research and professional development profile 11, 2009. issn 1657-0790. bogotá, colombia. pages 169-191 189 5. other remarks or suggestions: i suggest that seminars of this kind continue being offered by universidad del valle. in my particular__ case, i found the seminar of a great value. the knowledge acquired is also serving me to approach other studies i am carrying out nowadays. vergara, hernández & cárdenas universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras190 appendix 2: classroom research and teacher development-sample* university teacher’s survey (ut) this survey aims to explore the perception of participants in our classroom research seminar. this seminar is part of the teacher professional development program at universidad del valle (desarrollo profesional docente), which was carried out from january to june 2007. we intend to find out how you, as participants, felt during the process and how this experience has contributed to your work as a teacher. the information collected through this survey, together with other seminar related aspects, will be analyzed and systematized; we will present the results at the v encuentro nacional de universidades formadoras de licenciados en lenguas extranjeras to be held in cali in march, 2008. we thank you in advance for your cooperation. please, send this forward to omarirav@univalle.edu.co or fannyher@univalle.edu.co 1. taking into account your experience as a research instructor for pre-service teachers, briefly explain the differences between teaching research to pre-service and to in-service teachers. in-service teachers have a good knowledge of the realities in the educational field and in the professional practice that most (pre-service) teachers have not developed. this may have positive and negative consequences too. on the one hand, they may perceive research as difficult to carry out taking into account their working conditions and their previous experiences of research courses as an imposition in a previous program. on the other hand, they may have real needs and problems that need solving and this may motivate them because they make research a useful process. 2. how would you describe the feelings you experienced in this teaching process with in-service teachers? (i feel) satisfaction when i see the final results in terms of the products they developed in such a short time. a bit of frustration with the results of the teachers i was tutoring because they did the least satisfying job in terms of quality. 3. which feelings did you perceive in the participants regarding the experience? (feelings) were diverse and always evolving, according to the phase we were in. there was initial uncertainty, satisfaction as the process went on, disorientation in the phase of analysis, the burden of meeting deadlines of progress reports (and) much satisfaction with the final outcomes, even in those who had less than satisfying results. * the original survey was presented in spanish and translated by the authors of this article. classroom research and professional development profile 11, 2009. issn 1657-0790. bogotá, colombia. pages 169-191 191 4. could you witness the impact of the new knowledge in the participants’ work after the course? no, because i lost contact with them. 5. which positive aspects would you highlight from this particular teaching experience? well-planned team work allows projects to evolve. the team of instructors shared previous experiences and the in-service teachers shared a common context. we could go deep into the real interests and needs of the participants. the institution the teachers work for got involved in the process. projects were socialized among the participants. 6. which difficulties did you encounter in the process? more meetings, beside the initial ones would have been necessary for the instructors. some in-service teachers were not interested in teacher development. 7. please, mention any other relevant aspects you may want to share. it would be interesting to keep in contact with the participants in order to follow up on the impact of the process on their work. profile no. 6 oct 13.p65 ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ profile profile profile profile profile 6 (2005): universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras promoting oral interaction in large groups through task-based learning* motivación de la interacción oral enmotivación de la interacción oral enmotivación de la interacción oral enmotivación de la interacción oral enmotivación de la interacción oral en grupos grandes a través del aprendizaje basado en tareasgrupos grandes a través del aprendizaje basado en tareasgrupos grandes a través del aprendizaje basado en tareasgrupos grandes a través del aprendizaje basado en tareasgrupos grandes a través del aprendizaje basado en tareas yyyyyolima folima folima folima folima forerorerorerorerorero rochao rochao rochao rochao rocha dforero2@redp.edu.co instituto educativo distrital isabel ii this research project attempts to show the way a group of five teachers used task-based learning with a group of 50 seventh graders to improve oral interaction. the students belonged to isabel ii school. they took an active part in the implementation of tasks and were asked to answer two questionnaires. some english classes were observed and recorded; finally, an evaluation was taken by students to test their improvement. kkkkkey worey worey worey worey words: ds: ds: ds: ds: task-based learning, oral interaction, large groups, high school english teaching este proyecto de investigación trata de mostrar la forma como un grupo de cinco profesoras usaron el método de aprendizaje basado en tareas con un grupo de 50 estudiantes del grado séptimo, con el fin de mejorar la interacción oral. los estudiantes pertenecían al colegio isabel ii y fueron parte activa en la implementación de las tareas. respondieron dos cuestionarios, se les observó y se grabaron en video algunas clases; finalmente, se hizo una evaluación para poner a prueba el avance de los estudiantes. palabras claves: palabras claves: palabras claves: palabras claves: palabras claves: aprendizaje basado en tareas, interacción oral, grupos numerosos, enseñanza del inglés en secundaria. * this article was a project completed in 2004 in the “red profile” in-ser vice program at the universidad nacional de colombia. it was a collaborative work in which 5 teachers participated. they were: esperanza cárdenas, mercedes hernández, ruth martínez, yolanda silva, and yolima forero. this article was received on april 14th, 2005 and accepted on august 23rd, 2005. 73-81 ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ 74 foreroforeroforeroforeroforero profileprofileprofileprofileprofile introductionintroductionintroductionintroductionintroduction one of the main achievements of foreign language teaching is to encourage students to express and interact effectively, exchanging opinions and ideas with others. given this fact, students should be frequently exposed to opportunities to use the target language. this situation was presented at isabel ii school, where teachers showed a wide variety of contexts in which language was used but students rejected communication and did not take advantage of the opportunities given in class. they presented some reasons to answer this question such as the great amount of pupils per class (50-52), shyness, students’ panic of being in front of others and their pronunciation mistakes. taking those problems into account, teachers decided to solve them using task-based learning. this methodology gave them two possibilities, namely, to teach the foreign language in a dynamic and creative way and to help students from large groups interact and become interested in the foreign language. this article intends to show the way some teachers handled task-based learning to encourage a large group of seventh graders to improve their oral interaction. this study was developed along 2004, based on the following research questions: • could task-based learning be used to improve oral interaction? and could it be effective? • how can teachers handle interaction in large groups? literaliteraliteraliteraliterature reviewture reviewture reviewture reviewture review tasks are defined by nunan (1989) as activities where the foreign language is used by the learner for a communicative purpose (goal), and, consequently, in order to achieve an outcome. this idea shows the importance of the purpose and makes communication to take place easily; for this reason, we should take into account ariza’s suggestions (2003: 27), “students need opportunities to express their ideas, feelings and experiences”. tttttask-based learningask-based learningask-based learningask-based learningask-based learning according to willis (1996), task-based learning helps learners to improve communication by doing different tasks; they are defined as goal–oriented communicative activities with a specific outcome. the task has the following three phases: the pretask, the task cycle and the language focus. the first one introduces the class to the topic, activating topic related words and phrases. the task cycle offers learners the chance to use whatever language they already know in order to carry out the task and the language focus allows a closer study of some of the specific features used during the task cycle. interactioninteractioninteractioninteractioninteraction several authors have stated different theories to define and help to promote interaction in the classroom. ibarra (2002: 44) talks about the relationship between interaction and communication. she says: “we use language with the immediate purpose of communicating the way we perceive, give meaning and understand the world. we also use it to build social relationships that allow us to interact with each other. furthermore, students should develop their communicative competence interacting with others and creating a real atmosphere in the classroom through the development of tasks. communicative tasks are supposed to allow students to develop communicative competence in the real day-to-day use of the language.” large classeslarge classeslarge classeslarge classeslarge classes most efl teachers in the world reject teaching in large groups due to the large mixture of students, heterogeneous ages and abilities, learning and individual attention difficulties. teachers think that they can get better pedagogic results in small school groups, but it is not possible in colombian state schools. even though government law says that education should be given to everybody, there are many students, but not too many schools. for this reason, we must study other options, techniques to solve this problem and study methodologies to promote language practice. one of them is to use pair or group work. ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○75 profileprofileprofileprofileprofile promoting oral interaction in large groups through task-based learning according to nolasco & arthur (1988: 17), “grouping is one technique that has been used to reduce the negative effects of large classes…” then he adds, “pair work and group work have the advantage that learners are working simultaneously and, therefore, not only is language practice time greatly increased, but children are less likely to become bored or lose interest because they are actively involved”. in other words, when pair and group work are used, students are the centre of learning, and the teacher is similar to a monitor who creates an appropriate atmosphere to address educational activities. methodologymethodologymethodologymethodologymethodology this study was conducted at isabel ii school in bogotá, from march to november, 2004. five teachers participated in it, teaching and observing the lessons with 52 seventh graders. the following steps from action research were developed. they were mentioned by burns (1999: 36-42). along the process, we decided: • to analyze the state of the art. • identifying: to reflect upon the possible weaknesses found in the state of the art stage and some data collected in the different classes. • becoming aware of a problem: the lack of oral interaction and the huge amount of students per class. • formulating the problem. • choosing a solution: it was to use task-based learning. • planning: to make a plan and to consider the methods to get data. • analyzing and reflecting on data collection in order to get the findings. description of participantsdescription of participantsdescription of participantsdescription of participantsdescription of participants the participants were students of seventh grade, specifically class 701 at isabel ii school. their ages were between 11 and 13. there were 21 boys and 30 girls. they were the youngest students of seventh grade and were characterized by their active and enthusiastic attitude. most of them liked english and enjoyed participating in communicative activities, but they were afraid of speaking or reading aloud. they felt confident when they were answering or asking in written form. they were open minded regarding new activities and always tried to do things well. data collectiondata collectiondata collectiondata collectiondata collection when teachers applied the tasks designed beforehand (see one sample in appendix 1), they had the opportunity to collect data. while one teacher was teaching the class, one or two teachers were observing it, using three different techniques to collect data: • a proforma instrument, to write about the important aspects observed in class, stages of the task and the observer’s reflections. • class recordings, to give real evidence of the findings gotten. • two questionnaires, one at the beginning of the process and the other at the end. taking into account the results of the first one, teacherresearchers designed the tasks. with the last one, it was possible to get the students’ points of views about the process, the activities they liked the most and the interactive improvement (see appendix 2). we also did an oral evaluation to see the advances of this last aspect. pedagogical designpedagogical designpedagogical designpedagogical designpedagogical design the focus of our project was to promote oral interaction using task-based learning. therefore, a set of tasks was designed in which students developed the four skills, mainly speaking. these tasks should have specific goals, content, materials, activities, input, teachers’ role and students’ roles (nunan, 1989). taking into account that teachers and students play an important role in task-based learning, it is relevant to define what each one of them had to do in the classroom. the first ones developed the task, introduced the topic, used the materials, helped students, and made sure that pupils understood the task, while the second ones developed the activities proposed in the task. ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ 76 foreroforeroforeroforeroforero profileprofileprofileprofileprofile findingsfindingsfindingsfindingsfindings after examining the information gathered through the three different techniques –a proforma, questionnaires and class recordings, three categories were established, namely: task, interaction and large classes. tttttaskaskaskaskask as was mentioned, the task has the following three different phases: the pre-task, the task cycle and the language focus. these were taken into account to analyze the data. pre-task in this introductory part, it was noticed that the use of creative, colorful or user-friendly material helped students to increase their vocabulary, understanding, and motivation. this practice made students feel confident while speaking, forgetting about shyness or apathy toward language. they liked some material and used it many times. for example, in the audiotape transcription, we noticed that students had to talk about animals shown in a flashcard and they did it actively. furthermore, students expressed their interest in topics that were closely related to their lives. these attracted students’ attention and made them participate effectively in class. as a result, in a final evaluation the students improved their oral skills. this is a salient aspect if we take into account that before starting the research, the pupils were reluctant to interact. task cycle during the task, it was seen that the instructions given to students individually, were better understood than the ones given to the whole group. it could be seen in one of the questionnaires when the students answered the question: what activity was the most difficult? most of the learners answered, “to understand the teacher’s instructions”. the language focus at the end of the lessons, the students had to practice what was learnt in class. in order to know if they had understood, they had to create or plan an outcome (see appendix 3, for samples of some outcomes). each task, in the language focus phase, had its own outcome such as: • photo album • weather forescast • to talk about past events • to talk about a text • to make a short presentation about an animal • to talk about a story told in class oral interaction in large groupsoral interaction in large groupsoral interaction in large groupsoral interaction in large groupsoral interaction in large groups interaction was the central aspect of our study. bygate (1987) suggests that in particular, “learners need to develop skills in the management of interaction and negotiation of meaning”. in our study, the students interacted among themselves or with the teacher in most of the cases. this practice was inferred from the observer’s notes. it was seen that most of the times students answered the teacher’s questions or participated in class answering in short sentences or they tried to pay attention to what a partner said and answered his/her questions. unfortunately, the same students always participated during the activity, but there were others who were not good at english and who were rejected by the group as they did not participate too much. learners worked best when they were in groups or in pairs. they felt more confident and helped each other. in terms of fluency, we can say that students practiced the language and improved their oral skill, although many of them had several problems with grammar and sentence building. nolasco & arthur (1988) states that large classes demand all kinds of resources. it was possible to work with 52 students, but many changes were made like the class seating arrangement. it was possible to work with groups, pairs and rows; this latter was developed with games or competitions. in addition, many techniques were used to give clear instructions, to change the activities often, to use creative and colorful flashcards and guides, and to make a plan outline. ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○77 profileprofileprofileprofileprofile promoting oral interaction in large groups through task-based learning changes in participants’ attitudeschanges in participants’ attitudeschanges in participants’ attitudeschanges in participants’ attitudeschanges in participants’ attitudes in this study, students had the opportunity to change their attitudes towards english language learning. in the questionnaires, we can see some changes between what learners thought before and after the research. the first change was evidenced in the activities students liked the most. at the beginning they were more interested in doing individual tasks such as writing compositions and reading. after the task-based method application, they preferred to develop group and pair work activities. the second change was obser ved in the activities that students considered difficult to develop. in the first questionnaire, they referred to the activities that implied understanding the spoken language and pronunciation. at the end of the study, learners felt more confident with the tasks when they had to read, listen and speak in english. finally, it should be pointed out that students became more interested in the foreign language and participated actively in the different stages of the tasks. conclconclconclconclconclusionsusionsusionsusionsusions the use of task-based learning in large groups helped students to improve oral interaction, but it was a gradual process. it required providing opportunities to practice the language, providing different visual aids and working with topics related to students’ needs and interests. in addition, to teach english in large groups, it was necessary to use different strategies to maintain motivation such as changing the activities very often, using creative and colorful flashcards and guides, and making a dynamic plan outline. the control of students’ discipline was very difficult but necessary. some of the strategies used were to have different classroom settings (rows, groups, pairs), to promote competition among students (games), and to stimulate. a third aspect to consider is that when you plan a task-based learning class, it is very important to take into account some aspects such as prior knowledge, developing interdisciplinary topics, using drill repetition in order to acquire grammar structures when necessary and giving clear rules and instructions at the beginning of each class. finally, task-based learning was an appropriate method employed to improve oral interaction in large groups. it was an enjoyable way for teachers and students to take advantage of the teachinglearning process. it was a success to take turns and to teach a class. students had five different teachers who participated in the research, taught lessons and observed the classes. learners said they learnt more and had the opportunity to practice the english language. about the authorabout the authorabout the authorabout the authorabout the author yyyyyolima folima folima folima folima forerorerorerorerorero rochao rochao rochao rochao rocha, b. ed in philology and languages, english, from the universidad nacional de colombia. she works at isabel ii school, a public school in bogotá. referencesreferencesreferencesreferencesreferences ariza, a. (2003). from strengths to weaknesses: guiding students in their development of oral skills. profile. issues in teachers’ professional development, 4, 25-38. burns, a. (1999). collaborative action research for english language teachers. travelling the yellow brick road. new jersey: prentice hall. bygate,m. (1987). speaking. oxford: oxford university press. ibarra, s. (2002). understanding the task-based approach in communicative classroom teaching. interlenguajes, 3 (2), 4551. nolasco, r. and arthur, l. (1988). large classes. london: macmillan. nunan, d. (1989). designing tasks for the communicative classroom. cambridge: cambridge university press. willis, j. (1996). a framework for task-based learning. malaysia: longman. ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ 78 foreroforeroforeroforeroforero profileprofileprofileprofileprofile appendix 1: designing a tappendix 1: designing a tappendix 1: designing a tappendix 1: designing a tappendix 1: designing a taskaskaskaskask goal: to express abilities and disabilities of animals. input: teacher explains the use of can and can’t, and gives some examples, also to review some animals, their homes and verbs. she shows some animal flashcards. students have to name orally some abilities of the animals seen in the pictures. activitiesactivitiesactivitiesactivitiesactivities 1. listen, cut and place the animals in the corresponding home, and talk with your partner about your answers (see attachment1, taken from nuñez, a. (2004). teenagers. new generation. bogotá: norma, 7, 38.) • choose one animal, name one ability and the other students should try to identify it. 2. read about the domestic animals in latin america. lllllanguage focus: outanguage focus: outanguage focus: outanguage focus: outanguage focus: outcomecomecomecomecome in groups of four people, choose three animals. find their characteristics, abilities, home and share it with the class. students’ role: he/she has to construct his knowledge and work hard to do it. teachers’ role: he/she is a facilitator, a guide. ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○79 profileprofileprofileprofileprofile promoting oral interaction in large groups through task-based learning appendix 2: questionnaire used aappendix 2: questionnaire used aappendix 2: questionnaire used aappendix 2: questionnaire used aappendix 2: questionnaire used at the end of the tt the end of the tt the end of the tt the end of the tt the end of the tasksasksasksasksasks to get students’ views about the processto get students’ views about the processto get students’ views about the processto get students’ views about the processto get students’ views about the process i.e.d. isabel ii j.m.sede a 1 el tema que más le gustó fue: a hablar sobre su niñez la elaboración del álbum ____ b reporte sobre el clima en colombia – diseñar el mapa ____ c hablar de acciones del pasado – escribir una postal ____ d leer sobre lápices y esferos ____ e exponer sobre un animal ____ f narrar un cuento, cantar el cuento en diferentes ritmos ____ g otro ____ ¿cuál? _______________ ¿por qué? 2 las actividades con las cuales se siente mejor son: a hablar en inglés ____ b escribir en inglés ____ c leer en inglés ____ d escuchar textos en inglés ____ e hacer preguntar en inglés ____ f ninguna de las anteriores. ____ g otra ____ ¿cuál? _____________________ 3 durante las clases de inglés le gusta trabajar: a sólo ____ b en grupo ____ c por parejas ____ d cuando el profesor le pregunta ____ e cuando el profesor o el compañero le pregunta a todo el grupo ____ f otro ____ ¿cuál? ______________________ 4 en general cómo se sintió con el trabajo de las profesoras. a nervioso al hablar ____ b seguro al hablar ____ c motivado ____ d aburrido ____ e conforme ____ f otro ____ ¿cuál?___________¿por qué? 5 que varias profesoras dicten clase de inglés en el mismo salón le parece: a que es favorable ____ b que no es bueno ____ c que se aprende más ____ d que me ayuda a mejorar oralmente ____ e que puede prestarse para confusión ____ ¿por qué? ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ 80 foreroforeroforeroforeroforero profileprofileprofileprofileprofile 6 ¿qué técnica de control de grupo le gusto más? a. por filas ____ b. por grupos ____ c. individual ____ d. todo el grupo ____ ¿por qué? ________________________________________________ 7 teniendo en cuenta que el horario de las clases de inglés es lunes 3 y 4 hora y viernes 5 y 6 hora. ¿qué día cree que trabajó mejor?: lunes ____ viernes ____ ¿por qué ?__________________________________________________ 8 ¿en cuál clase se sintió más motivado para participar a nivel oral y por qué? 9 lo que más le gustó de las clases dictadas fue: (señale una opción) a el material presentado ____ b el trabajo de grupo ____ c los ejercicios por parejas ____ d los ejercicios individuales ____ e las actividades orales ____ f los trabajos escritos ____ g otro ____ cuál? __________________ ¿por qué?: _______________________________________________________ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○81 profileprofileprofileprofileprofile promoting oral interaction in large groups through task-based learning appendix 3: samples of some outappendix 3: samples of some outappendix 3: samples of some outappendix 3: samples of some outappendix 3: samples of some outcomescomescomescomescomes reporting about the students’ favorite animals. weather forecast in colombia. number pages articles 2 45-62 arboleda arboleda, a., & castro garcés, a. y. “the accented efl teacher: classroom implications” [“el acento del profesor de inglés como lengua extranjera: implicaciones pedagógicas”] 2 131-144 baleghizadeh, s., & zarghami, z. “the impact of conferencing assessment on efl students’ grammar learning” [“impacto de la evaluación mediante conferencias en el aprendizaje de la gramática en estudiantes de inglés como lengua extranjera”] 2 29-43 banegas, d. l. “identity of the teacher-researcher in collaborative action research: concerns reflected in a research journal” [“la identidad del docente investigador en la investigación acción colaborativa: preocupaciones reflejadas en un diario de investigación”] 2 195-211 bruguier, l. r., & greathouse amador, l. m. “new educational environments aimed at developing intercultural understanding while reinforcing the use of english in experience-based learning” [“nuevos entornos educativos destinados a desarrollar la comprensión intercultural y a reforzar el uso del inglés a través del aprendizaje basado en experiencias”] 1 5-9 cárdenas b., m. l. “editorial” [“editorial”] 2 7-10 cárdenas b., m. l. “editorial” [“editorial”] 2 77-94 cárdenas ramos, r., & hernández gaviria, f. “opportunity to teach and learn standards: colombian teachers’ perspectives” [“estándares de oportunidad para la enseñanza y el aprendizaje: perspectivas de profesores colombianos”] 1 29-48 castañeda usaquén, m. e. “adolescent students’ intercultural awareness when using culture-based materials in the english class” [“la conciencia intercultural de estudiantes adolescentes al usar materiales con contenido cultural en la clase de inglés”] 2 163-180 correa díaz, a. m. “teaching foreign trade in english through the modalities based on competences and using moodle” [“enseñanza del régimen de comercio exterior de colombia a través de las modalidades centradas en el desarrollo de competencias y con el uso de moodle”] accumulative index of published articles in profile vol. 14 (2012) 1 129-142 díaz larenas, c. “using case study methodology to approach the views of teachers of english on classroom disciplinary strategies” [“uso de la metodología de estudio de casos para aproximarse a las concepciones de profesores de inglés sobre las estrategias disciplinarias en el aula”] 1 11-28 duarte romero, m., tinjacá bernal, l. m., & carrero olivares, m. “using songs to encourage sixth graders to develop english speaking skills” [“uso de canciones para motivar a los estudiantes de grado sexto a desarrollar habilidades orales en inglés”] 2 95-112 galvis, h. a. “understanding beliefs, teachers’ beliefs and their impact on the use of computer technology” [“hacia la compresión de las creencias, convicciones del educador y su impacto en el uso de la tecnología”] 2 113-129 gómez flórez, e., pineda, j. e., & marín garcía, n. “efl students’ perceptions about a web-based english reading comprehension course” [“percepciones de estudiantes de inglés como lengua extranjera acerca de un curso de comprensión lectora apoyado en la red”] 1 49-66 gómez r., l. f. “fostering intercultural communicative competence through reading authentic literary texts in an advanced colombian efl classroom: a constructivist perspective” [“desarrollo de la competencia comunicativa intercultural mediante la lectura de textos literarios auténticos: una perspectiva constructivista”] 2 63-75 hernández méndez, e., & reyes cruz, m. d. r. “teachers’ perceptions about oral corrective feedback and their practice in efl classrooms” [“percepciones de los docentes acerca de la retroalimentación correctiva y su práctica en las aulas de inglés como lengua extranjera”] 1 113-127 herrera díaz, l. e. “self-access language learning: students’ perceptions of and experiences within this new mode of learning” [“aprendizaje de idiomas mediante la modalidad de autoacceso: percepciones y experiencias de los estudiantes”] 2 181-194 jiménez guamán, l. v. “efl teenagers’ social identity representation in a virtual learning community on facebook” [“representación de la identidad social de los estudiantes adolescentes de lengua extranjera en una comunidad de aprendizaje virtual en facebook”] 1 91-112 lemos tello, n. c. “‘on air’: participation in an online radio show to foster speaking confidence. a cooperative learningbased strategies study” [“‘al aire’: participación en un programa de radio en línea para fomentar la confianza al hablar. un estudio basado en estrategias de aprendizaje cooperativo”] 1 79-89 lopera medina, s. “effects of strategy instruction in an efl reading comprehension course: a case study” [“efectos de la instrucción de estrategias en un curso de comprensión de lectura en inglés como lengua extranjera: un estudio de caso”] 1 187-209 lizarazo jara, o. y. “using a blog to guide beginner students to use adjectives appropriately when writing descriptions in english” [“el uso de una bitácora o blog para guiar a estudiantes principiantes en el uso apropiado de los adjetivos cuando escriben descripciones en inglés”] 1 159-172 mansfield, g., & poppi, f. “the english as a foreign language / lingua franca debate: sensitising teachers of english as a foreign language towards teaching english as a lingua franca” [“el debate del inglés como lengua extranjera o como lengua franca: sensibilización de docentes de inglés como lengua extranjera hacia la enseñanza del inglés como lengua franca”] 1 173-185 méndez, t., & garcía, a. “exploring elementary students’ power and solidarity relations in an efl classroom” [“exploración de las relaciones de poder y solidaridad entre estudiantes de primaria en la clase de inglés como lengua extranjera”] 1 143-158 muñoz, a. p., palacio, m., & escobar, l. “teachers’ beliefs about assessment in an efl context in colombia” [“creencias de los profesores acerca de la evaluación en un contexto de inglés como lengua extranjera en colombia”] 1 67-78 nava gómez, g. n., & garcía, h. “the impact of regional differences on elementary school teachers’ attitudes towards their students’ use of code switching in a south texas school district” [“el impacto de las diferencias regionales en las actitudes de docentes de primaria respecto a la alternancia de códigos por parte de los estudiantes en un distrito escolar del sur de texas”] 2 145-162 picón jácome, e. “promoting learner autonomy through teacher-student partnership assessment in an american high school: a cycle of action research” [“el rol de la evaluación negociada en el desarrollo de la autonomía del estudiante en la escuela secundaria norteamericana: un ciclo de investigación acción”] 2 11-27 rátiva velandia, m., pedreros torres, a. l., & núñez ali, m. “using web-based activities to promote reading: an exploratory study with teenagers” [“uso de actividades en la red web para promover la lectura: un estudio exploratorio con adolescentes”] 173profile vol. 14, no. 1, april 2012. issn 1657-0790. bogotá, colombia. pages 173-185 exploring elementary students’ power and solidarity relations in an efl classroom exploración de las relaciones de poder y solidaridad entre estudiantes de primaria en la clase de inglés como lengua extranjera tatiana méndez* andrea garcía** universidad distrital francisco josé de caldas, colombia this article derives from a critical discourse analysis study that reports the characteristics of elementary school students’ power and solidarity relations in english as a foreign language classroom in bogotá, colombia, while we were doing our teaching english as a foreign language practicum. the study was based on theories of power and solidarity. the findings suggest that there are different forms of ex ercising power and solidarity in the classroom. power can be resisted, challenged, or exercised by means of reproaches. solidarity can take the form of taking sides to protect friends. these findings allow us to be aware of the complexities of the english language class.  key words: classroom interaction, critical discourse analysis, efl classroom, power relationships, solidarity relationships. este artículo se deriva de un estudio de análisis crítico del discurso que reporta las características de las relaciones de poder y solidaridad presentes en una clase de inglés como lengua extranjera, en un colegio de primaria. para este estudio, que se realizó durante nuestra práctica pedagógica en inglés, empleamos la metodología de análisis crítico del discurso y las teorías de poder y de solidaridad. los resultados reflejan que hay diferentes formas de ejercer poder y solidaridad en el salón de clase. el poder puede ser resistido, retado o ejercido con reproches hacia los demás, en tanto que la solidaridad puede caracterizase por tomar partido para proteger a los amigos. estos resultados nos permiten ser conscientes de las complejidades que se presentan en la clase de lengua inglesa. palabras clave: análisis crítico del discurso, clase de inglés como lengua extranjera, interacción en el aula, relaciones de poder, relaciones de solidaridad. * e-mail: tatianalila@hotmail.com ** e-mail: andreagarros@gmail.com this article was received on june 30, 2011, and accepted on december 16, 2011 universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras174 méndez & garcía introduction during the teaching practicum, we implemented the task based language teaching approach (tblt), illuminated by willis’ (1996) theory and richards and rogers’ (2001) methodology. we applied three stages as proposed by the previous authors: pre-task activity, task activity, and post task activity. we collected data during the post task activities over a period of six months. research was conducted in a fifth grade classroom with a population of nineteen boys and fifteen girls. the participants of the study totaled seventeen, selected according to the most relevant data collected along the research process. during the pedagogical intervention, we found that the implementation of the tblt theory was difficult to carry out in the classroom due to micro interactions between learners when working on tasks. we observed and investigated students’ micro interactions and the possible reasons for the dynamics of classroom such as: problematic behaviors, resistance, discrimination, and unequal social status, among other issues. guided by the tblt theory, we realized that the symmetrical and asymmetrical relationships that were occurring in the efl classroom during the development of the tasks were part of power and solidarity relations. taking into consideration that power and solidarity relations are present in any context when people interact with each other (fairclough, 1989), we carried this study out in an english as a foreign language (efl) classroom where power and solidarity relations were studied. this study was carried out under the guidelines of the critical discourse analysis (cda) research method according to norman fairclough’s theory (1989). in order to develop this methodology, we analyzed different interactions where students worked together. according to the previous idea, the institutional educational goal of the republicano school1, where this study was carried out, states that learners must be the central part of the educational process. as such, freire (as cited in ramos, 2004) argues that learners’ problems and needs are factors that must be considered by the teacher as those difficulties are part of the students’ reality. thus, we believe that observing students as generators of power and solidarity relations permits teachers and researchers to recognize students as whole persons that include their problems, interests, motivations, and learning difficulties. in that sense, fairclough (1989) argues that students are sources in whom it is possible to observe different features that are inherent in learners’ lives, such as home, social issues, and cultural background. we believe that there is a contradiction between the tblt theory and the classroom’s reality. learners are not simple receptors that receive knowledge, but instead have backgrounds and beliefs that affect classroom dynamics and the under standing and observation of students’ interactions is important, just as everything that students bring to the classroom is reflected in their own context and vice versa. we did not intend to observe how the relationships of power and solidarity affected the teaching and learning of the english language, but instead focused the study on finding the way power and solidarity dynamics took place when learners were working together. it is important to clarify that as part of our pedagogical intervention project, this study took place in an efl classroom. additionally, we found that some of the characteristics of power and solidarity relations determined the form in which the class worked or changed according to students’ dynamics. for 1 the republicano is not the real name of the school. it was changed to protect the participants’ identity. 175profile vol. 14, no. 1, april 2012. issn 1657-0790. bogotá, colombia. pages 173-185 exploring elementary students’ power and solidarity relations in an efl classroom example, being a good student, disapproving others’ ideas, or aligning with others are factors that influence the development of the class. conceptual framework in the following lines, the reader will find the theoretical constructs: the concepts of power, power relations in the classroom and how power and solidarity circulated among students. afterward, we present the cda research methodology that was implemented and that permitted the discovery of the categories which will be explained through samples. subsequently, we established the conclusions, pedagogical implications, and issues for further research. power power in the educational context has been studied by many authors who have evidenced its importance not only within a particular community but also in any place in which interaction occurs (ramos, 2004). from a cda perspective, power is a central condition of social life; power is not static but dynamic. power is generated as a natural effect of human beings’ interactions and it circulates among participants (fairclough, 2003; foucault, as cited in gordon, 1980; orellana, 1996; ramos, 2004; wodak & meyer, 2001). along the same line of thought, cubillos and novoa (2005) state that power is an important factor that can be seen when people interact with each other. similarly, power does not belong to any particular individual, but is something inherent to every person (wertsch, 1998, as cited in cornelious & herrenkohl, 2004; fairclough, 1989). power is not something alien to a specific group of people, but a trait that is exerted by the members of a community (hitchman, 2000, as cited in ramos 2004). thus we could conclude, as cubillos and novoa (2005) state that power is at the core of human interaction since humans are social beings that tend to create associations which allow them to attain common objectives. on the other hand, it has been established that power relations have a direct impact on reality and that language is a means through which power can generate deep changes in its structures (freire, 1970 as cited in moreno & jiménez, 2005a). those social issues have to do with people’s decisions, thoughts, customs, and perceptions. in that sense, we consider that the role of language is central to this study as, in most cases, power is transmitted through language. power relations in the classroom in this study learners tried to maintain control over certain situations depending on their interests or motivations with regard to specific issues. for instance, it was observed that some students chose a dominant role when they identified themselves with the activities or when they had an advanced english level. on the contrary when students were not engaged or when they lacked knowledge, they assumed less powerful positions, ceding the power move to another student. power changed and circulated among learners. power relations also have to do with agreements and disagreements present in class. according to toohey (2001), agreements and disagreements are means of negotiation of meaning and powerful positions among participants. toohey examined the way children use disagreements about decision-making activities as a tool for the construction of their personality in terms of ideas, knowledge, and leadership. this study found that those disagreements reinforce students’ understandings and help them state and share their opinions, positions, and thoughts. similarly, power relations among students are present thanks to the interactions that emerge in universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras176 méndez & garcía the classroom. those interactions are facilitated by the teacher providing students the opportunity to express themselves. thus, power is constructed rather than imposed (ramos, 2004). in this case, students were encouraged to work together in order to facilitate their making decisions and participating and in that way dominant attitudes of teachers toward students were eliminated. taking this further, ramos (2004) states there are two different kinds of power relations in the classroom: one, power relations that are constructed by students in which they have the chance to be heard with the consent of teachers; two, power relations that are related to the way teachers exert power without sharing it with students. power relations among students orellana (1996) affirms “power relations are always relations of struggle, though those struggles may take different forms and assume varying degrees of intensity” (p. 336). in other words, when students exercise power they decide the form with which to express that power. one of the forms to exercise power is when learners remain silent. according to sifianou (as cited in liu, 2001), silence can be manifested in order to express domination or subordination depending on the situations, rules, and participants. additionally, lozano (2009) stated that in an efl classroom different issues exist that affect student dynamics such as involvement, contributions, use of the language, and teacher assumptions that generate learner tension and force learners to make use of silence and code-switching. similarly, lozano argues that teachers usually see silence as a way to indicate lack of understanding; however, silence can also be used to force a member of a group to participate (2009). likewise, students can exert power through the way they use voice in the dynamics of the class. according to bourdieu (1991), when people speak they wish not only to be understood, but also to be noticed in a group. thus learners express their ideas through the use of voice not only to share their knowledge when they are working or participating in activities but also to call others’ attention (johnson, as cited in moreno & jiménez, 2005b). we realized from our own experience in the classroom that students’ voices play a predominant role in power relations as learners use their voices in order to complain about partners and/ or to accuse others; for example, no matter which activities we were developing in class, students consistently talked about others’ actions. voice was also used by students to establish connections with their peers, especially with friends, to share opinions about the classroom topic or their own experiences, to participate in the activities, and to talk about things about which they felt a special interest. solidarity regarding the concept of solidarity as a value, sequeiros (1997)2 found that teachers and students consider solidarity as a sporadic, romantic value that entails closeness with others. in our study, we observed that students expressed solidarity toward the teacher when they asked their partners to pay attention to the teacher’s explanations, even though this demonstration of solidarity was not regularly stated in the classroom. on the other hand, the concept of solidarity is also illustrated in light of the linguistic perspective. deborah tannen has investigated the way solidarity is expressed through linguistic channels. according to tannen (1996), solidarity and power have ambiguous relations as both can be generated using the same linguistic means. in that sense, when a person 2 all sequeiros’s quotations were translated by the authors and were paraphrased keeping the meaning of the author’s ideas. 177profile vol. 14, no. 1, april 2012. issn 1657-0790. bogotá, colombia. pages 173-185 exploring elementary students’ power and solidarity relations in an efl classroom expresses solidarity, elements of power relationships emerge depending on the intention of the speaker and the interpretation of the hearer. research question what are the characteristics of students’ power and solidarity relationships in an efl classroom? research method critical discourse analysis (cda) is a methodology within discourse analysis (da) and has different approaches. however, this study is guided according to norman fairclough’s socio cultural approach. this methodology has three stages: description, interpretation, and explanation. also, this methodology helped us to describe, analyze, and interpret the relationships of power and solidarity that occur in the efl classroom. these steps allowed us to establish connections between the linguistic features and the social context (wodak & meyer, 2001, p. 123). in the same way, an interview was carried out in order to validate the interpretation of the data analysis results. it allowed for free response and flexibility from students that cannot be obtained by means of other procedures (seliger & shohamy, 1989). profile of the participants and setting the class that was observed was made up of thirty-four students from fifth grade. seventeen of the students were from low and middle-income households. the republicano school is located in the northwest area of bogotá, colombia. the school has two shifts: morning and afternoon and provides pre-school, elementary, and secondary education. the school has a high student to teacher ratio that does not always allow for complete and focused development of the students. results the cda approach permitted the observation of data in three different stages: descriptive, interpretative, and explicative. the stages of analysis contributed to in-depth knowledge about the research process and the understanding of the way power and solidarity relationships manifest themselves when students interact in the classroom. according to fairclough (2003), description constitutes the analysis of the linguistic properties of the text, the first stage. text is organized in different components: grammatical rules, meaning, lexical features (vocabulary, words, jargon, slang, among others), and phonological relations. the second stage is interpretation; in this step the discourse events that happened were analyzed and understood within their context. thus, students’ exchanges were analyzed while taking into account what factors influenced the production of those communicative events. the third stage is explanation. students’ discursive exchanges were compared with the social context to observe and report how learners’ dynamics were a reflection of society and how those external factors shape students’ actions, thoughts, and behaviors. once we established the data analysis procedures, students were video recorded while they were working in groups. subsequently, we analyzed those video recordings using the data analysis procedures we explained above and found the emerging categories shown in table 1. these categories were named by taking into account the students’ own voices in certain relevant moments during their interactions since the study was carried out in an efl classroom where the mother tongue was spanish; hence, the categories and the samples are presented in both english and spanish. universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras178 méndez & garcía categories of power: “bueno muestre su tarea, rocío” (well, show me your homework rocío) “power relations are exerted by what is considered to be a “good student” to fulfill the school duties” (cornelious & herrenkohl, 2004, p. 468). the first category: “bueno muestre su tarea, rocío” (well, show me your homework rocío) exemplifies one form of exercising power in the classroom. even though being a good student is a way to exert power, it does not mean it is the only form of exercising power. students can be considered powerful no matter which way the power is positioned. for example, power can be exerted by a learner who did not do the homework or one who does not want to participate because they are assuming positions of power in front of peers. as lozano (2009) states, the student exercises her/his power by means of forcing her/his classmates to participate by remaining silent. being considered a good student is an example of an underlying feature that is present in the efl classroom. students can exercise power by demonstrating their discipline in class as long as teachers research question categories what are the characteristics of students’ power and solidarity relations in an efl classroom? categories of power “bueno muestre su tarea, rocío” (well, show me your homework, rocío) “¡esa karen es toda mentirosa!” (that karen is a liar!) category of solidarity “no son novios” (they are not a couple) table 1. categories found in data analysis: characteristics of students’ power and solidarity relationships contribute by having the necessary conditions in which learners feel recognized and that they are valuable members in the development of activities (cornelious & herrenkohl, 2004, p. 468). in other words, the teacher has to value the fact that a student stays quiet, obeys the instructions, and pays attention, among other school duties. the following excerpt illustrates the way two students (dora and karen) exercise power towards their partners to gain control with regard to the activity3. the teacher asked the students to work in groups of four; they had to talk about traditional celebrations in colombia and in the united states. excerpt 1 82. dora: bueno, muestre su tarea rocío. 83. rocío: ¡ayy ya! 84. karen: trae tus cosas allá, como te la pasas es acá parada. 85. dora: rocío muestre su país. 86. karen: ella no hizo tarea, casi tampoco no tiene nada que hacer porque no sabe 3 we used different symbols in the transcriptions to make the reading of interactions comprehensible: … long pause (.) a pause of a second or shorter [ ] description of the situation xxx speech that could not be deciphered. 179profile vol. 14, no. 1, april 2012. issn 1657-0790. bogotá, colombia. pages 173-185 exploring elementary students’ power and solidarity relations in an efl classroom 87. qué es lo que hicieron. 88. dora: ¿nosotras dos solo hicimos la tarea? (referring to karen and to herself ) 89. karen: ¿cómo hacen? ¿cómo hace? si a lo bien. 90. nelson: para qué si yo quiero ayudar y se ríen. 91. karen: yo lo hice bien. 92. dora: y ni siquiera escogieron irlanda, alemania, japón, corea, australia. 93. nelson: finlandia. 94. dora: ¿y yo? 95. karen: ¡ah ya! ustedes nos ayudan a comenzar. (to rocío and nelson) 96. dora: como ustedes no trajeron la tarea. (c17 08/26/10) english version 82. dora: well, show me your homework rocío. 83. rocío: hey stop! 84. karen: take your things there, as you stand over there. 85. dora: rocío show your country. 86. karen: she didn’t do the homework. she doesn’t even have anything to do as she doesn’t know 87. what they did. 88. dora: are we the only ones who did the homework? (referring to karen and to herself ) 89. karen: how do you do it? how do you do it? seriously. 90. nelson: what for if i want to help and you laugh? 91. karen: i did it right. 92. dora: even they did not choose ireland, germany, japan, korea, and australia. 93. nelson: finland. 94. dora: and me? 95. karen: ah stop! you help us to start. to rocío and nelson) 96. dora: since you did not bring the homework. (c17 08/26/10) in line 82, dora took the initiative to start the activity by using the phatic adverb “bueno” (well) to establish contact with other participants. additionally, dora includes rocío in the activity when she asked rocío to share her homework with the rest of the group through this imperative: “muestre su tarea” (show me your homework). in line 85, she repeated her request using the same grammatical structure, in this case with a more conciliatory tone. in the lines 86, 87, and 88, karen and dora distanced themselves from rocío and nelson with regard to the development of the homework. for instance, in line 86, karen expresses: “ella no hizo la tarea” (she didn’t do the homework). karen was referring to rocío in the third person singular. karen used the verb “hacer” (to do) in the pret erite, which was used to denote that rocío was not responsible because she did not worry about the homework and as a result she did not contribute to the exercise. subsequently, dora also asked karen in line 88: “¿nosotras dos solo hicimos la tarea?” (are we the only ones who did the homework?). she used the second person pronoun in plural to include herself and karen to explicitly indicate they were the only students that had done the homework. in that moment, dora recognized karen’s power and then dora expressed that not only she did agree with karen but also established distance from the other members of the group (kramsch & mcconnell ginet, 1992). similarly, as a consequence of the previous situation, rocío is judged by her partners because of her lack of commitment. according to covarrubias and moratilla (2008), homework is a tool that helps students enhance their performance while promoting student responsibility towards their learning process. additionally, the authors mention that homework is not only indispensable in the learning development of the child, but also contributes to reinforce what was learned in school. in the case of the efl classroom, homework plays an important role as universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras180 méndez & garcía learners review, check, and clear up doubts about topics studied during class. also, when teachers check learner’s homework, they give feedback that allows the student to confirm and evaluate errors or mistakes made during the development of the task. learners sometimes see homework as a tool they can use to express their interests, skills, and motivations and as a way to obtain recognition from their peers, family, and teachers (wigfield & eccles, as cited in beltrán & bueno, 1995). today education is more flexible in terms of methodologies and approaches. students are no longer thought of as mere receptors but instead as the core of the educational system. students are more autonomous with respect to their learning process because the teacher acts as a monitor or supporter (richards et al., as cited in nunan, 2004). this first category –“bueno muestre su tarea, rocío” (well, show me your homework rocío)– exemplifies what can be observed in the dynamics of the class. in the structure of the school, the task constitutes an essential element of the learning process. tasks are essential aspects of the classroom since they complement the learning process. in cameron’s (2001) words, tasks are activities and dynamics implemented to evaluate processes that occur in the classroom. additionally, cameron (2001) argues that the main objective of tasks is to do more significant language learning with regard to the learners’ lives. from this line of thought, tasks are important vehicles that reinforce what is developed and studied in class while students become autonomous concerning their own learning process. in the case of karen, when she was asked what the homework meant to her, she answered that homework was important because it helped her to better understand different issues about the task and encouraged her to research the topics. categories of power: ¡esa karen es toda mentirosa! (that karen is a liar!) “power relations are exerted through reproaches” (tainio, 2010, p. 2). reproaches are a way of exercising power that is mostly employed by teachers in the classroom to criticize students’ actions (tainio, 2010, p. 2). in this study, students adopted the reproach to show disapproval and complain about their peers’ work and performance. the reproach is problematic for both teachers and students, as it causes embarrassment to learners who receive a reproach. according to the preceding author, the mode and voice plays an important role in the way the reproach is understood. assuming that the reproach was made in a humorous mode, the receptor will follow the same mode in their reply. on the contrary, if the reproach was made in a rude way, the receptor will respond in the same manner. the following excerpt was taken from the transcription of a video recording; it corresponds to class number 17 that took place on august 26th, 2010. excerpt 2 illustrates the way three students, nelson, karen, and dora, were arguing with regard to the activity they were working on together. in this case, nelson’s reaction is due to the fact that he did not bring his homework to class and karen told the teacher when she arrived to monitor the activity. excerpt 2 111. nelson: ¡esa karen es toda mentirosa! 112. karen: (to rocío) cierto que yo dije eso; de conversar; si quieres pregúntale a dora. 113. nelson: pues sí admito, usted dijo que conversáramos pero, pero usted dizque (.) 114. ¿usted no decía que dizque qué? eishh. 115. dora: a mí se me había caído el brazo detrás. xxx 181profile vol. 14, no. 1, april 2012. issn 1657-0790. bogotá, colombia. pages 173-185 exploring elementary students’ power and solidarity relations in an efl classroom 116. karen: sí es así, ya cada uno sabe dar explicaciones. ¿ves? ya tú no sabes nada. si 117. acá estuvo la profesora… (karen shows her notebook to rocío). (c17/08/26/10) english version 111. nelson: that karen is a liar! 112. karen: (to rocío) i said that, right? about talking, if you want, ask dora. 113. nelson: well, yes i admit it, but you said we talked, but you supposedly. 114. you did not say supposedly eh? eishh… 115. dora: my arm had fallen behind me. xxx 116. karen: yes that’s how it is, and everyone knows how to give explanations. see? you know nothing. yes. 117. the teacher was here ... (karen shows her notebook to rocío). (c17/08/26/10) after the teacher explained to the students what they had to do, nelson became upset and blamed karen for guiding them mistakenly during the activity. he affirmed this in line 111: “¡esa karen es toda mentirosa!” (that karen is a liar!). the demonstrative personal pronoun “esa” (that) indicates that nelson distanced himself from karen and referred to her in a contemptuous way. in his opinion, karen had wrongly explained the activity. nelson uses the manner adverb “toda” (a) adding the adjective “mentirosa” (liar) (completely a liar) to emphasize karen’s mistake. in the preceding lines, nelson was not working towards the development of the activity. additionally, he had not brought the homework but he was going around disrupting other groups. nelson also disqualified karen’s effort to guide the group during the activity. here it is clear that nelson exercised his right to criticize karen’s procedures with regard to the activity. in society, human beings have the tendency to judge others’ actions through the stressing of their own shortcomings. this is reflected in nelson’s criticism. additionally, today it is also common to discredit individuals’ work without bearing in mind their contributions. in the interview dora expressed that she was annoyed with their partner’s (nelson’s) lack of commitment to the activity, so karen and dora had to do it without any help. category of solidarity: “no son novios” (they are not a couple) “showing solidarity with my partners” (tannen, 1996, p. 342). we understand solidarity as an alignment act that a learner could take in a specific moment of an interaction. in addition, individuals can exert power and solidarity simultaneously because there is an overlap between them (tannen, 1996, p. 342). solidarity in the classroom has an important connotation: students tend to align with their partners regarding specific issues such as interests, topics, agreements, and activities. when there is solidarity, learners establish more equity among themselves and this permits them to achieve working relation ships. however, in the efl classroom those sol idarity relations respond to individual or common interests of the learners towards class activities. for example, when students participate together in games they show solidarity towards their team partners in order to obtain a benefit for the group. the same happens with students that have a better command of the topic when posing as allies in order to be successful in the development of the class. in that sense, it is clear that the school is a place in which solidarity is constantly developing. learners identify themselves with others and it makes them feel comfortable because they express communalism towards them (elmesky, 2005, p. 324). universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras182 méndez & garcía in the following excerpt, students were divided into different groups. they had to find the different pieces of an object jigsaw around the classroom. in this specific moment, javier, cesar, and andrea had already assembled the puzzle and were asked to write a description of the object. excerpt 3 21. javier: ¡huyyy ehhh sepárenme la cámara, por favor! (andrea está sentada en las piernas de marcos) 22. césar: son novios. 23. andrea: no, ya no más. 24. césar: son novios. 25. javier: no son novios. (c18 09/02/10) english version 21. javier: ehhh move away from the camera, please! (andrea is sitting on mark’s legs) 22. césar: they are a couple. 23. andrea: no, not anymore! 24. césar: they are a couple. 25. javier: they are not a couple. (c18 09/02/1910) when javier declares in line 21: “¡huyyy ehhh sepárenme la cámara, por favor!” (ehhh, move away from the camera, please!), he employed an interjection to call his partners’ attention because two of them (andrea and marcos) were in a position that prevented javier from observing the entire group in the camera. on the other hand, when cesar expressed: “son novios” (they are a couple) in line 22, andrea immediately responded with an imperative mood: “¡no, ya no más!” (not any more!). according to fairclough (2003), there are three different grammatical moods: declarative, interrogative, and imperative. in this case, andrea used the imperative mood to express her desire to avoid cesar’s reproach. in line 22 cesar said andrea and marcos had a close relationship: “son novios” (they are a couple), possibly because of the fact that andrea was sitting on marcos’ legs. additionally, one of the factors that could have caused cesar’s affirmation was the fact that javier had provoked cesar’s reaction towards this situation. nevertheless, the research suggests javier did not say: “son novios” (they are a couple) with the purpose of suggesting that andrea and marcos were in a romantic relationship, but instead was making fun of the situation. consequently, after cesar’s reaction, javier tried to calm the situation down by denying cesar’s affirmation: “no son novios” (they are not a couple), in line 24. similarly, when cesar, andrea, and marcos were asked about this particular issue in the interview, it was confirmed that cesar’s reaction was because cesar did not agree with the fact that andrea sat on marco’s legs despite the three of them being friends. we observed that he was concrete and relevant in his assertion, using a minimum of words and displaying a clear intention of teasing andrea and marcos because of their behavior (brown & levinson, 1978, pp. 94-95). excerpt 4 profesora: ese día adriana se sentó en las piernas de cristian. ¿para ti eso está mal visto? césar: pues sí. profesora: ¿por qué? césar: sí porque ella siempre donde está marcos o algo(.) ella va y se le sienta y si a veces están peleando ehh, no sé sin pedirle permiso o si me puedo sentar solo va se le sienta y ya. profesora: ¿si hubiera sido otra niña la que se le siente en las piernas a marcos eso estaría bien? cesar: no. profesora: ¿o sea que no te parece que ninguna niña se siente en las piernas de ningún niño? césar: solo en las de marcos. 183profile vol. 14, no. 1, april 2012. issn 1657-0790. bogotá, colombia. pages 173-185 exploring elementary students’ power and solidarity relations in an efl classroom english version teacher: that day adriana sat down on cristian’s legs. is it embarrassing for you? césar: well, of course. teacher: why? césar: yes, because she is always where marcos is (.) and she sits on marcos’ legs and they are sometimes fighting and she does not ask him to do so and she just does it. teacher: would it have been fine if another girl was the one who had sat on marcos’ legs? césar: no. teacher: it means that you disagree for any girl to sit on any boy’s legs? césar: only on marcos’ legs. excerpt 4 was taken from a semi-formal interview we applied to the students after analyzing the transcriptions in order to support the data analysis. it is important to clarify that when comparing the transcription and the interview, we realized that cesar’s affirmation, “son novios” (they are a couple), was not only a simple declaration, but entailed deep meaning for him because he expressed in the interview that a girl sitting on a boy’s legs was not accepted by society. what is more, he expressed that the previous action could damage andrea’s reputation. at the end, it was confirmed that cesar’s intention from the beginning was not to tease or reproach andrea and marcos’ attitude but to tell them their behavior could be badly interpreted by other students. andrea’s response in line 23: “ya no más” (not any more!) shows that after cesar’s affirmation she did not stay quiet but immediately replied to cesar in order to gain respect from her partners. moreover, she did not feel inhibited about expressing her ideas by rejecting cesar’s utterance. similarly, when javier affirms: “no son novios” (they are not a couple), javier took sides with andrea against cesar’s declaration. regarding this action, castañeda (2008) claims that students assume more or less powerful positions in order to support their classmates. in our society it is possible to observe this phenomenon in multiple contexts as power and solidarity relationships change depending on the circumstances, situations, and individuals (orellana, 1996, p. 336). in the same vein, through andrea’s example, the way human relationships are mediated by physical contact was analyzed. rodríguez (1999) affirms that “physical contact as a form to manifest affect is fundamental as it facilitates the connections among students” (p. 76). rodríguez also states that physical contact is a common aspect in the educational settings and can be easily expressed by learners to show affection towards peers. conclusion we sought to report on the main characteristics of students’ power and solidarity relationships in an efl classroom: how power flowed and changed among participants during class. the role of cda methodology was fundamental for this research project as one of its main characteristics is the study of power relations. in the same way, the cda methodology allowed this study to link the pedagogical and research areas through an analysis of students’ discourse exchanges in the classroom. during the research process, it was observed that some of the characteristics of students’ power had to do with discipline, responsibility, fellowship, resistance, reproach, and silence, among others. additionally, we found that the same student did not always exercise power; power took different shapes during interactions. likewise, it was interesting for us to observe that solidarity acts demonstrated in class were consequences of the exercise of power and vice versa. for example, this study identified the existence of different forms of exercising power and solidarity. silence can be used universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras184 méndez & garcía to express agreement or disagreement; reproach is a way to show dissatisfaction and disagreement about someone’s behaviour or a situation. additionally, activities and discussions that take place change according to external factors that are not part of classroom development. this study has important pedagogical connotations since the analysis of power can be done in any sphere, including the classroom. the result of this study opens the way for further research about the way power and solidarity relations affect the efl classroom. as mentioned before, our intention was not to establish the way power and solidarity relationships affected efl classroom development; instead, we wanted to show how power and solidarity are present during class regardless of the subject, context, or environment. the findings of this research could be applied to the efl field because power and solidarity are present here just as much as in any other setting. according to the micro dynamics that occurred among students, our contribution to the efl field has to do with the observation and questioning of the tblt theory, as it seemed to be perfect on paper but varies in practice. when teachers are aware of this, they can improve and create better efl teaching and learning environments. finally, we advise future researchers to be more proactive and go beyond boundaries, exploring new research fields and bringing about new academic contributions. carrying out an innovative research project is worthwhile since we acquire research skills, increase knowledge, and most importantly, grow as researchers. references beltrán, j., & bueno, j. (1995). psicología de la educación. barcelona, spain: editorial boixareu universitaria. bourdieu, p. (1991). language and symbolic power. cambridge, uk: polity press. brown, p., & levinson, s. (1978). some universals in language usage. cambridge, uk: university press. cameron, l. (2001). teaching languages to young learners. cambridge, uk: cambridge university press. castañeda, h. (2008). i said! i’m first: gender and languagelearner identities. colombian applied linguistics journal, 10, 113-114. cornelious, l., & herrenkohl, l. r. (2004). power in the classroom: how the classroom environment shapes students’ relationships with each other and with concepts. journal of cognition and instruction, 22(4), 468-471. covarrubias, m., & moratilla, m. (2008). tareas escolares: una guía para ayudar a sus hijos en las tareas. madrid: editorial trillas. cubillos, l., & novoa, d. (2005). power relations in a collaborative project. (monograph). universidad distrital francisco josé de caldas, bogotá. elmesky, r. (2005). playing on the streets-solidarity in the classroom: weak cultural boundaries and the implications for urban science education. in k. tobin, r. elmesky, & g. seiler (eds.), improving urban science education: new roles for teachers, students and researchers (pp. 321-343). new york, ny: rowman and littlefield. fairclough, n. (1989). language and power. new york, ny: longman. fairclough, n. (2003). analysing discourse: textual analysis for social research. new york, ny: routledge. gordon, c. (1980) (ed.). power/knowledge: selected interviews and other writings, 1972-1977 by michel foucault. new york, ny: pantheon. kramsch, c., & mcconnell-ginet, s. (1992). text and context. lexington, ma: heath. liu, j. (2001). asian students’ classroom communication patterns in u.s. universities. westport, connecticut, london: ablex publishing. 185profile vol. 14, no. 1, april 2012. issn 1657-0790. bogotá, colombia. pages 173-185 exploring elementary students’ power and solidarity relations in an efl classroom lozano, j. (2009). the relation between silence and codeswitching in an efl class (master’s thesis). universidad distrital francisco josé de caldas, bogotá. moreno, v., & jiménez, d. (2005a). the generation of power relationships through the students’ oral interaction under the use of a task-based syllabus. (monograph). universidad distrital francisco josé de caldas, bogotá. moreno, v., & jiménez, d. (2005b). the generation of power relationships through the students’ oral interaction under the use of a task-based syllabus. how, 12, 44-60. nunan, d. (2004). task-based language teaching. cambridge, uk: cambridge university press. orellana, m. (1996). negotiating power through language in classroom meetings. linguistics and education, 8, 335-365. ramos, b. (2004). power relation in the efl class through oral interaction (master’s thesis). universidad distrital francisco josé de caldas, bogotá. richards, j., & rogers, t. (2001). approaches and methods in language teaching. cambridge, uk: cambridge university press. rodríguez, e. (1999). sexualidad y cultura. bogotá: universidad distrital francisco josé de caldas. seliger, h., & shohamy, e. (1989). second language research methods. new york, ny: oxford university press. sequeiros, l. (1997). educar para la solidaridad. barcelona: octaedro. tainio, l. (2010). gendered address terms in reproach sequences in classroom interaction. linguistics and education, 22(4), 1-18. doi:10.1016/j.linged.2010.09.004 tannen, d. (1996). researching gender-related patterns in classroom discourse. tesol quarterly, 30(2), 341-344. toohey, k. (2001). disputes in child l2 learning. tesol quarterly, 35(2), 257-278. willis, j. (1996). a framework for task-based learning. edinburgh: longman. wodak, r., & meyer, m. (2001). methods of critical discourse analysis. london: sage publications. about the authors tatiana méndez is a novice teacher researcher from the universidad distrital francisco josé de caldas, colombia. she has taught english in primary and high schools as part of her practicum. she was an assistant teacher in a private school in the usa. she completed a monograph as a graduation requirement to obtain her bed degree at universidad distrital. andrea garcía is a novice teacher researcher from universidad distrital francisco josé de caldas, colombia. she has been a teacher practitioner in different public schools in bogotá and has worked in the administrative area of the languages institute of the same university. the article reported was taken from the research project developed as a graduation requirement. 11profile vol. 14, no. 1, april 2012. issn 1657-0790. bogotá, colombia. pages 11-28 using songs to encourage sixth graders to develop english speaking skills uso de canciones para motivar a los estudiantes de grado sexto a desarrollar habilidades orales en inglés mónica duarte romero* luz mery tinjacá bernal** marilú carrero olivares*** álvaro gómez hurtado school, colombia this article contains the procedures and findings of an investigation carried out by a team of teachers with the purpose of motivating students to speak english. we observed students’ lack confidence to talk and that they had little motivation toward learning english. thus, we used songs as a main resource in conjunction with different kind of activities thus giving students the opportunity to learn in a fun way during their first years of learning a foreign language. as a result of this research project, we found that learners could pronounce many words freely and accurately in a non-threatening environment. students acquired new vocabulary and, the most important aspect, they were motivated to learn english. key words: promoting confidence, speaking skills, using songs. este artículo presenta los procedimientos y resultados de una investigación realizada por un grupo de maestras, cuyo propósito era motivar a estudiantes de grado sexto a hablar en inglés. observamos en los estudiantes inseguridad para hablar y poca motivación para aprender inglés. por ello, optamos por usar canciones para articularlas a diferentes tipos de actividades, con el fin de darles a los estudiantes la oportunidad de aprender de manera divertida en sus primeros años de aprendizaje de una lengua extranjera. con este proyecto de investigación logramos que los estudiantes pudieran pronunciar muchas palabras libre y correctamente en un ambiente de aprendizaje armonioso. los estudiantes adquirieron vocabulario nuevo y, lo más importante, se motivaron a aprender inglés. palabras clave: habilidades orales, promoción de seguridad, uso de canciones. this paper reports on a study conducted by the authors while participating in the profile teacher development program at universidad nacional de colombia in 2009-2010. the teacher development program was sponsored by secretaría de educación de bogotá, d.c. code number: 1576, august 24, 2009. * e-mail: monicaduro7@hotmail.com ** e-mail: luzmerytin@gmail.com *** e-mail: marcar671@hotmail.com this article was received on march 28, 2011, and accepted on december 16, 2011. universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras12 duarte romero, tinjacá bernal & carrero olivares introduction during the last few years english has become a really important tool in order to succeed professionally in our society; it is the language for business, research, public relations and the internet. for this reason, teachers are looking for better strategies to teach this subject. one of the major weaknesses that we have found in students is the lack of confidence to talk, since they do not have the opportunity to learn english in most public primary schools; they usually start only in the last course, fifth grade. on the other hand, students do not have the chance to interact in english in their daily lives and this causes the language not to be very meaningful for them. in many public schools teachers cannot rely on good resources for teaching and it is a barrier that in most cases does not let students learn english in an interactive and pleasant way. in this study we implemented songs because doing so was an interesting resource used by english teachers and by teachers of other subjects. in fact, they have used songs as a resource to develop communicative abilities properly in a foreign language, providing students with the opportunity to talk with confidence and giving teachers the chance to teach in a fun way. for those reasons, we decided to focus on using songs to encourage sixth graders to develop english speaking skills while having two main objectives: 1. to explore different alternatives for exploiting songs in the english class. 2. to examine students’ oral production when taking part in activities that involve songs in english. this article contains a brief description of what we did with students to improve oral skills by using songs based on some important theoretical studies related to music and the development of oral abilities. at the end we will present the outcomes and conclusions. context and participants this project was developed at álvaro gómez hurtado public school, located in zone 11 suba, in bogotá, colombia. this school had about three thousand, five hundred students divided between two different branches; the primary branch is situated in a renovated building housing one thousand, two hundred students. junior and high schools are located in another building with two thousand three hundred students distributed in two shifts (a.m. and p.m. shifts). the school’s philosophy attempts to provide an integral education that allows students an instruction in values, productivity, construction of knowledge and environmental education, with the intention of promoting social interaction and becoming participative in democracy, founded on respect for the dignity of human beings. on the other hand, the pei1 of our school was focused on developing communication abilities as a social and humanistic commitment. also, it states that speaking is one of the most significant elements that represents communicative competences to provide students with opportunities and tools to demonstrate values and communicative competences. that was one of the reasons that we designed this project, particularly about oral skill production. we carried out the teaching activities with 84 sixth graders who belonged to two different classrooms: 601 and 602. however, we concentrated our study on the 601 group and focused the analysis and the recollection of information on five specific students who had different profiles. s1 was a high achiever, s2 was a smart student, s3 was lazy, s4 was a difficult student, she did not like english classes; and s5 was naughty. these students were from 11 1 pei = proyecto educativo institucional (institutional education project). 13profile vol. 14, no. 1, april 2012. issn 1657-0790. bogotá, colombia. pages 11-28 using songs to encourage sixth graders to develop english speaking skills to 13 years old and belonged to the socio economic strata 2 and 3. the students were selected on purpose to study the different reactions in the different students’ profiles. literature review we found some projects and ideas which were taken into consideration for our project as well as the guidelines based on (nunan, 1992) about lite rature reviews. the following two issues were kept in mind: advantages of the use of songs in the english class and activities to promote speaking skills with songs. advantages of the use of songs in the english class there are many key studies that have proved that including songs in learning english processes is a very useful tool. morales (2008) considers that when students sing they may improve english speaking skills and practice pronunciation. in addition, they can discuss the different topics in the lyrics like love, hate, revenge, and in this manner they can practice speaking by expressing opinions and reflections about the contents of the songs. according to orlova (2003) these are some of the advantages for working in class with songs: • practicing the rhythm, stress and the intonation patterns of the english language. • teaching vocabulary, especially in the vocabulary reinforcement stage. • teaching grammar. in this respect, songs are especially favored by teachers while investigating the use of the tenses. • teaching speaking. for this purpose, songs and mainly their lyrics are employed as a stimulus for class discussions. • teaching listening. music can be helpful for comprehension. • developing writing skills. for this purpose a song can be used in a variety of ways; for example, speculation as to what could happen to the characters in the future, writing a letter to the main character, etc. after having developed a musical project, cuesta (2006) expressed that “students showed behaviors, emotions or feelings particularly to interest in or enthusiasm for the work the activities proposed” (p. 52). similarly, mccarthy (2006) talks about the use of songs to teach more than just a vocabulary point. songs allow teachers to cover specific grammar points in an effortless fashion. for example, one teacher, loretta, who posted on dave’s esl café, mentions the use of cat steven’s “moonshadow” in a lesson on the future tense. she writes: “it has many if ‘clauses’ and uses both ‘will’ and ‘to be going + infinitive’ constructions”2. we think that this lesson is exciting for students because not only do they get to hear the song, but they are also able to see their grammar lesson in action. therefore, even if the student cannot construct the future tense by him/herself, the use of songs allows students to practice speaking (or singing) this grammar point until they have mastered the use of this technique for themselves. activities to promote speaking skills with songs there are many activities and ideas that some authors highlight to promote speaking skills with songs; for instance, morales (2008) states that teachers have to be careful when choosing a song. it should have the right characteristics to fulfill students’ needs in terms of the learners’ context and the possibilities the song gives them in order to introduce new elements of the language teachers 2 retrieved from: http://www.eslcafe.com/idea/index.cgi? display:1009678819-28037.txt universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras14 duarte romero, tinjacá bernal & carrero olivares want the students to have contact with. therefore, careful selection of the songs is important ac cording to the level of speaking that the students have, and it is advisable that songs could be selected for them, according to their own interest. according to natasa (2006), sometimes songs can be added, making things a bit different and out of the expected e.g. “row, row, row your boat” can easily be changed into “fly, fly, fly your plane”. it is basically the teachers who decide what or how to change the song, and it is always welcomed by the learners. in addition, we think that when students continuously repeat the same words they easily learn new vocabulary and it contributes to im proving their oral expression. some other researchers like lindstromberg (2004) and molinsky (2000) propose activities like the following ones: • song illustrations: draw simple pictures illustrating a story of the song; then cut them out and make a word sheet with the pictures placed on it properly. ask students to listen to the song and put the pictures in order. • mixed-up lines: mix up the order of the lines; then, ask learners to listen to the song and put the lines in the right order. • finding the word: this activity is based on asking students to listen for words and write them down with certain sounds in the songs. we considered other proposals that were interesting to apply during the lesson, for instance: • act: create a dramatization with the theme of the song. • different rhythms: have students sing the same song in different rhythms. • graphic representation: after listening to the song make a drawing trying to represent the meaning of the song and then explain it. • imitation: have students pretend they are the singers of the song. allen and valette (1977) suggest that students bring to class different kinds of instruments and with these attempt to sing songs they love. they consider that this resource can become a motivator for students to learn a second language. to conclude, we found main advantages of using songs in the english class and various activities that are important for promoting speaking skills with songs. this information gave us the illumination to develop this project. procedure we organized the different tasks with the team. one of us was the teacher in charge of implementing the teaching activities with students. she collected the data while students were completing the activities. the other teachers were in charge of searching for information of similar investigations in order to help with the development of the whole study. in some opportunities the other two teachers observed the classes to evaluate the process. we considered that action research was very helpful in developing our study. according to wa-llace (1998), the most important function of action research “is to facilitate the ‘reflective cycle’, and this way provide an effective method for im proving professional action” (p. 18). on the other hand, kemmis and mctaggart (1988, in burns, 1999) state that an action research study consists of four essential “moments” –planning, action, observation and reflection– and this was the way we worked. 1. planning: in this stage we explored the ideas of authors and researchers who had already worked on this kind of projects; also, we observed our students in order to diagnose their previous learning to plan the right activities to develop our project. after identifying the problem we created strategies to develop the project. then, we designed lesson plans and workshops to work in classes with the students (see appendixes a and b). we also 15profile vol. 14, no. 1, april 2012. issn 1657-0790. bogotá, colombia. pages 11-28 using songs to encourage sixth graders to develop english speaking skills designed instruments and activities for collecting and analyzing data, namely: surveys, daily field notes, and videos. 2. action: in this part we implemented activities already planned like song selections, presentation of the songs and their vocabulary, modeling and practicing pronunciation, discussions of some vocabulary and topics of the songs, listening to the songs, filling in the selected blanks, and practicing the song. this was done by singing as a whole class and then by groups. 3. observation: that was a permanent activity. we saw the process of the students’ behavior and learning, and identified the changes in students’ abilities to speak english. information gathering was done through surveys, field notes and videos as already mentioned. surveys were employed to know what the students’ preferences were and to have an overview of their perceptions toward learning english. moreover, field notes were useful to collect and analyze the data while videos were utilized to compare the different behaviors and students’ different processes class by class. finally, workshops were adapted to do multiple activities during the classes such as introducing vocabulary, filling in the blanks, completing charts of information and having a guide with which to practice the songs while they got used to pronouncing well. a sample is provided in appendix b. 4. reflection: it led us to review the gathered information, looking for new ideas for improving the action part of the study. along the implementation of the new set of teaching strategies and activities, we found advances and difficulties, which allowed feedback for constant improvement. pedagogical design as we said before, our project focused on using songs to encourage sixth graders to develop the speaking skills. during the development of the project we followed the phases proposed by burns (1999) as well as the guidance given by cárdenas (2010). also, we used the ideas of the authors mentioned in the literature review, especially those of lindstromberg (2004) and molinsky (2000). as already mentioned, we used songs by planning our lessons in the form of workshops. the first thing we did was to select a group of songs; after that, we pre-selected ten of them while considering the important aspects a song should have to be implemented in the project like the vocabulary and grammar range. the ten pre-selected songs were the following: • “this love” sung by maroon five • “lemmon tree” sung by the secret garden • “yesterday” sung by the beatles • “yellow submarine” sung by the beatles • “don’t worry be happy” sung by bob marley • “three little birds” sung by bob marley • “no woman no cry” sung by bob marley • “yellow” by coldplay • “dust in the wind” sung by kansas. “all together now” sung by the beatles was the first song included in the project with the students. “i gotta feeling” sung by black eyed peas was the second and last song used in the project. although it was not selected at the beginning, it was chosen after the reflection and the results of the implementation of the first one. on the other hand, at the beginning we did a chronogram with the first song “all together now” and, according to the results of this first action stage, we included modifications in the rest of the activities of the second song, “i gotta feeling”; this song enriched the project with new ideas and suggestions given by the learners and derived from the reflection of each stage of the study. then we followed the steps given by burns (1999) to organize the data analysis and write the findings. universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras16 duarte romero, tinjacá bernal & carrero olivares data collection for collecting, analyzing and interpreting the data, we followed the five steps proposed by burns (1999): assembling, coding and comparing the data, building interpretations and reporting the outcomes. as already stated, the instruments used to collect the data were observations of the classes using daily field notes or videos, and surveys. first, we observed the english classes in order to get an overview about students’ speaking; after that, we applied a survey in spanish. it was applied to eighty students of two sixth grades to get a general idea of their expectations and points of view about english lessons (see appendix c) and in another survey we explored what students perceived in connection to speaking and songs (see appendix d). we had informal talks with students to listen to their perceptions and suggestions about alternatives for exploiting songs in the english class, and their interest in learning as well. in the english classes we wrote field notes daily to observe students’ oral production when taking part in activities that involved songs (see appendix e). data analysis and results in this stage we gathered, organized and coded the information that we took in each one of the instruments. at the beginning of the process we observed the english classes to know about students’ english speaking level and knowledge. we could see that most of the students were really shy, nervous and did not express confidence, especially when they took part in oral activities, especially in personal oral presentations. in the surveys used in the diagnostic stage, we found that 90 percent of the students stated that learning english through music should be interesting and enjoyable. however, 8 percent said that using music could be difficult because they did not understand the lyrics and the singers usually sang very fast. besides, in informal talks some of them suggested the use of musical videos and said that music helped to gain confidence at the moment of speaking with their friends. however, others said they would feel ashamed when singing because of their pronunciation mistakes. nonetheless, they admitted that learning english was necessary in order to succeed in professional life. we examined the information gathered to see relevant and common aspects, which were connected to our objectives. after a deep study we found the categories and subcategories shown in figure 1. figure 1. the role of songs in developing speaking skills songs as a means to learn new vocabulary and pronunciation ∙ exploring new vocabulary and pronunciation with songs ∙ improving oral skills while listening to songs showing con�dence and motivation when singing ∙ team work to overcome fears ∙ talking in a non-threatening enviroment using songs to encourage sixth graders to develop english oral skills as shown in figure 1, we had two categories and four sub-categories, which are going to be explained in the following paragraphs. to identify each one of the participants we numbered them using the following codes: student 1(s1), student 5 (s5), and teacher (t). most of the samples presented here were taken from the students’ conversations and were translated from spanish into english for the purpose of this publication. 17profile vol. 14, no. 1, april 2012. issn 1657-0790. bogotá, colombia. pages 11-28 using songs to encourage sixth graders to develop english speaking skills songs as a means to learn new vocabulary and pronunciation when taking part in activities that involved music, students felt more confident because it was easier for them to remember the pronunciation modeled by the song, and with the rhythm it was even easier to keep the songs’ vocabulary and pronunciation in their memories. for example, when they sang the first song “all together now” it was a little tough to get used to singing and to faithfully imitate the pronunciation at the beginning; but once they got used to it, it was really easy for them to remember the lyrics and to use the vocabulary later in a real context in communicating with peers. regarding vocabulary, it was introduced in different ways, but mainly by workshops. there we presented the unknown words; the teacher explained the meanings and modeled the vocabulary, having students repeat after completing some activities. on some occasions, when the song started, we had students practice pronunciation; after that, the teacher reinforced and fostered practice with the vocabulary and had students say the meaning of given words and practice their pronunciation. even though there were different problems, students were very enthusiastic and showed a lot of interest. this helped to achieve our first objective. exploring new vocabulary and pronunciation with songs we wanted to call the students’ attention towards the fact that songs can be seen as a motivational tool. for one, it lets students learn new vocabulary. for example, during the first stage of the pedagogical intervention, the teacher previously introduced some vocabulary of animals, the alphabet, numbers and colors. this vocabulary was more meaningful for students when they heard the words in the song and could learn them by heart. the teacher exploited the remaining vocabulary by asking for meanings most of the time; that way students could learn it. in addition to that, during the first stages of the project, vocabulary was the first thing taught. that vocabulary was required to understand the meaning of the song, and was related to animals, the alphabet, numbers, and colors. luckily after searching very hard, we could find a song that could match basic topics taught in sixth grade. the first topic was animals and it was taught by using flashcards, repeating pronunciation and then playing imitation games. in order to work with the alphabet, a contest was the perfect device to encourage them to practice and learn the words. students were also asked to utilize the vocabulary in different contexts or in different activities; for example, by saying sentences using the verb to be and animals, having contests with numbers, writing and saying them correctly, and imitating animals along with pronouncing the vocabulary. also, there were other activities like filling in the chart and completing information. after introducing the basic vocabulary with the activities mentioned above, the teacher gave them a workshop with the more complex vocabulary and lyrics of the song. at the beginning of the activity students were curious to know the new expressions, as highlighted in the following sample: t: ok. it is time to start with the song. s1: miss mónica… what does it mean? can i have a little more? t: it means, when you want more food or more to drink… s2: miss mónica, what does it mean? my friend to tea? t: it means… you guys know what friend and tea mean... it is very similar to spanish. it is like an invitation to drink tea. on the other hand, talking about improving pronunciation, the songs were really helpful. the teacher modeled the pronunciation but with the songs it was very easy to practice anytime. also, with universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras18 duarte romero, tinjacá bernal & carrero olivares the rhythm of the songs it was easy to remember the pronunciation of the vocabulary. furthermore, after listening and practicing many times, students were able to pronounce many words correctly. we began to encourage the students to work on pronunciation using the first song “all together now” by the beatles. after practice they could sing like this: t: ok, it is time to sing the song. s1: can i have a little more. can i bring my friend to tea? sail the ship, chop the tree, skip the rope, look at me, all together now… s2: can i have a little more. can i bring my friend to tea? sail the ship, chop the tree, skip the rope, look at me, all together now… s4: can i have a little more. can i bring my friend to tea? bom bam bum. sail the ship, chop the tree, skip the rope, look at me, all together now… according to natasa (2006), when students repeat the same words continuously, they easily learn new vocabulary and it contributes to improving their oral expression. that was evidenced in the previous example. from the beginning of the project the teacher explained to the students that at the end of the process with the first song, “all together now”, they were expected to make a presentation. after studying the vocabulary, doing different oral and written activities and games related to vocabulary, some students were asked to sing for the whole class. students were very excited about the new way of learning. although some of them seemed to be unsatisfied with the kind of songs chosen, most of the learners agreed that it was an enjoyable activity. for instance, some students said the following: s2: i like this kind of activities because it is a different way to learn. s5: uyy! it was really nice. i love that song, the part of the song that i like the most is “bum bam bum”. s4: i like learning english through songs, but that song, mmm… it is old fashioned and boring. [the mates of s4, say: “yeah that’s true, learning through music is cool, but that song was boring”]. s1: the song is really nice and with it i could learn new words and pronounce them well. s3: this song is nice, i like it. on the whole, we observed motivated students that improved pronunciation and listening, and who could also learn new vocabulary. it should be noted that some comments like the one of s4 and her mates gave us hints to incorporate modern songs to the project so that they could match what students would like to have in their english class. in addition, we could confirm what morales (2008) found in relation to the role songs play in helping students improve speaking skills and practice pronunciation. likewise, we observed that, as orlova (2003) asserts, students can learn vocabulary, grammar and pronunciation in a pleasant way. improving oral skills while listening to songs at the beginning students were very excited about the project, but when they listened to the song “all together now” for the first time, they were very concerned. this can be evidenced in the following excerpt: t: teacher asks. was it difficult? s5: yeah. it was really difficult. that song goes so fast… i couldn’t understand anything. t: yes, i know, but with the time, you will be able to understand and to follow the lyrics. trust me. s5: uhmmm… for most of them, it seemed impossible to pronounce many words correctly by following a song. they thought they were not able to accomplish that goal because they were not used to learning or studying english in such a way, and by that moment they had not practiced english in a formal academic setting at all. for those reasons, the first moments of the implementation of the project were really difficult 19profile vol. 14, no. 1, april 2012. issn 1657-0790. bogotá, colombia. pages 11-28 using songs to encourage sixth graders to develop english speaking skills for them, since they were not used to listening to spoken english in an academic context, so as the song went fast, they had to go according to its pace, following and repeating the lyrics. furthermore they were asked to remember the vocabulary while listening. it was many things to do at the same time, but with time and practice they got used to it. we worked most of the time with only the songs because we ran out of time and the team could not work specifically on other oral activities. the only thing we were sure about was that students could learn some vocabulary and that they were able to develop oral skills using the vocabulary provided by the songs. on the other hand, at the beginning students practiced individually, but during the process they had the opportunity to work with their favorite peers. this was vital to encourage motivation, and hence, they showed improvement in pronunciation. showing confidence and motivation when singing students were motivated just with the fact that they had the opportunity to learn using music. as we know, that is one of the things that kids and teens really enjoy and have contact with nowadays. additionally, after some practice, when they re alized that it was not that difficult, they felt stimulated to accomplish something that at the beginning seemed very tough. for example, at the beginning of the presentation of the song “all together now”, they were concerned, but the teacher gave them time to get used to it and also supported them in overcoming their difficulties with some words. furthermore, and since students were working in groups, she encouraged the teams to cooperate and to help each other. on the other hand, in the results it is shown that, after developing diverse activities, students have improved their oral skills. furthermore, after analyzing the information and students’ process they gave us new ideas to incorporate into the project like using modern songs to make learning more interesting for them. in this category we derived two sub-categories. the first one refers to team work to overcome fears because we could note how the students encouraged each other in order to sing and develop different activities. team work was significant because it provided students with confidence to speak english. the second sub-category, talking in a non-threatening environment, refers to the confidence that the students acquired during the development of the project, even when they made mistakes. team work to overcome fears as already mentioned, we employed the strategy of having students work with their favourites peers due to the fact that we knew they would feel more comfortable working with their buddies. during the presentation of the second song, “i gotta feeling”, students sang in front of the class, in groups formed freely after practicing the song many times. for this activity the teacher had them perform the song as they liked; they were free to dress up, to dance or act it out, but teacher reminded them that the most important point was the pronunciation of the song. learners looked very excited planning all kinds of activities with the song and seemed to enjoy the class, as can be evidenced in this excerpt: t: how do you want to perform the song? do you want me to organize you or do you want to do it by yourselves? s4: ayy miss mónica, let us organize by ourselves with our friends, and you will see that we will do a better job. we evidenced here that songs were forms to integrate the students working in teams and to create a comfortable environment for learning english. universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras20 duarte romero, tinjacá bernal & carrero olivares throughout the process, and when they talked or sang in groups with their favourite peers, students felt much more confident. another important aspect to point out is that the students had the opportunity to use the vocabulary and the grammar patterns found in the songs in a different context, and to communicate. for example, they were asked to speak about their favorite things like their favorite colors, their lucky number, their favorite animals (this was the vocabulary of the song “all together now”). also, with the second song, “i gotta feeling”, they talked about parties and dances. obviously, in this part of the talk they used some expressions in spanish because they had only a basic knowledge of spoken english. the vocabulary given by the songs was pronounced accurately during the talks. in this same line of thought, rengifo (2009) said that when working together, students are capable of doing something that they considered impossible to achieve like singing or talking in english. in our case, it is important to point out that songs in class are a strategy to work in an integrated way, which, in turn, helps us avoid problems of discipline. this way, students can overcome difficulties and fears. talking in a non-threatening environment in the first steps of the implementation of the songs, “all together now” and “i gotta feeling”, students were quite afraid of making mistakes when they were asked to sing individually. as could be evidenced in one of the videos, when the teacher played the song, most of them looked down; they did not want to sing the song because they felt embarrassed; and although the teacher kept encouraging them to sing, they seemed to be very shy. nevertheless, when they sang in groups, they were more confident. this was shown in the videorecording of the last session. each group was very enthusiastic and most of them looked very excited when they came to the front of the class. they sang and some of them danced doing it with a lot of confidence and pronouncing their words well. it means that when students feel free to work with who they want to, they may do a better job, feeling free and comfortable. also, it seemed that music gave them a lot of confidence and they felt pleased when we had music in class. students commented about it as follows: s4: if we always were taught in this way, we will learn a lot more. s2: yeah, working with my friends i feel happier and i don’t feel very shy. s1: definetely that way of learning is nicer. i don’t feel ashamed. s3: for me, it is the same thing. the only thing i care is to get good grades. s5: no miss mónica... i love that way of learning. please keep teaching us that way. to conclude, we should restate that if students are given the chance to feel comfortable, they most probably do a better job. we should also highlight that music was a good alternative to relax and learn in a fun way. in this respect, pérez (2010) points out that most people, especially adolescents, enjoy listening to music as a hobby while working, studying or developing different activities. as mentioned before, two songs were used. the first one was “all together now”, which gave us new ideas for the second one, “i gotta feeling”. students were asked to make a presentation after studying the vocabulary of the second song too. during this presentation they organized their groups as they liked and were free to dance or play musical instruments to make a real imitation of the song while singing. during the second final presentation, students gave a better performance in contrast with the first presentation of the song “all together now”. in this stage they felt really confident and expressed progress in learning, as can be read in the following sample: 21profile vol. 14, no. 1, april 2012. issn 1657-0790. bogotá, colombia. pages 11-28 using songs to encourage sixth graders to develop english speaking skills t: guys ¿how was the song. was it difficult? how did you like it? s1: miss mónica, it was really cool. to me, it was wonderful. the rhythm was nice and the lyrics weren’t difficult. s5: uyyy miss monica! the song was cool. at the beginning i thought i wouldn’t be able to sing it but i could learn and it was easy. s2: well, i was a little ashamed, but i really enjoyed the activity, even i had to practice a lot. in general, most of the students looked very happy with their learning process because they saw how they could improve their speaking by lis tening and practicing. also, the contents of the song “all together now” helped to introduce the topics required for the syllabus of the school, such as animals, colors, numbers and the alphabet. the song “i gotta feeling” helped to introduce vocabulary of the days of the week and some patterns of the verb to be that were implicit in the lyrics of the song. conclusions and pedagogical implications based on our study, we can point out that songs turn out to be an important part of the daily teaching activities. the combining of curricular activities with music not only helps students to develop speaking, but grammar as well; students can also internalize new vocabulary, improve pronunciation, and improve modulation, among other oral communication skills. besides, they can acquire new vocabulary and understand the usage of grammar items in a real context through exploring activities related to the songs. in addition, learners enjoyed the classes while learning a foreign language. when using music, they were more motivated and talked in a nonthreatening environment. learners practiced the vocabulary, laughed and developed the activities with confidence. on the other hand, an average number of students looked very concerned and shy; they thought it was not going to be possible for them to improve their oral production skills and they experienced some difficulties at the begin ning, but along the process they found they could improve little by little. this was possible because they were supported by the teacher and by their mates, and in the last activities they accomplished the objective proposed in the project. this helped them command new vocabulary, improve their pronunciation and learn some new grammar structures. most of them looked laidback and confident. they finally recognized that making mistakes is allowed and is part of the learning process. and, the most important aspect, they were motivated to learn english. one thing to take into account is that teachers have to be careful and look for pertinent activities and songs because there are plenty of songs, but the majority does not match the needs of students. at the beginning we chose a song that had very simple grammar structures and vocabulary –because we had beginner students– but it was an old-fashioned song, which means that it was not really interesting to some students. the second song was modern, but it had a lot of new words and expressions thus, it was impossible for students to learn all of them. however, the purpose of this project was to improve oral skills, and we were able to reach this objective because students pronounced many words freely and used this vocabulary in other activities like talks in front of the class. for these reasons, a careful selection of the songs is vital. there is another important point to make about this project: we could explore just the beginning of the research but it would be good to continue looking for more alternatives adapted to ex ploring music as the main resource to help students in pronunciation and speaking. so, this project can be easily adapted for primary, high schools, adults, language institutes, etc. universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras22 duarte romero, tinjacá bernal & carrero olivares finally, we should bear in mind that every day our profession is more demanding and we have to be ready to face the challenges that come up, finding solutions or different alternatives to overcome limitations. therefore, we should admit that the intention to do a project like this is to look for better strategies with which to teach, going beyond the results, and that this search comprises a non-stop activity that we as teachers have to keep in mind. references allen, e. d., & valette, r. m. (1977). classroom techniques: foreign languages and english as a second language. new york, ny: harcourt brace. burns, a. (1999). collaborative action research for english language teachers. cambridge: cambridge university press. cárdenas b., m. l. (2010). pedagogical design. melba libia cárdenas b. memoirs. archives of the profile teacher development programme, universidad nacional de colombia, bogotá. cuesta, m. (2006). songs in the english class: a strategy to encourage tenth graders’ oral production. profile issues in teachers’ professional development, 12(1), 47-57. lindstromberg, s. (ed.). (2004). language activities for teenagers. cambridge: cambridge university press. mccarthy, j. (2006). songs in the classroom. tesol courses. retrieved from: http://www.tesolcourse.com/tesolcourse-articles/songs-classroom/article-01-jmc.php molinsky, j. (2000). side by side: handbook of teaching strategies. new york, ny: longman pearson education. morales, c. (2008). using rock music as a teaching-learning tool. profile issues in teachers’ professional development, 9, 163-180. natasa, i. k. (november, 2006). developing speaking skills in the young learners classroom. the internet tesl journal, 12(11). retrieved from http://iteslj.org/techniques/klancar-speaking skills.html nunan, d. (1992). research methods in language learning. cambridge: cambridge university press. orlova, n. (2003). helping prospective efl teachers learn how to use songs in teaching conversation classes. the internet tesl journal, 9(3). retrieved from: http:// iteslj.org/techniques/orlova-songs.html pérez, d. (2010). the role of music in young learners’ oral productions in english. profile issues in teachers’ professional development, 12(1), 141-157. rengifo, a. r. (2009). improving pronunciation through the use of karaoke in an adults english class. profile issues in teachers’ professional development, 11(1), 91-105. wallace, m. (1998). action research for language teachers. cambridge: cambridge university press. about the authors mónica duarte romero holds a ba degree in modern languages from universidad incca de colombia. she has attended some courses at georgetown university in washington d.c., usa, and studied in a professional development program at universidad nacional de colombia. currently she works as a teacher at brazuelos school and at universidad pedagógica nacional, bogotá, colombia. luz mery tinjacá bernal holds a bachelor degree in primary education and promotion of the com munity from universidad santo tomás (colombia); a specialization in informatics from universidad autónoma (colombia) and she studied in a professional development program at universidad nacional de colombia. she currently works as a primary teacher in álvaro gómez hurtado school in bogotá, colombia. marilú carrero olivares holds a bachelor degree in modern languages, spanish and english, from universidad la gran colombia (colombia). she is an english and spanish teacher interested in didactics; she studied in a professional development program at universidad nacional de colombia. 23profile vol. 14, no. 1, april 2012. issn 1657-0790. bogotá, colombia. pages 11-28 using songs to encourage sixth graders to develop english speaking skills appendix a: lesson plan sample álvaro gómez hurtado school grade level: sixth grade song: “all together now” the beatles objectives: 1. students will be able to recognize the vocabulary previously studied in the song. 2. students will start getting familiar with the rhythm of the song. 3. students will correctly express orally some ideas of the song. estimated time: one hour description: start to get familiar with the song gathering the vocabulary studied beforehand like numbers, animals and the alphabet. procedure: before beginning the class, learners will revise the vocabulary worked and afterwards, the idea is to motivate the students through song using the tape and video and develop the activities planned by using photocopies. activities: 1. watch the video and the song to get familiar with it. 2. discuss with students the possible topics of the song. materials and resources: video tape, papers, tv, and home theater. required knowledge: students will have previous knowledge of some vocabulary of the songs. motivation: teacher will explain the activity having students discuss the beatles and then showing them the video of the song. statement of purpose: teacher will play the song in order for students to listen to the first part two times then discuss the possible topics and meanings of the vocabulary. after that, the teacher will present the expressions of the song and vocabulary to students in a workshop. they will discuss the meanings and try to memorize them, then they will write the meanings in the workshop. guided practice: during this part the teacher will play the tape in order for students to fill in the charts with the missing words; the idea is to play the song many times until most of the students get the missing words in the right place. assessment: teacher will discuss with the students the answers they get while listening to the song. universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras24 duarte romero, tinjacá bernal & carrero olivares appendix b: workshop sample álvaro gómez hurtado school song: “all together now” the beatles name:________________________ grade:_______________ date:__________ 1. expressions: can i have a little more? can i bring my friend to tea? sail the ship, chop the tree boom, bam, boom skip the rope, look at me all together now can i take my friend to bed? i love you 2. listen again to the first part of the song and fill in the blanks with the words in the box: one, four, five, eight, ten, love. one, _____, three, _____ can i have a little more? ____, six, seven ______ nine _____ i ______ you. 3. listen to the second part of the song and fill in the blanks with the words in the box: b, d, friend, f, h, you a,__, c,___ can i bring my _____ to tea? e,___, g,___, i, j, i love ____. boom, bam, boom boom, bam, boom 25profile vol. 14, no. 1, april 2012. issn 1657-0790. bogotá, colombia. pages 11-28 using songs to encourage sixth graders to develop english speaking skills 4. listen to the rest of the song and fill the blanks with the words in the chart: me, ship, thee, look, rope, sheep 5. listen to the 3rd part and choose the right word: sail the ship/shop, boom, bam, boom chop the tree/three boom, bam, boom skip the/t rope,  boom, bam, boom look at me/my all together now.... (x16) 6. listen to the song again and complete the following table with the numbers, colors, and the letters of the alphabet that you find in the text. numbers colors alphabet                   7. correct the mistakes and rewrite them: blak, wite, gren, ret __________________________________ kan i teik me frend to bed? __________________________________ pin, bron, yelow oranje and blue i lobe jou __________________________________ oll together naw...(x16) __________________________________ universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras26 duarte romero, tinjacá bernal & carrero olivares appendix c: survey used to identify students’ expectations and views about english lessons álvaro gómez hurtado school grade: __________ j.t. date: __________ objective: to get a general idea of students’ expectations and their points of view about english. answer the following questions: 1. is it important for you to learn english at school? yes____ no____ why? ___________________________________________________________________________ 2. why is it important to learn english? 3. how would you like the english class to be? 4. do you consider an english class could be fun to learn in? yes____ no____ why? ___________________________________________________________________________ 27profile vol. 14, no. 1, april 2012. issn 1657-0790. bogotá, colombia. pages 11-28 using songs to encourage sixth graders to develop english speaking skills appendix d: survey used to identify students’ perceptions about speaking and songs álvaro gómez hurtado school grade: __________ j.t. date: __________ objective: to explore what students perceive in connection to speaking and songs. 1. do you consider speaking english to be easy? yes____ no____ why? ___________________________________________________________________________ 2. do you think that you can learn english through songs? yes____ no____ why? ___________________________________________________________________________ 3. do you consider that singing an english song can help you to improve your pronunciation and fluency? yes____ no____ why? ___________________________________________________________________________ 4. how do you prefer to get oral skills? a. presentations ___ b. songs ___ c. musical videos ___ d. dialogues ___ e. other, what? _____________________________________________________ universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras28 duarte romero, tinjacá bernal & carrero olivares appendix e: field notes samples*3 álvaro gómez hurtado school date and topic general observation comments april 9th topic: alphabet students had a great response to the topic they had previous knowledge and they were practicing very exciting, teacher model the pronunciation and by group they pronounce good but when teacher ask individual they are very shy and they do not pronounce ok. s1: she had a little problem pronouncing some letters like w, z, j. the others were ok. s2: she pronounces ok most of the letters. s3: he is not really interested. teacher has to push him a lot, he feels ashamed at the time of pronouncing. s4: she did well with most of the letters but they had some difficulties trying to remember some of the pronunciation of the letters. s5: still having problems with pronunciation and he misbehaves a lot in class, sometimes he is not focus and just forgets the correct way to pronounce and recognizing some letters. may 13th topic: presentation video today students were very nervous and excited, at the beginning we practiced together after that they decided to dress up for the presentation, some groups did a great job, some did not, but the most important point was the most of the group could accomplish the objective that was learning english through a song. s1: she was really nervous, she sang all the song correctly, but she almost could not face the rest of the class because she is so shy. s2: she did great, she did not have any difficulty and she brought some material in order to do her presentation more interesting. s3: he did a good job he sang most of the parts of the song, but he had some difficulties in the colors part. s4: she did not sing in front of the class but she just stood there, just one of three of them sang the song. s5: though he is not a really advanced student. he performed the song excellent. he danced and introduced in the song new interesting things that made all the class laugh. also, he sang the song perfectly. * the notes are presented as recorded in class by the teacher-observer. 91profile vol. 14, no. 1, april 2012. issn 1657-0790. bogotá, colombia. pages 91-112 “on air”: participation in an online radio show to foster speaking confidence. a cooperative learning-based strategies study “al aire”: participación en un programa de radio en línea para fomentar la confianza al hablar. un estudio basado en estrategias de aprendizaje cooperativo nubia consuelo lemos tello* universidad de la sabana, colombia the daily observation of class sessions has enabled me to recognize that students possess a feeling of self-distrust in oral activities. for this reason, i designed a study carried out with a group of twelve eighth graders. this article illustrates an action research project conducted to enhance students’ confidence when speaking on an online radio show. the data were collected by using surveys applied to students, audio and video recordings and a teacher’s journal. the data analysis procedures included a blend of inductive analysis, grounded theory and trend analysis. results indicated that the research process prompted students’ speaking confidence through the use of technology. the study was also an opportunity to improve the teacher’s performance, and become a facilitator by steering a pedagogical intervention that allowed students to make decisions to overcome their lack of speaking confidence. key words: confidence, cooperative learning, participation, radio, speaking. la observación diaria de las clases de inglés me ha hecho reconocer que los estudiantes manifiestan una sensación de frustración al participar en actividades de producción oral. por esta razón decidí diseñar un estudio para desarrollar la confianza de los estudiantes en la producción oral, participando en un programa de radio en línea. dicho estudio de investigación-acción se llevó a cabo con un grupo de doce estudiantes de octavo grado. los datos fueron recolectados con encuestas aplicadas a los estudiantes, grabaciones en audio y video y diarios de la docente. el análisis de datos se realizó usando una combinación de análisis inductivo, teoría fundamentada y análisis de tendencias. los resultados indican que el proceso de investigación fue una experiencia positiva que facilitó la confianza al hablar en lengua extranjera usando la tecnología. el estudio fue también una oportunidad para apoyar y mejorar el trabajo del docente, quien asumió el papel de facilitador al diseñar una intervención pedagógica que permitió a los estudiantes tomar decisiones para superar su falta de confianza en actividades orales. palabras clave: aprendizaje cooperativo, confianza, participación, producción oral, radio. * e-mail: colechao74@gmail.com this article was received on june 22, 2011, and accepted on november 2, 2011. universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras92 lemos tello introduction learning a language implies a practice of the four communicative skills. when it comes to introducing oral activities in the classroom, some of the obstacles that teachers –specifically in contexts like the school/object of this research include– have to face are large classes, students with low levels of vocabulary and grammar, and lack of motivation to complete the exercises satisfactorily. as a result, the english activities have mainly been focused on writing and reading. additionally, the concern of training for the icfes1 test (similar to the sat in the u.s.) is another reason to avoid planning speaking activities because this test does not include an oral component. conversely, a common motivation that students have regarding the listening skill is the use of players (mp3 or mp4) at every moment during school time. they listen not only to music, but also to the different radio shows, commenting about presenters’ expressions and the spontaneity that they demonstrate in each broadcast. these elements were integrated to ask the following question that became the starting point to conduct the present research project: to what extent can cooperative learning-based strategies –participating in an online radio show– foster speaking confidence in 8th graders at la chucua school? the research question was supported by the following objectives: general objective: to determine the effects the interpersonal and small-group skills strategy has on the enhancement of english speaking confidence in a group of eighth graders through an online radio show. specific objectives: 1. to identify the reasons for students’ lack of confidence when speaking in the target language. 1 icfes (instituto colombiano para el fomento de la educación superior) is a colombian agency in charge of regulating the state exams when finishing studies, including high school and undergraduate ones. 2. to create a strategy derived from interpersonal and small-group cooperative learning principles through team and individual decision-making interventions. 3. to use students’ knowledge about radio language to foster english speaking confidence. theoretical framework three areas to take into consideration in order to complete such action research were relevant to conduct this study: first of all, it was necessary to identify the possible reasons that produced students’ lack of confidence when speaking. secondly, it was pertinent to understand and evaluate the importance that radio has acquired in schools, especially since it establishes a good environment for socialization and helps to sort out academic problems through discussion, sharing, and reflection with a target audience. finally, it was necessary to identify the key elements regarding the cooperative learning instructional strategy that guided the study. confidence in speaking for most school community members, speaking english in colombian public schools is not common. reading activities, for example, are more appealing since students have expressed that they feel more skillful with them. despite learning english grammar rules and vocabulary, they are not confident in applying them in a spontaneous conversation. additionally, in the case of la chucua school, the amount of students in each classroom (about 40) does not permit teachers to closely monitor students’ oral performance. furthermore, based on students’ answers and reactions when requested to participate in oral activities, it has been identified that anxiety is one of the factors that influences the lack of confidence in 8th graders when they are prompted to speak english. brown (2007, p. 161) stated that anxiety –being a 93profile vol. 14, no. 1, april 2012. issn 1657-0790. bogotá, colombia. pages 91-112 “on air”: participation in an online radio show to foster speaking confidence... result of self-esteem, self-efficacy, inhibition and risk– has become the biggest challenge in language acquisition. in order to understand what happened to the students who participated in this project when they had to be involved in oral activities, it is necessary to discuss types of anxiety. oxford (1990) has helped brown to identify two types of anxiety, depending on the level or the learning/ environmental situation: trait anxiety (defined as a permanent bias to be anxious in different aspects), and state anxiety (in a learning situational level or specific moment). brown (2007) has also categorized three components of foreign languages anxiety as the following: 1. communication apprehension, arising from learners’ inability to adequately express mature thoughts and ideas (individual level of anxiety in real or anticipated communication). 2. fear of negative social evaluation, arising from a learner’s need to make a positive social impression on others (others’ opinions, product of unfavorable impressions due to the result of the learners’ avoidance of situations in which they are observed). 3. test anxiety or apprehension over academic evaluation (the feelings of anguish a person has before, during or after an exam with a sense of “blanking out”) (horwitz, 2001 and oxford, 1999, as cited by brown, 2007, p. 162). based on these assumptions, anxiety appears when learners experience apprehension in a situation that requires the use of the target language and they do not feel skillful enough to perform as confident speakers. consequently, the correlation between anxiety and performance arises. the observations of the sessions with the target group evidenced that they tended to experience trait anxiety because, as formerly mentioned, students feel that they are not able to speak appropriately in the target language. according to oxford (2002), language anxie ty occurs when learners must perform in the target language and they assume that the teacher expects them to perform well. without the appropriate management –in terms of guaranteeing a safe environment where making mistakes is part of the process–, anxiety would be a real problem for students. in addition, oxford proposed two effects that anxiety might produce in the learning process: harmful anxiety (the negative form that forces learners react to the situation, decreasing their participation); and helpful anxiety (a positive form that controls anxiety to assist the learning process) (oxford, 2002, p. 59). krashen (1987) established that the best outcome occurs when there is an environment that allows the learner to forget about anxiety, as cited by brown (2007). consequently, the learners feel comfortable and receptive when they receive constructive criticism in a healthy learning environment. hughes (2002) also suggested the importance of the environment for acquiring confidence in speaking. according to her, pragmatics, socio-linguistics and ethno-linguistics share the significance of the relationship between language and social interaction. likewise, she presented a set of materials that helps teachers provide students elements to activate their speaking, such as particular expressions in conversations and their purposes. these resources include a set of interactive schemes that –once stu dents practice a lot in a way they feel familiar with them– help them reduce their anxiety. these schemes include greetings and follow-up questions. in the case of this action research study, the schemes proposed were related to the radio context. additionally, realia includes elements to set up radio shows e.g. recording devices, players, editing software and a platform with which to upload the show. likewise, the recording sessions in the school radio station gave students the sense of their roles as radio broadcasters. thus, my objectives with the present study were directed toward setting up an instructional strategy that permitted 8th graders to universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras94 lemos tello foster their confidence in speaking. based on the fact that they chose “radio show”2 as the topic for their english class project, this strategy became the pathway for reaching my study objectives. school radio based on experience from programs applied to different public schools in bogotá by montoya and villa (2006) (e.g. their team work in the program called “onda cheverísima”, and later by the “subsecretaría de calidad y pertinencia: dirección de ciencia, tecnología y medios educativos” in the secretaría de educación of bogotá), it has been demonstrated that when students speak without being observed, their fears diminish and they recognize that they can produce commercial-like shows. furthermore, they are capable of producing meaningful products, taking into account that they know the context of their audience, their needs and problems (montoya & villa, 2006, p. 13). being aware of the importance of using radio at school implies thinking of two aspects used to achieve the purpose of this action research study: radio language for montoya and villa (2006), school radio is not only the studio and the microphone; radio broadcasting is the dynamics between words, imagination, creation, music, and sound effects. these elements permit users to narrate stories, which lead to discussions about real life and experiences (montoya & villa, 2006, p. 33). montoya and villa (2006), as part of the team that has led the inclusion of radio in the bogotá public school system, have determined the following elements of radio language: 2 “radio show” is the name of the project. at the beginning of the school academic year (2009), i gave them several topics to work in english class. they decided on the one related to radio. 1. music 2. words 3. silences (blanks) 4. sound effects internet radio or webcasting kozamernik and mullane (2009) conducted an action research project about the impact of webcasting. they stated that radio programs are not only available from terrestrial networks, but also by other means like satellite, cable or mobile phones. the growth of the internet has affected mass media, and these changes in radio technology have had an unexpected result because radio has become not only just radio, but also associated metadata, synchronized slideshows and even short video clips (kozamernik & mullane, 2009). consequently, radio is no longer linear broadcasting. during this action research study, the recording and storage of audio files allowed students to have a look at their performances and to constantly re-evaluate them. this constant revision inspired the students to be active participants in the project because by means of constant practice, listening to recordings and receiving feedback from their peers, they knew it would improve their confidence to speak english, thus taking advantage of online radio since the students would find a meaningful and appealing way to be listened to and express their feelings and thoughts using the target language. in the same way, compaine and smith (2001) conducted research that recognized the contribution of internet radio concerning the acceptance of diversity due to the variety of shows created by measuring the level of variety being created by internet radio broadcasters. according to them, internet radio has increased the number of broadcasters as setting up an online web 2.0 resource is free. in the case of land radio, the situation is the same. consequently, internet radio has added diversity, defined 95profile vol. 14, no. 1, april 2012. issn 1657-0790. bogotá, colombia. pages 91-112 “on air”: participation in an online radio show to foster speaking confidence... in this case as a variety of formats and genre shows extending to diverse audiences. cooperative learning there is a concept that is closely related to cooperative learning: educational interaction. coll and sole (1990, as cited by díaz-barriga & hernández, 2002) stated that educational interaction pre sents situations where the members of a team act simultaneously and reciprocally in a specific context to complete a learning objective. in this case, the teacher’s role in this study is seen as that of a facilitator who is familiar with the tools that aid the attainment of the goals (the internet radio show). the teacher also provides the students with the information necessary to operate the software used to produce the radio show. additionally, the teacher guides the students in the process of writing scripts, practicing, providing feedback, and encouraging them to be confident when speaking during practice activities, ensuring that they have an environment in which they can feel confident to speak. in addition, mcgroarty (1989, as cited by olsen & kagan, 1992) identified some benefits of planning and implementing cooperative learning activities in acquiring english: (a) an increase in the frequency and variety of second language practice through interaction, (b) the possibility for the development or use of the first language in ways that support cognitive development that permits second language skills, (c) the opportunity to integrate language with content-based instruction, and (d) the opportunity for students to assume an active role. likewise, the benefits that gillies (2007) mentioned when setting up cooperative learning groups were also considered: (a) positive interdependence among group members, referring to the need that students have to contribute to their teams in order to achieve a common goal; (b) use of interpersonal and small-groups skills, where students learn how to communicate their ideas to teach other members and, at the same time, learn how to recognize their other members’ ideas, establish agreements and manage conflicts. cooperative learning provides the opportunity to develop a personal rapport that activates the willingness to help each other by listening to the entire group say what needs to be said in a way that every idea is considered (gillies, 2007, p. 29). contemplating the former theoretical constructs, we feel it is possible to infer that using software for producing online radio shows could be a motivation to work cooperatively on a team in order to foster speaking confidence. furthermore, the inclusion of technology in the classroom could act as a strategy that enables participants to discover their interests, weaknesses and the strengths involved in the development of a suc cessful learning process. context and participants ied la chucua is a public school located in kennedy neighborhood, which is in the southern region of bogotá. the school was founded in 1976 as part of “escuela nueva”3, as one of the governmental programs. in 2000 the school was transformed into an institution that offered instruction for students at the pre-school, elementary and high school levels. currently it has about 1,300 students per shift. the majority of students’ families belong to stratum 2 and 3, and they usually live in the surrounding neighborhoods. most english classes are given in the native language because there is some resistance on the part of the students and some of the teachers to use the english language. lessons are mainly focused on 3 escuela nueva is a pedagogical model established in the 70’s especially designed to offer elementary education in rural zones, where a teacher was in charge of three grades (1st, 2nd, and 3rd) and another teacher in charge of the rest ( 4th and 5th grades). the groups were small in each classroom (about 10 students). universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras96 lemos tello vocabulary acquisition and reading comprehension. consequently, students’ level is a1 (according to the council of europe, 2002); some of 9th, 10th, and 11th graders are reaching a2. they are false beginners. for la chucua community, language is the most important means of communication. in fact, communication is an area that is under development for students. in general terms, l1 has a relevant importance at school, following up with the pileo4 program. participants the participants of this action research study were the students of group 802 at la chucua school. the study started with 38 students aged 13, but –because of some changes that occurred during the academic year– the study ended with 12 students. the group received two sessions of english of eighty minutes each per week (160 min.). the most common materials used in class were study guides, handouts (provided by the teacher), books, dictionaries, texts from the internet or encarta™ encyclopedia, and handicraft materials (provided by students). they studied the book teenagers (norma publishers), whose copies are in the library. the sessions were planned according to the ministry of education standards5 in english language education, which were adapted according to the students’ level. students were able to use familiar everyday expressions and very basic phrases as well as interact in a very simple way (council of europe, 2002, p. 24), but they did not feel confident speaking. in class, the teacher-talk time used to be high. they were encouraged to participate orally. when this study began, the students were in the stage of producing just monosyllables and other isolated 4 pileo: plan nacional de lectura, escritura y oralidad (national plan of literacy: reading, writing and oral skills). 5 ministerio de educación nacional (2006). estándares básicos en lenguas extranjeras: inglés. words. in addition, they also had difficulties re calling vocabulary, especially verbs. as a result, after considering the weaknesses and strengths identified in the institutional english test results last year, the board of english teachers decided to work with projects in order to increase students’ motivation and performance levels. in the case of the target group of this study, they decided to work with the topic “radio show”. data collection instruments the data collection instruments utilized in order to carry out this project were students’ artifacts (video and audio recordings), the teacher’s journal, and an initial and final survey. surveys surveys were used to confirm the reality that students lacked confidence speaking in the target language and the long term trends referred to the areas where the students thought they had improved. previous to the implementation of the project, the survey was applied to the entire group. the questions were directed at finding possible reasons that the students felt little confidence speaking in english. after the implementation, a new survey was handed out in order to consider what students thought about the project in terms of its relevance. it was given to the twelve students who finished the project. additionally, the researcher’s observations were compared to the students’ thoughts and opinions. audio recordings thus, audio recordings became not only a source of material for the radio show, but also were used as data collection instruments, given that they evidenced the students’ english speaking confidence level. this instrument was applied during the implementation. the transcriptions were recorded on a form (given, 2008, p. 40). 97profile vol. 14, no. 1, april 2012. issn 1657-0790. bogotá, colombia. pages 91-112 “on air”: participation in an online radio show to foster speaking confidence... video recordings according to given (2008), video recordings offer moving images of the interaction and behavior of the participants during the implementation. for this study, the approach applied was researcher-generated (given, 2008, p. 917) because the researcher chose the subjects and the content of the video. video recordings were made at the end of the implementation. they were used to analyze the students’ impressions about their own performance. those videos were filmed after students’ recordings. the transcriptions were recorded on a form. teacher’s journals according to sagor (2005), journals are important during the period of implementation because they are used to document a lot of information (as a complement of the other instruments) which is useful at the end of the process. he states that the more observations the researcher collects in the journal, the more information will be available when analyzing data (sagor, 2005, p. 108). during each lesson (giving input, planning the section of the show and recording), i registered my observations after participants completed their activities. at the end, i compared my observations with the identified aspects in the audio and video recordings. pedagogical intervention as previously mentioned, the pedagogical interventions used included identifying the reasons that students did not like participating in oral activities, finding the most appropriate cooperative learning strategies, designing the strategy, and putting it into practice. the steps used to develop the study were grouped into three stages: pre-implementation, implementation, and post-implementation. pre-implementation stage this stage was used to identify the reasons that impeded students to feel confident when they participated in oral activities. to complete this stage, a written survey was handed out (appendix a). a lesson plan was designed to observe the participants in action and also to identify the facts or situations that made students feel uncomfortable in oral activities. the teacher’s journal was implemented in order to record the students’ performances during this first activity, focusing the observations on the speaking confidence (appendix b). after reading and analyzing the first insights, the next step consisted of looking for the most appropriate cooperative learning strategies. implementation stage this stage began with the organization of coop erative teams. likewise, three lesson plans (connected with the syllabus) were designed to conduct the process of speaking confidence acquisition (appendix c). each lesson included input, planning, recording and editing sessions. similar to the pre-implementation stage, each implementation lesson was observed and the observations were reported in the teacher’s journals. additionally, a blog was set up (http://consulemos.blogspot.com) to record reflections about the study. post-implementation stage all the data were grouped together and classified in order to be analyzed. a final online survey (available at http://www.encuestafacil.com) was also displayed for students to fill-in, and the final show was edited and set up. at the same time, the creation of the online radio station was set up. because of time constraints, few students participated in uploading the radio show to the web. that is why a tutorial was created for the rest of the class. universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras98 lemos tello data analysis for this study, a blend of three approaches was applied: the foundation of quinn’s inductive analysis (2002), the procedure of sagor’s trend analy sis (2005) and the coding techniques proposed by corbin and strauss (1990) in the grounded theory. it was found that each isolated approach might not respond to the question and did not coincide enough with the qualitative type of research and most of the data that were collected. this combination of approaches is explained later. quinn (2002, p. 56) stated that inductive analysis consists of the identification of patterns, categories and themes of analysis from the emerging data, instead of imposing before the data collection. from these specific observations and findings, the theory is constructed. in trend analysis, sagor (2005) proposed three action – change – relationship (acr) questions that must be answered to make a precise analysis: acr question 1: what did we do? it consists of reconstructing the actions that occurred during the implementation, considering two steps: 1) allocating time (the relationship between the time planned and the real time invested); 2) looking for patterns (the identification of issues in common, in the different data collection instruments); sagor (2005) stated that identifying the actions that a phenomenon produced permits the researcher to predict what might occur in the future. acr question 2: what changes occurred regarding the achievement targets? the researcher explains the achievement target during the course of the project, comparing and contrasting trends and how external factors of triangulation affected the possible changes. acr question 3: what was the relationship between actions taken and any changes in performance on the targets? in this phase, the findings are used in order to answer the previous questions. then, it is necessary to identify changes in performance in the data and this way, it is possible to determine the pattern or patterns that are closely related to the actions or situations that could explain such changes. the grounded theory is basically the inductive development of theory, based on the collection of data. according to corbin and strauss (1990), grounded theory consists of reading and re-reading the collected data and identifying certain variables, called categories, as well as the relationship between them. the categories are identified by means of following a process called coding. this is the aspect of grounded theory used in the present study. figure 1. emerging patterns from constructs con�dence in speaking cooperative learning school radio pronunciation practice helping each other listening to each other learning together opportunity of expansion of vocabulary (how is the...) need of anxiety because of 99profile vol. 14, no. 1, april 2012. issn 1657-0790. bogotá, colombia. pages 91-112 “on air”: participation in an online radio show to foster speaking confidence... figure 2. paradigm model applied to the emerging category “pronunciation” consequence students became aware of the relevance that pronunciation has in acquiring speaking con�dence action interactional strategies intervening contidions casual contidions context asking students for reasons self/peer assessment listening to each other lesson transitions letting students edit the recordings opportunities to re�ect after recording listening: a way to strengthen re�ection self/peer evaluation: relevant to build speaking con�dence virtual room radio station room classroom figure 3. paradigm model applied to the emerging category “practice” consequence students became aware of the practice as the main strategy to improve interaction, and consequently, speaking con�dence action interactional strategies intervening contidions casual contidions context asking students for needs planning together assuming roles planning the shows dividing the recording in chunks practicing before recording: peer assessment opportunities to be familiarized with the chunks and the peer assessment radio station room classroom findings in the pre-implementation stage, and after applying the initial survey, 40% of the students did not like interacting in the target language; 55% did not like interacting in the target language because of their classmates’ reactions (laughing), 25% because the other people did not understand (pronunciation), and 15% because the teacher corrected pronunciation. the reasons for students’ fears included the fact that 80% of the students did not think their pronunciation was good, and 20% felt they did not have enough vocabulary and did not have opportunities to practice. on the other hand, after the implementation the students felt that their pronunciation had improved. they recognized a need to practice to remember the lines. this discovered requirement is the strategy that they found to face their anxiety. restating oxford’s proposal (2002), a change in the setting (from classroom to radio studio) motivated students to practice (evidenced in constant repetitions) to perform better and, given that they were assuming the role of “radio broadcasters”, they showed awareness and willingness to be understood. universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras100 lemos tello thus, the emerging categories were pronunciation and practice, as presented in the figure 4. to establish the relationship between the emerging categories and the other elements, (the possible subcategories at this point), axial and selective coding techniques –proposed by corbin and strauss (1990)– were applied. corbin and strauss defined axial coding as the process of putting the data back and establishing the relationship among the emerging categories. in so doing, the paradigm model was followed. the elements of the paradigm model are: causal conditions (situation or event that permitted the phenomenon to occur), context (the properties that were valid when the phenomenon occurred, for example, location), intervening conditions (conditions or actions that facilitated or constrained the phenomena), action and interactional strategies (how the participants acted, reacted, interacted, and handled the elements previously mentioned; and finally, the consequences (outcomes) (corbin & strauss, 1990, pp. 99-115). figures 2 and 3 show how i applied the paradigm model to identify the categories and subcategories, placing the findings in the elements mentioned above. applying the paradigm model allowed being more precise while defining the categories and identifying the sub-categories. pronunciation awareness refers to the importance that students give to pronunciation as a means of feeling more confident when speaking. the subcategories are the following: pronunciation concerns (defined as a concern that students experienced when they had to face speaking-based activities); listening to each other (the active and positive attitude that students developed in connection with their peers’ pronunciation skills process, a voiding laughing or intimidating their peers. it was the result of an improvement in their relationships and effective communication); helping each other (the enhancement of a constructive attitude when listening to each other, as seen in figure 5, excerpt 1). figure 5. excerpt 1: recording form – describing the situation student 1: very secure. she didn’t need to read in the moment of recording. better pronunciation. she helped student 2 a lot. she used some expressions to encourage him. finally, the expansion of vocabulary (the students’ challenging attitude to develop pronunciation skills through the acquisition of new vocabulary which was needed to transmit an understandable message) strengthened this feeling of awareness. during the implementation, the teacher’s journals evidenced the students’ concerns regarding pronunciation e.g. when planning the shows students usually considered pronunciation figure 4. categories and sub-categories pronunciation concerns listening to each other helping each other expansion of vocabulary need of practice opportunity of practice practicing together learning together categories practice awareness pronunciation awareness 101profile vol. 14, no. 1, april 2012. issn 1657-0790. bogotá, colombia. pages 91-112 “on air”: participation in an online radio show to foster speaking confidence... an issue. in excerpt 2, shown in figure 6, i evidence the decisions i made to provide a solution when i saw students’ concerns and frustration because of their pronunciation. figure 6. excerpt 2: teacher’s journal. class implementation 2 given the frustration that i have noticed in the students, i have decided to set up a pronunciation exercise with each group. however, i was surprised because some groups were already working in this aspect (pronunciation). this activity was consisted on repeating and showing what they have found in the dictionary or in google. some others wrote the pronunciation. the final survey –applied after the implementation– showed that 75% of the students felt that the use of the target language in the class increased fairly (60% 70%). 35% of those students expressed that it was because they felt that their pronunciation had improved (appendix d). practice awareness is defined as the recognition that students give to practice as a strategy to achieve confidence. the subcategories, need of practice (students acknowledged that they needed to do more so that they could improve their performance in subsequent sessions), opportunity of practice (the result of the reflection regarding the first subcategory; events, situations or actions that provided students different moments to take action on some issues that they considered needed further improvement), practicing together (the main strategy established as a product of an explicit or implicit decision of the team members in order to make effective use of their time during each implementation session), and learning together (suited the social effect of cooperative learning; new information was shared and consequently, students became aware of a better understanding not only of the language topic, but also of the radio language). during the project study, the students’ views were reiterative in terms of the needs to practice and the opportunities that the lessons planned for the present study offered for doing so, as seen in excerpt 3, where some students were reflecting on their own progress as well as their peers’. figure 7. excerpt 3: video recording transcription6 teacher: well, how did you feel this time? student 1: i felt good, as usual. student 2: yes of course, much better. student 4: yes, better. teacher: what about you? (referring to student 3) students 3: well… i think there is something else missing... student 2: no my friend, there is something missing, but it is few, isn’t it? student 1: yes folk, last time you almost cried. student 2: right, this time you did understand. similarly, they recognized that it was more appealing to practice with their peers (on the cooperative teams), and in this way they learned together. excerpt 4 –that shows how students provide each other help– demonstrates that applying the interpersonal and small-group cooperative learning skills improved the relationships amongst the teams’ members since the motivation arose not only to have a successful individual performance, but also, according to johnson (2003, as cited by gillies, 2007, p. 42), to facilitate learning in others. 6 originally in spanish. translated by the author. universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras102 lemos tello figure 8. excerpt 4: audio recording form. describing the situation7 student 1: very secure. she didn’t need to read in the moment of recording. better pronunciation. she helped student 2 a lot. she used some expressions to encourage him (“just do it, it’s easy!” “don’t be a fool, you can do it, just as we already did”). figure 9. excerpt 5: teacher’s journal. implementation class 3 the group starting practicing the script first by reading, then the members took the time to read alone one line, and then they joined to practice the line learned hiding the paper with the script. the interpersonal and small-group skills cooperative learning-based strategy enabled students to identify the reasons they did not feel confident when speaking as well as the actions required for dealing with this issue. identifying the reasons is a starting point for facing the anxiety that oral activities produced in the students. likewise, adopting gillies’ strategy (interpersonal and small-group skills) allowed students to cultivate social strategies that eased the incorporation of new information (and pronunciation of this new vocabulary) and, thus, to feel more confident with the recordings (students’ oral production in this study). likewise, the interpersonal and smallgroup skills strategy helped participants to change their attitudes, contributed to the teams’ tasks and assisted each other. in excerpt 5 it is possible to identify the importance of listening as a source to provide feedback for the others. it was through the application of gillies’ interpersonal and small7 the interaction was originally in spanish (“hágale que es fácil!”. “no sea bobo, ud., puede, como lo hicimos antes”). group skills strategy (2007) that students were provided opportunities to learn how to listen to each other and develop a critical assessment in a constructive way. based on gillies (2007), the change in behavior evidenced in these expressions of encouragement permitted students to feel confident and motivated them to be active participants in the task including supporting the team’s vision without the fear of being ridiculed in front of their peers. the result of being active listeners helped students achieve the common goal. this project also demonstrated that participating in a radio show was an engaging opportunity to use students’ knowledge and expand it to develop speaking confidence in english by means of practicing, recording, listening to, re flecting and editing (or recording again if necessary). the radio show –as a final product– allowed participants to work on their pronunciation needs, derived from their explicit concerns related to speaking confidence expressed during the earlier stages of the project. following the strategies previously mentioned, the study validated montoya’s and villa’s assumptions regarding the way students spoke without being observed (resembling a radio show performance). students felt that they were in a healthy and encouraging environment that facilitated their production and raised their confidence when speaking. conclusions this action research project guided students to become aware and reflective in terms of identifying reasons for the lack of confidence and the possible solutions to overcome the problem. this is the first time that the participants had the opportunity to reflect upon their difficulties and propose solutions for improvement. it became a crucial step in developing speaking confidence since learners were able to identify their own weaknesses and strengths 103profile vol. 14, no. 1, april 2012. issn 1657-0790. bogotá, colombia. pages 91-112 “on air”: participation in an online radio show to foster speaking confidence... and, therefore, could decide both individually and as a group the actions to take for the process. the cooperative learning-based strategy –framed under the foundation of gillies’ (2007) interpersonal and small group skills strategy– helped the students build a secure environment. it is, as oxford cited, cooperating with others where students agree on procedures for working together on an activity that has a common goal (the production of the show). furthermore, participating in the show demanded from the students what oxford (1990) called empathizing with others which for the present study meant becoming aware of others’ thoughts and feelings (oxford, 1990, p. 173). the students demonstrated a more positive attitude as a result of listening as a resource to advise their peers on how to perform better in terms of pronunciation (their main concern) for the up-coming recording sessions. therefore, the students’ confidence increased since their attitudes were modified towards motivation for performing better based on their self-reflection and peer-assistance. as a consequence of increased motivation, it is possible to say that speaking confidence in 8th graders from la chucua school was fostered, not only because it enabled social interactions, but also because it influenced the academic performances of learners in the english classroom. pedagogical implications conducting a project like this implies that one has or acquires knowledge of the content area (in this case, radio shows). if this is not so, it would be useful to create a collaborative team of teachers or ask for assistance from an institution that specializes in this field. in this way, a multidisciplinary project could be designed and the students could have the opportunity to integrate different information from different courses in order to achieve a common goal. this integration of different disciplines would entail a change in the schedules and school routines. likewise, providing opportunities for the students to visit a real radio station (in order to cultivate the interest that students could have in mass media) could be seen as an additional productive strategy. young learners will always like mass media, so leading or conducting a project that involves communication and certain media resources will be appealing and meaningful to them. therefore, through the integration of the affective filter (krashen, 1974 as cited by vanpatten & williams, 2006), mass media and language issues could be integrated to foster motivation and more meaningful usages of the target language. further research one of the primary areas for further research would be developing oral production through the implementation of this interpersonal and smallgroup skills strategy. students could use this gained knowledge to start a subsequent study, in addition to gillies’ proposal, on oxford’s statement about applying indirect strategies to the four language skills, and more specifically, the social strategies: asking questions, cooperating with others, and empathizing with others (oxford, 1990, p. 169). in this way, students would be helped to become more proficient because, according to kessler (1992, as cited by oxford, 2002, p. 60), (1) the input received will be a more comprehensible product of peer interaction; (2) they will have better developed listening skills that would help oral performance; (3) they would receive an instant reaction from their peers regarding their participation; and (4) they could relate new information to their previous knowledge, among others. maintaining the target group will be crucial and could be the leading group that will allow students of other grades to integrate a multidisciplinary universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras104 lemos tello team that would be more independent and autonomous in terms of decision-making. references brown, h. d. (2007).  principles of language learning and teaching (5th ed.). white plains, ny: pearson education, inc. compaine, b., & smith, e. (2001). internet radio: a new engine for content diversity? retrieved from http://arxiv.org/ftp/cs/papers/0109/0109046.pdf corbin, j., & strauss, a. (1990). part iii: coding procedures. in j. corbin & a. strauss (eds.), basics of qualitative research: grounded theory procedure and techniques. (pp. 57–115). london: sage publications. council of europe (2002). common european framework of reference for languages: learning, teaching, assessment. cambridge: cambridge university press. díaz-barriga, f., & hernández, g. (2002). estrategias docentes para un aprendizaje significativo (2a ed.). méxico, d.f.: mcgraw hill. gillies, r. (2007). cooperative learning: integrating theory and practice. los angeles, ca: sage publications. given, l. (ed). (2008). the sage encyclopedia of qualitative research methods. london: sage publications. hughes, r. (2002). the problem of real speech. in c. n. candlin & d. r. hall (eds.), teaching and researching: speaking (pp. 47-72). london: pearson. kozamernik, f., & mullane, m. (2009). an introduction to internet radio. retrieved from http://www.ebu.ch/en/ technical/trev/trev_304-webcasting.pdf montoya, a., & villa, l. (2006). radio escolar. bogotá: paulinas: centro de comunicación social. olsen, r., & kagan, s. (1992). about cooperative learning. in c. kessler (ed.), cooperative language learning: a teacher’s resource book (pp. 1-30). englewood cliffs, nj: prentice hall regents. oxford, r. (1990). language learning strategies: what every teacher should know. boston, ma: heinle & heinle publishers. oxford, r. (2002). anxiety and the language learner. in j. arnold (ed.), affect in language learning (pp. 58-67). cambridge: cambridge university press. quinn, m. (2002). strategic themes in qualitative inquiry. in m. quinn (ed.), qualitative research and evaluation methods (pp. 37-73). thousand oaks, ca: sage publications. sagor, r. (2005). the action research guidebook. thousand oaks, ca: corwin press. vanpatten, b., & williams, j. (2006). early theories in sla. in b. vanpatten & j. williams (eds.), theories in second language acquisition: an introduction (pp. 17-35). london: routledge. about the author nubia consuelo lemos tello holds a bed in modern languages (universidad distrital francisco josé de caldas, colombia) and an ma in edumatics with emphasis in multimedia. she also studied in a professional development program at universidad nacional de colombia. the article is based on the study she conducted while studying for an ma in elt autonomous learning environments at universidad de la sabana, colombia. 105profile vol. 14, no. 1, april 2012. issn 1657-0790. bogotá, colombia. pages 91-112 “on air”: participation in an online radio show to foster speaking confidence... appendix a: initial survey*8 welcome to the survey! this survey has the purpose of determining the percentage of oral production in english class, and your range of confidence as well. i thank you in advance for your honesty when filling it in. 1. how much do you use oral english during the sessions? ____ every time ____ frequently ____ sometimes ____ a few times 2. in which situations do you use oral english? ______________________________________________________________________________ ______________________________________________________________________________ ______________________________________________________________________________ 3. how many of your classmates have you recognized as speakers of english during the sessions? ____ all of them ____ the majority ____ some of them ____ few ____ no one 4. how much information do you share when speaking in english? ____ a lot; more than what i have learned in class or according to the teacher’s instructions. ____ very little, just what i have learned in class. ____ none. 5. when the teacher speaks in english, you: ____ understand all or almost all and you reply (interchanging information). ____ you recognize the general idea and do not answer or you answer in monosyllables. ____ you understand little information and do not provide answers. 6. who do you prefer interacting with in class (to speak english with)? ____ with the teacher. ____ with your classmates. ____ you do not like speaking english or you are frightened to do so. * survey originally presented to the students in their mother tongue (spanish). universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras106 lemos tello 7. are you frightened of speaking in english as you do in spanish? a. yes ____ b. no ____ c. more or less ____ if the answer is “yes” or “more or less”, answer questions 8 and 9. 8. what is your main fear when you are requested to speak english? ____ that your classmates laugh at you. ____ that the audience expresses their lack of understanding what you are saying. ____ that the teacher corrects your pronunciation. ____ other (please, specify)_______________________________________________________ _______________________________________________________________________________ 9. why do you feel afraid when speaking english? ____ because you feel that your pronunciation is not appropriate. ____ because you do not have enough vocabulary. ____ because there are not enough opportunities to practice in class. ____ other (please specify) ______________________________ 10. do you think that the topic “radio show” that the group chose at the beginning of the school year will help you overcome your fears of speaking english? would you feel more confident? ____ yes ____ no ____ it would be a starting point ____ i am not sure about it if you answered “yes” or “would be a starting point”, please answer the last question 11. how do you think that the project “radio show” would help you to overcome your fears when speaking and help you feel more confident when speaking? _______________________________________________________________________________ _______________________________________________________________________________ thanks for your cooperation. adapted from: thornbury, s. (2005). planning and assessing speaking. how to teach speaking. england: pearson, p. 113. 107profile vol. 14, no. 1, april 2012. issn 1657-0790. bogotá, colombia. pages 91-112 “on air”: participation in an online radio show to foster speaking confidence... appendix b: sample of teacher’s journal universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras108 lemos tello appendix c: sample of lesson plan “recommendations for vacations” teacher: nubia consuelo lemos tello date: september 14th institution: colegio la chucua ied class time: 9:50 – 11:00 length of the class: 70 minutes room: 15 number of students: 38 average age: 15 / virtual room level: elementary group: 8th grade (802) aim by the end of the lesson students will provide a suggestion report: • by giving an oral report about vacations. • by identifying and using compound words. assumed knowledge students recognize modals for suggestions or advice (should – should not) students are familiar with whclauses: what, where, when. students are familiar with yes-no questions. materials • powerpoint presentation. • handouts for pair work. • handouts for writing the script. 109profile vol. 14, no. 1, april 2012. issn 1657-0790. bogotá, colombia. pages 91-112 “on air”: participation in an online radio show to foster speaking confidence... stage aim procedure teacher and student activity time and interaction warming up presentation practice production to activate input, checking previous knowledge to present vocabulary regarding vacations to build compound words to build modal verb sentences for giving suggestions to build a section of a radio show talking about suggestion for vacations 1. students are organized in rows and each row is a team. 2. each row receives a set of cards with different words: the students of each team have to organize the words in order to build a sentence with the modal verb. the first team to build the sentence gets a point. 3. two other tries are set up. 4. students observe two pictures of places. students explain the relationship between them (places to take a rest). 5. pair work: students receive a handout with a set of pictures of different elements that are necessary for vacations and the corresponding words. each pair must match the pictures with the words. 6. the whole class corrects the exercise and justifies their answers. solutions are displayed on the smart board. 7. pair work: exercise 2 in the handout. students match the names in column a and b to make compound nouns. 8. then, they build sentences using “should” (affirmative – negative) you should wear sunglasses if you travel to cartagena. you shouldn’t carry gloves to the beach. group work: the students are organized in groups (according to the groups of the class project “radio-show”. each group plans a section for a radio show. the objective of the section is “recommendations for vacations”. for doing so, each group must: 1. think about the name of the section. 2. check and correct the sentences created during pair work. 3. decide on the use of radio elements: music, special effects, words, etc. 4. start writing the script of the radio show section. each group presents their production to the teacher for being corrected in terms of pronunciation and sentence structure. 10 minutes t – gw 10 minutes pw 15 minutes pw 20 minutes 15 minutes universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras110 lemos tello appendix d: sample of final survey results final survey results number of students surveyed: 12 missing students: none after the development of the project, how did the use of the target language change? few (40% 50%) 0% fair (60% 70%) 75% no increase 0% much (80% 100%) 25% • reasons for the increase: ȟ pronunciation was taken into account (2 surveys). ȟ the style is different (better). ȟ we changed our way of listening. ȟ it is a motivation to learn english. ȟ it is an opportunity to put into practice what we learned. ȟ by recordings we learn how to pronounce. ȟ it demands using vocabulary. ȟ my speaking increased a lot. ȟ i don’t feel embarrassed when speaking english. ȟ because we didn’t speak english before, but now we understand and the expansion of vocabulary and the use of radio, we can speak more. ȟ sometimes we speak and sometimes we don’t. • reasons for no improvement: (no answers) 111profile vol. 14, no. 1, april 2012. issn 1657-0790. bogotá, colombia. pages 91-112 “on air”: participation in an online radio show to foster speaking confidence... why do you think you are more con�dent? which aspects helped to become so? other(s) 33% more vocabulary 17% all 8% pronunciation 42% fluency 0% memorization 0% • other aspects: ȟ to speak with more grace. ȟ the timbre of the voice is higher. which strategy would help you continue increasing your speaking con�dence? other 9% working on a different project 8% continuing working with the project or radio 83% other: to develop study guides that go from the basic to the most difficult. • (if you chose the first option in the previous question). how do you think the project “radio show” can help you overcome your fears and feel more confident when speaking? ȟ being more spontaneous and confident when speaking. ȟ applying everything we have learned. universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras112 lemos tello ȟ people around me do not laugh at me when i make a mistake. ȟ by having workshops where we can connect the topic and the vocabulary. ȟ listening to the recordings after editing to notice how we are improving and if we are doing a good job. practicing and learning. ȟ everybody is listening to us. ȟ when speaking i used to feel nervous but when it is time for the radio show i feel motivated because it’s a way that i like to speak. ȟ i don’t have any fear, but the problem is that i don’t understand. however, the radio show is good as it was managed now. i would like to be allowed to choose the topics and not everybody have the same topic. ȟ it is an opportunity to continue practicing, and in this way, i feel more confident and relaxed. ȟ more workshops, vocabulary activities, recordings, different genres of radio show (role play, drama, news, etc.) ȟ perhaps speaking close to my friends eases speaking in front of a bigger audience. ȟ working on pronunciation, learning more words in both written and oral ways. profile vol. 12, no. 2, october 2010. issn 1657-0790. bogotá, colombia. pages 87-105 87 exploring reflective teach ing through informed journal keeping and blog group discussion in the teach ing practicum* exploración de la enseñanza reflexiva en la práctica docente a través de la escritura informada de diarios y de discusiones grupales mediante blogs edgar alirio insuasty** lilian cecilia zambrano castillo*** universidad surcolombiana, colombia this article reports the findings of a study which examined how student teach ers could be empowered as more reflective practitioners through journal keeping and blog group discussions. it was carried out with six student teach ers who developed their practicum over six months. data were collected through journals, blogs, metaphors, conferences and a questionnaire. the results demonstrated that student teach ers enriched their perceptions about what reflective teach ing implied. furthermore, journal keeping was approached as an informed process by virtue of which studentteach ers could go beyond the descriptive documentation of what happened in their classes. their journal entries also revealed reflective references, most of which were mainly focused on evaluating teach ing, diagnosing and solving problems. key words: teach ing practicum, reflective teach ing, informed diary keeping, group discussions. este artículo reporta los resultados de un estudio que examinó cómo se podía potenciar los practicantes como docentes más reflexivos a través del uso de diarios y discusiones mediante blogs. en el estudio participaron seis practicantes, quienes desarrollaron sus prácticas durante seis meses. los datos se recogieron a través de diarios, blogs, metáforas, conferencias y cuestionarios. los resultados demostraron que los practicantes enriquecieron sus percepciones acerca de lo que significa la enseñanza reflexiva. por otra parte, el diligenciamiento del diario, el cual se hizo como un proceso informado, les permitió ir más allá de una etapa descriptiva y enfocarse en la evaluación del proceso de enseñanza, la identificación y solución de los problemas que surgieron en la clase. palabras clave: práctica docente, enseñanza reflexiva, escritura informada de diarios, discusiones a través de blogs. * this article is derived from the research “the development of reflective teach ing: a way to improve the teach ing practicum in an elt program” conducted by the authors (august 2007-november 2008) as a thesis requirement which enabled them to obtain the degree of m.a. in english didactics at universidad de caldas. ** e-mail: edalin@usco.edu.co *** e-mail: licezam@usco.edu.co this article was received on december 16, 2009, and accepted on june 12, 2010. 88 universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras insuasty & zambrano castillo introduction reflection should be a basic component of teacher development because pre-service and inservice teach ers are called to evaluate and rearrange their teach ing in order to optimize the teachinglearning process. a reflective teach er is expected to go beyond the practice of reciting textbooks, giv ing tests, following imposed syllabi, and taking for granted that everything is going well. teach ers are supposed to become critical of their own practices in order to make their students’ learning experience something dynamic, valuable and meaningful for their lives. in spite of the importance that reflective teach ing involves, the potential of reflection in the colombian educational context has not been fully explored. zambrano and insuasty (2008) carried out a small-scale descriptive study which sought to investigate the extent to which the teach ing practicum in the foreign language program of a public university had been approached as a reflective experience. the teach ing practicum component of this program was found to have fallen short in providing student teach ers with opportunities to develop into reflective practitioners, despite the existing institutional regulations in that sense. in general terms, student teach ers did not seem to be aware enough of the principles of reflective teach ing and, consequently, were not committed to implementing this approach. the researcher’s professional response to the student teach ers’ low level of reflectivity was the conception and implementation of a reflective teach ing intervention proposal (rtip), which was framed and explored in the practicum supervisory relationship between six student teach ers and the two researchers. the initial plan consisted of seven induction workshops. they were aimed at broadening student teach ers’ insights into reflective teach ing, its main purposes, and reflective teach ing tools. in addition to these conceptual foundations on reflective teach ing, student teachers were asked to keep a journal and to participate in group blog discussions throughout the practicum period. the present study sought to develop the following objectives: (a) to determine the type of perceptions student teach ers had about reflective teach ing, (b) to broaden student teach ers’ insights into reflective teach ing, (c) to stimulate student teach ers to explore reflective teach ing tools dur ing the practicum experience, and (d) to ascertain to what extent student teach ers became reflective practitioners. the next sessions of this article will discuss the basic concepts of reflective teaching, its rationale as well as two implementation frameworks. moreover, the major findings of three similar studies will be added. then, the research methodology will be depicted. finally, the results, findings and conclusions will be discussed. theoretical framework in general terms, reflection has been described in many ways. koszalka, song, and grabrowski (2002, as cited in conderman & morin, 2004) defined reflection as “active, persistent, and careful consideration of any belief or practice” (p. 111). in order for reflection to evolve in meaning and usefulness, rodgers (2002, as cited in amobi, 2006) suggests that “reflection should be taught, learnt, assessed, discussed, and researched” (p. 26). as to the conceptions of reflection in the educational field, there is also a wide range of standpoints. according to ross (1989), reflection is “a way of thinking about educational matters that involves the ability to make rational choices and to assume responsibility for those choices” (p. 22). likewise, bartlett (1994) contends that reflection is more than thinking and focuses on the day-to-day profile vol. 12, no. 2, october 2010. issn 1657-0790. bogotá, colombia. pages 87-105 89 exploring reflective teaching through informed journal keeping... classroom teach ing of the individual teach er as well as the institutional structures in which the teach er and students work. bartlett (1994) also says that “becoming criti cal means that as teach ers we have to transcend the technicalities of teach ing and think beyond the need to improve our instructional techniques” (p. 203). he suggests that we should move away from the “how to” question to the “what and why” questions because they give us some power over our teach ing, and in this way we can begin to exercise control and open up the possibility of transforming our everyday classroom life. bartlett (1994) claims that reflective teach ing should be seen as “a form of critical inquiry located in a socially critical orientation to teach ing” (p. 203). thus, second language teach ers should assume that they are both the producers and creators of their own history. risko, roskos, and vukelich (2002, as cited in conderman & morin, 2004) believe that reflection creates the foundation for assessing situations and making rational decisions and provides educators the opportunity to generate connections between theory and practice, to come to deeper understandings about their personal beliefs while adapt ing new perspectives, and to use inquiry to inform instructional decisions. richards (1990, as cited in farrell, 2003) also sees reflection as a key component of teach er development. he defines critical reflection as a process in which “experience is recalled, considered, and evaluated, usually in relation to a broader purpose” (p. 15). he also argues that this process is a basis for evaluation, decision making and a source for plann ing and action. according to schön (1983, as cited in corcoran & leahy, 2003), reflection requires a public testing of private assumptions, which happens through a dialogue of words or actions with other participants in the teach ing-learning context. in this sense, kemmis (1986, as cited in bartlett, 1994) contends that: reflection is not just an individual, psychological process. it is an action oriented, historically-embedded social and political frame, to locate oneself in the history of a situation, to participate in a social activity, and to take sides on issues. moreover the material on which reflection works is given to us socially and historically; through reflection and the action which it informs, we may transform the social relations which characterize our work and our working situation. (p. 204) in order to comply with the requirements of reflective teach ing development, teach ers can have access to a variety of resources such as the ones presented by murphy (2001). they include audio or video recording, class observation, interviews, journal keeping, focus groups, etc. why reflective teach ing? reflective teach ing is an approach which has gained significant momentum in language teach ing. in his personal reflection about thirty years of tefl/tesl, richards (2008) contends that language teach ers have moved away from a search of the perfect method and have shifted their at tention to developing and exploring their own teach ing through reflective teach ing and action research. other theorists have, over the last few years, advocated different rationales for the emergence and the worthiness of reflective teach ing. gore (1987) enhances collegiality as one of the outcomes of reflective teach ing, since via working in small groups to question and examine teach ing behavior and provide honest feedback, students may develop trust and respect for each other as teachers and professionals. according to smyth (1992), reflection places an emphasis on learning 90 universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras insuasty & zambrano castillo through questioning and investigation in order to lead to a development of understanding. as a matter of fact, exploring the nature of reflective practice, calderhead (1993) and others found that reflective teach ing contributes to professional development by encouraging teach ers to analyze, discuss, and evaluate practice. from a constructivist point of view, colton and sparks-langer (1993) contend that teach ers are expected to learn from their experiences by constructing mental representations of their personal meanings when they are stored in memory to be revised as experience dictates. ferraro (2008) also perceived that teachers could improve their effectiveness in the classroom by gaining a better understanding of their own individual teach ing styles through reflective practice. murphy (2001) points out that teach ers can grow as professionals in different ways and this growth lets them look inward, both within themselves and within the courses they offer, to access information about what happens in their language classrooms. he proposes three main purposes of reflective teach ing: first, to expand one’s understanding of the teach ing learning process; second, to expand one’s repertoire of strategic options as a language teach er; and third, to enhance the quality of learning opportunities one is able to provide in language classrooms (pp. 499-514). frameworks to develop reflective teach ing reflective teach ing has been conceived by different scholars as a cyclical process of teach er development. bartlett (1994) proposes a cycle for the process of reflective teach ing. it is made of five components, namely, mapping, informing, contesting, appraising, and acting, which are not linear or sequential. each one of these elements is a response to a particular question, as shown here: mapping. (what do i do as a teacher?) for bartlett it implies observation and the collection of evidence about our experiences in the classroom. this stage also involves asking questions about what we do as teach ers. what is very important in the mapping phase is that observation must be done by individual teach ers (and through the use of personal diaries, learning logs, portfolios, and journals). the teach ers’ approach to the mapping phase should be a descriptive one. informing. (what is the meaning of my teach ing? what did i intend?) “it is looking for meaning behind the maps” (bartlett, 1994, p. 210). that is, the teach er revisits his first records his maps adds to them, and makes sense of them. as such, the informing phase provides the teach er with an understanding of the difference between teach ing routine and conscious teach ing action, and the ability to unearth the principles behind them as well as reasons underlying one’s own theory of teach ing. contesting. (how did i come to be this way? how was it possible for my present view of teaching to have emerged?) “this phase involves contesting our ideas and the structures that hold them in place” (bartlett, 1994, p. 211). to this end, teach ers can share their understandings and reasons for teach ing in particular ways with their colleagues. while becoming experienced teach ers, they develop their own theories of teach ing and learning and their professional histories which contain assumptions about the best ways of teach ing. appraisal. (how might i teach differently?) it has to do with a search for alternative courses of action. “appraisal begins to link the thinking dimension of reflection with the search for teach ing in ways consistent with our new understanding” (bartlett, 1994, p. 213). appraisal is a quest for alternative courses of action; that is, emerging plans or strategies to enhance the quality of teach ing and learning processes. profile vol. 12, no. 2, october 2010. issn 1657-0790. bogotá, colombia. pages 87-105 91 exploring reflective teaching through informed journal keeping... acting. (what and how shall i now teach ?) it is concerned with implementing those emerging teach ing plans. freire, as cited by bartlett (1994), states that “reflection without action is verbalism, and action without reflection is activism” (p. 213). to sum up, what is expected with this cycle, according to bartlett, is that “we rearrange our teach ing practice after mapping what we do, unearthing the reasons and assumption for these actions, subjecting these reasons to critical scrutiny, appraising alternative courses of action, and then acting” (1994, p. 213). murphy (2001) suggests the following steps for those teach ers who are interested in deepening awareness of their teach ing and learning behaviors through reflective teach ing: (a) gather information on whatever is taking place within a language course, (b) examine such information closely in an effort to better understand what they collect, (c) identify anything puzzling about the teach ing-learning process, (d) build awareness and deepen understanding of current teach ing and learning behaviors, (e) locate and collaborate with others interested in processes of reflective teach ing, (f ) pose and refine questions tied to one’s teach ing that are worth further exploration, (g) locate resources that may help to clarify whatever questions are being posed, (h) make informed changes in teach ing, even if only modest changes, (i) document changes in teach ing-learning behaviors and responses, (j) continue such efforts over time and share emerging insights with others. (p. 500) in addition to the theoretical foundations we have just briefly described, this study has also been informed by other research-derived insights. chacón (2008) conducted an investigation with the practicum student teach ers at the university of los andestáchira. findings showed that intervention helped improve student teach ers’ competencies to reflect because it fostered reflection-in-practice and reflection-on-practice. ho and richards (2008) carried out a study aimed at investigating how journal writing promoted reflective thinking. they concluded that “journal writing can provide an opportunity for teach ers to write reflectively about teach ing, though in itself does not necessarily promote critical reflection… some initial training in reflective writing may well be necessary as a preparation for journal writing” (p. 13). muñoz, quintero and munévar (2008) carried out collaborative action research which was aimed at enriching the potential of young educators in the teach er training schools with the concept and practice of pedagogical research. the major finding was that teach er trainees could improve their research abilities while learning to teach . these studies are relevant to our research since all of them are concerned with improving reflective teach ing practice from different perspectives. the study conducted by muñoz, quintero and munévar (2008) proves that the practicum can be a propitious arena to promote reflection and research competences. the study by chacón (2008) supported our initiative of intervening in the practicum by encouraging student teach ers to reflect upon their teach ing practicum. on its part, ho and richards’s study (2008) was valuable because it provided us with procedural insights on how to categorize the descriptive and reflective references found in the student teach ers’ journals. on the other hand, they recommended taking into account diary keeping as an informed process. methodology this research study was framed within the category of curriculum action research since it abides by the main objectives and procedures of this research design. in his introduction to mck ernan’s book (1996), elliot suggests that “the aim of doing action research as a teach er is to achieve educationally worthwhile changes, and at the heart of this enterprise are considerations 92 universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras insuasty & zambrano castillo of curriculum and pedagogy”. as a matter of fact, what is sought with this research proposal is to start intervening one of the major curricular components of the foreign language program: the teach ing practicum. the study also had other defining features of action research such as being small-scale, localized, and aimed at discovering, developing, or monitoring changes to practice (wallace, 2000). observational and non-observational techniques were used to collect data. the former were journals, blog group discussions and conferences. the latter were metaphors and questionnaires. journal entries were done in terms of description, interpretation, intervention points, action plans and follow-up. blog group discussion was done by means of the postings and feedback of student teach ers and supervisors in their own blogs. stu dent teach ers and their practicum supervisors also held a group and individual conference as a way to exchange their impressions about the reflective teach ing intervention proposal (rtip) process. as to the non-observational techniques, student teach ers were administered three questionnaires aimed at determining student teach ers’ perceptions about reflective teach ing and its importance and at capturing student teach ers’ perceptions about the impact of the reflective teach ing insights and practical tools they explored throughout their teach ing practicum experience. furthermore, student teach ers individually drew two metaphors, an initial one which would represent them as prospective teach ers and a final one which would represent them as reflective practitioners. the main purpose of this task was to find out which were the insights and beliefs they held about the teach ing learning process and to assess their initial and post-intervention perceptions on reflective teach ing based on the descriptions they made of their metaphors. they made different kinds of representations. for example, student-teacher 3 drew a teach er and his students outside the classroom, surrounded by nature and statues like the ones we could see in the san agustin archeological park in his first metaphor and in his second metaphor he included many details to explain his preceptions about his experience during the practicum (see appendixes 1 and 2). this action research spiral (ars) consisted of two cycles, each one of which involved four stages: (1) designing an intervention plan aimed at improving the practicum based on reflective teach ing, (2) implementing the intervention plan, (3) observing and completing a follow-up, and (4) reflecting. once the data gathered in the first cycle were analyzed, the initial plan was revised and adjusted as the point of departure for the second cycle. in general terms, data analysis followed the stages outlined by mckernan (1996): “first, processing the evidence, editing and coding. second, mapping the data by noting the frequency of recurrence of issues, themes and units. third, making the interpretation of data/model building. fourth, presenting of results, reporting evidence” (pp. 223-227). content analysis was specifically conducted in accordance with the procedures suggested by mckernan (1996): “first, defining the universe of the content. second, writing careful definitions of key categories being coded. third, analyzing the data and coding categories. fourth, quantifying and doing counts” (p. 147). results the implementation of the rtip resulted in an enhancement of the student teach ers’ initial perceptions about reflective teach ing and in an ongoing improvement of their reflectivity through informed journal keeping and blog group discussions. an overview of the most relevant conceptual profile vol. 12, no. 2, october 2010. issn 1657-0790. bogotá, colombia. pages 87-105 93 exploring reflective teaching through informed journal keeping... and practical gains student teach ers experienced throughout the two cycles is presented here by tracing the initial assumptions student teach ers had about reflective teach ing, documenting the ongoing development of their reflectivity and presenting their informed notions of reflective teach ing. in order to ensure the confidentiality of the six participants, they are identified in this report as student-teach er 1 (st1), student-teach er 2 (st2), and so on. baseline perceptions of student teach ers about reflective teach ing as an explanation of their initial metaphors, stu dent teach ers depicted various roles such as being a controller, a guide or innovator they would play in their future profession. however, none of them disclosed any relevant features which would shape a reflective practitioner. they did not see themselves as researchers, critical analysts of their own teach ing practice, neither did they see teach ing as a process where experience should be document ed, evaluated and whose results are used to make informed decisions, to implement changes and so to be able to rearrange teach ing objectively. in addition to metaphor development, student teach ers were administered a questionnaire aimed at finding out their previous knowledge about reflective teach ing. as a response, student teach ers stated a wide range of diverse but discrete perceptions. for example, st2 pointed out that “reflective teach ing is a way of improving the learning process”. st4 answered that “it allows teach ers to self-evaluate and improve weaknesses”. st3 and st5 asserted that “the main purpose of reflective teach ing is to identify and solve problems in different ways”. some of them also wrote some references which did not evidence traits of reflectivity as pursued by reflective teach ing. for instance, st1 pointed out that reflective teach ing is useful “to teach students not to memorize grammar structures, but to teach how to live in a changing world”; st3 claimed that “it is a model where a student teach er puts into practice all the psychological knowledge”. reflectivity development as evidenced by informed journal keeping one of the major components of the rtip was informed journal keeping. after having been provided with insights into reflective teach ing and reflective journal keeping, student teach ers wrote journal entries about their practicum experiences. at the end of the two cycles, 72 of those journal entries were analyzed and coded according to the categories and subcategories presented by ho and richards (2008) and adapted by the researchers. table 1 shows that 435 out of a total of 576 analyzed references were classified as reflective and 141 as non-reflective. in general terms, table 1 reveals that the most recurrent issues student teach ers wrote about were concerned with evaluating teach ing (312 out of 576 analyzed references). most of the references deal with positive or negative evaluation of lessons, students or teach ers’ problems and problems within the school context. in some of the references student teach ers let us see their willingness to evaluate their lessons either in a positive or negative way. they highlighed the good results they had achieved or they showed previously identified problems concerned with the learner, the teach er or the institutional context, as shown in the following examples: the repetition and labeling of the parts helped my students to identify the vocabulary little by little. once again, this demonstrated the usefulness of the natural approach, specially the production stage-by-stage process used to write more elaborated sentences. (st2) 94 universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras insuasty & zambrano castillo table 1. frequency of reflective and non-reflective categories categories sub-categories instances st1 st2 st3 st4 st5 st6 t 1. theories of teach ing theories and beliefs about teach ing and learning a belief or conviction 5 2 3 4 3 3 22 an expert’s view 1 2 0 0 0 3 6 a justification for something 2 5 5 1 0 11 24 a personal opinion 9 7 7 3 3 2 31 applying theories to classroom practice contradictions between theory and practice 4 0 1 2 2 0 9 how a theory was applied 0 0 2 0 2 0 4 pedagogical knowledge 0 0 3 0 0 0 3 knowledge and experience 0 0 1 0 0 0 1 2. approaches and methods the content of a lesson 13 13 16 11 14 38 105 the learners 2 1 3 2 0 3 11 3. evaluating teach ing evaluating lessons positive evaluations of lessons 13 29 12 11 17 31 113 negative evaluations of lessons 11 4 0 0 1 6 22 diagnosing problems students problems 10 7 13 11 5 11 57 classroom interaction 0 0 2 3 2 0 7 teach er’s problems 3 3 0 6 0 3 15 problems of the school context 5 1 1 0 0 3 10 solutions to problems alternative ways of presenting a lesson 0 0 5 4 4 0 13 deciding on a plan of action 16 3 17 16 8 11 71 seeking solutions from tutor 0 3 1 0 0 0 4 4. self-awareness perceptions of themselves as teach ers their teach ing style 5 3 3 1 0 4 16 recognition of personal growth 0 1 0 0 0 0 1 setting personal goals 2 1 2 1 0 1 7 recognition of weaknesses 4 16 0 2 0 1 23 profile vol. 12, no. 2, october 2010. issn 1657-0790. bogotá, colombia. pages 87-105 95 exploring reflective teaching through informed journal keeping... through references like this one student teach ers showed they did not limit themselves to just describing what they did in the classroom, as happened before the intervention proposal. st2 went beyond narrating her experience; she determined what worked well and made a contrast between what the theorists state and the actual results in the classroom. in so doing, student teachers become more reflective because as bartlett (1994) points out: “they begin the search for principles or reasons which are the basis for their theory of teach ing” (p. 210). they also became a little aware of the value of making informed decisions in their teach ing experience in order to facilitate their students’ learning process. another way of evaluating their lessons was focused on diagnosing problems concerned with students, the institutional context and the student teach ers themselves. although some of the student teach ers argued that they were initially afraid of getting lower grades if they wrote down all the difficulties they had during the class, they finally learned to be more self-critical of their own performance and identified their own weaknesses as we can see in the following testimonies1: i know it was a little terrible because they wanted to work in groups, but they couldn’t stay in a specific place, and they were very noisy. it was stressful; i had to call their attention several times. sometimes i didn’t know what to do. (st2) the mistake i made when preparing the guide they had to color, cut and at last classify was to have students color the drawings. i should have colored the drawings myself and stuck the colored 1 some extracts taken from the data were originally expressed in spanish. they were translated into english for the purpose of this publication. drawings in order for them to cut and classify. due to the fact students had to do all of these activities, we were short of time. (st6) it has been so difficult to find some actions to solve this problem. if i speak loudly or shout it hurts my sore throat. if i am indifferent, they continue in the same behavior. (st1) student teach ers not only diagnosed problems, but also proposed some alternative ways of solving them, as can be seen in the following examples: when i noticed this fact, i proceeded to explain it in an easier way using spanish to make the topic clearer for them. (st6) in order to clear up the students’ doubts, i walked around the classroom checking what they were doing and giving personal explanations. (st5) these courses of action proposed by st6 and st5 also stem from their reflective teach ing attitude. even though they did not explicitly provide any theoretical support when proposing the strategies to overcome the above mentioned difficulties, the researchers could infer the tenets underlying their plans. in the first reference, the student teach er’s decision was based on the premise that learners can sometimes benefit from the use of their native language, especially when some grammatical components must be explained. finocchiaro and brumfit (cited by richards & rodgers, 2001) point out that “judicious use of native language is accepted where feasible” (p. 156). in the second reference, the student teach er lets us see that he is applying one of the teach ers’ roles harmer (2007) proposes, the teach er as a tutor, where he can go around the class and stay briefly with a particular group or individual and offer some guidance. 5. questions about teach ing asking for reasons 1 0 0 0 0 0 1 asking for advice and suggestions 0 2 0 0 0 0 2 total 106 105 97 76 61 113 578 96 universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras insuasty & zambrano castillo the second most frequent concern of student teach ers in their journal entries was framed within the category “approaches and methods”, as can be seen in table 1. 124 out of 578 references were registered in this category. however, most of these were concerned with describing the content of a lesson without suggesting explicitly the type of approach or method which supports their practice. in spite of having taken courses during their career where student teach ers deeply analyzed different approaches and methods for language teach ing, they did not confront the theoretical foundations that supported their performance with what actually happened in the classroom. for example: “the class started with a review of what was seen in the previous lesson… after, a game where a student had to pass a kind of capsule was played… next, the same was done but with background music…” (st6). however, this type of practice made student teach ers aware of the importance of collecting evidence about their own teach ing. regarding this, bartlett (1994) claims that “in writing, we begin not only to observe, but we take the first step in reflecting on and about our practice… the aim is to raise your consciousness of your teach ing through writing: this is the first step to “sussing out” the meaning behind your ideas” (p. 210). as can be seen, this type of reference corresponds to the mapping phase of bartlett’s reflective cycle which does not involve the teach er in critical reflection, since s/he just gives an account of what goes on in her/his practicum lessons. the third most important issue student teach ers wrote about was theories of teach ing. in this category, they wrote descriptive references aimed at expressing a belief or conviction or an expert’s view: “during this school term, there were some children who didn’t get a satisfactory academic performance; however, i cannot give a mark of poor performance (“i”) to a preschool child” (st2). as can be seen in the reference, the student teach er did not justify her decision of not assigning a bad grade to a pre-school student. in the category of theories of teach ing, other references were focused on more reflective actions such as expressing a justification for something or expressing an opinion shaped by experience. for example: the children seemed to be motivated when they were asked to perform commands and it was, to a large extent, due to the fact that it implied movement. i realized that juan (pseudonym) who does not usually participate in class was very interested in performing commands. this confirms what the tpr method postulates: giving a physical response to commands makes students move and this turns to be appealing to children. (st6) through this reference we can perceive that the student teach er conciliates theory and practice. she confirmed the effectiveness of that theoretical assumption proposed by asher (1977). “this phase in reflective teach ing begins the search for principles that underlie our teach ing, the search for reasons which are the basis for our theory of teach ing” (bartlett, 1994, p. 211). it is important that student teach ers become aware of their teach ing actions, confront them with what theorists propose and try to create their own teory of teach ing and learning based on the specific context where they teach . “maybe the students’ good attitude was due to the fact that they had heard the song in their native language” (st2). english songs can be a very useful resource to promote language development. with this particular reference, st2 is posing the worthy hypothesis that the choice of a particular song made by taking into account the students’ previous familiarity with it can impinge on their attitude. “i worked with profile vol. 12, no. 2, october 2010. issn 1657-0790. bogotá, colombia. pages 87-105 97 exploring reflective teaching through informed journal keeping... flashcards to introduce professions… pictures help so much students to learn and catch easily” (st1). this seems to be an obvious statement likely to be found in elt literature. however, it is in this case the voice of a student teach er who has reflected on his/her experience of using pictures and who has derived a meaningful lesson from this teach ing strategy. as is widely known, the teach er can find students with different learning styles in a classroom –the visual style being one of the most prevalent– and it is through the use of pictures that the teach er can cater to students’ learning needs. to a lesser extent, student teach ers also showed some self-awareness manifestations such as perception of their teach ing style, recognition of personal growth, the setting of personal goals and recognition of weaknesses. all of these traits have been classified as reflective since they suggest a high sense of introspection on the student teach ers’ part. here are some selected examples: “i always correct the mistakes through an indirect reinforcement, i stress and correct… this is a way in which the kid feels neither badly nor frustrated” (st1). it is important for the student teach ers to be aware of the teach ing style that works best for them. in this case, st1 has grown aware, via introspection, of the need to give students constructive feedback. “most of the mistakes i have made during my teach ing experience have had to do with pronunciation for not having looked up some unknown words in advance” (st2). as stated in the theoretical framework, one of the characteristic features of reflective teach ing is problem solving. introspective self-examination enables student teach ers to identify what needs to be improved upon. “to know that they had liked the lesson i had prepared for them made me feel proud of myself ” (st2). a reflective practitioner should not only be concerned about spotting and solving problems, but he or she should also recognize the worth of his/her efforts to do a good job. finally, in the fifth category, which is concerned with asking questions about teach ing, one of the student teach ers (st1) wondered what to do with her students’ disruptive behavior. another one recognizes the worth of asking for advice or suggestions, as seen in the following reference: “i have to revise the activities and ask for a second opinion to my practicum advisor or another experienced teach er” (st2). at the very beginning, student teach ers need to be guided in their search for professional growth, so, it is important that they look for feedback opportunities which can empower them as reflective and assertive professionals. reflectivity development as evidenced by blog group discussions the initial task student teach ers completed was to answer a question posted by one of the researchers concerning which beliefs about teach ing and learning a foreign language they thought they were applying in their practicum classes. for the subsequent weeks, each one of the student teach ers posted a problematic situation they were facing in the practicum and invited their peers to give their opinions about it. most of their posts had to do with behavior problems in their respective courses. most of the comments made by their practicum peers were suggestions on how to solve their difficulties. here there is a sample of a blog posting taken from st4. as can be seen in this blogging example (ta ble  2), student teach ers share their points of view about the way disruptive behavior and lack of students’ self-esteem should be coped with. by doing this they are extending their own individual teach ing insights. this supports the idea of teach ing as interaction (bartlett, 1994). even though all of the 98 universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras insuasty & zambrano castillo six participants did not become actively engaged in blog group discussions because of time and computer literacy limitations, as expected, the merits of this kind of interaction were enhanced by the stu dent teach ers themselves. weblogs (or blogs) are a meaningful educational tool which can encourage reflective practice (beale, 2007). they can create a sense of community within which participants can post their comments and read what others have written about their different classroom incidents. table 2. sample of a blog posting (taken from st4) the most difficult issues that i am facing up in my practicum (eighth course) are related to disruptive behaviour and students’ apathy toward english language. with regard to the indiscipline i have tried to apply some techniques for controlling the group but it seems to be impossible. students talk all the time and have difficulties for staying at their own places; for avoiding the idle talk between them, i reorganize students or stop my class waiting for silence but i feel that those strategies are not working. another fact that hampers students to learn english is the lack of self-esteem; they believe they can not learn english language because they are “ignorant people”. i tell them that everyone is intelligent but it is necessary to make efforts for achieving our objectives. furthermore, students think that english language is not an interesting subject because it is difficult and they consider that it will not contribute in their future plans. i would like you to help me with ideas for improving the english teach ing-learning process in my practicum. please answer the following questions or add some comments about my difficulties: how can my english classroom management get better? how do you handle disruptive behaviour in your english class? do you know some strategies for increasing students self-esteem? i thank you in advance. st6’s response was as follows: i think you have to involve them in several activities in which they can move. – you can ask them to make small groups to develop certain activity. the winner gets points and at the end of the week or month you count those points and you can give to them a reward like a certificate for being good students or something like that. but you have to tell them that those activities have to be developed in groups, no just one person per group because sometimes one person develops the activities and the other just look at him/her. – you can make activities with listening and use them to make the students compete. post-intervention perceptions of student teach ers about reflective teach ing the most prevailing perceptions student teach ers held about reflective teach ing at the end of the rtip process were identified by means of their final metaphors and opinions in an individual conference and a questionnaire. at the end of the second cycle student teach ers were asked to draw a second metaphor which was aimed at representing themselves as teachers after profile vol. 12, no. 2, october 2010. issn 1657-0790. bogotá, colombia. pages 87-105 99 exploring reflective teaching through informed journal keeping... having done their teach ing practicum. moreover, we intended to see the extent to which they recognized themselves as reflective practitioners. for an illustration, turn to appendix 2 to see st3’s second metaphor. what follows is an account of the way st3 interpreted his own metaphor: st3 drew a room in which nature and the city complement each other. in this room there are different objects each of which symbolizes something relevant of the practicum process. there is, for example, a watch representing the amount of time the teach ing practicum was allotted. it is also time for reflection. time for solving problems. time for diary-keeping. a bird, representing the students’ enthusiasm and energy as well as the student teach er’s. a picture where there are two people fishing, the underlying message being “give a man a fish; you have fed him for today. teach a man to fish; and you have fed him for a lifetime”. there is also an ink pot with some drops falling on a kind of oil painting. this represents all the thoughts reflected in the journal as well as all the writing done by supervisors, practicum peers and students. there is a window which represents the reflective thinking in the practicum. (st3) in the accounts student teach ers gave about their own metaphors, two of them (st3 and st5) explicitly revealed that they had gained insights into reflective teach ing. st3, for example, emphasized the importance of devoting time not only to teach ing the subject matter, but also to reflecting, diary-keeping and solving problems. st5, on his part, highlighted teach ing as a construction process from the teach er’s reflective posture and willingness to self assess and to make necessary changes. even though the other student teach ers did not make overt references to reflective teach ing, they showed awareness about some of its meaningful traits such as being self critical (st2 and st4) and problem solving (st1 and st6). in addition, st2 also seemed to favor the transition from teach er-centered to learner-centered instruction. in the individual conference, student teachers contended that a reflective practitioner needs to be engaged in evaluating and analyzing one’s teaching experience critically, doing research, identifying and solving problems, gaining insights from discussing one’s teach ing with others, rearranging teach ing, and improving classroom process. they also reiterated the usefulness of journal keeping and blog group discussion as reflective teaching tools which enriched their practicum experience. in the final questionnaire student teach ers were administered, they matched reflective teach ing with crucial issues such as evaluating, analyzing and examining one’s teach ing experiences critically, identifying and solving problems, and improving classroom processes. discussion throughout the rtip implementation, student teach ers demonstrated they expanded their insights into reflective teach ing and adopted a more reflective and critical attitude in their practicum. informed diary keeping and blog group discussion proved to be positive strategies for this purpose because they promoted the development of student teach ers’ critical thinking through writing. bartlett (1994) claims that in writing we begin not only to observe, but take the first step in reflecting on and about our practice. on journal-keeping as an informed process keeping a diary or a journal, either for pedagogic or research purposes, is a valuable experience for pre-service or in-service teach ers as many scholars such as bailey (1994) and burns (2003) have pointed out. the present study let us state that journal-keeping can be a useful tool to empower student teach ers as reflective practitioners 100 universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras insuasty & zambrano castillo as long as it is approached as an informed process. writing journal entries, for its own sake, does not lead to reflectivity development. student teach ers need to be provided with some prior insights into reflective teach ing and guidelines on how to frame their ideas in the journal from a reflective perspective. it is crucial to encourage them to go beyond the mere description of what goes on in class by giving a theoretical sense to classroom incidents, finding inconsistencies between one’s teach ing intentions and one’s teach ing actions, identifying things worth improving, adopting some courses of action and completing a follow-up. at the very beginning, student teach ers can be advised to follow some frameworks such as the one proposed in this study in terms of description, interpretation, intervention points, action plans and follow-up. as they gain more experience in this kind of reasoning, student teach ers can use different formats for writing their journal entries. another aspect that makes journal keeping an informed process is the supportive feedback student teach ers can be provided with by their practicum supervisors. in this respect, practicum supervisors are expected to read the student teach ers’ entries carefully and systematically and write back comments or questions aimed at encouraging them to be more analytic and self critical. in keeping with bartlett’s phases of contesting and appraisal (1994), student teach ers built up the association between reflective teach ing and evaluating and analyzing one’s teach ing critically this particular association goes hand in hand with the way richards (1990, as cited by farrell, 2003) defines critical reflection as a process in which “experience is recalled, considered, and evaluated, usually in relation to a broader purpose”. in the context of the practicum, this broader purpose has to do with empowering the student teach ers’ professional competence and improving “classroom processes and outcomes”, as pennington stated. another important initiative student teach ers undertook was identifying and solving problems that arose in the classroom. loughran (2002) contends that one element of reflection that is common to many is the notion of a problem (a puzzling, curious, or perplexing situation). what that problem is, the way it is framed and (hopefully) reframed, is an important aspect of understanding the nature of reflection and the value of reflective practice. in the same way, ross strongly advocates the focus of reflective teach ing on “an educational dilemma” and the consequent analysis, responses, framing, reframing, experimentation, solving, assessment, and implementation to deal with the specific dilemma. to a lesser or greater extent, student teach ers got to make sense of what they did in the classroom by justifying their decisions. they sometimes found discrepancies between theory and practice and were open to share their accomplishments and difficulties with their practicum peers and supervisors. moreover, they showed the initiative to propose courses of action to solve the problems that cropped up in the classroom. at last, they implemented and completed a follow-up of the plans they had come up with. on the usefulness of blogs as a way to enhance the social nature of reflectivity development reflectivity development cannot be exclusively assumed as individual experience of introspection. it implies that the student teach er has his/her assumptions and decisions known, questioned or challenged by others. it is through a dialogue with his/her practicum peers, supervisor, cooperating teach er or pupils that the student teach er can grow professionally. according to bartlett (1994), one of the ways of making sense of what goes on in the profile vol. 12, no. 2, october 2010. issn 1657-0790. bogotá, colombia. pages 87-105 101 exploring reflective teaching through informed journal keeping... classroom is by unmasking the principles behind the teach ing actions. richards and lockhart (2004) also contend that by examining attitudes, beliefs and assumption, teach ers are incorporating reflectivity into their teach ing practices. a practical alternative that may facilitate this interaction is the use of technological aids such as blogs. this is an appealing resource which let student teach ers submit their individual reflections to public scrutiny and perceive their teach ing practice as a manifestation of collegiality. in this sense, gore (1987) states that collegiality is one of the outcomes of reflective teach ing, since it may contribute to establish individual teach er’s trust and respect. by virtue of their reflectivity development, reflective practitioners are better equipped to cope with the changing educational challenges they are faced with in their teach ing practice. however, most of those challenging situations require a collective response from the faculty members. therefore, student teach ers are not expected to work alone concerning common problems and purposes. the popular saying “two heads are better than one” proves to be true when a particular problem needs to be solved. but in times when everyone is too busy to get together, the use of information and communication technologies such as blogging is a good option to socialize one’s personal reflections, experiences and initiatives. in the present study, most of the student teach ers contend that blog group discussion is a useful tool to socialize one’s experiences, to search for solutions to problems, to improve the teach ing practice and to exchange views about the practice. at the beginning of their practicum, student teach ers proved to be actively engaged in posting problem situations and making comments on their peers’ teach ing experiences. however, at the end of the semester not all of them kept using blogs because they argued they were overloaded with different academic tasks in their course of studies at the university and in their teach ing practice. conclusions from the rtip consequential implementation, the following general conclusions can be drawn: the worthiness of exposing student teach ers to a reflective teach ing intervention lies in the fact that student teach ers can expand their insights into reflective teach ing and assume a more reflective attitude in their teach ing practicum process. student teach ers’ reflective behavior should not be expected to stem from nothing. it needs to be shaped by a systematic professional development process through which student teach ers are involved in a wide range of observation, analysis, exploration and evaluation experiences. a parallel between the base-line perceptions and postintervention perceptions student teach ers hold about reflective teach ing showed that they gained a better understanding about this approach. they growingly built an association of reflective teach ing to a teach er professional development process which involves awareness-raising of their teach ing and learning beliefs, written documentation of the teach ing practice, interpretation of what underlies their practice, search for inconsistencies between their teach ing intentions and teach ing actions, identification of intervention points, and, of course, exploration of alternative courses of action and follow-up. reflection should not be taken for granted as the panacea for teach er development. it should be something worth being taught, learnt, assessed, discussed and researched, in keeping with what rodgers suggested. the potential of reflective teach ing to enhancing teach er development should be explored in more systematic ways from pre-service to in-service teach er education. a good way of empowering student teach ers to become more 102 universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras insuasty & zambrano castillo critical thinkers, self evaluators, problematizers, decision makers and transformers of the educational reality is by providing them with discussion spaces and practical reflection tasks throughout their pre-service teach er education. one of these tasks was journal-keeping which stu dent teach ers undertook as an informed process. unlike their prior practicum journal-keeping experiences, the participating student teach ers were given guidance on how to frame their journal entries in the light of the reflective teach ing cycle proposed by bartlett (1994). it was by virtue of these insights that student teach ers went beyond the description of class incidents by focusing on the assessment of their teach ing process, and the identification and solution of emerging problems. another meaningful reflection task was blog group discussion. this tool let student teach ers see themselves as members of an academic community by exchanging their practicum experiences. at the same time, they recognized the usefulness of blogs because through them they could enrich their perceptions about teach ing and teach ing performance. nevertheless, despite their initial enthusiasm, their participation and commitment decreased because of time and technology constraints. the teach ing practicum is a propitious arena to cultivate reflectivity development. as a central element in most pre-service teach er education programs, teach ing practicum is promoted as a formation process through which student teach ers are called to confront their pre-service academic training to their teach ing experiences in a real educational context. it proves to be a favorable opportunity in order for student teach ers to start making their first pedagogical explorations and shaping their own teach ing identity, and the implementation of a reflective teach ing approach in the practicum can play an important role in this purpose. student teach ers need to be empowered to become reflective professionals who reflect continuously on experience and devise new patterns of action aimed at improving student learning and achievement. to this effect, the teach ing practicum should provide prospective teach ers with insights into the principles and practical tools of reflective teach ing. but most importantly, prospective teach ers should be encouraged to devise their own professional development plans to be pursued in their actual teach ing practice. references amobi, f. (2006). beyond the call: preserving reflection in the preparation of “highly qualified” teach ers. teach er education quarterly, 33(2), 23-35. asher, j. (1977). learning another language through actions: the complete teach er’s guide book. los gatos, ca: sky oaks productions. bailey, k. (1994). the use of diary studies in teach er education programs. in j. richards & d. nunan (eds.), second language teach er education (pp. 215-226). cambridge: cambridge university press. bartlett, l. (1994). teach er development through reflective teach ing. in j. richards & d. nunan (eds.), second language teach er education (pp. 202-214). cambridge: cambridge university press. beale, r. (2007). blogs, reflective practice and student-centered learning. lancaster: british computer society. burns, a. (2003). collaborative action research for english lan guage teach ers. cambridge: cambridge university press. calderhead, j. (1993). dilemmas in developing reflective teach ing. teach er education quarterly, 20(1), 93-100. chacón, m. a. (2008). la enseñanza reflexiva en la formación de los estudiantes de pasantías de la carrera de educación básica integral. retrieved august 23, 2010, from http://www.tesisenxarxa.net/tdx-0625107120634/index.html. profile vol. 12, no. 2, october 2010. issn 1657-0790. bogotá, colombia. pages 87-105 103 exploring reflective teaching through informed journal keeping... colton, a., & sparks-langer, g. (1993). a conceptual framework to guide the development of teach er reflection and decision making. journal of teach er education, 44(1), 45-54. conderman, g., & morin, j. (2004). twenty ways to reflect upon your practice. intervention in school and clinic, 40(2), 111-115. corcoran, c., & leahy, r. (2003). growing professionally through reflective practice. kappa delta pi record, 40(1), 30-33. farrell, t. (2003). reflective teach ing: the principles and practices. english teach ing forum, 4, 14-40. ferraro, j. m. (2008). reflective practice and professional development. retrieved august 23, 2010, from http:// www.ericdigests.org/2001-3/reflective.htm. gore, j. (1987). reflecting on reflective teach ing. journal of teach er education, 38(2), 33-39. harmer, j. (2007). the practice of english language teach ing. harlow: longman. ho, b., & richards, j. (2008). reflective thinking through teach er journal writing. retrieved august 23, 2010, from http://sunzi1.lib.hku.hk/hkjo/view/10/1000060.pdf. loughran, j. (2002). effective reflective practice: in search of meaning in learning about teach ing. journal of teach er education, 53(1), 33-43. mckernan, j. (1996). curriculum action research. a handbook of methods and resources for the reflective practitioner. london: kogan page. muñoz, j. de f., quintero, j., & munévar, r. (2008). experiencias en investigación acción-reflexión con educadores en proceso de formación. retrieved august 23, 2010, from http://redie.uabc.mx/vol4no1/contenido-munevar.html. murphy, j. (2001). reflective teach ing in elt. in m. celcemurcia (ed.), teach ing english as a second or foreign language (pp. 499-515). boston: heinle & heinle. richards, j. (2008). towards reflective teach ing. retrieved august 23, 2010, from http://www.tttjournal.co.uk/ uploads/file/back_articles/towards_reflective_ teach ing.pdf. richards, j., & lockhart, c. (2004). reflective teach ing in second language classroom. cambridge: cambridge university press. richards, j., & rodgers, t. (2001). approaches and methods in language teach ing. cambridge: cambridge university press. ross, d. (1989). first steps in developing a reflective approach. journal of teach er education, 40(2), 22-40. smyth, w. j. (1992). teach er’s work and the politics of reflection. american educational research journal, 29(2), 267-300. wallace, m. (2000). action research for language teach ers. cambridge: cambridge university press. zambrano, l. c., & insuasty, e. a. (2008). analysis of the teach ing practicum in the light of a reflective teach ing approach. lenguaje, 36, 447-471. about the authors édgar alirio insuasty is an associate professor at universidad surcolombiana. he holds a b.a. and a graduate diploma in elt from universidad de nariño. he also holds a master’s degree in english didactics from universidad de caldas. he is the coordinator of the research group “comuniquémonos”, acknowledged by colciencias. lilian cecilia zambrano castillo is an assistant professor at universidad surcolombiana. she holds a b.a. and a graduate diploma in elt from universidad de nariño. she also holds a master’s degree in english didactics from universidad de caldas. she is a member the research group “comuniquémonos”, acknowledged by colciencias. 104 universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras insuasty & zambrano castillo appendix 1: student-teach er 3’s metaphor in the first cycle guide one my initial teach ing metaphor task one: make a drawing that represents you as a prospective teach er. profile vol. 12, no. 2, october 2010. issn 1657-0790. bogotá, colombia. pages 87-105 105 exploring reflective teaching through informed journal keeping... appendix 2. student-teach er 3’s metaphor in the second cycle profile no. 7dic 5.p65 ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ profile profile profile profile profile 7 (2006): universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras the construction of theoretical and practical knowledge in initial teacher education la construcción del conocimiento teórico y práctico en la formación inicialla construcción del conocimiento teórico y práctico en la formación inicialla construcción del conocimiento teórico y práctico en la formación inicialla construcción del conocimiento teórico y práctico en la formación inicialla construcción del conocimiento teórico y práctico en la formación inicial del profesoradodel profesoradodel profesoradodel profesoradodel profesorado maria helena vieira abrahão*maria helena vieira abrahão*maria helena vieira abrahão*maria helena vieira abrahão*maria helena vieira abrahão* mahevieira@yahoo.com.br universidade estadual paulista (unesp), brazil this paper presents results from an interpretive research which has analysed how language student-teachers construct their knowledge about language teaching and learning during preservice teacher education. the study, embedded within the general frameworks of teachers’ thinking and socialization, involved language student teachers from a public university in brazil. kkkkkey worey worey worey worey wordsdsdsdsds: initial education, beliefs, language teaching and learning este trabajo presenta resultados de una investigación interpretativa que ha analizado cómo los profesores de lenguas construyen su conocimiento sobre la enseñanza y el aprendizaje de lenguas durante la formación pre-servicio. en el estudio, arraigado en los esquemas generales de reflexión y socialización de los profesores, participaron profesores de lenguas de una universidad pública en brasil. palabras clavespalabras clavespalabras clavespalabras clavespalabras claves: formación inicial, creencias, enseñanza y aprendizaje de lenguas * maria helena vieira abrahãomaria helena vieira abrahãomaria helena vieira abrahãomaria helena vieira abrahãomaria helena vieira abrahão is an applied linguistics professor at the são paulo state university (unesp), located in são josé do rio preto, são paulo, brazil. she has a ph.d. in applied linguistics from the state university of campinas (unicamp) and is especially interested in foreign language teaching and language teacher education. she has super vised dissertations and theses related to these research areas. this article was received on march 31st, 2006 and accepted on june 20th, 2006. 87-99 ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ 88 vieira profileprofileprofileprofileprofile introductionintroductionintroductionintroductionintroduction there is evidence in educational and applied linguistics literature that the theoretical and practical knowledge developed in teacher education programs has little influence on the student-teachers’ subsequent practical activities (zeichner, tabachnic, and densmore, 1987). this evidence points to the fact that teachers are highly influenced by their beliefs, which are results of their personal values and background knowledge. there are also research findings which support the fact that student-teachers have the tendency to remember their own personal experiences as students which were acquired through their "apprenticeship of observation" (lortie, 1975) and to construct their knowledge and teaching practice upon these remembrances. beliefs, assumptions and knowledge acquired before the studentteachers’ entrance into teacher education programs work as mediators, filters of the input received by means of the theories and knowledge to which student-teachers were exposed to (lortie, op cit; zeichner & grant, 1981; tabachnic & zeichner, 1984; kagan, 1992; roberts, 1998, among others) and, according to kagan (op cit), implicit knowledge, values and practice tend to be stronger than the teacher education programs interventions, no matter the underlying theories of orientation. in-service teachers also, according to schön (1983), interpret and organize their experience by means of a repertoire of values, knowledge, theory and practice which they bring with experience, which he calls “appreciative systems”. these “appreciative systems”, highly investigated, have been named differently by distinct researchers such as teachers’ personal practical theories (connelly & clandinin, 1988); practical theories (handal & lauvas, 1987); teachers’ strategic knowledge (shulman, 1986); practical knowledge (elbaz, 1983) and bak beliefs, assumptions and knowledge (woods, 1996). no matter what teachers’ knowledge is called, there is something that seems evident: every studentteacher provides input to his university teacher education program and every teacher uses his teaching practice beliefs, assumptions, values, knowledge and experience which seem to exert a strong influence upon his/her theoretical and practical knowledge construction and development. besides those teachers’ socialization studies which evidence the weak impact formal education can exert to alter the apprenticeship of observation effect (feimann-nemser & buchmann, 1986 and pennington, 1990), we evidence others which argue that classroom experience is the main source of teachers’ knowledge (claderhead & miller, 1985; shulman, 1986 & 1987). almarza (1996), on the other hand, brings evidence in her study that student-teachers’ knowledge transformation occurred during a teacher education program and before the beginning of her/his teaching practice: thus, teacher education played a very influencial role in shaping student-teachers’ performance during teaching practice. it was knowledge learned in teacher education that became apparent during teaching practice (p. 72). this studythis studythis studythis studythis study as an applied linguistics lecturer and foreign language teacher-educator at a public university in brazil, i see it extremely relevant and necessary to study foreign language teachers’ knowledge construction in different stages (pre-teacher education; in-teacher education and post-teacher education) in order to enlighten the influence each type of knowledge brings to the theoretical and practical education and development of this professional. this research was conducted with this purpose. it is an interpretive investigation which aims at analysing the language teachers’ knowledge construction or, rather, beliefs, assumptions and knowledge that are brought by student-teachers to their education program; how these beliefs, assumptions and knowledge interact with the theoretical and practical content which are focused on the education program and how these different kinds of knowledge are manifested in their practice and produced during this stage. this research was ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○89 profileprofileprofileprofileprofile the construction of theoretical and practical knowledge guided by the following major research question and three minor ones: how does language teachers’ knowledge construction occur while they are in university? a) which beliefs, assumptions and knowledge are brought by student-teachers to their university foreign language education program and what are the origins of these beliefs, assumptions and knowledge? b) to what extent are student-teachers’ beliefs, assumptions and knowledge brought to university modified by the theoretical and practical reflections provided by the education program? c) what kinds of knowledge are expressed (preteacher education knowledge or in-teacher education knowledge) or acquired by the studentteachers during their teaching practicum? this research can be justified as follows: 1. for helping student-teachers to be conscious of their own beliefs, assumptions and knowledge which are tacit most of the time. this consciousness, even partial, may represent a first step towards their professional education and development. helping pre-ser vice teachers to reveal, think about and examine their own language and teaching conceptions is essential for educating them as reflective professionals (clandinin, 1986); 2. the comprehension of how studentteachers’ knowledge is constructed in a preser vice foreign language teacher education program -although this research involved only six participantsis likely to provide contributions for teacher educators by helping them in their planning of strategies and content specification, so as to be able to develop the different kinds of knowledge in an appropriate manner. research methodologyresearch methodologyresearch methodologyresearch methodologyresearch methodology researresearresearresearresearch naturech naturech naturech naturech nature this is an interpretive research which is characterised by the description and study of concrete and singular situations and by the consideration of the participants’ perspectives (erickson, 1986; bogdan & biklen, 1998 and silverman, 2000). there was no pretension of testing hypotheses, using pre-established categories or generalizing its results, although data collection and analysis were done systematically, which makes its results meaningful to other situations and contexts. context and participantscontext and participantscontext and participantscontext and participantscontext and participants this research was developed in a "letter course"1 of a public university in brazil. six studentteachers in their third year volunteered to be participants. four of them were future teachers of english (ali, ka, ma, and so) while two were future teachers of spanish (am and fa)2 . third-year student-teachers were chosen for they had had no contact with formal theories of applied linguistics by the time this research began. this is an important fact since i wanted to uncover beliefs, assumptions and knowledge brought by these learners to their pre-service language teacher education program; more specifically, to the discipline applied linguistics-foreign language teaching, which they take in the second semester of their third year of studies. ali, ma, so and fa had studied only in public institutions since elementary school. am and ka, on the other hand, had gone to public and private institutions. all of them had studied foreign language or languages outside regular schooling in private or public language institutes. four of them (ali, so, fa and ka) had already started their professional activity by teaching english in private and public institutions while engaged in the project. researresearresearresearresearch phases and instrumentsch phases and instrumentsch phases and instrumentsch phases and instrumentsch phases and instruments during what i called phase i (first semester of 2001), we collected data in order to study the student-teachers’ beliefs, assumptions and knowledge by means of the use of a teachers’ belief inventory, adapted from e. horwitz (1987). it 1 pre-service graduation program for language teachers which lasts four years. 2 the first letters of the student-teachers’ names were used in order to protect their identities. ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ 90 vieira profileprofileprofileprofileprofile consisted of a questionnaire, an autobiography and life history sessions. during phase ii (second semester of 2001), the interaction between the student-teachers’ beliefs, assumptions and knowledge and the theoretical and practical knowledge introduced and discussed in their teacher education program during applied linguistics classes as well as in weekly meetings with this researcher were studied. for data collection, student-teachers and this researcher kept reflective diaries and every weekly meeting was audio-recorded. during phase iii, which took place in 2002, when the student-teachers were involved in their teaching practice in the last year of their undergraduate course, their classes were videorecorded so that we could analyse the kinds of knowledge which were expressed in their practice. reflective diaries were kept by the participants and semi-structured interviews were collected. as far as analysis procedures are concerned, six case studies were first developed and later compared. all data were categorised and registers collected by different instruments and perspectives were considered. theoretictheoretictheoretictheoretictheoretical foundal foundal foundal foundal foundaaaaationtiontiontiontion this study, which has its focus on teacher education, has characteristics of studies developed by two research frameworks, namely: research on teachers’ thought processes and on teachers’ socialization. the first framework has as a main assumption the premise that teachers’ actions are influenced by mental processes. teachers’ mental life is described and from this description researchers try to understand and explain how and why the observed professional activities are the way they are (clark & peterson, 1986). the same authors identify the following three categories in the teachers’ mental process: theories and beliefs; proactive planning and decision-making; and interactive decisions. the first one, which includes information, attitudes, values, expectations, theories, and assumptions about language teaching and learning, is considered the main source of teachers’ classroom practices. the second one, which studies teachers’ socialization, is interested in investigating how beliefs, knowledge, attitudes and values are transmitted. for feimann and floden (1986), several socialization definitions have been used. for example, some see socialization as any change in the teachers’ behaviour. others see it as the way new teachers acquire values and practices due to the interaction with more experienced professionals. this research is directly based on woods’ work (1996) in which he presents an integrated view of teachers’ beliefs, assumptions and knowledge (bak), its features and evolution and its role in the teachers’ interpretive processes. according to the author, beliefs, assumptions and knowledge “do not refer to distinct concepts, but rather to points on a spectrum of meaning, although they have been treated for the most part as separate entities in the literature”. i share woods’s definition of belief, assumption and knowledge for whom belief is “the acceptance of a proposition for which there is no conventional knowledge, one that is not demonstrable, and for which there is accepted disagreement”. assumption, on the other hand, is defined as a “temporary acceptance of a fact (state, process or relationship) which we cannot say we know, and which has not been demonstrated, but which we are taking as true for the time being”. knowledge is used by the author to refer to “things we ‘know’-conventionally accepted facts” (p. 195). in this research, we analyse beliefs, assumptions and knowledge as an integrated construct for it is difficult or even impossible to categorize them separately. the resulthe resulthe resulthe resulthe resultststststs phases 1 and 2phases 1 and 2phases 1 and 2phases 1 and 2phases 1 and 2 a comparative analysis of the beliefs, assumptions and knowledge provided by the six student-teachers involved in this study suggested ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○91 profileprofileprofileprofileprofile the construction of theoretical and practical knowledge changes in a year ’s period, after teachers’ exposition to the theoretical and practical reflections in the applied linguistics course and during the weekly group meetings. such changes could be mainly observed in relation to these categories: language, teaching, learning, learning a foreign language, most important factors which influence language learning and teaching, and teachers’ and students’ roles. other categories which were salient and recurrent in the data of teaching a foreign language were an efficient language teacher, error, correction and evaluation. coursebooks in language teaching and learning were practically unchanged as will be explained later in this paper. in the first step of the research, the participants defined language as an instrument of communication, which suggests a structuralist view; as an instrument which leads to transformation (a functional view of language); as a product of social interaction, which reflects a socio-interactional perspective and as a social practice and power instrument, a discursive perspective of language. in the second step, the same conceptions were still present in the participants’ discourse, but the socio-interactional and discursive perspectives were more emphasized (see figure 1). as far as teaching is concerned, we could observe that in the first phase of this study, the student-teachers understood teaching as a transmission of knowledge, a traditional and positivist view that knowledge is something stable and finished. after a year, they seemed to have assumed a constructivist perspective, for which the individual has an active role as constructor of meanings from the world and from experience. the learner is considered someone who brings knowledge and experience to the classroom and it is through them that he/she makes sense of the learning experience (see figure 1). in the first step, learning was defined as the accumulation, acquisition, assimilation or absorption of new knowledge. two of the student-teachers mentioned knowledge and experience upon which new knowledge is anchored, suggesting a cognitive view of learning, which focuses on the comprehension of the way human beings think and learn. although the data suggested some of the students’ familiarity with a cognitive view of learning, we found that all of them still saw knowledge as something ready and finished. they did not seem to know clearly that knowledge is constructed and that each person, by means of his/her previous knowledge, assumptions and beliefs, constructs it in a particular way. after a year, learning was conceptualized as construction of knowledge; as knowledge adaptation in a reflexive and critical way; as acquisition in a reflexive and critical manner; and as a process which involves autonomy and intellectual independence. one can observe that although they expressed themselves in different manners, which suggested that each one made a different interpretation of the experience and theories they were exposed to, the student teacher ’s discourse reflected a constructivist perspective of learning. learning a foreign language was seen by the participants in a very traditional way, namely: learning a language is to learn grammar; it is repeating and practicing a lot; it is absorption of structures and vocabulary and it is absorption of the knowledge transmitted by the teacher. in the second step of the research, we could verify changes in participants’ perspectives for the focus was turned to language use, namely: learning a language is to develop the four abilities; a foreign language is learned when it is useful; and learning a language is experiencing real situations of language use. the analysed data pointed out that a traditional view of language learning was replaced by a communicative perspective. as far as the factors which affect learning and teaching are concerned, in the first step the participants mentioned the following in their data: materials; students’ participation and involvement; relevance of the teaching content; adequate affective environment, motivation, and teacherstudent interaction and teachers’ knowledge level. ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ 92 vieira profileprofileprofileprofileprofile categorcategorcategorcategorcategor yyyyy languagelanguagelanguagelanguagelanguage ttttteachingeachingeachingeachingeaching learninglearninglearninglearninglearning learning a foreignlearning a foreignlearning a foreignlearning a foreignlearning a foreign languagelanguagelanguagelanguagelanguage factors that affectfactors that affectfactors that affectfactors that affectfactors that affect learning andlearning andlearning andlearning andlearning and teachingteachingteachingteachingteaching phase 1phase 1phase 1phase 1phase 1 structuralist; functional, sociointeractional and discursive conceptions i see language as a very important instrument of communication...(ka) language is not only an instrument of communication, but transformation too (so) knowledge transmission teaching is transmitting knowledge and abilities (am) teaching is knowledge transmission (ali) accumulation, acquisition, assimilation or absorption of new knowledge learning is knowledge accumulation (ali) learning is the acquisition of new information (am) learning grammar; it’s repeating and practicing; asbsorption of structures and vocabulary; absorption of knowledge transmitted by the teacher absorption of structures, vocabulary and intonation…(am) acquisition of structures transmitted by the teacher and their translations…(fa) materials; students’ participation and involvement; relevance of the teaching content; adequate affective environment; motivation, teacher-student interaction and teachers’ knowledge level. teacher-student and student-student relationship (ma) students’ interest to learn (so) phase 2phase 2phase 2phase 2phase 2 structuralist, functional, sociointeractional and discursive conceptions (the last two were more frequent) besides communication, language is an instrument of social domination (ka) language is a socially systematized mechanism, which is used for communication and for societal transformation (so) knowledge construction …teaching must contribute to the construction of particular visions of the world… (am) construct knowledge in relation to learning (ali) knowledge construction, knowledge adaptation in a reflexive and critical way; a process which involves independence and autonomy. learning involves content, teacher and student. together they construct knowledge… (ali) learning is knowledge construction… (am) developing the 4 abilities; recognizing usefulness; through real situations development of 4 abilities in real and relevant situations (am) use the language in real and relevant situations (fa) materials, students’ participation and involvement; relevance of the teaching content; adequate affective environment; motivation, teacherstudent interaction the human and the affective factors are the main ones (ma) students’ motivation, useful activities (so) ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○93 profileprofileprofileprofileprofile the construction of theoretical and practical knowledge in the second step, there was little change related to these opinions. they only left aside teachers’ knowledge level and kept intact the other factors. it is interesting to emphasize that in the first step of data collection the participants had had no contact with language learning and teaching theories and stated what seemed more favourable to them by considering their previous experiences as students or as language teachers, (some of them had already started their professional life working in private language institutes.). their beliefs, assumptions and knowledge regarding teachers’ role in the first step were as follows: mediator of cultures; knowledge transmitter; classroom commander; collaborator, motivator, responsible for an adequate affective environment, and worried about students’ necessities and performances. they saw the students’ role as information receptor; mediator among students; learner and questioner; active and critical agent, collaborator and researcher. it is interesting to observe that when defining teachers and students’ roles, some participants had already included in their discourse some contemporary positions attributing to the student an active role of knowledge constructor and the teacher the role of mediator-collaborator. this is mixed to traditional positions that could also be found as follows in their discourse: teacher as knowledge transmitter; classroom commander and the student as information and knowledge receptor. the presence of contemporary beliefs, assumptions and knowledge in the student teachers’ discourse is probably due to their experience as language students at the university in which the language classes are oriented by a communicative approach. in the second step of the research the traditional conceptions about teachers and students’ roles were replaced by contemporary ones. they saw teachers as the ones who lead to knowledge construction, in other words, knowledge constructors the ones who create conditions for learning; and mediators between the student and the new language and facilitators of knowledge. as far as the students’ roles are concerned, they characterized them as interagents who were coresponsible for learning; autonomous; efficient and were teacher conductors in the use of teaching strategies. these participants’ perspectives are coherent with their contemporary views of language learning and teaching presented in the second step. after having provided a summary of the main modifications observed in the teachers’ discourse, we discuss origins of these beliefs, assumptions and knowledge in the following section. the originsthe originsthe originsthe originsthe origins mapping the origins of one’s beliefs, assumptions and knowledge is a very difficult if not impossible task. all that can be done is to raise hypotheses based on life history facts and reflections to get a glimpse of these origins. that is what we attempted to achieve with the data obtained from the student-teachers’ autobiographies and life figure 1.figure 1.figure 1.figure 1.figure 1. results: beliefs, assumptions and knowledge in phases 1 and 2 of the study. culture mediator; knowledge transmitter; someone worried with students’ needs and performance teach the students the language construction (ka) …the teacher must assume the role of mediator and collaborator (ma) the one who offers the chance of constructing knowledge; conductor of knowledge construction; mediator between the student and the target language and learning facilitator create conditions so that learning can happen, be constructed (ka) create conditions for learning (ma) ttttteachereachereachereachereacher’s r’s r’s r’s r’s roleoleoleoleole ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ 94 vieira profileprofileprofileprofileprofile history interviews. they will be presented here briefly. from these data, i found that the six student teachers had brought good and bad remembrances from their elementary and secondary public schooling, where they had had the best and the worst of teachers. from these teachers they might have constructed part of the image of a good teacher they had by the time of the research, namely: a fair, delicate person who has good content knowledge, who is worried about students’ individualities and necessities, and who stimulates criticism and talents. the image they had of the english teachers they had studied with in public and private schools (two of the student-teachers had spent a few years in private institutions.) was very negative. they had had no proficiency in the foreign language, their classes were very dull and they taught only grammar and translation. this opinion was also stated in the belief ’s inventory they answered, in which they all disagreed with the following statement: english can be learned in a public school and english can be learned in private elementary and secondary schools. they were conscious of the necessity of learning english and since they believed they would not learn it in regular schools, the six participants attended private language institutes where they experienced new forms of teaching and learning english, such as small groups of students in the classrooms, audiovisual resources, audiolingual and communicative methodologies, fluent teachers, colourful imported materials, etc. according to their impressions, this contrast made them reflect on the best routes to teaching and learning a foreign language and this reflection suggested that such experience was important for the construction of the knowledge they brought to university. according to their narratives, they were good students in regular schools and loved literature and grammar, which they thought would be the focus of the “letter course”. they stated that they were very surprised to verify that grammar would not be the main focus of the course at university, once their professors adopted a communicative approach. during the period before the beginning of this research, after two years at the university, they were exposed to this teaching approach which included different resources and interaction organization for teaching. they stated that these two years had been extremely important for the construction of their perspectives of language teaching and learning, constructed by means of experience and little contact with theories. considering the student teachers’ conceptions and the realities of their school lives, we could conclude that although they had had little or no contact with formal theories regarding language learning and teaching until that first step, they had brought some contemporary perspectives with them that seemed to be possible by means of what lortie (1975) calls “apprenticeship of observation”. that is what seems to have happened with their beliefs, assumptions and knowledge regarding the categories, namely, teaching a foreign language, error, correction and evaluation and coursebooks. since their perspectives were contemporary and compatible with the theoretical-practical content developed in the education program, they were not questioned and were kept unchanged. it is implicit in the previous paragraph that in order to have beliefs, assumptions and knowledge modified or replaced, questioning is necessary. before questioning, however, it is indispensable to make them explicit. education programs are responsible for helping the student-teachers uncover the construction they make of the world, namely: what they know; what they believe; and where and who they are so that they can construct meanings which are relevant to them (williams, 1999). horwitz (op cit) agrees with this position by saying that the first step for teachers’ development, since the methodology contents are interpreted through the beliefs system each one brings with him/her, is to uncover the beliefs. teacher development is seen by the author as a continuous construction and reconstruction of knowledge, and i totally agree with her. ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○95 profileprofileprofileprofileprofile the construction of theoretical and practical knowledge my results reinforce the theoretical position that beliefs are mutable when they are adequately approached (rokeach, 1968; burns, 1999; barcelos, 2001; johnson, 1992 and 1999; roberts, 1998; williams, 1999 and cabaroglu & roberts, 2000). in the next section, the methodology that was used to make the participants’ beliefs, assumptions and knowledge explicit will be presented. m e t h o d o l o g y u s e d t o e l i c i t b e l i e f s ,m e t h o d o l o g y u s e d t o e l i c i t b e l i e f s ,m e t h o d o l o g y u s e d t o e l i c i t b e l i e f s ,m e t h o d o l o g y u s e d t o e l i c i t b e l i e f s ,m e t h o d o l o g y u s e d t o e l i c i t b e l i e f s , assumptions and knowledge (bak)assumptions and knowledge (bak)assumptions and knowledge (bak)assumptions and knowledge (bak)assumptions and knowledge (bak) the modification of part of the students’ beliefs, assumptions and knowledge probably occurred by means of the methodologies we used , which is similar to the one used by johnson (1999, p. 39), and will be presented considering their different steps. 1) first of all, conditions were created so that the student-teachers could uncover their own beliefs, assumptions and knowledge by means of writing an autobiography, answering a questionnaire and a beliefs inventory adapted from horwitz (op cit) and participating in life history sessions. the latter were audiorecorded and later transcribed by the student-teachers themselves. 2) once their beliefs, assumptions and knowledge brought to the education program were expressed, or at least part of them, we tried to create conditions so that they could be examined in the light of what the participants knew intellectually and not just felt. this was done when the collected data were analysed by the student-teachers themselves. 3) by analysing their data and writing a report about them, the student-teachers were able to identify beliefs, assumptions and knowledge which they thought were conflicting. 4) in the second step of the project, the participants had the chance to get in contact with alternative ways of thinking and teaching, which was caused by contact with public and academic theories (eraut, 1994), by means of readings and discussions in the applied linguistics classes and in the weekly group meetings, as well as the participants’ professional experience exchange, since some of them were starting the professional exercise in private language schools. it is interesting to emphasize that our meetings were oriented by a social-constructivist perspective (williams & burden, 1997). knowledge was never seen as a universal truth to be transmitted to the students and to be implemented in their classrooms. the technical rationality model was avoided (schön, 1983) and we tried to pursue a reflective approach (wallace, 1991 and 1998; zeichner & liston, 1996, zeichner, 2003), provoking the students to compare their personal theories to the public ones, constructing if it were the case, new personal theories. results of phase threeresults of phase threeresults of phase threeresults of phase threeresults of phase three the analysis of the data collected in the third phase of the project, which had as its objective to analyse the beliefs, assumptions and knowledge expressed in the student-teachers’ practice during their practicum activities, revealed that the studentteachers’ practice reflected new perspectives that were constructed during the teacher education program which reinforces the importance of reflection upon theories and practices for the student-teachers’ knowledge construction. in figure 2, we can see that the participant ka expresses the view of language as an instrument of communication and self-expression; teaching as creating opportunities for learning creatively; learning in general and learning a foreign language as a critical act, guided by usefulness and motivation and the importance of an appropriate affective environment, which can be reinforced by playful activities and an error positive view. in ka’s planning, communicative and motivational activities were emphasized and these were selected according to the students’ interests and communicative necessities. cultural aspects were to be discussed in order to get students more competent in the target language. as far as her practice is concerned, the following recurrent actions were observed: interaction was valued in the classroom by the intense use of communicative activities which took for granted students’ needs, interests and prior knowledge; the ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ 96 vieira profileprofileprofileprofileprofile teacher worked as a facilitator, was worried about the students’ motivation and treated students’ errors carefully in order to provide an appropriate affective environment for learning; also, grammar and cultural aspects were focused on according to the students’ communicative necessities. in figure 3 such coherence could also be obser ved. in his planning ma expresses a sociocultural perspective of language, teaching and learning. to him we learn a foreign language by interacting in this language and when teaching a foreign language we must consider the students’ learning culture, their expectations and interests in order to create an adequate affective atmosphere in the classroom. he sees errors as a natural aspect of learning as well as students’ need to save face in the correction process. his objective for teaching was the following: to create conditions so that pupils could reflect on the culture and society of the native speakers of the target language and on their own language. his practice is characterized by the following recurrent actions: frequent interaction among students in the discussion of updated and polemic texts, focusing on cultural aspects; use of strategies to promote the students’ autonomy; and consideration of the students’ learning culture, expectations and interests in choosing texts and planning activities. errors were seen as natural and students’ dignity was preserved in the classroom, although ma confessed to feeling insecure as far as error correction and treatment were concerned. such coherence relating student-teachers’ bak, objectives and teaching practice seems to have occurred due to the following aspects: 1. the student-teachers had had opportunities to discuss their beliefs, assumptions and knowledge over a whole year and seemed to be conscious of them. 2. the participants were completely engaged in the research project and understood that with more coherence, their teaching practice was better. 3. the participants had complete freedom in planning their courses and lessons. there was no imposition whatsoever. 4. the students were stimulated to reflect on their practice by means of keeping reflective diaries, in which they were invited to reflect upon the beliefs, assumptions and knowledge which supported their actions. 5. some classes were videotaped and viewing sessions were organized so that student-teachers could discuss their practice with the researcher and their colleagues. 6. the weekly meetings focused on the participants’ practices and participants had the opportunity of sharing their experiences, anxieties and conflicts, which might have contributed to the later coherence in their work. 7. the participants’ practicum was informally evaluated by their colleagues and the researcher and formally by the applied linguistics and practicum teacher. the rare incoherent procedures which characterized the participants’ practices were most of the time perceived and reformulated by them, which indicates their preoccupation with coherence related to what they said, planned and did. we could also evidence moments in which the student-teachers manifested to be constructing knowledge from their practice. for example, when ma questions the affective filter theory, saying that he had discovered from his experience with students that a tense state could be connected to the lessons and a permanent state of vigilance for new knowledge acquisition. this experience probably brought modifications to ma’s bak as well. final considerafinal considerafinal considerafinal considerafinal considerationstionstionstionstions we can conclude by stating that a pre-service education program, founded on a teaching and learning social-constructivist perspective (williams & burden, op cit), which started by offering conditions for student-teachers to be conscious of the beliefs, assumptions and knowledge they had brought to university (that created conditions for the interaction of these beliefs with theories and experience in a critical and provocative way and led to the construction of personal theories), offered ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○97 profileprofileprofileprofileprofile the construction of theoretical and practical knowledge main bak main bak main bak main bak main bak languagelanguagelanguagelanguagelanguage: communication instrument; expression of beliefs and perspectives ttttteachingeachingeachingeachingeaching: create conditions so that the student can acquire knowledge in a reflective and critical manner learninglearninglearninglearninglearning: acquire knowledge in a critical way, so that it can be used learning a foreign languagelearning a foreign languagelearning a foreign languagelearning a foreign languagelearning a foreign language: when there is motivation and one feels the usefulness of knowledge ttttteaching a feaching a feaching a feaching a feaching a foreign loreign loreign loreign loreign languageanguageanguageanguageanguage: playful activities; useful tasks; adequate affective environment erererererrrrrrororororor: positive perspective planning planning planning planning planning goalsgoalsgoalsgoalsgoals: offer the students communicative activities which present language in a contextualized way according to the students’ realities and necessities, creating motivation; work with cultural aspects so that the students can become more competent speakers practice practice practice practice practice interaction valuing: development of communicative activities importance of students’ previous knowledge teacher as facilitator grammar according to students’ necessities error: seen in a positive way; careful with corrections worried about student motivation cultural content figure 2figure 2figure 2figure 2figure 2. bak planning and teaching practice (student-teacher k). figure 3figure 3figure 3figure 3figure 3. main bak, planning and practice (student-teacher m). main bak main bak main bak main bak main bak languagelanguagelanguagelanguagelanguage: built-in social interaction ttttteachingeachingeachingeachingeaching: experience exchange; construction of knowledge learninglearninglearninglearninglearning: an active process which involves autonomy and independence learning a foreign languagelearning a foreign languagelearning a foreign languagelearning a foreign languagelearning a foreign language: interacting in the target language ttttteaching a fleaching a fleaching a fleaching a fleaching a fl: to consider the students’ learning culture, expectations and interests; an adequate, affective atmosphere errorerrorerrorerrorerror: natural, student’s dignity has to be preser ved planning planning planning planning planning objectivesobjectivesobjectivesobjectivesobjectives: create conditions so that the students can reflect on the culture and society of the native speakers of the english language and on their own culture practice practice practice practice practice frequent interaction among students in the discussion of updated and polemic texts, focusing on cultural aspects strategies to promote students’ autonomy consideration of the students’ learning culture, expectations and interests in choosing texts and planning activities errors seen as natural and students’ dignity is preserved (difficulties in treating students’ errors) ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ 98 vieira profileprofileprofileprofileprofile elements for the construction of a classroom practice that was coherent with these theories, constructed throughout the education process. closing this article i bring the following two student-teachers’ words which evaluate the benefits of their participation in the described project: “besides having reflected about my beliefs and modified many of them, i can say that nowadays i feel more confident and prepared for the exercise of my profession, since i can explain my choices and consequences. studying beliefs is very important: this knowledge makes the teacher a coherent professional who knows how to explain and justify his attitudes and keeps him far from being a dogmatic teacher.” (final interview –student-teacher ka) “considering the data from the autobiography i could find out that the student-teacher abandoned a passive attitude of absorbing the theoretical content to reflect upon his learning and teaching practice… formal, structural aspects were replaced by communicative and affective ones… the reflections developed during the project allowed the participant to uncover these transformations, making them more explicit and concrete.” (research report, student-teacher m) referencesreferencesreferencesreferencesreferences almarza, g. g. 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(1986). paradigms and research programs in the study of teaching. in m.c. wittrock (ed.), handbook of research on teaching (3rd ed., pp. 3-36). new york: macmillan. shulman, l. (1987). those who understand: knowledge growth in teaching. educational researcher, 15(2), 4-14. silverman, d. (2000). doing qualitative research. london: sage publications. tabachnic, b. r., & zeichner, k. (1984). the impact of the student teaching experience on the development of teacher perspectives. journal of teaching education, 35(6), 28-36. wallace, m. (1998). action research for language teachers. cambridge: cambridge university press. wallace, m. (1991). training foreign language teachers: a reflective approach. cambridge: cambridge university press. williams, m., & burden, r.l. (1997). psychology for language teachers: a social constructivist approach. cambridge: cambridge university press. williams, m. (1999). learning teaching: a social constructivist approach-theory and practice or theory with practice. in h. trappes-lomax & i. mcgrath (ed.), theor y in language teacher education (pp. 11-20). longman. woods, d. (1996). teacher cognition in language teaching. cambridge: cambridge university press. zeichner, k. (2003). educating reflective teacher for learner centered education: possibilities and contradictions. in t. gimenez, ensinando e aprendendo inglês na universidade: formação de professores em tempos de mudanza. londrina: abrapui. zeichner, k., & grant, c. (1981). biography and social structure in the socialization of student teachers. journal of education for teaching, 1, 198-314. zeichner, k., tabachnic, b. r., & densmore, k. (1987). individual, institutional and cultural influences on the development of teachers’ craft knowledge. in j. claderhead (ed.), exploring teachers' thinking (pp. 21-56). london: cassel. zeichner, k., & liston, d. (1996). reflective teaching: an introduction. mahwah, nj: lawrence erlbaum. 5profile vol. 13, no. 2, october 2011. issn 1657-0790. bogotá, colombia. pages 5-9 editorial “(…) research communities: academic researchers belong to research communities in which they disseminate their research at conferences and through publications” (p. 114).1 welcome to the second issue of our thirteenth volume. with this publication we reach the sixteenth edition of our journal and continue moving forward towards meeting the challenges academic journals face nowadays to reach a target audience. the increasing interest of teacher-researchers, universities, research agencies and educational authorities in making research results, innovations and knowledge public poses questions in regard to the existence of conditions that support periodical publications. besides counting on the necessary resources, we need to make certain that we are not only working towards the fulfilment of deadlines to get a new issue published. in addition to that, we consider it paramount to sustain a community composed of readers, contributors, reviewers and supporters for, as pointed out by burton and mickan, research communities are one of the features of academic research. as the authors explain, academic researchers belong to research communities which provide opportunities to make their work visible. one of them is through publications. this might sound obvious, but finding spaces to have their work published and getting in touch with peers who have common interests are some of the challenges faced by less experienced researchers and new teachers. likewise, it is a challenge for practitioners who work in places where publications containing classroom research, reflections and innovations in english language teaching (elt) are inexistent or only open to experienced professionals or to the ones who belong to prestigious institutions. in some scenarios, prospects to engage in publication processes are scarce. in others, the publication culture does not have a long tradition. we hope we can continue sharing the works contributed by teachers of english from different academic backgrounds and countries through the print and electronic versions of our publication. the last one can be downloaded from our website. readers can also share with authors and editorial boards their impressions about our publication by participating in the conferences we organize to launch each issue or via e-mail. this way, we want to keep in touch with the elt community we aim to reach. 1 burton, j. & mickan, p. (1993). teachers’ classroom research: rhetoric and reality. in j. edge & k. richards (eds.), teachers develop teachers research (pp. 113-121). oxford: heinemann. cárdenas-beltrán universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras6 this issue contains twelve papers derived from research and innovation projects. they are connected to the areas of english language teaching (elt) through the use of technological tools and learning strategies, discipline-related problems and challenges, pre and in-service teacher education, the development of metacognition among students, and the implementation of bilingual education programmes in english as a foreign language (efl) settings. the issues from teacher researchers section groups ten articles about studies conducted in six countries. the first three articles are related to the exploitation of technology in english language teaching, an area still in need of documented experiences. we open our publication with an action research report. this time, gloria rojas tells us about the work done with ninth grade students of a public school in colombia in order to foster students’ communication in english through the writing of blogs. it involved doing some in-class activities or in the computer room, and independent work, according to students’ arrangements of extra-curricular time. these [arrangements let the author document how students communicated through writing blogs and the nature of the interaction that took place when using them. subsequently we have the paper by gurleen ahluwalia, deepti gupta, and deepak aggarwal on the use of blogs in a college in india, with the purpose of supplementing in-class language learning activities. this was done through a language laboratory program in which forty-two first year engineering students were introduced to blogs and instructed to use them for recording their laboratory work. afterwards, we can find an analysis of the views of twenty-six pre-service and eight in-service english teachers in hong kong concerning the information technology courses in their teacher education programmes, as examined by chi cheung ruby yang. the findings of the study show the role software applications and technological integration plays in the course outline plus the paramount role of powerpoint as an application in teaching. questions are posed with respect to the role information technology courses play in the preparation of teachers to teach with it. then, josefina quintero corzo and odilia ramírez contreras address a topic of common concern among school teachers: facing discipline-related challenges in the classroom. the authors report an action research study on how a group of teachertrainees created and tried varied strategies to help them overcome indiscipline in english as a foreign language classrooms at public schools in colombia as well as the challenges faced. phatic communion is the theme of the next article written by gabriela ayala gonzález, miguel adrián leonel de cervantes orozco, víctor daniel gonzález cabrera, faviola romero mayoral and gerrard edwin mugford fowler. the authors collected classroom data in five contrasting teaching contexts in mexico to investigate how language learners engage in classroom small talk and how teachers respond to such interactional opportunities. the analysis of the information provided arguments editorial 7profile vol. 13, no. 2, october 2011. issn 1657-0790. bogotá, colombia. pages 5-9 to conclude that phatic communion plays an important role in establishing, developing and maintaining interpersonal relationships between teacher and learners which can be seen in terms of solidarity and support. the following two articles deal with the study of metacognition as a means to foster speaking and reading skills in contexts of english as a foreign language. with respect to the first one, claudio díaz larenas informs us what was found in an exploratory investigation that sought to analyse eighth and twelfth graders’ knowledge of speaking strategies to communicate in english in public, semi-public and private schools in chile. the implementation of a communication strategy inventory revealed students’ perceptions of knowledge of speaking strategies and peculiarities of results in connection to the type of school they belong to. the paper by fatemeh khonamri and elahe mahmoudi kojidi is based on a study in iran around the relationship between metacognitive awareness of reading strategies and comprehension monitoring of a group of students majoring in electronics. the use of a questionnaire, think-aloud protocols, error detection and retrospective questions let them identify the strategies students chose to tackle academic reading tasks as well as the combined effect of metacognitive awareness of reading strategies and reading ability of those texts on language learners’ comprehension. three articles concerning bilingualism are gathered next. first, irasema mora pablo, m. martha lengeling, buenaventura rubio zenil, troy crawford and douglas goodwin report on the results of a study aimed at exploring students’ and teachers’ reasons for using the first language within the foreign language classroom at a public institution in mexico. through questionnaires and semi-structured interviews carried out with french and english teachers, they concluded that the participants recognized the use of the first language as positive and part of the teaching and learning process. in contrast, few students do not like the use of the first language in the classroom and are fond of the use of the target language only by the teachers. an investigation conducted at a colombian public university with eleven deaf students in different academic programs who did not receive english instruction as part of their professional training is the theme of the article by olga lucía ávila caica. the study entailed identifying the effect of using internet resources as support for the design and development of a blended english course for deaf university students. the readers will get acquainted with relevant information as regards what can work well for deaf students and the difficulties that can interfere with their english learning. after that follows the article by claudia lucía ordóñez, who presents the results of a study on the impact of a curriculum that connects learning events in spanish and english in authentic communicative performances during the first year of the implementation of the curriculum in a private school in colombia. the results revealed positive changes in the language learning environments of the school, the teachers’ ideas about language and language learning, and the students’ communicative skills and cárdenas-beltrán universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras8 ways of learning. the author also introduces the concept of education for bilingualism to replace that of bilingual education used in colombia, which she considers ineffective in the country’s mostly monolingual context. i wish to draw our readers’ attention to the problematic aspects those three articles address: the use of the mother tongue in spanish speaking contexts, the attention given to minority groups –like deaf learners– and the monitoring of curricula that integrate the languages involved in bilingual education. these aspects shed light on the necessity of examining classroom practices and language policies. this is particularly important in latin-american contexts where there is an increasing emphasis on raising standards in english language teaching and learning and on promoting bilingualism at local and national levels. we continue with the section issues from novice teacher researchers. it includes an article by jhonatan perdomo toro, ángela milena rico gonzález and nury catherine huepa salcedo, who focus on describing and analyzing how autonomous learning emerges in a group of colombian third graders’ socioaffective practices as reconstructed in written narratives. besides these documentary evidences, the authors carried out classroom observation and interviews. the information gathered through them showed that children are able to recognize and reflect on the causes and consequences of situations thanks to the use of different socialization forms implemented by their parents. those forms, in turn, help them become aware of their duties and reveal that social interaction, with family as the main contributors, is essential in children’s development of autonomy. we close this edition with an article in section three of our journal by rocío mahecha, stella urrego and erika lozano: issues based on reflections and innovations. the authors give us the opportunity to learn about the innovation they conducted in a public high school in bogotá, colombia, where they monitored text coding and double entry organizer as strategies that could help students improve reading comprehension of texts in english. they concluded that, even though they only explored what happened while developing two reading workshops, both teachers and learners could see improvement in reading comprehension and positive reactions towards the learning processes the project brought about. as mentioned in our previous publication, the number of papers submitted for evaluation purposes has increased. this poses more challenges in the evaluation processes which are possible thanks to the support of the members of the advisory and editorial boards, as well as our assistants. furthermore, it implies counting on more reviewers. on this occasion i am pleased to welcome four new collaborators, namely: professors maria cristina arancibia aguilera (pontificia universidad católica de chile, chile), darío luis banegas (university of warwick, uk & ministry of education of chubut, argentina), kate mastruserio reynolds (university of wisconsin-eau claire, usa), and yvonne marcelle saulny, universidad pedagógica experimental editorial 9profile vol. 13, no. 2, october 2011. issn 1657-0790. bogotá, colombia. pages 5-9 libertador-maracay campus, venezuela. i am sure their participation will also help us maintain the quality of our publication, comply with the requirements a scientific journal demands and foster the participation of teachers of english in the work we lead in our journal. we hope you find the manuscripts gathered in this volume 13 no. 2 interesting and, hopefully, feel encouraged to send your contributions to upcoming issues. collaboration in sharing our journal with other teachers involved in the elt field is very much appreciated. melba libia cárdenas b. journal editor profile no. 7dic 5.p65 ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ profile profile profile profile profile 7 (2006): universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras songs in the english class: a strategy to encourage tenth graders' oral production el uso de canciones en la clase de inglés: una estrategia para fomentar la producciónel uso de canciones en la clase de inglés: una estrategia para fomentar la producciónel uso de canciones en la clase de inglés: una estrategia para fomentar la producciónel uso de canciones en la clase de inglés: una estrategia para fomentar la producciónel uso de canciones en la clase de inglés: una estrategia para fomentar la producción oral en estudiantes de décimo gradooral en estudiantes de décimo gradooral en estudiantes de décimo gradooral en estudiantes de décimo gradooral en estudiantes de décimo grado marlén cuestas cifuentes*marlén cuestas cifuentes*marlén cuestas cifuentes*marlén cuestas cifuentes*marlén cuestas cifuentes* mcues2002@yahoo.es colegio distrital león de greiff, colombia this research project examines a strategy in which english songs are used to encourage oral production of tenth graders. it aims at providing a solution to our students’ low speaking proficiency in the english language and to the complexity of working with a large number of students per class. students involved in this project provided useful data through their participation in activities using english songs. they had the opportunity of speaking in english about their favorite songs; also, we obser ved that they not only improved their oral production but also showed relaxed, interested and participative attitudes as they worked with songs and particularly when they focused on expressing their ideas freely rather than being concerned about accuracy. kkkkkey worey worey worey worey wordsdsdsdsds: english songs, speaking activities, attitudes, oral production changes este proyecto de investigación analiza el uso de canciones en inglés como estrategia para fomentar la producción oral en estudiantes de décimo grado. busca dar una solución al bajo desempeño en la competencia oral en inglés de nuestros estudiantes y a la complejidad del trabajo con grupos numerosos. los y las estudiantes comprometidos en el proyecto suministraron información útil a través de su participación en las diferentes actividades en las que se usaron canciones en inglés. ellos tuvieron la oportunidad de hablar en inglés acerca de sus canciones favoritas; también observamos que los estudiantes no sólo mostraron mayor progreso en su producción oral, sino también una actitud relajada, interesada y participativa cuando usamos las canciones y particularmente cuando ellos se concentran más en la libre expresión de ideas que en la manera correcta de decirlas. palabras clavespalabras clavespalabras clavespalabras clavespalabras claves: canciones en inglés, actividades de práctica oral, actitudes, cambios en la producción oral *marlén cuestas cifuentesmarlén cuestas cifuentesmarlén cuestas cifuentesmarlén cuestas cifuentesmarlén cuestas cifuentes, m. a. in education with emphasis in community education from universidad pedagógica nacional, and b.ed. in philology and languages, english-spanish from universidad innca de colombia. currently she works at colegio distrital león de greiff and at the universidad pedagógica nacional. she participated in the pfpd programme "red profile". this article was received on february 8th, 2006 and accepted on may 16th, 2006. 47-57 ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ 48 cuestas profileprofileprofileprofileprofile introductionintroductionintroductionintroductionintroduction one of the main achievements of an english teacher is to teach better classes every day. therefore, we are always searching for answers to fundamental questions such as “are my students learning happily? can they use their learning in life?” throughout that search, we have applied different methodologies, some of which have been carelessly reflected upon; others are considered appropriate but, as they do not produce the expected results, we simply forget about them. the reason for finding an innovative process through classroom research is to obtain a solution in order to achieve it. from our experience, the action research process was very important since it presented many advantages. among them, we can point out that we were able to • explore what happens in our classroom • reflect upon our pedagogical practices and improve them • develop action research and innovative experiences in our classrooms • work situations in the context of our students which allows us to provide meaningful learning • learn and teach how to work as teams • consolidate the arguments that led us to incorporate changes in our practices • encourage pedagogical changes in the school. on the other hand, we consider it important to say that teachers are privileged to develop action research and innovative processes because since we have the population, the spaces and the time every day, we have everything that is necessary to develop these processes in our schools in order to help change the difficult and routine school culture. this research project was developed with the teacher lisana clavijo, who helped me during the project. it provided the advantages mentioned above and it also helped us solve some of our students’ difficulties, such as low english speaking proficiency, in addition to the complex task we face when working with a large number of students in each class. besides, it gave us insights into the way we can work with songs and have students speak about the meaning of those songs. research questionsresearch questionsresearch questionsresearch questionsresearch questions speaking english is one of the abilities that our students want to develop the most. however, it is the ability to which public schools devote less time in comparison to other abilities such as reading or writing. we noticed low speaking proficiency in the english language of our students in tenth grade; thus, we engaged in a project with the purpose of promoting oral proficiency in english through the use of songs. in this endeavor we tried to answer the following questions: how can songs in english promote students’ oral production? how do students react towards the proposed activities using songs in english? and what changes can we observe in students’ oral production when they are engaged in such activities? contextcontextcontextcontextcontext this research project was developed at león de greiff public school, zone 19, ciudad bolívar, in bogotá. this school has about 2,000 students in three shifts. the students selected to work on this research project were 45 tenth graders divided into small groups of 5 or 6 students. we focused the project on 5 of those groups of students who study in the afternoon shift. they are between 14 and 17 years old. this group of students is interested in finishing high school with a good level of english, particularly in the speaking area. in spite of the fact that these students have many problems, they are very dynamic and happy. literaliteraliteraliteraliterature reviewture reviewture reviewture reviewture review in order to have a solid background in which to develop our project, the following two theoretical aspects were kept in mind: the use of songs in english to develop oral production and the selection of activities using songs to promote speaking skills. using english songs to develop oralusing english songs to develop oralusing english songs to develop oralusing english songs to develop oralusing english songs to develop oral productionproductionproductionproductionproduction there are different authors and studies that consider music to be an important part of language learning. phillips (2003) considers music and ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○49 profileprofileprofileprofileprofile songs in the english class rhythm essential parts of language learning for young learners because they enjoy learning and singing. in addition, she refers to the use of music as an element that is much easier to imitate and remember and states that there are many songs that give them the advantage of being part of the english speaking culture. also, there are different methods by which we can choose songs depending on the objective. lieberstein (1996) expresses that songs have to promote participation among students and that the approach used will depend on the song and the linguistic objective. in our case, it is speaking about songs. also, she proposes four important factors that can be worked with music in children and adolescents in any kind of context. we took them into account for our research, to wit: • music focuses students' attention, encourages group unity, involves everyone and allows creative self-expression. • everybody has the ability to sing. from the earliest cultures, probably before humans learned to speak, they had contact with words through some celebrations or rituals. • working with songs provides the teacher with the opportunity to reinforce vocabular y and grammar structures and with the possibility of developing the students' four skills. • songs have to fulfill students and teachers’ expectations. regarding teaching english through songs and the relation with communicative abilities, there are authors such as león (1998), who specifically refers to the enthusiasm provided by songs. discussion among students arises easily since students propose topics, not the teacher. when students select a song or activity that is meaningful for their life, they learn its meaning quickly and well. selecting activities using songs to promoteselecting activities using songs to promoteselecting activities using songs to promoteselecting activities using songs to promoteselecting activities using songs to promote speaking skillsspeaking skillsspeaking skillsspeaking skillsspeaking skills there are key activities in which songs are used to promote speaking skills. authors such as lindstromber (2004) and molinsky and bliss (2000) propose some activities using songs in english, and phillips (2003) states that many english pop songs are well-known even by the youngest learners, especially theme songs of films or television series. although the language is difficult, students love using them in class. also, she proposes some activities along with lesson plans, which can be used to promote speaking skills. among them we can find the following: • finding the word: ask students to listen for words and note them down with certain sounds in the song. • song pictures: draw simple pictures to illustrate the story of the song, cut them out, and make a worksheet with the pictures placed randomly. ask students to listen to the song and put the pictures in order. • mixed up lines: mix up the order of the lines; then, ask the adolescents to listen to the song and put the lines in the correct order. in addition, there are articles that describe music as a stimulus for speaking. for example, madylus (2004) in the magazine for english language teachers presents different activities such as discussion of themes, presentation of songs, songtranslation activities, etc., which teachers can use to help stimulate students' imagination and to encourage them to speak to one another. furthermore, it presents some reasons why songs and music are used with this age group. some of them are the following: first, children or adolescents like songs and music and have strong personal preferences about what they like. second, songs often include a lot of repetition that helps them to make language memorable. third, songs contain chunks of language that students can remember and use. fourth, there are many songs that are about issues of interest to this age group. fifth, songs are sung at a reasonably fast speed; they contain natural phonological features like linking and weak forms that students learn to recognize and become comfortable with. lastly, music can stimulate strong feelings that can be channeled to enrich the language learning experience. ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ 50 cuestas profileprofileprofileprofileprofile the literature that was reviewed and was mostly used to develop this project was based on studies concerning activities using the songs in english, particularly those proposed by phillips (2003) and molinsky and bliss (2000). it was observed that many of their statements or arguments suggest considering music and more specifically songs in english as promoters to develop speaking abilities. methodologymethodologymethodologymethodologymethodology this action research project involved the use of a series of data collection instruments applied to students and the development of four stages. in those stages, we designed several activities using english songs that were used in an english class in which students worked in small groups. we examined the effectiveness of the activities observing and registering in field notes and video recording students’ attitudes or reactions, and their changes in oral production when they engaged in such activities. the information gathered was classified using conventions and then analyzed to identify categories. data collection instrumentsdata collection instrumentsdata collection instrumentsdata collection instrumentsdata collection instruments • surveys: we applied two surveys with one hundred tenth graders, including the selected groups to participate in the research. these were administered in spanish and used in the first stage to explore the importance students give to the english language (see survey nº 1, in appendix 1) and to gather different opinions about the methodology used in english classes (see survey nº2, appendix 2). • audio and video recording of the activities done in english classes: these were used in the first stages and during the implementation of activities using songs in english. they allowed us to observe and analyze aspects such as reactions or attitudes toward the proposed activities and the changes in students' oral production. each one of the activities was recorded, some in video and others in audio. • field notes: we took field notes for each english class. these let us identify students’ attitudes and the changes in their oral production. • focus group interviews: these were applied in the first and second stages. these were made to collect more data and to compare them with the video recordings and field notes. for each implemented activity, we interviewed some students in groups and others individually. stagesstagesstagesstagesstages the next four stages were followed simultaneously during the process. we took into account some of the proposed stages by kemmis and mc taggart (1988), cited in burns (1999). • gathering data using different techniques this stage was done at the beginning. we designed the different instruments (sur veys, interviews, formats for field notes and observation of classes) in order to collect data. to do so, we followed the ideas proposed by burns (1999), arhar, holly, and kasten (2001) and wallace (1998). then we applied them. the information that was gathered was transcribed and organized by type of instrument using a portfolio. • designing and implementing activities using songs in english this stage was developed simultaneously with the first one. in this second phase we focused on the four oral activities using english songs. in order to do so, it was necessary to review some authors who have proposed activities using songs in english such as phillips (2003) and molinsky and bliss (2000). then we designed the following activities: choosing the song, inter viewing the singer, explaining the selected new words of the song, and discussing topics of the song. such activities were implemented one by one in each english class; similarly, they were repeated, including aspects observed in order to be able to validate the data and compare the results. • interpreting and analyzing the data to analyze and interpret the data, we followed four steps (burns, 1999): ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○51 profileprofileprofileprofileprofile songs in the english class assembling the data: we did the transcriptions of observation of classes and interviews, and tried to scan the data in a general way. coding the data: we classified the data according to the implemented activities and used symbols to identify each one: the data gathered in class observation in bold, the data gathered in interviews in italics and the data gathered in field notes, underlined. comparing the data: we compared the previous data with field notes (triangulation) and lastly, building interpretations: we read all the data over and over and established some relations that led us to finding answers to our research questions. then we identified some categories and presented them. • writing the project report in the final stage, we presented the description of all the aspects worked and developed during the research process. likewise, we related and supported the findings and conclusions of our study with other sources. pedagogical designpedagogical designpedagogical designpedagogical designpedagogical design the focus of our project was to encourage students' oral production using english songs in class. therefore, a set of activities was designed. each one was designed in a lesson plan that included specific goals, resources, the teacher's role, the students' roles, the organization of students, specific skills to develop and a detailed description of the activity. below we present the four activities that we implemented. • choosing the song here, each group of students selects a song and presents its lyrics and melodies. then, they describe some aspects of the singer and explain why the song was chosen. • interviewing the song's singer in this activity the students role play interviewing the singer or musical group of the selected song. • explaining new words of the song here, the students explain the meaning of the new words or vocabulary, unknown for them, using synonyms, antonyms or short phrases. • discussing topics of the song in this, the students discuss the topics or themes of the selected song, present some arguments and support them with the lyrics or melody of the song. it should be clarified that each one of the previous activities was carried out with some songs chosen by the students themselves according to their likes. they were don't cry (guns n' roses); i can't get no satisfaction (britney spears); complicated (avril lavigne); my immortal (evanescence) and always (bon jovi). additionally, these activities led students to speak about musical albums produced by their favorite singers. findingsfindingsfindingsfindingsfindings our data analysis showed two kinds of students' attitudes toward activities when using english songs. some attitudes appeared with more frequency than others did; therefore, they are described according to that order. our findings also showed important changes in students' oral production. to begin with, the first outcome that emerged from our data indicated that songs are generators of favorable factors such as motivation, participation, cooperation, relaxation and self-confidence. on the contrary, songs may also be generators of unfavorable factors such as instances of anxiety and lack of confidence. moreover, the use of the aforementioned activities showed important changes in students’ oral production. for example, they expressed their ideas freely, spoke more when the topic was interesting for them, expressed several reasons and opinions about the proposed songs, interacted more with one another, and spoke clearly and quickly. s o n g s : g e n e r a t o r s o f f a v o r a b l e a n ds o n g s : g e n e r a t o r s o f f a v o r a b l e a n ds o n g s : g e n e r a t o r s o f f a v o r a b l e a n ds o n g s : g e n e r a t o r s o f f a v o r a b l e a n ds o n g s : g e n e r a t o r s o f f a v o r a b l e a n d unfavorable factorsunfavorable factorsunfavorable factorsunfavorable factorsunfavorable factors we identified some favorable factors such as motivation, participation, cooperation, relaxation and self-confidence. • motivation: we noticed that during the development of the activities, students showed ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ 52 cuestas profileprofileprofileprofileprofile behaviors, emotions or feelings particularly related to interest in or enthusiasm for the work the activities proposed. this same factor appeared frequently in collected data (video recording and field notes). the attitude was evidently noticed through behaviors such as paying attention when the teacher or a classmate spoke in english,,,,, concentrating on the activity, having a willingness to speak english and prepare the activity, having a positive mood towards the class and trying to understand peers and the teacher when they spoke english. additionally, this same attitude was found in interviews with students as evidenced in these statements: we acquire a lot of knowledge about other cultures through their songs (isabel g.); we consider that this activity is important and it encourages us to speak in english (ivone c.). furthermore, students believe that they learn better and more quickly with this kind of activities. they stated: we get better english through this kind of activities (daniel g.); we learn better english with the vocabulary of the songs and we have freedom to choose the topics we like to learn (yuly a.). with respect to this, similar considerations are presented by madylus (2004), where she asserts that students like songs and music and have strong personal preferences about what they like. this supports the fact that the use of english songs in english classes increased motivation and, above all, students could speak english about their favorite topics. • participation: this attitude was constantly shown during the development of the different activities. collected data shows students made interventions in class and asked for, prepared and presented activities. in regard to these ideas, lieberstein (1996) suggests that songs themselves promote participation in group work because students like the lyrics, the melodies and the singers themselves. in addition, this attitude or factor was ratified in interviews with students as can be seen in the following statement: we like to participate in these activities because we can discuss the ideas about the songs and there is interaction between us because everyone has participated in class and we are fascinated with the english class (wendy d.). also, forero (2000, p. 44) concluded in her research that group work bettered students’ participation. we could observe and prove the level of this participation because we worked the class in small groups as a solution to the complexity of working with a large number of students per class. • cooperation: according to our findings, cooperation was frequently observed during the proposed activities. this frequent cooperation was perceived when we implemented different activities using some principles of cooperative learning as a teaching strategy. we observed this attitude when students explained and asked each another questions, gave ideas to the group's monitor, and helped the other groups enthusiastically. these aspects are related to some elements proposed in the definition of cooperative learning (kagan, 1994 and forero, 2000). furthermore, a cooperative attitude was confirmed through statements made by students in the interviews. they stated: in these activities there is more interaction among students (angie e.); the group work is easier, we are more integrated in the class and we help each other a lot (leidy e.). this shows that they like to work with songs in english as well as in small groups. • relaxation: a relaxed environment was observed most of the time. students were quiet and calm while engaged in activities, smiled and enjoyed them. they considered the activities fun. these aspects were presented by students in most of the inter views as shown in the following statements: i feel very well in the class, the activities were fun and i enjoyed them (michael m.); we in our group feel very calm while preparing the presentation of the activity (luisa e.). then, we can say that activities using english songs help create a good learning environment to facilitate learning english quietly and cheerfully. • self-confidence: it was evident in observations that students understood the activity and prepared it. they spoke freely about ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○53 profileprofileprofileprofileprofile songs in the english class something they knew in the selected song and they felt confident speaking because they liked the fact that their opinions and suggestions were taken into account. additionally, in the interviews they stated that we work with songs that we like because we research about topics that we like to know and learn about. also we clearly know what we are doing and we like to express our opinions and thoughts (alejandra a., diana c.). these testimonies evidence self-confidence. in view of the findings, we consider that this attitude is a key element to be generated in the classroom because it allows students to feel motivated, improve learning and become more spontaneous when speaking in english. coping with unfavorable factorscoping with unfavorable factorscoping with unfavorable factorscoping with unfavorable factorscoping with unfavorable factors: we found only two attitudes of this type. anxiety and a lack of confidence were observed in some moments, but they were reduced using the proposed activities. • instances of anxiety: these were registered in some video recordings. some students felt nervous when speaking because they were afraid of pronouncing words incorrectly and some of them were shy when they began to speak. in the interviews, they referred to this aspect of anxiety only when they said, i felt nervous to begin to speak because some classmates laughed at me when i mispronounced words but after all the activities i have overcome my fear (camilo g.). this attitude was noticed in some students during the first activities and the use of songs helped reduce it. during the development of the activity, the few students who were anxious observed that their classmates and other groups carried out their presentations calmly and actually enjoyed them. • lack of confidence: it was registered in some video recordings when students spoke and tried to look at the notes at the same time. it was also observed when students began to speak and did not finish the idea. besides, some inter views presented statements such as, some of us spoke slowly because we forgot the idea easily, also we sometimes needed a lot of vocabulary to express an idea and we didn't know it (ibeth f., sergio a.). this attitude was minimal because most students left their notes aside and switched from reading to speaking. they spent more time preparing each activity and it led them to participate and feel more confident. c h a n g e s o b s e rc h a n g e s o b s e rc h a n g e s o b s e rc h a n g e s o b s e rc h a n g e s o b s e r v e d i n s t u d e n t s ' o r a lv e d i n s t u d e n t s ' o r a lv e d i n s t u d e n t s ' o r a lv e d i n s t u d e n t s ' o r a lv e d i n s t u d e n t s ' o r a l productionproductionproductionproductionproduction in relation to this category, we obser ved important changes in students’ oral production. some of them expressed ideas freely, spoke more when the topic was interesting for them, and gave several reasons and opinions about the proposed songs. these changes are contrasted against what was obser ved before the project. they are presented in table 1. • expressing ideas freely in relation to this aspect, it was observed and registered in the field notes that before implementing the project, our students had low levels of oral production. they did not take any risks speaking more because they were concerned about accuracy more than about expressing their ideas. then, during the development of the activities, the collected data showed that students focused on expressing their ideas freely more than when they were concerned about accuracy. thus, these kinds of activities encourage them to speak english. they speak because they wish to express what they know about their favorite songs and singers. some of these previous ideas are also shown by gutiérrez (2005) when she refers to the importance of creating an interactive and communicative context to contribute to the development of speaking skills and the improvement of oral production. in our case, this creation of context was evident in each activity developed around songs. • speaking more when the topic is interesting for students before the project, we obser ved that our students did not participate much in class. the video recordings showed they were shy and afraid ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ 54 cuestas profileprofileprofileprofileprofile to speak in english. most of them preferred for the teacher to speak in spanish. after the new activities around songs were implemented, students spoke more in english; they showed more willingness to speak when the situation was meaningful for them. this coincides with gutiérrez (2005, p. 89) in the sense that students “used the foreign language by engaging in situations that replicated normal language use". moreover, many reasons were expressed by our participants in the interviews and video recordings. these reasons support the previous facts. they can be summarized as follows: the topic was interesting for them. in this case, it was their favorite song. they know a lot of songs because they like to listen to music all the time. they had the chance to choose the songs they liked and learn more about them. these songs helped build a more comfortable atmosphere in the classroom. additionally, as stated before, changes in oral production were shown in students’ participation and motivation. • expressing several reasons and opinions about the proposed songs the different registers of data showed that most students participated orally and spoke using complete sentences or ideas. for example, in the activity where they were to choose the song, they expressed different opinions about their favorite songs. for instance, i like much this song (don't cry) because its lyric and melody remember me a special person in my life. (ivone c.). likewise, in the activity where students were to interview the singer of the song, they spoke about each member of the group. they also commented on their favorite albums, concerts or public presentations of musical groups, instruments, etc. finally, during the discussions of themes, they expressed ideas such as we consider that the main topic of this song (don't cry) is the feelings because its lyric show much sadness, love, and pain for separating (yury s.). • interacting more with one another another change in students’ oral production was observed when students interacted among themselves, especially among members of small groups. then, the video recordings showed students asking each other questions, sharing information and speaking in spanish or sometimes in english during the preparation of the activities. group work functions as an integration tool. “it lets them know more about their partners”, says forero (2000, p. 44). besides that, this change was shown in the cooperative attitude they manifested and in the relaxed atmosphere in which interaction took place. • speaking more clearly and quickly this change was observed in most students’ oral production. we could see during the development • they focus on expressing their ideas freely more than when they were concerned about accuracy. • they speak more when the topic is interesting for them. • they speak using reasons and opinions about chosen songs. • students interact more with one another. • most students speak clearly and more quickly. • they were concerned about accuracy more than about expressing their ideas..... • they didn't participate much in class. • they used words or short phrases. • they reduced their interaction with the teacher to present the lesson or homework. • they spoke slowly and mispronounced words. before when using songs tttttable 1able 1able 1able 1able 1. major changes observed in students' oral production. ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○55 profileprofileprofileprofileprofile songs in the english class of all the proposed activities that many students were more spontaneous and confident when speaking. this aspect was also supported by motivation manifested in singing the song chosen, concentrating on the activity and tr ying to understand peers when they spoke about a song. also, support was evidenced in the interviews, to wit: we consider important this activity and it is motivating for us to speak in english (daniel g.) and in this statement, i like to speak in english now, because i know enough about this song (dayana m.). in addition, we could observe that they would always concentrate and relax while preparing each activity. as a result, they exposed their ideas clearly and quickly during the presentation revealing a longer and more fluent oral production. all in all, the research findings show that by using songs in english in the classroom, teachers can not only encourage students’ oral production but also promote many favorable attitudes towards english language learning. since students like to listen to music and love the lyrics and melodies of the songs, they speak rather easily and share what they know about their favorite songs and the lives of the singers. in addition, the use of songs in english can be extended to promote other skills. the key element is to know how to design appropriate and pertinent activities. conclconclconclconclconclusionsusionsusionsusionsusions after the implementation of this action-research project, we can conclude that classroom research processes definitively helped improve our classes and achieve very good results with our students. in our specific case, we aimed at encouraging oral production through the use of songs and, from that point of view, we can say the following: when students were given songs in english in their class activities, they showed some attitudes that we considered favorable to promoting their oral production. some of them are motivation, participation, cooperation, relaxation and selfconfidence. in addition, they were pleased with the different proposed activities around songs given because they love their lyrics, melodies and music groups or singers. this factor was enhanced by the fact that most of them were their favorite songs. furthermore, the use of songs helped diminish some unfavorable factors students often face when learning to speak english; for example, anxiety and lack of confidence. equally important were the changes that were observed in the students’ oral production. there was improvement in oral production when they focused on expressing their ideas freely more than when they were concerned about accuracy. students spoke more in english when they talked about songs in english because the topics were interesting for them. as a result, they showed much more motivation, participation and better class work. they also explained that the reason they felt more inclined to talk in english was because they knew the songs and they wanted to research them more. these facts made them interact more with one another when talking about songs in english. working in small groups helped them improve their oral production since they were together and developed values such as solidarity. in summary, the implementation of the different activities using songs in english was a successful strategy to encourage oral production in students and it showed satisfactory results for them, for us teachers, and for the school. therefore, i will continue working on this strategy and i will try to get the project developed in the different grades of high school. to do so, it is necessary to disseminate results among my colleagues and share with them to make them aware of the pedagogical procedures that guided us to accomplish the goal of our project. referencesreferencesreferencesreferencesreferences arhar, j., holly, m. l., & kasten, w. (2001). action research for teachers. traveling the yellow brick road. new jersey: prentice hall. burns, a. (1999). collaborative action research for english language teachers. cambridge: cambridge university press. forero, l. m. (2000). group work as a means of getting students to participate. profile journal, ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ 56 cuestas profileprofileprofileprofileprofile 1, 42-44. gutiérrez, d. (2005). developing oral skills through communicative and interactive tasks. profile journal, 6, 83-96. kagan, s. (1994). cooperative learning. california: kagan publishing. león, m. a. (1998). enseñanza del inglés a través de canciones y su relación con las habilidades comunicativas. in m. j. (ed.), aprendizaje efectivo y desarrollo gramatical a través de canciones en inglés (p. 27). lieberstein, t. (1996, may-june). makin' music: song rhythm and creative expression. camping magazine. lindstromber, s. (2004). language activities for teenagers. cambridge handbooks for the language teacher. cambridge: cambridge university press. madylus, o. (2004). music as a stimulus for speaking. the onestop magazine. retrieved august 20, 2005, from http://www.onestopenglish. com/ young_learners/teenage/songs/music2.htm molinsky, j., & bliss, b. (2000). side by side: handbook of teaching strategies. new york: longman. pearson education. phillips, s. (2003). young learner: songs and chants. oxford: oxford university press. wallace, m. (1998). action research for language teachers. cambridge: cambridge university press. ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○57 profileprofileprofileprofileprofile songs in the english class appendix 1: survey nº1appendix 1: survey nº1appendix 1: survey nº1appendix 1: survey nº1appendix 1: survey nº1 colegio distrital león de greiff grade: __________ woman_______man _________date____________ answer the following questions: 1. it is important for you to learn english in school? yes _____ no______ why?_______________________________________________ ______________________________________________________________________ 2. what do you like about the current english class? ______________________________________________________________________ ______________________________________________________________________ 3. what do you not like about the current english class? ______________________________________________________________________ ______________________________________________________________________ 4. how would you like the english class? ______________________________________________________________________ ______________________________________________________________________ 5. what is the methodology that you suggest for your teacher to teach you english? _____________________________________________________________________ _____________________________________________________________________ appendix 2: survey nº 2appendix 2: survey nº 2appendix 2: survey nº 2appendix 2: survey nº 2appendix 2: survey nº 2 colegio distrital león de greiff grade: __________ woman_______man _________date____________ what do you consider to be the best methodologies to work the next english classes? a. using english books____ b. using music _____ c. using readings___ d. using games _____ e. using films or videos___ f. using explanations of the teacher____ g. using the internet_____ h. other, what?___________________ profile vol. 12, no. 2, october 2010. issn 1657-0790. bogotá, colombia. pages 179-190 179 towards a discourse for criticism in language teach ing: analysis of sociocultural representations in mass media hacia un discurso para la crítica en la enseñanza de la lengua: análisis de representaciones socioculturales en medios de comunicación margarita rosa vargas torres* universidad distrital francisco josé de caldas, colombia this article states that in order to exercise citizenship with responsibility, language teach ers need to popularize a discourse for criticism in which students and teach ers transcend tacit knowledge and common sense due to meta-cognition and argumentation and reach systematic knowledge and procedures posed by experts in the different disciplines. as illustrated inside, the source and objective of analysis by means of which this discourse can be contextualized in language teach ing is the language of mass media and all the sociocultural and signifying practices that it invokes. we conclude that through the analysis of mass media it is possible to educate students with the basic knowledge and skills necessary to interact critically in the world. key words: discourse for criticism, citizenship, public counter-sphere, mass media. el artículo plantea que, con el propósito de ejercer su ciudadanía, los maestros de lenguas deben popularizar un discurso para la crítica en el cual los estudiantes y los profesores trasciendan el conocimiento tácito y el sentido común mediante la argumentación y la metacognición, y alcancen conocimiento y procedimientos sistemáticos planteados por expertos en las diferentes disciplinas. como se ilustra en el texto, la fuente y objeto de análisis mediante el cual se contextualiza este discurso en la enseñanza de la lengua es el lenguaje de los medios de comunicación y las prácticas socioculturales y de significación que este provoca. concluimos que a través del análisis de los medios es posible educar a los estudiantes con conocimientos y habilidades básicas necesarias para interactuar en el mundo. palabras clave: discurso para la crítica, ciudadanía, contraesfera pública, medios de comunicación. * e-mail: margaritarvt@hotmail.com this article was received on november 4, 2009, and accepted on april 6, 2010. 180 universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras vargas torres introduction nowadays foreign language learning is a broadly discussed subject in academic settings due to the national policies that aim to have a bilingual colombia by the year 2019. this discussion is given in the frame of economic internationalization and tries to respond to the demands of the era of globalization and the increasing development of the industries of communication that circulate knowledge in the foreign language. however, policymakers do not seem to be interested in the complexities of our educational system that has very heterogeneous contexts. these contexts go from those bilingual schools attended by students of middle classes, mainly who have a high socioeconomic status and live in an academic environment due to their parents’ educational level. they have opportunities to go abroad and experience the culture of the target language. these students have what bourdieu (1967) calls cultural capital and could have good possibilities of social mobility. the other group corresponds to those students of public schools. within this group there is also a wide range of varieties. students belonging to it do not have the mentioned cultural capital because they come from communities that are at risk, with many socioeconomic problems, with an average language exposure time of 3 hours a week without extra practice outside the classroom. they live in a non-academic environment because their parents and relatives are not professional and their sociocultural environment experience is one of violence, exclusion, discrimination and poverty. their opportunities to go abroad are scarce or non-existent. from my point of view, an english teach er in the colombian context has the ultimate objective of generating the conditions for all students to think, value, and act with responsibility in the exercise of their citizenship, understood as the awareness of the obligations and rights that citizens have in the public sphere1. students and teach ers need to be able to have clear positions about the heterogeneous situation described before and manifested in issues of public interest such as displacement, pollution, discrimination, and elections. a discourse for criticism to achieve the construction of the public counter-sphere the thesis that i defend in this article is that in order to exercise citizenship with responsibility, teach ers need to popularize a discourse for criticism in which, thanks to meta-cognition and argumentation, students and teach ers transcend tacit knowledge and common sense and achieve systematic knowledge and procedures used by experts in different disciplines. in my view, the source and objective of analysis by means of which this discourse can be contextualized in language teach ing is the language of mass media and all the sociocultural and signifying practices that it invokes. through the analysis of mass media it is possible to help students think critically i.e. provide them with the basic knowledge and skills necessary to interact in the world they have to live in and enable them to interpret the intention of the messages sent by the industries of communication. there has been a trend of thinking whose main interest is working for the popularization of the discourse of criticism. for instance, giroux (1990) states that there are two basic conditions for popular pedagogy to be real: one is having a language of criticism (concepts and meta-concepts to be selective, documented and informed) and the other is having a language of possibility (recognition of opportuni1 the concept of public sphere is taken from eagleton (2001) and is understood as the collective commitment of citizens with the democratization of society. the public sphere or counter-sphere as he calls it is the association of a documented public opinion able to oppose dominant ideologies with justified reasons. profile vol. 12, no. 2, october 2010. issn 1657-0790. bogotá, colombia. pages 179-190 181 towards a discourse for criticism in language teaching... ties that can give origin to new, alternative projects) and both exist in the context of schools taken as cultural institutions in which the social surpasses the individual and education is considered a public discourse. in the same direction, gee (1989) states that for literacy to be critical and liberating, students need to be involved in a secondary discourse (additional to the primary discourse commonly learned at schools through formal instruction) that goes beyond instrumental practices and that contests and opposes dominant discourses. gee (2002) continues explaining that in order to achieve more documented and informed arguments, this discourse has to popularize the language and procedures used by experts in the evaluation of problems of knowledge. thus, it requires a meta-language (concepts, values, attitudes) particular of the community using it. in the case of language teach ing from a sociocultural perspective concerned with the analysis of cultural manifestations coming from mass media, this discourse would contain concepts such as culture, discrimination, diversity, inclusion, exclusion, bias, fallacies, argumentation, power, hegemony, ideology, identity and difference, among others. this discourse is to be used inside and outside the classroom, in public forums, in research reports, in film clubs, and in any academic practices that contend for the analysis of media. from this perspective, language teach ers should start understanding students’ conceptions, ideas, and ways of learning in order to grasp the way students think and their subjectivity in language teach ing. research in this field should be promoted by educational institutions. however, as bruner (2000) explains, knowing students’ ideas is not enough. it is necessary to know what students think about the way they learn and the reasons for doing it. this is the meta-cognitive gift that leads students to self-regulate their learning, to be autonomous and to monitor the way they learn. this also has an advantage and it is that students think about knowledge, about how it is produced, its logic and they gain skills to identify bias in its production. bruner (2000) suggests following a contrastive approach aimed to reach procedures of experts. in the first place, students’ common sense, subjectivity, wishes, and affective implications should be approached because that is where systematic knowledge is rooted. as lipman (1987), bruner also asserts that children are able to understand abstract issues and to follow logical patterns in order to acquire knowledge. traditionally, it has been believed that students learn by imitating adults, by self-initiating practices and by didactic exposure. however, bruner (2000) highlights another aspect that is very relevant in the construction of a discourse for criticism and cannot be neglected: the importance of interaction, solidarity, collective aims, dialogue and inclusion. this last one is understood as recognition and respect for difference in communities. teach ers and students contending for the creation of a public counter-sphere need to have collective alternative projects. bruner explains that from very early stages children need to look at their mothers, to interact and to form part of a group. to explain this insight, he reports an experience in the united states in which a group of educators worked with communities at risk and were able to reduce the rates of criminality, raise the intelligence quotient (iq), and increase inclusion and integration. this was a collective and collaborative project in which students had a clear problem to solve (oil spilling) and they aimed to reach a final product (addressing multinational companies with a proposal) by means of argumentation, collaboration and commitment. in the previous experience there are three fundamental issues for my proposal: argumentation, collaboration and project-work (harris, 2003; 182 universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras vargas torres jolibert, 2003; lipman, 1987; perelman, 1988; vygotsky, 1978). the first one has to do with the development of procedures for students to identify fallacies or weak arguments, and to question them with counter-arguments supported by reasons that can be obtained independently or with the help of others. the second is about the cooperation of students working together and encouraged by the wish to achieve shared goals that have to be pursued collaboratively. finally, the third one deals with students solving a problem that requires the consultation of different sources and the development of a plan with stages and steps that require being followed systematically in order to answer a question or achieve a common goal. the idea is that by using procedures and a discourse for criticism, teach ers and students start varied projects in which debate and reasoning about mass media take place in tolerant, democratic, challenging and demanding environments which pave the way for the creation of a counter-public sphere able to oppose the way in which cultural industries shape ideologies, ways of thinking, and acting. a discourse for criticism in language education: the analysis of sociocultural representations in mass media figure 1 outlines the main strategies suggested in this section in order to implement a pedagogical proposal toward the construction of a critical discourse in language learning and teach ing. the diagram shows that without neglecting students’ subjectivities, identities and signifying practices, and through critical analysis of socio-cultural representations of mass media, teach ers can create discursive practices leading to interaction, collaboration and argumentation that question dominant ideologies and promote democratic, committed and inclusive ways of student thinking. the proposal is that mass media comprise the text which gives context within the classroom. in addition, the symbolic, ideological and subtle complexity of its messages makes it worthy of analysis. this methodology has the purpose of identifying stereotypes, biases, fallacies, and prejudices. it also allows going to denotative, connotative and ideological levels of interpretation about marginal cultural manifestations so that students and teach ers can build social, alternative projects. this paper proposes using mass media for the text to be analyzed and meaningful context to provoke critical analysis in language learning and teach ing processes. but, why mass media? because in mass media the symbolic and the political are connected and through them it is possible to understand the way students feel, think and act; that is, students’ identity. if a public counter-sphere with an alternative proposal for education is able to appeal to students’ subjectivities, affective implications and signifying practices, it can constitute a strong political force in the field of education (eagleton, 1984). critical thinking is a source for teach ers and students to defend themselves against the manipulations of mass media and to pedagogical strategies autonomous and critical students committed to the transformation of society build a public counter-sphere based on mass media analysis consider students’ subjectivities, identities and signifying practices build social projects cooperatively and collaboratively approach denotative, connotative and ideological levels of analysis reverse stereotypes visibilize marginal cultural manifestations figure 1. towards a discourse for criticism in language classrooms. profile vol. 12, no. 2, october 2010. issn 1657-0790. bogotá, colombia. pages 179-190 183 towards a discourse for criticism in language teaching... react conscientiously, but also it is a tool for identifying students’ signifying practices (bernstein, 1996; gee, 2005; gee & allen, 2001). consequently, students require analytical tools to question and read these texts critically. the procedures include reversing stereotypes by means of transcoding and approaching denotative, connotative and ideological levels of analysis; designing social and interdisciplinary projects that will allow students to work collaboratively; and selecting materials that introduce alternative cultural manifestations in the classroom. hall (2003) states that the terrain of cultural studies to which media analysis belongs is an open field for teach ers as intellectuals to contribute to the democratization of society. this is due to the fact that recalling gramsci’s words (1976), “in a bourgeois democracy, hegemony is accomplished by means of persuasion and consent of the marginal or contesting groups of society and not only by force and authority of the dominant classes” (p .80). therefore, it is argued that cultural industries have to consider the reactions, preferences, and identities of marginal communities in order to be hegemonic in gramscian terms. in this sense, fiske’s contributions (1987) toward the theory of reception are valid. he explains that television audiences are not passive and participate actively in the cycle of communication; they are consumers but with their reactions, they circulate meanings, and can even become producers. in language learning, the agency of students is evidenced when they select the language and style they want to use to present their arguments. in many cases, they have to contest or struggle with academic discourses and choose their own rhetoric or style, thus constituting themselves performatively through discourse (canagarajah, 1999). hall (2003) illustrates this situation with the reversal that british producers had to make on the decision of ending with the series cagney and lacey (barbara & barbara, 1982) because, supposedly, one of the characters promoted lesbian behaviour. the women’s movement in great britain campaigned against this measure because they loved seeing women playing the roles of men and the series continued being broadcast. as such, there are different manifestations of audiences e.g. slash literature that lead producers to respond to audience preferences. hall (2003) and van dijk (1997) also suggest different procedures for identifying and reversing stereotypes or false generalizations about given communities as they are presented in popular culture (films, publicity, television, press, internet, etc.). one is trans-coding or re-signifying previous beliefs that students may have. for example, in a language class the problem of racism in the united states can be approached by appealing to denotative and connotative levels of the language. appendix 1 illustrates other methodological proposals or language teach ing activities that can be used in the language classroom to put into practice a socio-cultural perspective on language teach ing. students are provided with images of black people taken from different sources that entail elements of history, geography, and culture as they are presented in mass media. for example, with the analysis of the images of black people in photography such as the ones presented in the british press (hall, 2003) in films such as bowling for columbine (moore, 2002) on television and in advertising, students start describing them denotatively by referring to the explicit elements in those artifacts. then, in a process of argumentation, students describe them connotatively, reporting on contextual elements, emotions, meanings of images, etc., and, finally, they have to reach the ideological level in which they have to identify political elements related to power relationships and their consequences for society. 184 universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras vargas torres different projects about the diversity of language in anglo-speaking countries and in colombia can give origin to alternative projects that deal with the problem of identity and difference. in this context, the analysis of cultural manifestations of mass media, the heterogeneity within and across schools can be managed by taking advantage of the contact that all students have with the views and perspectives that circulate on television, radio, publicity, newspapers and all those sources of mass media that hall (2003) calls popular culture2. to enable students to be critical of all the messages that mass media are permanently sending is a teach er’s obligation that we cannot neglect. the information coming from these sources is a medium with which to contextualize language topics by making them meaningful and attractive. a didactic trend that has had great importance in the implementation of foreign language learning programs is the project-work methodology (harris, 2003; jolibert, 2003). this practice encompasses a sociocultural perspective because it focuses on meaning and language use rather than on form. this approach facilitates an interdisciplinary perspective because different subject matters are taught in the foreign language, and transversal projects that integrate a problem of knowledge can be introduced. for example, the problem of pollution could be seen from different disciplines, such as social studies, sciences and language; consequently, multiple sources have to be consulted and reported inter-textually. in this sense, the selection of pedagogical material for language teach ing and for any area of knowledge has ideological and political implications. whether teach ers are aware or not of these implications, any time they select given material 2 popular culture is understood as artifacts produced industrially and that are received massively by social groups (hall, 2003). they are opting ideologically. in her article about the construction of identity in bilingual schools, truscott (2002) reports that children in bilingual schools have stereotyped views about british, american and colombian citizens. they believe that the british are polite, educated, red-haired, and drink much tea, and americans are superficial and their views about colombians are quite negative (irresponsible, not very honest, etc.). these perceptions might be the consequence of stereotyped instruction understood as the repeated false generalization of partial features of those people who shape a hegemonized ideology3, considering no other possibility than the values fostered by the people with power in the society. a proposal towards bilingualism should take into account varied material and those marginal manifestations should be fore-grounded because the messages that circulate among the industries of communication and that are received massively by our students are partial, biased and homogenized. they belong to and represent the dominant ideology. students face them spontaneously and most of the time are permeated by their influence and repeat uncritically what the media show. mass media have a double function: cognitive and ideological. with mass media people are informed (cognitive level), but they are also persuaded, manipulated and led to feel a particular way (ideological level). it is necessary to incorporate the possibility to contrast and make visible what mass media hide. for example, commercial movies from hollywood should be contrasted with alternative expressions that show how minorities in anglo-speaking countries live, feel and value. for instance, tamahori 3 the concept of ideology as it is being used in this paper is that of van dijk (1999). it has to do with the principles upon which beliefs, social representations and ways of interpreting the world are constructed. profile vol. 12, no. 2, october 2010. issn 1657-0790. bogotá, colombia. pages 179-190 185 towards a discourse for criticism in language teaching... (1994) portrays the life of a marginal community in the movie once were warriors (about the maoris in new zealand). other examples are those of parker (1999) in angela’s ashes, about poor people in ireland; or lee (1989) in do the right thing, a controversial movie about racism in the united states. this kind of stories can be useful to question students’ perspectives and reverse stereotyped views that have been shaped by the dominant ideology shown in commercial movies. additionally, music and its juvenile varieties can be another source of analysis. language classrooms have to be open to students’ likes and expectations and debates and discussions about them so that students are invited to bring, present, analyze and defend their favorite bands in front of their classmates, regardless of the genre they choose. the rest of the class must tolerate and respect their classmates’ preferences. some activities that can be implemented in language classrooms from a socio-cultural perspective have to do with the use of the ability that lomas (1999) calls semiological competence; that is, read ing images and interpreting the polyphonic and polysemic messages of mass media, mainly publicity. he suggests that teach ers should unfold a methodology to identify aspects such as denotation and connotation. it means starting from the descriptive, general level of explicit elements in images. at this level, consensus is easily reached. students are given an image of publicity and have to enumerate the general and evident characteristics. for instance, some features could be an evening dress or a woman wearing make-up who is slim, beautiful, etc. and then they have to go to the stage of the connotative level in which students are to express their feelings and emotions towards the pictures and give the conventional value assigned by our culture to those elements; for example, the evening dress means ‘elegance’ and the make-up, vanity. mórtola (2001) includes the ideological level in this analysis. at this stage, students can approach issues regarding female roles in society, sex, gender or male chauvinism, for example. it is important that, depending on the proficiency level of the students and their socio-cultural backgrounds, the teach er has to grade the complexity of the task, select the language items to be used, determine a scoring system coherent with the methodology and the complexity of the task. if necessary, code switching can be used with beginners but without losing the perspective that the most important issues in the activity are meaning, language use and cultural awareness. conclusion this paper has proposed a comparative approach to media discourse that starts from students’ personal views, feelings and emotions and continues with analysis and interpretation of mass media contents. students may thus develop critical thinking skills and tolerance towards opposing views. this process fulfills one of the main responsibilities of education: giving students strong social and participatory skills to react, interpret and make reasonable decisions in a society that demands selective citizens with autonomy of opinion. the insights presented imply a view that language classrooms must go beyond teach ing the four communicative skills. teach ers are to create a democratic environment for all students in which a participatory model of language, didactics and culture that takes mass media representations as sources of information and analysis is implemented. for this reason, an academic approach to media discourse is necessary to understand its language and look at its contents critically, with the view that the overall education of our students for language teach ing cannot neglect this responsibility. 186 universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras vargas torres throughout this paper we have defended the idea that teaching a language is teach ing a culture, a way of living, acting and valuing, and our responsibility as english teach ers is to create a trend of thought that can counteract instrumental perspectives in language teach ing and contribute to the transformation of society and the generation of alternative projects. this can only be achieved by working collectively and collaboratively, making real freire’s assertion (1989) that every educative act is also political, which in this context means that instrumental views in language teach ing have been proved insufficient and more integral perspectives committed to the transformation of society are required. references barbara, a., & barbara, c. (1982). cagney and lacey [television broadcast]. united states: cbs broadcasting. bernstein, b. (1996). pedagogy, symbolic control and identity: theory, research, critique. london: taylor and francis. bourdieu, p. (1967). los estudiantes y la cultura. barcelona: editorial labor. bruner, j. (2000). la educación, puerta de la cultura. madrid: visor distribuciones. canagarajah, s. (1999). on efl teach ers, awareness, and agency. elt journal, 53(3), 207-214. eagleton, t. (1984). the function of criticism. london: verso. eagleton, t. (2001). la idea de cultura: una mirada política sobre los conflictos. barcelona: paidós. fiske, j. (1987). television culture. new york: methuen. freire, p. (1989). alfabetización: lectura de la palabra y lectura de la realidad. barcelona: ediciones paidós. gee, j. p. (1989). literacy, discourse and linguistics. journal of education, 171(1), 5-17. gee, j. p. (2002). el nuevo orden laboral: lo que se oculta tras el lenguaje del neocapitalismo. maçanet de la selva: ediciones pomares. gee, j. p. (2005). an introduction to discourse analysis: theory and method. london: routledge. gee, j. p., & allen, a. r. (2001). language, class and identity: teenagers fashioning themselves through language. linguistics and education, 12(2), 175-194. giroux, h. (1990). los profesores como intelectuales: hacia una pedagogía crítica del aprendizaje. barcelona: paidós. gramsci, a. (1976). la alternativa pedagógica. barcelona: editorial nova terra. hall, s. (2003). representation: cultural representations and signifying practices. london: the open university. harris, j. (2003). literacy and project work. illinois: midwest association for the education of young children. jolibert, j. (2003). formar niños productores de textos. santiago de chile: j. c. saez. lee, s. (director). (1989). do the right thing [film]. united states. 40 acres & mule filmworks. lipman, m. (1987). thinking in education. new york: cambridge university press. lomas, c. (1999) cómo enseñar a hacer cosas con las palabras: teoría y práctica de la educación lingüística. barcelona: paidós. moore, m. (director). (2002). bowling for columbine [film]. united states: united artists / alliance atlantis. mórtola, g. (2001). estrategias para explorar los medios de comunicación: la formación de ciudadanos críticos. buenos aires: novedades educativas. parker, a. (director). (1999). angela’s ashes [film]. united states: universal pictures. perelman, c. (1988). el imperio retórico: retórica y argumentación. bogotá: editorial norma. tamahori, l. (director). (1994). once were warriors [film]. new zealand: fine line features. truscott de mejía, a. m. (2002). power, prestige and bilingualism: international perspectives on elite bilingual education. clevedon: multilingual matters. van dijk, t. a. (1997). racismo y análisis crítico de los medios. barcelona: paidós. van dijk, t. a. (1999). ideología. una aproximación multidisciplinaria. barcelona: gedisa. vygotsky, l. s. (1978). mind and society: the development of higher psychological processes. cambridge, ma: harvard university press. profile vol. 12, no. 2, october 2010. issn 1657-0790. bogotá, colombia. pages 179-190 187 towards a discourse for criticism in language teaching... about the author margarita rosa vargas torres is an english teach er at universidad distrital francisco josé de caldas. she holds a masters in education with emphasis on university teach ing from universidad pedagógica nacional and a masters in applied linguistics to the teach ing of english as a foreign language from universidad distrital. currently her research interest is on the critical analysis of mass media and its use in language teach ers’ education. 188 universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras vargas torres appendix 1: language teach ing activities in a sociocultural perspective thesis statement language learning can be promoted by means of critical analysis of mass media representations. taking them as a source in language teach ing facilitates the creation of discursive practices leading to critical thinking, interaction, collaboration and argumentation about the sociocultural aspects of language. 1. stereotypes: a. revealing stereotypes (mórtola, 2001). – instruction: describe the groups that appear in the images. – who are these people? – where do they live? – what is their daily routine? – where do they work or study? b. reversing stereotypes (hall, 2003; mórtola, 2001) questions to transcode, reverse and denaturalize: stereotypes – at denotative levels: what elements are there in the scene? – at connotative levels: what do they mean to me? – at ideological levels: what values and ideologies do they transmit? profile vol. 12, no. 2, october 2010. issn 1657-0790. bogotá, colombia. pages 179-190 189 towards a discourse for criticism in language teaching... 2. production of media (mórtola, 2001; gee, 2005): a. writing the front page of a newspaper and reflecting on the differences among students’ versions. students are invited to analyze and produce media. students identify foregrounding and backgrounding strategies in discourse production. b. persuasive strategies: repetition, omission, substitution students are invited to identify the reasons some aspects are repeated, others are omitted or substituted in media production. 190 universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras vargas torres 3. writing biographies: what do the gazes, gestures, clothes and body postures say about women? a. instruction for writing biographies – write a brief biography of the women in the images. talk about their professions, studies, free time activities, favorite music and tv programs. – then, the teach er compares the different biographies produced by students, writing down on the board the repeated features. – why are there many similarities in the biographies written? 4. argumentation (lipman, 1987): this methodology has the purpose of identifying stereotypes, biases, fallacies, prejudices. it is achieved by going to connotative and ideological levels of interpretation passing through denotative ones. controversial argument with frequent students’ stereotypes about black people. black people are guilty of violence in the united states, they are good at sports but low performers at schools, very good lovers, they are lazy and that’s why they rob, kill and destroy in order to survive. a. strategies for argumentation in an oral debate – elicit points of view and opinions: why do you think this scene is particularly interesting? is it striking for you? why? – clarify and reformulate: what you mean is…, what you are saying is that…, correct me if i am wrong… – explain points of view: at which point in what you have said would you emphasize? – interpret: if what you say is correct, how would you explain that… – be coherent in the use of concepts: previously, when you used this term, you said that… didn’t you use it differently? – identify presuppositions: aren’t you taking for granted that…, what you are saying is based on the belief that…? – unveil fallacies: isn’t there a contradiction in what you are saying?… that’s not a real reason… – ask about reasons: why do you think so? could you provide an argument to support your affirmation? – examine other alternatives: some people think that…, what would you answer if someone suggests that…? 107profile 11, 2009. issn 1657-0790. bogotá, colombia. pages 107-121 discussion boards as tools in blended efl learning programs foros de discusión en programas de aprendizaje mixto del inglés como lengua extranjera diana isabel cantor barragán*1 universidad nacional de colombia, sede bogotá this paper reports on a study conducted at universidad nacional de colombia in the alex virtual english program. it shows the main characteristics of discussion boards when used as a main activity in an efl blended course. the study took place in the second semester of 2008 when the program was in the piloting stage and it illustrates the importance of the discussion board tool in the transition from face-to-face education to virtual education. the research followed the qualitative principles and shows the use given to discussion boards by some of the students of the program. students’ perceptions of the tool are registered as a description to give the reader the opportunity to develop her/his own perception on its use. key words: discussion boards, alex virtual english program, autonomy, blended modality, teachers’ accompaniment este artículo reseña un estudio realizado en la universidad nacional de colombia en el programa alex virtual – inglés. se muestran algunas características de los foros de discusión como actividad principal en un curso mixto (presencial y virtual) de inglés como lengua extranjera. el estudio se realizó en el segundo semestre del 2008, cuando el programa aún estaba en fase de pilotaje y ejemplifica la importancia de los foros de discusión en la transición de la modalidad presencial a virtual. la investigación siguió los principios cualitativos y muestra el uso que dan algunos estudiantes del programa a los foros de discusión. se describen las percepciones de los estudiantes sobre la herramienta para que el lector pueda desarrollar su propio punto de vista sobre el uso de esta. palabras clave: foros de discusión, programa alex virtual – inglés, autonomía, modalidad mixta, acompañamiento del profesor * e-mail: dicantorb@unal.edu.co address: calle 18b 5-44 sur, bogotá, colombia. this article was received on november 17, 2008 and accepted on march 16, 2009. cantor barragán universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras108 introduction in the last few years the world has seen a considerable rise in the use of ict (information and communication technologies), especially due to the internet spreading. with globalization, information culture and new technologies in communication, societies are forced to evolve and involve as many users as possible. colombian society and the universidad nacional de colombia have tried to move along with such development by implementing projects involving new technologies. the task of getting to know and effectively using new technologies is not easy, even more in countries still in the development process but efforts to gradually become part of the world’s technological societies are constantly made. through technological and pedagogical resources, students of the universidad nacional are offered the alex virtual english program, which aims at providing students with a successful learning process of english as a foreign language in a virtual blended modality. in the program, one of the first virtual tools developed is still being used: the discussion board. this and some other tools (chat, videochat) were meant to facilitate the gradual change from face-to-face to virtual modalities in the program. these tools gave students and teachers the experience and confidence necessary to consolidate the two pillars of the alex virtual program: autonomous and virtual learning. during the time in which the research took place the program was in a piloting stage in order to permit changes in it and to make it easier to turn to the blended learning methodology, which would contribute to the success of the program. the changes of modality led to changes in methodology and strategies; this means the role of both students and teacher was reconsidered. the study aimed at showing how the use of discussion boards in four groups of the second level of the alex virtual english program can typify the conjuncture of the change of modality by encouraging autonomy as well as allowing the teacher to guide the student in the process. furthermore, the study intended to project the use of the tool in the program. the study the research project was carried out during the second term of 2008 with 4 groups (groups number 13 to 16) of students of the alex virtual english program, second level. i took part in the project as both researcher and tutor of the four groups. the program was launched in 2008-i, and for that term and the following semester (2008ii), it was under a piloting stage. before alex virtual, the university used to offer students faceto-face english courses (the regular modality in its education system) but the high demand of places to study english led the foreign languages department to seek another option to solve this problem. besides offering an english program, the department aimed at developing a new program which could renew the concept of language learning and that’s how alex virtual was conceived. in alex virtual’s first phase (2008-i), the program offered levels i and ii and was then in a phase of testing and improvement. for 2008ii, the program offered levels i to iv, increasing considerably the coverage of students, which also evidenced the success of the first phase. alex virtual is a new modality of the alex program (programa de aprendizaje autónomo de lenguas extranjeras or foreign languages autonomous learning program). it was created in 2001 by the approval of “acuerdo no 023, acta 021, december 10th, 2001, by the csu (consejo discussion boards as tools in blended efl learning programs profile 11, 2009. issn 1657-0790. bogotá, colombia. pages 107-121 109 superior universitario). since the approval of the act, students of the university have been learning different languages in courses based on an autonomous methodology. university students have registered in the courses and taken them successfully, especially in english language courses. this led to an over demand of these courses since they consider english the most useful language for their professional development. the over demand of english led to the creation of alex virtual, a different modality of english learning at the university in 2007. however, changing from face-to-face sessions to only virtual learning is neither easy nor pedagogically appropriate (since students will feel lost as regards knowledge without a semipermanent guide). in order to consolidate the program, including the virtual and a face-to-face component, the designers of the course decided to make it blended, with a wide virtual component and tutorial sessions to provide face-to-face meetings which could ensure students real understanding on the topics. alex virtual is a blended program which, according to bonk & graham (2002), is a hybrid of online and face-to-face courses, in which a substantial proportion of the content is delivered online; it typically uses online discussions and typically has some face-to-face meetings. these meetings make the program different from one hundred percent online programs since they represent 30 percent of the courses’ grade (15% attendance for tutorial sessions and 15% cultural events participation, these elements will be explained in detail afterwards). the methodology of alex virtual consists of the following four main elements (gda, 2004): 1. autonomous work by the students. it is done through the use of the contents designed for the program (modules in blackboard) and materials available in the resources center. 2. face-to-face component. this component consists of one hour of face-to-face tutorial sessions a week with a teacher responsible for a group of 25 students maximum. each group also has a tutor, who is an english philology student, who supports the teacher’s work with the group. the tutor has four hours per week for on-line (video-chat) and four hours for face-toface tutorial sessions. these hours are devoted to answering questions students have about the platform or the course and for the oral practice of the language. students can also communicate with teachers and tutors via internal mail on the platform or ask for help of auxiliary students (english language students) at the resources center. the auxiliary students assist students’ work at the resources center since they not only facilitate materials to students but also know all the materials available and can recommend different activities according to the needs of the students. they can also answer language, history, literature and other questions about topics closely related to the language studied. 3. academic and cultural events. these are spaces provided by the university and the program in which the students, guided by teachers and tutors, develop project works and show the result of their work in an event. presentations, exhibitions, competences and games are part of the projects students can participate in. 4. evaluation. the courses have two progress tests and one final exam. the two midterm progress tests are not quantitatively meaningful for the course, but aim at showing students, teacher and tutor the strengths and weaknesses of each student. both tests are required before taking the final exam. the final exam represents 40% of the whole grade of the course and passcantor barragán universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras110 ing the exam is a requirement for passing the course (departamento de lenguas extranjeras foreign languages department, 2007). the breakdown of the grades corresponded to the percentages indicated in the following chart. the participation in discussion boards is included in 30% of activities. table1. alex virtual grading system. item percentage final grade activities, participation and quizzes 30% tutorial sessions attendance 15% 60% project work and cultural events participation 15% final exam (having stood the two progress tests is compulsory to be able to stand this exam) 40% 40% discussion boards the discussion board is an asynchronous tool which allows the exchange of ideas, debates and collaborative learning. due to the characteristics of the tool (flexibility as regards time and open field of expression), boards are largely used by teachertutor (mentioned this way throughout the text since both decide on discussion board usage) and, therefore, deserve research to examine whether they actually help students of a blended course by allowing accompaniment and encouraging students’ autonomy or not. alex virtual runs on the blackboard platform which in its base form includes the discussion board application. “language teachers have found that students at many different levels benefit from the extra writing done in discussion forums and from its use to communicate meaningfully in real contexts” (godwin-jones, 2003, p. 1). that’s why the designing team decided that this application had to be explored and used by students and guided by teachers, but it was the teachers’ and tutors’ decision regarding when and how to use it. discussion boards are widely used in many programs and specifically in alex virtual because they “facilitate group exchanges, and they maintain automatically a log of all messages in a threaded, hierarchical structure. some instructors find that students consider language structure somewhat more in contributing to discussion forums (as a form of semi-public display) than in writing e-mail (a quick and easy private and informal system). discussion forums are often seen as an equalizing tool, which encourages universal participation in discussion compared to face-to-face dialogue” (godwin-jones, 2003, p. 1). the options for defining discussion boards are as varied as discussion boards themselves. basically, a discussion board can be defined as a web application where people can discuss different topics through individual (whether personal or scientific information) posts. there are specific discussion boards that are designed to join people with similar characteristics (students of a certain major or university) and similar knowledge backgrounds to discuss more technical information and even give opinions and make predictions about the state of the art and the future of the field being discussed. in this way, discussion boards become not only banks of information but generate ideas and trigger potentialities. the discussion board is an asynchronous online tool. it has time flexibility and the fact that discussion boards as tools in blended efl learning programs profile 11, 2009. issn 1657-0790. bogotá, colombia. pages 107-121 111 it provides a practice and reflection space make it an excellent tool for blended courses. this is an excellent reason why designers decided to include participation in discussion boards as one of the significant tasks for alex virtual courses. furthermore, “these discussions allow for dynamic growth, development, and interchange of ideas among students, and therefore can play an important role in student learning” (barbour & collins, 2005; wu & hiltz, 2004). this interchange and meaningful communication help improve writing skills and autonomy but, overall, they promote the critical thinking that characterizes the universidad nacional de colombia’s students. now that the concept of discussion boards has been defined and described in terms of their characteristics and function, it is important to describe their elements or users. a discussion board is made up of a creator and/or administrator, as well as participants and their interventions (participation, ideas, and writings). • a creator, which most of the time is the administrator or moderator, is the person who starts a discussion by making a post or asking a question of people who know about the topic or are part of a group with a common interest. the creator can enable other users such as administrators to propose discussion topics, delete or modify contents and block or remove users who break the rules of participation, are discourteous or sabotage in any way the functioning of the board. in alex virtual english program the creators are always the teachers or the tutors since they meet ahead of time and think of a topic according to the contents studied during the time the board will be available as well as propose the topic which can help students review it and widen their knowledge. • a discussion board can be open or restricted (in that case the participants must have a subscription to an organization or page). in alex virtual only students registered in the corresponding group have access to the board. the participants are given an issue and must answer a question or reply to an opinion with information from different sources or original ideas. in some forums participants can create discussion threads; in other forums they can only answer threads proposed by the administrator and the interventions of other participants. the participants comprise the “soul” of discussions because their participation conditions the success of the discussion of a topic. some threads aim at getting information about students’ learning processes, feelings, impressions and difficulties; others do not have a specific aim but, instead, attempt to give students the opportunity to express themselves freely, to get to know other students while developing critical thinking and shared learning through the possibility of seeing what partners have said about a topic and replying to this in the best way possible, but with the condition of maintaining meaningful, pertinent, friendly and overall respectful communication. the teacher or tutor has the option of allowing or disallowing students to create sub-forums or only adding “sequences” as replies to the main topic or to others’ opinions. the teacher can add sequences, answer specific interventions, modify sequences and limit the time the discussion board is available for students’ participation (after deadlines, students cannot participate in certain boards). in turn, students can add sequences (if allowed), give opinions or information about the cantor barragán universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras112 main topic or reply to specific people through open intervention in the board or by sending private internal e-mails (on the same platform of the course, blackboard). students cannot modify other students’ interventions or delete them. students can express their opinions, add referenced information and links to external websites related to the topic discussed as well as attach files, images and videos, etc. according to tagg (1994) as cited by anderson & kanuka (1997), the administrator or moderator of a discussion board must be “a person who motivates, provides support and stimulates… guides or “weaves” the topic in order to keep it on the right track”. anderson & kanuka (1997) also say that the moderator makes use of strategies and techniques to make sure that the discussion will keep flowing, be continuous and “humanize technology” since it is a medium still considered by some people as a threat to the human interaction and, additionally, makes them feel comfortable with the use of these technological tools. however, this proposal for the role of the moderator seems to be more appropriate for long term discussions and with people or students who are not involved in processes of autonomy awareness and still need the moderator or teacher to assume the leadership of the learning process. in accordance with the face-to-face modality of the alex program at the universidad nacional de colombia as regards the autonomy of students, and in order to give them the responsibility of their learning processes, teachers assumed a more distant position and restricted their participation to the posting of the topic, giving some answers and corrections to students when asked and adding more sequences in order to organize ideas that were moving from the topic and distracting students’ attention from the original proposed issue. the student must not have the impression he/she is interacting only with the teacher–tutor. hence, alex virtual is interested in allowing students to interact with each other; the teacher answers or makes interventions only when necessary. it is also important to have only one or two discussion boards available for students; having more boards can distract students and make them feel the pressure to participate more times than he/she actually has to. participation in discussion boards must have a specific percentage in the whole course grade. students participate more actively when they know the activity not only contributes to his/ her learning process but to the final grade. alex virtual is a blended course and is still in the piloting phase, so encouraging participation on the boards is acceptable. establishing a demand of a certain amount of interventions per week to get the points is a good strategy to guarantee students’ participation. methodology of the study the study reported on in this article is an exploration of the use given by students of the alex virtual english program to discussion boards. according to bell (1993), the qualitative researcher’s function is “to collect facts and study the relationship of one set of facts to another”. the research has both quantitative and qualitative data but it has a descriptive, qualitative approach, since the facts of participation and use and the opinions given by the students in the survey should portray patterns common to the four groups or differences produced by different phenomena to be studied in further works of research. this study is a first exploration of the tool in the program in four groups of second level. it is discussion boards as tools in blended efl learning programs profile 11, 2009. issn 1657-0790. bogotá, colombia. pages 107-121 113 also a case study, which is defined as “a specific example, frequently designed to illustrate a more general principle” (cohen, manion & morrison, 2000). the program is divided into four levels, each level with ten groups. this study took four groups of the same level that were guided by the same teacher and tutor and, therefore, with the same topics in the discussion boards. however, the participants represent a big population of the program and, as such, their participation in the discussions represents frequent uses of the tool in the whole program. the four groups the study was based on (groups 13 to 16, alex virtual, level ii) were all led by one teacher and one tutor. the teacher and tutor also worked together in the first semester of 2008; they were in charge of four groups of level i. during the first semester they posted one activity and one discussion board weekly; there was a permanent board called “questions and doubts about the platform and the course” as well as non-permanent boards which were available for students from monday to sunday (these nonpermanent boards were the ones in which there was a greater emphasis). after that time (monday morning) the topic was not available for students anymore and a new topic was posted. among the topics were questions about topics studied in the virtual modules, reflections about students own learning processes, discussions about the changes faced by the university and, during the second half of the term, discussions about the topics, information and procedures to develop a project to be exhibited in the cultural event. the study was focused on students’ participation in one of the main activities: weekly discussion boards. the research aimed at describing and analyzing the use given by students to this tool. the study also aimed at examining this tool in the learning process and in the encouragement of autonomy as well as the collaboration or accompaniment of teacher-tutor, which are both part of the philosophy of alex virtual program since it belongs to the blended modality. to carry out the study there were two instruments for collecting the data: • a survey for students about their perceptions and use of discussion boards. • statistics of the groups’ participation in the boards posted weekly. the results of the three instruments used for data collection were analyzed both individually and in relation to each other and the findings about common patterns of usage among most students from the four groups are reported in the following section. findings the surveys answered by 55 students who participated in the study consisted of 9 questions about their actual use and perceptions on the discussion boards. from those questions the study was divided into the following three categories: perceptions, expectations and usage of the tool (as showed in figure 1). in the students’ survey many perceptions about the discussion boards were revealed. some of the perceptions students have are, on the one hand, their personal opinions about the possibilities they have in the discussions and the benefits they get from participating in them. on the other hand, there are perceptions about autonomy and the teacher’s accompaniment through this tool. at the end of the description of these feelings students made an evaluation of the boards; they evaluated the interest on the topic, how useful they think this tool is and the appropriateness of the duration of the topics cantor barragán universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras114 posted on the board. these perceptions reported by students were contrasted and corroborated with the statistics of participation of each group, provided by the programs’ coordination and available on each group’s administrator page. perceptions feelings and benefits in relation to feelings, most students reported they felt free to express their ideas in the discussion boards and gave some reasons. a small percentage of the students do not feel free to express ideas on the boards. the only person who answered “no” to this question argues that the use of a foreign language reduces the vocabulary available to write and, therefore, the expression of ideas becomes more limited than expression in the mother tongue. students tend to feel free because there are no restrictions such as limits of participation figure 1. categories from the research on the use of virtual discussion boards. or bans and they do not feel that partners or teacher-tutors judge or criticize their opinions. some students reported that the tool is by nature a space of free expression of ideas and opinions and that fact makes them feel comfortable when using it. a significant amount of students said they feel free because there is respect from partners towards diversity of opinion. this is probably a consequence of kind and respectful words and a low level of expression of disagreement. some students mentioned the fact that grammar and vocabulary are not taken into account when grading the participation on the boards. this was a strategy used by the teachertutor to encourage free participation, privileging a communicative rather than grammar approach of the tool. this factor does not seem to encourage the use of the tool, but it would be necessary to do further research under both circumstances to verify whether or not the factor is influential. discussion boards as tools in blended efl learning programs profile 11, 2009. issn 1657-0790. bogotá, colombia. pages 107-121 115 autonomy autonomy refers to an approach to support or guide the learning process. students were supposed to evidence autonomy when participating in discussions by the following: investigating or getting informed about the topic, searching for new words, organizing ideas about the topic and, after participating, analyzing and reflecting on their intervention and other students’ interventions. all these activities could be done individually by using only the platform and virtual tools such as on-line dictionaries and web pages. by doing these activities students can substantially improve their writing as was manifested by students who reported the following: “there is autonomy because i have to make an effort to investigate the topics studied and to make valuable contributions to the discussion” (milton miranda, group 13) or “yes, it helps to develop autonomy because it allows me to start the habit of becoming responsible for making short interventions in any free time i have” (catalina serrato, group 13). a significant number of students reported they do not believe the use of discussion boards helps them to develop autonomy in english learning. the reasons these students gave were as follows: participation is obligatory or rewarded with points (grade) so there is no autonomy in participation and the amount of participation does affect the grade. they also reported the tool helps but it is not enough given that developing autonomy is a very long and complex process which demands the integration of many aspects. students who considered participation in discussion boards helped them to develop autonomy did so mainly because it makes them responsible for the time destined to participate as there is no participation limit or ban. the other strong reason was that each student can decide on the amount of effort made in order to participate since the quality of the writing is not graded. making understandable and interesting interventions tends to reflect how committed and interested the student is with the learning process. teacher’s accompaniment since alex virtual is a blended program with face-to-face and virtual components, being the virtual bigger than the face-to-face, students should be able to count on the teacher’s accompaniment through the different tools. on these boards the main objective was not to assess; thus, the teacher’s attention was centered on student-student interaction. students were asked in the survey about their perceptions on the teacher’s accompaniment in general and in each forum, both from a quantitative perspective (assign a number). the majority of students do not consider there is a significant-relevant accompaniment of the teacher-tutor through this tool. actually, accompaniment was thought of in the tool as a “control” of students’ participation in the activity (for developing writing skills could done in other activities such as the written assignment in the same degree). the results of the survey showed less than half of the students believe there is a good or very good accompaniment. the results of this question and the study as a whole suggest that students’ perceptions about the teacher’s accompaniment could change (increase-improve) with the implementation of feedback on the writing of the participants, which was not a relevant aspect for the objectives of teacher-tutor in this case, since students receive feedback and suggestions on written assignments. the teacher-tutor could also get more involved with the students through the tool. this could be possible perhaps by participating more in the sequences. cantor barragán universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras116 evaluation students evaluated the first five topics posted on the discussion boards according to four parameters which were as follows: • interest in the topic • practice of topics from the modules • time (duration and frequency) • teacher’s accompaniment (analyzed in the previous subcategory) students did not access the boards in order to grade the parameter. this lack of rigor is the reason the evaluation was located in the category perceptions instead of being in a single category. the perceptions given by the students are supported on the question number four from students’ survey. in this question students had to grade from 1 to 5 four aspects of the boards, being 1 the least and 5 the most. in this category the study confirmed there is a directly proportional relationship between the interest students have in the topic and their participation in same. there is also an increase in the participation in the boards which students consider help them to review and even solve doubts about the contents of the modules. another finding is that students participate more during the week than during the weekend, which led us to think that the boards should have only one sequence available all the week and the weekend and, instead of posting a second sequence, the teacher could guide the topic through more interventions in the first and only sequence throughout the week. but how can a teacher define what topics to post in the boards? it is necessary to achieve a balance involving students’ interests (what they want to debate) and the course needs (contents of the modules) since they both proved sufficient to arouse active participation. in the following category we will see some expectations students had about discussion topics. expectations since students were not asked at the beginning of the course about the expectations they had from the tool discussion board, these expectations were analyzed (deduced) from some topics they proposed for future discussions (which is what students expected to discuss and still have not found posted but would like to find in the future). the topics students suggested the most were “interests” which includes music, sports, literature and science; “current situation” which included problems and situations in colombia and the world such as political, economical and social issues. they also proposed to discuss university life and the majors studied by the members of the groups. although the proposals varied from group to group, the first two were the ones the teacher should include. including these topics may bring some benefits to the discussion: the topic of “interests”, for example, might allow students to identify themselves with other students (belonging or community feeling); the second, “current situation”, may allow the expression of ideas (inform), followed by argumentation on their own points of view and on partners’ points of view under an atmosphere of camaraderie generated on the “interests” topic. nevertheless, the term “interests” refers to personal things students like and the “presentation board” and “favorite gadget” were the boards in which they could talk about themselves directly. this participation was lower than that in the rest of the boards. course development also had a high rating despite being the only board to reflect on learning, which was “reading strategies” which had low participation. discussion boards as tools in blended efl learning programs profile 11, 2009. issn 1657-0790. bogotá, colombia. pages 107-121 117 some students suggested posting more controversial topics. this reflects that students did not think the topics allowed a real discussion (based on argumentation) among students but an exchange of ideas (dialogues). usage function finally, and related to their use of the tool, students were asked if they knew the tool and its function; they were asked to grade from 1 to 5 (being 1 very difficult and 5 very easy) the level of difficulty to use the tool; lastly they were asked the frequency they used the tool. according to the results, all the students knew the tool and had a clear idea of its main uses, these being as follows: allowing interaction among students, allowing participation, practicing writing and argumentative skills and simply answering questions posed by the teacher-tutor. the most common answer was that the tool gives students the opportunity to participate and interact with their partners and teacher-tutor. fewer students thought it was meant to practice the writing skill and a small minority took into account the possibility of providing a space to answer questions in the discussion boards. the teacher-tutor intended to use the board mainly as a participatory tool in which students could feel free to express some of their own ideas and by doing so, get more familiar with the language. interaction student-student is also very important when posting a topic. facility regarding the facility to use the tool, a few students reported that the tool was not easy to use, but the great majority of the students reported it was easy or very easy to use. this opinion was very likely to appear true since the statistics of the first board showed that students participated that week as much as in the rest of the week, which means they already knew how to use the tool or learnt to use it the first week. the discussion boards comprise one of the tools included in the basic version of the platform blackboard, which supports the alex virtual program. the tool is easy to use and students had an explanation of it during the induction session at the beginning of the course. students from these groups also have an explanation of the general function of the tool on a weekly basis. they get a word document where they can find the activities assigned for the week, including the discussion board and the instructions for participating (posting). frequency students were also asked about frequency of use. many of them participated fewer times than required by the teacher (3 per week). most students marked that they participated 3 times, which was the amount required by the teacher and a few students reported they participate 4 or 5 times; that is to say, more than required. nobody reported more than five interventions per week. however, this may not be entirely true since, statistically, the number of posts does not correspond to three interventions per person. besides, only 13 or 14 students were interviewed as a group, which means we are not counting their interventions (with those numbers, the average would decrease even more). in the study the participation rates throughout the weeks was also analyzed, since in the previous semester the teacher and tutor noticed participation was high during the first weeks but decreased dramatically with the passing of time cantor barragán universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras118 and almost disappeared at the end of the semester. in the semester in which the research took place, this tendency did not appear; instead, there was the tendency to decrease the participation from the first sequence to the second. in the first discussion boards the participation in the first sequence was lower than in the last boards except for the first board. in the majority of boards the number of participants was more than half the number of students who took the course in each group, which means it is an important activity for students and, through the tool, teachers can develop more activities like deciding on and planning other activities (for example, the academic and cultural event). the participation rates for the first week were very similar to the participation of the rest of the boards, so it is certain that the tool (as the survey showed) is very easy to use and teachers can start effective discussions and activities from the very beginning of the course. the teacher and the tutor tended to think that participation was going to decrease with the passing of time since students got involved in more courses and started all their classes and partial exams. the statistics showed that the highest participation rates were in the last two boards (weeks 4 and 5), when the students had already started all their classes and had had their first partial exams. even in alex virtual, where they had the progress test in the fifth week, it was the week in which board number five (the one with the highest participation) took place. the participation was not affected in week number three, the week of the university’s cultural week. the irregular functioning of the university did not affect the activities, probably because students could carry out these activities from different places outside the university. the semester when the research took place was not affected by university strikes as is usual in the institution; however, it is advisable to do research projects under abnormal academic situations to see if the participation is really affected by those events. research under those conditions could help to propose alternative strategies and activities to continue with the courses when facing strikes and university closures. according to the contrast made between the first and second sequences of every board, the days when students participated most were mondays, and especially, tuesdays and wednesdays. this conclusion was reached since in the majority of boards (6 out of 20 sequences), the first sequence had higher participation than the second. the days were deduced because the first sequence is usually available for students from monday afternoon to wednesday night, while the second sequence is available from thursday morning to sunday night. that is to say, students participated more in two and a half days than in four complete days. this result was unexpected because many students argue that they do not have time during the week to study the modules or send the activity so they study on weekends, when their participation proved to be lower. at the beginning of the study it was thought that participation was a single phenomenon divided as follows: attendance of tutorial sessions (both face-to-face and on-line), handing in of activities, and participation in discussion boards. however, the participation statistics on discussion boards do not allow establishing a relationship with the participation in other activities of the program since the groups which participate the most in other activities, such as the sending of written assignments and tutorial sessions attendance, are not the groups with the highest participation rates on discussion boards. discussion boards as tools in blended efl learning programs profile 11, 2009. issn 1657-0790. bogotá, colombia. pages 107-121 119 the second sequence of each discussion board was meant by the teacher and tutor to keep the flow of the discussion going by posing new questions and aspects touched on in the first sequence. however, according to the statistics, the strategy was not effective as the number of participants was not significant in most of the second sequences. the number of students who participated in the discussion boards proved that the boards are key tools in virtual language learning. they proved to be a tool students really take advantage of; they participated in a group activity, interacted with other students and practiced topics studied in the modules, which comprise the center of the course. conclusions the study reported on found that the tool discussion board was used to create dialogues and debates among the students and to give them the opportunity to express their ideas about certain topics. students’ interaction is one of the most important functions of the tool for students. teacher-tutor posted the topics not only with the objective of generating discussions but also to provide a space to review the topics studied in the modules (another pillar of the program). although these functions (discussing and reviewing) were important for students, the study concluded that it is necessary to include a straighter-more direct accompaniment by the teacher (through interventions on the boards and feedback of grammar, vocabulary, coherence and cohesion) to motivate the use of the tool and make students feel a closer accompaniment by the teacher. with respect to time, it proved to be a relevant aspect for the discussion. students participated more from monday to wednesday; that is to say, during the first question or thread posted. the other main issues of the study were students’ autonomy and teacher’s accompaniment. students reported different perceptions which led us to conclude that they could develop autonomy through the use of this tool; for example, the importance they gave to responsibility, organization of time to participate and effort to communicate effectively by searching for new words were all convincing. these strategies that students used when participating in the boards were not suggested by the program or teacher, which means students are taking responsibilities and control (decisions) over their learning. however, the number of interventions per student in each week was the one required by the teacher and this fact (asking for a number of interventions) may interfere with students’ real autonomy in participation and time organization. collaborative learning was studied only in one perspective: teacher–student relationship. the students of the program did not feel the tool allowed teacher’s accompaniment to their learning process. the lack of feedback is the factor which determines this perception on students’ part. it is advisable for teachers to establish policies on discussions feedback and decide together when and how to give feedback on the writing in order to facilitate teachers’ work as well as to give students the option of improving their writing skills more through the use of the boards. finally, it is important to remark that the asynchronous tools and especially the discussion board should be given a higher status (than it has now) since it can be a key mediator between teacher–student and student–student as it helps in the dimensions mentioned above: collaborative work (by discussion, argumentation and meaning negotiation), autonomy (taking control over times, amount and quality of their own participation) and interaction (substitute cantor barragán universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras120 the face-to-face component missing in the modality and create tolerance as well as an affective link among students). limitations of the study and further research the use of the discussion boards was depicted from students’ perspective; nevertheless, further study should be carried out on teachers’ points of view towards this and other tools of the virtual component of the course. discussion boards were described in four groups but it would be interesting to compare the different uses made by different teachers, since they decide how to use the tool at different levels. a comparative analysis may lead to conclusions on qualitative and quantitative evidence of how to use discussion boards or other tools with specific purposes, such as increasing students’ participation/raising autonomy awareness/improving writing skills, etc. throughout the study it was possible to see that students had very different expectations about the topics to be discussed. it is necessary to encourage action research projects in order to get a balance between what has to be taught and discussed and what the student can and wants to do. more interesting and controversial topics could have permitted more dynamic participation and interaction among students, optimizing the use of the tool and the potentiality of students’ autonomy. finally, it is important to remark that no efforts concerning students’ involvement in learning through new technologies are enough. new tools are developed every day and teachers have to update their knowledge about them and negotiate their role (teacher’s role and technologies’ role as a medium) and students’ role not to delegate or ease off on their jobs but to motivate students and improve interdisciplinary learning (ntic’s and english), preparing them for a technological and multilingual world. references anderson, t., & kanuka, h. (1997). on-line forums: new platforms for professional development and group collaboration. edmonton, alberta: office of learning technologies, human resources. barbour, m. k., & collins, m. a. j. (2005). online writing as an indicator of student performance. retreived september 25, 2008 from international journal of instructional technology and distance learning, http://www.itdl.org/journal/aug_05/ article02.htm bell, j. (1993). doing your research project: a guide for first time researchers in education and social science. buckingham: open university press. bonk, c. j., & graham, c. r. (2002). handbook of blended learning: global perspectives, local designs. sanfrancisco, ca: pfeiffer publishing. cohen, l., manion, l., & morrison, k. (2000). research methods in education. london: routledge falmer. colombia. universidad nacional de colombia [un]. (2001). reglamentación en el proceso de institucionalización del programa alex. acuerdo 023 de 2001(acta 021 del 10 de diciembre de 2001). bogotá: consejo superior universitario. departamento de lenguas extranjeras, universidad nacional de colombia. (2007). folleto divulgativo, alex virtual. godwin-jones, b. (2003). emerging technologies. blogs and wikis: environments for on-line collaboration. retrieved october 21, 2008, from http://llt.msu.edu/vol6num3/emerging/default. html grupo de desarrollo académico programa alex. [gda]. (2004). modalidades de trabajo y evaluación en el programa alex. proyectos, documento para formación de profesores. bogotá, d.c., universidad nacional de colombia. wu, d., & hiltz, r.s. (2004). predicting learning from asynchronous online discussions. journal of asynchronous learning networks, 8(2), 139-152. discussion boards as tools in blended efl learning programs profile 11, 2009. issn 1657-0790. bogotá, colombia. pages 107-121 121 about the author diana isabel cantor barragán is a student of the philology and languages english program at universidad nacional de colombia. the study reported on in the article was her monograph as a requirement for her degree licentiate in english philology. she participated as auxiliary student in the design of materials for alex virtual and as tutor in the same program. profile 11, 2009. issn 1657-0790. bogotá, colombia. pages 5-8 5 editorial “[…] we propose that as teacher research of various kinds accumulates and is more widely disseminated, it will present a radical challenge to current assumptions about the relationship of theories and practice, schools and universities, and inquiry and reform”1. profile, as well as other publications in the area of english language teaching in colombia, has witnessed how the teacher research movement has grown and become stronger in the past few years. this has been so thanks to the sustained work of recognized research groups as well as the involvement of less experienced teacher educators, school teachers, and novice teachers who have decided to incorporate the research activity into their teaching job. in addition, the reforms most initial teacher education programmes have undergone, as a means to bridge the gap between theory and practice, have had an impact on the attention given to the teaching and development of the research skills of pre-service teachers. likewise, several professional development programmes include innovation and action research in their curricula as alternatives to systematically examine teaching practices and, hence, encourage change. as cochran-smith & lytle (1993) point out, the teacher research movement has contributed to building up knowledge, to upholding scientific publications, and to providing input for new ones, all of them with the purpose of making research results public and providing more opportunities for critical examination of our work products. furthermore, knowledge accumulated through reflections, innovations, and investigation from inside (our own classrooms and teaching practices) gives us the chance to think over theories (from outside), to examine local and universal knowledge and, hopefully, to provide sound frameworks for policy making and educational reforms. as our readers might remember, in 2008 we decided to become a biannual publication. this has made our work more demanding and represented more challenges. luckily, we continue getting the support of our reviewers and new specialists have lately expressed their willingness to be part of our advisory board. this time i want 1 cochran-smith, m. & lytle, s. (1993). inside outside. teacher research and knowledge. new york: teachers college press, p. xiv. cárdenas beltrán universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras6 to welcome professors flávia vieira (universidade do minho, portugal), sue garton (aston university, u.k.), ann m. johns (san diego state university, usa), ana maria ferreira barcelos (universidade federal de viçosa, brazil), danuta wisniewska (adam mickiewicz university, poland), josé villalobos (universidad de los andes, mérida venezuela), gabriel díaz maggioli (administración nacional de educación pública ministry of education, uruguay), martha lengeling (universidad de guanajuato, mexico), and marcela del campo (universidad nacional de colombia, bogotá). a word of gratitude to them for having accepted our invitation and for their help in evaluating articles submitted for publication in our journal. this issue contains eleven papers concerning english language teaching (elt), language policies, and teacher education. all of them are based on research in different settings and give us the chance to reflect upon implications for teaching practices, policy making and implementation. we begin with a report on an action research and innovation project carried out by sandra juanita lópez clavijo, a teacher in a public school in bogotá. the author describes the process followed to design an english syllabus with emphasis on chemistry, for 10th grade students. in addition, she highlights the opportunities a work like that contributes toward making english language learning meaningful and closer to students’ needs. the next two articles deal with reading, an area of particular interest for english language teachers. alex poole provides a report on a study he conducted to find out which reading strategies are used by male and female colombian university students. the results derived from a survey provide comparisons and ideas for teaching strategies. afterwards, jahir aguirre morales and bertha ramos holguín share the results of a research project focused on guiding students in a semi-distance education program in the use of different reading strategies as a means to foster autonomous learning. the fourth article, by claudia marcela chapetón castro, addresses the use and functions of discourse markers in the context of english as a foreign language with a non-native teacher of the language. the results inform us of the role discourse markers played in fulfilling a number of textual and interpersonal functions, as well as in the flow of the discourse generated in classroom interaction. initial teacher education is the area claudia rodríguez ferreira concentrates on in the next paper. in it, she presents the results of a research study concerning the analysis of the process of evaluation in the teaching practicum of the undergraduate program in english language teaching at universidad de la amazonía, in colombia. findings also show which evaluation paradigm promoted the professional development of the student teacher and the connections with work conditions. in the next section, two novice teacher researchers present the findings of investigations carried out in adult programs. their papers, based on the monograph projects they developed as a requirement for their degree in english language profile 11, 2009. issn 1657-0790. bogotá, colombia. pages 5-8 7 teaching, evidence the increased interest of pre-service educators in classroom research and in making their results accessible to a wider audience. andrés roberto rengifo writes about the study he conducted while using karaoke in class in order to help students improve their pronunciation in english. then we can read diana isabel cantor barragán’s report on a study conducted in an efl blended course. it shows the main characteristics of discussion boards, which were used as a main activity in the alex virtual english program at universidad nacional de colombia, in bogotá. additionally, it describes students’ perceptions of the tool. in the last two issues of our journal, we included papers concerning elt policies in the country which, according to our readership, have contributed to the discussion of policy-making and policy implementation. i am sure the following two papers will contribute to the discussion of education and language policy, and to the consideration of the teaching of culture in foreign language education at a time when teachers are compelled to homogenize education based on recently issued standards of competencies in the english language. the article by jaime a. usma wilches links education and language policy in colombia by analyzing processes of inclusion, exclusion, and stratification in times of global reform and by examining the national bilingual program in connection with other education and language reforms that have taken place in the country. the author also draws our attention towards some interconnected processes that seem to be favored in international reform and are reflected in current national policy agendas: the externalization of policy discourses; the instrumentalization of languages; the stratification of groups, languages and cultures; and the standardization and marketization of foreign language teaching and learning. the following paper concentrates on intercultural competence, an issue that has neither been explored much in the english language teaching area nor thoroughly considered in the recently issued standards for english language teaching in colombia. norma barletta manjarrés explains what this concept entails as well as examines the tensions between this new understanding of the teaching of culture and the prevailing teaching practices, approaches, beliefs and discourses associated with the learning and teaching of culture. samples from a study which critically analyzed the academic discourses of in-service teachers in colombia regarding the cultural component of foreign language programs are provided too. in the same line of thought, georgia costalas’ piece of writing concentrates on intercultural communication between colombian and american teachers, which results from her observations and analyses while working in multicultural environments for several years. the review of sources on intercultural communication allowed her to establish connections between language and culture and to derive some suggestions for overcoming intercultural communication difficulties. cárdenas beltrán universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras8 finally, fanny hernández, omaira vergara and rosalba cárdenas share the experience of a group of teachers in the classroom research seminar of a teacher development program as well as its framework, contents and the impact the seminar had on the teachers’ professional development and teaching practice. this report shows that although research activity poses more demands on teachers as regards their workloads, it certainly contributes to practitioners’ innovation, self-esteem and continuous preparation. it is our purpose to continue making teacher researchers’ voices visible through publishing so that local knowledge circulates, connections between schools and universities become stronger through their knowing each other, and all of us learn more about english language teaching and professional development. we hope you enjoy reading the articles we carefully selected for this issue and look forward to your contributions for future editions. melba libia cárdenas beltrán journal editor 5profile vol. 12, no. 2, october 2010. issn 1657-0790. bogotá, colombia. pages 5-9 editorial with this edition we complete ten years of publication. what has the publication of your article(s) in profile meant to you?1 publishing is a motivation for one to keep up-to-date, on the one hand, and a personal challenge to be academically active, on the other. each publication has been an opportunity to have a long-term connection with others to tell them about my concerns in teaching and to let them know that despite “bad publicity”, we language tea ch ers (at public schools) are doing much more than repeating lessons prepared by others. we are thinking about contextualised proposals as well as also reflecting about the consequences of our everyday interaction with pupils; we do care about the impact of education policies in the development of school life, thus, we are in a permanent struggle between our dreams and our realities (myriam, inservice teach er, colombia). it was an enriching experience that has provided me with more confidence when facing academic writing (javier, pre-service teach er, colombia). some other teach er researchers have read the article as a point of reference to conduct their pieces of research (yakelin, pre-service teach er, colombia). sharing my findings with other colleagues, disseminating knowledge all over the world, and promoting discussion with colleagues to improve teaching/learning practices for pre-service and in-service teach ers (sumru, teach er-educator, turkey). giving voice to latin americans. now we’re able to express our beliefs, thoughts and opinions. we can do it at a level that reaches the highest standards of a serious academic discourse. we can become a strong discourse community, not just in terms of discourse, but research findings as well (cecilio, teach er-educator, mexico). it is important for university professors, pre-service teach ers, and school teach ers in colombia to share their research, contribute towards local knowledge, learn from each other, and value our work. also, i am sure that professionals in other countries appreciate these contributions of ours, as i do theirs. i also believe that i have learned how to become a better writer and publisher (maria, teach er-educator, colombia). 1 this question was part of a survey sent to authors who have published in profile, with the purpose of gathering information about experiences we have lived through the journal along a decade and in relation to our idea of disseminating research findings and innovations by teach ers of english. preliminary findings were presented at the conference referenced below: cárdenas, m. l. (2010, may). the role of the profile journal in empowering english teach ers as writers: challenges along the journey. in m. e. macías (chair), encuentro internacional de editores de revistas de ciencias sociales y humanísticas, intereditores 2010. camagüey: universidad de ciencias médicas de camagüey, cuba. cárdenas beltrán universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras6 i am very pleased to present this edition, on a very special occasion: in october, 2010, we reach ten years of publication. fourteen versions are completed with this edition of our journal which started as an annual publication. then, in 2008, it was decided to publish it twice a year (in april and october). along a ten-year journey we have travelled to empower teach er researchers as writers, we have continuously learned what publishing a professional journal entails and what it means to authors, to the editorial team and to some of our readers. the difficulties and strategies used to overcome them have also been important lessons to carry on making teach er researchers’ voices public through publishing. likewise, testimonies like the ones presented above make us more conscious of the challenges ahead. since 1995, i have written and coordinated teach er development programmes for teach ers of english at the primary and secondary levels. the programmes, held at universidad nacional de colombia in bogotá, integrate three modules or components: language development, methodological updating and action research. this last component also embraces innovation as a means to change or understand teaching contexts, to work collaboratively in the development of projects with the ultimate goal of providing better opportunities for learning. those programmes promote the systematization and sharing of teach ers’ works. in those enterprises, teach er educators in charge of the language and research modules have played a paramount role as we set out to promote team-work to develop classroom projects as well as to guide teach ers in language use and report writing. as can be seen, we have favoured collaborative action research with the purpose of evaluating our practice jointly, recording and making our work public and understandable by other teach ers; and thus contributing to professional knowledge in the areas of elt and teach er education. the conviction that wider dissemination of teach er research was needed planted the seed to first bring out in 2000 the profile journal, issues in teach ers’ professional development in which school teach ers could publish articles referring to their innovations, reflections and action research experiences. it was also conceived as a forum for papers written by teach er educators. the name profile was suggested by professor anita rodríguez, to accompany the name of the new publication. later on, profile was adopted to denote what the research group that leads its publication means: in spanish, the acronym stands for profesores de inglés como lengua extranjera (teach ers of english as a foreign language). the increasing interest in our publication of the english language teaching community made the journal open its doors to teach ers from different levels and coun tries and to change its frequency from annual to biannual. though we have maintained our interest in disseminating action research, we have also welcomed different research perspectives. gradually, we have gladly gotten a wider number of contributors, gained readership, the recognition of different indexation agencies and the inclusion in various editorial 7profile vol. 12, no. 2, october 2010. issn 1657-0790. bogotá, colombia. pages 5-9 databases. the latest recognition we have been granted comes from redalyc, red de revistas científicas de américa latina y el caribe, which has included our journal in its scientific information system. along this decade and besides the institutional backing of the universidad nacional de colombia, i have had the support of different people, namely, our contributors, reviewers and editorial team. i wish to express my gratitude to the advisory and editorial committees as well as to my working team for their enthusiasm and partnership. once more, i should acknowledge their fundamental role to maintain our journal and to move forward in search of higher quality standards. this, in turn, has helped us consolidate the profile’s mission and vision, as well as the sections that characterize it nowadays. we have gathered eight papers in the issues from teach er researchers’ section. first we can read the account written by claudia quiroga, who conducted with other teach ers an action research project in a public school in bogotá, colombia. she re ports that, based on the analysis of high school students’ needs as well as on the interest of the school, the group of teach ers participating in the collaborative endeavour monitored what happened when students took part in the development of a series of lessons around academic texts and which made provision for students to use a series of reading strategies. the discussion of elt (english language teaching) policies in colombia continues being an issue of interest and debate. the portrayal of efl (english as a foreign language) teach ers in official discourse and the perpetuation of disdain is the focus of the second article. this is done through the interpretation of the images of colombian english teach ers as evidenced in official discourse, especially in the official document that establishes the state standards for primary and secondary students. following a critical discourse analysis, the study found three main aspects: teach ers are invisible; teach ers are like clerks; and teach ers are like technicians/marketers. i am sure this paper by carmen helena guerrero will contribute to the construction of knowledge about what is happening in countries like colombia, where there is an urgent need to strengthen the level of english in primary and secondary schools. besides the article that opens this edition, we will find several articles dealing with the topic of reading and which deal with studies carried out in different contexts and educational levels. in the third article of this issue, we can get acquainted with a study focused on iranian efl and indian esl (english as a second language) college students’ beliefs about reading strategies in l2 (second language). alireza karbalaei tells us about a study of investigating differences between efl and esl readers in reading awareness of metacognitive strategies used when they are reading in english. as the author states, the findings can contribute to examining the need to develop programmes so that students in both contexts are guided in the use of reading strategies. cárdenas beltrán universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras8 the next paper by jorge hugo muñoz marín and adriana gonzález moncada presents preliminary findings of an investigation aimed at exploring the roles that a teach er plays in an efl reading comprehension distance web-based course and pinpoints implications for teach er preparation and readiness to face this new challenge. the analysis of the roles observed so far in the colombian context chosen for the study makes us think about the new roles teach ers are confronted with when engaged in distance web-based teaching courses. particular emphasis is placed on the need to document teach ers’ participation in these environments. subsequently, we can read the findings of a study led by edgar alirio insuasty and lilian cecilia zambrano castillo, who explored reflective teaching through journal writing and blog group discussion in the teaching practicum of a public university in colombia. the use of data through those tools together with conferences and a questionnaire allowed the researchers to uncover student teach ers’ perceptions about evaluating teaching, diagnosing and solving problems. they could identify what reflective teaching implied for the participating prospective teach ers. the following paper, written by fatemeh khonamri, mahin salimidraws on an investigation based on an efl context of iran. the purpose was to look at the impact of a teach er development programme regarding the use of reading strategies in high school teach ers’ practices. the procedures employed in the research process –observation and audio-recording of reading lessons both before and after the teach ers took part in workshops on reading strategies for in-service teach ers– led to examination of changes in teach ers’ reading practices. in the last paper of the first section, we can read the report of an action research project developed in colombia and which provides us a look at the experiences that students in a tenth-grade efl class had with redesigning a grammar unit into a topicbased unit. while promoting and documenting the use of given strategies with three dimensions of significant learning, luz maría becerra and maria mcnulty could examine students’ perceptions about learning with and about others, learning about themselves, integrating language and topics to their lives, and recycling and applying topics to other formats. the second section, issues from novice teach er researchers, contains the paper written by ruth elena cuasialpud canchala, who did an exploratory study as part of the fulfilment to opt for the b. a. degree in languages. she reports a study carried out with two indigenous students in a public university with the purpose of identifying and understanding students’ attitudes towards learning english through a virtual program. the main findings regarding students’ feelings, motivation and reasons for these as well as the implications for teaching or tutoring indigenous students are derived from data collected through interviews, observations and questionnaires. i hope this paper, together with the ones published in previous issues, contribute to the revision or definition of editorial 9profile vol. 12, no. 2, october 2010. issn 1657-0790. bogotá, colombia. pages 5-9 language policies and teaching practices for indigenous groups who are compelled to demonstrate proficiency in english in higher education. three papers written by colombian teach ers were selected for the issues based on reflections and innovations section. screenwriting is the topic addressed by hernán amado. the author shares with us what was observed when he used screenwriting as a strategy for the improvement of writing skills in adult students. we can learn how he introduced and reinforced the importance of screenwriting, its usefulness and the theoretical backbones that helped them achieve given goals. we continue with an article on task-based language learning written by mónica rodríguez-bonces and jeisson rodríguez-bonces, who based the article on their experiences in higher education. the authors provide an overview of task-based language learning (tbl) and practical considerations about its use in the teaching and learning of foreign languages. they also present a theoretical framework of tbl, illustrate its tenets with a lesson plan and establish some implications for the implementation of this approach. finally, we have the article by margarita rosa vargas torres, who reflects upon the issue of socio-cultural representations in mass media in language teaching and the need to adopt a critical perspective towards those images. she argues that in or der to exercise citizenship with responsibility, language teach ers need to popularize a discourse for criticism in which students and teach ers transcend tacit knowledge and common sense and focus on meta-cognition and argumentation as a means to access knowledge in the different disciplines, and hence, interact critically. i hope you enjoy reading this second issue of profile 2010 and feel motivated to send your suggestions or contributions for future issues. your help in spreading the word about this publication is also appreciated. melba libia cárdenas beltrán journal editor 47profile vol. 12, no. 1, 2010. issn 1657-0790. bogotá, colombia. pages 47-61 authentic oral interaction in the efl class: what it means, what it does not la interacción oral auténtica en la clase de inglés: lo que significa y lo que no josé david herazo rivera* universidad de córdoba, colombia the communicative approach in efl education has generated a concern for the development of communication in the foreign language classroom within which the promotion of oral interaction is usually paramount. however, what constitutes authentic oral interaction is sometimes not clearly understood and some of the activities that take place in the classroom seem unlikely to generate meaningful opportunities for the development of oral interaction. to address this gap, this paper characterizes four samples of oral communication exchanges that occur in colombian efl secondary school classrooms in montería and discusses their effectiveness for developing meaningful oral production in both student-student and teacher-student interaction. the paper has two main sections: the first is devoted to the analysis of student-student interaction, and the second to discussing teacherstudent exchanges. key words: oral interaction, english as a foreign language (efl), oral production el enfoque comunicativo en la enseñanza del inglés como lengua extranjera ha generado una preocupación por el desarrollo de la comunicación en el aula de clases, en la cual se da gran importancia a la interacción oral. sin embargo, aún se entiende poco lo que constituye la interacción oral auténtica y por ello las actividades de aprendizaje generan pocas oportunidades significativas para el desarrollo de la interacción oral. por ello, el presente artículo caracteriza cuatro ejemplos de interacción oral comunes a las aulas de inglés de escuelas públicas de montería, colombia y discute su efectividad para desarrollar una producción oral significativa en la interacción estudiante-estudiante y profesor-estudiante. el artículo tiene dos secciones: la primera se encarga del análisis de la interacción estudiante-estudiante, la segunda discute la interacción profesor-estudiante. palabras clave: interacción oral, inglés como lengua extranjera (ile), producción oral * e-mail: jherazo4@hotmail.com this article was received on may 10, 2009 and accepted on october 25, 2009. 48 universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras herazo rivera introduction the development of communicative language teaching (clt) has brought with it a great variety of activities for promoting oral communication in the efl classroom. i am sure that many of us are acquainted with an array of terms like tasks, role plays and simulations, project work, conversation strategies, dialogues, presentations, and many other activities that we call communicative and that we have used in our role as in-service or pre-service teachers to promote oral communication. the use of these activities, we assume, renders our teaching practice ‘communicative’ and so, when asked how we teach, we usually say we use the communicative approach, or that we develop oral communicative competence in our classrooms. however, have we ever wondered about what we understand by oral communication and its characteristics? is it the dialogue students speak in front of their classmates based on a prepared script? is it the oral presentation they make about a particular topic? is it the uttering of model sentences based on patterns provided by the teacher? are all those activities equally successful in developing communication? the objective of this paper will be to provide an informed discussion of what authentic oral communication involves and the possibilities it has in the efl classroom. in doing so i will explore both student-student and teacher-student interaction as they presently occur in classrooms and describe them in terms of their conformity to what can be called authentic oral communication. my central argument will be that both the studentstudent and teacher-student interactions that usually occur in efl lessons, represented by what i have called the ‘script-based dialogue’ and by the irf exchange (initiation-response-followup), resemble authentic oral communication very little and thus seem unlikely to generate meaningful opportunities for the development of foreign language proficiency. the discussion that follows will be based on observation and transcriptions coming from state, secondary school classrooms in montería (colombia). the usual learning conditions within these classrooms imply a scarcity of technological, bibliographical, and material resources; they also imply large classes and teacher-centered instruction, where the primary source of oral language is the teacher him/herself. the data i will use have been collected mainly through non-participant, unstructured observations and audio recordings, and are part of an ongoing action research project about the development of communication standards and citizenship through the use of tasks (task-based learning). the discussion is organized into three main sections: in the first one, the main theoretical issues that inform the paper will be briefly presented. in the next section two types of student-student interaction will be analyzed in terms of their value for developing efl conversational skills. in the last section, teacher-student interaction is given a close look considering, equally, how it seems to promote or hinder the growth of these skills. theoretical briefing this short section deals with the main theoretical aspects that underlie the discussion presented in this paper. however, rather than explaining them in detail here, i have opted for a brief, general explanation of each one. the reason for this is that almost all these theoretical issues will be retaken throughout the paper and discussed in more detail as they are weaved with classroom interaction data. in this way, i hope to be able to make my points clearer and sufficiently grounded. one current issue in efl education comes from the discussion of how human beings appear to 49 authentic oral interaction in the efl class: what it means, what it does not profile vol. 12, no. 1, 2010. issn 1657-0790. bogotá, colombia. pages 47-61 become part of their cultural system and the role learning plays in this process. outstanding within this discussion is the work of lev vygotsky (1978) and his ideas about the culturally and socially mediated nature of human cognition (lantolf, 2000). the main assumption of this theory is that “individual development must be understood in, and cannot be separated from, its cultural and cultural-historical context” (rogoff, 2003, p. 50). in this view, the social and the psychological interact in meaningful ways and create each other. another important concept from the vygotskian legacy is the concept of the zone of proximal development (zpd). the idea behind this concept is that learners become able to do things when they are provided help by more mature, knowledgeable or skilled peers with tasks that otherwise they would not be able to accomplish alone (van lier, 2004). in a developmental sense, the support gained through the interaction extends learners’ ability, pulling them to higher levels of performance. the extension of these two powerful ideas for the field of efl has led to a wide recognition of efl learning as increasing participation in activities or situations when the language is used. in this view of efl learning, the concept of interaction has gained increased recognition over the past decades. a pioneer in this area is long (1983), who stated in his interaction hypothesis that opportunities to attend to form during negotiated interaction were conducive to language learning. several reasons that support this hypothesis include the assumptions that learners receive feedback on their production during negotiated interaction and that they have opportunities to modify their output, or oral language production, during this negotiation (long, 1996). this concern for interaction has also been expressed by other authors (ellis, 2003; hall & verplaetse, 2000; kumaravadivelu, 2003; pica, lincoln-porter, paninos, & linnell, 1996; van lier, 1996), who see it as a fundamental condition for second and foreign language learning. it is in this broad area of knowledge and research that the subsequent discussion and characterization of authentic oral communication in the efl class fit. student-student interaction in the efl class the value of student-student interaction for the development of efl proficiency has been highlighted with communicative language teaching and with the advent of theories of learning that emphasize the social nature of first and second language acquisition (lantolf, 2000; lantolf & thorne, 2006; van lier, 2000, 2004). today it is widely known that students can learn from and among themselves. thus, different ways in which they can interact meaningfully have come to be favored in classrooms. although there are different options for promoting student-student interaction in the efl classroom, not all of them seem to foster authentic oral communication and, as a result, hardly suit the communicative lesson. a very common activity that i have found in efl classrooms in the context under study consists of a dialogue students perform in front of their classmates. this dialogue is usually prepared in advance and is mostly carried out as the recitation of a script. this activity, teachers argue, promotes oral communication because students are using the foreign language to exchange true information about themselves, and also because they practice pronunciation and grammar. my opinion is to the contrary, that such an activity has little to contribute to the development of oral communication and is really far from being an authentic communicative event. what is worst, its persistent occurrence in classrooms might be reproducing the wrong 50 universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras herazo rivera belief that it indeed constitutes authentic oral communication and that, as a result, it should be carried out as frequently as possible. in the remainder of this section i will present two student-student interaction events and weigh their value for developing learning-promoting, authentic, oral communication. one of the events, between two students, corresponds to a dialogue, which has been prepared and then performed in front of the class; the other corresponds to a survey activity in which learners are trying to get information from their classmates about routines. interaction event no. 1: the script-based exchange the short piece of interaction below (see table 1) comes from a sixth grade classroom in a state school in montería and concentrates on the topic of personal information (name, place of origin, age, etc.). in order to foster students’ ability to communicate orally, the teacher asked students to do a dialogue based on a model she presented in the previous lesson. students had to prepare the dialogue for homework and then perform it in pairs in front of their classmates. interaction event no. 2: the survey the excerpt in this second example (see table 2) is also from a group of sixth graders. in this case they are learning how to ask for and give information about routines and times. the exchange that follows comes from the sixth lesson on the topic and is part of a survey students are taking to collect information about their classmates’ routines using a format the teacher provided. the format has pictures of the activities they should ask their classmates about, as well as a sample question and answer. apparently, the two excerpts contribute to developing oral communication; more specifically, conversational skills. however, a close analysis of them shows that the second one seems more successful at that than the first. in my opinion, this might be a result of the way in which the second table 1. transcript 1 turn student transcript 1 s1 … comienza tú carlo... dale ((laughter)) 2 s2 espérate [wait]…what is your name? 3 s1 my… name… is… miguel… what is… your name? 4 s2 my name is carlos 5 s1 where are you from? 6 s2 se me olvidó… [i forgot it] ((in a soft voice)) 7 s1 where are you from… = ¡que si de dónde eres! 8 s2 =montería... i am is from montería 9 s1 are you new... in the city? 10 s2 este:… i am twelve. twelve... ¿así? [like this?] 11 s1 no... respóndeme que sí [answer yes]... yes, yes ((in a soft voice)) 12 s2 yes ((laughter)) note: transcription conventions have been kept at their simplest. italics indicate erroneous pronunciation; capital letters indicate higher tone of voice. 51 authentic oral interaction in the efl class: what it means, what it does not profile vol. 12, no. 1, 2010. issn 1657-0790. bogotá, colombia. pages 47-61 excerpt mirrors real communication, opening opportunities for learning the foreign language in realistic ways. on the contrary, the first event yields little resemblance to authentic oral communication and thus has little to offer for the development of efl oral proficiency as will be shown below. one of the problems of the first activity, which limits the development of oral communication, has to do with the fact that the conversation was planned in advance, written down as a script. this is seen in the fact that one of the students forgot his line in the script (turn 6) and was helped by his classmate, who clearly knew what his classmate had to say. this situation clashes head on with one of the characteristics of this type1 of speaking event: that of spontaneity. in real conversation very rarely do we plan ahead what we want to say, but we leave it to the moment of interaction 1 there are many more types of speaking events, many of which might indeed not be spontaneous and might have to be written in advance e.g. a public speech. so, spontaneity is not necessarily a characteristic of all speaking situations. and tune our utterances to it as the conversation unfolds, relating them to previous utterances and foreseeing the ones to come – a concept called contingency in language teaching literature (van lier, 1996). additionally, in a real conversational encounter we are not told what to say by the person to whom we are supposed to say it, as occurs in turn 11 in transcript 1. the second excerpt seems more successful in this respect. in this case students are using the survey format as support for asking their classmates questions and this helps them in producing their utterances in real time; that is to say, they did not write the questions in advance and are repeating them parrot-like, but are looking at the drawings in the survey format and then uttering the necessary questions based on the knowledge of the language they have or are gaining through this activity. it is true that we do not usually look at drawings in real life to be able to have a conversation like this. however, this second excerpt is more likely to engage learners in the type table 2. transcript 2 turn student transcript 147 s1 what time do you get up? 148 s2 i get up fif o’clock 149 s1 what time do you take a shower? 150 s2 take a shower at fif fif...fif fif (five) 151 s1 what time do you… gu to school? 152 s2 go to school fif tirty 153 s1 what time do you... have dinner? 154 s2 a las fif o’clock... five o’clock 155 s1 i…yo soy [i am] i, i… tú tienes que decir lo que dice aquí [you have to say what it says here] ((s1 suggests s2 to use the pronoun i so that the sentence is grammatically correct)) 156 s2 what time do you brush your teeth? 157 s1 xxx o’clock 158 s2 what time do you... do your… home…work? 159 s1 at five, five, five 160 s2 mira yo en inglés es i… i… i… [look, i in english is i] 52 universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras herazo rivera of language use that is characteristic of authentic oral communication (ellis, 2003). as a result, it appears to be more successful in developing spontaneous oral production than the first one. (see also how the questions and answers in the second excerpt seem to flow more smoothly with much less hesitation; they are also perfectly tuned to the situation, which is more in line with the contingent nature of authentic communication). this concern for spontaneity is very closely related to the issue of automatization, or the production of speech without having to organize it in your mind first (ellis, 2003; harmer, 2007; van lier, 1996). when students have to use the foreign language in a way that mirrors ‘real operating conditions’ (i.e. as it occurs in communication in everyday life), making decisions of what to say and how to say it at the moment of speaking, there is a higher chance that they develop an automatic use of the language (ellis, 2003). this is one of the characteristics of a high level of proficiency. the second transcript seems to fulfill this condition properly, as can be seen in the fact that they are not uttering their participation from a script, but creating and shaping it as the conversation takes place. a second issue that deserves particular attention has to do with the ideational meaning of the exchange (halliday, 1994). i have contextualized this concept here as the ‘ideational relevance’ of the two exchanges. that is to say, the extent to which the participants of the exchange are truly interested in finding out what the other has to say and the extent to which they do not know, in advance, the information the other participant will provide. this, in simpler words, can be referred to as content relevance. the first excerpt obviously lacks this. at the beginning of the exchange it can clearly be seen how s1 already knows s2’s name. additionally, these two students studied in 5th grade together, so they already know that both of them are from montería, and that neither of them is new in the city. in my view, these two situations might render this short exchange unrealistic, meaningless, as lacking motivation and, as a result, unlikely to develop authentic oral communication. the second excerpt, instead, seems to be providing new information about students’ routines and the corresponding times. the content relevance of this excerpt can be seen as well in the fact that the information students are providing is true and the other classmate does not know it in advance. although it is very likely that students might not be truly interested in knowing their classmates’ routines, this activity clearly engaged students, perhaps because it involved them in exchanging relevant content in real operating conditions of language use. this is usually one of the features that keeps conversations going and encourages participants to use language in their attempt to find out more information. another important issue characteristic of meaningful and realistic oral communication has to do with the way the utterances (the form) suit the communicative situation in an appropriate coupling between of form and function in real time. it is this aspect that helps us decide what to say (meaning) and how to say it, (form) depending on the situation in which we find ourselves and depending on what was said before by us and the other participants of the conversation. although this process is mostly and best carried out unconsciously, “meaningful use of language will necessarily imply the establishment of relevant form-meaning mappings” (van den branden, 2006, p. 7) this is closely related to the concept of automaticity and has direct implications for the usefulness of the fl in the classroom and for the motivation towards learning it in the long run. in the first transcript, students seem not to be involved in such decision-making for the decisions 53 authentic oral interaction in the efl class: what it means, what it does not profile vol. 12, no. 1, 2010. issn 1657-0790. bogotá, colombia. pages 47-61 about what to say had been already taken and, thus, the relationship between form and meaning is distant and perhaps lost. this can be seen in the fact that s2 is not paying attention to the meaning of s1’s utterances and thus answers something completely unrelated to s1’s question (turns 9 and 10). this situation renders this part of the exchange unsuccessful in terms of sociolinguistic competence, for the triad meaning-form-situation is not appropriately matched. something different seems to be happening in the second excerpt. in this case, both students seem to be perfectly aware of what is going on and thus ask and answer accordingly, as can be seen in almost all the turns. in other words, they are matching their utterances to what is required in terms of form and meaning and, as a consequence, in terms of sociolinguistic competence (bachman, 1990). the type of situational awareness just described, which turns into appropriate form-meaning use, seems to be also present in the form of language awareness concerning how the linguistic system should work (van lier, 1996). this seems to be what makes s1, in transcript 2, notice that there is something inappropriate in s2’s answers in turns 150 and 152, and thus tries to provide explicit correction in turns 155 and 160. although this part of the exchange does not reflect what is characteristic of realistic communication (you do not usually correct what other people say when you are talking), the fact that s1 turned her attention to form in this precise moment has important implications for language learning, for it is an act of noticing a language item and how it should work (bitchener, 2004; ellis, 1994, van lier, 1996, watanabe, 2008). attention to form within a communication event among students has been documented by different authors and has been called collaborative dialogue: it is knowledge building dialogue. in the case of our interests in second language learning, it is dialogue that constructs linguistic knowledge (swain, 2000). the general feeling about it is that, as it is the learner who focuses on form on his/her own accord, it might successfully contribute to learning how the language works and developing communicative grammar, for this act of noticing becomes an affordance for appropriating the foreign language (van lier, 2000) based on students’ output (swain, 2000). in other words, collaborative dialogue of this sort creates language learning opportunities that contribute to foreign language development in the long run (kumaravadivelu, 2003). the creation of learning opportunities for students to develop the foreign language is not unique to student-student interaction. as will be shown in the following section, teacher-student interaction can also carry the seeds for language growth or, more commonly than we would wish, for language learning failure as well. teacher-student interaction and the development of oral communication teacher-student interaction is an important source of efl learning in the classroom. given the conditions of most of our state schools where scarcity of resources makes it difficult to expose students to oral samples of the foreign language, the use of english by the teacher becomes a tremendously important source, if not the most important, of real foreign language use. in this part of the paper i will concentrate on two different types of teacher-student interaction and will analyze their potential for promoting meaningful efl learning within the framework of authentic oral communication as described above. the 54 universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras herazo rivera first type corresponds to what has been called an irf exchange (sinclair & coulthard, 1975, cited in van lier, 1996); the second, to a pedagogical conversation (van lier, 1996) by the teacher and students. both types will be discussed using two samples of teacher-student interaction. the first comes from my own data on secondary school classroom interaction in the colombian context; the second comes from seedhouse (2007). interaction sample no. 3: the irf exchange in their influential work on the analysis of classroom discourse, sinclair & coulthard (1975, cited in nassaji & wells, 2000) characterized the irf exchange (which stems from initiationresponse-follow up) as the most common type of interaction that is found in classrooms. this exchange usually takes place in teacher-student interaction and has been described as a “closed rather than an open discourse format…” (van lier, 1996, p. 152), due to the fact that it limits the learner’s participation to one turn (the second turn or response) and hems it in between the eliciting turn (the first turn or initiation) and the evaluative one (the third turn, follow up or feedback)2. the characteristics of this type of interaction are summarized by van lier (1996, p. 153), whom i quote fully here: • it is three turns long. • the first and the third turn are produced by the teacher, the second one by the student. • the exchange is started and ended by the teacher. • as a result of (b) and (c) the student’s turn is sandwiched between two teacher’s turns. 2 for a detailed description and discussion of the irf exchange see van lier (1996) and nassaji & wells (2000). • the first teacher’s turn is designed to elicit some kind of verbal response from a student. the teacher already knows the answer (is ‘primary knower’), or at least has a specific idea ‘in mind’ of what will counts (sic) as a proper answer. • the second teacher’s turn (the third turn in the exchange) is some kind of comment on the second turn, or on the ‘fit’ between the second and the first. here the student finds out if the answer corresponds with whatever the teacher has ‘in mind’. • it is often clear from the third turn whether or not the teacher was interested in the information contained in the response, or merely in the form of the answer, or in seeing if the student knew the answer or not. • if the exchange is part of a series, as is often the case, there is behind the series a plan and a direction determined by the teacher. the teacher ‘leads’, the students ‘follow’. in recent years, the validity of the irf exchange has been revisited and deeply discussed. for example, nassaji & wells (2000) present a detailed account of the different configurations and possibilities the irf offers for learning. one important conclusion of their study is that the irf is not necessarily a useless exchange and might have learning potential when the third turn (the f turn) is conceived as open and not evaluative (that’s why they call the f move follow-up rather than feedback). however, for the present discussion i will concentrate on a configuration of the irf exchange as including a feedback, evaluative move. this stems from the pervasive nature of the evaluative move in the lessons i have had the chance to observe. an example of the irf exchange from a sixth grade lesson on the topic of routines and times, 55 authentic oral interaction in the efl class: what it means, what it does not profile vol. 12, no. 1, 2010. issn 1657-0790. bogotá, colombia. pages 47-61 with the f-move in the evaluative function, is presented below (table 3). the example illustrates a common event in the efl class. in fact, it is so common that it has come to dominate teacher-student interaction in many of the lessons i have had the chance to observe. the first irf exchange occurs between turns 1 and 3: the teacher starts by asking the question “what time…what time... do you get up?” (the eliciting turn or initiation), and the student provides an answer to that question saying “i get up at six o’clock” (the response), and in the third turn the teacher gives her feedback or evaluation with “very good” (the feedback, or follow up). this pattern is repeated from turns 3 to 8, 9 to 13, and 14 to 16. despite its common use in the efl class, this type of interaction has several implications that, in my opinion, limit rather than propel meaningful learning. the first one has to do with the amount of student talk it promotes. as can be seen in the example, the teacher dominates the talk to a point that she produces 62.5% of the participation (10 out of 16 turns). this leaves the 35 students she has with only 37.5% of the chances to use the language orally. following a very simplistic but logical equation, the more chances students have to use the language orally, the more opportunities they might have for developing their oral communication abilities. however, that is not the case in this example where student participation is significantly reduced, nor is it the case in some of the different studies where teacher-student interaction has been analyzed and where the irf exchange usually accounts for two thirds of the total interaction (van lier, 1996) that occurs in a classroom. table 3. transcript 3 turn student transcript 1 t victor? what time…what time... do you get up? 2 victor i get up at six o’clock. 3 t i get up at six o’clock. very good… ¿qué estaré preguntando? [what am i asking?] 4 s? ¿qué hora es? [what time is it?] 5 t no, what time do you get up? 6 s? ¿a qué… a qué hora se levanta?... [what time do you get up?] at six... 7 t seis y media [half past six], not at 6:00… good… 8 t faber…what time do you get up? 9 f i get up at in english. 10 t i get up at... y me dices la hora [and you tell time the time] 11 faber …((goes on thinking, no does not provide any answer)) 12 t ok faber te dejo pensando [i’ll let you think] 13 t cristian, what time do you get up? 14 cristian i get up at 5:00. 15 t i get up at 5:00, very good. 16 t now... let’s continue. 56 universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras herazo rivera another issue worth analyzing has to do with the roles each one of the participants of the exchange assumes in the talk. in the example, the teacher is the one who always initiates the talk, as is evident in turns 1, 8 and 13, where she asks different students the question, ‘what time do you get up?’. she also fulfils the roles of a) reuttering, or re-casting, what students say (turns 3, 10 and 16) in order to acknowledge their participation; b) evaluating students’ answers by accepting (turns 3 and 15: ‘very good’) or rejecting them (turns 5 and 7, ‘no, not at six’); c) deciding who is supposed to talk (turns 1, 8, and 13 where she nominates participants), and d) deciding the course the interaction will follow (turn 16, ‘now… let’s continue’). the students, on the other hand, are left with the role of providing only an answer to the teacher’s elicitations (turns 2, 4, 6, 9 and 11). the fact that it is the teacher who manages the talk by assuming different roles, and in doing so uses language to fulfill varied communicative functions, leaves the learner with scarce opportunities to use the language communicatively and for different purposes, thus reducing the amount and variety of efl practice in the classroom. in terms of spontaneity, content relevance, promotion of automaticity, and the coupling of form and meaning, this piece of interaction seems to have the same problems discussed in the previous section for student-student interaction. namely, that the third turns of the irf instances are evaluativesomething very rare in authentic conversation; the conversation is not oriented towards exchanging meaningful relevant contents, but towards verifying knowledge (grammar and pronunciation); and finally, answers and questions do not appear to flow in an automatic fashion, appropriately coupled one to the other in a contingent way, but in jumps from verifying form to exchanging meaning. these reasons, then, seem to make this piece of interaction unrealistic and thus barely significant for the development of foreign language proficiency. one final issue worth considering in this analysis has to do with conversational symmetry (van lier, 1996). this aspect refers to how the rights and responsibilities are distributed in the conversation. that is to say, each of the participants has the right to decide when to talk and what to say3 and is not told when to talk or what to say. in the efl classroom it is usually the teacher who makes the decision of who talks next and what he/she should talk about, but this is something that does not usually happen in real talk. in our example, the teacher is ‘the one in charge’ and tells the students when to talk and what to say. although it is the teacher’s responsibility to guarantee that the interaction flows in an orderly way, exercising too much control through this type of interaction might generate students’ reluctance to participate and thus result in less motivation, not to mention the implications it might have for the distribution of power and the perpetuation of the status quo in the classroom (lemke, 1990, cited in nassaji & wells, 2000). although the irf exchange is the most common type of interaction that occurs in the efl class, it is not the only one. there are other types of interaction whose characteristics seem to contribute more successfully to developing language learning. one of them is the type of interaction van lier (1996) calls the ‘pedagogical conversation’, or contingent interaction. i will describe it in the following subsection. 3 this is also referred to as talk management and topic management (kumaravadivelu, 2003). 57 authentic oral interaction in the efl class: what it means, what it does not profile vol. 12, no. 1, 2010. issn 1657-0790. bogotá, colombia. pages 47-61 interaction sample no. 4: contingent interaction contrary to the irf exchange, contingent interaction seems to be related to the concept of conversation. in van lier’s terms, conversation is aimed at the construction of communicative symmetry, or equal (or at least almost equal) “distribution of rights and duties in the talk” (1996, p. 175). in contingent interaction there is no certainty as regards the direction the talk will take, for it depends on the local, moment-to-moment positions and contributions of each of the participants. as vygotsky (1986) puts it, in conversation, every sentence is prompted by a motive. desire or need lead to request, question to answer, bewilderment to explanation. the changing motives of the interlocutors determine at every moment the turn oral speech will take: it does not have to be consciously directed –the dynamic situation takes care of that. (p. 99) relating the concept of contingent interaction to the way proficiency grows, it is possible to say that it is in contingent interaction where “language provides affordances that engage learners” (van lier, 1996, p. 171); that is, where learning opportunities are created and learners take advantage of them. in this way, the complex set of processes that underpin l2 learning might be more effectively activated. before we go on, let us see an example4. the teacher has been asking learners to talk about their favorite movies when one of the learners introduces a topic within the flow of the talk. this piece of interaction is different from the first one we studied (the irf exchange) and, in my opinion as well as that of several authors (seedhouse, 2007; van lier, 1996; wood, 1988), seems to have important implications for the development of foreign language proficiency and learning in general. one such implication comes from the fact that in this example the student’s amount of talk is higher and richer than in example 3. in this case, the student’s amount of talk constitutes 50% of the turns, which means that the students might have more opportunities for using the language in communication. the above is also related to the fact that it is no longer the teacher who starts topics or expands on them. as could be seen in the example, the learner 4 this example comes from seedhouse, 2007, p. 12. table 4. transcript 4 turn student transcript 1 s kung fu 2 t kung fu? you like the movie kung fu? 3 s yeah… fight. 4 t that was about a great fighter? a man who knows how to fight with his hands. 5 s i fight… my hand 6 t you know how to find with your hands? 7 s i fight with my hand. 8 t do you know karate? 9 s i know karate. 10 t watch out guys, wang knows karate. 58 universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras herazo rivera initiates the talk about kung fu (turn 1), takes it in the direction he wants (his fighting abilities, turn 5), is ‘primary knower’5 of the information (turns 3, 5 and 9) and uses what the teacher says to build his own talk. this interaction seems to be more symmetric than what happens in example 3 and, as a result, is some steps ahead in the process of developing efl learning. one additional point of discussion is that it is the learner who initiates the talk or proposes a topic for discussion (turn 1). the teacher then steers towards the student’s utterance and asks a genuine question about it (turn 2, kung fu? you like the movie kung fu?); that is, the teacher is truly interested in the information he is asking for and, contrary to the irf exchange, does not know the answer in advance (he is no longer ‘primary knower’). this causes the exchange to develop in a more realistic way for the teacher and student are sharing true information and are interested in doing so because the teacher is not evaluating the student’s contribution but commenting on it and subtly helping the learner construct what he wants to say. additionally, in the example above, the talk started by the student’s presentation of his favorite movie and ended up in an exchange about his fighting abilities, with the joke the teacher makes in turn 10. this, in vygotsky’s words, means that the dynamics of the situation took care of the course the talk followed, of its unpredictability. this exemplifies one of the characteristics of contingent interaction, if not the most salient. following seedhouse’s (2007) analysis of this same excerpt, it is important to note that the student’s grammatical resources are fairly limited, but this does not impede him from initiating the talk (turn 1), developing it (turn 3) and turning the discussion to his fighting abilities (turn 5). we can also see how the student “very skillfully manages 5 see nassaji & wells (2000). to co-construct meaning with t in the l2 from his limited grammatical resources” (turn 12). what this shows is that students can in fact not only initiate talk in the classroom and contribute to developing conversation, but can do so with a very few linguistic resources, which contradicts one of the teacher’s most common complaints when developing oral communication in the efl class; namely, that students cannot talk because they do not know enough vocabulary and grammar. this kind of interaction could be related to wood’s (1988) concept of contingent teaching, or van lier’s (1996) ‘pedagogical conversation’, both of which refer to teaching that assists performance through the pacing of help based on the child’s contributions to the interaction. it falls also within the conception of human development as the transformation of participation in sociocultural activity (rogoff, 2003) and within the zpd (vygotsky, 1978) that ohta (2000, cited in seedhouse, 2007) contextualized in relation to second language acquisition as “the distance between the actual developmental level as determined by individual linguistic production, and the level of potential development as determined through language produced collaboratively with a teacher or peer” (p. 9). in transcript 4, and following again seedhouse’s (2007, p. 13) analysis, the learner’s actual developmental level can be seen in turn 3 with the telegraphic utterance “yeah... fight”, which the teacher expands to the native-like form “you know how to fight with your hands?” in turn 6. thanks to the teacher’s embedded support, the learner starts producing more elaborated utterances that seem to be moving up the scale and signal the area of potential development. this is the case of “i fight… my hand” (turn 5) and “i fight with my hand” (turn 7), which are very likely the result of the learner’s noticing and subsequent uptake of the teacher’s 59 authentic oral interaction in the efl class: what it means, what it does not profile vol. 12, no. 1, 2010. issn 1657-0790. bogotá, colombia. pages 47-61 embedded correction and of the scaffold he has constructed through his interaction6. based on the previous two examples, it can be said that the irf exchange seems a limited and limiting interactional format that encourages very little participation on the part of the learner and, as a result, reduces the possibilities for learning the foreign language. contingent interaction, on the other hand, seems to open possibilities for a more symmetric, meaningful, realistic, and effective interactional mode in the pursuit of efl proficiency. conclusions in this paper i have tried to show the different aspects that seem to account for what can be called authentic oral communication in the efl classroom. in order to do so i have presented and contrasted different examples of teacher-student interaction in teacher-centered lessons and student-student interaction in a script-based dialogue and in a contingent conversation based on a survey task. my main claim has been that both the script-based dialogue and the teacher-student irf interaction have very little to offer in terms of efl proficiency growth. i do not mean by this, however, that they should be banned from the language classroom nor that they are a waste of time for both students and teachers. i think they retain some value in terms of pronunciation practice, confidence in handling the sounds of the language, and perhaps motivation, for the first case, as well as controlled language practice and the keeping of an orderly lesson for the second. the major reasons that support my position have to do with the authenticity, content relevance, contingency and symmetry of language use and of the language use situation in both cases (halliday, 6 van lier (2004) presents an interesting revision of the concept of scaffolding as it applies to sla. 1994; van lier, 1996, 2004). as was argued, for oral communication to be authentic there need to be a considerable degree of spontaneity and a true exchange of meaning to which the interacting parties are oriented and in which they are interested. additionally, when the interaction gives no room for the uncertain, for managing it in terms of its linguistic realizations and its topic, little opportunities are offered for students to develop automatic language use and thus make appropriate, online matching of form and meaning. additionally, we have seen that unauthentic communication usually provides a variety of language use roles for the teacher, relegating students to passive members of the language exchange. through the discussion of the different situations that were presented above i have also tried to put together a set of basic criteria for making informed pedagogical and practical decisions as regards what constitutes communication in the foreign language class and of the way we shape, choose or adapt our efl learning activities. in this way, i think, we can better tune the activities we design or choose in order to suit both students’ needs and the demands that the language learning process poses. although my emphasis has been on the secondary school classroom, the proposed criteria might equally serve the purposes of more demanding efl or esl teaching situations. the occurrence of contingent interaction or pedagogical conversation in english in the efl learning contexts i have had access to is extremely scarce. this means that an appealing research path to follow would be to look for pedagogical strategies to engage both teacher and students in learning to generate conversations in english within the classroom. the path is a challenging one, given the conditions in which efl learning takes place in our contexts, but that makes it more fascinating. 60 universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras herazo rivera references bachman, l. f. (1990). fundamental considerations in language testing. london: oxford university press. bitchener, j. (2004). the relationship between the negotiation of meaning and language learning: a longitudinal study. language awareness, 13(2), 81-95. doi: 09658416/04/02 081-15 ellis, r. (1994). the study of second language acquisition. london: oxford university press. ellis, r. (2003). task-based language learning and teaching. oxford: oxford university press. halliday, m. a. k. (1994). an introduction to functional grammar. london: edward arnold. hall, j. k., & verplaetse, l. s. (2000). second and foreign language learning through classroom interaction. london: lawrence erlbaum associates. harmer, j. (2007). how to teach english, harlow: longman. kumaravadivelu, b. (2003). beyond methods: macrostrategies for language teaching. new haven: yale university press. lantolf, j. (2000). sociocultural theory and second language learning. new york: oxford university press. lantolf, j., & s. thorne. (2006). sociocultural theory and the genesis of second language development. oxford: oxford university press. lemke, j. l. (1990). talking science: language, learning, and values. norwood, nj: ablex. long, m. (1983). native speaker/normative speaker conversation and the negotiation of comprehensible input. applied linguistics, 4, 126-141. long, m. (1996). the role of the linguistic environment in second language acquisition. in w. ritchie & t. bhatia (eds.), handbook of language acquisition (vol. 11): second language acquisition (pp. 413-68). new york: academic press. nassaji, h., & g. wells. (2000). what’s the use of ‘triadic dialogue’? an investigation of teacher-student interaction. applied linguistics, 21(3), 376-406. doi:10.1093/ applin/21.3.376 ohta, a. s. (2000). rethinking recasts: a learner centred examination of corrective feedback in the japanese language classroom. in j. k. hall & l. s. verplaetse (eds.). second and foreign language learning through classroom interaction (pp. 47-72). mahwah, nj: lawrence erlbaum associates. pica, t., lincoln-porter, f., paninos, d., & linnell, j. (1996). language learners interaction: how does it address the input, output, and feedback needs of l2 learners? tesol quarterly, 30, 59-84. retrieved from http:// www.jstor.org/stable/3587607 rogoff, b. (2003). the cultural nature of human development. new york: oxford university press. seedhouse, p. (2007). interaction and constructs. language learning and teaching as social inter-action. in z. wei, p., seedhouse, l., wei, & v. cook. (eds.), language learning and teaching as social interaction (pp. 9-21). basingstoke, uk: palgrave macmillan. sinclair, j. m., & coulthard, m. (1975). towards and analysis of discourse: the english used by teachers and pupils. london: oxford university press. swain, m. (2000). the output hypothesis and beyond: mediating acquisition through collaborative dialogue. in j. lantolf (ed.), sociocultural theory and second language learning (pp. 97-114). new york: oxford university press. van den branden, k. (2006). task-based language education: from theory to practice. cambridge: cambridge university press. van lier, l. (1996). interaction in the language curriculum: awareness, autonomy, and authenticity. london: longman. van lier, l. (2000). from input to affordance: social interactive learning from an ecological perspective. in j. lantolf (ed.), sociocultural theory and second language learning (pp. 245-260). new york: oxford university press. van lier, l. (2004). the ecology and semiotics of language learning: a sociocultural perspective. london and new york: kluwer academic press. 61 authentic oral interaction in the efl class: what it means, what it does not profile vol. 12, no. 1, 2010. issn 1657-0790. bogotá, colombia. pages 47-61 vygotsky, l. (1978). mind in society: the development of higher psychological processes. cambridge: harvard university press. vygotsky, l. (1986). thought and language. cambridge: mit press. watanabe, y. (2008). peer-peer interaction between l2 learners of different proficiency levels: their interactions and reflections. canadian modern language review, 64(4), 605-635. doi: 10.1353/cml.0.0008 wood, d. j. (1988). how children think and learn. oxford: basil blackwell. about the author josé david herazo rivera is a full time teacher at universidad de córdoba, montería, colombia. he holds a master’s degree in education and is currently a phd student at the university of pittsburgh (usa). he co-authored the series keynote tests. research interests include task-based language teaching, classroom interaction, and efl learning from a sociocultural perspective. 105profile vol. 11, no. 2, 2009. issn 1657-0790. bogotá, colombia. pages 105-115 parental involvement in english homework tasks: bridging the gap between school and home*1 la participación de los padres de familia en el desarrollo de tareas de inglés: creación de lazos entre la escuela y la casa nelly patricia ávila daza** sandra janneth garavito*** universidad distrital francisco josé de caldas, colombia this paper explores the concept of parental involvement in english homework tasks as a way to include parents in the educational community. this descriptive study was carried out in a female public school with 10 students from third and fourth grades and their parents. in order to obtain the information, different instruments were used: artifacts, interviews, questionnaires and observations. after analyzing the data, it was stated that parental involvement was seen as a means to bridge the gap between the school and home. the findings also showed the possibility of learning from each other and the importance of homework tasks as interactional and learning spaces among parents and children. key words: school and home connections, parental involvement in homework tasks este artículo explora el concepto de la participación de los padres de familia en el desarrollo de las tareas de inglés, como una forma de incluir a los padres de familia en la comunidad educativa. este estudio descriptivo se realizó en un colegio público femenino, con diez estudiantes de tercero y cuarto de primaria y sus padres. para la recolección de la información se utilizaron diferentes instrumentos: artefactos, entrevistas, cuestionarios y observaciones de clase. después de analizar la información se encontró que la intervención de los padres de familia se percibió como un medio para crear lazos entre la casa y el colegio. los resultados también mostraron la posibilidad del aprendizaje mutuo y la importancia de las tareas como espacios de interacción y aprendizaje entre padres e hijos. palabras clave: conexiones entre la escuela y la familia, soporte de los padres de familia en las tareas escolares * this research study was carried out as a requirement to obtain an undergraduate teaching degree at universidad distrital francisco josé de caldas. ** e-mail: nepavda7@gmail.com *** e-mail: sandygara@yahoo.com address: cr 3 no. 26a – 40. universidad distrital francisco josé de caldas. facultad de idiomas. bogotá, colombia. this article was received on may 1, 2009 and accepted on july 28, 2009. 106 ávila daza & garavito universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras introduction schoolwork can be taken as an opportunity to bring parents closer to school and at the same time create a positive learning environment to make learning more interesting. teachers can attempt to promote that link by designing relaxed and meaningful tasks so that children and parents work together. this is the case of homework, which can be designed to encourage children and parents to share time, knowledge and common concerns to fulfill a goal. in doing so, teachers can promote collaborative learning. in addition, parents and children can exchange personal information and increase their knowledge. this way, involving parents allows them to be aware of their vital role in their child’s education. the problem all schools should make an effort to work collaboratively with parents to ultimately improve student achievement (keane, 2007). following this line of thought, this research emerged from the need to integrate parents in children’s school life. the main objective of this study was to describe what happens when parents are involved in the development of their children’s homework. it was also expected that the pedagogical design intended to explore such interaction would tell us about the role of parents’ experiences and knowledge while working with their children to do english homework. in order to do so, the researchers developed a series of tasks in which english homework assignments were sent home to be developed by both parents and students. the main question that was addressed in this research was: what is revealed about parental involvement in homework tasks? another related question was: what is the role of tasks in children and parents’ collaborative learning? theoretical framework since this study was focused on parental involvement in english homework tasks, the following concepts were addressed: parental involvement in children’s education and homework tasks, and ways to involve parents in students’ learning process and collaborative learning. parental involvement in children’s education and homework tasks parental involvement means the participation of parents in regular, two-way, and meaningful communication involving student academic learning and other school activities such as the tasks we applied as a way to bring family closer to school (the no child left behind act, 2002). additionally, we cannot ignore that parental involvement seems to have positive effects on students’ academic performance, and it is important to integrate parents into the school institution in order to share the responsibility of children’s education. furman & buhmester (1985) mention that in spite of school life independence, the family continues to be important for children. escayola (1994) states that the first level of institutionalized education should be an instrument of collaboration with the family in children’s education. for that reason, it is necessary to encourage a collaborative relationship which leads to a system of mutual help. then, school-family teamwork is more likely to produce positive results than the schools systems and families working independently (henderson & mapp, 2002). this research was intended to apply homework tasks as a tool that promotes interaction among 107 parental involvement in english homework tasks... profile vol. 11, no. 2, 2009. issn 1657-0790. bogotá, colombia. pages 105-115 parents and children and at the same time involves parents in their children’s education. homework in this research was defined as out-ofclass tasks assigned to students in order to work collaboratively with parents. walker et al (2004) affirm that homework can be a powerful tool for (a) letting parents and other adults know what the child is learning, (b) giving children and parents a reason to talk about the events that occur at school, and (c) giving teachers an opportunity to hear from parents about the children’s learning. as such, to involve parents in children’s education, an effective school-family partnership that will benefit all involved school staff, parents, and students is necessary. research demonstrates that parental involvement can be an important contributor to student achievement. effective school-family partnerships can have important benefits for parents as well, helping them to perceive their children’s school in a more positive light, enhancing their sense of efficiency as parents and changing the perceptions of their children as learners (ames, 1993; epstein, 1991). ways to involve parents in students’ learning quintero (2006) accounts for a series of ways used to involve parents in students’ literacy learning. the author argues that harding (1996) gives insights into how to involve parents in literacy activities by having children take books home from school and then creating their own stories based on the pictures. after that, parents were in charge of reading the actual story that was written in the book. another way to involve parents is by encouraging them to listen to their children reading to them (hannon, 1995). quintero (2006) further mentions a research study developed by barillas (2000) in which children were encouraged to develop writing activities at home together with their parents and siblings. the homework tasks used as a way to involve parents in students’ learning in this research were also aimed at having children work at home with their parents in different written activities. collaborative learning another aspect we considered in our study was to involve parents in order to work as a team with students helping each other in their learning process. this is connected to collaborative learning, which is organized in a way that allows students to talk with each other (golub, 1988). as the author asserts, it is in this talking that much of the learning occurs. collaborative learning aims at having students work with those students who have more knowledge to get guidance or orientation (brown, 2001). in this research parental involvement is used in homework tasks as a collaborative effort between parents and children using their context and life’s information. collaborative learning has been supported by social constructivism. this teaching philosophy promotes individual as well as social growth. according to vygotsky (1979), social constructivism emphasizes the critical importance of culture and the importance of the social context for cognitive development. according to him, the next four principles apply to social constructivism philosophy: • learning and development are social, collaborative activities. • the zone of proximal development can serve as a guide for curricular and lesson planning. • school learning should occur in a meaningful context and not be separated from learning 108 ávila daza & garavito universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras and knowledge that children develop in the “real world”. • out ofschool experiences should be related to the child’s school experiences. instructional design english classes were based on tasks. a task is a piece of classroom work which involves learners in comprehending, manipulating, producing or interacting in the target language while their attention is principally focused on meaning rather than on form (nunan, 1989). open tasks were used in this study. willis (1998) argues that open tasks are those activities that are loosely structured, with a less specific goal. for example, comparing memories of childhood journeys, or exchanging anecdotes on a theme. inside these types of tasks the same author further adds there is a sub category that is based on sharing personal experiences. these tasks encourage learners to talk more freely about themselves and share their experiences with others. the tasks were based on 9 topics that the children had already experienced in an attempt to develop meaningful learning. the themes were organized as shown in figure 1: figure 1. topics for tasks the themes presented were useful to inquire into the knowledge that children and parents had regarding general information about each other. likewise, the activities were applied for children to acquire vocabulary and simple sentence structures that allowed them to describe people and real events they had experienced. every topic was partially developed through a pretask that was carried out in the classroom. in the homework, which was the post-task, girls were asked to finish the task they began in the classroom. usually they were asked to carry out a similar task as the one proposed in the classroom with their parents (see appendix 1). the students’ role was that of mediators bridging the gap between parents and teachers by explaining the topics and the activities to their parents. parents were active participants who developed, with the help of their children, different activities as part of the homework and according to the topics. parents interacted with their kids at home offering help, giving them suggestions and providing them with feedback but, above all, sharing information. the study context and participants this study was carried out in a girls’ school in bogotá. this public educational institution aims to promote a holistic education involving all important aspects in life in order to educate women who can participate and contribute to the society they belong to. the participants in this study were 10 girls (5 from third grade and 5 from fourth grade) and their parents. the 10 girls were chosen at random. all of them and their parents signed a consent form to take part in the development of our study. the girls’ ages ranged from 8 to 10 years old. they 109 parental involvement in english homework tasks... profile vol. 11, no. 2, 2009. issn 1657-0790. bogotá, colombia. pages 105-115 lived with their parents in various neighborhoods in bogotá, colombia. on the other hand, 13 parents were involved in this study: 10 mothers and 3 fathers who had various occupations such as housewives, managers, independent workers, merchants, dressmakers, assistants, cashiers and teachers. these parents attended some informal meetings in which the teacher-researchers informed them about the english homework tasks that they were supposed to complete with their daughters. the topics of the tasks as well as their organization were shared with parents. parents were given ample opportunity for questions about the homework assignments. then, they were invited to be part of their children’s educational process. the teacher-researchers provided parents with specific information regarding the importance of supporting students in homework assignments. hoover-dempsey & sandler (1995) mention that parents choose to become involved in homework because they believe they should do so and because they believe their involvement will make a positive difference in their children’s learning. in this research parents who wanted to participate had the same feeling. type of research this descriptive research followed the principles of a qualitative case study. in connection to this, merriam (1988) argues it is an examination of a specific phenomenon such as a program, an event, a person, a process, an institution, or a social group. data collection procedures in order to collect data, the following instruments were used: artifacts (from children and parents), observation notes, surveys and interviews. regarding artifacts, parents and students did all the activities of the pedagogical intervention in an individual notebook (see appendix 1). observations were also considered. marshall & rossman (1989) indicate that observation is a fundamental and highly important method in all qualitative inquiry. it is used to discover complex interaction in natural social settings. observations were carried out in class every session. students were observed while developing the pre task and the task in the classroom. surveys were also used. nunan (1992) quotes that survey data are collected through questionnaires or interviews, or a combination of questionnaires and interviews. in this study questionnaires and interviews were used for collecting data since both were complementary. we used three questionnaires along the project; the first one came into use at the beginning of the research in order to get general information about parents’ occupation, level of education, english level, and their willingness to participate in the project with their children. the second one was applied to the parents and children in the middle of the research process to identify what was happening with the interaction among parents and their children during the development of the different homework tasks as well as to collect their impressions, suggestions, expectations and comments about the project. finally, individual interviews with children and parents were applied. girls were interviewed in the middle of the research and their parents at the end of it. girls were interviewed in the classroom and parents were interviewed at their homes. findings the information was collected during one academic year. categories emerged after reading, 110 ávila daza & garavito universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras analyzing, and rereading the data gathered. first of all, common patterns were highlighted in each instrument, and classified using different colors. after that, they were named provisionally and finally categories emerged. in order to answer our research question and the sub-question, we identified two categories and one subcategory. the categories as well as the subcategories are summarized in the following table: table 1. categories derived from data analysis questions category main question what is revealed about parental involvement in homework tasks? homework tasks: the pathway to learn from each other sub-question what is the role of tasks in childrenparents, collaborative learning? developing strategies to promote interaction among parents and children homework tasks: the pathway to learn from each other in this research, parental involvement in homework tasks showed that parents and children were willing to listen to each other. consequently, parental involvement in homework tasks was seen as a process in which participants could learn from each other. in the following extract of an interview a mother mentions that during the homework tasks she could talk to her daughter about her and her husband’s life experiences. 550. r: did you know about the activities carried out during the class? 551. p: off course, i did. it was at the beginning of the year. 552. r: how did you like them? 553. p: well, doing the homework assignments was pretty beautiful. 554. p. my daughter was laughing all the time because it was 555. p. funny for her to know things about her 555. p: father and i. there were many things she did not know about our life. (t2, i2, mother) the homework tasks that parents and children carried out became an excuse and an opportunity to gain confidence and knowledge. it was also noticed that while students developed the activities assigned with their parents, they realized they did not know their parents’ personalities. similarly, when students were interviewed, they said that they got home and asked their parents what was asked of them. in the following extract from field notes, taken during an activity where a student wrote in her notebook what her parents’ favorite song was, the girl mentioned her concern for not being able to answer the question since she did not know what to write. the students wrote their parents’ favorite song, the name of the singer, and where the singer was from in the notebook. at the beginning of the activity a student said “teacher what should i do? i do not know what my parents’ favorite song is”. the teacher answered: “try to remember a song they listen to a lot”. but she said “no, i do not know, we do not listen to music together”. so, the teacher told the student that if she did not know her parents´ favorite song, she could write only the kind of music her parents preferred” (classroom 303: o.4, oct. 5th). the same issue was observed in an interview with one of the girls’ fathers. 435. r: how did you feel carrying out the english tasks? 436. p: i felt pretty well because it was a lot fun. 111 parental involvement in english homework tasks... profile vol. 11, no. 2, 2009. issn 1657-0790. bogotá, colombia. pages 105-115 i learned many things about my 437. p: daughter. there were many aspects about her life at school 438. p: and at home that i did not know. one feels 439. p: really happy to know about ones daughter. 440. p: i have also told her many things about my own life. (t2, i2, father) it is evident the lack of seemingly simple knowledge that parents and children have about one another. it was found that the tasks gave parents as well as children the opportunity to get to know their likes, feelings, and personality. through discussing the preferences in terms of foods, music, places, etc., children had the opportunity to know other facets of their parents who, in the same way, discovered in their children aspects they were not aware of until that moment. as a consequence and as was mentioned previously, they had difficulties when giving some information about each other, showing that there was a lack of communication among them. in this regard cohen (2000) affirms that through time, children have demonstrated that adults also have a lot to learn from their own world. the answers given in interviews, by some students and parents of both grades, to the questions related to the relationship among parents and children revealed that children learn from their parents through interacting with them. on account of that, we looked for the factors that could and did affect interaction and communication. thus, it was found that lack of time was the most common reason why parents and children did not interact, and we could see why time is an important factor that influences interaction between parents and children and, therefore, their collaborative work. this situation could reduce periods of interaction, so children and parents did not have the opportunity to exchange experiences and ideas. nowadays, many parents have jobs with working days. some of them have additional part time jobs. the current world offers us many distractions to make family interaction less frequent every day. fernoso (1976) indicates that family socialization is often affected by a lack of organization and a search for entertainment, or other activities that the modern world offers us such as t.v. through this research, it was confirmed that parents’ lack of time with their children was the main cause for their not interacting and sharing their experiences with their children. children have had to resign themselves to having part time parents who arrive tired at home with only the desire to rest. therefore, parents’ jobs become the main reason for them not be with their children. quintanilla (1993) affirms that it demonstrates that work can cause the loss of parents’ valuable time with their children. this issue was evidenced in the teacher’s notes. a teacher-researcher wrote the following: the teacher wrote on the board the title of the activity, and then she told the children to do a cartoon related to “one day in their parents’ life”. during this activity, one student said “my mother wakes up very early in the morning, it is still dark” and another girl close to teacher claimed: “teacher, i do not know what to write because my parents work all day long” (classroom 405: o.3, september 30th). the next quotation taken from a survey given to parents shows how a father commented on his lack of time to do tasks with his daughter. bearing in mind that homework was done by parents and children, we could see the difficulty in getting them together to do these exercises. do you have any suggestion for the project? 112 ávila daza & garavito universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras … well, sometimes there is not time to do the assigned tasks (s2, q3. parents). the next extract is part of an english activity in which students wrote when they were happy, sad, worried, bored, etc. in this case, one student demonstrated that she was bored when her parents did not have time to play with her. here, it is evident that parents had different things to do so they could not be with their daughter, which the girl disliked. figure 2. i am bored when my parents are busy because they cannot play with me.(student’s artifact)1 some children spoke of their parents’ lack of time, but they justified their actions because they were aware of the necessity the parents had to work, and the responsibility they have to the family. time is definitely one of the factors that affected parents’ as well as children’s opportunities to interact. because of the previous issues, it was noticed that tasks were an excuse for students and parents to interact and, at the same time, an opportunity to have a space to share. developing strategies to promote interaction among parents and children english homework tasks were spaces in which the children could interact collaboratively with their parents and at the same time get help from them. in the following information taken from 1 translation of the artifact. some parents’ questionnaires when they were asked about the contribution that the project gave to the collaborative work with their daughters, it is clearly stated that while they developed the tasks with their daughter’s help, an interaction space was opened up among them. in addition, they could share in a pleasant way. what impact do the homework tasks have on you? we share more (s.2, q4. mother 1) we have a lot of fun together (s.2, q4. mother 2) we talk more and i know who my daughter is (s.2, q.4, mother 3) we exchange ideas (s.2, q.4, mother 4) the excerpt above indicates that interaction is an opportunity to get to know each other. the activities are carried out in a friendly environment. this, in turn, encourages confidence and allows them to talk about their lives. in the following extract we can see how mother and daughter take advantage of the situation to work as a team. as can be read in lines 543-547, mother showed that thanks to the english homework tasks they had a moment to share, enjoy and be together. 543. r: did you find any difficulty during the process? 544. p: sometimes we had to look for books or dictionaries to understand. 545. p: however, i think that the most important aspect was the 546. p: time we dedicated to each other we 547. p: could be together and we helped each other (t2, i2, mother). in addition, through an artifact, a student demonstrated that she had a good time and was pleased with her parents while they did the english homework tasks. here, we could find that the girl did the homework with her mother, which allowed them to establish dialogue and collaboration. 113 parental involvement in english homework tasks... profile vol. 11, no. 2, 2009. issn 1657-0790. bogotá, colombia. pages 105-115 in the sample from an artifact, parents pointed out that they had a pleasant time with their daughters while carrying out the tasks. consequently, during the interaction among parents and children doing the english homework tasks, a link was created to bridge the gap between parents and the school. figure 3. my mum paid attention to me. she understood the homework task and we could do the homework together. it was a lot of fun. (student artifact)2 conclusions through the development of this research, we could not agree more with walker et al. (2004, p. 8) “because they [children] are at the center of the homework process, teachers play critical roles in helping parents become effectively involved in student homework. in sharing ideas for homework involvement with parents, school-age care professionals, and parent leaders, teachers increase community support for student learning”. we realized that tasks play an important role and can be used as a way to involve parents in children´s education. as english teachers we sometimes underestimate the interest of parents in being involved in the education of their children, and the interest of children in completing successful academic activities with their parents. furthermore, while carrying out this research project, we evidenced some principles of critical pedagogy. children, parents and the school 2 translation of the artifact. were considered equally important in the teaching and learning processes and in order to make this possible, we as teachers should create different strategies to link the principal actors in children’s education and we can use different tools to generate spaces where children and parents can interact and learn together. in our case, parental involvement in homework tasks generated important and successful interaction. then, we saw how aspects related to transforming the relationship among classroom teaching, the production of knowledge, the institutional structures of the school, and the social and material relation of the wider community (mclaren, 1989) were tackled. references ames, c. (1993). parent involvement: the relationship between school-to-home communication and parents’ perceptions and beliefs. report no. 15. baltimore, md: center on families, communities, schools, and children’s learning. brown, d. (2001). teaching by principles: an interactive approach to language pedagogy. san francisco state university: longman. cohen, d. (2000). como aprenden los niños. méxico d.f.: fondo de cultura económica. epstein, j. l. (1991). effects on student achievement of teachers’ practices of parent involvement. language research, 5, 261-276. escayola, i. (1994). la participación de los padres y madres en la escuela. padres y educadores: “un encuentro singular”. venezuela, caracas: editorial laboratorio educativo. fernoso, p. (1976). teoría de la educación. madrid: argullo. furman, w., & buhrmester, d. (1985). children’s perceptions of the personal relationships in their social networks. developmental psychology, 21(6), 1016-1024. 114 ávila daza & garavito universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras golub, j. (ed). (1988). focus on collaborative learning. urbana, il: national council of teachers of english. hannon, p. (1995). literacy, home and school: research and practice in teaching literacy with parents. london: falmer press. henderson, a. t., & mapp, k. l. (2002). a new wave of evidence: the impact of school, family, and community connections on student achievement. austin, tx: national center of family & community connections with schools, southwest educational development laboratory. ed 474-521. hoover-dempsey, k., & sandler, h. (1995). parental involvement in children’s education: why does it make a difference? teachers college record, 97(2), 310331. keane, t. (2007). improving parent involvement in schools: a cultural perspective. rivier academic journal, 3(2). retrieved on february 25, 2009 from web site: http:// www.rivier.edu/journal/roaj-fall-2007/j123-keane. pdf marshall, c., & rossman, g. (1989). designing qualitative research. thousand oaks: sage. merriam, s. b. (1988). case study research in education: a qualitative approach. san francisco: jossey-bass. mclaren, p. (1989). life in schools: an introduction of critical pedagogy and the foundations of education. boston: allyn and bacon. no child left behind act of 2001, pub. i. no 107-110, sect. 9109(32), 115 stat. 1425 (2002). retrieved june 22, 2008, from web site: http://www.ed.gov/policy/elsec/ leg/esea02/pg107.html#sec9109 nunan, d. (1989). designing tasks for the communicative classrooms. cambridge: cambridge university press. nunan, d. (1992). research methods in language learning. cambridge: cambridge university press. quintanilla, j. (1993). pedagogía familiar. españa: narcea ediciones. quintero, l. m. (2006). school literacy practices closer to home: the new challenge of literacy learning. colombian applied linguistics, 8, 216-227. vigotsky, l. (1979). el desarrollo de los procesos psicológicos superiores. buenos aires: grijalbo. walker, j. m., hoover-dempsey, k., whetsel, d., & green, c. (2004). parental involvement in homework. a review of current research and its implications for teachers, after school program staff, and parent leaders. harvard: harvard family research projects. willis, j. (1998). a framework for task-based learning. london: longman. about the authors nelly patricia ávila daza holds a b.ed in english as a foreign language from universidad distrital francisco josé de caldas. she currently works as a full-time teacher at institucion educativa departamental in funza, cundinamarca. sandra janneth garavito holds a b.ed. in english as a foreign language from universidad distrital francisco josé de caldas. she is an auxiliary researcher in a research group at javeriana university in an m.a. program. she currently works as a full-time teacher at institución educativa distrital orlando higuita rojas in bogotá. acknowledgements the authors wish to thank professor bertha ramos holguín, assistant professor at universidad pedagógica y tecnológica de colombia. she was our research advisor and guided us in the writing of this article. 115 parental involvement in english homework tasks... profile vol. 11, no. 2, 2009. issn 1657-0790. bogotá, colombia. pages 105-115 appendix 1: post task sample children’s artifact parents’ artifact 63profile vol. 14, no. 2, october 2012. issn 1657-0790 (printed) 2256-5760 (online). bogotá, colombia. pages 63-75 teachers’ perceptions about oral corrective feedback and their practice in efl classrooms percepciones de los docentes acerca de la retroalimentación correctiva y su práctica en las aulas de inglés como lengua extranjera edith hernández méndez* maría del rosario reyes cruz** universidad de quintana roo, mexico corrective feedback has been discussed mainly in second language acquisition contexts, but less has been done concerning corrective feedback in foreign language settings. in this descriptive study, conducted at a mexican university, our aims were to identify the perceptions of instructors of english as a foreign language about corrective feedback and its actual practice in their classrooms. a semistructured interview and a questionnaire were used to collect the data. the results show that teachers in general have a positive perception of oral corrective feedback. however, some consider it as optional because instructors are very concerned with students’ feelings and emotions. unfocused oral cor rective feedback and implicit strategies are predominant in practice. corrective feedback provided by the instructor is preferred to that provided by peers. self-correction is the least popular. key words: corrective feedback, efl, perceptions, practice. la retroalimentación correctiva se ha discutido principalmente en contextos de adquisición de segundas lenguas, pero poco se ha hecho en el área de lenguas extranjeras. esta investigación descriptiva, realizada en una universidad mexicana, tuvo como objetivo identificar las percepciones de profesores de inglés como lengua extranjera sobre retroalimentación correctiva y su práctica. para la recolección de datos se usaron una entrevista semiestructurada y un cuestionario. los resultados muestran que si bien los profesores en general tienen una percepción positiva sobre la retroalimentación correctiva oral, algunos la consideran opcional, pues les preocupan los sentimientos y emociones de los estudiantes. en la práctica predominan la retroalimentación correctiva oral no enfocada y las estrategias implícitas. asimismo, se prefiere la retroalimentación correctiva que ofrece el docente y la autocorrección es la menos común. palabras clave: inglés lengua extranjera, percepciones, práctica, retroalimentación correctiva. * e-mail: edith@uqroo.mx ** e-mail: rosreyes@uqroo.mx this article was received on december 6, 2011, and accepted on may 14, 2012. universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras64 hernández méndez & reyes cruz introduction errors in most cultures are seen as something we should avoid or prevent, as errors can be the cause even of unfortunate events. to deal with them, then, is not easy. when talking about errors in language learning or language acquisition, we cannot help but become part of a very controversial topic, either on the theoretical or methodological (pedagogical) side. han (2008) suggests that error correction implies an evident and direct correction, whereas corrective feedback is a more general way of providing some clues, or eliciting some correction, besides the direct correction made by the teacher. for the sake of clarity, we will refer to correction as corrective feedback in this paper. although the role of corrective feedback has been discussed from both theoretical and methodological viewpoints, one wonders: what occurs in practice in real foreign language classrooms? how are these theories and methodologies translated and implemented with real language learners? these questions have been around for some decades now, and problems with regard to the use of corrective feedback or its absence in the language classroom have been identified, to wit: a) the inconsistency, ambiguity, and ineffectiveness of teachers’ corrections (allwright, 1975; chaudron, 1977; long, 1977); b) ambiguous, random and unsystematic feedback on errors by teachers (lyster & mori, 2006); c) acceptance of errors for fear of interrupting communication; and d) a wide range of learner error types addressed as corrective feedback (lyster & ranta, 1997). corrective feedback (cf) has been discussed mainly in second language acquisition contexts, but less has been done in foreign language settings. therefore, this paper reports the findings from a study conducted at a mexican university where english as a foreign language is taught to all undergraduate students who have, as a graduation requirement, a need to cover four prescribed levels of english (from introduction to intermediate). our aims were to identify the efl (english as a foreign language) instructors’ perceptions about cf and its actual practice in their classrooms. our specific questions were: what are the teachers’ perceptions about corrective feedback? what are the teachers’ self-reported ways of implementing corrective feedback in their classrooms? this paper is organized into three sections. first, an overview of cf in literature is presented. we discuss mainly the changing viewpoints with regard to cf, and then we describe strategies employed to provide oral corrective feedback, considering the provider, the frequency of provision, the type of error, and the type of strategy. the next section includes a description of the method used to conduct this descriptive study. the research findings as well as a discussion and interpretation make up section 3. data from both the questionnaire and the interview are integrated in the discussion. finally, a conclusion and some suggestions are offered for efl teaching. corrective feedback the term corrective feedback has been defined at different times in a very similar way. one of the earliest definitions is that of chaudron (1977), who considers it as “any reaction of the teacher which clearly transforms, disapprovingly refers to, or demands improvement of the learner utterance” (p. 31). more recently, ellis, loewen and erlam (2006) stated that: corrective feedback takes the form of responses to learner utterances that contain error. the responses can consist of (a) an indication that an error has been committed, (b) pro vision of the correct target language form, or (c) meta-linguistic information about the nature of the error, or any combination of these. (p. 340) 65profile vol. 14, no. 2, october 2012. issn 1657-0790 (printed) 2256-5760 (online). bogotá, colombia. pages 63-75 teachers’ perceptions about oral corrective feedback and their practice in efl... although all these definitions include the learners’ and teacher’s participation, and thus, a classroom as the setting where cf takes place, this can also occur in naturalistic settings where native or non-native speakers can provide it. interestingly, in the foreign language contexts, sheen (2011) points out that not all cf occurs because of a communication breakdown; teachers can use it to draw the learners’ attention to form even in those situations where they comprehend each other. this means that cf can carry negotiation of meaning and negotiation of form as well. the role and importance of cf in efl pedagogy can vary from teacher to teacher. this may depend on their previous education and training, teaching experience, and their own experience as language learners, amongst others. cf is a very contro versial issue in this regard. perspectives toward errors have gone from the extreme of non acceptance and preventing them at all cost, to more permissive perspectives in which errors are seen as part of the language development. next, we present a summary of the main issues concerned with the provision of oral cf. types of oral corrective feedback strategies sheen (2011) classifies cf strategies into seven types; yao (2000) added body language as another strategy. table 1 illustrates this and a more detailed study follows. recasts “a recast is a reformulation of the learner’s erroneous utterance that corrects all or part of the learner’s utterance and is embedded in the continuing discourse” (sheen, 2011, p. 2). recasts can be partial or whole (only a part or the whole utterance is reformulated, respectively). they can be didactic or conversational. the former is a partial or whole reformulation that draws the learner’s attention to the error made. the purpose is merely pedagogical. on the other hand, the conversation recasts take place when there is a breakdown in communi cation, and the corrector reformulates to verify if he comprehends what is intended. the following dialogs illustrate this strategy: s: i have 20 years old.1 t: i am (partial didactic recast) s: i can lend your pen? t: what? s: can i lend your pen? t: you mean, can i borrow your pen? (conversation recast) explicit correction the correct form is provided by the instructor. sheen (2011) indicates that phrases such as “it’s not x but y”, “you should say x”, “we say x not y” usually accompany this treatment. example: s: she go to school every day. t: it’s not “she go”, but “she goes”. (sample of our own) explicit correction with meta-linguistic explanation the correct form and a meta-linguistic comment on the form are provided. let us see the following example: 1 s= student; t= teacher. samples are of our own. table 1. types of cf strategies (based on sheen, 2011 and yao, 2000) correct form is provided correct form is elicited • recasts • explicit correction • explicit correction with meta-linguistic explanation • repetition • elicitation • meta-linguistic cue • body language • clarification requests universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras66 hernández méndez & reyes cruz s: yesterday rained. t: yesterday it rained. you need to include the pronoun “it” before the verb. in english we need “it” before this type of verb related to weather. (sample taken from sheen, 2011) repetition in order to elicit the correct form, the wrong utterance is repeated (partially or entirely). we suggest that this repetition is generally accompanied by some intonation change emphasizing the error or in a question form. example: s: i eated a sandwich. t: i eated a sandwich? (sample of our own) elicitation this strategy takes place when there is a repetition of the learners’ erroneous utterance up to the point when the error occurs. this way self correction is promoted. example: s: when did you went to the market? t: when did you...? (sample of our own) meta-linguistic cue this strategy is similar to “explicit correction with meta-linguistic explanation” to some extent, but it differs in that there is a meta-linguistic comment by the corrector, but the correct form is not provided. self-correction is then encouraged. example: s: there were many woman in the meeting. t. you need plural. (sample of our own) body language the corrector uses either a facial expression or a body movement to indicate that what the student said is incorrect. a frown, head shaking, or finger signaling “no” can be observed (yao, 2000). example: s: she doesn’t can swim. t: mmm. (t. shakes her head= no). (sample of our own) these strategies can be classified into those which provide some input (correct form is provided) or the learner is prompted to generate some output by himself (correct form is elicited). clarification requests when the learner’s utterance has an error and a clarification is requested: “sorry?”, “pardon me?” i don’t understand what you just said. example: s: how many years do you have? t: sorry? (sample of our own) another useful categorization of strategies is that which divides them into explicit cf and implicit cf. with explicit, there is an overt linguistic signal in the correction; with implicit the correction is prompted or elicited without an overt linguistic signal. the preference for one type or the other may depend on the teacher. a very important factor to consider when choosing the cf strategy is its effect on learner uptake, which is defined by lyster and ranta (1997) as “a student utterance that immediately follows the teacher’s feedback with the intention of drawing attention to some aspect of the student’s initial utterance” (p. 49). in other words, it’s the learner’s response to the cf received. he has to choose: to repair or not to repair. lyster and ranta call these actions: repair and needs repair. in the former, the learner corrects after receiving cf; in the latter, the learner may acknowledge the correction (but without any correction) or just continue talking. focused and unfocused cf is another way of providing correction in the classroom setting. the former refers to the “intensive corrective feedback 67profile vol. 14, no. 2, october 2012. issn 1657-0790 (printed) 2256-5760 (online). bogotá, colombia. pages 63-75 teachers’ perceptions about oral corrective feedback and their practice in efl... that repeatedly targets one or a very limited number of linguistic features”; unfocused cf is “extensive corrective feedback that targets a range of grammatical structures” (sheen, 2011, p. 8). we can also understand unfocused cf as that feedback that targets any feature of a language level: pronunciation, grammar, semantics, pragmatics; and many structures, phonemes, and categories at the same time. another issue regarding how to provide cf has to do with the dichotomy individual vs. group correction. some instructors consider individual correction as an activity that may prevent further participation in the classroom because they see cf as an inhibitor, as something that may damage learners’ feelings; therefore, they favor group correction. a differing view is that individual correction seems more effective, as the learners addressed becomes aware of their errors, notices the error, and corrects. when using group cor rection, many students do not even acknowledge the errors they made and there is no repair at all. although the literature on corrective feedback generally does not discuss the possibility that the strategies to provide cf can vary, depending on the learners’ language proficiency and meta linguistic vocabulary, in practice this is something that can occur. for instance, it may be difficult to provide explicit correction with meta-linguistic explanation to beginners in the target language, and probably more time would be wasted than that required for another strategy such as body language. this is another important decision for the language instructor, who needs not only a range of strategies, (examples provided previously), but also the experience of how to put them into practice with real language learners and their particular individual differences. in the theoretical and pedagogical grounds cf has been a very controversial topic. loewen, li, fei, thomson, nakatsukasa, ahn, and chen (2009) claim that this controversy can be better understood in terms of meaning-focused instruction versus formfocused instruction. the former assumes that second language (l2) acquisition occurs unconsciously and implicitly like first language acquisition (l1) does. advocates of this view claim that overt attention to linguistic form is not needed, and they see corrective feedback as ineffective (e.g., krashen, 1982; newmark & reibel, 1968; schwartz, 1993; terrell, 1977; truscott, 1999, all cited by loewen et al. 2009). krashen (1982), one of its proponents, suggests that cf is useless and potentially harmful. the meaning-focused instruction has been questioned with regard to its effectiveness. research suggests that learners’ production shows grammatical inaccuracy even after years of exposure to the target language. this situation has been associated with a lack of noticing and practicing linguistic forms on behalf of the learners. findings suggest, therefore, that form-focused instruction can benefit language learners. form-focused instruction is defined by ellis (2001, p. 1) as “any planned or incidental instructional activity that is intended to induce language learners to pay attention to linguistic forms.” this last instruction supports the use of cf in language learning. when to use cf? cf can be provided immediately after the error has been made, or it can be delayed until later, after the communicative activity the learners are engaged in is finished. the main distinction many instructors make is between fluency and accuracy or if the activity involves negotiation of meaning or negotiation of form. instructors who practice a focus on meaning instruction and encourage fluency in their classrooms prefer to delay cf. however, if their instruction follows a focus on form and they want to encourage accuracy, then both immediate and delayed cf are encouraged. universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras68 hernández méndez & reyes cruz important also to consider in instructional settings is the frequency with which teachers use cf in their classes. too much correction can sometimes have a negative effect on the learners’ attitudes or performances; whereas too little feedback can also be perceived by learners as a hindrance for efficient and effective language learning. finding the right balance as regards the amount of cf is, therefore, not an easy task. error types when correcting, it is paramount to identify the type of error the learners make because it is not always the case teachers want or need to correct everything. errors have been categorized by mackey, gass and mcdonough (2000) and nishita (2004), cited by yoshida (2008) as: • morphosyntactic error: learners incorrectly use word order, tense, conjugation and particles. • phonological error: learners mispronounce words (or we suggest it could also include suprasegmental errors such as stress and intonation). • lexical error: learners use vocabulary inappropriately or they code-switch to their first language because of their lack of lexical knowledge. • semantic and pragmatic error: the misunderstanding of a learner’s utterance, even if there are no grammatical, lexical or phonological errors. when dealing with errors, language instructors have to make many decisions and one of them is the type of error to correct. however, sometimes some types of errors are neglected to some extent, or only the most “serious” errors are corrected. that is, there are errors that probably do not hinder comprehension between the language instructor and the learner, but they are errors that in a real world setting might affect communication with other speakers who are not familiar with foreign accents, or who are not tolerant with nonnative speakers. thus, identifying and targeting the types of errors that are relevant and essential to become a successful efl learner is another complex task for the instructor. cf providers in the classroom setting considering the participant(s) in the corrective feedback interaction, the following possibilities can be observed: self-correction is possible when the learner realizes that s/he has committed an error and repairs it by providing a correct form. self-correction seems to be preferred to correction provided by others because it is face-saving and allows the learner to play an active role in the corrective event. selfcorrection plays a central role in the promotion of autonomous learning nowadays. peer correction occurs when one learner corrects another one. its most important advantages are that both learners are involved in face-to-face interaction; the teacher obtains information about learners’ current abilities; learners co-operate in language learning and become less teacher-dependent; peer correction does not make errors a public affair, which protects the learners’ egos and increases their self-confidence. teacher correction occurs, of course, when the person to correct the errors is the teacher. he or she knows the problem and the solution, and can define and put things simply so that the learner can understand the error. as shown in the previous pages, cf is a very complex phenomenon in efl which has its own peculiarities that distinguish it from esl contexts. it is not only that the classroom is the setting where learners mainly receive language input, but also where they receive their provision of 69profile vol. 14, no. 2, october 2012. issn 1657-0790 (printed) 2256-5760 (online). bogotá, colombia. pages 63-75 teachers’ perceptions about oral corrective feedback and their practice in efl... cf. with this limitation, thinking about cf and its role in language learning in this particular context becomes a relevant issue. practicing cf in efl settings is therefore a complex task in which many factors meet and intertwine. teachers have to ask themselves: why to include cf? how to provide cf? what to correct? how much cf and how frequently? who is to correct? and then make decisions. additionally, teachers have also to be concerned with the individual differences. this is something that will be discussed in the findings in the next section. method this is a descriptive study conducted at a mexican university located in the southeast region of the country. this university offers english as foreign language (efl) courses from beginners to advanced level to all undergraduate students. however, they only have to cover, as a graduation requirement, four levels of english (from beginner to intermediate). the population of students taking efl courses totals 600 every term, approximately, and there are about 40 instructors teaching these courses. for this study, a semi-structured interview and a questionnaire were used to collect the data. five language instructors, with ages from 25 to 60, were interviewed. their teaching experience ranged from 4 to 20 years. the interviews were recorded and analyzed considering variables such as types of errors, the cf provider, frequency of correction, cf techniques, perceptions of students’ attitudes, training, and perceptions about cf. a questionnaire was designed and distributed among 40 instructors. unfortunately, only 15 gave us back the questionnaire. the instructors were teaching courses from introductory to intermediate levels at that time. the questionnaire consisted of five sections intended to obtain data about those instructors’ ideas on cf and its practice in the classroom; perceptions about their learners’ reactions and attitudes toward cf; attention paid to the different language levels (i.e. phonetics phonology, syntax, morphology, semantics, and pragmatics); the different strategies used to provide oral cf and its frequency of use; and instructors’ perceptions on the strategies most preferred by their students. to analyze the data, descriptive statistics were used with spss v. 18 (statistical package for the social sciences), and a qualitative analysis of the variables was conducted and interpreted by both researchers. findings and discussion the role and importance of corrective feedback in the classroom from the questionnaires there is a strong tendency (80%) to agree on the need to correct learners so that they gain fluency and accuracy. this is concurrent with the idea that cf has a positive impact on language learning in which 87.7% of the instructors agreed. however, 3 out of 15 teachers believe that cf does not play a relevant role in the acquisition of fluency and accuracy. in the interviews, 4 out of 5 instructors agreed with the need to provide oral cf in the classroom, but it seems they do not believe in the benefits of cf, or the impact it can have on the learners. they consider cf to be only necessary to develop accuracy. overall, these instructors have positive beliefs and attitudes toward oral cf, as they consider it necessary for language learning. nonetheless, in the interviews most of the teachers associate cf to focus on form (limited to accuracy). it seems that they favor the focus on meaning instruction (and fluency), and therefore, they cannot accept cf completely. this lack of total acceptance may have to do with their academic profile and teaching experience; their previous knowledge and education. universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras70 hernández méndez & reyes cruz effects on learners: reactions, emotions and feelings 13.3% consider that cf inhibits students’ par ticipation, 60% partially agreed with this statement and 20% disagreed. these varied answers probably have to do with the consideration of other variables that can influence this outcome. if teachers consider, for example, that individual correction affects more than group correction, and it does prevent further participation, then that is why they either agreed or partially agreed. they may also have thought that the amount of cf could be another variable affecting participation. these results coincided with those of the interviews, in which instructors mentioned that it was important to get to know their students very well in order to know if cf could be used or not with some students. they said that learners had different attitudes toward cf and teachers should be aware of this and decide whether or not to consider it for the provision of cf. 3 out of 5 teachers said that at the beginning of their courses they asked their students if they wanted to be corrected. this leads one to think that teachers perceive cf as an activity with many intricate variables to control, and if this is not done tactfully, then it may be detrimental to class participation. 33.4% consider frequent cf as a cause of frustration or demotivation; 46.7% partially agreed, and 20% disagreed. again, it seems that teachers think of cf as a potential cause of these emotions or feelings if some other issues (such as personal traits) are not controlled or considered for the provision of cf. this was also manifested in the interviews where instructors expressed that cf could damage the learners’ feelings and the process of learning if used very frequently and regardless of the personality or emotions of the students. a contradiction, however, was identified in the results. when asked if shyness or low motivation should be factors to consider in the provision of cf, 66.7% did not think so, and the rest partially agreed with this statement. this complements the question of whether correction should be used only with more open/receptive learners. 60% of the instructors disagreed on correcting only this type of student; 13.3% partially agreed and 26.7% agreed. there is inconsistency by some in con ceiving error correction as an inhibitor of participation or a factor of de-motivation. yet they think that shyness and low motivation should not prevent cf from taking place in the classroom. in the interviews, teachers expressed being very concerned with learners’ personality traits, preferences, and attitudes. it appears then that there is not complete agreement in this respect. teachers in general (80%) perceive that learners do not get angry or feel bothered when provided with oral cf. in the interviews they agreed that anger and annoyance are not emotions manifested by students in their classroom, but that anxiety, shyness, and introversion were thought of as factors to consider for cf provision. a paramount reaction to cf is the learners’ uptake and repair, that is, what do they do with this cf? do they correct? 60% agreed that learners do repair their utterances frequently and always; 33.3% said learners do it sometimes, and 6.7% agreed that learners never correct their errors. in the interviews, 3 out of 5 instructors agreed that their students repair; 2 said that learners do it sometimes. therefore, in general, there is this perception that repair takes place in their classroom with regular frequency. this belief can actually be one of the factors causing some negative or cautious attitude toward cf. why should teachers bother to provide cf if students do not respond to it? if cf is not helping, why include it in the teaching practice? 71profile vol. 14, no. 2, october 2012. issn 1657-0790 (printed) 2256-5760 (online). bogotá, colombia. pages 63-75 teachers’ perceptions about oral corrective feedback and their practice in efl... the role of learners’ proficiency in cf 60% of instructors in this institution consider that the use of certain cf strategies depends on the learners’ proficiency. similar results were obtained through the interviews (3 out of 5 teachers). they said that body language, for example, could be more exploited with beginners, whereas metalinguistic explanations should be used more with advanced students who have better proficiency in the l2. they also suggested that peer correction is more suitable for advanced students, but not for beginners because they are not used to this type of strategy and they do not trust their classmates for this endeavor. 20%, however, do not think that proficiency in the target language influences the choice of one or another strategy, and 20% partially agreed. these perceptions could be based on other factors besides proficiency level. typically students at this institution begin to learn english during their first year of college, and as they progress in the english courses (and therefore gain proficiency), they also get to know their classmates better since they are often placed in the same classroom and have the same schedule. so, while beginners have sometimes complete strangers as classmates, in other higher level english courses, students are acquainted with many of their classmates. this ensures a more trusting environment. in some classrooms the instructor is the only newcomer. it is also interesting to examine these results if we consider that some students are not familiar with all cf strategies or with meta-language. two teachers mentioned in the interview that beginners have no idea of what a verb is, an adjective or a pronoun. consequently, using meta-linguistic feedback is unthinkable at the beginning levels. however, advanced learners do know these terms and are then able to understand the explanations, and repair. the same occurs with some students who have not experienced the different cf strategies, which usually occurs in the first english courses. when to correct regarding the distinction between immediate or delayed cf, 40% agreed that teachers should provide cf just immediately after the learner has made an error, but without interruption; and 53% partially agreed with this statement. this partial agreement is probably rooted in the purpose teachers have with cf e.g. if the teachers’ focus is on accuracy, then they will probably engage in cf immediately; or if it is fluency, they can delay correction. most professors (60%) prefer to provide the whole class with cf at the end of the class time. 33% partially agreed with this practice. this trend can be understood as teachers’ concern with learners’ feelings and emotions and their fear of interrupting and inhibiting participation. the above interpretation (accuracy and fluency distinction) can apply to this result as well. this preference on behalf of the instructors, however, differs with regard to “what should be done”. concerning the statement, “not only general errors made by the whole class should be corrected, but also individual errors”, 73% agreed with it. in the interviews, most of the teachers showed a preference for cf to be provided for the whole class. types of errors to correct with regard to correcting only errors that interfere with meaning and with getting the message across, 46% partially agreed and 46% disagreed. it seems then that there is a tendency not to favor this practice in the classroom, or that this may depend on the activities involved and on the focus (meaning vs. form). universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras72 hernández méndez & reyes cruz there is also a clear tendency on behalf of the instructors to direct cf toward morphosyntactic errors (86.7%), followed by pronunciation (73.3%), lexicon (66.7%) and pragmatics (53.3%). interestingly, as percentages get lower, more diverse answers to the amount of attention are observed; that is lexicon and pragmatics, for example, had answers such as “some” and “little”, respectively, whereas morphosyntax and pronunciation got “a lot” by most teachers. these findings are similar to the answers provided by the teachers in the interview, in which most of them (4 out of 5) emphasized they indeed corrected pronunciation and morphosyntactic errors. none mentioned pragmatic errors. unfocused correction was manifested through the different examples used to show the type of corrective feedback in their classrooms. these findings (pronunciation and morphosyntactic errors as main targets) suggest that these instructors pay more attention to language structures rather than meanings when providing cf. they see cf as a way to prevent or correct structure errors. on the contrary, they care less about semantic or pragmatic meanings. this does not correspond to a focus on meaning instruction. who corrects in the questionnaire, 86.7% consider that the teacher is not the only one who can and must correct errors. this coincides with 73.3% in agreement with the statement that the learners should engage in self-correction with the instructor’s help. although there seems to be a positive attitude toward self-correction, their perceptions about the effectiveness of cf considering the corrector are not consistent among all the teachers. 40% agreed that self-correction is more effective than teachers’ cf, and 33% partially agreed. thus, other variables are apparently seen as intervening in this effectiveness. peer correction, on the other hand, is not perceived as a positive activity in the classroom by most teachers (86.7%). the rest partially agreed with having peer correction in the classroom, but none agreed on this strategy as something positive. when asked about the effectiveness of teachers’ correction and peer correction, 53.4% do not consider the former to be more effective than the latter; the rest agreed and partially agreed with this statement. all interviewees agreed that the teacher is the authority for providing cf in the classroom. the instructors do not think that peers are good at correcting their classmates; actually, they said that sometimes peer correction can be harmful for the relationships among students. generally speaking, teachers seem to favor more teachers’ cf, followed by self-cf and then by peer cf. they perceive the former to be the most effective as well. this is probably a result of the traditional and paternalistic education we have had in mexico for many years. learners’ autonomy has been included in the schools’ curricula very recently, and teachers and students are still trying to integrate this into the classrooms, but it has not been easy. cf strategies and their frequency of use the favored strategy was to ask for clarification or confirmation, which was reported to be used always and most frequently by 86.6% of the teachers, although the remaining 13.4% report periodic use. gestures and mimicry, as well as recasting, were favored next by 80% of the teachers, who reported using them always, and the remaining 20% periodically. 67.7% of teachers emphasize the error so that the learner makes the correction. they use this strategy always and frequently; 20% rarely use this strategy. this emphasis is made mainly with 73profile vol. 14, no. 2, october 2012. issn 1657-0790 (printed) 2256-5760 (online). bogotá, colombia. pages 63-75 teachers’ perceptions about oral corrective feedback and their practice in efl... a change in intonation when uttering the erroneous part, or putting the error into a question. (for example, a student says: where did you went last weekend? teacher replies: went?). most teachers in the interview pointed out that this was one of the main strategies they used and they thought it worked very well with students. regarding peer correction, 60% reported using it rarely and 20% only sometimes. this supports what was found regarding who carries out the cf in the classroom as mentioned above. three interviewees argued that they do not use peer correction very frequently because they thought that this type of feedback could create negative attitudes among the students toward their classmates; many times, they claimed, the “corrector” is seen as superior or a more knowledgeable person than the rest, and this can create a hostile environment which prevents proper camaraderie among students. finally, concerning grammatical explanation as a cf strategy, results from the questionnaires show that 46.6% always and frequently provide grammatical explanations; 33% do it sometimes, and 6.7% rarely. in the interviews some teachers (3 out of 5) also manifested some aversion to this strategy, mainly the youngest instructors who insisted that other strategies could be used instead with more positive outcomes. these answers suggest that teachers do not seem to favor explicit correction. in sum, these trends in strategies used show a higher frequency and preference toward indirect and implicit cf (clarification requests, confirmation checks, gestures), followed by direct and explicit strategies (emphasizing the error and gram matical explanations). peer correction seems not to be promoted by teachers, but self-correction instead. in the interviews, similar answers were reported, although self-correction was the least promoted by the professors, who highlighted the lack of language awareness on behalf of students correcting their errors. learners’ preferences according to teachers 70% think that their students prefer a teacher’s cf rather than a peer’s. this concurs with their perception (84.6%) that students would prefer that their instructors do not ask a classmate to help with their corrections. all interviewees agreed that students prefer teachers’ feedback rather than their classmates’. they added this was rooted in the following perceptions: that the teacher is the authority in the class and an expert and their classmates do not seem to be very reliable. as such, peers do not rely on their classmates’ cf. also, peer correction could cause a negative impact on the students’ relationships because, for example, a student could be corrected by someone he does not like and this could cause some kind of unconstructive attitudes or undesirable reactions. as to the time when cf is provided, 76.9% consider that students prefer for the instructor to provide cf immediately just after the error has been made. the same percentage believes that students favor group correction rather than individual cf. this seems contradictory because if learners wanted to be corrected immediately after the error, this would imply individual correction. however, in the interviews teachers mentioned that learners prefer both (depending on the type of error, or in order to have some variety in strategies). 53.8% agreed with their perception that students like personal and individual cf. regarding the students’ favorite oral cf strategies, according to the teachers’ perceptions, 61.5% suggested recasting as number one, followed by grammatical explanations, provision of further examples (60%), gestures, and finally clarification universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras74 hernández méndez & reyes cruz requests (53.8%). although implicit strategies seem to be the most preferred, grammatical explanations came in second place. this finding, interestingly, does not match the teachers’ practice of this strategy since they reported lower use of this one in particular and a clear tendency to favor indirect strategies. a possible interpretation of this is that teachers probably reported what they believed or thought as regards how oral cf should be provided, but not how they actually provide it. conclusions and suggestions in general, teachers at this institution have a positive perception of oral corrective feedback. however, they need to know more about its effects and role in interlanguage development because they look at cf only as a technique to improve accuracy in the language, particularly in pronunciation and morphosyntax. some teachers actually consider cf as optional (mainly individual cf) because they are very concerned with students’ feelings and emotions. in this regard, these instructors in particular have such a respect for the individual differences such as personality, attitudes, motivation, and beliefs, that this affects -sometimes positively and other times negativelytheir practice with regard to oral cf. unfocused oral cf is predominant in the instructors’ practices and this situation may need to be reconsidered as it probably inhibits the learners’ noticing their errors and subsequent pursuit of repair. with many aspects covered at the same time, students might not engage in as much correction as desired. teachers should make it clear to their students what they need to correct and pay more attention to it so that repair does indeed occur. with regard to the use of strategies, the implicit ones are more favored by this group of teachers. teachers should know the effectiveness of both explicit and implicit strategies and choose the ones proven to be more effective. as a matter of variability, many possible strategies should be exploited in the classroom. for the instructors, the most suitable person to provide cf is the teacher, followed by the learner doing self-correction; peer correction is the least favored. however, fostering autonomous learning is a paramount task in the teachers’ agenda as is collaborative learning. teachers should be aware of the advantages that self and peer correction have, as they can raise or increase language awareness and help learners to test hypotheses in the target language. in brief, this research in the mexican context provides, in general, evidence of similar problems found in previous studies (allwright, 1975; chaudron, 1977; long, 1977; lyster & ranta, 1997; lyster & mori, 2006): inconsistency; ambiguity of teachers’ corrections; random and unsystematic feedback on errors by teachers; acceptance of errors for fear of interrupting the communication; and a wide range of learner error types addressed as corrective feedback. the first step then is, as language teachers, to learn more about cf and to share it with the learners; to manage individual differences in a way that they do not interfere with the language learning; to put into practice new and more effective strategies; to organize and systematize corrective feedback; and to set clear and feasible goals in this respect. references allwright, r. l. (1975). problems in the study of the language teacher’s treatment of error. in m. k. burt & h. d. dulay (eds.), new directions in second language learning, teaching, and bilingual education. selected papers from the ninth annual tesol convention. washington, d.c: tesol. chaudron, c. (1977). a descriptive model of discourse in the corrective treatment of learners’ errors. language learning, 27, 29-46. 75profile vol. 14, no. 2, october 2012. issn 1657-0790 (printed) 2256-5760 (online). bogotá, colombia. pages 63-75 teachers’ perceptions about oral corrective feedback and their practice in efl... ellis, r. (2001). investigating form-focused instruction. language learning, 51(1), 1-46. ellis, r., loewen, s., & erlam, r. (2006). implicit and explicit corrective feedback and the acquisition of l2 grammar. studies of second language acquisition, 28, 339-368. han, z. h. (2008). error correction: towards a differential approach. paper presented at the fourth qcc colloquium on second language acquisition. new york, ny. retrieved from http://www.tc.columbia.edu/ academics/?facid=zhh2 krashen, s. d. (1982). principles and practice in second language acquisition. new york, ny: pergamon institute of english. long, m. (1977). teacher feedback on learner error: mapping cognitions. in h. brown, c. yorio & r. crymes (eds.), tesol`77. teaching and learning english as a second language: trends in research and practice (pp. 278-294). washington d.c.: tesol. loewen, s., li, s., fei, f., thomson, a., nakatsukasa, k., ahn, s., & chen, x. (2009). l2 learners’ beliefs about grammar instruction and error correction. the modern language journal, 93(1), 91-104. lyster, r., & mori, h. (2006). interactional feedback and instructional counterbalance. studies in second language acquisition, 28, 269-300. lyster, r., & ranta, l. (1997). corrective feedback and learner uptake. studies in second language acquisition, 19, 37-66. mackey, a., gass s., & mcdonough, k. (2000). how do learners perceive interactional feedback? studies in second language acquisition, 2, 471-497. sheen, y. (2011). corrective feedback, individual differences and second language learning. dordrecht: springer. yao, s. (2000). focus on form in the foreign language classroom: efl college learners’ attitudes toward error correction. buffalo: state university of new york at buffalo. yoshida, r. (2008). teachers’ choice and learners’ preference of corrective feedback types. language awareness, 17(1), 78-93. about the authors edith hernández méndez holds a phd in hispanic linguistics from ohio state university. full time professor at universidad de quintana roo and member of the national system of researchers in mexico. research interests: language acquisition, language learning and teaching, and sociolinguistics. maría del rosario reyes cruz holds a phd in international education from universidad autónoma de tamaulipas. full time professor at universidad de quintana roo and member of the national system of researchers in mexico. research interests: pedagogical beliefs, epistemological beliefs, beliefs about language learning, and educational technology. 157profile vol. 13, no. 1, april 2011. issn 1657-0790. bogotá, colombia. pages 157-174 the role of discussion boards in a university blended learning program el papel de los foros de discusión en un programa universitario de aprendizaje mixto rosa isabel gonzález moreno* universidad nacional de colombia, bogotá discussion boards as tools in blended english language learning programs have unique characteristics when compared to other synchronous and asynchronous communication tools that are different. therefore, it is important to investigate the way they operate, their role within a given program and the students’, teachers’ and tutors’ attitudes towards them. this paper contains the report of a study that took place in an english virtual program of a public university in colombia. students’ surveys and reflections, the tutor’s and teachers’ interviews and reflections were used to collect data. the results showed the main advantages and disadvantages of the use of the tool as well as ideas for new proposals to improve their use and, therefore, increase the students’ performance in the program. key words: alex virtual english program, blended learning, discussion forums. los foros de discusión, como herramientas en programas de aprendizaje mixto de inglés, tienen características únicas en comparación con otras herramientas sincrónicas y asincrónicas de comunicación. en consecuencia, es importante indagar sobre la forma como funcionan, el papel dentro del programa y las percepciones que tienen los estudiantes, tutores y profesores acerca de ellos. en este artículo se reporta el estudio que se realizó en un programa virtual de inglés de una universidad pública en colombia, en el primer semestre de 2010. se recolectó información mediante encuestas y reflexiones de los estudiantes y entrevistas y reflexiones de los profesores. los resultados muestran las principales ventajas y desventajas en el uso de esta herramienta e ideas para generar nuevas propuestas que mejoren su uso, para así incrementar el desempeño de los estudiantes en el programa. palabras clave: aprendizaje mixto, foros de discusión, programa alex virtual inglés. * e-mail: nosemeocurrionombre@hotmail.com this article was received on july 30, 2010, and accepted on december 14, 2010. 158 universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras gonzález moreno introduction the colombian society is becoming familiar with the use of new communication tools as part of their daily lives and as part of their higher education context. thus, it has been necessary to change the role of students and teachers to develop new learning processes properly. for this reason, universidad nacional de colombia yearly invests an important amount of money to provide students access to new technologies, electronic magazines, virtual databases and virtual learning platforms such as blackboard and moodle. in 2001 the academic council of the university, as stated in its agreement 023, regulated the requirement of a certain proficiency in a foreign language for undergraduate students to be able to graduate as well as the implementation of classes to fulfill this requirement. therefore, a program called programa de desarrollo de aprendizaje autónomo de lenguas extranjeras (programa alex) was estab lished and administered by the department of foreign languages. the program aims to develop communicative competences in a foreign language with emphasis on reading comprehension as part of the professional training that undergraduate students are required to undergo in order to receive a degree. by the time the alex program was thoroughly operating, it started to offer not only english courses to undergraduate students but also other language courses such as french, german, italian, portuguese, russian, japanese and chinese. therefore, due to the overpopulation of students and the increase in the demand of english courses, the alex virtual program was set up to respond to those in need of english courses at the university. virtual english courses levels i and ii were created and the first one piloted in the first term of 2007. in the second term, levels iii and iv were offered (medina, 2009). this virtual environment operates on the blackboard platform and uses all the tools offered by it (virtual classroom, discussion boards, online assessment, e-mail, chat, online multimedia modules, etc.), and other tools customized by engineers and pedagogical experts such as the video chat. the development of students’ courses is led by teachers and tutors (monitors or assistants), and are previously planned and targeted according to the students’ level (universidad nacional de colombia, 2008). to support this work done in the virtual classroom, students are also required to participate in activities that integrate the methodology of face-to-face intensive semester courses: working in the resources center, attending academic and cultural meetings, and participating in projects and evaluations. the introduction of the blended modality in the efl context has had an impact on the way com munication occurs between students and teach ers. for the colombian academic context, discussion boards have been used as a bridge of communication between the teacher and the students, and most importantly, as a way to practice the subjects students have learned. under the premise that each tool of the platform plays a unique role in the english learning process, it is necessary to inquire how students perceive each one of the tools provided in the blackboard platform. this paper aims at describing the role of discussion boards by examining students’, tutors’ and teachers’ perceptions. inquiring as to how they use discussion boards, for what purposes teachers and tutors use them and their opinions about the way the tool works is also relevant. likewise, it is important to look at these boards through the teachers’ and tutors’ eyes as these users play a crucial role in the organization of the activities on discussion boards. this role enables them to account for the characterization of their use and the challenges they face when using boards in a virtual-teaching environment. 159profile vol. 13, no. 1, april 2011. issn 1657-0790. bogotá, colombia. pages 157-174 159 the role of discussion boards in a university blended learning program... context the study was carried out at the universidad nacional de colombia in bogotá during the second term of 2009. throughout the development of the project, this university faced a lot of income and budget problems which had the impact of delay on academic processes such as the opening of virtual courses and the resources center. under these conditions, english teachers as well as tutors work in difficult circumstances characterized by time required for tutoring sessions or feedback and by having a lot of students in their charge. the great demand for these courses is also an important feature revealed during the research process. participants the study was conducted with students, tutors and teachers of the alex virtual program levels i to iv. the group of participants was composed of 20 students from different levels of the program, selected randomly, 4 teachers of different levels as well as 3 tutors. the participating students were chosen from a survey to be answered voluntarily and applied to a database of 1000 students. from those 1000 students only 20 answered. their ages ranged from 15-28 years old. the students came from different undergraduate programs such as economics, medicine, biology, engineering, mathematics, accounting, design and chemistry. nine of the students had had previous experience in virtual education environments while eleven of them had not. the tutors and teachers who participated in the study were working with the alex virtual program during the second semester of 2009. all teachers are graduated from different english educational programs of colombian universities and have a high english level; 3 of the 4 teachers have had previous experience in virtual program environments. all 3 tutors were 8th semester students of the philology and languages-english program and all of them were between 20 and 25 years old. theoretical framework alex virtual program the alex virtual program is based on studentcentered teaching. in student-centered classrooms the goal of education is to create independent, autonomous learners who take responsibility for their own learning. the ultimate goal of alex virtual program is to achieve a constructivist way of learning the english language using as a basis students’ autonomous work, the teacher’s guidance and the collaborative work among students. the program provides opportunities for students to successfully learn english as a foreign language by blending virtual tools (blackboard platform) and some face-to-face complementary activities. since its piloted stage in 2007, this program has changed in terms of organization and evaluation systems, incorporating the interaction component as a relevant element of knowledge construction (medina, 2009). the pedagogical model of constructivism, which inspired the design of the program, states that knowledge is built through social interaction and is the mechanism by which language is spread and by which a foreign language is acquired. among the benefits of collaborative learning, we can pinpoint the experience gained by the learner when interacting with others. vygotsky (1978, cited in benson, 2001) demonstrated the importance of others as learning mediators as he believed that human mental activity is a particular case of social experience (see figure 1). a certain amount can be learnt by a student learning on his own. in addition, their learning mentor teachers provide ‘scaffolding’ or support to help students and gradually withdraw this support so that the student 160 universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras gonzález moreno becomes more independent. but what happens to the communicative bond among students? peer tutoring, where students in the same group work with one another, has the advantage of increasing effectiveness and accuracy in relation to social skills. it also facilitates knowledge for all in a way that a teacher may not perceive. constructivism what the student can learn collaborating with peers what the student can learn with the teachers’ advice what the student can learn on his own figure 1. zone of proximal development (theory developed by vygotsky, 1978, cited in benson, 2001). adapted and edited from carlile, jordan, & stack (2004). the alex virtual program is based on the notions of autonomy and collaborative work. it shares the following features with the face-to-face modality, with some modifications to adapt the contents to the virtual environment. • projects: projects are assigned to put the student in a more communicative and collaborative environment (medina, 2009). the main objective of doing a project is to get students aware of the different cultures sharing the same language and of the grammatical and social aspects that model language. • academic and cultural meetings: cultural meetings also foster collaborative work as well as cultural awareness among students from different majors. the activities carried out in these events relate to custom, traditions, slang and other different aspects in which culture is the one that molds the target language. in some of the cases students show the results of their projects. • resources center: the courses place emphasis on reading comprehension; students also have access to the resources center, where they have plenty of material to practice the four abilities (writing, reading, listening and speaking). advisors help the student to reflect upon learning strategies, materials and other media to develop language competence (departamento de lenguas extranjeras, 2007). • the compensation forums: at the end of 2009 and the beginning of 2010, discussion boards were given a new use: as a complementation of lesson practice. it is a forum to be set up weekly in the online classroom to facilitate students’ contact with the language. it is especially useful for those students who, for their work or geographic location, have trouble developing a face-to-face or online (video chat) interaction (coordinación alex virtual, 2010). the grading system has continued to evolve since the program was piloted. the current grading system shows that communication among students, tutors and teachers is considered a relevant factor for success in the blended course. currently, the students’ performances are evaluated according to the following aspects: 161profile vol. 13, no. 1, april 2011. issn 1657-0790. bogotá, colombia. pages 157-174 161 the role of discussion boards in a university blended learning program... table 1. alex virtual grading system 2009-2010. taken from: guía del estudiante (coordinación alex virtual, 2010) weekly activities • weekly exercises assigned by the teacher • quizzes • portfolio • other activities 30% course project and presentation at academic meetings, course project and presentation at academic and cultural meetings • the teacher evaluates both the development process and the final product. • the results are presented in academic and cultural meetings 15% interaction component weekly participation in any of the following modalities of interaction: a. tutoring sessions with teachers/tutors in the alex virtual resources center b. online tutoring sessions using the video chat system c. weekly participation in the compensation forum d. study with the interactive program tell me more. e. session with advisors at the resources center and practice with materials for learning english: auditory, visual and written aids. f. participation in conversation and practice clubs in the resources center. 20% final exam • it is a requirement to have taken two achievement tests. this is the only time attendance is mandatory 35% in other words, outside of a continuous time or simultaneity between comments (arango, 2003). the participation record of all users is stored on the server, and unlike the chat, interventions in the forum are similar to those views in a debate, closer to the discussion. most online discussion boards implement threading. threading is a way of displaying messages and replies to messages in an easy to follow format so that when a participant enters, he sees an indented list of messages (horton & horton, 2003). usually, the first message is the main message of the thread or topic and the messages indented under it are the replies or comments to the main message (see figure 2). discussion boards most of the internet tools, apart from being used to share information, are also used for internet communication, which can be instantaneous or synchronic (chat, instant messaging) or delayed or asynchronous (e-mail, discussion forums). with asynchronous communication, participants send messages when it is most convenient for them. these internet communication tools, when used in the academic environment, enable interaction by means of information sharing and non-verbal discussion between peers, tutors and teachers. the forum is a virtual communication tool where the user can leave messages asynchronously; 162 universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras gonzález moreno horton & horton (2003) also stated that if we talk about levels of asynchrony, discussion forums are less synchronous than e-mail because there is less expectation of a speedy reply. in e-learning contexts, forums are considered the most comprehensive communication tools on the internet as they are in themselves the sight of expression, opinion and interaction of the subscribed members and enable communication and understanding between them. the user is able to publish anecdotes, articles, questions and other kinds of items considered useful to take actions upon other participants’ thoughts. discussion boards are attached to a bigger set of tools in educational programs and have unique features that change according to the objectives of each curriculum. pérez (2008) inquires about the concept of discussion boards, the roles of the participants within it, the role of an administrator and the student’s profile as well as some social norms to apply in an educational forum and the utilities the forum offers. according to this author, boards are established as a valuable tool in education, especially for distance education, eliminating barriers of time and space and encouraging reflective and collaborative participation. it is also a tool that promotes collaborative learning and encourages interaction among participants who actively seek information, share it, and discuss threads are collections of related messages. click previous or next thread to move between threads. posts are messages shared with the class. click previous or next to move between posts. quote creates a response with the original post inserted above yours. click reply to respond. if files are attached click the link on top of the message to open. figure 2. discussion board: thread display (retrieved from http://libweb.mansfield.edu/graduate/ tutorial/images/forum_threaddetails.gif). 163profile vol. 13, no. 1, april 2011. issn 1657-0790. bogotá, colombia. pages 157-174 163 the role of discussion boards in a university blended learning program... it with the aim of achieving common goals and objectives, sharing experiences and clarifying doubts, among others. discussion boards in the alex virtual program are incorporated as a tool in the english course offered to students at the universidad nacional de colombia. the discussions there are created based on the issues, functions, concepts and structures that are taught along the course. normally, students discuss and participate weekly in order to use and practice what is learned, and the tutor’s work is to give feedback to those entries taking into account different aspects previously agreed upon at the start of the program e.g. spelling, punctuation, correctness of the verb form, and structural organization (guía del estudiante, coordinación alex virtual, 2010). there have been several investigations carried out by students of this university in regard to the platform, its tools, the modules that constitute each course and the methodology of the alex virtual program (barrios, 2009; cantor, 2009; medina, 2009; pinzón, 2008). pinzón (2008) explored students’, teachers’ and tutors’ perceptions about face-to-face and online tutoring sessions in levels i and ii of the alex virtual program during the first semester of 2008. this exploration shows how these kinds of tutoring sessions are organized and the reasons that students attend them. in this case, students attended tutoring sessions in order to solve doubts and feel the tutors’ support. likewise, medina (2009) described the interaction taking place between a tutor and her students during the online tutoring sessions in the alex virtual english program level iv. the results showed that language itself, the methodology of the course, reflection upon learning and social and personal issues were the main traces of interaction. barrios (2009) intervened pedagogically by applying collaborative work strategies in the second level of the alex virtual program. the purpose of the research was to describe the answer given by students to activities of collaborative work when using synchronous and asynchronous tools. the results of this research showed that the achievement of collaborative work in virtual environments involves a number of elements such as the support among group members and the kind of activities developed by the teachers along the course. it was found that the use of different kinds of activities could foster collaborative work or autonomous work. cantor (2009) inquired specifically about the main characteristics of discussion boards and illustrates the importance of this tool in the transition from face-to-face education to virtual education. this author describes discussion boards in alex virtual as a tool of teacher’s accompaniment to the autonomous student learning, and inquires about how students use the tool by asking: when do they use them? what for? what topics do they debate? how do students participate? her research was carried out during the second term of 2008 when the program was in the piloting stage with 4 groups of second level students. the study reported that the tool was “used to create dialogues and debates among the students, giving them the opportunity to express their ideas about certain topics. according to cantor, students’ interaction is one of the most important functions of the tool for students (2009, p. 119). collaborative learning was studied only in one perspective: teacher-student relationships as the accompaniment of the teacher influenced student self-awareness process towards autonomy. methodology of the study this was an exploratory case study aimed at describing the perceptions of three different participants of the same event (students, tutors and teachers) regarding their experiences with the 164 universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras gonzález moreno discussion boards. i also aimed at identifying and describing the main characteristics, purposes and functions of the alex virtual english program discussion boards. according to cohen, manion and morrison (2000), the case study is characterized by the use of data collection methods such as semi-structured and open interviews, observation, narrative accounts, documents and diaries as these instruments give a clear report of the participant’s role that, consequently, merges and shows a more global understanding of the studied situation. it is also a research strategy that contributes to our knowledge of individuals or groups in organizational, social, political and related phenomena (yin, 2003). data collection the first stage of the research procedure consisted of observations and documentation to account for general aspects. data were also collected through a survey for students and teachers to glean their perceptions of the way discussion boards and the program operates. the second stage included semi-structured interviews for students, tutors and teachers to account for their perspectives on the positive and/or negative impact on the use of discussion boards. the participants provided information on their participation and interaction in the board, the process of communication and organization in groups to carry out the activities of the cultural week, perceptions about teamwork, and strengths and difficulties faced in the process. students were asked to tell the story of their experience in the virtual program; they were especially asked what they thought about the discussion boards as a tool for communication and as a place to practice writing skills. data analysis the process of data analysis for this study consisted of a mixture of different techniques and coding procedures by which data are “broken down, conceptualized, and put back together in new ways” (strauss & corbin, 1990 p. 61). the first step i took in data analysis is called open coding, in which data are observed, divided and conceptualized. the second step of data analysis corresponds to the axial coding process. in axial coding the focus is on specifying a category in terms of the conditions that gave rise to it: “the context, the strategies by which the phenomenon is carried out, and the consequences of those strategies” (p. 97). the main objective of managing the data this way is to help in the conceptualization of the data and to establish logic relationships among the emerging categories of analysis. findings from the coding and preliminary categories analysis i found two main axes of categories. the first category is related to the interaction component of discussion boards, while the second has to do with the writing skill as a component of the tool and its role inside the english learning process. the descriptive elements shown in table 2 are also inter-related as the feedback component is an element of the interaction component as well as the writing skill practice component. 165profile vol. 13, no. 1, april 2011. issn 1657-0790. bogotá, colombia. pages 157-174 165 the role of discussion boards in a university blended learning program... table 2. categories found in data analysis the role of discussion boards in the alex virtual program category subcategory descriptive elements interaction through discussion boards • teacher/tutor-to-student interaction • the importance of feedback • student-to-student interaction • conditions for working collaboratively writing skill practice in discussion boards • the students’ writing process • challenges and difficulties in the writing process teacher had to write an example of a completed task in order to show students the outcome expected for each activity. most of the activities asked students to write their opinions regarding current issues, to propose different options for a special situation and to write about personal experiences. after a week, the board was disabled for students to be punctual in doing the task and tutors began to correct those on-time participations and deliver feedback. after that, each of the excerpts in the discussion board were revised and corrected, and then students were rewarded with a grade on the weekly activities, while participation in the compensatory forum represented a special grade on the interaction component of the program. teachers 3 and 4 decided to assign the discussion board activities every 15 days to give students the possibility of writing on time. at the same time this gave them time to correct and grade the large number of interventions. tutors also used the board as a way to monitor the work of a student in the whole platform. interaction through discussion boards teachers of the alex virtual program are in charge of several groups of students. each teacher works with a tutor and both of them are responsible for guiding the virtual course. during 2009-ii the boards were also used to complement the interaction component. it was recurrent to hear how dynamic communication was developed in discussion boards, what teachers did to foster interaction and how students reacted to those actions. students also spoke about their experiences when using the tool to get in contact with the tutor. teacher/tutor-to-student interaction all four teachers designed and used boards similarly. two of them often posted writing activities in the board (teachers 1 and 2). every week there was a different topic to discuss and it was based on the grammatical component worked on the respective module. topics where normally written as a question or as an instruction and the 166 universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras gonzález moreno only teacher 4 designed discussion forum activities to scaffold the participants’ learning: they began with a few individual activities and then moved to interactive games to foster interaction and group activity. according to this plan, it can be said that the discussion board implementation normally consists of a four-stage process (see figure 3). first, the instructor (in this case, the teacher or the tutor) posts an assignment in the discussion board. second, learners read the assignment. they may work on it individually before posting their completed solu tions back to the discussion forum, where the instructor and other students review and discuss them. finally, the teacher or tutor corrects every intervention and gives feedback. this process is repeated several times depending on the number of assignments that the teacher implements per level. these processes fully agree with the pedagogic interaction model for investigation of classroom interaction proposed by malamah-thomas (1987). the author described the mutual influences between the teacher and students. the teacher’s action causes the students’ reaction. then, their reaction becomes an action directed towards the teacher and, as a result, evoking his or her reaction. that is, both the teacher and students are influencing each other and influenced by each other. here we take malamah-thomas’ explanations of face-to-face classroom to virtual environments. the methodological device is represented by the board and the kind of assignments posted by the teacher/tutor. this generates a reaction in class that is represented by the student’s individual work and then that work generates the teachers’ reaction, instructor posts an assiqnment to the discussion forum instructor and students discuss their work students work individually to complete the assignment assignment * urls for assigned reading * questions to answer * group activity for class * attached documents, if necessary figure 3. discussion board implementation process (adapted and edited from horton & horton, 2003, p. 217). 167profile vol. 13, no. 1, april 2011. issn 1657-0790. bogotá, colombia. pages 157-174 167 the role of discussion boards in a university blended learning program... which is evidenced in revision and feedback. this further action starts a new round of interaction. every action of the learners needs to be countered with corrections and feedback before starting a new utterance. that is what teachers of alex virtual program are called to do with students’ interventions. this practice enhances students’ motivation towards the blended modality and supports the bond between the instructor and the learner. students also accounted for the interaction they had with teachers and tutors when using discussion boards and talked about two main aspects of the interaction: the affective and the academic aspects. a significant number of students pointed out that the contact between teacher and learner is usually limited to a specific subject, such as the solution of a particular problem or achievement of a specific project. according to students’ interviews the teacher/ tutor serves as a technician or a consultant rather than an adviser or confidant on personal matters related to the english learning process. for most students with time difficulties, posting on the compensation forum was the only form of tuition that all students were able to access. teachers and tutors were asked to evaluate from 1 to 4 (4 being the highest rating) how effective they considered discussion board as a means of communication between them. a significant number of tutors and teachers considered the discussion forum an effective tool with which to communicate with students, whereas a minimal percentage (18%) considered the forum an ineffective tool. these results differ from the perceptions given by students. a significant amount of students graded discussion boards as ineffective for enabling free communication between them and their instructors. in contrast to the responses of the interviews, they argue that the communication is not clearly seen as it is camouflaged as mandatory interventions that in fact are not expected to have counterargument by the teacher. they are just corrected in terms of grammar, vocabulary and structure. inquiring more about its effectiveness in the interviews, students claimed that communication was strictly related to the kind of activities the teacher or the tutor posted. some teachers’ feedback also included some opinions, encouraging the students to keep writing. let us read two cases in which one of the students was really engaged with the writing process and in constant communication with the teacher, while the other was not. her (my teacher) really encourages me to continue working on the board. my writing is horrible and i was thinking to quit the course. she told me to not be afraid to commit mistakes, then i received all the feedback for my participations and i kept trying… i mean, even if this is a virtual course i feel the teacher was always there. (int. st10, 140-145) in my last course the tutor was the one doing the entire job. we tried to contact our teacher but it was impossible… even our tutor was complaining about that. she did her best but we were a lot of students. we had to write an opinion or sometimes to talk about an experience, but as the tutor was working alone she decided not to give us corrections but to grade our participation… i felt abandoned. i felt everything so impersonal that i really believe i learned nothing from the course. (int. st2, 3441) while the first student has a positive perception about the communication process and guidance from the teacher, the second one argues that her poor performance is strictly related to the lack of teacher’s presence and the way in which the tutor managed the activities on the board. that leads us to the conclusion that the more the students are involved with the teacher, the more motivated they are and therefore the more they will practice and interact. these affective interactions engage 168 universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras gonzález moreno students not only with the rest of the participants but with the tool, the program and with the writing skill practice. from this observation we conclude that the tutor, as a supporter and moderator, is responsible for contacting students, for providing on-time feedback. this will have an impact on the perceptions students have towards the tool and the program itself and will influence their motivation to interact with each other. the importance of feedback teachers and tutors of the alex virtual program have the responsibility of providing feedback on all students’ interventions, utterances and evaluations. feedback can be very powerful if done well. good feedback “gives students information they need so they can understand where they are in their learning and what to do next –the cognitive factor. once they feel they understand what to do and why, most students develop a feeling that they have control over their own learning –the motivational factor” (carnell, 2000, p. 9). carnell also describes the teacher’s or tutor’s characteristics in teacher-tostudent feedback as the instructor who clarifies goals: for every thread the teacher clarified what he wanted us to do and gave us different examples. it’s like…as if he explained the purpose of each activity so we know it is not a useless task. (int. st10, 128-130) gives a sense of direction and purpose: for the cultural week […] he read our proposals and gave us suggestions about grammar but, more importantly, he showed us like a way of doing it because i was a little bit lost. (int. st5, 112-120) identifies mistakes: well…that’s like the main thing they do with our participations, right? they always show you why you were wrong, which word was spelled wrong, which word you miss to complete a sentence. (int. st1, 40-43) provides advice: in my personal case the tutor was really supportive, her comments on how i could correct myself and be aware of some characteristics of words helped me to edit my own participations before posting them. (int. st3, 72-75) these are the most time-consuming tasks for teachers and tutors but the most important ones as well. consequently, students “may appreciate tutor feedback and response to their contributions, but also can lose heart if there is no moderator presence” (macdonald, 2008, p. 83). sometimes it may be hours or even days until a reply is received for a post and this can be frustrating for students. delayed responses can contribute to communication anxiety in which the sender may experience concern as to whether the message was sent to the correct destination or whether it was received but was considered unworthy of a reply (hiltz, turoff, & harasim, 2007). teachers and tutors argue about the large amount of students they have to guide and the great amount of input they should provide to students’ participations they receive weekly. besides, tutors must provide prompt feedback for students to mind their mistakes and be ready to write correctly in the following weekly activity. that means instructors will certainly need to expend extra effort to ensure that all students elicit feedback. a disadvantage of the use of discussion boards is the time that we need to devote to feedback. at the moment, the tools we have for feedback are really time-consuming. if we could use certain applications to promptly detect common mistakes and classify them according to the type of error/mistake committed, our work would be less stressful and more efficient and feedback would be more satisfying. (int. tt1, 34-37) some students work better after receiving feedback while others do not appreciate those actions because they are studying to get a qualification and have little time for time-consuming elements of the course. this makes them commit mistakes that have already been shown to them. that relates to the comments i made on feedback, but they never read. (int. t3, 50-54.) 169profile vol. 13, no. 1, april 2011. issn 1657-0790. bogotá, colombia. pages 157-174 169 the role of discussion boards in a university blended learning program... giving feedback on individual writing activ ities can be very demanding on a tutor’s time but also really encouraging for students who are really committed to the activity. that shows some characteristics of being an autonomous learner: “the more prompt the feedback given for student postings the higher the student learning and satisfaction” (arbaugh & hornik, 2002; shea et al., 2001; 2002, cited in hiltz et al., 2007, p. 63). let us read different experiences and opinions over this matter and some counterarguments from the teacher’s point of view. well, in the boards we had to write about some specific questions about everyday aspects, opinions, anecdotes, etc. she gave us a week to write it and post it on the board and the next week we received feedback. one day, i don’t know what happened exactly, she started to delay feedback… and then we stopped receiving it. although we thought activities were over, she was still asking for weekly writing exercises. i never understood what the point was in keeping asking for them if she was not going to read them. at the end i just posted it for the sake of the grade. (int. st.11-17) actually i failed the course, but it was because i entered the platform a couple of times and then never came back because i was really busy. the teacher i had always sent us messages and reminded us of the importance of participations… she was a very diligent teacher. so, although i failed, i know it was because of me. it was not the program’s or the teacher’s fault. (int. st8, 43-47) i always tried to come up with a good disposition and correct as many interventions as possible; however, there is great apathy on the part of students and teachers. i think that this is due to the lack of time they have to do the relevant activities. many students believe that virtual english saves time but the truth is the other way around... therefore, even if they write out of obligation, i have to always be there, cheering and giving feedback ... one gets tired. (int. t4, 51-56) the disadvantages or a negative point of the use of this resource does not depend on the tool itself but the student’s attitude towards it. (surv. t4, when asked about which disadvantages the use of discussion boards had.) these opinions confirm that the use teachers give to the tool as well as the initial attitude of students about the activities or the program in general terms determine students’ and teachers’ good or bad experiences. to mehrabian (1971, cited in hiltz et al., 2007), in order to be effective, feedback should be timely, and should include something that is called “instructor immediacy behaviors”, which refers to communication behaviors that reduce the social and psychological distance between people. if the student is feeling left behind in accompaniment processes by the tutor or the teacher, his bonds with the program itself will break and his or her perception about the tool and even the program will be negative. likewise, if students send and receive feedback on time and are in constant contact with the platform, they will enhance their commitment to the activities and, therefore, will express a positive perception towards the tool. student-to-student interaction teachers and tutors were asked to describe how they perceived interaction among their students only based on discussion boards’ interventions. the majority of them emphasized that discussion boards, apart from being an english writing environment, were also created to foster participation among students. students are supposed to practice their writing skills while at the same time participate in the discussions. it is important for us to know what they think about a topic, not for the topic itself but to really be sure they can communicate without vocabulary or grammar being an obstacle. (int. tt1, 40-45) looking at the circumstances in past courses and in the present one in particular, the top priority was centered on student-tutor 170 universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras gonzález moreno interaction, with little interaction among students. let’s say a student post[ed] a question “i don’t understand how to use the third conditional”, and then it was the tutor’s duty to respond. and that was all. yeah? so, you’d make your participation, i will reply to you and then there will be no other person to respond. there’s no[t] continuity to the thread. (int. t3. 73-78) as we see in the intervention of the teacher, collaboration is extremely attached to the partic ipants’ interaction among themselves. administrators try to foster collaborative learning in discussion boards by implementing tasks in which it is necessary that students post on other students’ participations. as some teachers said, these kinds of tasks are required to make them interact, as there are some students who are not very willing to participate and who see no value in doing so. peer correction is not perceived as a very frequent activity in online tutoring. the levels of interaction among students are low compared with the levels of interaction between teacher and student. this tendency is due to several factors such as the time they devote to their practice on the discussion boards per week and the nature of activities which do not foster interaction and discussion. conditions to work collaboratively several studies conducted in online learning suggest that students will not collaborate unless collaboration is structured into the course and evidenced in the nature of the activities. students may just present their information without considering the thoughts of others. these results are similar to the ones noted by ellis (2001), who suggested that “hindsight training in the use of a threaded discussion is needed” (p. 175). these activities can include getting classmates to provide feedback on both work in progress and completed work. this also gives you insight into how individuals have contributed to a group piece of work. for example, teacher 1 and teacher 4 designed different writing activities for different groups of students; here, they explain the outcome received: my tutor, he’s the one who has the credit for all activities done in discussion boards. he knows a lot and he knows how to keep them motivated. for example, the first week he did an icebreaker activity to iv level students. he explained the activity to the students like “today we are going to tell a tail. i am going to start with a simple phrase and then each one of you has to continue the story. you must start your sentence using the final word of the previous comment. we have a week, at the end of the week we are going to read the whole story and to comment on it”. you can’t imagine the amount of comments he received next week… i think they like this kind of interactive activities… they release all stress and anxiety. (int. t1) well, collaborative learning is defined as working together; working as a group and that depends on the approach that each teacher gives to the board, right?, because, for example the nature of our boards (the one that my tutors and i implemented) was not to generate or motivate students to work collaboratively. if i post a board that asks you to tell me about your personal experience as a child there is no way that you would work collaboratively with another person. then it depends on the type of board, if the post is ... if i intend to design collaborative activities i have to change the topic of the forum ... then, for example “we will prepare a recipe, then student 1 will put the ingredients, student 2 is going to say how the recipe is prepared and student 3 is going to tell me how to serve it. let’s prepare it together “, then it would be different. but the forums that we have put ... not encourage students to work collaboratively but more to reflect about personal issues. (int. t4, 91-101) according to these teachers’ experiences, those kinds of internet-mediated games are meaningful to students and foster participation among them because they share an inclusive factor. students feel they are contributing to the activity and to the rest of the class while improving their writing skills. 171profile vol. 13, no. 1, april 2011. issn 1657-0790. bogotá, colombia. pages 157-174 171 the role of discussion boards in a university blended learning program... these findings show us that asynchronous learning tools enable us to encourage and support new forms of collaboration in virtual environments, but they demand time, perseverance, and a design of new activities. in some cases, they require reflection on the syllabus and the objectives of the program. collaborative work also calls for students’ commitment to the communicative and learning process, as well as teachers’ guidance and monitoring. writing skill practice in discussion boards writing skill practice is one of the discussion board characteristic components. this component was organized around weekly discussion topics. those discussion topics were posted according the grammatical structure presented in modules. according to students’ perceptions, 79% re ported the tool had helped them to improve their written production. however, 21% of students argued that participating in this tool represented neither practice nor improvement in writing skills. further inquiry into the reasons that it is not representative leads us to special cases in which students argue that feedback was not given on time or the teacher did not use meaningful activities. challenges and difficulties in the writing process it has been found that the teachers encountered various pedagogical challenges, most of them related to the limitation of online instructional background and related to students’ writing process. these challenges and limitations affect how teachers perceive their roles in the class and also students’ perceptions towards the program. the main challenges for teachers are the lack of students’ orientation in writing processes and plagiarism. when teachers were asked whether they first introduced writing practices, two of them said they did at the beginning of the course while the other two only used examples of a possible intervention without giving any other advice about the writing process. students were in level iv so i noticed they already had instruction in the writing process, although i emphasized the importance of writing an organized paragraph by giving them examples and posting links with important writing strategies for them to take into account. (int. t4, 130-133) the problems experienced by students in learning how to write appropriately are magnified if they are studying in a second language and perhaps accustomed to a linguistic culture which is very different to that around the course. teachers are there to help students develop the writing process and construct awareness about the advantages of a staged plan for writing. if students are not adequately prepared to face writing assignments, plagiarism appears as a viable solution to them. first of all, those students who have a great deficit in spanish writing level are those who are also going to have writing problems in other languages. for them it would be advisable to have enough time to come to face-to-face tutoring sessions. however not all students who have these problems take into account the time needed to mind their errors. (int. t1, 133136) students with low level in english have to take more time and put more effort to their writing and i think that affects their… emotions. they feel frustrated, they need to study for other different things and just use a translator! and i personally consider that as bad as plagiarism because that student is not going to know what is grammatically correct in english and what is not. (int. t4, 112-116) plagiarism is also a relevant issue in virtual education. sutherland-smith (2008) outlines some ongoing issues in plagiarism for teachers and institutions. the main causes have to do with 172 universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras gonzález moreno difficulties in reading theoretically “dense” texts; difficulties in summarizing key ideas in more complex readings; and an inability to incorporate their own voice into students’ work, among others. those causes are somehow evidenced in students’ perceptions about the difficulties of writing in english. however, the main cause reported by students was the lack of time to cope with activities. regarding teacher 4’s testimony, findings show that students in beginner levels take two to three times longer than others to be able to read and respond to material; they may also experience a negative impact in their ability to participate equitably (harasim et al., 1995 cited in hiltz et al., 2007). also, supporting teacher 4’s reflection, students surveyed were asked about the reasons for taking a virtual course. the majority of them (26%) chose it because they lacked the time to participate in a face-to-face course. six of the 10 students interviewed stated that they took more time than expected to complete the writing exercises and, consequently, this affected their affective filter as anxiety interferes with the process of acquiring a proficient level of writing in a second language (krashen, 1988). there is also an important relationship between the type of activities designed to motivate students’ writing practice and the quality of the interventions. being asynchronous, communication limits the type of written discourse and the naturalness of the interaction is needed when learning a language. for example, to ask two students to build a dialogue in a board would be an inconvenient exercise because it lacks authenticity. (int. t2, 150-154) further research is needed regarding strategies to avoid plagiarism in students’ writing products to establish important casual relationships. one useful instructional strategy is online debates. individuals or groups can be assigned different sides of a controversial topic, and a vote can be taken at the end to see who had the most convincing argument. according to tutors’ and teachers’ reflections, there should be clear policies for online discussions. they need to be clear and well defined and should include how individual students or groups are graded for their contributions to discussions. guidelines might also specify a minimum number of responses and the minimum length of messages to encourage students to think harder about the content of a message rather than just replying with very short, superficial comments. conclusions characteristics of the discussion boards vary depending on how teachers and tutors manage discussion boards. two main components characterized the role of discussion boards in the alex virtual program according to teachers’, tutors’ and students’ perceptions: interaction and writing skill practice. discussion boards work with two different processes of interaction: teacher/tutor-to-student interaction and student-to-student interaction. teacher/tutor-to-student interaction is the process of weekly communication that teachers have with students and is based on assignment development. these processes fully agree with the pedagogic interaction model for investigation of classroom interaction proposed by malamah-thomas (1987). feedback is one of the most commonly used educational interventions and a vital part in the use of discussion boards in the alex virtual program. if the student is feeling left behind in accompaniment processes by the tutor or the teacher, his bonds with the program itself will break and his or her perception about the tool and even the program will be negative. if students thus receive feedback on time and are in constant contact with the teacher and platform, they will experience a positive perception towards the tool. 173profile vol. 13, no. 1, april 2011. issn 1657-0790. bogotá, colombia. pages 157-174 173 the role of discussion boards in a university blended learning program... the levels of interaction among students are low compared to the levels of interaction between teacher and student. this tendency is due to several factors: the time per week they devote to the practice on the discussion boards, the commitment to participate in platform activities, and the nature of activities which has an impact on interaction and discussion. writing skill practice is one of the discussion board characteristic components. this component was organized around weekly discussion topics. those discussion topics were posted according to the grammatical structure presented in modules. the main challenges for teachers are the lack of students’ orientation in writing processes and plagiarism. various research projects have included how process-oriented teaching influences the writer’s processes (planning, drafting, revising, editing) and the products (quality, syntax, length, and number of errors). findings show that meaningful topics that relate to classroom learning activities will promote discussion and facilitate a deeper level of thinking about a topic. limitations and further research participants’ collaboration and availability were crucial limitations to this research. students were chosen from a survey to be answered voluntarily by a database of 1000 students. from those 1000 students, only 20 answered and then, only ten granted permission to have an interview. teachers and tutors were also chosen from a survey applied to all alex virtual program instructors (a total of 20 people) from which only 7 responded. i considered this a limitation for further studies for very often we expect to have a greater number of participants, especially teachers. it was also expected that they were more open to collaborate in these kinds of investigations. further research in the field must also analyze teachers’ challenges in virtual education and propose how to best empower teachers to take advantage of the new technology available in their classrooms. it would be more relevant if those objectives could be implemented following an action research design. this way, the role of the researcher in the project would be that of a tutor or a teacher and researcher at the same time, to give observational data more power. questions focused on how writers adapt their strategies to computer writing or on whether their composing habits change with the technology are clearly relevant for this field as writers’ particular habits and strategies for composing are influenced by computers. the results of such investigation can help to control plagiarism and shed light on the use of an internet translator. references arango, m. l. (2003). foros virtuales como estrategia de aprendizaje. universidad de los andes. lidie–laboratorio de investigación y desarrollo sobre informática en educación. argentina. retrieved on april 2009 from web site: http://www.rlcu.org.ar/revista/ numeros/02-02-abril-2004/documentos/arango.pdf barrios, o. (2008). aprendizaje colaborativo y entornos virtuales: en la búsqueda de una comunidad de aprendizaje de lengua extranjera para los estudiantes de segundo nivel del programa alex virtual. monografía para optar por el título de licenciado en filología e idiomas–inglés. universidad nacional de colombia facultad de ciencias humanas, bogotá. benson, p. (2001). teaching and researching autonomy in language learning. edinburgh: longman pearson education limited. cantor, d. i. (2009). discussion boards as tools in blended efl learning programs. profile issues in teachers professional development, 11, p. 113-121. 174 universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras gonzález moreno carlile, o., jordan, a., & stack, a. (2004). learning by design: learning theory for the designer of multimedia educational materials. waterford: wit/bbc online. carnell, e. (2000). dialogue, discussion and feedback: views of secondary school students on how others help their learning. in askew, s. (ed), feedback for learning, (pp. 46-61). london: routledge. cohen, l., manion, l., & morrison, k., (2000). (5th edition), research methods in education, london: routledge falmer. coordinación alex virtual. (2010). guía del estudiante: programa alex virtual. retrieved from: http://guiadelestudiantealexvirtual.net16.net/ departamento de lenguas extranjeras. (2007). folleto divulgativo lanzamiento, alex virtual. bogotá: universidad nacional de colombia. ellis, a. (2001). student-centred collaborative learning via face-to-face and asynchronous online communication: what’s the difference? proceedings 18th ascilite conference melbourne, 9-12 december. retrieved on april 2010 from web site: http://www.ascilite.org.au/conferences/melbourne01/pdf/papers/ellisa.pdf hiltz, s. t., turoff, m., & harasim, l. (2007). development and philosophy of the field of asynchronous learning networks. in andrews, r. & haythornthwaite, c. (eds.), handbook of e-learning research (pp. 56-72). london: sage. horton, w., & horton, k. (2003). e-learning tools and technologies. indianapolis: wiley publishing. krashen, d. (1988). second language acquisition and second language learning. prentice-hall international. macdonald, j. (2008). blended learning and online tutoring: planning learner support and activity design. hampshire, uk: gower publishing. malamah-thomas, a. (1987). classroom interaction. oxford: oxford university press. medina, r. (2009). interaction in the online tutoring sessions in a group of alex virtual level iv at the national university of colombia-bogotá. monografía para optar por el título de licenciada en filología e idiomas inglés. universidad nacional de colombia facultad de ciencias humanas, bogotá. pérez, s. l. (2008). el foro virtual como espacio educativo: propuestas didácticas para su uso. retrieved on april 2010 from web site: http://www.quadernsdigitals.net/ datos_web/hemeroteca/r_1/nr_662/a_8878/8878.html pinzón, d. (2008). percepciones de los estudiantes, profesores y tutores de los cursos de inglés i y ii del programa alex virtual de la universidad nacional de colombia, respecto a la respuesta a las tutorías presenciales y en línea durante el primer semestre de 2008. monografía para optar por el título de licenciada en filología e idiomas inglés. universidad nacional de colombia facultad de ciencias humanas, bogotá. strauss, a.l. & corbin, j. (1990). basics of qualitative research: grounded theory procedures and techniques. newbury park: sage. sutherland-smith, w. (2008). plagiarism, the internet and student learning: improving academic integrity. new york and london: routledge. universidad nacional de colombia [alex]. (2008). objetivos del programa. programa para el desarrollo del aprendizaje autónomo de lenguas extranjeras. bogotá, d.c. yin, r. (2003). case study research. thousand oaks california: sage publications. about the author rosa isabel gonzález moreno holds a bed in philology and languages-english, from universidad nacional de colombia, bogotá campus. she has participated as an assistant student in the profile research group at the same university. this article reports on her monograph project as a graduation requirement. 125profile vol. 12, no. 2, 2010. issn 1657-0790. bogotá, colombia. pages 125-140 silenced fighters: identity, language and thought of the nasa people in bilingual contexts of colombia voces silenciadas: identidad, lengua y pensamiento de la comunidad nasa en contextos bilingües colombianos wilder yesid escobar alméciga* july carolina gómez lobatón** universidad distrital francisco josé de caldas, colombia this article is the result of a theoretical investigation and a reflection guided by a revision of literature and a set of interviews conducted of two members of the nasa community: adonias and sindy perdomo, father and daughter who belong to a nasa sub-community located in tierradentro, cauca, southwestern colombia. the article addresses three major factors. firstly, it depicts identity processes that are constructed and constituted through language. secondly, it explores the power structures perceived by two nasa people, one of colombia’s minority groups. finally, it identifies and connects correlating dots between the literature, the testimonies of adonias and sindy perdomo and the teaching practices, approaches and beliefs in the area of elt (english language teaching) in colombia. key words: identity construction, bilingual education, minority groups, power structures este artículo es el resultado de una investigación teórica y una reflexión cimentada en una revisión literaria y en entrevistas aplicadas a dos personas de la comunidad nasa: adonias y sindy perdomo, padre e hija, pertenecientes a la población ubicada en tierradentro, cauca, en el suroccidente colombiano. el artículo trata tres aspectos principales. primero, describe procesos identitarios construidos y constituidos por medio del lenguaje. segundo, explora la distribución de poder tal como es percibida por dos personas de la comunidad nasa, uno de los grupos minoritarios de colombia. en último lugar, traza las correlaciones entre la literatura, los testimonios de adonias y syndi perdomo, y las prácticas y creencias existentes y predominantes en el área de la enseñanza del inglés en colombia. palabras clave: constitución de identidad, educación bilingüe, grupos minoritarios, estructuras de poder * e-mail: escobar.w@gmail.com * e-mail: carolinag0111@hotmail.com this article was received on july 8, 2009 and accepted on december 27, 2009. 126 universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras escobar alméciga & gómez lobatón introduction this article is not merely about knitting stories of the nasa people and their language mediated struggles, but rather, it attempts to observe other forms of bilingualism and bilingual education to make connections between languages and sociocultural aspects in order to further understand bilingualism as a concept. it is also an attempt to unveil identity issues which are assaulting our current collective and individual reality as a multilingual country and as second language learners and educators. in addition, this reflection aims at finding relationships between language and many other aspects of culture; for example, meaning, importance, work, land, prestige, religion, and power. this theoretical investigation took place as part of a bilingualism and bilingual education class of the m.a. program in applied linguistics to the teaching of english at universidad distrital francisco josé de caldas, in bogotá. it had the purpose of discovering relationships among language, sociocultural dynamics and geographical locations of minority groups in colombia to, subsequently, find correlations with elt. methodology the class theorization and conceptualization involved a study of bilingualism and bilingual education in those socio-culturally diverse and complex contexts of the colombian territory. herein, many minority languages and cultures in colombia came under scrutiny; for example, tukano, guambiano and, of course, nasa. then, we chose to focus our study on the nasa community and their lived experiences. due to limited time and resources we were unable to conduct the research project in tierradentro, cauca, with a bigger sample of the population. thus, we contacted two nasa members, sindy and adonias perdomo, who were within geographical reach for the financial feasibility of the project. they gladly accepted to participate and requested that their real names should be used for this purpose. data were gathered by using videotaped interviews of the participants in the form of biographical oral histories as depicted by creswell (1998). the interview questions pursued information about the educational system, home life, and literacy experiences. these data were mostly collected in spanish due to the fact that the participants are proficient speakers of spanish and the researchers did not have any knowledge of nasayuwe. this was followed by attempts of identifying bilingualism and bilingual education issues and the study of possible connections with english language teaching and learning. finally, we interpreted and critically presented the information based on the theoretical study and conceptualization about the subject. what we have next is the product presented in narratives, which account for the new considerations and understandings we have come to and we only hope that this will also serve to shape your own understanding on the matter. silenced fighters: theory-based analysis perhaps you love the briefcase which holds your documents or the sweater you wear on special occasions, but have you ever thought about the significance they have for you or for the people who made them? every single piece of work of the nasa people has been crafted with deep cultural consideration: their work represents who they are, what they have, what they believe in, and where they come from. for example, knitting carries life stories which are passed down through time and space not only through the making of the items, 127 silenced fighters: identity, language and thought of the nasa people... profile vol. 12, no. 1, 2010. issn 1657-0790. bogotá, colombia. pages 125-140 but through the items themselves. according to our participants, the skillful hands of nasa women weave the wool, cotton, and all the other fibers to provide clothing and shelter for their community as well as to register and pass on the changes of their ever-evolving culture and identity from family to family and generation to generation. the responsibility of maintaining the history of the nasa people and conveying cultural significance to their children rests heavily on their shoulders. this duty is incessant, given that neither identity nor culture is static, but rather, as cummins (2001) suggests, is constantly being negotiated and transformed under socio-cognitive conditions. this is the kwetad ya`ja (cuetandyaja). it is composed of colors and figures that are closely associated with the nasa cosmogony. in it, we can appreciate the unza yafx; that is, the mouse’s eye. the ideology behind it is to be able to raise our children with the cleverness of a mouse, which is a very important animal for the nasa community. (sindy perdomo) in addition, cultural significance is not divorced from language and language, in term, permeates most, if not all, aspects of any given civilization. thus, nasayuwe, the language of the nasa community, is not the exception. nasayuwe is the means by which the nasa community structures life, understands their world and conveys knowledge amongst themselves and outward into other societies. speaking nasayuwe, for the nasa population, means possessing one of the most vital sources of cultural identity, which arber (2005) considers to be the right to express and share individual cultural heritage including, but not limited to, language and religion. language portrays them as a cultural group setting them apart from any other (bernal & gonzález, 2007). sindy perdomo comments: when we lived in the indian reservation, i had a very close relationship with my grandmother, who was a very important person at the time… my mother is a spanish speaker; spanish is her mother tongue, and my father is a balanced bilingual, but i had a closer relationship with my grandmother, rosenda. she was a traditional medical doctor, and that is how i got acquainted with the nasayuwe language. (sindy perdomo) tierradentro, cauca, for example, is depicted by sindy perdomo as the land of the nasa people; only citizens of the nasa nation live there, and the restricting factors for awarding membership in this society are determined by language and language alone. in one of her narratives, sindy recounts below the encounter that her people had with white missionaries: the influence they had with one another and the history they shared together, which, she declares half joking, could never be denied because there is living proof embodied in the white european-looking portion of this population: something very special about tierradentro, is the people who live there because they are blond, green eyed, they have curly hair… i don’t know why! maybe because of the missionaries or maybe because of the colonialism. (sindy perdomo) these white skinned, blond haired and green eyed individuals from tierradentro are often monolinguals in nasayuwe and despite their astonishing ethnical differences when compared with the rest of the members, they seem to have no socially assigned restrictions due to their language proficiency in nasayuwe and to the common history they have with the rest of the nasa people. as a result, we could say that meaning pierces through the thickest layers of biological racial features and it is found at the core of who people are. as hymes (1974) explains, this is often determined through language under conditions and parameters exclusive to a specific community. nevertheless, the issue at hand entails far more than just speaking. nasayuwe, for the nasa people, represents a matter of pride in their historical 128 universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras escobar alméciga & gómez lobatón roots, respect for their culture and reverence for their belief system. this issue, consequently, sets off an identity-related matter affirmed by affiliations established through a common language, a common history and, in general, sociocultural aspects (foucault, 1988). knowing and identifying themselves as part of a given social group which has its own vision of the world allows them to recognize their possibilities in the present and project them towards the future based on their experiences from the past. that is, as ching man (2008) puts it, identity concerns not only who we are but also what we might become. language is the medium through which individuals are socially constructed and through which they construct the identity they are assigned. according to luke (1996), it is also through language that they define themselves and their subjectivities. for instance, grandparents tell their grandchildren stories about their life experiences and their origins as one of the many ways of reinforcing and revitalizing language which, in turn, is the foundation for identity constitution. this is done not merely by the use of words but also by the unlimited nature of conventions and significations that this tradition holds, as reflected in the quote below: this is the “chumbe”, this object is special because it is the last and the only symbolic representation of women’s thought, because it is the women who make it. they are the ones who transmit cultural values such as language, roles and the like… (sindy perdomo) the pieces of work crafted by nasa women such as “chumbe”, a strap-like baby carrier, is language in and of itself. the pictures, drawings and symbols decorating these items depict their cosmogony, tell their stories, and define their roles as their children’s educators who transmit linguistic and cultural values. language, then, is wrongly delineated if it is merely associated with grammatical structures or terms that are exclusively related to accuracy and appropriateness. according to freire & macedo (1987), these components, however, are closely linked with conceived economical interests, or to an ideology designed to initiate the poor, the underprivileged and minorities into the logic of a unitary, dominant cultural tradition. in order to come to deeper and better understandings about language and, more specifically, about nasayuwe, it is imperative to refer to hymes (1974), who suggests that the creation of language is contingent to the conditions and parameters of the context. that is, context shapes language by allocating meaning according to the characteristics of the participants. imagine english language education in colombia focused on reconstructing who students are as individuals, how they understand their world, how they comprehend their connections to their larger groups to have better access to possibilities within their world. that is what one participant refers to in the next statement: the best way to recover the language is by recovering the land…because… where is language constructed? where is communication constructed? where is our own thought being constructed? (adonias perdomo) swain (2000) mentions that physical and semiotic tools mediate our interaction with the physical and social environment. according to adonias, nasa people create language in and about their land: their lives in it, their dreams about it and their sorrows for it. they do not see themselves outside their natural environment but rather, they identify themselves as a part of the whole natural system and they see this system as a part of them. therefore, they create language to relate to their environment, to position themselves within it and 129 silenced fighters: identity, language and thought of the nasa people... profile vol. 12, no. 1, 2010. issn 1657-0790. bogotá, colombia. pages 125-140 to protect it. they also claim the right to preserve it as suggested below: [for nasa people] spanish became the in-fashion language; it was a privilege to be able to speak spanish… just like speaking english today, speaking the language of the dominating nation represented an asset for us as well. (sindy perdomo) as a result of the coalition of these many aspects in the nasa environment, the struggles of the nasa nation arise from the biggest and most important of the arenas which is language. certainly it set off several changes in nasa life. in relation to the prior idea, schumann (1990) illustrates the acculturation phenomenon: how the perception held about their own language is altered upon the arrival of one with more “prestige”, which is spanish. therefore, the “need” of nasa people to speak the majority language besides their first, generated a bilingual phenomenon that entailed new dynamics for identity constructions in this society. the nasa nation endured from the most subtle discriminatory acts to the cruelest punitive procedures for speaking what they speak, thus being what they are. if language is understood not only as a code system but also as a process of construction and negotiation of meaning and significance in which factors like ideologies and histories come into play, then we can associate the dynamics of the languages above with the dynamics that spanish and english have. symbolic occupation does not only happen in “el cauca” to the colombian mestizo community or by the pressing force of spanish; we can also see that same effect in other countries and nations. colombia, for instance, loses more and more ground to foreign enterprises and governments. therefore, english language teaching should include some of the socio-political issues and explorations of individual and collective identities in its practice to avoid problems like the following: it was not easy for me to do my homework when i had neither the resources nor a good command of the language. it was even harder for my dad because he was punished for speaking nasayuwe… (sindy perdomo) for sindy, this learning experience was painful at times, but remarkable, nonetheless. what she lived could be taken as a sample of what nasa youth had experienced through the learning of spanish. this trend is explained by thompson, mahoney, & macswan (2004) and can be debriefed by accounting for two different aspects that round out to form an approach to bilingual education that, certainly, has never suited a community with such peculiar characteristics. firstly, the impact of spanish on nasa students was reflected in the never-ending and complicated set of rules that entailed diction in grammar, phonetics and syntax. tudor (2001) calls this a structural and instrumental view to language and it is something they were not familiar with. sindy points out that while, in nasayuwe, the nasa people achieved meaning to the degree to which their speech was related to their current reality, in spanish meaning was forcefully appointed in substitution to their language and to every other aspect attached to it in order to subdue them and transform them into what the mestizo and the international community consider to be acceptable human beings. once more, it is possible to say that these practices relate directly to elt when significance leaves the classroom and grammar is the main focus of english classes as well as when students’ background, current context and future possibilities are not invited into the construction of the class dynamic (curricula). the next excerpt reflects this point: so then, they [the missionaries] tried to communicate the gospel through the usage of spanish and it was very interesting what 130 universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras escobar alméciga & gómez lobatón happened in the churches: they would sing “alabaré, alabaré” [...] and how can you translate that into nasayuwe? well, it is possible to translate banana, pineapple… but what about alabaré? it is similar to the oh gloria in the national anthem. they are sentimental words, thus their translation was difficult and so they were learned mechanically. (sindy perdomo) as any other episode of force in human history, this one also implies rules, regulations, oppressions, and restrictions that are, as adonias and sindy perdomo describe it, reflected in the way they perceived their language and language learning in general. subsequently, their first approach to spanish employed imitations and repetitions of linguistic patterns from their mestizo spanishspeaking classmates and teachers. as the nasa citizens started to find relevance in learning spanish, they also found strategies to improve their performance. by associating words with images, they began to support the constructions of new concepts. this aided understanding and provided meaning when the words from the new language by themselves were unable to do so. in other words, language learners need not only to find relevance in the concepts presented, but they also have to be allowed to construct their own coping mechanisms in their learning process. secondly, hornberger & skilton-silvester (as cited in reyes, 2009) state that “bilingualism and biliteracy often occur in a sociopolitical context of asymmetric power relationships, in which one language has a higher status than the other” (p. 2). clearly, the previous accounts exemplify the quote above, but we could further support it by exploring the literacy processes that sindy perdomo makes reference to. she mentions nasa individuals who, for one reason or another, attend high school on mestizo grounds or experience western literacy who, thereby, place themselves or are placed by others in what mckay & wong (1996), explain as academically marginalized social ranks. to represent this idea, we refer to the next account: when i was eight, i had to go to school and it was there where i started to identify the difficulties of learning many things in spanish. there was a time in which all was only learned mechanically. (sindy perdomo) coming from a society that relied mainly on the oral tradition, not only were nasas academically required to learn to read and to write in spanish at the speed and in the same way mestizos did by adhering to standardized “westerner ways” (weber-pillwax, 2001), but they were also socially stained through belittling, name calling, and other humiliating deeds for conceiving their literacy practices as different from everybody else’s. pardo (2007) also touches on the subject and reminds us that there are sixty-five indigenous languages, two creole languages, english and other languages of diverse origins spoken in colombia and the speakers of these languages have been forced, in many ways, to assimilate spanish. they face discrimination fostered by the circumstances that privileged the so called “language of power”, justifying the importance of writing or endorsing the learning of a given second language by presenting deceiving possibilities and practices that empower languages and individuals placing some in privileged and others in marginalized social ranks. in the same light, some elt practices involve the restriction of the use of l1 in the classroom. this needs to be reconsidered given that, as it is supported in this work, l1 engrosses identity and cognitive aspects. the school environment banned the speaking of nasayuwe; it was not suitable to speak it in common places where nasa and mestizo children met obligatorily and shared spaces as sindy declares in the next statement: 131 silenced fighters: identity, language and thought of the nasa people... profile vol. 12, no. 1, 2010. issn 1657-0790. bogotá, colombia. pages 125-140 interaction in the school took place in spanish, but inside doors, in the house, it would be in nasayuwe; one would play outside and even curse at others in spanish but once in the house and with the doors shut, everybody would speak nasayuwe. (sindy perdomo) sindy and adonias tell us that most teachers in their school contexts were mestizo and from their testimonies about school language policies, it could perhaps be inferred that these teachers viewed the students’ use of their first language as an interference in their collective and individual academic objectives. this concept is also described by krashen & terrel (1993). perhaps this is one of the explanations for the reasons behind enforcing the exclusive use of spanish in school. for skutnabb-kangas & mccarty (2008), this restriction causes language attrition in our indigenous communities. that is encouraging, in one way or another. nasa and indigenous students prefer spanish as the language to be used in public and tend to leave the use of nasayuwe and other native languages exclusively for “behind closed doors” of one’s house. it is important to remember what cameron (1995, as cited in pennycook, 2001) mentions about language which is not only an expression of identity but also the source by which individuals construct it. in other words, these teachers were not only forbidding students to speak nasayuwe but were also inhibiting their right to exist, thereby inflicting shame through the symbolic power enclosed in social dynamics as guerrero (2008) depicts it. this explains the difference from learning spanish with the only purpose of creating relations with the spanish speaking world as opposed to assimilating the spanish speaking world in substitution to one’s own. perhaps all of this could correspond to a subtractive vision of bilingualism (baker, 2006) if we observe that the use of nasayuwe is being confined to certain contexts, causing speakers of this language to partially forget it by the restriction of its use. we could relate this to reyes’ (2009) ideas of power, as an element that exerts an effect on the way students develop their literacy processes in two languages and the reality that having a similar practice in elt would lead to the recurrence of our repetitive history. conversely, the symbolic power of language transcends the boundaries of the school grounds. for instance, wycliffe bible translators, better known in spanish as instituto lingüístico de verano, had a profound influence in the political and spiritual fields of nasa history. on the one hand, wycliffe introduced the protestant faith in this society through language; persuasion, confusion and justification of acts were at the heart of these practices. this is similar to what frykenberg (2009) depicts of what happened from christianity’s early spread from the middle east to the furthest corners of europe as a metamorphosis of the gospel where each expansion of the gospel had its unique changes in the different aspects of social life and language. there were also mutations of the gospel and resistance towards it in tierradentro. sindy and adonias say that those who believed in different gods from that of the christian movement or walked an appropriation process of keeping some of their heritage traditions were labeled as heretics. on the other hand, the wycliffe bible translators “identified” a need in the nasa nation for a writing form of nasayuwe and they launched a program to fulfill it. it is obvious to state that this intention pretended to give nasayuwe an outlook similar to spanish and english. the initiative of creating nasayuwe in writing did not come from the 132 universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras escobar alméciga & gómez lobatón community itself but from a foreign entity which was wycliffe bible translators1. as a consequence, this would lead us to associate the term “identifying needs” with the marketing concept in capitalism whereby we do not really identify a need but rather, we create it since a need is neither mine nor real when i have not identified it myself. however, they carried out their task, worked in conjunction with the nasa people and fulfilled remarkable linguistic achievements. however, sindy perdomo declares that these accomplishments did not serve the interests of the nasa people because the findings rest to date, in their vast majority, in libraries in the united states and have remained out of the reach for the nasa nation. in the same way, many indigenous groups have been hostilely removed from their land, from their language and life. in response to it, we condemn solely the illegal terrorist groups. what is being concealed by the mass media and other entities is that many other parties share great responsibility for such savage acts: the banking system, the government itself, and social, religious, political, and educational institutions that perpetrated inequalities. here language is being used to exercise power over those whose histories were created, written and spoken in a specific geographical location that now it is to be seized; language is being used to misinform, deceive, justify and submit individuals and groups of people. therefore, sindy perdomo makes reference to the television set, in a mocking sort of way, as la caja del diablo (the devil’s box), attributing the authorship of this creative label to the wycliffe missionaries. nevertheless, she now realizes how close this label actually is to reality. sindy exhibits her feelings towards the media describing them as weapons of mass destruction 1 wycliffe bible translators was founded in the 1930 by richard legster and william cameron townsend. as a main objective, wycliffe sent young people to indigenous communities where oracy prevailed to create and introduce a written form of their language. that have been used against her people. it is obvious to state that the media without language would lose their impact; thus, not only language encompasses the very essence of who individuals are or traces the path they came along, but language also has a destructive power capable of breaking through the most solid socio-cultural structures eroding human essence away as shown in the next quote: the government has its own vision about the main communication processes that the indigenous peoples have; there are organizations that provide laws for language conservation for native communities. however, all of these procedures are done with the only purpose of appeasing us. (adonias perdomo) as james clifford (cited in canagarajah, 2005) states, “perhaps there is not return for anyone to a native landonly field notes for its reinvention”. nasa people hold different views about land from the ones held by mestizos. nasas cannot conceive themselves outside their territories because their significance entail different conditions and whole lifestyles. the relationship between language and land is so closely linked that when indigenous peoples lose their land, they are hopelessly exposed to the pressures and abuses of the outside world by being forced to forsake and forget their language and customs. however, the mestizo community appears to invade the lands of these indigenous groups more and more and that seems to be justified through discourse. accordingly, adonias perdomo comes to the conclusion that regaining, reviving and revitalizing their “heritage language”, as defined by kramsch, is only possible to the extent to which they get back for their community the lands that have been taken away from them (kramsch & whiteside, 2008). adonias expresses it as follows: today as well as yesterday, reviving the mother tongue has its bases on the fighting for the land; because, it is our territory, it is our autonomy; it is our right for self-government… if we win 133 silenced fighters: identity, language and thought of the nasa people... profile vol. 12, no. 1, 2010. issn 1657-0790. bogotá, colombia. pages 125-140 this battle, there will be resources to teach the language in the schools, there will be freedom; there will be an equilibrium, or at least, an acknowledgement for the right to use the language. (adonias perdomo) as we have seen, territorial incursions, political decisions, and social restrictions have permeated the life of the nasa people in a way that hinders their attempt for constructing their civilization. as any other community, they must also be aided by physical as well as symbolic borders and frontiers to protect their subsistence. here is where a pressing need for a deeper understanding of social aspects needs to come in to place. raising socio-cultural awareness towards bilingualism and bilingual education and their relationship to identity reconstruction the analysis of the previously presented struggles and their corresponding implications seeks to become stepping stones towards ongoing processes of reflection, which may contribute to arriving at new understandings about our bilingual and sometimes multilingual contexts in colombia and the subsequent approaches language educators and policymakers should pursue. the chronicles that sindy and adonias perdomo shared are directly or indirectly related to language and its relationships to other languages. therefore, language, meaning, and bilingualism are concepts that echo in the midst of these lines. on the one hand, medina (2005) makes us aware of the importance of creating new conditions in order to allow differences to “visit” our classrooms and feel accepted, valued and welcomed enough so as to remain to enrich our society. on the other hand, reyes (2009) defines a matching term – ecological perspective– as language practices that underlie not only linguistic components, but also a vast set of socio-cultural factors surrounding language learning processes which, together with the prior, evoke principals of respect and tolerance. in short, far from being a problem, ethnic, cultural and language diversity in the classroom represents a powerful learning asset to society. in the case of nasa communities, a view under these characteristics has not yet been undertaken; on the contrary, some common misconceptions motivate efforts to work in opposite directions. to illustrate, bilingualism has been limited to spanish and english alone leaving nasayuwe as well as hundreds of other languages marginalized from the concept (de mejía, 2006). additionally, according to grojean, it has been assigned standard definitions that diminish the complexity of the cognitive and socio-cultural processes that take place in it (as cited in cenoz & genesee, 1998) when, indeed, colombian bilingualisms are rich in shades, colors and forms (edwards, 2003). the socio political conditions that, in one way or another, foster these erroneous conceptions are, on the one hand, the fact that the united states, with all the support from latin america, has developed a concept of language imperialism (skutnabbkangas & mccarty, 2008), that places english as the privileged source of quiet domination in the “latin american colonies” thus, being the only one recognized as a valid second language. spreading the use of english without cultural considerations means spreading english ideologies, policies and interests that could and will, sooner than later, perhaps backfire on us. spreading the use of one global language could also be attributed to the fact that we want to homogenize the population so as to have more control. differences present a threat that, according to baker (2006), “may lie not only in personal insecurity and intolerance to differences 134 universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras escobar alméciga & gómez lobatón but also in perceived threats of power, position and privilege, plus a fear for what is different and competition for perceived fear resources” (p. 394). as berstein (2000) implies, who one is, then, and who one might become as a learner is definitively inherent to what is learned and constructed within a social environment. wess (1992, as cited in norton, 1997) states that “those who have access to material recourses have access to power and privilege, which will in turn, influence how they understand their relationship to the world” (p. 410). as we have learned from sindy and adonias’ accounts and from our experience as teachers, students do not learn all at the same pace nor do they have the same resources. their processes differ greatly from each other; however, the same results are required and measured through standardized testing. here comes the issue of educational policies and the first aspect one should ponder is its role in society. educational policies should aim at the construction of conditions under which cultural pluralism is protected. in addition, it should take into account who people are as a country or nation and what their contexts require of them and provide them with. basic standards for competences in a foreign language such as english tells us that in colombia today, foreign principles and standards are being implemented across the nation and these principles and standards belong to places of different contexts and people with different resources. here, it is important to evoke the concept of collective or national identity depicted by block (2007), where it is explained as the ability to imagine oneself as part of a larger social group. one crucial aspect when speaking about constructing a group’s collective identity is that all its members must understand what larger group they actually belong to. this is colombia with its own micro and macro contexts and its own interests and resources and it should be colombia the point of reference for measuring and testing educational objectives. the issue at hand here is when people imagine themselves as a part of a larger society to which they can never be a part of; for example, europe or the usa. in addition, through the many experiences and what is witnessed in the academic arena and in society in general, we could probably say that it is difficult to understand injustice when someone else is treated unjustly. it has to be our own personal and individual grievance to shake off our apathy and take action. that, as mentioned before, is one of the shortcomings of society today, the impossibility to see oneself as part of the larger group. for example, nasa struggles are our own and yet we perceive them so far from our reality. the policies that rule the nasa ethnic community were written by the same people who wrote the policies that rule the mestizo community. it would also be important to understand that the identity of a nation and its members is connected in many different ways; for example, by the communalities of their belief system, shared history, and common interests. as a system, a nation should operate together in search for its own interests. moreover, as a system, a nation should be able to understand that what is done to other members of a larger group may have a butterfly effect on other members. what we allow to happen to them may later occur to us or hurt us. in other words, colombia has standardized testing practices such as instituto colombiano para el fomento de la educacion superior (icfes) in general education and test of english as a foreign language (toefl) in english language teaching that do not take into account the specific context, the historical background, or the resources of the students and that have a reference point in foreign and unfamiliar contexts. as writers of this article, we want to make evident the 135 silenced fighters: identity, language and thought of the nasa people... profile vol. 12, no. 1, 2010. issn 1657-0790. bogotá, colombia. pages 125-140 need for a critical and informed stance on issues of this nature and advocate for a more responsible work of the media, of the different institutions and of those people whose voices are heard. helping the nasa nation and other native nations in our country regain their territory means helping them regain their identity, culture, language, and knowledge: their territorial identity (bernal & gonzález, 2007). applicability in elt: from current trends towards new prospectives on teachers’ development it is evident that neither listening nor knowing is a prevailing characteristic of human nature; it is easier to reap the “benefits” without considering possible repercussions. perhaps some prefer the easy way out by choosing the surgery over doing exercise or following a diet because it is too painful a process to lose weight. people often numb themselves with work overloads and the busyness of life just to be oblivious to the world around them. they love those diamonds in rings and necklaces, but they really do not want to hear how in the world they got them. they also love the briefcase even when the only thing they know about it is that it serves the purpose of carrying paperwork. they want to “learn english while sleeping” or “in four weeks” as is commonly advertised. they reduce life to the littlest and simplest of expressions. however, through their narratives, the nasa participants have taught us, among numerous others, the concept of meaningfulness. as we have seen in this article, meaningfulness for the nasa does not derive from the concept of entertainment or recreation and much less from effortless rewards, but rather, it stems from the ethical notions of historical relevance, common well-being and usefulness. making the “kwetad ya’ja (cuetandyaja)” was probably a task that required effort, concentration and hard work; however, it had purposes that went beyond its instrumental use and into depicting them and their place in this world and it was precisely that which made the job and the item significant. in other words, it is the possibility of identifying the usefulness of its specific utility as well as the recognition of its general historical and social cultural contributions and representations that assign meaning and significance. singing aleluya did not have a religious, historical or emotional background for the nasas and thus, it seemed to them as though it was full of empty words. for brookfield (1986), personal, meaningful learning does not always seek a specific goal such as the acquisition of immediately applicable skills. he defines it as “learning in which adults come to reflect on their self-images, change their self-concepts, question their previously uncritically internalized norms (behavioral and moral), and reinterpret their current and past behaviors from a new perspective” (p. 213). he argues that the self-directed mode of learning is crucial for a meaningful learning to occur because he sees self-directed learning as one in which learners are aware of and understand alternative possibilities to interpret and create their personal and social worlds. another aspect worth mentioning is the connection between language and culture. sindy and adonias recognize that language is not just the code standing alone in its attempt to make meaning by itself, but rather, that in order for the code to be able to make any sense, it needs to rely on contextual factors (e.g. history, ideologies and identity). they, more than everybody else, have realized that everyone is different and that we all have different histories and stories. we come from and go to different places. consequently, we learn different things and in different ways. as a result of this reflection, language teachers must 136 universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras escobar alméciga & gómez lobatón certainly go beyond the linguistic perspective and, as cruz (2007) suggests, try to figure out strategies that aim at helping students attain understanding of different ways of behaving, doing things and perceiving their reality. camps (1997) elaborates on and supports the fact that we have the right to be different and that right is not being respected. taking a close look at what our participants commented on in the narratives, we see that this idea seemed to be relevant in their context. throughout their narratives the participants describe the way in which restrictions on the use of a different language in school and on being different were inflicted and enforced. nevertheless, it is also important to acknowledge that roberts, byram, barro, jordan, & street (2001) make mention that in a social context, not only its participants have the right to be different, but they also have the responsibility of learning about the other in order to achieve some degree of social tolerance. we must understand that all these processes depend on socio-cultural factors because learning comes as the result of a need. perhaps not everyone needs the same things. meek & messing (2007) challenge educators to strive for a more cautious approach to educational practice bringing to bear the importance of dimensions of power contextualized within minority-language and ethnic groups. we urge them to attend to problems such as matrix-language framing and working with communities and publishers to ensure decisions favoring minority language use, rather than undercutting efforts to empower minority communities and reverse language shift. according to sapir (1970), “language is felt to be a perfect symbolic system in a perfect homogeneous medium” (p. 540). nevertheless, in english alone, we can see that language has evolved differently from country to country and from region to region. english speakers from jamaica do not share exactly the same codes as english speakers from africa. they do not even share the same codes with people from their own region or country. bustamante (2002) emphasizes the importance of accents and non-standard forms of language. barnard & glynn (2003) emphasize the importance of promoting diversity in the classroom. and yet, there is a marked preference in the field for employing “native speakers” in some institutions. it has also been our experience that in the midst of colombian’s critical unemployment rate, there are numerous qualified and over qualified english teachers. we conclude that even when there are human resources available and when there is a high unemployment rate, it is sometimes preferred to go the extra mile to hire foreign teachers. our next example in the matter concerns the standards and parameters by which english language teaching is governed in colombia. herein, english education is required to be taught, measured and evaluated according to methods and procedures that were designed for other contexts as such as the common european framework of reference (cefr) and the employment of standardized testing techniques such as the toefl and other standardized language examinations. in bärenfänger’s words (2008), frequently, responsibilities and accountabilities for the objectives and procedures to be implemented are unclear; at other times, they are beyond our control. fairclough (1992) suggests that knowledge, social relations, and social identities construct one another in their interactions. he says that this is done through discourse. learning english is not important for everybody because there are needs that have priority over the desire or requirement to speak english. sindy perdomo mentioned, for instance, that in order for her to go to school, she had to walk for about two hours. by the time she got there, 137 silenced fighters: identity, language and thought of the nasa people... profile vol. 12, no. 1, 2010. issn 1657-0790. bogotá, colombia. pages 125-140 she was already tired and hungry and could not concentrate on academic matters. we can assure you that in our efl classrooms there are conditions and situations that undermine the importance of learning english because there may be other more immediate circumstances that prevail. attaining meaningfulness from learning english does not lie solely with the speech of english teachers, but rather, students need to understand their relationship to the english language. teachers should strive for the provision of the necessary conditions for that to take place. learning english as a foreign language should, then, become important when students are able to construct a personal and, maybe, collective purpose for learning it. many people learn similar things for different purposes. there have been countries and individuals who learn english to appropriate it in order to be able to retaliate and gain emancipation. hall (1959, as cited in vaid, 2006) says that an appropriation of the language can be exerted as a powerful form of resistance against the dominant discourse. there exist others who do it to join in, others to be able to function behind enemy lines and others just out of desire to understand the other. as teachers, we need to create the environment to explore and indentify the reasons for learning english under the scope of a deep cultural consideration. we need to find sociocultural relevance instead of being worried about the games we will entertain our students with. we need to get to know the individual and collective realities of our efl students and practices. we need to be aware of our political and economical world to make decisions for the right purposes. as spolsky (1999) has pointed out, “foreign-and second-language teachers have been challenged to recognize the political effects of their customary work. whereas they had thought they were neutral and academically objective, they found their professional occupation supporting the spread of imperial and world languages and contributing to the demise of powerless languages” (p. 182). cárdenas (2006) endorses this claim by reflecting on the standards proposed by the ministry of education and concluding that they might have not taken into consideration cultural pluralism in colombia. the creation of policies and documents such as “the basic standards for foreign language teaching: english” (ministerio de educación nacional [men], 2006b), which is the basis for the development of others like the “bilingual colombia program: education vision for 2019”, have not stopped despite an outcry of the people (men, 2006). steps towards the development of educational strategies that enable teacher-researchers and students to start exploring the path between culture and language teaching and learning could involve a search for understanding on deeper levels of the complex human beings and their multifaceted interrelations as well as involve seeking collaborative work amongst teachers in order to achieve common goals towards a better way to teach the language (davies, 1999). we might think that we are delivering culturally oriented curricula when we tell students that “thanksgiving is one of the most important celebrations in the united states and that it is all about eating turkey and sharing in order to give thanks”. that is certainly showing only one side of the story; however, it is important to establish connections between what thanksgiving represents for all actors involved; it is important to give an account according to the native north americans to see if they had the same opinion, for example. in addition, the value and the power of the english culture are often spoken about but how about the incursion into an exploration of the self value in english? many times we speak about the language exchanges in terms of the english 138 universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras escobar alméciga & gómez lobatón contributions to the spanish language; however, it is also important to study the contributions of the spanish language to english. in conclusion, we should start, then, by thinking about the concept of multicultural education, understood as the plurality of races, costumes, traditions and therefore language that have to be recognized and accepted (solomon, 1988), just as in the case of minority languages, that claim for the right to be heard and respected without sacrificing their essence and identity. in the case of our efl contexts, the concept of intercultural education arises in the field of teachers’ development and language education. according to rivilla & domínguez (2005), for the development of intercultural education, culture has to be taken beyond the presentation of cultural items in the classroom: culture has to be embraced as a live entity that lets students go through the processes of understanding, synthesis and analysis, about cultural aspects that could be different from and yet, similar to one’s own. references arber, r. (2005). exploring multicultural curricula: speaking of race and ethnic identities. journal of curriculum studies, 37(6), 633-652. baker, c. (2006). foundations of bilingual education and bilingualism. clevedon: multilingual matters. barnard, r., & glynn, t. (2003). bilingual children’s lan-guage and literacy development. clevedon, england: multilingual matters ltd. bärenfänger, o. (2008). language educational policy and language learning quality management: the common european framework of reference. foreign language annals, 41(1), 81-101. barnard, r., & glynn, t. (2003). bilingual children’s language and literacy development. clevedon, england: multilingual matters ltd. bernal, i., & gonzález, m. e. (2007, november, 27). el canto del origen. tierra de todos. podcast. retrieved on june 15th from http://www.youtube.com/ watch?v=yv6w7ot4zcq bernstein, m. m. (2000). “pedagogy”, symbolic control and identity: theory, research, critique. oxford: roman and littlefield publishers. block, d. (2007). second language identities. london: kings lynn. brookfield, s. d. (1986). adult learning: a comprehensive analysis of principles and effective practice. england: open university press. bustamente, g. (2002). una mirada, desde bourdieu, al lenguaje y a las competencias. enunciación, 7, 51-56. camps, v. (1997). ética y diversidad cultural: derecho a la diferencia. méxico, d. f.: fondo de cultura económica. canagarajah, s. (2005). reclaiming the local in language policy and planning: reconstructing local knowledge. new jersey: esl & applied linguistics professional series. cárdenas, m. l. (2006). bilingual colombia: are we ready for it? what is needed? 19th annual ea education conference. retrieved on june 26, 2009 from http:// www.elicos.edu.au/index.cgi?e=hcatfuncs&pt=sl&x =getdoc&lev1=pub_c07_07&lev2=c06_carde cenoz, j., & genesee, f. (1998). beyond bilingualism: multilingualism and multilingual education. clevedon, england: multilingual matters ltd. colombia. ministerio de educación nacional [men]. (2006b). estándares básicos de competencias en lengua extranjera: inglés. formar en lenguas extranjeras: el reto. retrieved may 08, 2008 from http://www. colombiaaprende.edu.co/html/mediateca/1607/articles-115375_archivo.pdf colombia. ministerio de educación nacional [men]. (2006). educación: visión 2019. bogotá: autor. creswell, j. (1998). qualitative inquiry & research design: choosing among the five traditions. london: sage publications. 139 silenced fighters: identity, language and thought of the nasa people... profile vol. 12, no. 1, 2010. issn 1657-0790. bogotá, colombia. pages 125-140 cruz, f. (2007). broadening minds: exploring intercultural understanding in adult efl learners. colombian applied linguistics journal, 9, 144-174. cummins, j. (2001). negotiating identities: education for empowerment in a diverse society. los angeles: california association for bilingual education. ching man, l. (2008). classroom discourse and the construction of learner and teacher identities. in encyclopedia of language and education (vol. 4). university of pennsylvania. davies, a. (1999). an introduction to applied linguistics: from practice to theory. edinburgh: edinburgh university press. de mejia, a. (2006). bilingual education in colombia: towards recognition of languages, cultures and identities. colombian applied linguistics journal, 9, 152-168. edwards, j. (2003). bilingualism: beyond basic principles. clevedon, england: multilingual matters ltd. fairclough, n. (1992). discourse and text: linguistic and intertextual analysis within discourse analysis. discourse and society, 3(2), 193-217. foucault, m. (1988). technologies of the self. massachusetts: university of massachusetts press. freire, p., & macedo, d. (1987). literacy: reading the word & world. critical studies in education series. london: routledge. frykenberg, e. (2009). translating the message: the missionary impact on culture. international bulletin of missionary research, 33(1), 42-50. garland, e. (2006). can minority languages be saved? the futurist, 40(4), 31-36. guerrero, h. (2008). bilingual colombia: what does it mean to be bilingual within the framework of the national plan of bilingualism? profile, issues in teachers’ professional development, 10(1), 27-45. hymes, d. (1974). foundations in sociolinguistics: an ethnographic approach. philadelphia: university of pennsylvania press. kramsch, c., & whiteside, a. (2008). language ecology in multilingual settings: towards a theory of symbolic competence. applied linguistics, 29(4), 645-671. krashen, s., & terrell, t. (1993). the natural approach: language acquisition in the classroom. london: pergamon. luke, a. (1996). text and discourse in education: an introduction to critical discourse analysis. retrieved on june 26, 2009 from: http://www.gseis.ucla.edu/ faculty/kellner/ed270/luke/saha6.html mckay, s., & wong, s. (1996). multiple discourses, multiples identities: investment and agency in second-language learning among chinese adolescent immigrant students. harvard educational review, 66(3), 577-590. medina, e. (2005). presentaciones y políticas de la educación sobre los sordos y la sordera en colombia. revista educación y pedagogía, 17(41), 71-81. meek, a., & messing, j. (2007). framing indigenous languages as secondary to matrix. languages anthropology and education quarterly, 38(2), 99-112. norton, b. (autumn, 1997). language, identity, and the ownership of english. tesol quarterly, 31(3), 409-429. pardo, n. (2007). diversidad lingüística y tolerancia en colombia. colombian journal of bilingual education, 1, 11-23. pennycook, a. (2001). critical applied linguistics: a critical introduction. laurence erlbaum associates, inc. reyes, i. (2009). an ecological perspective on minority and majority language and literacy communities in the americas. colombian applied linguistics journal, 11, 106-114. rivilla, a., & domínguez, c. (2005). la formación del profesorado ante los nuevos retos de la interculturalidad. interculturalidad, formación del profesorado y educación. madrid: penron educación s.a. roberts, c., byram, m., barro, a., jordan, s., & street, b. (2001). language learners as ethnographers. clevedon, uk: multilingual matters, ltd. sapir, e. (1970). the collected works of edward sapir. berlin: gmbh & co. 140 universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras escobar alméciga & gómez lobatón schumann, j. (1990). extending the scope of the acculturation/pidginization model to include cognition. tesol quarterly, 24(4), 667-683. skutnabb-kangas, t., & mccarty, t. (2008). key concepts in bilingual education: ideological, historical, epistemological and empirical foundations. in encyclopedia of language and education. (vol. 5. bilingual education). new york: springer. solomon, i. d. (1998). strategies for implementing a pluralistic curriculum in the social studies. social studies, 79(6), 256-259. spolsky, b. (1999). second language learning. in fishman, j. (ed.), handbook of language and ethnic identity (pp. 181-192). new york: oxford university press. swain, m. (2000). the output hypothesis and beyond: mediating acquisition through collaborative dialogue. in lantolf, j. (ed.), socio-cultural theory and second language learning. oxford: oxford university press. thompson, m., mahoney, k., & macswan, j. (2004). the condition of english language learners in arizona: 2004. in a. molnar et al. (eds.), the condition of prek-12 education in arizona: 2004. tempe: arizona state university, education policy studies laboratory. tudor, j. (2001). the dynamics of the language classroom. cambridge: cambridge university press. weber-pillax, c. (2001). orality in northern cree indigenous worlds. canadian journal of native education, 25(2), 149-167. vaid, j. (2006). joking across languages: perspectives on humor, emotion, and bilingualism. clevedon, england: multilingual matters ltd. about the authors wilder yesid escobar alméciga is a candidate for the master’s of applied linguistics in the teaching of english at universidad distrital francisco jose de caldas. his research interests include constitution of identity through the analysis of discourse. he is currently a teacher of the administration and language faculty at universidad de la salle. july carolina gómez lobatón is a candidate for the master’s of applied linguistics in the teaching of english at universidad distrital francisco jose de caldas. her research interests include discourse analysis in efl settings and bilingual education. she is currently part of the languages department at universidad central and universidad de la salle. profile 10.indd english teachers’ beliefs about communicative competence and their relationship with their classroom practices profile 10, 2008. issn 1657-0790. bogotá, colombia. pages 75-89 75 * e-mail: egonzalez6@gmail.com address: calle 71b # 76-06. barrio santa helenita. bogotá. this article was received on february 5, 2008 and accepted on august 5, 2008. english teachers’ beliefs about communicative competence and their relationship with their classroom practices creencias de los profesores de inglés sobre la competencia comunicativa y su relación con sus prácticas de clase moravia elizabeth gonzález peláez* icfes & universidad nacional de colombia – sede bogotá, colombia this article describes a research project conducted with two english teachers from the extension program at foreign language department, national university in bogotá. the purpose of the study was to establish the relationship between what english teachers understand on communicative competence and what they actually do in their english classes. the teachers were observed during 4 months, and they were also interviewed. the findings show how hard it is to define what communicative competence is in teachers’ own words. data also show how important students are in the english classrooms. english teachers should make careful decisions to help them develop their language competence. key words: communicative competence, english teacher’s beliefs and reflections, classroom practices, english students’ roles, decision making este artículo describe un proyecto de investigación llevado a cabo con dos profesores de inglés de la unidad de extensión del departamento de lenguas extranjeras de la universidad nacional de colombia, en bogotá. el estudio tenía como objetivo establecer la relación entre lo que los profesores comprenden sobre la competencia comunicativa y lo que ellos realmente hacen en el salón de clase. los profesores fueron observados por un período de cuatro meses y también fueron entrevistados. los resultados del estudio muestran lo complejo que resulta para los profesores definir la competencia comunicativa en sus propias palabras. también es posible evidenciar la importancia que los estudiantes tienen en el salón de clase de inglés. los profesores de inglés deben ser cuidadosos al momento de tomar decisiones con el fin de ayudar a los estudiantes a desarrollar su competencia en la lengua extranjera. palabras clave: competencia comunicativa, creencias y reflexiones de los profesores de inglés, prácticas de clase, roles de los estudiantes de inglés, toma de decisiones profile 10, 2008. issn 1657-0790. bogotá, colombia. pages 75-89 profile 10.indd 75 23/10/2008 8:46:15 gonzález peláez universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras76 introduction as colombian language teachers are aware, education has gone through many changes during the last few decades. those changes are related mainly to the purpose of teaching and specifically to what colombian students need in order to deal with the national and international contexts in which they have to be ‘competent’. according to bogoya (2000), to be considered competent certainly depends on the type of circumstances in which a person has to act while making use of certain knowledge. based on this, he proposes an interdisciplinary work in which the individual, while acting in a context, takes into account some aspects regarding different areas of knowledge. the changes mentioned above have been integrated into the colombian educational system based on the national ministry of education proposals which include ley general de educación (men, 1994), resolución 2343 (men, 1996), lineamientos curriculares foreign languages area (men, 1999), and more recently, the national standards on foreign language competence (men, 2006). the intention of all those proposals is to give teachers and administrators guidelines to develop students’ communicative competence in a foreign language. but how do english teachers understand the concept of communicative competence? moreover, how do their teaching practices inform us about their understanding of communicative competence? the current article deals with the possible answers to these two questions. literature review the three main constructs which supported the study are: the definition of communicative competence, teaching practice and teachers’ beliefs. defining communicative competence savignon (1983) defines communicative competence as follows: “[...]it is a dynamic rather than a static concept[...], it depends on the negotiation of meaning[...], it applies to both written and spoken language as well as to many other symbolic systems[...], it is context specific[...], it takes place in an infinite variety of situations[...], it is defined as a presumed underlying ability[...], it is relative, not absolute, and depends on the cooperation of all the participants involved” (savignon, 1983, pp. 8-9). savignons’ definition is related to canale & swain’s communicative competence model (1980, in savignon, 1983). for them, communicative competence has four different components: grammatical competence, sociolinguistic competence, discourse competence, and strategic competence. these components allow teachers to develop a classroom curriculum and to structure teaching practice. canale & swain’s model can be seen in an english classroom when meaning negotiation takes place, and when all the participants in the classroom are involved in trying to develop their communicative competence. when you have students negotiating meaning, it is important to provide an appropriate atmosphere in which students feel free to interact profile 10.indd 76 23/10/2008 8:46:15 english teachers’ beliefs about communicative competence and their relationship with their classroom practices profile 10, 2008. issn 1657-0790. bogotá, colombia. pages 75-89 77 cooperatively. regarding interaction, stern (1990) refers to a classroom in which social and cultural components are part of the students’ interaction. he particularly suggests that language teaching gives greater importance to these components rather than to the language structure. beyond canale & swain’s model, bachman (1990) proposes a model for evaluating students’ language competence, which, in my opinion, is related to what teachers should do in the english classroom. his model includes different competences from organizational competence to sociolinguistic competence which are related to structural, cohesive, functional and social aspects of the language. this implies that teachers should have many aspects in mind when deciding about what to teach and how to do it. that also involves seeing language not just as a system, but also as a means of communication. besides the said models, the common european framework (council of europe) describes communicative language competence “[...]as comprising several components: linguistic, sociolinguistic and pragmatic. each of these components is postulated as comprising, in particular, knowledge and skills and know-how” (cef, p. 13). this definition goes beyond language knowledge and emphasizes on knowing how to use the language, and to act with it. teaching practice discussion in an article published by the colombian national ministry of education (1998), teaching practice is described as a crucial social event to which the field of pedagogy has a lot to contribute. they state that this ‘social task’ has evolved and changed throughout time going from a ‘simple’ duty developed in a particular setting (the classroom) to an elaborated task that might have a social, cultural and political impact, etc. this article also suggests that teaching practice is not abstract; rather, it is factual and verifiable. it is possible to identify its outcomes and to relate them to the society in which we live. that is why, based on an individual’s behavior in society, we can picture the type of education they were involved in. another important discussion on teaching practice is found in richards (richards & nunan, 1994). he highlights the systematic way teachers are working now in contrast to the way they used to act based on intuition or common sense. now, he argues, teachers are taking advantage of theoretical issues that might help them understand and improve the way they teach. he also mentions that nowadays second language teachers are interested in examining language development, pedagogy, acquisition, and curriculum, along with other issues, which allow them to assume an autonomous behavior to some extent. finally, bartlett (in richards & nunan, 1994, p. 203) proposes characterizing teachers’ actions as follows: “[...]teacher’s actions are influenced by intentions in the social settings and by the beliefs and chains of reasoning that are held before and after the occurrence of the action” . this shows the close relationship between what teachers do in the classroom and what they think or believe in, and how profile 10.indd 77 23/10/2008 8:46:15 gonzález peláez universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras78 the former makes teachers’ understanding about what teaching is evident, for instance. teachers’ beliefs about teaching practices johnson (1999) establishes a relationship between reflective teaching and teachers’ beliefs by asking the following question: what are teachers’ beliefs and how do they influence teachers’ reasoning? she answers it by defining the term ‘beliefs’. she says that beliefs have a cognitive, an affective, and a behavioral component. she also states that all human perception is influenced by beliefs which influence the ways in which events are understood and acted on. johnson also mentions that teachers shape their beliefs based on who they are and what they do. their beliefs are the product of their personal and professional experiences. if the affective component of teachers’ beliefs is taken into consideration, it is possible to see how difficult it is for them to deal with criticism and changes that might affect their teaching practice. on the other hand, richards & lockhart (1999) assume teachers’ beliefs are constructed based on many aspects such as goals, values, understanding about teaching content and process, their work environment, and their roles. all these aspects constitute teachers’ background when making decisions and acting or what it is known as “culture of teaching” (p. 30). they say that when studying teacher-thinking, some questions like these should be asked: what do teachers believe about teaching and • learning? how is their knowledge organized?• what are the sources of teachers’ beliefs?• how do teachers’ beliefs influence their • teaching? (richards & lockhart, 1999, p. 30) those are some of the questions i posed when deciding on conducting this research. closely related to them are two investigations in the area teachers’ beliefs and their practices, which are worth summarizing. the first study is about the congruence of student teachers’ pedagogical images and actual classroom practices conducted by fung & chow (2002) in hong kong. the purpose of this research was to establish a profile of pedagogical images of a group of student teachers, and to see if there is congruence between their pedagogical images and teaching practices. the researchers developed a questionnaire to explore teachers’ views about teaching, and this was administered to 59 first-year student teachers before and after their teaching practicum in physical education for secondary schools. the researchers found that student teachers have an approach in mind, but when they are in actual classes they have a mixture of approaches. it means that they considered themselves as teachers who have in mind child-centered approach, but when having their classes they actually followed a teacher-centered approach. the second study was conducted in colombia and was done by two novice teacher-researchers in bogotá (zuleta & prada, 2005) with four primary school student teachers. it was a case study in which researchers were interested in questioning student teachers about profile 10.indd 78 23/10/2008 8:46:15 english teachers’ beliefs about communicative competence and their relationship with their classroom practices profile 10, 2008. issn 1657-0790. bogotá, colombia. pages 75-89 79 their practice based on their teaching preparation and how they dealt with some difficulties. they used student teachers and practice counselor’s journals and conferences as well as semi-structured interviews as instruments to collect data. the study results showed that student teachers faced stressful situations when developing their practicum, especially when they found difficulties; however, they felt happy at the end of the process. results also showed that the reflective approach chosen by the practice counselor allowed studentteachers to see their practice from a critical perspective and it was enriching for them. these two studies are very closely related to my research in terms of the type of questions or inquiries researchers have. they seek to compare student teachers and teachers’ beliefs, perceptions, and ways of seeing teaching with their current practices. methodology before portraying the setting, participants and instruments used to collect the data, it is necessary to say that the study carried out with in-service teachers followed the descriptive case study features pointed out by cohen & manion (1995). they state that a researcher who develops a descriptive case study observes and describes a group of people who represent a specific community that can be characterized based on the data analysis. that is what i did as researcher. i observed and described a group of english teachers, and then analyzed the phenomena that characterize them. participants the participants of this study were two english teachers. both of them got their undergraduate degree at the national university in bogotá, one of them in the mid-nineties, and the other in 2000. the first participant, martha correa1, is an english teacher whose experience began in 2001 after getting her degree. but she actually started working as a teacher before graduation while doing her teaching practice. during the three years before her participation in this study, she taught at different levels and in different settings. she began teaching in primary school, then went on to high-school students (eighth, ninth, tenth and eleventh graders); and after that worked with university students at two universities. she has also been part of the program called alex, at the national university of colombia, which is based on an autonomous paradigm that was started by the foreign languages department some years ago in order to teach foreign languages to students who were studying different majors at the university. she has also worked as an assistant researcher at the same university. the second participant, patricia rojas2 is an english teacher with ten-years of experience. she holds a postgraduate degree in applied linguistics (especialización). she has taught english at different levels and in different settings, but mainly she has worked in a school in the northern part of the city for ten years. there, she has taught 1 this is a fictitious name used to protect the participant’s identity. 2 this is a fictitious name used to protect the participant’s identity. profile 10.indd 79 23/10/2008 8:46:15 gonzález peláez universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras80 english at all high school levels and she has been in charge of the foreign language area. she also has worked at the national university of colombia in the extension courses for more than seven years. she also had the opportunity of teaching spanish and english to high school students at la chorrera (amazonas) for one year. finally, she got a scholarship and worked as a spanish teacher in manchester (england) for one year. during that period of time, she enrolled in an advanced course in english literature. setting the study was done at the national university in bogotá, mainly in the extension english courses that take place at night from monday to thursday. at the time the data was collected, the courses were divided into four different levels, which were also divided into two. for instance, students in an elementary level began with 1a, continued with 1b, and then were promoted to the second level (2a), and so forth. the students who attended those courses were adults who work and/or study during the day, and were studying english for different reasons, which varied from personal interests to job requirements. teachers organized their classes following a textbook. this means that the program was mainly based on the textbook. however, teachers were allowed to use extra materials related to the topics proposed by the textbook. in each one of the levels throughout the entire course, teachers had to develop a minimum of four units from the textbook ready. collecting data interviews and observation sheets were used to collect the data. regarding interviews, the format employed was based on seidman’s proposal (1998) about the use of the three-interview series designed by dolbare and schuman (schuman, 1982, cited by seidman, 1998). seidman argues that when this series of interviews is used, the interviewer guarantees an environment in which interviewee’s background is taken into account. due to restrictions on the participants’ availability, it was decided to merge the threeinterview series in which they were asked about seidman’s proposal issues. despite the fact that i did not do the three interviews, their responses to the semi-structured interview made it possible to elicit their beliefs about communicative competence in relation to their life history and professional experience at the same time. the second instrument used to collect data was observation sheets. this was used to see the relationship between their beliefs and their actual teaching practices. the two participants were observed before the interviews were done. i attended nine class sessions of two hours each with the first participant and six class sessions, also of two hours each, with the second participant. this was done on a weekly basis from october to november 2003 and from october to november 2004. in the class sessions observed, everything that happened during the class was described following a narrative structure using the observation sheet. after the first three observation sessions, the interview was done in november 2003. this took profile 10.indd 80 23/10/2008 8:46:15 english teachers’ beliefs about communicative competence and their relationship with their classroom practices profile 10, 2008. issn 1657-0790. bogotá, colombia. pages 75-89 81 about one hour. it was recorded and the corresponding transcription was made. finally, i believe these instruments allowed me to elicit teachers’ beliefs and practices better. calderhead (1988 in breen, hird, milton, oliver & thwaite, 2001) mentions that it is difficult to ask teachers about their beliefs or ‘principles,’ because teachers’ professional knowledge is embedded in their actions. that is why it is complex for them to make those beliefs explicit. breen et al. also suggest that this data collection can be done by observing and using elicitation techniques. these guiding principles were important for negotiating with the teachers to avoid the influence of their affective component and the resistance they might have towards a research oriented to describing and analyzing their way of acting as professionals in the educational context. findings while reading the data, i used some coding techniques as suggested by strauss & corbin (1990). one of these consists of analyzing the interview and observation line-by-line. based on this, i started by reading the data collected with the observation sheets in which some comments were included in the right hand column. when the interview was transcribed, i contrasted it with what had been found through the observation process. the comments included in the observation sheets were mainly labels or concepts, as strauss & corbin (1990) call them. after that, i grouped and listed them in a matrix where i tallied their frequency. while tallying, i used different colors to identify some commonalities that drew my attention. in relation to commonalities, i read the data gathered, looked for some regular patterns and highlighted them. i mainly concentrated on the ones related to those already found through the observation instrument. after having identified the commonalities i came up with categories and subcategories, as follows: table 1. categories drawn from data analysis. core category sub-categories sub-categories’ characteristics acting upon the dynamics of the class based on personal beliefs of communicative competence starting from students’ 1. needs. planning and doing based on – students’ interests. promoting confidence. – teachers’ attitudes that support – students. deciding upon classroom 2. organization and environment. going beyond what is supposed to – be used. having students work – cooperatively. coping with multiple competences – and language abilities. profile 10.indd 81 23/10/2008 8:46:16 gonzález peláez universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras82 in the core category we can see teachers’ actions which are mainly based on what they consider is important to develop students’ communicative competence. based on this, many of the teachers’ actions show that communicative competence development implies different aspects beyond language itself. it embraces students’ needs (affective and language needs), the way they interact in the classroom (classroom organization and ways of working in class), and the type of materials teachers use. teachers’ beliefs could be also identified: they were represented by different attitudes seen in the classroom when i observed them and by their awareness when they were asked about their practices. those beliefs have to do with the ways teachers see their students and mainly, what they consider their students need to develop their language competence. based on those beliefs, teachers also start to reflect upon what they consider should be taught and how. these considerations allowed me to talk about two sub-categories: starting from students’ needs and deciding upon classroom organization and environment. starting from students’ needs first of all, seedhouse (1995) considers learners’ needs really important, because it allows teachers to set their class goals, and it is directly related to what happens in a classroom. from the very beginning of each class, i noticed that participants in this study consider learners not only individuals in a classroom, but also people who deserve consideration. this makes students feel comfortable and relaxed, which is why teachers greet them: “hello! good evening”, in a friendly manner and ask them about their day, for instance. here is some evidence from the observation sheets and from the interviews to illustrate this subcategory: teacher greets students by asking them how their day was. one of the students says that she had a terrible day and the teacher asks: “why? tell us”. (observation sheet nº 01. entry: november 12, 2003) teacher begins by saying: “hello!” then, she addresses a student and says to him: “nice to see you again”. (observation sheet nº 06. entry: october 13, 2004) this evidence shows teachers’ attitude towards students in terms of considering classroom atmosphere important; that is why they have a particular way of starting the class in order to, perhaps, have the appropriate atmosphere to begin with the class. to do that, they take care of greeting and asking students about themselves. i interpret this attitude as a way showing concern about their students as the human beings they are. secondly, some evidence taken from the interviews is also relevant to illustrate this sub-category in which teachers’ opinion or view about class atmosphere is expressed. teacher 1 (martha): 681. my students’ work environment 682. is very important for me so 683. i try to make them feel comfortable, 684. get to know each other and see that 685. they are not sitting with a profile 10.indd 82 23/10/2008 8:46:16 english teachers’ beliefs about communicative competence and their relationship with their classroom practices profile 10, 2008. issn 1657-0790. bogotá, colombia. pages 75-89 83 686. stranger in the first class. (interview. november 22, 2003) here, we notice how martha considers creating the appropriate conditions before starting the class really important. conditions that include having students interacting among themselves to meet their own interests, or at least to share their personal information, which later on will allow them to interact in a friendly manner. at the end, they will feel really comfortable in the class and that will help them to develop language competence. teacher 2 (patricia): 419. ...well, ahhh, first i would say that 420. before teaching an english class, 421. it’s... you need to [sic] open your 422. heart to the students and feel that 423. they can give a lot and that 424. they aren’t afraid to want to say 425. things in english because that 426. limits them a lot. 427. it is a disease that many have. (interview. november 29, 2003) in this evidence, we can see patricia’s feelings in terms of offering students some opportunities to feel free to say what they think without fear of being judged. this is also an example of teachers’ purpose about creating an appropriate atmosphere for learning, which implies thinking about students’ needs. when thinking about students’ needs, teachers’ beliefs were reflected in three important aspects that show how they consider students’ interests and confidence when developing communicative competence. in other words, teachers believe that communicative competence implies thinking broadly about students’ needs. that is to say, when developing communicative competence, students bring to class what they are in terms of themselves, their feelings and their interests; so teachers should control all these aspects by providing the appropriate conditions in order to guarantee an appropriate learning environment. promoting confidence is one of the characteristics of this sub-category, which i consider really important when teaching. with respect to it, we can see teachers’ beliefs about the importance of avoiding student anxiety by fostering confidence were evident. “communicative language teaching requires a sense of community –an environment of trust and mutual confidence, wherein learners interact without fear or threat of failure” (savignon, 1983, p. 122). this quotation reveals the importance classroom atmosphere has in the development of communicative competence. there are some pieces of evidence taken from the data analysis to illustrate this discussion: teacher 1 (martha): 692. “...but what we try to do is to 693. lower the level of anxiety and 694. make the environment become 695. more friendly and perhaps 696. that is one of the nice things”. 697. researcher: “so you are talking 698. about the environment in class”. (interview. november 22, 2003) profile 10.indd 83 23/10/2008 8:46:16 gonzález peláez universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras84 teacher 1 (martha): 699. “for me this is very important 700. because it allows them to talk... 701. intervene, they don’t feel reprimanded 702. by me nor by their classmates. 703. this is a part that i have realized that 704. they don’t talk because xx no, 705. it is that the person beside me 706. is going to say that i xx these concepts 707. that we call representations here xx 708. i try to change them. 709. now that we trust each other xx 710. so xx we play a little game xx and 711. go on with the topic because now 712. they are relaxed and now they can 713. work on the topic we are dealing with 714. in class or the one we are going to introduce.” (interview. november 22, 2003) teachers’ interest in giving students confidence was also noticed in the way teachers acted, for example, they smiled frequently during a class. …she nods very often while she is listening to a student asking a question. sometimes she does so when she says: “yes.” while listening to students, she also smiles regularly. (observation sheet nº 03. entry: october, 29, 2003) some aspects related to teachers’ role in the classroom can be seen in this observation. when communicative language teaching is followed, richard & lockhart (1999) identify the role of the teacher as that of a facilitator whose attitudes and behaviours influence students’ progress. this role is easily observed and evident in the way one of them nods when students are participating, as a way of assenting (observation sheet nº 03. entry: october, 29, 2003). deciding upon classroom organization and environment coming back to the sub-categories, now i am referring to the second one. this second sub-category involves some aspects related to the way teachers have students interact in class, the use of extramaterial for developing some activities, and a core aspect of this study--the relevance teachers give to developing communicative competence through the different subcompetences, and the development of the four language skills. in the majority of the classes i observed, i noticed how teachers changed from one activity to another and this implied also changing students’ organization in the classroom. the students seemed to enjoy these changes. something that called my attention was that some students who were reluctant to participate in a certain activity changed their attitude when they were asked to arrange desks in a complete different way. here we can see how teachers’ decisions regarding different classroom arrangements are related to the way they think this would help students to develop their communicative competence. teacher 1 (martha): 921. researcher: “and in the end 922. how does the organization of your class 923. with your students work? 924. how is it related, shall we say, profile 10.indd 84 23/10/2008 8:46:16 english teachers’ beliefs about communicative competence and their relationship with their classroom practices profile 10, 2008. issn 1657-0790. bogotá, colombia. pages 75-89 85 925. with that goal that is the development 926. of communication competence? 927. is there a relationship? 928. do you feel like there is a relationship 929. when you think about organizing the class?” 930. t: “of course, because look, 931. this thing of developing communicative 932. competence is not an individual matter 933. xx i don’t sit there in a classroom and 934. look at certain structures like they do 935. in certain kinds of classes. 936. that makes you think of: 937. one desk behind another and 938. another desk behind that and 939. like managing a class on anatomy 940. or something like that. this is not 941. the same. so you have to create spaces 942. and structures such as a half-moon, 943. small circles, groups of three where 944. they can exchange knowledge. 945. they can xx that they have a 946. common reference to be able to share it 947. and that seems very important to me. 948. i always try to do it. whenever i have lecture 949. classes, the desks are one behind the other 950. but when i am practicing, the format is different”. (interview, november 22, 2003) in the last part of this interview (lines 949-952), the way the teacher decided to have students organized differently depending on the type of process they were going through in the class was noticeable. in other words, when the teacher introduces a topic, she has students sitting in rows one behind the other. but if she has them practicing, students are organized differently depending on what it is. that means, students have the opportunity of practicing the language while they are organized in ways that imitate real communication to develop their communicative competence. rivers (1992) supports my thinking by saying that since language is a vehicle of communication it must take place in communicative situations in which students can interact among themselves and with the teacher. finally, let’s look at some of the evidences concerning how participants coped with multiple competences and language abilities, an important characteristic of this sub-category. teachers’ beliefs about communicative competence can be seen through the way they incorporate a competence model into their classes. they express their belief by including activities and tasks which make students develop their competence (organizational and pragmatics competence) following bachmans’ model (1990), for instance, without being aware of it. teacher 1 (martha): 774. “communication competence is made up 775. of various things. that is to say, what 776. i taught my students the other day, 777. it is not only that you know the structure 778. but when you can use that structure. 779. because you are not going to use 780. ‘quiubo’ / ‘what’s up?’ with your boss 781. because you can’t do that. profile 10.indd 85 23/10/2008 8:46:16 gonzález peláez universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras86 782. there are many things that this 783. implies and i believe that as a professor 784. one knows that but putting it into 785. words just like that is difficult x 786. for me it is difficult right now. 787. how do you develop your students’ 788. competence? i don’t know. 789. i try to make them work a little on 790. each thing that communicative 791. competence is made up of ”. (interview, november 22, 2003) in the previous data, it is possible to see how teachers incorporate some of the elements bachman (1990) talks about regarding communicative competence. they give great importance to the appropriate use of language structure depending on speakers’ role. in that sense, they are considering grammar and pragmatic competences. they also see the relation between bachman’s communicative competence model and the development of the four language skills. on the other hand, teachers think communicative competence implies a complex process because it involves many things such as form, function, purpose and use, for instance. they argue that it is difficult for them to define what communicative competence implies. however, they take into account many of the elements they consider part of what communicative competence embraces. this discussion can be related to what savignon (1983) mentions in regards to communicative competence. she says that this notion goes beyond linguistics and psychology, that it also covers anthropology and sociology. based on this, it is understandable that communicative competence is seen as a macro concept as one of the teachers suggested. her reason was that she found it hard to fulfill all the requirements and, therefore, proving that a teacher is really working on students’ communicative competence is not easy. conclusions teachers revealed communicative competence complexity in their teaching practices. nonetheless, the analysis of data gathered allowed me to answer the inquiries posed in this research. first of all, here are some of the conclusions related to my first sub-question: how do english teachers understand the concept of communicative competence? it was observed that teachers find difficult to define what communicative competence is. they state that communicative competence can be seen as a macro concept and that its development goes beyond language. they also believe or think there is a model of communicative competence composed of elements such as grammar, lexis, functional aspects, and the four language abilities as well. it turn, these components are seen as an integrated whole in the classroom. communicative competence is also described by teachers as related to functional issues in terms of having language use in mind when teaching language structures to students. this is closely related to the fact that teachers consider communicative competence a context-based issue. nonetheless, participants think that nowadays teachers do not take into account all of the components of communicative profile 10.indd 86 23/10/2008 8:46:16 english teachers’ beliefs about communicative competence and their relationship with their classroom practices profile 10, 2008. issn 1657-0790. bogotá, colombia. pages 75-89 87 competence when they work on developing it in the classroom. secondly, the following conclusions are related to the second sub-question: what do their teaching practices tell us about their understanding of communicative competence? teaching practices show that teachers act based on their beliefs about communicative competence. teachers consider students’ needs thus, they plan and do things in the classroom while keeping in mind what students prefer. likewise, while developing communicative competence, teachers believe students need support. participants think that communicative competence development depends on classroom atmosphere, classroom organization and the use of extra-materials. they assert that the development of communicative competence implies thinking about the students themselves as well as the way they interact in the classroom. pedagogical implications this study shows how teachers are going through a reflective process that leads them to see themselves as professionals who have certain beliefs about teaching that shape what they do in class. these reflections are necessary for socialization with the english language community. this process implies having teachers interacting among them and sharing these experiences. that is one of the main flaws in the current educational system. there is no room for teachers to really reflect about how they teach and learn together about teaching and learning issues, along with other aspects. based on that, i believe these findings show how important and necessary it is to have the space to discuss educational issues such as the ones described here. these spaces have to be established by teachers themselves and facilitated by the government and institutions if they are to succeed in this attempt. spaces like these should bring teachers not just the possibility of sharing reflections and beliefs but also of thinking about ways to enrich their teaching practices. these would also have to do with the type of available courses, or even graduate programs for teachers to make them more qualified. in that sense, government support is needed to implement programs in which teachers can be updated in terms of political and educational changes that allow them to reflect upon their practices and make decisions to improve them quickly. another pedagogical implication has to do with the teaching practice itself. first of all, from this study it is possible to see how teachers’ decisions in the class have a purpose and a basis which comes not only from their knowledge, their experience and their beliefs but also from institutional patterns that, in many cases, shape the way teachers act in the classroom. based on this, it is necessary to see the teaching practice as the complex process it is. not only that but more importantly, to see english teachers as individuals who have to struggle with many problems to do their task: developing students’ foreign language competence. the second issue has to do with the awareness teachers must have when profile 10.indd 87 23/10/2008 8:46:16 gonzález peláez universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras88 assuming the responsibility of teaching a foreign language in our country. this awareness is related to the relationship between theory and practice. in this study, i saw how teachers faced difficulties when putting some concepts into practice in the classroom. then, i asked myself: is it a matter of simply relating one thing to another one or is it a matter of being updated in terms of studying, and why not, doing research? i think that teachers have plenty of literature that can help them become updated in terms of teaching, but they also have ample opportunities to question their practices that perhaps would minimize the problem of relating what they know with their actual practice. references bachman, l. (1990). fundamental considerations in language testing. oxford: oxford university press. bartlett, l. (1994). teacher development through reflective teaching. in j. richards & d. nunan (ed.), second language teacher education (pp. 202-214). cambridge: cambridge university press. bogoya, d. (2000). una prueba de evaluación de competencias académicas como proyecto. bogotá: universidad nacional de colombia. unibiblos. breen, m., hird, b., milton, m., oliver, r., & thwaite, a. (2001). making sense of language teaching: teachers’ principles and classroom practices. applied linguistics journal, 22(4), 470-501. cohen, l. & manion, l. (1995). research methods in education. london: routle. colombia. ministerio de educación nacional [men]. (1994). ley general de educación. ley 115. bogotá: author. colombia. ministerio de educación nacional [men]. (1996). resolución 2343. bogotá: author. colombia. ministerio de educación nacional [men]. (1998). serie documentos especiales. bogotá: author. colombia. ministerio de educación nacional [men]. (1999). lineamientos curriculares. idiomas extranjeros. bogotá: author. colombia. ministerio de educación nacional [men]. (2006). estándares básicos de competencias en lenguas extranjeras: inglés. bogotá: author. common european framework. a common european framework of reference for languages. retrieved february 2, 2005, from council of europe web site: http://www.coe.int/t/dg4/ linguistic/cadre_en.asp fung, l., & chow, l. (2002). congruence of student teachers’ pedagogical images and actual classroom practices. educational research, 44(3), 313-321. johnson, k. (1999). teachers’ beliefs: the rock we stand on. understanding language teaching. canada: heinle & heinle publishers. richards, j. (1994). the dilemma of teacher education. in j. richards & d. nunan (ed.), second language teacher education (pp. 3-15). cambridge: cambridge university press. richards, j. & lockhart, c. (1999). reflective teaching in second language classrooms. cambridge: cambridge university press. rivers, w. (1992). communicating naturally in a second language. cambridge: cambridge university press. savignon, s. j. (1983). communicative competence: theory and classroom practice. u.s.a.: addisonwesley publishing company, inc. seedhouse, p. (1995). needs analysis and the general english classroom. elt journal, 49, 59-65. seidman, i. (1998). interviewing as qualitative research: a guide for researchers in education and social sciences. new york: teachers college press. stern, h. h. (1990). fundamental concepts of language teaching. oxford: oxford university press. profile 10.indd 88 23/10/2008 8:46:17 english teachers’ beliefs about communicative competence and their relationship with their classroom practices profile 10, 2008. issn 1657-0790. bogotá, colombia. pages 75-89 89 about the author moravia elizabeth gonzález peláez holds a b.a in philology and languages from universidad nacional de colombia sede bogotá. m.a in applied linguistics for tefl. teacher at the profile teacher development program and alex virtual program at national university of colombia. eleven years experience as test designer and manager at icfes, colombia (tests for high school students, foreign language teachers, and for the undergraduate exam, ecaes). strauss, a. & corbin, j. (1990). basics of qualitative research: grounded theory procedures and techniques. london: sage. zuleta, x. & prada, l. (2005). tasting teaching flavors: a group of student-teachers’ experiences in their practicum. profile, 6, 157-170. profile 10.indd 89 23/10/2008 8:46:17 73profile vol. 13, no. 2, october 2011. issn 1657-0790. bogotá, colombia. pages 73-84 “don’t tell my father”: important lessons learned through efl classroom small talk “no le digan a mi padre”: lecciones importantes aprendidas a través de la comunión fática en el salón de inglés como lengua extranjera gabriela ayala gonzález* miguel adrián leonel de cervantes orozco** víctor daniel gonzález cabrera*** faviola romero mayoral**** gerrard edwin mugford fowler***** universidad de guadalajara, mexico all too often phatic communion is neglected in the english as a foreign language classroom or relegated to the level of formulaic language which merits little or no attention. in this article we argue that phatic communion plays an important role in establishing, developing and maintaining interpersonal rela tionships between teacher and learners which can be seen in terms of solidarity and supportiveness. furthermore, small talk offers one of the few opportunities for students to engage in meaningful communicative interaction in the english as a foreign language classroom which is largely characterised by non-authentic language activities. using classroom data, we attempt to show that teachers and students actively look for ways to enhance personal relationships as they boost the face of other interactants. key words: english as a foreign language, interpersonal language, phatic communion. a menudo se descuida la “comunión fática” en los salones donde se imparte el inglés como lengua extranjera o se baja al nivel de una fórmula lingüística que merece poca o ninguna atención. en este artículo sostenemos que la “comunión fática” juega un papel importante al establecer, desarrollar y mantener las relaciones interpersonales entre maestro y alumno, lo cual puede ser visto en términos de solidaridad y apoyo. además, la comunión fática ofrece una de las pocas oportunidades para que los estudiantes participen de manera significativa en actividades de comunicación en el aula de inglés como lengua extranjera, la cual se caracteriza por sus actividades no auténticas del lenguaje. utilizamos la información del aula para mostrar que los maestros y alumnos buscan maneras de mantener una relación personal mientras impulsan su “imagen” entre otros interactuantes. palabras clave: comunión fática, inglés como lengua extranjera, lenguaje interpersonal. * e-mail: gabiotilla@hotmail.com ** e-mail:malco_zero87@hotmail.com *** e-mail: elhakimefk@hotmail.com **** e-mail: faviola-01@hotmail.com ***** e-mail: gerrymugford@yahoo.com this article was received on january 20, 2011, and accepted on may 4, 2011. 74 universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras ayala gonzález, cervantez orozco, gonzález cabrera, romero mayoral & mugford fowler introduction small talk or ‘phatic communion’ (malinowski, 1923/1969) in the foreign-language (fl) classroom is all too often an unexploited propitious oppor tunity to interact in the target language in meaningful ways. in contrast to the endless class hours spent presenting and practising non-authentic language in the english as a foreign language (efl) classroom, student-generated small talk reflects motivated and authentic real-life language use and allows teachers to exploit learners’ interactive communication skills. although frequently pres ented as formulaic and pre-patterned language, small talk is a common theme in elt coursebooks. however, in the actual classroom, teachers miss the opportunity to take advantage of emerging small talk given the administrative pressures to follow the course programme and perhaps ‘finish’ the book. through collecting data in five contrasting teaching contexts in mexico, this paper investigates how language learners engage in classroom small talk and how teachers respond to such interactional opportunities. research begs the bigger question as to whether the fl classroom should reflect target-language small talk or local practices i.e. if language users should adhere to target-language norms of phatic communion or develop their own ways of engaging in small talk. after analysing the classroom data, we argue that efl learner interaction should reflect genuine communication where fl interactants engage in meaningful lan guage use rather than mirror and second-guess target-language usage. in this article we begin by reviewing the concept of phatic communion and then highlight its relevance to the efl classroom. after examining the nature and history of the concept, we maintain that it is closely linked to solidarity and support since phatic communion is used to develop, reinforce and maintain interpersonal relationships. subsequently, we specifically consider how phatic communion is related to face enhancement and gossip. after conducting and analysing classroom observations, we discuss how phatic communion can be encouraged in the classroom and what the factors working against it are. as a conclusion we argue that phatic communion is an important resource in encouraging meaningful interpersonal language use in the classroom. nature of phatic communion the origins of research on phatic communion can be traced to malinowski who coined the term in the 1930s. a second era of research focused on discursive and situational approaches which led to our examining contemporary analyses in terms of rapport management and the interpersonal language use which has been the academic focus in this decade. first of all, however, we offer an example of phatic communion in the foreignlanguage learning context as a teacher interacts with students before the beginning of class. 1. teacher: how was your day? 2. brenda: bad. 3. teacher: wow! you´re very honest. why? 4. diana: i have very busy day. 5. alberto: yeah, i always. 6. benda: it’s boring. 7. teacher: why boring? 8. estefan: a lot of work. (extract 1) in extract 1, the teacher demonstrates concern for his students’ feelings and attempts to establish (or re-establish) a level of rapport. he is engaging in phatic communion. he is attempting to show supportiveness by trying to understand how his students feel. phatic communion offers choices since, alternatively, he could have attempted to establish solidarity, or to use aston’s term, 75 ‘don’t tell my father’: important lessons learned... profile vol. 13, no. 2, october 2011. issn 1657-0790. bogotá, colombia. pages 73-84 ‘solidary routines’ (1988, p. 255) by sharing the same feelings. the term phatic communion was first proposed by malinowski to describe ‘a mode of action’ (1923, p. 296) during which interactants develop interpersonal relationships as “ties of union are created by a mere exchange of words” (1923, p. 315). malinowski, however, gave little importance to the actual words echoed in phatic communion, claiming that words merely fulfil a solidary rather than a referential or reflective function. whilst malinowski pioneered the interactional dimension to language use, further work on phatic communion was limited until laver revisited the concept and highlighted the social dimension of phatic communion especially in terms of how interactants may engage in exploratory talk at the beginning, in the middle and at the end of conversations. far more than reflecting “a mere exchange of words”, laver argues that phatic communion is also used to avoid silence and to prepare the way to engage in “an initiatory function, in that it allows the participants to cooperate in getting the interaction comfortably under way [...]” (1975, p. 221). in other words, phatic communion prepares the way for language users to make the transition to transactional language use e.g. asking for or giving information. stressing the social motivation behind phatic language use, laver (1975) like malinowski, underscored the formulaic dimension to small talk whilst downplaying the individual aspect of phatic communion. taking a much more local approach to phatic communion, coupland, coupland and robinson (1992) emphasise the negotiatory dimension of small talk. critiquing malinowski’s and laver’s formulaic and patterned approaches to phatic communion, coupland, coupland and robinson argue that small talk should be examined in terms of ‘relational engagement’ (1992, p. 217) as language users approach each interaction on an individual basis depending on what they want to achieve socially and relationally from the interaction as ‘this very indeterminacy may be the hallmark of phatic communion and the key to its social utility’ (1992, p. 226). further highlighting the importance of small talk, coupland (2000b) has argued for the discoursal importance of small talk. in his introduction to a collected volume of papers on phatic communion, small talk (coupland, 2000a), coupland argues for the contextual analysis of phatic communion and the need to examine “the relationship between form and function within those contexts, as is classically the case with discourse analysis” (2000b, p. 22). coupland also edited a special edition of the journal research on language and social interaction dedicated to examining phatic communion from a more conversation analysis perspective. the collection of the articles “explores how small talk is achieved interactionally, turn by turn, and what this displays about small talk and its achievements for participants in situ” (coupland, 2003, p. 5). the study of phatic communion has therefore developed from seeing small talk as a nebulous exchange of words to situated language use. current work focuses on small talk in terms of rapport management (hernández lópez, 2008; spencer-oatey, 2008) and the personal dimension to phatic communion (placencia, 2004). in this paper, we adopt the definition of phatic talk as local interactional language use aimed at establishing, developing and maintaining a given interpersonal relationship. in particular, we examine the solidary dimension of small talk. rather than seeing phatic communion in generalised social terms (malinowski, 1923; laver, 1975) or discoursal and situational approaches (coupland, coupland and robinson, 1992; coupland, 2000a, 2000b), we examine small talk in interpersonal terms as 76 universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras ayala gonzález, cervantez orozco, gonzález cabrera, romero mayoral & mugford fowler interactants construct or even fail to construct phatic talk within a specific localised context. dynamic and not always purely formulaic, phatic communion reflects deliberate and often tentative attempts to establish, develop and maintain relationships. exploratory and hesitant talk may be even more underscored in the foreign-language classroom when teachers and students attempt to establish, develop and maintain their interpersonal relationship in the target language. phatic communion and solidarity whilst agreeing with malinowski’s assertion that phatic communion reflects solidary talk, we argue that the actual words do matter because the phatic actions do not produce automatic and predictable results. furthermore, solidarity needs to be understood in terms of how it is expressed. in phatic communion, interaction can convey solidarity by matching the feelings of another interactant, or what aston (1989) terms supportiveness, e.g. 1. teacher: did you bring your umbrella today? 2. pedro: no. 3. alicia: yes, do you like it? it has flowers. 4. teacher: yeah, it is really beautiful. personally, i don’t like the rainy days. do you like the rainy days. 5. pablo: only when i am in my house. (laughs) 6. students: (laugh) 7. teacher: what about you guys? 8. sergio: yes. 9. ivan: yes, only when i am in my bed sleeping. 10. teacher: (laughs) yeah or when you are not around plaza del sol where there is a big river. (extract 2) the common thread of laughter (lines 5, 6 and 10) and joking (e.g. line 9) reflects solidary talk as the interactants share common perceptions and feelings regarding rainy weather since they have all gone through the same experience. furthermore, we would argue that the words do matter as interactants engage in speech acts (e.g. the compliment in line 4: yeah, it is really beautiful) and creative language use (e.g. line 9: ...when i am in my bed sleeping). at the same time, interaction can involve ‘doing’ phatic communion rather than just expressing commonly-felt experiences. for instance, in the following extract: 1. teacher: really, what do you want to study? 2. carlos: i’m going to study “controlador aereo” [air traffic controller] 3. teacher: air traffic controller? it’s great. actually, my father wanted me to study that, because he works in the airport. this job is a great. responsibility right? 4. carlos: yeah! (extract 3) carlos has just told the teacher that he is learning english in order to pursue a second career. after saying that he wants to be an air traffic controller, the teacher reveals ‒through ‘self-disclosure’‒ that his father also wanted him to pursue the same career. self-disclosure between interactants establishes common ground as interactants engage in phatic communion. given carlos’s enthusiastic answer, the interactants are in a stronger position to create what malinowski calls ‘ties of union’. self-disclosure plays an important part in how interactants want to present themselves to other interactants as wardhaugh argues: you must “present yourself ” in a conversation, and part of that pres entation is the way you choose to display yourself to others and how you view your relationship with the rest of the world. in fact, every encounter with another person requires you to come to a decision about how you want to appear in that encounter, that is, how you wish to present yourself to the other or others. (1985, pp. 26-27) 77 ‘don’t tell my father’: important lessons learned... profile vol. 13, no. 2, october 2011. issn 1657-0790. bogotá, colombia. pages 73-84 when engaging in phatic talk, fl users need to decide how they want to come across. therefore, words employed in phatic communion are important. face-boosting solidary talk can go much further than expressing or doing phatic communion. interactants can also engage in face enhancing acts where they attempt to boost the ‘face’ of other interactants. the term ‘face’ is taken from goffman (1967) who argues that participants present a ‘face’ when they are interacting in a conversation. goffman argues that participants will “claim a positive social value” for themselves “in any particular contact” (1967, p. 5). face is not fixed and stable as house argues: “face can be likened to a person’s public self-esteem or self-image, which can be damaged, maintained or enhanced in interaction with other others” (1998, p. 57). face is “only on loan” (goffman, 1967, p. 10) during a given interaction and other interactants can take, augment and decrease another participant’s face. a decrease can lead to a loss of face or a face-threatening act (brown and levinson, 1987) whilst an increase can lead to intimacy enhancement (aston, 1989), face-boosting acts (bayraktaroğlu, 1991, 2001), face enhancement (sifianou, 1995) and rapport enhancement (spencer-oatey, 2008). face enhancement becomes an important factor in non-formulaic phatic communion i.e. small talk that aims to develop meaningful interpersonal relationships. an example of the face boosting can be seen in the following example: 1. teacher: hey, dave, your team won, right? 6-0 2. david: yes, teacher. 3. teacher: how much time did you play? 4. david: the complete game. 5. teacher: oh, really? that’s great. (extract 4) the teacher’s opening question is designed to make david feel good as he respects his englishlanguage name and has done his ‘homework’ by finding out that david’s team won the game. he then congratulates david on playing for the whole game. face boosting acts run the risk of sounding formulaic but in this case the teacher appears to take a real interest in the student. phatic communion and gossip whilst often maligned as mean-spirited and malicious talk, gossip has attracted the attention of discourse analysts and sociolinguists because it reflects the nature and strength of interpersonal relationships. for instance, eggins and slade (1997, p. 283) have identified two key social functions of gossip: 1) to establish and reinforce group membership; 2) as a form of social control. since it involves talking negatively about a third party not present in the conversation, gossip ‘provides a means of exploring similarity and shared values’ as it ‘draws boundaries between a “we” and a “they”; it forges ties that bind a group together’ (eggins & slade, 1997, p. 283). at the same time, gossip exerts social control since “it is a way of asserting collective values and increasing group cohesion, and it also enables the group to control the behaviour of its members” (eggins & slade, 1997, p. 283). in the following example of phatic communion, students are gossiping with the teacher about their school: 1. teacher: hey, how are you? 2. maria: not so good. 3. teacher: why? what’s the matter? 4. maria: can you believe they want us to go to school on sunday? 5. teacher: really? why? what did you do? 6. maria: just because the school is going to be evaluated! 7. teacher: that’s too bad, but hey! such is life. (extract 5) 78 universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras ayala gonzález, cervantez orozco, gonzález cabrera, romero mayoral & mugford fowler maria is talking negatively about a third party i.e. her school authorities which she claims are making students go to school on sunday (line 4) in order to be certified (line 6). the teacher appears to side with the student by expressing his sympathy (line 7). research structure this research project took place over a period of six months as four mexican teachers recorded conversations that reflected interactional language use during their efl classes in five private language institutions. generally lasting 40 hours, the courses ranged from basic to advanced levels with an average of eight students in each class, which lasted, on average, 120 minutes. the four teachers –two males and two females– are between 22 and 26 years old and are completing their final year on a ba programme in tefl. they are advanced level english-language speakers who will soon be presenting their toefl examination where they are expected to achieve 600+ points. so as not to deliberately or even inadvertently engage in phatic communion for the purposes of this study, the teachers were not informed about the overarching research question guiding this study which is: how do teachers and students engage in phatic communion in the efl classroom? however, when they had collected the necessary data they were fully integrated into the project and asked for their comments and insights. research methodology the teachers were initially asked to write down instances of classroom small talk, which took place at the beginning and the end of class. they recorded the conversations through a reconstructed dialogue technique i.e. the teachers wrote down the instances of phatic communion at an opportune moment as soon as possible after the interaction. reconstructed dialogue was chosen since overt recording would have been too intrusive and could have stifled the spontaneity of classroom small talk. all the participants involved in the project were asked to sign consent forms authorising the use of the classroom data. to protect the participants’ identity, pseudonyms have been used throughout this paper. findings phatic communion is used by both teachers and students to develop and reinforce solidarity in the efl context. often it will involve self-disclosure as seen in the following extract: 1. teacher: good morning, blanca. how are you? 2. blanca: sleepy, i went to bed at 1:00. 3. teacher: what were you doing so late? 4. blanca: don’t tell my father, but i was watching a movie. 5. teacher: ok. (extract 6) whilst the small talk commences in a formulaic way with a greeting i.e. good morning, blanca. how are you? (line 1), there is a non-standard response: sleepy, i went to bed at 1:00. (line 2). blanca’s follow-up comment in line 4, don’t tell my father, but i was watching a movie, reveals a degree of trust and closeness as she explains why she stayed up late. therefore the phatic communion aims to shorten distance through self-disclosure and gossip as blanca asks the teacher to hide the information from her father, who obviously does not approve of his daughter staying up late. with the ok (line 5), the teacher appears to collude with blanca. phatic communion may also involve shared feelings as interactants experience the same feelings as seen in the following extract when the students and the teacher talk about studying on saturday mornings: 79 ‘don’t tell my father’: important lessons learned... profile vol. 13, no. 2, october 2011. issn 1657-0790. bogotá, colombia. pages 73-84 1. teacher: hi! good morning! 2. students: hi, teacher! 3. teacher: how are you? 4. marco: fine, teacher! 5. moisés: yo tengo mucho sueño, teacher! [i am really tired] 6. teacher: yes, i know… i know it is difficult sometimes to wake up on 7. saturdays but today we will have a great class! but first, why 8. don’t you tell me what did you do during the week? 9. esteban: me! i had 3 exams, and 2 projects! 10. teacher: and did you get good grades? (extract 7) once again, small talk starts off with formulaic greetings (lines 1, 2, 3 and 4). however, moisés reveals his ‘true’ feelings by saying in spanish that he is sleepy: yo tengo mucho sueño, teacher! (line 5), by answering in spanish, moisés seems to be appealing to teacher’s first language and thereby attempting to create a degree of solidarity. the teacher picks up on this commonly-felt feeling and answers in english with yes, i know… i know it is difficult sometimes to wake up on saturdays (lines 6 and 7) and tries to respond to the students by offering to give a great class (line 7). phatic communion is not being used in formulaic ways but rather to talk about student motivation and how to get the class going. students will often use phatic communion to develop the relationship with the teacher inside and outside of the classroom. in the following extract, a student attempts to find out about the teacher’s private life: while the teacher is waiting for students to finish an exercise, clarissa, a student, grabbed the teacher’s cell phone. 1. clarissa: she’s your girl, teacher? 2. teacher: yes, but you shouldn’t look at my stuff. (clarissa stares at the picture) 3. clarissa: sorry… ¿y cuánto llevan? [for how long?] 4. teacher: ha ha ha ha, two months and counting. 5. clarissa: neta? it’s serious? [really?] 6. teacher: yes, the only serious relationship i’ve had. 7. clarissa: oh! ‘ta chido. [that’s cool] 8. teacher: thanks, i know. now focus! (extract 8) clarissa asks personal questions about the teacher’s girl-friend (line 1) by using an affirmative grammatical structure and appears to be seeking out gossip about the girl-friend. the teacher mildly admonishes clarissa as he engages in selfdisclosure by revealing how long they have been going out two months and counting (line 4) and revealing that this is the only serious relationship i’ve had (line 6). clarissa engages in face-boosting by saying in spanish ‘ta chido (that’s cool) (line 7). the teacher accepts the compliment in line 8 and asks clarissa to concentrate on her work. student interest in their teachers was a common feature of small talk as revealed in the following interaction that took place as the teacher was trying to take attendance. 1. teacher: fine, guys! 2. elena: teacher? how old are you? 3. teacher: i’m 24 years, why? 4. elena: because you have a ring in your finger! are you going to get marry? 5. teacher: jajaja. yes! 6. sandra: when, teacher? 7. teacher: on march! 8. adriana: teacher? y nos vas a invitar? [and are you going to invite us?] 9. teacher: jajaja, i am not sure… maybe. jajaja… this is a strange situation for me. i think it is better if we start the class… (extract 9) once again small talk is far from formulaic and mainly takes place in english as students express an interest in knowing more about their teacher e.g. how old are you? (line 2) and are you going to 80 universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras ayala gonzález, cervantez orozco, gonzález cabrera, romero mayoral & mugford fowler get marry? (lines 4 and 5). after engaging in selfdisclosure by revealing her age (line 3) and when she is going to get married (line 8), the teacher feels embarrassed by the level of intimacy and assumes her role as a teacher and tells the students that they should begin the lesson (line 9). student interest in their teachers did not solely focus on their personal relationships outside the classroom. in the following extract, students are interested in where the teacher works. the student came across the teacher after his class and starts a conversation. 1. roberto: teacher! how are you? 2. teacher: i’m fine, thank you. how about you? 3. roberto: i’m great. [here there was a moment of silence as roberto signed some school papers] 4. roberto: teacher, do you work? (teacher stares at roberto) 5. roberto: i mean, besides here. 6. teacher: yeah, i work on saturdays in another school. 7. roberto: oh! that’s why you never come on saturdays? 8. teacher: exactly, that’s why. (extract 10) the small talk reflects a genuine interest by roberto in the teacher. whilst the small talk starts off with the formulaic how are you?­ i’m fine, thank you. how about you? ­ i’m great (lines 1–3), it quickly becomes potentially face-threatening i.e. “acts that intrinsically threaten face” (brown and levinson 1987, p. 60), when roberto asks teacher, do you work? (line 4). in a remedial interchange (goffman 1971), roberto self-corrects with i mean, besides here (line 5). the phatic communion is now back on track with yeah, i work on saturdays in another school (line 7). phatic communion and face enhancement face enhancement reflects a personal dimension to phatic communion and is a common feature of student-student and teacher-student talk. its use further reinforces the argument that small talk does not have to be predictable and formulaic. in the following extract, the students express their appreciation of their classmates and therefore develop another dimension to solidarity. 1. teacher: good morning, alejandra. how are you? 2. alejandra: good morning, teacher, i am very happy because berta is coming 3. today. 4. teacher: i am glad! 5. alejandra: glad? 6. teacher: i am happy too. 7. carla: may i come in please? 8. teacher: good morning, carla; come in. 9. naylea and paula: can we come in? 10. teacher: good morning, girls! come in. 11. alejandra: berta, i am happy to see you! 12. berta: me too, te traje unas pulseras. [i brought you some bracelets] (extract 11). the conversation begins with formulaic greetings followed by self-disclosure as alejandra reveals that she is happy since she expects her friend, berta, to come to class today. the teacher makes a supportive move by saying that she is glad – although it is not clear whether she is happy because alejandra is happy or because berta is coming to class. when berta does finally arrive, alejandra greets her with a face boosting act (fba): berta, i am happy to see you! (line 11). berta responds to the fba with me too (line 12) and subsequently code-switches to spanish. the codeswitch may have further signalled closeness and solidarity. it should also be noted that the teacher uses the phatic communion to introduce the word glad as a synonym for happy (lines 4-6) without specifically teaching the word. in the following extract, the teacher engages in face boosting as he jokingly talks to the students 81 ‘don’t tell my father’: important lessons learned... profile vol. 13, no. 2, october 2011. issn 1657-0790. bogotá, colombia. pages 73-84 about an upcoming examination. the small talk reflects intersentential code-switching as the teacher speaks in english and the students talk in spanish: 1. rodrigo: ¿está difícil el examen, teacher? [is the exam difficult?] 2. teacher: no, i don’t think so. you are very intelligent. i think it is easy for you! 3. ricardo: really? 4. teacher: yes! 5. alberto: ¿nos vas a pasar las respuestas, teacher? [are you going to give us the answers?] 6. teacher: no! jajaja, i am going to take attendance, jajaja. 7. ricardo: ¿nos deja ver el examen mientras toma la asistencia? [can you let us look at the exam whilst you are doing the attendance?] 8. teacher: of course not!!! jajajaja. relax, guys, everything is going to be ok! (extract 12) the conversation starts off with rodrigo asking whether the examination is going to be difficult. the teacher appears to give an honest answer no, i don’t think so (line 2) and then engages in face boosting: you are very intelligent. i think it is easy for you! (line 2). then the students switch to spanish to engage in language play as they ask the teacher whether he is going to give them the answers or at least look at the examination (lines 7 and 8). the teacher appears to make no effort to force the students to speak in english which raises the question as to whether small-talk has to be completely in the target-language or can reflect interaction in two languages. discussion phatic communion inside and outside the efl classroom reflects both formulaic and inventive language use as both teachers and students employ a range of discursive resources to establish, develop, maintain interpersonal relationships which can be seen in terms of solidarity and supportiveness. a key resource is self-disclosure (extracts 6-10), which enables teachers and students to step out of their fixed classroom roles and come across in more individualistic ways. such a strategy is important for foreign-language learners so that they can develop personal rather than anonymous relationships in the target-language i.e. they can participate as a somebody rather than as an anybody (aston, 1989; sacks, 1970 1971; schenkein, 1978). self-disclosure can develop into supportiveness i.e. understanding how the other feels e.g. complimenting the teacher on his girlfriend (extract 8) or into solidarity i.e. having undergone the same experience as other interactants e.g. feeling sleepy (extract 7). however, small talk can go wrong as seen in extract 9 when the teacher feels uncomfortable being asked about her wedding plans or in extract 10 when the teacher is asked whether he works. the incidences offer opportunities for students to deal with unsuccessful small talk. in extract 9, the teacher ended the small talk but in extract 10 the student demonstrated the ability to rephrase his request. face enhancement was a commonly employed strategy, which reflects local language use since it is a common feature of mexican spanish. extracts 11 and 12 indicate that face-enhancement is used by both teachers and learners. since face-enhancement is not particularly characteristic of target-language usage in the united states and the united kingdom, teachers are faced with the pedagogical choice regarding whether students should be using efl small talk to engage in meaningful relationships or whether they should mimic target-language practices. encouraging phatic communion given that classroom data in this study have recorded the widespread use of phatic communion, we argue that teachers should provide the necessary opportunities to develop and work on 82 universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras ayala gonzález, cervantez orozco, gonzález cabrera, romero mayoral & mugford fowler phatic talk and practices. the kind of predictable, formulaic patterns of small talk are dealt with in most efl textbooks. however, the personal and unpredictable nature of small talk cannot be tackled solely through textbook exercises and needs to be developed, rehearsed and practised in a classroom context. whilst learners cannot be taught phatic communion, they can be given opportunities to examine its features and how resources are used in terms of ‘skills-getting’ as opposed to ‘skills-use’ (rivers & temperley, 1978, p. 4). skills-getting activities provide learners with the opportunity to practise different features of communication in a classroom setting. with respect to phatic communion, learners can be given the chance to examine supportiveness, solidarity, self-disclosure and gossip. skills-use means using phatic knowledge in a communicative context. skills-getting can be developed either through deconstruction or construction activities (aston, 1989). deconstruction activities invite students to notice and analyse how target-language users employ resources to achieve communicative aims whilst construction activities encourage fl users to use resources to achieve interactional objectives. noticing is a key aspect of developing interactional ability in the target-language. batstone (1994, 1996) argues that noticing gives learners the opportunity to consciously attend to language ‘input’ and structure it so that it becomes part of the student’s language ‘intake’ and is ready for future use. deconstruction activities can be used to examine how target-language users achieve supportiveness and solidarity and engage in gossip. easily accessible tl language instances of phatic talk can be found by inviting learners to watch such sitcom shows as two and a half men, the big bang theory and the new adventures of old christine to examine how the leading characters show concern and interest with each other as they share experiences or talk behind each other’s backs. construction activities can help learners to develop, for instance, self-disclosure and faceboosting. for example, icebreakers and warm-ups can be used to encourage learners to reveal aspects about themselves that enable them to come across as individuals. for instance, students may be asked to write up three revealing statements about themselves, one of which is not true, and in a probing and personal question-and-answer session his/her classmates have to establish which statement is wrong. with regards to face-boosting, learners can be asked to write down three qualities they like about a classmate and then design a roleplay into which they incorporate the fbas. discouraging phatic communion whilst we have argued that phatic communion is a common feature of classroom interaction, it is often discouraged by administrators, coordinators and teacher trainers. phatic communion is often considered ‘wasteful’ because 1) it detracts from the transactional nature of the classroom e.g. learning grammar, communicative functions; 2) it undermines the importance of timing which is considered to be an essential feature of a successful and balanced class; 3) it potentially undercuts teachers´ efforts to complete the programme on schedule; and 4) phatic communion is best obser ved and learnt in the target-language environment. whilst such arguments reflect the reality of classroom teaching and learning, we argue that phatic communion should be given its place (and perhaps time slot) in the syllabus as it reflects authentic language use and may improve students’ ability to participate in unplanned spontaneous discourse which must be a key factor in developing communicative competence. with regard to learning and practising phatic communion in the 83 ‘don’t tell my father’: important lessons learned... profile vol. 13, no. 2, october 2011. issn 1657-0790. bogotá, colombia. pages 73-84 tl context, mexican learners often use english for work e.g., in the computer and tourism sectors, and need to interact with other non-native speakers and therefore may never have the opportunity to practise phatic communion in the tl environment. conclusions in this paper, we have argued that teachers need to be aware of the learning opportunities afforded to their students by phatic communion. to pursue this argument, we reviewed the concept of phatic communion arguing that it is more than just a “mere exchange of words” as malinowski (1923, p. 315) would suggest. we then examined how phatic communion as spontaneous and unplanned talk is a feature of the foreign-language classroom as learners use phatic language to express support or solidarity, to engage in face enhancement, and to participate in gossip. such findings reveal meaningful interpersonal language use. for many students, classroom phatic communion may be one of the few opportunities they have to engage in authentic language. therefore, we would argue that teachers need to know how to exploit opportunities for engaging in phatic communion and help learners develop their linguistic competence with regards to small talk. references aston, g. (1988). learning comity: an approach to the description and pedagogy of interaction speech, bologna: cooperativa libraria universitaria editrice bologna. aston, g. (1989). learning comity: an approach to the description and pedagogy of interaction speech. phd dissertation, institute of education, university of london. batstone, r. (1994). grammar. oxford: oxford university press. batstone, r. (1996). noticing. elt journal, 50(3), 273. bayraktaroğlu, a. (1991). politeness and interactional imbalance. international journal of the sociology of language, 92, 5-34. bayraktaroğlu, a. (2001). advice-giving in turkish: “superiority” or “solidarity”? in a. bayraktaroğlu & m. sifianou, (eds.). linguistic politeness across bound­ aries: the case of greek and turkish (pp. 177-208). amsterdam: john benjamins. brown, p., & levinson, s. (1987). politeness: some universals in language usage. cambridge: cambridge university press. coupland, j. (ed.) (2000a). small talk. harlow. essex: pearson. coupland, j. (2000b). introduction: sociolinguistic perspectives on small talk. in j. coupland (ed.). small talk (pp. 1-25). harlow, essex: pearson. coupland, j. (2003). small talk: social functions. research on language and social interaction, 36(1), 1-6. coupland, j., coupland n. & robinson j. d. (1992). “how are you?” negotiating phatic communion. language in society, 21, 207-230. eggins, s., & slade d. (1997). analysing casual conversation. london: cassell. goffman, e. (1967). interaction ritual: essays on face­to­face behaviour. new york, ny: anchor books. goffman, e. (1971). relations in public: microstudies of the public order. new york, ny: basic books. hernández lópez, m. (2008). rapport management under examination in the context of medical consultations in spain and britain. revista alicantina de estudios ingleses, 21, 69-98. house, j. (1998). politeness and translation. in l. hickey (ed.). the pragmatics of translation (pp. 54-71). clevedon: multilingual matters. laver, j. (1975). communicative functions of phatic communion. in a. kendon, r.m. harris & m. r. key (eds.), organization of behaviour in face­to­face inter­ action (pp. 215-238). the hague: mouton. malinowski, b. (1923 / 1969). the problem of meaning in primitive languages. in c.k. ogden & i. a. richards (eds.) (1949). the meaning of meaning: a study of the influence upon thought and of the science of symbolism (pp. 296-336). london: routledge & kegan paul ltd. placencia, m. e. (2004). rapport-building in corner shop interactions. journal of sociolinguistics, 8(2), 215-245. 84 universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras ayala gonzález, cervantez orozco, gonzález cabrera, romero mayoral & mugford fowler rivers, w., & temperley m. (1978). a practical guide to the teaching of english. oxford: oxford university press. sacks, h. (1970 1971). on being ordinary. in j. m. atkinson & j. heritage (1984), structures of social action: studies in conversation analysis (pp. 413-429) cambridge: cambridge university press. schenkein, j. (1978). identity negotiations in conversation. in j. schenkein (ed.), studies in the organisation of conversational interaction (pp. 57-78). new york, ny: academic press. sifianou, m. (1995). do we need to be silent to be extremely polite? silence and ftas. international journal of applied linguistics, 5(1), 95-110. spencer-oatey, h. (ed.) (2008). culturally speaking: man­ aging rapport through talk across culture. london: continuum. wardhaugh, r. (1985). how conversation works. oxford: blackwell. about the authors gabriela ayala gonzález is a mexican student who is finishing a ba in teaching english as a foreign language at the university of guadalajara. she is also an efl teacher with experience of teaching teenagers and children in private and public schools. her current investigation interests include sociolinguistics and classroom interaction. adrián leonel de cervantes orozco is a mexican efl teacher with experience of teaching adults, teenagers and children. he is currently completing his ba in teaching english as a foreign language at the universidad de guadalajara. his current interests include sociolinguistics, language program management and teaching english as a second language. víctor gonzález cabrera is a mexican efl teacher with experience of teaching adults, teenagers and children. he is currently completing his ba in teaching english as a foreign language at the universidad de guadalajara. his current research interests include sociolinguistics and teaching english as a second language. faviola romero mayoral is a mexican efl teacher with experience of teaching children, teenagers and adults. she is currently completing her ba in teaching english as a foreign language at the universidad de guadalajara. her research interests include research and teaching. gerrard mugford fowler works at la universidad de guadalajara, mexico, and holds a phd from the institute of education, university of london. his current research interests include critical pedagogy, interpersonal language use and linguistic politeness and impoliteness. 145profile vol. 14, no. 2, october 2012. issn 1657-0790 (printed) 2256-5760 (online). bogotá, colombia. pages 145-162 promoting learner autonomy through teacher-student partnership assessment in an american high school: a cycle of action research el papel de la evaluación negociada en el desarrollo de la autonomía del estudiante en la escuela secundaria norteamericana: un ciclo de investigación-acción édgar picón jácome* universidad de antioquia, colombia in this article i present some findings of an action research study intended to find out to what extent a teacher-student partnership in writing assessment could promote high school students’ autonomy. the study was conducted in a u.s. school. two main action strategies in the assessment process were the use of symbols as the form of feedback and the design of a rubric containing criteria negotiated with the students as the scoring method. results showed that the students developed some autonomy reflected in three dimensions: ownership of their learning process, metacognition, and critical thinking, which positively influenced an enhancement of their writing skills in both english and spanish. likewise, the role of the teacher was found to be paramount to set appropriate conditions for the students’ development of autonomy. key words: action research, assessment for learning, learner autonomy, rubrics, summative assessment. en este artículo presento hallazgos de una investigación-acción cuyo objetivo era averiguar en qué medida una forma alternativa de evaluación negociada promovería la autonomía de los estudiantes. el estudio se realizó en una escuela secundaria norteamericana. las principales estrategias de acción fueron el uso de símbolos en la retroalimentación y la inclusión de criterios negociados con los estudiantes en el diseño de una rúbrica que se utilizó como instrumento de evaluación y calificación. los resultados mostraron que los estudiantes desarrollaron su autonomía en tres dimensiones: apropiación de su proceso de aprendizaje, metacognición y pensamiento crítico, lo que influenció positivamente el desarrollo de sus habilidades de escritura tanto en inglés como en español. asimismo se encontró que el papel del profesor es de vital importancia para establecer condiciones propicias en el desarrollo de la autonomía de los estudiantes. palabras clave: autonomía del estudiante, evaluación formativa, evaluación sumativa, investigaciónacción, rúbricas. * e-mail: edgar.picon@idiomas.udea.edu.co this article was received on october 15, 2011, and accepted on may 30, 2012. universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras146 picón jácome introduction in his work, assessment of autonomy or as sessment for autonomy?, lamb (2010) elaborates on the notion of assessment that is designed to foster learner autonomy. supporting his arguments with the work of black and williams (1998, 2005, cited in lamb, 2010) and black and jones (2006, cited in lamb, 2010), lamb comes to the conclusion that “assessment for learning is designed to develop the necessary capacities for becoming an autonomous learner with a view to improving learning through better self-monitoring and self-evaluation leading to better planning” (p. 100). the author defines assessment for autonomy as “any assessment for which the first priority in its design and practice is to serve the purpose of promoting pupils’ autonomy” (p. 101). this article presents my effort within that same spirit: designing assessment procedures with the objective of enhancing students’ autonomy. i highlight three aspects of the study that i consider especially significant: (1) the foreign language setting in which it took place that might provide valuable insight for schoolteachers to try out similar actions; (2) the usefulness of rubrics to help teachers make grading practices formative and provide space for them to share their power with the students; and (3) the fact of the study being inserted in a cycle of action research, which places research practices within the reach of teachers. the assessment system the assessment system in this project corresponds to a teacher-student partnership type1 in which students participated in the creation of the scoring instrument and as active co-evaluators. 1 although bratcher and ryan focus on evaluation and grading for their classifications, i consider that the whole process in this study actually corresponds to my definition of assessment; consequently, i have called it teacher-student partnership assessment. assessment had both a formative and a summative purpose within a conscious intention on my part to promote students’ autonomy. in the following paragraphs, i expand the key concepts that support this assessment procedure. key terms that define teacherstudent partnership assessment assessment and evaluation are terms sometimes used indistinctly referring to the same processes. consequently, i find it necessary to clarify what those terms mean within the framework of my project. in doing so, i take the ideas of williams (2003) for whom assessment designates the following four related processes: deciding what to measure, selecting or constructing appropriate measurement instruments, administering the instruments, and collecting information. evaluation, on the other hand, designates the judgments we make about students and their progress toward achieving learning outcomes on the basis of as sessment information (p. 297). brown (2004) expands assessment definition asserting that it is a continuous process that takes place either on a formal or an informal basis. assessment and evaluation can be classified according to the focus of power. for instance, teacher-student partnership, a concept developed by bratcher and ryan (2004), is a type of evaluation in which both teachers and students work together. some key words that describe this approach to grading are input (from both sides), negotiation, and flexibility. power is not concentrated on the teacher but shared with the students and there is a continuous combination of different student and teacher roles in every step of the process. bratcher and ryan assert that this type of evaluation has the advantages of students “investing in grades in which they feel they have had input” (p. 102). 147profile vol. 14, no. 2, october 2012. issn 1657-0790 (printed) 2256-5760 (online). bogotá, colombia. pages 145-162 promoting learner autonomy through teacher-student partnership assessment... assessment can also be classified according to its purpose –when it is administered and how its results are used– as either formative or summative. formative assessment aims at measuring achievement within the process and helping students to improve their skills. contrariwise, summative assessment measures results at the end of a process mostly in order to make decisions (angulo delgado, 2002; arias, estrada, areiza & restrepo, 2009; bachman & palmer, 1996; brown, 2004; ekbatani, 2000; himmel-köning, olivares-zamorano, & zabalza-noaim, 2000; and lippman, 2003). this study takes place within a context in which grading plays an important role and therefore assessment has a summative purpose. however, the action strategies applied had the intention to make it formative by providing space for feedback –among other strategies– which is expanded in the following section. feedback feedback is inherent to formative assessment. in fact, goodrich-andrade and boulay (2003) –citing cooper and odell (1999)– define as sessment as “ongoing feedback that supports learning” and stress the need of providing students time for reflection upon and self-assessment of their pieces of writing before they submit a final draft (p. 21). arias et al. (2009), in addition, assert that there must be a continuous and systematic process of feedback for formative assessment to be successful. one of the forms of feedback that i used in this study is in agreement with rutherford’s arguments in favor of the teaching of grammar rules. rutherford (as cited in edlund, 2003, p. 369) argues that adult learners go into a process of comparison between the two grammatical systems in which they make and test theories about how l2 works. the process of producing such theories can be facilitated by what he calls “grammatical conscious raising” or c-r. c-r is the supplement of data needed during the theory testing occurring in the l2 learner’s mind. edlund (2003) thus points out that this theory justifies the practice of selective marking of errors, which was applied in this study as part of the action strategies. the other form of feedback was the use of analytic rubrics for self-evaluation. rubrics have been found to be useful to provide both formative and summative feedback in a systematic and ef fective manner (see o’malley & valdez-pierce, 1996; mertler, 2001; moskal, 2000; and stevens & levi, 2005). while the use of symbols for self-correction emphasized syntax and vocabulary, the rubrics included aspects of the discourse component that complemented the linguistic construct evaluated2. in the following section, i expand the definition of rubric. rubrics mansoor and grant (2002) define a rubric as “a scoring device that specifies performance expectations and the various levels at which learners can perform a particular skill” (p. 33). this is the concept of rubric that applies to the scoring method employed in the study, and the same that authors such as o’malley and valdez-pierce (1996), moskal (2000), mertler (2001), and stevens and levi (2005) are in concordance with. rubrics are pertinent for criterion reference assessment since they provide the space for assessment criteria to be explicitly stated (bachman & palmer, 1996; brown, 2004; genesee & upshur, 1996; himmel-köning et al., 2000). likewise, they are coherent for the scoring of constructedresponse assessments (brown & hudson, 1998) such as the short compositions that the students 2 the communicative competence was the theoretical construct evaluated. universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras148 picón jácome produced for this study. rubrics need to be closely connected to the task that they will score and the task should clearly state the specific and detailed information that the students will need in order to complete it successfully (see o’malley & valdezpierce, 1996). rubrics can be easily accessed and downloaded from internet sites. however, following the ideas of hewitt (1995), i decided to design the rubrics along with my students in order to facilitate discussion and reflection about the criteria. in the words of black and jones (2006), “an assessment activity can help learning if it provides information to be used as feedback” (cited in lamb, 2010, p. 100). teacher-student partnership is consequently assessment for learning. following lamb’s (2010) definition of assessment for autonomy, we can finally assert that the assessment system applied in this research project had the characteristics of such assessment practice. next, i elaborate on the definition of learner autonomy. learner autonomy in the words of benson (2010), when we talk about autonomy in language learning, we usually “refer more to a certain kind of relationship between the student and the learning process.” (p. 79). the author asserts that the term that best describes this relationship is control. following this order of ideas, benson offers a framework to measure learner autonomy. this framework is represented by three poles of attraction among which various degrees of control over learning could be determined: those poles are student control, other control and no control (p. 80). learner autonomy could thus, to some extent, be evaluated in relation to a student level of control, at a certain point in time, over dimensions of the learning process such as “location, timing, pace, sequencing and content of learning” (p. 79). from that perspective, evaluation being another dimension of the learning process, one might establish students’ development of autonomy in terms of the student level of control over it at different points in time. dimensions of learner autonomy previously, in his well known work the philosophy and politics of learner autonomy, benson defines three dimensions of autonomy –technical, psychological, and political. the technical di mension concerns the techniques and strategies that help students to become owners of their learning process i.e. individuals with the capacity to manage their own learning. in order to facilitate its development, it is paramount to promote self-directed learning, which includes providing students situations for them to learn how to learn (benson, 1997). concerning the psychological dimension, benson considers that it involves the development of traits in the individuals that leads them to become more responsible, develop critical thinking, and take control over their learning process. learners are the ones who construct knowledge starting from their social interaction and continual selfevaluation that should lead to self-awareness. with regard to the political dimension, benson asserts that it relates to the learners’ ability to deal with power issues within the teaching-learning process. benson highlights that whether the teacher takes full control of the power within the classroom or whether s/he decides to share it with the students is a political decision that affects learning completely. in the same way, benson and voller (1997) affirm that learner autonomy “can be thought of in terms of (…) redistribution of power among participants in the social process [of education]” (p. 2); hence, the development of a more political dimension of learner autonomy could be facilitated by teaching methodologies in which students have the opportunity to participate in decision making. 149profile vol. 14, no. 2, october 2012. issn 1657-0790 (printed) 2256-5760 (online). bogotá, colombia. pages 145-162 promoting learner autonomy through teacher-student partnership assessment... the role of the teacher many authors have emphasized the role of teachers in the promotion of learner autonomy (see benson, 1997; ellis, 2000; lamb, 2010; little, 1995; o’malley & valdez-pierce, 1996; voller, 1997; and wenden, 1991). in this sense, the teacher is a facilitator, counselor or guide with a supportive attitude towards the learner and within a learner centered environment; a teacher is willing to release some power over the students in behalf of their development as independent, able learners. furthermore, they have pointed out the possibility to help students develop autonomy by teaching them strategies to learn the language, rather than transmitting the language, and fostering self reflection and critical thinking. following this rationale, wenden (1991) examines the features of autonomous learners, shows how those characteristics are linked to learning strategies, and proposes activities to teach those learners. in her analysis, the author uses the typologies of learning strategies defined by chamot (1987). wenden groups learning strategies, according to their function in the learning process, as cognitive and self-management. self-management, which corresponds to o’malley and chamot’s (1990) metacognitive strategies, include three main functions: planning, monitoring, and evaluating. planning has to do with specifying matters such as time, place, individuals, resources, forms, and reasons to carry out an activity or to state a task leading to learning the language. monitoring has to do with constantly identifying failures in the act of communicating while the communication is taking place. finally, evaluating has to do with reflecting on the development of the strategy planned and its pertinence in terms of learning. besides metacognitive strategies, o’malley and chamot’s (1990) typology point out two more main types: cognitive strategies and social/ affective strategies. while cognitive strategies are “more directly related to individual learning tasks and entail manipulation or transformation of the learning materials” (p. 8), social/affective strat egies are related to cooperative processes of learning and the control of affective matters that affect the language learning process. a failure identified in this study is that learning strategies were not explicitly taught; they were identified in the analysis, however. in my belief, teachers have a special responsibility to help students develop autonomy in a more political dimension. training students to self-evaluate against clear criteria, and giving them the opportunity to act as co-evaluators, is a way both to help them foster metacognition in l1 and l2–english and spanish in this study– and to develop skills in order to fight for their rights; a movement of evaluation practices towards fairness and democracy (shohamy, 2001). method this study is framed within a cycle of action research. action research has been found to be especially appropriate for educational improvement (see altrichter, posch & someck, 1993; selener, 1997; burns, 1999). one of the goals of action research is to involve teachers in reflection upon and within their practice so that they (1) become aware of the possible factors that might constitute a particular question/problem encountered in their day-by-day teaching lives, (2) better understand those factors, and (3) plan and carry out strategies in order to find answers to and/or solve that question/problem. burns (1999) found that doing action research enabled teachers “to engage more closely with their classroom practice as well as to explore the realities they faced in the process of curriculum change” (p. 14). in addition, it produced “personal and universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras150 picón jácome professional growth” and increased teachers’ “selfawareness and personal insight” (p. 15). the starting point my starting point for this project came from my experience teaching spanish as a foreign language in high school in the u.s. english was the mother tongue for the majority of the students3 and spanish classes took place two hours daily. high school students needed to complete at least one year of a foreign language in order to graduate and spanish was the favorite one due to the hispanic population growth that was turning some environments bilingual in the u.s. at the time of this proposal, i was teaching eleventh and twelfth graders, and the group with which i systematized the experience was composed of 19 students, eight girls and 11 boys, whose ages ranged from 15 to 18. relating to their placement in the school, there were 10 seniors and nine juniors. two of the students dropped the course. i had found that many of my spanish students did not keep track of their notes and then depended on me or other students to choose the vocabulary needed for their writing tasks and to correct their grammar errors. some students seemed not to have learned the mechanics in previous classes, made mistakes that they did not know how to correct, and felt unmotivated towards the writing task. many students seemed not to care about the whole process and to lack clear objectives and/ or reasons for studying the language; although speaking spanish was considered an advantage for potential jobs in the future, most students expected to learn it without much effort. the majority relied on english to communicate in class. as a consequence of these conditions, some students copied 3 one of the students had hispanic roots and there were others with immigrant parents. the school itself had many students who were hispano immigrants or had hispanic roots. from partners and did not even worry about learning while others translated whole papers using computer software without knowing what they had written. the writing activity ended up being of little value for such students. i believed that the previous situation was directly related to students’ lack of ownership i.e. lack of autonomy. i had already applied some of the assessment procedures that i incorporated into the project with the feeling that they helped me to become more successful in my teaching. nonetheless, i had not taken into account my students in the development of evaluation criteria, neither had i given self evaluation much importance in their final grades as i did in this course. action plan the main action that i applied in order to cope with the situation described in the previous section was the implementation of a teacher-student partnership form of assessment. two main strategies in this assessment process were (a) the imple mentation of self-correction of errors by using symbols as a form of feedback (see appendix a) and (b) the design of a rubric containing criteria negotiated with my students in order to self-evaluate and grade some of their compositions. the plan would be applied through different steps including training students both to self-correct their errors, and self-evaluate against the criteria stated on the rubric. the plan was intended to fit within my normal teaching activities. data collection the data collection included my personal journal; a survey of the students; students’ products, namely two compositions plus early and late writing samples of theirs and the scoring rubrics used to evaluate their performance. for the purpose of this article, i took into account the findings that emerged 151profile vol. 14, no. 2, october 2012. issn 1657-0790 (printed) 2256-5760 (online). bogotá, colombia. pages 145-162 promoting learner autonomy through teacher-student partnership assessment... from the analysis of my journal and the survey itself in addition to inferences made from the students’ progress based on the analysis of their scores. in my personal journal, i described the implementation of the actions that i had planned and reflected on every step of the process. i registered in it my interpretations of the outcomes that emerged from the analysis of the survey and the comparison of self and teacher assessment. i also recorded my personal opinion in the journal of the students’ performance and progress through the implementation of the strategies, which gave me the possibility to triangulate my perception with my students’ and to keep track of the chronology of the events. twelve students responded to a survey given at the end of the course. it was a brief survey composed of four multiple choice questions and an open-ended one aimed to find out the students’ sense of whether the procedures used had helped them or not in terms of developing strategies and/ or attitudes towards their process of learning how to write in the foreign language. the students wrote, self-corrected, and selfevaluated two compositions for the purpose of this research: mi escuela and mi familia (see appendix b). in total, thirteen students’ self-evaluation forms were included in the analysis of the first composition and eleven in the second one. data analysis in order to analyze qualitative data, such as narrative and descriptive events, personal reflections, and open-ended questions, i carried out inductivedeductive analyses following the steps suggested by burns (1999): assembling, coding, comparing and building interpretations (pp. 156-160). for the analysis of quantitative data, such as the comparison between the student’s and the teacher’s evaluation forms, and the outcomes of the survey, (1) i created charts and tables comparing the results; (2) i described those results and tried an initial interpretation through a reflection exercise in which i tried at connecting them to the main topics of the project; and (3) i carried out inductive deductive analysis of those descriptions and re flections i.e. i categorized them too. i invited my students to participate in the process by giving me feedback about the dif ferent strategies and about the process in general. at the same time, i asked my students for permission to use their pieces of writing and signed a com promise letter committing myself to guarding their anonymity in order to be consistent with the ethical principles of educational research (pring, 2004; and burns, 1999). finally, i asked a colleague to act as a critical friend in order to enhance validity of the data analysis (altrichter et al., 1993). findings and discussion in this section, i discuss the findings of this study that intended to analyze to what extent a teacher-student partnership on writing assessment could promote students’ autonomy. analysis of the data showed that some development of learner autonomy resulted from the interaction of the teacher’s role and the actions taken in this research project. learner autonomy was thus reflected in three student features: gaining ownership of their learning process, developing metacognition, and developing critical thinking. gaining ownership in the framework of this discussion, gaining ownership refers to students’ actions, behaviors, or attitudes that showed their movement towards a more autonomous dimension of learning. students showed that they had gained ownership by ex pressing or showing independence, showing com mitment and responsibility to do the learning universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras152 picón jácome activities proposed, participating in decision making, and expressing their having felt part of the development of the assessment system. to start off, some of the students’ responses to the survey confirmed a positive attitude towards the use of social and cognitive strategies after having been involved in the project: on the one hand, 90% of them acknowledged that they were more likely to ask for help instead of copying their partner’s work; and on the other hand, 60% of them expressed that they were more likely to use their notes (see figure 1). i, myself, corroborated such behavior during our visits to the lab and in other opportunities in class: …they would sit next to their partners and ask them for help… i thought that was part of the plan; they should be willing to ask for help instead of just copying. …also, most of the students were using their notes and dictionaries. (journal, p. 15) figure 1. results for the multiple-choice question 4 100% 80% 60% 40% 20% 0% a b c d e ause my notes bask for help ccopy from other partners dtranslate the whole paper in the computer eit has not changed my writing process at all by the same token, 50% of the students agreed that the activity of self-correcting their own errors helped them to become more independent and it is particularly significant that one of them expressed that she was more likely to “do better herself”4 after the experience (see figure 2). consequently, since the use of learning strategies implied students’ progress in terms of independence and posi4 emphasis mine. tive attitudes towards learning, it also evidenced some development of ownership of their learning process, which has been associated with learner autonomy (lamb, 2010; benson, 1997; little, 1995; wenden, 1991). figure 2. results for the multiple-choice question 1 100% 80% 60% 40% 20% 0% a b c d abe aware of my own errors in the foreign language bbe more independent at the time of correcting my own errors cimprove my spanish grammar ddoes not help me at all it seems that the assessment process enhanced most students’ commitment towards the development of the activities completed in class. this could be observed in their changing attitudes, keeping on-task, and expressing pride in their work, as i recorded in my journal. generally speaking, i noticed that most of the students would be concentrated in their job…with the exception of few students, i felt that the activity had engaged them. …another positive aspect i noticed was that most of them looked proud of their work. they would decorate their final papers and use fancy font. (journal, pp. 15 & 16) most of the students who showed little motivation and commitment towards class activities in the beginning of the semester gradually changed their attitude. benson (1997) points out that “constructivist approaches to language learning tend to support ‘psychological’ versions of learner autonomy that focus on the learner’s behavior, attitudes and personality” (p. 23). he goes on to assert that those versions “can be seen as promoting qualities in 153profile vol. 14, no. 2, october 2012. issn 1657-0790 (printed) 2256-5760 (online). bogotá, colombia. pages 145-162 promoting learner autonomy through teacher-student partnership assessment... individual language learners that will be of value in the process of independent language use” (p. 29). on the other hand, a more observable behavior leading to the development of ownership was students’ actual participation in decision making. benson and voller (1997) state that autonomy can be understood as a right of learners to direct their learning process; hence, active participation in deciding criteria against which they were going to assess themselves was evidence of students learning how to take control of that part of their learning that involves evaluating their achievement. it was very gratifying to see that most of them actually discussed the criteria and gave me feedback in order to design the rubric. as i recorded in my journal, the majority participated with their comments, which were very valuable in the design of the assessment instrument (journal, pp. 6-11). likewise, the results from the survey showed that, as a consequence of participating in the design of the rubric, 70% of the students felt part of the grading process and 48% felt that they had been taken into account in decisions that affected their performance (see figure 3). figure 3. results for the multiple-choice question 2 100% 80% 60% 40% 20% 0% a b c d e f g abetter understand what is expected from me bgain motivation towards writing cunderstand a numerical grade dfeel more comfortable about a grade efeel part of the grading process ffeel that i am taken into account gdoes not make any difference the act of participating in the establishment of something as determinant of power as the grading criteria in a language course implied a movement towards a more political dimension of autonomy in my students. as little (1995) warns: in formal educational contexts learners do not automatically accept responsibility for their learning –teachers must help them to do so; and they will not necessarily find it easy to reflect critically on their learning process–teachers must first provide them with appropriate tools and with opportunities to practice using them. (pp. 176-177) because it is a determinant factor for students to become better able to self-direct their learning within the psychological dimension of autonomy, in the following section i give special emphasis to the students’ use of metacognitive learning strategies. developing metacognition metacognition, which relates to mental processes that involve reflecting, comprehending, interpreting, reexamining, planning, monitoring, self-evaluating, and, generally speaking, expressing self-awareness of learning, is very important in the development of autonomy because it enables human beings to self-manage their learning process. the three main pieces of evidence found in the data analysis as development of meta cognition in the students were their development of metacognitive learning strategies, namely, planning, self-monitoring, and self-evaluating. it is important to clarify that these processes were carried out in english, which evidenced the role of l1 in scaffolding the development of l25. the evaluation criteria stated in the rubric –along with the detailed guidelines for the development of the task– demonstrated to have been helpful for students to have a clearer idea of what they had to do in order to be successful in the writing assignment. hence, the students’ increased awareness about the general process of the task 5 evaluation criteria and symbols were written in english. teaching took place in both languages. compositions were written in spanish. universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras154 picón jácome must have influenced the fact that most of them planned better and thus improved their grades for the second evaluation event. table 1 shows comparison of the students’ final grades for the two compositions. the responses for question 2 of the survey also showed that 85% of the students found participating in the design of the rubric useful to better understand what was expected from them (see figure 3). according to some of the students’ actual words, …designing a rubric with the teacher: help me understand what i need to include in my writings it does make me know what to expect, what is going to be required and that it is part of the grading process i will know what is expected to be on an assignment that will give me a 100. an outstanding positive result of students’ participating in the design of the rubric was their awareness of the features of a composition that would meet the standards for a good grade. it must have been determinant for their planning since it helped them to organize their ideas and apply their language knowledge while writing. in our case, most of the students (85%) identified the development of planning skills in terms of organization of ideas around a given topic as the second clearest improvement that resulted from their participation in the rubric design (see figure 4). students’ own words picture their point of view: it did help me organize on a topic because it gave me ideas what i was going to write about and it helped me with spanish grammar… it also helped me in my ability to write a composition more carefully and it gave me ideas. (questions 3 & 5, survey) figure 4. results for the multiple-choice question 3 100% 80% 60% 40% 20% 0% a b c d e f g dimprove my knowledge of spanish grammar eimprove my knowledge of english fimprove my writing skills gimprove my punctuation aimprove my spanish vocabulary borganize my ideas about a topic cprepare myself to speak in a broader dimension of autonomy, planning would imply organizing a more complex set of details such as choosing times, resources, and places most appropriate for learning. however, developing planning in the restricted sense found in this analysis is surely a valuable evidence of the development of metacognition that could eventually lead the students through the path of learning how to learn. another self-management strategy (wenden, 1991), self-monitoring, seems to have been fostered by the use of symbols as the form chosen to give feedback to the students’ pieces of writing. in table 1. students’ grades: first vs. second evaluation student 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 1st evaluation a d c nt nt nt d b nt d a c b a a d b 2nd evaluation b d b a b a a c b b a a c a a b a nt: students who did not turn in their first papers students who improved their grades or kept them high student who kept his/her grades low students who lowered their grades 155profile vol. 14, no. 2, october 2012. issn 1657-0790 (printed) 2256-5760 (online). bogotá, colombia. pages 145-162 promoting learner autonomy through teacher-student partnership assessment... their responses for question 1 of the survey, 85% of the students identified an increased awareness of grammar errors as a result of this formative as sessment strategy (see figure 2). students acknowledged that the activity actually helped them to better understand their mistakes and correct them, which is proof of the presence of instances of comparing and making hypotheses about how the foreign language works in terms of grammar (edlund, 2003). some of the students’ responses to the survey evidence their development of selfmonitoring as a result of self-correcting their errors based on codes provided by the teacher: it helps you see what you did wrong and not do it again helped me to understand my own mistakes so i could recognize them later on by seeing the errors that i made, it helped me to prevent me from making the same mistake. (questions 1, 3 and 5; survey) the key aspect in these pieces of evidence to identify students’ self-monitoring was the fact that they emphasized understanding, seeing, correcting, fixing and preventing the making of mistakes as the result of the activity. wenden (1991) marks the difference between monitoring and evaluating, emphasizing that “in contrast with monitoring,… when learners evaluate, they consider the outcome of a particular attempt to learn or use a strategy; the focus is on the result and the means by which it was achieved” (p. 28). some students’ responses that evidence self-evaluating pointed at different aspects of the fl learning process. when a student stated, “if i use my notes, it will help me to understand better and study,” he evaluated the usefulness of a strategy. or when another student stated that the project had been “helpful in her understanding of the spanish language and grammer” [sic], she was referring to one specific component of her communicative competence. on the other hand, when this other student wrote, “i think doing all this will improve my english and spanish language,” he was reflecting on the usefulness of having been part of the project in general. other students’ responses that showed self-evaluation are it helped me with my writing completely has improved my spanish skills and knowledge a good learning experience, because it really helped me learn how to correct my problems. (questions 1 and 5, survey) in the following paragraphs, i will discuss the appearance of a more political dimension of autonomy found in the analysis: gaining critical thinking. gaining critical thinking gaining critical thinking within the framework of this experience refers to events in which the students make honest judgments about their own language performance in a task based on previously agreed criteria; they also discuss and/or question decisions and reach agreements based on arguments as well as make changes towards a more responsible and successful attitude if needed. critical thinking evidences the presence of psychological and political traits of autonomy that should eventually be transferred to other situations. the psychological traits involve values such as responsibility and honesty while the po litical traits imply learning how to take a stand and support one’s point of view. in its political di mension “learner autonomy represents recognition of the rights of learners within educational systems” (benson, 1997, p. 29). consequently, “a considerably expanded notion of the political… would embrace issues such as… roles and relationships in the classroom and outside, kinds of learning tasks, and the content of the language that is learned” (p. 32). following, i present evidence of an opportunity for a student to discuss his grade based on arguments, which reflect his development of critical thinking: universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras156 picón jácome when i returned the papers to the students, one of them was not happy with his grade. so i discussed the disagreement with him. it was a student who was very strong, regarding speaking skills and vocabulary, but had some writing weaknesses…i showed him that he had had a lot of spelling mistakes and emphasized that i had given him the opportunity to correct before i graded the final paper. he had refused to correct his mistakes and now seemed to feel disappointed about the grade. it was not difficult to convince him; he actually smiled at the fact that i was right, and told me i could keep the grade like that. (journal, p. 13) besides an opportunity for the students to develop some critical thinking, this was an example of the usefulness of the rubric for me: the student could not deny that i was right because the criteria were clear and he had taken part in their establishment. however, the most significant evidence of development of autonomy for this kid was his change of attitude for the rest of the semester; he became more responsible and careful in the development of the writing tasks. this could thus show that his growth in self-criticism influenced his gaining ownership. more evidence for development of critical thinking can be inferred comparing the number of discrepancies between teacher and students’ grades during the first and second instances of selfassessment. the fact that this number decreased significantly in the second instance proved that students’ abilities to self-evaluate their work improved with experience and that students must have become more self-critical as they gained expertise evaluating their work (see table 2). the teacher: factors that determined my role given that this study presents teaching strategies applied within a conscious effort of the teacher to promote autonomy in his students, the teacher’s role in the process is important to be discussed. table 2. comparison of teacher and students’ grades first event of evaluation student 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 m i e sc u e la s a b b b b c a b b a a b a t a d c d b c a c b a a c b second event of evaluation student 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 m i fa m il ia s b a b a b b a a a a a t b a b a a b a a a a a did not turn in their rubrics agreement discrepancies 157profile vol. 14, no. 2, october 2012. issn 1657-0790 (printed) 2256-5760 (online). bogotá, colombia. pages 145-162 promoting learner autonomy through teacher-student partnership assessment... the main themes that emerged in the data analysis regarding my role as a teacher in the promotion of learner autonomy were empowering, fostering critical thinking and guiding. empowering was evident in different forms, namely, strengthening students’ independence by training them to self-correct and self-evaluate as well as teaching them the use of cognitive strategies such as the use of the dictionary and memory strategies, and encouraging their participation in decision taking. my beliefs in regard to assessment as a democratic formative process in which learners should play a starring role were decisive for the traits of learner autonomy identified in the analysis to take place. my teaching methodology might as well have facilitated empowering and thus autonomy: the analysis of the data showed that i used a learner-centered approach to teaching characterized by group work, the use of technology, and differentiated instruction, which promoted the development of social learning strategies, fa cilitated students’ independence and added to their technical dimension of autonomy. my role in the development of students’ critical thinking was evident in two main instances: (a) the promotion of discussion among them to select the criteria for the rubric, and with me to discuss grades based on those criteria; and (b) the facilitation of students’ self-assessment itself. part of the impact of students’ self-assessment could be identified as the appearance of self-criticism and this was evident in some of them changing negative attitudes and committing themselves to the writing tasks. some aspects of my personality probably facilitated this process. my own self-criticism provided space for reflection and allowed the benefit of the doubt about me being always right, which was decisive to acknowledge students’ rights and prevented me from taking authoritarian de cisions. likewise, my flexibility might have helped in decreasing students’ anxiety at the time of discussing grades, making it easier for me to approach them and question their behavior. both aspects support voller’s (1997) statement that “teachers need to reflect critically not only upon how they act during a learning event, but also upon their underlying attitudes and beliefs about the nature of language and the nature of learning” (p. 112). my role as a guide and technical support was evidenced during the development of the key action strategies of the project. at the time of defining evaluation criteria, i negotiated with the students, on the one hand, and, on the other, either used my expertise or linked theory and practice in order to make an informed decision. likewise, i guided students to self-correct by using symbols and using the rubric for self-evaluation. again, both languages had their role in this process: english was the one used to lead reflections about metalinguistic aspects and spanish the goal in terms of communicative competence. conclusions teacher-student partnership assessment proved to be a valid strategy to promote learner autonomy. the findings showed that three dimensions of it developed in the students who took part in this study: ownership of their learning process, metacognition and critical thinking, which were found to interrelate producing better conditions for learning. regarding ownership, the students showed some independence from the teacher and some sense of responsibility, both of which were evident during in-class activities that required the students to be involved and committed. this development of ownership seems to have been positively affected by a movement observed in some students towards a more self-critical thinking as evidenced by their recognition of and effort to cope with negative attitudes. alternatively, a more responsible universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras158 picón jácome and committed attitude surely helped to prepare the terrain for more independent learning, supported by the two main action strategies taken in the project. in that sense, the students’ development of some planning, self-monitoring, and self evaluating skills seems to have positively affected their writing achievement, and showed an increment on their part of both their technical and psychological dimensions of autonomy. critical thinking was equally reflected in the fact that students’ self-evaluation was more accurate during the second evaluation event, which could be explained based on students’ better understanding of evaluation criteria as they gained experience using the rubric. as a result, the data showed that some participants were developing the ability to support their self-evaluation by acting as trained co-evaluators. from this perspective, students’ development of critical thinking seems to have a direct correlation with the formulation and discussion of clear evaluation criteria, which preceded the design of the rubric. by the same token, this finding evidences a movement of the students towards the development of a more political dimension of autonomy. this experience of teacher and students be coming partners in the process of assessing for learning has equally proved that the teacher’s role is to some extent a dependent factor of learner autonomy in the school context. the main features that emerged in the analysis proving such statement were my role as a guide and technical support, which reflected my moving towards a more learner-centered teaching approach; and my beliefs in more democratic forms of assessment, which provided space for students’ participation, fostering their critical thinking and empowering them. using benson’s framework, one could say that, in terms of evaluation, learner autonomy moved towards the student-control pole with the support of the teacher. in spite of these positive results, i am aware that learner autonomy has a multidimensional nature and needs to be analyzed from different per spectives. my analysis is thus limited by at least two aspects: (1) that only one dimension of learning was taken into account i.e. evaluation; and (2) that learning was only observed inside the classroom within a somehow teacher-centered environment. i therefore present these conclusions with an awareness of such limitations. this action research project was implemented upon a sample of convenience and conclusions are subjected to generalization only to the extent to which the reader identifies similarities in his/her teaching-learning context. implications although teacher-student partnership as sessment has been confirmed to be a significant means to promote learner autonomy, a political dimension needs to be addressed at a more critical level; promoting student reflection about social issues that affect them could be an objective in teachers’ planning that would help the latter to achieve such a goal. regarding the assessment construct, teachers must keep updated with the models that support their teaching approach in order for their as sessment criteria to be clear and valid. likewise, content and performance standards need to be established among the language teachers of the school in order for them to be able to design assessment procedures that could more accurately evaluate students’ level of proficiency. this study offers valuable insight for language teachers in high school about the possibilities of democratic assessment practices to support language learning. by the same token, it provides a view of the conditions under which their colleagues teach and allow themselves to compare and find similarities. efl/esl teachers will surely 159profile vol. 14, no. 2, october 2012. issn 1657-0790 (printed) 2256-5760 (online). bogotá, colombia. pages 145-162 promoting learner autonomy through teacher-student partnership assessment... identify challenges in this article similar to the ones they face in their daily practices. this case is consequently evidence that it is possible to change things for the better in such contexts. finally, i have realized the benefits of carrying out action research via my better understanding of the situation and my learning about the topics that framed the project. furthermore, i became more conscious of my role and responsibility in the development of my students’ autonomy at the time that i developed mine. references altrichter, h., posch, p., & someck, b. (1993). teachers investigate their work: an introduction to the methods of action research. london: routledge. angulo-delgado, f. (2002). enseñar, aprender y evaluar: tres procesos inseparables. tercer encuentro de enseñanza de las ciencias, universidad de antioquia. medellín, colombia. arias, c., estrada, l., areiza, h., & restrepo, e. (2009). sistema de evaluación en lenguas extranjeras. medellín: reimpresos, universidad de antioquia. bachman, l. f., & palmer, a. s. (1996). language testing in practice. new york, ny: oxford university press. benson, p. (1997). the philosophy and politics of learner autonomy. in p. benson & p. voller (eds.), autonomy and independence in language learning (pp. 18-34). london: addison wesley longman. benson, p. (2010). measuring autonomy: should we put our ability to the test? in a. paran & l. sercu (eds.), testing the untestable in language education (pp. 77-97). bristol: multilingual matters. benson, p., & voller, p. (1997). introduction: autonomy and independence in language learning. in p. benson & p. voller (eds.), autonomy and independence in language learning (pp. 1-12). london: addison wesley longman. brown, d. h. (2004). language assessment: principles and classroom practices. new york, ny: longman. brown, j. d., & hudson, t. (1998). the alternatives in language assessment. tesol quarterly, 32(4), 653-675. bratcher, s., & ryan, l. (2004). evaluating children’s writing: a handbook of grading choices for classroom teachers. mahwah, nj: laurence erlbaum associates. retrieved from university of pittsburg netlibrary database (98761), http://www.library.pitt.edu/articles/database_ info/netlibrary.html burns, a. (1999). collaborative action research for english language teachers. london: cambridge university press. ekbatani, g. (2000). moving toward learner-directed assessment. in g. ekbatani & h. pierson (eds.), learner-directed assessment in esl (pp. 1-11). mahwah, nj: laurence erlbaum associates. edlund, j. (2003). non-native speakers of english. in i. clark & b. bamberg (eds.), concepts in composition: theory and practice of the teaching of writing (pp. 363387). mahwah, nj: erlbaum. retrieved from university of pittsburg netlibrary database (79439), http://www. library.pitt.edu/articles/database_info/netlibrary.html ellis, g. (2000). is it worth it? convincing teachers of the value of developing metacognitive awareness in children. in b. sinclair, i. mcgrath & t. lamb (eds.), learner autonomy, teacher autonomy: future directions (pp. 75-88). edinburg: longman. genesee, f., & upshur, j. (1996). classroom-based evaluation in second language education. new york, ny: cambridge university press. goodrich-andrade, h., & boulay, b. (2003). role of rubric referenced self-assessment in learning to write. the journal of educational research, 97, 21-34. hewitt, g. (1995). a portfolio primer: teaching, collecting, and assessing student writing. portsmouth, nh: heinemann. himmel-köning, e., olivares-zamorano, m. a., & zabalzanoaim, j. (2000). hacia una evaluación educativa 2000: aprender para evaluar y evaluar para aprender. santiago de chile: pontificia universidad católica de chile. universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras160 picón jácome lamb, t. (2010). assessment of autonomy or assessment for autonomy? evaluating learner autonomy for formative purposes. in a. paran & l. sercu (eds.). testing the untestable in language education (pp. 98-119). bristol: multilingual matters. lippman, j. (2003). assessing writing. in i. clark & b. bamberg (eds.), concepts in composition: theory and practice in the teaching of writing (pp. 199-220). mahwah, nj: erlbaum. retrieved from university of pittsburg netlibrary database (79439), http://www. library.pitt.edu/articles/database_info/netlibrary.html little, d. (1995). learning as dialog: the dependence of learner autonomy on teacher autonomy. system, 23(2), 175-181. mansoor, i., & grant, s. (2002). a writing rubric to assess esl student performance [electronic version]. adventures in assessment, 14, 33-38. (eric document reproduction service no. ed 482885). mertler, c. a. (2001). designing scoring rubrics for your classroom. practical assessment, research & evaluation, 7(25). retrieved from http://pareonline.net/ getvn.asp?v=7&n=25. moskal, b. m. (2000). scoring rubrics: what, when and how. practical assessment, research & evaluation, 7(3). retrieved from http://pareonline.net/getvn.asp?v=7&n=3 o’malley, m., & chamot, a. (1990). learning strategies in second language acquisition. new york, ny: cambridge university press. o’malley, j. m., & valdez-pierce, l. v. (1996). authentic assessment for english language learners. boston: addison wesley. pring, r. (2004). philosophy of educational research (2nd ed.). london: continuum. selener, d. (1997). participatory action research and social change. new york, ny: the cornell participatory action research network. shohamy, e. (2001). democratic assessment as an alternative. language testing, 18 (4), 373-391. stevens, d., & levi, a. (2005). introduction to rubrics: an assessment tool to save grading time, convey effective feedback and promote student learning. sterling, virginia: stylus. voller, p. (1997). does the teacher have a role in autonomous language learning? in p. benson & p. voller (eds.), autonomy and independence in language learning (pp. 98-133). new york, ny: longman. wenden, a. (1991). learning strategies for learner autonomy. london: prentice hall international. williams, j. (2003). preparing to teach writing: research, theory and practice (3rd ed.). mahwah, nj: erlbaum. retrieved from university of pittsburg netlibrary database (83850), http://www.library.pitt.edu/articles/ database_info/netlibrary.html. about the author édgar picón jácome holds an ma in tesol from greensboro college in greensboro, usa. he is an assistant professor at the school of languages of universidad de antioquia, colombia, and belongs to the giae research group. his interests in research include teacher and learner autonomy, and evaluation. 161profile vol. 14, no. 2, october 2012. issn 1657-0790 (printed) 2256-5760 (online). bogotá, colombia. pages 145-162 promoting learner autonomy through teacher-student partnership assessment... appendix a: symbols for self-correction universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras162 picón jácome appendix b: sample of students’ compositions profile no. 7dic 5.p65 ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ profile profile profile profile profile 7 (2006): universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras children’s oral communication in english class activities: an exploratory study la comunicación oral de los niños en actividades de una clase de inglés:la comunicación oral de los niños en actividades de una clase de inglés:la comunicación oral de los niños en actividades de una clase de inglés:la comunicación oral de los niños en actividades de una clase de inglés:la comunicación oral de los niños en actividades de una clase de inglés: un estudio exploratorioun estudio exploratorioun estudio exploratorioun estudio exploratorioun estudio exploratorio sara monsalve*sara monsalve*sara monsalve*sara monsalve*sara monsalve* saraemonsalvep@yahoo.com alexandra correal**alexandra correal**alexandra correal**alexandra correal**alexandra correal** arekusandoraco@yahoo.com universidad nacional de colombia it is important that teachers fully equip students with the skills needed to communicate effectively in the target language so that they can share and exchange their ideas, feelings, opinions, etc. this article reports on a study aimed at examining the development of children’s oral communication in english and the way in which the activities and the teacher’s roles created or expanded students’ opportunities for learning. data collection techniques included field notes, audio and video recordings and two interviews to the teacher. the study revealed that children’s oral production was possible thanks to the teacher’s efforts to provide children with topics and activities closely related to the students’ particular interests and needs. likewise, the teacher created an appropriate learning environment in which children were challenged to use english in meaningful ways. kkkkkey worey worey worey worey wordsdsdsdsds: oral communication, young learners, teaching english, children, teacher’s roles es importante que los maestros faciliten a sus estudiantes las habilidades necesarias para comunicarse efectivamente en la lengua extranjera, de tal forma que puedan compartir e intercambiar sus ideas, sentimientos, opiniones, etc. este artículo reporta sobre un estudio encaminado a examinar el desarrollo de la comunicación oral de los niños en inglés y de la forma en que las actividades y los roles del profesor crearon y ampliaron las oportunidades de aprendizaje de los niños. las técnicas de recolección de datos incluyeron notas de campo, grabaciones de audio y video y dos entrevistas a la profesora participante. el estudio reveló que la producción oral de los niños fue posible gracias a los esfuerzos de la profesora para brindarles temas y actividades estrechamente relacionados con sus intereses y necesidades particulares. así mismo, la profesora creó un ambiente de aprendizaje apropiado en el cual los niños usaron el inglés de manera significativa. palabras clavespalabras clavespalabras clavespalabras clavespalabras claves: comunicación oral en niños, enseñanza del inglés a niños, roles del profesor * sara monsalvesara monsalvesara monsalvesara monsalvesara monsalve, b. ed. in philology and languages, english, from the universidad nacional de colombia. she is currently an english teacher in the extension programs at the universidad nacional de colombia. ** alexandra correalalexandra correalalexandra correalalexandra correalalexandra correal, b. ed. in philology and languages, english, from the universidad nacional de colombia. she is currently an english teacher at a private school in bogotá. this article was received on march 31st, 2006 and accepted on june 2nd, 2006. 131-146 ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ 132 monsalve and correal profileprofileprofileprofileprofile introductionintroductionintroductionintroductionintroduction oral language is the principal medium of communication for young learners. even when their literacy abilities are formed, it is the most important link with the outside world. through it, children are able to share ideas, acquire new concepts, organize old ones, compose stories and create new worlds. likewise, oral language takes children on a journey into the world of imagination where they can truly live the adventure of using language for communication. it is our role as teachers to make this journey a meaningful and enjoyable one. but how can we help our children to develop these oral skills? there are important links between what and how children are taught and how they learn. traditionally, the second/foreign language teacher has been seen as an expert and the learner as a passive receptor of information; the teacher spends hours and hours teaching by talking while the students sit listening passively. in such conventional teaching-learning environment there is no chance for students to gain knowledge and to explore ideas. as can be seen, children’s oral language is indeed an important aspect in the process of children’s learning that has been neglected in the classroom. it is also an intellectual issue which deserves more attention from both teachers and researchers. hence, our interest in inquiring about children’s oral communication during the development of the class activities in an english course. literaliteraliteraliteraliterature reviewture reviewture reviewture reviewture review this section includes the following relevant aspects related to our research topic: the general principles of teaching children and young learners, the definition of oral communication and what oral communication in children implies. general principles for tgeneral principles for tgeneral principles for tgeneral principles for tgeneral principles for teaching childreneaching childreneaching childreneaching childreneaching children and yand yand yand yand young learnersoung learnersoung learnersoung learnersoung learners according to the colombian national education ministry –ministerio de educación nacional de colombia – m.e.n. (1999), the methodologies for teaching english to children and young learners are more effective if they have the following characteristics: active and interactive methodologies that account for ludic or play principles: active and interactive methodologies allow children to learn a foreign language by doing actions with it. learners become actors who use the language to convey meaning in real situations both inside and outside the classroom. activities that promote the development of children’s potential: according to phillips (1993), the way children learn a foreign language depends greatly on their developmental stage. therefore, activities need to match carefully the child’s age and ability level if language learning success is to be attained. interesting and meaningful activities centered in the learner: if the learning process is focused on the learner, the activities have to be designed to fulfill his/her needs and interests; in that way the activities will be meaningful and directly related to the learner’s daily life. methodologies that emphasize affective factors: if language learning is to take place, learners must be affectively open to second language input. krashen (1981) asserts that learners with a good self-image and motivation interact more and obtain more input for acquisition. methodologies that integrate children’s prior and new knowledge: within the methodological process, teachers can include an element of reflection where children are drawn periodically into a personal synthesis of what they are learning. this process of reflection has the purpose of making children aware of the way new language knowledge relates coherently to the existing knowledge, forming an integrated whole. flexible methodologies: these methodologies allow teachers to select and adapt techniques and activities appropriate to the specific students' characteristics and needs. among the methodologies and approaches advisable for teaching english to children we can ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○133 profileprofileprofileprofileprofile children’s oral communication in english class activities find the natural approach, total physical response, project work, activity-based learning, whole language, content-based instruction and the communicative approach. all of these methodologies and approaches are widely known by the elt community and, given the restrictions of space; we are not going to explain them here. however, with respect to the classes we observed, we could say that the methodology used by the teacher was mostly communicative. oral practice was always emphasized and listening comprehension developed. the role of the teacher in these classes was to provide children with opportunities for meaningful interaction and to establish interesting and enjoyable activities which motivated students to learn the language. in this way, children experienced a real need of negotiating meaning and communicating ideas in the new code. likewise, total physical response and natural approach principles were applied in class. oral communicationoral communicationoral communicationoral communicationoral communication "since communication is a process, it is insufficient for students to simply have knowledge of target language forms, meanings and functions. students must be able to apply this knowledge in negotiating meaning. it is through the interaction between speaker and listener (or reader and writer) that meaning becomes clear” (larsen-freeman, 1986, p. 123). this makes us point out that the main goal when handling speaking in class should be to help the learner to produce fluent and accurate language appropriate to the speech situation. to attain this goal, the learner must receive comprehensible input to act on in order to activate and develop his/her own learning mechanisms. however, the concept of comprehensible input is not enough in itself to explain the development of second/foreign language learning. learners also need opportunities to interact with other speakers and to negotiate meaning through interaction (ellis, 1985, as cited in glew, 1998). in addition to the relevance of input and interaction, reyes (2002, p. 22) defines the importance of output in the process of acquisition: "through exchanges with peers, or native speakers of the target language, the learners are not only receiving meaningful input, but they are also testing the efficiency of their output and the ability to convey the message. besides, they are testing their ideas about the language and creating meaning through negotiation.” successful second language learning also requires opportunities for students to obtain ample feedback. through teacher ’s and peers’ oral feedback, learners can refine and improve their oral production. similarly, through error correction, students can incorporate new language elements from the correct forms of the teacher’s responses. oral communication in yoral communication in yoral communication in yoral communication in yoral communication in young learnersoung learnersoung learnersoung learnersoung learners according to dunn (1984), the process of second language learning in young children within the classroom context goes through three stages, namely: silent period, intermediate period and breakthrough period. in the silent period, as children can already communicate in their own language, they want to be able to use the foreign language in the same way. if they cannot say what they want, they feel frustrated or lose interest. thus, to speed up the process of speaking, teachers can provide children with useful or prefabricated phrases helping to expand the children's repertoire of language. they can learn these as blocks of sounds the same way they did when they learnt their first language. after a certain period of time children move beyond the silent period and begin using the prefabricated language in different situations. when young foreign language learners finally begin communication in the target language, that is to say, in the intermediate period, mainly learnt by imitation and repetition, researchers have observed two consistent features: the use of telegraphic speech and the use of formulaic speech. telegraphic speech refers to the use of a few content words such as an entire utterance without function words or morphological markers. children ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ 134 monsalve and correal profileprofileprofileprofileprofile use these single words frequently, repeating them and practicing them. then, the next step in this process involves an elaboration or extension made by the teacher which the children imitate. on the other hand, formulaic speech consists of children using short phrases. through frequent imitation and repetition such phrases are learnt and used. these formulas often help children to communicate in the foreign language with speakers around them. finally, in the breakthrough period, children begin to put the learnt language together to express meaning. it is a process of incorporation. children incorporate an utterance used by an adult into an already established phrase or one that is being produced from elements already learnt. in this way, children begin to recognize the rules that underlie the foreign language. however, not all second language learners follow the exact same stages. there is a set of factors (psychological, sociological, cognitive, to name a few), known as individual variation, that may affect directly or indirectly the process of second language learning. accordingly, some people could learn faster or slower than others, make more mistakes, etc. (m.e.n., 1999). research questionsresearch questionsresearch questionsresearch questionsresearch questions we intended to inquire about children’s oral communication during the development of the class activities in an english course. therefore, our main question was: what happens with children’s oral communication in english when they take part in class activities? and our research secondary questions were: what is the nature of the class activities? and what is the teacher’s role in the development of such activities? research designresearch designresearch designresearch designresearch design this research followed the qualitative case-study principles. we chose a case study as our research method because it allowed us to identify significant factors and characteristics of the phenomenon while studying groups that were functioning (merriam, 1988). our role in the investigation was researcher-observers. we accounted for children’s oral production from an ethic perspective; that is, we tried to understand the phenomenon from outside the group. our research process began by identifying the phenomenon and formulating our research questions based on it. then, we got literature in the field about the topic and we started to read and select the relevant information. later, we chose the appropriate data collection techniques according to the nature of the questions. once we had the information gathered through the four instruments implemented, we began to organize this data to make its reading and interpretation easier. we read and re-read the information several times to find similarities and differences and to establish patterns to which we then gave a name. after this initial identification of phenomena in the data, we grouped our first concepts under umbrella terms called categories according to their commonalities. the next step involved the naming and definition of the categories and subcategories. finally, we engaged in the process of validating our findings. context and participantscontext and participantscontext and participantscontext and participantscontext and participants the national university of colombia offers saturday english courses to children from 7-8 years old. the program consists of four different learning projects divided into the following three levels: pushers (beginners), fighters (intermediate) and challengers (advanced). the main purpose of the courses is to learn language by doing things taking into account that the potential development of children’s creativity serves as the foundation to build an integral education. our study was carried out in the intermediate level of the “universe maniacs” project. the goals for this course were that children create and describe an alien, his/her activities, abilities, clothing and food as well as the planet where he/she lives. the participants totaled 16: a teacher, aged 40, and a group of 15 children aged 8-10. our participant teacher had been working with the english courses since 1995 and specifically with ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○135 profileprofileprofileprofileprofile children’s oral communication in english class activities the universe maniacs project for two years. the children were in 4th and 5th grade and had been attending the courses at the university ever y saturday from 9 a.m. to 12 for two years as an extra reinforcement to the activities developed by each of them at school. data collection tdata collection tdata collection tdata collection tdata collection techniquesechniquesechniquesechniquesechniques field notes: field notes are direct observations of what is being said and done in a classroom as well as impressions and perceptions of the observers (arhar, holly, and kasten, 2001). in our case we took notes for four months in ever y saturday lesson. these notes allowed us to register behaviors, attitudes and the teaching-learning processes closely related to the purpose of our investigation. audio and video recordings: audio and videorecordings provided us with verbatim data of children’s oral production. they also allowed us to look again at what happened in certain moments and to supplement the data gathered through field notes. inter views: interviews were useful tools for understanding the children’s experiences in oral activities and the meaning they made of those experiences. in other words, interviews were used “to have the participants reconstruct his or her experience within the topic under study” (seidman, 1998) (see appendix 1). it should be clarified that we got permission from the children’s parents to audio and videorecord children’s oral production and to use the data gathered in our project. students’ real names were changed to protect their identity. instructional designinstructional designinstructional designinstructional designinstructional design taking into account that with this research we wanted to measure children’s oral production in english class activities, we are going to describe how the teacher organized activities so that children could talk. initially, the teacher asked students to stick some posters with useful expressions on the board. these expressions enabled children to participate and maintain communication in english. for example, “how do you say _____ in english?” “can i erase the board?” “can you repeat, please?”, etc. then, the different topics were introduced to the students through a sequence of activities from real and imaginary situations and through written and oral input. the objective was to provide students with useful vocabulary and structures that later would help them to describe their aliens and their new planet. next, children were given intensive practice in the vocabulary and structure under the teacher’s guidance and control. the students, through a demonstration or an example given by the teacher, could understand what they were expected to do and take the teacher’s production as a language model. after this, the students practiced using what they had learned with less control by the teacher since they could talk freely about the things they had invented after having developed a series of individual and group activities. dddddaaaaattttta anala anala anala anala analysisysisysisysisysis in the process of analyzing data, our units of analysis were the evidence of children’s oral production gathered through our field notes and the transcriptions of the audio and video recordings. this evidence shed an important light on the characteristics of children’s oral communication and the way in which the class activities promoted this communication. equally important were the impressions, opinions and experiences of our participant teacher regarding the class activities, her role as a teacher and the development of children’s oral production throughout the entire course. in the data analysis process, we scrutinized the data thoroughly and carefully to search for salient patterns. we used colors to codify the data and group the common elements in the information. this last stage, data analysis, involved some of the strategies suggested by merriam (1988) to validate our findings: triangulation, to compare the same emerging findings in the different instruments; ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ 136 monsalve and correal profileprofileprofileprofileprofile member checking, by asking the teacher if she considered our results plausible; and long-term observation at the research site in order to increase the validity of the data. we corroborated our findings by using two types of triangulation (burns, 1999). on the one hand, we used methodological triangulation which consists of multiple ways to collect information. first, we gathered the information from the field notes and the interviews, and then we compared it with the audio and videotape transcriptions. on the other hand, we used investigator triangulation, as there were two researchers involved in this project. resulresulresulresulresultststststs there was an on-going revision and updating of the categories that implied returning to the raw data several times and re-naming and re-organizing the categories we had found. the analysis of the information gathered led us to the categories and sub-categories shown in diagram 1, which evidences their connections with our research questions. relying on previous knowledgerelying on previous knowledgerelying on previous knowledgerelying on previous knowledgerelying on previous knowledge we noticed that activities allowed students to communicate orally mainly when they could rely on previous knowledge. teacher and students take a trip to the world of words taking off from the earthly platform where they have to refuel the tank of knowledge by reviewing and reinforcing the prior experiences they have about the world that surrounds them. as is known by primar y teachers, constructivism proposes that the learning process is an act of construction of meaning by learners diagram 1diagram 1diagram 1diagram 1diagram 1. categories and sub-categories found in the analysis of the data. ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○137 profileprofileprofileprofileprofile children’s oral communication in english class activities within the context of their current knowledge and past experiences. people construct their own understanding and knowledge of the world through experiencing things and reflecting on those experiences. when learners encounter something new, they reconcile it with previous knowledge and experience. they may use the new information, or they may discard it as irrelevant. analyzing the information we collected from the field notes, transcriptions and interviews, we found out that students were exposed to a variety of activities that had an element in common: they reflected what children already knew or had experienced in life. the following extract from our observations illustrates that common feature: “t: let’s talk about the clothes… alex, this question is for you. what is katherine wearing today? a: she is jacket t: she is wearing… a: wearing jacket…ehh glove?” (transcription, april 24, 2004) this example shows that students come to the language learning situation with already-formulated knowledge, ideas and understandings. this previous knowledge helps the teacher to review and reinforce the new language and to make sure it is meaningful and understandable for children. thus, if the teacher uses the environment that surrounds children’s lives to be expressed in english, young learners will see the foreign language as a means to express their experiences in their daily life: “t: […] children already know many things; the teacher only has to see how to use those things they already know. children know them from the t.v., the newspaper, the world that surrounds them and from stories at school. they come from learning english, they are studying english at school.” (teacher’s interview, june 7, 2004) in this respect, the teacher provided the children with oral and written input closely related to their realities and their previous experiences with the foreign language, as observed in this instance: “t: […] this is the homework about you. the teacher writes on the board ´what activities do you do on sunday?’ “describe your sunday, please. for example, i wake up at ten…, i watch tv, i go to the park… it’s about you… do this activity at home.” (transcription, may 22, 2004) as we noticed, students never came to class as empty vessels to be filled with several language elements. the personal and linguistic experiences they have lived in their first language constitute the foundation for foreign language learning (cummins, 2001). all these experiences and knowledge acquired in the l1 learning make an important contribution to the l2 learning process. “the conceptual knowledge that students possess in their first language constitutes a major component of the ‘cognitive power’ that they bring to the language learning situation. thus, it makes sense to value and, where possible, continue to cultivate these abilities both for their own sake and to facilitate transfer to english” (ibid, 2001, p. 40). the classroom activities also helped both teacher and students create a familiar framework for developing knowledge of the new language. however, successful foreign language learning requires opportunities for students to receive comprehensible input as well as to produce comprehensible output. this was especially so when the teacher applied different strategies to elicit information from the students, reinforcing the idea of meaningful interaction, as seen in the following example: “t: now you are going mention the color, o.k.? what is daniela wearing today? s: a jacket. t: she is wearing… ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ 138 monsalve and correal profileprofileprofileprofileprofile s: she is wearing a pink…a pink jacket and …blue pants.” (transcription, april 24, 2004) vigotsky (1978), piaget (1981), and bruner (1980), among others, argue that meaning is the basis of the learning process. to be meaningful, this learning should be articulated both in a social context and in the daily life of the learner. in such supportive environment children will have the opportunity to construct their own knowledge in an active and creative way. we conclude that children learn more easily when the learning environment reflects meaningful situations that include their daily life experiences. accordingly, previous knowledge of the world is important when trying to teach a foreign language as it is the scaffolding children count on to reconcile the new knowledge with what they already know. (bruner, as cited in m.e.n., 1999). but how did the teacher connect children’s prior knowledge to new knowledge and avoid falling into the boring, senseless and meaningless world of repetition? the answer to this question let us describe the second category which responded to one of the secondary questions of our research: what is the nature of the activities? exploring imaginarexploring imaginarexploring imaginarexploring imaginarexploring imaginary wy wy wy wy worldsorldsorldsorldsorlds going on with the amazing trip, both teacher and students took off from planet earth in their spaceship of knowledge ready to explore the universe of language. now, traveling through that never-ending universe, they will see magic worlds where imagination and fun will let them have some good times. cameron (2001) points out that general language learning principles and research have shown that young learners need the following models of language use to listen to, to notice and to assimilate; plentiful opportunities for repeated listening and plentiful opportunities to practice words, phrases and sentences. taking this into consideration, children need constant questioning and redirection in order to process the information and make it their own. repetition, in different forms, allows consolidation of knowledge and deeper understanding. accordingly, if repetition is to be meaningful and enjoyable, the teacher must take on the responsibility of adjusting tasks and topics so that they relate to pupils’ interests and needs. in this respect, our participant teacher says: “…to avoid the repetitive, boring description of the planet earth, of human beings, for this is something they have been working on, to avoid that repetition of structures, […] we create a planet, children create a planet […] its inhabitants, their daily activities…” (teacher’s interview, april 3) this excerpt shows the strategy applied by the teacher to maintain a high degree of motivation and to make the english class an enjoyable, stimulating experience for the children. therefore, topics and activities must stimulate thought and inspire children’s imagination. this way, the foreign language becomes an easy and meaningful vehicle to communicate inside and outside the classroom. in conclusion, children need activities which are exciting and stimulate their curiosity. they need to be involved in meaningful situations that emphasize interaction through the use of english as a foreign language so that they are able to express their needs and feelings, to question and explore their surroundings, and to create imaginary worlds. within this category, two subcategories are included: superkid as a context and saying more when touched by their own magic worlds. in the following paragraphs, we explain our interpretation of these elements in an attempt to account for the nature of the class activities and their relation with children’s oral communication. 1. superkid as a context among the communicative functions of language suggested by halliday (1975), we can find the imaginary function, in which the language is mainly used for creating, exploring and entertaining. ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○139 profileprofileprofileprofileprofile children’s oral communication in english class activities consequently, to reach these goals, the teacher has to give students many opportunities to speak in order to express their thoughts, feelings and insights for a variety of purposes using a variety of forms. in the particular case of our study, a form that appeared frequently was a fictional story created by the teacher. this story talks about a fantastic world where children, holding the teacher’s hand, visited imaginary places and beings. the following extract taken from one of the teacher’s interviews can be an example of this: “the superkid story is like, as we say in english, like an input, like a motivation, like a warm-up to what comes later, that is, what children actually produce, what they create, what they talk about later. superkid creates the environment for those subsequent activities […] .” (t’s interview, june 7, 2004) stories provide foundations for learning. in this respect, ellis and brewster (1991, as cited in barreto, 2002) listed some of the following thoughtprovoking reasons for using stories in the language learning classroom: stories help students develop positive attitudes towards language learning; they foster imagination. stories also provide a way to link fantasy and imagination with the child’s real world. as children enjoy listening to stories over and over again, repetition allows natural language acquisition. finally, stories allow the introduction or revision of new vocabular y and language patterns, as witnessed below: “teacher tells the students that today they are going to have the oral evaluation and that this is going to have two parts: first, retell the story of superkid and second, describe their own aliens: t: what is superkid doing? sts: pushing t: christian, what happens when he opens the space door? st: superkid is holding the parachute.” (field notes, march 13, 2004) as can be seen in the previous example, the superkid story was an appealing framework to present a language model to the children. indeed, many of the language structures present in the story were evident in the children’s subsequent oral presentations. based on the superkid story, the teacher also proposed varied and interesting activities that captured students’ attention, stimulated visual memor y and improved their imagination. accordingly, these activities reinforced children’s speaking skills through many different exercises: retelling the story, drawing and describing pictures, questioning, answering and describing scenes of the story. to sum up, story telling gave children the opportunity to participate actively and enthusiastically in the learning process. it was a good way for the teacher to interact with children as well as to encourage oral interaction among them. 2. saying more when touched by their own magic worlds hill (1991) reminds us that children have to be recognized as individuals who develop and learn according to their specific characteristics, needs and environmental circumstances. for these reasons, teachers have to be in constant search of strategies that fit their students’ characteristics. in this respect, our participant teacher says: “motivating activities…which are close to the children’s world; the world of imagination. to create new beings or spaces, different, yet closely related to the vocabular y children already know.” (teacher’s interview, april 3, 2004) the previous extract shows that after having stored a certain amount of language and structures, children had the opportunity to use foreign language in imaginary contexts created by themselves. we noticed that children learnt best when they were the creators of their own magic worlds. this can be seen further in the following examples: ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ 140 monsalve and correal profileprofileprofileprofileprofile “the alien is spot, ehh spot is strong, ehh spot is… ehh tall and short and fat. ehh spot has a two black antennas, ehh spot has a short, curly, black hair. spot has a big, spot has a big, a big green??? spot has…ehh two, two big ears. spot has a big, triangular nose, spot has a big, a big red mouth […].” (gabriela, transcription, april 3, 2004) “the planet is katiuska… in the planet woman wearing ehh (s’s gestures) yellow pants and ehh pink boots, and, and transparent t-shirt. ehh in the ma, wearing, ehh shorts, sandal (s’s gestures) and t-shirt.” (gabriela, transcription video recording, june 12, 2004) in the examples above we can notice that these types of activities stimulated the children’s creativity. their imagination took over and they truly lived the fascinating, fictional story. the children were eager to share their feelings and ideas and to speak out about the content of the activities. regarding the development of the speaking skills, the children’s spontaneous responses and reactions to the activities revealed how much they had really understood and processed. the following teacher’s words describe this process: “it has been difficult […] at the beginning, children hardly produced. i have seen changes in them. they already produce, they are more confident now, though some of them still feel fear, […] oral production has improved remarkably, from saying two words, they speak more fluently now.” (teacher’s interview, june 7, 2004) in conclusion, stimulating children’s imagination and creativity can help both students and teacher make the english class more enjoyable because children like to share their ideas. it is also important to offer children a learning situation in which language development is an integral part of the whole learning process, and not the only final product. ttttteachereachereachereachereacher’s support in the learning pr’s support in the learning pr’s support in the learning pr’s support in the learning pr’s support in the learning processocessocessocessocess our category is made up of three subcategories which helped us to identify the teacher’s roles in the development of the class activities. it is common knowledge that oral language is one of the most important means of learning and of acquiring knowledge. through oral language skills people engage in intellectual dialogue and communicate ideas. given this understanding of the importance of such skills, the teacher has to do more than tell the children what they are expected to do in class. instead, the teacher has several different roles to play. bearing this in mind and analyzing the information we collected, we found that one of the teacher’s roles in the development of the oral activities was to facilitate listening and speaking processes by giving young learners opportunities to use the language in meaningful and appealing contexts: “t: you are going to create the inhabitants for each planet… next class you are going to make or model the alien and say the description orally.” (field notes, march 20, 2004) in the previous example, we can see that a simple but effective way to promote students’ oral communication was to connect topics with things that children already find interesting or attractive. within these contexts, children also found that language learning was meaningful and understandable because the activities were stimulating and motivating. in this same train of thought, and in agreement with lastra (2004), we think that teachers are responsible for supporting students’ learning and need to interact through a foreign language provision. this provision is possible when the teacher selects materials that are learner-centered, accessible (build on learners’ prior knowledge of the world), meaningful, interesting, authentic and challenging. likewise, the teacher designs activities that have a clear purpose, reduce the anxiety of ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○141 profileprofileprofileprofileprofile children’s oral communication in english class activities the learners and are easily modified to meet students' needs (larsen-pusey, 2004). this can be seen in the following excerpt: “t: since i have noticed that some of you still have problems with is/are; has/have, you are going to have…created the inhabitant for each planet.” (field notes, march 20, 2004) in the example above, we can see that as children progressed they developed certain language problems. the teacher was able to pinpoint precisely her students’ needs and look for solutions that would help children to overcome these difficulties. we can conclude that the teacher supported the children’s learning process as she selected and/ or designed activities or materials based on theoretically-sound learning principles and created spaces for meaningful interaction. 1. expanding students’ talk in this subcategor y we considered the strategies the teacher used to help children organize their talk into an extended piece of discourse. by students’ talk, we mean the communicative use children give to the new language. our analysis revealed that the teacher acted most of the time as an elicitor and instead of giving the information to the students, she tried to get the students to tell her what the topic was about or the answer to a given aspect: “t: well, we have the solar system, we have the sun, the planets…what other things are there in the solar system? what else so we have in the solar system?” (transcription, april 24, 2004) based on the sample above, being an elicitor meant starting from where the learners were and then embarking on new knowledge. eliciting equally allowed the teacher to involve students more actively in the classes in terms of ideas, language and pace (scrivener, 1994). with this technique the teacher was able to reduce her talking time and maximize that of her students. the teacher also made students become elicitors. children asked their partners questions to find out more about their aliens and their planets. this way, the teacher provided opportunities for children to share meaning through the use of the foreign language, and children felt that they were active participants in the communicative situation: “t: ahh the next question, this one (pointing to the board)…for the alien sts: what’s your favorite…? t: noo, not me sts: (all at the same time) what her like, what does she like, what does she…like s: what does she like? t: very good! yess sts: uauh yeah!” (transcription, april 17, 2004) in the previous example, the children are the ones who elicit information from their partners. although the teacher still gives the students feedback and encouragement, she decides not to take part in the activity in order to enhance children’s participation. in other words, the teacher’s passive role allowed students to become genuinely involved in the activity and, thus, promoted the development of children’s communicative abilities. in addition, the teacher also helped the children to expand their talk by asking questions. these questions prompted students to say more about their creations and reminded children things they forgot to say but that they knew fairly well, to wit: “t: what about the antennas? are they straight or curly? s: curly t: the antennas are... s: curly” (transcription, april 3, 2004) ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ 142 monsalve and correal profileprofileprofileprofileprofile we conclude that the teacher expanded students’ talk as she encouraged them to bring their ideas and background knowledge into the class learning activities. likewise, children were given both an opportunity to speak and to explore their own thinking as well as that of the others. finally, the teacher gave learners support for remembering and expanding the information to be included while talking. 2. teacher as a resource according to harmer (1983), the teacher as a resource is a kind of walking resource centre always ready to offer help if it is needed. after all, it is the teacher who has the language that the students may be missing in a given activity. throughout this study, we noticed that the teacher made herself available as a source of information so that students could consult her whenever they needed. this is illustrated by the following example taken from our data: “s: how do you say ‘lunares’? t: spots. the spots (the teacher points to something on her face), spikes like the rose (the teacher makes the drawing), scales like the fish, the fish has scales.” (transcription, march 27, 2004) the previous sample reveals how the teacher provided children with necessary language items and how the children, when involved in their own work, called upon the teacher for guidance and help. likewise, there were activities where the teacher either reminded or equipped the learners specifically with the vocabulary or the input they needed for such activities: “t: where does he live or in what planet if you don’t remember the question you say in what planet does he live or where does he come from or what planet…right?” (transcription, april 3, 2004) finally, we observed that the teacher always made sure that learners understood what they were required to do in the oral activities. to attain this goal, the teacher provided the children with a language model that could be followed, namely: “t: this is what you are going to explain next class in the exam, in the oral exam. for the recipe, for example i need cookies, cheese, wire […] i need ink, and frosting […] you take the cookies […].” (transcription, june 5, 2004) we can conclude that the oral activities developed during the course required careful and plentiful support for production. in this sense, the teacher provided the children with the input necessary to perform in the foreign language as well as with a model of language use. her help and guidance were an important support for learners. 3. motivating self-confidence this subcategory is defined as the result of those pedagogical strategies the teacher used to help children focus on learning with ease, energy and determination. we know that speaking a foreign language in public can bring about feelings like fear. fear of making language mistakes and, consequently, fear of failure. in a language class, this feeling can be so intense in some students that they prefer to stay silent than take the risk of speaking english. however, children are likely to overcome fear if they realize that the language classroom is a safe place where they can take risks in the foreign language without the fear of possible ridicule and correction. in relation to this, our participant teacher points out: “if they are given confidence, they say i am going to say this, because the teacher confirmed what i was thinking but i was afraid to say. or if i am wrong the teacher is not going to scold me or give me a bad grade…” (teacher’s interview, june 7, 2004) ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○143 profileprofileprofileprofileprofile children’s oral communication in english class activities in agreement with krashen (1981), we think that the affective factors related to foreign language learning such as fear, anxiety, self-doubt, apprehension, self-esteem, attitude and motivation have a major influence on language learning. accordingly, we found that foreign language learning occurs more effectively when there is a supportive atmosphere in which certain affective conditions (positive attitudes, self-confidence, low anxiety) exist and are used for the learner: “children are going to present the oral evaluation but before, the teacher asks them to go out of the classroom and relax. t: you are going to leave the classroom. you are going to the stadium. you walk and come back for the evaluation. take fresh air. don’t take too much time.” (field notes, march 6) the previous sample demonstrates how the teacher ’s efforts to foster a friendly, relaxed learning environment gave children a sense of security and value as individuals. in such atmosphere, children were more likely to take risks with the new language as they felt comfortable and supported by those around them. another important element to be considered here, in relation to children’s self-confidence, is encouragement (dörnyei, 2001). since the language classroom is a face-threatening environment where children are expected to communicate in a foreign language, it is of paramount importance that children feel that the teacher believes in them and values every single effort they make to complete tasks. therefore, the opinion of an important figure like the teacher can reinforce or reduce children’s self-esteem: “t: how old is he? how old is he? s: three hundred years old t:uhm! three hundred years old (enthusiastic voice)… well christian, i think christian deserve eh deserves an applause (students clap). that’s a very complete description.” (transcription, april 3, 2004) the previous example shows that the teacher recognized students’ personal achievements and progress and took time to celebrate an effort. however, it is interesting to note that this recognition was not only made on the teacher’s part; she also engaged the class in valuing students’ accomplishments. this way, children also enjoyed the recognition of their partners. finally, we have to recognize that in order to enhance children’s self-confidence, teachers who work with children need to have certain particular characteristics: they have to enjoy working with children and understand their development, needs and interests. when these aspects are reflected in every teacher’s pedagogical practice, children begin to enjoy what they are doing and love english as well. these pedagogical principles are pointed out by our participant teacher: “…children can find the activities interesting and meaningful, however, affection is even more important, yes, to give children affection. what for? to show them that the teacher likes what she is doing and they get infected with this feeling and love english as well.” (teacher’s interview, april 3, 2004) conclconclconclconclconclusionsusionsusionsusionsusions the findings revealed that children’s oral communication presented distinctive features. at the beginning, when children were asked to produce orally, they mostly used single words and phrases. this demanded from the teacher activities and roles that were constantly modified to meet students’ needs and in which the teacher gradually built up the children’s discourse skills. by traveling to the imaginary world of a story, children were exposed to a model of language in which new forms were met and familiar ones expanded. children felt more confident using the language and, thus, their oral production was more extensive and fluent. finally, ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ 144 monsalve and correal profileprofileprofileprofileprofile after having stored a certain amount of knowledge, children were challenged to share and exchange their ideas by creating their own imaginary worlds and by talking about them. in doing so, the children’s oral communication became more meaningful, creative and spontaneous. regarding the nature of the class activities, we conclude that children came to the language classroom with their own understandings of the world and their past experiences with the first and the foreign language. these abilities or previous knowledge comprised the foundation for the construction of new meaning. likewise, the teacher incorporated motivating, appealing and purposeful activities that allowed children to express themselves, to negotiate meaning, to give definition to their thoughts and to learn about the language, themselves, and their world. additionally, the story presented by the teacher helped children develop their own creative powers and gave students a lot of opportunity for review, recycling and consolidation of language. in this sense, developing the children’s communicative skills worked very naturally for them as they spontaneously took a more active participation in the speaking process due to their familiarity with the story and their own creations. as for the teacher’s role in the development of the activities, we found that the teacher supported the students’ learning process in several ways. first, the teacher made the teaching materials and activities relevant and appropriate to the learners. second, the teacher increased and maximized the students’ interaction in class. third, the teacher made learning stimulating and enjoyable. fourth, the teacher created a pleasant and supporting atmosphere where children’s selfesteem was protected and their self-confidence increased. finally, the teacher ’s love and commitment towards english became latent for the children, instilling in them a similar feeling and interest in the subject. pedpedpedpedpedagogicagogicagogicagogicagogical implical implical implical implical implicaaaaationstionstionstionstions we stress the importance of acknowledging students’ previous knowledge and experiences. as a matter of fact, we observed that children felt more confident and learning was more meaningful when they could face new situations using the knowledge they had already acquired and practiced during the entire course. besides, it is fundamental that the activities suggested by the teacher are appealing enough to engage children in the process of learning. for this purpose, children’s age, level, needs and individual characteristics have to be taken into account when deciding to use an activity. thus, activities must be interesting, introduce novelty and fantasy elements and should promote and create spaces for meaningful interaction. the main goal of developing these activities is to encourage students to use the target language for communicative purposes. lastly, it is important and necessary that the teacher encourage interaction among learners. we could prove that getting children to ask questions and give information to each other is a useful way to maximize students’ talking in class. these giveand-take exchanges of messages will enable children to use english in real-life communication. further researchfurther researchfurther researchfurther researchfurther research based on our findings, we found some evidence of the process children go through when developing their communicative skills. however, considering that this was not the purpose of our investigation, it would be a valuable topic for further research. likewise, it would be interesting to account for the different communicative strategies children apply when they participate orally in english. finally, it would be worthy to study how children’s individual background and previous schooling affect their oral communication in english. referencesreferencesreferencesreferencesreferences arhar, j., holly, m., & kasten, w. (2001). action research for teachers. traveling the yellow brick road. new jersey: merrill prentice hall. ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○145 profileprofileprofileprofileprofile children’s oral communication in english class activities bar reto, g. (2002). stor y-telling: a path to imagination and creativity in the primary english class. profile journal, 3, 55-57. bruner, j. (1980). la elaboración del sentido. la construcción del mundo por el niño. buenos aires: paidós. burns, a. (1999). collaborative action research for english language teachers. cambridge: cambridge university press. cameron, l. (2001). teaching languages to young learners. cambridge: cambridge university press. cummins, j. (2001). knowledge, power and identity in teaching english as a second language. in fred, g. (ed.), educating second language children, the whole child, the whole curriculum, the whole community. language education. cambridge: cambridge university press. dörnyei, z. (2001). motivational strategies in the language classroom. cambridge: cambridge university press. dunn, o. (1984). help your child with a foreign language. great britain: hodder and stoughton educational. glew, p. j. (1998). verbal interaction and english second language acquisition in classroom contexts. issues in educational research, 8(2), 83-94. retrieved 2006, from http:// education.curtin.edu.au/iier/iier8/glew.html halliday, m. a. (1975). learning how to mean. london uk: edward arnold. harmer, j. (1983). the practice of english language teaching. essex: longman. hill, b. a. (1991). language teaching. cambridge: cambridge university press. krashen, s. (1981). principles and practices in second language acquisition. oxford: pergamon press. l arsen-freeman, d. (1986). techniques and principles in language teaching. new york: oxford university press. larsen-pusey, m. a. (2004). facilitation of learning in the language classroom. proc. of the 1st profile symposium, november 20, bogotá: universidad nacional de colombia. lastra, s. (2004). an understanding of the concept and conditions of biligualism: a case study in an efl setting. bogotá: universidad distrital francisco josé de caldas. merriam, s. b. (1988). case study research in education. san francisco: jossey-bass publications. ministerio de educación nacional. (1999). lineamientos curriculares. idiomas extranjeros. bogotá: ministerio de educación nacional de colombia. phillips, s. (1993). young learners. oxford: oxford university press. piaget, j. (1981). la representación del mundo del niño. madrid: morata. reyes, j. (2002). from building blocks to architects empowering learners for success. profile journal, 3, 19-30. scrivener, j. (1994). learning teaching. oxford: macmillan education. seidman, i. (1998). inter viewing as qualitative research. new york: teachers college press. vigotsky, l. s. (1978). mind in society. the development of higher psychological processes. cambridge, ma: harvard university press. ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ 146 monsalve and correal profileprofileprofileprofileprofile appendix 1: teacherappendix 1: teacherappendix 1: teacherappendix 1: teacherappendix 1: teacher’s interview’s interview’s interview’s interview’s interview dear teacher, the purpose of the following interview is to know your opinions about some elements that have emerged from the preliminary data analysis of the research we are developing on children’s oral production in your english class. what can you tell us about the characteristics or features of the activities you use to get children to speak in the english class? what is the role of the superkid story in the development of such activities? what do you expect from these activities? what has been your role in the development of the oral activities? has it changed? to what extent has your role in the development of these activities helped to achieve the course objectives? from the development of the activities, what can you tell us about the children’s oral production? do you consider that children get more involved in the oral activities as such? when do you see that children get more involved? what do you think the reason for this is? we would appreciate your permission to use the information we get. we clarify that your identity will be protected all the time. thanks for your help and consideration 89profile vol. 13, no. 1, april 2011. issn 1657-0790. bogotá, colombia. pages 89-110 teachers’ knowledge of second language and curriculum: a narrative experience conocimiento de los profesores acerca de la segunda lengua y el currículo: una experiencia narrativa jenny alexandra mendieta aguilar* universidad de la sabana, colombia this study was carried out with a group of three teachers who work for the foreign languages department of a private university in colombia. it was aimed at unveiling and characterizing the narrative knowledge these teachers hold about language teaching and learning processes as well as the role this knowledge plays in the constant construction and evaluation of curriculum. data were collected through concept maps, biodata surveys, narrative interviews, and participant observation within a narrative inquiry approach to research. findings show the crucial need to value and explore teachers’ knowledge from a narrative perspective in order to better understand the complexity of the teaching context in which they work. key words: narrative inquiry, narratives, second language curriculum, second language teaching and learning, teachers’ beliefs. este proyecto de investigación se realizó con un grupo de tres profesores que laboran en el departamento de lenguas de una universidad privada de colombia. el objetivo fue develar y caracterizar el conocimiento narrativo de los participantes en relación con la enseñanza y aprendizaje de la lengua extranjera y el papel de dicho conocimiento en la construcción y evaluación del currículo. se recolectaron datos mediante mapas conceptuales, encuestas, entrevistas narrativas y observación de clases, en el marco de una metodología de la investigación de tipo narrativo. los resultados muestran la necesidad de valorar y explorar el conocimiento de los docentes, desde una perspectiva narrativa, y con el fin de comprender mejor la complejidad del contexto en donde laboran. palabras clave: currículo de una segunda lengua, creencias de los docentes, enseñanza y aprendizaje de una segunda lengua, estudio de la narrativa, narrativas. * e-mail: jennymendieta@ yahoo.com this article was received on july 30, 2010, and accepted on january 7, 2011. 90 universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras mendieta aguilar introduction educational research on efl/esl (english as a foreign language/english as a second language) has been concerned with different issues that somehow inform or affect language, language acquisition/learning and language teaching. one of these issues has been curriculum and, lately, the interrelationship of teachers’ knowledge, life experiences and beliefs, as well as the practices they employ in and outside the classroom. woods (1996) affirms that there has been a shift in educational research over the years e.g. from a focus on the methods and products of teaching to a focus on the processes of teaching. accordingly, it is important for researchers to examine the language teaching and learning processes as they are perceived and interpreted by the participants themselves, given that there is a disparity between the language learning activities that are present in the second-language classroom, their intended theoretical purpose, and how they are perceived by both teacher and learner. according to woods (1996), research has addressed extensively what happens to second language learners from a host of perspectives, but unfortunately, has failed somehow to examine the processes by which language teachers plan and make decisions about teaching, as well as what they bring to the second language classroom such as knowledge base, beliefs and experiences. despite the fact that various studies concerning teaching processes have been carried out in the elt (english language teaching) field, what woods affirmed more than 10 years ago is still relevant to some of our local contexts. from my own experience as a language teacher and as an observer of what happens in our field, i think curriculum is still considered a static entity in many institutions –a set of pre-established assumptions as to what the content, methodology and ways of evaluation and assessment should be like. and many stakeholders still assume that certain contents, materials and teaching procedures should result in specific language learning outcomes, ignoring the importance of what the different curricular agents as teachers and students believe about what constitutes effective learning and teaching. it is my contention that teachers hold immense power over what happens in the classroom when it comes to curricular decisions and language learning opportunities. the findings of the present study clearly show that teachers make decisions about what to do and what not to do in order to accomplish certain goals that might either align with or completely differ from what is set by the pre-established curriculum. in a similar vein, drake and gamoran (2006) state that the relationships between teachers and curricula are often filled with significant tensions and challenges, and that these tensions have to do in part with teachers’ beliefs, experiences and opinions about the different issues that relate to their practices. as a result, teachers have come to adopt their own models of curriculum use which they constantly read, evaluate and adapt. keeping in mind what i previously mentioned, my own experience as a language teacher, and what some researchers like woods (1996) and drake and gamoran (2006) have discussed in terms of curriculum and language teaching, i decided to observe to what extent the issues they present in their research and theories are related to the reality of my teaching context. when doing so, i noticed that woods and drake and gamoran’s concerns are not far from the truth at my workplace, a private university, considering that some research has been carried out in relation to students’ needs and language learning processes, but little in regard to the teaching process. as a result, i decided to pose the following research question in order to better understand this phenomenon. 91 teachers’ knowledge of second language and curriculum... profile vol. 13, no. 1, april 2011. issn 1657-0790. bogotá, colombia. pages 89-110 • how does teachers’ narrative knowledge about foreign language teaching and the curriculum shape and characterize the curriculum stories that are lived in the classroom? theoretical considerations narrative inquiry: an alternative paradigm to understanding teaching and curriculum narrative inquiry was the research approach followed in this study, for narratives allow a contextualized and integrated understanding of teachers’ beliefs, knowledge and prior experiences and, as drake and gamoran (2006) state: by situating the beliefs in teachers’ narrative identities, the historical and developmental origins of the beliefs remain connected to the beliefs themselves, which allows for an understanding of teachers´ beliefs not as isolated statements, but as interrelated ideas rooted in teachers’ identitiestheir stories of themselves as learners and teachers. (p. 158) sikes and gale (2006) also value the use of narratives in educational research in light of the fact that “human beings are storying creatures that make sense of the world and the things that happen to them by constructing narratives to explain and interpret events both to themselves and to other people” (p. 1). in terms of the relationship between curriculum and teachers’ beliefs, cortazzi (1993) states that any real change in the curriculum is not likely to be carried out unless teachers’ perceptions, beliefs and experiences are taken into account. for him, what teachers know about context and instructional actions is tied to specific events they have experienced in the classroom. he affirms that this knowledge is expressed in narrative forms. therefore, the story is what most adequately constitutes and presents teachers’ knowledge. from different ways to study narratives, cortazzi (1993) believes ni is one of the approaches that better informs and accounts for teachers’ knowledge, since it focuses less on problematic situations, life transitions and turning points in teachers’ lives (as autobiography and life stories do) and more on the everyday business of the classroom. its purpose is to explicate the experiential understanding of teachers’ thinking in terms of everyday meaning and practices. from my standpoint, this approach has come to encompass and make use of certain concepts which help us in our endeavor of reflecting upon the complex world of teaching and learning. from this perspective, ni turns out to be more than just an approach to do research and becomes to some extent a paradigm for understanding certain issues in education. i believe this is so, for ni poses interesting questions to the academic community in regard to what actually happens in our classrooms and institutions. for coulter, michael, and poynor (2007), who discuss connelly and clandinin’s stance regarding ni (2006), to understand teachers and the teaching process from a narrative perspective implies that teachers’ feelings, past and present professional and personal events, as well as the possible future implications of these events, must be valued and explored in order to gain insights into the way they re-create their “professional self ” in different settings. this means that the world of teaching goes beyond the mere transmission of content or the implementation of a given syllabus. from a narrative perspective, teachers (and also learners) are recognized as human beings who live in specific social contexts and who participate in determined personal and professional situations, bringing to the classroom not only their content knowledge, but all their whole and multifaceted lives. that is why connelly and clandinin (2006) propose a 92 universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras mendieta aguilar three-dimensional space narrative structure that, from my point of view, helps researchers identify the elements that ought to be taken into account if we are to look at the participants’ knowledge from a holistic and critical perspective (see table 1). for ollerenshaw and creswell (2002), who analyze connelly and clandinin’s approach, in temporality, “the researcher should analyze the transcript or text for information about past experiences of the storyteller” (p. 339). in addition, he/she must look for present experiences as illustrated by current actions or by actions to occur in the future. as a result, the researcher is considering “the past, present, and future” of the participants (p. 339). as for sociality (or interaction), it is important to analyze the personal and social elements of the stories. in this stage “the researcher analyzes a transcript or text for the personal experiences of the storyteller as well as for the interaction of the individual with other people” (p. 339). for the proponents of this research approach, sociality relates to two concepts: the personal, which is linked to the feelings, hopes, desires, aesthetic reactions, and moral dispositions of the person; and the social, which is linked to the existential conditions, the environment, surrounding factors, and people that form the individual’s context. as for place (or situation), ollerenshaw and creswell (2002) affirm that situation or place also ought to be analyzed in a transcript or text for narrative researchers should look for specific situations in the storyteller’s landscape; these may be physical places or the sequence of the storyteller’s places. this should be so, since it is important to recognize that “all events take place some place” (connelly and clandinin, 2006, p. 481), and that what happens in a given situation is shaped by the context and physical location in which this situation occurs. consequently, acknowledging that people’s experiences are socially constructed and connected to their past, present and future, and that these experiences are context-related and therefore linked to a specific moment and place, evidences a big step forward in our endeavor to analyze educational practices from a more inclusive perspective. connelly and clandinin (1999) and elbaz (1983), as cited by beattie, dobson, thornton and hegge (2007), also state that, for teachers, questions of professional knowledge are deeply entwined with questions of identity due to the fact that “their table 1. the three-dimensional space narrative structure. adapted from conelly and clandinin, 2006 interaction continuity situation/place personal social past present future look inward to internal conditions, feelings, hopes, aesthetic reactions, moral dispositions. look outward to existential conditions in the environment with other people feelings, and their intentions, purposes, assumptions, and points of view. look backward to remember experiences and stories from earlier times. look at current experiences, feelings, and stories relating to actions of an event. look forward to implied and possible experiences and plot lines. look at context, time, and place situated in a physical landscape or setting with topological and spatial boundaries with characters’ intentions, purposes, and different points of view. 93 teachers’ knowledge of second language and curriculum... profile vol. 13, no. 1, april 2011. issn 1657-0790. bogotá, colombia. pages 89-110 practices are expressions of a knowledge that has intellectual, moral, and social dimensions and which is situational, theoretical, personal, social and experimental” (p. 120). in a similar vein, understanding that humans are storying creatures who live storied lives, as asserted by sikes and gale (2006), also means that stories are lived, created and negotiated everywhere. hence, the classroom turns into one of the best places that stories take place and, consequently, curriculum also acquires a narrative view. olson (2000) points out that curriculum comes to life within classrooms as teachers and students create lived curriculum texts. “curriculum, then, is what they experience situationally and relationally, each person constructing and reconstructing his or her narrative knowledge in response to interactions and according to personal and situational particulars” (p. 1). so, when curriculum is understood as narratively constructed and reconstructed through experience, “the stories lived and told by students and teachers of what is important, relevant, meaningful, or problematic for them are valued” (olson, 2000, p. 1). also, as jackson (1992), cited by beattie et al (2007) claims, teachers become more aware of the richer, broader and deeper significance of their work as their horizons and awareness expand and extend. not only seeing more, but experiencing “changes in the value they attach to their work as it comes to be more meaningful” (p. 121). methodology the study was carried out during the second semester 2009. the teachers selected for the study (paul, mary and richard) were teaching different levels of the english proficiency program and were chosen based on their availability to participate in the study, their teaching schedules and the language program they were attempting to implement in their classrooms. it is important to mention that the proficiency program of the languages department offers the community (students, staff members and nearby residents) seven english levels aimed at the development of linguistic, cultural and academic competences. this program also aims at developing autonomous learners and helps those learners develop strategies needed to take international tests all throughout the seven courses. regarding the participants, each one of them was teaching at a different language level and thereby interpreted, adapted and put into action a different language program and curriculum. in that sense, the twofold aim of this research was (1) to obtain an understanding of the meaning teachers narratively give to their teaching and learning experiences and classroom practices, and (2) to gain an understanding of the relationship there might be between their narrative knowledge (beliefs, pedagogical theories and experiences) about foreign language teaching/learning and the decisions they make in and outside the classroom (that is, the interpretation and adaptation they make of the second language curriculum). this proposal is a qualitative, descriptive and interpretative research study since it involves “the understanding of teaching as a highly complex, context-specific and interactive activity” clavijo (2004, p. 15), and because “it uses inductive reasoning to create ways of understanding phenomena” (thorne, kirkham & macdonald-eames, 1997, p. 172). that is to say, as a result of the complexity of analyzing teaching processes, this study uses inductive methods (such as narrative analysis and grounded theory) to make sense of the data gathered. data collection instruments taking into account the characteristics of qualitative research and specifically those of ni, this study used multiple methods of data collection 94 universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras mendieta aguilar such as biodata surveys (see sample in appendix  1), concept maps, narrative interviews, video-taped class sessions, and field notes from the direct observations of classes. data were gathered during the second semester of 2009, as shown in table 2. • concepts maps can capture and graphically represent the schematic mental representations of teachers’ knowledge, which are tied to their belief system and their actual classroom practices. according to farrell (2001), the use of concepts maps was transferred into educational research to understand how teachers use their knowledge to carry out a complex task such as teaching. these maps, along with a biodata survey, were an initial step in the data collection process, designed to create a profile of the participants (see appendix 2). • narrative interviews allowed teachers to initially clarify, explain and discuss in detail what they wrote in their concepts maps. they also let me explore the participants’ perceptions, attitudes, and feelings about language learning and teaching (see appendix 3). subsequently, they permitted participants to describe what they did in the classroom (their practices) and the reasons they had to do certain things and not others with the aim of identifying relationships between their belief systems and the curricular decisions they made in and outside the classroom. narrative interviewing also promoted a space for teachers to construct narratives around the description of their experiences and beliefs. • videotaped class sessions helped me identify the kinds of decisions teachers made in the classroom and how those decisions were evidence of their constant evaluation, adaptation or modification of the curriculum. they served as a tool to contrast, confirm or disconfirm the information gathered from the concept map and interviews, and also worked as the means through which i could identify important issues to explore in subsequent interviews. • field notes guided me in the process of giving a balance between the emic and etic perspective of the research since they served as a means to register my own insights and reflections about what i saw in the classroom and how i connected them to the teachers’ narratives. after being analyzed in matrix form, all these data were re-constructed and re-created through the compilation of individual and collective stories table 2. data collection timetable time data gathered instrument first month, second semestrer, 2009 teachers’ learning and teaching initial profile • biodata survey • concept map • 1st narrative interview second and third part of the semester (from september to december) teachers’ narrative knowledge about language teaching and curriculum • video-taped sessions (7 per teacher) • field notes ( per class observed) • narrative interviews 2 and 3 april 2010 member checks • narrative stories created by the researcher 95 teachers’ knowledge of second language and curriculum... profile vol. 13, no. 1, april 2011. issn 1657-0790. bogotá, colombia. pages 89-110 which each of the participants had the opportunity to read and co-create. these individual stories reflected teachers’ past and present language learning and language teaching experiences and, as a final step, were integrated into one final story that reflected the commonalities and differences of their knowledge base, beliefs and experiences. participants’ roles the role of each of the three teachers was one of collaborator since they allowed me to be in their classroom as a participant observer and were willing to register their knowledge and experiences in some of the data collection instruments used such as the concept map and the biodata survey. as to my role as a researcher, i acted routinely as a coordinator, but more to the point, as the participants’ friend and colleague as i was also teaching an english level and had a close relationship with them. this dual role gave me the perspective of a language teacher who often understood and identified with the participants’ narratives and discourse, as well as that of a curriculum designer who wanted to explore their understanding of the curriculum they had re-created and co-constructed with their students. data analysis process during the data analysis process, two stages were followed. there was an initial moment where the data were analyzed in order to account for the narrative knowledge of each of the participants in relation to language learning, teaching and curriculum. in the process of analyzing these data, i decided to use grounded theory methods (strauss & corbin, 1990) such as open coding, axial coding and selective coding in order to recognize key ideas or aspects, establish relationships between these emerging aspects, and identify main or core concepts. in the second stage, i decided to assign meaning to these concepts by putting them together (or by re-creating them) in a narrative fashion (through stories) –all this based on the fact that humans assign meaning to the world, and to what they know and do through narrative constructions; that is, through stories. to culminate the final stage of the data analysis process, i examined these individual narrative representations in terms of educational and efl theoretical concepts in order to establish individual sub-categories and main categories and answer the research question that had been initially posed. for this effort, process grounded theory methods were also used. due to the nature of the research and bearing in mind that ni calls for the recognition of the individual and his/her multifaceted life, all the stories and categories that emerged during the data analysis process had an individual focus, although, they were also compared and brought together in a final story with the purpose of establishing commonalties and differences that could account for the social aspect of the three-dimensional space proposed by connelly and clandinin (2006). for the purpose of this document, this task implies that i will start by describing and explaining the subcategories that emerged from the data (accounts of the particular teaching and learning world of each of the participants), and then i will address the main categories in which learning, teaching, curriculum, personality, beliefs, experiences and knowledge are all brought together. i will also present the similarities and differences that were identified in terms of the three participants’ teaching and learning experiences as well as their curricular knowledge. this will be done by using excerpts from some of the stories and by contrasting them to theoretical underpinnings and personal reflections. 96 universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras mendieta aguilar findings the sub-categories that emerged from data analysis are related to the main theoretical constructs the research question posed for this project and from drake and gamoran’s (2006) idea of acknowledging the fact that each teacher creates his/ her own version of curriculum . they are teachers’ narrative knowledge about language teaching/ learning and curriculum and how curriculum is experienced in and outside the classroom. to be able to tackle the first issue, i looked into the data for ideas and beliefs related to the roles of the teacher, students, language, classroom and assessment as well as into the nature of language learning and teaching so that i could unveil and re-create the way each of the participants approached the teaching of english in her/his classroom. thus, the name given to the first sub-category is linked to the specific teaching knowledge, experiences and practices of each of the participants. the second one embraces the curricular model each participant created in order to match her/his pedagogical beliefs and experiences to her/his teaching practices. as mentioned earlier, after analyzing the research constructs independently, the two sub-categories were subsumed into a bigger concept or main category with the objective of better explaining how the participants’ narrative knowledge shaped the curriculum stories they lived in their classrooms (see figure 1). participants are given pseudonyms in order to account for privacy and ethical issues. sub-categories: being learners, teachers and curriculum makers paul in paul’s case, the first subcategory is labeled under the heading: adopting a student-centered approach to language teaching. as evidenced in the following excerpts, paul is a teacher who strongly believes students should be at the core of the learning process, and therefore issues such as scaffolding, the social role of learning, and the importance of students’ previous knowledge and experiences are highly regarded. well... i am not a professor who likes to use the board very much… i like the students to... yeah... to kind of just... put them to understand what they’re studying and what they’re doing in the classroom... i am not a professor who is just gonna be like on the board all the time and … this is the simple past ... you know… when we are on a new subject… i like to get what they understand about that before i give … i give an explanation… …i’m not the teacher who knows it all. why having activities different from the ones given in the program? “i like to do an activity even if it is a totally random activity that has nothing to do with the class but it’s gonna help them in their real lives—yeah, because the book says one thing but then a lot of the things we see in the book they’re not gonna use. yeah, it’s just grammar and vocabulary and things like that”. sub-categories: being learners, teachers and curriculum makers main category: who they are… how they teach! paul richardmary paul richardmary 1. adopting a student-centered, approach to language teaching 2. creating a personal curricular model 1. adopting a goal-oriented approach to language teaching 2. creating a personal curricular model 1. adopting a language-oriented approach to language teaching 2. creating a personal curricular model an experiential and interactiondriven language teacher a strategic and goal-oriented language teacher a fun-driven and languagecentered teacher figure 1. categories and sub-categories derived from data analysis. 97 teachers’ knowledge of second language and curriculum... profile vol. 13, no. 1, april 2011. issn 1657-0790. bogotá, colombia. pages 89-110 i know that i don’t necessarily follow the program for the week or anything because i don’t like to do that, i mean we all have our own styles for teaching, but i know i’ll get to the same objective. (interviews 1 and 2) the essential nature paul attributes to students’ active participation during class activities, the need to plan activities that connect to real contemporary issues in order to promote interaction, and his role as a facilitator (as opposed to that of a teacher who is expected to provide students with all the answers) are relevant to the type of curricular decisions he makes when trying to put the english program for level three into action. the fact that he plans activities which sometimes drift away from the pre-established curriculum is an indicator of the need there is to create a personal version of the curriculum in order to match the one that had been given to him to his own knowledge and beliefs. creating a personal curricular model emerged as a second subcategory due to the fact that paul’s narrative knowledge about language teaching and learning is directly related to the way he implements the curriculum in the classroom. from the analysis of the data, i observed how he interpreted, evaluated and adapted the prescribed curriculum in light of his convictions about what should be done in the classroom to promote communication and language learning. in the narrative interviews, he interestingly showed his concern about the lack of connection to reality he found in the textbook as one of the reasons to skip or change some of the activities that were part of the program, and which had been given to him prior to the initiation of the course. paul’s evaluation of the role and effectiveness of the textbook was the key to the type of new activities he planned and brought into the classroom, given that the program and curriculum for this language course were designed and based on most of the tasks proposed by the textbook. paul’s adaptation of the curriculum was not only tied to the evaluation of the textbook, but also to his personal conception of students’ needs. more to the point, if he felt students enjoyed the class, he would regard the activities he had planned as successful and he would then continue implementing them in subsequent classes and courses. as both a participant observer in some of his classes and a researcher who was analyzing what took place in the classroom in terms of students’ attitudes, class activities and teacher’s discourse, i found myself judging some of his teaching practices as lacking organization or development; however, when talking to him in the interviews, i was amazed to learn that he did not think of those specific practices as unsuccessful or under-developed but, on the contrary, judged them as appropriate and enjoyable for his students. this finding confirms what polkinghorne (1995) says regarding the need to understand the representation of people’s lives as they (participants) see them and not as they (their practices) may actually be. one last constitutive and essential element of paul’s creation of his own curricular model is his creative personality. this personal trait turns him into a teacher who is constantly experimenting in the classroom. adapting and implementing activities different from the ones specified in the syllabus and giving students an active role in the classroom are all elements manifest in his teaching practices due to the fact that he likes experimenting and testing new things, not only in his professional but also in his personal life. “trial and error” is somehow a prerogative he assumes when he plans and puts the curriculum into action. and what about exploring all the time? “well... i am not a professor that is afraid to explore different ways of teaching …. lots of professors are very scared to try something new because they’re gonna be like... well students are not going to learn from 98 universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras mendieta aguilar this. ...i think it has to do with my major in college which was graphic design, and with graphic design comes a lot of creativity and it works a lot with trial and error. (interview 2) mary when replicating the exercise of identifying the two subcategories for mary’s data, i realized how, despite belonging to the same teaching community, her approach to language teaching and learning and to curriculum differed markedly from what was displayed by paul in the classes and interviews. therefore, she evidenced adopting a goal-oriented approach to language teaching. classes do not necessarily need to be full of games or things like that. they need to provide students with useful activities... activities that can help them reach their learning goals… to get where it is expected. i remember i had classes where i had a lot of fun, however i did not learn much. (interview 1) mary’s goal-oriented personality and her interest in exposing students to challenging and meaningful language-learning experiences drove her lessons and students towards the achievement of the pre-established curricular goals. as a result, most of her teaching and learning practices became efforts to realize the outcomes that had been established for her level. for mary it is crucial to provide students with knowledge that is useful and challenging for them; as such, it is important to design and carry out learning and teaching activities that can help them enrich and consolidate their language knowledge. thus, the level of students’ commitment and her effort to have students participate as much as possible in class were key factors in the development of her classes. from her personal perspective, when there is an emphasis on achieving the goals of a program, it is relevant to give evidence of proper teaching and learning through clear outcomes. in a goal-oriented or product-oriented view of teaching, products or outcomes are essential in the process of measuring the efficacy of the curriculum as well as the performance of students and teachers. so for her, heading where she is expected to go and evidencing that process in her classes are important factors in the process of adapting and creating her own curricular model. in the second subcategory, creating a personal curricular model, i often observed that, despite her agreement with many of the objectives and principles that underlie the program of level seven, she clearly exhibits a tension related to a “gap” in terms of the content that ought to be taught, the material selected and the time specified to do so. though she sees herself as not having sufficient experience to judge the curriculum she has been asked to follow, she does evaluate what takes place in her classes and realizes the need to analyze the relationship that exists between goals and the time allotted for achieving them, as well as the appropriateness of the materials for the meeting of the objectives. we have to cover some contents which are advanced, but there are still some... some gaps between what should be and what it is, and there is not time to do all the things that are required. i think we should leave the book aside and focus on the exams… if that´s what we want... or focus on the book and have an extra course for exams… but both things are difficult... there is not enough time. (interview 1) in her classes and interviews, i witnessed the priorities she established in the classroom of wisely using the time, and of promoting awareness in her students of the complexity of the objectives and competences they needed to develop in order to produce the concomitant level of commitment required on their part. the reality of the classroom, students’ language performance, and poor scores were issues of concern she revealed frequently in 99 teachers’ knowledge of second language and curriculum... profile vol. 13, no. 1, april 2011. issn 1657-0790. bogotá, colombia. pages 89-110 the narrative interviews. so, as a consequence of the “gap” which she had initially identified (and which seemed to be continuously confirmed throughout the semester), she planned lessons and activities which were strategy-oriented and tried to guide students in the analysis of the language and assessment criteria so that they could acquire on their own what they could probably not develop and practice in the classroom. the only way they can do (learn the l2) that is just thinking... period!… taking a look at the context, the words around, semantic… you know semantic fields.... we have it somehow clear but they don’t… and it might seem obvious for us, but not for them… so if you tell them things like associate words... what is this? what is that? should they go together? don’t you think they’re kind of connected? well, all those things... it would be easier for them. in some schools or institutes or whatever… the evaluation is not very important, but here it’s crucial… they have to really be familiar with the evaluation and the way they’re evaluated; in that way, they can asses their own language performance. (interview 2) to create her own version of the curriculum, she evaluated the pre-established curriculum in terms of the appropriateness of the objectives and some of the evaluative practices that had been already planned and created a curriculum closely related to the original version, which she tried to put into action as diligently as she could. from my role as a participant researcher, it was fascinating to notice how, despite identifying apparent discrepancies between the pre-established curriculum and the curriculum in action, she did not drift very far afield, as did paul at times; instead, she designed and planned her lessons in ways that could attend to this tension and yet get to where all stakeholders expected. i personally believe that, as in paul’s case, mary’s knowledge, experiences, and especially her goal-oriented personality shaped each of the teaching and curricular decisions she made in and outside of the classroom. richard following a similar vein, the first subcategory in richard’s case is named adopting a languageoriented approach to language teaching. when they don’t talk it’s because they don’t know how to pronounce the word… even though they have the grammar maybe they don’t want to say it because of the pronunciation. i told them like... they don’t have grammar structures… so i checked that and we reviewed that and i told them also that they don’t have vocabulary. if you don’t have vocabulary how are you gonna write things? if you don’t have structures how are you gonna express yourself? (interview 2) in his classes and interviews the importance he gives to the successful use of the language at initial language-learning levels was clearly recognizable. for him, to be able to make students aware of the way the language works, of its patterns of pronunciation and of text formation is a key element in the pedagogic decision-making process he carries out in and outside the classroom. to be a good communicator, it is necessary to acquire solid knowledge of grammar structures, vocabulary and pronunciation patterns; therefore, for richard, it is essential to promote learning strategies and errorcorrection practices so that students can analyze and test their own language knowledge and that of their peers. his previous learning experiences also come to bear heavily on the approach to language teaching he uses because he believes in the importance of having students use the language to express ideas about their own lives and in creating an enjoyable atmosphere where students can laugh while they learn the target language. for him, some of the language learning experiences that impacted him the most were the ones where he had fun and 100 universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras mendieta aguilar enjoyed what he did in the classroom. subsequently, making jokes or laughing at different classroom and cultural issues is an important element in the development of his lesson plan, owing to the fact that students can feel relaxed and comfortable in the classroom. i’m always trying to, to, to… change it (the project for the given level), to make it more coherent… to adapt it to their personal experiences… as we were talking about eating habits, it came to my mind this recipe thing because i did it in one of my classes as a student and i enjoyed a lot. i like to involve culture, real life and students’ experiences... for me classes should be interesting and fun... i like talking to people and making fun of things... of the students and even of myself... in that way they can learn in a relaxed and fun way. (interview 1) richard’s priorities and knowledge of language learning and teaching, coupled with his previous learning experiences and funny personality, guided him in the creation of his own personal curriculum. in this subcategory, i was able to identify a middle ground between paul’s constant adaptation of the curriculum and mary’s preoccupation with meeting the objectives of the level just as they had been established. throughout the interviews and class observations, i noticed how richard modified some of the practices that had been pre-planned in the curriculum of his level in order to match them to his personal view of language learning (e.g. “students are to be encouraged to express ideas about their own lives and experiences.”). however, i could also identify how he decided to carry out some other activities just as they had been planned in the syllabus, provided that they matched one of his most salient beliefs about language teaching –that of giving students models for writing and speaking before asking them to use the language in a written or oral way. i liked it because... i selected that activity because it was taking part the aspects that i was reviewing and… also it was a perfect example in order to give them the model so they can create something similar. (interview 2) in the interviews, he did not directly evaluate or make judgments about the pre-established curriculum or curricular goals as paul or mary did; on the contrary, he attributed students’ possible failure or unsuccessful language performance to the lack of work at home. in that sense, he evaluated the curriculum as a course of study based on the role and responsibilities of students and not necessarily based on his role as a teacher or the role of the stakeholders as designers of the curriculum. this idea may also explain why he did not change or adapt the pre-planned curriculum as frequently as paul did, given that he understands language learning as a process that entails the desire and intrinsic motivation of students, and also the commitment to devote time to learning the language outside the classroom. in this sense, what is done in the classroom is just a small part compared to what each student must do on his or her own. mary expressed agreement with this idea at given points throughout the narratives interviews, but she equally questioned the extent to which the objectives that had been set for the program were likely to be achieved by her and her students. paul, on the contrary, did not show any concern about what students ought to do at home. instead, he was worried about what he could do to have them use the language and learn it meaningfully in the classroom. this last paragraph introduces the importance of analyzing the adherence teachers show to the discourse of the institution they belong to. paul, for instance, did not seem to adhere much to the discourse of autonomy promoted by the language department of the university; therefore, he did not show much concern about these principles during the interviews and, on the contrary, in the classes 101 teachers’ knowledge of second language and curriculum... profile vol. 13, no. 1, april 2011. issn 1657-0790. bogotá, colombia. pages 89-110 frequently adapted the curriculum that had already been planned for him. mary and richard, however, both showed more adherence to these principles and tried to enact them in their classes through various teaching and learning practices that were similar to the ones suggested by the coordinators. drake and gamoran (2006) espouse the need to understand how teachers interpret, evaluate and adapt the prescribed curriculum in order to understand why they do the things they do in the classroom. identifying the things teachers know and believe in, and then analyzing teachers’ practices in light of those things can serve to explain how curriculum is put into practice and how aligned this curriculum is to the one established by stakeholders. similarly, connelly and clandinin (1988 as cited in beattie, et al. 2007) assert that “the more we understand ourselves and can articulate reasons why we are what we are, do what we do, and are headed where we have chosen, the more meaningful our curriculum will be” (p. 11). these two authors, also cited by craig (2006), talk about the need to see teachers as “curriculum makers” and not only as curriculum implementers for “teachers and students live out a curriculum [in which] an account of teachers’ and students’ lives over time is the curriculum itself ” (1992, p. 365). that is to say, the curriculum stories teachers create on a daily basis with their students in and outside the classroom are actually what make up most of the curriculum, more so than the curriculum stories written by stakeholders. olson (2000) also affirms that “when teachers see curriculum as prescribed by people outside classrooms, whether in curriculum documents or in stories created by others, they often see curriculum as irrelevant to the narrative experiences of teachers and students in classrooms” (p. 169). therefore, it may be understood why paul, mary and richard saw the need to plan and carry out tasks differently and not always as they were written in the official documents of the institution. for olson (2000), “each teacher has to negotiate her or his emerging curriculum stories within curriculum stories already in progress” (p. 169). so, their collective and individual stories help us see how teachers’ experiential narratives uniquely and profoundly shape curriculum stories constructed in classrooms, and whether these stories are in tension with the ones created by “people positioned in out-of-classroom places”. olson (2000) also cites craig (1995), who points out that the “tension between curriculum stories written for teachers in out-of-classroom places and curriculum stories lived by teachers in their own classrooms creates the dilemmas that gnaw at [the] soul” (p. 24). these possible dilemmas and the way they develop must receive most of our attention and analysis, and that is why connelly and clandinnin (2006) stress the relevance of interpreting teachers’ stories within their three-dimensional space proposal: temporality, sociality and place. understanding their experiences as learners of english and as pre-service teachers, their personalities, their beliefs and knowledge of the language teaching profession, their current teaching practices and their affiliation with the institutional and (why not) national foreign language teaching discourse helped me create a more holistic picture of who they are as teachers and of who they may become in the near future. main category: who are the teachers? how do they teach? paul going back to paul’s story, it becomes apparent how i understand temporality as a key influence on paul’s personality, overseas language learning experiences, and teacher training in colombia and 102 universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras mendieta aguilar also on the way he constitutes his current teaching methodology and personal curricular model. as to sociality and place, paul’s relationships with his students and stakeholders determined the way he either accepted or rejected what was written in the prescribed curriculum story. the combination of all these categories merged into a broader concept or main category that is rooted in who paul is, not only as professional but as a human being. this melting pot which contains his experiences, teaching knowledge, personality and beliefs makes him think, teach and act the way he does, and therefore reveals him as an experiential and interaction-driven language teacher, who makes curricular decisions in and outside the classroom in response to his personal and professional selfimage. as a teacher who learned the language by using it for real communicative purposes and who was trained from a modernist language-teaching point of view, in which the student is understood as an active member in the language teaching process, paul builds on his experiences to construct his classroom as a place where he is not the only person who holds knowledge, but as a place where the opportunity to learn from one another through interaction and real-life communicative activities seems to be the most valued. he reveals himself as a human being who likes to experiment and create new things and who therefore sees the classroom as the perfect scenario in which to carry out new ideas and be himself. “i do everything i do because it has to do a lot with me, i guess”. mary mary, on the contrary, is a strategic and goal-oriented language teacher, for she has been influenced by what she considers to be her own successful language learning experiences while she was a pre-service teacher. consequently, she makes some of her teaching decisions based on her own perceptions of what was effective for her while learning the language. one example in support of this conclusion comes from the period of her formation when she had been given tasks that required her to think or make an effort, rather than have fun. becoming a strategic and analytic learner is something mary considers useful for an advanced language learner; so, she teaches her students to analyze the patterns of the foreign language, believing that this can help them learn to decipher the l2 on their own and better equip or prepare them to face an international exam or any other task. her experiences as a language learner, her analytic and challenge-driven personality, her pre-service and in-service language teaching experiences (temporality), her goal-oriented mind, her interest in her students’ moods and weaknesses, her sense of belonging and affiliation with a local and institutional discourse (sociality and place), and her own constructions of what it means to be a successful language learner and teacher lead her to make the decisions she makes and to act in the classroom the way she does. richard lastly, and based on my analysis of the data and the stories, i assert that richard is a fun-driven and language-centered teacher. his humorous personality helped him enjoy the different classes where he could relax and have fun while learning english. being a funny person turns him into a teacher who likes joking around as well as sharing personal experiences in the classroom. nonetheless, he combines his personality with the dynamics he establishes in the classroom of being responsible and committed to the class assignments in order to learn to master the skills of the target language appropriately. correcting students’ pronunciation mistakes, testing their language knowledge, 103 teachers’ knowledge of second language and curriculum... profile vol. 13, no. 1, april 2011. issn 1657-0790. bogotá, colombia. pages 89-110 contrasting the l1 and l2, and having them concentrate on the language structures when writing and speaking are some the activities that reveal his interest in helping students become accurate, and therefore, successful language learners. conclusion: going back to the question before concentrating on the research question, it is important for me to clarify that the names i am giving to the main categories specifically relate to what was observed and narratively explored in a specific period of time under certain particular circumstances. therefore, to say that paul drifts away from curricular stories that have been written for him, or that mary does the opposite, does not necessarily mean that they will do so in all situations. similarly, to stress that richard concentrates on certain aspects of the language when making curricular decisions does not mean that he will not make use of other approaches or methodologies for language teaching. the process of analyzing paul, mary and richard’s knowledge, beliefs and experiences from a narrative perspective sheds light on the way teachers construct their own curricular models and somehow demystifies the idea that there is a linear and static relationship between what is dictated in the prescribed curriculum and what is actually done in the classroom by teachers. when thinking of paul‘s data, i realized that some people could have judged him as a teacher who does not comply with academic requirements and probably as an ineffective language teacher, but by digging impartially into the reasons he holds for doing the things he does, i could understand that what he does in the classroom is tightly connected to who he is. as drake and gamoran (2006) affirm, it is only through this type of analysis of teachers and teaching processes that we can really improve curriculum or guarantee better results when attempting to implement a curricular reform. hence, to answer the main research question i posed for this study, i could say that, on the one hand, the three participants’ knowledge of language teaching and curriculum, which was narratively re-created in the interviews and in this research document, emerged as something that is particular to each one of them, despite their being members of a common teaching community. paul, mary and richard have each lived unique learning, teaching and personal experiences which have shaped their systems of beliefs and, consequently, their knowledge as language teachers. in clandinin’s terms (1985), their personal practical knowledge, “knowledge which is imbued with all the experiences that make up a person’s being, and which meaning is derived from, and understood in terms of a person’s experiential history, both professional and personal” (p. 362), is completely attached to what each one of them has experienced as a language learner and teacher. on the other hand, i could interestingly evidence how all the knowledge or attributes just mentioned directly affected the type of decisions these three teachers made in their classes when planning new lessons or interpreting the curriculum created for their levels. each one of them also lived personal and unique stories that were shaped by a compound of external and internal factors, which includes but is not limited to the objectives to achieve, physical setting, students’ moods, attitudes, needs, interests, language knowledge, and level of commitment, assessment practices, academic chronogram, institutional principles, personality, teaching beliefs, and past and present classroom experiences. the type of curriculum these three teachers lived and co-constructed with their students, and which they transformed with varying 104 universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras mendieta aguilar frequency, was all mediated, filtered and informed by their personal practical knowledge and the external factors previously described. in clandinin and connelly’s (1995) words, paul, mary, and richard’s personal practical knowledge informed the decisions they made in the different professional-knowledge landscapes they were part of. “a landscape metaphor [refers to] space, place, and time, but also takes into account human relationships and the moral and intellectual considerations involved when these phenomena interact with one another” (p. 25). these canadian authors support this landscape metaphor on the idea that teachers spend part of their time in classrooms and part of their time in other professional, communal places. for them, these are two fundamentally different places on the landscape: “the one behind the classroom door with students and the other in professional places with others” (p. 26). the place on the landscape outside of our classrooms is a place filled with knowledge funneled into the school system for the purpose of altering teachers’ and children’s class-room lives... classrooms are, for the most part, safe places…where teachers are free to live stories of practice...when teachers move out of their classrooms, they often live and tell cover stories… cover stories enable teachers whose teacher stories are marginalized … to continue to practice and to sustain their teacher stories (p. 26). these two authors argue, like margaret olson (2000), that there is often a degree of tension between the stories that are written for teachers and the ones that are written by them. in the narrative interviews that were carried out in the study, i noticed that the three teachers, especially paul and mary, told me part of their secret stories, as they shared with me their disagreement with certain aspects of the stories that stakeholders had written for them. some of the misgivings they expressed or acknowledged may have not been shared by them in other landscapes or contexts of the language department. based on what i could evidence in the interviews, the personal and practical knowledge of each of the teachers shaped their classroom curriculum stories in different ways; some of the secret stories were more similar to the cover stories they lived and told outside the classroom, as in richard’s or mary’s case. nonetheless, some other stories (like paul’s) were unlike what was written by others, and therefore could have been marginalized if looked at from a perspective dissimilar to the one stressed by ni. consequently, i would point out, as other researchers have, the importance of studying teachers and the development of curriculum from a more holistic perspective, where teachers are seen as capable of drawing upon “an image of a creative and practical reformer discerning problems through an awareness of apparent gaps between what should be and what is, then seeking solutions from his understanding of what might be done, and finally moving to bring about change or improvement” (p. 30, schwab, 1969, cited by benperetz, 1980). implications a type of study like this one confirms what olson (2000) states about the importance of “creating and legitimizing professional development spaces that emphasize the valuing, sharing, and examination of teachers’ curriculum narratives as an integral part of implementing curriculum as a course of study that can assist teachers to better understand their own practices and the practices of their colleagues” (p. 1). that is to say, if institutions come to value teachers’ knowledge about teaching and curriculum, we could more easily recognize how what they think, experience and know form an integral part of the 105 teachers’ knowledge of second language and curriculum... profile vol. 13, no. 1, april 2011. issn 1657-0790. bogotá, colombia. pages 89-110 implementation of any pre-established curriculum or curriculum as a course of study, as olson calls it. if this narrative knowledge were valued, understood and shared, we would not only provide more constructive and effective learning experiences for the students, but teachers would also have the latitude to explore and reflect upon their own teaching practices and beliefs about language and the language-learning process, which might eventually cause changes in the things they do in and outside the classroom. understanding how teachers actually come to acquire knowledge and teach could be integrated into a future development program for teachers, one which may have benefits that eclipse those of current teachers´ seminars or training courses, which tend to focus narrowly on the “what” of the teaching process, rather than on the “who, how, and why” of this paramount educational phenomenon. there are also some implications that apply to the local context of the study, the participants and the researcher. in terms of the place where the study was conducted, i would argue that from my role as an active member in the process of curricular design, the results of this study will shed light on the way the stakeholders have understood and designed the curriculum of each of the courses so far. understanding the important role that teachers’ active participation plays in the creation of successful programs is an issue that had not been analyzed from a narrative perspective before, but which can now be looked at differently, given that there is new evidence of how some of our teachers understand the programs and constitute their teaching practices. in addition, the results of this study show the importance of conceptualizing the process of class observation and the evaluation of the teachers’ performance through a different lens, due to the fact that common class observation formats or criteria do not always provide enough and thorough information to really comprehend teachers’ classroom practices. it will be necessary then to go beyond the process used up to now and initiate a more intimate one, as the one suggested by ni, where teachers’ voices and stories are taken as valuable in order to promote curricular and educational success. regarding the participation of the three teachers, it is important to mention (based on their comments) that this study was an opportunity for them to reflect upon their practices and pedagogical knowledge and beliefs. the interviews afforded them a space where they could take some time from their busy days with the ultimate objective of thinking and talking about their experiences and assumptions—something many of us feel we do not have the time to do. discussing the reasons behind the things they did in the classroom was an opportunity for them to test their knowledge and theories. this was so, as it is easy to find divergences between what a teacher says he or she believes in and what he or she actually does in the classroom. at some point, richard told me it was an interesting experience for him to look at his classes and notice things he had not seen before; after some of the interviews he seemed to walk out the door with ideas in his mind for further reflection. as to my role as a researcher, i can affirm that the experience of trying to implement an ni approach, not only as part of the methodology of the study but as the core of the theoretical construct of this project, allowed me to achieve a deeper understanding of alternative approaches to qualitative research, which are interesting but little known in the colombian context. the ni experience somehow challenges certain traditional research concepts and roles, such as the importance of objectivity in the interviewing and data analysis process, or in the construction of the role of the participants and researchers. ni acknowledges 106 universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras mendieta aguilar the influence and impact of the researcher in the re-creation of the story-line of the phenomenon under study and recognizes the importance of the role of the participants in the co-construction and negotiation of the data analysis process. regarding my role as a coordinator, i feel my own assumptions and conceptions about curricular design and the evaluation of teachers’ performance changed greatly. from my role as a level coordinator, i know i intervened deeply in the two processes just mentioned, but i also recognized i understand them differently now from how i did in the past. to assess the quality of a teacher’s pedagogical performance solely based on the few insights one might gain from observing a couple of classes during the semester is a practice i conceive as insufficient at times. from my experience with paul, mary and richard, i understood that teaching and curriculum execution are much more complex phenomena than what is actually portrayed in books, and therefore should be carefully addressed and continuously explored. references beattie, m., dobson, d., thornton, g., & hegge, l. 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(1992). helping teachers develop. in hargreaves, a., & fullan, m. (eds.), understanding teacher development. new york: teachers college press. olson, m. (2000). curriculum as a multistoried process. canadian journal of education, 25(2), 169. ollerenshaw, j., & creswell, j. (2002). narrative research: a comparison of two restorying data analysis approaches. qualitative inquiry, 8(3), 329-350. polkinghorne, d. e. (1995). narrative configuration in qualitative analysis. in j. a. h. a. r. wisniewski (ed.), life history and narrative (pp. 5-24). london: falmer press. schwab, joseph j. (1969). college curriculum and student protest. chicago: university of chicago press. sikes, p., & gale, k. (2006). narrative approaches to educational research: research in education. retrieved from http://www.edu.plymouth.ac.uk/resined/ strauss, a., & corbin, j. (1990). basics of qualitative research: grounded theory, procedures and techniques. london: sage. 107 teachers’ knowledge of second language and curriculum... profile vol. 13, no. 1, april 2011. issn 1657-0790. bogotá, colombia. pages 89-110 about the author jenny alexandra mendieta aguilar holds an ma in applied linguistics to the tefl and a ba in modern languages from universidad francisco josé de caldas. she has worked in primary and high schools, as well as in universities. she currently works at universidad de la sabana, as an english teacher and level coordinator. thorne, s., kirkham, s.r., & macdonald-emes, j. (1997). interpretive description: a noncategorical qualitative alternative for developing nursing knowledge. research in nursing & health, 20, 169-177. woods, d. (1996). teacher cognition in language teaching: beliefs, decision-making and classroom practice. cambridge: cambridge university press. 108 universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras mendieta aguilar appendix 1: teacher’s biodata survey this survey is aimed at gathering information about your learning and teaching background and experiences. please answer the questions in the space provided and ask the researcher if you have any doubt. 1. how long have you been learning english? _____________________________________________________________________________ 2. when did you start learning it? _____________________________________________________________________________ _____________________________________________________________________________ 3. where did you learn it? _____________________________________________________________________________ _____________________________________________________________________________ 4. what kind of experiences (travel, courses, jobs, etc.) helped you learn the language? why? _____________________________________________________________________________ _____________________________________________________________________________ _____________________________________________________________________________ _____________________________________________________________________________ 5. why did you decide to become a teacher? did anything influence you? _____________________________________________________________________________ _____________________________________________________________________________ _____________________________________________________________________________ 6. how long have you been a teacher? _____________________________________________________________________________ _____________________________________________________________________________ 7. where have you worked? _____________________________________________________________________________ _____________________________________________________________________________ _____________________________________________________________________________ _____________________________________________________________________________ 8. where are you currently working? how do you like it? _____________________________________________________________________________ _____________________________________________________________________________ _____________________________________________________________________________ 9. what are the different roles and responsibilities you have been in charge of during your teaching experience? _____________________________________________________________________________ _____________________________________________________________________________ _____________________________________________________________________________ 109 teachers’ knowledge of second language and curriculum... profile vol. 13, no. 1, april 2011. issn 1657-0790. bogotá, colombia. pages 89-110 appendix 2: teacher’s concept map dear teacher/colleague, the following concept map is aimed at exploring your understanding and beliefs about foreign language teaching and learning and about the development of curriculum. please write down all the concepts and ideas you relate to the questions and statements provided below, trying to address the three questions posed in the two bubbles as thoroughly as possible. feel free to ask the researcher in case of doubt. what´s your understanding of effective foreign language teaching and learning? what do you think it involves? how do you think you reflect it in your classes? (what do you do?) what is your understanding of curriculum and your participation in curricular design? effective l2 teaching and learning what comes to mind when you see/hear the word curriculum? do you think you participate in curriculum design at the university? yes____ no____ how? why? what you do in your classes what it involves 110 universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras mendieta aguilar appendix 3: first narrative interview protocol objective for the following questions: to generate an in-depth profile of the teachers so that experiences as learners that might have influenced the kind of teachers they are can be unveiled. 1. tell me about the way you learned english. • when did you begin? • where did you learn it? • what were some significant experiences for you as a learner of english? 2. tell me the story of your interest in english teaching. • when, why and how did you decide to become a teacher? • what helped/made you decide to become a teacher? • what experiences (positive or negative) as a learner influenced you to be the teacher you are? objective for the following questions: to explore how teachers see themselves as curriculum planners and makers. 1. when you think about effective language teaching, what do you think of? 2. describe one class you are currently in charge of: what do you do? (describe it from the beginning until the end) 3. as an in-service language teacher: • what moments of joy have you experienced as a language teacher? • what concerns have you had? • what desires do you have? things you would like to happen. 4. (based on the concept map). this is the concept map you created in regard to your understanding of curriculum. could you explain it to me? • provide examples 5. you indicated that you have participated in the creation and evaluation of the curriculum of the foreign language program of the university. • tell me how you have participated. a. what tasks have you done? b. how did you get involved? • how do you feel about your participation? 6. how do you feel about being involved in this project? profile 9.indd preliminary evaluation of the impact of a writing assessment system on teaching and learning profile 9, 2008. issn 1657-0790. bogotá, colombia. pages 89-110 89 preliminary evaluation of the impact of a writing assessment system on teaching and learning* evaluación preliminar del impacto de un sistema de evaluación en la enseñanza y el aprendizaje ana patricia muñoz** martha e. álvarez*** eafit university, colombia motivated by the conviction that valid and reliable assessments can foster positive changes in instruction, we implemented a writing assessment system in the adult english program at the language center, eafit university, medellín. to evaluate the impact of the system, we analyzed the improvement of 27 students’ writings over time. we also examined the quality of their teachers’ (n=35) teaching and assessment routines. student progress was measured by looking at the syntactic complexity of the texts using an average number of words per t-unit. teachers’ instructional practices were examined through portfolio analyses. results show some improvement in students’ writings and that the teachers need to provide a better response to students by appropriately using the required assessment tools. key words: writing assessment, prompts, scoring rubrics, washback con base en la creencia de que las evaluaciones válidas y confiables pueden motivar cambios positivos en la enseñanza y el aprendizaje, implementamos un sistema de evaluación para la escritura en el programa de inglés de un centro de idiomas en colombia. para evaluar el impacto del sistema, analizamos las mejoras de 27 escritos a través del tiempo. igualmente se analizó la calidad de las prácticas de enseñanza y evaluación de 35 profesores. las mejoras en los escritos se determinaron a través de la complejidad sintáctica usando como medida el promedio de número de palabras por texto entre unidades t. las prácticas de evaluación y enseñanza se evaluaron mediante el análisis de portafolios de escritura. los resultados indican ciertas mejoras en los escritos y la necesidad de proporcionar mayor entrenamiento y orientación para que los profesores utilicen el sistema de evaluación de manera más apropiada. palabras clave: evaluación de la escritura, instrucciones, rúbricas para calificar, efecto de arrastre * this paper reports the results of the first phase of the project, “evaluating the impact of a writing assessment system on teaching and learning,” developed by the research group of the language center at eafit university, medellín. code number: 818022. ** e-mail: apmunoz@eafit.edu.co *** e-mail: ealvarez@eafit.edu.co address: carrera 49 no. 7 sur-50 medellin, colombia. this article was received on october 24th, 2007 and accepted on december 13th, 2007. profile 9.indd 89 21/04/2008 07:43:39 p.m. muñoz and álvarez universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras90 introduction this article draws together results of the first phase of a two year project, “evaluating the impact of a writing assessment system on teaching and learning,” which is being undertaken by the research group of the language center at eafit university, medellin. the aim of the project is to evaluate the effect of a carefully designed set of writing assessment practices on the teaching and learning of writing in the adult english program. the english program has a total of 15 courses that can be completed in different schedules. students can take intensive, semi-intensive or regular courses, depending on their needs. the intensive courses can be completed in a four-week period, working two hours a day, monday through friday. the semi-intensive courses are completed in eight weeks with the students attending three times a week. regular courses are completed in a 10week period, meeting twice a week. the current study is being conducted with students in the intensive schedule of the adult program. in 2005, the research group designed and validated a writing assessment system (was) with the intention of improving teaching and learning writing practices. intentional actions towards positive washback1 require, as some elt professionals have recommended, congruity between assessment and curriculum related objectives, authenticity of tasks, detailed score reporting, teachers’ understanding of the assessment criteria, and learner self-assessment (hughes, 2003; messick, 1 washback refers to the influence of assessment on teaching and learning (hughes, 2003; wall & alderson, 1993). 1996; bailey, 1996; shohamy, 1996). the design of the was closely followed these recommendations. first, each component of the was –writing standards per course, rubrics, conventions, and writing tasks– was explicitly connected; second, the writing tasks were designed by considering authenticity requirements (parallel with real life situations, consistency with classroom and curriculum related objectives, and interaction between tasks and students’ background (bachman & palmer, 1996; o’malley & valdez, 1996; douglas, 2000; widdowson, 1979); and third, the rubrics were designed to render consistent application, r > 0.7 (muñoz et al., 2006). the was consists of a set of writing rubrics2 aligned with writing standards for each course, writing conventions to check grammar, vocabulary, punctuation, and spelling problems, and tasks for the writing section of the mid-term and final tests. the system was implemented during the first academic quarter of 2006 after teachers had received training to familiarize them with its appropriate use. a three-module course dealing with theory and practice was offered, including: 1) definition of writing ability, 2) planning and design of writing tasks, plus 3) consistent use of the rubrics and conventions. moreover, a training course was held to guide teachers on how to teach writing and how to keep writing portfolios. the teaching of writing at the institution focuses on three basic components: 1) the process students go through when writing 2 scoring scales for different levels of proficiency. they are used to measure different aspects of writing ability: coherence and cohesion, grammar, vocabulary, spelling, and task completion. profile 9.indd 90 21/04/2008 07:43:39 p.m. preliminary evaluation of the impact of a writing assessment system on teaching and learning profile 9, 2008. issn 1657-0790. bogotá, colombia. pages 89-110 91 (prewriting, drafting, revising, and editing); 2) the accuracy, content, and organization of the writing; and 3) the particular genre the students are producing (letters, essays, biographies, reports, etc.). we believe that an emphasis on the process, the product, and the genre can help students greatly improve their writing skills by considering the personal process, the accuracy of the language used, and the purpose of the piece of writing (harwood, 2005, badger & white, 2000). the language center (lc) does not have courses exclusively designed for the teaching and learning of writing. this skill is part of the regular language program. teachers are required to organize their classes using the writing standards established for each course. this requirement obviously leads to presenting the class with tasks that follow the writing process established by the lc: pre-writing, drafting, revising, editing, and providing detailed scoring and feedback. it is expected that at least one of the writing tasks will constitute a formal writing evaluation for the course. the writing component aims at developing different skills from elementary to upper intermediate levels of proficiency. for instance, students at the elementary level are expected to be able to fill in simple forms where personal information is required, write short, simple postcards, describe people, places, jobs or study experiences, write short, simple imaginary biographies, write simple personal letters, and narrate stories. at intermediate levels students are required to write short, simple essays on topics of interest, summarise, report and give opinions, write brief reports, write personal letters and notes asking for or conveying simple information of immediate relevance. finally, at more advanced levels, students are expected to write clear, detailed descriptions of real or imaginary events and experiences, write a review of a film, book or play, write an essay or report which develops an argument, and present an argument for or against a given topic (tasks adapted from the council of europe, 2001). through the accomplishment of these tasks, the lc seeks to prepare students for future academic or professional demands. admission to academic programs, placement into different levels of a language program, exemption from certain course work or selection for a particular job will largely depend on how appropriately students master this mode of communication while involving different socio-cultural norms and cognitive processes. in the current article we will first review some of the literature in the area of writing assessment, contending that meaningful assessment can motivate positive changes in the instruction and learning of writing. we will then describe the method and procedures involved in the realization of this study and present the findings and discussion for this stage of the project which includes preliminary results for two of the three hypotheses researched. in the final section, we will offer some conclusions and implications for the classroom. review of the literature the primary purpose of assessment is to make interpretations and decisions about students’ language ability. in view of this, it profile 9.indd 91 21/04/2008 07:43:39 p.m. muñoz and álvarez universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras92 is essential, for a specific assessment system, to define the ability or construct to be measured. construct definition is the most important consideration when assessing because it determines what aspects of the ability are to be measured and how they are going to be measured. the definition of the construct for the lc includes the specification of writing standards for each course, the definition of the teaching approach to writing and the aspects of language knowledge and ability (see table 1). aspects definition grammar and vocabulary (linguistic competence) the grammar and vocabulary domain addresses the control of grammar, vocabulary and sentence structure. it examines the appropriate use of language structures, effectiveness and range of lexical choice, and the appropriateness to context and to the demands of the task. it also covers the control of spelling and punctuation. coherence and cohesion (discourse competence) the coherence and cohesion domain addresses the logical development (organization) of the text that enables the reader to follow a thread of thought through the development of the written piece. cohesion measures the students’ ability to link ideas by using cohesive devices such as transitions and connectors. such devices permit logical sequencing, establishment of time frames for actions and events, and the creation of structure of meaning by establishing main and supporting language units. task completion (sociolinguistic competence) the task completion domain addresses the students’ ability to thoroughly complete the given task. it examines students’ ability to achieve the specified writing performance indicators through their knowledge of functional uses of the language and the appropriate register. it also examines the extent to which the students are able to elaborate and provide sufficient details to illustrate ideas and go beyond the given task, avoiding digressions and irrelevancies. table 1. definition of language ability (based on actfl proficiency guidelines and ielts writing descriptors). after defining the construct, it is necessary to plan carefully how to measure it. this involves the design of the assessment tasks and the scoring methods. therefore, the design of tasks calls for a specification of the prompt, which defines the task for student writing assignments. it refers particularly to the written instructions to the student. the prompt consists of the question or statement students will address in their writing and the conditions under which they will write (o’malley & valdez, 1996). according to hyland (2003), a prompt can include both contextual and input data. contextual data relates to information about “setting, participants, purpose, and other features of the situation” (douglas, 2000:55 as cited in hyland, 2003). this type of information should be clearly and briefly stated in the prompt profile 9.indd 92 21/04/2008 07:43:40 p.m. preliminary evaluation of the impact of a writing assessment system on teaching and learning profile 9, 2008. issn 1657-0790. bogotá, colombia. pages 89-110 93 and should be appropriate to the students’ level of proficiency and background experience. input data, on the other hand, refers to the “visual and/or aural material to be processed in a communicative task” (douglas, 2000:57 as cited in hyland, 2003). different types of input data may be responding to a short reading text, analysing a table or chart, or describing a picture. the wording of the prompt may include the purpose (or ‘discourse mode’) of the writing. it may also specify the genre, which refers to the expected form and communicative function of the written product, such as a letter, an essay, a report, etc. (weigle, 2002). the prompt may also make reference to the pattern of exposition (hale et al, 1996), which refers to the specific instructions to the students; for example, making comparisons, drawing conclusions, contrasting, etc. and finally, the prompt can mention the audience (the teacher, the classmates, general public), the tone (formal/informal), the length (100 words, one page, etc.), and time allotment (30 minutes, one hour). weigle (2002) considers that a prompt should, at least, include the audience, the purpose and some indication of the length, but that the ultimate choice of specification depends on the definition of the construct. based on the literature presented above and on the definition of its writing construct, the lc considers that prompts at the institution should be as follows: be connected to the writing 1. standards for any specific course. include the genre or the 2. purpose of the writing. include the audience, either 3. implicitly or explicitly. include the organizational plan or 4. form of presentation which specifies how students are to develop the writing. it refers to the process or the steps students have to follow when developing a writing piece. it may include the number of words, time allotment, sequence, number of paragraphs, etc. in addition to task design, an essential component of evaluation is determining the scoring methods. since the judgment of student work is inevitably a subjective one on the teacher’s part, a clear set of criteria must be identified and then applied consistently to each student’s samples of writing in order to reduce teacher bias and increase the value of assessment. teachers have found that a well-designed rubric can provide such a tool in promoting accurate, reliable writing assessment (weigle, 1994; stansfield & ross, 1988). additionally, teachers need to be trained to apply the rubric consistently. one source of unreliability in writing assessment is due to inconsistencies among different evaluators in scoring. sufficiently high consistency in scoring can be obtained by means of proper training of the evaluators. prior to proceeding to the scoring stage, examiners should understand the principles behind the particular rating scales they must work with, and be able to interpret their descriptors consistently (alderson & wall, 2001). this may be achieved by conducting meetings where a group of examiners get together, at the same time and place, to score samples and reach consensus. during the meetings, profile 9.indd 93 21/04/2008 07:43:40 p.m. muñoz and álvarez universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras94 raters compare their scorings and discuss any differences of opinion they might have. although different studies have been conducted on the accuracy and validity of large scale writing assessments (novak, et al., 1996; walberg & ethington, 1991), little has been investigated concerning the impact of writing assessment on teaching and learning. for instance, stecher et al. (2004) studied the effects of a test – the washington assessment of student learning (wasl) – and a standards-based system on writing instruction in washington schools. as a result of analyzing statewide surveys of both principals and teachers, the researchers found that although the approach to writing, a process approach, changed little before and after the test was instituted, curriculum (writing conventions, emphasis on audience, purpose, styles and formats) and instructional methods (greatest emphasis on wasl rubrics for student feedback) did change. the study concluded that the wasl influenced instruction. in another study, lumley & wenfan (2001) examined the impact of the pennsylvania assessment policy on writing instruction and teaching methodology. the findings indicate that even though teachers agreed with the type of scoring and characteristics of effective writing proposed by the pennsylvania holistic scoring guide, they were reluctant to use the state rubric, descriptors, and writing samples. the authors concluded that there may be some deficiencies in the support material; that teachers may be using their own evaluation tools, or that they are not adopting the suggested writing approach. as can be seen from the above studies, a host of elements beyond the assessment itself needs to be considered. according to wall (1996), different factors might prevent positive washback effects: teachers’ lack of understanding of the exam, resistance to change, and exam content. she also refers to other factors such as the gap between test designers and teachers, and lack of well trained teachers. the aim of the research described in the current article is to evaluate the impact of writing assessment practices on the teaching and learning of writing in english as a foreign language. more specifically, following the implementation of a writing assessment system, it is hypothesized that: student writing will significantly 1. improve from preto post test; teacher writing instruction 2. will significantly improve; student and teacher perceptions 3. of the was will be positive. method participants twenty seven university students aged 17 to 20 participated in the study. most of them enroll in the lc because they need to comply with a bilingualism policy established by the university. others take classes because of academic or professional requirements. the adult english program has a total of 69 teachers; from these, 35 (20 females and 15 males) participated voluntarily in the study. eighteen of the participant teachers had undergraduate degrees in language education or in translation from local universities. the others had degrees in other areas such profile 9.indd 94 21/04/2008 07:43:40 p.m. preliminary evaluation of the impact of a writing assessment system on teaching and learning profile 9, 2008. issn 1657-0790. bogotá, colombia. pages 89-110 95 to test hypothesis 1, a longitudinal study involving a pre and post-test design for the pre-intermediate, intermediate and upper intermediate proficiency levels of the intensive schedule is being conducted. we want to observe students’ writing improvement from course 2 to course 5, from course 6 to course 9; and from course 10 to 13. measuring progress within levels of proficiency was imperative due to, on the one hand, the significant fluctuation of the student population. a great number of students interrupt their english classes at different periods during the year, mainly because of mid-term/final exams or summer/christmas breaks at the university. therefore, we cannot expect that the same number of students goes from course 1 to 13 without interruption. on the other hand, existing research suggests that improvements can take place in a period as short as eight weeks (arthur, 1980). part of the rationale for conducting a longitudinal study is that effective training of teachers does not happen overnight. similarly, student progress needs to be examined over time. in the second stage of the project, we can compare improvement of student writing and teacher instruction in terms of where it was at the end of the first phase. hopefully, teacher practice will improve over that time and, as a result, student writing should also improve. for the pre and post-tests, writing tasks were designed according to levels of proficiency. a narrative type of task was designed for pre-intermediate, a narrativedescriptive task for intermediate, and a proficiency levels courses for adults type of writing expected advanced 5 topic-based courses informative, descriptive, narrative persuasive (upper intermediate to advanced)upper intermediate 10, 11, 12, 13, 14* intermediate 6, 7*, 8, 9 informative, descriptive, narrative (preintermediate to intermediate)pre-intermediate 2, 3, 4, 5 elementary n, 1 informative (elementary) * speaking and listening courses table 2. distribution of courses by level of proficiency for expected writing abilities. as administration or engineering. most of them teach an average of 28 hours a week. the teachers had little experience in the teaching of writing. therefore, they received training on how to teach and assess this skill. additionally, they were instructed on how to keep writing portfolios for their students. data collection before describing the data collection procedures, it is essential to visualize the current composition of courses for the adult english program, the distribution of courses by proficiency level, and the type of writing that students are expected to produce (see table 2). profile 9.indd 95 21/04/2008 07:43:40 p.m. muñoz and álvarez universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras96 persuasive task for the upper intermediate students (see appendix 1). the pretest writing tasks were applied initially to 126 students in courses 2 (n=57), 6 (n=47), and 10 (n=22) in may, 2006. students were given 30 minutes to complete the task and no dictionaries were allowed. in august, the same tasks with the same instructions were given as the post-test to students who reached courses 5, 9, and 13. the process was repeated in july with students in courses 2, 6, and 10. the same tasks were given as the post-test to those who reached courses 5, 9, and 13 in october, when the collection of data for the year 2006 ended. by this time, the final sample population was 27 students who had taken the preand post tests. these students received writing instruction from the 35 teachers involved in the study. all the information gathered from the 35 teachers was taken into consideration because, at some point, they taught at least one of the 27 students. teachers’ quality of writing instruction (hypothesis 2) was examined by analyzing 35 writing portfolios gathered from the teachers in the intensive schedule from may to september, 2006. quality was defined based on the aspects that are deemed important in the lc approach to writing instruction and assessment. these are constituted by 1) congruence between task and writing standards for the course; 2) appropriateness of the prompt; 3) explicitness and elaboration of idea generation technique; 4) understanding of writing conventions; and 5) detailed scoring and feedback. as stated in the introduction to this report, teachers were instructed on how to keep the portfolios. the portfolios were distributed at the beginning of each course. inside each folder, steps were specified to guide teachers in the filing process (see appendix 2). teachers were expected to submit the folders at the end of each course including students’ first drafts and final texts. although teachers were to file students’ writings, the purpose of the portfolio was to evaluate teachers’ understanding of the writing process and scoring procedures as reflected in the writings. in other words, the interest was placed on teacher instruction and not on student performance per se. measures preand post-test writing tasks to a. estimate student progress over time. portfolios to assess teachers’ quality b. of writing instruction. data analysis impact on student writing measurement of student progress was done by examining the syntactic complexity of the preand post test writing tasks. complexity is mainly judged by the higher frequency of complex sentences in a text. wolfe-quintero et al. (1998 in polio, 2001, p. 96) highlight the idea that syntactic complexity means “that a wide variety of both basic and sophisticated structures are available… whereas a lack of complexity means that only a narrow range of basic structures are available…” according to hunt (1970), the ability to combine more and more sentences is a sign of syntactic maturity. moreover, syntactic complexity is the most profile 9.indd 96 21/04/2008 07:43:41 p.m. preliminary evaluation of the impact of a writing assessment system on teaching and learning profile 9, 2008. issn 1657-0790. bogotá, colombia. pages 89-110 97 common feature for determining the effects of a program or intervention (polio, 2001). different techniques have been used in writing research to measure text complexity, ranging from counting words, clauses, sentences or t-units in a text to averages of the number of words, clauses, or sentences per t-unit. a t-unit stands for ‘minimal terminable unit’ and is defined as a main clause plus all subordinate clauses and nonclausal structures attached to or embedded in it (hunt, 1970). in simplified terms, a t-unit is the shortest unit which can stand alone as a sentence. for example: ‘he stopped and he sat down on the soft grass.’ has two t-units because there are two complete sentences which can ‘stand alone’. there is a great deal of evidence that the t-unit has some special status as a meaningful unit of discourse which serves as a measure of syntactic complexity and cognitive maturity in a writer3. for instance, hunt (1970) examined how the correlation of sentence length and academic maturity worked. he looked at the writing of fourth, eighth and twelfth graders and educated adults and found that 4th graders averaged 8.60 words per t-unit, 8th graders averaged 11.50, 12th graders averaged 14.40, and educated adults averaged 20.20 words per t-unit. using an average of number of words per t-unit, we analyzed the syntactic 3 the following example (taken from hoelker & hashi (2005), while correct, would be syntactically underdeveloped. fatima walked to the store (one t-unit). fatima walked slowly (one t-unit). fatima bought some bread (one t-unit). fatima returned home (one t-unit). when combining sentences, transformations are performed on the sentences. a syntactically mature sentence, containing one t-unit reads: “fatima walked slowly to the store to buy some bread and returned home.” complexity of the writings of the 27 students who completed both pre and posttests (a total of 54 writings: 27 pre-tests and 27 post-tests). all the writings were coded to protect students’ identity and typed in order to avoid problems due to illegible handwriting. the complexity ratio was obtained by counting the number of t-units per text and dividing it by the total number of words in the text. the number of words in the pre-test and post-test writing texts was balanced so that comparisons could be done between texts of similar length. the calculation of average words per t-units was done by two raters using polio’s ‘guidelines for t-units, clauses, word counts and errors’ (1997). the count was done, first, individually. then, the two raters compared results by naming in unison the final word of each t-unit. for the 54 writings, the average t-unit count for the two raters was 16.5 and 15.7 (p-value =0.57) showing no significant differences between the evaluators at a 10% level of significance and a correlation of 0.97. the data were further analyzed using a signed rank test at a level of significance of 10% which shows the difference between complexity ratios. the level of significance was set at 10% due to the small size of the sample. impact on writing instruction the analysis of portfolios was conducted using a rubric designed and validated4 for this purpose (see appendix 3). the 4 to determine validity, the aspects measured by the rubric were aligned to the writing construct as defined for the language center (muñoz, et al. 2006). further, the descriptors for each aspect in the rubric were progressively adjusted by evaluating different portfolios used for piloting purposes. profile 9.indd 97 21/04/2008 07:43:41 p.m. muñoz and álvarez universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras98 prompt congruence idea generation conventions scoring overall 82.9% (29) 97.1% (34) 77.1% (27) 94.3% (33) 91.4% (32) 94.3% (33) table 3. percentage and frequency of agreement between raters. rubric measures the aspects that are central to the lc approach to teaching writing and assessment: 1) congruence between task and writing standards for the course; 2) appropriateness of the prompt; 3) explicitness and elaboration of idea generation technique; 4) understanding of writing conventions; and 5) detailed scoring and feedback. the overall presentation of the portfolio (drafts and final version properly dated and organized) was also analyzed. each aspect was evaluated on a 1-3 scale, where 3 = excellent, 2 = satisfactory and 1 = unsatisfactory. two evaluators conducted the analysis of the 35 portfolios, first, individually, and then together to compare ratings. the table below shows the percentage of agreement between the raters for each of the evaluated aspects. for instance, in relation to prompt design, the evaluators gave the same ratings to 29 portfolios (82.9%). based on these percentages, discrepancies were discussed and consensus reached for the final ratings. results and discussion impact on student writing the tables below present the results of the syntactic complexity analysis of the preand post test writing tasks for the 27 students. course 2 course 5 code text words t-units complexity ratio text words t-units complexity ratio gains 029 127 15 8.4 125 9 13.8 5.4 002 110 15 7.3 109 10 10.9 3.6 038 80 10 8.0 78 8 9.75 1.8 007 158 13 12.1 160 13 12.3 0.2 035 52 8 6.5 52 8 6.5 0.0 036 112 9 12.4 111 9 12.3 -0.1 010 112 11 9.3 106 10 8.1 -1.2 041 124 6 20.7 127 8 15.9 -4.8 109.4* 108.5* *average of balanced number of words between texts table 4. average number of words per t-unit (courses 2 – 5). profile 9.indd 98 21/04/2008 07:43:41 p.m. preliminary evaluation of the impact of a writing assessment system on teaching and learning profile 9, 2008. issn 1657-0790. bogotá, colombia. pages 89-110 99 the signed rank test for data in table 4 showed that the number of students whose writings increased in level of complexity, students 029, 002, 038, and 007, is not significantly different from the number of students whose writings decreased in complexity, students 036, 010 and 041 (p-value = 0.62). table 5 below illustrates that there are more students whose writings increased in syntactic complexity –students 067, 044, 284, 045, 186, 182, 192, and 175– than writings where syntactic complexity decreased –046, 048, 179, 196–. however, the difference is not statistically significant (p-value = 0.12). the data in table 6 show that students’ writings 099, 095, 202 and 204 increased in syntactic complexity whereas the rest of the students produced less mature writings in the post test. in general, considering all the proficiency levels, 62% percent of the students showed an increase of syntactic complexity. although for the majority the gains were not considerable, some students’ syntactic complexity increased significantly: students 029, 002, and 038 from course 2 to course 5; students 284 and 182 from course 6 to 9; and 099 and 204 from course 10 to 13. below, four excerpts taken from the writings are presented to exemplify the increase in syntactic complexity of students 002 and 284. this is my friend jose, # he is eighteen year old, he live in sabaneta with his family, # he live in one big house out the city, # his family is very nice,# the house is beautiful,# there is bathroom, living room, kitchen, garage, bedroom,# in the bedroom there is one big bed and closet.# code 002 course 2 there are 7 t-units in this excerpt. as can be seen the writer used very short course 6 course 9 code text words t-units complexity ratio text words t-units complexity ratio gains 067 271 38 7.1 276 34 8.1 1.0 044 183 25 7.3 183 21 8.3 1.0 284 114 12 9.5 118 10 11.8 2.3 045 251 34 7.4 251 29 8.7 1.3 046 177 19 9.3 178 21 8.5 -0.8 048 150 22 6.8 148 24 6.2 -0.6 186 232 23 10.0 235 22 10.7 0.7 182 157 14 11.2 167 12 13.9 2.7 179 106 9 11.7 95 12 7.9 -3.8 196 174 18 9.7 171 18 9.5 -0.2 192 176 21 8.3 175 19 10.1 1.8 175 243 30 8.1 248 27 9.1 1.0 186.2 187.1 table 5. average number of words per t-unit (courses 6 – 9). profile 9.indd 99 21/04/2008 07:43:42 p.m. muñoz and álvarez universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras100 sentences. in the post test, sentences were joined using coordination with subject deletion or subordination, producing a more complex text. many years ago, was a children what lived in a world where not exist material things.# they only could play with friend in the street, because not had television and computers.# they went at school # after they arrived at house to make the homework. # after they can go out to play soccer, and other plays.# code 002 course 5 the number of t-units here is 5. the student writes more complex sentences by using relativization and subordination. despite the grammatical errors, the first t-unit shows the use of a relative pronoun ‘what*’ (instead of ‘who’) and ‘where’ to make this sentence longer [many years ago, was a children what lived in a world where not exist material things]. the second t-unit uses a subordinating conjunction to make a more mature sentence [they only could play with friend in the street, because not had television and computers]. here is another sample from a student pre-tested in course six and post-tested in course nine. it happened the last friday on night. # i was in my house with my cousins and my aunt. # i was seeing a movie with my aunt # and my cousins were in the kitchen. # we were in the first floor # suddenly we heard a sound in the second floor. # code 284 course 6 there are 6 t-units here. most sentences are short and there is one attempt to combine through coordination without subject deletion [i was seeing a movie with my aunt # and my cousins were in the kitchen]. many days ago i was walking to my house in the night and knew a girl that was walking in the same way. # she told me that her house was near of my house and asked me if i could walk whit her because she doesn’t want to be alone. # code 284 course 9 this passage contains 2 t-units revealing more mature writing. in the first t-unit the subject of the second verb has been deleted course 10 course 13 code text words t-units complexity ratio text words t-units complexity ratio gains 099 252 18 14.0 257 17 17.0 3.0 206 157 9 17.4 162 10 16.2 -1.2 095 151 13 11.6 160 13 12.3 0.7 205 228 12 19.0 228 22 10.4 -8.6 202 153 9 17.0 148 8 18.5 1.5 211 307 24 12.8 296 25 11.8 -1.0 204 265 19 14.0 263 16 16.4 2.4 216.1 216.3 table 6. average number of words per t-unit (courses 10 – 13). profile 9.indd 100 21/04/2008 07:43:42 p.m. preliminary evaluation of the impact of a writing assessment system on teaching and learning profile 9, 2008. issn 1657-0790. bogotá, colombia. pages 89-110 101 to avoid redundancy since it is the same as the subject of the first sentence [i]. in the first t-unit, there is also a relative pronoun [that] which makes the sentence longer and more sophisticated. the second t-unit uses again subject deletion and subordination yielding a more mature sentence pattern. if we consider the average of all the complexity ratios in the last courses of the proficiency levels as shown in table 7, it is possible to observe that the averages increased between course 5 and 13 (11.2 to 14.7) but dropped considerably in course 9 (9.4). it is likely that the writing assignments between courses 5 and 9 lacked emphasis on the subordination and relativization elements necessary to produce more complex syntactic patterns. it is also possible that consolidation of more complex structures, which are taught at this level, is taking place and therefore were difficult to produce. it is also important to note that more complex sentences may be indicative of maturity, but not necessarily of quality. too many complex sentences may be a problem because of an uncontrolled use of subordination which may reduce communicative effectiveness and the grammaticality of sentences. impact on writing instruction table 8 below presents the results of portfolio analysis. the portfolios were evaluated using the rubric designed for this purpose (see data analysis, section b). as indicated in the table, 17.5% of the teachers designed excellent prompts. this means that the prompts clearly followed the requirements for prompt design at the lc; in other words, specification of genre or discourse mode, audience, and organizational plan. 42.5% of the teachers course count average sd min. max. 5 8 11.2 3.0 6.5 15.8 9 12 9.4 2.0 6.2 13.9 13 7 14.7 3.1 10.4 18.5 table 7. average of complexity ratios for courses 5, 9, and 13. aspect excellent satisfactory unsatisfactory prompt 17.5 42.5 40.0 congruence 57.5 42.5 idea generation 15.0 47.5 37.5 convention 22.5 47.5 30.0 scoring 2.5 40.0 57.5 overall presentation 15.0 72.5 12.5 table 8. percentages of adequacy of writing assessment and instruction. profile 9.indd 101 21/04/2008 07:43:42 p.m. muñoz and álvarez universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras102 designed satisfactory prompts because they omitted one of the requirements or worded the prompt somewhat awkwardly. 40% did not include any of the specifications. providing students with well-designed prompts is obviously an important aspect of assessment because students’ successful performance greatly depends on how well teachers and test developers design the tasks. therefore, prompt design becomes crucial to “allow all candidates to perform to the best of their abilities and to eliminate variations in scoring that can be attributed to the task rather than the candidates’ abilities” (weigle, 2002, p. 60-61). with regard to congruence between prompts and writing standards, it was observed that while 57.7% of the teachers used writing tasks directly related to the writing standards, 42.5 % used activities that had little or no relation to the standard. even though the standards are clearly defined for each course, teachers had difficulties making this connection. this might be due to the preference of some activities by the teacher or the students without regard to the objectives of the course. more awareness needs to be raised regarding the connection between these two aspects. when teachers and students recognize that the writing tasks directly assess the standards and that writing is assessed along clearly articulated levels of performance, teachers will be more motivated to change instructional practices both to teach and have students practice around these authentic assessments, and students will be more likely to buy into the value of such work (natriello & dornbusch, 1984). the analysis shows that 15% of the teachers explicitly gave evidence of the technique used to generate ideas, such as brainstorming, listing, mind mapping, etc. the technique was clearly presented, elaborated, and reflected in students’ writings and, therefore, evaluated as excellent. although 47.5% of the teachers indicated the technique used, they did not fully elaborate on it or the technique was partly evidenced in the students’ writing. still, 37.5% of the teachers gave no evidence of the technique used. it is then necessary to encourage the use of prewriting techniques. these are important because they spark general ideas on the topic in a draft form. pre-writing helps students to focus on the topic by breaking it down into manageable sections and organizing ideas. in other words, it enables the writer to prioritise ideas. regarding the use of conventions, the data revealed that 22.5% of the teachers made an excellent use of the conventions, providing students with precise and appropriate feedback. these teachers seem to have a clear understanding of the symbols. similarly, 47.5% of the teachers applied the conventions in an appropriate way, but still confused some of the symbols or used them inconsistently. 30% of the teachers appeared not to understand the symbols or not to use them at all. it is essential that all teachers use the conventions appropriately. suitable use of these symbols may affect students’ writing in a positive way because, when editing their writings, students need to exercise higher-order thinking skills such as analysis, synthesis, and evaluation in profile 9.indd 102 21/04/2008 07:43:42 p.m. preliminary evaluation of the impact of a writing assessment system on teaching and learning profile 9, 2008. issn 1657-0790. bogotá, colombia. pages 89-110 103 order to improve their writings (bereiter & scardamalia, 1987; elbow, 1983). when scoring writings, 2.5% of the teachers were very specific providing scores for each aspect –coherence & cohesion, grammar & vocabulary, and task completion– and descriptor (each aspect is specified by descriptors a. b. and c.) of the rubric and offering qualitative comments to help students understand the score. 40% provided satisfactory scorings, meaning that they assigned scores for each aspect but did not give scores for each descriptor. likewise, they included some useful comments for students. a great number of teachers, 57.5%, assigned global grades and did not comment on the students’ writings. score reporting may be an influential factor in performance. several studies confirm that global skills assessments seem to be less reliable than skill specific or behaviour specific descriptors (chapelle & brindley, 2002; strong-krause, 2000). furthermore, it is crucial that teachers do not simply respond to grammar or content by means of scores but by making more personalized comments so as to maintain a meaningful dialogue with the student. likewise, comments need to be related to the text itself rather than to general rules (bates et al., 1993 in hyland, 2003). finally, the analysis of the overall presentation of the portfolios shows that 15% of the teachers included all the required portfolio elements, mainly, specification of the prompt, presentation of the generation of ideas technique, inclusion of first draft with conventions, dated and commented, inclusion of second draft properly scored, dated and organized. seventy two per cent of the teachers presented satisfactory portfolios, meaning that some of the required elements were missing and dates were also sometimes omitted. the rest of the teachers (12.5%) omitted numerous pieces of writing or presented the material in a disorganized manner making it hard to analyze the data. conclusions and implications the results of the current study indicate some improvements in the syntactic complexity of students’ writings. sixty two percent of the students produced more mature texts by combining sentences using relative pronouns, subordinate conjunctions, and subject deletion. factors such as lack of specific teaching and assessment of any of these elements may have affected the production of a higher number of syntactically mature writings. since the pre and post-test writing tasks were designed according to proficiency levels, it is not possible to consider this as a factor that could have influenced syntactic maturity. based on the fact that teaching and assessment at the lc are more focused on the process than the product of writing, it became evident that syntactic complexity cannot fully account for student progress in writing. being able to produce more complex sentences does not necessarily mean that there are less grammatical errors or that ideas are more coherently connected. consequently, improvement cannot only be measured quantitatively. other factors need to be considered for a more comprehensive view of language improvement. this is even more relevant if we consider that finding an objective measure of student progress profile 9.indd 103 21/04/2008 07:43:42 p.m. muñoz and álvarez universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras104 is difficult because a precise definition of improvement becomes impossible. according to casanave (1994), examining quantitative changes in student writing overtime is, in one sense, a failure because a picture of student writing will necessarily be very incomplete. therefore, it is important to examine aspects such as coherence, cohesion, revision, and task completion, which might provide better information about the process rather than the product of writing. these aspects may be difficult to evaluate in terms of face validity for those who want to see objective measures. however, coherence and discourse features are concerned with the quality of a text’s organization, and therefore with how clear students are able to communicate an idea. the relationship between teacher feedback and student revision is also important to examine in order to determine the degree to which students address the teacher feedback and the degree to which revisions are related to teacher comments. by analysing task completion, we can observe how completely students develop the prompts and accomplish the writing standards. additionally, a measure of language improvement needs to match our assessment system as used in the context of our own classes. in the current study, teachers emphasized the teaching of grammar and, accordingly, students were able to produce more complex sentences. however, in order to have more clarity of the effects of the was on learning, we need to consider all the aspects involved in this system, going beyond all the implicit complications involved in measuring qualitative variables. regarding the teaching and assessment of writing as evidenced by the portfolios, it is clear that the teachers have not been able to implement the was as established by the lc. different factors may account for this: when innovative assessments are proposed it may take teachers some time to adjust to changes. it is possible that some aspects of the assessment system are not yet internalized or clear to teachers. therefore, we need to offer more training opportunities and stimulus that will motivate teachers to participate in the assessment process in a more committed manner. it is also possible that teachers are somehow reluctant to implement the was. it is likely that the suggested assessment system makes new demands on the teachers’ competencies and beliefs. it is also possible that the design of the was presumes that teachers have certain beliefs about the nature and goals of evaluation. this would obviously lead us to the field of teacher cognition, defined by borg (2003, p. 81) as the “unobservable cognitive dimension of teaching –what teachers know, believe, and think.” in fact, different research studies indicate that teachers have complex beliefs about pedagogical matters which, according to borg (2003), create a structured set of principles. these principles, he points out, are derived from teachers’ prior experiences, school practices, and individual personalities. in the field of english language teaching beliefs have been studied to see how they have informed the instructional practices and decisions of teachers (borg, 2003; burns, 1992). furthermore, other research literature suggests that beliefs and practice are related, profile 9.indd 104 21/04/2008 07:43:43 p.m. preliminary evaluation of the impact of a writing assessment system on teaching and learning profile 9, 2008. issn 1657-0790. bogotá, colombia. pages 89-110 105 and that teachers may hold beliefs that are not compatible with the practices called for in institutional plans (bliem & davinroy, 1997; borko et al., 1997). it then follows that meaningful change in assessment practices may require change in teachers’ beliefs about such practices. this would be an important topic for future research: how to introduce change in educational settings and how to involve teachers in it. in addition to the abovementioned observations, it is also imperative to consider that the effects of teacher training programs take place over time. in the second phase of the project, after more training is provided and time has elapsed, it will be possible to verify this connection. overall, the results of this study provide a clear knowledge of the areas that need further improvement; this, in turn, will lead to the implementation of corrective measures in these areas as well as constitute a comparison point for the data gathered in the second phase of the study. it will then be possible to compare teacher instruction and student progress in writing. it is expected that writing instruction will improve and, as a result, student writing will also improve. references actfl proficiency guidelines writing (2001). retrieved july, 2005 from http://www.actfl.org/ files/public/writingguidelines.pdf alderson, j. c., & wall, d. 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(2001). research methodology in l2 writing research. in silva, t. & matsuda, p.k. (eds.), on second language writing (pp. 91-115). new jersey: lawrence erlbaum associates. polio, c. (1997). measures of linguistic accuracy in second language writing research. language learning, 47(1), 101-143. stansfield, c. w., & ross, j. (1988). a long-term research agenda for the test of written english. language testing, 5, 160-186. shohamy, e., donitsa-schmidt s., & ferman, i. (1996). test impact revisited: washback effect over time. language testing, 13, 298-317. stecher, b., chun, t., & barron, s. (2004). the effects of assessment-driven reform on the teaching of writing in washington state. in chen l. & watanabe, y. (eds.), washback in language testing (pp.147-170). new jersey: lawrence erlbaum associates. strong-krause, d. (2000). exploring the effectiveness of self-assessment strategies in esl placement. in ekbatani, g. & pierson, h. (eds.), learnerdirected assessment in esl (pp. 255-78). mahwah, nj: lawrence erlbaum. wall, d., & alderson, j. c. (1993). examining washback: the sri lankan impact study. language testing, 10, 41-69. wall, d. (1996). introducing new tests into traditional systems: insights from general education and from innovation theory. language testing, 13, 231-354. walberg, h.j., & ethington, c.a. (1991). correlates of writing performance and interest: a u.s. national assessment study. journal of educational research, 84(4), 198-203. weigle, s. (1994). effects of training on raters of esl compositions, language testing, 11, 197223. weigle, s. c. (2002). assessing writing. cambridge: cambridge university press. profile 9.indd 106 21/04/2008 07:43:43 p.m. preliminary evaluation of the impact of a writing assessment system on teaching and learning profile 9, 2008. issn 1657-0790. bogotá, colombia. pages 89-110 107 widdowson, h. (1979). explorations in applied linguistics. oxford: oxford university press. wolfe-quintero, k., inagaki, s., & kim, h.y. (1998). second language development in writing: measures of fluency, accuracy, and complexity (tech. rep. no. 17). honolulu, hi: national foreign language resource center. about the authors ana muñoz is the coordinator of research and teacher education at the language center, eafit university, medellin. her current research interests cover assessment and evaluation. her recent publications include students’ objectivity and perception of self assessment in an efl classroom (2007) and developing a coherent system for the assessment of writing abilities: tasks and tools (2006). martha e. alvarez is a professor in the school of engineering, eafit university, medellin. she holds a postgraduate degree in information systems from universidad eafit. her recent publications in efl include students’ objectivity and perception of self assessment in an efl classroom (2007) and developing a coherent system for the assessment of writing abilities: tasks and tools (2006). profile 9.indd 107 21/04/2008 07:43:43 p.m. muñoz and álvarez universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras108 appendix 1: writing tasks for preand post tests courses 2 5 narrative: write a short story about children who live in a world where there is no such thing as television, computers, or electronic games. consider aspects such as family life, school, and friends. courses 6 9 narrative + description: write an account about a real or imaginary scary moment in your life. your readers want to know what happened and where it happened. be sure to include how the place looked, and how the people involved felt and reacted. readers also want to know why this incident sticks in your memory. courses 10 -13 persuasive: write an essay for the university’s newspaper stating your opinion about whether or not homework should be required. your goal is to convince your readers that your opinion is “right.” be sure to include the effect doing or not doing homework has on your learning, as well as other arguments to prove your opinion. profile 9.indd 108 21/04/2008 07:43:43 p.m. preliminary evaluation of the impact of a writing assessment system on teaching and learning profile 9, 2008. issn 1657-0790. bogotá, colombia. pages 89-110 109 appendix 2: instructions for writing portfolios writing can be a powerful tool not only for communicating ideas but for improving language skills. grammar, vocabulary, mechanics, coherence and cohesion are some of the aspects that students can develop through writing practice. one way of fostering appropriate teaching and assessment of writing is by keeping a portfolio of students’ work. what is a portfolio? a portfolio is a purposeful collection of students’ writing (or any other type of work). it is used to keep track of the process students go through when developing a writing piece. the portfolio contains drafts, revisions, and final written work. why keep a portfolio? through the portfolio we can do the following: examine if students improve their writing over time – observe the writing process, not just the final product – promote students’ self assessment – become aware of one’s teaching writing practices – become aware of the connection between curriculum and instruction – how to keep the portfolio? at the end of the course, you will hand in the portfolio to the coordinator of research. the writings need to evidence the steps described below: selecting the topic:1. file in the portfolio the prompt for the selected topic. generating ideas:2. on the first page of the portfolio you will find a sheet listing some techniques to get students started on the topic: brainstorming, listing, mind mapping, cubing, outlining, etc. tick the one you used for the writing activity. make sure the technique is reflected on the students’ writings. also, date the sheet. drafting:3. have students write and hand in a draft. make sure students write their names on the drafts. revising:4. check the drafts using the writing conventions. make a copy5 of the drafts, date them and file the original drafts in the portfolio. editing:5. give students the checked copy of the drafts. have them rewrite the draft based on your feedback. scoring:6. collect edited versions and grade them using the appropriate rubric. filing final product: 7. make copies of the edited writings, date them, and file original versions in the portfolio. give the copies back to students. 5 to make copies at no cost, please pick up an authorization slip at the research office. profile 9.indd 109 21/04/2008 07:43:43 p.m. muñoz and álvarez universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras110 appendix 3: portfolio rubric portfolio rubric excellent satisfactory unsatisfactory prompt all the elements required for a prompt6 are clearly stated. most of the elements required for a prompt are present. few of the elements are present or not clearly worded. congruence the task directly relates to the writing standard(s) of the course. does not match standard or is not clear. idea generation explicit evidence of technique is used, clearly presented and elaborated. technique sparks exceptional generation of ideas. technique clearly presented, but not fully elaborated. technique elicits good generation of ideas. little evidence provided. use of conventions precise and appropriate. shows clear understanding of the symbols. confuses some of the symbols or inconsistent use of the symbols. inappropriate use of the symbols or does not use them. scoring scores given for each aspect and descriptor of the rubric. provides comments to help student understand the score. scores given only for each aspect of the rubric. some useful comments are provided. scores given only for each aspect. no comments provided. overall presentation all required portfolio elements are included. properly dated and organized. some of the required elements are missing. dates are sometimes omitted. numerous pieces omitted or material disorganized and hard to analyze. 6 specification of genre or discourse mode, audience, and organizational plan (muñoz et al., 2006). profile 9.indd 110 21/04/2008 07:43:44 p.m. profile 10.indd a study of the dominant type of technique (controlled, semicontrolled and free) of two english teachers... profile 10, 2008. issn 1657-0790. bogotá, colombia. pages 163-180 163 * e-mail: franciapili@yahoo.com.mx address: diagonal 49a sur # 57a-37 this article was received on november 15, 2007 and accepted on july 2, 2008. a study of the dominant type of technique (controlled, semicontrolled and free) of two english teachers from a languages teaching program estudio acerca del tipo de técnica dominante (controlada, semicontrolada y libre) de dos profesores de inglés de un programa en licenciatura en idiomas francia del pilar gavilán galindo* universidad de la salle this article shows the process and emerging results from a study held at a private university in bogotá, colombia. it aims at describing and interpreting the dominant kind of language teaching technique: controlled, semicontrolled and free (brown, 2001) within the context of two first semester english teachers of a languages teaching program. data collection was based upon class observations, teachers’ logs and a semi-structured interview that permitted triangulation of information in order to figure out the central research query. the analysis showed that the controlled technique predominates in both teachers’ classes. thus, this study intends to foster reflection and pedagogical debate regarding its implications for elt instruction within that university. key words: teacher education, controlled, semicontrolled and free techniques, elt este artículo describe el proceso y resultados de un estudio realizado en una universidad privada en bogotá, colombia. busca describir e interpretar el tipo dominante de técnica en la enseñanza de una lengua extranjera: controlada, semicontrolada y libre (brown, 2001), en el contexto de las clases de inglés de dos profesores de primer semestre de un programa de licenciatura en lenguas extranjeras. la recolección de información se basó en observaciones, fichas de clase y una entrevista semiestructurada, las cuales permitieron triangular los datos con el objetivo de resolver la principal pregunta de investigación. el análisis de la información indicó que la técnica controlada predomina en las clases de ambos profesores. por tanto, este estudio busca promover la reflexión y debate pedagógico sobre las implicaciones de dicha técnica en la enseñanza del inglés como lengua extranjera en esa institución. palabras claves: formación docente, técnica controlada, semicontrolada y libre, enseñanza de la lengua inglesa profile 10, 2008. issn 1657-0790. bogotá, colombia. pages 163-180 profile 10.indd 163 23/10/2008 8:46:28 gavilán galindo universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras164 introduction the purpose of this paper is to report on the main components that are part of a study i carried out with a partner to obtain my degree in foreign languages from a private university1. consequently, inquiring into the types of language teaching techniques of two teachers of english is due to the fact that i was involved as an assistant in a research project of the research line on foreign language didactics from such an institution2. likewise, i purport to describe the activities implemented by two first semester english teachers and categorize them within the frame of language teaching techniques stated by brown (2001), since the taxonomy presented by him provides the best form of illustrating those english teachers’ practice, which allows determining the principal kind of technique applied in their lessons. accordingly, i will present the main theoretical constructs that support this research; thereafter, i will delve into the issues related to the settings and participants, the type of study, the instruments implemented and the data collection procedure. subsequently, the data analysis will be described regarding the two categories used for it. then, i will state the conclusions that emerged from the data analysis, and finally, i will highlight the implications and suggestions for further research. with the aim of developing this research project, i posed the following question and 1 diana rocío romero guzmán was my partner during the development of the research project. 2 the title of the project was “a descriptive study of the english teachers’ didactic sequences in the languages teaching program” subquestions that were the guidelines so as to carry out the mentioned study: what is the dominant language – teaching technique (controlled, semicontrolled and free) of two first semester english teachers in a spanish, english and french languages teaching program? subquestions: what are the teaching activities – that materialize the techniques implemented by the participants of the study? what are the most common activities – developed by the two participant english teachers? theoretical framework the practice of teaching english as a second or foreign language has been a matter of discussion for many decades. for instance, a plethora of strategies which shows how to teach a specific language item can be observed in several handbooks in order to provide teachers with a “reliable” path to walk on. nevertheless, such tips cannot be taken in isolation; on the contrary, they must be thought to fit classroom variables and to fulfill students’ needs, and also they are expected to be adopted and adapted by teachers on the basis of an ongoing reflection upon their teaching practice. with this is mind, the meaning of technique will be tackled from different authors’ perspectives in order to present how it is understood or taken for the development of this research. thereafter, profile 10.indd 164 23/10/2008 8:46:28 a study of the dominant type of technique (controlled, semicontrolled and free) of two english teachers... profile 10, 2008. issn 1657-0790. bogotá, colombia. pages 163-180 165 i will introduce the sort of techniques for english language teaching as well as types of activities. the term technique concerning elt instruction was coined by anthony (1963), who was the pioneer who established a seminal work on such a concept since he asserted that a technique is implementational; that is, it is a particular trick, stratagem or contrivance that is intended to achieve a goal. on the other hand, doff (1988) claims that teaching techniques have to do with the organization of learning activities. that is to say, an activity can be developed in different ways so as to obtain different results in accordance with the steps followed by the teacher. by the same token, brown (1995) introduces his own assertion of the term technique which, according to him, constitutes the ways teachers select for presenting language items to learners taking into consideration that they must fulfill students’ needs. conversely, brown (2001) goes beyond as regards what technique means within elt instruction. thus, he claims it is a superordinate term to refer to various activities that either teachers or learners perform in the classroom since they include all tasks and activities. in addition, they are almost planned and deliberate, considering they are the product of a choice made by the teacher that can be addressed to the pedagogical units or components of a classroom session. as can be noticed, the word technique has been redefined since anthony’s groundwork, and, notwithstanding some modifications triggered over the years, we can see how edward anthony’s foundations remain solid despite new studies on this subject. consequently, i will discuss the term technique along this research not only bearing in mind his assertions but also drawing attention to the fact that techniques have to do with a teleological and procedural view of language teaching with respect to the teacher’s stance, his/her personal traits, the specifications posed on the syllabus, the institutional policies, the objectives expected to be achieved through a particular activity that is framed within a lesson, as well as the particular conditions that characterize an efl classroom; besides, the extent to which such factors might affect learners’ performance in the target language has to be considered. a menu of language teaching techniques as i have already pointed out, this research is focused on brown’s taxonomy of language teaching techniques (2001). therefore, it is worth presenting his work in relation to that classification. thus, he asserts that techniques move from a manipulative to a communicative dimension; that is, when it is manipulative, the technique is absolutely controlled by the teacher with a predicted response from students. for instance drilling, dictation and reading aloud are typically controlled. when talking about communicative, learner’s answers have an open-ended nature in which the teacher has less control and therefore students interact in a freer and spontaneous form. story-telling, brainstorming, role-plays, and information gaps, among others, are samples of such a technique. profile 10.indd 165 23/10/2008 8:46:28 gavilán galindo universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras166 next, in order to clarify what control means, brown underscores there is always control in the classroom whether it is overt or covert. consequently, this author explains the differences between controlled and free techniques. table 1 will explain those concepts. see also that it has two approaches: one characterizes the controlled and free techniques whereas the other defines what semicontrolled is: as a result, brown illustrates a taxonomy of techniques adapted from crookes & chaudron (1991). here he indicates he uses the term technique to what was referred as “activity” by those theoreticians; thus, such a taxonomy is divided into three categories: controlled, semicontrolled, and free. (see appendix 1). the first authors to prose this taxonomy were crookes & chaudron. it was centered on classroom observation done by chaudron with the purpose of displaying a list of activities grouped into three levels of teacher and student control with respect to the performance of the activity. likewise, they pointed out that the topic and the teacher’s goals can vary the degree of control. it is also worth noting that brown asserted that many techniques might be difficult to categorize due to the control continuum; besides, some others will overlap in more than one category. nonetheless, he claimed that the taxonomy can be considered as follows: an aid to raising the awareness of the – variety of techniques an indicator of how techniques differ – from controlled to free a resource to apply the different types – of techniques for the classroom taking into consideration the previous overview of the three types of techniques in accordance with brown, we can now move to what he states in relation to activity. in his view, the term activity is anything that students do in the classroom involving their participation and not the teacher’s. by contrast, crookes (2003) contends that an “activity is a segment of classroom life… is intended to cover all distinguishable behavioral segments in a classroom...” (p. 144). however we look at those definitions, it can be inferred that crookes’ concept of activity is very similar to what brown stated regarding techniques. in other words, both terms have to do with everything done by teacher and students in the classroom and table 1. types of language teaching techniques. controlled semicontrolled free teacher-centered use of language in a less restrictive way than the controlled, but taking into account linguistic patterns already set up by the teacher. student-centered manipulative communicative structured open-ended predicted student responses unpredicted responses pre-planned objectives set curriculum negotiated objectives cooperative curriculum profile 10.indd 166 23/10/2008 8:46:29 a study of the dominant type of technique (controlled, semicontrolled and free) of two english teachers... profile 10, 2008. issn 1657-0790. bogotá, colombia. pages 163-180 167 that is why they are connected. nonetheless, along this study we will refer to activity as what is done by students, and technique as the intent that underlies the activities proposed by the teacher. we can notice in this sense that the concerns and theories underlying language teaching have triggered the emergence of teaching techniques that have appeared in harmony with a particular educational paradigm. for this reason, the aim of this conceptual framework was to be aware of the main concepts dealt with in this research. methodology this study adhered to a qualitative approach to research which, in accordance with taylor & bodgan (1987), merriam (1998) and burns (1999), draws on data collected by the researcher to try to understand and explain the meaning of human behavior or social phenomena. moreover, it is a descriptive –interpretative study that is characterized by the use of questions which do not contain any kind of variable. the study only describes and attempts to interpret the phenomenon under study (seliger & shohamy, 1990). participants and setting this research project was held at the languages department of a private university in bogotá, colombia, particularly in the english area of a languages teaching program. the selection of the participants for this study was nonrandom or purposeful (bonilla-castro & rodríguez, 2005), keeping in mind that the two english teachers, who are the main subjects of this article, come from the group of six that participated in the aforementioned project on which i worked as assistant. within the group of six teachers, two belonged to first semester, two taught in third semester and the remaining two in fifth semester, including both day and night shifts. first of all, the teachers were told about the insights of the research project and then every one was asked about their willingness to be part of the study. subsequently, they signed the consent forms to become participants of the research. our two participants were the two first semester teachers sarah3, from the day shift, and robert, from the night shift. their ages ranged between 30 and 40 years old. furthermore, they had been teaching for over 10 and 15 years, respectively, at different schools and universities and had been working for the university for more than two years. data collection procedure we implemented the following instruments to collect data: firstly, class observation forms that were considered the most suitable form to register all realities found in an l2 classroom. as stated by seligner & shohamy, 1990, this type of nonstructured observation permits obtaining a great amount of data. it is also worth clarifying that the researchers, who adopted a non participant role as observers with the aim of not disrupting teacher and students’ performance, applied such an instrument. 3 the names used for the participants along this paper are pseudonyms to protect their real identity. profile 10.indd 167 23/10/2008 8:46:29 gavilán galindo universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras168 this is related to burns’ (1999) concept of non-participant observation that has to do with recording with a highly descriptive narration without subjective evaluation of the facts observed. the second source of information was teachers’ logs that were completed by the participants who should describe in detail the development of their class from their own view (richards & lockhart, 1994). and the last one, a semi-structured interview, was carried out by the researchers to inquire about teachers’ daily professional activity. as burns remarks, this type of interview is open-ended in order to provide more flexibility by using a guideline of questions and giving rise to a more equal balance between interviewer and interviewee. the piloting process was developed in 2006, while the data gathering stage was from january to march, 2007. categories for data analysis when the data collected were being analyzed, we adopted two main categories so as to group such information and achieve the principal research goal, which was to identify the dominant language teaching technique. therefore, the categories implemented were language teaching techniques and teaching activities. consequently, to enhance internal validity for our study we established triangulation that is carried out by using multiple investigators, sources of information or methods to confirm the emerging findings (merriam, 1998). in this sense, we completed a deep reading of the raw data provided by the three instruments. this intended to establish a dialogue among the instruments to verify whether the outcomes would be similar or not. moreover, we made a statistical analysis to go through the two mentioned categories based on the two participants’ instruments (observation sheets and teachers’ logs) as the interview did not provide enough information to gather statistics. it is important to emphasize that statistics were used in order to organize and categorize the results in terms of a frequency criterion in order to then analyze them and interpret them in the light of the elements already determined. likewise, an a priori approach was implemented to analyze data since it is centered on established categories to find patterns and frequencies (freeman, 1998). additionally, to identify common patterns in the three instruments, the subsequent coding procedures were established: a= activity 1,2,3….39 = type of activity controlled technique = ∆ (triangle) semicontrolled technique = o (circle) free technique = (square) findings of the study after analyzing the information gathered and bearing in mind the two established categories, we will look first at the core of this study; that is to say, the three types of language teaching techniques: controlled, semicontrolled and free. it means that we will see the emerging results in regards to the dominant technique and thereafter the four activities most developed by the participants on the basis of the taxonomy presented by brown. diagrams 1 and 2 illustrated that profile 10.indd 168 23/10/2008 8:46:29 a study of the dominant type of technique (controlled, semicontrolled and free) of two english teachers... profile 10, 2008. issn 1657-0790. bogotá, colombia. pages 163-180 169 language teaching techniques (class observation sheets) language teaching techniques (teachers’ logs) diagram 1. sarah diagram 3. sarah diagram 2. robert diagram 4. robert table 2. comparative chart language teaching techniques. sarah’s techniques robert’s techniques observations logs observations logs controlled= 84% controlled= 57% controlled= 81% controlled= 83% semicontrolled= 8% semicontrolled= 27% semicontrolled= 13% semicontrolled= 9% free= 8% free= 16% free= 6% free= 8% the dominant technique for teacher sarah is the controlled with 84% and the most highly ranked for teacher robert is also the controlled that obtained 81%. now, the emerging statistics in relation to the teachers’ logs are displayed in diagrams 3 and 4. the comparative chart (table 2) below depicts the results obtained for every teacher concerning the two main instruments applied. these findings determine that the controlled technique is the most used by teacher sarah with 57% in profile 10.indd 169 23/10/2008 8:46:30 gavilán galindo universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras170 the logs; by contrast, it obtained 84% on the observation sheets. the semicontrolled showed 27% over an 8% from the observations; whereas, the free technique had 6% in comparison to the observations which ranked 8%. relating to the emerging outcomes from teacher robert’s instruments, we can say that both observation sheets and teacher’s logs displayed very similar results. the controlled technique obtained 83%, over 81% in the observations; then it was followed by the semicontrolled with 9% on the logs, with 13% in the observation sheets. the free technique had 8% on the logs according to a 6% in the observations. accordingly, what the participants have in common is that the controlled technique is paramount concerning the statistical results. thus, i will examine the second category of analysis -teaching activitiesin order to find out whether the preceding outcomes can be validated or not. in other words, when analyzing such a category, i will highlight the four activities most developed by every teacher, taking into consideration a frequency criterion. subsequently, i will determine which kind of technique each activity corresponds to in accordance with brown’s taxonomy. to do this, the emerging results from class observation sheets and teachers’ logs are displayed in table 3. to understand the previous chart, the letter a means the abbreviation for activity, while the number comes from the 39 activities described in brown’s classification (see appendix 1). besides, the chart indicates that both teachers’ classes are very similar in relation to the activities applied. in other words, among the four kinds of activities more highly ranked for each of them, they just differ in the last one, so that the fourth activity developed by teacher sarah is the 16th, “identification”, whereas the fourth for teacher robert is the 10th, “correction or feedback”. thus, what can be concluded from these findings is that both professors sarah and robert often implement activities referring to controlled language teaching techniques, which have to do with a few creative or spontaneous uses of language of students so that the teacher knows beforehand the responses that will be given by students. teachers’ logs had the same system of coding data as the one of the observation sheets since the purpose was to establish relationships between the two instruments. nonetheless, it is important to clarify that teachers’ logs were not as descriptive as the observation sheets; for that reason, what teachers table 3. comparative chart language teaching activities (class observation sheets) sarah robert a3 “organizational” = 33% a3 “organizational” = 30% a9 “checking” = 22% a9 “checking” = 15% a4 “content explanation” = 8% a4 “content explanation” = 10% a16 “identification” = 6% a10 “correction or feedback” =7% profile 10.indd 170 23/10/2008 8:46:30 a study of the dominant type of technique (controlled, semicontrolled and free) of two english teachers... profile 10, 2008. issn 1657-0790. bogotá, colombia. pages 163-180 171 wrote down from their own perspective should be considered carefully when analyzing data because activities might have been described differently from the observations due to the fact that every teacher has his/her own theoretical and experiential background regarding elt instruction. in this sense, the statistics that emerged as concerns the most representative activities for teacher sarah and robert according to the logs were the ones shown in table 4. to have a simpler view from such statistics, tables 5 and 6 make a comparison of the outcomes obtained in each instrument. the previous pie chart from professor sarah’s logs indicates changes with respect to the observation sheets. for example, the activity more highly ranked was a16 “identification” with 24%, while on the observation sheets it was the last with 6%; the second was a9 “checking” with 14%, which had 22% in the observations; however, the most noticeable difference was a38 “composition” with 8%, which belongs to the free technique and did not appear as a relevant activity on the observation sheets. now, the outcomes concerning robert’s logs were the following: table 4. comparative chart language teaching activities (teachers’ logs) sarah’s logs robert’s logs a16 “identification”= 24% a3 “organizational”= 17% a9 “checking” = 14% a4 “content explanation”= 17% a38 “composition”= 8% a9 “checking”= 17% a19 “testing”= 6% a16 “identification”= 9% table 5. comparative chart sarah. observation sheets logs a3 “organizational”= 33% a16 “identification”= 24% a9 “checking” = 22% a9 “checking” = 14% a4 “content explanation” = 8% a38 “composition”= 8% a16 “identification” = 6% a19 “testing”= 6% table 6. comparative chart robert. observation sheets logs a3 “organizational”= 30% a3 “organizational” = 17% a9 “checking” = 15% a4 “content explanation” = 17% a4 “content explanation” = 10% a9 “checking” = 17% a10 “correction or feedback” = 7% a16 “identification” = 9% profile 10.indd 171 23/10/2008 8:46:30 gavilán galindo universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras172 what robert’s findings tell us is that there is a correlation between the logs and the observation sheets regarding the most practiced activities. that is to say, a3 “organizational” obtained the highest percentage with 17% and in the observations it was the first with 30%; the second rank in the logs was a4 “content explanation” with 17% while it was the third on the observation sheets with 10%; the next activity scored on the logs was a9 “checking” with 17% whereas in the observations it had second place with 15%; the last activity more highly ranked in the logs was a16 “identification” with 9%, but it did not appear among the ones with the highest percentages on the observation sheets. a perspective of the language teaching techniques from the applied instruments in what follows i will illustrate some samples taken from the observation sheets, teachers’ logs and semi-structured interviews to clarify how teaching techniques were handled by sarah and robert. to do this, i will display excerpts obtained from the information collected, drawing attention toward the activities that were more highly ranked. therefore, as the activity with the highest percentage was a3 “organizational”, i will define and describe it from a sample as follows: the managerial structuring of lesson or class activities is also called “organizational”. it includes disciplinary action, organization of class furniture and seating, general procedures for class interaction and performance, structure and purpose of lesson, assigning homework or any other out of class task, etc. (adapted from brown, 2001). (3∆) teacher passes out a handout to classify expressions related to work. students are told they may be given 10 minutes to work in pairs, check in dictionaries and match expressions (observation sheet, sarah, february 8, 2007) this excerpt demonstrates that the teacher gives learners instructions which are intended to guide them for their task completion: “students are told they may be given 10 minutes to work in pairs, check in dictionaries and match expressions”. that is why she distributes some material, gives students some time limit, and arranges the class activity by pairs. thereby, activity 3 was linked to this passage since the teacher organized the activity steps for students to follow and thus achieve its objective. likewise, it is an organizational activity in which the teacher plays a role that has to do with the control of the class, because she is the one who says what should be done; besides, it can be inferred that there is not a creative use of language since learners’ response are already known by the teacher. hence, it belongs to a controlled technique (∆). despite the organizational activity being mostly recorded on the observations (33 and 30% for sarah and robert, respectively), it was never registered on the logs by the participants. this may be due to the fact that such an activity is considered by them as an innate aspect of foreign language teaching so that giving instructions, arranging classroom seats, scolding students, etc. is part of an l2 classroom life. notwithstanding, it is worth profile 10.indd 172 23/10/2008 8:46:30 a study of the dominant type of technique (controlled, semicontrolled and free) of two english teachers... profile 10, 2008. issn 1657-0790. bogotá, colombia. pages 163-180 173 highlighting that the organizational activity is part of the controlled technique when pupils are directed in an explicit way by the teacher because his/her directions have been clearly specified. similar to sarah, the third activity scored in robert’s statistics was a4 which had 10%. that is known as content explanation that, according to brown, has to do with the explanation of the lesson content: grammatical, phonological, lexical (vocabulary), sociolinguistic, pragmatic, or any other aspects of language. the upcoming samples will describe this activity as follows: (4∆) “the teacher explains saying that in spanish we use “una/un” and gives more examples”. (4∆) “he says the second rule is with “h”. he says the word hotel is voiced, it sounds like a “j” and in other cases when the pronunciation is voiceless, (no sound) you use “an”. he has written these examples on the board.” (observation sheet, robert february 2nd , 2007). the first passage as well as the excerpt of log shed light on the participant’s purpose of making clear to the students the use of indefinite articles in english by translating what they mean: “the teacher explains saying that in spanish we use “una/ un” and gives more examples”. besides, he stated the activity intent: “to clarify the use of indefinite articles a/an”. likewise, he points out the use of such articles by giving a phonological explanation: “when the pronunciation is voiceless (no sound), you use “an”. it is also a controlled technique (∆) because what this professor purports is to lead the explanation of a language item for students to internalize it. besides, it is assumed that he is the only one with the pertinent knowledge and therefore the one who controls the way this input is conveyed to students. on the whole, what i might infer from these outcomes is that every single instrument applied to collect data (observation sheets and teacher’s logs), revealed that the controlled technique is dominant regarding what was displayed by statistics. additionally, it is important to remember that the semi-structured interview did not undergo statistical analysis since it did not provide enough information. however, there were very useful excerpts which contribute to support what has been found in the other instruments. on the other hand, to validate the results that assert the controlled technique is dominant over both professors’ lessons. it is clear that the participant english teachers used most of the time activities such as 3 “organizational”, 4 “content explanation”, 9 “checking” and so forth. yet, sarah and robert developed such activities in their own way; that is, activities were not developed literally as they were posed by brown, which confronted somehow his activity objective material used (4∆) to clarify the use of indefinite articles a/an. describing your room. pictures (teacher log robert, february 2nd , 2007) profile 10.indd 173 23/10/2008 8:46:30 gavilán galindo universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras174 taxonomy, so that his foundations were not utterly fulfilled by what was found in the information gathered. relating to the semicontrolled and free techniques, it is worth noting that despite not obtaining very high percentages they are remarkable features within those teachers’ lessons since there were overt activities recorded that evidenced the professors’ attempt to promote such techniques. therefore, as i have previously pointed out, the existing implications to these findings will be commented on in the forthcoming section. conclusions keeping in mind that the first category of analysis and the research question were to identify the dominant language teaching technique of two teachers of english, i can say that the results of the study revealed that the technique most developed by both professors is the controlled, which pinpoints activity-centered lessons as a helpful form of guiding students’ learning process. in other words, what the analysis of data indicated is that most of the time students had to work on language activities which were intended to practice linguistic forms. the second category of analysis was concerned with identifying the four activities most practiced by sarah and robert as regards the 39 taken from the proposed taxonomy of brown. thereby, what the statistical analysis portrayed is that the activities favored the most were 3 “organizational”, 4 “content explanation”, 9 “checking”, 10 “correction or feedback”, 16 “identification”, 19 “testing” and 38 “composition”. except for the last one, what all of them have in common is that they belong to the controlled technique framed within brown’s classification. in this sense, the fact of having a controlled technique to teaching a foreign language can be due to several variables. for instance, it is worth noting that the two participant teachers were observed while they were teaching first semester students, which may constitute a relevant factor of such an instructional decision-making. that is to say, it is important to highlight that teaching english as a foreign language to first semester students of a teaching program requires the adoption of a directive role, since learners are at the initial phase of their learning process and, therefore, they need to be led concerning the input provided and the output expected from them. when looking at the emerging results from the instruments applied, there were overt activities that revealed that the expected outcome was linguistic rather than communicative because the teachers’ intent was to teach students the accurate form of language utterances. therefore, such a purpose indicates that what both professors purport is to foster the linguistic competence of their pupils. yet, when the participants were interviewed, they asserted their language teaching approach was mainly communicative. nevertheless, it is important to emphasize that the communicative approach faces two main stages according to littlewood (1981): pre-communicative activities and communicative activities. the first refers to giving the learners a complete control over language forms by emphasizing on the production of profile 10.indd 174 23/10/2008 8:46:30 a study of the dominant type of technique (controlled, semicontrolled and free) of two english teachers... profile 10, 2008. issn 1657-0790. bogotá, colombia. pages 163-180 175 accurate utterances; that is, such activities are intended to prepare learners for future communication, which means the progression from controlled practice to a creative language use. the second concentrates on an effective production of meaning in which the activities provided should enhance the emergence of the skills acquired by the student within the previous phase. hence, its objective has to do with the capacity of conveying what a speaker purports. bearing in mind the above foundations, it could be asserted that teachers sarah and robert are fostering the former stage of the communicative approach, since they draw attention to language forms and that is why they implemented a controlled technique to language teaching. accordingly, their methodological choice would be reasonable so that they were in charge of beginner students who require the knowledge of the target language to succeed in further communication. furthermore, although teachers intended to promote communicative activities, the final result was assessed in terms of grammatical or linguistic features, which disregarded the original communicative purpose of the activity developed. in short, implementing a controlled technique to language teaching is not a decision at random since, as stated in the theoretical framework part, techniques are considered within this research as a teleological and procedural view of language teaching. therefore, we can see there are many variables to bear in mind when teaching a foreign language, and due to those concerns, professors sarah and robert selected such a means to carry out their lessons. further research it would be interesting to delve into other professors’ lessons from more advanced semesters so as to compare whether the findings might be similar or not. likewise, as my partner and i worked based on an a priori research approach, it could be more challenging to focus on a grounded research approach in accordance with the information gathered. in regards to the instruments applied, implementing journals, doing member-checks or participatory research (merriam, 1998) would make teachers active subjects regarding their teaching practice and the study itself. references anthony, e. (1963). approach, method and technique. english language teaching, 17, 63-67. bonilla-castro, e. & rodríguez, p. (2005). más allá del dilema de los métodos: la investigación en ciencias sociales. bogotá: editorial norma. brown, j. (1995). a systematic approach to program development. massachussets: heinle & heinle publishers. brown, d. (2001). teaching by principles. new york: prentice hall. burns, a. (1999). collaborative action research for english language teachers. cambridge: cambridge university press. crookes, g. & chaudron, c. (1991). guidelines for classroom language teaching. in celce-murcia, m. teaching english as a second or foreign language (2nd ed., pp. 46-67). boston, mass.: heinle and heinle. crookes, g. (2003). a practicum in tesol. cambridge: cambridge university press. profile 10.indd 175 23/10/2008 8:46:31 gavilán galindo universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras176 doff, a. (1988). teaching english: a training course for teachers. cambridge: cambridge university press. freeman, d. (1998). doing teacher research. boston: heinle & heinle publishers. littlewood, w. (1981). communicative language teaching: an introduction. cambridge: cambridge university press. merriam, s. (1998). qualitative research and case study applications in education. san francisco: jossey-bass publishers. richards, j. & lockhart, c. (1994). reflective teaching in second language classrooms. cambridge: cambridge university press. seligner, h. & shohamy, e. (1990). second language research methods. oxford: oxford university press. taylor, s.j. & bogdan, r. (1987). introducción a los métodos cualitativos de investigación. españa: paidós ibérica s.a. about the author francia del pilar gavilán galindo holds a b. ed. in modern languages from universidad de la salle and is a research assistant of foreign languages didactics at the same institution. she also works for the languages center of universidad pedagógica nacional as a teacher of english. profile 10.indd 176 23/10/2008 8:46:31 a study of the dominant type of technique (controlled, semicontrolled and free) of two english teachers... profile 10, 2008. issn 1657-0790. bogotá, colombia. pages 163-180 177 appendix 1: taxonomy of language teaching techniques (brown, 2001, adapted from crookes & chaudron, 1991, p. 52-54) controlled techniques warm up1. : mimes, dance, songs, jokes, play. this activity has the purpose of getting the students stimulated, relaxed, motivated, attentive, or otherwise engaged and ready for the classroom lesson. it does not necessarily involve use of the target language. setting2. : focusing in on lesson topic. either verbal or nonverbal evocation of the context that is relevant to the lesson point by way of questioning or miming or picture presentation; possibly tape recording of situations and people. teacher directs attention to the upcoming topic. organizational3. : managerial structuring of lesson or class activities. includes disciplinary action, organization of class furniture and seating, general procedures for class interaction and performance, structure and purpose of lesson, assigning homework or any other out of class task, etc. content explanation4. : explanation of lesson content involving grammatical, phonological, lexical (vocabulary), sociolinguistic, pragmatic, or any other aspects of language. role-play demonstration5. : use of selected students or teacher to illustrate the 11 procedure(s) to be applied in the lesson segment to follow. includes a brief illustration of language or other content to be incorporated. dialogue/narrative presentation6. : reading or listening passage presented for passive reception. no implication of student production or other identification of specific target forms or functions (students may be asked to “understand”). dialogue/narrative recitation7. : reciting a previously known or prepared text, either in unison or individually. reading aloud8. : teacher or student reading directly from a given text. checking9. : teacher either circulating or guiding the correction of students’ work, providing feedback as an activity rather than within another activity. it can happen when students socialize work or after activities when it is necessary to check students’ answers to a given exercise. it also includes students’ peer correction. correction or feedback:10. 4 teacher or students jumping in during students’ performance to make corrections, provide feedback, make related comments, complete or finish students’ sentences, add information (it includes short content reviews). 4 the addition of such an activity was thought of because when we were reading the raw data, it was very common of the participants to disrupt students when they made mistakes with respect to linguistic features (grammar, vocabulary, pronunciation and so forth). profile 10.indd 177 23/10/2008 8:46:31 gavilán galindo universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras178 question-answer, display:11. activity involving prompting of student responses by means of display questions (i.e. teacher or questioner already knowing the response or having a very limited set of expectations for the appropriate response). distinguished from referential questions by means of the likelihood of the questioner’s knowing the response and the speaker’s being aware of that fact. students’ questions to the teacher or their partners comprise part of this activity. remember that the fact of using yes/no questions is not the only criterion, the main criterion is the fact that the questioner knows the answer. in class students usually don’t know the answer, so their questions would fit into referential questions. drill:12. typical language activity involving fixed patterns of teacher and student responding and prompting, usually with repetition, substitution, and other mechanical alterations. typically with little meaning attached. translation:13. student or teacher provision of ll or l2 translations of given text. dictation:14. student writing down orally presented text. copying:15. student writing down text presented visually. identification:16. student picking out and producing/labeling or otherwise identifying a specific target form, function, definition, meaning or other lessonrelated item. reading comprehension exercises comprise part of this activity. recognition: 17. student identifying forms, etc., as in identification, but without producing language as response (i.e., checking off items, drawing symbols, rearranging pictures). review:18. teacher-led review of previous week/month or other period as a formal summary and type of test of student recall performance. testing:19. formal testing procedures to evaluate student progress. meaningful drill:20. drill activity involving responses with meaningful choices, as in reference to different information. distinguished from information exchange by the regulated sequence and general form of responses. semicontrolled techniques brainstorming:21. a special form of preparation for the lesson, like setting, which involves free, undirected contributions by the students and teacher on a given topic, to generate multiple associations without linking them; no explicit analysis or interpretation by the teacher. story-telling22. (especially when student-generated): not necessarily lesson-based. lengthy presentation of story or even by teacher or student (may overlap with warm-up or narrative recitation). may be used to maintain attention, motivation, or as lengthy practice. question-answer, referential:23. activity involving prompting of responses by means of referential questions (i.e. the questioner does not know beforehand the response information). distinguished from question-answer, display. profile 10.indd 178 23/10/2008 8:46:31 a study of the dominant type of technique (controlled, semicontrolled and free) of two english teachers... profile 10, 2008. issn 1657-0790. bogotá, colombia. pages 163-180 179 cued narrative/dialog: 24. student production of narrative or dialog following cues from miming, cue cards, pictures, or other stimuli related to narrative/dialog (e.g. metalanguage requesting functional acts). information transfer:25. application from one mode (e.g. visual) to another (e.g. writing), which involves some transformation of the information (e.g. student fills out diagram while listening to description). distinguished from identification in that the student is expected to transform and reinterpret the language or information. information exchange:26. task involving two-way communication as in information gap exercises, when one or both parties (or a larger group) must share information to achieve some goal. distinguished from question-answer. referential in that sharing of information is critical for the resolution of task. wrap-up:27. brief teacher or student produced summary or report at the end of a lesson or activity of point and/or items that have been practiced or learned. narration/exposition:28. presentation of a story or explanation derived from prior stimuli (that is to say, a dialog or story that the student received before and is not the product of something the teacher is showing him/her like pictures or scenes for students to construct at the moment). distinguished from cued narrative because of lack of immediate stimulus. preparation:29. student study, silent reading, pair planning and rehearsing, preparing for later activity. usually a student-directed or -oriented project. free techniques role-play:30. relatively free acting out of specified roles and functions. distinguished from cued dialogues by the fact that cueing is provided only minimally at the beginning, and not during the activity. games:31. various kinds of language game activity, if not like other previously defined activities (e.g. board and dice games making words). report:32. report of student-prepared exposition on books, experiences, project work, without immediate stimulus, and elaborated on according to student interests. akin to composition in writing mode. problem solving:33. activity involving specified problem and limitations of means to resolve it; requires cooperative action on part of participants in small or large group. drama:34. planned dramatic rendition of play, skit, story, etc. simulation:35. activity involving complex interaction between groups and individuals based on simulation of real-life actions and experiences. interview:36. a student is directed to get information from another student or students. profile 10.indd 179 23/10/2008 8:46:31 gavilán galindo universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras180 discussion:37. debate or other form of grouped discussion (between teacher and students or students among them) of specified topic, with or without specified sides/positions prearranged. in these discussions the teacher can also play an important role. composition:38. as in report (verbal), written development of ideas, story or other exposition. a propos:39. conversation or other socially oriented interaction/speech by teacher, students, or even visitors, on general real-life copies. typically authentic and genuine. profile 10.indd 180 23/10/2008 8:46:31 147profile vol. 13, no. 2, october 2011. issn 1657-0790. bogotá, colombia. pages 147-161 education for bilingualism: connecting spanish and english from the curriculum, into the classroom, and beyond educación para el bilingüismo: español e inglés conectados desde el currículo hasta el salón de clase, y más allá claudia lucía ordóñez* universidad nacional de colombia, bogotá i present here the results of a qualitative research study on the impact of a curriculum that connects learning events in spanish and english in authentic communicative performances during its first year of use in a private school in a medium-size colombian city. i did discourse analysis of interviews with participating teachers and class observations including small in-situ interviews with teachers and students. they revealed positive changes in the language learning environments of the school, the teachers’ ideas about language and language learning, and the students’ communicative skills and ways of learning. i use these results to introduce the concept of education for bilingualism to replace that of bilingual education we use in colombia. i find the practices of the latter ineffective in our mostly monolingual context. key words: bilingual curriculum, bilingual education, bilingualism in a monolingual context, education for bilingualism, research on bilingual curriculum. presento aquí los resultados de una investigación cualitativa sobre el impacto de un currículo que conecta eventos de aprendizaje en español e inglés en desempeños auténticos comunicativos durante su primer año de uso en un colegio privado de una ciudad intermedia colombiana. hice un análisis discursivo de entrevistas con los maestros participantes y observaciones de clase que incluyeron pequeñas entrevistas in­situ con maestros y alumnos. el análisis revela cambios positivos en los ambientes de aprendizaje de lengua del colegio, las ideas de los maestros sobre la lengua y su aprendizaje, las habilidades comunicativas de los alumnos y sus formas de aprender. uso estos resultados para introducir el concepto de educación para el bilingüismo, en contraposición al de educación bilingüe que usamos en colombia, cuyas prácticas encuentro inapropiadas para nuestro contexto, mayoritariamente monolingüe. palabras clave: bilingüismo en contexto monolingüe, currículo bilingüe, educación bilingüe, educación para el bilingüismo, investigación en currículo bilingüe. this article contains results from the research study entitled “evaluation of the practice and effectiveness of a curriculum connecting spanish and english”, financed by the facultad de ciencias humanas at universidad nacional de colombia, convocatoria orlando fals borda 2009. code: 10533, hermes research system. * e-mail: clordonezo@unal.edu.co this article was received on january 31, 2011, and accepted on july 14, 2011. 148 universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras ordóñez bilingual education in colombia two facts about language acquisition are consistently supported in research. first, everyone can learn one or several languages; and second, the success of this learning depends on the real need or wish to use the new language(s) in authentic communication (snow, 2007). these facts exist because what motivates and promotes the learning of language is the social need and the pragmatic demands of communication; that is, the characteristics, relationships, and purposes of those who communicate and the contextual conditions in which they do so (ninio & snow, 1996). this is why a main problem we face in colombia (when teaching foreign languages like english that we accept as necessary in today’s life) is that our socio-linguistic context is mostly monolingual in spanish. this means that we do not need to use english to function in society, which makes it especially difficult for us to motivate our children and adolescents to learn it. in our limited experience in international languages and with school bilingualism, we see that the institutions perceived as most successful are the schools we call bilingual. these are mostly elite private schools located in our large cities. they have adopted bilingual education models developed for contexts alien to ours (ordóñez, 2008). many follow the programs and practices of canadian immersion and even programs, policies, and accreditation systems used by and for monolingual schools in europe or the united states (de mejía, ordóñez & fonseca, 2006). but they also follow common sense: if the foreign language does not occur naturally in our social context, creating the need for it at school makes sense. so they set up artificial environments in which the foreign language of interest becomes necessary for communication and academic success through four basic actions: the introduction of the foreign language at the earliest possible age, normally at preschool level and often in partial or total immersion programs; the learning of academic areas different from the language itself in the foreign language; the hiring of as many native foreign language teachers as possible; and the requirement that everyone in school speak in the foreign language in and outside of class. but the very little research done in these learning environments reveals that policy-makers can easily ignore important facts of language acquisition. a probable exaggerated concern for the lack of second language use in the immediate social context causes many of our so-called bilingual schools to concentrate on it and neglect the development of spanish, apparently taken for granted (de mejía et al., 2006). some of this research has even produced evidence of impoverishment of some communicative skills in spanish and a strong influence of the rhetorical characteristics of english as regards the spanish oral narratives of students from these schools when compared to those of students from spanish monolingual schools (ordóñez, 2000; 2004; 2005). although there is no evidence from research of bilinguals exhibiting the same skills of two monolinguals and it is not expected that they do so, a considerable reduction of skills in the first language is not justifiable for the sake of alleged bilingualism, especially in a monolingual sociolinguistic context. the goal of bilingualism cannot override a central fact of language acquisition: after four or five years of age, the main stimulus for the development of language is the school experience. this is because entering school creates the need for the child to communicate with a variety of new people, in a variety of new communicative situations, and in the context of a variety of new topics and discourse types associated with them. 149profile vol. 13, no. 2, october 2011. issn 1657-0790. bogotá, colombia. pages 147-161 education for bilingualism: connecting spanish and english from the curriculum... additionally, reading and writing start formally in school and become the largest possible source of linguistic expansion (barriga-villanueva, 2002; 2003) this is true for the foreign language when its development is a school goal, but it is first true for the first language, whose development should not be neglected in school. in addition to this, children born in a monolingual environment can become bilingual in school, but they will be consecutive bilinguals, having acquired a lot of their first language before entering school. this means that they will naturally use their knowledge of the first language to learn the second one and will need to be able to consciously recognize differences between the two. schools which commit to the goal of bilingualism in our monolingual context need to find ways to respond to the needs not only of foreign language learning, but of sophisticated development in the first language. school bilingualism in crisis the difficulty of our monolingual sociolinguistic context for the learning of english varies in intensity in the very different circumstances in which communities live in a country as diverse as colombia. for example, it is a little easier in our big cities to find english speaking people, books in english, and places where english is in use (e.g. in touristic and commercial activities). but in our smaller cities, the use of english is farther away from the daily life of children and youngsters. however, the social pressure for learning english is so strong that many schools in medium-size and small cities have followed the model of our apparently very successful bilingual institutions, without considering the extra difficulty posed by the socio-linguistic contexts in which their students socialize. the school where the present research was conducted is located in a medium-size colombian city. the school had struggled for around 15 years to produce bilingual individuals by implementing the abovementioned policies with poor results. the students did not speak english easily, naturally or willingly. they often showed actual resistance to using it, and instead of english they used something like spanish with english words. in 2007 i was invited as a consultant by the school administrators to discuss these problems. among the possible reasons for the situation were mentioned the level of english and of the pedagogic effectiveness of their teachers, the lack of enough foreign teachers, and their inability to put english into use in enough classes, school events, and places in the institution. they were surprised at my explanations related to the very little sense that the students found in the use of english in their lives, and at the solution i proposed: real bilingualism through fostering increasingly complex development of communicative abilities in spanish and establishing connections between spanish and english language developments. the administrators were open to new possibilities and hired me to try ideas not typical of the model bilingual school. i worked with both their language departments. the new curriculum the work on curricular design started with a group of some of the english and spanish teachers chosen by the school and the coordinators of the two areas. for eight months the group discussed language development in the school, the curriculum in use, and a few theoretical documents that illuminated new possibilities for achieving bilingualism. as a result, the group accepted that change was necessary and designed some activities that were tried out in both english and spanish classes in 2008. at the end of that year i converted the collective experience into a new curriculum with the following characteristics: it applies constructivist 150 universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras ordóñez principles of human learning, the one relating to authentic action for learning connecting to communicative linguistic theory to produce a curriculum focused on “authentic communicative performances”. it is actually bilingual, due to the application of theory on first and second language acquisition in connection to the importance given in constructivism to previous knowledge in the building of the new one; and it covers three contexts of language development: that of daily communication and communication through the mass media, the communication necessary when approaching knowledge in different academic disciplines, and artistic and cultural expression. the characteristics of the curriculum are consistent with four basic constructivist principles taken from the work of different researchers who have contributed to the complex construct that is, today, this description of human learning. the first one points out the fact that learning occurs when doing things. piaget (1970) refers to manipulating elements in the environment; vygotsky (1978) to social actions with others with different levels of cognitive development and knowledge; perkins (1998) to performances of understanding; and dewey (1945) and the theory of situated cognition (brown, collins & duguid, 1989; díaz barriga, 2003), to action as it occurs authentically in life. authentic activity with language is always the representation, transmission, and purposeful use of meaning in communication among interlocutors or writers and readers. hence, the curriculum is composed of “authentic performances” (ordóñez, 2010). in this case they are communicative actions or processes performed in specific contexts by people who use their constructed knowledge in their daily or professional life when acting as learners or as experts to fulfill real-life purposes. applied linguistics enables us to identify authentic communicative performances in the real world on the basis of the pragmatic conditions that define communicative acts. these pragmatic conditions have been specified by researchers during more than 30 years of development and use of the communicative approach to language analysis (widdowson, 1978; van lier, 2005), to wit: the characteristics of the sender of the message, the position from which he/she sends it and his/ her purpose, the characteristics of the receiver, the relationships between sender and receiver, and the context in which communication occurs. the curriculum, then, focuses on authenticity and its application depends completely on the teachers’ ability to analyze their own and others’ communicative experiences in order to design class performances. these should correspond to reallife communicative situations, actions, processes, and products. authenticity for specific groups of students is further supported when performances are related to their contexts and interests, when the students themselves participate in decision-making about what to learn, what to do to learn, and how to do it and when communicating requires the use of different sources of information, knowledge from different disciplines and types, and interactions with others. all this is what happens in the real world when one acts using or looking for real understanding of phenomena and events. the recognition of work with others as an authentic feature of real life performance is reinforced by the second constructivist principle. socio-cultural in nature and initially established by vygotsky (1978), it recognizes interaction with others as basic for individual learning. as a result, teaching and learning on the basis of this curriculum are highly based on collaborative work. the third constructivist principle indicates that all learning occurs naturally as processes (piaget, 1970). for this reason, the curriculum just indicates starting points for work on specific communicative 151profile vol. 13, no. 2, october 2011. issn 1657-0790. bogotá, colombia. pages 147-161 education for bilingualism: connecting spanish and english from the curriculum... performances, but not ending points. after a communicative performance and its associated language are introduced, they appear and re-appear repeatedly in different contexts. as a result, the same or very similar performances also appear in different grades, to be done in increasingly complex ways according to the age of the students and their accumulated language repertoire, which is maintained in permanent use. this corresponds to dewey’s description of a cyclical curriculum (1948), whose purpose is not to differentiate learning periods or school grades on the basis of content, but to guide learning processes. the fourth constructivist principle contributes to this cyclical nature of the curriculum, as it states that all new learning is built on knowledge previously constructed (piaget, 1970; ausubel, 1968). the application of this principle requires the curriculum to constantly connect the performances and language already used to the new performances and language presented. it also supports building skills in the foreign language on the basis of those in the first language, a feature that defines the curriculum as bilingual. the curriculum is bilingual, then, because all communicative performances occur first in spanish and then serve as support for similar ones in english. spanish and english teachers, then, have to work together in planning and designing in struction. on many occasions, starting from the students’ interests in really communicative, authentic activities that they cared about in spanish, the curriculum allows teachers working in collaboration to motivate the students to do those activities in english too. thus the two languages end up being used for similar communicative purposes and bilingually in the same performances whenever possible and natural, with the support of teachers from both areas (e.g. looking for and using information in bibliographic research; interviewing speakers of both languages as informants in journalistic, personal, or empirical research; developing bilingual radio and tv shows, news programs and newspapers). this also allows teachers to complement each other’s knowledge when the students need help in comparing their two languages to understand how they work similarly or differently. finally, the three contexts for communicative development covered in the curriculum –daily life and the media, academic, and aesthetic-cultural communication– are not unknown to language teachers. however, one or several of them can be forgotten or at least neglected in their classes. the curriculum permanently reminds teachers to include communicative performances in the three contexts and to connect them whenever possible. the research i present here started at the end of 2008, the year participating teachers tried out a few examples of performances planned by the design group and some others created by the teachers. the first data come from information provided by the teachers about these piloting efforts. in 2009 the previous curriculum stopped being used and the new one was adopted in the whole school. the study in agreement with the school, i designed a qualitative study to evaluate the impact of the curriculum on the learning of students and teachers in its first year of use. a qualitative methodology was consistent with the nature of the changes that the curriculum was intended to produce initially, which had to be apparent in what happened inside the language learning classrooms, in the actual performance of teachers and students, and through their opinions and observations. the impact of the curriculum on the language development of the students, the final goal of the whole project, would need to be evaluated quantitatively through 152 universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras ordóñez standardized tests after a longer period of time. therefore, the following are the research questions i and three student research assistants set out to answer in this initial exploration: • how was the curriculum put into practice? • what did the teachers learn? • what did the students learn? data were collected in field trips from bogotá on thursdays and fridays on three occasions during the academic year (december/february, april/ may, and september). all the english and spanish teachers who gave classes on those days from grades transition to eleventh were observed and filmed in one of their courses. the observations included short, in-class interviews with the teacher and some students about what they were doing. in-depth, semi-structured interviews were also conducted with all the participating teachers and coordinators. at the end of the year the data which were complete for the same teacher and students on all three collection occasions were chosen as the final sample for analysis, as this ensured that the participating teachers had worked steadily with the curriculum from the beginning of its implementation. the data came only from three english courses taught by colombian teachers (kindergarten, with 6 to 7 year-old children, and sixth and seventh grades, with 12 to 14 year olds) and six spanish courses (transition, second and fifth grades, with 5 to 11-year-old children, and grades eight, nine, and eleven, with adolescents from 14 to 19 years of age). data from the english courses were very incomplete due to the constant change and movement of both colombian and foreign english teachers, a common phenomenon in bilingual schools. videos and interviews were transcribed, and discourse analysis was done on the transcriptions in search for specific information to answer the research questions. to determine final results, findings from the interviews and the class observations were triangulated. results evidence from the data reveals a process in which spanish and english teachers improved their confidence, effectiveness, and quality in the design and implementation of communicative performances and in making them as authentic as possible for their students throughout the year. most of them also found the coordination of their planning with the teacher of the other language productive. all this changed the nature and characteristics of the language learning environments in the school and the teachers’ conceptions of language, language learning, and their role as teachers. these changes helped students improve their skills in spanish and english and their ways of learning. the results describe in detail the new environments and what both teachers and students achieved in the process, which includes pedagogical, linguistic, pragmatic, attitudinal, and metacognitive learning. how was the curriculum put into practice? the characteristics of the language learning environments in the school show that all participating english and spanish teachers brought authentic communicative performances to their individual classes in the three contexts of communicative development in the curriculum. these performances were generally described in the curriculum and discussed in our meetings, but it was the teachers who managed to specifically design them for their students, in spite of big doubts they constantly expressed about their decisions on the authenticity of what they planned. in the areas of daily and media communication, the english teachers had their students, even the 153profile vol. 13, no. 2, october 2011. issn 1657-0790. bogotá, colombia. pages 147-161 education for bilingualism: connecting spanish and english from the curriculum... youngest ones, handle question-answer exchanges as minimal oral production units and use the questions to get real information about people outside the classroom. in both their spanish and english classes the students developed and presented autobiographical scrapbooks to their classmates, performed a variety of role plays, created and presented different types of radio and television shows and news programs, wrote different types of journalistic articles running them through successive critical readings and editing them repeatedly, and published them for different readers. in the area of communication in the academic disciplines in both spanish and english, students conducted bibliographic research projects and personal learning projects using multiple types of sources and data from interviews; they made different types of presentations of reports to real audiences and wrote different academic texts for different readers with successive drafts. in turn, in the area of aesthetic and cultural communication, the students chose to read their favorite literature in both english and spanish, shared their understandings and interpretations with their classmates orally, in writing and in public performance, recommended books to others in different ways, planned, wrote and presented scripts from literary works, created and acted out original scripts, and learned, composed and interpreted songs before audiences. all teachers planned for their performances to occur in ways as close as possible to how they happen in reality and using authentic materials, allowed student participation in deciding what to do, on what topics, and how to do it, and stimulated and supported collaborative work. additionally, all except for one spanish teacher (who insisted on working mostly from literature carried out with their students’ performances related to their families and social contexts, their school and the city where they live) and only two spanish teachers did not work on performances connected to other language or academic areas. illustrations of all these different learning environments and the levels of authenticity achieved are abundant in the data. in 6th grade english, for example, the teacher speaks about the use of students’ interests and collaborative work, and comments on the changes that the latter naturally produces in the children’s work, in a performance that combines academic and aesthetic communication. they are creating… [a magazine] on [an academic] topic they chose… first they asked questions about what they would like to investigate… and that [was] the opportunity to work on how to ask questions correctly… today… they had to bring information from the internet, books, magazines, in spanish or in english, to start discussing and answering those questions here. several groups have realized that the questions they initially proposed were limited [according] to what they have found. for example, that group… [started] with… what was a comedy...; but now… they want to compare movies and take… the characteristics of a comedy from them… then i told them [to look at their questions and see if they really worked for what they wanted, and they decided to change them]. (class observation, 6th grade english, february) additionally the teacher’s words indicate that she used the opportunity to work on the grammar and syntax of questions because the students actually needed to clarify the questions they had on their topic of personal interest in order to be able to focus their bibliographic search. this academic performance also allowed students to use materials in english and spanish, even though they were in the english class. in turn, the following 3rd grade spanish teacher talks about a performance similar to the previous one, which combined journalistic and aesthetic 154 universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras ordóñez communication. the students are authentically engaged in the production of their own magazine. the teacher used a real one as a model and allowed these very young students full participation in the real work of an editorial committee. i took the school magazine to class so that we could see how it resembled [our magazine] and if we were really using the language of a magazine... they saw a page called ‘editorial’, written by the school principal, and they told me: ‘teacher… your picture is going to be here and you write our editorial… you also come to the front of the class [and present your text] and we give you suggestions…’ i wrote the editorial telling what had happened in class and read it to them… [the] suggestions [they made]… were the nicest thing…: ‘teacher, why don’t you write there that you congratulate us for what we are doing?’ this is something one keeps as a teacher and fills you with great satisfaction. (interview, 3rd grade spanish, september) the teacher was pleased with his students’ playing their role as editors; and the children include their teacher as a member of the group who works with them as an equal. the role of this teacher has become that of an associate in his students’ learning. even at the preschool levels language learning occurred in interactions which were made as au thentic as possible, inside and outside class rooms. in the following communicative performance introducing the academic and aesthetic topic of autobiography in kindergarten english, children bring to class information about themselves after obtaining it from those who really have it. we had a biography [performance] called “when i was a baby”… first they [wanted to do] an interview with their parents asking them, obviously in spanish, what they did when they were babies, if they cried a lot, what they ate, things like that. then they said that in spanish and we helped them translate it. then they could say: “when i was a baby, i used to eat baby food”… they brought pictures of [themselves] when they were babies [and] then [said] “when i was a baby…” showing the picture. and then they talked about a classmate: “he used to like this, his favorite program was this”. (interview, kindergarten english, may) by sharing their autobiographical information with their classmates, these 5 and 6-year-old children used questions and answers with rather complex language for their second year of english learning. the authenticity of their interests provides the teachers with the question-answer structures that the children learn, without pedagogic attention to its complexity. in spanish, in 2nd grade, the children developed their own version of a news program from a real one. the program is constructed from events that occurred in the school and that the children are interested in. teacher: for today we have an exercise i had promised you… student 1: we are going to watch the news... teacher: we said we were going to create a news program, but not like the news programs we don’t like to watch on tv because they talk about topics that sometimes we do not understand, about tragic things that happen… we are going to create a news program that we… like… about things that happen in our… student 2: school! teacher: let’s make a news piece about our institution, about things that are going to happen or that have happened and that we consider important to be in the news… teacher (to researchers): [we’ll] watch the news in the systems room… to observe the vocabulary used, what types of news are shown, how they are shown, how long the news pieces take… then... in groups… [they’ll] think about the sources from which they’ll collect information [for their own news], the interview [they’ll do], whatever. then, we start… the writing process, obviously supported by the teachers. once they have it, we start the staging of vocals, oral expression, to start organizing the news program to present it to their classmates, and maybe the parents… (class observation, 2nd grade spanish, september) the development of the news program allows the teacher to work on the pragmatics of tv news 155profile vol. 13, no. 2, october 2011. issn 1657-0790. bogotá, colombia. pages 147-161 education for bilingualism: connecting spanish and english from the curriculum... shows, the language associated with narration, future events, and oral expression, as children play the role of journalists and newscasters. the authenticity of the news is provided by the context of the school community, where so many things happen that not everybody knows about them. the children decide what is important to report to that audience and work together in writing their news. what did teachers learn? the data presented in response to the previous question are also evidence of the teachers’ learning as they put into practice our connected spanishenglish curriculum. some of those data and the ones i present below reveal that they learned much more than designing communicative performances and making them as authentic as possible for their students: throughout the year they improved their skills and confidence in handling pedagogic planning; in actually putting into practice the constructivist principles that support it and in identifying and working with the students on the language that they can learn as they perform communicatively. they also showed learning related to the process of evaluation and their role as teachers. authentic performances –often long term processes with multiple stages to reach finished products– represented big planning challenges for teachers used to carrying out activities ending in fast achievements. all participating teachers speak explicitly about improving in their handling of both the number of performances completed in a determined planning period and their duration. this was possible mostly by having the students work on performances in more than one of the three curriculum communicative contexts simultaneously (e.g. reading a book and doing research on an academic topic), something teachers considered impossible at the beginning of the year. actually putting into practice the constructivist principles was also a challenge for teachers that have heard about them repeatedly but have never really seen what they look like in classrooms. the curriculum helped them direct learning as a process and use students’ prior knowledge, including that of their native spanish, because of its cyclical nature and the relation it establishes between the two languages. all participating teachers expressed that they gradually learned to handle the distinction between grades and between complexity levels in similar performances appearing in different grades. additionally, all but one spanish teacher expressed and demonstrated in their performances the use of collaborative work among students. the ability to analyze instances of communication and decide what grammar and syntax to bring to classroom practice is one of the most complex linguistic and pedagogical skills for teachers used to teaching what textbooks dictate. the class observations show that all but one of the participants, a spanish teacher, did it well, even though they expressed insecurity on this subject in their interviews. finally, through the use of the curriculum, the teachers really experienced other concepts common in teaching discourse but not easily seen in practice. thus, all but one spanish teacher spoke of having developed a new conception for the evaluation of learning, based on the observation of processes and the participation of the students. also all but one english teacher talked about having adopted a new role as supporters of and companions in their students’ learning. the following examples illustrate some of this learning in the words of the teachers. the 5th and 6th grade spanish and english teachers, for example, talk about how they handle aesthetic performances and performances in academic and media communication with a lot of flexibility in 156 universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras ordóñez their planning. this flexible management allows teachers and students to face unexpected class situations without problems. the fourth phase [of the creation of a school news program] was work in the systems room. there we had a problem with the filming and the cameras… [and] we had to ask the engineer to change the format of the videos. then, while that happened, i had to do something else, so we worked on other performances at the same time. [the kids were reading their books from the] reader’s plan and [we had] compositions [to edit]. (interview, 5th grade spanish, may) now we are working on biographies and autobiographies and, at the same time, we are working on the reader’s plan, which is totally free [reading] because its purpose is to enjoy the text they bought at the book fair. (interview, 6th grade english, may) an english teacher from kindergarten, very early after her first try-outs with authentic performances, realized the changes they were to produce on the way learning and evaluation proceed. she compares the new way with her previous work with traditional achievements. the performances provide logical continuity. the objectives [we worked with before] came as islands, detached from logic, and with the message that they have to end and be done with… an objective… was closed, and evaluated, and gone, and if [the student] failed, then there was remedial work and the child had to study in three days and take a remedial test… with performances, instead, we have like a continuum; it is work in a more sequential way and more logical, and in addition the evaluation process is going to change too, which brings many benefits for the children. (interview, kindergarten english, december) this teacher, at an early stage, even predicts the change that is to come in the evaluation of children’s learning. this change is already a fact for the following 2nd grade spanish teacher, who describes it in her may and september interviews. for me the most complicated part has been to understand the evaluation process of the new curriculum … before one knew that a guide was given [and graded] … but [now] you don’t have a moment of evaluation; the evaluation is more the process. (interview, 2nd grade, spanish may) i think that today, with the results we have obtained, i have understood it more… those children who… require more time to elaborate the information and approach it, transmit it and put it in a context… have been the ones who have benefited the most with this process, because you don’t make an activity or develop three or four activities and close [them] because a new one has to start. (interview, 2nd grade spanish, september) this second grade teacher explains how it is possible now to respect the different learning processes in the children. this idea is also very clearly stated by the 9th grade spanish teacher who, below, connects the cyclical characteristic of the curriculum with the management of learning as a process and its implication in evaluation. the students have realized that it is easier for them now… that everything is done again. then they are not so lost… in the process, because they know that if they could not argue well in this text, they can do it better in the final draft, and if not there, in another performance. then it is like the possibility to develop more skills and strengthen their processes. (interview, 9th grade spanish, may) in turn, the transition spanish teacher, working with the youngest children in the school (5 years of age), describes change related to her work in collaboration with the canadian english teacher. she started the change in her early try-outs with authentic performances. at two different moments in the project, she indicates the important advantages this change has for students. [the performance] was worked at the same time with english, so what was done in spanish, [the english teacher] would now work in english… [the english teacher] was telling me that he was astonished to see how transition children had developed more english thanks to their spanish native language, so we are working together. (interview, transition spanish, december 2008) 157profile vol. 13, no. 2, october 2011. issn 1657-0790. bogotá, colombia. pages 147-161 education for bilingualism: connecting spanish and english from the curriculum... i was not working with the english teacher … for many reasons. but now we reread the curriculum and there i really understood the importance of working with the english teachers, because the children assimilate english on the basis of their mother tongue … now we do meet… we have improved team work… we try to identify the language [we need to teach]; we plan a performance together… for the children it has made it easier to understand many things more in english. (interview, transition spanish, september) the teacher recognizes that her very young students benefit from her work with the english teacher, thus increasing their understanding of what they are learning. what did students learn? finally, our teachers talk about having observed important learning in their students. on the one hand, all english and three spanish teachers mention formal language learning in terms of a lot of vocabulary, grammar and structure. at the same time, all point out improvement in the skills of comprehension and writing of different types of texts and general development in communication skills. but according to the teachers, students’ learning goes beyond language and communication. they report seeing children skillfully search for, select and connect information from different sources in bibliographical research and choose and use with comfort different forms of oral presentation and audiovisual media. they see them participate responsibly as self and co-evaluators of finished work, collaborate with others to learn, and work with autonomy and responsibility. and finally, they acknowledge a new attitude towards language learning: their students show interest in their classes. in 6th grade english the teacher describes learning related to linguistic form, linguistic awareness and collaborative work: as for language… the structure and the correct management of tense [have improved]. [the students] themselves [said] that they were disorganized and did not respect structures; but… we have reached a point at which they correct, monitor themselves. we were just in class and a student was telling me about something he did not do and used a structure in present, and a classmate said: ‘no, don’t no, didn’t’. (interview, 6th grade english, september) and in kindergarten english, it is a pleasure hearing the teacher talk about the way in which the youngest children communicate in english even outside class. we even had the opportunity to see that in our class observations, as we had to answer the students’ questions about who we were, where we came from, and what we did. they already communicate with an unknown person… they already ask him things like where he lives, what he likes; they say what they like; what they dislike; what they want to do; they compare… ask questions and answer, things that the children did not do last year. they speak in well-organized complete sentences. listening skills have developed because they do understand everything and they follow instructions very well… the question-answer [interchange] is what has surprised me – i like that a lot! (interview, kindergarten english, september) in 9th grade spanish class, the teacher describes a media communication performance in which students display multiple skills for bibliographic research, oral and written presentation: they have watched national news programs [and asked] different questions on how a news program is produced in colombia… they accessed the [radio cadena nacional] webpage, where there is information about writing… and about the participation committee… they could see that there are teams that interact to produce a news issue. then… they wrote a plan for a news program… they also found different articles and news that could be used in their own the broadcasting and presented them. there was a sports section, the presentation of a political topic, a social section. that is, they presented the news program they wanted to see on television… 158 universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras ordóñez from this they made an expository text on the news and news programs in colombia. (interview, 9th grade spanish, may) finally, the english teacher for 6th and 7th grades comments on two different occasions on her students’ learning values: [i observe] values like group work, not underestimating the one who knows less or who makes more mistakes, the development of autonomy. what i do is make plans with them and [decide what] their final product has to be; they are responsible for handing that in. some already work by themselves [without supervision]. sometimes they go to work in [the systems room or the library]… and then return to the classroom. (interview, 6th and 7th grades english, may) as for the curriculum, [now they understand] the dynamics; they know that they have to hand in products, that they cannot waste time… they have gained independence in that sense. collaborative work has been key [because] they ask each other questions… support each other… help one another… before they wanted to have everything completely explained [to them]; now there is more elaboration by them. (interview, 6th and 7th grades english, september) autonomy, responsibility, awareness of the need to work, initiative, mutual help and other behaviors the students from the different levels show in both their english and spanish classes are also evidence of real motivation in learning. it is intrinsic motivation coming from the students as a response to the possibilities they discovered for their learning during this year of pedagogic change. as a final illustration of all this learning, here is the description made of what was observed in a kindergarten english class. here is a group of 6-year-old children, only in their second year of exposure to the language, working completely in english after having planned with their teacher how they wanted to talk about the profession of chef and what they wanted to be able to say. the teacher only acts as a coordinator of presentations. in this class, the students are presenting recipes as part of a performance in which the daily activities of people from different professions are investigated and described. here they talk about chefs. the children organized themselves in groups of three; the first child presents his group and the recipe they are going to prepare; the next one presents the ingredients and the utensils they are going to use; and the last student prepares the recipe, describing what he is doing. for this activity, each student dressed up according to his role and the group brought to class the ingredients and the materials they were going to use. (class observation, kindergarten english, september) discussion working in pedagogic change in practice for a year constitutes for me the most effective professional development program i have directed in many years of dedication to this activity and the one that has produced the best results in terms of student learning. at the same time it is evidence that education for bilingualism is possible in our monolingual context. this is the kind of education which corrects the deficiencies of what we call bilingual education but is mostly education for the learning of a foreign language without sufficient regard for the development that spanish has to undergo in school. education for bilingualism is based only on the language classes and is focused on achieving a high level of development of the two languages as useful instruments for communica tion and learning. it can be done if we use curricula like the one implemented in this school –which cater to the first language first; which make first and foreign language teachers work together in designing and implementing bilingual communicative teaching adapted specifically for their students and which also allows them to help students see and use the similarities and differences between the two languages in order to learn them both. several reasons contribute to explaining these conclusions. 159profile vol. 13, no. 2, october 2011. issn 1657-0790. bogotá, colombia. pages 147-161 education for bilingualism: connecting spanish and english from the curriculum... first of all, making our spanish-english cur ric ulum work required, from the teachers who did it, openness and dedication to design, implementation, self evaluation and revision of their work as well as change in their ideas about what should happen in a language class. they did it in an exemplary way and managed to change the nature and characteristics of the language learning environments in the school and to change their students’ observed learning outcomes. from this totally practical experience, the teachers developed learning that has to do with applied linguistic analysis, pedagogical planning and design consistent with the way people learn plus practical ways to support learning processes in others. not all teachers produced performances of the same quality and degree of authenticity or allowed the same active participation from students in their pedagogic decisions; however, all changed their previous pedagogic ways to some extent and ended with a conscious realization, developed and lived in real practice, of the need for communicative activity in language learning, the possibility of achieving it in authentic ways, the process and social nature of learning, and the importance of supporting the first language and connecting it with the foreign one in the process of achieving real consecutive bilingualism. some teachers even moved to connect developments in their language to those in other academic areas. secondly, the change in the classrooms and in the teachers also brought positive changes for students. the classroom extended to the whole school, its different spaces, events and means of communication, the students’ homes, the city itself, and the internet. because of this extension, the participants in the students’ learning and the sources of stimulus and information for that learning increased. all this supported developments in the two languages and beyond, in autonomy and learning skills. thirdly, the achievements were numerous even though the teachers did not stop expressing their doubts and insecurities. i consider this natural in teachers who so bravely embarked on a radical change without the support of textbooks, models, or detailed descriptions of what they had to do. they should be capable of helping others make their own changes and will advance even more if they continue working with the curriculum and increase collaboration with their colleagues. as indicated in the research methodology, this qualitative project was a necessary exploration of the initial impact of the curriculum, specifically through its ability to produce changes in the language learning environments and in the learning of teachers and students in the school. all the observed changes are criteria enough, then, to qualify the experience as successful. but this was only a beginning; there is a lot still to be done. in the first place, the school must stimulate and facilitate the continuation of the experience and –like any educational institution really interested in improving the quality of students’ learning– resolutely support the teachers’ work. they are the architects of success. it is necessary to schedule extended periods of work for students and time for spanish and english teachers to plan collaboratively. additionally, all of the school’s information media, written, oral, audiovisual, and virtual, should become authentic communication resources for the whole community, handled by students with the guidance of their teachers and dedicated to the authentic publication and broadcasting of their work. secondly, it is necessary to further evaluate the impact of the new curriculum quantitatively at a later stage as a year is probably not enough to allow improvement to register quantitatively in any 160 universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras ordóñez significant way in standardized tests. the students take different standardized tests in school and outside, which should show the observed advances formally if the work with the curriculum continues. a weakness of the curricular implementation process was that i did not work with the teachers in the use of the internet as a basic resource for authentic communicative performances. they were not regular or skillful users of the internet, so it was too difficult to dedicate time to this when so many other important changes were happening. but the internet is, nowadays, the richest resource for the authentic use of a foreign language in a monolingual environment like ours. there should be extended work on finding virtual ways to communicate with speakers of english, for example. it will be necessary to extend the development and use of this type of curriculum connecting developments in the first and a foreign language and the research on its impact if there is interest in working in effective education for bilingualism. it is important, for example, to develop and use this type of curriculum in other socio-cultural and socioeconomic contexts and observe the differences in pedagogical design and in outcomes occurring as a result of the different conditions surrounding the experiences. it will also be interesting to intervene in areas in which it was not possible to do so in this specific institution. for example, i would consider formalized learning of the foreign language later than preschool, to let the students develop spanish more solidly or at least to allow for the first stages of the development of reading and writing to consolidate before starting. bilingual education has convinced us that it is necessary to start early with the foreign language and the arguments against this are not known in schools (e.g. marinovatodd, marshall, & snow, 2000). a combination of more mother tongue, professional development for change, and authentic communicative practice, adapted differentially for specific contexts, could be the answer in the achievement of really functional bilingualism. with the same educational purposes oriented towards bilingualism in school, it would be interesting to influence the forms of connecting what happens in other areas of learning with what happens in language. language is a vehicle for all learning, and it is important to involve all teachers in its development. on the other hand, simply decreeing the teaching of different areas in one language or the other may not be effective if schools value the outcomes in both the areas and the languages. handling the language needed in approaching academic knowledge in the language classes in collaboration with the other areas and teachers may be enough for language development and may contribute greatly to learning in the areas. in education for bilingualism, it is important to envision wide developments around connected curricula and to reflect on the linguistic and learning principles on which these developments can be built. references ausubel, d. p. 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(2000). oral bilingual proficiency of colom­ bian adolescents. doctoral thesis not published, school of education. cambridge, ma: harvard university. ordóñez, c. l. (2004). efl and native spanish in elite bilingual schools in colombia: a first look at bilingual adolescent frog stories. international journal of bilingual education and bilingualism, special issue: bilingual education in south america, 7(5), 449-474. ordóñez, c. l. (2005). oral bilingual proficiency of colombian adolescents in an elite bilingual school. in j. cohen, k. mcallister, k. rolstad, & j. macswan (eds.), isb4: proceedings of the fourth international sympo­ sium on bilingualism (pp. 1765-1783). somerville, ma: cascadilla press. ordóñez, c. l. (2008). education for bilingualism in international languages in a monolingual socio-linguistic context. lenguaje, 36(2), 353-384. ordóñez, c. l. (2010). desempeño auténtico en educación. in pedagogía y didáctica: texto del docente (pp. 151160). quito: ministerio de educación de ecuador. perkins, d. (1998). what is understanding? in m. stonewiske (ed.), teaching for understanding: linking research with practice (pp. 39-57). san francisco: jossey-bass publishers. piaget, j. (1970). piaget’s theory. in p. h. mussen (ed.), car­ michael’s manual of child psychology (vol. 1). new york, ny: wiley. snow, c. e. (2007). determinants of the outcomes of language education: developmental and sociolinguistic factors. in memorias del segundo simposio latinoame­ ricano de bilingüismo y educación bilingüe en américa latina (pp. 2-12). bogotá: ediciones uniandes. van lier, l. (2005). interaction in the language curricu lum: awareness, autonomy, and authenticity. london: longman. vygotsky, l. (1978). mind in society. cambridge, ma: harvard university press. widdowson, h. g. (1978). teaching language as communi­ cation. oxford: oxford university press. about the author claudia lucía ordóñez, associate professor, department of foreign languages, universidad nacional de colombia. master in applied linguistics, universidad de los andes, bogotá; master and doctor of education (language/cognitive development and education), harvard university. director of a research group classified by colciencias: from pedagogical conceptions to pedagogical practices (pedagogy of all academic areas). 151profile vol. 11, no. 2, 2009. issn 1657-0790. bogotá, colombia. pages 151-170 addressing culture in the efl classroom: a dialogic proposal el abordaje de la cultura en la clase de inglés como lengua extranjera: una propuesta dialógica josé aldemar álvarez valencia*1 ximena bonilla medina** universidad de la salle, colombia language teaching has gone from a linguistic centered approach towards a lingo-cultural experience in which learning a language goes hand in hand with the understanding of not only the target culture, but the learner’s own culture. this paper attempts to describe and reflect upon a collaborative and dialogical experience carried out between two teachers of the languages program of universidad de la salle, in bogotá. the bilateral enrichment of such a pedagogical experience helped the teachers to improve their language teaching contexts and prompted the construction of a theoretical proposal to enhance intercultural awareness. it also opened the way for the development of critical intercultural competence in fl (foreign language) learners. key words: interculturality, critical intercultural awareness, critical intercultural competence, dialogical process la enseñanza de lengua ha pasado de un enfoque centrado en lo lingüístico hacia uno linguocultural, en el que el aprendizaje de una lengua va de la mano del entendimiento no sólo de la cultura objetivo, sino también de la propia cultura. este artículo intenta describir y reflexionar alrededor de una experiencia colaborativa y dialógica que se realizó entre dos profesores del programa de lenguas de la universidad de la salle, en bogotá. el enriquecimiento recíproco de esta experiencia pedagógica, permitió mejorar los contextos de enseñanza y la construcción de una propuesta teórica para promover la conciencia intercultural. también abrió las puertas para desarrollar competencia crítica intercultural en estudiantes de inglés como lengua extranjera. palabras clave: interculturalidad, conciencia crítica intercultural, competencia crítica intercultural, proceso dialógico * e-mail: joseaedu@yahoo.com ** e-mail: ximenabvonilla@gmail.com address: universidad de la salle carrera 5 no. 59a-44departamento de lenguas extranjeras. bogotá, colombia. this article was received on february 23, 2009 and accepted on july 10, 2009. 152 universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras álvarez valencia & bonilla medina […] we are irreducibly unique and different, and that i could have been you, you could have been me, given different circumstances -in other words, that the stranger, as kristeva says, is in us (kramsch, 1996, p. 3). introduction one of the major concerns of the language department of universidad de la salle is the emphasis in a more salient way of cultural aspects as a cornerstone in the learning of a foreign language. it is well understood that language and culture cannot be analyzed in isolation (cortazzi & jin, 1999; gonzález, 1990; hinkel, 2005, 1999; peterson & coltrane, 2003; nieto, 2002; stern, 1992). several actions have been taken in order to set the context for this endeavor to happen. the language department in its areas of spanish, french and english has developed the cultural literacy project (clp) whose aim is for teachers and students to build intercultural awareness through a critical stance towards all manifestations of culture. the clp has engaged the lasallian community in different tasks and activities such as a reading plan, different academic events such as the faculty week, the cultural thursdays, the celebration of the day of languages, among others. in the same way, teachers in every one of the subjects taught in the different abovementioned areas have devised and developed classroom-based projects that are centered on some cultural matter. the endeavor undertaken by the department has shown that culture and its teaching imply understanding and awareness of multiple axes. it is the interrelation of different axes that grounds the interdisciplinarity of the study of culture (abdallahpretceille, 2001; moran, 2001). in teaching and learning a language, interdisciplinarity becomes more evident when someone approaches a language in its contexts of cultural realization. as peterson & coltrane (2003) highlight, students cannot really master the language until they have also mastered the cultural contexts in which the language exists. being aware of the importance of culture in foreign language teaching-learning became our motor to engage in a collaborative and dialogical process. this explains why the concept of collaborative teaching achieves relevance in this experience. in what follows, we relate the experience and achievements of this collaborative work. later, we present a theoretical proposal that fosters the approximation of culture in efl teaching from an intercultural perspective. finally, in the conclusions, we reflect upon the importance of teachers’ collaboration in order to face the challenges that educational processes are posing such as the role of culture teaching in learning a language. dialog and collaboration as a route for teachers' professional development at the beginning of the second semester of 2007, we were assigned to teach two different subjects. one of us was given the class “cultural awareness”, whereas the other was in charge of “mastering english language skills”1. the first course focused on the study of culture and the second on language skills. at the beginning, we did not set out to engage in any collaboration to undertake our pedagogical task; nonetheless, in an informal way we started sharing our views and the 1 the students that made up part of the experience were in seventh semester of the language program at universidad de la salle. it was a mixed gender group of students whose ages ranged from 21 to 28 years old. 153 addressing culture in the efl classroom: a dialogic proposal profile vol. 11, no. 2, 2009. issn 1657-0790. bogotá, colombia. pages 151-170 daily experiences we were going through in our classes. little by little, we introduced changes in our teaching situations on the basis of the regular discussions about how culture may be tackled. we started doing some readings and sharing them in order to enrich our conceptualizations and to make better informed decisions. it was only at the end of the academic semester that we rationalized that we had been engaged in a collaborative process and that it could lead us to articulate a final product. edge (1992) calls cooperative development to the process we unconsciously carried out. this author points out that there are two different levels in which teaching can be a growing professional experience. one goes from an individual reflection from daily practice and the other from the supervision and insight of members of the institution where teachers develop their teaching activity. nevertheless, when these levels are restricted, teaching development could be better enhanced through dialog, discussion, and cooperation with others. the collegiate interaction between teachers usually helps professional practice development in two ways: first, it goes beyond egocentric subjectivity to cause teachers to be clear in their own experiences and opinions. second, it does not leave that responsibility to the administrative staff since “when professional development push comes to administrative shove, it is the professional items which tend to disappear off the end of the staff-meeting agenda” (nunan & lamb, 1996, p. 55). within the development of this cooperative task, we engage in what kim, chin & goodman (2004) call informal critical dialogs, which helped us to achieve understanding of several issues. as a result, we built a proposal, initially theoretical, and systematized some of our discussions and reflections. the next section concentrates on the description of the two classes that constituted the source for us to develop our collaborative and dialogical engagement. to achieve the task proposed, we describe some of the activities developed in our classes and use samples taken from students’ written production in order to exemplify the achievements of our work. addressing culture in the efl classroom: the experience in cultural awareness the following is the description of the experience that was carried out in the course “cultural awareness”. it was a class introduced recently in the language program at la salle university. the general intention of the institution in proposing this class was to increase students’ awareness of the aspects of culture when learning a foreign language. the class also aimed at studying general cultural features of english speaking countries as a main goal to be achieved throughout the course. however, describing a culture from an observer position was a superficial job which did not account for the complexity of the role of language educators who are studying to be teachers. byram & risager (1999) state that teachers act as mediators between cultures. this involves the responsibility to help learners to understand other peoples and their cultures. thus, based on the discussions we held on our focus on interculturality, we agreed that, as mediators between cultures, we needed to foster in our students a critical approach to culture. from our viewpoint, students should take a critical position which could not only be based on the judgments about the target culture but also on the analyses and understanding of their own culture. a major complexity in discussions of culture is that people hardly ever have the chance to examine the influence of their own cultural background as 154 universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras álvarez valencia & bonilla medina regards their behavior (brislin, 1993). similarly, lado (1998) refers to culture as “the ways of a people” and in connection to people’s attitudes towards culture, he explains that “…more often than not the ways of a people are praised by that same people while looked upon with suspicion or disapproval by the others, and often in both cases with surprisingly little understanding of what those ways really are and mean” (p. 52). by reading brislin & lado’s definitions as well as abdallah-pretceille (2001), byram (2000), cortazzi & jin (1999), hinkel (2005), kramsch (2001; 1998; 1993), and paige et al. (2008), we can infer the necessity of an intercultural approach to cultural practices. in the context of language teaching, teachers should enhance the development of cultural awareness in order to promote intercultural speakers. in this regard, kramsch (2002) clarifies that an intercultural speaker is a tolerant and openminded person who is able to interact with other cultures taking into account cultural differences. inspired by the different readings we had discussed, we agreed that a good exercise to reach the goal of promoting intercultural speakers was to propose tasks through which students questioned their impressions about other cultures and examined how cultural representations were partly the product of their own native culture. this is how we decided that the class of “cultural awareness” should base its development on a three-stage structure to be worked out along the semester. in the first stage we aimed to recognize the students’ understanding of culture and the elements that underlay those conceptualizations. this stage included activities of retrospection and analyses of their own life experiences as well as readings that guided them to reflect on those issues. in general, the students showed their understanding of culture resembling hebdige’s (cited in strinati, 1995, p. 15), whose definition of popular culture asserts that it is “a set of generally available artifacts: films, records, clothes, tv programmes, modes of transport, etc. or a list of behaviors and products that are part of the identity of a group of people”. some students considered culture to be related to intellectual growth, mainly the works and practices of intellectual and special artistic activity (storey, 1996). they also placed special attention on the fact that culture and language are extremely related and it is difficult to determine whether culture defines language or language defines culture since there are arguments on both sides. in this regard, we agree with moran (2001), who suggests that language is the means to manipulate or use varied cultural products or it is also the tool to nominate and understand the perceptions, values, attitudes, and beliefs that rule ways of life. for this reason, in this stage students analyzed samples of interaction in the target language and inquired about ideologies involved in the performance of those behaviors and how, as members of a community, they could contribute to the development of cultural artifacts. in addition, the students were able to recognize the fact that language in contemporary multicultural communities fosters the transformation of new generations as well as their perceptions of the world. pavlenko & blackedge (2004, p. 2) connect their argument to this idea by asserting that “the shifts and fluctuations in languages available to individuals have become particularly visible in the light of recent sociopolitical and socioeconomic trends: globalization, consumerism, explosion of media technologies, and the postcolonial and post communist search for national identities”. globalization and media have produced new ways for people to learn about other cultures and simultaneously build or strengthen stereotypes and prejudices (brown, 2000). the students realized that stereotypes and prejudices can model 155 addressing culture in the efl classroom: a dialogic proposal profile vol. 11, no. 2, 2009. issn 1657-0790. bogotá, colombia. pages 151-170 one’s understanding of a culture and are crucial for making sense of one’s own beliefs before attempting to evaluate and understand others’ behaviors and views. finally, students discussed the idea that being an intercultural speaker is a privilege, in agreement with the perspectives posed by kramsch (2002), in which she acknowledges the advantages of having access to cultures from an intercultural stance. in the second stage students were more concentrated on the features of culture that could be observed in communicative interactions in different cultures and the way these interactions could be compared. elements such as nonverbal communication, personal relationships, family values, educational attitudes, work values, time and space patterns and cultural conflicts, among others, were the focus of discussion and reflection (levine & aldeman, 1982). broadly speaking, students studied the way in which these elements were represented by each culture (some english speaking countries and colombia in particular), the importance people grant to them and how the elements could be tackled from the perspective of a competent intercultural subject (rowena & furuto, 2001). the last stage was probably the most important for this experience because students manifested more clearly their perception of intercultural competence. this stage consisted of students’ development of a final project where they had to select an aspect of culture which they considered worthy to work on because it was controversial, it was related to a personal conflict, or it generated general interest. the origin of students’ inquiries was the result of classroom discussions on topics linked to the culture of english speaking countries and the comparison of those cultures with the colombian culture. although this is called the third stage, it is important to clarify that it was developed all along the academic semester; therefore, it overlapped with the previous stages. it was carried out in three steps in which the first started as a project proposal followed by an preliminary report in the second step and, as a final step, students handing in a paper and sharing the outcomes with the class. the project could be developed about the culture and cultural element that students preferred to analyze. it was mandatory to show evidence of the analysis done and connections with theoretical support. students’ proposals were the beginning of an analysis to figure out their interests in aspects of their own culture since ninety percent of the topics were chosen on issues about their cultural milieu. for instance, students decided to work on vegetarian culture, lesbian culture, body-building, urban cultures, regional culture (caribbean coast) which dealt with the colombian context. they were also attracted by the comprehension of connections among cultures; for example, the idealisms as regards foreign cultures of colombian students at university. students presented a particular interest for collecting information on how the individuals in those cultures thought, how ideologies were visualized in their actions and how they, as foreign people, were perceived by others. overall, most of the projects attempted to identify ideologies evident on specific behavior or cultural representation observed in each culture or subculture. in the second step of this last stage, students showed their advances of their proposals. they presented a more structured idea of what they wanted to do and most of them showed, as a tendency, a general concern for working on the stereotypes they had about subcultures. students realized these subcultures were at times rejected 156 universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras álvarez valencia & bonilla medina or even neglected because their members behaved or thought differently from the standard behavior recognized and accepted by the community. an example of this was the significance given by a group to the different youth subcultures which are judged as violent or even asocial only because they dress differently or listen to a different kind of music. students reported that a single event can label a group of individuals and cause negative effects. they wrote in their proposal paper2: this project is done on based on the past situation in which a young boy was killed when he was in his way out of a little concert... this boy got into a fight with… skinheads…and the boy died because of this attack. this generated a big controversy and prejudices and stereotypes about the skinhead boys. they are seen now as dangerous people, armed people with bad intentions, criminals…they are generalized as threats but it is important to know that skinheads are not the way people think …without knowing information about them and without respect and tolerance… in this excerpt, we can see that the students’ project was useful as an excuse to develop a general understanding of an event that happened in their surroundings. the students shared some time with a group of skinheads and tried to delve into their life experiences to be able to understand the reasons for their actions and to help other people understand them as well. consequently, students reached the conclusion that people’s attitudes toward subcultures like skinheads mostly came from generalization: “they are generalized as threats”, that created “prejudices and stereotypes”. through their study they intended to contribute to the skinheads’ integration in society as common members that comprise part of it. finally, it is important to notice that students’ reflections indicate a level of intercultural awareness in 2 the excerpts that will be presented along this document were not edited by the authors and thus may contain some grammar mistakes. which tolerance appears as a central element. this inference is sustained in two ways: first, because of the attitude students had of trying to understand the skinheads’ subculture, and second, because to some extent in their paper they advocate for more tolerance and respect for this cultural group, as shown in this excerpt: “[…]people speak of them without knowing information about them and without respect and tolerance…” another project that caught our attention intended to inquire about vegetarians. the group working on this topic tried to scope the reactions vegetarian people have about non-vegetarian food in social meetings; students wrote: this research project is made in order to understand what is the vegetarian culture, which are their beliefs, but it is most focused in understand which is the common behavior of that people when they have to confront the meat in a social meeting, or the comments of the others according to their believes . the students’ proposal shows that they were aware of the importance of understanding other people’s cultural patterns, in this case, vegetarians. notice here that students use the word “understand”, a term that is significant when we refer to interculturality. in this project, vegetarians constituted the target to observe and understand in connection to the way they behaved in environments where they interacted with non-vegetarians. thus, students wrote: “[…] it is most focused in understand which is the common behavior of that people when they have to confront the meat in a social meeting”. students also intended to explore vegetarians’ beliefs and others’ opinions which, in essence, could visualize prejudices about this group. broadly speaking, students did not only center on understanding this subculture from the outsider perspective but from an insider perspective. this explains why they consider it paramount to know their beliefs. 157 addressing culture in the efl classroom: a dialogic proposal profile vol. 11, no. 2, 2009. issn 1657-0790. bogotá, colombia. pages 151-170 another work that is worthy of mention is the one a student developed on the bodybuilding culture. he was 22 and liked practicing body building. he tried to show the influence of american fashion by analyzing the different strategies for such a practice. additionally, he established a comparison between the cultural practices regarding this topic in colombia and the usa specifically. he wanted to explore ideological issues around body building regarding health, economic and cultural constructs. this case is a key example of how the students started to acquire a critical position to question their own choice for living. even if this young man was a fan of this sportive practice, he considered it crucial to be aware of the reasons people choose it. through his practice of this sport, he thought that the american culture had certain influence on people’s choice and he decided to uncover the positive or negative elements underling this influence. all in all, this project evidences that being critical about the influences that lead us to make choices for our cultural practices was another form to build interculturality. in general, students felt they could observe other people’s behaviors to understand how the others’ imaginaries affected people’s ways or choices for life. they thought that through the understanding of cultural practices, they could also be able to see themselves in the eyes of others. in this account, one of the students wrote in one of the projects: our reality always has been from the exterior, from we observe, we leave ourselves to go for the decisions of others, we have created a world and without stopping to see with depth, certainly we don’t give ourselves the opportunity to know the cultures and people as actually they are. these comments as well as the reflections developed in their project enable one to see that there is a sense of interculturality in the way students are reading their environment and cultural subjects embedded in the foreign and native cultures. that is why students admit that “we don’t give ourselves the opportunity to know the cultures and people as actually they are…” generally speaking, this experience, along with the majority of the projects students developed, was a way for them to know more about themselves (notice the use of “we” in the above samples) and to question their stereotypes and imaginaries. it can be said that by looking at the other from an intercultural perspective, they were able to see and inquire about themselves. another example as regards reflection on stereotypes and cultural understanding was a group which was interested in lesbian culture. they wanted to examine the way heterosexual people perceive this subculture and the kinds of stereotypes and prejudices attached to homosexual practices. they said: when people talk about lesbian culture think that this “kind” of women is very different than another people, and they are a lot of prejudices and stereotypes about these women, but it is very interesting to see that lesbianism is not an illness. at this stage, these students had realized that although we are supposed to be in a more opento-diversity epoch, many of these prejudices and stereotypes keep these cultures in a hidden space (lesbianism as an illness). additionally, students became conscious through their study that stereotypes increase differences among people (this “kind” of women is very different than another people); they concluded that dissimilarities obeyed the imaginaries created by people. although imaginaries are not founded on clear criteria, they can constitute a reason to detach people from cultural interaction. these worries coming from students reflected how they 158 universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras álvarez valencia & bonilla medina were increasing their level of tolerance in their actions and how this phenomenon was linking them to a more intercultural perspective vis-a-vis culture learning. they refused to act by following everybody’s patterns of rejecting the group of lesbian subculture and decided to explicate how prejudices determine limitations in interactions with groups like the one under study. in the last step of the development of the project, students presented the results coming from the analysis of the data they had collected. the students found that stereotypes and prejudices are common factors that play a role and model the different interactions and behaviors between members of different cultures. the concept of modeling is relevant when we look at intercultural connections. this is well exemplified when we think of body building practices. for instance, the student that worked on this topic found that most of the subjects that are part of these routines follow the general tendency of american people who want to show themselves in “better fit” and they follow strict american recipes or behaviors presented on tv or in well known magazines. he brought into being that these “bodybuilding practitioners take medicines to increase their muscles and pay huge amounts of money to do so”. however, “they do not consider these practices wrong but necessary because famous artists also apply these strategies to look well”. the conclusions drawn from this study helped this student understand that the invitation to follow famous models was a commercial strategy coming from american advertising that attracted people to consume and become addicted to the gadgets, medicines or any product associated with this sport. at this point, it can be concluded that this ethnographic task helped the student to discover that some cultural practices are related to socio-economic issues. in the case of the group that worked with the lesbian culture, they pointed out that people need to open their minds to new subcultures that are emerging nowadays. based on a multicultural view (pavlenko & blackedge, 2004), the students reported that “people should not talk about men and women but about humans who have no sex difference or tendency”. this exploration ended up with students advising people on the ways subcultures can be seen; this advice is expressed through the words “people should”. for these students, eliminating the dichotomy men and women might help societies adopt a more tolerant perspective in which all of us are humans with no gender differences. this consideration shows not only the level of tolerance they developed but also their worry about getting other people conscious of intercultural skills to approach other cultures which are usually neglected, like the lesbian subculture. we concluded that these projects were very helpful for the students to become aware of the importance of cultural awareness and interculturality in the study of a foreign language. they found more explicit relations between language and culture. the analysis of interactions between spanish speakers and english speakers aided students in identifying aspects that connect culture to language; for instance, roles of speakers, space management, registers, styles and language variety. as a result, students viewed that reflecting and studying their native language and a foreign one are catalysts to understanding their own realities as well as others’ realities and cosmovisions. they also conceptualized that trying to understand another culture implies a stripping of prejudices built up by the society in which they are immersed. they could examine negative and positive stereotypes which can make people approach or reject a culture. finally, the condition of the postmodern epoch implies being open not only to understand 159 addressing culture in the efl classroom: a dialogic proposal profile vol. 11, no. 2, 2009. issn 1657-0790. bogotá, colombia. pages 151-170 the others’ cultures and our own, but also the changing realities that directly impact worldwide cultures and subcultures. the experience in mastering english language skills the experience in this class varied in that, unlike “cultural awareness”, this one focused on the development of language skills (listening, speaking, writing, etc.) rather than the explicit study of culture. however, we accepted the premise that “language and culture are inexorably intertwined” (gladstone, 1980, p. 19) and that it is one of the major ways in which culture manifests itself (kramsch, 1993; hinkel, 1999; nieto, 2002; peterson & coltrane, 2003, stern, 1983, 1992). due to the differences between the two courses we were teaching, the first one more content oriented whereas the other more language oriented, we agreed that for the class -“mastering english language skills”there should be a languageas-culture approach as a way to go beyond the traditional language-and-culture or culture-inlanguage approach (kramsch, 1996). the textbook provided for this subject served the approach that was adopted because of its cultural orientation. movies, comics, documentaries, music, literature and other materials would always set the context to reflect upon cultural issues linked to linguistic contents. intercultural awareness was enhanced through discussion of the cultural diversity which is evidenced when two languages are rethought in their contexts of realization. students interweaved the reflections they were making in their “cultural awareness” class and the tasks they were carrying out in “mastering language skills”. these connections were evidenced in the discussions that were held in class about lifestyles in different cultures, values assigned to certain behaviors or life attitudes, among others. coming from the collegial dialog established between us, and after consulting on it with students, we all agreed that the final assignment for the writing process would be an opinion essay on one of the books students were reading for the class: a room with a view (forster, 2003). through this task, they were supposed to join concepts and reflections studied in both subjects in order to choose, describe, analyze and give arguments to understand any cultural issue identified in the literary text. the task proved to be successful. students showed that new perspectives to approximate culture were permeating their personal views. going beyond the traditional inmanentist or biographical approach to addressing literature, they drew upon a sociocultural view (eagleton, 1983) which presented a broader perspective and allowed for better understanding of cultural texts. for instance, some students analyzed the role of women in the socio-cultural context of the xx century. one student says: “the room with a view story is not far from the reality of many women at the… beginning of the xx century when they were repressed by society”. through this sample, it is noticed that the student is making connections with the concept of interculturality in which cultural patterns (women’s repression), views, events or behaviors should be seen and analyzed as social practices which are located in specific historical moments and settings. this contention is strengthened by another student who asserts that to understand lucy honeychurch’s character, it was necessary to bear in mind that “the values, the beliefs, customs, politics, religions, ideologies, language, etc. are important elements that determine culture”. in the same vein another student writes: first i am going to emphasize the 160 universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras álvarez valencia & bonilla medina english woman during that era: …women still had very few rights and a different conception in 1900,… they stayed at home to take care of children…” notice that the analytical perspective of these students implies an intercultural view in which any interpretation of a culture should come from the study of the internal dynamics (geertz, 1973) of that culture in all dimensions, “values, the beliefs, customs, politics, religions, ideologies, language”, as stated by the student. some other students related the story portrayed in the piece of literature to current dynamics of societies; for instance, one of them asserts: “nowadays, the prejudices about the different social classes and the lifestyles don’t let society notice the reality”. this excerpt shows the students’ understanding of the negative role of prejudices in current societies. besides indicating his understanding and interest in this phenomenon, the student’s discourse implies a direct connection with the topics discussed in the class of cultural awareness. in this regard, we can cite one student that addressed the concepts of cultural shock and components of culture: in the book a room with a view, lucy honeychurch visits italy, where she meets different kinds of people. they have a different culture. lucy and her cousin charlotte bartlett have to get accustomed to a new life; the food, clothes, houses, people, etc. are different. they enjoy it but they are sad because they remember the city and its customs”. although this student does not thoroughly discuss her statement, she is aware that the new cultural features of another country (food, clothes, etc.) can cause cultural shock which can be experienced through feelings like sadness. there is an understanding that cultural shock happens due to a new cultural experience and is intensified by the background of one’s homeland culture. despite this fact, the student acknowledges that there needs to be a process of acclimation to the new culture as lucy and charlotte depict it in the story. traces of the understanding of intercultural awareness and intercultural competence can be identified in students’ papers; for instance, one student in relation to lucy honeychurch’s experience wrote: […] when we arrive to a new country, it is common to find difficulties relating to believes, habits, attitudes and behaviors, in conclusion the cultural differences…however to learn about cultural differences is an essential culturally competent attitude where we could appreciate and respect a cultural diversity…it is important to know the other worldview. this excerpt reveals that in order to approximate another culture it is essential to acknowledge the otherness (it is important to know the other worldview); in other words, the understanding of the existence of diversity and a respect for it. we think the student points at two main concepts that are at the core when one talks about intercultural awareness and intercultural competence: the comprehension of my “myness” and the “otherness” and the assumption that interculturality has to do with an attitude that permits one to “appreciate and respect a cultural diversity”. showing examples of all the different ways in which students in this class connected knowledge acquired in both subjects goes beyond the possibilities of this document. nevertheless, the samples presented and the different discussions held in class allow one to see that students were transcending from descriptive to a hermeneutic way of reading a cultural text such as a novel. the experience described only represents a first attempt to make culture meet ends with language teaching. the idea of introducing the concepts of interculturality and intercultural awareness emerged along the dialogic process we experienced. nevertheless, it was still a timid 161 addressing culture in the efl classroom: a dialogic proposal profile vol. 11, no. 2, 2009. issn 1657-0790. bogotá, colombia. pages 151-170 approximation which needs to be strengthened in future experiences. furthermore, we are aware that a more critical stance is required as a basic condition to foster the critical subjects that education advocates. this last contention led us to think, initially, of a theoretical proposal which focused on the development of critical intercultural competence in our teaching context. the next section presents the description of such a theoretical proposal. a framework to understanding the development of intercultural competence the conceptualization we display here emerges from the dialogic process we undertook and the multiple readings that have enriched our construction. through this section, we intend to outline our understanding of some paramount concepts and introduce a theoretical model that might enlighten ways to approach culture in the foreign language classroom in order for our students to achieve critical intercultural competence. the concern in regard to the relevance of culture in the elt profession is relatively new. according to gonzález (1990) and ommagio (1986), the issue of seriously infusing cultural goals into the curriculum dates back to the 1970s. several perspectives were advocated in order to “learn” the culture of the target language, for instance brislin (1993), cortazzi & jin (1999), gonzález (1990), gudykunst & ting-toomey (1988), kramsch (1996), lustig & koester (1999), moran, (2001), and ommagio (1986) pinpoint that in many cases the core was the study of cultural products: literary works or works of art. another perspective addressed culture as the acquisition of background information: factual information about history or geography, celebrations and so on. culture was also addressed on the basis of the observable behavior, beliefs, values and attitudes of people. some other authors considered it as the social heredity of a group of people or as communication. in order to go beyond the limited notion of culture, we see in france in 1975 that a new perspective to understanding culture appeared. it is how the term “intercultural” started being used to refer to social and educational actions that dealt with immigration affairs. soon the concept impacted the foreign or second language teaching curriculum. the intercultural approach advocates a new way to conceptualize culture, the subjects, the context and interaction. it has given birth to other concepts such as cultural awareness, intercultural communication and intercultural competence. next we intend to address some of these concepts as a manner to locate our proposal rather than with the aim of reviewing the myriad of definitions appointed to them. the stance of interculturalism as the recognition of myness and otherness before tackling interculturality, it is paramount to locate our comprehension of culture. it is now clear that culture is not a monologic phenomenon due to the fact that its reading requires the conjunction, interrelatedness and interaction of several disciplines, as we have stated above. it is not a monolithic or a static phenomenon; on the contrary, dynamism is one of its main features. in view of this, culture is a sphere of knowledge (ramírez, 2007) in which the frameworks of assumptions, ideas and beliefs that can be used to interpret people’s actions, patterns of thinking and human artifacts (art, literature, etc.) lie at the core. this sphere allows us to know and 162 universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras álvarez valencia & bonilla medina comprehend the world and is usually more linked to the concept of inheritance; hence, it is daily updated in another sphere of knowledge: society. culture and society overlap and engage in tension themselves while at the same time strike another sphere of knowledge –the individual, the socio-cultural subject. individuals are in between and are pulled by the strings of these two forces. in short, the sphere of culture is in constant updating and struggling in the context of societies; societal dynamics are constantly challenging cultural knowledge, reshaping or making up new understandings. individuals rely on these spheres to build themselves as social and cultural subjects; however, simultaneously they will use these spheres to constitute the sphere of the subject, the sphere of the myness. figure 1. an ethnocentric view of culture figure 2. an unanchored view of culture figure 3. an intercultural view of culture the view of culture in language teaching from an intercultural perspective supposes a progression from monological to dialogical views to understanding culture. these monological views materialize in two ways. the first one approaches the target culture from ethnocentric inspection in which the culture of the language learner is at the core to interpret and describe the host culture (brislin, 1993; oliveras, 2000, see figure 1). the second approach, in contrast, shows that in some stages of foreign language learning, the language learner adopts to a certain extent the ways of thinking and the behavioral patterns of the target culture and uses these to judge and think of his/her natal culture (see figure 2); s/he intends to “unanchor” aspects of his/ her culture of origin3. such a situation often carries implications to the way learners assumed their linguistic and cultural identity. we must remember that people’s cultural identity is based on the relation between an individual, society and culture (damen, 1987; hinkel, 2005; lustig & koester, 1999), and implies that dilemmas of identity will not only impact the way an individual sees his/her own culture and society but the way s/he perceives himself/herself. as we have seen, the monological 3 this phenomenon only constitutes a phase in language and culture learning since identity is not fixed but on the contrary is “a contingent process involving dialectic relations between learners and the various worlds and experiences they inhabit and which act on them.” (ricento, 2005, p. 895). consequently, it is possible that new re-articulations of learners’ identities happen through linguistic and cultural contact (holliday, 1994; kramsch, 1993). 163 addressing culture in the efl classroom: a dialogic proposal profile vol. 11, no. 2, 2009. issn 1657-0790. bogotá, colombia. pages 151-170 views presented a biased and fragmented reading of the cultures in interplay; it is due to this reading that an intercultural perspective attempts to encounter both ways of approaching culture (see figure 3). one of the main elements that articulate the concept of interculturality in language teaching relies on the fact “that many aspects of second and foreign language learning are affected by the interpretative principles and paradigms in learners’ natal culture” (hinkel, 2005, p. 6). consequently the understandings, conceptualizations and constructs of the target culture are fundamentally affected by students’ culturally defined worldviews, beliefs, assumptions and presuppositions. this suggests the need for a perspective that accounts not only for what the other culture and its cultural subjects are, that is the otherness, but also who i am as a cultural subject; in other words, my myness. in this sense, the prefix inter has to do with the way the other is seen and i see myself; it refers to the establishment of an interaction among social groups, individuals and identities (abdallahpretceille, 2001; byram, 2000; porto, 2000). in light of this, the concept of interaction becomes relevant under the intercultural approach since the emphasis will be given to the encounter of cultures, subjects, systems of thought, social practices and the conditions of possibility (foucault, 1984) that configure these interactions. the dialogic dynamic between identity and otherness helps visualize the sphere of culture in relation to society and the subject. the interaction among these three spheres calls upon different disciplines to explain the concept of interculturality. although these interdisciplinary relations go beyond the scope of this paper, it is necessary to mention that the intercultural approach borrows constructs from disciplines like philosophy (phenomenology), sociology (comprehensive sociology and interactionism), anthropology, social psychology (representations and categorizations), linguistics, sociolinguistics (ethnography) and cultural studies, among others (abdallah-pretceille, 2001; byram, 2000; moran, 2001). bearing in mind that culture is inescapably permeated by relations of power and politics (byram & feng, 2005; kramsch, 2001, 1998, 1996; storey, 1996), we assume that besides approaching culture from an intercultural stance, its study can be enriched if a critical perspective is adopted. a critical intercultural view will draw upon an analysis of cultural texts4 as a way to uncover ideologies which allow discussion and study of discursive formations (storey, 1993). these discursive formations will emerge from the scrutiny of the discourses that lies beneath the cultures that engage in interaction, the subjects and the wider society; that is to say, it will be seen how the spheres of knowledge come into play in specific and situated contexts. a critical intercultural approach will aim to develop critical intercultural awareness. usually cultural awareness is defined as the ability of interlocutors to acknowledge and understand the differences between their schemata (patterns of thinking, behaviors, beliefs, assumptions, etc.) and the schemata of the foreign interlocutors (brislin, 1993; byram, 2000; cortazzy & jin, 1999; damen, 1987; porto, 2000). in light of a critical perspective, the use of the concept of difference would be replaced by diversity. more than seeing the others from the stance of the difference, we should start to see the myness and the other’s essence and features as the product of the diversity that is inherent in human beings. awareness has to do with the acknowledgment, tolerance and acceptance of that diversity and the ability to reflect and evaluate it critically. it will let the individual 4 in our stance, text is understood as anything that can be read; thus, an artifact like a painting, a social practice or an oral utterance will make a cultural text. 164 universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras álvarez valencia & bonilla medina explore, question, examine and strengthen his/ her cultural identity rather than undermining the importance of his language, culture and so on in front of another culture. moreover, an individual will be open-minded to read other cultures and speakers of other languages in order to make sense of their diversity and particular identities. a critical intercultural approach will not only ensure the development of critical intercultural awareness but also intercultural communication5 competence. notice that the first term establishes the view which will be the lenses to approximate a phenomenon: culture. the second term indicates an attitude towards that phenomenon. the last term is located in the dimension of action; that is to say, how a speaker can interact in any context as an intercultural subject in order to create shared meanings (lustig & koester, 1999). this will represent the materialization of interculturality and intercultural awareness in a discursive situation. clearly, to successfully accomplish the conditions for intercultural communication, interlocutors will need to be acquainted with the formal aspects of language (phonology, phonetics, syntax, etc.) and put into practice sociolinguistic, discursive and strategic competences (canale & swain, 1996a, b; oliveras, 2000; savignon, 1997). as a whole, a critical intercultural approach aims to have two outcomes: the first to enhance critical intercultural awareness and the second to develop intercultural communication competence. these two outcomes will fundamentally give rise to a broader concept: critical intercultural competence6. 5 damen (1987, p. 23) reviewing rich & owaga, (1982) reports that “the field of intercultural communication has been identified by many names: cross-cultural communication, transcultural communication, interracial communication, international communication, or even contracultural communication.” 6 other authors have proposed a similar approach to culture in efl teaching that has been defined as “critical cross-cultural literacy” (see kramsch, 1996). we consider that the field of language teaching should ultimately aim to achieve a competent intercultural subject who transcends the simplistic description and naïve interpretation of the other culture; instead, s/he will move toward a critical approximation to it. byram (1995, in oliveras, 2000) states that intercultural competence should embed savoir-etre, meaning a change of attitude. savoirs, ability to acquire new concepts, and savoir-faire which refers to the activity of learning through experience. in the framework of a critical perspective, learners’ change of attitude would be bi-directional, in the sense of assuming new views in front of his/her own culture and the target one; namely, a comprehensive, informed and critical attitude. this would lead to critical intercultural awareness. the learning of intercultural competence has been researched and experimented through different models. oliveras (2000) discusses two of the most predominant models to intercultural teaching, to wit: the social skills approach and the holistic approach. the former sees intercultural competence as the ability to behave properly in an intercultural encounter. the speaker must simulate the social skills native speakers show as representatives of any given culture. the latter defines intercultural competence as an attitude towards the other(s) culture. in general this approach takes into account issues such as the role of personality and identity. through this competence the individual can stabilize his/her own identity during intercultural exchanges. the development of empathy constitutes another aspect that will permit understanding, tolerance and respect for different cultural views. although we agree with the standpoint presented by oliveras (2000), we consider that the critical perspective needs to take explicit part in the study, teaching and learning of any 165 addressing culture in the efl classroom: a dialogic proposal profile vol. 11, no. 2, 2009. issn 1657-0790. bogotá, colombia. pages 151-170 culture. researchers such as byram & feng (2005); fairclough (1995, 1989); kramsch (1996, 1993); mejía (2006); nieto (2002), and pennycook (2002) sustain that foreign language teaching needs to place emphasis on critical understanding of current thought in both the linguistic and socio-cultural sciences. besides the affective, cognitive and communicative component, it is necessary to talk about a critical component to define intercultural competence. the link between language study and critical cultural analysis needs to be articulated in order to encourage students to assume a critical understanding of the sociocultural phenomena. to achieve this, it is essential to bear in mind that any cultural text or artifact is made up of discourses which are underpinned by ideologies which materialize forces of power and control (fairclough, 1995, 1989; fowler, 1983; kramsch, 1996, 1993; pennycook, 2002; storey, 1996, 1993; strinati, 1995; van dijk, 2000a; 2000b). so far, we have described and conceptualized the fundamental axes that structure our proposal to tackle culture in fl teaching. this conceptualization and the theoretical framework that has been depicted constitute a blueprint of an approach to a line of inquiry that has emerged from the process of a collaborative and dialogical interaction we established in the context of our classes. in this last part, we would like to make a direct link to the innovative teaching practice that gave birth to this theoretical model. we will use the connections made to summarize what has been discussed along this section through a figure which locates and puts into interaction the different components of the framework proposed: figure 4. a framework for critical intercultural competence 166 universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras álvarez valencia & bonilla medina the development of the classes and our discussions helped us start shaping the idea that an individual is immersed in different spheres (see figure 4). along with students, we discussed that humans moved among spheres of cultural knowledge, society, and interactions with other subjects. in their projects and the analysis of a literary work, students admitted that subjects are both the product and producers of culture and society. their exploration of lesbian groups, vegetarians, or the role of women in edwardian english society and culture of the xx century, placed the individual at the core of any cultural and societal phenomenon. for instance, one student in his essay discusses the several internal tensions that lucy honeychurch -the main character of the novel a room with a viewfaces when cultural traditions and social dynamics force her to acquire the traditional role women were granted at the time. the student writes: “in a room with a view the lucy’s character felt offended by the way that society treat …women were educated to be housewives and to take care of her husband and children, if they wanted to be someone different they will be judged by society”. this example emphasizes that the cultural and social patterns are in interaction and act upon individuals, usually engaging into frictions and struggle; this conclusion is strengthened with the next excerpt: “lucy…fights against her family and friends to obtain her woman’s rights, to be free and acquire the independence to be what she wanted”. throughout this innovative teaching contribution, we realized that it was necessary to establish a stance (see figure 4) that would constitute the lenses through which we approached the spheres of knowledge. as stated above, we assumed a critical intercultural view. this is the perspective under which most students’ projects were developed. one example to illustrate this assertion is portrayed in the comparative study done by the student who concentrated on the body building cultural practice, in colombia and the usa. his reflections pointed out that economical and social imaginaries around physical appearance are the main agenda in the north american body building practices. finally, the student calls attention to the fact that the north american body building cultural practices have been adopted as a model in colombia. based on students’ reflections and analyses, we concluded that the outcome (see figure 4) of a critical intercultural stance should be the development of critical intercultural awareness and, at the same time, intercultural communication. this is what we observed in the view students had of their own culture and the foreign one. by interacting with different subcultures (lesbian, bodybuilders, etc.), students achieved awareness that allowed them to evaluate a cultural practice from inside and outside. they needed to make use of intercultural communication skills in order to get by in different communicative situations. the various explorations of cultural practices were the context for them to build up critical intercultural competence. as we have exemplified in the description of the two courses we taught, the most important gains of the intervention were that students constructed a sense of interculturality and intercultural awareness in order to approximate not only the foreign but their native culture. thus we have presented the conclusions obtained in each pedagogical experience and we have connected the achievements that proved to be similar after analyzing students’ productions from each class. conclusion one of the main reflections pointed out through this experience is that collegial dialog 167 addressing culture in the efl classroom: a dialogic proposal profile vol. 11, no. 2, 2009. issn 1657-0790. bogotá, colombia. pages 151-170 is an important source of teachers’ professional development. teachers should be aware that practical experiences coming from their colleagues constitute a resource for their personal and professional growth. although at the beginning we did not set out to embark on any collaborative and cooperative task, the dynamics of our dialogic process prompted the decision that this experience needed to be systematized and shared with the academic community. our experience reveals that for cooperation and dialogue to happen, participants’ attitude and openness to new viewpoints play important roles. in regard to culture, it is paramount to mention that it still needs wider exploration and reflection in the area of foreign language teaching in our country (badillo, 2006; real, 2007), yet colombian referee journals show that there is an increasing interest in researching on the topic of culture teaching-learning, interculturality, cultural awareness and bilingualism, amongst others, directly related to cultural issues (see recent studies carried out by ariza, 2007; campo & zuluaga, 2000; cruz, 2007; de mejía, 2006; mojica, 2007; posada, 2004; quintero, 2006; and velásquez, 2002). especially at the university level, new strategies are being employed to connect culture and language learning, such as the case at universidad de la salle. we also consider that a critical stance needs to be adopted if we are to foster intercultural subjects that can understand and take action in front of the hidden agendas of postmodern societies. through this paper we advocate the exploration of new ways to articulate culture in the efl class, not only at the university level but also in other language teaching contexts. this paper has shown two plausible examples of how the cultural component can be articulated in programs in charge of educating language teachers. our experience demonstrates that the role of teachers change –they become mediators in the exchange of cultures. we believe that this role is not difficult to play if teachers are open to dialogue and to encountering new perspectives. we hope our collaborative and dialogic experience might constitute a source for teachers to generate new dynamics of interaction in which the discussion of interculturality in language teaching plays a central role. references abdallah-pretceille, m. 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(2005). considerations of identity in l2 learning. in e. hinkel (ed.), handbook of research in second language teaching and learning (pp. 895-910). seattle: lawrence erlbaum associates, publishers. rowena, f., & furuto, s. (2001). culturally competent practice: skill interventions and evaluations. boston: allyn and bacon. savignon, s. (1997). communicative competence. theory and classroom practice. new york: mc-graw-hill. stern, h. h. (1983). fundamental concepts of language teaching. oxford: oxford university press. stern. h. (1992). the cultural syllabus. in h. stern, issues and options in language teaching (pp. 205-242). oxford: oxford university press. storey, j. (1993). cultural theory and popular culture. georgia: the university of georgia press. storey, j. (1996). cultural studies and the study of popular culture: theories and methods. georgia: university of georgia press. strinati, d. (1995). introduction to theories of popular culture. ny: routledge. van dijk, t. (2000a). el discurso como interacción en la sociedad. in t. van dijk (ed.), el discurso como interacción social (pp. 19-66). barcelona: gedisa. 170 universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras álvarez valencia & bonilla medina van dijk, t. (2000b). el estudio del discurso. en t. van dijk (ed.), el discurso como estructura y proceso (pp. 21-65). barcelona: gedisa. velásquez, j. (2002). integrating email projects to english classroom: looking for intercultural understanding. colombian applied linguistic, 4, 78-84. about the authors josé aldemar álvarez valencia holds a master’s in applied linguistics to tefl and is a candidate for the master’s in hispanic linguistics at instituto caro y cuervo. he is a full time professor in the school of languages at universidad de la salle and works part time at universidad nacional de colombia, in bogotá. he is an active member of the board of directors of the asociación colombiana de profesores de inglés (asocopi).  sandra ximena bonilla medina holds a master’s in applied linguistics to tefl from universidad distrital. she is a full time professor in the school of languages at universidad de la salle and works part time at universidad distrital francisco josé de caldas.  profile vol. 12, no. 2, october 2010. issn 1657-0790. bogotá, colombia. pages 107-116 107 the impact of a teach er development program for strategic read ing on efl teach ers’ instructional practice el impacto de un programa de desarrollo profesional en lectura estratégica en la práctica instruccional de docentes de inglés como lengua extranjera fatemeh khonamri* mahin salimi** mazandaran university, iran research on teach er development has been the focus of attention in recent decades. the overall aim of this study was to explore the impact of read ing strategy training on high school teach ers’ reading instructional practices. the study was conducted in the efl context of iran. to meet this aim, four efl high school teach ers voluntarily took part in the study. teach ers’ read ing classes were observed and audio-recorded both before and after the teach ers took part in a three-hour workshop on reading strategies. drawing on data from observations, the results showed some degree of change in teach ers’ read ing practices after their having taken part in the workshops. that is, they took a more strategic approach to the teach ing of read ing in their classes. key words: high schools, read ing strategies, teach er development, innovation in elt. la investigación en el desarrollo profesional docente ha sido el centro de atención durante las últimas décadas. el objetivo general de este estudio fue explorar el impacto de la capacitación de profesores de secundaria en estrategias lectoras en las prácticas de enseñanza. este estudio se realizó en el contexto del inglés como lengua extranjera en irán. para cumplir con este objetivo, participaron cuatro profesores de inglés como lengua extranjera de educación secundaria. se observaron y grabaron sus clases enfocadas en lectura. esto se hizo antes y después de participar en talleres de tres horas sobre el tema de estrategias lectoras. los datos provenientes de las observaciones arrojaron como resultado que hubo cierto nivel de cambio en las prácticas de lectura de los profesores después de participar en los talleres. es decir, adoptaron un enfoque más estratégico en sus clases. palabras clave: colegios de secundaria, estrategias de lectura, desarrollo profesional docente, innovación en la enseñanza del inglés. * email: fkhonamri@yahoo.com ** email: mahin2002000@yahoo.com this article was received on march 1, 2010, and accepted on july 2, 2010. 108 universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras khonamri & salimi introduction english is one of the most important subjects in many schools around the world, including in iran. iranian students study english for at least 7 years on average. and the main aim of teach ing english as a foreign language, especially in high schools of iran, is read ing comprehension (roshd, 1980). in spite of the time spent and the emphasis on read ing comprehension, the majority of the iranian learners are not equipped with the desired read ing comprehension ability after graduating from high school. among many other reasons, one can be the methodology of teach ing read ing in high schools (roshd, 1980). in high school, read ing comprehension instruction is limited to the assignment of a read ing passage accompanied by a number of short, multiple choice, or true/false questions relating to the passage. in this type of read ing practice, which is generally known as “intensive read ing procedure”, short passages are given to the learners to read carefully and analyze the details. this type of read ing, as alderson and urquhart (1984) have described, is not a read ing but a language lesson. what happens in such situations is that teach ers do not give instructions regarding the use of read ing strategies and do not tell learners how to read more efficiently. in fact, they take it for granted that all the learners know how to read a passage strategically mainly because they already know how to read in their first language (khonamri, 2008). it seems that in spite of the importance of read ing strategies in read ing comprehension, the absence of teach ing them is completely felt in high school english read ing classrooms. “the effectiveness of teach ing read ing comprehension strategies has been the subject of over 500 studies in the last twenty five years. a common conclusion from these works points out that strategy instruction improves comprehension” (willingham, 2006, p. 39). generally speaking, there are two kinds of teach ing strategies in the classrooms: explicit and implicit teach ing (dole, 2000). in the early 20th century, researchers seldom thought that read ing comprehension should be taught (smith, 1986, cited in shen, 2003). researchers began to revisit comprehension processes in the 1980s. under the umbrella of metacognition, researchers made huge discoveries concerning expert readers’ strategies and developed the term explicit instruction (pressely, 2000). explicit instruction is rooted in cognitive psychology. since the 1970s, cognitive psychology has led researchers to consider read ing as an active process that involves readers’ interaction with the text to produce meaning (dole, 2000). in cognitive psychology, metacognition requires learners to use not only declarative knowledge (knowing the content) but also procedural knowledge (knowing how to use the content) and conditional knowledge (knowing when and why to use the content) (dole, 2000). in other words, explicit read ing strategy training refers to “the practices of deliberately demonstrating and bringing to learners’ conscious awareness of those covert and invisible processes, understanding, knowledge, and skills over which they need to get control if they are to become effective readers” (cambourne, 1999, p. 126). implicit instruction is rooted in the progressive movement, which focused on children and their experience rather than on teach ers and the curriculum (dewey, 1938; dole, 2000). according to dewey’s view, children learn best when education focuses on their interests. implicit approaches include whole language, language experience, literary response theory (dole, 2000), extensive read ing (bamford & day, 1998), and free voluntary read ing (krashen, 1995). profile vol. 12, no. 2, october 2010. issn 1657-0790. bogotá, colombia. pages 107-116 109 the impact of a teacher development program program for strategic reading... in this study both explicit and implicit instructions of read ing strategies were the focus of the investigation. meanwhile, to be in line with the research finding on the effectiveness of teach ing read ing strategies in read ing comprehension and initiating the changes necessary to be brought to read ing classes, teach er professional development programs were considered to be a solution. teach er professional development or teach er learning can occur through activities like self-monitoring, journal writing, teach ing, portfolios, action research, peer observation, reflection, and workshops (richards & farrell, 2005).workshops are one of the most common and useful forms of professional development activities for teach ers (richards & farrell, 2005). thus the purpose of the present study was to explore the relation between teachers’ read ing classroom practices and professional development regarding read ing strategies. in other words, it examined the impact of read ing strategy training workshops as a professional development program on teach ers’ practices regarding read ing strategies. to achieve the purpose of the study the following research questions were raised: 1. which read ing comprehension strategies are most frequently taught by efl high school teachers? 2. is there any change in efl high school tea ch ers’ read ing instructional practices before and after a read ing strategy training program? method four efl female high school teach ers, teach ing in babol, a city in the north of iran, voluntarily took part in the study. table 1 shows the demographic information of the participants. the current study was done in about six months during fall and winter, 2008. the main procedures applied to do the project as a qualitative study were observation, workshops on read ing strategy training, and interview. two series of observations were done and audio recorded by the researchers. one series was done before the workshop and the second after the workshop. the pre-workshop observation of each teach er was conducted from early october to the end of november and the post observation from december to march. the researcher was present in the classes as a non-participant observer observing teach ing read ing classrooms and taking notes but not contributing her/himself to the practices. table 2 shows in detail the observations done for each teach er in classes and time. three three-hour workshops were held in three weeks in one of the case study teach ers’ private tuition classrooms equipped with a whiteboard, a laptop, a table and chairs. teach ers and the researcher sat around the table. a combination of lecturing presentations, handouts, worksheets, and whole group discussions were presented. there were lecture sessions, moving on to the main segment of the workshop, and usually ending with a group discussion. the main segment of the workshop included a number of different awareness-raising activities (ellis, 1986). the main aims of conducting the strategy training workshops were having the teach ers reflect on their teach ing methodology regarding read ing; examining the observation session regarding the amount and quality of teach ing read ing strategies; making the teach ers familiar with the theoretical basis of learning and read ing strategies; making the teach ers familiar with what the research says about the effectiveness of teach ing read ing strategies in read ing classes; and modeling explicit teach ing of read ing strategies and so on. at the end of the final workshop, teach ers completed a program evaluation questionnaire to assess the usefulness of the three-week project. 110 universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras khonamri & salimi an unstructured type of interview was used in the current study. there was no list of questions. the researcher developed her own questions “to help respondents to open up and express them selves in their own terms and at their own speed. unstructured interviews are more similar to natural conversations, and the outcomes are not limited by the researcher's preconceived ideas about the area of interest” (mackey & gass, 2005). during the breaks and especially when the teach ers didn’t have a class between two periods, the researcher had the opportunity to speak with the teach ers informally, which helped immensely in understanding them and their teach ing approaches. results case study a teach er a had divided teach ing read ing into three major activities: pre-read ing, while read ing, and post-read ing activities. teach er a presented a summary of the passage or told the students what was going to be read in the passage in the pre-read ing period. in the while read ing period, she used strategies like read ing aloud, paraphrasing, translating, retelling in l1 or l2, and asking questions to check the students’ comprehension. in post-read ing activities, the lesson’s comprehension exercises were done. these exercises usually encompass some yes/no questions, true/ table 1. the demographic information of the case study teach ers participant degree specialty age years of experience teach er a ba tefl 34 9 teach er b ba translation 33 14 teach er c ma tefl 31 7 teach er d ba tefl 35 11 table 2. observation sessions in classes and time participant before workshops after workshops classes amount of time in h.m classes amount of time in h.m teach er a 6 2.15 6 2.25 teach er b 5 2.50 5 2.10 teach er c 6 2.10 6 2.15 teach er d 5 1.50 5 2.00 total 22 8.25 22 8.50 profile vol. 12, no. 2, october 2010. issn 1657-0790. bogotá, colombia. pages 107-116 111 the impact of a teacher development program program for strategic reading... false statements, and multiple choice questions. it should be noted that the students’ proficiency influenced the degree of the use of while read ing strategies. for ex ample, the teach er allotted more time to translation in less proficient classes while she spent more time on paraphrasing and retelling in more proficient classes. it seemed that teach er a’s knowledge and awareness of learning and read ing strategies were rather low. through the interview and the workshop questionnaire, she defined language learning strategies as listening, speaking, read ing, and writing. in fact, she called language skills language learning strategies and like other teach ers, used summary instead of retelling in her teach ing. through observation, it was obvious after the workshops that teach er a’s read ing practices, which included pre-read ing, while-read ing, and post-read ing stages, had differed to some extent. although the pattern was the same, the strategies used in each stage were more varied. for example, in the pre-read ing stage, she employed strategies like identifying the title by using the book’s pictures, asking the students to predict what would be found in the text, and asking the students to scan the text and find sentences related to the pictures. in while read ing activities, when the students asked the meaning of some words, she explained that they could skip the unknown words and pay attention to the whole meaning of the sentences. sometimes, she elicited some contextual clues and asked the students to guess the meaning of the unknown words. regarding post-read ing activities, teach er a asked the students’ opinion about the text and how they felt. she also asked them what they thought of the passage and how correct they thought their guess was. as teach er a had noted in her reflective journal: “after the workshop, i asked the students to predict the content of the text by identifying the title. i explain to them how to guess unknown words or skip them”. it seemed that teach er a had some reflection on her teach ing when after a read ing class she told me, “i think giving a summary of the text or explaining what the text is about is not an effective strategy for activating the students’ background knowledge. they are not involved in the process and i am the only person who transmits the information. when the students guess or predict the content, they are motivated to find out how right or wrong their guesses are. they are involved in the process of teach ing. i think more students took part in the activities today. it’s a good method and the students like it. it’s more like a puzzle to be done”. case study b interview and observation revealed that teach er b’s main concern was getting the meaning of the words, sentences, and the paragraphs thoroughly. as she herself stated in the interview, “because of my major, translation, i believe we can’t understand a text unless we translate it”. she used strategies like read ing aloud, translating, and asking questions to check students’ comprehension. she also did the lesson’s comprehension exercises at the end. teach ing read ing was the last session of each lesson. she taught the new words in the previ ous sessions and asked the students to memorize the list of the vocabulary before read ing the passage. she also emphasized that students study the passage at home before they were taught. as she her self noted: “a read ing passage is taught when all the students know the exact meanings of the words in the text with their synonyms and antonyms (these are taught in previous sessions)”. she was very sensitive to pronunciation and grammatical points. she often interrupted her read ing aloud to emphasize pronunciation. she also explained the grammatical points while she was translating 112 universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras khonamri & salimi the sentences. teach er b had the same model of teach ing read ing in all classes. she often told me that it was not really necessary to observe all her classes. she did the same for all classes. teach er b’s answers to the questions on the workshop questionnaire –how do you define learning strategies? and how do you define reading strategies?– showed that she was not aware of learning and read ing strategies. she had noted, “learning strategies are the strategies we use in teach ing a foreign language” for the first question. defining read ing strategies, she had noted, “read ing strategies are the ones which help us learn a read ing and get the main idea of it. they enable us to answer the questions made by a person about the text”. after the workshops, teach er b like teach er a employed some new strategies in teach ing read ing. the most distinguished strategy was implementing the pre-read ing stage. she didn’t use any preread ing strategy before the workshop. teach er b dealt straightly with the text before any introduction. but after the workshop she activated the students’ background knowledge by asking some questions related to the topic. for while-read ing activities, although teach er b was still sensitive to the exact meaning of the words and phrases, she began to employ some strategies like scanning and silent read ing. there was no change in post-read ing activities. therefore, although teach er b continued with her methodology, she employed some new strategies in her practices. case study c the workshop questionnaire and interview showed that teach er c like teach er a had divided teach ing read ing into three activities: pre-read ing, while-read ing, and post-read ing activities. observation revealed that teach er c used a variety of strategies during the pre-read ing stage. she introduced the title by showing the book’s pictures. she also asked some questions about the pictures and wanted the students to predict a relation between the pictures and the text. she also asked the students’ opinions about the pictures and the title. using these strategies, she tried to activate their background knowledge. in the while-read ing stage she employed strategies like silent read ing, retelling in l1, asking some questions to check the students’ comprehension, and translation of the text by the more proficient students. for post-read ing activities, she asked some questions about the passage and then asked the students to do the book’s comprehension exercises. it seemed that teach er c had come to a pattern for teach ing read ing although there were some minute differences in different classes. for example, in one class she gave the students time for silent read ing and then asked some display questions to check comprehension while in another class she wrote some questions on the board and then asked the student to find the answers as they were read ing the paragraph silently. teach er c never explained grammatical points or read the text aloud. she sometimes explained the words by giving synonyms or antonyms. it seemed that she believed that linguistic strategies were not important in read ing comprehension and her responses to the questionnaire confirmed it. she had reported that she never taught grammar or asked the stu dents to read aloud while teach ing reading. according to the workshop questionnaire, interview, and the methodology teach er c used in teach ing read ing, it could be inferred that she was aware of language learning and read ing strategies. it seemed that her degree, m.a. in tefl, to some extent had distinguished her from her colleagues. profile vol. 12, no. 2, october 2010. issn 1657-0790. bogotá, colombia. pages 107-116 113 the impact of a teacher development program program for strategic reading... after the workshops, teach er c like teach ers  b and a began to teach and use more strategies in her practices. for example, before teach ing a passage entitled “learn a foreign language”, consisting of two paragraphs each being a very short story, she explained that the text type was narrative. she talked about the paragraph connections. she explained “story grammar” in teach ing another lesson and asked the students to retell the story based on the “story grammar”. she asked them to identify the setting first, then to explain the events, and finally to reach the conclusion or solution. she also explained by having this order in mind, they could easily find the paragraphs' connection. in all her classes that i observed after the workshop, she taught the students how to write a summary of a passage. she had noted the following in her reflective journal: “i have found out that i must teach the students how to summarize a text. i am from those teach ers who always asked the students to tell a summary but i never had taught them how to do that. in fact, what my students were doing was retelling not summarization”. it seemed that teach er c also had reflected on her read ing practices. case study d teach er d, like teach er a and c, presented her read ing instructional practices in three stages: preread ing, while-read ing, and post-read ing. for the pre-read ing stage, she wrote the title of the read ing on the board and clarified its meaning. for example, in teach ing a passage entitled “the boy who made steam work”, she asked the meaning of the word “made”. the students answered and then she explained thoroughly the different meanings of “make”. in while-read ing activities she first read aloud the passages paragraph by paragraph. then she asked the students to read the paragraphs silently. finally, she asked some questions to check the stu dents’ comprehension. she did the same for all paragraphs. she paraphrased some sentences that she felt the students had not entirely understood. sometimes, she explained some grammatical points. for post-read ing activities, she asked the students to do the comprehension exercises. of course, she checked only true/false and multiple choice exercises. in the interview, teach er d stated, “i ask the students to study the passages at home before i teach them. i explain the meaning of the vocabulary list at the first session of each lesson. so, the students are provided with the meaning of the words and they can comprehend the passages. when i teach the passage, they should pay attention and understand the parts that they could not cope with by themselves”. based on the interview, the workshop questionnaire, and my observation, it seemed that teacher d employed the same methodology in all her classes. the observation done after the workshop revealed that teach er d didn’t change her practices considerably. she only specified more time for silent read ing. to be brief, observation revealed that teach ers employed some read ing strategies in their practices but no explicit teach ing of read ing strategies was observed before the workshops. they employed some strategies like paraphrasing, silent read ing, retelling, translating, and asking questions to check comprehension in their practices. the observation showed that paraphrasing was the most frequently used strategy and the teach er’s giving a summary was the least frequently used. all four teach ers used paraphrasing in their practices while only one teach er gave a summary of the text. three out of four teach ers employed more read ing strategies in their practices and began to teach read ing strategies explicitly after the workshops. it seemed that the dominant teach ing read ing methodology by the four teach ers was the 114 universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras khonamri & salimi pattern of pre-read ing, while-read ing, and postread ing activities. it was employed by three out of four teach ers before the workshops. it remained the dominant pattern after the workshops and all the four teach ers employed it. discussion and conclusions three main results were obtained from the study. first, the observation revealed that teach ers did not explicitly teach any read ing strategy in their read ing classes. however, they employed some strategies like paraphrasing, silent read ing, retelling, translating, and asking questions to check comprehension in their practices. the observation showed that paraphrasing was the most frequently used strategy and summarizing by the teach er was the least frequently used strategy. this result was obtained from eight hours and twenty minutes’ ob servation of high school read ing classes. reviewing the literature, the researchers could not find a compatible study in the efl/esl context. however, the literature confirms the mentioned findings in the l1 context. major findings of durkin’s study (1979) through classroom observations of read ing and social studies in elementary schools included the fact that almost no comprehension instruction was found. the attention that did go to comprehension focused on assessment, which was carried on through teach er questions. instruction other than that for comprehension was also rare. teach ers actually devoted two percent of classroom time designated for read ing instruction to teach ing students how to comprehend what they read. ness (2007) also collected data from forty hours of direct classroom observations in eight middle and high school science and social studies classrooms. the study showed that just over 3 percent of instructional time was devoted to read ing strategies. the above findings might mean that high school teach ers emphasize breadth over depth (ness, 2007). efl teach ers are likely to see their major instructional responsibility as covering the books and preparing their students to pass the final exams. second, the dominant methodology of teach ing read ing by the four teach ers under study was the preread ing, while-read ing, and post-read ing model. third, observation done after the workshops revealed that the strategy training workshops affected teach ers’ practices in several ways as follows: • one out of four teach ers did not make a considerable change to her practices. • three out of four teach ers began to teach read ing strategies in read ing classes. • they modified their read ing teach ing methodology. • the strategies they used in teach ing read ing became more varied. • they replaced some strategies with new strategies. • they began to reflect on their teach ing methodology. studying the interplay between teach ers’ beliefs, instructional practices, and professional development regarding grammar, mohamed (2006) also found that by the end of a development program two of the teach ers had started using grammar discovery tasks in their teach ing. several of the other teach ers had also started to make some changes to their teach ing. four teach ers continued to teach without making any alterations to their practices. looking into the literature on teach er change, the sentiment one can find expresses that teach ers do not change and teach ers are not manageable (e.g. duffy & roehler, 1985; fullan, 1991, as cited in richardson, 1998). regarding the time of teach er training strategy (9 hours), it seems that teach ers revealed considerable change in their practices. of course, it is not clear whether they continued the implementation or not. i think the main reason for profile vol. 12, no. 2, october 2010. issn 1657-0790. bogotá, colombia. pages 107-116 115 the impact of a teacher development program program for strategic reading... teach ers’ change in this study is that teach ers voluntarily took part in the study. they willingly took part in the workshops and, as the program evaluation questionnaire revealed, they aimed to implement read ing strategies in their classes as much as their classes could accommodate them. other reasons are the ages and the teach ing experiences of the case study participants that ranged respectively from 31-35 and 7-14 in this study. according to hargreaves (2005), teach ers in the early stages of their career were the most open to change, and those nearing the end of their career showed the most resistance while mid career teach ers who were relaxed in their professional duties were also fairly flexible and positive toward change. several practical implications of the study, especially concerning efl teach ers, teach er trainers, material developers, and educational managers, can be identified. it is recommended that efl high school teach ers be aware of the effect of read ing strategies in improving read ing skills. they should try to enhance their professional knowledge to be compatible with the current research findings and theories. furthermore, teach er trainers are expected to familiarize their students with these effective factors in successful teach ing. furthermore, material developers are required to design materials which encompass explicit teach ing of read ing strategies while preparing the materials for schools. if explicit teach ing of read ing strategies becomes a part of the textbooks, efl teach ers will surely pay more attention to it. finally, preservice education alone is not adequate to fully prepare a teach er for a lifetime of teach ing. inservice teach ers need to be made aware of different models and approaches of teach ing and be provided with opportunities to put these into practice. teach ers must be regarded as learners who need to continually expand their knowledge and improve their practices. all the above issues can be obtained via systematic and continuous in-service training programs. as a final note on the limitations of the research, the subjects of the study were limited to five female efl high school teach ers in babol. the researcher doubts whether the findings will be applicable to other places as well. and, the presence of the researcher, as any other observation, may have affected the teach ers’ behavior. references alderson, j., & urquhart, a. h. (1984). read ing in a foreign language. london: longman. bamford, j., & day, r. r. (1998). teach ing read ing. annual review of applied linguistics, 18, 124-141. cambourne, b. (1999). explicit and systematic teach ing of read ing: a new slogan? the read ing teach er, 53(2), 126-127. dewey, j. (1938). experience and education. new york: simon & schuster. dole, j. a. (2000). explicit and implicit instruction in comprehension. in b. m. taylore, m. f. graves, & p. van den broek (eds.), read ing for meaning: fostering comprehension in the middle grades (pp. 52-69). newark, de: international read ing association. durkin, d. (1979). what classroom observations reveal about read ing comprehension instruction. reading research quarterly, 14, 481-533. ellis, r. (1986). activities and procedures for teach er training. elt journal, 40(2), 91-99. hargreaves, a. (2005). educational change takes ages: life, career and generational factors in teach ers’ emotional responses to educational change. teach ing & teach er education, 21, 967-983. khonamri, f. (2008). an investigation of the relationship between esl readers’ beliefs, metacognition and their strategic read ing behavior. unpublished doctoral dissertation, puc, india. krashen, s. d. (1995). immersion: why not try free voluntary read ing? mosai, 3, 1-4. 116 universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras khonamri & salimi mackey, a., & gass, s. (2005). second language research: methodology and design. new jersey: lea. mohamed, n. (2006). an exploratory study of the interplay between the teach ers’ beliefs, instructional practices, and professional development. unpublished doctoral dissertation, the university of auckland, auckland. ness, m. (2007). read ing comprehension strategies in secondary content-area classrooms [webpage]. retrieved from http://www.pdkmembers.org/members_online/ publications/archive/pdf/k0711nes.pdf. pressely, m. (2000). comprehension instruction in elementary school: a quarter-century of research progress. in b. m. taylore, m. f. graves, & p. van den broek (eds.), read ing for meaning: fostering comprehension in the middle grades (pp. 32-51). newark, de: international read ing association. richards, j. c., & farrell, t. s. c. (2005). professional development for language teach ers. cambridge: cambridge university press. richardson, v. (1998). how teach ers change [webpage]. retrieved august 24, 2010, from: http://www.ncsall. net/?id=395. roshd. (1980). english group news. efl journal of lesson planning and curriculum design, 6, 28-29. shen, h. j. (2003). the role of explicit instruction in esl/ efl read ing. foreign language annals, 36(3), 424-433. willingham, t. d. (2006). the usefulness of brief instruction in read ing comprehension. american educator, winter, 39-45, 50. about the authors fatemeh khonamri is an assistant professor of tefl in the english department, at mazandaran university in babulsar, iran, and an m.a. candidate of tefl at the same university. her main fields of interest include efl teach er education and learning strategies. she is also interested in research on read ing and writing, assessment, cooperative learning, and autonomous learning. mahin salimi holds an ma in tefl (teach ing english as a foreign language) from the english department of the university of mazandaran in babulsar, iran. her main fields of interest include efl teach er education and learning strategies. 11profile vol. 15, no. 2, october 2013. issn 1657-0790 (printed) 2256-5760 (online). bogotá, colombia. pages 11-33 using the dictionary for improving adolescents’ reading comprehension of short scientific texts uso del diccionario para mejorar la comprensión lectora de textos científicos cortos en inglés con adolescentes 1ximena becerra cortés* colegio saludcoop norte, colombia this paper reports on an innovative and action research project which focused on the use of the dictionary and the prior knowledge of colombian high school students to improve their reading comprehension of short scientific texts. data collection instruments included students’ work gathered during two workshops, field notes, and a questionnaire. findings showed that searching in the dictionary and activating prior knowledge seem to facilitate the use of the text to answer reading comprehension questions. students experienced less difficulty answering questions that required literal information than those that required establishing relationships among elements of the text. they equally valued the prior knowledge of the subject and the use of the dictionary in the resolution of science workshops in english. key words: dictionary use, prior knowledge, reading comprehension, scientific texts. en este artículo se reporta un proyecto de innovación y de investigación acción centrado en el uso del diccionario y el conocimiento previo adquirido de estudiantes colombianos de secundaria para mejorar la comprensión lectora de textos científicos cortos. los instrumentos de recolección de datos incluyen el trabajo realizado por los estudiantes durante dos talleres, notas de campo y un cuestionario. los resultados mostraron que la consulta del diccionario y la activación de conocimientos previos parecen facilitar el uso del texto para responder preguntas de comprensión de lectura. los estudiantes encontraron menor dificultad en la resolución de preguntas que requerían información literal que en aquellas que implicaban el establecimiento de relaciones entre los elementos del texto. ellos valoran por igual el conocimiento previo y el uso del diccionario en la resolución de talleres de ciencias en inglés. palabras clave: comprensión de lectura, conocimiento previo, textos científicos, uso del diccionario. * e-mail: becerrax@yahoo.com this paper reports on a study conducted by the author while participating in the profile teacher development programme at universidad nacional de colombia, bogotá campus, in 2010. the programme was sponsored by secretaría de educación de bogotá, d. c. code number: 1576, august 24, 2009, and modified on march 23, 2010. this article was received on february 1, 2013, and accepted on july 25, 2013. universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras12 becerra cortés introduction saludcoop norte school is part of the pilot public schools selected by the secretary of education of bogotá, colombia, for the implementation of a bilingual program (spanish and english). educational policies argue that in times of globalization, colombia needs to develop the capacity of its people to handle at least one foreign language. hence, the national ministry of education has formulated the national bilingual program 2004-2019. command of a second language means, among other things, understanding other contexts and appropriating knowledge as to generate new knowledge and have access to more opportunities (ministerio de educación nacional, 2005). taking into account the previous statement, i as a science teacher have been designing and applying some workshops in the foreign language related to the science issues that i have been teaching in spanish— my students’ mother tongue. workshops include the presentation of short scientific texts in english and activities that involve their reading comprehension, encouraging ninth graders to engage in the exploration of data, searching for specific information, and the establishment of general ideas. however, despite the belief that scientific vo cabulary is easily understood because many words are very similar in the mother tongue, students have difficulties understanding the text so they easily stop paying attention to the rest of the task. students have difficulties in finding the information needed to carry out these tasks due to their lack of proficiency in the foreign language as well as lack of accuracy in scientific vocabular y. therefore, it is important to guide students in using strategies to improve their reading comprehension. among the strategies recommended to achieve this goal we have the search for meaning of words within the text and the use of a dictionary for scientific vocabulary (díaz de león, 1988). in order to fulfill the goals of a teacher development program i took in 2010—the pfpd red profile1—i decided to dig into the said problematic situation by engaging in an innovation and action research project. i opted for encouraging ninth graders at saludcoop norte school, in bogotá, to work on the decoding of unfamiliar words using the dictionary as well as their prior knowledge. this strategy aims to improve reading comprehension of short scientific texts through the establishment of relations within the knowledge acquired in the mother tongue. context although the implementation of the bilingual program at the school is just beginning, there are many language and cultural difficulties that are very hard to overcome, especially due to social and economic characteristics surrounding the student population. however, students’ interest in bilingual education exists. the school is located in the usaquén neighborhood, in the north of the city. ninth grade students range from 14 to 17 years of age and live mostly in extended families (parents, siblings, uncles, grandparents, cousins). a good number of students reported the absence of either their fathers or mothers mainly because of abandonment, disappearance, or death. most of their families belong to the second and third socioeconomic strata.2 many of the students are left alone at home and have to take care of their siblings and do the housework; hence, reading does not play an important role within their daily routine. these students are therefore commonly immersed in the following situations: 1 pfpd stands for “programa de formación permanente de docentes” (permanent professional development programme). the red profile is a pfpd for schoolteachers. it is run at universidad nacional de colombia, in bogotá, and motivates teachers to engage in action research and innovation projects. 2 colombian socioeconomic strata are a classification of households from its physical characteristics and its environment, categorized into six groups with similar social and economic conditions. strata 1 and 2 correspond to people with fewer resources and strata 5 and 6 correspond to people with ample resources. 13profile vol. 15, no. 2, october 2013. issn 1657-0790 (printed) 2256-5760 (online). bogotá, colombia. pages 11-33 using the dictionary for improving adolescents’ reading comprehension of short scientific texts 1. students lack a cultural and academic environment at home that enables parents to support their academic work. 2. many of their homes do not offer the conditions that ensure stability in the emotional aspect and provide the educational resources necessary for optimal performance in school. 3. the surrounding area is primarily an environment of degradation (drugs, thefts, and assaults are local situations affecting their welfare per manently), which has an impact on their motivation for schoolwork and their development of a life plan. it is therefore a great challenge faced by teachers to foster an appropriate learning environment that allows motivating students for academic work. in this case, providing them with opportunities for effective interaction with texts and guiding the use of resources to enable them to take advantage of reading and to acquire language for the appropriate interpretation of information both become real challenges. literature review this section is intended to provide theoretical support on reading comprehension, reading scientific texts, vocabulary enrichment, and the use of the dictionary. here we concentrate on the meaning of reading comprehension, the characteristics of scientific texts, the possible types of reading, as well as some recommendations to improve understanding and deal with the lack of vocabulary by using the dictionary. reading comprehension i based my work on grellet (1981), who states that “understanding a written text means extracting the required information from it as efficiently as possible” (p. 3). therefore, grellet mentions that it is essential to take the following elements into consideration: what do we read? in this case, we are referring to science text books; why do we read? we are reading for information (in order to find out something or in order to do something with the information); and how do we read? we are doing intensive reading: reading shorter texts, to extract specific information. scientific texts most of the information provided in schools has a documentary source: books, articles, scientific journals, notes, among others. therefore, it is very important that students know how to handle these documentary sources and how to make their reading profit them because academic work is largely based on written communication. thus, the acquisition of skills related to reading comprehension and management of scientific and technical texts allows the scope of better academic achievements (díaz de león, 1988). given that some limitations are present for handling documentary information that is used to inform students of the various advances in science and technology, this innovation and action research project was intended to develop exercises through which students could acquire skills that would enable them to achieve a better text understanding. the scientific literature provides data about reality. these data have to be judged to be accepted. also, in science the documentary sources serve as methodological, practical, and experimental guidelines, therefore, those who read them should know how to use them for those purposes (díaz de león, 1988). starting from an appropriate source material the students can carry out various types of reading according to their needs: browsing, data search, and reading for general ideas. reading comprehension requires bringing into play those skills (díaz de león, 1988). to do it properly, it is necessary that the confrontation with the text is done through a constant awareness of their own capabilities and limitations. this reading process also requires the use of the elements that the text provides as clues. the student facing a scientific reading must know what prior knowledge he or she possesses about the terminology universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras14 becerra cortés contained in it; if s/he does not understand it, s/he has to use the same text or a different one to learn it. the texts can be used in many ways: • to follow a sequence of content that progressively becomes more complex. • to obtain specific information. understanding a scientific text may be difficult because of the lack of sufficient knowledge of the subject. hence, the importance of choosing texts that have an appropriate level according to what is known about the issue (díaz de león, 1988). according to alderson and urguhart (as cited in calderón, carvajal, & guerrero, 2007), the reading comprehension process focuses on three elements: the text being read, the background knowledge possessed by the reader, and contextual aspects. in ever yday language a word differs from a scientific word, because the first appears in phrases that can be replaced by different words with the same me aning (synonyms). the phras e made up of scientific terms cannot admit synonymous substitutions (díaz de león, 1988). given a new text the reader may discover that language is unknown to him/her due to vocabular y or terminological difficulties. vocabulary difficulties concern the fact s/he does not know the meaning of the word in everyday language. the terminological difficulties are related to the lack of special significance that a term in a scientific discipline has (díaz de león, 1988). however, if the reader does not understand a word of ordinary language, s/he can continue to read and extract meaning from the general context of the sentence and, although there are times in which the context does not help him, s/he will need to go to the dictionary. the most common situation is that the meaning of new words from everyday language is made apparent in the same course of reading. when there are unknown scientific terms the reader must necessarily find the corresponding definition. enrichment of vocabulary and use of the dictionary the dictionary is used when the context does not permit extracting the meaning. so it is very important to insist that students get used to infer from context the meaning of the vocabulary as much as possible. they should be advised to resort to the dictionary, but only in cases where it is really necessary (fernández de bobadilla, 1999). the acquisition of scientific terms is achieved through the study of the subject area itself. introductory texts as well as dictionaries of technical terms can provide definitions when the context is not enough to get the meaning of scientific terms. in relation to these terms, students do not usually need to find them in the dictionary, since they are mostly from latin or greek roots and therefore very similar to those used in their native language (e.g. polychloroprene-policloropreno, butadiene-butadieno, spectroscopy-espectroscopía). the failure to understand the content of the term because of its specificity is not necessarily a foreign language problem, but a problem of understanding in their own language (fernández de bobadilla, 1999). in relation to the information provided by the dictionary, fernández de bobadilla (1999) states that the student must know how to use it, especially in relation to two main aspects which tend to cause major difficulties in reading comprehension: the division of entries for meaning and grammatical category. division of entries by meaning a lexical unit has several meanings. students tend to associate each lexical unit with a single meaning. that would not be a problem because the scientific terms often have a single, precise, and definite meaning. but in some cases we find more than one entry for a scientific term. 15profile vol. 15, no. 2, october 2013. issn 1657-0790 (printed) 2256-5760 (online). bogotá, colombia. pages 11-33 using the dictionary for improving adolescents’ reading comprehension of short scientific texts division of entries per grammar category a formal unit can belong to several grammar categories. students tend to associate each word with a single grammatical category. the formal unit belonging to various categories is not appropriate for scientific terms, but those belonging to general language. in data search reading, the dictionary review is aimed at seeking a term. it is not necessary to read whole paragraphs; students should be explained that we can just take a general look at the page of the book to see if the term we want to find appears there. at this point we have to stop and start with other reading comprehension strategies (díaz de león, 1988). díaz de león adds that the techniques of speed reading (skimming and scanning) should be applied to the search for entries, so that the search is carried out quickly. according to the literature review, it is clear that reading comprehension of scientific texts requires intensive reading to extract specific information to resolve academic problems. consequently, it is important to develop a methodological process that assures better understanding while taking into account previously acquired knowledge, use of context to face unfamiliar foreign and scientific vocabulary, and the proper use of the dictionary. method markee (1997) states that “curricular innovation is a managed process of development whose principal products are teaching (and/or testing) materials, methodological skills, and pedagogical values that are perceived as new by potential adopters” (p. 46). the project reported here is an innovation because i wanted to improve the students’ reading process by guiding them in the use of the dictionary. this involved the implementation of a methodological process that we had not done before. taking into account the some considerations about investigation expressed by calderón (2000), another reason to recognize this project as an innovation is because it is a reflection that takes place on a real practical problem that becomes known because of the teaching task. innovation in this approach not only involves providing new knowledge and establishing laws and theories; it also allows us to establish relationships, formulate hypotheses and dilemmas. in this case, it starts from the difficulty observed in students in the understanding of short scientific texts in english. this innovation also involved carrying out a research exercise with a students’ group in order to take advantage of the results of investigations that recommend the use of the dictionary to face scientific texts and discuss their use in the classroom while taking into account scopes and limitations within a local context. the processes followed in the innovation matched the ones that characterize action research because they implied monitoring its development. to this end, burns (1999) emphasizes that the reflexive nature of action research means that analysis occurs over the entire investigation. burns (2010) also explains that action research “involves taking a self-reflective, critical, and systematic approach to exploring your own teaching contexts . . . it means taking an area you feel could be done better, subjecting it to questioning, and then developing new ideas and alternatives” (p. 2). closely related to the alternatives we have to engage in with innovation projects are the stages claimed in the literature about action research. in burns (2010), in particular, we find that action re search processes “involve many interwoven aspects— exploring, identifying, planning, collecting information, analysing and reflecting, hypothesizing and speculating, intervening, observing, reporting, writing, presenting (burns, 1999, p. 35)—that don’t necessarily occur in any fixed sequence” (p. 8). as can be seen, action research provides a framework for systematic innovation implementation. all these processes were taking into consideration and universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras16 becerra cortés experienced by the teachers participating in the teacher development program within which this project was carried out. alfonzo (2008) claims that understanding educational innovation as a process requires certain steps for their uptake and application; these stages are: planning, diffusion, adoption, implementation, and evaluation. planning of an innovation is a decisionmaking process whereby objectives and procedures are set. diffusion is one in which an innovation is made known to its users for their adoption and use. in the adoption phase the teacher and the educational community decide whether or not to start educational innovation. implementation is a series of processes to adapt and implement the innovative plan in specific situations and, evaluation consists of getting the value of the whole process in order to come to know the weaknesses and strengths, the resistance and supports. according to the previous statements, in this project, planning meant making decisions about literature recommendations to face reading comprehension of scientific texts and how to deal with the dictionary, context, and needs of ninth grade students to implement the innovation. diffusion involved creating an appropriate environment at school for the innovation process. adoption included adjustments based on the guidance given by the tutors of the pfpd red profile who advised me along the development of the project, the school schedule, and the availability of time and resources, among others. implementation involved the selection of appropriate short scientific texts according to the level of the students and the design and application in the science class of two workshops with activities specially designed for them. the evaluation included analysis of the applied workshops. the data were collected—using a questionnaire and field notes— in order to identify progress and difficulties and to evaluate the process. finally, it should be noted that the students were asked if they wanted to be part of this innovation and action research project, and their parents were asked to sign a consent form in a meeting. this helped me decide which students could be observed and which evidences from them could be collected and analyzed. hence, i gathered data collection from 34 students. instruments as has been said, data were collected from different instruments: two workshops, a questionnaire, and field notes. workshops in view of time available, two workshops were designed and developed in class. they included the same organization: one short scientific text (a text about evolution for workshop 1 and another text about taxonomy for workshop 2) followed by activities to promote the use of prior knowledge and the dictionary. the first activity consisted of reading the text carefully to recognize and classify the unknown words into scientific words and other words. the second activity included multiple-choice questions that implied establishing relationships between prior knowledge presented on these issues in spanish and the text presented on the workshop. the third activity focused on the use of the dictionary to ask for the meaning of selected words from the text using the dictionary or the context. the fourth activity tapped into students’ prior knowledge to ask for definitions of scientific words promoting the use of prior knowledge or context. the final activity included true or false questions that implied that students established relationships between different elements of the text (see appendices a and b). questionnaire a questionnaire was designed and administered at the end of the two workshops. they inquired about the students’ points of view and feelings regarding the ac tivities, difficulties found in decoding the unknown vo cabu lar y using dif ferent res ources li ke t he 17profile vol. 15, no. 2, october 2013. issn 1657-0790 (printed) 2256-5760 (online). bogotá, colombia. pages 11-33 using the dictionary for improving adolescents’ reading comprehension of short scientific texts context, previous knowledge and dictionary, and the advantages and disadvantages of using dictionaries (see appendix c). field notes field notes were kept to register students’ behav iors and participation during the application of the workshops. data analysis data were analyzed based on triangulation processes, which involved resorting to the literature review and the results of the applied workshops, as evidenced in the questionnaires and field notes. this was done in order to ensure the reliability and validity of the research. findings three categories emerged after examining the information gathered. they are, namely: using the dictionary, looking for information to define given issues, and reading comprehension. the categories and their subcategories are shown in figure 1 and they are described and discussed below. using the dictionary students were asked to classify unknown vocabu lary from scientific texts into scientific and nonscientific (activity 1) terms and to write yes or no if they had used the dictionary for each word (see appendixes a and b). they were not sure about differences between these words so they expressed many doubts in workshop 1. after workshop 1, a feedback session was done, which allowed among other things, the consideration of the classifications made by the students and to clarify terms differences, including correspondence with one or more meanings as well as general or restricted science use. probably because of that, they felt more confident in workshop 2 and, as a result, the successful classification of terms increased from 50% in workshop 1 to 69% in workshop 2. students were also asked to find the meanings of different words—scientific and non-scientific terms— by paying attention to the context or by using the dictionary (activity 3). given the characteristics of the scientific and non-scientific terms, they were considered as two subcategories for the analysis. an additional subcategory was established to review the opinions and feelings of the students about the search for meanings process. scientific terms according to the results obtained by the students, most of the scientific terms achieved correct recognition percentages (between 78% and 94%). terms like theory, hypothesis, fossils, were easily recognizable because they were similar in the students’ native language (fernández de bobadilla, 1999). also easy to recognize, but not similar in the native language were: kingdom (using the context), fertile offspring (using figure 1. categories derived from the data analysis using the dictionary • scientific terms • non-scientific terms • likes and dislikes looking for information to de�ne given issues • prior knowledge • contextual aspects reading comprehension • decoding the written text • likes and dislikes using the dictionary for improving reading comprehensión of short scienti�c texts universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras18 becerra cortés the dictionary and prior knowledge), traits, whales (using the dictionary). for the translation of scientific terms they found less difficulty in relation to grammatical categories and entries because these do not accept synonyms (díaz de león, 1988), but they could not find some words in dictionaries, for example, phylogeny and kingdom. on the other hand, they found difficulties with the translation of compound words (classification system, bottle-nosed dolphin). non-scientific terms regarding this issue, i observed students’ results using the dictionary with non-scientific terms and students’ opinions about the difficulties faced during the workshops. students identified non-scientific terms already known by them and, as a result, they were easily recognized and adjusted to the context. for example, survive and changes were recognized properly by 91% of the students. on the other hand, in relation to the unknown terms, students had difficulties with dictionary use when they were trying to find the most appropriate me an i ng among t he opt i ons pre s e nte d i n it . furthermore, they did not check that the meaning selected in the dictionary was in accord with the context of the reading. for example, the word suited was understood as the noun suit = “colección” (collection) by most of the students and the correct meaning was the verb in passive voice: adaptado. only 22% of them found the correct answer because the translation they found was not checked with the context. they reported many difficulties while searching for non-scientific terms like suited, means, called, gathered, known, commonly (that they extracted from the text). this was evidenced in expressions observed in workshop 1 such as “i cannot find this!”, “there are some meanings!”, “i cannot find the word!”, “the word is not here!”.3 fortunately, in workshop 2 students were more focused and willing to resolve the activity in an autonomous way using other resources as context and prior knowledge. likes and dislikes i got to know students’ opinions through the questionnaire and the observation notes. most of the students recognized that they had difficulties with unknown words when facing a scientific text in english. for 41% of them, the use of the context is a useful strategy to find meanings and 47% of them think that even though they keep on reading, they do not find meanings so they decide to look in a dictionary. one student wrote: “it is difficult for me but i try to understand.” in addition, students were asked about the use of the dictionary. all of them consider the dictionary useful but 23% notice that they cannot always find the word that best corresponds to the text. in relation to the understanding of scientific texts in english, the opinions of the students were divided: those who understand the vocabulary (32%), those who have difficulties with the scientific vocabulary (even in their mother tongue) (29%), and those who have difficulties with foreign language vocabulary (29%). students’ opinions confirm the difficulties to use the context and to appropriately use the dictionary to find scientific and non-scientific terms. another important point was the quality of the dictionaries that they brought to class. although the number of suitable dictionaries for the activities increased in workshop 2, which suggests students were more aware of the importance of a good dictionary, some of them were not good enough to resolve the activities. 3 these expressions were translated from spanish: “¡no puedo encontrar esto!”; “¡aquí hay muchos significados!”; “¡no puedo encontrar la palabra!”; “¡la palabra no está aquí!”. 19profile vol. 15, no. 2, october 2013. issn 1657-0790 (printed) 2256-5760 (online). bogotá, colombia. pages 11-33 using the dictionary for improving adolescents’ reading comprehension of short scientific texts looking for information to define given issues knowledge acquired in the mother tongue and contexts are useful sources when facing scientific readings. in this section the use of prior knowledge and context are analyzed (activity 4). prior knowledge students answered multiple choice questions concerning information which we had worked previously in science class, and in their mother tongue (see appendices a and b). more than 50% of the students reached correct answers. for example, they easily recognized that “charles darwin was an english naturalist” and that “cordata is not a kingdom.” the use of prior knowledge was useful in the reporting of specific data such as dates and events, but not as useful when students were required to establish relationships with the text. in the case of the question, “traits best suited” relates to…, the answer, “helpful variations,” involved understanding the meaning of the words according to the context. only four students answered correctly. in connection to this, we should remember that the reading comprehension process focuses on three elements: the text being read, the background knowledge possessed by the reader and contextual aspects. [hence], to comprehend a reading it is necessary that the reader can extract key words in order to capture the whole sense of the text. (calderón et al., 2007, p. 28) to define scientific terms in english, students had two chances: using prior knowledge or using context provided by the readings. students wrote the use of one of the two strategies showing prior knowledge preference in both workshops (percentages averages were 71% and 48%) despite the fact that in the second workshop around 25% of the population did not write their preference. in addition i could notice that students used their notes along the development of both workshops. although in their notebooks there were no literal definitions, most students realized that when they define most of the scientific terms they can use prior knowledge. prior knowledge seems to be useful and students realize it in concepts like reproduce and evolution, in which they reached higher percentages (66 and 53%) of correct answers. however, in workshop 1 they had many difficulties defining the concept of natural selection and only three students took it from the text. the answer was literal: “natural selection means that organisms with traits best suited to their environment are more likely to survive and reproduce” (see appendix a). there were the same difficulties when defining scientific terms in workshop 2. phylogeny, kingdom, and species as natural selection definitions were taken literally from the text (see appendix b), but the students’ percentages of correct answers decreased compared to workshop 1 (percentage average 27%). here we saw the importance of creating awareness among students of the importance of establishing relations between prior knowledge and context to create definitions because prior knowledge is not always enough to resolve the task. alderson and urguhart (as cited in calderón et al., 2007, p. 28) emphasize that “background knowledge is a helpful tool,” but the reader has to take in mind the text, to “reorganize his knowledge and put it together better.” contextual aspects in general terms, students improved their performance in workshop 2 in relation to workshop 1. according to the percentages of correct answers, students improved in activities 1, 2, and 5: in activity 1: classifying unknown words, from 50% to 69%; in activity 2: activating prior knowledge, from 52% to 69%; and in activity 5: reading comprehension, from 42% to 63%. activity 3, using the dictionary, was almost the same (81% and 79%); whereas in activity 4, defining scientific terms, their performance decreased from 47% to 27%. in this case, the use of prior knowledge universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras20 becerra cortés proved not to be enough for the development of appropriate definitions. scientific terms as phylogeny, kingdom, species (present in workshop 2) and natural selection (in workshop 1) had in common that they were the concepts to be defined and with the least number of correct answers. although the concepts’ definitions could be taken literally from the text of the workshop, i could notice that students needed a greater use of the context to construct definitions. reading comprehension this section includes the analysis of the results obtained in the resolution of the last activity of the two workshops in which students were expected to show their understanding as well as their likes and dislikes in relation to them. decoding the written text for lopera (2012), “reading is an interactive process in which the writer and the reader dialog through a text” (p. 85). in my case, this was enhanced by engaging students in using some reading strategies. in connection to this, the same author reviews several related studies and points out that the reading process can be more successful if students receive strategy instruction. i could observe that activating prior knowledge and searching in the dictionary seemed to facilitate the use of the text to answer the questions through which students were expected to signal understanding of the given texts. in the last activity of the workshops, students were expected to decode the written text, that is, to extract the underlying meaning from it. students’ average of correct answers to the items contained in the last activity was 42% in workshop 1, and in two questions they showed percentages above 50%. the highest percentage was for the item “the origin of the species was never published” (59%). the other item, “when darwin refers to traits, this is the same as the individual characteristics,” scored 53% of right responses. probably, it could be answered correctly because of the use of the dictionary. in a previous activity, 72% of the students used the dictionary to look for the meaning of the word trait, which proved to be useful, because 84% of the students found the correct meaning. workshop 2 showed the three highest percentages (72%, 72%, and 69%) for three questions that implied an appropriate use of the context and establishing relations among different elements of the text as well as taking advantage of the methodological process of the workshop using dictionary and prior knowledge. this can be contrasted with workshop 1, in which the highest percentage reached 59%. the lowest percentage found in workshop 1 was 25% for question 5d. it is likely that this problem is related to the previous difficulties defining the natural selection concept, because it was literal. in contrast, 47% was found in workshop 2, when students answered the question “man and bottle-nosed dolphin belong to the same class.” this low percentage was perhaps due to difficulties in finding the meaning of a compound word. the above results confirm that reading scientific texts requires the stakes of skills that are not restricted to decoding the written text. it is also necessary to know how to use it to organize the information provided in the resolution of academic problems (díaz de león, 1988). the average of correct answers increased from 42% in workshop 1 to 63% in workshop 2 (see figure 2). the difference is attributed to a greater use of context in addition to the prior knowledge in the resolution of questions. perhaps this was due to the fact that students took into account the feedback received in workshop 1 and that empowered them to improve their results. as can be seen, the highest number of correct responses was gotten from questions which required a literal information search within the text, as well as easier ways to explain why the sentence 21profile vol. 15, no. 2, october 2013. issn 1657-0790 (printed) 2256-5760 (online). bogotá, colombia. pages 11-33 using the dictionary for improving adolescents’ reading comprehension of short scientific texts was true or false. students were asked to write arguments, but the frequency of writing was very little. two questions presented the highest number of arguments. one of them was the question “the origin of the species was never published,” where five students wrote not only false but answers such as “it was published in 1859;” in the other, “phylogeny refers to the economical history of an organism,” six students wrote not only false but explanations such as “it refers to the evolutionary history.” this question obtained 67% of correct answers (see figure 2). despite the increase in positive results in workshop 2, it was observed that most students were still reluctant to develop arguments in their responses, although in the feedback provided in workshop 1, taking this into account was suggested. additionally, there were difficulties in establishing relationships between elements of the text and the true or false sentences, for contrasting ideas or finding similarities that allowed them to justify their answers or at least make it explicit in writing. some students wrote arguments like “i am not sure,” “i think so,” “it is said in reading,” “this is in reading.” although they are not valid arguments, this could reflect that the requested process is difficult for them and that they are not aware of its importance because they consider that recognizing the sentence as true or false is enough. when students were asked about their whole understanding, 50% of them considered that they understo o d s cience in spanish. according to the review of the other percentages, english under standing reached 12% and science in english under standing reached 26%. it could be argued that science in english has a lower degree of difficulty for students than regular english, which would be contradictory. however, this result could be explained by the satisfaction of some of the students with the positive results reached in the development of the workshops, which made them feel empowered to take on challenges. likes and dislikes a high percentage of students (86%) expressed they liked having lessons that included science activities in english. their responses were as follows: all science classes (12%), once a week (53%), and once a month (21%). among the reasons that justify why they would prefer this once a week, they mentioned the possibility of improving their english by applying it in different contexts as well as the enrichment of not only their usual vocabulary but scientific vocabulary too. they also remarked on the value of the contribution of this kind of initiatives to science learning which at the same time helps them improve their english proficiency. finally, it should be noted that when students were asked about strategies for improving their understanding to develop science workshops in english, they recognized and equally valued prior knowledge of the subjects (44%) and the use of the dictionary (44%). limitations results of this innovation are limited and require the implementation of a greater number of designed and applied workshops to test the significant effectiveness of the methodological process implemented. although students showed better performance in the second workshop and felt comfortable with the methodology, figure 2. comparison between percentage of correct answers achieved in questions from activity 5: reading comprehension in workshops 1 and 2 0 10 20 30 40 50 60 70 80 53 31 59 25 41 42 72 58 67 69 72 47 50 63 a b c d e f g average workshop 1 workshop 2 universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras22 becerra cortés which could be an indicator of its success, students’ results must be better. some students do not have adequate dictionaries for the development of the workshops; this difficulty had to be faced through collaborative work with peers. so, optimized access to resources through checking dictionary availability for each student before workshops application could have improved results. conclusions before this innovation, when i had applied science workshops in english, students had shown difficulties decoding information due to a lack of foreign language proficiency and scientific vocabulary. there had been emphasis on the strategy of the use of the context to infer missing information but students could not distinguish the majority of the meanings; therefore, most of the students did not get involved in the activity and only a few students attempted to perform it. as far as dictionaries are concerned, they had been requested to develop the workshops; however, not all the dictionaries were suitable due to factors such as a lack of appropriate parents’ criteria to buy a dictionary because the lowest cost is generally decisive in the buying decision. as a consequence, dictionaries are not always adequate because they handle a small number of words and limited entries for meanings and grammatical categories. students showed difficulties in the use of the dictionary, especially managing the division of entries: per meaning and per grammatical category. for example, students tended to consider just the first meaning or they could not find verbs in the past tense, the passive voice or comparatives. along the development of the project, decoding unknown words presented more difficulties with non-scientific terms than with scientific terms. this seems to be due to native language similarities, prior knowledge of terms and difficulties using dictionaries. students appreciate the use of the context, the dictionary, and prior knowledge for the resolution of the science workshops, but strategies have to be implemented to help or motivate them to improve the use of the context in reading comprehension in general. students preferred the use of prior knowledge in tasks such as defining scientific terms. prior knowledge proves to be useful in the reporting of specific data such as dates and events and to create some definitions but when this was not enough to resolve the task; they had difficulties establishing relationships with it and the context. the methodological process of activating prior knowledge and searches in the dictionary seems to facilitate the use of the text to answer the questions aimed at checking the students’ understanding. students’ better performance in workshop 2 could be considered an indicator of the success of the methodology employed by taking in mind feedback given in workshop 1. when students are required to write arguments to support their true or false responses, they are limited to literal information from the text. there is a resistance from most of the students to develop arguments regarding their responses. there are difficulties in establishing relationships between elements of the text and the true or false sentences and in contrasting ideas or finding similarities that allow them to justify their answers or at least make them explicit in writing. although we could implement only two workshops, it was observed that some students had an optimistic feeling towards the positive results they reached with the development of the workshops by activating prior knowledge and using the dictionary. the majority of them assessed the science activities in english in a positive way due to the fact that they gave them the opportunity to experience the discovery that english can be applied in different contexts, enriching not only daily vocabulary but scientific vocabulary and science learning. 23profile vol. 15, no. 2, october 2013. issn 1657-0790 (printed) 2256-5760 (online). bogotá, colombia. pages 11-33 using the dictionary for improving adolescents’ reading comprehension of short scientific texts further research for the purpose of this study i chose short scientific texts from a science book. but articles from scientific journals are also documentary sources that are very important in the science area and so students should know how to handle them. this is of upmost relevance if we take into account that the academic world is based largely on written communication (díaz de león, 1988). considering that reading requires not only decoding the text also establishing relations among elements of the text and the activities to be considered, i saw that students need training in their native language to improve their reasoning process and, hence, their reading comprehension. in line with this, it is very important to insist that students get used to inferring the meaning of the vocabulary from the context as much as possible. for future innovations about using the dictionary to improve reading comprehension of short scientific texts, i recommended exploring not only dictionaries, but also introductory science texts and technical dictionaries that are recommended in literature and that could be very useful in familiarizing students with different sources of information. references alfonzo, f. (2008, november 4). innovación educativa [educational innovation. web log post]. retrieved from http://www.natureduca.com/blog/?p=237 biggs, a., daniel, l., ortleb, e., rillero, p., & zike, d. (2002). glencoe science: life science. columbus, oh: glencoe/ mcgraw-hill. burns, a. (1999). collaborative action research for english language teachers. cambridge, uk: cambridge university press. burns, a. (2010). doing action research in english language teaching: a guide for practitioners. new york, ny: routledge. calderón, j. (2000). enseñar a investigar a los profesores: reflexiones y sugerencias didácticas [teaching teachers to do research: didactic reflexions and suggestions. pdf version]. retrieved from http://publicacionesemv. com.ar/_paginas/archivos_texto/100.pdf calderón, s., carvajal, l. m., & guerrero, a. y. (2007). how to improve sixth graders’ reading comprehension through the skimming technique. profile issues in teachers’ professional development, 8(1), 25-39. retrieved from http://www.revistas.unal.edu.co/index.php/profile/ article/viewfile/10818/11300 díaz de león, a. e. (1988). guía de comprensión de lectura. textos científicos y técnicos [a guide to reading comprehension. scientific and technical texts]. méxico d.f., mx: conpes. retrieved from http://www.uamenlinea. uam.mx/materiales/lengua/diaz_de_leon_ana_ eugenia_guia_de_comprension_de_lectura_text.pdf fernández de bobadilla, n. (1999). hacia un uso correcto del diccionario en la lectura de textos científicos en inglés [towards a correct use of the dictionary in the reading of scientic texts in english]. encuentro: revista de investigación e innovación en la clase de idiomas, 11, 96-105. retrieved from http://www.encuentrojournal. org/textos/11.11.pdf grellet, f. (1981). developing reading skills. cambridge, uk: cambridge university press. lopera, s. (2012). effects of strategy instruction in an efl reading comprehension course: a case study. profile issues in teachers’ professional development, 14(1), 79-89. retrieved from http://www.revistas.unal.edu. co/index.php/profile/article/view/29057 markee, n. (1997). managing curricular innovation. cambridge, uk: cambridge university press. ministerio de educación nacional. (2005, october/november). bases para una nación bilingüe y competitiva [foundations for a competitive and bilingual nation]. altablero: 37. retrieved from http://www. mineducacion.gov.co/1621/article-97498.html universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras24 becerra cortés about the author ximena becerra cortés has worked and studied in colombia. she is a science teacher at saludcoop norte school in bogotá. she holds a bachelor’s degree in teaching biology from universidad pedagógica nacional and an ms in biology from universidad de los andes. 25profile vol. 15, no. 2, october 2013. issn 1657-0790 (printed) 2256-5760 (online). bogotá, colombia. pages 11-33 using the dictionary for improving adolescents’ reading comprehension of short scientific texts appendix a: workshop 1. finding the meaning of unknown words pfpd red profile 2010 project: science ninth grade—afternoon shift name:_____________________________________________________________________________ course: 901 objective to promote prior knowledge and dictionary use to improve reading comprehension. science theme: evolution, natural selection activities: pre-reading activity: read the text carefully and underline the unknown words. the theory of evolution suggests why there are differences among living things! darwin developed the theory of evolution that is accepted by most scientists today. he described his ideas in a book called on the origin of species, which was published in 1859. after many years, darwin’s hypothesis became known as the theory of evolution by natural selection. natural selection means that organisms with traits best suited to their environment are more likely to survive and reproduce. their traits are passed on to more offspring. the principles that describe how natural selection works are listed in table 1. over time, as new data have been gathered and reported, some changes have been made to darwin’s original ideas about evolution by natural selection. his theory remains one of the most important ideas in the study of life science. universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras26 becerra cortés table 1. the principles of natural selection 1. organisms produce more offspring than can survive. 2 differences, or variations, occur among individuals of a species. 3. variations are passed on to offspring. 4. some variations are helpful i.e. individuals with helpful variations survive and reproduce better than those without these variations. 5. over time, the offspring of individuals with helpful variations make up more of a population and eventually become a separate species. english text adapted from biggs, daniel, ortleb, rillero, & zike (2002, p. 157). 1. classify the underlined unknown words into scientific words other words 2. activating prior knowledge choose the correct option. a. charles darwin was a(an): 1. french botanist 2. italian zoologist 3. english naturalist 4. german geologist b. “traits best suited” relates to 1. environment 2. helpful variations 3. organisms 4. offspring 27profile vol. 15, no. 2, october 2013. issn 1657-0790 (printed) 2256-5760 (online). bogotá, colombia. pages 11-33 using the dictionary for improving adolescents’ reading comprehension of short scientific texts c. darwin’s theory has been modified in a modern evolutionary synthesis that is called: 1. neo-darwinism 2. darwinism 3. lamarckism 4. neo-lamarckism d. in 2009, in relation to darwin’s life, a celebration occurred of 200 years of his 1. birth 2. death 3. publication of on the origin of species 4. beginning of the five year voyage on the beagle 3. using the dictionary find the meanings of the words (by paying attention to the context or by using the dictionary). word meaning did you use the dictionary? suited traits offspring theory hypothesis survive changes yes___ no___ yes___ no___ yes___ no___ yes___ no___ yes___ no___ yes___ no___ yes___ no___ 4. define the following words using your previous knowledge (pk) or using the context provided by the reading (c). word definition did you use pk or c? reproduce natural selection offspring evolution universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras28 becerra cortés 5. according to the text, is the sentence true or false? why? a. ____ when darwin refers to traits, this is the same as individual characteristics. b. ____ a hypothesis is the same as a theory. c. ____ the origin of the species was never published. d. ____ natural selection means that organisms with traits not suited to their environment are more likely to survive and reproduce. e. ____ offspring of individuals with helpful variations number more than offspring without these helpful variations. 29profile vol. 15, no. 2, october 2013. issn 1657-0790 (printed) 2256-5760 (online). bogotá, colombia. pages 11-33 using the dictionary for improving adolescents’ reading comprehension of short scientific texts appendix b: workshop. understanding scientific texts pfpd red profile 2010 project: science ninth grade—afternoon shift name:_____________________________________________________________________________ course: 901 objective to promote prior knowledge and dictionary use to improve reading comprehension. science theme: taxonomy activities: pre-reading activity: read the text carefully and underline the unknown words. modern classification system in the late eighteenth century, carolus linnaeus, a swedish naturalist, developed a new system of grouping organisms. his classification system was based on looking for organisms with similar structures. today studies about fossils, hereditar y information and early stages of development are used to determine an organism’s phylogeny. phy logeny is t he e volutionar y histor y of an organism, or how it has changed over time. today it is the basis for the classification of many organisms. a classification system commonly used today groups organisms into five kingdoms. a kingdom is the first and largest category. kingdoms can be divided into smaller groups. the smallest classification category is a species. organisms that belong to the same species can mate and produce fertile offspring. to understand how an organism is classified, look at this classification of the bottle-nosed dolphin: universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras30 becerra cortés kingdom animalia phylum chordata class mammalia order cetacea family delphinidae genus tursiops species tursiops truncates the classification of the bottle-nosed dolphin shows that it falls under the order cetacea. this order includes whales and porpoises. english text adapted from biggs et al. (2002, p. 23). 1. classify the underlined unknown words into scientific words other words 2. activating prior knowledge choose the best option. a. this is not a kingdom 1. plantae 2. protists 3. cordata 4. bacteria b. carolus linnaeus was born in 1. 1607 2. 1707 3. 1807 4. 1907 c. carolus linnaeus is often called the father of 1. genetics 2. chemistry 3. taxonomy 4. zoology d. the binomial nomenclature is used for naming 1. families 2. species 3. kingdom 4. orders 31profile vol. 15, no. 2, october 2013. issn 1657-0790 (printed) 2256-5760 (online). bogotá, colombia. pages 11-33 using the dictionary for improving adolescents’ reading comprehension of short scientific texts 3. using the dictionary find the meaning of the words (by paying attention to the context or by using the dictionary). word meaning did you use the dictionary? classification system fossils phylogeny kingdom fertile offspring bottle-nosed dolphin whales yes___ no___ yes___ no___ yes___ no___ yes___ no___ yes___ no___ yes___ no___ yes___ no___ 4. define the following words using your previous knowledge (pk) or using the context provided by the reading (c). word definition did you use pk or c? phylogeny kingdom species 5. according to the text, is the sentence true or false? why? a. ___ carolus linnaeus developed a new classification system based on organisms’ structures. b. ___ fossils are helpful to determine an organism’s phylogeny. c. ___ phylogeny refers to the economical history of an organism. d. ___ the five kingdoms are bacteria, protista, fungi, plantae, and animalia. e. ___ a species is a group of organisms that can mate and produce fertile offspring. f. ___ man and the bottle-nosed dolphin belong to the same class. g. ___ whales, dolphins, and porpoises belong to the same family. universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras32 becerra cortés appendix c: questionnaire pfpd red profile 2010 project: science ninth grade—afternoon shift objective to learn students’ opinions about the advantages and disadvantages of using dictionaries, the quality of the workshops, the difficulties found in decoding the unknown vocabulary using different resources, and their points of view about the activities. dear student:41 the purpose of this questionnaire is to get your feedback on activities in science class related to decoding unfamiliar words in english and spanish and using the dictionary to improve reading comprehension of scientific texts. mark with an x the answer that best fits your views. your sincerity will be of great help to us. 1. how often would you like to develop science in english activities in science classes? a. all classes b. once a week c. once a month d. never e. other, which one? ________________________________________________________________ why?__________________________________________________________________________ ______________________________________________________________________________ 2. do you think… a. you understand english? b. you understand science? c. you understand science in english? d. other. which one? _______________________________________________________________ 4 the original questionnaires were designed in spanish and translated into english to comply with the journal requirements. 33profile vol. 15, no. 2, october 2013. issn 1657-0790 (printed) 2256-5760 (online). bogotá, colombia. pages 11-33 using the dictionary for improving adolescents’ reading comprehension of short scientific texts 3. when you face a scientific text in english: a. you understand everything. b. you have difficulties with some words, but you keep on reading and you find their meaning. c. you have difficulties with some words and even though you keep on reading you do not find their meaning, so you decide look them up in a dictionary. d. you have difficulty understanding despite implementing the strategies above. e. other. which one? _______________________________________________________________ 4. understanding scientific texts in english. a. it is easy. i understand scientific words and other words. b. i have difficulties with scientific words and although they are similar to spanish words, i do not understand their meaning. c. it is difficult because i do not understand many words in the text whether or not they are scientific, since they are in english. d. other. which one? _______________________________________________________________ 5. to use the dictionary is: a. useful, because i choose the word that best corresponds taking into account the context. b. not always useful, because i cannot always find the word that best corresponds to the context. c. useless, because i do not always find the meaning of the words that i look for. 6. understanding and developing science workshops in english is easier when: a. i have previously worked on the same topic in spanish. b. i have a dictionary. c. other? comments_________________________________________________________________________ profile 9.indd using rock music as a teaching-learning tool profile 9, 2008. issn 1657-0790. bogotá, colombia. pages 163-180 163 * this is a report of a monograph project to opt for the degree of b. ed. in philology and languages – english. universidad nacional de colombia, 2007. ** e-mail: cmoralesne@unal.edu.co address: carrera 74 nº 7b-25 bogotá, colombia this article was received on november 14th, 2007 and accepted on january 9th, 2008 using rock music as a teaching-learning tool* uso de la música rock como herramienta de enseñanza-aprendizaje camilo morales neisa** universidad nacional de colombia sede bogotá, colombia the use of rock music in english teaching-learning contexts gains relevance as many of the people involved in them listen to this kind of music. the integration of rock music into language learning can be done if the music is treated as class material, taking into account that it requires previous and careful preparation. in this article i will show my experience working with two students in classes in which the materials were based on the lyrics of rock songs. the motivations, reflections, information collected and findings made during the process compose the following article in which rock music and learning are the central characters of a research study carried out with two adult students. key words: rock music in elt, music as authentic material, teaching-learning tools el uso de la música rock en el contexto de la enseñanza y aprendizaje del inglés cobra relevancia dado que muchas personas involucradas en el proceso escuchan esta clase de música. la integración de este tipo de material en la enseñanza de lenguas es posible si la música se presenta como material de clase, teniendo en cuenta que requiere preparación previa y cuidadosa. en este artículo deseo compartir la experiencia de trabajar con dos estudiantes en clases cuyos materiales se basaron principalmente en letras de canciones de rock. las motivaciones, reflexiones, información recolectada y hallazgos durante el proceso se incluyen en este artículo en el cual la música rock y el aprendizaje son los protagonistas principales de un estudio realizado con dos adultos. palabras clave: música rock en la enseñanza del inglés, música como material auténtico, herramientas para la enseñanza-aprendizaje profile 9.indd 163 21/04/2008 07:43:53 p.m. morales neisa universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras164 introduction in the context of english teaching, music has been used since long ago, but at times it is done through isolated exercises and almost as an entertainment activity to challenge the atmosphere of the class. currently, its use for learning purposes has widened thanks to the internet and the increase of research in the english teaching and learning fields. the relevance of its use in the learning context grows as rock music gains presence in the environment of the people interested in english and the advantages of using it as authentic material can help in the teaching and learning of the language. for this reason i wanted to explore the teaching of english through lyrics of rock songs, and to register the reactions and opinions observed during the process. this document will present the information collected during a three-month period of classes with two private students. the main source from which i developed the material for the classes were rock songs chosen by the students and some exercises developed for such purpose. the information for the research was collected in the form of questionnaires, field notes, journals and the material worked on by the students during the lessons. in the frame of a case study, my intention was to work with people that also enjoy listening to rock music in english, to see how i could help them approach language through music, and to learn from their reactions and suggestions. the problem: researching rock music after narrowing the field of my work to rok music, the research was focused on the previous research done related to music and rock music, and other theoretical issues that could support my work. the objectives of the research were divided into general (to explore the teaching/learning potential rock songs have in english language lessons with two adult private students) and specific objectives (to integrate the lyrics of songs into exercises worked on with two private students in private lessons and to describe the learning experiences these students had when exposed to rock songs in lyrics-based english lessons). the research was framed in a qualitative research paradigm because it was my interest to explore, to describe and to analyze what happens when integrating rock music lyrics to learning and how it could be done, rather than to find any measure accounting for its effectiveness. the idea of using this kind of material was to motivate students to practice english outside classrooms and to help them relate their interests with learning a language. presence of music in research and theory the use of songs has been notably present in teaching research for more than two decades. it has been mentioned in the theory and been used timidly in certain study books to which i had access at the beginning of my language learning process. i have seen some teachers that, by individual efforts and dynamics, have included songs in their classes, and i have worked with songs almost each time i have given lessons to my students. during my research, i realized that many things i thought about the use of music had already been done, yet i consider it important to profile 9.indd 164 21/04/2008 07:43:53 p.m. using rock music as a teaching-learning tool profile 9, 2008. issn 1657-0790. bogotá, colombia. pages 163-180 165 develop my own way to present rock music as a tool to learn english. the first important thing was to make clear the definition of the type of music i used as a learning tool. regarding this, fornatale (1987, p. 3) says that “two of rock’s primary functions have always been to annoy adults and to take a poke at the status quo”. this explains to some extent the ideological inspiration behind music itself: to show society those aspects of reality that are too harsh to be shown amiably, though music has been revolutionary in its use of instruments as well. after narrowing the scope of my work, the research was focused on the previous research done related to music and rock music in particular, and all the theory that could support the use of this as a learning tool. i considered particularly important: preliminary consideration, the use of music in listening practices and songs as authentic material. preliminary considerations the use of songs in class may be useful if it is done in a way in which the song is treated as something deeper than the entertainment of three to four minutes. the use of songs as a teaching material requires previous preparation and careful selection of those songs we may want to include in our classes. it does not mean that just few songs can be useful for teaching; instead, a great variety of music is available for this purpose, though we have to be careful with the selection. teachers should take into account the characteristics and particularities of students, and the possibilities the song gives them in order to present the elements of the language they want the students to have contact with. one of the advantages of using songs in teaching is that the texts in the lyrics represent authentic examples of english structures and real uses of the language, and here is when the work with songs takes paramount relevance at the moment of teaching the language. lopera (2003) considers that the inclusion of social contexts, the interaction with students’ moods, and the possibility of accessing authentic texts in english are important reasons for the inclusion of songs into teaching contexts. relaxation is another factor that is mentioned by several authors that write about music in their works. dubin & olshtain (1977, p. 198) consider that the inclusion of music in english lessons is effective because “music is a pleasurable outlet…is a good way for students to relax and feel more at ease in using the new language”. coromina (1993, p. 27) says rock songs “provide a break from the text book and workbook routine”. eken (1996, p. 47) says: “these activities provide a relaxed, friendly and cooperative classroom atmosphere”. in addition, it is interesting to see that saeki (1994), working only with background music, found several similar reasons shared by other teachers working with music. saeki (ibid., p. 30) says that music can be used for many purposes in language teaching: “bgm (background music) is important because i believe it can do the following: (1) relax students, (2) activate students, (3) get students to be attentive, (4) let students have fun, (5) change the classroom atmosphere, profile 9.indd 165 21/04/2008 07:43:53 p.m. morales neisa universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras166 (6) create learning situations”. saeki also mentioned a very interesting fact dealing with the psychological aspects of the use of music, “music may also engage the right hemisphere of the brains more, and make learning a more holistic experience”. on the other hand, the use of songs is directly related to the identity of the people who listen to it, and the use of songs within the classroom can help the class to overcome indifference from the students due to the inclusion of their interests. segura & villalba (2005, p. 70) mention that using songs related to the students’ interests can help the class to engage willingly and meaningfully in the activities involving things they like; though in order to exploit the lyrics of songs, specific activities should be designed taking into account the english level of the students and the complexity of the language in the song. another advantage of the use of songs is their easy availability in our current environment, since technology has provided ways in order to get it easier and cheaper. all these reasons make me think that the use of songs is really beneficial in teaching contexts; however, i have other personal reasons for the inclusion of music in my classes. the characteristics of the texts given in songs (full context [both musical and linguistic], complete meaning [not a fragment], pronunciation, etc) lead me to consider them as excellent sources of english samples. another reason is the easy access students have to music in english, since it can help people who cannot have permanent contact with native speakers in the language. in the light of this, i believe that music is a great way to be in contact with the language inside and outside the classroom. the use of music in listening practices listening is regarded as one of the most difficult aspects in the mastery of the language, and the material used for this purpose in traditional teaching is not always the most effective, nor the most interesting. in relation to listening activities, cárdenas (2000) considers that in most cases listening is carried out through practices that produce boredom, panic or frustration. in order to avoid these circumstances, music may be useful to improve the conditions of the listening activities thanks to its entertaining and authentic nature. in fact, many authors agree that songs help to increase motivation. another reason is the teaching possibilities that the lyrics of songs provide in order to design exercises for an english class. concerning these possibilities, lopera (2003) mentions that songs provide the opportunity to work on specific teaching points. among others, these are: to have a contextualized topic for – compositions or discussion to make associations in english with – other aspects of our lives to facilitate translation exercises – to provide listening material – discussion about feelings and attitudes is another teaching point mentioned by several authors like eken (1996) and lopera (2003), and it is related to other skills besides listening. discussion means oral practice, since it requires the participants to interact and interchange their ideas by speaking. music is also related to writing skills because interpretations can profile 9.indd 166 21/04/2008 07:43:54 p.m. using rock music as a teaching-learning tool profile 9, 2008. issn 1657-0790. bogotá, colombia. pages 163-180 167 be manifested through compositions or essays, and it can also stimulate creativity and imagination at the time to produce other responses as drawings. reading is directly related to listening activities since all listening involves a script, words and sentences making a text. guerrero (1999) states that listening and reading interact reciprocally with each other, since the words that could not be heard can be understood in the written text and vice versa. concerning this, dubin & olshtain (1977, p. 5) consider that “listening-comprehension and reading are linked to each other since they both represent language understanding at deep levels of cognition.” therefore, the use of different skills at the same time is not a new discovery in teaching theory. cárdenas (2000, p. 15) states that “listening comprehension is added on to established stages of reading, writing and speaking”. according to this, if other skills are required for listening comprehension, interaction is inevitable. with music it seems that skills not only interact but also integrate a single unit of meaning, a complete text with many of the contextual references necessary for the interpretation of the message and the activation of the four skills in an interconnected way. a song can be listened to, read, written or written about; it can be sung or talked about. the use of more than one skill at the moment of listening to songs makes the practice of english through this option an integral learning activity. another advantage of songs in teaching is that songs seem to deal with some of the main worries of teachers researching listening skills, activities and comprehension. to illustrate, gray (1983, p. 67) mentions some relevant issues about effective listening: learners must want to listen, the idea of working with songs is to take into account students’ interest and likes; learners must understand the particular reason for learning, the intention is to understand something one likes, and therefore, the reason for learning is personal; learners must enjoy and look forward to listening, if students enjoy the songs they are using for learning, each time they listen to these songs will be an opportunity to practice english. concerning the topic of listening skills, willis (1981, p. 135) argues that in order to improve these skills, students have “to get the chance to listen to different types of english, so they will be able to listen with understanding to spoken english outside the classroom”. in the light of this, songs serve perfectly as exponents of different types of english because, as english has become the language of rock, speakers from all over the world are writing their lyrics and singing in english. besides, songs give the students the opportunity to be in contact with different forms of this language. music can help second language students to participate in the culture (carrier, 2000); it is an accessible and enjoyable way to have contact with the culture and structures of the language we are learning. in relation to this, barfield (2001, p. 47) states that “preferably, there should be times when the activities are carried out as activities completely separate from any text and book. is this approach not more in keeping with the way we learn the first language?” the use of songs in language teaching offers plenty of possibilities to teachers profile 9.indd 167 21/04/2008 07:43:54 p.m. morales neisa universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras168 and learners. it allows the language to be presented and manipulated in a variety of forms. it can be used as presentation of cultural issues, brief narratives, new vocabulary and expressions in context, familiarization with the pronunciation of native (international) speakers, topics of discussion, etc. the teaching possibilities of songs are not limited to those mentioned above; they depend on the creativity of the teacher and accurate selection when choosing those songs we want to work with. songs as authentic material the context of language teaching in our country is very different from that of an english-speaking country. the process of learning a language in a place where the contact with native speakers is difficult has to be very different from those processes of immersion that are carried out in englishspeaking countries. however, and despite the lack of native speakers of english to talk to, our colombian context and current processes of globalization give us access to plenty of cultural productions of this language. in our immediate environment we can find movies, advertisements, catalogs, instructions for devices, videogames, products, documents, academic information, magazines, music, etc. all these productions are possibilities to enter in contact with english. this kind of material that has not been exclusively designed for teaching purposes is considered authentic material. arias, duque, & mitchell (1996, p. 125) include songs as part of this kind of material because they are “not graded material, produced by native speakers and for the users of that language, without any modification, and with the purpose of helping english language instruction”. the contact that people have with songs is of a completely different nature. if people like music, they are likely to listen to it outside classrooms, and this is a circumstance that may be really helpful when learning a language. it can release the practice of english from the pressure of academic duties, and help students face real use of the language in real contexts. authenticity in language learning material is a condition mentioned by several authors. widdowson, cited by cárdenas (2000, p. 12), claims that authenticity “is a function of the interaction between the hearer and the text, which incorporates the intention of the speaker”. in addition, songs combine linguistic and extra-linguistic elements in one single unit of meaning; they provide text, co-text, cultural and aural (artistic) context, autonomous narratives and reflections. thus, the intention is integrated to other elements that help the message convey its meaning in a real and meaningful situation. another advantage of songs in language learning is availability. crystal (1997) cited by lopera (2003, p. 138) declares: “throughout the world, english is probably encountered more often today in music than on the printed page.” in the case of rock music it has become a world-wide expression, and the availability of this kind of music extends around the globe. murphey (1990) cited by lopera (ibid., p. 138), stated that “english language music was readily available in most efl environments and extensively listened to by youth.” however, i would say that rock profile 9.indd 168 21/04/2008 07:43:54 p.m. using rock music as a teaching-learning tool profile 9, 2008. issn 1657-0790. bogotá, colombia. pages 163-180 169 music extends to older populations, since the popularity of this music began almost 50 years ago, and i know there are rock fans older than 60. therefore, the possibility of working with rock songs is not limited to young people. songs are part of the culture of the people engaged in language learning, and it is the duty of teachers to relate the teaching of english to those cultural productions students have access to. for this purpose barfield (2001, p. 44) affirms that “movies, songs on the radio and on cassettes…are some of the many options the language learner has at his/her fingertips today.” it would be a waste not to take advantage of materials that are already prepared and that students enjoy. the presence of music in diverse contexts and the variety of uses and situations in which it is involved are an important reason to believe that music plays a remarkable role in people’s lives. to include this kind of element in the process of learning a language must have a particular influence over student’s perception, since the stimuli perceived involve more than one sense working on cognition (listening: aural, reading: visual, singing: oral, and even writing: tactile, kinesthetic). to relate music to learning is similar to relating language to everyday life, and to do that is to use it for real purposes. in addition, the popularity and variety of rock music gives countless options at the moment of choosing a song for teaching/ learning/practicing purposes. i have already mentioned some teaching possibilities when working with songs, but it is important to take into account the attitude toward rock music. coromina (1993, p. 27) exemplified the willingness to work with rock songs from teacher’s perspective: “i favor the use of rock songs in class, because in today’s society rock music is everywhere”. this willingness is also claimed by other authors like dubin & olshtain (1977, p. 199): “pop, rock, and folk music is an idiom which is embraced by a broad span of young people –and not only those living within englishspeaking countries. it is familiar to students both in academic and non-academic settings”. rock music is enjoyed by many people; it is almost part of the culture of those interested in english. learners listen to it outside the classrooms and that is quite an advantage to take into account. music can positively influence learning because learning the language better may enable learners to have access to what songs say; hence, learning the language would be a motivation for students to understand parts of the culture they like. the use of songs in class must be accompanied by tasks or materials designed in order to help the students have access to the language and messages embedded in songs. also, it is recommendable to take into account the three phases of listening (pre-, whilepost-) in order to take deeper advantage of the contents and teaching possibilities existent in songs. the interests of the students should be taken into account, but the teacher should decide whether they are appropriate or not according to the language elements present. the level of the students must also be taken into account, though the same song can be useful for beginners or advanced students depending on the kind of activity planned. the idea is to encourage students to use english outside the class environment, and profile 9.indd 169 21/04/2008 07:43:54 p.m. morales neisa universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras170 to motivate them when including songs as part of the language lessons. participants in order to develop the current research i carried out three private lessons with two students, daniel (21) and alfredo (27). the lessons were developed at their home in bogotá, where the participants and the researcher agreed a schedule. each lesson had a lesson plan that involved one song chosen by the students and the activities designed in order to present and study the language involved in those songs. the lessons took from one to two hours and were developed in weekends during the first semester in 2006. the level of english of the students was that acquired in secondary education and some later study in institutes and the sena (servicio nacional de aprendizaje) respectively. according to the lineamientos curriculares para las lenguas extranjeras (ministerio de educación, 1999) in colombia, students are expected to demonstrate mastery of the following aspects: communication – : the participants are able to understand commands in english and they give written answers to the questions asked. they express feelings, emotions and opinions mainly in written form. their oral expression is limited to short sentences but their understanding of listening material is high (they understand about 50 to 60 per cent of the lyrics of the songs involved in this research). culture – : the participants understand the songs as a cultural expression from another culture and recognize the differences in the structure and perspective of the language studied. they interpret the messages of the songs in the context of their own culture. connections – : the participants understand a high percentage of songs in english and make connections with other personal interests related to professional areas and entertainment activities like movies and video games. comparisons – : the participants recognize the different phonetic values of english and try to emulate correct pronunciation through the comparison with the singer’s pronunciation in the songs. they understand the distinction between words and expressions in the mother language and english but have some difficulty when trying to translate these elements into spanish. communities – : the participants use english in their daily lives when listening to music, watching tv and movies, playing video games and looking for information on the internet. they use the language to understand what they need more than to interact with other people. for the development of this research i asked two friends, alfredo (27) and daniel (21), who i knew share my interest in rock music. alfredo is an architect from the universidad nacional and his last academic contact with english was a short course in an institute. the situation is similar for daniel, who studied bakery at sena, and profile 9.indd 170 21/04/2008 07:43:54 p.m. using rock music as a teaching-learning tool profile 9, 2008. issn 1657-0790. bogotá, colombia. pages 163-180 171 took english classes there. they have been my students in some informal lessons we have had when we have been able to arrange time to share music and english. both of them studied english at cafam school during high school, and both of them undertook further studies in institutes and in the sena respectively. procedure the present research is framed in a qualitative research paradigm because it was the interest of the research to explore, to describe and to analyze what happens when integrating rock music lyrics to learning and how it could be done, rather than to find any measure accounting for its effectiveness. i thought this kind of research fit my work because qualitative research is non-standard, unconfined, and dependent on the subjective experience of both the researcher and the researched (greenhalgh & taylor, 1997). the authors also stress that qualitative methods aim to make sense of, or interpret phenomena in terms of the meanings people bring to them. this approach helped me to give more relevance to the reactions and opinions of my students, and let me integrate my own reflections into the research instruments and data analysis. with the kind of instruments i used to observe the reactions of my students, it was more relevant to explore the information gathered than to measure any of it. i used the methodology of a case study because it seemed to me the most appropriate approach to the exploratory observation of the “case” of two adult students learning english through the lyrics of songs. the exploratory nature of this kind of study was chosen because it allows deep and close observation of individual phenomena and it is suitable for the characteristics of the group i worked with. regarding case study, hillway (1964, p. 238) declares that “while there may very well be a good proportion of the subjective element in this type of study, the method nevertheless tends to uncover information which might otherwise be overlooked”. the idea of this research was to take a close look at the impact that songs have in the context of language learning, specifically within the group of two students i was working with. for this reason, i chose the participant observation approach of the case study, since it allowed me to follow the language development of my students while keeping an informal relationship with them. bailey (1978), cited by cohen, manion, & morrison (2000, p. 188), mentions that in case studies “researchers can develop more intimate and informal relationships with those they are observing, generally in a more natural environment than those in which experiments and surveys are conducted”. this kind of approach turned out to be very useful in my research because of the friendly relationship i had with my students before the research. in relation to case study, bell (1993, p. 8) states that it “allows the researcher to concentrate on a specific instance or situation”, and it allowed me to dig deep into the reactions and experiences my students have while receiving language lessons based on the lyrics of songs. profile 9.indd 171 21/04/2008 07:43:54 p.m. morales neisa universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras172 instruments for data collection for the purpose of data collection i developed three research instruments. the first instrument was the questionnaires. the second instrument was the research journal, which was closely connected to the lesson plan for each class, and was improved by another minor instrument which was the field notes. the third instrument was the artifacts, those written materials developed by my students which showed the way they developed the exercises proposed and kept a record of their answers and written work during the lessons. questionnaires the first questionnaire consisted of five questions, the first of them about personal information. i also asked about previous experiences with english, and the places where they had taken place. the second questionnaire was focused on specific information i thought useful in order to start the lessons. i included some of the activities that they wanted and mentioned in the lesson plans. the third questionnaire was more focused on the objectives of my research. through this questionnaire i realized that there are specific elements of the language that require grammar explanations in order for students to understand the use and functions of other elements of the language. i also found in these answers that they had developed skills in other areas different to listening, and that both students considered the inclusion of images as something important for the future development of the lessons. research journals these journals evolved each time i carried out a lesson, analyzed the data, and wrote the research journal for the lesson involved. the information collected in the first two journals was useful in the data analysis and some of the reflections written there were relevant for the development of the research. the last journal was the most focused account of the lessons; it revealed specific students’ reactions in relation to the objectives of the research and provided vital information for data analysis. its relevance improved thanks to the evolution of the previous journals. lesson plans although not considered as an instrument, the lesson plans (appendix 1) were vital for the organization of the classes and the inclusion of the lyrics of the songs into the exercises proposed. the first lesson plan included listening exercises, dictation, vocabulary search, reading comprehension, brief discussion of the topics proposed and a translation exercise. the second lesson plan included the song “what do you want from me?” by pink floyd. this time the students organized jig-saw lyrics, filled the gaps in the text, looked for unknown vocabulary and gave oral and written examples with those words they already knew. the third lesson plan included the song “winter retreat” by judas priest. this time the class started with the discussion about the title of the song, and then we listened to the song and tried to organize scrambled lyrics. there was a crossword about the vocabulary and some reading profile 9.indd 172 21/04/2008 07:43:55 p.m. using rock music as a teaching-learning tool profile 9, 2008. issn 1657-0790. bogotá, colombia. pages 163-180 173 comprehension through short questions. the planning of these lessons played a significant role in the research because it was the exemplification of the inclusion of rock lyrics into class material. these plans enable me to help my students approach english through songs they like, and to start thinking about an efficient way to present rock music lyrics when teaching the language. field notes although i did not consider this instrument in the first stages of my research, i realized during the first lesson that i needed an instrument to help me with the reconstruction of the events during the lesson; it was better not to rely only on memory when writing the important facts in the journal. for this instrument i did not use any specific format but the free notes i wrote during the lessons. it was like having “raw” notes during the lessons and “cooked” notes in the journal, and it helped me a lot in the improvement of the journal writing. artifacts my students’ productions improved during the development of the lessons. in the first lesson i just gave my students a sheet of paper in which they wrote important information and carried out the exercises proposed. the second lesson materials included a translation exercise, listening activities and work with vocabulary and expressions. for the last lesson i designed a worksheet in order to have their answers and relevant productions organized. it gave me good results despite the difficulties we had in the last lesson concerning the high level of the vocabulary and the listening skills required to understand the song. later i realized that the worksheet was necessary because it allowed the students to read and to answer questions about the song in a very clear way. the use of the artifacts helped me realize that my students were good when producing written answers to the questions i proposed, though they were not as skilled when speaking skills were required. there were always good answers and examples recorded in the students’ productions, but they were much better in written than spoken answers. through the analysis of the artifacts i realized that there is a need to find a balance in the exercises proposed, in which the different skills involved have to be equally present. data analysis music and its impact in the context of language learning and teaching has been the main force that makes me move into the exploration of the role of this kind of cultural production in specific private lessons with a couple of students. in order to develop the lessons and examine the role of songs in these students’ language learning processes i designed questionnaires and lessons intended to identify students’ needs and to analyze what happens when students engaged in language learning activities focused on the lyrics of songs. the learning experiences of the students were also collected through the questionnaires and the reflections recorded in the research journal. profile 9.indd 173 21/04/2008 07:43:55 p.m. morales neisa universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras174 the idea of this research was to explore the role of music as a pedagogical tool that can cross the threshold of the academic context and stimulate people to learn english through activities they like. music is perfect for this purpose since the lyrics of songs are not only texts for teaching purposes but real artistic and cultural productions that people listen to even without the purpose of learning english. its field of action is broader than many methods of language teaching because through songs english can be practiced almost anywhere and the fact that it has purposes beyond teaching (entertainment, relaxation, social interaction, cultural identities, etc.) makes it have a stronger impact in populations that do not have direct contact with english speakers, nor any academic context (classes) in which the practice of english may be a common activity. the validation of the data collected was possible due to the identification of different relevant issues present in the information collected, analyzed and contrasted through the triangulation of the different instruments proposed. the relevance of the topics found in the literature review was taken into account for the extraction of the fragments mentioned in the findings and their focus were tightly linked to the bibliographic research. it was difficult to find patterns in such a brief period of time, although this period showed clear suggestions about the matters that should be taken into account when using rock music for learning purposes. codification the coding procedures i used were very basic but helped me to organize the information collected in the different instruments. each reference to the instruments is made by the mention of the initials of the instrument and the data required to finding the information. for the questionnaires i used the abbreviation q (questionnaire), the date, and the number of the question (qs) involved. for instance, in relation to the category interconnection of skills, we can see qiii, 29/06/06, qs2; the third questionnaire, june the 29th 2006, question nº 2: how have the activities with songs in english developed so far influenced your learning process? a: well, i’ve done, and improved in listening, grammar and vocabulary exercises. d: they have taught me vocabulary and helped me to recall words and uses.1 findings the categories found were linked to those proposed in the literature review. i decided to choose these because i consider they are related to the relevant information i found during the data analysis. besides, i think the inclusion of these categories may help the coherence of the findings and the theory considered for the literature review. learning more than vocabulary there were several instances in the data collected that made me think of this as a category because there are many more aspects than vocabulary that have to be taken into account at the moment of using lyrics of songs as a teaching/learning 1 for the coding procedure i identify my students through the initials of their names a for alfredo and d for daniel. profile 9.indd 174 21/04/2008 07:43:55 p.m. using rock music as a teaching-learning tool profile 9, 2008. issn 1657-0790. bogotá, colombia. pages 163-180 175 tool. some of these i mainly found in the research journals: “i asked my students to underline unknown vocabulary; they did it while listening to the song and asked me about the meaning of those words. as there were not many words, i asked my students to look for them in the dictionary and to write a short glossary of the song. i realized that some of the words were related to conditional sentences and were difficult to include in a glossary. they asked me examples with those words and i gave them some; nevertheless, i told them we will have to check those words and conditional sentences more carefully afterwards”. rj 2, 02/04/06, lines 18-24 it is important to have in mind, when using lyrics of songs as teaching material, that the linguistic elements present in songs are not only vocabulary; they all cannot be included in a glossary because there are words with specific functions that only work in a specific way and context. the most evident case i faced during the lessons was the case of conditionals, because my students did not know how to include such words like: would, if and should in the glossary i asked them to write. at the end i had to devote some unplanned time of the class to explaining conditional sentences, but it was useful because the students could use those words within sentences created by them. d example: “i should control my anger if i want take care myself ” a example: “if i were rich i would buy a motorcycle”. pd 2, 02/04/06 the interconnection of skills the interconnection of skills is nothing new in language teaching. as cárdenas (2000, p.15) said “listening comprehension is added on to established stages of reading, writing and speaking”. listening requires that the hearer knows the words and elements presented in the lyrics, and these elements (words) are fundamental part of reading, writing and speaking skills. while listening to a song we can read the lyrics and clarify pronunciation issues, we can sing and practice speaking and pronunciation skills, and we can write opinions or answer questions about our understanding of the songs. guerrero (1999) also mentions the close relation between listening and reading. she states that listening and reading interact reciprocally with each other, since the words that could not be heard can be understood in the written text; in the same way, doubts about pronunciation can be solved thanks to the oral component. let us see some examples of this interconnection in the instruments of this research. in order to exemplify this, i will take some extracts from the journals. “after they finished translating, we listened to this class song. i gave them the lyrics in disorganized pieces of paper. students try to organize the papers while listening to the song but, as they could not in a single try, i played the song again. as they were organizing, they sang the parts of the song they recognized in the pieces of paper. they finished organizing after having heard the song twice”. rj 2, 02/04/06, lines 8-12 the exercise of translating involves deep reading skills in order to get closer to the meaning intended by the author. in this exercise, the students read and listened to the song at the same time in order to organize the lyrics, and they even practice profile 9.indd 175 21/04/2008 07:43:55 p.m. morales neisa universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras176 speaking and pronunciation when singing the song while they listened. real texts and promoters of students’ interests regarding students’ interests, the most relevant instruments were the journals and the questionnaires. through the earlier questionnaires it was evident that my students were interested in songs and in the things songs said. when they were asked about the activities of their daily life that involved english, songs appeared in the answers of both students. in which kind of activities of your daily life is english involved? a: when i try to understand the lyrics of my favorite music groups. d: i started studying english in high school and got interested in it because i saw it in video games, listened to it in music and saw it in advertisements. qi, 2nd semester 2005, qs 4 the relevance of promoting students’ interests in the language through activities they like is to help them use and practice english without the necessity of an academic environment, because not all those interested in learning english have the possibility of accessing to formal education. besides, and taking into account that motivation is a force that moves students to carry out the activities intended for language learning, the relation between the desire to learn and the practice of english is increased by the integration of the students’ likes within the frame of language learning. students are attracted to music for reasons different to learning a language; instead, they feel attracted to english in order to understand better a part of their world they like and want to know for very personal reasons. to include students’ interests in the development of lessons for any student would help to increase the student’s will to learn the topic studied, and in the case of language learning, to improve their desire to know about the language in which their favorite songs are sung and composed. conclusions listening is much more than just a matter of hearing. we have to pay attention to the sounds and give interpretations and meaning to what we hear; and we can do that thanks to our skills in the language concerning other aspects like reading, speaking, and writing. in the case of listening to music there is another factor that is fundamental concerning the reasons for listening. it is not just a matter of interpretation of a message but of taking pleasure in the activity we are involved in, and the fact that lyrics of songs go together with instrumental features ameliorates the experience of paying attention to what is coming into our ears. this is an advantage i found in the use of songs for teaching/ learning purposes, that there are reasons stronger that just learning a language. however, regarding other aspects of the language, the interconnection of skills makes the use of songs something very relevant if we take into account that we cannot focus only on specific aspects of the language but must try to interrelate different instances of the linguistic elements involved in the lyrics of songs. the lyrics of songs in english offer plenty of possibilities profile 9.indd 176 21/04/2008 07:43:55 p.m. using rock music as a teaching-learning tool profile 9, 2008. issn 1657-0790. bogotá, colombia. pages 163-180 177 in connection with other language skills different from listening. to understand the lyrics of songs, reading skills are necessarily involved. both reading and listening are reciprocally supported by each other because you can check pronunciation while listening and check spelling while reading. other skills can be also integrated with the use of songs for teaching/learning purposes; for instance, we can sing and practice pronunciation skills that can help us improve our speaking skills, in addition we can discuss the topics presented in the lyrics, and in this way we can practice speaking by expressing opinions and reflections about the contents of the songs. writing skills can be present as well through the design of questions related to the contents of the song. by answering in written form questions about the understanding of songs we could integrate the last language skill and have a comprehensive approach to the teaching and learning of the language. another skill that lately has been regarded as very relevant in language learning is vocabulary, and this is an aspect of english in which the use of songs is very appropriate, because the vocabulary presented in songs is framed in a context and the meaning of words can be easily identified, avoiding the inconvenience of learning non-contextualized words in isolation. it is crucial to keep in mind that the lyrics of songs do not work by themselves as language teaching/learning material. it is necessary to design activities integrating the language present in the songs, and to adapt those activities to the level and needs of the students. grammar issues cannot be avoided if we try to teach the language of songs, hence it is necessary to integrate grammar explanations into the activities planned. there are also additional materials that can help the utilization of music for language learning; for example, videos and other visual material can help to better contextualize the contents of the songs and to catch the attention of those students who do not enjoy music at all. music goes beyond the threshold of language learning, and the integration of an activity like this with the learning of english may improve both the experience of listening to music, and the motivation necessary to learn a second language. references arias, r., duque, a., & mitchell, y. (1996). efectividad del empleo de los materiales auténticos en el proceso de adquisición de una lengua extranjera. íkala, 1(1), 125-153. barfield, r. (2001). drawing on the familiar to create new listening exercises. profile, 2, 44-47. bell, j. (1993). doing your research project. buckingham: open press university. cárdenas, m. l. (2000). helping students develop listening comprehension. profile, 1, 8-16. carrier, m. (2000). teaching language with music. retrieved may 30, 2006, from http:// gs.fanshawec.on.ca/tlwm/ cohen, l; manion, l., & morrison, k. (2000). research methods in education. london: routledge. coromina, i. s. (1993). an original approach to the teaching of songs in classrooms. forum journal, 31(3), 27-28. dubin, f., & olshtain, e. (1977). facilitating language learning. usa: mcgraw-hill. eken, d. (1996). ideas for using songs in the english language classroom. forum journal, 34(1), 46-47. fornatale, p. (1987). the story of rock ‘n’ roll. new york: william morrow and company. profile 9.indd 177 21/04/2008 07:43:55 p.m. morales neisa universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras178 gray, j. (1983). effective listening. focus on the learner: bologna conference. oxford: british council. greenhalgh, t., & taylor, r. (1997). how to read a paper: papers that go beyond numbers (qualitative research). retrieved october 25, 2006 from http://www.bmj.com/cgi/content/ full/315/7110/740 guerrero, m. (1999). la integración de la audición y la lectura en inglés para la especialidad de economía. cuba: universidad de camagüey. hillway, t. (1964). introduction to research. boston: houghton mifflin company. about the author camilo morales neisa, holds a b. ed. in philology and languages (english) from universidad nacional de colombia. he is currently the director of anonyma, a journal of the students of philology and languages and assistant to the editor of capital letter, a periodical publication of the foreign languages department at the same university. lopera, s. (2003). useful ideas when taking songs to a class. íkala, 8(14), 135-149. ministerio de educación. (1999). idiomas extranjeros. lineamientos curriculares. bogotá: enlace editores. saeki, k. (1994). stimulating classes with background music. forum journal, 32(2), 30-31. segura, c., & villalba, v. (2005). las canciones en inglés como medio para promover el pensamiento crítico en estudiantes de octavo grado. trabajo de grado. bogotá: universidad nacional de colombia. willis, j. (1981). teaching english through english. uk: longman. profile 9.indd 178 21/04/2008 07:43:56 p.m. using rock music as a teaching-learning tool profile 9, 2008. issn 1657-0790. bogotá, colombia. pages 163-180 179 appendix 1: lesson plans lesson plan 1: march the 26th, 2006 the class: two students: alfredo (27) and daniel (20) level: pre-intermediate (advanced beginners) materials: song “one of the few” by pink floyd, cd player, paper, pens time: 75-90 minutes, sunday. topic: introduction to the lessons, english language level diagnosis objectives: to have an overview of the student’s level of english• to start periodic lessons.• procedure: the students listen to the song “one of the few”. they have 1. to take notes while listening to the song. (5’) students complete the lyrics of the song through a dictation. (5’)2. the teacher asks students to underline unknown vocabulary. the students do dictionary 3. work and write a glossary of the song. the teacher helps with examples. (25’) students listen to the song again. the teacher asks a couple of questions 4. about the song. the students must answer in written form. (10-15’) the teacher asks students about the song’s title’s meaning. they have to answer orally. (10-15’)5. students translate the song. (15-20’)6. the teacher gives a preview of the next class. (5’)7. lesson plan 2: april the 2nd, 2006 the class: two students: alfredo (27) and daniel (20) level: pre-intermediate (advanced beginners) materials: song “what do you want from me?” by pink floyd, jig-sawed pieces of lyrics, translation sheets, paper, pens time: 120 minutes, sunday objectives: to exemplify grammar structures through authentic material• to provide written, oral, listening and speaking practice• profile 9.indd 179 21/04/2008 07:43:56 p.m. morales neisa universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras180 procedure: review: teacher gives students the translation sheet. they have to translate the song 1. (“one of the few”) by comparing and improving their last class translation. (20’) students listen to the song “2. what do you want from me?” and organize jig-sawed lyrics. (10’) students listen to the song again and fill the gaps in the lyrics. (10’)3. with the organized lyrics, the class checks sentences one by one and extract 4. unknown vocabulary and grammar. students write a glossary of the song. (25’) the class gives new examples with the structures found and writes 5. sentences with those already known. difficult structures (according to the students) will be explained and exemplified by the teacher. (20’) students translate the song. (20’)6. the class discusses the difficult expressions they found hard to translate. (10’)7. the class agrees new songs to be worked in future lessons. (5’)8. lesson plan 3: june the 27, 2006 the class: two students: alfredo (27) and daniel (20) level: pre-intermediate (advanced beginners) materials: song “winter retreat” by judas priest, worksheet, music player, dictionaries time: 70 minutes, tuesday objectives: to have students explore a song in english related to their interests• to develop activities intended to help students understand the lyrics of the song.• procedure: review: the class read the song “1. what do you want from me?” and talk about its meaning and possible interpretation. (10’) pre-listening: (speaking) the class talks about what they know about the band or a 2. possible interpretation of the title of the song “winter retreat” by judas priest. (10’) while-listening: (listening) the students listen to the song and rewrite scrambled lyrics. (10’)3. inter-listening: (vocabulary) the students fill a crossword puzzle with 4. some of the vocabulary of the song (nouns, verbs). (10’) while-listening: (writing) the students complete the lyrics of the song with 5. the vocabulary in the crossword or a dictation if necessary. (10’) post-listening: (reading-writing) the students read the complete lyrics of 6. the song and answer in written form some questions about it. (10’) closing: (speaking) the teacher contextualizes the song with other two songs 7. from the same album “rockarolla” by judas priest. the class will talk about the relation of the three songs and the meaning of the third (winter retreat). (10’) profile 9.indd 180 21/04/2008 07:43:56 p.m. 167profile vol. 16, no. 1, april 2014. issn 1657-0790 (printed) 2256-5760 (online). bogotá, colombia. pages 167-180 from drills to clil: the paradigmatic and methodological evolution towards the integration of content and foreign language desde las repeticiones en el aula hasta aicle: la evolución paradigmática y metodológica hacia el aprendizaje integrado de contenido y lengua extranjera rosa muñoz-luna*1 universidad de málaga, málaga, spain content and language integrated learning has become a common practice in european higher education. in this paper, i aim to describe how this integrated teaching practice comes as a result of a paradigmatic and pedagogical evolution. for this purpose, the main linguistic paradigms will be revisited diachronically, followed by a revision of the main pedagogical trends in teaching english as a second language. this theoretical overview culminates in a predominantly constructivist practice that is more pragmatic and contextualized than ever before. from a language teacher’s standpoint and in language university classrooms, content and language integrated learning comes to solve the forever present decontextualization. key words: content and language integrated learning, constructivism, contextualization, paradigm, pragmatics, english teaching techniques. el aprendizaje integrado de contenidos y lengua extranjera se ha convertido en práctica común en la educación superior europea. en este artículo se describe cómo esta práctica de enseñanza integrada surge como resultado de una evolución paradigmática y pedagógica. con ese fin, se revisan diacrónicamente los distintos paradigmas lingüísticos, seguidos de una descripción de los métodos pedagógicos en la enseñanza del inglés como segunda lengua. este recorrido teórico culmina en una práctica constructivista predominante que es más pragmática y contextualizada que ninguna otra usada con anterioridad. desde la perspectiva del profesorado de idiomas y dentro de un aula de idiomas universitaria, el aprendizaje integrado de contenidos y lengua extranjera ofrece la solución al problema constante de la descontextualización. palabras clave: aprendizaje integrado de contenidos y lengua extranjera, constructivismo, contextualización, paradigma, pragmática, técnicas de enseñanza del inglés. * e-mail: rmluna@uma.es how to cite this article (apa, 6th ed.): muñoz-luna, r. (2014). from drills to clil: the paradigmatic and methodological evolution towards the integration of content and foreign language. profile issues in teachers’ professional development, 16(1), 167-180. http://dx.doi.org/10.15446/profile.v16n1.37843. this article was received on april 18, 2013, and accepted on october 18, 2013. universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras168 muñoz-luna introduction the term clil (content and language integrated learning) was adopted in 1994 to describe those school contexts in which children’s learning was taking place in a language other than their native language, or l1 (coyle, hood, & marsh, 2010). originally, clil came out of immersion and bilingual programmes in primary schools during the 1960s-1980s, when learners were asked to practise foreign language (l2) skills to learn a discipline (brinton, snow, & wesche, 2011). however, it has now spread to all socioeconomic backgrounds, not only to the elite schools that previous programmes were designed for. clil is the consequence of recent european policies committed to the learning of other languages within natural environments. in this shared european context, every eu country has undergone different historical factors that have shaped their present language teaching situations. in the case of spain and other western european countries, clil is an innovative measure that needs some time and training to be fully implemented (lasagabaster & ruiz de zarobe, 2010). this gradual carrying out of bilingual programmes is still in its early stages even after 15 years of continuous political pressure (salaberri, 2010). to understand this development, the present paper aims to theoretically describe the paradigmatic and pedagogical evolution that l2 teaching has undergone in some spanish universities. i first describe the continuing changes in the linguistic paradigms: from initial structuralist approaches to language teaching, we have moved to pragmatic assumptions under which the context is crucial for learning. because these linguistic paradigms evolved, pedagogical techniques have also undergone radical changes from drills to specific genre approaches. pragmatic contexts require certain methodological and constructivist actions, which then merge into clil courses.1 1 today, both language specialists and nonspecialists are carrying out clil practices at the university level. in this paper, i a preliminary note on terminological scope: clearing the terrain the debate between languages for specific purposes (lsp) and clil becomes especially stronger in interdisciplinary fields such as those taught at the university level (e.g., english applied linguistics, french for tourism or pharmacology, among others). clil is not lsp, although it is debatable which is a category of which. they are similar in that they simultaneously use content and language, but whereas language is central to lsp (kennedy, 2012), it is often secondary to clil. the issue of content over form is essential to clil, whereas in lsp, there is much overlapping of content and language: lsp allows for a form focus where clil does not. however, a sharp distinction between clil and lsp courses might be problematic if we use radical content-based or formbased methodologies. clil is also a commitment to a combination of language fluency and content accuracy. a clil approach shapes syllabus contents and methodologies in the same way that lsp does, influencing the way things are taught in class. as coyle et al. (2010) define it, clil “is a dual-focused educational approach in which an additional language is used for the learning and teaching of both content and language” (p. 1); therefore, clil combines disciplinary and language contents to create more meaningful contexts. from a linguistic perspective, clil is the natural consequence of true contextualisation in l2 classrooms, coming as a result of a necessary evolution in foreign language teaching. political and educational bilingual demands have caused clil to expand progressively from primary schools to higher education sectors. moreover, universities are promoting subject teaching in english am focusing on the evolution of l2 teaching that derives into clil frameworks. clil is better understood once we examine the changing role of l2 in the classroom. 169profile vol. 16, no. 1, april 2014. issn 1657-0790 (printed) 2256-5760 (online). bogotá, colombia. pages 167-180 from drills to clil: the paradigmatic and methodological evolution towards the integration... in all degrees, something that can be done in different ways, as indicated by brinton et al. (2011), who propose a diagram on clil modalities in higher education as shown in table 1. sheltered and adjunct models are the most frequently used, although that will depend on the university degree and syllabus aims: language becomes secondar y in those subjects that are detached from a purely linguistic basis. in some cases, teachers tend to follow a sheltered curriculum in which language and content subjects are coordinated and coexist but in which predominance is given to contents. this sheltered preference is but the consequence of the natural evolution in the field of foreign language teaching: specific genres and contents come to play a role, as we will see later in this paper. a diachronic revision of the linguistic paradigms regarding language teaching structuralism the structuralist paradigm did not take place until the beginnings of the 20th century, but its roots can be found some decades earlier. this philosophical, cultural, and linguistic movement provided new ways of perceiving both language and human existence. apart from being an inherent language property, structuration is equally inherent to human beings, who need to constantly modulate their realities and ever ything that surrounds them. this was piaget’s opinion defending the idea of both human and linguistic structures in his work structuralism (1970). these structures help to transform and selfregulate everything within their containing whole. subsequently, the relationship between words’ structural features and their correlations with world entities was used for pedagogical purposes in the teaching of a foreign language. in this teaching environment, bloomfield (1983) presented language elements as phonological, morphological, and semantic structures that evolved throughout time, accounting for an integrating aspect of his linguistic theories. these linguistic notions became key references in the field of language teaching, and his classification of the parts of speech would be the basis for future studies. undoubtedly, however, bloomfield’s major contribution took place in foreign language teaching. his attention to detail, something typical in a structuralist linguist, helped enumerate the possible causes of failure in the table 1. clil subject typology at the university level subject features theme-based sheltered adjunct objectives l2 competence content material l2 + content course format esl course content course esl + content course instruction language teacher teaching l2 within a topic area specialist teaching contents. incidental l2 learning language + content instruction: separate but complementary evaluation language skills and functions contents l2 skills and contents separate note. esl = english as a second language. universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras170 muñoz-luna process of second language acquisition. in this way, he revealed data on language skills three decades ago that could be applied to today’s language classrooms: “not one in a hundred (students) attains even a fair reading knowledge” (bloomfield, 1983, p. 293). bloomfield himself, in an eclectic approach to the scientific study of language, linked the linguistic discipline to others such as psychology, ethnology, literature, and history, placing his research in the so-called domain of applied linguistics. in fact, after the 1960s and once structuralism flourished, poststructuralist works and authors appeared, going a step beyond in the study of language structures. this new period can be defined as a “second phase in the french structuralist philosophy . . . which broadens new horizons in structuralist research” (sturrock, 1979, p. 174). post-structuralism supports difference and individuality, in opposition to the systematisation of the previous years (crotty, 2003). as we can see, structuralist language analyses focus on language structures and forms, leaving meaning and context aside. this structure-centrism is reflected in repetitive learning and drills, where there is no room yet for classroom interaction. generativism in the same way as structuralism, generativism relies on a number of theoretical principles that help in the understanding of language and the human mind; chomsky (1995) called them “principles-andparameters theory” (p. 13), which was intended to be not a theoretical framework but a novel way of addressing classical language problems. originally, the generativist concept of grammar was a finite set of rules generating an infinite number of sentences in any language; for this reason, generativism is also called transformational or transformative grammar (chomsky, 1988, 1995); syntax, semantics, and phonology are the main three pillars, and although they are interrelated, they maintain some degree of autonomy. generativism took into account native speakers’ intuitions because they are naturally predisposed to know what is grammatically correct and what is not. when analysing sentence grammaticality, chomsky brought up a scale of language adaptation regarding its grammar. this adaptation took place at different levels: from an observational perspective, that is, knowing specific language features in a descriptive way and being able to interrelate them, and also from an explicative level, by accounting for the mental processes that speakers undergo (chomsky, 1972). the infinite possibilities of a finite group of language structures were one of chomsky’s main ideas after he adopted the 19th century maxim that linguistics does not have to be dogmatic or normative. this principle becomes meaningful in a paradigm that opposes all previous forms of language analysis: generativist language analyses would allow for a more general perception of linguistic forms. the relationship between the generativist paradigm and structuralism comes with the structuralists them selves, who defined language elements by using certain rules that were crucial for later generativist studies. this is the case with derrida (1971), who decomposed linguistic elements according to their differences with other elements in the same system. derrida introduced the term “trace” as the feature that links one element to the rest and, at the same time, differentiates it from them. this author—as later generativists such as himself would do—considered written language more important than its oral form, in opposition to the traditional western conception of language. generative linguistics is a cognitive science, and it explains language knowledge. generativism aims at describing how we perceive language in our minds beyond its social applications. however, the field has its limitations owing to the complexity of human minds. relevant scholars in the field have analysed human mental processes and compared them with computer 171profile vol. 16, no. 1, april 2014. issn 1657-0790 (printed) 2256-5760 (online). bogotá, colombia. pages 167-180 from drills to clil: the paradigmatic and methodological evolution towards the integration... processes, using a symbolic language to describe people’s cognitive behaviour. cognitive activities are mental representations that are not on a biological or neurological level or on a social or cultural one. therefore, language studies in generativism account for the ways language elements select forms and meanings in our brain (van dijk, 2004), something that has limited pedagogical implications because no context or use is being considered here. in a more recent publication, chomsky (2000) goes into the study of language use making reference to other external factors: “no structural relations are invoked other than those forced by legibility conditions” (p. 11). in this case, general linguistics suppositions together with chomsky’s theories are altered and conditioned by emotional and idiosyncratic factors that must be taken into account when analysing language. all of these extratextual factors have a crucial role in the next language paradigm: pragmatics, which deeply marks the course of foreign language teaching and learning. pragmatics at the end of the 20th century, we can find a shift towards more pragmatic analyses in generativism. the structural complexity of minimalism (chomsky, 1986) moved towards more pragmatic domains when it was split into different logical-semantic levels. these levels of functions made reference to the semantic properties of signs, and they were updated according to their contexts. the analysis of a linguistic sign from this post-generativist perspective took into account both contextual and cotextual issues, which foreshadowed a change in the study and teaching of languages. where structuralism examines linguistic signs and the possible changes that take place in them, pragmatics focuses on the causes of such changes, mainly those coming from outside of the linguistic system and those that provoke changes in either the system or its uses: for example, psycholinguistic, so ciolinguistic, or environmental factors that influence word change and lexical meanings. these extralinguistic constituents are clearly present in a language classroom by means of certain variables that are both gestural and situational and that determine and discriminate the meaning of a specific sequence of words. regarding the cotext or written context, it is the written environment that gives meaning to the text, making it more real or comprehensible. pragmatic scholars are now aware of the importance of linking language abstraction with more concrete factors such as context, individual variables, and communicative purposes. in fact, language is but a sign system made up of the cultural and extralinguistic variables that condition sign usage. the pragmatic linguistic paradigm has been specifically linked with the field of foreign language teaching. roever (2006) associates both pragmatics and teaching with what he calls “interlanguage pragmatics” (p. 230). although many studies have been published on the acquisition and teaching of foreign languages, only recent analyses have considered pragmatics as the theoretical and multidisciplinary basis for the study of language. what i have presented here as two opposing forces—theoretical and pragmatic paradigms—are but two representations of the same reality reflected on an abstract level (e.g., sentence-deep structure and lexicon) and on a concrete one (i.e., speech realisations and language use and context). to bridge the gap between theoretical paradigms and the pragmatic one, clil provides a multidisciplinary standpoint that combines language analyses from these divergent perspectives. innovative structural approaches together with the content variables of linguistic signs are given within a communicative context in the classroom. table 2 aims to merely describe the main differences among the different paradigms addressed in this section. universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras172 muñoz-luna table 2. linguistic paradigms and their language focuses structuralism generativism pragmatics word structure sentence structure communication every traditional linguistic paradigm has been linked with a specific theoretical teaching framework that best describes the conditions, procedures, and variables of a learning/teaching situation. table 3— inspired by guey, cheng, and shibata (2010)—notes the different paradigms previously described, together with their corresponding foreign language learning approaches. table 3. linguistic paradigms and their corresponding l2 learning approaches linguistic paradigm learning approach structuralism programmed framework generativism discovery learning pragmatics open classroom, communicative approach as we can see, learning environments have also undergone an evolution in which context has gradually acquired a chief role. the increasing dependence on contextual factors is unavoidable in understanding and fostering the integration of content and foreign language in the classroom. this pragmatic contextualisation invites students to construct their language learning, as will be explained in the following section. from linguistic paradigms to knowledge construction the linguistic paradigm evolution follows a progression from objective linguistic foundations to a more humanized view of the building of l2 academic knowledge. these assumptions have modified teaching notions accordingly. crotty (2003) defines this new theoretical approach as the fact that all knowledge “is being constructed in and out of interaction between human beings and their world, and developed and transmitted within an essentially social context . . . there is no true or valid interpretation of the world. there are useful interpretations” (pp. 42, 47). the epistemological basis of this paradigmatic evolution is constructivism because it provides clear justifications for the ways students approach foreign language learning today. constructivism has been always related to post-structuralism and post-modernism, but in fact, it is more related to a subjective epistemology. both constructivism and post-modernism commit themselves to “ambiguity, relativity . . . fragmentation” (coll et al., 2007, p. 43, 185), consisting of reality made up of several viewpoints and multiple existences. classroom constructivism includes some pragmatic elements that take the learning context into consideration by paying attention to linguistic signs and their communicative purposes (larochelle & bednarz, 1998). features from different linguistic paradigms converge in linguistic constructivism because learners themselves are working with l2 forms, structures, texts, and purposes. constructivism is especially relevant in those cases in which nonnative speakers aim to be successful in l2 speaking and writing (nagowah & nagowah, 2009). particular cognitive schemata should be developed in these processes: not only does the linguistic barrier impede fluent discourse, but the academic genre also r ules need to be constructed under foreign frameworks. for this reason, constructivist learning and teaching take place progressively but meaningfully, and they do so at different levels of knowledge; that is, the process is interdisciplinary, and various elements come to play 173profile vol. 16, no. 1, april 2014. issn 1657-0790 (printed) 2256-5760 (online). bogotá, colombia. pages 167-180 from drills to clil: the paradigmatic and methodological evolution towards the integration... a role. although constructivist learning and teaching seem to be in different spheres (abstract and concrete), they coherently form the multifaceted construction of knowledge in the classroom (see table 4). the inclusion of these layers in the study of lan guage teaching implies a holistic approach in knowledge construction, considering students’ production in different areas such as cognitive contents, learning experiences, and personal explorations. this is the reason a constructivist framework offers such a rich basis for l2 instruction: the entire learning experience (e.g., linguistic and extralinguistic issues alike) is considered here as a practice in which many factors play a role and that results in a complex and compact procedure. consequently, and in relation to dayto-day classroom implications, practitioners must consider the explicit teaching of other aspects apart from those purely conceptual and linguistic, including procedural and strategic items as well. these strategies will become discipline-specific, and clil is the perfect ground where language and discipline meet. therefore, constructivist behaviour in teaching a foreign language requires complete involvement from the teacher, who must be the students’ guide and facilitator. at the same time, teachers must supervise learners’ construction processes by means of formative evaluation and assessment. as kaufman (2004) notes in her analysis of constr uctivist learning, constructivism justifies not only linguistic development but also academic construction from a critical perspective: “constructivism is open-ended and allows for ambiguity, flexibility, and innovative thinking” (pp. 310-311). pedagogical implications of constructivist concepts: clil at the end of the path in such a complex educational environment as the one described above, constructivism considers students as active doers in their learning processes, making them competent language users. this idea of competences is the basis of learning in the new european higher education area (ehea). the new ehea framework aims to consider the social dimension of learning by promoting competences such as students’ autonomy in the classroom; similarly, constructivism takes these collaborative variables into consideration (pérez, soto, sola, & serván, 2009). today, the constructivism field has abandoned its primary psychological sources in search of more linguistic domains; this theoretical framework has already been considered crucial “in the linguistic investigation of literacy development” (kaufman, 2004, p. 303). in reality, however, constructivism can be considered both a theory of learning and a theory of knowledge and world perception. the study and learning of a language come as a result of different construction processes that take place in complex environments. from a constructivist standpoint—and to support the most linguistic side of this theory— the development of mental and cognitive processes derives from repeated exposure to language. learners’ paths toward meaning construction are based not only upon their social interactions in the classroom but also upon their conceptual knowledge of the discipline they are studying. this academic setting enhances the notion of academic genre that table 4. levels of knowledge construction in the foreign language classroom foreign language learning: linguistic l2 items to be learned curricular contents: academic objectives achieved by preestablished contents academic strategies: study and communicative strategies employed in learning language conventions: the learning of discursive rules universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras174 muñoz-luna must be present in learners’ outcomes; academic genre features can be taught explicitly, and this genre shift advocates for content specification. content-focused teaching, without leaving formal aspects aside, is what clil can offer. the most direct outcome of this holistic nature of constructivism is the fact that it does not pursue a single teaching technique. as we will see in the following section, the emergence of constructivism in classroom implementations leads to a postmethodological clil in l2 teaching that aims at using eclectic techniques that would significantly depend on learners’ various needs. an evolution in l2 teaching methods that mirrors the linguistic paradigm shift the classica l met ho d of foreig n language teaching, the so-called grammar-translation method, was eminently mnemonic, with some lexical and grammatical exercises based on repetition and recurrence. these continuous repetitions reinforced a word’s mental image, making its memorization easier but without considering its contextual use. attention was paid to written over oral language, so that learners never had complete acquisition of greek and latin spoken skills because they were already dead languages. the pedagogical tactics in this traditional method were “translation, memorisation of vocabulary lists, and verb conjugation” (savignon, 2007, p. 208). therefore, the crucial role of memory in this type of teaching allowed for more mechanical learning rather than deductive or relational. this traditional focus on forms and recitation continued to be the only foreign language teaching method for centuries. however, a new concept of grammar and grammar teaching was published by monk scholars during the second half of the 17th century, bringing innovative constructivist ideas into the language classroom. constructivism as a theory of learning is then rooted in the french school of port royale, derived from the abbey of the same name (laborda, 1978). nevertheless, this innovative teaching practice was not exported to other schools or universities in a time when foreign languages did not have a crucial role in learners’ curricula. language teaching followed the classical trend until the beginning of the 20th century, when the world wars demanded modern and quick ways of learning foreign communication. these historical and political circumstances changed the language teaching panorama, and english became the common international language. during the forties and fifties, skinner’s behaviourist model put an emphasis on conductive processes in learners’ minds, something that affected the learning of english and its uses in the classroom. behaviourist practices in language teaching derived from the structuralist roots of language because structuralism was the basis upon which l1 teaching strategies were drawn during the 1950s and 1960s (mitchell & myles, 2004; myles, 2010). bloomfield (1983) and skinner (1957) examined measurable behaviour and responses towards an external stimulus; when applying behaviourism to foreign language teaching, this procedure becomes a simple interaction of repetitions followed by their corresponding rewards. this behaviourist modification of students’ conduct in the classroom was a teaching trend that aimed to redirect learners’ behaviour to improve their learning. by means of repetitions and linguistic stimuli, teachers could focus on specific patterns and then motivate students towards a specific response to these. at this time, contrastive language analyses between l1 and l2 also helped emphasise the structural character of behaviourism. other language learning methods that focused on linguistic forms were the reading method and audiolingualism, in which the key was memorising 175profile vol. 16, no. 1, april 2014. issn 1657-0790 (printed) 2256-5760 (online). bogotá, colombia. pages 167-180 from drills to clil: the paradigmatic and methodological evolution towards the integration... a series of written items to reach native-like patterns (richards, 2008). these teaching schemes were the first methods used when the teaching of english as a foreign language (tefl) was consolidated as a professional practice. from teaching structures to context ualised and meaningful teaching the focus on linguistic forms and structures led the foreign language teaching panorama until the early 1980s. krashen (1977, 1978) and his monitor model examined the process of language learning through a series of hypotheses that moved from structural theories towards more affective reasoning. by this time, the field of foreign languages was having greater autonomy and was being constituted as a field of research per se. as a reactionary movement against behaviourism, a more cognitive model appeared. in this case, mental processes and individual intellectual factors measured the different steps and progress learners made in their learning processes. at the beginning of the 1960s, chomsky began to criticise skinner’s behaviourist theories, and consequently there was a shift towards more cognitive aspects of learning. these new ideas influenced the development of language teaching in the following decade: error analysis and interlanguage shed some light on the way l2 learners produced the languages they were learning. this move towards cognitivism in language teaching took place in two phases that mitchell and myles (2004) identify as (1) a procession approach and (2) a more constructionist framework. after behaviourist and generativist tefl methods, students no longer practised correct patterns and behaviours; instead, teachers began to look for the construction of particular and contextualised knowledge. consequently, practitioners had to work with learners who were more actively engaged in their individual learning processes. generativist and pragmatic trends in language teaching can be compared to the contrast between formalism (chomsky, saussure, bloomfield) and functionalism in language research. in this case, there is a shift from form to function in language study and a direct relationship between students’ cognitive stages in l2 and their pragmatic production and purpose; to measure those cognitive stages, students’ interlanguage provided sufficient information to identify them and therefore grade the activities (and not the text) accordingly (muñoz-luna, 2010). this pragmatic or functionalist tradition took into account the nonformal acquisition of l2 structures for the first time, considering it “driven by pragmatic communicative needs” in near-natural situations (mitchell & myles, 2004, p. 154); however, learning interaction was still not being contemplated in the functionalist trend. the importance of pragmatics in l2 teaching dates back to the analysis of speech acts and their communicative consequences in the 1960s (austin, 2004). however, it was not until recently that pragmatic competence became an explicit part of the english language teaching (elt) curriculum (gretsch, 2009; yu, 2011). this pragmatic skill consists of other sub-competences such as: • pragmatic awareness. • metapragmatic awareness. • metalinguistic fluency (ifantidou, 2011). these are needed for the correct interpretation and production of genre-specific texts. in this case, there has also been a methodological evolution within these pragmatic teaching techniques: from reproductive learning (by means of repetitive drills) to constructive learning (through comprehension). therefore, there has been a change: • from teaching to transmit knowledge • to teaching that develops and constructs students’ learning capabilities. students are transferring what they have learned to new problems and situations, which genuinely enables them to find solutions and interiorise their learning. universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras176 muñoz-luna these pragmatic issues fall into the latest postmethodological teaching trend, which does not oppose traditional methods of teaching but rather complements them. method and post-method will provide a holistic and more real perception of the teaching and learning tasks (kumaravadivelu, 2001). this new teaching pedagogy has derived from principles that are against the traditional teaching style, and it includes: • creative teaching beyond the traditional transmission model. • the pursuit of particular aims depending on particular contexts. • the importance of a theory vs. practice dialogue. • learning via shared experiences. with these pioneering classroom techniques, we leave traditional morphological structures aside and we move on to dialogical and discursive ones, with conversation being the work-unit in the classroom. regarding the learning of foreign grammatical rules, constructivist teachers attempt to imitate the l1 acquisition process, allowing the student to discover praxis from theory analogically by taking an active role and using inductive exercises (nagowah & nagowah, 2009). these new learning procedures could be defined as negotiating meaning within interaction. the type of knowledge that constructivism promotes looks for the structuration of information, for the conscious application of specific academic techniques, and for the understanding of relationships to make a coherent and more meaningful whole. with regard to meaningful environments, learners’ academic behaviour is placed within a constructivist methodology by which students restructure content and linguistic information according to their previous knowledge of both. results of the constructivist methodology are expected to be optimal because it is characterised by the following features: • the learning process takes place in a meaningful way. • that learning process departs from what the learner already knows, and it moves towards new concepts from there. • there is an active effort from the students, who need to be aware of their own learning stages, as well as from the teachers, who will give the necessary guidelines to each learner. as we can see, the evolution in the field of language teaching is deeply rooted in a focus on form, which gradually turns into a meaning focal point. in turn, meaningful teaching and language interactions move pedagogical attention towards speakers and communication, which undoubtedly need context and purpose. the clil frameworks come at this end to provide that discipline-specific context that language learning demands. towards a clil pedagogy: content and linguistic purposes combined in the academic genre the integration of content and form is but the natural inclusion of the role of context in second language teaching. in strongly disciplinary subjects as university ones, the teaching focus should not be solely grammatical, and clil does not happen only in language-specific contexts. l2 must be based on specific contents to be contextualised and meaningful. current teaching practices in university classrooms show that language and content are inseparable when teaching in a foreign language; both are evaluated and mutually influenced. according to bell (2003), no language paradigm or teaching methodology has ever been applied holistically to the entire teaching-learning process but rather, only to parts of it (focusing on e.g., students, teachers, physical environment, materials, or syllabus). in a new integrational approach, context, meaning, and communicative competence are key 177profile vol. 16, no. 1, april 2014. issn 1657-0790 (printed) 2256-5760 (online). bogotá, colombia. pages 167-180 from drills to clil: the paradigmatic and methodological evolution towards the integration... issues because language contexts are perceived as part of the students’ learning backgrounds. consequently, we have shifted towards a cons tructivist state that is beyond traditional methods. this means that both effort and research towards finding the correct methods need to be redirected towards finding necessary strategies and towards awareness of the linguistic target. without methodological restrictions, teachers feel freer to test their own personal techniques in the classroom and see what works for their specific groups; thus, the figure of the teacher-researcher substitutes the former methodological limits in search of a more holistic approach to elt. disciplinary contents, in relation to the foreign language we are working with, may act as the very necessar y context in which language acquires meaning. constructivist methodologies pursue this contextualised practice, which is present in clil frameworks. as mentioned above in this paper, the clil model most broadly used at university level in europe is the so-called adjunct model (brinton et al., 2011), in which students must use their previous language instruction to approach discipline-specific contents. in this way, form and content are not mutually exclusive but coherently integrated. both are assessed and, therefore, both need explicit attention in class; students’ intrinsic motivation is also essential. clil is triggered by the urgent need to learn foreign languages more quickly efficiently, and also by the use of english as a lingua franca in all research settings, which turns researchers’ attention towards the cognitive and developmental processes of language acquisition (coyle et al., 2010). clil is therefore very relevant to the teaching profession because it offers a wide and complete teaching and learning frame that goes a step beyond traditional programmes. nevertheless, clil implementation requires specific teacher formation and a certain degree of l2 proficiency in students, both conditions that are as yet unfulfilled in spanish university classrooms (dafouz, núñez, & sancho, 2007). clil is also a good practical realization of holistic and constructivist principles in teaching: • “there is neither one preferred clil model, nor one clil methodology. the clil approach is flexible in order to take account of a wide range of contexts” (coyle et al., 2010, p. 48). • this clil contextual flexibility seems highly suitable for constructivist and post-methodological practices. • clil allows for personalizing teaching sessions, encouraging positive attitudes and active engagement in learners. • clil helps develop linguistic strategies and language awareness by means of awareness-raising activities that would focus on linguistic aspects without leaving aside the content of the subject; the juxtaposition of disciplinary and linguistic activ ities would develop students’ critical thinking. the importance and usefulness of clil courses have been widely demonstrated: comprehension of contents helps aid full acquisition of the vehicular language. specific language use is considered to be one of the basic elements in a clil teacher training course. discipline-specific language is the means that teachers will work with and that will also evaluated as part of students’ expected knowledge (coyle et al., 2010). this content and genre specificity unveils the current debate between lsp and clil subjects, which focus on languageand content-specific methodology, respectively. clil is the learning approach that refers to the instruction of syllabus contents that are apparently not related to language learning, although a foreign or second language is the language used in the class (räisänen, 2009). it is mostly employed in language immersion programmes, in which learning a subject requires integration within the practical use of a second language. universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras178 muñoz-luna the need for contextualisation is inevitable in such a specialised academic arena as higher education. the explicit teaching of genres and their academic features provides students with the necessary tools to carry out authentic tasks in humanities, sciences, and technology. if learners are aware of academic genre features, their written contributions will be more meaningful and directly focused and of better quality. lorenzo (2010) defines this as a shift from language contents to genre items. in fact, clil should go beyond the mere integration of contents and language (mungra, 2010). if we teach genres and specific academic schemata, we will improve learners’ input processing abilities, thus favouring cognitive thinking beyond context memorisation. concluding remarks clil is the natural and necessary consequence of paradigmatic and pedagogical evolution in foreign language teaching. initial structuralist approaches to language analysis developed into cognitive theories (e.g., chomskian generativism) and, later, into pragmatic assumptions. language forms and structures gave way to constituent formation and then context, placing communicative purposes at the core of language teaching. from a pedagogical standpoint, drills and repetitions were gradually substituted by meaningful language interactions in which learners had to find and construct their own messages. in such a constructivist environment, the teachers’ task has inevitably expanded; it is now their responsibility to identify students’ needs and learning strategies to provide them with more contextualised and meaningful input. from the learners’ side, they are autonomous, and that means they make use of metacognitive strategies to be able to modify their own learning rhythms. as we have seen, traditional methods have been disrupted to give way to a more holistic and inclusive clil methodology, something that fits into the framework of constructivism. this inclusive perspective is, by definition, eclectic, including multiple methods and interdisciplinary concepts; constructivist standpoints are reflected in postmethodological techniques in the following ways: • learning results from a constructivist perspective have proved to be the most advantageous because of students’ implication in the entire process. • students work from what they already know to arrive at new concepts. • learners are experiencing a more contextualised learning in which language and subject contents are fully integrated. recent research programmes are now analysing the effectiveness of content-based language teaching in some european countries (brinton et al., 2011). the results so far show a great concern for clearly identifying the different competences in education; moreover, they evidence the need for more attention towards affective and motivational aspects (competences) in the curriculum. the complete acquisition of linguistic communicative competence in the l2 includes the mastery of several domains that cover those extralinguistic issues mentioned above, and clil provides a meaningful environment in which to combine linguistic and discipline-specific contexts. references austin, j. l. (2004). how to do things with words. in j. rivkin & m. ryan (eds.), literary theory: an anthology (2nd ed., pp. 162-176). london, uk: blackwell. bell, d. m. (2003). method and post-method: are they really so incompatible? tesol quarterly, 37(2), 325-336. bloomfield, l. (1983). an introduction to the study of language. amsterdam, nl: john benjamins. brinton, d. m., snow, m. a., & wesche, m. (2011). contentbased second language instruction. ann arbor, mi: university of michigan press. chomsky, n. (1972). topics in the theory of generative grammar. the hague, nl: mouton. 179profile vol. 16, no. 1, april 2014. issn 1657-0790 (printed) 2256-5760 (online). bogotá, colombia. pages 167-180 from drills to clil: the paradigmatic and methodological evolution towards the integration... chomsky, n. (1986). barriers. cambridge, ma: mit press. chomsky, n. (1988). language and problems of knowledge. cambridge, ma: mit press. chomsky, n. (1995). the minimalist program. cambridge, ma: mit press. chomsky, n. (2000). new horizons in the study of language and mind. cambridge, uk: cambridge university press. coll, c., martín, e., mauri, t., miras, m., onrubia, j., solé, i., & zabala, a. (2007). el constructivismo en el aula [constructivism in the classroom]. barcelona, es: biblioteca de aula. coyle, d., hood, p., & marsh, d. (2010). clil: content and language integrated learning. cambridge, uk: cambridge university scholars. crotty, m. (2003). the foundations of social research: meaning and perspective in the research process. london, uk: sage. dafouz, e., núñez, b., & sancho, c. (2007). analysing stance in a clil university context: non-native speaker use of personal pronouns and modal verbs. international journal of bilingual education and bilingualism, 10(5), 647-662. derrida, j. (1971). de la gramatología [of grammatology]. méxico, mx: siglo xxi. gretsch, c. (2009). pragmatics and integrational linguistics. language and communication, 29(4), 328-342. guey, c., cheng, y., & shibata, s. (2010). a triarchal instruction model: integration of principles from behaviourism, cognitivism, and humanism. procedia: social and behavioural sciences, 9, 105-118. ifantidou, e. (2011). genres and pragmatic competence. journal of pragmatics, 43(1), 327-346. kaufman, d. (2004). constructivist issues in language learning and teaching. annual review of applied linguistics, 24, 303-319. kennedy, c. (2012). esp projects, english as a global language, and the challenge of change. ibérica, 24, 43-54. krashen, s. (1977). the monitor model of adult second language performance. in m. k. burt, h. c. dulay, & m. b. finocchiaro (eds.), viewpoints on english as a second language (pp. 152-161). new york, ny: regents. krashen, s. (1978). individual variation in the use of the monitor. in w. c. ritchie (ed.), second language acquisition research: issues and implications (pp. 175-183). new york, ny: academic press. kumaravadivelu, b. (2001). toward a postmethod pedagogy. tesol quarterly, 35(4), 537-560. laborda, x. (1978). la gramática de port-royal: fuentes, contenido e interpretación. [grammar of port-royal: sources, contents, and interpretation] (doctoral dissertation) universidad de barcelona, spain. larochelle, m., & bednarz, n. (1998). constructivism and education: beyond epistemological correctness. in m. larochelle, n. bednarz, & j. garrison (eds.), constructivism and education (pp. 3-20). cambridge, uk: cambridge university press. lasagabaster, d., & ruiz de zarobe, y. (eds.). (2010). clil in spain: implementation, results, and teacher training. cambridge, uk: cambridge university scholars. lorenzo, f. (2010). clil in andalusia. in d. lasagabaster & y. ruiz de zarobe (eds.), clil in spain: implementation, results, and teacher training (pp. 2-11). cambridge, uk: cambridge university scholars. mitchell, r., & myles, f. (2004). second language learning theories. london, uk: hodder. mungra, p. (2010). teaching writing of scientific abstracts in english: clil methodology in an integrated english and medicine course. ibérica, 20, 151-166. muñoz-luna, r. (2010). interlanguage in undergraduates’ academic english: preliminary results from written script analysis. encuentro: revista de investigación e innovación en la clase de idiomas, 19, 60-73. myles, f. (2010). the development of theories of second language acquisition. language teaching, 43(3), 320-332. nagowah, l., & nagowah, s. (2009). a reflection on the dominant learning theories: behaviourism, cognitivism, and constructivism. international journal of learning, 16(2), 279-286. universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras180 muñoz-luna pérez, á., soto, e., sola, m., & serván, m. (2009). aprender en la universidad. el sentido del cambio en el eees [learning at university. sense of change at the eees]. madrid, es: akal. piaget, j. (1970). structuralism. new york, ny: basic books. räisänen, c. (2009). integrating content and language, in theory in practice: some reflections. in e. caridad de otto & a. f. lópez de vergara (eds.), viii congreso internacional aelfe: las lenguas para fines específicos ante el reto de la convergencia europea (pp. 31-41). la laguna, es: servicio de publicaciones de la universidad de la laguna. richards, j. c. (2008). second language teacher education today. relc, 39(2), 158-177. roever, c. (2006). validation of a web-based test of esl pragmalinguistics. language testing, 23(2), 229-256. salaberri, s. (2010). teacher training programmes for clil in andalusia. in d. lasagabaster & y. ruiz de zarobe (eds.), clil in spain: implementation, results, and teacher training (pp. 140-161). cambridge, uk: cambridge university scholars. savignon, s. j. (2007). beyond communicative language teaching: what’s ahead? journal of pragmatics, 39(1), 207-220. skinner, b. f. (1957). verbal behavior. englewood cliffs, nj: prentice-hall. sturrock, j. (1979). structuralism and since: from lévi-strauss to derrida. oxford, uk: oxford university press. van dijk, t. a. (2004). discourse, ideology, and context. in j. d. pujante (ed.), caminos de la semiótica en la última década del siglo xx [semiotic ways in the last decade of the 20th century] (pp. 47-77). valladolid, es: servicio de publicaciones de la universidad de valladolid. yu, m. (2011). learning how to read situations and know what is the right thing to say or do in an l2: a study of socio-cultural competence and language transfer. journal of pragmatics, 43(4), 1127-1147. about the author rosa muñoz-luna has a ba in psychopedagogy (universidad pontificia de salamanca, spain), an ma in tesol (university of exeter, united kingdom), and a phd in applied linguistics (universidad de málaga, spain) and is a teaching fellow and part of the applied languages and linguistics research group at the universidad de málaga. part of her recent research has focused on the study of teaching methods and their evolution throughout time. profile no. 6 oct 13.p65 ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ profile profile profile profile profile 6 (2005): universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras efl teachers’ research and mainstream tesol: ships passing in the night? la investigación de profesores de inglés y la línea dominante en tesol:la investigación de profesores de inglés y la línea dominante en tesol:la investigación de profesores de inglés y la línea dominante en tesol:la investigación de profesores de inglés y la línea dominante en tesol:la investigación de profesores de inglés y la línea dominante en tesol: ¿bar¿bar¿bar¿bar¿barcos que pasan en la noche?cos que pasan en la noche?cos que pasan en la noche?cos que pasan en la noche?cos que pasan en la noche? isobel rainey de díazisobel rainey de díazisobel rainey de díazisobel rainey de díazisobel rainey de díaz i.raineydediaz@ntlworld.com freelance elt consultant, retired lecturer university of surrey, u.k. this article describes and analyses the concerns of efl secondary school teachers who do, or would like to be doing, research into their own classroom practices. the study attempts to show that, despite claims to the contrary, these concerns are still not being accounted for in mainstream tesol. even though efl teachers may have been given voice within their national contexts, that voice is neither being heard nor acted upon in the dominant tesol community. it is suggested, therefore, that until efl teachers from non-mainstream tesol contexts not only benefit from but also contribute to that body of knowledge which forms the bedrock of tesol, and from which many reforms derive, this profession will continue to be hegemonic and not truly representative of a global tesol reality. kkkkkey worey worey worey worey words: ds: ds: ds: ds: efl teachers, secondary school, mainstream tesol, non-mainstream tesol, research concerns and interests, inner and expanding circles se describen y analizan las áreas de investigación que interesan a aquellos profesores de inglés, nivel secundario, que hacen o quieren hacer investigación en sus propios salones de clase. aunque en la literatura se sostiene que hoy en día se toman en cuenta los intereses de dichos profesores, este estudio intenta demostrar que éste no es el caso. aunque dentro de contextos nacionales se ha venido cediendo 'voz' a los profesores, la comunidad dominante de tesol no ha parecido prestarle importancia. por lo tanto, se sugiere reflexionar sobre el siguiente hecho: mientras los profesores de inglés de contextos no-dominantes no saquen provecho, ni contribuyan a los conocimientos que forman la base de tesol, de los cuales se derivan muchas reformas, esta profesión seguirá siendo hegemónica. palabras clavespalabras clavespalabras clavespalabras clavespalabras claves: profesores de inglés como idioma extranjero, colegios secundarios, la línea dominante en tesol, la línea no-dominante, los temas e intereses de los investigadores, el círculo interior y el círculo creciente 7-21 this article was received on april 14th, 2005 and accepted on august 22nd, 2005. ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ 8 raineyraineyraineyraineyrainey profileprofileprofileprofileprofile 1. introduction1. introduction1. introduction1. introduction1. introduction although this study draws on the research aspirations and actual research projects of efl teachers in non-mainstream tesol contexts1 in general, it concentrates on the concerns and interests of efl secondary school teachers in particular. several factors have influenced this choice of focus. first, the efl secondary school community – of both teachers and learners – is by far the largest of the tesol communities. although some countries, under pressure from the effects of economic globalisation, have recently made efl compulsory at the primary school level (colombia and argentina, for example), this is still not the case in many other countries (peru and indonesia, for instance). at secondary level, on the other hand, the vast majority of learners study english, even in those countries where they can opt to study a foreign language other than english. in argentina, for example, where learners can still choose between english and french,2 the majority still opt for english. again, the reason mooted for the preference for efl is that it is english – the socalled language of international communication – which is required by global market forces. as for tertiary level, while there is a similar preference among students for efl, it is commonly acknowledged that the population of learners and, therefore, teachers at tertiary level is universally much smaller than that of the other two levels. thus, the size of the efl secondary school population is still by far the largest of the three main levels and, considering that this community includes countries like china, indonesia, brazil and japan, it is clearly very large indeed. it is logical, therefore, that such a vast community should be of interest to all those concerned with tesol. another reason for the choice of focus is that, given the size of the efl secondary school community, it is with some urgency that mainstream tesol needs not only to begin to listen to but also to act upon the messages which emanate from the research aspirations and projects of the teachers in this community. unless the knowledge and research results of tesol’s largest community are assimilated into the mainstream, it is an aberration to talk of a global tesol reality. so far (see below), there is little evidence that this process of assimilation has actually got under way. it is hoped that this study will make a contribution, albeit modest, to redressing this problem. my personal experience with secondary school teachers of efl has also greatly influenced the focus of this study. in the course of many years of international travels, i have heard the refrain, “they’ve had 6 years of secondary school and these efl learners still don’t know any english.” dozens of times and in contexts as varied as costa rica, korea, malaysia, japan, and taiwan. such claims do not reflect well on the efl secondary school teacher. paradoxically, however, i have also found that efl secondary school teachers, again from a wide international spectrum (argentina, colombia, ecuador, korea, pakistan3 , peru, tunisia, turkey) have figured among my most enthusiastic learners on all kinds of teacher education programmes – preservice, in-service, and post-graduate programmes. in their willingness to acquire more knowledge, improve their practices, and contribute from their own experiences and research to the body of knowledge at the core of this profession, they have been unswervingly enthusiastic, determined and diligent. it is, in short, hard to reconcile the ‘bad press’ these teachers receive with their personae as seekers and potential generators of professional 1 mainstream tesol contexts are taken here to mean inner circle countries (see paragraph 2 of 2) like canada, the us, australia, the uk, ireland, and influential countries from the expanding circle (see same paragraph of 2) like germany, france, sweden, which have traditionally been the main sources of innovations and reform in tesol, and of that body of knowledge which is regarded as holding the key to successful foreign and second language teaching and learning. non-mainstream tesol countries are all the other countries in the expanding circle. 2 this information was provided by my colleague lucrecia d’andrade de miranda of the national university of tucuman, argentina. 3 although english is officially a second language in pakistan, there are many large communities for whom it is a foreign language. ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○9 profileprofileprofileprofileprofile efl teachers’ research and mainstream tesol knowledge. this study seeks to throw some light on this apparent incongruity. the study begins with a brief overview of the historical issues which, during the 1980s and 1990s, led to major changes in the orientation of traditional efl teacher education programmes and which, in theory at least, resulted in a change of roles for and attitudes towards the practising efl teacher in general and the efl secondary school teacher in particular. it goes on to describe and analyse data collected from efl secondary school teachers about their research aspirations and active interests, and to juxtapose these with those of mainstream tesol. it concludes with a discussion of the implications of these findings for both mainstream and non-mainstream tesol. 2 . h i s t o r i c a l o v e r v i e w o f e f l2 . h i s t o r i c a l o v e r v i e w o f e f l2 . h i s t o r i c a l o v e r v i e w o f e f l2 . h i s t o r i c a l o v e r v i e w o f e f l2 . h i s t o r i c a l o v e r v i e w o f e f l teachers as researchersteachers as researchersteachers as researchersteachers as researchersteachers as researchers the view that teachers should research their own practices and, in so doing, make a contribution to the body of knowledge available for teacher education, is not new. it goes back at least as far as dewey (1929), who claimed that this type of research was ‘a profoundly important form of educational scholarship’ (lagemann, 1999, p.375). between the 1930s and the 1980s, for reasons which fall outside the scope of this article (see lagemann 1999 for one meagre attempt at documenting them), schools and colleges of education lost sight of the valuable contribution teachers could make to the scholarship of their respective subject areas. instead, there was ‘the belief that education can be changed through changes in the curriculum’ (marcondes, 1999, p.209). teachers of every subject at both primary and secondary school levels and, it would appear, in most countries all over the world, followed curricula that were dictated from ‘above’, i.e. curricula which were the products of research, often exclusively theoretical, carried out by university and college lecturers whose knowledge of school reality derived either from a distant memory of the days when they had first started teaching or from something they had merely read up on in books. in the case of efl teachers, the situation was exacerbated by the fact that not only did the curriculum4 dictates come from ‘above’, they also came from ‘afar’. that is, most of the research which greatly influenced efl curricula for all but the last two decades of the 20th century was generated in what kachru (1986) and kachru and nelson (2001) term inner circle countries, i.e. countries, such as canada, the usa, the uk, australia, new zealand, where english is spoken as the first official language5 . the results of this same research were ‘exported’, with great enthusiasm and insistence, to contexts in the expanding circle6 , i.e. to countries like brazil, indonesia, japan, where english is taught and learned as a foreign language. thus, efl teachers in what is here termed non-mainstream tesol contexts7 were continually bombarded with knowledge from the inner circle, and in time, too, from ‘privileged’ members of the expanding circle (germany, france, etc.). such knowledge pertained to all aspects of their work, namely, teaching methods, syllabus types, teacher’s and learners’ roles, learner strategies and testing techniques, and came with the implicit promise that the teachers’ lot would be easier and their teaching more successful if they changed their teaching to accommodate the proposed ‘innovations’. often and not surprisingly, given the origins of the new ideas, the teachers’ sincere efforts to innovate were rewarded, not with the success that had been forecast by the apologists of the innovations, but with even greater failure and the 4 curriculum and curricula in this study are to be understood as the entire fl programme, including approach, view of language, aims, objectives, methods, methodology, syllabus, and materials. 5 english is taught as a first, second and foreign language in these countries but the foreign language communities are transient and ver y small compared to the communities of the expanding circle. 6 the second circle, the outer circle, falls outside the scope of this discussion. according to kachru, it is made up of those countries where english is officially recognised as a second language. 7 see footnote 1. ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ 10 raineyraineyraineyraineyrainey profileprofileprofileprofileprofile ensuing despondency. “teachers … flock to conferences and workshops, looking forward to learning different ways of doing things. they anticipate with excitement the arrival of the latest textbook and materials. subsequently, they are sometimes disappointed and frustrated when, in the classroom, these activities and textbooks do not meet with great success.” (musumeci, 1997, p.2). it would be wrong, unfair and grossly inaccurate to claim that nothing good has ever come out of these very unequal power relationships between mainstream researchers and non-mainstream teachers. the results of research from the mainstream into the areas of error analysis and interlanguage (il), for example, have served to throw much light on how foreign languages are learned/acquired, and have, therefore, contributed to a fuller understanding of the learning/acquisition processes. this, in turn, has helped teachers, among other things, to adopt more tolerant attitudes towards, and a deeper scientific understanding of learners’ errors. similarly, pedagogical principles such as those underlying speaking activities based on the information and opinion gap have proved excellent facilitators of student oral participation, often in contexts where one of the main stumbling blocks to learner progress has been the students’ unwillingness to participate in class activities. many of the improvements in the teaching of the skills of reading, writing and listening (use of background knowledge, the need for drafting in the writing process and the advantages of going from gist to detailed understanding) have also derived from inner circle research. ignored for many decades, however, was the fact that much of what was imported from the mainstream was often culturally alienating, at least initially, and especially if it was abruptly imposed on unprepared and untrained learners (see kramsch, 1993; rainey, 2002), or it was contextually inappropriate in as much as the content of the learning experience failed to address the needs of the society in which the learning was taking place (kramsch, 1993; breen, 2001). all of this has been well documented before in the works of scholars like philippson (1992), pennycook (1994), holliday (1998), and carnagaragh (1999). it is touched on again merely to explain why, when mainstream education, under the influence of stenhouse (1975 ), began to subscribe once more to the idea that it was teachers, and not mainstream researchers, who should be the principal generators of the knowledge needed to understand and improve classroom practices, and to reform curricula, the tesol profession began, a decade or so later, to embrace this idea with open arms (nunan, 1989; edge and richards, 1993; freeman, 1998; richards, 1998; wallace, 1991). it is worth pointing out, however, that more than a decade before action research became ‘fashionable’ in tesol, two canadian foreign language teacher educators had already claimed that “...basic research techniques are not effectively productive for generating applied knowledge. the latter must be produced by the person who is going to use it and is closest to the data, namely, the teacher himself.” (jackobitis and gordon, 1974, p. 249). at any rate, in the latter part of the 20th century, action research became the new order of the day (rainey, 2000, p.65) in tesol education, and, since then, it has been taken as given that it is the efl teachers who should be the originators of change in their practices and that this change should reflect the outcomes of their research into their own practices. this is the theory. in practice, rainey (2000) reported, however, that, in an international survey, the majority of efl secondary school teachers had never heard of action research and, of those that had, few were actually doing it or had ever done it. of those few teachers that were doing it or had done it, most claimed that they wrote up their research but no concrete evidence of the dissemination of their research reports was forthcoming and, as rainey pointed out, without access to the teachers’ research, it is virtually impossible for the knowledge and expertise that successful teachers have developed to foster educational reform’ (2000: 83). much of the literature (see nunan, 1989; freeman, 1998; wallace, 1998, amongst others) leaves the reader with the impression that the ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○11 profileprofileprofileprofileprofile efl teachers’ research and mainstream tesol research of efl classroom teachers is done mainly for the teachers’ own benefit. riley’s position is representative of such a view. “teacher research provides teachers with a systematic way to examine problems or issues in their own situation and to address these problems or issues.” (2000: 24). from what is written in the tesol literature, reaching out beyond the confines of their individual classrooms to share their research findings would appear to be, in the theorists’ view, an option – the icing on the cake for the teacher researchers. although there are those who encourage collaborative teacher research, the scope of the influence of such research would also appear to be somewhat restricted. burns, for example, recognises that teacher research done collaboratively can influence school policy. “developing critical changes in practice from the basis of teachers’ collective research on school problems would, therefore, seem a fruitful direction in which to go.” (1999: 225). burns also claims that, on working collaboratively with other teachers, the sense of isolation so common in this profession is reduced and the ‘research process empowers teachers by reaffirming their professional judgement and enabling them to take steps to make reflection on practice a regular part of everyday teaching’ (1999: 234). none of this is being questioned. rather, it is being suggested here that it does not go far enough. what is missing in most of the literature is a clear acknowledgement that the results of teacher classroom research could and should benefit and be of interest to a much wider audience to the global tesol community because “… many case studies aimed at improving action in particular settings have yielded generally useful insights into the complexities of teaching and learning, and … many action research projects have focussed on problems and dilemmas teachers experience across a wide range and variety of educational settings.” (elliott, 2004, p.3). it is precisely those insights and complexities that emerge from efl secondary school teachers’ research that are at the core of this study. 3. procedures and method3. procedures and method3. procedures and method3. procedures and method3. procedures and method the study draws on three sources of data, collected in the following ways. 3.1 sur3.1 sur3.1 sur3.1 sur3.1 surveyveyveyveyvey efl secondar y school teachers attending professional conferences or in-service professional development seminars, most of whom had not yet received any formal training in classroom research methods/techniques, completed a simple questionnaire where they provided some basic bio data and answered the following question: ‘if you had the necessary resources (time, training and support), which aspect/s of your teaching would you like to research?’ this question was chosen as it was assumed that the topics identified would reveal the problems and issues of concern to the teachers in their specific teaching contexts. a list was drawn up of all the topics generated by the questionnaires; these were then coded, and classified into general topic areas (see 4: results). the questionnaires were answered by teachers from argentina, costa rica, spain, and pakistan8 , as these were the communities to which i had access when i began the study. in other words, the communities were selected on a convenience basis but, fortunately, they spawned data from four continents and represented not only nonmainstream contexts but also one mainstream tesol country, spain (see footnote 1). as most of the teachers taught in at least two institutions, they were instructed to express their research preferences for the state/public school contexts and/or for the not-soprivileged private secondary school contexts in which they taught. (many private schools even in non-mainstream countries are very privileged and the teaching and learning conditions reflect those of mainstream country schools; these were not the focus of this study.) 3.2 meta-analysis (1)3.2 meta-analysis (1)3.2 meta-analysis (1)3.2 meta-analysis (1)3.2 meta-analysis (1) a meta-analysis was conducted of the research topics selected by efl secondary school teachers 8 see footnote 3. ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ 12 raineyraineyraineyraineyrainey profileprofileprofileprofileprofile who were doing, and who had already done, research into their own practices. in the case of the former, the topics were listed as ongoing research in the colombian applied linguistics journal, 5, september 2003 (calj); in the case of the latter, the topics were identified in the actual reports of their research which colombian teachers had published in the profile journal. although both of these sources are from the same country, this, as we will see in discussion, is not as restricting as it may seem and may even have served to strengthen the argument in this article. once again, all the research topics pertained to the work of teachers in state or not-very-privileged private secondary schools. table 1 contains details of the number of teachers involved in each of these sources of data (3.1, 3.2). tttttable 1.able 1.able 1.able 1.able 1. total number of teachers in survey and metaanalysis 1. source of descriptions/analysis no. teachers questionnaire 66 meta-analysis 1 (calj) 14 meta-analysis 1 profile 31 total number of teachers in survey 111 3.3 meta-analysis (2)3.3 meta-analysis (2)3.3 meta-analysis (2)3.3 meta-analysis (2)3.3 meta-analysis (2) yet another meta-analysis was conducted. this analysis focuses on the ef/sl/fl9 topics in research articles in three international journals. these journals (see 4.3) are commonly recognised by mainstream tesol researchers as three of the journals which have most influence on the beliefs and practices of fl teaching in general and the international tesol community in particular. the results for the three groupings (3.1, 3.2 and 3.3) were then juxtaposed to check for convergence of interests and concerns, and these results are described and analysed in 4. 3.4 questions3.4 questions3.4 questions3.4 questions3.4 questions although this study does not represent a formal piece of research, the following questions served to give it a sense of direction and purpose: • which topic areas are the most common among the teachers/teacher researchers in the survey and in meta-analysis 1? • what are the messages and insights which emanate from efl secondary school teachers’ research topic preferences? • what convergence, if any, is there between the interests of efl secondary school teachers’ research concerns and the research concerns of mainstream tesol? • why, if at all, are the research interests and concerns of secondary school teachers important, not just to the teachers themselves but to mainstream tesol? • to what extent, if any, are these messages and insights being listened to and acted upon by the mainstream? 4.4.4.4.4. resulresulresulresulresultststststs this section begins with a description and analyses of the survey results. the results for each subsequent source are then described, analysed and compared and contrasted with the foregoing set/s of results. 4.1 sur4.1 sur4.1 sur4.1 sur4.1 surveyveyveyveyvey a total of 66 teachers completed the questionnaire (see table 1 in 3.2 above): 23 from argentina; 20 from spain; 15 from pakistan; and 8 from costa rica. after the topics were coded, they were classified into 8 major categories/topic areas: socioaffective/cultural (sac); second language acquisition (sla); skills teaching (st); student corpora (sc), for example, written texts for error analysis, recorded texts for interlanguage studies; grammar teaching (gtg); language learning behaviours (llbs); general methodology (gm); and testing (tg). most of the classifications are selfexplanatory but here are examples of three which might not be immediately obvious. 9 there were so few articles about efl that the study had to be widened to include those esl and fl topics which could throw some light on efl (see 4.3). ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○13 profileprofileprofileprofileprofile efl teachers’ research and mainstream tesol general methodology general methodology general methodology general methodology general methodology (gm) contrasts with formal skills teaching (st), formal grammar teaching (gtg) and sla concerns. for example, how can i help all my students in mixed ability classes (argentina) was classified as gm as was how can project-based learning help efl learners in large classes to use english meaningfully? (pakistan) language learning behaviourslanguage learning behaviourslanguage learning behaviourslanguage learning behaviourslanguage learning behaviours (llbs): (1) what are my students’ learning strategies and what are the teachers’ assumptions about them? (pakistan); (2) what knowledge and behaviours do learners already have at their entry level to my school? (pakistan) socio-affective/cultural (sac):socio-affective/cultural (sac):socio-affective/cultural (sac):socio-affective/cultural (sac):socio-affective/cultural (sac): (1) how do feelings, like shyness, and attitudes such as a strong dislike of the fl culture, and politics affect learning and how can i reduce the negative effects? (argentina); how can i motivate my teenage learners when they are so worried about external problems (parents’ divorce, for example)? (argentina) as with most classification tasks, there was occasionally some topic overlap, making classification difficult (for example, in language learning behaviours above, item (2) could also have been classified under testing). in the case of this study, however, topic classification dilemmas were few and when they did occur, the eventual classification of the topic made little difference, if any, to the overall results. table 2 shows the results for each country represented in the survey. with respect to these results, several points are worth making. first, not only do socio-affective and cultural (sac) issues receive the most interest from the group as a whole but, with the exception of spain (the mainstream tesol country), they are also the issues of greatest concern for each individual non-mainstream context, with 9 among the 20 argentinean, 5 among the 8 costa rican, and 6 among the 15 pakistani teachers selecting a sac topic. other examples of the teachers’ concerns in the area of sac include: (1) is it possible to motivate my learners by integrating the teaching of english with that of the teaching of other subjects on the curriculum? (spain) (2) what are my students’ motivations for learning english? (pakistan) (3) how can i give to school tasks the social values teenagers need to cope with life outside the classroom? (argentina) (4) how does the very hot weather in my country (on the caribbean coast) affect students’ attention in class and how can we find a solution? (costa rica) a second point worthy of note is that not one single teacher out of a total of 66 and from countries as far flung as argentina and pakistan identified the teaching of grammar as an area they would like to research. this is especially interesting in light of the voluminous literature which, in the past two decades, has come flooding out of mainstream tesol on research into the teaching of grammar (see poole, 2003, for an excellent summary and appraisal of this literature and of the concomitant debate). what message are these teachers conveying by not choosing gtg as one of their research topics? are they saying that they have already sorted out their gtg problems and countrcountrcountrcountrcountryyyyy sacsacsacsacsac s ls ls ls ls l aaaaa s ts ts ts ts t sc sc sc sc sc gtggtggtggtggtg llbllbllbllbllb gmgmgmgmgm tgtgtgtgtg argentina 9 2 2 2 5 3 costa rica 5 2 1 pakistan 6 3 2 4 spain 5 1 4 2 8 tttttotalotalotalotalotal 2525252525 3 3 3 3 3 11 11 11 11 11 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 6 6 6 6 6 18 18 18 18 18 3 3 3 3 3 tttttable 2.able 2.able 2.able 2.able 2. research preferences of inexperienced/untrained efl ssts. ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ 14 raineyraineyraineyraineyrainey profileprofileprofileprofileprofile that they do not need to do any research into this aspect of their teaching? or, are they simply indicating that, before researching any gtg problems they may have, they have much more pressing problems? given the conditions under which many/most of these teachers work, the likelihood that their message is contained in the second possibility is high. other points could be made on the basis of this table but, as space is of the essence, there is room for only one more. does the absence of an entry under sc (student corpora) indicate that teachers are not interested in the valuable data which derive from student generated data or does it simply reveal that not enough attention has been paid to, or training given in, sc in the teachers’ education programmes? food for thought! 4.2 meta-analyses (1)4.2 meta-analyses (1)4.2 meta-analyses (1)4.2 meta-analyses (1)4.2 meta-analyses (1) this analysis examines the topics chosen by two groups: trainee teachers who had just started and teacher researchers who had completed research into their teaching practices. 4.2.1 trainee teachers’ choices of research topic for reasons of space already commented on in 4.1 above, the first part of this analysis is limited to one article in the calj (colombian applied linguistics journal), namely, no 5, september, 2003. this may not seem a lot but, when it is combined with the second part of the analysis, it is sufficient. writing in considerable, and very useful detail about how different types of research skills are integrated into the basic teacher preparation programme in the licenciatura programme in foreign languages at the universidad del valle, cali, colombia, cárdenas ramos (2003) provides in appendix 2 (pp. 42-43) a list of the topics which the efl trainee teachers selected for their research projects, a compulsory part of the research component of the course. even this list – of just 23 topics is a goldmine of information for anybody who claims to have an interest in the knowledge generated by efl teachers in non-mainstream contexts with a view to integrating such knowledge into mainstream tesol educational reform. of the 23 topics provided, it is not clear in some cases whether the research is being carried out in primary or secondary school. given my familiarity with the colombian contexts, i have been able, in a few of these cases, to infer whether it is one or the other. i have not included those topics where my ability to infer failed me. the topics chosen by the trainee teachers for their research at secondary school are listed in table 3. column 1 contains the number of the topic as it appears in cárdenas ramos’ original appendix. column 2 contains the titles of the topic. column 3 reveals the topic categorisation based on the classification procedures already applied in 4.1. where there appears to be topic area overlap, the second and third topic areas have been placed in brackets after what would appear to be the main topic area. given the international readership of this journal, the original topic titles have been translated from spanish into english. on examining these data, several features stand out. first, perhaps because the teacher researchers here are still new to both teaching and research and have not yet narrowed down their focus of interest, there is a strong tendency to focus on general, as opposed to simply efl, teaching-learning processes. see topics 1, 3, 5, 9, 13, 16 and 23. nevertheless, the message even in these general choices is strong and reflects that of the main message in the data in 4.1: socio-affective and cultural (sac) matters are of great concern to these trainee teachers. of the seven topics of general educational interest, five (1, 3, 5, 16 and 23) are classified as sac. of the seven topics which appear to concentrate on efl (4, 15, 17, 18, 20, 21, and 22), three (17, 18, 20) have a sac or shared sac focus. this means that out of the 14 topics, over half (eight) are sac or sac – related topics. those topics which are fl-oriented and which do not have a sac focus are also of interest. as with the teachers surveyed in 4.1, there is considerable interest in ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○15 profileprofileprofileprofileprofile efl teachers’ research and mainstream tesol nonononono researresearresearresearresearch topicch topicch topicch topicch topic categorcategorcategorcategorcategoryyyyy 1 socialisation: relationships between male and female learners in grade sac 10 and how this socialisation process affects their achievement 3 student-student and student-teacher conflict in grade 10: how to sac cope with it and its effects on academic achievement 4 the teacher’s pedagogical stance with respect to student error during sc (gm) the teaching-learning process of english as a foreign language 5 factors influencing grade 10 and 11 learners’ excessive smoking habits sac 9 description of the colloquial expressions used by 9th graders inside the [sc] 10 classroom 13 the use, and contribution of the library to educational processes in cali [l]lb11 (sla) high schools 15 defining the characteristics of good learners [l]lb 16 description of the attitudes of students and teachers in junior high school sac towards the type of education which is imparted and received there 17 teacher-student interaction in the classroom of 11th grade groups in a sac (llb) high school in cali 18 activities which favour the participation and interaction of the students in gm (sac) an english class 20 effects of the methodology used in the teaching english on the gm (llb,sac) learning processes of grade 11 students in a high school in cali 21 the use of speaking and listening activities for the teaching of english st in grade 7 22 the use of activities for the teaching of the l2 in grade 7 in a state school gm 23 the effects of discipline in the process of learning sac gm (general methodology) and llb (language learning behaviours), with four topics classified in or related to both of these categories. once again, no one has selected gtg (grammar teaching) as the focus of his/her research. in contrast to the teachers in the survey, however, there is some interest here in sc (student corpora), which leads one to wonder why the teachers in the survey appear to have no interest in sc. 4.2.2 practising teachers’ choices of topic profile journal proved an invaluable source of data for this part of meta-analysis 1, namely, the topics selected by experienced teachers who had written up their research reports and who had had them published in profile. these teachers were required to do a classroom research project as a tttttable 3.able 3.able 3.able 3.able 3. choice and classification topics of novice teacher researchers. compulsory part of a professional development course they enrolled in at the national university of colombia, bogotá campus. other components of the course included language improvement and methodology updating12 . it is important to note here, however, that the teachers chose the topics for their research projects in the early stages of the professional development programme as the course director did not want their choices to be conditioned by the contents of the other 10 not clear whether the colloquialisms are in l1 or the fl or both; hence the square brackets 11 in this case, square brackets indicate that the trainee teacher researchers appear to be focussing on learning behaviours in general and not just on language learning behaviours. 12 i am grateful to prof. melba libia cárdenas, director of the teacher development programmes at the national university, bogotá campus, for providing me with this information. ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ 16 raineyraineyraineyraineyrainey profileprofileprofileprofileprofile components, especially the methodology updating. in other words, she wanted the teachers to identify a problem they had before they came to the course as this, she believed, revealed an immediate and real need. had they made the choice when the course was in full swing, they might have been tempted to choose topics they were attracted to in the methodology updating component, and this would not necessarily have reflected their most urgent needs. five issues of profile (no.1, 2000; no. 2, 2001; no. 3, 2002; no. 4, 2003; no. 5, 2004) were used in this analysis and are summarised in table 4. the same coding and categorising procedures described in 4.1 and illustrated in tables 2 and 3 were applied here, too. first, however, it is important to point out that some of the teachers in this particular professional development course did their research collaboratively. table 4 contains, therefore, an extra column (column 2), which indicates the total number of projects reported in the corresponding issue of profile and in brackets the total number of teachers undertaking the projects. the focus of interest in this study is, however, the number of teachers interested in a given topic area so the discussion will concentrate not on the number of projects but on the number of teachers. unlike the other two sources of data, the number of teachers interested in gm (12) in terms of the profile reports is higher than the number interested in sac although sac and st follow closely behind gm with 10 and 9 respectively. nevertheless, if the results for all three sources are computed, the overall results reveal that, among the teachers in this study, there is a greater number interested in sac topics than in any of the other topics. see tables 5. the scope of the interests and concerns of the secondary school teachers who wrote up their reports in profile also merits some comment. in contrast to the teachers in the survey and the trainee teachers in calj, as many as five of the topic areas – sla (second language acquisition), sc (student corpora), gtg (grammar teaching), llb (language learning behaviours), tg (testing) receive zero interest among the profile teachers (see table 4); thus, this group of teachers soursoursoursoursourcecececece sacsacsacsacsac s ls ls ls ls l aaaaa s ts ts ts ts t s cs cs cs cs c gtggtggtggtggtg llbllbllbllbllb gmgmgmgmgm tg tg tg tg tg sur vey 25 3 11 0 0 6 18 3 calj 6 0 1 2 0 2* 3 0 profile 10 0 9 0 0 0 12 0 tttttotalotalotalotalotal 41 41 41 41 41 3 3 3 3 3 21 21 21 21 21 2 2 2 2 2 0 0 0 0 0 8 8 8 8 8 33 33 33 33 33 3 3 3 3 3 tttttable 4. able 4. able 4. able 4. able 4. classification of efl ssts’ interests as reported in profile. profileprofileprofileprofileprofile no. projectsno. projectsno. projectsno. projectsno. projects sacsacsacsacsac s ls ls ls ls l aaaaa s ts ts ts ts t s cs cs cs cs c gtggtggtggtggtg llbllbllbllbllb gmgmgmgmgm tgtgtgtgtg no. 1 2000 7 (13) 3 7 3 no. 2 2001 3 (4) 1 1 2 no. 3 2002 2 (2) 1 1 no. 4 2003 3 (6) 3 3 no. 5 2004 4 (6) 2 1 3 tttttotalotalotalotalotal 16 (31)16 (31)16 (31)16 (31)16 (31) 10 10 10 10 10 0 0 0 0 0 9 9 9 9 9 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 1212121212 0 0 0 0 0 tttttable 5.able 5.able 5.able 5.able 5. totals for topic area preferences for all the teachers in the study.13 *overlaps three times as second area with other areas total no. topics: 111 = total no. teacher researchers (see table 1, 3.2) 13 data used from table 2 for this table have taken into account only one topic area per teacher. in those cases where there is topic overlap, only the first area has been accounted for here. ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○17 profileprofileprofileprofileprofile efl teachers’ research and mainstream tesol concentrates intensively on gm, sac and st. clearly, more research in the form perhaps of group interviews needs to be carried out to see if the teachers themselves can explain why the scope of their interests differs considerably from that of the other two. once more, however, it is quite remarkable that, like the other two groups, this group did not choose to research gtg and, like the survey group, there is no apparent interest in sc. part of the mystery surrounding the apparent absence of interest in gtg may reside in the fact that some of the teacher researchers in this study integrate their grammar teaching with other course components, preferring to deal with it, for example, within speaking activities. even this, however, is, or should be, a source of interest to mainstream tesol. at any rate, probing the reasons for this very surprising result requires further research. 4.34.34.34.34.3 meta-analysis (2)meta-analysis (2)meta-analysis (2)meta-analysis (2)meta-analysis (2) tesol quarterly (tq), applied linguistics (al), and language learning (ll) were identified as three of the journals which most influence change and innovation in es/fl and fl teaching and learning. it is not being claimed here that they are the only influence but their influence is strong. these journals are commonly rated as ‘prestigious’ or ‘blue chip’ journals and are referenced extensively in post-graduate teacher development courses in mainstream contexts. they claim to have a special interest in reporting the results of research into all aspects of tesol and other fl teaching and learning and this is another reason why they were selected for this study; for this same reason, non-research oriented journals, eltj for instance, were not selected. first, a tally was taken of all the articles in these journals for the years 2000, and 2001 and for one issue in 200514 which were relevant to research into and/or debates about the teaching of foreign/ second languages (any foreign/second language). out of a total of 118 articles, 86 met this general criterion. (the articles for one issue of ll were not included as that particular issue had not been published in hard copy form and at the time of doing this research the electronic copy was not available.) since the present discussion is specifically concerned with the teaching of efl at secondary school level in non-mainstream contexts, the 86 articles were further narrowed down by applying the following criteria: • criterion 1: the article reports a formal research project which was carried out in an efl context in non-mainstream contexts at secondary school level. • criterion 2: the article reports a formal research project which was carried out in an efl context (any efl context, not just non-mainstream) but in contrasting venues: secondary school and at least one other. (some articles compared and contrasted vocabulary acquisition in secondary school with vocabulary acquisition at university level, for example) • criterion 3: the research was carried out in a non-efl context and at a level other than secondary school but the research focused on the teaching of english (esl, for example) and the results could be generalised, to varying degrees, to secondary school level in non-mainstream efl contexts. • criterion 4: the article did not report a formal research project but discussed aspects of research and tesol: applied linguistics of some relevance to the present discussion. out of the 86 articles which met the general criterion, 47 met one or other of these four criteria. table 6 illustrates the number of articles from each journal which met each criterion. 14 these data were collected for a paper read at a keynote address at kortesol in october 2001. the audience was so receptive that i decided to recycle them here, but to include also an analysis of the articles in one 2005 issue for each journal to see if any significant change of focus in the research interests of the journals had taken place. ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ 18 raineyraineyraineyraineyrainey profileprofileprofileprofileprofile tttttable 6.able 6.able 6.able 6.able 6. articles per journal meeting each. criterioncriterioncriterioncriterioncriterion l ll ll ll ll l alalalalal tesol qtesol qtesol qtesol qtesol q tttttotalotalotalotalotal 1 2 2 2 6 2 2 2 3 13 6 6 25 4 1 7 6 14 two things stand out in this table: in a total of 47 articles a mere 6 were exclusively concerned with efl at secondary school level in nonmainstream contexts, and if this is seen in the light of the total number of articles dealing with fl teaching in general, it is even worse – only 6 out of 86; out of the 47 articles meeting one of the four criteria, as many as 25 met criterion 3, that is, the research was not directly concerned with secondary school teaching; nor was it conducted in an efl context, but the results could be generalised, to varying degrees, to such contexts. that so little research into what is the largest community of teachers and learners in the entire tesol profession (see the discussion about the size of non-mainstream contexts in the introduction to this article) is reported in these journals is most disconcerting and reveals an enduring and strong bias in mainstream tesol towards educational levels other than the level with the largest community – and it would seem logical to assume the community with the greatest needs. if so little is reported in mainstream tesol of what constitutes the reality of such a large community, it is not altogether surprising that there are misconceptions about what can be expected of learners when they complete their high school studies (see discussion in paragraph 4 of the introduction). it may well be that, irrespective of the very different teaching and learning conditions, these learners are expected to meet the same objectives as those learners whose contexts are researched and reported. a further analysis was conducted of the articles in the journals. this time, all 86 articles were analysed for the topic areas researched or debated, applying the same procedures and classification as in 4.1 and 4.2. there were two reasons for analysing all 86 articles. first, although some dealt with the teaching of fl other than english (dutch, spanish, for example), they reported results and insights of some interest to all fl teaching and learning. second, on including all 86, the number of articles was not as out of line with the total number of topic areas for 4.1 and 4.2 111. this, it is hoped, made the comparison fairer and more evenly balanced. table 7 contains the results of the classification for the 86 articles in the three mainstream journals. out of the 86 articles, as few as 5, that is, 5.8% were classified under sac (socio-affective/cultural). in contrast, as many as 41 out of 111, that is, 36.9% were classified as sac for the results of the efl secondary school teachers in non-mainstream contexts (see table 5). the difference is enormous and is revelatory of the equally enormous chasm between the knowledge mainstream tesol offers and the knowledge the efl secondary school teachers in this study appear to be indicating they need. more importantly, the teachers in the metaanalysis are actually engaged in the relevant research and are, therefore, in a position to contribute their knowledge to the mainstream. another major contrast lies in the strong interest in these journals in sla, 23 of the 86 articles, that is, 26.7% as compared with only 3 journaljournaljournaljournaljournal sac sac sac sac sac sl sl sl sl slaaaaa st st st st st sc sc sc sc sc gtg gtg gtg gtg gtg llbs llbs llbs llbs llbs gm gm gm gm gm tgtgtgtgtg l l 1 9 7 3 3 2 1 3 al 3 7 7 5 2 6 3 tesol q 1 7 6 2 8 tttttotal areaotal areaotal areaotal areaotal area 55555 23 23 23 23 23 20 20 20 20 20 8 8 8 8 8 5 5 5 5 5 4 4 4 4 4 15 15 15 15 15 6 6 6 6 6 tttttable 7.able 7.able 7.able 7.able 7. research areas in journals. ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○19 profileprofileprofileprofileprofile efl teachers’ research and mainstream tesol out of 111, that is 2.7%, among the teachers’ topics. like other differences commented on above, these data require further inquiry to arrive at some possible explanation. here it is enough to note that these marked differences exist. not so marked but still substantial is the gm (general methodology) difference; whereas for the teachers it represents 29.7% (33 out of 111) of their topic area interests, it is much less for the journal articles – just 17.44% (15 out of 86). two other minor contrasts are worthy of note. although in the journals only 8 articles (9.3%) are concerned with sc (student corpora), the apparent interest in/need for this research is even lower in the teachers’ data – 0.9% (1 out of 111). also worthy of mention are the areas with some convergence; for example, 18.9% (21 out of 111) of the teachers’ projects focussed on st (skills teaching) as did 23% (23 out of 86) of the journal articles. clearly, st is an area where there is some common interest and potential for mutual support and learning but again further analysis is required to find out if the convergence pertains to the same skills. surprisingly, even the journal topics reveal little apparent concern for gtg (just 5 out of 86) but at least this is more than in the teachers’ topics – 0 out of 111. equally surprising is the result for tg (testing), just 3 out of 111 in the case of the teachers, and slightly more, 6 out of 86 in the journals. this datum may derive from the fact that there are mainstream journals which are devoted exclusively to testing. at any rate, it is just as important to explore further not only the research topics of interest to efl secondary school teachers but also those which would appear not to be of interest to them. 5. discussion5. discussion5. discussion5. discussion5. discussion from the data described and analysed above, it would seem fair to claim that, as far as this study goes, there are more differences than areas of common interest between the research interests and concerns of non-mainstream efl secondary school teachers and mainstream tesol. particularly worrying are the major differences, especially those with respect to sac, greatly favoured by the teachers and virtually ignored in the journals, and sla, favoured in the journals but virtually ignored by the teachers. among other possible messages in these data, one would appear to be urgent: mainstream tesol research needs to be more in touch with the socio-affective and cultural aspects of the efl secondary school classroom. while it is not, it is failing to cater to the needs of the largest community of teachers and learners in global tesol – efl secondary school teachers who work in non-mainstream contexts. this, however, is not the only message. in their determination to address the issues and problems they have with respect to sac, some of the colombian teachers in this research have actually undertaken or are currently undertaking the cor responding research. their message to mainstream tesol is not only that sac is important but that the findings of their research are invaluable and available. they are out there in journals for mainstream tesol to read about, to assimilate into their teacher education programmes, and to recycle in their international journals. it could be argued that the research done by the colombian teachers is too context specific to be of global interest but this research shows that, among the teachers in the international sur vey and the colombian researchers, there is a convergence of interest; sac is the area of greatest concern. for this reason alone, it was in fact good – fortuitously so, perhaps – to compare the concerns of teachers in one non-mainstream context with those of teachers in several other non-mainstream contexts. yet another message is that it is time that efl teacher researchers from the biggest teacherstudent community in this profession were offered the re-active listening ear they so badly need and deserve because ‘nothing ever really gets said until it is listened to’ and while these teachers are not listened to, it is, as commented on earlier, a nonsense to talk about ‘giving voice to teachers’ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ 20 raineyraineyraineyraineyrainey profileprofileprofileprofileprofile or of ‘a global tesol community’. for such a community to exist, it must have at its core not only a knowledge base which is truly global in character but a willingness to recognise and instigate the reform and change which derive from that knowledge. “educational researchers in the academy can collaborate with an educational agent by adopting their practical standpoint as though they were in the action context. educational action research need not be exclusively practitioner research. the fact that it is so often construed as such by educational researchers suggests that they are viewing it as a low level a-theoretical activity from an intellectual standpoint.” (elliott, 2004, p. 23). that none of these 111 non-mainstream context secondary school researchers identified gtg as an area for research represents yet another energetic message: they would appear to have more pressing problems. in sum, the evidence from this study would seem to indicate that, despite much talk and text to the contrary, the knowledge base of mainstream tesol continues to be hegemonic and still does not reflect the needs or mirror the realities of grassroots efl educational agents. 6. concl6. concl6. concl6. concl6. conclusionusionusionusionusion this study is not without its flaws, not least among them the subjective nature of criteria 3 and 4 applied to the 86 journal articles in 4.3. also, there was a need to break down the topics under gm (general methodology) and st (skills teaching) to check for convergence, or lack of it, within the subtopics of these major categories. it would have been desirable, too, to report the data for the journals for the years 2002-2004 but lack of space made that impossible. it is hoped that the message in the following concluding comments will far outweigh the impact of any minor technical inadequacies. every year thousands of teachers in inner circle countries and thousands of teachers from nonmainstream contexts who do post-graduate studies in the same inner circle countries are trained/ educated in tesol at inner circle universities: their staple diet is still the knowledge derived from mainstream tesol research and that knowledge is incomplete – witness the results for the journals in this study. it still does not account for the realities of the largest community in this profession. many innercircle ‘trained and enlightened’ teachers travel or return to non-mainstream contexts to teach and do research, applying what they have learned in the inner circle courses, thereby perpetuating the gulf between what non-mainstream teachers believe they need and what the mainstream says they need. some confident and competent educators like the colombians in this study, although no doubt there are others across the globe, resolve this problem by going about the business of adjusting what they have learned to the needs of their reality, dismissing any overbearing influence from the mainstream while generating their own pertinent knowledge. these are healthy independent attitudes and it would behove the international community to keep abreast with developments like these in colombia and other non-mainstream contexts. nevertheless, mainstream tesol is missing out if what these researchers do/achieve is not just applauded but also integrated into the mainstream expertise. for years, tesol has come to tefl bearing, at times, dubious gifts of pedagogical enlightenment. now, it is time for tefl to be brought to tesol with real truths which can be added to what should be a rich and resilient mosaic of global knowledge. while it continues to despatch, to nonmainstream contexts, teachers with mainly or exclusively mainstream knowledge – teachers who are, therefore, not fully prepared for all the tasks they are to undertake – the needs, concerns and problems of literally millions of teachers and learners in those contexts will neither be understood nor resolved and mainstream tesol researchers and non-mainstream efl secondary school teacher researchers, together with their respective findings, will continue to be what they have always been ships passing in the night. ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○21 profileprofileprofileprofileprofile efl teachers’ research and mainstream tesol about the authorabout the authorabout the authorabout the authorabout the author isobel risobel risobel risobel risobel rainey de díazainey de díazainey de díazainey de díazainey de díaz has worked for many years as a teacher, teacher educator, and lecturer in applied linguistics in europe (england, italy, spain), south america (argentina, colombia, peru), and the middle and far east (the united arab emirates, japan, korea, pakistan). her main research interests include: the priorities and concerns of the secondary school efl teacher-researcher working in non-mainstream tesol contexts; textbook design, in particular the organisation and dynamics of textbook writing teams, and the processes involved in selecting textbook themes; and the challenges facing and characteristics of the less successful language learner. before retiring, she was a lecturer in applied linguistics: tesol at the university of surrey, guildford, england. in retirement, she works as a freelance consultant in the areas of efl teacher development, efl textbook writing and intercultural communication. referencesreferencesreferencesreferencesreferences breen, m. (2001). the social context for language learning: a neglected situation. in c.n. candlin & n. mercer (eds.), english language teaching in its social context (pp. 122– 144). london and new york: routledge in association with macquarie university and the open university. burns, a. (1999). collaborative action research for language teachers. cambridge: cambridge university press. carnagarajah, a. s. (1999). resisting linguistic imperialism. oxford: oxford university press. cárdenas, r. (2003). developing reflective and investigative skills in teacher preparation programs: the design and implementation of the classroom research component at the foreign language program of universidad de valle. colombian applied linguistics journal, 5, 22-40. dewey, j. (1929). the sources of a science of education. new york: liveright. edge, j. and richards, k. (eds.). (1993). teachers develop teachers research. papers on classroom research and teacher development. oxford: heinemann. elliott, j. (2004). the struggle to redefine the relationship between ‘knowledge’ and ‘action’ in the academy and society: some reflections on action research in the light of the work of john macmurray. educar 34, 1126. freeman, d. (1998). doing teacher research. boston: heinle & heinle publishers. holliday, a. (1998). appropriate methodologies and social context. cambridge: cambridge university press. jakobovits, l. and gordon, b. (1974). the context of foreign language teaching. rowley, mass: newbury house. kachru, b. (1986). the alchemy of english. the spread function and models of non-native english. oxford: pergamon press. kachru, b. and nelson, c.l. (2001). world englishes. in a. burns and c. coffin (eds.), analysing english in a global context: a reader (pp. 9-25). london and new york: routledge in association with macquarie university and the open university. kramsch, c. (1993). content and culture in language teaching. oxford: oxford university press. lagemannn, e. c. (1999). whither schools of education? whither education research? journal of teacher education, 50, 373-376. marcondes, m. (1999). teacher education in brazil. journal of education for teaching, 25, 203213. musumeci, d. (1997) breaking tradition: an exploration of the historical relationship between theory and practice in second language teaching. usa: mcgraw hill companies. nunan, d. (1989). understanding language classrooms. a guide for teacher-initiated action. hemel hempstead: prentice hall. pennycook, a. (1994). the cultural politics of english as an international language. harlow: longman. phillippson, r. (1992). linguistic imperialism. oxford: oxford university press. ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ 22 raineyraineyraineyraineyrainey profileprofileprofileprofileprofile poole, a. (2003). new labels for old problems: grammar in communicative language teaching. profile issues in teachers’ professional development, 4, 18-24. rainey, i. (2002). lessons from the less successful language learner. spelt, 17 (2), 1-14. rainey, i. (2000). action research and the efl practitioner: time to take stock. educational action research: an international journal, 8 (1), 65-92. richards, j. c. (1998). teaching in action: case studies from second language classroom. alexandria, va: tesol. riley, k. (2000). teachers as researchers. spelt, 14 (3), 24-27. stenhouse, l. (1975). an introduction to curriculum research and development. london: heinemann. wallace, m. j. (1998). action research for language teachers. cambridge: cambridge university press. wallace, m. j. (1991). training foreign language teachers: a reflective approach. cambridge: cambridge university press. 35profile vol. 15, no. 2, october 2013. issn 1657-0790 (printed) 2256-5760 (online). bogotá, colombia. pages 35-47 autobiographies: a way to explore student-teachers’ beliefs in a teacher education program autobiografías: una forma de explorar las creencias de docentes en formación en un programa de licenciatura en inglés norma constanza durán narváez*1 sandra patricia lastra ramírez**2 adriana maría morales vasco***3 universidad del tolima, colombia autobiographies depict with words life stories, personal experiences, and perceptions that allow researchers to deeply understand the way people see life, reflect, and construct meaning out of experiences. this article aims at describing the contributions of autobiographies as valuable resources in qualitative research when exploring people’s beliefs, personal knowledge, and changes as a result of experience and learning. this is all based on a research project carried out at a colombian public university, where students from the undergraduate english teaching program wrote their language learning stories which were used as an instrument to garner data. the project also aims at demonstrating how these narratives exhibit human activity and diverse events that may have a significant effect on the epistemologies and methodologies of teacher education. key words: autobiographical narratives, qualitative research, students’ beliefs, teacher education. las autobiografías perfilan con palabras las historias de vida, experiencias personales y percepciones que brindan a los investigadores una profunda comprensión de la manera como las personas ven la vida, reflexionan y construyen significado a partir de esas experiencias. este artículo tiene como objetivo describir las contribuciones de las autobiografías como recursos valiosos en la investigación cualitativa por cuanto son un medio para explorar las creencias, el conocimiento personal y los cambios en los individuos como resultado de la experiencia y el aprendizaje. el presente trabajo se basa en una investigación realizada en una universidad pública colombiana, en la que estudiantes de la licenciatura en inglés narraron sus historias sobre el aprendizaje de la lengua; narraciones que fueron usadas como instrumentos para la recolección de información. adicionalmente, se busca demostrar cómo dichas narrativas describen la actividad humana y diversos eventos que pudiesen tener un efecto significativo en la construcción epistemológica y metodológica en la formación de docentes. palabras clave: autobiografías, creencias de los estudiantes, formación docente, investigación cualitativa. * e-mail: ncduran23@yahoo.com ** e-mail: slastra.ramirez@gmail.com *** e-mail: ariadna38@gmail.com this article was received on december 28, 2012, and accepted on june 30, 2013. universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras36 durán narváez, lastra ramírez, & morales vasco introduction this paper aims at showing the significance of studying autobiographies as a source for examining student-teachers’ beliefs, the way they are analyzed and the answers they provide regarding how students start framing their understanding about teaching by looking at their learning histories. the accounts also revealed the concomitant influence of teacher education subjects on their renewed or in-construction pedagogical conceptions. to understand the student-teachers’ conceptions and the role they play in their education may make a great contribution in two directions. one of them is to rethink the teacher education programs content and student-teachers’ own conceptions behind the theories presented in such programs. the second one is to enhance student-teachers’ knowledge growth providing them with opportunities to make their preexisting knowledge explicit to be examined and challenged (calderhead & robson, 1991). this study also attempts to provide insights that may serve to guide similar studies and conceive autobiographies as a way to promote pedagogical practice understanding and teacher development in teacher education programs, as it has been a major discovery in this research. it simultaneously attempts to lead to new considerations of our role as teacher educators who particularly guide teaching practicum processes. unfortunately, based on the related literature, both this issue and the contribution that personal accounts may make to teacher education programs tend to be overlooked in our context, as stated by woods (as cited in mendieta, 2011): research has addressed extensively what happens to second language learners from a host of perspectives but has failed somehow to examine the processes by which language teachers plan and make decisions about teaching, as well as what they bring to the second language classroom such as knowledge base, beliefs and experiences. (p. 90) to arrive at the findings in this study, it was also im portant to explore ways of analyzing narratives as a path of learning and growing as learners of teaching and teacher educators. for this purpose it was crucial to follow a systematic process in order to interpret the participants’ stories. the implicit timelines of the students’ learning and teaching histories helped identify the critical incidents, salient factors, and trends likely to influence student teachers’ teaching theories and classroom practices, issues which will be expanded upon in the research design segment. the oncoming sections of this article will discuss the concepts of autobiographies as a narrative mode and their role in the exploration of beliefs in preservice teachers, as well as their contribution to teacher education programs. furthermore, the methodology followed is described and the results and conclusions presented. theoretical framework autobiographies in teacher education autobiographies as a way of narrative have become paramount in the teacher education field and, indeed, have become a lens to explore and facilitate understanding of teaching practices and to delve into the what, the how, and the why of pedagogical actions. in some local studies connected to the use of narrations to explore beliefs and practices, clavijo (2000) draws attention to autobiographies as a way to bring together who the teachers are as people, their sense of self, their knowledge base, and understanding of their practices and social, historical, and cultural values as well as how they permeate practice. the latter were also evident in the present study as a decisive dimension in approaching the interpretation of autobiographies. regarding the approaches followed in order to uncover what autobiographies contain, mendieta (2011) describes the construction of narratives around teachers’ experiences and beliefs with respect to curriculum. those experiences and 37profile vol. 15, no. 2, october 2013. issn 1657-0790 (printed) 2256-5760 (online). bogotá, colombia. pages 35-47 autobiographies: a way to explore student-teachers’ beliefs in a teacher education program beliefs are reflected in the past and present language learning and language teaching practice. the final integration of the former items into a story after the analysis reflects commonalities and differences of the participants’ knowledge base, beliefs and experiences. moreover, some of the outcomes brought to surface when exploring autobiographies have to do with the rediscovery of memories, the development of new perspectives on teaching, the discovery of reasons behind personal beliefs systems or the enunciation of new ones (bailey et al., 1996). this has been an observable fact in this study which will be later illustrated. furthermore, great emphasis has also been placed on teachers’ identity as a need that teachers make sense of themselves by stressing the importance of relating the personal with the professional realm, as well as teaching and learning in the everlasting quest of self-understanding (serna, 2005). other local studies in the area have explored the topic of beliefs in relation to assessment and have made visible the dissonance between beliefs and practices (muñoz, palacio, & escobar, 2012). in fact, this is a matter we highly anticipate to be undertaken near the end of the whole project through class observation. autobiographies as a mode of narrative have demonstrated that pre-service teachers, particularly, may also come to make sense of their pedagogical practices. in this vein, stenberg (2011) states that focusing on teachers’ own life experiences can help to access the inner beliefs, values, and understandings that fundamentally guide teaching practice. as underlined by this author, autobiographies appear as a valuable instrument to look at teachers’ beliefs, conceptualizations, thoughts, and actions in the present. besides, they are influenced by experiences from the past, expectations for the future and shape teachers’ practices (kelchtermans, 2009). according to johnson (1999), autobiographies are a way to capture the richness of prior experiences and to get into the critical analysis of those experiences and beliefs in order to come to comprehend the complexity of the understandings of teachers, teaching, and learning. for this study, the exploration of the autobiographies as narratives has been grounded in two current and broad correlated theoretical trends: sociocultural perspective (johnson, 2009) and teachers’ cognition (borg, 2009). a socio-cultural standpoint to teacher education the socio-cultural perspective is a fairly new one which entails the theoretical ground to explain and conceptualize teacher learning, language teaching and teacher education overall. in this line, this perspective sustains the value of autobiographical accounts in the examination of what is behind student-teachers’ beliefs and how their practices are or may be the reflection of their previous experiences as social individuals. a funda mental principle of a socio-cultural theoretical perspec tive is that human cognition is understood as originating from and fundamentally shaped by engagement in social activity. in this regard, johnson (2009) points out: the processes of learning to teach are socially negotiated. teacher learning is understood as normative and life-long; it is built through experiences in multiple social contexts first as learners in classrooms and schools, then later as participants in professional teacher education programs, and ultimately in the communities of practice in which teachers work (freeman & johnson, 1998; grossman, 1990). (p. 10) teacher cognition and sense making in pre-service language teachers complementar y to the socio-cultural view, teacher cognition is defined by borg (2006) as developments in research which have focused on how teaching as well as teachers’ mental lives have been conceptualized. some of the themes tackled when exploring pre-service teachers’ cognitions are related to beliefs about language teaching, cognitions in relation to practicum experiences, universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras38 durán narváez, lastra ramírez, & morales vasco teachers’ instructional decision making and practical knowledge. on the same subject, the core of this study is the examination of prospective teachers’ beliefs about teaching strategies which, through the use of autobiographies, showed the link between their previous experiences as language learners and their growing images of teaching. beliefs, considered as changeable and dynamic, do not occur in a linear fashion, but they comprise social, cultural, and political forces which causes students’ conceptions and beliefs to be rooted in a system that seems hard to be altered (goodson, 2005). in addition, in lortie’s words (as cited in bailey et al., 1996), their apprenticeship of observation and the influence of teacher education programs dealing with the process of learning to teach become their prior knowledge and knowledge base for the establishment of ne w const r uc ts, re organizat ion of exist ing structures until they hopefully turn into stable general and personal theories. in student-teachers’ autobiographies in this study, the accommodation and activation of their different sources of beliefs and their interpretation of learning to teach were extensively evidenced. in different studies about learning to teach, the power of prospective teachers’ experiences as learners and how such experiences help to frame the conceptions, beliefs systems, values, and images for their future practice, have been recurrent. in the process of searching for what happens when these students make public their life stories within their life histories (goodson, 2005), it has been brought to light the way students start conceptualizing and shaping or reshaping their decision making and practical knowledge. in the present study, this was reflected in the participants’ in-construction philosophies of teaching, identity issues, the influence of teacher education courses, and student-teachers’ wishes and future plans, which will be presented and discussed later in the document. research method and research design this paper is based on a qualitative research project carried out at university of tolima, colombia, where students from the b.a. in english program wrote about their language learning stories in order to explore their beliefs concerning english teaching strategies. through these narratives, autobiographies rather, students exhibited their experiences, diverse events, happenings, and actions they had lived in their english learning process and that had had a significant effect on their epistemologies and methodologies of teaching as student-teachers (polkinghorne, 1995). since stories provide an open access to the identity and personality of individuals and reflect their inner reality in the outside world, autobiographies constitute a fundamental element to explore and analyze, via the b.a. in english program, students’ beliefs concerning english teaching strategies. we all are storytellers by nature and stories provide consistency and continuity to our experiences and have an important role in our communication with others (lieblich, tuval-mashiach, & zilber, 1998). besides, telling a story is having the opportunity to create an identity, and a particular self which will fit specific contexts, purposes, and audiences (ricoeur, 1980). that is why autobiographies provide a vast sea of possibilities to explore and describe students’ beliefs. the following questions have guided this study and have yielded the subsequent results: questions how do autobiographies reveal student-teachers’ beliefs about english language teaching strategies? how do autobiographies unveil the contribution of the preparatory subjects of the b.a. in english program to the course of student-teachers’ beliefs? 39profile vol. 15, no. 2, october 2013. issn 1657-0790 (printed) 2256-5760 (online). bogotá, colombia. pages 35-47 autobiographies: a way to explore student-teachers’ beliefs in a teacher education program participants this research was carried out at universidad del tolima, colombia, the only public university of the region. nine student-teachers from the b.a. in english program volunteered to be participants. their names have not been used in this study responding to ethical issues. instead, we used their initials in order to respect their identity as agreed in the consent letter they signed. they were doing their didactics and first teaching practicum course which are part of the pedagogical preparatory stages. they were also about to start their second teaching practicum in different public schools in ibague in 2010. each one of the participants wrote an autobiography about their english learning experiences throughout their school years and it became one of the instruments used for data collection in the study. with this instrument, we intended to learn about their prior learning experiences, their current beliefs about teaching strategies, their reflections and all the sense-making of their language learning stories in their life histories. autobiography implementation narratives have value in educational studies as tools to access teachers’ thinking and practical knowledge (elbaz, 1990). the narratives in this study are autobiographies which are “self-stories” that narrate a set of language learning experiences within particular contexts. denzin (as cited in stenberg, 2011) describes a biography as a self-story that positions the teller in the center of a narrative; it is a story about the individual in relation to an experience and is built upon the statement that any individual is a storyteller of personal experiences. the assignment for students was to write some prose concerning their prior language learning experiences by answering the following lead questions, which were adapted from some guidelines provided by johnson (1999) and borg (2006): 1. in what ways has your personality influenced the way you learn? have your teachers taken this influence into account when planning and executing their classes? 2. what language learning experiences have you had and how successful have they been? 3. from the teaching practices you have been exposed to throughout your language learning process, describe both the effective and ineffective ones. 4. how has your experience as a language learner influenced your decision of becoming a language teacher? we wanted to identify and analyze trends, critical incidents, and salient factors influencing their beliefs about english teaching strategies (bailey et al., 1996). the students wrote one or two-paged compositions which were read and analyzed following the systematic process described below. reading to hear the authors’ voice within this process there were three reading moments which had specific intentions. the first reading had the purpose of just hearing what participants were saying. the second moment sought to interpret the information and identify the narrative core, which contained the most significant aspects of the narration. this reading allowed the researchers to identify events, meaningful issues or moments which were highlighted with different colors. the third reading aimed at re-reading the highlighted sentences or expressions in order to construct understanding of what the teller was communicating. the process was complemented the holistic approach of lieblich et al. (1998) and embraces the stories’ units of analysis, derived from the plot structure and from progression. in this regard, ascending and descending points, climax, and turning points in the stories were at the heart of the entire analysis. the whole process helped to make sense universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras40 durán narváez, lastra ramírez, & morales vasco of the stories told and unveiled useful insights and answers for this study. the ascending, descending, climax and turning points were identified by the use of descriptive words—adjectives and adverbs—that portrayed the participants’ experiences and feelings. mapping the narration a story map was designed to find the participants’ voices in a particular time frame and to systematically organize the learners’ experiences of the past, present, and future. this map helped us to become aware of the strength of each moment participants described in their autobiographies; we could see through a line story the whole language learning process of each one of the participants. finding patterns and meaningful events the purpose of this moment was to find repeated patterns or repeated stor ylines which became meaningful details to fully understand the issue we were investigating. these patterns and meaningful events were then condensed in a narrative core which had the purpose of summarizing and putting together the most significant issues of the narration. you may not find all the information you need in one single story, “but each one provides pieces for a mosaic or total picture of the concept” (marshall & rossman, 1995, p. 88). the repetitiveness of patterns and main events, which were analyzed and described in detail here, yielded the definition of the categories. data analysis we approached the analysis of the autobiographies following essentials within clandinin and connelly’s model (1995): • one of them was content, which helped us a lot with rising categories related to the objectives of the study. this process, called unity of analysis by the researchers, showed us new perspectives and different routes as to how to approach studentteachers’ thoughts, ideas, feelings, and most of all, beliefs. • a second one was form which enlightened the analysis and paved the way to the evolution in the structure of the narration. it was of great importance when realizing how ascending and descending positions were evident, that is, high points or dramatic turning-points in autobiographies. by taking these two aspects into account, we analyzed the story trying to “weave history from the past” aiming at understanding the narrative in the three historical moments—past, present, and future— and being able to give meaning to the ascending and descending tones in history, leading to the important aspects in the autobiographies we called “narrative cores,” which are precise reflections of studentteachers’ beliefs about teaching beliefs that are the product of their own learning experiences. these narrative cores helped us by giving each student-teacher an identity, where convergences and divergences among participants were highlighted. according to burns and richards (2009): stories are used to organize, articulate, and communicate what we know about ourselves as teachers, about our teaching, about our students, bringing together past, present, and future . . . we cannot properly understand teachers and teaching without understanding the thoughts, knowledge, and beliefs that influence what teachers do. similarly, in teacher education, we cannot make adequate sense of teachers’ experiences of learning to teach without examining the unobservable mental dimensions of this learning process. (pp. 158, 163) there were two moments in which the analysis was made. the first moment was called “listening to the authors’ voice.” in it, we categorized information and labeled sub-groups as: character (participant’s name), setting (place and time), problem, and beliefs. as previously exposed, particular issues—expressed in the form of inquiry—were suggested to student-teachers as a 41profile vol. 15, no. 2, october 2013. issn 1657-0790 (printed) 2256-5760 (online). bogotá, colombia. pages 35-47 autobiographies: a way to explore student-teachers’ beliefs in a teacher education program table 1. story mapping characters setting problem action/beliefs participant t primary teacher (kind teacher) grade 1 -school meaningful class activities. activities related to real life contexts promote understanding. -this exercise was very meaningful for me because i have always loved the nature. -teaching about colors, relating this topic with farm animals, use pictures. -english teacher provided me meaningful activities related with a real context in order to have a better understanding. -i was very interested…in it. elementary teacher elementary traditional teaching, pronunciation of sentences and isolated words. reduce view of communicative competence. a contradictory situation and activities presenting isolated language, vocabulary out of contexts. traditional teaching is an obstacle for developing communicative competence. -teaching focused in a traditional way because of the methodology…this caused my communicative competence was reduced to pronounce sentences and isolated words. generating contradictory situation in my learning process because…i was able to write but i was not able to produce. -the other skills were reduced to a few listening and speaking exercises as songs and roleplays…were carried out without a real and meaningful context. -teacher didn’t take into account it as an essential element in…learning process and understanding. universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras42 durán narváez, lastra ramírez, & morales vasco this is perfectly supported by johnson (1999) when she states that: for most teachers, the apprenticeship of observation encompasses two types of memories. the first is our memories as students: how we as students were expected to talk and act and what we learned from the experiences of being students. the second is our memories of our former teachers: what these teachers did and said and how they approached teaching and learning. unknowingly these memories become the basis of our initial conceptions of ourselves as teachers, of how they influence our views of students, formulate the foundation of our reasoning, and act as the justifications for our teaching practices. interestingly, these memories also seem to have a lasting impact on the kind of teacher we each aspire to be. (p. 19) findings this section describes the categories that emerged throughout the analysis of autobiographies which bring to the fore enlightening answers to the research questions. the first of them was related to how student-teachers’ beliefs about learning strategies can be uncovered through the analysis of autobiographies, and the second one had to do with how the participants’ autobiographies could unveil the contribution of the preparatory courses of the b.a. in english program to the construction of those beliefs. the categories will be described and supported by students’ voices that recreated their own language learning experiences in the narrations and allowed us to see the influence of such events on their former and new beliefs. from the participants’ language learning ex periences in elementary and high school, we named a central category sources of in-construction beliefs since the beliefs explained the “what and why” of the opinions participants themselves had about english language teaching strategies. in the source, they described what their elementary and high school teachers used to do in english classes; the “traditional” (using participants’ words) methodological approaches starting point for autobiography writing. consequently, analysis in this case focused on those aspects (table 1). setting, for instance, accounted for the moment in the participants’ language learning story, either elementary, high-school, or university, that was the object of narration at a certain moment; we called the next one problem, since aspects described here were all awkward to participants throughout their english learning processes; it clustered aspects such as english teachers, english language teaching methodology, students’ perceptions, students’ feelings, students’ opinions about themselves, students’ general perceptions and opinions about language teaching and their process of becoming future teachers; english language learning experiences, evaluation, personality features affecting language learning processes, effective/ineffective teaching practices, learning strategies involved, and skills development. the beliefs section, for its part, sometimes accounted for descriptions of student-teachers’ beliefs about their learning experiences and, at other times, for actions undertaken by teachers in schools that were justified or explained by the students according to their own beliefs system, all of them being related to the aspects listed in the problem section. then, analysis continued and a second moment emerged which was “piecing history together.” in this new stage, the same information was divided again into past, present, and future moments through which we pretended to identify new sound details deeply intertwined in data. as asserted by lortie (as cited in johnson, 1999, p. 19), “novice teachers need to appreciate how their personal history and experience of schooling influence their perceptions of classrooms” in such a way that beliefs continued to be formed. as stated in the introduction, past, present, and future moments were identified and classified following the holistic model of analysis by liebitch et al. (1998). all this process of analysis allowed us to unravel the students’ memories that had influenced their conceptions about language teaching methodologies. 43profile vol. 15, no. 2, october 2013. issn 1657-0790 (printed) 2256-5760 (online). bogotá, colombia. pages 35-47 autobiographies: a way to explore student-teachers’ beliefs in a teacher education program they were exposed to for years in which no place was left for interaction, active participation, or correction and feedback; the boring techniques and strategies their former teachers used in classes; and the participants’ informed and reflective opinions about all those issues. the following are the different sources of in-construction beliefs of the students in relation to the language teaching strategies. interaction of experiences through stories, participants could compare and contrast the two worlds, being a learner and being a teacher. thus, they realized how important it was to become a good language teacher and how inspiring or detrimental it can be to students. the recognition of these factors by the student-teachers tend to make visible the redefinition and reorganization of their views towards the teaching profession; they made this evident by their clear identification of teaching methodological and theoretical principles for the fundamental communicative skills development and language teaching. the following excerpts demonstrate students’ recognition of effective practices and value of professional knowledge (shulman, 1986) that have had and may have an impact on their current role as learners and on their future one as teachers. these also depict the students’ encounters with their learning experiences at university and their relationship with their emerging beliefs. effective english teaching involves: the development of all skills, the development of the communicative competence. it offers different strategies so different kinds of students may have the possibility to learn. (learning styles) t through my learning process i have discovered my learning styles and i have understood that teaching and learning a foreign language is not an easy work. for me is really important to know how this knowledge can be applied. n i think that my experience as a language learner has influenced my decision of becoming a language teacher, because i am a learner and now i know a teacher can build a good and selfconfident learner or may destroy the desire to learn. l after further analysis of those origins, we also found in the student-teachers’ opinions common patterns that evidenced the influence of the teacher education courses reflected in all the new ideas student-teachers have about teaching strategies. teaching education courses at the university this subcategor y refers to the way students perceived their teacher education experiences throughout their university studies. from the students’ view, their classes have been characterized by the implementation of different methodologies, and their teachers have become models to follow in their future. they also highlighted those learning experiences as novel, appropriate, and different from the ones in elementary and high school. through their autobiographies, participants show the university as the “turning point” where things started changing and although it was difficult at the beginning for most of them, they have learnt many useful things from teachers and the different courses that have shaped their budding teaching styles. i consider effective the subjects at the beginning because they had a link between theory and practice because they have shown methods, approaches, theories, authors and the most important part is that we can apply it. l i hope using all the concepts that i have learned through the semesters as mediators between theory and practice, to take into account the context in a natural way where activities are going to be used in a real context with the objective that the students understand the meaning. n another effective teaching practice has been the model the teachers of the b.a. have, because these teachers have shown us good and several kinds of activities, approaches, methods that we can judge and in this way to correct, improve and implement in our classroom. l universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras44 durán narváez, lastra ramírez, & morales vasco the teachers had different methodologies…some were more significant for me than others. f regarding the ab ove sub categories and in juxtaposition to the ideas exposed by the students in the previous excerpts, johnson (1999) comments the following: how they think about their subject matter content depends on their own experiences as learners of that content, their understanding of how that content is viewed and organized within the discipline, theoretical orientation, and instructional importance placed on the materials they use. how they think about their students depends on their own experiences as students; their beliefs about how students should act and learn; the academic, social, and personal expectations they hold for their students and how their students are viewed within the context of schools and surrounding communities in which they live. (p. 56) the already addressed revision of the sources that intervened in the construction of student-teachers’ beliefs about language teaching strategies derived into a parallel shaping of their growing philosophy of teaching, thus having a mutual relation with the building of their self-identity, features that we consider a noteworthy discovery in this study. “developing a personal philosophy involves clarifying educational issues, justifying educational decisions, interpreting educational data, and integrating that understanding into the educational process” (wiseman, cooner, & knight, 1999). this statement suppor ts the preliminary conceptions student-teachers hold about principles for teaching a foreign language, their conceptions about what being a good teacher means, what good teaching entails and the way they project themselves as teachers. they start evidencing the construction of the philosophy of teaching through new understandings of what should prevail in the profession and characterize teachers’ practice. these initial traces of shaping a belief system seem to respond to the influence of a landscape of personal and language learning experiences. as will be shown, both successful and unsuccessful experiences have become the basis for envisioning different pedagogical practices with the purpose of developing not only language skills on the learners, but also to see them as the center of the teaching and learning process. the following excerpts illustrate their new views about teaching strategies, approaches to teaching, knowledge of students’ likes and interests, and the importance of rapport and human values: you grow as you learn from your students...not only from the academic aspect you learn how to be a person. f in this profession you learn patience, perseverance, dedication and respect. d i would like to teach them from a meaningful and real perspective…with all the three basic skills. t i want to be an excellent teacher…to have the responsibility to help others to develop their skills. j participation and self confidence, contributing to the development of communicative competence. n in this category we also grouped other features that participants considered prime: contextualized learning of languages, meaningfulness gotten through real life situations, development of communicative competence, consideration of students’ learning styles, and feedback treatment. teaching strategies should embrace meaningful activities related to real life, contextualized language, development of communicative competence, take into account learning styles and students’ correction. t the purpose of learning a foreign language is based on the development of language skills, be able to establish a conversation, interchange meanings, knowledge and so on, and you have to express your feelings and mainly talk. c take into account the students’ interests, to create friendly environments, the use of games and class dynamics, provide real contexts. c i consider that the way to correct the learner is key to open the learning door because you can interact, correct and help learner 45profile vol. 15, no. 2, october 2013. issn 1657-0790 (printed) 2256-5760 (online). bogotá, colombia. pages 35-47 autobiographies: a way to explore student-teachers’ beliefs in a teacher education program to do it in the best way. also collaborative learning where the students that have a high level help to others. the interaction where it provides opportunities for the negotiation of meaning. l in addition, there was clear support of the innovative future plans they have for their students and their classes. wishes and future plans this aspect becomes another parallel effect of the process of the construction of student-teachers’ beliefs. we arrived at this last category by listening attentively and understanding the voices of the participants in the study and their desire whether or not to b e come eng lish l angu age te achers. although they likely perceive it as a difficult work, they encourage themselves and foresee their future students’ successful learning processes as the most important and rewarding result. i think that to teach is not easy. really i want to be a teacher; i know that it may be difficult, but i know that i can do it. j in conclusion, i think that really i would like to be teacher because of that i am studying this. l in a future i wouldn’t like to be a teacher…i never imagine to become a teacher…because i am aware that is a big responsibility and i am not prepared to face that situation because of my personality…i have an introverted personality and i am not confident to speak. d i think my language learning has not influenced my decision to become a language teacher. n i would like to teach them from a meaningful and real perspective…i would like to give the opportunity to the students to develop all the things that i could not on my personal learning process. l i do not remember an exact moment when i came to the decision of being a teacher, even now it's something not clear for me… being a teacher is one option…i would like to be a teacher who is able to teach important languages…give to my students tools to be proficient…it would be great. m conclusions the aims of the research questions that have guided the process of this study are clear enough to account for, first of all, how the autobiographies reveal the student-teachers’ beliefs about english language teaching strategies. regarding this first question, participants in this study took a stand towards the questions that were suggested as guidelines for autobiography writing. evidence collected shows that those beliefs have been forming since elementary or high school english classes. participants’ school teachers, their teaching styles, methodology used, and personal traits have shaped student-teachers’ beliefs about english language teaching. they overtly describe how those conditions they have been exposed to enable them get a clear idea of what teaching should look like or be, and what a teacher should or should not do. that is, experience has formed both positive and negative ideas in students of what is and is not worth doing in a classroom. secondly, the other question (how do autobiographies unveil the contribution of the preparatory courses of the b.a. in english program to the course of student-teachers’ beliefs?) was addressed at different moments during autobiography writing. those beliefs, according to students’ descriptions, have strengthened as semesters have passed and as content belonging in the didactics courses and teaching practicum have touched students’ lives, and now underlie their opinions and ideas; in a word, their beliefs. on the other hand, as researchers and teaching practicum counselors, this process of inquiry and analysis has impacted us very positively. first, it has helped us discover new perspectives on how to go beyond factual information and discover what underlies students’ opinions. also, it has trained us on how to newly size up qualitative information so that it yields tangible results. lastly, it has lent us a hand in considering integrative and interdisciplinary universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras46 durán narváez, lastra ramírez, & morales vasco solutions at the moment of solving one’s own or others’ classroom difficulties. finally, concerning the b.a. in english program(s), this project expands new perspectives as regards curricular integration and interdisciplinary relationships, an idea that goes hand-in-hand with the appropriate and necessary restructuring, sequencing, and support of content in curriculum. references bailey, k., bergthold, b., braunstein, b., fleischman, n., holbrook, m., tuman, j., . . . zambo, l. (1996). the language learner autobiography: examining the “apprenticeship of observation.” in d. freeman & j. richards (eds.), teacher learning in language teaching (pp. 11-27). cambridge, uk: cambridge university press. borg, s. (2006). teacher cognition and language education: research and practice. london, uk: continuum. borg, s. (2009). introducing language teacher cognition. retrieved from http://www.education.leeds.ac.uk/assets/ files/staff/borg/introducing-language-teacher-cogni tion.pdf burns, a., & richards, j. c. (eds.). (2009). the cambridge guide to second language teacher education. cambridge, uk: cambridge university press. calderhead, j., & robson, m. (1991). images of teaching: student teachers’ early conceptions of classroom practice. teaching and teacher education, 7(1), 1-8. clandinin, d. j., & connelly, f. m. (1995). teachers’ professional knowledge landscapes. new york, ny: teachers college press. clavijo, a. (2000). formación de docentes, historia y vida: reflexión y praxis del maestro colombiano acerca de la lectura y la escritura [teacher training, life and history: reflection and praxis of the colombian teacher about reading and writing]. bogotá, co: plaza y janés. elbaz, f. (1990). knowledge and discourse: the evolution of research on teacher thinking. in c. day, m. pope, & p. denicolo (eds.), insights into teachers’ thinking and practice (pp. 15-42). london, uk: the falmer press. goodson, i. f. (2005). learning, curriculum, and life politics. new york, ny: routledge. johnson, k. e. (1999). understanding language teaching: reasoning in action. boston, ma: heinle & heinle. johnson, k. e. (2009). second language teacher education: a sociocultural perspective. new york, ny: routledge. kelchtermans, g. (2009). who i am in how i teach is the message: self-understanding, vulnerability, and reflection. teachers and teaching: theory and practice, 15(2), 257-272. lieblich, a., tuval-mashiach, r., & zilber, t. (1998). narrative research. reading, analysis and interpretation. london, uk: sage publications. marshall, c., & rossman, g. b. (1995). designing qualitative research (2nd ed.). thousand oaks, ca: sage publications. mendieta, j. a. (2011). teachers’ knowledge of second language and curriculum: a narrative experience. profile issues in teachers’ professional development, 13(1), 89-110. muñoz, a. p., palacio, m., & escobar, l. (2012). teachers’ beliefs about assessment in an efl context in colombia. profile issues in teachers’ professional development, 14(1), 143-158. polkinghorne, d. e. (1995). narrative configuration in qualitative analysis. international journal of qualitative studies in education, 8(1), 5-23. ricoeur, p. (1980). narrative time. critical inquiry, 7(1), 169-190. serna, h. m. (2005). teachers’ own identities. concocting a potion to treat the syndrome of doctor jekyll and edward hyde in teachers. íkala, revista de lenguaje y cultura, 10(16), 43-59. shulman, l. s. (1986). those who understand: knowledge growth in teaching. educational researcher, 15(2), 4-14. stenberg, k. (2011). working with identities—promoting student-teachers’ professional development (doctoral dissertation). university of helsinki, finland. wiseman, d. l., cooner, d. d., & knight, s. l. (1999). becoming a teacher in a field-base program: an introduction to education and classrooms. new york, ny: wadsworth. 47profile vol. 15, no. 2, october 2013. issn 1657-0790 (printed) 2256-5760 (online). bogotá, colombia. pages 35-47 autobiographies: a way to explore student-teachers’ beliefs in a teacher education program about the authors norma constanza durán narváez holds an ma in applied linguistics to tefl from universidad distrital francisco josé de caldas and a specialist in english language teaching from universidad del tolima (colombia). her research interests include teacher learning and professional development. she is currently a full time teacher in the b.ed. in english program at universidad del tolima, colombia. sandra patricia lastra ramírez holds an ma in applied linguistics to tefl from universidad distrital francisco josé de caldas (colombia). she is a full-time efl teacher at universidad del tolima (colombia). her research interests include teacher learning, professional development, and efl methodology and bilingualism. adriana maría morales vasco holds an ma in english didactics. she is a full-time efl teacher at universidad del tolima (colombia). her main interests are research in the field of efl methodology, language teaching and learning processes, pedagogy and teacher education programmes. 7profile vol. 16, no. 1, april 2014. issn 1657-0790 (printed) 2256-5760 (online). bogotá, colombia. pages 7-10 editorial editorial the continual striving for the optimal teaching of english as a foreign language and adequate preparation of teachers at all levels of education combined with more global processes aimed at an appreciation of teacher professionalism, autonomy and creativity laid fertile grounds for the gradually increasing interest in teacher research, and shortly afterwards, action research. (p. 11)1 the above quote, from the most recent work of polish professor danuta wiśniewska, one of the members of our editorial review board, is in accordance with some of the reasons we have to keep our work in profile. we feel that a journal like ours is an important forum for teachers at all levels of education to make their work more accessible to the public. as you can observe in the contents of this edition and in all the issues published up to now, every work included in profile is derived from processes of inquiry that followed the principles of classroom research and/or innovation. whether authors report research projects, reflections or innovations, the ultimate goal is to share with the academic community the results of systematic processes carried out in their teaching contexts. accordingly, we can ensure that we expand our knowledge base and expand our understanding of the phenomena found in our daily practices. it is also hoped that as a result of our inquiries, we can both move forward in the teaching of english and develop professionally. before introducing the works of this edition, i wish to welcome the following scholars, who have accepted our invitation to be part of our scientific and editorial review board: nora basurto (universidad veracruzana, mexico), pilar mur-dueñas (universidad de zaragoza, spain), josé aldemar álvarez (university of arizona, usa) and hashemi akram (islamic azad university roudehen branch, iran). their feedback, together with the expertise of the reviewers who have collaborated with us for several years, has been vital for the continuation of our work in accord with profile’s mission and vision. i am pleased to present the first number—of the sixteenth volume—of our journal, which, as noted by wiśniewska (2013), supports the gradually increasing interest in teacher research. with this idea in mind, we have gathered 13 articles this time by authors from colombia, chile, iran, mexico, and spain. 1 wiśniewska, d. (2013). action research in efl pedagogy. theory and analysis of practice. poznań, pl: wydawnictwo naukowe uam. how to cite this article (apa, 6th ed.): cárdenas, m. l. (2014). editorial. profile issues in teachers’ professional development, 16(1), 7-10. universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras8 cárdenas we open the issues from teacher researchers section with an article by colombian schoolteachers ivon aleida castro huertas and lina jazmín navarro parra, who report on an action research project aimed at developing oral communication among first graders, using songs as a strategy for young learners to use and enjoy english. we can learn how the teacher-researchers tried to encourage students using simple and amusing songs to help them learn new vocabulary in english and develop oral skills from the very moment they begin their literacy process. then, yakelin salinas vacca shares with us her work in the area of information and communication technologies (icts). her article represents an exploratory, descriptive, and interpretive study regarding a collaborative project development in a virtual environment with low-intermediate colombian undergraduates. her findings acquaint us with the roles played by students, the teacher and the class monitors, as well as those of the discussion boards. next, we gather two articles concerning teacher education in latin american contexts. first, we can read the account written by mexican authors alberto mora, paulina trejo, and ruth roux, who focused on the professional development of two english language teachers in a mexican language center. the study provides information regarding the interplay between professional development, identity and agency, and the part played by english language teaching certificates in all of these areas. second, we find the contribution by frank giraldo, who developed an action research study at the language institute of a colombian university. the study focused on the impact of a professional development program on english language teachers’ classroom performance. the conclusions support the idea that these programs must be based on teachers’ philosophies and needs. these programmes are also expected to effectively articulate theory, practice, experience, and reflection. afterwards, we gather four articles that discuss learners’ self-efficacy, reading, and writing. to begin with, iranian authors sasan baleghizadeh and mahboobeh mortazavi share with us the results of a project they conducted to investigate the impact of different methods of journaling on self-efficacy of learners of english as a foreign language. the work conducted with upper-intermediate iranian english language learners suggests the benefits or feedback conditions to have students achieve higher self-efficacy. next, we present two articles based on studies concerning reading comprehension at colombian universities. sergio lopera medina reports on the motivation conditions in a foreign language reading comprehension course offered in both web-based and face-to-face modalities. interestingly, some similarities were found in the courses: the use of teaching aids, mastery gain in reading, proper presentation of tasks, and lack of humor. however, the differences in both teaching modalities involve constant motivation, technical support, interaction among students, anxiety, and the high number of exercises. then, we present an article by gladis leonor arias rodríguez, who informs us of a study 9profile vol. 16, no. 1, april 2014. issn 1657-0790 (printed) 2256-5760 (online). bogotá, colombia. pages 7-10 editorial conducted at a colombian private university with students of english from the law program with the purpose of analyzing the effects of applying reading english for specific purposes with criteria from the communicative approach and by using specialized readings. we can learn how students became motivated to gain vocabulary and knowledge about their field of study and to use english while interacting in real situations. then, we have the last article of the first section of this edition, by nancy emilce carvajal medina and eliana edith roberto flórez. the authors share with us the findings of a study that sought to examine how collaborative work relates to undergraduate electronics students’ academic writing development in english as a foreign language at a colombian university, following some specific writing stages. the results showed the benefits of process writing and teacher feedback so that students can engage in writing research articles in a dynamic way. the second section, issues from novice teacher researchers, is composed of the paper written by luis fernando cuartas álvarez. his work was part of the fulfilment for the ba degree in foreign languages at a colombian university. the author worked with a group of colombian secondary students with the purpose of examining the enhancement of the english learning process through a selective use of the students’ mother tongue. this was done with the aim of overcoming the students’ reluctant attitude towards learning english within the classroom. the main findings show that the mother tongue plays an important role in students’ english learning process by fostering their affective, motivational, cognitive, and attitudinal development. we close this edition with four papers in the issues based on reflections and innovations section. first, we can learn about the design of a rubric to evaluate laboratory reports written by undergraduate astronomy students at a chilean university. in her article, maría cristina arancibia aguilera describes the process of elaboration, peer validation, and application of the rubric to the evaluation of written tasks. she also gathers useful guidelines to direct students’ attention towards the critical components of the laboratory report genre. subsequently, we can read an article by spanish researcher rosa muñoz-luna on content and language integrated learning (clil). in her piece, she describes how this integrated teaching practice comes as a result of a paradigmatic and pedagogical evolution and contributes to contextualized learning. afterwards, diana pineda expounds on the experience of a study group in a public university in colombia that engaged in the design of assessment rubrics. concerning the results, the author remarks on the impact assessment rubrics have on teachers regarding practicality. finally, we present megan elizabeth rouse’s article on preparing the high school classroom for migrant english language learners. the author gathers key reflections that invite us to consider how we can best aid their learning process while present in an acquiring-language setting, what type of structure, goals, and standards can be expected, as well as changing preconceived notions that teachers may hold. universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras10 cárdenas as you can see, readers can find in this edition issues that illustrate several challenges teachers face in the elt field today as well as possibilities for contributing to students’ learning. i hope you enjoy this edition of profile. i also invite you all to support this endeavour to engage teachers and teacher educators in publishing their work. melba libia cárdenas journal editor 187profile vol. 14, no. 1, april 2012. issn 1657-0790. bogotá, colombia. pages 187-209 using a blog to guide beginner students to use adjectives appropriately when writing descriptions in english el uso de una bitácora o blog para guiar a estudiantes principiantes en el uso apropiado de los adjetivos cuando escriben descripciones en inglés omar yesid lizarazo jara* nueva delhi school, colombia beginner students often have difficulties using adjectives when they write descriptions in english. this article focuses on the procedures used to help my sixth grade students understand and use adjectives in the correct order by using a blog. to achieve the objective of the project i decided to implement an innovation in and out of class practices, particularly when guiding students in writing descriptions. hence, different activities were designed using some worksheets during the lessons in the classroom and some exercises implemented in a blog. the results showed that at the end of the implementation the majority of students’ descriptions improved in terms of using adjectives related to nouns and the students increased their understanding of the use of this grammar issue. key words: using adjectives, using blogs, writing descriptions. los estudiantes principiantes suelen tener dificultades en el uso de los adjetivos cuando escriben descripciones en inglés. este artículo se centra en los procedimientos usados con el fin de lograr que mis estudiantes de grado sexto entendieran y emplearan los adjetivos de manera correcta, mediante el uso de una bitácora o blog. para lograr este objetivo decidí implementar una innovación en las prácticas dentro y fuera de clase, particularmente en la guía brindada a los estudiantes para escribir descripciones. consecuentemente, se diseñaron diversas actividades que incluyeron guías de trabajo para realizar durante las clases y algunos ejercicios para desarrollar en un blog. los resultados mostraron que la mayoría de las descripciones escritas por los estudiantes mejoraron en términos de uso de los adjetivos en relación con los sustantivos descritos y, asimismo, que los estudiantes incrementaron su entendimiento respecto al uso de esta categoría gramatical. palabras clave: escritura de descripciones, uso de adjetivos, uso de blogs. this paper reports on a study conducted by the author while participating in the profile teacher development program at universidad nacional de colombia in 2009-2010. the teacher development program was sponsored by secretaría de educación de bogotá, d.c. code number: 1576, august 24, 2009. * e-mail: olizaraz@etb.net.co this paper was received on july 1, 2011 and accepted on december 14, 2011 universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras188 lizarazo jara introduction during the process of english learning, 6th grade students at colegio nueva delhi i.e.d. have difficulties using adjectives when they write a description. it means that they write the adjective after the noun as we do when we write in spanish, without taking into account that some structures are formed differently in english. for this reason, some activities were designed to take advantage of the use of blogs and different worksheets, which allowed the students to understand and use the adjectives in english. with these activities, i hoped they could improve their abilities to use adjectives when writing a description in english about people’s physical appearances. some of the students of the target group seemed to be enthusiastic about english lessons, but most of them were not interested in the class. for this reason i thought that the use of internet resources in english classes would be a motivating factor for them. this way, i tried to help them to solve this difficulty. besides, the project was necessary in order to guide students to understand how they have to use adjectives in the correct order in relation to nouns. in this article the reader will find the objectives and the methodological design of the project including context, type of project and stages. after that, you can find the literature review and finally the data analysis, results and conclusions. objectives the main objective of the study was to analyze how students use adjectives when they write descriptions in english by using a blog. to attain this, the following two specific objectives were posed: • to engage students in using a blog to understand and use adjectives appropriately when they write descriptions in english about people’s physical appearances. • to observe what happens with students’ involvement in the english learning process when they take part in the activities suggested in the blog. method context the project was implemented with sixth grade students of the morning shift at colegio nueva delhi i.e.d., which is placed in the fourth locality of the city. the ages in the group of students observed during this project ranged from 10 to 13 years old. this group of students had a very basic level of english language proficiency which explains why during an english class spanish was more spoken than the foreign language. in general terms, this group of students (with some exceptions) was able to write simple expressions by using elements that were memorized. they could write (using simple sentences) their names, numbers, some dates, and other simple information, but did not use writing as a communicative skill. besides, most of the students did not recognize the structure of the sentence when they wrote physical descriptions; instead, they wrote a list of adjectives and nouns (like an inventory of characteristics), but in the same way as they do in spanish. this means that students wrote one sentence per line showing one specific characteristic. if the student wanted to write something about five different characteristics, then he/she wrote 5 sentences on five different lines. for example, they wrote this is a car blue; teacher is eyes brown; the pear is of color green. approach to develop this project, i decided to implement a pedagogical innovation. it is considered an innovation because in the high school referred to no similar activity had ever been implemented. 189profile vol. 14, no. 1, april 2012. issn 1657-0790. bogotá, colombia. pages 187-209 using a blog to guide beginner students to use adjectives appropriately when writing descriptions in english besides, it is important to take into account that the proposal of this project arose from the analysis of the use of adjectives in some descriptions produced by the students. this fact was considered important because, as white (1988) mentions, innovations are events which take place in a context; they do not occur in isolation. in the same vein, markee (1997) states that “innovation is a managed process of development whose principal products are teaching (and/or) testing materials, methodological skills, and pedagogical values that are perceived as new by potential adopters” (p. 46). students in my school were accustomed to going to the resource center to practice every english class with the same software on the computer, but they always followed a pattern guided by the teachers. this practice does not always produce real new knowledge. i mean, teachers had tested the possibility to use the internet as a pedagogical resource during the session. with this innovation, i wanted to change my teaching practice with my 6th grade students in terms of the adoption of a new strategy in which students could be in contact with the internet and learn at the same time. besides, it is considered an innovation because it is “perceived as new by an individual or other unit of adoption” (rogers, 2005, p. 11, in kirklan & sutch, 2009, p. 10). another important aspect to take into account is that this project was considered an innovation not just for being a new experience in the school, but also because nowadays the education process needs to be reloaded, renewed, etc. as bransford, brown and cocking (2000) comment: everyone expects much more from today’s schools than was expected 100 years ago. a fundamental tenet of modern learning theory is that different kinds of learning goals require different approaches to instruction (chapter 3); new goals for education require changes in opportunities to learn. (p. 131) in my opinion, the use of technology and internet resources is one of those opportunities that must be promoted by teachers. but, of course, it is necessary that as an innovation, the use of technology should be assumed by teachers as an opportunity for improving teaching and learning because, as stated by bransford, brown, & cocking (2000), “technology has become an important instrument in education. computer-based technologies hold great promise both for increasing access to knowledge and as a means of promoting learning” (p. 229). stages and data collection techniques the innovation was implemented in three main stages. the first one was related to the explanation of the use of blogs and resources from the internet. this part of the project was planned because students had never used internet resources in any class. it is important to mention that parents and students were informed about the de velopment of the project and of the benefits of its implementation. they expressed their interest in participating. also, parents gave the teacher permission to use the students’ writings to be analyzed in order to produce the final report of the project. the second stage was dedicated to the comprehension and production of physical descriptions in guided form. in this step, students participated in different workshops (some of them using printed worksheets and others using a blog) in which they identified adjectives and their position in the sentence. at the end of this stage, students produced physical descriptions without the direct guidance of the teacher. the activities applied during the implementation were part of a cycle in which the teacher observed the use of the worksheets and activities in the blog for redesigning what would be necessary universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras190 lizarazo jara in further stages. this was done in order to tackle the difficulties that arose from the accomplishment of the proposal. the idea behind using those worksheets was to provide the students with key elements with which to identify the adjectives and their position in the sentence. besides using worksheets during the classes, we exploited a blog with different activities taken from some web pages, including some designed for the purpose of the project. moreover, during the whole process the teacher took notes about the observations during the classes and activities done by students in order to have a record which could help to organize the information that was used in the final report. the address of the blog is http://lizajara.blogspot.com data were collected and analyzed during the whole implementation process. this activity took place in order to find explanations and to produce the final report and conclusions of the project. literature review some aspects about language, descriptions, students’ engagement and the use of blogs were consulted. these topics were relevant during the implementation of the project, as can be read below. language structures when students are learning a new language they rarely think in that foreign language (l2, and in this case, english); they usually think in the mother tongue (l1, in our case, spanish). it means that students do not use the patterns of the l2. this is a case of interference which, although criticized by several authors, refers to the effect of one language on another. it produces deviations from the norms of either language affecting all levels of language: accent, pronunciation, syntax, morphology, and vocabulary (mcarthur, 1992), and, it affects the l2 learning process as well. when students are learning a foreign language, they tend to transfer to the l2 the structures of their native language. for example, students use the spanish language structure when they are learning how to use adjectives in descriptions, instead of using the ones that the english language has. this fact causes some difficulties during the acquisition of the new language. the main differences between the first language and the other (english and spanish) are the lexicon, some structure details and some of the sound patterns (garcía & molesworth, 1996). these are some of the most common prob lems students experience during the english lan guage learning process which can be caused by the little contact with the grammar of the foreign language and the small number of hours which is given to study it in the school curriculum. based on the aspects mentioned before, the interest placed in this innovation project was a) to understand what happens concerning the use of adjectives when 6th grade students are guided to write descriptions in english, and b) to help them to improve their abilities when writing a description about people’s physical appearances. descriptions as already mentioned, students in this project were guided to work on descriptions in english. “descriptive writing tells how a person, place, or thing feels, looks, smells, or sounds” (cramer et al., 1989). with this definition in mind, it was thought that descriptions would give students the opportunity to use adjectives and that through the activities in which they would have to write descriptions, they would improve their abilities in using the correct order of adjectives and nouns in english. at this point it is relevant to mention the definition and function of adjectives. an adjective is a part of speech or word class chiefly used to modify nouns and as a complement to copular verbs such 191profile vol. 14, no. 1, april 2012. issn 1657-0790. bogotá, colombia. pages 187-209 using a blog to guide beginner students to use adjectives appropriately when writing descriptions in english as “be” and “seem” (richards, platt, & weber, 1985). in this project the use of adjectives in descriptions was focused on attributive characteristics. nordquist (2010) mentions that there are two main kinds of adjectives: attributive, which normally come right before the noun they qualify, and predicative adjectives, which come after the verb to be or similar verbs such as become and seem. students’ engagement besides the elements mentioned above, grammar is not the only aspect to consider during the foreign language learning and teaching processes. berns (1990) mentions that attitudes also influence english language teaching and learning traditions to improve the proficiency level and give learners the opportunity to enlarge and develop the competence that they eventually achieve in the classroom. hence, it is necessary to consider the methodology used to teach; in addition, students need to be interested in learning the foreign language. related to this issue, in my school students seem not to be interested in the english class. for this reason, it has been considered important to change some strategies during the english lessons, and one useful element could be the use of internet resources. using blogs during the english learning process according to ward (2004, in quintero, 2008), “a weblog is a website that is updated regularly and organized chronologically according to the date, and in reverse order from most recent entry backwards. weblogs can also provide decentralized access rights which allow(s) multiple authors” (p. 17). it was then considered that the use of a blog could be very interesting for 6th grade students in nueva delhi school because they had never used this resource in any class. the idea of using a blog was an attempt for motivating students in a different way, so that they could view english language learning as an enjoyable experience. a big group of students did not like speaking english to the teacher during the classes; consequently, it was necessary to find a way to communicate with them by writing. in that sense “blogs provide a communication space that teachers can utilize with students whenever there is a curriculum need to develop writing, share ideas and reflect on work being undertaken in the classroom” (western australian department of education, 2010). besides, a blog gives students the opportunity to participate actively in their learning process. as already mentioned, many students did not like to participate during the english lessons, but it was clear that they had understood the topic. related to this issue, cuesta (2010) mentions that students could find a self-controlled scenario in a learning space created by an online environment and assisted by their tutors. this scenario could be developed in the school english resource center and, in some cases, at their homes. as barrios (2010) mentions, “students don’t tend to write unless they have to” and blogs can be a way to change that. therefore, teachers need to create the habit of writing and if students are engaged with technology; a blog can be very useful to obtain good results in this project. the use of blogs is a relatively new tool in the teaching and learning processes, but as quintero (2008) points out, there are some studies which have shown the advantages of using weblogs to enhance students’ writing development. she refers to the ones undertaken by ward (in 2004) with a group of forty non-native english speakers to establish how weblogs could improve their composition level and the experience developed by deitering and huston in 2004 in which a class weblog was universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras192 lizarazo jara created to give students from a geography and film intensive writing course the opportunity to write their own comments about the course content. technological resources are attractive for students. for that reason, with the development of this project it was considered that an internet resource like a blog turns out to be a motivational and productive element in class. data analysis the data obtained during the implementation of the project were collected in three different phases. in the first one, the teacher explained to students some general aspects about the internet, so during two classes the topic of the sessions was about the use of the computer, history and characteristics of the internet, the use of a browser and how to write the posts in a blog. this was done in order to facilitate the comprehension and the use of a blog. during the development of this stage, students also had to write a free description. it was written without the teacher’s guidance. students were asked to write about four different objects: a train, a pear, an airplane and a car. the objective of that description was to observe how students used the adjectives in the sentence to describe a noun. the second phase of the implementation was dedicated to guiding students to write descriptions on a specific topic to focus the explanations and activities just on that issue. the topic selected was people’s physical appearances. in this stage of the project different worksheets were used; some of them were created by the teacher and other adapted from books or internet web pages. at the same time, the blog designed was used to practice the topics of the english lessons and there students found different exercises created by the teacher and taken from different web pages. in these exercises students found matching activities on which they could work with opposite adjectives and images to relate with words, and writing activities to match the opposites of the adjectives in bold. exercises 1 to 4 can be found at the blog1 (see samples in appendix a). after the implementation of this part of the project, students wrote a description which was posted on the blog (see appendix b). in the final phase of the project the idea was to correct the problems observed in the final description that was written in the second stage. to do this, the teacher designed some new activities to be used in the blog and applied new worksheets. to do these activities students had to unscramble sentences and complete a text by writing the correct adjective according to one image. exercises 5 to 8 can be found at http://lizajara.blogspot.com/p/ activities.html (see samples in appendix c). the result of this last activity was presented in a final description that students wrote and posted in the blog (see appendix d). the instruments used during this part of the process to collect the data were students’ written exercises in their notebooks, in the worksheets and in the blog. also, the teacher wrote some useful notes as part of the analysis of observations made during the classes; they were not part of the research but clues for writing the final report. findings taking into account the observations that were made in the different activities and the data gathered while students worked with the worksheets and got engaged in the activities proposed in the blog, i analyzed data to find common patterns and explanations. table 1 shows the categories that emerged from the analysis of the results. 1 http://lizajara.blogspot.com/p/activities.html 193profile vol. 14, no. 1, april 2012. issn 1657-0790. bogotá, colombia. pages 187-209 using a blog to guide beginner students to use adjectives appropriately when writing descriptions in english exploring the use of adjectives to describe people as mentioned in the objectives of the project, students needed to understand the importance of adjectives when they wrote a description about people and objects. so they needed to realize that people could talk about one object, but if they added a specific characteristic to that object, the idea about that element immediately changed in people’s minds because, as cramer et al. (1989) mentioned, “adjectives can tell how a noun looks, feels, tastes, sounds, or smells” (p. 150). the features found in this category were analyzed at sentence level –the chunks that characterized students’ attempts to produce different descriptions. word order after students wrote the first description included in the activities planned along the project –their free description about the four objects proposed– it was observed that students’ written production contained evidences of wrong uses of adjectives to describe a noun. they wrote sentences as they are written in spanish, but using words in english. at this point, it should be pointed out that this fact could guide us to a broader analysis of the issues, but the project focused just on adjectives. they had to use the dictionary all the time to write simple sentences. it was probably due to a lack of knowledge of the necessary vocabulary in terms of adjectives or nouns and maybe because students did not know enough about english structures to table 1. categories that emerged from data analysis categories subcategories exploring the use of adjectives to describe people word order (wrong use of adjectives in a sentence) usefulness of worksheets and activities posted in the blog role of the blog students’ engagement students’ progress write a description. for example students wrote2: “the train is the colourblak blue”; “the cart is the color blue”; “the pear has blemish the color green an yellow”. other students wrote sentences like a list of characteristics: “the pear is small, the pear is round”. in other examples, students used more words but, again, with errors in the use of adjectives: “the airplane utilize wings. is of colors yellow red and blue. and is big”. the analysis of descriptions like the ones shown above seemed to evidence that students did not understand the concept of the adjective as a grammar issue and its function in the sentence. students used adjectives in their descriptions, but the teacher’s guidance was necessary to understand how to use them. furthermore, they seemed to need more practice on writing descriptive texts. in the second stage, students were guided by the teacher to learn adjectives to be used in their writings. this was done through the application of the first three worksheets (see appendix e), and some exercises in the blog. the objective of these activities was to increase the vocabulary that they needed to write the descriptions. with the worksheets, students could write short sentences about a dog, a car and finally different characteristics about people. in the blog they could find games and activities in which they could read and write adjectives in short sentences again. 2 samples presented from now on have not been edited. they were transcribed for this publication, keeping the original form used by students. universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras194 lizarazo jara when students accessed the blog they found, among other activities, games like hangman in which they had to guess the adjective. they could also find a word search in which they had to locate 20 new adjectives and an exercise in which they had to listen to one simple sentence to match with the correct words. at the end of this second stage, students posted a description about one picture that they found in the blog (see figure 1). these descriptions showed an important improvement in their writings. they showed that with the application of the activities mentioned above, many students could write the adjectives without using the dictionary, that is to say, with more confidence. figure 1. image posted in the blog for students to write the first description although students still had spelling errors, many of them wrote the adjectives before the nouns and used complete sentences in short paragraphs. at this moment a majority of students had learned new vocabulary to write descriptions and they could organize sentences with more information than merely writing words to describe colors. it should be noted that in this part of the project students worked in groups of two or three people because they had only 13 computers at the school. other examples of the sentences produced by the students can be found in the descriptions posted in the blog, such as: she is maria. maria has short, curly and brown hair. she has big and green eyes. she is average height. she is beautifil. she is thin. (group 1) she is maria. maria has short, wavy and black hair. she has small and green eyes. (group 2) as can be seen, some of the students still wrote a list of sentences with some errors in the use of adjectives but they showed an improved use of them, especially in the use of colors. it seemed that students understood how they had to write the descriptions, but it was necessary to reinforce the work in writing short paragraphs. for this reason, two additional worksheets were used to complement the practice of writing descriptions, this time focused on people’s physical appearances. after the application of these worksheets, students wrote longer sentences and also wrote ideas in paragraphs, which means that they did not write lists of characteristics or an inventory, as in their first descriptions. in addition, i noticed that they used the vocabulary learned in the first activities. during this part of the project the teacher had to solve a little confusion about the use of the verbs “is” and “has”, because some students wrote sentences like: “he is straight, black and short hair”. it was also noticed that many students wrote better sentences such as: “she is mary. mary has short, wavy and brown hair. she is thirsty too”. the last assignment proposed to students was that they had to write two descriptions about two different images they found in the blog –a man and a woman. with this final assignment it could be observed that the majority of students wrote a complete description using the adjectives in the correct position related to the noun and writing complete sentences with more information than in previous productions. descriptions produced by 195profile vol. 14, no. 1, april 2012. issn 1657-0790. bogotá, colombia. pages 187-209 using a blog to guide beginner students to use adjectives appropriately when writing descriptions in english the students were posted in the blog. some of them can be read as follows: she is thelma. she has blond, curly and long hair. she is wearing a gray skirt. she is beautiful. she has big eyes. she is wearing a black blouse. she is happy. she is tall. he is frank. he has gray, straight and short hair. he is wearing a black suit. he is old. he has small eyes. he is average height. he is happy. (group 3) she is thelma. thelma is tall. she has blond hair. she is wearing a purple blouse. she is thin. she has black eyes. he is frank. frank is tall. he has white hair. he is wearing a black jacket. he is fat. he has black eyes. (group 4) it is also important to say that many students wrote their final descriptions taking into account the use of capital letters and they had fewer spelling errors than in their previous descriptions posted in the blog. also, they wrote more information related to clothes and feelings, as can be read in the following sample: she is thelma. thelma has blond, wavy and long hair. she has black and big eyes. she is tall. she is thin. she is wearing a gray skirt and a blue blouse. she is happy too. he is frank. frank has a black suit. he has white, short and staight [straight] hair. he has black small eyes. he is fat. he is also happy. (group 5) usefulness of worksheets and activities posted in the blog teachers and students often use worksheets to revise and practice what has been taught in class. as wyels (2011) states, worksheets are an effective tool in ongoing efforts to encouraging our students to engage their brains during class. nowadays, the internet offers hundreds of useful, well-designed and high quality websites which provide new opportunities for english language learning. in those sites people can find many worksheets designed by teachers who want to share their work with other teachers or students who are interested in using technology to improve their english management or their english teaching methods. along the implementation of the project, 5 worksheets were applied; moreover, in the blog students could find different types of activities and resources such as word search, hangman, videos, a song, and matching exercises. these activities were about objects, animals and famous people like singers. during the development of the activities students had to practice the use of many adjectives and their opposites. the majority of the activities seemed to have been interesting for the students, especially when they had to go to the school resource center to work on the computers. as regards the first two worksheets not all the students finished the activity because they had to look for the words in the dictionary so they spent a lot of time finding the meanings. concerning the last three worksheets, the situation changed and students seemed to be more confident about their work, probably because they noticed that the teacher did not make as many corrections as in the first activities. besides, they understood their partner’s texts, and were happy to see their own texts on the screen of the computer. the exercises proposed in the blog were very useful because, as already mentioned, students had never used internet resources in the english class and they were very interested in solving the activities. in fact, during the lessons in the resource center, some groups of students had difficulties due to the low quantity of computers in the classroom since all the students wanted to do all the activities, but with the agreement of some rules and shifts – like organization of turns to write and respect for everybody’s opinions– the issue of disadvantages was solved. universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras196 lizarazo jara the effectiveness of the activities was reflected in the students’ writings in terms of the correct use of adjectives and here i am talking about word order. they commented that the exercises were clear and entertaining; this showed an increase in their motivation during the sessions. throughout the development of the activities with the worksheets, the students’ interest in improving their writings and their concern for improving their performance in the activities could be evidenced. these facts are closely related to their increase in motivation. about this topic, the national research council and the institute of medicine (nrcim, 2004) states: “students enjoy and exert more effort when they are active participants than when they are passive” (p. 50). role of the blog teaching and learning resources are increasing all the time and students and teachers have the responsibility to adapt their educational environment to get it moving with technological changes. blogs are some of those new educational tools that can be used nowadays by teachers and students as a support for reflection on teaching experiences. as duffy and bruns (2006) state, a blog offers interaction with reflective comments and also the ability to interlink to related ideas. the subcategories presented in the following paragraphs will illustrate the students’ engagement and progress showing how the educational role of the blog was applied to this innovation project. students’ engagement at the beginning of the project students did not have any idea about what a blog was or how to work in a blog, so the teacher had to dedicate some sessions to show this new tool and to explain the educational benefits that a blog could give to the class and to the students’ progress. first of all they had to learn how to access the blog, how to post their own ideas. during the next sessions students’ interest increased and they wanted to have more new activities in the blog. definitely, the use of the blog was a very attractive strategy for the students and because of its novelty they wanted to work every class in the resource center. however, the main constraint was the one of the group of students who participated in this innovation project: just four of them had a computer in their homes. since many students do not have computers at home, they had to wait for the english class to work on the activities in the blog. during the development of the project, students attended lessons in the resource center 5 times, two hours each time. in the classes they were very engaged with the activities. at the beginning they had some problems with the instructions because their english language level was very basic in terms of vocabulary and grammar, but with practice, they got used to the exercises and started recognizing what they had to do. it is also important to point out that at the beginning of the process, some students tended to have less confidence because they were so shy and thought that they were not good at english. however, at the end of the project a majority of these students showed a higher level of confidence. for that reason i agree with nrcim (2004) when they mention that “they [students] need to know what it takes to succeed and to believe they can succeed” (p. 35). as result of this, students also wrote good descriptions and during the final two sessions at the resource center, they showed more interest in finishing the activities. definitely, this level of confidence will be very important for students to be able to achieve future goals in our classes. it was very interesting to note that during the last lessons which implied using the blog, students carried out the activities practically without asking 197profile vol. 14, no. 1, april 2012. issn 1657-0790. bogotá, colombia. pages 187-209 using a blog to guide beginner students to use adjectives appropriately when writing descriptions in english for help from the teacher. in particular, they liked to work with the videos about adjectives in which they could find the word with its pronunciation as well as the corresponding image. they could also find games like hangman and activities like crosswords and word search. students commented that after those activities they could solve the exercises more easily. a blog is an excellent instrument that allows developing many different activities in a website that is visited by the students without the pressure of having to work in the classroom on the same traditional activities. besides, blogs offer opportunities for students to acquire creative, critical, communicative, and collaborative skills that may be useful to them in both scholarly and professional contexts (duffy & bruns, 2006). students’ progress when the innovation was proposed to the students, they had been writing descriptions using the adjectives in an incorrect position related to the nouns. at the end of the project, when they had to write their final descriptions, improvement was evident in the use of the structures and the order of the adjectives. it is very probable that the activities carried out coupled with the exercises designed and used in the blog provided the students with enough information to understand how they had to use the adjectives in their descriptions. this was a very important element in achieving the objectives of innovation. students’ progress was reflected in the descriptions that they wrote in their final post on the blog and also in their level of confidence when handing in writing exercises. furthermore, their participation during the class seemed to be higher than at the beginning of the project. besides, the structures of their texts also improved in terms of fluency – students used more words and longer sentences to get messages across. in this respect, it is important to notice that students were worried about the correct use of singular and plural nouns. after the implementation of the innovation, students seemed to have clarified ideas concerning the use of the adjectives in a description and as they expressed themselves. by then they had learned many new words to be used in their texts. they were also happy because they had learned new things about the use of the internet resources as well as the computer. it means students discovered that technology is very useful in their learning process and they gained confidence in the use of the blogs. technology gives the language learner the opportunity to have text, audio, images and video in one place and in the same activity. students noticed this while they used the blog to practice the topics of the lessons. likewise, during the development of the project, students used the blog as a means to learn english. conclusions and implications it is important to start by noting that during the development of the project i focused my attention on a specific topic which was to have students correct the use of adjectives in relation to the nouns. there is no doubt this aspect will deserve new teaching actions and broader analyses in the future, particularly in the area of writing skills and descriptions, among others. another fact to reinforce is that the use of technological resources in the classroom is turning into a very useful element to engage students’ attention and participation during the english class. it is evident that even though students are very close to the use of computers, a majority of them do not use them for pedagogical purposes. in that sense, the implementation of an innovation becomes a very useful strategy for producing positive change in universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras198 lizarazo jara some students’ attitudes. innovations like the one reported here are particularly useful for those who are not confident about taking part in the english lessons and/or who are not happy with their performance in them. during the development of this project i noticed that the use of blogs was definitely the most attractive resource with which learners could engage in writing practices.  they waited for the english class in order to use the computers in the resource center. however, the low number of computers in that classroom turned into a limitation for carrying out activities individually and thus for working faster. it was unexpected that the use of the blogs turned into a resource not only for english lessons but also for the spanish ones because students who participated in the project had relatives in other grades. since some of these students also attended spanish lessons with the same teacher, they expressed they would like to learn about that new element in the classes. though the use of technology and blogs is well known, the use of this kind of resources is not common in the classroom. in fact, many teachers and students are not familiar with the use of the computer. for these reasons, it is necessary to organize training sessions because they need to be shown how those tools can be used for learning purposes. it can be concluded that the objectives of the innovation project were reached as evidenced by the majority of students’ writings. nonetheless, it is necessary to continue the process with some students who need to work a little bit more in their descriptions, and in general, in their writing skills. for this reason, the use of innovative proposals in the pedagogical procedures adopted for the english area is an important element that should be taken into account during the design of the curricular programs at school. on the other hand, it would be useful to design a school project for the secretary of education in bogotá for the purpose of obtaining more and better equipment in the resource center. furthermore, it is necessary to make provisions for the implementation of new strategies in order to produce the appropriate environment of confidence for students’ participation in the english activities. this way, we can embark upon actions to keep them away from the assumption that they are not good at that. it would then be very important for new researchers to know what the knowledge level about the use of computers is among students. besides, it is necessary to remember that technology in the world is changing all the time and there are a lot of new strategies, applications and software emerging every day on the internet. besides, and in order to save time, it would be very useful to be sure about the applications that can be used in the computers at school such as videos from different web pages or other different links of tools that are often blocked by the secretary of education’s webmaster. agile solutions are needed because, in cases like this last one, the teacher has to send the people in charge several e-mails requesting help and this procedure often takes a long time. finally, i would like to mention that after the implementation of the project i decided to engage in further professional programs. hence, i decided to start postgraduate studies in a specialization on technology (computer science). this way, i hope to improve and reinforce my knowledge about this topic in order to offer my students more and better elements that can be used not just in english classes, but in spanish classes too. references barrios, b. (2010). blogs as writing practice. retrieved from: http://www.bgsu.edu/cconline/barrios/blogs/write/ index.html 199profile vol. 14, no. 1, april 2012. issn 1657-0790. bogotá, colombia. pages 187-209 using a blog to guide beginner students to use adjectives appropriately when writing descriptions in english berns, m. (1990). contexts of competence. social and cultural considerations in communicative language teaching. new york, ny: plenum press. bransford, j., brown, a., & cocking, r. (2000). how people learn: brain, mind, experience, and school. washington, dc: national academy press. cramer, r., beers, j., triplett, w., najimy, n., ward, l., welles, c., & mccarthy, t. (1989). language. glenview: scott foresman company. cuesta, l. (2010). the design and development of online courses materials: some features and recommendations. profile issues in teachers’ professional development, 12(1), 181-201. duffy, p., & bruns, a. (2006). the use of blogs, wikis and rss in education: a conversation of possibilities. in proceeding online learning and teaching conference 2006, brisbane, 31-38. retrieved from: http://eprints. qut.edu.au/5398/1/5398.pdf garcía, m. a., & molesworth, d. j. (1996). unravelling spanglish. a practical guide to language interference. tunja, colombia: universidad pedagógica y tecnológica de colombia. kirklan, k., & sutch, d. (2009). overcoming the barriers to educational innovation: a literature review. retrieved from: http://www.futurelab.org.uk/resources/documents/lit_reviews/barriers_to_innovation_review.pdf markee, n. (1997). managing curricular innovation. cambridge: cambridge university press. mcarthur, t. (1992). the oxford companion to the english language. oxford: university university press. national research council and the institute of medicine. (2004). engaging schools: fostering high school students’ motivation to learn. committee on increasing high school students’ engagement and motivation to learn. board on children, youth, and families, division of behavioral and social sciences and education. washington, dc: the national academies press. nordquist, r. (2010). attributive adjective. retrieved from: http://grammar.about.com/od/ab/g/attribadjterm.htm quintero, l. (2008). blogging: a way to foster efl writing. colombian applied linguistics journal, 10, 7-49. richards, j. c., platt, j., & weber, h. (1985). longman dictionary of language teaching of applied linguistics. london: longman. western australian department of education. (2010). blogs in education: resourcing the curriculum. retrieved from: http://www.det.wa.edu.au/education/cmis/eval/ curriculum/ict/weblogs white, r. (1988). the elt curriculum: design, innovation and management. oxford, uk: blackwell publishing ltd.  wyels, c. (2011). engaging students via in-class worksheets. maa online innovative teaching exchange. mathematical association of america. retrieved from http://www.maa.org/t_and_l/exchange/ite11/worksheets.htm about the author omar yesid lizarazo jara has a ba in languages, spanish and english from universidad antonio nariño, colombia, and is currently studying technology and multimedia at the pg level. he also studied in a professional development program at universidad nacional de colombia. he works as a spanish and english teacher at nueva delhi school in bogotá (colombia). universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras200 appendix a: exercises 1 to 4, posted in the blog posted at: http://lizajara.blogspot.com exercise 1. it contains a set of images. students just had to click on the picture to see the adjective related to the image. (this word appears over the picture after click). exercise 2. students had to write the opposite of the adjective in bold letters. 201profile vol. 14, no. 1, april 2012. issn 1657-0790. bogotá, colombia. pages 187-209 exercise 3. a table in which students had to make couples with one pictures and the correct adjective. exercise 4. students had to match the adjective in the left column with the opposite adjective in the right column. universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras202 appendix b: first description posted in the blog posted at: http://lizajara.blogspot.com 203profile vol. 14, no. 1, april 2012. issn 1657-0790. bogotá, colombia. pages 187-209 appendix c: exercises 5 to 8, posted in the blog posted at: http://lizajara.blogspot.com exercise 5. students listened to a voice describing the picture. after that, they had to unscramble an affirmative sentence. exercise 6. students listened to a voice describing the picture. after that, they had to unscramble a negative sentence. universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras204 exercise 7. a short story in which students had to complete writing the correct adjective according to the text and the image. exercise 8. students had to put the words in correct order to obtain the description of the image. 205profile vol. 14, no. 1, april 2012. issn 1657-0790. bogotá, colombia. pages 187-209 appendix d: final description posted in the blog posted at: http://lizajara.blogspot.com universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras206 appendix e: samples of worksheets used along the project first worksheet name: date: adjectives mastery instructions: adjectives are words used to describe a noun. write an adjective on each line to describe the dog.  write a sentence using four of the adjectives above. 1. 2. 3. 4. taken from: http://www.teach-nology.com/worksheets/language_arts/adjectives/make/ver1/index.html 207profile vol. 14, no. 1, april 2012. issn 1657-0790. bogotá, colombia. pages 187-209 second worksheet name: date: instructions: adjectives are words used to describe a noun. write an adjective on each line to describe the car. write a sentence using four of the adjectives above. 1. 2. 3. 4. taken from: http://www.teach-nology.com/worksheets/language_arts/adjectives/make/ver3/index.html universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras208 third worksheet what does he look like? word bank moustache beard bald scared spikey blond bored sad curly straight sleepy across 1. he has hair. 4. he has a full . 5. she has long hair. 7. she looks . 9. he looks . 11. she has straight hair. down 2. he looks . 3. she has long hair. 6. he doesn’t have a beard but he has a . 8. he has a head. 10. he looks sad and . 5 7 6 8 1 2 9 3 11 10 4 adapted from: http://www.esl-galaxy.com/crosswords/peopledescription.pdf 209profile vol. 14, no. 1, april 2012. issn 1657-0790. bogotá, colombia. pages 187-209 fourth worksheet 1. write antonyms for the following adjectives: ugly happy tall old small fat long young 2. describe the people in the following pictures to your classmates. http://www.telenovelasychismes.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/08/shakira-17.jpg http://miaminewsmagazine.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/09/juanes3.jpg 215profile vol. 15, no. 2, october 2013. issn 1657-0790 (printed) 2256-5760 (online). bogotá, colombia. pages 215-224 formal grammar instruction: theoretical aspects to contemplate its teaching instrucción formal de la gramática: aspectos teóricos para considerar su enseñanza carolina cruz corzo*1 universidad de la sabana, colombia with the rise of new tendencies and methodologies in the english as a foreign language field, formal grammar instruction has become unnecessary during the last few years. institutions and educators have made serious decisions in order to promote a language production which is fluent and coherent. thus, grammar instruction has been partially relegated and new trends have occupied its place. however, based on personal teaching practices, i have realized that some learners are producing the foreign language in a fluid, but sometimes inaccurate form. the present reflection is aimed at presenting some insights for educators that may help them consider the possibility of teaching formal grammar as part of the curriculum. key words: explicit grammar instruction, grammar instruction, implicit grammar instruction. con el crecimiento de nuevas tendencias y metodologías en la enseñanza del inglés, la instrucción formal de la gramática se ha vuelto innecesaria durante las últimas décadas. instituciones y educadores han tomado serias decisiones con el fin de promover una producción fluida y coherente de la lengua extranjera, lo que ha generado que la enseñanza formal de la gramática sea relegada de manera parcial y nuevas tendencias ocupen su lugar. con base en mis propias experiencias dentro del aula de clase, he observado que algunos de mis estudiantes se comunican fluidamente en la lengua extranjera, pero en ocasiones, de manera incorrecta. en este artículo de reflexión se presentan algunos elementos teóricos que podrían ayudar a educadores de lengua extranjera a considerar la posibilidad de incluir la enseñanza formal de la gramática en el currículo. palabras clave: enseñanza de la gramática, enseñanza explícita de la gramática, enseñanza implícita de la gramática. * e-mail: carolina.cruz@unisabana.edu.co this article was received on july 1, 2012, and accepted on april 14, 2013. universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras216 cruz corzo introduction the teaching of explicit grammar as part of the foreign language learning process is an aspect that has been debated for so many years. schulz (2001) affirms that “foreign language educators and applied linguists examining the effectiveness of various approaches for fl teaching are not all in agreement about whether explicit grammar instruction . . . is essential or even helpful in learning a new language” (p. 245). in addition, authors like terrell (1991), norris and ortega (2002), and ellis (2006), to mention some, have considered and supported the idea of explicit grammar instruction (egi) in the foreign language class, whereas theoreticians such as krashen (2003) have defended the idea of avoiding egi since it may interfere with a natural acquisition process. thus, the approaches implemented in the language class have varied throughout the years and educators are still looking for the best option to guarantee an optimal learning process. in the united states for example, educators have applied current teaching tendencies to achieve the previously mentioned goal. terrell (1991) explains this language teaching evolution by stating: the role of english grammar instruction in a second/foreign language class in the united states has changed drastically in the last forty years as the favored methodology changed from grammar-translation to audio-lingual, then from audio-lingual to cognitive, and finally from cognitive to communicative approaches. (p. 53) however, this phenomenon has not only occurred in developed countries such as the united states. colombian education has also changed in the last few years and english foreign language (efl) teaching has not been the exception to this phenomenon. language teachers and researchers have been looking for the specific criteria, methodology, and appropriate approaches that would help them enhance english teaching. some decades ago, colombian teachers used to place emphasis on the teaching of grammatical forms but, interestingly, some educators have recently claimed that this methodology was not helpful for producing spontaneous and authentic language since its main focus was related to the production of accurate linguistic forms where communication or interactional situations did not play a primary role. nassaji and fotos (2004) support the previous statement by explaining that “with the rise of communicative methodology in the late 1970s, the role of grammar instruction in second language learning was downplayed, and it was even suggested that teaching grammar was not only unhelpful but might actually be detrimental” (p. 126). nonetheless, it is relevant to bear in mind that the teaching of explicit grammar forms has not been completely relegated and is still taking place in many efl settings. nowadays, some educators still believe that the formal teaching of linguistic forms is significant in the development of a foreign language and they also may implement this practice as a complement to teaching the language as a whole. similar to the language teaching evolution lived in the united states (terrell, 1991), new forms to teach a foreign language started to grow in colombian classrooms and, apparently, these started becoming effective. thus, by moving from audio-lingual and grammar-based methods to more communicative approaches, language educators have evidenced that learning a language is a process that requires constant update in order to achieve the expected goals and necessities of their populations. bearing in mind the aforesaid teaching development, colombian educators are regularly looking for methods to promote the most appropriate language teaching methodologies that help educators create bilingual individuals who may be able to produce an accurate and fluid foreign language. consequently, some institutions are attempting to implement new bilingual methodologies or approaches such as task— or content—based programs with the purpose of 217profile vol. 15, no. 2, october 2013. issn 1657-0790 (printed) 2256-5760 (online). bogotá, colombia. pages 215-224 formal grammar instruction: theoretical aspects to contemplate its teaching providing learners with a wider range of opportunities to experience and learn a foreign language in more authentic or meaningful ways. in general, i would assert that colombian education is moving forward to become an outstanding bilingual model; however, even though the abovementioned approaches are expected to be successful, i personally believe that learning a foreign language is a process that not only requires natural and bilingual models, but also needs the development of linguistic accuracy that will allow learners to produce the language in a standard and coherent form. even though language teachers and institutions have made a big effort to move from traditional to more communicative and meaningful approaches in the efl field, and although there has been a constant evolution in the methodologies implemented in this area, some populations are still not achieving the final aim: producing the language with fluency and accuracy. this is evidenced by a study carried out by the ministry of education in 2005, whose final results showed that only “6.4% of students finishing high school performed in english at an intermediate level, whereas an overwhelming 93.6% did so at a basic. no students were found to perform at an advanced level” (macías, 2011). equally, the results obtained in icfes exams in the last seven years not only evidenced low performance from learners but also a minimal increase in this area (see figure 1). the data in figure 1 evidences that even though a variety of methodological changes have been implemented to enhance the results obtained in a teaching-language process, colombian students are still having difficulty in this area. thus, a personal question arises: if new trends and approaches are implemented every day in order to help learners become bilingual, why are colombian students still not achieving the expected goals? from my personal teaching perspective while working with young adults, i have realized that sometimes linguistic forms are not promoted explicitly since they may restrict the production of fluent and real language (krashen, 2003). likewise, i have faced classroom situations in which learners are able to communicate fluently in the foreign language, however their accuracy is not without its flaws. considering language learning theories, a foreign language is expected to be learned following the same process of the first language and formal grammar instruction should be kept away (krashen, 2003), but figure 1. icfes results in english test 2005-2011 20051 criterio promedio egresado 43.71 estudiante 44.08 20061 criterio promedio egresado 43.49 estudiante 43.29 20081 criterio promedio egresado 44.69 estudiante 44.76 20101 criterio promedio egresado 46.66 estudiante 49.96 20071 criterio promedio egresado 44.36 estudiante 43.93 20091 criterio promedio egresado 45.45 estudiante 44.23 20111 criterio promedio egresado 45.70 estudiante 50.63 universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras218 cruz corzo is it the best way to help our students, who may need to use l2 for professional purposes, become bilingual individuals? the two previous questions made me reflect on the possibility of including formal grammar instruction in the foreign language class as part of a process in which language should be seen as whole and used with fluency and, most importantly, with accuracy. in the following section, i present a theoretical overview in which not only the teaching of linguistic forms is suggested, but also presents the most appropriate time and techniques in which it should be incorporated into the efl curriculum. formal grammar instruction: a theoretical overview the most recent approaches for second and foreign language teaching have principally been focused on meaning and the way language is developed naturally and as a whole. considering my experience as a foreign language teacher, i have observed educators who have decided to employ more communicative and authentic approaches in order to help individuals develop competences in order to be able to use the second or foreign language in real and spontaneous forms. interestingly, these approaches have replaced the teaching of explicit grammar for an implicit method in which accuracy is learned naturally with no pressure or excluding formal instruction. this idea is supported by the second language acquisition theory (krashen, 2003), which explains that formal instruction of grammatical structures should not be taken into account in language acquisition considering the fact that human beings learn to understand and produce their first language through natural and informal communicative contexts. krashen (2003) argues that grammar instruction has no role in second language acquisition. the author explains that language is acquired as a subconscious process, and he states that conscious learning can only be considered as a monitor device to correct sentences when the individual has already produced them. krashen’s theory not only places emphasis on selfcorrection but also suggests that formal instruction does not contribute to fluency: “while monitoring can make a small contribution to accuracy, the research indicates that acquisition makes a major contribution. thus, acquisition is responsible for both fluency and most of our accuracy” (krashen, 2003, p. 2). clearly, krashen’s theory is not in accordance with the teaching of explicit grammar in second language acquisition, but there are other theoreticians and linguists who have defended opposite ideas. even though i personally am a devoted follower of communicative approaches and virtual environments due to their innovation and realistic form to focus on language teaching, i have regularly wondered about a missing ingredient to help my students use the language not only fluently but also accurately. as a result of my personal teaching disquiet, i found other perspectives regarding formal and explicit grammar instruction which provided me with a positive view and therefore helped me change my viewpoints about grammar as an antiquated teaching practice. ellis (2006), for example, resorts to various researchers including long (1983) and norris and ortega (2002) to support his idea of the importance of including explicit grammar in a second language acquisition process. the author explains that grammatical deficiencies may cause a breakdown in communication and interfere with an intended message, therefore, it is understood that language learners need to speak fluently, but they also need to speak accurately. similarly, and based on the importance of speaking a standard language which is clear and coherent to the recipient, it can be suggested that explicit grammar instruction is essential in second language acquisition. correspondingly, richards (2002) affirms that grammar-based methodologies have been replaced 219profile vol. 15, no. 2, october 2013. issn 1657-0790 (printed) 2256-5760 (online). bogotá, colombia. pages 215-224 formal grammar instruction: theoretical aspects to contemplate its teaching by communicative approaches which give more importance to fluency than to accuracy. due to this phenomenon, the teaching of grammar has been isolated from language acquisition and is causing a major issue. students who are encouraged to speak for communicative purposes focus their speech on meaning regardless of grammatical accuracy. nevertheless, there are grammatical mistakes that can change meanings and consequently interfere with communication. richards (2002) explains that there is a grammar-gap problem in the development of linguistic competence and he affirms that “what has been observed in language classrooms during fluency work is communication marked by low levels of linguistic accuracy” (p. 38). considering linguistic competences, some feel that language is supposed to be used naturally, but natural approaches promote students’ participation in communicative tasks that may have resulted in “communication that is heavily dependent on vocabulary and memorized chunks of language” (richards, 2002, p. 39). the teaching of linguistic forms is not only supported by theory but also by studies recently conducted. for instance, norris and ortega (2002) have analyzed different studies in which it is demonstrated that teaching grammar is appropriate and that it may make a difference in the results obtained in the language learning process. based on the study conducted by these authors, ellis (2002) explains that “not only did form focused instruction make a difference but also that it made a very considerable difference” (p. 223) and concludes that there is “ample evidence to show that form-focused instruction (ffi) has a positive effect on second lan-guage (sl) acquisition” (p. 223). the assumptions presented above are not the only ones that contradict krashen’s view towards grammar instruction. for instance, long and robinson (1998) are certainly in favor of teaching grammar stating that “formal instruction helps to promote more rapid l2 acquisition and also contributes to higher levels of ultimate achievement” (p. 18). they theorize that grammar not only contributes to the development of accuracy, but it also has a beneficial effect on acquisition of l2. equally, ellis and fotos (1999) argue that formal grammar instruction can have a positive impact on acquisition when grammatical structures are shown in context. the authors state: “formal instruction may work best in promoting acquisition when it is linked with opportunities for natural communication” (p. 20). furthermore, ellis (2006) has resorted to previous research in language acquisition in order to find a clear answer related to grammar teaching. he explains that “some researchers have concluded that teaching grammar is beneficial, but to be effective it needs to be taught in a way that is compatible with the natural processes of acquisition” (p. 85). in this way, it is evident that there is sufficient relevant research to indicate that grammar is worth teaching, but the natural order in which learners acquire it should be respected. in brief, and based on the theory previously presented, it is clear that grammar instruction can be implemented in foreign language classes but a major recommendation is to bear in mind specific factors or variables such as students’ age, proficiency level, or needs and goals they may have (nassaji & fotos, 2004). accordingly, the following section includes some important aspects to consider when making the decision of including grammar instruction when planning foreign language lessons. formal grammar instruction: how, where, and when in the previous section, the importance and relevance of including grammar in the foreign language class were discussed and it was concluded that the teaching of grammar forms are worth teaching. however, educators might need to make decisions regarding the most effective techniques and moments universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras220 cruz corzo to include this aspect in their lessons. before starting to answer questions regarding the how, where, and when of incorporating linguistic forms in the foreign language class, it is relevant to take a closer look at the definitions or expectations regarding grammar teaching. ellis (2006) presents an interesting definition in which he asserts that it “involves any instructional technique that draws learners’ attention to some specific grammatical form in such a way that it helps them either to understand it meta-linguistically and/ or process it in comprehension and/or production so that they can internalize it” (p. 84). similarly, celcemurcia (1991) explains that “if learners are presented with many fully illustrated and well-demonstrated examples and then asked to describe other similar situations, they have a basis for understanding and practicing the correct use of these forms” (p. 467). bearing in mind the previous characteristics which can be considered when presenting linguistic forms in a foreign language environment, one can be state that egi can be implemented in language classes by taking into account, as previously suggested, its significance and usefulness to learners. how should grammar be presented? besides the concern about the use of formal grammar instruction in foreign language learning, it is also relevant to be acquainted with the most ap propriate grammar techniques in order to present grammatical structures to language learners. many educators may have been concerned with the idea of teaching grammar explicitly in their classes since they could acquire a teacher-centered perspective where students do not have an active participation. for instance, blaauw-hara (2006) explains that grammar teaching is visualized as a negative technique where “the teacher lectures on grammatical concepts, diagrams sentences on the board, or gives a quiz” (p. 166) and unfortunately, many foreign language educators share this same viewpoint and they may see grammar as a boring and meaningless process where learners acquire isolated grammar forms that are rarely produced in authentic conversations. however, grammar instruction can be presented from different perspectives in which learners play a more dynamic role and become active participants of their language learning process. to begin with, using guessing or discovery techniques is an opportunity for students to identify and understand linguistic forms on their own that can be used later in context; secondly, applying practice activities allows participants to put the language learned into practice; and lastly, using presentational techniques in which practice is not required but the full attention of learners is necessary (ellis, 2006). in addition, brown (2007, p. 421), who has summarized the research of various linguists, explains that grammar can be included in the language class if the appropriate techniques are used. the author summarizes five important characteristics as follows: • forms that are embedded in meaningful, communicative contexts, • forms that contribute positively to communicative goals, • forms that promote accuracy within fluent, communicative language, • forms that do not overwhelm students with linguistic terminology, and • forms that are as lively and intrinsically motivating as possible. in addition, there is a wide range of possibilities in which to present grammar. for instance, brown (2007) proposes charts as a useful tool for clarification, the use of authentic objects to engage learners, maps and drawings used as visual aids, dialogues for students to practice linguistic forms in context, and written texts to process selected forms. considering the previously mentioned aspects, teachers can propose a variety of activities and tech niques in order to present explicit forms which, according to linguists such as fotos (1994), celce 221profile vol. 15, no. 2, october 2013. issn 1657-0790 (printed) 2256-5760 (online). bogotá, colombia. pages 215-224 formal grammar instruction: theoretical aspects to contemplate its teaching murcia (1991), and ellis (2006), if used and prese nte d appropr i ately, b e c ome e ss e nt i a l to t he learning process. in general, grammar can be seen as an aspect that can be included and presented in a variety of forms in which students are expected to use the language in context and with the intention of developing an accurate production. when should grammar be presented? the second question regarding the most ap propriate time to present linguistic forms in the language class is related to the proficiency level of the learner. brown (2007), for example, explains that grammar focus at beginning levels may block acquisition or fluency skills and asserts that “research agrees that at the intermediate to advanced levels, a more explicit focus on form is less likely to disturb communicative fluency, and can assist learners in developing accuracy” (p. 422). likewise, ellis (2006), who has evaluated the most influential theories concerning the teaching of grammar in second language acquisition, proposes grammar instruction to those individuals who have already acquired an intermediate level of english. he explains that it is recommended to “emphasize meaning-focused instruction to begin with and introduce grammar teaching later, when learners have already begun to form their interlanguages” (p. 90). ellis (2006) bases this assumption on previous research in immersion programs where students are able to develop both fluent and proficient communication without formal instruction. the results suggest that grammar should be presented later in order to develop grammatical accuracy. in general, the author proposes to teach “explicit grammatical knowledge as a means of assisting subsequent acquisition of implicit knowledge” (p. 102). in the same vein, lightbown (2004) agrees with ellis’ suggestion explaining that “some linguistic features are acquired incidentally without intentional effort, conscious awareness or teacher’s guidance” (p. 75). this statement refers to the teaching of grammar as a mechanism to enhance features that need to be developed with formal instruction. in consideration to the explanations offered before, it can be concluded that grammar should certainly be incorporated in language curriculum, but it is advisable to be presented to those individuals who need or are prepared to receive formal grammatical instruction in the second or foreign language. what kind of grammar instruction? thus, the final question regarding egi is related to the most appropriate manner for incorporating it into the foreign language class. first, it is relevant to identify the differences between extensive and intensive grammar teaching; the former refers to the teaching of a specific grammatical structure during a continued period of time, whereas the latter refers to a variety of grammatical structures that are presented in a shorter term. once again, ellis (2006) provides relevant information to compare these two types of instruction. the main characteristic of intensive grammar instruction is the opportunity that is given to the learner to put into practice what s/he has learned. therefore, this type of instruction is presented with drills and task opportunities to practice the target structure. conversely, extensive grammar teaching should be developed within learning activities that may be focused either on form or meaning. finally, the author provides a definite answer about these types of grammar teaching: “learning grammar is best conducted using a mixture of implicit and explicit feedback types that are both input based and output based” (p. 102). besides an extensive and intensive focus, explicit and implicit instruction can be considered. the former refers to a conscious mental process learners need to overcome in order to internalize grammar rules and universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras222 cruz corzo later put into practice. ellis (2010) explains that through explicit grammar instruction learners are: encouraged to develop metalinguistic awareness of the rule. this can be achieved deductively, as when a rule is given to the learners or inductively as when the learners are asked to work out a rule for themselves from an array of data illustrating the rule. (p. 4) on the contrary, implicit instruction is aimed at promoting a further thinking process where learners infer and deduce the rules and accurate use of the language. thus, ellis (2010) explains that “implicit instruction is directed at enabling learners to infer rules without awareness. thus it contrasts with ex plicit instruction in that there is no intention to develop any understanding of what is being learned” (p. 4). additionally, housen and pierrard (2005) present a clear differentiation between explicit and implicit instruction (see table 1). table 1 offers an interesting perspective that can be considered when making decisions regarding the most appropriate type of instruction to present grammar. however, it is important to bear in mind that educators need to have a clear focus and in tention when deciding on the type of instruction to be implemented since students respond to the instructions accordingly (ellis, 2010). decisions on whether to use an implicit or an explicit focus have also been a controversial issue. some educators prefer to use an implicit methodology since it invites students to deduce grammar uses and structures on their own whereas others prefer the idea of being explicit and help learners to develop awareness on the uses of linguistic forms. norris and ortega (2002) offer an explicit answer by stating “that focused l2 instruction results in large target-oriented gains, that explicit types of instruction are more effective than implicit types, and that focus on form and focus on forms interventions result in equivalent and large effects” (p. 417). in addition to the types of instruction discussed previously, long and robinson (1998) present two main options to be considered in language teaching: focus on forms and focus on meaning. the authors explain focus on meaning as an incidental or implicit learning that is sufficient for successful second or foreign language acquisition. analytic approaches such as natural, communicative, and immersion are the best representation for this method. on the contrary, synthetic methods such as audiolingual, grammar translation, and total physical response give specific emphasis to grammatical structures that are not usually presented in context; it means these table 1. implicit and explicit forms of form-focused instruction (based on housen & pierrard, 2005, p. 10) implicit ffi explicit ffi ȟ attracts attention to target form ȟ is delivered spontaneously (e.g., in an otherwise communication-oriented activity) ȟ is unobtrusive (minimal interruption of communication of meaning) ȟ presents target forms in context ȟ makes no use of metalanguage ȟ encourages free use of the target form. ȟ directs attention to target form ȟ is predetermined and planned (e.g., as the main focus and goal of a teaching activity) ȟ is obtrusive (interruption of communicative meaning) ȟ presents target forms in isolation ȟ uses metalinguistic terminology (e.g., rule explanation) ȟ involves controlled practice of target language. 223profile vol. 15, no. 2, october 2013. issn 1657-0790 (printed) 2256-5760 (online). bogotá, colombia. pages 215-224 formal grammar instruction: theoretical aspects to contemplate its teaching approaches are mainly focused on forms. the decision about how grammar should be taught in language teaching should be made based on learners’ needs. however, taking into account previous research, neither fluency nor accuracy must be separated, but should be integrated and developed concurrently. conclusions founded on relevant research and theory, a final conclusion about the teaching of formal grammar instruction can be provided. certainly, language acquisition is a process that requires informal and natural input (krashen, 2003), but research has demonstrated the significance of grammar instruction in foreign language learning and second language acquisition that serves not only to develop a fluent, but also an accurate use of language. consequently, it has been corroborated that explicit grammar instruction can be presented to learners who have already acquired an intermediate level of language by integrating extensive and intensive approaches that can be focused either on form or meaning. finally, language should be considered as a vehicle of social and educational communication that needs to be used in formal and informal settings, but it is relevant to bear in mind that the decision about where, when, and how to use it is primarily made by speakers. thus, language teachers are encouraged to provide students with the necessary tools to produce not only fluid speech in certain contexts, but also to produce standard and coherent statements in formal and informal settings. certainly, it is not the intention of this paper to disapprove teaching approaches which have demonstrated success for years or acquisition theories that have enhanced the teaching practice of many educators, but the objective was definitely to learn what theory and research had to say regarding accuracy in language teaching. i personally believe that it is unnecessary to qualify or disqualify teaching trends, but identifying the most significant characteristics of each method might be an interesting eclectic process to be considered for further teaching practices in which an accurate, fluent, and communicativeauthentic language can be promoted concurrently. references blaauw-hara, m. (2006). why our students need instruction in grammar, and how we should go about it. teaching english in the two-year college, 34(2), 165-178. brown, d. (2007). teaching by principles. an interactive approach to language pedagogy. new york, ny: pearson longman. celce-murcia, m. (1991). grammar pedagogy in second and foreign language teaching. tesol quarterly, 25(3), 459-480. ellis, r. (2002). does form-focused instruction affect the acquisition of implicit knowledge? studies in second language acquisition, 24(2), 223-236. ellis, r. (2006). current issues in the teaching of grammar: an sla perspective. tesol quarterly, 40(1), 83-107. ellis, r. (2010). does explicit grammar instruction work? ninjal project review, 1, 3-22. ellis, r., & fotos, s. (1999). learning a second language through interaction. amsterdam, nl: john benjamins publishing company. fotos, s. (1994). integrating grammar instruction and communicative language use through grammar consciousness-raising tasks. tesol quarterly, 28(2), 323-351. housen, a., & pierrard, m. (2005). investigating instructed second language acquisition. in a. housen, & m. pierrard (eds.), investigations in instructed second language acquisition (pp. 1-27). germany: mouton de gruyter. instituto colombiano para la evaluación de la educación. (2011). [figure icfes results in english test 2005-2011]. retrieved from http://www.icfesinteractivo.gov.co/ historicos/ krashen, s. (2003). explorations in language acquisition and use. portsmouth, uk: heinemann. lightbown, p. (2004). commentary: what to teach? how to teach? in v. patten (ed.), processing instruction: theory, universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras224 cruz corzo research, and commentary (pp. 65-75). mahwah, nj: lawrence erlbaum associates, publishers. long, m. (1983). does second language instruction make a difference? a review of the research. tesol quarterly, 17(3), 359-382. long, m., & robinson, p. (1998). focus on form: theory, research, and practice. in c. doughty, & j. williams (eds.), focus on form in classroom second language acquisition (pp. 15-41). new york, ny: cambridge university press. macías, d. f. (2011). towards the use of focus on form instruction in foreign language learning and teaching in colombia. íkala, revista de lenguaje y cultura, 16(29), 127-143. nassaji, h., & fotos, s. (2004). current developments in research on the teaching of grammar. annual review of applied linguistics, 24(1), 126-145. norris, j. m., & ortega, l. (2002). effectiveness of l2 instruction: a research synthesis and quantitative meta-analysis. language learning, 50(3), 417-528. richards, j. (2002). accuracy and fluency revisited. in e. hinkel, & s. fotos (eds.), new perspectives on grammar teaching in second language classrooms (pp. 35-50). mahwah, nj: lawrence erlbaum associates, publishers. schulz, r. a. (2001). cultural differences in student and teacher perceptions concerning the role of grammar instruction and corrective feedback: usa-colombia. the modern language journal, 85(2), 244-258. terrell, t. d. (1991). the role of grammar instruction in a communicative approach. the modern language journal, 75(1), 52-63. about the author carolina cruz corzo holds a ba in modern languages from universidad distrital francisco josé de caldas (colombia), a specialist degree in applied linguistics from universidad la gran colombia (colombia), and an ma in tesol from greensboro college, north carolina, usa. she currently works as a full time teacher at universidad de la sabana (colombia). 199profile vol. 16, no. 2, october 2014. issn 1657-0790 (printed) 2256-5760 (online). bogotá, colombia. pages 199-205 enacting a people-centred curriculum in elt with teenage learners la vivencia de un currículo basado en los actores de la clase de inglés con adolescentes darío luis banegas1* university of warwick, conventry, united kingdom aurelia velázquez2** colegio salesiano san luis gonzaga, esquel, argentina in this paper we reflect on the extent to which the learner-centred curriculum in english language teaching includes teachers and learners. we briefly describe the top-down nature of curriculum development in argentina, then describe and discuss personal and collaborative explorations based on our identities as teachers of english in secondary education with a people-centred approach in the classroom. through this paper we wish to highlight pedagogies and teacher strategies which are enacted for and from the classroom and built around both teachers and learners. recommendations for policy makers are included. key words: communicative approach, curriculum enactment, learner-centred curriculum, teacher strategies. en este artículo reflexionamos sobre la medida en que el currículo basado en el estudiante incluye a docentes y estudiantes. describimos la naturaleza descendente del desarrollo curricular en argentina y discutimos exploraciones personales y colaborativas, basadas en nuestras identidades como profesores de inglés en la escuela secundaria, dirigidas hacia un enfoque que incluya los actores áulicos. mediante este artículo buscamos resaltar aquellas pedagogías y estrategias docentes vividas desde y para el aula y construidas alrededor tanto de docentes como de estudiantes. el artículo incluye recomendaciones para autoridades ministeriales. palabras clave: currículo basado en el estudiante, currículo vivido, enfoque comunicativo, estrategias docentes. * e-mail: d.banegas@warwick.ac.uk ** e-mail: aure7000@gmail.com how to cite this article (apa, 6th ed.): banegas, d. l., & velázquez, a. (2014). enacting a people-centred curriculum in elt with teenage learners. profile issues in teachers’ professional development, 16(2), 199-205. http://dx.doi.org/10.15446/profile.v16n2.40902. this article was received on november 13, 2013, and accepted on february 26, 2014. this is an open access article distributed under the terms of the creative commons license attribution-noncommercial-noderivatives 4.0 international license. consultation is possible at http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/. universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras200 banegas & velázquez communicative language teaching and the curriculum more than forty years ago the concept of communicative competence, as noted in fernández (2011), became conflated with the communicative approach which, in turn, became fused with communicative language teaching (brumfit & johnson, 1979). since then, english language teaching (elt) has placed learners at the heart of the curriculum (nunan, 1988; prapaisit de segovia & hardison, 2009). in graves’ (2008) words, a curriculum is “the processes and products of planning, teaching, and evaluating a course of study or related courses;” while a syllabus is “a plan for what is to be learned in a particular course or course of study” (p. 147). graves observes that the specialist approach to curriculum development can be summarized as follows: planning is in the hands of a group of experts; implementation is in the hands of teachers. in our identity as teachers, we believe this is problematic for there exists a lack of alignment between the specialists’ own ideas and what we teachers implement inside the classroom. instead, graves proposes the concept of curriculum enactment to emphasize that a curriculum needs to be brought to life to have a purpose, and such a purpose, we shall add, is driven by careful needs analysis of the context in which this curriculum emerges. yet, to what extent do teachers and learners play an active and equal role in curriculum development? how can we all become active agents and co-developers of this curriculum at the level of development and at the deeper level which curriculum enactment entails? in this paper we discuss what ways teachers and learners are part of the learner-centred curriculum in elt. first, we describe curriculum design in argentina. secondly, we discuss different pedagogical explorations based on our experience as teachers of english in secondary education. last, drawing on these personal experiences, we put forward a people-centred curriculum which represents both learners’ as well as teachers’ voices. learners and teachers in the curriculum following the conceptualization of curriculum enactment, the learner-centred curriculum in elt incorporates both learners and teachers (nunan, 1988) with different yet complimentary roles (tudor, 1993). we should all develop strategies “to bridge the gap between learning and instruction” as suggested in nunan (1995, p. 133) in order to promote memorable and meaningful experiences that transcend the classroom. while we cannot deny that the learner-centred curriculum and curriculum enactment embody by definition the relevance of context and a sociocultural view on language learning (lantolf, 2000; villacañas de castro, 2013), developing a curriculum in state education is often far from participatory (wang, 2007; but see banegas, 2011). along these lines banegas (2013) notes that although there have been efforts to include teachers’ voices, the curriculum is still a top-down process, decontextualized at times, and teachers are seen as implementers. the author adds that curricula in argentina advocate a learner-centred approach (braun, 2011) yet teachers and learners are not systematically consulted and more often than not we teachers feel that, when consulted, our opinions are disregarded if these do not coincide with those of the curriculum developers. in argentina, as in many other contexts, banegas (2013) explains that teachers receive the official curriculum as a guideline. in this sense, the curriculum may be prescriptive but it should not be seen as inflexible or imposed since teachers still have the freedom to depart from it. nevertheless, the more teachers depart from it, the more we arrive at the coexistence of parallel, sometimes in-opposition, and observed curricula. although we understand that a 201profile vol. 16, no. 2, october 2014. issn 1657-0790 (printed) 2256-5760 (online). bogotá, colombia. pages 199-205 enacting a people-centred curriculum in elt with teenage learners learner-centred curriculum should lead to learnercentred lessons (jones, 2007) without thinking that teachers are overlooked, we sometimes feel, due to institutional or ministerial pressure, that we do not have a say and that our learners are customers we need to satisfy. in our experience we develop our syllabus and lessons in a continuum which moves from teachercentred to learner-centred ones. such a continuum challenges the misleading extremes or a teachercentred versus learner-centred dichotomy, and illustrates that a variety in lesson frontedness usually responds to perceived contextual dynamics (garrett & shortall, 2002; lee & ng, 2010). yet, isolated practices may not be enough. instead, we need to encourage and promote these undertakings by exploring our practices (allwright & hanks, 2009) and writing about them. that said, how can teachers and learners enact a curriculum which will include everyone’s voices? we believe that through this forum we may motivate colleagues to explore horizontal classrooms, that is, where tensions around power are discussed at the levels of practice and enquiry. how to incorporate teachers’ and learners’ voices in argentina, as in many other contexts, english in secondary education is a mandatory subject and therefore learners’ motivation to learn english may be highly influenced by their desire to pass the subject. consequently, teachers face the challenge of establishing a dialogue between learner motivation and their own motivation. from a relational view of motivation, ushioda (2011, p. 203) asserts that we should move from “motivating the person rather than the l2 learner.” in a similar vein, we suggest that we should move from motivating the learner to motivating holistically all the people inside the classroom so that their voices find a meaningful place in the teaching and learning processes and the curriculum. this may lead to a people-centred approach in elt. we can incorporate teachers’ and learners’ voices by having teachers and learners discuss how they wish to teach and learn what they are supposed to learn, and in what ways they can add those contextual features which a top-down official curriculum will never provide. as banegas (2013) reports, a group of teachers asked their learners to suggest topics, materials, and activities. at the end of each term, learners answered a survey to collect their suggestions. learners’ preferences were then negotiated and incorporated into what teachers already had developed. similarly, teachers can reflect and share with their colleagues and learners what their strengths are and what motivates them to teach a lesson. in so doing, we may discover that learner-suggested sources for listening indicate an interest in authentic materials, or we may realize that, as has happened to us, a teacher and learners interested in history may integrate the passive voice and world war ii meaningfully. based on our classroom experience, taking into account learners’ interests becomes of paramount importance. as teachers, we should become involved with their everyday lives so as to gather— and then make use of—information as regards their likes and dislikes. the older the learners, the more aware they are of their learning styles. some learners are more extroverted, some are keen on writing, others enjoy reading and debating, others prefer acting out. the same runs true among teachers. there are no two groups or teachers alike. this kind of information can be truly helpful, especially when dealing with groups of around 40 learners, a common feature in argentina, and colleagues with different personal styles and lived experiences. involvement to enact the curriculum by promoting everyone’s participation can also be sought universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras202 banegas & velázquez by accepting new challenges and activities promoted by other bodies. in 2013, one of the authors of the present paper was invited to contribute to a federal project led by the british embassy in buenos aires. the authors of this article decided to work together by co-teaching a lesson on creative poetry writing. learners created short poems based on authentic answer phone messages (spiro, 2004) but what was innovative for everyone was that learners were invited to record their poems as those would be part of an open-access audio library online. not only did the learners become part of this library, but also the teachers stepped in by recording their contributions. if the learning atmosphere is friendly, the learners themselves may openly suggest activities or topics they are interested in. fortunately, this has happened to us several times. whenever learners voice their suggestions, we try to implement their ideas in different measures and ways. for example, a group of teenage learners once completed coursebook activ ities on food but we supplemented the material with authentic videos from cookery programmes with the aim of promoting vocabulary identification and language functions. they welcomed this and suggested recording their own cooking videos. they exerted themselves to use as many verbs as possible and they posed many questions about pronunciation prior to recording. they were eager to share their videos and dishes with the rest of the class. in retrospect, we felt that what started as learners’ spontaneous reaction led to a project. such a project prompted another one about healthy habits and physical exercise. on this occasion, teacher and learners agreed to make a video or a class demonstration about a sport or other activity familiar to them. in class, the choice of sports was negotiated as learners did not wish to repeat them. learners had to carry out internet searches for information as they realized they would need content and subject-specific vocabulary. some of the videos included special locations and props. this was possible as the teacher felt involved in the project and did not remain as an outsider facilitator. when working with coursebooks, teachers may add follow-up activities through which they can participate fully along with their students. in our school, a learner suggested describing clothes but also finding out about fashion through the decades. one of the teachers took this suggestion and added that each group should dress accordingly. what these learners did not know was that the teacher herself decided to take part and entered the classroom wearing striped oxford trousers, a spotted t-shirt, a long black wig, huge sunglasses, and a flowery necklace. while the experiences outlined above may depend on teachers’ individual characteristics, they all reinforce the need for involvement of all the people inside a classroom in different ways. if either the teacher or the learners are not truly involved, the lessons can turn out to be dull or meaningless. more often than not, we teachers find ourselves giving our learners tasks or activities we ourselves rarely find useful or relevant. filling in the gaps, deciding whether statements are true or false, choosing the appropriate answer are mere examples. the truth is that our learners can perceive that we are not fully into the activity, and they complete them only because they have to. however, when we teachers are convinced that what we ask our learners to do is significant for them and for us, they will definitely launch themselves into the tasks. we should be captivated with the task so as to expand this feeling towards our learners. in this landscape, teachers and learners need to negotiate the curriculum so that the lesson becomes a motivating environment for everyone. in addition, the examples above indicate that teachers may work towards a people-cen203profile vol. 16, no. 2, october 2014. issn 1657-0790 (printed) 2256-5760 (online). bogotá, colombia. pages 199-205 enacting a people-centred curriculum in elt with teenage learners tred curriculum by maximizing the potentialities a coursebook may bring. a coursebook topic or activity may trigger the planning of a project or a materials supplement as was the case of cookery programme videos. in this regard, mcgrath (2013) makes the case that teachers can adapt and supplement coursebooks by involving learners as co-authors of classroom materials. not only can learners suggest topics or activities, but they can also contribute to enacting the curriculum by providing sources of input, games, or presentations, or become engaged in access-self materials as suggested in tomlinson (2011). we have experienced situations where learners suggested websites they can work on autonomously or sitcoms videos because they believe that the language sounds “more real,” as a learner put it informally (see alsurmi, 2012). from the bottom up when teachers give room for learners’ participation and allow themselves to have a say, a negotiated syllabus through a people-centred approach is enacted, but, how can we let curriculum planners know about these democratic and motivating context-responsive endeavours? with the support of school principals, teachers may write systematic reports and experiential accounts of their enacted curriculum and include learners’ own work and sample materials or activities. these reports could then be submitted to curriculum planners through the hierarchical structures in place in each context so that curriculum planners can collect stories and voices (banegas, 2011) and, hopefully, realize that they should see teachers and learners as co-authors of the elt curriculum. readers may find the suggestion of including teachers’ voices familiar. yet, to what extent do we read reports of curricula based on teachers’ and learners’ views? teachers and learners can develop a people-centred classroom with the aim of enacting a context-responsive curriculum and a sociocultural view of learning. in other words, the classroom should represent both teachers and learners in constant negotiation even when reports indicate that including learners’ perspectives on classroom practices does not seem to have sustainable impact on motivation (ruesch, bown, & dewey, 2012). a context-responsive curriculum and a people-centred approach could be implemented through an extremely simple tool we have: dialogue. these dialogues do not need to be about radical changes at once but, nevertheless, will begin to be seen as evidence of steps towards critical language teaching (huang, 2012; rocha pessoa & urzêda freitas, 2012). if each teacher introduces small classroom changes towards a people-centred approach and then these are shared among colleagues and reported to their superiors, there will be a time when teachers’ and learners’ voices will begin to shape the future of elt curricula (banegas, 2013). implications for policy-makers the suggestions we propose above are a reflection of the possibilities we have in our elt teaching contexts in southern argentina. however, we do not claim that the conditions to achieve these suggestions are currently found in all contexts, even within argentina. while we understand that flexibility and participation may be granted and exercised in different degrees across contexts, we believe that teachers can take small but continuous steps towards emancipation and democratisation of elt curriculum development. nonetheless, it is not enough for teachers to raise their voices or enact an isolated version of a people-centred approach. a dialogic relationship presupposes more the presence of more than one speaker engaged in communication. in the eduuniversidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras204 banegas & velázquez cational arena, this presupposition implies that policy-makers, curriculum developers, and education planners need to leave their comfort zone and embrace teachers’ interpellations, practices, and wishes to participate as an opportunity for improvement, negotiation, and legitimation of the policies sought to be implemented. policy makers and curriculum planners can achieve teacher engagement at the level of elt curriculum development by generating actions which help them gather teachers’ opinions and experiences so that efforts to produce a people-centred approach are shared, extended, and adapted. for example, teachers can be invited to share on an online platform via uploading their brief reports, projects, classroom accounts, and learners’ opinions based on their participatory and enacted curriculum. these elements could be used by policy makers to map out curriculum enactment, strengths, and opportunities for change. furthermore, policy makers can work towards an elt curriculum which emerges from the intersection of top-down regulations and agreements and school realities. in so doing, policy makers will also become part of a curriculum built upon curriculum planners, teachers, and learners, among other agents. conclusions a people-centred approach will be a new space for reflection, negotiation, mutual understanding, and recognition of all the paths we can critically walk towards knowledge creation and recreation. nevertheless, a people-centred approach should be strengthened through the support of a participatory elt curriculum. in elt, teenagers need to have a voice so that their needs, interests, motivations, and creative selves are part of the classroom. after all, they are the centre of our endevaours and their participation should be direct. in other words, if we wish to find out more about them as learners, we must ask them in a space of mutual respect and understanding. we should not make decisions based on our intitution or assumptions. we should base our informed decisions on information gleaned after having listened to them in this participatory space. this space needs to feature constant dialogue and willingness to innovate, explore, share, and negotiate. that is, we should not do solely what learners wish. they are not our customers and both parties are aware of our different but interrelated identities. sometimes teachers are reminded of focusing on learners in terms of strategies and motivation. however, giving learners a voice does not erase teachers and their own motivations. involving teachers in the equation will also impact learners. 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(2007). the student-centred classroom. cambridge, uk: cambridge university press. lantolf, j. p. (ed.). (2000). sociocultural theory and second language learning. oxford, uk: oxford university press. lee, w., & ng, s. (2010). reducing student reticence through teacher interaction strategy. elt journal, 64(3), 302-313. doi:10.1093/elt/ccp080 mcgrath, i. (2013). teaching materials and the roles of efl/esl teachers: practice and theory. london, uk: bloomsbury. nunan, d. (1988). the learner-centred curriculum: a study in second language teaching. cambridge, uk: cambridge university press. nunan, d. (1995). closing the gap between learning and instruction. tesol quarterly, 29(1), 133-158. doi: 10.2307/3587808 prapaisit de segovia, l., & hardison, d. m. (2009). implementing education reform: efl teachers’ perspective. elt journal, 63(2), 154-162. doi:10.1093/elt/ccn024 rocha pessoa, r., & urzêda freitas, m. t. (2012). challenges in critical language teaching. tesol quarterly, 46(4), 753-776. doi:10.1002/tesq.46 ruesch, a., bown, j., & dewey, d. p. (2012). student and teacher perceptions of motivational strategies in the foreign language classroom. innovation in language learning and teaching, 6(1), 15-27. doi: 10.1080/17501229.2011.562510 spiro, j. (2004). creative poetry writing. oxford, uk: oxford university press. tomlinson, b. (2011). access-self materials. in b. tomlinson (ed.), materials development in language teaching (2nd ed., pp. 414-432). cambridge, uk: cambridge university press. tudor, i. (1993). teacher roles in the learner-centred classroom. elt journal, 47(1), 22-31. doi:10.1093/elt/47.1.22 ushioda, e. (2011). language learning motivation, self and identity: current theoretical perspectives. computer assisted language learning, 24(3), 199-210. doi:10.108 0/09588221.2010.538701 villacañas de castro, l. s. (2013). teaching english as a foreign language in accordance with social-constructivist pedagogy. tejuelo, 17, 97-119. wang, q. (2007). the national curriculum changes and their effects on english language teaching in the people’s republic of china. in j. cummins & c. davidson (eds.), international handbook of english language teaching (pp. 87-105). new york, ny: springer. about the authors darío luis banegas, phd, is an associate fellow at the university of warwick, and a teacher trainer and curriculum developer with the ministry of education of chubut, argentina. his main interests are clil, materials development, teacher research, and teacher development. aurelia velázquez is a teacher of english and holds an ma in education. she is also a teacher trainer at a pre-service teacher education programme in esquel, argentina. her main interests are curriculum development, education management, and learner strategies. 85profile vol. 15, no. 2, october 2013. issn 1657-0790 (printed) 2256-5760 (online). bogotá, colombia. pages 85-97 beliefs of chilean university english teachers: uncovering their role in the teaching and learning process creencias de profesores universitarios de inglés: descubriendo su papel en el proceso de enseñanza y aprendizaje claudio díaz larenas*1 paola alarcón hernández**2 andrea vásquez neira***3 boris pradel suárez****4 universidad de concepción, chile mabel ortiz navarrete*****5 universidad católica de la santísima concepción, chile beliefs continue to be an important source to get to know teachers’ thinking processes and pedagogical decisions. research in teachers’ beliefs has traditionally come from english-speaking contexts; however, a great deal of scientific work has been written lately in brazil, mexico, colombia, and argentina. this study elicits 30 chilean university teachers’ beliefs about their own role in the teaching and learning of english in university environments. through a qualitative research design, the data collected from inter views and journals were analyzed, triangulated, and categorized based on semantic content analysis. results of the study indicate that university teachers reveal challenging and complex views about what it is like to teach english as a foreign language in a university context in chile. the article concludes with a call to reflect on the importance of beliefs unravelling in teacher education programmes. key words: learning, teachers’ beliefs, teaching of english, university level. las creencias continúan siendo una fuente de importancia para conocer los procesos de pensamiento y los estilos pedagógicos de los docentes. los estudios sobre las creencias docentes provienen en su mayoría de contextos angloparlantes; sin embargo, en los últimos años se ha escrito una gran cantidad de trabajos científicos en brasil, méxico, colombia y argentina. este estudio recoge las creencias de treinta docentes universitarios chilenos sobre su papel en la enseñanza y aprendizaje del inglés en ambientes universitarios. a partir de un diseño de investigación cualitativo, los datos recolectados por medio de entrevistas y diarios personales fueron analizados, triangulados y categorizados según el análisis de contenido semántico. los resultados indicaron que los docentes de educación superior tienen visiones desafiantes y complejas sobre lo que significa enseñar inglés como lengua extranjera en un contexto universitario en chile. el artículo concluye con una invitación a reflexionar sobre la importancia de transparentar las creencias en los programas de formación inicial docente. palabras clave: aprendizaje, creencias de docentes, enseñanza del inglés, universidad. * e-mail: claudiodiaz@udec.cl ** e-mail: palarco@udec.cl *** e-mail: avasquez@udec.cl **** e-mail: bpradel@udec.cl ***** e-mail: mortiz@ucsc.cl the research findings are part of a government-funded grant entitled fondecyt regular (nº 1120247) “investigación del conocimiento profesional, las creencias implícitas y el desempeño en aula de estudiantes de pedagogía en inglés como estrategia de generación de indicadores de monitoreo de su proceso formativo.” this article was received on august 16, 2012, and accepted on march 1, 2013. universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras86 díaz larenas, alarcón hernández, vásquez neira, pradel suárez, & ortiz navarrete introduction this research is based on the assumption that beliefs directly affect the teaching practice and the potential success or failure of the teaching and learning process (borg, 2003; kalaja & barcelos, 2003; pajares, 1992; woods, 1996). in particular, it considers factors that, both directly and indirectly, influence the process of teaching a foreign language, besides the fact that the teaching practice itself can rightfully be addressed from the perspective of the cognition of a university teacher. in this context, the concept of “beliefs” includes all mental, emotional, and reflexive constructs that derive from personal experiences, prejudices, judgments, ideas, and intentions (barcelos & kalaja, 2011). this study aims at identifying university teachers’ beliefs about their own role in the teaching and learning of english in university environments. conceptual framework although there are various international bibliographical references regarding general pedagogical beliefs about the teaching and learning process of teachers (borg, 2003), there is little research in this area in chile, despite the several contributions from other latin american countries. consequently, this study addresses the beliefs of a group of 30 university english teachers about their own role in the teaching and learning process at a university level. in general, beliefs are defined as understandings, premises, or psychological propositions an individual has about the world (kane, sandretto, & heath, 2002). beliefs consist of sets of integrated and generally contradictory and messy ideas that are generated from everyday experiences. according to díaz and solar (2011), beliefs are incomplete and simplified versions of reality that have some level of internal organization, structure and consistency. through the study of beliefs, the frames of reference by which teachers perceive and process information, analyze, give meaning, and focus their educational performance are made explicit. thus, studying the beliefs teachers have involves exploring the hidden side of teaching (díaz, martínez, roa, & sanhueza, 2010). in the scope of this study, beliefs are understood as individual ways a teacher understands the students, the nature of the learning process, the classroom, the teacher’s role in the classroom, and the pedagogical objectives (northcote, 2009). freeman (2002) supports the importance of reflecting on beliefs because this may lead to a number of advantages, such as revealing the conscious thinking behind certain actions; it may make teachers choose to teach differently from the way they were taught or want to expand their techniques and practices; it can confirm the positive things that teachers do in the classroom or make teachers reflect on their somewhat negative teaching practices. borg (2009) and borg and al-busaidi (2012) affirm that beliefs can certainly influence classroom practices, but classroom practices can also trigger the shaping of new beliefs. stenberg (2011) states that major changes in the quality of university education will not occur if the beliefs that university teachers have about teaching itself do not change. beliefs vary in intensity and type, and over time, form a system. the ease with which teachers change their beliefs is related to the intensity of those beliefs. the more intense the belief is, the greater the resistance to change it. to reinforce this idea, several authors argue that teachers’ beliefs are rooted in their personal experiences and are therefore highly resistant to change (farrell, 2006; kasoutas & malamitsa, 2009; richards & lockhart, 1996). there is no denying the importance beliefs have in education in general; however, the obvious relationship between beliefs and teaching practices cannot be 87profile vol. 15, no. 2, october 2013. issn 1657-0790 (printed) 2256-5760 (online). bogotá, colombia. pages 85-97 beliefs of chilean university english teachers: uncovering their role in the teaching... ignored. tudor (2001) highlights the importance of researching beliefs university teachers have as a way of emphasizing the important role they play in the teaching practice. brown and frazier (2001) argue that teachers should be treated as active learners who build their own understandings. humans are agents that interact in their environment with a purpose and learn from their actions and use this knowledge to plan future actions (levin, 2001). if teachers feel the need to improve their teaching practice, to reflect on it and to look for alternative teaching strategies, it indicates an improvement in their teaching practices is near. however, for this change to be effective and permanent, this process should take place at an early stage in order to renovate those deep-rooted and ineffective pedagogical behaviors and criteria. on the other hand, it is interesting to quote gross (2009), who argues that important possibilities exist for change, development, and enrichment, and even conceptual changes toward epistemological positions that could be considered more complex and richer in the teaching projection in a more flexible and multiperspective way. from this point of view, brown and frazier (2001) raise the importance of researching the thoughts and decision making of teachers, the nature and content of these thoughts, how these thoughts are influenced by the organizational and curricular context in which teachers work, how the thoughts teachers have relate to their classroom behaviour, and ultimately, to students’ thoughts and behaviours. all of this would enhance the level of understanding of instructional processes that occur within the classroom and the consequent improvement of the teaching practice. the beliefs english teachers have are very closely related to the didactic approach that dominates the discourse of the participants interviewed for this study. that is to say, either a communicative or traditional teaching approach greatly influenced the participants’ beliefs about their role as teachers in the classroom (i.e. the role teachers have can be seen as the person in charge of transmitting knowledge or facilitating the learning process). research design this is a non-experimental and transectional study based on an analytical and interpretive case study (bisquerra, 2009), as it explores the beliefs 30 university english teachers have about their own role and functions in the process of learning and teaching english as a foreign language in higher education at two chilean universities. in a case study, data and analysis are deeply and thoroughly examined, and become relevant inasmuch as the readers contextualize them to their own psycho-pedagogical reality. participants the 30 participants of this research make up a nonprobabilistic and intentional sample (corbetta, 2003) where, taking into account specific characteristics, subjects were selected one by one. in the case of this current study the participants should be university teachers who teach english as a foreign language at chilean universities and they should have more than five years of work experience. research question what beliefs shape the cognitive dimension of a group of 30 university english teachers about their own role in the teaching and learning process of english in higher education? research assumption beliefs influence the teaching practice. during the process of teaching and learning, teachers must take a series of decisions that are guided by their linguistic and pedagogical beliefs which define their performance in the classroom. universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras88 díaz larenas, alarcón hernández, vásquez neira, pradel suárez, & ortiz navarrete instruments • a semi-structured interview was used as a specific model of verbal interaction with the objective of understanding the phenomenon of linguistic and pedagogical beliefs of the participants about their role as teachers. the dimensions that were taken into account for the interview were as follows: theoretical principles of teaching english, theoretical approaches of the teaching role and functions of teachers, the english teacher as a professional in education, the role of students, the different learning styles, the relationship between objectives, contents, methods, activities, context as well as teaching resources, materials, information and communication technologies (ict), and assessment. this article focuses the attention on some of the most important actors in pedagogical innovation: teachers, their role and functions in the learning process. • a self-reflection interview was applied in which the participants created a time line with the experiences they considered most relevant to their teaching practice and then explained the reasons they considered to choose the different experiences. • an autobiographical diary was used as a procedure to find out what teachers thought about different aspects of their teaching over a period of six months. procedure for data analysis after validating the data generation techniques mentioned above, we collected from the autobiographical diaries, semi-structured interview, and self-reflection interview and then performed the data analysis. the data analysis is a representation of the social phenomenon and creates a vision of different social contexts and its actors. an analysis of initial structural content was performed and then the data were submitted to the atlasti qualitative analysis software, which allowed us to find coherence as well as explicit and implicit meaning of the data through the dialectics between text comprehension and interpretation of the different actors. the data analysis was performed following the subsequent steps: transcription, segmentation, codification, initial categorization, a systematic search of the different properties of the found categories, integration of categories, and finally the search for relationships between the categories to establish sub-categories. the categories and subcategories obtained were subjected until saturation occurred, thus ensuring data reliability in qualitative studies. analysis and discussion of the data this section addresses the following dimension: “the university teacher of english in the teaching and learning process of a language.” this dimension includes the role of teachers in the teaching and learning of language. nine categories were set up, most of them divided into subcategories that emerged from the participants’ discourse either in the semi structured interview, self-reflection, or autobiographical diary (see table 1). sources of beliefs about teaching english the teachers participating in this research stated that the sources of their beliefs about teaching english were mostly based on literature and their own work experience. additionally, a significant percentage of the participants affirmed that their professional development had influenced their views of teaching english. it is interesting to note that a very small group considered undergraduate university studies as a source for their beliefs. the main sources of beliefs about teaching english identified by the participants are shown in figure 1. 89profile vol. 15, no. 2, october 2013. issn 1657-0790 (printed) 2256-5760 (online). bogotá, colombia. pages 85-97 beliefs of chilean university english teachers: uncovering their role in the teaching... table 1. categories and subcategories of the role of english teachers in the teaching and learning process categories subcategories techniques of data generation 1. sources of beliefs about teaching english • university degrees • work experience • professional development • literature autobiographical diary 2. strengths of teachers • relationship with students • class preparation • personal features • language proficiency • expertise in ict • expertise in the different language contents autobiographical diary 3. weaknesses of teachers • relationship with students • personal features • expertise in ict • team work • professional development • time management autobiographical diary 4. personal features of good english teachers • language proficiency • ability to provide a good learning environment • ability to transmit the foreign culture • planning classes using a variety of methodologies • personal features semi-structured interview 5. the role of english teachers • facilitator • teaching materials and resources supplier • a person who controls, directs, and monitors the teaching activities • a person with a combination of roles within the classroom semi-structured interview / autobiographical diary 6. most frequent functions carried out by teachers • to answer students’ questions • to give positive feedback • to teach linguistic strategies • to demonstrate different activities • to monitor students’ work • class management semi-structured interview / autobiographical diary 7. learning strategies used in the english classes • the use of a variety of strategies • the use of some particular strategies • no use of strategies semi-structured interview / autobiographical diary 8. suggested changes for english teachers in chile • methodological aspects • attitudinal aspects • undergraduate teacher training • administrative aspects of the educational institution • type of professional development semi-structured interview 9. teacher assessment • specialist observation • direct observation • participation of all actors involved in the educational sector semi-structured interview universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras90 díaz larenas, alarcón hernández, vásquez neira, pradel suárez, & ortiz navarrete figure 1. frequency of different sources of beliefs about teaching english university education experience literature professional development 14% 29% 36% 21% the fact that most teachers’ beliefs come from literature in the first place and from working experience in the second place poses a real challenge for the kind of professional development teachers would likely need to reshape those pedagogical practices that could be in the way of students’ effective learning. in other words, if literature is strategic for the shaping of beliefs, teachers should be exposed to publications and reading that can really help them to make appropriate classroom decisions on behalf of effective language learning. strengths of teachers in the category called strengths of teachers, the participants agreed on mentioning aspects such as language proficiency (english), their ict expertise and their expertise in the contents of the subject they teach. they also emphasized the good relationship teachers should have with their students and the teachers’ planning of their classes. certain personal features the participants possess are said to contribute both to establishing a good classroom environment and to an effective learning process. in table 2, some fragments of autobiographical diaries are shown to support the category mentioned above. these beliefs reflect that in order to be effective classroom managers, teachers should possess subjectmatter knowledge and pedagogical content knowledge of conceptual, procedural, and attitudinal natures. for the research participants, any teacher of english should know english very well (conceptual knowledge), should be able to use the language effectively (procedural knowledge) and should be capable of creating the necessary affective and emotional classroom conditions for learners to learn the language. table 2. strengths of teachers participant fragment no. 13 i always enthusiastically answer if my students ask questions about some information. no. 15 one of my strengths is language proficiency, as well as my expertise in ict, and the use of strategies in the teaching of english as a foreign language. figure 2 summarizes the strengths participants considered important in their teaching practice. figure 2. frequency of strengths of teachers relationship with students planning of classes personal features language pro�ciency pro�ciency in ict knowledge of contents 14% 14% 22% 22% 14% 14% weaknesses of teachers the participants’ own personal features such as the lack of systematicity in their work, impatience, and insecurity in some areas, among others, were some of the most referred weaknesses. lack of rapport with students, poor expertise of ict, deficient continuous professional development, poor time management, and lack of teamwork were identified in second place. in 91profile vol. 15, no. 2, october 2013. issn 1657-0790 (printed) 2256-5760 (online). bogotá, colombia. pages 85-97 beliefs of chilean university english teachers: uncovering their role in the teaching... table 3 there are some fragments from autobiographical diaries to support the subcategories mentioned above. the nature of beliefs is context oriented. teachers of similar socioeducational contexts tend to hold similar beliefs. the participants of this study share a similar educational context because all of them work in tertiary education and teach english to students of common social backgrounds under very similar institutional conditions. therefore, diagnosing teachers’ beliefs constitutes a fundamental starting point to later on identify teachers’ professional development needs. table 3. weaknesses of teachers participant fragment no. 3 on some occasions, one of my weaknesses is the lack of systematic work. no. 4 i have to plan my classes more regularly. figure 3 summarizes the weaknesses that teachers claim to possess. figure 3. frequency of weaknesses of teachers relationship with students personal features use of ict team work professional development time management 14% 30% 14% 14% 14% 14% personal features of good english teachers regarding personal features of good english teachers, most of the participants mainly chose those traits that allowed them to create a relaxed learning atmosphere in classes, some of which were maintaining a good relationship with students or taking the different types of learning processes into account. on a second level of importance, participants mentioned both the importance of feeling confident about their language proficiency and also some personal features among which they included the use of humour, patience, and their own motivation. being able to plan lessons according to new methodologies and transmitting the foreign culture to the students were mentioned by a smaller percentage. in table 4, there is a fragment selected from the semi-structured interviews to support the abovementioned ideas. table 4. personal features of a good english teacher participant fragment no. 12 teachers should be spontaneous, dynamic, and fun people, especially when they are teaching a foreign language. they cannot consider themselves as just being lecturers; they have to be able to communicate with students, promote a ludic learning environment, and make the necessary connections between the different cultures. no. 11 i am definitely not a controlling teacher. most chilean teachers are controlling and tend to transform their students into people that are not able to think for themselves. beliefs also mirror the kind of classroom practices teachers declare to be conducting. hence, the analysis of teachers’ beliefs also represents a strategy to identify effective and ineffective classroom practices that either foster or hinder students’ language learning. the beliefs held by these research participants reveal interesting communication-oriented teaching practices that universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras92 díaz larenas, alarcón hernández, vásquez neira, pradel suárez, & ortiz navarrete match with what empirical research claims to work for the development of communication. figure 4 summarizes the opinions of the participants about the features of a good english teacher. figure 4. frequency of features of a good english teacher language pro�ciency personal features creates a good learning environment transmits the foreign culture planning of classes using different methodologies34% 5% 11% 25% 25% the role of english teachers to inquire about the role teachers often have in the classroom, the participants were asked to identify with one or more alternatives from a list proposed by brown and frazier (2001). most identified with the premise that teachers should be a source of information, a role in which they take a back seat to allow students to be in charge of their language development, but are always available to give suggestions when students ask for any kind of help. the second most frequent role mentioned was that of facilitator of the learning process; teachers help students to overcome difficulties and find their own paths to communication. the third most stated opinion was that, depending on the activity or the type of students, the roles teachers have change or become intertwined. a smaller group of the participants believe their role is to plan lessons and then allow students to be creative within the established parameters. finally, a minority of the participants mentioned the role of controlling teachers that do not give many opportunities for the different learning processes to develop. table 5 contains a fragment selected from the semi-structured interviews to support the subcategories mentioned above. these research participants hold beliefs that align with communicative teaching regarding the different roles teachers assume in the classroom in order to promote negotiation and communication. this way the language classroom becomes a dynamic space for learners’ interaction, in which teachers assume a wide variety of roles based on what they encounter in the complexity of the teaching and learning process. figure 5 illustrates the beliefs teachers have about their roles within the classroom. figure 5. frequency of the roles of english teachers facilitator a combination of roles provider of teaching materials and resources a person who controls, directs, and monitors a person who plans and structures classes 26% 33% 7% 15% 19% most common functions performed by the english teacher with reference to the different strategies used by teachers, the participants claimed not to have a lot of knowledge about this issue thus they are reluctant to use these strategies overtly in the teaching and learning process. regarding classroom management, the participants stated that teaching university level students does not present any problems requiring table 5. the role of english teachers participant fragment no. 11 i am definitely not a controlling teacher. most chilean teachers are controlling and tend to transform their students into people that are not able to think by themselves. 93profile vol. 15, no. 2, october 2013. issn 1657-0790 (printed) 2256-5760 (online). bogotá, colombia. pages 85-97 beliefs of chilean university english teachers: uncovering their role in the teaching... this function. table 6 shows excerpts taken from the autobiographical diaries and semi-structured interviews to support the categories mentioned above. figure 6 shows the most common functions performed by english teachers as stated by the participants. table 6. functions frequently performed by english teachers participant fragment no. 4 i answered questions and i monitored group work. no. 15 within the functions i use a lot as a teacher is the one to ask questions. in my opinion, asking questions is vital because they are tools that do not only help teachers to reflect on certain issues, but they can be seen as mirrors of the way they are working. figure 6. frequency of the most common functions performed by english teachers to answer students' questions positive feedback to teach linguistic strategies to show different activities to monitor students' work class management 15% 28% 9% 15% 26% 7% an effective language teacher should be able to demonstrate a wide array of classroom management strategies that obviously will be activated by the learners’ language needs and the requirements of the tasks. teachers should be able to turn to the appropriate classroom management strategies based on their position of active and critical classroom decision-makers. learning strategies promoted in english classes when being asked about the category called learning strategies promoted in english classes, most of the participants answered they did not teach learning strategies either because of their ignorance on the topic or their lack of knowledge to distinguish the appropriate strategies for the different skills. just a small number of participants stated they not only taught some kind of linguistic strategies but also some other strategies that were useful in the learning process itself. they also declared that in order to teach a language, it was essential not only to know the learning strategies and use them during class, but also to explicitly teach them so that students are able to apply these strategies in other contexts. table 7 shows a fragment selected from the semi-structured interview to illustrate the abovementioned opinions. table 7. learning strategies promoted in english classes participant fragment no. 12 while reading about the teaching of linguistic strategies, i realize that it is a weak aspect in my teaching. i think i have not taken enough time to reflect on how to put this into practice. the use of the current research instruments helped us to identify which teaching strategies were at a disadvantage for these research participants. for learners to be effective language users, they should be explicitly exposed to the teaching of learning strategies that can help them to consciously use resources to overcome any language problem that could interfere with communication. these research participants’ beliefs reveal that their knowledge and use of strategic teaching is weak; therefore, this is an area of their teaching that requires reinforcement through reflection and professional development. universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras94 díaz larenas, alarcón hernández, vásquez neira, pradel suárez, & ortiz navarrete in figure 7 the learning strategies that teachers claim to promote are shown. suggested changes for teachers of english in chile this category emerged when participants were asked whether they considered it necessary to make changes in the way english is taught in chile. in first place, issues related to changes in attitude, such as self development, teamwork and greater autonomy were mentioned. the second place is shared by methodological and administrative issues such as reduce the number of hours a teacher has to be in front of a class, diminish the number of students per room, and the professional development teachers can obtain within their own schools. it has to be said that there was only a small number of participants suggesting changes in the initial training of teachers. table 8 contains a fragment of semi-structured interviews to illustrate this last aspect. table 8. suggested changes for teachers of english in chile participant fragment no. 7 the importance of updating our knowledge; i think teachers are just realizing the need to keep learning. figure 7. frequency of learning strategies promoted in english classes use of different strategies use of certain strategies no use of strategies 20% 27% 53% figure 8 illustrates the changes suggested in the teaching of english in chile regarding the type of professional development suggested for teachers of english in chile, the participants primarily manifested the need to update their knowledge on new methods of teaching languages, ict and different learning styles, new learning strategies, the capacity for reflection, and the evaluation process. secondly, importance was given to the improvement of language skills and classroom management. finally, in the subcategory called areas of interest, the following aspects were mentioned: the neurosciences (set of sciences which researches the nervous system with particular interest in the way that the brain activity relates to behaviour and learning) and also internships for teachers, defined as a set of practical activities carried out by teachers that will allow them to apply knowledge, skills, attitudes, and values in the educational field in a integrated and selective way (see table 9). table 9. type of professional development suggested participant fragment no. 4 i think we need to know about the different learning styles and the strategies used; we must learn to understand that not all of our students learn in the same way. figure 8. suggested changes for teachers of english in chile methodological aspects aspects to do with attitudes undergraduate education administrative aspects 22% 45% 11% 22% 95profile vol. 15, no. 2, october 2013. issn 1657-0790 (printed) 2256-5760 (online). bogotá, colombia. pages 85-97 beliefs of chilean university english teachers: uncovering their role in the teaching... figure 9 illustrates the type of professional development suggested. figure 9. frequency of teachers’ areas of interest teacher's areas of interest update of academic aspects language pro�ciency classroom management 11% 57% 16% 16% diagnosing the changes and type of professional development required by teachers of english at a university level through belief identification is an inductive approach for determining teachers’ professional development needs. very often organizations and institutions tend to have a deductive approach as far as professional development is concerned. institutions frequently determine in advance what kind of training teachers need, which obviously creates resistance and reluctance on the teachers’ part to participate in pedagogical change and innovation. beliefs strongly reflect what someone truly accepts as truths that guide their actions. teacher assessment as for teacher assessment, all participants were fully in agreement of this process. in the next category, the best ways to assess teachers, most of the participants suggested direct classroom observation because it allows an immediate and accurate view of the various phenomena that occur within the classroom. the second most noted opinion was the importance of the teacher assessment process to be carried by a specialist who can provide specific ways to overcome weak areas observed. a third group suggested that this process should take into account the participation of different actors in the educational field, such as area coordinators, fellow teachers, and/ or students (see table 10). table 10. suggestions on teacher assessment participant fragment no. 3 in any kind of job, one should be assessed through direct and continuous classroom observation…performed by a person that has more academic experience and more professional development. teacher assessment is a sensitive and context bound issue because just the mere suggestion of any kind of assessment or appraisal generates resistance on the part of teachers. for this matter, belief identification on teacher assessment before conducting this process constitutes a key step for the implementation of a robust system of teacher assessment. figure 10 summarizes the suggested format for teacher assessment. figure 10. frequency of suggestions on teacher assessment specialist observation participation of all agents direct observation 33% 17% 50% conclusions and implications research on beliefs of teachers is becoming important because there are theoretical and empirical reasons suggesting they affect the teaching practice. the present study explored the cognitive dimension of a group of 30 university teachers of english. the number of participants allowed a snapshot of what universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras96 díaz larenas, alarcón hernández, vásquez neira, pradel suárez, & ortiz navarrete teachers think, know, and believe regarding what they do in the classroom and of the learning process in general. it seems interesting to note that the participants readily expressed their beliefs about the various issues raised and recognized that these beliefs are generated mainly from theory or from their own professional experience. revealing the beliefs of a group of university teachers contributes valuable information to the constant concern about instances of teacher training designed to meet the needs and interests of teachers in such a way that it is meaningful for them so it can contribute to the improvement of their teaching practice and the achievement of effective learning by students. the use of an interview and an autobiographical diary as instruments for collecting qualitative data from the respondents is very useful for maintaining the richness and necessary subjectivity of teachers’ discourse. beliefs anchor themselves in people’s long term semantic memory and can probably be reshaped when they are confronted against evidence that does not fit in people’s cognitive framework. the responses from both the interview and the diary really depict teachers’ inner classroom world; teachers reveal their strengths, weaknesses, personal characteristics, classroom roles, and views on the teaching and learning of english. in brief, belief identification encourages teachers to self-reflect on their own views and classroom practices and contrast their views with those of other teachers. besides, teachers are seen as active decisionmakers and not just as mechanical implementers of the prescribed language curriculum. the beliefs held by the research participants filter new information and experiences and are very much influenced by their own experience as learners. references barcelos, a., & kalaja, p. (2011). introduction to “beliefs about sla revisited.” system: an international journal of educational technology and applied linguistics, 39(3), 281-289. bisquerra, r. (2009). metodología de la investigación educativa [methodology of educational research] (2nd ed.). madrid, es: editorial la muralla. borg, s. (2003). teacher cognition in language teaching: a review of research on what language teachers think, know, believe, and do. language teaching, 36(2), 81-109. borg, s. (2009). introducing language teacher cognition. retrieved from http://www.education.leeds.ac.uk/ assets/files/staff/borg/introducing-language-teachercognition.pdf borg, s., & al-busaidi, s. (2012). learner autonomy: english language teachers’ beliefs and practices. elt journal, 12(7), 1-45. brown, d., & frazier, s. (2001). [review of the book teaching by principles: an interactive approach to language pedagogy, by h. d. brown]. tesol quarterly, 35(2), 341-342. corbetta, p. (2003). metodología y técnicas de investigación social [methods and techniques of social research]. madrid, es: mcgraw-hill interamericana de españa. díaz, c., martínez, p., roa, i., & sanhueza, m. g. (2010). una fotografía de las cogniciones de un grupo de docentes de inglés de secundaria acerca de la enseñanza y aprendizaje del idioma en establecimientos educacionales públicos de chile [a snapshot of a group of english teachers’ conceptions about english teaching and learning in chilean public education]. folios, 31, 69-80. díaz, c., & solar, m. i. (2011). la revelación de las creencias lingüístico-pedagógicas a partir del discurso del profesor de inglés universitario [the revelation of pedagogical and linguistic beliefs from efl university teachers’ discourse]. revista de lingüística teórica y aplicada (rla), 49(2), 57-86. farrell, t. (2006). the teacher is an octopus. regional language centre journal (relc), 37(2), 236-248. freeman, d. (2002). the hidden side of the work: teacher knowledge and learning to teach. a perspective from north american educational research on teacher education in english language teaching. language teaching, 35(1), 1-13. gross, b. (2009). tools for teaching. san francisco, ca: jossey-bass. 97profile vol. 15, no. 2, october 2013. issn 1657-0790 (printed) 2256-5760 (online). bogotá, colombia. pages 85-97 beliefs of chilean university english teachers: uncovering their role in the teaching... kalaja, p., & barcelos, a. (ed.). (2003). beliefs about sla: new research approaches. dordrecht, nl: kluwer academic publishers. kane, r., sandretto, s., & heath, c. (2002). telling half the story: a critical review of research on the teaching beliefs and practices of university academics. review of educational research, 72(2), 177-228. kasoutas, m., & malamitsa, k. (2009). exploring greek teachers’ beliefs using metaphors. australian journal of teacher education, 34(2), 64-83. levin, b. b. (2001). lives of teachers: update on a longitudinal case study. teacher education quarterly, 28(3), 29-47. northcote, m. (2009). educational beliefs of higher education teachers and students: implications for teacher education. australian journal of teacher education, 34(3), 69-81. pajares, m. f. (1992). teachers’ beliefs and educational research: cleaning up a messy construct. review of educational research, 62(3), 307-333. richards, j., & lockhart, c. (1996). reflective teaching in second language classrooms. cambridge, uk: cambridge university press. stenberg, k. (2011). working with identities. promoting student teachers professional development. helsinki, fi: university of helsinki, faculty of behavioural sciences, department of teacher education. tudor, i. (2001). the dynamics of the language classroom. cambridge, uk: cambridge university press. woods, d. (1996). teacher cognition in language teaching: beliefs, decision-making and classroom practice. cambridge, uk: cambridge university press. about the authors claudio díaz larenas, phd in education and master of arts in linguistics. he works at facultad de educación and dirección de docencia de la universidad de concepción (chile), where he teaches english, discourse analysis, and efl methodology and assessment. he has researched in the field of teacher cognition and language assessment. paola alarcón hernández, phd and master of arts in linguistics. she teaches spanish grammar and latin at universidad de concepción (chile). andrea vásquez neira, master of arts in linguistics. she teaches english language at universidad de concepción (chile). boris pradel suárez, master of arts in linguistics. he teaches english language and phonetics at universidad de concepción (chile). mabel ortiz navarrete, phd candidate in linguistics and master of arts in information and communication technologies. she teaches english, discourse analysis, and ict at universidad católica de la santísima concepción (chile). 113profile vol. 14, no. 1, april 2012. issn 1657-0790. bogotá, colombia. pages 113-127 self-access language learning: students’ perceptions of and experiences within this new mode of learning aprendizaje de idiomas mediante la modalidad de autoacceso: percepciones y experiencias de los estudiantes luz edith herrera díaz* universidad veracruzana, veracruz, mexico with the aim of fostering autonomy in learning, both innovations, the self-access centre and the mode of learning derived from it, were adopted in the context of the study (language centre in the university of veracruz, mexico). based on a case study, i have adopted a qualitative perspective to do this research, which aimed to know how the students undergoing this new english learning mode perceived it and what their experiences were within the no-class courses. the purpose of this article is to present the main themes that emerged after gathering the data for this study. it concludes with suggestions for a more contextualized and critical adoption of innovations in the english as a foreign language arena. key words: autonomous learning, self-access centre, self-access language learning. en el contexto de este estudio (centro de idiomas de la universidad veracruzana, méxico), y con la finalidad de promover la autonomía en el aprendizaje, se adoptaron dos innovaciones: los centros de autoacceso y el aprendizaje de lenguas en ellos. basándome en una investigación realizada con el fin de conocer cómo perciben y experimentan los estudiantes esta nueva modalidad de aprendizaje de inglés, el propósito del presente artículo es mostrar los principales temas que surgieron a partir de la colecta de datos. el estudio concluye con la sugerencia de que la adopción de innovaciones en el terreno de la enseñanza de inglés como lengua extranjera se haga de manera más contextualizada y sea más crítica. palabras clave: aprendizaje autónomo, aprendizaje de lenguas por autoacceso, centro de autoacceso. * e-mail: ehd63@hotmail.com this article was received on july 1, 2011, and accepted on december 18, 2011. universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras114 herrera díaz introduction the topic of learner autonomy has been the foundation for the promotion and implementation of self-instruction and/or self-direction as modes of learning foreign languages; hence, we note the presence of self-access centres (sac) as a resource for achieving this kind of learning around the world. mexico, as part of this globalized world, has invested a great amount of time and money establishing several self-access centres all over the country, mostly at public universities, including the university of veracruz (uv). while working as a counsellor at the self-access centre-veracruz, at the university of veracruz (in mexico), i found that my constant contact with students who were trying to learn english by means of a self-access language learning (sall) mode led me to reflect on several issues which became the research questions that i endeavoured to answer through the current study: research questions: 1. are the new “autonomous courses” (based on principles of self-direction and sall) functioning according to the university’s plans for them? 2. how do students studying english as a foreign language perceive the self-instruction mode? 3. what is the difference in perceptions between students who chose to study by this mode and those who had to do it? 4. what are the students’ experiences within this innovation –the self-instruction mode of learning and the use of the self-access centre? the following section summarises the context in which this research was carried out. then, i explain core concepts related to self-access language learning in which through the use of selfaccess centres, autonomous learning is supposed to be promoted. the methodologies i drew on for collecting data and for their analysis –both derived from the qualitative perspective of this study– are illustrated too. based on the findings, the themes that emerged, i was able to answer the research questions that guided the study. finally, the implications of the outcomes in the efl world and the conclusions i reached are presented. context of the study the current research was carried out at the language centre-veracruz (in veracruz city), specifically in its self-access centre (sac) (called cadi= centro de autoacceso de idiomas), at the university of veracruz (uv), the public university in the state of veracruz, mexico. the university of veracruz has a student population of approximately 70 thousand pupils distributed among the five campuses. some of them come from small towns or villages around the city where their campus is located; and most of them are part of middle-class or working-class families. the academic staff totals 6,300 employees. the administrative staff numbers 4,436 employees. whereas at the language centre-veracruz, the number of students is around 3 thousand and the staff makes up a total of 10 administrative employees and 40 language teachers; 6 of these teachers work as counsellors and there are 2 assistants and 1 technician at each cadi –the cadi in the language centre and the cadi in the usbi (the university library called unidad de servicios biblio tecarios y de informática). all the language centres (xalapa, veracruz, córdoba, orizaba, poza rica/tuxpan and coatzacoalcos/minatitlan) offer english and french courses and some of them offer courses of other foreign languages such as italian, german, portuguese, chinese and japanese. as part of a national project, four self-access centres (cadis) were opened in 1999 and at present there are nine cadis 115profile vol. 14, no. 1, april 2012. issn 1657-0790. bogotá, colombia. pages 113-127 self-access language learning: students’ perceptions of and experiences within this new mode of learning working throughout the state of veracruz. they were all created sharing the same theoretical foundations and aims. they all have the same type of physical structure and facilities (furniture, electronic devices, working areas), but they may have different materials, organization and even a different approach to counselling students. these cadis are used by people studying any foreign language at the language centres and they may or may not be university students (“external students”). furthermore, the centres are mostly used by students who are studying english 1 and 2, compulsory subjects in all undergraduate programs, and especially by those who take these subjects in the “autonomous” courses. in these courses, students work by themselves at the cadi, not because they want to but because they do not have any other choice (no place for them in regular classes or attending the cadi is a compulsory part of their course). notions on autonomous learning and self-access autonomy and autonomous learning based on what i already understand as autonomy, i recognize it as the counter-edge, the opposite of traditional-dependence in the learning continuum. a general meaning of this term would be this one: the condition of something that does not depend on anything else. it is defined as “the quality or state of being self-governing; the right of selfgovernment; self-directing freedom and especially moral independence” (longman dictionary, 2005). the history of the term, in the field of education and language learning, can be traced to the post-ww ii period when social rights movements arose and education started to be considered an empowering tool which moved to an awareness of its worth. collins and hammond (1991) confirm the latter by saying that “the ultimate purpose of education is the betterment of society, and that critical awareness and social action to promote emancipation are desirable results of any educational intervention” (p. 13). from the 70’s on, there have been several innovations in adult education. some of them were based on issues such as social awareness and resulted in the insistence of “the need to develop the individual’s freedom by developing those abilities which will enable him to act more responsibly in running the affairs of the society in which he lives” (holec, 1981, p. 1). others, based on pedagogical issues, maintain that adults demonstrably learn more, and more effectively, when they are consulted about dimensions such as the pace, sequence, mode of instruction and even the content of what they are studying. (candy, 1988, p. 75) in foreign language education, learner autonomy has become, as little (1991) says, the new “buzz-word” which has transformed old practices in the language classroom and has given rise to self access facilities around the world. the following is one of the most popular definitions: according to henri holec (1981), autonomy is an acquired ability to take charge of one’s own learning. that is to say, to have, and to hold, the responsibility for all the decisions concerning all aspects of this learning, ie: determining the objectives; defining the contents and progressions; selecting methods and techniques to be used; monitoring the procedure of acquisition properly speaking (rhythm, time, place, etc); evaluating what has been acquired. (p. 3) dickinson (1987) also described autonomy as “a situation in which the learner is totally responsible for all the decisions concerned with his (or her) learning and the implementation of those decisions” (p. 18). little (1991), still using the idea of capacity, added critical reflection and elements, stating that universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras116 herrera díaz autonomy is a capacity –for detachment, critical reflection, decision-making, and independent action. it presupposes, but also entails, that the learner will develop a particular kind of psychological relation to the process and content of his learning. (p. 4) another author for whom ability plays a crucial role in the conceptualization of autonomy is nunan (1995), who states that learners who are able to define their own goals and to create their own learning opportunities have become autonomous. i prefer to consider sionis’ (1990) description of autonomy. he says that reaching autonomy is a complex process that includes the identification of our own needs, the self-determination of goals and the election and putting into practice of the most suitable learning method as well as a self-evaluation procedure. among the diverse conceptualizations of autonomy that have arisen in the elt milieu is benson’s who describes it as the acknowledgement of the rights of learners within educational systems (1997), which takes into consideration the fact that “the self-directed learner may choose classroom instruction” (dickinson, 1987, p. 11). this position is also consistent with pennycook’s (1997) claim that there might be students “who independently [choose] to come to a teacher to learn and would prefer that teacher to teach in a ‘teacherly’ way” (p. 43). both statements sound so fair that i find them rather far from reality in the educational setting where i carried out this piece of research (cadi-veracruz). there, some students have no option but to take their english course(s) in the no-class mode, which is incongruously called “autonomous mode” (no-class mode and no-class students are terms which i created as a result of my inquiry in the actual field of this study). however, i still think that even in this case students may be able to reach, or rather, exercise some degree of autonomy, understood as boud (1998) and cotterall (2003) describe it in the following paragraph. boud (1988) comments that “[t]he main characteristic of autonomy as an approach to learning is that students take some significant responsibility for their own learning over and above responding to instruction” (p. 23, my italics) while cotterall (2003) recognises that in several contexts many opportunities are given for “the learners to assume control of some of the decisions surrounding their learning” (p. 1, my italics). self-direction and self-instruction regarding the concepts of self-direction and self-instruction, dickinson (1987) explains the former as an attitude because that has more to do with a personal decision, although he keeps on talking about “all the decisions” when he states that self-direction describes a particular attitude to the learning task, where the learner accepts responsibility for all the decisions concerned with his learning but does not necessarily undertake the implementation of those decisions. (p. 12, my italics) along the same line of thought, nunan and lamb (1996) suggest that at the end of the day it is the learner and only the learner who has to do the learning, and that every kind of educational act should lead learners towards self-directed learning. however, i consider, as dickinson (1987) aptly comments, that only a very few people are naturally self-directed and that many learners who turn to self-instruction do it for their own convenience and not because it appeals to them. he suggests that [i]t is not desirable to thrust self-instruction and self-directed learning on to learners who are resistant to it, and it is very important (…) not [to] confuse the idea, or our enthusiasm to introduce it, with the learner’s ability or willingness to undertake it. (p. 2) 117profile vol. 14, no. 1, april 2012. issn 1657-0790. bogotá, colombia. pages 113-127 self-access language learning: students’ perceptions of and experiences within this new mode of learning regarding the concept of “self-instruction”, dickinson (1987) defines it as a neutral term which refers to situations in which a learner, with others, or alone, is working without the direct control of a teacher (…) [either] for short periods within a lesson, for whole lessons, or in the extreme case of learner autonomy, where he undertakes the whole of his learning without the help of a teacher. (p. 5, my italics) the same author talks about homework as an old example of a self-instruction activity. in my view, self-instruction (as defined above) would be the most feasible type in my context. and as i experienced it as a counsellor at cadi-ver, it is the mode of learning that prevails there, although we insist on calling it “autonomous learning” just because the students do not attend regular classes. self-access centres and sall (self-access language learning) in general, the term self-access refers to the organization of learning materials and equipment made available and accessible to students without necessarily having a teacher present. in sturtridge’s words (1992), the term self-access centre refers to the “system which makes materials available to language learners so that they can choose to work as they wish, usually without a teacher or with very limited teacher support” (p. 4). several authors talk in a similar way about self-access centres as the area in which specially designed, adapted or processed materials can be used by learners in such a way that they can direct and assess their own learning with or without help (sheerin, 1989; booton & benson, 1996; mccafferty, n.d.; dickinson, 1993). looking at the background of self-access centres, i feel it can be said that their predecessors are the language laboratories that responded to a behaviouristic, lock-step approach to language learning. however, even though they recognise their differences, gremmo and riley (1995) would rather compare sacs to libraries, since these were a basic manifestation of autonomous and self-directed learning. the implementation of a sac depends basically on “the beliefs about learning which are held by those who set up the system” (sturtridge, 1992, p. 4). therefore, depending on this ideology, the needs perceived and the teaching situation to which it is related, a sac may function as an instruction centre; as a practice centre; as a skill centre or as a learning centre, all of them sharing the characteristic of fostering autonomy and the skills of self-directed learning (booton & benson, 1996). derived from self-access centres, the term self-access language learning (sall) stands for the kind of learning that takes place precisely in a sac. sheerin (1989) says that “[t]he essential prerequisite to self-access learning is the provision of self-access materials within an organized framework so that students can get what they need” (p. 7). sall seems to arouse controversy in two aspects: the cost-efficiency and the development of autonomy. regarding the former, there are authors (e.g. aston, 1993) who see this mode of learning as a cost-saving proposition, which eventually could substitute for direct teaching. whereas others like gardner and miller (1997) think that [i]mplementing sall should not be seen as a cheap alternative to teaching. it should be seen as a useful complement to teaching which enhances language-learning opportunities and provides learners with the independent learning skills to continue learning languages after they have finished formal studies. in this light it may be judged to be relatively cost efficient. (p. 32) regarding the latter, it is known that although this mode of learning is supposed to promote learners’ autonomy, it does not necessarily occur. students may be working by themselves in a sac but still doing what their teachers told them to do universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras118 herrera díaz (reinders, 2000). that is to say, “a self-access centre could be used as a teacher-directed source of individualised homework activities, but this would in no way constitute self-directed learning” (sheerin, 1994, p. 144). in any case, there are positive positions/perspectives towards sall. even if it is not undertaken with the aim of becoming autonomous learners, [s]elf-access learning is the practical solution to many language teaching problems: mixed-ability classes, students with differ ent backgrounds and needs, psychological and personality dif ferences between students, etc. (sheerin, 1989, p. 7) i think the latter is as true as gardner and miller’s view of sall as a mode of learning that offers varying degrees of guidance but still encourages students to move towards autonomy (1997). the achievement of such autonomy, in my view, will not depend on the mode of learning itself, nor on the sac where students may work, but on their attitudes, their decisions and the education system in which they may be immersed. method considering that i was not aiming to “measure” anything but to study the events in their natural setting, to attempt to understand students’ perceptions and to make sense of or to construe their experiences in the specific context where they evolve, i decided to adopt a qualitative mode of research. qualitative research attempts to look deeply into the quality of the social life in particular settings, permits the exploration of the important themes that may emerge, those mysteries of reality “to which the researcher must submit, and can do no more than interpret” (holliday, 2002, p. 6). it studies small and/or particular groups of human actors in natural settings, in their everyday world, in a particular time. according to denzin and lincoln (2000, p. 3), qualitative research is a situated activity that locates the researcher in the world with an interpretive, naturalistic approach towards it. in a similar way, maykut and morehouse (1994) describe qualitative research as that which looks to understanding a situation as it is constructed by the participants (…) [it] attempts to capture what people say and do, that is, the products of how people interpret the world. (p. 18) qualitative inquiry then, seeks to understand the meanings and significance of certain humans’ actions from their own perspective (lankshear & knobel, 2004; maykut & morehouse, 1994; richards, 2003; robson, 2002), which is done by employing a range of methods and analyses based on a range of features. as denzin and lincoln (1994) put it, [q]ualitative research is multimethod in focus, involving an interpretive, naturalistic approach to its subject matter (…) [it] involves the studied use and collection of a variety of empirical materials –case study, personal experience, introspective, life story, interview, observational, historical, interactional, and visual texts– that describe routine and problematic moments and meanings in individuals’ lives. (p. 2) process of the data collection in this research, treated as a case study, i used some data collection methods which are commonly used in ethnographic research, namely: moderate participant observation (c.f. cherulnik, 2001; dewalt & dewalt, 2002; patton, 2002) and semi structured interviews (c.f. dewalt & de walt, 2002). as planned, i was able to observe the different areas (video, audio, computers, multiple uses, etc.) in which cadis are divided while students were working there, as well as several counselling sessions coordinated by counsellors in whose groups the participants (interviewees) were enrolled. the data collection phase took place at cadiver, where i work as a counsellor. i interviewed 119profile vol. 14, no. 1, april 2012. issn 1657-0790. bogotá, colombia. pages 113-127 self-access language learning: students’ perceptions of and experiences within this new mode of learning seventeen university students who were taking english 1 and 2, as well as two who had already finished, and two external students who were studying efl at the language centre. these interviews were conducted in spanish and i translated the extracts presented here. i also interviewed, in english, four of the counsellors working there and the coordinator of the language centre, who had been a counsellor at the cadi. furthermore, i looked at the students’ monthly work reports that were processed on the computers located at the check in/out area of the cadi-ver. these reports contained information related to the worksheets or materials they worked on, the time they spent at the cadi and a self-evaluation of the session. i decided to consider these documents as another piece of data because as robson (2002) mentions, written documents are not affected by the act of being used. i wanted to use the information obtained by this means to complement, as far as possible, the information i was able to gather through the interviews and observations. process of the data analysis in this section i succinctly describe the themes and sub-themes that were uncovered throughout the processing of the data. for this analysis i adopted and adapted some elements from procedures such as the constant comparative method (lincoln & guba, 1985 based on glaser & strauss, 1967; maykut & morehouse, 1994); the concepts/ coding method suggested by coffey and atkinson (1996), and the approach suggested by miles and huberman (1994) because they suited my analysis of data during the data collection stage as well as later on when i had already collected all the data. the actual process of my data analysis consisted of the following stages: • organising the data (45 interviews and 29 observations/field-notes) • coding the data materials • highlighting the data materials • reviewing the data materials • summarizing the data • labelling the data: first-level codes • labelling the data: second-level codes • inventorying the data • grouping the codes (first/second-level) • displaying the data (in a matrix) • naming categories (preliminary, sub-, and categories) • refining categories, uncovering themes • designating hierarchies to the categories • moving towards interpretation • summarizing the data analysis procedures. findings and revisiting the research questions this section illustrates nine out of the thirteen findings of the study. for those i consider the most relevant, i present samples of evidence from the data that underlie these findings. as shown in figure 1, the topic of the study is divided into two broad themes, which are divided into the subthemes that emerged from the data and which the findings are related to. at the same time, the findings are related to the research questions (see the introduction section) to which i consider they are responding. since the findings presented here are related to the eight subthemes shown in figure 1, the former are numbered according to the corresponding subtheme. as mentioned before, extracts from the data referring to the main findings are included here for a deeper understanding of the themes under consideration. the other findings are mentioned also so as to give a complete idea of what was found out throughout the study. universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras120 herrera díaz 1. students’ perceptions of the no-class learning mode 1.1 ease and convenience of the no-class courses here, i refer to the students’ idea that this learning mode would be, or rather was, easy and practical in terms of time/schedules, particularly with respect to the other subjects (of their respective majors) and of some of the characteristics of the courses, as the following student declared: i wish it had been easier, last semester [english 1] wasn’t hard at all, but this one [english 2] is more complicated… i must work harder… but for me it’s very practical, because i take many subjects and my schedules are crazy, so for me it’s very practical… in the autonomous [courses] the advantage is that it’s only 1 hour a week and one can determine how long and when one can come during the week. counsellors also agreed; they had observed or heard that students expected this kind of course to be easy, practical and convenient. in this respect one of them commented: some of them let me know that they thought it was a lot easier, because in their faculties they said ‘oh you just have to go once a week, so you don’t have to worry about it’… but it’s not just a matter of coming once a week, well… although this is comfortable for them. the passages above seem to indicate what finding 1.1.1 summarizes: most students seemed to have recognized the value of the no-class courses based on the convenience and easiness (regarding the management of their time and schedules) that they attributed to these courses, rather than on their contribution to their learning english or on the features of this type of courses. 1.2 difficulty and inconvenience of the no-class courses among the most common problems that students mentioned when giving their opinions about figure 1. relations among themes, subthemes, findings and research questions (q2, q3, q4) self-access language learning: students’ perceptions of and experiences within this new mode of learning 1. students’ perceptions of the no-class learning mode 2. students’ experiences within the no-class learning mode 1.1 ease & convenience of the no-class courses 1.2 dif�culty & inconvenience of the no-class courses finding 1.1.1 finding 1.2.1 finding 1.3.1 finding 2.1.1 finding 2.1.2 finding 2.2.1 finding 2.3 finding 2.4 q4 q3 q2 finding 2.5 1.3 students’ expectations of the no-class courses 2.1 experiencing autonomy 2.2 control over the students 2.3 beyond learning english: awareness and re�ectivity 2.4 preparation to face the innovation 2.5 taking ownership of the innovation (no-class mode) 121profile vol. 14, no. 1, april 2012. issn 1657-0790. bogotá, colombia. pages 113-127 self-access language learning: students’ perceptions of and experiences within this new mode of learning the no-class courses was how difficult it was for them when they had to commute from their schools to the language centre or to the usbi where the cadis are located and where the counselling sessions took place. two of the students stated this: the idea [to work in the self access centre] is good, but the distance from our schools was not considered… mmm yes, cadi is far from my school (…) i don’t have time to come because of the distance, and i couldn’t make [accumulate] enough hours of work. the course is good but the defect is… that it isn’t well organized according to our major’s program, (…) they are too many subjects, and, and the location of my school is too far, and the time…more than anything is the time (…) [i’m] in administration, there in the north, and there isn’t a direct bus, you have to take 2 or walk a lot… imagine!!! we need around 3 hours to come to cadi, and our other classes? another problem that several students remarked on was the difficulty they had when studying without the constant presence of a teacher; this is an example of what they said: working by myself was hard because i didn’t know any english, you see!! (…)… ufff, studying by myself is very difficult because there is no teacher to tell me everything and to teach me, especially the pronunciation… mmm it’s very difficult, very difficult and the exam is coming!! counsellors also perceived the difficulty that students had when studying without a teacher and two of them commented: definitely, students in basic levels cannot cope with the idea of working by themselves, it’s hard, hard (…) but, but language centre students do better. well... it’s obvious that students who are forced to take the autonomous, and mmmm… it’s the majority, see?, they have more difficulties to adapt to this mode (…) yes, students need somebody to guide them… they look for it!! it seems, as toogood and pemberton (2002) identified, that the students still needed some structured support since we were dealing with students who had been “socialized into seeing teachers as the directors of the learning process rather than advisers…” (p. 9). in brief, finding 1.2.1 refers to the no-class courses’ lack of planning, especially in terms of the location of the buildings involved, the programs, the students’ interests, the students’ preparation for the change and the relevance of the subject (efl), was a significant reason behind their difficult and slow ‘“routinization” and the scarce development of autonomy. 1.3 students’ expectations from the no-class courses according to the information provided by the students in the interviews, they got to the courses with certain expectations (work by themselves, attend only once a week, many materials and counsellors/teachers available, easy contents, no rules). i considered it important to ask them to what extent those expectations had been fulfilled or agreed with what they had actually got during the courses and how they felt about it. several students talked positively in this respect, for instance: i already had the idea that i had to work by myself, that i was going to learn as much as i wanted; that i had to attend the counselling sessions to solve some doubts, but the one who would learn was i myself, not because i had to attend an everyday class… and it [the development of the course] is just as i thought!! mmm… more than anything i didn’t expect a counselling session at cadi but something like tools to reinforce my knowledge, and it has been accomplished for example with the audio system, the computers and all the materials that we can find here, it has been as i expected. universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras122 herrera díaz some counsellors talked about both the language centre students and the meif students saying the following: language centre students, aha… they usually fulfil their expectations, they are satisfied with what they’re doing, some of the students prefer to continue working as autonomous because they like it better, specially adults… meif students… mmm... only the ones who study hard and really want to learn. despite the advantages that students recognized as regards these courses, they also thought that the contents of the course were more difficult than they had expected and that there were requirements and rules to comply with that they did not expect to have. furthermore, some students felt they had not obtained what they had conceived and thus expressed some disappointment, as shown in these passages: (smiling) what i got?... headaches... hehehe! (laughs)… i feel that my progress was average, no?, i am not going to question that there is some learning because at the beginning i thought it was not going to work for me, certainly it worked. from this course i didn’t get a big thing sincerely, it was only a review, a reminder of what i had already seen [learnt], the only thing l liked was its schedule flexibility (…) but that it was useful, or i had learnt much… no, unfortunately no, because it was only a review. through the interviews it was noticeable that most students, whether they were pleased with their “autonomous” courses or not, whether their expectations had been fulfilled or not, but especially the ones whose expectations had not been fulfilled, expressed their preference for classes. the following are samples of this: at the beginning i thought it was not going to work for me, but it certainly worked, but it’s not the same, i would’ve preferred to have a class with a teacher and classmates, because the counselling session… ehhmm… didn’t help me much… don’t tell the teacher eh! [secretly, in very low voice] yes, i really think that i would take the other course in a class,… it’s not a criticism of the course, but actually… it’s not the same, one gives it more priority or… one takes it more seriously in a class, that is, i have the english class at certain time, it’s not like: let’s see when i’m going to make hours [clock up hours] of english… it’s different, mmm. capturing the excerpts above, finding 1.3.1 states: the no-class mode of studying efl failed to meet several of the students’ expectations, and this had a significant impact on their perception of the whole project, resulting in their partial acceptance of this mode and their preference for the class mode. 2. students’ experiences within no-class learning mode 2.1 experiencing autonomy i also found that some of the students involved in this study had a clearer idea of what autonomy meant in this context and expressed their exercise of it, as can be read in the following quotations: the tools are there and one knows if we use them and what time, how long and how to use them according to your own capacities. if i organize myself i can do the things by myself (…) for me it’s easier because i know myself, i know my moments, i know how to organize myself (…) and for me it’s easier to take it in this mode than depending on a fixed schedule or on other people. in a class, it’s ok, but there are things that if you have already understood… why to see them again? preferably, you move forward to whatever you want, audio, vocabulary or video; or if there is something that you don’t remember very well, you go back to it and review it (…) it depends only on you! 123profile vol. 14, no. 1, april 2012. issn 1657-0790. bogotá, colombia. pages 113-127 self-access language learning: students’ perceptions of and experiences within this new mode of learning my field-notes below also demonstrate the exercise of autonomy in a very productive way: field note at the check in/out area-ci: a girl checks in, looks for an audio-book, asks for the tape to the assistant and finds a place to seat. it seems she has previously decided what to do, what materials to work on. field note at the listening area-usbi: one of the girls who has been working very focused, writes on her log, turns off the tape recorder, gives back the tape and changes to another area (multiple uses area). the girl next to her does the same. they start working with other materials. however, there were some students who did not have this attitude, such as the ones mentioned by this counsellor: they usually do grammar, grammar and grammar. in fact they like that they can do and practice whatever they want, well… when they want!! (…) some students are reluctant to work, they just don’t want to do anything, they don’t care. my observations also registered how the students came to this kind of decisions, even at the expense of not getting credits for their participation in the counselling sessions or for their work at the cadi, as reported in the following field-notes: field note in a counselling session: one boy is drawing on a piece of paper, well he’s signing, like practicing his signature, i thought he was taking notes… maybe he’s decided not to pay attention!. (…) other boy is also drawing on a piece of paper; when the counsellor asks if they have any doubts one of them asks her about the lists for the final exams (…) even when the boys are not looking at her but drawing, it seems they pretend to be paying attention. field note at the video area-usbi: two girls sit next to each other, start playing the videos and start talking, they put on the earphones but only in one ear so that they can keep on chatting; they pretend they’re watching the video and writing or rather looking at the worksheet, but they are chatting (whispering) all the time. however other students seem to be working they watch attentively, rewind the videotapes and write on their worksheets. considering the previous excerpts, i agree with marsh et al (2001) when, after researching this topic among undergraduate students at nottingham trent university, they commented that, [n]otions of autonomy and independence have no objective existence for students in their lived world. yet the terms feature strongly in the teaching and learning discourse with which students have to engage. [thus, for] many students, the terms are reducible to attendance requirements, that is, something about doing, rather than being. (p. 387) there was another counsellor’s noteworthy opinion related to the absence of autonomy in some students’ everyday performance within their no-class courses. this counsellor commented: but it’s natural, no?... look, when children are in kindergarten they are free, they can play and do many things they want, very nice; then, in primary school… there you are… orders, prohibitions, ‘you have to memorize this and that’; in high school –worse, no?– you have to study many different subjects, there are a lot of contents, homework and rules and more rules to observe, finally, you get to the university and suddenly in english [courses]… well, now you are autonomous!! and you go ‘what’s that’? it’s a shock for the students. what the new mode meant to some students, that is, the difficulty it represented for them to study without taking classes and without having a teacher at hand constantly, is expressed in the following findings: regarding finding 2.1.1, some students were able to achieve some degree of autonomy. it should be noted that autonomy” in this context seems to refer to actions such as choosing when, how long and what to work on at the cadi; deciding to actually work or to pretend to be working in order to accumulate credits; determining their universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras124 herrera díaz attendance and participation in the counselling sessions; and trying their best to pass the subject. finding 2.1.2 indicates some of the possible causes for students’ failing to carry out the no-class courses. they might be as follows: their resistance to the imposition of the innovation; their misinterpretation of the notions of autonomy as used in the educational setting, or their identification of the mismatch between the “discourse of the new mode of studying” and their experience as students in an institutional context. 2.2 control over students it is worth noting that in a system which claimed to be based on the notion of autonomy and whose name was in fact “autonomous mode”, the exercise of control and surveillance was more palpable and more open to criticism. examples of this control can be described through these students’ statements: i became more responsible because they put pressure on us, i mean they force you to study and to study the basic things… what they are going to ask you [in the exams]. it [the cadi and the no-class mode] is like a father with a belt in his hand telling you to do the things. i feel uncomfortable with this issue of being asked to do certain number of hours or activities… and the counselling sessions, well… they’re ok, they are useful to have control on what students have to study. as can be noticed in the excerpts above, some students mentioned the subtle coercion they felt they were subjected to. this idea was also manifest when some of the counsellors declared: we have decided not to check more hours, now we are more interested in the activities they have done during the week. one of our duties is to check if they [the students] have worked and what [activities and areas] they have done during the week. i want to complement these indications of control with some of the numerous notes of my observations, either of the areas at the self-access centre (cadi) or of the counselling sessions in which the practice of subtle control and surveillance over the students was noted: field note at the computers area:… all the students in this and in all the areas, especially in the check in/out area, write on their logs, they are supposed to write down the key of the worksheet they have done and the time they’ve been there. field note at the check in/out area-usbi: the assistant stamps a student’s log, and when she’s about to give her bag back to the girl, she suggests her to do another activity to complete the time, since the computer doesn’t register less than 30 min. field note in 4 different counselling sessions of levels 1, 2, 3 and 5: in every single counselling session the students’ logs are checked; counsellors ask the students to pass their logs to them, then they write down on their lists in order to keep a record of whatever the students have done at cadi. there are counsellors who spend so long in this issue, and they scold or give suggestions to the students based on these logs… it’s incredible how important the logs are in this system!!! according to the preceding quotations, whether the students were to complete a certain number of activities instead of hours or to cover different areas (e.g. vocabulary, grammar, video, audio, etc.), it seemed that it was pre-established by someone else but the students as it occurs in the self-instruction mode, but contradicting again the original conception of autonomy. another account of the surveillance taking place in the setting of this study can be read in the following extracts of my field-notes: field note at the multiple uses area-usbi: the assistants are working on the computers; suddenly one of them starts walking around the cadi just to see what the students are doing… they must be working quietly??? 125profile vol. 14, no. 1, april 2012. issn 1657-0790. bogotá, colombia. pages 113-127 self-access language learning: students’ perceptions of and experiences within this new mode of learning field note at the multiple uses area-usbi: (…) the other 3 friends are still joking and laughing; suddenly the assistant walks in and everybody stays still, nobody talks except one of the boys who is so distracted fooling around, but his friend touches him with a pencil and then he realizes that the assistant is there. she walks straight to those 3 boys and asks them to be quiet; she tells them that she will subtract 15 minutes to their times because they haven’t been doing anything but playing. these excerpts seem to illustrate how the assistants (although it could also be the counsellors or even the technicians) oversaw the students and tried to control their discipline by scolding them and by reducing their allotted study time from their records. it must be mentioned that these surveillance actions seemed to be facilitated by the construction and arrangement of the cadi buildings where the rooms (areas and offices) were divided by short walls (1 meter tall) containing huge windows through which the counsellors and assistants were able to constantly keep an eye on the students who were in the areas. due to the accessibility of the view of the areas and the people there, who hardly noticed they were being watched, this “functional” architecture recalls the conception of jeremy bentham’s prison “in which prisoners supposed that they were under the all-seeing gaze of an inspector” (lyon, 2001, p. 7) who was in a central tower from which he was able to watch all the prisoners in their cells that surrounded the tower but without being noticed. even if the prisoners were not being watched, they watched themselves and functioned within the norms. recapitulating the samples of data presented here, finding 2.2.1 states the following: contrary to the claim that the no-class mode was based on and fostered principles of autonomy and independence, important factors which suggested that surveillance and control were subtly exerted over the students in the no-class mode were revealed. as mentioned above, besides the six major findings already discussed, three other findings are briefly described below in order to offer an overall panorama of the study. 2.3 beyond learning english: awareness and reflectivity despite the difficulties faced by some students undergoing this new mode of learning efl, there seemed to be a significant enhancement of some students’ capacity for making decisions and evaluations, and for developing reflectivity and awareness of their own learning processes and of their situation as university students throughout their no-class courses. 2.4 preparation to face the innovation a substantial output of the research suggested that significant problems in the no-class courses were the stakeholders’ lack of preparation to embark on the innovation, their reluctance to use the cadi materials, which could have been of help in this preparation, and the scarce effectiveness of the introductory course. 2.5 taking ownership of the innovation (no-class mode) an unexpected result was that most of the stakeholders –the counsellors as well as the students– seemed to be taking ownership of the innovation by gaining knowledge and experience, by participating in the system’s development, and the students, especially, by doing what they considered appropriate and convenient for them, which was mostly related to issues of time and credits. conclusions according to the outcomes of the current study may i suggest that the “autonomous mode” of learning/teaching foreign languages (especially universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras126 herrera díaz efl) has been institutionalized in such a way that it turned out to be suitable to the educational system in general and to the university’s system in particular, in spite of its divergence with the promotion of “autonomy” and the lack of consideration of the local context. for this reason, i consider that the university should do local needs’ analyses, evaluations of the actual development of the no-class system (autonomous courses and sacs) and by interweaving them, they should redesign and make them more suitable to the local conditions and more congruent with their principles (finding 4). in this new design, maybe other foreign languages and modes of teaching/learning would have to be included in the schema (finding 1). to conclude and as an attempt to answer the research question 1 (q1), i can say that, based on the concepts that have been reviewed here (autonomy, self-instruction, self-access language learning, self-access centres) and on the outcomes from this research, what the language centre-veracruz, and perhaps many other language centres around méxico (c.f. clemente, 1998), has offered as “autonomous courses”, based on principles of self-direction, sall and critical thinking, are in fact “no-class courses”. these courses, contrary to what autonomy implies, exercise a subtle control and surveillance over the students (finding 2.2.1) rather than promoting autonomy. i consider that a reappraisal and the consequent reorientation of the project (the no-class system) are necessary actions to be taken during the “routinizing” stage the system is going through, so that it fosters the students’ learning and independence. references aston, g. 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(1994). self–access. oxford: oxford university press. sionis, c. (1990). let them do our job! towards autonomy via peer-teaching and task-based exercises. english teaching forum, 28(1), 5-9. sturtridge, g. (1992). self-access. preparation and training. london: the british council. toogood, s., & pemberton r. (2002). integrating selfdirected learning into the curriculum: a case study. in p. benson, & s. toogood (eds.), learner autonomy 7: challenges to research and practice (pp. 86-110). ireland: authentik. about the author luz edith herrera díaz is the coordinator of the ma tefl programme at the language centreveracruz (university of veracruz, mexico), where she has been an english teacher and counsellor at its self-access centre. she holds a bed tesol, a masters’ degree in education and a phd in language studies from canterbury christ church university, uk. number 2 profile issues in teachers’ professional development vol. 11, no. 2, october 2009 issn 1657-0790 facultad de ciencias humanas departamento de lenguas extranjeras grupo de investigación profile © universidad nacional de colombia, sede bogotá director-editor melba libia cárdenas beltrán universidad nacional de colombia, bogotá editorial committee maría eugenia lópez universidad nacional de colombia, bogotá alex poole western kentucky university, usa ana maría ferreira barcelos universidade federal de viçosa, brazil ruth marcela del campo universidad nacional de colombia, bogotá assistant to the editor xatlí zuleta garzón universidad nacional de colombia, bogotá proofreaders randall barfield liam turnbull jeff althouse administrative services assistants ruth elena cuasialpud canchala christian leonardo lópez león rosa isabel gonzález moreno universidad nacional de colombia, bogotá centro editorial facultad de ciencias humanas www.humanas.unal.edu.co ciudad universitaria, ed. sociología orlando fals borda (205) phone: 57(1) 3165000 ext. 16208 bogotá, d. c., colombia design: carlos ramos printed in colombia by xpress estudio gráfico y digital, 2009 350 copies please send all correspondence to the journal editor: departamento de lenguas extranjeras, grupo de investigación profile universidad nacional de colombia. ciudad universitaria. carrera 30 n.º 45-03, bogotá, colombia website: www.humanas.unal.edu.co/cms.php?id=747 phone: 57(1) 3165000 ext. 16780 fax: 57(1) 3165000 ext. 16780 /16773 e-mail: rprofile_fchbog@unal.edu.co for information on journal exchange, please contact: dirección de bibliotecas, grupo de colecciones hemeroteca nacional carlos lleras restrepo av. el dorado n.º 44a–40 phone: 57 (1) 3165000 ext. 20082. a.a. 14490 e-mail: canjednb_nal@unal.edu.co distribución y venta scientific committee marina bondi, university of modena and reggio emilia, italy simon borg, university of leeds, uk anne burns, macquarie university, australia jill burton, university of south australia, australia carmen cáceda córdova, utsa, university of texas at san antonio, usa rosalba cárdenas, universidad del valle, colombia amparo clavijo, universidad distrital francisco josé de caldas, colombia gabriel díaz maggioli, ministerio de educación, uruguay john elliot, university of east anglia, uk deepti gupta, panjab university, chandigarh, india ann m. johns, san diego state university, usa andy kirkpatrick, university of hong kong, institute of education, china daniel madrid, universidad de granada, spain robin mctaggart, james cook university, australia édgar mendoza lópez, universidad ean, colombia raúl alberto mora vélez, university of illinois at urbana-champaign, usa gerrard mugford, universidad de guadalajara, mexico maría claudia nieto, universidad nacional de colombia, bogotá susan e. noffke, university of illinois at urbana-champaign, usa franca poppi, university of modena and reggio emilia, italy álvaro quintero polo, universidad distrital francisco josé de caldas, colombia isobel rainey de díaz, trinity college london, england juana mahissa reyes, universidad nacional de colombia, bogotá kathy g. short, university of arizona, usa richard smith, university of warwick, uk esperanza vera, universidad pedagógica nacional, colombia flávia vieira, universidade do minho, portugal editorial review board jesús alirio bastidas, universidad de nariño, colombia cristina frodden, universidad de antioquia, colombia sue garton, aston university, uk adriana gonzález m., universidad de antioquia, colombia nilton hitotuzi, secretaria de educação do estado do amazonas, brazil john m. keller, florida state university, usa terence lamb, university of sheffield, england martha lengeling, universidad de guanajuato, mexico claudia lucía ordóñez ordóñez, universidad nacional de colombia, bogotá josé luis ortega martin, universidad de granada, spain clelia pineda báez, universidad de la sabana, colombia josé villalobos, universidad de los andes, mérida-venezuela maría helena vieira a., universidade estadual paulista, brazil john jairo viáfara, uptcuniversidad pedagógica y tecnológica de colombia danuta wisniewska, adam mickiewicz university, poland profile, a refereed journal, encourages the dissemination of classroom research projects and innovations by teachers of english, and is published twice a year (in april and october). it is currently registered in ulrich’s periodicals directory. it is indexed in the mla international bibliography, educational research abstracts online –era, llba– linguistics and language behavior abstracts database, publindex –colciencias, classified in category b (until december 2009), and scielo (see http://www.scielo.org.co/scielo.php?script=sci_ serial&pid=1657-0790&nrm=iso). the views expressed here are those of the authors. except where otherwise noted, the contents in this journal is licensed under a creative commons license “attribution non-commercial and without derivative works”, colombia 2.5. consultation is possible at http: //creativecommons.org/licenses/bync-nd/2.5/co/ rector moisés wassermann lerner dean of the human sciences faculty fabián sanabria sánchez vice-dean of the human sciences faculty sergio bolaños cuéllar research and extension vice-dean of the human sciences faculty germán gutiérrez domínguez head of the foreign languages department melba libia cárdenas beltrán un la librería, bogotá plazoleta de las nieves calle 20 no. 7-15 tel. 22819003 ext. 29490 ciudad universitaria torre de enfermería, piso 1 tel. 3165000 ext. 19647 www.unlalibreria.unal.edu.co www.unibiblos.unal.edu.co libreriaun_bog@unal.edu.co la librería de la u www.lalibreriadelau.com siglo del hombre editores cra 31a no. 25b-50 bogotá, colombia pbx. 3377700 www.siglodelhombre.com contents 5 editorial issues from teacher researchers 11 promoting oral production through the task-based learning approach: a study in a public secondary school in colombia mireya peña & amparo onatra, francisco de paula santander school, colombia 27 integrating the coffee culture with the teaching of english carmen tulia zuluaga corrales, margarita maría lópez pinzón, & josefina quintero corzo, universidad de caldas, colombia 43 ¿duermes mucho tony? interpersonal and transactional uses of l1 in the foreign-language classroom sandra higareda, georgina lópez, & gerrard mugford, universidad de guadalajara, mexico 55 language testing in colombia: a call for more teacher education and teacher training in language assessment alexis a. lópez mendoza & ricardo bernal arandia, universidad de los andes & universidad piloto de colombia, colombia 71 exploring teachers’ practices for assessing reading comprehension abilities in english as a foreign language jorge hugo muñoz marín, universidad de antioquia, colombia 85 interweaving autonomous learning and peer-tutoring in coaching efl student-teachers aleida ariza ariza & john jairo viáfara gonzález, universidad pedagógica y tecnológica de colombia, colombia issues from novice teacher researchers 105 parental involvement in english homework tasks: bridging the gap between school and home nelly patricia ávila daza & sandra janneth garavito, universidad distrital francisco josé de caldas, colombia 117 interaction in online tutoring sessions: an opportunity to knit english language learning in a blended program rosa alejandra medina riveros, universidad nacional de colombia, sede bogotá issues based on reflections and innovations 135 english as a neutral language in the colombian national standards: a constituent of dominance in english language education carmen helena guerrero nieto & álvaro hernán quintero polo, universidad distrital francisco josé de caldas, colombia 151 addressing culture in the efl classroom: a dialogic proposal josé aldemar álvarez valencia & ximena bonilla medina, universidad de la salle, colombia 171 elt materials: the key to fostering effective teaching and learning settings astrid núñez pardo & maría fernanda téllez téllez, universidad externado de colombia, colombia 187 guidelines for contributors profile issues in teachers’ professional development vol. 11, no. 2, october 2009 issn 1657-0790 contenido 5 editorial temas de docentes investigadores 11 el enfoque de aprendizaje basado en tareas como medio para promover la producción oral: un estudio en un colegio público de secundaria en colombia mireya peña y amparo onatra, colegio francisco de paula santander, colombia 27 integración de la cultura cafetera con la enseñanza del inglés carmen tulia zuluaga corrales, margarita maría lópez pinzón y josefina quintero corzo, universidad de caldas, colombia 43 ¿duermes mucho tony? usos interpersonales y transaccionales de la lengua materna en el aula de clase de lengua extranjera sandra higareda, georgina lópez y gerrard mugford, universidad de guadalajara, méxico 55 evaluación de idiomas en colombia: un llamado a mejorar la formación y capacitación de profesores alexis a. lópez mendoza y ricardo bernal arandia, universidad de los andes y universidad piloto de colombia, colombia 71 exploración de las prácticas de los profesores para evaluar las habilidades de comprensión lectora en inglés como lengua extranjera jorge hugo muñoz marín, universidad de antioquia, colombia 85 la conexión entre aprendizaje autónomo y la tutoría entre pares como apoyo a estudiantes de inglés como lengua extranjera aleida ariza ariza y john jairo viáfara gonzález, universidad pedagógica y tecnológica de colombia, colombia temas de nuevos docentes investigadores 105 la participación de los padres de familia en el desarrollo de tareas de inglés: creación de lazos entre la escuela y la casa nelly patricia ávila daza y sandra janneth garavito, universidad distrital francisco josé de caldas, colombia 117 la interacción en las tutorías en línea: una oportunidad para tejer el aprendizaje de la lengua inglesa en un programa mixto rosa alejandra medina riveros, universidad nacional de colombia, sede bogotá temas basados en reflexiones e innovaciones 135 el inglés como idioma neutral en el marco de los estándares nacionales en colombia: un elemento constitutivo de dominación en la educación en inglés carmen helena guerrero nieto y álvaro hernán quintero polo, universidad distrital francisco josé de caldas, colombia 151 el abordaje de la cultura en la clase de inglés como lengua extranjera: una propuesta dialógica josé aldemar álvarez valencia y ximena bonilla medina, universidad de la salle, colombia 171 materiales para la enseñanza del inglés: la clave para promover ambientes efectivos de enseñanza y aprendizaje astrid núñez pardo y maría fernanda téllez téllez, universidad externado de colombia, colombia 187 instrucciones para los autores profile issues in teachers’ professional development vol. 11, no. 2, october 2009 issn 1657-0790 29profile vol. 14, no. 1, april 2012. issn 1657-0790. bogotá, colombia. pages 29-48 adolescent students’ intercultural awareness when using culture-based materials in the english class la conciencia intercultural de estudiantes adolescentes al usar materiales con contenido cultural en la clase de inglés mireya esther castañeda usaquén* secretaría de educación de bogotá, colombia this article reports on a qualitative and interpretative case study conducted at a high school located in the southeast of bogotá. the case is comprised of a group of fifty-one eighth graders who had had little contact with english. it aimed at exploring how these adolescents made sense of the culture-based materials implemented in the english lessons, and at describing their perceptions about foreign cultures. video and audio recordings, surveys, field notes and students’ artifacts were used to collect data. in this article, teachers can find some materials and reflections upon cultures as well as some ideas on how they can be adapted to their own needs and/or teaching contexts. key words: culture, culture-based materials, foreign culture, home culture, intercultural awareness. en este artículo se reporta un estudio de caso de tipo cualitativo e interpretativo que se realizó en un colegio público del suroriente de bogotá, con un grupo de cincuenta y un estudiantes del grado octavo, quienes tenían poco contacto con el idioma inglés. el objetivo fue explorar cómo estos adolescentes entendían los materiales con contenido cultural usados en las clases de inglés y describir sus percepciones de las culturas extranjeras presentadas en los materiales. se recolectó información mediante grabaciones de video y audio, encuestas, diario de campo y material elaborado por los estudiantes. en este artículo, los profesores pueden encontrar materiales y reflexiones sobre culturas y adaptarlos a sus necesidades o contextos. palabras clave: conciencia intercultural, cultura, cultura foránea, cultura materna, materiales con contenido cultural. * e-mail: mire_@hotmail.com this article was received on february 20, 2011, and accepted on october 30, 2011. universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras30 castañeda usaquén introduction what people say every day is shaped by their knowledge, background, and experience, among other factors. english teachers must be aware of some cultural differences or similarities between our students’ language and culture and what they learn in our classrooms, a foreign language and culture. as students use english only in the classroom i prepared and implemented materials which help them to broaden their views of the world. this study purports exploring students’ knowledge about culture, finding out the relationship between the culture-based materials implemented in the lessons and analyzing students’ perceptions about culture in a semi-rural state school with large classes. in order to fulfill the objective, the questions shown in figure 1 were posed. conceptual framework culture damen (1987), robinson (1988), freire and macedo (1987), storey (1996), roth and harama (2000), nieto (2002), mclaren (2003) and dolby (2003) agree with the conception that culture is complex, is dynamic, and is influenced by many factors because it is the center of human relationships. nieto (2002) affirms that “everyone has a culture because every person participates in the world through social and political relationships informed by history as well as by race, ethnicity, language, social class, sexual orientation, gender, and other circumstances related to identity and experience” (p. 10). mclaren (2003) points out that culture is understood as “the particular ways in which a social group lives out and makes sense of its ‘given’ circumstances and conditions of life” (p. 200). in addition, kramsch (1999) stresses that the perceptions that we have about foreigners are determined by the culture that we belong to. for this study, culture is defined as the way eighth graders interpret and understand what happens in english classes because they expressed their perceptions of their native culture, and the foreign cultures. i explored what they conveyed with their messages about those cultures during the lessons. in relation to school, nieto (2002) states that comprehending a culture entails “an understanding of how students from diverse segments of society –due to differential access, and cultural and linguistic differences– experience schooling and a commitment to social justice” (p. 4). since the school was located in a marginal area of the city, and pupils’ socio-economic conditions were restricted, figure 1. research questions how does student’s re�ection upon culture based materials inform us about their understanding of their own culture? how does interaction with cultural based materials inform us about student’s understanding of foreign cultures? subquestionsmain questions how does students’ interaction with culture-based materials inform us about students’ intercultural awareness? 31profile vol. 14, no. 1, april 2012. issn 1657-0790. bogotá, colombia. pages 29-48 adolescent students’ intercultural awareness when using culture-based materials in the english class it was fruitful to see the different visions students had of the classes when they used the materials. students’ background and the perceptions gene rated by their interaction with materials were crucial aspects that shaped students’ understanding of their home and the foreign culture. materials tomlinson (1998) defines materials as something that teachers and pupils use to make the experience of learning a foreign language easy; and as “anything which is used by teachers or learners to facilitate learning of a language. (...) it can be everything, which is deliberately used to increase the learners’ knowledge and/or experience of the language” (p. 2). both teachers and learners can be materials developers, but when studying cultures teachers have to ask about the sociocultural aspects that materials presented involve because “no society is a single seamless entity made up of ‘standard’ members” (tudor, 2001, p. 73). going beyond, authors such as storey (1996) and roth and harama (2000) gave a hint for finding sources with cultural content because from their perspective culture can be picked up from everywhere. roth and harama (2000) affirm that teachers “need to consider the world as a text, so that literacy means engaging the full range of what we can find in the library, art gallery, and the street” (p. 771). in relation to the classification of materials, cárdenas (2000) refers to two kinds of materials depending on the public they are directed to: materials for a local audience and commercial materials, which are for a large audience. she describes a 10-stage procedure that a team she worked with followed in order to produce materials to respond to children’s local needs. she also explains some of the principles that they kept in mind when designing and evaluating the materials. they took into account learners’ needs, the relation between teaching materials to schools’ aims and objectives, the variety in class arrangement, and the connection between language, the learning process, and the learner. finally, she asserts that if a book suited students’ needs, interests, and abilities, suited the teacher, met educational policies, and was flexible enough to be used it would be the best book available for teacher and students. cortazzi and jin (1999) establish three groups of materials according to the role of the cultural content and information in them. the first one is source cultural materials which draw on learners’ own culture content. the second one is target culture materials which exploit the culture of a country where english is spoken as the first language. the last one is the international target culture materials which take advantage of resources from different countries not only the english-speaking ones. pedagogical design i used some criteria proposed by cortazzi and jin (1999, p. 203) to evaluate textbooks with cultural content. i organized the tasks implemented in the classroom according to the parameters shown in table 1, which gathers the criteria connected to culture and the tasks. then, i explain each of the lessons, the roles of students and the teacher, the steps followed, and their relationship with culture. for the first criterion, social identity and social groups, students read about a real situation lived by a group of people in new york. this is not widely known and i have to confess that i did not know anything about that. so, i also learned about a group in deprived economic conditions in the usa. for the second criterion, social interaction, students saw london through an educational video. they could hear some colloquial and formal expressions in different locations in the center of london such as cafes, bookshops, the underground, etc. the main focus of this video was to universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras32 castañeda usaquén show the city as a place where one can find lots of facilities. students listened to formal language when the actors asked for something and informal language when they talked friendly to each other. it is important to say that one of the characters was a tourist and the other was a native speaker. the third criterion, belief and behavior, was worked because most of the students manifested being mistreated at home and complained of a lack of affection inside their family life. so, i illustrated the same situation lived by large numbers of people, including north americans through a tv program called “jerry” which, that day, presented a problem between a man (stepfather) with two teenagers (stepsons) and his wife (teens’ mother). this program was moving for students, and it helped them reflect on aggressive actions, on the use of rude words, and also on their roles as sons and daughters. the fourth criterion, social and political institutions, was addressed through a reading on the table 1. nature of tasks implemented criteria (cortazzi & jin, 1999, p. 203) tasks (carried out in the classroom) 1. social identity and social groups: social class, regional identity, ethnic minorities. students read an article called “underground in new york”. it is about a group of people who live in the undergrounds. 2. social interaction: different levels of formality; as outsider, as insider. pupils watched a video called a day in london. they saw different types of interaction (different settings). 3. belief and behaviour: moral, religious beliefs, daily routines. students watched a tv program that deals with a family which has a problem. 4. social and political institutions: state institutions, health care, law and order, social security, local government. students read some paragraphs about buckingham palace: the palace, the queen’s day, and an invitation to the palace. 5. socialization and the life cycle: families, schools, employment, rites of passage. students saw two video clips: one of a classroom and a class in a north american school, and the other of a party at a school in virginia. 6. national history: historical and contemporary events seen as makers of national identity. students read some texts related to the founding of the states of the usa, and britain as a multiracial nation. students were given some dollar bills with some historical facts about the person who appears on each one. 7. national geography: geographical factors seen as being significant by members. students read about the usa and the uk, they could study 50 states and the three countries in the island of great britain. 8. stereotypes and national identity: what is “typical”, symbols of national stereotypes? students read about sports in the usa: baseball, american football, ice hockey, and basketball. they explored a text with information about the uk: its national dish, tourist places, etc. and saw a video about tea. pupils gave an oral presentation about holidays in britain and the usa. 33profile vol. 14, no. 1, april 2012. issn 1657-0790. bogotá, colombia. pages 29-48 adolescent students’ intercultural awareness when using culture-based materials in the english class buckingham palace. this text showed the queen’s life in her palace. some aspects of the british govern ment were introduced, which are different from north american and latin american societies. for the fifth criterion, socialization and the life cycle, pupils watched two social events: one was in a real classroom and the other took place during a school party. those situations touched pupils’ lives because they had watched such moments as they happened: since the video was not edited, they could have a clear picture of north american students, their same age and grade (8th). adolescents could see how foreigners behaved in at least two familiar settings: a classroom and a school party. for the sixth criterion, national history, i included readings and tasks related to historical events that explained facts about some nations’ formation and identity. one of those readings described how great britain was settled and the other was a book in which the foundation of each state of the usa was explained. figure 2 shows some excerpts from a pupil’s notebook. they show the student’s drawings to illustrate some facts about the settling of colombia and the usa. for the sixth criterion i also created and implemented a task that included a cultural product like currency (bills, coins), and followed some steps: in the first, students were given some dollars and they pretended to sell and to buy some souvenirs (brought by them from a tourist place where they had been). then, they completed a table, in cluding the products they had sold, and the customers’ names. in another task, i provided pupils with a photocopy from a worksheet i myself designed which contained some historical facts of the people who were printed on the bills, and they looked for the prize that corresponded to that person. then, as homework, students took the same information from colombian bills. thus, students not only learned about american history but also about colombian history by recognizing significant people from foreign and native cultures. for the seventh criterion, the national geography, students read texts about the founding of the states (usa) and departments (colombia), drew some maps and included the most significant information about them. for the last one, stereotypes and national identity, teenagers read texts about typical foods, sports, and symbols in the usa and the uk. in one of the lessons students saw a video about tea, and in another they drank tea. students gave some oral presentations based on some excerpts about holidays in north america and in the uk. finally, during the last lessons, pupils wanted to give a presentation; most of them chose something in the fashion of popular singers such as shaggy and madonna. the teenagers seemed to enjoy their presentations and the audience was attentive. figure 2. excerpts taken from fernando’s notebook when contrasting settlements universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras34 castañeda usaquén table 2. lessons and materials implemented lessons: cultural settings materials a north american public school classroom a bingo board game with colombian school objects in it flashcards of some supplies in a north american classroom a video clip of a spanish language class in a public school in virginia (usa) currency deals bills from the usa (dollars for didactic purposes) coins (quarters) from the usa souvenirs provided by students from their trips a workshop of facts about people printed on north american bills (see appendix a) real colombian bills to be used at home usa formation a big map of the usa flashcards with the names of each state of the usa miller, r., fernández, v., & price k. (1999). the 50 states. new york: tangerine press. a brochure about colombia lesson with information about the settling of the usa and colombia* (see appendix b) a poster (see a student’s artifact, in appendix c) a workshop i designed with information provided by a social studies teacher at juana escobar school, morning shift (see figure 2) britain formation extract from the textbook**: elsworth, s. , rose, j. & date, o. (1999). go for english 3. turin: longman. (p. 64-65) flashcards with the names of some countries a day in london an educational video taken from headway (elementary) section 1: a day in london soars, j., & soars l. (1993). headway video-elementary. oxford: oxford university press. tea an educational video taken from headway (elementary) section 8: tea tea prepared by me parties in schools a teenagers’ school party video clip the uk elsworth, s., rose, j. & date, o. (1999). go for english 2. turin: longman. sports in the usa elsworth, s., & rose, j. & date, o. (1999). go for english 1. turin: longman. undergrounds in new york an extract from the book by harris, m., mower. d, & sikorzynska, a. (2001). opportunities, pre-intermediate. london: longman. holidays in britain and in the usa elsworth, s., rose, j. & date, o. (1999). go for english 3. london: longman. students’ oral presentations the buckingham palace extract from soars j., & soars, l. (1993). headway-elementary. student’s book. oxford: oxford university press. (p. 37) a family issue a tv program: kiesewetter, j. (2003). (television broadcast, may 30). in r. dominick (executive producer). the jerry springer show. virginia, usa: universal talk television productions. pupils’ artifacts cds and lyrics brought in by students for their presentations * ricardo bejarano, a social studies teacher, summarized historic aspects to make this chart. ** go for english is a book series that the school has in the library. students read them in groups or individually. 35profile vol. 14, no. 1, april 2012. issn 1657-0790. bogotá, colombia. pages 29-48 adolescent students’ intercultural awareness when using culture-based materials in the english class materials a detailed description of the materials used for each lesson, the name of each lesson, and the list of sources used during the instruction is provided in table 2. i adapted a lesson of the book called cultural awareness by tomalin and stempleski (1994), and designed tasks using some of the following resources: magazines, newspapers, songs and their lyrics, photos, videos, maps, two home video clips –one of an american classroom, a party at a school1, an american tv program; two educational videos, one about london and the other about tea– some currency of the usa, britain and colombia, readings from textbooks (see table 2) and cds brought in by students. research design this is a qualitative, exploratory and interpretative case study (larsen-freeman, 1991) carried out with the whole class over ten months. observation was naturalistic because students were recorded. this is a case study because “it gives an opportunity for one aspect of a problem to be studied in some depth within a limited time scale”, and the data are collected in a systematic way (bell, 1999, p. 10). participants bogotá is a place where one can find diverse realities. it is very different to teach in a school 1 these videos were recorded by a teacher who was working for an american school in virginia and who helped me to collect authentic materials for this study. located in an urban area than in one in the periphery. this project was conducted in 2003 with a group of eighth graders at a public school located in the southeastern part of the city. in this neighborhood there were not any banks, cinemas or malls, so the community had to go to other neighborhoods to get some goods and services. people belonged to zone one of the local socioeconomic stratification. the classes were large, with about fifty-one students in each group. students had two sessions of english class a week, one of 110 minutes, and the other of 55. students were at the elementary level of english. their ages were between 11 and 16. data collection i used surveys, field notes, audio and video recordings, and students’ artifacts. according to bell (1999), the main purpose of a survey is to find out information which can be analyzed to identify patterns (p. 13). surveys were administered to the whole class in order to explore students’ knowledge, perceptions, opinions, and reflections of home and foreign cultures and of the materials used. besides that, at the end of the lessons semi-structured interviews were administered to some students of the class. “these interviews are guided by a list of questions or issues to be explored, but neither the exact wording nor the order of the questions is determined ahead of time” (merriam, 1988, p. 74). because of the noisy setting, i took the tape recorder with me all the time. i set the camera in one of the corners of the classroom and placed a tape recorder in a group that was not being captured on camera. i recorded what students said “verbatim quotes, in your students’ own words” (hubbard & power, 1999, p. 95). i also took field notes regarding students’ comments about culture. finally, with the students’ artifacts i gathered evidence of what students did during the lessons, and what they learned from the lessons. figure 3. excerpt taken from fernando’s notebook universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras36 castañeda usaquén data analysis to analyze the data i followed the open coding procedure (strauss & corbin, 1990). first of all, i read and re-read the data in order to find commonalities. second, from these common attributes i read again to find patterns; the ideas that i found were grouped into subcategories according to the characteristics shared. i read students’ answers in the surveys and tried to find patterns. next, i labeled the subcategories; then i numbered each page; and finally, i designed a chart where i indexed students’ verbatim dialogue by indicating date of the lesson, page number, question number, and the name of the group those words represented. i transcribed the tapes (audio/video) and used color-coding for the video and tape transcriptions. i highlighted in different colors the ideas that supported the commonalities i found. i also used symbols next to the line that caught my attention and, at the end of the transcription, wrote commentaries, questions, headings and thoughts. i transcribed the semi-structured interviews and underlined in color the ideas that substantiated the categories identified in the other instruments. then, a name was given to each category. after that, the data were read again and the patterns contrasted to establish the categories that emerged from the different instruments. then i wrote the quotations or ideas from the data that helped illustrate the categories. findings the categories depicted in figure 4 were drawn from the data to explain students’ intercultural awareness while interacting in class with culturebased materials. reading a foreign culture in the light of one’s reality, and the home culture in relation to the foreign one this category reflects the way students used their own world, their experiences, and their knowledge as a tool to read the foreign cultures presented in the materials, and reading home culture in relation to the foreign one. for freire and macedo, “reading the world always precedes reading the word, and reading the word always implies continually reading the world (…)” besides that, “reading the word is not preceded merely by reading the world, but by a certain form of writing it or rewriting it, that is, of transforming it by means of conscious, practical work” (1987, p. 35). figure 4. categories that emerged from the study categories reading a foreign culture in the light of one’s reality, and the home culture in relation to the foreign one appraising home and foreign cultures and responding to them changing an efl classroom culture 37profile vol. 14, no. 1, april 2012. issn 1657-0790. bogotá, colombia. pages 29-48 adolescent students’ intercultural awareness when using culture-based materials in the english class students read the materials used in lessons fol lowing a path: first, they used the materials; then, they made sense of them, and finally they let me know their interpretations by sharing them through their writings, behaviors, and ideas. students used their previous cultural knowledge and experiences, and their home culture characteristics, to understand, to read the foreign culture, and to establish links between the two cultures in contact. pupils read the foreign culture in the light of a very familiar feature of their home culture because after reading a text about buckingham palace, they found, as most of them did not have any spatial referent for this place, a referent in the city they live in, bogotá; they also considered it very big, like buckingham palace. according to dayana, nicol and xiomara: “in london there was a prime minister and a parliament, and that the palace was as big as a city” (survey, nov. 4th)2. another example was that fernanda did not know that champeta is a latin rhythm, so she associated it with hip-hop3. hence, and since she did not like champeta, she concluded that “the parties in that foreign school were boring” (survey, nov. 4th)4. in another lesson, teenagers watched a video about tea, but most of the students reported that they had watched a video about coffee. beethoven: “about the history of coffee, how many times people drank coffee, and about the country where caffeine is drank the most” (survey, oct. 21st). 2 the expressions in quotation marks correspond to students’ spanish ideas translated into english for the purpose of this publication. 3 champeta  is the cultural phenomenon and musical genre of independent and local origin from the african descendents in the areas in and around cartagena de indias, (colombia). it is also associated with the culture of palenque of san basilio. san basilio is located in bolívar, in northern colombia. retrieved from http://en.wikipedia. org/wiki/champeta 4 the expressions in quotation marks correspond to students’ spanish ideas translated into english for the purpose of this publication. when i realized the misunderstanding, i made tea and pupils drank it, most of them had not drunk it before. some students linked that new flavor with a very familiar drink in their diet. nathalie: “tea shared a characteristic with a popular colombian drink made from sugar cane, it was its color” (survey, nov. 12th). thus, she compared the new with the old. she read the foreign culture in the light of her own reality. language is another aspect that played a role in students’ interpretations of the foreign culture because when they wrote they used spanish in a very peculiar way. for example, carlos explained a situation experienced by some people in new york who lived in the undergrounds. he used a particular expression to mean that these people had to go away from the undergrounds: “pisarse” when the police came. 285. ss: railway. 286. t: railway, and what else? where do they live? 287. ss: tunnel. 288. t: tunnels. then, they 289. have to (rises her hand and shakes 290. her fingers to show that they have to go) 291. carlos: go away, go away. (video transcriptions, nov. 13th) regarding the use of language, fabián said that american teenagers were yankees: “they are yankees”. i asked him what he meant by yankee and he said that it meant “very tall” (teacher’s field notes). to analyze this example, i used adaskou’s assertion (1990, in mckay, 2000), which states that in the culture level denominated pragmatic sense, language learning has to do with cultural norms: whether an expression fits in a specific context. for duvan and his group the word yankee had a shared connotation, which differed from mine, or from other groups’. when i looked at this expression i put the meaning of that word in a broader universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras38 castañeda usaquén context, our colombian one, where that word is used during workers’ protests to refer to north americans (yanquis). because of duvan’s answer, i was sure that he did not know of the negative and political force that this word had. he was using an expression but it did not fit the context in which it was framed. pupils reflected the images of the foreign culture through their native language and that matched halliday’s idea (1990) that language is a way of coming nearer to the world and making sense of it, and that language is a mirror of reality. in other words, the word “yankee” for this group referred to a very tall foreigner. fernando used an idiomatic expression when he described the video about london as a nice one: 46. fernando: (reading the question aloud) what do you think of 47. the materials used in today’s class? ajisosos. 48. i write ajisosos (talking to himself ). 49. duveimar: wow! 50. t: a volunteer (to fernando). what does ajisoso 51. mean? 52. fernando: ajisoso. 53. duveivar: wonderful! nice! (audiotape, oct. 20th) participants used their average physical characteristics (short and thin) to comprehend the foreign culture. american students who were recorded in the video and the observers, colombian students, had in common their ages (14-15), grade (8th graders) and context (a public school) but pupils wrote in the surveys that the main difference between them was the age. that idea did not correspond to the factual information, but that was the way they perceived that reality using the standards of height and weight in their home culture. nicol: “young boys looked very old” (survey, nov. 3rd) and jhonpy said that he could see students of his same course, “that they were old between 16 and 18” (survey, nov. 3rd). students also contrasted foreign classrooms with the ones at home. hemili explained that she learnt about rooms in the usa because “in the usa places are spacious while here places are cramped” (survey, nov. 3rd). danielewicz (2001, p. 59) states: “our identities are manifested in what we regard as the self, the internal state of consciousness we refer to in everyday speech whenever we say i”. students manifested their social self because they used key words like we, our, i, or in colombia to talk about themselves; and other words like there, they, in the usa, in order to contrast the home culture with the foreign one. i refer to social self in this document to the relations established between myself and others, or my country (colombia) and the other societies (the usa and the uk). students contrasted their social selves with the foreigners’. for collins (2000) the self-concept develops the self-image, the self-esteem, and the ideal self. self image is defined as the individual awareness of his/her mental characteristics; selfesteem refers to the individual’s evaluation of the discrepancy between her/his self-image and the ideal self, which is made up of the ideal characteristics he or she should possess, and ideal standards or skills and behaviours which are valued within the society in which she/he is growing up. besides that, roth and harama (2000) think that identity is an articulated premise of daily life, including schooling: students showed their identity when they talked about customs that characterize their culture. collins (2000) affirms that identity involves the self-concept, which has three aspects: the cognitive (thinking), the affective (feeling), and the behavioral (actions). from my point of view the first one deals with the academic self, the second with self-esteem, and the third with the social self. pupils revealed the concept they had about their social behavior. 39profile vol. 14, no. 1, april 2012. issn 1657-0790. bogotá, colombia. pages 29-48 adolescent students’ intercultural awareness when using culture-based materials in the english class after reading a short text called “where do the british come from?”, which presented the idea that british people were all immigrants, xiomara found some correlation between the formations of both great britain and colombia. she wrote: “it seems that there was not a slow conquest but invasion” (survey, oct. 3rd). the information she provided was the product of the connections she had made among news on tv (in those days the conflict between the usa and iraq reigned), the situation of many colombians being displaced or forced to resettle, and the content of the reading. regarding the role of mass media in students’ view of the world, dayana, nicol and xiomara read some paragraphs about buckingham palace and established a relationship between the white house in the united states, which they have seen on tv several times, and buckingham palace, and not with the nariño palace in colombia. apparently, students had not seen our palace before. that could be due to the fact that they rarely go out of their neighborhoods. otherwise, students would have contrasted the palace in london with the palace in bogotá. the white house was not mentioned in the reading. they reported what they learnt: “here, in colombia, there was a president and a white house” (survey, nov. 21st). pupils gave attributes to their home culture that it does not have. they did that because they tried to apply knowledge transmitted by mass media and not with the information presented in the text. willis, in dolby (2003), argues, “popular culture is a more significant, penetrating pedagogical force in young peoples’ lives than schooling” (p. 264). he also states that school has left aside its role in students’ identity formation, which has been taken or assumed by the popular culture and mass media. we can recapitulate from this category that students read their home culture in light of their own reality by using their previous knowledge, experience, and home culture characteristics such as language, physical characteristics, behaviors, and buildings. they also related their home culture to the foreign one by contrasting their social selves with the foreigners’, and by making connections between the home culture and foreign cultures. appraising home and foreign cultures and responding to them to appraise is “to examine (someone or something) in order to judge their qualities, success or needs” (cambridge international dictionary of english, 1995, p. 57) and response is understood as the “act or feeling produced in answer to a stimulus; reaction” (oxford advanced learner’s dictionary, 1993, p. 1077). students not only read about the foreign and home cultures, but also responded to them critically. when students responded to the culturebased materials, they challenged home culture policies, acknowledged some aspects of the foreign culture represented in the materials, reshaped their home culture beliefs, expressed surprise, reshaped perceptions of the foreign culture, balanced the cultures, and valued the richness of their home culture. some examples are the following: in a lesson, after watching a video of an american school, adriana stated: “in the school in virginia (usa) there are things that we do not have in a colombian public school. the government does not invest in public education.” (survey, aug. 3rd) beethoven read between the lines of this situation as he described the bad conditions of his own classroom, chairs that were like old sticks of wood and explained the role he saw of the american state in the maintenance of the american school: 19. “t: well... did you like the video? 20. yes or no? and why? 21. beethoven: eh...yes, i do. i liked the video because eh... 22. there we learnt eh, how, eh, the, the state 23. takes cares of the school very well. universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras40 castañeda usaquén (...) 30. t: well, did you learn anything new about... 31. those aspects? 32. beethoven: (nods) 33. t: about what aspect you learned 34. anything new? 35. beethoven: of a classroom from a public school. 36. because, because we are 37. sitting on very old and destroyed desks 38. our classroom, and there, they have everything 39. modified, new. we do not have anything. (audio transcription, aug. 22nd) in another lesson, students read a short text of one state in the usa. there was a big map of the american continent on a table; leonardo and beethoven were looking at it. teacher approached them and asked what they had seen. beethoven answered that colombia was very close to be coming a new state of the usa because we had debts with the world bank. he also expressed that he did not like that situation because we would lose our beloved land: 113. t: what did you see on the map? 114. beethoven: that we are near (points to the map) 115. t: what? 116. beethoven: being another state. 117. t: why? 118. beethoven: because we have a debt with the world bank. 119. t: what happens, don’t you like it? 120. beethoven: no, i do not. we lose our land. (audio transcription, sep. 5th) students understood our colombian social situation by using foreign policies as an excuse. this is what freire and macedo (1987), storey (1996), nieto (2002) and mclaren (2003) explained when they said that culture is a site of social differences. teenagers drew conclusions of their own socioeconomic situations in light of politicians’ decisions about investing money and placed the responsibility for the differences found between the foreign and home societies on the politicians. when students used the materials they also reshaped their home culture values. when i read students’ reflections i could recognize that the materials and the instruction exerted a certain kind of power which helped students expand their ideas about some essential values that help everybody live a better life such as environmental protection, dialogue, coexistence, and tolerance. pupils watched a video about the center of london. horse manifested that he learnt “about the protection of the environment by taking care of everything and not throwing rubbish to rivers”(survey, oct. 20th). students also read a short article about people who live in the undergrounds of new york. this reading caused xiomara to reflect on “the importance of recycling, and of taking care of books, and keep them to sell in the future as a mean to survive” (survey, nov. 13th). it can be inferred that students were thinking about things they valued in order to have a better place to live in, as they saw in the video, and when they read the article, they realized that a place like that could be possible and reflected upon the actions they could take to build that better place. in that way, they evaluated their self-concept and manifested these possible actions to take care of everything in their worlds, recycling, not throwing rubbish into the water, or not throwing away books, in order to accomplish an ideal self. in fact, these are values expressed in the shape of actions to be carried out. finally, self-concept and the ideal self were explored because students expressed some thoughts which allowed me to hear their ideas about protecting the environment and the importance of recycling. the importance of conversing to live in harmony was also remarked on by students constantly. it seemed that to solve problems by talking is what 41profile vol. 14, no. 1, april 2012. issn 1657-0790. bogotá, colombia. pages 29-48 adolescent students’ intercultural awareness when using culture-based materials in the english class pupils concluded as the best option, after having used the materials. students watched a video, which contained a troublesome situation in a north american family. escarcha: “one must not be aggressive.” fernanda: “i liked the activity. males and females are aggressive and both used rude words, so we have to use proper words.” (survey, nov. 21st). when students used the materials they valued the richness of their home culture. value is defined as “have a high opinion of somebody or somebody” (oxford advanced learner’s dictionary, 1993, p. 1411). students found the worth of their home culture in relation to its music, famous people printed on the currency, and landscapes. in one task, students had to find information about the people who appeared on colombian bank notes; the class shared their findings and compared them with the american dollars. the class expressed that on colombian bank notes there was a variety of people who appeared printed on them while on the american ones there were only presidents. 13. t: what’s the difference? 14. ok. rise your hand and say 15. (points to a student) 16. fabian: that most of them are 17. liberators and the others can be eh. 18. can be male heroes 19. nerón: heroes 20. t: and what else? (video transcriptions, sep. 3rd) damen (1987) says that “cross-cultural awareness involves uncovering and understanding one’s own culturally conditioned behaviour and thinking, as well as the patterns of others. this process involves not only perceiving the similarities and differences in other cultures but also rec ognizing the givens of the native culture” (p. 141). i could state that students are in the process of raising intercultural awareness because in the data analyzed we have seen how they try to uncover and understand not only the similarities and differences between the cultures they are in contact with but also the qualities or richness of their own. changing an efl classroom culture change is defined as “become different” (oxford advanced learner’s dictionary, 1993, p. 187), and classroom is understood as the place students and teachers interact in the english language lessons. one aspect of the culture is that it can be changed; according to murphy (1986), in holliday (1994), cultures are “the products of human activity and thinking and, as such, are people-made” (p. 26). students changed the classroom culture in terms of types of learning, the roles played by teacher and students, and the classroom routine. robinson (1988) and cheung (2001) stated that two types of knowledge take place inside schools: one is the related to the subject matter and the other is concerned with the world. regarding learning about the subject matter, english, i found some concepts that helped me explain what happened in the classroom: inventive spelling and learning vocabulary. inventive spelling occurred when learners listened to a word but did not see it in the written form so pupils made up its spelling. some examples of this phenomenon were ti for tea; musicc for music; jalowin for halloween (survey, nov. 13th). besides that, lawrence (2001) states that “spelling errors made during the process of writing were not viewed as impediments to learning, but as opportunities for the observant teacher to notice how children were making sense of sound-letter relationships (p. 265). students also learned vocabulary; rasputin wrote: “i learned many words in english like homeless, live, mole, etc.” (survey, nov. 13th). universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras42 castañeda usaquén in relation to learning about the world, one student wrote that he learnt “a mole makes tunnels” (survey, nov. 13th). i found that he learnt that information from his classmates because the presentation of this word occurred in this way: 52. t: what does mole mean? what is a mole? 53. nerón: what do you write? 54. boy: an animal. 55. t: and where does it live? 56. ss: (inaudible) in the land. (video transcriptions, nov. 13th) in the previous example pupils were sharing their knowledge when one explained to the other what a mole was, and according to mckay and hornberger (1997, p. 439), classrooms must generate knowledge sharing on the part of the students. materials had a great influence on students’ engagement and interest in the foreign language class. most of the students wrote their opinions about the materials used in each lesson and showed their curiosity for learning about other worlds. beto said that “it was funny to see the videos from other countries, because he could see how people lived, their routines, and how they spent their free time” (survey, nov. 4th). beethoven stated: “the materials were good because they were different from other school subject matters” (survey, nov. 4th). in the surveys students gave some advice regarding materials that could be useful in class. this confirmed what nieto (2002) says about students helping to build a better atmosphere in the classroom. conclusions students read the foreign culture in light of their own reality by using their previous knowledge, making connections between foreign and home issues learned from media, using home culture standards to assess their own reality, acknowl edging foreign culture development, and reshaping their beliefs about the foreign culture. when students interacted with something new that did not have any kind of equivalent in their home culture they tended to look for a suitable and familiar referent to make sense of it. this process was influenced by students’ previous knowledge and experiences. some examples: buckingham palace with bogotá, hip-hop with champeta, and tea with coffee. in the school context analyzed throughout this study, mass media (especially national tv) exerted great influence in the connections that students made between situations lived in colombia and the content presented in the culture-based materials used in this research. for instance, students had not had any direct contact with a typical sport of the usa (american football, for example) but as they had watched a film where it was played, they made sense of it and gave their opinions about the sport and sportsmen’s behaviors. the same happened with some historic situations when they connected our colombian situation of forced resettlement with the usa invasion of iraq, and with the formation of great britain. the other example occurred when students connected buckingham palace with the white house. based on the awareness raised through the a nalysis of the culture-based materials, students took a stand on politics, challenged home culture policies by using the foreign culture as a parameter. pupils went beyond their usual level of analysis, for example, expressing emphatically what they would do if they were the politicians in our country. by doing so, students reflected upon and analyzed some criti cal socioeconomic aspects of home culture. in order to read the foreign culture students expressed their beliefs about it using idiomatic expressions. when students found situations in the foreign culture which caused an impact on them, they chose idiomatic expressions in their mother tongue to effectively communicate that impact. 43profile vol. 14, no. 1, april 2012. issn 1657-0790. bogotá, colombia. pages 29-48 adolescent students’ intercultural awareness when using culture-based materials in the english class consequently, language played an important role when sharing beliefs, feelings, and understanding about other cultures. when students read the foreign culture using their home culture parameters they could not easily accept that reality. it was difficult for them to accept that teenagers of their same age were taller and looked stronger than they did. for this reason they emphasized that american teenagers were older than they were. besides that, pupils found that they behaved differently from american teenagers in parties; here they are livelier. so, they deduced that american teenagers were bored in their parties. when students established contact with the foreign culture they reshaped their beliefs about it. pupils recognized that american institutions were more organized than ours, and that sports were more advanced than ours too. before coming into contact with culture-based materials, they used to think that in american schools there were not any afro-americans. they then noticed the different ethnic groups who live abroad. students read their home culture by con trasting their social selves with the foreigners’. they used home culture parameters and described themselves in relation to others. so, pupils evaluated their self-concept, which provoked their thinking about their ideal selves and reshaped their own values like environmental protection, dialogue, tolerance, and coexistence. this comparison led students to value the richness of their home culture too. some home culture elements were music, famous characters printed on their currency, and landscapes. likewise, students kept a balance between the foreign and the home cultures. they found commonalities in both positive and negative aspects, things that cultures shared such as their behaviors when watching sports, poor people’s occupations, historic situations, and means of transportation. pedagogical implications it is of much value that people involved in educational matters, particularly in teaching a foreign language, are aware of their own beliefs about the foreign and home cultures. teachers’ practices, voices, feelings, and opinions revealed in classrooms shape students’ identities. we are responsible for the kind of ideas generated in our practices; we cannot be far from the role that we assume when being teenagers’ educators. culture is a construct that must be at the heart of education; students have their own way to interpret the materials used in our practice. having this in mind, we must be aware of the culture that is being placed on or introduced to them, and of the kind of ideas presented to them. culture is broad and we always have to keep it in mind if we want to really help in the transformation of this violent world into one in which everyone respects the other’s point of view. hence, teachers must hear students’ voices after the lessons to know what they think, learn, or feel when attending a class where a foreign culture is presented, and also to be familiar with students’ readings of different worlds. that is, teachers must guarantee their students’ literacy of foreign and home cultures. considering that pupils have numerous ways to approach different realities (foreign culture, in this case), it is strongly recommended that educators use a wide diversity of materials to make sure their classrooms are places of learning for everyone. the use of video is strongly suggested due to the great influence that it puts toward students’ class engagement, and on their production of multiples responses which ultimately enrich the teaching and learning process. regarding the nature and the role of materials in students’ understanding of home and foreign cultures, resources must motivate students’ curiosity to know about different worlds, and the resources need to touch pupils’ lives because universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras44 castañeda usaquén they could foster students’ engagement in foreign language classes and teamwork. references bell, j. 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(1988). cross cultural understanding. cambridge: cambridge university press. 45profile vol. 14, no. 1, april 2012. issn 1657-0790. bogotá, colombia. pages 29-48 adolescent students’ intercultural awareness when using culture-based materials in the english class roth,w. m., & harama, h. (2000). (standard) english as second language: tribulations of self. journal curriculum studies, 32(6), 757-775. soars, j., & soars l. (1993). headway-elementary. sudents’ book. oxford: oxford university press. soars, j., & soars l. (1993). headway video-elementary. oxford: oxford university press. storey, j. (1996). cultural studies and the study of popular culture: theories and methods. athens: the university of georgia press. strauss, a., & corbin, j. (1990). basics of qualitative research grounded theory procedures and techniques. london: sage publications. tomalin, b., & stempleski, s. (1994). cultural awareness. oxford: oxford university press. tomlinson, b. (1998). materials development in language teaching. cambridge: cambridge university press. tudor, i. (2001). the dynamics of the language classroom. cambridge: cambridge university press. about the author mireya esther castañeda usaquén holds a bed in philology and language-english (universidad nacional de colombia) and a masters in applied linguistics to tefl (universidad distrital, colombia). she also studied in a professional development program at universidad nacional de colombia. she has worked in primary and high schools, and in universities. she currently works for secretaría de educación de bogotá and universidad antonio nariño, bogotá, colombia. acknowledgements i would like to express my gratitude to professor esperanza vera who was my mentor during the master’s program and to judith astrid rodríguez who was teaching spanish in the usa and collected authentic materials for this study. universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras46 castañeda usaquén appendix a. workshop on currency (dollars) please, fill the with the value of each bill. george washington was the first president of the usa. benjamin franklin signed the declaration of independence. statesman – inventor – philosopher abraham lincoln led and maintained the union through the civil war. he was against slavery. alexander hamilton believed in a strong central government and in a strong banking system. u.s. grant his government was tainted with corruption among his cabinet members. thomas jefferson author of the declaration of independence. 2 two 47profile vol. 14, no. 1, april 2012. issn 1657-0790. bogotá, colombia. pages 29-48 adolescent students’ intercultural awareness when using culture-based materials in the english class appendix b. formation of the usa and colombia read the following information and illustrate it with images. the usa colombia 1. settlement: community 1. conquest: invasion 2. families 2. only men 3. escaped from religious persecution 3. looked for adventure 4. wanted to stay in that territory 4. wanted to explore and return to spain 5. worked to be independent 5. worked for the king 6. killed or displaced ethnic groups 6. took advantage of the work of ethnic groups 7. maintained separated from ethnic groups 7. had sexual intercourse or violated indigenous peoples’ rights 8. farmers (independent) 8. depended on the king 9. sense of belonging 9. no sense of belonging 10. no crusade 10. crusades (killed people because of their religious beliefs) universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras48 castañeda usaquén appendix c. a student’s poster 101profile vol. 16, no. 2, october 2014. issn 1657-0790 (printed) 2256-5760 (online). bogotá, colombia. pages 101-116 systemic functional linguistics and discourse analysis as alternatives when dealing with texts la lingüística sistémica funcional y el análisis del discurso como alternativas para trabajar con textos paula andrea garcía montes1* ana maría sagre barboza2** alba isabel lacharme olascoaga3*** universidad de córdoba, colombia this article presents a case study research with aims to find out which activities, methodological and textual aspects used in a reading strategies course were causing a group of students difficulties when analyzing critically written information. we conducted the study at universidad de córdoba (colombia) with seventh semester students from the undergraduate english program. the data collection techniques used included observations, document analysis, interviews, and a preliminary english test for students. the results were analyzed taking into account issues in discourse analysis and systemic functional linguistics. results show reasons why students find it difficult to successfully complete the analysis of written texts. these results can serve as useful alternatives for planning reading lessons. key words: critical discourse analysis, discourse analysis, reading, systemic functional linguistics. este artículo presenta un estudio de caso que busca analizar qué actividades, aspectos metodológicos y textuales causan dificultades en los estudiantes para analizar de manera crítica información en un curso de estrategias de lectura. este estudio se realizó en la universidad de córdoba (colombia) con estudiantes de séptimo semestre del programa de inglés. las técnicas de recolección usadas fueron observaciones, análisis de documentos, entrevistas y un examen de competencia en inglés. los resultados fueron analizados teniendo en cuenta elementos relevantes del análisis del discurso y de la lingüística sistémica. los resultados mostraron las posibles razones por las cuales los estudiantes muestran dificultades para analizar textos escritos. estos resultados pueden servir como alternativas para la planeación de clases de lectura. palabras clave: análisis del discurso, análisis crítico del discurso, lectura, lingüística sistémica funcional. * e-mail: paulandreag02@gmail.com ** e-mail: asagrabe02@gmail.com *** e-mail: allacharme@hotmail.com how to cite this article (apa, 6th ed.): garcía montes, p. a., sagre barboza, a. m., & lacharme olascoaga, a. i. (2014). systemic functional linguistics and discourse analysis as alternatives when dealing with texts. profile issues in teachers’ professional development, 16(2), 101-116. http://dx.doi.org/10.15446/profile.v16n2.38113. this article was received on may 14, 2013, and accepted on january 24, 2014. this is an open access article distributed under the terms of the creative commons license attribution-noncommercial-noderivatives 4.0 international license. consultation is possible at http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/. universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras102 garcía montes, sagre barboza, & lacharme olascoaga introduction in the past, teaching english required teachers to concentrate on the development of grammar through drills and translations. by using these techniques students were supposed to learn english. due to new educational requirements, some students are no longer passive learners; they are more autonomous in learning, active thinkers, and analysts of everyday encounters. thus, the ministry of education in colombia has set out very useful standards to help learners construct their own knowledge, develop discourse skills, improve students’ communicative and linguistics abilities, as well as develop their sociolinguistic competences in order to encourage them to be autonomous and critical thinkers. all these aspects challenge teachers to look for effective methods and approaches to improve their teaching and avoid the traditional teaching practices wherein students are not encouraged to debate, reflect, and suggest. instead they are asked to just internalize sets of words and rules in isolation. these methods can be useful in some cases but when used repetitively in our classes, students will not be given the chance to explore more critical and analytical methods to learn english as active thinkers rather than passive ones. nowadays, students should not only acquire aspects regarding vocabulary, grammar, and pronunciation, but they also need to know how to use the language in real situations. additionally, learners should learn how to identify the purpose of news or magazine article texts. students need to be given the necessary tools to identify the structure of texts in terms of language, genre, functions, form, linguistic features, words, and intentions in order to lead them to complex analyses of discourses. these in-depth analyses will help students recognize the type of text or articles they are dealing with, that is, whether it is a spoken or written discourse, which words, rules, and language characteristics the text contains in order to accomplish a specific purpose. however, we realized that this opportunity was not widely given to students in most reading classes we observed since teachers and students tended to concentrate more on the development of skimming and scanning strategies and on answering literal questions. thus, students found reading classes a little bit monotonous since they noticed they were not making progress in their reading lessons. the use of skimming and scanning as mentioned above are very useful for students’ learning process in reading, but there should be transitions or a progression from these skills to more complex or challenging ones such as inferring, implying, concluding, analyzing, and so on, in order to awaken students’ critical analysis of the information given by the teacher. during the study, we also identified issues regarding material and methodologies used to help students read. here we observed that students did not have enough opportunities to read critically since they were not or had not been exposed to the analysis of ideas in texts that required careful study of words, phrases, structures, purposes, and so on. likewise, sometimes materials used in class did not correspond to students’ english level and teachers did not choose the materials based on students’ ages or interests. additionally, students did not seem to be competent enough to implement reading strategies such as inferring, implying, or applying complex mental processes. most of the students found it difficult to identify purposes, intentions, text types, structures, or functions. another factor that helped us carry out the study had to do with students’ reading difficulties. we noticed that students have many problems reading or dealing with unknown words and structures. when analyzing texts, the majority of the students did not know how to cope with the vocabulary presented in the article. 103profile vol. 16, no. 2, october 2014. issn 1657-0790 (printed) 2256-5760 (online). bogotá, colombia. pages 101-116 systemic functional linguistics and discourse analysis as alternatives when dealing with texts based on that situation we decided to implement the use of discourse analysis and, particularly, systemic functional linguistics (sfl), which is a useful tool in identifying which aspects of teachers’ methodology and texts were affecting seventh semester students’ reading processes and understanding. we were interested in characteristics of texts used in class that prevented students from effectively understanding messages conveyed in everyday texts as well as in analyzing teachers’ methodology when applying reading activities. during the study, we considered discourse analysis not only as a tool to identify anomalies in texts or characteristics of texts that might cause reading difficulties, but also as a very important source to help students become active readers. we also find it meaningful as a way to encourage students to become effective analysts of texts/conversations in order to identify ideologies, purposes, and aims of both written and oral discourses. teaching students how to approach information in order to analyze messages given in texts is a wonderful process since learners are not reading in order to answer simple questions. on the contrary, they are analyzing a variety of aspects which are not evident or obvious in the texts. according to wallace (2003), discourse analysis is fundamental in helping students identify aspects such as the field, tenor, and mode of discourse (topic, characters, context of situation, channel of communication). by identifying these issues in texts, students are aware of the organization of paragraphs, language choices, participants involved in the texts, and textual meanings. consequently, discourse analysis—along with sfl—provide an excellent means to discover and analyze texts used in reading classes and to identify linguistic characteristics of texts that were affecting students’ reading levels. to accomplish this task we created the following objectives as a guide to focus our intentions and purposes for the study. questions the following are the questions we answered in our study: • how do linguistic characteristics of texts and teachers’ methodology influence seventh semester students’ reading comprehension of academic information at universidad de córdoba? • what linguistic characteristics of texts and methodological aspects influence seventh semester students’ reading comprehension of academic information at universidad de córdoba? specific research questions • what are some of the linguistic characteristics in the texts? • what is the role of linguistic features in the texts in the process of reading comprehension? • how does the teacher deal with the texts in the process of teaching reading? • what are students’ difficulties when reading these texts? theoretical framework the main purpose in this research project is to analyze the discourse characteristics of the texts students are asked to read and analyze in their reading strategies course. by understanding this purpose, it will be possible to establish a relationship between the features of the text and the level of reading comprehension students have. as the study is related to the analysis of discourse, different theoretical underpinnings related to this area will be described. we will also define the concept of discourse analysis and its features: references, lexical density, theme and rheme. universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras104 garcía montes, sagre barboza, & lacharme olascoaga discourse analysis discourse analysis is the examination of language used by members of a speech community. it involves looking at both language form and language functions and includes the study of both spoken interaction and written texts. it identifies language features that characterize different genders (demo, 2001). discourse analysis in language teaching has become a fundamental tool to interpret the use of language in different contexts. it is very helpful in understanding how people organize language in texts, textual features, and language choices. discourse analysis serves as a means to examine both written and spoken data in order to explore language and its importance for communication. when students have the chance to engage in discourse analysis issues, they are not only exposed to learning and memorizing words and grammar structures. instead, learners are also investigating the systematicity and functional aspects of the language. through the applicability of discourse analysis, students experience different ways to read and new opportunities to develop high levels of reading comprehension. according to celce-murcia and olshtain (1995), “discourse analysis is minimally the study of language in use that extends beyond sentences boundaries . . . which entails a more cognitive and social perspective on language use” (p. 4). it is important to understand discourse analysis as a powerful tool or discipline that helps make sense of written or spoken languages; it studies information in terms of grammatical aspects and roles with which to achieve communicative purposes which, in turn, relate to linguistic issues. additionally, it focuses on language use in sociocultural settings. thus, discourse analysis is related to systemic functional linguistics because it sees language used within contexts. discourse analysis also deals with textual units in terms of experiential, interpersonal, and textual language functions. taking into consideration halliday and hasan’s (1989) explanation, experiential meaning has to do with the way words in sentences are associated with issues and events in the world. interpersonal interaction is very similar to social interaction among people. the main concern of interpersonal meaning is participants. finally, textual meaning deals with language choices in the text that leads us to determine the type of genre found in texts. linguistic features of discourse cohesive devices of written discourse: referring expressions anaphoric, cataphoric, and exophoric references are important linguistic features in texts. we use anaphoric references when we want to refer to some data we have already mentioned. cataphoric reference is related to those expressions that refer to data we are going to mention; for example: the following are, such as, for example, and so on. exophoric references lead the reader to think of information outside the text. it deals with our interpretation of messages by placing them in context. as porter and reed (1999) point out: “exophoric information is located in the context of situation and thus also in the context of culture. . . . it points to information outside of the text, and requires more interpretative effort on the part of modern reader” (p. 36). theme and rheme another feature of texts is related to the concepts regarding the theme and rheme of a sentence or clause. to define theme and rheme, it is important to understand that a sentence is organized by using a subject, verb, and the complement. these types of organization of language choices let us 105profile vol. 16, no. 2, october 2014. issn 1657-0790 (printed) 2256-5760 (online). bogotá, colombia. pages 101-116 systemic functional linguistics and discourse analysis as alternatives when dealing with texts analyze many issues of both written and oral discourses. from sentences following these patterns or other complex ones we can draw out aspects such as the topic of conversation and complements. i am claudia cassaignee. i live on rue martel, paris. i work in the centre of paris. i like classical music. (from cosmopolitan, september 1985, p. 5 [as cited in mccarthy, 1991]) in the example we can easily identify i as the theme or topic of conversation and in rue martel, paris known as the complement or rheme of the topic. therefore, i is the point of departure known as theme. according to halliday (as cited in mccarthy, 1991): alternatively, the theme can be seen as the point of departure of the message. for the moment, we shall take as the theme of a clause the subject noun-phrase, or if this is not initial, then we shall include whatever comes before it. (p. 52) types of progressions for theme and rheme analysis while analyzing theme and rheme, it is important to study the different categories used when describing these patterns in order to identify the different ways to organize speech. for example, this organization could have a simple linear progression, constant progression, derived, and split progression. simple linear progression is evident when an item of the rheme becomes the theme of the subsequent clause. regarding constant progression, it is clearly seen when analyzing clauses where theme becomes the theme of another clause. derived hyperthematic progression appears when the theme in a clause is different but both derive and refer to the main theme. finally, split progression can be identified when the rheme of the first theme is divided into two items; each item is taken as the theme of the subsequent clauses. lexical density lexical density is another feature to take into account when analyzing texts. this concept is very important for this study since it offered the research group information as to the importance and influence technical words have on students’ reading comprehension process. lexical density is a very important aspect to consider when selecting texts or materials with which to teach reading. it refers to the amount of words given in texts for students to process. according to lewis (1996) “written language achieves lexical density, and the resultant density of information, by using a relatively high proportion of complex noun phrases and subordinate clauses” (p. 100). due to the variety of language choices such as technical words, formal language, and so on, written language becomes complex in terms of structures. thus, when reading, we find clauses full of nouns, adjectives and verbs that together require high levels of reading comprehension to understand in detail and find out the intention of those choices. systemic functional linguistics systemic functional linguistics has been a wellknown term since the 1950s due to the influence in the process of analyzing texts. sfl is primarily concerned with people using the language to construct or interpret meaning. people cannot achieve a communicative purpose if words are not addressing specific cultural or contextual issues. thus, language is seen as a social means to help humans convey meaning, but this meaning cannot be achieved if words are conveyed in isolation. as a result, we need contexts or situations in which more sentences and words can be placed so that universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras106 garcía montes, sagre barboza, & lacharme olascoaga readers can understand the reasoning behind utterances and words. according to malinowski (as cited in martin, 1984), “you cannot understand the meaning of what someone says or writes unless you know something about the context in which it is embedded” (p. 14). this assumption is very important since it highlights relevant issues regarding teachers’ roles in the learning process. it is necessary to involve students in the analysis of language in contexts so that they learn how language achieves communicative objectives by seeing it playing useful roles in situations where culture and context are key issues. additionally, it is fundamental to teach students that each situation requires variety and different language choices according to the purpose of the conversation and the context provided. therefore, sfl studies language in context in terms of field, tenor, and mode. field refers to the subject matter of discussion at any situation. it answers questions such as “what is going on in the text,” and “what are people doing”. according to martin (1984), “examples of fields are activities such as tennis, opera, linguistics, cooking, building constructions, farming, and so on” (p. 16). in contrast, tenor refers to relationships of main characters and roles of people in social status. it is concerned with the study of people positions in the world in terms of knowledge, studies, professions, and so forth. as halliday and hasan (1989) pointed out, tenor “refers to who is taking part, to the nature of the participants, their statuses and roles: what kinds of role relationship obtain among the participants” (p. 13). in terms of mode, it concerns the idea of channel of communication. mode of discourse can be by both written and oral means. nowadays, we have a variety of channels such as facebook, blogs, skype, email, telephone, cell-phone, videos, films, etc. following halliday and hasan’s definition: “mode of discourse refers to what part language is playing, what it is that the participants are expecting the language to do for them in the situation: the symbolic organization of the text” (p. 13). teaching reading teaching reading requires teachers to be acquainted with several theories and methods in order to be able to help learners acquire effective reading practices. among the approaches used to teach reading we can highlight the top-down and bottom-up approaches. the former is described as “the approach where readers begin with a general sense of the meaning of a reading passage and use their general knowledge of the world and then predictability of grammar patterns to guess the meaning of unfamiliar words” (horwitz, 2008, p. 118). the latter, on the other hand, is used as the main basis for reading practice since the reader starts his/ her process by working with individual sounds and putting them together to make sense of the message being conveyed. we can use bottom-up processing in whole language approaches to reading since it uses phonics-based approaches to help students recognize sounds and symbols. even though the use of approaches when teaching reading is significant, we should understand the importance of helping students analyze data critically. most of our learners are surrounded by information of all kinds in the news, magazines, internet, headings, books, etc. thus, it is necessary to introduce sfl when analyzing texts to acquire better reading analysis skills. besides, it is not useful to teach students to memorize information only by reporting what authors said in the text. instead, we should encourage them to become competent readers by introducing sfl along with discourse analysis to increase their level of comprehension while helping them to go beyond basic information to discover hidden messages and intentions of the information given. being a competent reader means using discourse tools to understand how 107profile vol. 16, no. 2, october 2014. issn 1657-0790 (printed) 2256-5760 (online). bogotá, colombia. pages 101-116 systemic functional linguistics and discourse analysis as alternatives when dealing with texts language works in a social context. thus, we are truly convinced that introducing discourse analysis for the development and improvement of reading is a useful opportunity for students to learn how to deal with a variety of information. method this study is a qualitative research project which describes in detail the way texts are analyzed in a reading course. the purpose of the study is to gain some insights about the way reading comprehension has been taught in these classes. thus, the results show a description of a teaching methodology and how this may interfere with the learner’s comprehension level. according to seliger and shohamy (1989), “qualitative and descriptive research are concerned with providing descriptions of phenomena that occur naturally, without the interventions of an experiment or artificial contrived treatment” (p. 116). thus, our intention is not to measure students’ abilities but to describe and give an account of their performance while putting into practice a variety of methods or strategies for the development of reading skills. for the understanding of the phenomenon in our context, we used case study as a qualitative research method, which was helpful in closely analyzing a group of students in order to get relevant data regarding reading and students’ development during lessons. the purpose of the study ties to the definition of a case study, as theodorson (as cited in duff, 2008) says: case study has been defined as a method of studying social phenomenon through the analysis of an individual case. the case may be a person, a group, an episode, a process, a community, a society, or any other unit of social life. (p. 153) as can be seen, in case study we describe a person’s actions or behaviors in a setting. it can also be taken as a useful means to give accounts of teachers’ performances when teaching and guiding students in the learning process. thus, a case study is part of qualitative research methods since it can give us the opportunity to explain or characterize occurring phenomena in a variety of settings. these descriptions or analyses are very important since they are all involved with students’ capabilities, understanding, and learning of a language. data collection in order to analyze the information gathered in the study, we used documental analysis to revise the texts students were asked to read in their reading course: “the black death,” “toll house inn,” and “english only laws.” these texts were analyzed taking into account discourse analysis features as lexical density, referring expressions, theme and rheme. also, a standardized test— preliminary english test (pet)—was taken by students in order for us to analyze their english level. additionally, we used observations to check the way the teacher taught reading strategies and the way students used them when analyzing reading texts. also, the teacher’s methodology was observed in order to note the explanations he provided and the type of questions used to promote reading analysis. furthermore, both teacher and students were interviewed in order to learn of students’ difficulties while reading and to understand the methodology used by the teacher. the information gathered was triangulated in order to verify if the information in one instrument was similar to the others, which is pretty significant as cohen and manion (1994) explain: “triangulation techniques in the social sciences attempts to map out, or explain the richness and complexity of human behavior by studying it from more than one stand point” (p. 233). universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras108 garcía montes, sagre barboza, & lacharme olascoaga data analysis after collecting the data, the information was organized into four categories: linguistic features from texts, teacher’s methodology, students’ reading levels, and students’ reading difficulties. in order to collect the information to analyze the linguistic features from texts, we revised the texts students were asked to read; the teacher’s methodology was studied by observations and interviews of both students and the teacher. the students’ reading levels were checked by asking students to take the pet. the difficulties students have when reading were identified by observing classes and interviewing the students. the results found are described in detail as follows: linguistic features from texts to identify linguistic features from texts that caused difficulties for learners to comprehend messages from texts, we used a technique called documents analysis in which some theories based on discourse analysis and sfl were helpful in analyzing texts. the texts were analyzed in terms of anaphoric, cataphoric, and exophoric references, as well as theme and rheme progressions, topic types, genre, and lexical density. the linguistic characteristics of texts that affected students reading process have to do with anaphoric, cataphoric, and exophoric expressions. first we identified that the reading texts had many referring expressions, which may have caused difficulties in the comprehension of texts (see table 1). table 1 shows specific examples in the text where anaphoric, cataphoric, and exophoric expressions were identified. the column shows each category and examples literally taken from two articles (“the black death” and “toll house inn”) used by the teacher in the reading course; the other columns show more categories and examples. as could be noticed, the texts students are asked to read have many anaphoric, cataphoric, and exophoric references. moreover, there is a great amount of table 1. textual units that caused students problems to comprehend information textual anaphoric expressions textual cataphoric expressions exophoric expressions • one such a trading route was overland… • …once they appeared… • nations came to exchange their goods… • …several of these ships… • …the people of the town… • in houses where they fell… • the disease case suddenly… • the plague continued to spread… • …did everything they could to preserve… • we understand these things (interactive anaphoric expression). • the symptoms included… • in such numbers is called “plague” • where it took on the name of “the black death” • those peasants who were left alive… • the main culprit was a flea and a tiny… • another form of the plague was spread… • …a third form was spread by the… cataphoric expressions intended to evaluate: • doctors—real and fraudulent • …a disease spread in such a quick and contagious manner • the impact of society was enormous. gangs and thieves… questions as exophoric expressions • what caused all this death and change? exophoric expressions intended to evaluate • it must have seemed like the end of the world • a new and mysterious disease exophoric expressions to contextualize the reader: a drawing of a map to show the spread of the plague throughout fourteen century europe. 109profile vol. 16, no. 2, october 2014. issn 1657-0790 (printed) 2256-5760 (online). bogotá, colombia. pages 101-116 systemic functional linguistics and discourse analysis as alternatives when dealing with texts exophoric expressions, which may impede students’ understanding of the text since these phrases are part of cultural and contextual issues. furthermore, we found that students found it difficult to identify these references in the text. we confirmed this information by asking students to identify anaphoric, cataphoric, and exophoric expressions in the text. when students were reading, they were asked to read the statement: “she thought that it would mix.” then they were asked the question: “what does the word it refer to in the text?” when answering the question, the students said: “it refers to two varieties of chocolate.” here the difficulty was because in the text it refers to the phrase a mixture described in the whole paragraph rather than the mixture of chocolate mentioned by students. further, when students supported the reason for their choice, we identify their misunderstanding as could be noticed in the following interaction: excerpt 1 teacher: which words from the text helped you relate one idea with the other previously mentioned in the text? for example: “she thought that it would mix together”…the word it refers to? student 1: well, that it is making reference to two varieties of chocolate she had, so she said let put them together in order to see what we get from the mixture then we divided it into pieces and finally we got the so-called cookies. student 2: the chocolate bar that she put on the cookie, she thought that it would mix but she got something new. (personal communication with students) as can be seen, students find it difficult to identify anaphoric references in the text, which may cause difficulties understanding whole texts. theme and rheme in terms of linguistic features negatively affecting students’ comprehension, we selected texts to identify theme and rheme organization. we wanted to observe theme and rheme progressions to support findings regarding students’ difficulties processing ideas organized in a text. in order to do so, we used a careful analysis of the articles used in the reading strategies lessons and found that students were exposed to a variety of texts where theme and rheme progression was very complicated to process since ideas were not written in a simple linear progression. we identified three types of progressions while analyzing texts given to students: simple linear, constant, and hyper-thematic ones. figure 1 shows a combination of two types of progressions: simple linear and derived hyper-thematic. the first one is evident when the rheme, which is the complement, becomes the theme (topic) of the subsequent clause. in addition, the second one appears when the theme in a clause is different but both derive and refer to the main theme. figure 1 shows the structure used: the letter t stands for theme and r refers to rheme. horizontal and vertical lines represent simple linear progressions, which means that some sentences present in the article were written using less complex organization of theme and rheme (topic and complement). horizontal and vertical lines are related to the same topic while hyper-thematic progressions do not follow the same topic and complement pattern. in contrast, they show an intricate progression that might confuse readers since ideas mentioned in prior paragraphs are restated or new ideas about them are included. this type of progression confused students while they were identifying topics and establishing the gist of the passage. we considered these progressions very complex for students to comprehend in detail in the passage since the themes and rhemes used in the article they read do not have a vertical or linear progression. instead, the author used intricate progressions in paragraphs and sentences to develop the topic and complements in the article. ideas that were mentioned in the first paragraph were left aside to universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras110 garcía montes, sagre barboza, & lacharme olascoaga continue with another aspect of the topic that was also related to the idea discussed. as a result, the prior idea from paragraph 1 was developed in paragraph 5 instead of paragraph 2, and so on. these movements of ideas made the reader reread the statements already mentioned in the text to understand the complete idea in the text. as a result, the reader got confused when identifying the topic in the paragraphs. lexical density another feature we noticed that caused students problems when reading is lexical density. we found that most of the texts students read in their lessons were dense. findings indicated that phrases and clauses from each paragraph had a variety of content words that were difficult for students to process and understand. a short paragraph taken from the article “the black death” goes from 7.5 to 15 in lexical density. it can be considered difficult for students to process since the article does not use simple language. additionally, clauses are packed with nouns, normalization, adjectives, adverbs, etc. according to halliday and martin (1990), if a clause of a paragraph is higher than 6 in terms of lexical density, the clause can be considered dense for learners to process. an example of the dense tense students were asked to read is presented in figure 2. as can be seen, this single clause has 12 lexical words, which make the text difficult to understand. on the other hand, it does not mean we are not going to give or assign these types of articles to students due to the level of difficulty they present. instead, it is necessary to give students complex figure 1. rheme and theme progression obtained from the article “english only laws” figure 2. lexical density: sample paragraph analysis simple linear th1 + rh1; th2 (=rh1) rh2); th3 (=rh2) + rh3; hyper-thematic progression th1 rh1; [hypertheme] th2 + rh2; th3 + rh3… t1 r1 t2 r2 t3 r3 t4 r4 t5 r5 t6 r6 t7 r7 t8 r8 t10 r10 t11 r11 t14 r14 t13 r13 t12 r12 t9 r9t15 r15 t16 r16 simple linear progress hyper -thematic i i i i i 111profile vol. 16, no. 2, october 2014. issn 1657-0790 (printed) 2256-5760 (online). bogotá, colombia. pages 101-116 systemic functional linguistics and discourse analysis as alternatives when dealing with texts texts accompanied with good strategies and modeling in order to help them learn to read and successfully deal with the text. teacher’s methodology while triangulating the data obtained from observations and interviews with the teacher, we tried to find out issues regarding methodology that could negatively affect students’ reading process. we discovered that the types of questions used to help learners think and comprehend texts were, in most cases, based on the development of memory. most of the questions used by the teacher made students recall detail data from articles or the teacher’s explanations. the teacher used that approach to strengthen students’ memory rather than developing critical thinking. table 2 shows some of the sample questions the teacher used to ask students for information that they had to memorize from the article “the black death.” table 2. questions asked by the teacher what insect was responsible for the spread of the disease? its name is? how were people infected? how many different ways do you remember the reading having stated that people could get the disease? why were doctors unable to cure the disease? who brought it to europe? these questions are not considered negative but take into consideration students’ reading level. they need more opportunities to practice reading using a variety of skills that will help them use critical analysis of discourse. these questions the teacher used to check students’ comprehension of articles were literal most of the time; they were used to ask about details and information stated in the passage. as a result students did not have opportunities to give opinions, discuss points of view, compare, and evaluate information. questions to activate prior knowledge in the study, we found that the teacher did not use questions to activate prior knowledge. due to the absence of strategies to activate students’ prior knowledge such as questions, images, and so on, students were working on their own during the other reading stages. thus, students were not given the opportunity to explore what they knew about topics and had to comprehend information without prior guidance. explanations another aspect of teacher’s methodology that does not contribute positively to the students’ reading comprehension process has to do with the teacher’s explanations and applicability of reading strategies. the explanations and instructions used to guide students in the reading process are complex and unclear for learners. in one of the lessons observed, the teacher used theory from a research study to explain to learners about findings regarding anaphoric and cataphoric expressions. most of the students were confused due to the use of these technical words they were not familiar with. additionally, the type of discourse used by the teacher was dense and difficult to process. besides, most of the teacher’s explanations of concepts were complex due to the language or terminology used. thus, students were not following the teacher’s intended message. excerpt 2 supports the previous conclusions. universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras112 garcía montes, sagre barboza, & lacharme olascoaga excerpt 2 explanation provided by the teacher: the anaphoric and cataphoric is that helps you make a reference for example the ship, o the never with the cataphoric. we can study this at the end or i ask them to investigate by themselves. (personal communication with the teacher) responses given by students when the explanation was given: student 1: that confused me student 2: what is it? as one can see, students do not have a clear understanding of the concepts and feel confused after the teacher’s explanations. further, the teacher does not expand his explanations about the strategies: skimming and scanning. excerpt 3 illustrates this aspect. excerpt 3 teacher: do just the scanning exercises. from 1-8 please write your full name. ok? teacher: ok scanning look over the article quickly to find the following information. remember that scanning is looking for specific information. so do not read the article just look for these parts. as can be seen, the definition was not accompanied with examples or tips to help the learners understand how to implement these strategies when reading. these strategies were not modeled in the presentation stage. the teacher just read the definition and left students to complete the task on their own. students’ reading levels during various analyses of data gathered in interviews, observations, pet, and diaries completed by students, we can state that students do not reach high levels of reading analysis in the reading course. that is, students have difficulties stating in their own words the intention or purposes of information. furthermore, students have problems going beyond data and discovering aspects regarding alignments and the importance of language choices in texts. they read to answer detailed questions that imply the use of memory to recall information and provide literal accounts extracted from content. in the test and interview applied to students, we found that students need more opportunities to explore other types of questions that involve critical analysis. students have problems identifying text types and intentions involved as well as grammar choices. they find it difficult to talk about the type of text that they are reading. in the following accounts, students provided information about genre and text types, but they were not able to give accurate responses when they had to explain the genre in the text. student 1: maybe, information genre. that is informing something about a disease that happened in the past. student 2: narrative. because it tells us about what happened in the story, what happened with the cookie and people? it tells us a story by asking us whether we know the cookies or not, if we know how they were make, and it tells us they were very delicious. so, like a story. students’ reading difficulties the last category is related to students’ reading difficulties. we used some diaries and interviews to ask students questions regarding difficulties they face when reading articles. after the triangulation, we discovered that students find it difficult to deal with unknown words or phrases. they have not received training in the use of strategies to figure out the meaning of words in the text. thus, lexical accessibility has become a major problem for comprehending data. this is evident in the following account provided by one student: when i was reading, there was like a pause because there were two or three words in the same paragraph and line. so, i lost my ideas and didn’t comprehend the message because i had to look for them in the dictionary. so, i had to read again. 113profile vol. 16, no. 2, october 2014. issn 1657-0790 (printed) 2256-5760 (online). bogotá, colombia. pages 101-116 systemic functional linguistics and discourse analysis as alternatives when dealing with texts overall, we found many aspects that needed improvement in order to help learners succeed in reading comprehension. tools regarding the use of discourse analysis are fundamental when analyzing and discovering specific features that cause problems for learners when reading. additionally, we can use these features as very useful tools to help learners deal with a variety of texts. teachers need also to modify or improve methodologies and activities to provide new opportunities for students’ reading development. conclusions and implications we based the following conclusions on the objectives we stated at the beginning of the article. we wanted to know the possible influence of linguistic features of texts on students’ reading process. we also needed to discover the way reading was developed in the reading course. we tried to identify methodologies, strategies, and interaction patterns. further, we identified students’ reading levels and difficulties they faced when dealing with texts to be able to find their weaknesses in terms of students’ reading comprehension. we analyzed all these aspects through a variety of instruments, which led us to the following conclusions: features that we identified in texts that caused students difficulties in understanding articles are highlighted in the following aspects: • students do not manage aspects regarding referring expressions. it is difficult for them to identify cataphoric, anaphoric, and exophoric expressions in texts. students are not accustomed to identifying words, especially pronouns that refer to words given earlier or later in a passage. • theme, rheme, and type of progressions affected students’ reading process. learners are not good at following the development of ideas in the texts. they need more practice in being able to recognize how ideas are presented by authors as well as their intentions. texts used by the teacher had a variety of themes and progressions; for example, hyper-thematic, simple linear, and constant. these combinations affected students’ reading process due to an unawareness of these important aspects when reading. students found it difficult to follow ideas since most of the texts given have very intricate progressions, which are very hard to understand. these moves resulted in learner’s feeling lost and forgetting the ideas already mentioned. • articles are highly dense for students to comprehend ideas in detail. clauses are packed with nominal groups and words unknown to students. texts are not studied in advance by teachers to help learners manage issues regarding words, contexts, places, structures, and so forth. • exophoric references in the articles caused students difficulties when inferring aspects regarding time, culture, spaces, and contexts that were not mentioned and stated in the text analyzed. during the analysis of linguistic features, we noticed that students have difficulties dealing with text types. students do not know if the text they are reading is a narrative, expository, or argumentative text. thus, when we asked students questions regarding the structure of texts and types of texts, they were unable to analyze these aspects in detail. another feature that was not helpful for students to understand articles provided by the teacher is theme and rheme progressions. the articles chosen to develop reading in class have a variety of progressions. one of the texts we analyzed—“english only laws”—has three types of progressions: simple, constant, and split. these combinations confused the reader since ideas did not follow the same type of progression. instead, universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras114 garcía montes, sagre barboza, & lacharme olascoaga they were interrelated or intricate in the text. therefore, students struggled to restate issues already mentioned in the text or in previous clauses to get a better understanding of further ideas. additionally, lexical density was another feature we studied in detail due to students’ complaints in terms of understanding words. in the three articles we analyzed, we found that they are dense for students to comprehend; they contain some technical and unknown words. most of the texts exceeded the amount of lexical words proposed by halliday and hasan (1989). they state that the number of lexical items cannot be higher than six since the clause or paragraph will be dense. in the passages we analyzed, the amount of data written in a clause affected students’ understanding since ideas were packed and written using complex language. one of our objectives refers to the identification of students’ reading levels. from this analysis, we can conclude the following: the majority of students are at literal level of analysis. they are asked to memorize data or answer detail questions. learners are skillful at managing literal questions and simple reading activities. however, upon exposure to critical and comprehension analysis, they evidenced some weaknesses. around 25 percent of the students can be placed at a basic comprehension level of analysis; they are able to get the gist of a passage, paraphrase, and interpret messages. in addition, some of the students know how to identify supporting details and main ideas. regarding level of analysis, eight students out of 28 are able to compare tables by using logical deduction, analyzing situations, and finding solutions. furthermore, some students from the reading course were identified as having a critical analysis level. we found this data when interviewing students by using texts and critical discourse analysis tools. three students were skillful at finding anomalies in texts, author’s intentions, referring expressions, constituents, etc. in general, learners are accustomed to skim ming and scanning data rather than actively dis cussing the author’s intentions, language choices, and points of view. they have been training their memory to answer detailed questions and manage concepts and definitions. thus, we can say that we should give students more opportunities to learn about other strategies in order to strengthen and develop critical reading that requires learners to go beyond the basic information. in the study, just a very small group of students was able to reflect and use comments that are more critical on some questions designed to get details regarding students’ reading levels. likewise, we found that learners need favorable conditions to learn how to apply strategies dealing with problems in terms of lexical accessibility and grammar structures. in diaries and interviews, students stated they have problems dealing with unknown vocabulary, especially technical words. moreover, students struggle to complete the assignments since they lack the strategies needed to cope with it. most of the texts used were lexically dense. vocabulary choices from the articles used specialized language that required support from teachers’ explanations and vocabulary techniques to help learners overcome these difficulties. one of the objectives selected for the study has to do with the identification of teachers’ methodology to enhance reading. from this main issue, we concluded that the methodology used to help students read only gave them the opportunity to strengthen their memory. besides, observations showed that the methodology used to develop students’ reading strategies and help them comprehend data needs to be carefully redesigned so that students understand that reading is an active process. materials given to students were 115profile vol. 16, no. 2, october 2014. issn 1657-0790 (printed) 2256-5760 (online). bogotá, colombia. pages 101-116 systemic functional linguistics and discourse analysis as alternatives when dealing with texts not authentic. students were asked to read texts that were adapted or taken from reading books or booklets specifically designed for teaching. students need more opportunities to use a variety of genres to be able to interact with different topics and text structures. instead, they were given texts and assignments without a reading purpose. additionally, the teacher is not acquainted with students’ needs, lacks, likes, and dislikes regarding reading skills. this teacher planned materials and lessons to follow a program and apply techniques he considered useful for students to learn from and develop skills to comprehend information. the final aspect we wanted to identify in terms of reading development had to do with the difficulties students considered they faced when they read a text. in interviews, students stated that they did not understand some texts due to unknown words and grammar issues. furthermore, they also mentioned they needed to read texts or ideas presented in articles several times because they found it difficult to recall information mentioned previously. all in all, the experience with the project made us reflect on approaches and methods used to teach reading. on the other hand, it gave us new insights on the creation of activities and lessons based on sfl and discourse analysis as well as in using these approaches to teach learners issues regarding anaphoric, cataphoric, and exophoric expressions. also, concepts regarding genre, text types, and structures, theme, rheme, and lexical density are meaningful techniques to awaken students’ curiosity and interest to read critically. thus, sfl and discourse analysis can be seen as very good tools in order to study texts or articles before giving them to students. they can be seen as very meaningful opportunities to teach students to read differently and critically. references celce-murcia, m., & olshtain, e. (1995). discourse and context in language teaching: a guide for language teachers. cambridge, uk: cambridge university press. cohen, l., & manion, l. (1994). research methods in education (4th ed.). london, uk: crum helm. demo, d. a. (2001). discourse analysis for language teachers. eric digest. retrieved from eric database. (ed456672) duff, p. (2008). case study research in applied linguistics. new york, ny: lawrence erlbaum. halliday, m. a. k., & hasan, r. (1989). language, context and texts: aspects of language in a social-semiotic perspective. oxford, uk: oxford university press. halliday, m. a. k, & martin, j. r. (eds.). (1990). readings in systemic linguistics. london, uk: batsford. horwitz, e. k. (2008). becoming a language teacher: a practical guide to second language learning and teaching. boston, ma: pearson education. lewis, m. (1996). the lexical approach: the state of elt and a way forward. hove, uk: language teaching publications. martin, j. r. (1984). language, register, and genre. in f. christie (ed.), children writing: reader (pp. 21-30). geelong, au: deakin university press. mccarthy, m. (1991). discourse analysis for language teachers. cambridge, uk: cambridge university press. porter, s. e., & reed, j. t. (eds.). (1999). discourse analysis and the new testament: approaches and results. sheffield, uk: sheffield academic press. retrieved from http://books.google.com/books?id=drhgsivdc9ic&pr intsec=frontcover&hl=es#v=onepage&q&f=false seliger, h. w., & shohamy, e. (1989). second language research methods. oxford, uk: oxford university press wallace, c. (2003). critical reading in language education. basingstoke, uk: palgrave macmillan. universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras116 garcía montes, sagre barboza, & lacharme olascoaga about the authors paula andrea garcía montes is a part time teacher at universidad de córdoba (colombia). she holds both a specialization in language teaching and a master degree in education from universidad del norte, barranquilla. she is a member of escu research group (estudios curriculares) at universidad de córdoba. ana maría sagre barboza is a full time teacher at universidad de córdoba (colombia). she holds a master degree and a specialization diploma in education and english language teaching and investigation from universidad del norte, barranquilla. alba isabel lacharme olascoaga is a full time teacher at universidad de córdoba (colombia). she holds both a master degree and a specialization diploma in language teaching and education from universidad del norte, barranquilla. she is a member of a research group ahead at universidad de córdoba. 11profile vol. 13, no. 2, october 2011. issn 1657-0790. bogotá, colombia. pages 11-27 writing using blogs: a way to engage colombian adolescents in meaningful communication la escritura a través de bitácoras o blogs: una forma de involucrar a adolescentes colombianos en comunicación significativa gloria rojas álvarez* colegio castilla & universidad distrital francisco josé de caldas, colombia we report an action research project developed with ninth grade students of a public school in bogotá, colombia, and which focused on innovating english communication through writing blogs. the project took into account the implementation of a specific blog that proposes activities, suggestions, strategies and links, among other things, to increase communication in english. it also prompted the written production of students in the blogs when posting entries and communicating through them. some aspects of the project were developed in the classroom; others in the computers room, and others were developed by the students independently or collaboratively with classmates. findings show how students communicated through writing in blogs and the main characteristics of the interaction that took place when using them. key words: developing written communication, technology, writing blogs. reportamos un proyecto de investigación acción que se desarrolló con estudiantes de noveno grado de un colegio público de bogotá, colombia. en este proyecto se buscó innovar en el medio de comunicación en inglés a través de la escritura de bitácoras o blogs. el proyecto tuvo en cuenta la realización de una bitácora específica en la que se plantearon actividades, sugerencias, estrategias y enlaces, entre otros, para incrementar la comunicación en inglés. también motivó la producción escrita de los estudiantes en las bitácoras, al publicar entradas y comunicarse a través de estas. algunos aspectos del proyecto se desarrollaron en el aula de clase; otros, en el aula de sistemas, o de forma autónoma y colaborativa con otros compañeros. los resultados muestran cómo se comunicaron los estudiantes al escribir en las bitácoras, así como las principales características de la interacción que se generó. palabras clave: desarrollo de comunicación escrita, escritura de bitácoras, tecnología. this paper reports on a study conducted by the authors while participating in the profile teacher development program at universidad nacional de colombia in 2009-2010. the program was sponsored by secretaría de educación de bogotá, d.c. code number: 1576, august 24, 2009. it was a collaborative work conducted with the author of this paper and lida serley gómez. * e-mail: glorjamar@gmail.com this article was received on january 29, 2011, and accepted on may 31, 2011. 12 universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras rojas álvarez introduction the internet has become an excellent tool for english teachers in colombia. so why not take advantage of these materials in public schools? we have decided to use blogs with ninth graders in order to increase effective communication, especially improving writing skill and the relationship among the students. our work had two main phases: the first was when the learners developed some activities in the classroom, and the second, when they worked in blogs. in addition we developed different activities in order to improve the writing skill as follows: 1. writing topics in the classroom about students’ interests such as music, the city, the neighborhood, friendship, global warming, school, family. 2. interdisciplinary work in connection with the computer teacher in order to help the students create their own blogs. 3. reading tales such as “the giving tree,” and then writing in the blog reflections and comments about the text message. 4. listening to the students’ favorite songs and encouraging them to post their comments or opinions in their blogs. 5. watching films and publishing some comments in the blog. with these activities we intended to develop the communicative aspect, improving writing, not only the other skills and language aspects (reading, speaking, listening, grammar, speech). we believed if the students were motivated enough we could be successful developing the writing skills. bearing this in mind, we concentrated on the following for our research question: how do 9th graders communicate through writing in blogs? in the following paragraphs we present the theoretical framework that guided our study, the methodology, the pedagogical procedure we followed to explore the selected research issue, the results, the conclusions and some pedagogical implications. theoretical framework over the last years, english teaching has focused on communication; it is helped by technological advances, especially computers. so, in our project we improved the writing skill because we consider the english language can be learned by improving this skill and taking advantage of a lot of technological resources such as computers, blogs and web pages. the central tool we used was the blog where the students could express in a written way their feelings, opinions and be in touch with their classmates and teachers. in any research project, the literature review constitutes the essential core as a foundation for the chosen work. in this project, the concepts that illuminated our work are writing, information and communication technologies (icts) and writing in blogs. writing we highlight the approach to writing as a process carried out by the students as active subjects, as permanent learners. the students are not only passive recipients of knowledge, but creators of their own mechanisms for working, sometimes self-directed and sometimes working collaboratively. in this regard, approaches proposed by ferreiro and teberoski (1979) are taken into consideration. these authors argue that writing could be interpreted and understood from an early age (the first years when a child enters the school system and in some cases, earlier). this implies taking into account the child and her/his prospects as a future learner. thus, success in learning cannot be attributed to the method but to the learner (p. 30), 13profile vol. 13, no. 2, october 2011. issn 1657-0790. bogotá, colombia. pages 11-27 13 writing using blogs: a way to engage colombian adolescents... and the acquisition of knowledge is a result of the subject’s own activity (p. 32). tolchinsky (1993) also stressed that writing is a process that involves practices of thought, design and construction of new knowledge that extends beyond basic copying often employed in the traditional educational system. she says writing and copying are different activities, and copying requires reproducing (a process focused on a passive subject), and writing (as in not copying), requires thinking, understanding, interpreting. thus, every reader in any language in question, adds, removes or modifies the written word. on the other hand, cross (2007, p. 268) says that “writing is more difficult to justify than the other skills. however, the school is a micro world of its own, in which writing holds a most important role”. we are in agreement with him because the school is the institution that encourages writing constantly, through time. however, it is necessary to take into account that writing is the most difficult skill for learners to develop; for that reason, it is necessary to implement different methods because there are many different learning styles in each group. this helped us consolidate an action research perspective when handling writing in the english class. this practice is, in turn, in tune with tolchinsky (1993), who sees writing in the classroom as a process and as a research effort. information and communication technologies (icts): blogs english language is very important in this global era, where we can find a lot of information around/ about the world; many professional papers are published in english. on the internet, on the radio, in newspapers, english has become the official language of many international organizations, including the united nations. it is also the official language of air transport and shipping; the leading language of science, technology, computers, commerce, and a major medium of education. we can learn science and culture through the english language. ferreiro (2001) says that nowadays the internet, e-mails, web pages and the hypertext, among others, are producing deep and accelerated changes in the manner we communicate and receive information. it fascinates any person worried or interested in language or its changes. the fascination with the changes is higher in students, who use the new technologies to modify traditional forms to communicate. it means that technology is a great tool to use with students because it can be motivational, fun (when something is fun we learn more), and allow them to produce better published works. on the other hand, technology is a great challenge for teachers because few of us use it due to the fact that we do not have enough knowledge about it. but, it is also a great opportunity to have better relationships between teachers and students, get help from them, raise their self–esteem increasing the leadership capacities and improving communication in a written way in order to prepare them for future life. our research matter: the blog offers many possibilities for use in the educational process. the word “blog” came from “web-log”, a term put in use by jorn barger in 1997 (eduteka, 2008). he associates the term with the online personal diary and the author’s constant updates. then, a blog is a website that facilitates the immediate publication of entries (“posts”) and permits the readers to give feedback to the author in the form of comments. the posts are kept organized chronologically. according to ramírez (in suárez, 2009), the topics related to partner relationships, sex and technology are the most popular in the blogs, which do not have space limitations or censorship. however, other authors like orihuela (in suárez, 2009) say the 14 universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras rojas álvarez blog is a personal medium that impacts a community, but one not intended as journalism. we find several blogs in the informative, academic and educative environment, and the school can put into practice the traditional process of writing in an interesting and enjoyable way for the students. blogs offer many possibilities for use in educational processes. for example, they encourage students to write, exchange ideas, practice teamwork, design, and see instantly what they produce. the creation of blogs by students offers synthesis processes because writing on the internet must be timely and accurate. the teachers are in contact with their students in other manners and the interactions are not only inside the classroom. they can publish materials immediately and allow access to the information or other sources to do classroom projects and activities, taking advantage of the time. the multimedia elements such as videos, sound, pictures, images, and animation, among others, that students use in blogs enrich the contents (eduteka, 2008). based on suárez (2009), the following aspects are necessary to construct a good blog: to shape a good idea, give a specific name to the blog and set how often it will be updated. to create a blog we can use different web blog pages like: www.blogger. com or http://es.wordpress.com, www.ezblogworld. com, www.bahraichblogs.com, www.getablog.net/ portal3.php. it is essential that the blog be promoted among the interested communities to continue to get more readers. likewise, it is important that the topics be diverse to answer the comments and messages of the visitors. dudeney and hockly (2007) state that the following steps should be taken into account in order to set up a blog with students: • setting up a sample blog: before beginning working in blogs with the students, we have to create our own blog in order to get familiarized with the content language and other aspects the technique has to contain. • setting up students’ blogs: in this step, the students will begin to create their blogs in the computer room and there they will look at the sample blog. according to the number of computers, they can work individually, in pairs or in small groups. • posting to and visiting blogs: encourage the students to share their blogs, visit, write and post comments in other blogs. • follow-up: it is good idea that students and teachers continue posting information in their blogs. it is important to know that the blog has a limited lifespan, so in approximately the next three months they can be eliminated. another important thing is that it is necessary to have a measure of security, especially if we are working with younger learners. a blog is formed by different elements such as the following: • input list of several texts as articles, images and videos. • comments written by visitors; they can write their opinions, calendar and file of the published text that allows the user to access items that have been published during a given time. • entries and articles are classified by categories, allowing a more effective organization and easy access to information. • links with other blogs. • search. this facilitates the bloggers’ finding the material that has been published in the blog. • the hyperlinks that are part of the blog. blogs are meaningful tools in teaching learning processes because they permit saving time and 15profile vol. 13, no. 2, october 2011. issn 1657-0790. bogotá, colombia. pages 11-27 15 writing using blogs: a way to engage colombian adolescents... development of collaborative work. it is a dynamic way to do easy and difficult activities, plus, it allows teachers and students to be in touch most of the time. the use of blogs in education allows the teachers and students to accomplish different roles. the teacher should be an animator, a director, a counselor, a facilitator, a motivator and an evaluator and the students should adopt a more active role because they are the ones who acquire the knowledge and transform it. both become co-authors and co-workers. these words, taken from carballo-calero (2008), show us that nowadays teachers have to work harder than before. the author introduces a new concept: “blogosphere”. it means a group of blogs interacting in an educational experience in which learning is shared. in this experience, the participants carry out learning activities such as readings, analyses and productions of texts, interchange of information, expression of feelings, ideas, opinions, real-life contexts, amongst others. these words allow us to have a clearer idea about the purpose of the project we are going to work on. according to carballo-calero (2008), in class rooms there is an important transformation because students and teachers can connect to the internet and access the blog at any time and place. the classroom is an open space in cyberspace. this allows for constant communication and work within and outside the stipulated schedule for classes. teachers also create their own educational materials which encourage the cooperative exercise of access to information, construction of knowledge, writing and creation. the use of blogs in education is closely linked to the promotion of reading and writing as well as the acquisition of communication skills. the development of communication skills (data analysis, discussion, construction of consensus, collaborative work) and literacy are objective and cross-learning strategies in any discipline, as well as skills for information or for solving problems. given the sophistication of technologies involved, it is interesting to use these technologies to promote good learning. carballo-calero (2008) also states the following are some advantages of using blogs: • the hyper-textual content allows having links to different documents and web pages. • in blogs, each participant can be in different places and moments. • blogs can be a supportive tool in collaborative projects. • they facilitate the relation to another application on the net. they are part of the ecosystem on the net. so, it is a socialization component because we can add contents and applications. • they are better structured and more open than e-mails. they provide the possibility of discussion and interaction between groups. • they allow organizing the articles in an easy way e.g. by thematic categories and in chronological order. writing in blogs to establish a connection between writing and blogs, we refer to quintero (2008), who states the following: with the avenue of internet and other technologies that can support writing, it is possible for students to have peers in a remote part of the world, in a different school in the same city or just peers from other levels, or even from the same class at the same institution. new technologies have extended writing environments by linking student-writers to other people with whom they can interact through writing. writing then becomes the vehicle for communication rather than the final purpose (p. 16). pennington (in quintero, 2008) raises the issue that students are motivated to write in l2 when 16 universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras rojas álvarez they are in contact with a real audience who fosters more input in writing, encourages their writing, and empowers them to seek out resources for developing their ideas. we understand real audience as virtual audience because students are in permanent contact and communication with friends, relatives and teachers via new tools and gadgets that mainly allow them to share different forms of writing. maybe this is the moment when teens are writing more intensively, as lenhart, smith and macgill (2008) and chartier (2004) assert. nevertheless, teachers and parents do not see this prolific production, maybe, because they have been concentrating on “correct writing” and ignoring the writing per se and students’ creativity. quintero (2008) notes that some studies have shown the advantages of using web blogs to enhance students’ writing development. their use permits observing how web blogs could benefit the composition class and, hence, provide opportunities for enjoying and improving the writing skills. in general, according to the author, students were highly motivated to write (p. 18). the blog was a form of self expression, something similar to a diary where the students could put in all the things they wanted to share with others. however, in our context this form of writing is new and many teachers do not risk implementing it for several reasons e.g. the conditions of schools and students, especially. the studies about this topic are very recent in particular those published during the last decade. for this reason, it is necessary to research this innovative form more to communicate. methodology this project is located in the field of educational innovation that occurs in the classroom. it was a proposal that involved elements of action research, too, particularly aspects such as collaborative work (burns, 1999), writing as a communication skill related to other skills, new information technologies and the new ways of teens’ communication nowadays. participants we developed this project at castilla school with ninth grade students. the school is located in kennedy zone, castilla neighborhood, in bogotá, colombia. students belong to first, second and third socioeconomic strata. the school has some technological resources such as computer rooms, tape recorders, video beams, and software with internet access, although many activities are done by students out of school. the number of students per course was very large; therefore, in some classrooms we worked with 45 or more students. the majority of our students lived in castilla and valladolid neighborhoods. the selected group, 903, was composed of 23 girls and 20 boys. their age range was between 13 and 17. their english language level was elementary due to the non-bilingual context they live in and the few english classes they have in school (two hours weekly), among other reasons. the students were open-minded most of the time. however, they seemed so shy when they spoke english but as their teachers we tried to encourage them to work in the development of all communicative skills in order to improve their english level. they were able to do almost every activity that the teacher suggested; for that reason, we believed we could engage them in the project. techniques to collect data we used the following techniques to collect data during the implementation of the innovation and its corresponding systematization: a diagnostic survey (see appendix a), teachers’ journals (see appendix b), an interview (see appendix c), and the blog created for the purpose of the project. the diagnostic survey was applied to the whole class. 17profile vol. 13, no. 2, october 2011. issn 1657-0790. bogotá, colombia. pages 11-27 17 writing using blogs: a way to engage colombian adolescents... journals were written from february to may 2010 by the teacher-researchers and authors of this paper. in these dates, notes, observations, reflections and comments about the main activities of the innovation were recorded. journals served to analyze the writing process of the students in depth and allowed us to discover the remarkable importance of images in the new forms of communication. we interviewed eight students at the end of the project. this was done in a school library to give students a warm environment. it helped us to learn some of their perceptions after participating in the innovation. the interviews were done in spanish so that they could answer freely and sincerely. the name of the blog, thinkingspeakingand­ writing, was chosen by a student. it also provided documentary evidence. the blog contained students’ comments, works, opinions, and photos, among other things, which constituted a good instrument to analyze the students’ work. in spite of the fact that the researchers worked in different schools, team-work was possible because from the first stages of the project, we determined a strict discipline of weekly meetings to coordinate writing, analysis of activities done and the actions to take in the immediate future, as well as permanent corrections and search of readings about the project. these arrangements guaranteed real collaborative work. pedagogical procedure in the first stage we made a draft of the project. after that, in stage two, we asked parents to sign the authorization form for students to take part in it and applied the first survey to the students. continuing with the process, the students designed posters where they showed what their final poster would be like. at that time they worked with computer teachers and us. once in the computer room, we showed them a sample blog that we created. after that, students began to create, to write and to post their contents in the blogs. in addition, we encouraged the students to visit their partners’ blogs and share the information in their own blogs. the topics the students wrote about were interests in their lives such as music, fashion, favorite sports, global warming, and their relationship with nature. the students posted comments about their favorite songs and a film. all this work was discussed previously and subsequently in class. results in order to account for the way 9th graders communicate through writing in blogs, information was collected from the four instruments already mentioned: a diagnostic survey, journals, a final interview and the blog itself. the results of the diagnostic survey can be read in table 1. table 1. results of the diagnostic survey question answers 1. which skill do you think you have developed more in english? writing 19 reading 13 listening 7 speaking 2 2. do you often have the opportunity to use a computer? yes: 38. no: 3 3. do you practice english activities using the computer outside of school? yes: 21. no: 20 4. do you know how to use blogs? (how to create one? how to post information on blogs?) yes: 35. no: 6 5. would you like to create your own blog to post information and communicate with your friends and teacher? yes: 35. no: 6 18 universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras rojas álvarez table 2. categories and subcategories found as a result of data analysis research question categories sub categories how do 9th graders communicate through writing in blogs? communicating through writing in blogs communication beyond formal writing communicating through short texts the role of affective issues in written communication communicative interaction taking place through blogs interacting based on topics of interest using tools to convey messages the answers showed students feel they had de veloped writing more than the other language skills. this might be so because they had been in touch with english through readings, guides, texts, among other items. on the other hand, the use of computers was important; most of the students had the opportunity to work with them. the answers showed that about fifty percent of the students have a computer at home so they could work there. the answers also showed that the use of technology is increasing nowadays because most of the students had used a blog. on the whole, a high percentage of students were motivated with the idea of creating their own blogs. it was a way to encourage them to use technological tools and thus improve their english level. we analyzed the data having in mind the theories and authors read and worked for the theoretical framework and the pedagogical design of our project. the information was analyzed and validated through the combination of techniques used (survey, journals, final interview, and the blog created). thus, the triangulation process (burns, 1999) was the technique used to validate data. the points of view of the students and the researchers allowed us different perspectives to make the innovation less subjective, unbiased, more dialogical and valuable. from the analysis of these instruments and taking into account the research question, we could establish the categories and subcategories shown in table 2. communicating through writing in blogs we could confirm how necessary it is to in corporate new technologies into classrooms. blogs provided evidence of their usefulness to implement interactive processes that engaged students in writing about themes connected to their own lives. we understand that writing is a crucial process in the school, a process which crosses all the knowledge and the curriculum. we need it to understand, analyze, and communicate. some authors like chartier (2004) and álvarez (1995) argue that school is writing and that without it there would be no school as we conceive it. in this sense, writing could be the core of pedagogical processes brought into school and it would determine the academic life of our students. in the diagnostic survey students answered, we could observe that they felt writing was the skill they had developed most (see table 3). the answers showed us the crucial role writing occupied in their school life. this was convenient for our project because the ability they worked on more was writing. this is so because the school had given more attention to this ability and then students felt surer about it. the students have been accustomed to writing from the beginning of their school life, so writing is a common practice. but when they reach adolescence, especially in 8th and 9th grades, they feel bad because of public 19profile vol. 13, no. 2, october 2011. issn 1657-0790. bogotá, colombia. pages 11-27 19 writing using blogs: a way to engage colombian adolescents... scorn; bullying is permanent in the environment when they speak in public and much more if it is english they are speaking. the students have fear to humiliation. the following reflection, written in the journal, evidences what the teacher thinks: “students prefer writing than speaking, because teens are afraid of public scorn” (4th march). we could observe that when communicating through writing in blogs, communication went beyond formal writing. nowadays icts show us that writing is another way of communication. besides tools like images, video and audio resources, students can engage in writing messages, modifying, changing, expanding and simplifying them. for this reason, it is very important to investigate it and understand the changes that occur when students write, in our case in blogs created to communicate among themselves and with the teacher. being aware of the usefulness of new technological devices, we observed that writing is understood by the group of students we worked with as a tool to communicate, to express feelings or opinions and to send messages to friends or peers. it is important to note that the content, creativity and originality of the teens when they sent messages or communicated in the blogs were the most essential issues they bore in mind when they engaged in writing. the spelling and the criteria required in school for correct writing were secondary when students wanted to do so. in figure 1 we can see these aspects evidenced in the sample containing a photo used as background to a message sent to the blog. figure 1. message posted by a group of students the sample presented in figure 1 shows the importance of the image or photo. the written message was used by cindy, maría, jirehe and danna to reinforce a friendship message. number “four” is replaced by the symbol “4” because it is shorter than the word. the verb “want” in this case represents the meaning of “love”. the phrase “he love to all heart” reflects the use of the mother tongue –spanish, in our case. we infer the phrase included in the message to mean that they deeply love being friends “with their whole heart” (in spanish: con todo el corazón). in the sample shown in figure 1, it is clear that the students fulfill the necessity to express a message more than the necessity to write the correct written form. here we can see that students prefer communicating through short texts because quick messages are very common today among teens. this preference is facilitated by new technologies they are familiar with (chats, text messages sent by mobiles, among other forms). table 3. students’ responses about their skills in the english language which skill do you think you have developed more in english? writing reading listening speaking no. of responses (total: 41 students) 19 13 7 2 20 universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras rojas álvarez the third sub-category, the role of affective issues in written communication, informs us that the affective dimension is very important in the school processes that teens experience. as we know, affective factors can make learning experiences easier or difficult. evidence of this aspect can be seen in the blog created along the development of the project. on it, we can see, for example, the importance of friendship in the students’ school life. the photos accompanied by affective messages show us that text production can be influenced by feelings or students’ inner personal driving forces. likewise, it was observed that the friendship theme allowed the students to directly connect the images, the written texts and the messages they wanted to convey. it should be noted that the ideas and comments evidencing their affective issues arise more easily when they engage in writing because they have thoughts and comments to share with their peers. we could also see that great emotions appear and enthusiasm is high when tasks are related to the things of the heart, not only of the head. it is interesting to see that, regarding the affective dimension, mccourt (2006) presents autobiographical texts that deal with the life of an english teacher (mccourt) in a public school of new york. the anecdotes presented show us the feelings of the students as regards academic requirements, especially those connected with reading and writing: they read or write more when they find a meaningful link with their life aspects, mainly with their sensibility or their affective relationships. communicative interaction taking place through blogs we saw that interactive communication took place when students engaged in writing in the blogs they created. their participation engaged them in communicating around topics of interest –which is the first sub-category of the second big theme that emerged from the data analysis. this made the writing activity meaningful for students. in the journals we kept, we can find evidence about topics of interest. work was done in groups and this reinforced the collaborative atmosphere we promoted in the project. this also facilitated getting to know about each other and finding common interests, likes and dislikes. all of this was useful for the purpose of engaging in the creation of authentic and original blogs, as can be read in the following extract: they asked about blogs. they were organized in groups of two or three, as they wanted. they began to make a draft of their possible individual blogs. they discussed and selected their favorite topics and the ones that they could include in their blogs. (journal, first week of february) the topics of the blogs created by students were related to global warming, teen fashion, rock and other musical genres, dangers of the internet, family violence, and touristic places in our country, among others. we respected the topics that motivated students to write because we knew it was a factor that drove them to write more easily and fluently. regarding this, it is important to highlight that the topics of interest demonstrated social responsibility and concern for community issues. in this respect, teens have deep concerns and worries and expect teachers to be able to guide them to write. their hopes and dreams motivate them to do it so that this world can be a better place to live. all in all, students’ worries and concerns are framed in their affectivity and they are the sources that provide inspiration for students to take action and play an active role in the adolescent world. on the other hand, allowing students to work in groups showed that production was more notorious and that they preferred group-work more than 21profile vol. 13, no. 2, october 2011. issn 1657-0790. bogotá, colombia. pages 11-27 21 writing using blogs: a way to engage colombian adolescents... writing alone. getting together with peers permits them to share likes, dislikes, problems, solutions, and ideas about several topics. as already said, affective relationships are strengthened. the following excerpt, from the interview done at the end of the project with eight students of the class participating in our project, illustrates how students perceived the communicative interaction taking place through blogs: t: how have you felt in the english project using blogs? s1: it’s been an interesting experience because we have learned about the icts, and have implemented this in our studies. t: would you like to continue working with blogs? why? s2: yes, it is a way to express ourselves and connect with others, and continue learning more english. s3: yes, with the blogs we find english most striking when we work with blogs. this is contrary to say “ah! how boring it is to write or something like that!”… this is what we often say… and the teacher would feel the same as what we feel. so... it’s much better.1 additionally, some students’ comments in the blog we created (see: www.thinkingspeakingandwriting. blogspot.com) showed us their positive feelings about the activities they participated in. these are some samples: mafe wrote... hi teacher good blog we learned a lot from this blog, is interesting to see pictures of friends and interact....¡¡¡gina lugoedwin cortesmafe velasquez903jm sergio wrote... sergio rojas 903 j.m this website is very interesting because this site is very dynamic and has very good material submitted by students. the second subcategory, using tools to convey messages, was related to the resources used by students to make communication meaningful. as can be seen in the samples of the journals kept along the development of the project (see appendix b), 1 t = teacher; s1 = student 1; s2 = student 2; s3 = student 3 students used e-mails, videos, edited photos, short messages similar to the chats besides topics studied in classes (see the blog created). with these tools we could become conscious of the students’ necessity to communicate through elements that enhanced the use of key and correct words to convey given messages quickly. when students were given the chance to use different tools they seemed to feel more engaged in their learning process. being in touch with computers, cameras, and mobiles was more interesting to them because they explored their own possibilities with new technologies and confirmed that these were also ways to learn english. this shows that although we had some problems at school with the use of technological tools, we could take advantage of the students’ enthusiasm for them. it should be noted that new technologies offer tools that can be a good possibility for teens to find new learning strategies, but they are not always well used in teaching and learning processes. although teens nowadays are inclined to use technology, very often they do not care much about aspects that require concentration, special attention and a capacity to memorize. to illustrate this, we now present an example. in one of the activities developed in our project, the teacher checked some pictures and messages sent by e-mail. some technological tools were used, but the teacher found some mistakes, as we can see in the photo sent by one student: figure 2. photo sent by one student (julián) 22 universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras rojas álvarez the following is the answer that the teacher sent to the student after reading the mail: hi, julian. thanks for your photo. please, write “do” at the beginning of the sentence: do you speak english? regards, teacher this type of communication is an interesting way to use keys and correct words and helps students to be more alert to write better. although it is impossible to answer all messages to them, the fact that the teacher answers their e-mails is important for them. communication is more effective and meaningful. hence, students can feel more inclined to expand their knowledge and improve their writing with the corrections provided by the teacher. in so doing, the teacher makes students conscious of their mistakes. needless to say, it should be done appropriately, not as bad evaluation. this way, students can realize that errors or mistakes are possibilities for learning more and better. the students wanted to express themselves quickly by using tools such as chats, facebook, and e-mails. even though they did not show correct writing, students engaged in the tasks because they felt the necessity to convey a message, an idea, a feeling or a comment. in this sense, the teachers are at a crossroads between allowing them to express themselves freely or giving them rules and explanations about the correct use of the language. conclusions according to the activities done in the project, we can conclude that as teachers we can encourage our students to write or improve this skill using technology. we noticed that in the project students tried to write a little more than before. although they did not write as much as we wanted, we consider it to be a good beginning. the interest was fed and the innovation showed us many possibilities to continue encouraging our students to write more and researching the processes they engage in. on the other hand, and taking into account our experience in this project, we can say that a blog is an excellent tool to work with students in a creative and interesting way. the students were very enthusiastic working on the project because it was a different way to obtain knowledge. in some cases learners did some online activities outside of school. this shows the necessity to have technological facilities in their homes or in their contexts, to support them in their efforts to communicate in english. the students’ writing also evidenced it was necessary to increase the hours allocated to studying english at school because two hours weekly are too little to do relevant work in the management of a second language. conversely, we could observe that with these activities collaborative work is really possible be cause the students cooperate and collaborate with their partners and teachers solving the majority of activities. it is important to say that most of the students developed many activities at home or in a café internet, which showed an autonomous attitude and commitment to fulfilling the goals of the different tasks. as teachers we can say that the project was a challenge for us because at the beginning we did not know much about blogs. but nowadays we know how to create a blog, how to publish information, videos, photos, and links. we also know how to write a comment in it. the most important gain is that we are now more confident because we were in touch with technology. this confirms that with this kind of projects we can learn and explore different technological resources. 23profile vol. 13, no. 2, october 2011. issn 1657-0790. bogotá, colombia. pages 11-27 23 writing using blogs: a way to engage colombian adolescents... pedagogical implications using blogs to foster students’ writing is an interesting possibility to work with students, but it is necessary that the school have several computer rooms where the project can be developed. in our case, the computer rooms were busy most of the time, which produced difficulties in the development of the project. another important issue to take into account is the possibility of giving students the opportunity to form groups as they wish because the work needs collaboration and sustained engagement. it is also necessary that all teachers are trained and continually updated in the use of new technologies and that they have time at school to implement interdisciplinary projects that involve issues like the ones handled in our study. also, it is important to open spaces in schools in which to present projects and conferences connected to english learning with the use of new technologies, as well as the technology already in use in other disciplines. references álvarez, a. (1995). ...y la escuela se hizo necesaria. bogotá: magisterio. burns, a. (1999). collaborative action research for english language teachers. cambridge: cambridge university press. carballo-calero, m. (2008). webquests: un modelo educativo basado en el uso de internet. revista de formación e innovación educativa universitaria, 1(2), 58-60. chartier, a. m. (2004). las mutaciones contemporáneas en la cultura escrita. in enseñar a leer y a escribir. una aproximación histórica, (pp. 203-204). méxico: fondo de cultura económica. cross, d. (2007). developing writing skills. a practical hand­ book of language teaching. phoenix: prentice hall. dudeney, g., & hockly, n. (2007). blogs, wikis and pod­ casts. how to teach english with technology. new york: pearson longman. ferreiro, e., & teberoski, a. (1979). los sistemas de escritura en el desarrollo del niño. méxico: siglo xxi. ferreiro, e. (2001). pasado y presente de los verbos leer y escribir. méxico: fondo de cultura económica. eduteka (2008). uso educativo de los blogs. retrived from www.eduteka.org/blogseducacion.php lenhart, a.,  smith, a., & macgill, a. r. (2008).  writing, technology, and teens. pew internet and american life project. retrived from http://pewresearch.org/ pubs/808/writing-technology-and-teens mccourt, f. (2006). el profesor. bogotá: norma. quintero, l. (2008). blogging: a way to foster efl writing. colombian applied linguistics journal. 10, 7-49. suárez, m. (2009, 29 de noviembre). el arte de bloguear. el espectador, p. 9. tolchinsky, l. (1993). aprendizaje del lenguaje escrito. barcelona: anthropos. about the author gloria rojas álvarez is a full-time teacher at castilla school and part-time teacher at universidad distrital francisco josé de caldas. she holds a bachelor’s degree in linguistics and literature from universidad distrital and a master’s in education from universidad pedagógica nacional. she has published some articles about educational issues. 24 universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras rojas álvarez appendix a: diagnostic survey castilla school morning shift we invite you to answer the following survey in order to learn a bit about your interests and knowledge of english. please answer honestly. remember that you will participate in the project: writing using blogs: a way to engage high school students in meaningful communication. student name: age: sex: english level: 1. which skill do you think you have developed more in english? reading writing listening speaking 2. do you often have the opportunity to use a computer? yes no 3. do you practice english activities using the computer outside of school? yes no 4. do you have any knowledge about the use of blogs? (how to create one, posting information on blogs) yes no 5. would you like to create your own blog to post information and communicate with your friends and teacher? yes no 25profile vol. 13, no. 2, october 2011. issn 1657-0790. bogotá, colombia. pages 11-27 25 writing using blogs: a way to engage colombian adolescents... appendix b: samples of journal entries date issue/ question action reflection/comments february first week blogs introduction questions and answers about blogs. draft design blog the project was set up in the grade. the students paid attention to the explanation of the teacher where she gave some justification about how to design a blog. they asked about blogs. they were organized in groups of two or three, as they wanted. they began to make a draft of their possible individual blogs. they discussed and selected their favorite topics and the ones that they could include in their blogs. the class was quiet; all the students were very enthusiastic and motivated in this new and interesting project. jaisson said that they have some experience in blogs because they had worked in it in their technology class. for this reason the english teacher spoke with the technology teacher about the possibility of creating an interdisciplinary blog involving not only english and technology, but the communication class that is also working with blogs. the teacher felt pleased because of the attitude of the majority of the students. third week management of icts and the beginning of the blogs creation the technology teacher helped the students to continue adding more information to their blogs. she gave them some explanations about how to use several tools in order to take the best advantage of them and design a very nice blog. she then let them go to the computers room and continue working in their blogs. the teacher asked the students to send a photo by mail with a sentence or message written in english in order to select the better ones and publish them in the common blog in construction. the name of this blog was chosen from the names submitted by the students: “thinking speaking and writing”, was the selected name, created by angie. the students showed their abilities in management of icts and they enjoyed posting drawings, illustrations, pictures, and photos. the technology teacher commented to the english teacher about the abilities and knowledge that some students have in blogs and the pleasure they feel when working on them. work with the group is good because they seem very motivated, plus the atmosphere is calm. 26 universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras rojas álvarez may first and second week reading the story: “the giving tree” comments on blogs about this story remembering auxiliaries: did and will the students read the story “the giving tree” on the internet before this class. once it was read, the students in the classroom commented and exchanged feelings and opinions about the story orally and in writing. the independent work was: write questions in the simple past and future using ‘did’ and ‘will’ related to “the giving tree”. the students published their comments and opinions in their blogs. the students participated via exercises and questions. the class was dynamic. the story allowed highlighting the parents and children’s relationship. these are some comments written by the students and posted on the blog: “…it is necessary we value the love of the others” (cristian). “i like the video you have (the giving tree) is very good but a bit sad”. (victor) “the video to “given tree” gives a very interesting and my sentence is that we appreciate the love that others give us and we will have it received with affection”. (geovanny) 27profile vol. 13, no. 2, october 2011. issn 1657-0790. bogotá, colombia. pages 11-27 27 writing using blogs: a way to engage colombian adolescents... appendix c: questions for students’ final review objective: to find out students’ perceptions about the project after participating in it. 1. how have you felt in the english project using blogs? 2. how was communication in english through the common blogs? how was it with blogs made by groups? 3. what problems or difficulties have you experienced in this communication? what has been the most interesting part of this work you have done? 4. which communication skills (reading, writing, listening and speaking) practiced through blogs are easiest for you? 5. why do you like to write little and use a lot of imagery? 6. do you feel that today you manage or know more about blogs? 7. would you like to continue working with blogs? why? 137profile vol. 16, no. 1, april 2014. issn 1657-0790 (printed) 2256-5760 (online). bogotá, colombia. pages 137-151 selective use of the mother tongue to enhance students’ english learning processes…beyond the same assumptions uso selectivo de la lengua materna para mejorar el proceso de aprendizaje del inglés de los estudiantes…más allá de las mismas suposiciones luis fernando cuartas alvarez*1 universidad de antioquia, medellín, colombia this article reports the results of an action-research project that examines enhancing students’ english learning processes through the selective use of their mother tongues with the aim of overcoming their reluctant attitudes toward learning english in the classroom. this study involves forty ninth-graders from an all-girls public school in medellin, colombia. the data gathered included field notes, questionnaires, and participants’ focus group interviews. the findings show that the mother tongue plays an important role in students’ english learning processes by fostering students’ affective, motivational, cognitive, and attitudinal aspects. thus, the mother tongue serves as the foothold for further advances in learning english when used selectively. key words: english as a foreign language, language learning, mother tongue, selective use of mother tongue. este artículo presenta los resultados de un proyecto de investigación-acción que examinó el mejoramiento del proceso de aprendizaje de inglés de los estudiantes, a través de un uso selectivo de la lengua materna con el objetivo de superar la actitud reacia hacia el uso del inglés dentro del aula de clase. en este estudio participaron cuarenta estudiantes de noveno grado de un colegio público femenino de la ciudad de medellín, colombia. los datos recogidos incluyen notas de campo, cuestionarios y entrevistas de los participantes a través de grupos focales. los resultados muestran que la lengua materna juega un papel importante en el proceso de aprendizaje del inglés, al fomentar aspectos afectivos, motivacionales, cognitivos y actitudinales. así, la lengua materna se sitúa como el punto de apoyo para seguir avanzando en el aprendizaje de inglés, cuando se utiliza de manera selectiva. palabras clave: aprendizaje de lenguas, inglés como lengua extranjera, lengua materna, uso selectivo de la lengua materna. * e-mail: luisfdocuartas@gmail.com how to cite this article (apa, 6th ed.): cuartas alvarez, l. f. (2014). selective use of the mother tongue to enhance students’ english learning processes…beyond the same assumptions. profile issues in teachers’ professional development, 16(1), 137-151. http://dx.doi.org/10.15446/profile.v16n1.38661. this article was received on july 1, 2013, and accepted on november 5, 2013. universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras138 cuartas alvarez introduction mainstream language teaching methodologies uphold the english-only practice at schools. this teaching style assumes that english ought to be learned solely through english (henceforth, l2) and not with the help of mother tongue (henceforth, l1), which in fact tend to be prohibited in the classroom (jadallah & hasan, 2010). nevertheless, practices in schools vary considerably. the mother tongue, especially at public institutions, occupies a large proportion of the language used in class. both students as well as teachers constantly resort to l1, leading to its overuse and to avoiding using english. the aforementioned scenario was not an exception in the institution where this study took place, an allgirls public high school located on the northwest side of medellin with approximately 2,200 students from low and middle-low socioeconomic status. at this school, one of the most recurrent issues was that students, particularly ninth-graders, overused l1 in the classroom and showed negative attitudes toward using english. i shared my concern with my cooperating teacher (ct), who mentioned that this group had had very poor experiences with english because their previous teachers had conducted all classes in spanish and the students were always being asked to translate texts (informal conversation with ct, february 23, 2012). despite the efforts of my ct to encourage english use in class, the students remained reluctant and resorted to l1 instead. eventually, my ct resorted to using l1 to teach his class instead. at this time, i questioned myself about the possible reasons for this issue. i wondered whether the teacher, the lessons, the topics, the language, or the classroom environment were influencing the students’ constant dependence on l1. as my observations continued, i noticed that the students were unmotivated to use english and that they would use l1 all of the time. as a countermeasure for their constant dependence on l1, my ct insisted on asking students to perform oral tests, quizzes, and short presentations as a way to force them to use english in class. however, students preferred to receive bad grades than to share their work in class. the students’ frustration was evident as the classes went on: “teacher, i don’t understand anything”; “teacher, it’s just that i’m stupid”; “teacher, don’t worry about me because i’m not going to study anymore” (class journal, february 23 and march 1, 2012).1 i decided to push this issue further by talking with those students, and i realized that most of them actually did their homework, but their lack of confidence in using english prevented them from presenting their homework in class. this situation reflected a serious issue—when students’ confidence levels and grades drop, they “may very well experience an unnecessary sense of failure” (jones, 2010, p. 16), a very distant sense from what we may expect from a class. i understood that a methodological renewal was required to overcome this sense of failure and to inculcate in the students a sense of success that could be represented by an increase in english use within the classroom. i stated this in my journal: “to bring them [students] a sense of success would improve students’ morale. this could result in better development of the activities and, eventually, better outcomes from them” (class journal, march 1, 2012). based on these data, i decided to take a different pathway by searching for information related to the use of l1 in the classroom. beyond the taken-forgranted assumptions regarding its use, i found that the selective use of l1 could actually be beneficial for l2 learning. i also found that the problem stems not from the use of l1 but from the way in which it is used in the classroom. l1 can be actually used alongside english without displacing it as the main medium 1 these excerpts have been translated from spanish. 139profile vol. 16, no. 1, april 2014. issn 1657-0790 (printed) 2256-5760 (online). bogotá, colombia. pages 137-151 selective use of the mother tongue to enhance students’ english learning processes… of communication (butzkamm, 2003). it can be used as a support for students to express themselves and be understood by others even when their proficiency in english is not adequate (cook, 2001). additionally, l1 can be used to provide students with scaffolding to communicate in a non-threatening environment (antón & dicamilla, 1998; auerbach, 1993), increasing confidence, reducing reluctance, and enhancing english learning. however, when advocating for the use of l1, it is important to remark on the fact that there is no guideline regarding its appropriate use. in addition, there is no criterion that establishes either specific dosages or purposes for which l1 should be used to enhance l2 learning. thus, finding a balance of l1 use appears to be a matter of reflection, judgment, and selectivity. “l1 can be a valuable resource if it is used at appropriate times and in appropriate ways” (atkinson as cited in cole, 1998, “l1 and communicative language,” para. 8). this last is what best represents a selective use of l1: using l2 when possible and l1 when necessary and positioning l1 as a conscious and meditated choice with a facilitative and supportive role for students (jadallah & hasan, 2010). considering all of the findings acknowledged here, this research project sought to enhance students’ english learning process through the selective use of l1, increasing both confidence and english use and fostering a non-threatening environment for language learning. therefore, to frame this research inquiry, i proposed the following research question: how can the selective use of l1 enhance a group of ninth-graders’ english learning processes in the english as a foreign language (efl) classroom at a public school in medellin? theoretical framework the following theoretical framework presents the arguments, assumptions, and concepts that will support the aim of this study. first, i portray a brief analysis of the debate around the use of l1 in the efl classroom. second, i present a brief state of the art of the research conducted on this issue and how the findings support the benefits of using l1. third, i show some possibilities of l1 use in the efl classroom. fourth, i provide reasons that monolingual approaches to language teaching should be reconsidered in our country. ultimately, i propose reasons l1 use could be beneficial in the colombian efl context. the debate around the use of l1 in the efl classroom the use of l1 in the efl classroom has been a polemic issue and the subject of much controversy and debate for decades. on the one hand, supporters of monolingualism in efl, for instance, advocate that l2 should be used solely and exclusively within the classroom as the teaching and learning medium, avoiding the use of l1, which would reduce the amount of input provided to students in the target language (polio & duff, 1994). this assumption portrays a scenario in which l2 is appropriate, suitable, advisable, and the norm, and l1 is the opposite, detrimental, taboo, and the “skeleton in the cupboard” (prodromou as cited in butzkamm, 2003, p. 29); this scenario, implicitly or explicitly, reinforces the assumption that english is the only acceptable way to communicate in the efl classroom (auerbach, 1993). on the other hand, other authors have dissented from this assumption (atkinson, 1987; butzkamm, 2003; cook, 2001). cook (2001), for instance, mentions that the avoidance of l1 in the efl classroom has been undoubtedly justified for decades. nonetheless, there have been moments in history when this commonsense assumption has been rejected. these authors are progressively defying the english-only assumption (auerbach, 1993), calling into question its suitability for efl teaching and learning, particularly in non-english-speaking countries, and the role that l1 plays within efl learning. universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras140 cuartas alvarez beyond the same assumptions this new stance toward the role of l1 has resulted in an increasing repertoire of relevant research studies supporting the benefits of using l1 from different sociolinguistic contexts that not only provide insights into the favorable attitudes from both teachers and students toward l1 use but also support the premise that l1 can actually facilitate l2 learning. schweers (1999) conducted a study at a puerto rican university with 19 teachers and their students in an efl context. the aim was to investigate the teachers’ and students’ attitudes toward using spanish in the l2 classroom. the results showed that using spanish led to positive attitudes toward the process of learning english and better yet, encouraged students to learn more english. tang (2002) conducted a similar study in china with 20 teachers and 100 students. the aim was to investigate their attitudes toward using chinese in the l2 classroom. the findings showed that limited and judicious use of the mother tongue in the classroom did not reduce students’ exposure to english but rather, could assist in the teaching and learning processes. miles (2004) utilized three lowlevel first-year university classes of japanese students to find evidence of the theory that l1 use can facilitate l2 learning. the results supported that l1 use in the english classroom did not hinder l2 learning but rather facilitated it. drosatou (2009) involved six greek english language teachers as well as 30 students in her study. the study’s aim was to analyze to what extent greek was used in the l2 classroom. the results showed that teachers were likely to use l1 in the classroom and that students were mostly in favor of using both languages in class. uses of l1 in the efl classroom some authors have provided for some uses for the l1 in the efl classroom (atkinson, 1987; cook, 2001). atkinson (1987), for instance, describes favorable uses such as eliciting language, checking comprehension, giving instr uc tions, encouraging co op eration among learners, discussing classroom methodology, presenting and reinforcing the language, checking for sense, and testing and developing useful strategies. in addition, the use of l1 facilitates the incorporation of students’ life experiences and their knowledge of the world (auerbach, 1993; miles, 2004). these experiences are the starting points for comprehension and the references for students to connect what they have lived and learned with the l2. in addition, l1 use provides students with an effective tool for crosslinguistic analysis, confronting the new language with their already-existing mother tongue (butzkamm, 2003). additionally, l1 use improves the students’ affective filters and the efl learning environment; its use facilitates an affective environment for learning and reduces students’ anxiety levels and other affective barriers (auerbach, 1993; jones, 2010). students who are unmotivated, without self-confidence, or anxious are less likely to utilize l2 in the classroom. by using l1, they could reduce their inhibitions or affective blocks, which would encourage them to use english in class in more confident ways than would otherwise be possible in a solely efl environment. finally, although the discussion about l1 use in the l2 classroom has not passed unnoticed by researchers and practitioners in our country, there are scarce studies in colombia regarding whether l1 should be used in efl classrooms. reconsidering foreign language teaching in the colombian efl context foreign language teaching in colombia relies on imported models that emphasize conformity to standards and norms of an idealized native english speaker as the main objective of language competence (velez-rendón, 2003). these imported monolingual models, however, fail in the colombian context and its specific features because of several factors. 141profile vol. 16, no. 1, april 2014. issn 1657-0790 (printed) 2256-5760 (online). bogotá, colombia. pages 137-151 selective use of the mother tongue to enhance students’ english learning processes… to begin with, these models are forged in anglo sociolinguistic milieus, in which the implications of dif ferent languages apar t f rom english are not considered. additionally, these models are implicitly elitist and they predominantly favor high socioeconomic sectors and marginalize low socioeconomic ones, which reinforces the everincreasing division between private and public education in c olombia (velez-rendón, 2003). moreover, the curricular experiences from these models could be pedagogically justified except that they rely on unfounded assumptions that have not been fully examined, and their inner discourses encompass relationships of power and maintenance of the status quo (auerbach, 1993; freire & macedo, 1987). furthermore, monolingual models and english-only policies overlook the current conditions of teachers in the public sector. the teachers are asked to preserve the english-only policies in their classes, but they also must acknowledge the scarce opportunities for maintaining english use in the classroom and the lack of in-service training and professional development programs available to them (gonzales as cited in velez-rendón, 2003). finally, these models have been applied without considering the constant challenges that come with the lower socioeconomic conditions of our country, such as “non-motivated students, lack of support and resources, overcrowded classrooms, lack of adequate space and quality materials, and lack of morale” (gonzales et al. as cited in velez-rendón, 2003, p. 192). positive effects of l1 in the colombian efl context in a context in which english is learned as a foreign language, applying monolingualism then represents adopting the pretension of abolishing l1 from the efl classroom, which deprives students of a fundamental tool for reflection, critical thinking, and social interaction (freire & macedo, 1987). moreover, this represents excluding the students’ most intense existential experiences obtained through their l1 (phillipson as cited in auerbach, 1993). in addition, this represents a lack of acknowledgement of the fact that students “have learnt to think, learnt to communicate and acquired an intuitive understanding of grammar” through their l1 (butzkamm, 2003, p. 31). however, by acknowledging and welcoming the use of l1 within the efl classroom, negative attitudes toward english could be dispelled and receptivity to learning the language could be increased (schweers, 1999). in addition, l1 use could present linguistic, cognitive, affective, political, psychological, and social benefits, which would favor both students and teachers (jones, 2010). all of the possibilities above call for a reconsideration of l1 use in the english classroom as a possible teaching and learning resource that may be beneficial not only in the colombian efl context but also in other efl contexts in different spanishspeaking countries. method planning actions to enhance students’ english learning through the selective use of l1, i planned to perform the following actions: (a) inform students about the aims of the study as well as the implementations to be performed in the english classes, (b) modify the teacher’s speech in the english classes, (c) permit students to resort to their l1 but guided by established boundaries, (d) promote collaborative work among the students during the classes, and (e) modify the class methodology towards a more communicative approach. additionally, to collect qualitative and quantitative data for this study, i planned to use the following instruments: (a) field notes from all of the classes observed and taught during the school year to record the events within the classroom; (b) two questionnaires universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras142 cuartas alvarez in spanish, the first adapted from schweers (1999) and tang (2002) and including closed-ended questions to analyze the students’ perceptions toward english and l1 use, and the second, also including closed-ended questions and a section for reflections, to analyze the impact of the implementations performed in class; (c) audio-recording of two structured interviews with my ct to collect insights about the class, the students, and their use of language (l1 and l2); and (d) audio-recording of three semi-structured focus group interviews with five students each to gain insights on their perspectives toward l1 use and the implementations performed in class. in the following section, i provide more details of each teaching action and its development. development of the actions the aforementioned actions were developed throughout the second semester of this study and were aimed at fulfilling the study objective. first, i informed students of the purpose of this study as well as what was going to be implemented in the class. i described that my objective was to enhance the students’ english learning processes through the selective use of l1. however, i clarified that using l1 as a tool did not mean the whole class would be in spanish. i emphasized that english use was going to be increased in the classroom because the main objective of an english course is for the students to actually learn english. by sharing the implications of the study, i expected students to dispel any prior ideas regarding the constant use of l1 in class and to progressively invite them to use it consciously and purposely. second, i modified my teacher’s speech by maintaining a clear tone of voice and slow but careful pronunciation. in addition, i modified the way instructions were given in class; they remained in l2 but were continuously simplified to match them to the students’ english levels (e.g., avoiding idiomatic expressions, difficult tenses and vocabulary). additionally, i utilized code switching between l1 and l2 on certain occasions to emphasize important concepts, to reacquire the students’ attention, and to supply difficult vocabulary items, as suggested by cook (2001). by making such modifications, i expected to facilitate a progressive increase in the input provided in l2 during classes, an idea that is supported by butzkamm (2003), who states that “when used properly, the l1 steals very little time away from the fl [l2] and, in fact, helps to establish it [l2] as the general means of communication in the classroom” (p. 32). third, i permitted students to resort to l1 during the classes, under established boundaries, as a way to express themselves, to convey language, and to make inner connections between their own knowledge and experiences and the topics in english. additionally, i permitted the use of l1 in class as a way to provide students with a supportive tool to help them organize their ideas and, therefore, express themselves in l2. by allowing students to use l1, i expected them to increase their confidence and to realize that they were actually able to respond successfully, increasing their participation in class. this action was based on the premise that the more english knowledge the students acquired, the less dependent on the mother tongue they would be. fourth, i promoted collaborative work among the students, facilitated by the use of l1 as a way to incorporate their own life experiences and knowledge, to create a non-threatening environment in which to work and to allow students to give each other feedback to increase their confidence and learning (antón & dicamilla, 1998; auerbach, 1993). by promoting this kind of work, i expected students to find support from their peers to overcome their difficulties together in a free and motivating environment that would improve their performance in class. finally, i modified the class methodology toward a more communicative language teaching approach 143profile vol. 16, no. 1, april 2014. issn 1657-0790 (printed) 2256-5760 (online). bogotá, colombia. pages 137-151 selective use of the mother tongue to enhance students’ english learning processes… instead of the prevalent grammar-translation tendency. this tendency, based mainly on translation exercises, had permeated the students to such a degree that they had to perform translations before trying any exercises in english, as presented in the following excerpt from a reflection students had to deliver as homework: reflexión del cigarrillo y el alcohol el alcohol como el cigarrillo son muy malos el alcohol te destruye tus pulmones te da mal aliento te causa infarto aborto y miles de cosas que perjudican tu salud al igual que el alcohol te daña el cerebro te daña la dentadura y daña tu aspecto. pero así nosotros somos muy tercos por que los seguimos consumiendo pero lo peor de todo que estos dos productos son adictivos y dañan tu vida. reflection of cigarette and alcohol alcohol and cigarettes are very bad alcohol destroys your lungs you gives you bad breath cause abortion infarction and thousands of things that harm your health like alcohol damages the brain you will damage the teeth and damages your appearance. but we are very stubborn and that we continue to consume but the worst of all that these two products are addictive and damaging your life. (homework collected from student, september 25, 2012) instead of maintaining this tendency, i applied communicative tasks that encouraged students to use english such as role-playing, presentations, games, and dramatizations among others. these communicative tasks were facilitated by the use of l1 supported by cole (1998), who acknowledges the role that l1 plays within this approach. in addition, i decided to incorporate more meaningful, context-related and authentic topics (e.g., moral dilemmas, pregnancy, and drug consumption) as a way to increase students’ motivation and to allow further discussions. by making these modifications, i expected students not only to realize the importance of l2 as a medium of communication but also to relate their learning to life situations, making learning meaningful even outside of class. data analysis to analyze the data collected, i followed the framework for qualitative data analysis proposed by burns (1999) involving assembling, coding and comparing the data, building interpretations, and reporting the outcomes. first, to analyze the field notes, i systematically read the different journal entries written after each class. afterward, following emerson, fretz, and shaw (1995), i coded the data by using open and focused coding to look for emerging patterns. i then established some preliminary categories for arranging the data. once i finished this, i reread the field notes to code the arranged data into the identified broader categories. second, to analyze the questionnaires, i first gathered the responses into a chart i arranged. afterward, i tabulated the number of responses for each item and set them into percentages. then, following the recommendations of bell (1993), i coded and recorded the responses as soon as they were tabulated and arranged. once i was finished, i created a visual display by putting the data into graphic charts. third, to analyze the ct and fo c us group interviews, i first transcribed the entire interviews for subsequent analysis. after ward, i coded the interviews’ transcripts through open and focused coding to identify emerging ideas, patterns, and issues. finally, i arranged the codes into preliminary and broader categories. at the end, the entire process was validated by triangulation of the different data sources with the aim of enhancing the trustworthiness of my findings and by peer examination to determine my advisor’s opinions regarding my findings, which were acknowledged as logical and reasonable. this process helped me to build interpretations and articulate them with my research question and objectives. in the following section, i provide a summary of what i found. universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras144 cuartas alvarez findings and interpretations the findings of this study, the purpose of which was to enhance the students’ english learning processes through the selective use of l1, were encompassed in terms of (a) the students’ use of l1 and (b) the teachers’ use of l1, all of these comprising the role that l1 plays in enhancing students’ english learning processes. in the following sections, i provide further explanations of each of these findings. students’ use of l1 enhancing their english learning processes the data revealed how the students’ use of l1 enhanced their english learning processes in specific aspects such as acquiring and defining vocabulary, which led to english learning and increasing confidence (see appendices a and b). below, i provide further details regarding these uses. acquiring and defining vocabulary in english data from this study revealed that l1 played an important role in the efl classroom by helping students to understand and acquire vocabulary in english, as illustrated in the following excerpt from a focus group in which one student expressed how her l1 use helped her in learning english vocabulary:2 [the use of spanish] has helped me a lot at the moment of learning more vocabulary in english, because when i am taught new words and i don’t have a clear meaning in spanish, i forget them, but when i can and am able to connect them with their meaning, it is easier to learn them and retain them. (focus group, november 17, 2012) the excerpt above shows how the l1 use assisted students in learning vocabulary by providing an effective tool for cross-linguistic analysis to confront both english and spanish because “ever y new 2 all of the excerpts from the focus groups were translated from spanish. language is confronted by an already-existing mother tongue” (butzkamm, 2003, p. 30). this tool allowed students to analyze and compare words in english to make connections with their counterparts in l1, thus facilitating acquisition and retention. in addition, the use of l1 as a cross-linguistic tool was important for students’ learning; they acknowledged its usefulness as a way to elicit meaning from the english vocabulary, as illustrated in the following excerpt from a focus group: “for me, spanish is really important for learning english because it’s as i say, for me is a comparison, i compare a word in english with one in spanish to be able to understand it” (focus group, september 13, 2012). this process of comparison is worth consideration because “students are, especially at lower levels, always using their knowledge of the world and their l1 to make comparisons with english . . . trying to make it [l2] more comprehensible” (ferrer, 2002, p. 4). leading to english learning the data showed that l1 use also played a supportive and facilitative role within the efl classroom by leading the students through the process of learning the foreign language. students utilized their l1 as a reference point to compare grammar structures and to make sense of the information that had been provided in the l2, as illustrated in the following excerpt from a focus group: the use of spanish does help me at the moment of learning more english because it seems easier to learn and retain the information when i make some kind of comparison between these two languages, for example in the structure of a sentence. although it is different in each language, spanish helps me to identify the parts of the sentence such as the verb, subject, complement, etc., and, with this as a base, to be able to easily learn and identify the parts or structures of one sentence in english. (focus group, november 17, 2012) thus, l1 appeared to be a tool for learning the foreign language, which helped students to achieve 145profile vol. 16, no. 1, april 2014. issn 1657-0790 (printed) 2256-5760 (online). bogotá, colombia. pages 137-151 selective use of the mother tongue to enhance students’ english learning processes… a better understanding of the mechanics of english by making comparisons and creating signposts to associate similar structures in both languages. this role of l1 in facilitating students’ access to english was acknowledged by butzkamm (2003), who stated that l1 “is the greatest asset people bring to the task of foreign language learning . . . the tool which gives us the fastest, surest, most precise, and most complete means of accessing a foreign language” (p. 31). this role of l1 was also intuitively acknowledged by the students, who understood that their mother tongue was their foothold to advancing in l2, which facilitated their understanding and served as a guide in learning l2, as illustrated in figure 1, which shows an excerpt from a student’s reflection regarding whether the l1 use had helped her enhance her learning process. figure 1. student reflection, october 22, 20123 increasing confidence in the classroom the data revealed that the l1 use played an important role in increasing students’ confidence in utilizing the l2 within the efl classroom. in fact, students were allowed to moderately resort to l1 in some activities as a way to overcome nervousness or any other difficulties that could have appeared when they were expressing their ideas in l2. for instance, during an activity in which students had to describe some words to their classmates, i allowed them to resort to l1 with established boundaries such as only a specific number of words in l1, as illustrated in the following excerpt from my journal in which i asked one student to describe a specific word as part of a game in class: 3 yes, because to the extent that we are practicing english, we use spanish as a guide for our learning; it’s easier. i gave the word corn and she was confused; she knew neither the meaning of the word nor how to explain it in english. she asked me if i could allow her to use spanish to explain the word. i told the class that i was going to allow them to use spanish but just for three words. (class journal, september 10, 2012) this selective use of l1 increased students’ confidence to face the challenge of using l2 during class activities and increased their satisfaction after performing those activities, as is illustrated in the following excerpt from a focus group: “[the use of spanish] gave me confidence. for example, when we have to go in front to explain something [in english] and because we could talk in spanish, we could do it a little better, and by doing so, we felt better” (focus group, november 17, 2012). consequently, using l1 during class activities increased students’ motivation toward and interest in the subject, which was reflected in their improved performance, participation, and attitudes toward learning english, as evidenced in the following excerpt from a focus group: “[the use of spanish] helped me in many ways. for example, i paid more attention in class, i was more encouraged to participate in class and i buckled down to do the tasks in class” (focus group, november 17, 2012). teacher’s use of l1 to enhance students’ english learning processes the data revealed that the teacher’s selective use of l1 served to enhance the students’ english learning processes in specific aspects such as helping them to comprehend vocabulary, clarifying doubts when giving explanations, and providing affective support in the english classroom (see appendices a and b). helping students comprehend english vocabulary the data showed that the teacher’s selective use of l1 helped students to comprehend vocabulary in universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras146 cuartas alvarez english. then, using l1 selectively to elicit meaning and providing accurate translations to l1 when necessary assisted students in comprehending and learning the l2 vocabular y, as illustrated in the following excerpt from my journal in which a student constructed her own statements to describe some words to her classmates as part of a class activity: another student came, and this time the word was submarine. she asked me how she could say bajo el agua, i quickly replied “underwater,” and then she started saying, “is something underwater…with periscopio” [periscope]. students immediately understood it was a submarine. (class journal, september 10, 2012) additionally, by providing accurate and selective translations when necessar y, teachers can help students construct language. to illustrate this, in one class, one student had difficulties understanding a question about her age because she was not accustomed to being asked orally in english. by using l1 selectively, however, i could help her to make connections with her prior knowledge to respond adequately, as evidenced in the following excerpt from my journal: i carefully said just one word in spanish after saying the question; this automatically re-focused the student and created the connection between the question itself and her prior knowledge, allowing her to answer correctly. for instance, how old are you?… edad [age]…then she answered “i’m fifteen years old.” (class journal, july 23, 2012) this selective use of l1 is especially useful when working with young or low-proficiency students, such as the ones in this study, who may find it difficult to understand and remember the meanings of certain words, helping them create a clear picture of those words and foster their learning. in fact, in a reflection, a student mentioned what is shown in figure 2 when asked about how the l1 use had helped her learn english. figure 2. student reflection, october 22, 20124 nonetheless, as part of using l1 selectively, other options such as body language, exemplifications or realia should also be considered and not dismissed out of hand. these options were used throughout the classes as aids for students to understand what was provided in l2 and to avoid constantly resorting to l1, as illustrated in the following excerpt from my journal: when students were unable to understand the question, i tried different alternatives (aids) to make them understand: i tried using gestures like using my hand as a telephone to make them tell me their telephone number; also i tried to make examples by answering the questions and then asking again to see if they [students] got it, for example “i’m 24 years old, how old are you?” also i tried to point out what the question was about, for example “what is your favorite tv program?” (pointing to the tv in the classroom). (class journal, july 23, 2012) although these options were used with the purpose of eliciting students’ language through questions, they can also be associated with other purposes such as asking students for meaning and providing them with new and more complex vocabulary, just to mention a few. in general, the findings above are in accordance with those of other authors who have also found favorable responses toward l1 use in terms of explaining vocabulary and difficult concepts for general comprehension (cianflone, 2009; jadallah & hassan, 2010; schweers, 1999; tang, 2002). 4 yes, it has been useful a lot because thanks to the fact that we use spanish in the classes to an appropriate extent, i’ve clarified many doubts about the topics and i’ve learned most of the vocabulary. 147profile vol. 16, no. 1, april 2014. issn 1657-0790 (printed) 2256-5760 (online). bogotá, colombia. pages 137-151 selective use of the mother tongue to enhance students’ english learning processes… clarifying doubts when giving explanations in english the data revealed that the teacher’s selective use of l1 played an important role in clarifying and resolving students’ doubts when giving explanations, as illustrated in the following excerpt from a focus group: the use of spanish helped me a lot because i believe that in the grade in which i am, i didn’t understand when the teacher spoke everything in english; but when he explained to me in spanish, the learning was more because it helped me to better develop the tasks and homework, and my understanding was better than when he spoke in english. (focus group, november 17, 2012) as a result, l1 adopted a positive role as a facilitator and clarifier that proved to be helpful for students to develop better understanding of the teacher’s explanations in l2, which might have sometimes been inaccurate, complex, or unreachable for the students given their levels. this positive role of l1, therefore, permitted students to overcome difficulties when understanding the class activities and tasks, as well as what they were being asked to do, as illustrated in the following excerpt from a focus group: spanish helped me in the english class, for example, for some explanations of difficult tasks and in some difficulties that one may have, for example, to know what to do in the tasks, that’s one difficulty i present in english [class]...and in that spanish helped me. (focus group, november 17, 2012) in addit ion, students felt t hat t he y cou ld easily clarify l2 when the teacher used l1 to make meaningful connections between both english and l1, which contributed to their success in understanding and clarifying english explanations, as illustrated the following excerpt from a focus group: we understand easily in ways that we have been already taught, so, if we have as the main language spanish, when he [teacher] uses it in class it help us to understand easily, and so when he speaks spanish, we have more clarity of a topic, an explanation . . . that’s why is good that he uses spanish. (focus group, september 5, 2012) the data also showed how the l1 use served as a direct way to facilitate students’ understanding by providing them with precis e and ef fective explanations that would not have otherwise been fully understood by using l2 only. thus, the use of l1 can be seen as a matter of efficiency, whereby something can be done more efficiently through the l1 (cook, 2001). for instance, during a class in which the main topic was raising awareness on teen pregnancy, i provided selective explanations using l1 when necessary to facilitate students’ understanding and to avoid raising doubts, as illustrated in the following excerpt from my journal: i asked them [students] to make a list of the things they usually like to do . . . then i asked them which of those things they would be able to do if they were pregnant. because the question would have been difficult to express in english, i decided to do it in spanish for them to understand what i meant. (class journal, august 27, 2012) providing affective support within the efl classroom the data showed that the teacher’s selective use of l1 played an important role in providing students with affective support during classes. in this study, this support came from the accompanying, scaffolding, and c ar i ng f rom t he te a che r, w ho a d opte d a participative role within the classes that is exemplified in the following excerpt from my journal: after some minutes, i asked the students to start doing the presentations. they were nervous and worried. the students told me: “profe es que no sabemos pronunciar bien, y hay que decir mucha cosa.”5 i told them that i was going to be there in front helping them with the presentation and with their pronunciation. this motivated students and enhanced their confidence to carry out the presentation. (class journal, september 10, 2012) 5 teacher, we don’t know how to pronounce well, and there is a lot to say. universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras148 cuartas alvarez this participative role along with a selective use of l1 to support students when constructing language, especially the low-proficiency students, contributed to overcoming the “sense of failure” (jones, 2010, p. 16) that prevented them from expressing and freely utilizing english in the efl classroom. in addition, this participative role favored students’ performance in class by creating a non-threatening environment for english learning (antón & dicamilla, 1998), encouraging them to take risks when participating in class and thereby increasing their confidence and self-esteem. conclusions and teaching implications with this study, i was able to determine how the selective use of l1 could favor students’ english learning processes as a way to contribute to the ongoing corpus of research knowledge regarding l1 use in the english classroom (antón & dicamilla, 1998; atkinson, 1987; auerbach, 1993; butzkamm, 2003; cianflone, 2009; cook, 2001; ferrer, 2002; jadallah & hassan, 2010; schweers, 1999; tang, 2002). based on the findings i obtained, it was possible to conclude that the selective use of l1 succeeded in enhancing students’ english learning processes within the particular efl context in which this study took place, as well as in improving students’ class performance, their levels of confidence, their language use, the classroom environment, and the students’ attitudes toward learning english. at the end, this study contributed to providing a rationale for the relationship between the use of l1 and the students’ english learning processes, and it placed l1 as a foothold for further advances in learning english when used selectively. given this, it is necessary to raise awareness and motivate teachers to inquire about the different roles that l1 may play in the efl classroom and what role l1 is actually playing within their own classes. this inquiry would not only provide sound bases for teachers to decide on l1 use in their own class contexts but would also favor further reflections on their own practices. references antón, m., & dicamilla, f. j. (1998). socio-cognitive functions of l1 collaborative interaction in the l2 classroom. the canadian modern language review, 54(3), 314-353. atkinson, d. (1987). the mother tongue in the classroom: a neglected resource? elt journal, 41(4), 214-247. auerbach, e. (1993). reexamining english only in the esl classroom. tesol quarterly, 27(1), 9-32. bell, j. (1993). doing your research project. buckingham, uk: open university press. burns, a. (1999). collaborative action research for english language teachers. cambridge, uk: cambridge university press. butzkamm, w. (2003). we only learn language once. the role of the mother tongue in fl classrooms: death of a dogma. language learning journal, 28, 29-39. cianflone, e. (2009). l1 use in english courses at university level. esp world, 8(22), 1-6. cole, s. (1998). the use of l1 in communicative english classrooms. the language teacher, 22(12). retrieved from http://jalt-publications.org/old_tlt/files/98/dec/ cole.html cook, v. (2001). using the first language in the classroom. canadian modern language review, 57(3), 402-423. drosatou, v. (2009). the use of the mother tongue in english language classes for young learners in greece (unpublished doctoral dissertation). university of essex, united kingdom. emerson, r., fretz, r., & shaw, l. (1995). writing ethnographic field-notes. chicago, il: the university of chicago press. ferrer, v. (2002). the mother tongue in the classroom: cross-linguistic comparisons, noticing and explicit knowledge. retrieved from http://www.teachenglishworldwide.com/ar ticles/ferrer_mother%20 tongue%20in%20the%20classroom.pdf 149profile vol. 16, no. 1, april 2014. issn 1657-0790 (printed) 2256-5760 (online). bogotá, colombia. pages 137-151 selective use of the mother tongue to enhance students’ english learning processes… freire, p., & macedo, d. (1987). literacy: reading the word and the world. south hadley, ma: bergin & garvey. jadallah, m., & hassan, f. (2010). a review of some new trends in using l1 in the efl classroom. retrieved from http://www.qou.edu/english/conferences/firstnationalconference/pdffiles/drmufeed.pdf jones, h. (2010). first language communication in the second language classroom: a valuable or damaging resource? (master’s thesis). memorial university of newfoundland, canada. retrieved from http://nativelanguageuse. weebly.com/uploads/4/0/4/5/4045990/roleofnativelanguage.pdf miles, r. (2004). evaluating the use of l1 in the english language classroom (master’s thesis). university of birmingham, united kingdom. retrieved from http:// www.bhamlive3.bham.ac.uk/documents/college-artslaw/cels/essays/matefltesldissertations/milesdiss.pdf polio, c. g., & duff, p. a. (1994). teachers’ language use in university foreign language classroom: a qualitative analysis of english and target language alternation. modern language journal, 78(3), 313-326. schweers, w. (1999). using l1 in the l2 classroom. english teaching forum, 37(2), 6-9. tang, j. (2002). using l1 in the english classroom. english teaching forum, 40(1), 36-42. velez-rendón, g. (2003). english in colombia: a sociolinguistic profile. world englishes, 22(2), 185-198. about the author luis fernando cuartas alvarez holds a b.ed. degree in foreign language teaching (english and french) from universidad de antioquia, colombia. his research interests are teaching english as a second language and language acquisition. he currently works as a full-time english teacher. acknowledgements to make this study a success, i counted on the participation of a group of persons that i would like to thank: my family and girlfriend, my students, the school staff, my advisors dr. ana maria sierra and camilo andrés dominguez, my cooperating teacher robinson durango and my fellows who contributed to my personal and professional growth as well as to the fulfillment of this study. universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras150 cuartas alvarez appendix a: responses to the first questionnaire6 1. should spanish be used in the classroom? yes: 34 (94.4%) no: 2 (5.6%) 2. if you considered that spanish should be used, when do you think the use of spanish is appropriate in an english class? you can select several options. yes no to introduce new or complicated words 30 (83.3%) 6 (16.7%) to make students feel more comfortable 9 (25%) 27 (75%) to make students feel more confident 8 (22.2%) 28 (77.8%) to explain difficult grammar concepts 21 (58.3%) 15 (41.7%) to make the class nicer 14 (38.9%) 12 (61.1%) to make the class less stressful 16 (44.4%) 20 (55.6%) to check for comprehension 15 (41.7%) 21 (58.3%) to give instructions 11 (30.6%) 25 (69.4%) to give tips regarding how to improve learning 10 (27.8%) 26 (72.2%) 3. how does the use of spanish help you in class? you can select several options. yes no it helps me to understand the grammar concepts better. 22 (61.1%) 14 (38.9%) it helps me to understand the new vocabulary items better. 18 (50%) 18 (50%) it makes me feel more confident. 9 (25%) 27 (75%) it makes me feel less stressed. 12 (33.3%) 24 (66.7%) it makes me feel less lost in class. 27 (75%) 9 (25%) it helps me to express my ideas. 22 (61.1%) 14 (38.9%) not at all a little sometimes fairly much always 4. do you like that your teacher uses spanish in the class? 0 (0%) 1 (2.8%) 16 (44.4%) 14 (38.9%) 5 (13.9%) 5. how often do you think spanish should be used in the classroom? 0 (0%) 1 (2.8%) 21 (58.3%) 13 (36.1%) 1 (2.8%) 6. do you think the use of spanish in the classroom helps you learn english? 0 (0%) 7 (19.4%) 5 (13.9%) 21 (58.3%) 3 (8.3%) adapted from schweers (1999) and tang (2002). 6 thirty-six out of 40 were returned. 151profile vol. 16, no. 1, april 2014. issn 1657-0790 (printed) 2256-5760 (online). bogotá, colombia. pages 137-151 selective use of the mother tongue to enhance students’ english learning processes… appendix b: responses to the second questionnaire7 a lot more or less a little not at all 1. to what extent has the use of spanish in class helped you to improve your english use? 17 (44.7%) 14 (38.9%) 5 (13.1%) 2 (5.3%) 2. to what extent has the teacher’s use of spanish to clarify doubts favored your english learning? 25 (65.8%) 6 (15.8%) 7 (18.4%) 0 (0%) 3. to what extent has the use of spanish as a support helped you to increase your confidence to use english? 13 (34.2%) 14 (36.8%) 9 (23.7%) 2 (5.3%) 4. to what extent has using spanish in class made group work easier? 19 (50%) 15 (39.5%) 4 (10.5%) 0 (0%) 5. to what extent have the class activities favored your english learning? 22 (57.9%) 13 (34.2%) 2 (5.3%) 1 (2.6%) 6. to what extent has not using translation exercises in class encouraged you to use less spanish? 7 (18.4%) 17 (44.7%) 10 (26.3%) 4 (10.5%) 7 thirty-eight out of 40 were returned. 61profile vol. 15, no. 1, april 2013. issn 1657-0790 (printed) 2256-5760 (online). bogotá, colombia. pages 61-80 efl teaching methodological practices in cali prácticas metodológicas en la enseñanza de inglés como lengua extranjera en la ciudad de cali orlando chaves* fanny hernández** universidad del valle, colombia in this article we aim at showing partial results of a study about the profiles of english as a foreign language (efl) teachers in both public and private primary and secondary strata 1-4 schools in cali, colombia. teachers’ methodological approaches and practices are described and analyzed from a sample of 220 teachers. information was gathered from surveys, interviews and institutional documents. the quantitative information was processed with the statistical package for the social sciences and excel while the qualitative information (from a survey and focal interviews) was analyzed hermeneutically. an analysis grid was used for the examination of institutional documents (area planning, syllabi, and didactic materials). teachers’ methodology (approaches/methods), lessons, activities, objectives, curricula, syllabi and evaluation are analyzed in the light of literature in the field. finally, we discuss the implications of methodological approaches. key words: english as a foreign language (efl), teaching methods, teacher profile, teaching practices. en este artículo se presentan los resultados parciales de una investigación sobre los perfiles de los profesores de inglés como lengua extranjera que enseñan en colegios de educación básica primaria y secundaria, públicos y privados, de estratos 1 a 4 en cali, colombia. se describen y analizan sus enfoques y prácticas metodológicas a partir de una muestra de 220 docentes. se obtuvo información cualitativa y cuantitativa por medio de encuestas, entrevistas y documentos institucionales. la información cuantitativa se procesó con el software statistical package for social sciences y excel, mientras que la información cualitativa se analizó hermenéuticamente. se usó una rejilla de análisis para el examen de los documentos institucionales (planes de área, programas, y materiales didácticos). la metodología (enfoques/métodos), clases, actividades, objetivos, currículo, programas y evaluación se analizan a partir de la literatura especializada en el campo. finalmente, se discuten las implicaciones de estos enfoques metodológicos. palabras clave: inglés como lengua extranjera, métodos de enseñanza, perfil docente, prácticas de enseñanza. * e-mail: orlando.chavez@correounivalle.edu.co ** e-mail: fanny.hernandez@correounivalle.edu.co this article was received on april 30, 2012, and accepted on july 3, 2012. universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras62 chaves & hernández introduction it is a fact that english has evolved as an international language with great importance in economic, political, and cultural contexts. in the educational field, this importance is reflected in english as a foreign language (efl) language policies seeking global integration. in c olombia, the national bilingual program (nbp) represents the official policy which aims at enabling all citizens to communicate in english with internationally comparable standards (ministerio de educación nacional [men], 2006a, p. 3). the document estándares básicos de competencias en lenguas extranjeras: inglés (men, 2006) is the most noticeable component of this program. it states that, by 2019, all students and teachers will reach predetermined levels of english, according to the council of europe’s common european framework of reference [cefr] (council of europe, 2001) scale1: c1 for teachers of foreign languages; b2 for professionals in other areas; b2 for english teachers at the elementary level, b1 for students who finish the secondary level, and a2 for teachers of other areas at the elementary level. however, the official announcement of this bilingualism policy is not enough to guarantee its en actment. more knowledge about the context in which the policy is to be applied is still required. in regard to this need, a group of researchers from universidad del valle and universidad san buenaventura carried out a macro-project which intended to describe and analyze critically the conditions of implementation of the nbp in santiago de cali, colombia. this project comprised ten subprojects addressing school infrastructure, efl teachers, students and parents, respectively. one of the subprojects intended to establish the english teachers’ demographic, socio-economic and academic profiles. 1 the cefr scale is the following: a (basic user), b (independent user), and c (proficient user). each is subdivided like this: a1 (breakthrough), a2 (waystage), b1 (threshold), b2 (vantage), c1 (effective operational proficiency), and c2 (mastery) (council of europe, 2001, p. 23). the academic profile considered initial teachers’ education, updating, language proficiency, and methodology. this latter is the focus of the present paper. the importance of a study in this field lies in that it shows, on the one hand, teachers’ conceptions about foreign language, its learning and its teaching; on the other hand, it allows assessing teachers’ practices in the light of current tendencies of efl teaching while it also allows evaluating the conditions for the implementation of the pnb. this means that this study casts light not only on the teachers’ practices but also on their conceptions. theoretical perspectives understanding language teachers’ methodological conceptions and practices requires reviewing conceptual grounds mainly in relation to methodology, method, approach, curriculum, and syllabus. english teachers’ methodological orientations since the notion of “method” was established from the direct method (richards & rodgers, 2001, p. 14), almost a century of methodological controversy took place. that discussion has currently faded, after its peak between the 1950s and 1990s. originally, methodology is knowledge about methods, the theory about teaching practice. for brown (1994a, p. 51), “methodology is the study of pedagogical practices in general. whatever considerations are involved in ‘how to teach’ are methodological.” according to rodgers (2001, p. 1), “a more or less classical formulation suggests that methodology links theory and practice.” in turn, method is a more or less prescriptive set of ways of doing things: procedures in terms of teaching strategies, techniques and activities, altogether with stipulations about contents and the functions of teachers, learners, and materials. method refers to the practical side of teaching while methodology is concerned with the comprehension of methods. 63profile vol. 15, no. 1, april 2013. issn 1657-0790 (printed) 2256-5760 (online). bogotá, colombia. pages 61-80 efl teaching methodological practices in cali taking anthony’s ideas, richards and rodgers (2001, p. 20) refer to approach as “theories about the nature of language and language learning that serve as the source of practices and principles in language teaching.” thus, approaches are on the theoretical side of the continuum, while methods are on the practical end. however, it is necessary to tell methods apart from approaches, which are general in nature and do not refer to specific ways of doing things in the classroom (anthony and mackey, as cited in richards & rodgers, 2001; pennycook, 1989; richards, 1990; holliday, 1994; brown, 1994a, 1994b; richards & rodgers, 2001). approaches contribute to the theoretical support for methods, which are more or less their realization. as our main purpose in this article is to present the findings of our research regarding the methodological orientations and practices of teachers of english in cali, we will not dwell on the historical account of the most important methods and approaches to language teaching, which constitutes a good deal of the modern history of language teaching and has occupied a significant part of applied linguistics literature (kelly, as cited in richards & rodgers, 2001; stevick, 1980, 1998; howatt, as cited in richards & rodgers, 2001; brown, 1994a, 1994b; richards & rodgers, 2001; celce-murcia, 1991; germain, 1993; larsen-freeman, 2000; kumaravadivelu, 1994, 2001, 2003). we will only list and situate methods and approaches briefly: • the grammar-translation or classic method: the teaching was carried out through the translation of classic literary excerpts and the explanation of structures of the target language in contrast with the ones from the mother tongue. this prescientific methodological orientation prevailed between the 1840s and the 1940s but has still had a widespread survival to date. • the series method: this method advocated that it is more important to learn sentences to speak than words; that verbs are the key elements in sentences, and that sentences are more easily learned when they form a narration. the idea was to have students memorize sentences in sequence, related to the same ‘theme’, teaching students directly– without translation–and conceptually–without grammatical rules and explanations, a series of connected sentences that are easy to understand. • the direct or berlitz method: the first method as such, developed at the end of the 19th century. its basic principle was that meaning must be conveyed directly in the target language by means of demonstration and visual aids, which means avoiding translation. • oral approach or situational language teaching: originating in the united kingdom, in the 1920s, it was popular up to the 1960s. this approach to methodology was based on the orderly principles of selection, gradation and presentation of vocabu lary and grammar items. • the audio-lingual method (alm), or army method, or oral approach, or aural-oral approach or structural approach: this was a linguistics-based teaching method that focused on pronunciation and thorough oral drilling of sentence models of the target language. it started in the 1930s and was in vogue in the 1950s in the united states. • total physical response (tpr): developed by a professor of psychology at san jose state university, california, this teaching perspective associated speech and physical action, taking into account that children first respond physically to commands even before being able to speak. • the silent way: a method resulting from the emphasis on human cognition and the cognitive approach. it was based on learners’ capacity for discovery and awareness, already learnt with their mother tongue. by means of cuisenaire rods, word charts, and game-like activities, teachers provide feedback to the students about vocabulary, grammar and spelling without modeling or repetition universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras64 chaves & hernández or even speaking. this latter feature expressed the principle of subordination of teaching to learning, minimizing the teacher’s role and maximizing learners’ capacities for learning. • suggestopedia or desuggestopedia: another method developed from psychology in the early 1960s. it based teaching on the power of affection and suggestion by creating a comfortable and suggestive environment that helped eliminate (de-suggest) fear and negative feelings or “psychological barriers” that hinder learning. that environment was accompanied by a positive and authoritative role of the teacher, who should be specially trained in acting and psychology as well. • community language learning (cll): a 1970s method to teach languages based on psychological counseling techniques to learning. in this scheme, the relationship between the teacher and the student is that of counselor-client: the role of the teacher is not to tell the student what to do but to help and guide her/him to explore; the role of the learner is then to decide what to explore and to what extent, thus determining content. • whole language: this 1960s and 1970s perspective rose as opposed to teaching languages by focusing on the separate components of language, con sidering it as a complete meaning-making system whose parts are closely related and work as an integrated whole. thus, they should be taught in an integrated way, not isolated for direct instruction and reinforcement, by using the learners’ own experience and naturally occurring situations that require listening, reading, writing, and communicating with others. • multiple intelligences (mi): this early 1980s learnerbased perspective viewed education as aimed at developing the multiple types of intelligence. the implication for teaching is that teaching must accommodate the various ways the learners learn. • neurolinguistic programming (nlp): it consists of a set of training techniques from psychology applied to many learning fields, not only language education. its origin, in the mid 1970s, blends linguistics, mathematics and psychology. its bottom line is the close relationship between brain, language and body. the first principle is that we do not perceive reality directly. it is our ‘neuro-linguistic’ maps of reality that determine how we behave, not reality itself. it is generally not reality but our perception of reality that limits or em powers us. the second principle is that life and mind are systemic processes. our bodies, our societies, and our universe form an ecology of complex systems and sub-systems all of which interact with and mutually influence each other. it is not possible to completely isolate any part of the system from the rest of the system. the people who are most effective are those who have a map of the world that allows them to perceive the greatest number of available choices and perspectives. • communicative language teaching (clt): in the 1980s, interactive views of language teaching prevailed over the rest of the methods and ap proaches. clt originated in the british rejection of situational language teaching and the american refutation of audiolingualism. • the natural approach: a view in the tradition of language teaching methods based on observation and interpretation of how first and second languages are learnt in informal settings in a grammatically unordered sequence. • cooperative language learning (part of collaborative learning cl): this approach to teaching is based on pair and small-group activities working together exchanging information in order to learn. • content-based instruction (cbi): this approach to second language teaching builds its syllabus around contents and not on linguistic items, lan65profile vol. 15, no. 1, april 2013. issn 1657-0790 (printed) 2256-5760 (online). bogotá, colombia. pages 61-80 efl teaching methodological practices in cali guage being not an end itself but a means to learn a subject. • learning strategy training: this learner-centered teaching method rose from research on what successful (and non successful) learners do. • the lexical approach: this point of view is based on the belief that what is central to the language is vocabulary. • competency-based language teaching (cblt) or competency-based education (cbe): unlike most methods and approaches emphasizing the importance of input for language learning2, cbe focuses on the outcomes or products of learning, regardless of the way of learning. • task-based language teaching (tblt) or taskbased instruction (tbi): this approach centers language learning on the development of natural or real interactive or communicative tasks.3 when analyzed, methods and approaches to language teaching can be classified in a variety of ways: 1. according to the discipline(s) they originate/draw from: linguistics-based (oral approach, audio-lingual, whole language, clt, etc.), psychology-based (nlp, mi, suggestopedia, tpr, etc.), philosophybased4 (cl, learning strategy training, etc.). 2. according to their direction: input-, process-, or output-oriented. 3. according to their focal point: learner-, teacher-, contentor learning-centered. 4. according to the pedagogical background in volved in them: hetero-, auto-, inter-structuring (not, 2000). 5. according to the epistemological moment they belong to: 2 the standards movement that has dominated educational discussions since the 1990s is a realization of this perspective (richards & rodgers, 2001, p. 142). 3 project-based learning (pbl) is closely associated with tbl; here, we consider the former as part of the latter. 4 the most influential sciences have been linguistics and psychology; however, a few methods have been heavily influenced by social, political or cultural (philosophical) schools of thought. • pre-scientific –before the xix century– and scientific orientations. • methods era (1930s-1990s) • post-methods era (eclecticism5). despite classifications, each method or ap proach can be seen simultaneously from different perspectives, and they can share traits belonging to different taxonomies. table 1 summarizes the three major methodical stages and their corresponding theoretical views about language and language learning. throughout the long record of methodical or methodological discussions each method proved to have its own advantages and disadvantages. nevertheless, the disapproval to approaches and methods grew (prabhu, 1990; kumaravadivelu, 1994; brown, 1997; richards, 1998) mainly in regard to their prescriptive nature that treated teachers as passive appliers, and their lack of sufficiency to the everchanging particular educational settings teachers face in their everyday practice. a consensus about the impossibility and inadequacy of finding the panacea method, one that can be applied universally, was reached. the use of the term “methodology” spread to refer to teaching practices, as the concept of “method” was no longer central in teachers’ philosophy (brown, 1994a, p. 49). a post methods era was advocated (kumaravadivelu, 1994; richards & rodgers, 2001), an era of informed or enlightened eclecticism that requires language teachers to know not only methods (in plural) but also about methods and to teach according to their particular setting. as a wrapping up, regardless of the methodological orientation, methodology, approach or method, language teaching implies theoretical foundations (regarding the nature of language, language learning and language teaching), knowledge about methods, design (curricular or instructional system), and practical 5 eclecticism can be seen either as an approach or as a coherent blend of two or more methods. universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras66 chaves & hernández classroom procedures (strategies, techniques, activities). it is the methodology (methodical integration and curricular design) that mediates between the theory/approach and the practice/method. curricular design in pedagogic literature, curriculum has been defined in a number of ways: as a product (tyler, 1949), as a practice (stenhouse, 1975), as praxis (grundy, 1987), and as context impact (cornbleth, 1990). in language teaching literature, brown (1994a, p. 51) affirms that the terms curriculum and syllabus are american and british terms for the same concept, designs for carrying out a particular language program. however, these two concepts are often conceived as different: for white (1988), syllabus denotes the content or subject matter of an individual subject, while curriculum designates the totality of content to be taught and the aims to be realized within one school or educational program. for graves (1996, 2000), curriculum stands in the broadest sense as the philosophy, purposes, design, and implementation of a whole program, whereas a syllabus refers narrowly to the specification and ordering in content of a course or courses. it is in this wide-scope sense that we understand curriculum in consonance with the colombian ministry of education (men) definition: curriculum is the set of criteria, area plans6, syllabi7, methodologies8, and processes that contribute to the integral education and to the building of the national, regional, and local cultural identity. it also includes the necessary human, academic, and material resources necessary to carry out the institutional educational project. (men law 115, 1994, art. 76) we also agree with fandiño’s (2010) idea of the 21st century curriculum being understood as a sociocultural process consisting of a series of pedagogical actions activated when planning, developing, and assessing a critical and transformative educational program aimed at integrating contextually shaped teaching and learning realities, practices, and experiences. 6 planes de estudio. 7 programas de estudio (course programmes). 8 understood as teaching procedures that can cover various methods. table 1. the theoretical views about language and language learning in the major methodical stages historical moment language focus theory of language theory of learning learning activity focus “traditional” port royal, saussure, skinner written literature, translation descriptivism, structuralism behaviorism imitation, rote memory drills, repetition, translation methods era chomsky, halliday, van dijk, piaget, vigotsky initially: speaking, pronunciation, accent; later: all skills generativetransformational grammar, sociolinguistics, psycholinguistics, text and discourse analysis, … innatism, developmentalism, cognitivism, pragmatism (social-cultural perspectives) ppp (presentation, practice, production) post-methods kumaravadivelu discourse functions, skills, abilities, competences eclecticism eclecticism input-intakeoutput, comprehension + production 67profile vol. 15, no. 1, april 2013. issn 1657-0790 (printed) 2256-5760 (online). bogotá, colombia. pages 61-80 efl teaching methodological practices in cali and whose characteristics are: • open to critical scrutiny and capable of effective application • based on informed action and critical reflection • in favor of a dynamic interaction of students, teachers, knowledge, and contexts. on the other hand, the syllabus has been defined by different authors as follows: according to candlin (1984, p. 30), the syllabus is concerned with the specification and planning of what is to be learned, frequently set down in some written form as prescriptions for action by teachers and learners. they have, traditionally, the mark of authority. they are concerned with the achievement of ends, often, though not always, associated with the pursuance of particular means. nunan (1988, p. 159) conceptualizes it as: a specification of what is to be taught in a language program and the order in which it is to be taught. a syllabus may contain all or any of the following: phonology, grammar, functions, notions, topics, themes, tasks. in turn, dubin and olshtain (1986, p. 28) see it as “a more detailed and operational statement of teaching and learning elements which translates the philosophy of the curriculum into a series of planned steps leading towards more narrowly defined objectives at each level.” then, the difference between syllabus and curriculum is that the latter is a wider term when compared with the former: curriculum covers all the activities and arrangements made by the institution throughout the academic year to facilitate the learners and the instructors, whereas syllabus is limited to a particular subject of a particular class. beyond the mere definition, and from a more critical point of view, hadley (1998, p. 51) considers a syllabus “represents and endorses the adherence to some sociolinguistic and philosophical beliefs regarding power, education, and cognition (…) that guide a teacher to structure his or her class in a particular way. ” in this article, we see the syllabus as the course program, which is a small part of the wider setting covered by the curriculum. concordant with this conception, a syllabus (ur, 1991; dubin & olshtain, 1986; nunan, 1988) is a public comprehensive document that specifies the orderly components of a course or series of courses in terms of contents (vocabulary, grammar/structures, functions, topics) and process (explicit aims/goals/objectives, teaching and learning tasks, materials/resources associated with those tasks, evaluation/assessment, and– sometimes–approach/method, time schedule or pacing guidelines). at this point, it should be clear for the reader that we are following a “top-down” theoretical sequence, from the widest concept of curriculum, linked to educational principles, to the increasingly narrower ones of syllabus, course, lesson and task/ activity. between the wide concept of “curriculum”, concerning the general principles, that guide the whole educational action, and the particular one of “syllabus” or course program, there is the concept of “area plan” or “area curriculum”, the one referring to a particular subject, e.g. the foreign language, social sciences, mathematics, etc. foreign language area plans contain the theoretical principles about language, language learning, and language teaching, as well as the pedagogical and methodological guidelines for the area, which may vary according to the subject. although course and lesson are everyday terms for language teachers and learners, let’s see some authoritative definitions about them. according to hutchinson and waters (1996, p. 65), a course is an integrated series of learning and teaching experiences whose ultimate aim is to lead the learners to a particular state of knowledge. it is a common place universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras68 chaves & hernández to think of a course as formal education conveyed through a series of lessons or class meetings. for ur (1991), the lesson is a type of organized social event that occurs in virtually all cultures. lessons in different places may vary in topic, time, place, atmosphere, methodology and materials, but they all, essentially are concerned with learning as their main objective, involve the participation of learner(s) and teacher(s), and are limited and pre-scheduled as regards time, place and membership. (p. 213) ur (1991, p. 214) highlights aspects of the lesson that may be less obvious, but which are significant: (a) its transactional character; a lesson is a transaction or series of transactions with the aim of mental or physical changes in the participants, (i.e. learning); (b) its interactive nature; here what is important are the social relationships between learners, or between learners and teacher (see also prabhu, 1992), and (c) goal-oriented effort, involving hard work. this implies awareness of a clear, worthwhile objective, the necessity of effort to attain it and a resulting sense of satisfaction and triumph if it is achieved, or of failure and disappointment if it is not. (d) a role-based culture, where teacher roles involve responsibility and activity, the learners’ responsiveness and receptivity. (e) a conventional construct, with elements of ritual. certain set behaviors occur every time (for example, a certain kind of introduction or ending), and the other components of the overall event are selected by an authority from a limited set of possibilities. to conclude, the design (methodology) involves, from the macro level to the micro level (i.e. from school curriculum to area plans to a course or series of courses to a lesson or a series of lessons to an activity or group of activities), the situated definition of the objectives, the syllabus (the contents and their organization), the type of learning tasks and teaching activities, the roles of learners, teachers and the instructional materials, as well as the assessment/ evaluation plan. figure 1 shows graves’ model of curriculum development, which contains the aforementioned curriculum design components. research method context of the study the exploration of the efl teaching meth odological practices in cali was part of a macro study aimed at describing and analyzing the conditions of the implementation of the colombian national bilingualism project (nbp) in public and private figure 1. graves’ model of curriculum development (from: graves, 2000, p. 4) assessing needs formulating goals and objectives conceptualizing content developing materials organizing the course designing an assessment plan articulating beliefsde�ning the context course design 69profile vol. 15, no. 1, april 2013. issn 1657-0790 (printed) 2256-5760 (online). bogotá, colombia. pages 61-80 efl teaching methodological practices in cali schools in cali, colombia. this macro research project comprised ten sub-projects covering crucial conditions that might hinder or foster the accomplishment of the nbp policy: school infrastructure and the profiles, attitudes and expectations of the administrative staff, efl teachers, students, and parents. the research group gathered seven professors from two universities, universidad del valle and universidad san buenaventura, ten undergraduate students and four graduate students. the information was collected in 56 strata one-to-four institutions, 23 private and 33 public, in the 22 city political districts or comunas. research questions the sub-project that studied the teachers’ profiles covered their socio economic, demographic, and academic features. these latter traits included preservice qualifications, in-service updating studies, experience, self-perceived and tested proficiency, as well as methodological conceptions and practices, among other aspects. this particular aspect of the research asked about the methodological views and practices of the english teachers. the specific questions about the methodological orientations of the efl teachers in cali were these: • which are the efl teaching approaches and methods english teachers usually adopt? • do they consider their teaching to be traditional or conservative? • are they eclectic or do they adopt any particular method(s)? • if they are eclectic, which are the components of their eclecticism? • if they adopt any particular method(s), which method(s) do they adopt? the questions about their methodological practices were the following: • what is a usual efl lesson like? • what elements are used in evaluation? • which are their goals? participants a total of 220 english teachers participated in the study: 131 from the public sector and 89 from private schools. however, not all teachers provided information gathered with the different instruments; only 188 of them sent the survey back to us; 56 of them were interviewed (focal groups plus some individual interviews). data collection and analysis instruments the information was gathered through surveys, interviews and institutional documents like curricu lum/area planning, syllabi and class materials. the survey was the instrument providing most of the information; the teachers submitted few plans, syllabi and class materials. the quantitative information from the survey was processed with the statistical package for the social sciences (spss) and excel while the qualitative information, from the survey, the focal interviews, and the documentary analysis, were analyzed hermeneutically in the light of the literature about approaches and methods, curriculum, course design, evaluation, and other pertinent topics. an analysis grid was used for the examination of institutional documents (area planning, syllabi, and didactic materials). findings and discussion teachers’ methodological orientations regarding approaches and methods teachers were asked whether they considered their teaching to be traditional, moderate or innovative (see figure 2). we used this conceptual reference based on literature about language trends (richards & rodgers, 2001; larsen-freeman, 2000; kumaradivelu, 2001, 2003, 2006, 2012, and other authors like mackey, howatt, and kelly, as cited in richards & rodgers, 2001). universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras70 chaves & hernández figure 2. teachers’ view of their own teaching private public 24 40 8 3 25 50 13 25 0 10 20 30 40 50 60 innovative moderate no information traditional my english teaching is... most teachers consider themselves to be mod erate, as their teaching oscillates between innovative and t radit iona l prac t ices. the y supp or t t heir choice saying that on the one hand, they can be innovative due to context possibilities like available tools, new technologies, interactive software, and engaging activities. on the other hand, they cannot be innovative due to context restrictions such as students’ low level of motivation, students’ low level of knowledge, lack of resources, large classes, and low number of teaching or class hours for the area. what is more interesting is not that the teachers consider themselves moderate in their practices as a consequence of the tension between context constraints and opportunities, but their perception about innovative and traditional practices. according to them, traditional practices are associated with teacher-centered lessons, work on isolated vocabulary and repetition, grammar teaching, etc. in turn, innovative practices are associated with the use of new methodologies (pbl), new technologies (tic), written production, games, dynamic activities, working with complete texts and student-centeredness (flexibility regarding learning rhythms and styles). from this, it can be inferred that their conception of innovation is rather weak; aspects such as autonomy, collaborative learning, meta-cognition, and post-method ap proaches are not mentioned by them. t h e r e l at i o n s h i p t h at t e a c h e r s e s t a b l i s h between traditional teaching, their low english proficiency level and their deficiency in the use of new technologies (due to lack of knowledge) is also noteworthy. teachers feel that their language level or the students’ level is too low to be innovative; in one teacher’s words: “as my english level is too low, i can only work on easy activities with my students” (t1089). this reflection points at teachers’ awareness. this is consistent with the findings reported by gonzález and sierra (2011) regarding teachers’ commitment and motivation despite a lack of teaching resources. when asked if they are eclectic or adopt any particular method(s), most teachers ascribe to eclecticism (see figure 3). they relate it to the combined use of repetition, conversation, explanation, grammar exercises and translation. these components are in fact more activities than methods, and in that sense they are not true or actual components of an eclectic orientation. figure 3. teachers’ ascription to methods / eclecticism private public 19 45 11 40 58 15 0 10 20 30 40 50 60 70 following a particular method eclectic no information eclecticism vs. method teachers support their choice on reasons such as influence from the environment, knowledge gained through experience, need to get adjusted to institutional requirements (program, school book, icfes state exam, etc.), demands of national policies for primary teachers who are not professional in foreign languages, lack of the appropriate conditions (resources, time, institutional support, course size, 9 teacher 108. teachers in the sample were given numbers for their identification in the treatment of the information. 71profile vol. 15, no. 1, april 2013. issn 1657-0790 (printed) 2256-5760 (online). bogotá, colombia. pages 61-80 efl teaching methodological practices in cali etc.). “i have groups of 45 – 50 students; with that number of students and the lack of resources you can do little” (t121). these reasons put the weight of responsibility mainly on aspects external to the teachers themselves. this might be interpreted as weakness in teachers’ autonomy. furthermore, a large number of teachers who affirm to be working with a specific methodological orientation were unable to specify their components. this indicates that teachers are not clear about what eclecticism implies; nor are they clear about other possible methodological approaches to be adopted, or about the particularities of the methods they ascribe to. this finding is consistent with what kumaravadivelu (2003, pp. 29-30) summarized from other authors like swafer, arens and morgan; nunan; legutke and thomas; and kumaravadivelu: • teachers who are trained in and even swear by a particular method do not conform to its theoretical principles and classroom procedures, • teachers who claim to follow the same method often use different classroom procedures that are not consistent with the adopted method, • teachers who claim to follow different methods often use same classroom procedures, • and over time, teachers develop and follow a carefully delineated task-hierarchy, a weighted sequence of activities not necessarily associated with any established method. up to here, while a lack of methodological clarity is linked with the need of theoretical support of teaching practice, moderateness refers to situational constraints. this strain between weak theoretical support and situational tension constitutes the background for the efl teachers’ methodological practices. teachers’ methodological practices teachers’ practices were inferred from what they say about what they do in the survey (appendix a), interviews, and from documentary analysis (area and course planning, samples of class and evaluation materials) (appendix b). this construction is approached here on the basis of the design elements: objectives, activities and learning tasks, contents and their organization, evaluation, roles of teachers, learners, and materials. in order to achieve their goals, teachers were prompted to tell what they usually do in a lesson. table 2 shows the resulting general structure of a typical lesson in terms of the usual activities sequence in it. the usual class organization is made around activities moving from introduction and development of the topic (first theory, then practice), evaluation, and–sometimes–homework. we also found that despite the activity-centered lesson structure being the most common, a lesson can also be organized according to axes other than activities. we found table 2. general lesson structure introduction theory practice evaluation (homework) greeting warm up presentation of the new topic primary vocabulary pronunciation secondary grammar reading exercises repetition revision feedback questions universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras72 chaves & hernández lessons structured from class arrangement (individual, pairs or whole class work), contents (grammar, vocabulary, skills), and materials (textbooks, written or audio texts, images). when contrasting the class organization between primary and secondary schools, some differences were identified. in primary, the emphasis is placed on vocabulary, speaking (largely in terms of pronunci ation) and writing in terms of copying from the board. in secondary schools, the emphasis is placed on grammar, listening and reading. this difference can be explained on the basis of primary teachers’ reflections regarding their low level of english, which leads them to work chiefly on vocabulary. unlike primary teachers, secondary teachers are subject teachers; it means they have a better knowledge of the area so as to be able to work with grammar, skills and complete texts. it is interesting to see that the primary level is considered as “easy”, associated with vocabulary (lists of isolated words) and pronunciation (often understood as “speaking”), something that can be taught without much preparation. the secondary level is in turn seen as “difficult”, linked to work around grammar and skills, an area that requires skilled teachers. regarding goals, it came out that teachers center their interest in the development of oral communication, reading and writing skills (see table 3). table 3. main goals of english as a foreign language lessons primary level secondary level • oral communication • reading • writing • pronunciation • grammar • translation • reading comprehension • oral communication • writing • grammar • pronunciation • translation in the analysis of the importance teachers give to goals, it was found that for secondary teachers these goals do not correspond with what they express about their class organization. teachers accepted their focusing mainly on grammatical topics (see table 2); however, when talking about goals, they do not give grammar a leading position. likewise, there is a mismatch between goals and class organization in primary level teachers: pronunciation does not have a remarkable position as a goal despite playing a central role in the class organization. oral production is focused on pronunciation of words, as vocabulary is the central content. a possible explanation of this mismatch might be, on the one hand, the type of question used in the survey questionnaire. the options given to the teachers in this question could have influenced their answer, in opposition to the question about class organization, which was an open question. on the other hand, it might be that teachers recognize the importance of changing their practices, but these changes have not materialized yet. this gap between theory and practice is an area to be worked with teachers. the most common lesson activities were explored on the basis of the elements that are present in teachers’ answers, as well as the elements not considered when regarding activities. in primar y schools, the results showed vocabulary again as the center of the work in class. in secondary, what can be seen is that the “evaluative paradigm” might be influencing the methodological practices, responding to the improvement of test taking strategies like multiple-choice, completion with words, matching, etc. composition, dialogues, research, projects and presentations were not mentioned by teachers. this confirms what was mentioned above about a limited perspective of foreign language learning and teaching (see table 4). contents were deduced from information pro vided in relation to objectives and activities for evaluation; also, from course plans and material provided by some institutions. three types of contents were identified: those related to communicative functions 73profile vol. 15, no. 1, april 2013. issn 1657-0790 (printed) 2256-5760 (online). bogotá, colombia. pages 61-80 efl teaching methodological practices in cali and skills, those built in terms of topics, and grammar items, which take the lion’s share of contents. as mentioned before, emphasis on vocabular y and pronunciation is made at the primary level while at the secondary level the main focus is on grammar and the development of skills needed for accomplishing evaluative tasks. these results point at the still prevailing presence of “grammar-translation” and at a negative effect of the accountability paradigm underlying current foreign language national policies. in regard to evaluation activities, the most common evaluation activities in primary schools are matching and completion with words. the most common evaluation activities in secondary schools are reading comprehension questions and multiple choice questions. these most common evaluation activities correspond to the activities teachers highlighted when talking about common activities in their classes. this confirms the outcomes about lesson organization, goals and most common class activities. it also confirms the differences between primary and secondary schools. besides their consistency, the results show– again–the effect of “evaluationism” in foreign language teaching: icfes-like exams, exercises, and questions have become trendy among efl teachers, both at the primary and the secondary level. it seems more important to prepare students for passing tests (and show good achievement indicators for institutions and teachers) than really enabling them to use the language for communicative purposes (see figure 4). the institutional documents collected for the study were area plan or area curriculum (plan de area), syllabi, and class and evaluation materials. the idea was to build knowledge about the teachers’ methodological practices as they are usually reflected on these types of documents. besides, this was an indirect way of approaching what teachers do in their classes as direct observation was not possible figure 4. english as a foreign language evaluation activities 20 28 41 25 29 23 42 38 19 21 33 11 5 17 26 52 41 76 64 87 68 70 53 54 50 78 44 29 66 88 0 10 20 30 40 50 60 70 80 90 100 d ic ta ti o n t ra n sl a ti o n c o m p le ti o n o f w o rd s w ri ti n g m u lt ip le c h o ic e t ru e /f a ls e m a tc h in g d ra m a ti zi n g c re a ti n g d ia lo g u e s c o m p le m e n ta ti o n g ra m m a r e xe rc is e s p ro je ct s r e se a rc h / c o n su lt a ti o n p re se n ta ti o n s r e a d in g q u e st io n s evaluation activities primary evaluation activities secondary table 4. most and least common lesson activities primary level secondary level matching multiple choice completion with words reading questions grammar exercises grammar exercises multiple choice complementation with words translation matching least used: research and projects universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras74 chaves & hernández due to the number of teachers participating in the study. though not many documents were provided, some important methodological features were identified. area plan or area curriculum is usually a collection of syllabi, not supported by any theoretical or m e t h o d o l o g i c a l c on s i d e r at i on s re g ard i n g language, its learning and teaching, or pedagogical perspectives that should guide the subject. syllabi are characterized by their lack of explicit objectives, their focus on standards, grammar-centered content and activities emphasizing reading, vocabulary and structures; evaluation is stated in terms of topics and activities, but not in terms of standards. not many class materials were provided by teachers; most of them were evaluation materials; they reflect the emphasis placed on grammar and the predominant types of questions are completion with words, multiple choice, and writing. it is noteworthy that no objectives are formulated with these materials. the absence of objectives–in contrast to the presence of standards, which are not taken into account for evaluation–shows the need of working more deeply on the understanding of current foreign languages methodological perspectives. conclusions we have presented the findings about the methodological orientations and practices adopted by primary and secondary english teachers in public and private schools in cali, colombia. the information was analyzed with the understanding that what is usually known as “methodology” involves considering approach/method awareness and instructional design whose main components are objectives, syllabus (contents and their organization), learning tasks and evaluation activities, among other aspects. under this perspective, it became apparent that teachers’ choices concerning the methodological orientation for their english classes have more to do with institutional and class conditions than with their conceptual grounds, which are rather weak and associated, for instance, with grammar-translation, pre-communicative views and empiricist actions. this means that the practice overrules the theoretical principles. efl teaching in the context studied seems to be shaped mainly by situational conditions. the immediate implication is that the implementation of the nbp requires not only teachers’ theoreticalmethodological updating but also provision of appropriate conditions for teaching and educational innovation. teachers are conscious of the existence of different theoretical methodological options, which could be the support for their practices, but they lack sound knowledge about them. they are also aware of their own limitations and those generated by the working conditions in the institution or in the classroom. a good deal of governmental and policyenforcing actions addressed to bridge those gaps must accompany teachers’ efforts in order to fulfill, on their own, the task they were forcibly assigned and are trying to carry out. teachers’ methodological options are determined– from their perspective–by the possibilities and constraints they find in their school context. in this respect, teachers show a great coincidence, evidenced in their conception of what being innovative, moderate and traditional implies. teachers’ view of innovation and tradition reflects gaps dealing, first, with generational characteristics: while tics are new for them and they have difficulties with their use, it is not so for their students, who feel at ease with modern gadgets and are well ahead of most teachers regarding that area. second, there is a deep gap between theory and practice: ludic activities and work with whole texts and skills in a communicative way are still new/innovative to many of our efl teachers in secondary schools, despite having been described in literature decades ago. teachers’ work on language–mainly around vocabulary, pronunciation, and grammar–reflects 75profile vol. 15, no. 1, april 2013. issn 1657-0790 (printed) 2256-5760 (online). bogotá, colombia. pages 61-80 efl teaching methodological practices in cali not only an outdated conception, but an incomplete one for secondary teachers (prepared in the efl teaching field). there is an urgent need of a deeper comprehension of recent perspectives about language. for primary school teachers, the situation is worse. forced by law to play a role they are not prepared for and in absence of sound support for that burden, they have resorted to interim measures to teach the foreign language such as crash courses of language or didactics. however, this is not enough; teaching efl requires real proficiency and sound methodological preparation that cannot be achieved overnight. the teachers recognize the importance of changing their practices, but these changes need to be made real. for these changes to be fulfilled, the gap between theory and practice must be overcome. it is necessary for teachers to be able to tell methods (e.g. tbl, pbl, cblt, etc.) apart from activities (composition, dialogues, research, projects and presentations) and that they are able to recognize the fundamental principles of methods and methodological approaches. this need might be relatively easy to fulfill as teachers from primary and secondary level feel the need for teacher development programs (tdp) and are clear about what they need in order to do a better job. a steadfast tdp national, regional, local and institutional effort seems a necessary practical counterpart to our foreign language policies. the ministry of education and the departmental and city secretarías de educación, as well as the universities with foreign/modern language licenciaturas (b.a. or b.ed. programs) must coordinate their role in the fulfillment of the nbp, bearing in mind that focus on language mastery is just half of the issue, for the methodological preparation is the other sine qua non condition to teach any foreign language, altogether with the pro-vision of appropriate conditions to carry out the kind of foreign language teaching this challenging era requires. awareness should be raised in those who lead the educational processes to provide the conditions necessary (regarding resources) for the goals of education policies like the nbp to be met. miranda and echeverry (2010) studied this particular issue and found an evident urgency for considering real needs in relation to resources for teaching a foreign language in our colombian context. without adequate conditions to turn policy into actual practices, the challenge represented by the nbp becomes a burden the efl teachers cannot carry. the responsibility for the success of the nbp cannot be put only on teachers’ shoulders. they do need to improve their proficiency level and to update their methodological views and practice, but that will not be enough; supportive actions towards the nbp among policy makers, education authorities, and school administrators must address educators’ needs regarding conditions to adopt effective methodological orientations and practices to meet the new goals in the area. references anthony, e. (1963). approach, method, and technique. english language teaching journal, 17, 63-7. brown, d. (1994a). teaching by principles. an interactive approach to language pedagogy. new york, ny: prentice hall regents. brown, d. (1994b). principles of language learning and teaching. new york, ny: prentice hall regents. brown, d. (1997). english language teaching in the “postmethod” era: toward better diagnosis, treatment, and assessment. pasaa. a journal of language teaching and learning in thailand, 27, 1-10. candlin, c. n. (1984). syllabus design as a critical process. in c. j. brumfit (ed.), general english syllabus design. elt documents no. 118 (pp. 29-46). london, uk: pergamon press & the british council. celce-murcia, m. (1991). language teaching approaches: an overview. in m. celce-murcia (ed.), teaching english as a second or foreign language (pp. 3-11). new york, ny: newbury house. universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras76 chaves & hernández colombia. ministerio de educación nacional [men]. (1994). ley 115, ley general de educación. bogotá, co: imprenta nacional. colombia. ministerio de educación nacional [men]. (2006a). programa nacional de bilingüismo. retrieved from http://www.colombiaaprende.edu.co/html/productos/ 1685/article-158720.html colombia. ministerio de educación nacional [men]. (2006b). estándares básicos de competencias en lenguas extranjeras: inglés. bogotá, co: serie guías n° 22. cornbleth, c. (1990). curriculum in context. basingstoke, uk: falmer press. council of europe, (2001). a common european framework or reference for language, learning, teaching, assessment. a general guide for users. strasbourg, fr: council of europe. dubin, f., & olshtain, e. (1986). course design: developing programs and materials for language learning. cambridge, uk: cambridge university press. fandiño, y. j. (2010, april). curriculum development and syllabus design in the postmodern era [powerpoint slides]. paper presented at the xiii national elt conference “challenges for the elt syllabus: developing competencies for the 21st century”. bogotá, universidad de la salle. retrieved from www.britishcouncil.org/colombia-ingles-elt-conference2010-presentaciones-yamith-fandino-ppt.pdf germain, c. (1993). evolution de l’enseignement des langues: 5000 ans d’histoire. paris, fr: nathan-clé international. gonzález, a., & sierra, a. m. 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(2001). toward a postmethod pedagogy. tesol quarterly, 35(4), 537-60. kumaravadivelu, b. (2003). beyond methods. macrostrategies for language teaching. london, uk: yale university press. kumaravadivelu, b. (2006). understanding language teaching. from method to post-method. mahwah, nj: lawrence erlbaum. kumaravadivelu, b. (2012). language teacher education for a global society: a modular model for knowing, analyzing, recognizing, doing, and seeing. new york, ny: routledge. larsen-freeman, d. (2000). techniques and principles in language teaching. oxford, uk: oxford university press. miranda, n., & echeverry, a. p. (2010). infrastructure and resources of private schools in cali and the implementation of the bilingual colombia program. how a colombian journal for teachers of english, 17, 11-30. not, l. (2000). las pedagogías del conocimiento. bogotá, co: fondo de cultura económica. nunan, d. (1988). syllabus design. oxford, uk: oxford university press. pennycook, a. (1989). the concept of method, interested knowledge, and the politics of language teaching. tesol quarterly, 23(4), 591-615. prabhu, n. s. (1990). there is no best method why? tesol quarterly, 24(2), 161-176. prabhu, n. s. (1992). the dynamics of a language lesson. tesol quarterly, 26(2), 225-241. 77profile vol. 15, no. 1, april 2013. issn 1657-0790 (printed) 2256-5760 (online). bogotá, colombia. pages 61-80 efl teaching methodological practices in cali richards, j. c. (1990). the language teaching matrix. cambridge, uk: cambridge university press. richards, j. c. (1998). teachers’ maxims. in j. c. richards (ed.) beyond training (pp. 49-62). new york, ny: cambridge university press. richards, j. c., & rodgers, t. s. (2001). approaches and methods in language teaching. cambridge, uk: cambridge university press. rodgers, t. (2001). language teaching methodology. caldigest. issue paper. online resources: digests, september 2001. retrieved from http://www.cal.org/ resources/digest/rodgers.html stenhouse, l. (1975). an introduction to curriculum research and development. london, uk: heineman educational books. stevick, e. w. (1980). teaching languages: a way and ways. rowley, ma: newbury house. stevick, e. w. (1998). working with teaching methods: what’s at stake? boston, ma: heinle and heinle. tyler, r. w. (1949). basic principles of curriculum and instruction. chicago, il: university of chicago press. ur, p. (1991). a course in language teaching. cambridge, uk: cambridge university press. white, r. (1988). the elt curriculum, design, innovation and management. oxford, uk: basil backwell. about the authors orlando chaves ba in philology and languages (universidad nacional de colombia, bogotá). diplomas (especializaciones): pedagogy (uniamazonia, colombia), tertiary education (universidad el bosque, colombia), creativity and communication, and elt (universidad surcolombiana, colombia). ma in linguistics, (universidad del valle, colombia). efl, applied linguistics, methodology and tdp teacher at universidad del valle and member of eila research group. fanny hernández ba in modern languages, universidad del valle (colombia). ma in linguistics from the same university. associate professor and member of eila research group. teaches english and classroom research at universidad del valle, in cali, and is the director of the licenciatura program. participated in the research project on the conditions of implementation of the pnb in cali (colombia). universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras78 chaves & hernández appendix a: survey regarding methodological knowledge and practice10 4.5. methodological knowledge and practice 4.5.1. my teaching of english is: 4.5.1.1. innovative ___ 4.5.1.2. moderate ___ 4.5.1.3. traditional ___ 4.5.1.4. why? ______________________________________________________ 4.5.2. my teaching is: 4.5.2.1. adjusted to a specific method ___ 4.5.2.2. eclectic ___ 4.5.2.3. if ascribed to a specific method, to which one? 4.5.2.3.1. audio-oral / audio lingual ___ 4.5.2.3.2. cognitive ___ 4.5.2.3.3. communicative ___ 4.5.2.3.4. natural ___ 4.5.2.3.5. total physical response ___ 4.5.2.4. eclecticism components: 4.5.2.4.1. repetition, conversation, explanation and grammar exercises ___ 4.5.2.4.2. translation, grammar exercises and pronunciation ___ 4.5.2.4.3. reading aloud, translation and conversation in pairs ___ 4.5.2.4.4. translation, writing and grammar explanation ___ 4.5.2.4.5. other ___ 4.5.2.4.5.1. which ones? _____________________________________ 4.5.3. my usual lesson in five steps: 4.5.3.1. step 1 4.5.3.2. step 2 4.5.3.3. step 3 4.5.3.4. step 4 4.5.3.5. step 5 10 the original survey was carried out in spanish. the section here corresponds only to the methodological knowledge and practice. 79profile vol. 15, no. 1, april 2013. issn 1657-0790 (printed) 2256-5760 (online). bogotá, colombia. pages 61-80 efl teaching methodological practices in cali 4.5.4. elements i use for evaluation: 4.5.4.1. dictation ___ 4.5.4.2. translation ___ 4.5.4.3. cloze with words ___ 4.5.4.4. text writing ___ 4.5.4.5. multiple choice ___ 4.5.4.6. true-false ___ 4.5.4.7. matching ___ 4.5.4.8. dramatization ___ 4.5.4.9. dialogues ___ 4.5.4.10. completing dialogues ___ 4.5.4.11. grammar exercises ___ 4.5.4.12. projects ___ 4.5.4.13. searches ___ 4.5.4.14. presentations ___ 4.5.4.15. reading comprehension ___ 4.5.5. other evaluation activities: 4.5.5.1. other 1 4.5.5.2. other 2 4.5.5.3. other 3 4.5.5.4. other 4 4.5.6. main objectives: 4.5.6.1. oral communication development ___ 4.5.6.2. writing skills development ___ 4.5.6.3. reading comprehension skills development ___ 4.5.6.4. pronunciation development ___ 4.5.6.5. grammar development ___ 4.5.6.6. translation skills development ___ universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras80 chaves & hernández appendix b: elements resulting from documentary analysis (area planning, syllabi, and didactic materials) area planning syllabi didactic materials i. contextual information • institution • section • area • academic period ii. body of the document • justification • general objectives • competences • methodology ȟ strategies ȟ resources ȟ evaluation • general axes levels ȟ thematic contents ȟ a c h i e v e m e n t s indicators ȟ other notice: there are two kinds of ‘planes de área’ (area plans): 1. compilation of syllabi 2. independent plan with theoretical support and diversity in the terminology used. i. contextual information • objectives • time • units ii. body of the document • fundaments ȟ competences ȟ standards • achievements • achievements indicators • thematic axes/contents (grammatical/func tional/ topics) • methodology ȟ type: projects, tasks, activities, evaluation, etc. ȟ resources • evaluation iii. appendices bibliography i. contextual information • topical title • course • date • objectives ii. type of material and contents • workshop • theoretical presentation • evaluation: type of question • other 7profile vol. 16, no. 2, october 2014. issn 1657-0790 (printed) 2256-5760 (online). bogotá, colombia. pages 7-10 editorial editorial with this edition, profile celebrates fifteen years of publication while research and writing are always locally situated practices, no academic text or publishing activity can be considered in isolation from the many complex global(izing) practices and systems which influence academic text production in powerful ways, not least the ways in which texts are evaluated and disseminated. (p. 1)1 no man is an island (donne, j., british poet, 1572-1631). this idea comes to our mind when reflecting upon the words of lillis and curry (2010). whether we are thinking of human beings, trees or books, we cannot ignore the fact that we move or are moved by the sometimes open, sometimes understood conditions and forces of our environment, denominated as market tendencies and demands in our editorial world. editors need to follow a line of action in accordance with prescriptions modeled by markets; the “glocal” tendencies set the scenario for local and/or regional publications. these must adapt themselves in order to fit into the international concert: the struggle to be part of indexes and percentiles, and if possible of the highest ranks. editors have to manage in different areas to be able to fulfil the criteria coming from outside: periodicity, number of articles, little or no endogamy, the deadlines, the hunt for internationally and nationally known academicians to be part of the scientific committees, the evalu ators and, internally, the allocation of budget for things such as print editions, snail mail, assistants, and proofreaders. the work must be uninterrupted, on time, and making constant communication among evaluators and writers possible so that the submitted articles go through a conscientious process leading to the publication of works characterized by their quality and relevance to the academic world. the profile staff does all the previous and more in order to assure the presence of local, regional, and international writers in our publication. the interest is in spreading the knowledge gained by practitioners in their communities, situations that happen here and there but that can be applicable in any academic context disregarding the geographical area of occurrence. with this edition profile celebrates fifteen years of existence. fifteen years of daily battles and gains. the colombian community in the first place and international contributors in a second but not less important position have found an interlocutor 1 lillis, t., & curry, m. j. (2010). academic writing in a global context: the politics and practices of publishing in english. london, uk: routledge. universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras8 nieto cruz & cárdenas through which their ideas can be known and spread. the voices of teachers of english, teacher educators, researchers, and future teachers have a natural channel of interlocution with us. our hope is to continue being here for you and the future generation of practitioners and researchers. we invite you to continue heeding our call in benefit of our elt field. the issues from teacher researchers section begins with an article regarding teacher researchers as writers. it stems from the interest to delve into the experiences and perceptions of some authors who published their articles in the profile journal. in particular, we can get acquainted with the reasons why authors submitted their manuscripts, the experiences they recall most regarding the process of publication, and the meaning they assign to the fact of having published in our journal. next, we gather three articles concerning teacher education in latin american contexts. first, néstor ricardo fajardo mora shares with us the findings of a study that sought to uncover the ideologies discovered by colombian pre-service social studies teachers when they construct the meaning of texts through text-based tasks in an english class. interestingly, we can learn about three main themes emerging from the data gathered at a colombian public university: shattering the establishment, perspectives from a counter-hegemonic position, and resisting the mainstream. as the author pinpoints, those themes explain the core category, habitus, in a system of fixed dispositions. we continue with the work by nancy keranen and fátima encinas prudencio who address the issue of micropolitics of teacher collaboration from an intrapersonal perspective within a mexican context. the authors report on issues of conflict, borders, teachers’ ideologies, intrapersonal and interpersonal conflicts and their connection to collaboration and growth. then, alberto fajardo castañeda’s article informs us on a study regarding a group of colombian pre-service teachers and the construction of their professional identities from the interplay between participation in a teacher community and their systems of knowledge and beliefs. as part of the main findings, the author also draws our attention towards particularities concerning how the process of learning to teach is constructed. next we gather three articles around reading, writing and discourse analysis. in the first one we have an action research project conducted by alexander izquierdo castillo and sonia jiménez bonilla who monitored the implementation of skimming, scanning, and making predictions as reading strategies with adolescents from a rural public school in colombia when they read materials around topics they had selected. the results confirm that those strategies contribute to the development of learners’ autonomy. after that, we include an article by troy crawford lewis, martha lengeling, irasema mora pablo, and rocío heredia ocampo. it deals with the construction of identity in an academic learning environment in central mexico, and displays how identity may be linked to non-language factors such as emotions or family. as the authors point out, these issues are associated with elements of hybrid identity. next, 9profile vol. 16, no. 2, october 2014. issn 1657-0790 (printed) 2256-5760 (online). bogotá, colombia. pages 7-10 editorial we present an article containing a report on a case study intended to note the activities, methodological and textual aspects that were causing difficulties for a group of colombian pre-service teachers when analyzing critically written information used in a reading strategies course. the authors, paula andrea garcía montes, ana maría sagre barboza, and alba isabel lacharme olascoaga, took into account issues in discourse analysis and systemic functional linguistics and subsequently provide ideas for further actions in reading processes in the english class. afterwards, we gather two articles that address cultural issues. to begin with, we have colombian authors sandra ximena bonilla and ferney cruz-arcila’s article on an issue that has received little attention up to now: critical socio-cultural elements of the intercultural endeavour of english teaching in colombian rural areas. they present a study carried out with five english language teachers and highlight, among several relevant aspects, that teachers have to mediate between local and global tensions and also deal with socio-cultural matches and mismatches in their teaching settings. in the other article, edith hernández méndez and maría del rosario reyes cruz focus on the aspect of the research culture in higher education. specifically, they look at and categorize, through the lenses of organizational theory and a current model of research culture in an academic setting, the features of the research culture in a public university in mexico. i am sure this work can shed light on the tendencies and models that prevail in higher education as well as provide a reflection on the market culture that seems to be the main motive to foster research at university level. the second section, issues from novice teacher researchers, contains a collaborative project by ana cristina tlazalo tejeda and her advisor, nora m. basurto santos, who conducted a study at a mexican university regarding pronunciation instruction and students’ practice to develop their oral skills’ confidence. data analysis shows the relevance of teacher pronunciation instruction and student practice to increase learners’ proficiency and commitment to further improvement. in connection to this article, i wish to draw attention towards the fact that novice researchers can be encouraged to report on classroom research by joining efforts with advisors so that we can contribute to the generation of a culture of researchers and writers in the elt field. the last section, issues based on reflections and innovations, is composed of three papers. in the first one we can learn about the experiences of paula andrea echeverri sucerquia and sebastián pérez restrepo in the process and challenges of meaning making around critical pedagogy within an english teachers’ study group which was created at a colombian public university for the purpose of learning how to teach language from a critical perspective. following narrative inquiry, the authors were able to gather different perspectives which demonstrate the necessity of having spaces and situations of personal confrontation with theory and support in collaborative learning through dialogue to attempt such goal in initial teacher education. afterwards, chilean teachers mabel ortiz navarrete and anita ferreira cabrera describe their universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras10 nieto cruz & cárdenas proposal for a technique in order to engage students in collaborative argumentative essay writing in a wiki environment. the authors describe the way they followed a systematic work assignment, the tasks used and the students’ individual and collaborative roles. they also explain how equal participation and collaboration among group members were enhanced. we close this edition with an article co-authored by darío luis banegas and aurelia velázquez, who gather their views concerning the participation of teachers and learners in the learner-centred curriculum in english language teaching. their reflections are based on their analysis of the argentinian context as well as on their experiences as teachers of english in secondary education with a people-centred approach in the classroom. it is hoped that the recommendations for policy makers included in this work can contribute to the study of curricular issues in similar contexts. immersed as we are in the search for participation coming from diverse sources and settings, we invite you to read and contribute with knowledge produced in local settings but applicable in other academic communities. it is our intention to not only comply with the complex global publication trends, but to keep in mind the reasons that inspired the creation of profile fifteen years ago: to be a space for novice and experienced teachers and researchers, a forum where works dealing with local and global issues have the opportunity to be heard or read. maría claudia nieto cruz journal director melba libia cárdenas journal editor 7profile vol. 15, no. 1, april 2013. issn 1657-0790 (printed) 2256-5760 (online). bogotá, colombia. pages 7-10 editorial editorial it seems incontrovertible that the purpose of research in the field of education is to improve the quality of education that students receive. but how often does research actually improve the educational experiences of those who take part in research? clearly, there are many ways in which this goal can be served, including research on equitable provision of resources, modes of governance, and procedures for accountability. (p. 51)1 welcome to the fifteenth volume of our journal which, as pointed out by wells (2009) above, is committed to the enhancement of education. in connection with this goal, we cannot assert that a publication like ours can measure the extent to which such improvement has been accomplished. nonetheless, most of the works included in our issues provide accounts of pedagogical interventions and inquiries carried out within the premises of given educational contexts. in turn, the satisfaction of having attained the goal of getting published adds to the many experiences we gain when we participate in innovative and/or research projects. this is expressed or inferred in the authors’ reflections as well as in studies we have conducted in order to examine the genesis and evolution of our journal. also, the same has been confirmed by academics based in other countries and by academic forums. in all those cases, the authors’ perceptions, which have provided feedback on the processes they have gone through to get their manuscripts published, have proved valid to inform about teacher growth. it is hoped that their efforts do not only get recognition in institutional indicators needed to get accreditation, but get rewarded via more funding for project development, better working conditions, and consideration when defining educational policies. since the main purpose of the profile journal is to give voice to teacher-researchers, it is expected that the rate of contributors will continue increasing as we have witnessed in the past few years. this activity, as we know, demands more participation by reviewers, whose contributions are highly appreciated by profile. fortunately, we have received positive responses from distinguished academics who have joined our committees. i wish to welcome the following members of our editorial review board: luis fernando gómez (universidad pedagógica nacional, colombia), shaofeng li (university of auckland, new zealand), kevin carroll (the university of puerto rico, mayagüez, puerto rico), and gary barkhuizen (university of auckland, new zealand). their feedback, together with the expertise of the peers who have accompanied us for several years, will continue helping us carry on our work in tune with profile’s mission and vision. 1 wells, g. (2009). dialogic inquiry as collaborative action research. in s. e. noffke, & b. somekh (eds.), educational action research (pp. 50-61). london, uk: sage. universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras8 cárdenas b. we open the issues from teacher researchers section, as usual, with a paper by grassroots schoolteachers. this time, yuly yinneth yate gonzález, luis fernando saenz, johanna alejandra bermeo, and andrés fernando castañeda chaves report on a study conducted at a private colombian school. the article depicts the results of an action research study which focuses on the role of collaborative work in the development of elementary students’ writing skills. the pedagogical intervention involved the monitoring of two cycles which, in turn, let them examine the role strategies based on collaborative work play in fostering students’ productions, task completion, language development and interest in writing. then, we gather three articles concerning current english language teaching policies in colombia. first we can read the account written by marlon valencia, who presents a critical analysis of colombia’s national program of bilingualism. in line with other local academics, the author examines the ideologies behind it and draws our attention towards the way it facilitates the manufacture of colombian citizens’ consent for foreign intervention through free trade agreements. attention is also given to the effects on the progressive disassembling of public education due to the interests of transnational companies and the urgent need to fulfill the government’s educational goals despite local realities. identity-forming discourses is the topic addressed by wilder yesid escobar alméciga, who examines power relationships and uneven conditions in english language education exerted via identity shaping discourses in an official document issued by the colombian ministry of national education and related documentary evidences containing issues that have to do with policymaking processes and english language teaching in the country. the author remarks that discourses are being strategically employed by the colombian government to change or preserve ideologies and to widen gaps between socio-economic groups to protect the interests of just a few. afterwards, orlando chaves and fanny hernández, from universidad del valle, colombia, expound on some results of a study about the profiles of the methodological practices of 220 english as a foreign language (efl) teachers in primary and secondary schools in cali, colombia. the use of surveys, interviews and institutional documents allowed them to portray teachers’ approaches or methods, lessons, activities, objectives, curricula, syllabi and evaluation and draw implications for teacher education and language policies, among others. i hope these three papers contribute to expanding knowledge about what is happening in countries like colombia, where there is an urgent need to strengthen the level of english and to have an impact on the evaluation of current action plans for different educational sectors. needless to say, profile invites other academics to document what is happening with english language policies implementation and to take an active part in its discussion. teacher education is the common area of the following two articles. i am sure the readers will find in them key information to be considered in both initial teacher education and teachers’ professional development. the portrayal of pre-service teachers’ beliefs about language teaching and learning at different stages of instruction while they were taking the 9profile vol. 15, no. 1, april 2013. issn 1657-0790 (printed) 2256-5760 (online). bogotá, colombia. pages 7-10 editorial teaching practice courses in a ba program at a mexican university is the focus of the article by sofía d. cota grijalva and elizabeth ruiz-esparza barajas. this was done through the use of questionnaires and semi-structured interviews. findings tell us about the links students made between theory and practice, some changes in previous beliefs, and their awareness and understanding of processes involved in teaching and learning. next, josé vicente abad informs about a qualitative study concerning the pedagogical factors that influence english teaching in four public schools in medellín, colombia. the in-service teachers provided information about three linguistic principles: communicative competence, native language effect, and interlanguage. it was concluded that factors like teachers’ linguistic ego, views of their teaching role, and attitudes towards english have a bearing on english teaching and teachers’ education. subsequently, we can read three articles around teaching issues. we start with the findings of an exploratory study that gives us the opportunity to acquire more knowledge about psychological and pedagogical factors affecting elt (english language teaching) at the university level. the investigation was led by mexican authors mariza g. méndez lópez and argelia peña aguilar, who explored the role of emotions as learning enhancers of foreign language learning motivation, among the salient points of their study, i can mention the confirmation of the role of negative and positive emotions in enhancing and diminishing motivation. furthermore, the fact that the findings of this study show that negative emotions serve as learning enhancers can shed light on further discussions and research in other teaching contexts. we continue with the work by madhumathi pasupathi who presents a study that aimed to find out the effect of technology-based intervention in a language laboratory to improve listening skills of first year indian engineering students as well as to learn the views of the students about using teacher-suggested websites for acquiring listening skills. interestingly, it was concluded that the use of technology in a language laboratory for training students in listening competences reduces, in said context, the anxiety of the students when listening to english and contributed to the improvement of students’ listening skills when assisted with technology-based resources and pedagogical processes. afterwards, in the last paper of the first section of this edition, we have myriam judith bautista barón’s article. it draws on an action research project aimed at improving the reading comprehension and vocabulary of the undergraduate students of an english for specific purposes course at a colombian police training institute. the study implied the design of reading comprehension workshops based on the cognitive language learning approach. results showed their effectiveness in strengthening students’ reading skills and in fostering their autonomy through the use of learning strategies. the second section, issues from novice teacher researchers, contains the paper written by hollman alejandro rativa murillo, who did an exploratory study as part of the fulfilment to opt for the b.a. degree in english language teaching. he reports a study carried out with sixth grade students at a public school located in bogotá, colombia, with universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras10 cárdenas b. the purpose of adapting features of the sheltered instruction observation protocol (siop) in lesson delivery. the main findings, derived from data collected through lesson plans and a diagnosis of students’ needs, evidenced that use of the english language was increased thanks to the implementation of the siop and the development of vocabulary activities. two papers written by colombian teachers are contained in the issues based on reflections and innovations section. judith castellanos jaimes shares with us a review of studies on pre-service teachers’ beliefs about teaching. departing from the assumption that pre-service teachers come into the teaching profession with set beliefs about teaching and that they are not always aware of those beliefs, the author derives key conclusions worth considering in teacher education programs and in further research in the field. finally, we have the article by martha isabel espitia cruz and anna kwinta, who present an account of a pedagogical innovation carried out at a colombian university to support online interaction. the description of the process and the results reveal the role of a peer feedback strategy to foster such interaction and some strategies that might be effective when working with technology in elt. as always, i hope you find profile useful. i also hope we can continue moving forward in our attempts to maintain a professional space for teacher educators, new teachers, researchers, innovators, and grassroots teachers committed to make their work public via academic journals. melba libia cárdenas b. journal editor 175profile vol. 13, no. 1, april 2011. issn 1657-0790. bogotá, colombia. pages 175-187 when theory meets practice: applying cambourne’s conditions for learning to professional development for elementary school efl teachers* cuando la teoría y la práctica se encuentran: implementación de las condiciones de aprendizaje de cambourne en el desarrollo profesional de docentes de inglés de la básica primaria isabel cristina cadavid múnera** claudia patricia díaz mosquera*** diana isabel quinchía ortiz**** universidad de antioquia, colombia this article presents a reflection on an action research project carried out by a group of teachers and students at universidad de antioquia. the action research project aimed at determining the impact of a professional development proposal for elementary school english teachers in medellin, colombia. in the first section, the article describes the previous study that supported this project as well as its design and implementation. in the second part, cambourne’s conditions for learning are discussed from a theoretical and practical perspective. researchers found that participant teachers improved both their use of the foreign language and their pedagogical practices as a result of having the opportunity to take risks and reflect as learners and teachers on holistic strategies for teaching and learning english as a foreign language. key words: cambourne’s conditions for learning, teachers’ professional development. este artículo presenta una reflexión acerca de un proyecto de investigación llevado a cabo por un grupo de profesoras y estudiantes de la universidad de antioquia. este proyecto de investigación acción tuvo como objetivo principal determinar el impacto de una propuesta holística de desarrollo profesional para maestros de inglés de la básica primaria, en medellín, colombia. en la primera sección del artículo se describen el diseño y la implementación del proyecto así como el estudio anterior que dio origen al presente proyecto. en la segunda parte se discuten las condiciones para el aprendizaje y propuestas por cambourne, desde una mirada teórica y práctica. se encontró que los profesores participantes mejoraron en su uso de la lengua extranjera, así como en sus prácticas pedagógicas, como resultado de la toma de riesgos y la reflexión como aprendices y docentes acerca de estrategias holísticas para la enseñanza y el aprendizaje del inglés como lengua extranjera. palabras clave: condiciones para el aprendizaje de cambourne, desarrollo profesional docente. * this paper reports on the research study “un enfoque holístico para el desarrollo profesional de maestros de inglés de la básica primaria”. it was financed by the comité para el desarrollo de la investigación (codi) of universidad de antioquia (acta 443 november 8, 2005) and secretaría de educación de itagüí, antioquia, colombia. ** e-mail:ccadavid@idiomas.udea.edu.co *** e-mail:claudiadiazmosquera@gmail.com **** e-mail:dquinchia@idiomas.udea.edu.co this article was received on march 1, 2010, and accepted on august 13, 2010. 176 universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras cadavid múnera, díaz mosquera & quinchía ortiz introduction like the students they teach, it seems that teachers also benefit from being in learning settings that go beyond mere transmission of how-to-knowledge. (cambourne, 2000-2001, p. 417) elementary school efl teachers in medellín, colombia (south america), are in the midst of a complex situation concerning their teaching practices and their professional development processes. since 1994, official policies require them to include a foreign language in the regular school curriculum at the primary level, but factors such as their personal stories as fl learners and teachers, their students’ needs, the lack of resources at schools, as well as their teaching conditions in general hinder the fulfilment of those demands posed by the government. recently, the ministry of education has started the implementation of the national program “bilingual colombia 2010-2019” (ministerio de educación nacional (men), 2005) which implies, among other things, the definition of standards and standardized tests for all levels of education, and the definition of guidelines for teacher training in order to attain the expectations concerning the english level students should have at the end of their high school studies, grade 11, namely level b2, according to the common european framework for language learning, teaching and evaluating. given this situation, and in response to it, university professors in different regions of the country have started to undertake research projects to better understand the reality of teachers at schools in order to suggest possible courses of action. this article reports on one of such efforts carried out by a group of researchers at universidad de antioquia in medellin, colombia. the first part will describe a previous study that explored the reality of english teachers in public elementary schools in medellin; the second part will focus on a professional development experience implemented by these researchers with some elementary school teachers; and finally, the analysis of the project based on cambourne’s conditions for learning. using an earlier project as a planning guide cadavid, mcnulty, and quinchía (2004) explored the reality of efl elementary instruction in medellín in a previous research project that was the springboard for the one presented in this article. it is therefore worth mentioning here that this preceding study allowed us to read the reality of teachers before embarking on the task of proposing a professional development course for those teachers. the previous study was a small scale ethnographic investigation with 12 efl teachers in grades 1, 3, and 5 in seven public elementary schools in the metropolitan area of medellín. after observing classes and interviewing the teachers, we analyzed the information gathered which gave us a picture of the situation in public schools. results derived from this experience included a profile of the participant teachers and a description of the methodology they used to teach english in their classrooms while following the beliefs they held. concerning the most salient features of the teachers, we can state that they • were mainly homeroom teachers in charge of teaching all subjects in their groups • had brief english teaching experiences • held undergraduate and graduate degrees in areas different from foreign languages. (only three had a bed in foreign languages) • had little preparation in english and meth odology. some of them had taken professional development courses related to learning the english language, but not to the methodology of teaching it. 177profile vol. 13, no. 1, april 2011. issn 1657-0790. bogotá, colombia. pages 175-187 177 when theory meets practice: applying cambourne’s conditions for learning... • worked with around 50 students in english classes that were offered once a week and were 45 minutes long. • were free to teach english the way they considered best because principals allowed teachers the autonomy to make decisions about how english was taught, but they were also alone doing their job without any support. the same researchers highlight the importance of a careful identification of a teacher’s profile related to their educational and target language preparation in order to analyze critically governmental policies and the feasibility of their implementation. figure 1 outlines the teachers’ classroom methods. it presents a general overview of the method used by them. the first column refers to the approach, which consists of the theory of language and language learning that support the classroom practice. in our case, we included the beliefs of these teachers. the second column is related to the design, which includes objectives, types of activities and the roles of the teacher, the students and the materials. finally, in the third column, there is a description of procedures that depict what actually takes place in the classrooms and the taxonomy of the activities undertaken. method teachers’ beliefs * learning another language at an early age is an advantage. children are more motivated, interested and possess a positive attitude towards learning new things, especially english. * teaching english at the elementary level is a preparation for high school. * affect plays an important role in foreign language teaching and learning. * receptive skills need to be developed first and then the productive ones. * english instruction needs to be focused on themes/topics. * grammar instruction needs to be taught in the higher grade levelsfourth and fifth. * visual materials will keep students engaged and motivated to learn english. * children need to be exposed to game-like and technologybased activities. * english can be used to reinforce learning in other subjects. design objectives: teachers aim at: * developing a positive attitude towards the language and the process of learning it. * learning vocabulary related to familiar everyday topics like colors, numbers, food, family, the home/house, etc. role of the teacher curriculum and materials developer, manager, quality controller, motivator role of the learners active instead of passive: singing, playing, moving, etc. receptive instead of productive: in terms of fl use; followers instead of decision makers. materials visual aids like pictures, flashcards and booklets are suggested to keep students interested and on task. procedures activities * controlled: repetition, singing, copying, grammar exercise, dialogues, reading comprehension. * guided: copying (from the board), describing objects. * free: drama * affective: coloring, cutting, singing, drama, games, warm-ups, praising. * presentation: introducing new topics. * organizational: giving instructions, assigning homework, disciplinary actions interaction patterns mainly whole class and individual work should be assigned in order to keep control of the class. figure 1. elementary school teachers’ method (adapted from richards & rodgers, 1984). 178 universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras cadavid múnera, díaz mosquera & quinchía ortiz the conditions of these teachers, as well as those of many others around the country, can be described as a cart-before-the-horse situation (murphey, 2003) because elementary school teach ers are asked to teach english having had little or no preparation for this task. as a result, they end up learning the language at the same time that they are teaching it. the results of this study became a point for reflection about the needs of these teachers and about the role of administrators and policymakers concerning the teaching of english in elementary schools. this study was also an invitation to teachers and teacher educators to be critical towards this reality and to attempt to become agents of change. but, as cadavid, mcnulty, and quinchía (2004) point out, “teachers cannot become reflective if they are not given the chance to participate in decision making; they cannot be agents of change if their voices are not heard. a process of critical reflection leading to principled actions is required in our schools” (p. 45). in order to promote such processes of reflection and principled actions, a group of teacherresearchers of universidad de antioquia proposed the project that is described below. the focus of the study the project presented here focused on a holistic approach to professional development of efl elementary school teachers. it was an action research study that, as described by burns (1999), is “a systematic process of investigating practical issues or concerns which arise within a particular social context” (p. 31). in this case, the particular social context was a professional development course for elementary school english teachers. we, as the teacher-researchers, and three studentteachers of universidad de antioquia, designed, implemented and analyzed this study. the course for professional development was fashioned with the participation of 14 schoolteachers working at different schools in itagüí (a town near medellin) and was led by the student-teachers and us. the questions that guided this action research project were as follows: 1. how can a professional development course, designed from a holistic perspective, favour language development in a foreign language as well as the development of strategies for the efl class? 2. how do teachers’ reflections on their processes as language learners and teachers promote a process of empowerment that will allow teachers to be critical of their practices and search for strategies to improve them? throughout the course, we wanted to follow up on teachers’ development concerning the iden tification and reflection about their teaching practices and how they became more confident and competent at using the language. so, the content of the course had two main components: a language development component in which teachers were learners of english, and a pedagogical one in which they reflected on their role as teachers of english as shown in figure 2. english component who am i? how are we different? how are we alike? how were the “good old days”? pedagogical component who am i as a teacher? how are reading and writing developed in a foreign language? which are some strategies for teaching english to children? re�ection figure 2. content of the course. 179profile vol. 13, no. 1, april 2011. issn 1657-0790. bogotá, colombia. pages 175-187 179 when theory meets practice: applying cambourne’s conditions for learning... it was holistic in the sense that the teachers involved were participating both as learners and teachers; they explored the learning of the foreign language and some possibilities for teaching it. the sessions were divided into two sections: one around learning the language, and the other was a reflection about its teaching. it was also holistic because the language they were exposed to or produced was not fragmented since the emphasis was on meaning–making processes. reflection was a central element throughout the process. their experiences as learners and teachers nourished the discussions and helped them to build the syllabus that was presented as a general framework to be reformed and adapted based on teachers’ needs as the course developed. to answer the questions posed, data were collected through the observations of the sessions with the schoolteachers, a group interview with them and a questionnaire. in order to find information about their foreign language development, a pre and a post-test were used. these tests aimed at assessing the teachers’ comprehension of oral and written texts and their capacity to use the language to describe and provide personal information. the analysis of data followed the steps proposed in grounded theory. these were open, axial, and selective coding (creswell, 2007). we now present the analysis of this process in light of the theory that supported it. when theory meets practice this part will focus on three central aspects that theoretically supported our professional development course: first, the difference between training and professional development, the latter being our option; second, the concept of knowledge building community (kbc); and finally, cambourne’s conditions for learning. the discussion in this part will deal with these three concepts from a theoretical and a practical perspective. so, a brief explanation will be followed by the way each concept was evidenced in the course. from training to professional development after we examined the reality of efl primary schoolteachers we found that teachers needed to improve as language learners and teachers. hence, we decided to implement this proposal that was conceived as a professional development course in which elementary schoolteachers and university teacher researchers worked collaboratively to learn from each other. woodward (1997) presents the main differences between training and professional development as shown in table 1. table 1. main differences between training and professional development (woodward, 1997) training professional development mandatory competencies short-term temporary product-oriented, certificate, final work skills, techniques external agenda guided by experts voluntary holistic long-term continuous process-oriented reflection, personal growth internal agenda guided by advisors 180 universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras cadavid múnera, díaz mosquera & quinchía ortiz in our case, the course was a voluntary process led by the secretary of education of the municipality where the project was carried out (itagüí). elementary schoolteachers were invited to join this project, and 20 that were interested registered. some of them had either personal or professional problems and, thus, 14 teachers finished the whole process. so, we started working with the 20 teachers within the framework of a holistic approach defined above. there was also a journal in which teachers wrote about different issues connected to them as persons and as teachers on the basis of specific prompts. it is important to highlight that the reflection, as an essential component of the course, was an important way to include university teachers’ expertise and knowledge as well as that of schoolteachers and student teachers. all participants had a voice and it was exactly this polyphony that made this experience a very enriching one. the next part will describe more in depth how this community of learners was set and how we worked. knowledge building community (kbc) kbc is defined in kiggin’s words as “a commu nity of individuals… dedicated to sharing and advancing the knowledge of the collective” (as cited in cambourne, ferri, & kiggins, 2003). at the university of wollongong, a group of professors implemented a model of kbc for the education of pre-service teachers as an alternative to the more traditional lecturing-tutoring-exam model. in this experience three modes of learning were fostered: community learning, school-based learning and problem-based learning. in our context, these three modes of learning were also essential. in the first place, as in the wollongong experience, the community was made up of preservice teacher education students (from the foreign language teaching program at universidad de antioquia), school-based teachers (from different public schools in itagüí) and faculty lecturers (from universidad de antioquia). in this community, a sense of belonging was fostered through the discussions where the expertise and knowledge of all participants were shared and valued. it is essential to emphasize that these teachers were also co-learners with their students as both parties were involved in the process of learning the language: the children in the classroom with the teachers, and the teachers with us in the course. this gave them the chance to analyze the process of their students in a different way because they were experiencing it as well. concerning school-based learning, this course was a clear example of it. even though we had a general framework to organize content, it was modified as the course developed. the reflection on these teachers’ contexts was a starting point that allowed us to see some of their needs in order to plan actions. however, they were asking for specific topics they needed to explore and discuss like literacy development in the foreign language or the use of technology in their classes. so, sessions were based on their schools and on their needs and interests. the third element, problem-based learning, was evident in this project since it stemmed from a clear problem we have in our city with teachers of english in public elementary schools, as the previous study revealed. it was a diagnosis that allowed us to see the reality of teachers and the need they had (and still have) for support as regards both language learning and its teaching. this project was presented as a way to respond to this problematic situation. with all these elements being present – commu nitybased, school-based and problem-based learning– we can say that this proposal for professional development constitutes an experience of kbc on a small 181profile vol. 13, no. 1, april 2011. issn 1657-0790. bogotá, colombia. pages 175-187 181 when theory meets practice: applying cambourne’s conditions for learning... scale. it is through these communities that we believe processes of true professional development can take place. cambourne’s conditions for learning within the framework of these conditions we made informed decisions concerning the type of literacy events that encouraged this group of teachers to understand the development of the foreign language through experiences in which language had realistic and meaningful functions for their lives. according to cambourne’s theory for learning (1988), immersion refers to the meaningful and contextualized examples experienced language users expose the new members of the society to so as to show what they will use and ultimately learn. the actions that show what language is used for and how it functions for language users are known as demonstration and how they are coupled to actions and artefacts such as books show learners what print is and how all of them allow connections with life experiences and other sign systems. learners will only engage in demonstrations when they see them as purposeful for their lives, “do-able” or “owner-able”, and that they will support them in becoming potential talkers, readers, or writers since failure in emulating them will not lead to harmful outcomes. all through these processes, expectations are two-fold: those the learners hold about their possibilities to learn, and the ones “significant others” communicate to learners of fering opportunities to exploit their capabilities, and challenging them without being overwhelming. once learners are immersed in variegated examples articulated with demonstrations that enhance the array of possibilities to use the language, they will learn to become proficient in the events that they form part of, and will learn to make decisions about how to engage in those aspects that become relevant for their own learning experience. on the other hand, the significant others must make sure that the immersion and the demonstrations are meaningful and create the climate of expectations to take advantage of the learners’ capabilities. the process may become complicated if the significant others strip away the responsibility from the learner by predetermining everything he or she is going to learn, thus turning the process into a trivial and fragmented act. learners do not go through the learning process error-free; they try to imitate what has been demonstrated to them and, in so doing, set in motion the “hypothesis, test, modify hypothesis, test again” cycle. significant others are not expecting learners to have control over all the language systems at the same time; instead, they treat the approximations as legitimate, relevant, meaningful and useful evidence of natural learning. time and opportunities should be provided to use the language in real literacy events that allow learners to interact with others, as well as work on their own and to develop their awareness and skills about how language functions in an anxiety-free context. significant others scaffold learners’ attempts by going beyond a mechanistic feedback, therefore providing complete examples of the language they are trying to use. the response is not restricted: it is frequent and the learner is allowed to continue trying with no threat when not getting it the first time. the linguistic component in the linguistic component, there were many events in which some of the conditions for learning were easily observed. the three linguistic cycles proposed in the course included activities that were addressed to promote the development of the four linguistic modes; however, reading and writing were given special treatment during the course. 182 universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras cadavid múnera, díaz mosquera & quinchía ortiz we are going to explain how we articulated these learning conditions in the linguistic cycle how are we alike? how are we different? focusing on how are our families alike? to begin this cycle we carried out activities related to the family; for instance, poems, riddles, songs and communication games. then, we did shared reading with the book families are different by pellegrini (1991). as the book was quite small, we created a big book in order to provide a demonstration for the schoolteachers to perform the shared reading with students. we prepared previewing, viewing and reviewing activities for this event. the first stage consisted of asking schoolteachers to predict the content of the book based on the illustrations of the cover and on the title. their predictions were written on the board for further use. the second stage consisted of the actual reading. first, we read the book, constantly making the connections between the print and the illustrations evident, and then we invited schoolteachers to read the book with us. some teachers were immediately eager to participate in the reading; others were encouraged by their partners and later accepted doing it. during reading, some schoolteachers used unconventional pronunciation of some words, and their partners corrected them right away; however, we did not use that strategy; instead, we waited for schoolteachers to finish and then repeated the word or sentence they had had problems with. the third stage consisted of writing a text about the teachers’ own families. they could use the book they had just read as a reference as well as use the expressions and words that were written on the board and the guiding questions that we had prepared to facilitate their writing. during this activity schoolteachers worked in groups while we monitored their work and helped them when they needed it. they were asked to bring a photo of the families for this last stage. the fourth and final stage was to create a page of a book. each schoolteacher was given a large colored sheet of paper with which to write the text about their family on and paste the photo on it. each schoolteacher ended up with a page of the book. afterwards, we collected the different pages and bound them to create a big book. in groups schoolteachers discussed the title of the book; nonetheless, they ended up with the same title of the book they read because they said it really portrayed the content of their book. they said that their families were also different and unique. throughout the course immersion was seen in all the activities which were carried out in the foreign language; we, as the most experienced foreign language users, spoke english all the time. spanish was used when schoolteachers needed clarification. moreover, the materials used during the course were generally authentic. language was presented to schoolteachers for reallife situations and students were surrounded by this language while they were in the sessions. at the moment of reading the book and when schoolteachers were encouraged to participate in the reading (shared reading), what brian cambourne calls demonstration was evidenced. the teachers also discovered that reading in english was not something artificial or too different from reading in spanish. throughout the course, schoolteachers observed models of how to use reading strategies that would later facilitate the association of print and sound, how to organize conventional sentences to describe, and how to take advantage of their background knowledge and previous experiences with the language to understand print or aural texts. engagement occurred when the teachers felt confident to write their own texts about their families because they had demonstrations and immersion that helped them to view this event as do-able and purposeful for their lives as teachers. expectation 183profile vol. 13, no. 1, april 2011. issn 1657-0790. bogotá, colombia. pages 175-187 183 when theory meets practice: applying cambourne’s conditions for learning... was a critical factor in the course. although it was not observable, we were constantly generating a safe and trusting environment in which schoolteachers were encouraged to learn. in the event described above, schoolteachers approximated conventional writing when they created the texts about their own families; as a consequence, they were using the foreign language in class. we supported teachers’ attempts at using the language without judgement and showed the conventional way of saying or writing something in english. during the course, mistakes were opportunities to learn as evidenced by one schoolteacher who stated, “el error no es un acto de desacierto, sino una aproximación a la verdad” [an error is not an act of ignorance but an approximation to the truth]. as can be seen, in the process of acquiring the foreign language, schoolteachers were experiencing the conditions for learning and this had an impact on their process as learners, but also on their reflection about teaching. this is the issue we now address. the teaching component the discussions about the implications of oral and written language development in efl were encouraged through reflections in spanish around teaching experiences that were reported by scholars in some articles. in several sessions, teachers discussed the perceptions they had constructed concerning the characteristics of learners across different age levels, some stages of their students’ language development processes, their own histories as teachers and learners and on the impact of their reflections on the design and implementation of the syllabus for english. after reading “la escritura en primera y segunda lengua: un proceso, dos idiomas” (clavijo & torres, 1999), they came to the conclusion that reading and writing are very complex processes that imply the understanding of language learning stages. therefore, it is convenient to validate children’s initial attempts and not to rush students. teachers also realized that reading and writing processes do not differ from one language to the other; rather, that the changes lie in the conditions that foster or hinder the access to resources or the strategies that significant others around the students use to support them. being immersed in these experiences as learners and having demonstrations of different literacy events helped the schoolteachers clarify that writing is not copying, but a process that involves thinking and needs to be experienced by children from the early stages of their schooling. finally, they pointed out that it is very unfortunate that at their schools the strategies to promote literacy development change as students move up through the elementary grades because teachers have to prepare students for high school and, in the process, the enjoyment disappears. in order to understand these processes in a wider perspective within the school curriculum, we discussed with teachers the article “ciclos temáticos: una alternativa para lecto-escritura bilingüe” (salmon, 1998). the schoolteachers brought up questions about how to work individually and to negotiate themes with groups of 50 students, a common situation in the efl context. this proposal helped them realize that as life-long learners, teachers are constantly constructing knowledge in the company of their students through processes that validate previous knowledge and life experiences as primary sources to organize their lessons. they highlighted the need to find strategies to make connections between english and other subject areas as they negotiate and pose questions, promote extensive reading and learn to write through multiple opportunities to interact with print. in order to create conscious links in the company of teachers, we explored which of 184 universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras cadavid múnera, díaz mosquera & quinchía ortiz cambourne’s con ditions were evident in this context. they stated that the exposure to the foreign language is very limited, first, because students have scarce opportunities to be surrounded by english outside school and teachers considered that their english proficiency was very limited. the access to resources was another difficulty because they could only count on what they call a bilingual room, which is a computer lab without software to work there. teachers considered that they had to be more creative at designing materials and activities that favored the use of the foreign language, so that students feel they are able to participate as language users in different events and that their knowledge and abilities to learn more are not underestimated. again, their need to be more experienced as language users became an issue here because they had to show students how to use the language without fear of making mistakes, and with purposes different from “practice english”. students should be invited to create materials so they can use them in class or for students in other grades. the conclusions they derived from being immersed in the readings and the discussions evidenced that they were not the only models students may have in their classes and that they did not have to control everything in the class. the other point was that they had not participated in events of that kind as english language learners. they knew about holistic strategies for spanish and other subject areas but they had never thought about transferring those to the english class because for them the foreign language to date has basically been a matter of learning vocabulary and grammar rules. schoolteachers also had an opportunity in their classes to use one of the events they experienced in the course. in the implementations the teachers shared, we identified evidence of how at the moment in which each teacher planned their version of one of the activities, they were responsible for the decisions they made concerning the risks they were able to take; they set a purpose for the event, selected the strategies that favored their students’ learning, as well as the resources required, all this in light of the learning experiences. their expectations allowed them to identify their possibilities to learn and they had the opportunity to reflect on the implications of implementing the experiences we shared with them, and analyze how far they could go without feeling pressed to do it. when they learned to give more value to their situation as education professionals, they realized that as life-long learners they needed to be informed not only about the policies mandated by the district or the ministry of education, but about the sound selection of practices supported by the professional literature; they confirmed that they had the expertise to understand their students and their institutions; therefore, they were responsible for the decisions they made and would take risks to implement what they were ready for. we encouraged them to try without predetermining what exactly they had to do or the specific strategies to use. the confidence and knowledge gained through the sessions became evident when all the teachers shared the events they implemented. even though they still needed more opportunities to use the language, their versions of events such as drawing your name, the family album or reading aloud adapted versions of fairy tales confirmed that they wanted to try what they considered meaningful, interesting and relevant for both them and their students (engagement). as they were on their own, in their own places without us to provide immediate response, they felt they had the authority to control the situation (responsibility). the responses they received from their colleagues and the university teachers during the sharing sessions opened more spaces for discussions that articulated the 185profile vol. 13, no. 1, april 2011. issn 1657-0790. bogotá, colombia. pages 175-187 185 when theory meets practice: applying cambourne’s conditions for learning... experience in their classes and the support they had found in the professional literature. to finish this component, schoolteachers analyzed how the syllabus they had at their schools might be organized in order to create meaningful connections and transitions among the topics in order to move to theme cycles. in their programs they had a list of contents, vocabulary, and topics as well as references to competences, goals, progress indicators, evaluation, strategies and procedures. in order to articulate this information, the university teachers suggested taking into account a name for the unit that introduced the theme, goals for the unit, contents, materials and evaluation procedures and instruments. they had the chance to respond to their colleagues’ proposals on posters they put up on the wall. as cambourne explains, when learners have time and opportunities to participate in events that allow interaction with others and to develop their awareness and skills about how they are learning functions, all the conditions come together. as such, they indicate how the quality of the immersion and the relevance of the demonstrations put into motion a need to engage in events they want to be responsible for, to make their expectations explicit, to try their hypothesis and to receive a response to keep on trying. conclusions the professional development course presented here was an enriching experience for all the participants, but it was by no means the answer to the teachers’ complex situation. it was an opportunity to inquire about the impact of implementing a professional development proposal within a holistic framework. it was the possibility of exploring cambourne’s conditions for learning in a new context. it was a chance for university and schoolteachers to share and create knowledge together with a common purpose. this inquiry yielded some interesting results and points for reflection. first, it was interesting to see how at the end of the sessions, teachers were gradually accepting their role as english teachers. at the beginning of the course they were reluctant to see themselves as english teachers, but throughout the development of the sessions this image changed as they felt that they were empowered to explore different possibilities in their classes even though their english proficiency was not as they wished. second, as a result of the application of brian cambourne’s conditions: im mersion, demonstrations, approximations, and use, these teachers felt engaged and felt they were experiencing something they were willing and able to use in their own classes. they felt responsible for the changes they wanted to implement in their classes because it was their own choice. as the course developed, the teachers’ conceptions of the foreign language and its teaching began to become modified, and so did their practices. for instance, the concept of planning changed from a very linear perspective around topics and vocabulary to one that could explore connections with other subjects. class activities aimed at repetition and copying began to change to other activities that promoted construction of meaning involving the comprehension and creation of texts. finally, we can state that one of the most important gains was the linguistic and pedagogical growth of teachers. figure 3 below condenses the complexity of this learning process. learning in this case went beyond the mere understanding and application of concepts and/ or strategies since reflection on the teachers’ own processes as teachers and learners was fomented within an atmosphere in which relevant exposure to and use of the foreign language, as well as discussions about the process of teaching it, took place. through 186 universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras cadavid múnera, díaz mosquera & quinchía ortiz reflection, teachers developed an ability to critically transfer to their own environments what they were learning and experiencing in the course. they felt empowered to make decisions and to try to transform their practices. the concept of transferability involves being able to make conscious links between theory and practice and to understand principles underlying practices in order to make informed decisions. relevant exposure to the l2 affective factors conscious links applicability engagement understanding principles transfer-ability figure 3. process of transfer-ability1 in professional development (cadavid, díaz & quinchía, 2009). after finishing the project, some questions for further research arose e.g. how has the practice of these teachers changed over time? are they exploring new alternatives? how can this professional de velopment proposal be implemented on a larger scale? how can these teachers be helped to establish and consolidate a community of learners? to conclude, we would like to emphasize the importance of proposals for professional development for teachers that respond to their realities. university teachers and schoolteachers should work together to construct communities of knowledge aimed at the improvement of foreign language teaching and learning in our context through processes of transfer-ability that will help teachers become reflective and empowered to be 1 term coined and spelling used by cambourne (1998). agents of change (price & valli, 2005). more and deeper reflection is needed in order to illuminate decision making concerning foreign language policies; imposed agendas can no longer be the answer to local needs. references burns, a. (1999). collaborative action research for english language teachers. cambridge: cambridge university press. cadavid, i. c., díaz, c.p. , & quinchía, d. i. (2009). una propuesta holística de desarrollo profesional para maestros de inglés de la básica primaria. ikala, revista de lenguaje y cultura, 14, 135-158. cadavid, i. c., mcnulty, m. m., & quinchía, d. i. (2004). elementary english language instruction: colombian teachers classroom practices. profile issues in teachers’ professional development, 5, 37-55. cambourne, b. (1988). the whole story: natural learning and the acquisition of literacy in the classroom. auckland, new zealand: ashton scholastic. cambourne, b. (december 2000/january 2001). conditions for literacy learning: turning learning theory into classroom instruction: a minicase study. the reading teacher , 54, 414-417. cambourne, b., ferri, g., & kiggins, j. (2003). the knowledge building community odyssey: reflections on the journey. retrieved from http://education.waikato. ac.nz/research/files/etpc/2003v23art1.pdf clavijo, a., & torres, e. (1999). la escritura en primera y segunda lengua: un proceso, dos idiomas. lectura y vida , 20, 33-41. colombia. ministerio de educación nacional [men]. (2005). al tablero, 37, octubrediciembre. retrieved from http://www.mineducacion.gov.co/1621/propertyvalue-32266.html creswell, j. (2007). qualitative inquiry and research design: choosing among five traditions (2nd ed.). thousand oaks, ca: sage publications. 187profile vol. 13, no. 1, april 2011. issn 1657-0790. bogotá, colombia. pages 175-187 187 when theory meets practice: applying cambourne’s conditions for learning... murphey, t. (2003, september/october/november). nns primary school teachers learning english with their students. tesol matters, 13(4), 1-6. pellegrini, n. (1991). families are different. markham, ontario: holliday house. price, j., & valli, l. (2005). preservice teachers becoming agents of change: pedagogical implications for action research. journal of teacher education, 56, 57-72. retrieved on march 19, 2007 from http://jte.sagepub.com richards, j., & rodgers, t. (1984). approaches and methods in language teaching. new york: cambridge university press. salmon, k. (1998). ciclos temáticos: una alternativa para el desarrollo de la lecto-escritura bilingüe. lectura y vida, 19(3), 26-34. woodward, t. (1997). models and metaphors in language teacher training. cambridge: cambridge university press. about the authors isabel cristina cadavid múnera is a full time teacher educator at the school of languages, universidad de antioquia. a member of the research group pedagogy and foreign language teaching at the same university, she holds a ba in foreign languages, a diploma in translation from universidad de antioquia, and an ma in tesol from west virginia university. claudia díaz mosquera is a full time teacher educator at the school of languages, universidad de antioquia. a member of the research group pedagogy and foreign language teaching at the same university, she holds a ba in foreign languages, a diploma in translation from universidad de antioquia, and an ma in tesol from fresno pacific university. diana isabel quinchía ortiz is a full time teacher educator at the school of languages, universidad de antioquia. a member of the research groups eale (enseñanza y aprendizaje de lenguas extranjeras) and pedagogy and foreign language teaching at the same university, she holds a bed in foreign language teaching, universidad antioquia, and an ma in english teaching, universidad de caldas. 85profile vol. 13, no. 2, october 2011. issn 1657-0790. bogotá, colombia. pages 85-98 exploring knowledge of english speaking strategies in 8th and 12th graders exploración del conocimiento de las estrategias de expresión oral en inglés en estudiantes de los grados octavo y doceavo claudio díaz larenas* universidad de concepción, chile this article presents a research study that analyses eighth and twelfth graders’ knowledge of speaking strategies to communicate in english. the oral communication strategy inventory, developed by nakatani in 2006, was applied to 108 students belonging to the public, semi-public and private educational sectors in chile. the findings show that 8th graders claim to have broader knowledge of speaking strategies than 12th year secondary students, and the knowledge of speaking strategies of elementary and secondary school students does not vary depending on the type of school: public, semi public and/or private. key words: learning english, oral communication, speaking strategies. en este artículo se presenta una investigación en la que se analiza el conocimiento que estudiantes de octavo básico y primero medio declaran tener cuando se comunican en inglés. se aplicó el inventario de comunicación oral, propuesto por nakatani (2006), a ciento ocho estudiantes que pertenecen a sectores educativos públicos, particulares-subvencionados y privados en chile. los resultados muestran que los estudiantes de octavo básico declaran tener mayor conocimiento de las estrategias de expresión oral que los estudiantes de grado doce, y el conocimiento de dichas estrategias no varía según el tipo de sector educativo al que pertenecen. palabras clave: aprendizaje del inglés, comunicación oral, estrategias expresión oral. this paper contains results of the research grant entitled fondecyt 1085313 “el sistema de cognición docente, las actuaciones pedagógicas del profesor de inglés universitario y su impacto en la enseñanza-aprendizaje del idioma”: http://www.fondecyt.cl/578/article-28062.html. the study was conducted between 2008 and 2010. * e-mail: claudiodiaz@udec.cl this article was received on january 20, 2011, and accepted on april 17, 2011. 86 universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras díaz larenas introduction learning a language is a complex issue that requires the participation of at least three main stakeholders: teachers, students and contents. therefore, there is a didactic triangle that should allow students to construct their own knowledge, a process that is not always easy to grasp and produce autonomously. for this reason, the concept of strategy is fundamental as a group of operations, steps and devices that the learner can use to acquire and store knowledge. the importance of knowing and using speaking strategies is to help students improve their language development in order to encourage effective spoken communication. in this matter, teachers should act as facilitators who teach these strategies that can help students to develop their language skills. some of these oral strategies might be related to negotiation of meaning or the alteration of the message. some others may be connected with body language or even with the abandonment of the message that is being produced. in brief, this particular study focuses on the speaking strategies declared to be used by 8th and 12th graders in order to achieve oral communication in english. theoretical framework chilean society today requires that secondary school students improve their language proficiency level, so that they can be active participants in this globalized world. in this context, the purpose of teaching english as a foreign language via chilean public, semi-public and private education is to give students a linguistic tool that can enable them to understand and communicate information, knowledge and technologies as well as to appreciate other cultures, traditions and ways of thinking (crookes, 2003). communicative language teaching is the trend in the teaching of english as a foreign language, embraced by the chilean english policy. as such, the main aim of communicative language teaching is to help students develop their ability to communi cate in the target language. this endeavor suggests that students should be able to communicate in english using different language functions and notions. they must manage meaning and a range of linguistic components, since communication is seen as a process of negotiating meaning among the participants of the communicative situation. the emphasis is on students’ ability to maintain a conversation rather than master a set of lexical or grammatical components (brown, 2001; brown, 2007; richards, 2005). in communicative language teaching, the teacher is expected to act as a facilitator of the communicative situation, monitoring students’ attempts to communicate in the target language. the correction of errors or the use of the teacher as a model of perfect speech is left behind as the focus is to promote students’ participation and motivate them to produce speech in the target language. the active participation of the students is essential. students should be engaged and willing to practice producing speech and negotiating meaning to create a communicative situation. as the main focus is for students to be able to communicate in the target language, learners need to work cooperatively, in pairs or in groups as interaction gives them the ability to create meaning and therefore communication (larsen-freeman, 2000). the learners are seen as responsible for their own learning since they need to try to understand each other and make themselves understood. (richards, 2005; thornbury, 2005). speaking and listening in english describing oral production leads to oral communication and both of them can be defined as any type of interaction that makes use of spoken 87 exploring knowledge of english speaking strategies in 8th and 12th graders profile vol. 13, no. 2, october 2011. issn 1657-0790. bogotá, colombia. pages 85-98 words, an interaction that is really important and essential nowadays. it has also been printed out that the ability to communicate effectively through speaking as well as in writing is highly valued, and in demand (johnson, 2001). one of the major concerns when teaching a foreign language is how to prepare learners to be able to use the language. therefore, for teachers to make a lesson successful, they must clearly present the aims of the lesson. when teaching the students how to speak, for example, it is necessary for them to have some knowledge of the language conventions such as grammar, vocabulary and pronunciation. it is important, therefore, to allow learners to practice speaking as an opportunity to use the grammar, pronunciation and vocabulary previously taught and, of course, the most essential task is the practice of the oral skill (bygate, 1987). when talking about oral skills, it can be said that there are two different ways in which these skills can be divided. the first division is the motorperceptive skills, which involve perceiving, recalling and articulating the correct order of sounds and structures of the target language. the second division is the interaction skills, which involve making decisions about communication and the ability to use language in order to satisfy particular demands, not structure (buck, 2001; osada, 2004). in oral production there is something imperative that every single speaker faces when speaking: time pressure. time pressure affects the target language because it makes the speaker think about devices to facilitate and compensate her/his oral production. as a consequence of this situation, there are four features presented in spoken language: “(a) it is easier to improve if the speakers use less complex syntax; (b) speakers tend to abbreviate and produce incomplete sentences; (c) it is easier to produce messages if speakers use fixed phrases; (d) speakers will use devices to gain time while speaking” (bygate, 1987, p. 14). to make the previous observations clearer it is necessary to explain two different ideas about oral production: facilitation and compensation. the first one is related to the ways in which a speaker can facilitate his or her speech. there are four ways to facilitate speech production: “(a) by simplifying structures. (b) by ellipsis, this is the omission of parts of a sentence. (c) by using formulaic expressions, these are the well-known colloquial or idiomatic expressions. (d) by the use of fillers and hesitation devices, these tend to give more time to the speaker to formulate what he/she wants to say” (bygate, 1987, p. 15). compensation, the second idea, is related to modifying what the speaker has already said. it is an alteration in the speech, which is permitted among speakers. there are also four ways to have this done: “(a) by adjustments, such as hesitation, false start, self-correction, rephrasing and circumlocutions. (b) by syntactic features, such as ellipsis and parataxis. (c) by repetition, via expansion or reduction of the speech. (d) by using formulaic expressions, these are the well-known colloquial or idiomatic expressions” (bygate, 1987, p. 20). all these features must be taken into consideration by both learners and teachers. in relation to learners, it is better to make clear messages using short sentences, and the appropriate vocabulary. in order to develop a range of more complex ways of extending sentences, learners need to become skilled in producing utterances so that they can achieve fluency. for teachers, it is necessary to be aware of the opportunities that learners are offered for improving their skills. it is also essential for teachers to know how oral production should be taught. then there are three important aims that must be achieved: (a) methodology of teaching 88 universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras díaz larenas oral skills, (b) assessment of some actual examples of oral material and (c) language of learners working on such activities. the process of interaction in oral communication to understand oral communication, the interaction of two different participants is needed: the speaker and the listener. it has to be stated that listening comprehension is fundamental in speaking and that the two skills must be used simultaneously. however, the time and space to process speaking and listening are very limited; indeed, when the utterance is produced, it lasts just the moment of speaking. through the years, “listening comprehension as a skill, has been underestimated, since teachers used to think that it was something students could learn on their own without being taught how to do it. in the early twenties, teachers tended to leave out the teaching of the listening skill from their planning mostly because they thought it should be something learnt by osmosis” (osada, 2004, p. 54). in this matter, it was thought that the more the students listened to english, the more they learnt, without any help. therefore, their role was mainly to listen to the teacher when drilling and imitating dialogues. it is well-known that “speaking itself does not constitute communication unless what is being said is comprehended by another person” (muchmore, 2004, p. 34), so when teaching speaking in any language, l1 or l2, the aim is communication and to achieve this, the two participants need to understand the meaning of the messages that are being sent. however, it was not until the 70s that the status of listening began to change from a secondary skill into something of central importance (celce-murcia, 2001; harmer, 2001; mckay, 2003; osada, 2004). educators became aware not only of how important comprehension of a foreign language was, but also of how complex the achievement of listening as a skill was and its importance when talking about the comprehension of spoken messages. to establish a connection between listening and speaking, buck (2001) states that there are four features in speaking that help to understand the importance of listening comprehension as a skill: (a) speech is encoded in the form of sounds. (b) it is linear, which means that one idea follows the other one. (c) it takes place in real time with little time to review what has been said. (d) it is linguistically different from written language. the concept of strategy the definition of strategy has several interpretations, but all of them come from the same source. the word comes from the ancient greek term ‘strategia’, used to refer to the tactics employed to defeat the enemy. in the educational field, the use of this term is not very different, but in this case the enemy is the students’ lack of knowledge. oxford (1992, p. 15) offers the following definition: strategies are specific actions, behaviours, steps or techniques that students (often intentionally) use to improve their progress in developing l2 skills. these strategies can facilitate the internalization, storage, retrieval or use of the new language. strategies are tools for the self-directed involvement necessary for developing communicative ability. based on oxford (1992), direct strategies for dealing with the new language are the first major classification and are used to work with the language in different tasks and situations. the second major classification is indirect strategies used for the general acquisition of learning. when conditions are created for the students’ development of strategies, teachers need to bear in mind that what they teach must be consistent with what students need. according to hedge (2000) and macaro 89 exploring knowledge of english speaking strategies in 8th and 12th graders profile vol. 13, no. 2, october 2011. issn 1657-0790. bogotá, colombia. pages 85-98 (2003), it is possible to identify four needs: (a) contextualised practise: the aim is to connect the linguistic features with their functions by finding a situation in which what they are learning is commonly used. (b) personalised language: the teacher has to make students express their ideas, feelings and opinions using the target language. students tend to remember more of the language when they can use it in interpersonal situations. (c) building awareness of the social use of the language: the aim here is to make students understand that there are situations with an appropriate social behaviour and an appropriate use of the language. therefore, conversational misunderstandings that can cause language problems can be avoided. (d) building confidence: when teachers build confidence in students they are able to produce the language quickly and automatically at ease. teachers also need to create a positive environment for classroom communication. in brief, the teaching context in this 21st century is determined by the globalised world in which students are immersed. the demanding work conditions create a need for students to be autonomous and efficient in all areas. it is in this context where learning strategies become important to develop the students’ language ability in order for them to be self-sufficient and direct their own learning process. research methodology this section contains the research framework that has guided this study. the general objective was to identify the speaking strategies that 8th and 12th graders from public, semi-public and private schools claim to use when speaking english. by the same token, the following were the hypotheses: • 12th graders will show broader knowledge of speaking strategies than 8th graders. • the knowledge of speaking strategies will vary depending on the type of school: public, semipublic and private. as far as the definition of variables, these are presented as follows: speaking strategies: they are actions and/or procedures that students apply in order to complete an oral communicative task successfully. types of school: within the national educational system, there are three types of schools: public, semi-public and private. year group: 8th graders: group of students whose ages range from 13 to 14 and 12th graders: group of students whose ages range from 17 to 18. type of research design this is a non-experimental and correlational study (hernández, fernández & baptista, 1996). non-experimental research is a systematic and empiric research where independent variables are not manipulated due to the fact that they have already been used. the inferences about the associations among variables are to be made without any intervention or direct influence, and they can be observed as they were given in their natural context (aliaga & gunderson, 2002; cresswell, 2003; murray, 2003). subjects the subjects included for data collection purposes are fifty-four 8th year elementary school students coming from three types of schools: public, semi-public and private. instrument the instrument is a validated inventory called oral communication strategy inventory ocsi (see appendix). it was specifically designed for investigating the use of oral communicative strategies, particularly to determine the strategies 90 universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras díaz larenas used for coping with speaking and listening problems. oxford (1996) claimed that “questionnaires are among the most efficient and comprehensive ways to assess the frequency of language learning strategy use”. the inventory has been taken from the article “developing an oral communication strategy inventory” by nakatani (2006), who gave his permission to validate it and translate it into spanish so that students would not have problems understanding the inventory statements. the inventory was validated by five native english speakers and five chilean academics in order to avoid alterations and misconceptions of any kind. the inventory consists of fifty-two statements divided into two sections: strategies for coping with speaking problems and strategies for coping with listening problems. its aim is to assess the knowledge of speaking strategies while communicating. nakatani (2006) groups speaking strategies into seven different types which are described as follows: • strategy type 1: fuency-oriented strategy; this strategy is seen when students pay attention to aspects like rhythm, intonation, pronunciation and speech clarity in order to improve listeners’ attention. • strategy type 2: negotiation for meaning while speaking; this strategy is related to the speaker’s attempts to negotiate with the listener. to keep and maintain their interaction and avoid breakdowns while communicating, they both modified the message by giving examples and repeating the speech to figure out what they really wanted to say. • strategy type 3: accuracy-oriented strategy; it is associated with the desire to speak english with some accuracy. learners pay attention to the form of their speech and look for grammatical accuracy; therefore, they correct what they are saying by noticing their own mistakes. • strategy type 4: message reduction and alteration strategy; it is closely connected with the reduction and simplification of the message by using similar expressions in order to avoid breakdowns. • strategy type 5: non-verbal strategy while speaking; this strategy is directly linked to the use of body language. learners use eye contact, gestures and facial expressions to achieve communication. • strategy type 6: message abandonment strat egy; it is associated with the abandonment of the message in esl communication. learners have a tendency to give up their endeavour to communicate when they face difficulties carrying out their message. • strategy type 7: attempt to think in english strategy; this strategy is useful for learners who think in the second language during their speech. learners tend to think in english and avoid thinking in their native language. procedure the information was gathered using the closed-question inventory (oral communication strategy inventory ocsi) that had already been applied in order to conduct a research project on oral communication strategies in japan. to corroborate that the instrument could be used in a chilean context, specifically with teenagers, it was tested and piloted on 6 teenagers outside of the sample population in november, 2009. students responded to the inventory during class time taking twenty minutes to fill it in. during the administration, students could ask the inventory administrator questions about issues they did not fully understand. 91 exploring knowledge of english speaking strategies in 8th and 12th graders profile vol. 13, no. 2, october 2011. issn 1657-0790. bogotá, colombia. pages 85-98 data analysis as mentioned before, in order to collect the data, a speaking strategy inventory was applied and answered by 108 chilean students from three different school contexts. the inventory statements were arranged in a likert scale format in which students might report the frequency with which they used strategies in oral communication. the statements were expected to be answered using a scale ranging from 1 to 5: 1 being never true of me; 2, almost never true of me; 3, sometimes true of me; 4, almost always true of me and 5, always true of me. the responses were added and then divided by the number of statements giving a final average which was analysed by statgraphics centurion, which is a statistical software program for exploratory data analysis and statistical modelling. this software program allows researchers, through statistical procedures, to make deep analyses of data to manage and analyse statistic values. the discussion will be conducted based on the two research hypotheses. hypothesis 1: the knowledge of speaking strategies will vary depending on the type of school: public, semi-public and private after analysing the data through the statgraphics centurion program, a variance analysis, which is a statistical procedure to verify and measure the data, was conducted and the final results obtained. the data analysis of each subject reflects the following results which are organised according to the two variables presented in table 1. as shown in table 1, it has been observed that there is no statistically meaningful effect of the type of school variable since its value is higher than 0.05, the rank for accepting or declining the hypothesis. this means that among the public, semi-public and private schools that were analysed in this research, there is no difference in the students’ knowledge of speaking strategies. in other words, the three school realities do not necessarily lead to stronger or weaker alleged knowledge of speaking strategies. table 1. variance analysis source p-value main variables a: type of school (public, semi-public and private) 0.2043 b: year group (8th and 12th graders) 0.0147 interaction of both features (a and b) 0.2043 thus, the hypothesis that states that the claimed knowledge of speaking strategies in elementary and secondary school students will vary, depending on the type of school and given the results obtained, is declined. this observation implies that private school students do not necessarily show broader speaking strategy knowledge than those students from the public and semi-public school sectors, as might be expected. as thornbury (2005) states, a shortage of opportunities for practice is iden tified as an important contributing factor to students’ lack of speaking strategies. the fact that this hypothesis is declined may be due to several reasons that constitute an attempt to explain this hypothesis declination, namely: • regardless of the school reality, the one hundred and eight subjects are taught by local chilean teachers of english who received the same undergraduate education during their university years. the teachers’ ages reveal that when they were doing their university studies, the concept of strategy was not fully developed among educators; therefore, the strategy issue today might be a little puzzling for them. 92 universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras díaz larenas • speaking has always been regarded as a difficult language skill to teach and to learn. what is more, chilean secondary school teachers tend to focus their attention on developing reading and listening skills, as stated in the national language syllabus. • the explicit teaching of strategies does not seem to be taught in any of the school realities. • speaking activities probably take longer to be taught and assessed; that is why teachers avoid doing them with their students. the process may be complicated by a tendency to formulate the utterance first in the mother tongue and then ‘translate’ it into the foreign language, with an obvious cost in terms of speed (luoma, 2004). • secondary school students tend to focus on subjects of their curriculum that they regard as important for their professional future. english does not seem to be one of these subjects. hypothesis 2: 12th graders will show broader knowledge of speaking strategies than 8th graders since the p-value for the year group variable is below 0.05, this shows a statistically meaningful effect of the data analysis. then, the hypothesis that states that 12th graders show broader knowledge of speaking strategies than 8th year elementary students is also declined. contrary to what was expected, 8th graders show higher claimed knowledge of speaking strategies than 12th year secondary school students, regardless of the type of school. to clarify this issue further, a test that uses the statistical rank of data points (multiple ranks test) was applied and is presented in table 2, which shows that the average for 8th graders is higher than the one for 12th graders. the difference between both grades is 0.29 as it can be seen in table 3. this implies a meaningful difference between 8th and 12th year students’ alleged knowledge of speaking strategies. since 8th graders claim to have broader speaking strategy knowledge than 12th graders, it is important to find out which types of speaking strategies are mostly used by the 8th grade group, ranked below from the most to the least used strategy. table 2. multiple ranks test analysis of the year group variable grade subjects average 12th graders 54 3.25926 8th graders 54 3.55556 table 3. multiple ranks test analysis of the strategy type by 8th year elementary students strategy type average strategy type 2: negotiation for meaning while speaking 3.96296 strategy type 1: fluency-oriented strategy 3.77778 strategy type 5: non-verbal strategy while speaking 3.75926 strategy type 7: attempt to think in english strategy 3.75926 strategy type 4: message reduction and alteration strategy 3.62963 strategy type 3: accuracy-oriented strategy 3.55556 strategy type 6: message abandonment strategy 3.03704 as shown in table 3, it is observed that the most common strategy claimed to be known by the students is strategy type 2, referring to negotiation for meaning while speaking. learners claim to negotiate with the listener to keep and maintain interaction to avoid breakdowns. the second most claimed strategy to be known is strategy type 1, named as fluency-oriented strategy. learners 93 exploring knowledge of english speaking strategies in 8th and 12th graders profile vol. 13, no. 2, october 2011. issn 1657-0790. bogotá, colombia. pages 85-98 claimed to pay attention to the rhythm, intonation and pronunciation to improve their speech and avoid misunderstandings while communicating. thornbury (2005) states if speaking as a skill is dealt with, it is often dealt with only at the level of pronunciation. frequently, training and practice in the skill of interactive real-time talk, with all its attendant discourse features, is relegated to the chat stage at the beginning and end of lessons (p. 28). figure 1 highlights the most common strategies claimed to be known by 8th grade elementary school students. 0 0,5 1,0 1,5 2,0 2,5 3,0 3,5 4,0 4,5 strategy type 1 a v e r a g e strategy types strategy type 2 strategy type 3 strategy type 4 strategy type 5 strategy type 6 strategy type 7 figure 1. strategy types for 8th year elementary school students eighth graders might present a higher development of social skills, based on what the subjects claim; they are more willing to communicate using body language and paying attention to the interlocutor’s reaction toward the message. students tend to do that in order to avoid breakdowns and keep the conversation flow smooth. one set of features having an influence on what gets said in a speech event and how it is said is the social and situational context in which the talk happens (luoma, 2004). students are not afraid of explaining terms or giving examples so that they can clarify the meaning of the message. moreover, it can also be concluded that 8th graders, due to their age, are willing to communicate and eager to take risks in communicative situations. twelfth graders, on the other hand, reveal interesting data regarding speaking strategy knowledge. as seen in table 4, there is also a difference in the knowledge of 12th graders’ strategies. again, they are organized from the most common to the least frequent strategy. table 4. multiple ranks test analysis of the strategy type used by 12th year secondary students strategy type average strategy type 5: non-verbal strategy while speaking 3.98148 strategy type 2: negotiation for meaning while speaking 3.59259 strategy type 1: fluency-oriented strategy 3.44444 strategy type 4: message reduction and alteration strategy 3.31481 strategy type 7: attempt to think in english strategy 3.12963 strategy type 3: accuracy-oriented strategy 3.03704 strategy type 6: message abandonment strategy 2.98148 the most common strategy in the 12th grade group is related to strategy type 5, named as nonverbal strategy while speaking. strategy type 5 has a statistically meaningful effect on the data analysed, with a 95% confidence level. the results show that this strategy is directly linked to the use of body language and learners’ use of eye contact, gestures and facial expressions to achieve and succeed while communicating. the second most common strategy refers to negotiation for meaning while speaking, which appears to be the same second most common strategy among 8th graders. figure 2 highlights the most common strategies claimed to be known by 12th grade elementary school students. 94 universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras díaz larenas figure 2. analysis of strategy types by 12th graders thornbury (2005) states that when students are learning a language, most of the time they lack confidence, so, in order to avoid embarrassment they might tend to use body language to express what they want to say. they might prefer to look or appear confident rather than ignorant in a foreign language. hedge (2000) affirms that teachers need to build confidence in their students so they will be able to achieve and produce the language automatically. besides, this will help them to create a positive environment for classroom communication. another reason for 12th graders choice of strategy 5 as the most common might be that nonverbal communication is a kind of language among the chilean culture, so everybody understands the use of gestures to explain what is being said. a third reason might be that non-verbal communication contributes to keep the flow of a conversation going (luoma, 2004). hedge (2000) also points out that one of the things a conversation implies is that the topic must follow smoothly; therefore, it is thought that students might use this strategy to make the conversation pleasant. using the multiple ranks test to identify the contrasting difference between both year groups, a comparative analysis is presented in table 5. as shown in table 5, strategy types 1, 2, 3, 4, and 7 for 8th graders score higher than those types for 12th graders. strategy type 2 stands out in the 8th year group, while strategy type 5 stands out in the 12th year group. strategy type 6 scores the same in both groups. comparative figure 3 contrasts both year groups’ knowledge of speaking strategies and allows one to conclude that 8th year elementary students seem to have broader knowledge of speaking strategies than 12th year secondary students, based on what the subjects claim. 0 0,5 1,0 1,5 2,0 2,5 3,0 3,5 4,0 4,5 strategy type 1 a v e r a g e strategy types strategy type 2 strategy type 3 strategy type 4 strategy type 5 strategy type 6 strategy type 7 table 5. multiple ranks test analysis of the strategy types for 8th and 12th graders year groups strategy type 1 strategy type 2 strategy type 3 strategy type 4 strategy type 5 strategy type 6 strategy type 7 12th graders 3.4 3.6 3.0 3.3 4.0 3.0 3.1 8th graders 3.8 4.0 3.6 3.6 3.8 3.0 3.8 0 0,5 1,0 1,5 2,0 2,5 3,0 3,5 4,0 4,5 strategy type 1 strategy type 2 strategy type 3 12th secondary school students 8th secondary school students strategy type 4 strategy type 5 strategy type 6 strategy type 7 figure 3. comparative analysis of strategy types 95 exploring knowledge of english speaking strategies in 8th and 12th graders profile vol. 13, no. 2, october 2011. issn 1657-0790. bogotá, colombia. pages 85-98 conclusions chilean english language policy does not stress oral production as a main skill in the official plans and programs; on the contrary, the language curriculum emphasises the development of reading and listening, leaving speaking and writing as secondary skills, at least from the perspective of teachers. as teachers of english try to fill in this ‘speaking gap’ in the curriculum, it is an important task for them to try and find out what speaking strategies are known by students. in this sense, conducting a needs analysis could possibly be a way in which teachers can find out more about the speaking needs of their students. it is always helpful to find out about students’ motivation, their prior learning experiences, the situations they are likely to use english in and which skills/language items they need extra practice with. the conclusions show that there was no difference among the types of school in terms of their claimed speaking strategy knowledge. this could be explained because the chilean english teachers who teach the subjects of this research share a similar academic formation that leads to the assumption that the methodology and strategies used and not used inside the classroom might be similar. in this respect, the explicit teaching of oral strategies might not be a common practice among the subjects. it could also have been assumed that secondary school students would use more speaking strategies since they have had more time to expand their language competence. it seems obvious that the longer you spend learning a language, the better at it one becomes. however, after analysing the data from the inventory, it surprisingly appeared that 8th graders claim to know more about speaking strategies than 12th graders while communicating in english. one reason that might explain this is that 8th graders seem to be more motivated towards language learning; therefore, they are more willing to orally communicate and express their thoughts, feelings and opinions in english. another possible reason is that chilean 12th graders focus their attention on courses that for them would facilitate their continuity in higher education. they are actually aiming at passing the university entrance exam that would allow them to study the profession they like best. english is not a subject matter that is assessed in the university entrance exam. finally, it might be concluded that the importance of knowing speaking strategies can be regarded as a significant issue for improving students’ oral communication skill. therefore, teachers should take the responsibility of promoting the acknowledgment of speaking strategies in oral communication, reinforcing oral tasks and classroom oral interaction. furthermore, the chilean language policy that intends to foster oral communicative skills among students would not be completely successful if speaking was not directly emphasised and reinforced inside the classroom. it is here where the explicit teaching of speaking strategies as well as the exposure of students to activities that aim at practicing and developing oral communication are crucial issues. references aliaga, m. & gunderson, b. (2002). interactive statistics. new jersey: prentice hall. brown, d. (2007). teaching by principles. new york, ny: pearson education, inc. brown, d. (2001). principles of language learning teaching. new york, ny: longman. buck, g. (1992). listening comprehension: construct validity and trait characteristics. language learning, 42(3), 313-357. 96 universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras díaz larenas bygate, m. (1987). speaking: a scheme for teacher education. oxford: oxford university press. celce-murcia, m. (2001). teaching english as a second or foreign language. boston: heinle & heinle. creswell, j. (2003). research design. qualitative, quantita­ tive and mixed methods and approaches. london: sage publications. crookes, g. (2003). a practicum in tesol. professional development through teaching practice. cambridge: cambridge language education. harmer, j. (2001). the practice of english language. london: longman. hedge, t. (2000). teaching and learning in the language classroom. new york, ny: oxford university press. hernández, s., fernández, c., & baptista, p. (1996). metodología de la investigación. ciudad de méxico: mcgraw-hill interamenricana de méxico. johnson, k. (2001). an introduction to foreign language learning and teaching. england: pearson. larsen-freeman, d. (2000). techniques and principles in language teaching. oxford: oxford university press. luoma, s. (2004). assessing speaking. cambridge: cambridge university press. macaro, e. (2003). teaching and learning a second language: a guide to recent research and its applications. new york, ny: continuum. mckay, s. (2003). teaching english as a foreign language: the chilean context. elt journal, 57(2), 139-148. muchmore, j. (2004). a teacher’s life. san francisco: backalong books. murray, r. (2003). blending qualitative and quantitative research methods in theses and dissertations. california: corwin press, inc. nakatani, y. (2006). developing an oral communication strategy inventory. the modern language journal, 90(2), 151-168. retrieved from www.fltrp.com/ download/07062706.pdf osada, n. (2004). listening comprehension research: a brief review of the past thirty years. dialogue, 3, 53-66. retrieved from www.talk-waseda.net/ dialogue/no03_ 2004/2004dialogue03_k4.pdf oxford, r. (1996). employing a questionnaire to assess the use of language learning strategies. applied language learning, 7, 25-45. oxford, r. (1992). language learning strategies: what every teacher should know. boston: heinle & heinle publishers. richards, j. (2005). communicative language teaching today. retrieved from www.cambridge.com.mx/site/extras/ jack-cd.pdf thornbury, s. (2005). how to teach speaking. edinburgh: pearson education limited. about the author claudio díaz larenas holds a phd in education and master of arts in linguistics. he teaches english language, discourse analysis and efl methodology and assessment at universidad de concepción. he has also researched in the field of teacher cognition and language assessment. acknowledgements acknowledgements are due to the following practitioners for their hard work in this research: óscar campos rodríguez, patricia neira fierro, carolina ramos fuentes, angela retamal vera and carolina rojas cruz. 97 exploring knowledge of english speaking strategies in 8th and 12th graders profile vol. 13, no. 2, october 2011. issn 1657-0790. bogotá, colombia. pages 85-98 appendix: oral communication strategy inventory (ocsi) (based on nakatani, 2006) please read the following items. choose a response and write it in the space after each item. 1. never or almost never true of me 2. generally not true of me 3. somewhat true of me 4. generally true of me 5. always or almost true of me strategies for coping with speaking problems 1. i think first of what i want to say in my native language and then construct the english sentence. 2. i think first of a sentence i already know in english and then try to change it to fit the situation. 3. i use words which are familiar to me. 4. i reduce the message and use simple expressions. 5. i replace the original message with another message because of feeling incapable of executing my original intent. 6. i abandon the execution of a verbal plan and just say some words when i don’t know what to say. 7. i pay attention to grammar and word order during conversation. 8. i try to emphasize the subject and verb of the sentence. 9. i change my way of saying things according to the context. 10. i take my time to express what i want to say. 11. i pay attention to my pronunciation. 12. i try to speak clearly and loudly to make myself heard. 13. i pay attention to my rhythm and intonation. 14. i pay attention to the flow of conversation. 15. i try to make eye contact when i am talking. 16. i use gestures and facial expressions if i can’t communicate how to express myself. 17. i correct myself when i notice that i have made a mistake. 18. i notice myself using an expression which fits a rule that i have learned. 19. while speaking, i pay attention to the listener’s reaction to my speech. 20. i give examples if the listener doesn’t understand what i am saying. 21. i repeat what i want to say until the listener understands. 22. i make comprehension checks to ensure the listener understands what i want to say. 23. i try to use fillers when i cannot think of what to say. 24. i leave a message unfinished because of some language difficulty. 25. i try to make a good impression on the listener. 26. i don’t mind taking risks even though i might make mistakes. 27. i try to enjoy the conversation. 28. i try to relax when i feel anxious. 98 universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras díaz larenas 29. i actively encourage myself to express what i want to say. 30. i try to talk like a native speaker. strategies for coping with listening problems 1. i pay attention to the first word to judge whether it is an interrogative sentence or not. 2. i try to catch every word that the speaker uses. 3. i guess the speaker’s intention by picking up familiar words. 4. i pay attention to the words which the speaker slows down or emphasizes. 5. i pay attention to the first part of the sentence and guess the speaker’s intention. 6. i try to respond to the speaker even when i don’t understand him/her perfectly. 7. i guess the speaker’s intention based on what he/she has said so far. 8. i don’t mind if i can’t understand every single detail. 9. i anticipate what the speaker is going to say based on the context. 10. i ask the speaker to give an example when i am not sure what he/she said. 11. i try to translate into native language little by little to understand what the speaker has said. 12. i try to catch the speaker’s main point. 13. i pay attention to the speaker’s rhythm and intonation. 14. i send continuation signals to show my understanding in order to avoid communication gaps. 15. i use circumlocution to react the speaker’s utterance when i don’t understand his/her intention well. 16. i pay attention to the speaker’s pronunciation. 17. i use gestures when i have difficulties understanding. 18. i pay attention to the speaker’s eye contact, facial expression and gestures. 19. i ask the speaker to slow down when i can’t understand what s/he has said. 20. i ask the speaker to use easy words when i have difficulties comprehending. 21. i make a clarification request when i am not sure what the speaker has said. 22. i ask for repetition when i can’t understand what the speaker has said. 23. i make it clear to the speaker that i haven’t been able to understand. 24. i only focus on familiar expressions. 25. i especially pay attention to the interrogative when i listen to wh-questions. 26. i pay attention to the subject and verb of the sentence when listening. 225profile vol. 15, no. 2, october 2013. issn 1657-0790 (printed) 2256-5760 (online). bogotá, colombia. pages 225-228 accumulative index of published articles in profile vol. 15 (2013) number pages articles 1 97-108 abad, j. v. “pedagogical factors that influence efl teaching: some considerations for teachers’ professional development” [“factores pedagógicos que influyen en la enseñanza del inglés como lengua extranjera: algunas consideraciones para el desarrollo profesional de docentes”] 2 165-183 areiza restrepo, h. n. “role of systematic formative assessment on students’ views of their learning” [“el papel de la evaluación formativa en las percepciones de los estudiantes sobre su aprendizaje”] 2 69-84 báez dueñas, l. t., & chacón vargas, l. m. “student-teachers’ teaching techniques: actors in pupils’ extrinsic motivation as they speak” [“técnicas de enseñanza de los docentes practicantes: actores en la motivación extrínseca de los estudiantes a la hora de hablar”] 1 139-169 bautista barón, m. j. “building esp content-based materials to promote strategic reading” [“diseño de materiales basados en contenidos para fomentar estrategias de lectura en un curso de inglés con propósitos específicos”] 2 11-33 becerra cortés, x. “using the dictionary for improving adolescents’ reading comprehension of short scientific texts” [“uso del diccionario para mejorar la comprensión lectora de textos científicos cortos en inglés con adolescentes”] 1 7-10 cárdenas b., m. l. “editorial” [“editorial”] 2 7-9 cárdenas b., m. l. “editorial” [“editorial”] 1 195-206 castellanos jaimes, j. “the role of english pre-service teachers’ beliefs about teaching in teacher education programs” [“el papel de las creencias de los profesores de inglés en formación sobre la enseñanza en los programas de formación docente”] universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras226 2 127-147 chala bejarano, p. a., & chapetón, c. m. “the role of genre-based activities in the writing of argumentative essays in efl” [“el papel de actividades basadas en géneros en la escritura de ensayos argumentativos en inglés como lengua extranjera”] 1 61-80 chaves, o., & hernández, f. “efl teaching methodological practices in cali” [“prácticas metodológicas en la enseñanza de inglés como lengua extranjera en la ciudad de cali”] 2 149-163 correa pérez, r., martínez fuentealba, m., molina de la barra, m., silva rojas, j., & torres cisternas, m. “the impact of explicit feedback on efl high school students engaged in writing tasks” [“el impacto de la retroalimentación explícita en tareas de escritura en lengua inglesa de estudiantes de secundaria”] 1 81-95 cota grijalva, s. d., & ruiz-esparza barajas, e. “pre-service teachers’ beliefs about language teaching and learning: a longitudinal study” [“creencias de profesores principiantes acerca de la enseñanza y aprendizaje de lengua: un estudio longitudinal”] 2 215-224 cruz corzo, c. “formal grammar instruction: theoretical aspects to contemplate its teaching” [“instrucción formal de la gramática: aspectos teóricos para considerar su enseñanza”] 2 85-97 díaz larenas, c., alarcón hernández, p., vásquez neira, a., pradel suárez, b., & ortiz navarrete, m. “beliefs of chilean university english teachers: uncovering their role in the teaching and learning process” [“creencias de profesores universitarios de inglés: descubriendo su papel en el proceso de enseñanza y aprendizaje”] 2 35-47 durán narváez, n. c., lastra ramírez, s. p., & morales vasco, a. m. “autobiographies: a way to explore student-teachers’ beliefs in a teacher education program” [“autobiografías: una forma de explorar las creencias de docentes en formación en un programa de licenciatura en inglés”] 227profile vol. 15, no. 2, october 2013. issn 1657-0790 (printed) 2256-5760 (online). bogotá, colombia. pages 225-228 1 45-60 escobar alméciga, w. y. “identity-forming discourses: a critical discourse analysis on policy making processes concerning english language teaching in colombia” [“discursos que forjan identidades: un análisis crítico de discursos en la formulación de políticas sobre la enseñanza del inglés en colombia”] 1 207-221 espitia cruz, m. i., & kwinta, a. “‘buddy system’: a pedagogical innovation to promote online interaction” [“sistema de amigos: una innovación pedagógica para fomentar la interacción en línea”] 2 199-214 hernández-ocampo, s. p., & vargas, m. c. “encouraging students to enhance their listening performance” [“cómo animar a los estudiantes para que mejoren su desempeño en comprensión oral por sí mismos”] 2 115-126 lopera medina, s. “diary insights of an efl reading teacher” [“apreciaciones de un profesor de lectura en lengua inglesa escritas en un diario de clase”] 2 99-114 macías, d. f. “an exploration of efl teachers’ awareness of the sources of pedagogical knowledge in a teacher education program” [“una exploración del nivel de conciencia de docentes de inglés como lengua extranjera respecto a las fuentes del conocimiento pedagógico en un programa de formación de docentes”] 1 109-124 méndez lópez, m. g., & peña aguilar, a. “emotions as learning enhancers of foreign language learning motivation” [“las emociones como potenciadoras de la motivación en el aprendizaje de una lengua extranjera”] 2 49-67 olaya, a., & gómez rodríguez, l. f. “exploring efl pre-service teachers’ experience with cultural content and intercultural communicative competence at three colombian universities” [“indagación sobre la experiencia con el contenido cultural y la competencia comunicativa intercultural de docentes de inglés en formación, en tres universidades colombianas”] universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras228 1 125-138 pasupathi, m. “analyzing the effect of technology-based intervention in language laboratory to improve listening skills of first year engineering students” [“el uso de la tecnología en el laboratorio de idiomas para el mejoramiento de las habilidades de escucha de estudiantes de ingeniería de primer año”] 1 171-193 rativa murillo, h. a. “adapting features from the siop component: lesson delivery to english lessons in a colombian public school” [“adaptación de las características del componente de siop: desarrollo de clase, en las clases de inglés en un colegio público colombiano”] 2 185-197 rivas rivas, l. “returnees’ identity construction at a ba tesol program in mexico” [“construcción de identidad de retornados en un pregrado en enseñanza del inglés para hablantes de otras lenguas en méxico”] 1 27-43 valencia, m. “language policy and the manufacturing of consent for foreign intervention in colombia” [“la política lingüística y la fabricación del consentimiento para la intervención extranjera en colombia”] 1 11-25 yate gonzález, y. y., saenz, l. f., bermeo, j. a., & castañeda chaves, a. f. “the role of collaborative work in the development of elementary students’ writing skills” [“el papel del trabajo colaborativo en el desarrollo de las habilidades de escritura de estudiantes de primaria”] 67profile vol. 16, no. 2, october 2014. issn 1657-0790 (printed) 2256-5760 (online). bogotá, colombia. pages 67-85 building up autonomy through reading strategies formación en autonomía a través de estrategias de lectura alexander izquierdo castillo1* i.e.d. bicentenario, bogotá, colombia sonia jiménez bonilla2** universidad de la sabana, bogotá, colombia this article reports on an action research project conducted with six ninth grade students in a rural public school in colombia. the purpose of the study was to determine how the implementation of three reading strategies (skimming, scanning, and making predictions), when reading topics selected by learners, helps them to improve their reading comprehension and promotes their autonomy in the learning process. the results show that these learners developed some autonomous features such as making decisions for learning and doing assigned homework, increasing reading awareness and motivation. additionally, the training on reading strategies allowed them to succeed in their reading comprehension. we conclude that these reading strategies are tools that take learners along the path of autonomy. key words: autonomy, motivation, reading, reading strategies. en este artículo se reportan los resultados de un proyecto de investigación-acción llevado a cabo con seis estudiantes de noveno grado en un colegio público rural. el propósito fue determinar el impacto de tres estrategias de lectura en inglés (identificar información específica, entender la idea principal y hacer predicciones) en la promoción de la autonomía y la compresión lectora. los resultados evidenciaron que los estudiantes adquirieron algunos rasgos de autonomía, tales como tomar decisiones para aprender y hacer sus tareas asignadas, ser más conscientes de su proceso de lectura y estar más motivados para el aprendizaje. así mismo, la capacitación referente a las estrategias de lectura les permitió mejorar su comprensión lectora. se puede concluir que estas estrategias son herramientas que le sirven al estudiante para su formación en autonomía. palabras clave: autonomía, estrategias de lectura en inglés, lectura, motivación. * e-mail: alexizquierdo1@hotmail.com ** e-mail: maria.jimenez@unisabana.edu.co how to cite this article (apa, 6th ed.): izquierdo castillo, a., & jiménez bonilla, s. (2014). building up autonomy through reading strategies. profile issues in teachers’ professional development, 16(2), 67-85. http://dx.doi.org/10.15446/profile.v16n2.39904. this article was received on september 15, 2013, and accepted on march 29, 2014. this is an open access article distributed under the terms of the creative commons license attribution-noncommercial-noderivatives 4.0 international license. consultation is possible at http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/. universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras68 izquierdo castillo & jiménez bonilla introduction this article reports the results of an action research project conducted with six ninth grade students in a rural public school in gachetá, cundinamarca, colombia. the project aims at determining how the development of three reading strategies (skimming, scanning, and making predictions), when reading topics selected by learners, helps them to improve their reading comprehension and promotes their autonomy in the learning process. reading is one of the most vital skills that a person can acquire in his or her life because it is an interactive process which allows the reader to access information about the latest achievements of science and technology and transform it into knowledge. reading in english will help the learner to get updated and in contact with knowledge regarding many issues such as agriculture, culture, economics, politics, tourism, and telecommunications. moreover, reading in english is essential because people depend on the internet for information. an important aspect when dealing with english in colombia is that students in state and private schools must take the saber pro exam in the eleventh grade in order to access higher education and the english component of this exam is based mainly on reading comprehension. however, we noticed that the students in our target group faced a variety of difficulties while reading in english. even though they were expected to understand the main idea, make predictions, and identify specific information in a text, they could not do it. this was mainly due to the fact that they did not apply any strategy while reading in english and their reading skills were elementary. consequently, we considered it useful to give them practice that helps them to develop three reading strategies (scanning, skimming, and making predictions) that can promote autonomy. in addition, the learners were asked to select topics of their interest before we implemented the training program. the main purpose was to help them become effective and efficient readers as well as autonomous learners in terms of making decisions about their learning. with well-developed reading skills, learners would be expected to make greater progress and accomplish better results in their academic subjects. another important aspect to highlight regarding reading is its social dimension because reading operates in a social context. wentzel (1996) supports this idea when reflecting on the importance of the social aspects of reading. her position focuses on the fact that learners read for social reasons because they construct and share the meanings gleaned from reading with friends and family. by doing this, students in rural settings are able to learn by themselves, particularly by checking information about their work in the countryside. for instance, they can find new ways of managing and operating the farms for more effective cattle raising strategies, how to process and grow agricultural products like coffee, bananas, sugar cane, blackberries, and pineapple. thus, applying these reading strategies will better help them to read effectively in english in order to broaden their perspectives about their quality of life; for example, to become better farmers, housewives, and merchants in the future because they will be able to read and keep updated about their environment and their living conditions. theoretical framework this study is based on the following theoretical constructs: autonomy, motivation, reading, and reading strategies. autonomy autonomy is a relevant issue nowadays because we live in a society which is constantly changing day 69profile vol. 16, no. 2, october 2014. issn 1657-0790 (printed) 2256-5760 (online). bogotá, colombia. pages 67-85 building up autonomy through reading strategies by day. therefore, education must deal with those challenges it brings, which means that educators must provide learners with the appropriate strategies to be proactive. autonomy has become a key issue in today’s world, particularly because it offers learners the possibility of modifying and transforming their lives according to their needs. as a consequence, it is advisable that learners become aware of those new challenges that society presents and to be able to make their own decisions in their learning process. they must have the tools and skills to become responsible for their own duties by taking control of the process and finding the motivation to succeed. the aforementioned features of autonomy will empower them to integrate themselves successfully in any context. little (1991) supports this idea when reflecting on the importance of autonomy, defining it as the capacity to reflect critically, to make decisions, and to act independently. autonomy refers to the way the learner transfers what he/she has learned to different contexts. furthermore, holec (1981) states that individuals must develop the abilities that society demands, and those abilities enable them to take more responsibility in solving the new challenges of the society they live in. reflecting on the same issue, dickinson (1995) highlights that autonomy is an attitude toward learning in which students are equipped to take responsibility for their learning. also, dickinson (1995) states that there is a link between autonomy and motivation due to the fact “that learning success and enhanced motivation are conditional upon learners taking responsibility for their own learning, being able to control their own learning and perceiving that their learning success or failure are to be attributed to their own efforts and strategies rather than to factors outside their control” (pp. 173-174). consequently, dickin son outlines that motivation is a condition for learners to become autonomous learners. motivation we viewed motivation as a key factor to undertake a reading process, especially since our target group was particularly unmotivated to read and carry out their homework. the latter was considered a key point in this context since the learners had only two hours a week of class and homework allows them to practice and build up autonomy. we believed that the promotion of reading strategies as well as giving learners the opportunity to select reading topics by themselves would provide the motivation they needed to carry out the reading process in a meaningful way. authors have stated that reading challenges can be overcome more easily if students are highly motivated to read. as guilloteaux and dörnyei (2008) note: motivation provides the primary impetus to initiate second or foreign language learning and later the driving force to sustain the long and often tedious learning process. without sufficient motivation, individuals with the most remarkable abilities cannot accomplish long term goals. also, appropriate curricula and good teaching are not enough on their own to ensure student achievement. (pp. 55-56) similarly, guthrie, wigfield, metsala, and cox (1999) carried out two studies to explore the relationship between reading and motivation. they found that motivation had a major impact on reading comprehension, providing the best single explanation for reading performance. motivation was also the strongest single factor predicting the amount of reading done by students (guthrie et al., 1999). reading reading is an interactive process in which the reader gives sense and meaning to the issues he or she gets in touch with. alderson (2000) defines reading as a “process of interaction between a reader and the text” (p. 3). in the same spirit, nunan (1999) states that reading is an interactive universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras70 izquierdo castillo & jiménez bonilla process that involves the exploitation of linguistic knowledge (sound, symbol correspondences, grammatical knowledge) and real-world (content) knowledge. he outlines that skilled readers have a range of strategies at their disposal and select those strategies that match the purposes for which they are reading. nuttall (1996) states that reading is the process of “getting out of the text as nearly as possible the message the writer put into it” (p. 4). likewise, she states that effective reading involves “word attack,” “sentence attack,” and “text attack” skills. to her, reading involves not only looking at sentences and words and going through them at random but also recognizing and understanding them intellectually. this helps students to pick up new words, syntax, and writing styles. jiménez (2000) defines reading as “the learners’ ability to interpret or work out the meaning of a written text and react towards it as a result” (p. 10). this means that comprehension is involved in this process. her main concern is the development or improvement of this ability through the teaching and practice of reading strategies in the context of english as a foreign language (efl). ríos and valcárcel (2005) state that reading is an individual process which develops self-study habits. also, they think that reading is a good resource to have students become conscious of their own learning processes, particularly using reading strategies such as making predictions, skimming, scanning, extensive reading, and intensive reading. reading strategies carrell (1989) states that “reading strategies are of interest to many researchers as they show how readers interact with the written material and in what way they are associated with text comprehension” (p. 121). likewise, cantrell and carter (2009) state that reading strategies help educators to instruct effectively less proficient readers in their reading comprehension. the three reading strategies used in this research were selected because they were basic for our learners to improve their ability to understand and process text. they are defined as follows: • scanning has to do with looking for “specific information, for example, the relevant times on a timetable, items in a directory, or key points in an academic text” (hedge, 2003, p. 195). williams (1996) states that “scanning is reading for particular points of information. it is a selective reading, and its purpose is to achieve very specific reading goals” (p. 107). • skimming deals with getting main ideas of the text without reading every single word. an example could be previewing a newspaper “by reading rapidly, skipping large chunks of information, and focusing on headings and first lines of paragraphs” (hedge, 2003, p. 195). nuttall (1996) defines skimming as: glancing rapidly through a text to determine its gist, for example in order to decide whether a research paper is relevant to our own work . . . or to keep ourselves superficially informed about matters that are not of great importance to us. (p. 49) • making predictions has to do with making assumptions regarding what the text is about based on the title, images, pictures, or charts and then reading to confirm expectations. training learners in the use of this skill will ensure their active involvement and make reading easier to practice (nuttall, 1982). method we think that reading strategies are a useful tool to foster learners’ reading proficiency and autonomy. by using this tool, learners will gain 71profile vol. 16, no. 2, october 2014. issn 1657-0790 (printed) 2256-5760 (online). bogotá, colombia. pages 67-85 building up autonomy through reading strategies meaningful insights about how to make decisions for learning and develop awareness about effective reading, motivation, and responsibility for their own tasks. we allowed the students to select the topics they wanted to read about in order to engage them in the reading process. we used qualitative action research because we carried out a pedagogical intervention to solve a problematic situation which we identified through observation of our context. likewise, in this study we had to analyze the specific situation of the classroom and collect data systematically on our everyday practices and analyze the data in order to identify the problem and make decisions to improve our future teaching practices (wallace, 2002). we were interested in describing and theorizing about our students’ reading strategies, particularly developing scanning, skimming, and making predictions. therefore, learners were expected to take some significant responsibility for their own learning, responding to instructions and, particularly, being expected to improve their reading comprehension and promote some features of autonomy such as making decisions for learning and setting up goals when reading about topics selected by them. this action research project was set to answer the following research question: to what extent does the implementation of three reading strategies (scanning, skimming, and making predictions), when reading about topics selected by learners, promote autonomy? by answering the research question the researchers aimed to accomplish the objectives described below. research objectives general objective to determine how the implementation of three reading strategies (scanning, skimming, and making predictions) promotes autonomy in reading when reading about topics selected by learners. specific objective to analyze the effects of student training in the three reading strategies (scanning, skimming, and making predictions) on students’ reading skills when reading topics selected by them. context and participants this study was carried out with a group of six students in ninth grade in a small rural agricultural public school where one of the researchers taught english. there were three girls and three boys aged 14 and 15 years old. these students come from a low socioeconomic background and belong to farming families. the learners’ parents never had the opportunity to go to school, so they cannot read and write. they believe that the farming chores are more important than studying, so learners must help them with the farming duties, particularly milking cows, feeding chickens, cows, horses, cooking the food, cutting grass, and felling trees. additionally, none of the learners had a computer at home or any other resources such books or dictionaries plus they had to make a big effort to go to school by walking long distances. the learners’ english level was elementary because they only had the opportunity to learn it at school. they were particularly strong at writing, but they had serious difficulties with reading comprehension. ethical considerations participants in this study were volunteers. the main objectives and the activities were explained to them, to their parents, and the school principal through consent letters. the letters were in spanish in order to avoid misunderstanding and the parents, the group of learners, and the universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras72 izquierdo castillo & jiménez bonilla school principal understood each detail of the research project. the participants were told about the implications, benefits, and impact that the research project could have on their academic development. data collection a training program to promote reading strategies was implemented and data were collected from different sources as described below: a. a students’ pre-implementation, selfassessment checklist to compare with a similar instrument at the end of the implementation to see if the reading strategies have fostered autonomy and to analyze the effects of reading strategies training on students’ reading skills (see appendix a). b. three questionnaires (one for scanning, one for skimming, and one for making predictions) in order to check if learners have improved their reading skills and have developed autonomy. these questionnaires were used at the end of the implementation of each reading strategy (see appendix b). c. a post-lesson self-evaluation for the teachers in order to see what went well, what did not go so well, what were the lesson objectives, and if the reading strategies had been useful in fostering autonomy. d. a students’ post-implementation, selfassessment checklist to see if learners have developed better insights about autonomy in relation to the use of the three reading strategies and also to see if those strategies helped them to improve their reading skills (see appendix c). e. a reading achievement test: this test was necessary to know if learners had improved the process of using reading strategies to foster reading for main ideas and for specific information in a text. the test was administered at the end of the study. validity and reliability the information elicited from the five instruments was triangulated to find out if students had improved their autonomy and reading skills through the strategy training program. the focus and amount of data obtained allowed us to determine whether or not the research question had been solved. in order to reach reliability, all the data were consistently and systematically placed in categories and subcategories. likewise, we went along this research project through a number of “checkpoints” to make the research project valid. we had regular meetings to discuss how the project was going on following the “checkpoints.” they included the following questions (burns, 2010, pp. 130-131): 1. is the focus of the research the right one? 2. is the activity or strategy i am using to change the situation pedagogically sound? is it of benefit to my students? 3. do i need to go back and review my research questions? do i need new questions? 4. am i getting as rounded a picture as possible? or am i relying on just one source of information that could be biasing what i find? 5. am i being objective? am i seeing things in the data as they really are, rather than how i want to see them? 6. are there other people i can collaborate with or consult who might shed new light on my data analysis? 7. am i giving enough time to examining the data? am i too hasty in drawing conclusions without seeing the deeper meanings of the data? 8. am i coming to conclusions on the basis of too little evidence? am i finding enough support in my data for the claims i am making? 9. am i claiming too much about the results of the changes i made? am i suggesting that my conclusions apply beyond my classroom? 73profile vol. 16, no. 2, october 2014. issn 1657-0790 (printed) 2256-5760 (online). bogotá, colombia. pages 67-85 building up autonomy through reading strategies pedagogical design the main objectives of the strategy training program for this project were as follows: 1. helping the learners to learn how to use the three reading strategies (skimming, scanning, and making predictions) to foster autonomy when reading topics selected by them. 2. helping the learners to learn how to improve reading comprehension through the use of the three reading strategies implemented in the project. in this sense, we were facilitators by providing our learners guidance and reading strategies input to enable them to develop autonomy towards reading. the program integrated 11 sessions of two hours each, which were developed with the learners from february to may, 2012. appendix d describes in detail the steps and processes that were followed in order to carry out the implementation of the project. the program was organized based on williams (1996), who suggests that for the effective teaching of reading in the classroom, the lesson should be divided into three consecutive phases: pre-reading, while-reading and post-reading. the first phase, according to williams, “aims to introduce and raise interest in the topic, to motivate learners by giving them a reason for reading and to provide some language preparation for the text” (p. 37). therefore, in this phase we provided our learners with the opportunity to explore ideas, knowledge, and personal experiences regarding the readings. this stage is important to activate schemata and to prepare students for reading. the second phase, while-reading, is the most active stage. according to williams, it enables the students to understand the writer’s purpose, the text structure and to clarify text content. in the post-reading stage, the teacher may ask the students about their reaction to the text. for example, the students may answer whether they have liked and enjoyed it, or found it useful or not. this stage is also important since it is supposed to evaluate and examine the output and feedback from the students. in addition to that, the post-reading phase enables the students, according to williams (1996), “to consolidate or reflect upon what has been read and to relate the text to the learners’ own knowledge, interest, experience or views” (p. 39). data analysis and findings for the analysis of the data gathered during the implementation, the researchers used the grounded theory approach, which allowed them to generate, build, and interpret the findings following open coding, axial coding, and selective coding. open coding, according to stern and porr (2010), “involves breaking up data into segments, and then collapsing them into one or more conceptual categories” (p. 64). axial coding, following cohen, manion, and morrison (2007), “is understood as the stage to link categories and codes” (p. 493). selective coding, based on cohen et al. (2007), is the stage to establish a core code and to clarify connections between the core codes and other codes. after exploring the data gathered and applying the coding strategy to reduce the quantity of information collected with the instruments, two categories and three subcategories related with the research question emerged (table 1). table 1. categories and subcategories category subcategories fostering autonomy through the use of reading strategies decision making for learning and doing assigned homework increasing reading awareness promoting motivation improving reading performance universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras74 izquierdo castillo & jiménez bonilla fostering autonomy through the use of reading strategies data taken from the students’ pre-implementation checklist, the three questionnaires (one questionnaire for each strategy), the post-lesson/ self-evaluation report, and the students’ postimplementation checklist supported the fact that most students increased their autonomy, principally by making decisions for learning and doing assigned homework, increasing awareness of the reading process, increasing motivation, and improving their reading skills by using the three reading strategies (scanning, skimming, and making predictions). decision making for learning and doing assigned homework after the researchers implemented the initial questionnaires and activities, the learners started expressing their interest in learning the target language. they carried out their reading comprehension tasks using the three reading strategies proposed by the teacher and, through those tasks, learned to make decisions about their reading process autonomously. they started taking initiative in order to approach specific activities, such as finding out the meaning of unknown words, locating specific information in a text, finding main ideas in a passage, and relating the content of the reading to their own schemata. by doing this, they felt empowered to carry out their assigned homework on their own and to transfer those strategies to reading effectively in spanish about other subjects. these features of autonomy led them to be less dependent on the teacher and more focused on their reading tasks. excerpt 1 demonstrates the process the students followed in order to develop the three reading strategies for fostering autonomy. excerpt 1 teacher:1 do you do your activities or tasks with responsibility, interest, and commitment? yes or no? why?) student a: yes, because responsibility is essential to become an independent and successful learner. student b: yes, because it is a responsibility which has been given to us and we must carry it out. student c: yes, because it is important to do our tasks to learn more into the future. student f: yes, because if we do not do the tasks, we will not learn, practice helps us to learn. (questionnaire on scanning) little (1991) mentions that when defining autonomy, one must take into consideration some aspects such as the capacity learners have to work on their own, their responsibility, and their ability to make decisions for learning. after students practiced the use of the three reading strategies, they realized the usefulness of these strategies to aid in making their own decisions in their learning process, developing responsibility and commitment. decision making for learning and doing assigned homework was identified by the researchers as a key finding due to the fact that learners started acquiring more determination and initiative towards reading, and there was more enthusiasm when they used the strategies taught in class. as a result, they were more committed to doing their homework: excerpt 2 at the beginning of the reading process, learners were worried about the use of the reading strategies. after training in their use, learners felt with more initiative and open-minded for reading; they followed instructions carefully for the development of 1 all the samples taken from the students as well as all the instruments have been translated from spanish into english to enable full understanding of the findings of the study and for purposes of publication. 75profile vol. 16, no. 2, october 2014. issn 1657-0790 (printed) 2256-5760 (online). bogotá, colombia. pages 67-85 building up autonomy through reading strategies skimming strategy. likewise, they could participate more actively in class. (post-lesson self-evaluation report, skimming) increasing reading awareness the second subcategory came up as another way in which learners developed their autonomy. during the process of the implementation of the three reading strategies, learners became more conscious of their reading process through the use of the strategies taught. as a result, they were more open-minded and reflective regarding how to use and apply the reading strategies to promote their autonomy. after the implementation of the strategies, all the students agreed that their process was better when using reading strategies. as mentioned in the theoretical framework, dickinson (1995) states that autonomy is an attitude toward learning in which students are prepared to take responsibility for their learning; therefore, having this responsibility toward learning increases their awareness of their learning process. this was done through the students’ training in the use of the reading strategies. excerpt 3 demonstrates the importance given by learners to their reading process, particularly increasing awareness about the use of the reading strategies to foster autonomy. excerpt 3 teacher: do you think that the skimming strategy implemented in class is useful for you to use in other contexts? yes or no? why? student a: yes, i have put it into practice in the other subjects, and i have seen better outcomes. student b: yes, because i am more conscious about how this strategy works in other subjects. student d: yes, this strategy is useful for me use in other subjects to find the correct answer. (questionnaire on skimming) promoting motivation motivation was fostered with the implementation of the three reading strategies (scanning, skimming, and making predictions). this was evidenced by the fact that learners read more easily and faster, and reported that they enjoyed their reading more and that they felt more motivated by going to the question first and then going to the text to find out what they needed to focus on, disregarding vocabulary and words they did not know. they clearly stated that they became more interested in reading with the use of the reading strategies. as a result, learners became more autonomous readers. the following excerpts demonstrate that motivation was promoted with the development of the reading strategies because these strategies allowed the students to enjoy the reading process. excerpt 4 teacher: do you feel motivated when you are able to locate specific information in a text in english? yes or no? why? student b: yes, because i like to read when i understand what i read. and this situation engages me to read more. student c: yes, because i have learned how to locate specific information in a text, thus, i feel more confident towards reading. student e: yes, because this strategy makes reading more interesting, and it helps me to read more. student f: yes, because this strategy makes me feel more comfortable to read. (questionnaire on scanning) excerpt 5 learners felt comfortable in reading because the reading strategies developed in class allowed them to read easier, faster and more enjoyable. furthermore, they were able to transfer these strategies to use them in other subjects. (post-lesson self-evaluation report, making predictions) these findings are similar to the ones reported by aguirre and ramos (2009) after conducting five workshops on reading strategies such as skimming, scanning, and predicting in a semidistance learning program. the authors found that the use of reading strategies had contributed universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras76 izquierdo castillo & jiménez bonilla to the reading process of students. the students’ attitude and motivation towards english changed. through the teacher’s guidance in terms of how to use reading strategies, students were able to develop metacognitive skills and, as a result, build up confidence and motivation to work by themselves on assigned tasks. improving reading performance this category emphasizes the importance of the three reading strategies for the improvement of the reading skills. learners were able to use and apply the reading strategies to read faster, more easily and with increased comprehension. consequently, they were able to locate main ideas, find specific information in a text, and make predictions. the use of these strategies empowered learners as effective readers and they became less dependent on the teacher than they used to be. the excerpt below demonstrates how learners improved their reading process when they implemented the reading strategies. excerpt 6 teacher: have you improved your reading skills after the implementation of skimming strategy? yes or no? why? student a: yes, because i have learned several words i did not know before. and i can read faster in english now. student c: yes, reading has become easier by using skimming. student d: yes, because i have a better picture of the text now. student e: yes, because i can understand the main idea of the reading. (questionnaire on skimming) finally, and to support the fact that learners progressed in their reading skills, a reading achievement-test was applied at the end of the process which confirmed the success of the three reading strategies (scanning, skimming, and making predictions). conclusions the use of the three reading strategies (skimming, scanning, and making predictions) is a very enriching process to guide learners along the path of autonomy, particularly in terms of decision making for learning and doing assigned homework, increasing awareness of their own reading learning process, and promoting motivation. also, these strategies encouraged students to see that they were builders of their own knowledge and possibilities. through this process, learners were more openminded and reflective regarding how to use and apply the reading strategies for effective reading and to promote their autonomy. in addition, the effective use of reading strategies made learners feel more motivated while reading. this motivation was due to the fact that learners read more easily and faster, and reported that they enjoyed their reading because the topics had been selected by them. also, they were able to locate specific information, identify general information, and make predictions about a text without depending a lot on the teacher. finally, there was improvement of their reading skills due to the efficient use of the reading strategies. pedagogical implications the conclusions mentioned above led to the identification of various issues teachers should take into consideration when teaching english, especially when teaching reading strategies to efl learners. first, in many efl classrooms translation is still used as a method, and little or no attention is given to training in reading strategies for an effective and meaningful reading process. through the application of the reading strategies (skimming, scanning, and making predictions) learners could not only improve reading comprehension, but also develop 77profile vol. 16, no. 2, october 2014. issn 1657-0790 (printed) 2256-5760 (online). bogotá, colombia. pages 67-85 building up autonomy through reading strategies some features of autonomy such as metacognitive skills, reading awareness, motivation, and decision making. the guidance in terms of how to use reading strategies helps learners to achieve a better performance as well as to enjoy the learning process due to the fact that they become more efficient and have more fun. furthermore, other language skills (listening, speaking, and writing) might be improved through the implementation of the reading strategies. secondly, reading strategies should be taught explicitly in order for learners to understand them and put them into practice in other contexts. for example, learners could use scanning to locate specific information in a biology text or use skimming to identify the main idea in a spanish passage. in addition, readings must be selected taking into consideration the learners’ interests, age, english level, needs, and context allowing them to select the reading topics they want to read for the term. by doing this, learners will see english reading as a tool to access real life situations concerning their context and will be engaged in the english learning process. moreover, motivation will make them more successful because it will encourage them to accept responsibility for their own learning. therefore, teachers should take into consideration the importance of promoting motivation in the reading process in order for learners to perceive their progress and reach their goals. teachers are also encouraged to implement the stages of reading proposed by williams (1996) for effective reading (pre-reading, while-reading, and post-reading) since they are helpful to scaffold the reading process in a sequential and effective way (see pedagogical design). suggestions for further research it is suggested that similar studies be conducted with other types of reading strategies such as inferring or extensive reading. it would also be interesting to study how learners acquire language structures and vocabulary through reading activities. likewise, it would be interesting to implement these reading strategies in a virtual learning environment to identify if learners take advantage of them to improve their reading comprehension. moreover, this study could also be replicated with larger groups of participants to explore the variety of their insights and see if students would also be willing to develop better reading skills, autonomy, and commitment to carry out their homework as well as to foster different types of interaction and awareness regarding their reading process. finally, we would like to highlight the importance of using the list of “checkpoints” proposed by burns (2010). by doing this, we kept an eye on the evolvement of our research project due to the fact that it allowed us to be focused, objective, reflective, and well documented. also, it was useful for us in evaluating our research project and making adjustments based on the findings to reach trustworthy conclusions. references aguirre, j., & ramos, b. (2009). guidance in reading strategies: a first step towards autonomy learning in a semidistance education program. profile issues in teachers’ professional development, 11(1), 41-56. alderson, j. c. (2000). assessing reading. cambridge, uk: cambridge university press. burns, a. (2010). doing action research in english language teaching: a guide for practitioners. new york, ny: routledge. cantrell, s. c., & carter, j. c. (2009). relationships among learner characteristics and adolescents’ perceptions about reading strategy use. reading psychology, 30(3), 195-224. carrell, p. l. (1989). metacognitive awareness and second language reading. the modern language journal, 73(2), 121-134. universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras78 izquierdo castillo & jiménez bonilla cohen, l., manion, i., & morrison, k. (2007). research methods in education (6th ed.). london, uk: routledge falmer. dickinson, l. (1995). autonomy and motivation: a literature review. system, 23(2), 165-174. guilloteaux, m. j., & dörnyei, z. (2008). motivating language learners: a classroom-oriented investigation of the effects of motivational strategies on student motivation. tesol quarterly, 42(1), 55-77. guthrie, j., wigfield, a., metsala, j. l., & cox, k. e. (1999). motivational and cognitive predictors of text comprehension and reading amount. scientific studies of reading, 3(3), 231-256. hedge, t. (2003). teaching and learning in the language classroom. new york, ny: oxford university press. holec, h. (1981). autonomy and foreign language learning. oxford, uk: pergamon. jiménez, p. (2000). teaching reading strategies. bogotá, co: universidad externado de colombia. little, d. (1991). learner autonomy: definitions, issues, and problems. dublin, ie: authentik. nunan, d. (1999). second language teaching and learning. boston; ma: heinle cengage learning. nuttall, c. (1982). teaching reading skills in a foreign language. london, uk: heinemann. nuttall, c. (1996). teaching reading skills in a foreign language (2nd ed.). oxford, uk: heinemann. ríos, s. r., & valcárcel, a. m. (2005) reading: a meaningful way to promote learning english in high school. profile issues in teachers’ professional development, 6(1), 59-72. stern, p. n., & porr, c. (2010). essentials of accessible grounded theory. walnut creek, ca: left coast press. wallace, m. j. (2002). action research for language teachers. cambridge, uk: cambridge university press. wentzel, k. r. (1996). social goals and social relationships as motivators of school adjustment. in j. juvonen & k. wentzel (eds.), social motivation: understanding children’s school adjustment (pp. 226-247). new york, ny: cambridge university press. williams, e. (1996). reading in the language classroom. malaysia: modern english publications. about the authors alexander izquierdo castillo holds a master in english language teaching—autonomous learning environments from universidad de la sabana (colombia); a ba in english language teaching (uniamazonia, colombia), assessment for competency based learning (centro espiral mana, alajuela, costa rica). he works at i.e.d. bicentenario high school in funza, colombia. sonia jiménez bonilla holds an msc in teaching english for specific purposes from the university of aston (birmingham, u.k.), and a is a certified icelt tutor, university of cambridge—esol, u.k. she is the academic coordinator of the master program in english language teaching—autonomous learning environments at universidad de la sabana (colombia). 79profile vol. 16, no. 2, october 2014. issn 1657-0790 (printed) 2256-5760 (online). bogotá, colombia. pages 67-85 building up autonomy through reading strategies appendix a: pre-implementation checklist name: date: please answer the following questions. students’ opinions self-assessment checklist never sometimes many times always 1. do you read in english? 2. can you identify specific information in a text? 3. can you understand the main idea in a text? 4. can you make predictions about a text or reading through a picture or the title? 5. do you think that scanning is a useful strategy? 6. do you think that skimming is a useful strategy? 7. do you think that making predictions is a useful strategy? 8. do you do your activities or tasks with responsibility and commitment? 9. do you look up new vocabulary in texts to improve the reading process? 10. do you check and read again the assigned readings to complement what you see in class? universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras80 izquierdo castillo & jiménez bonilla appendix b: questionnaire on scanning 1. can you identify specific information in a text? yes or no? why? 2. do you think that the scanning strategy implemented in class is useful for your use in other contexts? yes or no? why? 3. do you feel motivated when you are able to locate specific information in a text in english? yes or no? why? 4. do you think that having the option of selecting topics of your interest has promoted more autonomy to read about other subjects? yes or no? why? 5. have you improved your reading skills after the implementation of the scanning strategy? yes or no? why? 6. do you do your activities or tasks with responsibility, interest and commitment? yes or no? why? 81profile vol. 16, no. 2, october 2014. issn 1657-0790 (printed) 2256-5760 (online). bogotá, colombia. pages 67-85 building up autonomy through reading strategies appendix c: post-implementation checklist name: date: please answer the following questions. students’ opinion self-assessment checklist never sometimes many times always 1. how often do you read outside the classroom for your own interest? 2. can you understand the main idea in a text? 3. can you identify specific information in a text? 4. can you make predictions about a text through a picture or the title? 5. do you think that scanning is a useful strategy? 6. do you think that skimming is a useful strategy? 7. do you think that making predictions is a useful strategy? 8. do you do your activities or tasks with responsibility and commitment? 9. do you look up new vocabulary in texts to improve your reading comprehension process? 10. do you check and read again the assigned readings to complement what you study in class? 11. do you monitor and self-assess your own learning process to overcome any difficulties? 12. do you think that the strategies implemented in class are useful for you to use in other contexts? 13. do you think that the use of strategies engages you to read more in english? 14. do you believe that the reading process is better when you use reading strategies? universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras82 izquierdo castillo & jiménez bonilla appendix d: strategy training program 2012 sessions activities reading topics february 14th to 16th session 1: introducing the research project introducing the project to the class. explaining the benefits of the project. the purpose of this session was to persuade learners about the usefulness of the three reading strategies to improve reading comprehension and develop some features of autonomy such as making decisions for learning, taking responsibility for their own learning, increasing reading awareness, and increasing motivation. we explained to the students that they were going to take three sessions of two hours each with each one of the three reading strategies (scanning, skimming and making predictions). task would integrate the three phases of reading: pre-reading, while reading and postreading. we taught the strategies explicitly, particularly using teacher modeling in order for learners to get used to the strategies and put them into practice. some samples of readings using scanning, skimming, and making predictions were taken to get learners conscious of how to use the three reading strategies. february 21st and 22nd session 2: scanning session 1 reading about everyday activities. learners found specific information in a passage after they got some language preparation for the text. in the pre-reading phase, they had to look at different pictures related to everyday activities and say the activities. then, they wrote the activities on the board. in the while-reading phase, they were asked to find specific actions or activities in a short text. in the post-reading phase, they had to write the activities they did every day. then, they were asked to discuss with the person next to them the activities they had in common and the activities that were different. hobbies. march 1st to 6th session 3: scanning session 2 reading how to make a vegetable soup. learners found specific information in a short story regarding how to make a vegetable soup. in the pre-reading phase, they had to talk about the common vegetable products they grew in their community and what they could do with those products. in the while-reading phase, they were asked to read a short story about a girl who was a good cook. before reading the story they had to read some questions and then select the best option based on specific things that happened in the story. how to make a vegetable soup. 83profile vol. 16, no. 2, october 2014. issn 1657-0790 (printed) 2256-5760 (online). bogotá, colombia. pages 67-85 building up autonomy through reading strategies sessions activities reading topics march 8th to 13th session 4: last scanning session learners read about the importance of plants for life on earth. they could understand specific ideas of the passage. in the pre-reading phase, they looked at a photosynthesis chart. then, the teacher asked them the importance of photosynthesis, the parts of the plant, and what plants produce. in the while-reading phase, they were asked first to read some statements and then they needed to go to the text as fast as they could to find out if they were true or false. after this, we shared the answers. in the post-reading phase, learners had to write two true statements and a false one about the text “green plants.” then, they read the sentences to the class in order for the others to identify the false statement. green plants (the process of photosynthesis). march 15th to 20th session 5: skimming session 1 learners found the main idea of the text. in the pre-reading phase, learners described the environment of a zoo with the support of a zoo picture given by the teacher. then, they had to list some beautiful animals and some dangerous ones found in a zoo. after this, they were asked to talk about the foods those animals usually eat. in the while-reading phase, they read the text and matched the story with its appropriate picture. then, they talked to the class about how they organized the story. next, they had to complete a reading map which had the following information: title of the reading, setting, characters, main animals, foods that animals were eating. they had to do this activity individually and then share their answers with the class. in the post-reading phase, they worked in groups of three to talk about what they liked about the reading, the importance of the reading in real life as a way to protect the animals in danger of extinction, and how we as citizens should take care of those animals when we visit a zoo. part of this post-reading task was done in spanish because of the level of the learners. learners used “should” and “shouldn’t” to give advice about how to take care of animals when going to a zoo. a visit to the zoo. universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras84 izquierdo castillo & jiménez bonilla sessions activities reading topics april 10th to 12th session 6: skimming session 2 learners looked at the text and matched the headings (a-d) with the paragraphs (1-4). learners identified the main idea of the text. in the pre-reading phase, learners had to say the names of the animals and their characteristics. then, they talked about the most and the least dangerous animals. in the while-reading phase, they looked at the text and matched the headings (a-d) with the paragraphs (1-4). then, they shared their answers. in the post-reading phase, they selected an animal of their region and wrote a short description of it (type of animal, characteristics, color, foods it eats, place it lives). dangerous animals. april 17th to 19th session 7: last skimming session learners found the main idea of a passage about different types of dairy cows. in the pre-reading phase, they mentioned the types of cows they saw in a poster. then, they had to name the colors of these types of milk cows. after this, they were asked about these cows in their region. in the while-reading phase, they answered some questions about the text “milk cows.” in the post-reading phase, they were asked to select one of the milk cows presented and talk about it. for example, they could talk about the origin of that type of cow, color, weight, main characteristics (small or big). they made a presentation for the class. different types of dairy cows. april 24th to 26th session 8: making predictions session 1 learners made predictions about school matters. they talked about the most relevant issues that happened in a school. in the pre-reading phase, learners predicted the topic of the text through the analysis of different pictures. then, they read the text by chunks and made predictions of what was going to happen next. there were some tips for helping them to do a communicative task using “should” and “should not.” in the while-reading phase, they needed to give advice to some people. in the post-reading phase, they were asked to discuss with a classmate some tips for staying healthy (using “should” and “should not”). school matters. 85profile vol. 16, no. 2, october 2014. issn 1657-0790 (printed) 2256-5760 (online). bogotá, colombia. pages 67-85 building up autonomy through reading strategies sessions activities reading topics may 1st to 3rd session 9: making predictions session 2 learners made predictions about the origin of coffee. in the pre-reading phase, they were presented with some pictures related to colombian coffee and they talked about the importance of coffee in our country and the regions where coffee is grown. then, they were asked to work with a partner and decide if some sentences were true or false before reading the text. in the while-reading phase, they read the text and checked if their guesses were right or wrong. in the post-reading phase, they were asked to select an agricultural product (vegetable or fruit) and talk about it emphasizing characteristics of the product e.g., origin, benefits, price, etc. coffee. may 8th to 10th session 10: making predictions session 3 learners made predictions about natural resources in our country. in the pre-reading phase, learners were asked to observe a map of colombia. they had to identify the biggest and smallest region and talk about the most important natural resources in those regions: what people could grow in amazonas, what agricultural products people could grow in cauca, etc. in the while-reading phase, they selected five regions on the map and wrote five predictions about five agricultural products that people can grow in those regions. then, they checked their predictions through reading a text. in the post-reading phase, they talked about the importance of the natural resources in our country and what should be done to protect them. natural resources in colombia. may 10th to 15th last session the last reading practice consisted of giving students the opportunity to choose from three different guides: one about scanning, one about skimming, and one regarding making predictions. reading strategies workshop (closure of the implementation). 139profile vol. 15, no. 1, april 2013. issn 1657-0790 (printed) 2256-5760 (online). bogotá, colombia. pages 139-169 building esp content-based materials to promote strategic reading diseño de materiales basados en contenidos para fomentar estrategias de lectura en un curso de inglés con propósitos específicos myriam judith bautista barón* universidad externado de colombia this article reports on an action research project that proposes to improve the reading comprehension and vocabulary of undergraduate students of english for specific purposes–explosives majors, at a police training institute in colombia. i used the qualitative research method to explore and reflect upon the teaching-learning processes during implementation. being the teacher of an english for specific purposes course without the appropriate didactic resources, i designed six reading comprehension workshops based on the cognitive language learning approach not only to improve students’ reading skills but also their autonomy through the use of learning strategies. the data were collected from field notes, artifacts, progress reviews, surveys, and photographs. key words: calla, learning strategies, materials development, reading. este artículo informa sobre un proyecto de investigación cualitativa que propone mejorar la comprensión de lectura y el vocabulario de estudiantes universitarios de inglés que se especializan en temas relativos a explosivos en una escuela de policía, en colombia. por tratarse de un curso de inglés específico que carece de los recursos didácticos apropiados, diseñé seis talleres de comprensión de lectura basados en el enfoque del aprendizaje cognitivo de la lengua, para mejorar tanto su comprensión de lectura como su autonomía para usar estrategias de aprendizaje. para la recolección de datos se emplearon notas de campo, artefactos, pruebas de progreso, encuestas y fotografías. palabras clave: calla, diseño de materiales, estrategias de aprendizaje, lectura. * e-mail: bautistamyriam@yahoo.es this article was received on march 6, 2012, and accepted on november 20, 2012. universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras140 bautista barón introduction the students at the escuela de investigación criminal–a police training institute in bogotá–study english for specific purposes and there is an immediate need to design didactic resources for teaching the classes effectively because there are no appropriate materials related to crime in colombia in english. besides, nowadays the abundance of english information found in journals, articles, books, and web sites demands a good level of reading abilities. for this reason, these students need to be competent in the comprehension of english texts to promote their own practice and interest in their lives as police officers. considering the english for specific purposes (esp) institutional goals and the students’ needs, i feel the main aim of this study was to understand whether and how reading comprehension and strategy awareness can be developed through the implementation of content-based materials anchored in the cognitive academic language learning approach (calla). i developed and implemented criminalistics materials to promote reading comprehension based on calla by designing six reading workshops as didactic units that provide both language and content learning activities, with an explicit focus on language learning strategies, the inclusion of relevant content, the possibility for interactive teaching and learning, and opportunities for students’ self-assessment of their own learning process. the workshops also allow me to track the participants’ progress for interpretation and analysis of data when necessary. this situation aroused my interest in materials development, so that i could provide my students with authentic readings to help them achieve the pre-established learning objectives. as a teacher, i consider that this student-centered approach helps us to get closer to the students’ language needs and enhances the success of our work. this research can motivate other teachers to develop contextualized esp materials as a regular pedagogical task, and i believe that this study is a worthy example of how teachers can give the practice of teaching a well-deserved boost in the education field. theoretical framework the pillars that shape this research are reading comprehension, materials development and the cognitive academic language learning approach. they were combined to set up a productive work environment to fulfill the expectations of a group of police officer trainees who were interested in learning about criminalistics as a science that deals with processing criminal events. according to the california association of criminalistics (cac, 2010, p. 1), “this science involves the application of principles, techniques and methods of the physical sciences and has as its primary objective a determination of physical facts which may be significant in legal cases.” this was the main curriculum subject at this school, so the students needed to be taught vocabulary related to physical descriptions, clothes, belongings and evidence elements relevant in a criminal in vestigation. also, they needed to be familiar with crime information and to read material dealing with criminal cases, updated technologies in data analysis, fingerprints, explosives and weapons. reading comprehension the reading process is not easy to examine be cause it is complex and personal. many communicative events take place during the reading process and the reader has to cope with them tr ying to comprehend and obtain as much as he/she can from the text. there is a close relationship between the reader and the text (alderson & bachman, 2000), and the reader’s perception of the material is affected by life experiences and purposes. reading is a complex, strategic, and active process of constructing meaning, not simply a matter of skill 141profile vol. 15, no. 1, april 2013. issn 1657-0790 (printed) 2256-5760 (online). bogotá, colombia. pages 139-169 building esp content-based materials to promote strategic reading application (palinscar & brown, 1984). comprehension requires a dynamic participation of the readers and their ability to seek, organize and reformulate the information in their own words, resorting to their own experiences and background knowledge. to prepare students to read, it is essential to overcome comprehension difficulties and prepare them to be autonomous in the future. there are lots of effective ways to guide them, but, unfortunately, sometimes teachers ignore them and tell students to simply read and hope they become skillful in getting information without planning any strategic steps i.e. organizing ideas, taking notes, using reference skills, etc. in this respect, there are many kinds of effective instructional activities that can help students comprehend and remember what they read and as teachers it is our responsibility to make them available to the students. additionally, the reading process includes a variety of strategies, skills and types of texts that make the reading task multifaceted and a combination of mental processes, knowledge, and abilities. grabe (2004, p. 55) suggests that “it should be centered on the use of and training in multiple strategies to achieve comprehension.” then, the real value and effectiveness of the reading process involve frequent practice with clear purposes and expectations. likewise, the use of authentic and adapted readings helps students familiarize themselves with specific content-based expressions and vocabulary, and become skillful at consciously recognizing the organization of the information and the structure of the target language. students should also be trained in the use of terminology related to their field of study, thus feeling more engaged (scott & winograd, 2001). noles and dole (2004) state: researchers have collected much evidence that supports explicit strategy instruction. the teaching of strategies empowers readers, particularly those who struggle, by giving them the tools they need to construct meaning from text. instead of blaming comprehension problems on students’ own innate abilities, for which they see no solution, explicit strategy instruction teaches students to take control of their own learning and comprehension. (p. 179) there is a variety of direct and indirect learning strategies to facilitate reading comprehension in the language learning process. from oxford’s strategy classification system (oxford, 1990) i focused on direct strategies that allow the straight learning and practice of content and vocabulary and indirect ones that help the students organize and evaluate their knowledge and performance (see figure 1). materials development teacher-developed didactic materials can be defined as any kind of resources and layouts that the teacher creates, looks for or adapts to fulfill the daily needs in the teaching-learning process. in the same line of thought, tomlinson (1998, p. xi) defines materials development as “anything which is used figure 1. learning strategies (adapted from oxford, 1990) direct strategies memory cognitive compensation metacognitive affective social indirect strategies • making associations • placing new words into a context • using imagery • using linguistic or other clues • adjusting or approximating the messages • cooperating with peers • taking risk widely • discussing your feelings with someone else • overviewing and linking with already known material • self-evaluating • getting the idea quickly • answering questions • asking questions • predicting content • translating • paraphrasing universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras142 bautista barón by teachers or learners to facilitate the learning of a language”. the interesting point here is that the author comments that learning is a shared responsibility between the teacher and the learners. due to the lack of appropriate didactic resources for the esp course i teach, materials development is one of the main constructs that underpins this research. developing materials is an opportunity to find solutions for immediate teaching problems at escuela de investigación criminal and without depending on foreign resources and help. moreover, it is really refreshing when we teachers not only instruct all the time, but also develop our own materials based on reflection and concern, and look for new experiences as teacher-researchers. we can produce solid and excellent material with the quality level of materials created in english speaking countries. from my point of view, it is really exciting to explore this attractive possibility because it helps the teacher reflect on his/her labor to continue seeking knowledge and discovering new facets that enormously feed his/her intrinsic motivation. it is also an opportunity to be updated with recent research in the educational field (núñez, téllez, castellanos & ramos, 2009). reading and being informed is an essential prerequisite to know about new theories and practices that support the design of new materials. de mejía and fonseca (2006) argue that foreign materials are not always appropriate to any context and do not fit in with the cultural and historical aspects of other countries. sometimes they integrate misunderstandings or fictitious concepts about cultures in which the foreign language is taught. this is another valuable reason to convince teachers to elaborate their own materials since they belong to and are much closer to the culture and social situations in which they are teaching. materials development also requires attention to affective and motivational factors (núñez et al., 2009) since teachers should create an enjoyable learning setting that fosters students’ confidence. when there is an affectionate environment, learning is more motivating and effective because the level of anxiety decreases and confidence increases. however, materials development is a tremendous responsibility that requires both preparation and, above all, time. searching for exercises, strategies, visual aids and contents requires a lot of patience, time and creativity. these tools must be constantly improve d to opt imize t heir ef fe c t iveness and replaced whenever they do not fully meet the desired outcomes. calla calla is a helpful resource to uphold academic and linguistic development. also, it emphasizes higher levels of thinking, fosters effectiveness, motivates learners and benefits varied language level students towards learning a foreign language. i consider this to be a model that works for content-based instruction and learning strategies development, and therefore it was suitable for the development of this research. chamot, barndhardt, beard and robbins (1999) state that calla provides explicit instruction that assists students in learning both language and content, and helps them to become more autonomous and better self-evaluators of their learning process. this approach is based on the social-cognitive learning model that integrates the students’ prior knowledge, collaborative learning and the development of metacognitive awareness and self-reflection. it is an approach for learners of second and foreign languages and uses explicit instruction in learning strategies for academic tasks. the main purpose of this approach is to have students both learn essential academic content and language, and b e come independent and self-regulated learners through their increasing command over a variety of strategies for the acquisition of knowledge. the main elements of this instructional approach are summarized in figure 2. 143profile vol. 15, no. 1, april 2013. issn 1657-0790 (printed) 2256-5760 (online). bogotá, colombia. pages 139-169 building esp content-based materials to promote strategic reading for this work, two components of calla have been emphasized. the first one is the cognitive learning model which defines learning as a dynamic process in which learners are fully engaged and the information given is retained when it is important to them. the second one has to do with the learning strategies defined as ways to understand, remember and recall the information; these also have a close relation with thoughts and actions that assist learning tasks and link the new learning with the prior knowledge. instructional design in order to obtain and organize evidence on the way students develop the reading comprehension through the implementation of esp content-based materials based on calla, i designed reading workshops that focused on: (1) helping students to identify vocabulary and expressions related to crimes, suspects and victims with the use of their prior knowledge; (2) promoting the students’ interest in the learning content and the english language; (3) training students in the use of learning strategies for the development of different activities; (4) fostering the students’ reading comprehension of short crime-related texts; (5) aiding students in the recognition of vocabulary and expressions in context; (6) creating and adapting activities to encourage students to use the learning strategies as a routine to be more independent; (7) making the students aware of the usefulness of english in their academic success, and (8) teaching students to do an ongoing self-evaluation of their own learning process. the reading workshops were designed considering calla’s five steps (chamot et al., 1999) to organize the lesson plans flexibly so as to combine content, language and learning strategies (see figure 3). preparation (warm up): students prepare for strategy instruction by identifying their prior knowledge and the use of specific strategies. presentation (warm up): the teacher demonstrates the new learning strategy and explains how and when to use it. practice (before reading): students practice using the strategy with regular activities of moderate difficulty. evaluation (while reading): students self-evaluate their use of the learning strategy and how well the strategy is working for them. figure 2. calla’s main elements (taken from chamot et al., 1999) calla prior knowledge and cultural experiences hands-on, inquiry-based and cooperative learning tasks learning strategies and study skills self-evaluation content knowledge language awareness and critical literacy motivation social context universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras144 bautista barón expansion (after reading): students extend the usefulness of the learning strategy by applying it to new situations or learning tasks. the workshops integrated these steps which were implemented in three two-hour sessions. the example presented in appendix a refers to the first workshop where the teacher starts by introducing the topic so that the students can define the concept of crime (warming up). then, they identify crime vocabulary using pictures; they use these new words in context through guessing, scrambling, matching, and completion activities (before reading). with this type of activities students are prepared for the reading process and are also introduced to the recognition of learning strategies. after that, they read short crime cases in groups (while-reading) and the teacher revises the reading comprehension exercises with the whole class (after-reading). then, students reflect on their experience of strategy use. in the last part of the workshop, there is a self-evaluation that the teacher explains to students; in it, each student reflects on learning attitudes, content learning, development of reading comprehension skills and learning strategy awareness. figure 3. reading steps (adapted from chamot et al., 1999) preparation (warming up) (warming up) (after reading) (while reading) (before reading) presentation expansion evaluation practice instructional sequence research design the research approach of this study is qualitative since it gives me the chance to have a better understanding of my students’ behaviors, informing on their thoughts, feelings, motivation, and performance. james, kiewicz and bucknam (2008, p. 58) mention that “qualitative methods aid researchers in extracting the depth and richness of the human experiences from their subjects.” this inquiry is an action research whereby “the participants examine their own educational practice systematically and carefully, using the techniques of research” (ferrance, 2000, p. 1). the purpose is to improve the way they address issues and solve specific problems within the classroom; thus, i consider this type of research to fit my study because it can generate genuine and sustained improvements in language learning at escuela de investigación criminal. this action research comprised various phases: problem identification, theoretical research, diagnostic stages, selection of learning strategies to be promoted, development of reading materials and workshops data collection and analysis. research questions • how does reading comprehension develop through the implementation of content-based ma terials founded on the cognitive language learning ap-proach in an english course for undergraduate students majoring in explosives? • how can students’ awareness of learning strategies be raised through reading workshops using the cognitive academic language learning approach (calla)? context and participants the study was conducted at escuela de investigación criminal de la policía, a police training institute in bogotá accredited by the ministry of national defense. regarding esp, is imperative to improve the police officers’ performance in english, because it has become an important means of communication and information in their profession. additionally, during their studies, they have to work with different materials and situations in english 145profile vol. 15, no. 1, april 2013. issn 1657-0790 (printed) 2256-5760 (online). bogotá, colombia. pages 139-169 building esp content-based materials to promote strategic reading and use it to solve problems or to be informed. they also need to manage technical vocabulary related to criminalistics to understand, for example, foreign texts related to racketeering. the group where the research was carried out was attending the undergraduate program “technical professional in explosives.” it was composed of 16 male students whose ages ranged from 24 to 36, and all of them participated in the process. the english subject is divided into two levels: basic english and esp. the students belonged to the latter, but their real language performance was elementary. data sources freeman (1998) considers the triangulation of data sources as a suitable methodological strategy to test the credibility of qualitative analysis. incorporating various sources of information will make the research results more vigorous. first of all, a needs assessment (see appendix b) and a diagnostic test were carried out for the diagnosis process and the design of the workshops. three main data sources were used during and after the implementation of the workshops: students’ self-evaluation reports in six reading comprehension workshops, and two surveys: the first survey (see appendix c) was a final questionnaire to gather data about the students’ thoughts and behaviors, factual information and preferences; the second survey (see appendix d) consisted of three open-ended questions that the students answered in their own words, providing qualitative information on their learning process (marsden & wright, 2010). apart from these sources, i also used three progress friendly reviews consisting of written papers with different exercises to observe the students’ reading comprehension progress through the implementation of the workshops. these reviews were a very helpful tool since they provided evidence about the students’ cognitive and metacognitive processes, and their ability to choose the appropriate learning strategies to do the tasks. i also took observation field notes and some photographs that document the development of collaborative work in class and the teaching-learning environment in general. data analysis according to seliger and shohamy (1989, p. 201), data analysis refers to “sifting, organizing, summarizing and synthesizing the data so as to arrive at the results and conclusions of the research”. the procedure was systematic and included the description, the illustration of two research categories supported with the information collected from various sources: knowing the what, the how and the what for and building it up together. the type of data analysis was the a priori approach since the categories were the support of this study, as affirmed by freeman (1998, p. 103): “it starts with established categories and organizes them into a basic display, then names by category and finds patterns in the display.” findings the needs assessment form was used before the intervention and included 14 multiple choice questions to find out about the students’ previous english learning experience and performance, their definition of strategy, their opinions about reading comprehension in criminalistics, their learning ac tivity preferences and their meaning of autonomous work. the last question had to do with expressing general comments and suggestions to facilitate the achievement of the esp objectives. most students indicated that english was an essential component in their professional development and they had to read a lot of material in english. nine students agreed that the type of learning materials that might help them in their learning process could be guided reading workshops with a variety of crime-science activities to allow some complete and holistic progress. universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras146 bautista barón finally, 8 students mentioned that they felt more comfortable during collaborative work (between the teacher and the students) and emphasized the import ance of the teacher’s help and guidance in the whole teaching-learning process. 6 of them preferred to develop their work and class activities under the teacher’s supervision and 2 felt better when working alone. a subsequent diagnostic test, that included the reading of a crime text in which students had to answer some comprehension questions, revealed that almost half of the class (14 out of the 16 students did it) had a low level of language proficiency (49%). i also asked them some oral ques tions after the test to know how they solved each one of the exercises. i found that most of them were not aware of the handling of strategies while doing the exercises. based on the results of the students’ needs assessment and the diagnostic test, i designed 6 reading workshops with activities that allowed them to work on crime-science content and learning strategies for vocabulary and reading development. to carry out the process of self-reflection, i selected and adapted a brief evaluation at the end of each workshop to gauge the awareness of their performance in terms of learning and autonomy. the two research categories supported by the data sources are presented in table 1 and explained below. table 1. categories questions categories subcategories data sources how does reading comprehension develop through the implementation of content-based materials founded on the cognitive language learning approach in an english course for undergraduate students majoring in explosives? 1. knowing the what, the how and the what for 1. suitable content and linguistic input 2. students’ learning attitudes 3. strategy use awareness and appropriateness 4. collaborative work 5. self-reflection (plan, monitoring, problem solving, self-evaluations) survey 1 and 2 survey 1 field notes, survey 1 field notes, survey 1 and 2 field notes how can students’ awareness of learning strategies be raised through reading workshops using the cognitive academic language learning approach (calla)? 2. building it up together 1. tailor-made materials 2. moving from simple to complex reading exercises 3. students’ selfappraisal of their learning attitude and strategy use awareness survey 2 field notes, reading workshops field notes survey 1 147profile vol. 15, no. 1, april 2013. issn 1657-0790 (printed) 2256-5760 (online). bogotá, colombia. pages 139-169 building esp content-based materials to promote strategic reading knowing the what, the how and the what for suitable content and linguistic input for the students it was a double challenge since they had to handle both the language and the new contents at the same time, which brings to my mind what cantoni-harvey (1987, p. 201) says: “language is essential for understanding content materials and can be taught naturally within the context of a particular subject matter.” both the specific content (crimes, victims and suspects, relevant suspect’s marks, criminal notice and summar y of crime reports), and the language (colors, parts of the body, clothes, simple sen tences in present and past tenses, expressions of time and places) were addressed by means of a consistent application of an array of learning strategies that aimed at developing the students’ reading processes. the results of the survey at the end of the course (see appendix c) confirmed that 63% of the learners considered they were always able to understand the contents developed through the reading workshops, and the other 37% could usually comprehend them. in survey 2, the students answered a question related to the contribution of the implementation of the strategies in their content and language learning. some of their answers appear in the following excerpts (translated from spanish): yes, the strategies help to understand the topics some strategies are easy to understand the crime words and expressions the reading of the texts was easier with the help of the strategies survey 2 (november 8th, 2010) students’ learning attitudes in general, my students’ attitude was really motivating as the planned topics had to do with their own work as police officers. in fact they were willing to participate, take risks without feeling disappointed, and accept more responsibility for their learning from the beginning. even though the instruction of learning strategies was both interesting and useful to the students, it was difficult for them to take full control of their own learning process and this had a direct effect on their attitude depending on the tasks and the time they had to invest in the workshops. sixty-two percent of students indicated that they always had positive feelings towards the class, the learning process and their classmates. ten percent answered they usually had them, 5% sometimes and 23% did not give any answer. strategy use awareness and appropriateness students realized they had used strategies and vocabulary but had not been aware of their use in other contexts as can be verified in some of their opinions: i didn’t know there were strategies to learn english so, the strategies can be used for everything? i learned vocabulary watching police films field notes (october 4th, 2010) some instruments evidenced the fact that in the first tasks students tended to use direct strategies like imagery, making associations, translating and placing new words into a context, etc. they also began to realize which strategies were most appropriate for each activity and that using them was helpful for developing the tasks and doing the readings. the examples below confirm this variable: it is imagery porque hay dibujos (it is imagery because there are drawings) i need the strategy list para usarla cuando hago los exercises (i need the strategy list to use it when doing exercises) terrorism como in spanish (terrorism as in spanish) field notes (october 4th, 11th, 2010) the information from the survey at the end of the course showed that 60% of the students considered they always implemented the learning strategies and used the reading ones for a better understanding of universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras148 bautista barón texts and descriptions. thirty-five percent indicated that they usually implemented them and only 5% sometimes did so. collaborative work the majority of the students agreed that they felt more comfortable working with others and with the teacher’s guidance. in this respect, the strategies that brought this issue to the surface were the social ones: asking for clarification or verification and cooperating with peers, which are documented in the following excerpts. teacher can i use the same strategies? i like this exercise because we can work in pairs i am always cooperating with my partners because they don’t understand field notes (october 12th, 2010) the evidence collected from the survey at the end of the course evidenced that 62% of the students always respected others’ opinions and points of view and also asked the teacher and classmates for help to solve problems and doubts. ten percent stated that they usually paid attention to their partners’ ideas and only 5% sometimes did. unfortunately, 23% did not answer. what i enjoyed the most was the work in groups i liked a lot to share ideas with my classmates my partner was my best strategy because he clarified all my doubts survey 2 (november 8th, 2010) the collaborative work implied students working together as well as with the teacher, which brought more resources into play, improving mutual trust, self-confidence and support. overall, this enhanced the human relationships that i, as a teacher, deem an essential part of my mission. for the aforementioned reason, i included an item related to the teacher support in the final selfevaluation to know if my role as a guide, facilitator and companion was effective and supportive. the data gathered showed that 72% of the students considered that i always promoted their interest in several aspects such as learning content and language, instruction of strategies, development of their reading comprehension of crime science related topics, and encouragement to become independent readers able to use learning strategies as a routine. the remaining 27% asserted that i usually accomplished these goals and 1% declared i sometimes carried them out. self-reflection self-reflection implied the students’ awareness of the use of the learning strategies for the development of reading comprehension. ormrod (2004) defines this awareness as “people’s knowledge of effective learning, and cognitive processes and their use to enhance learning” (p. 358). it also has to do with the form, the appropriate time and the reason to apply the learning strategies that helped students to become autonomous and more self-regulated. i took into account the metacognitive model proposed by chamot et al. (1999): organization of the learning strategies which includes the reflection processes of planning, monitoring, problem solving and evaluating, all useful for reading and retention of language and content. the first step, planning, consisted of socializing the objectives at the beginning of each reading workshop making sure they are clear to all the students. prior to starting the activities, i invited them to look at the list of strategies and to select the ones they considered more appropriate. the second step, monitoring, implied the students resorting to their prior knowledge, the previous workshops or the dictionary to complete the tasks. the third step, problem-solving, entailed having students use learning strategies like asking and verifying, linking with already known materials, adjusting the messages, and using the context, among others, to sort out problems during their implementation. the last 149profile vol. 15, no. 1, april 2013. issn 1657-0790 (printed) 2256-5760 (online). bogotá, colombia. pages 139-169 building esp content-based materials to promote strategic reading step, evaluation, comprised correcting and verifying the exercises within their groups, which allowed them to reflect and become aware of their results. this stage enabled students to reflect upon all these issues and consider them to solve the following workshops and more complex tasks. the evidence below exemplifies the students’ perceptions. i need the list of strategies to do the exercise i used placing new words into context because the words are in the first exercise there are key words that help to recognize the type of crimes to complete with letters i have to use the strategy asking for clarification and verification field notes (october 12th, 2010) building it up together tailor-made materials i took into consideration an array of aspects to modify the syllabus and to create the plan of activities for this esp course. among them, i incorporated students’ needs and expectations as the improvement of their reading comprehension, the design and implementation of activities and tasks with an increasing degree of complexity, the use of authentic materials as much as possible, and the continuous teacher support and guide. this can be seen in appendix a and in these students’ remarks: in the way you learn more the difficulty is greater very positive experience because the methodology was innovative and easy i think the learning was good thanks to the teacher’s methodology i liked the readings because they were real survey 2 (november 8th, 2010) moving from simple to complex reading comprehension exercises this aspect features the reading process in the design, the implementation of the workshops and the progress reviews. as getting information and its manipulation are two of the main objectives in reading, i merged a variety of activities and tasks to nurture mental processes, build knowledge, and improve learning skills to strengthen the students’ reading comprehension abilities. i also implemented permanent practical procedures to make it more effective. additionally, i chose appropriate teaching strategies to promote a didactic reception of the reading passages moving from the simpler to the more complex. in addition, i made use of authentic readings that allowed students to read real information in the foreign language, familiarize themselves with different reading processes and become skilled in consciously recognizing the organization of the information and the structure of the target language. in reference to this, jacobson, degener and purcell-gates (2003, p. 13) propose that “it is best for adult students to receive instruction which utilizes authentic, or real life, materials and activities to be also grounded in the context of the learner’s life outside of class.” furthermore, the learners were trained in the use of common expressions and vocabulary related to their field of study which made them more engaged and enthusiastic. here are some views that illustrate this issue: there are many words related to crime i used placing new words into context because it helps me to know the meaning. i used selecting and paraphrasing to understand better the marks are very important to describe the suspect field notes (october 12th, 25th, 2010) figure 4 illustrates the process of developing materials that gradually moved from the simplest reading exercises in the first workshops to the most intricate in the last ones. in the first 4 workshops, according to the students’ perception of reading comprehension abilities, progress was increased 20%. however, in workshops 5 and 6 almost 45% universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras150 bautista barón of the students did not complete the survey, which made it impossible to check their complete insights. but according to the graphic the students who did complete the survey (55%) kept the perception of a possible improvement (40%). figure 4. students’ development of reading comprehension can can improve no answer 0 20 52 48 30 45 25 65 29 6 70 30 46 9 45 40 18 42 40 60 80 workshop 1 workshop 2 workshop 3 workshop 4 workshop 5 workshop 6 students’ self-appraisal of their learning attitude and strategy use awareness this last aspect that supports the second categor y concerns the reflective manner in which students reflect on their learning process and their attentiveness in the use of strategies. according to scott and winograd (2001), when students are strategic, “they consider options before choosing tactics to solve problems and then they invest effort in using the strategy. these choices embody selfregulated learning because they are the result of cognitive analyses of alternative routes to problemsolving” (n. p.). in the first workshops i explained to the students every aspect to consider in the reflection process and how to do it. however, it was not easy for them since they were not used to doing it due to their cultural and educational backgrounds. at the beginning they mentioned that their success or failure was a direct result of the difficulty of the new concepts and vocabulary and lack of personal abilities in the use of ap propriate strategies. fortunately, through continuous practice they started to feel more comfortable judging by how well they applied the strategies to do the tasks and then compared with their classmates, discussed in group or talked with the teacher. they also learned that various strategies could be used in the same activity and began to think about better ones they could have used. in general, there was a tendency to use the most attractive to them, as imagery, asking for clarification and verification, making associations, cooperating with peers and translating what they found difficult to understand. however, when they started to gain control over strategy use, they began to select more difficult strategies as placing new words in context, taking risks widely, getting the idea quickly, adjusting and approximating messages, using linguistic and other clues. the examples below confirm the idea that students have specific preferences. i always use imagery i liked this exercise porque trabajamos de a dos (i liked this exercise because we work in pairs) i liked this workshop porque hay mucha imagery (i liked this workshop because there is a lot of imagery) i choose translating with the dictionary because hay muchas palabras que i don’t know (i choose translating with the dictionary because there are many words that i don’t know) field notes (october 12th, 25th, nov 3rd 2010) according to the analysis of the final survey, 60% of the students recognized that the self-evaluation at the end of each workshop was always important as part of their learning experience and that they were able to choose the strategies by themselves. thirty-five percent said that they were usually able to do it, and 5% stated that only sometimes they knew how to do it. similarly, 63% of the students considered that they were always able to evaluate their own progress in the new language; 34% were usually able and 3% only sometimes as shown in figures 5 and 6. 151profile vol. 15, no. 1, april 2013. issn 1657-0790 (printed) 2256-5760 (online). bogotá, colombia. pages 139-169 building esp content-based materials to promote strategic reading conclusions and implications based on the data collected, i concluded that the students understood the importance of esp in their professional performance, praising the creation of criminalistics-based reading workshops underpinned by calla principles. they improved their reading comprehension by consciously selecting and applying learning strategies and self-evaluating their own progress. in addition, there was a significant advancement in self-sufficiency and communication in general as they were able, at the end, to share their failures and achievements, identify their difficulties, and look for possible solutions grounded on their own knowledge while interacting with their classmates and the teacher. they learned most of the crime-science topics developed through the course mainly because those had to do with their professional aim and interests. this fact helped them to improve their language competence, have a very positive learning mood, be willing to take risks and be more responsible during the learning process. the use of a variety of direct and indirect strategies helped the students to understand the content better even though in the first workshops they preferred to use the direct ones since they were memory and cognition-related. progress was observed as they learned to use all the strategies and became aware of their appropriateness in the different tasks. to sum up, the whole analysis gave me confidence to state that the development of reading comprehension through content-based material was an effective process in which the learners used their prior knowledge and built up on it as they fused their experience as police officers with the language. the field of materials development not only gives teachers the opportunity to design new and motivating activities for the students but also opens their minds to become more proactive and creative in their teaching practice. moreover, the use of innovative materials encourages students to participate more actively, increases general interaction, and gives an enhanced sense to the teaching profession. it is also an alternative to the continuous use of the same textbooks, traditional class activities and teachercentered classes. this issue is also a good point to foster thinking about the current teaching practices and the need for teacher-generated materials that cater to students’ language learning and professional needs, likes and expectations. indeed, contributing to the betterment of the english level of our students through the development of contextualized materials reduces the tendency of using traditional textbooks and methods that are not always the most suitable for esp context. references alderson, j. c., & bachman, f. l. (2000). assessing reading. cambridge, uk: cambridge university press. cantoni-harvey, g. (1987). content-area language instruction: approaches and strategies. reading, ma: addison-wesley. figure 5. the use of learning strategies 60% 35% 5% always usually sometimes figure 6. metacognitive strategies always63% 34% 3% usually sometimes universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras152 bautista barón chamot, a. u., barndhardt, s., beard, p., & robbins, j. (1999). the learning strategies handbook. new york, ny: pearson education. de mejía, a. m., & fonseca, l. (2006). lineamientos para políticas bilingües y multilingües nacionales en contextos educativos lingüísticos mayoritarios en colombia. universidad de los andes, bogotá. ferrance, e. (2000). action research. themes in education. lab at brown university: the educational alliance. freeman, d. (1998). doing teacher-research: from inquiry to understanding. a teacher source book. san francisco, ca: heinle & heinle. grabe, w. (2004). research on teaching reading. annual review of applied linguistics, 24, 44-69. jacobson, e., degener, s., & purcell-gates, v. (2003). creating authentic materials and activities for the adult literacy classroom. a handbook for practitioners. ncsall teaching and training materials. boston, ma: ncsall at world education. james, e., kiewicz, m., & bucknam, a. (2008). participatory action research for educational leadership. los angeles, ca: sage publications. marsden, p., & wright, j. (2010) (2nd ed.). handbook of survey research. bingley, uk: emerald group publishing. noles, j. d., & dole, j. a. (2004). helping adolescent readers through explicit instruction. in t. l. jetton, & j. a. dole (eds.), adolescent literacy research and practice, (pp. 162-182). new york, ny: guilford press. núñez, a. (2010). on the road 2. elementary a. bogotá, co: uniempresarial. núñez, a., téllez, m., castellanos, j., & ramos, b. (2009). a practical material development guide for pre-service, novice, and in-service teachers. bogotá, co: universidad externado de colombia. ormrod, j. e. (2004). human learning (4th ed.) upper sadle river, nj: merrill/prentice-hall. oxford, r. (1989). strategy inventory for language learning (sill). retrieved from http://homework.wtuc.edu.tw/ sill.php oxford, r. (1990). language learning strategies: what every teacher should know. new york, ny: newbury house. palinscar, a. s., & brown, a. l. (1984). reciprocal teaching of comprehension-fostering and comprehension-monitoring activities. cognition and instruction, 1, 117-175. scott, g., & winograd, p. (2001). the role of self-regulated learning in contextual teaching: principles and practices for teacher preparation. in a commissioned paper for the u.s. department of education project preparing teachers to use contextual teaching and learning strategies to improve student success in and beyond school. retrieved from http://www.ciera.org/library/ archive/2001-04/0104parwin.htm seliger, h. w., & shohamy, e. (1989). second language research methods. oxford, uk: oxford university press. the california association of criminalistics [cac]. (2010). code of ethics of the california association of criminalists. retrieved from http://www.cacnews.org/membership/california association of criminalists code of ethics 2010.pdf tomlinson, b. (1998). introduction. in b. tomlinson (ed.), materials development in language teaching (pp. 1-24). cambridge, uk: cambridge university press. 153profile vol. 15, no. 1, april 2013. issn 1657-0790 (printed) 2256-5760 (online). bogotá, colombia. pages 139-169 building esp content-based materials to promote strategic reading about the author myriam judith bautista barón studied philology and languages (spanish and english) at universidad nacional de colombia. she holds a specialization in bilingual education (universidad antonio nariño, colombia), and a master’s in education with emphasis on english didactics (universidad externado de colombia). she has taught in different educational institutions in colombia and spain. acknowledgements  my infinite gratitude to my master and friend, astrid núñez pardo, for her patience and support. special thanks to my graphic designers nicolás ávila and juan fernández for their devotion and collaboration. universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras154 bautista barón appendix a: workshop 1 policía nacional de colombia dirección nacional de escuelas escuela de investigación criminal crimes i main objective to define what a crime is and differentiate among different types of crimes through the reading of short texts. specific objectives ȟ to identify and define vocabulary related to crimes. ȟ to recognize different types of crimes. ȟ to select specific information in short crime texts. ȟ to distinguish information and questions in present and past. getting the idea quickly to define a concept 155profile vol. 15, no. 1, april 2013. issn 1657-0790 (printed) 2256-5760 (online). bogotá, colombia. pages 139-169 building esp content-based materials to promote strategic reading how much do we know about crimes? choose the best definition: a crime is… a. incorrect behaviour that regulates the norms b. cultural standards explaining how humans ought to behave. c. a person who violates the law and causes serious loss or damage to individuals. d. an act related to norms and law. using imagery to learn crime words before reading 1. write the number next to the corresponding picture for crime words. 1. kidnapping 2. torture 3. arson 4. smuggling 5. blackmail 6. murder/killing 7. terrorism 8. rape 9. human trafficking 10. drug trafficking universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras156 bautista barón 2. unscramble the words and choose from the picture the correct crime for each definition then com pare with your classmate next to you: pear roture sonar redrum a. __________________________: it is an assault by a person involving sexual intercourse with another person without that person’s consent. b. __________________________: taking out or extinguishing the life of a human being, especially with premeditated malice. c. __________________________: it is a crime of intentionally and maliciously setting fire to structures or wild land areas. d. __________________________: any act by which severe pain or suffering, whether physical or mental, is intentionally inflicted on a person to obtain information or a confession. 3. guess. write the missing consonants and match. using linguistic and other clues to define concepts a. it is illegal trade in human beings. b. political violence by a group using military methods. c. importation or exportation without paying lawful customs charges or duties. d. extortion of money or something else of value from a person by the threat of exposing a criminal act or discreditable information. e. trafficking in illegal drugs like cocaine and heroin. f. the unlawful act of capturing and carrying away a person against their will and holding them captive. __ __a__ __ __ai__ __ i__ __a __ __i __ __ __ __u__ __ __a__ __i__ __i__ __ __u__a__ __ __a__ __i__ __i__ __ __e__ __o__i__ __ __ __u__ __ __i__ __ 157profile vol. 15, no. 1, april 2013. issn 1657-0790 (printed) 2256-5760 (online). bogotá, colombia. pages 139-169 building esp content-based materials to promote strategic reading using linguistic clues to learn new words 4. there are some important words related to crime. find them in the gun and then compare with your classmate. perpetratorfsdfgangsgfdgfarrest attackerfdedavictim lifeimprisonmentfderlaw&order pu ni sh m en tf ds de at hp oy pe na lt y le th al in je ct io ns dm ut il at io n universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras158 bautista barón 5. underline the best option to complete the following sentences: a. when a person is committing an illegal action and is taken to imprisonment / prison. b. law & order / gangs is a tv series that has presented different crime cases for more than 20 seasons. c. there are many kinds of punishment / sentences as death penalty, lethal injection, the capital punishment and mutilation. d. the perpetrator / victim is the one who commits an offence or crime. e. capital punishment / death penalty is the killing of a person by judicial process as a punishment for an offense. f. money or property paid to secure a captive’s release is called fine / ransom. g. in a crime scene the assault / attacker and the victim are the most important elements. placing new words into a context to recognize their meaning cooperate with peers to comprehend short texts while-reading read the following crime cases with your classmate and decide what types of crimes they are: a. (october 11, london, sri lanka guardian) hillary clinton was giving a list of countries that used this crime as a weapon of war. kathleen willey and juanita broaddrick alleged they were abused sexually by (bill) clinton. gennifer flower, other women and of course monica lewinski claimed to have had illicit sexual relations with clinton which is not a crime. the average sentence for this crime is 6 to 7 years but different penalties for a crime as assault could be 11 to 12 in a federal prison. ____________________________________________________________________________ ____________________________________________________________________________ 159profile vol. 15, no. 1, april 2013. issn 1657-0790 (printed) 2256-5760 (online). bogotá, colombia. pages 139-169 building esp content-based materials to promote strategic reading b. three suspects were arrested this week in ontario, canada, and abroad. the conspiracy allegedly played out in canada, iran, afghanistan, dubai and pakistan. police say they seized educational literature and more than 50 circuit boards intended to remotely detonate bombs. one of the accused, mohammad alizadeh, also faces charges of making or possessing explosive devices and financing this terrible crime. ____________________________________________________________________________ ____________________________________________________________________________ c. one of today’s biggest human rights crises is the sale of women and girls (and, to a lesser extent, boys) into sex slavery. this crime is the third largest criminal industry in the world, outranked only by arms and drug dealing. the united nations estimates that this business generates $7 to $10 billion annually. each year the estimate by most experts involves millions of people. it is considered that it will be the second largest criminal industry in the world within the next decades. ____________________________________________________________________________ ____________________________________________________________________________ d. this crime in the united states is one of the most profitable in the world. as such, it attracts the most ruthless, sophisticated, and aggressive traffickers. law enforcement agencies face an enormous challenge in protecting the country’s borders. each year, according to the u.s. customs service, 60 million people enter the united states on more than 675,000 commercial and private flights. another 6 million come by sea and 370 million by land. in addition, 116 million vehicles cross the borders with canada and mexico. more than 90,000 merchant and passenger ships dock at u.s. ports. these ships carry more than 9 million shipping containers and 400 million tons of cargo. another 157,000 smaller vessels visit our many coastal towns. amid this voluminous trade, these people conceal cocaine, heroin, marijuana, mdma (éxtasis), and methamphetamine shipments for distribution in u.s. neighbourhoods. ____________________________________________________________________________ ____________________________________________________________________________ (taken and adapted from wikipedia) universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras160 bautista barón after-reading let’s check reading comprehension according to the crime cases above answer the following questions by circling the correct option. (individually and then compare with your classmates) 1. who had illicit sexual relations with clinton? a. kathleen willey and juanita broaddrick b. gennifer flower and monica lewinski c. hillary clinton 2. what is the average sentence for rape? a. 6 to 7 years b. 11 and a half c. 11 to 12 years 3. what did the police seize in these countries? a. literature books b. explosives and bombs c. circuits boards and information 4. what charges does mohammad alizadeh face? a. detonation of bombs and explosives b. possession of explosives and drug trafficking c. fabrication, possession of explosives and financing of terrorism 5. what is the third largest criminal industry in the world? a. human trafficking b. slave trade c. drug trafficking asking for clarification or verification to answer 161profile vol. 15, no. 1, april 2013. issn 1657-0790 (printed) 2256-5760 (online). bogotá, colombia. pages 139-169 building esp content-based materials to promote strategic reading 6. how much money does human trafficking generate? a. two to seven million b. seven to ten billion c. seven to one hundred billion 7. what is the most profitable crime in the world? a. kidnapping b. human trafficking c. drug trafficking 8. how do people enter the usa? a. by car and plane b. by ship and vessel c. by vehicles and train 9. what countries border the usa? a. united states and canada b. canada and mexico c. mexico 10. what kind of merchandise do people conceal in international trade? a. tons of cargo b. different kinds of drugs c. shipping containers selfevaluation my learning attitude always sometimes never i have done all the reading comprehension exercises.        i have had a positive attitude towards learning.       i have cooperated with my classmates.       how much i know about crimes yes, i can. i can improve. i can identify and define vocabulary related to crimes.     i can recognize different types of crimes.     i can distinguish crime information and questions in present and past.     universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras162 bautista barón development of my reading skills yes, i can. i can improve. i can select specific information in short crime texts.     i can recall crime words when i read short texts. i can get the main idea when i read short texts. my learning strategy use awareness yes, i can. i can improve. i can use imagery clues to identify new words.     i can use linguistic clues to define concepts.     i can logically deduce from context clues.     i can place new words into context.     i can cooperate with my classmates to comprehend short texts.     i can selectively find and relate specific information.     taken and adapted from astrid núñez pardo (2010) thanks for your attention! j&n 163profile vol. 15, no. 1, april 2013. issn 1657-0790 (printed) 2256-5760 (online). bogotá, colombia. pages 139-169 building esp content-based materials to promote strategic reading appendix b: students’ needs assessment dirección nacional de escuelas escuela de investigación criminal questionnaire name: _______________________________________________________ age: ________________ position: _______________________________ academic background: _________________________________________ a. choose the option that better describes your performance in english. in the last option write your own ideas. 1. you consider english an important tool for: a. your professional development b. international promotion of the institution c. job performance d. personal growth e. others. which? _____________________________________________________ 2. your previous english learning in the institution has been: a. very good b. good enough c. not good d. other: ___________ 3. your english level to perform in criminalistics matters is: a. low b. average c. high d. other: _____________________ 4. the english skill you have developed best is: a. writing b. listening c. speaking d. reading e. other: ________ 5. according to the institution, a professional in criminalistics must: a. be able to write reports, construct evidence, and ask and give information. b. prepare reports to participate in a trial. c. identify suspects, victims and witnesses. d. other: ________________________________________________________ universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras164 bautista barón 6. an english class for specific purposes should be: a. an oral exposition prepared by the teacher. b. reading workshops and practical performances prepared by the students. c. guided reading workshops and practical performances prepared by students. d. other: _________________________________________________________ 7. reading is a skill that allows a complete development of criminalistics and crime science subjects: a. yes b. no c. it is necessary to develop other skills. d. other: _________________________________________________________ 8. a strategy is: a. a thinking process. b. prior knowledge to think about a topic. c. an action or technique used by students to improve their reading skills. d. other: _________________________________________________________ 9. the materials that can help your learning process could be: a. guided reading workshops with a variety of activities. b. videos and webs in internet. c. cds and cassettes and visual aids. d. other: _________________________________________________________ 10. to improve your english level you need: a. vocabulary b. reading and writing exercises c. listening and speaking exercises d. all of the above e. other: ________________________________________________________ 11. your learning process is more effective when you: a. see vivid images or pictures. b. listen to the teacher or others. c. use gestures and use expressive movements. d. other: __________________________________________________________ 165profile vol. 15, no. 1, april 2013. issn 1657-0790 (printed) 2256-5760 (online). bogotá, colombia. pages 139-169 building esp content-based materials to promote strategic reading 12. in class you prefer to work: a. individually b. in pairs c. in a group d. other: __________________________________________________________ 13. in class you feel more comfortable when: a. the activities are guided by the teacher. b. you work alone. c. there is collaborative work between the teacher and the students. d. you work with your classmates only. e. other: ___________________________________________________________ 14. your autonomous work consists of: a. self reviewing of the vocabulary and the activities worked in class. b. using the vocabulary creating new situations or descriptions. c. visiting the web pages recommended by the teacher and doing exercises on your own. d. other: ____________________________________________________________ b. please write your comments, ideas or make a proposal you consider interesting or relevant to accomplish our english objectives both effectively and attractively: _________________________________________________________________________________ _________________________________________________________________________________ thanks a lot! universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras166 bautista barón appendix c: final self-evaluation (survey 1) please read each statement and tick the corresponding box. the statements refer to the frequency in which the situation took place or happened. answer the following questionnaire in terms of how often the situations occurred in the process of the reading workshops development. do not answer how you think it should be, or what other people do. there are no right or wrong answers. my teacher support always 100% usually 50% sometimes 25% never 0% 1. the teacher helped me to identify vocabulary and expressions related to crimes, suspects and victims using my prior knowledge. 2. the teacher promoted my interest in learning content and the english language at the same time. 3. the teacher trained me in the use of learning strategies for the development of different activities. 4. the teacher fostered my reading comprehension of short texts related to crime topics. 5. the teacher created and adapted activities to encourage me to routinely use the learning strategies and to be more independent. 6. the teacher helped me realize the usefulness of english for my academic success. 7. the teacher taught me to do an ongoing self-evaluation of my own learning process. what i have learned about content always 100% usually 50% sometimes 25% never 0% 1. i am able to define what a crime is and differentiate among the different types of crimes through the reading of sentences and short texts. 2. i am able to identify and describe crimes through the reading of short articles. 3. i am able to read short physical descriptions of suspects and victims. 4. i am able to indicate significant elements for descriptions of suspects and victims in short texts. 5. i am able to read and identify a criminal notice with specific vocabulary and expressions. 6. i am able to recognize the summary structure of a crime report. 167profile vol. 15, no. 1, april 2013. issn 1657-0790 (printed) 2256-5760 (online). bogotá, colombia. pages 139-169 building esp content-based materials to promote strategic reading what i have learned about the use of learning strategies always 100% usually 50% sometimes 25% never 0% 1. i implemented the learning strategies to improve reading comprehension. 2. i used reading strategies for a better understanding of texts and descriptions. 3. i recognized the importance of self-evaluation. 4. i am able to choose the strategies by myself. memory strategies 1. i can associate new words or expressions to concepts already in memory. 2. i can place new words into a context. 3. i can relate words with a specific concept. 4. i can relate new words or expressions using imagery. cognitive strategies 1. i can get the idea quickly. 2. i can ask questions to clarify information. 3. i can translate in the native and target language. 4. i can answer questions to verify information. 5. i can predict content. 6. i can select and paraphrase specific information. compensation strategies 1. i can use linguistic or other clues to get the meaning. 2. i can adjust or approximate the messages. metacognitive strategies 1. i can relate concepts with already known material. 2. i can evaluate my own progress in the new language. affective strategies 1. i can take risks in a language learning situation. 2. i can discuss my feelings with someone else. social strategies 1. i can ask for clarification or verification. 2. i can cooperate with my classmates. universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras168 bautista barón why do i prefer to use certain strategies? please tick your options 1. because i am a visual learner. 2. because i do not know the vocabulary. 3. because i relate unfamiliar words and expressions with their equivalents in spanish. 4. because i need the dictionary to know the exact meaning to understand the text. 5. because i like to work with my classmates. 6. because confirming and clarifying with my classmates make me more confident. my learning attitude always 100% usually 50% sometimes 25% never 0% 1. i expressed positive feelings toward the class and the learning process. 2. i respected others’ opinions and points of view when reading. 3. i strove to learn and implement the learning strategies to improve. 4. i asked for the teacher’s and classmates’ help to solve problems and doubts. 5. i became aware of the importance of learning english in a meaningful context. adapted from http://richarddpetty.files.wordpress.com/2010/03/sill-english.pdf (oxford, 1989) thanks for your cooperation, my dear students! 169profile vol. 15, no. 1, april 2013. issn 1657-0790 (printed) 2256-5760 (online). bogotá, colombia. pages 139-169 building esp content-based materials to promote strategic reading appendix d: expressing my personal opinions (survey 2) 1 make a brief description of your experience as regards the implementation of the reading comprehension strategy use. _________________________________________________________________________________ _________________________________________________________________________________ _________________________________________________________________________________ do you consider that the implementation of reading comprehension strategies contributed to your learning content and improvement in english? why? _________________________________________________________________________________ _________________________________________________________________________________ _________________________________________________________________________________ what workshop activities did you enjoy the most and what would you change from those you enjoyed least? _________________________________________________________________________________ _________________________________________________________________________________ _________________________________________________________________________________ thanks for your collaboration! 1 the original survey was conducted in spanish, but it has been translated for the purpose of this publication. 63profile vol. 12, no. 1, 2010. issn 1657-0790. bogotá, colombia. pages 63-78 moral responsibility and confidence as factors that influence teacher involvement in educational change responsabilidad moral y confianza como factores que influyen en la participación del profesor en el cambio educativo cecilio lópez* universidad de veracruz, méxico various factors that are not easily observed have a strong impact on educational change. in this paper, i examine some of the issues that emerged from the data collected while exploring my informants’ perceptions and attitudes towards their changing roles when confronted with curriculum innovation. this research demonstrates that the experience teachers acquire during their career may often enable them to participate in the design of a new study plan. however, this experience does not always justify their role as curriculum-designers in either the eyes of their colleagues or in their own eyes, particularly when coerced into playing this or other roles. the results indicate that teachers, depending on their levels of moral responsibility and confidence, become involved in different roles during their teaching career. key words: change, confidence, curriculum, innovation, moral responsibility existen diversos factores que tienen un fuerte impacto en el cambio educativo y que no se observan fácilmente. en este artículo examino algunos de los temas que emergieron de los datos recogidos mientras exploraba las opiniones y las actitudes de mis informantes hacia sus roles siempre cambiantes cuando se enfrentan a la innovación curricular. esta investigación demuestra que los profesores, con la experiencia que adquieren durante su carrera, pueden permitirse a menudo participar en el diseño de un nuevo plan de estudios. sin embargo, para sus colegas o para ellos mismos, esta experiencia no justifica siempre su papel como diseñadores de un plan de estudios particularmente cuando están obligados a jugar éste u otros roles. los resultados indican que los profesores se involucran en diversos roles durante su carrera como profesores, dependiendo de sus niveles de responsabilidad moral y de confianza. palabras clave: cambio, confianza, currículo, innovación, responsabilidad moral * e-mail: lomcx@yahoo.com this article was received on august 1, 2009 and accepted on december 19, 2009. 64 universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras lópez introduction the purpose of the present study is to determine teachers’ moral responsibility and confidence as factors that influence their involvement in educational change. previous studies have shown that there is little research on the exploration of teachers’ opinion regarding new roles during innovation. most of the studies conducted so far have been limited to demonstrating that teachers remain faithful to traditional roles and methodologies so as not to undermine their confidence. this struggle leads teachers to revise their commitment to the institution and their confidence. case study methodology may bring to light that teachers do demonstrate a confident and responsible attitude towards other colleagues and a commitment towards their institution during innovation. the aim of this study is therefore to consider the fact that teachers, both consciously and efficiently and with responsibility and confidence, need to play different roles upon request during a time of change. this paper is divided into four sections. the first section explains the research question, which is the point of departure for this work. it also deals with reforms in the mexican educational context. there are three subsections here: first, i refer to the teachers as members of an institutional culture; then, i focus specifically on the encouragement of collaboration and leadership as an important element regarding responsibility and confidence. the second section explains the methodology used to obtain data. in the third section, i interpret what teachers said. there are two subsections in this part: the first subsection has to do with the idea of teachers’ moral responsibility, and in the following section i present my data that are related to the concept of confidence. lastly, i present the findings of my research. educational context in mexico in general, it can be said that there are three important issues to discuss when referring to the perceptions and attitudes teachers have of the roles they play when designing a curriculum. the first issue is whether teachers are aware of the roles they play in a curriculum change and if innovation management has an impact on these. attitudes, perceptions and awareness are not interchangeable; however, they are intertwined. the second issue is that teachers have their own attitudes and these attitudes are reflected in their behaviours. for example, a positive attitude towards innovation may be reflected by cooperative behaviour while an ambivalent or negative attitude is likely to be reflected by non-cooperation or even resistance. the third issue is that teachers’ perceptions are reflected in their attitudes. to be exact, one’s attitudes towards an innovation are the result of the perceptions (and quite possibly misperceptions) that one has about it, e.g. one’s perceptions about the way it might affect one’s work patterns, status and identity. therefore, an interesting point might be to identify the attitudes held by teachers towards the roles they will play. these attitudes and perceptions appear to be deeply connected with the professional development and identity of teachers (calderhead, 1993, 1996; castejón & martínez, 2001; cook-sather, 2001; hargreaves, 1992, 2000). in this paper, i focus specifically on teachers’ opinions regarding their moral responsibility and commitment during educational change in mexico. the educational system in mexico has gone through several curricular changes in the past two decades. these reforms started in the late 1980s and early 1990s in the universities of guadalajara, puebla, tabasco, sonora and veracruz. educational 65 moral responsibility and confidence as factors that influence teacher involvement in educational change profile vol. 12, no. 1, 2010. issn 1657-0790. bogotá, colombia. pages 61-78 reform during the 1980s included changing to the credit system. although this system still lacked flexibility, it involved creating a common core of courses in the basic skills, upgrading existing academics and hiring academics with higher degrees. as a result, grants and full-time positions were offered. furthermore, staff were trained, resource and computer centres were opened and a new budgeting system was adopted (kent, 1998; garcía, flores, & gallegos, 2005). another reform adopted in the 1990s was a new approach to support research, which began with the introduction of an innovative programme designed to grant individual, productivity bonuses to teachers and researchers (gago, 1992). institutions were required to compete for these funds on the basis of project proposals, which were evaluated by committees of experts. individual schools or departments were encouraged by the university authorities to expand their income, to include non-governmental sources by raising student fees, selling services and entering into contracts with local businesses (arredondo, 1992a, 1992b, 2003). however, by the late 1990s, it is important to highlight that university authorities permitted the different schools to create their own procedures to increase their income, such as opening postgraduate programmes, language courses, and computer classes to anyone from inside or outside the university who could pay the corresponding fee. on the other hand, the resources obtained were taken over and administered by the university and not by the individual school that generated the income. this appears to have been carried out in order to help the weaker academic and administrative areas in accordance with managerial and economic perspectives. it may be useful to note that in an international context, such changes are common and often part of “neoliberal” politics that exports economic crisis downward, making local authorities “responsible” for generating income and, at the same time, allowing a very small measure of autonomy. educational reforms in order to improve education during the period 1988-1994, there occurred a process of partial decentralisation (ocde, 1994). the administration of schools was transferred to the corresponding heads of schools, but the salaries of teachers continued to be negotiated at the federal level along with the granting of full-time positions. later on, financing by the federal government was condensed into one global budget destined for all institutions of higher education throughout the country (ocde, 1994). updated training programmes began to be offered in less known areas, including languages, and this became the responsibility of state universities. furthermore, state universities today are also competing for funding, but they have to prove that they are involved in research. they are also obliged to make their programmes more flexible so that the mobility of academics and students can be ensured. all these issues may have had an impact on the perception of what was expected of teachers as members of an institutional culture. teachers as members of an institutional culture by institutional cultures, i refer to the set of objectives and rules that defines how members of a community interact with each other, their expectations of one another, themselves and the institution. institutional cultures interrelate with all the members of a community and their responsibilities within the community and can 66 universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras lópez be understood to embrace the values, beliefs, rules and expectations projected in the institutional image. i relate this to what hargreaves (1994) refers to as cultures of teaching: cultures of teaching comprise beliefs, values, habits and assumed ways of doing things among communities of teachers who have had to deal with similar demands and constraints over the years… cultures of teaching help give meaning, support and identity to teachers and their work. (p. 165) this involves coming to an agreement on what is to be discussed at academic meetings, concurring in the characteristics of good teaching strategies and techniques and weighing up the interest staff members might show towards change, innovation and professional development (peterson & deal, 2002). lambert (1998) and fullan (2001) believe that the culture of an institution not only possesses a shared sense of purpose and values, but also follows the norms regarding continuous learning and improvement as well as commitment and responsibility in accomplishing duties through collaborative relationships. kabanoff, waldersee & cohen (1995) mention that this type of institutional culture might be characterised by collegial values such as collaboration and commitment. gunnar (2000) adds that an organisation, simply by going through a value-consolidation process, ensures its transformation into an institution. however, inside some organisational cultures there are power groups, which are evidence of a top-down hierarchical organisation (darling-hammond, 1988; white, 1988; newman, 1998). their presence may have an impact on the roles teachers play inside the educational setting. this is more evident when the institution becomes involved in educational change based on two stages in which several models of innovation seem to coincide: collaborative planning and leadership encouragement. collaborative planning and leadership encouragement lópez (2008) affirms that several models for the management of innovation coincide at different stages. for example, west’s (2005) model starts with the identification of specific challenges and achievements. it is also connected to what campbell, kynakides, muijs, & robinson (2004) and joyner (2005) propose. as stated by lópez (2008), collaborative planning involves schools and individuals working together as members of the same institutional team. bennett, crawford, & riches (1992) add that in the collaborative school management cycle, those involved in the different levels of planning of a programme become part of a “programme team”. every member of the group participates in the design of the study plan. in addition, one of the members of this team will have to play a leading role to ensure a successful result. most members on any team of teachers are somehow waiting for the opportunity to show their potential in managerial, academic and professional terms. west (2005) affirms that leadership practices are not exclusive to school principals. the managerial side of teachers’ jobs responds to the new roles they play as ‘middle’ managers (campbell et al. 2004, p. 94). west (2005) refers to them as ‘transformational’ approaches, which distribute and empower, in contrast to ‘transactional’ approaches, which sanction bureaucratic concepts of hierarchy and control (lópez, 2008). he also refers to the need to focus on the development of the staff as a whole. every member is a partner in the progress of the institution. finally, it can be said that teachers, as members of a socially evolving group, play different roles in the same way as if they were actors or coaches (wright, 1987; miles, 2005; hoogveld, paas, & 67 moral responsibility and confidence as factors that influence teacher involvement in educational change profile vol. 12, no. 1, 2010. issn 1657-0790. bogotá, colombia. pages 61-78 jochems, 2005, lópez, 2008). they work for social change and teach and train students to respond to the demands of a world in which new technology develops rapidly. they are coaches because they have the responsibility of leading the work team to achieve the goals stated in the plan to design and implement a new curriculum. this general description highlights the fact that, so far, teachers do not seem to have a clear description of a professional identity or confidence in their performance of the role or roles they are expected to play during innovation. relation between institutional culture, collaboration and leadership in addition, teachers’ attitudes play an important role in the design and implementation of a study plan. they may affect the teachers’ level of confidence and commitment regarding the request to design a new curriculum (bascia, 2005; nias, 2005; durrant & holden, 2006), as well as their personal use and adoption of new roles, concepts and methodologies. when a teacher accepts a role, s/he accepts the positive and negative aspects involved in its description. in the following section, i present my research methodology, which is based on a case study approach. methods to explore teachers’ opinions i find that a case study is preferred for examining different phenomena when performances cannot be controlled, since it uses direct ob-servation and systematic interviewing to find out the informants’ perceptions and judgements (simons, 1996; yin, 2003). by these means, i hope to get an in-depth, holistic description and analysis of a single case, or a group of cases, a phenomenon (historical case study), or a social unit (merriam, 1998; simons, 1996; cohen, mccue, germain, & woods, 1997; yin, 2003). my main source of information, as is typical in a case study, is the interview. this resource can take several forms, but, in this case, it was frequently of an open-ended nature, during which the interviewer was able to ask key informants for the facts of, or opinions about, different phenomena taking place in their institution. in some situations, the informant might have even been asked for personal insights into certain occurrences and i used this information as the basis to continue with the inquiry. this gave the informant different roles: that of a storyteller, a participant, or a partner, in addition to that of a respondent. i interviewed a total of seventeen informants who were all uv academics. analysing important teachers’ attributions one of the main issues that emerged in answer to my research question regarding teachers’ perceptions of their roles when confronted with a request to design a curriculum was that of the relationship between managers and teachers, stated in the first part of this paper. the fact that the answers given by the informants related to moral responsibility and confidence led me to organise what they said into these categories. the key aspects of these findings are divided into two categories: the first, “teachers’ moral responsibility”, which relates to teachers assuming obligations; the second is “levels of confidence”. this second category is divided into four subcategories, to wit: 68 universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras lópez lack of confidence in other people’s ability, selfconfidence, confidence as trust and factors which affect confidence. i decided to present my findings under these particular headings because teachers referred to these issues when talking about their involvement with both the institution and their students. they also mentioned them when referring to the roles they have played so far in addition to the new ones they have been obliged to play since the request to design a curriculum. given their responses, these roles appear to be connected to an ideal conception of the way teachers should behave, especially in response to new demands such as curriculum change. moral responsibility regarding moral responsibility, i am referring to when, for either external or internal reasons, a teacher feels obliged to perform certain tasks. for example, teachers who experience a change in roles and become co-ordinators, or agents-of-change, may feel obliged to commit themselves to carrying out the different tasks inherent in these roles. in addition, teachers may be persuaded to perform certain actions simply because they are responsible; in other words, moral responsibility might be understood as something personal, that is, a mutual or self-imposed obligation. moreover, teachers may feel morally responsible to perform certain tasks for different reasons; for example, because they feel morally devoted to the institution. here, in this investigation, the informants interviewed showed that they were dedicated to their work in the way they understood what it entailed. people in our group care about students and put in more time and effort. they treat their students as people and as learners, neither role more important than the other, but combined. they see their students outside the classroom. i see the students at home, socially, talk to them in the halls... keep in contact after they are no longer my students, things like that and i think that’s important. (margarita, ini, 05.10.031) this informant implicitly divides teachers into two groups: those who do not care about students and those who, like herself, do. this informant might be including in her group teachers who are part of a task culture, an informal group, or a power group (white, 1988; hargreaves, 1992). these teachers might be committed, participative and responsible. their concern for their students goes beyond the time spent in the classroom. however, the force that makes this particular teacher take the decision to treat her students as human beings who can learn – and not computers that just capture information – may be her commitment to them and the institution. margarita feels morally obliged and responsible for maintaining the appropriate learning conditions for her students. she sees her students as individuals and interacts with them even outside the school boundaries. her comment highlights her ability to cope with her responsibilities and her students’ expectations of her. hugo also makes reference to this group of morally responsible teachers who become involved in different academic activities that have an impact on the students. on november 25th 1998, luis, in his role as head-teacher of the language school, summoned all the members of his work team (academic secretary, head-teachers of both b.a. programmes run by the language school and coordinators of the different areas) to an important meeting to inform them about the project the uv was generating to move into a new educational model… there were plenty of questions that were very difficult to answer. there was a lack of elements to carry out such a task. it was a complex enterprise and nobody had a clear idea on how to start the work. we decided to start working with the analysis of the institutional evaluation document carried out during the 1 the reference involves: name, (in) interview, (i) first round, date. 69 moral responsibility and confidence as factors that influence teacher involvement in educational change profile vol. 12, no. 1, 2010. issn 1657-0790. bogotá, colombia. pages 61-78 previous administration when another teacher was head of the language school. (hugo, meif log, 2003) hugo employs an inclusive we, although it can be observed at the beginning of this extract that not everybody is included. he is part of a team that has just taken the decision to start working on the analysis of the institutional evaluation document relating to plan 90. the team is supporting the new administration by revising a document from a previous administration, which is a task laden with political implications. by using an inclusive we, hugo is showing that by making a decision as shown in extract 002, he believes that he belongs to a group with enough power to do so. however, his sense of commitment is not only to his colleagues and the institution, but also to his students. hugo and margarita, by all accounts, seem to be two concerned teachers, but they were not aware of what the other was doing and never once mentioned any of the other’s projects. this might lead to the demand for the creation of a network – although this association would be for students, in this case, not for teachers – as margarita suggests. i get to start opening up a sort of network of support [for students] – a kind of group where they communicate their fears, why they are uncomfortable, or what their impressions or desires are for the college – besides the teacher, or tutor, or adviser, or whatever... also to get to know some students more formally, more deeply… i am sure teachers need to be trained and it should be somebody who believes in the concept of autonomy and practises it… so that an autonomous person should be one who teaches others to be autonomous, not just one who likes it. (margarita, ini, 05.10.03) margarita seems to be interested in helping students as she is investing time in keeping in touch with them. furthermore, she is aware that she will have to play other roles –tutor, adviser and facilitator– that demand more time and training. however, the university will not pay her for the extra hours to set up a network because these hours are already considered as ‘office hours’ in a teacher’s contract; that is, in theory, a full-time teacher spends half her/his working hours in a classroom and the rest in her/his office. an example of this committed and participative attitude is further expressed by margarita in the following extract referring to teachers innovating to achieve more dynamic classes. if you want to show a movie you have to fight for the students’ cubicle, or the movie room, because a lot of classes are held in these spaces. i would like to have more space, but i do not think there is much we can do about that. it would be nice to have more places where you can show movies or tv… but you can bring the tape-recorder, the cd player and stuff, which are now much better than they used to be. sometimes there’s no electricity in the room, but there are batteries for the cd player, which is a step up. (margarita, ini, 05.10.03) it is evident that margarita is committed to the students’ learning of the language: teachers should not be expected to fight, buy batteries or bring their own equipment to the classroom. her comment gives the impression that if you do not take an aggressive attitude, your students will not benefit from the few available resources (these resources and spaces demand better organisation and more communication, a task that requires improved coordination amongst the head of school, planners and teachers). for example, teachers cannot offer students this resource, so the authorities cannot expect teachers to commit themselves if they do not provide the necessary conditions. new teachers also want to use up-to-date technology, however, at this point in time, the video room had been closed, which is a paradox between ideal situations and facts. for such commitment, the authorities or institution should be able to respond in a more organised fashion. 70 universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras lópez teachers with more stable working conditions often witness the struggle new teachers experience in their desire to be updated in subject matter knowledge and technology. this struggle leads teachers to revise their commitment to the institution as expressed by the following informant: there are people committed to their jobs and to the improvement of the institution. they are part of a group of teachers who support and carry out the academic work of the language school. they are eager to work. there’s a new engine in the new teachers who want to participate and they’re sessional [parttime] teachers, so their participative attitude is something to admire. these young people are eager to work, to keep up their training and surrender to projects. they’re only paid for the hours they work in the classroom. i also have a lot of work and even though i have a full time position, i still struggle to survive. (lucy, in2, 18.11.032) this teacher admires “sessional” [part-time] teachers who could lose their jobs when full-time teachers come back from their leaves of absence. the view expressed in extract 005 relates not only to new teachers, but to every single teacher who is committed, regardless of the number of years spent working for the institution. full-time teachers might view their daily obligations in a less threatening way than sessional teachers, given that they have tenure, but that does not reduce their workload, or alleviate unfair working conditions. however, whether full-time or sessional, teachers do what they have to do and more. in addition, the full-time teachers’ positive response to their obligations may inspire ‘novice’ teachers and other colleagues. when this happens, these teachers become a model for their students and colleagues, what lucy (extract 005) calls a new engine. however, new teachers also need to consider what is expected of them and what they can actually do, and 2 the reference involves: name, (in) interview, (2) second round, date. communicate in a sort of bottom-up process how they hope to be rewarded -not just by promises during the change process. in the following extract sandy highlights the fact that teachers not only need to communicate what they do and need, but that they also need to recognise the work carried out by colleagues. this type is somebody who if he has class at eight, he’s on time and if he has class at four, he is there, because he’s interested in his work. he gets upset with students who do not participate – as other students comment that there are those students who do not work, do not read, or do not respond in class as most of us do. that’s also true… he is interested in change, in updating, in organising meetings with teachers and students to modify and update the study plan. he even worked on the study plan previous to the one called plan 90. (sandy, ini, 17.09.03) sandy views her colleague as a model of commitment. this type of teacher is usually involved in change and in giving her/his community an identity. in addition, these teachers give their time, ideas and effort to achieving academic projects and institutional goals. they do this in order to grow professionally and attain a professional identity. they do not necessarily expect any financial reward except, perhaps, a more solid working base. this type of teacher also works with colleagues and students and organises meetings that include a particular group of teachers. administrators usually invite these teachers to join a team to accomplish institutional goals or complete projects and to establish communication with similar groups in other educational settings (networking). however, according to the data that emerged, managers need to reconcile the different personalities of their teachers, avoid giving false promises and assign attainable tasks. an example of this view is found in the following extract: one of the facilitators informed us that the university authorities had the intention of implementing this modality in september 71 moral responsibility and confidence as factors that influence teacher involvement in educational change profile vol. 12, no. 1, 2010. issn 1657-0790. bogotá, colombia. pages 61-78 1999 (i thought this was a mad idea). the work should be speeded up, so a series of proposals was added to the previous ones. a copy of the evaluation of the previous study plan was handed out to the different areas in order to get feedback – analysis, comments and proposals. the coordinators of the two bas were responsible for coordinating this work. (hugo, meif log, 2003) hugo feels that designing a study plan based on a new educational model might not be achievable in the time set by the university authorities and he points out the fact that there are people with different responsibilities involved in the task. he reveals a lack of confidence concerning the possibility of carrying out the task adequately as is evident from his use of the word mad. this is less related to his academic background than to the resources provided by the university itself and even the human resources at the language school. by resources i mean training, appropriate means of communication, library resources and technology. by human resources, i mean all those in charge of providing training and resources. hugo did not appear to have enough information about the changes that the authorities expected teachers to implement and yet he seems to have enough experience, or knowledge, to make such a statement. he is also showing that experience was important to start organising the work. hugo, being cooperative and committed, started keeping a log of the meetings outlining the development of the new model. although hugo did not feel quite confident about himself and his colleagues carrying out the task of designing the new study plan based on the specific parameters imposed by national policies, he knew teachers had to speed up the process, as the university authorities were expecting it to start in autumn, 1999. once again, the force that moved the informants to participate in this endeavour was a strong sense of responsibility and, of course, pressure from the authorities. therefore, teachers became committed to their role as facilitators and arranged meetings to get the work organised. after my first encounter with the new model, i kept on attending the meetings organised in the offices of the coordinators of the english ba and the department of foreign languages. with the help of an overhead projector, the facilitators sketched out a way in which the design of the new study plan could be approached, or advanced. it was highlighted that the model of credits could be categorised as semi-flexible and its presentation covered three levels: 1) an initial phase or basic; 2) an intermediate phase, or disciplinary that would correspond to the stage when students focus on the discipline of their ba as the name of this phase implies; 3) a final stage. (hugo, meif log, 2003) based on my observations during the research process, hugo continued to attend the meetings mainly because of his sense of responsibility. however, he might have felt obliged to carry on with the task because of his friendship with the head of the school. on the other hand, a close relationship might make people become too relaxed, leading them to expect special treatment or benefits, which is not the case of hugo as shown in extracts 002, 007 and 008. teachers had to learn the theories and become familiar with the policies behind the new model. they also had to learn the processes involved in the project so that they could become promoters of the principles it espoused. this is expressed by lucy in the following extract: it is necessary to get to know all these new philosophies well. i’m trying to internalise them and make them mine. they refer to the fact that education will make us better teachers and we have to change this concept radically, although unesco itself thinks this is just utopic… perhaps this change is not going to be so hard for them [teachers] as they are used to carrying out their work built on all these great theories of education such as the idea of learning to learn. i’m sure there are colleagues who have 72 universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras lópez already put this into practice. we’re supposed to start with this new model in 2004. i have high expectations that it will come to pass. i hope we’ll become models for our students who will become better citizens and human beings. they need to question more the events that happen around them. (lucy, ini, 20.09.03) lucy suggests that it is no longer enough to be aware, to be an expert and to be supportive and creative; teachers and managers have to be participative and committed to carrying out assigned tasks. through the extract, lucy seems to be proposing the idea that teachers should perform different roles such as subject expert, promoter of values and reflective teacher. this may be the appropriate moment to suggest that more than just one role can be in a main or focal dimension (polanyi, 1958). lucy also makes it evident that teachers should be concerned about being experts in their subjects. lucy’s perception was that teachers demonstrated their expertise by using the knowledge they had acquired from studying theories of education. still, i wonder why she uses the word hard when the change is going to be difficult in one way or another for other members of the educational setting such as administrators. i also wonder if she is only referring to teachers who can handle theories. lucy uses the pronoun them and so excludes herself from the group, but she shows confidence in terms of her specialised knowledge. perhaps she is just making a distinction between herself as an experienced, full-time teacher and others who are less experienced, meaning sessional teachers. in short, the moral responsibility of teachers refers to when they adhere to the goals of the group and uphold them because they believe they are right. it is evident that responsibility is profoundly connected to commitment and devotion, especially when teachers look for a way to give their students the tools to succeed, even after concluding their studies at school. teachers respond with more dedication when they understand, internalise and make the projects of the institution their very own. in addition, both novice and experienced teachers, whether they are employed as sessional or full-time teachers, struggle to become up-to-date in subject matter knowledge and technology. this may cause teachers review their commitment to the institution, especially if they are only sessional teachers who do not have tenure. however, there is a group of teachers, comprising both full-time and sessional, who for one reason or another feels a moral responsibility towards their work, their students and possibly the institution. this type of teacher, as revealed in the data, works with colleagues and students and has a disposition for teamwork. however, apart from moral responsibility, another important issue that emerged was teachers’ need to feel confident in order to carry out their work. this issue is discussed in the following section. confidence (levels of) in the various roles a teacher has to play the term confidence can have different connotations and interpretations. based on the responses of my informants, i shall discuss the issue of teachers’ professional confidence under four different headings: lack of confidence in other people’s ability, self-confidence, and confidence as trust (occurring when the teacher is the one to whom students or other colleagues disclose their private affairs), and, finally, factors which affect confidence (which includes support from colleagues). the quotes from my data were organised in a way that could make sense to the reader. it relies on the way i observed teachers behave. this behaviour was observed while my informants were giving their points of view. these points of view are observed 73 moral responsibility and confidence as factors that influence teacher involvement in educational change profile vol. 12, no. 1, 2010. issn 1657-0790. bogotá, colombia. pages 61-78 at a micro-level, the language classroom, and at a macro-level, the institution as a whole. lack of confidence in other people’s ability the first context for confidence may influence a teacher’s involvement. teachers might remain faithful to traditional roles and methodologies so as not to undermine their confidence. by traditional roles, i am referring to teachers who adhere to traditional methodologies. although there may be many other reasons that a teacher adheres to traditional methodologies, the fact is that confidence emerged as a relevant reason in this investigation. these teachers could be narrow-minded and rarely accept the opinions of students, so their classes could become quite passive. on the one hand, their determination to adhere to traditional ways of doing things might suggest to their colleagues that they do, indeed, lack self-confidence. on the other hand, their behaviour may give their colleagues the impression that they are self-confident, but only playing the role of a traditional teacher, as illustrated in the following extract: some of the teachers don’t completely believe in the role of a facilitator, the teacher who provides knowledge in an accessible manner. i feel they are so confident in their role of traditional teacher. i am afraid that the traditional teacher believes that he is the only one who has power in a classroom and that whatever he says or does is law and he is the absolute power source and no one can contradict him. no one is able to think outside of his criteria. i really prefer the idea of facilitator and giving more power to students, because after they leave school, they can continue learning. it is up to them. i think they should have the tools they need to be able to do so. (margarita, ini, 05.10.03) this suggests that some teachers feel secure playing a role they have mastered through experience, but they might not feel so confident with new methodologies. therefore, they may show a lack of trust towards new roles in order to avoid losing face. self-confidence the second use of the term confidence refers to when people have faith in what they do. sometimes, people may have an overview of what is happening in a specific situation and are sure they can sort out any problem. in the following extract, the informant seems to take it for granted that all teachers are concerned about improving their students’ training. there does not seem to be any doubt that the new task can be carried out in spite of the constant flow of more questions. the document showing the results of the evaluation of study plan 90 indicated that it had been approved and accepted as adequate, but it proposed a few adjustments: establishing a real common core area with three final specialised areas. all attempts to approach the new model became more difficult due to the constant surging of more questions, for example, what relationship would there be between this new model with a credit system and the postgraduate courses. (hugo, meif log, 2003) hugo appears to be quite confident in expressing his views. he knows what he is talking about. he implies by his comments that the work carried out related to the evaluation of the current study plan resulted in its approval and acceptance. it just demanded a few changes and adaptations. he also seems quite confident when expressing his opinion concerning the design of the study plan based on a new educational model. he observes that there are still a lot of doubts in relation to such work and, as an example, refers to the matter of credits. in addition, teachers can have confidence in other teachers for different reasons, as shown in the following section. 74 universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras lópez confidence as trust confidence as trust refers to when the teacher may be a confidant of her/his students and colleagues, enabling her/him to play the role of tutor or facilitator. i’m in touch with students, although i have a lot of them. if i have 15 or 20, i can be a guide and get closer to them. unfortunately, i have a group of 36 and contact becomes harder and this is a group in the new educational model. however, even in these large groups, i manage to keep in touch with students and clarify their doubts about the content of the lesson even after class. and many other students have the confidence to tell me other things, but not everyone, of course. (alfonso, ini, 12.10.03) this sense of confidence as trust changes considerably how students view their teachers, since they become more like friends, parents or tutors. in roberto’s case, as shown in the following extract, students’ comments help him feel confident and, in turn, he plays the role of confidant. students ask you for advice… they let you know when they like your work. ‘no, sir, you really do your best’. some teachers don’t… they arrive late. i encourage them [students] to feel confident to express their doubts about any part of the content of the course, not about personal stuff; however, i listen to whatever they want to share with me and try to support them. some students have the confidence to tell me why they didn’t attend a class, or what they didn’t understand. they have the confidence to tell me private things, touchy matters you cannot even imagine that have nothing to do with learning english. this helps you to have a wider picture of who your students are and what you can do to help them learn. (roberto, ini, 07.10.03) factors which affect confidence the fourth context of confidence is when the teacher feels more confident about performing a certain task or doing certain activities because of the support he/she has received or perceived. an example of this is in the following extract. on the one hand, the teacher feels more confident because he belongs to an apparently more ‘promising’ programme and, on the other, he feels more emotionally supported by the people involved in the distance elt ba programme. recently, i decided to leave the exam commission and focus on working for the distance elt ba, because of the lack of support [to carry out the tasks of the exam commission], although i’m still helping to design exams for some subjects. i don’t want to go back to the old system where you could attain a good mark at a certain level with a given teacher, but you knew you might even fail with another teacher at the same level. that’s why some of us are trying not to lose the departmental standard exams. (roberto, ini, 07.10.03) roberto was confident about his capability of carrying out two different activities without thinking of the effort and time invested. indeed, the time and effort invested does not appear to have been the problem that led him to stop participating in one of the projects, but, rather, the lack of support. therefore, confidence here seems to be linked to support: if there is support, there is more confidence to perform an assigned task. findings one assumption that emerged from my findings is that teachers may move from one role to another, even though the roles chosen might seem to be contradictory in their description. for example, why should teachers perform the roles of evaluator, facilitator and tutor with the same attitude? might this be due to the fact that they may be seen by students as an academic with contradictory behaviours? apparently, teachers are more strict and distant when playing the role of evaluator than when playing the role of tutor. some of the consequences of this shift might be reflected in the 75 moral responsibility and confidence as factors that influence teacher involvement in educational change profile vol. 12, no. 1, 2010. issn 1657-0790. bogotá, colombia. pages 61-78 teachers’ inability to make a balanced distribution of the energy invested in these different roles, which could lead to exhaustion, causing lower participation levels and creating an impoverished learning environment. the research findings indicate that teachers’ perceptions of a more positive and professional attitude towards new roles are characterized by their moral responsibility and confidence. teachers demonstrate their expertise by using the knowledge they have acquired from studying theories of education. in addition, teachers are not isolated islands. they need to work in agreement with the whole staff, students and those involved in administrative affairs. therefore, better organisation and more communication require improved coordination amongst the head of school, planners and teachers. communication, teamwork and leadership, thus, play an important role in helping teachers feel confident, more convinced and conscious of their role during innovation. all these roles and tasks can be carried out, on the one hand, when teachers show moral responsibility towards the institution for which they work. on the other, confident teachers cannot work in teams, reach agreements and plan their work unless they have confidence in what they know and what they do. in addition, teachers’ attitudes play an important role in the design and implementation of a study plan. they may affect the teachers’ level of confidence and commitment regarding the request to design a new curriculum (bascia, 2005; nias, 2005; durrant & holden, 2006), as well as their personal use and adoption of new roles, concepts and methodologies. when a teacher accepts a role, s/he accepts the positive and negative aspects involved in its description. teachers’ attitudes and perceptions will determine the final success or failure of every initiative to introduce change. in sum, in this paper i have discussed the different interpretations and uses of the concept of confidence. firstly, teachers may give the impression that they suffer from lack of confidence due to their attaching themselves to the traditional roles they know by heart in order to avoid getting involved in innovative tasks. this may be because they do not feel qualified to carry them out. secondly, teachers demonstrate a confident attitude towards other colleagues. thirdly, confidence also seems to be linked to support: support leads to confidence and trust. teachers can have confidence in other teachers, but more importantly, they need to have confidence when carrying out what they are asked to do. teachers need to feel supported in carrying out their work, in performing different roles, and they need to clearly understand what is expected of them and have their own expectations fulfilled. it also emerged from the data that there are subtle differences between the different roles performed by a researcher depending on the demands of the task. most teachers might be involved in research, but not all to the same degree. teachers might play the role of researcher because of their skills, responsibilities, commitment and other factors. apparently, when teachers start playing the role of researcher, they attempt to define their basic role as teacher before they start playing other roles. these research findings broaden our understanding of teachers’ perceptions of the educational quality of their school. therefore, research findings suggest that educational change has to include teachers’ development of role awareness. if teachers’ perceptions towards innovation are negative, the design of a study plan will be limited. to gain the support of the teaching staff, which miller (2005) concluded is a necessary condition for the success of innovative programmes, the 76 universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras lópez teachers’ priorities must be taken into account. teachers are definitely most aware of the needs of their students and institution in general (jordan, 2004; zembylas, 2004, nias, 2005). although they might need some specialized training and need to carry out research, they are the ones who may better frame what is required by the students and the institution in general. teachers need to consciously and efficiently play the different roles requested during change. conclusion teachers’ confidence in their professional practice and improved working conditions could facilitate the process of change (bascia, 2005; durrant & holden, 2006). certain models of innovation propose better working conditions and better interrelationships amongst staff. for example, durrant & holden (2006), in their model “for teacher-led school change”, suggest giving teachers more power when taking a plan of action. in addition, smylie & perry (2005), in their model, state that restructuring schools demands mechanisms, such as incentives, learning opportunities and expert professional educators from whom novices can learn. they, in turn, influence academic life in general. institutional and school practices generally require collaboration between novice and experienced teachers, and understanding of the different roles teachers play, or any other new role or function, regardless of whether the managerial perspective is bottom-up or top-down. an important factor that seems to be missing in the models of innovation shown in this paper is any reference to teachers playing the role of headteacher. indeed, he might play the role of leader in front of the rest of the teachers, but he still needs special training to perform the role appropriately, as in the case of curriculum-designer, agent of change or facilitator. it is clear that teachers are interested in playing these roles adequately after being trained, or through self-instruction, because they are responsible and committed to the institution. although some models take into account teachers’ participation in the process (taylor, 1970; 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(1970). how teachers plan their courses. slough: national foundation for educational research in england and wales. west, m. (2005). quality in schools: developing a model for school improvement. in m. fullan (ed.), fundamental change (pp. 98-119). the netherlands: springer. white, r. (1988). the elt curriculum. oxford: blackwell. wright, t. (1987). roles of teachers and learners. oxford: oxford university press. yin, r. (2003). case study research: design and methods. london. sage. zembylas, m. (2004). emotion metaphors and emotional labor in science teaching. science education, 88(3), 301-324. about the author cecilio lópez has a ph.d in language studies awarded by the university of kent, england, and a master’s degree in teaching of english from the university of aston in birmingham. he has a diploma in teaching of english from the university of yucatan in conjunction with the british council in mexico. he participated in the designing and implementation of a master’s programme in tesol at the university of veracruz (uv). he was director of the school of languages of uv from 1998 to 2002. at present, he is coordinator of the ba in english tutorial programme. 77profile vol. 14, no. 2, october 2012. issn 1657-0790 (printed) 2256-5760 (online). bogotá, colombia. pages 77-94 opportunity to teach and learn standards: colombian teachers’ perspectives estándares de oportunidad para la enseñanza y el aprendizaje: perspectivas de profesores colombianos rosalba cárdenas ramos* fanny hernández gaviria** universidad del valle, colombia the aim of this article is to present the outcomes of an exploration of in-service teachers’ perspectives in relation to an opportunity to teach and learn standards in english. a workshop for english teachers from cali (colombia) and the neighboring rural sectors was designed and carried out in order to collect the information. teachers’ perspectives about the topic were explored in terms of three aspects: general considerations that underlie opportunities to learn; standards and conditions in educational institutions (work aspects) and other institutional factors such as human and material resources. key words: equity, opportunities to learn and teach, standards. este artículo tiene por objetivo presentar los resultados de una exploración acerca de las reflexiones de un grupo de docentes en ejercicio, respecto a estándares de oportunidad para la enseñanza y aprendizaje del inglés como lengua extranjera. con este propósito se diseñó y ofreció un taller a profesores de cali (colombia) y de la zona rural aledaña. allí se estudiaron las perspectivas de los docentes en cuanto a tres aspectos: consideraciones generales que subyacen la oportunidad de aprender, estándares y condiciones en las instituciones educativas y otros factores tales como recursos materiales y humanos. palabras clave: aprender, enseñar, equidad, estándares de oportunidad. * e-mail: rosalbacardenas@gmail.com ** e-mail: fanny.hernandez@correounivalle.edu.co this article is based on a workshop carried out with teachers from cali and jamundí at universidad del valle (colombia). the purpose of the workshop was to explore in-service teachers’ thoughts in relation to an opportunity to teach and learn standards, an idea that became a goal after visiting schools within the research project about the conditions of implementation of the national bilingual program (nbp). this article was received on january 13, 2012, and accepted on june 12, 2012. universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras78 cárdenas ramos & hernández gaviria introduction historical trends towards social and economic integration have consolidated the english language as a lingua franca in international communications. english has evolved as a required tool for communicative purposes in different economic, commercial, political, cultural and academic contexts. in colombia, the effects of this historical trend have also materialized in our educational policies; the international use of english has generated requirements in terms of standards, which should help to determine levels of language proficiency. in the formulation of the standards, the common european framework of reference for languages (cefr) (council of europe, 2001) was adopted as the principal source and the basic standards for foreign languages -englishwere designed and published in colombia. the basic standards for foreign languages, english (ministerio de educación nacional men, 2006), was issued as the most visible part of the national bilingual program (nbp) 2004-2019. this program states that, by 2019, all students and teachers at the different educational levels should reach a predetermined level of english, according to the cefr scale, which should be as follows: c1 for professionals of foreign languages; b2 for professionals of any area; b2 for english teachers at the elementary level, b1 for students who finish the secondary level, and a2 for teachers of other areas at the elementary level. however, reaching these goals within the expected time is not an easy task. the achievement of these goals could be hindered by different aspects, such as the status of english as a foreign language in our country, the current level of english proficiency among students and english teachers, and the lack of appropriate conditions for improving the foreign language learning process in public and private educational institutions of low socioeconomic strata. having in mind the language proficiency goals to be reached and the presumed difficulties to attain them, we thought of the importance of investigating the real opportunities students and teachers are being offered by their institutions in order to reach these standards. based on navarro’s study (2004) on schools and their learning and teaching conditions, in which he argues that there are some baseline factors (‘primary goods’) that people require to be free and equal citizens in a society, and on everyday knowledge, it is not dif ficult to understand that many countries fail to offer the basic opportunities to learn a foreign language and that many factors need to be developed in order to build firm bases for opportunity to learn (otl) standards. one might reasonably suppose that a study which shows crucial aspects of work in schools as well as teachers’ experiences could help to provide information leading to the identification of elements in order to create opportunities to learn in a specific context. at the same time, such a study would make interventions designed to improve the learning process of the foreign language possible. the university of california, los angeles’ (ucla) institute for democracy, education and access (2003, p. 1) defines opportunity to learn (otl) as “a way of measuring and reporting whether students and teachers have access to the different ingredients that make up quality schools.” the otl standards movement has balanced the last educational reforms in the usa, which dealt mainly with performance and content standards without providing the conditions to reach them; the movement has lately expanded to other countries. the implementation of the nbp in colombia has raised questions and concern regarding the conditions of education, equity, opportunity and social im balance. cárdenas and hernández (2011, p. 252) argue that there is a need to construct the framework for the improvement of english language teaching 79profile vol. 14, no. 2, october 2012. issn 1657-0790 (printed) 2256-5760 (online). bogotá, colombia. pages 77-94 opportunity to teach and learn standards: colombian teachers’ perspectives (elt) in colombia: “…it is urgent to demand the betterment of conditions for the achievement of goals in the nbp, that is, the assurance of opportunity to learn (and teach) standards, from colombian educational authorities.” the previous thoughts and what we have witnessed in a two-year research project about the conditions of implementing the nbp, which involved 58 schools from strata 1 to 4 from the public and private sectors, gave rise to the idea of designing and offering a workshop for english teachers from cali and the neighboring rural sectors, with the intention of exploring in-service teachers’ thoughts in relation to the opportunities for teaching and learning. the workshop session started by building a basic theoretical foundation for the otl concept in order to ensure a common conceptual ground and, after that, focused on the exploration of teachers’ perspectives about otl. outcomes of the workshop carried out with teachers provided the following information: • general aspects that underlie opportunities to learn: worth and personal competence, healthy choices, decision-making, the teacher as an agent that transforms society. • standards and conditions in the institutions teachers represented: work-related aspects (teachers’ attitudes, interests and reasons for them; difficulties of different kinds; foreign language teaching methodologies; content clarity; evaluation, etc.) and institutional factors (infrastructure; human and material resources, support, etc.) • human development. personal aspects: dependability, productivity, career choices, attitude, resistance to change and responsibility. this paper discusses the results obtained after exploring the views about otl standards among the group of teachers who participated in the workshop. the teachers’ perspectives in relation to otl standards gathered in the workshop are valuable contributions in the process of building opportunities to teach and learn standards in english in cali and, hopefully, in the wider national context. building up otl standards the initial workshop was attended by 62 english teachers, mainly from the public sector, from cali and jamundí. they represented approximately 17 schools. the workshop lasted four (4) hours and was held on a saturday. the content of the workshop was organized in four sections that dealt with: 1. definitions (standards, opportunity, development, opportunity to learn standards); 2. general aspects that underlie opportunity to learn standards and conditions in the institution teachers work for (worth and personal competence; healthy choices; decisionmaking; exercising social responsibility, plus other aspects the participants consider relevant); 3. human development issues (dependability, productivity, career choices, attitude, resistance to change, responsibility and other aspects); and 4. the impact of the implementation of standards on teachers, students, school administrators, parents and the school community. in dealing with parts two to four of the workshop, we used a questionnaire organized in sections which teachers could answer individually or in groups; theoretical support was provided when needed (see appendix). the questionnaire was made up of four group discussions and two plenary discussions. both group discussions and plenary discussions had guiding questions. other explanatory elements were also included in the questionnaires. group discussion one enquired about teachers’ opinions on the role of aspects such as worth, personal competence, healthy choices, decisionmaking and social responsibility regarding their universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras80 cárdenas ramos & hernández gaviria students’ and their own opportunities to develop as individuals and members of society. this was followed by the first plenary dis cussion, which explored the opportunities that might contribute to the professional development of teachers. the second plenary discussion aimed at identifying the role and responsibility of educational authorities as providers of opportunities for teachers and learners within the nbp. notes and recordings of teachers’ answers were made. group discussion two focused on standards and institutional conditions. group discussion three addressed human development issues and personal aspects. participants were asked to evaluate their dependability, attitude, responsibility, productivity, and resistance to change, among others aspects. finally, group discussion four asked teachers to reflect upon the impact that establishing these standards could have on their institutions. the vermont department of education (2000) section on personal development standards provided some of the topics used in this questionnaire. to this source, we added questions concerning the teachers’ institutional context and the foreseeable impact of the implementation of standards in their schools. the information was then analyzed qualitatively; it was read and re-read, transcribed, organized, color-coded and categorized; charts were created to visualize it better. finally, it was analyzed and relevant examples were selected. the first three major categories had been pre-established according to the sections in the questionnaire, as well as some of the sub-categories of the second column. major category four and its associated subcategories, in addition to the entire third column of subcategories, emerged from the data. because of space limitations in the discussion, subcategories are not fully expanded and exemplified. discussion of the findings from the workshop teachers’ contributions in the workshop gave rise to a great number of subcategories (see table 1) which were organized following the structure of the main categories. nevertheless, not all subcategories are developed in the analysis; instead, it focuses on those of higher occurrence in the two plenaries and four group discussions: general aspects underlying opportunity to learn standards; otl standards and their relationship with conditions in schools; human development and impact on students and parents. in terms of general aspects underlying opportunity to learn standards and conditions in the schools teachers work for, we found that all remarks teachers made are oriented towards themselves and most of the time giving a very positive view of themselves and of the work they do. teachers feel they do well because they need to set an example; as one of the teachers states: “it’s important that the teacher be a model for the student, showing values with his attitude and reflecting professionalism” (t4)1. it is, however, necessary to state that teachers who participated in this workshop are highly motivated and many of them have attended teacher development program (tdp) courses for some years. it is possible that this fact explains their positive self-image. they see themselves as individuals with high self-esteem and self-confidence, positive attitudes towards pro gress and change. they think they are ready to interact with other school members to pursue their development with determination and are eager to use self-evaluation. they realize the importance of interacting with their peers in order to construct common bases for working together; they consider interactions with more experienced colleagues as strategies to face change: “some colleagues that work in primary are studying english by themselves and we help them teaching english in their groups” (t10). 1 teachers have been given a number in order to make reference to their opinions and viewpoints. 81profile vol. 14, no. 2, october 2012. issn 1657-0790 (printed) 2256-5760 (online). bogotá, colombia. pages 77-94 opportunity to teach and learn standards: colombian teachers’ perspectives table 1. elements emerging from teachers’ perspectives in the workshop major categories initial sub-categories emergent sub-categories 1. general aspects that underlie opportunities for learning worth and personal competence a. self-esteem, confidence and motivation b. setting personal goals c. self-evaluation d. being promoters of change healthy choices a. the teacher as a role model b. socializing healthy practices c. influence of socioeconomic factors on students’ learning habits d. teachers’ lack of awareness concerning physical and mental health decision-making a. individual decision-making b. life project c. teachers as decision-makers d. orienting students’ decision-making social responsibility a. the teacher as an agent that transforms society b. the relationship between classroom and real life c. the promotion of ecologically responsible practices d. teacher responsibility 2. standards and conditions in the schools teachers represented work-related aspects a. teachers’ attitude towards english b. number of students per group c. others: infrastructure, methodology, content clarity, evaluation, lack of appropriate use of resources, lack of connection and regulation for english teaching institutional aspects a. time aspects b. human and material resources c. physical conditions of schools’ classrooms d. the role of administrators e. opportunities for professional development f. meetings and curricular planning in the area g. the status of english in the institution universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras82 cárdenas ramos & hernández gaviria major categories initial sub-categories emergent sub-categories 3. human development dependability a. trusting teachers because of their education and knowledge b. trusting teachers because of their work in the institutions c. trusting teachers because of their autonomy, leadership and capacity to be critical d. difficulties found in teaching productivity a. importance of being prepared for productivity b. productivity as reflected in the teaching methodology c. difficulties career choices a. career satisfaction and love for the profession b. vocation and community service c. learning to love the profession d. wishing to increase knowledge in the english teaching area attitude a. positive attitude towards their own learning b. positive attitude towards teaching c. keeping a positive attitude in spite of difficulties resistance to change a. need for change b. positive aspects of change c. acceptance of change in spite of its inconveniences responsibility a. establishment of a link between responsibility and being life-long learners for their students’ sake as well as their own 4. impact of establishing standards in such schools teachers a. changes required b. opportunities for improvement c. lack of impact of standards students a. motivation, interest, and positive attitude towards english b. impossibility of creating awareness about standards school administrators a. commitment with english teaching b. support for teachers c. proficiency level of teachers and students parents a. comprehension of the importance of english b. need of information about standards c. negative impact school communities a. possibility for interacting with native speakers of english b. participation of the community in the educational processes c. need of raising awareness in the community 83profile vol. 14, no. 2, october 2012. issn 1657-0790 (printed) 2256-5760 (online). bogotá, colombia. pages 77-94 opportunity to teach and learn standards: colombian teachers’ perspectives regarding the idea of teachers as role-models (subcategory ‘healthy choices’), teachers feel they need to provide students and their families with all the available information and options for a healthy life through curricular activities. the idea that schools and educational communities must take a comprehensive approach to student health and social service needs is supported by many researchers in the context, as shown in schwartz (1995). unfortunately, at times those goals are very demanding for schools and, of course, for teachers. teachers can also lack an appropriate level of awareness concerning the importance of a healthy lifestyle because they experience the same limitations their students have; after all, they are often immersed in the same culture and are a product of it. among the factors that teachers reported and emphasized as hindering learning are the cultural, social and economic limitations encountered in the social environment they and their students are immersed in. navarro’s analysis of the chilean situation calls attention on this issue (2004): at school, the complexity of the children’s life demands competences teachers do not have: drug addict parents, unstable parents with variable composition, poverty and delinquency are new variables which demand new conditions for teaching. to face this situation, teachers need to assume roles considered to be parents’ roles: dialogue with children about their everyday experiences, puberty changes, health and eating habits. the school starts to be more like home. (p. 128) the social and economic limitations teachers mentioned in this section about ‘healthy choices’ are definitely connected to the absence of equal conditions and social differences. rawls (1999, in navarro 2004), also, stresses the role of these aspects in the presence or absence of equity and quality in education. for him, income and riches as well as the social bases for self-respect and dignity are part of the ‘bienes primarios’ all individuals are entitled to. for raczynsky (2002), also cited in navarro, the improvement of ‘material conditions’ are important elements for the quality of the life we live; however, he argues that poverty is the product of intangible elements such as attitudes, values and behaviors, all of which are cultural elements. working only on material conditions without taking into account cultural and environmental factors will not yield lasting improvement in people’s conditions and their handling of opportunities. paes de barros, ferreira, molinas and vega (2008) in their study on the inequality of opportunities in latin america and the caribbean, stress that the circumstances people face early in life, including race, gender, place of residence and, especially their parents’ income, account for the inequality of opportunities they face in adulthood. concerning education, darling-hammond (2007) extensively discusses the role of socio-cultural and economic limitations of minorities in the type of education they get and the results they obtain. this feeds a ‘catch twenty-two’ situation, a vicious circle that feeds poverty, lack of accomplishment, neglect and rejection. in order to determine limitations of any kind darling-hammond finds it necessary to evaluate whether or not schools have adequate resources, deploy them effectively, or if they provide equal educational access for all students. it is clear that inclusion and equality are important aspects which should be taken into account in the formulation of language policies such as the national bilingual program. in reality what usually happens is that policies and government programs usually make claims of equity, democracy and inclusion, but often ignore or overlook realities, probably in their desire to show results. gonzález (2009, p. 186), discussing shohamy’s views on language policies (2006, p. 143), claims that “language policies often ignore their connection to actual universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras84 cárdenas ramos & hernández gaviria language learning because they do not have a basis in reality, and thus, remain as good intentions on paper.” this seems to be the case with the nbp. along the same lines, fernández (2003) asserts that inclusive education is a human right and that the conception of inclusive education, as an effective means for improving efficiency in educational processes, involves the need to revise the concept of educational needs. here is a summary of what this author considers are the advantages of inclusive education: it offers equal opportunities for all; personalizes education; fosters participation, solidarity, and cooperation within students; improves quality in teaching and promotes efficiency in the whole educational system; values individualities; maximizes resources for the benefit of general educational, individual and special needs. on the issue of inclusion, machin (2006) carried out a study which explored how social disadvantage affects the learning experiences of learners with fewer economic resources. much of the work draws upon longitudinal data sources that follow children as they grow up. it also includes information on their parents and the area where they were raised. the results of the study show that: education and social disadvantage are closely connected and that people from less advantaged family backgrounds acquire significantly less education than their more advantaged counterparts. this translates into significantly reduced life chances…this includes poorer labor market outcomes, significantly worse health, higher crime levels and lower levels of social capital. (p. 27) concerning the relationship between opportunity to learn standards and the conditions in the institutions they work at, teachers are, in general, less positive; they focused their contributions on the aspects that would need to be changed in order to foster otl, such as the full integration of the elementary level in elt; the introduction of changes in elt in order to make it an area with interdisciplinary links and not a oneor two-hour a week course, and the need for an institutional policy designed to improve the proficiency level of teachers. they consider it important to have a positive attitude and be ready to change practices. on the negative side, or factors that affect otl, teachers mention the reluctance of some of them to change. teachers insist on methodologically ‘safe’ practices and do not use the english language in class because they are probably afraid of revealing deficiencies in their competence. this is not a new situation: cárdenas (2001, p. 2) surveyed primary english teachers six years after this language was introduced at the elementary level and found a very similar situation to the one found today. lack of time is also a common hindrance: teachers do not have time for meetings, for planning, revising, delivering contents, or participating in institutional activities and they consider teamwork and planning to be important elements in their professional growth. teamwork is an element also considered important by researchers (tochon, 2009) when researching teacher education. participatory action science (pas) used by tochon as methodological orientation is characterized by being respectful of the positioning of different partners; promoting dialogue and the capacity to learn from others’ experiences while influencing the ability of teachers to shape social outcomes with the aim of building a more just society. in any case, teachers in the workshop expressed their disappointment for not being able to rely on sustained spaces for pedagogical discussion, and for not having been listened to about the importance of assigning a better status to the english area. besides, teachers consider that in order to reach standards in elt, it is essential to offer this area as a fundamental one; they said that it is necessary to make an impact on general teaching and learning 85profile vol. 14, no. 2, october 2012. issn 1657-0790 (printed) 2256-5760 (online). bogotá, colombia. pages 77-94 opportunity to teach and learn standards: colombian teachers’ perspectives conditions and, as a result, improve students’ achievements. in this respect denbo, grant, and jackson, (1994) argue that: it is time for schools, local education agencies, and state and federal governments to ensure that no system of testing or student assessment be used except in the context of educational approaches that are based on standards for equity in educational resources and processes. (p. 47) although this reflection stems from a different context, it is similar in nature to our national context: learners from all regional, geographical, cultural, economic and social contexts are being evaluated on the same bases although they are learning under different circumstances and unequal possibilities. furthermore, in relation to time for the area, teachers manifested that the number of weekly instructional hours is 1 at the elementary level and two (exceptionally 3) in high school. with so little time, little access to resources, crowded classrooms and high standards to achieve, the situation is difficult to handle. teachers express that even with good resources and all the development programs they have access to, it is extremely difficult to meet the standards because of poor conditions. based on research findings it can be said that time is one of the most influential factors in school and student success. in chile, for example, as part of the implementation of el inglés abre puertas (english opens doors), the curriculum was modified to strengthen all areas, especially those that develop “habilidades de orden superior.” to establish such a curriculum, the school day was expanded, and elt weekly instructional time went from 11% to 27% of the time. most schools went into jornadas completas (full-time) (unesco report, 2004). indeed, gillies and jester-quijada in the usaid document (2008) consider time the most influential factor in school and student success. they mention the experiences of ghana and peru and their efforts to improve their educational systems; the two experiences are relatively successful stories in terms of access to the english language, but both have shown poor outcomes in terms of learning. the phenomenon is explained in the document arguing that the basic elements for creating opportunities to learn are overlooked, and that time is one of the elements which marks the difference between accessing a language and learning a language. these authors also stress that a longer school day, more hours of instructional time a year (they propose a minimum of 850 to 1,000 a year), a more effective use of time at schools, which means fewer interruptions, less absenteeism, less tardiness, and more time-on-task are the key elements in otl. if we analyze the situation in our schools we find that there are striking differences in the way time is assigned and used in different types of institutions. besides, public institutions are affected by the need to maximize the use of facilities, which makes the school hours very short. there are also more interruptions to deal with due to social and economic factors; there is usually more absen teeism and tardiness. the document also mentions a study carried out in six developing countries (bangladesh, ecuador, india, indonesia, peru, and uganda) which shows teachers’ absenteeism is at an average of 19%. in colombia there are very few studies about absenteeism and they do not focus on teacher absenteeism; however, in our experience as researchers who visited urban schools in santiago de cali, we recognized this as an issue of common occurrence. as a result of absenteeism and of low assignment to elt, sometimes weeks elapse without the students having a single lesson. gillies and jester-quijada (2008, p. 17) make distinctions among several uses or misuses of time and analyze how they affect students’ otl: universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras86 cárdenas ramos & hernández gaviria time-on-task, teacher and student punctuality and absenteeism, official instructional time and number of hours per subject. they complain about how little is known about time-related issues in schools and express that “no one is held accountable for a failure to provide the basic opportunity to learn” as far as time is concerned. another aspect teachers in the workshop mentioned was the proportion of students per teacher. in both public and low and medium strata private schools, teachers usually manage groups of 38 to 50 students, and this fact reduces considerably the time they can devote to each student. it has been proven that reduced class size improves students’ achievement (heros, 2003, in gillies & jester-quijada, 2008). he suggests that the appropriate class size for students to benefit is from 15 to 20, and indicates that class size, as well as other elements, is a cause for students’ absenteeism: student attendance must start with using attendance as a management tool, and in understanding the underlying causes of absenteeism. to some degree, there is a circular influence with other otl factors – if the teacher does not regularly show up, little learning is taking place; and if the class size is unmanageable, students may not be motivated to attend (heros, 2003, p. 10, in gillies & jester-quijada, 2008). darling-hammond (2007) mentions high student-teacher ratio as a common feature of underprivileged schools. also, the usaid document extensively discusses the incidence of student-teacher ratios in the performance and satisfaction of teachers and students. “having fewer children in class reduces the distractions in the room and gives the teacher more time to devote to each child.” (mosteller, 1995, in gillies & jesterquijada, 2008, p. 11). in our context, with very few exceptions, classrooms in public schools are overcrowded, which reduces time for interaction in the language class. another element teachers who attended the workshop mentioned as an impediment for good student otl is the lack of resources, both human (not enough teachers, crowded classrooms) and material. small classrooms without the minimal conditions of light, ventilation, facilities for using equipment and which have poor acoustics do not facilitate the task. finally, some teachers mentioned the fact that there is little or no monitoring from school administrators of the results of pd; they are not asked to share, replicate, or even put new knowledge or ideas into use. in other words, they are not made accountable for improving teachers’ teaching or students’ results based on the opportunities they, as administrators, are given. this element is part of what aguirre-muñoz (2008) calls leadership and supervision, not always present in our schools because of many reasons that arise from the lack of time of principals who have to divide their time and attention among four or five institutions, to the lack of interest in some areas. in the category ‘human development’, teachers declared that trust from their supervisors in their work because of their preparation and responsibility is one of the factors that favor the otl of their students: “i think that in my school my coordinators, principals and administrative [personnel] have confidence in me because i try to make an effort to be better day by day.” (t1). other elements that show the positive side of teachers and undoubtedly contribute to their students’ otl are that they are proactive and seek and take all opportunities for pd, using every chance to put into practice what they learn. they take pride in what they do: “my institution has confidence in what i learn to be shared with my students and colleagues” (t5). in revising the theory we find that almost all models mention teacher capability (preparation and expertise) as a key aspect of otl; however, other important elements concerning teachers such as 87profile vol. 14, no. 2, october 2012. issn 1657-0790 (printed) 2256-5760 (online). bogotá, colombia. pages 77-94 opportunity to teach and learn standards: colombian teachers’ perspectives a positive attitude, a strong sense of self and a sense of job satisfaction in spite of limitations and problems are omitted; these factors are mentioned only in schwartz’ model (1995), but they are considered basic by this group of teachers; the great majority of teachers feel satisfied with their career: “this role is the most important for us because we are helping our students and ourselves grow as human beings in order to contribute [to] and build a better future.” (t3) within the same category, the elements that according to teachers have a negative impact on otl are usually related to two areas; one concerns teachers and includes the difficulty for them to find a balance between their professional and personal lives, the lack of time to do their job well, the low salaries they receive and the lack of sustained efforts on the part of educational authorities to offer continuous pdp, although they recognize that the offer of pd courses has greatly improved in the last three years. the other factor that affects students’ otl depends mostly on students, and is manifested in their lack of interest and involvement in class and in other academic activities. the time factor has been under discussion and study in countries where there is worry about poor results in education. of the first three elements mentioned by teachers, one considered as a crucial ingredient in all models is time. limited time on the part of teachers affects planning, preparation, exploration, innovation, assessment, and ability to get to know students and to lead them into learning. time limitations have several sources: little time allocation in timetables and curricula, little time-on-task, holidays, planned and unplanned meetings, special events and celebrations at schools, strikes, ‘atti tudinal slow-downs’, etc. in several states of the usa there have been studies that try to determine the effect of expanded learning time (elt) on student achievement. teachers and researchers find 180 school days a year is about the same amount of time devoted to school in colombia and they state that it is too short to guarantee good results. for example, marcotte and hansen (2010) studied the incidence of shortened school time (due to closings for bad weather) in students’ results in national exams in the areas of mathematics and reading; they found that students received lower scores when the number of weeks of the academic year was shorter. other studies reviewed by marcotte and hansen (2010) –lee and barro (2007), eren and millimet (2007), marcotte (2007), hansen (2008), and sims (2008)– show evidence in the same direction after implementing elt programs and studying their results. as marcotte and hansen (2010, p. 1) conclude, “this new body of evidence… suggests that extending time in school would in fact likely raise student achievement”, and that “differences in instructional time can and do affect school performance”. elt is not only about more school days a year, but also about longer hours (between 7 and 8 a day), and meaningful and optimal use of time in school. silva (2007) recommends that schools analyze the way time is spent so they can decide the kind of time they need to extend; she classifies school time into four categories: allocated school time, allocated class time, instructional time and academic learning time. in colombia the school day in private schools usually goes from 7:00 a.m. (sometimes earlier) to 3:00 p.m. public schools usually work from 7:00 a.m. to 1:00 p.m. or from 1:00 p.m. to 6:00 p.m. because buildings are used by more than one school or body of students. at present, the government has acknowledged the importance of time in the improvement of edu cation and the creation of more inclusive conditions for all; steps have been taken in the country’s capital to extend the school hours for children who attend public institutions. some other major cities are considering implementation of the same action. universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras88 cárdenas ramos & hernández gaviria lastly, but not less important, the teachers mentioned the issue of low salaries: “i feel free to do my job, and i like it. i studied for being an english teacher, and i’m doing my best. the only thing i have to complain is the so poor salary.” (t12). indeed, teachers’income do not usually correspond to the time spent studying to become a professional; the teachers’ salaries are probably among the lowest paid in any profession, and the contractual conditions that many teachers have assure them a salary only for a few continuous months, making their situation even more difficult. in many cases, this factor affects motivation and the likelihood of putting enough time or extra time into their work. darling-hammond (2007) finds a direct relation between low salaries for teachers and schools in deprived or difficult areas, where students do not have many opportunities for success. this may be the case of many of the teachers involved in this study; most of them work in schools of the public sector, and some in deprived urban or rural areas. in closing the discussions in the workshop, teachers socialized what they thought was the most remarkable impact of the implementation of standards in their institutions (main category four). they highlighted the effects of changing the nature of english teaching. according to their perception, presenting english as an area and not as a course amounts to assigning it a higher status and, therefore, requires other changes. according to them, developing english teaching and learning as an area requires the revision and adaptation of the teaching methodology, as well as the planning and curricular execution; it also demands the reevaluation of teachers’ roles and pedagogical knowledge, cooperative work and opportunities to grow professionally. the importance of improving the area of english teaching with more contact hours, methodological innovations, student exchanges, materials and bilingual bibliography is also considered crucial. all the revised models for otl standards include curricular conditions as one of the elements to improve or revise; these improvements or re visions usually include integration with other courses (also mentioned by the teachers in the workshop), adaptations in order to meet standards, as well as contextualizing content in order to deal with real life problems. the curriculum also needs to be flex ible to cater to different groups of students. the establishment of standards has opened the door for teachers to get updated as new opportunities for professionalization in the language and in methodology have emerged. teachers who have been attending the courses think they are improving and feel more confident teaching the language. this feeling of increased capability necessarily involves motivation that favors the development of the area; this fact is highlighted by rodrigo fábrega, leader of the chilean program “inglés abre puertas” (english opens doors), who expressed in an interview for palabra maestra (fundación compartir, 2009, p. 3-4) that “it is not enough to speak the language; teachers need to feel comfortable using it.” teachers confessed that they feel more at ease in their classrooms, while those who have not gotten involved in these processes or who have just initiated them confess lacking confidence. that is why most of them stress the importance of permanent updating in topics related to language proficiency, methodology and technological advances, which they recognize they have to analyze and adapt before adopting. the standards movement has generated motivation not only among teachers but also among administrators. at the same time, teachers feel that they are now involved in a new educational dynamic, although some of them would appreciate principals who show more commitment to the development of the english area. in general, teachers highlight the importance of having more 89profile vol. 14, no. 2, october 2012. issn 1657-0790 (printed) 2256-5760 (online). bogotá, colombia. pages 77-94 opportunity to teach and learn standards: colombian teachers’ perspectives support for education not only from their principals, but also from the government and from other professionals in order to strengthen the teaching and learning processes. they also state they would benefit from more exchange programs in order to get a real taste of english speaking cultures. in relation to the impact of standards on students, teachers say very little; however, it is clear that their opinions are divided: on the one side, there is a group of teachers who think students are gaining motivation for learning english because they understand the importance of speaking a second language. they believe students are more enthusiastic because learning is no longer oriented towards developing contents or learning only grammar, but rather towards developing competences. they also believe that programs are better organized and, as a result, students are also motivated and demanding. however, there is another group of teachers who think students are not aware of the importance of learning a second language and that their attitude hinders progress in the learning process. this group finds it really difficult to overcome this barrier. as for parents, they are receiving this piece of news with great expectations; they consider this knowledge to be a useful and extra tool for their children to become more competitive in life. final considerations in presenting english teachers’ views of the way they are working, the attitudes they have and the challenges they face in the process of establishing the nbp, we have found enough evidence to demand the establishment of otl standards in order to address the issue of equality of educational opportunities and as a way to ensure the attainment of the goals proposed in this national policy. we are well aware that there are many aspects involved in the design, formulation and issuance of otl standards; however, not all of them belong to the sphere of influence of teachers, teacher educators, students or their families. there are, nonetheless, two main aspects of otl standards that we could concentrate on, and these are, on the one hand, teachers providing their students with opportunities to learn; and, on the other hand, educational authorities providing teachers with opportunities to teach and students with opportunities to learn. how can teachers provide their students with real opportunities to learn? by getting to know and understand their present situation and the situation the policy has created; by initiating and main taining actions to continue tdp work, by being aware of their strengths and deficiencies and autonomously working on them, by creating collaborative groups in their institutions, by using time responsibly, by showing progress in their work, by creating pressure groups to pursue the betterment of conditions for teaching and for facilitating teachers to learn and provide their students with opportunities to learn. a good number of the teachers participating in the seminars expressed that they were already undertaking actions of this kind and exercising responsibility in their work, although they also mentioned a not so generous or responsible attitude on the part of some of their colleagues or supervisors. what do teachers feel needs providing in order to create opportunities to teach? an analysis of the information shows that conditions for attaining the goals of the nbp are far from being appropriate or fair, despite the evident efforts on the part of educational authorities towards fostering teachers’ improvement through tpd programs. teachers and students alike are facing cultural, social and economic challenges which have multiple local causes and are aggravated by present-day global trends. all over the world demands are universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras90 cárdenas ramos & hernández gaviria being made for the need to provide educational access under equal conditions for all; inclusive education is claimed not only as a human right but also as an effective means of improving efficiency in educational processes. unfortunately, colombia occupies a shameful second place in latin america concerning inequality2 and the implementation of educational policies reflects this situation: most private institutions have longer hours, better resources, better conditions and teachers with the adequate profile to implement the nbp. but, other aspects as well are highlighted by teachers as elements to be revised in order to achieve standards: time allocation and management, that would provide more exposure and opportunities for skills development among students as well as better chances for teachers to do a good job and continue to develop professionally; teacher-student ratio that would allow more teacher-student interaction and closer attention to individual student needs and difficulties. finally, other elements mentioned by teachers and analyzed in the revised models for otl standards that would guarantee equity and opportunities for all are as follows: better resources, both human and material; improved physical conditions of schools and classrooms (lighting, ventilation, acoustics), and last but not least, the improvement of teachers’ salaries, which are among the lowest paid to professionals in the country. in an attempt to gather teachers’ thoughts in relation to otl standards and with the intention of opening up discussions on the topic, we can conclude that a serious revision of the elements mentioned above is necessary. changes that take into account teachers’ voices are also a must if colombia is to achieve these standards. striving 2 http://www.dinero.com/actualidad/economia/articulo/ colombia-campeon-desigualdad-america-latina/120728; http://www. agenciadenoticias.unal.edu.co/detalle/article/aunque-bajo-la-pobreza-en-colombia-hay-mucha-desigualdad.html to accomplish these standards does not mean responding uncritically to a policy that we know has advantages and drawbacks; above all, in order to reach higher levels of proficiency in english or in any target language means giving our students better cultural and academic possibilities. it also means giving language teaching professional recognition and its due importance. references aguirre-muñoz, z. (2008). cátedra bloom: estándares de oportunidad de aprendizaje: una estrategia para promover equidad escolar. ciudad de guatemala: universidad de san carlos. retrieved from http://www. proyectodialogo.org/index.php?option=com_content &task=view&id=291&itemid=112 cárdenas, r. (2001). teaching english in primary: are we ready for it? how, a colombian journal for english teachers, 8, 1-9. cárdenas, r., & hernández, f. (2011). towards the formulation of a proposal for opportunity to learn standards in efl learning and teaching. íkala, 16(28), 231-258. colombia. ministerio de educación nacional [men]. (2006). estándares básicos de competencias en lenguas extranjeras: inglés. serie guías no. 22. bogotá: author. council of europe. (2001). common european framework of reference for languages. cambridge: cambridge university press. darling-hammond, l. (2007). the flat earth and education: how america’s commitment to equity will determine our future. educational researcher, 36(6), 318-334. denbo, s., grant, c., & jackson, s. (1994). educate america: a call for equity in school reform. opportunity to learn standards. american youth policy forum; mid atlantic equity consortium & national educational association. retrieved from http://www.maec.org/old/pdf/ edam.pdf department of education state of vermont. (2000). vermont’s framework of standards & learning opportunities. montpelier, vt: vermont department of education. 91profile vol. 14, no. 2, october 2012. issn 1657-0790 (printed) 2256-5760 (online). bogotá, colombia. pages 77-94 opportunity to teach and learn standards: colombian teachers’ perspectives fernández, a. (2003). educación inclusiva: enseñar y apren der entre la diversidad. revista digital umbral 2000, 13, 1-10. retrieved from http://www.inclusioneducativa.org/content/documents/generalidades.pdf fundación compartir. (2009, septiembre). maestros de inglés: los alquimistas de la educación en chile. palabra maestra, 9(22), 3-4. retrieved from http://www. premiocompartiralmaestro.org/pdfpmaestra/palabra_maestra22.pdf gillies, j., & jester-quijada, j. (2008). opportunity to learn. a high impact strategy for improving educational outcomes in developing countries. united states agency for international development (usaid) working paper. retrieved from http://www.equip123.net/docs/e2-otl _wp.pdf gonzález, a. (2009). on alternative and additional certifications in english language teaching. íkala, 14(22), 183-209. machin, s. (2006). social disadvantage and education experiences. oecd social, employment and migration working papers. retrieved from http://www.oecd.org/ dataoecd/13/60/36165298.pdf marcotte, d., & hansen, b. (2010). time for school? when the snow falls, test scores also drop. education next, 10(1). retrieved from http://educationnext.org/ time-for-school/ navarro, l. (2004). la escuela y las condiciones sociales para aprender y enseñar. equidad social y educación en sectores de pobreza urbana. buenos aires: instituto internacional de planeamiento de la educación unesco. pabón, c., wills, e., & salas, s. (2011). “colombia es el campeón de la desigualdad en américa latina” dinero.com. 2011-06-05. retrieved from http://www. dinero.com/actualidad/economia/articulo/colombiacampeon-desigualdad-america-latina/120728. paes de barros, r., ferreira, f., molinas j., & vega, j. (2008). midiendo la desigualdad de oportunidades en américa latina y el caribe. washington, d.c.: banco mundial. schwartz, w. (1995). opportunity to learn standards: their impact on urban students. eric/cue digest number 110, 1-9. doi: ed389816. retrieved from http://iume. tc.columbia.edu/i/a/document/15460_digest_110.pdf silva, e. (2007). on the clock: rethinking the way schools use time. washington d.c.: education sector reports. tochon, f. v. (2009). the role of language in globalization: language, culture, gender and institutional learning. international journal of educational policies, 3(2), 107124. retrieved from http://ijep.icpres.org/2009/v3n2/ fvtochon.pdf ucla’s institute for democracy, education, & access. (2003). opportunity to learn (otl) does california’s school system measure up? retrieved from http://justschools.gseis.ucla.edu/solution/pdfs/otl.pdf unesco. (2004). la educación chilena en el cambio de siglo: políticas, resultados y desafíos. santiago de chile: oficina internacional de educación. about the authors rosalba cárdenas ramos, ba in philology and languages, universidad del atlántico, colombia. ma in linguistics and fl education, university of louisville, usa. research attachment in testing and evaluation, university of reading, england. teacher development, thames valley university, england. professor of fl methodology and applied linguistics, universidad del valle, colombia. coordinator of teacher development program at universidad del valle. fanny hernández gaviria, ba in modern languages and ma in linguistics, universidad del valle, colombia. assistant professor. member of the eila research group. teaches english and classroom research at universidad del valle. director of the licenciatura program. participates in the research project on conditions of implementation of the pnb in cali, colombia, describing english teachers’ profiles. universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras92 cárdenas ramos & hernández gaviria appendix: workshop on opportunity to learn standards universidad del valle facultad de humanidades escuela de ciencias del lenguaje group discussion 1: general aspects that underlie opportunities to learn ȟ what is, in your opinion, the role, if any, of these elements in you students’ and your own opportunities to develop as individuals and members of society? in groups of four, read the following items and decide whether or not and to which extent they have an influence on opportunities to learn. then, complete the table below. general aspects influence on opportunities to learn worth and personal competence healthy choices making decisions exercising social responsibility other aspects you consider relevant plenary discussion 1 based on your own experience as an individual and as a teacher, what kind of opportunities have contributed to your development? plenary discussion 2 in your opinion, what is the responsibility and role of educational authorities as providers of opportunities for teachers and learners within the programa nacional de bilinguismo (national bilingual program nbp)? 93profile vol. 14, no. 2, october 2012. issn 1657-0790 (printed) 2256-5760 (online). bogotá, colombia. pages 77-94 opportunity to teach and learn standards: colombian teachers’ perspectives group discussion 2 standards and conditions in the institution i work for. in the next chart, list all the factors that would affect the implementation of standards in your institution. work, if possible, in institutional groups. work aspects these involve factors related to your colleagues, access to study and research; time for meetings; access to materials; number of students per group: interpersonal relations (colleagues, administrators, parents and students). institutional aspects these are related to decisions made by the institution and resources: number of hours dedicated to english, available human and material resources, institutional support, curriculum; opportunities for professional development; support for professional development; physical conditions of the setting. universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras94 cárdenas ramos & hernández gaviria discussion 3: human development/ personal aspects these include emotional factors such as fear, disappointment; attitudinal aspects (expectations, resistance to change, willingness to work with standards & personal responsibility) personal aspects evaluate yourself as regards the following aspects. be honest and as objective as you can be in your judgment. dependability productivity career choices attitude resistance to change responsibility other aspects group discussion 4 what impact will the implementation of standards have in your institution? perspective impact teachers students school administrators parents school community other 157profile vol. 17, no. 1, january-june 2015. issn 1657-0790 (printed) 2256-5760 (online). bogotá, colombia. pages 157-166 http://dx.doi.org/10.15446/profile.v17n1.43957 incidental vocabulary learning in second language acquisition: a literature review aprendizaje incidental de vocabulario en la adquisición de una segunda lengua: una revisión de literatura falcon dario restrepo ramos*1 west virginia university, morgantown, usa this literature review aims to analyze previous studies that address the incidental learning of vocabulary in second language acquisition. the articles included in this literature review look into the understanding of vocabulary learning through incidental means, the relationship of reading and incidental vocabulary learning, and the strategies and tasks that promote the incidental learning of vocabulary. the findings show that l2 learners develop much of their vocabulary by incidental means through exposure to words in informative contexts. moreover, this exposure is promoted by reading, and enhanced through multimodal glosses. further research may focus on listening for higher lexical retention rates, the circumstances that allow incidental learning of multi-word phrases and collocations, and the use of technology-based methods for incidental vocabulary acquisition. key words: contextual cues, incidental vocabulary learning, multimodal glosses, second language acquisition, reading for meaning. esta revisión de literatura analiza estudios previos sobre el aprendizaje incidental de vocabulario en la adquisición de una segunda lengua. estos artículos estudian la naturaleza del aprendizaje incidental de vocabulario, la lectura y la adquisición incidental de vocabulario y las estrategias que la promueven. encontramos que los estudiantes de una segunda lengua desarrollan la mayoría de su vocabulario incidentalmente por medio de la ocurrencia léxica en contextos altamente informativos. asimismo, la lectura y las anotaciones multimodales incentivan y complementan la ocurrencia de este vocabulario. investigaciones futuras podrían enfocarse en la escucha como medio de mayor retención léxica, en las circunstancias que permiten el aprendizaje incidental de colocaciones, y en el uso de la tecnología para la adquisición incidental de vocabulario. palabras clave: adquisición de una segunda lengua, anotaciones multimodales, aprendizaje incidental de vocabulario, claves contextuales, lectura comprensiva. * e-mail: fdrestreporamos@mix.wvu.edu how to cite this article (apa, 6th ed.): restrepo ramos, f. d. (2015). incidental vocabulary learning in second language acquisition: a literature review. profile issues in teachers’ professional development, 17(1), 157-166. http://dx.doi.org/10.15446/profile.v17n1.43957. this article was received on june 10, 2014, and accepted on october 16, 2014. this is an open access article distributed under the terms of the creative commons license attribution-noncommercial-noderivatives 4.0 international license. consultation is possible at http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/. universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras158 restrepo ramos introduction second language learning largely depends on vocabulary, as the building blocks from which learners start their second language (l2) acquisition. hence, its significance lies inherently deep within the first stages of the acquisition of any language. during the past decades, l2 vocabulary learning has become of great research interest. a great deal of research has advocated that vocabulary is a key aspect in second language acquisition, especially when it comes to its incidental learning. these studies have pointed out the importance of vocabulary learning as a by-product of the instructional focus. the aim of this literature review is to analyze previous studies that address incidental vocabulary learning from the perspective of second language acquisition. research has suggested that both l1 and l2 learners may incidentally gain knowledge of meaning through reading (webb, 2008). moreover, researchers seem to agree that after a learner acquires his/her first thousand words during the initial stages of classroom instruction through intentional learning, vocabulary acquisition happens mainly through extensive reading, and most of the time by guessing the meaning of unknown words (huckin & coady, 1999). in this sense, a learner would learn vocabulary as a by-product of reading, out of the boundaries of the pedagogical focus of the instructional setting. furthermore, gass (1999) considers incidental vocabulary learning to take place “as a by-product of other cognitive exercises (e.g. reading/listening) involving comprehension” (p. 319). however, incidental learning of vocabulary is not completely understood in terms of how it actually occurs, given the fact that there are a number of factors that determine the success of a learner when trying to infer a word, such as the amount of exposure, wordguessing strategies, and the quality of the context that facilitates learners’ lexical inference activities. many theories have tried to account for the specific way that this type of acquisition takes place. it seems, however, that it depends on the type of cognitive process in which the learner is engaged. schmitt and schmitt (1995) in their depth of processing hypothesis state that “mental activities which require more elaborate thought, manipulation or processing of a new word will help in the learning of that word” (p. 135). clearly the above hypothesis would include mainly reading as the means in which this acquisition is accomplished. furthermore, the frequency of vocabulary exposure seems to have a great impact on incidental vo cabular y learning (huckin & coady, 1999), since repeated exposure to words in meaningful collocations is the key to form-meaning associations. krashen (1989) in his input hypothesis argues that incidental acquisition of vocabulary takes place naturally by providing the learner with comprehensible input. and though krashen states that acquisition occurs only when the learners’ attention is focused only on the meaning rather than the form, some researchers argue that vocabulary acquisition requires attention to meaning but also to form to some degree (ellis, 1994). therefore, it seems that incidental vocabulary learning largely depends on the context surrounding each word and the amount of attention that the learner places on both meaning and form. however, the type of context seems to have an effect on the correct interpretation of lexical meaning, since it may lead learners to correctly or incorrectly infer the meaning of words (webb, 2008). in this literature review, i seek to analyze three main issues that stand out after reviewing the articles concerning incidental vocabulary learning. first, how incidental vocabulary learning occurs, that is, the specific circumstances that allow learners to acquire vocabulary through incidental means. then, the effect of reading on incidental vocabulary learning is discussed as learners engage in vocabulary gains through mental comprehension. next, the strategies and tasks that can be used to promote and enhance the retention of vocabular y through incidental 159profile vol. 17, no. 1, january-june 2015. issn 1657-0790 (printed) 2256-5760 (online). bogotá, colombia. pages 157-166 incidental vocabulary learning in second language acquisition: a literature review learning are discussed. after exploring and analyzing the findings of the studies included in this literature review, i will finally provide a discussion on the main results that concern the analysis of this paper. review of literature the criterion with which i chose to organize this paper is based on three main areas: (1) the occurrence of l2 vocabulary learning through incidental means, (2) the effect of reading on incidental vocabulary learning, and (3) the use of strategies and tasks conducive to improving the incidental learning of vocabulary. i have decided to place the literature found into this classification since it is important to discuss elemental issues that concern the understanding of incidental learning of vocabulary not only in its main way of occurrence—reading—but also by analyzing the strategies and tasks employed to promote the right lexical knowledge for inference in learners for vocabulary acquisition in a second language. understanding incidental vocabulary learning the way incidental vocabulary learning occurs has been widely discussed. in a review presented by huckin and coady (1999), several issues regarding this topic were surveyed through previous empirical researches. the researchers set out to investigate the mechanism of incidental acquisition, the type and size of vocabulary for correct guessing, the amount of exposure for successful retention, the effectiveness of wordguessing strategies, the influence of different reading texts, and the problems with incidental learning. extensive reading for meaning and form was found as the primary way incidental learning occurs. however, several variables affect its success as suggested by the authors: mainly, the appropriate context surrounding each word, and the nature of the learners’ attention and the task demands, largely enhanced by text-based tasks. in order to correctly guess the meaning of a word in context, a learner must be able to recognize a great percentage of the surrounding words. according to the researchers, this value is nearby 95% of knowledge of the words in a text to attain general comprehension, and 98% if the goal is to achieve full comprehension. the former requires the level of comprehension of 3,000 word families, consisting of a base form and all its derived and inflected forms, and 5,000 word families for the latter. in contrast, there is no agreement on the amount of exposure to a word for incidental learning to occur. some studies locate this number between 5 and 16 exposures, but much depends on other factors, such as word salience, its recognizability as a cognate, the learners’ interests, and the availability of rich informative contexts. effective word guessing was found to require the flexible application of different processing strategies ranging from grapheme identification to the use of wider contextual meanings. however, as some strategies arise others naturally required instruction. this is illustrated in a series of observational studies where the majority of learners studied relied heavily on cognate recognition, but failed to recognize false cognates, which implied that some strategies needed to be taught. huckin and coady also pointed out that the texts which are of personal interest to learners seem to facilitate incidental vocabulary acquisition. in contrast, the authors found the lack of precision of word guessing in context to be the main limitation of incidental learning. furthermore, although they make a thorough review of the main issues concerning this topic, especially for the different amount of lexical knowledge for incidental learning to occur, they fall short of exploring more in-depth multiword phrases and collocations learning as part of their survey. this would have been an interesting topic also, since this type of lexical conglomerate is broadly found in different types of text. gass (1999) also discusses, through a review of different papers, key issues concerning incidental vo cabu lar y le ar ning. the aut hor provides an universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras160 restrepo ramos overview of definitions for incidental vocabulary and acquisition, and presents a new approach to incidental learning that draws attention to the recognition of syntactical categorization of the lexicon through context. the researcher points out the extent to which incidental is a viable concept, referring to the basic limitation of not having a way to show when a word has been learned incidentally. however, the author suggests that vocabulary and acquisition involve a certain degree of syntactic and lexical knowledge that learners heavily rely on for comprehension, and it is this relationship that needs to be taken into account for vocabulary learning purposes, whether it is incidental or intentional. the main limitation that comes about in this paper is the lack of clarity in the conceptualization of incidental that the researcher relates in the introduction of her literature review as a by-product of a mental effort for comprehension, w h i c h l e av e s m o re q u e s t i o n s t h a n a n s w e r s . conversely, the main contribution stemming from this paper is the attention to the sentence-grammar structure for vocabulary acquisition which involves a more nuanced approach to vocabulary acquisition. in an empirical study conducted by barcroft (2009), incidental and intentional vocabular y learning were compared in terms of l2 synonym generation. one hundred and fourteen spanishspeaking university students in mexico city at the intermediate english level were selected for the study. after reading a passage containing 10 target words translated in the text, participants were assigned to read for meaning (incidental), or read for meaning while trying to learn the translated words and generate their spanish synonyms (intentional). results showed that learners that were instructed to learn the target words and requested to generate synonyms positively affected l2 word-forming as compared with the learners instructed to read for meaning only, which suggests that explicit instruction has an effect on target word recall. nonetheless, when learners know that a synonym-generation test is following after reading the passage, it is likely that they will only focus on recalling the target words, and thus outperforming the learners that only read for incidental meaning recognition. evidently, text comprehension would be negatively affected in the intentional group, since the focus of their attention would be on trying to remember the target word, rather than global text comprehension. however, this study presents positive evidence of the inclusion of direct instruction for word recalling and other techniques to foster intentional vocabulary learning. alcón (2007) investigated the effectiveness of teachers’ incidental focus on form in vocabulary learning. data consisted of 17 recordings, 204 learners’ diaries and 204 delayed post-test translations gathered during a whole academic year from 12 high school english as a foreign language (efl) participants from spain. the researcher found that teachers’ involvement in lexically-oriented focus on form episodes is effective for learners’ noticing and subsequent use and learning of vocabulary items. in regard to this study, it seems that a certain degree of attention must be raised towards the form of the lexical items in order for learners to notice the vocabulary they are being exposed to. this correlates to previous findings mentioned in the introduction of this literature review which state that a certain amount of attention to meaning, but also to form is required for vocabulary acquisition to happen (ellis, 1994). in this sense, and to a certain degree, some form of intentional instruction is present, which relates to barcroft’s (2009) study on synonym generation. however, more research needs to be done to establish the degree in which an intentional and incidental approach can be combined for the enhancement of l2 vocabulary learning. so far the discussion revolves around four articles that tr y to explain the occurrence of incidental vocabulary learning and the specific circumstances in 161profile vol. 17, no. 1, january-june 2015. issn 1657-0790 (printed) 2256-5760 (online). bogotá, colombia. pages 157-166 incidental vocabulary learning in second language acquisition: a literature review which this type of learning occurs, and to some degree, the relationship of incidental and intentional methods for l2 vocabulary learning, at least for lexical focus on form. these articles have shed light on the current basic assumptions revolving around the incidental learning of vocabulary. perhaps a combination of intentional and incidental learning could definitely solve some issues that come from an only-incidental learning point of view and would enhance l2 learners’ vocabulary learning experience. the effectiveness of reading for incidental vocabulary learning par ib a k ht and wes che (1999) studie d t he acquisition of vocabulary knowledge as a by-product of reading for comprehension. the researchers set out to investigate the strategies and the kinds of knowledge 10 intermediate english as a second language (esl) canadian university student volunteers used when dealing with new l2 words while reading. after the administration of two tasks, first a question task and a summary task later, learners were asked which words they remembered and how these were subsequently learned. data analysis showed that while learners tended to ignore a vast proportion of unknown words (mostly content words as opposed to function words), for those words which they paid attention to, inference was the main strategy used. learners employed previous knowledge and contextual cues together when trying to infer meaning of unfamiliar words. grammatical knowledge at the sentence level was mostly used for lexical inference for both tasks. as noted by huckin and coady (1999) and schmitt and schmitt (1995), this study also gives evidence supporting reading as a useful tool for vocabulary development after taking into account the selection of appropriate texts and tasks, that is, theme-related texts and tasks requiring word-level and textual comprehension. the impact of reading on vocabulary development was also examined by ponniah (2011). the researcher analyzed the performance of students engaged in reading, and the students who learned consciously the meaning of words for developing lexical knowledge. the participants included 49 esl adult students from an indian university who were subsequently divided into 23 individuals in the control group and 26 in the experimental group. the control group was asked to use the dictionary to find the meaning of 20 words appearing in an edited passage whereas the experimental group was asked to read for comprehension. a post-test followed consisting of writing down the definition of the vocabulary selected and using it in different sentences. results confirmed that learners who used dictionaries were unable to use the consciously learned words in sentences. in contrast, the learners who acquired words subconsciously while reading were able to use them in sentences, proving that they not only absorbed the meaning of the words but also the grammar. thanks to studies like this, there is heavy evidence of the effectiveness of reading for vocabulary gains not only for the meaning of words but also for correct sentencelevel grammar. however, as the study reveals, the passage used in this study was manipulated in such a way as to make the difficult words appear at least twice in the story or were used in a context easy to understand for learners. such advantages are hard to find in authentic, natural texts. nonetheless, it gives positive evidence for texts rich in contextual cues that enhance comprehensibility and inference as stated in paribakht and wesche’s (1999) study. in another study, vidal (2011) conducted a comparison of the effects of listening and reading for the incidental acquisition and retention of vocabulary. the participants in this study included 248 first-year undergraduate students studying mandatory esl at a university in madrid, spain. during a period of four weeks they were tested on their knowledge of 36 target words (12 for each reading/lecture): 112 students were assigned to the listening condition, which consisted universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras162 restrepo ramos of three authentic video-taped lectures about tourism; the reading condition involved 80 students and consisted of three authentic readings on the same topic; finally, 38 subjects, who neither listened nor read, were used as control subjects. results showed that the reading subjects made greater vocabulary gains and retention than the listening subjects, which suggests that reading is a more effective source of vocabulary acquisition. however, results also suggest that for students with higher levels of proficiency (as corroborated on their toefl scores) listening might lead to slightly higher levels of retention than reading. clearly, more research should enquire about the effectiveness of listening for incidental vocabulary acquisition for high-proficiency students. this study used academic readings and lectures to test learning conditions and was, in my opinion, a correct decision since university students are engaged more frequently in academic settings. this article is an attempt to provide greater insight into the relationship of reading and listening for incidental vocabulary learning. the results of the studies cited above suggest positive evidence for incidental vocabulary learning through reading (ponniah, 2011), and reconfirm the results of previous studies on the matter that correlates reading with incidental learning of vocabular y (jenkins, stein, & wysocki, 1984). likewise, listening was also found to improve vocabulary retention, especially for high l2 proficiency learners (vidal, 2011). moreover, several factors seem to be involved in assuring the success of incidental learning. learners’ lexical inference activity seems to benefit from texts that foster contextual cues not only in meaning but also at the grammar-sentence level (paribakht & wesche, 1999). strategies and tasks promoting incidental vocabulary learning mccafferty, roebuck, and wayland (2001) conducted a preliminar y study about applying vigotsky’s activity theory to investigate the retention of new l2 vocabulary. emphasis is placed on the goal-directedness of the activity in relation to the intentionality of those involved and the sociocultural context. this study took place over several class days and involved five native speakers of english enrolled in a third-semester spanish class at a large us university. the control condition consisted of a writing task about a visit to the zoo using a list of related vocabulary items given by the instructor. the experimental condition consisted of peer interviews as regards the students’ early l2 learning experiences and was later reported to the class. findings showed that increased mental effort and the productive use of new words in the experimental condition might positively affect learning and retention. moreover, the researchers argue that task-essentialness—the relationship of a vocabulary item within an activity as the goal of the task—is also important for lexical learning and retention, along with exposure to words in meaningful contexts. one of the main limitations of this study consists in the small sample size used, which limits the possibility to generalize the findings. however, the authors showed good evidence for the support of learning/retention enhancement when a lexical item becomes the focus of goal-directed action. another study investigating the influence of marginal glosses, dictionary use, and the repeated o cc ur rence of un k now n words on incident a l vocabulary learning was developed by hulstijn, hollander, and greidanus (1996). this empirical study included 78 advanced university students of french enrolled in three different dutch universities who were randomly assigned to read a short narrative story under three conditions: marginal glosses, dictionary use, or control (not receiving additional information). after testing previous knowledge of lexical items, the students were tested on recognition, recall, and provision of meaning of 16 target words, eight of which were included three times by modifying certain 163profile vol. 17, no. 1, january-june 2015. issn 1657-0790 (printed) 2256-5760 (online). bogotá, colombia. pages 157-166 incidental vocabulary learning in second language acquisition: a literature review phrases in the text, and the rest were unmodified to appear only once. findings showed that frequency of occurrence and provision of word meaning through marginal glosses or dictionary use positively affected incidental vocabulary learning. such strategies showed an improvement in the low incidence of incidental vocabulary learning. furthermore, it seems that these strategies have both intentional and incidental learning and none of them seek to replace the other but to follow up or complement each other. as a result, these findings correlate well with previous studies that suggest the integration of intentional pedagogical methods to enhance the incidental learning experience (alcón, 2007; huckin & coady, 1999). shahrokni (2009) conducted an empirical study investigating the effects of online, pictorial, and textual pictorial glosses on the incidental learning of vocabulary of 90 iranian efl learners. after being recruited by poster ads, the participants were selected based on their results of an english placement test and subsequently assigned to three groups of 30, in which they were exposed to research treatment during three sessions of instruction. the research treatment consisted of three different versions of the same text, each one displaying glosses of 25 target words by means of (a) texts, (b) pictures, and (c) a combination of texts and pictures. finally, participants were tested on the immediate recall of the target words. the findings suggested that a combination of text and still images resulted in improved incidental vocabulary learning. furthermore, these results confirmed that multimodal annotations support components of reading conducive to incidental vocabulary learning. limitations from this paper stem from the fact that it included only male participants with a low english level, and the fact that delayed retention and further use on context of target words was not tested, which fail to fully test the incidental acquisition of lexical items or its use in grammar-level sentences. however, these results advocate for the positive use of multimodal strategies in call (computer-assisted language learning) settings for vocabulary learning, which can boost the incidental acquisition of l2 learners. xu (2010) examined the effect of different reading tasks on immediate word gain and retention in l2 learners. more specifically, the researcher set out to operationalize the general labels of the load involvement hypothesis: “attention, elaboration, and depth of processing, into concrete task-specific constructs” (laufer & hulstijn as cited in xu, 2010, p. 126). the participants involved 125 esl freshmen students randomly selected from a chinese university who were divided into four different groups according to their even scores on the university entrance english examination. different tasks were given to each group consisting of four reading comprehension tasks of the same passage with 10 target words: reading comprehension with (a) glosses, (b) sentence marking with annotated target words, (c) glosses and dictionary use, and (d) no additional aid. results suggested that tasks with higher involvement load, that is, tasks that involve search and evaluation, such as reading with glosses and dictionary use, are conducive to better word retention. overall, the marginal glosses showed to be more efficient in fostering incidental learning of l2 vocabulary. this study gives positive evidence for the support of marginal glosses for incidental vocabulary as shown also in other studies (hulstijn et al., 1996). it also showed the effectiveness of this type of tasks for low-intermediate learners. it would also be worthy of enquiring as to its effectiveness in learners with different levels of proficiency in order to generalize the findings for a broader audience. the effects and quality of context for incidental vocabulary learning were also investigated in a study conducted by webb (2008). within class periods of 90 minutes, 50 intermediate japanese esl university students were randomly assigned to two groups (comparison and experimental) before completing a reading comprehension task. the task consisted of universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras164 restrepo ramos reading three sets of sentences, each one containing 10 target words (six nouns and four verbs) whose forms were disguised to ensure learners had no prior knowledge of them. the set of sentences was rated by english native speakers as being more informative (the first two sets) to less informative (the last two sets). results suggested that informative contexts produced higher retention of the meaning of words in learners. the findings showed as well that context has a significant effect on gaining knowledge of meaning rather than form. this can boost the effectiveness of the recurrence of target words if they are encountered in highly informative contexts that lead to comprehension of vocabulary meaning. the results of this study correlate with previous findings that suggest incidental vocabulary learning improvement by allowing learners to infer correctly the meaning of unknown words through incidental learning in texts that provide high quality contextual cues. t he ab ove me nt i one d stu d i e s h ave d r aw n attention to the effectiveness of marginal glosses accompanied with pictures along with the repeated occurrence of unknown words in highly informative contexts for the incidental learning of vocabulary. the results from these studies support strategies that boost the possibilities learners have to infer correct meaning of a word and its immediate and delayed retention. furthermore, tasks promoting lexical items as the goal of the activity seem to enhance vocabulary retention and learning, which can be integrated in activities relating to the sociocultural reality of learners. discussion after reviewing the findings of this literature review, there is strong evidence that supports the occurrence of incidental vocabulary learning through reading for meaning comprehension. as pointed out by ahmad (2011), an incidental vocabulary technique is enhanced by reading in highly informative contexts. not only does extensive reading appear to be the main feature for incidental learning. this type of learning is the result of a number of factors that correlate among each other to ensure its success. research shows that learners must be able to recognize a great percentage of the surrounding words in order to correctly infer the meaning of a word in context. this amount of previous knowledge ranges from 95% to 98% for general and full textual comprehension. this knowledge could be fostered first through initial stages of intentional learning that allow following up on incidental acquisition of l2 vocabulary gains. as suggested by zandieh (2012), both types of vocabulary learning could be bolstered if they are combined jointly in “a virtual learning environment in order to improve comprehension and vocabulary retention” (p. 60). moreover, texts of personal interest to learners promote motivation resulting in more guided attention to lexical items at the word-sentence grammar level. accordingly, exposure of unknown words should be included in meaningful contextual cues, which would allow high percentages of correct lexical inference activity. the effectiveness of reading for incidental learning is also discussed. reading boosts subconscious acquisition of lexical items. however, it also depends on the type of learner it is aimed at. pilot research suggests that reading is more beneficial for low and intermediate learners, as it allows them to increase vocabulary gains and further retention of lexical items. in contrast, listening was found to be of improvement for vocabulary retention in advanced l2 learners (vidal, 2011). clearly, further research should focus on the relationship of reading and listening in high-proficiency learners. strategies and tasks for promoting incidental vocabulary learning have also been the focus of research. several empirical studies suggest that incidental vocabulary learning can be improved through marginal glosses. at the same time, marginal glosses and still images as multimodal annotations appear to be even more effective for incidental 165profile vol. 17, no. 1, january-june 2015. issn 1657-0790 (printed) 2256-5760 (online). bogotá, colombia. pages 157-166 incidental vocabulary learning in second language acquisition: a literature review learning (azizollah & marzieh, 2012; hulstijn, et al., 1996). such results advocate for the positive use of multimodal strategies, such as multiple types of glosses (yoshii, 2006) and even video captioning (montero, peters, clarebout, & desmet, 2014) in call settings for vocabulary learning. moreover, other strategies that focus lexical items as the goals of different tasks showed positive impact in several studies (mccafferty et al., 2001; xu, 2010). these researches showed that the repeated occurrence of words in highly informative contexts conducive for learners to infer meaning of unknown words provide greater incidental vocabulary gains. in turn, such strategies embedded in tasks that encourage lexical items to become the focus of goal-directed activities could enhance learning and retention of vocabulary. important pedagogical implications stem from the results of this literature review. for example, teachers should consider the role of the type of text that best suits the interest of learners, and the quality of contextual hints that allow subconscious acquisition of vocabulary. therefore, i draw attention to the importance of selecting authentic texts with highly informative contextual cues manageable for the level of proficiency of learners, and the importance of selecting tasks that allow learners to focus attention at the word level (syntactical level) and global text comprehension. such activities, would not only boost comprehension and syntactic lexical knowledge, but would also allow the learner to use the newly acquired vocabulary in real-world speech events. material developers also need to consider how texts will affect vocabulary learning. if the context surrounding the vocabulary is not useful for learners to correctly infer the meaning of words, multimodal glosses are likely to be necessary for learners to gain knowledge of meaning and focus attention at the word level in meaningful and authentic texts. in addition, the frequency of occurrence of the target vocabulary has a significant effect on the retention and recall of lexical items. as a consequence, such effect is enhanced when complemented with additional aids, including learner’s access to knowledge of words and awareness of vocabulary learning strategies. in other words, the perfect amount of intentional and incidental learning that improves l2 vocabulary learning. likewise, the use of multimodal texts, including video captioning, enhances comprehension and gives the learner additional support to associate correctly a lexical item with its meaning. in this sense, the inclusion of new technologies in the l2 class enhances the incidental acquisition of vocabulary and it could help us to improve current reading strategies and tasks in our learning environment. beginners and advance learners can benefit from reading and listening activities correspondingly that include multimodal e-learning technologies, even perhaps for the incidental acquisition of multi-word phrases and collocations. if further research focuses on how we can implement effectively web 2.0 tools in tasks that improve retention and recall of basic and complex lexical items at the meaning and form level, we can build on our current literature and gain a deeper insight into the acquisition of l2 vocabulary in the 21st century. references ahmad, j. (2011). intentional vs. incidental vocabulary learning. interdisciplinary journal of contemporary research in business, 3(5), 67-75. alcón, e. (2007). incidental focus on form, noticing and vocabulary learning in the efl classroom. international journal of english studies, 7(2), 41-60. azizollah, d., & marzieh, r. (2012). incidental vocabulary learning and the development of receptive and productive vocabulary: how gloss types work. suvremena lingvistika, 38(74), 175-187. barcroft, j. (2009). effects of synonym generation on incidental and intentional l2 vocabulary learning during reading. tesol quaterly, 43(1), 79-103. universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras166 restrepo ramos ellis, r. (1994). factors in the incidental acquisition of second language vocabulary from oral input: a review essay. applied language learning, 5(1), 1-32. gass, s. (1999). discussion: incidental vocabulary learning. studies in second language acquisition, 21(2), 319-333. http://dx.doi.org/10.1017/s0272263199002090. huckin, t., & coady, j. (1999). incidental vocabulary acquisition in a second language: a review. studies in second language acquisition, 21(2), 181-193. http://dx.doi. org/10.1017/s0272263199002028. hulstijn, j. h., hollander, m., & greidanus, t. (1996). incidental vocabulary learning by advanced foreign language students: the influence of marginal glosses, dictionary use, and recurrence of unknown words. the modern language journal, 80(3), 327-339. http://dx.doi. org/10.1111/j.1540-4781.1996.tb01614.x. jenkins, j. r., stein, m. l., & wysocki, k. (1984). learning vocabulary through reading. american educational research journal, 21(4), 767-787. http://dx.doi. org/10.3102/00028312021004767. krashen, s. d. (1989). we acquire vocabulary and spelling by reading: additional evidence for the input hypothesis. the modern language journal, 73(4), 440-464. http://dx.doi.org/10.1111/j.1540-4781.1989.tb05325.x. mccafferty, s. g., roebuck, r. f., & wayland, r. p. (2001). activity theory and the incidental learning of secondlanguage vocabulary. language awareness, 10(4), 289294. http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/09658410108667040. montero, m., peters, e., clarebout, g., & desmet, p. (2014). effects of captioning on video comprehension and incidental vocabulary. language, learning & technology, 18(1), 118-141. paribakht, t. s., & wesche, m. (1999). reading and “incidental” l2 vocabulary acquisition: an introspective study of lexical inferencing. studies in second language acquisition, 21(2), 195-224. http://dx.doi.org/10.1017/ s027226319900203x. ponniah, r. j. (2011). incidental acquisition of vocabulary by reading. the reading matrix, 11(2), 135-139. schmitt, n., & schmitt, d. (1995). vocabulary notebooks: theoretical underpinnings and practical suggestions. elt journal, 49(2), 133-143. http://dx.doi.org/10.1093/ elt/49.2.133. shahrokni, s. a. (2009). second language incidental vocabulary learning: the effect of online textual, pictorial, and textual pictorial glosses. the electronic journal for english as a second language, 13(3), 1-17. vidal, k. (2011). a comparison of the effects of reading and listening on incidental vocabulary acquisition. language learning, 61(1), 219-258. http://dx.doi. org/10.1111/j.1467-9922.2010.00593.x. webb, s. (2008). the effects of context on incidental vocabulary learning. reading in a foreign language, 20(2), 232-245. xu, x. (2010). an empirical study on the effect of task on l2 incidental vocabulary acquisition through reading. asian social science, 6(7), 126-131. yoshii, m. (2006). l1 and l2 glosses: their effects on incidental vocabulary learning. language, learning & technology, 10(3), 85-101. zandieh, z. (2012). the effects of hypertext gloss on comprehension and vocabulary retention under incidental and intentional learning conditions. english language teaching, 5(6), 60-71. about the author falcon dario restrepo ramos holds a ba in translation english-french-spanish from universidad de antioquia (colombia) and has recently completed a master’s degree in linguistics and tesol at west virginia university, usa. currently, he is a first-year student in the phd program in linguistics at the university of florida, usa. 5profile vol. 12, no. 1, 2010. issn 1657-0790. bogotá, colombia. pages 5-9 editorial “i am confident that as teachers gain in confidence as researchers and as writers of research reports and articles, they will become more intrepid and seek, in other sources of difficulties, topics which will make an even greater contribution to the larger tapestry of tesol wisdom”1 (p. 5). i am delighted to start this editorial by sharing with all of you the recognition granted recently by publindex-colciencias, which is the national indexing system for colombian journals. the high standards of profile have been acknowledged one more time and for this reason, we have been classified in category a2. in colombia, as in other countries, there is an urgent need to contribute to the nations’ growth by having scientific publications that contribute to the development of knowledge. it is also expected that journals be accountable for the use of international standards and for their capacity to foster dialogue with academic peers all over the world. in other words, there is an increasing interest in having publications that meet international standards and visibility. this new ranking in the índice bibiliográfico nacional publindex 2009 acknowledges our commitment to fulfil those requirements. thus, this achievement deserves not only ample dissemination, but acknowledgment for the people who have made our work possible and a continuous learning experience. the dedication of novice and experienced teacher-researchers and their decision to make their works and reflections public through publishing, as well as the sustained support of our reviewers, have being vital to maintaining our journal. these, together with the editorial processes we have carefully followed, have also been decisive in the evaluation processes we have gone through recently. i wish to express my gratitude to the advisory and editorial committees as well as to my working team for their encouragement and collaboration. our latest achievement is in tune with rainey’s (2009) assertion that teachers have gained confidence as researchers. rainey points out that “as teachers gain in confidence as researchers and as writers of research reports and articles, they will become more intrepid” (p. 5). from the editorial processes we have led, i can assure all that this has been so because research has become more important in initial and in-service teacher education programmes. in addition, more research communities of teachers of english 1 rainey, i. (2009, december). why do we action researchers choose our topics? in m. l. cárdenas (chair), 6th profile symposium. bogotá: universidad nacional de colombia. 6 universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras cárdenas beltrán are being consolidated and efforts are being made to give due value to literature coming from practitioners and local contexts. all of this has had, in turn, an impact on the challenges they have decided to face upon seeing their articles published. our publication is a forum for research groups, teacher educators, school teachers, and novice teachers, no matter how experienced they might be. hence, the themes addressed in their papers derive from the curiosity generated by daily experiences, from the practical or philosophical issues they need to solve or explain, and from the explanations they wish to find to phenomena concerning policies, socio-political factors, and existing educational models connected to english language teaching and learning, among others. it is not the intention of profile to publish only papers in accordance with the most fashionable ideas or topics. we want to be on the cutting edge of trends that spreads practitioners’ work nationally or internationally and that empowers the teachers and teacher educators to enhance the existing knowledge of the profession. we wish to preserve a space for teacher researchers to make their work more visible and, following rainey’s remark, to encourage them to address topics which can make an even greater contribution to the larger tapestry of tesol (teaching english to speakers of other languages) knowledge. aware of the importance of reaching a wider community, we now have several options with which to reach our readership. besides our printed version, we can be found through the indexing systems and directories that have included profile in their databases: ulrich’s periodicals directory, mla international bibliography, educational research abstracts online (era), linguistics and language behavior abstracts database (llba), latindex, the directory of open access journals (doaj). you can also read our issues in full text online. this can be done by accessing the universidad nacional de colombia website: http://www.revistas.unal.edu.co/index. php/profile/index. likewise, full texts can be consulted by accessing the scientific electronic library online –scielo: http://www.scielo.org.co/scielo.php?script=sci_ serial&pid=1657-0790&lng=en&nrm=iso. this issue includes eleven papers concerning english language teaching (elt), language policies –this time in connection with bilingualism– and teacher education. in keeping with the mission of profile, the articles are derived from research, reflective practices, and innovations. we open the first section, issues from teacher researchers, with a paper by two public school teachers in bogotá, william urrutia león and esperanza vega cely. it is based on an action research project conducted while participating in a teacher development programme at universidad nacional de colombia. the use of video recordings, the teacher’s journal and some questionnaires let them delve into the study of tenth grade students’ involvement in playing games. this was the pedagogical 7profile vol. 12, no. 1, 2010. issn 1657-0790. bogotá, colombia. editorial strategy chosen to help learners overcome difficulties when trying to speak english. in the findings, the authors highlight the role of games in fostering collaboration, solidarity, interaction and a relaxed learning atmosphere in class. next, sumru akcan reports the results of a study that focused on pre-service english teachers’ reflections on their teaching performance after watching their videotaped lessons in company with their university supervisor at a university in turkey. the readers will find out what those reflections tell us about teacher talk. we can also get acquainted with what happened with students’ participation and interest in the lesson. additionally, we can learn more about the role of video recording in providing opportunities for critical reflection on candidates’ performances in the practicum of pre-service programmes. the following paper draws our attention towards a common concern: authentic oral interaction in the efl (english as a foreign language) class. josé david herazo rivera analyses four samples of oral communication exchanges that he recorded in colombian efl secondary school classrooms. to do so, he examines their effectiveness for developing meaningful oral production in both student-student and teacherstudent interaction. the next article, by cecilio lópez, comes from the mexican context and depicts moral responsibility and confidence as factors that influence teacher involvement in educational change. based on the interviews administered to seventeen university academics, the author analyses some teachers’ perceptions and attitudes towards their changing roles when confronted with curriculum innovation. he also highlights the relationship between their levels of moral responsibility and confidence, and the different roles they engage in during their teaching career. then, doris correa deals with the development of academic literacy and voice and the challenges faced by a mature esl (english as a second language) student and her instructors while involved in an undergraduate course offered by a university in the united states. critical, socio-cultural and sociolinguistic theories of writing, text and voice shed light on intertextual analysis of the data and lead to questions concerning the effectiveness of traditional product-based approaches in helping students develop academic literacy. teaching english through stories is the theme of the sixth paper of this edition. nohora inés porras gonzález reports the work she supervised while working with a group of student-teachers at a colombian university. this project involved teaching children in a public elementary school, syllabus design, using stories that responded to the children’s interests and likes, and lesson planning. the results indicate that stories used by the student-teachers had a significant role in children’s motivation, class participation, reading comprehension, and vocabulary learning. 8 universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras cárdenas beltrán we continue with an issue on reading comprehension. luz marina echeverri and maria mcnulty give an account of an action research project which aimed at examining the foreign language reading comprehension of public school eighth graders in colombia. participants experienced a directed reading-thinking approach with strategies for comprehension and application. the results inform us about the students’ opinions regarding the strategies and the use of an interactive reading task. moreover, they contain explanations concerning the contribution of the pedagogical intervention to improved reading comprehension. the last paper of the first section gives us the chance to continue with the initiative of promoting the discussion of education and elt policies. the article by wilder yesid escobar alméciga and july carolina gómez lobatón addresses an issue of particular interest for english language teachers: identity, language and thought of the nasa people in bilingual contexts of colombia. the reflection is illuminated by a revision of literature and a set of interviews conducted of two members of the nasa community. besides addressing the factors already mentioned, the article establishes connections with teaching practices, approaches and beliefs in the area of elt (english language teaching) in our country. the second section, issues from novice teacher researchers, includes two papers based on the research projects the authors accomplished as part of the requirements to opt for the degree in undergraduate language programmes. in the first one, daniel fernando pérez niño focuses on the role of music in young learners’ oral production in english. the study was conducted in the foreign language extension courses of universidad nacional de colombia. it examines how young learners view music as a ludic tool that allows them to perform in oral communication. the study also describes the activities applied by a music teacher and how they helped to reinforce the language topics studied in other english classes. afterwards, we can find an article by césar julio león chica, catalina d’costa martínez and gisela franco jácome who documented the designing of proficiency tests to accredit previous knowledge in american and british literature in a bilingual education programme in colombia. the article depicts the processes followed, the criteria borne in mind to accomplish the testing task, the contextual and theoretical framework that inspired the design and the factors that, in general, have a bearing on successfully passing the tests. we close this edition with a paper by liliana cuesta, who gathers some features and recommendations to design and develop online course materials. among the aspects she highlights to engage in innovations in this area we have the following: some instructional design patterns, the value of permanent analysis and assessment to support an efficient management of online environments, and the efforts needed 9profile vol. 12, no. 1, 2010. issn 1657-0790. bogotá, colombia. editorial to implement varied educational strategies so that online instructors and learners can make the most of this type of materials. as always, we hope the issues contained in our journal contribute to the further development of the elt profession and look forward to publishing more research reports, reflections, and innovations. remember: we publish twice a year and accept submissions all year round. melba libia cárdenas beltrán journal editor 141profile vol. 12, no. 1, 2010. issn 1657-0790. bogotá, colombia. pages 141-157 the role of music in young learners’ oral production in english el papel de la música en la producción oral en inglés de niños y jóvenes daniel fernando pérez niño* universidad nacional de colombia, sede bogotá this article reports on a study conducted at universidad nacional de colombia in the foreign language extension courses. the author shows how young learners who study english in this program can develop their oral production by making and listening to music. the study took place in the first semester of 2009 and followed the qualitative and descriptive approaches to classroom research. the author describes how young learners view music as a ludic tool that will improve their oral performance and how the activities applied by a music teacher help to reinforce the language topics studied in other english classes. key words: music in english learning, teaching young learners, oral production este artículo reseña un estudio realizado en la universidad nacional de colombia en los cursos de extensión de lenguas extranjeras. el autor muestra cómo los niños y jóvenes que estudian inglés en este programa pueden desarrollar su producción oral creando y escuchando música. el estudio se realizó en el primer semestre del 2009 y siguió los enfoques cualitativo y descriptivo para la investigación en el aula. el autor describe cómo perciben los niños y jóvenes la música como una herramienta lúdica para mejorar su desempeño oral y cómo las actividades musicales que realiza un profesor de música ayudan a reforzar los temas estudiados en otras clases de inglés. palabras clave: la música en el aprendizaje del inglés, enseñanza del inglés a niños y jóvenes, producción oral * e-mail: dfperezn@unal.edu.co this article was received on july 30, 2009 and accepted on january 13, 2010. 142 universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras pérez niño introduction learning is a long process which depends not only on the inner abilities of the student, but also on the method chosen for teaching any subject. although gardner (1993) in his theory about multiple intelligences said that there are many different ways of learning, we have to take into account our methodology and how we use other disciplines in order to make the learning process easier. learning an alternative language is different from learning any other kind of subject. this is the conclusion that i came to after studying english for almost five years. it is different in the sense that you do not learn just structures and vocabulary. while you are learning a foreign language, you are learning the culture behind that language and you are learning thousands of years of history. in other words, you are acquiring a different way of thinking. as a language student (in this case english student) i have to say that learning by doing is the best way to learn the components of english. ludic activities and games are useful to apply what you learn in a specific context; however, there is another way of teaching english. you can use alternative disciplines in order to teach the language components already mentioned. some language teachers use science or theater for teaching english or french, but others use music for the same purpose. it was interesting for me to see how music could be applied in the theories of teaching language and how students reacted when learning a language using this discipline. i felt interested in examining how a teacher could apply different alternatives for reinforcing the information we are teaching. hence, being a close observer helped me to see how music was really attached to english learning each time i was in the classroom. the following sections present the problem, the research questions and the main participants of this project; then, the theoretical framework and the methodology are explained. we bear in mind the theories about music, learning during youth, oral production and the data collection procedures, respectively. finally, the results, the conclusions and the recommendations to be taken into account for future studies are included. the problem one thing that we as language researchers have to keep in mind is how we teach a foreign language. we cannot follow the traditional way in which the teacher is in front of her/his students, writing several structures on the blackboard. this is the typical method used in elementary and high schools, and that is why in most of these places there is a low level of english proficiency. teaching a foreign language is not just about teaching structures; this is only one step of a big process. you have to create real language use for your students by taking into account the context in which you are involved. as a result of the interest generated by the methodology used in the extension courses for children, i took into account the following research questions in my project: 1. what kind of music was the teacher keeping in mind? in other words, what specific kind of music did the teacher use in order to teach the english class. did the teacher use musical instruments for students to make their own music? or did the teacher use common songs? 2. what kind of activities did the teacher plan for teaching the english class? in other words, did s/he apply ludic games, role-plays or other kinds of activities related to music? 143 the role of music in young learners’ oral production in english profile vol. 12, no. 1, 2010. issn 1657-0790. bogotá, colombia. pages 141-157 3. how did young learners react when they took the specialized english class? 4. how can other pedagogical alternatives like music encourage and reinforce the speaking ability of young students? research setting and participants the context in which this research project was involved corresponded to one of the foreign languages extension courses developed by the foreign languages department of the universidad nacional de colombia in bogotá. the methodology of these courses was that each one of the courses had two teachers: the first one, which was called the regular, had to teach the basics of english language. the main job of the regular teacher was to teach and to work with students on the main skills: listening, speaking, reading, writing and grammar, according to the expected proficiency level; and the second one, who was called the specialized teacher, had to reinforce those skills and teach a different discipline. there were specialized teachers who taught the students certain basics according to the discipline in which the teacher was working. some teachers worked on painting and drawing, and taught the students how to create pieces of art. also, there were specialized biology teachers, who taught the students how to do experiments in chemistry. other teachers specialized in physical education and gave the students the opportunity of jogging, jumping, playing soccer, basketball, volleyball or others. finally, there were specialized teachers in music, who taught the english language by using musical instruments, by having the students sing and engage in other activities. knowing that it was a six months’ course, the music teacher divided the course program into two main parts. the first part was called theoretical feedback, because the teacher focused on teaching specific vocabulary and the characteristics of each one of the main musical instruments. it did not mean that the class was boring. instead, the teacher encouraged ludic activities to make the class more pleasant. on the other hand, in the second part –called practice and reinforcing– the children could practice what they learned in the first part by playing musical instruments. the participants who took part in my investigation were students from 10 to 15 years old. they were part of one group called seekers challengers who took classes in the extension courses of the universidad nacional de colombia, in bogotá. these children took three english classes: two classes with their regular teachers and the last one with their specialized music teacher. theoretical framework being a language teacher is a hard job if we keep in mind that we are trying to get the student to acquire a new and different language. hence, it is helpful to find some other pedagogical tools in order make our work more effective. here we have some theories and other studies related to the role music plays in young learners’ oral production music as an alternative method the use of alternative pedagogical methods in learning processes is not anything new in foreign language acquisition. music is a subject that has been used in this field as a teaching tool for many years. it has been demonstrated that music is a trigger that improves academic skills such as vocabulary and grammar, and also develops linguistic abilities (jalongo & bromley, 1984; mccarthy, 1985; martin, 1983; mitchell, 1983; jolly, 144 universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras pérez niño 1975). as a ludic activity, music is a discipline that not only reinforces such mentioned abilities but acts as a great motivational source that helps teachers to make the class enjoyable. the role of music for catterall (2006) has to do especially with the cognitive abilities that the learner can improve by keeping in mind musical concepts such as songs or instrumental music and how these can improve learners’ special reasoning. this is, in turn, connected with subjects like mathematics, language skills of writing and reading and, finally, verbal competence. in the case of language development, the relationship is somehow more indirect, but at the same time important: what we write, what we read, and what we hear involve words that are used and understood in specific contexts. these contexts can be seen as spatial networks involving words with related words, words with their historical backgrounds, words with their social relationships, and words placed in expressions. in addition, in a study carried out in colombia, morales (2007, p. 163) stresses that “while listening to a song we can read the lyrics and clarify pronunciation issues, we can sing and practice speaking and pronunciation skills, and we can write opinions or answer questions about our understanding of the songs”. these kinds of listening activities, apart from being a good teaching and learning alternative, are useful and effective for language learning. nowadays, music is used as an important pedagogical tool, especially in english as a second language (esl) in both young learners’ and adult classrooms. it is useful for creating enjoyable environments as well as for building listening comprehension, speaking, reading, and writing skills; it is also useful to increase vocabulary and to expand cultural knowledge. as pointed out by lems (2001), songs contextually introduce the features of supra segmentals (how rhythm, stress, and intonation affect the pronunciation of english in context). through songs, students discover the natural stretching and compacting of the stream of english. young learners by young learners, we understand the ranges in age from 11/12 to 17/18. this is a stage in which it is difficult to say whether the person is a child or an adult. according to laza (2005), there are some physical changes that affect not only students’ learning, but also their personality. such changes have to be underlined and analyzed as important learning factors. those physical changes start and continue from 10/11 years of age to 16/18 in boys; in girls this process goes from 10/11 to 14/18. we, as the teachers of young learners, have to be careful and alert to be able to deal with the physical and emotional changes. referring to personality, it is relevant to talk about the personality and identity development of young learners. this is the period in which teenagers have to adopt their own way of thinking, their own values and identity. there is heavy social pressure on them. self-esteem is the key word at this stage. if we as emotional supporters do not inculcate in them this essential concept, we will later on have behavior problems in the classroom and in the home. social tradition has some beliefs about children and their ability to learn a second language effortlessly, superior than the adults’ learning ability. according to brown (1994), it happens because of children’s amazingly widespread success in acquiring other languages. they exercise a good deal of two important mental skills: cognitive and affective effort for internalizing languages. the main difference between children and adults, apart from 145 the role of music in young learners’ oral production in english profile vol. 12, no. 1, 2010. issn 1657-0790. bogotá, colombia. pages 141-157 their ages, is the contrast between the child’s spontaneous, peripheral attention to language forms and the adult’s overt, focal awareness and attention to those forms. oral production according to guerrero (2004), when foreign language learners try to speak, the accuracy of their speech, the variety and precision of their words and the complexity of their utterances are highly influenced by some specific factors such as the anxiety that learners feel as they speak, the degree of cognitive complexity of the task that they are trying to perform, and their proficiency level. as we can see, these factors are relevant if we are going to analyze the oral production of young learners, even that of children who are acquiring their oral skills. some investigators like levelt (1989; 1993) have suggested that the production system can be broken into a number of distinct components which have specific functions such as finding and organizing the concepts of a message or articulating it into sounds and utterances. bearing in mind one of the investigations about oral interaction developed by cazden (1988), hall & verplaetse (2000), language classrooms can be seen as sociolinguistic environments and discourse communities in which interaction is believed to contribute to learners’ language development. according to the aforementioned authors, oral production has to do with the transfer of meaning. in oral production, people learn the foreign language grammar structure and connect its structures with oral ability, pronunciation and sound patterns. in another study conducted in an english class of the extension program of the same university where the present investigation took place, monsalve & correal (2006) examined the development of children’s oral communication in english and the way in which the activities and the teachers’ roles created or expanded students’ opportunities for learning. the study revealed that children’s oral production was possible thanks to the teacher’s efforts to provide children with topics and activities closely related to the students’ particular interests and needs. likewise, the teacher created an appropriate learning environment in which children were challenged to use english in meaningful ways. research methodology this study followed the descriptive research approach. according to knupfer (2007), the descriptive approach provides a detailed account in connection to the type of research question, design, and data analysis that is applied to a given topic. it does not fit neatly into either quantitative or qualitative research methodologies because it uses elements of both. in addition, it uses descriptive statistics, which refer to what is. in contrast, inferential statistics try to determine cause and effect. in order to gather the information needed for this study, i used field notes, diaries, video recordings and interviews. based on cohen & manion (1994) and burns (1999), i used observation because through it we can abstract real data from real situations. by using observation you can analyze and study the environments that data come from. in other words, through observation we can describe perfectly not only the features of participants, but also the context to which the participant belongs. field notes are one of the best observational data techniques because it has observation as the most important complement. notes help the researcher to register some specific facts about their participants at a specific moment. my expectation 146 universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras pérez niño was to use notes as a primary way of collecting the basic data when the music class was taught. the diary, like notes, also belongs to observational techniques or, according to nunan (1992), introspective methods. diaries are very similar to notes in terms of the observational component; however, this technique is more systematic and has a specific structure in terms of order. in diaries, you can write the important facts that you are seeing and give those a detailed order by date or by time of occurrence. diaries helped me record relevant events observed in class and consolidate information that was also collected through other instruments. in other words, the diary was more linked to the personal notes that i, as the researcher, wrote about the class management and methodology applied by the teacher. video, as well as audio recordings, provides us with denser linguistic information than does field note taking for, ideally, it allows us to record every word. when taking field notes, the researcher is limited to writing down the gist of what the interlocutors said, or recording only brief interactions consisting of a few short turns because of constraints on memory and the inherently slower speed of writing as compared with speaking (beebe & takahashi, 1989). recordings were the main instrument that i used during the project. through these, i could describe each one of the activities applied by the music teacher. first of all, i chose three classes in which music had more of a presence, then i recorded five lessons altogether, as well as the students’ perceptions, as expressed in the interviews i carried out. finally, i transcribed the data collected in order to find the results. interviews are an elicitation or non-observational technique which allows the researcher to obtain more in-depth information. most effective interviews require researchers to develop a guide to use during the interview process. thus, it is important to follow certain guidelines and to train all interviewers to use the same techniques. in order to apply the interviews, i bore in mind the recommendations pointed out by siedman (1998): • listen more, talk less • follow up on what participants say • ask questions when you do not understand • ask to hear more about a subject • explore, do not probe • avoid leading questions • ask open ended questions • follow up, do not interrupt • ask participant to talk to you as if you were someone else. some personal interviews promote a higher response rate but require more staff, time, and travel. i interviewed the music teacher in order to get a professional opinion about the presence of music in english learning (see appendix 1). it was also important for me to know how students felt in each class, so i interviewed them (see appendix 2)1. i picked the last classes for interviewing them because it was at that time when the teacher and the students had a clear image about music and the english language. data collection process and analysis as already mentioned, the field notes and the video recordings were gathered inside the classroom. the diary contained additional reflections and some other observations registered after the specialized class. in addition, the interviews reinforced the information that i collected through recordings and notes and gave me a different perspective of 1 the interviews were conducted in spanish to let the students express themselves freely in their mother tongue and then they were translated into english for the purpose of the research report. 147 the role of music in young learners’ oral production in english profile vol. 12, no. 1, 2010. issn 1657-0790. bogotá, colombia. pages 141-157 the situation despite the subjective content of each one of the interviews i did. when the specialized english classes started, i focused on five classes in which i applied the data collecting instruments. in the process of analyzing data, my units of analysis were the evidence of children’s oral production collected through my journal and the transcriptions of the audio and video recordings. some information such as the teacher’s and students’ experiences, as well as impressions and opinions were also useful for me as a means to complement my understanding of the phenomenon under study and to ensure data validation. in terms of qualitative data analysis, which was the option adopted in this study, gonzález (2004) explains how qualitative information must be organized and classified. he stresses that qualitative data is linked to content analysis. results on the basis of the research process described before, and following gonzález (2004), i categorized, codified and interpreted what i grasped from the classroom. diagram 1 depicts the categories and subcategories found in the study the presence of musical activities as a speaking trigger this is the category that embraces a set of facts that helped children speak in class. what follows is an explanation of the kind of activities the english music teacher used for encouraging children’s oral production. to do so, it was divided into three subcategories, each one of them linked to the actions in class and how they affected the children’s oral production. now let’s examine each one of the subcategories in detail. vocabulary emphasis: a tool to grasp key concepts i noticed that one particular aspect of the several exercises that the teacher prepared for kids was that all of them focused on teaching children specific vocabulary related to music. in other words, the main emphasis of this specialized class was the role of music in young learners’ oral production the presence of musical activities as a speaking trigger children’s perceptions about the music class a motivator to progress a funny way to learn an alternative to know more about music vocabulary emphasis: a tool to grasp key concepts complementary activities: a different way to reinforce speaking skills listening activities: the steering force for speaking figure 1. categories derived from the data analysis 148 universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras pérez niño vocabulary learning and listening comprehension, as evidenced in the following extract: t: (…) well, according to all the activities i plan every saturday for children, there is no doubt that my two most important emphases are vocabulary and listening… because it is a music class, it’s important for them first, to train their ears with songs with advanced vocabulary and second, to have the specific concepts about music and the knowledge of some musical instruments that i am showing for them. (teacher’s interview, april 18, 2009) the interview let me know about the emphasis that the teacher proposed for the lessons. it was also important to analyze in detail the activities that he planned in order for the children to grasp specific vocabulary and key aspects that helped them with musical knowledge such as instruments and their characteristics. the following extract illustrates how the teacher went about it: the teacher asks student to read the first part of the lesson prepared for this day in order to get them interested in music theory. t: ok, guys, this is the first thing we are going to learn in the first music class. do you know the difference between sound and noise? c: [noise]… umm… no teacher t: so… let me see… you please read the first part! c: sound without definition is called… noise. for example, a broken glass or car crash. (journal, february 21, 2009) this example shows that in this music class, the teacher had students identify vocabulary by asking them for the word noise, a key concept, and by having them read what noise means. these kinds of exercises helped children not only grasp words or definitions, but also involved other skills such as reading. listening activities: the steering force for speaking in connection to this category, we should highlight the kind of listening activities the teacher used in class. the teacher used listening activities such as common songs with authentic english in use and musical instrument sounds to get children to recognize the instrument they were talking about. i noticed that both of them are used in class, first, for teaching them vocabulary and, second, for supporting the speaking part. during the data collecting process, i wondered about the type of music they listened to in class. i was surprised when i came into the classroom to observe them. below, we can read the events that took place at the beginning of a lesson i recorded: the teacher plays a song and all children pay attention. while the song is playing, teacher guides children with numbers, so they can catch the missing word and fill in the blank. when they finished the children seemed very interested and asked the teacher about unknown words. c: teacher, what’s the meaning of dar…kness? t: ok, for example, when you go to sleep and you turn the lights off, so what happens. c: eee… queda oscuro. [it gets dark.] t: so, what is the meaning of darkness? c: ahh… ‘oscuridad’ [darkness], and teacher, what’s the meaning of bones? t: it’s what you have in your body, so when you touch it, is hard and white c: ¿huesos? [bones?] t: yes, very good, ok, so let’s see… so far… the meaning not of the unknown words but the whole meaning… so who wants to tell me the meaning of the song? c: umm. la canción dice que [the song says that…] t: wait a second, do it, but in english please. c: ehh… it says that a men, no, no, a man that… thinks in aaa.. woman every time and sunday remembers she… ehh... her. t: so far so good, esteban. (transcription of a video and audio recording, march 14, 2009) this piece of data exemplifies that these kinds of songs were used to encourage the speaking part in the music class. in most of the classes, the teacher prepared a different song for practicing the listening and the speaking part. with this kind of activities, children could, first, have a good time by relaxing with music and, second, learn some unknown words useful to them to understand the meaning of the lyrics. finally, after doing the 149 the role of music in young learners’ oral production in english profile vol. 12, no. 1, 2010. issn 1657-0790. bogotá, colombia. pages 141-157 exercise, the teacher tried to make them talk about the song. on the other hand, woodall & ziembrosk (2004) pointed out that oral language is an interactive and social process, and using songs with authentic meaning is a natural way to experience rich language in a pleasurable way. songs are a good way for teaching children not only theoretical concepts related to music, but also vocabulary we use daily. in order to exemplify this fact, i extracted the following sample from the teacher’s interview: i: what do you expect from the listening activities you plan for children? t: ok, first of all, i think about the development of the class, i think that songs make the class more pleasant for them and it is a good tool for teaching them vocabulary and some grammar structures. what i expect is to support of course listening and speaking when i ask for the pronunciation or the opinion about the song. (teacher’s interview, april 18, 2009) complementary activities: a different way to reinforce speaking skills this was an important category in my research project. although we have seen that listening activities were the main bases of speaking outcomes, there were alternative activities that helped to reinforce not only the students’ oral production, but also the other linguistic abilities. this category was made up of three subcategories which helped me identify the use and role of some complementary activities the teacher used to reinforce the speaking skill: games such as contests and competitions in the classroom; reading and writing skills for children’s speaking outcome, and visual aids for helping children speak in class. activities prepared by the teacher of the music class, such as contests or games were also a good connection between music and learning. piaget’s research and theory (1965) convinced constructivist educators of the value of group games for intellectual and moral development as well as for social and physical development. in most of the sessions, the teacher i observed prepared a contest in which a group of boys and a group of girls had to confront themselves. the idea of this kind of game was to practice and consolidate all the vocabulary and the topics that they had previously learned. this evidence is shown in one of the teacher’s interviews, as shown in the following extract: t: these games that i prepare represent the class environment that i want. you know, games make the children feel fine and comfortable in class, and improve the participation. that’s why i try to make contests for them, not only for changing the classroom environment, but also for reinforcing all the topics i teach for them. (teacher’s interview, april 18, 2009) most of the contests that the teacher organized for children were intended to help children practice vocabulary about the musical instruments, their proper spelling and the perfect pronunciation of the words describing them. children could also develop oral production by interacting with their classmates and by having a good time in class, as seen in the following example: after the teacher’s explanation of the activity, children get excited and want to start playing. t: ready? so, let’s begin, so you will be number one, two, there, four, five, six and seven right? c: which number you are? c: seven c: huyy… the last one, yo veré, no se deje ganar de natalia [i’ll see... don’t let natalia win.] t: ok, so number ones, please come here. c: come on camilo, win, win, win, win… t: ok. silence, calm down… (transcription of a ideo and audio recording, march 21, 2009) the example above illustrates what the teacher explained in the interview. children got really excited in those types of activities, no matter what 150 universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras pérez niño kind of topic he was teaching them. this shows that if you try to make the class environment funnier, you will be able to teach them all the things you want. reading and writing skills for children’s speaking outcome was the second sub-category found in connection to complementary activities. i want to highlight a special particularity that happened regularly in some other activities related to the interconnection of skills, especially reading, writing and speaking. it is not a new issue in language learning. as cárdenas (2000, p. 15) argues: “listening comprehension is added on to established stages of reading, writing and speaking”. at this point, we can say that all reading and writing activities used in the extension course under study were interconnected. they were also useful in encouraging the young learners’ oral production. this can be observed in this instance: the listening exercise ends and the teacher starts the second activity with another worksheet about string instruments. t: you… please start reading… esteban! yeah… you please, start with the first part. b: es…tring instrument. t: string instruments b: perdón [sorry]… string instruments… the four major instru…ments in the string instruments, the violin… t: violin b: violin, the vio..la, the chello t: cello b: cello and the doub…le brass… ehh bass t: repeat… double bass b: double bass. (transcription of a video and audio recording, march 14, 2009) visual aids for helping children speak in class were the third sub-category in the area of complementary activities. when the child finished reading the first part about the characteristics of the violin, the teacher got prepared for showing them the violin’s image. t: so, the violin… i think you already know this instrument! he shows a flashcard of a violinist. t: do you know the violin, don’t you? c: yes… b: as you said teacher, put the violin on the … how do you say… ¿cómo se llama? [how do you call it?]… ¡barbilla! [chin!] t: the chin, you have to put the violin on the chin… and play… do you see?… so repeat: violin c: violin. (transcription of a video and audio recording, march 14, 2009) as we can see in the example, visual aids –in this case, flashcards– helped children to grasp new information and consolidate language learning. also, we can see how the teacher directed the lesson for practicing pronunciation, which was basically the main objective of the music teacher in most of the classes. flashcards were really useful for the teacher to make the learning process more effective and funny for young students. children need to have all five senses stimulated. sensorial inputs like the smell of flowers, the touch of plants or audiovisual aids like videos or pictures are important elements in children’s language teaching (brown, 1994). through my experience in the practicum, i could see that images help children, first, to perceive more in detail what they are learning and, second, to grasp information faster. below we can see an extract from the oral evaluation children had. in it, we can see the role of visual aids in oral production. while children prepare the music folder, the teacher calls each one of them for the oral test. t: ok, i want here just the one who i called, the rest of you please in your place, ok? so, maria paula, please bring me your music folder and come here. g: teacher, this is the folder. t: ok, so let’s check, one, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight, nine and ten… very good and you have… three points for the last tournament. now, i am gonna show you some flashcards and you are gonna tell me the name of the instrument. ok, so, here we go. 151 the role of music in young learners’ oral production in english profile vol. 12, no. 1, 2010. issn 1657-0790. bogotá, colombia. pages 141-157 the teacher shows maria paula the flashcards of the musical instruments they have seen. g: ehh… snare drum, cello, cymbals, umm… oboe, violin [violin], clarinet. t: ok you failed just one, please repeat: violin. g: violin. t: ok, so the next one, ricardo josé, please come here with the music folder. b: teacher, aquí está el folder [here you are the folder]. t: ok, so please check how many worksheets do you have. b: one… seven, eight nine and ten… ten, teacher. t: ok, i´m gonna show you some flashcards and you are gonna tell me the name of the instrument, ok? so get ready… the teacher shows ricardo josé the flashcards of the musical instruments they have seen. b: umm… xilophone, violin, stream drum, oboe, cello, french horn, flute. t: ok ricardo, be careful with the pronunciation, you failed two answers, please, repeat: oboe b: oboe t: and snare drum. b: snare drum. t: ok, good, ricardo thank you. (transcription of a video and audio recording, april 4, 2009) children’s perceptions about the music class this category is made up of four subcategories which helped me to organize and identify the most important perceptions children had in relation to the music class they attended each saturday. most of this information was collected through the personal interviews i carried out with them. children were comfortable with the interview; they expressed what they felt and thought about the class and the teacher. the music class as a motivator toward progress children feel very bad when they do not understand the exercises that they have to do in class. in fact, we adult learners feel the same way when we have to face these kinds of situations. but this bad sensation helps teachers wonder about possible solutions that exist for avoiding these feelings. in the case reported in the following interview extract, a girl decided to study more to understand the activities and enjoy the class more: i2 : laura carolina, how have you been in the last english classes? g: umm… ee… fine i: why did you hesitate? g: because at the beginning i did not like to come to class. it seemed that the activities were really difficult, besides, the teacher speaks in english all the time. it is difficult to me understand his explanations. i: and now? g: now i like to come to class because i studied very hard and i already understand a little bit more. i can do all the homework alone. (children’s interview, april 4, 2009) just as laura carolina, there were some other children who felt bad when they had to come to class because it was very hard for them to understand all the explanations that the music teacher gave them. nonetheless, encouragement was a key factor to engage her in the class processes, as can be found in the following extract: t: so, laura carolina, please… quickly, and the last one… santiago, please, be prepared ok? g: teacher, i am laura carolina. t: ok so, check out how many photocopies do you have g: i have just eight copies t: umm… now, listen to me. i´m gonna play some sounds, the idea is that you have to tell me the names, clear? g: ok., lista [ready]. the teacher plays some musical instruments’ sounds… g: cello, violin, triangle, xylophone, snare drum, oboe, flute. t: ok very good pronunciation, but you have 3.9 for the two missing copies. so be careful ok? g: bueno profe [fine, teacher]. (transcription of a video and audio recording, april 4, 2009) as dörniey (2001) remarked, one important aspect to take into account about children’s self 2 i = interviewer (the researcher). 152 universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras pérez niño confidence is encouragement. now, the two extracts above, from the oral test, demonstrated that the student was able to recognize and pronounce all the names of the musical instruments. the girl also felt encouraged to continue working. on the other hand, from the responses of two girls who told me in the interviews that they could not understand what the teacher said, we can conclude that the music class was a good motivator for students to improve their language level. music as a funny way to learn it is common knowledge that music is a good alternative for relaxing and having fun. people in general play music while working or studying. in most cases, music can be used in the language learning field. young children seem to be naturally “wired” for sound and rhythm (davies, 2000). in our case, most of the children in the music class agreed that this subject could be used in language learning classrooms to make the class nicer and more pleasant. also, through music, children can learn structures or vocabulary faster. one aspect of this research project was to assure that music helped children to learn in a funny way. in the following excerpt we have some information that illustrates this fact: i: laura valentina, do you like music, i mean, do you like to learn english through music? g: yeah, yeah, i like music. i like to play the recorder and guitar… ok. i do not play guitar so much because i am learning right now. i: ahhh… but do you like it? g: i would say yeah as for english… i also like it and i think it is cool to combine the two subjects in just one class i: why? g: because we can learn in a different and a great way; besides, when the teacher bring us some songs, we can sing and listen to these. (children’s nterview, march 21, 2009) in the previous extract, we can confirm that music is a fun way to learn english because young learners enjoyed doing listening activities with popular songs. they liked to learn unknown vocabulary related to music and enjoyed bringing musical instruments to the class too. in regards to this confirmation, griffee (1983) stated that songs can be used to encourage extensive and intensive listening, to stimulate discussion of attitude and feelings, to encourage creativity and use of imagination, to provide a relaxed classroom atmosphere, and to bring variety and fun to learning. it should also be noted that although most children did not know how to play a musical instrument, they really had fun listening to the music and sounds. this facilitated the learning process and made the class enjoyable. in this context, if we take into account the role of specialized classes, we could say that it could also supported the other english classes as seen in the following example: i: do you think that specialized classes such as music, or sciences could help children to reinforce english language? t: that’s the idea. i think that the specialized learning, in this case music, is a parallel learning that makes children to have whole language learning in many subjects. besides, the classes such as theater, science or music are very funny for them, so i think that these classes are a good tool for children to gain knowledge of english. (teacher’s interview, april 18, 2009) the class as an alternative to know more about music the extension courses in the extension program under investigation have one particularity and it is that all children, from the first level, have to take a specialized course in which they are taught subjects in the arts (involving areas such as drawing, theater and music) or science. in these classes students learn how to engage in scientific 153 the role of music in young learners’ oral production in english profile vol. 12, no. 1, 2010. issn 1657-0790. bogotá, colombia. pages 141-157 experiments. in other words, apart from taking the normal english classes, they take classes in specific subjects in order to complement their language learning with some different activities. let’s read some examples which show the views of children in respect to the program organization: i: do you think that all specialized classes are useful in the extension courses? g: yes, because we can learn other subjects, for example, last year we studied science and besides we made experiments. now that i am taking music, we can learn more things in a funny way. (children’s interview, march 21, 2009) if we analyze the opinion of this child, we can see that students agree with the fact that it is good to have the chance to learn english by studying other subjects. ludic activities such as playing musical instruments or making scientific experiments make the class pleasant for children. furthermore, it is a good trigger for teaching in the sense that children enjoy the class and feel comfortable in the classroom. these views are also present in the following opinion about the music class: i: santiago, what things of the music class call your attention? b: hummmm, the fact that they are teaching us other things in english; for example that each musical instrument belongs to a specific family, the differences between sound and noise and many unknown words… what we did not know. i: can you learn all these things, even if the teacher speaks english all the time? b: mmmmm, at the beginning it was very hard because in the primary school the teacher speaks spanish all the time, but here the things change because sometimes i do not understand what he says but little by little you get accustomed and finally you understand everything. (children’s interview, march 14, 2009) as can be seen, there is clear evidence about the positive view of the specialized classes. students think that the music class is a good opportunity for learning new, useful things to complement what they already know about music and about english. conclusions after examining the main opinions of the students and the teacher participating in this study, we can have a clearer vision of the specialized music class in the extension courses at the university, as well as of their benefits for young learners. the findings revealed that the music employed by the teacher in the specialized class presented two features. the first feature had to do with the specific songs the music teacher exploited in class. the teacher used popular rock and pop songs in most listening activities he planned in order to promote the speaking part. as a result, children enjoyed doing listening activities like filling in the blanks and discussing the whole meaning of the songs as well as the unknown vocabulary they found. the second feature had to do with the musical instruments that the teacher used to help children grasp the specific musical concepts of the class. in other words, musical instruments were useful to explain to students some important concepts related to music such as the specific features about the appearance and sound of each one of these instruments. visual aids were also used to enable students to pronounce the corresponding name of the musical instruments and to have them recall or infer relevant information. in most classes, especially in the oral test session, i observed the teacher placing emphasis on the visual aids in order to evaluate the children’s oral production; however, the interesting part of this activity was that the children, by looking at the image, could recognize the name of the instruments. although a few children made mistakes, they distinguished the 154 universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras pérez niño name of the instruments, so it made confirmed for me that visual aids are useful for oral correction. as for the reactions or perceptions of young learners in relation to the specialized english class, i found that music sessions worked, first, as a motivator to enable students to advance in the english course. in addition, children felt confident and motivated when they heard the music teacher explaining the activities in english. it helped them to improve the english level by getting accustomed to the pronunciation and the intonation of the english language. furthermore, music was a fun way to learn english. children enjoyed the music class and its activities so much that they also wanted to practice more with the musical instruments. in general terms, most students agreed that the specialized music class was a fun way to grasp information and gain acknowledge. further research i want to remark on the importance of using other subjects such as music, science, or arts to teach a second language. in the national university extension courses, children not only learn the general aspects of the language but also find the opportunity to learn it in some other contexts; in this case, in the music area. although there are several research studies about the link between music and learning, this investigation had some different aspects, which can add more interesting statements to the field. on the one hand, here we have a very strong link between english and music in terms of language acquisition in a very specific context and with a very specific group of participants in an extension program. on the other hand, this investigation was supported by some theories which state that music can be an excellent tool to get children to learn and reinforce the linguistic skills “reading, listening, writing, speaking and vocabulary” of a second language. one possible study highly related to the conclusions i found would be about the emphasis on vocabulary in young students’ learning. this was a particularity inside my research because of the way almost all the activities planned by the teacher were followed in order to reinforce the students’ speaking skills. therefore, i think that an investigation about the relation between vocabulary and young learners’ oral production could be a good complement for this research study. references beebe, l. m., & takahashi, t. 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(2004). promoting literacy through music. retrieved november 2008 from http:// www.songsforteaching.com/lb/literacymusic.htm about the author daniel fernando pérez niño holds a b.a. in philology and languages from universidad nacional de colombia. the study reported in the article was his monograph as a requirement for his degree. he participated in the extension courses of languages as monitor and nowadays works in the extension courses as an english teacher. 156 universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras pérez niño appendix 1: protocol used for the interview with teacher’s teacher gonzalo rubiano: the main purpose of this interview is to know your opinion about some specific aspects founded through the previous data analysis of the research i have been developing on children’s oral production in your english class. 1. what can you tell me about the features of the activities you use to encourage children to speak in class? 2. what role does music play in the development of the activities? 3. what do you expect from these activities? 4. what has been your role in the development of the music activities? 5. from the development of the activities, what can you tell us about the children’s oral production? 6. do you consider that children get more involved in music activities than other kind of activities? 7. when do you see that children get more involved? what could be the reason for that situation? 8. i would appreciate your permission to use the information i get. i clarify that your identity will be protected all the time if you want it to be. thanks for your help, your time and your consideration. 157 the role of music in young learners’ oral production in english profile vol. 12, no. 1, 2010. issn 1657-0790. bogotá, colombia. pages 141-157 appendix 2: protocol used to interview the students 1. how have you felt in the music class these last saturdays since we started extension courses? 2. do you like music, i mean, do you like to learn english through music? 3. how have you felt doing the activities in the music class? 4. what do you do in the music class? what kind of activities do you do in class? 5. would you change anything about the class? 6. what kind of things about the music class calls your attention in comparison with the regular english class? 7. do you think that music classes are useful in the extension courses? yes? no? why? profile vol. 12, no. 2, october 2010. issn 1657-0790. bogotá, colombia. pages 33-49 33 the portrayal of efl teach ers in official discourse: the perpetuation of disdain la imagen de los profesores de inglés como lengua extranjera en el discurso oficial: la perpetuación del desdén carmen helena guerrero* universidad distrital francisco josé de caldas, colombia the purpose of this article is to offer an interpretation of the images of colombian english teach ers constructed in official discourse, particularly (but not exclusively) in the document “estándares básicos de competencias en lenguas extranjeras: inglés. formar en lenguas extranjeras, el reto”. this is part of a larger critical discourse analysis research study whose main data source is the aforementioned document. the analysis was conducted following a hallidayan “clause as representation” approach combined with fairclough’s methodology for a critical discourse analysis. three main images were found: teach ers are invisible; teach ers as clerks; and teach ers as technicians/marketers. the conclusions show that official discourse plays into folk concepts of colombian teach ers and feeds into them to validate official unilateral decisions. key words: teach er education, efl teach ers, critical discourse analysis, symbolic power, meaning as representation. el propósito de este artículo es ofrecer una interpretación sobre las imágenes, que se han construido en el discurso oficial, de los maestros colombianos de inglés. se examinará particularmente (pero no exclusivamente) el documento “estándares básicos de competencias en lenguas extranjeras: inglés. formar en lenguas extranjeras, el reto”. el presente análisis es parte de un estudio de investigación más amplio que usa la metodología de análisis crítico del discurso y cuyos datos primarios son los textos del citado documento. se realizó el análisis siguiendo el enfoque propuesto por halliday de “la cláusula como representación” en combinación con la metodología propuesta por fairclough para hacer análisis crítico del discurso. se identificaron tres imágenes: los profesores invisibles, los profesores como empleados y los profesores como técnicos/comercializadores. las conclusiones muestran que los discursos oficiales no solo aprovechan, sino que además alimentan la imagen desfavorable que se tiene en colombia sobre los maestros, para validar decisiones oficiales unilaterales. palabras clave: formación docente, profesores de inglés como lengua extranjera, análisis crítico del discurso, poder simbólico, significado como representación. * e-mail: helenaguerreron@gmail.com this article was received on february 27, 2010, and accepted on july 5, 2010. 34 universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras guerrero introduction the main data for this analysis come from the handbook aforementioned and henceforth called “estándares”. the document is part of a series of handbooks published by the ministry of education of colombia within their program revolución educativa, one of the leading projects of álvaro uribe vélez, current president of the country. the main objective of this series is to set standards for the core areas of the curriculum which are spanish, mathematics, and social and natural sciences. although english is not a core area, it became part of the series because of the implementation of the national bilingualism program (pnb for its initials in spanish = programa nacional de bilingüismo). the data in “estándares” were based on the “common european framework of reference for languages: learning, teaching, assessment”, a document produced in europe to establish a set of standards for the diverse languages spoken on that continent, and in order to facilitate student mobility across europe1. as a researcher i share the idea that no text is neutral (canagarajah, 1999; fairclough, 1992, 1995, 2001; heller, 1992; kress, 1989a; 1989b; pennycook, 1998; van dijk, 1997, 2005; wodak, 2005); that institutions play a crucial role in the distribution, con trol, and circulation of discourse (foucault, 2005; macdonell, 1986; mills, 2004), and that textbooks (in this case a handbook) are vehicles used by institutions to direct people’s behavior (kress, 1989a; stubbs, 1996). this set of beliefs, the fact that the main audience for the “estándares” is comprised of colombian english teach ers, plus anecdotal data2 about how people perceive efl. co1 see ayala & álvarez (2005), cárdenas (2006), sánchez & obando (2008), vargas, tejada, & colmenares (2008), for more information about the mismatches between the “estándares” and the cefr. 2 these data were gathered from introspection, informal talks with community members, people’s participation in blogs, online newspapers, etc. lombian teach ers guided my interest in exploring how official discourses contribute or contest the images held about efl colombian teach ers. texts are dialogic in nature (mills, 2004); the writer constructs his/her reader, and based on that idea, selects the language to be used in the text (kress, 1989a). this procedure makes it possible to reconstruct information about the addressee even when he/she is not overtly present in the interaction or in the text. if we hear only one of the interlocutors in a conversation, the linguistic choices made by him/her allow us to construct an idea of who the other interlocutor(s) is/are: age range: children, adolescents, adults; sex: men, women; type of relationship with the speaker: family, friend, stranger, lover; power relation: symmetric, asymmetric, and so on and so forth (eggins, 1994; halliday & hasan, 1985). the “estándares” has been constructed as a dialogue between the ministry of education and colombian efl teach ers. halliday (1994) and halliday & matthiessen (2004) consider that three different meanings are present in a clause: message, exchange, and representation. the first one refers to the topic or thematic structure of the clause, what it is about. the second one establishes who is voicing the message; and the third one is how human experience is constructed. to each one of these meanings, halliday (1994) associates three functions respectively: theme, subject, and actor. clause as representation will guide the analysis in this article (although the three meanings occur simultaneously). halliday (1994) states that reality is made up of processes, and processes consist of three components –the process itself, the participants in the process, and the circumstances associated with the process– saying, “[t]hese components are semantic categories which explain in the most general way how phenomena of the real world are represented as linguistic structures” (p. 109). here i concentrated profile vol. 12, no. 2, october 2010. issn 1657-0790. bogotá, colombia. pages 33-49 35 the portrayal of efl teachers in official discourse... on the participants in the process since my interest –as stated above– is to see how teach ers, as participants in the national bilingualism program (pnb), are represented or construc ted in the “estándares”3. the focus of the study as stated above, this article is part of a larger research study conducted to analyze how the document “estándares” constructed three concepts: bilingualism, english, and colombian english teach ers. the “estándares” themselves constitut ed the main data source and the research methodology followed fairclough’s model for critical discourse analysis. in this methodology the fine grained linguistic analysis is combined with the intertextual analysis drawn from the macro structures that make up the context in order to offer a sound interpretation of data. in this particular article, i focus on reporting the third part of the larger study, which has to do with the images of colombian efl teach ers in official discourses. findings the analysis of data shows three main images: the first one is that teach ers are invisible because despite the fact that the “estándares” is addressed to them and they are the ones to carry out the ac tions to achieve the standards, they are scarcely mentioned in the handbook, their opinions little considered and their knowledge not valued. the second image is teach ers as clerks in the sense that they are expected to just follow the orders of a remote authority without questioning, resisting, or contributing; and a third image constructs teach ers as technicians who are there to create a marketable product. 3 as stated above, the “estándares” were produced by the ministry of education within their national bilingualism program, whose objective is to make the teaching of english mandatory at the national levelin all public schools from elementary to secondary. figure 1. the three main images that emerged from the analysis of data. teach ers are invisible gonzález, montoya and sierra (2002) in their seminal article on teach er education in colombia state that although teach er educators might think they know what teach ers need and want as professionals, their voices are very rarely taken into ac count when designing teach er education programs. the same is true when it comes to education al policies (smith, 2004); teach ers are not consulted about the feasibility, necessity, or content of a new policy, nor are their knowledge and expertise tak en into account (ayala & álvarez, 2005; cárdenas, 2009; gonzález, 2007; sánchez & obando, 2008; vargas, tejada & colmenares, 2008). one possible explanation for the exclusion of teach ers’ voices might have to do with whose knowledge is valued and whose is not, which at the same time might be related to the following three aspects: 1) the influence of positivism in the sense that something is sanctioned as “valid knowledge” if it responds to the characteristics of the scientific method; that is, if it is observable and measurable and comes from a recognized author (foucault, 2005; macdonell, 1986). teaching is a human istic activity that does not always fit in the scien tific method. sometimes teach ers make decisions based teachers are clerks teachers are technicians/marketers teachers are invisible 36 universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras guerrero on their intuition because they are the ones who have a holistic picture of who the students are and what they need. 2) the value given only to institutionalized forms of capital. bourdieu (1986) identifies three forms of cultural capital –embodied, objectified, and institutionalized– but it is the latter that enjoys more prestige in our society. it is necessary to have a certification of knowledge given by an institution (which at the same time is a double-edged sword because the knowledge sanctioned as such by an institution responds to what the mainstream or dominant groups regard as “valid knowledge”). as a consequence, teach ers’ knowledge is not certified (in a lot of cases) because a great deal of their knowledge is constructed in and from their classroom through experience. fortunately, some colombian universities, through their masters programs and teach ers’ development programs have contributed greatly to spread teach ers’ intellectual production by means of local, regional, and national conferences, and publications as the ones mentioned further below. 3) the widespread concept in colombia that teach ers are less intelligent or less capable than the rest of the professionals in colombia; two probable reasons for this concept might be first, that to enroll in any teaching program students are required to have merely the minimum score on the icfes (a state exam) while for many other programs the highest score is required. the second possible reason is that to obtain a bachelor’s degree in teaching, students in the past had to attend college for only four years while all other programs required five years (this was modified some years ago and now all programs take five years to complete). as a consequence of this poor conception of who teach ers are and what they are able to do, in most educational planning, teach ers are expected to just follow instructions and successfully achieve the goals set by others. the national bilingualism program is no exception, and school teach ers’ voices were not considered when designing it (cárdenas, 2006; sánchez & obando, 2008). besides their invisibility during the process, school teach ers have also been invisible in the document “estándares” regardless of the crucial role they will play as future implementers of the project. in order to explain the invisibility of teach ers in the “estándares”, i drew from halliday’s (1994) clause as representation and fairclough’s (2003) representations of social events. as stated above, for halliday, a clause is made up of process, participants and circumstances; also, depending on its grammatical configuration, the semantic interpretation varies. in the same line of thought, fairclough considers that social events include various elements like forms of activity, persons, social relations, objects, means, times and places, and language. this framework allows the researcher to identify not only what elements are included or excluded but, of those included, which ones get prominence and which ones do not. the following excerpt, which is the opening paragraph in the “estándares”, illustrates one of the instances in which teach ers are made invisible in the handbook: ser bilingüe es esencial en el mundo globalizado. por ello, el ministerio de educación nacional, a través del programa nacional de bilingüismo, impulsa políticas educativas para favorecer, no solo el desarrollo de la lengua materna y de las diversas lenguas indígenas, sino también para fomentar el aprendizaje de lenguas extranjeras como es el caso del idioma inglés. (“estándares”, p. 5) being bilingual is essential in the globalized world. therefore, the ministry of education, through the national bilingualism program, promotes educational policies to favor not only the development of the mother tongue and the various indigenous languages, but also to promote the learning of foreign languages as is the case of the english language4. 4 all translations were done by the author. profile vol. 12, no. 2, october 2010. issn 1657-0790. bogotá, colombia. pages 33-49 37 the portrayal of efl teachers in official discourse... the text mentions various forms of activities like “impulsa políticas educativas” (thrust forward educational policies), “favorece el desarrollo de la lengua maternal y de las lenguas indígenas” (favor the development of the mother tongue and indigenous languages), and “fomenta el aprendizaje de lenguas extranjeras” (foment the learning of foreign languages); there is also information about objectives: the languages to be learned and developed. the means is also present in the “plan nacional de bilingüismo” (national bilingualism program). in relation to the persons involved, only the men plays a very prominent role, which is indexed by the grammar of the main sentence because it is in active voice. the selection of vocabulary enhances the role of the men since words like “impulsa”, “fortalece”, and “fomenta” have positive connotations. excluded from this particular paragraph are students and teach ers. the former are mentioned in some other parts of the “estándares” while the teach ers are hardly ever mentioned in the document, which makes sense in their portrayal of teach ers because as stated by bourdieu (2003), “the minimum of communication ...is the precondition for economic production and even for symbolic domination” (p. 45). making sure teach ers are the least mentioned in the document diminishes their opportunities to criticize, opine, question and, all and all, interact with the men. in this excerpt and many others, there is no reference to the role they play in the whole project, which shows men’s lack of understanding in this sense because teach ers are directly responsible for the success or failure of any educational policy (giroux, 1988; kumaravadivelu, 2003). by excluding teach ers, the social relationship between them and the men is obscured in relation to teach er preparation programs. the actions included (mentioned above) do not signal how the government is promoting the development of the mother tongue and indigenous languages; the actions are taken for granted, as if they were actualized in every single context in the country and for every single teach er. furthermore, the text suggests that spanish, indigenous languages, and english all receive the same budget and investment, but the reality is that the majority of the resources are being used for the spread of english (de mejía, 2006; vélezrendón, 2003; see table 1). the actions of the men are focused on supporting only teach ers’ preparation in english, using models like the tkt developed by the british council; furthermore, teach ers are tested with the quick placement test designed by oxford university press (cely, 2007; gonzález, 2007). ta ble 1 shows the main actions proposed by the men to improve english learning and teaching. the agency of the men is apparent throughout the whole “estándares” in the sense that it presents itself as the one who possesses knowledge and, as a consequence, it can make decisions. by assuming the whole agency in the decision making, the men not only does not acknowledge the voice and opinions of colombian schoolteach ers / scholars / academics / experts, but also gives a high value to the knowledge produced in europe. table 2 serves as an illustration of the disparity of the value given to local knowledge (that produced by colombian school and university teach ers) and foreign knowledge (european). the first excerpt is part of a letter sent by the men to invite various university teach ers to participate in the project to formulate and validate the standards. while in the letter the men praises the achievements produced by local knowledge and acknowledges the important role it plays in the project, later on it decides to choose the common european framework in a clear disregard for the work of colombian academics. in fact, in 1990 a group of colombian scholars participated in the cofe (colombian framework for english) project (rubiano, frodden, 38 universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras guerrero & cardona,  2000), and later, in 1999, another group of academics from several public and private colombian universities wrote the “lineamientos curriculares para idiomas extranjeros” (curricular guidelines for foreign languages) (ministerio de educación nacional, 1999). although both projects were sponsored by the men, none was considered for adoption in their pnb. the second excerpt (see table 3) is a paragraph of a letter that was signed by more than thirty colombian academics sent to the men asking why they had adopted the first certificate to evaluate proficiency while there was a group of colombian scholars working on the development of a local test. the practice of devaluing local knowledge is common in colombia, and a possible interpretation has to do with our condition as a former colony of spain. after independence, latin american leaders were strongly influenced by the enlightenment, which ranked societies from barbaric to civilized (hall, 1997 as cited in ruiseco & slunecko, 2006) so that the new republics could imitate european culture if they wanted to become civilized. during the 1920s, a nationalist movement emerged in latin america that addressed the fact that although latin american countries had achieved their independence, it was only political because culturally and ideologically we continued to behave as colonies (gamio, 1916; vasconcelos, 1961). the colonial ideology in which europe was constructed as the paradigm of what the world should be like (pennycook, 1998; ruiseco & slunecko, 2006) was so pervasive that even today in some fields like education we adopt their models guided by the idea that they know better (ayala & álvarez, 2005). the adoption, not only of the cef but also of the teaching methodologies, the teaching training programs, the materials and the test perpetuates the inequity between local knowledge and the knowledge of the former colonial powers (gonzález, 2007). table 4 below shows an excerpt of the letter sent by the men at the beginning of the process of the pnb in which they state why they signed an agreement with the bc. as stated by gonzález (2007) “[t] he imposed leading role of the british council, or of any other foreign academic institution that might have been chosen to guide the policy of bilingual table 1. actions proposed by the men to improve english learning and teaching (presentation by juan carlos grimaldo, manager of the national bilingualism project) líneas de acción estándares acciones instituciones estándares básicos de competencias en lengua extranjera: inglés formulación y validación surcolombiana, javeriana, uninorte, eafit, nacional (bogotá y san andrés), distrital, pedagógica, asocopi, uptc, icfes, british council, private and state schools. socialización de estándares diseño e implementación de talleres grupo de investigación universidad del norte (colciencias aaa), men, aliados regionales. esquema nacional de acreditación de institutos de lenguas formulación y validación más de 100 centros de idiomas y programas de extensión de las universidades, men (coordinación british council). note: special thanks to julia posada, ma, who facilitated this material. profile vol. 12, no. 2, october 2010. issn 1657-0790. bogotá, colombia. pages 33-49 39 the portrayal of efl teachers in official discourse... table 2. extract from a letter of invitation to participate in a committee to formulate and validate the standards and the response of the committee after the decision by the ministry to choose the cefrl la experiencia nacional en la definición de estándares, evaluación de competencias y formulación de planes de mejoramiento ha mostrado su potencial movilizador de las áreas del conocimiento en las instituciones educativas y ha generado dinámicas de desarrollo en lo pedagógico, metodológico y administrativo en estas áreas. por ello el ministerio de educación considera pertinente adelantar acciones tendientes a la definición de estándares básicos para el área de inglés, de tal forma que se aproveche el desarrollo de los años de experiencia en el área y se promueva su adecuada implementación en la totalidad de instituciones educativas del país. congruente con lo anterior, la dirección de calidad de la educación preescolar, básica, y media del ministerio de educación nacional conocedora de su trabajo y experiencia en la enseñanza del inglés se permite invitarle como representante de su institución a participar en el comité ejecutivo encargado de “formular los estándares nacionales de inglés para la educación básica y media y su posterior validación”. national experience in the definition of standards, competence assessment and development of improvement plans has shown its potential for mobilizing the knowledge areas in educational institutions and has led de velopment dynamics in the pedagogical, methodological and administrative areas. therefore the ministry of education considers it appropriate to take actions towards the definition of basic standards for the area of english, taking advantage of the many years of experiencze in the area and encouraging their proper implementation in all education institutions in the country. consistent with this, the directorate of quality of early childhood education, basic and secondary education of the ministry of education, knowledgeable of your work and experience in teaching english, is glad to invite you as a representative of your institution to participate in the executive committee to "develop national standards of english for primary and secondary education and their subsequent validation”. table 3. an excerpt of a letter sent by a group of colombian academics questioning the unilateral adoption of the cefr desde el ministerio de educación nacional y el icfes se planteó que el trabajo realizado por el equipo colombiano serviría de base para la toma de decisiones en el campo de políticas de evaluación para el sistema educativo colombiano de educación media y superior. no se conocen resultados de evaluaciones realizadas al trabajo hecho por la colegiatura. sin embargo, se ha decido que el consejo británico lidere el diseño de la prueba alineándola con el marco europeo. la colegiatura de idiomas-área de inglés demostró la capacidad para hacer este trabajo, articulando marcos nacionales e internacionales, e involucró a través de diversas estrategias a docentes de distintos niveles educativos y regiones del país. por otra parte, nos preocupa la presión por parte del proyecto-programa colombia bilingüe para que adopten las pruebas de la universidad de cambridge. prueba de ello son las aplicaciones que se han hecho para los sectores de educación básica, media, superior y del profesorado de inglés. both the ministry of education and icfes decided that the work done by the colombian team would serve as a basis for decision making in the field of policy evaluation for the colombian educational system and higher education. there are no known results of assessments made of the work done by the colegiatura [a group of university professors]. however, it has been decided that the british council lead the design of the test being consistent with the european framework. the colegiatura in the area of english demonstrated their ability to do this work, coordinating national and international frameworks and involving, through a variety of strategies, teach ers of different educational levels and regions. on the other hand, we are concerned for the pressure on the part of the program-project colombia bilingüe [national bilingualism program] for the adoption of the tests of cambridge university. proofs of this are the tests applied to students in basic, secondary, and higher education, and english teach ers. 40 universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras guerrero table 4. letter of invitation sent by the men to colombian academics, bogotá april 6th 2005 para este proceso el ministerio de educación ha decidido celebrar un convenio especial de cooperación con el consejo británico, previa las siguientes consideraciones: 1. en el año de 1979 se firmó un convenio cultural -que sigue vigenteentre el gobierno del reino unido de la gran bretaña e irlanda del norte y el gobierno de la república de colombia, el primero estará representado por la misión diplomática en bogotá y por el british council (consejo británico), entidad oficial encargada de llevar a cabo sus relaciones culturales y educativas. 2. en el marco del convenio, tanto el ministerio como el consejo británico han manifestado sus deseos de emprender acciones conjuntas a favor de la enseñanza y aprendizaje del inglés en la educación oficial del país, especialmente en el fortalecimiento de estrategias de mejoramiento en el manejo del idioma inglés de los alumnos, docentes y población en general. 3. se hace necesario implementar un programa nacional que formule estándares de competencia para el área de inglés, que desarrolle evaluaciones de competencia en inglés en alumnos de primaria y secundaria y que adelante programas de formación para maestros encaminados a: 3.1. mejorar los resultados en cuanto al dominio del idioma en alumnos y docentes con referencia a los estándares que se formulen... en esta línea, el convenio con el consejo británico busca fortalecer el dominio del idioma inglés como segunda lengua de los docentes y alumnos, a partir del diseño de estándares, evaluación sistemática del inglés en alumnos de primaria y secundaria y de programas de formación que se desarrollarán con referencia a los estándares definidos y a los resultados que arrojen las evaluaciones aplicadas. for this process the ministry of education has decided to hold a special agreement of cooperation with the british council, based on the following considerations: 1. in the year 1979 a cultural agreement –which remains in force– between the government of the united kingdom of great britain and northern ireland and the gov ernment of the republic of colombia, the first is represented by the diplomatic mission in bogota and the british council, an official entity responsible for carrying out the mission’s educational and cultural relations. 2. under the convention, both the ministry and the british council have expressed their desire to undertake joint action to promote the teaching and learning of english via formal education in the country, especially in strengthening strategies for improving the management of english of the students, teach ers and general population. 3. it becomes necessary to implement a national program to develop standards of competence for the area of english, to develop assessments of competence in english in elementary and secondary students and to bring forward tea cher training programs aimed at: 3.1. improved results in terms of language learners and teach ers with reference to the standards that are formulated... in this vein, the agreement with the british council aims to strengthen english as a second language for teach ers and students as the result of standards, systematic evaluation of en glish in elementary and secondary students and training programs that develop with reference to the standards defined and the results of the assessments used. note: special thanks to professor melba libia cárdenas, from universidad nacional de colombia, who facilitated this document. colombia, holds back the development of a local community with enough validity to construct a language policy” (p. 313). teach ers, who know their students better than anyone else, do not get a voice to express their opinions, concerns, and solutions. despite the fact that teach ers are excluded, the relationship between them and the men is apparent. their categorical statements signal a vertical and asymmetrical power relationship where teach ers are positioned as followers whose role is to obey the rules without questioning them. profile vol. 12, no. 2, october 2010. issn 1657-0790. bogotá, colombia. pages 33-49 41 the portrayal of efl teachers in official discourse... using words in this way paves the road towards the naturalization of discourse (fairclough, 1995) and with it the road to symbolic power (bourdieu, 2003). in this case, an institution like the ministry of education, given its very nature (official institution), is entitled to exert power explicitly on the education community by means of decrees, laws, agreements, and other regulatory means; nevertheless, it reinforces its actions by the use of symbolic power through the use of discourse because, as stated by bourdieu (2003), symbolic power leads people to behave according to the interest of the dominant groups without the use of violence. through its discourse, in which it circulates the message that this is how things should be, the men wants to block any type of resistance from teach ers; its goal is to create a hegemonic situation in which teach ers accept and become part of their own silencing. teach ers as clerks in the few instances in which teach ers are included in the “estándares”, they are constructed as “clerks”. i borrowed this denomination from giroux (1988) and the meaning is that teach ers are viewed as employees who follow diligently the directions of a distant authority. teach ers are portrayed as passive followers whose willingness to cooperate is taken for granted. the perception of teach ers as clerks has been constructed through time and has been strongly influenced by the ideology that guides teach er development programs. within the terminology of teach er education, there are two prevailing concepts which are “pre-service teach er education” to refer to the preparation of students who want become teach ers; and “in-service teach er education” to refer to the courses taken by teach ers to update their knowledge, to learn new techniques, strategies, and the like. gonzález (2003) explains the existence of the second type according to the common belief (by teach ers and non teach ers alike) that pre-service teaching preparation is insufficient and more preparation is needed in order to become a good teach er. part of the reason for this belief could be that teach er preparation has been influenced heavily by behavioral and cognitive psychology and that educational theory has been constructed around a discourse and a set of practices that emphasize immediate measurable methodological aspects of learning and, furthermore, that when teach ers face their reality and do not comply with these ideals they need they need more “training” (giroux, 1988). according to woodward (1990), teach er education programs could fall into two main attitudes: “teach er training” and “teach er development”, which she defines as being fundamentally opposed to each. there are profound ideological differ ences between these two attitudes in relation to how teach ers and teaching are perceived in each one. although both models focus on the instructional part of teaching, in the former, teach ers are seen as mere “deliverers” who need to learn certain skills and recipes to be “efficient”. in the latter, teach ers are viewed as professionals who are in charge of their own actions and are capable of making their own decisions (gonzález, 2003; richards, 1996; woodward, 1990). gonzález (2008) states that in colombia, elt education follows two tendencies which she categorizes as top-down and bottom-up, but which are strongly related to woodward’s taxonomy. the former tendency includes the courses proposed by the british council like the ielts and the tkt while the latter tendency includes regional conferences, publisher’s sessions, university-schools collaboration, and university-based programs. within the latter one, gonzález, cárdenas, álvarez, quintero and viáfara (2009) document the teach er education models developed in colombia by colombian academics; these 42 universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras guerrero models are characterized by a holistic perspective that combines elements of previous models, but that also looks at the particularities and complexities of the participants in these teach er education programs. considering that for this particular project the men has designated the british council (bc) as the coordinating organism for the whole project, it is a natural consequence that the bc models of teach er education, which fall into the characteristics of teach er training, prevail at this moment in colombia. as a result, teach ers in the “estándares” are constructed as “trainees”; that is, people in need of learning from the experts and not as profes sionals capable of making sound contributions to the pnb. consequently, given that they receive limited training useful to perform only certain tasks, they are positioned at the same level as clerks. table 5 shows the aims of the latest teach er development program proposed by the men in which it is clear that the goals are to train teach ers from a mere instructional point of view with no interest in promoting teach ers’ reflection or their exploration of critical issues in teaching. in a course like this one, teach ers are equipped with all the necessary recipes to perform their task efficiently with the underlying belief that, in that way, they will be good english teach ers. these teach er training models are not innocent because, as stated by pennycook (1994), teaching practices are cultural practices linked to the promotion of certain forms of culture and knowledge. as a consequence, a discourse that emphasizes “skills, strategies, trainees, systematic, accuracy, techniques” and the like (as seen in table  5) is bound to be spread in the same way. this type of course does not encourage or promote the problematization of linguistic practices and the power relationships that exist within them (bourdieu, 2003; hornberger & skilton-sylvester, 2000) and, therefore, the possibility of an agency to transform unequal social practices enacted through language is denied from the beginning. the following excerpt is another example of the construction of teach ers as clerks. here the men positions itself as the authority that determines what teach ers have to do to fulfill the tasks assigned: 108) la tarea de todas las instituciones educativas es velar por que sus planes de estudio y las estrategias que se empleen contemplen, como mínimo, el logro de estos estándares en dichos grupos de grados y ojalá los superen, conforme a las particularidades de sus proyectos educativos institucionales y a sus orientaciones pedagógicas. (“estándares”, p. 11) the task of all educational institutions is to ensure that their curricula and strategies used include, at the very least, the achievement of these standards in those groups, and hopefully to be exceeded, being in conformity to the particularities of their institutions and their teaching guidelines. the men demands from schools the commitment to “watch over” (velar) their study plans and the strategies used so the standards are achieved. it clarifies, though, that schools should take into ac count their “proyectos educativos institucionales” (institutional educative project = pei)5 and their own pedagogical orientation when working towards the achievement of the standards. the two clauses that give structure to this paragraph are contradictory because the first one is stating a command that schools (teach ers included) need to obey and which is based on the standards previously adopted by the men. regardless of schools pei, they must at least (“como mínimo”) achieve those particular standards. this means that the autonomy schools have in the pei exists only on paper and not in reality. 5 the pei was created by the men as a way to actualize the autonomy of colombian schools particularly in relation to establishing educational goals that responded to the situated needs of each school community (decreto 1860 de 1994). profile vol. 12, no. 2, october 2010. issn 1657-0790. bogotá, colombia. pages 33-49 43 the portrayal of efl teachers in official discourse... another way in which teach ers are construct ed as clerks but which cannot be identified in independent instances or paragraphs has to do with the tenor (halliday & hassan, 1985) of the whole document. as stated above, it is addressed to teach ers because they are the people who teach english in the classrooms, but they are hardly mentioned in the “estándares”. nevertheless, the tenor in which the whole document is written hints at the image that the men holds of colombian teach ers. cárdenas (2009) confirms this when she voices teach ers’ concerns about the haste with which decisions are made by the men. the concept of “tenor” was developed by halliday (in halliday & hassan, 1985) in relation to the “context of situation” and along with other two concepts: field and mode, as defined by the personal relationships involved. in this particular case, the tenor of the whole text allows the researcher to interpret the type of relationship that exists between the author (men) and the addressees (schoolteach ers). from the linguistic choices made by the authors coupled with the topics and the structures in which the text is written, the asymmetrical positioning of the men is apparent, where the latter are poorly valued and are not recognized as legitimate contributors in the design and implementation of an educational project. the language used by the authors of the document is, in a way, patronizing and condescending. the text that more evidently resembles the construction of teach ers as clerks is the first part of chapter 5 of the “estándares” where the authors explain the structure of the standards. it comprises a set of instructions teach ers have to follow; the style in which they are written do not leave room for autonomy, creativity or questioning by the teach ers, as can be seen in the following excerpt which is the first paragraph of chapter 5: 109) en las páginas siguientes se encuentran los cuadros de estándares para la educación básica y media. estos están organizados en cinco grupos de grados que corresponden, además, al desarrollo progresivo de los niveles de desempeño en inglés. (“estándares”, p. 14) 109) on the following pages are tables of standards for basic and secondary education. these are organized in five groups of grades that match the progressive development of standards of performance in english. the tenor of this text shows an unequal pow er relationship between the writer and the audience. following a hallidayan analysis, it could be said that the participants in the text are the men (as the writer) and teach ers (as audience). in the excerpt above we can see that the men, by using two indirect statements (“on the following pages…” and “these are organized…”), performs an illocutionary act (austin, 1962/2004) that underscores teach ers’ tacit agreement or cooperation principle (grice, 1975/2004) in doing the task, and also on the asymmetrical power relationship that exists between the two (men/teach ers) given by their roles in society. by announcing that the standards table 5. “teach er development programme” course guide (british council, 2007) course aims men teach er development programme (stage 2) is designed to: 1. develop trainees' knowledge of concepts related to language, language use and the background to and practice of language teach ing and lear ning. 2. raise awareness of strategies to better develop learners’ language skills. 3. raise awareness of strategies to better help learners develop accuracy and fluency. note: special thanks to julia posada, ma, who facilitated this document. 44 universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras guerrero are to be found on the following pages, the men is saying more than that; it is stating that the men has established certain standards and teach ers have to implement them. once again the role of the teach ers is relegat ed to that of fulfilling a clerical job; they are not valued as intellectuals, and their autonomy is not considered. they are conceived of as instruments in the spread of a policy (and with it, of particular anglo-american ideologies), and servants of a corporate system (the school system) (canagarajah, 1999; cárdenas, 2006; pennycook, 1990; ricento & hornberger, 1996). the conclusion is that “the experts do the thinking and teach ers are reduced to do the implementing” (giroux, 1988, p. 124). for this reason, the adoption of a marketing discourse intends to produce the efficiency of cost-benefit in public schools. as such, schools whose teach ers are seen as employees of an economic industry are at the service of productivity; a teach ers’ task is to “equip” students (who are seen as human capital) with the skills to compete efficiently and competitively outside the school (apple, 2006). thinking of teach ers as “makers” of marketable products gives rise to the next category: teach ers as technicians/marketers. teach ers as technicians/marketers within his identification of postmodern culture, fairclough (1995) includes its characterization as a “promotional” or “consumer” culture. he defines it as the “reconstruction of social life on a market basis” (p. 138) where language serves the purpose of “selling” services, products, ideas, people, and so on. education has fallen into this category and schools have started to operate as businesses where students are the products, teach ers the employees whose task is to make a good product, and the corporations are the customers. to keep the customers happy is the ultimate goal of any business; in the school setting, teach ers need to make sure the product (students) fulfills the needs of their customers. the men and the bc have painted the picture quite differently; although they keep the argument of the economic benefit, the difference lies in who will receive the returns from investing in the right sort of linguistic capital (english). the overt argument is that students will receive or enjoy econom ic benefits in the form of social mobility, better jobs, access to scholarships, and access to knowledge, science, technology and entertainment. but what will most likely happen, particularly with the international economic crisis, is –as projected by apple (2006)– that in both the contexts of the united states and colombia, most new jobs will be found in the service sector where high levels of education are not needed and will be characterized by being low-paid, part time, or temporary. to fulfill the goal of producing students for the labor market, the role of teach ers takes a slightly different shade from the previous one (teach ers as clerks). they still have to follow orders but there is an emphasis on the quality of the final product as stated by the minister of education, cecilia maría vélez white, on the first page of the “estándares”: 114) el ideal de tener colombianos capaces de comunicarse en inglés con estándares internacionalmente comparables ya no es un sueño, es una realidad y solo podremos llegar a cumplir los propósitos establecidos si contamos con maestras y maestros convencidos y capaces de llevar a los niños y niñas a comunicarse en este idioma. (“estándares”, p. 3) the ideal of having colombians able to communicate in english with comparable international standards is no longer a dream but a reality, and we can only arrive at meeting the stated purposes if we believe teach ers are able to teach the children to communicate in this language. profile vol. 12, no. 2, october 2010. issn 1657-0790. bogotá, colombia. pages 33-49 45 the portrayal of efl teachers in official discourse... the role of teach ers is to “produce” students who can compete in a linguistic market that is highly influenced by the corporate world where an ideal variety (so called “standard”) is used and that that will determine the feasibility of employment (see table 6). the official voice (ministry) expects total compliance from teach ers to achieve this endeavor by saying that the objective of speaking english will be possible if teach ers are “convinced and capable”. table 6. project: a bilingual bogota in ten years (concejo de bogotá, 2006, p. 6) metas a largo plazo sector empresarial el 80% de los trabajadores vinculados a los sectores promisorios de la región estarán certificados en la competencia bilingüe definida dentro del sistema de certificación de competencias laborales long-term goals business sector 80% of the workers linked to the promising sectors of the region will be certified in the bilingual competence defined within the certification of working competences. in this paragraph teach ers get prominence that comes with a hint of a negative connotation because it implies submission on the teach ers’ part. being “convinced” means that teach ers believe and approve the decisions made by the ministry and will not challenge or resist them; doing the opposite could be seen as sabotage. the under lying thought is that when things go wrong, it is exclusively the teach ers’ fault because they were not “convinced” or “capable”. this is a recurring practice in our societies, to blame teach ers for social failure instead of bringing a multilayered analysis to interpret reality. while the outcomes are good, everything else is acknowledged but teach ers (apple, 2006; wink, 2000). the case of english teach ers is particularly interesting because they are not usually seen as educators responsible for the holistic development of their students who can transform their lives (kumaravadivelu, 2003) but rather as technicians limited to perform a specific task without much involvement in the broader context of their classroom, school, or community. this perception is strengthened by the assumptions (still in effect in many contexts in colombia) that (1) teaching en glish is “neutral” and that (2) the only requirement to teach english is to speak the language. therefore, english teach ers have no responsibility in the education of their students; that is the task for other teach ers; theirs is to teach children to speak the variety of english sanctioned by the men and the bc as the legitimate (standard) one, as seen in the following excerpt: para ilustrar esta interrelación basta ver como en el caso del aprendizaje del inglés o de cualquier lengua extranjera, el desarrollo de la competencia comunicativa solo es posible cuando se desarrollan, en forma paralela, otros saberes que el estudiante adquiere en las distintas áreas del currículo y que le dan contenido a sus intervenciones… (“estándares”, p. 13) to illustrate this inter-relationship, it is enough to see, as in the case of learning english or any foreign language, that the development of communicative competence is only possible when other contents of the curriculum are developed (by the student) in parallel, which give substance to their speaking... according to this excerpt, the english teach er teach es only the language; that is, the “structures” to be used which get “content” from the other areas of the curriculum. the “neutrality” of the language –discussed in the previous chapter– permeates its teaching so that if language is a collection of rules, teaching it means practicing those rules –the vocabulary, the combinations, the pronunciation and so on and so forth. since mastering the structural part of the language is the only one that has 46 universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras guerrero validity and relevance for the men in its pnb and some teach ers lack such mastery (due to historical reasons and not because they are ignorant), the men conceives teach ers from a deficit perspective who need training in basic skills and privileges the brit ish council models for teach er education. from this perspective, the english teach ers’ role is very mechanical (guerrero & quintero, 2005), and they are not at all thought of as intellectuals (giroux, 1988) who can tackle critical is sues within their classes and challenge the status quo. colombian english teach ers have proved them wrong and have started to see their profession as much more than teaching empty structures (gonzález, 2007; vargas et al., 2008), and the evidence can be found in the amount of scholarly presentations and research articles school and university teach ers of english alike have published during the last ten or more years in the three main teach ers’ journals: íkala, profile, colombian ap plied linguistics journal, how, and lenguaje. their intellectual production shows that their understanding of the profession goes beyond grammar; and their application of theories serves not only to inform their teaching practices but also to explore who colombian students are and what they need. conclusions in colombia there is a generalized poor conception of teach ers. in everyday conversations teach ers are portrayed from lazy and unintelligent to problematic and mediocre. some parents would stand against their children’s desire to become teach ers because teaching is not a profitable and distinguished profession. this conception has a direct relationship to the level of education chosen by the teach er: being a preschool teach er receives the lowest value while being a university teach er gets a little bit more respect. few colombians acknowledge the real value of teach ers: the constant devotion most teach ers give to their students; the sacrifices teach ers who work in rural or underprivileged areas make every day to keep their students at school; the skills teach ers develop to make the most of the few resources they have; the effort they make to advance in their education; and the magic they perform to make a decent living out of the low salary they get. unfortunately, these teach ers, the ones who go to work every day and help to build the nation, are invisible for the ministry of education. so invisible that their voices were not heard when deciding this educational policy or other educational policies. although there is a list of schools and teach ers’ names included in the last pages of the “estándares” as contributors, reviewers, and evaluators of the handbook, it is apparent, as shown in the analysis of the data, that the discourse presented there is not polyphonic; rather, it is a uniform discourse associated with the ideologies of the british council and its policy of the spread of english worldwide based on the idea that english is the key to success and privilege. teach ers are valued only because of their language skills in english, so it is not surprising that the very essence of teach ers is undervalued. the mark of their suitability is their command of the four language skills; whether or not they are suitable teach ers does not matter because with a “training course” they will be ready to follow instructions and be efficient instructors. the men assumes teach ers as just instructors (a concept inherited from british teaching models); that is, trainees with limited, superficial and technical knowledge while the men sees itself as a body of “specialists” coached by the british council “experts”. teach ers are detached from all the complexities of the profession which is not limited to technical tips or content knowledge, but includes a profile vol. 12, no. 2, october 2010. issn 1657-0790. bogotá, colombia. pages 33-49 47 the portrayal of efl teachers in official discourse... wide range of aptitudes learned only by teaching. by seeing teach ers as technicians the men has no reason to accept them as valid interlocutors whose knowledge can contribute to enrich the teachinglearning process. summing up, the conjugation of the already generalized poor concept of teach ers plus the ideology of the colonized produces, as a result, an asymmetrical power/knowledge relationship. as such, teach ers do not have much to offer because their discourse goes in one direction and the men’s in a different one. although there might be points in which both (teach ers and men) coincide, as long as the men insists on undervaluing colombian teach ers and academics to acknowledge and hear only what foreigners have to say about how to educate our students, and in the long run, what direction the country should take, this project is bound to fail. references apple, m. 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(2005). critical discourse analysis. in d. schiffrin, d. tannen & h. hamilton (eds.), the handbook of discourse analysis (pp. 352-371). malden: blackwell publishing. vargas, a., tejada, h., & colmenares, s. (2008). estándares básicos de competencias en lenguas extranjeras (inglés): una mirada crítica. lenguaje, 36(1), 241-275. vasconcelos, j. (1961). la raza cósmica. misión de la raza iberoamericana. méxico: aguilar. vélez-rendón, g. (2003). english in colombia: a sociolinguistic profile. world englishes, 22(2), 185-198. wink, j. (2000). critical pedagogy: notes from the real world. second edition. new york: addison wesley longman. wodak, r. (2005). what cda is about-a summary of its history, important concepts and its developments. in r. wodak & m. meyer (eds.), methods of critical discourse analysis (pp. 1-13). london: sage publications. woodward, t. (1990). models and metaphors in language teach er training. loop input and other strategies. cambridge: cambridge university press. about the author carmen helena guerrero nieto, ph.d and ma in second language acquisition and teaching, the university of arizona. she also holds an ma in applied linguistics to the teaching of english as a foreign language, universidad distrital. she is an associate professor at universidad distrital. her research interests are critical discourse analysis, critical pedagogy, teach er education, and educational policies. acknowledgments i would like to express my gratitude to the editor and the anonymous reviewers for their comments and suggestions during the process of publishing this article. any mistakes are exclusively my own. 111profile vol. 13, no. 1, april 2011. issn 1657-0790. bogotá, colombia. pages 111-127 111 comparing teaching styles and personality types of efl instructors in the public and private sectors* una comparación de los estilos de enseñanza y los tipos de personalidad de profesores de inglés de los sistemas educativos estatal y privado claudio h. díaz larenas** universidad católica de la santísima concepción, chile andrea victoria rodríguez moran*** instituto de idiomas berlitz, chile karen jocelyn poblete rivera*** colegio a-lafken, chile this is an exploratory non-experimental research study whose main objective is to compare the teaching styles of a group of thirty teachers of english working in either public or private secondary education in chile. in order to collect the required data, two instruments were administered to the participants: a teaching style inventory and a personality type index proposed by grasha. results indicate that public sector participants show a facilitator teaching style and an extrovert personality type, whereas private sector participants reveal a more authoritative teaching style and an introverted type of personality. key words: english teachers, personality types, teaching styles. este estudio exploratorio de naturaleza no-experimental tiene como objetivo principal comparar los estilos de enseñanza de un grupo de treinta profesores de inglés que trabajan en el nivel de enseñanza secundario del sistema educativo estatal o privado, en chile. para la recolección de datos se utilizaron el inventario de estilos de enseñanza y el índice de tipo de personalidad de grasha. los resultados indican que los participantes del nivel de enseñanza estatal presentan un estilo de enseñanza de naturaleza facilitadora y un tipo de personalidad extrovertido, mientras que los participantes del nivel de enseñanza privado revelan un estilo de enseñanza más autoritario y una personalidad más introvertida. palabras clave: estilos de enseñanza, profesores de inglés, tipos de personalidad. * this paper contains results of the research grant entitled fondecyt 1085313 “el sistema de cognición docente, las actuaciones pedagógicas del profesor de inglés universitario y su impacto en la enseñanza-aprendizaje del idioma”: http://www.fondecyt.cl/578/article-28062.html. the study was conducted between 2008 and 2010. ** e-mail: cdiaz@ucsc.cl *** e-mail: andrea.rodriguez37@gmail.com **** e-mail: karenjpr@gmail.com this article was received on june 11, 2010, and accepted on december 23, 2010. 112 universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras díaz larenas, rodríguez moran & poblete rivera introduction the english teaching and learning process is a pedagogical act that involves both teachers and students. both students and teachers are unique individuals who possess their own way of learning and teaching, but do public and private sector efl teachers reveal similar teaching styles and personality types? the point of this research is to find out whether the socio-cultural context the participants work in (public and private) impacts on their teaching style and their personality type. teaching styles, as brown (2007) states, refer to the enduring preferences within an individual and they vary with each one; therefore, the style a teacher possesses is an essential aspect to better understand the teaching and learning process. in fact, several studies on the field of teaching styles point out that more research has to be done to really unravel the impact and the consequences of a determined teaching style on students and their learning (eggen & kauchak, 1996; lightbown & spada, 1999; macaro, 2003). having said the above, it is then important for educators to have an overview of their own teaching styles, particularly of the one that predominates in their own teaching practices. to get some insights into this topic might help teachers to become more aware of the way they teach and to self reflect on their own teaching (medgyes, 1994; puchta & rinvolucri, 2005). one might argue that teachers have a predetermined teaching style regardless of the educational sector they work in: public or private. others, however, believe that teachers’ teaching styles depend on the social environment they are in. as a matter of fact, teaching styles can be influenced by many factors e.g. personality traits (richards & renandya, 2002; roberts, 2002). these factors are sometimes so strong that they could define the way a teacher teaches in the classroom. through a teaching style inventory and a psychological type index, this exploratory nonexperimental study (ruiz, 1996; sabino, 1996; sandín, 2003) focuses on determining the public and private sector participants’ teaching styles and their psychological types. theoretical background the concept of teaching style teaching style is a concept that has been studied by only a few authors (bowen & marks, 1994; evans, harkins & young, 2008). it is for this reason that there is no single definition. however, different authors (graves, 2000; zhang, 2008) offer their own definitions in order to clarify and characterize the concept itself. table 1 shows a chronology of five definitions of the concept of teaching styles. this study used grasha’s (1996) definition stated below as the guiding principle. table 1. definitions of teaching styles types author definition bennett (1976) teaching styles refer to the teacher’s pervasive personal behaviour and media used during interaction with learners. it is a teacher’s characteristic approach whatever the method used. (p. 27) heimlich & norland (1994) teaching styles refer to style as a predilection toward teaching behaviour and the congruence between educators’ teaching behaviour and teaching beliefs. (p. 34) 113 comparing teaching styles and personality types... profile vol. 13, no. 1, april 2011. issn 1657-0790. bogotá, colombia. pages 111-127 campbell & kryszewska (1995) there are three classifications to identify teaching styles: (a) a didactic style which was teacher-controlled through lectures and students’ note taking; (b) a socratic style which was teacher directed through the use of questions to which the students responded; and (c) a facilitative style in which the teacher prepared the learning environment and the students were responsible for their own learning. (p. 132) grasha (1996) teaching styles represent those enduring personal qualities and behaviours that appear in how we conduct our classes. it is both something that defines us, that guides and directs our instructional processes, and that has effect on students and their ability to learn. (p. 44) brown (2001) teaching styles refer to a teacher’s personal behaviours and media used to transmit data to or receive it from the learner and involve the implementation of the teacher’s philosophy about teaching. (p. 231) the abovementioned definitions provide a general view of how these authors define teaching styles. although they all have their own views, there is a common element that refers to teachers’ behaviour and their impact on teaching (scovel, 2001). this implies that teachers have their own personal characteristics which make them unique; therefore, the concept of styles emphasises the cognitive and affective dimensions of teaching that have a strong impact on students’ way of learning. sicilia and delgado (2002) point out that to fully understand the concept of teaching style, educators should focus on what teaching style is not: it is neither a procedure nor a technique. it is not a strategy, a resource or a method either, but the combination of the educator’s values, beliefs, and personality traits, which are reflected in how teachers behave during the teaching and learning process. among the authors who attempt to conceptualize teaching styles, grasha (1996) provides a sound definition of the concept, validated instruments and techniques for analyzing teachers’ teaching styles. because grasha was the basis for this study, his work is further examined here. through his research, he identified five teaching style categories, shown in table 2. table 2. definition of teaching style types teaching style type definition the expert type the expert possesses knowledge and expertise that students need. she or he strives to maintain status as an expert among students by displaying detailed knowledge and by challenging students to enhance their competence. the teacher is concerned with transmitting information and ensuring that students are well prepared. the formal authority this teaching style is an instructor-centered approach where teachers are responsible for providing and controlling the flow of content. the ‘formal authority’ type possesses status among some students because of knowledge and role as a faculty member. the teacher is concerned with providing positive and negative feedback, establishing learning goals, expectations and rules of conduct for students. 114 universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras díaz larenas, rodríguez moran & poblete rivera the personal model type this type is also an instructor-centered approach where the instructor demonstrates the skills that students are expected to learn. this approach encourages student participation and instructors adapt their presentation to include various learning styles. the demonstrator/personal teacher believes in ‘teaching by personal example’ and establishes a prototype for how to think and behave. this instructor oversees, guides and directs by showing how to do things, encouraging students to observe and then to emulate the instructors’ approach. the facilitator type this is a student-centered approach. the instructor acts as a facilitator and the responsibility is placed on the student to achieve results for various tasks. this teaching style fosters independent as well as collaborative learning. the instructor typically designs group activities which require active learning, student-to-student collaboration and problem-solving. the delegator type this is also a student-centered approach where the instructor delegates and places the control and the responsibility for learning on the students and/or groups of students. the teacher is concerned with developing students’ capacity to function in an autonomous fashion. students work independently on projects or as part of autonomous teams. the delegator style often gives students a choice in designing and implementing their own complex learning projects while the instructor acts in a consultative role. personality traits the fact that personality traits involve both behaviour and psychological characteristics may provide useful information when investigating instructors’ teaching styles. the way educators behave and their personality when facing the teaching and learning process might influence their teaching style. personality, based on scharle and szabó (2000, p. 7), is understood as a “dynamic organization, inside the person, of psychophysical systems that create a person’s characteristic patterns of behaviour, thoughts, and feelings”. for williams and burden (1999) personality refers to an individual’s characteristic patterns of thought, emotion and behaviour, together with the psychological mechanisms –hidden or not– behind those patterns. in brief, it stresses the individual’s disposition to think, feel and act in certain ways. table 3 below shows the two aspects that this study considered to research into what kind of personality is characteristic of the participants. table 3. personality types personality types characteristics extroversion [e] attitudes and interests oriented towards the external world of actions, people, objects and events. introversion [i] inner subjective orientation towards life. attitudes and interests are directed towards concepts, ideas, theories, and models of reality. 115 comparing teaching styles and personality types... profile vol. 13, no. 1, april 2011. issn 1657-0790. bogotá, colombia. pages 111-127 research methodology this is an exploratory non-experimental re search study that focuses on the phenomenon of teaching styles and personality traits by collecting numerical data that were analyzed using frequency statistics (murray, 2003; wilkinson & birmingham, 2003). the researchers’ role was to measure and take care to keep the researchers from ‘contaminating’ the data through personal involvement with the research subjects. researchers’ ‘objectivity’ was of utmost concern (sandín, 2003). this exploratory research study aims at comparing the teaching styles of thirty teachers of english: 15 of them work in the private educational sector and the remaining 15 in the public educa tional sector (mertler, 2009; mitchell & jolley, 2007; muijs, 2004). research questions • what teaching styles and personality types does a group of efl teachers from the public and private sector possess? • is there any relationship between the participants’ teaching styles and their personality types? participants the thirty participants of this research are in-service cooperating teachers of english who work in either the public educational sector or the private sector. this means that these teachers work closely with universities and regularly help university tutors to supervise student-teachers who do their practicum in both public and private high schools. these participants were randomly selected and all of them responded to grasha’s teaching style inventory (1996) (see appendix 1) and grasha’s psychological type index (1996) (see appendix 2). this sample, of course, does not represent or describe the whole reality of teachers of english in chile. as for the participants’ ages, it is possible to state that the predominant ages range between 25 and 30 years, as shown in figures 1 and 2. 25-30 31-35 36-40 41-45 46-50 51-55 56-60 33% 20% 13% 13% 7% 7% 7% figure 1: age range state sector. 25-30 31-35 36-40 41-45 46-50 51-55 56-60 29% 12% 35% 6% 6% 6% 6% figure 2: age range private sector. gender also varies among the participants, de pending on the type of school. in the state sector, figure 3 shows that 67% of the participants are female and 33% of them are male. in the private sector, 59% of the participants are female and 41% of them are male (see figures 3 and 4). m f 33% 67% figure 3: gender in the state sector. 116 universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras díaz larenas, rodríguez moran & poblete rivera m f 41% 59% figure 4: gender in the private sector. variables this study identifies and defines the following variables: • teaching style: this is understood as the way educators conceptualize teaching and reflect their beliefs and assumptions in their own classroom performance. • personality traits: it is defined as the way in which people behave towards other people or particular situations. • type of school: private sector school: it is a school controlled and supported privately. it does not receive funding from government sources and parents have to pay for entrance and tuition. state or public sector school: it is a school free of charge for pupils and the government provides local municipalities with funding to support the schools. instruments the instruments the participants responded to were two inventories validated by grasha (1996). one of the instruments used is a psychological type index (see appendix 2) whose purpose is to identify a certain teaching style through personality type. the index has got eight columns of 17 items each. participants have to select only one member of each pair. the second instrument is a teaching style inventory (see appendix 1). this instrument has as a main purpose to find out which ones of the five teaching styles predominate in each participant: expert, formal authority, personal, facilitator and delegator. it consists of a series of forty items that teachers have to answer using a rating scale. procedure the participants received the psychological type index and the teaching style inventory to respond to individually and on their own time. it took the researchers approximately 4 months to get all the instruments back in order to start analysing the data. data analysis teaching styles in the state or public school sector the more predominant teaching style in the state school sector is ‘facilitator’. this corresponds to 33% of the responses. however, it is necessary to mention that the highest percentage is followed by the ‘personal model’ type which corresponds to 27%. as stated by grasha (1996), the ‘facilitator’ teaching style is a student-centered approach; the instructor acts as a facilitator and the responsibility to achieve results is placed on the student (see figure 5). facilitator expert personal model formal authority delegator 33% 20% 27% 13% 7% figure 5: teaching style in the state sector. 117 comparing teaching styles and personality types... profile vol. 13, no. 1, april 2011. issn 1657-0790. bogotá, colombia. pages 111-127 personality type in the state or public school sector the participants working in the state sector tend to have an ‘extrovert’ kind of personality type. according to grasha (1996), ‘extroversion’ refers to attitudes and interests oriented towards the external world of actions, people, objects and events. nevertheless, the two percentages obtained by participants from the state sector in the personality type index vary only 3 points. therefore, as shown in figure 6, 53% of the participants are extrovert and 47% of them are introverted teachers. extroverted introverted 53% 47% figure 6: personality type in the state sector. in order to deeply analyse the results obtained by participants from the state school sector, the most significant results are as follows: • teaching style that predominates: facilitator • personality type that predominates: extrovert • participants’ age range: 25-30 years • experience as a teacher: between 1 and 5 years • participants’ gender: mostly female. the most preponderant teaching style in the state educational sector is ‘facilitator’, and the psychological type is ‘extrovert’. both characteristics may be possibly due to the participants’ age range, since they are novice young teachers of english; therefore, this factor could have determined the outcome of the teaching style inventory and the psychological type index. it is possible to infer from the results obtained in both instruments that there is no apparent relationship between gender types and teaching styles since male and female participants obtained roughly similar results, regardless of the gender type. experience is another factor that could have influenced the outcomes in the state educational sector because teachers with less than five years of experience may possibly have a different, more enthusiastic attitude towards teaching. the results obtained by the state sector school teachers correspond to a student-centered approach in which teacher and student roles are redefined: the teach er becomes a facilitator of learning instead of a ‘container’ of knowledge, and the students take more responsibility for their own learning (laboard, 2003). consequently, open-mindedness towards teach ing could possibly be related to youth and fewer years of teaching experience, which would explain such results in the state sector. teaching style in the private school sector the more predominant teaching style in the private school sector is ‘formal authority’, which corresponds to 46% of the responses. this teaching style is defined by grasha (1996) as an instructorcentered approach where the instructor is responsible for providing and controlling the flow of content (see figure 7). facilitator expert personal model formal authority delegator 7% 20% 27% 46% 0% figure 7: teaching style in the private sector. 118 universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras díaz larenas, rodríguez moran & poblete rivera personality type in the private sector the participants working in the private school sector tend to have an ‘introverted’ kind of personality. according to grasha (1996), ‘introversion’ refers to an inner subjective orientation towards life. attitudes and interests are directed towards concepts, ideas, theories, and models of reality (see figure 8). extroverted introverted 47% 53% figure 8: personality type in the private sector. in the private school sector the obtained results are the following: • teaching style that predominates: formal authority • personality type that predominates: introverted • participants’ age range: 36-40 years • experience as a teacher: between 11 and 15 years • participants’ gender: mostly female. the most predominant teaching style in the private educational sector is ‘formal authority’, and the psychological type is ‘introverted’. these two characteristics might be predominant due to the fact that most of the participants belonging to the private school sector are a bit more experienced and have been working as teachers of english for a considerable time. based on their age, the undergraduate teacher preparation they received was very much teacher-centered, where the teacher’s role in the classroom was central for learning. the teacher-centered approach is associated chiefly with the transmission of knowledge. teachers in teacher-centered environments focus on establishing relationships with students who are anchored in intellectual explorations of selected materials (laboard, 2003). thus, the participants’ age and professional experience might have influenced their teaching style and personality type results. gender has no influence on the participants’ teaching styles since it is possible to observe that both males and females are likely to have the same predominant teaching style. gender does not seem to influence personality type in this research study at least. based on the participants’ responses, it is possible to affirm that both gender types have the same preponderant psychological type. two particular issues that might have a further effect on the results obtained by the state and private sector participants are the subject they teach, in this case english, and their students’ grade level: secondary. the fact that an educator teaches a particular subject somehow determines very much how he or she approaches the act of teaching, taking into account that the subject being taught and learned is a foreign language with all the pedagogical implications and challenges that this subject entails. all of the participants also teach english to secondary level students, a fact that, of course, impacts teachers’ lesson planning and classroom practices and requires a repertoire of teaching skills that could meet the linguistic, pedagogical and social needs of secondary level students. conclusions this section provides a detailed description of the proposed research objectives, which cannot, of course, be generalized as regards other contexts 119 comparing teaching styles and personality types... profile vol. 13, no. 1, april 2011. issn 1657-0790. bogotá, colombia. pages 111-127 due to the small sample used in this study. the results obtained from the study indicate that the more predominant teaching style is ‘facilitator’ for the state sector and ‘formal authority’ for the private one. it is important to mention that both styles were followed by the ‘personal model’ type in both sectors. the study also shows that there is a relationship between the participants’ teaching style and their personality traits, since participants from the state sector tend to have an ‘extrovert’ kind of personality type whereas participants from the private sector have a tendency towards the ‘introverted’ kind of personality. therefore, personality traits would exert some influence on the outcome of individuals’ teaching styles. the study’s general objective aims at comparing the teaching styles of a group of thirty teachers of english working either in state or private secondary education. as mentioned before, participants working in the state educational sector have a tendency towards the ‘facilitator’ teaching style, which refers to a student-centered approach. teachers from this sector are thus supposed to be facilitators and their learners should take responsibility as independent individuals. consequently, teachers who possess this teaching style would foster autonomous learning, initiative, and encourage students to make decisions based on their own criteria and thinking. interestingly enough, this kind of teaching style may well be thought to be found in a more personalized type of education that is usually imagined to be encountered in chilean private education, which is obviously controlled and supported by private funding; hence, of better quality. however, a very significant percentage of the participants from the state sector hold this teaching style, which would be opposed to what state english education has been regarded in the chilean context: of poor quality. in 2004, the chilean ministry of education conducted an english test and two surveys on a sample of 11,000 students from 8th and 12th grades in state, subsidized and private schools. the findings revealed that 67% of state sector eighth graders showed just an elementary english comprehension level and 10% showed no comprehension at all (resultados nacionales del diagnóstico de inglés, 2004). even though it would be premature and ambitious to draw final conclusions based on the administration of two instruments on a very small scale, it is necessary to point out that a studentcentered teaching approach in chile would be more likely to occur in an environment with a smaller number of learners, in contrast to the reality found in regular classrooms in the state sector. participants belonging to the private educational sector, on the other hand, tend to have a ‘formal authority’ teaching style. this style refers to an instructor-centered approach. teachers from this segment are likely to control the flow of lesson contents. this type of teaching style sets a kind of classroom hierarchy because teachers are those who possess knowledge and students learn from them. educators are supposed to provide positive and negative feedback and they are in charge of establishing learning goals. this style is also related to the popular, ‘acceptable’ and standard ways to do things in the chilean classroom. since the ‘formal authority’ teaching style is an instructor-centered approach, it could have been thought to be part of a different teaching context. the chilean private educational sector is believed to provide a more personalized kind of education with fewer students in the classroom and many more teaching and learning resources. most of the participants from the private educational sector possess then the teaching style that is expected to occur in larger classes, where teachers are forced to standardise learning styles and contents due to the large number of students in the classroom. 120 universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras díaz larenas, rodríguez moran & poblete rivera based on the commonly believed assumptions of private and state education in chile, one could have been expected to find the ‘facilitator’ type in the private sector and the ‘formal authority’ type in the state sector. however, this research proved differently. as for the personality type, it is possible to establish that the one in the state sector is mainly ‘extrovert’. people who have this kind of personality are generally characterized as individuals who are outwardly expressive, active and who easily engage in social activities. considering the predominant personality type in this educational sector, it is possible to state that the fact that this group of participants is younger and has fewer years of experience might predispose it to be more active and behave in a more extrovert way. nonetheless, it is important to mention that the difference in percentage between the ‘extrovert’ and ‘introverted’ types is not wide. consequently, it could be possible to establish an existing relationship between the predominant participants’ teaching style of the state sector and their personality type. since a ‘facilitator’ educator tends to promote independent and collaborative learning, encouraging communication between students, it may be possible to surmise that most of the participants of this research who possess a facilitator teaching style possess the characteristics of an extrovert. with regard to the private sector, the more predominant personality type is ‘introverted’. introverted people are generally those whose motives and actions are directed inward. they tend to be preoccupied by their own thoughts and feelings, minimizing their contact with other people. the fact that the participants working in this sector are more experienced than the participants belonging to the state sector could have resulted in a formal authority teaching style for the private sector participants. since educators whose teaching style is ‘formal authority’ have a tendency to provide knowledge, concepts and theories as well as to control the flow of content and individual work, the relationship between their teaching style and personality type seems to be a result. therefore, it could be said that teachers’ teaching styles belonging to the private sector might be influenced by their introverted type of personality. this exploratory study opens a window for further research in the field of teaching styles and personality traits since the cognitive and affective dimensions of educators impact the whole teaching and learning process strongly. undoubtedly, for student-centered teaching to happen, it is necessary to acknowledge the key role that teachers play in the process of change and innovation in education; it is, therefore, of utmost importance to continue researching into what teachers know, think and do about teaching. in brief, this study has provided some valuable insights into the role played by a small group of chilean teachers of english when teaching the language to their students in a national sociolinguistic context, where all governmental policies aim at promoting the use of communicative-oriented methodologies among teachers with the purpose of making the population bilingual by the year 2011. this has meant the alignment of the chilean english curriculum to the european linguistic framework, leading, consequently, into the following scenario: elementary level language mastery for 8th graders and an intermediate level mastery for 12th graders. finding ourselves one year away from this goal, we consider the task to be very challenging. references bennett, n. 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(2000). learner autonomy. a guide to developing learner responsibility. cambridge: cambridge university press. scovel, t. (2001). learning new languages. a guide to second language acquisition. boston: heinle and heinle. sicilia, a., & delgado, m. (2002). educación física y estilos de enseñanza. barcelona: inde. publicaciones. wilkinson, d., & birmingham, p. (2003). using research instruments. a guide for researchers. london: routledge falmer. williams, m., & burden, r. (1999). psicología para profesores de idiomas. madrid: cambridge university press. zhang, l. (2008). teachers’ styles of thinking: an exploratory study. the journal of psychology, 142, 37-55. 122 universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras díaz larenas, rodríguez moran & poblete rivera about the authors claudio h. díaz larenas, phd in education and master of arts in linguistics. he teaches english language, discourse analysis and efl methodology and assessment at universidad católica de la santísima concepción. he has also researched in the field of teacher cognition and language assessment. andrea victoria rodríguez moran is an efl teacher at instituto de idiomas berlitz in concepción, chile, and also teaches primary school students. she graduated from universidad católica de la santísima concepción. karen jocelyn poblete river is an efl teacher at colegio a-lafken in concepción, chile, and also teaches primary school students. she graduated from universidad católica de la santísima concepción. 123 comparing teaching styles and personality types... profile vol. 13, no. 1, april 2011. issn 1657-0790. bogotá, colombia. pages 111-127 appendix 1. psychological type index (grasha, 1996) the information gathered in this document is going to be treated as strictly confidential. instructions place the edge of a sheet of paper across the two columns of items of the psychological type index. lay the edge so that you can see only one pair of items at a time. select the member of each pair that is most like you. (do not try to make an absolute judgment about how each item applies to you). select only one member of each pair. e ____________ i ____________ ___ prefer to be active ___ prefer to be quiet and reflective ___ prefer to work with others ___ prefer to work alone ___ plunge into new experiences ___ hold back from new experiences ___ relaxed and confident with people ___ less comfortable around others ___ readily offer my opinions ___ ask questions before giving opinions ___ i’m verbally proficient ___ i’m more proficient in writing ___ short attention span on tasks ___ work intently on tasks ___ don’t mind being interrupted ___ dislike interruptions ___ aware of time when working ___ often lose track of time when working ___ have a large breadth of interests ___ known for the depth of my interests ___ guided by standards of others ___ guided by personal standards ___ have multiple relationships ___ have limited relationships ___ tend to skip from on task to another ___ prefer to focus on one task at a time ___ seek help from others with problems ___ try to handle problems by myself ___ act before thinking things through ___ think long and hard before acting ___ use trial and error with problems ___ more systematic with problems ___ energized more by taking actions ___ energized more by thinking s ____________ n ____________ ___ prefer not to speculate ___ enjoy speculating ___ i hate to wait to do things ___ i don’t mind waiting ___ seldom make actual errors ___ tend to make factual errors ___ focus thoughts on the “here and now” ___ like to project ideas into the future ___ seldom act on my hunches ___ frequently act on my hunches ___ focus on the elements of a problem ___ focus on the patterns and “big picture” ___ tend to be realistic ___ tend to be imaginative ___ like established routines ___ impatient with routines ___ like to memorize details and facts ___ prefer to learn underlying principles 124 universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras díaz larenas, rodríguez moran & poblete rivera ___ prefer order and structure in my life ___ prefer less order and structure ___ patient with status quo ___ impatient with status quo ___ good at checking details ___ poor at checking details ___ tend to be practical ___ tend to be idealistic ___ enjoy very stimulating activities ___ prefer quiet activities in my life ___ like a steady routine work schedule ___ prefer variation in my work schedule ___ comfortable with the pace of time ___ uncomfortable with the pace of time ___ seldom think about the meaning of life ___ often think about meaning of life t ____________ f ____________ ___ prefer to objectively analyze issues ___ prefer to subjectively analyze issues ___ rely on facts when deciding ___ focus on my values when deciding ___ use objective criteria to decide ___ use subjective and personal criteria ___ there are no exceptions to rules ___ exceptions to rules must be allowed ___ prefer logical order in the world ___ prefer harmony in the world ___ justice more important than mercy ___ mercy more important than justice ___ tend to be critical of others ___ tend to be accepting others ___ have a skeptical outlook ___ have a trusting outlook ___ decisions best based upon logic ___ impact of choice on others more important ___ do not keep diaries/scrapbooks/photos ___ keep diaries/scrapbooks/photos ___ logic tends to override my feelings ___ feelings override sense of logic ___ not in touch with feelings of others ___ in touch with feelings of others ___ brief and business-like with others ___ display personal qualities with others ___ offended by illogical thinking ___ offended by lack of feeling in others ___ prefer logical solution to conflict ___ seek personal ways to resolve conflict ___ it’s important to me to be on time ___ being late is not such a big deal ___ prefer to plan and follow a schedule ___ dislike planning and following schedules j ____________ p ____________ ___ prefer specific plans in my life ___ prefer to leave my options open ___ not a very spontaneous person ___ tend to be a spontaneous person ___ prefer schedules and organization ___ prefer less order and flexibility ___ do not handle uncertainty well ___ handle uncertainty well ___ seek closure on issues ___ resist closure to obtain more ideas ___ dislike unexpected events to occur ___ comfortable with unexpected events ___ use a lot of “should” and “oughts” ___ have a “live and let live” attitude ___ generally good at managing my time ___ not very good at time management ___ have enduring friendships ___ tend to change friendship ___ like to make decisions ___ have trouble making decisions ___ tend not to over-commit to projects ___ tend to take on too many projects 125 comparing teaching styles and personality types... profile vol. 13, no. 1, april 2011. issn 1657-0790. bogotá, colombia. pages 111-127 ___ complete the projects i begin ___ have difficulty completing projects ___ customs and traditions are important ___ customs and traditions not as important ___ more decisive than curious ___ more curious than decisive ___ can’t wait to complete tasks ___ tend to procrastinate completing tasks ___ meet deadlines on tasks ___ flexible in meeting deadlines ___ believe in “the way things ought be” ___ able to accept things as they are 126 universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras díaz larenas, rodríguez moran & poblete rivera appendix 2. teaching styles inventory (grasha, 1996) respond to each of the items below in terms of how you teach. if you teach some courses differently than others, respond in terms only of one specific course. try to answer as honestly and as objectively as you can. resist the temptation to respond as you believe you should or ought to think or behave, or in terms of what you believe is the expected or proper thing to do. respond to questions below by using the following rating scale: 1 = strongly disagree 2 = moderately disagree 3 = undecided 4 = moderately agree 5 = strongly agree 1 facts, concepts, and principles are the most important things that students should acquire. 2 i set high standards for students in this class. 3 what i say and do model appropriate ways for students to think about issues in the content. 4 my teaching goals and methods address a variety of student learning styles. 5 students typically work on course projects alone with little supervision by me. 6 sharing my knowledge and expertise with students is very important to me. 7 i give students negative feedback when their performance is unsatisfactory. 8 students are encouraged to emulate the example i provide. 9 i spend time consulting with students on how to improve their work on individual and/or group projects. 10 activities in this class encourage students to develop their own ideas about content issues. 11 what i have to say about a topic is important for helping students to acquire a broader perspective on the issues in that area. 12 students would describe my standards and expectations as somewhat strict and rigid. 13 i typically show students how and what to do in order to master course content. 14 small group discussions are employed to help students develop their ability to think critically. 15 students design one of more self-directed learning experiences. 16 i want students to leave this course well prepared for further work in this area. 17 it is my responsibility to define what students must learn and how they should learn it. 18 examples from my personal experiences are often used to illustrate points about the material. 127 comparing teaching styles and personality types... profile vol. 13, no. 1, april 2011. issn 1657-0790. bogotá, colombia. pages 111-127 19 i guide students’ work on course projects by asking questions, exploring options, and suggesting alternative ways to do things. 20 developing the ability of students to think and work independently is an important goal. 21 lecturing is a significant part of how i teach each of the class sessions. 22 i provide very clear guidelines for how i want tasks completed in this course. 23 i often show students how they can use various principles and concepts. 24 course activities encourage students to take initiative and responsibility for their learning. 25 students take responsibility for teaching part of the class sessions. 26 my expertise is typically used to resolve disagreements about content issues. 27 this course has very specific goals and objectives that i want to accomplish. 28 students receive frequent verbal and/or written comments on their performance. 29 i solicit students’ advice about how and what to teach in this course. 30 students set their own pace for completing independent and/or group projects. 31 students might describe me as a “storehouse of knowledge” who dispenses the fact, principles, and concepts they need. 32 my expectations for what i want students to do in this class are clearly defined in the syllabus. 33 eventually, many students begin to think like me about course content. 34 students can make choices among activities in order to complete course requirements. 35 my approach to teaching is similar to a manager of a work group who delegates tasks and responsibilities to subordinates. 36 there is more material in this course than i have time to cover. 37 my standards and expectations help students develop the discipline they need to learn. 38 students might describe me as a “coach” who works closely with someone to correct problems in how they think and behave. 39 i give students a lot of personal support and encouragement to do well in this course. 40 i assume the role of a resource person who is available to students whenever they need help. 163profile vol. 14, no. 2, october 2012. issn 1657-0790 (printed) 2256-5760 (online). bogotá, colombia. pages 163-180 teaching foreign trade in english through the modalities based on competences and using moodle enseñanza del régimen de comercio exterior a través de las modalidades centradas en el desarrollo de competencias y con el uso de moodle ana maría correa díaz* universidad pontificia bolivariana, bucaramanga, colombia with the new approach to guide the learning process of students with a model based on the development of competences, and in comparison with the traditional lecture-based learning, it is necessary to start working with the teaching modalities that help to achieve this objective. with that in mind, the aim of the study reported in this article was to show that through the use of active teaching methods focusing on the development of competences we can improve the writing, speaking and research competences in english of the students who nowadays take university subjects in a foreign language in colombia. the results showed that the support provided by the platform promotes student motivation in carrying out their self-learning, which contributes to the development of the mentioned competences. key words: autonomy, competences, teaching foreign trade in english, using moodle. gracias al nuevo enfoque que guía el proceso de aprendizaje de los estudiantes a través de un modelo basado en el desarrollo de competencias, en comparación con el discurso expositivo tradicional, se hace necesario empezar a implementar un modelo de enseñanza basado en el desarrollo de competencias. con esto en mente, el objetivo de la investigación que se reporta en este artículo fue demostrar que mediante el uso de métodos de enseñanza activa centrados en el desarrollo de competencias se pueden mejorar las habilidades de escritura, habla e investigación en inglés de estudiantes universitarios que actualmente cursan asignaturas en una lengua extranjera en colombia. los resultados del estudio muestran que en este proceso educativo la plataforma moodle favorece la motivación de los estudiantes hacia la realización de su trabajo autónomo y el desarrollo de las mencionadas competencias. palabras clave: autonomía, competencias, enseñanza del régimen de comercio exterior en inglés, uso de moodle. * e-mail: acorread@eafit.edu.co this article was received on november 15, 2011, and accepted on june 28, 2012. universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras164 correa díaz introduction trying to respond to the challenges of global markets now that our country is taking part in free trade agreements with other nations, it is imperative to emphasize the development of university students’ competences with the final aim to improving the competitiveness of the country while training future workers. this represents a focus on training based on real demands. for that purpose, the colombian ministry of national education (men) has been following the impact of the evaluation of competence-based programs in other countries such as denmark, where hans peter christensen, a danish pro fessor and teacher trainer, is widely recognized for his great knowledge and experience in the field of competences. indeed, the major concern of our educational community is to determine key competences and review curricula to fortify colombian education. that is the reason why teachers also have the responsibility to create learning environments and communicative situations to encourage self learning, research activities and collaborative work. that is also why this paper shows the benefits of implementing the modalities of lectures, seminars, workshops, hands-on activities, and tutorials in foreign trade courses, among students of the bba program in international business at upb (universidad pontificia bolivariana). those students motivated by their desire to develop communicative competences in listening, writing, speaking and reading in the context of international trade, opted for taking the class in english, instead of taking the class in spanish, which is also offered by the faculty. therefore, in order to help my students to enhance their effective use of the english language as a communicative tool for an effective dialogue in their professional endeavor, i decided to spur their self-motivation with the creation of a friendly learning environment, full of variety and using teaching aids, including moodle (modular object-oriented dynamic learning environment). in the following paragraphs i present the results of my observation process and the survey results of the application of the teaching modalities based on competences in the new environment of technological revolution. the research problem the question to answer during this project was how to develop communicative language competences in a foreign language in the context of foreign trade while working with teaching mo dalities based on competences and using moodle. description of the context this research was based on the observation and survey of seventeen students (of fifth semester in administration of international business at upbu) who took the course international trade regime in english guided by their self-motivation, taking into account that the mentioned subject is also offered in spanish. during the second semester of 2011, the students were engaged in their work in a 4-hour weekly class, a typical 2-hour session; therefore, they were expected to study one hour at home. the mentioned students enrolled in the class with basic vocabulary about the topics of the course and with different levels of linguistic competence. literature review the concepts of competence, the teaching modalities based on competences, and moodle are explained in this paper with the aim of understanding their contribution to the faculty of strategic studies, now that upbu is offering more subjects of the curricula in english. 165profile vol. 14, no. 2, october 2012. issn 1657-0790 (printed) 2256-5760 (online). bogotá, colombia. pages 163-180 teaching foreign trade in english through the modalities based on competences and using moodle basically, this action is taken with the purpose of contributing to the government’s role in establishing the conditions and rules to operate a system based on competences and guide the assessment. that system helps faculties and students to get a common understanding about the specific skills and knowledge that undergraduates should master as a result of their learning experiences; in that way, they will be able to perform professionally in the global market economy and in multicultural environments. the meaning of competence generally speaking a competence is formed by the combination of skills, abilities, and knowledge to respond to labor market demands and tasks; as such, it is a holistic concept filled by non-cognitive components. what is more, according to scientific literature, the concept refers to: a contents component of a given ability in the form of knowledge, skills and aptitudes (zimnyaya & evdokimova, as cited in lobanova & shunin, 2008). a general ability based on knowledge, values, aptitudes, enabling [one] to establish [a] relationship between knowledge and situation, to reveal a procedure (knowledge and action), suitable for a problem (shishov, as cited in lobanova & shunin, 2008). a slightly specialized system of aptitudes, abilities or skills necessary for achievement of a specific goal. it can concern both the individual abilities and the distribution of abilities within a social group (weinert, as cited in lobanova & shunin, 2008). an ability to successfully meet complex requirements in a certain context (rychen, as cited in lobanova & shunin, 2008). an ability to make actions in various contexts in adequate, responsible form integrating a combination of knowledge, skills and attitudes (van der blij, as cited in lobanova & shunin, 2008). furthermore, the organization of economic cooperation and development -oecdwhich started the work in the field of competences defined them as: a system of internal mental structures and abilities assuming mobilization of knowledge, cognitive skills, practical skills, and also social and behavioral components such as attitudes, emotions, values and ethics, motivations for successful realization of activity in a particular context. (saliha & warda, 2010). from those definitions, it can be said that the constitutive elements of a competence are: 1. motivation 2. personality 3. self-concept 4. knowledge 5. skills the development of competences is possible through these elements because when analyzing students in their learning process, it is remarkable that while some pupils just care about their grades others do more due to their vision or interest in being successful negotiators in organizations that deal with interactions in multicultural contexts enriched by international communications. that is why one important competence to develop when studying international business is the communicative language competence due to the need to deal with overseas partners. therefore, it is necessary to integrate language, communi cation and culture to be competent communi cators in a social language group (hymes, 1985). that means producing and understanding sentences according to the context, which implies the acquisition of not only linguistic skills but also communicative abilities (widdowson, 1979) and the integration of communicative competences with others (canale & swain, 1980). universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras166 correa díaz consequently, taking into account that in a new millennium when changes in all spheres of life are accelerating in geometrical progression, the communicative language competence development cannot be considered as the one for specific purposes; therefore, higher schools should prepare specialist[s] not just by providing them with professional knowledge, but also by encouraging them for self-development and self-realization in a global, multicultural environment, implementing all available resources, including language. (lobanova & shunin, 2008, p. 52) with that in mind, the following innovative teaching methods can help to achieve the desired results. teaching methods as schultz and christensen (2004) have stated, realizing that traditional lectures and exercises did not provide the expected learning, other teaching methods were sought. therefore, here i present the modalities for the development of educational activities to let others know how to renew and innovate their teaching methods. those modalities are important because the relationship between the study strategy and the learning outcome calls for a change in the paradigm in the teaching-learning process. then, with the new methods, teachers may plan their activities and experiences according to the established competences of the curricula as student learning objectives. more specific, the mentioned modalities based on the development of competences are scenarios where activities to be undertaken by teachers and students throughout the course take place; they differ from each other in terms of the purposes of educational action, the tasks to perform and the resources needed for implementation (díaz, 2005). the modalities correspond to the following: lectures, seminars, group works, hands-on activities, laboratories, tutorials, and self-employment, which are explained in the next paragraphs. lectures: talking to the students they consist of expository sessions with explanations and demonstrations of contents (andersen, brady, gibbs, & weimer, as cited in díaz, 2005). hence, lectures are recommended to permit the discussions of the students in these sections where the following methods can be applied: case studies and problem solving. actually, it is expected that the pupils read textbook material before it is presented in class. seminars and workshops: building knowledge through interaction and activity here, knowledge about a specific topic is built thanks to the discussion between the assistants, thus, personal efforts and motivation are required on the part of the students to activate the group. the most representative characteristics of seminars and workshops are interactions, discussions, reflections, critical thinking, and experiments (brown & atkins, as cited in díaz, 2005). therefore, the methods that can be applied in seminars are cases, simulations, group projects, analyses of texts and videos. students should read texts, prepare essays, create mind maps, and participate in reflection processes to think and communicate effectively. in that way, seminars contribute to students’ selflearning and the development of competences because that communication process promotes dialogue and interpersonal relationships. hands-on activities: showing them how to act it is represented by any type of classroom practices such as case studies, diagnostic analysis, lab practices, and computer lab activities, among others. with respect to case studies, they require 167profile vol. 14, no. 2, october 2012. issn 1657-0790 (printed) 2256-5760 (online). bogotá, colombia. pages 163-180 teaching foreign trade in english through the modalities based on competences and using moodle the description of a real or hypothetical situation that must be studied in an analytical and comprehensive way with the aim of finding the solution to the situation in question. at this point students have lots of opportunities to apply the acquired know ledge (beard & hartley, as cited in díaz, 2005). external practices: applying what has been learned it consists of training conducted at companies and organizations outside the university to put into practice skills, techniques and resources (lobato, gonzález & ruiz, as cited in díaz, 2005). basically, it is an out-of-class learning opportunity. tutorials: personalized attention to students they represent a personalized relationship in which the teacher guides the student in the learning process to overcome difficulties, doubts, or to obtain additional research sources. it is more rewarding when it is focused on the development of competences and combined with other modalities (michavila & garcia, as cited in díaz, 2005). group work: having them learn from themselves this interactive approach allows students to learn from themselves through the preparation of seminars, lectures, research papers, reports, procurement and data analysis to be presented in class and prepared in groups; thus, it develops com petences of social interaction. as broadly recognized, “collective learning in the organization becomes the basic of core competence” (prahalad & hamel, as cited in delamare & winterton, 2005); this is so because in dynamic environments firms must sustain the capacity for meta-learning in order to develop core competences (lei, hitt & bettis, 1996). likewise, pupils work during the course as partners in a collaborative process and the teacher gives continuous feedback about the development of the group work. autonomous study: developing self-learning activity it includes preparation of seminars, lectures, research papers, reports, procurement and data analysis as well as library work, preparations for exams, complementary readings, problems and exercises by the students themselves, who regulate their own learning process (howsan, as cited in díaz, 2005). specifically, it is a constructivist activity carried out by the student. the mentioned modalities based on competences are supported by methods, which are procedures to undertake and resources to be used in different phases of a plan of action; hence, methods are organized in accordance with the intended objectives of the curricula. what’s more, different methods can be applied under the same modality; for instance, seminars can be prepared through cases, projects, cooperative work, or problem based learning. according to díaz, the most recommended methods are: • lectures • case studies and exercises • problem based learning • project based learning • cooperative learning • self-learning lectures are organized by the teacher who presents and explains contents of the curricula. this method is really helpful for developing competences of knowledge (process information, and solve professional problems), skills (communicate ideas, elaborate conclusions, learn how to listen, discuss with others relevant ideas) and attitudes (lifelong learning), even though they do not help at working autonomously. case studies permit the analysis of real problems to interpret, make diagnoses and understand solution procedures. they allow for the universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras168 correa díaz development of knowledge about decision making processes and the judgment of complex and professional situations. in terms of skills, cases permit the elaboration of conclusions and resolution of problems. also, cases permit the acquisition of good at titudes toward complex situations. when discussing the solutions, students may be able to express their arguments in public with clear communication, respecting others and their points of view. exercises and problem solving, where the students process information and interpret results, foster the development of strategies to manage time and resources and develop motivation, effort and attention. problem based learning helps students to think about complex situations (problems) in the real world. this method is used by teachers to develop the competences of argumentation, re vision and precision. the development of projects deal with real problems through the realization of some activities in a period of time to generate new knowledge and develop competences of analysis and synthesis (knowledge), systematic and critical thinking, oral expression (skills) and responsibility (attitudes). cooperative learning is a philosophy when the students have group goals. it also develops competences of cooperation and social interaction because it invites people to express themselves and establish questions. finally, the learning contract is a formal agreement between the teacher and the student that promotes self-learning, critical and creative thinking and helps to make decisions that promote the autonomy of the student. it implies self-regulation and self-evaluation. in brief, the use of either method depends on the type of competence to acquire, the context and the characteristics of the students. thus, it is necessary to combine the methods to develop competences as well as to motivate students. in the end, the new knowledge should be applied to solve problems and make decisions. nonetheless, the focus on the acquisition of com munication competences in a foreign language, with the aim to help students to think and produce knowledge in english, is necessary to respond to the actual needs of the society to guarantee a sustainable employability. that is why moodle, a platform which creates interactive and dynamic spaces for the development of the english language communicative competence, is essential in this research (see table 1). table 1. contribution of teaching methods to the development of competences method communicative competence to develop in english lectures communicate ideas, elaborate conclusions, learn to listen to others case studies to argue and elaborate conclusions in different situations, for different audiences problem based learning presentation of information project based learning oral and written expressions, management of information cooperative learning oral expression, planning of the speech, invite pupils to express themselves learning contract argumentation, use of information and communication technology 169profile vol. 14, no. 2, october 2012. issn 1657-0790 (printed) 2256-5760 (online). bogotá, colombia. pages 163-180 teaching foreign trade in english through the modalities based on competences and using moodle developing a course in moodle moodle is an e-learning software platform developed by martin dougiamas that allows educators to create and manage online courses for university students; therefore, the participants or learners can access the modules of those courses as a virtual classroom. as such, moodle is one of those scenarios where activities to be performed by the faculty and students take place. according to moodle.org, “moodle is a software package for producing internet-based courses and web sites. it is a global development project designed to support a social constructionist framework of education” (“moodle,” “definition,” para. 1)1. consequently, moodle is a tool for learning online that allows the professor and the student to interact and collaborate in multiple ways. with respect to moodle’s basic structure, it can be said that each course homepage generally has a three-column layout, visually organized with blocks on the left and right sides and with a center column containing the course content. coursecontent will appear in the middle section, usually broken down into weeks or topics. every week/ topic might have some content and matching activities (university of minnesota, 2009-2011). thus, via the internet, teachers post their texts and multimedia learning resources for the students. moreover, the right and left columns of the course homepage will have blocks with additional tools and features, such as calendar block, course administration, my courses, etc. particular blocks and their location on the course homepage may vary from course to course, since blocks may be added, hidden, deleted, and moved up, down and left/right by the instructor (2009). a good picture of how a moodle course looks like can be found at http://www1.umn.edu/moodle/images/screenshot.jpg 1 retrieved from http://docs.moodle.org/22/en/about_moodle in brief, the common moodle homepage includes a list of participants, a list of assignments, and glossaries of terms. additionally, it can contain links to other web resources (blogs and wikis), digital readings rooms, online quizzes, and discussion forums where students comment on content and ask questions through instant messaging. all these tools are used to teach classes completely online, to enhance face-to-face classes, and to support blended learning environments. additionally, courses can be packaged as a zip file using the backup function. these can be downloaded to a local computer and restored later on any moodle server. in that way, copies of forum posts and instructor feedback can be mailed in html or plain text. furthermore, through moodle, teachers find the following advantages: the flexibility to define their own scales for grading, the possibility to choose the course formats (by week, or by topic) and the easiness of the creation and edition of entries at webpages. so, the course can be highly customized by teachers. students, on the other hand, find an online space for collaboration and group participation because the moodle modules are designed for discussion, reflection and learning. the discussion forums allow students and teachers to engage in discussion on any topic; this ability to discuss is a key component of the social constructionist philosophy. the idea is that when students construct meaning and then share ideas with other students, learning is enhanced. (moore, 2003, p. 18) as such, moodle facilitates the process of working by competences due to the motivation it spurs in the students who access the platform to participate in forums, watch videos, write reports on paper and take tests. that means producing, presenting and understanding information and accessing and searching the contents of the course. universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras170 correa díaz inozu, sahinkarakas and yumru (2010) have pointed out that “considering the global interest in the use of technology, and the privileged place of computers and internet in their lives, students’ interest in using these materials is a natural outcome of today’s world” (p. 17). that is why “we need new competences to master a whole new digital world, not only by acquiring technical skills, but also by gaining a deeper understanding of the opportunities, challenges and even ethical questions posed by new technologies.” (figel, as cited in european commission, 2007). that is true because through moodle, the cluster of knowledge, skills and personal attitudes that affects an individual’s ability to perform, en counters a favorable context. thus, the students show a good attitude to the broad information presented to them and exploit it in a critical and systematic way. more specifically, moodle encourages the use of new technologies for effective communication in a scenario that is more advanced than the traditional contact teaching. taking into account the focus of this research on the communication of future international negotiators in a foreign language, the potential of using this platform is remarkable, thanks to the interaction among peers via moodle’s activities and texts (including audio and video). these learning situations are necessary to improve the students’ language skills in english. thus, it is possible to integrate the internet for language learning goals (brandl, 2002, 2005) in the curricula of colombian faculties as it complements conventional classroom instruction. in fact, since 1988, at king college university –just to mention an example– researchers and educators have suggested that “group training in computer literacy, critical thinking, or writing across the curriculum is necessary for faculty to become responsible for the total education of their students” (farmer, as cited in u.s. department of education, 2002 ). method this research was an action research project whose terms “action” and “research” highlight the essential features of this method: trying out ideas in practice as a means of increasing knowledge about improving curriculum, teaching, and learning (kemmis & mctaggart, as cited in ferrance, 2000). the project was supported by multiple data sources such as online exchanges, surveys, and tests. observation also played an important role because the innovative action research was used as a new method to teach an essential subject of the curricula at upbu. thanks to this methodology, the participants and i worked in a collaborative environment using moodle. therefore, the research was carried out under a constructivist approach and within swain’s concept of collaborative dialogue. moreover, the ultimate goal of improving language learning was achieved. research and pedagogical procedure based on action research, my purpose with this paper is to develop a model based on competences at upbu in order to help students who take subjects in english. to do so, my role is to achieve an outstanding role while applying the modalities that will guide the building of inimitable competitive advantages. in turn, the steps taken to accelerate the learning efforts have been as follows: • planning. setting up the objectives to determine the competences to be developed during the semester. • selection of the activities to accomplish the objectives. hence, the number and distribution of activities during the course are influenced 171profile vol. 14, no. 2, october 2012. issn 1657-0790 (printed) 2256-5760 (online). bogotá, colombia. pages 163-180 teaching foreign trade in english through the modalities based on competences and using moodle by the credits of the subject and the number of students in a course. besides, the didactic resources and their availability are established at this point. in this theoretical context, the time assigned to each activity is determined according to its complexity because different activities develop different competencies. therefore, an activity is selected because it is practical in the context with the available resources (biggs, 2005). • determination of the evaluation criteria. an example of the list of evaluation activities is shown in table 2. table 2. evaluation activities questioning error detection critical comments oral presentations information search writing reports to do so, students were informed of the aforementioned steps at the beginning of the semester. lastly and broadly speaking, the results of the lesson observation and the outcomes of the surveys were juxtaposed to analyze the context and methods of development of key competences; this research method was reinforced with analysis of scientific literature and educational documents. data collection the present research relied on two techniques: questionnaires and a collection of moodle material (forums, workshops, exams, etc.) throughout the course. similarly, the accumulated experience in previous courses helped us to check the progress that can be obtained with the new approach grounded in the learning process of the participants. besides, a deep observation and analysis of the students’ evolution helped me and the faculty to come to conclusions about how competences have been improved because the development of language skills implies a continuous evaluation. results the following results show the scenarios that were possible to apply during the semester in foreign trade courses. for instance, during lectures, the students had the opportunity to interact with me and among themselves in english, especially when they had read the assigned chapter before the class. taking into account that the vocabulary in the field of international trade regime is completely new for the pupils, a previous reading has been shown to be necessary in order to speed up the opportunity to use the oral language of the students. with workshops developed in groups, the competences of communication and share work permitted more dialogue to increase human relations, which are very important for international negotiators. those proposed workshops were assigned with the intention to improve good writing; for that purpose, students were required to present ideas shaped, organized and refined properly even though business writing is typically characterized by a simple and direct style. furthermore, as writing is a part of communication that includes the skills of listening, speaking, and reading (cortese, 2001), the students spend a great deal of time on composing essays and reviews of papers, articles and videos; that is why writing also comprises the analysis of visual and verbal texts. for instance, when asked to write about the lessons that latin america can learn from china’s universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras172 correa díaz rapid economic development outside the classroom, where learning continues, some of the answers were full of clear arguments like the ones found in figure 1. figure 1. sample of a draft article china is the actual example of a country that has been through many rapid changes to be where they’re at right now[.] [it] has sustained its economy [for] many reasons[;] one of those reasons[,] i’d like to say[,] is the astounding education system they carry. as one columnist said – “one reason china is likely to overtake the united states as the world’s most important country in this century is that china puts more effort into building human capital than we do”. completely assertive of this analysis, facts are stated and if we compare how china was in the 1980’s [to now, we see] it is completely different now. and what have those changes been? more schools, more colleges, and more than 60% of students enrolled, more hours of learning and more discipline. the continuation of this chinese trend will soon make this country the greatest of them all. what should the world learn from china? simple, we should all develop hunger for education, and of course, [continue efforts to raise] our standards, not to conform. there is no wonder why brazil targeted china to be the main market for the coal it will produce in colombia. every country seems to be benefiting from it and colombia’s coal production will grow this year to 80 million tons from 74 million last year[.] [t] o conclude, china must be doing something right to be where it is at [present], and we should all follow their footsteps. students were able to allow more time for the act of writing, shown to be very rewarding because as long as pupils had time to think and communicate they could produce a more compelling and complete document, a fact that is reflected in the grades obtained. as has been the conclusion of some studies, “it looks as if students getting a high exam score have a steady workload throughout the semester, and work a little more in the week before handing in a report and not in the last moment” (christensen, vigild, thomsen, szabo & horsewell, 2009, p. 5). more important, followed by their intrinsic motivation and creativity, some students added pictures to their texts to reinforce their ideas and self-expression. that initiative was very intelligent because those visual ads fulfill a pedagogical and an analytical function (lund university, 2007). another writing activity seeking the highest level of writing competence, but based on the modality of autonomous work, involved students being asked to write a short report after watching a video at home. actually, with this activity i was able to assess not only the writing skills, but also the motivation of the participants while doing the activity due to the dedication of each of the students in developing a report with the proper instructions and sequence of ideas. it was motivating to find that some students used connectors to guide the reader to a clear understanding of the topic; it was also valuable to include a conclusion in the report. on the other hand, it was very disappointing to find that some students just presented the ideas to have the teacher know that the video was understood and the activity was done. some good examples of that activity are: first of all i want to talk about the aims of doing business in colombia which provides a quantitative measure of national regulations, departmental and municipal authorities on starting a business and opens up opportunities for business activity. according to the video, colombia is located in the top 10 countries that reformed the way of doing business for a third consecutive note: edited for the purpose of this publication. corrections are shown as follows: [xx]. 173profile vol. 14, no. 2, october 2012. issn 1657-0790 (printed) 2256-5760 (online). bogotá, colombia. pages 163-180 teaching foreign trade in english through the modalities based on competences and using moodle year. in colombia, the paperwork with the government to get any kind of permit or license was very long and tedious. to sum up, in the video there is a number of people who said that doing business is making their life easier and that is really helpful for our country because we must think big, we must take advantage of our nature and the riches our country has. finally, there is a very interesting program called talk to the world, which seeks to train new employees and people in areas related to trade who are interested in learning the english language. other texts show errors as follows: i saw in the video, is the process of how colombia would generate greater foreign investment through the opening of its processes. according what i saw in the video the doing business is very important in colombia because when the world bank and his partners arrive they was helping the government and private sector in simplifying business regulations and generating investment since two thousand and five. these kinds of assignments are necessary just as being able to write reports is crucial for businessmen to support decision-making or to solve a problem. they are an essential part of doing business and one’s ability to be proficient in this area is critical toward the pursuit of commercial success (mc carthy; ronstadt, as cited in thompson, 2005). with respect to hands-on activities, by the use of the software known as syscomer (to calculate the costs of an import/export), this modality has proved to encourage students to work on the computers to take the adequate steps to resolve a problem with real costs. this connection with reality greatly motivates the pupils because it allows the applications of the contents, especially since external practices are not available until the seventh semester. regarding tutorials, these happened in a nonsystematic mode, and sometimes just via online, but they were useful in supporting the students in a personalized way because as has been mentioned above, they started the course with different levels in their communicative competence in a foreign language. and since the development of communicative skills in language learning requires social interaction between the teacher and the students and among the students themselves, the use of computers has for a long time been regarded only as a support tool with regard to certain skill areas. rapid advances in technology and more compatible cross platform applications now make the implementation of synchronous and asynchronous learning tasks, in oral and written modes” (cziko & park, as cited in brandl, 2005, p. 16). further, tutorials facilitate individual and immediate feedback about how to approach the activities in the new university scenario. with regard to the distribution of the time in each modality, it is appreciated that the students spend most of the time reading and attending lectures (55%), and about one third (25%) participating in workshops which included computer labs simulations; and almost another third (20%) in autonomous work via moodle and tutorials using forums. those forums, which were available for a limited time to help students to respond to the others, represented virtual seminars. in that context, students posted their answers following the online instructions in an environment of inquiry and discovery which provided an excellent potential to enhance the interpretative reading and the presentational writing skills. and considering the results of the survey via http://freeonlinesurveys.com, the pre-test determined that the student’s pre-knowledge of the vocabulary of the course was limited to the following words: exports, imports, tariffs, dian, chamber of comm during the course, because just 27% of them had studied in a bilingual school. consequently, for the question, which words related to the colombian regime did you know at the beginning of the semester?, some answers were the following: universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras174 correa díaz • i honestly didn’t know much of it. • not so many, just the ones that are similar to spanish. • none of them, i learnt all the worlds in the semester. more significantly, the preferred activating teaching elements in the group were group activities (36%), theoretical classes (27%), workshops (18%), individual activities (9%), and simulations (9%). therefore, practical exercises combined with work on cases, developed under the modality of group work, are more appreciated by the pupils as approaches to learning. this preference to work with colleagues permitted students to listen to the others (in powerpoint or prezi presentations in front of the class) and to respect differences of opinions. thereby, oral and listening communications skills were assessed not only by the teacher but also by the rest of the class. other speaking and listening opportunities occurred when inviting guest speakers, in debates, by retelling the text in one’s own words, when asking questions, while watching videos and in group discussions about exports and imports. herein, we had the opportunity to follow what research works have identified as essential communicative abilities: correct speech; rich vocabulary; understandable and fluent expression; tactful expression of one’s opinion and clear pronun ciation; appropriate intonations and regulation of loudness and pace; pauses in speech; the use of correct standard language; the use of facial expression and body language; attentive listening; eye contact with an interlocutor and an attentive and tactful attitude in the process of communication (strakšienė, 2011, p. 131). nonetheless, a future proposed activity will be to ask students to use an open-source recorder like pamela for skype to save their recordings about trade issues in english; with this program, students can upload the mp3 file through the assignment module. for sure, this task will enhance the conventional classroom instruction. besides, more reading activities should be assigned in the future because the reading of texts for retention and comprehension requires the discipline of researching for papers in databases in order to complete the knowledge provided by the teacher in printed articles or via moodle. to quote strakšienė (2011), “the act of reading means conveying the information encoded in the written text in a verbal form; to be able to master and convey all the information of the text, one has not only to perceive the content but also to feel the correct intonation of the text” (p. 129). in the end, it would be good to know how to stimulate reading on their own due to the difficulty of changing study habits. anyway, the use of moodle has that objective and it is a matter of time before we see how study s trategies develop during a reasonable period. in the meantime, moodle’s tools have served as a supporting agent of the conventional classroom instruction. it has served as a constructivist approach to the learning process of the international topics taught in a foreign language, which in real life may help to develop new products for existing or new markets. needless to say, this whole series of developments has been planned in a sequential and progressive manner and the students were actively involved in the learning activity; as such, by the end of the semester all of the students felt they had improved their communicative skills in english. improvement of specific competences and language abilities the intention to develop and improve specific competences and language abilities in the students was achieved to the extent that they recognized 175profile vol. 14, no. 2, october 2012. issn 1657-0790 (printed) 2256-5760 (online). bogotá, colombia. pages 163-180 teaching foreign trade in english through the modalities based on competences and using moodle they had better achievement in writing as they had plenty of time to think and produce at their pace. listening and reading were also easier for them because moodle was enriched with creative features such as pictures, cartoons, and illustrative videos. additionally, quick feedback was given throughout the course via one-to-one messages within the platform. with respect to exams and quizzes, students were always eager to answer them in an online format, which in the end saved a lot of time. those online tests provide immediate results to the participants after the test is completed; therefore, learners did not end up with doubts about what was evaluated. students also said they had had less fear expressing themselves in english via moodle as they were not in front of others. the reason was that while some students have studied english abroad, others have just studied in colombia; therefore, there were different levels of language abilities in the course. nonetheless, those differences were easy to handle thanks to the progress tracking feature that moodle offers. in brief, moodle was worthwhile due to the fact that it is “written by educationalists for educationalists” (chidwick, as cited in moore, 2003). besides, the platform is friendly and supportive to the moodle community, which also worked together outside of class. with that in mind, it can be said that bilingual teachers at upbu or at any other university have the responsibility to make sure that students not only achieve the competences stated in the curricula but also acquire the competences in the foreign language which will help them to perform as successful professionals. among those competences, we find writing and speaking (productive) and listening and reading (receptive), in english, in order to respond to the globalized context. therefore, it is recommended to start planning classes using active teaching modalities and the supporting methods, focusing on the development of competences and, if possible, evaluating based on those competences. as mentioned earlier, moodle has represented to me to be a useful tool to motivate the students to develop the planned activities in order to help pupils acquire knowledge regarding foreign trade and, more importantly, to being able to communicate like ambassadors in any culture in which they do business. for that purpose, the factors that influenced the development of the components of expression of pupil’s communicative competences played an important role, as shown in table 3. table 3. components of expression correct speech clear and fluent expression rich vocabulary clear pronunciation intonations loudness pauses pace of speech facial expression body language attentive listening ability to interfere in the conversation furthermore and notably, values-based attitudes towards the communicative competence also deserved detailed attention (see table 4). universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras176 correa díaz table 4. communicative attitudes openness and sincerity empathy politeness tolerance respect for speaker or listener self-respect with those components, lessons planning will be easier. conclusions after one year of using moodle to teach a university subject in english, i feel it can be concluded that the growing interest in integrating computer-mediated communication (cmc) tools into language learning along with the development of internet technology have proved to be effective (zeng & takatsuka, 2009). this is because moodle impacts the language learning of the students who interact among themselves and with the teacher as it offers a social context that spurs engagement and motivation. it can be said that upbu students enrolled in the course of the present study improved their writing, speaking, listening and reading skills by doing exercises and interacting with peers at any time, and anywhere. in that process, learners communicated language form and content (swain, as cited in zeng & takatsuka, 2009). moreover, they collaboratively learned language, learned about language and learned through language (warschauer, as cited in zeng & takatsuka, 2009). as students are nowadays more comfortable using computer-mediated communication, moodle helps to improve their levels of language proficiency because it provides many opportunities to develop their abilities thanks to the meaningful activities uploaded in the platform. it was real in our case, due to the connection of the tasks given in english with the real business world. moodle also served to enhance the language learning of the students in and out of class because it builds a sense of community, thanks to the frequent peer-peer interactions and conversational exchanges via texts. so, engagement, motivation, and mutual understanding among peers facilitated the co-construction of knowledge. moreover, students asked for assistance, gained confidence to express their opinions and respond to others, and practiced oral and written english. as stated by zeng and takatsuka, “language learning is seen to emerge through social mediation of collaborative activity” (2009). other reasons to support the opportunities to improve the receptive and productive skills in english were the quick feedback given to the students, the real time interaction, and the creative tools uploaded in the platform. by using moodle, students felt the desire to use it even more to share ideas. interestingly, the assertion about the in creasing development of language competences was provided by the students themselves through their comments in surveys. to sum up, in today’s world online learning is a must (moore, 2003), moodle is an accessible learning tool and upbu students learned from it. therefore, the results were positive and the theoretical framework of recognized authors proved to be valid. limitations the principal limitation encountered was that there is not a unique and formal process in the faculty to get feedback or value the com petencies that should be assessed at the courses offered in a foreign language. this happens because broad knowledge is still given more credit than competences and skills, in particular because the 177profile vol. 14, no. 2, october 2012. issn 1657-0790 (printed) 2256-5760 (online). bogotá, colombia. pages 163-180 teaching foreign trade in english through the modalities based on competences and using moodle model of active learning has not been established in our universities. that is the reason why grades are basically being given based on the students’ specific knowledge of the prescribed course contents. in turn, the research into the development of the competences in high schools in colombia and, more specifically, the acquisition of communicative competence are still at the initial stage. moreover, the high absenteeism of the students of the 4-hour weekly module, even though it is compulsory to attend classes according to university regulations, reduced the potential to increase the learning outcomes (verbal expression, attentive listening, rich vocabulary, clear formulation of thoughts, among others). references australia. moodle partners. (2012). about moodle. retrieved from http://docs.moodle.org/22/en/about_moodle biggs, j. (2005). calidad del aprendizaje universitario. madrid: narcea. brandl, k. (2002). integrating internet-based reading materials into the foreign language teaching curriculum: from teacher to student-centered approaches. language learning & technology, 6(3), 87-107. brandl, k. (2005). are you ready to “moodle”? language learning & technology, 9(2), 16-23. canale, m., & swain, m. (1980). theoretical bases of communicative approaches to second language teaching and testing. applied linguistics, 1(1), 2-47. christensen, h., vigild, m., thomsen, e., szabo, p., & horsewell, a. (2009). activating teaching methods, studying responses and learning. barcelona: arctic technology centre & learning lab dtu. cortese, r. (2001). communication skills (reading, writing, speaking, listening). retrieved from https://intranet. ebc.edu.mx/contenido/faculty/archivos/communicating%20_paper_140512.pdf delamare, f., & winterton, j. (2005). what is competence? human resource development international, 8(1), 27-46. díaz, m. (2005). modalidades de enseñanza centradas en el desarrollo de competencias. asturias: ediciones universidad de oviedo. european commission. (2007). key competences for lifelong learning. belgium: eu publications. ferrance, e. (2000). action research. rhode island: brown university press. hymes, d. (1985). toward linguistic competence. aila, association internationale de linguistique appliquée, review, 2, 9-24. inozu, j., sahinkarakas, s., & yumru, h. (2010). the nature of language learning experiences beyond the classroom and its learning outcomes. us-china foreign language, 8(1), 14-21. lei, d., hitt, m., & bettis, r. (1996). dynamic core competences through meta-learning and strategic context. journal of management, 22(4), 549-569. lobanova, t., & shunin, y. (2008). competence-based education: a common european strategy. computer modeling and new technologies, 12(2), 45-65. lund university. (2007). the art of writing and speaking. version 5. lund: department of political science. moodle. (n.d.). in about moodle. retrieved from http:// docs.moodle.org/22/en/about_moodle moore, m. (2003). moodle open source management system: a free alternative to blackboard (master’s thesis). university of london, united kingdom. saliha, c., & warda, k. (2010). the competency-based approach in high education. retrieved from: http:// www.ouargla-univ.dz/pagesweb/pressuniversitaire/ doc/05%20sciences%20sociales%20et%20humaines/ ssp/ssp01/01/ssp0107.pdf schultz, n., & christensen, h. (2004). seven-step problem based learning in an interaction design course. european journal of engineering education, 29(4), 533-541. strakšienė, g. (2011). characteristics of the development of junior pupils’ communicative competence at primary school. bridges / tiltai, 54(1), 123-138. universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras178 correa díaz thompson, a. (2005). entrepreneurship and business innovation. guide to business report writing. perth: vineyard publishing. university of minnesota. driven to discover. (2009-2011). what does a course look like? retrieved from http:// www.oit.umn.edu/moodle/looks/index.htm u.s. department of education, national center for edu cation statistics. (2002). defining and assessing learning: exploring competency-based initiatives. washington d.c.: ed pubs. widdowson, h. g. (1979). explorations in applied linguistics 2. oxford: oxford university press. zeng, g., & takatsuka, s. (2009). text-based peer–peer collaborative dialogue in a computer-mediated learning environment in the efl context. system, 37(3), 434-446. about the author ana maría correa díaz holds a master’s degree in business administration from universidad eafit, colombia. her research interests are ict, foreign trade and intercultural issues. she is currently a professor at some universities in bucaramanga, colombia. 179profile vol. 14, no. 2, october 2012. issn 1657-0790 (printed) 2256-5760 (online). bogotá, colombia. pages 163-180 teaching foreign trade in english through the modalities based on competences and using moodle appendix: questionnaire used for student’s feedback on the development of competences during the semester universidad pontificia bolivariana-bucaramanga goal: to obtain information to improve the development of the classes taught in english. instruction: please take a minute to complete this survey based on your critical opinion. 1. did you study in a bilingual school? yes____ no____ 2. which words related to the colombian government did you know at the beginning of the semester? _______________________________________________________________________________ _______________________________________________________________________________ _______________________________________________________________________________ 3. which of the following modalities do you prefer to study under? ____ theoretical classes ____ group activities ____ individual activities ____ simulations-syscomer ____ workshops 4. do you prefer a quantitative measurement from a questionnaire? yes____ no____ 5. how many books in english do you read during the year? ____ 0 ____ 1 ____ 2 ____ 3 to 5 ____ 6 to 10 ____ 11 or more 6. do you usually read before class? yes____ no____ 7. were you highly motivated to do well in the course? yes____ no____ 8. do you feel a fear of making mistakes? yes____ no____ 9. do you think communication in business english is difficult? yes____ no____ universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras180 correa díaz 10. do you use english outside the classroom setting? yes____ no____ 11. have you developed effective critical thinking skills during the class? please explain. _______________________________________________________________________________ _______________________________________________________________________________ _______________________________________________________________________________ _______________________________________________________________________________ _______________________________________________________________________________ _______________________________________________________________________________ 12. what is your learning outcome now that we have finished the course? _______________________________________________________________________________ _______________________________________________________________________________ _______________________________________________________________________________ the survey is now finished. thanks for participating in our study! 29profile vol. 17, no. 2, july-december 2015. issn 1657-0790 (printed) 2256-5760 (online). bogotá, colombia. pages 29-42 http://dx.doi.org/10.15446/profile.v17n2.44374 efl teachers’ perceptions of continuing professional development: a case of iranian high school teachers la percepción de docentes de inglés como lengua extranjera acerca del desarrollo profesional continuado: el caso de profesores iraníes de bachillerato goudarz alibakhshi*1 allameh tabataba’i university, tehran, iran najibeh dehvari**2 azad university, zahedan, iran english, particularly regarding a foreign language teachers’ professional development, has been studied in depth. however, it is not known how iranian english as a foreign language teachers perceive continuing professional development. this study explored the perceptions of iranian english as a foreign language teachers of continuing professional development and identified their main professional development activities. for the study, a phenomenological research design was applied. twenty english teachers were interviewed. the data were content analyzed in line with the randor model. the results showed that the participants perceived continuing professional development to entail skills development, continuous learning, keeping up to date, learning for interest, and professional revitalization. additionally, they developed professionally through work, formal education, and attending and presenting at continuing professional development events. key words: continuing professional development, cpd activities, english as a foreign language teachers. el desarrollo profesional de los docentes de inglés como lengua extranjera se ha estudiado ampliamente. sin embargo, se desconoce cómo los profesores iraníes de inglés como lengua extranjera perciben el desarrollo profesional continuado. en este estudio se exploran dichas percepciones y se identifican las principales actividades que estos docentes llevan a cabo para desarrollarse profesionalmente. con este fin, se diseñó una investigación fenomenológica aplicada a 20 profesores entrevistados. los datos se analizaron de acuerdo con el modelo propuesto por radnor. los resultados mostraron que los docentes perciben el desarrollo profesional continuado como: mejora de habilidades, aprendizaje continuo, actualización, aprendizaje motivado por el interés y revitalización de la labor docente. asimismo, los docentes crecen profesionalmente por medio del trabajo, la educación formal y la asistencia y presentación en eventos de desarrollo profesional continuado. palabras clave: actividades para el desarrollo profesional continuado, profesores de inglés como lengua extranjera. * e-mail: alibakhshi@atu.ac.ir ** e-mail: dehvari.najibe@yahoo.com how to cite this article (apa, 6th ed.): alibakhshi, g., & dehvari, n. (2015). efl teachers’ perceptions of continuing professional development: a case of iranian high school teachers. profile issues in teachers’ professional development, 17(2), 29-42. http://dx.doi. org/10.15446/profile.v17n2.44374. this article was received on july 9, 2014, and accepted on january 31, 2015. this is an open access article distributed under the terms of the creative commons license attribution-noncommercial-noderivatives 4.0 international license. consultation is possible at http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/. http://dx.doi.org/10.15446/profile.v17n2.44374 mailto:alibakhshi%40atu.ac.ir?subject= mailto:dehvari.najibe%40yahoo.com?subject= http://dx.doi.org/10.15446/profile.v17n2.44374 http://dx.doi.org/10.15446/profile.v17n2.44374 http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/ universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras30 alibakhshi & dehvari introduction after the second world war, countries around the world placed more emphasis on english language teaching (elt) as an important requirement of education (collins, 2010). additionally, in countries in which english is not an official language, the prominence of english as an international language has been widely recognized. thus, elt has become a part of both secondary and tertiary education systems in countries where english is acknowledged as a foreign language. in english as a foreign language (efl) contexts, teachers face challenges because of school environments. they tend to teach their students independently from their colleagues. sometimes teachers—especially novices—become overwhelmed by school bureaucracy demands, and if teachers do not receive insightful feedback or regular supervision, they might become frustrated and less effective (murray, 2010). therefore, professional development activities can solve some of these problematic issues (bailey, curtis, & nunan, 2001). professional development is any attempt to increase teachers’ professional knowledge both during and ater the initial preparatory stages (crat, 1996; johnson & golombek, 2011). however, it is believed that professional development consists of career-building activities that are undertaken by practitioners ater they complete their teacher training (shawer, 2010). for the purposes of the present study, teacher training and professional development are not assumed to be synonymous. t h e re fore , b e c au s e of t h e i mp or t an c e of professiona l de velopment and its imp ac ts on teachers’ teaching effectiveness, it is expected that an exploratory study can provide insight into the continuing professional development (cpd) experiences of teachers employed in iranian high schools and the types of cpd options they might have. the results are expected to be significant in better understanding the cpd situation in iran from the perspectives of iranian efl teachers by gaining insight into their experiences. through these insights, we try to highlight the cpd of high school teachers in a particular sociocultural context (iran) that to the best of our knowledge has not received appropriate analysis to date. this may also deepen an understanding of the interplay between sociocultural settings and cpd. review of the literature it is argued that cpd is a consistent cycle of teacher learning beginning with initial training and lasting for as long as a teacher remains in the profession. teaching as a public profession encourages teachers and increases their societal expectations to find ways to improve students’ achievement (mushayikwa & lubben, 2009). to be effective, teachers need a combination of professional knowledge and specialized skills as well as their own personal qualities and experiences. moreover, acquiring new skills and adding to their knowledge are among the major reasons teachers endeavor to attend activities designed for professional development (bailey et al., 2001). according to murray (2010), learning about new techniques and ways to empower teachers in english language teaching seems to be both motivating and encouraging for both experienced and novice teachers. as is the case with teachers of the other fields, english language teaching experts believe that ongoing professional de velopment is of great significance, particularly in today’s rapidly, constantly, and technologically changing world. teachers of english as a foreign language are more likely to try the recent innovations in language teaching theories and education technology with their students (allwright, 2005) that enable them to continue to evolve in the adaptation and application of their art and crat, which is important for their professional development. as day and sachs (2004) argue, the term cpd suggests all of the activities teachers that engage in during the 31profile vol. 17, no. 2, july-december 2015. issn 1657-0790 (printed) 2256-5760 (online). bogotá, colombia. pages 29-42 efl teachers’ perceptions of continuing professional development: a case of iranian high school teachers course of their careers to enhance their work. such activities, as kelly (2006) believes, are intended to result in a process, ongoing teacher learning, through which teachers become experts. a number of studies have argued in support of professional development for teachers. for instance, karabenick and noda (as cited in jafri, 2009) argue that teacher development allows teachers to improve their practice and to keep abreast of recent findings in the field. in the same vein, mizell (2010) believes that ongoing professional development activities help teachers define the best pedagogical approaches for the betterment of students’ learning processes. richards and farrell (2005) also emphasize the significance of ongoing teacher development for in-service practitioners to become acquainted with the most recent resources and methodologies. teachers’ cpd has been studied and presented in the relevant literature in different ways (to name just a few, kelly, 2006; mann, 2005; roberts, 1998), although always understanding that professional development that is highly related to teachers’ learning and transforming their knowledge into practice has always been at the center of such attempts (bolam, 2000). teachers’ professional learning is a complex process that requires their cognitive and emotional engagement and their willingness to investigate where each stands (burbank & kauchak, 2003; reis-jorge, 2007; romano, 2006; sandholtz, 2002). the instr uments us ed to trigger teachers’ development also depend on their objectives and needs as well as those of their students. therefore, formal structures including courses and workshops might serve some purposes, and involvement in producing curricula and discussing assessment data might serve other purposes (avalos, 2011). it is also believed that not every form of professional development, even that with positive impact, is of itself relevant to all teachers (craig, 2003). in sum, it seems that teachers tend to do a variety of activities to develop professionally. they also view cpd as needed so that they can keep themselves updated. iranian efl teachers, owing to the nature of their profession (teaching english as a foreign language and being nonnative speakers of english) need to emphasize cpd as an integrated part of their profession. however, to the best of the researchers’ knowledge, there is no study on iranian efl teachers’ perceptions of cpd and the activities they prefer for developing professionally. purpose of the study this study is an attempt to investigate iranian efl teachers’ perceptions of cpd and the types of activities they prefer to develop professionally. more specifically, the following research questions are raised: (1) what do iranian high school efl teachers understand by cpd? and (2) what types of cpd activities do iranian efl teachers engage in while teaching efl? research method this study aimed at investigating iranian efl teachers’ perceptions of cpd and the cpd activities they engage in to develop professionally. therefore, in attempting to investigate and interpret the meaning of cpd from the participants’ perspectives within the researched context, a qualitative research design within the interpretive paradigm was used. because we wanted to describe the phenomenon (cpd) that the participants directly and individually experienced, we used a phenomenological approach. phenomenology is a research strategy that examines “how human beings construct and give meaning to their actions in concrete social situations” (denzin & lincoln, 1994, p. 204). it focuses on “understanding the meaning events have for persons being studied” (maykut & morehouse, 1994, p. 3). thus, the role of phenomenologists is to first understand how universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras32 alibakhshi & dehvari people within a context collectively and individually understand and interpret phenomena. then, they aim to record, explain, and interpret and explain the meanings these individuals make of their experiences. participants a purposive sample was selected of both male and female teachers of english as a foreign language who had more than 10 years of experience in teaching at public high schools in tehran. the data saturation point was reached when the sixteenth participant was interviewed. therefore, the purposive sample size was 20 efl teachers. they were both male and female participants with two degrees: master’s and bachelor’s (ba) of teaching english as a foreign language (tefl). the main reason for including such a wide selection of full-time experienced teachers was to be able to generate a broad range of perceptions, insights, and efl teachers’ experiences of cpd. teachers’ demographic information is presented in the appendix. data collection this study required qualitative instruments that could deeply explore efl teachers’ perspectives of cpd and the cpd activities they engaged in. hence, semi-structured face-to-face individual interviews with open-ended questions were conducted to collect the study data. semi-structured interviews helped us understand the phenomenon of cpd from interviewees’ own perspectives with the assumption that the important reality is what people perceive it to be. moreover, open-ended questions helped us develop rapport with participants, explore our research questions deeply, elicit information, and generate answers, which allowed for true assessments of par ticipants’ b eliefs. additionally, face-toface interviewing made it possible to understand participants’ verbal responses via their nonverbal cues. data analysis all interviews were conducted by the first author. to avoid any misunderstandings, all inter views were conducted in english, the teachers’ major, and difficult terminology associated with teacher education and cpd was avoided. to elicit teachers’ in-depth perceptions, the interviewer allowed the conversations to move smoothly and interactively. the interviews took from 45 min to 1 hr and 5 min, with an average of 50 min. each interview consisted of two main parts. in the first part, the questions addressed teachers’ perceptions of cpd, and in the second part, the questions addressed the participants’ main professional development activities. we employed radnor’s (2001) guide to qualitative data analysis for analyzing the data. the interviews were first transcribed, and multiple copies of the transcripts were printed. the transcripts were then read for topic ordering to draw out and list topics that were linked to the original research questions of the study. a second meticulous reading of the transcripts helped the researchers identify the explicit and implicit categories that emerged within each topic. the categories were color coded. in case of more than one category for each topic, numeric coding was used. a third reading for content helped identify quotes that were aligned with each category within the topics. the quotes were labeled according to the categories they represented. research quality qualitative researchers, according to denzin and lincoln (1994), acknowledge that there is no valuefree or bias-free design. to make research findings convincing and trustworthy, we acknowledged biases by considering the validity, trustworthiness, transferability (or generalizability), and objectivity of the research methods we employed. 33profile vol. 17, no. 2, july-december 2015. issn 1657-0790 (printed) 2256-5760 (online). bogotá, colombia. pages 29-42 efl teachers’ perceptions of continuing professional development: a case of iranian high school teachers research validity the conversations were recorded for accurate interpretations (maxwell, 1992), notes were taken during participants’ discussions, and member checking was incorporated (padgett, 1998) by returning transcripts to the participants for their verification. data were collected at the onset of each term of the academic year to guarantee easy access to the participants (robson, 2002). hence, and bearing in mind that a researcher’s status can impact on participants’ responses, the second researcher tried to establish a trusting professional relationship with the participants. trustworthiness trustworthiness, or the reliability of methods and research practices in qualitative research, is concerned with dependability (lincoln & guba, 1985), or the degree of consistency with which instances are assigned to identical categories by different observers or by the same observer under different conditions (silverman, 2000). the dependability of the research was thus increased in three ways. first, all participants were provided with the same questions, which were carefully worded (robson, 2002). second, the interviews were transcribed as accurately as possible and returned to participants for verification. finally, and following radnor (2001), all research procedures including transcripts, drats, and final reviews of data were documented, according to which the study could be replicated or reconstructed. objectivity trustworthiness in interpretive research is extremely valuable for assessing research quality. hence, although the subjective nature of this research is acknowledged, the researchers attempted to the best of their capability to present accurate, complete, detailed, and bias-free accounts of the participants’ views, perceptions, and feelings as they were revealed to researchers and as they were experienced by the participants. results in this section, individual interview data are analyzed under each research question. findings appear thematically under the research questions and are illustrated by quotations from interviewees. to illustrate the number of interviewees who held similar views, we grouped individual interviewees. what do iranian high school efl teachers understand by cpd? responses to this question resulted in a variety of views, which were grouped under five themes as shown in table 1. table 1. teachers’ understanding of cpd understanding of cpd number % skills development 18 90 continuous learning 14 60 keeping up-to-date 13 65 learning for pleasure 10 50 teachers’ professional revitalization 8 40 the commonality between all of these themes is that cpd involves some form of learning. this might include training for new skills, some type of learning or keeping oneself up-to-date. developing skills is the most frequently argued understanding of cpd. cpd as skills development first, a majority of the interviewees perceived cpd as acquiring specific skills with emphasis placed on being equipped to effectively teach within their institutions. these were indicated as skills that teachers might not have been acquainted with previously. as an example, one interviewee narrates: universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras34 alibakhshi & dehvari sometimes we attend in-service training courses and we learn something new related to language teaching methodology, language assessment, and the use of technology in efl classrooms which are totally new to us [sic]. (t1)1 this theme consists of six sub-themes: development in teaching methodology, language proficiency, material preparation, classroom management, the use of technology and language testing. each of these is illustrated as follows. • development in teaching methodology the majority of the participants perceived cpd as developing their teaching skills through in-service trainings (formal and informal) such as workshops, classroom obser vations, and watching teaching videos. the following quotation from a female teacher exemplifies this theme: two weeks ago we all got trained teach through task-based method. that was really good because task based instruction is an important area in language teaching methodology which i have basically had no training in [sic]. (t1) another participant observed: last month, english language teachers in our city were invited to a quarterly meeting. an instructor from university was invited to give a lecture on innovations in language teaching. he addressed some issues about collaborative teaching and how teachers can involve learners in teaching. i really enjoyed his lecture and right now i am trying some of the techniques he taught us and i think they are all useful [sic]. (t5) • development in test preparation most of the participants also regarded cpd as useful for honing their test-preparation skills. the following quotations exemplify this: a couple of weeks ago, a lecturer from a teacher training center was invited to education department in our city. almost all 1 t = teacher english teachers were present and he reviewed testing theories and test development strategies. i forgot some of the issues which i learned at college 20 years ago. now i know how to develop good language tests and evaluate the english language tests developed by the other test developers [sic]. (t10) another participant observed: i remember passing a course on language testing but honestly speaking i forgot almost all details. i used to make use of published sample language tests in my own classes without being aware whether they were standard or not. now, ater attending the in-serving training course on language testing, i know that i should not have used some of the items of those tests because they were not well prepared. . . . prior to attending these classes, i knew little about these issues [sic]. (t10) • development in material preparation and adaptation the majority of the interviewees perceived cpd as a means of acquiring specific skills in material development, adaptation, and adoption. the following quotations illustrate the theme: i remember attending some in-service training courses in which the principles of material development, adaption, and adoption were reviewed. honestly speaking i learning new things and right now i can provide my students with some instructional supplementary materials [sic]. (t19) an experienced teacher observed: prior to attending in-service training courses, i just followed the content of the english high school textbooks, but ater reading the textbooks on material development i learned that some parts of the english textbooks the learners have to learn are not well prepared and need revision. now i can simplify the textbooks, skip some parts, and add some parts to the textbooks [sic]. (t11) • development in the use of technology such training may also be related to the use of newer technologies that schools invest in and that they require all teachers to use as part of their teaching. as 35profile vol. 17, no. 2, july-december 2015. issn 1657-0790 (printed) 2256-5760 (online). bogotá, colombia. pages 29-42 efl teachers’ perceptions of continuing professional development: a case of iranian high school teachers the following interviewees elaborate, the job roles that they have been assigned for a particular semester may require them to obtain training in certain technical skills that will enable them to perform effectively within their work contexts. the schools in which i teach required to me make use of computer, power points, video projector, etc., in our classroom. i am also required to type language tests and send it to the administrators through e-mails. . . . i have to familiarize myself with this [sic]. (t2) in this semester i’ve been given office and international computer driving as one of my courses. so all my professional development is technological [sic]. (t10) cpd as continuous learning the second most frequently expressed meaning of cpd is continuous learning during teachers’ careers from the first day they are employed to retirement. the following quotations exemplify the theme: for me pd means continuous learning. i believe one always needs to learn. (t2) when you stop learning how you do expect to be a teacher? i don’t think you ever do. you never stop learning how to be a teacher and you can tell the ones who do [sic]. (t10) more specifically, cpd was viewed as a type of learning that aims at adding value to a teacher’s professionalism in the form of enhanced practice and capabilities. quotations from the following interviewees illustrate their understanding of cpd: in my opinion cpd is anything which empowers me to teach better than i could do it in the past and i can do at present. (t18) i believe that cpd is learning how to teach more effectively by pursuing best practice as shown by successful practitioners. (t19) keeping up-to-date the next frequently expressed perception of cpd is teachers’ keeping themselves informed and up-todate with developments and innovations in the field of elt, as is evident from the quotations from the interviewees below: cpd is a chance to keep up to date in current teaching methods and philosophy. (t1) i see it as opportunities improve my knowledge about teaching, to become more informed, keeping myself updated on current research. (t10). most participants who held this perspective of cpd as keeping updated argued that it was imperative for them to continually seek opportunities to keep themselves current with new methodologies and learning theories in their field or any other fields that directly or indirectly influenced their jobs as teachers. the following quotations exemplify the theme: i need to be somehow in touch with current best practice. for me, it is really vital because i don’t like to look like a fossil...i also know how the methodologies and approaches are changing at this point. (t18) through attending cdp programs i can get familiar with the newest advances in teaching. (t20) cpd as learning for pleasure the fourth expressed understanding of cpd is the perception of cpd as learning for personal interest. such learning may not necessarily relate to the subjects of elt. instead, as some of the interviewees argue, there may be other areas with which teachers would like to engage: i think that cpd is about opportunities to develop professionally in the areas that i’d like to learn and not necessarily the areas that which are related to elt. (t10) if i have a chance to attend an activity which is useful to me and that keeps me interested and helps me to perform better, i’ll certainly go along with it. (t13) cpd as teachers’ professional revitalization the last expressed understanding of cpd addresses teachers’ motivation and revitalization through engagement with professional development activities. some of the participants argued that cpd provides opportunities to discuss new ideas and prevents universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras36 alibakhshi & dehvari teachers from experiencing burnout. one of the participants states: when we are unenthusiastic in class and unmotivated students realize and this feeling is understood by us. so i think cpd is the best way to keep ourselves enthusiastic and motivated in our jobs. (t16) hence, according to the following interviewees, teachers need to find ways to refresh their teaching energies so that they can teach more effectively when they return to their classrooms: cpd i think keeps us up to speed; therefore, we don’t rely on only old information acquired a couple of years ago…cpd can help us grow. (t15) i am sure that to be able to stay in teaching carrier for a long time, it’s necessary to change because you won’t enjoy it otherwise, neither will you survive. so yeah, i need cpd to feel sure that i’m in touch with the present best practices and i also need it for revitalization. (t18) occasionally leaving the teaching classrooms and attending cpd courses gives the teachers the opportunity to gain respite from teaching and enables them to focus on their own learning. the following interviewee elaborates: i think it’s a pleasure to have a chance to learn rather than teach because you’re always transmitting information to students and sometimes you might need to receive information. (t14) this understanding of cpd seems to entail the key role that it plays in maintaining teachers’ enthusiasm for teaching. to summarize, cpd was mostly understood to be skills-oriented training that focuses on acquiring skills related to teaching effectively within the institutional context. moreover, cpd was also perceived to be improving current professional skills to continue to perform effectively in the work setting. second, cpd was viewed as lifelong learning directed by modern developments in elt and resulting in evident changes in teaching. the third theme that emerged relates to continual attempts by teachers to keep themselves familiar with the new developments in their field. the other expressed perception of cpd includes professional learning as a way to keep teachers motivated and enthusiastic about their teaching, professional growth and learning as an essential part of their professionalism. the following part of the study addresses the second research question and discusses findings related to the types of cpd activities iranian efl teachers engage in. what type of cpd activities do iranian efl teachers perform? the participants in the present study reported that they engaged in a wide range of cpd activities to develop professionally. these are grouped under five categories and illustrated in table 2. table 2. teachers’ cpd activities cpd activities number % professional development through work 20 100 formal education 14 70 attending cpd events and workshops as members 12 60 informal self-studies 10 50 presenting at cpd events 4 20 among the cpd activities that interviewees engaged in were development through work, engaging in formal higher education, membership in professional associations, attending cpd activities, participating in cpd events, and also engaging in formal higher education as part of professional development. 37profile vol. 17, no. 2, july-december 2015. issn 1657-0790 (printed) 2256-5760 (online). bogotá, colombia. pages 29-42 efl teachers’ perceptions of continuing professional development: a case of iranian high school teachers professional development through work all participants revealed that their main professional development was through teaching. they viewed teaching and daily engagement with their students in class as a significant source of learning through which they were able to gain knowledge from practical experiences in the classroom. the following quotations from the participants illustrate this theme: the administrator required me to make use of computer in efl classrooms. so my students and i are using computer and while working with the computer i learn something new about the implication of computer and the way it works. (t10) i’m an active participant in the association of efl teachers in my city in terms of planning and delivering cpd for efl teachers. we believe in cooperative learning and developing communities of practice for sustainability of professional learning via follow up. (t9) i also attend the other teachers’ classrooms sometimes as teacher of in-service courses. i find it quite interesting that i’m able to work with both students at schools and the colleagues who attend my classes. sometimes i learn a lot from them. (t1) hence, it is clear that in addition to their day jobs that involve teaching foundational english, a number of teachers were involved in other professional roles that were either voluntary (such as working with institutional cpd centers or teaching in external programs) or assigned by the institution (such as training for the certificate in teaching english to speakers of other languages, celta) based on their individual professional competence. formal higher education engaging in formal higher education emerged as the second most preferred type of cpd activity among the study participants. a number of interviewees revealed that they were either studying for a higher degree such as a master’s or phd or considering preparing for higher education degrees. some had also already completed their ba or higher degrees. the following quotations illustrate the theme: i completed my master’s in tefl, and right now i am getting prepared for phd. (t1) ten years ago i was a ba holder of english language literature, but now i have the master’s in tefl. (t3) i registered for the phd entrance exam, and i am studying hard to get prepared. (t6) attending cpd events sixty percent of the participants reported that the third most preferred cpd activity was participation in cpd events as participants. generally, it was shown that teachers participated in in-house events that were organized by education departments in their cities or provinces. some participants also reported attending off-site cpd events that were held by other organizations such as universities and the teaching english and language society of iran (tellsi). among the in-house cpd events that interviewees participated in were workshops and theoretical courses that were perceived to be immediately applicable to their teaching. the following quotations exemplify the theme: in the monthly pd sessions we have the chance to learn different sorts of computer related things. (t2) recently we had an assessment workshop where teachers were trained to do sessions and last month we had a one-day workshop where we were trained up to re-think our testing skills. (t13) additionally, some interviewees also reported having p ar t icip ate d in conferences t hat were organized by off-site institutions. the following quotations exemplify the theme: i attended tellsi annual conferences and workshops. i found some of the presentations really useful and quite related to my job. (t13) we have a teaching forum where efl teachers particularly university lecturers present research. for example, recently someone did some research on the implication of translation tasks in efl classrooms. (t10) universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras38 alibakhshi & dehvari presenting at cpd events the least preferred cpd activity by the participants was making presentations at cpd events. presenting at these events was revealed as occurring at two levels: (1) off-site at local professional development events organized by the teaching english language and literature society of iran (tellsi) and (2) in-house where teachers worked. for instance, one interviewee revealed how he assisted colleagues in searching e-materials in google and yahoo search engines: ater the workshop was over some people came to and asked how they can search for e-materials, i taught them and i think they all learned. (t2) among t he of f-site e vents at w hich most inter viewees presented were the tellsi annual conferences. one of the participants noted: i presented a lecture on the iranian efl learners’ attitudes towards the use of technology in their english language classes. the teachers came to me and commented on my presentation. (t11) discussion and conclusion the present study was an attempt to investigate iranian efl teachers’ perceptions of cpd and the cpd activities they engaged in. the perceptions of cpd that emerged from the present study are in line with those found in related studies (e.g., hoban, 2002; kennedy, 2002; malderez & wedell, 2007; mann, 2005; stuart, akyeampong, & croft, 2009). cpd is therefore understood in two ways: as improving skills in related contexts and as lifelong development or growth because context-related cpd is perceived to be developing skills that are applicable to the teaching context and that help teachers perform effectively within the working environment (bolam, 2000). however, as lifelong learning, cpd is believed to last through a teacher’s career from the beginning to retirement (gravani & john, 2005). it involves keeping abreast of new developments in tefl, updating oneself through formal qualifications, and specializing. the underlying notion in different perceptions of cpd addresses changes that are realized through improved teaching methodologies, learning theories, and testing approaches, specializing in specific skills such as the use of technology. in line with the findings of the present study, it could be argued that while engaging with cpd is perceived to be a way of revitalizing teachers (evans, 2002; jafri, 2009), it is also understood to be a part of a teacher’s professionalism. it could also be argued that teachers perceive cpd to be an important tool for learning for interest, keeping updated, and profession revitalization. in line with the findings of the present study and the related studies, the following conclusions could be made. 1. cpd is context dependent, and teachers from different working contexts have different perceptions of cpd. primarily, findings from this study show that teacher development is situated socially and contextually. 2. cpd is non-static and rather complicated. it also depends on the views of teacher education that teachers, institutions, and professional development organizations have. cpd depends on who the teachers are, where they are currently (geographically), where they are coming from and what is available in terms of cpd in their current contexts. 3. teachers’ learning never ends. that is, teachers’ teaching lives consist of two poles: teaching and learning, and they are always moving from one pole to the other. in addition to external motivation, teachers learn for their own interests. 4. through cpd events, efl teachers can revitalize their profession and avoid becoming burnt out. 5. in addition to language knowledge, teachers need to develop other skills such as the use of technology, teaching methodology, and so forth. this can be achieved only through cpd. 39profile vol. 17, no. 2, july-december 2015. issn 1657-0790 (printed) 2256-5760 (online). bogotá, colombia. pages 29-42 efl teachers’ perceptions of continuing professional development: a case of iranian high school teachers 6. because of the rapid changes in learning theories and teaching methodologies, cpd is a need for all teachers who want to have great teaching achievements. 7. the most important source for teacher development is work. as such, the workloads of novice versus experienced teachers will certainly differ. 8. continuing higher education is the second most important activity for cpd. therefore, all teachers should be supported in having the chance for continuing higher education. 9. attending cpd events is another mentioned cpd activity. therefore, administrators should try to establish professional associations through which teachers can attend conferences, workshops, etc. 10. workshops were highlighted by the teachers. therefore, it is concluded that useful workshops in line with teachers’ needs are of much significance and that the teachers who are qualified should be encouraged to present at the conferences and share their experiences with the other association members. 11. conducting research is another activity that was reported by a few respondents. therefore, teachers’ research skills should be developed either through workshops or through self-studies. teachers sometimes study language books. therefore, institutes and association should always provide the members with the newest publication. considering the nature and scope of the present study to explore teachers’ understanding and experiences of cpd, the following areas could be explored by other researchers. first of all, this study was carried out in high schools; similar studies could be carried out in higher education centers such as state and open universities to see how efl teachers in these institutes view cdp. additionally, we also think it would be interesting to investigate the role of all cpd activities on teachers’ professional development. finally, because informal cpd is deemed considerably significant in shaping teacher development and informal communities are perceived to be a need, it would be worth exploring the role of informal communities of practice in teacher development as well as the interplay between formal and informal communities of practice. references allwright, d. 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(2002). real world research. a resource for social scientists and practitioner-researchers (2nd ed.). malden, ma: blackwell. romano, m. e. (2006). “bumpy moments” in teaching: reflections from practicing teachers. teaching and teacher education, 22(8), 973-985. http://dx.doi. org/10.1016/j.tate.2006.04.019. sandholtz, j. h. (2002). inservice training or professional development: contrasting opportunities in a school/university partnership. teaching and teacher education, 18(7), 815-830. http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/ s0742-051x(02)00045-8. shawer, s. (2010). classroom-level teacher professional development and satisfaction: teachers learn in the context of classroom-level curriculum development. professional development in education, 36(4), 597-620. http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/19415257.2010.489802. 41profile vol. 17, no. 2, july-december 2015. issn 1657-0790 (printed) 2256-5760 (online). bogotá, colombia. pages 29-42 efl teachers’ perceptions of continuing professional development: a case of iranian high school teachers silverman, d. (2000). doing qualitative research: a practical handbook. london, uk: sage. stuart, j., akyeampong, k., & crot, a. (2009). key issues in teacher education: a sourcebook for teacher educators in developing countries. oxford, uk: macmillan. about the authors goudarz alibakhshi has taught at different state universities in iran for 20 years. he has published a number of papers in different international journals. currently, he is an assistant professor of tefl at the department of english language and literature, allameh tabataba’i university (iran). najibeh dehvari has graduated from azad university of zahedan, iran. she has been teaching general english courses to undergraduate students for a few years now. universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras42 alibakhshi & dehvari appendix: teachers’ demographic information interviewed code gender/degree teaching experience school code city t1 t2 t3 t4 t5 t6 t7 t8 t9 t10 t11 t12 t13 t14 t15 t16 t17 t18 t19 t20 f/ba m/ma f/ba m/ba f/ma m/ba m/ba m/ma f/ba m/ma m/ma m/ma m/ba f/ma f/ba f/ba f/ma m/ba m/ba m/ba 10 years 11 years 12 years 17 years 15 years 20 years 14 years 18 years 22 years 10 years 14 years 16 years 15 years 19 years 23 years 20 years 22 years 12 years 10 years 11 years 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 saravan saravan saravan zahedan saravan saravan saravan saravan zahedan zahedan saravan zahedan zahedan zahedan zahedan zahedan zahedan zahedan saravan saravan 31profile vol. 13, no. 1, april 2011. issn 1657-0790. bogotá, colombia. pages 31-54 31 grassroots action research and the greater good la investigación acción de base y el bien mayor isobel rainey* gese/ise panel for trinity college london, united kingdom this study examines the action research topics and topic preferences of two groups of grassroots teachers: active researchers, and potential researchers. the analysis of the topics appears to indicate that, over the past decade, action research at the teaching of english at the grassroots level to speakers of other languages has been principally understood in terms of professional development with respect to teachers’ methodologies and learners’ learning behaviours. a nascent concern for a more ample approach to professional development and issues conducive to the greater good of the profession can, it is mooted, flourish only with the collaboration of all relevant stakeholders. key words: collaboration, comprehensive professional development, grassroots action research, research topics. en este estudio se examinan los temas de investigación acción y los temas preferidos por dos grupos de profesores de base: uno de investigadores activos y otro de investigadores potenciales. el análisis sugiere que, durante la última década, la investigación acción en el aula de inglés para hablantes de otras lenguas se ha entendido principalmente en términos del desarrollo profesional con respecto a las metodologías de los profesores y las conductas estudiantiles de aprendizaje. se considera que un incipiente interés por un enfoque más amplio y por asuntos conducentes al beneficio general de la profesión, solamente puede florecer con la colaboración de todos los actores más importantes. palabras clave: colaboración, desarrollo profesional integral, investigación acción de base, temas de investigación. * e-mail: isobelrainey@googlemail.com this article was received on may 3, 2010, and accepted on november 27, 2010. 32 universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras rainey introduction the motivation for this study derives from the author’s experience as an avid reader of the reports of the action research projects of efl teachers working at the grassroots level and from her hunch, as a result of her reading, that the sources from which the teachers select their research topics are rather limited –for example, to aspects of their teaching methodologies and their learners’ learning behaviours. as a result, the impression given is that the teachers’ putative professional selfdevelopment cannot be described as fully rounded and, furthermore, the potential for the knowledge generated by the research projects to impact the tesol profession as a whole, either at national or international levels or both, is somewhat restricted. in identifying these potentially problematic issues, this paper is not suggesting that achievements in this area of tesol research have been either inadequate or insubstantial. on the contrary, over the past ten years, and particularly since the launch of journals like profile, progress has been quite remarkable, reaching far beyond the dismal predictions of many action research doubters. inasmuch as it is always good to take stock of what is being achieved in any research field lest important issues are overlooked, this paper aims to do precisely that. the paper begins by revisiting briefly aspects of the works of dewey (1923), lewin (1948) and stenhouse (1975), who, either directly or indirectly, have had a major influence on the theory of educational action research. it goes on to define what is meant, in the context of this study, by the term ‘grassroots (efl) teachers’ and to identify and analyse the main sources of the topics selected by a group of published teacher-researchers working at the tesol grassroots level and by a group of potential action researchers for their action research projects. sources of data for the study include documentary evidence in the form of the topics of articles published in an academic journal, the principal aim of which is to publish grassroots efl teachers’ action research reports, and the topics of chapters in a book also reporting efl teachers’ action research as well as two questionnaires (one closed; one open) completed by group of potential grassroots action researchers who were participants at a symposium on action research. the data derived from the documentary evidence are analysed in terms of a framework of factors influencing teaching and learning, as reported in the literature review, and of the difficulties efl teachers face, established in the discussion on grassroots teachers; the analysis of the questionnaire involves basic descriptive statistics, accompanied by critical reflection. as anticipated, the data reveal that the choices of topics for the action research projects of both groups do not represent a comprehensive treatment of all their needs in respect to their immediate teaching contexts; nor is there a marked tendency to address issues pertaining to the wider scope of tesol. the conclusion to the study is, however, not pessimistic. rather, it acknowledges the achievements of the grassroots teachers in terms of their action research activities and celebrates the contribution these activities have made to building up the teachers’ sense of self-worth (cárdenas, 2003; stringer, 1999, p. 24) and to creating formal written records of grassroots efl teacher expertise and knowledge. at the same time, it reminds traditional researchers in the field of applied linguistics: tesol that, if, in line with dewey, lewin and stenhouse, the greater good is to be served through action research at the grassroots level, they need to draw on and respect this knowledge in their teacher training and development programmes; by the same token, they need to work collaboratively with their grassroots colleagues in order to facilitate research into areas they appear to find excessively challenging if working alone. 33 grassroots action research and the greater good profile vol. 13, no. 1, april 2011. issn 1657-0790. bogotá, colombia. pages 31-54 bases of and developments in action research when a theory becomes popular in a given profession, it is not uncommon for academics, in their enthusiasm, to publish enormous amounts of literature reporting their interpretations of, views on, and even modifications of that theory. educational action research is no exception to this rule; nor is action research in tesol. the volume of literature produced over the past three decades through conventional publications and on the internet is overwhelming; more importantly, in its detail it has sometimes obscured, even overlooked, the original, clear and important bases on which action research has been constructed. it is, therefore, in the interests of clarity and strength of argument that this overview of the contributions of dewey, lewin, and stenhouse to the genesis of, and developments in, action research theory1 is brief and focused on those aspects of their philosophies and beliefs which pertain directly to action research or, in dewey’s case, to active learning. views of knowledge and the active learner: dewey it is generally believed that the term action research was coined by lewin, who used it for the first time in his writings in 1946 as follows: the research needed for social practice can best be characterized as research for social management or social engineering. it is a type of action-research, a comparative research on the conditions and effects of various forms of social action, and research leading to social action. research that produces nothing but books will not suffice. (lewin, 1946, reproduced in lewin, 1948, pp. 202-203, cited in smith, 2001) 1 this study does not enter into debate about whether action research is or is not a theory in scientific terms; theory here is being used in its most general sense as a set of principles. although lewin may have been the first person to use the term and to propose the procedures for the conduct of action research (see below), the pragmatic principles underpinning some of dewey’s writings would appear to have prepared the way for educational action research. dewey posited, for example, that the “development of knowledge was fundamentally an adaptive response to the environment” (dimitriadis & kamberelis 2006, p. 5) and defined the environment itself as “whatever conditions interact with personal needs, desire, purposes, and capacities to create the experience which is had” (dewey, 1938, p. 44, cited in dimitriadis & kamberelis, 2006, p. 5). rejecting the view that knowledge could be represented in the form of an encyclopaedic copy of all the facts about the universe, dewey, thus, proposed that (i)t is the expression of man’s past most successful achievements in effecting adjustments and adaptations, put in a form so as best to help sustain and promote the future still greater control of the environment. (dewey, 1977, p. 179) this view on the development of knowledge sits well with action research as teachers are encouraged to practise it today. action research is done ‘by the teachers and for the teachers’ (mertler, 2009, p. 4) and (i)s defined as any systematic inquiry conducted by teachers, administrators, counsellors, or others, with a vested interest in the teaching and learning process or the environment for the purpose of gathering information about how their particular schools operate, how they teach and how their students learn. (mills, 2007, p. 10, cited in mertler, 2009, p. 5) with respect to understanding and controlling the environment, caillods and postlethwaite’s de tailed, though not exhaustive, breakdown of factors affecting teaching and learning is a useful reference for checking that research aimed at improving that 34 universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras rainey particular environment is in fact looking at it from all, or most, of the relevant angles. many factors operate to produce pupil learning and achievement. the child’s home background, the curriculum, the materials, the language used, the time devoted to instruction and homework, the work ethos of the school, the pupil’s motivation, the teachers’ perception of the ability of the class, their education and status, their behaviour, and teaching practices all intervene in this network of influences (caillods & postlethwaite, 1989, p. 182). thus, knowledge is for action researchers what it was for dewey, not “an a priori psychological or ontological phenomenon” but “an effect of goaldirected activity” (dimitriadis & kamberelis, 2006, p. 5) on factors in the environment which are of special interest to them –either because they represent a challenge or because they represent success (see discussion and analysis of data for a consideration of teacher researchers’ need for success). furthermore, dewey believed that if collectives of individuals worked together, they could make life better through experimentation and inventiveness, finding their own answers to questions rather than accepting dogmatic answers handed out to them by authority (barrow & woods, 1988, p. 135). this belief finds resonance in modern theorists who see action research as fundamentally, maybe even exclusively, collaborative2. action research is collaborative (italics in the original): it involves those responsible for action in improving it ...it starts with small groups of collaborators at the start, but widens the community of participating action researchers so that it gradually includes more and more of those involved and affected by the practices in question (kemmis & mctaggart, 1992, pp. 22-5). 2 the collaborative-collective distinction, which some theorists insist on (see winter, 1996, p. 228), is not considered essential or even all that useful to this discussion. at this point, it is worth noting that much of what dewey wrote on education focused on the learners and on his concerns that they should be ‘active learners’ within the context of their educational experiences and, as a result, “become tolerant and rational adults, able to cope with a relatively high degree of social freedom without abusing that freedom to interfere with the freedom or well-being of others” (barrow & woods, 1988, p. 134); that is, in the long-term, education was for the greater good, the good of the community as a whole. what dewey had to say about the (child) learners was subsequently applied to adult learners, and specifically in the case of tesol to efl teachers in pre-service, in-service and teacher development programmes. this is most likely due to the influence of lewin. experiential learning and democracy in teacher training: lewin it was lewin who, quite fortuitously3, first realised that the underlying principles of dewey’s work could also be applied to teachers in initial and/or in-service training. his approach, not surprisingly, perhaps, given that the ‘learners’ with whom he was dealing were adults, emphasised the contribution to learning that the trainees could make if the programmes were organised along democratic lines. kolbsummarises lewin’s beliefs thus: (l)earning is best facilitated in an environment where there is dialectic tension and conflict between immediate, concrete experiences and analytic detachment. by bringing together the immediate experiences of the trainees and the conceptual models of the staff in an open atmosphere where inputs from each perspective could challenge and stimulate the other, a learning environment occurred with remarkable vitality and creativity. (kolb, 1984, p. 10) 3 see smith 2001 for the circumstances under which lewin ‘discovered’ the benefits of two-way discussion and debate in teacher training when the trainees themselves asked for permission to sit in on the discussions of their performances. 35 grassroots action research and the greater good profile vol. 13, no. 1, april 2011. issn 1657-0790. bogotá, colombia. pages 31-54 lewin’s convictions about how training is better effected through creative and dynamic learning environments, where theorists and practitioners participate in a democratic debate, are echoed today in winter’s principles of action research4. action research creates “... plural structures, which involves developing various accounts and critiques, rather than a single authoritative interpretation” (winter, 1996, pp. 13-14). lewin also had a strong belief in the need for a close integration of theory and practice “there is nothing so practical as a good theory” (1952, p. 169), and this is reflected today in the claim that action research “makes for practical problem solving as well as expanding scientific knowledge” (cohen et al., 2000, p. 228). lewin’s greatest contribution to the action research debate is probably his proposal for the process by which action research should be conducted, as illustrated in his by now ubiquitous action research spiral (mertler, 2009, p. 15); nevertheless, a discussion of how to conduct action research falls outside the scope of this study. it is, here, sufficient to emphasise that, like dewey, he believed in a collaborative, democratic approach to the educational process in active experiential learning, all of which would lead to both the resolution of immediate problems and the generation of knowledge which would have the potential to add to and widen the scope of professional understanding. teachers as researchers and curriculum reform: stenhouse although it was lewin who coined the phrase action research, it was stenhouse (1975) who was responsible for promoting the notion of the teacher as researcher. he cast the teacher in the role of learner with respect to “both their subject matter and their pedagogical knowledge” (elliott & ching4 see winter 1996 for the full list of principles he proposes. tien, 2008, p. 569), insisting that any major attempts at curriculum reform could be effective only if they were informed by teacher research (kemmis, 1995, p. 74). like lewin, stenhouse believed in a good theory but for him the theories for teaching should derive principally from teachers’ practices. thus, action research involved teachers in theorising about their practices and these theories were to contribute to curriculum reform. aware of the exigencies of such projects, he also acknowledged that there was “a need to evolve styles of cooperative research by teachers using full-time researchers to support the teachers” (1975, p. 62), and that “the emergence of a healthy tradition of curriculum research and development depends upon a partnership of teachers and curriculum research workers” (stenhouse, 1975, p. 207). he was most insistent, however, that it was ultimately the teachers’ influences which would prevail. research workers have a contribution to make, but it is the teachers who in the end will change the world of the school by understanding it (stenhouse, 1975, p. 208). in an age of globalisation and of the hegemony not only of english as the language of international communication but also of the curricula and methodologies for teaching it (phillipson, 1992), such an approach offers a welcome opportunity for efl teachers and curriculum reformers working in non-western contexts to design more appropriate, even less threatening, curricula for their specific contexts. thus, elliott and ching tim, writing in their case about east asia, maintain that curriculum reform (n)need not draw exclusively on ideas from the west. within the educational traditions of east asian societies lie cultural resources for the creative reconstruction of teaching and learning as an educational process. the value of the encounter with western educational ideas for east asian educators is that it can heighten their awareness of ideas embedded in their own cultural traditions and their similarities and differences to 36 universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras rainey western ideas. indeed such encounters provide opportunities for mutual learning between eastern and western educationists. (2008, pp. 573-574) it is worth noting that elliott and ching tim tsai do not exclude western ideas when curricula are being designed in non-western contexts; rather, they favour an approach where both communities are learning from one another. also worth noting is that what elliott and ching tim have to say about east asia can easily apply to many other regions of the world, eastern europe, south america, the middle east to mention just a few. summary this brief overview of the genesis of, and developments in, action research reveals, in terms of the three influential theorists discussed, the importance they ascribed to active learning for the growth and edification of the whole person and for the community in which he/she studied, lived or worked; a democratic and collaborative approach to generating the knowledge relevant to such growth; and, specifically in terms of educational curriculum reform, a firm belief that reforms could work only if they were based principally in the outcomes of teachers’ action research. the extent to which action research is being practised in these terms in the tesol grassroots realm is one of the main concerns of this study, but first it is necessary to clarify what is meant here by the term ‘grassroots’. grassroots efl teachers grassroots efl teachers are traditionally regarded as those who teach in difficult circumstances at primary and secondary schools in developing countries, for example, algeria, brazil, cambodia, mexico, peru, thailand, and vietnam, where english is widely studied for specific purposes, such as reading scientific and technical literature and facilitating communication in business and tourism. furthermore, these countries do not have a tradition of english being used as a second language in, for example, governance, education, the press. they correspond roughly to the category of expanding countries, as proposed by kachru (1985), contrasting roughly with outer circle countries where english has varying degrees of institutionalised functionality. kachru’s concept of the inner circle i.e. countries like australia, canada, new zealand, the uk and the usa, where english is the first language, is quite useful in the context of this study but the other two categories are not considered all that useful: many outer circle countries (nigeria, zimbabwe, sudan, for example) are developing countries and teachers in these contexts, despite erstwhile colonial connections with inner circle countries, still face many difficulties in their teaching experiences; and these are just as severe, if not more so, than those of teachers in expanding circle contexts. furthermore, in terms of this study, it is considered inappropriate to limit the term ‘grassroots’ to one specific type of country. that in many developing contexts investment in education is inadequate and opportunities for teachers and learners to interact with speakers of english as a first language are severely limited is here not disputed. some of the difficulties which teachers in these contexts face are vexing and have been identified, for example, as follows: in uzbekistan, scanty resources and low salaries (hassanova & shadieva, 2008); in argentina, problems with discipline bordering on the violent (zappahollman, 2007); in malaysia, limited english language competence (kamarul kabilan, 2007); and the demands of unrealistic recently imposed clt curricula on teachers who lack the linguistic competence and/or pedagogical skills to implement them – all three contexts: (hassanova & shadieva, 2008; kamarul-kiabalin, 2007; zappal-hollman, 37 grassroots action research and the greater good profile vol. 13, no. 1, april 2011. issn 1657-0790. bogotá, colombia. pages 31-54 2007). these difficulties find resonance in the field of general education as stated below: [t]eachers work with 45-50 students in crowded spaces with few resources and are paid salaries below what is required to sustain a family. they often have other jobs in order to garner reasonable resources. (saud & johston, 2006, p. 17) it would be somewhat naive to assume, nonetheless, that the difficulties faced by these teachers (note that outer circle countries [malaysia] as well as expanding countries are represented) are exclusive to developing countries. in terms of this paper, what makes teachers ‘grassroots teachers’ is not the specific difficulties they face, or the geographical or historical relationship of their country to the inner circle; what makes them grassroots is that, irrespective of where they teach, they face daunting difficulties of one type or another in their day-to-day classroom realties. thus, appel (1995), who narrates –poignantly– how he grappled for a whole year with one major source of difficulty, namely discipline, in his secondary school in germany, which is supposedly ‘an outer circle context’, is in terms of this article a grassroots teacher. despite coming from different circle (viz kachru) backgrounds, prodromou and clandfield (2007) have identified similar sources of difficulties in their teaching contexts and have recently collated their strategies and suggestions for dealing with them. even in inner circle or mainstream contexts, where the material, organisational and professional circumstances in which teachers work tend to be satisfactory (well-equipped classroom; small group teaching; mother or near-mother tongue teachers with a good command of the language and an up-to-date working knowledge of fl teaching methodologies), teachers can encounter intractable problems which have a dampening effect on teacher performance and learner achievement. senior (2006) found, for instance, that esl teachers working in australia often had to deal with challenging affective inhibitors, which resulted in worried students, reluctant students and cultureshocked students, among others (p. 27). in terms of this study, therefore, a salient characteristic of grassroots teachers is that they are teachers for whom a lot, if not all, of the joy has been taken out of their teaching or out of their learners’ learning experiences, or both because of one or more prevailing difficulties (viz appel, 1995). another characteristic is the extent to which the teachers have the power to do something about their difficulties. within the constraints of traditional, top-down educational settings, grassroots teachers are seldom in a position to do much about their problems; quite the opposite in fact, because in these circumstances: (t)he teacher’s task is reduced to that of bringing about certain pre-specified behavioural changes in all pupils in a predetermined stereotypical manner. neither teachers nor pupils are considered as individuals with the need to teach and learn in mutually responsive ways toward ends that they themselves have agreed upon. (clark, 1987, p. 34, cited in appel, 1995, p. xiv) in the 1980s and 1990s, action research was heralded in the field of education as a process by which teachers could be empowered not only to do something about the difficulties they en countered in their immediate teaching contexts but also something for the wider educational setting within which they operated. in this interpretation, action research is regarded as “a dual mechanism for transforming the curriculum and for the empowerment of teachers” (somekh, 2006, p. 59). the practice of action research by tesol grassroots teachers, in theory, anticipated a long-awaited situation where action research would contribute to teachers’ professional self-development and where the outcomes of teachers’ research would, through a bottom-up process, be fed into curriculum 38 universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras rainey reform, thus effecting a change in attitude within central ministries of education for whom “most knowledge which is valid is that produced by the ministry” (riddell, 1999, p. 384). thus, in addition to examining the extent to which action research is being practised in line with principles of dewey, lewin and stenhouse, this study examines the extent to which it is fulfilling its promise for the tesol grassroots realm. the study the discussions in the two foregoing sections suggest the following research questions as a focus for this study: a) to what extent, if any, are the teachers in this study being empowered through their action research activities? b) is the research, as practised by the active re searchers, or as would be practised by the potential researchers, comprehensive? in other words, does it (would it) address a wide spectrum of the factors influencing and challenging teaching and learning in their situations? c) is the action research carried out not only for the teachers’ professional self-development but also for the greater good i.e. for the community of tesol educators and learners as a whole? d) is there evidence that teachers or professional researchers and teachers work collaboratively on their action research projects? sources of data data for this study are the action research topics and research topic preferences of two groups of efl teachers. group 1 is made up of teacher researchers who have already done, and published reports on, their own action research projects. group 2 comprises a large group of potential action researchers. it is mooted that analyses of the topics of the published articles and of the topic preferences of the potential researchers lead to an appreciation of the extent to which action research, as practised by group 1, and as it would be practised by group 2, is contributing or has the potential to contribute to the ample professional development of the teachers and to progress in the profession as a whole. group 1 teachers have published their research reports in (a) profile, an academic journal produced at the national university of colombia, bogotá campus; the express purpose of the journal is to facilitate the space for grassroots efl teachers to report their action research projects; it was selected as the main source of data for this group as it is the only academic journal this author knows of which consistently reports the action research findings of grassroots efl teachers working in primary and high schools (henceforth ps and hs, respectively); and (b) in action research in english language teaching in the uae (henceforth, aruae), a book published by the higher colleges of technology in the united arab emirates, which reports the action research experiences of a small group of pre-service teachers in the context of the teaching practicum component of their undergraduate degree courses. there are more data for the colombian (profile) than for the uae publication. it is not the intention here to establish a comparison of the value or success of these two publications. although the contribution from the uae publication is small, it provides not only a second concentrated source of topics selected by efl school teacher researchers but also a unique example of collaboration between professional researchers and grassroots teachers. group 2, the potential action researchers, attended a symposium on action research at the national university of colombia, bogotá campus, 39 grassroots action research and the greater good profile vol. 13, no. 1, april 2011. issn 1657-0790. bogotá, colombia. pages 31-54 in december 2009. they were asked to complete two questionnaires: (1) about the difficulties they encountered in their current teaching positions (appendix 1); and (2) about which topic they would choose, should they be given a chance to do action research (appendix 2). the data generated by these two questionnaires are voluminous and will not be analysed in all their detail here5; rather, these data are also used to triangulate the data generated by group 1 and to gauge the extent to which grassroots teachers consider, or do not consider, action research as a path beyond immediate professional development to greater empowerment within the profession. just as profile was selected for its consistent service to grassroots teacher researchers, the symposium at the national university in bogotá, colombia, was used to collect the data for group 2 because of the enthusiasm with which action research has been embraced by the colombian tesol community in general and at the national university in particular. topics data: group 1 the first issue of profile was published in 2000 and the most recent in october 2010. data for this study are collected from issues numbers 1, 2, 6, 7, 10 and 11(2) which correspond to the years 2000, 2001, 2005, 2006, 2008, and 2009. (profile now has two issues a year; hence 11(2)). selecting these issues from the beginning, middle and end of the decade offers, it is believed, a fair representation of the trends in profile. in the case of both publications (profile and aruae), only those articles pertaining to teacher research at primary and secondary schools are used for 5 the data not discussed here are being used in articles which are forthcoming at the end of 2010. the data on the grounds that, in tesol, it is in these two sectors of education that the grassroots conditions described above are most common and most acute. thus, articles on the teaching of efl to adults at universities or language academies were not included in the tally; neither were theoreticalreflective articles as they are not relevant to the present discussion. description and presentation of data: group 1 altogether, the data for this group are made up of 41 topics: 35 derived from the titles of the relevant articles in the six profile journals; six from the relevant chapters in aruae. as a title does not always accurately predict the contents of an article, all the articles and chapters were read to ensure that the topic identified through the title is in fact the topic discussed. similarly, the title may give the impression that the focus of the research is narrow i.e. of interest only to a specific teacher and/ or of little relevance to the profession as a whole, but reading the article may reveal that the focus is not so narrow and the topic may indeed be of wider interest than anticipated. conversely, titles which promise a wider focus, especially topics containing words like ‘approach’ are sometimes researched from a very narrow basis. where these issues arise, they are dealt with in comments after table 1. table 1 contains the titles of the articles (profile) and chapters (aruae) selected. each entry in table 1 is given a number for ease of reference within this study. there is a key (below the table) for the abbreviations in the titles and to indicate how the articles were authored; for spacesaving reasons, the authorship is recorded in the same column as the source. 40 universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras rainey table 1. sources of topics: data for group 1 no. title of article source and authorship 1 using play activities and aids to develop speaking skills profile 1 cc2 2 encouraging speaking through the use of storytelling cc3 3 reading comprehension: a viable challenge for public school pupils cc3 4 group work as a means of getting students to participate sa 5 homework in the learning process sa 6 improvement of writing proficiency through creation of homogeneous groups cc2 7 kinds of materials to use as homework sa 8 increasing ss’ motivation by using computers cc3 9 reading: a motivating and interactive process cc2 10 interacting in english through games profile 2 sa 11 the fun approach to english learning cc2 12 improving speaking through role plays and dramatizations cc3 13 stimulating an inquiring attitude sa 14 improving new vocabulary learning in context sa 15 literacy development in kindergarten sa 16 encouraging interaction by applying cooperative learning sa 17 motivating ss by responding to their interests and learning styles sa 18 improving ss’ english through problem solving activities cc2 19 state of teaching process writing in last two years of hs profile 6 sa 20 the process writing approach: an alternative to composition guides sa 21 the process of writing a text by using cooperative learning sa 22 reading: a meaningful way to promote learning english in hs cc2 23 promoting oral interaction in large groups through tbl sa 24 developing oral skills through communicative and interactive tasks sa 25 ts in public schools engage in a study group to reach general agreements about a common approach to teach english cc2 26 revising a fl curriculum: a challenging and enhancing experience at a public school in bogotá profile 7 cc5 27 materials assessment: a shared responsibility among ts and ss sa 28 songs in the english class: a strategy to encourage 10th graders’ oral production sa 29 a case study of the learning styles of low-level ss in a private school in bogotá cc2 30 children’s oral communication in english activities: an exploratory study cc2 31 the role of warming up activities in adolescent ss’ involvement profile 10 sa 32 teacher collaboration in a public school to set up a language resources centres: portraying advantages, benefits and challenges sa 41 grassroots action research and the greater good profile vol. 13, no. 1, april 2011. issn 1657-0790. bogotá, colombia. pages 31-54 33 promoting oral production through the tbl approach: a study at a public secondary school in colombia profile 11(2) cc2 34 language assessment in colombia: a call for more teacher education and teacher training cc2 35 parental involvement in english homework tasks: bridging the gap between school and home cc2 36 promoting the use of picture storybooks, supported by other word-based strategies, to introduce and teach thematic vocabulary aruae sa 37 the effect on reading of teaching phonics to grade one students sa 38 involving learners in establishing an interactive classroom sa 39 learning hand in hand: applying collaborative learning activities in the english for young learners (eyl) classroom sa 40 using learning centres to cater for different multiple intelligences in the efl classroom sa 41 the use of mother tongue in group work sa key tbl: task based learning ts: teachers ss: students (learners) collaboratively sa: single authorship (t worked alone) cc2: two colleagues (ts) worked collaboratively cc3/4/5: three/four/five colleagues (ts) worked prcgt: professional researchers working collaboratively with grassroots teachers classification of data: group 1, as presented in table 2 table 2 contains the classification of the data for group 1 into a framework derived mainly from the discussions in ‘genesis of and developments in action research’ and ‘grassroots efl teachers’ above. the framework has two main categories: (a) environmental issues, which is based on caillods and postlewaithe, with some modifications to accommodate the teaching of english as a foreign language (for example, teachers’ fl competence) and recent advances in fl pedagogy (learner behaviours, as in strategies and learning styles); and (b) difficulties, as discussed in grassroots efl teachers, and likewise modified in line with efl considerations (see, for example, appel, 1995; prodromou & clandfield, 2007). the sub categories within each major classification are arbitrary and could, depending on individual teaching contexts, be switched, especially from environmental issues to difficulties. for example, testing program mes (environmental issues) could in some circumstances be classified under difficulties, as could students’ home backgrounds but, unlike the subcategories under difficulties, they are not inherently problematic. testing programmes and students’ home backgrounds can in fact be supportive of students’ learning. where topics have a narrow methodological focus, as in ‘songs in the english class: a strategy to encourage 10th graders’ oral production’ (article 28), they are classified under teacher methodology. if, however, the methodology issue is of wider application, it is classified under curriculum (curriculum 42 universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras rainey being used here in its wider sense of the overall fl programme including language content, materials to be used and methodologies to be applied) or under large classes (see below) for the discussion of topics 16 and 18). some topics could belong in two subcategories; thus 7 could be classified under materials or homework. where this is the case, the topic is placed in both subcategories without brackets under the subcategory, which is the main focus in the article, and in brackets under the other subcategory. when calculating percentages, however, only the main focus is considered. some specific clarifications of the classifications are in order. articles 4 and 11 would appear to be quite broad in their treatment of the topic but they are in fact narrowly focused: article 4 is concerned with participation in speaking activities, as opposed to participation in the language learning experience in general; article 11 promises a fun approach to learning english in general but deals only with the use of games in the teaching of efl. thus, both of these topics are classified in teacher methodology (see table 2), not under one of the bigger issues e.g. curriculum. article 13 does not do itself justice inasmuch as the wording of the title is so vague but it is in fact about the integration of the science and english curricula in the early years of school and, for this reason, classified under curriculum (see table 2). although article 16 focuses only on improving the skills of listening and speaking, it does so in the context of large group teaching; thus, it is classified in the difficulties section under large groups. article 17 is widely focused taking into account the learner as a whole person when attempting to motivate him/ her and thus classified under the general heading of motivation. likewise, article 18 is concerned with the integration of all four skills through a problem solving approach and could, potentially, make a useful contribution to curriculum reform; hence, it is classified under curriculum. five of aruae chapters are of interest: 37, 38, 39, 40 and 41. at first glance, all the topics represented in the titles for this publication would appear to offer ‘more of the same’ in terms of efl methodologies i.e. the same problems and solutions as those traditionally offered by tesol pundits from the inner circle. on closer reading, however, five of these action research projects reveal (a) an angle to the topics which is wide enough to make them significant in terms of general teaching methodology throughout the national primary school (all the research reports are ps based) level, and (b) a sensitivity to national realities; thus, these reports could be taken into account for efl primary school curriculum reform in the united arab emirates (uae) and hence their classification under curriculum issues. authorship of the articles reveals that as many as 17, almost 50%, of the 35 profile projects, were carried out collaboratively with two or more colleagues working together. this is an important finding and is discussed under data analysis below. all of the six aruae projects were conducted by a teacher working alone (sa), not surprisingly given that the teachers in question were carrying out their research within the context of their teaching practicum. of great interest and significance for the current discussion, however, is how such a project (action research in the context of teaching practicum) got started in the first place. it is clear that it is the outcome of international collaboration i.e. of professional researchers from western contexts, in this case the university of melbourne, working with teacher educators and their trainee teachers at the higher colleges of technology in the uae. thus, while each of the aruae projects is classified as sa (ts working alone), the overall project would be classified as prcgt (professional researchers working collaboratively with grassroots teachers). 43 grassroots action research and the greater good profile vol. 13, no. 1, april 2011. issn 1657-0790. bogotá, colombia. pages 31-54 table 2. classroom environment issues classroom environment issues profile aruae % of 41 ss’ home backgrounds 35 2% curriculum 13, 15, 18, 22, 25, 26, (29), (31), 32 37, 38, 39, 40, 41 29% materials (7), 27 2% time for instruction 0% homework 5, 7, (35) 4.9% ethos of schools 0% motivation 8, 17, 31 7% ts’ perceptions of ss’ ability 0% ts’ fl competence 0% teacher methodologies 1, 2, 3, 4, 6, 9, 10, 11, 12, 14, 19, 20, 21, 24, 28, 30, 33 36, (41) 42% learner behaviours/styles 29 (40) 2% testing programme 34 2% difficulties profile uae % of 41 large classes 16, 23 4.9% mixed ability groups 0% discipline 0% ts have two jobs 0% demands of new curricula 0% physical conditions (classroom size; room temperatures) 0% no in-service 0% all of the aruae research was carried out at the ps level, where it is hard not to integrate methodology with wider curriculum issues. it may also be an outcome of the collaboration with the researchers (see comments on data above) but this can only be confirmed through further research. that curriculum is the second biggest subcategory for the colombian and the first for the uae researchers, seven and five respectively, is encouraging as this makes the total for the curriculum-relevant topics 12 altogether, i.e., 29%. furthermore, two of the colombian topics in other categories (29, 31) have a strong relevance for the curriculum so this statistic discussion of data in tables 1 and 2 as predicted, the main focus of the research topics for this group is teacher methodology: 18 (42%) out of the 41, with 17, exactly 50%, of the topics classifying in this category in the case of profile. thus, the practice of action research for the profile teachers is fundamentally aimed at teacher professional development. in the case of aruae, the picture is somewhat different, with only one topic in this subcategory. the focus on methodological issues has, in terms of five out of the six aruae topics (83%), wider implications for the curriculum. this is perhaps due to the fact that 44 universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras rainey of 29% is on the conservative side. also worthy of note is the fact that of the seven curriculumfocused projects carried out by the colombians, more than half, four, which is 57%, were carried out collaboratively, which could possibly be interpreted as an implicit recognition that collaboration is highly recommendable when addressing bigger issues (see data analysis below). it is, however, of concern that the topics selected by this group of researchers concentrate so markedly on two aspects of environment issues, with other elements, such as time for instruction, ts’ fl competence, testing programme, which con tribute just as much to the teaching-learning processes, receiving very little or no attention. even more perplexing is the fact that only two of the topics deal directly with commonly acknowledged major difficulties of grassroots efl teachers. the data for group 2 serves, on the one hand, to further compound this issue; on the other, to illuminate it. group 2 data these data were collected at the beginning, in the case of questionnaire 1, and at the end, in the case of questionnaire 2, (see appendixes 1 and 2 respectively) of the final plenary of a day’s symposium on action research. not all the participants at the symposium were new to action research; some of them had already done at least one action research project and had published their reports in profile or other journals, but judging by their enthusiasm for it (see cárdenas, 2003), were open to further projects. similarly, not all of the participants were drawn from ps and hs, although ps and hs teachers were in the majority. detailed reporting and analyses of the data from this group will form the bases of at least one other article on teachers’ choices of topics for their potential action research projects. here it is used solely to triangulate and expand on the discussion of the data collected from group 1. areas of difficulty: data questionnaire 1 altogether 89 copies of questionnaire 1 were distributed. respondents were given a number by the monitors who distributed the questionnaires and asked to register the number in the space provided on questionnaire 1 and to memorize their number, or write down their number, as they would need it again at the end of the plenary. respondents were given seven minutes to complete the questionnaire, the main aim of which was to check for the most common and salient difficulties for the symposium participants, most of whom work in similar contexts to those of the profile researchers (group 1). 83 questionnaires were returned. only 47 respondents filled in item 12 but the percentages given in table 3 for this item is based on 83 respondents as, in not responding, the other 36 participants were by omission registering a 0 rating for other sources of difficulties. for this study, ratings 8-10 were interpreted as ‘very difficult;’ 5-7 ‘difficult’; 3-4 ‘not very difficult’; and 0-2 ‘not at all difficult’. of interest here are the four items in questionnaire 1 which the highest number of respondents rated as ‘very difficult’ and the three most common additional difficulties they identified in item 126. the results are presented in table 3. 6 as noted earlier, the remaining data for these two questionnaires will be processed in another/other articles as here there is insufficient space to analyse these data in full. 45 grassroots action research and the greater good profile vol. 13, no. 1, april 2011. issn 1657-0790. bogotá, colombia. pages 31-54 comment on results for questionnaire 1 what is most striking about these results is the very high number, 62 out of 83, (74%) who identify their own language ability as a major source of difficulty; this identification, however, was not an area of action research for group 1 researchers even though the profile researchers come from the same teaching environment. yet, stenhouse (as quoted by elliott & ching-tien above) was clear that action research could help teachers improve not only their teaching practices but also their competence in the subject matter they taught. just as striking are the reasonably high ratings, 42% and 35%, given respectively to items 6 and 9, which could be seen as two sides of the same coin: pupils’ affective problems and lack of interaction between the school or teachers and parents. in the data for group 1, only one of the research projects (35) addresses the issue of pupils’ backgrounds. large classes posed a predictable major difficulty which was given a high rating by 28 (34%) of this group but again it gets scant attention in group 1 with only two projects, 16 and 23, addressing this issue. for additional sources of difficulty (item 12 in questionnaire 1), nine (11%) out of the 47 who answered this item identified ‘time’ as problematic in the sense that the time allocated to instruction is too short in their contexts. yet, none of the action researchers in group 1 focused on this aspect of their teaching even though it could lend itself to a variety of action research projects, such as maximising time through homework tasks, collaborating with teachers of other subjects in the reinforcement of knowledge, and more obviously using the internet7. specific aspects of teacher 7 in the united arab emirates and in the main cities in colombia, most ps and hs now have access to internet facilities and where they table 3. most difficult aspects of teaching situations item number topic area 8-10 rating % of 83 11 ts language ability: i would like to have more opportunities to improve my linguistic competence 62 74% 6 ls affective problems: some learners come to class with affective problems derived from their home situations 35 42% 9 parent-school collaboration: there is little communication with the parents of the pupils, for example, about why it is good for their children to learn english 29 35% 1 class size: classes are too large 28 34% 12 any other major source of difficulty which comes to mind spontaneously 8-10 rating % of 83 time: class time is too short; how to make the most of the time available 9 11% (a) aspects of methodology: phonics, games, listening. 7 8.4% (b) ss language development: few opportunities for ss to use language outside class 7 8.4% 46 universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras rainey methodology, for example, how to use games in the language classroom, were identified by 7 (8.4%) of the respondents as another source of difficulty under item 12. this echoes the data for group 1, but to a much lesser degree, where 50% of the topics were drawn from this source. not enough opportunities to use english in the outside community also got a rating of 8%, which could serve to point future teacher researchers in the direction of another very useful action research topic. potential topics for action research projects group 2 these data were generated by questionnaire  2 (open-ended), which was completed at the end of the plenary. section 1 of table 4, research area preferences, reports the data relevant to the four most popular potential areas of research. section 2, sources of greatest difficulty, contains the data for the number of respondents to questionnaire 2, whose research preferences reflected the seven areas of greatest difficulty identified by the same group of respondents at the beginning of the symposium (table 3). research area preferences no. % of 83 motivation 19 23% methodology 17 20% curriculum 12 14% learner behaviours 4 5% sources of greatest difficulties no. % of 83 teachers’ language competence 0 0% learners’ affective problems related to home backgrounds 0 0% lack of communication between school and parents 2 2% large classes 0 0% time allotted for instruction 0 0% do not have access in the schools in colombia they have it at home. comparisons of table 4 with table 2 nineteen (23%) of the group 2 respondents (see table 4 above) said they would like to do research on aspects of learner motivation, whereas only 3 (7.3%) selected motivation as a research focus in group 1 (see table 2). this may be because group 1 respondents had more experience as teachers and had already sorted out their problems with learner motivation. it is worth pointing out, however, that many of the motivation topics for group 2 were methodology-oriented, as in motivating learners through songs. with respect to teachers’ methodologies, 17 (20%) of group 2 respondents said they would opt for a topic in this area, the second favourite topic source, but not as large as in group 1, where it was the most common source of topics: 42% (see table 2). with respect to the curriculum, the gap between the two groups is smaller: 29% of group 1 respondents opted for research into curriculum matters, while 12 (14%) of group 2 respondents identified it as their preference; a difference of 15%. it is in learner behaviours where the gap is smallest with 2% of group 1 opting to do research in this area and 4% table 4. results for questionnaire 2 relevant to tables 2 and 3 47 grassroots action research and the greater good profile vol. 13, no. 1, april 2011. issn 1657-0790. bogotá, colombia. pages 31-54 in group 2 identifying it as their preferred area of potential research but both of these percentages are very low indeed. comparison with table 3: although 76% had, at the beginning of the plenary, identified their own language competence as an area they needed help with, no one (0%) selected research into ways of improving their command of english as a possible choice of topic. likewise, no one (0%) opted for a topic related to their learners’ affective needs even though 42.1% had selected this as a major problem area in their teaching context. two (2.4%) said they would do research into parental involvement with the school but as many as 34.9% had identified it as a major source of difficulty. very surprisingly, no one expressed an interest in doing research into large class teaching. similarly, although time allotted for instruction had been identified as the most common additional source of difficulty (11%), no one (0%) said they would opt to do action research in this aspect of their teaching either. discussion and analysis of data although this is a small study, certain patterns of teacher behaviour with respect to their action research emerge for these two groups. these are reflected in the answers to the original research questions: a) to what extent, if any, are the teachers in this study being empowered through their action research activities? clearly, teachers in group 1 have been empowered inasmuch as they have taken control of their own teaching practices and endeavoured to improve them through their own research. they have taken a big step away from the mainstream dependency grassroots teachers showed for so many years when attempting to improve their practices exclusively through the application of the results of research carried out in contexts different from their own. empowerment could also be seen to be enhanced by the fact that these teachers have not only done their own research, but have published it too. this, as reported above, has added to their feelings of self-worth (raising self-esteem) which, in turn, will no doubt have positive effects on their selfconfidence as teachers, hence, a positive effect on their teaching performances. it would seem unwise, however, to limit the empowerment of teachers to the narrow sphere of teachers’ immediate profes sional development. empowerment as proposed by freire (1969) and clearly embraced by stenhouse (see discussion above) goes beyond this interpretation into the realm of the profession as a whole, the realm of the greater good. dewey, lewin, and stenhouse, as discussed above, were concerned that teachers would be instrumental in moulding the knowledge base upon which their professions as a whole are built, and in promoting general change. in essence, action research typifies a grassroots effort to find answers to important questions or to foster change. most important, action research can support the call for transformative educational leadership (grogan, donaldson, & simmons, 2007, p. 2). again, inasmuch as these teachers have generated knowledge relevant to their actual grassroots circumstances, there is scope for such moulding and change to take place. whether or not mainstream tesol will accommodate this knowledge is another matter and the extent to which this is, or is not, happening is a question for future research projects. it is important to note, however, that now that teachers have generated such knowledge, the onus for accommodating it into mainstream tesol is on the shoulders of mainstream educators and not on those of the grassroots teachers –or their educators. their responsibility is to ensure that their research addresses all the issues which impinge on their teaching and this leads us to the next question. 48 universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras rainey b) is the research, as practised by the active researchers, or as would be practised by the potential researchers, comprehensive? in other words, does it (would it) address a wide spectrum of the factors influencing and challenging teaching and learning in their situations? on the one hand, need for improvement in the subject matter (efl), the affective needs of the learners, lack of parental involvement with schools, mixed ability groups, large classes and insufficient time allotted for instruction are identified either in the literature review or by group 2, or both, as major sources of difficulty. yet, there appears to be a tendency for both groups to shy away from choosing topics related to these issues in their action research projects. it is, therefore, very hard to make a claim that, at this point in the history of the action research of these grassroots teachers, they are addressing all the questions which they find challenging in their specific context. this is true also of the researchers for the aruae publication. although they do focus on wider curriculum issues, the topics all derive from an interest in methodology and general methodology issues are only one aspect of the curriculum; thus, there is still an imbalance in the distribution of the topics. difficulties common to the uae teaching context8, mixed ability groups, the issue of dealing with culturally alienating efl materials, the testing programmes, for instance, are not addressed. there is on the part of both contingents in group  1, however, what would appear to be a nascent interest in taking their research beyond their immediate classroom into the wider tesol context (see curriculum for both the profile and aruae researchers in table 2). 8 having worked in this context, the author is familiar with the challenges. that these researchers eschew in their choice of research topics some of the major difficulties they themselves identify may have several explanations. first, they may feel intuitively that they need help with addressing major challenges. second, the examples of action research they have been exposed to in the literature may, for the most part, have been strongly oriented towards methodology issues. thus, the need for mainstream tesol to recycle those research projects from the grassroots which address other issues of concern in the grassroots realm is even more pressing. third, inasmuch as all of these researchers are developing in their field, although some more so than others, it may be that their choice or preference of topic has been made or expressed in line with how they see the future outcomes. in other words, while finding their feet as researchers, they, not unreasonably, want to tackle a problem with which they will have a measure of success, and therefore, avoid more complex issues. c) is the action research carried out not only for the teachers’ professional self-development but also for the greater good i.e. for the community of tesol educators and learners as a whole? if teachers are improving in their individual practices as a result of action research, then clearly the greater good is being served as the profession as a whole is benefiting from better teaching. there is also evidence, in both the profile and aruae contingents in group 1, which would appear to indicate a nascent concern for bigger issues. it would be hard to claim, however, that, as yet, grassroots action research as represented in the choice of topics and topic preferences of these groups is generating in terms of their knowledge and that of the mainstream ‘a dialectic tension ... an open atmosphere where inputs from each perspective could challenge and stimulate the other’ (kolb, 1984, p. 10). that grassroots researchers have taken the first major steps in a process which will help them 49 grassroots action research and the greater good profile vol. 13, no. 1, april 2011. issn 1657-0790. bogotá, colombia. pages 31-54 influence the profession as a whole is undeniable. it behoves them at this point to reflect on their choices of research topics in order to ensure that they are not in fact endorsing the knowledge from, and concerns of, the dominant groups as it is the very problem of the top-down flow of knowledge which action research is supposed to resolve. d) is there evidence that teachers or professional researchers and teachers work collaboratively on their action research projects? there is and this is one of several encouraging outcomes of this study. the aruae is a welcome and valuable example of international collaboration between teacher trainers and trainee teachers and that collaboration appears to have contributed to the success of the project. as for the profile researchers, there is a clear tendency to do action research with colleagues, with 17 out of the 35 colombian researchers, that is, exactly 50% opting to do their research with at least one colleague. interviewing the collaborators, both for the aruae and profile about the strategies employed for, and benefits of, the collaboration could provide more important insights into this aspect of grassroots action research in tesol and would help prepare the ground for the collaboration which appears to be needed to address those problems which, because of their exigencies, these action researchers seem to be avoiding. concluding comments this study is itself not without problems. first, had circumstances permitted, interviews with the respondents to questionnaires 1 and 2 would have provided their specific answers to some of the questions this study poses, for example, “why are some obvious areas of research being avoided?”, and not limited the answers to mere speculation on the part of the author. second, a full tally of the articles published in profile so far might have resulted in a more favourable balance between topics derived from methodology and those from other areas. third, interviews with the international collaborators of the aruae publication could have provided some useful benchmarks for future collaboration in other contexts. despite these problems, it is hoped that the study has at least sparked some interest in the issues discussed, as synthesised below. that most of the grassroots teachers in this study did not, or do not aspire to, research topics which they identify as representing major sources of difficulties is, on the one hand and for the reasons discussed in the analysis of the data, a source of concern; on the other hand, these data may harbour an implicit message from grassroots teachers to the tesol community in the sense that, to research the bigger issues, grassroots teachers need help: help from professional researchers, from the institutions within which they work and the government departments who encourage them to do action research. this help was provided in the case of the aruae publication, and with laudable results. even the aruae researchers, however, appear to view methodology as the main point of departure for their action research endeavours. that this might be the result of the focus of their teacher development programmes serves to alert teacher educators to the need to check that the examples of action research projects to which they expose their trainees derive from a wider scope of topic sources and teaching contexts. in this way, teachers should come to realise that action research is a way of attempting to mitigate all obstacles in their environment (dewey); for example, overcoming problems with competence in the subjects they teach. it is also important that the problem solving aspect of action research is not sidelined in favour of the mere practising of a procedure and that grassroots researchers become aware that they can, 50 universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras rainey should, and have a right to influence the profession as a whole through finding their specific solutions to problems. finally, this study is not to be understood as a criticism of the action researchers and potential action researchers whose research topics and topic preferences are at the core of the discussion. despite identifying areas of concern, the study celebrates the outstanding achievements of the researchers in group 1 and the enthusiasm and interest of those in group 2. the progress in grassroots efl teachers’ action research has, over the past decade, been quite remarkable; in 1999, few applied linguists would have believed that publications like profile and aruae would ever materialise, let alone progress and develop –as is the case with profile. the credit for this progress goes first to the researchers themselves, many of whom work in extremely difficult circumstances, to the determined efforts of the teacher educators, and, in the case of aruae, to their institutional and international collaborators. it is hoped that this study will inspire other professional researchers to offer similar assistance to grassroots teacher researchers as the data analysis would seem to indicate that grassroots researchers find it too daunting to deal with the complex issues on their own. the tone of much of the literature on action research in tesol is one of uncritical enthusiasm which can, in the long term, be counterproductive. this study is to be interpreted as a stock-taking exercise of what is being achieved in the field, serving principally to flag up areas which require some thought, attention and even reorientation to help keep the ship on course. documents consulted action research in english language teaching in the uae. a. warne, m. o’brien, z. syed, m. zuriek (eds.) abu dhabi: higher colleges of technology press. profile issues in teachers’ professional development, 1, 2000. m. l. cárdenas (ed.), universidad nacional de colombia. human sciences faculty, bogotá. profile issues in teachers’ professional development, 2, 2001. m. l. cárdenas (ed.), universidad nacional de colombia. human sciences faculty, bogotá. profile issues in teachers’ professional development, 6, 2005. m. l. cárdenas (ed.), universidad nacional de colombia. human sciences faculty, bogotá. profile issues in teachers’ professional development, 7, 2006. m. l. cárdenas (ed.), universidad nacional de colombia. human sciences faculty, bogotá. profile issues in teachers’ professional development, 10, 2008. m. l. cárdenas (ed.), universidad nacional de colombia. human sciences faculty, bogotá. profile issues in teachers’ professional development 11(2) 2009. m. l. cárdenas (ed.), universidad nacional de colombia. human sciences faculty, bogotá. references appel, j. (1995). diary of a language teacher. oxford: macmillan heinemann. barrow, r., & woods, r. (1988). an introduction to philosophy of education (3rd edition). london and new york: routledge. caillods, f., & postlewaite, n. (1989). teaching/learning conditions in developing countries. prospect, 14(2), 182-190. cárdenas, m. (2003). teacher researchers as writers: a way to sharing findings. colombian applied linguistics journal, 5, 49-64. clark, j.l. (1987). curriculum renewal in school foreign language teaching. oxford: oxford university press. cohen, l., manion, l., & morrison, k. (2000). research methods in education (5th edition). london and new york: routledge and falmer. dewey, j. (1923). how we think. london: d. c. heath & co. dewey, j. (1977). the middle years, 4, (1907-1909). carbondale: southern illinois university press. 51 grassroots action research and the greater good profile vol. 13, no. 1, april 2011. issn 1657-0790. bogotá, colombia. pages 31-54 dimitriadis, g., & kamberelis, g. (2006). theory for education. new york london: routledge. elliott, j., & ching-tien, t. (2008). what might confucius have to say about action research? education action research, 16(4), 569-578. freire, p. (1969). pedagogy of the oppressed. new york: herder & herder. grogan, m., donaldson, j., & simmons, j. (2007, may 19). disrupting the status quo: the action research dissertation as a transformative strategy. retrieved from the connexions web site: http://cnx.org/content/m14529/1.2/ hassanova, d., & shadieva, t. (2008). implementing communicative language teaching in uzbekistan. tesol quarterly, 42(1), 138-143. kachru, y. (1985). standards, codification and sociolinguistic realism: the english language in the outer circle. in r.quirk & h. widdowson (eds.), english in the world: teaching and learning the language and literature (pp. 11-30). cambridge: cambridge university press. kamarul kabilan, m. (2007). english language teachers reflecting on reflections: a malaysian experience. tesol quarterly, 41(4), 681-706. kemmis, s. (1995). some ambiguities in stenhouse’s notion of the ‘the teacher as researcher’: towards a new resolution. in r. jean (ed.), an education that empowers (pp. 73-111). clevedon, philadelphia, adelaide: multilingual matters ltd.. kemmis, s., & mctaggart, r. (eds.). (1992). the action research planner (third edition). geelong, victoria, australia: deakin university press. kolb, d. a. (1984). experiential learning. experience as the source of learning and development. englewood cliffs, new jersey: prentice hall. lewin, k. (1946). research and minority problems. journal of social issues, 2, 34-46. lewin, k. (1948). resolving social conflicts; selected papers on group dynamics. gertrude w. lewin (ed.). new york: harper & row. lewin, k. (1952). field theory in social science: selected theoretical papers. london: tavistock publications. mertler, c.a. (2009). action research (second edition). los angeles, london, new delhi: sage publications. phillipson, r. (1992). linguistic imperialism. oxford: oxford university press. prodromou, l., & clanfield, l. (2007). dealing with difficulties. england: delta publishing. riddell, a. (1999). evaluations of educational reform programmes in developing countries: whose life is it anyway? international journal of educational development, 19(6), 383-394. saud, u., & johnston, m. (2006). cross-cultural influences on teacher education reform: reflections on implementing the integrated curriculum in indonesia. journal of education for teaching, 32(1), 3-20. senior, r. m. (2006). the experience of language teaching. cambridge: cambridge university press. smith, m.k. (2001). kurt lewin, groups, experiential learning and action research, the encyclopedia of informal education. retrieved from http://www.infed.org/thinkers/ et-lewin.htm somekh, b. (2006). action research: a method for change and development. buckingham: open university press. stenhouse, l. (1975). an introduction to curriculum research and development. london: heinemann. stringer, e.t. (1999). action research (second edition). thousand oaks, london, new delhi: sage publications. winter, r. (1996). some principles and procedures for the conduct of action research. in o. zuber-skerritt (ed.). new directions in action research (pp. 13-27). london: falmer. zappa-hollman, s. (2007). efl in argentina’s schools: teachers’ perspectives on policy changes and instruction. tesol quarterly, 41(3), 618-625. 52 universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras rainey about the author isobel rainey has worked in the uk, south america, and the middle and far east as an efl teacher, lecturer in applied linguistics and textbook writer. her main research interest concerns the teaching of efl in challenging circumstances. she is currently member of the gese/ise panel for trinity college london. acknowledgements i would like to express my gratitude to the editor and anonymous reviewers for their comments and suggestions during the process of publishing this article. any errors are of course mine alone. 53profile vol. 13, no. 1, april 2011. issn 1657-0790. bogotá, colombia. pages 31-54 53 appendix 1: questionnaire used at the profile symposium to inquire about the difficulties teachers encountered in their current teaching positions profile symposium first activity number: ___________________ on a scale of 0 (does not apply at all) to 10 (applies 100%), rate the extent to which each of the following statements applies to your particular teaching circumstances. do not attempt to put the statements into an ascending order of applicability. 1. classes are too large: _____________________________________________________________ 2. the range of levels/abilities in each class is very wide: ____________________________________ 3. there is not enough money to buy appropriate resources (teaching materials and aids): ___________ 4. there are serious problems with discipline in some classes: _______________________________ 5. the motivation to learn english of some students/groups is very low: _________________________ 6. some learners clearly come to class with affective problems derived from their home situation: _____ there is little enthusiasm on the part of the school/institution for innovations to teaching or the curriculum or for action research: ____________________________________________________ 7. few teachers of other subjects are interested in working collaboratively to change teaching/learning approaches: there is little communication with the parents of the pupils e.g. about why it is good for their children to learn english: 8. i have to hold down two jobs to make a living and that limits the time i have to think about and research major sources of difficulties in my classes: _______________________________________ 9. i would like to have more opportunities to improve my linguistic competence: _________________ 10. any other major source of difficulty (just one) which comes to mind spontaneously: (please rate): 54 universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras rainey appendix 2: questionnaire used at the profile symposium to ask teachers which topic they would choose, should they be given a chance to do action research profile symposium second activity number: _______________________ now that you have attended this talk, take a few minutes to think about an aspect of your teaching experience which you would like to research (through action research): _________________________________________________________________________________ _________________________________________________________________________________ _________________________________________________________________________________ _________________________________________________________________________________ _________________________________________________________________________________ _________________________________________________________________________________ _________________________________________________________________________________ _________________________________________________________________________________ _________________________________________________________________________________ _________________________________________________________________________________ _________________________________________________________________________________ _________________________________________________________________________________ _________________________________________________________________________________ _________________________________________________________________________________ 137profile vol. 17, no. 2, july-december 2015. issn 1657-0790 (printed) 2256-5760 (online). bogotá, colombia. pages 137-146 http://dx.doi.org/10.15446/profile.v17n2.47510 engaging foreign language learners in a web 2.0-mediated collaborative learning process inclusión de estudiantes de lenguas extranjeras en procesos colaborativos de aprendizaje mediados por la web 2.0 gabriel eduardo cote parra*1 universidad de pamplona, pamplona, colombia the purpose of this action research was to explore the types of interactions that foreign language learners experience while using a wiki as a supporting tool for a face-to-face research course. this design allowed me to play a dual role: first, i studied my own classroom setting and students. second, i implemented a pedagogical intervention based on a collaborative online learning interaction. the data were gathered from participants’ posts, and the findings revealed that class tasks promoted an asynchronous voluntary interaction among participants in which they shared knowledge and experiences while expressing the opinions and points of view that enabled them to actively participate in the face-to-face class. key words: collaborative learning, foreign language learning, web 2.0, wiki. el propósito de esta investigación acción fue explorar el tipo de interacciones que estudiantes de lenguas extranjeras presentaron al utilizar una wiki como herramienta de soporte de un curso presencial. este diseño me permitió desempeñar un doble papel. por una parte, estudié mi propio salón de clase y estudiantes; por otra, implementé una intervención pedagógica con base en una interacción colaborativa en línea. la información se recolectó por medio de 128 aportes hechos por los participantes. los hallazgos revelan que las actividades de clase permitieron una interacción asincrónica voluntaria entre los participantes en la cual ellos compartieron saberes y experiencias, a la vez que expresaron opiniones y puntos de vista que les permitieron participar activamente en la clase presencial. palabras clave: aprendizaje colaborativo, aprendizaje de lenguas extranjeras, wikis, web 2.0. * e-mail: gcote@unipamplona.edu.co how to cite this article (apa, 6th ed.): cote parra, g. e. (2015). engaging foreign language learners in a web 2.0-mediated collaborative learning process. profile issues in teachers’ professional development, 17(2), 137-146. http://dx.doi.org/10.15446/profile.v17n2.47510. this article was received on november 26, 2014, and accepted on march 17, 2015. this is an open access article distributed under the terms of the creative commons license attribution-noncommercial-noderivatives 4.0 international license. consultation is possible at http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/. http://dx.doi.org/10.15446/profile.v17n2.47510 mailto:gcote%40unipamplona.edu.co?subject= http://dx.doi.org/10.15446/profile.v17n2.47510 http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/ universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras138 cote parra introduction this article attempts to describe my experiences during an 80-hour research course that was taught during the spring semester 2012. this introductory course was intended to provide foreign language pre-service teachers with qualitative and quantitative theoretical research foundations, methodologies, and evaluations of research. throughout this course, six intermediate-level english students were engaged in collaborative activities while reading, summarizing, and critiquing research papers that allowed them to discuss and compare the relationship between the theoretical foundations learned in class and what is published in the research field of foreign language learning and teaching. b a s e d on my for m e r s tu d e nt s’ fe e d b a c k , and seeking ways to embrace information and communication technologies (icts) to create better learning environments, i designed a wiki as a core element of the course in order for the students to be part of a collaborative, complementary online learning experience that would allow them to interact with one another, post tasks, and provide and receive feedback from others. in contrast to myriad other neologisms, there appears to be a broad consensus on the origins of the term wiki, derived from the hawaiian word for quick, which was coined by ward cunningham, the first creator of a wiki in 1995. its applications are as diverse as humans’ imaginations and as plentiful as humans’ needs. according to vaughan (2008), “wikis have recently emerged as a very powerful digital tool for supporting student collaboration” (p. 48). castaños and piercy (2010) defined a wiki as “an online database that allows users to create, edit, and reflect on the content of a web page” (p. 948). in educational environments, wikis are particularly interesting for learning purposes (reinhold; shih, tseng, & yang; wang & turner ; yukawa as cited in kimmerle, moskaliuk, & cress, 2011). furthermore, wiki users “can share their knowledge, create a joint artifact, discuss and integrate different opinions, and develop innovative ideas [thus] wikis may be considered as powerful tools for learning and knowledge building in educational contexts” (kimmerle et al., 2011, p. 138). accordingly, wikis can be “applied to a diverse set of systems, features, approaches, and projects” (lamb, 2004, p. 38). in my teaching experience, i have found that providing students with technology-supported learning environments implies a dynamic and more engaging way of developing learning projects. in other words, students interact and use a foreign language (fl) in a real context, alongside their peers, and professors are given the opportunity to monitor and obtain up-to-date information on their students’ progress. although “no generation is more at ease with online, collaborative technologies than today’s young people” (economist intelligence unit, 2008, p. 5), today’s classroom teachers seem not to be prepared to address digital natives, “who have grown up in an immersive computing environment. where a notebook and pen may have formed the tool kit of prior generations, today’s students come to class armed with smart phones, laptops, and ipods” (economist intelligence unit, 2008, p. 5). it is customary for most fl teachers to ban the handheld wireless devices students bring to the classroom because they are found to be interrupting. perhaps ater professional training, fl teachers could start to advocate the use of all types of technological gadgets to be integrated into the curriculum. ater having created the wiki becoming-aresearcher (http://becoming-a-researcher.wikispaces. com/), i have come to understand that all of the dynamic processes generated by this student-student interaction through this wiki paved the road for course takers to master the qualitative and quantitative theoretical research foundations, methodologies, and evaluation of education research. mostly, the interactions were guided by the tasks and questions 139profile vol. 17, no. 2, july-december 2015. issn 1657-0790 (printed) 2256-5760 (online). bogotá, colombia. pages 137-146 engaging foreign language learners in a web 2.0-mediated collaborative learning process i asked in order to lead the discussions. although this was a face-to-face course, the wiki provided participants with an opportunity to strengthen the key topics that were developed during class time. however, the wiki also allowed participants to share their reactions and the feelings they experienced as the course gradually developed. two questions guided this study: (a) what type of interactions does the use of the wiki generate among foreign language learners? (b) how does the use of a wiki influence the foreign language learning process? consequently, the purpose of this study was to explore the sorts of interactions foreign language learners experience while using a wiki as a supporting tool to a face-to-face research course. a learning-by-doing experience this qualitative inquiry took place within an introductory research course, which is the first of a set of four research courses. ater a rigorous selfevaluation process in the fl program in which this research took place, it was found that although professors incorporated ict tools into their classes on a regular basis, they had not measured the impact of their use on learning and teaching foreign languages. consequently, i embarked upon a research project to engage fl learners in a web 2.0-mediated collaborative learning process in order to provide pre-service fl teachers with a dual purpose: first, providing fl students with training in ict through a learning-by-doing experience and second, facilitating collaborative knowledge construction in the field of foreign language research by having them become memb ers of t he w i k i b ecoming-a-res earcher. although the students were enrolled in a face-to-face course, the wiki was designed as a core course element for the students to interact with one another mainly based on the activities and tasks i created as part of the course syllabus. theoretical background and literature review technological innovations might help to re design learning and teaching in higher educational environments. as such, professors who are familiar with emergent technologies (e.g., wikis) have come to understand that they “offer powerful opportunities to online collaboration” (godwin-jones, 2003, p. 12). according to bandura, “co-constructing meaning in a democratized digital space has a certain social constructivist elegance” (as cited in higdon, 2005, p. 3). most activities that are suggested through wikis are developed through collaborative work. reading and writing—receptive and productive skills—are the most common language skills used for acquiring and exchanging knowledge. in a wiki, the flow of interactions allows users to play a twofold role: “readers are writers, and readers and writers jointly form a community of collaboration” (ferris & wilder, 2006, p. 2). in an fl setting, this mutual learning appears to be sufficiently valuable. first, students are given real opportunities to improve their competence in the target language while commenting on their classmates’ pro duc t ion, and s e cond, students demonstrate knowledge by posting comments, ideas, and reflections on a specific topic. relevant to the study are the notions of wikis and collaborative learning. as with other web 2.0 applications, the so-called wiki way—“open, prestructured asynchronous collaboration in a text-based environment” (bryant, 2007, p. 11)—allows users to create, edit, and delete web page contents. wikis can be used as collaborative writing tools and have the potential to facilitate “collaborative knowledge building amongst learners” (lee as cited in bryant, 2007, p. 9). after having used wikis for personal projects, i found that they were excellent online environments to support face-to-face courses because they “encourage people to share early drats, interim universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras140 cote parra thoughts and texts for others to contribute, plus they move beyond individual ownership of documents towards a more open, collaborative approach” (bryant, p. 12). the main idea was to give the students an opportunity to co-construct based on one another’s production. a number of studies have reported the use of wikis for educational purposes, such as collaborative learning environments, collaborative construction of wikis, online collaboration, and collaborative knowledge building (boulos, maramba, & wheeler, 2006; bruns & humphreys, 2005; duffy & bruns, 2006; kessler & bikowski, 2010; kimmerle et al., 2011; koçak-usluel & mazman, 2009; li, dong, & huang, 2011; su & beaumont, 2010; and witney & smallbone, 2011). in colombia, a small number of studies have discussed the use of web 2.0 technologies within educational settings, especially the use of blogs. for example, insuasty and zambrano castillo (2010) “examined how student teachers could be empowered as more reflective practitioners through journal keeping and blog group discussions” (p. 87). quintero (2008) conducted research that attempted “to analyze the role that feedback played in the process of writing. participants interacted ‘by means of using blogs’” (p. 7). similarly, espitia and clavijo olarte (2011) reported on a “teacher education experience in which tools such as blogs, earning sotware, e-mail, forums and internet-based tools were used to improve efl learning and teaching” (p. 29), and cote parra (2000), in a small-scale project, described how online discussion groups contribute to fostering learning interactions outside the classroom settings. some studies have reported on implementing other web 2.0 tools, such as webquest (jimenez pulido, 2009); storybird (herrera, 2013); hot potatoes (beltrán lópez, 2009); and blackboard (salinas vacca, 2014). in contrast, i have adopted a collaborative learning perspective based on a dialectical constructivism “that highlights the importance of social interaction in developing knowledge and thought” (moshman as cited in bruning, schraw, norby, & ronning, 2004, p. 195). according to silverman (as cited in cortez, nussbaum, woywood, & aravena, 2009), “t he s e cond are a of res e arch stemming f rom computer-supported collaboration (csc) is computer supported collaborative learning (cscl) which aims at enhancing the learning process and improving students’ academic results with the help of technology” (p. 126). this definition is consistent with the main goal of this project, which allowed students to share their experiences, challenges, and knowledge building while becoming familiar with the theoretical foundations and intricacies of conducting research in the education field. higdon (2005), suggests that wikis allow students to “co-construct meaning in a democratized digital space” (p. 1), and fountain (2005), states that the use of wikis to support collaborative projects helps “promote ‘pride of authorship’ and ownership in the team’s activities.” (vaughan, 2008, p. 56) my incorporating a wiki as a core feature of this course gave the students the opportunity to interact and create a cooperative online learning environment. context of the study during spring semester 2012, 12 foreign language undergraduate students enrolled in a face-to-face introductory course on research at a public university in colombia. this 16-week course was designed to provide an overview on facilitating the theoretical foundations of qualitative and quantitative research, methodologies, and evaluation of fl research. ater having consented to participate in this exploratory qualitative research, the participants embarked upon a web 2.0-mediated collaborative learning experience in which they were required to contribute on a voluntary basis to the suggested activities as an online support to the face-to-face curricular activities. 141profile vol. 17, no. 2, july-december 2015. issn 1657-0790 (printed) 2256-5760 (online). bogotá, colombia. pages 137-146 engaging foreign language learners in a web 2.0-mediated collaborative learning process with regard to the students’ participation, they were expected to make voluntary contributions on the posted activities. students participated as a way to reinforce topics that had been previously studied in class. they posted their individual contributions, and most of them were definitions, brief explanations of research designs, summaries, and personal insights on research papers. in other words, interacting through the wiki helped participants to build their knowledge on topics discussed in class, ask questions, and edit their own posts and their classmates’. as the students participated, they also explored and learned how to use the tools offered by the wiki. description of online tasks throughout the semester, i designed seven tasks to give the students the opportunity to internalize and better comprehend the concepts and theoretical foundations of different qualitative and quantitative research designs. for example, participants engaged in reading, summarizing, and critiquing research papers, which allowed them to discuss and contrast the relationship between theory and what is published in the field of learning and teaching foreign language research. a typical task, at first, asked the participants to read a passage, concept, or research paper; second, to answer a series of questions to check their understanding of the reading selection; and third, to help others by suggesting ways of improving their written answers. the participants were also encouraged to ask one another for help. although most of their interactions were triggered by the task itself, their opinions and comments were also posted throughout the course. although i started using this wiki in 2011, this paper reports on the interactions students and i had during the spring semester 2012. during this course, the participants posted 46 direct messages in response to the seven tasks, and these messages generated 82 messages in the form of questions, comments, or requests for clarifications. method drawing on a naturalistic paradigm, i conducted an action research study because this design “is characterized as research that is done by teachers for themselves” (mertler, 2006, p. 2). action research is defined as “systematic procedures done by teachers (or the individuals in an educational setting) to gather information about, and subsequently improve, the ways their particular educational setting operates, their teaching, and their student learning” (mills as cited in creswell, 2011, p. 550). this design allowed me to play a dual role as researcher and implementer of the pedagogical proposal. the former allowed me to study my own classroom setting and my own students. the latter gave me the opportunity to put into practice a collaborative learning process. data analysis the qualitative analysis is based on 128 posts written by the participants as result of the interactions generated by the tasks that were suggested throughout the course. the posts included: 46 direct responses to the seven tasks and 82 responses in the form of questions, comments, or requests for clarifica tions. i decided to use one message as the unit of analysis because its “parameters are determined by the author of the message” (rourke, anderson, garrison, & archer, 2000, p. 10). in other words, there are no restrictions on the type of message that is produced as a response in terms of length (e.g., a sentence, a word or a paragraph, among others). in addition, using this unit of analysis makes it easy to identify the posts, and the number of units to be analyzed increases as the participants enter any type of response. universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras142 cote parra findings ater i analyzed the 128 posts, they were labeled using 14 codes that were aggregated into two main categories: becoming familiar with course content, which shows how participants expressed their levels of understanding of the concepts, theories, or research designs that we studied in class, and collaborative learning, a category that explains multiple ways of interaction among participants. becoming familiar with course content the participants engaged in an asynchronous exchange of experiences and knowledge while becoming familiar with theories, concepts, and research designs. for the most part, they asked and answered questions in order to have a better understanding of the concepts and theoretical foundations of different qualitative and quantitative research designs by introducing, paraphrasing or summarizing concepts, theories, or designs. this interaction may explain how their contributions allowed them to comprehend the course content and to be better prepared to take part in the face-to-face class. a total of 22 contributions were posted under this category. the participants used the wiki as a way to introduce key concepts or theories that helped them expand on what they were expecting to learn in class. the next sample illustrates how one participant shared a definition with his classmates: hi everybody i just want to share with you a good definition of culture: according to an english anthropologist, edward b. tylor describes culture in his book primitive culture, published in 1971 with this words: culture is the complex whole which includes knowledge, morals, belief, art, law, custum and any other capabilities and habits acquired by a man as a member of society [sic]. although participants posted concepts without thorough discussions on their part that did not generate threaded discussions with the rest of the participants, the simple exercise of using the wiki as a way to share key concepts allowed them to interact actively during the face-to-face discussions in class. as opposed to simply introducing a definition, when paraphrasing a concept, the participants displayed a more demanding intellectual exercise in which they restated concepts using their own words. the following excerpt shows how one participant explained in her own words what she had understood about the concept of culture: hi, guys...today i want to tell you what i learned about “culture”. to begin we could express many definitions of culture according some authors and also for us. now, i learned culture is a way in which the human being learns many social aspects such as beliefs, habits, traditions, customs, language and standards of morality which are part of his personality and allowing him to adopt a role into a society (environment) [sic]. this contribution shows a higher le vel of comprehension because the participant elaborated a more sophisticated sort of sharing in which she decided to paraphrase a concept. in so doing, it seems that she went through a more complex process that required her to first understand the concept and then to restate it in her own words. along with paraphrasing, when summarizing, participants demonstrated that they were able to condense multiple definitions and concepts into reasonably shorter versions. as one participant posted: in short, culture is the process of learning due to experiences, habits, customs and knowledge where it is involved into a social group; with the purpose to educate and to form the human beings with values, beliefs and all time acquiring new experiences [sic]. 143profile vol. 17, no. 2, july-december 2015. issn 1657-0790 (printed) 2256-5760 (online). bogotá, colombia. pages 137-146 engaging foreign language learners in a web 2.0-mediated collaborative learning process it can be inferred that when participants shared summarized versions of concepts or ideas, the wiki enabled them to exercise a more complex skill that involved understanding and restating ideas, thoughts, and concepts. along with paraphrasing, when learners summarized concepts or ideas, they demonstrated a higher level of comprehension. collaborative learning the participants engaged in online collaborative learning in which they expressed their opinions and points of view and used the target language naturally. this collaborative learning experience illustrates the way participants interacted while taking part in the discussions linked with some of the tasks that were suggested during the course. a total of 57 interactions were posted. participants sometimes expressed their opinions through brief posts to thank another student for helping them to improve their posts. the following extract illustrates one of the instances in which a participants showed her appreciation to a classmate: thanks x, your opinion is very important to me to improve in a good way my future critiques...in fact, i tried to do my critique in a clear and specific manner to understand much better and to comply with the purpose of making known my paper, criticizing an action research [sic]. although participants made minor grammatical mistakes or typos while posting their messages, meaning was not compromised. in other words, what really mattered to those who participated in this online community was providing timely advice or suggestions to help others to accomplish tasks more effectively or efficiently. it is important to highlight that the wiki was suggested as a way for the students to be better prepared for the classes. consequently, the written assignments appeared to have been polished based on the suggestions students made on the wiki. similarly, during the face-to-face sessions, having spent some time interacting on the wiki helped them to internalize the concepts and theories and be willing to take part in class discussions. interestingly, participants did not only note their classmates’ mistakes; they also suggested improvements. it seems that the wiki actively engaged students in two-way interactions, giving them the opportunity to negotiate meaning and come to agreements. these exchanges may reflect a collaborative learning environment in which the students helped others to improve their posts, and, conversely, obtained ideas and comments from others. what this seems to suggest is that participants worked cooperatively to achieve understanding while improving their language skills. that is to say, the wiki exposed the participants to a natural way of using linguistic skills while giving them the opportunity to internalize and better comprehend the course content. more importantly, taking into account that the feedback was not regarded as being judgmental, it was customary to accept fellow students’ suggestions. a thorough review of the posts revealed that once they had been viewed, nobody rejected any of them. in other words, the camaraderie exercised during the online interactions strengthened the scholarly and personal ties among participants. with regard to participants’ expressing their points of view on others’ posts, this web-based student-student interaction served to provide others with timely feedback. in the following exchange, one participant advised a classmate on the way she should have fixed a post: “hi x, i think you should be more clear and specific when you write a conclusion.” taking into account that participants were efl learners, they struggled not only with the theories and concepts studied in class but also with the accurate use of the target language. according to some early posts, their participation centered more heavily on language use than on what was needed to fully understand concepts and theories, which was the core element of this universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras144 cote parra course. the following excerpt explains this recurring concern: “you can change analyzed to examined in order to avoid repetition.” although the course aimed at developing participants’ research competences, the wiki allowed them to improve their linguistic skills while positively impacting their face-to-face interactions and their classroom participation as well as their mastering of the course content. eventually, as participants became more comfortable exchanging comments and ideas, they gradually focused on the course content rather than the language itself. the following interaction describes how one participant further elaborated on an earlier comment: i see what do you mean but do not forget quantitative design collecting numeric data from a large number of people. in addition it has three types of quantitative method: experimental, quasi-experimental and survey; in this case quan design generalizes. on the other hand qualitative studies a phenomenon in a real context; i mean, it explores people behaviors; and it does not generalize [sic]. it is noteworthy to mention, however, that the participants’ comprehension levels significantly increased, as evidenced during class time, as the interactions came to center on the content rather than the form. the following contribution depicts how participants interacted on a voluntary basis: finally i would like to know, why are there different cultures in the world??? what do you think is the main reason??? maybe, because everybody think in a different way, or people try to create their own identity [sic]. it seemed that participants found the wiki a way to ask others and to expand their knowledge. furthermore, this online environment provided participants with an opportunity to use the target l ang u age natu r a l ly, by ask i ng and ans we r i ng questions, for example. in addition, the sort of interaction the wiki generated allowed participants to track their own progress, as evidenced by their posts and their evident comfort levels when taking part in class activities. as one of the participants explained: ater this second term i can infer how difficult is to read and reread a paper, for instance, and start doing a critique. nevertheless, being objective, i can see progress in my knowledge in the research field. i still got a doubt and maybe it’s late to clarify it but i want you to help me to stablish the difference between criticism and critique. what i know is that the first is especially adversely and the other one is a serious examination of something but at last they are synonyms. so what? [sic] this participant understood that the best way to gain more robust knowledge on the course content required her posting her contributions on the wiki. as she interacted, she became aware of what she had grasped and what was yet to be mastered. it is important to note, in addition, that this visibility offered participants a twofold benefit. first, the way the tasks were structured allowed them to interact on a voluntary basis, and second, in spite of the grammatical mistakes, the participants progressively became part of an online community that shaped their thinking as they shaped others’. conclusions the purpose of this action research was to explore the sorts of interactions that foreign language learners experienced as they used a wiki as a supporting tool to a face-to-face research course. in an attempt to answer research question one, i would say that once the participants embarked upon web 2.0-mediated c ol l ab or at ive l e ar n i ng , cl a s s t a s k s prom ote d voluntary interactions among them in which they expressed their opinions and points of view. this online environment engaged the participants in an asynchronous exchange of experiences that enabled them to actively participate in the face-to-face class. with regard to the second research question, i consider that this type of online interaction allowed 145profile vol. 17, no. 2, july-december 2015. issn 1657-0790 (printed) 2256-5760 (online). bogotá, colombia. pages 137-146 engaging foreign language learners in a web 2.0-mediated collaborative learning process participants to use the target language naturally. by and large, the tasks required them to answer specific questions, giving them the opportunity to contrast their ideas and understanding with those of others. more importantly, as they developed reading and writing skills, participants were exposed to meaningful learning in context. taking into account that most of the mistakes they made while posting did not compromise meaning, the mistakes were regarded as a natural part of the learning process. in the long term, this type of collaborative learning experience could help participants not only to improve their foreign language competence but also to become lifelong learners. references beltrán lópez, j. f. 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(2000). methodological issues in the content analysis of computer conference transcripts. international journal of artificial intelligence in education, 11. retrieved from http://iaied.org/pub/951/file/951_paper.pdf. salinas vacca, y. (2014). collaborative project work development in a virtual enviroment with low-intermediate undergraduate colombian students. profile issues in teachers’ professional development, 16(1), 29-48. http:// dx.doi.org/10.15446/profile.v16n1.37607. su, f., & beaumont, c. (2010). evaluating the use of a wiki for collaborative learning. innovations in education and teaching international, 47(4), 417-431. http://dx.doi.org /10.1080/14703297.2010.518428. vaughan, n. (2008). the use of wikis and weblogs to support deep approaches to learning. research review, 1(3), 47-60. retrieved from http://journals.ufv.ca/rr/ rr13/article-pdfs/6-vaughan.pdf. witney, d., & smallbone, t. (2011). wiki work: can using wikis enhance student collaboration for group assignment tasks? innovations in education and teaching international, 48(1), 101-110. http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/ 14703297.2010.543765. about the author gabriel eduardo cote parra holds a phd in education from the university of nebraska at lincoln (usa). he is an associate professor at the licenciatura en lenguas extranjeras, inglés-francés at the universidad de pamplona (colombia), and he is the coordinator of the student research group in foreign languages (silex). 163profile vol. 13, no. 2, october 2011. issn 1657-0790. bogotá, colombia. pages 163-179 the role that socioaffective practices play in third graders’ autonomous learning el papel de las prácticas socioafectivas en el aprendizaje autónomo de estudiantes de tercer grado jhonatan perdomo toro* ángela milena rico gonzález** nury catherine huepa salcedo*** universidad distrital francisco josé de caldas, colombia in this article we describe and analyze how autonomous learning emerges in third graders’ socioaffective practices as reconstructed in written narratives. results were obtained by analyzing and reflecting on classroom observation, interviews and written narratives done by the students which let us appre ciate different behaviors and reactions the students usually went through. this study shows that children are able to recognize and reflect on the causes and consequences of situations thanks to the use of different socialization forms implemented by their parents; those forms help them become aware of their duties and homework. it also makes evident that social interaction, with family as the main contributors, plays an important role in children’s development of autonomy. key words: autonomy, socioaffective practices. en este artículo describimos y analizamos cómo surge el aprendizaje autónomo en las prácticas socioafectivas de los estudiantes a través del uso de narrativas escritas. los resultados se obtuvieron a través del análisis y la reflexión de observación de clases, entrevistas y narrativas escritas por los estudiantes, que permitieron apreciar los diferentes comportamientos y reacciones que los estudiantes vivían. este estudio muestra que los niños son capaces de reconocer y reflexionar sobre las causas y las consecuencias de situaciones gracias al uso de diferentes formas de socialización implementadas por los padres. estas socializaciones les ayudan a ser conscientes de sus deberes y tareas. el estudio también evidencia que la interacción social con la familia, como principal contribuyente, desempeña un papel importante en el desarrollo de la autonomía de los niños. palabras clave: autonomía, prácticas socioafectivas. * e-mail: jhonatan.perdomo@yahoo.es ** e-mail: algel13@yahoo.es *** e-mail: huepanury@yahoo.es this article was received on january 31, 2011, and accepted on july 30, 2011. 164 universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras perdomo toro, rico gonzález & huepa salcedo introduction this is a report on how autonomy is revealed through third graders’ socioaffective practices. it is based on our experience as novice researcher teachers in the english classroom, and our interests in order to inquire into learning autonomy when students share experiences, exchange ideas or help each other. the theory that illuminated our project has to do mainly with autonomous learning (holec, 1981; benson, 2001, and lamb & reinders, 2008), and socioaffective practices (piaget & heller, 1968; marc & picard, 1992 and de andres, 2002). this study was important for us as teachers because we had the opportunity to understand students’ socioaffective practices through written narratives as well as to realize how students’ interactions with their parents or classmates contributed to them to make use of their autonomy. we believe the colombian academic community needs to remember that the school should be a place to give students a holistic education that goes beyond academic aspects. this paper starts by presenting the problem, then the theoretical framework describing our main constructs which are autonomy and socioaffective practices; after that, we present the instructional design that let us carry out our research. next, we mention the study itself that includes context and participants, type of research, and data collection procedures. then we present the findings and finally, we gather the conclusions of the study. the problem throughout our experience of about ten months as pre-service teachers in an english classroom of third graders, we noticed that they had an inner motivation to learn because they asked the teacher questions when they did not understand instructions, they asked each other for help and brought extra materials to the class to understand the topic. on the other hand, they showed dependence on the teacher when making simple decisions such as asking what pencil to use when writing a title, or when waiting for the teacher to tell them what to do. these aspects drew our attention to the way we as researchers understand their socioaffective practices in their autonomous learning. in the same vein, the materials, activities, and tasks carried out in the classroom by the teachers did not allow students be autonomous. teachers perceived their role as having general control over their students; “however, the learning process can only happen if learners are willing to contribute” (scharle & szabó, 2000, p. 4). the success in the learning process depends on both the learner and the teacher. based on this problem, our research question was: how does autonomous learning emerge in third graders’ socioaffective practices as reconstructed in written narratives? theoretical framework in order to understand the role that socioaffective practices have on third graders’ autonomous learning, we focused on two theoretical constructs: socioaffective practices and autonomy. socioaffective practices in the education process the cognitive domain has been overemphasized (goleman, 1995, as cited in de andres, 2002) and research has shown that this practice is not the only way to conduct a learning process. both the affective side and the cognitive side are linked and with such combination learners are able to learn and recall better (brown, 1994 as cited in de andres, 2002). affective variables such as self-esteem, inhibition, motivation and anxiety cannot be ignored in the learning process as they have an important influence on students’ perceptions and attitudes towards english classes. children’s affective domain also occurs at home as 165profile vol. 13, no. 2, october 2011. issn 1657-0790. bogotá, colombia. pages 163-179 the role that socioaffective practices play in third graders’ autonomous learning their parents or relatives are the principal source of affection for them and when students lack affection, serious consequences such as aggressiveness and academic problems may occur (dewey, 1964). taking dewey’s ideas into consideration, children need their parents to satisfy their affective domain in order to grow up healthily in this unpredictable world and for them to do well at school. both family and school play an important role in children’s psychological development and autonomous learning due to the interaction that takes place among them. according to marc and picard (1992), developing one’s abilities and potential requires getting in touch with peers in family and school which are defined as social institutions based on cultural meanings and values that shape individuals’ personalities. both family and school are the principal social institutions where individuals start constructing their identities as members of a community, and they comprise the most important places where autonomous learning and social responsibility are fostered (piaget & heller, 1968). in our study we decided to focus on the role that family has on children’s autonomous learning development and how this role is evidenced through their socioaffective practices. as for the family being one of the most important social institutions, hargreaves (1986) says that parents transmit the culture they are surrounded by into their children initially because they filter their culture when interacting with them. relatives play a great influence on children’s personalities as they are the models to follow and imitate or as kuhn in hargreaves (1986) would say: relatives are the significant others; that is to say, the others the individual feels the most committed to both emotionally and psychologically; the others, who have given them their general vocabulary, including the most basic and crucial concepts and categories; the others who have provided them and keep on providing them with the categories of the self and of the other and the meaningful roles those assignments refer to; the others in whose communication the self-concept of the individual is either supported or changed fundamentally. we have mentioned how relatives interact with children, but we have to recognize that interaction at school is as important as interaction at home. according to medina (1989), interaction in the classroom is characterized by the relational effort in diverse situations. because of the new characters in their lives and the school as the new social institution they participate in, students face new situations that demand the acquisition of new roles framed by their classmates’ attitudes. medina also states that interaction in the classroom is a socioemotional and cognitive reality complex and deeply influenced by the physical environment. then, relatives are not the only ones children interact with when constructing their personalities. both their classmates and teachers also have a remarkable influence on them. according to vygotsky (as cited in lee & jacobs, 2001), individual mental functions have their origins in social interaction, meaning their personalities, behaviors, attitudes and perceptions. as hargreaves (1986) says, the individual emerges from the interaction that he or she has with others, and in this way family puts children through a process of socialization through which children learn their role in society. focusing this line of thought on the colombian context of teaching and learning english as a foreign language, ávila and garavito (2009) state that both parents and school are equally important in children’s teaching and learning processes because they are the principal actors in the acquisition of their education; however, according to the authors, we as english teachers sometimes underestimate the interest of parents in participating in children’s 166 universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras perdomo toro, rico gonzález & huepa salcedo academic processes and also the inner motivation that children have in completing school activities successfully with their parents. for that reason, teachers play critical roles in getting parents involved in their children’s academic life and in order to accomplish that, teachers should create different spaces where both children and parents interact with each other so that they can learn together. to conclude, we see that affection and social interaction have to do with children’s autonomous learning and responsibility as they are the necessary elements for both children and parents to make autonomous learning emerge in their socioaffective practices which means that autonomy itself has to be promoted from childhood to succeed in making people autonomous learners. autonomy autonomy has been researched mainly in an adults’ context rather than in a children’s context as we could see during the time we looked for theory to support our study; however, to some extent this theory showed us that children were also able to be autonomous individuals and that we teachers underestimate their capacity to become autonomous learners. these theories also let us identify the importance that students’ socioaffective practices had in the development of their autonomous learning. the reader may wonder what autonomous learning has to do with social interaction, and the answer is given by piaget and heller (1968). they understand autonomy as an educative process that teaches people to stop being egocentric in order to collaborate among themselves while at the same time submitting to common rules as individuals of the societies they live in. for individuals’ practices to be fruitful they have to be in touch with the whole community. according to the same authors, school is a sample society where autonomy can be put into practice because it teaches students to respect the law that was already created. as a matter of fact, autonomy helps them become aware of their duties, gives them a sense of responsibility and possession of oneself. on the other hand, benson (2001) states three claims that show the way he understands autonomy based on his own research. the first one is connected to taking control over our learning process. autonomy is a natural predisposition, available to all even though it shows up in different ways and degrees according to the contexts. the second has to do with learners’ lack of autonomy in the english classroom where, the author states, it is possible to work out this situation by giving students the opportunity to take control of their own learning process through teachers’ lessons. teachers can create the appropriate atmosphere for their students to exert their autonomy. the last claim says that when autonomous learning is fostered in the classroom, students learn the target language better. holec (1981) states that autonomy is the ability to take charge of one’s own learning, “not inborn but must be acquired either by ‘natural’ means or (as most often happens) by formal learning i.e. in a systematic, deliberate way” (holec, 1981, p. 3). this definition can be related to social interaction by taking into consideration that children need their relatives, peers and teachers to build their personalities, a consideration which leads us to conclude that autonomous learning needs the participation of others in order to be acquired and developed. in relation to holec’s understanding of autonomous learning, ariza (2008) sees this concept as an opportunity for learners to make very personal decisions regarding their learning process based on their motivation and needs, so both students and teachers will have to assume new roles; the 167profile vol. 13, no. 2, october 2011. issn 1657-0790. bogotá, colombia. pages 163-179 the role that socioaffective practices play in third graders’ autonomous learning former as active participants and the latter as facilitators. despite recognizing the importance of doing things by oneself, teachers will have to encourage their pupils to set their own learning objectives and also to reflect on their performance in order for them to be aware of their strengths and weaknesses. according to the author, this process is pretty emotional but necessary for both teachers and students to express all the feelings they go through when facing different learning dynamics. on the other hand, little (2000) characterizes autonomy through three main pedagogical prin ciples: learner empowerment, reflectivity and appropriate target language use. learner empowerment means that students have to accept responsibility for their own learning process; reflectivity has to do with encouraging students to plan, monitor, and evaluate their learning process, and appropriate target language use is the promotion of english when expressing oneself. however, the learner’s autonomy process does not imply that teachers become redundant (fandiño, 2009). instead, the teacher should assume new attitudes such as sharing relevant information with the student which is a way to show respect and willingness to the learner and help achieve the same goals as partners. another attitude is consistent control which lets the learner know what she/he should or should not do, but not exceeding the establishment of rules that may stifle learners’ initiatives. finally teachers must delegate tasks and decisions. that is to say, students need to have more influence on the learning process if they are going to take more responsibility; therefore, teachers can support students but not rescue them if they are making mistakes, as this is a natural process that helps students become aware of consequences. among the definitions about autonomy, we have opted for the one provided by holec (1981), which leads us to conclude that children need their relatives, peers, and teachers to build their personalities and ways to approach learning situations. instructional design implementing tasks was an opportunity for the teacher to have the learners practice their socioaffective learning strategies, as the main objective was to have students practice rather than teach them implicitly. task-based learning is rooted in the notion of a structural, functional, and interactional view of language. however, taking into account our intervention, the interactional view fulfills our requirements because it states that language is “a vehicle for the realization of interpersonal relations and for the performance of social transitions between individuals. language is seen as a tool for the creation and maintenance of social relations” (richards & rogers, 2001, p. 21). our english class was organized into two stages. the first is pre-task, in which teachers introduced the topic by using questions in both english and spanish. in this way, teachers allowed students to participate. teachers highlighted useful words or phrases in english. the second one was the task cycle, which was composed of planning, reporting, analysis and practice steps, which meant students did a specific task; for example, they wrote about their own daily routine either in pairs or in small groups, and teachers monitored from a distance. in the planning stage students thought about how they could perform what they had to do; in the reported stage students presented what they understood by participating in competences like matching activities, tic tac toe, etc. in the analysis stage students examined and discussed specific features about the presented topic, and in the practice stage teachers presented a new activity where students could reinforce their new knowledge. the tasks were organized as shown in table 1. 168 universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras perdomo toro, rico gonzález & huepa salcedo thanks to this instructional design, we as teachers could interact with students and observe how they used their socioaffective learning strategies in class and practiced the language in a communicative way. at the same time we as teachers knew aspects about their family such as the place they lived, the specific family members, their occupations, economical status, but above all their emotional links and how they contributed to shaping the children’s personalities. thanks to those strategies and aspects, we were able to identify the different socioaffective practices that lead children to autonomous learning. the study context and participants the project was carried out at heladia mejia school, which is a public school located in barrios unidos locality in bogotá, colombia. the social conditions this institution was immersed in were characterized by people who belong to the lowmiddle class. the students we worked with were third graders between nine and ten years old organized into two groups, one with thirty-three students and the other with thirty-four students. we applied those narratives to all of the students and during the process of data management ten students were chosen for our case study. they are recognized in this study as student a, b, c, d, e, f, g, h, i, and j to guarantee anonymity despite the fact that the participants’ parents allowed us to use their names. the criteria we used to select our population were to have written all of the ten narratives with good handwriting that let us understand the text, and that those stories are based on real experiences and not on their imagination. research methodology this is a qualitative, descriptive, and interpretive case study (johnson & christensen, 2004). the data collection instruments we used were written narratives and interviews. according to fitzgerald (as cited in muth, 1991, p. 27), narrative is a discourse that aims to include linguistically a set of facts that took place in a particular period of time and which has a thematic coherence. in our study these narratives had two functions: a pedagogical one and an investigative one. through them students had the opportunity to reflect on their life experiences because, according to onbelet (2010), narratives give a space for reflection to allow table 1. task cycle my daily routine type of task description pre-task what do you do every day? do you have a specific routine? task cycle planning the students ask the teacher questions in order to understand what they have to do. reporting the students match the picture with the correct routine. analysis the students look at some pictures about routines which are in disorder, then they discuss the correct order according to their own routines. practice the teachers present a worksheet which helps students reinforce their knowledge. 169profile vol. 13, no. 2, october 2011. issn 1657-0790. bogotá, colombia. pages 163-179 the role that socioaffective practices play in third graders’ autonomous learning thinking to take place in different ways. they also reach our imagination and let us see each other’s faces to stop being biased. we could collect data from the narratives to interpret and understand students’ socioaffective practices in relation to their autonomous learning. in our study we used a narrative form for the students to write about ten topics that had to do with their life experiences (see appendix). all of the students were encouraged to participate; however, we selected the ones who wrote all of the narratives. these were twenty-one out of a total of sixty-seven participants, and in order to go deeper into our understanding of students’ insights, we designed an interview. according to freeman (1998, p. 216), an interview “is a structured oral (or possibly written) exchange with someone. it aims to gather information” so our purpose was to expand the information gathered in the narratives. patton stated “the purpose of interviewing, then is to allow us to enter into the other person’s perspective” (patton, 1990, p. 92, as cited in merriam, 1998). data analysis the data analysis was divided into three stages: organization, reduction and categorization. in the first stage we organized a chart divided into sections. one section contained our participants’ names; another, the topics that emerged taking into account our research question; the third one, the theory that supported the topics, and the last section included the number of the narrative. as soon as we finished this chart we started the second stage, reduction, by codifying the topics that emerged in each narrative and keeping in mind their likenesses by using different colors. we then colored each narrative done by the students to identify patterns: family relationships were blue, feelings were purple, responsibility was green and learning was yellow. based on these patterns we designed an open-ended interview that helped us expand the information to learn students’ perceptions about different topics written but not explained in the narratives. we transcribed them and designed a chart similar to the narratives chart. we color coded the transcriptions based on the previous reduced topics to identify patterns again –family relationship in blue, learning in yellow and responsibility in green–, so we could join the narratives with the interviews in order to define our categories, this being the third stage. findings keeping in mind our research question, our data analysis was focused on the socioaffective practices that students established with their families and how they showed their autonomous learning. in table 2 the categories that emerged from our data analysis are presented with the corresponding subcategories. the data was collected in l1 and translated into l2 for the purpose of this publication. table 2. categories and subcategories category 1 family as a shelter category 2 learning from experiences helps oneself become responsible category 3 expressing feelings inside family • children’s roles • parents’ roles • mother’s role • family member as a model for children • children’s capacity to reflect and evaluate • responsibility • socialization forms • students’ lack of will • mixed emotions • social pressure • stimuli 170 universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras perdomo toro, rico gonzález & huepa salcedo family as shelter many ways students showed us how they conceived their family and one of those ways had to do with family as a shelter. we decided to name the category this way because we realized that relatives of our participants are quite important to them as they mean protection and support, and revealed that too many of the students home stands for security. we are going to examine different aspects children referred to about their families; those are: the different roles that children assume when interacting with relatives and how those help them make up part of family; parents’ roles; mother’s role and the last aspect is family member as a model for children. the first aspect deals with the different roles that children play when interacting with relatives and how those help them make up part of their families. children have specific roles inside their families that help them become aware of their duties, and bearing in mind our participants’ psychological stage, children require specific instructions in order to develop their duties. in the next excerpts we could identify the first aspect: by assigning those duties in the house, children learn what they should do and how they are supposed to do it. family plays an important role in children’s socialization by assigning roles in which parents give the child the opportunity to be part of a society. family is in charge of giving children duties, sanction, and recompense (paez, 1984). the second aspect has to do with parents’ roles which are more than just assigning duties or homework. parents also guide their children and let them reflect on their positive and negative experiences in order for them to internalize new behaviors that help them face world realities in a proper way. according to poddiákov (cited in shuare, 1987), both parents’ guidance and children’s experiences let new knowledge take a place in their lives; children put what they learn at home into practice when interacting with others who do not necessarily belong to their family. the excerpt presented at the beginning of page 171 shows how the children learn from that interaction. english equivalent once my mother got to work very early and told me to clean my bedroom, to pick up my shoes and make the other’s bed but i just watched t.v. with my brother and my grandfather suggested i should do the same but i did not mind. when my mother arrived home at night, being tired of working, she was shocked by my bedroom mess, so she made me help her organize it until it was impeccable; she didn’t stop scolding me and i understood that my mom needed me to help her so that it wouldn’t be this hard for her. (narrative 4, student a) 171profile vol. 13, no. 2, october 2011. issn 1657-0790. bogotá, colombia. pages 163-179 the role that socioaffective practices play in third graders’ autonomous learning 66 student a: that person explains me, helps me to strive for more, so that i can become very intelligent and so that. 67 student a: i can do things by myself when being an adult. 68 researcher: what good things have you learned inside your family? 69 student a: to be respectful, tidy, sociable, and intelligent, ummmm a good neighbor eeee 70 researcher: what do you mean by saying that? 71 student a: it’s to try to help neighbors, in case they have some difficulty or problem or help them to what? ah… 72 student a: things, problems they have. (interview, student a, 66-72, october 25th, 2010) the following excerpt of students’ narratives deals with family as my shelter especially with how they see their mother’s role, which is the third aspect. 230 researcher: what does your mother stand for to you? 231 student e: love because she has never left me alone, she loves me and she has never hit me. (interview, student e, 230-231 october 25th, 2010) student e has shown an affective dependence for her mother as the person who helps her, who protects and loves her, and so, similar to the other participants, she considers her mother as the one who makes her feel secure and safe. for that reason we wanted to highlight the role that mother has in the family, because the mother is the first person children have contact with and this allows a clear feeling of love and safety for them. however, every member of the family has an important influence on socioaffective practices development. as for the fourth aspect, which has to do with relationships with family members, they are seen as a model for children. the family is an institution where children can interact, create, and socialize their personality, behaviors, and attitudes. as hargreaves (1986) states, the self emerges from social experience when the child interacts with others and in some narratives, specific children’s behaviors were evident when they interacted with their relatives including brothers, sisters, cousins, etc. to conclude, it is demonstrated that family is a shelter because through the roles family give them, children know how to behave in society. through the guidance parents give to their children, they feel safe and confident when making decisions. children feel the mother is the safest connection; however, interaction with relatives is also important as it lets children learn how to behave. in tune with what hargreaves (1986) states, relatives are the significant others the individual feels the most committed to, both emotionally and psychologically; relatives provide children with the categories of the self and of the other. that is why the self-concept of the individual is either supported or changed fundamentally, thanks to them. learning from experiences helps oneself become responsible thanks to the experiences that children have with their families, they learn how important being responsible is. these learning experiences improve through interaction and socialization that end up reinforcing children’s will. in this category four aspects will be analyzed: children becoming autonomous by reflecting and evaluating on their actions; responsibility; the use of different socialization forms like punishment to learn, and students’ lack of will as one of the reasons for children not to do their duties. the first aspect that we analyzed has to do with the capacity that children have to reflect and evaluate their actions in order to be autonomous. in the concrete operative stage children have the capacity to evaluate their actions and at the same time the ability to reflect on their behaviors. however, both processes, evaluating and reflecting, occur thanks 172 universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras perdomo toro, rico gonzález & huepa salcedo to interaction. as the child perceives family actions, he or she is able to share with others and think not just about themselves, but also about others. certainly, student c thought about his mother’s reaction when he did not do his duties. this action shows that he was concerned about others’ feelings and reactions and at the same time he reflected on his actions. wadsworth (1995) states that it is typical of children who are starting to acquire the capacity to evaluate events from others’ points of view to have a reduction in egocentric thoughts. in this socioaffective practice it is evident that a degree of self management was used by student c, who had the capacity to control the situation. in this case, he was able to assume the punishment and learn from that negative experience. according to wenden (1987), self management and cognition are two classes of learning strategies which are necessary to use for achieving autonomy. the second aspect has to do with responsibility, which is understood as being in charge of something with the capacity to assume the consequences. according to scharle and szabó (2000), the use of attitudes or skills like motivation and self confidence are necessary to develop not only children’s responsibility but their autonomy at the same time. inside the family every member must carry out different tasks; for instance, student c knows the task or duties that he must do especially when his family is not in the house; this duties assignation helps children develop their autonomy. morrissey and brown (2009) explain it by using the term scaffolding, whose purpose is the ultimate transfer of responsibility for the task to the child as adult support decreases and child capability increases, and in this sense it is necessary that the adults and parents guide the child in development of autonomy and responsibility. however, children require the use of different socialization forms like punishment to learn. punishment is seen as one way to correct children’s bad behavior because as evidenced in student c, the child needed punishment to realize his mistake but at the same time children learn from both their negative and positive experiences. according to paez (1984), there are different techniques or forms to socialize children. the ones in which parents congratulate children when they do their duties are stimuli and recompenses and the others english equivalent my mother had left us both my sister and me, and i was told to make the beds and do the dishes and my sister was told to wash clothes and hang them up but we played all day on the computer, when my mother arrived she got angry and punished us for one month without the computer, the time passed and we had learnt the lesson. (narrative 4, student c) 173profile vol. 13, no. 2, october 2011. issn 1657-0790. bogotá, colombia. pages 163-179 the role that socioaffective practices play in third graders’ autonomous learning that let parents correct their children when they do something wrong are punishment, repression, threatening, and warnings; however, children showed that punishment led them to be more responsible and aware of their duties. the following excerpts of students’ interviews show that. 288 researcher: do you consider that when you receive punishment you do your duties better? 289 student g: as a child i do, even though i do not have to wait for the punishment to do them. 290 researcher: why? 291 student g: because i have to, otherwise i will not be allowed to do the things i like punishments were not physical. as students c and g mentioned, parents use the things children like to do in order to encourage them to obey, and punishments such as not letting them go out and play with their friends, or play on their computers. (interview, student g, 288-291, october 25th, 2010) based on papalia & wendkos (1995), parents try to shape children’s character in order to make them competent people in a society. parents use either punishment or reward to influence their children’s personalities in order to make them a part of the society they have to interact with, so that they can develop their social skills and individual capacities. the fourth aspect has to do with students’ lack of will, which is one of the reasons for children not doing their duties. children know they have to do something for their parents at home –in this case housework– but they do not do it because they are not really motivated to mind their parents. according to wadsworth (1995), will is defined as the capacity that an individual has to stick to his or her own values based on the experiences that person has been going through and in order to make both simple and important decisions. it means that through the experiences we go through and the previous values we are taught, we strengthen our will. as we could see in student c, this participant shows a lack of will when knowing he has to do things at home. he is able to learn from his mistakes when being punished because of his attitude. in this case, the child is able to reinforce the values that he was previously given because of the experience he lived. children can learn from negative and positive experiences. according to paez (1984), the family establishes an educational, double relationship with children: the ones who learn (children) and the ones who teach (parents). by establishing duties, punishments, and roles, parents teach children to be responsible. in the narratives and interviews, students expressed what they could learn from their stories or experiences and most of the time these reflections were based on parents’ advice, so the zone of proximal development (zpd) intervenes because the student is solving problems with the guidance of other people: “learners can move into their next level with their peers’ or teachers’ assistance” (mantero & iway, 2005, zone of proximal development section, para. 1). the data suggest that there is meaningful learning thanks to reflection that leads children to become responsible. likewise, children need socialization forms like duties assignment, punishment, and reward given by their parents that let them become responsible and therefore autonomous. taking dewey’s (1964) ideas into consideration, children need their parents to grow up healthily in this unpredictable world and for them to do well at school due to the interaction that takes place among them. expressing feelings inside family we decided to title the category this way because family is the first social institution where children start to express themselves. children feel vulnerable when being scolded by someone who 174 universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras perdomo toro, rico gonzález & huepa salcedo is supposed to be their model to imitate; that is to say, the authority. on the other hand, they feel quite happy when sharing moments with their families and so it seems that relatives represent an enjoyable and safe place. this category dealt with three aspects found in our data collection process: mixed emotions, social pressure, and stimulus. feeling mixed emotions about family’s social pressure, which is the second aspect this category deals with, has an important role in how people feel because human beings are sociable and need others to express themselves. student d has mixed feelings about her family as its members may make her feel good or bad; however, what she feels for them remains positive despite her father’s bad temperament. in student d’s excerpts we can also see that others’ opinions influence the way she feels. for instance, when she was late to an event, she felt embarrassed because of being the last one to receive pie at the party: 434 researcher: what sentiments do the people around you inspire? 435 student d: my family 436 researcher: what about bad feelings? 437 student d: my dad as he sometimes gets angry and when they scold me. (interview, student d, 404-407, october 25th, 2010) student d tells us that emotions are related to interaction and social rules, especially in reference to what others think of us, which is why she feels embarrassed not following the social rules at a specific event. this fact is explained based on marc and picard (1992) when they state that children are not really able to avoid social influence on them as they are still constructing their personalities. children are vulnerable to peer pressure to accommodate themselves to accepting general values; however, this fact is not necessarily negative because children become more independent from their parents due to the interaction they have with their peers. according to neddermeyer (2010), children are taught to please others throughout their lives and even told that if they worry about others their lives will be fulfilled. for that reason, student d feels bad about the situation because she needs others’ approval to feel she belongs to a community. the sense of embarrassment she goes through at the event is a learned behavior that is neither good nor bad, as it is based on the rules and values that the community she lives in has created, but the feeling itself can be transformed over time as the person becomes aware of this fact. families in general strive to give their children a good education which implies teaching them what is right or wrong. this interaction may english equivalent i felt too bad because i arrived late and they had started and everyone was happy because i arrived and they gave us some pie and i felt bad because it was embarrassing to be the last one, i mean, it was too embarrassing. (narrative 7, student d) 175profile vol. 13, no. 2, october 2011. issn 1657-0790. bogotá, colombia. pages 163-179 the role that socioaffective practices play in third graders’ autonomous learning cause lots of stress but children have the capacity to cope with it, becoming more adept at handling situations that produce negative feelings. however, that capacity needs to be developed in children by parents. according to santrock (2007), “parents can help children learn to regulate their emotion through emotion-coaching” (2007, p. 393), meaning that parents –by accompanying their children at the right moment in which they have to control their emotions– can help them become more independent when facing other situations they go through without their parents. as for the third aspect, which is stimulus, it has to do with responding to the different stimuli in the children’s environment. in student d’s case, those stimuli are her parent’s scolding and rewards, and social pressure. student d responds to the stimulus a person gives her, in this case, when she is given some pie sharing that moment with special people; she really appreciates it and it makes her feel happy. on the other hand, she feels bad when not getting her dad’s approval but just scolding and also her feeling of embarrassment at the event because she feels she was not able to follow social rules and, as a consequence, thinks she is not part of that community. those facts can be explained based on santrock (2007) when he says that children in late childhood are able to understand complex emotions like shame and pride and also are aware of the fact that many sentiments can be expressed in a particular situation. conclusions children become autonomous thanks to their capacity to reflect on their actions. however, they need their families to help them. for that reason, family as a social institution is the first place children learn how to express themselves and its members as the guides make them social beings through the interaction they have with them e.g. by assigning duties, giving either rewards or punishment depending on the situation, all of which contribute to helping children become autonomous learners. family is a shelter because by giving children tasks they learn their role in specific situations; therefore, they are able to survive in the environment they are immersed in, while at the same time their parents’ role as guides contributes to making children aware of their duties. the role that mothers play is very important in this process as they start the first socialization process with their children. mothers have a big influence on their children’s socioaffective practices. in relation to the rest of the family, they help children build their personalities as they are the significant others who have personal contact with them, a contact which shapes children’s behaviors and values. taking into consideration all of the aspects mentioned above, family contributes to developing in children autonomous learning; that is to say, interaction with families is the way children can become autonomous and social beings. according to the psychological stage these children are in, they have the capacity to reflect and assess their acts, which makes them more responsible and their learning process more meaningful. however, their responsibility was evidenced when parents assigned them duties and activities, meaning good choices were necessary for children to exert their responsibility. punishment as a form of socialization is used by parents when their children do not carry out the tasks they are given. it is quite important in the construction of responsibility and a key element for their learning process. children express themselves inside their families as they are emotional beings who receive stimulus and social pressure from parents and relatives that make them feel good or bad depending on the situation. the different experiences children live give them the chance to redirect and shape 176 universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras perdomo toro, rico gonzález & huepa salcedo their feelings to control themselves emotionally and therefore have the capacity to be in charge of their learning process in an autonomous way. we have to say that the research itself had an important impact on the students themselves as it was an opportunity for them to express their life stories and experiences transforming the english classroom into a place where both english and spanish could be put into practice through normal english lesson plans and narratives to tell personal experiences. as was evident in the written narratives, family represents the first space for children to develop their socioaffective practices and the development of autonomous learning, which leads children to experience meaningful learning and become more responsible. references ariza, a. 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(1989). la enseñanza y la interacción social en el aula. madrid: cincel-kapelusz. merriam, s. (1998). case study research in education. san francisco: jossey bass publishers. morrissey, a. m., & brown, p. m. (2009). mother and toddler activity in the zone of proximal development for pretend play as a predictor of higher child iq. gifted child quarterly, 53, 106-120. neddermeyer, d. (2010). responsibilities ­ pleasing others or obligation. retrieved from http://ezineart177profile vol. 13, no. 2, october 2011. issn 1657-0790. bogotá, colombia. pages 163-179 the role that socioaffective practices play in third graders’ autonomous learning icles.com/?responsibilities---pleasing-others-orobligation&id=885050 onbelet, l. (2010). imagining the other: the use of narratives as an empowering practice. mcmaster journal of theology and ministry. retrieved from http:// www.mcmaster.ca/mjtm/3-1d.htm . paez, g. (1984). sociología de la familia elementos de análisis en colombia y américa latina. bogotá: universidad santo tomás, centro de enseñanza desescolarizada. papalia, d., & wendkos, s. (1995). human development. new york, ny: mcgraw-hill. piaget, j. & heller, j. (1968). la autonomía en la escuela. buenos aires: losada s.a. richards, j., & rogers, t. (2001). approach and methods in lan­ guage teaching. cambridge: cambridge university press. santrock j. (2007). a topical approach to lifespan develop­ ment. new york, ny: mcgraw-hill higher education. scharle, a., & szabó, a. (2000). learner autonomy. a guide to development learner responsibility. cambridge: cambridge university press. shuare, m. (1987). la psicología evolutiva y pedagógica en la urss. moscú: editorial progreso. wadsworth, b. (1995). teoría de piaget del desarrollo cog­ noscitivo y afectivo. mexico: diana. wenden, a. (1987). learner strategies in language learning. new york, ny: prentice hall. about the authors jhonatan perdomo toro holds a bed in english as a foreign language from universidad distrital francisco josé de caldas. ángela milena rico gonzález holds a bed in english as a foreign language from universidad distrital francisco josé de caldas. she currently works as a learning guide of three students from calvert homeschool. nury catherine huepa salcedo holds a bed in english as a foreign language from universidad distrital francisco josé de caldas. she currently works as a full time teacher in a bilingual kindergarten in bogotá. 178 universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras perdomo toro, rico gonzález & huepa salcedo appendix: narrative form as used in spanish (the students’ mother tongue) 179profile vol. 13, no. 2, october 2011. issn 1657-0790. bogotá, colombia. pages 163-179 the role that socioaffective practices play in third graders’ autonomous learning translation of the narrative form heladia mejia district school my family name:__________________________ grade: 301 write down a story where you tell an important family event. i once went out with my mom, my dad and my little sister, i had lunch with my family, it happened like this, but everything didn’t happen because they were going to surprise my mother with a birthday party and we invited her to the party and we also invited our neighbors and my story happened like this but we ate some dessert as well as normal food and the food was delicious; we enjoyed ourselves so much the whole night. the end. draw the event. how do you imagine a day without your family? what would you do and what would you not do? i wouldn’t make any pranks and i would play on the computer. profile vol. 12, no. 2, october 2010. issn 1657-0790. bogotá, colombia. pages 117-132 117 significant learning experiences for english foreign language students* experiencias significativas para estudiantes de inglés como lengua extranjera luz maría becerra** maria mcnulty*** universidad de antioquia, colombia this action research examines experiences that students in a grade 10 efl class had with redesigning a grammar-unit into a topic-based unit. strategies were formulating significant learning goals and objectives, and implementing and reflecting on activities with three dimensions of dee fink’s (2003) taxonomy of significant learning: the human dimension, integration, and application. students report ed positive perceptions about learning with and about others, learning about themselves, integrating language and topics to their lives, and recycling and applying topics to other formats. they became more active and reflective language learners. difficulties were linking significant unit goals and objectives to all participants’ needs and interests, students’ initial unwillingness to learn about others, and students’ limited proficiency for integrating and applying english. key words: english as a foreign language teach ing, public secondary school, significant learning, dee fink’s taxonomy, topic-based unit. esta investigación acción examina las experiencias que estudiantes de un grado 10.o de inglés como lengua extranjera tuvieron durante el rediseño de una unidad gramatical a una unidad temática. las estrategias fueron la formulación de metas y objetivos de aprendizaje significativo, y la implementación y la reflexión sobre actividades con tres dimensiones de la taxonomía de aprendizaje significativo de dee fink (2003): la dimensión humana, la integración y la aplicación. los estudiantes reportaron percepciones positivas al aprender con otros, acerca de otros y acerca de ellos mismos. también integraron el lenguaje y los temas a sus vidas, reciclaron y aplicaron los temas en otros formatos. los estudiantes se convirtieron en aprendices más activos y reflexivos. las dificultades fueron: la vinculación de las metas y los objetivos significativos de la unidad con las necesidades y los intereses de los participantes; la falta de disponibilidad inicial de los estudiantes para aprender acerca de otros, y su bajo dominio para integrar y aplicar el inglés. palabras clave: enseñanza del inglés como lengua extranjera, colegio público de secundaria, aprendizaje significativo, taxonomía de dee fink, unidad basada en temas. * this article is based on an action research project carried out by the preservice teach er, luz maría becerra, under the guidance of her university practicum and research advisor, maria mcnulty, in the foreign language teach er education program at the universidad de antioquia in colombia. the article is the result of a collaborative writing experience. ** e-mail: telma910@yahoo.es *** e-mail: mariam@idiomas.udea.edu.co this article was received on october 10, 2009, and accepted on april 26, 2010. 118 universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras becerra & mcnulty introduction while significant learning is often associated with students in higher levels of education, this concept is equally important for english language learners in secondary schools. in colombia, students learn english as a foreign language and its usefulness is questioned by many teach ers and students in public high schools. this issue can be related to instructional approaches that are grammar-based, with teach ing and learning processes focused on students’ acquisition of grammar know ledge and the ability to manipulate grammar structures. often lacking are significant learning goals and activities for students to use english meaningfully. for instance, learning english falls short of classroom experiences that go beyond knowledge to include purposeful active learning, relevant content, student interaction, integration of content and ideas, and application of learning to new situations. consequently, it is not uncommon that students have difficulties connecting with and remembering content, participating in english, and completing class work. with this predicament, understanding how teach ers can help students experience significant learning in an efl class is addressed in this action research report. specifically, the reformulation of a grammar-based unit to a topic-based unit is a point of departure for this inquiry. this process has students choosing a topic and subtopics to make learning english more interesting and relevant for them. also, it promotes active learning leading to change by reformulating goals and activities towards dee fink’s (2003) human, integration, and application dimensions of significant learning. stu dents learn about themselves and others, recycle and connect information and ideas, and employ information and ideas in a useful and creative way. similarly, students reflect on learning experiences and achievements with unit goals and change as learners of english. in short, these actions are explored in a grade 10 efl class and discussed in an attempt to understand how students can learn best. literature on significant learning dee fink (2003) regards learning as when students change. this change leads to significant learning, according to the author, when there is some permanence of the learning experience. for this type of learning to take place, teach ers need to look beyond what students learn to how they learn. this requires an instructional shift from focusing on the teach ing of content or knowledge towards other types of learning experiences. students can be encouraged to relate what they learn in the classroom to their lives, learn more about themselves and their classmates through interaction, and apply or use what they learn to new situations. teach ers can help students achieve these learning experiences by revising course content, reformulating goals and objectives, implementing activities to achieve them, and evaluating learning. course content and language need to be personally relevant and meaningful for significant learning (williams & burden, 1997). students can have the opportunity to link subject matter to interesting and accessible topics and other situations for this purpose (ashburn, 2006). organizing course content around inter esting topics is characteristic of the topic-based approach (tba) that can respond to the demands and characteristics of significant learning. according to crispen (n.d.), a topic-based approach can promote student engagement by linking content, activities, and materials to the students’ lives. equally important, students can explore a variety of accessible topics and recycle content with clear ly detailed goals and outcomes. bourke (2006) rec ommends that the topic-based syllabus be based on a student needs assessment. teach ers can select topics, content with profile vol. 12, no. 2, october 2010. issn 1657-0790. bogotá, colombia. pages 117-132 119 significant learning experiences for english foreign language students language items, learning goals and objectives, and activities that reflect what students are interested in learning about, and how they wish to learn. revising content to include real-life topics can help students develop a more holistic and integrated view of themselves and others, as well as learn about people’s opinions and beliefs (wiśniewskabrogowska, 2003). in this way, students learn to express meaning in real life contexts (ur, 1996). with meaningful topics and activities, students can interact, exchange, and negotiate messages while working together and learning about each other (hudelson, 1991, as cited in bourke, 2006). hudelson believes that this social nature of learning helps students feel comfortable with learning new content and skills. learning english with interesting and relevant topics can be more significant for students. reformulating goals and objectives that are focused, relevant, and lead to a long-lasting learning experience is essential for significant learning according to brown (1994), williams and burden (1997), and dee fink (2003). dee fink (2002) advises teach ers to reformulate their learning goals and objectives beyond a focus on knowledge. the author proposes a number of dimensions, three of which were used to reformulate the goals and objectives of the topic-based unit in this study: the human, integration, and application dimensions. human dimension goals are focused on giving students the chance to learn about themselves and others in class. integration goals enable students to establish connections among the topics, concepts, and ideas to their real lives. application goals describe how students will think about and use both what they have learned and their skills in a useful and creative way. setting learning goals and objectives for students is related to “establishing a direction for learning” by marzano, pickering, and pollock (2001, p. 93). marzano et al. state that setting general goals helps student focus on what they have to learn in units and lessons. focusing and maintaining students’ attention on these goals is recommended by wong and wong (1998), who advise teach ers to review them orally and in writing with students at the beginning of the class and keep them visible. in addition, teach ers need to write clear objectives with sentences having the student as the subject, and the topic, concept or skill as the object, plus an action verb to express what students will be able to know or do (center for teach ing and learning, 2008). reformulating and sharing goals and objectives can help teach ers and students identify the types of significant learning experiences they desire, and reflect on the learning process and achievements. implementing activities to reach significant learning goals requires a change in role for students. according to dee fink (2002), students are active learners and engaged with achieving the learning goals. dee fink refers to significant activities as those in which learners are actively involved in getting information from different sources, doing hands-on activities while exploring the content and language, applying learning, and reflecting on the learning process. similarly, jonassen, peck, and wilson (1999, as cited in bhattacharya, 2002) associate meaningful learning with active students and their intentional engagement with and reflection on activities to reach learning goals. these authors highlight collaboration, student interaction, and dialogue in group experiences as a means for understanding different views about the world. these activities are authentic as students’ ideas and opinions arise from real-life contexts and can be transferred to new learning situations. so, for significant learning experiences, the key is integrating learning to the students’ context and letting them apply what they learn to other situations (williams & burden, 1997). 120 universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras becerra & mcnulty reflecting on and evaluating learning is also associated with this type of learning. teach ers can encourage students to think about their learning process and growth. williams and burden (1997) suggest that teach ers point to students out a personal or broader cultural significance of the learning activity. these authors coincide with dee fink (2003) in that teach ers can help students develop an awareness of the purposes of the learning experiences beyond the classroom, and of themselves sharing, cooperating, and changing. indeed, teach ers and students can engage in dialogue about whether their learning experiences have led to significant learning. method of the study this nine-month action research study has characteristics and stages of action research proposed by burns (1999), johnson (2005), and mertler (2006). the authors concur that action research is a contextualized, small-scale, planned and systematic effort of inquiry into improving classroom practice. critical reflection on one’s teach ing and learning processes is required, and the inclusion of other participant perspectives. mertler’s (2006) four broad stages of planning, acting, developing, and reflecting included johnson’s (2005) processes of identifying a problem, reviewing the literature, planning and implementing actions, planning for and gathering data, analyzing data, and reporting the data. context and participants this study was carried out in the high school section of a large public elementary-secondary school in the town of bello, adjacent to medellín, in 2008. this institution has collaborated with our university in the preparation of future foreign language teach ers in the teach ing practicum for a number of years. i was given a grade 10 placement with students who had english classes three times a week. the english curriculum at the school cites a humanistic and cultural approach to learning english; one that is enjoyable, motivating, interactive, and significant for students. students’ needs and interests and their background experiences are to be taken into account in the learning process. the participants of this study were my cooperating teach er (ct) as a participant observer, twenty (out of 27) students in our grade 10 class, my practicum and research advisor as a nonparticipant observer, and myself as the teach er-researcher. my ct is colombian and an experienced efl teach er who has supervised other pre-service teachers. the students were 10 boys and 10 girls whose ages ranged from 14 to 17. students had a low level of english and some lacked motivation for the class. these students were chosen according to creswell’s (2003) qualitative sampling technique that included typical and extreme cases. ten students demonstrated average engagement with the english class and performance on activities, and the other ten were divided equally between students with excellent or low class engagement and performance. i have taught efl in public institutions for five years, but not at this institution. although i have had preparation in action research theory and experience with research activities prior to the practicum, this was the first time that i carried out action research in my practice under the guidance of a university advisor. data sources and analysis data were collected from four different sources during the planning and implementation of the topic-based unit. these sources included students’ perceptions about the topics, goals, activities, and their achievements on rating checklists and feedback cards. my ct’s and advisor’s perceptions of the significance of topics, goals and activities during classes were gathered with structured observation profile vol. 12, no. 2, october 2010. issn 1657-0790. bogotá, colombia. pages 117-132 121 significant learning experiences for english foreign language students rating checklists. my perceptions were written in a teach er research journal (crookes, 2003) during the planning, implementation, and evaluation of the topic-based unit. the data were analyzed following burns’ (1999) steps of inductive analysis. after i organized the data according to source, i read it with my research inquiry in mind. i took notes and coded what i considered relevant. while coding the data, i realized that the codes could be grouped easily into dee fink’s (2002) three stages of significant learning for courses which are planning, implementing, and evaluating a course. these three broad themes helped me to group and narrow my codes, and understand and interpret the data more easily. i triangulated the data by identifying recurrences among codes from the data sources. subsequently, i validated my findings with participants at the school. findings and interpretations findings related to the planning and implementation of the unit for significant learning are written in a narrative style and could be a practical contribution to this theory for the reader. five important themes i identified were changes in participants’ roles, planning challenges and drawbacks, the nature of the learning goals, opportunities for students to achieve the goals and the significance of the topics and activities. planning the significant learning unit planning the unit with dee fink’s (2002) steps for designing courses around significant learning was challenging. changes in participant roles and challenges and drawbacks were present when balancing students’ interests and decisions, my ct’s interests and the grammar syllabus, plus my desire to provide students with significant learning experiences. during this stage i adopted the role of a planner and organizer of goals and activities while my students assumed an active role in selecting topics, subtopics and activities. this led me to perceive my unit as student-centered with possibilities for meaningful activities for students. based on my students’ needs assessment, i gave them the opportunity to choose from three topics of their interest, and they chose music for the unit. they proposed two subtopics which were the history of music genres, and symbols and lifestyles for music genres. then, students selected their favorite music genre and grouped themselves. students became active participants identifying the content to learn english with. these interesting and relevant top ics, i believe, became the basis for what dee fink (2003) coins significant student learning. according to dee fink’s (2002) suggestion for course design, i contemplated and analyzed different situational factors to design my unit. as the unit planner, i faced different challenges and drawbacks designing the topic-based unit. i struggled with deciding which grammar items from the structural syllabus should be integrated to the new unit. i found that it was very challenging to make the unit less grammar-driven knowing what students have usually been assessed on in grade 10. it has been very difficult for me to stay apart [sic] from the grammar based approach and syllabus my school has, because that is what my students are going to be assessed and graded on by the end of the year1. that is why my first unit was like a grammar unit framed inside a topic. (teach er research journal) i did not feel very comfortable with grammar being the main focus for the unit, since i thought that language and significant learning meant much more than this. after receiving feedback from my 1 in this article, language from the teach er journal and observation rating checklists is presented as it was written. 122 universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras becerra & mcnulty advisor on my first draft of the unit, i became more aware of the necessity to clarify my understanding of significant learning goals and activities and reread dee fink’s (2002) guidelines. i realized that i would have to reformulate the learning goals according to what i wanted students to learn for each dimension, and what the school wanted. first, i decided to focus on the main goals students should achieve by the end of the unit. i thought that students should gain knowledge about language items proposed by the school, make connections among these items and the topics, relate them to their lives, and use language to communicate and share ideas in a creative way. with these, i started to contemplate how students would achieve the goals. somehow, i had to make decisions about the grammar items that students would need so that the unit was significant for them and feasible for us. these decisions were in part guided by the communicative language functions required to develop the topics. almost all the grammar items the school required students to learn were integrated to the units. those that were not, were introduced later to students with contextualized grammar activities. after formulating the main goals, i planned activities considering students’ needs and interests (see appendix 1). to propose and define the goals and activities related to the human dimension for the unit, i reflected on what my students would learn about themselves and their classmates, and how. i thought that students could get to know and understand their classmates’ opinions about music genre preferences, genre lifestyles and symbols, and their cultural backgrounds. interactive activities could facilitate this information sharing. i believed that students could learn about their own points of view through questioning and reflecting. these activities and goals were aimed at providing students with a more holistic and integrated view of themselves and others (saluveer, 2004). when planning integration goals and activities, i reflected on how students could relate the topic to their lives and background experiences, and connect information and ideas. this resulted in goals and activities in which students would be asked to make connections between the subtopics and their personal preferences and opinions, and background experiences. i also planned lessons with active learning that included dee fink’s (2002) actions of doing, observing, reflecting and engaging in dialogue about the topic. the planned activities reinforced this important concept for the significance of activities and materials. for application goals and activities, i decided to give students hands-on activities in which they could apply their knowledge about the topic and the language, plus their creative skills in a final poster to be presented, shared, and assessed. with this experience i realized that the grammar items would also emerge from the language needed to perform the activities, as well as from my ct’s suggestions and the syllabus. with these general goals and ideas for activities in mind, i wrote topicbased objectives that were more meaningful and significant and in which grammar was only a part. i have chosen those grammar structures i can integrate to our topic, and i have written in terms of what my students will be able to do with those structures and that knowledge. then, i built more topic driven objectives which i think are more meaningful and significant and in which different grammar issues are implicit. (teach er research journal) this helped me realize that topics were in fact very useful for building significant learning units. as hudelson (1991, pp. 2-5, as cited in bourke, 2006) suggests, tba allows students to be engaged in working with meaningful activities where language is part of a complex process and skill development. i also realized that topics were very flexible for curriculum organization. they could profile vol. 12, no. 2, october 2010. issn 1657-0790. bogotá, colombia. pages 117-132 123 significant learning experiences for english foreign language students be approached from different perspectives or subtopics, and integrate grammar structures that my ct and the school considered mandatory in a more purposeful, meaningful, enjoyable and contextualized way. reformulating the units, goals and objectives to more significant experiences was not an easy process. it required a lot of dialogue with my ct and my advisor to reach an agreement since all of us had to reconsider our teach ing paradigms. it was very difficult for me to reconceptualize the role of grammar in learning, and likewise for my ct to give more control of the learning process over to the students and me. we had to be very reflective and open-minded to accept that each one of us had something valuable to propose for our new unit: my new ideas, confidence and high expectations of the project; my ct’s teaching experience in a public high school; and my advisor’s knowledge about new methods and strategies. after a lot of reflection and several attempts, i designed a topic-based unit that i thought responded to all participants’ interests, and that included goals, objectives, and activities with features of significant learning. my advisor, who reflected on my unit goals and activities, commented: i think that you planned your general lesson goals to promote significant learning for students. your objectives were written to promote the human dimension of significant learning, as well as integration and application. your activities were structured in a way from simple to more complex. the four skills were integrated in this lesson, as well as the sub-skill of grammar and culture. (advisor observation rating checklist) finally, students became active evaluators reflecting on their learning process and their achievements with the goals, objectives and activities. this led to future planning and decision-making for the lessons. students adopted an active voice in class decisions regarding group work, the sequence of activities, and materials (teach er research journal). students gave their perceptions and opinions about the goals and activities before and during the development of each subtopic. they reflected on the feasibility of the learning goals and gave suggestions about extending the time we had to accomplish the unit goals. also, students evaluated their achievement of the goals and objectives, and the significance of activities and materials during each subtopic. implementing the significant learning unit during the implementation of the unit, students were provided with opportunities to work towards the learning goals and objectives, and to reflect on their performance for each subtopic. all participants perceived the human dimension positively and that it was the most developed dimension for the two subtopics. i believed that students learning with others in small collaborative groups was effective, as it let students assume a more active role in class, share knowledge and experiences about both language and topics, support each other when language difficulties appeared, learn from each other’s products, and finally, improve their performance (teach er research journal). many students expressed that learning with others in groups was useful and significant and helped them to improve their performance. students expressed that they learned more about the topics for the following reasons: when i work with others i learn about their likes and how to distinguish the music genres in english.2 […] and the classmates because some know more than others.3 2 original spanish: “al relacionarme con mis compañeros aprendo de sus gustos y a distinguir en inglés los géneros musicales”. 3 original spanish: “… y los compañeros porque hay algunos que saben más que otros”. 124 universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras becerra & mcnulty […] the classmates because they explain what i did not understand.4 (student rating checklist) these findings are similar to those of middlecamp (n.d.) who reported that the main advantages of students working in groups were each member’s unique contributions, the chance to learn from classmates who had considerable knowledge about a topic, and learning being easier. my advisor also perceived group learning positively stating: “i saw that you promoted small group work in the class which gave students the chance to share their ideas and use english to communicate them” (advisor observation rating checklist). she noticed that students learned from each other by negotiating meaning, knowledge, and understanding in groups then sharing their final products. in this sense, there was a collaborative nature to the learning process (jonassen et al., 1999, as cited in bhattacharya, 2002). all participants agreed that students had the opportunity to learn about themselves and others via the two subtopics, and become more tolerant of different opinions. discussions of the subtopics in whole class or group activities let them share their opinions about the different music genres, criticize and question them, understand others’ points of view, and expand and change theirs toward other music cultures. at the beginning of the unit, some students were reluctant to learn about their classmates’ musical preferences and opinions and were unmotivated to participate in class activities. however, as the subtopics were developed, they showed more interest in learning about and accepting other genres and the reasons that their classmates liked them (teach er research journal). 4 original spanish: “… los compañeros porque me explican lo que no entiendo”. this change occurred after giving students the opportunity to show their preferences and share some of their favorite music. when they noticed their classmates accepting and listening respectfully to their ideas, they started to realize that they should demonstrate the same respect and openness towards their classmates’ ideas about other genres. others’ points of view were respected because students wanted their own opinions to be heard and respected as well. while students’ roles included discussing, sharing and participating actively during the class activities, my role as a teach er involved establishing rules of interaction and talking about respecting differences. also, i had to give language tools and guide cultural discussions so that students could recognize the importance of acknowledging others’ cultural backgrounds before judging and rejecting them. as i reflected in my journal: then, i added that was why we cannot judge a genre without knowing its backgrounds, its topics and its history. everybody agreed with that conclusion. with this activity i think that today [student name] perceived that their [sic] classmates respect their [sic] genre even if they do not share his passion for it. i think that was why he had a completely different attitude during the sharing activity, he was attentive, interested and respectful. (teach er research journal) my advisor also observed this change. she perceived that by sharing and discussing preferences, and background knowledge and experiences about the subtopics, students began to develop an understanding of common characteristics for some music genres, and a tolerance for others. as my advisor reflected, […] they realized that some representations were not mutually exclusive to a particular music genre. perhaps, this activity might develop student tolerance towards different music genres and their representations. i believe that the final application activity encourages students to “put themselves in another person’s shoes”, for example, by choosing a music genre that is not their favorite profile vol. 12, no. 2, october 2010. issn 1657-0790. bogotá, colombia. pages 117-132 125 significant learning experiences for english foreign language students and then considering what they would wear and what activities they would do being that person. (advisor rating checklist) my ct also perceived a change in students with respect to their interest in the class, which included a more active participation without fear of being judged by others and a willingness to express a different point of view. she wrote: they express their feelings freely.5 […] they express their preferences and what they dislike about other music genres.6 […] they learn a lot about their classmates’ likes and trends while listening to their comments because they are very attentive and interested.7 (ct observation rating checklist) however, at the beginning of the unit on music, group work was a problematic issue. students were having conflicts in the groups they had arranged. they were not listening to their classmates’ opinions and wanted to change their group or interaction pattern because of personal problems among themselves or just whim. i realized then that students were taking an active role in learning without being serious and responsible enough, and began to reflect on this situation: this episode has made me think… and realize many things about the process my students and i are having with the project. what i see is that students are taking an extremely active role during their learning process because they have been given the right to take decisions about the contents, topic and activities of the unit and now they feel with the right of changing things just because they do not like something. this makes me wonder: to what extent is this positive? to what extent being too democratic facilitates the learning and teach er process? is really good being democratic with this type of students (adolescents) who 5 original spanish: “ellos expresan sus sentimientos espontáneamente”. 6 original spanish: “expresan sus preferencias y lo que les disgusta acerca de otros géneros musicales”. 7 original spanish: “ellos aprenden mucho de los gustos y tendencias de sus compañeros al escuchar sus comentarios porque todos están atentos y muy interesados”. are always changing their way of thinking and feelings? (teach er research journal) i understood that a teach er with authority and clear procedures was needed from the beginning of this process so that students could work better in groups and listen to their classmates’ ideas and opinions. it was necessary for my ct and i to convey to students that even though they had made decisions about the course content and activities, they needed to follow the rules that were established in class. as we advanced through the units, students became more open-minded, required my interventions less frequently to solve their difficulties, and began to listen to each other. i also had to guide students to solve their conflicts by talking among themselves and reaching agreements, and by creating an environment where all opinions were respected. regarding this issue, i observed changes in participants’ roles that, according to el karfa (2007), usually happen with instruction that is learner-centered. i became a facilitator whose work, according to owen and saddler (1999, p. 14, as cited in el karfa, 2007, p. 1), is “…to create a safe space within which people can work”; safe meaning a space where students can share their ideas and opinions without feeling any kind of pressure. the majority of the students also became aware of this change and of their increased tolerance of different points of view during class activities and discussions. they recognized that they had become more open and accepting of their classmates’ opinions about music genres they were previously reluctant to learn about. students expressed this new attitude: i learned many things about different genres in which i was not interested at all. i discovered new things about the genres 126 universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras becerra & mcnulty and i would love to continue learning more about them.8 i learned about other genres cultures and why they listen to that music.9 (student feedback card) el karfa (2007) states that whole class discussions and group work can help students to develop tolerance and mutual respect. students also reported positive perceptions related to their achievement of the human dimension learning goals for both subtopics in table 1. eighteen students completed the rating checklist during the first subtopic –history of music genres–, and seventeen during the second subtopic –music symbols and lifestyles. students reviewed the learning goals before assessing their performance. one of the most important findings during my research project was that most students actually experienced and perceived a change with the human dimension and reported having achieved the goals for this dimension for both subtopics. as most of the information and discussions about the topic came from their cultural background, students began to recognize and understand that each of them had background experiences that made them prefer one music genre. they also realized through group work, class activities and discussions that even if they were different in preferring other genres, there were similarities among the genres related to history, lifestyle, symbols, and clothes. this led us to conclude, in accordance with dee fink’s (2003) theory of significant learning, that students indeed had a significant learning experience since they experienced a transformation in one of the di8 original spanish: “aprendí muchas cosas sobre diferentes géneros por los cuales no he demostrado ningún interés de aprender. descubrí nuevas cosas de géneros y me encantaría seguir aprendiendo más de ellos”. 9 original spanish: “aprendí acerca de otros tipos de culturas y por qué ellos escuchan esa música”. mensions. moreover, students had a collaborative experience that put them in contact with different views of the world, which leads to meaningful and significant learning according to jonassen et al. (1999, as cited in bhattacharya, 2002). students’ work samples also demonstrated that they were able to see themselves as part of a different music genre and lifestyle. students were quite motivated with this work after knowing more details about the different genres and their histories, life-styles, and backgrounds. i further noticed a change in students’ attitudes towards learning english during this unit. before this intervention with this group, students had negative attitudes and thought that english was difficult to learn and they did not have the abilities to learn it successfully. however, over time, i began to see that my students were more confident, motivated to learn, and able to use english meaningfully. as i reflected in my journal: another important thing i saw was that students finally believe they can use english in a meaningful way and they finally saw themselves achieving something they thought it was impossible. i think we have made a change in the perceptions students have about english and about them learning english. (teach er research journal) i wanted my students to have an active role, reflecting on their learning process and achievement of the learning goals. in this way, i tried to transform goal setting into an act of communication so that the learning process could be more successful. i gave the students the opportunity to experience the reflective and intentional nature that learning should have, which is associated with meaningful and significant learning, according to jonassen et al. (1999, as cited in bhattacharya, 2002), and dee fink (2003). throughout this process, i communicated to students that i wanted them to keep in mind the profile vol. 12, no. 2, october 2010. issn 1657-0790. bogotá, colombia. pages 117-132 127 significant learning experiences for english foreign language students learning goals of the topics and subtopics. for this purpose, i used wall posters with the goals, a written agenda on the board, and whole class discussions. i also gave students the goals on slips of paper so that we could refer to them regularly and reflect on the learning process. my role turned more into that of a guide who proposed the agenda, and who motivated and gave students a chance to reflect actively on their learning process during class. my advisor and ct recognized this role and the importance i gave to both communicating the agenda and goals and having students reflect on their achievements. regarding this issue, my advisor expressed: in this class, you asked students to take out their sheets with the second unit subtopic goals, and think about which objectives they have reached or not. most students were engaged. students re-read the subtopic goals orally in class and then gave their opinion… i perceived that students were familiar with the goals and quite capable of reflecting on whether they had achieved them or not. (advisor rating checklist) this activity enabled students to have clear learning purposes and adopt a more active and reflective role towards their learning process. moreover, while reflecting, i realized students improved their self-confidence and adopted a different perception about learning english. in fact, students started to personalize goals and refer to them as theirs: “i have achieved all my goals”10 (student rating checklist); and, “until now, nothing has hindered me in achieving my goals”11 (student rating checklist). this personalization of goals showed that learning was enhanced. researchers at the north central regional educational laboratory (n.d.) refer to students taking ownership of their learning goals as a process which helps focus students’ learning. read ing through those reflections, i understood that students were recognizing that they were learning and achieving the goals we had previously established and agreed upon. the majority of the students acknowledged they were achieving all their learning goals and that the new topic-based unit and activities had helped them do so. the nature and organization of the music topic also helped students experience the integration dimension. they recognized they were not only learning about grammar, but about a topic that was relevant, interesting and useful for them. all participants agreed that the topic was very interesting for students and the activities and materials led to more meaningful and significant experiences. 10 original spanish: “he alcanzado todas mis metas”. 11 original spanish: “hasta ahora nada me ha impedido cumplir mis metas”. table 1. students’ perceptions of achievement with human dimension goals learning goals subtopic excellent good fair goal 1 goal 2 goal 1 goal 2 goal 1 goal 2 human 1 11.61% 9.50% 6.33% 8.44% 1.5 % 1.5% 2 10.58 % 10.58% 6.35% 7.41 % 1.5 % na* * no goal 2. 128 universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras becerra & mcnulty thus, students were personally engaged during the development of the topic and were able to establish permanent connections between the content and their real context and experiences. in this sense, learning became more authentic (jonassen et al., 1999, as cited in bhattacharya, 2002) as it was connected to students’ real life experiences and background (dee fink, 2003), which characterizes significant learning. during my classes, my ct and advisor agreed that the topic was interesting and motivating for students since they chose it for the unit and it could be applied to their life experiences and knowledge. (ct, advisor rating checklist) furthermore, my advisor noticed that students were making connections between the topic and their lives. she expressed in a rating checklist: “in your lesson, you gave students the opportunity to link the topic – music genre of hip-hop– to their lives. you asked students questions and made comments about hip-hop that enabled students to connect it to their lives”. in this sense i realized another change in the participants’ roles. students started to make connections by themselves, guided and motivated by my questions and comments. regarding whether working with a topic-based unit was significant for students, they all answered affirmatively. most of their comments indicated that they were motivated and enjoyed the unit: yes, because we learned about what we like the most: music genres.12 yes, because i have learned very easily and it is a topic i like a lot.13 yes, because i have realized i have learned a lot with this new learning methodology.14 (student rating checklist) 12 original spanish: “sí, porque aprendimos de lo que más nos gusta, géneros musicales”. 13 original spanish: “sí, porque he aprendido muy fácil y es un tema que me gusta mucho”. 14 original spanish: “sí, porque he visto que he aprendido más con este método de aprendizaje”. i think that this corroborates thanasoulas’ (2002) proposition that if we want our students to be more successful and motivated learners, we should find their relevant topics and integrate them into the curriculum. the topic and subtopics enabled me to present, link and recycle content and grammar in a meaningful way, including integrating language from the students’ cultural background experiences. after students practiced the language required for the different activities several times in class, they realized they could give important information about the topic during our discussions and activities while using the grammar structures they learned and their background knowledge of the music genres (teach er research journal). my ct also realized that students were trying to recycle structures to give opinions about the class discussions (ct rating checklist). my advisor agreed and wrote on the rating checklists that i gave students opportunities to “…connect previous ideas, both topic content and grammar, by using standard questions about a music genre during the warmup activity”; and “to integrate grammar with the topic in a meaningful and inductive way”. students had a more active role with this dimension, being responsible for building and integrating knowledge with guidance and support. i realized the topics were useful to produce cohesive and meaningful learning, and allowed students to reuse knowledge and topics in a variety of different contexts, which is promoted by the faculty for applied science resource center (2000). many students perceived that they had achieved the integration goals, although a few reported not having done so well for both subtopics, in table 2. samples of students’ products showed that many of them were successful with integrating language and content to express their ideas and knowledge about the topic. overall, students were profile vol. 12, no. 2, october 2010. issn 1657-0790. bogotá, colombia. pages 117-132 129 significant learning experiences for english foreign language students able to build more complex sentences and to recycle grammar and vocabulary from previous lessons. however, a number of students with low language ability had more difficulties with this dimension. their products contained isolated words or a few short sentences. yet, i recalled that a number of these students hardly wrote in english at the start of the semester. i realized that they would have benefited from additional material and activities with alternative grouping arrangements to reach their classmates’ language level. regarding the application dimension, i reflected that i did not propose enough activities and materials that would let students explore this dimension during the development of the subtopics due to a lack of time during my practicum (teach er research journal). it seemed that students had a chance to explore this dimension with the final product of each subtopic, which is a possibility according to dee fink (2003). my advisor and ct strongly agreed on their rating checklists that students applied content of the topic and language in the hands-on activities for the two subtopics. my advisor wrote, “i believe that all students were able to apply their knowledge about their music genre in a final product –a hand-made poster– answering wh-questions”; “your last activity in this lesson is an example of a hands-on activity as well as an application activity”. also, students believed that the most significant learning activities for the application dimension during the two subtopics were developed with surveys, posters, and cartoons (student feedback cards; student rating checklists). students expressed wanting to share what they had applied during the class with their families and friends (student feedback cards; student rating checklists). one could say that students’ intentions illustrate brown’s (1994) notion of permanence in students’ learning. these students wanted to share the knowledge they acquired in class in real life contexts outside the classroom. table 2. students’ perceptions of achievement with integration dimension goals learning goals subtopic excellent good fair goal 1 goal 2 goal 1 goal 2 goal 1 goal 2 integration 1 2.11 % 5.27% 14.77% 10.55% 2.11% 3.16% 2 12.70% 5.29% 4.23% 11.65% 1.6% 1.6% table 3. students’ perceptions of achievement with application dimension goals learning goals subtopic excellent good fair goal 1 goal 2 goal 1 goal 2 goal 1 goal 2 application 1 8.44% 7.41% 7.41% 9.50% 3.17% 2.36% 2 2.12% 12.70% 12.70% 4.23% 3.18% 1.6% 130 universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras becerra & mcnulty students believed they had achieved the significant learning goals related to application in table 3. while reviewing my students’ final products, i realized that many of them applied what they had learned about the target language and the topic with a creative, hands-on activity. the students with better language ability did very well with the written part as well as the oral presentation of the products. they were able to build meaningful and logical pieces of information and share this information with their classmates. even those students’ products with low language ability revealed that despite difficulties students had building sentences, english was used to communicate information and ideas. conclusion english foreign language students in public high schools in colombia can experience significant learning experiences leading to change by participating in the design and implementation of a topic-based unit. the topic-based unit becomes a useful strategy to allow teach ers and students to take on new roles in the teach ing-learning process. for example, teach ers can become active planners and communicators of significant learning goals, designers and organizers of activities and materials to achieve these goals, providers of content and language, and facilitators and motivators of learning. equally important, students can be active learners with roles such as decisionmakers of learning content, products and group members, information sharers and active listeners, as well as reflective learners and evaluators of their learning process and achievements. moreover, new roles for students can contribute to significant learning when goals and activities relate to dee fink’s (2003) human, integration and application dimensions. students can express and share their opinions about relevant and meaningful topics, and learn about others while becoming more tolerant and respectful of different points of views. additionally, students can establish meaningful links between content and language to their lives, and use what they learn in creative expression. students can become more interested in learning english, and reflect on their success with learning achievements. significant learning for students can be promoted by teach ers and students together negotiating what and how they want to learn with a topic-based unit. constant dialogue about learning goals and activities during the implementation of the unit is important, as well as reflection on learning. in this way, efl public high school instruction can include significant learning experiences in their courses. the rewards of shifting towards a student-centered approach to learning is worthwhile, and outweighs any challenges. references ashburn, e. a. (2006). attributes of meaningful learning using technology (mlt). in e. a. ashburn & r. e. floden (eds.), meaningful learning using technology: what educators need to know and do. new york: teach ers college press. bhattacharya, m., (2002, may). creating a meaningful learning environment using ict [electronic version]. cdtl brief, 5(3). retrieved october 16, 2008, from http://www.cdtl.nus/edu.sg/brief/v5n3/sec3.asp. bourke, j. m. (2006). designing a topic-based syllabus for young learners. elt journal, 60(3), 279-286. brown, h. d. (1994). teach ing by principles. an interactive approach to language pedagogy. englewood cliffs, nj: prentice hall regents. burns, a. (1999). collaborative action research for english language teach ers. cambridge: cambridge university press. center for teach ing and learning. (may, 2008). designing courses for significant student  learning. retrieved august 30, 2010, from http://ctl.byu.edu/?page_id=252. profile vol. 12, no. 2, october 2010. issn 1657-0790. bogotá, colombia. pages 117-132 131 significant learning experiences for english foreign language students creswell, j. w. (2003). research design. qualitative and quantitative and mixed methods approaches. thousand oaks, ca: sage publications. crispen, a. (n.d.). ideas for topic-based learning in science. retrieved september 9, 2010, from http:// www.teach ingexpertise.com/articles/ideas-for-topicbased-learning-in-science-2460. crookes, g. (2003). a practicum in tesol. professional development through teach ing practice. cambridge: cambridge university press. dee fink, l. d. (2002). a self-directed guide to designing courses for significant learning. retrieved august 25, 2010, from http://trc.virginia.edu/workshops/2004/ fink_designing_courses_2004.pdf. dee fink, l. d. 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(1998). the first days of school. mountain view, ca: wong publications. about the authors luz maría becerra, efl teach er at colegio de la universidad pontificia bolivariana and instructor at universidad de antioquia. b.ed. in teach ing foreign languages from universidad de antioquia. member of the autonomy and new technologies research group (geant), universidad de antioquia. maria mcnulty, associate professor at the school of languages, universidad de antioquia. master’s degree in tefl from universidad de caldas and a diploma in tesl from the university of toronto, canada. member of the action research and evaluation research group (giae) at universidad de antioquia. 132 universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras becerra & mcnulty appendix 1: unit 2. music genres topic: our favorite music genres: origins and characteristics. unit goals: students will: – learn about different music genres, their origins and representations (integration); – share their likes and interests of music genres (human); – identify similarities + differences among their preferences for music genres (human); – describe the history of their favorite music genre and representations (integration); – ask and answer questions in english about the unit subtopics (integration); – create a music poster exhibition with information about their music genres (application). weeks objectives integration human application subtopic 1. origins and history of our favorite music genres 1 identify, describe important information about favorite music genre in writing (when? where? who?). share likes + preferences for music genres, small groups. 2 compare favorite music genre history to others, in writing and orally. share, notice + understand different music preferences. illustrate + present a poster with important facts of favorite music genre (e.g. dates, artists, songs). 3 compare origins + history of different music genres, in writing (timeline), share orally. draw + present timelines to class. subtopic 2. music symbols and lifestyles 4 recognize musical instruments of music genres + characteristics. identify + describe symbols, clothes, accessories that define music genres in writing, present orally. share + notice the background, cultural richness of music genres. show + present visual with representations of music genres. 5 hypothesize about the lifestyle they would have if they liked another music genre. connect to symbols, clothes. place yourself in a different music genre lifestyle. 6 invent + describe a fictitious character who represents their point of view of a different music genre. explain your point of view of a different music genre to classmates. draw, label + describe a fictitious character who represents and illustrates their point of view of another music genre. 199profile vol. 15, no. 2, october 2013. issn 1657-0790 (printed) 2256-5760 (online). bogotá, colombia. pages 199-214 encouraging students to enhance their listening performance cómo animar a los estudiantes para que mejoren su desempeño en comprensión oral por sí mismos sonia patricia hernández-ocampo*1 maría constanza vargas**2 pontificia universidad javeriana, colombia spanish-speaking students constantly complain about the difficulty they have comprehending spoken english. it seems teachers do not often provide them with strategies to alleviate that. this article reports on a pedagogical experience carried out at a colombian university to help pre-service teachers at an intermediate level of english to improve their aural comprehension. the students were given the task of designing listening activities to be worked on as micro-teaching sessions and were asked to describe their experience by answering a survey. the results showed that students developed the ability to think critically since they needed to make the best decisions regarding the audio level and the design of the activities. they also appeared to have become more autonomous as they realized they could be responsible for their improvement in listening. additionally, there were evident changes in the teachers’ roles. key words: autonomy, critical thinking, teacher’s role, teaching listening. es común que los hablantes de español se quejen de su comprensión oral en inglés. parece que los profesores no siempre dan a sus estudiantes estrategias para mejorar al respecto. en este artículo se describe la experiencia pedagógica desarrollada en una universidad colombiana con el propósito de ayudar a los estudiantes de inglés intermedio de una licenciatura a mejorar su comprensión auditiva. se pidió a los estudiantes desarrollar actividades de escucha para ser trabajadas en sesiones de microenseñanza y describir su experiencia, contestando una encuesta. los resultados evidenciaron que los estudiantes desarrollaron su pensamiento crítico en la medida que necesitaban tomar decisiones con respecto al nivel de dificultad del audio y al diseño de las actividades mismas. también se mostraron más autónomos por cuanto se hicieron conscientes de su responsabilidad en el mejoramiento de su comprensión oral. adicionalmente, se dieron cambios en los papeles del profesor. palabras clave: autonomía, enseñanza de comprensión oral, función del profesor, pensamiento crítico. * e-mail: hernandez-s@javeriana.edu.co ** e-mail: tatinavgv@gmail.com this article was received on january 11, 2013, and accepted on july 2, 2013. universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras200 hernández-ocampo & vargas introduction the present article intends to show what has been done in the field of linguistics, say teaching english to future english teachers, in order to help the students enhance their listening skill. now, teaching a language means not only teaching the fundamentals of it but also abilities and strategies that help the learners improve their performance on it, so that they can really communicate. concerning a foreign language like english, we must talk about non-native users of english who use the language to communicate with others or to teach others how to use it. this is our case. as teachers, we try to teach our student-teachers how to use english properly. this arduous task involves, of course, the teaching and acquisition of the four skills: writing, reading, speaking, and listening. now, it is common to hear english students say that one of the biggest difficulties they have is to comprehend spoken english and to obtain good grades on listening exams. for them, it is easier to get to write in english and comprehend written texts than to have a good performance in listening and speaking. in addition, it is common for teachers to tell their students they will improve their speaking ability if their listening skill is enhanced. however, it is not common that teachers tell the students how they can go about doing it, and it is very likely that the students do not know how to practice listening on their own, as we have evidenced with our students. that is precisely our purpose with this document: to show the reader one of the things that can be done in order to help students with their learning and listening comprehension. to do that, we will start by describing the three pillars we consider are the ones involved in the project: teaching listening, autonomy, and critical thinking. afterwards, a descrip tion of the project will be provided, as well as the results obtained. three axes to consider first, it is important to know about the characteristics of our learners: they are future teachers since they are majoring in modern languages at javeriana university. the course is intermediate english, which means most of them are in fifth semester and have been taking 10-hour-a-week english classes for two years. according to the common european framework of reference for languages, they would be classified in level b2; this implies that they “can understand extended speech and lectures and follow even complex lines of argument provided the topic is reasonably familiar. [they] can understand most tv news and current affairs programmes. [they] can understand the majority of films in standard dialect” (pearson longman, n.d., p. 5). however, our students’ enduring complaint is that it is complicated to understand any audio text when the dialect is different from the american one. our discernment, as teachers, is that it is not only the dialect but also the pace and the task proposed that prevents them from obtaining good results. considering that the project has been developed in order to help those students enhance their listening performance, and also considering the fact that reminding the students they have to do extra practice on their own—since what is done in class is never enough—does not mitigate the problem, we feel there are three axes to consider: teaching listening, autonomy, and critical thinking. teaching listening this is not an easy task because listening involves going through a lot of mental processes, from distinguishing sounds to knowing a grammatical rule. in addition, we as teachers fall into the habit of having our students practice listening, but we do not tend to teach them how to listen. obviously, practice plays an essential role in developing the listening skill; 201profile vol. 15, no. 2, october 2013. issn 1657-0790 (printed) 2256-5760 (online). bogotá, colombia. pages 199-214 encouraging students to enhance their listening performance however, the way such practice is done is a key factor in developing the skill more effectively. in the classroom, for instance, we should take into account the understandable input we must use and the affective factor for listening comprehension (krashen, 1981). in addition, we have to emphasize two different processes to be used when listening to an oral text and trying to understand it: bottom-up processes and top-down processes (richards, 1990). the first ones involve the linguistic knowledge one possesses to decode the message, so it involves knowing, for example, how words link together, how some sounds disappear, and how grammar helps to guess meaning. the second ones, top-down processes, deal with the previous knowledge the listener has about the topic and how he associates this prior knowledge to the information he listens to in order to enhance comprehension. this all brings up the complexity of the listening skill; nevertheless, the way listening comprehension is taught might make the needed skills even more difficult to acquire. we should get our students aware of these processes at the time they are doing a listening exercise. for example, we can teach them that their knowledge about the language (prepositions, collocations, tenses, subject-verb agreement, etc.) will help them make predictions of the words that will follow in a sentence depending on the context, of course (bottom-up processes). also, we can have them realize the importance of reading the instructions and the questions before doing the task in order to activate their knowledge of the vocabulary related to the topic and, in this way, improve their listening comprehension (top-down processes). not only is it necessary to include conscientious listening strategies in our classes to improve our students’ listening comprehension, it is also important to provide our students with an appropriate environment that helps them in the acquisition. here, krashen’s (1981) affective filter hypothesis plays an important role, as does his input hypothesis. the first one refers to lowering students’ stress and anxiety as they are doing a listening exercise because motivation and selfconfidence encourage language acquisition. the second one refers to providing students with comprehensible input that is a little higher than what they can produce and with enough input of this kind they will acquire the language. language acquisition then involves practicing the language in real contexts or in situations similar to the real use of the language without feeling stressed or anxious. as teachers, we can help develop such acquisition by choosing the appropriate audios for our students and by motivating them to do listening activities in a comfortable environment. autonomy this is the second idea behind the project. autonomous learners are more effective learners and therefore more motivated learners. according to benson (2001, p. 47), “autonomy is generally defined as the capacity to take charge of, or responsibility for, one’s own learning.” what this means is that autonomous learners are able to control three aspects of the learning process: their cognitive processes, the content they are learning, and the way they are learning. in exercising this control, learners use different strategies: metacognitive, cognitive, and socio-affective strategies. the first ones enable the student to reflect on the learning process by planning, managing, monitoring, and evaluating learning tasks; cognitive strategies are the particular exercises or actions students take with the material to be learned; socio-affective strategies involve working or interacting with others to improve learning. according to vandergrift (2002), skilled listeners use more metacognitive strategies than their counterparts: “when listeners know how to . . . analyze the requirements of a listening task; . . . universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras202 hernández-ocampo & vargas activate the appropriate listening processes required; . . . make appropriate predictions; . . . monitor their comprehension; . . . and evaluate the success of their approach, they are using metacognitive knowledge for successful listening comprehension” (“listening in language learning and teaching,” par. 1). developing metacognitive knowledge in our students is, therefore, critical for the effectiveness in their listening skill. vandergrift proposes a pedagogical sequence to practice listening and help students develop metacognitive knowledge: the first step is having pre-listening activities which prepare the students for the content they are to listen to and the task they have to do; in pre-listening activities students are aware of their knowledge about the topic, can make predictions about the oral text and can focus on the particular information they need in order to do the listening task. the second step is monitoring listening comprehension; in this step, students make decisions on what strategy they need to use during the listening task, check their predictions and check their comprehension of the oral text. the third step involves assessing the effectiveness of the strategy used during the listening task. it is imperative then to encourage our students to follow these steps to become more autonomous listeners. hopefully, with the practice of these steps when doing listening exercises, they will eventually be more likely to practice on their own in order to improve their listening skill. critical thinking paul (1992) states that it is only when we have one problem to solve that we think critically. in order to solve a problem, we first need to analyze its nature then come up with different ideas to solve it, evaluate these ideas, and make decisions to choose the best alternatives. these processes require high order thinking skills that improve our own thinking. but improving our thinking not only implies analysis and decision making but also assessing our thinking (analysis, decisions) using intellectual standards as paul suggests. intellectual standards are used to get students to check or assess the quality of their judgements. they include clarity, accuracy, precision, relevance, depth, breadth, and logic. teachers can teach these standards by posing questions to students about their reasoning.1 therefore, getting our students to solve problems is not enough to turn them into critical thinkers; they need to assess their analyses and decisions in solving problems by using the abovementioned intellectual standards. all in all, critical thinking is, in paul’s words, “thinking about your thinking while you are thinking in order to make your thinking better” (par. 3). the project conscious of the need to guide our students in their language acquisition and autonomous work, we have included a listening project in our classes as a way to help them improve their listening skill. the project was carried out in a teaching degree program with intermediate students of english; the project—which is currently being developed not only in the intermediate level classes, but in others—was run for two semesters in 2010-2011. the information was collected in two classes, with an average of 20 students each. in the project, students were to look for an authentic audio text and create an activity with which they and their partners could have good practice. in this way, our students were making use of the language in real contexts, which might help them enhance their understanding when they listen to english in authentic situations (field, 1998) and they could practice listening in an atmosphere where they were 1 for an example of a set of questions about depth, let’s quote paul and elder (2007, p. 11): “depth: how does your answer address the complexities in the question? how are you taking into account the problems in the question? is that dealing with the most significant factors? a statement can be clear, accurate, precise, and relevant, but superficial (that is, lack depth).” 203profile vol. 15, no. 2, october 2013. issn 1657-0790 (printed) 2256-5760 (online). bogotá, colombia. pages 199-214 encouraging students to enhance their listening performance relaxed, not stressed as is the case of class exercises and exams. as krashen (1981) suggests, reducing stress enhances language acquisition. the first condition for the students to do the activity was that the audio had to be authentic, so that they could become familiar with the characteristics of natural speech (field, 1998). that means that they were not allowed to choose any audio that came from textbooks. instead, they had a wide variety of sources such as magazines, websites, podcasts, songs, movies, and so forth. the constraint related to textbooks is due to the fact that they have adapted audios; therefore, they are not real life examples of what an english learner might be exposed to. students must also consider the level of the audio, neither too high nor too low, but according to their language level (krashen, 1981). on this first condition, the students faced a problem: to decide which audio would match best with their level. the second condition was that they had to identify the type of task they had more difficulty with. thus, the students were obliged to reflect on their strengths and weaknesses to distinguish the latter and try to compensate for them, which would somehow enable them to be critical about their learning process (paul, 1992). besides, as the groups were varied— what might be a strength in one student might be a weakness in another—this resulted in diverse types of challenging tasks. the third condition consisted in designing a pre-listening, a while-listening, and a post-listening activity. here they faced the responsibility of designing a creative pre-listening activity to get their partners’ attention, which was as important as a well-designed post-listening activity that kept the audience involved. student-presenters, in a micro-teaching situation, gave their partners the activities they themselves. the whole situation lasted for about half an hour. once the presentation was over and all the class had done the proposed activities, it was time for evaluation: self and peer evaluation (see appendixes a and b). the class was to evaluate the presenters as “teachers” and so were the student-presenters, who did self-evaluation; assessment focused on the design of the activities. as a consequence, the students were learning how to assess themselves and their partners; they became more responsible as they recognized weaknesses, not only in their partners but also in themselves and became aware of what they could do on their own to their benefit. towards the end of the semesters, after having three micro-teaching sessions with different audios and activities per pair, a general evaluation of the project took place. it was a blind open question survey2 (see appendix c) in which they were asked about their feelings towards the assignment, the difficulties they had had, and the gains they made, as well as suggestions and complaints. the above resulted in students being reflective upon and critical of their performance; they were to identify strengths and weaknesses and go beyond that by getting into action. it is valuable that they could say what their difficulties were and then tried to alleviate them by doing the exercise of designing listening activities as proposed. results the results are based on the information collected through the survey to assess the project as a whole. all students in the two classes answered the survey. the analysis of the information was a qualitative one; the data were analysed so that some categories emerged according to repetition of information relating the criteria in the survey: feelings as a “teacher,” feelings towards peer and self-evaluation, gains, suggestions. the findings were classified into four categories: performance, critical thinking and autonomy, playing the teacher’s role, and assessment. 2 the students were not asked to identify themselves when answering the surveys. universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras204 hernández-ocampo & vargas performance all the students reported having an important gain: the listening project has helped them comprehend spoken english better, apart from giving them the chance to practice speaking. they commented that there had been a certain amount of improvement in the different skills, especially in listening, as well as in the acquisition of new vocabulary and improvement in pronunciation; besides, it gave them the opportunity to learn about new topics different from the ones they see in their textbooks. students also claimed they had gotten some new practice when listening: “now i try to get the whole idea the first time i listen to the audio and, after that, i try to answer the tasks that are asked;” “[i have learnt] to do charts, to classify the information, to infer;” “now i try to understand little details, not only the general idea.” with regard to the common complaints about the difficulty in understanding when it was a dialect different from the american, they stated that they could understand different accents better: “it helps us to improve our comprehension of different types of voices;” “i have better understanding even with fast audios,” referring to the pace of the speech, they said. furthermore, many said they had made some progress in the exams, although this was not the purpose of the project. with respect to this, it is important to add that not all the students made the same progress, as it would depend on every student’s level of proficiency; some of them did not even pass their exam(s)—“i don’t have a good listening [performance], but the project is a good practice for our listening exams”— but experienced such an important advance in listening comprehension that they felt more confident as they recognised their weaknesses and got ideas on what to do to alleviate them. it is obvious that the students were exposed to a lot of input that maybe helped them acquire the language (krashen, 1981); in other words, this input promoted the use of the language in a subconscious way and made them feel more comfortable when listening to an audio for a quiz or an exam. on the other hand, when asked about their feelings when performing as presenters, students said they had felt nervous, intimidated, stressed, scared, and sometimes confused and disappointed: “i felt stressed because the audience didn’t want to participate;” “nervous because i didn’t know how to explain the instructions;” and “i felt scared because i don’t like to stay in front of many people.” others said they had felt disappointed because the results were not what they expected. nevertheless, not all of them had bad feelings as presenters; many of them reported feeling comfortable and added that it was a very good experience as “you learn how to manage the audience.” students were also asked about their feelings as members of the audience. regarding this, most of them reported to have felt interested as there were different topics on culture, history, science, and medicine, among others; they also said they felt relaxed and expectant: “i felt more confident and relaxed when listening, which allows me to think more clearly.” also, some added that they had felt more secure because they did not have to speak before the audience. however, others said they felt a little bored because there were too many exercises of the same kind. critical thinking and autonomy as we know an autonomous learner is one who thinks critically and a critical thinker makes an autonomous learner, we decided not to separate the findings on these. the students admitted that it had been hard to find an appropriate audio according to their level. they were aware of the fact that they had to design something for the others to approve and find useful: “something that was kind of difficult was to create something new and appealing for the others.” besides, the students became more acquainted with their active role in their learning process: “i have 205profile vol. 15, no. 2, october 2013. issn 1657-0790 (printed) 2256-5760 (online). bogotá, colombia. pages 199-214 encouraging students to enhance their listening performance learned that i must do my job conscientiously.” “it is useful because you can see what you need to improve.” furthermore, as said before, some students realised that they can do a lot to alleviate their limitations—at least, they were aware of the many sources they could access to get extra practice on their own: “i learnt that i can do exercises by myself and that i can use the internet to do them;” “i found that i can use the podcasts and news with listenings (referring to audios) to improve my listening and vocabulary.” this shows that students are becoming more responsible for their own improvement. all of them confessed to having done more work at home as they have learned that they can find a lot of web pages to practice with on their own. also, they realised, while looking for the audios to do the exercises, that there are a lot more activities for practising themselves. they claimed to have learned about the wide variety of resources the centro de recursos (resources center) offered, apart from the web pages they found such as: www.unicef.org, www. bbc.co.uk/radio/podcasts, www.sciam.com/podcast playing the teacher’s role our students, as stated before, will become language teachers once they finish their major (at least, that is the preparation they are receiving). the project allowed the students to take the role of a teacher: “i felt as a teacher,” “it helped us to analyse ourselves as teachers,” they commented. others, thinking further about what being a teacher means, assured us that the project helped them think of how to prepare a class taking the students’ characteristics into account: “you have to design challenging exercises, not only fill-inthe-blank activities because they are repetitive and don’t allow the students to think.” similarly, some recognised they could be more creative which, they acknowledged, is good for them as future teachers. they also realized that being in front of the audience implies some form of control over it. they felt that was challenging as they said it was difficult “to catch the attention of the class because to control the group is very hard” and, sometimes, “it was difficult to give clear instructions.” clarity of instructions, we must say, improved as they did the project a second and third time. so, we could notice students took the feedback into account every time they did their presentations. others recognized they had learned how to control their fear of speaking in public, as it also improved through the different presentations they did. besides, some said to have been trained in evaluation, as they had to assess their partners. although in the beginning it was taken as “if the presenters are my friends, i will give them a good grade”—to put it in the students’ words—they turned out to be more objective towards the end of the semester: they justified the score they gave their partners. all the students considered these aspects to be very helpful as they will be in front of a group soon, and will have to evaluate them as teachers. assessment although most of the students reported finding peer evaluation useful, a few did not agree: “peer evaluation is not useful because the majority of them [the students] don’t take the suggestions into account; they just want a good grade, but it is not like that;” some felt that the comments made by their peers were not fair as they considered their peers to be evaluating the topic instead of the activity itself. others, instead, recognised the importance of it since they found it useful to have another point of view different from the teacher’s. with regard to the role of evaluating their peers, they said it was interesting as “it helps you know what it is like to be a teacher.” they were able to suggest to their partners what to improve and most of them were serious when doing it. all of them reported having evaluated their partners conscientiously. moreover, they valued the importance of feedback in learning: “the learning process implies good feedback and we had it,” they affirmed. universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras206 hernández-ocampo & vargas conclusions it is important to highlight the fact that many of the students were aware of their problems with pro nunciation and grammar, besides their low performance on listening, which reinforces the idea of the project being helpful to lead students to an improvement of other skills/components of the language. the project required the students to make decisions about the topic and material they would use in their presentations, as well as about the activities they would plan. this involved reflecting on their performance to identify strengths and weaknesses and, based on that, analyzing and judging sources and methodology, which reflect the use of the critical thinking skills paul (1992) talks about. in the same way, although some students did not design the exercises themselves, they were useful because they had to make decisions on what to use and how to adapt them, taking into account not only their needs, but also their peers’. some others took already designed exercises as a reference to design their own; that move implied decision making as well, as they had to decide if the level was proper and if the type of exercise was interesting enough to be presented. as long as the projects were presented, students became more demanding with respect to the difficulty of the audio, the design of the exercises and the type of activities, which shows they were really concerned about their need to enhance their performance. they were being critical of and took responsibility for not only their own performance but also their peers’, following what paul, willsen, and binker (1993) and benson (2001) state. thus, some students have gone beyond recognising their weaknesses by using their own strategies to lessen them. they considered the project to be very helpful since it made them aware of the many possibilities of working on their own; they are becoming more autonomous. they really felt there was some improvement in their performance on listening (which was what we aimed at with the project), although it did not guarantee obtaining good grades—at least the ones they expected—on their tests. as for language acquisition, students had to choose an audio that was at a higher level than the level they use to produce the language which involved the kind of input that krashen (1981) says is necessary to acquire a language. in the same way, students had the chance to practice listening in a relaxed environment since the ones who were not the presenters had to do the exercise without the pressure of a grade for their performance. this involves the second point made by krashen about motivation and self-confidence, which promote language acquisition. by evaluating themselves and their peers, students will become more analytical and critical. thus, when they become teachers, they will have been faced with evaluating and, somehow, will have some confidence in the process and will take it more into consideration as they will have reflected on all that it implies. students played the role of a teacher and realized that it implied being creative, taking the students’ characteristics into account to design the activity, controlling the group, keeping the group’s attention, and challenging the students to get good responses. they felt it was difficult but liked the experience a lot. there was a change of roles. our students were given the responsibility for some functions that traditionally have been in teachers’ hands. this has led us to confront our own practice; we have begun reflecting upon our role as guiding agents, not as providers. references benson, p. (2001). teaching and researching autonomy in language learning. essex, uk: longman. field, j. (1998). skills and strategies: towards a new methodology for listening. elt journal, 52(2), 110-118. 207profile vol. 15, no. 2, october 2013. issn 1657-0790 (printed) 2256-5760 (online). bogotá, colombia. pages 199-214 encouraging students to enhance their listening performance krashen, s. d. (1981). second language acquisition and second language learning [html version]. retrieved from: http://www.sdkrashen.com/sl_acquisition_and_ learning/cover.html paul, r. (1992, april). critical thinking: basic questions and answers [interview for think magazine]. retrieved from http://www.criticalthinking.org/aboutct/ctquestions answers.cfm paul, r., & elder, l. (2007). the miniature guide to critical thinking: concepts and tools [pdf version]. retrieved from http://www.d.umn.edu/~jetterso/documents/ criticalthinking.pdf paul, r., willsen, j., & binker, j. a. (eds.). (1993). critical thinking: how to prepare students for a rapidly changing world. santa rosa, ca: foundation for critical thinking. pearson longman. (n.d.). teacher’s guide to the common european framework [pdf version]. retrieved from http://www.pearsonlongman.com/ae/cef/cefguide.pdf richards, j. (1990). the language teaching matrix. cambridge, uk: cambridge university press. vandergrift, l. (2002). listening: theory and practice in modern foreign language competence. retrieved from: https://www.llas.ac.uk/resources/gpg/67 about the authors sonia patricia hernández-ocampo is an english teacher at pontificia universidad javeriana (colombia). she earned a master’s degree in education at the same university. she has designed material for the language department’s distance english program. her interests also include evaluation in education. maría constanza vargas has studied and worked in colombia. she holds a bed in modern languages from universidad de los andes and the certificate of “especialista en docencia universitaria” from universidad del rosario. she has worked as a coordinator in the english department at politécnico grancolombiano and as materials designer for the virtual english courses at universidad nacional de colombia. currently, she works as an english teacher at pontificia universidad javeriana. universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras208 hernández-ocampo & vargas appendix a: self-evaluation forms pontificia universidad javeriana facultad de comunicación y lenguaje departamento de lenguas licenciatura en lenguas modernas—inglés intermedio _______________________________________________________________________________ july 2010 answer the following questions. be as explicit as possible. 1. how did you feel as a presenter? _______________________________________________________________________________ 2. what was the audience response like? _______________________________________________________________________________ 3. were there any problems with the activities proposed? _______________________________________________________________________________ 4. do you consider there is anything to improve for future presentations? what? how? _______________________________________________________________________________ 5. give yourself a grade from 1-5. support your answer. _______________________________________________________________________________ 209profile vol. 15, no. 2, october 2013. issn 1657-0790 (printed) 2256-5760 (online). bogotá, colombia. pages 199-214 encouraging students to enhance their listening performance pontificia universidad javeriana facultad de comunicación y lenguaje departamento de lenguas licenciatura en lenguas modernas—inglés intermedio _______________________________________________________________________________ july 2010 presenter choose the option—one or more when suitable—you consider the best. 1. i was ______________ prepared for the activity. ( ) inadequately ( ) fairly ( ) well 2. it was useful to design the listening activity because… ( ) i learned that i could practise listening on my own. ( ) i practised how to design a listening exercise. ( ) i practised grammar. ( ) i practised listening. ( ) i learned new words. ( ) i learned about a topic. 3. the activity… ( ) had problems with respect to the instructions. ( ) had problems with respect to the exercises. ( ) had problems with respect to the level of difficulty of the audio. ( ) had problems with respect to the layout. ( ) didn’t have any problems. 4. the reaction/response of the audience was… ( ) negative ( ) fairly positive ( ) positive 5. what grade 1-5 would you give yourself? _____________ universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras210 hernández-ocampo & vargas appendix b: peer evaluation forms pontificia universidad javeriana facultad de comunicación y lenguaje departamento de lenguas licenciatura en lenguas modernas—inglés intermedio _______________________________________________________________________________ february 2011 answer the following questions. be as explicit as possible. 1. were the presenters clear when introducing the topic? _______________________________________________________________________________ 2. what was their level of language? _______________________________________________________________________________ 3. was the presentation appropriate for the listening activity? _______________________________________________________________________________ 4. was the listening activity in accordance with the level? _______________________________________________________________________________ 5. how did you feel about the listening and the activities? _______________________________________________________________________________ 6. did you have much trouble doing the exercises proposed? why? _______________________________________________________________________________ 7. what recommendations would you give the presenters? _______________________________________________________________________________ 8. what grade 1-5 would you give them? support your answer. _______________________________________________________________________________ 211profile vol. 15, no. 2, october 2013. issn 1657-0790 (printed) 2256-5760 (online). bogotá, colombia. pages 199-214 encouraging students to enhance their listening performance pontificia universidad javeriana facultad de comunicación y lenguaje departamento de lenguas licenciatura en lenguas modernas—inglés intermedio _______________________________________________________________________________ july 2010 student choose the option—one or more when suitable—you consider the best. 1. the activity has the following characteristics: a. ( ) authentic text b. ( ) pre-listening component c. ( ) while-listening component d. ( ) post-listening component 2. the level of difficulty of the audio was… a. ( ) low b. ( ) adequate c. ( ) high d. ( ) too high 3. the instructions of the activity were… a. ( ) confusing b. ( ) fairly clear c. ( ) clear 4. the information of the audio was… a. ( ) poorly used b. ( ) fairly well used c. ( ) well used 5. the exercises were… a. ( ) creative b. ( ) interesting c. ( ) challenging d. ( ) varied e. ( ) organized f. ( ) well designed g. ( ) simple h. ( ) boring i. ( ) easy j. ( ) badly designed k. ( ) other: __________________ universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras212 hernández-ocampo & vargas 6. (name)_______________ needs to improve…. a. ( ) fluency b. ( ) pronunciation c. ( ) grammar d. ( ) intonation 7. (name)_______________ needs to improve… a. ( ) fluency b. ( ) pronunciation c. ( ) grammar d. ( ) intonation 8. what recommendations would you give the presenters? 9. what grade 1-5 would you give them?________ 213profile vol. 15, no. 2, october 2013. issn 1657-0790 (printed) 2256-5760 (online). bogotá, colombia. pages 199-214 encouraging students to enhance their listening performance appendix c: general evaluation of the project pontificia universidad javeriana listening project assessment 1. how did you feel as the presenter? as a member of the audience? _______________________________________________________________________________ _______________________________________________________________________________ 2. was it difficult to present your exercise? why? _______________________________________________________________________________ _______________________________________________________________________________ 3. do you consider the listening project useful? why? _______________________________________________________________________________ _______________________________________________________________________________ 4. what did you learn? _______________________________________________________________________________ _______________________________________________________________________________ 5. did you find any sources that you can use on your own initiative just for practice? which ones? _______________________________________________________________________________ _______________________________________________________________________________ 6. did it help you use new strategies or change the ones you had to improve your listening skill? which ones? _______________________________________________________________________________ _______________________________________________________________________________ 7. do you perceive any progress in your listening performance through the listening projects? _______________________________________________________________________________ _______________________________________________________________________________ 8. how can the listening project be improved? _______________________________________________________________________________ _______________________________________________________________________________ universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras214 hernández-ocampo & vargas 9. did you design the exercises yourself or did you take them from another source? _______________________________________________________________________________ _______________________________________________________________________________ 10. did you feel well evaluated by your classmates? _______________________________________________________________________________ _______________________________________________________________________________ 11. did you evaluate your classmates conscientiously? _______________________________________________________________________________ _______________________________________________________________________________ 12. do you find evaluating and being evaluated useful? why? _______________________________________________________________________________ _______________________________________________________________________________ 13. what did you think of the audience’s response? were they interested? was it what you expected? _______________________________________________________________________________ _______________________________________________________________________________ 11profile vol. 14, no. 2, october 2012. issn 1657-0790 (printed) 2256-5760 (online). bogotá, colombia. pages 11-27 using web-based activities to promote reading: an exploratory study with teenagers uso de actividades en la red para promover la lectura: un estudio exploratorio con adolescentes marlén rátiva velandia* andrés leonardo pedreros torres** mónica núñez alí*** el libertador school, colombia it is considered valuable to take advantage of web activities to improve and qualify the english teaching and learning processes, especially in the promotion of reading comprehension. in this article we share the process and results of a study that focused on some activities based on web materials that were designed and used with 10th grade students, with the purpose of promoting reading. data was gathered through the use of questionnaires, surveys and web activities. the results showed that most of the students agree on the fact that reading more information concerning a specific topic or about different subjects makes them work with enthusiasm; they also had new possibilities to access knowledge in a different way and to improve reading comprehension. key words: reading comprehension in english, teaching teenagers, web-based activities. se considera valioso tomar ventaja de las actividades basadas en materiales web para mejorar y cualificar los procesos de la enseñanza y aprendizaje del idioma inglés, especialmente en la promoción de la comprensión lectora. en este artículo compartimos los procesos y resultados de un estudio que se centró en algunas actividades basadas en materiales web que fueron diseñadas y empleadas por estudiantes de décimo grado con el propósito de promover la lectura. la información se recogió mediante cuestionarios, encuestas y materiales web. los resultados mostraron que la mayoría de los estudiantes están de acuerdo con que leer información concerniente a un tema específico o de diferentes materias los puede motivar a trabajar con entusiasmo y que también tienen nuevas posibilidades para acceder al conocimiento de una manera diferente y mejorar su comprensión lectora. palabras clave: actividades en la red, comprensión lectora en inglés, enseñanza a adolescentes. * e-mail: maraveya1975@yahoo.com ** e-mail: andresupn2002@yahoo.com *** e-mail: nuezali@yahoo.com this paper reports on a study conducted by the authors while participating in the profile teacher development program at universidad nacional de colombia in 2009-2010. the program was sponsored by secretaría de educación de bogotá, d.c. code number: 1576, august 24, 2009. this article was received on january 13, 2012, and accepted on june 19, 2012. universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras12 rátiva velandia, pedreros torres & núñez alí introduction the new technologies of information and communication have become an important tool that can develop new interests and abilities among people. nowadays students need to be inquisitive and use their imagination to explore subjects. they not only need to get knowledge but also to understand how and why things work. it is undeniable that the internet has transformed our society. it has broken communication barriers and facilitated a new way of information exchange. also, it has given access to wider knowledge. thus, we can find some web materials that have become a great support for the developing of learning processes in different disciplines. the use of some web information for classroom activities not only gets students closer to their reality but also gives both teachers and students the opportunity to exchange knowledge. web-based activities constitute an easy-to-use way for learning management and they make the internet a useful tool for education. our tenth grade students were very interested in the use of technology in some aspects of their lives. also, el libertador school –where the study was conducted– has placed emphasis on technology as part of its curriculum. so, we decided to involve students in the implementation of an english project that focused on technology and helped them in the development of reading comprehension skills. this decision was based on the opinion of some teachers who expressed that their students were not used to reading very often and when they had to, their interaction with reading materials was not very positive. through this experience we wanted to explore how the perspective of the teaching learning process in a foreign language could change our practices in the classroom, as well as get students to realize the advantages of using the internet for some educative purposes. this project was carried out at el libertador school. it is a public institution located in bogotá (colombia), zone 18 rafael uribe uribe, with a pedagogical emphasis on technology. since 2007 it has been associated with sena (servicio nacional de aprendizaje national apprenticeship service). they offer students four vocational options to select from: analysis, design, electronic techno logies and business management. the main purpose of the school pei (proyecto educativo institucional institutional educative project) is to develop in the students the tools to face the new requirements of the technological societies with real and practical knowledge. we chose 21 students from 10th grade, who were part of 3 different groups. it is important to note that one of the researchers of this project had been working with those students for 3 years; so he had enough information about their characteristics and the way they fared in english classes. therefore, he noticed their needs concerning reading comprehension; so this was the main reason why we decided to take this group as the research study subject. on the basis of the school’s main goal, the students’ needs and our interest in working on the use of technology to foster reading comprehension among the students, we established the main research question of our study as follows: • what can be observed regarding students’ interest towards reading when using webbased reading activities? in tune with it, we posed two main objectives: • to explore the impact of using web-based activities as a classroom resource to promote reading in the context of 10th graders at el libertador public school in bogotá. • to analyze how web-based activities promote reading among students. 13profile vol. 14, no. 2, october 2012. issn 1657-0790 (printed) 2256-5760 (online). bogotá, colombia. pages 11-27 using web-based activities to promote reading: an exploratory study with teenagers in this article we describe the implementation of the project, the characteristics of the tenth grade participants, the main question and objectives, the implementation of the project in a real context, how the theoretical framework was conceived and the results obtained during the process. in the last section of the article we present the conclusions and the pedagogical implications. literature review according to murray, yang and allen (2002), the overall adoption of educational technology within academic environments is driving literacy instruction beyond the traditional oral and print-based medium toward online, electronic, and multimedia texts. the inclusion of computers within learning processes is dramatically creating new opportunities for students to embrace writing and collaboration as a means for self-expression. by changing the way that information is presented and processed, technology is influencing how students read, write, and communicate. as perakovic, remenar and jovovic (2012) said, the development of technology has brought additional improvement in the quality of education by using the e-learning technology. the world wide web has impacted the educational model in a fundamental way and forced educators to think of ways that this technology can be used to improve teaching effectiveness. thus, it is important to consider methodology in terms of the call (computer assisted language learning) methodology. call is reaching an utmost position in the pedagogical field of english as a second or foreign language. its powerful presence has fostered learner autonomy and a wide range of opportunities for authentic interaction in the target language (english) in computer-based conditions (quesada, 2005, p. 6) web-based learning is becoming an even more powerful interactive source that increases learners’ knowledge and that guarantees quantity and quality of language input and output. added to this, the changing role of the teacher is more responsive to students’ self-directed learning. it has also been found that the implementation of different web activities develops student’s skills in the use of language. web activities may increase learner motivation so the resulting effects could be beneficial to both teaching-learning processes; additionally, they offer opportunities for teachers to explore content resources on the net in order to integrate them in classroom instruction at a low cost. teachers with few skills in information and communication technology (ict) can make use of web-based activities cognitive brainstorming, identify real world activities, examine resources, define the task available on the web or adapt existing ones to their purposes. web materials have a pedagogical value in the sense that they foster opportunities for richer interdisciplinary content learning and allow the development of skills to deal appropriately with information. for instance, web tasks help students to think, analyze, and use information and resources to solve problems through collaborative work (angrill, 2002). gass, mackey and pica (1998) claimed that interaction plays a significant role in second language acquisition. it is through interaction with others as well as the learning materials that learners receive the input in order to acquire the target language. in the same line of thought, simina and hamel (2005) say that principles of construct ivism also support the use of computers in second language learning classrooms. web-based learning can provide a context for collaboration and social interaction in which learners will construct the knowledge of the target language by being engaged in meaningful activities such as the reading of different kinds of material. web activities, therefore, universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras14 rátiva velandia, pedreros torres & núñez alí provide an ideal context for second language learning because they provide multiple representations of the natural complexity of the real world, representing authentic tasks and enabling context and content dependent knowledge construction (simina & hamel, 2005). in fact, computer-based activities enable interpersonal interaction with the learning materials in the target language. our study was based on the use of ict as a tool to develop reading abilities. we consider that reading is an important competence in a knowledge-based society; it involves decoding strings of letters or being able to enjoy or understand a text. in fact, literacy is the ability to read, write and think critically and coherently. it is probably a better word for the crucial competences in knowledgebased societies. reading is an interactive process that goes on between the reader and the text, resulting in comprehension. the text presents letters, words, sentences, and paragraphs that encode meaning. the reader uses knowledge, skills, and strategies to determine what that meaning is. reading pages on the web is very different from reading information in a book because on the web you need to know how to navigate from page to page and up and down a page, using both your browser’s navigation buttons and the website’s features. you also need to know how to skim and scan to find the information you need. using these skills makes reading on the web easier and more rewarding (pearson education development group, n.d.). they also say that skimming and scanning help students find the information they need, without reading everything on a web page. if you had to read every word on every page you came across, you would never have the time to finish your research. when students develop reading skills through web materials they do the following: • understand how reading information on the web is different from reading information in a book. • understand how to use a browser’s navigation tools and a website’s features. • understand the importance of skimming and scanning on the web. • apply what they have learned to find and read information on the web. (teachervision, n.d.) there are different styles of reading for different situations. the technique you choose will depend on the purpose for reading. for example, some people might be reading for enjoyment, information, or to complete a task. that is the flexibility learners have when they access the www, thus becoming autonomous learners. students can also be exposed to extensive reading and writing through conceptualized practice. that is, learners can exchange messages and discuss readings or they can read web-based stories with both audio and video text exposure, and write comments to other on-line reading peers about relevant details. (egbert, 2005, as cited by quesada, 2005, p. 15) there are several ways in which technology can be used to improve reading ability. most simple wreading texts are also very primary in content. older children may consider themselves too old to be reading such primary content books. computers, however, can increase the interest level for older students while keeping the text simple and easy to read. another benefit of using computers for reading instruction is that the computers offer immediate feedback on performance. they also provide added practice when necessary. according to case and truscott (1999), students have been able to improve their sight word vocabulary, fluency and comprehension as a result of the interaction with this kind of resources. hence, they can increase their interest in reading, independence to approach new texts, the acquisition of knowledge 15profile vol. 14, no. 2, october 2012. issn 1657-0790 (printed) 2256-5760 (online). bogotá, colombia. pages 11-27 using web-based activities to promote reading: an exploratory study with teenagers and awareness of the importance to take this activity over as an essential part of their lives. research design the implementation of web activities which was developed with tenth graders from el liber tador public school is considered basic in the educative process and an innovative tool to help the target group to focus on their way of thinking about reading and the importance of having a critical point of view. for that reason, we decided to engage in an action research project, since it is conducted in naturally occurring settings, primarily using methods common to qualitative research (nunan, 1992) such as observing and recording events and behaviors. in action research, analytic or theoretical understanding has a subordinate relation to the development of a synthetic or holistic appreciation of the situation as a whole (elliot, 1991). we consider that action research is a viable way to use data collection methods based on “triangulation”, which involves gathering data from a number of different sources so that the research findings or insights can be tested out against each other. this increases the reliability and validity of the research. additionally, since collaborative action research encompasses the different perspectives of several participants and researchers, as well as a variety of data collection tools and methods, the findings of collaborative researchers are likely to be more valid and reliable and, therefore, potentially more generalized to similar teaching contexts than the findings in individual action research (burns, 1999). as a research team, we distributed the tasks according to our experience, time and knowledge about the group. so, some of us took notes and organized the data, others applied the activities. the processes of data analysis, material design and report writing were conducted collaboratively. as a way to understand our participants’ needs, we used a questionnaire in our study. it was useful to get an accurate profile of their needs and to design appropriate reading workshops. in the first stage we applied two instruments – one for students and another one for teachers. this was done in order to get more information from our students in relation to the way they use web sites, and teachers’ points of view about the use of the internet during the teaching process. the students’ questionnaire goal was to identify interests, tastes, level of interaction with web resources and their previous experiences with reading. the teachers’ questionnaire was answered by 5 secondary education teachers from the areas of spanish, informatics, social sciences and english. it was also designed to determine if they had used the internet in their classes and the advantages and disadvantages that, from their points of view, this practice may involve. at the end, we applied another questionnaire to learn the students’ opinion about the activities. we also commented what was observed during the implementation of the reading workshops. we analyzed the data according to the information requested in the questions identified categories and selected information that, according to the research group, could provide information regarding students’ views about web activities and reading. taking into account the findings of the first stage, we designed some materials linked to students’ interests and likes. pedagogical design as a team, we designed three activities, the first was “the history of computers”, the second was about “the history of rock music” and the third was “the 2010 world soccer cup” playoff. those activities let students navigate on some web pages that offered a variety of information; in other cases, the web pages provided new vocabulary and learning universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras16 rátiva velandia, pedreros torres & núñez alí about grammar structure (see web-based activity sample in appendix c). the activities were exposed in the blog http:// literatureandknowledge.blogspot.com. it gave students links about readings in order to be explored and provided opportunities for them to do exercises like answering questions, completing sentences, doing crosswords or word search. another important aspect was that activities had games, karaoke, simulations and listening exercises. the material design and the subsequent analysis were carried out by the research-team while the activities were applied and monitored by the teacher who was in charge of the group. it should be noted that although the school has four computer labs, english teachers do not have any access to them, so it was a problem when we decided to implement our project. to overcome that limitation, students worked at home, developed online activities and presented their results in two ways: through an e-mail with an attached docu ment and a printed copy of the same file. in some classes students and the teacher discussed the topics and activities with the purpose of sharing the information obtained in the readings and obtaining the proper feedback. results base-line study we followed the phases proposed by burns (1999). in the exploring phase we identified a general idea or issue of interest. it was done with the implementation of two questionnaires, one for teachers and another one for students because we considered it to be relevant to know how they used web sites in teaching and learning processes. in the identifying stage, we documented reading problems and this helped us clarify the nature of the situation and suggest further action. other phases were intervening and observing. hence, one of the researchers managed his classes in relation to the use of web materials and gave some instructions in order to develop activities. at the same time he observed the effectiveness of the procedures. table 1. summary of students’ questionnaire results questions most relevant answers aspects of interest use internet for to look for information and to download software students’ needs use internet for academic purposes always frequency web-sites used when doing homework www.wikipedia.com top-ranked websites time spent surfing the net 2-4 hours time spent on the internet internet for academic purposes yes usefulness interest of learning activities through web sites i am quite interested interest in engaging in activities reading texts difficulties to explain the secondary ideas in the text students’ difficulties in reading interesting or pleasant topics to read technology and music students’ reading preferences 17profile vol. 14, no. 2, october 2012. issn 1657-0790 (printed) 2256-5760 (online). bogotá, colombia. pages 11-27 using web-based activities to promote reading: an exploratory study with teenagers the first students’ questionnaire was applied to 21 students and the sample was taken at random. this questionnaire let us get information about students’ needs, the frequency of the use of the internet, kind of web sites they used to visit, and other aspects. from the base-line study we drew relevant information for further decision-making. see complete information in appendix a. in table 1, we summarize the results according to the categories that the team identified and then analyzed as aspects of interest. students’ needs according to the results, students showed a great tendency to work on web sites in order to fulfill requirements like looking for information and doing homework. as can be seen in appendix a, a high percentage of the students go for activities in which they get some entertainment like playing games or chatting and a low percentage mentioned activities like downloading software and taking online courses. it was a positive point that students used the internet for academic purposes instead of just playing computer games. frequency most of the students expressed that they “usually” have the possibility to use the internet for academic purposes. a low percentage expressed that they rarely use the internet. this may also mean that they frequently use the internet just for academic purposes more than any other kind of activity. top ranked websites students are used to visiting the most popular websites (wikipedia, rincón del vago, google). as we know, there they do not have to follow instructions from the teacher or can just look for information in an easy way. time spent on the internet most of the students (52%) say that they spend from 2 to 4 hours surfing the net. it is not much time, but could be enough when they try to do activities like search information, complete homework, organize presentations, read specific texts or get ideas to be presented in class. usefulness a high percentage (95.2%) of the students find the internet useful for academic purposes. this was an advantage for the development of our project. by contrast, only a few of them (4.7%) did not consider the usefulness that web sites could offer in terms of improvement of academic learning. interest in engaging in learning activities more than a half of the percentage of students was quite interested (52.3%) while 33.3% was really interested. this showed that we had a great challenge to involve our students in interactive activities that engaged them in the project and changed a little bit their idea of using web sites not only for fun but for both learning and having fun. students’ difficulties in reading in response to our question, the students reported that they had more difficulties in understanding secondary ideas and explaining main ideas than when dealing specific or detailed information from the reading of texts. this caused us to reflect on the kind of materials we should design to engage them in the web-based reading activities. it was important to take it into account because readings have to be suitable for them to develop this specific skill. students’ reading preferences it was interesting to find that music and technology have the highest percentage in terms of likes universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras18 rátiva velandia, pedreros torres & núñez alí for students. this aspect constituted an important point of departure when implementing some readings that contained certain topics related to music or technology. on the other hand, the teachers’ questionnaire provided information about the use of the internet in their classes, its advantages and disadvantages and how they used reading in their classes (see appendix b). five teachers from el libertador school answered the questionnaire. the results are summarized in figure 1. figure 1. teachers’ questionnaire results teachers’ views on technology and reading self-development and quali�cation updating usefulness advantages and disadvantages students’ dif�culties when reading reading strategies in class favorite topics the use of technology reading process the use of technology teachers showed a huge interest towards using new technologies and tools to engage students in a dynamic way in the development of classes involving extra activities. most of them pursued their interest to get a better pedagogical environment in the classroom. also, two of them admitted they had had some kind of training to improve their classes. moreover, teachers affirmed that the use of web-materials helps students to gain self-confidence, autonomy, entertainment and practice of the english language as a complementary task of classroom activities. they also expressed that one can monitor students’ progress and their willingness to develop the assigned task. however, internet access could be difficult because most of the students are not able to interact frequently and they do not know how to select proper information. reading process reading has become a problem for students because they think it is a punishment. moreover, some chosen topics are not pleasant for them so they prefer doing other activities. besides, they do not know how to use the dictionary to find meanings according to the context, and they have some problems identifying main and secondary ideas in a text. the teachers mentioned that they applied strategies to engage students when developing reading activities like pre-reading, inference and deduction, reading images, maps and schemes and association of new words to get meaning. however, it is important to mention that most of the time these are not enough to catch their attention because their results have not been good enough. finally, music, movies, extreme sports, true stories, tales and fables, social problems, personal successes, action, comedy and video games are topics that teachers considered interesting or motivating for students for they can foster their interest to read. students’ interest towards reading in web-based activities in this section we provide information about the implementation of the three web-based activities that the research team designed and analyzed and the last questionnaire applied to students in which they expressed their opinions of the activities. the results are organized into three categories: students’ interest in the reading processes, the role the web-based activities played in students’ involvement, and the difficulties they faced. 19profile vol. 14, no. 2, october 2012. issn 1657-0790 (printed) 2256-5760 (online). bogotá, colombia. pages 11-27 using web-based activities to promote reading: an exploratory study with teenagers students’ interest in the reading processes most of the students agree on the fact that searching for more information concerning a specific topic or different subjects engage them in working with enthusiasm by using new technologies. on the other hand, this activity gave them new possibilities to have access to knowledge in a different way. it is important to analyze two facts found along the development of the activities: first, we noticed the students’ motivation to complete other kinds of activities (different from the ones they were accustomed to). second, some of them seemed to be confused when they did not understand meanings or instructions and asked if they could use online dictionaries or translators. the use of these tools helped them to organize ideas, understand main ideas, check their translation and acquire new vocabulary. because of their ages and likes, our students preferred readings of different topics that caught their attention; for instance, music technology and games. virtual resources, images, sounds and games facilitated and promoted students’ cooperative attitude and helped them commit themselves to the ongoing work. the role the web-based activities played in students’ involvement we can deduce that activities like these are interesting for students; they motivate them to learn english. this proves that we have better results when the students’ interests are taken into account. students were interested and committed in the development of the activities; therefore, they spent their free time working on them and some of them went to internet cafés to overcome the lack of access to technology at home or at school. this attitude on the part of the students shows that it is possible to engage them in their own learning processes. the students expressed that the activities in general were interesting because they let them identify what they know about computers. it should be noted that hangman (a guessing game) and the crossword puzzle were the most attractive in the evaluation of computer knowledge. in regard to this, a student wrote: “it was so interesting that the clues were in english”. it means that when students work on motivational activities they do not have difficulties in solving problems in spite of dealing with another language. on the other hand, 90% of the students who worked on the activities said that the most interesting and motivating reading was the history of rock music because of the following: a. it was interesting to know how rock music has evolved. b. the rock music is a very pleasant musical genre. c. it was important to know about different musi cal genres. d. this kind of music is useful in an english learning process. moreover, some students suggested additional topics like music, war and weapons, culture, sports and paranormal phenomena, fantastic readings. by contrast, history was proposed only by one student. difficulties faced by students some students experienced difficulties; three of them expressed that the crossword puzzle demanded more time and the most difficult part was the comprehension of the clues. finding some exact words was also difficult for students who were not accustomed to do it. however there was no reason to give the activities up. on the other hand, a student expressed that the most difficult part was the summary and two of them said that they did not have any problem with the activities. we can observe a summary of students’ reflections about the use of web-based activities in table 2. universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras20 rátiva velandia, pedreros torres & núñez alí conclusions the promotion of reading has been considered a challenge for teachers of any discipline. during the last years schools have been implementing institutional projects to help students improve and develop reading. with the purpose of engaging students it is necessary to pay attention to their interests and problems, so schools have to develop diagnostic procedures that let them select readings that fulfill students’ needs. the implementation of web activities in the promotion of reading constitutes a new opportunity for learners to strengthen their abilities in acquiring the competence in the target language. likewise, they provide teachers the opportunity to improve their teaching methodology. according to the results observed in our project, we can conclude that if teachers want to promote reading through web activities, it is necessary, first, to put into practice the ones that prioritize playful and interactive aspects as a way to engage learners and challenge them to read. second, the selection of topics must be based on students’ real context, interests and likes. web activities helped students to find another way to enrich their learning process. since they were accustomed to using computers mainly for the leisure activities, they found that during the implementation of the project the proposed academic activities were interesting, motivating and challenging because they implied an innovative way to learn. the interactive activities were more motivating than those in which students had to handle with the printed readings because they could explore different web sites at the same time, use diction aries online or listen to music. some students, though, considered that the printed reading activities were easier to develop because of the way they could handle time, underline and revise ideas, and write meaning of new vocabulary. to sum up, we consider that this kind of project could be put into action in schools in order to generate a new atmosphere for the learning process not only for efl students, but for many others as well. it can also be part of interdisciplinary projects due to the fact that reading and the access to ict could be a transversal axis to knowledge and the teachers’ practices together. implications for further pedagogical and research practice along the implementation of this project an interesting aspect caught our attention: it is undeniable that web-based activities have given new opportunities for both teachers and students in the teaching-learning process by developing authentic tasks. nonetheless, it is important not to forget the traditional way to develop reading activities (the printed one). although technology has table 2. summary of students’ reflections about web-based activities positive negative • learning more about the topics. • the topics are interesting and they are presented in a didactic way to the teenagers. • the activities were developed although they are mainly academic. they help to obtain knowledge. • the history of computers was easy to develop and the activities were simple. • it is difficult to find the answers. • the history of the rock was complicated due to the quantity of the activities; some of them were confusing. • there was difficulty to access into the web activity. • new vocabulary. 21profile vol. 14, no. 2, october 2012. issn 1657-0790 (printed) 2256-5760 (online). bogotá, colombia. pages 11-27 using web-based activities to promote reading: an exploratory study with teenagers provided new and playful strategies for learning processes, it is not enough in terms of the integration of methodologies in efl or in any other teaching discipline. printed reading activities help students to develop reading competence because they can underline main ideas, go back to revise them and get a physical reference at any time. references angrill, j. (2002). webquests and blogs: web-based tool for efl teaching. retrieved from http://www.apac.es/ publications/documents/webquest_weblog_paper.pdf burns, a. (1999). collaborative action research for english language teachers. new york, ny: cambridge university press. case, c., & truscott, d. (1999). the lure of bells and whistles: choosing the best software to support reading instruction. reading and writing quarterly, 15(4), 293-296. elliot, j. (1991). la investigación acción en educación. madrid: morata. gass, s., mackey, a., & pica, t. (1998). the role of input and interaction in second language acquisition: introduction to the special issue. modern language journal, 82(3), 299-307. murray, g. c., yang, h., & allen, r. (2002). wq: an environment for teaching information access skills. in p. barker & s. rebelsky (eds.), proceedings of world conference on educational multimedia, hypermedia and telecommunications 2002 (pp. 34-39). chesapeake, va: aace. retrieved from http://www.editlib.org/p/9561 nunan, d. (1992). research methods in language learning. cambridge: cambridge university press. perakovic, d., remenar, v., & jovovic, i. (2012, april). modeling system of transport and traffic information management in republic of croatia. in c. volosencu (ed.), cutting edge research in new technologies. doi:10.5772/33709 pearson education development group. (n.d.). learning to read on the web. lesson 3. teacher vision. retrieved from http://www.teachervision.fen.com/educationaltechnology/internet/4893.html quesada, a. (2005). web-based learning (wbl): a challenge for foreign language teachers. revista electrónica actualidades investigativas en educación, 5(002), 1-25. retrieved from http://redalyc.uaemex.mx/src/inicio/ artpdfred.jsp?icve=44750210# simina, v., & hamel, m. j. (2005). casla through a social constructivist perspective: webquest in projectdriven language learning. recall , 17(2), 217-228. teachervision (n.d.). study guide to web research. lesson 3: learning to read on the web. grade levels: 6 – 12. retrieved from http://www.teachervision.fen.com/ educational-technology/lesson-plan/4892.html universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras22 rátiva velandia, pedreros torres & núñez alí about the authors marlén rátiva velandia holds a ba in philology and languages from universidad libre (colombia). she has a master’s degree in interdisciplinary social research and a specialization in pedagogy of projects from universidad distrital francisco josé de caldas (colombia). she is currently a spanish and english teacher at el libertador school. at present she is a teacher trainer for the colombian ministry of education. andrés leonardo pedreros torres holds a ba in modern languages, english and spanish, from universidad pedagógica nacional (colombia) and an ma in spanish teaching as a second language from universidad internacional iberoamericana (puerto rico). he has worked as an english and spanish teacher at el libertador school in bogotá, colombia, and as foreign language assistant at chingford foundation school in london, england. mónica núñez alí holds a ba in languages and a specialization in applied linguistics to the teaching of english as a foreign language from universidad la gran colombia (colombia). she is currently a spanish and english teacher at jorge eliécer gaitán school. she is also a candidate for the specialist in pedagogical evaluation degree from universidad católica de manizales (colombia). 23profile vol. 14, no. 2, october 2012. issn 1657-0790 (printed) 2256-5760 (online). bogotá, colombia. pages 11-27 using web-based activities to promote reading: an exploratory study with teenagers appendix a: students’ questionnaire results questions answers aspects of interest 1. use internet for to do homework: 61.9% students’ needs to chat: 47.6% to play: 42.8% to look for information: 95.2% to download software 9.5% for online courses 4.7% 2. use internet for academic purposes always: 9.5% frequencyusually: 85.7% rarely: 4.7% 3. web-sites used when doing homework? www.wikipedia.com: 100% top-ranked websites www.rincondelvago.com: 90% www.google.com: 66.6% http://es.answers.yahoo.com/: 28.5% http://www.britannica.com/ebchecked/topic/186436/ encarta: 23.8% www.monografias.com: 23.8% www.definicion.de: 19% www.youtube.com: 9.5% www.biografiasyvidas.com: 4.7%, 4. time spent surfing the net 0-1 hour: 38% time spent on the internet 2-4 hours: 52% 5-8 hours: 9.5% more than 8: 0% 5. internet for academic purposes yes: 95.2% usefulness no: 4.7% universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras24 rátiva velandia, pedreros torres & núñez alí questions answers aspects of interest 6. interest of learning activities through web sites i am very interested: 33.3% interest in engaging in activities i am not interested: 19% i am interested: 52.3% 7. reading texts difficulties to give detailed information according to the reading: 28.5% students’ difficulties in reading to answer the questions: 9.5% to understand the main ideas in the text: 38% to explain the secondary ideas in the text: 47.6% vocabulary: 4.7% 8. interesting or pleasant topics to read sports: 38% students’ reading preferences music: 57.1% technology: 52.3% scientific: 14.2% news – languages: 4.7% 25profile vol. 14, no. 2, october 2012. issn 1657-0790 (printed) 2256-5760 (online). bogotá, colombia. pages 11-27 using web-based activities to promote reading: an exploratory study with teenagers appendix b: teachers’ questionnaire results questions answers aspects of interest 1. have you ever considered the possibility to expand your learning activities through web sites or web lessons? why? for knowledge. to use technology. to provide other tools. students are more motivated. self-development and qualification 2. have you been involved in any teachers’ self-development course learning how to use the internet for educative purposes? yes = 2 no = 3 updating 3. do you consider the internet and the use of web sites useful for your teaching practice? yes = 2 yes, because it offers tools to expand knowledge and it develops autonomous learning. usefulness 4. what advantages do you find in using web materials with your students? students find a funny way to learn and be more participative. they help us monitor students’ learning and develop extra class activities. they contribute to improving the learning process and provide a variety of activities. technology and english language are involved. using web materials generate different points of view. advantages 5. what disadvantages do you find in using the websites with your students? not all the students have access to the internet from home. lack of resources and information about the websites to be used. the possibility to find wrong information. disadvantages universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras26 rátiva velandia, pedreros torres & núñez alí questions answers aspects of interest 6. what are the most common difficulties you find in your students when reading texts? they do not like to read. they think reading is boring. they often show lack of understanding and have difficulties identifying new vocabulary. they do not recognize main and secondary ideas. students’ difficulties when reading 7. which reading strategies do you use to develop among your students when working in class? pre-reading comprehension questions inference and deduction representation of the texts with images maps and schemes meaning of new words reading strategies in class 8. which topics do you consider interesting or motivating for your students when reading texts? music and movies extreme sports true stories tales and fables social problems personal successes action comedy video games favorite topics 27profile vol. 14, no. 2, october 2012. issn 1657-0790 (printed) 2256-5760 (online). bogotá, colombia. pages 11-27 using web-based activities to promote reading: an exploratory study with teenagers appendix c: web-based activity sample date: may, 18th 2010 topic: sports south africa world soccer cup 2010 introduction: here you have the possibility to connect to this link and watch the video of the official song for the 2010 soccer world cup http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ia1wrija3k0. once you finish, please answer the following questions: 1. what is the message of the song? 2. what is the meaning of the expression: “when you fall, get up, oh oh”? 3. what is the feeling caused (or sparked) by the whole song? 4. did you like it? yes /no. why? activities: go to the following link at http://www.sa2010.gov.za/en/node/535 (read the information about south africa: the people, the land, the first ten decades of freedom) and answer: 1. how many people does africa have? 2. what is the constitution for south african people? 3. what has the government done to create a better life for its people? watch the video at this link http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pgnl0dj9mny and report on the following information: 1. which teams are involved? 2. what was the most interesting goal for you? 3. which players do you recognize in the different matches? 4. who is your favorite player talking about soccer? now, go to the link: http://bogglesworldesl.com/soccer_worksheets.htm and select a puzzle to solve. present it in the next class (see the soccer crossword and soccer word search sections there). with this web lesson go to the following link http://cernet.at/ict/hotpot/sportscw.htm and solve the puzzle about sports. once you finish, print it and take it to the next english lesson. 127profile vol. 15, no. 2, october 2013. issn 1657-0790 (printed) 2256-5760 (online). bogotá, colombia. pages 127-147 the role of genre-based activities in the writing of argumentative essays in efl el papel de actividades basadas en géneros en la escritura de ensayos argumentativos en inglés como lengua extranjera pedro antonio chala bejarano*1 pontificia universidad javeriana, colombia claudia marcela chapetón**2 universidad pedagógica nacional, colombia this article presents the findings of an action research project conducted with a group of pre-service teachers of a program in modern languages at a colombian university. the study intended to go beyond an emphasis on linguistic and textual features in english as a foreign language argumentative essays by using a set of genre-based activities and the understanding of writing as a situated social practice. data were gathered through questionnaires, semi-structured interviews, class recordings, and students’ artifacts. the results showed that genre-based activities supported the participants throughout the experience and boosted their confidence, resulting in a positive attitude towards essay writing. the study highlights the importance of dialogic interaction to provide scaffolding opportunities, of understanding writing as a process, and of the use of samples and explicit instruction to facilitate writing. key words: argumentative essay writing, genre-based teaching, scaffolding, situated social practice. este artículo presenta los hallazgos de una investigación-acción realizada con un grupo de estudiantes de la licenciatura en lenguas modernas de una universidad colombiana. el estudio buscaba ir más allá del énfasis en las características lingüísticas y textuales en la escritura de ensayos argumentativos en inglés como lengua extranjera, mediante un conjunto de actividades basadas en géneros y comprendiendo la escritura como una práctica social situada. los datos se obtuvieron a través de cuestionarios, entrevistas semiestructuradas, grabaciones de clase y artefactos de los estudiantes. los resultados muestran que las actividades basadas en la enseñanza de géneros proporcionan apoyo a los participantes durante la experiencia investigativa y aumentan su confianza y actitud positiva hacia la escritura de ensayos. el estudio resalta la importancia de la interacción dialógica para ofrecer oportunidades de andamiaje, la escritura como proceso y el uso de muestras e instrucción explícita para facilitar la escritura. palabras clave: andamiaje, enseñanza basada en géneros, escritura de ensayos argumentativos, práctica social situada. * e-mail: pchala@javeriana.edu.co ** e-mail: cchapeton@pedagogica.edu.co this article was received on february 1, 2013, and accepted on july 27, 2013. universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras128 chala bejarano & chapetón introduction today, due to its importance as an international language, the presence of english in educational settings is paramount. institutions, then, encourage the development of students’ abilities to communicate in the foreign language and writing is, of course, a skill to be included. however, writing is not always approached from a communicative perspective, and linguistic and textual emphases are fostered instead. on the other hand, essay production is widely used (lillis, 2001) but not very often seen from a social and situated perspective that makes writing a meaningful and purposeful activity. this research project emerged from a necessity to foster transformation in writing practices, which privileged a product over a process view of writing and allowed little opportunity for students to express their voices in a meaningful way. the study attempted to approach efl argumentative essay writing from a perspective that influenced literacy practices worldwide: writing as a situated social practice. to complement this understanding of writing, a genrebased perspective was adopted as the pedagogical approach to frame the experience. although these two perspectives have been central in research, they have not been openly used together to approach student writing of argumentative essays. the main objective of this study was to explore and describe the role that a set of genre-based activities may have on argumentative essay writing with a group of high intermediate students of english in the bachelor of arts in modern languages program at a private university in bogotá. the research question guiding this study was: what is the role of a set of genre-based activities in the creation of argumentative essays by high intermediate students of english in the bed in modern languages program when writing is understood as a situated social practice? literature review keeping in mind the importance of dialogic interaction and scaffolding (bruner & sherwood, 1975; vygotsky, 1978), we feel this study conceives students as subjects of their learning and fosters their individualities and deliberation processes (grundy, 1987). language is understood here as a situated action that embeds and manifests different forms of knowledge, beliefs, and ways to refer to the world. the three main constructs that support this study are genre-based writing, argumentative essay writing, and writing as a situated social practice. these are explained in the following sections.1 genre-based writing this study considers hyland’s (2004) view that “genre-based teaching is concerned with what learners do when they write” (p. 5), which emphasises the importance of the situated context where writing occurs and further considers this practice as communication. two characteristics of genre-based writing activities are considered: first is hyland’s (2004) concept of modelling, which aids students to explore the genre and understand features such as rhetorical structures or frames (hyland, 2004) and formulaic sequences (morrison, 2010). second is bastian’s (2010) explicit teaching of genre, which promotes awareness of genre conventions as well as reflection on its purposes and uses. genre is considered as situated social action; this perspective accounts for a social dimension of communication and acknowledges the relationship between the genres and their social context, students’ voice-as-experience (lillis, 2001), and the collaboration and scaffolding (bruner & sherwood, 1975) provided by skilled writers to struggling peers (lin, monroe, & troia, 2007). 1 for a comprehensive account of the constructs and literature review, see chala and chapetón (2012) and chala (2011). 129profile vol. 15, no. 2, october 2013. issn 1657-0790 (printed) 2256-5760 (online). bogotá, colombia. pages 127-147 the role of genre-based activities in the writing of argumentative essays in efl two research studies on genre-based teaching can be mentioned. morrison (2010) designed and implemented a short distance writing course at an organisation in tokyo. it was an effort to improve the students’ writing skills by preparing them for the international english language testing system (ielts) exam through the use of a genre-based pedagogy to second language writing. the study provides interesting information regarding multiple drafting and feedback to provide scaffolding and to foster a transformative writing process. finally, chaisiri (2010) conducted a study in different universities in thailand. it consisted of two phases: the first one investigated how teachers perceived their approaches to teaching writing and the second phase was an action research study, intending to find the role of genre-based activities in a writing classroom. this study provides significant theoretical and practical insights on how to use a genre-based perspective in an action research study. argumentative essay writing argumentative essay writing is understood here as a dynamic literacy practice where the author establishes a dialogic relationship with an audience defending a point of view and looking to convince, get an adhesion, or persuade (álvarez, 2001). as dialogue between interlocutors (ramírez, 2007) emerges through argumentative essay writing, this practice goes beyond a linguistic perspective to become social action. in this dialogue, the writer communicates with a reader and shapes his/her discourse according to the relationship that is established between them: power, contact, and emotion (goatly, 2000). three ar ticles illustrate pre vious res earch connected to argumentative essay writing. nanwani (2009) analysed the linguistic challenges lived by a group of students at a private university in bogotá in the development of academic literacy. in his study, the author provides insights to reflect on the challenges of writing academic texts. he also hints at a transformative view of this practice and suggests that students’ backgrounds should be considered. zúñiga and macías (2006) conducted a study to help advanced english students of the undergraduate foreign language teaching program at universidad surcolombiana to refine their academic writing skills. this study draws attention to the importance of instruction, peer feedback, inclusion of sample papers, and the possibility to publish students’ texts to foster their motivation. finally, street (2003) explored where writing attitudes originate and how they influence practice. participants of this study were undergraduate students in a teacher education programme in texas. the study sheds light on the positive and negative experiences in the process of writing, and it highlights the importance of the writing process and the product in the development of students’ attitudes, as well as the consideration of their identity. writing as a situated social practice writing practices are situated and social as they occur within specific contexts, at specific moments, and serve the specific needs of communication, learning, and expression (ramírez, 2007). in this sense, writing and the writer participate in discourses (gee, 2008), ideologies, and institutional practices, as well as establish a dialogic connection with the world and the powers that surround them. at the same time, writers not only imbue their texts with their inherent characteristics such as gender or race, but also include their voice as experience: their beliefs, experiences, and feelings that have been built and moulded through social contact (lillis, 2001). it is then understood that writing implies more than the development of a technical skill. according to baynham (1995), writing can be approached via considering the subjectivity universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras130 chala bejarano & chapetón of the writer, the writing process, the purpose and audience, the text as a product, the power of the genre, and the source or legitimacy of that power. although little research has been conducted which considers writing as a situated social practice, two research studies related to this construct are worth mentioning here. one was conducted by correa (2010) in a general studies programme in a public school in massachusetts. it examined the challenges that a mature esl student and her teachers faced with regard to the construction of literacy and voice in writing. this study is important as correa seems to call for a need to go beyond a technical view of writing and to stop considering that writing is “applicable across context, purpose, and audience” (p. 92). on the other hand, ariza (2005) conducted action research with a group of ninth-graders in a public school in bogotá. she investigated how teachers of english can guide their students to develop their written communicative competence based on white and arndt’s (1991) process-oriented approach to writing. even though ariza’s study does not explicitly take writing as a situated social practice, it does show the implementation of a project where writing was approached as a process, not as a product. research design this qualitative action research study looked to gather holistic insights by analysing what happened in the classroom setting (johnson & christensen, 2004). action research was valuable to reflect on the pedagogical practice and find insights that contributed to its improvement (sagor, 2000; sandin, 2003). the action-research process followed in the study was composed of four stages, as proposed by sagor (2005). however, keeping in mind burns’ (2003) claim for flexibility in action research, the stages were dynamic, allowing for changes within our own interpretation of the research process. the stages were developed in each cycle of the pedagogical intervention that was designed. the first stage was clarifying vision and targets. careful thinking about the classes, the activities, and the outcomes of teaching and learning were important to come up with insights to approach writing in a different way. research questions associated with the main goal of the study were raised here. in the second stage, articulating theory, an informed rationale was built to back up pedagogical intervention. important outcomes of this phase were an instructional design to be implemented and a data collection plan in order to gather insights related to the research question. the third stage was implementing action and collecting data. following sagor (2005), this was the moment in which the instructional design was put into practice and data were collected to get insights about the pedagogical intervention. the final stage was reflecting and planning informed action. data collected in each cycle of the instructional design were used in order to reflect upon the implementation of the activities and to plan further action for the subsequent cycle. context and participants of the study this study was conducted at pontificia universidad javeriana, in bogotá, specifically in the bed in the teaching of modern languages programme. the participants (aged 17 to 23) included two male and thirteen female students. they were enrolled in the high intermediate level, a course taken in sixth semester. at the time this study was conducted, the course was divided into two modules: international relations and current issues. this study was conducted in the latter, dealing with topics like technology, global and local culture, education, and work. both the institution and the students were informed about the study and signed consent forms accepting participation in it. 131profile vol. 15, no. 2, october 2013. issn 1657-0790 (printed) 2256-5760 (online). bogotá, colombia. pages 127-147 the role of genre-based activities in the writing of argumentative essays in efl data collection instruments four data collection instruments were used. first, the classes were recorded for sixteen weeks; recordings were important to collect the teacher’s and students’ actual words in their interactions throughout the development of the activities. second, there were two questionnaires. one was applied at the beginning of the semester to build a profile of the participants and collect their beliefs and ideas about writing (see appendix a); the other was used at the end of the process to gather the students’ opinions about the experience of essay writing throughout the study (see appendix b). third, there were artifacts that included the evaluation of each cycle and the argumentative essays written by the participants. this represented important evidence of the role that genre-based activities played when students approached writing from a situated social perspective. finally, three semi-structured interviews were conducted, one at the end of each cycle (see one sample in appendix c). they were useful in order to gather students’ reactions, thoughts, and ways they approached writing in the study. pedagogical procedure a central element of the action research pro cess was the creation and implementation of an in str uctional design which integrated the three constructs of the study. it emerged after a process of deliberation (grundy, 1987) upon the way in which writing was being approached in the classes. during the implementation of the instructional design,2 a number of activities were developed using a genre-based perspective to teaching writing (bastian, 2010; hyland, 2004) and considering writing as a situated social practice (baynham, 1995; gee, 2008; lillis, 2001). 2 see chala (2011) for a detailed description of the instructional design. the instructional design was planned following the sequence of writing topics in the course programme and consisted of three cycles. each cycle corresponded to a term during the semester and dealt with a specific type of essay: opinion, for and against, and problemsolutions. in order to account for a genre-based perspective to teaching writing, a six-step writing cycle was used based on widodo’s (2006) proposal of a genre-based lesson plan. the first step of the writing cycle was exploring the genre. students analysed sample essays in small groups and as a whole class with the guidance of the teacher. it was done in the light of theory and students’ previous knowledge. in the second step, building knowledge of the field, students chose a topic and an audience and investigated to gather insights that they could draw upon when writing. then, groups of peers shared their ideas to get preliminary feedback. in the third step, text construction or drafting, students actually engaged in the act of writing in and outside the class. the fourth step was revising and submitting a final draft; students self-evaluated their first draft, trying to go beyond the linguistic and textual features. peer and teacher feedback was also provided through comments and prompting questions not only about formal aspects but also about the ideas themselves. based on feedback and personal reflection, students constructed a new draft. assessment and evaluation by the teacher in the fifth step provided qualitative feedback about students’ writing performance. the final step was editing and publishing. students made final adjustments to their texts and published them on a blog or on facebook thus transcending academic purposes to achieve a more realistic and social purpose as well as a wider audience. once the whole cycle finished, the students evaluated the activities developed, the materials, and the teacher’s guidance. they did this by writing their impressions about these three aspects on a piece of paper, which they submitted. universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras132 chala bejarano & chapetón in the following section, the findings of this study are presented. the data gathered through and transcribed from the different instruments will show the participants’ original voices as they were actually produced during the efl class sessions, thus, errors were not marked/coded nor corrected. findings after a process of systematic analysis of the col lected data and having used the grounded approach (corbin & strauss, 1990), two categories emerged: (1) supportive role along the writing path and (2) encouraging role enhanced through the situated social experience. these categories describe the main roles that the genre-based activities had in the students’ construction of argumentative essays during the study. the data showed that genre-based activities not only supported the participants throughout the construction of essays but also boosted their confidence resulting in a positive attitude towards writing argumentative essays. support was provided through social interaction among the participants and between them and the teacher; drafting and redrafting, which raised awareness of writing as a process; and the sample essays analysed, which helped participants to shape their essays. encouragement to write was enhanced through the discovery of generic features and the possibility to choose the topic of the essays. figure 1 is a visual representation of the categories and subcategories resulting from the analysis. category 1: supportive role along the writing path this category refers to the guiding role that the genre-based activities had in the participants’ essay writing process. the orientation that was identified in the data relates to the concept of scaffolding (bruner & sherwood, 1975; vygotsky, 1978) provided through supportive social interaction among participants and by the samples that were analysed in class; this support was also enhanced through a process of drafting and redrafting. the data showed that the activities developed in the study had an important role in guiding students to diminish the occurrence of linguistic errors in their texts and acquire the ability to write essays that met the requirements of the genre. the analysis of the data showed that the support provided by the genre-based activities came from three sources: (1) social interaction with peers and teacher, which helped participants to generate ideas and improve their texts; (2) drafting and redrafting, figure 1. categories resulting from the analysis the role of genre-based activities in the writing of argumentative essays in efl category 1: supportive role along the writing path category 2: encouraging role enhanced through the situated social experience supportive social interaction to generate ideas and improve drafting and redrafting: a new way to improve samples as guides for text shaping positive discovery of the genre thought explicit analysis essay topic selection: a factor that boosts writing 133profile vol. 15, no. 2, october 2013. issn 1657-0790 (printed) 2256-5760 (online). bogotá, colombia. pages 127-147 the role of genre-based activities in the writing of argumentative essays in efl regarded by the students as a new way to improve their essays and their writing skills; and (3) the essay samples, which were considered by the participants as points of reference that they could use to shape their own texts. a common pattern that the data showed in the three sub-categories is related to students’ concern for mistake identification and correction. although insights show concern for aspects that went beyond linguistic and textual aspects, there was still concern for formal issues. after presenting a general definition of the category, we now provide a description of the three sub-categories. supportive social interaction to generate ideas and improve supportive social interaction refers to the vari ous ways in which students established dialogic com munication with their peers and teacher and which mediated to enhance text correction and skill improvement. this activity hints at the supportive nature of genre-based teaching (hyland, 2004), and the importance of socialisation in the learning process, as stated by vygotsky (1978). data from the final questionnaire and second interview showed that group work before writing, during the step of building knowledge of the field, was an opportunity to get reactions, points of view, and advice from classmates with regard to the authors’ ideas: s314: my classmates helped me with some ideas and sometimes i help them too. (2nd questionnaire) 34. s13: i think it [doing the activities] was useful. for example, in my particular 35. case, you said: guys you have to write another essays, so, i start writing about 36. child labor and then was what you said it was about cons and pros, so i told s3 3 codes used: s=student, t=teacher. 37. …and i said: “oh my god, what can i do right now?” “because i have, so i 38. start.” so, she helped me to think in the new way that i had to do with my 39. essay, so, i think is useful because you can compare your ideas with others and do a better essay. (2nd interview) sharing thoughts with classmates through dialogic interaction was shown to be relevant for most of the participants in this preliminary stage of the writing cycle in order to get ideas and to focus more on the content that they were going to discuss in their essays. at the same time, this activity offered participants the possibility to contribute to aiding their peers in the construction or refinement of their arguments. on the other hand, peer and teacher interaction and scaffolding provided in the step of revising and submitting a final draft were useful for the majority of the students to identify and correct “mistakes”4 that had been overlooked by themselves and by the teacher. in this respect, one student states: s11: classmates were a big help because sometimes they show me what the teacher didn’t realize. (2nd questionnaire) interaction was also important for text correction and improvement, as described by this student: 37 . s7: i think it was really important because sometimes our friends or our 38. classmates realize of some mistakes that the teacher didn’t realized 39. or sometimes, we express our idea, but it was wrong and they help 40. us to explain it or sometimes, for example, i wrote when s1’s 41. essay, she wanted to tell a story and i told her that it was in that way and 42. she said, oh, yes, and she explained to you, and you said, ah, that’s what you wanted to say! 43. that kind of things, i think are important. (2nd interview) 4 “mistakes” in this study refer to what the participants under stood as flaws in grammar and vocabulary. universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras134 chala bejarano & chapetón the above student regards peer work as useful not only for improving his essays through the correction of mistakes, but also because it provides the opportunity to become an active agent in assisting others in their writing process. also, although there is a concern for mistake correction, there is an interest for content improvement enhanced through social interaction. looking at other students’ essays and having theirs checked by peers were both useful strategies to get or refine ideas and listen to points of view that were different from that of the teacher. the social dimension of writing, evidenced in the interaction that emerged through peer and teacher supportive action, came also to enhance the development of writing skills. in other words, social interaction provided scaffolding opportunities: s3: the most useful activities were reading other essays and correcting ours. . . . the guidance working with partners and having the teacher feedback really helped to write better essay. (student’s artifact) in her evaluation of the first cycle, this student also highlights the relevance of socialisation with classmates and of the support provided by the teacher in order to render good results in writing. writing was assumed as a social action in which guidance from others was important. the teacher’s support was perceived as useful to guide the students in writing their essays: s8: i like the feedback the teacher gave us for every essay because it makes us to realized things we should change or take into account for writing an essay. (2nd questionnaire) support provided by the teacher on a dialogic basis was considered by the participants as relevant and effective for them to correct their texts and improve their writing skills. although identifying and correcting formal mistakes were found to be important contributions of supportive social interaction, there was also an opportunity for participants to improve the content of the essays and identify their strengths and weaknesses in writing, as expressed by this student: s12: in my case i agree with [s15], about feedback because in my case i found some problems with grammar, because i tried to use just let’s say simple grammar structures, so i realized that i have to use more well structured grammar. (2nd interview) it is also necessary to mention that not all the students agreed with the importance of having their essays checked by peers. some students did not consider this relevant due to their peers’ lack of knowledge or inaccuracy to give feedback. this is expressed in the following piece of data: s14: i think that teacher’s feedback is more relevant than peer feedback because, in my case, i only take into account the teacher’s corrections because the teacher knows more than a student. (2nd questionnaire) drafting and redrafting: a new chance to improve the writing and re-writing of essays based on personal reflection and supportive guidance provided by teacher and peers were found to be two innovative activities in the writing process; additionally, as the data from the interviews showed, they were strategies that had not been implemented in prior courses. the following is an example of this: 22. s11: i think for me the most useful activity was drafting and re-drafting and 23. also the feedback because what happened normally is that you just 24. write an essay and you have the feedback at the end with all 25. the mistakes, so you don’t have actually the chance to improve 26. and the teacher cannot see the process, the way you have been 27. improving, they’re just like, ok, it is wrong and sorry, 2.0 or 28. 3.0, i don’t know, any grade, but actually when you start writing 29. and reading again and writing again, sometimes actually when you 30. receive the feedback, you say, ah! yes, i have already realized this mistake, because you have the opportunity to read and… proof read, so, i think that that is what for me, was more useful. (3rd interview) 135profile vol. 15, no. 2, october 2013. issn 1657-0790 (printed) 2256-5760 (online). bogotá, colombia. pages 127-147 the role of genre-based activities in the writing of argumentative essays in efl as this piece of data shows, mistakes were an important concern for students, and writing used to be viewed mainly as a product (grundy, 1987) represented by a grade; however, there is a new interest in viewing writing as a process, and in this sense, drafting and redrafting become important because they allow writers to improve during the process. in the participants’ written production it was possible to find that drafting and redrafting were valuable activities as the texts showed higher levels of elaboration and correction after scaffolding activities were done and adjustments were made. figure 2 and 3 show this of one student. certain aspects improved in the second draft with respect to the first one: to begin with, the topic is narrowed down from “colombia” to “overpopulation in colombia.” moreover, unlike the first draft, the second one presents general information on overpopulation before focusing on the specific topic. furthermore, the ideas in the second version are supported by the student’s own experience (lillis, 2001), which is used to situate the text (baynham, 1995) in her reality and gives her the opportunity to write from her own perspective. changes in text formality and appropriateness of vocabulary are also more evident. drafting and re-drafting were shown; then, as a way to meet generic features and by elaborating different drafts, the students became aware of how the texts should be organised, and what other conventions, such as formulaic expressions, could be used so that their texts came closer to the genre. the following piece of data, taken from an interview, illustrates this point: 89. t: and how can you evaluate the final version of your essay? 90. s10: i think, it’s, you know because of the draft, you could identify what, i 91. mean, your problems, what were you doing bad, so, i think at the end figure 2. student’s artifact—first version figure 3. student’s artifact—final and published version universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras136 chala bejarano & chapetón 92. when i wrote the final version, i could do it better and it was, i think it was good. (2nd interview) through drafting and redrafting, most of the participants had the opportunity to identify mistakes and correct them, but this process in which they engaged also allowed them to reflect on the content of their essays thus raising their awareness with regard to their writing skills, enabling them to identify drawbacks and use this information to improve. this is a remarkable insight as students seemed to go beyond linguistic and textual issues to engage in other dimensions of writing that were more related to their subjectivity as writers and the process that they followed when engaged in this literacy practice. samples as guides for text shaping the essay samples presented and analysed in class during the step exploring the genre were considered by the participants as guides or models to shape their own texts. these samples were important to get students aware of key genre features and facilitate their personal writing process. samples were shown to have a fundamental supporting role as reliable material to consult and get ideas from in order to adjust their texts in terms of rhetorical structure and formulaic sequences (morrison, 2010). this aided students to gain control of the genre (chaisiri, 2010), and thus engage in the act of writing in a more confident way: s4: when i started to write my pros and cons essay i didn’t find it difficult because with the examples of that kind of essays presented in class was very useful to write it. (student’s artifact) this student highlights the role of samples as facilitators in writing. the data also showed that having a sample guided students in different degrees depending on their needs as writers. the following interview excerpt shows how samples were useful in this respect: 39. s2: i think all of them were pretty useful. for example when we looked at the 40. model text, it 41. was really helpful because it’s like a guide for us, and we can follow that example, not copy it, but just follow that structure. (2nd interview) it was interesting to find that modelling did not generate blind text imitation. on the contrary, it enhanced the writers’ ability to discern and make decisions (grundy, 1987) about what elements they could integrate in their own texts to meet the genre conventions. although students acknowledged the importance of essay samples as reliable material to guide their writing, they also showed discernment in deciding how the samples could help them to improve their texts and learn: s11: i learnt from the samples, i could take some elements from them for me to use on my essays. (2nd questionnaire) 31. t: and another thing about the sample essays that i presented and that you 32. said that they were useful to you. did you copy the same 33. structure? what aspects did you consider from that? from the 34. texts? 35. s5: the organization of the text? [t: uh-hum.] for example, if the text 36. presents an organization from the most important points to the 37. less important, and also some linking words that i brought, and also i 38. considered the way to introduce the topic sentence because the 39. way those developed the idea, to parts of this points to start writing. 40. t: and why did you take those aspects, those little pieces? 41. s5: because i think that if i do it, i can develop better my essay or i can make 42. it more organised and understandable, because i have to respect 43. sometimes the structure and that’s why i used it. 44. t: did you adjust, or did you use some of your own ideas to the structure? 45. s5: yes, sometimes. for example, i have other problems with the conclusion and i never take some aspects of the models 137profile vol. 15, no. 2, october 2013. issn 1657-0790 (printed) 2256-5760 (online). bogotá, colombia. pages 127-147 the role of genre-based activities in the writing of argumentative essays in efl because i think it doesn’t adjust to my topic but what i do is to write my own ideas and to develop my own way. (2nd interview) samples helped learners to develop awareness of argumentative essay writing by allowing them to focus on generic features such as structure and formulaic sequences. on the other hand, samples were also useful to acknowledge the subjectivity involved in writing (baynham, 1995), thus helping the students to make decisions about generic features they could use. given the dynamic perspective that was embraced in the study, participants decided which elements to focus on and use in order to consider the features of the genre and at the same time make the text theirs. it was also possible for them to draw upon elements from their sociocultural context to build their texts and support their ideas. category 2: encouraging role enhanced through the situated social experience this category refers to the positive role that the activities developed had on the students throughout the study to build their confidence in writing. the analysis of data showed that self-reliance and positive attitudes towards writing were enhanced due to the implementation of the genre-based activities when writing was considered as a situated social practice. confidence was built through explicit analysis of the genre and understanding the purpose for writing, among other aspects. on the other hand, the data revealed that the students showed an improvement in attitude towards the act of writing itself due to two main aspects: (1) the encouraging discovery of the particular features of the argumentative genre and (2) the possibility to choose the topics of the essays. positive discovery of the genre through explicit analysis engaged in genre-based activities when writing, the students were able to build awareness as to how to write opinions, pros and cons, and problem-solution, essays, paying close attention to genre conventions and features. this ability relates to the explicit nature of instruction in a genre-based pedagogy (hyland, 2004). explicit analysis of genre features allowed students to better understand how texts were structured, how the audience could be approached, and what language could be used to achieve their purpose. in connection with this, a student expresses: s7: i can say it was an excellent experience. at the beginning it was a little bit difficult because the structure was not clear but thank to the explanations and power point presentation i really improved in my essays; now i try to organize it to make it coherent. now i feel better writing essays. (2nd questionnaire) as a personal endeavour, writing generated different reactions among the students, including fear. however, due to the use of samples and their analysis, this feeling changed; participants thus approached writing in a more confident way, even changing the perspective they used to have about this practice, as shown below: 109. t: s15, has your conception of writing academic essays changed in certain 110. way? 111. s15: well, i think it has changed a little bit because before i thought that 112. writing an essay or writing something for english class was boring 113. and i didn’t feel excited about writing only for the teacher, but in this 114. course, i realized that writing is a good thing to do, and i realized 115. that i could express myself by a piece of paper and i’m excited when i 116. write, next semester i will be excited because i will show the previous class, so it’s nice for me to show my improvement to the other teacher. (3rd interview) students got engaged in discovering the particu larities of the genre, and this seems to have encour aged them to change their negative views of writing. universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras138 chala bejarano & chapetón just as they focused on formal features of texts, they also acknowledged other important aspects like the social dimension and subjectivity involved in writing. being able to discover these aspects and the reasons for writing made the experience more meaningful to the participants and therefore encouraged them to become more engaged in writing. a genre-based perspective to writing was important to explore what students did when they wrote, and understanding writing as a situated social practice helped to discover how they felt. students’ attitude was an important factor that influenced the way they undertook writing. analysis of the genre features allowed the students to become aware of textual features, which in turn helped them to become more self-reliant and develop a more positive attitude to undertake writing. prior knowledge was elicited and used in order to support the analysis of genre features, as can be seen in the following exchange that was transcribed from a class session: 77. t: there are some pros, and there are some cons. good. now, do you know 78. any other ways to begin an introduction? here we began with a general 79. idea. 80. s3: the other way is we begin with the thesis statement and then we develop 81. the essay. 82. t: ok. what do you think?...we begin with the thesis statement and then 83. we go to the general point? 84. class: no. 85. t: it would depend on your eh, style, but usually we don’t do that. [s15: 86. yeah]...good. another way. 87. s12: another is called “dramatic entrance,” but i don’t know. 88. s7: you tell a story about or an experience that you had… [t: yes.] related 89. with the topic 90. t: yeah. why (bis) would you bring up an experience that you had (-) and 91. put it there? 92. s3: because by giving this makes it more real for the reader… it is not like 93. an idea, but a real situation. 94. t: excellent, and so it what? 95. t, class: it catches the attention of the reader. t: very good. another possibility. s12: define the topic. t: define the topic, yes. good. you can also use an explanatory question at the beginning s4: or we can use a quote from someone else. (recorded class transcription) as seen in these data, dialogic interaction with peers and teacher allowed the students not only to analyse generic features, but also to establish dialogic communication; in this dialogue, the students’ subjectivity (baynham, 1995) and personal background (lillis, 2001) were very important because they were able to resort to their knowledge and become active participants in the social construction of knowledge (vygotsky, 1978). analysis of the texts contributed to building students’ confidence to write as it was an opportunity to solve doubts and answer questions. essay topic selection: a factor that boosts writing another important factor that boosted participants’ engagement and positive attitude towards essay writing was the opportunity to choose the topics. this allowed participants to express their ideas more fully and relate to the text in a closer way. the students viewed this opportunity as innovative in their writing experience because, as found in the questionnaires and interviews, in previous courses it was the teacher who chose for them, and as a result they felt restricted as to expressing their feelings and unenthusiastic to write. a comparative quantitative analysis of students’ responses in the first and final questionnaire showed that students felt they could 139profile vol. 15, no. 2, october 2013. issn 1657-0790 (printed) 2256-5760 (online). bogotá, colombia. pages 127-147 the role of genre-based activities in the writing of argumentative essays in efl express their ideas, feelings, and points of view more during this study than before (see table 1). table 1 shows an important shift in the participants’ degree of agreement with the question. although in the two questionnaires the general opinion remained between “agree” and “completely agree,” there was a higher degree of agreement when referring to the writing experience they had in the study. the qualitative data collected through the questionnaires and the interviews showed that the change in students’ opinion was due to the possibility to choosing the topics of the essays. participants felt confident to express their ideas more freely about topics that they liked, that were interesting to them, and most of all, which they could choose themselves: s5: i agree with the fact that this course let me express my ideas, feelings and points of view because it was a space where we had this possibility thanks to the chance to choose our own topics. (2nd questionnaire) choosing the topic was revealed to be an opportunity for self-expression and an encouraging factor for writing. as participants were able to choose what they would write about, their confidence to write their essays was improved: 140. t: s12, you said that you felt confident and comfortable when you 141. wrote. why was that? 142. s12: mainly, because of the topic. i think that when we know about 143. something, we can develop it in a well manner, a well way. 144. t: what do you mean “in a good manner”? 145. s12: that for example we can use some strong arguments or to bring several 146. examples about something that we know well. we have more elements to enrich the essay. (3rd interview) being able to choose the topic helped the students to gain control of what they said and how they said it. knowing about the topic was an important factor that contributed to building up students’ confidence when writing because it helped them to draw upon ideas and present arguments that came from their voice-asexperience (lillis, 2001). conclusions and pedagogical implications the data showed that the genre-based activities had two main roles in the students’ construction of argumentative essays when writing was understood as a situated social practice. on the one hand, they provided support to the participants and on the other, they fostered encouragement to approach the act of writing. as to the first role, the data showed that there were three ways in which the genre-based activities supported the participants’ undertaking of writing. first, the dialogic interaction that emerged during the different stages of the writing cycles, among the students and between them and the teacher, provided scaffolding opportunities for the students to construct or refine their arguments; given this type of interaction, the activities allowed the participants to become active subjects in supporting their peers table 1. participants’ view of expression in prior courses and during the study the texts that i wrote allowed me to express my own… completely agree agree disagree completely disagree ideas before the experience 3 10 1 1 in this experience 14 1 0 0 feelings before the experience* 3 5 1 5 in this experience 8 7 0 0 points of view before the experience 6 7 1 1 in this experience 12 3 0 0 n=15 * one student did not answer this. universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras140 chala bejarano & chapetón and enriching their essays at the same time. second, the possibility of drafting and redrafting was shown to be an innovative activity in the study which aided the students to start looking at writing as a process, not as a product. at the same time, this activity provided them with the opportunity to meet the generic features of essays and improve their writing skills. third, the essay samples analysed in class were revealed by the data to be facilitators in writing; they were reliable sources for students to consult and shape their texts with regard to generic features such as formulaic sequences and text structure. the use of samples also fostered students’ decision-making in writing by choosing the elements that helped them meet the genre features and at the same time keep their texts original and personal; hence, blind imitation of templates was avoided. as to the second role, the genre-based activities generated confidence and positive attitudes towards writing because of two main factors. first, the discovery of the generic features through explicit analysis and exploration of the essay samples helped students to become aware of how to take on the act of writing argumentative essays; this explicit discovery helped them to improve their perception of writing and undertake this literacy practice in a more confident way. second, the possibility of choosing a topic to write about was a boosting factor for students to engage in writing; the opportunity to express their points of view with regard to a topic that the participants themselves chose was an encouraging factor which helped them to improve their confidence to write as they gained control of what they said and how they said it. carrying out a project in which argumentative writing is approached as a situated social practice and framed within a genre-based perspective implies promoting teaching and learning processes that respond to local needs. writing essays becomes more meaningful when it is approached from a situated perspective, and when students can identify with their texts either because the issues affect them directly as people of the world or because they feel interested in the topics. by experiencing this, students may be able to focus on their sociocultural and personal context in a more direct way; they may be able to name, create and re-create personal experiences which allow them, as chapetón (2007) states, to understand the social nature of the realities that surround them, approach issues from a critical perspective, and start a meaningful process of transformation of their reality. this situated perspective of education calls for a change in the current paradigms of teacher training and practice within the elt community in our country. in the first place, professional development programmes that promote teachers’ reflections on their own sociocultural contexts should be promoted. as cárdenas, gonzález, and álvarez (2010) claim, these programmes should encompass and value the particularities of the communities where teachers come from and must be coherent with their needs and exp ectations (own translation, p. 62). by acknowledging this gap, teachers can start to base their practices on their own realities and needs instead of importing external knowledge from training programmes that may turn out to be meaningless to their professional and pedagogical situation. references álvarez, t. (2001). textos expositivo-explicativos y argumentativos [argumentative and expository-explanatory texts]. barcelona, es: octaedro. ariza, a. v. (2005). the process-writing approach: an alternative to guide the students’ compositions. profile issues in teachers’ professional development, 6(1), 37-46. bastian, h. (2010). the genre effect: exploring the unfamiliar. composition studies, 38(1), 29-51. baynham, m. (1995). literacy practices: investigating literacy in social contexts. new york, ny: longman. 141profile vol. 15, no. 2, october 2013. issn 1657-0790 (printed) 2256-5760 (online). bogotá, colombia. pages 127-147 the role of genre-based activities in the writing of argumentative essays in efl bruner, j., & sherwood, v. (1975). peek-a-boo and the learning of rule structures. in j. bruner, a. jolly, & k. sylva (eds.), play: its role in development and evolution (pp. 277-285). harmondsworth, uk: penguin books. burns, a. (2003). collaborative action research for english language teachers (3rd ed.). cambridge, uk: cambridge university press. cárdenas, m. l., gonzález, a., & álvarez, j. a. (2010). el desarrollo profesional de los docentes de inglés en ejercicio: algunas consideraciones conceptuales para colombia [in service english teachers’ professional development: some conceptual considerations for colombia]. folios, 31, 49-68. chaisiri, t. (2010). implementing a genre pedagogy to the teaching of writing in a university context in thailand. language education in asia, 1, 181-199. chala, p. a. (2011). going beyond the linguistic and the textual in argumentative essay writing: a critical approach (unpublished master’s thesis). universidad pedagógica nacional, bogotá. chala, p. a., & chapetón, c. m. (2012). efl argumentative essay writing as a situated-social practice: a review of concepts. folios, 36, 23-36. chapetón, c. m. (2007). literacy as a resource to build resiliency. bogotá, co: editorial universidad pedagógica nacional. corbin, j., & strauss, a. (1990). basics of qualitative research. grounded theory procedures and techniques. london, uk: sage. correa, d. (2010). developing academic literacy and voice: challenges faced by a mature esl student and her instructors. profile issues in teachers’ professional development, 12(1), 79-94. gee, j. (2008). social linguistics and literacies. ideology in discourses. (3rd ed.). new york, ny: routledge. goatly, a. (2000). critical reading and writing. an introductory coursebook. london, uk: routledge. grundy, s. (1987). curriculum: product or praxis? london, uk: falmer press. hyland, k. (2004). genre and second language writing. ann arbor, mi: university of michigan press. johnson, b., & christensen, l. (2004). educational research. quantitative, qualitative, and mixed approaches. boston, ma: pearson. lillis, t. m. (2001). student writing: access, regulation, desire. new york, ny: routledge. lin, s., monroe, b., & troia, g. (2007). development of writing knowledge in grades 2-8: a comparison of typically developing writers and their struggling peers. reading and writing quarterly, 23(3), 207-230. morrison, b. (2010). developing a culturally-relevant genre-based writing course for distance learning. language education in asia, 1, 171-180. nanwani, s. (2009). linguistic challenges lived by university students in bogotá in the development of academic literacy. colombian applied linguistics journal, 11, 136-148. ramírez, l. a. (2007). comunicación y discurso. la perspectiva polifónica de los discursos literarios, cotidianos y científicos [communication and discourse. the polyphonic perspective of literary, scientific, and daily discourses]. bogotá, co: editorial magisterio. sagor, r. (2000). guiding school improvement with action research. alexandria, va: ascd. sagor, r. (2005). the action research guidebook: a four-step process for educators and school teams. thousand oaks, ca: corwin press. sandin, m. p. (2003). investigación cualitativa en educación: fundamentos y tradiciones [qualitative research in education: foundations and traditions]. madrid, es: mcgraw hill. street, c. (2003). pre-service teachers’ attitudes about writing and learning to teach writing: implications for teacher educators. teacher education quarterly, 30(3), 33-50. vygotsky, l. (1978). mind in society: the development of higher psychological processes. cambridge, ma: harvard university press. universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras142 chala bejarano & chapetón white, r., & arndt, v. (1991). process writing. london, uk: longman. widodo, h. p. (2006). designing a genre-based lesson plan for an academic writing course. english teaching: practice & critique, 5(3), 173-199. zúñiga, g., & macías, d. (2006). refining students’ academic writing skills in an undergraduate foreign language teaching. íkala, revista de lenguaje y cultura, 11(17), 311-336. about the authors pedro antonio chala bejarano is a teacher of english at pontificia universidad javeriana (colombia). he holds a ba in philology and languages (universidad nacional de colombia) and an ma in foreign language teaching (universidad pedagógica nacional, colombia). his professional interests include efl writing and materials design. he has authored school and university efl teaching materials. claudia marcela chapetón is an associate professor at universidad pedagógica nacional (colombia). she holds a ba in english and spanish, an ma in applied linguistics (universidad distrital francisco josé de caldas, colombia), and a phd in applied linguistics (university of barcelona, spain). her research interests include literacy, metaphor, and corpus linguistics. she has authored efl teaching materials and textbooks. 143profile vol. 15, no. 2, october 2013. issn 1657-0790 (printed) 2256-5760 (online). bogotá, colombia. pages 127-147 the role of genre-based activities in the writing of argumentative essays in efl appendix a: first questionnaire sample universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras144 chala bejarano & chapetón 145profile vol. 15, no. 2, october 2013. issn 1657-0790 (printed) 2256-5760 (online). bogotá, colombia. pages 127-147 the role of genre-based activities in the writing of argumentative essays in efl appendix b: second questionnaire sample universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras146 chala bejarano & chapetón 147profile vol. 15, no. 2, october 2013. issn 1657-0790 (printed) 2256-5760 (online). bogotá, colombia. pages 127-147 the role of genre-based activities in the writing of argumentative essays in efl appendix c: sample interview protocol first semi-structured interview research question: what is the role of a set of writing tasks in the creation of argumentative texts by high intermediate students in the bachelor degree in modern languages programme at universidad javeriana when writing is understood as a situated social practice? interview schedule interviewee: _____________ date: _________________ place: ________________ intended duration: _______ min. interview began: _____ interview finished: _____ actual duration: _______________ min. topic: opinions of students with regard to the genre-based activities that were implemented taking writing as a situated social practice. questions: 1. what is your opinion about the writing activities that we have developed in the class so far? (prompts: have they been useful to you as a writer? why?) 2. how did you feel during the development of these activities? (prompts: confident / worried / optimistic / interested / apathetic... why?) 3. what activities from the ones that were developed in the classes do you think influenced your writing most? (prompts: conversations with classmates / whole group discussions/ readings / video activities... why?) 4. how would you describe your way of approaching writing after the development of the tasks? (prompts: more critical about social issues/just as before/less focused on critical issues... why?) 29profile vol. 13, no. 2, october 2011. issn 1657-0790. bogotá, colombia. pages 29-41 the use of blogs in english language learning: a study of student perceptions el uso de bitácoras o blogs en el aprendizaje del idioma inglés: un estudio sobre las percepciones del estudiante gurleen ahluwalia* bbsb engineering college, india deepti gupta** panjab university, india deepak aggarwal*** bbsb engineering college, india in this article we present an investigation that focused on the students’ perception of using blogs as a means to supplement in-class language learning activities. blogs are easy to manage and enable students to publish their work in a chronological manner. they help students to engage in online exchanges and promote learner autonomy. this study evaluates a language laboratory program in which forty-two first year engineering students from a college in india were introduced to blogs and instructed to use them for recording their laboratory work. data collection reveals that despite encountering some difficulties, students had an overall positive attitude towards using blogs in their learning of english. a follow-up study was conducted a year after the initial study and the results supported the original findings. key words: computer assisted language learning, student perceptions, using blogs. en este artículo presentamos una investigación enfocada en las percepciones de los estudiantes acerca del uso de blogs como un medio para complementar las actividades de la clase de idiomas. los blogs son fáciles de usar y permiten a los estudiantes publicar sus trabajos cronológicamente. ayudan a los estudiantes a involucrarse en intercambios en línea y promueven el aprendizaje autónomo. este estudio evalúa un programa de laboratorio de lengua en el cual cuarenta y dos estudiantes del primer año de ingeniería de una universidad de india, a quienes se les familiarizó con los blogs y se les instruyó en la forma de usarlos para documentar su trabajo en el laboratorio. los datos recolectados muestran que a pesar de enfrentar algunas dificultades, los estudiantes tuvieron una actitud positiva acerca del uso de blogs en su aprendizaje de inglés. se realizó un estudio de seguimiento un año después del estudio original y los resultados sustentaron los primeros hallazgos. palabras clave: aprendizaje del idioma asistido por computador, percepciones de los estudiantes, uso de blogs. this article is a result of gurleen ahluwalia’s phd project. she conducted the study with her students. the development of the study and the writing of this document included the collaboration of deepti gupta and deepak aggarwal. * e-mail: gurleenahluwalia@yahoo.co.in ** e-mail: deepti.elt@gmail.com *** e-mail: aggarwal656@rediffmail.com this article was received on january 20, 2011, and accepted on april 4, 2011. 30 universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras ahluwalia, gupta & aggarwal introduction the “talk and chalk” method has a long history in language teaching, but the time has come to introduce available cutting-edge technologies in language teaching. they will bring about a transformation in the existing traditional education model by promoting active learning in students and will enable students to move from an emphasis on knowledge memorization to knowledge application, analysis, synthesis and evaluation. innovations in teaching methodologies have been supported by the development of increasingly sophisticated but user-friendly technologies and one of them is blogs. they have fundamentally transformed the way people interact on the in ternet. they have changed users from consumers to contributors of information. a blog (short for weblog) is a frequently updated website that often resembles an online journal. it is easy to create and update a blog –it requires only basic access to the internet, and a minimum of technical know-how. because of this, it is one of the easiest ways to publish student writing on the world wide web (www). it is almost as easy as sending an e-mail (stanley, 2005). entries are posted chronologically, with the most recent at the top, and provide commentary or news on a particular subject. a typical blog combines text, images, and links to other blogs, web pages, and other media related to its topic. a blog is a viable option when a public space is required to display the students’ work or where students can share experiences, opinions or creations that reflect the best of their learning. the present article reports on a classroom-based research project where blogs were integrated into language courses at a college of engineering in india. it describes the study and examines the participants’ perception of the learning experiences afforded by blogs as a means to supplement in-class language learning activities. on the educational value of technology blogs have been well received in education because of their multimedia features, simple web publishing, interactivity, and ability to support cooperative and autonomous learning. bloggers can read other blogs, give their comments on them, and refer to them in their own blogs. the worldwide blog audience enables students to interact with and have their work viewed by others outside the classroom (godwin-jones, 2003; warlick, 2005). several studies have lent support to the assertion that blogs can effectively facilitate language teaching and learning (betts & glogoff, 2005; bloch, 2004), especially in terms of learners’ language complexity, grammatical correctness, and fluency. in addition, bloggers tend to have a greater sense of freedom to express their ideas and to establish their arguments than classroom-based participants (baggetun & wasson, 2006; bloch, 2004). blogs enhance users’ exposure to people from different backgrounds and circumstances (baggetun & watson, 2006; richardson, 2006). the archiving of blog entries facilitates users’ reflection on blog content and fosters development of metacognitive strategies for monitoring the progress of learning on the blog (richardson, 2006; xie & sharma, 2004). while traditional websites usually contain a static, limited scope of content, blogs with really simple syndication (rss) present readers with diverse ideas, questions, and links and, thereby, help develop collective intelligence (richardson, 2006; warlick, 2005). rss is a family of web feed formats which publish frequently updated works —such as blog entries, news headlines, audio, and video— in a standardized format. web feeds benefit publishers by letting them syndicate content automatically. they benefit readers who want to subscribe to timely updates from favored websites (wikipedia). 31 the use of blogs in english language learning... profile vol. 13, no. 2, october 2011. issn 1657-0790. bogotá, colombia. pages 29-41 chapelle recommended six criteria for computer-assisted language learning (call) task ap propriateness based on second language acquisition (sla) findings: (1) language learning potential, (2) learner fitness (presenting tasks “ap pro priate to learners’ linguistic ability level”), (3) meaning focus, (4) authenticity, (5) positive impact (resulting in “effects beyond its language learning potential”), and (6) practicality (2002, pp. 499‒500). similarly, based on the experiences of a worldwide teacher survey, warschauer & whittaker (2002) have compiled a set of considerations for teachers planning to implement call tasks. their suggested considerations include the following: (1) understanding of one’s goals, (2) aiming for the integration of skills activities, (3) understanding the “complexity” of call tasks, (4) providing strong teacher support, and (5) involving learners in decision-making (pp. 368‒371). with these considerations and principles in mind, the researcher selected blogging as the call activity that would best serve the students. this was done for a number of reasons. first, it was evident from our own experience and from an understanding of the prior research on blogs (dieu, 2004; downs, 2004; glogoff, 2005; lamshed, berry, & armstrong, 2002; mcintosh, 2005; pinkman, 2005; thorne & payne, 2005; warschauer & whittaker, 2002; williams & jacobs, 2004) that blogging’s popularity has grown rapidly, parallel to that of the internet, and its potential in language teaching and learning has been encouraging, though not fully known. in fact, on a global scale and according to internet world stats (n.d.) data for 2007, the number of internet users in asia is now approaching half a billion, while in north america and europe the number is close to 600 million. between 2000 and 2007, the growth in worldwide internet usage was 250%. concurrently, articles in bbc (blogosphere sees healthy growth, 2006), summarizing data from the blog tracking firm technorati1, puts the number of new blogs created daily at 100,000 and the number of posts posted every day at 1.3 million. murray (2007) states that as of october 2007, technorati was tracking “more than 108.8 million blogs” (p. 26); and bbc’s another article (children who use technology are ‘better writers’, 2009), states that children who blog texts or use social networking websites are more confident about their writing skills. “our research suggests a strong correlation between kids using technology and wider patterns of reading and writing,” jonathan douglas, director of the national literacy trust, told bbc news. he added that engagement with online technology drives their enthusiasm for writing short stories, letters, song lyrics or diaries. research also suggests that educators help motivate students by using materials and implementing activities that students consider meaningful (spratt, humphreys, & chan 2002). so when students upload their posts on their blogs, creating their own space on the web, and receive comments and feedback from their peers and teachers, they feel highly motivated. as one of pinkman’s students wrote, “...once or twice a week i check my blog and then other students write comments for me, my motivation is up, usually teacher check my blog, so if i read teacher comments my teacher thought about me, my motivation up” (quoted in blackstone, 2007, p. 5). due to the popularity of computer and internet technology and the growing interest in blogging, it was expected that the group of learners would also find the use of blogs in their english language study highly motivating. second, almost every student of the college where the study was conducted owns a computer/ laptop and the campus has wifi internet connection; 1 http://technorati.com/state-of-the-blogosphere/ 32 universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras ahluwalia, gupta & aggarwal for students who do not have a computer, the college provides two 24-hour-access computer centres with 30 and 40 computers respectively. this availability of the required technology, the researcher believes, would make any plans for course-based blogging practical within the educational context. related to the availability of computers and internet connections was the fact that blogs are easy to create and maintain. there are a number of servers, blogger.com being one example, which offer free, simple to set up, and convenient to use blogs. some of these are designed specifically for educational purposes, which generally means that there is no advertising. the blogger can quickly set up his/her own blog on one of these free web spaces, upload pictures, presentations, music and even video (from his/her own files or another web source) and then upload personal writing (known as a blog “post”) and receive commentary from readers regarding each post that has been made (blackstone, 2007). purpose of the study research on the effect of blogs on education is still in its infancy, and the effect of blogs on language learning and teaching has been studied even less. a review of the literature reveals that no such study on blogs even exists in india. the purpose of this study is to report on the integration of class blogs into language courses and to examine the participants’ perception of the learning experiences afforded by blogs. in this regard, the researcher designed a project to introduce students to blogs and to find ways to use blogs to supplement their learning experience. the overall purpose of this study was to investigate how students perceived learning english through blogs. participants and context the participants were 42 first-year college students, taught by the teacher-researcher, in two laboratory classes at an engineering college in india. both classes were relatively large: 20 and 22 students respectively. of the 42 students, 14 were female and 28 were male. the students’ average age was 19.67 years. they were placed at the high-beginner level in language ability and had received at least ten years of formal instruction in the english language. at the time of this research project, they were taking a compulsory communication skills course. this project was implemented in the students’ communication skills practical laboratory course, which aims to enable students to use language sub-skills effectively. they were majoring in a variety of technical disciplines, such as electronics, mechanical engineering, information technology, and computer sciences. these students tended to have relatively little exposure to english in their content-based classes. the researcher conducted a survey of the students’ online experience and habits prior to the study and found that 37 students out of 42 (88%) possess a personal computer (a desktop or a laptop). most of the students, 63.8% to be precise, reported that they work online through home computers more often than through college facilities, such as the computer centre, the library or the digital language laboratory. data on how often the students got online revealed that 68.8% of the students got on line between one and seven times a week, and 26.5% of them got online more than seven times a week. 55.3% of the students reported spending between one and two hours on the internet. the data collected suggested that many of them frequently spent a considerable amount of time online. however, regardless of their ample online experience, none of the students owned a blog and many might not be even familiar with blogs. procedure during the last week of january 2007, the students were introduced to the digital language 33 the use of blogs in english language learning... profile vol. 13, no. 2, october 2011. issn 1657-0790. bogotá, colombia. pages 29-41 laboratory, where access to the internet is available round the clock. two practical groups comprised of 20 and 22 each were instructed to put the record of communication skills’ class activities on their blogs rather than writing them up in their practical files. at the outset of the project, the groups were given a 50-minute training session at the laboratory on the use of blogs (creating their account, customising their blog, publishing their work, commenting on others blogs). the students worked in pairs on the computers in the digital laboratory. the training session aimed to introduce students to blogs so that learners could create their own blogs and afterwards post and publish the written assignments on them. before the training session started, the students answered the survey questionnaire mentioned above, about their computer usage habits (experience using the web, frequency of web usage) and their familiarity with the latest web 2.0 tools offered by the world wide web. a blog is called an online journal or a diary where every post is published chronologically; therefore, students used it to record their communication skills’ class activities. after every performance in the language laboratory, students recorded their work on their blogs and uploaded relevant pictures, photographs, presentations and videos to make them more presentable, for one reason. then, they also read their classmates’ posts and wrote comments on them. at the end of the semester, students were asked to complete an anonymous survey questionnaire concerning their perceptions of the experience. an interview was conducted with some of the students to gain a broader perspective on blogging processes. the survey instrument in order to collect data on the students’ blog ging experience, the researcher used the online survey program surveymonkey.com, available for free for small-scale surveys (www.surveymonkey. com). this program allows users to create an online questionnaire quickly by following simple procedures. once one survey is created, it can be renamed as a new survey with the same questions for replication or with revisions made for improvement. at the end of the semester, the students an swered the survey, which related to their attitudes toward writing their communication skill’s practical record on blogs, commenting on classmates’ posts, and the difficulties they encountered. there were 25 items in total on the survey instrument, including 4 focusing on demographic information, 16 rating scale items focusing on degree of agreement in a likert scale format where 1 stood for “strongly disagree” and 4 indicated “strongly agree”, and 5 yes/no questions. of the 21 nondemographic questions, 7 focused on the usefulness of blogs as a communication skills activity, 9 aimed to determine students’ attitudes toward blogging (see appendix) and 5 yes/no questions focused on students’ difficulties while blogging. interviews the purpose of the interview was to get a better insight into student’s blogging processes. so, the teacher-researcher adopted stratified sampling2 to “ensure the representative presence of particular subgroups of the population under study” (mackey & gass, 2005, p. 120). in the initial phase of the interview, 12 students were selected. the criterion of selection was based on important demographic information such as, gender, year of study, blog performance, major and course grade. this sample method seemed to be more representative because of the limited sample size. 2 the process of grouping members of the population into relatively homogeneous and mutually exclusive subgroups. 34 universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras ahluwalia, gupta & aggarwal then the researcher invited 6 students to participate in the interview who came from a different field of study (electronics, mechanical engineering, information technology, and computer sciences). of the 6 interviewees, 2 were female and the other 4 were male. the interviews were conducted individually in the students’ first language i.e., punjabi. it allowed them to freely express their opinions and feelings. each interview lasted for about an hour. the rationale for the interview was to elicit information relating to four major areas: (a) students’ attitudes toward blogging as a language learning activity, (b) related learning strategies, (c) difficulties encountered, and (d) solutions to those difficulties. limitations of the study the primary limitation of this study is the selfreported nature of the data collection. because the researcher is the teacher of the class, it is possible that the students might have over reported on the effectiveness of the program. one control for this limitation was the anonymous nature of the final survey questionnaire. the teacher also indicated to the class that she wanted to see how the class as a whole, not individual students, felt about the program. the results of the study cannot be generalized to other populations as the sample was confined to only one class of engineering students in a college in india. the short duration of the study may also have negatively skewed the results obtained. results the main purpose of this original research was to determine, in a pilot study format, how students perceive the use of blogs. there have been critics of the use of blogging in an academic setting, and some researchers have implied that the informal nature of blogs is not appropriate for academic work. a study conducted by williams & jacobs (2004) revealed that students were “broadly in favour of the continued use of blogs as an effective aid to teaching and learning” (p. 11), but it also called for providing students with greater direction. however, williams & jacobs (2004, pp. 3-4) surprisingly identified, “there is not a lot of refereed published material on the subject of blogs in general, let alone work that focuses specifically on blogs in education”. so, the researcher took the opportunity to address this lacuna. having implemented blogging for a semester, the researcher conducted a survey of the students’ blogging experience. this step recalls the fifth principle of warschauer & whittaker (2002, p. 371): soliciting student feedback on the call activities that have been implemented. table 1 contains the subscales of the survey. table 1. subscales of the blog survey subscale description demographic details (questions 1-4) age, gender, branch, semester. helpfulness and usefulness of blogs (questions 5-11) improvement in writing communication skills, business correspondence, self presentation, grammar, vocabulary and as a new way of social networking. attitude (questions 12-20) blog-technology acceptance, perceived degree of motivation and confidence, and concern about the comprehensibility, quality, interest level, and popularity of blogs . difficulties and problems encountered (questions 20-25) typing problem, getting disconnected, computer equipment, copying others’ work. 35 the use of blogs in english language learning... profile vol. 13, no. 2, october 2011. issn 1657-0790. bogotá, colombia. pages 29-41 participants’ perceptions of the usefulness of blogs the participants’ perceptions of the usefulness of blogs are discussed below. of the perceived benefits of blogging, using blogs as a medium of self-expression received the highest score, followed by writing communication skills, information exchange, and social networking. almost twothirds (66.6%) of the participants responded positively towards improvement in their writing skills as a result of using blogs (see figure 1). additionally, 76% of the participants agreed to the statement that the blog is a medium of selfexpression, out of which 57% “strongly agreed” on the same (figure 2). in general, the results show that the participants prioritized the enhancement of communication skills. participants’ attitudes towards blogging overall, most students found the main blogging activities, including writing and uploading their blog posts and responding to classmates’ posts, positive and useful. for example, 80.9% of the respondents (34/42) chose “strongly agree” or “agree” for the statement that they liked blogging (see figure 3). similarly, for the statement, “i like posting writing assignments on my blog,” 76% of the students (32/42) responded positively (see figure  4). responding to the statement, “i like reading my classmates’ written posts,” 92.8% (39/42) of the students expressed agreement (see figure 5). also, 66.6% (28/42) students answered in agreement for the statement, “i like making comments on my classmates’ posts” (see figure 6). regarding the value of receiving comments on posts from classmates, 97.3% students responded positively. equally impressive (99%) was the response of the students that they liked having their instructor make written comments on a blog post. figure 1. enhancement of writing-communication skills figure 2. a medium of self-presentation figure 3. i like blogging as a communication skills activity figure 4. i like posting writing assignments on my blog 6 8 1 1 0 2 4 6 8 10 12 14 16 18 strongly disagree disagree agree strongly agree 4 6 24 8 0 5 10 15 20 25 30 strongly disagree disagree agree strongly agree 4 6 18 14 0 2 4 6 8 10 12 14 16 18 20 strongly disagree disagree agree strongly agree 2 6 21 13 0 5 10 15 20 25 30 strongly disagree disagree agree strongly agree 36 universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras ahluwalia, gupta & aggarwal figure 5. i like reading my classmates’ written posts figure 6. i like making comments on my classmates’ posts difficulties and problems encountered some students felt typing texts in the beginning of the semester for posting the blogs was a major hurdle. they found writing on a practical file much easier than typing. but they later on felt that it was important to learn typing skills as it would be very helpful for them in their profession. some of them faced some technical problems like getting unconnected, slow uploading and power failure (see table 2). students’ perceptions: main findings the results of the survey given to the student participants are important for a number of reasons. first, it appears that the percentage of students who liked writing in general also liked blogging as an activity. about the same percentage stated that they liked posting classroom assignments on their blogs. this seems to underscore that the students who like to write will probably like blogging, while students who do not like writing might not like blogging, but all of them liked uploading photographs, pictures, presentations and videos relevant to their assignments. second, the responses seem to indicate that whether students liked writing or not, they enjoyed reading what their classmates wrote (93.1%) and having their classmates read and comment on their own writing (97%). this again supports the idea of blogging activity as a student-centred, peer-focused exercise. at the same time, students did not see the teacher as excluded from this process. in fact, since all indicated that they appreciated their teacher’s comments on blog posts, input from the teacher can still be considered vital within the context of the blogosphere. in response to an interview question, one student explained his blogging experience as “blogging is a wonderful experience. it has benefited us in many a way. firstly, it was a good approach to make the students familiar with their oncoming activities. it also helped prevent wastage of time, paper & ink. 6 8 12 16 0 2 4 6 8 10 12 14 16 18 strongly disagree disagree agree stronglyagree 1 2 19 20 0 5 10 15 20 25 strongly disagree disagree agree stronglyagree table 2. difficulties encountered during the program question yes no i had to spend too much time typing. 15 27 i got unconnected when uploading text, pictures or videos or presentations. 9 33 i did not have enough access to computer equipment. 3 39 i did not understand instructions on the blogs. 7 35 others can easily copy my work. 16 26 n = 42 37 the use of blogs in english language learning... profile vol. 13, no. 2, october 2011. issn 1657-0790. bogotá, colombia. pages 29-41 it not only looks better than old bulky practical files but also helps to avoid silly, hand-breaking incidences caused due to writing by hand. but there are some loopholes too. students can easily copypaste another’s material thus depriving the original author lose the credit he/she deserves. well, i really loved blogging.” one of the students said, “just three clicks on the mouse and my views are open for world wide readership.” some mentioned the possibility of commenting on peer work as the best part of the blogs presented. another mentioned that comment features allow interaction and peer review which help in developing their analytical skills, one of the important professional skills. so these views support the assertion made by godwin-jones (2003) and warlick (2005) that, through blogging, students take ownership of the virtual space and the work they publish—an outcome that replaces traditional acts of passive information consumption by acts of active information creation. follow-up study a year after the previously described program, a follow-up study was conducted with the same group of students. the students were asked to complete a questionnaire with open-ended questions regarding their recollections of the program and the current status of their blogs. of the 41 responses we received, only 16 students reported ever going back to the blogs they created. this result seems to confirm the results obtained in the first questionnaire where the researcher found that the likelihood of students going back to their blogs is relatively low. three students reported accessing their blogs once every two or three weeks and also commenting on each other’s works, photographs and experiences. they admitted liking the use of bogs. they found it “an interesting way to be in touch with others’ works and learn english.” they continued using it only for six months, but then because of their course study and examinations they did not get time to access their blogs. the main reason that the other 25 students did not go back to the websites was lack of time. students said that they were too busy with their coursework; they didn’t have enough time to post anything on their blogs and to give comments on other people’s blogs. one possible interpretation of this finding is that students do not consider learning english a priority since they are into technical trades. the other possible interpretation is that students place work assigned by their teachers ahead of learning on their own. this interpretation is supported by three students’ comments. they reported not having gone back to the blogs because they had “no pressure” from their teacher and she “did not give extra points.” interestingly, of those students who claimed they didn’t have enough time, seven very reflective ones said they were probably “lazy” or “not aggressive enough” in their learning of english. another reason for not going back to blogs is related to the suitability of the blogs as a way to learn english. some felt that there were other more effective and convenient ways to learn english such as using the language learning websites, tv, and magazines. five students mentioned getting easily distracted by “more interesting stuff ” when they surf or work on their blogs. a third reason that students did not go back to blogs concerns equipment and bandwidth. fourteen students reported not having easy access to computer equipment when they wanted to get online and some reported not having a high speed connection. twelve students mentioned forgetting the passwords of their blogs as a reason for not going back to them. this leads the researchers to believe that these students might not have been interested 38 universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras ahluwalia, gupta & aggarwal enough in creating and maintaining their blogs or not interested enough in learning english. a few students brought up not being used to getting online to learn as a reason for not using the blogs. they mean that they mainly use the internet for other purposes such as e-mailing, chatting, and playing online games. when asked about their recollections of the experience, most students said that it was a positive experience. over twenty students appreciated the ease with which they could own web space in the form of a blog and instant publishing on the net. conclusions in this paper, the researcher has made an attempt to give a pedagogical perspective of blogging in english language teaching and learning. the findings are based on the feedback received from 42 students of an undergraduate class of an engineering college in india. the feedback has been recorded from an attitudinal survey of the students regarding their experiences with structured blogging assignments. the survey de monstrates that the students responded positively to the blogging activities. while 33 students out of 42 stated that they enjoyed posting, reading their classmates’ posts and making comments on those posts, they almost unanimously stated that they liked having their classmates and the teacher write comments on their posts. the following features of blogging activities seem to make them an attractive and powerful curricular component for collegelevel english language classes: 1) offers worldwide readership which is far beyond the limits of the traditional classroom, 2) instant publishing on the internet, 3) creating an e-portfolio of students’ work, and 4) interaction and peer review through com ments. these features combine to make blogging a highly productive, communicatively meaningful and effective approach to helping students refine and develop their language skills. the follow-up study conducted one year after the program revealed that although only 16 students reported continued use of their blogs, all of them recalled their experience of blogging as a positive one. although the implementation of blogging and associated activities in the course was carried out on a small scale and lacks the quantitative data to provide empirical support for blogging activities as being either more or less effective than traditional paper-based exercises in helping students to refine and develop their language skills, we can conclude that the blogging methods and activities presented do provide a motivating curricular addition for those students with internet access to having meaningful target language interactions outside the classroom. pedagogical relevance is an important driving force that can both motivate students to undertake an activity and maintain their interest in it (barr, 2004). students in language courses would be more likely to engage in blogging if they felt that maintaining a regular target language blog could enhance their language proficiency or that improved blog-based performance could improve their course grade. whatever the case, educators should make informed decisions regarding the extent of the integration of blogs with course content. for instance, should the blogs be central or a peripheral component of the course? course design should take into account many blogrelated issues. one such issue concerns whether or not teachers should assign specific topics to be addressed on blogs. further research in this regard would be of interest to researchers and classroom teachers. research on the possible contributions of blogs to language learning is still in its teething stage. more research can help determine whether other factors such as gender, age, field of study, computer 39 the use of blogs in english language learning... profile vol. 13, no. 2, october 2011. issn 1657-0790. bogotá, colombia. pages 29-41 literacy, and learner personality have a significant effect on the blogging process. references baggetun, r., & wasson, b. 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(2002). blogs: personal e-learning spaces. binary blue. retrieved from http://www.binaryblue.com.au/docs/blogs.pdf mackey, a., & gass, s. m. (2005). second language research: methodology and design. mahwah, nj: lawrence erlbaum. mcintosh, e. (2005). from learning logs to learning blogs. scottish centre for information on language teaching and research. retrieved from http://www.strath. ac.uk/media/faculties/hass/scilt/slr/issues/13/slr13_ mcintosh.pdf murray, a. (2007). blog communities. the language teacher, 31(12), 26-27. pinkman, k. (2005). using blogs in the foreign language classroom. the jalt call journal, 1(1), 12-24. richardson, w. (2006). blogs, wikis, podcasts, and other powerful web tools for classrooms. thousand oaks, ca: corwin press. rss. in wikipedia. retrieved from http://en.wikipedia.org/ wiki/rss 40 universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras ahluwalia, gupta & aggarwal spratt, m., humphreys, g., & chan, v. (2002). autonomy and motivation: which comes first? language teaching research, 6, 245-266. stanley, g. (2005). blogging for elt. teaching english. retrieved from http://www.teachingenglish.org.uk/ articles/blogging-elt sun, y. (2009). voice blog: an exploratory study of language learning. language learning & technology, 13(2), 88-103. retrieved from http://llt.msu.edu/vol13num2/ sun.pdf thorne, s., & payne, j. (2005). evolutionary trajectories, internet-mediated expressions, and language education. calico journal, 22(3), 371-397. warlick, d. (2005). classroom blogging: a teacher’s guide to the blogosphere. raleigh, nc: lulu.com warschauer, m., & whitttaker, p. (2002). the internet for english teaching: guidelines for teachers. in j. richards & w. renandya, (eds.), methodology in language teaching: an anthology of current practice, (pp. 368373). cambridge: cambridge university press. williams, j., & jacobs, j. (2004). exploring the use of blogs as learning spaces in the higher education sector. aus­ tralian journal of educational technology, 20(2), 232247. retrieved from http://www.jeremywilliams.net/ ajetpaper.pdf xie, y., & sharma, p. (2004). students’ lived experience of using weblogs in a class: an exploratory study. retrieved from http://www.eric.ed.gov/ericwebportal/contentdelivery/servlet /ericservlet?accno=ed485009 about the authors gurleen ahluwalia holds an ma (english literature and linguistics). she is ugc-net qualified and pursuing her phd at panjab university, chandigarh. her research area is to improve the communication skills of students with the use of technology. present position: assistant professor in communication skills, department of applied sciences, bbsb engineering college, fatehgarh sahib (india). deepti gupta holds an ma (english literature and linguistics), an m.phil. (stylistics) as well as a phd (elt), all with first classes. her publications are varied and she has recently published on bringing context and methodology together. present position: professor, department of english, panjab university, chandigarh (india). deepak aggarwal holds an mtech degree in computer science and engineering. his research domain is the performance evaluation of various technologies and their practical implications. present position: assistant professor, department of computer sciences, bbsb engineering college, fatehgarh sahib (india). 41 the use of blogs in english language learning... profile vol. 13, no. 2, october 2011. issn 1657-0790. bogotá, colombia. pages 29-41 appendix: survey items rated on a likert scale 1. age: 2. gender: 3. branch: 4. semester: 5. blogging activities improve my writing skills. 6. blogging activities improve my reading skills. 7. blogging is a medium of self-presentation. 8. blogging activities improve my grammar. 9. my vocabulary has increased due to blogging activities. 10. blogging activities will help on my professional floor. 11. blogging is a new way of social networking. 12. i like blogging as a language laboratory activity. 13. i like posting writing assignments on my blog. 14. i like reading my classmates’ written posts. 15. i like making comments on my classmates’ posts. 16. i like having classmates make comments on my posts. 17. i like having my instructor make written comments on my post. 18. in general, blogging motivates me to complete practical writing assignments on time. 19. positive comments from my teacher and classmates enhance my confidence level. 20. i like to upload quality posts because of worldwide readership of blogs. 21. i had to spend too much time in typing. 22. i got disconnected when uploading text, pictures or videos or presentations. 23. i did not have enough access to computer equipment. 24. i did not understand instructions on the blogs. 25. others can easily copy my work. 181profile vol. 16, no. 1, april 2014. issn 1657-0790 (printed) 2256-5760 (online). bogotá, colombia. pages 181-198 the feasibility of assessing teenagers’ oral english language performance with a rubric la viabilidad de evaluar el desempeño oral de los adolescentes en inglés con una rúbrica diana pineda*1 universidad de antioquia, medellín, colombia this article reports the experience of a study group in a public university in colombia, formed mostly by academic coordinators who worked in the design of assessment rubrics. its focus is on the experience of the academic coordinator of the english program for teenagers, who concentrated on implementing the rubric to assess the students’ oral performance. the data collection instruments used were the rubric and interviews with the teachers and students. the results are related to the impact of the assessment rubrics on the program’s teachers regarding practicality. key words: alternative assessment, oral performance, practicality, rubrics, teaching english to teenagers. en este artículo se presenta la experiencia de un grupo de estudio en una universidad pública colombiana, conformado principalmente por coordinadores académicos que trabajaron en el diseño de rúbricas para la evaluación. el presente trabajo se centra en la experiencia de la coordinadora del programa de inglés para jóvenes, quien usa las rúbricas para evaluar el desempeño oral de los estudiantes. los instrumentos de recolección de datos fueron la rúbrica y entrevistas a los profesores y estudiantes. los resultados están relacionados con la viabilidad y utilidad de la rúbrica. palabras clave: desempeño oral, enseñanza de inglés a adolescentes, evaluación alternativa, rúbricas, viabilidad. * e-mail: dpineda@idiomas.udea.edu.co how to cite this article (apa, 6th ed.): pineda, d. (2014). the feasibility of assessing teenagers’ oral english language performance with a rubric. profile issues in teachers’ professional development, 16(1), 181-198. http://dx.doi.org/10.15446/profile.v16n1.43203. this article was received on march 29, 2013, and accepted on october 18, 2013. universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras182 pineda introduction language assessment is a complex issue because it implies the great responsibility of teachers to assess what students are able to do with language and also because assessment may be used by the administration to evaluate the effectiveness of the teaching. nonetheless, the average teacher has to work with a large number of students per class, which makes evaluation a very time-consuming task that results in the application of very traditional assessment instruments that do not favor the students’ learning or let the teachers know what students are really able to do with that learning. although some of those assessment instruments, such as written exams or multiple-choice quizzes, seem more practical, they may sometimes lack validity and reliability. in the field of english language teaching, this reality can be worse if we take into consideration that english teachers are asked to assess communicative competence in terms of what students are able to do regarding listening, speaking, reading, and writing. at other times, despite the use of alternative instruments, such as interviews or writing tests, the criteria used to assess may be uncertain and students seem to care only about their grades without reflecting on their learning achievements. to face this reality, assessment rubrics seem to be a reliable, practical and formative instrument for both teachers and students. in this article, i will only refer to practicality as part of my experience carrying out my master thesis within the context of a research project developed by a team of different academic coordinators of programs in the centro de extensión (extension center) of the escuela de idiomas (school of languages) at the universidad de antioquia. my project aimed to examine to what extent the use of oral performance assessment rubrics can be practical and reliable when the criteria are decided by a group of teachers or, as in our case, the members of the study group, which included two of the program’s teachers. at the time the study was carried out, i was the academic coordinator of the programa de inglés para jóvenes (english program for teenagers, from now on named pij); i assumed the responsibility of becoming part of this study group and conducted research on a topic that could help us improve our assessment practices. the piloting of the rubric to assess students’ oral performance in the program led me to realize the program teachers’ need to be educated in a curriculum innovation related to assessment. at the end of the work, the reader may draw some conclusions to make decisions regarding how a rubric facilitates the teacher’s work. the results of this research will be useful for english teachers who have to daily accommodate great assessment demands, especially those in colombia, who are regulated by recent language policies under which competent language learners are expected to reach, by the end of high school, level b1 of the common european framework of reference for languages (cefr) by the year 2019. in my opinion and based on my experience, although assessment is clearly a key issue in determining what students are able to do with the language, it is by means of the rubric that we can make evaluation something well founded, practical for teachers and formative for students. context the pij was created in 2000 at the extension center of the school of languages at the universidad de antioquia in medellin. the program had 33 teachers and 450 students at the time this project was carried out. teachers should ideally hold a bachelor’s degree in teaching english, but very frequently the program hires advanced students from the university translation and teaching undergraduate programs. students belong to the medium-low and mediumhigh social strata. students’ ages were between 10 and 18. classes are four hours each weekend, and the courses last 64 hours. parents have high academic and 183profile vol. 16, no. 1, april 2014. issn 1657-0790 (printed) 2256-5760 (online). bogotá, colombia. pages 181-198 the feasibility of assessing teenagers’ oral english language performance with a rubric professional expectations for their children when they enroll them in the program. english in the program is taught for communication and, to some extent, for academic purposes. the teaching methodology the program proposes embraces the communicative language teaching approach, whole language and project work, a component of autonomy, and a content-based syllabus. included in the registration fee, the program offers students a tutorial service for those who need to work on specific needs outside of class, a two-hour read-aloud session every semester and a chat session to discuss in english about a topic of students’ interest. as s e s s m e nt i n t h e pro g r am cl ai ms to b e formative, summative, and alternative. it is formative because we evaluate students in different ways and give them feedback to contribute to their learning processes. it is summative because administratively, we have to choose certain moments to check whether students have accomplished the goals proposed and have passed or failed an assessment task or the course. the assessment is also alternative because we encourage selfand peer-assessment to help students reflect on their learning processes and achievements and make goals. the grading system in the program is numerical, from 0.0 to 5.0, and the passing score is 3.0. the assessment includes a section for follow-up where teachers typically include four-skill quizzes, oral presentations, homework and class participation, among others. each teacher is free to decide how many grades they will include in this section, except for the first oral assessment tasks, which are mandatory for all of the courses. participants the participants in this study were 39 out of the 41 students enrolled in the four level-one english courses of the pij during the second semester of 2009. they were 16 boys and 25 girls, and their ages ranged from 10 to 15. the teachers who participated in the project were four, two with little experience in teaching (both students of the translation and teaching program at the universidad de antioquia) and two already graduated from the same teaching program and with some teaching experience. a number of other experienced teachers from the program participated voluntarily in a survey after a year of the rubric’s implementation to assess the students’ oral performance. the academic coordinator of the pij holds a bachelor’s degree from the same university; she has been an english teacher for 12 years in public and private institutions of the city and has some experience in research. data collection techniques and data analysis to focus my attention on the feasibility of assessing with a rubric, i analyzed the data following burns’s (1999) steps. i collected the information used to identify the use of the rubric: an interview with one of the teachers and the questionnaire the teachers completed (see appendices a and b). the decision to collect these data was made based on the research question. once the data were assembled, i began to read them and underlined what caught my attention in relation to the research question. at the same time, i wrote out key words that helped me identify the information selected. after that, i reread the information with a focus on what i had already underlined, and i defined the categories and subcategories for which i had written key words. sometimes, i also wrote insights that could later help me to interpret the analyzed data. once i had coded the data, i began to establish relationships between the categories obtained from the different data sources. i organized the codes in a way that would make sense when presenting and explaining what had happened with the information in relation to the research question. during the analysis, i kept track of the recurrences and then took them into account to explain the reasons for the universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras184 pineda most and the least recurrent categories. to establish relationships among the categories identified in the data, i put together all the evidence of the categories. a f t e r i h a d a n a l y z e d a n d o r g a n i z e d t h e information, i attempted to understand what the data were telling me and compared my conclusions with the theory i had previously read about evaluation. s ome t i me s i re v is e d t he e v i d e nc e u nd e r t he categories to determine whether my evidence truly fit the category and to identify the connections with the theory. during this stage, i also shared what i was finding with some of my colleagues in the study group on rubrics and with other teachers in the program. finally, i organized my ideas, describing the data analysis and its interpretation and connecting them with the context and the theory to understand the reality of what had happened during the rubric implementation. i also presented the findings to the research participants and shared the results at the study group meeting to validate my findings. procedure when i became the academic coordinator of the english program for teenagers, in july 2007, i noticed that the program was not exempt from the same problems that arias and maturana (2005) had found in the local context of the foreign language teaching programs they had investigated. in march 2008, i invited the teachers of the pij to join a study group to work together and learn about a topic of our interest. to my surprise, assessment was the most recurrent topic, and teachers stated that it was the area in which more training and reflection were needed. the problem with assessment became even more salient when teachers switched their groups to assess students’ oral performance, which happened twice every semester for levels four to seven. some teachers complained that the teachers evaluating their group overor underestimated the students’ performances, resulting in incoherence or lack of reliability in the scores. at that time, the program offered the teachers a grid with five criteria: listening, content, pronunciation, accuracy, and fluency, but the teachers frequently misinterpreted the meaning of each criterion. when i realized this, i asked senior teachers and previous coordinators what they meant exactly with those criterion labels and prepared definitions to share with all of the teachers. nevertheless, not all of the teachers read the information they were given, or they sometimes made their own interpretations of it. with that problem in mind, i came up with the following research question: to what extent can a rubric be a practical and reliable assessment instrument for teachers when assessing their students’ oral performance? this article will only reflect what happened with practicality. actions by august 2008, a colleague had presented a research proposal to define evaluative tasks and to design rubrics to assess the communicative competence in the extension center or sección servicios (services section) of the school of languages of the university where we worked. his objective was to invite teachers and coordinators of these two sections to join a study group in which we could develop the proposal while some of the participants learned how to do research. because this proposal aligned with the issue of assessment that we had been working on in the program study group, i invited teachers from the study group on assessment to join the new study group on rubrics as a way of giving continuity to our work and directing our efforts toward a specific product, namely, the definition of assessment tasks and rubrics in the pij. one of the teachers accepted and the others left the group, either for work schedule or personal reasons. in september 2009, after a long discussion of readings in the study group about the communicative 185profile vol. 16, no. 1, april 2014. issn 1657-0790 (printed) 2256-5760 (online). bogotá, colombia. pages 181-198 the feasibility of assessing teenagers’ oral english language performance with a rubric competence concept, the oral task options, the definition of rubric, and the revision and reformulation of the course contents for level 1, the four level-one teachers and i implemented the first oral assessment rubric (see appendix c). then, we reflected and analyzed what had happened and what we needed to improve. the main conclusion that we reached was that the teachers needed more training in the use of rubrics. based on that, the three extension center coordinators prepared a lecture and a workshop for teachers during two all-day in-service sessions in 2009 during which teachers received training on the use and design of assessment rubrics. in 2010, i started a training program on rubrics with pij teachers. the aim was to define oral evaluative tasks and rubrics at the same time as they received training on how to prepare these assessment instruments and use them. during the sessions, we negotiated the assessment task based on previous readings that the teachers were required to do, taking into account the course contents, the students’ ages, their cognitive levels, and their linguistic skills. once the rubric was complete, the teachers were asked to present the evaluative task and the rubric to their students and to negotiate them. in this way, we not only ensured that the teachers received proper training in a new curricular change in assessment, but we also facilitated the construction of assessment instruments that were more formative and democratic. as a result of this training that semester, most of the teachers designed a rubric to assess students’ oral performance in the second part of the course. for the second semester of 2010, this training was only carried out with new teachers, and those who had already received the training during the first semester of the year had to define the two oral assessment tasks and rubrics to be used during the course, send it to the coordinator to be revised, receive feedback and introduce the changes, if necessary. literature review evaluation, assessment, and testing evaluation, assessment, and testing are concepts that should be defined to understand their differences and avoid confusion. according to arias, estrada, areiza, and restrepo (2009), evaluation refers to collecting information about the factors that affect the teaching and learning processes such as: institutional policy, methods, course programs, teaching, materials, resources, program effectiveness, student performance, and learner satisfaction. this information is collected, analyzed and interpreted for different purposes, for instance, to monitor a teaching proposal, make a decision on a textbook choice, examine teachers’ practices, or determine students’ progress on their communicative competence based on what the program offers. the term evaluation includes assessment, but the latter is more oriented to communicative and strategic competence. the assessment is formal when evidence of students’ performance is maintained systematically. on the contrary, informal assessment comes spontaneously from the teacher to contribute to the student’s improvement, and there is no register of it. although both methods are valid, arias et al. (2009) recommend being rigorous and systematic in informal assessment. in this way, it is easier for the teacher to have evidence of the student’s progress. testing is simply a technique used to revise, measure, or monitor a student’s communicative competence. in this sense, a test is used to measure a learner’s performance or linguistic knowledge. arias et al. (2009) proposed a combination of assessment and testing to obtain a more integrative and formative view of a student’s performance. alternative assessment aschbacher, aschbacher and winters, and huerta-macias (as cited in brown and hudson, 1998), established some features of alternative assessment: universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras186 pineda • students are required to do something. • real-world contexts are used. • it is included in day-to-day class activities. • students’ assessment is based on what they normally do in class. • meaningful tasks are used. • the focus is on both process and product. • higher-level thinking and problem-solving skills are targeted. • information about students’ weaknesses and strengths is offered. • multiculturalism is sensitive when it is properly administered. • it is assured that the scoring is done by humans not by machines. • standards and rating criteria are transparent. • teachers are allowed to perform new roles. brown and hudson (1998) avoided using the term alternative assessment and preferred alternatives in assessment because the former implies three things: (a) that it is a new assessment procedure, (b) that the assessment procedures are completely separate and different, and (c) that they do not follow all the rigor of test construction and decision making. lynch (as cited in brown, 2004) highlights the ethical potential of alternatives in assessment because they promote fairness and balanced power relationships between teachers and students. according to brown and hudson, alternatives in assessment, include s ele c te d-resp ons e, const r uc te d-resp ons e, and personal-response assessment. selected-response assessment includes true-false, matching, and multiple choice and will not be explained here because these are not related to oral production, which is the main focus of this paper. constructedand personalresponse assessments constructed-response assessments are those for which students are required to produce language by speaking, writing, having listening and speaking interactions such as in interviews, or reading two texts to write an essay to contrast them. that is the reason this type of assessment is more appropriate for measuring productive skills. there are three types of constructed-response assessments commonly used in language testing: fill-in, short-answer, and performance assessment; because the focus of this experiment is on oral assessment, i will only refer to the third one. in performance assessments, students are required to carry out authentic, real-life tasks. some examples of performance assessments are essays, interviews, problem-solving tasks, role-plays, or group discussions. performance assessments comprehend three characteristics: the performance of a sort of task, the task’s authenticity and the qualification of the rater. performance assessments contribute to measuring students’ abilities to respond to real-life language tasks, value students’ true language abilities, and reflect on how students will perform in future real-life language situations. in addition to this, performance assessment counteracts the negative wash-back effect of standardized tests. nonetheless, this type of assessment can be expensive because of the time needed to develop and administer it and to train raters (brown & hudson, 1998). brown (2004, p. 255) identifies some characteristics of performance assessment: 1. students make a constructed response. 2. they engage in higher-order thinking with open-ended tasks. 3. tasks are meaningful, engaging, and authentic. 4. tasks call for the integration of language skills. 5. both processes and products are assessed. 6. the depth of a student’s mastery is emphasized over breadth. brown (2004, p. 255) also recommends some procedures for performance assessments to maintain the rigor of traditional tests: • state the overall goal of the performance, • specify the objectives (criteria) of the performance in detail, • prepare students for performance in stepwise progressions, 187profile vol. 16, no. 1, april 2014. issn 1657-0790 (printed) 2256-5760 (online). bogotá, colombia. pages 181-198 the feasibility of assessing teenagers’ oral english language performance with a rubric • use a reliable evaluation form, checklist, or rating sheet, • treat performances as opportunities for giving feed-back and provide that feedback systematically, and • if possible, utilize selfand peer-assessments judiciously practicality: an assessment quality although the most important consideration for bachman and palmer (1996) regarding the design and development of a language test is usefulness, here i will refer to practicality as the assessment quality that directed a segment of my thesis work. i will mainly consider four authors: bachman and palmer (1996), brown (2004), the cefr (council of europe, 2001), and arias et al. (2009). i consider it important to mention that bachman and palmer’s concept of usefulness is understood as the sum of six qualities: reliability, construct validity, authenticity, interactivity, impact, and practicality, and the basis for implementing these three principles: (a) the overall usefulness of the test; (b) the individual qualities of the test, evaluated in combination with the overall usefulness of the test rather than independently; and (c) the balance among the test qualities determined for each specific testing situation. these principles highlight the fact that for a test to be truly useful, it should have a specific purpose for particular test takers and be in a specific language use or target language use domain. this last concept is defined by bachman and palmer as a situation in which the test taker’s oral production abilities are appraised in a real communicative context or through the spontaneous production of language. it can be said that a test is practical if it is cheap and easy to administer and has a time-efficient scoring procedure. a test is expensive when it takes more time and money than necessary to accomplish its objective (brown, 2004). in bachman and palmer’s (1996) words, a test is practical when the human, material, or time resources required to implement the assessment task are available. the cefr (council of europe, 2001) uses the term feasibility to refer to this testing quality. brown (2004) defines formal standardized tests as highly reliable and practical instruments because they are cheap for both the test-taker and the test designer in terms of time and money, in contrast with some alternative assessments that seem more expensive. however, the author remarks that the alternative techniques have a more beneficial wash-back effect, are more formative and authentic, and have greater face validity. arias et al. (2009) define practicality as the relationship between the resources available and the ones that are required to design, administer, and pilot a test in terms of time, space, materials, and human resources. the degree of practicality is determined by the degree of accomplishment of these conditions. oral performance assessment because this study is mainly devoted to oral performance assessment, it is necessary to consider some specific aspects when assessing this skill, for instance, the context in which the assessment takes place, the students’ ages, their cognitive and linguistic levels, the characteristics and appropriateness of the assessment task and, in general, the entire process that assessing the oral skill implies, from its planning to its implementation. first, it is important to consider that neither native speakers nor foreign learners produce complete sentences, specific vocabulary or a very structured syntax (brown & yule as cited in o’malley & valdez, 1996). in spite of this, some pause fillers, phrases and simple sentences are used. nonetheless, it must be remembered that this also depends on certain features such as age and gender (o’malley & valdez, 1996). understanding what a speaker says is part of oral communication. the proposition or idea is its basic unit of meaning (richards, as cited in o’malley & valdez), and it should be retained to comprehend the message. listening comprehension is defined by brown and yule (as cited in o’malley & valdez) as universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras188 pineda the process of arriving at a reasonable interpretation. according to murphy (as cited in o’malley & valdez), listening and speaking should be taught and assessed in an integrated way because they are two interdependent language processes. regarding oral assessment o’malley and valdez (p. 61) affirm that: assessment of oral language should focus on a student’s ability to interpret and convey meaning for authentic purposes in interactive contexts. it should include both fluency and accuracy. cooperative learning activities that present students with opportunities to use oral language to interact with others— whether for social or academic purposes—are optimal for assessing oral language. the authors recognize the importance of planning for assessment, and these are the steps they suggest: identifying the purpose, planning the assessment, developing the rubric or scoring procedure, setting the standards, involving students in selfand peerassessment, selecting the assessment task, and keeping record of the information. table 1 summarizes the typ es of sp eaking activities and assessment tasks suggested by some authors depending on the learners’ proficiency levels. they recommend the application of different assessment instruments because of the different types of information that can be provided about students’ needs and further instructional goals (the american council of teachers of foreign languages, brown & yule, murphy, omaggio hadley [as cited in o’malley & valdez, 1996]). o’malley and valdez (1996) propose the following oral assessment tasks suggested by several authors: oral interviews, picture-cued descriptions of stories, radio broadcasts, video clips, information gaps, story/text retelling, improvisations, role-plays, and simulations, oral reports, and debates. all of these tasks are for different levels of proficiency and target different language functions, as may be seen in table 1 (bachman & palmer, genishi, gonzález pino, hughes, oscarson, underhill [as cited in o’malley & valdez]). oral language assessment in the pij targets the students’ ability for communicative and academic purposes. as cummins (as cited in o’malley & valdez, 1996) states, face-to-face interaction and negotiation table 1. types of assessment task based on students’ proficiency levels beginners advanced beginners intermediate high intermediate advanced listening for the gist. matching descriptions to pictures. using total physical response (tpr). inferring meaning from the context. information that can be familiar for learners and include visual aids. oral presentations. reading what they have written. describing a chart. giving instructions. oral reports and public speaking performances. listening for the gist of the message. taking notes. analyzing. evaluating. summarizing. note-taking. using fewer visual cues. 189profile vol. 16, no. 1, april 2014. issn 1657-0790 (printed) 2256-5760 (online). bogotá, colombia. pages 181-198 the feasibility of assessing teenagers’ oral english language performance with a rubric of meaning with the use of contextual cues, gestures, facial expressions and intonation make up a part of communicative or conversational skills (context embedded), whereas academic language is more context-reduced and more cognitively demanding. cummins defines communicative language functions as those that express meaning and that are not cognitively demanding. academic language functions can be used across content areas, for instance, looking for and reporting information, comparing, ordering, classifying, analyzing, inferring, justifying and persuading, solving problems, synthesizing, and evaluating (chamot & o’malley, hamayan & perlman, o’malley [as cited in o’malley & valdez]). assessment rubrics as has been shown in the statement of the problem, evaluation in education, although it is necessary, is a thorny issue, and foreign language assessment has not been an exception. assessment is a time-consuming activity to be accomplished by teachers in addition to all of their other responsibilities, such as planning classes and preparing materials and extracurricular activities. in addition, local research has found difficulties in determining clear assessment criteria among teachers to assess students’ language performance. one of the main repercussions of this has been that students do not reach the minimum knowledge level, which affects the quality of a language program and also indicates a lack of clear criteria among teachers. the rubric appears then as an assessment instrument that can be easy to use and that can establish clear criteria for what to assess. mertler (2001) defines a rubric as a rating scale with specific performance criteria defined in advance. brookhart (as cited in moskal, 2000) identifies it as a descriptive scoring scheme that can be developed by a teacher to evaluate the process or the product of a student’s work. taggart and wood (as cited in taggart, phifer, nixon, & wood, 1998) explain that rubrics emerged from the need to assess more authentic activities and that they are useful for establishing achievement targets. finally, custer (as cited in taggart et al., 1998, p. 58) states that when rubrics are shared with students, the students “experience more empowerment for their own learning, find learning and assessment less threatening, and become more reflective about their learning.” in my opinion, and based on what some authors have established, rubrics have characteristics that can be connected to some qualities of assessment, such as transparency, reliability and practicality, and without doubt, rubrics positively impact formative assessment and students’ learning and autonomy. rubrics are transparent because they explicitly present what the teacher expects. this quality makes the assessment clearer and easy to understand, and it prevents subjectivity when scoring. evaluation with a rubric can be more objective because the criteria and the weight given to each scale are clearly stated from the beginning. this can prevent an evaluator from giving a higher or lower score to some unspecified aspect. there is a higher probability of obtaining reliable grades when the criteria are clear because different graders can be more objective, so that the score can be validated through different perspectives. the main reason rubrics are practical is time. according to stevens and levi (2005), teachers who are accustomed to working with rubrics can create a new one in less than an hour, perhaps by adapting one they already have or adding changes depending on their specific assessment needs. creating a new rubric may take more time, but the time invested is worthwhile because the grading time is reduced. rubrics make grading easier and faster because: (a) what is expected from students is already defined in the rubric, (b) rubrics allow teachers to place the student’s work in a range that gives students an quick idea of what they did well and where they have to improve, (c) the rubric is the format the teacher uses to universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras190 pineda focus his or her attention on the student’s performance, and this facilitates not only speed in taking additional notes but also the individualized feedback that can be provided through specific comments, and (d) the scoring guide rubrics facilitate grading for the teacher, helping him or her to save time. rubrics also promote formative assessment because they offer students feedback about their strengths and weaknesses (phifer & nixon as cited in taggart et al., 1998). rubrics can also be used as self and peer-assessment forms. when students are trained to use rubrics for this purpose, they become skillful in identifying and finding solutions for their and other people’s problems. in addition to this, rubrics support individual guidance by helping learners to move from “a dependent level of understanding to a highly independent level of higher order analysis” (shwery as cited in taggart et al., 1998, pp. 84-85). this drives students to use rubrics to self-analyze the quality and result of their work. according to moskal (2000), when students are evaluated with descriptive rubrics, they may become aware of the extent to which their performance complies with the criteria or not. this becomes formative assessment because the description of the criteria lets the students know what they have accomplished and what they have missed, which does not happen, for example, when learners are evaluated with numbers. it is important to mention that the main reason to determine the type of rubric to use depends on the purpose of the evaluation. there are analytic, holistic, task-specific and general scoring rubrics. the main difference between an analytic and a holistic rubric is that the former allows the evaluation of separate factors and the latter permits an overlap in the evaluation criteria, which means that the criteria can be combined in a descriptive single scale. the rubrics can also be utilized to assess specific tasks or for students’ development of a particular skill, oral for instance (moskal, 2000). findings practicality was the second-most recurrent category in the data analysis. this may have been the case because practicality was one of the two objectives of this study, so that the collection of data was somehow focused on it. eleven out of the 14 teachers who completed the questionnaire provided 28 comments in relation to the ease of assessment with the rubric in terms of planning and defining the topics to assess, assessment of contents and students’ oral skills, presenting the rubric to students, managing the grading system, supporting the grade, and giving feedback. one of the teachers mentioned that at the beginning, it was difficult to rank the students’ performance with the rubric. seven teachers referred to the ease of assessing with the rubric, including its usefulness in assessing students’ oral performance and in connecting the evaluation to the students’ interests and for the transparency the rubric contributed to the assessment process. two teachers referred to the usefulness of the rubric in relation to planning class activities and homework based on the criteria established in the rubric. another teacher mentioned planning as a characteristic required to implement the rubric. six of the teachers mentioned that the rubric contributed to evaluation in terms of construct definition and clarity, content and performance assessment, the creation of evaluation standards, the formulation of the assessment task and the creation of new material, and it contributed to connecting the teaching with the assessment objectives. in terms of logistics, six teachers considered that it had been easy to present the rubric to the students, to show the results to parents and pupils, to take notes of the students’ performance, to grade more quickly, and to give feedback to the students. finally, rubric use was also easy according to five teachers because it made their assessments more transparent and fair because students knew what they were going to be evaluated on and how. 191profile vol. 16, no. 1, april 2014. issn 1657-0790 (printed) 2256-5760 (online). bogotá, colombia. pages 181-198 the feasibility of assessing teenagers’ oral english language performance with a rubric teacher 3: [it has been easy] guiding the questions, creating evaluative standards, creating new material and situations to carry out the evaluation. teacher 14: [the rubric] has facilitated me greatly in terms of supporting the grade. in contrast with this, there were 17 comments related to its limited practicality. four teachers considered that the rubric was not very practical. one admitted that it required more work, although the evaluation was more transparent; a second one said the process was complex but worthy; a third one acknowledged that assessing with the grid we had used before was less time-consuming, but that with the rubric we had gained reflection on learning; and one last teacher considered that the process of assessing with the rubric implied a change of paradigms that was not easy because we had been accustomed to traditional methods of assessment but that nonetheless, this could be overcome through practice. four other teachers complained about the use of the rubric, which proved complex in terms of time management to prepare it, define the task, present it to students, assess student performance including oral skills and course contents, and, especially, take notes of student performance and give feedback. in relation to logistics, four teachers expressed that it was difficult to be clear with the instructions and the assessment of everything that had to be assessed, such as managing paperwork, understanding the format of the rubric, and working with a rubric prepared by another teacher whose students’ learning processes were unknown by the scorer. finally, three teachers considered the entire process of assessing with the rubric to be difficult. according to stevens and levi (2005), rubrics save teachers grading time and provide timely and meaningful feedback to students. they state that when used properly, the rubric becomes part of the teaching process. these authors estimate that rubric preparation requires approximately one hour’s time, or less if teachers adapt one that already exists. however, they recognize that at the beginning, creating a rubric can be time-consuming but that the time is worth spending in terms of the grading time it saves and the quality of the feedback students receive. they give an example of how a rubric they used to assess students’ oral performance in a thirty-student class took no more time (one hour to add individual comments) to create and use than did the oral presentations and that in addition to that, the students received the feedback almost immediately. in line with stevens and levi, the teachers in this study affirmed that rubrics help teachers to be aware of their teaching methods and provide timely feedback to students. stevens and levi (2005) established four ways in which rubrics make grading easier. 1. rubrics help save time because teachers determine what they want their students to achieve from the very beginning. 2. rubrics allow teachers to save time because if the criteria are well defined in advance, they only have to look within the corresponding rating scale instead of writing extensive notes. the time invested in grading is proportionally inverse to the amount of time devoted to defining the criteria. rubrics with three to five rating scales or levels permit detailed and quick feedback, so that the scoring can also be accomplished more rapidly. 3. rubrics make grading easier because the explicit criteria express the highest levels expected from students’ performance. 4. the quantification of the dimensions or criteria established make grade assignments easier. conclusions for teachers, the experience of assessing with a rubric was positive in general; only one of the teachers in the study admitted that its implementation proved difficult. the teachers identified some of the qualities universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras192 pineda expected from the rubric: usefulness and practicality, fairness, and equitable and democratic principles in its guidance. in addition to this, teachers discovered in the rubric a tool for obtaining evidence of their students’ performance, helping students become aware of their weaknesses and strengths, and making them responsible for their learning needs. the teachers also acknowledged the importance of planning, being creative, and preparing challenging tasks. one of the main problems defined in this research and also identified by arias and maturana (2005) and muñoz-marín (2007) in relation to the construct definition targeted the use of the rubric in assessing students’ oral skills. this finding is of tremendous importance for teachers and institutions who must address this problem daily. if teachers are clear about what they have to assess and make it explicit to students, it will impact their teaching practices and also their students’ learning. in addition to this, assessment becomes fairer and more transparent. although there were teachers who reported gaining clarity in the construct, others reported difficulties in identifying a clear construct, which clearly shows that there exists a real need for training in assessment issues. this training is needed at the initial stage of a curricular innovation such as this on. subsequently, the training may be given in terms of accompanying the teachers during the rubric implementation process, observing the assessment activities, and giving them feedback. the teachers’ dispositions and willingness to learn a new assessment procedure, their previous beliefs in assessment, and their labor conditions are three key aspects to take into account for administrators who wish to implement a similar curricular innovation in any program. ke e pi ng t r a c k of h ow a s s e s s m e nt w it h a rubric facilitates evaluation of students is of great importance for everyday teachers who must grade stacks of papers. with the use of a rubric, not only practicality but also meaningfulness in students’ learning are favored, which is necessary in today’s educational institutions and programs. the use of a rubric for students’ learning is an outcome also found by stevens and levi (2005) that can be used in similar school contexts in colombia that are having difficulties in evaluating students. despite the time spent on defining assessment tasks and designing rubrics at the beginning, i highly recommend that english teachers attempt this experience and that school administrators provide the conditions—time and space—for teachers to meet together and develop their own evaluation standards. as stevens and levi (2005) affirm, the time devoted at the beginning will be made up later when teachers begin to save time evaluating, which is not even to mention the impact of the timely feedback that rubrics generate on students’ learning and motivation. in addition to the benefits that assessment rubrics may represent for teachers, the learning they gain is priceless for their professional growth. in our case, the program gained the recognition of having a great team of teachers, the satisfaction of having fulfilled the trust parents had placed in us, and the feeling of contributing somehow to the accomplishment of what society expects from education. we started a process in which students’ and teachers’ voices were included that must continue, a process that took into consideration previous local studies and the colombian reality in the field of assessment. i must also thank the teachers of the program who participated in the study group at different times for allowing me to be present in their classes, for listening to me, and for enriching this work with their perspectives and experience. many thanks must also be given to the group of coordinators who participated in the study group, for their contributions and feedback and for the critical discussions in the weekly meetings. finally, great gratitude is also owed to the study group and project coordinator who proposed this idea and who has guided my work with dedication. 193profile vol. 16, no. 1, april 2014. issn 1657-0790 (printed) 2256-5760 (online). bogotá, colombia. pages 181-198 the feasibility of assessing teenagers’ oral english language performance with a rubric references arias, c., & maturana, l. (2005). evaluación en lenguas extranjeras: discursos y prácticas [assessment in foreign languages: discourses and practices]. íkala, revista de lenguaje y cultura, 10(16), 63-91. arias, c., estrada, l., areiza, h., & restrepo, e. (2009). sistema de evaluación en lenguas extranjeras [assessment system in foreign languages]. medellín, co: universidad de antioquia. bachman, l. f., & palmer, a. s. (1996). language testing in practice: designing and developing useful language tests. new york, ny: oxford university press. brown, d. h. (2004). language assessment: principles and classroom practices. new york, ny: longman. brown, j. & hudson, t. (1998). the alternatives in language assessment. tesol quaterly, 32(4), 653-675. burns, a. (1999). collaborative action research for english language teachers. london, uk: cambridge university press. council of europe. (2001). common european framework of reference for languages. retrieved from http://www. coe.int/t/dg4/linguistic/source/framework_en.pdf mertler, c. a. (2001). designing scoring rubrics for your classroom. practical assessment, research and evaluation. retrieved from http://pareonline.net/getvn.asp?v=7&n=25 moskal, b. m. (2000). scoring rubrics: what, when and how? practical assessment, research and evaluation. retrieved from http://pareonline.net/getvn. asp?v=7&n=3 muñoz-marín, j. (2007). recognizing institutional guidelines and teachers’ practices and beliefs for assessing foreign language reading comprehension performance (unpublished master’s thesis). universidad de caldas, manizales, colombia. o’malley, j. m., & valdez-pierce, l. (1996). authentic assessment for english language learners: practical approaches for teachers. white plains, ny: addison-wesley. stevens, d. d., & levi, a. j. (2005). introduction to rubrics: an assessment tool to save grading time, convey effective feedback, and promote student learning. sterling, va: stylus publishing. taggart, g., phifer, s., nixon, j., & wood, m. (eds.). (1998). rubrics: a handbook for construction and use. lancaster, pa: technomic publishing company. about the author diana pineda has a b.ed. in foreign language teaching from the universidad de antioquia (colombia), where she currently is an assistant professor. she holds a master’s degree in applied linguistics in teaching english as a foreign language (universidad de jaén, spain) and belongs to the grupo de investigación acción y evaluación en lenguas extranjeras (giae). acknowledgements on behalf of the program, i would like to thank the teachers for their commitment, their favorable attitudes toward the change the use of the rubric entailed, their willingness to follow the coordinator’s directives, their courage in reflecting on their assessment practices and their kindness in allowing me to enter their classes. universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras194 pineda appendix a: questions for the interview to teachers1 1. have you ever used a rubric to assess? 2. how was the experience of assessing with a rubric? 3. how did you feel about assessing your students in the interview with a rubric? 4. what was good? what would you change? 5. what do you think about having assessed the interview with the rubric in relation to the grid used the previous semester? 6. do you have any additional comment or question? 1 the interview and the questionnaire shown in appendix b were carried out in spanish. 195profile vol. 16, no. 1, april 2014. issn 1657-0790 (printed) 2256-5760 (online). bogotá, colombia. pages 181-198 the feasibility of assessing teenagers’ oral english language performance with a rubric appendix b: questionnaire used for the teachers 1. what do you think about the experience of assessing students’ oral performance with a rubric? 2. what has been easy? 3. what has been difficult? 4. did you have the opportunity to assess in the program with the grid that we used before that only included five general criteria: listening, content, fluency, vocabulary, and pronunciation? 5. how has the experience of assessing with a rubric compared with using the grid that we used before? 6. use this space if you want to add something else in relation to the use of the rubric to assess students’ oral performance. universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras196 pineda appendix c: oral assessment task and rubric universidad de antioquia escuela de idiomas centro de extensión programa de inglés para jóvenes level 1 1st interview: asking for and giving personal information summative assessment task: interview/improvisation for which students have to ask for and give information. to complete this task successfully you need to: ȟ use the simple present tense of the verb to be ȟ use the simple present tense of other verbs (live, study, like, etc.) ȟ ask and answer questions about personal information: full name, age, phone number, and nationality ȟ ask and answer questions about daily routines: chores, bath time, meal times, school duties, free time activities (during the week and on the weekend) ȟ ask and answer questions about likes and dislikes: hobbies, sports, music, movies, books, food, colors, actors, singers, and subjects instructions: in pairs, you are going to interview each other. pretend you are on the first english class day and you are getting to know each other. ask some questions about the information you want to find out about your classmate. use the simple present of different verbs and the verb to be. be ready to answer his or her questions, too. you have 10 minutes to do this activity. passing score: 3.0 197profile vol. 16, no. 1, april 2014. issn 1657-0790 (printed) 2256-5760 (online). bogotá, colombia. pages 181-198 the feasibility of assessing teenagers’ oral english language performance with a rubric student’s name: date: % criteria/score (1 is the lowest; 15, 20 and 25 are the highest) poor needs improvement fair good outstanding total the student is able to: 25 talk about himself or herself, asking for and sharing personal information, daily routines and likes and dislikes, e.g., what’s your name? where are you from? what’s your favorite…?, etc. 1-5 6-10 11-15 16-20 21-25 25 understand spoken language when s/he is asked about personal information, daily routines and likes and dislikes, e.g., understands classmates and teacher’s questions. 1-5 6-10 11-15 16-20 21-25 15 produce basic rising and falling intonation patterns worked on in class and sounds (such as /s, sh, ch, st, sp, ʌ/), e.g., i like to go shopping, my favorite teacher, subject, i am a student, i like to study, i speak spanish, i like english. 1-3 4-6 7-9 10-12 13-15 universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras198 pineda 15 produce some of the structures worked on in the course such as: adjectivenoun word order, word order to ask questions, to be, simple present tense, e.g., “my favorite color is, what do you like? i like to…, i don’t like…, i’m colombian, i have a beautiful dog. 1-3 4-6 7-9 10-12 13-15 20 use the necessary vocabulary to express ideas and understand personal information, daily routines and likes and dislikes, e.g., i’m 12 years old, i live in…, i get up at…, i eat at 7 o’clock, etc. 1-4 5-8 9-12 13-16 17-20 comments: this space is to write about the strategic competence the student uses when s/he is performing the task. it can include paraphrasing, using synonyms, pause fillers, gestures, or asking for repetition or clarification. the objective is to give feedback to students about what they can do to overcome a communication difficulty (formative assessment). students will not receive a grade on the use of these strategies (summative assessment). final grade: _______ /2 = 185profile vol. 16, no. 2, october 2014. issn 1657-0790 (printed) 2256-5760 (online). bogotá, colombia. pages 185-198 proposing a wiki-based technique for collaborative essay writing propuesta de un modelo pedagógico para la escritura colaborativa de ensayos en un entorno virtual wiki mabel ortiz navarrete1* universidad católica de la santísima concepción, concepción, chile anita ferreira cabrera2** universidad de concepción, concepción, chile this paper aims at proposing a technique for students learning english as a foreign language when they collaboratively write an argumentative essay in a wiki environment. a wiki environment and collaborative work play an important role within the academic writing task. nevertheless, an appropriate and systematic work assignment is required in order to make use of both. in this paper the proposed technique when writing a collaborative essay mainly attempts to provide the most effective way to enhance equal participation among group members by taking as a base computer mediated collaboration. within this context, the students’ role is clearly defined and individual and collaborative tasks are explained. key words: collaborative writing, essay writing, wiki environment. este artículo tiene como objetivo proponer una técnica para la escritura colaborativa de un texto académico en inglés como lengua extranjera en un entorno virtual wiki. el entorno virtual y el trabajo colaborativo juegan un papel importante dentro de la tarea de escritura. sin embargo, se requiere un trabajo sistemático con el fin de articular la metodología colaborativa con la herramienta tecnológica. la propuesta de este artículo intenta proporcionar una técnica de trabajo que propicie la participación equitativa de los miembros del grupo y considere las características del trabajo colaborativo y las del entorno virtual. dentro de este contexto, el rol del estudiante es claramente definido a través de la división de tareas individuales y colaborativas. palabras clave: ambiente wiki, escritura colaborativa, escritura de ensayos. * e-mail: mortiz@ucsc.cl ** e-mail: aferreir@udec.cl how to cite this article (apa, 6th ed.): ortiz navarrete, m., & ferreira cabrera, a. (2014). proposing a wiki-based technique for collaborative essay writing. profile issues in teachers’ professional development, 16(2), 185-198. http://dx.doi.org/10.15446/profile.v16n2.38877. this article was received on july 20, 2013, and accepted on january 24, 2014. this is an open access article distributed under the terms of the creative commons license attribution-noncommercial-noderivatives 4.0 international license. consultation is possible at http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/. universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras186 ortiz navarrete & ferreira cabrera introduction in chile the teaching of english has become a compulsory language subject in the school curriculum and its teaching is particularly hard as spanish is the only dominant language in chileans’ everyday life. this becomes a barrier for both those who are learning the language for communicative purpose and those who intend to teach the language. for the latter, there is a need of acquiring effective and innovative methods and techniques in order to master english as a foreign language. within the mastery of english, writing is the ability wherein pre-service teachers of english demonstrate to be least proficient. this may be due to the fact that writing is considered as one of the most difficult skills to develop during the learning process of a foreign language i.e., “even native speakers at university level very often experience serious difficulties in showing a good command of writing” (lázaro, 1996, p. 89), thus students may not feel motivated. therefore, teaching methods and learning approaches play an important role in order to encourage students’ active involvement in writing and, for the purpose of this paper, involvement in academic writing. in this context, it is assumed that students perform better in writing when collaborative learning is incorporated in the classroom. moreover, collaborative work in a virtual environment may increase the potential of teaching and learning and may facilitate the planning and production of a written document. on the one hand, the use of the virtual environment “wiki” enables pre-service teachers to integrate technology into the classroom. on the other hand, this virtual tool involves new opportunities for writing development as students can work in or out of the classroom. nevertheless, a didactic and systematic method is required for students to perform the task effectively. in the revised literature review, not many studies show clearly how a collaborative writing task is carried out, therefore, in this paper a technique for writing an argumentative essay collaboratively in a wiki environment is described and explained. conceptual framework the collaborative construction of knowledge the collaborative construction of knowledge emerges from the sociocultural theory, which states that individuals are situated within a social and cultural context (lamy & hampel, 2007; nunan, 2004). its main precursor is vygotsky (as cited in choul, 2008), who, examining the role of interaction in children’s learning, affirms that a child who works with an adult or a peer with a higher ability or more capable, can develop strategies that will allow her/him to solve problems independently. collaborative learning involves a set of methodological strategies which aim at maximizing the benefits of cooperation among students (gross, 2007; jacobs & small, 2003; johnson & johnson, 1997) who work in groups in order to achieve a common goal. students develop linguistic and communication skills through different procedures, methods, and various techniques. according to trujillo (2002), among these methods are those who promote discovery learning such as jigsaw puzzles, student team learning, learning together, and group investigation. “the differences between each method are the degree of structure of the task, the use of rewards, and individual assessment methods” (trujillo, 2002, p. 8). another essential technique is the assignment of specific roles. gross (2007) states that “each student’s role can change along the process but it is 187profile vol. 16, no. 2, october 2014. issn 1657-0790 (printed) 2256-5760 (online). bogotá, colombia. pages 185-198 proposing a wiki-based technique for collaborative essay writing essential to establish responsibilities to make sure students learn to work in groups” (p. 7). barkley, cross, and howell (2007) classify collaborative techniques into problem solving, techniques using graphic organizers, techniques that focus on writing, techniques for reciprocal teaching, and techniques for discussion. as can be observed, different authors propose different types of collaborative learning techniques in order to promote each other’s learning. additionally, cassany (2008) and johnson and johnson (1997) suggest the following elements as characteristics of collaborative learning: • the formation of heterogeneous groups in terms of skills, competencies, and gender. • the existence of individual and group responsibility. • the development of interpersonal communication skills and verbal and nonverbal communication skills. • the metacognitive group control. • the teacher’s guidance. • the existence of positive group interdependence and a shared individual responsibility. the concept of interdependence means that the members of the groups are dependent on each other in order to achieve a common goal. cassany (2008) and jacobs and small (2003) declare that the principle of positive interdependence is a key concept of collaborative learning. collaborative writing writing is considered a complex process that involves the selection of content, the use of appropriate linguistic features, and an adequate organization of ideas. three phases are identified within this complex process (flower & hayes, 1980; hayes, 1996; kellogg, 1999; white & ardnt, 1991): planning, editing, and revising. in collaborative writing, these three phases are carried out through communication, coordination, and agreement with partners in order to achieve a common goal. according to stein, bernas, and calicchia (1997), during a collaborative writing task students become more aware of their learning process and “use each other as a source of knowledge” (p. 27) during planning, discussion, and negotiation of ideas. collaborative writing is understood as a social and recursive process that involves a group whose challenge is to achieve a single written document through interaction and negotiation of meaning (cassany, 2001; landone, 2004; van waes, 2004). students work in small groups and start sharing ideas, debating positions and proposing arguments before starting the production of a text. in this context, group formation is very formal: groups can be made up of a very small number of students, usually three to six people. the writing teacher must create “a positive environment and must stimulate reflection and self-evaluation” (landone, 2004, p. 3). from this perspective, the teacher’s role is no longer that of the expert and the transmitter of knowledge, but that of a facilitator who monitors students’ learning (collazos, guerrero, & vergara, 2001; lamy & hampel, 2007; smith & macgregor, 1992). in turn, the student acquires a much more active and independent role. according to krause (2007), lowry, curtis, and lowry (2004), sharples (1999), and tompkins (2008), there is more than one strategy with which to address the collaborative writing process. figure 1 shows the coordination strategies for group writing. each of these strategies has advantages and disadvantages, therefore, different methods can be combined during the writing process, which demonstrates the flexibility of collaborative methodology. before this writing process, there is a pre-writing phase which is relevant for the completion of universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras188 ortiz navarrete & ferreira cabrera the task. according to tompkins (2008), during the pre-writing phase the students determine the purpose of writing. at this stage the students discuss and generate ideas for further development. this phase is crucial since the objectives of the writing task are set and the students agree on a plan to follow in order to achieve these objectives. the use of wikis for collaborative writing tasks the emerging information society is based on the use of powerful technologies. these technologies aim at promoting essential changes in the way we teach and learn and demand the use of new teaching methods that enable learners and instructors to adopt new roles. the current challenge focuses on the successful integration of these new tools in order to support teaching and learning significantly and improve traditional methodologies. in other words, the contribution does not come from the computer itself, but from the way it can be used to foster teaching and learning (chapelle, 1997; egbert, 2005; sánchez, 1998; warschauer, 2010). in the field of computer-mediated communication (cmc) and within technology tools that can figure 1. the collaborative writing process support writing development, there are different types of synchronous and asynchronous communication such as chat, skype, forums, blogs, e-mail, wikis, and many more. each of these tools has applications that can eventually enhance writing and, essentially, collaborative writing production, an area in which, according to jones, garralda, li, and lock (2006), there seems to be a positive view in the literature regarding collaborative learning and cmc in the area of second language learning. in this context, a wiki, a hawaiian term that means “quick,” has gained considerable recent attention both within and outside the writing classroom and the wiki’s main pedagogical contribution in the educational field is to support writing (barton, 2005; ebersbach, glaser, & heigl, 2005; garza & hern, 2005; lamb, 2004). writing lessons, which commonly focus on individual work, can take advantage of collaborative learning and a wiki environment can help to enhance students’ written performance and to promote active participation. wiki is a type of website that allows users to work collaboratively by building texts that can be quickly and easily edited by authorized users (bartolomé, 2008; loyo & rivero de magnago, 2005; parallel writing sequential writing reciprocal or reactive writing it consists of the subdivision of tasks. each member writes one part of the text simultaneously. it consists of editing a text through different phases. one member writes the �rst part of the text then s/he shares her/his part with a second member who continues the text and so on until a �nal version is reached. all parts of the writing task are done by all members. they all together work around a single document. 189profile vol. 16, no. 2, october 2014. issn 1657-0790 (printed) 2256-5760 (online). bogotá, colombia. pages 185-198 proposing a wiki-based technique for collaborative essay writing pennell, 2008). according to cabero (2007), lee (2010), and morgan and smith (2008), the main features of wikis are the following: • a document can be created easily and quickly. • it can be edited synchronously and asynchronously by multiple authorized users. • it contains a “page history” that enables users to access previous versions of the written document. • it allows authorized users to create new pages. • it promotes collaborative work. • it contains a banner that allows written comments. figure 2 shows the front page of a wiki environment called pbworks. regarding the collaborative component, although more research is needed on the use of wikis in the educational field, several researchers, according to ioannou and artino (2009), have advocated the use of a wiki space to engage students in online collaboration activities. bryant (2006), for example, states that “as wikis have no predefined structures, figure 2. a wiki environment taken from http://pbworks.com/ this feature makes them ideal for collaborative writing or group projects involving multimedia” (p. 62). likewise, cress and kimmerle (2008) distinguish wikis from other tools, such as blogs, affirming that “wikis provide new opportunities for learning and for collaborative knowledge building as well for understanding these processes” (p. 108). swan and shea (2005) also assert that “wikis have a significant potential to support collaborative learning” (p. 6). as has been stated, one of the main advantages of this tool in the teaching and learning process, then, is to maximize the collective production of knowledge. collaboration in the production of a written text using a wiki leads students to learn from others and to acquire different responsibilities around one shared goal, whereby the technological resource facilitates the process of interaction, communication, negotiation, and the reflection of ideas during the joint construction of the written text. in this context, the technological tool plays a facilitating role during collaborative knowledge construction, especially for learners who try to build virtual learning communities from different parts of the world. universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras190 ortiz navarrete & ferreira cabrera some preliminary studies about the use of wikis for collaborative writing tasks in second language acquisition suggest that students increase the amount of writing and find this type of task more motivating (kovačić, bubaš, & zlatović, 2007; lee, 2010; mak & coniam, 2008). according to upton (as cited in chen, 2008) “in such environments, students enjoy learning at their own pace, are more independent in their learning, feel that it is more convenient than attending face-to-face classes, and find it an interesting way to learn” (p. 10). this collaborative feature of wikis moves the teaching of writing from a teacher-centered approach to a context much more focused on the student, who may perform better in a learning environment where he/she can feel more confident and less overwhelmed by the teacher’s pressure. likewise, chen (2008) contends that the use of wikis for written production not only favors collaboration but also opens editing, in which authorized users can also edit and change information, and provide a simple editing environment in terms of navigation, which is easy and allows users who are not technologically savvy to participate in a collaborative task. in brief, collaborative writing through wikis constitutes a new alternative approach to learning and an opportunity for students to become more independent and to develop their social and linguistic skills. the collaborative writing of an argumentative essay in a wiki environment a basic argumentative essay, which is an academic text that usually reflects a particular writer’s point of view, contains an introduction, two or three arguments, and a conclusion. to write a basic argumentative essay in collaboration, students need to agree on different aspects beforehand in order to produce a coherent text. not many reviewed papers (hadjerrouit, 2011; woo, chu, ho, & li, 2009; laperrousaz, leroux, & teutsch, 2005; lee, 2010; storch, 2005; van waes, 2004) explain in detail the distribution of tasks and the way collaborative writing has been carried out to produce a joint text in a virtual environment. the goal of this paper is to present a technique for the online construction of a basic argumentative essay in collaboration. the technique proposed refers to the part of the process in which students start writing their text, preceding the prewriting phase. according to chao and lo (2009), “wikis alone cannot make collaborative writing happen” (p. 432). this means that for a better students’ engagement there is a need for a clear methodological procedure to follow in order to benefit from computer mediated collaboration. figure 3 shows the distribution of tasks in a wiki environment when students write a text collaboratively in real time. as collaborative writing is considered a recursive process, the arrows indicate that writers can go backwards and forwards to improve their text by means of multiple revisions. the introductory paragraph in a wiki environment the introduction is the first part of the writing that tells the reader what the topic is about. therefore, a strong introduction is crucial in order to get the reader’s attention. a topic clearly defined and contexts clearly stated are characteristics of a good introduction (cottrell, 2008; germov, 2000; levin, 2004). in this context, and taking into consideration that in this phase group members need each other, the recommendation is that members of the writing group should write the introduction all together in order to assure that there will be an agreement among all members on the thesis and the ideas that will be expanded upon in 191profile vol. 16, no. 2, october 2014. issn 1657-0790 (printed) 2256-5760 (online). bogotá, colombia. pages 185-198 proposing a wiki-based technique for collaborative essay writing the body paragraphs. besides, if all group members take part in writing the introduction, this will assure logical links between the introduction and the body paragraphs in which each student will be in charge of one paragraph. figure 4 provides an example of an introductory paragraph of an essay written by a group of undergraduate students in a wiki environment. one of the characteristics of a wiki environment is that each author’s contribution can be visualized. figure 5 shows how each member contributed to the writing of the introduction. figure 3. distribution of tasks in a wiki environment figure 4. sample from students (introductory paragraph) the body paragraphs in a wiki environment as technology tools used properly can significantly enhance learning, it is the teacher’s role to make the best use of a wiki environment by valuing its main characteristic as a collaborative tool (bartolomé, 2008; egbert, 2005; sánchez, 1998). within this particular context, one advantage of a wiki environment is that it enables students to work on different pages simultaneously. based on this aspect, this technique suggests that for the construction of the body paragraphs, group members should work phase i phase ii phase iii phase iv phase v introduction body paragraphs parts connection wiki task conclusion revision this part of the writing is done all together. this part of the writing is done all together. group members revise the text all together and send it to one group for online peer review. each group member is in charge of writing one body paragraph. the task is done simultaneously in the wiki. parts are connected in order to generate oan single document. students check that ideas make sense universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras192 ortiz navarrete & ferreira cabrera individually. this means that each student should be in charge of constructing one body paragraph. it is suggested that this phase can be carried out individually due to the fact that students already know the ideas they have to expand upon. anyhow, in order to prevent the construction of an incoherent text, something that may occur when students work collaboratively, it is advisable that once each student finishes his part, group members should generate a single document in the wiki environment and revise each paragraph together until it sounds coherent to each group member. the wiki environment facilitates this process due to the fact that students are working in the same learning environment. figure 6 provides an example of the body paragraphs of an argumentative essay in a wiki environment. figure 7 shows the students’ individual contributions to the writing of each body paragraph. introduction was created by bryanabos show changes introduction was edited by bryanabos show changes introduction was edited by cami muñoz figueroa show changes introduction was edited by cami muñoz figueroa show changes introduction was edited by cami muñoz figueroa show changes introduction was edited by bruno caballero show changes introduction was edited by bruno caballero show changes figure 5. sample from students working collaboratively in a wiki environment the concluding paragraph in a wiki environment after students have connected the introduction and paragraphs, group members should write the conclusion all together. as the conclusion is a relevant part of the writing and at the same time a complex one, students must be able to come up with a good summary and find a sense of connection with the introduction. besides, a good conclusion should also go further in the sense that it should give the reader an opportunity for analysis and reflection (crème & lea, 1997; germov, 2000; levin, 2004). for all these reasons, it can be stated that in this phase students also need each other in order to provide an appropriate and coherent closure of the writing, together with reinforcing the central idea of the text. figure 8 provides an example of a concluding paragraph of an argumentative essay in a wiki space. 193profile vol. 16, no. 2, october 2014. issn 1657-0790 (printed) 2256-5760 (online). bogotá, colombia. pages 185-198 proposing a wiki-based technique for collaborative essay writing figure 6. sample from students (body paragraphs) figure 7. sample from a group of students working on the body paragraphs individually body_1 was created by bryanabos show changes body_1 was edited by bryanabos show changes body_1 was edited by bryanabos show changes body_1 was edited by bryanabos show changes body_2 was created by cami muñoz figueroa show changes body_2 was edited by cami muñoz figueroa show changes body_2 was edited by cami muñoz figueroa show changes body_2 was edited by cami muñoz figueroa show changes figure 8. sample from students (concluding paragraph) universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras194 ortiz navarrete & ferreira cabrera figure 9 shows each individual’s contribution to the writing of the conclusion, as four students can be seen working collaboratively to create the conclusion. the revision process in a wiki environment to end up this process, group members should revise the text. the review phase involves a process of re-reading the text to identify errors. revision is an important part of the writing process and, at the same time, a difficult one, especially when revision is carried out through peer review. this step can be carried out in different ways: the group reviews the written text altogether, each group member revises one paragraph of the text or each member is responsible for a specific aspect, such as grammar, vocabulary, organization of ideas, and so on (cassany, luna, & sanz, 2000; krause, 2007). krause (2007), who has written about how to collaborate and write with others, suggests that during the revision phase one member of the group should read the produced text out loud while the other members of the group read along to identify errors. according to this author “reading your writing out loud to others gives the conclusion was created by cami muñoz figueroa show changes conclusion was edited by bruno caballero show changes conclusion was edited by bryanabos show changes conclusion was edited by cami muñoz figueroa show changes readers and writer a real sense of the voice of an essay and is a great way for writers and readers to catch small grammar errors” (p. 70). what krause proposes is an effective way to revise an academic text. the reading aloud technique makes the process of revising the argumentative essay easier as group members solve the problem together. furthermore, in order to take advantage of a wiki environment and to make a writing activity more engaging for students, group members can send invitations to other groups to see their drafts and to receive online feedback from their peers. every wiki has a banner that allows authorizes users to make virtual comments and this feature distinguishes this writing tool from others. based on the cooperative learning techniques proposed by apple (2006), students will also have a specific role in order to assure the achievement of goals within a collaborative environment. these roles are: • facilitator: a person responsible for ensuring that the group stays on task. • recorder: a person responsible for writing down group decisions. • time keeper: a person responsible for checking the time left to finish the task. figure 9. sample from a group of students working collaboratively on the concluding paragraph 195profile vol. 16, no. 2, october 2014. issn 1657-0790 (printed) 2256-5760 (online). bogotá, colombia. pages 185-198 proposing a wiki-based technique for collaborative essay writing this process, in which tasks are performed in groups and individually, assures equal participation. moreover, the writing task can be fulfilled rapidly since students are working synchronically. conclusion as a conclusion the wiki-based technique proposed for collaborative essay writing aims at achieving different goals. one of these is to promote writing development among teachers of english in chile due to the fact that they often do not devote much teaching time to developing this ability. on the other hand, this proposal also aims at promoting appropriate technology use in teaching. as gross (2007) says, “technology itself does not change any teaching practice, however, when it is consistent with a theoretical perspective it may have a significant potential” (p. 115). thus, by means of this proposal teachers may get a clear view as to how to integrate technology for writing development in an effective way from a theoretical perspective. as future teachers should be exposed to innovative teaching methods, this proposal could be included in english as a foreign language (efl) teacher preparation programs because more support and training are needed to help student-teachers develop ict (information and communications technology) competences and to effectively integrate technology into language teaching. finally, this proposal is expected to be implemented in a future project in order to promote peer online feedback to help pre-service teachers become better writers and to promote autonomy and self-correction among them. furthermore, teachers of english in chile devote too much classroom time to teaching, which limits their time for writing revision. thus, this future project is also aimed at facilitating their job by means of peer feedback. references apple, m. t. 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(1991). process writing. london, uk: longman. woo, m., chu, s. k. w., ho, a. & li, x. (2009, november 18). collaborative writing with a wiki in a primary five english classroom. paper presented at the 6th international conference on knowledge management. retrieved from http://eproceedings.worldscinet.com/ 9789814299862/9789814299862_0016.html about the authors mabel ortiz navarrete holds a master degree in ict from universidad de concepción (chile). her main area of interest is ict and language learning. anita ferreira cabrera holds a phd in linguistics and a phd in artificial intelligence from edinburgh university (scotland). her field of study includes applied linguistics, call, and computer science. 11profile vol. 16, no. 2, october 2014. issn 1657-0790 (printed) 2256-5760 (online). bogotá, colombia. pages 11-20 publishing and academic writing: experiences of authors who have published in profile*1 publicación y escritura académica: experiencias de autores que han publicado en profile melba l. cárdenas2** universidad nacional de colombia, bogotá, colombia the increase in the publication of academic journals is closely related to the growing interest of research communities as well as of institutional policies that demand visibility of the work done by their staff through publications in highly-ranked journals. the purpose of this paper is to portray the experiences of some authors who published their articles in the profile journal, which is edited in colombia, south america. data were gathered using a survey carried out through the use of a questionnaire. the results indicate the reasons the authors submitted their manuscripts, their experiences along the process of publication, and what the publication of their articles in the journal has meant to them. the authors’ responses and the reflections derived from them also show that despite the difficulties faced, there were achievements and lessons learned as well as challenges ahead to ensure the sustainability of the journal and teachers’ empowerment. key words: academic journals, getting published, profile journal, publishing articles, teachers as writers. el aumento de la publicación de artículos en revistas académicas está relacionado con el creciente interés en ello por parte de los grupos de investigación, así como con las políticas institucionales que buscan dar mayor visibilidad a sus trabajos. el objetivo de este artículo es recoger las experiencias de algunos autores que publicaron en la revista profile, editada en colombia, sur américa. la recolección de datos se hizo con el uso de una encuesta en forma de cuestionario. los resultados muestran las razones que llevaron a los autores a presentar sus manuscritos, sus experiencias durante el proceso de publicación y lo que ha significado para ellos la publicación de sus artículos en la revista. las respuestas de los autores y las reflexiones derivadas indican que, a pesar de las dificultades, hubo logros y lecciones aprendidas. se plantean, asimismo, futuros retos para asegurar la sostenibilidad de la revista y el empoderamiento de los profesores. palabras clave: lograr publicar, profesores como escritores, publicación de artículos, revistas académicas, revista profile. * this article reports on the findings of the first stage of an ethnographic research study in progress. ** e-mail: mlcardenasb@unal.edu.co how to cite this article (apa, 6th ed.): cárdenas, m. l. (2014). publishing and academic writing: experiences of authors who have published in profile. profile issues in teachers’ professional development, 16(2), 11-20. http://dx.doi.org/10.15446/profile.v16n2.46144. this article was received on january 24, 2014, and accepted on june 23, 2014. this is an open access article distributed under the terms of the creative commons license attribution-noncommercial-noderivatives 4.0 international license. consultation is possible at http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/. profile texto escrito a máquina profile texto escrito a máquina profile texto escrito a máquina profile texto escrito a máquina profile texto escrito a máquina profile texto escrito a máquina profile texto escrito a máquina profile texto escrito a máquina universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras12 cárdenas introduction it is important for university professors, pre-service teachers, and schoolteachers in colombia to share their research, contribute towards local knowledge, learn from each other and value [their] work. also, i am sure that professionals in other countries appreciate these contributions, as i do theirs. (maria) the opinion of this teacher-educator reflects the importance of research and publishing. for most university teachers, the “publish or perish” pressure to sustain a position in our career has had an impact on the field of teaching as researchers and writers and has, in turn, fostered debates regarding teacher preparation and the possibilities we have to get published in academic or scientific journals (adnan, 2009; cárdenas, 2003; lillis & curry, 2010; rainey, 2005; smiles & short, 2006; whitney, 2009). this reality is closely related to teachers’ professional development which, from a critical perspective, positions professional learning as a continuous process that acknowledges the theories, personal practical knowledge teachers possess (golombek, 2009), and their personal interpretations (johnson & golombek, 2011). this vision of professional development gives value to teachers’ experience and creativity to face diverse teaching scenarios in which reflection and inquiry allow continuous growth (johnson & golombek, 2011; sharkey, 2009). it also motivates them to make their work public as an approach to professional learning and development (johnson & golombek, 2011), to empower classroom practices and improve the quality of education (kincheloe, 2003). similarly, the increasing participation of teachers from different educational levels in doing and publishing their research and teacher-based works evidences their commitment toward developing their own expertise through critical inquiry into their own practice and toward the sharing of their experiences. this can be observed, for example, in the elt (english language teaching) journals edited all over the world. nonetheless, it is necessary to document and study authors’ experiences so that we can foresee actions in the field of teacher-researchers as writers. in this article, we portray the experiences of some authors who have published in a journal edited in the latin american context. over the past two decades colombia has witnessed an increase in academic journals. this is due to the interest of research communities and institutions in gaining prominence in highly ranked journals as well as in the credits granted to teachers’ careers and in the increases in universities’ prestige. the lastest report issued by the national research agency shows the existence of a total of 466 indexed journals, 254 of which are classified in the areas of social sciences and humanities (colciencias, 2012). among them we have 28 specialized in education and 15 in languages and literature; two of them are published only in the english language: profile issues in teachers’ professional development (profile henceforth) is one of them. to trace the life of this journal along its first twelve years of publication, we carried out a case study that included a survey in order to portray the experiences of the authors who have published in it. the purpose was to identify the reasons that motivated authors to send their manuscripts to the journal, the diffi culties experienced during the whole processfrom submission to approval for publication-and some reflections they could share regarding the meaning they assign to the fact of having had their works published in it. the results of the questionnaire used are reported below. the study a descriptive case study (cohen, manion, & morrison, 2011; yin, 1984, 2009) was conducted to examine the origins and evolution of the profile journal along 12 years, and in relation to its vision 13profile vol. 16, no. 2, october 2014. issn 1657-0790 (printed) 2256-5760 (online). bogotá, colombia. pages 11-20 publishing and academic writing: experiences of authors who have published in profile of disseminating research findings, reflections, and innovations by teachers of english. data collection included a survey, documentary information concerning editorial processes, and my reflections as the editor from its inception. within the framework of that study, we followed a survey design in order to accomplish a description of trends and opinions of a sample of the population (creswell, 2009). a short questionnaire was sent by email to all the authors who had published in profile from 2000 to 2012. the questionnaire was cross-sectional, with the data collected at one point in time. the questions were as follows: 1. what made you decide to submit your article(s) for publication in profile? 2. think about the experiences along the process of publication (submission, evaluation, adjustments) of your article(s) in profile. which one(s) in particular can you remember/ caught your attention? 3. did you have any difficulties along the process of publication? yes __ no __ • if yes, what kind? • what action(s) helped you overcome the difficulties? 4. what has the publication of your article(s) in profile meant to you? 5. other comments context profile started as an annual publication in 2000 at the universidad nacional de colombia, bogotá campus. the initial idea was to contribute to teachers’ professional development by publicizing the results of action-research projects carried out by schoolteachers of english who participated in an in-service programme focused on language development, pedagogical updating and action research. little by little, the journal captured the interest of the local elt community and has worked towards meeting international standards such as defined criteria for publishing, editorial committees, a style sheet, editorial processes, exchange with other journals, punctuality in its periodicity, and open access. it should be noted that such standards have helped profile be in tune with other elt research oriented journals. after four years, profile opened its doors to contributors from other countries and consolidated its mission and vision. at present the journal shares papers authored by schoolteachers, teacher educators, novice teacher-researchers, and university teachers from different parts of the world who have been engaged in carrying out research and innovations in wide-ranging contexts. this can be seen in the sections that characterize it nowadays, namely, issues from teacher researchers, issues from novice teacher researchers, and issues based on reflections and innovations. the journal has worked to achieve more visibility through several international databases and reference systems. its progress has also been acknowledged; for instance, in 2006, it was ranked in the colombian national indexing system and in 2008 became a biannual journal; at present, it is classified as the most important publication concerning elt in colombia and has gained international readership. participants sixty-seven authors out of the 312 who had published in the journal up to 2012 responded to the questionnaire. they work in different educational levels: seventy percent of them teach in universities; twenty percent in primary and secondary schools; seven percent have just completed a bed; and three percent teach at language institutes or are freelancers. their articles deal with the teaching of english, teacher education, and language policies. as far as their nationalities go, 55 (82 percent) are colombian: 34 work in universities; nine in primary and universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras14 cárdenas secondary schools; four in universities and schools; three in language institutes; and five have just completed a bed. the other authors (12 = 18 percent) are mostly university teachers. they are from the usa (3), mexico (3: one of them works at a school), india (2), and one each from the uk, turkey, italy, and ukraine. as can be seen, the vast majority of the participants belong to non-anglophone-centre contexts. data analysis the identification of commonalities was carried out using the atlas.ti programme. since the survey contained open questions, we followed the principles of the grounded theory because it allowed us to systematically organize, analyze, and interpret the gathered data (strauss & corbin, 1990). as the data were analyzed, explanations were constructed according to the questions contained in the survey itself. the analysis was primarily descriptive and once it was completed, we did member checking (merriam, 1991) by sending this article to all the respondents. we got comments from seven members (participants), who checked (approved) our interpretations. although the number of responses during the member checking process was not high, we could ensure internal validity and trustworthiness (merriam, 1991). results the data are presented in terms of a description of the patterns or categories (the reasons for submitting articles for publication, experiences along the process of publication, and what the publication of their articles has meant to authors). we also contrast and compare these trends with theoretical concepts underlying them. we illustrate them with some voices from authors, identified with pseudonyms or with the names they chose. reasons for submitting articles for publication five main reasons were expressed by the authors. they are displayed in table 1. accordingly, several explanations were identified in connection to each one of them. table 1. reasons authors submitted their articles for publication reasons percent of responses contribution to the elt community 45 visibility of the journal 31 fulfilment of a goal 12 support provided by the journal 9 practical reasons 3 the main reason authors decide to submit their papers to the journal lies in their conviction in the usefulness of articles published in it. fifty-five percent of them think that they can collaborate with peers on some serious work and recognize the significance of making their work public, that is, the reaching of teachers through publishing. they are convinced that the papers contained in profile are read by teachers as their contents address common concerns, theories, and issues teachers usually inquire about. as pointed out by one author, “it focuses on topics that foreign language teachers need to debate and it goes beyond presenting games or activities with no theoretical background” (clara). this evidences that teachers need more than just tips for getting the teaching job done. thus, publications should comprise thoughtful contents and go beyond the tendency of including guidelines with zero or very little theoretical foundations. in addition, seven percent of the authors expressed their interest in publishing in a colombian or a local journal because of the importance 15profile vol. 16, no. 2, october 2014. issn 1657-0790 (printed) 2256-5760 (online). bogotá, colombia. pages 11-20 publishing and academic writing: experiences of authors who have published in profile of “sharing reflections and findings of studies concerning teachers’ development as a way to construct local knowledge” (adriana). this way authors can contribute to the elt community and disseminate their work among different scenarios. having their work published in a well-known journal is paramount for 31 percent of the authors. as this suggests, an important number of responses showed that the journal recognition, its quality, rigor, ranking, popularity, and “the fact that it is devoted to make different teachers’ voices heard” (helena) motivated them to submit their works. this testimony advocates the need to position teachers as contributors whose inputs are recognized. on the other hand and as it is widely known, getting published is a challenge and can be on the list of goals to be achieved in a teacher’s career. twelve percent of the participants consider that it is a professional and personal challenge; an experience that adds to the pride and the status you gain when you can evidence you have published in a specialized journal. a schoolteacher decided to send her manuscript to complete the research cycle because “the publication of my article was the second step as a teacher-researcher” (juanita). her reflection mirrors a commitment to transcend her teaching job and to develop agency. as in this case, the authors select the journal because it is perceived as a forum that provides opportunities for teachers’ agency work. agency gives us the power to transform the object of activity; it is understood as the capacity to initiate purposeful action and implies determination, autonomy, independence, and choice (lipponen & kumpulainen, 2011). it is not a fixed quality or disposition but something that people do to transform and refine their social and material worlds. as shown in table 1, the editorial guidance provided by the journal staff is also crucial in some authors’ resolution to submit their manuscripts. for example, a university teacher asserts: “i know that when i submit an article i receive academic, constructive feedback” (aleida). similar to smiles and short’s (2006) conclusions, this finding reflects the reality that promoting the circulation of teachers’ works in academic journals requires providing effective support. three percent of the authors mentioned three instrumental reasons to explain their choices: course requirements, the teacher-career’s incentives, and their learning as writers. in the first case, a couple of schoolteachers admitted that they fulfilled the writing task because it was a requirement of a teacher development course although they agreed with others on its importance. in the second case, university teachers admitted that they selected the journal because publishing in an indexed journal gives one the possibility of improving her/his salary and adds more points to one’s academic career. finally, it is worth mentioning that a couple of authors justified their choice in light of an academic exercise in which they could learn from the reviewers’ comments and suggestions, gain awareness about how to write a better paper, and thus be ready to guide others. the outlined reasons might look commonsensical, obvious, or not surprising. however, the authors’ responses evidence that despite the circumstances faced in their teaching contexts, they are all concerned about the importance of contributing to the profession via a well-positioned publication. the case of profile illustrates the issue of local context as a locus of making teacher narratives public “because it is from and for more diverse professional contexts, it is generating new uses by creating alternative systems for making practitioner knowledge public” (johnson & golombek, 2011, p. 503). in the same line of thought, sharkey (2009) depicts the journal as a space that blurs communities’ boundaries; an opportunity for universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras16 cárdenas professionals across the career span to present their work in the same venue. this, in turn, draws our attention towards the fact that academic journals are often associated with core or central communities and countries, a reality which makes it difficult to include voices from the periphery. significant experiences along the process of publication the authors recalled experiences along the process of publication, namely: submission, evaluation, and adjustments. in order of relevance, they remarked on the opportunities to learn, the tensions generated by the editorial processes per se, and the contribution to their self-esteem. first, there was a consensus about the feedback provided by the reviewers for they are considered knowledgeable authors and academic leaders concerned about the quality of work to be published. most participants (79 percent) perceived the comments as pertinent and valued the fact that they could learn a great deal because “modifications helped me to understand how articles are developed and organized” (hernán); and “you confront . . . thoughts with different points of view. . . . this interchange usually leads you to learn in terms of content, research, formal writing” (fanny). hence, “the evaluators’ comments stimulated a revision process which proved insightful and enriching” (franca). in this respect, one author felt she had also gained expertise to guide other teachers to become better writers. once more, the data suggest authors’ agency: they express their capacity to work in collaboration with others and their predisposition to utilize the support given by others as well as their being a resource for others. another survey study conducted by cárdenas (2003) inquired into the views of schoolteachers who had published in profile in its initial stage. the investigation searched for achievements and difficulties and strategies used to overcome those difficulties. it revealed that schoolteachers who had been away from long written tasks had difficulties coping with the demands of article preparation. the results reported here confirm that particular study and coincide with smiles and short (2006) in that writing for publishing offers many professional benefits for teacher-researchers and the academic community, but the journey from writing to actual publication is overwhelming. we found that 29 percent of the authors experimented tensions in attempting to follow the format of an article for it is a very demanding task, and even painful, for some of them. three percent of them affirmed they had had disagreements with reviewers, but understood them after some time; another three percent explained that coping with different requirements was somehow complex because “sometimes evaluators have different criteria and it is difficult to know which route to go” (john). for one teacher, it generated stress because “it is difficult to follow guidelines from two different evaluators, especially when feedback is not consistent. of course, this kind of situations is not necessarily negative, but it might be stressful’’ (aleida). interestingly, another teacher recalled that team writing was not an easy task because “we were a group of four teachers. it’s difficult to agree on ideas and at the end one of us had to make decisions” (sandra). table 2 contains a summary of the main struggles faced and the tools used to overcome them. for thirty-eight percent of the informants, regardless of constraints, the editorial processes had positive effects on their self-esteem. however, those processes require time and disposition: i was willing to start writing and to polish my paper but it requires a lot of your free time and effort. on the other hand, it was the first time that i wrote an article so i felt a little bit anxious to know if it was good enough or worth reading for others. once i started writing and receiving feedback i felt more comfortable and positive, i realized i had a lot to say and i had learnt a lot along the whole process. (deissy) 17profile vol. 16, no. 2, october 2014. issn 1657-0790 (printed) 2256-5760 (online). bogotá, colombia. pages 11-20 publishing and academic writing: experiences of authors who have published in profile deissy’s reflections represent the commonalities found in six percent of the participants along the line of self-esteem. first, they realized that there are misconceptions regarding who can get published in academic journals. we also found that although there is often a lack of confidence, the disposition to overcome fears, and the implementation of a timely, user-friendly editorial process can help authors build confidence to continue writing and, in the end, lead to personal satisfaction. what has the publication of their articles meant to authors? their responses to this question can be gathered around three axes: personal and professional achievements and the role of academic journals in giving voice to teachers. at the personal level, sixtyeight percent of the authors recognize that it was a challenge, an important achievement that has brought pride, rewards, recognition, and self-assurance. those feelings are more significant for some authors who got published for the first time. two of them answered: it has given me confidence in my professional field. i am working in international education at a university in the us and am glad to have had an article published in an important journal of colombia. (gill) it has meant a great achievement for me, since i was yet an undergraduate student, and now it can be part of my résumé. (sandy) nowadays, publishing has different meanings for teachers’ careers. as already mentioned, for just a couple of authors it is mainly the fulfillment of a course requirement; for others, it is a personal and professional goal. professional enrichment has been significant for 93 percent of the respondents for publishing has entailed the possibility of broadening professional background, the satisfaction of sharing one’s work, reaching schools, and leaving a footprint in teacher research. nevertheless, the boundaries between the personal and the professional meaning the authors assign to the said achievement is not always clear. instead, we find interesting intricacies: being aware of our capabilities, finding ways to verbalise what we investigate or think, willingness to dialogue with a wide audience, and looking ahead to continue developing professionally. some authors’ comments include: [it has been] a great achievement and pride which marks my academic way has to continue in the future and that it is a possibility to share my thoughts with other people in the field. (ximena) table 2. difficulties faced along the process of publication difficulties strategies used to overcome difficulties re-submitting manuscripts delay due to lack of time for revisions information missing in the first version summarizing narrowing the topic fulfilling type of article requirements (structure of articles reporting research, innovations, or reflections; the justification of the manuscript, integration of theoretical aspects or studies in the field, discussion of findings, conclusions, among others) perseverance discipline attention to feedback dialogue with reviewers communication with co-authors proof-reading encouragement given by the journal universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras18 cárdenas there is a feeling of professional growth when you see your experiences printed and open to public scrutiny. (edgar) publishing has been an empowering tool . . . as teacher-researcher. (bertha) it [publishing] has meant a way to conceptualize about and make sense of language teaching and research as two mandatory activities for critical educators. (alvaro) i see the publication of the article as a step to grow personally and professionally. it gave me a platform to voice my choices and experiences which made me more passionate and stronger as a teacher-researcher. (hernán) concerned with the importance of sharing, the authors reflect upon the role of academic journals in sustaining spaces for the dissemination of teachers’ work so that they have the opportunity to participate and contribute via interaction where one is positioned as “an accountable author” (lipponen & kumpulainen, 2011, p. 813). in our case, the journal is viewed as “a new platform on which to explore and exchange ideas” (bernard), which suggests that efforts are being made to reach high standards when carrying out research and writing reports. this last matter implies providing opportunities for continuous learning, for instance, along the publication process and as an extension of it because some authors also advise other teachers in their research. for this reason, some authors advocate that encouragement and support are necessary in helping them to continue developing as publishers of quality research. it was also noted that the interplay embedded in the publication process is in tune with bourdieu’s (1986) concept of social capital for it is likely to be created by mutual recognition, receiving respect, and being an author whose ideas are valuable in the eyes of the local and larger community. in this respect, colombian authors acknowledge the important part the journal can play in the construction of teacher communities, that is, as “a way to have the voices of colombian researchers heard by teachers, students, and researches in our country … a contribution to the construction of local knowledge in the field of foreign language teaching and learning” (isabel). conclusions and implications the survey was used to bring authors’ experiences to enhance awareness. their answers reveal five main motives for submitting their manuscripts, to wit: contributing to the profession, the journal recognition, their interest in achieving a goal, the certainty to get support in such endeavor, and some practical motives. but above all, the main driving force has to do with the conviction that as teachers they can and should contribute to the profession. like smiles and short (2006), our participants evidenced that their decision to submit a manuscript was to inform the field by providing a truly emic or insider’s perspective. this finding indicates that teachers not only need to be part of professional communities that support them in their teaching jobs but that they should also feel committed to backing them. one way of doing so is through gaining a voice with other teachers with similar interests and with the elt community in general by sharing the experiences and the findings of their works. this is perhaps the greatest meaning the authors discover in their publication experience. an author who studied the in-service programme that inspired the creation of the journal and then participated as a tutor remarks: we are used to do certain things in our everyday classes and we sometimes think it is not worth sharing them in such a formal way. however something i have been learning . . . not only as an author, but as a student-teacher and as a tutor, is that new knowledge does not grow up in genius brains but in real-lifepeople, informed and reflective perspectives. (myriam) 19profile vol. 16, no. 2, october 2014. issn 1657-0790 (printed) 2256-5760 (online). bogotá, colombia. pages 11-20 publishing and academic writing: experiences of authors who have published in profile in connection to the role of the journal in giving a voice to teachers and although we have not further traced the actual use of the contents of the volumes published to date, the journal seems to be “functioning as a tool for knowledge-building and professional development practices that are working in consort to transform the professional landscape that constitutes the field of slte [second language teacher education]” (johnson & golombek, 2011, p. 486). implicit in most authors’ answers and also explicitly expressed in many of them, we can envision new understandings about publishing and professional development. publishing is the result of getting involved in a dialogic action by submitting manuscripts intended to reach different audiences. publishing acts as a mediational tool in fostering teachers’ professional development via recognising teachers’ knowledge as well as their capability to be teacher-researchers and to exercise agency. this way, and despite the demanding process or the difficulties faced, teachers as researchers and writers contribute to strengthening local communities, supporting the circulation of knowledge and good practices in wider contexts, developing professionally through this learning experience, and taking care as regards their self-confidence. the authors perceive the journal as a forum that provides opportunities for teachers’ professional growth. they also argue that teacher-researchers as writers need to be positioned as contributors whose inputs are recognized. profile is then perceived as a publication containing voices from and for diverse professional contexts; as a publication that has generated spaces for teachers from different educational levels and settings. to this end, the authors participating in our study evidence attempts in crossing boundaries; they have resorted to ways of presenting marked locality in a way that can lead to successful publication and capturing the attention of a wider audience. this is observed in the publication of articles that, although derived from their local teaching contexts, are supported with indigenous and international works, depict courses of action to face given problems, gather conceptual issues that befall most teachers, and match the interests of others working in diverse contexts. further research would engage us in examining how agency emerges and is constructed through the paths authors follow in this and similar journals. as far as the tensions experienced, we could identify some of the common problems that obstruct the publishing process. the most notorious, coping with the demands of manuscript revision, calls for the need to keep in mind that for papers published in scientific journals, it is essential to find the appropriate tone to reach first, practitioners, and second, a wider audience. hence, opening up spaces for teachers to publish their work is not enough; it is mandatory to provide actual support. this could be done through “writing buddies” (smiles & short, 2006), that is, those who can accompany authors through careful editorial guidance. in turn, this practice has implications for teacher education programmes, the commitment of stakeholders, editorial boards’ awareness of authors’ profiles, and the establishment of networks of writing activities. we have a long way to go to ensure the legitimacy of teacher-generated knowledge contained in journals like profile. yet, we believe that it evidences a space where the local and the global can co-mingle; where new understandings can emerge as a result of that interplay. the challenges ahead to ensure the sustainability of the journal and teachers’ empowerment remain. references adnan, z. (2009). some potential problems for research articles written by indonesian academics when submitted to international english language journals. asian efl journal, 11(1), 107-125. universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras20 cárdenas bourdieu, p. (1986). the forms of capital. in j. g. richardson (ed.), handbook of theory and research for the sociology of education (pp. 241-260). new york, ny: greenwood press. cárdenas, m. l. (2003). teacher researchers as writers: a way to sharing findings. colombian applied linguistics journal, 5, 49-64. cohen, l., manion, l., & morrison, k. (2011). research methods in education. london, uk: routledge. colciencias. (2012). indicadores generales publindex 20022011. retrieved from http://www.colciencias.gov.co/ sites/default/files/ckeditor_files/files/indicadores%20 generales%20publindex%202011.pdf creswell, j. (2009). research design: qualitative, quantitative and mixed methods and approaches (3rd ed.). london, uk: sage. golombek, p. (2009). personal practical knowledge in l2 teacher education. in a. burns & j. c. richards (eds.), second language teacher education (pp. 155-162). cambridge, uk: cambridge university press. johnson, k. e., & golombek, p. (2011). the transformative power of narrative in second language teacher education. tesol quarterly, 45(3), 486-509. kincheloe, j. l. (2003). teachers as researchers: qualitative inquiry as a path to empowerment. london, uk: routledge falmer. lillis, t., & curry, m. j. (2010). academic writing in a global context: the politics and practices of publishing in english. new york, ny: routledge. lipponen, l., & kumpulainen, k. (2011). acting as accountable authors: creating interactional spaces for agency work in teacher education. teaching and teacher education, 27, 812-819. merriam, s. b. (1991). case study research in education: a qualitative approach. san francisco, ca: jossey-bass. rainey, i. (2005). efl teachers’ research and mainstream tesol: ships passing in the night? profile issues in teachers’ professional development, 6(1), 7-22. sharkey, j. (2009). can we praxize second language teacher education? an invitation to join a collective, collaborative challenge. íkala, revista de lenguaje y cultura, 14(22), 125-150. smiles, t. l., & short, k. g. (2006). transforming teacher voice through writing for publication. teacher education quarterly, 33(3), 133-147. strauss, a., & corbin, j. (1990). basis of qualitative research: grounded theory procedures and techniques. london, uk: sage. whitney, a. (2009). ncte journals and the teacher-author: who and what gets published. english education, 41(2), 101-113. yin, r. (1984). case study research. beverly hills, ca: sage. about the author melba l. cárdenas is an associate professor of the foreign languages department at universidad nacional de colombia, bogotá campus. she is currently studying for a phd in education at universidad de zaragoza, spain, thanks to a scholarship granted by fundación carolina. she is the editor of the profile and how journals, edited in colombia. 129profile vol. 14, no. 1, april 2012. issn 1657-0790. bogotá, colombia. pages 129-142 using case study methodology to approach the views of teachers of english on classroom disciplinary strategies uso de la metodología de estudio de casos para aproximarse a las concepciones de profesores de inglés sobre las estrategias disciplinarias en el aula claudio díaz larenas* universidad de concepción, chile this qualitative study aims at identifying the disciplinary strategies claimed to be used by a group of five secondary classroom teachers of english in public or semi-public schools in chile. to conduct this research, a semi-structured interview was applied to participants. the data were analyzed using the principles of semantic content analysis and the grounded theory technique in order to organize the categories and subcategories from the data. the results show that some of the teachers declare using a rising tone of voice, scolding and expelling difficult students from the classroom as key disciplinary techniques; other teachers claim that disciplinary strategies help them to accomplish the teaching aim in a lesson. key words: case study research in efl, disciplinary strategies, english learning, foreign language learning. este estudio cualitativo tiene como objetivo identificar las estrategias disciplinarias que declara usar un grupo de cinco profesores de inglés como lengua extranjera, de la enseñanza secundaria, que laboran en la educación pública o semipública en chile. el estudio se basó en una entrevista semiestructurada, cuyos datos se interpretaron a partir de los principios del análisis del contenido semántico y la técnica de la teoría fundamentada. luego se organizaron en categorías y subcategorías. los resultados muestran que la mayoría de los informantes declara aumentar el tono de su voz o emplear la reprensión y la expulsión del aula como técnicas para mantener la disciplina. otros expresan que las estrategias de disciplina les ayudan a alcanzar el objetivo de la clase. palabras clave: aprendizaje del inglés, aprendizaje de una lengua extranjera, estudio de casos en lengua extranjera, técnicas disciplinarias. this paper is part of the thesis entitled “the use of disciplinary strategies and the effects of punishment in the efl classroom: teachers of english’ and students’ views”, and the research grant fondecyt 1085313 entitled “el sistema de cognición docente, las actuaciones pedagógicas del profesor de inglés universitario y su impacto en la enseñanza-aprendizaje del idioma”. acknowledgements to the following practitioners for their hard work in this research: camila cordova cañete, jael flores flores, natalia perales cruces, carol puentes sánchez and maría isabel torres faundez. * e-mail: claudiodiaz@udec.cl this article was received on april 25, 2011, and accepted on december 17, 2011. universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras130 díaz larenas introduction the mere fact of teaching a foreign language can be a challenge for teachers around the world. but what can even be a more difficult task to accomplish is to maintain discipline in a classroom full of high school learners. a double task is needed: to make the english learning process efficient and successful and to create a pleasant and disciplined atmosphere that allows learning to take place. as a matter of fact, because of the particular nature of the field of teaching english as a foreign language, certain conditions and disciplinary behaviors are needed to accomplish learning tasks. to master english has become a very highly valued skill in chile, particularly when graduates have to find a job. english is taught in primary, secondary and even tertiary education; however, it’s common to hear from primary and secondary teachers of english that disruptive behavior in the classroom is a strong barrier to teaching english. in this case study, five chilean teachers of english of public and semi-public schools were interviewed to explore the phenomenon of disciplinary strategies in the efl classroom. this paper is organized into five main sections: theoretical background, research design, data analysis and discussion, conclusions and pedagogical implications and references. the section below outlines the key literature we consulted to approach the issue of disciplinary strategies. theoretical background the concept of disciplinary strategies has been widely defined by several authors worldwide (brown, 2010; cubero, 2004; charles, 1999; gootman, 2008). socolinsky (1994), for example, defines discipline as a “set of rules established for an individual or group of people, intended to maintain order, classroom interaction and the sound development of group activities” (p. 24). discipline is not just a phenomenon that occurs at school but also at home, at work, or in every aspect of people’s lives. for ramo and cruz (1997), discipline in educational centers implies a set of strategies used by teachers and provides a model of behavior to achieve learning and co-existence among students. discipline is a crucial factor in every society as it is the starting point to achieve its goals, as such. de almeida (2007), in her study entitled discipline problems in the efl class: is there a cure? states that discipline is a key issue for learning and teaching to be effective. in her action-research project she claims that “above all, we should value students as individuals and show them they are capable of going beyond their perceived limitations. we should also help them to understand that they are responsible for building up the learning atmosphere by contributing their share to the learning process” (p. 12). lorduy (2008) in her study pre-service english teachers’ beliefs about discipline at universidad de cordoba declares that “beliefs about discipline are important predictors of classroom actions. self-efficacy beliefs are determinant in the way teachers approach their capacity to organize and execute action in the class” (p. 136). sali (2011) in her study an inquiry into efl teachers’ and learners’ perspectives on classroom discipline concludes that for turkish efl teachers and learners, the teacher is the one and only mighty figure in the classroom. lewis, romo, qui and katz (2005) also report that teachers’ disciplinary strategies are related to a number of factors, including students’ ages and sex. their paper on teachers’ classroom discipline in australia, china and israel claims that “lack of discipline ranks within the first two most serious problems confronting the public schools today” (p. 1). discipline becomes a problem when it does not exist. ur (1996), for example, points out that “although the immediate responsibility for the maintenance of classroom discipline in most situ131profile vol. 14, no. 1, april 2012. issn 1657-0790. bogotá, colombia. pages 129-142 using case study methodology to approach the views of teachers of english on classroom... ations is the teacher’s, the ultimate goal is to reach the point where learners take on or at least share this responsibility” (p. 264). when misbehavior arises in class or even before it appears, it is good for teachers to know what to do or how to manage the conflicting situation. teachers can certainly use a variety of disciplinary strategies to manage disruptive behavior in the classroom, and the best way to control it is to prevent it from happening. brown (2010) suggests that there is a necessity for teachers to be well-prepared in terms of disciplinary strategies to prevent the use of punishment because the application of it often has negative effects on behavior modification. mcdaniel (1986) and herr, reid and herr (1996) converge on the idea that experienced educators use disciplinary strategies in order to help with the difficult work that teaching is. another problem related to discipline that may emerge in the classroom is the misuse or poor selection of disciplinary strategies. through disciplinary strategies, the process of teaching turns out to be easier to guide because educators have the responsibility of teaching not only the academic aspects established in the curriculum, but also teaching discipline, respect for others, and respect for the school rules. successfully disciplined classrooms would possibly be, according to ur (1996), those where learning takes place, that is to say, a place where the learning process is achieved successfully. as already known, this process involves the active participation of both teachers and students. it requires interaction between them, so that the learner is able to finally learn successfully. in order to identify a disciplined classroom, moss (2010), oliver and reschly (2010) and ur (1996) suggest some of the following factors that could contribute to it: teachers’ competences in classroom management, the methodologies applied, the interpersonal relationships among students and the teacher himself, the lesson planning, and of course the learner’s motivation as regards the lesson. moreover, they recommend some tips to use in the classroom when indiscipline has not yet emerged, when it is just emerging, and finally, when it has emerged. some of these tips involve keeping in touch with the students at every moment in the classroom, dealing with discipline very quietly and calling their attention individually; in other words, never take problems personally. this means not to let the student pull the teacher into personal conflict. the american board for certification of teacher excellence (2007) defines disciplinary strategies as all the tools used by a teacher to obtain and maintain discipline in the classroom. such tools may be “employing the evil eye, asking the students to stop misbehaving (…) moving to or stand in close proximity to the troublesome student (…) tell the students to remain, once class is over (…) call parents (…) moving the student’s seat, assigning non-physical punishment, among others” (p. 105). classroom management strategies are significant in terms of organization and order for teachers and learners to achieve a sense of discipline. maintaining order and discipline within the classroom is a difficult task to accomplish if the teacher does not have a good repertoire of rules that could help her/him prevent misbehavior rather than find ways to punish it (oliver & reschly, 2010). disciplinary strategies help teachers to organize themselves in the classroom environment, to develop awareness of their teaching process, and to deal with learners’ misbehavior and confront disciplinary situations (camenson, 2007; mcdaniel, 1986; rose, 2006; sicurelli, 2010). high school learners and discipline a learner is any individual who is under going a schooling process. this means that a learner universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras132 díaz larenas could be a young child, as well as an adolescent or an adult. muzzo and burrows (1986) state that, based on experts of the world health organization, the approximate age that delimits adolescence from childhood and adulthood falls between 10 and 20 years old. muzzo and burrows (1986) and williams and burden (1997) also explain that adolescence is a period of every individual’s development where several changes take place. the individual starts reaching a process of biological maturity which involves psychological and social issues and the beginning of an identification of the personality process. all of these significant changes make a major adjustment in the mental structure of students, a fact that can influence their learning process. harmer (2001) and montijano (2001) claim that teaching to diverse age groups is considerably different. this is mainly because of the different psychological characteristics particular to every age group and their level of mental development. according to this position then, teaching adolescents would be one of the greatest challenges as they are going through a radical change in terms of physical and mental structures. adolescence is a period in which teenagers start defining their personality and identity, as well as their capacity of abstraction and adaptation to the social environment that surrounds them. the changes students go through may affect their learning process together with their behavior in classes. harmer (2001, p. 11) also adds that “one of the recurring nightmares for teachers of adolescents is losing control”. this loss of control could be due to the students’ dislike of the subject, the teacher, their classmates or just because they do not feel like participating. all of these are a consequence of the well-known changes that affect an adolescent. it is of high importance then that teachers should be very aware of these psychological changes in order to be careful when dealing with adolescents and their particular needs in a classroom. research question and general objective since this research aimed at understanding teachers’ views on disciplinary strategies, the following question was set: • what kind of disciplinary strategies does a group of five secondary teachers of english declare to use to control discipline in the efl classroom at four chilean secondary schools? research design this section describes the type of study that was conducted based on the qualitative paradigm which, according to creswell (2003, p. 4), “is a means for exploring and understanding the meaning individuals or groups ascribe to a social or human problem”; that is to say, it is used to understand different people’s beliefs, perceptions, feelings, ways of thinking, among others. within the qualitative paradigm, this research is an interpretative case study that provides a rich and profound description of the data given by the five participants (nunan & bailey, 2009; rodrigues, 2010; sealey, 2010). participants in order to fulfil the research objective, a group of five secondary teachers of english, whose native language is spanish, were interviewed to find out the main disciplinary strategies they declare they use to control their efl classes. these participants come from either the public or semi-public educational systems. the public sector schools refer to educational establishments that are completely owned and subsidised by the state and the semipublic schools involve institutions that are privately owned, but receive a subsidy from the state based on students’ class attendance. both public and semi-public schools hold large classes, which are very likely to present disciplinary issues. 133profile vol. 14, no. 1, april 2012. issn 1657-0790. bogotá, colombia. pages 129-142 using case study methodology to approach the views of teachers of english on classroom... the researchers who conducted this study consisted of a group of five practitioners led by a senior university professor who had done qualitative research before and was familiar with content analy sis, subjectivity, triangulation and data reliability. five participants provided the data to conduct this study. the first participant was a 32-year-old male teacher who had 4 years of professional experience in the efl field and worked in a semi-public school. the second participant was a 34-year old female who had 7 years of experience in the english teaching field and worked in a public school. the third participant was a 35-year-old woman who had been working as a teacher of english for 8 years in the same public school. participant four was a 55-year-old female teacher who had been working in the public system for over 32 years. finally, the fifth participant was a 32-year-old female teacher who had graduated from university four years earlier and was currently working in a public school. all of the participants graduated from the same university in concepción, chile. table 1 presents a more detailed summary of the participants and their most relevant characteristics in the context of this research. the participants in this research were also collaborating teachers who supervised teacher candidates who were doing their practicum or internship in different high schools. instrument this research uses a semi-structured interview to examine the participants’ views. according to olabuénaga (2003) and sealey (2010), an interview is a qualitative type of instrument based on a reflective and verbal data collection, and where an interviewer and an interviewee interact. a semi-structured interview gives us the possibility to follow topical trajectories in the conversation that may stray from the guide when necessary (pérez, 1998). this instrument is a seventeen open-ended question interview designed to identify the most common disciplinary strategies claimed to be used by teachers to control classroom discipline. these are some of the questions used in the protocol: 1. what is your own understanding of disciplinary strategies? 2. how do you react when misbehavior arises in your classroom? participant’s nickname genre age year of graduation university where he/she studied years of experience participant nº 1: javier male 32 2005 universidad de concepción 4 participant nº 2: sandra female 34 2000 universidad de concepción 7 participant nº 3: gina female 35 2001 universidad de concepción 8 participant nº 4: teresa female 55 1968 universidad de concepción 32 participant nº 5: silvia female 32 2006 universidad de concepción 5 table 1. participants’ professional characteristics universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras134 díaz larenas 3. what are your reasons for using disciplinary strategies when dealing with misbehavior? the instrument was externally validated by a group of five university teachers who read and analyzed the interview to see if it matched the research question and objective. the five reviewers gave feedback and suggestions on the instrument to finally create a semi-structured interview capable of collecting reliable and meaningful data. procedure after having defined the participants’ selection criteria, the interviewer visited the schools to start the data collection. they were selected on the basis of their time availability and willingness to take part in the research. once in the school, they were isolated in a private room where they were explained what the interview was like and the procedure they would follow. the interviewer would also clarify any questions, if necessary, while applying the instrument. then the interviews were conducted in english with occasional interruptions due to clarification matters. the process of applying each semi-structured interview to the participants took roughly 25 to 30 minutes per person. a semantic content analysis and a grounded theory screening of all the responses were conducted to identify categories and subcategories to describe the content (trinidad, carrero, & soriano, 2006). content analysis investigates the thematic content of text and serves as a basis of inference (deanbrown & rodgers, 2002; herzog, 1996; merriam 1998; sabino, 1996). initially, manual coding of each response was conducted to identify words, phrases, or word-phrase clusters for the purpose of this analysis. preliminary categories were modified and refined jointly by the researchers based on the data. the steps used during data analysis for this study (creswell, 2003; pérez, 1998; ruiz, 1996; sandín, 2003; sealey, 2010; stake, 1999) are described next. • level 1 (data segmentation). to bring meaning, structure, and order to these data, the entire data set was first segmented based on the research question and the nature of the data. • level 2 (initial coding). codes were identified based on the results of the initial open coding. these initial categories were generated from participants’ original responses and discrepancies in labels were resolved through negotiation between the researchers. a constant compar ison approach was used during the initial coding. • level 3 (categorizing). to identify the relationship among the initial codes, the researchers compared the coding labels to the related literature. • level 4 (exploring relationships). in this study, each response was linked to each dimension. data triangulation to validate the findings, researcher triangulation was used to make the final results more reliable (rodrigues, 2010). the process of triangulation took several and constant revisions in order to end with meaningful and accurate information for this research. the data were constantly reduced, coded, described, interpreted, compared and saturated. data analysis and discussion table 2 shows the dimension of disciplinary strategies. category 1: definition of disciplinary strategy the first category to be analyzed is the definition of disciplinary strategy where two different conceptions came from the teachers. on the one hand, disciplinary strategies are regarded as techniques to maintain good behavior in the classroom and, on the other, they are viewed as ways to achieve the lesson aim. the participants below stated the 135profile vol. 14, no. 1, april 2012. issn 1657-0790. bogotá, colombia. pages 129-142 using case study methodology to approach the views of teachers of english on classroom... following about disciplinary strategies when they were interviewed. sandra: for me disciplinary strategies are techniques teachers can use to conduct a class in an orderly way. teresa: disciplinary strategies are different ways one turns to when you have to control the class to achieve the lesson aim and cover the contents. it can be said that the concept of disciplinary strategies is understood similarly by the teachers of both public and semi-public schools. this could be due to the fact that all of the participants did their undergraduate training at the same university; therefore, they shared a common curriculum that engaged them in similar academic tasks and experiences, which may be influencing their similar category subcategory definition of disciplinary strategy • techniques to maintain good behavior in the classroom • strategies or ways to achieve the main aim of a lesson teacher’s reaction towards a disciplinary problem • help to solve the disciplinary problem • raising of tone of voice • show a positive attitude towards difficult students • request for help from the school inspector • give the difficult student a failing mark • give extra points for behaving well • reprimand the difficult student • expel the difficult student from the classroom • register a written warning in the student’s personal record • make students develop self-reflection towards bad behavior • call parents for an interview • hold a conversation with the student • confiscate the disruptive item from the student effectiveness of teacher’s disciplinary strategies • most-of-the-time effectiveness • uncertainty of strategy effectiveness reasons for students’ misbehavior and teachers’ disciplinary actions • disrespect on students’ part • hyperactive students views on disciplinary strategies. besides, public and semi-public schools provide strikingly similar work environments that are characterized by large classes, sporadic teacher training and lack of time for teachers to engage in professional development. the participants’ responses match what the literature review states about considering disciplinary strategies as a set of rules intended to maintain order and the development of group activities (socolinsky, 1994); however, their responses do not seem to reveal any reference to other educational objectives such as how disciplinary strategies could eventually help to foster classroom interaction, interpersonal relationships and learner motivation as moss (2010), for example, points out in the the oretical background section. table 2. categories and subcategories for the disciplinary strategies dimension universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras136 díaz larenas it can also be thought that these participants have gone a step further when they mention that the implementation of effective disciplinary strategies allows teachers to accomplish their teaching aim in a lesson because they do not just adhere to the obvious definition that disciplinary strategies only help to maintain order and control in the classroom. figure 1 represents the different definitions provided by the participants. disciplinary strategies, but if the issue has a more complex nature, teachers would often request the school inspector’s help. teachers’ reactions such as giving the difficult students a failing mark, giving them extra points for behaving well, reprimanding them severely for being rude and expelling them from the classroom when they behave badly are considered, by the participants, as negative reactions on the part of the teacher. the quote below, from one of the partic ipants, illustrates this point. silvia: i do not like to reprimand or expel my students from the classroom. that is not good. i do not give them low marks for misbehavior either… those are negative actions. nonetheless teachers claimed not to like using punitive methods and consider those negative. some of them listed them among their strategies. many of these teachers’ reactions are associated with a behaviorist teaching model that aims at producing control, authority and obedience rather than asking learners to be accountable for their personal actions. the reactions silvia mentions might occur due to the teachers’ lack of teaching experience to control the class, old-fashioned thoughts on discipline that associate marks with good behavior or lack of patience on the part of the teacher. it is worth clarifying at this point of the discussion that teachers’ reactions toward an act of indiscipline is contextually and culturally bound, that is to say, societies build their own codes of discipline and strategies to approach it; therefore, what may be a right way or procedure to deal with rowdy behavior in one country may not be in another. teachers’ positive reactions towards an act of indiscipline are based on the importance of conversing with students to solve a conflict. because of this, teachers must always show a calm attitude towards situations that have gotten out of control, paying special attention to the physiological and category 2: teachers’ reaction towards a disciplinary problem the second category to be analyzed is teachers’ reactions towards a disciplinary problem. within this category, the participants provided 13 different associated subcategories. the majority of the participants agree that when running into a disciplinary problem, they try to solve the conflict usually by raising their tone of voice or by showing a positive attitude towards the difficult students. as has been stated by mcdaniel (1986) and moss (2010), teachers may use different tools to control disciplinary issues such as intimidating eye contact, a demand for students to quit misbehaving or a change in seating arrangement. needless to say, it might not be necessary to use all of these disciplinary strategies at once, but rather consider the nature of the disciplinary problem to decide on the strategy to be used. if it is an issue that might require more help to be solved than usual, it is possible to use a wide variety of figure 1. teachers’ definition of disciplinary strategies strategies or ways to achieve the aim of the lesson (10%) techniques to maintain good behaviour in the classroom (90%) 137profile vol. 14, no. 1, april 2012. issn 1657-0790. bogotá, colombia. pages 129-142 using case study methodology to approach the views of teachers of english on classroom... physical characteristics of the learner they teach. javier, one of the participants, states the following: javier: to talk, to have a conversation with unruling students… this helps a lot to solve a problem…i believe teachers must be calm when dealing with misbehavior. as stated by muzzo and burrows (1986), adolescence is a period of every individual’s development where several changes take place. since each student is a unique individual, he/she goes through a series of different physiological changes that affect him/her not only at school, but also in every aspect of his/her life. having a positive attitude towards difficult students may benefit the creation of a smooth atmosphere between teachers and their students, facilitating discipline in the classroom. the following quotes extracted from the interviews illustrate the ideas expressed in this paragraph. sandra: i like to build a pleasant atmosphere when i teach. i don’t like to treat difficult students badly. gina: classroom atmospheres are crucial to have good discipline in the classroom. interestingly enough, participants seem to share the same ideas about the concept of disciplinary strategies. this concept has to do with getting students aware of the fact that their disruptive behavior is affecting the flow of the lesson and that they want that behavior not to appear again. participants, for instance, give difficult students a written warning in their personal record or confiscate a student’s personal item. for several researchers and authors (charles, 1999; gootman, 2008; mcdaniel, 1986), those strategies are not always effective since they imply that the teacher has the ultimate power in the classroom and that the learner is a passive recipient. besides, according to the participants’ responses, raising their tone of voice is the most used strategy to maintain discipline. if this strategy does not work, they use another type of strategy that is, generally, talking directly to the students or calling on their parents for an interview. the following fragments give more insight on this issue. javier: to draw their attention, i interrupt them, call them by their names and ask them to stop doing what they are doing. silvia: i usually tell them that they are interrupting the lesson. in figure 2, teachers’ reactions towards a disciplinary problem are represented to show the frequency of different strategies teachers use to face a disciplinary issue in the classroom. figure 2. teachers’ reaction towards a disciplinary problem category 3: effectiveness of teachers’ disciplinary strategies for sali (2011), disciplinary strategies turn out to be ineffective if teachers assume that they are the only ones who can set the classroom rules. this view is incompatible with the premises of learner-centered teaching. one of these premises 20%20%20% 60% 80%80% 100%100% 0% 20% 40% 60% 80% 100% 120% help to solve the disciplinary problem rise in tone of voice show a positive attitude towards di�cult student requesting help from the school inspector give the di�cult student a falling mark give extra points for behaving well scold the di�cult student expel the di�cult student from the classroom universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras138 díaz larenas recommends that teachers should create opportunities for the negotiation of learning and teaching perspectives on classroom happenings. one of the participants in this study accords strongly with the issue of negotiation between teachers and students, as the quote below states: gina: at the beginning of each year i usually negotiate classroom rules. i like students to see they have something to say about discipline. most of the time teachers who participated in this study consider the application of certain disciplinary strategies to control the class as effective; however, they also admit that an array of different strategies is usually needed to maintain discipline because every student reacts differently to the strategy applied. for some disruptive learners, certain strategies are more effective than others. moreover, for some teachers, the uncertainty of what strategies to use to face a disciplinary issue may have its origin in their lack of self-confidence when dealing with discipline (brown, 2010; herr et al., 1996). the extracts below show teachers’ opinions about the effectiveness of disciplinary strategies. sandra: disciplinary strategies sometimes work, sometimes don’t. it really depends on the group of students. some students change their attitude, others don’t. figure 3 shows participants’ perception of disciplinary strategies effectiveness. category 4: reasons for students’ misbehavior and teachers’ disciplinary actions indiscipline is certainly present in all different educational realities –public, semi-public and private– and teachers must deal with it every single day in their schools. it is no surprise then that participants have five important reasons to explain students’ misbehavior, leading them to disciplinary actions. figure 4 illustrates the reasons participants give for students’ misbehavior in the english lesson: figure 4. reasons for students’ misbehavior and teachers’ disciplinary actions long daily schedule for students lack of student’s motivation imitation of patterned behaviours among students lack of variety in classroom activities student’s not being aware of the importance of learning english existence of teacher centered lessons 0% 5% 10% 15% 20% 25% (1) some of their students respect neither each other nor the teacher. this situation may be generated as a consequence of the increasing presence of bullying among learners, students’ immaturity level, and social issues that learners start experiencing at home and, subsequently, at school. (2) the increasing presence of hyperactive students figure 3. participants’ perception of disciplinary strategies effectiveness positive perception of strategy effectiveness (20%) uncertainty of strategy effectiveness (80%) 139profile vol. 14, no. 1, april 2012. issn 1657-0790. bogotá, colombia. pages 129-142 using case study methodology to approach the views of teachers of english on classroom... who require a great deal of attention on the part of the teacher. these students show rather impulsive behaviors since they let their feelings take control over their actions inside and outside the classroom and it is difficult for them to stay focused on the class and on the teacher, generating conflicting situations. (3) students’ lack of guidance at home. these three reasons might lead teachers to feel forced to use disciplinary strategies so that they can create a productive working environment. the following quotes illustrate the three points just explained. teresa: disciplinary strategies are a must in the classroom. some students are very immature, they have social issues, they do not respect anybody, they are constantly bullying others. javier: i need to use disciplinary strategies, because my students come from homes in which there is no discipline. sandra: every year we happen to have more hyperactive students…i don’t know what is happening, but it is hard for me to control those students. a fourth reason that teachers mention has to do with long daily schedules for students, which in relation to what teachers state, depends very much on the type of school they attend: public or semipublic. semi-public schools have more class hours because students must enroll in extracurricular activities for the benefit of their personal development. students may often misbehave due to the timetable in which english is taught during their daily schedule, that is, very early in the morning or late in the afternoon when they are generally sleepy or tired. the issue of long school schedules is reported by the following participant. silvia: to keep a student from 8 am to 5 pm at school is exhausting and this is clearly a cause for misbehavior. the fifth reason teachers report to explain students’ rowdy behavior in the english lesson is the status of the subject in the whole curriculum. english is unfortunately viewed as a less important subject than others like maths or spanish (díaz, martínez, roa & sanhueza, 2010). this is partly explained by the fact that chile is a spanishspeaking country very much isolated from english speaking environments. this issue is pointed out by the following participant: silvia: english is not important for the students. all the other subjects are far more important for them. conclusions and pedagogical implications discipline is not only useful, but also an essential issue inside the classrooms because there is a close relationship between discipline and the way it affects learning: the former plays an important role in the classroom environment, which is clearly one relevant factor in the english teaching and learning process. when teaching a foreign language, teachers often have to face and deal with the most unimaginable and different sorts of difficulties that might arise in the classroom and without doubt these situations may affect the learning process. teachers have an essential role when facing discipline and it is an important task for them to look for the most suitable and appropriate tools or strategies. it is also crucial to apply these strategies in the right time and place, thus the correct use of disciplinary strategies could enable teachers to control the class and overcome misbehavior on the students’ part. as a result of this, teachers and students can take advantage as much as possible of the available time in class and, therefore, attempt to succeed in the challenge of learning a foreign language. the participants’ conceptualization of disciplinary strategies stresses both the role that these strategies play in maintaining discipline in the classroom and in accomplishing the lesson objective. this leads one to think that disciplinary strategies should be an essential component of teacher preparation programs. these programs should focus on three universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras140 díaz larenas key components to empower future teachers to deal with classroom discipline effectively: (1) classroom management skills, (2) field experiences for future teachers to try out those skills and (3) opportunities for reflections on classroom misbehavior issues. the participants of this study show an array of disciplinary strategies that they employ when they have to deal with indiscipline in the classroom or rowdy students; however, it is observed that most of these strategies are teacher-centered and more inclined toward a behaviorist model of teaching that does not give space to students’ contribution to the learning process. the understanding that students are also responsible for building up the learning atmosphere is central to getting disciplinary strategies to work in the classroom. the establishment of disciplinary strategies should be a collective and democratic exercise between teachers and students. this way, students become more aware of their share and responsibility for keeping a good working atmosphere. in the end, what matters is to break the idea that the teacher is the one and only mighty figure in the classroom as sali (2011) pointed out in the theoretical background. ur (1996, p. 264) mentions that “although the immediate responsibility for the maintenance of classroom discipline in most situations is the teacher’s, the ultimate goal is to reach the point where learners take on or at least share this responsibility”. students really need to develop autonomy and self-awareness as regards how they behave in the classroom, to think about their behavior as well as the reasons that cause indiscipline. this is certainly a task that both teachers and students have to work on so that the objective of the class as well as discipline maintenance can be achieved. besides, the students’ inability to see the importance of learning a foreign language may be influenced by teacher-centered lessons in which teachers do not focus on students’ language needs, but only on giving their lecture during the whole class time without noticing students’ lack of motivation; therefore, students start misbehaving during the english lesson. it is also of great importance for teachers to monitor how effective the disciplinary strategies they utilize are because the use of actions to control discipline on the part of the teacher should not be understood as punitive and negative behaviors by the students. teachers’ use of disciplinary strategies should not affect teacher-student rapport or create an unfriendly, threatening classroom atmosphere. the use of action research appears as a possible tool for teachers to explore and research the difficulties that indiscipline poses in each classroom and the causes for students to misbehave. after all, each classroom is a unique world; therefore, there is not a single answer for approaching indiscipline, its causes and consequences. when it comes to the reasons that the participants give for using disciplinary strategies, they refer to a worldwide issue that has to do with students’ understanding of what respecting each other means. misbehavior very often arises because of students’ disrespect toward others. the interesting thing to find out in future research is what pushes students not to respect others and why the number of hyperactive students is increasing every day in schools. bullying turns out to be another important issue that is at the heart of discussion today and is worth researching. teachers and students should look into bullying critically so as to make everybody in this society more aware of how crucial tolerance, respect and communication are to avoid bullying. finally, grossman (2004), in an attempt to help teachers deal with unruly students, suggests that teachers should stress internal, not external control and intrinsic, not extrinsic motivation because 141profile vol. 14, no. 1, april 2012. issn 1657-0790. bogotá, colombia. pages 129-142 using case study methodology to approach the views of teachers of english on classroom... when these students exercise their self-control, they improve their relationships with others. moreover, the use of certain motivational techniques helps students become more able to account for their own actions and accept the impact their actions may play in evoking responses from others. references american board for certification of teacher excellence (2007). classroom management: techniques for addressing student discipline problems part ii. retrieved from http://www.abcte.org/files/previews/ preptoteach/s5_p1.html brown, a. (2010). classroom management: punishment versus discipline. retrieved from http://www.ehow. com/facts_5875823_classroom-management_-punishmentvs_-discipline.html camenson, b. (2007). opportunities in teaching english to speakers of other languages. new york, ny: mcgraw hill press. charles, c. (1999). building classroom discipline. new york, ny: longman press. creswell, j. (2003). research design. qualitative, quantitative and mixed methods and approaches. london: sage publications. cubero, c. (2004). la disciplina en el aula: reflexiones en torno a los procesos de comunicación. revista electrónica actualidades investigativas en educación, 4(2), 2-40. retrieved from http://redalyc.uaemex.mx/pdf/ 447/44740202.pdf de almeida, d. (2007). discipline problems in the efl class: is there a cure? profile issues in teachers’ professional development, 8, 1-13. dean-brown, j., & rodgers, t. (2002). doing second language research. oxford: oxford university press. díaz, c., martínez, p., roa, i., & sanhueza, m. (2010). una fotografía de las cogniciones de un grupo de docentes de inglés de secundaria acerca de la enseñanza y apren dizaje del idioma en establecimientos educacionales públicos de chile. revista folios, 31(1), 69-80. gootman, m. (2008). the caring teacher’s guide to discipline: helping students learn self-control, responsibility and respect. california: corwin press. grossman, h. (2004). classroom behavior management for diverse and inclusive schools. maryland: rowman and littlefield publishing group. harmer, j. (2001). the practice of english language teaching. london: longman. herr, d., reid, l., & herr, s. (1996, april). training teachers for troubled times. paper presented at the annual convention of the council for exceptional children (74th), orlando, fl. retrieved from http://www.eric.ed.gov/ pdfs/ed395406.pdf herzog, t. (1996). research methods in the social sciences. new york, ny: harper collins. lewis, r., romo, s., qui, x., & katz, y. (2005). teachers’ classroom discipline in australia, china and israel. revista teaching and teacher education, 21(1), 729-741. lorduy, d. (2008). pre-service english teachers’ beliefs about discipline at universidad de cordoba. (unpublished master’s thesis). fundación universidad del norte, bogotá. mcdaniel, t. (1986). a primer on classroom discipline: principles old and new. boston: phi delta kappan press. merriam, s. (1998). qualitative research and case study applications in education. san francisco: jossey-bass publishers. montijano, m. (2001). claves didácticas para la enseñanza de la lengua extranjera. málaga: aljibe. moss, l. (2010). classroom management & punishment. retrieved from http://www.ehow.com/facts_7628849_ classroom-management-punishments.html muzzo, s., & burrows, r. (1986). el adolescente chileno: características, problemas y soluciones. santiago: editorial universitaria. nunan, d., & bailey, k. (2009). exploring second language classroom research. a comprehensive guide. boston: heinle. olabuénaga, j. (2003). metodología de la investigación cualitativa. madrid: universidad de deusto press. universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras142 díaz larenas oliver, r., & reschly, d. (2010). improving students’ outcomes in general and special education: effective classroom management. washington dc: learning point associate, national comprehensive center for teacher quality. pérez, g. (1998). investigación cualitativa: retos e interrogantes ii. madrid: la muralla s.a. press. ramo, z., & cruz, j. (1997). la convivencia y la disciplina en los centros educativos. madrid: escuela española press. rodrigues, s. (2010). using analytical frameworks for classroom research. london: routledge. rose, m. (2006). the experience of language teaching. cambridge: cambridge university press. ruiz, j. (1996). metodología de la investigación cualitativa. bilbao: universidad de deusto. sabino, c. (1996). el proceso de la investigación. buenos aires: lumen humanitas. sali, p. (2011). an inquiry into efl teachers’ and learners’ perspectives on classroom discipline. revista iconte, 27(1), 673-680. sandín, m. p. (2003). investigación cualitativa en educación. fundamentos y tradiciones. madrid: mcgraw hill. sealey, a. (2010). researching english language. london: routledge. sicurelli, m. (2010). praise or punishments: applying behaviorism in the classroom. retrieved from http:// joctl.blogspot.com/2010/11/praise-or-punishmentapplying.html socolinsky, n. (1994). la disciplina en el aula: ¿un callejón sin salida? buenos aires: aique press. stake, r. (1999). investigación con estudio de casos. madrid: morata. trinidad, a., carrero, b., & soriano, r. (2006). teoría fundamentada “grounded theory”. la construcción de la teoría a través del análisis. españa: centro de investigaciones sociológicas cis press. ur, p. (1996). a course in language teaching. cambridge: cambridge university press. williams, m. & burden, r. (1997). psychology for language teachers. cambridge: cambridge university press. about the author claudio díaz larenas, phd in education and master of arts in linguistics. he teaches english language, discourse analysis and efl methodology and assessment at universidad de concepción, chile. he works in the facultad de educación and dirección de docencia de la universidad de concepción. he has also researched in the field of teacher cognition and language assessment. 81profile vol. 15, no. 1, april 2013. issn 1657-0790 (printed) 2256-5760 (online). bogotá, colombia. pages 81-95 pre-service teachers’ beliefs about language teaching and learning: a longitudinal study creencias de profesores principiantes acerca de la enseñanza y aprendizaje de lengua: un estudio longitudinal sofía d. cota grijalva* elizabeth ruiz-esparza barajas** universidad de sonora, mexico this paper contains the description of a research project that was carried out in the bachelor of arts in english language teaching program at a mexican university. the study was longitudinal and it tracked fourteen students for four semesters of the eight semester program. the aim was to identify pre-service teachers’ beliefs about english language teaching and learning at different stages of instruction while they were taking the teaching practice courses in the program. the instruments employed were questionnaires and semi-structured interviews. the results demonstrated that students made links between theory and practice creating some changes in previous beliefs. the study revealed an increase of awareness and a better understanding of the complex processes involved in teaching and learning. key words: learning beliefs, pre-service teachers, teaching beliefs. en este artículo se describe una investigación que se llevó a cabo en el programa de licenciatura en enseñanza del inglés de una universidad mexicana. el estudio fue longitudinal, el cual siguió la trayectoria de catorce estudiantes de la licenciatura durante cuatro de los ocho semestres del programa académico. el propósito fue identificar las creencias de estos maestros principiantes, quienes cursaban sus clases de práctica docente del programa, acerca de la enseñanza y el aprendizaje del inglés en diferentes etapas de sus estudios. los instrumentos utilizados fueron cuestionarios y entrevistas semiestructuradas. los resultados demostraron que los estudiantes articularon la teoría con la práctica, lo cual incidió en sus creencias anteriores. el estudio también reveló que comprendieron mejor los complejos procesos involucrados en la enseñanza y el aprendizaje. palabras clave: creencias sobre el aprendizaje, creencias sobre la enseñanza, profesores principiantes. * e-mail: scota@lenext.uson.mx ** e-mail: elruiz@guaymas.uson.mx this article contains the final results of the project which was sponsored by the foreign language department at universidad de sonora, mexico (number of registration: le36). this article was received on june 22, 2012, and accepted on november 28, 2012. universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras82 cota grijalva & ruiz-esparza barajas introduction it is often assumed that teaching in higher education is the result of the subject-matter knowledge and intuitive decisions based on teachers’ experiences and beliefs about how the subject-matter should be taught (turner-bisset, 2001; shulman, 2005). however, beliefs are such powerful influences that affect the way teachers carry out every aspect of their work because they act as lenses which filter every interpretation and decision teachers make (johnson, 1999). teacher education programs are many times unsuccessful in helping pre-service teachers to develop modern approaches to pedagogy because these programs do not consider their beliefs (wideen, mayer-smith, & moon, 1998). deng (2004) argues that pre-service teacher beliefs need to be transformed for pre-service teachers to teach in new ways. however, transforming beliefs is not an easy endeavor. williams (1999) suggests that a socio-constructivist view of learning where teacher educators mediate between theory and practice through reflection will help learners reshape or construct new beliefs. therefore, identifying pre-service teacher beliefs and making these future teachers aware of their own beliefs seem crucial for teacher education programs. the present study took place in a bachelor of arts in english language teaching (ba in elt) program which has as its main purpose to offer professional preparation for future teachers of english. students in their last two semesters of the ba program are placed in institutions where they can practice teaching. therefore, this context offers a great opportunity to find out these students’ beliefs before and after the teaching stage to try to understand how their teaching beliefs work. for the purpose of this paper and, considering that the students of the program are first pre-service teachers and in the last years of instruction become in-service teachers, the students will be referred to as pre-service teachers or participants because they will not receive the degree until the fulfillment of the program. this research aims to find out the pre-service teachers’ beliefs about english language teaching and learning. it also focuses on whether those current beliefs were influenced by their teaching courses and the experience gained throughout the time spent during their academic preparation as english teachers. this research highlights the importance of not only raising the teacher educators’ awareness of the preservice students’ beliefs about language learning and teaching but of making the participants aware of their own beliefs. it also stresses the crucial need for english language teacher educators and program designers to identify the pre-service students’ beliefs at initial stages of instruction so that they can develop strategies to modify and understand those beliefs which hinder the efficacy of teacher instruction. this longitudinal study also aims to contribute to the theory about pre-service teacher beliefs and hopes to add to the literature that informs the practices of teacher education. moreover, it also presents information about a context that has been scarcely explored, that of pre-service teachers of english in mexico. this paper is organized in the following way: first, some key aspects of the literature are presented followed by the context of the study. then, the meth odolog y and the data collection are explained, concluding with the presentation of results and discussion of the findings. teacher beliefs teacher effectiveness depends on the conceptualization of all of the elements involved in teaching, although the personality and beliefs also influence their teaching practice. theories have stressed the idea that most teachers guide their actions and decisions by a set of organized personal beliefs and that these often affect their performance, consciously or unconsciously (johnson, 1999). it has also been discussed in the literature that teachers usually teach the same way they were taught since they tend to 83profile vol. 15, no. 1, april 2013. issn 1657-0790 (printed) 2256-5760 (online). bogotá, colombia. pages 81-95 pre-service teachers’ beliefs about language teaching and learning... follow the same rules and routines making reference to their learning experience (bailey, curtis, & nunan, 2001). therefore, teachers’ beliefs shape the world in which they and their students operate and these mental models of “reality” are highly individualistic since no two classrooms are, or can be, the same. in addition, abraham and vann (1987) explain that learners’ philosophy of language refer to “beliefs about how language operates, and, consequently, how it is learned” (p. 95). this philosophy guides the learners approach to language learning. ferreira (2006) claims that beliefs about second language acquisition will directly impact learners’ attitudes, motivation and learning strategies. thus, the authors state that beliefs are usually shaped by students’ and teachers’ backgrounds since they are formed through interactions with others, own experiences and the impact of the environment around them. it has been difficult to establish a single definition for the concept of belief since different authors understand it from a personal perspective. some authors refer to beliefs as cognition, knowledge, conceptions of teaching, pedagogical knowledge, practical knowledge, practical theories, theoretical orientations, images, attitudes, assumptions, conceptions, perspectives or lay theories to name some definitions (borg, 2006). one of the authors who focused his attention on tr ying to explain the meaning of beliefs and search for a clear definition of the concept was pajares (1992), who concluded that “the construct of educational beliefs is itself broad and encompassing” (p. 316). therefore, as there is no clear cut definition about beliefs, for the purpose of this paper they will be defined as interactive networks of assumptions and knowledge about educational processes. finally, in the literature, pajares (1992) says that “the earlier a belief is incorporated into the belief structure the more difficult it is to alter” (p. 317). many studies have shown that beliefs are deeply rooted and are resistant to change (richards, gallo, & renandya, 2001). however, williams (1999) states that providing teachers with the link between theory and practice, which should be mediated by reflection in a socioconstructivist approach, change can be brought about. therefore, because of the importance of beliefs about language learning and teaching for teacher educator programs, this study aimed to know more about the future teachers’ beliefs. in addition, this research tried to find out whether the ba in elt program is providing positive orientation and instruction as well as being successful in helping students to become better teachers of english. research questions the research questions for this study were: • what are the pre-service teachers’ beliefs about language learning and teaching in the 4th, 6th and 8th semesters? • to what extent did the pre-service teachers’ beliefs change? • how did pre-service teachers’ beliefs evolve? • to what extent does the teaching practice strand influence pre-service teachers’ beliefs? research method as the questions for this study are concerned with finding out pre-service teachers’ beliefs about teaching and learning, as well as understanding whether these beliefs changed and influenced their role as future teachers, its framework falls within a mixed mode approach to research. creswell and plano clark (2011) state that “mixed methods research provides more evidence for studying a research problem than either quantitative or qualitative research alone” (p. 12). relevant to the purpose of using a mixed mode approach in this study is that, among its benefits, qualitative data can help explain quantitative results (cumming, 2004; lazaraton, 2000). in this case, the research design used quantitative and qualitative universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras84 cota grijalva & ruiz-esparza barajas approaches aiming to support each other. the meth odology and the approach to data collection warranted or called for questionnaires and interviews that provided a strong support for the study. as the questionnaire was applied at different times during the students’ professional preparation, the study was a longitudinal one. context this longitudinal study was carried out at the university of sonora, which is in the northwestern part of mexico, in a ba in elt program that offers professional preparation for students who want to become teachers of english. the program, organized in eight semesters, provides not only english language courses, but stresses a theoretical and pedagogical background for language teachers. it also places great importance on the relationship between theory and practice by helping students to develop their teaching techniques and skills in real teaching contexts. the series of the teaching practice courses in the program provides the link between theory and practice and a strong theoretical teaching background where students are familiarized with the elements, theories and methodologies for teaching a foreign language. these courses also provide a link with the other courses in the program since the practice they offer help students to make sense of the pedagogical, linguistic and cultural knowledge. it is during the third semester that students are introduced to the first teaching practice course where they learn and develop classroom management skills and become familiar with the basic elements of a classroom. the second course is teaching practice i in the fourth semester where they learn about lesson and unit planning and how to deal with the teaching of the four skills. in this course, the students carry out observations, but it is during the sixth and eight semesters when they take practice ii and iii that students practice in real contexts, that is, they are sent to different educational institutions where they have the opportunity to practice teaching and learn from this experience. these opportunities provide them with the experience needed and help them gain more insights as to what this profession is about. furthermore, by this time, many students also start working as teachers in different local institutions and start benefiting from this teaching experience. participants the participants involved in this project were all mexican students of this ba in elt program; they were thirteen females and one male and all were non-native english speakers. it is important to say that seven of the fourteen students of this project started working while the project was in progress and the rest were full time students. they were all contacted when they registered for their second teaching practice course in the fourth semester and they all agreed to participate in this project until the conclusion of their studies. instruments for data collection two instruments were used: a questionnaire and an interview. the questionnaire was adapted from the beliefs about language learning inventory (balli) developed by horwitz (1988), who gave the researchers permission to adapt it. seven out of the twenty questions were taken from it and the rest were adapted and developed by the researchers based on the context and the research needs (see appendix a). to answer the questionnaire, students had to choose from the five options presented following the likert scale. the options ranged from those which (1) strongly agree, (2) agree, to the ones which they (4) disagree, and (5) strongly disagree. there is a neutral (3) element which provides the option to consider the belief in process of definition. that is, those responses which were not yet defined by the student. they were categorized as a position where the student was not certain of the belief in question and he/she was in the 85profile vol. 15, no. 1, april 2013. issn 1657-0790 (printed) 2256-5760 (online). bogotá, colombia. pages 81-95 pre-service teachers’ beliefs about language teaching and learning... process of agreeing or disagreeing with the statement. there was no right or wrong answer to the statements since they were designed to actually bring students’ opinions about teaching and learning to the surface and to see if those ideas changed over a period of two years. the interviews were semi-structured and were carried out just before the participants exited the program with the aim of verifying information and finding reasons for their responses. the interview consisted of six open-ended questions (see appendix b). data collection the questionnaire was applied the first time to the students when they started the fourth semester of the ba in elt program while they were taking the teaching practice i course. the students were tracked throughout the rest of their studies and the questionnaire was applied to them again when they were in the sixth and eighth semesters. just before they exited the program, the interviews took place with the purpose of confirming and/or expanding the data collected from the written questionnaires. these interviews were recorded and transcribed following jefferson’s transcription conventions (in ellis & barkhuizen, 2005). data analysis once the data were collected, the questionnaires were analyzed. the first step, the qualitative part, was to find out the students’ beliefs about language learning and teaching. the statements which dealt with the same topic were grouped in order to verify if the participants contradicted or verified their own information. then, the frequencies of their responses were analyzed. the data presented considered those students who started working while the project was in progress and those who did not work while they were studying. although the responses ranged from those who strongly agree to strongly disagree, to make the results more transparent, the agreement responses were collated as in the case of the disagreement responses. therefore, data responses could be grouped into three categories –agree, neutral and disagree. the second step was to analyze whether the beliefs had changed. the researchers concentrated on finding out whether the original beliefs had changed and to see whether a pattern could be observed. the third and final step, the qualitative part, was analyzing the transcripts of the interviews to verify the information given in the questionnaires, to discover reasons for their responses and to interpret ways in which their beliefs, whether changed or maintained, influenced their practice when teaching. findings there were two kinds of findings, one derived from the questionnaires and the other one from the interviews. for the questionnaires, the response frequencies of the beliefs are presented in tables and the most relevant findings are highlighted. the results of the interviews intended to clarify and expand the students’ responses on the questionnaires and are explained following the questionnaire findings. findings from the questionnaires the information that is presented below shows the beliefs which emerged from the questionnaires applied to the students involved in this project. each belief was organized and placed under the category response which showed the highest rating. table 1a presents those beliefs participants agreed on most and that were maintained throughout the years of instruction, although the degrees for agreement for this category varied in the different semesters. as can be observed in table 1a, belief number 14 is related to the role of methodology and shows that the rating of agreement is higher for the sixth semester. it is interesting to note that it is precisely in that semester where students have just finished taking the methodology courses and have been practicing universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras86 cota grijalva & ruiz-esparza barajas table 1a. response frequency for agreement beliefs rating 4th sem rating 6th sem rating 8th sem #6 it is necessary to know about english speaking cultures in order to speak a foreign language. 42.8% 49.9% 71.3% #9 language is learned subconsciously in non-academic social situations. 42.8% 49.9% 64.2% #11 english should be taught only through the use of english. 49.9% 50% 42.8% #13 if efl students understand some of the basic grammatical rules of the language, they can usually create lots of new sentences on their own. 78.5% 78.5% 71.4% #14 methodologies play an important role in second language learning. 85.6% 99.9% 92.7% #16 usually it is more important for efl students to focus on what they are trying to say and not how to say it. 64.2% 57.1% 49.9% #17 english is better learned when teachers implement different activities for different learning styles. 92.8% 99.9% 92.7% #20 everyone can speak a foreign language. 85.6% 92.8% 92.8% table 1c. response frequency for neutral beliefs rating 4th sem rating 6th sem rating 8th sem #8 it is easier for someone who already speaks a foreign language to learn another one. 50% 50% 50% #19 it is better to learn english through content rather than language courses. 57.1% 57.1% 64.2% table 1b. response frequency for disagreement beliefs rating 4th sem rating 6th sem rating 8th sem #4 students only learn what teachers teach them in class. 92.8% 85.7% 99.9% #7 you shouldn’t say anything in english until you can say it correctly. 71.4% 92.7% 99.9% 87profile vol. 15, no. 1, april 2013. issn 1657-0790 (printed) 2256-5760 (online). bogotá, colombia. pages 81-95 pre-service teachers’ beliefs about language teaching and learning... using the variety of methodologies in the teaching practice course. therefore, it is suggested that the students from the sixth semester were influenced by the courses taught in the program. in addition, belief number 6 shows the highest increase of responses. it is important to mention that the students take two courses on the culture of english speaking countries and two other courses for the learning of american literature. hence, this might also suggest that there is an influence of the teaching preparation received from the program in these two students’ beliefs. table 1b represents those beliefs which students disagree on most. students seem to see learning as a more flexible and personal process. it is clearly seen by the end of the eight semesters that students strongly believe it is the learners’ responsibility to take control of their learning. they seem to have reinforced these beliefs since the rating is higher. these beliefs reflect the emphasis on promoting learner responsibility carried out by the teachers of the program. this situation recalls ruiz-esparza’s (2009) findings in which she was investigating teacher beliefs about assessment in this same context and found out that the teachers had one main goal: to make students more autonomous and responsible of their own learning. table 1c presents beliefs that were kept neutral throughout the years of instruction. it is interesting to note that the rating for belief number eight was kept the same. as some of the students in the program come from bilingual schools and others have done part of their schooling in the united states, the beliefs in table 1c could reflect what was stated in the literature section of this paper. students’ responses may be influenced by their own experience as second language learners since students tend to agree on ideas based on what has worked for them and believe that the same way will work for other people (bailey et al., 2001). the program did not seem to exert any influence on those beliefs. table 2a shows one belief which students changed from agreement to disagreement keeping the same percentage. this is belief number two, which although the percentage is not the highest, students began to disagree on it in the sixth semester. belief 2 in table 2a is related to theories of language learning and modern pedagogy which are studied in the program and practiced in the teaching practice courses. therefore, the change in this belief might be a direct influence of the program. table 2b presents three beliefs that during the fourth semester were ranked high by most of the students. however, by the end of the eight semesters, students did not consider them to be in the same category. beliefs number one and ten had a strong position of agreement at the beginning of the study, but students began to change by the sixth semester as can be deducted by the decrease in their degree of agreement. the reason for the change in belief 1 is clarified in the interview section of this paper and concerns their experience in learning. the result for belief number 12 might have its roots in the students’ knowledge of the different methodologies seen in class and experienced in their teaching practice courses where they need to teach using different methodologies and to reflect on the results. table 2c evidences the evolution of a belief which drastically changed from disagreement to agreement. it can be observed that students disagreed in the fourth semester with belief 18; they then changed to neutral in the sixth to finally agree in the last semester of the program. it could be hypothesized that as the students were receiving information about the role of mistakes in language learning, they started doubting their belief by the middle of the program and then changed their belief after experiencing teaching. although the percentages are not very high, they were the highest rankings for the sixth and eighth semester. this result evidences that not all of the students have a strong universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras88 cota grijalva & ruiz-esparza barajas table 2b. response frequency for agreement which changed to neutral beliefs agreement rating 4th sem agreement rating 6th sem neutral rating* 8th sem #1 it is easier for children than adults to learn a foreign language. 78.5% 42.7% 50% #10 it is best to learn english in an english speaking country. 78.5% 49.9% 50% #12 efl students learn better if teachers implement cooperative learning. 57.1% 64.2% 57.1% *the cells where the responses changed are shaded. table 2c. response frequency for disagreement which changed to agreement belief disagreement neutral agreement rating 4th sem rating 6th sem rating 8th sem #18 when efl students make oral errors, it is best to ignore them as long as you can understand what they are trying to say. 57.1% 50% 50% table 2a. response frequency for agreement that changed to disagreement belief agreement rating 4th sem disagreement* rating 6th sem disagreement* rating 8th sem #2 efl students generally need to understand the grammatical rules of english in order to become fluent in the language. 42.8% 35.7% 42.8% *the cells where the responses changed are shaded. 89profile vol. 15, no. 1, april 2013. issn 1657-0790 (printed) 2256-5760 (online). bogotá, colombia. pages 81-95 pre-service teachers’ beliefs about language teaching and learning... conviction that oral errors are part of learning, and as table 2d seems to suggest, students seem to be more flexible in seeing mistakes as part of the learning process. this also suggests that the students are more aware of the importance of meaning instead of form. table 2d corresponds to a belief that changed from neutral to disagreement and it is related to the importance of grammar. the reason for the change in this belief is clarified in the interview section. b elief 15 seems to contradict the students’ response in the fourth semester about the role of mistakes observed in table 2c for belief 18. although they had disagreed that it is best to ignore students’ oral errors when they speak, they were neutral to the importance of grammar in their responses for the 4th semester. moreover, there is not much difference in the degree of response for belief 15 which is neutral in the 4th and 6th semesters but by the end of the 8th semester, this belief changed. it could therefore be moot that most students felt that grammar may not be that important when learning a foreign language because of the change in categor y and the high increase of the percentage. the last two tables, 2e and 2f, show interesting results for two beliefs because the pattern of responses was different to the one analyzed before. table 2e shows the ratings for the frequency responses for belief 3. as can be observed in table 2e, 64 percent of the students in the 4th semester were neutral for belief number 3 and then changed their responses to disagreement in the sixth semester. finally in the eighth semester, the majority of responses were divided between the previous responses of neutral and disagreement. table 2d. response frequency for neutral that changed to disagreement belief neutral rating 4th sem neutral rating 6th sem disagreement rating* 8th sem #15 the most important part of learning a foreign language is learning the grammar. 64.2% 50% (neutral) 78.5% *the cells where the responses changed are shaded. table 2e. divided opinions for belief 3 belief neutral rating 4th sem disagreement rating 6th sem neutral ratings 8th sem* disagreement ratings 8th sem* #3 language can be thought of as a set of grammatical structures which is learned consciously and controlled by the language learner. 64.2% 49.9% 42.9% 42.9% *the cells containing the divided responses are shaded. universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras90 cota grijalva & ruiz-esparza barajas table 2f shows the frequency of responses for belief number 5. this table also evidences that the eighth semester students were divided in their opinions. table 2f indicates that the students did not change their belief in the fourth and sixth semesters and that in their last semester only half of the participants changed their belief drastically from disagreement to agreement. therefore, half of the participants consider excellent pronunciation important. although not all of the beliefs presented here changed, it is interesting to note the change of perception, especially in beliefs numbers one, two, ten, twelve, eighteen and fifteen. findings from the interviews by the end of the participants’ academic preparation, the semi-structured interviews were carried out with the purpose of expanding and finding out more information about the reasons which influenced their teaching and learning beliefs. the questions addressed their own english learning process to know about the different stages they went through when learning english and to contrast them with their actual view of such process. most of the pre-service teachers came to discover their learning beliefs and how some of them have changed with time and experience. in relation to the first question about how english is learned, most of the pre-service teachers answered that it is learned by practicing the language and carrying out different learning activities. participant 1 (p-1) added “motivation” while participant 2 (p-2) mentioned the use of “different methods, strategies and activities.” these two answers are linked to beliefs #14 and #17. the second question about how english should be taught is closely related to the first question and the same beliefs, although students added that they “now need to have different methods and to observe what students like” (p-2). another participant stated, “teaching should be based on the needs of the students, the different learning styles and the variety of strategies” (p-5) which supported both points of view. the third question about how they learned english gave the information that half of the group interviewed had close contact with the american culture since they studied in bilingual schools or lived for a period of time in the united states. it was interesting to note that although they agreed on the importance of the context, they were more open to accept that the use of appropriate methodology is as important as exposure to the language. participant 1 said, “i had a private teacher and with practice, i suddenly began to speak.” therefore, the student practiced the target language with the teacher. another student said, “i don’t know how i learned, but i used to watch tv or movies in english” (p-5). none of them mentioned that age determined their learning of english as belief #1 states. they were more concerned with receiving enough practice than living in an american context as belief #10 suggest, in which table 2f. divided opinions for belief 5 belief disagreement rating 4th sem disagreement rating 6th sem agreement rating 8th sem* disagreement rating 8th sem* #5 it is important to speak english with excellent pronunciation. 50% 42.7% 50% 49.9% *the cells where the responses changed are shaded. 91profile vol. 15, no. 1, april 2013. issn 1657-0790 (printed) 2256-5760 (online). bogotá, colombia. pages 81-95 pre-service teachers’ beliefs about language teaching and learning... case they changed from agreement to neutral as was manifested in the responses from the questionnaire. the fourth question about how they were taught made them reflect on their own learning process. some of them said, “i was never taught because i lived in the united states” (p-6). in contrast others said, “with practice” (p-10), “little by little we formed sentences” (p-4) or “repeating and repeating sometimes the same things over and over” (p-9). they reported different approaches and experiences. the fifth and the sixth questions related to whether their perspectives on how english is taught and learned generated many comments considering that, as in-ser vice language teachers, they were very much aware of the second language learning processes. as participant 2 said, “i thought all of the students learned the same, but now i know they don’t.” participant 3 stated, “i used to think everything came from the book, now i know the book is not all” while participant 5 added, “i thought that the way we were taught was the correct one, now i know that we all have different learning styles.” this last comment reflects the claim of bailey et al. (2001) that teachers usually teach the same way they were taught making reference to their own learning experience. the comments from participants 2, 3 and 5 also indicate that as they received information from the teaching courses, they modified their perception as well. all of the participants were conscious of their own experiences as language learners and understood the importance of such experience as language teachers. their perspective of how english should be taught changed and they affirmed that “there are other factors, such as the affective one, that it’s very important” (p-1); “it shouldn’t be a lonely process but a collaborative one where the teacher and students must interact and learn” (p-3). they seemed to be more open and receptive to other factors. the interviews shed light on where most of their beliefs come from and also provided interesting information about how they were modified and why. all of the pre-service teachers were conscious of their own experiences as language learners and understood the importance of such experience as language teachers. they were confident in the changes of perceptions, agreeing that the knowledge of grammar is not the only important element when learning a foreign language (belief #15). during the interviews, the participants often em phasized the importance of the information received during the teaching practice courses throughout the program. there were beliefs which were often discussed in class and were very common such as the popular idea that children learn better than adults (belief #1). their responses on the questionnaires were probably neutralized by the fact they learned that “adults proceed through early stages of syntactic and morphological development faster than children do” (collier, 1995, p. 18). another insight was related to the learning of english through content and in an english speaking context. participants reflected on their personal experiences of english learning (half of the participants interviewed learned english in american contexts as mentioned earlier) and confirmed the idea that we tend to believe in learning strategies that are familiar to our experience. what became evident from the interviews was that the participants were very much aware and concerned about the language processes and their implications in teaching and learning. they all agreed that teaching and learning is much more complex than they thought they were. they agreed that the academic preparation they received made them learn and know about the implications of becoming good language teachers. conclusion the main purpose of this study was to identify the beliefs future teachers hold toward teaching and learning, how these evolved and to what extent the impact of the teaching practice courses have on universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras92 cota grijalva & ruiz-esparza barajas them. the results highlight the finding that 40 percent of the beliefs changed while 60 percent remained the same. it can be hypothesized that the teaching preparation received in the program along with the teaching practice courses where the pre-service teachers experience and reflect on teaching, may have influenced the changes presented. the methodology followed in the program recalls williams’ (1999) claims for teacher educators to help learners reshape their beliefs by mediating between theory and practice through reflection and the awareness of learners’ own beliefs. during the interviews, some of the pre-service teachers said that they were in the process of changing some of their practices and it can be suggested that such change is the result of changing beliefs (richards et al., 2001). it is true that more research needs to be done because what pre-service teachers say and what actually happens in the classroom have not been observed. however, this awareness about their own beliefs may lead to change since it involves trying to do things differently (freeman, in richards et al., 2001). the results highlight the pre-service teachers’ concern for becoming good teachers of english as they expressed a deep comprehension of the teachinglearning process. the longitudinal study suggests that they gradually became aware of the complexities involved in teaching and were “more aware of the elements involved in the process of learning” as one of the students said. they all agreed that the process of second language acquisition is complex, takes time and requires a lot of effort to be completed suc cessfully. they also agreed that the teaching preparation received in the program gave them the tools and theoretical basis to understand and be aware of their own teaching and learning beliefs. it is important to add that one of the limitations of the research is that it started at the beginning of the fourth semester and thus, the question arises as to whether the beliefs of the pre-service teachers were the same as when entering the program. another limitation can be that the study is self-reported, thus a new study is being conducted which includes classroom observation. in spite of the limitations found, this study was successful in identifying the pre-service teachers’ beliefs, which is a first step in the process of learning to teach as wideen et al. (1998) declare. moreover, the research was able to track these beliefs and to recognize how they influence the teaching practice views. references abraham, r. g., & vann, r. j. (1987). strategies of two language learners: a case study. in a. wenden, & j. rubin (eds.), learner strategies in language learning (pp. 85 102). london, uk: prentice hall. bailey, k., curtis, a., & nunan, d. (2001). pursuing professional development: the self as source. boston, ma: heinle & heinle. borg, s. (2006). teacher cognition and language education. london, uk: continuum. collier, v. (1995). promoting academic success for esl students. understanding second language acquisition for school. new jersey, nj: teachers of english to speakers of other languages-bilingual educators. creswell, j. w., & plano clark, v. l. (2011). designing and conducting mixed methods research (2nd ed.). thousand oaks, ca: sage publications, inc. cumming, a. (2004). broadening, deepening, and consolidating. language assessment quarterly, 1(1), 5-18. deng, z. (2004). beyond teacher training: singaporean teacher preparation in the era of new educational initiatives. teaching education, 15(2), 159-173. ellis, r., & barkhuizen, g. (2005). analysing learner language. oxford, uk: oxford university press. ferreira, a. m. (2006). researching beliefs about sla: a critical review. in p. kalaja, & a. m. ferreira (eds.), beliefs about sla: new research approaches (pp. 7-33). new york, ny: springer science business media. 93profile vol. 15, no. 1, april 2013. issn 1657-0790 (printed) 2256-5760 (online). bogotá, colombia. pages 81-95 pre-service teachers’ beliefs about language teaching and learning... horwitz, e. (1988). the beliefs about language learning of beginning university foreign language students. the modern language journal, 72(3), 283-294. johnson, k. e. (1999). understanding language teaching: reasoning in action. boston, ma: heinle & heinle publishers. lazaraton, a. (2000). current trends in research methodology and statistics in applied linguistics. tesol quarterly, 34(1), 175-181. pajares, f. (1992). teachers’ beliefs and educational research: cleaning up a messy construct. review of educational research, 62(3), 307-332. richards, j. c., gallo, p. b., & renandya, w. a. (2001). exploring teachers’ beliefs and the processes of change. pac journal, 1(1), 41-58. ruiz-esparza, e. (2009). the role of beliefs about assessment in a bachelor in english language teaching program in mexico. doctoral dissertation, macquarie university at sydney, australia. shulman, l. s. (2005). signature pedagogies in the professions. daedalus, 134(3), 52-59. turner-bisset, r. (2001). expert teaching: knowledge and pedagogy to lead the profession. london, uk: david fulton publishers. wideen, m., mayer-smith, j., & moon, b. (1998). a critical analysis of the research on learning to teach: making the case for an ecological perspective on inquiry. review of educational research, 68(2), 130-178. williams, m. (1999). learning teaching: a social constructivist approach – theory and practice or theory with practice. in h. trappes-lomax & i. mcgrath (eds.), theory in language teacher education (pp. 11-20). london, uk: longman. about the authors sofía d. cota grijalva  holds a ba in british literature, specialization in translation from the universidad nacional autónoma de méxico (unam), and a master in teacher training in english language teaching from the university of exeter, england. full time professor at the university of sonora, mexico. her research areas are teacher training and teacher education. elizabeth ruiz-esparza barajas holds a doctorate of applied linguistics from macquarie university at sydney and an m.a. in education from the university of london. she is a professor and researcher at the university of sonora in mexico. she has held different administrative positions. her research interests are teacher education and assessment. universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras94 cota grijalva & ruiz-esparza barajas appendix a: language learning and teaching questionnaire name ___________________________________ semester _______ date ________ are you currently working as a teacher? ________ if yes, which level(s) ________________ have you had any prior teaching experience? ______________ for how long? ______________ levels taught ___________________ read the following statements about language learning. for each statement indicate if you agree or disagree with the statement. 1=strongly agree; 2=agree; 3=neutral; 4=disagree; 5=strongly disagree statements about language learning 1 2 3 4 5 1. it is easier for children than adults to learn a foreign language. 2. efl students generally need to understand the grammatical rules of english in order to become fluent in the language. 3. language can be thought of as a set of grammatical structures which are learned consciously and controlled by the learner. 4. students only learn what teachers teach them in class. 5. it is important to speak english with excellent pronunciation. 6. it is necessary to know the foreign language culture in order to speak the foreign language. 7. you shouldn’t say anything in english until you can say it correctly. 8. it is easier for someone who already speaks a foreign language to learn another one. 9. language is learned subconsciously in non-academic situations. 10. it is best to learn english in an english-speaking country. 11. english should be taught only through the use of english. 12. efl students learn better if teachers implement cooperative learning. 13. if efl students understand some of the basic grammatical rules of the language, they can usually create lots of new sentences on their own. 14. methodologies play an important role in second language learning. 15. the most important part of learning a foreign language is learning the grammar. 16. usually it is more important for efl students to focus on what they are trying to say and not how to say it. 17. english is better learned when teachers implement different activities for different learning styles. 18. when efl students make oral errors, it is best to ignore them as long as you can understand what they are trying to say. 19. it is better to learn english through content rather than language courses. 20. everyone can learn to speak a foreign language. 95profile vol. 15, no. 1, april 2013. issn 1657-0790 (printed) 2256-5760 (online). bogotá, colombia. pages 81-95 pre-service teachers’ beliefs about language teaching and learning... appendix b: interview questions 1. how is english learned? 2. how should english be taught? 3. how did you learn english? 4. how were you taught? 5. has your perspective about how english is learned changed? how? why? 6. has your perspective about how english is taught changed? how? why? 37profile vol. 16, no. 2, october 2014. issn 1657-0790 (printed) 2256-5760 (online). bogotá, colombia. pages 37-47 teacher collaboration praxis: conflicts, borders, and ideologies from a micropolitical perspective la práctica colaborativa entre docentes: conflictos, fronteras e ideologías desde una perspectiva micropolítica nancy keranen1* fátima encinas prudencio2** benemérita universidad autónoma de puebla, puebla, mexico this paper looks at a feature of teacher collaboration within achinstein’s (2002) micropolitics of collaboration but from an intrapersonal perspective. results discussed feature issues of conflict, borders, and ideologies within each participating teacher rather than between teachers. unresolved or unacknowledged intrapersonal conflict might lead to interpersonal conflict of the type that does not enrich collaborative efforts. findings from this study reveal that participating teachers did experience intrapersonal conflicts that fit within achinstein’s micropolitical framework. these intrapersonal conflicts were not regarded as aberrant or pathological behavior, but as a natural effect of collaboration and growth. key words: collaboration, computer mediated instruction, intrapersonal conflict, micropolitical theory, professional development. en este artículo se analiza un rasgo de la colaboración entre profesores utilizando la micropolítica de la colaboración desde la perspectiva intrapersonal de achinstein. los resultados incluyen temas como los conflictos, fronteras e ideologías de cada profesor participante en lugar de los surgidos entre profesores. un conflicto intrapersonal no resuelto o no reconocido podría conducir a un conflicto interpersonal que no enriquece los esfuerzos de colaboración. los resultados de este estudio revelan que los profesores participantes sí experimentaron conflictos intrapersonales que encajan en el marco de la micropolítica de achinstein. estos conflictos intrapersonales no se consideraron como un comportamiento aberrante o patológico, sino como un efecto natural de la colaboración y el crecimiento. palabras clave: colaboración, conflicto intrapersonal, desarrollo profesional, educación mediada por computadora, teoría micropolítica. * e-mail: lajoya108@yahoo.com ** e-mail: fatimaencinas@gmail.com how to cite this article (apa, 6th ed.): keranen, n., & encinas prudencio, f. (2014). teacher collaboration praxis: conflicts, borders, and ideologies from a micropolitical perspective. profile issues in teachers’ professional development, 16(2), 37-47. http://dx.doi.org/10.15446/profile.v16n2.39994. this article was received on september 20, 2013, and accepted on february 26, 2014. this is an open access article distributed under the terms of the creative commons license attribution-noncommercial-noderivatives 4.0 international license. consultation is possible at http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/. universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras38 keranen & encinas prudencio introduction the study reported in this paper focuses on teacher collaboration from an intrapersonal perspective. the study was a facet of a larger project on the design, implementation, and evaluation of two principle research courses in the english language teaching (elt) undergraduate (bachelors’ level) program in the school of modern languages (fml) of a public university in mexico. the overall focus was on professional development through collaboration related to the formation of researchers, both teachers and students, in line with the increased focus on research in mexico and institutionality (weiss, 2004). as part of their five year elt program, students are required to do a final research project. that and the larger two year project mentioned evaluated the viability of the course design and delivery system based on various qualitative and quantitative outcomes (kirkwood & price, 2006; nachmias, 2002). such an evaluation generated a number of research topics related to teacher collaboration and course design. one of those topics is the one reported in this paper: the collaboration processes of three teachers, presented below. collaboration and networking have generated an overall increasing interest in different disciplines such as sociology and education (muijs, ainscow, chapman, & west, 2011). much of this literature in education focuses on the collaboration in schools, between institutions and in communities or groups either in pre-service or in-service teaching education programs which prepare teachers for the reform processes at different educational levels. however, there is a need to study, “the influence of personal relationships on changes in instruction in more contexts” (mccarthey, woodard, & kang, 2012, p. 54) and both interpersonal relationships as well as intrapersonal perspectives on these on-going collaboration processes. the sense in which we use the term in this paper is on a micro level: three teachers working together—within the “teacher professional community” (achinstein, 2002, p. 421)—representing three levels of experience (25+, 10, and 2 years). this paper will orient the study within the literature on collaboration in academic settings, specifically the dynamics of conflict in such situations and then discuss the collaborative experiences of the three participating teachers in light of this discussion. the data interpretation follows the theoretical framework based on achinstein (2002) but from an intrapersonal perspective rather than an interpersonal perspective. collaboration in academic settings—conflict, borders, and ideology since the mid-1990s, mexican higher education policies have been fostering collaboration and community building among faculty members for the design, implementation, and evaluation of educational programs as well as for research (encinas, busseniers, & ramírez, 2005). however, it is a common belief among faculty members in this setting and in the wider professional context that reaching consensus in both transformation and research processes is very complex, multidimensional, and often generates disagreements (dallmer, 2004; witten, castiñera, brenes, preciado, & tapia, 2007). a significant amount of research in mexico focuses on macro transformation processes in higher education (e.g., ibarra, 2002). a search of educational databases, however, uncovered no studies on micro collaboration processes in this national context. in school settings previous international research tends to present a simplified picture of the situation by underestimating the tensions among teachers and administrators during the consensus building processes (barth, 1990; hayes & kelly, 2000; sergiovanni, 1993) or present39profile vol. 16, no. 2, october 2014. issn 1657-0790 (printed) 2256-5760 (online). bogotá, colombia. pages 37-47 teacher collaboration praxis: conflicts, borders, and ideologies from a micropolitical perspective ing these tensions as aberrant behavior (achinstein, 2002; hartley, 1985; yeomans, 1985). achinstein (2002), whose research focuses on individuals’ and groups’ use of power to implement change in schools, considers that under-evaluating the dilemmas and conflicts that naturally emerge could ill-prepare participants to be able to contribute to these educational processes. furthermore, these processes may be blocked, retarded, hindered, or redesigned depending on how participants manage tensions and challenges. thus, understanding the natural role of conflict (achinstein, 2002; fullan, 1993) in education communities and how faculty members, administrators, and students deal with it seems to be an essential component in the discussion on collaboration and community learning. achinstein (2002), drawing on micropolitical theory, found that conflict, borders, and ideology were at the center of issues related to collaboration and community learning and are underrepresented in research on teacher collaboration. she defines conflict as both a “situation and an ongoing process in which views and behavior diverge . . . or appear to be to some degree incompatible” (p. 425). as a result, attempts to foster collaborative communities in educational settings often result in conflict because collaborative practices challenge wellestablished norms of “privacy, independence, and professional autonomy” (achinstein, 2002, p. 425). border politics in micropolitical theory refers to processes in which individuals see themselves as belonging to groups and not belonging to other groups. a potential source of conflict in teacher collaboration can come from teachers left out of the collaboration because they are not in the “group”. at the same time that a collaborative community is defined, outsider status is also defined. conflict between borders can strengthen communities through a common enemy mentality or, conversely, strengthen communities through accepting and incorporating outsider perspectives to expand borders (chomsky as cited in achinstein, 2002). the third element identified in achinstein’s (2002) study as underrepresented in teacher collaboration literature is that of ideology. every teacher possesses her or his own ideology regarding learning and teaching processes, and these ideologies are the sources for how teachers “make sense of their work and ultimately take action” (achinstein, 2002, p. 427). these ideologies can be synchronized with others in the community or can be at odds with others. political borders within an educational setting may represent a variety of ideologies, some of which could be compatible and others not—a potential source of conflict. however, instead of “pathologizing” conflict as much literature on collaboration does (achinstein, 2002, p. 449), achinstein’s (2002) study of two middle schools in san francisco in the united states revealed that conflict associated with collaborative efforts could be a source of innovation, of allowing new ideas to enter, and creative problem solving. but it has its costs. if the idea of conflict in communities is not acknowledged and used to an advantage, existing political borders can be strengthened and group ideologies within those borders can become more impenetrable, fracturing the community even more. achinstein recommends that conflict become the focus of inquiry in collaboration and community building and be regarded as an opportunity for growth. as mentioned above there is literature on conflict in collaborative settings. however, most of the literature is related to interpersonal conflicts (achinstein, 2002; barth, 1990; hartley, 1985; sergiovanni, 1993; yeomans, 1985). what may be underrepresented in the current literature are studies on intrapersonal conflicts resulting from collaborative efforts. this paper attempts to fill this universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras40 keranen & encinas prudencio gap, on a micro level, by looking at intrapersonal conflict as a result of teacher collaborative efforts. interpersonal conflicts of the nature of those described in this section were not an issue in this study. however, intrapersonal conflicts, defined as those conflicts within the individual related to the context of this study, are the focus and are examined using achinstein’s (2002) micropolitical theory framework. all three participant teachers experienced some level of intrapersonal conflict associated with this collaboration as described below. discussion of collaboration in this setting three teachers participated in this study. each teacher represented a different level of experience. at the time of the study maria (pseudonyms are used for all three teachers) had over 25 years of teaching experience in elt and teacher training. olga had ten years in elt and teacher training, and angela had two years in elt. all three teachers had masters’ degrees. maria and olga had been working as research partners for at least six years prior to this study. this has relevance to this study because these two participants had already established the trust, confidence, respect, and friendship needed for successful collaborative efforts. to understand the above issues, it is important to understand the context of this study. this is explained in the following section. course description the project reported in this paper began in an informal manner in the spring of 2006. maria and olga had worked with the thesis seminars for several years and knew that there were serious problems in the fml with students and their research training and academic writing and reading, so they decided to submit a proposal to their faculty research group to investigate issues related to these courses. angela had not taught the thesis seminars before and asked for maria’s and olga’s support. so they invited her to use an online course management system which olga had successfully integrated the previous year into her thesis seminar course to more formally investigate the efficacy of the course management system to improve thesis seminar outcomes. the course was conducted in face-to-face sessions using an online course management program (yahoo groups). for the fall semester (seminar i) classes were six hours a week. for the spring semester (seminar ii) classes were three hours a week. during the fall semester students generally worked on their introductions and literature reviews. this task involved deciding on a research topic, defining research questions or hypotheses, developing, to some extent, a proposed research methodology and reading related literature, and writing these thesis sections. the spring semester generally consisted of writing the methodology, results, and conclusions chapters. this involved also doing the actual instrument design, piloting, data collection and analysis, and presentation of results. face-to-face sessions varied according to each teacher’s style and the students’ needs. the online portion was designed by the three teachers and set up before the start of classes. this part of the course contained all the course administration papers such as the syllabus and course evaluation criteria. this online portion was set up so that it was also a course schedule. each assignment had its own folder which indicated the due date. each course folder contained another folder which had the assignment instructions, evaluation criteria, and a model assignment or writing outline. also within the assignment folder each class had individual folders where students uploaded their assignments. within each of those class folders each teacher had a “returned papers folder” which was the location for students to retrieve their 41profile vol. 16, no. 2, october 2014. issn 1657-0790 (printed) 2256-5760 (online). bogotá, colombia. pages 37-47 teacher collaboration praxis: conflicts, borders, and ideologies from a micropolitical perspective assignments with teacher feedback. all of these folders were accessible to every member of the group. the online site also had folders of sample writings and useful articles. the research project associated with this course consisted of an evaluation of the course based on several data sources. the evaluation was carried out in may 2006 and again in may 2007. the data sources for the evaluations were: from the students—completed assignments, research projects generated by the course itself, completed theses drafts, overall satisfaction, class statistics (average attendance, dropouts and failures, average grades, and so on)—from the teachers—teacher retrospective end of semester project reports (data source for this present paper), a number of resulting conference presentations and journal articles. the results of the first evaluation (may 2006) were used to make changes to the subsequent year and then the course was evaluated again which gave an indication of the success of the course as well as areas for improvement. table 1 presents the other elements in the larger project as well as the investigation of the teacher collaboration (reported in the last row of the table). these findings are reported in the following section. table 1. the courses, the evaluation and this project date courses evaluation this project may 2006 students • assignments • research projects generated by the course • completed theses drafts • class statistics (average attendance, dropouts and failures, average grades, and so on) teachers • teacher retrospective end of semester project reports evaluation results fall 2006 research seminar i 3 teachers’ collaboration processes spring 2007 research seminar ii 3 teachers’ collaboration processes may 2007 students • assignments • research projects generated by the course • completed theses drafts • class statistics (average attendance, dropouts and failures, average grades, and so on) teachers • teachers’ weekly meetings • teacher retrospective end of semester project reports evaluation results—for further research the teachers’ weekly meetings and the project reports are the data for the project reported in this article} universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras42 keranen & encinas prudencio results micropolitical intrapersonal aspects achinstein’s (2002) study proposes that micropolitical theory can be used as a framework for understanding aspects of teacher collaboration. as discussed above she identifies three factors that influence collaborative efforts: conflict, political borders, and ideologies. however, those factors are discussed in her study as between people involved in collaboration. those issues did not exist in this small scale study between the three teachers but rather within each of the teachers to varying degrees. this phenomenon is significant regarding the literature on teacher collaboration because it may be underrepresented and because it is an aspect that affects collaborative efforts as much as the interpersonal aspects noted in achinstein. the following sections present the three teachers’ reflections on these three factors experienced on an intrapersonal level. the reflections come from weekly research sessions between maria and olga and from retrospective project reports done by all three participants for the 2006-2007 period of this project. achinstein’s (2002) theoretical framework was used to analyze the data that emerged from the teachers’ weekly meetings and final reports. thus, the three issues she detected as central to collaboration and community learning—conflict, borders, and ideology—were the categories used for the analysis. intrapersonal conflicts the data, in this study, indicated that these three teachers reported intrapersonal conflicts rather than interpersonal ones. this was probably due to the characteristics of the three participants, their willingness to collaborate, and the context of this specific investigation. for purposes of this study intrapersonal conflicts are defined as those conflicts which occur not between participants but within individual participants in response to factors related to the collaboration in this project. most of these conflicts associated with this project are associated with feelings of inadequacy in the individual when comparing herself with one or both of the others. for example, these two lines one from olga’s fall 2006 project report and the other from maria’s fall 2006 project report illustrate the nature of this intrapersonal conflict related to inadequacy: olga: i should have worked more on literature reviews. maria: i should have worked more the methodology. it is interesting that both independently found some weakness to report about their own work. the regret or inadequacy expressed in the statements was based on their comparing their performance with the other teacher’s. maria and olga had often discussed this issue in their weekly research meetings. maria felt that because olga was at the time working on the methodology section of her pilot study related to her doctoral work, she had a stronger focus on methodology. this was probably an accurate assumption. almost all of olga’s students had identified and designed their research methodologies and five of her 23 students had collected their data at the end of the fall semester. this is an action almost never accomplished in the fall semester which is usually dedicated, as mentioned above, to writing the thesis introductions and literature reviews. however, as indicated in those two lines above, after talking to maria and listening to how she worked with her students to help them understand the fine points of literature reviews, olga realized at the end of the fall semester that she should have done more with her students related to writing the literature review. when comparing herself with maria and maria’s class she had feelings of inadequacy in 43profile vol. 16, no. 2, october 2014. issn 1657-0790 (printed) 2256-5760 (online). bogotá, colombia. pages 37-47 teacher collaboration praxis: conflicts, borders, and ideologies from a micropolitical perspective what she did in this respect. as discussed in their weekly sessions maria’s class worked in groups and analyzed a variety of texts for structure, form, and content related to literature reviews. many of their classes were dedicated to this task. in general olga felt that the face-to-face element of maria’s class was much better delivered than hers was. these feelings of insecurity transcend levels of experience. maria writes that teachers with years of experience do feel insecurities: novice teachers often feel that there is a moment in which one stops feeling insecure about one’s teaching, if they only knew that each new context brings new challenges and that feeling of insecurity. one of my colleagues is working on her phd and i ’m not so, there was a moment in which i felt i was in disadvantage. i started reading, talking to other colleagues especially about research methods. moreover, i haven’t attended research seminar courses in almost 10 years and although i try to read and attend conferences, i know how important it is to attend continuing education formal seminars on these issues. so, this realization has helped me understand how much i need to learn and organize my time in order to attend research seminars and workshops. however, angela’s intrapersonal conflicts were principally associated with her perceived lack of experience. as mentioned before, fall 2006 was her first time teaching the research seminar as well as other courses, so she was aware of her lack of experience. she expresses it in her report: my lack of experience was my main internal conflict because when your work is exposed online, everyone can notice it. in the beginning, there was a pressure to upload corrected papers and “feel” at the same time that someone was going to look at all your comments to your students. i put a lot of pressure on myself and i worried that i was giving the proper kind of feedback to my students. this isn’t such a crucial element when your work isn’t exposed to everyone else! it is interesting that angela expressed this idea of “exposure” in this extract. in discussing this idea, all three teachers came to the conclusion that this kind of collaboration—where one feels exposed— is analogous in a number of aspects to being unclothed in front of your other team members. we feel the following experience, while anecdotal, illustrates this situation. besides her spring 2007 thesis seminar ii maria also had a thesis seminar which was not part of this current project. another colleague also had a spring thesis seminar but was experiencing problems related to the course. maria told this teacher about the group site she was using for her course and gave this teacher access to it. within just a few days the teacher told maria that her students did not want to work that way and that she would not participate. however, maria had given this teacher her own (maria’s) username and password, so this teacher could have unlimited access to maria’s group but without contributing anything to the group. retrospectively maria regretted giving this level of access to a teacher who declined to participate because maria now felt exposed, naked, while the other teacher could move around the online site “clothed”. she could see all of maria’s students’ work, all the assignments, all the feedback, and so on but without exposing any of her own or her students’ work. we feel this incident illustrates the nature of this type of collaboration—and it seems supported by the study data. to be able to feel comfortable with this kind of exposure, team members have to have a combination of trust, confidence, and even a certain amount of friendship. but perhaps most importantly there has to be a feeling of reciprocity. team members cannot feel that they are exposing themselves while another team member is not. again the analogy of being naked before your colleagues seems particularly apt. most people are not comfortable being naked in front of others unless it is a situation shared by all members. universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras44 keranen & encinas prudencio borders in micropolitical theory, borders are described as a defining mechanism for the placement of people and ideas (achinstein, 2002). the idea is very similar to national borders or any other kind of structure that people and ideas can be put into and seen to differentiate from other people and ideas. issues of insider and outsider status emerge as borders are defined. in the case of this study, maria and olga, because they have been working together for so long, had well established political boarders. as maria described the relationship: olga and i have been working together for about 6 years and this certainly helps. we have been reflecting on how difficult it would have been to show all one’s work to someone in our own faculty whom we didn’t trust. as soon as something happens we just talk about it and we find a way to deal with it. furthermore, angela was very open and willing to cooperate. so i think we were really lucky. according to angela’s comments below, it seemed as if there was a time that she might have been feeling like a sort of immigrant in maria and olga’s country: as the newest in the academic team, i always tried to show a disposition and a positive attitude toward the course. my main internal problem was to provide useful comments, interesting observations, and productive discussions to contribute and feel integrated into the team. she had this feeling not only about her situation but felt her students could feel in a disadvantageous situation as well: another worry was to integrate my students with others from the experienced teachers without feeling in disadvantage. i tried to motivate and encourage them all the time, to forget the situation that they were working with the new “acquisition” [the new teacher]. surprisingly angela’s students had indicated that they wanted to participate in the theses oral presentations which the other two groups were doing. however, because angela experienced some problems and could not participate in the group for the first three months of the spring semester, she felt outside the border again: finally, my students wanted to be integrated in the virtual community when presenting their final version of their papers. i decided not to participate because we did not follow the same rhythm in the second course and i did not want to press my students, but they were missing that collective virtual team work. ideologies teacher ideologies are probably the most influential aspect of collaboration issues. an ideology is a central frame that each person puts around her or his thoughts, opinions, and actions. what people do and think are based on the ideologies they hold (jameson, ferrell, kelly, walker, & ryan, 2006). this is a particularly important concept in any study attempting to understand teacher collaboration. in the case of this study the three teachers’ ideologies overlapped in some instances and diverged in others. all three participants shared ideological perspectives in regard to the efficacy of using an online component. all three teachers had experience with online courses and knew the advantages of using this kind of technology. all three also believed that sharing work and experiences would be an incredible asset in their understanding and ultimate improvement of the thesis courses. all three trusted each other and believed in the project enough to make the collaboration possible. the divergence in individual ideologies is probably most significant regarding aspects of faceto-face instruction. in angela’s case, because this 45profile vol. 16, no. 2, october 2014. issn 1657-0790 (printed) 2256-5760 (online). bogotá, colombia. pages 37-47 teacher collaboration praxis: conflicts, borders, and ideologies from a micropolitical perspective was her first time teaching this course, her teaching beliefs for this course were not well established: another conflict was the combination of different teaching methodologies for this seminar, which is not another subject; it’s a methodological path to show your students. i wasn’t sure if those chosen ways were the best to follow with the seminar. angela modified her ideological stance on faceto-face instruction in response to the online course design: before starting this group work, i had different curricula for the course; i had prepared the topics with power point presentations. when i joined to the work online, i had to adjust my materials and adopt the scheduled program. this kind of openness and willingness to change or adapt (rather than rigidly adhering to personal ideologies) for the sake of the collaborative effort is an example of what acceptance of ideological differences can do for personal, group, and professional growth. if angela had been unwilling to change her already carefully planned lessons, she might have missed the opportunity to work collaboratively with other teachers and the subsequent collegiality and exposure to new ideas and methods. if this had happened, maria and olga, likewise, would have missed working and learning from angela. recognizing the power of ideological beliefs and making concessions for the sake of collaborative work do not mean abandoning personal creativity and control in the classroom. angela, maria, and olga conducted their face-to-face portions of the course differently based on their own teaching beliefs. however, as mentioned above, all of them struggled with internal conflicts regarding how well they were conducting their classes when comparing themselves with the other. these internal conflicts, challenges of personal exposure, and modifications in personal ideologies may be one source of teachers’ reluctance to participate collaboratively. it is sometimes easier to continue on in ways that are comfortable and familiar however stagnating they may be, than to be faced with having to re-conceptualize existing beliefs and practices (myers, 1993). understanding intrapersonal conflicts, borders, and ideologies as threads that construct consensus and collaboration processes in teacher higher education contexts could enhance and deepen our perspectives on these processes. conclusion findings of the collaborative component of this research project have been presented using the micropolitical perspective proposed by achinstein (2002). data from retrospective reports were analyzed based on the framework of intrapersonal conflict, borders, and ideology. achinstein’s study reported the effects of those factors on collaboration from an interpersonal perspective. the study reported in this paper looked at those factors from an intrapersonal perspective. the value in recognizing that participants in collaborative situations or efforts experience intrapersonal conflicts as described in this paper might lead to an explanation or understanding of interpersonal issues that arise from collaborative efforts. in other words, it might be that unresolved or unrecognized intrapersonal conflict leads to interpersonal conflict of the type that does not enrich collaborative efforts. however, understanding and expecting these reactions can possibly contribute to making teacher collaboration of the type reported here more successful. references achinstein, b. (2002). conflict amid community: the micropolitics of teacher collaboration. teachers college record, 104(3), 421-455. barth, r. s. (1990). improving schools from within: teachers, parents, and principals can make the difference. san francisco, ca: jossey-bass. universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras46 keranen & encinas prudencio dallmer, d. (2004). collaborative relationships in teacher education: a personal narrative of conflicting roles. curriculum inquiry, 34(1), 29-45. encinas, f., busseniers, p., & ramírez, j. l. (2005). conformación y consolidación en méxico del área de la enseñanza y del aprendizaje de lenguas extranjeras y el desarrollo de la investigación [configuration and strengthening of research development and foreign languages learning and teaching in mexico]. in j. l. ramírez (coord.), las investigaciones sobre la enseñanza y el aprendizaje de lenguas extranjeras en méxico (pp. 287-312). méxico: plaza y valdés. fullan, m. (1993). change forces: probing the depths of educational reform. london, uk: the falmer press. hartley, d. (1985). understanding the primary school: a sociological analysis. london, uk: croom helm. hayes, m. t., & kelly, m. (2000). transgressed boundaries: reflections on the problematics of culture and power in developing a collaborative relationship with teachers at an elementary school. curriculum inquiry, 30(4), 451-472. ibarra, e. (2002) la “nueva universidad” en mexico: transformaciones recientes y perspectivas [the “new university” in mexico: recent transformations and perspectives]. revista mexicana de investigación educativa, 7(14), 75-105. jameson, j., ferrell, g., kelly, j., walker, s., & ryan, m. (2006). building trust and shared knowledge in communities of e-learning practice: collaborative leadership in the jisc elisa and camel lifelong learning projects. british journal of educational technology, 37(6), 949-967. kirkwood, a., & price, l. (2006). adaption for a changing environment: developing learning and teaching with information and communication technologies. the international review of research in open and distance learning, 7(2). retrieved from http://www.irrodl.org/ index.php/irrodl/article/view/294/624 mccarthey, s. j., woodard, r. l., & kang, g. (2012). access and teachers’ perceptions of professional development in writing. in c. bazerman, c. dean, k. lunsford, s. null, p. rogers, & a. stansell (eds.), international advances in writing research: cultures, places, measures (pp. 41-59). fort collins, co: the wac clearinghouse. muijs, d., ainscow, m., chapman, c., & west, m. (2011). collaboration and networking in education. london, uk: springer. doi: 10.1007/978-94-007-0283-7_4 myers, m. (1993). to boldly go. in j. edge & k. richards (eds.), teachers develop teachers research: papers on classroom research and teacher development (pp. 10-25). oxford, uk: heinemann. nachmias, r. (2002). a research framework for the study of a campus-wide web-based academic instruction project. internet and higher education, 5(3), 213-229. sergiovanni, t. j. (1993). organizations or communities? changing the metaphor changes the theory. paper presented at the annual meeting of the american educational research association, atlanta, georgia. retrieved from eric database. (ed376008) weiss, e. (2004). la gestión de la investigación educativa [the administration of educational research]. revista mexicana de investigación educativa, 9(21), 261-268. witten, m., castiñera, t., brenes, m., preciado, p., & tapia, r. (2007). exploring innovation processes in a public university in central mexico. mextesol journal special issue, 31(2), 21-32. yeomans, r. (1985). are primary teachers primarily people? education 3-13: international journal of primary, elementary and early years education, 13(2), 6-11. 47profile vol. 16, no. 2, october 2014. issn 1657-0790 (printed) 2256-5760 (online). bogotá, colombia. pages 37-47 teacher collaboration praxis: conflicts, borders, and ideologies from a micropolitical perspective about the authors nancy keranen holds a phd from the university of lancaster, united kingdom. she is a teacher in the undergraduate and postgraduate english language teaching programs at the benemérita universidad autónoma de puebla, mexico. her principal areas of research are academic writing, research supervision, and coaching and professional development processes of researchers. fátima encinas prudencio holds a masters’ in english teaching from aston university, united kingdom. she has coordinated both undergraduate and graduate elt programs and has more than 30 years of experience in teacher training and english teaching. her research interests are literacy, research, and teacher professional development. 63profile vol. 16, no. 1, april 2014. issn 1657-0790 (printed) 2256-5760 (online). bogotá, colombia. pages 63-76 the impact of a professional development program on english language teachers’ classroom performance el impacto de un programa de desarrollo profesional en el desempeño en clase de profesores de lengua inglesa frank giraldo*1 universidad tecnológica de pereira, pereira, colombia this article reports the findings of an action research study on a professional development program and its impact on the classroom performance of in-service english teachers who worked at a language institute of a colombian state university. questionnaires, semi-structured interviews, class observations, and a researcher’s journal were used as data collection instruments. findings suggest that these inservice teachers improved their classroom performance as their teaching became more communicative, organized, attentive to students’ needs, and principled. in addition, theory, practice, reflection, and the role of the tutor combined effectively to help the in-service teachers improve classroom performance. it was concluded that these programs must be based on teachers’ philosophies and needs and effectively articulate theory, practice, experience, and reflection. key words: in-service training, professional development, reflective teaching, english teacher competence, english teacher performance. en este artículo se presentan los resultados de una investigación-acción en un programa de desarrollo profesional y su impacto en el desempeño de clase de profesores de inglés de un instituto de lenguas de una universidad pública colombiana. para recoger los datos se utilizaron cuestionarios, entrevistas, observaciones de clase y el diario del investigador. los resultados sugieren mejorías en el desempeño de los docentes, ya que la enseñanza fue más comunicativa, organizada, atenta a las necesidades de los estudiantes y basada en principios. la teoría, la práctica, la reflexión y el papel desempeñado por el tutor se combinaron de manera efectiva para ayudar a los profesores a mejorar. se concluye que los programas de desarrollo profesional deben planearse con base en las filosofías y necesidades de los profesores y articular la teoría, la práctica, la experiencia y la reflexión de manera más efectiva. palabras clave: desarrollo profesional, competencia del profesor de inglés, desempeño del profesor de inglés, enseñanza reflexiva, formación en servicio. * e-mail: icaros@utp.edu.co how to cite this article (apa, 6th ed.): giraldo, f. (2014). the impact of a professional development program on english language teachers’ classroom performance. profile issues in teachers’ professional development, 16(1), 63-76. http://dx.doi.org/10.15446/profile.v16n1.38150. this article was received on may 17, 2013, and accepted on october 15, 2013. universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras64 giraldo introduction the professional development of english language teachers has progressed from a transmission-oriented approach to one in which their realities are catered to. scholars in the field of professional development and teacher education agree that these programs should respond to teachers’ needs, be based upon their close realities, and account for teachers as learners of their teaching. furthermore, instead of top-down approaches in which experts “impose” models and recipes on teachers, authors urge context-sensitive models (gonzález, 2007) that ref lect teachers’ decision-making and experience. thus, the field of english language teaching has come to understand professional development not as the idea of an accumulation of skills but as a highly critical process. freeman (1989) defines professional development as: a strategy of influence and indirect intervention that works on complex, integrated aspects of teaching; these aspects are idiosyncratic and individual. the purpose of development is for the teacher to generate change through increasing or shifting awareness. (p. 40) for t he typ e of professiona l de velopment freeman defines to take place, there are different strategies, one of which is professional development programs. authors such as villegas-reimers (2003), díaz-maggioli (2004), and wilde (2010) agree that these programs must engage teachers in reflective and collaborative work; they must also include teachers’ skills, knowledge, and experience. lastly, professional development programs should provide teachers with opportunities to develop their professional practice and receive feedback on it. because of this type of practice, teachers are conceived of as learners. taken together, these authors recommend what professional development programs should be like. what we need to further understand is the actual realization of how these programs come about when they are designed and implemented. school support and adequate infrastructure as well as teacher willingness are some of the conditions for professional development programs to be successful. by taking the aforementioned principles and conditions into consideration, this research study sought to elucidate the impact a professional development program would have on six english teachers’ classroom performance. the following sections describe how the specific professional development program influenced the teachers’ philosophies, understood as the framework composed of their skills, experience, knowledge, and beliefs in language teaching (richards, 2011). action research (kemmis as cited in hopkins, 1995) was used as a way to evaluate the program and how it contributed to teachers’ professional development. this article begins with an overview of what professional development and classroom performance mean; it then explains to what problem the program responded, states the research questions, and describes the setting in which the study took place. later, the article describes the research methodology for the study, including the data collection instruments and techniques. finally, the findings are explained and conclusions argued on the specific matter of designing and i mpl e me nt i ng profe ss i ona l d e vel opme nt programs for english language teachers. literature review in order to explore the issue of professional de velopment, training should be defined as well. freeman (1989) defines training as the learning of discrete teaching items. in a training program, the collaborator (or tutor) is in charge of teaching these discrete stratagems to teachers so that they improve teaching skills such as presenting vocabulary, responding to student answers, and others. development, freeman continues, is about helping teachers to develop constant awareness of their experiences as professionals. in 65profile vol. 16, no. 1, april 2014. issn 1657-0790 (printed) 2256-5760 (online). bogotá, colombia. pages 63-76 the impact of a professional development program on english language teachers’ classroom performance professional development, the collaborator’s role is to help teachers to reflect upon their teaching. díaz-maggioli (2004) differentiates traditional de velopment f rom visionar y professiona l de velopment. as can be seen in table 1, the author understands the former as an approach to education in which teachers are recipients of knowledge that is not meaningful to them but is presented by experts in the field. in this sense, traditional development is not contextor teacher-sensitive. on the contrary, v i s i on ar y profe ss i on a l d e vel opme nt i s ab out helping teachers grow in their profession and has a constructivist perspective to learning. richards and farrell (2005) further differentiate the terms training and development. these authors define training as actions that teachers perform and that have an immediate impact on their contexts. in their view, training is about preparing teachers for the teaching task itself, that is, techniques that would help them cope with teaching situations such as adapting materials and grouping learners among others. development, in contrast, involves teachers’ knowledge of themselves and of their teaching situations. whereas training is a top-down approach to teacher education—experts decide what comprises training programs—development is bottom-up because it “often involves examining different dimensions of a teacher’s practice as a basis for reflective review” (richards & farrell, 2005, p. 4). among the dimensions that richards and farrell address are, for example, the understanding of how students learn language and the analysis of teachers’ philosophies for language teaching. gonzález (2007) proposes a situated model of professional development for english language teachers. in her view, a situated model would ac commodate the specific needs of english teachers in colombia. first of all, the model proposed by the author is shaped by kumaravadivelu’s (as cited in gonzález, 2007) post-method pedagog y ; specifically, the parameters of particularity, practicality, and possibility are called for. gonzález implies that professional development programs should be devised for specific contexts, encourage the making of contextual theory and reflection, and take teachers’ voices into account. second, gonzález proposes the discussion of external and local knowledge so that teachers have the chance to critically reflect upon the former and deconstruct and (re)construct the latter. it is about making local knowledge relevant for the more global discussion table 1. differences between traditional and visionary professional development (díaz-maggioli, 2004) characteristics of traditional professional development characteristics of visionary professional development • top-down decision-making • a “fix-it” approach • lack of program ownership among teachers • prescriptive ideas • one-size-fits-all techniques • fixed and untimely delivery methods • little or no follow-up • decontextualized programs • lack of proper evaluation • pedagogical (child-centered) instruction • collaborative decision-making • a growth-driven approach • collective construction of programs • inquiry-based ideas • tailor-made techniques • varied and timely delivery methods • adequate support systems • context-specific programs • proactive assessment • andragogical (adult-centered) instruction universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras66 giraldo of language teaching. third, the author argues that local scholars and national authorities should engage in dialog so that there are more perspectives on the construction of situated development programs. further, she urges that local academia be heard and taken into account so that this academia does not disappear. finally, gonzález’s model advocates for accepting criticisms of colonial models of professional development; critical divergent voices, she states, must be heard in the construction of a professional development model that would actually respond to the needs of colombian english language teachers. richards (2011) explores ten core dimensions that, in his mind, make up the profile of exemplary english language teachers. the dimensions range from knowing the language of instruction to the capacity to derive theory from practice. below, this article will briefly address each of the ten dimensions richards defines. the first dimension is called the language proficiency factor. the author explains how both native and nonnative speakers of the english language need to possess a series of skills related to how they use language. one of those skills is providing input at a level that is appropriate for learners. the second dimension is the role of content knowledge, which is divided into two: disciplinary content knowledge and pedagogical content knowledge; the former is specific to language teaching and involves knowledge of the history of this field, including disciplines such as pragmatics, sociolinguistics, phonology, and syntax; the latter comprises the ability to plan curricula, reflect upon practice, and manage classroom environments. the third dimension entails teaching skills. richards argues that these are the types of competences that teachers develop over time in professional development programs and because of reflective teaching. richards (2011) states that “teaching from this perspective is an act of performance, and for a teacher to be able to carry herself through the lesson, she has to have a repertoire of techniques and routines at her fingertips” (p. 9). richards argues that teaching skills are the result of teachers’ decision-making and as such should be considered in teacher training. the fourth dimension is contextual knowledge, which refers to the knowledge that teachers have about the conditions and human and material resources of the contexts in which they teach; knowing the school curriculum and policies for disciplinary issues fall into this dimension. the fifth dimension the author explores is the language teacher’s identity; this reflects the different roles that teachers are expected to display depending on school policies and even the cultures where they teach. richards (2011) defines identity as “the differing social and cultural roles teacherlearners enact through their interactions with their students during the process of learning” (p. 14). the sixth dimension in a teacher’s profile is referred to as learner-focused teaching. richards argues that teacher performance can be influenced by student learning and that exemplary teachers familiarize themselves with student behavior, devise teaching practices based on this knowledge, and keep students engaged during lessons. making the classroom a community of learning and personalized teaching are two skills that fall under the category of learner-focused teaching. pedagogical reasoning skills is the seventh dimension the author defines; it denotes teachers’ ability to make informed choices before, during, and after class. these skills are shaped by the actions, beliefs, knowledge, and opinions teachers have of themselves, their learners and their contexts. below are four of these skills: 1. analyze potential lesson content (e.g., a text, an advertise ment, etc.). 2. identify specific linguistic goals (e.g., in the area of speaking, vocabulary, etc.) that could be developed from the chosen content. 3. anticipate any problems that might occur and ways of resolving them. 67profile vol. 16, no. 1, april 2014. issn 1657-0790 (printed) 2256-5760 (online). bogotá, colombia. pages 63-76 the impact of a professional development program on english language teachers’ classroom performance 4. make appropriate decisions about time, sequencing, and grouping arrangements (richards, 2011, p. 20). richards argues that teachers’ philosophies should be addressed in professional development programs because they help teachers learn. teaching philosophies are shaped by the ability to reflect upon experience and arrive at principles for second-language teaching and learning. this is the eighth dimension, called theorizing from practice. the ninth dimension involves belonging to a community of practice. the author explains how teacher communities should work together toward common goals and engage more individualistic members to share with the community at large. lastly, professionalism is the tenth dimension, and it relates to the idea that language teachers are part of a scientific academic educational field and that, because of this, they should be familiar with what is current in the field. more importantly, richards suggests that teachers must be critical and reflective upon themselves and their practices. some questions for reflection leading to professionalism could be: 1. what are my strengths and limitations as a language teacher? 2. how and why do i teach the way i do? 3. what are the gaps in my knowledge? 4. how can i mentor less experienced teachers? (richards, 2011, p. 28) through the cycles in action research (kemmis & mctaggart, 1988), the present study explores how a situated professional development program has an impact on the classroom performance of english language teachers. as has been explored so far in this paper, performance is far more complex than routine actions in class. research studies on professional development programs seem to agree upon the idea that these programs should be localized because they allow teachers to reflect upon pertinent common goals. ariza and ramos (2010) conducted an action research study in the same institute where the present study was developed, with a different group of ten english teachers. in their study, the researchers found that the teacher study group (tsg) they implemented allowed the participants to make connections between theory and practice; in addition, the participants thought the tsg was a space to receive colleague support for problematic areas in their own teaching contexts. finally, the researchers concluded that the tsg helped the participants to become more reflective about their teaching practice. in álvarez and sánchez’s (2005) study, the researchers found that the study group they investigated helped teachers to become aware of their teaching practices and of the need to update themselves continuously. additionally, the participants had the chance to share pedagogical ideas and improve their language proficiency. activities in which the teachers played the role of learners were meaningful for them because they became aware of teaching issues that affect learners. furthermore, sierra (2007) explains how teachers involved in a study group learned about issues having to do with teaching (e.g., what are learning strategies); they also learned theory and practice regarding res e arch. the aut hor st ates t hat in this study, the teachers developed research skills (developing a research proposal), critical thinking skills (questioning, arguing, and reasoning) related to the contents they studied, and collaborative skills (e.g., working in teams). the last finding in sierra’s study was about teacher attitudes. the participants were participative and contributed to the study group; they also developed positive attitudes toward being engaged in a study group. finally, the findings in cadavid, quinchía, and díaz’s (2009) study were divided into three categories: participants as language learners, participants as english language teachers in elementary school, and participants as reflective practitioners. for the first category, the researchers found that the participants in the professional development program improved their communicative competence in writing; in the second category, the participants stated that they universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras68 giraldo became aware of their roles as teachers and included new practices in their instruction; in the last category, the participants showed reflective skills in that they were able to critically connect theory and practice by analyzing whether it was possible to apply some of the ideas in the program to their own teaching contexts. the problem understanding the real impact of a professional development program on the day-to-day practice of english language teachers is of interest in teacher education; furthermore, basing these types of programs on the specific contexts of teachers should be addressed and studied. that is why the present study was carried out, seeking to find answers for the following research question: • what is the effect of a professional development program on in-service english language teachers’ classroom performance in an english language institute? the problem was identified in a diagnostic stage prior to the implementation of the program. during this stage, the following data collection instruments were used to argue for the need to develop a professional development program: a questionnaire inquiring into teachers’ needs and wants, an informal interview with the instituto de lenguas extranjeras (institute of foreign languages, ilex) coordinator, one classroom observation and one semi-structured interview with each of the six participants in this research study. after the data analysis in the diagnostic stage, the five problematic areas shown in figure 1 emerged; they later became the main areas to be covered by the professional development program. context the present study was conducted at ilex, the language institute belonging to universidad tecnológica de pereira. the institute is responsible for teaching english to the student population at the university, and its curriculum includes other languages such as french, italian, and mandarin chinese. in the english language curriculum, the ilex includes sixteen courses ranging from elementary to upperintermediate english. the ilex seeks to help teachers to develop professionally by means of workshops that address relevant issues in language teaching. the professional development program derived from this study was another strategy to help ilex teachers to continue growing as professionals. figure 1. taxonomy of the results in the diagnostic stage needs identi�ed among the in-service teachers re�ection on and awareness of one's own classroom practice practice of current language teaching methodologies awareness of the importance of student motivation and participation in class tasks for diíferent learning styles and strategies approach to grammar teaching 69profile vol. 16, no. 1, april 2014. issn 1657-0790 (printed) 2256-5760 (online). bogotá, colombia. pages 63-76 the impact of a professional development program on english language teachers’ classroom performance method the present study relied upon the cycles of action research methodology as proposed by kemmis and mctaggart (1988). all workshops in the program were analyzed and improved upon based on the data collected. the techniques for data collection used while the program unfolded were questionnaires on each of the workshops, two classroom observations and two semi-structured interviews with each of the participants, and a researcher’s journal. the role of the researcher was that of participant observer because he was the one responsible for guiding the program workshops. six novice in-service english language teachers were involved in the study. at the time the research was conducted, they were english teachers at ilex as well as students of a language teaching program (licenciatura en lengua inglesa, universidad tecnológica de pereira). when the professional development program began, all six in-service teachers had had teaching experience of less than six months. the questionnaire was implemented to evaluate each weekly workshop; the classroom observations as well as the semistructured interviews took place after the third and the sixth workshops; finally, entries in the researcher’s journal were written every week, after each of the workshops. data analysis followed a grounded theor y approach (glasser & strauss as cited in birks & mills, 2011). the results from each of the instruments were grouped, and overlapping areas were identified across all four data collection techniques. broad categories emerging from all four instruments were identified so as to answer the research question for this study. findings the findings from this study were three major ones, with corresponding results for each. first, information from all four data collection techniques explained the direct impact of the professional development program on the teachers’ classroom performance. second, based on the data analysis, the teachers demonstrated awareness of their teaching and classroom performance. finally, the data collected explain how the professional development program represented a reason for improvement among the six in-service english language teachers. on classroom performance the first group of findings reflects the teachers’ changing performance while teaching in class. this article will now refer to specific areas that seemed to be improvements between the diagnostic stage both prior to the professional development program and while it was being conducted. the data come mostly from class observations and represent what the teachers did well according to contemporary principles of language teaching. the findings show some insights into teachers’ views of language and the ways they operationalized these views in their teaching; additionally, there is some indication of growing attention to learners’ needs and motivations. the results across all four instruments reflected a change in the theory of language the teachers displayed in their lessons. before the program, the way they viewed english was structural. however, because of their development in the program, the teachers developed a more holistic view of language and proposed activities in which students could interact with each other communicatively and meaningfully. overall, their lessons went from being an accumulation of structures to real communication as a teaching principle. sample d at a f rom one quest ionnaire t hat evaluated one of the program workshops: a. from now on, in my teaching, i should not: in-service teacher 1: focus on the structure but on the meaning. in-service teacher 2: focus so much on grammar and structure. b. from now on, in my teaching, i should: in-service teacher 4: implement more communicative activities. universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras70 giraldo in-service teacher 5: make clear if the activities or tasks are really communicative or not. the following data are taken f rom a class observation’s transcription. they first show two of the evaluation criteria for the observed lesson, along with corresponding comments. the other extract comes from the general feedback given to the in-service teacher in the form of improvements (or strengths during the lesson). 1. lesson focuses more on meaning than on structure. yes _x_ no ___ when students were filling in the table with their classmate’s daily routine, they were using grammar as meaning, not as cold inert structure! good thing they did this. 2. grammar is used functionally or communicatively (to express meaning) and not as an end in itself. yes _x_ no ___ same as above! the fact they used it to do something makes grammar functional…keep this key principle in mind for every lesson you teach. they learn something and learn how to do something with what they learn. improvements between the diagnostic and action stages • students use language structures meaningfully and to interact with others. • language at the oral level is then used for a writing product, which means activities are coherent somehow. • if there was a focus on structure, this structure(s) was used communicatively. the way the in-service teachers taught grammar followed a principled approach. rather than planning explicit grammar activities, they proposed discovery ones in which students could identify the grammar items by thems elves; therefore, grammar was taught inductively. additionally, the grammar the teachers addressed in lessons was used by students in communicative interactional activities, which agrees with the idea of meaningful english explained in the previous finding. following is an extract from a different class observation. 13. grammar is addressed based on current agreements on the matter: taught inductively and deductively, contextualized, with a focus on meaning, and communicatively. yes _x_ no___ yes, the house description was perfect to make sense of all the issues we have discussed in grammar teaching, was it not? they had input to discover, used grammar meaningfully to describe their own houses, and then focused on emerging mistakes during the feedback session. improvements between the diagnostic and action stages again, your grammar teaching is improving continuously, and the pacing for this is consistent. now you are teaching with an approach that has both inductive and deductive teaching. congratulations! the lessons that the in-service teachers taught were coherent. they made sure that each procedure in an activity would be articulated. this skill followed three stages. first, activities had a beginning, in which teachers introduced a topic, prepared students, modeled behavior, and others. second, teachers were attentive to keeping students engaged on a core interactional or comprehension task. finally, the last part of each activity, or the post-task, served as feedback for the task students had just done. topics were used as organizing principles during lessons, which made them appear coherent as well. the following data were taken from a class observation protocol that was used to observe one of the in-service teachers. 8. activities (or tasks) have a clear structure of beginning, middle, and end. yes _x_ no___ yes, activities were phased coherently. this was perfect for students to recycle key language from the lesson and to use it well. trial and error occurred and therefore learning and acquisition took place. you prepared students for tasks, had them do a core task and then corrected it to focus on language. 71profile vol. 16, no. 1, april 2014. issn 1657-0790 (printed) 2256-5760 (online). bogotá, colombia. pages 63-76 the impact of a professional development program on english language teachers’ classroom performance improvements between the diagnostic and action stages lesson coherence: between eliciting parts of a house, describing your own as support and listening activity, and the students talking about their own house, coherence was high. good you did this! the teachers implemented current methodologies for language teaching. aligned with the ideas in the previous paragraphs, the teachers taught lessons based on the pillars of communicative language teaching: they gave learners the chance to interact meaningfully with each other, used authentic materials, and referred to communicative competence as a goal in their teaching. task-based language teaching was evident when the teachers proposed tasks for real-life purposes in which language was used as a means to an end. lastly, the teachers used content-based instruction as a way to help the learners learn something through the english language. the following samples are also taken from an observation protocol. 5. the in-service teacher includes authentic content in the materials used in class. yes _x_ no ___ information about ratings is authentic language which is simple to learn. and yet it is useful! when you were presenting the ratings, they had descriptions. this was perfect for them to interact with simple authentic language. you shouldn’t have read it yourself, though. it would have been a great reading activity. edited: when they associated ratings and movies, there was some kind of meaningful language interaction going on. in the case of movie treats, most content depended on your presentation of them. how to do this more learner-centered and facilitating teaching? the principle here: if they are exposed to language that they are learning, what are they learning it for? in this activity, you did have that principle in mind. while lessons developed, the teachers were attentive to students’ needs and motivations. they acted upon students’ needing explanations, examples, clear instructions, and a helping hand during core tasks. they also activated their students’ learning strategies so that they could approach tasks more successfully. the motivation students showed was evident when they volunteered to participate and also while they were engaged in meaningful communicative activities in which they were asked to interact with each other. 9. the in-service teacher supports learners in all these stages using varied techniques to do so. yes _x_ no___ yes, this did happen when you modeled by asking questions about how you wanted them to describe the displayed pictures. 12. motivation is activated and maintained during lesson. yes _x_ no___ you did use extrinsic motivation for the treasure hunt task. the hunt seemed intrinsically motivating because the students did need to be quick or use their understanding to accomplish the task. and remember that one of the features of motivated students is that they are goal-oriented. on awareness of teaching and classroom performance the second group of findings shows the areas where the teachers felt there were improvements in their teaching in general and, specifically, in their classroom performance. the teachers affirmed that because of the professional development program, they gained deeper awareness in these areas: grammar teaching, implementation of current methodologies for language teaching, the importance of student motivation, learner styles and learning strategies, and coherence for classroom activities. in this case, the data come from the interviews during the professional development program. the teachers stated that there was a noticeable improvement in grammar teaching; specifically, they argued that their perspectives on the topic universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras72 giraldo progressed from a structure-only strategy to one in which students had the chance to discover and use grammar meaningfully. rather than teaching grammar deductively, the teachers said they would teach it inductively as they helped students discover grammar rather than analyze it as a first approach to learning it. the following extract from an interview depicts an in-service teacher’s improvement in his/her approach to grammar teaching. i’ve seen how the grammar is implicitly taught, or no, learned! i know how they get the grammar without, and i don’t have to be on the board, explaining a lot, always explaining. no! they get the grammar and then we clarify some things and that’s it. so i’m really happy about that. it has been an improvement, one of the biggest ones! because, um, well before you know, um, sometimes i started with the grammatical thing and everything but now, i start with the task, which involves, um, i mean, um, discovery and eliciting. i love that because they learn faster, even faster than when you explain on a board and everything. additionally, the teachers stated that they implemented ideas from current language teaching methodologies such as task-based language teaching and content-based instruction. even though the teachers explained that they needed to further explore the implementation of such methodologies, for them it was something that they learned and practiced in the professional development program and began to include in their lessons. i’ve been applying almost all the methodologies, no! all the methodologies you taught us, and i think they are awesome, and i didn’t do that before. now i’m doing it and am seeing the results, and i’m really happy with that. task-based activities, contentbased activities, um, i am in love now with those methodologies because they are working in…amazingly. i mean, i love it. fur thermore, the issue of motivation was something the teachers became more aware of. the teachers argued that they took into consideration their students’ needs and interests, which they later turned into classroom activities. the conclusion here is that the teachers were able to operationalize the construct and make it applicable by means of interviews with students and small surveys to inquire into their needs and interests. i’m also working with motivation issues. em, i think what i’ve seen in this course that i, that i’ve applied in the classroom in terms of motivation it’s been, it’s been awesome. i mean, i’m working on that and it’s really working. the motivation of the students have increased a lot. i can see the results. first of all, i’m telling them the aims of the class; also i’m telling them why is english important now. using examples, using, um, asking them critical thinking questions such as, mmm, that has to deal with their futures. ummm, what else? i think i’m just being friendly with them and telling them that this is not an obligation but something good for them. one last major change that the teachers noticed in their instruction was coherence in lessons. they specified that their lessons were more structured and logical because the activities held cohesion among steps and led to desired goals during lessons. according to the teachers, they planned tasks that had a beginning, a middle, and an end. this was one of the biggest changes and improvement i could notice, the way i teach now comparing to the old way which was, ummm, sometimes unstructured and lacked coherence in many cases, i realized this by reflecting upon my experience before and after the pdp. on the professional development program as a reason for improvement in this last finding, i will refer to the reasons that likely caused the changes in the six teachers’ performance and awareness in english language teaching. i will support these findings on the data collected while developing the professional development program. all of the workshops combined theor y and practice. the teachers had the opportunity to look 73profile vol. 16, no. 1, april 2014. issn 1657-0790 (printed) 2256-5760 (online). bogotá, colombia. pages 63-76 the impact of a professional development program on english language teachers’ classroom performance at theoretical underpinnings and analyze them by observing videoed and live lessons, planning activities to be used in their lessons, and receiving feedback from peers and the program’s tutor. additionally, t h e pro g r a m i n c lu d e d e x p e r i e nt i a l l e a r n i n g activities in which the teachers played the role of learners first and then evaluators of what they had experienced as language learners. this also helped them to contextualize theory. finally, the program incorporated talks by experts; during these exercises, the teachers had the opportunity to hear about and discuss ideas for language teaching from experienced peers. the excerpt below, taken from a journal entry, shows what teachers did to combine theory and practice. what went well? the experiential activity: during this workshop, i had an experienced teacher guide the in-service teachers through a listening activity about a bad hairdressing experience. first of all, this was an activity in which the in-service teachers could connect theory and practice by means of a hands-on task. i think they could identify the stages in a listening activity and how those stages are related to what we have emphasized on a lot during the workshop: organized coherent activities, with a clear purpose in mind, etc. second of all, this activity went well because of the guest teacher. he walked them through the listening activity and was keen on preparing them for listening, which, as one of the in-service teachers told me, was good for him to realize that before the actual listening, students need quite some support. the expert talk: for this workshop, besides the guest teacher, i invited other two teachers to hold a conversation with the in-service teachers about teaching listening. in total, there were three experts interacting with them. the expert talk occurred after the experiential learning activity, so this was perfect to tie loose ends in relation to teaching listening. the in-service teachers could get explicit ideas on teaching listening from the guest teachers, so i think this could have helped consolidate principles. in the workshop, i also asked the guests to get in groups with the in-service teachers. what this caused was a lively discussion between the guests and the in-service teachers, and it was the perfect wrap-up for the expert talk. they had the chance to react to the discussion previously held, and they could talk about their own experience. all this led to a successful section in this workshop. the practical activity: the in-service teachers prepared a listening activity for a near future lesson. after 10 minutes preparing it, i discussed the activity with them. this definitely went well because the in-service teachers could relate theory and practice. everything happening in this workshop could be put into practice thanks to the listening activity they planned. also, my job as an educator was key for them to make the connection theorypractice. i was able to help the in-service teachers make sense of everything they had learned in the workshop and through their own reading of the material. retrospective reflection was a major enterprise during the program and one that helped the teachers to improve their teaching. this type of reflection occurred when the teachers looked at the ideas that they planned during the program’s workshops and that they implemented in their lessons. because there was follow-up, each workshop in the program capitalized on something the teachers had just implemented. i think just by, uh, encouraging the fact that, uhm you know, of constantly reflecting, you know, on, your, uh, in that case, weekly sessions, um, the lessons i teach on saturday. um, well just the fact that you were constantly reflecting on them. obviously, in a way you have to really improve. not have to, but it is something that obviously you feel that you need to do. so, for example, when i would give my lesson on saturday, and then we would have the course on thursday, and it was about a certain, you know, concept or something, and i would reflect if i have done it, if i should do it better, how should i do it better? so, i would be constantly reflecting, you know, on what i already know and how i can improve that, and yeah. finally, a key aspect to helping the teachers i mprove t he i r te a ch i ng p e r for manc e w as my interaction with them as a tutor. b ecause of a number of strategies that i implemented during the universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras74 giraldo professional development program, i was able to help the teachers connect theory and practice. first, while the teachers were doing a practical task during workshops (which they would later apply in their lessons), i talked to them about what they wanted to do and asked them questions to help them reflect prior to implementing their ideas and to make them use theory explicitly. second, because i observed each teacher twice, i gave them feedback before and after the lessons i observed. each teacher received the feedback on his or her lesson plans and on the obser vation protocol for this study. finally, the teachers and i conversed about their teaching ideas and reflected on them, specifically, whether they went well or not as well and why; from these reflections, i would ask them to come to their own conclusions about language teaching and learning. the following are two samples taken from two different entries in two different workshops. they are about ideas the teachers had planned in the workshops and intended to implement later on. sample 1 while i was interacting with the in-service teachers, i noticed that they stay at a grammatical-functional phase of communicative language teaching (clt). for example, they showed me they would ask students to interact with teacher or others based on questions such as: what’s your name? what do you do? while this is communicative, it is not aligned with task-based language teaching (tblt) or content-based instruction (cbi), for example. it is a stand-alone activity. when interacting with the in-service teachers, many of them realized this can (and should) be part of a broader activity which leads somewhere. another example the teachers gave me was about nationalities. they told me they have students ask each other where they are from: students have a different nationality and say, for instance: “i am from japan.” i explained to the in-service teachers that this is functional but not communicative unless you had a group of students from different countries. in conclusion, the in-service teachers may have developed a deeper understanding of what it means to teach within a communicative approach in tblt and cbi. why? i believe that the fact that the in-service teachers interacted with me was key to help them refocus. i personally felt during this second workshop that when i talk to the in-service teachers, i can detect what their present knowledge is and can complement it. they may have read for the workshop but they need to be guided on how to make theory more practical/meaningful for them. sample 2 the in-service teachers prepared a listening activity for a near future lesson. after 10 minutes preparing it, i discussed the activity with them. why? this definitely went well because the in-service teachers could relate theory and practice. everything happening in this workshop could be put into practice thanks to the listening activity they planned. also, my job as an educator was key for them to make the connection theory-practice. i was able to help the in-service teachers make sense of everything they had learned in the workshop and through their own reading of the material. the findings in this study are similar to those in álvarez and sánchez’s (2005) study in the sense that in both research studies, teachers became aware of their teaching practices. moreover, the authors’ study reported positive results from having teachers perform activities as students, which was another positive result in the present study. similar results are reported in sierra’s (2007) study as well. in this case, the researcher found that in the study group for her study, the teachers became aware of teaching issues such as knowing what learning strategies are. in the present study, the findings indicate that the in-service teachers became aware of issues such as grammar teaching and student motivation. finally, there is 75profile vol. 16, no. 1, april 2014. issn 1657-0790 (printed) 2256-5760 (online). bogotá, colombia. pages 63-76 the impact of a professional development program on english language teachers’ classroom performance a relationship between the findings in this study and those in cadavid, quinchía, and díaz (2009). in their study, the participants in the professional development program included new practices in their teaching, which also happened in the present study, in which the six in-service teachers also implemented new, practical ideas in their teaching. furthermore, in both studies, the teachers connected theory and practice by critically analyzing whether they were applicable to their contexts. conclusions and recommendations professional development programs do have an impact on in-service teachers and their classroom performance, and this is possible especially when program developers take into account the suggestions given by scholars in the field. provided that these programs consider teachers’ needs, knowledge, skills, and experiences, there is a strong likelihood of positive results. based on these perspectives, it is suggested that those involved in designing and implementing professional development programs for language teachers conduct a careful needs analysis before implementation; this needs analysis should take into account not only what the teachers do (well or badly) but also what they know, what they would like to know, and what their experiences and beliefs for language teaching and learning are. after this analysis, designers can use the collected information to capitalize on implementation. theory and practice in professional development programs have a reciprocal relationship, which can have a positive impact on teachers and their practice. these programs should include opportunities for teachers to make sense of theory and to criticize and use it meaningfully for classroom contexts. the recommendations arising from this idea are four. first, professional development programs should include theoretical input that responds to the needs and wants identified in the needs analysis prior to starting a program. second, these programs should include explicit activities for teachers to discuss issues around theoretical underpinnings: whether they can be applied, whether they need to be adapted, and so forth. third, teachers in this program should be encouraged to explicitly use the theory they study in practical realizations such as lesson plans, class observations, and the planning and execution of classroom activities. teachers benefit from being asked to use theory this way and to reflect upon it. lastly, activities that combine theory and practice in professional development programs, especially ones that address planning and executing teaching ideas, should have follow-up sessions for reflection. teachers and teacher educators, or collaborators (freeman, 1989), should reflect prior to and on action to see in what ways the program is having an impact on teachers. teacher educators play a vital role during the implementation of professional development programs. they benefit from having someone help them make sense of theor y and their practice, who can articulate activities that help them reflect upon teaching issues and who can guide them to see what they do well and not as well. as freeman (1989) proposes, a teacher educator should not be an expert but a collaborator who can make teachers think critically upon their own teaching. all things considered, teacher educators must ensure that they do have close contact with each and every one of the participants in professional development programs. face-to-face discussions can help both parties to more effectively evaluate their individual processes; additionally, having a systematic process of class observation can help the teacher educator to universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras76 giraldo monitor a teacher’s progress while he or she is in a professional development program. a system for class observations should have three phases: first, teachers should send their lesson plans so the educator can give feedback before the lesson; second, the educator can obser ve the lesson with the corresponding protocol; and finally, teachers should receive feedback on their lessons, perhaps by means of the completed observation protocol. references álvarez, g., & sánchez, c. (2005). teachers in a public school engage in a study group to reach general agreements about a common approach to teaching english. profile issues in teachers’ professional development, 6(1), 119-132. ariza, j., & ramos, d. (2010). the pursuit of professional development through a teacher study group (unpublished master’s thesis). universidad de caldas, manizales. birks, m., & mills, j. (2011). grounded theory: a practical guide. london, uk: sage publications. cadavid, i. c., quinchía, d. i., & díaz, c. p. (2009). una propuesta holística de desarrollo profesional para maestros de inglés de la básica primaria [a holistic profesional development proposal for elementary school english teachers]. íkala, revista de lenguaje y cultura, 14(21), 133-158. díaz-maggioli, g. (2004). teacher-centered professional development. alexandria, va: ascd publications. freeman, d. (1989). teacher training, development, and decision making: a model of teaching and related strategies for language teacher education. tesol quarterly, 23(1), 27-45. gonzález, a. (2007). professional development of efl teachers in colombia: between colonial and local practices. íkala, revista de lenguaje y cultura, 12(18), 309-332. hopkins, d. (1995). a teacher’s guide to classroom research. buckingham, uk: open university press. kemmis, s., & mctaggart, r. (1988). the action research reader (3rd ed.). victoria, au: deakin university press. richards, j. c. (2011). competence and performance in language teaching. cambridge, uk: cambridge university press. richards, j. c., & farrell, t. s. c. (2005). professional development for language teachers: strategies for teacher learning. cambridge, uk: cambridge university press. sierra, a. m. (2007). developing knowledge, skills, and attitudes through a study: a study on teachers’ professional development. íkala, revista de lenguaje y cultura, 12(18), 277-306. villegas-reimers, e. (2003). teacher professional development: an international review of the literature. paris, fr: unesco, international institute for educational planning. wilde, j. (2010). guidelines for professional development: an overview. in c. j. casteel & k. g. ballantyne (eds.), professional development in action: improving teaching for english learners (pp. 5-11). washington, dc: national clearinghouse for english language acquisition. retrieved from http://www.ncela.gwu.edu/files/ uploads/3/pd_in_action.pdf about the author frank giraldo is a teacher educator and english language teacher. he holds an ma in english didactics from universidad de caldas and works for universidad tecnológica de pereira (colombia), at the institute of foreign languages (ilex) and the b.ed in english. he is interested in teacher education through professional development, curriculum design, and language testing, assessment, and evaluation. 99profile vol. 15, no. 2, october 2013. issn 1657-0790 (printed) 2256-5760 (online). bogotá, colombia. pages 99-114 an exploration of efl teachers’ awareness of the sources of pedagogical knowledge in a teacher education program una exploración del nivel de conciencia de docentes de inglés como lengua extranjera respecto a las fuentes del conocimiento pedagógico en un programa de formación de docentes diego fernando macías*1 universidad surcolombiana, colombia this project set out to investigate the extent to which the sources of english as a foreign language teachers’ pedagogical knowledge are acknowledged and addressed in a teacher education program in a public university in colombia. it involved the participation of teacher educators and novice teachers as well as the analysis of documents. this research followed a qualitative design with an interpretive approach to inquiry, and the data used were semi-structured interviews and official documents. the results indicate that while most of the teacher educators appeared to be aware of the many sources of teachers’ pedagogical knowledge, novice teachers emphasized their initial teacher education and teaching experience as the only sources of their pedagogical knowledge. key words: pedagogical knowledge, sources, teacher education, teaching experience. este proyecto buscó investigar hasta qué punto las diferentes fuentes de conocimiento pedagógico de los docentes de inglés como lengua extranjera son reconocidas y abordadas en un programa de formación inicial en una universidad pública en colombia. el proyecto involucró la participación de formadores de docentes y docentes principiantes y el análisis de documentos. la investigación siguió un diseño cualitativo con un enfoque interpretativo y los datos utilizados fueron entrevistas semiestructuradas y documentos oficiales. los resultados indican que mientras la mayoría de los formadores de docentes parecían ser conscientes de las muchas fuentes del conocimiento pedagógico de los docentes, los docentes principiantes enfatizaron su educación inicial como docentes y la experiencia docente como las únicas fuentes de su conocimiento pedagógico. palabras clave: conocimiento pedagógico, educación de docentes, experiencia docente, fuentes. * e-mail: diego.macias@usco.edu.co this article was received on august 16, 2012, and accepted on march 17, 2013. universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras100 macías introduction as a postgraduate student, i was enrolled in a course concerning the education and development of language teachers. some of the class discussions focused on what constitutes the knowledge base of language teachers; that is, the knowledge and skills needed for teachers to successfully teach the language. most significantly, issues such as teachers’ ways of knowing about the act of teaching came up during the sessions. these discussions made me realize that how and where language teachers learn to teach is an area worth looking into. it follows that my interest in this study was how english as a foreign language (efl) teachers learn to teach and where their pedagogical knowledge comes from. the term pedagogical knowledge is defined by shulman (1986b, 1987) as teachers’ accumulated knowledge concerning the act of teaching that serves as the foundation for their classroom behavior and activities. mullock (2006) similarly claims that teacher knowledge is sometimes referred to as pedagogical knowledge, which he defines as accumulated knowledge about the act of teaching, including the goals, procedures, and strategies that form the basis for what teachers do in the classroom. thus, teacher knowledge or pedagogical knowledge is what ultimately informs teachers’ decisions and actions in the classroom and is also evidenced in the materials and activities teachers use in the teaching process. my own experience has led me to assume that recently qualified efl teachers, at least in colombia, appear to rely almost entirely on the pedagogical k now le dge t he y re ceive in te acher e duc at ion programs. therefore, the methods, techniques, and teaching strategies that these teachers use in their classrooms are thought to come from the methods courses that they usually take in the teacher education program. this view, according to johnson (2006), is possibly based on the traditional assumption that teachers learn about what to teach (content knowledge) and how to teach (teaching skills) in their teacher education program; they observe and practice it in the teaching practicum, and develop expertise during the induction years of teaching. in contrast, studies such as the one by zeichner, tabachnic, and densmore (1987) have concluded that the theoretical and practical knowledge that student teachers acquire in initial teacher education programs have little influence on their subsequent professional practice, while others (calderhead & miller, 1986; shulman, 1986a, 1986b) have claimed that the principal source of teachers’ pedagogical knowledge is the classroom experience. other sources of teachers’ pedagogical knowledge such as their own experiences as learners in basic education and as in-service teachers, their research experience, and their implicit and personal theories of teaching or “hidden pedagogy” (denscombe, 1982), which is also likely to help shape their pedagogical knowledge, may have been somewhat underestimated. accordingly, it was my goal in this study to investigate the extent to which the sources of efl teachers’ pedagogical knowledge were acknowledged and addressed in a teacher education program at a public university in colombia. this study was based on a social constructivist paradigm since it relied on “the participants’ views of the situation being studied . . . the researcher’s intent is to make sense of (or interpret) the meanings others have about the world” (creswell, 2009, p. 8). theoretical background: sources of teachers’ pedagogical knowledge colombian society has had high expectations of foreign language teachers in connection to their students’ competence and performance in the target language. in other words, there seems to be a major focus on the outcomes of the teaching process as these become visible through students’ achievement on 101profile vol. 15, no. 2, october 2013. issn 1657-0790 (printed) 2256-5760 (online). bogotá, colombia. pages 99-114 an exploration of efl teachers’ awareness of the sources of pedagogical knowledge... national standardized examinations rather than on how teachers learn to teach or what they go through in the process of becoming teachers; nevertheless, the poor results of those examinations (icfes, 2009) show that english language teaching in the country is not yielding the expected outcomes. one of the aspects that surely play a significant role in this situation is teacher education, “the learning and teaching of language teaching” (freeman, 1989, p. 28). thus, the concept of pedagogical knowledge and the various sources of such knowledge are inherent and relevant to the larger area of language teacher education. various sources of pedagogical knowledge can be identified through the literature and classified into categories which, given the complex nature of teacher learning, inevitably overlap. basically teachers learn from being learners and observers, from professional teacher education and training, from teaching experience, from their “wisdom of practice” (shulman, 1987), and from their engagement in research. the first source of teachers’ knowledge is the role played by their own teachers from the time they are students in elementary school and then as they move through the different stages of general and specialized education. in a prominent study, lortie (1975) encapsulated this source of teacher knowledge in what he called “apprenticeship of observation” (p. 61). this concept, according to borg (2004, p. 274), des cr ib es “t he phenomenon w hereby student teachers arrive for their training courses having spent thousands of hours as schoolchildren observing and evaluating professionals in action.” this led lin (2005) to conclude that “a teacher’s experience as a student before she enters the teacher education program could have an impact on her experience as a teacher learner in such a program as well as on her actual teaching practice” (p. 11). thus, it can be inferred that the years of contact with teachers in primary and secondary schools, teacher training and education programs, the process of teaching practice and pre-service training as well as learning from peers and colleagues constitute aspects that influence teacher knowledge within this category. clearly linked to the previous source of pedagogical knowledge, the second one establishes that teachers also learn to teach from the education and training that they receive in teacher education programs. these programs are usually offered in the colombian context by universities where, as pointed out by freeman (2002), learning to teach typically involved mastering the specific content one was to teach and separately mastering methodologies for conveying that content to learners. still today, these two aspects of content and methodology are often covered through the different courses that make up the curriculum of many efl teacher education programs as new teachers, according to freeman (2002), continue to be considered “blank slates” with no prior knowledge of teaching upon entering their professional training. as a result, historically, aspects that we know can have a positive impact on future teachers such as previous learning experiences, preservice teaching experience, and research have, in many cases, been overlooked as potential sources for how new teachers construct pedagogical knowledge in their professional education. freeman and johnson (1998) have equally revealed that many teacher education programs which focus on language continue to operate under the assumption that they must provide teachers with a codified body of knowledge about language, language learning, and language teaching. in these programs future teachers are exposed to a range of methodologies and provided with field experience (teaching practice) in which they are expected to apply their theoretical knowledge in actual classrooms. the third source of pedagogical knowledge emphasizes the knowledge that teachers gain from their own teaching experience. it may also be referred to as experiential learning which is defined by universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras102 macías jamieson (1994) as “learning in which the learner is directly in touch with the realities being studied, and makes use of that direct contact to acquire changed insights that are carried for ward to subsequent encounters with other realities” (p. 40). it is important to notice that this source of pedagogical knowledge is directly related to the previous one of professional teacher education and training since teachers can begin to accumulate teaching experience as part of being enrolled in a teacher education program when they first have to teach part of a lesson or a whole lesson to their peers (usually in the methods courses). for this type of knowledge kolb (1984) proposes an experiential learning cycle consisting of four modes: concrete experience, reflective obser vation, abstract conceptualization, and active ex perimentation. concrete experience involves intuitive or “gut” feeling. this is followed by reflective ob servation, that is, perception and comprehension of what happened. this is then followed by abstract conceptualization, which requires the teacher to think and formulate a concept in relation to what happened. this subsequently leads to active experimentation, which involves the teacher applying in a subsequent lesson what he learned from a previous teaching event. eventually, this will require further concrete experience, and so the cycle goes on. research into teachers’ pedagogical knowledge is also based on the assumption that what teachers do in the classroom has its origins in thoughts or mental acts, which have been shaped by attitudes, values, knowledge, and beliefs gathered through years of being a teacher (borg, 2003; calderhead, 1996). this refers to shulman’s (1987) “wisdom of practice” or knowledge constructed from teachers’ mental lives (walberg, 1977). as highlighted by duarte (1998), “to understand how teachers learn to teach and how they come to conceptualize what they do, we need to focus on the mental lives of teachers and the activity of teaching as practiced by teachers” (p. 618). to help us understand teachers’ mental lives, freeman (2002) indicates that while accurate maps of teaching can be observed by studying the profession from the outside in, what is truly happening will not be grasped until the people who are actually doing the teaching articulate what they understand about it. this promotes a perspective from inside out— teachers constructing knowledge about how to teach as a result of being mentally engaged in the teaching process. accordingly, helping new teachers interpret and give meaning to their own experiences might lead them to develop empirical and pedagogical insights which will simultaneously allow them “to theorize from practice and practice what they theorize” (kumaravadivelu, 1994, p. 27). a last source of pedagogical knowledge relates to the knowledge derived from teachers’ engagement in research. shulman (1987) asserts that the research that teachers can benefit from can be both generic and content-specific. generic research is carried out in another area but with direct implications for teaching whereas content-specific is the type of research done in aspects related to teaching such as classroom management and patterns of interaction. it follows that doing content-specific research is more likely to help teachers to generate new knowledge and new theories to be tested in their own classrooms. in this respect, research can become a means for teachers “to become active users and producers of theory in their own right . . . and as appropriate for their own instructional contexts” (cochran-smith & lytle, as cited in johnson, 2006, p. 240). in short, research may help teachers generate new knowledge and therefore provide solutions to their own teaching problems. the challenge for teacher education programs is then to create opportunities and promote alternatives throughout the curriculum for teacher learners to engage in research as they gain knowledge about teaching. johnson (2006) claims that research could emerge out of questions posed 103profile vol. 15, no. 2, october 2013. issn 1657-0790 (printed) 2256-5760 (online). bogotá, colombia. pages 99-114 an exploration of efl teachers’ awareness of the sources of pedagogical knowledge... by student teachers in their practice settings and can enable them to bring a new sense of meaning to their conceptions of teaching. one can only wonder, as shulman (1987, p. 7) rightfully states, “at how the extensive knowledge of teaching can be learned at all during the brief period allotted to teacher preparation.” this is why language teacher education programs should contribute to at least raise awareness in teacher learners about the major sources of teachers’ pedagogical knowledge so that they can benefit from those once they finish their initial teacher education experience. the interest of the study i undertook was, then, to explore the extent to which the varied sources of efl teachers’ pedagogical knowledge were acknowledged and addressed in a teacher education program at a public university in colombia. method research questions and type of study the nature of my questions relied on the participants’ responses and the analysis of official documents (e.g., curriculum and course syllabi), and so asked for a qualitative orientation with an interpretative approach to inquiry. the questions were: • to what extent are the participants in a teacher education program in a public university in colombia aware of the different sources of efl teachers’ pedagogical knowledge? • how are the sources of efl teachers’ pedagogical knowledge evidenced in the curriculum or coursework of the teacher education program? participants there were two groups of participants in this research project: efl teacher educators and efl novice teachers. there was a total of ten individuals, five in each group, five female and five male. the five efl teacher educators (te01, te02, te03, te04, and te05) worked in the same efl teacher education program. all of them had completed postgraduate study in the form of a master’s degree in elt or in applied linguistics. each one had no less than fifteen years of experience as efl teachers and as teacher educators. in contrast, the five efl novice teachers (nt01, nt02, nt03, nt04, and nt05) were former graduates and recently qualified teachers from the same efl teacher education program. therefore, they held a bachelor’s degree in efl teaching and possessed two to three years of experience as efl teachers in private and public elementary and secondary schools in the region. participants were purposefully selected to help me understand the research questions, given my past experience with them as either their colleague or their former teacher. data collection and analysis given the qualitative nature of the study and the relatively small number of participants, i decided to use a semi-structured interview (see appendix) and the official documents which supported the efl teacher education program. the purposes of the inter view were to obtain information about the participants’ level of awareness of the sources of teachers’ pedagogical knowledge and to record their views regarding whether those sources were addressed in the efl teacher education program they worked for in the case of the efl teacher educators or had graduated from in the case of the efl novice teachers. the interviews were arranged with each participant and conducted by myself. on t he ot her hand, t he pur p os e i had in mind when looking at the program documents was to find evidence of whether the sources of efl teachers’ pedagogical knowledge were in any way addressed through the efl teacher education program curriculum. for this purpose, i conducted a careful analysis based on reading, comparing, and universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras104 macías contrasting the contents of such documents. one relevant consideration was that since “documents cannot be regarded as providing objective accounts of a state of affairs” (bryman, 2008, p. 522), they had to be examined in the context of the data obtained through the interviews in the first part of the study. i began by looking at the “proyecto educativo del programa” (educational project of the program, henceforth pep). this document contained a full description of all the aspects that constituted the program (including historical background, rationale, legal framework, mission and vision statements, theoretical framework, curriculum structure, re sources, research processes, alumni, and evaluation). i decided to focus on the chapter dealing with the curriculum structure. accordingly, i examined the syllabi of the following courses: pedagogy, dipdi (didactics and practice of english) i, ii, and iii and teaching practice i and ii. in the context of this efl teacher education program, the methods studies consist of three courses that are part of the program study plan where students are expected to gain more direct and explicit knowledge about language learning and teaching. to ensure validity of the data and the analysis, i piloted the interview questions and collected data from three sources (teacher educators’ interviews, novice teachers’ interviews, and analysis of official documents) in order to achieve triangulation. i designed a data analysis plan in five stages, based on the combination of burns’ (1999) and creswell’s (2009) analysis frameworks. the first stage involved transcribing the interviews and selecting the sections of the official documents that i thought to be most relevant to my research interest. the second stage consisted of reading through the interview transcriptions and official documents to get a general sense of the information and to reflect on its overall meaning. i began to notice patterns that related to the previous categories or sources of pedagogical knowledge presented earlier in the theoretical background section. the third stage focused on coding the data. accordingly, i first selected an interview with a teacher educator that i thought was interesting and reread it establishing categories and labeling them according to the types of knowledge established in the theoretical background. after this, i continued to follow the same procedure with the rest of the interviews and the official documents. the fourth stage consisted of comparing the different lists to see whether patterns or themes were repeated or related to each other across the data sources. this was also done in an attempt to reduce the number of categories, something that was difficult to achieve at times given the distinctive nature of the different ones. in short, the aim so far had been “to describe and display the data rather than to interpret or explain it” (burns, 1999, p. 158). the fifth stage involved interpreting or making sense of the meaning of the data on the basis of my understanding, knowledge of the context, experiences, and theories derived from the theoretical background. sometimes it was necessary to go back to the established categories and the data to rethink my assumptions and/or develop new interpretations of the meaning of the data. the final stage, as suggested by creswell (2009), concerns “how the description and themes will be represented in the qualitative narrative” (p. 189). i opted for using a narrative organized according to specific categories to communicate the findings. ethical considerations participants were informed as to the purpose of the study and of the interview, the time it would take them to answer the questions, and how the data would be used. after this, they were asked to sign a form giving their consent before beginning the interviews. as for the access to the official documents, 105profile vol. 15, no. 2, october 2013. issn 1657-0790 (printed) 2256-5760 (online). bogotá, colombia. pages 99-114 an exploration of efl teachers’ awareness of the sources of pedagogical knowledge... the head of the efl teacher education program gave me permission to obtain a copy of the pep and of the course syllabi. she was equally informed of the purposes of collecting and analyzing such documents and of the issues having to do with confidentiality. findings after following the five stages of the analysis plan, i was able to organize the information provided by the participants and the documents in the following categories, based on the types of pedagogical knowledge presented in the theoretical background section of this paper (list of categories). i now present illustrative examples of information for each. knowledge from teachers in early education all the teacher educators and two novice teachers in the study acknowledged that they had gained pedagogical knowledge from different teachers (spanish, math, english, chemistry, physics) across the basic stages of education (e.g., primary and secondary schools). however, the knowledge they believed they had gained from those teachers was more broadly connected to human qualities and personality traits such as ways of interacting and establishing a rapport with students, being patient, caring, respectful, and having a good sense of humor. this is supported by te02 who described her high school teachers as follows: “they were good communicators, they were good in their field, they transmitted excitement, passion, feelings towards the subject, and they were also concerned about their students’ learning.” nt02 also expressed the way he felt about his favorite high school teacher: “i became interested in english because of the way he treated us…he made everyone in the classroom feel important.” nevertheless, to a lesser extent, three teacher educators and one novice teacher made reference to knowledge they had gained from their former secondary school teachers in regard to methodological or teaching aspects. for example, te03 claimed the following about one of his former high school teachers: “[he] made me like the profession because he was a very good teacher and had a rich background in the methodolog y part of teaching a foreign language” while nt04, in reference to her english teacher in secondary school, stated that she “liked her methodology because she used to give [us] a lot of meaningful tasks.” some teacher educators mentioned things they remembered their teachers in secondary school did but they at present would not do since they thought they were inconsistent with their current philosophy of teaching. this is related to how “participants used previous teachers as models—and at times anti-models—to fashion what they do or do not do in the classroom” (vélez-rendón, 2002, p. 459). for example, te01 referred to the fact that some of his high school teachers showed some kind of bias when assessing students and it resulted in their not being fair with some students. he emphasized that this was “something that he had avoided himself doing in his profession.” likewise, te03 commented on how a teacher she had in high school was bad-tempered to the point that she was afraid of her. this had made her realize the importance of building a rapport with her students at present. while four out of five teacher educators considered that students bring some knowledge about teaching when they enter the teacher education program, three out of five novice teachers claimed that they did not bring any knowledge about teaching when they first entered such a program. in this regard, nt02 claimed the following: “i started from scratch at the university…what i know is what i learned from the university, that’s it!…in the didactics classes, in the pedagogy, psychology but i didn’t have any previous knowledge.” in the same way, nt03 commented: i didn’t know much about teaching…i just had the idea that teaching was like…you go to a classroom…the teacher says to universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras106 macías you what you have to do and you have to be responsible, to be silent and do your tasks. in short, teacher educators seemed to be more aware of how the primary and secondary school learning experiences constitute an important source of pedagogical knowledge. after analyzing the official documents as a whole, there appears to be no evidence of this source of teachers’ pedagogical knowledge being addressed through the courses in the program. this might be interpreted as if the program either took this source of pedagogical knowledge for granted or expected that students would recognize it as a result of their own experience after they graduated. an important consideration was brought to light by te01, te05, and nt02 who realized that there was a type of students who entered the program with more metacognitive knowledge about teaching. these are students who come from “escuelas normales” (public secondary schools with a strong pedagogical orientation) and are thought to be equipped “with certain conceptual and procedural tools [since] they study courses on pedagogy, psychology, and specific didactics” (te01) as part of their secondary education curriculum. interestingly, to the best of my knowledge, no studies have been conducted to determine whether the students who enter the teacher education program from escuelas normales actually outperform the other students in terms of teaching skills. knowledge from observation during pre-service or in-service teacher education it was interesting to note that most of the par ticipants claimed to have gained pedagogical know ledge from observing other teachers even though they had very limited opportunities to do so as part of their initial teacher education program. most of them claimed that student teachers in the program usually have the first two weeks of their teaching practice period for observing the groups they will eventually teach. however, the circumstances typically allow them to actually observe two to four classes within that time. in this respect, although reference to classroom observation was found in some of the course syllabi (e.g., dipdi i stated that “students have to do some field work in a public school: diagnostic and class observation [trans.]” and dipdi iii established that “participation from students will be required in different tasks . . . such as visiting schools to observe classes”), there was not enough information as to how, for how long or in what conditions such observation would take place. alternatively, te01 stated that he had learned a lot from the observations he had made of other teachers in two complementary senses: “because i have seen some things which i say to myself; this is worth trying in my own classroom so i am gonna do it but there are other things which i considered worth improving so i never do that.” te04 also affirmed that “observing other teachers allows you to think about what you do as a teacher. it’s like seeing yourself through others.” it follows then that observing other teachers takes on relevance if the teacher education program considers that getting students to observe other more experienced efl primary and secondary school teachers early on in the curriculum could help reduce the fact that many students become afraid when they have to begin their teaching practice since, for many of them, it is the first time they have to be in a classroom with forty or fifty students in the position of novice teachers. this is equally supported by te02 who argued that students “should observe more perhaps since the beginning of their studies so that they are more familiar with the problems they are going to be dealing with” and by nt05 who considered that students should start going to observe teachers in primary or high schools in the fourth or fifth semesters since, according to him, 107profile vol. 15, no. 2, october 2013. issn 1657-0790 (printed) 2256-5760 (online). bogotá, colombia. pages 99-114 an exploration of efl teachers’ awareness of the sources of pedagogical knowledge... “there are many students in the program who start working as teachers at this point of their career and do not have experience so it would be nice so that they can do a better job.” he further added: my girlfriend is a nurse, and she told me that when she was in the second semester they started going to the hospital and doing different things, different practices so why not doing something like that here in the language teacher program. this class observation, as stated by te03, must be accompanied by some reflection so as to help students compare the theories they learn about language teaching in the teacher education program and the circumstances of an authentic language teaching context. in this sense, freeman and johnson (1998) claimed that the knowledge base of language teaching remains generally disconnected from the authentic activity of teaching in actual classrooms and this was echoed by every novice teacher in the study who stressed how different the teaching reality was in comparison to what they had been taught about it in the teacher education program. knowledge from teacher education programs and courses most of the participants in the study also seemed to recognize having gained pedagogical knowledge from their initial teacher education program and from postgraduate education courses. the majority of novice teachers seemed to be a lot more emphatic in terms of considering the teacher education program as the primary source of their pedagogical knowledge followed at a distance by teaching experience. they mentioned lesson planning, theories about learning and teaching, methods and approaches as some of the elements they had learned in the teacher education program and insisted that the knowledge they acquired in this program, especially through the methods courses (dipdis), constituted the foundations of what they do today. analysis of the syllabi similarly revealed that dipdi i emphasized topics such as language learning theories and teaching methods; dipdi ii made reference to the teaching and integration of the linguistic skills (listening, speaking, reading, writing) and the teaching of grammar and vocabulary; while dipdi iii focused on issues such as teaching english to children, classroom management, and course design and evaluation. as for teacher educators, most of them tended to see their college teacher education program and postgraduate education courses, especially ma studies in the area of elt or applied linguistics, as just other sources of pedagogical knowledge together with teaching experience and research. for example, te01 and te04 said that at present they promote autonomous learning among their students because they were autonomous learners themselves in their initial teacher education program and claimed that it brings many benefits to their learners. in this respect, te01 stated that as a language learner i was very autonomous. i liked to go beyond what was given in the classroom. i used to practice english with some partners outside the classroom, so i’d say that one of my teaching traits is that; to promote autonomy, because i am very conscious that everything is not possible to be done in the classroom. in contrast, te02 argued that her experience as a language learner in the initial teacher education program did not influence the way she taught because she learned english using the audio-lingual method. according to her, she was simply asked to repeat sentences and memorize many words so she thought this was not compatible with a more communicative methodology she appeared to follow at present. likewise, te05 said that his experience as a language learner in the program did not influence the way he taught now and that in fact he “did not enjoy his experience as a learner of english.” these situations may show that these two teacher educators focused universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras108 macías on what they saw as inappropriate or unpleasant during their experience as english language learners at college and therefore tended to overlook the fact that learning to teach can also occur as a result of seemingly inappropriate methodologies or unpleasant circumstances. te03 appeared to be more aware of this fact when she said: my experience as a language learner in college has made me reflect about the weaknesses i had as an english learner and i try to improve now and to look for other strategies to help students become more effective language learners. knowledge from experience as efl teachers all the participants clearly recognized their experience as efl teachers as contributing to their pedagogical knowledge with teacher educators being perhaps a bit more emphatic about it. this reflects the point raised by calderhead and miller (1986) and shulman (1986b) in relation to classroom experience being apparently the main source of teacher knowledge. thus, te01 said that this kind of experience “shows him how to adapt his teaching style to different audiences every year, every semester.” te02 also argued that she was more aware of her students’ needs. she was also more concerned about teaching the four skills because she wanted her students to be fluent in english. interestingly, te03 connected her previous ex perience as a teacher with the opportunities she had had to do research. in this respect, she affirmed the following: experience has helped me a lot because if you do not stop to reflect about what you do, sometimes the experience by itself doesn’t help much in transforming what you do every day, but only when you have your experience but at the same time you stop to research what you are doing or what other teachers are doing, i think it’s more fruitful for your classes. in a similar way, te04 established a connection between teaching experience and the act of reflection as follows: experience gives you the opportunity to reflect on the way you were doing things, on the way you are doing…your teaching. you find that some events make you reflect about the way you’re doing and…in my case, if i find something that is not working properly i try to look for something else and i try to change the way i am doing it. novice teachers also argued that teaching ex perience had played an influential role for them in learning to teach. they claimed to have gained knowledge about a great variety of aspects such as classroom management (nt02, nt04), understanding the difference between activities for children and activities for young learners, using different teaching resources (nt03). as an illustration, nt02 made the following remark: when i just started to teach i was extremely nice with the students…i wanted to be loved by my students and so i let them do whatever they wanted…but with the time i have become more serious and more strict…my classroom management has improved tons. in the same way, from the analysis of the official documents as a whole, the efl teacher education program appears to be aware of the importance of experience as a source of teacher knowledge. thus, it provides opportunities for students to be engaged in micro teaching in the methods course (i.e., dipdi i) as an initial tool to help them gain experience in teaching. additionally, it established two periods of teaching practice in the last two semesters of the curriculum, which give students the possibility of accumulating experience by teaching english for one semester in a primary school and another one in a secondary school. as stated in the course objectives of the teaching practice syllabus, this teaching 109profile vol. 15, no. 2, october 2013. issn 1657-0790 (printed) 2256-5760 (online). bogotá, colombia. pages 99-114 an exploration of efl teachers’ awareness of the sources of pedagogical knowledge... experience “gets the student teachers involved with aspects such as lesson planning, teaching skills, students’ assessment, extra-curricular activities, use of resources, and reflection and self-evaluation.” consequently, it is evident that teaching experience appears to constitute a very important source of teachers’ pedagogical knowledge and also that it tends to be connected to other elements such as reflection and research which equally play an essential role in how teachers learn to teach. knowledge from teachers’ mental lives the implicit and personal theories of teaching (hidden pedagog y—denscombe, 1982) seem to be consolidated by means of a lifelong process of reflection and experience. therefore this source of pedagogical knowledge is closely linked to the categories discussed so far in this section. as can be inferred, reflection constitutes an invaluable tool and in that way i hoped to see how aware the participants were, not in terms of seeing reflection as a source of pedagogical knowledge but seeing it as a mechanism that would bring to light knowledge derived from teachers’ mental lives. one way of helping student teachers to develop these implicit theories and therefore construct new knowledge is by often asking them about the reasons behind their teaching actions and decisions. in this respect, all the teacher educators in the study, except for te02, recognized that during the feedback sessions after observing their teaching practice they ask their student teachers questions about the decisions and actions they take in class. asking student teachers questions about the pedagogical decisions or actions they take when they teach is one way to not only see what they have learned and how they think but is also a mechanism to trigger reflection and thus ensure that they are beginning to build their own personal implicit theories of teaching, which tend to constitute anot her of ten under va lue d s ource of te acher knowledge. te01 indicated that when giving feedback to student teachers he elicited responses for some of the teaching actions they take in class. this, he believes, “contributes to their own self-disclosure in a catalytic way…trying to have them self-discovered.” similarly, te03 also said that she tried “to involve them in self-reflection by asking them why they did certain things in class and so make them aware of the theory they study.” in terms of the act of reflection itself, most teacher educators claimed that although they did not have the chance to practice self-reflection when they were going through their pre-service teacher education, some of them had done it as part of their in-service teacher education. for instance, te02 said that she asked students questions (e.g., what worked in this course? what didn’t work? what was memorable? what would you suggest the teacher do to improve this course?) towards the end of the course in order to trigger reflection about the teaching process. in contrast, the novice teachers claimed that they had limited opportunities to self-reflect as part of their experience in the efl teacher education program. nt02 and nt03 also affirmed that as student teachers they were asked to keep a teacher journal where they were supposed to reflect on what had happened in their classes. unfortunately, as pointed out by te04, “those reflections are more like descriptions of their classes in many cases.” after analyzing the documents, it could be confirmed that those limited opportunities app e are d most ly dur ing t he last two or t hree semesters of the program curriculum, especially in the courses of dipdi iii and teaching practice i and ii. in spite of this, many of the participants in sisted that reflection should be promoted from the beginning of the curriculum. universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras110 macías knowledge from research experience teacher educators without exception seemed to be aware that research is also a relevant source of pedagogical knowledge. in fact, most of them claimed that the research they had been engaged in was clearly connected with their own teaching situations. this might give some weight to johnson’s (2006) views on teachers as investigators of their own teaching practice. te02 affirmed that by doing research, she had learned a lot about theory, about her students, about the real world because she had “read other works that other teachers [had] done in different parts of the world” and continued to add that “research kept her alive, motivated and excited about her teaching.” in terms of activities they applied in their classes and that were derived from their own research experiences, they emphasized the use of communicative tasks, the promotion of autonomous learning among the students, the use of reflection journals and new methodologies for teaching english to children. in a related issue, all the teacher educators coincided in saying that students in the efl teacher education program do not do research anymore. nevertheless, in reading through the pep, i observed that the program set as a general goal that “students are expected to develop competence in research and so be able to generate new knowledge in connection to the process of foreign language learning and teaching” (universidad surcolombiana, 2004, p. 55). additionally, the same document clearly established that the efl teacher education program “tends to familiarize students with the research process from the beginning of the program (trans.)” (universidad surcolombiana, 2004, p. 58). this can be contrasted with the fact that only two of the five novice teachers in the study claimed that they had done research in the program. nt03 claimed that although she did not have to do research, she took part in a research group whose main area of research had to do with the type of methodologies efl teachers used in their classes and nt05 conducted a research study in relation to strengthening virtues and values through the teaching of efl as his final undergraduate research project in the program. the remaining three (nt01, nt02, nt04) stated that they had not done research when they were students in the program. specifically, nt02 remarked: “the thing is that i didn’t do research and so...i feel i don’t have the skills. i have not learned the skills to do research...that may be a reason why i don’t do it now.” despite the fact that all the novice teachers perceived research as important, it was obviously impossible for most of them to speak of something they had learned from it. in contrast, nt03 affirmed having learned the importance of “visualizing [her] self doing the activities [she was] planning and using more realia in [her] classes” while nt05, who was also enrolled in an ma program at the time of this study, claimed that the experience of doing research in the undergraduate program had helped him in his postgraduate studies to the point that he felt he had more advantages over those students that had not been engaged in research at all. still, the teacher education program offers courses such as research methodology and research seminar in the v and vi semesters in which students get minimally acquainted with the theoretical elements for doing research. nevertheless, teacher educators and novice teachers appeared to feel that much more is required to get the students in the program to see research as a source of their own pedagogical knowledge. conclusions most teacher educators in the study appeared to be aware that efl teachers’ pedagogical knowledge comes from various sources. those they emphasized the most were their learning experience in basic and general education, their initial language teacher education program, their experience as language 111profile vol. 15, no. 2, october 2013. issn 1657-0790 (printed) 2256-5760 (online). bogotá, colombia. pages 99-114 an exploration of efl teachers’ awareness of the sources of pedagogical knowledge... teachers, and their engagement in research. in terms of the efl novice teachers in the study, they seemed to mostly agree that their initial teacher education program (especially the methods courses) followed by their experience as language teachers comprised the two main sources of their pedagogical knowledge. to a lesser extent, sources of teachers’ pedagogical knowledge associated with learning experiences in early education, classroom obser vation, and reflection, doing research, and teachers’ implicit and personal theories of teaching were recognized by either one or two novice teachers. analysis of the official documents allowed me to conclude that sources related to the theoretical knowledge about teaching, the teaching experience in the form of microteaching, and the teaching practice appeared to be evidenced in the efl teacher education program curriculum while others (observing other experienced school teachers, conducting research, and promoting teachers’ implicit theories of teaching through reflective teaching), although minimally emphasized along the study plan, still needed to be fully integrated and further addressed in the program. likewise, there seems to be no evidence of how the efl teacher education program helps students become aware of the fact that their learning experiences in basic education also constitute an important source of their pedagogical knowledge. it was interesting to note that two teacher educators claimed that it was impossible for the four-year (the length of the program) efl teacher education program to cover everything teachers need to know about teaching. they further argued that this program gave students only the foundations and therefore teacher learners actually started learning to teach after they graduated from the program. in this respect, although it is common sense to think that students will not learn everything about teaching during their initial teacher education program, it might be expected that through that program, students do at least gain awareness regarding the fact that teachers’ pedagogical knowledge derives from many sources and not merely from the methods courses in the teacher education program. recommendations for colombian teacher preparation programs it is imperative to design mechanisms that lead students to further acknowledge and use their learning experiences in primar y and secondar y school as an essential source of their pedagogical knowledge. this might also help them realize that regardless of whether those experiences had a positive or negative impact on them, they clearly influenced their knowledge base about teaching. it is also necessary for the program to provide more opportunities for students to visit and observe efl classrooms in real school settings where they might eventually work as efl teachers. this observation should start to take place earlier on in the study plan in order to help them better assimilate the transition and reduce the mismatch they claimed exists between the university teacher education experience and the actual teaching reality in schools. finally, efl teacher education programs should promote alternatives such as action research during the teaching practice and systematic reflection throughout the curriculum in order to help teacher learners discover their implicit theories of teaching and construct their personal practical knowledge about how to teach. the findings of this study have definitely enriched my understanding of the complex and dynamic nature of learning to teach. however, i have the feeling that this is just an initial attempt to delve into the sources of efl teachers’ pedagogical knowledge. investigating whether or not those sources are equally recognized and addressed in other efl teacher education programs in other regions in colombia is probably worthy of consideration. universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras112 macías references borg, m. (2004). the apprenticeship of observation. elt journal, 58(3), 274-276. borg, s. (2003). teacher cognition in language teaching: a review of research on what language teachers think, know, believe, and do. language teaching, 36, 81-109. bryman, a. (2008). social research methods (3rd ed.). oxford, uk: oxford university press. burns, a. (1999). collaborative action research for english language teachers. cambridge, uk: cambridge university press. calderhead, j. (1996). teachers: beliefs and knowledge. in d. c. berliner, & r. c. calfee (eds.), handbook of educational psychology (pp. 709-725). new york, ny: macmillan. calderhead, j., & miller, e. (1986). the integration of subject matter knowledge in student teachers’ classroom practice. university of lancaster school of education, uk: research monograph series paper 1. creswell, j. w. (2009). research design (3rd ed.). los angeles, ca: sage publications. denscombe, m. (1982). the hidden pedagogy and its implications for teacher training: an ecological analysis. british journal of sociology of education, 3, 249-265. duarte, i. (1998). research in second language teacher education. tesol quarterly, 32(3), 617-622. freeman, d. (1989). teacher training, development, and decision-making: a model of teaching and related strategies for language teacher education. tesol quarterly, 16(1), 27-45. freeman, d. (2002). the hidden side of the work: teacher knowledge and learning to teach. language teaching, 35, 1-13. freeman, d., & johnson, k. (1998). reconceptualizing the knowledge-base of language teacher education. tesol quarterly, 32(3), 397-417. instituto colombiano para la evaluación de la educación (2009). icfes national exam. icfes interactivo. retrieved from http://www.icfesinteractivo.gov.co/ sniee_ind_resul.htm jamieson, i. (1994). experiential learning in the context of teacher education. in g. harvard, & p. hodkinson (eds.), action and reflection in teacher education (pp. 35-54). norwood, nj: ablex publishing corp. johnson, k. (2006). the sociocultural turn and its challenges for second language teacher education. tesol quarterly, 40(1), 235-257. kolb, d. a. (1984). experiential learning: experience as the source of learning and development. englewood cliffs, nj: prentice-hall. kumaravadivelu, b. (1994). the postmethod condition: (e)merging strategies for second/foreign language teaching. tesol quarterly, 28(1), 27-49. lin, f. a. (2005).  knowledge base of english as a second language teachers  (doctoral dissertation proposal, the university of texas at austin). retrieved from https:// webspace.utexas.edu/cher witz/www/ie/samples/ fu-an_lin.pdf lortie, d. (1975). schoolteacher: a sociological study. chicago, il: university of chicago press. mullock, b. (2006). the pedagogical knowledge base of four tesol teachers. the modern language journal, 90(1), 48-67. shulman, l. s. (1986a). paradigms and research programs for the study of teaching. in m. c. wittrock (ed.), handbook of research on teaching (pp. 3-36). new york, ny: macmillan. shulman, l. s. (1986b). those who understand: knowledge growth in teaching. educational researcher, 15(2), 4-14. shulman, l. s. (1987). knowledge and teaching: foundations of the new reform. educational review, 57(1), 1-22. universidad surcolombiana, college of education (2004). proyecto educativo del programa, pep. (2004). colombia: author. vélez-rendón, g. (2002). second language teacher education: a review of the literature. foreign language annals, 35(4), 457-467. walberg, h. (1977). decision and perception: new constructs for research on teaching effects. cambridge journal of education, 7(1), 12-20. 113profile vol. 15, no. 2, october 2013. issn 1657-0790 (printed) 2256-5760 (online). bogotá, colombia. pages 99-114 an exploration of efl teachers’ awareness of the sources of pedagogical knowledge... zeichner, k., tabachnic, b., & densmore, k. (1987). individual, institutional and cultural influences on the development of teachers’ craft knowledge. in j. calderhead (ed.), exploring teachers’ thinking (pp. 21-56). london, uk: cassel. about the author diego fernando macías is an assistant teacher of english at universidad surcolombiana (colombia). he holds an ma in english from governors state university (usa) and an ma in tesol from the university of brighton (uk). his areas of interest are language teacher education, english as an international language, and web-based technologies. universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras114 macías appendix: interview guide for participants note: the questions below were used for both teacher educators and novice teachers. however, questions 8 and 11 were only addressed to tes and question 12 to nts. 1. did you have a favorite teacher when you were in primary or secondary school? why was he/ she your favorite? 2. did you have a teacher you hated/disliked in primary or secondary school? why did you hate/ dislike them? 3. has your own experience as an english language learner influenced the way you teach? if so, in what ways? 4. how much has your experience as an efl teacher after you graduated from the university teacher education program influenced how you teach? 5. what kind of knowledge about teaching do you think first semester students bring to the efl teacher education program? 6. to what degree has observing other teachers in their classes helped you learn how to teach? 7. did you have any opportunities to self-reflect in your process of becoming a language teacher in the efl teacher education program? if so, how has self-reflection contributed to the way you teach english? 8. how much research do students in the efl teacher education program (where you currently work) do? (for tes only) 9. did you do research along the efl teacher education program? if so, how has the research you have done influenced your teaching skills? 10. what role does the knowledge about teaching you acquired in the efl teacher education program play in how you teach english? 11. when observing student teachers and giving them feedback, do you ever ask them about why they engage in/make certain teaching actions or pedagogical decisions in class? (for tes only) 12. how did you find the teaching reality of actual classrooms to be compared to what you learned about it in the efl teacher education program? (for nts only) 13. where do you think the knowledge you have about teaching english comes from? 87profile vol. 17, no. 1, january-june 2015. issn 1657-0790 (printed) 2256-5760 (online). bogotá, colombia. pages 87-102 http://dx.doi.org/10.15446/profile.v17n1.41632 training in metacognitive strategies for students’ vocabulary improvement by using learning journals entrenamiento de estrategias metacognitivas para mejorar vocabulario a través de diarios de aprendizaje itala diaz*1 universidad de córdoba, montería, colombia this study examined the effects of metacognitive strategies to help beginning young learners with difficulties increasing and retaining vocabulary. this was a qualitative study in which participants first went through metacognitive strategy instruction to provide awareness of learning strategies. following this instruction, students underwent a set of five interventions based on the cognitive academic language learning approach instructional model. these interventions, together with journaling progress, were used to train them in the use of the metacognitive strategies planning, monitoring, and evaluating. the findings showed that metacognitive strategy training has positively contributed to vocabulary acquisition skills, as participants were able to raise consciousness about some learning strategies and the use of metacognitive strategies to increase their vocabulary learning. key words: evaluating, language learning strategy training, metacognition, metacognitive strategies, monitoring, planning, vocabulary. este estudio examinó el efecto de las estrategias metacognitivas para ayudar a estudiantes con dificultades para aumentar y retener vocabulario en inglés. este fue un estudio cualitativo, en el cual se instruyó en el uso de estrategias metacognitivas proporcionando el conocimiento de estrategias de aprendizaje. luego, se aplicó un conjunto de cinco intervenciones basadas en el método académico cognitivo para la enseñanza de lenguas. estas intervenciones, junto con el uso de diarios, se utilizaron para entrenarlos en el uso de estrategias metacognitivas. los resultados mostraron que el entrenamiento de estrategias metacognitivas ha contribuido positivamente en la adquisición de vocabulario, ya que los participantes fueron capaces de propiciar el conocimiento acerca de algunas estrategias de aprendizaje y el uso de estrategias metacognitivas para aumentar su aprendizaje de vocabulario. palabras clave: entrenamiento en estrategias para el aprendizaje de lengua, estrategias metacognitivas, evaluar, metacognición, monitorear, planear, vocabulario. * e-mail: itala1985@hotmail.com how to cite this article (apa, 6th ed.): diaz, i. (2015). training in metacognitive strategies for students’ vocabulary improvement by using learning journals. profile issues in teachers’ professional development, 17(1), 87-102. http://dx.doi.org/10.15446/profile.v17n1.41632. this article was received on january 18, 2014, and accepted on october 20, 2014. this is an open access article distributed under the terms of the creative commons license attribution-noncommercial-noderivatives 4.0 international license. consultation is possible at http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/. http://dx.doi.org/10.15446/profile.v17n1.41632 mailto:itala1985%40hotmail.com?subject= http://dx.doi.org/10.15446/profile.v17n1.41632 http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/ universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras88 diaz introduction there is a belief that the effectiveness for incorporating learning strategies to support students’ classroom goals can be fostered by providing learners with training and practice in learning strategies. these strategies are considered as “actions taken by students to make learning easier, more effective, and more self-directed and more transferable to new situations” (oxford, 1990, p. 8). applying these actions encourages participants’ knowledge on how they learn new vocabulary and find meaning in the language developed in class. in regard to these actions, flavell (1979) refers to this process as building students’ knowledge of the operations through which they achieve effective learning. therefore, this study examines the strategy training in vocabulary learning in participants who are a1 level according to the common european framework (cefr) and who also have difficulties retaining vocabulary. having noticed their lack of vocabulary through a needs analysis and their failed efforts at communication in most of the class, the teacher wants to see whether their training in metacognitive strategies results in more effective vocabulary learning. consequently, training students in these procedural strategies help them gather and exploit tools that help with managing their language learning process. with this in mind, training learners in metacognitive strategies such as planning, monitoring, and evaluating is considered as one way of improving their vocabulary acquisition by enabling them to manage techniques to control, supervise, and regulate their learning process (rubin, 1981). that is to say, if learners can be made aware of their own learning strategies, they may develop tools that will serve them well into the future by helping them monitor their cognitive and linguistic processes in their own vocabulary learning. considering this as the main variable of this study, this research project studies the effect of metacognitive strateg y training using learning journals in the students’ ability to improve their vocabulary retention. context the english language center at universidad de córdoba is a public institution for teaching and learning different languages in montería, colombia. this institution helps students who want to receive instruction in foreign languages, especially in english. it offers different language levels according to students’ ages. classes are held every saturday from 8:00 a.m. to 12:00 p.m. the center’s english teaching philosophy is based on providing opportunities for students to experience real communication as they undertake their learning. participants participants in the study were third, fourth, and fifth grade students whose ages ranged from 8 to 10, with a total of six girls and four boys. their socioeconomic status was middle class and their english level is a1 as established by the cefr. they were chosen for the study because they were having difficulties in class conversations, as they did not manage the necessary vocabulary to express or clarify their communication purposes. in addition, to confirm the above information a needs analysis was carried out in the participant’s first language. it was found that 45% of them think that they possess a good range of vocabulary and 60% said they never set objectives for learning new vocabulary. it was also noticed that they were not aware of learning strategies even though they did in fact use them. as a result of this analysis, an additional finding was that students struggle to learn new words and do not reflect on the process they undergo while learning. researcher’s role the teacher and the researcher were the same person during this study. the teacher’s primary role 89profile vol. 17, no. 1, january-june 2015. issn 1657-0790 (printed) 2256-5760 (online). bogotá, colombia. pages 87-102 training in metacognitive strategies for students’ vocabulary improvement by using learning journals was that of an observer and that of the researcher identifying the classroom difficulty that needed to be improved in everyday classroom practices, framing the research question for this study. this role then transitioned into one of a designer and driver, designing the research plan, interventions, and all the data collection instruments; after that, a trainer and a facilitator, in which she guided participants throughout the process, managing, analyzing, and supporting the participants’ training. finally, reporting events and data from the process, following high ethical standards that cemented the purpose of this research. theoretical framework this study is based on the framework of training learners in metacognitive strategies (mts), which include planning, monitoring, and evaluating in order to foster vocabulary learning. therefore, the following review will outline a significant perspective that addresses the use of mts in classroom practices. the subsequent review covers metacognitive strategies, language learning, strategy training, vocabulary learning, and journal study. metacognitive strategies (mts) r e c e nt l y, e du c at i on a l e nt it i e s h av e p a i d importance to strengthening metacognition to support and regulate students learning to prepare themselves with the skills at signifying and organizing beliefs about their own knowledge. for this process, researchers have defined the concept of metacognition. cross and paris (1988) conceived metacognition as “the knowledge and control children have over their own thinking and learning activities” (p. 131). in short, participants are aware of the particular cognitive strategies and the way to move toward given tasks, not only for the learning of vocabulary but for any kind of learning action so that they will be able to come across and extend those strategies and knowledge into new or similar situations. in this way, metacognition is like the enabling process of vocabulary learning, incorporating strategy training to predetermine and decide upon what is necessary to achieve learning purposes and vocabulary goals. in addition to this idea, important research has established that metacognition is the engine that drives self-directed learning. according to knowles (1975), self-directed learning: is that process in which individuals take the initiative, with or without the help of others, in diagnosing their learning needs, formulating learning goals, identifying human and material resources for learning, choosing and implementing learning strategies, and evaluating learning outcomes. (p. 18) if metacognition is a way of fostering learner knowledge about the thinking process, metacognitive strategies are then a way of developing that knowledge. the deployment of several activities and ways of approaching task goals can certainly be viewed as strategies to fulfill learning goals. according to o’malley and chamot (1990), in establishing the learning strategies as sets of actions in which students feed their own learning, learning strategies contribute to the improvement of students’ learning process. anderson (2002) states, “the use of metacognitive strategies activates one’s thinking and leads to improved performance in learning in general” (p. 3). this means that learners, who use these techniques, have advantages in understanding their own role in learning since they are aware of different ways of approaching learning goals. similarly, rubin (1987) states, mts are “management steps or operations by which learners control and manage their learning or problem-solving process via planning, monitoring, evaluating, and modifying their learning approaches” (p. 23). that is to say, using mts can make participantdirected learning possible by establishing the new thought processes to achieve learning tasks on their own, while simultaneously causing them to reflect on their performance. universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras90 diaz for the purposes of this study, metacognitive strategies are considered as a way of providing participants with more opportunities for reasoning out their own process of learning. engaging with the subject matter and using these methods encourage t h e m t o a s s u m e re s p on s i bi l it i e s an d l o g i c a l understanding of their own cognitive processes. in essence, o’malley and chamot (1990) define three steps to use as strategies when developing a task. first, plan for the task, which gets participants engaged with the material as they set out task goals. next, monitoring the task allows participants to examine, regulate, and manage their comprehension as they progress during the task. the final step is evaluation, where participants self-evaluate the process they underwent and how they developed the task. the outcome is that participants learn to evaluate their own learning process while simultaneously becoming familiar with journaling and more self-direction. the goal is for participants to internalize strategies that can become habitual and later skills for learning and retaining new vocabulary in a more self-directed way. to shed light over a broader view martinez (2006) states that recent research suggests that metacognition improves with adequate instruction, providing convincing evidence that supports its importance in the instruction and learning process. additionally, martinez (2006) implies that whether or not the process of developing metacognition is adequately initiated, it benefits the learning process as it is supported. this is linked to the purpose of this study since participants can start the reasoning of their own process of learning. in the same light, a study on third graders found out that the metacognitive instruction significantly improved their academic achievement. their improvement is reflected in the domains of reading comprehension and vocabulary, as the systematic instruction of these strategies led to positive effects in understanding written texts. this effect could be observed through different ways of representing expositor y texts, becoming more aware while they were reading, and figuring out the vocabulary in the texts (boulwaregooden, carreker, thornhill, & joshi, 2007). language learning strategy training oxford (1990) defines learning strategies as “operations employed by the learner to aid in the acquisition, storage, retrieval, and use of information” (p. 8). that is to say, learning strategies are defined as the way learners learn and recall information. this definition is expanded to what nunan (1999) states by calling them “the mental and communicative process that learners deploy to learn a second language” (p. 55). in other words, students’ learning strategies can influence the success of their language learning. “their active use of strategies helps them attain higher proficiency” (p. 60). that is to say, learning strategies are the individual actions that learners take to succeed in a language learning task or improve their target language proficiency. a study by lam (2010) about metacognitive training establishes an important point to the root of this study as the strategy instruction should begin with helping students to become aware of knowing about the strategies and which strategies they are already using because it may result in turning students’ attention away from non-task specific strategies towards task-specific strategies, matching them with the type of task. in that way, raising students’ awareness in trying more types of strategies, broadening the spectrum of learners’ preexisting non-target and task-specific strategies in future contexts. this situation supports this study in providing a1 learners with training in metacognitive strategies to know about the strategies they have at hand and to alert their use for upcoming settings. similarly, a report by chamot (2005) in the field of language learning strategy training states: “strategy instruction should be explicit, that is, that the teacher should inform students about the value and 91profile vol. 17, no. 1, january-june 2015. issn 1657-0790 (printed) 2256-5760 (online). bogotá, colombia. pages 87-102 training in metacognitive strategies for students’ vocabulary improvement by using learning journals applications of the strategies” (p. 23). it brings light to this study as the language instruction for participants is approached early on through mts training based on the learning task, their instructional model, and students’ needs. in addition, as rubin (2005) and chamot (2009) have stated, good language learners have an array of learning strategies to call on, to select, and employ when necessary. this is the main reason why the use of learning strategies is important to this study, as students undertake the strategy training. it is possible that they may succeed in learning a second language due to the correct application of these strategies that make learning more manageable. moreover, chamot (2005) states: “once a learning strategy becomes familiar through repeated use, it may be used with some automaticity” (p. 112). in other words, once students have a certain amount of experience in using and applying learning language strategies, they may develop the ability to automatically tap into their learning process. by following the chamot and o’malley (1994) instructional method, referred to as the cognitive academic language learning approach (calla), we can say the purpose of this study was to build a useful framework for direct language learning strategy instruction, in which the instruction was based on a five-phase recurrent cycle. this cycle included an introductory phase to explain the importance of metacognitive learning strategies; a teaching phase to present or model the learning strategies; a practicing phase to offer opportunities to let students practice the learning strategies with the learning task; an evaluating phase to use the learners’ journals and have students reflect on their own learning and evaluate their vocabulary learning; and lastly, a phase for the application of learning strategies to allow students to reflect, become aware of strengths and weaknesses, and participate actively in their learning process. finally, an expansion phase is defined as applying what students have learned to their own lives (chamot, 2009). in conclusion, by implementing this learning strategy training, participants were provided with the opportunity to develop habitual procedures for enhancing learning strategies and promoting students’ awareness of their own learning processes. vocabulary vocabulary is the foundation on which a language is taught. vocabular y is “the knowledge of the meanings of words” (herbert & kamil, 2005, p. 3). in other words, it can be said that vocabulary constitutes information coded in language meaning. there are two different manners of conveying information through language: oral and written. according to herbert and kamil (2005): the two forms that envision vocabulary are the oral and the imprint form, in which oral represents the receptive skill that allows learners to understand or recognize the words, and the productive skill which allows students to write or speak using different vocabulary. (p. 14) oral vocabulary is the set of words in which a person knows the meaning when speaking or reading aloud. written vocabulary is a set of word meanings encoding information that is meant to be written or read silently. vocabulary, then, refers to well-known words that are used and recognized frequently by a person. for this reason, vocabulary is important in the english language teaching (elt) process because it seeks to engage a successful language learner who is able to recognize and produce communicative functions. hence, the learner’s vocabulary acquisition is seen as “learning words, learning phrases and chunks” (cameron, 2001, p. 72). in oral and written for m , v o c a bu l ar y a c qu i s it i on h e lp s i mprov e spontaneous communication in class, supporting the teaching and learning of other language skills, such as listening, writing, reading, and speaking (chengqian, 2009). consequently, the improvement universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras92 diaz of vocabular y acquisition skills also has other language skills benefits, providing a foundation for a different area of language learning that engages the target language. for this reason, vocabulary learning is conceived through metacognitive instruction by training the learner in the use of mts turning his/her preexisting abilities into deploying different ways of figuring out conceptual understanding and creating deeper understanding of a word rather that applying traditional ways as memorizing or translating. lam’s (2010) study on third graders accounts for this decision as it shows evidence regarding metacognitive instruction for the learning of vocabulary. it actively engages students in the process of creating meaning through task-based strategies. the importance of vocabulary in the performance of language learners is also the focus of several researchers who have worked on different cognitive strategies for teaching vocabulary. herman and dole (1988) consider that when vocabulary teaching is started early and individually trained, it might help the learning of other skills, mainly reading and listening. for this reason, providing students with ways of improving their vocabulary storage, recognizing their learning strategies to be able to draw meaning and understanding the target language equips participants with learning alternatives for new settings. journal study a journal is a report of data that is recorded from introspection to describe studies on one’s teaching and learning practice where the journalers’ perceptions are also included. according to bailey and oschner (1983), a journal study is “an account of a second experience as recorded in a first-person journal” (p. 189). in other words, journals were the instruments to record experiences from participants’ introspection as well as the means for the learners to describe the teaching and learning process. during the period of implementation, journals proved to be of great value because they were one of the instruments used to collect qualitative information in order to find data documenting patterns and events that emerged during the analysis. it was kept during each lesson after participants completed their activities and then registered their own perceptions about the lesson development. participants were expected to write ideas about lesson events and experiences while using learning strategies to describe his/her task performance. journals were then the primary source to find out about students’ engagement in using the taskbased strategies. this is further supported by chamot’s (2005) report manifesting that language learning strategies are identified through self-report, since it is the only way to identify a leaner’s mental processing. a research study on self-access learning manifests significance for students’ capacity in making decisions and evaluations, developing reflectivity and awareness of their own learning processes (herrera díaz, 2012). this idea complements the purpose of using journals since it is to have a space to place all that reflective knowledge. in the same way we can say teacher’s notes play a very important role in this study, since they help to record entries from the teacher observations at each intervention. a study from lopera medina (2013) concludes that the use of teacher’s journal in a study not only served as a useful and objective tool to gather information, but also to cement information from other instruments as they are confronted. this study also conveyed a teacher journal on students’ language processes, keeping track of each student’s anecdotes of what learners do, understand, and misunderstand in class and giving accounts from the whole process. this further supports the purpose of this study. method type of study this study is based on a descriptive-qualitative analysis. nunan and bailey (2009) define this type of study as a systematic, interactive process of identifying 93profile vol. 17, no. 1, january-june 2015. issn 1657-0790 (printed) 2256-5760 (online). bogotá, colombia. pages 87-102 training in metacognitive strategies for students’ vocabulary improvement by using learning journals an issue, problem, or puzzle to identify in any context. through this frame, the teacher can inquire her/ his own classroom practice in elt reflecting on the puzzle observed and intending to improve it in order to significantly make more effective decisions about teaching. the research plan is then carried out reflecting on the whole process and the repeated cycle, allowing this study to self-reflect on the training in improving vocabulary learning via mts. based on this principle, it could be determined whether or not mts helped a1 learners improve vocabular y learning skills throughout the application of systematic procedures like planning, monitoring, and evaluating. moreover, kemmis and mctaggart (1988) have pointed out that when new thoughts are applied to educational environments, these can be a means to improve knowledge in the learning and teaching practices. this study included a descriptive-qualitative analysis for interpreting participants’ awareness and perceptions. consequently, participants were randomly assigned to the task for the purpose of collecting data in the strategy training during the intervention period, and offered a subjective d e s c r ipt i on and e x pl anat i on of t he stu d e nt s’ performance (kvale, 1996). the research consisted of training students in mts (planning, monitoring, and evaluating), following chamot and o’malley’s instructional model (1994). five interventions were also applied, developing activities intended to enable students to use and practice these strategies as well as their vocabulary learning skills. data collection in this study, the data were collected by using dif ferent obs er vat iona l met ho ds, including a questionnaire, a mind map, student journals, and field notes. these instruments were selected according to students’ age and language proficiency level to obtain different insights from participants and to elicit information for the further data analysis. questionnaire (needs analysis) this data collection instrument was focused on obtaining the basic and relevant information about the students’ possible lack of vocabulary as perceived by the teacher, needs, and knowledge about metacognitive strategies for the research project (needs analysis). it was also previously piloted. babbie (2001) defines a questionnaire as “an instrument specifically designed to elicit information useful for analysis” (p. 239). the identification of needs is a process of describing the “problems” of a target population. it was applied to participants to evaluate students’ knowledge of mts and lexical competence. mind map this elicitation tool was applied during the training to measure students’ knowledge of both everyday vocabulary and the selected vocabulary dur ing t he inter vent ions, and to obs er ve t he students’ improvement. mind maps would also provide evidence of learning and serve as a way for the participants to document their knowledge transformation (radix & abdool, 2013). the mind map was a concept map consisting of a diagram to structure knowledge around a single concept, determining students’ vocabulary range in everyday routines. one mind map was applied at the pre-intervention stage to check participants’ knowledge on everyday vocabulary. a second mind map was then applied at the end of the interventions, with students filling it out according to each intervention topic, to compare initial and final vocabulary knowledge. student journals students were asked to keep a written record to register the process of metacognitive strategies and universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras94 diaz vocabulary learning in their first language. according to bailey and oschner (1983), “a journal allows participants to report on affective factors, language learning strategies, and their own perceptions, facets of the language learning experience which are normally hidden or largely inaccessible to an external observer” (p. 189). as being this the tool to pique students’ reflection and introspection on the use of mts, students were expected to report on their thoughts, perceptions and ideas about applying learning strategies during the lesson interventions. the reflection was over a process of five 60-minute lessons with a variety of activities that allowed students to use learning strategies to learn vocabulary. journals were also guided with a group of seven open-ended questions and three closed-ended ones within four sections (planning, monitoring, evaluating, and vocabulary learning). that allowed students to bring up data and quality information from their mental processing on planning, monitoring and evaluating to address the research question. field notes field notes were used to register observations directed towards the teaching and learning process of participants, focusing on vocabulary and strategy use during the intervention. this instrument was kept in a digital format, recording data after each intervention. the objective was to analyze the influence of strategy training in vocabulary learning. these field notes included general accounts of what happened during each intervention, for the purpose of collecting data that might respond to the research question. pedagogical intervention during the pre-implementation phase, a needs analysis questionnaire was applied in spanish to examine participants’ knowledge of mts and techniques used for learning their vocabulary. in the same way, a mind map was also applied to determine students’ needs in terms of lexical competence and participants’ homogeneity in vocabulary learning. the implementation phase had to do with the strategy training. it lasted for a period of six weeks, in which five hours were used on mts training and 10 hours on the application of activities designed to allow the use of metacognitive strategies on vocabulary learning. training the researcher modeled strategies for learners to understand how to use vocabulary strategies. the strategies were associating, making sentences, using images, and so forth. after that, mts were explained and detailed, covering the three components of: planning, monitoring, and evaluating, as stated by chamot and o’malley (1994). each intervention included a lesson plan and students’ journal entries; every lesson was designed and reported in teachers’ field notes to record reflections about the study. the lessons consisted of five stages in accordance with the calla model by chamot and o’malley (1994), a useful framework for direct language learning strategies instruction: preparation: this stage consisted of finding out what students knew about the topic through brainstorming concepts in relation to the suggested topic. lesson objectives were explained and also established by learners to approach the lesson, as well as the new vocabulary to practice during the lesson. presentation: during this stage, the new information was presented and explained by modeling some language samples on how to use the new words, making sure of the understanding of the learning activity instructions. practice: the students worked on the different activities such as gap fill in, brainstorming, associating, and guessing for practicing the new vocabulary. the teacher provided guidance to help learners assimilate 95profile vol. 17, no. 1, january-june 2015. issn 1657-0790 (printed) 2256-5760 (online). bogotá, colombia. pages 87-102 training in metacognitive strategies for students’ vocabulary improvement by using learning journals the new words, giving them the opportunity to work in groups and clarify understanding. s elf-evaluation: in this stage, the students evaluated their performance during the lesson in relation to the way they attempted to solve language problems they encountered, and their own learning experience with the use of metacognitive strategies. a second mind map and the same needs analysis were also applied again during this stage in order to measure student growth in retaining new vocabulary and the application of mts after the interventions. for the post-implementation, all the data were grouped and analyzed to determine the influence the metacognitive strategies had on the improvement of lexical competence in everyday vocabulary. data analysis the process of analyzing data was based on the grounded theory approach explained by strauss and corbin (1990) as “the construction of theory from data that implies to extract and develop concepts from the data collected” (p. 278). considering this approach, this process was carried out by analyzing all the data that emerged from the journals, mind map, field notes and questionnaire, tagging individual phrases in an excel document with different colors. then the analysis was taken to match ideas with each other in order to consider indicators to assemble later categories and organize data according to their commonalities and triangulation patterns from the data which became the core categories and a picture of preliminary results. findings following the data analysis, this section explains the categories and sub-categories (see table 1) that emerged during the analysis as a way of grouping and organizing encountered themes during data table 1. categories and sub-categories main category categories subcategories awareness in the use of metacognitive strategies by means of learning journals to improve everyday vocabulary. category 1 engagement of metacognitive strategies through the use of learning journals. applying personal plans. raising consciousness of their needs (behavior and attitudes) by means of learning journals. category 2 enhancement of learning strategies. awareness of learning strategies. employment of learning strategies. category 3 development of vocabulary strategies. effectiveness of the use of vocabulary strategies. universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras96 diaz reduction. these help to answer the research question: how can training learners on planning, monitoring, and evaluating through learning journals help young learners improve their everyday vocabulary? first, the main category draws specific conclusions from the data collected. this shows an overview from the findings in relation to the effect of mts training. the constant review of data, its permanent verification, and integration of main categories allowed the researcher to label the core category as the awareness in the use of metacognitive strategies by means of learning journals to improve everyday vocabulary. the first category emerged in response to the research question in the application of mts through the use of learning journals. it can be explained from two perspectives: initially, in applying personal plans, data revealed that learners generated a plan for the task, setting personal goals to be reached during the lesson as shown in figures 1 and 2. subjects set and recorded personal objectives. for example, these included expected behavior outcomes or knowing the meaning of unknown words for the activity. students also predicted what they would find in the activity. the excerpts below illustrate participant journal responses in terms of planning and setting personal objectives for the lesson: excerpt 11 “focus on the lesson” (s3), “pay attention” (s5), “be quiet in class” (s6), “i should behave” (s8), “sit down so i don’t get quarreled” (s10). (students’ journals) excerpt 2 they seem to be more worried about behavior issues than the activity purposed. they set out goals in terms of behavior. (teacher’s journal) it can be said that during this planning stage the students got involved in the task of setting personal 1 excerpts have been translated from spanish. s = student. goals to be reached in the lesson. in terms of reflection, they did not carry out a satisfactory process, since the responses were not fully completed. similarly, the needs analysis showed students’ awareness of learning strategies as well as recognition of the mts (planning and monitoring). as an illustration of this, 80% of the participants manifested that they made plans for the lessons and also thought about the strategies they possessed. figure 1 shows student responses about the planning stage, presenting percentages that indicate participant awareness of mts. figure 1. needs analysis: setting objectives to learn new vocabulary always 30% sometimes 10% never 60% figure 2. needs analysis: following planning steps2 always 40% sometimes 40% never 20% 2 figure 2 mentions students’ responses in regard to setting goals, stating steps to find unknown information, and framing a possible performance. 97profile vol. 17, no. 1, january-june 2015. issn 1657-0790 (printed) 2256-5760 (online). bogotá, colombia. pages 87-102 training in metacognitive strategies for students’ vocabulary improvement by using learning journals even though participants were aware of the strategies they could use and when to use them, their process of auto evaluating task performance was weak. their manifestations regarding this last stage were not clear in terms of what was expected, such as reflections about their lesson performance. one factor that could explain this issue is the participants’ ages, which ranged from 8 to 10 years old, as they seemed to be confused by the idea of formulating a self-evaluation process. second, raising consciousness of their needs (behavior and attitudes) by means of learning journals is another sub-category to explain the enhancement of metacognitive strategies. embedding mts has some impact on students’ learning process; it has to do with their initiation of planning for the lesson. that is to say, the development of their ability to express what they know and assist their learning process by means of setting personal goals (mercer & mercer, 1993). likewise, mts contributes positively to the improvement of vocabulary learning skills, as student journal entry reflections showed more consciousness in terms of knowing what to do when the students faced difficulties. excerpt 3 in terms of the metacognitive strategies, they knew the steps to follow after each task. they seem to be more concerned with the strategy they use to find out the information they do not know. (teacher’s journal) learners manifested independence in recognizing difficulties and ways of managing the activity proposed. for example, when they encountered problems with the meaning of some words during the task, that difficulty was assisted by asking a friend or the teacher, looking the words up in a dictionary, or associating it within the context. this idea of being conscious learners is further supported by wenden (1987), who states this process is the set of acquired skills about their own cognitive process to apply, use, and gain knowledge in various situations. excerpt 4 the teacher noticed that s5 at the moment to start working in pairs established steps to follow in the activity and for each group mate. (teacher’s journal) participants identified when their strategies were effective or needed revision as they encountered the problems they had predicted. they were also aware of some difficulties they predicted they would find, as well as the possible solutions, implementing vocabulary strategies as necessary. for example, they indicated they had problems with meaning as they stated “no saber las palabras” (not knowing the meaning of some words) but they immediately came up with a possible solution, stating “buscar en el dictionary” (look up in the dictionary). figure 3 illustrates the most common solutions learners proposed when they encountered difficulties with word meanings. figure 3. students’ suggested solutions to vocabulary problems 16% 16% 27% 12% 29% saying the words many times translating the words looking up in the dictionary writing sentences using the words reading the word several times excerpt 5 they get the text and started to read several times in order to understand it. s5, s8, and s10 checked the dictionary to find out some word meanings and so be able to understand the text about carl’s reading, highlighting the words in the texts. (teacher’s journal) regarding category 2, defined as the enhancement of learning strategies, two subcategories were identified: universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras98 diaz first, the awareness of learning strategies during the process of integrating vocabular y learning strategies and mts. students showed a more conscious process in regard to being aware of the strategies they could use and recycle later. participants seemed to be more conscious of learning strategies, especially vocabulary learning. they discovered different ways of approaching language, recalling some of the strategies suggested at the beginning of the project. excerpt 6 in terms of the metacognitive strategies, they knew the steps to follow after each task. they seem to be more concerned with the strategy they use to find out the information they do not know. (teacher’s journal) excerpt 7 they also managed to have the activity done within the time limit, and also setting objectives in terms of putting their focus on the activity and coping with the requirements. (teacher’s journal) excerpt 8 i could see that there was appropriation of the new words as they tried to use them constantly during the activity in order to learn their meaning; some others were just writing the meaning they found in the dictionary or asking for the meaning in the first language. (teacher’s journal) it can be said from the above, that as students became more aware of learning strategies, they could understand how to manage obstacles encountered during the lesson by making use of the knowledge about their own strategies. to illustrate this, the use of vocabulary strategies is presented as evidence of when students at the planning stage started setting personal goals, predicting, and recalling background in relation to the lesson. this can be a sample of how they are starting to notice how they learn in a systematic way. figure 4 shows evidence of how students start noticing the frame to learn in a systematic way. second, the employment of learning strategies is another subcategory in the enhancement of learning strategies. the application of learning strategies is evident as students outlined tools such as repetition, translation, testing themselves, and so forth, during the lesson to facilitate their task performance (excerpts 6 to 8). they also involved the use of mts, such as planning and monitoring. during vocabulary activities, the process of strategy instruction allowed students to be guided in the use of mts embedding training for the task activity (o’malley & chamot, 1990). moreover, a reflection on the activity was taken from the lesson results, instead of what they predicted in the planning stage that implies following the process of using these strategy mechanisms. by doing so, learners are seen as more self-reliant in determining what strategies they can use. figure 5 shows students’ responses regarding the application of learning strategies. figure 5. wanted learning strategies 18% 28% 18% 9% 27% to look for strategies to understand to learn new words to follow a topic it is not needed figure 4. systematic steps applied during the lesson 28% 39% 22% 11% setting clear objectives to learn words in english applying previous knowledge to remember and learn new words in english thinking about strategies reviewing content 99profile vol. 17, no. 1, january-june 2015. issn 1657-0790 (printed) 2256-5760 (online). bogotá, colombia. pages 87-102 training in metacognitive strategies for students’ vocabulary improvement by using learning journals excerpt 9 i can see that students’ thinking on metacognitive strategies is more evident because they are managing their activities with little help from the teacher, at first sight, they knew the steps to follow after one was completed, making it easier to handle the class activity. (teacher’s journal) category 3 refers to the development of vocabulary strategies. as students determined their class plans and raised their awareness of learning strategies, they became more familiar with planning the strategies to be used to complete a task or to understand it. as a result of the influence of these, they could increase the number of words produced in the second mind map per intervention in relation to the first one. following the training, the number of words increased on average 5 or 6% in each week’s lesson. o’malley and chamot (1990) define learning strategies as “the special thoughts or behaviors that individuals use to comprehend, learn, or retain new information” (p. 1). when the students set behavior objectives and activity goals (see figure 2 and excerpt 1), they seemed to identify those strategies supporting their task performance quickly. they also decided when to use them, and regulated their learning to understand the task. for example, thinking about the difficulties they may encounter before beginning a learning task can be seen as part of the planning stage of metacognitive strategies, anticipating possible situations to be experienced (see figure 3). knowing and planning ways of overcoming these difficulties can be seen as a student’s way of scaffolding his or her own learning, making conscious use of learning strategies. hence, the integration of strategies constitute a combination of mts and vocabulary strategies processing, where learners are aware of learning strategies to improve their vocabular y through their own efforts as they prioritize strategies to make the understanding and completion of a task possible. excerpt 10 although they try to follow the steps presented to complete the activity, they measure the evaluation process by the product of their individual activity results. in terms of monitoring, they call for partners’ helps as well as teachers’; they also looked up the meaning of unknown words on the dictionary very repeatedly. (teacher’s journal) in the same way, learning journals also contributed to the training of mts by providing learners with a scan of their own experience (see figure 4) at learning vocabulary as well as understanding the strategies they used to make it possible. it also provided the opportunity to self-reflect on individual experiences and apply tools to acquire the meaning of unknown vocabulary, identifying their preferences based on strengths and weaknesses as illustrated in excerpts 11 and 12, although the process of self-report was demonstrated to be accurate since it comes from their mental processing. excerpt 11 journals have been useful for students to notice how they tried to solve lesson problems. they talk about how they could clarify understanding. i could also noticed them grouping and resourcing for getting the learning activity completed. (teacher’s journal) excerpt 12 remember the meaning of words about free activities, unknown the verbs and how to write them, do not know how to pronounce some words (students identified problems). memorize the words, strive for completing the activity, do my job in a better way as possible, look up in the dictionary (students identified advantages). (students’ journal) conclusions the main objective of this study was to examine the effect of metacognitive strategies training on a1 level students to help them improve their vocabulary. it found that the training in mts contributed to universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras100 diaz improving students’ vocabulary learning at centro de inglés. this was evident as participants raised individual consciousness about some learning strategies although they could not show evidence of internalizing metacognitive strategies. findings evidenced a positive inf luence of the learning strategies to improve students’ vo cabular y as they could experience different ways to find and understand meaning of the words given during the interventions. this knowledge gave participants different opportunities to use several tools as well as the ability to increase vocabulary learning during class performance. the process also indicated that students experienced a procedural language instruction where systematic stages involved various cognitive and linguistic processes. in regard to language learning strategies, the study concluded that students can be more conscious about the deck of strategies they use in their vocabulary le ar ning pro cess w hen t he y employ dif ferent vocabulary strategies and identify the integration of metacognitive strategies. it positively influences the knowledge of vocabulary learning tools, as implied by chamot and o’malley (1994). the use of learning journals has also served participants positively. as participants experienced the use of learning journals, they started framing their learning through the process of thinking, recoding their individual perceptions about their performance in each lesson. students were able to notice the operations they were employing to help their learning by means of this instrument, recognizing their strengths and weaknesses. learning journals could also provide the researcher with an overview of strategy training and how students were developing in their learning. one positive insight of this study is for teachers who may see this process as the starting point to improve methods applied by students in vocabulary learning, and expand them to others language areas, since this field is still to be investigated. pedagogical implications s ome prac t ic a l implic at ions of t he study, especially concerning efl teachers, students and educational institutions can be identified. the training in metacognitive strategies benefits classroom practices as it enriches the metacognition process. metacognitive strategies provide learners with the knowledge and ability to gather learning tools to carry out learning goals, and the acquaintance of features from their own ways of learning to manage cognitive process when developing their learning. another point drawn from this study is that the training in metacognitive strategies has significant inf luence on students’ autonomy. it generates autonomous behaviors and ways of self-managing learning strategies by allocating mindful tools and particular individual methods of attaining learning goals. these strategies may help cement future learning goals as they continue pursuing knowledge using different procedural skills that cope with learning needs. this study also permits exploring the training on metacognitive strategies in the different language areas and to seek the development of learning strategies that help students scaffold their learning process. furthermore, it allows promoting more classroom research on different techniques and cognitive process that can be engaged to provide learners with long lasting strategies as possible solutions to their learning difficulties. the use of learning journals and field notes in the classroom is another concern. it can be used as a way of assessing the development of a different teaching and learning process, through the process of thinking and writing about classroom and individual experiences. 101profile vol. 17, no. 1, january-june 2015. issn 1657-0790 (printed) 2256-5760 (online). bogotá, colombia. pages 87-102 training in metacognitive strategies for students’ vocabulary improvement by using learning journals further research to continue exploring the effect of mts training on language learning areas, it is advisable to extend the procedures carried out in this research. this extension can be employed in using interviews or focus groups in order to identify external factors that can benefit the research purpose by providing more data measurements. moreover, it is also recommended that the period of training be extended to continue contributing to participants’ self-evaluation process. finally, it is necessary to devote more time to the mts familiarization training to promote more student practice in the use of mts. references anderson, n. j. 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(1988). the action research planner (3rd ed.). victoria, au: deakin university. knowles, m. s. (1975). self-directed learning: a guide for learners and teachers. englewood cliffs, nj: prentice hall/cambridge. http://dx.doi.org/10.1598/rt.61.1.7 http://dx.doi.org/10.1017/s0267190505000061 http://dx.doi.org/10.1017/s0267190505000061 http://dx.doi.org/10.1037/0022-0663.80.2.131 http://dx.doi.org/10.1037/0022-0663.80.2.131 http://dx.doi.org/10.1037/0003-066x.34.10.906 http://dx.doi.org/10.1037/0003-066x.34.10.906 http://www.cuc.edu.ve/upc/pnft/ingles/teaching_and_learning_vocabulary.pdf http://www.cuc.edu.ve/upc/pnft/ingles/teaching_and_learning_vocabulary.pdf http://www.cuc.edu.ve/upc/pnft/ingles/teaching_and_learning_vocabulary.pdf universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras102 diaz lam, w. (2010). metacognitive strategy teaching in the esl oral classroom: ripple effect on non-target strategy use. australian review of applied linguistics, 33(1). retrieved from http://www.nla.gov.au/openpublish/ index.php/aral/article/viewfile/2036/2419. lopera medina, s. (2013). diary insights of an efl reading teacher. profile issues in teachers’ professional development, 15(2), 115-126. martinez, m. e. (2006). what is metacognition? phi delta kappan, 87(9), 696-699. http://dx.doi.org/10.1177/ 003172170608700916. mercer, c. d., & mercer, a. r. (1993). teaching students with learning problems (4th ed.). new york, usa: macmillan publishing. nunan, d. (1999). second language teaching and learning. boston, ma: heinle & heinle. nunan, d., & bailey, k. (2009). exploring second language classroom research: a comprehensive guide. boston, ma: heinle cengage learning o’malley, j. m., & chamot, a. u. (1990). learning strategies in second language acquisition. cambridge, uk: cambridge university press. http://dx.doi.org/10.1017/ cbo9781139524490. oxford, r. (1990). language learning strategies: what every teacher should know. boston, ma: heinle & heinle. radix, c., & abdool, a. (2013). using mind maps for the measurement and improvement of learning quality. caribbean teaching scholar, 3(1), 3-21. rubin, j. (1981). the study of cognitive processes in second language learning. applied linguistics, 2(2), 117-131. rubin, j. (1987). learner strategies: assumptions, research history and typology. in a. wenden & j. rubin (eds.), learner strategies in language learning (pp. 15-30). new jersey: prentice hall. rubin, j. (2005). the expert language learner: a review of good language learner studies and learner strategies. in k. johnson, (ed.), expertise in second language learning and teaching (pp. 37-63). basingstoke, uk: palgrave macmillan. strauss, a., & corbin, j. (1990). basics of qualitative research: grounded theory procedures and techniques. london, uk: sage. wenden, a. l. (1987). metacognition: an expanded view on the cognitive abilities of l2 learners. language learning, 37(4), 573-597. http://dx.doi.org/10.1111/j.1467-1770.1987. tb00585.x. about the author itala diaz holds a master degree in didactics for self-directed learning from universidad de la sabana (colombia), a tesol certificate from anaheim university (usa), a bachelor of arts in english language from universidad de córdoba (colombia), and esl certifications from hagerstown community college (usa). http://www.nla.gov.au/openpublish/index.php/aral/article/viewfile/2036/2419 http://www.nla.gov.au/openpublish/index.php/aral/article/viewfile/2036/2419 http://dx.doi.org/10.1177/003172170608700916 http://dx.doi.org/10.1177/003172170608700916 http://dx.doi.org/10.1017/cbo9781139524490 http://dx.doi.org/10.1017/cbo9781139524490 http://dx.doi.org/10.1111/j.1467-1770.1987.tb00585.x http://dx.doi.org/10.1111/j.1467-1770.1987.tb00585.x 99profile vol. 13, no. 2, october 2011. issn 1657-0790. bogotá, colombia. pages 99-111 metacognitive awareness and comprehension monitoring in reading ability of iranian efl learners monitoreo de la conciencia metacognitiva y de la comprensión en la habilidad lectora de estudiantes iraníes de inglés como lengua extranjera fatemeh khonamri* elahe mahmoudi kojidi** university of mazandaran, iran we report an investigation on the relationship between metacognitive awareness of reading strategies and comprehension monitoring of language learners in english as a foreign language context. participants were thirty first year university students majoring in electronics. they completed a questionnaire aimed at discerning the strategies that readers use when coping with academic reading tasks. participants were then divided into six groups according to their reading proficiency and metacognitive awareness. think-aloud protocol analysis, error detection and retrospective questions were used to examine the comprehension monitoring of readers. the data were analysed through descriptive statistical procedures as well as t-tests. the results indicated the combined effect of metacognitive awareness of reading strategies and reading ability of academic reading texts on language learners’ comprehension monitoring. key words: comprehension monitoring, metacognitive awareness, proficient readers, reading comprehension, reading strategies. reportamos una investigación sobre la relación entre la conciencia metacognitiva de las estrategias de lectura y el monitoreo de la comprensión de estudiantes de idiomas en un contexto de inglés como idioma extranjero. los participantes fueron treinta estudiantes universitarios de electrónica de primer año. ellos respondieron un cuestionario por medio del cual se podían identificar las estrategias que los lectores usan cuando se enfrentan a actividades de lectura académica. los participantes fueron divididos en seis grupos, según su competencia lectora y su conciencia metacognitiva. para examinar el monitoreo de la comprensión de los lectores se emplearon el análisis de protocolo de estimulación del recuerdo, la detección de errores y preguntas retrospectivas. se analizó la información a través de la descripción de procedimientos estadísticos así como t­tests. los resultados indicaron los efectos combinados de la conciencia metacognitiva respecto a las estrategias de lectura y la habilidad lectora de textos académicas en el monitoreo de la comprensión de estudiantes de lenguas. palabras clave: comprensión lectora, comprensión monitoreada, conciencia metacognitiva, estrategias de lectura, lectores competentes. * e-mail: fkhonamri@umz.ac.ir ** e-mail: ek.mahmoudi@yahoo.com this article was received on november 29, 2010, and accepted on april 30, 2011. 100 universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras khonamri & mahmoudi kojidi introduction during the past couple of decades, researchers have become keenly interested in metacognition. the term metacognition refers to the knowledge of and monitoring of cognitive processes. most research on metacognition e.g. nelson & narens (1990, cited in hacker, 1997) has been on metamemory or metacomprehension, although the metacognitive processes involved in performing other tasks, such as problem solving, have also been studied. additionally, researchers have begun to explore metacognition outside of the laboratory, extending research paradigms to the classroom and other applied settings. first language reading researchers, most nota bly baker and brown (1984), have investigated several different aspects of the relationship between metacognitive ability and effective reading. following flavell’s (1979) model, they have recognized two dimensions of metacognitive ability: 1) knowledge of cognition or metacognitive awareness; and 2) regulation of cognition which, as stated, includes the reader’s knowledge about his or her own cognitive resources and the compatibility between the reader and the reading situation. for example, if a reader is aware of what is needed to perform effectively, then he is likely to take steps to meet the demands of a reading situation in a more efficient way. if, however, the reader is not aware of his or her own limitations as a reader or of the complexity of the task he/she is to do, then the reader can hardly be expected to take actions to anticipate or overcome the difficulties (carrell, 1989). according to flavell (1985), as individuals de velop, they accumulate a great deal of knowledge as a result of life experiences. this knowledge can be thought of as “knowing that” knowledge, also referred to as declarative knowledge or “knowing how” knowledge, referred to as procedural knowledge. one of the types of declarative knowledge that individuals acquire is knowledge about their own and others’ cognitive processes, also known as metacognitive awareness. on the other hand, during learning, it is important for individuals to both assess how well they are doing on a task and initiate a plan to correct any problems they may be experiencing. these combined activities are referred to as monitoring cognition. thus, while one is listening to a lecture or reading a book, it is important to both evaluate one’s level of understanding (with perhaps simple questions, such as “do i understand what has been said/read up to this point?”) as well as regulate understanding with one or more strategies if one is aware of a comprehension difficulty (for example, asking a question of an instructor or rereading a section of a paragraph not understood). thus, monitoring of cognition really has two components. the first is evaluation of progress toward a cognitive goal, and the second is a regulation of activities through the use of appropriate strategies. if a student is regulating his or her cognition, then he or she has already attempted to evaluate progress. however, it is possible for a student to fail to evaluate progress or also possible to evaluate progress but then fail to use one or more regulation strategies. many fail to use strategies to repair comprehension problems simply because they lack the time or motivation to do so. unfortunately, failure to evaluate one’s progress and/or use strategies to aid progress toward goals is an all too common occurrence in students’ efforts at learning. furthermore, these types of monitoring activities are often not taught directly and, for this reason, students’ learning and their ability to know how to learn may be hindered. hence, based on the brief introduction pres ented, it can be mentioned that the purpose of the present study is to investigate the probable relationship between the two abovementioned components 101profile vol. 13, no. 2, october 2011. issn 1657-0790. bogotá, colombia. pages 99-111 metacognitive awareness and comprehension monitoring... of metacognition, metacognitive knowledge of reading strategies and comprehension monitoring, in reading ability of iranian efl learners. in fact, from bottom-up theories and top-down theories to the more recent interactive models, researchers have argued about which reading model is best to explain the process of readers’ comprehension. in addition to the explanations of the reading comprehension process based on reading models, researchers have also categorized a lot of so-called “good” reading strategies that“should be adopted” to enhance readers’ comprehension of texts and train less-efficient readers to use “good” strategies as they read (block, 1986; devine, 1984; hosenfeld, 1977, cited in yang, 2002). however, sarig (1987) pointed out that good strategies do not necessarily lead to successful comprehension, and anderson (1991) claimed that proficient and less-proficient readers might actually use the same strategies (cited in yang, 2002). accordingly, yang (2002, p. 19) states “even being equipped with a variety of reading strategies, readers still need a higher-level ability to utilize their reading strategies. this ability is called ‘comprehension monitoring’: the ability to know what has been done right or wrong and to integrate new information with prior existing knowledge”. this observation uncovered the fact that reading strategies alone cannot account for the effectiveness of reading comprehension. being aware of this flaw, researchers (e.g. block, 1992; ehrlich, remond and tardieu, 1999; loizido & koutselini, 2007; yang, 2002) then started to conduct studies related to comprehension monitoring. in the same vein, block (1992) indicated that most research related to comprehension monitoring has been conducted with native english speakers. she claimed, though, that comprehension monitoring is more important for l2 readers, as they will probably encounter more linguistic difficulties than l1 (native speaker) readers do and thus need to “repair more gaps in their understanding” through comprehension monitoring (p. 320). block argued that more studies should be done on l2 readers. considering the emphasis made on the necessity of comprehension monitoring for l2 learners, it is apparently clear that comprehension monitoring would be particularly crucial to foreign language (fl) readers. since (fl) readers have a more limited knowledge of vocabulary and grammar and have to decode meanings of texts by adopting strategies, they also need comprehension monitoring to further examine whether those strategies were successful in overcoming their reading problems. in this line, the current study, from one aspect, has investigated manifestation of comprehension monitoring among efl proficient and less proficient readers. in addition to comprehension monitoring, which is important for efl readers, the other aspect of metacognition, metacognitive awareness, is also related to it and plays a significant role in the act of good reading. according to hetherington & parke (1993), the two aspects of metacognition (individual’s knowledge and control of cognitive activities) are interrelated and act upon each other. in these two aspects, one’s understanding of her/his cognitive abilities and processes, the abilities of others and the task situation will influence the strategies s/he uses in overseeing and monitoring learning. in turn, his/ her experience and ability to act as an executive in planning, monitoring, checking, and modifying strategies will contribute to her knowledge about cognition and what contributes to success or failure on intellectual tasks. moreover, israel (2005) stresses the point that because metacognitive activities involve higher level cognitive processes, teachers should be more aware of their students’ cognitive abilities and basic knowledge/skills development. in addition to that, it is important to measure both awareness 102 universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras khonamri & mahmoudi kojidi and monitoring because of the plausible reciprocal relations and the effects on successful comprehension through independent strategic processing. each allows for instructional decision making. research questions and the hypotheses for the purpose of this study, the following research questions were posed: 1. is there any relationship between the degree of metacognitive awareness of reading strategies and comprehension monitoring among iranian efl readers? 2. how do more proficient readers (mp) perform comprehension monitoring differently from less-proficient readers (lp), if any? in order to investigate the abovementioned research questions empirically, the following null hypotheses were proposed: 1. there is no relationship between the degree of metacognitive awareness of reading strategies and comprehension monitoring among iranian efl readers. 2. more proficient readers do not perform comprehension monitoring differently from less proficient readers. methodology the present study used a quantitative-qualitative design with a descriptive and exploratory nature. in order to make the results valid and reliable, triangulation of data was employed to obtain multiple measures of participants’ comprehension monitoring strategies. hence, different means of data collection were utilized: think-aloud protocol, retrospective questions, and error detection. as is well known, the think-aloud technique is a valuable tool which is widely used in answering questions related to reading comprehension ability. it provides information regarding comprehension monitoring of readers which is difficult to obtain by any other procedure. to compensate for the limitations that are associated with this technique, think aloud was accompanied with two other methods (error detection and retrospective questions) in order to have multiple measures of the readers comprehension monitoring. at the same time, based on the research questions asked, quantitative analysis was also utilized to efficiently answer research questions. data triangulation helped to confirm the obtained results and thus improve the reliability and validity of the data. participants the subjects who participated in this study were selected from among one hundred and fifteen students majoring in electronics at the industrial university of noshirvani in babol, iran. they were freshmen who attended general english classes. they were both males and females and their age range was 19 to 20. to make sure of the homogeneity of the sample, a proficiency test (toefl) was administered to all the students and the mean of their scores was calculated. the students whose scores were 1 sd above and below the mean score were selected as subjects. then, 62 out of the 115 were identified as being at the same level of language proficiency. in the next step, they were administered a reading comprehension section of longman’s toefl test (1996, second edition by deborah phillips) and metacognitive awareness of reading strategies inventory (marsi) by mokhtari and reichard (2002). based on the results of completing the reading comprehension section of longman’s toefl test, those participants having highest and lowest scores on the reading comprehension test were chosen and grouped into 103profile vol. 13, no. 2, october 2011. issn 1657-0790. bogotá, colombia. pages 99-111 metacognitive awareness and comprehension monitoring... more proficient readers (mp) and less proficient readers (lp), 5 (mp) and 5 (lp). also, the rest of the participants were grouped into high metacognitive awareness (hm) and low metacognitive awareness (lm), each consisting of 5 subjects based on their answers on the questionnaire. also, two groups named (mphm) and (lplm), which were respectively more proficient readers who were high in their metacognitive awareness and less proficient readers who were low in their metacognitive awareness were identified in the sample. finally six groups, each consisting of 5 subjects, emerged. the total number of subjects chosen for the study was 30 which was distributed as 5 (mp), 5 (lp), 5 (hm), 5 (lm), 5 (mphm), and 5 (lplm) subjects. data collection tools the following data collection tools were used in the study: mokhtari and reichard’s (2002)’s marsi (metacognitive awareness of reading strategies inventory) was employed in the current study. marsi is an improved questionnaire from a psychometric and theoretical perspective. the items on this inventory consist of statements reflecting thoughts, actions and strategies associated with comprehending text material. the subject is to respond to each item by circling a quantitative value that represents the following: 1, i never do this to 5, i always do this. to conduct the think aloud protocol as efficiently as possible prior to the actual session, a training session lasting about 40 to 45 minutes was held. during the training sessions participants were informed that their verbal report during the actual session would be audio taped and later transcribed. they were also instructed how to perform the task. it was mentioned that they were supposed to think aloud while reading the passage and tell whatever is going on in their heads as well as that it should reflect what is being thought. error-detection paradigm was used to measure the subject’s ability to monitor his/her comprehension of the passage through detecting logical internal inconsistencies. the subjects were informed that they would be required to find a trick in the passage. then, the researcher provided a series of nine to ten progressive prompts after the passage. the prompts ranged from general to more specific probes about the inconsistency in the passage. after the passages were read, the subject was asked whether he/she knew the trick. if the student couldn’t adequately explain the trick, or had not noticed it at all, then the researcher provided the prompts one at a time. after each prompt, the subject was asked whether he now knew what the trick was in the passage. the number of prompts for each student was recorded for later analysis and comparison as they, too, provided a graduated measure of comprehension monitoring ability. retrospective questions were used to tap into students’ comprehension monitoring strategies re portedly used in reading the passage and detecting the error. here, too, students’ responses were recorded and transcribed for inter-rater coding. one of the tools that can provide useful information about the comprehension monitoring of the subjects is asking learners to keep a metacognitive journal. in the metacognitive journal, students analyse their own thought processes following a reading or other activity. the metacognitive journal encourages students to reflect on their reading processes, their final drafts, or their presentations. subjects of this study were asked to keep metacognitive journals for five of their academic passages. 104 universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras khonamri & mahmoudi kojidi results question 1 is there any relationship between the degree of metacognitive awareness of reading strategies and comprehension monitoring? to answer this research question, first, cross tabulation was used to examine the two hm and lm groups in terms of their percentage of using each monitoring strategy, also their total percentage of monitoring strategies use in general. in table (1), the percentage to which each hm and lm group employed each individual monitoring strategy is depicted. the portion of each group (hm and lm) from the total use of monitoring strategies is also shown. regarding the relationship between the degree of metacognitive awareness and comprehension monitoring, one piece of evidence comes from table 1. percentage of monitoring strategy use for hm and lm groups monitoring strategies * group crosstabulation group total hm lm monitoring strategies determining word meaning count 9 4 13 % within monitoring strategies 69.2% 30.8% 100.0% questioning count 11 2 13 % within monitoring strategies 84.6% 15.4% 100.0% reflecting count 3 1 4 % within monitoring strategies 75.0% 25.0% 100.0% monitoring count 12 6 18 % within monitoring strategies 66.7% 33.3% 100.0% summarizing count 4 5 9 % within monitoring strategies 44.4% 55.6% 100.0% looking for important information count 5 0 5 % within monitoring strategies 100.0% .0% 100.0% total count 44 18 62 % within monitoring strategies 71.0% 29.0% 100.0% these percentages. based on the results obtained, the percentages show that the hm group employed more monitoring strategies (71%) than the lm group, which made significantly less use of strategies (29%). these results suggest that metacognitive awareness can affect language learners’ monitoring behavior during reading comprehension. to ensure the relationship between the degree of metacognitive awareness and comprehension monitoring, a t-test at the 0.05 level of significance as the standard to reject the null hypothesis was also conducted to determine whether means of the hm group and the lm group were equal. table 2 illustrates the results of this analysis. 105profile vol. 13, no. 2, october 2011. issn 1657-0790. bogotá, colombia. pages 99-111 metacognitive awareness and comprehension monitoring... based on this table, in levene’s test for equality of variances, it is shown that sig=.002, is less than 0.05, so, the null hypothesis that “there is no relationship between the degree of metacognitive awareness and comprehension monitoring” is rejected. also, since the second line of the table has indicated that sig=0, it can be clearly inferred that since it is less than 0.05, equality of means is rejected. besides, taking the confidence interval of the double difference ensured us of the same conclusion, given that there is no 0 between 3.236 and 5.653. it further verifies the fact that the means are not equal and therefore the previously stated null hypothesis is rejected. question 2 do more proficient readers with higher metacognitive awareness use more comprehension monitoring? to answer this question, the frequency and percentage of comprehension monitoring strategies of participants who were more proficient readers and high metacognitively aware (mphm) and other participants who were less proficient in reading and were low in their metacognitive awareness (lplm) were calculated and compared. as depicted in table 3, statistics for (mphm) revealed that the majority of these participants employed strategies to a large extent, with the monitoring strategy having the highest percentage, 31.8%, and the reflecting strategy the lowest percentage, 6.8%, and all participants having a share of about 20-25%, except for one case (participant a with the percentage of 9.1%). furthermore, table 4 illustrates the frequency and percentage of monitoring strategy use in lplm group. as shown, determining word meaning has the highest percentage and reflecting the lowest percentage, 7.7%, among the strategies. participants’ manipulation of strategies ranged from 15% to 26%. table 2. independent samples t-test for hm and lm groups independent samples test levene’s test for equality of variances t-test for equality of means f sig. t df sig. (2-tailed) mean difference std. error difference 95% confidence interval of the difference lower upper frequency equal variances assumed 10.518 .002 5.614 60 .000 4.444 .792 2.861 6.028 equal variances not assumed 7.359 58.209 .000 4.444 .604 3.236 5.653 106 universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras khonamri & mahmoudi kojidi table 3. monitoring strategy use for mphm group monitoring strategies * subject crosstabulation subject total a b c d e monitoring strategies determining word meaning count 1 1 2 2 1 7 % of total 2.3% 2.3% 4.5% 4.5% 2.3% 15.9% questioning count 1 1 0 4 5 11 % of total 2.3% 2.3% .0% 9.1% 11.4% 25.0% reflecting count 0 2 0 0 1 3 % of total .0% 4.5% .0% .0% 2.3% 6.8% monitoring count 2 4 4 2 2 14 % of total 4.5% 9.1% 9.1% 4.5% 4.5% 31.8% summarizing count 0 1 2 0 1 4 % of total .0% 2.3% 4.5% .0% 2.3% 9.1% looking for important information count 0 3 0 1 1 5 % of total .0% 6.8% .0% 2.3% 2.3% 11.4% total count 4 12 8 9 11 44 % of total 9.1% 27.3% 18.2% 20.5% 25.0% 100.0% table 4. monitoring strategy use for lplm group monitoring strategies * subject crosstabulation subject total f g h i j monitoring strategies determining word meaning count 2 1 0 0 3 6 % of total 7.7% 3.8% .0% .0% 11.5% 23.1% questioning count 0 1 1 2 1 5 % of total .0% 3.8% 3.8% 7.7% 3.8% 19.2% reflecting count 0 0 1 1 0 2 % of total .0% .0% 3.8% 3.8% .0% 7.7% monitoring count 1 2 1 1 0 5 % of total 3.8% 7.7% 3.8% 3.8% .0% 19.2% summarizing count 1 1 1 0 1 4 % of total 3.8% 3.8% 3.8% .0% 3.8% 15.4% looking for important information count 3 1 0 0 0 4 % of total 11.5% 3.8% .0% .0% .0% 15.4% total count 7 6 4 4 5 26 % of total 26.9% 23.1% 15.4% 15.4% 19.2% 100.0% 107profile vol. 13, no. 2, october 2011. issn 1657-0790. bogotá, colombia. pages 99-111 metacognitive awareness and comprehension monitoring... figure 1 illustrates the frequency of monitoring strategy use of the mphm and lplm groups through the bar graph. as can be seen in figure 1, the mphm group manipulated monitoring strategies far more frequently than the lplm (with a ratio of 14 to 5 respectively) group. the next strategy which has been manipulated more frequently among mplm is questioning which has the frequency of 11 while its frequency among lplm members is only 5. the third strategy which has the highest frequency among mphm is determining word meaning. it is worth pointing out that regarding the manipulation of this strategy, there is not much difference between mphm and lplm in that the frequency of it in both groups is 7, 6, respectively. another interesting point is the fact that this strategy, determining word meaning, has the highest frequency among other strategies which have been manipulated by the lplm group. 1 2 3 4 5 6 0 2 4 6 8 10 12 14 16 monitoring strategies c o u n t subject mphm lplm 1= determining word meaning 4= monitoring 2= questioning 5= summarizing 3= reflecting 6= looking for important information figure 1. monitoring strategy use of mphm and lplm groups the fourth strategy regarding frequency of use among mphm is looking for important information. again, there is not much difference in the frequency of this strategy between the two groups (mphm, 5, lplm, 4). the fifth strategy is “summarizing”, which has the same frequency in both mphm and lplm groups, f=4.the last strategy is “reflecting”, which has the lowest frequency both in mphm and lplm groups (mphm, 3, lplm, 2). totally, the mphm group employed comprehension monitoring strategies more frequently (f=44) while the lplm group use of these strategies is almost half that of mplm, which is f=26. the higher frequency and percentage of comprehension monitoring strategy use among mphm in comparison with the lplm group reveal that there is a combined effect of metacognitive awareness and comprehension monitoring on the reading ability of learners, in that those participants who are more proficient readers and high in metacognitive awareness em ploy comprehension monitoring strategies more frequently than those who are less proficient readers and low in metacognitive awareness. as a result, the null hypothesis that “there is no combined effect of metacognitive awareness and comprehension monitoring on the reading ability of learners” is safely rejected. discussion as revealed in the data, there is a relationship between the degree of metacognitive awareness and comprehension monitoring. in other words, the results of the study indicate that comprehension monitoring can be affected by the degree of metacognitive awareness of reading strategies in that the more a language learner is metacognitively aware of reading strategies, the more comprehension monitoring s/he does. another point of interest is that not only the frequency of comprehension monitoring strategy use was higher among the hm group, but also the results of the error detection task displayed that they performed efficient monitoring while reading the passages in that four hm group members could find the error immediately and one of them found the embedded error only after one prompt, while none of the lm group members succeeded at detecting the error at first or second prompt. three 108 universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras khonamri & mahmoudi kojidi of them could detect the error at third prompt and two of them could do so on the fifth attempt. one reason for this difference in comprehension monitoring of hm and lm groups could be due to the way they approached the texts. in other words, the lm group tended to read the text much more locally, paying special attention to meaning of individual words and sentences. most of members of this group didn’t make much effort to link the sentences of the text with each other to get the full comprehension of the text. this is while the hm group members did not stop at every word or sentence. they tried to read more holistically and link the meaning of sentences to get a better understanding of the context. this finding supports baker & brown’s (1984) proposition that “knowing that” (declarative knowledge) is different from “knowing how” (procedural knowledge), and that the knowledge that a particular strategy is useful (awareness) precedes its routine use, which in turn precedes the ability to describe how it is used. interestingly, this finding is in line with devine’s (1984) study and studies of first language reading research which have generally shown that younger and less proficient readers tend to focus on reading as a decoding process rather than as a meaning-making process (paris & myers, 1981; garner & kraus, 1982). the results for investigating the combined effect of metacognitive awareness and comprehension monitoring on the reading ability of efl language learners indicate that those participants who are both highly metacognitively aware of reading strategies and more proficient in reading ability employed comprehension monitoring strategies much more frequently than the group with low metacognitive awareness and low reading proficiency. this finding is consistent with barnett’s (1988) study in which she investigated the effects of metacognitive awareness and strategy use on reading comprehension. in her study, the relationships between perceived strategy use, actual strategy use and reading comprehension were positive. students who claimed they used effective strategies seemed to use better strategies at understanding sentences in context and they also seemed to have a higher reading ability. the findings of this study are also in line with carrell (1989). carrell carried out a study to investigate the relationship between metacognitive awareness and reading comprehension in l1 and l2. in her study, global strategies were found to be positively correlated with reading proficiency. local strategies, however, seemed to negatively correlate with reading ability. schooren, hulstijn and bossers’ (1998) research also has revealed that metacognitive awareness is a significant contributor to both l1 and fl reading. also the higher percentage of lps in employing more ‘determining word meaning’ strategy, in comparison with mps, could be explained inasmuch as less proficient readers of this study checked almost every single word in the passage in a bilingual dictionary, while more proficient readers of the group only looked for more important words of the text which in turn resulted in a lower percentage for ‘determining word meaning’ strategy. furthermore, while looking for the embedded error and a result of not being able to detect the error at first prompt, lps frequently declared that they lost the meaning of sentences since they were busy translating them word by word. generally, results of the study are consistent with block’s study (1992) concerning the comprehension monitoring of l1 and l2 readers as they read an expository text. it has been shown in her study that reading proficiency is definitely a factor in determining the success of readers’ comprehension monitoring processes. and differences in the efficiency of comprehension monitoring among 109profile vol. 13, no. 2, october 2011. issn 1657-0790. bogotá, colombia. pages 99-111 metacognitive awareness and comprehension monitoring... the four groups of her study is in their reading proficiency, rather than their language background. additionally, findings of the present study support paris and meyer’s study (1981) in which successful readers or high proficient readers appear to use strategies more frequently than less successful or poor readers. this study is also in line with previous research in terms of the effect of metacognitive awareness on comprehension monitoring. research has revealed that once metacognitive awareness is raised, l2 learners can enhance their comprehension monitoring skills through practice and explanation of techniques. casanave (1998), for instance, suggests that students need to be asked to reflect on their understanding by answering questions inserted between paragraphs. such questions may ask learners to “reflect back on what they have read or to think ahead to what they will read and to relate their world knowledge to the text” (p. 292). he further asserts that this practice may help learners improve their metacognitive abilities so that they become more aware of where their reading problems lie and what kind of strategies can be applied to overcome those problems. conclusion as discussed previously, the core interest of this study was to examine whether or not there was a relationship between the degree of metacognitive awareness of reading strategies and comprehension monitoring in the reading ability of language learners in an efl context. as highlighted in yang, 2002, learners need comprehension monitoring to examine whether or not the employed strategies were successful in overcoming their reading problems. also, block (1992) pinpointed the fact that most studies regarding the role of comprehension monitoring in the reading comprehension ability of learners has been conducted with native speakers, while l2 learners will probably encounter more linguistic difficulties and therefore need to “repair more gaps in their understanding” through comprehension monitoring (p. 320). comparing efl learners’ more limited environment, it can be realized that comprehension monitoring is of more importance to efl learners. this is stated while few studies have been conducted with efl learners’ comprehension monitoring, specifically on their reading comprehension ability. from another aspect, while the relationship between metacognitive awareness of reading strategies and the reading ability of learners in native and second language context is established, studies regarding this issue for efl learners seem to be very few. furthermore, studies on the relationship between metacognitive awareness of reading strategies and comprehension monitoring of language learners were absent in the literature, let alone in an efl context. thus, this study was in part inspired by the essentiality of comprehension monitoring and metacognitive awareness of read ing strategies and the relationship between these two for efl readers as the focal point. to come to the point, the core intents of the current study were to explore the relationship between the degree of metacognitive awareness of reading strategies and comprehension monitoring, the combined effect of these two variables on the reading ability of iranian efl learners, and the comprehension monitoring behaviour of more proficient and less proficient readers. the findings suggest that there is a relationship between the degree of metacognitive awareness of reading strategies and comprehension monitoring inasmuch as the more metacognitively aware readers performed comprehension monitoring with a higher frequency and approached the reading task locally, whereas low metacognitively aware readers employed comprehension monitoring less 110 universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras khonamri & mahmoudi kojidi frequently and read the text globally. in this regard, it can be claimed that the present study contributes to support baker & brown’s (1984) proposition that “knowing that” (declarative knowledge) is different from “knowing how” (procedural knowledge), and that the knowledge that a particular strategy is useful (awareness) precedes its routine use. furthermore, findings indicate that metacognitive awareness of reading strategies and comprehension monitoring function effectively on the reading ability of efl learners. as mentioned previously, it was shown in the study that participants enjoying high metacognitive awareness of reading strategies and high reading proficiency employed comprehension monitoring strategies more frequently and more efficiently. in this regard, this study added a new aspect which was not present in the literature. finally, this study showed underlying differences in comprehension monitoring of more and less proficient readers. in this respect, too, this study supported previous research that has suggested that reading proficiency makes a difference in comprehension monitoring of language learners (block, 1992; paris & meyers, 1981). pedagogical implications the findings reported in the present study per tain to the metacognitive awareness and comprehension monitoring among efl academic readers. it also has some implications for teachers in the realm of tefl in particular and education in general. it helps teachers in accomplishing their chal lenging task of teaching english in an efl context where learners have less exposure to language compared to l1/esl contexts. teachers can play a key role in enhancing learners’ metacognitive awareness of reading strategies in order to facilitate their comprehension monitoring and thus improve their reading comprehension ability. as a result, gradually, learners would start to think metacognitively about the strategies they could use to improve their reading comprehension to become better readers and also autonomous and strategic readers. nevertheless, it is important for metacognitive reading strategies instruction to be integrated with the overall reading curriculum so as to enhance students’ metacognition as regards reading. “such instructions can help promote an increased awareness of the mental processes involved in reading and the development of thoughtful and constructively responsive reading” state shorey & mokhtari, 2001, p. 443). teaching students to be constructively responsive readers can be a powerful way to promote skilful academic reading which will in turn lead to academic achievement. references anderson, n. j. (1991). individual differences in strategy use in second language reading and testing. modern language journal, 75, 461-472. baker, l., & brown, l. a. (1984). metacognitive skills and reading. in p. d. pearson (ed.), handbook of reading research. new york, ny: longman, 353-394. barnett, m. a. (1988). reading through context: how real and perceived strategy use affects l2 comprehension. modern language journal, 72, 150-162. block, e. l. (1992). see how they read: comprehension monitoring of l1 and l2 readers. tesol quarterly, 26(2), 319-343. carrell, p. l. (1989). metacognitive awareness and second language reading. modern language journal, 73, 121-134. casanave, c. p. (1998). comprehension monitoring in esl reading: a neglected essential. tesol quarterly, 22(2), 283-302. devine, j. (1984). esl readers’ internalized models of the reading process. in j. handscombe, r. orem, & b. p. taylor (eds.), on tesol ’83 (pp. 95-108). washington, dc: tesol. 111profile vol. 13, no. 2, october 2011. issn 1657-0790. bogotá, colombia. pages 99-111 metacognitive awareness and comprehension monitoring... ehrlich, m. f., remond, m., & tardieu, h. (1999). processing of anaphoric devices in young skilled and less skilled comprehenders: differences in metacognitive monitoring. reading and writing: an interdisciplinary journal, 11(1), 29-63. flavell, j. h. (1979). metacognition and cognitive monitoring: a new area of cognitive-developmental inquiry. american psychologist, 34, 906-911. flavell, j. h. (1985). cognitive development (2nd ed.). eaglewood cliffs, nj: prentice-hall. garner, r., & kraus, c. (1982). good and poor comprehender differences in knowing regulating reading behaviors. educational research quarterly, 6(4), 5-12. hacker, d. j. (1997). comprehension monitoring of written discourse across early-to-middle adolescence. reading and writing: an interdisciplinary journal, 9, 207-240. hetherington, e. m., & parke, r. d. (1993). child psy­ chology: a contemporary viewpoint. (4th ed.) new york, ny: mcgraw-hill. loizidou, a., & koutselini, m. (2007). metacognitive monitoring: an obstacle and a key to effective teaching and learning. teachers and teaching: theory and practice, 13(5), 499-519. mokhtari, k., & reichard, c. a. (2002). assessing students’ metacognitive awareness of reading strategies. journal of educational psychology, 94(2), 249-259. paris, s. g. & myers, m. (1981). comprehension monitoring, memory and study strategies of good and poor readers. journal of reading behavior, 13, 5-22. sarig, g. (1987). high-level reading in the first and in the foreign language: some comparative process data. in j. devine, p. l. carrell, & d. e. eskey (eds.), research in reading in english as a second language (pp. 105-120). washington, dc: tesol. schoonen, r., hulstijn, j., & bossers, b. (1998). metacognitive and language-specific knowledge in native and foreign language reading comprehension: an empirical study among dutch students in grades 6, 8 and 10. language learning, 48(1), 71-10. sheorey. r., & mokhtari. k. (2001). differences in the metacognitive awareness of reading strategies among native and non-native readers. system, 29, 431449. yang, y. (2002). reassessing readers’ comprehension monitoring. reading in a foreign language, 14(1), 18-42. about the authors fatemeh khonamri is assistant professor of tefl at the university of mazandaran. she has been teaching english as a foreign language at the graduate and postgraduate levels. her main areas of interest are reading and writing research, metacognition, teacher development, formative assessment and feedback. elahe mahmoudi kojidi is an ma graduate of the university of mazandaran. she currently teaches english at the undergraduate level of the university as well as english language institutes. her main field of interest is reading strategies and metacognitive awareness. 189profile vol. 13, no. 1, april 2011. issn 1657-0790. bogotá, colombia. pages 189-204 peer interaction: a social perspective towards the development of foreign language learning interacción entre pares: una perspectiva social hacia el desarrollo del aprendizaje en una lengua extranjera july carolina gómez lobatón* universidad central, colombia this pedagogical innovation aims at discovering new ways of interaction that go beyond the unidirectional relationship that is presented in the classrooms most of the times. the innovation considers peers to be active agents in the construction of knowledge and proposes new ways to arrange groups in the classroom so that the arrangement can certainly contribute in the development of students’ language learning process in a context in which english is not a priority. this study, which is being carried out with undergraduate students at a private university in bogotá, considers the importance of new dynamics of interaction among students that might be the product of a process of meaning negotiation upon the language that is being learned in class, and what the product is of the interactions with other students that are supposed to deal with the same language level. key words: group arrangement, knowledge construction, peer interaction students’ needs. esta innovación pedagógica tiene por objetivo descubrir nuevas formas de interacción que van más allá de la relación unidireccional que, la mayoría de las veces, se evidencia en el salón de clase. se considera a los compañeros como agentes activos en la construcción de conocimiento y se proponen nuevas formas de conformación de grupos en el salón de clase para contribuir al desarrollo del proceso de aprendizaje de una lengua extranjera, en un contexto donde el inglés no es la prioridad para los estudiantes. este estudio, que tiene lugar en una universidad privada de bogotá, considera la importancia de las nuevas dinámicas de interacción entre los estudiantes, que podrían ser el producto de un proceso de negociación de significado de la lengua que se está aprendiendo. también se contempla cuál es el producto de las interacciones con otros estudiantes que deberían tener el mismo nivel de lengua. palabras clave: interacción entre pares, formación de grupos, construcción de conocimientos, necesidades de los estudiantes. * e-mail: carolinag0111@hotmail.com this article was received on august 1, 2010, and accepted on december 2, 2010. 190 universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras gómez lobatón introduction when it comes to peer interaction, which is understood as the relationships and roles developed by students in the classroom environment when undertaking any kind of task or activity, teachers are the ones with the “power” to control the way students can organize themselves in order to develop a specific activity. teachers tend to create some sets of grouping arrangements (whole class, individual, pair and group work) for students to share and construct knowledge about language. nevertheless, in contexts in which english is not seen as a priority, this grouping issue is naturally generated by the dynamics of classroom interaction that do not necessarily have to do with the academic interests of students: they usually join their close friends, partners they like to talk with, etc. furthermore, a teacher can take advantage of the results by developing alternatives in which students profit from the interaction with their peers not only as way of identifying each other’s mistakes or understanding what the teacher wants to say, but also in order to construct knowledge and language learning from the community towards the individual. it means how the product of the interactions with other students that are supposed to deal with the same knowledge might actually contribute to each one of the students’ learning process as they will have the opportunity to listen to and use what others have to say in order to compare and contrast with concepts and opinions they already have. this paper is the result of an innovative project that was aimed at helping both teachers and students restate the processes of interaction undertaken in efl settings. according to richards and lockhart (1994), “teachers can influence the kind of interaction that occurs in their own classrooms” (p. 138). according to the experience i have gotten throughout the years, i think this interaction is sometimes limited to receiving information with no further result. it is just a matter of receiving input with little possibility of producing an outcome. considering the importance that the negotiation of meaning has in the development of the second language learning process, this project could become a starting point for an understanding of meaning negotiation which would not only benefit the language learning process itself, but other processes of interaction of students with different people and in different social contexts. i considered this project worth doing in my teaching context since it would potentially change students’ perceptions of english as an important subject for the present and future. in fact, students found the opinions, ideas and points of view of their peers highly valuable, and also found out how to take advantage of those new dynamics of interaction to enhance their own learning process, all the while having respect for others as human beings and subjects of knowledge. needs analysis the stage of the needs analysis was completed after a three month period of permanent observation. i could identify some initial concerns thanks to the use of field diaries and surveys. i confirmed and analysed lack of relation between the contents of the subject and the accounting major itself, and low level motivation. additionally, i found a very particular situation concerning peer interaction that has to do with how the dynamics of interaction are somehow “coercing” individual performances of students, which is also the ultimate objective of this innovative project. to get to this point, i followed a rigorous process that started by selecting the group that was going to be described in the section related to setting and participants. i decided to choose this population due to the significant difficulties they have when learning 191profile vol. 13, no. 1, april 2011. issn 1657-0790. bogotá, colombia. pages 189-204 191 peer interaction: a social perspective towards the development... english, as well as all the different issues that underlie this situation and that were identified, observed, and registered during the stage of needs analysis. secondly, i started the observation process using two instruments: one observational represented by field diaries and the other non observational that consisted of an interview (burns, 1999). the objective with the field notes was to start an observation process in which i could systematize the phenomena presented in the classroom and thus identify possible problems that might conduct the research innovation. on the other hand, the intention behind the interview was to get additional information from the students in order to complement what the observations had shown so far, figuring out the learner interactional style (richards, 2004) in each one of the students, taking into account that each interactional style is defined by the way students approach their peers and the possible relationships they establish. according to hutchinson and waters (1993), any course should be based on an analysis of learner needs. thanks to this needs analysis previously carried out, i had the opportunity to have a broader perspective of what the situation was in my classroom and thus understand what the first steps would be in order to undertake my innovative project. in table 1, the needs, lacks and wants of my students are expressed. with the information contained in table 1 it was possible to answer hutchinson and waters’ questions as to the why and what of my research project. the who, how and where will be developed throughout the next sections of this paper. after this process of needs analysis, i discovered a problematic situation that i consider makes my innovation worth doing: in classroom practices, learning can be understood as the product of interaction. according to mackey (1999), conversational interaction facilitates second language development. regarding the needs analysis carried out in this research project, these interactions are, to some extent, having an effect on the way students develop their individual learning process. when developing any kind of activity in the classroom, students have created a kind of “interdependence” that fosters relying on their peers all the time, using either spanish or english. however, this situation promotes an environment in which students’ interaction coerces individual performance; it means, students think they table 1. needs analysis results needs lacks wants implementation of strategies by which they can develop their speaking abilities. to use the foreign language to talk about topics related to their major. to try new ways of interaction that allow students to appreciate different ways of thinking and working in activities related to english. awareness of the importance of english as a useful resource for their professional and personal lives. due to this situation, motivation towards english is not fully existent, and students see english as a “requirement” in order to finish their major. to relate english to their career. they really want to talk about topics they know about and exchange information. they also want to express opinions about the topics they read and learn. 192 universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras gómez lobatón un derstand as long as they have a partner next to them in order to clarify or correct what they have already got from the topics that are supposed to be learned in class. thus, when it comes to expressing ideas in an individual way, most of them are not able to do so, and the output of this negotiation process is reflected in a few words that do not express any clear idea about what the student probably wants to say. how would this social approach to knowledge be modified in such a way that students can construct knowledge about the language instead of waiting for others to do so for them? that is exactly what i was looking for with this innovative project: showing the benefits of social interaction for the development of foreign language learning. besides, in order to support this situation presented in the classroom, i posed some questions that definitely guided my pedagogical intervention, to wit: • are these kinds of interactions actually contributing to students’ process of language learning? • what would happen if these grouping arrangements were considered under a perspective in which interaction and negotiation of meaning are mediated by peers with similar interactional and learning characteristics? • how might these new dynamics of interaction contribute to a student’s individual learning process? setting and participants the context in which this research project is taking place is universidad central. it is a private institution that offers students a wide variety of majors from economics to arts. the university is divided into two campuses: on the northern campus, for instance, most of the majors are related to the arts: social communication, avertising, and music, among others. on the downtown campus, on the other hand, students can find majors such as accounting and engineering. the conception of english as an official and mandatory subject within the universidad central curricula is the reflection of the permanent concern the university has about broadening students’ perspectives towards international issues as well as knowing the foreign scenarios in which their profession might take place (mision universidad central). taking this reflection into consideration, a new entity of the university was conceived and created ten years ago: the languages department. since 1998 this department has been in charge of the creation, implementation, and development of processes in english as a foreign language as well as other languages such as french, german and italian for people who do not pursue careers at the university (extension courses). the department has adopted the communicative approach, understood as the use of language for real-life situations and integrating the four skills (speaking, writing, listening and speaking) as the body of the courses in all the levels. for undergraduate students, english is a mandatory subject which has to be undertaken throughout the career in four different levels: basic  i, basic ii, basic iii, and pre intermediate i, taking as a reference the book world link by thompson ed. the schedule, which is basically the same for all the majors (16 hours per month), can be freely chosen according to the student’s needs and availability. this specific innovative project is being carried out on the north campus with social communication majors. there is a population of 18 students (7 men and 11 women) whose ages range between 18 and 23 years old. currently, they are taking basic iii level english course, four hours per week: wednesdays and fridays from 11:00 a.m. to 1:00p.m. the environment in the course is nice and the relationship among the students and the teacher 193profile vol. 13, no. 1, april 2011. issn 1657-0790. bogotá, colombia. pages 189-204 193 peer interaction: a social perspective towards the development... as well as among the alumni group is kind and respectful; nevertheless, there are some concerns related to those relations in the english class (specifically the ones related to their interaction and the development of their speaking skills), that puzzled me to start this innovative project as described on previous pages. what theory says the following theoretical framework is mainly aimed at presenting the perspective of some theoreticians regarding the topic of peer interaction and its influence in students’ learning process, as well as analysing some pieces of research that have been conducted in this same field. for this purpose, and dealing with a conception of language learning as a social process developed by interaction, i am going to focus on three theoretical perspectives whose insights are helping me broaden the horizon on the complex but enriching process of second language learning. they are the following: input, output and learner interactional patterns, all of them related to peer interaction in classroom settings. additionally, my view of language as well as language teaching will be developed in this section. first of all, i would like to start by stating my position on language and language teaching and the kind of learning that guides my innovative project. based on kumaravadivelu (2006), my teaching practices would be closely related to a learner-centered method (p. 91), by which i seek to provide opportunities for my students to use the language in specific communicative situations through meaningful focused situations. that being the case, my interest would be based on both form and function of the language. nevertheless, my main interest through the implementation of this innovative project was not pushing students to express themselves in a “perfect way”, considering the use of accurate grammar structures as well as exact pronunciation and syntax in the things they express, but rather to encourage them to express their ideas about specific topics with the notions of language they already have and the ones they are getting in the classroom. i would also like to highlight the importance of two key aspects in peer interaction, understood as a socio cultural perspective in which learning is socially constructed by means of face-to-face contact among students and the context around them (apple & lantolf, 1994) as well as how these aspects are highly supported, argued and even complemented by different authors through the decades. these concepts are input and output. what do we understand by input? in the dictionary of language teaching and applied linguistics (2002), its meaning is expressed in simple words: it is “the language a learner hears or receives and from which he or she can learn” (p. 261). however, this conception entails a great number of processes that contribute to a student’s second language learning process. one of the first ideas of the function of input in second language acquisition was coined by krashen and terrell (1983), in which they state that “we acquire (not learn) language by understanding input that is a little beyond our current level of acquired competence” (p. 32). in other words, in order for acquirers to progress to the next stages in the acquisition of the target language, they need to understand input language that includes a structure that is part of the next step in the acquisition process. even though this theory is respected and considered in the guidelines for the creation of language learning programs around the world, it has certainly been questioned, as well as enriched and complemented by some authors like susan gass and alison mackey (1999). according to gass (2002), by the early 1970’s the nature of input started to be acknowledged in 194 universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras gómez lobatón second language acquisition research, and with it, some other concepts came into existence: the notion of modified speech as an alternative that enables the learner able to understand and, therefore, get through what is essentially a social interaction. this modified speech is also considered by krashen in that, according to his theory, we acquire the language only by comprehensible input. however, in several studies, gass as well as mackey go a step forward recognizing the importance of interaction and meaning negotiation as a contribution to the learning process, something that was not considered in krashen’s theory. in relation to this, the study undertaken by mackey (1999) is an attempt to support the interactionist hypothesis by understanding the relationship between some types of conversational interaction and second language acquisition. mackey’s qualitative and quantitative research aims to prove that conversational interaction facilitates second language development. to prove her hypothesis, mackey analyzed the extent to which developmental outcomes are related to the nature of the conversational interaction and the level of learner involvement. her study presents an extensive theoretical background (including authors such as ellis, swain & lapkin, gass & varonis, and long). the conclusions of some studies are different although they aimed to prove the influence of interaction in the development in sla. hence, mackey points out that the result of the studies cannot be generalized because there are different factors that affected them. she mentions aspects like the tasks to be used, the nature of the input, the nature of the interaction, the nature of the setting and the role of the learner. according to mackey (1999), the more you interact the more successful your second language development is. then i recall again krashen’s input hypothesis in which the silent period of the acquirer is important in order to get all the necessary input he/she is supposed to. from this perspective, it seems to have a balancing direction to what mackey states in terms of the complement between the interactional and the individual nature of learning. then, a reflection related to this research project arises from this comparison of perspectives. to what extent could we take into account both theories in order to analyse input in our efl settings? we all know about the advantages of interaction in terms of negotiation of meaning towards the development of the learning process. mackey’s study is a proof of that; however, what about those students who, due to different factors, are not participating (not having any oral interventions in the class that give account of their oral production in l2) in the interaction process. should we take for granted the fact that his/her process is not going to be successful since they are not participating in the negotiation processes that are taking place in the classroom? should we take into account the silent period krashen states as a way of intake in which the student is processing the input he/she is being given in order to transform it into comprehensible output? output, the second construct of this research that represents a complement of the language provided by the input represented by “what the learner produces” (dictionary of language teaching and applied linguistics, 2002), is widely developed by merryl swain. this author certainly places the role of output way beyond the mere result of learners’ language production. in an attempt to help students go beyond their current interlanguage stage and noticing great weaknesses in krashen’s comprehensible input hypothesis, merrill swain (2000) proposes a broader understanding of second language learning from a perspective where 195profile vol. 13, no. 1, april 2011. issn 1657-0790. bogotá, colombia. pages 189-204 195 peer interaction: a social perspective towards the development... interaction (particularly output) is the basis for language knowledge construction. she presents new ways to conceive of output considering its use as a socially-constructed language-learning mediator. taking this into consideration, swain shows the implications that this model may bring to second language learning. under this conception, interactions provide us with opportunities to negotiate meaning, to focus on form, to receive feedback and to use the target language: for output. output pushes students to process language more deeply and with more effort, to follow cognitive steps in understanding, creating linguistic meaning and for negotiating, monitoring and evaluating. one suitable example for this “pushed output” is described by mackey, philp, egi, fujii, and tatsumi (2002, p. 195) in their study of interactional feedback in second language development. nns: and in hand have a bigger glass to see. ns: it’s err. you mean, something in this hand? nns: like spectacle. for older person. ns: mmm, sorry i don’t follow, it’s what? nns: in hand have…he have…has a glass for looking through for make the print bigger, to see the print, for magnify. ns: he has some glasses? nns: magnify glasses…he has magnifying glass. ns: oh aha i see, a magnifying glass, right that’s a good one, ok. in order to enhance this function of output, susan gass (2002) complements it by stating that it “forces learners to focus on the syntax of an utterance and, consequently, on formulating hypotheses about how the target language works” (p. 180). furthermore, swain attempts to expand the scope of second language learning to a more comprehensive concept. interaction can be more than ‘information provided’ and take the role of a mediator to language learning. interaction is a ‘dialogue’ that constructs language learning. in the process of bridging the gap between what we want to mean and what is actually said (e.g. accurate form), collaborative dialogue can be a facilitator and lead to the understanding of new concepts or to the consolidation of previous ones. regarding swain’s theory, it would be important to consider that, in our teaching context, the processes of interaction in order to construct language through communication when learning a second language might be affected by certain variables, and one of them is related to the role of l1 in the negotiation process. if the purpose of both input and output hypotheses is getting to the learning of a second language, how do students negotiate meaning in a classroom when student-student interaction is mostly influenced by the use of l1? although it is stated, according to swain, that the negotiation process could be carried out in both l1 and l2 (interlanguage), would the use of l1 –in which students get to a stage of understanding the language but not being able to interact with it– be convenient for the learning process? at this point, it is suitable to mention the research study carried out by julia posada (2006), aimed mainly at identifying what students focus on when giving feedback to their peers at the time of undertaking speaking activities, taking into account that most study plans pay special attention to the processes of interaction in which teachers are permanent providers of feedback. posada’s main findings showed the great importance of grammar forms and accuracy when peers are giving feedback to one another, and the significance of feedback and the interaction phenomena among students. nevertheless, given the importance she gives to interaction, there is a main concern regarding a “noticing stage” in which grammar becomes the focus of the interaction process. according to this, it is important also to take into consideration 196 universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras gómez lobatón larsen-freeman’s conception about grammar (1991), in which she remarks on the importance of grammar as a tool to do something, not simply as storing knowledge about the language or its use (p. 13). the possible effects of that kind of interaction that might be evidenced in several efl classroom settings and, indeed, evidenced in the classroom that i undertook the needs analysis in make up one of my concerns for this innovation project. related to this, and according to richards (1994), it is suitable to talk about some interactional patterns that have to do with students’ personalities and learning styles that i consider of great importance when generating new dynamics of interaction among students. according to this author, there are different patterns of interaction that stand out in the classroom: task-oriented students, phantom students, social students, dependent students and isolated students. for this innovation project, and after the process of observation and interviewing carried out in the needs analysis, i am going to consider the first two patterns that rely on the following characteristics: task-oriented students are generally highly competent and successful in completing academic tasks. they enter into learning tasks actively and generally complete tasks with a high degree of accuracy. they seldom need a teacher’s help, but if they need it, they do not hesitate to ask for it. they are cooperative students, although they mostly work on their own. dependent students need the teachers’ and partners’ support and guidance to complete class tasks and tend not to maintain their engagement on tasks without frequent reinforcement and support. they need structure and guidance and do not usually work in large groups. they often depend on the teacher or other students to tell them if their learning has been successful. finally, bygate (1987), as cited in forero (2005), states: “learners need to develop skills in the management of interaction and negotiation of meaning” (p.76). if we talk about a social construction of language we have to start thinking how the social environment itself is being carried out in the classroom e.g. take a look at what is behind the process of learning in order to examine if, as teachers, we are helping in the process of building a development of language learning in which students feel confident enough to interact among themselves establishing a relation between the things they have learnt and they things they haven’t. that relation, of course, is mediated by interesting and complex processes of interaction and negotiation of meaning in our efl contexts. phases of the innovation now and then: the development of mass media in colombia in this section the what and how of this innovation project will be described in depth as to each one of the objectives i wanted to pursue. this innovation project was conceived with the main purpose of engaging students in new dynamics of interaction when undertaking group activities that would help them in the development of their speaking skill. thus, this project has three objectives: 1. to generate a new form of grouping arrangement, taking into consideration the possible similarities among students’ learning styles and interactional patterns. 2. to focus on peer interaction while undertaking group activities. 3. to check what the effect of those new interactions is in students’ development of the speaking ability. 197profile vol. 13, no. 1, april 2011. issn 1657-0790. bogotá, colombia. pages 189-204 197 peer interaction: a social perspective towards the development... implementation this phase of the innovation is divided into different steps that will account for the process of the project. identification of learner’s interactional patterns in order to achieve this goal, the two instruments used in the needs analysis were certainly very useful: through the observation process reflected in the field notes, i could realize the way students worked and how they approached the tasks undertaken in class both individually or in groups. there was an initial inference about the possible pattern each one of the students might follow, and in order to confirm this information, i designed the interview that matched the results of my observation (appendix 1). most of the students actually belong to the dependent pattern, which indicates a speaking ability that is nearly limited to words and gestures and the speaker’s asking support from the teacher or partners. some others turned out to be taskoriented, with the desire of working individually most of the time. a few students were social or phantom ones. hence, due to the fact that dependent students show poor results on their fl performance (especially in speaking) and taskoriented ones do not seem to consider the value of interaction, i have decided to work with these two specific kinds of learners and see if the results actually contribute to their learning process. nonetheless, it is important to clarify that all the students in the group were going to be involved in the activities, but the follow-up of the innovation considered just the two types mentioned above. how to do it? since students are majoring in social communication and after an informal talk in which they expressed their preference towards mass media, i designed a set of activities based on four of these types of media: television, internet, radio and movies and the changes they have been through in the last decades. all of the activities were created and designed to focus on the development of the speaking skill (when interacting in order to do the activity as well as when presenting the product of each one of them). moreover, for each one of the activities, the grouping arrangement varied in such a way that students who are dependent (d) or taskoriented (t-o) would interact in different forms: pair grouping: (d-d), (d/t-o), (t-o/t-o), or in larger groups: all (d), all (t-o); one d students within a group of t-o’s or vice versa. in table 2, the activities carried out by students are described. table 2. activities for the implementation of the project 1. television in colombia: present and past. oral presentation 2. are you addicted to the internet? debate on a reading based on this topic 3. creating tv commercials: black & white and color tv 4. narrating a “radio story”. discussion and taped recorded narration 5. what is real, what is fiction? movie: “the truman show” 6. realities and their impact on society: opinions and reaction on the movie presented in the previous class 7. evaluation. roundtable discussion with students about their impressions, experiences and insight of the project conclusions throughout this process of innovation, i realized that everything you do in behalf of your 198 universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras gómez lobatón students has an effect on their perceptions and beliefs regarding their process of language learning. in this specific case, the conclusions i came up with have to do with the two areas my project was expected to cover, and fulfilled all my objectives in spite of the short period of time i had to undertake all the activities. these results are expressed from two different perspectives: the language and the social one. in regard to the language perspective, i could see progress in different aspects. first of all, students engaged in a process of language learning in which they were no longer afraid of expressing their ideas either in l1 or l2. the idea of speaking about topics they felt familiar with triggered a process of meaning negotiation in which they used both languages in order to communicate their ideas successfully. i consider this a huge step, since they usually considered the act of speaking in english something difficult, boring and even worthless. secondly, they found meaningful and useful insights about the relationship between the topics they learned in class and the topics they discuss in their majors. this factor encouraged them to go deeper into issues like vocabulary and pronunciation that, especially in the dependent students, was a very difficult task at the beginning, but later one that was very satisfying and rewarding not only for them, but for me as the teacher. thirdly, the desire for talking about the things they knew made them construct sentences and ideas, using some grammar forms that were supposed to be explained later on. in order to illustrate this fact, i present one excerpt taken from one of my field diaries: we form a semi-circle in order to start the presentations. i ask for volunteers but nobody seems to go first. finally, one of the students (who likes to participate a lot), raises her hand. they all make their interventions (reading what they have in their notebooks) and i complement their information by asking them what the differences are between television in the past and nowadays. then one of the students who is usually very quiet says: “teacher, television today is more violence, in the past, not is”. very good! i say, you are comparing! examples like this evidence how effective task-based teaching (tbt) can be in order to encourage, enrich and improve student´s learning process, without having the grammar aspect as a priority: the act of having students thinking and expressing their ideas implies a process that does not guarantee the accuracy of students in terms of structures. nevertheless, according to what i saw after this innovation project, students’ need for speaking about what they know cause them to predict or try to organize sentences that fulfil the communicative intentions of the student. in the case of task-oriented students, this was a little easier to accomplish; in the case of dependent students, it was a reason to increase their motivation and willingness to learn. as a fourth element, the different arrangements that took place in the classroom made students go through a process of “comparison” of what they know and what the others know and complement their information. an implicit process of meaning negotiation started to take place among t.o. and dependent students, and the interdependence phenomena started to take a different path than the one we were used to: asking all the time for everything students were asked to do, waiting for other people to do so and then just copying their work. on the other hand, i noticed the changes as regards the social levels, which were even more meaningful and enriching for our teaching-learning process. in the first place, the environment in the classroom actually improved: at the beginning it was very difficult to “break the ice” among dependent and non dependent students. there 199profile vol. 13, no. 1, april 2011. issn 1657-0790. bogotá, colombia. pages 189-204 199 peer interaction: a social perspective towards the development... was a kind of social barrier which did not allow any process of negotiation or understanding. after the implementation of this project, students were more aware of the importance of sharing ideas and opinions in order to improve their learning process. i dare say the concept of “otherness” changed, since dependent students started to see their peers as helpful hands in order to reach their goals rather than “very smart” people who could do everything for them. related to this situation, the different arrangements of people in the classroom raised “dependent” students aware of the implications and the commitment of working as a group. students also opened themselves up and felt heard by others: the environment of trust increased since students felt more encouraged to talk about things they are familiar with, expressing valuable insight and opinions, rather than talking or receiving grammar structures they do not deal with on a daily basis. they understood the importance of the language and its use in the present and future of their majors. on the other hand, i consider it suitable to also present the conclusions from my standpoint as a teacher. in other words, what i had the opportunity to reflect on after having implemented this project tudor (2001) as well as some other authors’ perspectives, led me to think about what my position is regarding language, teaching and learning, taking into account what i “live” and what i do in my daily practice. in relation to language, i could give to my vision of it a bidirectional perspective that fulfils both the administrative requirements of the institution i work for and the vision of language i have been constructing from my experience as a foreign language teacher. thus, the type of activities i chose gave account of the great importance of learning as a social interaction. i definitely agree with mackey’s conception of learning in which conversational interaction facilitates second language development (1999). hence, group and pair activities were essential parts of most of my classes, and the practices that took place in the classroom showed me how they were feeling the language and thus how they were learning it. bearing in mind tudor’s views on language then, my vision of language is the one guided towards the functional perspective since my students, as social actors, would be able to use the language in specific contexts, and for specific purposes, given the context above described. nevertheless, and beyond this use of language from a methodological perspective that actually relates to the needs and wants of my students, there is a complementary vision of language that has been shaped through my beliefs and experience as an efl teacher. there is a vision of language that bears in mind its importance as a mediator of social relationships by which the individual constructs his/her self as part of a specific community, and how that language actually shapes the way this same individual constructs his/her identity from his/her own beliefs and experiences, or from the power others give to that language in order to define the identity of the individual. what does this project imply in the pedagogical practice? the pedagogical value of this innovation project will be reflected on in different aspects: the first one, the permanent reflection of teachers on their work bearing in mind that they would have to analyze the context they are working in, means they would be able to identify the different ways and processes students use to develop a task when learning a second language, and how this new information would help them to have a better performance. in addition, this project could be, without a doubt, a starting point of reflection for teachers regarding 200 universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras gómez lobatón the use of different methodologies in the classroom: how to approach grammar aspects creating an environment in which the communicative and social issues have great importance, or, taking into consideration new perspectives of foreign language teaching that considers students to be part of the educational process of co-construction rather than the ultimate step in the process of reaching “language structured goals”. finally, this project can encourage teachers (myself included) to think about new definitions for the dynamics of interaction among students in a context where, according to my experience as a teacher, the relationship between teacherstudents is the only one that validates the results of the language learning processes. students, as interactional beings, need to be in contact with other people’s opinions, ideas and strategies that might enrich their own process in the efl classrooms, specially the speaking skill: students need to be heard and valued by others! if that is so, their ideas and points of view are going to be expressed in a more confident way. thus, a deeper understanding of the social perspective in efl teaching will definitely contribute to the development of the individual language learning process. references apple, g., & lantolf, j. p. (1994). speaking as mediation: a study of l1 and l2 texts recall tasks. the modern language journal, 78, 437-452. burns, a. (1999). collaborative action research for language teachers. cambridge: cambridge university press. canale, m., & swain, m. (1980). theoretical bases of communicative approaches to second language teaching and testing. applied linguistics, 1, 1-47. forero, y. (2005). promoting oral interaction in large groups through task based learning. profile issues in teachers’ professional development, 6, 73-81. gass, s. (2002). an interactionist perpective in second language acquisition. in the oxford handbook of applied linguistics (pp. 171-180). oxford: oxford university press. hutchinson, t., & waters, a. (1993). english for specific purposes: a learning centered approach. cambridge: cambridge university press. krashen, s.d., & terrell, t.d. (1983). second language acquisition theory. in: the natural approach. second language acquisition in the classroom. london: prentice hall europe. kumaravadivelu, b. (2006). understannding language teaching. from method to postmethod. london: lawrence erlbaum associates publishers. larsen-freeman, d. (1991). an introduction to second language acquisition research. new york, ny: addison wesley publishing company. mackey, a. (1999). input, interaction and second language development. an empirical study of question formation in esl. ssla, 21, 557-587. mackey, a., philp, j., egi, t., fujii, a., & tatsumi, t. (2002). individual differences in working memory, noticing of interactional feedback and l2 development. in p. robinson (ed.), individual differences and instructed language learning (pp. 181-208). philadelphia: john benjamins. posada, j. (2006). the effect of peer feedback on students’ oral production. universidad distrital francisco josé de caldas. master in applied linguistics to the teaching of english. richards, j. (1994). reflecting teaching in second language classrooms. cambridge: cambridge university press. richards, j., & smith, m. (2002). longman dictionary of language teaching and applied linguistics. 3rd edition. harlow: longman. swain, m. (2000). the output hypothesis and beyond: mediating acquisition through collaborative dialogue. in lantolf (ed.). socio cultural theory and second language learning (pp. 98-113). oxford university press. tudor, i. (2001). the dynamics of the language classroom. london: cambirdge university press. 201profile vol. 13, no. 1, april 2011. issn 1657-0790. bogotá, colombia. pages 189-204 201 peer interaction: a social perspective towards the development... about the author july carolina gómez lobatón is an ma candidate for the masters of applied linguistics in the teaching of english at universidad distrital francisco josé de caldas. her research interests include discourse analysis in efl settings and bilingual education. she is currently part of the languages department at universidad central and works with the undergraduate program in languages at universidad de la salle. 202 universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras gómez lobatón appendix 1: interview guide for students* universidad central social communication program dear student, the following interview aims at learning about your vision, opinion and perspectives on the way you work and interact with your peers in english class. your contributions will be vital in order to enrich our classwork as well as to enhance our learning process. 1. which way do you prefer working when undertaking activities in your english class? in small groups ____ individually _____ in an open discussion ______ other _____ why? ______________________________________________________________________________ ______________________________________________________________________________ ______________________________________________________________________________ 2. when undertaking an activity in the classroom, do you find you need help or guidance from your teacher all the time? yes_______ no __________ why? ______________________________________________________________________________ ______________________________________________________________________________ ______________________________________________________________________________ 3. when you have questions about something you cannot understand, do you find it hard to ask the teacher for help? yes ________ no __________ why? ______________________________________________________________________________ ______________________________________________________________________________ ______________________________________________________________________________ 4. are you willing to help your peers when they experience trouble regarding activities in the english class? ______________________________________________________________________________ ______________________________________________________________________________ ______________________________________________________________________________ * this interview was conducted in spanish. it was translated into english for publication purposes. 203profile vol. 13, no. 1, april 2011. issn 1657-0790. bogotá, colombia. pages 189-204 203 peer interaction: a social perspective towards the development... 5. when undertaking group activities, who do you feel more comfortable working with? closest friends ______ new classmates _____ the way the teacher indicates ____ other ________ why? ______________________________________________________________________________ ______________________________________________________________________________ ____________________________________________________________________ 6. reflect upon the different ways in which you undertake activities within the english class (e.g. individually, in groups). which advantages or disadvantages do you find about them? mention some in the following chart. advantages disadvantages 49profile vol. 14, no. 1, april 2012. issn 1657-0790. bogotá, colombia. pages 49-66 fostering intercultural communicative competence through reading authentic literary texts in an advanced colombian efl classroom: a constructivist perspective desarrollo de la competencia comunicativa intercultural mediante la lectura de textos literarios auténticos: una perspectiva constructivista luis fernando gómez r.* universidad pedagógica nacional, colombia this article describes an action research experience carried out in an advanced english as a foreign language classroom of the language program at a university in bogotá, colombia, in 2010. the study proposes the inclusion of authentic literary texts in the english as a foreign language classroom through the implementation of four constructivist approaches as a means to develop intercul-tural communicative competence. data were collected to show how those approaches engaged learners to read authentic literary short stories, to negotiate meaning, and to develop intercultural competence. it demonstrates that integrating language and literature in english as a foreign language not only constitutes a communicative reading practice, but the opportunity to construct cultural knowledge through social interaction. key words: authentic literary texts, constructivist model, dialogical approach, inquiry-based approach, intercultural communicative competence. este artículo describe una experiencia de investigación acción llevada a cabo en una clase de inglés avanzado del programa de lenguas de una universidad colombiana en bogotá, en el año 2010. el estudio propone la inclusión de textos literarios auténticos en el contexto de inglés como lengua extranjera mediante la implementación de cuatro enfoques constructivistas como recurso para desarrollar la competencia comunicativa intercultural. los datos recolectados demuestran cómo tales enfoques contribuyeron a que los estudiantes leyeran cuentos literarios auténticos, negociaran significado y desarrollaran su competencia intercultural. la integración del lenguaje y la literatura no solamente constituye una práctica de lectura comunicativa, sino la oportunidad de construir conocimiento cultural a través de la interacción social. palabras clave: competencia comunicativa intercultural, enfoque basado en preguntas, enfoque dialógico, modelo constructivista, textos literarios auténticos. this article is derived from a pedagogical research approved by the department of english at illinois state university, usa, as part of the requirements for the completion of the phd program in english studies. * e-mail: lfgomez@pedagogica.edu.co this article was received on january 28, 2011, and accepted on may 22, 2011. universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras50 gómez r. introduction the development of intercultural communicative competence has become a central issue in the teaching of english as a foreign language (efl) over the last two decades. teachers are becoming aware that one of the main goals of language teaching is to enable learners to communicate effectively with people from diverse cultural backgrounds. however, several authors such as lázár (2003) point out that despite the recommendations of the common european framework of reference to languages (cef), the focus of language learning is still the study of grammatical and lexical competence. byram (1997) and haneda (2007) also explain that cultural competence has often been ignored in efl because language teaching has been influenced by the study of grammatical forms. certainly, acquisition of grammar rules and language fluency is not enough to establish meaning negotiation and cross-cultural communication. therefore, as indicated by kramsch (2001), the main goal of second language learning should not only be effective communication, but the search for the understanding of cultural boundaries and the attempt to come to terms with those boundaries. lázár (2003) claims intercultural communicative competence can actually be enhanced in efl through different means such as speaking with members of a particular cultural background and using textbooks, media, documentaries, and movies. nevertheless, it is a fact that in the efl context learners have limited opportunities to speak with native english speakers. hence, in many cases teachers can only use instructional materials such as songs, videos, movies and, very often, communicative textbooks in their classes. brown (2009) observes that, although communicative textbooks provide a wide range of readings with different topics, the variety of material is scarce because most textbooks mainly feature magazine-style reading passages, missing out other types of genres such as poetry and short stories. in addition, there are still efl textbooks lacking authentic language and containing a limited array of cultural information. berardo (2006) states that the language in non-authentic texts often tends to be “artificial” and “unvaried” because many textbooks concentrate on forms that have to be taught, often containing a series of “false text indicators” and including perfectly formed sentences that very often do not read well. likewise, stryker and leaver (1997) affirm that graded language textbooks often contain “artificial language” which does not provide students with models of how people really communicate in the foreign language. such language lacks natural redundancy and multiple contextual cues for comprehension, and differs from the actual material efl learners may encounter in real life. it is also fair to recognize that textbooks include meaningful language activities suitable for their expected audiences and promote the development of the four language skills through communicative functions. what is important to clarify is that efl learners should not entirely acquire language through textbooks, but also through the use of authentic texts. the implementation of authentic materials in the efl classroom becomes, as kramsch (2001) notes, a priority in order to enhance learners’ intercultural communicative competence. teachers might reflect that, instead of giving importance to the learning of grammar rules through the use of non-authentic language, learners need to develop language knowledge and cultural awareness through more authentic materials. for this reason, the main goal of this research was to include authentic literary short stories in a class of advanced english based on the notion that literary texts provide the ideal means to help efl learners develop intercultural communicative competence. in this sense, the following two questions guided this study: 51profile vol. 14, no. 1, april 2012. issn 1657-0790. bogotá, colombia. pages 49-66 fostering intercultural communicative competence through reading authentic literary texts... • how do efl learners develop intercultural com municative competence through the study of literary selections? • which teaching approaches might be useful to help efl learners develop intercultural communicative competence through the study of literary selections? accordingly, four teaching approaches from the constructivist model, inquiry-based approach, dialogical approach, transactional approach, and content-based learning, were implemented for the study of literary texts in the efl classroom. clear descriptions of their implementation will be supported by a teaching intervention carried out in an efl classroom at universidad pedagógica nacional (upn), colombia, first term, 2010. these constructivist approaches will be addressed later in the article. theoretical framework this study is supported by three theoretical considerations which are explained as follows: intercultural communicative competence lázár (2003) defines intercultural communicative competence as an extension of communicative competence. while communicative competence refers to the speaker’s ability to interpret messages and to negotiate meaning with other speakers within a particular speech community (bachman, 1990; savignon, 2001), intercultural communicative competence is conceived as the speaker’s ability to interact effectively with people from other cultures that he/she recognizes as being different from his/ her own. it is understood as the ability to cope with one’s own cultural background in interaction with others. as byram (1997) observes that efl instruction has given special importance to the study of the linguistic and the discourse competences, he intends to recognize the cultural dimension that language naturally conveys. byram (1997) explains that hymes, the initiator of the notion of communicative competence, established the relationship between linguistic and socio-cultural competences as he conceived language as another form of tacit cultural knowledge through which speakers interpret social life. by citing hymes, byram’s main goal is to restate the notion of communicative competence in efl as intercultural communicative competence by pointing out that language teaching should guide learners to develop the ability to deal with their own cultural meanings as well as those from other cultural settings. the notion of intercultural communicative competence necessarily involves the acquisition of both language competence and cultural competence. in this respect, sihui (1996) affirms that language is an inseparable part of culture because the beliefs, ideas, and identities of a group of people are constructed and communicated through the use of language. that is why intercultural communicative competence should be understood as the ability to identify cultural issues that are necessarily expressed through real language in use. in this sense, byram (1997) believes that authentic literary texts, which are essentially loaded with real language, offer efl learners the opportunity to develop intercultural communicative competence, since not only people, but “documents” and “cultural products” created by a distinctive society help learners to know about and appreciate events, thoughts, and national memories of a culture. literary texts as a means to develop intercultural communicative competence in general, all kinds of reading materials such as newspapers, magazines, and books are implicitly universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras52 gómez r. loaded with diverse levels of cultural expression because, over all, they are the product of a particular community essentially depicting cultural content. yet, it is important to point out that literary texts are considered difficult material to be assimilated and understood by efl learners. kramsch (2001) notes that teachers are hesitant to use literary texts in the language classroom because they are told they are only competent to teach conventional texts for their general interest and for their information value. however, it is vital to reconsider that literary texts in efl are ideal materials to promote meaning negotiation and the access to cultural knowledge, as textbooks and other factual readings do. kramsch (2001) suggests that efl learners have to be exposed to different types of reading material, from conventional texts (textbooks, newspapers, and magazines), to literary texts because they offer learners the opportunity for the negotiation of meaning and the encounter with cultural representations. authors such as carter (1996), mckay (2001), amer (2003), and savviduo (2004) have also stated that efl learners have the opportunity to open their minds to cross-cultural experiences and to enhance their language learning process when they negotiate meaning during their interactions with authentic literary texts. amer (2003) affirms that literature acts as a powerful agent to develop students’ intercultural awareness while nurturing empathy and tolerance for diversity. the common european framework of references to languages (council of europe, 2001) also points out the role played by literature in efl as a potential means to develop language and interculturality: imaginative and artistic uses of language are important both educationally and in their own right. aesthetic activities of language may be productive, receptive, interactive or mediative. they include the production, reception, and the performance of literary texts e.g. reading and writing texts (poetry, novel, short story, etc.) (p. 56). if real intercultural communicative compe tence is the main goal to be achieved in second language learning, it is essential to consider the inclusion of well-selected literary texts, if possible, at all levels of instruction. after all, from a very early age in our own language, we are exposed to read or listen to different literary pieces such as folk tales, fairy tales, legends, fables, and other selections from children’s literature, reflecting the important heritage of our own culture. similarly, by selecting appropriate lite rary pieces, we might help efl learners to become aware of diverse cultural expressions. criteria for the selection of literary texts in efl five american short stories were selected in order to help learners develop intercultural communicative competence during the pedagogical experience at upn. short stories are easy to read with efl learners because they are usually brief compositions, mostly dealing with one single plot. learners can read them in a short period of time and become motivated to hold class discussions. also, short stories can prevent negative feelings of frustration and tiredness, as would happen if learners were required to read long novels. the selections were characterized by being multicultural literary pieces rather than canonical works. this is because american literature today is crossing borders beyond the exclusively angloamerican canon. since the u.s. is gradually accepting that it is composed of the amalgamation of diverse cultural groups, its literature is becoming more inclusive and multicultural (lauter, 2010). almerico and silverman (2008) define multicultural literature as the aesthetic expression of those groups that were outside the socio-political mainstream of the united states. as a result, the 53profile vol. 14, no. 1, april 2012. issn 1657-0790. bogotá, colombia. pages 49-66 fostering intercultural communicative competence through reading authentic literary texts... term refers to african-american, asian-american, native-american, and latino/a writers that have been accepted as members of the current pluralistic society of the u.s., and recognized as the new voices of the american literary heritage. for that matter, the five selections were “a worn path” written by southern writer eudora welty, “everyday use,” written by african-american author alice walker, jewish-american author bernard malamud’s “the first seven years,” and latino writer sandra cisneros’s “eleven”. only one story from a canonical author was chosen, john steinbeck’s “the chrysanthemums,” since it deals with topics of discrimination, exclusion, and social injustice. from the pedagogical point of view, multicultural literature aims at accomplishing several goals. first, it tries to expand students’ knowledge of the world. second, it helps learners to understand and communicate cross-culturally with other communities. third, it reduces the proliferation of prejudices, stereotypes, and racist attitudes, and fourth, it helps students appreciate aesthetic manifestations produced by authors from different cultural backgrounds. as can be seen, multicultural literature promotes the same goals of intercultural communicative competence. the socio-constructivist pedagogical model for the teaching of literature in efl the teaching of literature in the efl classroom should not be understood as merely teaching the literary texts themselves. literary texts should be studied through appropriate teaching approaches that might promote meaning negotiation and knowledge construction. the socio-constructivist approach to learning seems to be a salient model to encourage learners to read and discuss authentic literary texts. socio-constructivism, proposed by vygotsky (1978, p. 88), advocates knowledge as being socially constructed, rather than received because “human nature presupposes a specific social nature and a process by which children grow into the intellectual life of those around them.” students construct knowledge in the socio-cultural environment in which they live and interact as they become the center of the learning process. hence, learners are no longer conceived as passive receivers waiting for the teacher to “fill” their minds with information. on the contrary, learners are engaged in experiencing the world so that they construct their own knowledge within meaningful contexts, sometimes through trial and error, because making mistakes is a normal part of the learning process. schcolnik and kol (2006) explain that social constructivist approaches are becoming important in efl because learners learn better when they discover and construct knowledge through a social process of communication with classmates, teachers, and other individuals of their cultural background. from this view, the socio-cultural theory becomes an excellent foundation for the teaching of multicultural literature in efl because it facilitates discussions as learners acquire cultural knowledge, appreciate and understand literature while, at the same time, improve their language competence. as a pedagogical model, constructivism proposes several teaching approaches which seem to meet the goal of teaching literature in efl. the reason for using several approaches in the language classroom is, according to schowalter (2003), because teachers need to be pragmatic and eclectic, using a variety of teaching strategies that might work in their daily teaching. today, efl teachers must take advantage of the diverse pedagogical theories available in order to meet the needs of different types of learners who often possess varied learning styles and learning paces. hence, the following four teaching approaches belong to the universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras54 gómez r. constructivist theory and share and meet similar pedagogical concerns: inquiry-based approach this approach values students’ opinions in the classroom. learners are engaged in a process of asking and answering questions to discuss ideas and share personal views based on the reading of literary texts or other materials. gellis (2002) asserts that inquiry-based learning facilitates active learning, moving away from an approach built around lectures given by the instructor. it involves learners in critical exploration and in the construction of knowledge by a process of meaning negotiation. inquiry-based learning is an important procedure that can be implemented in efl when dealing with literary selections, since gellis points out that it has been designed for students with limited expertise in literary criticism. it focuses on asking questions, allowing students to explore personal reactions and to address a more objective analysis of the texts being studied. this important characteristic matches the pedagogical necessities in efl since learners, who do not have too much experience in literary analysis, can be motivated to express their opinions through guided questions. essentially, the inquiry-based approach has been used in u.s. classrooms while rarely used in efl classrooms. it is because efl has placed emphasis on the acquisition of grammatical competence and survival language. then, it must be pointed out that by encouraging efl learners to read and discuss literary texts through questions, different personal reflections on the stories read can be achieved. as holden (2002) suggests, teachers should provide students with the means to reflect on and respond to questions. this approach can change a class from that of a teacher-centered lecture into one of a student-centered discussion. dialogic approach the dialogic approach to literature, proposed by bakhtin (1984), is another constructivist pedagogical procedure that works when literature is studied in the language classroom. kramsch (2001) proposes the application of the dialogical approach in efl as an appropriate pedagogical procedure to promote the negotiation of meaning when learners are exposed to literary discourse. as bahktin (1984) states that literature should be appreciated through dialogue among the author, the literary work, and the readers, kramsch (2001, p. 27) sees that “it is through dialogue with others, native and nonnative speakers, that learners discover which ways of talking and thinking they share with others and which are unique to them”. this approach is equally supported by other scholars interested in efl literature (amer, 2003; maley, 2001; mckay, 2001, and mcrae, 1996) in that they say that by interfacing language and literature, efl learners are encouraged to negotiate meaning communicatively. transactional approach the transactional approach is proposed by rosenblatt (1995) whose influence continues being adopted by many english teachers around the world. amer (2003) explains that the transactional approach should be applied in the efl setting because it conceives the reading process as a communicative interaction between the reader and the text. the reader relates his/her past experiences, previous knowledge, beliefs, and assumptions to the perspectives in the text, and constructs meaning, resulting in this transaction. thus, meaning is not ready-made and predetermined. on the contrary, meaning is shaped by persons in dialogue with one another. amer (2003, p. 68) cites rosenblatt to argue that transactional processes should be the basis in language teaching today because the 55profile vol. 14, no. 1, april 2012. issn 1657-0790. bogotá, colombia. pages 49-66 fostering intercultural communicative competence through reading authentic literary texts... teacher should accept “multiple interpretations” of a text rather than one “correct interpretation”. one of the important contributions that rosenblatt provides for the teaching of literature and that deserves attention in efl is the humanistic approach to literature. rosenblatt (1995) argues that literature deals with human life and reveals real human experience. the reader usually seeks knowledge of the world and craves for understanding the human condition in order to make his/her own life more comprehensible. in light of this assertion, one of the main concerns of english teachers should be the study of literature as a means of contributing to the humanization of individuals and to answering questions concerning human behavior and human circumstances. we cannot deny the fact that literature helps us to construct our understanding of reality and to perceive the world around us. this conception becomes a real need in the efl context as learners are studying a foreign language not just for the sake of learning a language, but for understanding the world around them with a firm intercultural attitude. literature can help them to become more culturally tolerant, respectful, and open-minded to diverse human expressions and cross-cultural experiences. content-based approach the last constructivist perspective in the teaching of literature in efl is the content-based approach. schcolnik and kol (2006) indicate that in the language classroom, content-based instruction helps students construct two kinds of knowledge simultaneously: content knowledge and knowledge of language, because materials are organized by contents which challenge learners to conscious reflection on the language. similarly, richards and rodgers (2001) explain that people learn a foreign language more successfully when they use the language as a means of acquiring information and content rather than as an end in itself. in consequence, literature as content implies a process through which efl learners acquire knowledge and information of the world in a meaningful and contextualized way. as stated by stryker and leaver (1997), the content-based model is be coming increasingly common in efl because foreign languages are currently conceived as the medium through which subject matter is taught. it is intended to change the systematic study of grammar into a study of different topics and subjects such as science, math, culture, technology, arts, and literature. this approach represents a significant departure from the traditional grammar-oriented focus to the study of subject matter, since talking about topics and the realities of the world is more meaningful than just learning grammar rules. content-based instruction is also characterized by the use of authentic language and texts with no exception. stryker and leaver (1997) state that teachers should use well-selected authentic materials taken directly from the culture being studied, and make the texts accessible to the students at their level of proficiency. as can be seen, the four approaches described above intend to be ideal support to incorporate literature into the efl class because they share similar procedures and goals and are part of the constructivist theory which advocates a meaningful learning construction of knowledge through social inter action and mutual communication. context for the research study this study was carried out in one advanced english class of the modern language program at upn in 2010. the program aims at preparing efl learners who will eventually work as qualified english teachers in public and private schools in colombia. the academic strengths and the pedagogical backgrounds to do such a job are highly universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras56 gómez r. dependent upon the quality of preparation learners receive. for that reason, learners’ focus of study is the language in all its varied manifestations, including the native language, foreign languages, literature, and those other systems used for the sake of communication and cognitive construction. this focus implies that learners have to be trained not only to learn english as a foreign language, but to be provided with the pedagogical tools to teach it. consequently, during this action research, learners were expected to become aware of the teaching approaches used for the reading of literary texts, so that they might use them in their future teaching careers. participants the participants involved in this study com prised a group of 23 advanced efl learners, ages 18 to 22. in the previous english courses they had worked with the communicative english textbook top notch (saslow & ascher, 2005), which is a six-level course for international communication. additionally, they had worked on class projects to study cultural content of the u.s., the united kingdom, australia and canada. the contents they studied consisted of factual information including celebrations, food, tourist places, geography, and historical events. participants had an appropriate language level, although they had several problems with grammar, pronunciation, and spelling due to the fact that they were still going through a learning process. pedagogical procedure as already stated, for the purpose of this research project, five multicultural literary pieces were included in an advanced english course as a means to help learners develop intercultural communicative competence. each story was read and discussed in a period of one week, although some of them took two weeks. inquiry-based learning was used when learners read steinbeck’s short story “the chrysanthemums”. by following the principles of this approach, learners were given a study guide containing key questions to direct their reading process. initially, they read the story at home by answering the questions individually during the reading process. after that, they came to class to speak about and compare their personal responses with their partners’ responses (see questions sample, appendix a). the dialogical approach was applied when par ticipants read the african-american short story “everyday use”. questions were not given in this case, as participants engaged in dialogue to express their responses to this literary piece. in doing so, they used language to interact with others, to express personal meanings, and to communicate relevant information orally with respect to the story. learners were encouraged to work in groups and in whole class discussions to establish a dialogic conversation. the findings with respect to the development of intercultural communicative competence when reading this story will be discussed later. the transactional approach was carried out during the reading of “eleven,” written by the mexican-american writer, sandra cisneros. during this opportunity, learners related their personal experiences to the experience of the main character in the story. learners not only identified with the character, but expressed their opinions about the education system, talked about their own experiences, and referred to harsh human incidents, an issue that will be discussed in the findings of this study. the content-based approach took place when learners read the jewish-american story, “the first seven years” and the african-american story “a worn path”. this approach involved learners in the study and discussion of literary topics such as characters, conflicts, ideas, symbols, points of view, 57profile vol. 14, no. 1, april 2012. issn 1657-0790. bogotá, colombia. pages 49-66 fostering intercultural communicative competence through reading authentic literary texts... and themes. moreover, students were able to speak about history, geography, and culture, aspects which will be analyzed later in the findings as they relate to intercultural communicative competence development. research method diagnosis at the beginning of the project, a diagnosis phase took place. learners were asked three main questions: 1. what do you know about inter cultural communicative competence? 2. have you ever read authentic literary texts in english in previous courses? 3. are you familiar with the term american multicultural literature? for question one, learners affirmed they were not familiar with the term. for question two, learners answered they had never read authentic literary texts before. for question three, they said they were not familiar with that kind of literature. as their answers were negative, learners were given a presentation to clarify these constructs, since one of the main goals of this experience was to help students become aware of the issues related to this study so that they could reflect critically on the application of those constructs in the course. learners found these issues relevant for their learning process and for their future teaching profession. they mainly valued the notion of intercultural communicative competence as an interesting topic and as a factor they still needed to improve upon. data collection instruments the data collected to answer the two posted questions guiding this study were gathered during class sessions and right after students had read and discussed each literary piece. essentially, there were three data collection instruments. direct observations: students were observed during the development of the pedagogical intervention to determine how they interacted with the constructivist approaches to the study of literary texts. field notes were taken to obtain descriptive accounts of the different situations that happened in class (see appendix b). participants were aware of the notes taken. in-depth interviewing: with their previous consent, students were interviewed and recorded individually on one occasion in order to collect data from their critical responses about the readings and the methodological procedures proposed. each interview lasted five to eight minutes and students were assigned a fictitious name to protect their identity. this was a structured interview which consisted of asking learners three main questions: 1. what cultural knowledge have you acquired through the reading of authentic literary texts? 2. what was your experience of reading multicultural literary texts in this course? 3. do you have something to criticize or point out about the methodological procedures used in this course? the recordings were transcribed directly into a computer file. journals: this kind of source allowed participants to produce reflective opinions related to the experience. learners were required to write three journal entries during the pedagogical intervention, all of them anonymous entries. through a process of triangulation, data were compared and analyzed from the three data collection instruments in order to identify significant opinions, attitudes, and comments about the literary texts and the approaches applied. that is, participants’ frequent opinions, actions, and procedures that were often present in the different data collection instruments in regard to the way they acquired intercultural knowledge and the teaching approaches they used were taken as salient data universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras58 gómez r. to justify the inclusion of multicultural literature in efl. for example, participants’ comments about the inquiry-based approach were grouped as presented in appendix c, which shows all the participants significantly favored questions to help them reflect and explore literary content. findings this section presents the outcome resulting from the examination of the data collected, which essentially constitutes a qualitative analysis. with respect to inquiry-based instruction asking efl learners questions in advance before reading “the chrysanthemums” was a useful teaching strategy as the questions led them to construct critical analysis. field notes show that the questions enabled learners to engage in discussion-based classes in which almost all students contributed significantly to the negotiation of meaning when giving their interpretations of the story. once students had individually answered the questions provided in the study guides, they participated in class because they had had time to think about and to explore the literary pieces more carefully and to be more prepared to speak in class. also, students’ comments on their journals and interviews highly favored the inquiry-based process for the construction of knowledge. some samples of learners’ remarks in regard to the usefulness of the study guides are listed in appendix c. from their comments, we can observe that they became aware of being able to focus their attention on the reading of the multicultural pieces in an easier and more directed way, were more conscientious to explore the short stories, and were more confident to participate in class discussion. the inquiry-based approach provided reflective reading with which efl learners were engaged to answer questions in order to encourage interrogation of texts and to promote critical thinking. for example, the field notes show that in order to answer question number three on the study guide (see appendix a), some learners concluded that elisa and henry were not a happy couple because elisa was always enclosed in her garden planting chrysanthemums as a result of her husband’s carelessness. for other students, the flowers she planted projected her necessity to be loved and valued. others argued that the flowers represented her fragile and lonely life while other learners explained that the chrysanthemums represented a child she would like to have in order to stop feeling lonely. interestingly, through the application of the inquiry-based approach learners did not only enhance communicative competence, but simultaneously acquired intercultural knowledge. based on the field notes, when reading steinbeck’s short story in particular, learners acquired geographical information such as the location of salinas valley, the place where the story takes place, historical references in regard to the causes and consequences of the american economic depression in the 1930s, and the author’s biography. additionally, learners were able to analyze gender issues such as women’s submission to their husbands’ chauvinistic attitudes, and to compare problems between american and colombian marriages. in fact, from their journal entries, learners reflected and commented the following: i found “the chrysanthemums” a very interesting story be cause we spoke about the causes and consequences of the great depression in the united states. the story also made me understand elisa’s situation as a woman who lived at the time of the great depression. (sandra) i learned that the role of women in america in the past was similar to their role in the rest of the world. (pablo) these comments indicate that learners compared the submissive situation of women in the 59profile vol. 14, no. 1, april 2012. issn 1657-0790. bogotá, colombia. pages 49-66 fostering intercultural communicative competence through reading authentic literary texts... u.s. with the situation of women in colombia in the last century. with this in mind, learners developed intercultural communicative competence as they constructed knowledge of language in context and acquired significant intercultural information. with respect to the dialogical approach from the field notes it was concluded that learners discussed in small groups and later as a whole class the cultural meaning of the story “everyday use”. specifically, learners interpreted the meaning of the quilts which, for them, represented africanamerican heritage. for instance, some learners discussed that one of the characters in the story, dee, wanted to have the quilts hung on the wall because her conception of culture was based on the preservation of ancient objects deserving to be kept as decorative souvenirs or fashionable antiques, while for dee’s mother, the quilts represented the family traditions and should be used as everyday objects for dee’s sister maggie’s upcoming marriage. during the discussion of the meaning of the quilts, other related issues also arose as learners started to argue who really deserved the quilts: whether dee, the well-educated, independent, and pretty daughter who had left home for a long time and had denied her past; or maggie, the shy, not good-looking, and helpful daughter who had stayed with her mama and had embraced her african-american traditions. learners expressed their opinions and after discussion was held, they concluded that maggie deserved the quilts once they had compared their views and learned from one another. dialogic approach became an ideal means for communicative interaction and the construction of meaning during the reading process. two students’ remarks are the following: i like this class very much because one is able to build knowledge with others. one is open to listen and to establish a negotiation of ideas. for example, i can share what i think with what the others think, i can complement ideas, and i can extend my personal perspective about a topic. the class has a safe environment in relation to the fact that i can express my ideas and i am not going to be judged for that. (sonia, from interview, may 12, 2011) we try to express our own ideas. i mean, [we do not only] read the short stories based on theories, but we thought and tried to state and develop our own ideas, to defend what we think, and to show what we understand about the short stories. (daniel, from interview, may 19, 2010) in these remarks, sonia and daniel value the process of meaning negotiation with their classmates because this dialogic experience allowed them to complement and enrich their personal views as they compared their ideas about the literary texts with others’ ideas. they also expressed that the class offered them a safe atmosphere of respect and acceptance in which they spoke freely and revealed their perceptions and literary reflections without feeling scared of making mistakes. therefore, as what happened with inquiry-based learning, the use of the dialogic approach to literature not only promoted negotiation of meaning, but the understanding and construction of intercultural competence. learners mainly discussed the cultural significance of the quilts and were able to identify and understand cultural traditions and beliefs presented in the story. they had the opportunity to develop intercultural communicative competence by means of a constructivist approach as they explored and reflected on the events of the story through dialogic interaction. with respect to the transactional approach it was observed that efl learners related the short story “eleven” to their own personal experiences. the story is about a mexican-american girl who is scolded on her eleventh birthday by her universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras60 gómez r. american teacher because she does not want to wear a sweater the teacher thinks belongs to the girl. thus, two students who were leading the discussion invited their classmates to remember an incident at school when they had an unjust experience with a teacher. surprisingly, most learners had had a bad experience with a repressive teacher so they started to relate their personal incidents to the one in the story. this first response was the activation to talk about issues on repression at school, humili ating attitudes, a sense of inferiority and of identity, important topics treated in the story. this activity also led to a discussion of issues related to respectful relationships among teachers and students. implicitly, learners also reflected in their journals on intercultural attitudes, including the ability to respect others, the importance of being tolerant, and the need to become open-minded to other views and beliefs: we were allowed to find and express our own interpretations, we connected personally to the text, and we were free to manipulate the text as we liked it. the teacher didn’t impose what we had to do, he rather facilitated with the means to construct our learning. (ana, from journals) i’ve learned about chicano literature when reading “eleven.” i’ve also learned about chicanos’ economic situation in the u.s. and their problems of discrimination and immigration. (santiago, from interview, may 19, 2010) with respect to content-based instruction this approach also became the means to develop intercultural communicative competence as efl learners identified important information about beliefs, traditions, and values reflected in the story “the first seven years”. a clear example identified in the field notes was when learners were able to talk about topics such as the con flict between materialistic and humanistic attitudes to life reflected in the characters’ actions and thoughts, about the difficult problems immigrants go through when they migrate to the usa, the ideals of the american dream, and the different cultural traditions toward marriage between individuals of jewish and american cultures when they interact together in the u.s. these findings support stryker and leaver’s view that content-based instruction aims at preparing efl learners to understand and live in a new culture. learners also proposed their own topics for class discussion when they read the african-american short story, “a worn path”. for instance, field notes reveal that one learner discussed the idea that phoenix, the main character of the story, probably suffered from senile dementia. she defined senile dementia, explained its characteristics, and applied them to the character in welty’s short story. this topic allowed other learners to express their own opinions by giving evidence from the story. some agreed with the idea and others disagreed, and after listening to different viewpoints they made their own conclusions. in other occasions learners proposed the topics they thought were relevant to discuss in class by having done some autonomous research and having come to tutoring sessions. these sessions were led by an instructor. for instance, as noted in the field notes, one learner addressed a discussion on racism reflected in the story and did some research about the establishment of slavery in the southern part of the u.s. the significant outcome is that learners constructed meaningful knowledge by speaking in english about content. a few remarkable comments taken from interviews are these: we talked about the problem of racism in the u.s., and we learned to avoid having racist attitudes. (sandra, from interview, may 12, 2010) i have learned about the conditions of african-americans after the civil war. they continued being oppressed and slaved. (sebastian, from interview, may 12, 2010) 61profile vol. 14, no. 1, april 2012. issn 1657-0790. bogotá, colombia. pages 49-66 fostering intercultural communicative competence through reading authentic literary texts... these comments reflect that learners were not only able to talk about content related to the situation of african-americans in the u.s., but to reflect on the negative effects of discrimination and exclusion. in this sense, they developed intercultural empathy toward the harsh situation of other cultural groups. with these findings in mind, the two questions guiding this study were answered. including lite rature in the efl classroom is an ideal means to enhance intercultural communicative competence, an important fact that many english teachers still need to consider. literature as content area enables students to work on problem-solving tasks in order to comprehend important issues. learners can manipulate information, express personal ideas, compare and contrast information, find and investigate historical events and literary topics, defend a point of view, and address conclusions from the literary works they read. in short, with the use of appropriate constructivist approaches, efl learners can potentially build both language and cultural knowledge through a process of meaning negotiation by working out the meaning of real language in context. some negative data from the experience in general terms, learners did not express any negative attitude toward the reading of the texts. however, they admitted that the first readings had been difficult because they contained unfamiliar vocabulary. learners also manifested that the later readings had been easier to read because they were already familiar with literary language. others admitted that they had taken more time to read the stories than with other kinds of materials. although learners thought the selections were difficult, they implemented reading comprehension strategies. for example, some learners reported that they had used the dictionary as a main tool during the reading process, a practice they had not seriously engaged in with other types of readings. some learners affirmed that when they did not know the meaning of a word, they tried to understand it from context. although the stories were somewhat challenging to read, students reported that they had enjoyed them due to the complementary material and the pedagogical support provided. conclusion and pedagogical implications this article has developed two important issues. first, it has described two major problems that still exist in efl teaching. one problem is that the teaching of english primarily focuses on mastering the linguistic system despite the teaching methods available to teach english communicatively. the other problem deals with the need to implement more authentic material in efl in order to complement the pedagogical goals of communicative textbooks. secondly, this article has presented four suitable constructivist approaches to incorporate authentic literary texts with efl in view of fostering learners’ intercultural communicative competence. one of the most remarkable findings is that those approaches constitute the basis to improve the teaching practices in efl through a process of meaning negotiation and the possibility to construct knowledge in a more personal, memorable, and meaningful way. another conclusion is that providing learners with appropriate approaches accompanied with guidelines and tasks can help learners to explore and understand authentic texts in a more accessible way. therefore, the teaching of literature in efl should be a more constant practice in advanced levels, adopting eclectic and consistent pedagogical approaches such as those offered by the socioconstructivist theory rather than attempting to universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras62 gómez r. study those literary texts in isolation without taking into account solid pedagogical perspectives. references almerico, g., & silverman, h. (2008). american literature as defined in college texts. research in higher education journal, 1, 1-10. amer, a. (2003). teaching efl/esl literature. the reading matrix, 3(2) 63-73. bachman, l. (1990). fundamental considerations in language testing. oxford: oxford university press. bakhtin, m. (1984). problems of dostoevsky’s poetics (ed. and trans. c. emerson). theory and history of literature, 8. minneapolis: the university of minnesota press. berardo, s. (2006). the use of authentic materials in the teaching of reading. the reading matrix, 6(2), 60-69. brown, d. (2009). why and how textbooks should encourage extensive reading. elt journal, 63, 238-245. byram, m. (1997). teaching and assessing intercultural communicative competence. clevedon: multilingual matters. carter, r. (1996). look both ways before crossing: development in the language and literature classroom. in r. carter & j. mcrae (eds.), language, literature and the learner: creative classroom practice (pp. 1-15). london: longman. cisneros, s. (1992). eleven. woman hollering creek and other stories (pp. 6-9). new york, ny: vintage books. council of europe. (2001). common european framework of reference for languages: learning, teaching, assessment. cambridge: cambridge university press. gellis, m. (2002). master questions and the teaching of lite rature. in j. holden & j. schmit (eds.), inquiry and the literary text: constructing discussion in the english classroom. (pp. 15-35), urbana, il: national council of teachers of english. haneda, m. (2007). modes of engagement in foreign language writing: an activity theoretical perspective. canadian modern language review, 64(2), 297-327. holden, j. (2002). socratic seminars and inquiry teaching: an overview. in j. holden & j. schmit (eds.), inquiry and the literary text: constructing discussion in the english classroom (pp. 1-14), urbana, il: national council of teachers of english. kramsch, c. (2001). context and culture in language teaching. oxford: oxford university press. lauter, p. (2010). contexts and canons. pedagogy, 10(1), 1531-4200. lázár, i. (2003). incorporating intercultural communicative competence in language teacher education. strasbourg: european centre of modern languages council of europe publishing. malamud, b. (1989). the first seven years. prentice hall literature: the american experience (pp. 946-953). new jersey: pearson prentice hall. maley, a. (2001). literature in the language classroom. in r. carter & d. nunan (eds.), the cambridge guide to teaching english to speakers of other languages (pp. 180185). cambridge: cambridge university press. mckay, s. (2001). literature as content for esl/efl. in m. murcia (ed.), teaching english as a second/foreign language (pp. 319-331). boston: heinle & heinle. mcrae, j., (ed.). (1996). language, literature and the learner. london: longman. richards, j., & rodgers, t. (2001). approaches and methods in language teaching (2nd ed.). cambridge: cambridge university press. rosenblatt, l. m. (1995). literature as exploration. (5th ed.). new york, ny: the modern language association. saslow, j., & ascher, a. (2005). top noch: english for today’s world. new york, ny: pearson, longman. savignon, s. (2001). communicative language teaching for the twenty-first century. in m. murcia (ed.), teaching english as a second/foreign language (pp. 12-28). boston, ma: heinle & heinle. savviduo, c. (2004). an integrating approach to teaching literature in the efl classroom. the internet tesl journal, 10(12). retrieved from http://iteslj.org/techniques/savvidou-literature.html 63profile vol. 14, no. 1, april 2012. issn 1657-0790. bogotá, colombia. pages 49-66 fostering intercultural communicative competence through reading authentic literary texts... schcolnik, m., & kol, s. (2006). constructivism in theory and in practice. english teaching forum, 4, 12-20. schowalter, e. (2003). teaching literature. london: blackwell publishing. sihui, m. (1996). “interfacing” language and literature: with special reference to the teaching of british cultural studies. in r. carter & j. mcrae (eds.), language literature and the learner: creative classroom practice (pp. 166-184). london: longman. steinbeck, j. (1995). the chrysanthemums. the long valley (pp. 1-13). new york, ny: penguin books. stryker, s., & leaver, b. (1997). content-based instruction in foreign language education: models and methods. washington: georgetown university press. vygotsky, l. s. (1978). mind in society: the development of higher psychological processes. cambridge, ma: harvard university press. walker, a. (1995). everyday use. in love and trouble: stories of black women (pp. 47-69). new york, ny: harvest book harcourt, inc. welty, e. (1989). a worn path. prentice hall literature: the american experience (pp. 710-715). new jersey: prentice hall. about the author luis fernando gómez r. holds a ba degree in english and spanish from universidad pedagógica nacional (upn), and an ma in education from carthage college, usa. he is currently enrolled in the phd program in english studies at illinois state university, usa. he is a member of the research group on hypermedia, testing, and teaching english, and a full time teacher at upn. universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras64 gómez r. appendix a: study guide with posted questions to apply the inquiry-based approach john steinbeck study guide on “the chrysanthemums” the story shows a very simple daily routine of a normal day on a farm. however, it contains a deeper literary significance. explore the story and answer the following questions. find key words, examples, actions, or events in the story to support your answer. 1. in the description of the setting, steinbeck remarks that the fog “sat like a lid on the mountains and made of the great valley a closed pot.” moreover, it is december with “pale cold sunshine.” later, he describes elisa enclosed in her garden working eagerly, and the garden is surrounded by a “wire fence.” how does the setting affect elisa’s life? what is the meaning of the environment in relation to elisa’ daily life? 2. compare elisa’s activities on the farm to those of her husband’s. what can you say about the issue of gender? do they do the same activities and do they have the same opportunities? 3. based on your reading, are elisa and henry a happily married couple? support your answer. 4. study the conversation between elisa and the tinker. what is his real intention when he comes to elisa’s farm? what kind of a man is he? does he want to establish a friendly relationship with elisa? 5. what are the similarities and differences between elisa’s husband and the tinker? how do they affect or favor elisa? 6. is elisa sympathetic or unsympathetic to the tinker? why does she please the tinker with everything he asks for (the chrysanthemum sprouts, the flower pot, and the saucepans to be repaired)? 7. does elisa change physically and emotionally throughout the whole story? if so, how and why does she change? what theme or idea do you think steinbeck intends to show through her change? 65profile vol. 14, no. 1, april 2012. issn 1657-0790. bogotá, colombia. pages 49-66 fostering intercultural communicative competence through reading authentic literary texts... appendix b: sample of observations (field notes) fourth formal observation site: upn, room 319 date: april 28, 2010 literary work read: “the first seven years ” author: bernard malamud field notes comments three presenters were in charge of leading the discussion on bernard malamud’s story “the first seven years.” they presented malamud’s biography and the jewish-american literature movement. they also spoke about the holocaust and the second world war. additionally, students discussed the immigration of people to the usa and what immigrants had to suffer in a land that was completely new for them. they commented that immigrants suffered from discrimination, poverty, and social injustice. they related the situation of feld, one of the characters, to the present situation of immigrants in the usa, and the recent law that considers immigrants as criminals. students were able to speak in english about serious social issues such as immigration, a problem that still prevails in the usa. students related the events of the story to the recent immigration reform under obama’s administration. several students spoke about jewish cultural elements presented in the story. for instance, they said that one important jewish tradition in the past was that parents always expected to have a male baby as their first son instead of having a girl because having a male was a god’s blessing. another jewish, cultural tradition they identified from the story was that children were very respectful and obedient with their parents, and were expected to do what their parents said. also, they said that parents used to make decisions for their children as happened with feld, one character in the story, who wanted his daughter miriam to marry a boy he had chosen for her. some other students expressed the opinion that miriam, feld’s daughter, was breaking the strict rules of jewish family traditions because she wanted to do what she thought was better for her than just obeying her father’s orders. this discussion was very meaningful because students were very analytical in terms of identifying important cultural values in cultural backgrounds different from their own. in this way, the cultural issues discussed showed that students were interculturally aware (socio-cultural sense) of certain cultural aspects that the story provided. one student point it out that sobel suffered from exclusion just because he was poor and jewish. however, something that shocked this student was that sobel was excluded by feld, who was also jewish. in that sense, people discriminate and exclude people from their own cultural background. feld abhors sobel because he is poor, ugly, bold, and uneducated. thus, sobel is a character who has been excluded by germans and by americans because he is an immigrant, and now by feld who is his compatriot. students were able to talk about issues related to exclusion and discrimination. universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras66 gómez r. appendix c: sample of students’ opinions about the inquiry-based approach s2: “i think that literature is a very difficult area to study, but when a teaching strategy is used as the study guides, the class work is easier because you have a concrete guide that helps you to consider ideas about the author, themes, the plot, etc.” (journal 2) s7: “i think that the study guides were a very appropriate tool to do the readings because the questions focused our attention on the main themes of each story and allowed us to have a first approach to the readings before class discussions. the study guides made us read the story between the lines.” (journal 2) s12: “the questions that the teacher asked us to answer [in the study guides] were very important because we can find another way to explore the short stories. it is not just to [tell students] to read, but to give them some guidelines. i liked this method and this way of teaching.” (interview, may 12th, 2010) s16: “the study guides were very useful because we had our first contact with the text. they were very useful, and i think all my partners were very happy with them because reading those texts without a study guide would have been too difficult. with this method, all of us tried to speak; we weren’t scare of being wrong or right. all of us tried to say our ideas. in my case, i am very shy, but with the methodology, i tried to participate a lot because i felt confident with the information i had. so, i think that method is very good. i don’t have anything to criticize about it.” (interview, may 19th, 2010) 11profile vol. 15, no. 1, april 2013. issn 1657-0790 (printed) 2256-5760 (online). bogotá, colombia. pages 11-25 * e-mail: yuly.yate@sanboni.edu.co ** e-mail: luis.saenz@sanboni.edu.co *** e-mail: johale238@yahoo.com **** e-mail: andres.castaneda@sanboni.edu.co this paper reports on a study conducted by the authors while participating in a teacher development program led by the profile research group of universidad nacional de colombia. the program was sponsored by the corporación colegio san bonifacio de las lanzas (ibagué, colombia) 2010-2012. this article was received on july 1, 2012 and accepted on january 12, 2013. the role of collaborative work in the development of elementary students’ writing skills el papel del trabajo colaborativo en el desarrollo de las habilidades de escritura de estudiantes de primaria yuly yinneth yate gonzález* luis fernando saenz** johanna alejandra bermeo*** andrés fernando castañeda chaves**** corporación colegio san bonifacio de las lanzas, colombia in this article we report the findings of a two-phase action research study focused on the role of collaborative work in the development of elementary students’ writing skills at a colombian school. this was decided after having identified the students’ difficulties in the english classes related to word transfer, literal translation, weak connection of ideas and no paragraph structure when communicating their ideas. in the first phase teachers observed, collected, read and analyzed students’ written productions without intervention. in the second one, teachers read about and implemented strategies based on collaborative work, collected information, analyzed students’ productions and field notes in order to finally identify new issues, create and develop strategies to overcome students’ difficulties. findings show students’ roles and reactions as well as task completion and language construction when motivated to work collaboratively. key words: collaborative learning, writing in elementary school, writing process. presentamos los resultados de una investigación-acción llevada a cabo en dos fases, centrada en el papel del trabajo colaborativo en el desarrollo de habilidades de escritura de estudiantes de primaria en una escuela colombiana. el estudio se realizó tras haber identificado las dificultades de los alumnos en las clases de inglés relacionadas con la transferencia de palabras, la traducción literal, la débil conexión de las ideas y la falta de estructura del párrafo al comunicar sus ideas. en la primera fase los docentes observaron, recogieron, leyeron y analizaron las producciones escritas de los alumnos sin realizar ninguna intervención pedagógica. en la segunda, los profesores leyeron sobre estrategias de trabajo colaborativo y las implementaron; recopilaron información, analizaron las producciones textuales de los estudiantes y las notas de campo tomadas para identificar nuevos problemas, crear y desarrollar estrategias que ayudaran a los estudiantes a superar sus dificultades. los hallazgos muestran cómo reaccionaron los estudiantes ante el trabajo colaborativo, y asimismo la forma como realizan tareas y construyen su lenguaje cuando están motivados a trabajar de esta manera. palabras clave: aprendizaje colaborativo, escritura en primaria, proceso de escritura. universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras12 yate gonzález, saenz, bermeo & castañeda chaves introduction this research project seeks to examine the role of collaborative work in the development of elementary students’ writing skills in their english classes at the corporación colegio san bonifacio de las lanzas. taking into account that elementary school students have not yet started their formal writing process in english, we assessed students to determine their current standing on their ability to write and what they implemented when composing written tasks. through this, the elementary language teachers would develop the necessary strategies to help students improve and create solid bases for an accurate writing process, as well as establish departure points to improve upon in the years to come. the authors of this article, who worked in grades 2, 3, 4 and 5, decided to work together in order to find strategies to help students when writing due to an obser vation made on the performance of elementary students for at least a year. we noticed some difficulties when students wanted to write their ideas in english such as transferring words and expressions from spanish (using literal translation), reduced or basic vocabulary, weak connection of ideas and no paragraph structure. also, most of the students showed a lack of interest and were reluctant to compose single sentences (a simple task) as well as get involved in longer assignments. many authors have written about the benefits of writing throughout history, remarking on its power and its ability to convey knowledge and ideas (macarthur, graham, & fitzgerald, 2006). besides, it allows people to express their points of views by making their thinking visible as well as promotes the ability to ask questions, helps others to provide feedback and demonstrates their intellectual flexibility and maturity, among others. on the other hand, collaborative authoring or writing can be defined as the set of activities involved in the production of a document by more than one author (dillon, 1993). taking this information about writing and collaborative authoring into account, we try to demonstrate with the following research project the effect of collaborative work as a tool for developing writing skills in elementary students. theoretical framework focusing on the objective of this investigation, we approached our research with our focus aimed at three key aspects of study: collaborative learning, the writing process and the development of writing skills in elementary (primary) school. collaborative learning as stated by smith and macgregor (1992), nowadays, collaborative learning is seen as a powerful tool that provides meaningful experiences for students and teachers, in which learning as a group is the motor that impulses other learning processes. in this type of techniques, teachers are not the ones that possess all the knowledge, and their only purpose is to transmit and reproduce that knowledge, but teachers are considered as promoters of experiences where students discover functionalities in what they learn, share with other and apply that knowledge to their real life. from a collaborative sense, the real meaning of this technique is not only the generation of students’ encounters in which they are given a task to develop, but also are given the opportunity to give opinions, self-correction and peer correction as tools to promote tolerance and idea-sharing, planning projects, among other important benefits of collaborative learning. (p. 1) these are some features of collaborative learning that we would like to highlight, as mentioned by smith and macgregor (1992): 1. learning is an active process in which all of its participants provide meaningful ideas for projects to be carried out. 2. learning depends on rich contexts in which students can feel more interested in working as teams with clear goals to achieve. 3. learners are diverse, meaning that every participant may have different ideas, opinions and points of view that can change or improve the project development. (p. 1) 13profile vol. 15, no. 1, april 2013. issn 1657-0790 (printed) 2256-5760 (online). bogotá, colombia. pages 11-25 the role of collaborative work in the development of elementary students’ writing skills as for education, collaborative learning has developed certain roles and values that we as teachers have to promote in our students when working in collaborative environments (smith & macgregor, 1992). these values are later turned into earnings for students. first, collaborative work involves all the participants and makes them work as a team in which the direction of the project is unique. second, learners learn how to cooperate among themselves, where work is not seen as an individual product, but it is a process in which the participants’ ideas influence and have a positive impact on the project, so the participants’ contributions are relevant and necessary. and finally, civic responsibility is learnt through the experience on collaborative learning; with this, students comprehend that the world is an enormous field in which some abilities are required to become a successful professional, such as cooperation, working with others, sharing ideas, comparing and contrasting opinions, defining goals, searching for strategies to achieve those goals, and learning from on-hand experience. these previous elements of collaborative learning have shown that learning, seen as an integral process, requires more than knowledge transferred from the teacher; it also requires experience that is learnt through working with others. the writing process according to long and richards (1990), the writing process has been an interesting field for educational researchers, linguists, applied linguists, and teachers since the early 1970s (long & richards, 1990), giving as results, numerous projects done in the field, identifying different aspects of this skill in l1 and l2 and their relationship. in the united kingdom, for example, researchers such as britton, burgess, martin, macleod, & rosen (1975) observed young learners in the process of writing in order to identify the planning, decision making and heuristics they employed. complementary work in the united states by researchers and educators such as eming, murray and graves (cited in long & richards, 1990, p. viii) led to the emergence of the “process” school of writing theory and practice. this view emphasizes that writing is a recursive rather than a linear process, that writers rarely write to a preconceived plan or model, that the process of writing creates its own form and meaning (depending on the writers’ intention, beliefs, culture, etc.), and that there is a significant degree of individual variation in the composing behaviors of both first and second language writers (long & richards, 1990). flower and hayes, and bereiter and scardamalia (cited in myles, 2002) proposed some writing process models that have served as the theoretical basis for using the process approach in both l1 and l2 writing instruction. by incorporating pre-writing activities such as collaborative brainstorming, choice of personally meaningful topics, strategy instruction in the stages of composing, drafting, revising, and editing, multiple drafts and peer-group editing, the instruction takes into consideration what writers do as they write. attention to the writing process stresses more a workshop approach to instruction, which fosters classroom interaction, and engages students in analyzing and commenting on a variety of texts. the l1 theories also seem to support less teacher intervention and less attention to form. at the corporación colegio san bonifacio de las lanzas, the l2 writing process is one of the skills students must develop in their academic performance. taking into account the nature of our curriculum, we feel writing is an ongoing process students must follow according to a variety of stages of prewriting, drafting, editing and rewriting and finally publishing, varying its levels of difficulty among the grades. writing skills among elementary students primary school teachers have been evaluating the importance of writing from the early ages at school throughout many years. our main concern universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras14 yate gonzález, saenz, bermeo & castañeda chaves as efl teachers yields on how to initiate students from primary levels into the second language writing process and how farther they should go by the end of each school year. what our research project is looking for basically is how to develop students’ writing skills in a collaborative environment, so they can build up the bases and structures to reach good results in academic terms. however, according to hillocks (1986), we should examine the giving of instructions rather than the way in which we approach students to work in writing. bazerman (2007) states that we as teachers need to face three dimensions and challenges for the teaching of writing: the first one talks about the continuing of writing, the second mentions the complexity of writing and the third one makes reference to writing as a social activity. (p. 293) writing as a social activity implies working on tasks where all students can surely be involved in imaginative and creative topics in which writing is seen as a social dialogue (dyson, 2000) as well as a peer collaboration in the classroom (mclane, 1990). additionally, writing is a way to interact, share and move further into processes at early ages (kamberelis, 1999). due to all of the above, we can connect our collaborative writing research project to a social writing environment, engaging and encouraging children to link the classroom activities with real life. doing so, we can help students to enjoy and become more motivated towards writing. considering the previous issues, we came to be concerned about the lack of interest students have in writing, and the difficulties concentrating on main ideas; these difficulties can be identified as not being concise and precise when expressing opinions, not using the correct vocabulary for the activity as well as not keeping track of punctuation, and not having coherence and cohesion when writing. context the population we took into account was the elementary students from corporación colegio san bonifacio de las lanzas, a private bilingual school with an english class intensity of seven (7) hours per week and a total of 536 students. it is located in the city of ibagué (colombia) and serves students of the middle-high socioeconomic status. school description with 26 years of experience, the school is one of the most important educational institutions in the region and it is also known throughout the whole country because of its high academic performance shown in the results of national tests and because our eleventh grade students rank in the highest levels based on the standards of the european council (council of europe, 2001). taking a brief look at the overall framework of the school institutional project (proyecto educativo institucional = pei) regarding the use of a foreign language, it states that the mastering of english as a second language is the main objective of the school. also, the school is engaged in the intensive learning of the language of globalization as a way to promote the school and its student body internationally. hence, the school institutional project explains that mastering a second language is the minimum standard to be met for educational institutions (corporación colegio san bonifacio de las lanzas, 2011). the school has about 75 teachers in areas such as science, social studies, mathematics, english, physical education, arts and language arts. on the other hand, the student population comprises pre-school, elementary, junior high and high school students. in addition to the english class intensity of 7 hours per week, mathematics and science are oriented in this foreign language as well. 15profile vol. 15, no. 1, april 2013. issn 1657-0790 (printed) 2256-5760 (online). bogotá, colombia. pages 11-25 the role of collaborative work in the development of elementary students’ writing skills population description there are 2 courses per grade in elementary: two second, third, fourth and fifth grades, with a minimum of 18 and a maximum of 29 learners in each classroom. their ages range from 7 to 12 years old, with varied english language skills due to their previous knowledge learnt from preschool within the institution. the population taken into account consists of 8 students per level, that is to say, 4 students from grade 2a, 4 students from grade 2b, 4 students from 3a, 4 students from grade 3b; 4 students from 4a, 4 students from grade 4b; and 4 students from 5a, and 4 students from grade 5b, all selected at random. elementary students start developing their writing and reading skills in second grade at a basic level, that is to say, reading and writing very short but structured single sentences. after that, moving to third grade, they start with the production of simple paragraphs, being encouraged to give opinions and to start developing independent sentences and short paragraphs. teachers always support and help students to improve their performance including writing skills; this process moves forward and gets more rigorous along with students’ elementary school life. the institution’s commitment is to develop a bilingual education. likewise, and taking into ac count that spanish is the l1 of our students and that their processes in learning a second language can be difficult for them to be developed with authenticity in our context (as they are with learning l1), we find the institution’s commitment is to develop a step-back process, that is, ensuring that the oral and written linguistic skills in their native language are developed first, and then move on to the process of learning a second language. taking that into account, we know the spanish curriculum and the students’ prior knowledge contribute to a base for the english curriculum, which aims to develop critical thinking skills (sequencing, analyzing, inferring, summarizing, etc.) and com municative competences (grammatical, discursive, sociolinguistic and strategic) through three principal strands which are the daily and media communication, approaching scientific knowledge and aesthetic and cultural expression. these involve five kinds of discourse which are the narrative, argumentative, descriptive, explanatory and future forms; these are composed of the formal aspects of the language like grammar, syntax, phonology, semantics and the use of language in order to achieve effective communication (see figure 1). as we can see from the last lines, more than learning a second language, the approach at san bonifacio school consists of the effective use of english in real contexts by developing several skills through elements like authentic performances and learning for understanding. all the elements mentioned above along with collaborative work will help students reach their goal, in this case, when writing. research design this is a study based on the principles of action research and is carried out in a descriptive-innovating manner in which we examined the main contributions of collaborative work in primary students in the development of writing skills. our research was developed in two stages, fol lowing the action research cycle represented in fi gure 2. the first stage took place during 2011. teachers obser ved, collected and read students’ written productions without their intervention concerning collaborative work. the intention of such decision was to gather information about the most common characteristics students have when writing in english. teachers applied a survey to students on how they felt in relation to writing in english, talking about feelings, likes and dislikes when they write during the english classes (see figure 3). universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras16 yate gonzález, saenz, bermeo & castañeda chaves figure 1. english area plan (corporación colegio san bonifacio de las lanzas, 2010) the spanish curriculum + prior knowledge english curriculum daily and media communication narrative • describing and sequencing events formal aspects • grammar, syntax, phonology, semantics pragmatic aspects • effective communication argumentative • creating and supporting arguments descriptive • describing, classifying, comparing and contrasting explanatory • instructing future forms • hypothesising, predicting, identifying degrees of probability aproaching scientific knowledge esthetic and cultural expression communicative competence critical thinking skills provide a base for the • grammatical competence • discourse competence • sociolinguistic competence • strategic competence • sequencing • analysing • evaluating • infering • making predictions • drawing conclusions • comparing and contrasting • paraphrasing • summarising • synthesising which aims to develop through three principle strands which have kinds of discourse figure 2. action research cycle (ferrance, 2000, p. 9) next steps identify the problem gather data interpret data act on evidence evaluate results 17profile vol. 15, no. 1, april 2013. issn 1657-0790 (printed) 2256-5760 (online). bogotá, colombia. pages 11-25 the role of collaborative work in the development of elementary students’ writing skills figure 3. sample of a student’s response1 1 the questionnaire was originally administered in spanish–the students’ mother tongue–and translated into english for the purpose of this publication. research study: the role of collaborative work in the development of elementary students’ writing skills at corporación colegio san bonifacio de las lanzas student questionnaire teacher: yuly yinneth yate g. date: 11/08/2011 student: juan david q._______ grade: 4a sincerely respond to the following questions. remember that the use of this information is confidential and your answers will not have any consequences concerning you in any manner. 1. how do you feel when you work individually? why? i fell i don’t have any help because i´m alone.___________________________________________________________________________________________________________ 2. what advantages and disadvantages are there from working individually? advantages: maybe to be more concentrated____________________________________________________________________________________________________________ disadvantages: do not have help_________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________ 3. how do you feel when working in a group? accompanied and more confident________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________ 4. what advantages and disadvantages are there from working in a group? advantages: it depends because sometimes you work with someone who doesn’t help_________________________________________ disadvantages: sometimes you get distracted______________________________________________________________________________________________________________ 5. what is your role when working in a group? it depends on the activity, sometimes i´m the narrator.___________________________________________________________________________________________ 6. do you have any type of criteria when choosing the students you work with in a group? which are they? students who work and help to me.______________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________ 7. how do you divide the work in the group? usually, we work in group._____________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________ 8. do you find it beneficial to work in groups when doing written activities? why? yes, because i practice my writing and because my friends help to me when i have difficulties when writing something.________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________ 9. what does it mean for you to work collaboratively? to help somebody when she/he doesn’t understand or when somebody has difficulties and i can help.____________ 10. do you consider that there is a difference between working collaboratively and working in a group? which is it? i don’t have any difference because when you work collaboratively, for sure, you are working in group.________________ thank you for your collaboration! universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras18 yate gonzález, saenz, bermeo & castañeda chaves in a second stage developed during 2012 and following the action research cycle represented in figure 2, teachers read about strategies based on collaborative work and selected three strategies that were believed by the teachers to improve students’ writing and at the same time overcome the difficulties that may arise during the process. teachers designed an activity in which they confronted the theory and the practice of collaborative work with primary students; at the same time, teachers gathered information from the students’ productions during all this process. furthermore, teachers analyzed students’ productions and teachers’ field notes. finally, teachers identified new issues in order to create and develop strategies to help students overcome difficulties. data collection for developing phase number one (observation, data collection and data analysis 2011) and phase number two (act on evidence, strategies implementation, evaluate results, 2012) for the project, teachers selected students’ written productions done during the second and the third academic period as sources of information. teachers created a goal for students to achieve according to the institutional needs. during the writing process students had to follow the processes of planning, drafting, revising and editing, and through these, teachers observed, took notes (using the observation chart in figure 4) and implemented the following strategies: 1. the team plans and outlines the task, then each writer prepares his/her part and the group compiles the individual parts, then revises the whole document as needed. 2. one person assigns the tasks, each member completes the individual task, and one person compiles and revises the document. 3. as a team, students compose the draft, revise it and make necessary changes. research study: the role of collaborative work in the development of elementary students’ writing skills at corporación colegio san bonifacio de las lanzas observation chart teacher: andrés castañeda. goal: elaborate a comic strip, taking ideas from their books. date student grade activity observations individually group work aug 1st – aug 5th group in general maría josé, juan david and maría paula 5a students had to assume a responsibility while in the group to manage a specific task. furthermore, they would brainstorm ideas for the completion of it. students formed their groups and discussed the theme of their comic strips, then decided how many slides they were going to need. maria jose, juan david and maria paula seemed unwilling to assume a role of leadership, but rather a submissive role and to follow the guidance of others. alejandro assumed a creative role of leadership and, along with his partners, constantly suggested new ideas that would eventually help in the creation of their comic strips. figure 4. sample of an observation chart 19profile vol. 15, no. 1, april 2013. issn 1657-0790 (printed) 2256-5760 (online). bogotá, colombia. pages 11-25 the role of collaborative work in the development of elementary students’ writing skills table 1. categories of observation grade / category students’ roles task completion language construction students’ reactions grade 2 there is always a leader, chosen because of his or her english level. he or she is the monitor of the class. he or she is the best writer, reader or editor. • time management. • brainstorming. • assigning roles. • dividing tasks. • gathering ideas all together. • focusing merely on instructions, written and orally. • asking the teacher questions. • using tools such as a dictionary and asking each other. • using everything studied in class, checking in the notebook. • enjoying the activity as all voices are heard. • sometimes arguing as boys’ ideas somehow conflict with the girls’. • they pretty much like writing and creating fiction and non-fiction stories, searching, drawing and creating the scene for it. grade 3a & 3b there is always a leader, chosen because of his or her english level. he or she is the monitor of the class. he or she is the best writer, reader or editor. students choose a leader to organize the work. one student assumes the leadership. students vote to elect the leader. students’ roles are readers and writers. • they go straight to the activity. • mostly it is necessary to repeat and get clear on the instructions many times. • gather ideas together, but somehow is unproductive as there is a lot of misunderstanding among them. • brainstorming. • use teacher as their main source, leaving dictionary or notebook behind as the last option. • use of spanglish to convey meaning somehow. • use monitors as the second main helpers. • are quite creative, they love placing themselves into the story. • they also include their own anecdotes, making it easy for teacher to understand their ideas. • they look interested when you motivate them giving ideas. • feel productive and cooperative. findings during the first phase of our research, we analyzed our findings from the students’ classwork, and then grouped our findings into four categories of obser vation: students’ roles, task completion, l ang uage constr uc tion and students’ reac tions (see table 1). as part of an on-going research, we found some interesting information regarding the differences or rather the fluctuation of responsibilities among students from different grade levels. next, we analyzed each aspect and resumed our findings being specific on the abilities being worked and developed. universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras20 yate gonzález, saenz, bermeo & castañeda chaves students’ roles elementary students at the san bonifacio de las lanzas school have clear and marked characteristics regarding their roles while working collaboratively. during the analysis of the four categories we have done, there are specific features that let us describe our students’ abilities, reactions and language situations involved inside a teamwork writing process. we will describe each of the most relevant factors related to student’s roles. we want to focus only on the four main roles and behaviors that caught our attention: 1. students choose their own roles 2. students vote for a leader 3. one student takes the initiative 4. students’ roles as readers and writers first, elementary students are able to provide supported reasons why they choose certain roles inside a group during team work. for instance, the case in which students choose their own roles, they do so while considering certain parameters or characteristics they should have in order to perform that role, such as: the best english in the group, the best writer, the best reader or the best editor. in a different case concerning teams in which students need someone to encourage the team performance, students vote for a leader. in this case, pretty similar to the one mentioned before, students state their choice on specific parameters for that leader to carry on and guide the task completion. some of the mentioned characteristics are: the best english inside the group, the most organized person, and students’ reliance on their abilities to perform different tasks. also, on a team in which no one seems to ignite the labor, there is one student who takes the initiative and, without being previously chosen, gets people to work. perhaps this is the most intriguing case because the one who takes the initiative is not always the student with the best english inside the group. contrary to the previous “roles”, in which someone is guiding the pro-ject, this student makes him/herself part of the team and develops part of the task. as already mentioned, this student may not be the best at english, but his or her initiative moves the team towards the completion of the task. in this case, after being motivated, students spontaneously choose a role and perform it. students help each other and carry out the project as a whole group. students learn about peer-correction and peerwork while developing the task. we can state that there is meaningful and spontaneous learning taking place among the students while they help each other. in the last case, students seem to be more decisive as to what they want to do while working and being part of a group. in this stage students know exactly what their abilities are and what they are capable of. students then decide to perform the roles of readers and writers. students recognize their strength either reading or writing and this helps them organize the group more quickly. task completion there exists a great range of characteristics that label each one of the different grades in terms of task understanding and completion. however, elementary students have a clear idea of what a task is and how they have to complete it: students read the instructions, ask for clarification, divide tasks and compile the results to present a final production, either orally or written. for this activity, there is a step-by-step process that nearly all the grades follow, and this process is the one we want to focus our attention on. the process is organized as follows: 1. reading and understanding instructions 2. asking for clarification (does not apply in all the cases) 3. gathering ideas 4. dividing tasks 5. compiling results 6. presenting final production (orally and/or written) the groups start developing the task by reading the instructions; one student reads the task as the other team 21profile vol. 15, no. 1, april 2013. issn 1657-0790 (printed) 2256-5760 (online). bogotá, colombia. pages 11-25 the role of collaborative work in the development of elementary students’ writing skills members listen to the reader. in some cases, students do not understand what they have to do and ask for clarification, either the teacher or their peers. it was crucial to identify that all the groups feel the real need to understand what they have to do. after reading the task, students gather ideas to perform the task. the fact that students always consider their partners’ ideas was very clear to us. students collect all the ideas and then decide upon the best and the most suitable ones for the task. along with this, students assigned specific roles inside the groups. these roles are chosen depending on a member’s abilities to perform different tasks (the best to do this or that). having understood the task, students move to divide the task for all the members (equal duties). in some cases, one student assigns the sub-tasks and in other cases, one student performs or develops the task as the other team members tell them what to do. after this, the group collects the previous results for the task, reads each of the pieces and agrees on possible changes or adjustments. students become their own super visor of their written and oral productions. some groups tend to make adjustments to their productions at this point, while some other groups seem to be more tolerant and less objective towards their partners’ contributions (not to hurt others’ feelings). when students finish reading the pieces for the task, they compile the information and present the product. at this point students check for organization and presentation of the final paper. in some groups one student is in charge of collecting, compiling and writing the final production, but other groups choose one person to write the final paper as the rest of the team has already accomplished their initial task. it was a surprise for us to find such process among all the grades. students have a great management of time and execution to complete the given tasks. they are very careful about the duties they have to perform and how they will do it. language construction at san bonifacio de las lanzas students have a clear sense of the work being implemented in class in order to improve their oral language and writing; doing so has some aspects that enable us as teachers to observe, analyze and identify strengths and areas of improvement in students’ daily productions and performance. given the nature of our day-to-day work, we, as an investigation group, have identified collaborative work as part of an on-going performance to aid us in the construction of a language base. the focus of this analysis lies within students’ language construction, from the basics of their phon etic level to fluent speaking, from simple words to complex sentences. during this phase of students’ work, we have identified as follows several important aspects that vary with each level (grade): 1. use of previous knowledge to conceive know ledge. 2. use of spanglish to understand or be under stood. 3. tools used to aid in learning; dictionary, monitors, teacher, etc. 4. notion of correction of common mistakes. 5. punctuation and grammar. students from the lowest level come with a notion of things and their surroundings; this helps them understand much of what is being worked in class whether it is visual or conceptual. students also work together to make the understanding of a specific topic easier. although this happens more often in lower grades, the exercise is present among all grades. although the use of a dictionary slowly declines as the grade level increases, students use a variety of tools or methods to understand; the resource used most often is the teacher; s/he is asked for help with translation or spelling. the use of spanglish (a mixture of spanish and english) is noticeable among third to fifth grades; students begin to resort to code switching to make universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras22 yate gonzález, saenz, bermeo & castañeda chaves themselves understood, often during all the activities in class; students will refer to their first language to complete sentences being constructed, or even specific words that are unknown to them. students often feel comfortable and find it easier to code switch because it eases the fluency of speech; however, at some point they realize that knowing the word will help them even more; so during their speech or conversation, students will often ask “how do you say” in order to complete their ideas. students have adapted a notion about words and structures that enables them to interact with their writing as it progresses. some of the most common mistakes students make at san bonifacio de las lanzas are the lack of completion of sentences (fragmenting) or the use of run-on sentences. when it comes down to punctuation and grammar, students have issues identifying when to rely on them for each context; while conversing with students they manifested that this was due to a confusion of language context; they assume that in english, rules derived from spanish do not apply. students’ reaction at san bonifacio de las lanzas students are com mitted to learning through a variety of means im plemented in class as part of the pedagogical method. part of students’ identity could be defined as the development of students’ different skills through ample fields of learning such as debates and round table discussions, among others. the focus on this analysis lies in the reaction of each student or students as a whole to identify their functions, based on previous data collection, taking into consideration peer to peer interactions. we have identified some key aspects related to this investigation, namely: 1. group interaction 2. life experiences 3. positive reinforcement 4. teacher-student interaction as part of our research we have identified group interaction to be essential when students brainstorm for possible writing topics; appreciating different ideas gives students a broad view of what to come up with in regard to composing texts. students enjoy time in class specially when their ideas are heard and appreciated; giving them the opportunity to interact with one another empowers them with trust and confidence to participate, positively contribute and overcome difficulties at the speaking level. one of the most common difficulties students faced during group interaction was the difference of ideas between boys and girls among low grade levels (2nd and 3rd). students’ ideas differ at the cohesion level; what this means is that boys’ ideas were somewhat “out in the open” whilst girls’ ideas were direct and concise, each relating to the activities planned. between the ages of 8-11 years old, students’ life experiences help them relate to activities planned and executed during their learning period. this gives students an opportunity to take ownership of whichever activity they are undertaking and feel encouraged to brainstorm, write and share. as part of a group interaction during each and ever y moment of writing as well as oral and listening activities in class, teachers and students are always communicating, therefore providing valid information about performances in all of the different fields. students rely a lot on feedback to positively construct their work; hence, teacher collaboration and involvement during these activities is essential. some students also feel the need within their “group” to receive positive comments, obser vations and interpretations. this need we have identified to be very motivating and encouraging for almost all students. as always, students follow a very interesting “emotional” line through their elementary performances, from motivated to creative, from curious to enthusiastic; these are all remarkable aspects to keep in mind when viewing each student’s work as an individual first and 23profile vol. 15, no. 1, april 2013. issn 1657-0790 (printed) 2256-5760 (online). bogotá, colombia. pages 11-25 the role of collaborative work in the development of elementary students’ writing skills then as part of a group, and it allows teachers and evaluators to monitor, write down and share this very important piece of knowledge. as a last point of reference, having students’ in volvement, eye contact, questioning and answering becomes a progressive activity because almost every time, students are advancing more and more through their performances, learning and getting used to new methods to do things. conclusions the implementation of the three strategies for working collaboratively showed interesting results. in the first place, when the team plans and outlines the task, each writer prepares his/her part and then the group compiles the individual parts and revises the whole document as needed. students felt less comfortable when they felt that their ideas might not be heard or determined, and this prompted them not to speak or interact with the other members of the team in a natural and harmonic way. some discussions flew around the group environment but students finally seemed to understand that the group task prevails over their own or individual interests (students’ roles). also, the teams adequately managed time and the subdivisions of the task to comprehend the given work. students still focused their attention on completing the task and dividing the amount of work so that everyone had their own part and the team achieved its goal (task completion). in addition, students seemed to rely more on their partners’ corrections and contributions than on their teachers’. for this strategy, each one of the members of the team maintained a close relation with their team colleagues to the point that language interaction, correction and construction comprised an essential and innate state of the group (language construction). in second place, when one person assigns the tasks, each member completes the individual task e.g. one person compiles and revises the document in question. students adopted different roles but a specific feature that remained was evidenced whereby students seemed to feel more comfortable when they performed a role for which they had the best talent or ability (writer, idea proposer, leader, compiler, editor). for this strategy and, as teams had no leaders, the groups decided to assign roles considering their members’ abilities for different tasks (students’ roles). as such, students comprehend the relevance and importance of their contributions to the initial task. members of the teams felt comfortable working on their own with no observer carefully watching what they had to do; instead, team members preferred to consider their colleagues a supportive axis concerning the task completion, an axis on which they could rely and trust in order to understand better the task intention and how to develop it (task completion). one student of the team was the one who provided final feedback on the members’ contributions, which made the rest of the team a bit unsatisfied due to the poor and not so reliable feedback. as the only voice that was heard at that point was the editor’s, the team had not much to do in terms of correction and revision. language use and function was directly used in terms of oral feedback. written language was used only to correct and edit the document (language construction). in third place, when the team plans and outlines the task and writes a draft, the group revises the draft, thus students feel that their contributions for the task are relevant and considered when developing either of the task subdivisions. no student performed a specific role so that everyone could contribute and have his/her own ideas on what to do and what not to do considered by the others (students’ roles). also, working with this strategy, ideas flew around the team environment providing a much wider view of what the task intended to achieve and the best methods to do so. each one of the students assumed one of the task subdivisions, contributed to the task completion with his/her ideas, comments or suggestions, and universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras24 yate gonzález, saenz, bermeo & castañeda chaves provided feedback, orally and in writing, for their classmates. students’ interaction happened in a more natural way and this allowed the task to be completely achieved (task completion). in addition, language was freely used by every member of the team. students used the language to communicate ideas, correct each other, provide accurate feedback on the paper’s progress and edit a final version of the paper. for complete achievement of the task students got a clear idea of how important it was to help each other and provide accurate and grounded feedback that help the team reach their initial goal (language construction). as we could see, at san bonifacio de las lanzas, collaborative learning is an opportunity for students to help each other to construct meaning and knowledge, as they work on tasks that demand analyzing, planning, acting and reflecting on their work as a tool to measure their capacity to work with others, and their abilities and contributions as regards common tasks. finally, through this research teachers noticed how relevant and meaningful collaborative learning is in students’ learning process. so, we can move towards the intention of this type of approach in education, and more important, the role of education around collaborative learning. references bazerman, c. (2007). handbook of research on writing: history, society, school, individual, text. new york, ny: lawrence erlbaum. britton, j., burgess, a., martin, n., macleod, a., & rosen, h. (1975). the development of writing abilities. london, uk: macmillan. corporación colegio san bonifacio de las lanzas. (2010). plan de área inglés. english area. ibagué, co: author. corporación colegio san bonifacio de las lanzas. (2011). pro yecto educativo institucional (pei). ibagué, co: author. council of europe. (2001). the common european framework of reference for languages: learning, teaching, as sessment. cambridge, uk: cambridge university press. retrieved from http://assets.cambridge.org/052180/ 3136/sample/0521803136ws.pdf dillon, a. (1993). how collaborative is collaborative writing? an analysis of the production of two technical reports. in m. sharples (ed.), computer supported collaborative writing (pp. 69-86). london, uk: springer-verlag. dyson, a. (2000). on refraining children’s words: the perils, promises, and pleasures of writing children. research in the teaching of english, 34(3), 352-367. ferrance, e. (2000). action research cycle. providence: northeast and islands regional educational laboratory at brown university. retrieved from http://www. lab.brown.edu/pubs/themes_ed/act_research.pdf hillocks, g. jr. (1986). research on written composition: new directions for teaching. urbana, il: ncte. kamberelis, g. (1999). genre development: children writing stories, science reports and poems. research in the teaching of english, 33(4), 403-460. long, m., & richards, j. c. (1990). second language writing. new york, ny: cambridge university press. macarthur, c., graham, s., & fitzgerald, j. (2006). handbook of writing research. new york, ny: guilford press. mclane, j. b. (1990). writing as a social process. in l. c. moll (ed.), vygotsky and education (pp. 304-318). cambridge, uk: cambridge university press. myles, j. (2002). second language writing and research: the writing process and error analysis in student texts. tesl-ej teaching english as a second or foreign language, 6(2). retrieved from http://www.cc.kyoto-su. ac.jp/information/tesl-ej/ej22/a1.html smith, b. l., & macgregor, j. t. (1992). what is collaborative learning? collaborative learning: a sourcebook for higher education. anti essays. retrieved from http:// www.antiessays.com/free-essays/81887.html 25profile vol. 15, no. 1, april 2013. issn 1657-0790 (printed) 2256-5760 (online). bogotá, colombia. pages 11-25 the role of collaborative work in the development of elementary students’ writing skills about the authors yuly yinneth yate gonzález is about to obtain a ba in english from universidad del tolima, colombia. she is currently a full-time english teacher at corporación colegio san bonifacio de las lanzas, ibagué, colombia. her interests include issues related to action research and applied linguistics. luis fernando saenz is a full-time english teacher at corporación colegio san bonifacio de las lanzas, ibagué, colombia. he is about to graduate from the undergraduate english teaching program at universidad del tolima (colombia). johanna alejandra bermeo holds a ba in english from universidad del tolima, colombia. she is currently working at berlitz istanbul (turkey) as an esp and efl teacher and native spanish language instructor. andrés fernando castañeda chaves is a full-time english teacher at corporación colegio san bonifacio de las lanzas, ibagué, colombia. he is a student in the undergraduate english teaching program at universidad del tolima (colombia). 101profile vol. 17, no. 2, july-december 2015. issn 1657-0790 (printed) 2256-5760 (online). bogotá, colombia. pages 101-110 http://dx.doi.org/10.15446/profile.v17n2.44375 when students say far too much: examining gushing in the elt classroom cuando los alumnos dicen demasiado: análisis del uso excesivo de palabras en clases de inglés como lengua extranjera gerrard mugford*1 oscar ramírez cuevas**2 universidad de guadalajara, guadalajara, mexico english foreign-language users oten overuse words when faced with difficult situations. called gushing, such excessive use of words is oten legitimately employed by native speakers to express, for instance, gratitude and apologies when a simple thank you or sorry does not sufficiently convey an interlocutor’s feelings. this paper examines the appropriateness and effectiveness of gushing when employed by advanced students facing difficult situations. answering discourse completion tasks, students from a private university in guadalajara, mexico were asked to employ acquiescing, persisting, and aggressing strategies to resolve two particular situations. the results indicate that gushing was widely used, but in communicatively ineffective ways, reflecting an area where teachers can help develop students’ communicative competencies. key words: insincerity, gushing, lack of knowledge, language insecurity, unnecessary reinforcement. los hablantes del inglés como lengua extranjera frecuentemente usan palabras en exceso cuando enfrentan situaciones difíciles. hablantes nativos utilizan un excesivo número de palabras para expresar, por ejemplo, gratitud y disculpas cuando un simple gracias o lo siento no transmite completamente los sentimientos del interlocutor. este artículo examina el uso excesivo de palabras por alumnos con un nivel avanzado de inglés al enfrentarse a situaciones difíciles. al responder un cuestionario de completación, alumnos universitarios en guadalajara, méxico, usaron estrategias conciliadoras, interrogatorias y argumentativas para resolver dos situaciones específicas. los resultados indican que un uso excesivo de palabras fue utilizado pero en formas comunicativamente ineficaces y reflejan un área donde los profesores pueden ayudar a los alumnos a desarrollar competencias comunicativas. palabras clave: falta de conocimiento, inseguridad del lenguaje, insinceridad, refuerzo innecesario, uso excesivo de palabras. * e-mail: g_mugford@yahoo.com ** e-mail: oscar.r07@gmail.com how to cite this article (apa, 6th ed.): mugford, g., & ramírez cuevas, o. (2015). when students say far too much: examining gushing in the elt classroom. profile issues in teachers’ professional development, 17(2), 101-110. http://dx.doi.org/10.15446/profile.v17n2.44375. this article was received on july 9, 2014, and accepted on january 31, 2015. this is an open access article distributed under the terms of the creative commons license attribution-noncommercial-noderivatives 4.0 international license. consultation is possible at http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/. http://dx.doi.org/10.15446/profile.v17n2.44375 mailto:g_mugford%40yahoo.com?subject= mailto:oscar.r07%40gmail.com?subject= http://dx.doi.org/10.15446/profile.v17n2.44375 http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/ universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras102 mugford & ramírez cuevas introduction this research project had its beginnings in students’ apologies uttered when they arrived late to class and attempted to explain their reasons in english. oten, the longer the explanation went on, the more dubious the apology sounded in the target language even though the students may have had a genuine reason for arriving late. while english foreignlanguage (efl) users are often lost for words when faced with difficult, challenging, and unexpected situations, the opposite is also true: they frequently use too many words when fewer would suffice. efl users need to find the right balance between not coming across as reticent and being too talkative and verbose. as expounded by grice (1975) in his maxim of quantity, interactants usually aim to make their contributions as informative as necessary while not offering more information than necessary. being too talkative may be due to the foreign-language user’s insecurity, lack of language knowledge, an unnecessary need to reinforce what is being said, or the inability to express oneself in an emotionally appropriate way. one of the aims of this paper is to identify the motives behind using gushing and to consider how teachers can help students in their spoken english to avoid unnecessary gushing. additionally, in negative situations, foreignlanguage users may become particularly frustrated when they want to directly confront people who have been rude to them. foreign-language users have choices: they may want to be submissive and accept the situation, they may aim to react in a proactive and defiant manner, or they may want to be aggressive and antagonistic. beebe and waring (2005) described these options in terms of aggressing, persisting, and acquiescing strategies (p. 71). while the aim of foreignlanguage teaching is not to practice rudeness in the target language, we will argue in this paper that teachers should at least equip their students with the necessary communicative resources so that they can react in the way they want to, and if they so desire, be rude. of course, foreign-language users must be aware of the communicative consequences of being rude and impolite. furthermore, students need to distinguish socially approved uses of gushing from those that are less appropriate. for instance, aijmer (1996), in examining speech functions, argued that gushing may be expected and even encouraged when expressing extreme gratitude, rejecting an extremely kind offer, or apologising when another interactant’s feelings are hurt. therefore, gushing may be an extremely effective communicative tool when used appropriately. to examine how foreign-language users engage in gushing, advanced students—based on their performance level on the toefl—were asked to react to a series of rude situations through the use of written discourse completion tasks (dcts). they were given choices regarding the use of aggressing, persisting and acquiescing strategies (beebe & waring, 2005). the results examined the extent to which students engaged in gushing and emotionality and whether they did so in appropriate and effective ways. in the method section, we explain how the preliminary data were obtained, that is, through examining critical incidents and classroom discussion. while the study was carried out using only one task, we argue that the results provide sufficient argument to warrant a more in-depth follow-up investigation into this phenomenon. gushing: terminology gu s h i ng h a s b e e n e x am i n e d i n t e r ms of speech act theory and the violation of grice’s (1975) conversational maxims. however, given that there appears to be little current literature on the topic, this article aims to increase teacher awareness of this phenomenon. examining gushing within speech act theory (austin, 1962), edmonds on and hous e (1981) argued that illocutionary acts (i.e., utterances with 103profile vol. 17, no. 2, july-december 2015. issn 1657-0790 (printed) 2256-5760 (online). bogotá, colombia. pages 101-110 when students say far too much: examining gushing in the elt classroom a communicative purpose), are often given more emotional weight by interactants who try to identify themselves more closely with their addressees. for instance, an interactant may want to come across in an extremely supportive way, as in the following utterances: • i’m most terribly sorry, i really am. • thanks awfully. (edmondson & house, 1981, p. 95) these two instances of gushing can only be considered appropriate when evaluated within a specific context. if one steps on someone’s foot by accident, an utterance such as “i’m most terribly sorry, i really am” may be considered excessive, but not if one is late for an important social engagement. context, participants, communicative implications, and the actual speech act itself are crucial in determining the appropriateness of gushing. consequently, foreignlanguage users must evaluate the use of gushing in terms of appropriateness, acceptability, and usefulness. sometimes, as argued by bergman and kasper (1993), foreign-language users may choose to gush because it provides “an opportunity for knowledge display” (p. 101). also reflecting speech act theory (austin, 1962), aijmer (1996) identified a range of speech functions in which gushing is oten found. she noted thanking when “the social occasion seems to demand a high degree of emotionality or ‘gushing’” (p. 69) and rejecting where “the rejection of an offer is regarded as a face-threatening act, which requires politeness and conscious attention” (p. 74). aijmer offered the following example as an instance of profuse thanking with gushing, which is further accompanied by a compliment. (so that the reader can fully appreciate gushing, transcription symbols have been removed.) c: you can have a spoonful of cream with these if you like. b: i really won’t thanks awfully. they’re terribly good. (p. 74) associating gushing with insincerity and a violation of grice’s (1975) quality maxim, jautz (2008) defined gushing as those “cases where people display so much emotion when, for instance, thanking someone, that their utterances can no longer be taken to be sincere” (p. 141). jautz (2013) further noted that gushing can oten be associated with disingenuousness and pretence. referring specifically to radio phone-ins and broadcast interviews (but also applicable to other contexts), she argued that “many examples of gushing may be found, i.e., cases in which people display so much emotion that one cannot take their utterances sincerely” (p. 210). in considering the motivation behind such gushing, jautz (2013) examined “whether seemingly polite utterances are only examples of gushing in order to create a better image of oneself in public rather than to show respect for one’s interlocutors and their (face) wants” (p. 210). this is the potential pitfall for foreignlanguage users: they may not sound sincere, and by implication, convincing, when engaging in gushing. apart from jautz’s (2013) current work, gushing has attracted scant interest in english-language teaching. given the lack of relevant literature and to further investigate this phenomenon, we therefore decided to conduct classroom research by asking students to react to difficult situations, after which we evaluated their utterances in terms of gushing. gushing: pedagogical dimension in english language teaching, teacher talking time (ttt) and student talking time (stt) have received considerable attention. teachers are encouraged to reduce their own interventions to allow students to participate as much as possible (gower, phillips, & walters, 1995; harmer, 2007). however, as harmer (2007) noted, in the case of teachers, teacher talking quality (ttq) is just as important as student talking time: “it is the quality of what we say that really counts” (p. 118). we argue that the same observation should apply universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras104 mugford & ramírez cuevas to students; that is, there should be a focus on the quality of student talk. maximum opportunities for pair-work and group-work may only result in gushing if teachers do not focus on what learners are saying in terms of communicative effectiveness and appropriateness. although in this paper, we examine students’ written answers of spoken dialogue and evaluate their effective use, there is a close corollary with stu dent talking time, especially when it involves gushing. in terms of a general pedagogical framework, we adopt a gricean approach to spoken language production and argue that students should aim to produce language that is informative (the quantity maxim), conveys the truth (the quality maxim), is relevant (the relevance maxim) and is spoken clearly and appropriate in length (the maxim of manner). if it is not used to convey supportiveness, gushing potentially breaks these maxims. use of gushing: difficult choices when faced with perceived rudeness, interactants have choices regarding how they want to react. for instance, one can accept and suffer rudeness and carry on. on the other hand, the alleged rudeness can be challenged. a third possibility is to respond in the same way, that is, be rude back. beebe and waring (2005, p. 71) described these strategies in terms of acquiescing strategies (apologize, express thanks, acquiesce, opt out), persisting strategies (argue, justify, request), and aggressing strategies (insult, threat, challenge). when employing acquiescing strategies, language users decide not to react to the rude situation. they may apologise for their behaviour, opt out of the situation altogether, or just say nothing. these strategies allow the perpetrator to get away with being rude. with regard to persisting strategies, language users may decide to take issue with the rude person, perhaps by arguing, justifying one’s own behaviour, or requesting clarification from the other person. far from being submissive, with this strategy the language user challenges the rude person. finally, the foreign-language user may decide to answer back and not accept the rudeness by replying with insults and threats. whichever strategy the language users choose, they must ensure that it is pertinent and effective. any unnecessary gushing can easily undermine the efficacy of a given strategy. communicative language teaching involves preparing students for a range of social situations and contexts and giving them choices with regard to how they want to react and be perceived and “has become a generalised ‘umbrella’ term to describe learning sequences which aim to improve the students’ ability to communicate” (harmer, 2007, p. 70). while teachers may argue that it is not their role to help students to be rude, students should be allowed to be rude if that is their decision and therefore should be given the communicative resources to do so. method to analyse how students negotiate and react to negative situations and whether they engage in gushing, the lead author, as their teacher, asked 24 middleand upper-class students studying english at a private university in guadalajara, mexico to voluntarily take part in the study. the study took place in march 2014 and included nine male and five female students in the cohort, with ages ranging from 20 to 25 years. they were studying to attain bas in law, international commerce, and institutional administration and needed to obtain a toefl score of at least 550 points to graduate. the students had been studying english for over five years and were at an advanced level. participants were assured that their identities would not be revealed. to introduce the topic, the lead author presented two critical incidents to the class. the incidents concerned two mexican efl users who had been 105profile vol. 17, no. 2, july-december 2015. issn 1657-0790 (printed) 2256-5760 (online). bogotá, colombia. pages 101-110 when students say far too much: examining gushing in the elt classroom asked in the united states where they came from, and their replies were sneered at. as part of a classroom discussion, students were then asked how they would have handled these critical incidents. subsequently, they were presented with the two situations in this study. their answers were then collected and analysed using beebe and waring’s (2005) acquiescing strategies, persisting strategies, and aggressing strategies. the instrument used for data collection was a single written discourse completion task (dct), which students duly completed in one session (this instrument aims to obtain a communicative response from the responder). the students had to respond to the following two situations and were given no time limit. • you have a meeting with an american co-worker to discuss some company processes. when the meeting starts, you begin to give different ideas but he/she does not take them into consideration. additionally, he/she does not give any reasons why he/she is doing that. how would you react? • you and some friends go shopping in the united states. when you get to the store, you start looking at some clothes. suddenly, you realize that your friends are not with you anymore. you want to ask the sales person to show you some jeans in a certain size but your english is not very good. when you finally ask the clerk to show the jeans to you, he/she says that he/she cannot understand you and that you should bring someone who really speaks english. how would you feel about it? these situations reflect work and social contexts to which the students could relate because they were all studying to obtain professionally oriented bas and had all been to the united states for extended periods of time to visit relatives, study, go shopping, etc. in answering the dcts, the choices available to the students were explained to them in terms of acquiescing, persisting, and aggressing strategies. however, participants were free to respond to the two situations in any way they might choose. as previously discussed, gushing may be due to insecurity, lack of knowledge, unnecessary reinforcement, and insincerity. in the next section, we examine the motives behind gushing to identify areas where students could benefit from pedagogical intervention. this research reflects both quantitative and qualitative approaches. it is quantitative in that we wanted to ascertain the amount and levels of gushing, and it is qualitative in that we see the participants as individuals with their own ways of interacting. the results were analysed by quantitatively identifying the acquiescing, persisting, and aggressing strategies employed by the 24 participants and qualitatively the motivation for a chosen strategy in terms of language insecurity, lack of knowledge, unnecessary reinforcement, and insincerity. results there were significant differences between the work and shopping contexts in the strategies employed and the levels of gushing. in the meeting with an american co-worker (context 1), respondents principally used persisting strategies (13 answers), and the number of words per answer across all the strategies was roughly similar to that shown in table 1. in the shopping context, respondents mainly employed acquiescing strategies, averaging only 15.2 words per answer. overall, the average number of words per answer dropped to 18.04 compared to 22.79 in the first context. the difference could have been due to the actual strategies used, the contrasting contexts or the students’ possible difficulty in negotiating social situations (see table 2). however, in the final analysis, the number of words may not be significant. it is more revealing to examine how each interactant tried to be perceived in a given context. acquiescing and aggressing strategies may come across as shorter and to the point when compared to persisting strategies with which an interactant is trying to get his/her point across. universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras106 mugford & ramírez cuevas ater identifying the types of strategies used, we now examine the possible reasons behind gushing and examine their effectiveness with regard to the chosen strategy in the four identified areas: language insecurity, lack of knowledge, unnecessary reinforcement, and insincerity. language insecurity instances of language insecurity in the students’ answers reflected significant difficulties in their efforts to get their points across. this led to gushing, which was apparent through repetition, appeals for help, and vague threats such as those seen in the following response to the sales clerk who claims that he/she does not understand the customer (context 2): i’m sorry, but at the moment i’m all by my own. i’ll appreciate if you make an effort to understand me, cuz i’m really trying my best. so now can you please show me the jeans size small, or should i need to talk with the store’s manager? the respondent starts off with an apolog y, indic at ing a s ens e of p owerlessness w hich is confirmed by a sense of isolation with an emotional “at the moment i’m all by my own.” she then calls on the clerk to “make an effort” which further indicates insecurity instead of asserting her role as a customer who should be attended to. her follow-up request is accompanied by a vague threat of needing “to talk with the store’s manager.” while on the surface this appears to be a persisting strategy (arguing, justifying, and requesting), gushing indicates helplessness rather than a customer demanding to receive the treatment that he/she deserves. an example of gushing when aggressing can be found in the following example from the meeting with the american co-worker (context 1): if you don’t like my ideas, can you please tell me and stop ignoring them? give me some examples of what you are looking for, so i can improve my ideas. the respondent appears to attack the face (goffman, 1967) of the american-co-worker with the use of direct and plain language and hence reflects an aggressing strategy. the use of please reflects decisiveness rather than politeness. however, any possible forcefulness is lost with the conciliatory table 1. context 1: meeting with an american co-worker strategy total number of answers total number of words used in answers average number of words per answer acquiescing 4 95 23.75 persisting 13 303 23.30 aggressing 7 149 21.28 total 24 547 22.79 table 2. context 2: shopping in the united states strategy total number of answers total number of words used in answers average number of words per answer acquiescing 14 214 15.2 persisting 4 101 25.25 aggressing 6 118 19.6 total 24 433 18.04 107profile vol. 17, no. 2, july-december 2015. issn 1657-0790 (printed) 2256-5760 (online). bogotá, colombia. pages 101-110 when students say far too much: examining gushing in the elt classroom “give me some examples of what you are looking for” and the potentially submissive “so i can improve my ideas.” instead of firmly stating his/her position and sticking to it, the respondent has accepted the rude behaviour of the co-worker and has accom modated to it. lack of knowledge lack of language knowledge was also a significant factor behind gushing, as seen in the next example, w hich a ls o involves t he amer ican co-worker (context 1). the respondent uses i repeatedly instead of focusing on the behaviour of the colleague who is seemingly ignoring him/her: i think that you don’t care about what i am saying. i really want to know why, if you don’t want to listen to me, i prefer to go. the reply reflects a persisting strategy in that he/ she is arguing and requesting. for example, she claims that she is being ignored with “you don’t care about what i am saying” and emphatically says “i really want to know why.” however, her arguments succumb to an emotional “if you don’t want to listen to me, i prefer to go.” her point of view is reduced to expressing emotionality through gushing. gushing can also be seen in the following example as the interactant offers emotional arguments about being ignored rather than confronting the co-worker head-on. sorry, but can you let me know why you don’t consider my ideas, i wanna contribute with my ideas in this project. i am very interesting, really. the initial use of sorry, with the immediate, polite request “can you let me know,” puts the interactant in a subordinate position. while trying to pursue a persisting strategy of arguing and requesting, the interactant asks to be taken into consideration but finishes with a weak and less-than-forceful “i am very interesting, really.” her arguments for being allowed to contribute reflect an emotional appeal rather than offering solid reasons for her inclusion in the meeting. unnecessary reinforcement a major reason for gushing is the unnecessary reinforcement of one’s position, and gushing may surface when all that is needed is a short remark. for instance, in the shopping incident (context 2) when the clerk claims not to understand, one participant said: sorry for my english i haven’t practiced it for a long time. this acquiescing strategy reflects a complete and utter submission to the shop clerk, who is actually the one who should be apologising for his/her rudeness. this acquiescing sorry is followed by an explanation for the customer’s poor language skills and why this has come about: “i haven’t practiced it for a long time.” the customer does not need to provide the reasons why her english may not be comprehensible. this is unnecessary reinforcement of one’s position. if the customer really wants to apologise a much shorter and concise reply could have been offered, for instance, “sorry i didn’t make myself clear.” unnecessary reinforcement can also be seen in the following example of a conversation with a co-worker (context 1). i’m sorry to interrupt, but i think that everybody in this meeting wants to participate. i have some different ideas that i would like you guys listen to. please allow me just one moment so i can explain them to you. the participant has adopted a persisting strategy where he/she makes a case for being heard. first of all, he/she apologises with “i’m sorry to interrupt” and tries to establish common ground with “i think that everybody in this meeting wants to participate.” however, he/she then creates a sense of distance by saying that he/she thinks differently than the rest: “i have some different ideas that i would like you guys listen to.” next, he/she seizes the floor with “please universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras108 mugford & ramírez cuevas allow me just one moment so i can explain them to you.” instead of coming across directly and to the point, this participant appears to have expended considerable communicative energy in just trying to gain the floor instead of simply making his/her point. insincerity insincerity can be seen in the following remark in the shopping incident (context 2), where the participant adopts an aggressing strategy that seems to echo empty threats: you better bring someone more polite and who can understand me and if you can’t i will go and never buy anymore in your store. i don’t like people like you. the shop clerk has to find someone who is more polite and can understand the customer. if this does not happen, the customer threatens to boycott the shop and adds a gratuitous “i don’t like people like you.” the whole utterance has little communicative force, and it is hard to see how the customer would achieve his/her communicative purpose ater calling the clerk impolite and threatening to go elsewhere. in the following example from the business meeting (context 1), the participant threatens to leave: hey man i think you should start hearing my ideas or i’m leaving because you are not respectful enough. the informality of hey man hardly adds weight to the interactant’s request. the threat to leave the meeting must be acted upon. it is more of an emotional cry to be heard rather than a solid argument. as an aggressing strategy, it does not sound particularly sincere. discussion the findings from this study indicate that the participants did engage in gushing to add commun icative effect when faced with rudeness. its effectiveness, however, is questionable. first, the results indicate that the participants in the research adopted a wide range of strategies to address rudeness, suggesting that students may not react to negative incidents in predictable and conventional ways. instead, they weigh their options and then choose. by summing the strategies used in both contexts, one can see that in total, there were 18 acquiescing, 17 persisting, and 11 aggressing strategies. as previously mentioned, a simple word count of each utilized strategy does not fully illustrate the level of gushing because each reply must be examined with regard to its communicative intention. with regard to language insecurity, participants employed repetition, appeals for help, and vague threats. indeed, vague threats were a common feature of answers in general, and this could especially be seen in the number of threats to call in a supervisor. the need to go to a third party may undermine one’s position in a tense argument, however, because it implies that one cannot get one’s point across without additional help. furthermore, language insecurity was reflected in the participants’ sotening of an initially firm position, which oten descended into an appeal for help and consideration. an inability to present solid arguments was reflected through the considerable use of emotionality with comments such as “i am very interesting, really” and “if you don’t want to listen to me, i prefer to go.” these examples reflect a lack of knowledge in how to argue one’s point and reply successfully in the target language. emotionality should be used to strengthen one’s position rather than plea for help. unnecessary reinforcement could be witnessed in both the shorter and longer utterances. as seen in both incidents, sometimes a simple sorry can suffice instead of long drawn-out explanations. furthermore, long-winded sentences often diminish the main communicative force of an utterance. for instance, “please allow me just one moment so i can explain them to you” could be reduced to “let me say this.” 109profile vol. 17, no. 2, july-december 2015. issn 1657-0790 (printed) 2256-5760 (online). bogotá, colombia. pages 101-110 when students say far too much: examining gushing in the elt classroom furthermore, in the use of unnecessary reinforcement, the interactant runs the risk of not achieving his/ her communicative goal. a remark regarding one’s english, for example, such as “i haven’t practiced it for a long time” may not help a customer obtain the service he/she is looking for when the shop assistant says that he/she does not understand the client. insincerity was particularly salient in the use of empty threats. threats should be used to achieve one’s communicative goals and not solely to express emotional distress. threats to co-workers and shop assistants must be followed through and acted upon. comments such as “i’m leaving because you are not respectful enough” sound hollow, while remarks like “i don’t like people like you” appear to serve little communicative purpose except to voice one’s dislike. conclusions in this paper, we examined the appropriateness and effectiveness of gushing in negative situations from an interactional viewpoint. while the data were collected from a limited sample of efl users, findings show that these foreign-language learners did not use gushing particularly effectively. its use highlighted communicative weaknesses in terms of language insecurity, lack of knowledge, unnecessary reinforcement, and insincerity. given the lack of research in this area, further investigation with a larger sample is necessary, examining sociocultural factors that may influence the choice of a given strategy. furthermore, the participants in this investigation studied at a middleto upper-class private university, and the research contexts were designed to be familiar to them. follow-up research would need to examine sociolinguistic variables related to gushing among other efl populations. students should be exposed to both the positive and negative aspects of gushing. moreover, teachers should raise students’ awareness of gushing and how it can be used more effectively as well as how it can fail to achieve its objective. to this end, we suggest five possible scenarios for practising gushing, although, of course, many more can be found: (1) giving one’s opinion, especially when one’s views are radically different from those of other interactants, while trying not to offend anyone; (2) making offers, especially when having family or friends over, and they decline invitations to eat or drink; (3) disagreeing, when one is with one’s in-laws, for instance, but one does not want to offend or disrespect them; (4) making suggestions to friends that do not seem well-received and must be defended; and (5) offering advice to acquaintances that may be easily misinterpreted. this can be achieved through acting out role-plays and answering dcts. this study clearly points to new areas for research. first, one must question whether written gushing is the same as spoken gushing. second, the number of participants in our study was relatively small, and a larger study is required to confirm the results. therefore, further research should examine a wider range of contexts with a greater number of participants. however, we argue that this paper contributes to an area that has been largely ignored in english language teaching. references aijmer, k. (1996). conversational routines in english: convention and creativity. london, uk: longman. austin, j. l. (1962). how to do things with words. oxford, uk: oxford university press. beebe, l. m., & waring, h. z. (2005). pragmatic development in responding to rudeness. in j. frodesen & c. holten (eds.), the power of context in language teaching and learning (pp. 67-79). boston, ma: heinle. bergman, m. l., & kasper, g. (1993). perception and performance in native and nonnative apology. in g. kasper & s. blum-kulka (eds.), interlanguage pragmatics (pp. 82-107). oxford, uk: oxford university press. universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras110 mugford & ramírez cuevas edmondson, w., & house, j. (1981). let’s talk and talk about it: a pedagogic interactional grammar of english. munich, de: urban & schwarzenberg. goffman, e. (1967). interaction ritual: essays on face to face behaviour. new york, ny: anchor books. gower, r., phillips, d., & walters, s. (1995). teaching practice handbook. oxford, uk: macmillan heinemann. grice, h. p. (1975). logic in conversation. in p. cole & j. morgan (eds.), syntax and semantics, volume 3: speech acts (pp. 1-58). new york, ny: academic press. harmer, j. (2007). the practice of english language teaching. harlow, uk: pearson longman. jautz, s. (2008). gratitude in british and new zealand radio programmes: nothing but gushing? in k. p. schneider & a. barron (eds.), variational pragmatics: a focus on regional varieties in pluricentric languages (pp. 141178). amsterdam, nl: john benjamins. http://dx.doi. org/10.1075/pbns.178.07jau. jautz, s. (2013). thanking formulae in english: explorations across varieties and genres. amsterdam, nl: john benjamins. http://dx.doi.org/10.1075/pbns.230. about the authors gerrard mugford works at la universidad de guadalajara, mexico and holds a phd from the institute of education, university of london. his current research interests include critical pedagogy, interpersonal language use, and linguistic politeness and impoliteness. oscar ramírez cuevas is a mexican efl teacher with experience teaching adults, teenagers, and children. he is currently completing his ba in teaching english as a foreign language at the universidad de guadalajara, mexico. his current research interests include sociolinguistics and teaching english as a second language. 87profile vol. 16, no. 2, october 2014. issn 1657-0790 (printed) 2256-5760 (online). bogotá, colombia. pages 87-100 hybrid identity in academic writing: “are there two of me?” identidad híbrida: “¿hay dos yo?” troy crawford1* martha lengeling2** irasema mora pablo3*** rocío heredia ocampo4**** universidad de guanajuato, guanajuato, mexico this paper explores the construction of identity in an academic learning environment in central mexico, and shows how identity may be linked to non-language factors such as emotions or family. these issues are associated with elements of hybrid identity. to analyze this we draw on language choice as a tool used for the construction of identity and for showcasing and defending identity through exploratory interviews with the bilingual students and teachers. the results draw our attention towards the role of non-linguistic variables and their relationship to emotional and contextual issues that influence how academic writing occurs within the school confines, where hybrid identities may be constructed for academic purposes. key words: academic writing, attachment, detachment, hybrid, identity. este artículo explora la construcción de identidad en un medio de aprendizaje en el centro de méxico y muestra cómo la identidad puede estar relacionada con factores no lingüísticos, como las emociones o la familia. estos factores están asociados con aspectos de identidad híbrida. para analizar esto, nos basamos en la elección de lengua del usuario como una herramienta para la construcción de la identidad y para ilustrar y defender la identidad en entrevistas a fondo con alumnos y maestros bilingües. los resultados atraen nuestra atención hacia el papel de variables no lingüísticas y su relación con factores emocionales y contextuales que influyen en la manera como ocurre la redacción en segunda lengua en la escuela, en donde las identidades híbridas pueden ser construidas para propósitos académicos. palabras clave: conectado, desconectado, escritura académica, híbrido, identidad. * e-mail: crawford@ugto.mx ** e-mail: lengeling@hotmail.com *** e-mail: imora@ugto.mx **** e-mail: rozetah@yahoo.com how to cite this article (apa, 6th ed.): crawford, t., lengeling, m., mora pablo, i., & heredia ocampo, r. (2014). hybrid identity in academic writing: “are there two of me?” profile issues in teachers’ professional development, 16(2), 87-100. http://dx.doi.org/10.15446/profile.v16n2.40192. this article was received on october 11, 2013, and accepted on january 24, 2014. this is an open access article distributed under the terms of the creative commons license attribution-noncommercial-noderivatives 4.0 international license. consultation is possible at http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/. universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras88 crawford, lengeling, mora pablo, & heredia ocampo introduction identity in many aspects is shaped by language and conversely, language choices may relate to identity. identity, in fact, like language, is both personal and social. social identity denotes the various ways in which people understand themselves in relation to others, and includes the ways in which they view their past and future lived experiences, and how they may want to be viewed. the shaped self employs language as a tool for making its presence felt. thus a person’s world-view is inextricably shaped by the language he or she decides to use (miller, 1997; olinger, 2011). the interaction of identity and language is a reality in a context such as the university of guanajuato, where students are required to learn english in the university in order to obtain a degree. on the other hand, teachers are required to write in spanish to maintain their employment. in other words, users are required to use a second language to fulfill social obligations. the capacity of language as a symbol of individual identity cannot be overemphasized. this is possibly the most important feature in mexican society, where english has a strong political feature powerfully shaped by the tense historical political relationship with the united states (crawford, 2007, 2010). early in life we individuals begin to use language to define our personalities in relation to each other, and later in life we continue to make use of language to define ourselves and the various roles we play in the community (cheng, 2003; waseem & asadullah, 2013). added to this in mexico, both countries have a powerful on-going political/linguistic relationship (condon, 1997). when people move into a context where the norms and practices are different from their own, it is to be expected that newcomers will learn the prevalent norms and values in order to achieve some degree of integration into the new language environment, and to enhance their ability to communicate and interact (mills, 2002; mok & morris, 2010; mokhtarnia, 2011). these adjustments may imply changes in selfperception as an author in an academic context. language attitude and identity haugen (1956) notes that language use is influenced by the attitudes and values of users and non-users (that is, those who refuse to use) of the language, both as an instrument of communication and as a symbol of group identity. individual attitudes towards a language will impact, for example, on the value placed on the language, and invariably, on how much of it may be used by first language speakers or learnt by second language speakers. in other words, the status of the language in a particular society also influences the attitudes of speakers as well as non-speakers. wherever languages are in contact, one is likely to find certain prevalent attitudes of favor or disfavor towards the languages involved. these can have profound effects on the psychology of the individuals and their use of the languages. in the final analysis these attitudes are directed at the people who use the languages and are therefore inter-group judgments and stereotypes (haugen, 1956). when two languages come into contact, usually one language is dominant over the other (spolsky, 1998). in the case of this study we have a situation where english is the dominant language because of institutional choice (crawford, mora pablo, goodwin, & lengeling, 2013), but in practice “the language now belongs to those who use it . . . whether in its standard form or local forms” (kachru & smith 1985, p. 210). as we are viewing, for this study, the language as an object that belongs to the user, there is no theoretical framework that is directing or orienting the data. we are allowing the data to shape and mold the process in the form of discovery through blurred genres in the tradition of geertz (denzin & lincoln, 2005). the reason 89profile vol. 16, no. 2, october 2014. issn 1657-0790 (printed) 2256-5760 (online). bogotá, colombia. pages 87-100 hybrid identity in academic writing: “are there two of me?” for this is that bilingual writers are by definition placed into a category of being hybrid. hybrids by definition are a complex group to understand. “in offensive parlance and in racist discourse, expressions in the meaning of the term ‘hybrid’ are used to often characterize persons of mixed racial or ethnic origin” (wagner et al., 2010, p. 232). in tesol (teaching of english to students of other languages) hybrid is frequently used in a reductionist manner to label non-native or bilingual writers as inferior in some sense (holliday, 2005; kubota, 2002). research on psychological essentialism provides the following definition of how essence is thought about in everyday life and its painful connotations to people: 1. essence is stable and inherent to its carrier and constitutes the carrier by causally determining its defining features. that is, it endows its carrier with permanent and unique attributes that are specific for all members of a category and constitute an inviolable identity (kronberger & wagner, 2007). it is transferred by descent, not by touch or other forms of proximity. 2. essence is discrete. it is perceived as a yes-or-no affair; either an entity has it or not, there is no middle way. a living-kind exemplar cannot possess a certain quantity or degree of an essence. as a consequence, essences are mutually exclusive. an exemplar of a kind or category can only possess one specific essence. 3. attributing an essence is coextensive with making a category a natural entity and naturalizes the defining features of the category’s exemplars. (wagner et al., 2010, p. 234) the same authors later make reference of the term essence and its relation in the following: this definition brings us immediately to the case of hybrids. if the members of a kind or category are attributed an essence, then this attribution makes the exemplar inherently and unalterably different from the members of other kinds or categories and, because an essence resists blending and decomposition and cannot be divided or mixed with another essence without losing its function in defining a category, then any “essence mixture” cannot exert its “causal” powers in shaping the necessary and defining features of the mixed exemplars. consequently, mixing the genes of two animal species or of two other essentialized categories creates a “non-entity” that is perceived as not belonging to any accepted category. perceivers with an essentialist mindset will reject and also despise a “mixed exemplar.” (wagner et al., 2010, p. 234) as mentioned in the introduction, both students and teachers are dealing with the condition of being considered hybrid in the academic space. this circumstance of existing academically in a space that is socially constructed as hybrid brings consequences that are not necessarily dealt with directly in the course of academic work in the classroom, but are present in the social spaces where academics are performed. this situation also tends to determine to what degree a student or teacher may feel “attached” or “detached” to a given language. the act of moving from family and other social networks to the larger societal matrix, studies of strange situation classifications in other cultures have sparked a lively debate on their universal versus culture-specific meaning. (bretherton, 1992, p. 770) the debate centers on how “attachment/detachment” is viewed in relation to our attitude towards knowledge and is reflected primarily in the relation between the writer and the reader (mora pablo, 2011; vassileva, 2001). our writing performance and debate occur in central mexico in a public university. method we are interested in this research professionally in the sense that second language research is part of our practice in the world of academics. another concern is the effectiveness of our program and the learning process of our students in the development of their academic writing in english during their ba studies. one question we ask ourselves universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras90 crawford, lengeling, mora pablo, & heredia ocampo continuously is if the training we give our students aids them along their journey to become part of an english academic writing community. in particular, we refer to the processes outside the realm of language, but directly involved in the transition of becoming a second language writer. therefore, following a qualitative paradigm, we wanted to know how participants became second language writers. according to maycut and morehouse (1994), “qualitative research examines people’s words and actions in narrative, or descriptive ways closely representing the situation as experienced by the participants” (p. 2). participants the eight participants in the study were selected purposefully in order to allow for representation of the different student types at the university of guanajuato, specifically, within the two academic teacher training programs: a ba in tesol and a ba in spanish as a second language. the bilingual professors and students participated in the data gathering process as both researchers and participants. nevertheless, there was a specific intent to select strong bilingual writers for the study because, in essence, they do not fit the classical model of identity and writer. technique: in-depth interviews—multivocality in-depth discussions with the participants was used. as madriz (2000) points out, it brings into the research process a multivocality of participants’ perceptions and experiences. through this method, personal emotions and opinions with regard to participants’ cultural backgrounds, educational backgrounds, attitudes toward other languages, and bilingualism are explored. the data collection consisted of individual recorded interviews following a semi-structured initial interview format taken from ivanič (1998) that focused on the construction of authorial identity. later, the follow-up interviews took on a more open and flexible pattern that emerged naturally. interviews were chosen as a research tool because they can generate useful information about a lived experience and its meaning. denzin and lincoln (2005) refer to interviews as conversations and that an interview is “the art of asking questions and listening” (p. 643). however, interviews are influenced by the personal characteristics of the interviewer, including race, class, ethnicity and gender (denzin & lincoln, 2005). the objective of these interviews was to know more about their experiences in writing, not only in their native language, but also in other languages and to know if they perceived a preference for either one of the languages. the participants had the opportunity to select in which language they would like to be interviewed. later, discussions with the co-researchers/ respondents were carried out in-depth and added to the discussion. this discussion allowed us to interact directly with participants and provided opportunities for the clarification and extension of responses and follow-up discussion (stewart & shamsadani, 1990). this method is not new to either mainstream linguistics or feminist linguistics (cameron, 1997). multiliteracies the creation of a second language writing identity is a complex issue that involves decisions at many levels. these decisions affect the individual on both a personal level and on a collective level in the sense of what groups he/she identifies with and how he/she is accepted within circles (busayo, 2010). in our context, our students are faced with a situation of being forced to acquire a second language writing identity in order to complete their undergraduate studies and the teachers are required to adopt a second identity to comply with academics inside the workplace. these require91profile vol. 16, no. 2, october 2014. issn 1657-0790 (printed) 2256-5760 (online). bogotá, colombia. pages 87-100 hybrid identity in academic writing: “are there two of me?” ments place them in a dual, forced multiliteracies situation. matsuda, canagarajah, harklau, hyland, & warschauer (2003) mention the presence of multiliteracies in the following: the term multiliteracies is becoming important in popular discourse in the context of post-modern cultural developments, the decentered workspace, and cyber-communication. the term refers to new ways of reading and writing that involve a mixture of modalities, symbol systems, and languages. a typical web page, for example, may involve still photographs, moving images (video clips), and audio recording in addition to written language. apart from processing these different modalities of communication, “readers” will also have to interpret different sign-systems, such as icons and images, in addition to words. furthermore, texts from languages as diverse as french and arabic may be found in a site that is primarily in english. different discourses could also be mixed—as legalese, medical terminology, and statistical descriptions, besides everyday conversational discourse. (p. 156) beside the assimilation of the literary complexities of the current globalized world, our students are also faced with the obligation to acquire a second “identity” as writers at a higher educational level. this necessity implies a complex set of emotions and situations which requires decisions that are interconnected beyond the defined boundaries of the university, where social definitions play a strong role in how identity is viewed. table 1 provides a profile of the participants’ backgrounds for the study. discussion of findings there are two major themes which emerged from the data. one is an internal emotional battle within the writer. the other is a sense of loss in some cases and in others a sense of discovery in which table 1. participant profiles participants areas of academic writing educational background years of bilingual writing felicia in-service spanish teacher ba spanish as a second language 5 spanish-english melissa in-service spanish teacher ba spanish as a second language 6 spanish-french ricardo in-service english teacher ba tesol 15 spanish-english roberto in-service english teacher ba tesol 13 spanish-english linda teacher education phd language studies 18 spanish-english cody second language writing phd language studies 30 spanish-english rebecca conversational analysis phd language studies 25 spanish-french maría bilingualism phd applied linguistics 15 spanish-english universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras92 crawford, lengeling, mora pablo, & heredia ocampo the writers feel either “attached” or “detached” from a language. the authors’ emotional battles as non-native writers, we must learn the hard way. most of us feel that we are going to be judged stricter than native speakers. rebecca explains that academic writing is something that you learn. her own process led her to get more than acquainted with experts in the field of writing. rebecca is aware that for her, the output of her writing must come with a pure french style. having discussed this with her colleagues, we all have the perception of becoming “perfect” in what we write and how we do it. most of us started our writing processes by reading and becoming familiar with the different writing conventions. rebecca explains: for example when i was writing my thesis, what i would do, and something my professor told me, in order to write academic articles and all that, you need to imitate someone. you need to get inspired by someone. so i chose the best in my flied and got inspired be her, i had to read many articles that she had written. so, in some way i was inspired by her style because in french you have to write, i believe, like the french. organizing a serious and profound idea is not easy in any language. much more in a language that at the end of the day is not yours. rebecca is conscious of who her audience is and writes in a totally different way compared to her own language (spanish), and she is aware that even writing in her own language is difficult. rebecca is mexican and her postgraduate education has been acquired in france. her own process is to know that it is through reading that one can become an expert at writing. once again, as non-native writers, we feel that we have to write perfectly in order to fit in. as already mentioned, non-native speakerswriters tend to first get acquainted by reading in order to start writing. we follow the experts and by doing so, we are somehow “copying” their style and trying to be part of a community that to start with is not ours due to the differences in the languages. the following student participant states: i always try…to give more content…to give more content i don’t know…i don’t know if...i don’t know if by trying to explain my idea a little in the style of, i said it before about the mexicans, right? read and well i did not have a choice, you have to do the homework or you have to do the project, right? and that’s it. but the person who corrected me has helped. he said: here, you don’t say it that way…the fact that i have studied spanish here; speaking it every day has helped. (melissa) or this other student participant comments: and because i like to read a lot and i try to get you know different styles of writing from other people and i try different things so it’s always something new. (roberto) perhaps we become better at doing something when we receive feedback. we can see from these three participants that asking somebody to read their work helped them to improve their writing. as non-native speakers we must feel comfortable with the “first audience” and, ideally, the first audience must be a native speaker since we think that this person knows more about what is trying to be learnt. we feel that this person is ready to give the appropriate feedback in order to help us grow as writers. this growth is often seen as learning how to manage a set of foreign conventions. writing may be seen as adhering to a set of writing conventions yet part of the writing process involves the person who is writing. when the person writing is taken into account in the forefront, then the building of a recognizable identity becomes important. within the data we found the emerging theme of the writers’ emotions, whether they write in their native language or another language. one of the emotions found was a lack of security or an attempt to overcome the lack of security when writ93profile vol. 16, no. 2, october 2014. issn 1657-0790 (printed) 2256-5760 (online). bogotá, colombia. pages 87-100 hybrid identity in academic writing: “are there two of me?” ing. the following research participant explains how she feels: i think i now feel more secure. for many years i didn’t feel i was secure enough to have that position of authority. but because i would start to write articles little by little and then became educated in the area of tesol and then i had other opportunities to work, like editing. it was a very very long process and so sometimes i think people depend on a number of aspects. it may be easier for them to enter into that type of privileged writing or not and then sometimes people are more interested in teaching and so it may be a little bit more difficult. myself, i think it was very difficult to enter into that privileged type of writing because you stumble, you fall, you skin your knees, you knock your head against the wall, you make a fool out of yourself and then little bit by little you figure out how to do it but how you do it is just you know understanding what you have to do, looking at lots of sources and almost bearing yourself, you know to this type of writing…to a group of people and you are always insecure at times as if they will accept you and if they understand what you wanted to get across. (linda) from the above excerpt we can see how the journey for this person to learn how to write has been long and at times filled with some setbacks. perhaps this person felt vulnerable at the beginning but through experience she has become more confident as an academic writer. this person distances herself when explaining her setbacks and uses you as a way to include others in her setbacks and perhaps make a generalization. the abovementioned excerpt was from a native english speaker and the following is from a nonnative english speaker whose native language is spanish. both are academics and researchers. she writes academically more in her non-native language than in her native language. interestingly she writes nostalgically about how she feels more comfortable with english instead of spanish in the following quote: and sadly i don’t write in spanish that often anymore and most of what i write is in english—the academic part. i used to keep a diary, but now i don’t have the time to, and i realize that i am writing more in english than in spanish. but i think it is just because here everything or most of the things i do are in english. (maría) perhaps this teacher feels guilty that she is more at ease with english than her native language. her use of a specific language for academic writing seems to be related to the fact that she has had many years of education in english and also the fact that she has to write in english for her career. yet it is clearly expressed that something has been lost or maybe modified—from something pure to something hybrid. another student comments on how he felt when he realized he had problems in spanish, his native language. this realization seems in tune with what the above teacher commented on and represents their bilingual identities. the student mentions: i remember when in the first semester taking a class in spanish and that’s when i noticed that i couldn’t write in spanish. for some reason there was like something in my brain that would lock or something when i wanted to put my thoughts into writing in spanish…it was like, wow, wait a minute, how do i say this? how do i structure this in spanish? i noticed i had quite a hard time doing that. also one thing i knew that sentences can be longer, you can put a few comas there in spanish. it’s not like in english. in english you go straight to the point and you have to say it in a structured matter. in spanish you can beat around the bush…i can say that it is a little more eloquent. i find them complex and i don’t know to some extent they cause some kind of anxiety in me to just even thing about that. (ricardo) both the teacher and student are bilingual people, yet english is more dominant in their academic writing. they seem to feel more at ease in english. another student, whose native language is french, mentions how she would feel if she had to write in universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras94 crawford, lengeling, mora pablo, & heredia ocampo her native language should she decide to pursue a master’s in france in the next excerpt: and i asked myself if i could do it [a master’s in france], if i could write in french after being in mexico for so much time. i am afraid. i am afraid to return and to have to write academic essays in my own language. i think i am more at ease with spanish right now. (melissa) again we see how the second language (l2) has become more dominant for these people. this student realizes that she has adapted herself as a nonnative speaker to be able to write in another language other than spanish and she expresses how she feels about the possibility of writing in her native language: anxious. again, this implies that the person may have lost something in the process of assimilating another language for the purpose of writing. another teacher/researcher uses the word rebel when describing himself. in the following data he seems to defy what the norm for academic writing is. i guess i’m a person who is a rebel who goes against the structures and conventions as much as possible and i try to challenge and question anything that is connected to authority. i guess when i write i want to cause problems; that’s who i am. i want people to create a discussion. (cody) according to him, this disobedience is a way for him to question the authority of the norms of academic writing. this behavior could be part of his personality or even the result of a lack of confidence. at the same time it could also be just the act of academic writing which is “supposed” to create debate and discussion, but from the data so far it would seem that the controls of academic writing may be more about forcing conformity rather than generating diversity. also, this situation might be an attempt to not lose fragments of identity, while transitioning to another language. another teacher explains how she approaches academic writing and her emotions in the following: i am the type of person who when i have to write something, i need to be alone and i take my time. i feel anguish when i have to do things quickly and when i am working in a group i feel we have to be in agreement of certain things, but to write i have to be alone and focused. if not, i do not feel at ease. after my doctorate, i learned a lot, and you really get some confidence. but i am also very strict and at the same time i am timid to start a research project. i have never considered myself good at writing and i think that most people tend to have more of an ability of talk than to write. yet, i am disciplined and i have had to do it. (rebecca) there are a number of emotions that this teacher expresses when she talks about how she has learned to write, the process of academic writing and the descriptions she uses. for her, writing is a solitary act that cannot be pressured. there is a sense of torment if she does not have the conditions she wants when writing. studying a doctorate helped her in her process of becoming a more confident academic writer. within this excerpt we also see her describe herself as disciplined, yet timid. regarding the opinions of students, the following student of the ba in teaching spanish as a foreign language program uses the words “freer” and “move around” to describe how she feels about academic writing in spanish. but in spanish, because it is my mother language and i suppose i have ample knowledge of it, i feel i am freer to write. i can write an idea, move around the ideas, add more details and at the same time say something. (felicia) this student expresses how much more confident and independent she feels when writing in her own language. it should be mentioned that this student began her studies in our ba in tesol program but changed to the ba in teaching spanish as a foreign language program because it was closer 95profile vol. 16, no. 2, october 2014. issn 1657-0790 (printed) 2256-5760 (online). bogotá, colombia. pages 87-100 hybrid identity in academic writing: “are there two of me?” to what she wanted to do. perhaps writing in her own language played a part in her decision-making towards writing and changing degree programs. this particular participant went on later to say in an informal conversation that english “is like putting on a straightjacket” and it (english) makes her lose her identity as a person when she is writing. in this section we have seen how teachers and students have felt about learning to write academically in their own language or in another language. what is clear is that the process is complex and varies from one person to another and emotions seem to play a part in this complex process as well as identity shifting. the interesting point that the data seem to suggest is that issues concerning learning and language seem to be in the forefront of the decision-making process. the choice of language and its link to the person’s identity takes on an emotional role and the language shift or the decision to write in a second language appears to be based more on need than desire. identity lost or discovered: a sense of attachment and detachment for most participants, language choice is a symbol of identity and in that sense they seem to choose a language based on their writing abilities and their contexts. all participants are bilingual or multilingual and this characteristic helps them mediate identities and engage in a number of situations. this is where the sense of “commitment/ detachment” becomes relevant to the data analysis because there were some participants who mentioned a very precise manner of attaching feelings and meanings to one language. the following excerpt mentions this aspect: participant: my first writing language would be english. (ricardo) interviewer: ok, do you see the difference between the two yous in when you’re writing in those two languages? participant: well, i would say in my english level—confident, ok, free flow, ok, in spanish i see some anxiety my anxious self…nervousness, insecurity i would say in writing in spanish (ricardo) this participant seems to have divided his repertoire based on how he feels when writing in one language or another. since he has lived most of his life thus far in an english speaking country (15 years), he feels more confident with english. even when he recognizes that spanish is his first language, his own life experiences have shaped the way he perceives these languages. he continues explaining how he feels in spanish: in spanish i take it a little bit slower. i would say, ok what am i writing about? write about this ok, what first of all what’s the vocabulary i’m going to use. my vocabulary is not really developed in spanish i can speak fluent spanish but it’s not academic…i don’t have too much academic vocabulary i would say. (ricardo) he says his spanish “is not academic” since he learned and used spanish at home while he studied english formally at school. this seems to be the source of this distinction and in his current role as a ba student; he has made clear the uses and purposes of using english or spanish. another participant, who is from france, shows an array of multiple languages: french as her first language, but also there is competence in spanish, italian, german, and english. she is currently studying for a ba in spanish and has been exposed to the “mexican way” of writing essays. she explains how she perceives this in the following extract: now i have two or three mistakes per essay but i have been told that my style is more european, at least french. but i have never tried to change it because i have never been asked to write as mexicans do. anyway, i don’t like the way mexicans write universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras96 crawford, lengeling, mora pablo, & heredia ocampo because they write many things…and they have no structure, they don’t have a good structure. they say many ideas in different tenses, there is no clear order. then, i try not to copy it; i try not to change my style because so far they haven’t said anything about this way of writing. (melissa) she evaluates the way she has improved her writing skills in spanish; however, she admits that her style is “european”. she also points out that “the mexican way of writing” is disorganized and does not follow a structure. she makes a comparison: “spanish is more disorganized and french is more concise” (melissa). even when this participant might be influenced by other languages when writing in spanish, she seems to reveal how she perceives french as “superior”. another student participant, whose first language (l1) is spanish, makes a distinction between english and spanish. she is studying for a ba in spanish but has also studied english for a number of years: because, for example, in english, i guess, you have to write very concrete, the ideas like…period and then another idea. and in spanish your ideas do not have to be concise, nor to the point, i feel that in spanish we are given the opportunity to “echar rollo,” to “decorate” the text, to be more redundant. (felicia) this idea of being more redundant in spanish has made a difference in the way she perceives one language. the manner with which she approaches a piece of writing in either language is connected to how she feels in one language or the other. english is not my mother tongue. so, i think that it is easier for me in english, to be more precise. and if i wanted to decorate or follow and idea on and on, i wouldn’t know how if it is accepted in english or if what i want to say would be understood. but in spanish, as it is my mother tongue, and i have more knowledge about it, i feel like…freer to write. i can write the idea, go on and on, “decorate it,” and at the same time say things. i feel freer in spanish when i write. (felicia) the “freedom” this student participant refers to when writing in spanish might be linked to the fact that she has been trained and encouraged to give more details in spanish than in english. she makes reference to one particular moment in which she was taught that english “is more direct:” i remember that when i was in an english class, the teacher gave us a piece of paper…an essay is done like this: first you have to write this, then here, the citation is like this . . . and in spanish they didn’t give us like a written guide but it was mentioned. when you do an essay it is expected that you do this, that . . . but the only written example i saw was in my english class, that’s how they told me. (felicia) this observation seems to show that students are in a constant ambivalent relationship between what they want to do in writing and what the conventions in a language dictate. even more, what they are taught in classes. also, the manner in which a language is perceived places these participants in a continuum of stereotypes formed not only by what they have experienced but also by what they have been taught. however, these feelings are not exclusively the students’. teachers are also in an ambivalent position when referring to language choice. in order to choose a language, they face similar issues, but also the professional side has influenced the way they perceive the languages and their own identities when writing in one language or the other. one researcher participant explains how she learned to write in her second language while working in an administrative position and how she thinks she is a different person when writing in her l2 (spanish): i think i probably learned how to write in the second language when i had to be in an administrative position and i had to look at other letters and realize “ok this is how you do it here in mexico” and i would try to more or less adapt that type of 97profile vol. 16, no. 2, october 2014. issn 1657-0790 (printed) 2256-5760 (online). bogotá, colombia. pages 87-100 hybrid identity in academic writing: “are there two of me?” discourse to my discourse so i would say i am a different person when i am writing in spanish. i have to adapt to a different type of language. it doesn’t bother me that it’s a different type. i just know that it can’t be the same in english. (linda) this change in identity when writing in her l2 seems to have no conflict with her identity in l1. on the contrary, she seems to have added another identity to her existing one. they are not against each other, but it seems that each one of them has a particular purpose and aim. this is not always clear for all participants. another researcher participant expresses confusion when defining his native language for writing: i don’t know what my native language is for writing. in total i’ve written more in spanish than in english, i can write faster and easier in spanish than in english. when i write in spanish i get less corrections and less observations than when i write in english but i’ve written more academic stuff in english than in spanish so i really don’t know what’s my native language i just conform to what i have to do when i’m using one or the other. (cody) moreover, the same participant seems to have created a link between the language and its purpose and sometimes it seems to be flowing between the personal and professional sides: it depends on the topic, if it’s something i studied in spanish i prefer spanish and if it’s something i studied in english i prefer english if it’s a topic that’s core to my beliefs and the way i think i prefer spanish if i’m talking about things that are outside of me i probably prefer english. (cody) each language seems to have its purpose and it has been given meaning related to identity. this has encouraged the transformation and recreation of the individuals’ linguistic repertoire and they seem to be able, at this point in their lives, to attach meaning to the languages in a clearer manner. the professional side has also affected language choice in some participants. in a context where their l1 (spanish) is not frequently used, they have accommodated their linguistic repertoire to the circumstances. the following example from another researcher participant points out this accommodation: i have to tell you that most of what i have written academically has been in french, of course. but recently, i have been doing things in spanish and i’m learning (rebecca). even when her l1 is spanish, her academic life has taken her to write in her l2 (french). as she points out, lately, she has been writing in spanish and it has been difficult to re-learn to write in her l1. this can be seen in the following extract from a different participant researcher: and sadly i don’t write in spanish that often anymore, and most of what i write is in english, the academic part. i realized that i was writing more in english than in spanish. but i think is just because here everything…or most of the things i do, are in english. i write differently but the problem is that right now my dominant language in the environment and in what i do is english and that has influenced my spanish writing. maybe later is going to be back to spanish but i find it easier to follow english conventions than spanish ones, because, as i haven’t studied those like in a long time i don’t know now anymore…it is like confusion now in my mind. (maría) this may even take on the extreme position of almost apparent complete rejection of the writing process as roberto, a student, states with almost hints of anger: well, if i think about it, what i write is at the end is pointless because all i got to do is turn in my work. i get a grade and then it goes in my files and that’s it so i’m a writer of papers that have no purpose other than getting a grade and then moving on but i don’t see the…i mean who cares what i think about a certain theory. who cares, i mean i don’t see the point but anyway that’s what we are asked to do. universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras98 crawford, lengeling, mora pablo, & heredia ocampo the detachment is such that it might seem to some that the language serves him little purpose. it is as if there were no real connection between him and the language in terms of academic writing. this internal process has an impact on the writer as a user of the language. these participants once experienced the difficulties of learning a second language, but now that second language has become their dominant one. they have experienced a detachment of their own first language and are aware of it. joining a new academic community has brought some changes in their language choice. they have appropriated a specific discourse as well as conventions and roles, but their identities remain a mixture of acceptance of and resistance to one language or the other according to their circumstances. what appears to give rise to the internal conflict in the writing process appears to be associated more with emotional or internal aspects of the individual rather than issues of knowledge about the conventions of writing. conclusion the above data place the writers in an unusual situation. it is as if they were almost unsure at times of whom they are: “i don’t know what my native language is for writing” (cody) and “it is like confusion now in my mind” (maría), or maybe even complete rejection as it seems to be the possible conclusion. the elements that surround the construction of authorial identity on the surface are debated in terms of educational and professional choice by the individual as if they were exclusively a conscientious decision (ivanič, 1998). yet the data here are taking on a different direction that moves into a path of emotional turmoil, which in turn leads to a sense of attachment and detachment of the individuals, where internal elements are in a state of movement depending on what, where, and with whom they are writing. this does not suggest a disagreement with the cumulative work of researchers (e.g., clark & ivanič, 1997; connor, 1996, 2002; ivanič, 1998), but more of a door opening that shows that bilingual writers do not experience identity in exactly the same way as do monolingual authors. moreover, the underlying difference is not about linguistics, rhetoric, or cultural patterns, but more of a personal issue of choice linked to professional or academic need. this need is often then transcended into a social space where issues of hybridity circulate as a peripheral form of classification of the writer, which in the future entangles the location of identity. this occurrence places the author in an unusual position where, on the one hand, there is a sense of being less because of hybridity and on the other a sense of conclusion depending on the degree of attachment or detachment to a given language. this finding creates an internal conflict or clash. the participants are dealing with an internal struggle where two languages are at odds with each other. the clash seems to be a battle ground where “emotions” and “need” are placed in front of the user. clearly, each user has made a choice as to which language she/he prefers to use. nevertheless, as maría said: “it is like confusion now in my mind,” and even though a choice has been made it does not mean that the other language has, in a complex manner, completely left the author’s identity. the above implies that we need to focus our attention less on linguistic and rhetorical factors in writing as occurred in the past. now, in this global world, we need to look closer at emotional issues and professional requirements that are in a constant state of change as we cross back and forth through the linguistic, emotional, educational, and professional boundaries of our societies. 99profile vol. 16, no. 2, october 2014. issn 1657-0790 (printed) 2256-5760 (online). bogotá, colombia. pages 87-100 hybrid identity in academic writing: “are there two of me?” references bretherton, i. 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(2011). the native speaker spin: the construction of the english teacher at a language department at a university in central mexico (unpublished doctoral dissertation). canterbury christ church university, canterbury. olinger, a. r. (2011) constructing identities through “discourse”: stance and interaction in collaborative college writing. linguistics and education, 22(3), 273-286. spolsky, b. (1998). sociolinguistics. oxford, uk: oxford university press. stewart, d. w., & shamsadani, p. n. (1990). focus groups: theory and practice. london, uk: sage. vassileva, i. (2001). commitment and detachment in english and bulgarian academic writing. english for specific purposes, 20(1), 83-102. wagner, w., kronberger, n., nagata, m., sen, r., holtz, p., & flores palacios, f. (2010). essentialist theory of ‘hybrids’: from animal kinds to ethnic categories and race. asian journal of social psychology, 13(4), 232-246. waseem, f., & asadullah, s. (2013). linguistic domination and critical language awareness. procedia: social and behavioral sciences, 70, 799-820. about the authors troy crawford, (ba) southern oregon university, (ms) university of guanajuato, (ma tesol) university of london, (phd) university of kent, canterbury. he has worked in esl for 30 years at the university of guanajuato and is a member of the mexican national research system focusing his research on identity in second language writing. martha lengeling works at the university of guanajuato and holds an ma tesol (west virginia university) and a phd in language studies (university of kent). she is the editor of the mextesol journal and currently is a member of the mexican national research system. her areas of research are teacher training and teacher identity formation. irasema mora pablo is a professor at the university of guanajuato, mexico. she holds a phd in applied linguistics from the university of kent, uk. she has conducted research in bilingualism, latino studies, identity formation and native and non-native teachers and published chapters and articles in mexico, the united states, and colombia. rocío heredia ocampo, (ba) university of guanajuato, (ma tesol) university of auckland, has worked in esl for 18 years. she currently collaborates in the ba tesol program and esl program in the university of guanajuato. 7profile vol. 15, no. 2, october 2013. issn 1657-0790 (printed) 2256-5760 (online). bogotá, colombia. pages 7-9 editorial editorial in memory of dr. susan e. noffke many educators are working in projects that . . . seek educational change by working from a grass-roots base as individuals and in groups. this belief in the power of communities participating in social change is often regarded as a fundamental component of democratic living as well as of action research. (p. 6) clearly, an understanding of action research that transcends the traditional divisions between practitioners and scholars is needed. (p. 2)1 peer-reviewed journals depend, to a large extent, on the support of the members of editorial committees. all the reviewers who have joined profile along its 14 years of life have contributed from different angles and countries. a few of them have left due to workloads; but most of them have kept a steady presence and continued to accompany us despite the many responsibilities they have in their workplaces. their contributions are always very much appreciated. sadly, i recently learned about the passing of dr. susan noffke, on june 1, 2013. dr. noffke was an associate professor of the school of education at university of illinois at urbana champaign, usa, and was a committed member of profile’s editorial board. very much concerned with democracy and social justice, she inquired into action research and what it has to do with creating democracy in schooling. she claimed that work in action research, in conjunction with democracy, was a way to “making life in educational situations better” (1995, p. 2). this view, which has been supported by other scholars and practitioners, was one of the driving forces for the creation of our journal, with works mainly by schoolteachers who had been involved in a teacher development programme. soon after it started, we moved forward toward making the participation of both practitioners and scholars possible in the same forum. in doing so, we also opened doors to different approaches to investigating the english language classroom as well as to issues related to teacher education. words are not enough to thank dr. noffke for the encouragement she gave me since we met in 2006, when she first came to colombia. she showed great interest in our publication and supported not only the editorial processes, but encouraged us to maintain the work we do in the profile research group with preand in-service teachers of english. 1 noffke, s. e. (1995). action research and democratic schooling. in s. e. noffke & r. b. stevenson (eds.), educational action research. becoming practically critical (pp. 1-10). new york, ny: teachers college press. universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras8 cárdenas b. a biography of dr. noffke as well as a memorial notice can be found on the school of education webpage of the university of illinois.2 there you can find a bunch of testimonies of appreciation, as expressed by former students, mentees, colleagues, and researchers from all over the world. you are also invited to record there your recognition to her and to continue working towards attaining the goals that inspired her academic career. no doubt, profile was honoured to have such a great woman, intellectual, and human being on our review board. dr. noffke was and will continue to be an inspiration to carry on working towards social justice and to make english teachers’ initiatives visible through publishing. welcome to the second number—of the fifteenth volume—of our journal which, as pointed out by noffke (1995), is committed to transcending the divisions between practitioners and scholars by opening doors to authors from different contexts. with this idea in mind, we have gathered 13 articles this time by authors from colombia, chile, and mexico. we open the issues from teacher researchers section with an article by schoolteacher ximena becerra cortés, who reports on an innovation conducted at a public colombian school and which was monitored by following the action research approach and by gathering data through field notes and a questionnaire. the study sought to examine the use of the dictionary and prior knowledge by colombian high school students as strategies that could help them improve their reading comprehension of short scientific texts. then, we gather five articles concerning teacher education in latin-american contexts, where the readers can find key information that can expand our knowledge in both initial teacher education and teachers’ professional development. first we can read the account written by norma constanza durán narváez, sandra patricia lastra ramírez, and adriana maría morales vasco. they report on an investigation carried out with students of an undergraduate english teaching program at a colombian university with the purpose of exploring student-teachers’ beliefs through the use of autobiographies. then, alba olaya and luis fernando gómez rodríguez tell us about a qualitative research project that focused on pre-service english teachers’ perceptions of and attitudes toward the aspects of culture and intercultural competence addressed in their english classes in the undergraduate programs at three colombian universities. following, we can read another paper on pre-service teacher education. leidy tatiana báez dueñas and leidy marcela chacón vargas inform about a study conducted at a colombian public school. they aimed at examining the role of student-teachers’ teaching techniques concerning their pupils’ extrinsic motivation while engaged in communicative speaking activities. teachers’ beliefs is the topic addressed by chilean authors claudio díaz larenas, paola alarcón hernández, andrea vásquez neira, boris pradel suárez, and mabel ortiz 2 http://blogs.education.illinois.edu/dean/2013/06/03/passing-of-a-colleague-and-friend-susan-e-noffkejune-2013/ 9profile vol. 15, no. 2, october 2013. issn 1657-0790 (printed) 2256-5760 (online). bogotá, colombia. pages 7-9 editorial navarrete, who examine the role of 30 chilean university teachers’ beliefs about their own role in the teaching and learning of english in university environments. afterwards, diego fernando macías expounds on the extent to which the sources of english as a foreign language teachers’ pedagogical knowledge are acknowledged and addressed in a teacher education program of a public university in colombia. subsequently, we can read four articles around teaching issues, namely reading, writing, and assessment. we start with a report on a case study based on a colombian university context. it is authored by sergio lopera medina, who examined to what extent the diary entries evidence the teaching practices of a foreign language reading teacher. we continue with two works concerning the development of writing skills. first we present the work of colombian authors pedro antonio chala bejarano and claudia marcela chapetón. their article presents the findings of an action research project conducted with a group of colombian pre-service teachers on the role of genre-based activities in the writing of argumentative essays in english. afterwards, we can read the paper by chilean authors roxanna correa pérez, mariela martínez fuentealba, maría molina de la barra, jessica silva rojas, and mirta torres cisternas. they report on a study conducted with high school students and two teachers to examine the impact of feedback on content and organization in writing tasks. then, we have the last article of the first section of this edition, by hugo nelson areiza restrepo. this colombian author shares with us the findings of a study that deals with the role of systematic formative assessment on students’ views of their learning. the second section, issues from novice teacher researchers, contains the paper written by leonardo rivas rivas, who did a narrative inquiry as part of the fulfilment to opt for the ba degree in tesol at a mexican university. interestingly, the author presents an account of factors that have influenced the identity of preand in-service returnees who have been caught in between two worlds: mexico and the united states. we close this edition with two papers written by colombian teachers and contained in the issues based on reflections and innovations section. first, sonia patricia hernándezocampo and maría constanza vargas share with us a pedagogical experience carried out at a colombian university to help pre-service teachers at an intermediate level of english to improve their aural comprehension. then, we can read the article by carolina cruz corzo, who focuses on formal grammar instruction and presents a reflection concerning theoretical aspects that are considered essential to teach formal grammar as part of the curriculum. i hope you enjoy this edition of profile and find it useful. as always, you are very welcome to submit your manuscripts to any of the three sections that characterise our publication. finally, i wish to invite our readers to help us spread the word about our work among your colleagues, student-teachers, and research groups. melba libia cárdenas b. journal editor 79profile vol. 12, no. 1, 2010. issn 1657-0790. bogotá, colombia. pages 79-94 developing academic literacy and voice: challenges faced by a mature esl student and her instructors desarrollo del discurso académico y la voz: retos de una estudiante de inglés como segunda lengua y sus profesores doris correa* universidad de antioquia, colombia drawing on critical, socio-cultural and sociolinguistic theories of writing, text and voice, this ethnographic study examines the challenges that a mature esl student and her instructors in a university course on spanish language media face as they co-construct a common understanding of academic literacy and voice in an undergraduate general studies program offered by a university in western massachusetts. intertextual analysis of the data suggests that traditional product-based approaches to helping students develop academic literacy might not be very effective. however, to be able to take a different approach, such as the one suggested by genre scholars, both faculty teaching content subjects and writing tutors would need appropriate training. key words: esl writing, academic writing, academic voice, disciplinary writing con base en teorías críticas, socioculturales y sociolingüísticas sobre escritura académica, texto y voz, este estudio etnográfico explora los retos que enfrentan una estudiante hablante de inglés como segunda lengua y sus profesores de un curso de medios de comunicación en lengua española al construir conjuntamente los conceptos de literacias académicas y de voz en un curso de pregrado en estudios generales ofrecido por una universidad en massachusetts. el análisis intertextual de los datos recogidos muestra que algunos métodos tradicionales dirigidos a la elaboración de productos pueden resultar poco efectivos para apoyar el desarrollo de la escritura académica. sin embargo, se concluye que para usar metodologías más efectivas, como las propuestas por las teorías de género, es indispensable que tanto los profesores de las diferentes materias como los tutores reciban el entrenamiento adecuado. palabras clave: escritura de inglés como segunda lengua, escritura académica, voz académica, escritura disciplinaria * e-mail: dcorrea0813@gmail.com this article was received on august 1, 2009 and accepted on november 3, 2009. 80 universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras correa introduction i need to learn how to quote. i am tired of being told that i am not using quotes appropriately, that i need to use my own words, and of not having any idea of what i am doing wrong (marina, oct. 28, 2004)1. the above is a quote from one of the students pursuing a bachelor’s degree in the general studies program (bgs) at a university in western massachusetts. the program’s main objective was to help a group of mature paraprofessionals2, head start teachers, and community educators from the area to develop the content knowledge and the critical academic literacies required to get their bachelor’s degree, pass state mandated tests, and become licensed teachers. to achieve these goals, the program created a series of twenty-one interdisciplinary courses to be taught in the community where most of the bgs students lived, so that they would not have to commute to campus. these courses included two critical reading and writing courses and nineteen interdisciplinary courses. the incident marina mentions in the quote happened during the spanish language media course. this course was the seventh one in the program. to complete it, students had to write a threeto five-page essay responding to two questions provided by the instructor: what is the main goal of the commercial spanish language media industry? and what is at stake for the latino population if making a profit is more important than 1 to protect the identity of the participants in this study, pseudonyms have been provided throughout the paper for participants’ names and locations. 2 an instructional paraprofessional is an individual who works alongside the teacher in a classroom and has instructional duties (doe, no child left behind, january 3, 2003). serving the information needs of the community? in doing this, they were supposed to draw not only on the readings assigned for this course, but on the discussions they had in class about these readings and on their own knowledge and experiences. finally, they had to follow conventions for writing five-paragraph expository essays and for attribution of voice. after presenting the first draft of her essay, marina, a working class mature woman from puerto rico who had come to the united states with only a middle school certificate, received feedback from julia, the class teaching assistant. in it, she was prompted to include fewer quotes in her paper and, instead, use her “own words” and her “own thoughts and opinions”. marina felt terribly upset about this but did not say anything to me until one october night when she came to our writing workshop to get help on a paper she was writing for another course. on this day, she told me how traumatized she was about the feedback she had received. i remembered having talked to julia and also to maribel, the class instructor, about the incident. in our conversation, they talked about their struggle to both give students access to privileged genres while at the same time acknowledging the writing styles of students in their class. the purpose of the critical ethnographic case study presented here was to explore the challenges that marina and her spanish language media university instructors faced in trying to manage the above-mentioned tension. specific questions addressed by this study were the following: (a) what are some of the challenges that marina and her instructors faced in trying to co-construct a common understanding of academic literacy and voice? (b) how are these difficulties addressed? and (c) what are some implications for practice and professional development? 81 developing academic literacy and voice... profile vol. 12, no. 1, 2010. issn 1657-0790. bogotá, colombia. pages 77-94 theoretical framework this study draws on critical socio-cultural theories of language according to which minority students, especially esl/efl students, are at a disadvantage with respect to middle class mainstream students when it comes to using the genres of the academy. first, these students have often been denied the quality education that many middle class traditional students have received, which means that they have not been accustomed to academic genres from their early years as have middle class mainstream kids. second, they have a double barrier to overcome, the language barrier and the barrier of having to express themselves in writing in ways that are unfamiliar to them. access to the genres of the academy would, hypothetically, not only level the playing field for these students but provide them with socioeconomic mobility and access to higher education, two possibilities which they have been denied for many years (cope & kalantzis, 1993; delpit, 1988; ivanič, 1998; schleppegrell, 2004). however, socialization in powerful genres does not mean erasing the discourses students bring with them by their association with different discourse communities. on the contrary, it means getting students to appreciate the value of the discourses they already possess while simultaneously learning to both analyze and produce powerful discourses (delpit, 1988; lillis, 2001, schleppegrell, 2004). the study also draws on socio-linguistic theories of writing, texts, and voice according to which writing is a social practice that varies from one context to another, from one situation to another, and from one community to another (butt, fahey, feez, spinks, & yallop, 2000; christie, 1993; eggins, 1994; cope & kalantzis, 1993; kress, 1993; hyland, 2003; martin, 1989; martin & rothery, 1993; thompson, 1996). written texts, on the other hand, are speech genres (bakhtin, 1986, p. 78) which possess certain characteristics: first, they have differentiated value. second, they are contextual and situated. third, they are dialogical and intertextual or multivocal. as for their differentiated value, scholars such as schleppegrell (2004), delpit (1988) and lillis (2001) affirm that, in academic settings, analytical or expository genres such as the five-paragraph essay are given a higher value than personal genres such as narratives. because of this, socialization in these particular genres is essential for students to succeed at school and university settings. contextuality refers to the fact that texts vary according to context (butt et al., 2000; christie, 1993; kress, 1993; cope & kalantzis, 1993; eggins, 1994; martin, 1989; martin & rothery, 1993; thompson, 1996). thus, academic texts are different from non-academic texts. in the same way, texts written by a disciplined community are different from those written by another. for instance, academic texts written for a class differ significantly from interactional texts written for a friend (schleppegrell, 2004, p. 50). in academic texts, the lexis tends to be less ordinary and generic (p. 52), they use fewer conjunctions to signal internal links (p. 57), and they use fewer interrogative and imperative forms (p. 59), to mention just a few differences. similarly, expository texts in history differ significantly from the same kind of texts in science, not only in their lexical but also in their grammatical and textual features (pp. 118-128). situatedness has to do with the variation of texts according to the situation or immediate context in which they are produced (butt et al., 2000, p. 3). thus, expository texts written for a course with one instructor, although similar in purpose, organization, and structure to those written by students taking the same course with another instructor, would always look different 82 universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras correa from expository texts written for the first instructor. instructors may share some of the same basic values, beliefs, assumptions, and purposes, but they may also have their own values and their unique ways of producing writing in their disciplines, which students need to understand and learn to adapt to. dialogicality is related to that property texts have of both involving a plurality of voices through links to other texts and responding to an active audience (hyland, 2003, p. 23). audiences or addressees are active participants in the process of communication. they determine writers’ choices of genre, compositional devices, language vehicles, and styles (bakhtin, 1986, p. 96). from the moment writers start constructing their texts, they anticipate their response and modify their speech accordingly. they enter into dialogue with them. finally, intertextuality or multivocality relates to the fact that, in constructing texts, people draw from other texts and voices available to them by their affiliation with different discourse communities (ivanič & camps, 2001, p. 5). people appropriate these voices in their own personal ways in order to form their own personal texts. but people do more than just appropriate these voices. they “juxtapose”, “transform”, and sometimes “uncritically accommodate” these voices based on their intentions (kamberelis & scott, 1992, p. 400). they also “resist” some of these voices and their connotations (ivanič & camps, 2001, p. 31). as they do all of this, they engage in a process that is not only “social”, and “historical”, but also “political” and constrained by cultural or disciplinary conventions for attribution of voice (scollon, 1994 & 1995; scollon, tsang, li, yung, & jones, 2004). conceiving of writing, texts and voice in the ways presented above has important implications for teaching. important teaching recommendations made by writing scholars include the following: (a) giving students the opportunity to discuss the value of both the discourses they already possess and of the discourses they are being asked to produce (schleppegrell, 2004, p. 41); (b) explaining to students the lexical, grammatical, and textual difference between interactional and academic genres (schleppegrell, 2004, p. 52); and (c) having students analyze disciplinary and situational distinctions among texts and decide, based on these, how they need to modify their texts (butt et al., 2000, p. 16; hyland, 2004, p. 4). suggestions regarding voice include the following: (a) helping students recognize not only the various types of voices that can be brought into a text but also the sources of those voices, the cultural or disciplinary ways in which these voices can be brought in, the ways in which the voices can be creatively recombined with other voices to achieve certain purposes (e.g. to argue or explain a point), and the ways in which writers position themselves as insiders or outsiders of the communities with which they wish to gain affiliation by the voice choices they make (butt et al., 2000, p. 17; ivanič & camps, 2001, p. 31; kamberelis & scott, 1992, p. 399; scollon et al., 2004, p. 175). engaging students in the kind of analysis proposed above is not a task that can be easily undertaken, however, especially if the instructor does not have a background in language, which is the case of many esl/efl instructors. this is why scholars such as schleppegrell (2004) and butt et al. (2000) propose that all instructors in charge of courses offered to esl/efl students get the “specialized” or “metalinguistic” knowledge required to be able to provide students with the type of language support they need (butt et al., 2000, p. 8; schleppegrell, 2004, p. 159). 83 developing academic literacy and voice... profile vol. 12, no. 1, 2010. issn 1657-0790. bogotá, colombia. pages 77-94 the bgs program the bgs program originated in 2001 as a response to the no child left behind law (nclb), according to which paraprofessionals in the schools needed to have a bachelor’s degree. aware of the fact that many paraprofessionals in the area, mostly mature puerto rican women, only had two years of college, the faculty at the school of education of this university in western massachusetts created a plan of studies which included taking two academic writing courses, one at the beginning taught by me, and one at the end of the program. the program also included some general education courses such as sociology, geography, and math, and some concentration courses such as spanish language media, and spanish. to teach these courses, the program recruited a group of interdisciplinary staff who were deeply committed to working with the latina/o population in the achievement of their licenses and were willing to modify their syllabi to include the content and the type of writing that were to be addressed in two mandatory teachers’ tests that students had to take at the end of the program to get their licenses: the subject matter test and a literacy test. to support faculty with these efforts, the program hired me, a doctoral student with some experience in teaching academic writing, to serve as the writing tutor. the spanish language media course as mentioned earlier, this was the seventh of a series of twenty one courses offered as part of the program. the objective of the course as expressed in the syllabus was the following: [to] examine the historical development and current transformations of the spanish-language media industry, particularly in the united states but also across the americas and the caribbean [and] how political economic and cultural constructions of “latinidad” are implicated in the production, distribution and consumption of spanish-language mass media. in terms of writing, the course aimed to develop knowledge of academic genres such as the fiveparagraph expository essay. to help students achieve this goal, maribel, the course instructor, and julia, the teaching assistant, assigned the writing of a mid-term essay paper, among other papers. for this essay assignment students were asked to respond to the following questions: what is the main goal of commercial spanish language media industry? and what is at stake for the latino population if making a profit is more important than serving the information needs of the community? to respond to these questions students were supposed to draw not only on the course readings but on class discussions and their own life experiences. research participants participants in this study were maribel, julia, doris and marina. maribel was a young chicana who worked in the communications department as an assistant professor and who had never been in charge of supporting esl students with their academic writing development as she was in this course. julia was a young european american master’s degree student with no previous experience teaching this course or with academic writing. she was hired as the course assistant based on her previous work in the program as a teaching assistant. finally, i was the program assistant, writing tutor and researcher and had also been in charge of teaching the first writing course. as a writing tutor, my role was to aid students in the writing of their academic papers. being used to product-based writing approaches and totally unaware of the critical socio-cultural theories of 84 universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras correa writing proposed in the theoretical framework presented above, i focused this support mainly on helping students do the following: (a) search for academic sources for their papers; (b) develop writing strategies such as drafting, proof-reading, and editing; (c) use conventional grammar, spelling, and punctuation, as well as disciplinary conventions for attribution of voice. marina was a prototypical bgs student. she was a puerto rican woman who had been born and raised on the island. she had done her primary school there and then started working to help support her family. soon after this, she completed middle school, got married, and started a family. her children were still in primary school when marina decided to go to the “mainland” to be with her family, which was already established there. once in massachusetts, she settled in a former factory town where most of her family lived. there, she had two more children, went to night school to prepare for the general education development (ged) test3 and volunteered to work in her children’s schools. once her children were older, she went to a two-year college in the area to get her associates degree4 in child education. to do this, she had to work during the day, study at night, and care for her family as well as attend church on the weekends. during our first interview when i asked marina if she had been taught how to write essays and how to cite sources in her ged and community college courses, marina said she did not and if she had, she had forgotten how to do it (interview with marina, feb 28, 2006). soon after her graduation from the community college, marina found a job at one of the many non-governmental organizations in town. at this organization she worked as a tutor helping latina/o 3 the ged is a test that students attending night school have to take at the end of their coursework to get a high school diploma. 4 an associate’s degree is a degree students get at two-year colleges, often called community colleges. students prepare for the ged. she also taught computer, theater, and spanish classes to teenagers and adults in the community. aside from this, she co-facilitated hiv, domestic violence, housing, and discrimination programs. finally, she supervised a program aimed at involving the town’s parents in the schools and school committees. it was while working at this institution that marina heard about the bgs program. methods of data collection and analysis data collected for this study include the following: (a) fieldnotes of all the classes taught as part of the spanish language media course; (b) copies of all the papers marina wrote during this course; (c) videotapes of the classes in which students were given instructions on how to write their essays; (d) class documents, including readings the students were assigned for this course, syllabus, handouts, and written guidelines on how to write the essay; and (e) audio-recordings of the three interviews conducted with marina and of the interview with julia about her feedback. these data were collected through my attendance and participatory observation in all of the classes taught as part of this course. to analyze the video and interview data, i first transcribed the parts of the videotapes in which students were given instructions on how to write their essay and the interviews in their entirety. then, following bloome, power-carter, mortonchristian, otto, & shuart-faris (2005), i organized the transcripts into clauses and the clauses into message units, numbering all the lines. next, i coded for themes and for categories within those themes (butt et al., 2000). once i finished this analysis, i looked at the articles or chapters marina had cited in her papers for this class and 85 developing academic literacy and voice... profile vol. 12, no. 1, 2010. issn 1657-0790. bogotá, colombia. pages 77-94 started to read them carefully, highlighting those parts that marina seemed to have either drawn on or copied from in her drafts. i then moved on to conducting an intertextual analysis of the drafts marina wrote. to analyze these drafts intertextually, i followed guidelines provided by fairclough (2003) and by kamberelis & scott (1992). this analysis involved looking at which relevant ‘external’ texts and voices were included in a text, whether or not they were attributed, and how specifically (e.g. through direct reporting, indirect reporting, free indirect reporting, or narrative report of speech act) (fairclough, 2003, p. 61). it also involved looking at sources of voice (e.g. teachers, parents, peer groups, minister) and the types of voice appropriation (e.g. quoted, adopted, stylized, parodistic, polemic, idealized) (kamberelis & scott, 1992). based on this analysis, i created a chart with six columns. in the first column i included the text organized by paragraphs. in the other columns, based on the analysis of the readings and the video and interview transcripts, i included the voices marina seemed to be bringing in, the sources of these voices, the type of appropriation she was using, and the evaluation given to her by julia. once i finished these charts, i was able to draw some conclusions about how marina was complying with the task assigned to her. in the following section i provide a summary of what i found. main findings main findings from this study include a series of challenges that marina, the course instructors and tutor had to face in trying to develop and help develop academic literacy and voice. on marina’s part, these challenges included knowing how to display knowledge in ways that were accepted by the audience and having the vocabulary to do it. on the instructors and tutor’s part, the challenges were related to knowing how to provide support with students’ writing and how to provide feedback. in the following paragraphs, i discuss these challenges, provide some examples of each, and describe how the challenges were addressed. marina’s challenges in the essay assignment as mentioned in the introduction, marina was faced with a big challenge: she had to answer the questions provided by the spanish language media instructors, but she had to do it in a language that was not her own, using not only the voices of the authors read in class but the voices of her peers and “her own voice”. she had to do all this following conventions for writing expository essays and the conventions for attribution of voice. intertextual analysis of the essays marina wrote for the course revealed that in spite of the great amount of knowledge that she had developed in class regarding issues concerning hispanic language media, and in spite of all the directions and guidelines that instructors provided for the task, by the time she had to write this essay she was still uncertain about how to display knowledge in ways that were accepted by her audience (i.e. the course teaching assistant and instructor) as academic. marina’s first draft, for example, shows that she both responded to the questions by using a string of quotes mainly from davila (2001) and rodriguez (1999), two of the authors read in this class, as well as selected the quotes purposefully. she chose only those which she thought would not only respond to the questions but would integrate ideas mentioned in the brainstorming sessions. for instance, to address the question, ‘what is at stake for the latina/o population if making a profit is more important than 86 universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras correa serving the information needs of the community?’, marina first paraphrased the question, and then let davila’s (2001) voice take over. (1) for the spanish-language media it is more important to make a profit than serve the information needs of the community. (2) the stake for the latino population is that the antithetical processes of reinforcing and challenging stereotypes of this industry have gone hand in hand to confront, reshape or reformulate all types of hispanic conventions in order to maintain a legitimate ethnic niche for this market. (3) what makes stereotypes so troublesome is not that they order and simplify information by reducing complexities to a few limited conventions but are always historically created and produced in conversation with social hierarchies of daily life (gilman, 1996; kanellos, 1998; rodríguez, 1997). (4) moreover, as an imposed category, hispanic/latino is subject to constant negotiation with regard to the multiple identifications of hispanics as also mexican, colombian, or ‘’niuyorican”. (5) what is unique in ethnic and hispanic marketing is the extent to which these processes are additionally mediated by issues of race and ethnicity (davila, 2001, p. 127). (6) the transnationalization of media products does affect the public reception and discourse of u.s. latinas/os throughout the continent and may be relevant to how locals throughout latin america think about race, gender, sexuality, and nationalism, not always in positive ways. (165) here, marina writes a string of quotes from different pages in davila (2001) (clauses 2 through 6 above), each containing at least one aspect mentioned in the brainstorming sessions as answers to the question. quote 1 mentions stereotypes, quote 3 mentions issues of race and ethnicity, and quote 4 mentions issues of race, gender, sexuality, and nationalism (brainstorming session 1, june 3, 2004). by inserting these quotes, marina is bringing in not only davila’s voice but the voices of instructor, teaching assistant and peers, all of whom agreed on the following during the brainstorming sessions: (a) that commercial spanish language media (cslm) reinforce stereotypes in order to maintain this market; (b) that stereotypes are problematic because they hide differences and are social and historical in nature; (c) that hispanic/latina/o are externally imposed labels and latinas/os prefer to identify themselves by national origin; and (d) that ethnic marketing is intrinsically connected to issues of race (white latinas/os being privileged over black latinas/os, etc.). however, she is not listening to the suggestion made by instructors on her first draft to “use her own voice and her own words and opinions”. the difficulties marina had, then, seemed to lie not in the fact that she developed an argument that was inconsistent with the ideas expressed in class, or that she did not answer the questions, or even that she did not follow guidelines for the basic organization of her paper. neither did these difficulties lie in the ideologies these voices expressed, all of which seemed to coincide with the ones expressed in class. rather, the difficulties seemed to lie in two factors: (a) that she was not drawing on her own experience to either make claims or support them, and (b) that she was bringing in other people’s voices by stringing them one after the other, instead of indicating whose claims or opinions they were (e.g. according to…) and showing what her stance was (e.g. i completely agree with… in my opinion… cslm should…). furthermore, she was not following conventions for attribution of voice since she failed to cite in some places, provided incomplete or wrong citations in others, and modified quotes without signaling the modifications. all of these facts left julia and me uncertain as to how much marina really understood the topic, what her opinion really was, and whether she really knew how to write academic essays and use conventions for attribution of voice. had we not 87 developing academic literacy and voice... profile vol. 12, no. 1, 2010. issn 1657-0790. bogotá, colombia. pages 77-94 known marina so well, we would probably have thought that she was being lazy and had resorted to copying as a way to avoid having to think for herself. however, as revealed by the interviews i had with her later on, marina not only knew the topic but knew how to respond to the questions and how to provide examples from her own repertoire of experiences. in fact, she had worked very hard to prove it. in her first interview with me, marina told me how she did all of the readings, took notes, and re-read to make sure she understood. this is what she said during the second interview, when i asked her why she had used so many quotes instead of her own words and examples: maybe i used a lot of quotes because i don’t know how to express myself in english the way i would like to. if i had to write this same paper in spanish, i would just have to read and that’s it but i don’t have the vocabulary to write that kind of paper now. (interview with marina, september 11, 2005) she continues by making it clear to me that her overuse of quotes and her failure to insert her own opinions about the issue are mechanisms she uses to compensate for her lack of english vocabulary about these issues and to save face: i don’t have any problem with responding to the questions. if they ask me questions about a book, i can go to the book, look for the answers and respond to the questions. i don’t have any problem with that (...) but when it comes to giving my opinion about the topic, it is very difficult for me because i don’t have the vocabulary, so i feel, how should i say? maybe i can talk about the topic but i don’t feel sophisticated enough to write about it, so writing only one page takes me a whole week because i want to sound like an intellectual (…) but at the same time i don’t know how to use the words, so i get frustrated and since i don’t have the vocabulary, i have to make a big effort but i try to make it so that what i say sounds intellectual and also makes sense). (interview with marina, september 11, 2005) instructors and tutor’s challenges with the essay assignment marina was not the only one to struggle with the essay assignment. the course instructors and i also struggled. these struggles had to do mainly with two aspects: (a) how to support students in the writing of the assignment, and (b) what kind of feedback to provide and how. in terms of the first, the course instructors and i prepared two brainstorming sessions. for the first session, i brought to class handouts of how to write a paragraph, an outline in a tform, a 5 paragraph essay and references using the apa format. i explained to students that if they were to follow us conventions for writing academic essays, they needed to write a thesis statement followed by supporting details and a conclusion. then, i told students i brought some copies on how to reference work using the apa style, in case they lost the copies i gave them during the academic writing course. next, maribel explored with students some ideas on how to respond to each question. finally, maribel and the students moved to the actual writing of an outline and a discussion of what they could write in each section. for the next class students were supposed to have a session in which they brought to class their outlines, with citations already incorporated, to share with the rest of the class. however, when the moment came for the students to show what they had brought, they all said they needed more time. hence, instructors started a second brainstorming session in which students were, once more, asked to brainstorm ideas for the paper. they were also reminded that they could back their ideas up not just from the articles and books, but also from class discussions and the movies they had watched in class. 88 universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras correa in regard to the second struggle, what kind of feedback to provide and how, after receiving students’ first drafts and discovering that they were not displaying knowledge in the ways that they were expected, julia turned to me, as the writing tutor, for help. she wanted to know if it was possible for me to provide students with feedback on form while she provided feedback on content. she argued that providing feedback on form was very difficult for her since she had never worked with esl students and, therefore, did not know what kind of feedback to give or how to provide this feedback. after explaining to her that it was impossible for me to provide feedback on form without being clear about the purpose of the task or its audience, julia said she would talk to maribel about it and get back to me. julia never got back to me on this. however, during our interview, i learned that julia and maribel had met after this to discuss what to do with marina and other students who were not citing properly, and decided that, given the time constraints, they would just let the citing go. according to julia, they were “just happy that she was doing some of her own analysis but if i had had more time to work with her, i would have done a third draft that would have integrated these two [content and citing]” (interview with julia, march 21, 2005). based on this decision, julia focused her written feedback on making suggestions in the form of marginal comments on students’ papers. she also organized conferences with students in which she went over the ideas that they could include in their drafts in order to improve them. she then produced the following feedback for marina on her first draft: “marina, you use too many quotes from the article and book. we want to hear your own words, your own thoughts and opinions”. outcome of efforts although julia was quite polite and respectful not only in her written comments but also in the oral feedback she gave marina afterwards, trying to encourage her to make corrections and focusing on how she could improve her paper instead of what she had done wrong, marina felt uncomfortable with the feedback. in her second interview with me, she said that she felt “frustrated, upset, confused, ashamed, and guilty” all at the same time (interview with marina, february 28, 2006). overwhelmed by these feelings, but aware that the instructors were more interested in her perspective than in the perspective of the authors read in class, marina went home and tried to keep the voices of those authors out of her second draft. for this draft, marina not only used fewer quotes but also included more personal experiences, which made her voice resonate more clearly, and incorporated feedback from the instructors. in paragraph 5, for example, marina tried once more to incorporate the ideas she read or heard in the brainstorm sessions as she responded to the question: what is at stake for the latina/o population if making a profit is more important than meeting the information needs of the community? this time, instead of using quotes, she used a patchwork of words and ideas whose source was more difficult to identify than in the first draft, and she incorporated feedback in the form of marginal comments and examples from her own life. (1) the stake is that this multibillion dollar industry is responsible for the perpetuation of stereotypes, racism, sexism, prejudice, and exploitation of latino communities in this country. (2) the commercial spanish-language media industry creates stereotypes because of the way they represent the latinos in all the advertisements. (3) they present good looking latinos mostly 89 developing academic literacy and voice... profile vol. 12, no. 1, 2010. issn 1657-0790. bogotá, colombia. pages 77-94 from the upper class in the ad. (4) most of the time, they look a lot like the anglo advertisements. (5) this can be a problem because the marketers are not presenting realistic representations of the latino community. (6) like my grandmother would say, “people are like a garden of flowers, all of them are different but all of them are beautiful and unique”. (7) if advertisers do not represent people and differences in their ads then the anglo culture would think that any latino who doesn’t look like people in the ad is different or weird. (8) many people are afraid of others that don’t look like them. (9) consequently, prejudice would arouse against another culture, racism would follow and make people act with violence and hatred against others. in this paragraph, expressions such as this multimillion dollar industry and realistic representations of the latino community all seem to come from the readings assigned to her in class, especially davila (2001). ideas such as those expressed in clause 1 seem to come directly from julia’s written feedback, since, in the margins of the first draft julia wrote: “result: stereotypes, racism, sexism, prejudice, exploitation”. similarly, the ideas expressed in clauses 3 to 5 that cslm create stereotypes and use mostly anglolooking latinas/os in their ads and news programs, all seem to be taken directly from both davila (2001) and the brainstorming sessions. finally, ideas such as those expressed in clauses 6 to 8 seem to all come from marina’s own repertoire of words and experiences. by constructing this patchwork of words and ideas, marina represented herself, at least in both julia’s and my eyes, as someone who knew the topic well enough not to have to lean on other people’s words for every claim and for examples to support them. however, by going to the other extreme and almost completely omitting quotes from her draft, marina made us wonder about her ability to incorporate or acknowledge the writing of others, as is common in expository essays (gadda, 1991, cited in schleppegrell, 2004, p. 88). finally, by drawing so closely on the feedback she received, on the examples provided by the book, and on the ideas presented in class, she left us wondering to what extent she really agreed with what she was saying and to what extent she was just parroting words and ideas which she knew her audience would welcome. in spite of all this, and contrary to what happened in the first draft, marina received a very positive evaluation which focused on her understanding of the issues and suggested that she provide more examples of what was at stake for the latina/o population: marina: this second paper is much better than the first draft. you use your own words, thoughts and analysis. excellent. you could expand this essay further to talk about what is at stake for the latino population, with examples. if north american (white) media owners control the sl media what will provide educational information, news and entertainment to the latino community? more specifically, what is at stake? (look at yellow sheet we brainstormed together on 1st draft). when i asked julia in my interview why she did not call marina’s attention to form or any of the above issues, julia explained that to the other instructor, maribel, and her it was more important to have students understand the content of the course and be able to “articulate it in their own words” than to have them use quotes, and marina did a good job at this. julia added, i actually think that she did a really good job at pulling in the papers to answer the question of what is at stake. i mean, she followed the guidelines that we had talked about in terms of racism, sexism, exploitation, you can see that she is working from my notes here, when she says “this multibillion dollar industry is responsible…of the latinos community”, and then she has a paragraph there about racism, and she talks about sexism here. so this is all addressing what is at stake for the latinos community, so it is a big improvement from the first 90 universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras correa paper, and then she does the conclusion, “mass media… consumer”. she is understanding, which is a big leap from the first paper, she is really understanding the ways specifically in which commercial spanish language media exploits the latino consumer. (interview with julia, march 21, 2005) in spite of the positive feedback received, marina seemed to still be confused about what voices she was allowed to bring in, how to purposefully incorporate those voices in her texts, and how to use disciplinary conventions for attribution of voice. during her second interview with me, marina confessed that she still did not know exactly how to go about incorporating the writing of others in her text and that was partly the reason she had decided to include only two quotes. this was confirmed a year later when the instructor of the human geography course complained, just like julia had, that marina was plagiarizing in an essay. marina felt so bad and ashamed that she thought of quitting the program. i conferred with her and promised to work with her until she finally had a good grasp of how to integrate other people’s voices in her paper. however, she never came to sessions with me and dropped two of the classes offered that year. fortunately, after one semester out, marina came back and graduated from the program in the fall of 2006. discussion the difficulties that marina had with the incorporation of academic voices in her text seemed to be related mostly to the nature of the support received. on the other hand, the challenges faced by the course instructors and me seemed to be related to the lack of a solid preparation on both of our parts on how to support esl/efl students with academic writing. in terms of the nature of the support received, as we saw in the explanation of the task, even though instructors held two brainstorming sessions in which ideas on what to put in each section of their argumentative essay were discussed and handouts were given, in none of these sessions was there a discussion of the difference between interactional and academic genres. neither was there a conversation about why it was important for them, as students and future teachers, to learn to produce academic genres such as the one proposed for this course, in which they would need to rely not solely on their views and opinion but on the opinions of others. moreover, there was no mention of why a text such as this was assigned a higher value than a narrative, for example, which only contained their experiences. furthermore, there was no talk about the lexical, grammatical and textual features associated with the type of academic text the students needed to write or about how these were different from the lexical, grammatical and textual features of the interactional genres they were used to producing. on no occasion during the text preparation were students reminded that, for example, academic texts needed to rely less on the use of conjunctions or contain shorter statements than interactional texts. neither were students made aware that the argumentative essays they were expected to write might be organized differently from the argumentative essays they may have written for previous courses, since in every discipline there is a unique way of structuring texts. important voice-related issues were also left out. such issues included which voices, apart from those of the authors read in class, the students were expected to bring in and leave out, and exactly how they were expected to do this (e.g. by making the 91 developing academic literacy and voice... profile vol. 12, no. 1, 2010. issn 1657-0790. bogotá, colombia. pages 77-94 voices precede or follow theirs or by interweaving them with their own). not once during this course were there discussions about the purposes of citing other authors, the power those citations had of positioning them as insiders or outsiders in the discourse community, and the different ways they would represent themselves by, for example, using primary as opposed to secondary sources, updated as opposed to outdated sources, and reliable as opposed to non-reliable sources. by limiting our support with citations to the presentation of some handouts with rules about how to cite following the apa style, we presented the incorporation of voices as a simple task implying the memorization and application of a fixed set of rules on how to cite, instead of presenting it as a personal, social, and political process, which writers use to purposefully position themselves in various ways for their audience. also, we treated conventions for attribution of voice as rules that need to be followed the same way across all genres and all disciplines, not as meaningful, agreed-upon ways used by members of a disciplinary community to engage with the ideas of other members, and to further develop, support or challenge these ideas. even though instructors (by dropping the requirement to use the readings assigned for class to support their ideas and by asking students to let their “own voices” be heard) were showing respect for the discourses students brought with them to the academy, they were also doing a disservice to students: these not only did not get the type of experimentation with voices that kamberelis & scott (1992) propose, but they did not get socialized in ways of citing in this discipline either. also, they were deprived of the opportunity to acquire strategies that would help them cite for other disciplinary communities in future courses. such strategies included identifying how the voices of others were being incorporated in similar texts and for what purposes as well as noticing how conventions for attribution of voice were being used in sample texts before launching themselves into the writing of their own texts. had marina been involved in discussions and analysis of form-related and not form related issues of the kind described above, she would have been in a better position to realize that a string of quotes extracted from the different texts they had read in class, regardless of how relevant, was going to be judged by her instructors as inappropriate and so would be her absolute refusal to include her personal opinion and non-disciplinary ways of citing. however, neither i nor the course instructors seemed to be prepared to involve students in these types of conversations. as for me, even though i had taught writing courses before, at the time this course was taught i was not familiar with either the genre or the voice theories presented in the theoretical framework section. therefore, as many other writing instructors, i thought of both academic writing and conventions for attribution of voice as fixed sets of rules that needed to be mastered and that once mastered, one could apply to every piece of academic writing one produced. this was reflected in the fact that, as mentioned in the description of the essay assignment, all i could think of to help students with the writing of their essays was to provide them with the rules in the form of handouts on how to write a five paragraph essay and how to follow apa guidelines for citing. as for course instructors, even though they had a great amount of knowledge of their discipline, they were at a loss when it came to guiding students in the ways of writing and citing inside that discipline. this could be seen not only in their conversations with me about the assignment but in the preparation for the essay assignment where, 92 universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras correa instead of discussing with students important form-related and unrelated issues such as the ones mentioned above, they focused on discussing ideas for the text. it could also be seen in the feedback julia provided to marina, in which to help marina see the non-disciplinary ways in which she was citing and using the voices of others in her text, she only wrote the word “quoting?” all over the text and then prompted her to use her “own voice” and her “own words and opinions”. for mature students striving to become licensed teachers like marina, this lack of preparation both on my part and the part of the instructors was very unfortunate for several reasons: first, without knowledge of how to write for a specific audience in a specific context and situation, with specific ways to cite and interweave her voice with the voices of others, she was unable to meet the expectations of other instructors and was likely to end up being accused of plagiarizing, as was the case with her human geography instructor. second, without this same knowledge, it was unlikely for her to pass mandatory teachers’ literacy tests, such as the one all aspiring teachers have to take in massachusetts, since these tests usually include the writing of an argumentative essay very much like the one they had to write for this class. third, as a schoolteacher, she needed to have this knowledge to be able to guide her students in the development of disciplinary ways of writing. conclusions and implications results from this study suggest that students such as marina, who have had an academic path filled with bumps and holes, experience a series of difficulties in the development of academic literacies and voice. these difficulties have to do with at least two aspects: (a) a lack of the language needed to express themselves, and (b) a lack of familiarity with the ways in which members of the discourse community for which they are writing combine their voices with the voices of others to argue a point. the study also suggests that to effectively help these students overcome the abovementioned difficulties and develop a “critical academic voice” that they can use to present their knowledge in academic settings, traditional product-based approaches, such as the ones employed to support students in the bgs program, are not enough. these students need additional support. if we were to follow the genre theories presented in the theoretical framework, this support could start with discussions about, for example, the differences between interactional and academic genres and the different value these genres are assigned, depending on the context. the support could also take the form of conversations about the contextual, situated, dialogic and intertextual nature of texts. however, in order to hold these conversations, esl/efl faculty would need, first, to stop considering writing as a process in which anyone can successfully engage, given a basic structure and some ideas to include in each section. similarly, they would need to stop considering texts as fixed sets of structures that can be copied from a handout and that are applicable across context, situation, purpose and audience. additionally, they would need to stop considering voice as unique and personal. finally, they would need to develop metalinguistic knowledge of the genres most frequently used by members of their discourse communities and of how these differ in text organization and language demands from those used in other disciplines the students are studying. though difficult to accomplish, taking these actions is of paramount importance for esl/efl students, especially for those preparing to be teachers. they not only need to pass their program 93 developing academic literacy and voice... profile vol. 12, no. 1, 2010. issn 1657-0790. bogotá, colombia. pages 77-94 courses and licensure tests but also need to be able to project themselves to the community through their writing. what is more, they need to be able to help their future students see writing as a situated, disciplinary, contextualized, multi-purpose, intertextual, and dialogical social practice. references bakhtin, m. m. 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(1994). as a matter of fact: the changing ideology of authorship and responsibility in discourse. world englishes, 13(1), 33-46. scollon, r. (1995). plagiarism and ideology: identity in intercultural discourse. language in society, 24, 1-28. scollon, r., tsang, w.k., li, d., yung, v., & jones, r. (2004). voice, appropriation and discourse representation in a student writing task. in n. shuart-faris & d. bloome (eds.), uses of intertextuality in classroom and 94 universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras correa educational research. greenwich, ct: information age publishing. thompson, g. (1996). introducing functional grammar. ny: arnold. about the author doris correa holds a ba and has done graduate studies in foreign language teaching from universidad de antioquia. she also holds a master’s and a doctorate in education from the university of massachusetts, amherst. she is currently an assistant professor and a member of the giae research group at universidad de antioquia, medellín, colombia. 181profile vol. 14, no. 2, october 2012. issn 1657-0790 (printed) 2256-5760 (online). bogotá, colombia. pages 181-194 efl teenagers’ social identity representation in a virtual learning community on facebook representación de la identidad social de los estudiantes adolescentes de inglés como lengua extranjera en una comunidad de aprendizaje virtual en facebook laura verónica jiménez guamán* universidad distrital francisco josé de caldas, colombia in this article i report the findings of a descriptive and interpretative qualitative study carried out in a public school in bogotá, colombia. the study aimed at analyzing, describing and exploring teenage students’ social identity representation as observed in their participation in a learning community on facebook. data were collected from eight active participants through artifacts and semi-structured interviews in the dragster virtual community on facebook. data analysis illustrated that teenagers’ ways of expressing themselves are manifested in conversations and posts and these interactions portray and reflect their social identity inside the group. their social representations are evaluated, accepted, or denied by the other members in the asynchronous group. key words: dialogical representation, social identity, virtual community. en este artículo reportamos los resultados de un estudio cualitativo, descriptivo e interpretativo llevado a cabo en una escuela pública en bogotá, colombia. el objetivo fue analizar, describir y explorar la representación de la identidad social de los estudiantes adolescentes de inglés como lengua extranjera, observando su participación en una comunidad de aprendizaje en facebook. los datos de ocho participantes activos fueron recolectados a través de artefactos y entrevistas semiestructuradas en la comunidad virtual dragster, en facebook. el análisis de los datos muestra que las expresiones que los adolescentes usan en las conversaciones y en los diferentes tipos de publicaciones reflejan su identidad social dentro del grupo. sus representaciones sociales son evaluadas, aceptadas o rechazadas por los demás miembros del grupo asincrónico. palabras clave: comunidad virtual, identidad social, representación dialógica. * e-mail: lveronicajg@hotmail.com this article was received on january 31, 2012, and accepted on june 30, 2012. universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras182 jiménez guamán introduction today the internet has created new habits of communication, such as e-mail, chats, posts, and pokes, all of which happen to be popular among young people. studies carried out by the kaiser family foundation (2005) and the pew internet and american life project (lenhart, madden, & hitlin, 2005), revealed that approximately 87 percent of youth between the ages of twelve and seventeen are online. in addition, youth are engaging with social network sites on the internet, which means that any english as a foreign language (efl) teenage “student with access to an internetready computer and a basic knowledge of how the internet works can post ideas and infor mation which they consider important and build their own interest groups and networks, and many do” (castells, 2001, p. 157). for that reason, the intention of this article is to describe the findings in a research report as regards how teenage efl students portrayed their social identity in a virtual group. using facebook as a virtual learning community, the efl teacherresearcher guided students in the development of activities that allowed them to portray their social identity in the group. to achieve the purpose of this study, the following research question was posed: how do efl teenage students represent their social identity in a virtual learning community? in the next sections, the two main constructs for developing this study, its context and participants, as well as the method and data analysis procedures, will be discussed. moreover, findings about teenagers’ social identity will be presented. finally, the conclusions and pedagogical impli cations will be discussed. literature review the study was based on the following two constructs: social identity and virtual communities. these constructs concern the object of this study: efl teenage students’ social identity representation in a virtual learning community. social identity social identity is understood as the way efl students portray themselves as real people through interactions; for example, using postings and chatting for exchanging ideas about themselves in their foreign language, as well as for recognizing other members in a group. also, it allows them to represent and negotiate their social presence with other participants in a virtual community. the definition of social identity that best suits the aim in this study is the one proposed by palloff and pratt (2007), who state that the represen tation of a social identity requires that the members develop social presence in the online community, that is, “the ability to portray oneself as a real person” (p. 43) and to perceive the same in the other members of the group. in addition to that, palloff and pratt propose that when people step through the screen into virtual communities, they re-construct their identities on the other side of the looking glass. this reflection projects ourselves “socially and emotionally in a community” (garrison & anderson, 2005) and expresses the “self uniqueness”, which allows acceptance and support within the group (palloff & pratt, 2007, p. 26). virtual community virtual community is understood as a functional virtual space in which learners and teachers share common practices and interests, as well as provide an environment where they identify and represent themselves. this atmosphere must allow participants to work, either asynchronously or synchronously, guided by the teacher in making the learning community a vehicle through which efl learning occurs online. 183profile vol. 14, no. 2, october 2012. issn 1657-0790 (printed) 2256-5760 (online). bogotá, colombia. pages 181-194 efl teenagers’ social identity representation in a virtual learning community on facebook for the purpose of this study, a virtual community is understood as a dynamic whole that emerges when a group of people shares common practices. also, the group is inter-dependent, which means they make decisions together and identify themselves with something larger than the sum of their individual relationships inside the group. the members make long-term commitments to their own well-being, as well as one another’s and the group’s (palloff & pratt, 2007). the virtual community offers social communication, an essential component in the educational process. considering that schools and campuses provide places for students to congregate socially, harasim, hiltz, teles, and turoff (1996) state that an online educational environment should provide a space for informal discourse, such as a virtual café, forums, or a group chat. these practices allow the members of the group to forge their social bonds and create important socio-affective and cognitive benefits for the learning activities (palloff & pratt, 2007). context this study was developed at a public school in the lusitania neighborhood of bogotá, colombia. the public school there has been serving a male population of high school students (from grades 6 to 11) for 73 years. the school’s pedagogical institutional project (pei) aims at preparing students through an educational, dynamic, significant, moti vating, and innovating environment that provides students with opportunities for intellectual, social, and personal development in society (colegio nacional nicolás esguerra, 2011). the school’s pei emphasizes students’ identification as social human beings. hence, the school acts as a mediator in the process of preparing students in social, cultural, political, humanistic, and scientific fields for future opportunities. on this basis, students must learn languages, cultures, and different kinds of knowledge in order to be successful. moreover, the school provides students with a three-hour english class per week; an english book is required for the class, as well as some extra materials. every classroom has 35 to 40 students. each grade has an english language teacher who guides the students for two years. for example, there is a teacher for sixth and seventh grades, another for eight and ninth, and a third for tenth and eleventh grades. dragster virtual community (vc) was the space chosen to provide opportunities for efl students to engage in different language learning experiences online. this experience implied interacting with each other through posts and group chats. this virtual community took place on facebook where students followed dragster virtual community’s page and took part in a group called nets (nicolás esguerra teenage students). this was an asynchronous environment that allowed participants to log on to the class, its discussions, activities, and chats at any time, to think about what was being discussed and post their own responses with a deadline for doing so. also, it allowed the teacher to work with a large group of students. facebook allowed posting links and activities visually appealing for students and which motivate them to participate in the community. therefore, virtual learning environments have an advantage over traditional learning environments which is that each student can participate equally in class discussion and different activities. in this study, i was a teacher-researcher whose attention focused on my students’ social identity representation in a learning community on facebook. i posted a variety of activities such as links, games, videos, listening exercises, among others every single week. these activities were planned, selected, organized and designed in advance for the universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras184 jiménez guamán development of the course, as well as for gathering data about my area of study. moreover, as a facilitator, i provided students with feedback about the activities that were developed offering open communication via private or public messages. i replied to my students’ doubts and inquiries about any issue presented in our virtual community. i also promoted a friendly social learning environment and regulated what happened through mediation among the students, rulemaking and decision-making in our group. all in all, i treated all of my students with respect and fostered a warm and enjoyable class environment where we could have fun and learn together. participants the school had five groups of tenth graders. this project was carried out with only 25 students from tenth-three (10-03) who were between 14 and 16 years old. there were thirty (30) male students in the efl class and twenty-five of them (25) agreed to participate as members in the project. however, only eight students fit the participants’ profile. these eight students were considered participants in this research, in view of the following features: first, the tenth graders could express themselves and their points of view in english. second, all participants had access to the internet for four to eight hours per week, developing a “sense of membership” (riley, 2007, p. 113). consequently, they would be able to contribute to their own learning process and be able to develop the activities offered. method this study was carried out as a descriptive and interpretative qualitative research study which, according to burns (2005), is focused on concrete and practical issues of immediate concern to particular social groups or in communities. in this case, the efl students got involved and actively took part, developing different activities that allowed them to portray their social identity through “typing, writing, image manipulation, creation of avatars, digital video and audio” (hine, 2000, p. 70) in the dragster virtual community on facebook. this study considers the internet an open context tool for social interactions where practices, meanings, and identities are intermingled (domínguez, beaulieu, estalella, gómez, schnettler, & read, 2007). that is why this study attempted to create a learning group in which learners would be able to interact with each other, either through posts on the community’ wall, open discussions, or group chats. the idea of developing a learning community on facebook was developed from these criteria, and dragster vc was created as an available space on the internet that would contribute to the purpose of this research. data collection data were collected in the first academic semester (february-june) of 2011 and gathered through students’ artifacts posted in the virtual community on facebook and through semi-structured interviews. these instruments were important in this study because students’ artifacts would show efl students’ social identity representation. their identities were developed and evidenced in their written narrative about themselves and the other members. subsequently, the semi-structured interviews would be used to validate the data presented by the learners’ artifacts. students’ artifacts contained illustrations that students used for expressing their social identities through online hypertexts in visual and written form, as well as their interactions in the group. the purpose of this instrument was based on burns’ (2005) idea that students’ artifacts would allow the teacher-researcher to have a clearer picture of the students’ reactions, perceptions, reflections, and 185profile vol. 14, no. 2, october 2012. issn 1657-0790 (printed) 2256-5760 (online). bogotá, colombia. pages 181-194 efl teenagers’ social identity representation in a virtual learning community on facebook thoughts. moreover, this instrument was employed to make a detailed portrayal of students’ social identity, in addition to “provid[ing] an easy way of obtaining other people’s perceptions” (hopkins, 2002, p. 145). additionally, semi-structured interviews were used because they were an opportunity to explore participants’ social identities and develop ideas about how those identities are presented, as well as confirming information gathered with students’ artifacts. according to freeman and capper (1999), an interview is a structured oral (or possibly written) exchange with someone that aims at gathering information. the interview is more comfortable and rewarding for the researcher and the interviewer and is appropriate because it is open-ended and thus more flexible (burns, 2005). semi-structured interviews permitted students to conduct a dialogue about their thoughts and conceptions of their own pieces of work and other members’ work. data analysis procedures the analysis of the data was done under the principles of grounded theory that, according to dey (1999, pp. 1-2), purports to discover or generate theory. also, it allows the researcher to have a conversation with the data, ask questions of them, and make comments to them, as well as continuously compare incidents and respondents’ remarks (merriam, 1998). the data were compared and contrasted and then grouped into patterns using different colors and key words for each of the patterns. after reading the patterns several times, one core category emerged named “dialogical relationship between the self and the others” (see figure 1). this category helped the researcher understand how participants shared and negotiated their social identities through dialogue. as shown in figure 1, the data were classified into two sub-categories: “my own representation at dragster vc” and “how others represent me at dragster vc”, which support the main core category. identity is used to refer to a sense of integration of the self, in which different aspects come together in a unified whole (deaux & philogène, 2001). findings dialogue was fundamental in the description of teenagers’ social identity in the virtual community. their ways of expressions are manifested in conversations that portray and reflect their social identity inside the group, based on their preexisting self, which means that “representations are constitutive of reality” (jørgensen & phillips, 2002, p. 145). therefore, the speaker identity is expressed by all “communicative practices” (riley, 2007, p. 93) that are developed among other members in a community. this category evidences the relationship of “how i want others to see me”, “how others see me”, and the incorporation participants had in figure 1. core category and subcategories dialogical relationship between the self and the others my own representation at dragster vc how others represent me at dragster vc the self i/me own image others he/you/our/we others’ image universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras186 jiménez guamán relation to the group throughout their communication in dragster virtual community. their social identities were represented “appropriately through the acquisition of certain practices, particularly those involved in taking and assigning responsibility” (riley, 2007, p. 84) in dragster vc. the analysis showed that participants were able to portray their social identity during the dialogical relationships that were created among members of the virtual community. consequently, they would become involved in most activities proposed, such as posts, comments, e-activities, chatting, pictures, and tags, among others. these types of activities allowed the efl learners to become active participants inside the community. the communicative practices that emerged from their actions inside the group permitted participants to reflect on their own representation and generate a public image that would be recognized by the other members of the group. in addition, their social identity must be understood with reference to social structures, which are reproduced in day-to-day social interaction where the role of the efl language is seen as a fundamental aspect of a language learner’s social identity (heller, as cited in norton, 1997). my own representation at dragster vc duff and uchida (1997, as cited in hinkel, 2011) affirmed that social identity is co-constructed, negotiated, and transformed on a regular basis through language. thus, the efl participants portrayed themselves via pictures and comments using their foreign language, including the use of “i/me” for exposing themselves in the virtual community. for example, students were asked to create their own graffiti using a word that represented themselves via an application in a website called graffiticreator.com. consequently, the students came up with a reflection of their self-image that was socially defined and negotiated by “the choices the writers make in their discourses” (hyland, 2002, p. 65). using graffiti and making a comment about it was an exercise that allowed students to express their “uniqueness as a person” (palloff & pratt, 2007, p. 201) because they were able to employ their favorite colors and their own words to portray themselves. subsequently, the learners illustrated their own voice, showing their “distinctive signature, the individual stamp that they leave on a text” (hyland, 2002, p. 70). those unique or idiosyncratic self-understandings presented in their narratives illustrated their “individual identity” and “self-conceptions” (ashmore, 1997, p. 120) about themselves as individuals in the community. as observed, participants made a variety of graffiti and narratives that showed each individual’s particular characteristics. for instance, brayan cb reflected his self-image differently from the other participants in the virtual community, as shown in figure 2. figure 2. brayan cb’s graffiti representation the student used the word “freedom” and expressed his “love for cold weather” and “weird stuff ” with the color gray. brayan cb described himself saying, “i think that i’m a humble person” and “i’m a bit explosive” which was affirmed by 187profile vol. 14, no. 2, october 2012. issn 1657-0790 (printed) 2256-5760 (online). bogotá, colombia. pages 181-194 efl teenagers’ social identity representation in a virtual learning community on facebook most of the participants in the semi-structured interviews (march 18, 2011, line 34). we can see how “i” is employed to portray the active, creative agent doing the experiencing, thinking, and acting in the learning community (ashmore, 1997). brayan cb was also interested in “boring activities” because he mentioned, “these things are strange and interesting”. he meant that he had a strange love for all the activities a typical teenager of his age would hate to do. he explained that those “boring activities” were going to a museum or art exhibit, reading a historic book, watching an independent movie, and dating a boy, instead of a girl. these activities are unusual for the teenagers participating in the study. according to a semistructured interview, most enjoy playing musical instruments, playing a sport or a video game, listening to music, watching television, or going out with friends. learners have different interests in relation to other members in the learning community. however, the participants always interacted and looked for those learners who represented a social identity similar to their own selves. this may be because their attention is aimed at the same goal, “engagement in both the classroom and the wider target language community” (kanno & norton, 2003). in the graffiti by bravy (see figure 3), the student portrayed himself as “funny” because of his jokes and his positive personality. he described himself as a happy person that smiles all the time. hence, the efl students’ self-idea “seems to have three principal elements: the imagination of our appearance to the other person; the imagination of his judgment of that appearance (how he perceived himself ) and some sort of self-feeling such as pride or mortification” (cooley, 1964, as cited in riley, 2007). figure 3. bravy’s graffiti narrative students portray themselves with unique characteristics different from other members of the group. first, the imagination of the teenagers’ appearance to the other members in dragster was represented through their own imaginations by using profile pictures, either of themselves or their favorite artists, as well as creating fictional names for the virtual community. their names were asked to be distinctive and to represent something they identified with. for example, we could see in the excerpt below that bravy had a photo of cristiano ronaldo as his profile picture. according to him, this soccer player was his favorite sportsman. also, he said “cristiano looked just like me when we are playing on the field” and he was using his picture to support him during the champions league cup final that was being played in europe at that time (interview, march 24, line 23). in this case, one notices how “me” is the perspective or “attitude” toward oneself that one assumes when taking the role of a specific person or the generalized community (ashmore, 1997). therefore, the other participants corroborated that bravy was interested in playing soccer and had similar physical characteristics to ronaldo’s. as boone, gordon-larsen, adair, and popkin (2007) state, people influence their environment by universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras188 jiménez guamán characteristics they naturally possess; in this case, cristiano ronaldo’s ability to play soccer influenced bravy’s physical appearance in our virtual community. knowing that bravy was good at soccer, he consequently portrayed himself with a picture of who he considered “the best” at playing this sport and followed him as a sport role model. this argument demonstrates that natural characteristics are one of the factors efl students’ used in order to represent their social identity. teenagers reflected their own self-perceived image; they represented themselves by how they wanted to be seen and recognized by the other members at dragster vc. however, if they did not interact with other participants, their social identity would not be acknowledged and visible by the participants inside the virtual “group they belonged to” (tajfel, 2010, p. 225). on the other hand, the imagination of participants’ judgment of their partners’ appearance is portrayed by the comments students made to each other. consequently, a dialogical interaction emerged and these interactions allowed me to see how the participants were perceived and seen inside dragster vc. as seen in the pictures shown in figure 4, bravy made his avatar look just like him. figure 4. bravy’s avatar vs. his profile picture on facebook however, most of his partners questioned his interest in “che1”, who was stamped on his avatar’s t-shirt. he had not given any significance to this social character when the group first began. when bravy was asked, he said he was using the “che” icon on his t-shirt to let other members in our group know that he admired him. on the contrary, brayan cb said, “i don’t think he even knows who the ‘che’ really was or what ideals he pursued”. brayan cb considered that the “che” did not adapt to the identity bravy had been shaping in our group. people can imaginatively anticipate others’ evaluations of their identities and identity performances (ashmore, 1997), as shown in figure 4. efl students portrayed their image of themselves in our learning community and this image was evaluated and either rejected or accepted by the others. hence, appearance affects both the way we look at other people and the way we look at ourselves. as boone et al. proposed (2007), appearance is genetically determined and therefore independent of personality. in other words, efl students’ physical appearances affected the dragster vc environment given that it was the space in which they were involved. to sum up, how we know ourselves is basically the same as how we know others, and it depends on observation, retrospection, and projection (jenkins, 2008). when teenagers belong to a virtual community, they examine who they are. then, they recognize how they want to be seen by others, and lastly, they show others how they want to be identified via dialogues, pictures, comments, and posts, among other virtual forms of expressions. “my own representation at dragster vc” described how participants portrayed themselves using words that make them stand out from others. 1 che guevara was one of the greatest marxist revolu tionaries in latin american history. the che symbol represents a countercultural rebellion and he is recognized for his pursuit of the transformation of the endemic poverty and alienation he witnessed. 189profile vol. 14, no. 2, october 2012. issn 1657-0790 (printed) 2256-5760 (online). bogotá, colombia. pages 181-194 efl teenagers’ social identity representation in a virtual learning community on facebook they represented their identity with “what makes individuals just that, individual” (riley, 2007, p. 87). others’ representation at dragster vc social identity is a quality that is attributed to an “individual human being by other human beings” (riley, 2007, p. 86). this means we need other people to tell us who we are and it is through interactions that people are able to portray themselves and create an image of others in a virtual community here. while involved in a community, it is our appearance in it that affects others’ opinions and influences how others perceive us. figure 5 illustrated the interaction between two students having a conversation about a song. this song was suggested by one of them in our group chat. it is called “pretty eyes” by alex goot. cortes expressed his dislike for the song, affirming, “i do not like ¬¬” using this “¬¬” eye emotion to express his aversion to the song. also, this symbol “¬¬” denoted that he found this particular song not worth hearing or watching, considering that an emoticon expresses the writer’s emotions using icons thus giving more meaning to plain text. figure 5. some students’ reactions to others’ comments in response, brayan cb replied using a different emoticon “.i.”, which literally means giving the middle finger to someone, to state his opinion about the song “pretty eyes”. also, he added: “this song is for people with good taste”. this statement showed how brayan cb perceived cortes as a teenager that did not have musical appreciation. it also let the other students know how cortes was recognized by him, showing other members in the group that they did not share their point of view about music. in other words, music appreciation was seen as different means of instrumentation, rhythm, lyrics and vocal styles that expressed efl students’ social identity. “these themes are reflected in the music not only lyrically, but through its instru mental composition and the social settings with which it is associated” (strickland & capodilupo, 2002). also, music tended to express defiance towards the opposite sex or feelings of romance, love, and sex, among others, as we could see in the previous example. brayan cb exposed his focus on romantic music with his “the desire to be loved, as well as the activity of raging hormones” in this stage of his life. this is in contrast to cortes who enjoyed defiant music such as rock, metal, and punk that reflected the “rejection of parental control” at home (strickland & capodilupo, 2002). interactions took place and comments about an issue were made by students and these comments established how other members portrayed others’ identities –in this case, about a song– and how through the comments they generated an image about the other. the self is social in its entirety and it is only from the study of social relations that one can truly understand how individuals are social selves and how their social life is the source of development of individuality in a social context (burkitt, 1991). when participants illustrated their likes, dislikes, opinions, agreements, disagreements, emotions, and feelings through dialogical universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras190 jiménez guamán communication with the others in our group, the students were reflecting their social selves and showing in those interactions their real persons (palloff & pratt, 2007). the students had the possibility of judging whether the representation of a participant was accurate to himself or not due to their interactions in the classroom and in our virtual community. in other words, if they wanted to be accepted, they must represent themselves according to the “real person” inside the online environment (palloff & pratt, 2007, p. 4). for example, students were asked to create their avatar and make it as similar to them as possible using an application called mego dev that allowed them to characterize their physical appearance and outfits. this exercise let students expose how they wanted to be characterized in the virtual community. it also gave the students the choice to accept or deny that representation according to their own perceptions about other members. when they step through the screen into virtual communities, they re-portray their identities on the other side of the looking glass. this re-portrayal was their cultural work in progress and the internet was another element of the computer culture that contributed to thinking about “identity as multiplicity” (palloff & pratt, 2007, p. 92). the fear of social rejection was very much alive among the participants, as can be seen in the example shown in figure 6. if students did not share appreciation for the musical band “slipknot”, those students would not have other members’ acceptance. however, a “like” for a musical band did not assure the others’ approval, as is illustrated on zebaztiian’s post. his post made evident how he perceived the other participants’ social identity in our group when he expressed his point of view about the others affirming: “howrah aghhh everybody likes slipknot and just doing it for fashion and nothing but claw”. figure 6. social rejection of the others the comment showed in figure 6 created a controversy among the participants. as polhemus (2000, cited in palloff & pratt, 2007) stated, students were able to give their points of view when they used personal forms of address, acknowledgment of others, expressions of feeling and humor, sharing, and the use of textual paralanguage symbols such as emoticons, font colors, different fonts, capitalization, and symbols or characters for expression in their post interventions. for example, when zebaztiian used the phrase “everybody likes slipknot” in his statement, he was recognizing all the members in the virtual community as well as characterizing them according to their musical taste. also, he expressed his dislike for this situation, using the word “claw2”. “claw” illustrated how frustrated he was feeling about the members who just liked “slipknot” because it was a fashionable band at that moment. it was evidenced 2 “claw” was used to express “se dan garra”, a popular expression in bogotá, colombia. it is used by teenager to mean that something is unfortunate, ridiculous and has poor taste. 191profile vol. 14, no. 2, october 2012. issn 1657-0790 (printed) 2256-5760 (online). bogotá, colombia. pages 181-194 efl teenagers’ social identity representation in a virtual learning community on facebook that their relationships were essential for passing on the lessons and their likes enabled them to join the community and gain others’ acceptance. in order to do this properly and efficiently, teenagers learn quickly from their peers, especially those who have more social power, are older, or more popular (baird, 2010). after his post, he used paralanguage in order to symbolize the middle finger “.i.” and all its connotations. this sign was intended to challenge the other members to defend themselves from his statement. according to zebaztiian, they just liked slipknot because of “fashion” and social acceptance in our group. we can also see how feli-p reacted to zebaztiian’s comment. feli-p completely disagreed with zebaztiian’s statement and wrote: “no true, we like rock and we don’t do it for fashion. we do it because we like it” (see figure 6). how “we” is employed in feli-p’s post showed the way he saw the other participants because he is putting himself in place of the others and is portraying himself as a mediator who represents all the members in the group who liked listening to “slipknot”. this evidences that adolescents have a strong desire to like the same type of music their friends like, and dislike the same type of music their friends dislike (tarrant, north, & hargreaves, 2000). teenagers want to identify themselves with a group and label that group as ‘cool’, while distancing themselves from another group identified as ‘uncool’; having musical taste similar to the in-group and dissimilar to the out-group aids in this association. this indicates that music preference may be determined by its “potential to serve a group differentiation function” (tarrant, north & hargreaves, 2002), which means that dragster had two sub-groups: the one who liked slipknot, rock, and consequently metal music, and another sub-group who enjoyed listening to other music, such as pop, reggeaton, salsa, and merengue, among others (semi-structured interview, april 4, 2011). subsequently, zebaztiian, feli-p, and brayan cb developed a dialogical communication around this particular issue in which each intervened expressing the way they saw others inside the community and how they wanted to be identified. for example, zebaz tiian stated, “the fact that one person started to like it in the course and now everybody listened to slipknot and the funniest thing is that it is not rock” (see figure 6). as can be seen in figure 6, when zebaztiian used the expression “now everybody heard slipknot”, he was making evident a situation that was happening in dragster vc that was influencing the participants’ taste in music. this situation led to aspects that made them part of the community because “it only needs someone to look at me for me to become what i am” (riley, 2007, p. 87). feli-p was recognized in a different form than what he wanted to reflect himself as in dragster virtual community. he declared: “first, there are people like me who had already listened to metal and on the other hand, metal music is derived from rock” (see figure 6). we could see in the previous comment, how “like me” was employed as a personal form by feli-p in order to identify his own self and defend his point of view about “slipknot” by exemplifying his personal experience. therefore, the central role of language is the relationship between the individual and the social; language not only defines institutional practices, but also serves to represent our sense of self and our “subjectivity” (weedon, 1987, p. 21). then, brayan cb joined their conversation and added: “it’s just the truth in the classroom there are many people without the personality!! that listens to some music bands only for the social acceptance. that stinks!!!” (see figure 6). brayan cb supported zebaztiian’s comment. he also admitted that “many people3” enjoyed listening to the musical band 3 it refers to most of the members that take part in dragster virtual community. universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras192 jiménez guamán “slipknot” because being accepted in the group offered possibilities for an enhanced range of identity options in the future (kanno & norton, 2003) and it fulfilled the impression of management needs; specifically, to please others and to create a particular self-image (norton, 2000) while involved in a community. language allows members to negotiate their sense of self with and across different sites at dif ferent points in time and also to gain access to or to be denied access to a group, which gives learners the opportunity to speak up (norton, 1997). conclusions after the analysis of the data, i can state that the students portrayed their social identity through a dialogical relationship between the self and the others using their foreign language in this interaction. in other words, the teenagers’ social identity representation emerged from communication. each student reflects himself through pictures, posts, and comments in our learning community, illustrating the way individual learners want other members to see them regarding their own representation. teenagers reflected their identity first individually and then collectively, which means they exposed themselves to others and then the other participants decided if they thought the representations students portrayed were accurate. finally, they decided to accept or to deny membership in the group. consequently, social identity is reflected when students become part of the group and have a sense of belonging to the community, shown through students’ interaction and how often they log in and participate inside the community. students’ active participation allows other members to recognize what manner each of the participants portrays themselves using unique characteristics that make them different from the rest of the group. students showed these representations via profile pictures, photos posted on the group’s wall, narrative posts, comments, and dialogical interactions, among others in the community. consequently, their portrayals evidenced the students’ social relationships and their “i/me” for denoting their own identity. students used “you” in order to indicate other members’ identity and the use of “we” to recognize themselves as part of the community. their interactions allowed teenagers to portray their individual and social selves in the learning community. therefore, these images were created through dialogical interactions that were evaluated, accepted, or denied by other members in the group. pedagogical implications this study contributes to the academic community by providing a description of teenagers’ social identities as foreign language learners when using methodologies that allow class and virtual work to become joined or merged. teachers need to know who their students are and how they represent themselves in a virtual learning community during their language learning processes. the use of narratives in their dialogical interactions allowed me to inquire about participants’ social identities from an academic perspective. their interactions were used as a tool to motivate participants to portray themselves and recognize other members in the group, thereby exposing their own identities and the identities of others in both oral and written forms. moreover, the exploration of social identities in a learning community on facebook revealed aspects concerning teaching and learning as a foreign language representative of the online process. the role of teachers and classmates in the representation of their social identity was evident through the development of e-activities. thus, this study encourages teachers to include reflection of 193profile vol. 14, no. 2, october 2012. issn 1657-0790 (printed) 2256-5760 (online). bogotá, colombia. pages 181-194 efl teenagers’ social identity representation in a virtual learning community on facebook their pedagogical practices. teachers should be more aware of new theories of language teaching and learning and implement virtual learning communities as an important part in the development of their classes, given that these new techniques are related to students’ interests and different learning styles. being aware of the teaching and learning particularities seems to not be enough. teachers also have a role in the interactions that occur within the classroom and in the virtual learning space. teachers should promote the use of virtual spaces because these communities allow students to portray their social identity and at the same time have different experiences as language learners by providing more contact and practice with the foreign language. this leads to another implication, which has been long been discussed: making the teaching of english meaningful. this implies showing students that english can be used for real purposes, not just as a subject to be studied per se. references ashmore, r. d. (1997). self and identity, me’s and we’s: forms and functions of social identities. new york, ny: oxford university press. baird, a. (2010, march 16). in teen music choices, anxiety rules. scientific american, 18(51). retrieved from: www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?id=in teen-music-choices-fear-rules boone, j. e., gordon-larsen, p., adair, l. s., & popkin, b. m. (2007) screen time and physical activity during adolescence: longitudinal effects on obesity in young adulthood. international journal of behavioral nutrition and physical activity, 4(1), 26-35. burns, a. (2005). collaborative action research for english language teachers. cambridge: cambridge university press. burkitt, i. (1991). social selves: theories of social formation of personality. curriculum social, 39(3), 1-215. castells, m. (2001). the internet galaxy. location: oxford university press. colegio nacional nicolás esguerra. (2011). plan educativo institucional pei. manual de convivencia del colegio. bogotá: consejo directivo del colegio nacional nicolás esguerra. deaux, k., & philogène, g. (2001). representation of the social. oxford: blackwell publisher. dey, i. (1999). grounding grounded theory. london: academic press. domínguez, d., beaulieu, a., estalella, a., gómez, e., schnettler, b., & read, r. (2007). virtual ethnography. forum qualitative sozialforschung / forum: qualitative social research, 8(3). retrieved from http://www.qualitative-research.net/index.php/fqs/ issue/view/8 freeman, m. a., & capper, j. m. (1999). educational in novation: hype, heresies and hopes. asynchronous learning networks magazine, 3(2). retrieved from: http://sloanconsortium.org/alnweb/magazine/maga_ v3_i2.htm garrison, d. r., & anderson, t. (2005). e-learning in the 21st century: a framework for research and practice. new york, ny: routledge falmer. harasim, l., hiltz, s., teles, l., & turoff, m. (1996). learning networks: a field guide to teaching and learning online. the computing teacher, 22(5), 66-99. hine, c. (2000). virtual ethnography. london: sage. hinkel, e. (2011). handbook of research in second language teaching and learning (2nd ed.). new york, ny: routledge. hopkins, d. (2002). a teacher’s guide to classroom research. maidenhood: open university press. hyland, k. (2002). teaching and researching writing. london: pearson education. jørgensen, m., & phillips, l. (2002). analysis as a theory and method. london: sage. jenkins, r. (2008). social identity (3rd ed.). abingdon, oxon: routledge. universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras194 jiménez guamán kanno, y., & norton, b. (2003). imagined communities and educational possibilities. journal of language identity and education, 2(4), 241-249. lenhart, a., madden, m., & hitlin, p. (2005). teens and technology: youth are leading the transition to a fully wired and mobile nation. retrieved from www.pewinternet.org/~/media/files/reports/2005/pip_teens_ tech_july2005web.pdf.pdf merriam, s. (1998). qualitative research and case study applications in education. san francisco, ca: josseybass publishers. norton, b. (1997). language, identity and the ownership of english. tesol quarterly, 31(1), 409-429. norton, b. (2000). identity and language learning: gender, ethnicity and educational change. harlow, england: longman education. palloff, r., & pratt, k. (2007). building online learning communities: effective strategies for the virtual classroom (2nd ed.). san francisco, ca: jossey-bass. riley, p. (2007). language, culture and identity: an ethnolinguistic perspective. new york, ny: continuum. strickland, s., & capodilupo, g. (2002). musical preferences. iceberg. retrieved from https://wesfiles.wesleyan.edu/courses/musc108/2002fafin/mag/articles/ features/preferences.html tajfel, h. (2010). social identity and intergroup relations. new york, ny: cambridge university press. tarrant, m., north, a. c., & hargreaves, d. j. (2000). english and american adolescents’ reasons for listening to music. psychology of music, 28(1), 166-173. weedon, c. (1987) feminist practice and poststructuralist theory. oxford: blackwell publishers. about the author laura verónica jiménez guamán holds a bachelor in teaching english as a foreign language from universidad distrital francisco josé de caldas (colombia). she currently works at the same university, at ilud (instituto de lenguas de la universidad distrital) and belongs to estupoli (estudios críticos de políticas educativas – critical studies on educational policies) research group. she has also worked in high schools as an efl virtual teacher. 95profile vol. 14, no. 2, october 2012. issn 1657-0790 (printed) 2256-5760 (online). bogotá, colombia. pages 95-112 understanding beliefs, teachers’ beliefs and their impact on the use of computer technology hacia la compresión de las creencias, convicciones del educador y su impacto en el uso de la tecnología héctor alejandro galvis* universidad de la salle & universidad de los andes, colombia this theoretical review addresses the construct of beliefs in education and english as a foreign language, and their impact when integrating technology. a thorough definition and categorization of teachers’ beliefs will be provided. in addition, studies conducted in various educational settings examining the effects of teachers’ beliefs and the use of technology will be reviewed. additional information on models attempting to explain human behavior and the use of computers will be presented as well in order to discuss these research results in light of local efforts made to solve the gap of integrating technology through the computadores para educar program in colombian public schools. key words: english as a foreign language, teachers’ beliefs, using technology. este artículo gira en torno al concepto y la categorización de las creencias sobre la educación y la enseñanza del inglés como lengua extranjera, y se estudia cómo la tecnología incide en dichas creencias cuando esta se integra. además de revisar varios estudios acerca de los efectos de dichas creencias respecto al uso de la tecnología, se presentan tanto los modelos investigativos y estudios que han intentando describir el comportamiento humano frente al uso de computadores como sus resultados. estas investigaciones son relevantes para el programa computadores para educar, con el que se busca combatir la falta de acceso a la tecnología en colombia, y beneficiar a los colegios públicos. palabras clave: creencias del educador, inglés como lengua extrajera, uso de la tecnología. * e-mail: alejandro.galvis.hg@gmail.com this article was received on august 17, 2011, and accepted on june 26, 2012. universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras96 galvis introduction computers and the internet are becoming both widely used and widely researched in the language classroom. computer technology in education is a new trend that seems to offer many advantages compared to traditional instruction. specifically, butler-pascoe and wiburg (2003) state that the use of computer technology fosters interaction and presents students’ language in a graphically and linguistically enhanced manner. also, computer technology can be used for task or problem-solving activities. likewise, chapelle (2003) states that using computer and internet technology can enhance second language acquisition due to the differences as to how input and information processing takes places through the use of computer technology, not to mention the benefits attributed to distance education in terms of mobility and efficacy. unfortunately, the desire to use technology is not always as successful as wished due to first-order barriers hindering access to computers and the internet. in fact, local efforts have been in action in order to fight the inevitable digital divide inherent to technology in education through the computadores para educar (cpe) program since 2002, in which thousands of computers have been collected from both the public and private sector in order to fight the lack of access to technology in lowincome and rural communities in the colombian territory. cep not only collects, but also refurbishes and distributes computers to public schools. since computers are acquiring a decisive role in education and society in general, the implementation of computer technology and its success has become of particular interest, but its success does not merely depend only on abundant economic investments. in fact, in education, it has been found that final users (i.e. educators) have an influential role in the successful implemen tation of technology. one of the factors affecting the implementation of computer technology is educators’ own teaching profile, which refers to how an educator’s performance fits into a pedagogical theoretical trend. mainly, teaching profiles have been described to be either traditional or constructivist; tondeur, hermans, van braak, and valcke (2008) have found that traditional teaching profiles are associated with low-computer use, whereas constructivist teaching profiles, in which students take an active role in learning, are associated with higher computer use. surprisingly, researchers have found that teachers holding both a combination of traditional and constructivist teaching profiles represented the highest degree of computer use. in a similar study, windschitl and sahl (2002) found that teachers’ beliefs about the potential of their students, about teaching, and, particularly, the role of computers in education had a decisive impact on the success or failure of implementing technology. in addition, windschitl and sahl found that even if teachers abandoned the idea of implementing computer technology in the classroom, there was an a posteriori effect on their teaching practices, leading such practices to become more constructive as compared to before the use of computer technology in the classroom. beliefs are a major influencing factor in many areas of education (borg, 2003), and technology is not exempt from this influencing phenomenon. in fact, teachers’ beliefs have proved to be able to challenge government and school efforts to implement computer technology. such beliefs have often served to be a deterrent in the use of computer technology in the classroom (ertmer, 2005). for this reason, the main purpose of this paper is to provide a general overview of the effects of teachers’ beliefs in the use of technology in the language classroom and some local considerations to bear in mind when encouraging educators to use technology. due to the scarcity of studies in the area, 97profile vol. 14, no. 2, october 2012. issn 1657-0790 (printed) 2256-5760 (online). bogotá, colombia. pages 95-112 understanding beliefs, teachers’ beliefs and their impact on the use of computer technology this paper will present both studies examining the effects of teachers’ beliefs in using technology in general and in language education. it is hoped that this will bring to light the reasons favoring or inhibiting the development of positive and negative beliefs teachers hold about the use of computer technology, and how administrators and educational public policy need to address the complexity of beliefs in order to succeed in the implementation of computer technology in schools. this paper consists of three sections. section one will provide a review of the various attempts to define the construct of beliefs, plus a detailed explanation of the type of beliefs first identified by rokeach (1968). section two will present a review of studies examining the effect of beliefs in computer technology use in both general and language education. section three will explore the interaction of beliefs, attitudes, intentions, and action. for this purpose, the venkatesh, morris, davis, and davis’ (2003) “unified theory of acceptance and use of technology” together with lawrence’s (2001) model of teachers’ beliefs will be explained in detail in order to gain insight into beliefs being not as an isolated construct, but as one interacting with both internal and external factors. section four will provide concluding remarks and recommendations for further research in the field of implementation of computer technology culture, and identity in relation to computer use. beliefs pajares (1992) presents beliefs as a messy construct, and one difficult to disentangle from similar concepts. pajares states beliefs usually overlap with close psychological terms such as knowledge, attitude, opinion and ideology. in this perspective, a definition for beliefs is “at best a game of player’s choice” (p. 309). an early attempt to systematize the concept of beliefs was introduced by rokeach (1968), who provided a comprehensive model of individuals and their belief system. rokeach’s (1968) model consists of the fol lowing four elements: existential vs. non-existential beliefs, shared vs. unshared beliefs, derived vs. underived beliefs, and beliefs concerning matter of taste. existential and non-existential beliefs are defined by rokeach as those beliefs that are related to existence in the physical and social world; shared vs. unshared beliefs relate to those shared with others; derived vs. underived beliefs refer to those beliefs internalized and not from direct encounter with a particular object. finally, the author defines beliefs that are a matter of taste as those beliefs representing a matter of choice in an arbitrary way. consequently, rokeach states that existential vs. non-existential, and shared and unshared beliefs are those having functional connections and consequences on other beliefs. furthermore, in rokeach’s (1968) model a complementary categorization of beliefs is presented as follows: primitive beliefs (type a), primitive beliefs (type b), authority beliefs (type c), derived beliefs (type d), and inconsequential beliefs (type e). to better understand rokeach’s (1968) model, it is important to draw a line that separates changeable and unchangeable beliefs. changeable beliefs in rokeach’s (1968) models are referred to as primitive beliefs. these contain a 100% subjective intrapersonal agreement. rokeach explains that these beliefs originate from direct encounters with determined objects, and have a “taken-for-granted character” (p. 6). such beliefs are not open to discussion or change, and they belong to the most inner-core type of beliefs. it is worth noting here that prior to this categorization, rokeach clarified central beliefs as precisely those that are not bound to change due to their incontrovertible nature. rokeach also warns that these central beliefs (type a) are also associated with universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras98 galvis self-identity and any disturbance affecting these can cause instability within an individual. some examples of central beliefs are exemplified in statements such as “i believe this is my mother”, “i believe this is my name” (p. 6). an additional type of belief is primitive beliefs consensus (type b). rokeach (1968) explains that these beliefs only justify their existence within an individual. that is, no external factor could affect their raison d’être. rokeach describes these primitive beliefs as being impervious in nature. an example of type b belief is “i believe… no matter what”. in addition to beliefs type a (plus rokeach, 1968 presents authority beliefs type c), which are described as those originating in the different spheres of society. rokeach explains that family, class, peer groups, religious and political groups, and country itself shape authoritative beliefs. in the same line, derived beliefs (type d) are presented. these beliefs are derived through second hand experiences, originating from an “institutionalized ideology” (p. 10). rokeach states that individuals adopt or reject these beliefs by balancing between their personal identity and the validity of the belief itself. that is, individuals accept or reject beliefs depending on how well they identify with them and form a sense of “group identity” (p. 11). finally, rokeach presents inconsequential beliefs (type e). these beliefs originate from indirect experiences with an object. rokeach explains that if these beliefs are changed, they have few implications for other beliefs. this contrasts notably with both type a and type b beliefs, since these types of beliefs cannot be changed at all. classifying beliefs may facilitate understanding but not defining beliefs themselves. in principle, there is no agreement in the literature as to where the boundaries of the scope “beliefs” originate and finish. because of this, finding commonalities among the different definitions appears to be easier than isolating each individual definition. for this purpose, i am going to refer here to the commonalities found in the work of the different researchers such as cuthbert, sigel, rokeach, and brown and coney (as cited in pajares, 1992). pajares states that one of the most common distinctions made between beliefs and knowledge is that beliefs are associated with subjectivity and emotion, whereas knowledge tends to be more empirical. further, sigel (as cited in pajares, 1992) adds that beliefs are the mental constructs of experience often condensed and integrated into schemata. similarly, brown and coney (as cited in pajares, 1992) state that the main function of a belief is guiding and determining behavior. finally, harvey (as cited in pajares, 1992) asserts that beliefs appear to each “individual’s representation of reality that has enough validity, for a partic ular purpose under any circumstance” (abelson, as cited in pajares 1992, p. 131). another definition of beliefs is presented by alexander and dochy (1995) who obtained a definition of beliefs by interviewing individuals from the u.s. and the netherlands. results suggest that individuals understand beliefs as being part of a level of perception, rather than constituting know ledge or being part of a tangible reality. these results also support brown and coney’s (as cited in pajares, 1992) differentiation between beliefs and knowledge. nevertheless, it appears to be problematic with what was found by nisbett and ross (as cited in pajares, 1992), namely, considering beliefs to be a sub-category of knowledge and not a different isolated concept itself. finally, alexander, murphy, guan and murphy (1998) provide crosscultural research results from students and teachers in the u.s. and singapore. their results agree with alexander, murphy guan and murphy ,s results in that they classify beliefs as subjective and knowledge as more factual. 99profile vol. 14, no. 2, october 2012. issn 1657-0790 (printed) 2256-5760 (online). bogotá, colombia. pages 95-112 understanding beliefs, teachers’ beliefs and their impact on the use of computer technology self-efficacy beliefs bandura (1986) explains that circumstances represent variables of success or failure in individuals. in this perspective, an individual possessing determined skills may perform successfully or not in certain situations. bandura explains that not only do individuals possess knowledge and skills to perform certain actions, but also they possess judgments in their ability to either have success or failure performing such actions. these judgments are referred to as “self-efficacy beliefs.” self-efficacy beliefs as conceived by bandura (1986) are reaffirmed by four factors: en active attainment, vicarious experience, verbal per suasion, and physiological states. enactive attainment refers to the direct experiences in which an individual has obtained success in the mastery of new experiences that are reinforced by conti nuous experience; vicarious experience refers to the second-hand experiences that can either foster or deter the success of one’s beliefs in the power of achieving a determined objective; verbal per suasion deals with the ability of awakening the beliefs that individuals possess certain skills that they are capable of using them. bandura cautions that as much as these beliefs can act as a positive agent, they can also become a negative factor if they are not realistic. in this case, they would lead to failure and most likely future avoidance. the final type of factor is physiological states which are the effect of elevated, adverse emotions on performance, usually represented in the form of high arousal. teachers’ educational beliefs the first attempt to define educational beliefs was made by pajares (1992). pajares acknowledges that the main weakness of educational beliefs is that these are context-free and broad. despite this, pajares mentions four main categories of educational beliefs, namely, teacher efficacy (affecting student performance); epistemological beliefs (regarding knowledge); teacher’s or students’ performance (regarding the different motivational spheres), and self-efficacy (confidence when performing a task). porter and freeman (as cited in pajares, 1992) include teachers’ beliefs as a sub-category of their concept “orientations to teaching”. according to porter and freeman, teachers’ beliefs encompass beliefs about related educational components such as the role of schools in society, beliefs about students, and the role of teachers in the education process. porter and freeman’s definition seems to be consistent with the research results of windschitl and sahl (2002) about the effects of teachers’ beliefs on implementing computer technology in a school context in that the different types of beliefs teachers had in the aforementioned study had to deal with most, if not all, of the components of educational beliefs presented by porter and freeman (as cited in pajares, 1992). the second attempt to define educational beliefs is found in tondeur, hermans, braak, and valcke’s (2008) work. the authors included more recent studies that defined teachers’ beliefs. the first of these authors is richardson (as cited in tondeur et al., 2008) who states that teachers’ beliefs are the “psychological understandings, premises or propositions felt to be true” (p. 2543). finally, denessen (as cited in tondeur et al., 2008) proposes that such types of beliefs could be specifically limited to the domain of education. in addition, campbell, kyriakides, muijs and robison; kagan; nespor and pajares (as cited in tondeur et al., 2008) agree that teachers’ beliefs are considered relatively stable and have a filtering role for new knowledge and meaning. finally, lowick (as cited in tondeur et al., 2008) notes that educational beliefs underlie teachers’ planning, teachers’ decisions and behavior in the classroom. universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras100 galvis clark (1988) addresses what in terms of pajares (1992) would be educational beliefs, as “preconceptions and implicit theories” (p. 6). clark collected the work of several scholars, and conceptualized beliefs as the implicit theories that teachers’ develop and hold about their students, about the target subject matter, and about roles and responsibilities. moreover, clark defines implicit theories as tending to be “eclectic aggregations of cause-effect propositions from many sources, rules of thumb, generalizations drawn from personal experience, beliefs, values, biases and prejudices” (p. 6). last but not least, richards and lockhart (1994) agree with clark (1998) and lowick (as cited in tondeur et al., 2008) in that beliefs represent a major source of decision-making in education. richards and lockhart, however, state that beliefs can be both objective and subjective. contrary to the subjective and commonly accepted notion of beliefs, richards and lockhart clearly state that beliefs can originate from academic and empirical concepts as well. as a final note, the authors emphasize that even experience in teaching turns into beliefs operating under the ‘i have done before, i’ll do it again’ formula. to conclude, from the definitions above, one could state that teachers’ educational beliefs are understood as the different educational phenomena that have an effect on teachers’ decision making in the classroom. a possible weakness of stating the above is already pointed out by campbell, kyriakides, muijs and robison; kagan; nespor and pajares (as cited in tondeur et al., 2008), acknowledging that educational beliefs are relatively stable, but unfortunately this is not explained in detail. also, it must be not ignored that even if clark’s categorization of educational beliefs appears to be more accurate, it still reflects what pajares (1992) calls a “too context-free” (p. 316) definition in which contextual variables are excluded. teachers’ beliefs and the use of technology in education in the next section, a set of studies examining teachers’ decisions about using technology will be reviewed. these studies were not conducted in language classroom settings; rather, they were conducted in different contexts and on different levels of education spanning from schools to universities. the first study was conducted by windschitl and sahl (2002), which examines teachers’ beliefs about technology, their own students, and ‘good teaching’. this study presents subsequent information about how beliefs have an effect on both the use of technology and teaching practices. this study is based on the premise that teaching is a social activity that is influenced by contexts and institutional cultures (little; minick, as cited in windschitl & sahl, 2002). the findings suggest that the participants’ beliefs about their students, their beliefs about what good teaching constitutes, and the role of technology in their students’ lives set the boundaries of feasibility and appropriateness in the classroom. moreover, findings suggest that the implementation of technology in schools is rather a complex issue that has to be solved from the teachers’ repertoire of beliefs. therefore, such a repertoire of beliefs should be earnestly considered. a similar study conducted by steel (2006) reports on the use of web technologies in higher education by experienced professors in areas of science and humanities. beliefs were examined from two perspectives: beliefs about teaching and beliefs about web technologies. results of this study suggest that teachers’ beliefs are clearly reflected in the web-based technology project the teachers designed for their classes and how they implemented it. in fact, from the three participants the following could be observed: • participant 1 created a website project in which information was provided only to students. 101profile vol. 14, no. 2, october 2012. issn 1657-0790 (printed) 2256-5760 (online). bogotá, colombia. pages 95-112 understanding beliefs, teachers’ beliefs and their impact on the use of computer technology • participant 2 created a website in which students had a more active role. • participant 3 created a website that allowed for student and teacher interaction. steel (2006) concludes from the findings above that teachers’ beliefs are mirrored in how technology is used. steel also states that these results reinforce bates and poole’s (as cited in steel, 2006) claims about the relationship between choices, use of technology, beliefs about knowledge and how students learn. teachers’ beliefs and use of technology in language teaching the following studies are specific to language teaching. these studies examined the role of teachers’ beliefs, as well as the obstacles hindering the use of computer technology in the language classroom. perhaps the most well-known of these studies is lam’s (2000). lam examined teachers’ beliefs and proposed a dichotomy between an excessive desire of institutions to use technology referred to as technophilia, and a presupposed rejection on the teachers’ behalf to use technology referred to as technophobia. lam found that her participants knew about the advantages of using technology, and that their personal convictions about the use of technology in the classroom highly influenced their use of computer technology. lam concludes that the widespread misconception about teachers not using technology in the language classroom is due to their personal beliefs and conceptions and not to technophobia, because in her study teachers were computer-literate, but did not necessarily use computer technology because their beliefs about technology’s usefulness were that it was limited. this leads lam to believe that institutions may be suffering from unnecessary technophilia, but of particular attention in this study is that factors associated with the lack of use of technology could possibly be teachers’ ages and types of students. in fact, lam noted that teachers actively using computers were in the age range between 25 and 35 years old, whereas the teachers not reporting any computer technology use were 35 and up. results also revealed that teachers’ high or low experience did not differ in the use of computer technology. a similar study conducted by yang and huang (2008) in the taiwanese-school context aimed at understanding what attitudes and behaviors teachers developed while striving to integrate technology in efl teaching. results suggest that inexperienced teachers struggled more to implement technology than did experienced teachers. this contradicts lam’s (2000) findings about age, but it simultaneously reinforces the importance of integrating technology in teacher education programs as done by park and ertmer (2008) in order to foster more familiarity and perhaps avoid the struggle that was detected in yang and huang’s study. another important factor facilitating the use of technology in efl was computer literacy. yang and huang (2008) reported that more computer literate teachers were found to score higher in being more liable to cooperate with other teachers and being more capable of refocusing. that is, they were more adept at implementing and troubleshooting technology. finally, it was found that teachers holding more positive beliefs about technology were more likely to put more effort into integrating it, and that lack of information and training among teachers were factors that significantly deterred the inte gration of computer technology. the results of the yang and huang (2008) study call attention to the importance of considering teachers’ backgrounds when implementing technology, possessing well-supported school environments, having positive beliefs about technology, and paying attention to both first and second-order universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras102 galvis barriers (brickner, 1995). furthermore, this study proposes that in order to change second-order barriers, teachers should be provided with further information about technology, incentives to integrate technology, and clearer explanations and demonstrations of the use of technology in the teaching and learning of efl. models explaining users’ beliefs and intentions toward computer technology the studies presented above have given more reasons to assert that beliefs are a crucial factor to address when integrating technology in both general and language education. in light of this, ertmer (2005) has acknowledged that teachers’ beliefs are in fact the next issue to address on the agenda when it comes to integrating technology; however, there are more questions than answers in regard to the nature of teachers’ beliefs, their origin, and their relationships to beliefs about technology, among other important questions. one model that explains how teachers’ beliefs originate is presented by lawrence (2001). lawrence bases his premises on a previous common model that examines the relationship between intentions and actions, namely, “the theory of planned behavior” (ajzen, 1991). lawrence (2001) posits that a system examining the origin of teachers’ beliefs has two starting points: “the perceptions of educational effectiveness of the innovation” and “attitudes towards that innovation” (p. 45). this dichotomy, explains lawrence, consists of a cognitive element assigned to perceptions, and an emotional one assigned to attitudes. considering the above, lawrence (2001) explains that the dichotomy of perception and attitudes toward innovation adds to three additional elements in the model, which are: perceived control (or the extent to which teachers think they are going to control the innovation), perceived expectations (or the effect of innovation as perceived socially), and past experiences, which refer to how the innovation “influences a teacher’s core perceptions about an innovation’s effectiveness, while at the same time becoming part of the more affective, evaluative attitudes towards the innovation” (p. 45). furthermore, lawrence (2001) adds that the interaction of these elements should not neglect the fact that confidence and access also play a major role in that they complement high levels of motivation in teachers, and that with the absence of confidence and access, innovation could fail to be put into practice. finally, lawrence concludes that the interaction of the elements hereby exposed can lead to understanding the effects of teachers’ beliefs when using technology in the classroom. a more comprehensive model that examines the relationship among several demographic variables such as age, gender, experience as well as beliefs, and the effect of such variables on in tentions of using technology is “the unified theory of acceptance and use of technology” (utaut) proposed by venkatesh et al. (2003). this theory does not relate specifically to education, rather it has been applied to the corporate world. the theory is a compilation of eight previous models that have attempted to explain user intentions to use computer technology, one of which is ajzen’s (1991) theory of planned behavior. after simultaneous empirical validation of the eight models, venkatesh et al. found that the following four elements play a significant role in all of the models: performance expectancy, effort expectancy, social influence, and facilitation of conditions. it is worth clarifying here that each of these elements represents a mode of belief which will be explained later in this section. further, venkatesh et al. state that self-efficacy, anxiety, and attitude, although present, do not play a significant role in isolated 103profile vol. 14, no. 2, october 2012. issn 1657-0790 (printed) 2256-5760 (online). bogotá, colombia. pages 95-112 understanding beliefs, teachers’ beliefs and their impact on the use of computer technology situations, but only when they interact with other variables. consequently, such variables are not considered in their theory. venkatesh et al. (2003) focus on the four most significant elements in predicting intention in using technology. the first of these elements is the belief of performance expectancy, which is “the degree to which an individual believes that using the system will help him or her to attain gains in job performance” (p. 447). according to the researchers, performance expectancy has been found to be the most influential predictor of intention using technology in both voluntary and mandatory settings (p. 447) and this has been the case with other models proposed. likewise, they explain that other variables play an important role as well in intention. for instance, men appear to be more likely to enjoy a task-oriented use of computer technology than women. regarding this differentiation, venkatesh et al. suggest that biological factors by no means play a role; rather, it appears that these types of differences are the results of shaping schemata during the socialization process of individuals (p. 447). finally, the researchers state that age seems to play an important role in that extrinsic motivation posed by rewards in the work-force can have a greater effect on younger individuals. by the same token, venkatesh et al. (2003) explain that the second most influential difference is effort expectancy; the latter is the degree of comfort that a user experiences with a computer system. once again, venkatesh et al. highlight that gender plays an important role in women in both mandatory and voluntary settings. additionally, venkatesh et al. identify different periods in which effort expectancy is more significant, granting the first periods of approaching a computer system the most relevance, and the post-periods a low level of importance. similarly, as in performance expectancy, age appears to be significant in that older populations struggle more with more complex input and information attention on task (plude & hoyer, as cited in venkatesh et al., 2003). another aspect addressed in the venkatesh et al. (2003) study is social influence. this refers to the concern individuals have when they are perceived using technology. venkatesh et al. found that social influence is not significant at all in voluntary contexts; nevertheless, differences are found in mandatory ones. moreover, the researchers explain that social influence has three main sub-divisions which are compliance, internalization, identifi cation. compliance refers to simply using a computer system due to the social pressure on the individual to do so, whereas internalization and identification refer to the extent to which social influence has an effect on individual’s schemata and belief structure. gender differences in social influence have demonstrated that women are bound to be affected more by social influence, and this appears to impact negatively their intention when using new technology. (venkatesh et al., 2003, p. 452). the last element identified in venkatesh et al.,s (2003) research is the facilitation of conditions. this is defined as the set of beliefs supporting the use of a computer system. a common example would be an adequate infrastructure. venkatesh et al. clarify that facilitating conditions only influence behavior and intention when used simultaneously with effort expectancy. besides, the authors state that facilitation of conditions plays a more significant role when they are measured simultaneously with experience of the user facing a system and age. to conclude, venkatesh et al. (2003) acknow ledge that further research is required in understanding the influence of age on computer use. they speculate that the differences in age and adeptness in using technology may become blurry and temporary, especially with younger generations that have been raised in the digital age. universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras104 galvis this leads venkatesh et al. to state that computer literacy should be another variable of interest to understand it as a factor influencing intentions in computer technology as well as the socio-cultural background that users bring with them when first approaching a specific computer system. similarly, venkatesh et al. (2003) state that the system characteristics, self-efficacy, levels of voluntariness, as well as the particular expectation of each organization regarding the use of computer technology are other aspects to examine in future research. venkatesh et al. assert that other important aspects that future models should look into are productivity, job satisfaction, commitment and other performance oriented constructs (p. 469) and how these are altered (or not) by the implementation of computer technology. discussion the results obtained from different research studies reiterate that teachers’ educational beliefs play a decisive role when integrating technology in the curriculum. for example, in the windschitl and sahl study (2002), beliefs about students and teaching determined the success of the use of laptop computers in the classroom. in addition, steel (2006) found that teachers’ beliefs about teaching and teaching profiles were reflected in the type of activities teachers developed for their classes. bearing this in mind, the research supports the notions that teachers’ beliefs are behind the reasons as to why teachers use or do not use technology in the language classroom. this is congruent with what ertmer (2005) states about the need of examining teachers’ beliefs in order to determine specifically how beliefs influence technology use. ertmer suggests that teachers’ beliefs be exposed explicitly in education or professional development programs while introducing new information into the teachers’ beliefs system. furthermore, ertmer proposes that teachers’ beliefs using technology can be changed through the following steps: “a) personal experiences b) vicarious experiences c) social-cultural influences” (ertmer, 2005, pp. 32-34). (further work on changing teachers’ beliefs and teacher change, and problems facing beliefs can be seen in: ertmer, 1999; ma, lai, williams, & prejean, 2008; ertmer & ottenbreit-leftwich, 2010; richardson, 1998; apple computer inc., 1990a, 1990b; dwyer, ringstaff & sandholtz, 1991; dexter, anderson & becker, 1999; hargreaves, 1994; barret, haslam, lee & ellis, 2005; chan 2007. also, see raths, 2001, for the ethics involved in changing beliefs). regarding personal experiences, ertmer (2005) states that gradual change should be encouraged among teachers. she recommends using simple technology tasks to begin changing teachers’ beliefs while questioning their own beliefs, “making assumptions explicit and using classroom as space for discussion and inquiry” (ertmer, 2005, p. 33). ertmer also states that no pressure should be exerted on teachers to change their teaching approaches and beliefs about technologies because this can bring about reluctance on their behalf. the final element proposed by ertmer (2005) is vicarious experiences. she states that vicarious experiences are when teachers observe other peers doing the same activities using technology so that the observers can improve their self-efficacy and be motivated. schunk (as cited in ertmer, 2005) suggests that these types of experiences should serve two purposes: informational and motivational. furthermore, this seems to agree with bandura’s (1986) definition and importance of self-efficacy in that vicarious experiences are a source of fos tering self-efficacy. however, venkatesh et al. (2003) found in their research that self-efficacy does not play a direct role on intention when isolated, but when mediated by effort expectancy (p. 455). therefore, the role of both vicarious experiences 105profile vol. 14, no. 2, october 2012. issn 1657-0790 (printed) 2256-5760 (online). bogotá, colombia. pages 95-112 understanding beliefs, teachers’ beliefs and their impact on the use of computer technology after venkatesh et al.’s research appears to hang loosely as a predictor of intention. nevertheless, one wonders if it should be completely put aside, or if it should be included as teachers advance more in the use of technology. what it is known from venkatesh et al.’s research is that self-efficacy does not directly affect intention. finally, ertmer’s (2005) model to address teachers’ beliefs states that socio-cultural influences should foster environments in which teachers can obtain support from other peers by means of public conversations, small communities and ongoing technological and pedagogical support from schools. venkatesh et al. (2003) found that certain socio-cultural variables such as gender and age have an effect on intention. nevertheless, this happens only under the conditions of mandatory settings; that is, settings where the use of technology is not a choice, but a requirement. venkatesh et al. have raised interesting questions with their results on social influence on behavior, since they state that social influence is significant only during the first stages of computer use, but as time goes by, this factor becomes insignificant. further, venkatesh et al. (2003) point out that social influence has mainly three ways in which it affects the intentions of an individual: compliance, internalization, and identification (p. 452). the authors explain that internalization and identification are two crucial stages because it is during these stages than individuals “alter their intention in response to social pressure” (p. 452). thus, it is paramount that administrators learn to identify such stages bearing in mind that they could either mean, simply, obedience because of the pressure imposed, that is, compliance, or an actual change in the individual’s belief structure. (for work on stages of technology integration see dwyer, ringstaff, & sandholtz, 1991; christensen & knezek, 1999; russell, 1995; violato, mariniz, & hunter, 1989; dias & atkinson, 2001; toledo, 2005). one could speculate from the results of the different studies reviewed here that adminis trators may profit better from a compulsory approach when attempting to integrate technology in the curriculum. it is known from other research (park & ertmer, 2008) that exposure to tech nology does not necessarily result in ultimate usage in pre-service teachers. still, questions remain as to whether pre-service teachers feel they have more freedom to choose, whereas in-service teachers do not. in any case, caution must be used when making the use of technology compulsory because as zhao and cziko (as cited in ertmer, 2005) put it, teachers can show more resistance if something is imposed upon them. integrating technology in the classroom definitely needs to incorporate the teacher’s belief system, past experiences (lawrence, 2001) and individual differences based on gender and age. gender and age from the research results appear to be problematic. in principle, based on the research results provided by venkatesh et al. (2003), women are put in a more vulnerable position, and older individuals appear to be less motivated by rewards, whereas younger individuals seem to find motivation in this. nevertheless, venkatesh et al.’s research does not refer to any multicultural differences that may play a role in the use of technology. in fact, yang and huang’s (2008) exploration of teachers’ use of technology has reported that younger teachers are precisely those who are less likely to use technology. it should not be for gotten that yang and huang’s study was conducted in taiwan, and this obviously implies cultural differences not explored in the utaut model. finally, venkatesh et al. (2003) acknowledge the fact that further models attempting to explain user behavior should explore the socio-cultural background of users, and this is reinforced by the results of the yang and huang study. universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras106 galvis local implications of the role of teachers’ beliefs and technology if the relationship between individuals, beliefs and decision-making is impervious in nature, so is the relationship between culture and technology. batteau (2010) warns about the success of adopting technologies, and the asymmetries that could be expected in the process if such technologies do not manage to go hand in hand with identity. this statement is similar to the findings of the venkatesh et al. (2003) study in that successful implemen tation is founded on permeable identity transactions between individuals and a specific type of tech nology. as a result of this, local language program administrators and public policymakers should address carefully the issues not only of beliefs, but also those of identity and successful use of technology. regarding local public policy, it must be acknowledged that the cep program has a positive set of beliefs regarding the vision and usefulness of technology. in fact, the use of technology and the need to spread it in public schools is associated with progress and development. nevertheless, given the discussion in this article, one cannot help but point out the weaknesses present in the stages that schools and teachers have to go through after the donation of computers. according to the cep program, once schools acquire refurbished computers, teachers and school staff should go through an assistance period in which final users (i.e. teachers) are expected to relate their experiences after a 16-month process. while the objectives of the cep program are congruent with the vicarious experiences proposed by ertmer (2005), one still has doubt as to the gray areas of teachers’ beliefs that are left unattended. not to mention the ambivalence that compulsory approaches vs. process-oriented approaches pose when addressing teachers’ beliefs and the implementation of technology. whereas the former may end up in simple institutional obedience, the latter does not necessarily guarantee any results and, additionally, generates lots of uncertainty. in sum, evidence is inexistent at this point as to how to address teachers’ beliefs when attempting to successfully implement technology in education. which approach is better and why? another aspect to examine in the cep program is any tangible means that assure that the efforts made to solve the gap in computer technology in public schools actually end up in positive results. as discussed elsewhere, abundant investments are not tantamount to successful implementation and use of computer technology. therefore, the cep program could implement better control mechanisms that address not only teachers’ beliefs but also control mechanisms that address identity, a priori experiences and ultimate computer use, and thus avoid false expectations based on the syllogism ‘teachers have computers, teachers will use computers appropriately (or not use them at all)’. another question inevitably arises; this question has to do with the role of computers in schools and the promise behind them. in a recent report sánchez, rodríguez and márquez (2010) have presented a solid research report investigating the benefits of computer use, standardized testing and areas of success in various countries worldwide. according to the authors, the most substantial success can be observed in results in the english language, but not in science or math. given these results, one could say that local teaching institutions have an advantageous position to be able to research which types of computer practices have been associated with better results in the learning of the english language in the contexts reported by sánchez, rodríguez and márquez. 107profile vol. 14, no. 2, october 2012. issn 1657-0790 (printed) 2256-5760 (online). bogotá, colombia. pages 95-112 understanding beliefs, teachers’ beliefs and their impact on the use of computer technology suggestions for further research the suggestions for further research refer to several aspects of language teaching. therefore, these will be divided into subcategories of this section in the following lines. further research on beliefs the approaches and models presented through out this paper have posited various ways to address teachers’ beliefs, more specifically, teachers’ educational beliefs. as explained elsewhere, ertmer (2005) argues that teachers’ beliefs should be discussed in order to possibly change such beliefs by integrating new beliefs into an alreadyformed system. however, this approach appears to be problematic when taking into account the beliefs resisting change introduced by rokeach (1968). moreover, as acknowledged by ertmer (2005), the nature of educational beliefs is a blurry area, and educational beliefs have not even been explored fully in nature. how can one know that educational beliefs do not belong to the already problematic set of primitive beliefs proposed by rokeach (1968)? if this were the case, discussing beliefs would not lead to change in rokeach’s terms. it cannot be forgotten that rokeach states that this type of beliefs cannot be changed, even if empirical counterarguments are provided. hence, one could assume that ertmer’s proposal could eventually work given that educational beliefs do not fall under the cate gory of primitive beliefs; however, here one is left with more questions than answers. therefore, further research would need to tap into the origins of educational beliefs, and this would help determine if ertmer’s proposal of discussing beliefs in order to integrate new beliefs into a teachers’ belief system would be a viable option. by screening the origins of teachers’ negative educational beliefs, administrators would be able to establish an action plan similar to the one proposed by butler-pascoe and wiburg (2003) in which the more skilled students help those who are still in the process of acquiring computer literacy skills. in the case of teachers, administrators could create general profiles that allow matching those “holders” of positive beliefs with those whose beliefs are negative towards the use of computer technology. by doing this, administrators would not only be helping teachers whose experience and beliefs with the use of technology are not positive, but also, administrators would be contributing to what venkatesh et al. (2003) pointed out to be the second most important factor in determining intentions to use computer technology, namely, effort expectancy. further research could aim at understanding what results could be obtained by matching teachers holding opposite beliefs about computer technology, and if such activity could result in better effort expectancy in those holding negative beliefs or not. local studies examining beliefs from various areas of interest in tefl although research on beliefs appears to be nascent locally, one can already observe various studies emerging and addressing different areas and issues related to the role of beliefs in various spheres. an important clarification to make now is that the studies reviewed here have explored both beliefs and perceptions. due to the ill-defined characteristics of beliefs, studies addressing both beliefs and perceptions have been included. the first study was conducted by muñoz, palacio, and escobar (2012). these researchers have addressed the impact of teachers’ beliefs on efl assessment. likewise, melgarejo (2009) has explored students’ universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras108 galvis beliefs about efl writing; hernández and samacá (2006) examined students’ perception of culture in efl; gonzález (2008) addressed teachers’ beliefs about the meaning of communicative competence. other studies have been conducted on intercultural beliefs like schulz’ (2001), who studied the perceptions of teachers and students in the u.s. and colombia about the role of grammar instruction. other studies conducted locally have addressed issues regarding public policy and bilingualism. for example, escobar and gómez (2010) explored the perceptions indigenous people have about bilingualism and the role of english, among other thorny issues. as reviewed, local studies have examined various areas of tefl and the influence of beliefs in such areas. local studies specifically addressing beliefs and the integration of technology in what appears to be a preliminary and ongoing study, benavides, otálora and hernández (2010) addressed pre-service language teachers’ beliefs about the use of technology at a local university. although unfinished, one can foresee great benefit on this study particularly for language teacher education programs in that this study allows understanding the pre-conceptions teachers have about the use of technology as proposed by park and ertmer (2008) in the u.s. context. another study conducted locally with in service teachers at local public schools was conducted by soto, buitrago, and pineda (2011). this study revealed that even if teachers have positive beliefs regarding the use of technology in the classroom, first-order barriers such as budget allocations, training, and infrastructure are some of the current challenges teachers at public schools face. in soto, buitrago and pineda’s study, a very controversial issue was discussed regarding whose budget and time should be included in an attempt for technology inclusion, the teachers’ or the institutions’? it appears that institutions have appointed teachers responsible for technology inclusion on their own budget and their own time. in other words, if teachers are planning to include technology in their classes, they will have to find their own means. this issue, plus the curricular constraints already mentioned by galvis (2011) comprise more items to be considered when integrating technology in the classroom. in sum, even if positive beliefs are held about the use of technology in the classroom, first-order barriers can be significantly inhibiting as second-order barriers. further research for curriculum and instruction other aspects to further look into are teachers’ workload and time in the classroom, and how these interfere with the use of computer technology. the yang and huang (2008) study has revealed how powerful a deterrent lack of time is when integrating computer technology. therefore, further studies could separate groups with different workload and time conditions in order to examine if facilitating conditions play a role in education, and if there is a co-relation between more facilitating curricular conditions and a potential increase in the use of computer technology. from the venkatesh et al. (2003) study, it is known that facilitating conditions are the third most decisive factor in using computer technology. another aspect learned from the taiwanese public school context (see chang, 2007) and that should be highlighted is that time, workload and class size represent major deterrents as well. therefore, one wonders if innovation, in general terms, is not being given sufficient space by the pre-established organization of curricula. in fact, previous academic work on curriculum and instruction has failed to include 109profile vol. 14, no. 2, october 2012. issn 1657-0790 (printed) 2256-5760 (online). bogotá, colombia. pages 95-112 understanding beliefs, teachers’ beliefs and their impact on the use of computer technology or mention the role of computer technology in language education (see ur, 1991; brown, 1994). further research for understanding computer use venkatesh et al. (2003) have provided a firm path to be explored regarding intentions in the use of computer technology. in spite of the fact that the venkatesh et al. (2003) study was not specifically conducted for educational contexts, one cannot help but wonder if such research results can be extended to the field of education, or if similar studies need to be conducted in the field of language teaching in order to decide what the new direction would be in understanding teachers’ beliefs and their intentions of using computer technology. many questions still remain unresolved. it may well be that venkatesh et al.’s (2003) study has simply put in a nutshell the universals of human behavior when approaching technology, or rather, their study has simply set the path for each field to begin its own area of investigation. it is still uncertain whether certain professions have more compatible profiles with technology than others. other aspects to further look into are the variables of age and use of technology, which are still inconclusive. nevertheless, administrators can learn from the results thus far found that while there is a high correlation between younger generations and adeptness in computer use as demonstrated in venkatesh et al. (2003), when it comes to the field of education, older generations have more ability to integrate computer technology in their teaching, while younger generations struggle more, apparently due to their lack of experience as found in the yang and huang (2008) study. therefore, it appears that neither the younger nor the older generations have demonstrated to be better or worse than the other in the use of technology; however, it would be worth investigating which roles each generation of teachers can better function in when it concerns the integration of computer technology in the classroom locally. further research for computer use, identity and culture another aspect in the relationship between culture and technology introduced by batteau (2010) gains relevance. this aspect is related to identity. batteau discusses how certain types of technology gain widespread acceptance when such innovations become iconic to a society. further research could investigate the triangular relationship between culture, technology and identity. such investi gation could aim at understanding how local culture conceives technology and what factors facilitate or hinder the use of computer technology in daily life. local generational contrasts could precisely reveal interesting data useful not only for language education but for other fields of knowledge as well. finally, critical experiences (block, 2007) that have an effect on identity could be utilized in order to dissect the effects and components of identities that facilitate the use of computer technology. briefly, as posited by batteau (2010), the cultural fragmentation, segregation and preference for visual culture that neglect both orality and literacy could be investigated. once investigated, more light could be shed on what aspects of technology are empirically beneficial or detrimental (see bauerlein, 2009), especially when the culture of literacy is impacted negatively. references ajzen, i. 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(2009). assessing children’s perceptions of writing in efl based on the process approach. colombian applied linguistics journal, 12(1), 70-84. muñoz, a. p., palacio, m., & escobar, l. (2012). teachers’ beliefs about assessment in an efl context in colombia. profile issues in teachers’ professional development, 14(1), 143-158. pajares, f. (1992). teachers’ beliefs and educational research: cleaning up the messy construct. review of educational research, 62(3), 307-332. park, s. h., & ertmer, p. a. (2008). impact of problembased learning (pbl) on teachers’ beliefs regarding technology use. journal of research on technology in education, 40(2), 247-267. raths, j. (2001). teachers’ beliefs and teaching beliefs. early childhood research and practice, 3(1), retrieved from http://ecrp.uiuc.edu/v3n1/raths.html richards, j. c., & lockhart, c. (1994). reflective teaching in second language classrooms. cambridge: cambridge university press. richardson, v. (1998). how teachers change. what will lead to change that most benefits student learning? focus on basics, 2(c). retrieved from http:// http://www. ncsall.net/index.php?id=395 rokeach, m. (1968). beliefs, attitudes, and values: a theory of organization and change. san francisco, ca: jossey-bass. russell, a. l. (1995). stages in learning new technology: naive adult e-mail users. computers in education, 25(4), 173-178. sánchez, f., rodríguez, c., & márquez, j. (2010). evaluación de impacto del programa computadores para educar. bogotá: universidad de los andes, centro de estudios sobre desarrollo económico (cede). schulz, r. a. (2001). cultural differences in student and teacher perceptions concerning the role of grammar instruction and corrective feedback: u.s.a.-colombia. the modern language journal, 85(2), 244-258. universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras112 galvis soto, l. a., buitrago, z. r., & pineda, b. c. (2011). ict in the professional development of efl teachers: perceptions and challenges. folios, 33, 25-42. steel, c. (2006). influence of teacher beliefs on webenhanced learning experiences: learners and teachers. in l. markauskaite, p. goodyear, & p. reimann (eds.) proceedings of the 23rd annual conference of the australasian society for computers in learning in tertiary education: who’s learning? whose technology? (pp. 795-8055). sydney: sydney university press. retrieved from http://www.ascilite.org.au/conferences/sydney06/proceeding/pdf_papers/p148.pdf toledo, c. (2005). a five-stage model of computer technology integration into teacher education curriculum. contemporary issues in technology and teacher education, 5(2), 177-191. tondeur, j., hermans, r., van braak, j., & valcke, m. (2008). exploring the link between teachers’ educational beliefs profiles and different types of computer use in the classroom. computers in human behavior, 24(6), 2541-2553. ur, p. (1991). a course in language teaching. new york, ny: cambridge university press. venkatesh, v., morris, m. g., davis, g. b., & davis, f. d. (2003). user acceptance of information technology: toward a unified view. mis quarterly, 27(3), 425-478. violato, c., mariniz, a., & hunter, w. (1989). a confirmatory analysis of a four-factor model of attitudes toward computers: a study of pre-service teachers. journal of research on computing in education, 22(2), 199-213. windschitl, m., & sahl, k. (2002). tracing teachers’ use of technology in a laptop computer school: the interplay of teacher beliefs, social dynamics, and institutional culture. american educational research journal, 39(1), 165-205. yang, s. c., & huang, y. f. (2008). a study of high school english teachers’ behavior, concerns and beliefs in integrating information technology into english in struction. computers in human behavior, 24(3), 1085-1103. about the author héctor alejandro galvis holds a ba in modern languages (english-french) from universidad pedagógica nacional, colombia, and an ma in tesol/applied linguistics from the university of northern iowa (usa). he is currently working at universidad de la salle, colombia, where he teaches under graduate courses in tesol/english. he also teaches courses on academic english at universidad de los andes, colombia. 55profile vol. 17, no. 1, january-june 2015. issn 1657-0790 (printed) 2256-5760 (online). bogotá, colombia. pages 55-72 http://dx.doi.org/10.15446/profile.v17n1.44149 attitudes and discourse: spanish practitioners’ and undergraduates’ survey results actitudes y discurso: resultados de encuestas a profesionales y estudiantes de medicina isabel herrando-rodrigo*1 centro universitario de la defensa, zaragoza, spain the emergence of english as the international language of communication has increased the attention and concern given its teaching and learning. this survey-based study explores the attitudes of spanish practitioners and undergraduate students towards english as the vehicular language in the field of medicine and towards medical electronic popularizations as an alternative to medical research articles. the survey results point out that these subjects’ perception of english as the vehicle of communication in the medical field and their conceptualization of medical electronic popularizations are positive. pedagogical implications can be drawn from this study since it confirms our students’ awareness of the use of english and the new-born genres or communication channels. key words: new-born genres, practitioners’ and undergraduates’ attitudes towards written discourse and towards english, survey-based study. el papel del inglés como lenguaje internacional de comunicación ha despertado interés en lo que respecta a su enseñanza y aprendizaje. el presente sondeo explora las actitudes de médicos y estudiantes de medicina españoles hacia el inglés como lenguaje vehicular y hacia nuevos géneros emergentes como las popularizaciones médicas difundidas por internet. los resultados señalan que estos sujetos tienen una actitud positiva ante ambos; el inglés como lenguaje vehicular y ante estas popularizaciones médicas. este estudio confirma que ambos grupos asumen la importancia del inglés como herramienta básica de comunicación en el campo de la medicina y del protagonismo de estos géneros electrónicos emergentes. palabras clave: actitudes de profesionales y estudiantes de medicina ante el discurso escrito y el inglés como lenguaje vehicular, nuevos géneros, sondeo. * e-mail: herrando@unizar.es how to cite this article (apa, 6th ed.): herrando-rodrigo, i. (2015). attitudes and discourse: spanish practitioners’ and undergraduates’ survey results. profile issues in teachers’ professional development, 17(1), 55-72. http://dx.doi.org/10.15446/profile.v17n1.44149. this article was received on june 25, 2014, and accepted on october 16, 2014. this is an open access article distributed under the terms of the creative commons license attribution-noncommercial-noderivatives 4.0 international license. consultation is possible at http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/. universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras56 herrando-rodrigo introduction there is a growing interest in studying english as the international language of scientific dissemination (burgess & cargill, 2008; ferguson, 2007; hyland, 2009; swales, 1997). the use of english as a lingua franca in the research sphere entails a major burden for non-native speakers of english when aiming to publish the results of their work in the international arena (lillis & curry, 2010; mauranen, 2011). the role of english as the language for international academic and scientific exchange is currently well attested. many insightful papers have dealt with this issue and with the potential consequences on other less powerful languages (bosch, villacastín, & alfonso, 2002; bosch, villacastín, & alonso, 2000; fairclough, 2006; hewings, 2002; hyland, 2002; swales, 1997; tardy, 2004; among many others). as producers of scientific knowledge, many non-native english-speaking scholars struggle when writing in english for dissemination purposes. these speakers, members of different fields and discourse communities, may have never reflected on the role of english for research and publication purposes (erpp) or english as a lingua franca. however, they are greatly concerned about the need to publish and read literature in english related to their fields. needless to say this academic literature is encoded with discipline-related and genre-related linguistic and textual conventions. concretely, in the field of medicine, herrando-rodrigo (2010, 2012, 2014)1 claims that contributions to new surgery techniques, clinical daily practice or the impact of certain treatments, are rapidly published and easily 1 these studies contribute to the project “el inglés como lengua franca en los discursos especializados: espacios alternativos de producción lingüística y cultural a través del análisis crítico de los géneros” [english as a lingua franca across specialised discourses: a critical genre analysis of alternative spaces of linguistic and cultural production] supported by the spanish ministerio de ciencia e innovación (ffi2013-37346) and it has been carried out within the framework of the research group interlae (interpersonalidad en el lenguaje académico escrito [interpersonality in written academic language]), financially supported by the diputación general de aragón (spain). available thanks to the internet every day (the online publications of international journals). nonetheless, one may wonder whether or not doctors in spain have enough time and mastery of english to read and process all the new medical information published almost every day. this idea inspired the present study (drawn from an innovative teaching project described in the method section), which aims to explore whether practitioners and undergraduates have a positive attitude towards english as the vehicular language in the field of medicine. besides, this paper also aims to observer whether both groups accept and read trustworthy medical electronic popularizations (hereafter med-e-pops) in order to keep up to date due to the impossibility of reading all the medical information contained in the copious numbers of new medical research articles (hereafter med-ras) published in english every day. from the 17 th centur y the urge to simplif y findings so as to make science comprehensible to a non-specialist audience has been common practice (gil-salom, 2000). in such a process the media have promoted the adaptation of scientific information for a non-specialist audience. this practice has been problematized due to its information manipulation and lack of professionalism (see for instance breeze, 2014; fernández-polo, 1995; gallardo, 2005; garcés conejos & sánchez macarro, 1998; giunchi, 2002; guillén-galve, 2001; among others). nevertheless, these publications are gaining prestige not only among lay-readers but also among undergraduate s t u d e nt s , l a n g u a g e re s e a rc h e r s a n d m e d i c a l practitioners (bondi, 2012; calsamiglia & van dijk, 2004; ciapuscio, 2003; herrando-rodrigo, 2014; myers, 1991; nwogu, 1991; varghese & abraham, 2004; varttala, 1999). this piece of research agrees with bhatia’s (2002, 2004) understanding of genre analysis and of what the goals of genre theory should be. in this scholar’s view, genre theory has suffered from a lack of attention to 57profile vol. 17, no. 1, january-june 2015. issn 1657-0790 (printed) 2256-5760 (online). bogotá, colombia. pages 55-72 attitudes and discourse: spanish practitioners’ and undergraduates’ survey results the social and cognitive aspects of genre, which leads him to propose: investigating instances of conventionalised or institutionalised textual artefacts in the context of specific institutional and disciplinary practices, procedures and cultures in order to understand how members of specific discourse communities construct, interpret and use these genres to achieve their community goals and why they write them the way they do. (bhatia, 2002, p. 6) in line with this proposal this piece of research provides an exploratory analysis of the text-external features, which include “situational as well as a number of socio-cognitive factors related to textconstruction, interpretation, use and exploitation by expert members of the disciplinary cultures in question” (bhatia, 2004, p. 123), that is, adopting an ethnographic approach—in this case a survey-based study—which for instance connor (2004a, 2004b) also claimed for intercultural rhetoric studies.2 s ome studies within english for academic purposes (eap) and erpp have taken an ethnomethodological approach to the study of texts and genres (burgess & ivanič, 2010; flowerdew, 2001; murdueñas, 2007b; pérez-llantada, 2009), an approach which was desirable in this study in order to portray the situation of a small but still representative sample of practitioners and undergraduates who are exposed to academic english and who have a direct relationship, whether as lecturers or students, with the school of medicine of the university of zaragoza (spain).3 2 the present study also draws on previous studies based on l1 and l2 interference and the cross-cultural implications when reading and writing english for academic purposes. many academic genres, such as research articles (lorés-sanz, 2011a, 2011b; martínez, 2005; moreno, 1997, 2004; mur-dueñas, 2007a, 2007b, 2010a, 2010b), abstracts (burgess, 2002; lorés-sanz, 2006; lorés-sanz & murillo ornat, 2007; martín martín, 2002, 2003) or academic book reviews (lorés-sanz, 2009; moreno & suárez tejerina, 2006; suárez tejerina, 2006) have been studied from a cross-cultural perspective. 3 since this study was the first incursion in the field for the author, future research aims to narrow this scope towards these previously mentioned ethno-methodological approaches. method in this paper, i explore the attitudes and perception of practitioners and undergraduates involved with the school of medicine of zaragoza (spain) towards the dissemination of medical knowledge in english (in two different medical genres; med-e-pops and med-ras). in addition, this analysis focuses on the study of text-external features of research articles and popularizations (bhatia, 2004). following bhatia (1999, 2004, 2008, 2011), written genres are considered versatile, dynamic constructs as members of the professional community exploit them to create new patterns. hence, practitioners and undergraduates may turn to hybrid mixed forms of med-ras as med-e-pops, adaptations of medical research articles published on semi-specialized websites and addressed to a specialized and non-specialized readership that facilitates the comprehension and dissemination of medical knowledge in their everyday professional life for several reasons (such as lack of time for reading, mastery of english, etc.). this is why this study is based on the experiences of experts in the field of medicine and of university students—as future practitioners— in order to reflect on the potential difficulties of native spanish-speaking medical informants who may be at different stages of their professional careers. in addition, undergraduates were exposed to both genres (med-ras and med-e-pops) in the subject i taught4 in order to participate in this survey because they might not have yet been exposed to a significant amount of medical literature written in english. the data were obtained from questionnaires that were personally distributed among practitioners and undergraduates. all the participants kindly and voluntary participated in this survey and were informed of the survey purpose. the questionnaires (from practitioners and undergraduates) were slightly 4 this subject was called inglés científico para medicina [scientific english for medicine] (school of medicine) university of zaragoza, spain. universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras58 herrando-rodrigo different because i wanted to evaluate in depth students’ self-reflections on the rhetorical strategies learnt in class (see appendixes a and b). data from practitioners one hundred and ten questionnaires were collected. the main requisite taken into account to define this sample was that the questionnaires collected were filled in by practitioners from different areas or medical specialities who should be involved in the theoretical and practical teaching of undergraduates in the school of medicine at the university of zaragoza and who should have a clinical post at hospitals. these practitioners worked in one of the two university hospitals of zaragoza (hospital clínico universitario: lozano blesa and hospital universitario miguel servet). due to their double role—working at the hospital with patients and working as teachers in the school—they were used to reading medical literature in english. as shown in table 1, the specialities of the practitioners who generously participated in this survey-based study were varied (20) and the average length of work experience was 17.82 years (with five years being the minimum and 40 years of experience the maximum [see appendix c]). no gender parameters were taken into account. table 1. practitioners’ specialties and percentage over the total number of participants number of participants by speciality percentage over total number of medical participants per speciality accidents and emergency 15 13.6 anaesthesia and intensive care 8 7.3 cardiology 2 1.8 dermatology 3 2.7 haematology 1 0.9 internal medicine 8 7.3 microbiology 4 3.6 neurology 9 8.2 obstetrics and gynaecology 12 10.9 ophthalmology 10 9.1 otorhinolaryngology 2 1.8 paediatrics 4 3.6 paediatric surgery 2 1.8 pharmacology 1 0.9 physical medicine and rehabilitation 5 4.5 pneumonology 5 4.5 radiology 6 5.5 surgery 5 4.5 traumatology 2 1.8 urology 6 5.5 total 110 100.0 59profile vol. 17, no. 1, january-june 2015. issn 1657-0790 (printed) 2256-5760 (online). bogotá, colombia. pages 55-72 attitudes and discourse: spanish practitioners’ and undergraduates’ survey results the numb er of quest ionnaires f rom e ach speciality differs due to the fact that not all the hospital ser vices or departments had the same number of practitioners involved in teaching posts at university. in addition, as explained below, not all the practitioners who received these questionnaires participated in this survey. the questionnaire was written in english because the respondents were asked about their attitude towards this language. these questionnaires (both from practitioners and undergraduates) were designed in a simplified way so as to make the answering process comfortable and fast. it consisted of five questions distributed into four thematic sections. most of these questions had multiple-choice answers so that practitioners could easily answer with just a tick (see appendix a). four out of the five questions were the same for practitioners and undergraduates. the process of collecting the questionnaires took longer than expected since not many practitioners were willing to collaborate as they are bombarded with questionnaires from different institutions every week. collecting the forms from the practitioners took me six months (from september 2010 to late february 2011) and the data analysis took this author almost a year. data from medical undergraduates the process of delivering and receiving medical undergraduates’ responses was more controlled and was done during the course lessons which i taught in the school of medicine at the university of zaragoza. this subject was an optional course in the sixth year degree programme in medicine. to boost their academic writing abilities these undergraduates carried out several writing tasks dealing with eap. as explained below, i asked them to write a med-epop from a med-ra that i had previously selected and sent to them. this task was worth two points out of ten in their final mark. to observe and measure undergraduates’ attitudes towards medical english i asked them to fill in a questionnaire (appendix b). following statistician experts’ orientation, 56 out of 93 completed questionnaires were selected. the confidence interval was high due to the characteristics of the random sample. this fact indicated that the final results would be similar with the sample taken as a whole in this study. at the beginning of the term i had planned to get my students to write a med-ra as part of their subject marks, something that was not welcomed by these undergraduates due to the level of complexity related to the task. eventually, the undergraduates wrote a med-e-pop. inspired by their fearful attitude towards reading and writing academic medical english, i reformulated my idea under the umbrella of an innovat ive te aching proj e c t, f unde d by vicerrectorado para la innovación docente [the vicerectory for teacher innovation] at the university of zaragoza. my students were at first reluctant not only to write academic english texts but also to read such texts in english. i then decided to create5 working groups using msn hotmail (cienciassaludingles@ hotmail.com) and i also designed an edublog (http:// medicalenglishinuse.blogspot.com) to encourage their participation and as a follow-up of the writing process. all the 93 undergraduates registered in this subject actively participated in this project. fiftyfive percent of them evaluated the project as more than adequate and 45% as adequate (see question 5 in appendix b). none of the undergraduates showed any disagreement much less strong disagreement with this initiative. as mentioned above, the task for undergraduates was to write a popularized text, following different guidelines given in class and helped by several resources such as our edublog and the 16-hour support that they could get from the virtual 5 project funded by adjuntía al rector para la innovación docente (university of zaragoza). project reference: pesuz 10-05-028. universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras60 herrando-rodrigo teletutorials of hotmail chat (messenger). when this written task was finished, my undergraduate students sent me their versions and i sent them the popularized text published on the internet (published on new york times health guide and docguide) and the evaluation questionnaire attached (appendix b). they filled in the questionnaires and sent them back to me by email or returned them personally in class. undergraduates who were in my course had never read or heard about med-e-pops and therefore i considered it essential to get them to learn about mede-pops due to their growing prestige among members of the medical discipline (herrando-rodrigo, 2014). the timing for the collection of data was more controlled than in the case of practitioners. my undergraduates were given three months to complete their writing task: from november to january 2011. in january, i got all the questionnaires and the data analysis was carried out along that same year—2011. results and findings this study reports on the attitudes of practitioners and undergraduates towards the role of english as the vehicle of communication. in addition, practitioners were openly asked in the survey whether they read med-e-pops rather than med-ras to keep up to date in the field of medicine for their accessibility (see appendix a). as regards undergraduates, i also asked my students if working with these two genres (med-ras and med-e-pops) during the academic year 2010-2011 had been useful in the improvement of their linguistic competence (see questions 3 and 5 in appendix b). besides, this paper aimed to observe whether both groups—practitioners and undergraduates, members of the same discourse community—distinguished the same linguistic and textual features in the medical genres under study. a reflection on the different conceptualisation of these genres by both spanish-speaking groups concludes this section. practitioners were asked in question 5 (appendix a) if they had a positive attitude or perception towards english as the vehicle of international communication in the medical field: 93% of practitioners agreed and the remaining 7% disagreed. as regards undergraduates, question 4 (see appendix b) aimed to get the same information regarding their attitude towards english as the vehicular language in medicine. in this case, 95% of undergraduates agreed and the remaining 5% disagreed. these results show how undergraduates’ perception is even more positive than practitioners’. in addition, as regards practitioners, table 2 shows that 71 out of 110 practitioners claimed that they read med-e-pops to keep up to date. table 2. do you read med-e-pops? frequency percentage no 39 35.5 yes 71 64.5 total 110 100.0 from the 64.5% of the practitioners who affirmed they read med-e-pops, 26.4% of them admitted looking for the original med-ra later because the med-e-pops raised their interest on the medical issue covered. the undergraduates who participated in this study stated that they had difficulties with medical academic english and that the project of reading med-ras and writing a med-e-pop had helped them to improve their mastery of english and thus, had also improved their linguistic competence and positive attitude towards this vehicular language. among the different questions that both groups were asked, only 33.9% of the undergraduates were aware that there are significant differences between everyday english and academic english. it should be noted that undergraduates were asked to have informal 61profile vol. 17, no. 1, january-june 2015. issn 1657-0790 (printed) 2256-5760 (online). bogotá, colombia. pages 55-72 attitudes and discourse: spanish practitioners’ and undergraduates’ survey results interviews or tutorials with the teacher to supervise their writing process while writing their essays. in these interviews 19 undergraduates claimed that their biggest difficulty lay in distinguishing general english from academic english due to their low command of english. the present study may highlight the fact that forcing them to deal with academic english has caused them to detect and reflect on their potential difficulties and at the same time helped them to look for solutions autonomously, as figure 1 illustrates. the affirmative answers to the questions visually displayed in figure 1 were classified into four categories. the most frequent answers (37.5%) dealt with undergraduates’ awareness of language acquisition. undergraduates were able to self-evaluate their lexicogrammatical improvement. another interesting finding is that 33.9% of the undergraduates agreed that it was the first time they had faced the task of transferring their medical knowledge from spanish into general english and finally into academic english. figure 2 shows a contrastive study (practitioners and undergraduates) on the lexico-grammar used in med-ras and med-e-pops. for practitioners, the main differences between med-ras and med-e-pops lay in the use of the passive voice (20.9%) and the use of reported speech (23.6%). 20.9% of the prac titioners claimed that they could not point out linguistic differences because they did not have enough knowledge of english grammar. as for undergraduates, 46.4%—almost half of the sample— claimed that the main linguistic differences lay in the use of the passive voice, reported speech, and nominalizations. 9.1% of the practitioners also selected this option. turning our attention to the potential purpose of med-ras and med-e-pops, it can be observed in figure 3 that both practitioners and undergraduates stated that the purpose of each type of publication is different because the potential readership and types of publication differ. few respondents (four practitioners and one undergraduate) claimed that there were no differences between these two genres in terms of purpose. two practitioners affirmed that the purposes of med-ras and med-e-pops were different because the latter highlight the sensationalist aspects of the medical issue, as is displayed below. from their answers it can be inferred that the med-e-pops are rarely devalued as sources of information. this finding may contribute to the presupposition (herrandorodrigo, 2014) that recent med-e-pops are not totally neglected or despised as reliable vehicles of knowledge dissemination. figure 1. usefulness of this project 0% 5% 10% 15% 20% 25% 30% 35% 40% yes, because we can re�ect on the remarkable differences between everyday english and medical english. yes, because we are used to using ras in spanish and we have checked that we can work in english ras. yes, it has been very interesting and useful. we have learnt a lot of vocabulary yes no universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras62 herrando-rodrigo figure 2. both groups’ contrastive analysis on the potential linguistic differences between these genres 0% 10% 20% 30% 40% 50% language is less academic and therefore is not so complex passive voice, reported speech, and nominalizations passive voice, pronouns, and nominalizations reported speech and nominalizations passive voice and pronouns passive voice and nominalizations pronouns and nominalizations reported speech, pronouns, and nominalizations reported speech and pronouns passive voice and reported speech nominalizations pronouns reported speech passive voice there are no differences undergraduates practitioners figure 3. both groups’ opinions on the differences between med-ras and med-e-pops purpose 0% 10% 20% 30% 40% 50% 60% the purposes of both texts are different because the popularizations highlight sensational aspects of the medical issue the potential readers and the means of publication is different the means of publication is different and therefore the purposes should be different the potential readers of both texts are different so the purposes of both texts have to be different there are no differences in the purposes of both texts undergraduates practitioners regarding the dif ferences of these genres’ information structure, it can be observed in figure 4 that there are significant differences among undergraduates’ and practitioners’ answers. 13.6% of the practitioners did not point out any differences in terms of structure (between med-ras and med-epops) other than length. 11.8% of the practitioners stated that med-ras and med-e-pops have a different structure because med-e-pops never include the method section. this section is indispensable for any medical researcher in order to validate the nature of any study. although practitioners’ perceptions differed from undergraduates’ as far as the structure was concerned, the views of undergraduates (62.5%) and practitioners (60%) largely coincide when simply stating that the two genres do not have the same structure. all the undergraduates who have specifically worked with both genres for their final 63profile vol. 17, no. 1, january-june 2015. issn 1657-0790 (printed) 2256-5760 (online). bogotá, colombia. pages 55-72 attitudes and discourse: spanish practitioners’ and undergraduates’ survey results task answered that there are structural differences between the two text types. it can be observed in figure 5 that while undergraduates’ answers centred on just three factors that differentiate the genres of med-e-pops and med-ras, practitioners produced several potential features that characterise med-e-pops and med-ras as different genres. hence, the views of practitioners (57.3%) and undergraduates (64.3%) from the field of medicine largely coincide when pointing out the reasons why these two genres differ. the reasons both groups give are that each genre (med-e-pops and med-ras) necessarily differs in terms of language use, communicative purpose, and figure 4. med-e-pops have the same structure as med-ras? undergraduates practitioners 0% 20% 40% 60% 80% no, they don't because the method section is never included no, they don't because only conclusions are mentioned no yes he or she doesn't know figure 5. both groups’ answers on differences observed regarding med-ras and med-e-pops genre differences undergraduates practitioners 0% 10% 20% 30% 40% 50% 60% 70% the use of language and the structure of the text the purpose and the structure of the text the use of language, the purpose, and the structure of the text the use of language and the purpose of the text the structure of the text the purpose of the text there are no meaningful differences between medical electronic popularizations and medical research articles universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras64 herrando-rodrigo text information structure. in general terms, both practitioners and undergraduates conceptualised these two genres as completely different genres. conclusions as is widely known, english has replaced latin, arabic, and greek as the globally recognised language of scientific communication.6 it should be pointed out that the widespread use of english as a lingua franca in the research field entails major burdens for nonnative speakers of english when aiming to publish the results of their work in the international arena in most disciplines (lillis & curry, 2010; mauranen, 2011). by the same token, english nowadays plays a part in most of the language planning and educational curricula all over the world. however, regarding foreign language learning, older generations were educated under the influence of french or german. this fact makes scholars invest “extra time and effort for the production of less than optimal written text” (ferguson, 2007, p. 33).7 therefore, the effective use of english rhetorical conventions and the way they are realised in language (language choice and language use) deserve thorough exploration since for instance they constitute the focus of study in eap. from the beginning of the 1980s there have been scholars such as maher (1986) who have openly claimed that english 6 many studies related to communication have been conducted from different perspectives: sociological perspective in its social setting (hymes, 1964), language as a social action under the umbrella of linguistic philosophy (austin, 1962; grice, 1975; searle, 1969), classroom language interaction and management (sinclair, 1972), communicative purpose (candlin, bruton, leather & woods, 1981), communicative competence (canale, 1983), and intonation and feedback in english as a foreign language classrooms (hewings, 1995), to name just a few. nevertheless, for the purpose of this piece of research it was essential to focus on the analysis of discourse to be able to: “explain the relationship between what we say and what we mean, and understand, in a particular context” (paltridge, 2000). 7 however, this native/non-native distinction has been criticised because the degree of experience or expertise in academic publications and proficiency in certain kinds of academic written discourse in english is what counts and helps when writing successfully—and therefore when being published and read. is the international language of medicine. hence, this situation of potential difficulties and negative attitudes towards the use of english as the vehicular language in medicine on behalf of spanish practitioners and undergraduates inspired this exploratory piece of research. subjects (practitioners and undergraduates) who participated in this survey share a highly positive perception and attitude towards english—as other studies such as orna-montesinos (2013) have also observed—as the almost unique and widely accepted vehicle of communication in the field of medicine. in addition, this survey also raises awareness of the importance of english as the language of scientific exchange and of the emergence of web-mediated genres in the field of medicine. needless to say, practitioners are aware of the difficulties they have when writing medical discourse. therefore, we teachers should help students to consolidate the life-long learning of this essential tool more efficiently. undergraduates, as future practitioners, should be trained with all the necessary tools required of medical practitioners in today’s medical practice and therefore communicative interaction. this pedagogical implication should also be taken into account when dealing with practitioners’ training programmes in spain.8 another research aim of this study was to observe how practitioners and undergraduates conceptualised med-ras and med-e-pops. practitioners and undergraduates are well aware of the different purposes, textu a l convent ions, audiences, and t yp es of publication of these two genres and therefore about both genres’ differences. hence, one may wonder whether undergraduates should be exposed to or even 8 moreover, english teachers have to be aware of this situation not only in esp and eap courses but also in courses related to translation or journalism since these professionals will be involved, sooner or later, with the dissemination of medical findings in these newly-born web-mediated genres. 65profile vol. 17, no. 1, january-june 2015. issn 1657-0790 (printed) 2256-5760 (online). bogotá, colombia. pages 55-72 attitudes and discourse: spanish practitioners’ and undergraduates’ survey results taught about the different text types or genres hosted and emerging in their medical community-domain. myers (1991) notes that: “scientists learn the rhetoric of their discipline in their training as graduate students and postdoctoral students, but they relearn it every time they get the referees’ reports on an article or the pink sheets on a proposal” (p. 61). however, according to this survey report, in the spanish system undergraduates are not exposed to these emerging genres such as med-e-pops that could both keep them up to date and train them to disseminate their own findings in different reliable publications.9 this piece of research, together with berkenkotter and huckin (1995), miller (1994), or tardy (2003), also suggests that writers gain knowledge of the genre network by having access to the practice community and colleagues’ interaction. thus, practitioners and undergraduates learn how to address the discourse communities of different medical genres by being exposed to these given genres. hence, this study suggests that undergraduates at least should be taught how to be communicatively successful with med-e-pops and with all the emerging electronic genres, not only in order to have rapid access to medical information but also to acquire mastery in disseminating their findings through different channels and in different ways (as they shall have to do when reformulating medical technical procedures to a lay patient in a surgery or consulting room in spain or elsewhere). 9 for instance, devitt (1991) in her work on genre sets based on a genre study of tax accounting affirms that: the education of aspiring accountants emphasizes learning what these documents contain and how to use them. the students are being trained in the profession’s epistemological assumptions, that these documents are the source of all knowledge and authority. however, beginning accountants must also learn how that epistemology translates into their won texts. they must learn that different types of reference to the tax codes are appropriate in different genres . . . learning the translations of this epistemology to other texts, learning the techniques of reference for different genres and rhetorical situations, may well be a major learning task of the junior accountant and a crucial mark of membership in that professional community. (p. 350) to conclude, the goal of this study was to explore the attitudes and perceptions of spanish practitioners and undergraduates towards medical discourse written in english as the main communicative tool or vehicular language in the medical field. the perspective emerged from this study ratifies the essential role of english as the international language of scientific exchange. in addition this survey raises awareness of the importance of both, the essential role of english as the language of exchange and communication in the international medical arena and about the emergence of web-mediated genres in the field of medicine. this circumstance should cause us teachers to reflect on the importance of our role as language mediators since our students will need english as a vehicular language of communication. that is, we should awaken and foster a positive attitude towards not only english but also towards the new scenario of today’s communication so as to aid spanish-speaking professionals’ communicative competence consolidation. references austin, j. l. 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(1999). remarks on the communicative functions of hedging in popular scientific and specialist research articles on medicine. english for specific purposes, 18(2), 177-200. http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/ s0889-4906(98)00007-6. about the author isabel herrando-rodrigo is an english teacher at centro universitario de la defensa, zaragoza, spain. she holds a phd in applied linguistics and is a member of the interlae research group (www.interlae.com). her published papers have appeared in cambridge university press, miscelánea, tropelías, and journal of the english for specific purposes special interest group. universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras70 herrando-rodrigo appendix a: questionnaire answered by practitioners before beginning, please write your field/speciality_____________________ and years of experience as practitioner_________________ 1. how often do you read medical articles written in english? 2. do you read medical popularizations published in english on the internet (e.g., new york times health guide, doc guide, etc.)? if so, please mention the electronic journals you read and why. 3. if you read a medical popularization and you are interested in the topic covered, do you read the corresponding research article? 4. if you think that research articles differ from popularizations, what do you think the differences are? use of language. have you observed any differences? tick the ones you have observed: ☐ passive voice ☐ reported speech ☐ pronouns ☐ nouns ☐ others: …………… purpose. is the content expressed differently in medical research articles and in electronic popularizations? if so, could you identify the reasons by ticking the ones you have observed: ☐ different audience (different readers) ☐ different means of publications ☐ others: ................... structure. experimental medical research articles are generally structured following the so-called imrad pattern (introduction, methods, results and conclusions or discussion). do medical popularizations have the same imrad structure? 5. do you have a positive attitude or perception towards english as the vehicle of international communication? 71profile vol. 17, no. 1, january-june 2015. issn 1657-0790 (printed) 2256-5760 (online). bogotá, colombia. pages 55-72 attitudes and discourse: spanish practitioners’ and undergraduates’ survey results appendix b: questionnaire answered by undergraduates 1. how often do you read medical articles written in english? why? 2. do you find medical research articles different from medical popularizations? 3. if so, what do you think the differences are? use of language. have you observed any differences? tick the ones you have observed: ☐ passive voice ☐ reported speech ☐ pronouns ☐ nouns ☐ others: ................... purpose. is the content expressed differently in medical research articles and in electronic popularizations? if so, could you identify the reasons by ticking the ones you have observed: ☐ different audience (different readers) ☐ different means of publications ☐ others: ................... structure. experimental medical research articles are generally structured following the so-called imrad pattern (introduction, methods, results and conclusions or discussion). does your popularization have the same imrad structure? if so, have you organised information in the same way? (beginning with information regarding the ra introduction, then the ra methods, results and discussion). 4. do you have a positive attitude or perception towards english as the vehicle of international communication? 5. to conclude, have you found this project useful? universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras72 herrando-rodrigo appendix c: percentage of junior/senior medical participants range of years of experience of medical informants number of participants per age range percentage over the total number of participants 1-10 years 30 27.27 10-20 years 35 31.81 20-30 years 26 23.63 30-40 years 19 17.27 95 http://dx.doi.org/10.15446/profile.v18n2.48272 improving 10th graders’ english communicative competence through the implementation of the task-based learning approach el enfoque de aprendizaje basado en tareas como medio para mejorar la competencia comunicativa de estudiantes de grado décimo ana carolina buitrago campo* universidad de antioquia, medellín, colombia this article reports the results of an action-research project focused on improving students’ communicative competence in english through the task-based learning approach. this study was conducted in a co-educational public school in medellín (colombia) with thirty-four tenth graders. actions implemented include the development of a series of tasks and the definition of four thematic units consistent with the syllabus and students’ interests and needs. the results evidence students’ significant improvements in their communicative competence in english. findings also show that implementation of the task-based approach was affected by factors related to the teachers’ role and others related to students’ performance. key words: communicative competence, english as a foreign language, language learning, task-based learning approach. este artículo presenta los resultados de un proyecto de investigación-acción que se enfocó en el mejoramiento de la competencia comunicativa en inglés de los estudiantes mediante el enfoque de aprendizaje basado en tareas. este estudio fue realizado en un colegio público mixto de la ciudad de medellín (colombia) con treinta y cuatro estudiantes de décimo grado. las acciones implementadas incluyen el desarrollo de una serie de tareas y la definición de cuatro unidades temáticas acorde con el currículo y los intereses y necesidades de los estudiantes. los resultados evidencian mejoras significativas en la competencia comunicativa en inglés de los estudiantes. los resultados también muestran que la implementación del enfoque basado en tareas fue afectada por factores relacionados con el rol de los profesores y otros relacionados con el desempeño de los estudiantes. palabras clave: aprendizaje de lenguas, competencia comunicativa, enfoque de aprendizaje basado en tareas, inglés como lengua extranjera. * e-mail: buitrago.caro@gmail.com how to cite this article (apa, 6th ed.): buitrago campo, a. c. (2016). improving 10th graders’ english communicative competence through the implementation of the task-based learning approach. profile issues in teachers’ professional development, 18(2), 95-110. http://dx.doi. org/10.15446/profile.v18n2.48272. this article was received on january 15, 2015, and accepted on january 17, 2016. this is an open access article distributed under the terms of the creative commons license attribution-noncommercial-noderivatives 4.0 international license. consultation is possible at http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/. profile vol. 18, no. 2, july-december 2016. issn 1657-0790 (printed) 2256-5760 (online). bogotá, colombia. pages 95-110 universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras96 buitrago campo introduction despite the support that policies and curricula give to the development of english learners’ communicative competence in english as a foreign language (efl) contexts, instruction is still focused on the traditional test-oriented or form-based approaches (littlewood, 2007; savignon & wang, 2003). in colombia, the national ministry of education intends to give teachers and administrators guidelines to develop students’ communicative competence through proposals such as the estándares básicos de competencias en lenguas extranjeras: inglés (basic standards of competences in foreign languages: english, ministerio de educación nacional, 2006). however, an overemphasis on teaching grammatical forms and written language remains at almost all levels of education and english learners give evidence not only of limited knowledge of linguistic forms, as revealed by national tests (cely, 2007), but also of an inability to carry out “a simple communicative situation after several years of classroom instruction” (vélez-rendón, 2003, p. 191). the aforementioned problem was evident in the tenth grade english class where this study was developed. the class took place in a co-educational public school located in the northeast area of medellín (colombia). this school had a population of 1,409 students from low and middle-low socioeconomic statuses, and with a low level of english proficiency. the syllabus proposed by the school for tenth grade gave teachers guidelines to develop students’ communicative competence, but i noticed that my 34 tenth graders had not developed it enough despite having attended english classes every school year. several factors contributed to this situation: (1) students were not provided with enough opportunities to use the english learned in class to communicate ideas or interact spontaneously; (2) my cooperating teacher (ct) taught the class in spanish and therefore, there was an absence of exposure to spoken english; and (3) the english lessons were focused on preparing the students for their mid-term exams as well as teaching vocabulary, grammatical structures, and tenses. as a consequence, the use of bilingual dictionaries and exercises involving grammar and translation was frequent. after observing the aforementioned conditions and the lack of opportunities for my students to improve their communicative competence, i identified the need to implement a teaching approach that would help to improve this competence. consequently, i decided to implement the task-based learning (tbl) approach based on the framework of tbl teaching proposed by willis (1996). this approach “combines the best insights from communicative language teaching with an organized focus on language form” (willis, 1996, p. 1), and in most of the cases where scholars embedded the task-based approach in their teaching instead of other approaches, the results were positive in relation to the students’ use of the target language and communicative competence (lopez, 2004; tanasarnsanee, 2002). through this approach, students participating in this study were expected to develop different tasks in class that exposed them to spoken and written english, gave them opportunities to use the language in a spontaneous or planned way, and addressed their attention towards the form and grammar at the end of the tasks. considering the facts acknowledged here, this research sought to improve a group of tenth graders’ english communicative competence through the implementation of the tbl approach, developing a series of tasks that involved students’ interests and fostering students’ oral and written production through tbl founded classes. therefore, in order to frame this research inquiry, i proposed this question: how can the implementation of the tbl approach improve a group of tenth graders’ english communicative competence in a public high school? theoretical framework on this theoretical framework, i briefly present a debate that allowed the evolution of the concept of communicative competence in language learning 97 improving 10th graders᾽ english communicative competence through the implementation... and teaching. secondly, i share some authors’ insights on that competence, on the tbl approach, and their relationship. then, i present a brief state of the art of the research conducted in efl contexts related to this study. finally, i state the need for exploring the tbl approach in our efl classrooms and its effects on the students’ communicative competence. the debate that started the evolution of the concept of communicative competence emerged in the late 1960’s. several linguists called into question the grammatical focus of the grammar-translation and audio-lingual methods of foreign language teaching by arguing that language learning involved more than grammatical competence (richards, 2006). chomsky (1959) was among the first researchers to point out the limitations of structural theories of language. he introduced a distinction between competence (the monolingual speaker-listener’s knowledge of language) and performance (the actual use of language in real situations). this distinction was then seen as too narrow by hymes (1972), who believed that communicative competence not only implied the development of a grammatical competence but the ability to use language in a variety of communicative situations, thus bringing the sociolinguistic perspective into chomsky’s notion of competence. as a result of the debate, many linguists started to contribute to the further development of the concept of communicative competence and new methods. thereafter, different authors in the field of language acquisition and foreign language learning came out with insights on the communicative competence. one of them was savignon (1972) who defined communicative competence as the “ability to function in a truly communicative setting—that is, in a dynamic exchange in which linguistic competence must adapt itself to the total information input, both linguistic and paralinguistic, of one or more interlocutors” (p. 8). she described this competence as a dynamic and relative concept that is more interpersonal than intrapersonal, largely defined by context, and dependent on the negotiation of meaning and cooperation of all the participants involved (savignon, 1972). savignon’s description as well as willis and willis’ (2007) insights suggested the implementation of methods and approaches in efl classrooms that equipped students to improve both their linguistic and communicative competence. indeed, one of the approaches proposed to respond to learners’ communicative needs was tbl, whose aim is to develop students’ ability to communicate. in tbl, communication takes place by using the grammatical system of the language, which supports the idea that “‘communicative competence’ can only exist on a foundation of ‘grammatical competence’” (littlewood, 2000, p. 40). tbl provides students with a learning context that requires the use of the target language through communicative tasks, understanding task to be “a goal-oriented communicative activity with a specific outcome, where the emphasis is on exchanging meanings not producing specific language form” (willis, 1996, p. 36). tasks are characterized by integrating language skills, removing teacher-centered instruction, providing opportunities for spontaneous interaction in the foreign language, and increasing learners’ fluency, accuracy, and ability to interact in real-life contexts (willis, 1996). accordingly, efl classrooms are well suited for tbl, which is supported by the studies stated below. effectively, studies conducted in international efl contexts have supported the finding that tbl engages learners in certain mental processing that is useful for acquisition, promotes the use of language for a communicative purpose (ellis, 2000; nunan, 2005), and enhances students’ oral discourse in terms of utterance length or complexity, fluency, and accuracy (skehan & foster, 1997). lochana and deb’s (2006) findings, after conducting a study in an education society in india, suggested that tbl was beneficial to learners not only in terms of proficiency enhancement, but motivation. likewise, in an experiment in a brazilian private school, lopez (2004) found that students learned english more profile vol. 18, no. 2, july-december 2016. issn 1657-0790 (printed) 2256-5760 (online). bogotá, colombia. pages 95-110 universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras98 buitrago campo effectively through tbl because they were using the language to access information, solve problems, and talk about personal experiences, and then were able to deal with real life situations. moreover, in a book published by leaver and willis (2004), they presented some us foreign language programs that implemented task-based instruction, whose major outcomes included student motivation and satisfaction, higher proficiency results, risk taking, better program evaluation results, and curricular flexibility. furthermore, in our colombian efl context, gutiérrez gutiérrez (2005) conducted a study to investigate some ninth graders’ oral skills improvements while implementing tbl instruction. she proved it to be effective and concluded that the tasks implemented let students express their feelings and opinions freely and use language meaningfully and effectively. likewise, peña and onatra (2009) conducted a study on tbl in a public school to investigate students’ oral outputs. they found that the tasks favored students’ fluency, vocabulary, strategies to maintain communication, and promoted the use of language purposefully. in another study, the tbl approach was applied to the design of a multimodal didactic unit, which encouraged authentic communication inside a familiar environment for the students (facebook), and allowed them to monitor themselves through virtual connections (aldana gutiérrez, baquero rodríguez, rivero ortiz, & romero garcía, 2012). the implementation of task-based activities also helped 35 eighth-graders to comprehend and manipulate information, as well as interact meaningfully and spontaneously in an oral way (gonzález humanez & arias, 2009). in brief, the aforementioned findings are likely to encourage teachers in our context to feel confident when carrying out tbl in their efl classrooms, since this approach fulfills fundamental conditions for learning a foreign language, namely exposure, meaningful use, and motivation, as willis (1996) claims. as for communicative competence, some publications also dealt with it in our colombian context. jaime osorio and insuasty (2015) carried out a study to analyze the teaching practices used by some teachers in their english lessons and their effects on the development of students’ communicative competence. it revealed the prevalence of the pre-communicative teaching practices over the communicative ones, and a satisfactory influence of the teaching practices on the development of students’ communicative competence, more at the level of the pragmatic component than the organizational one. likewise, gonzález peláez (2008) conducted a study to establish the relationship between what english teachers understood about communicative competence and what they actually did in their classes. one of her findings showed how hard it was to define what communicative competence is in teachers’ own words. however, despite our finding studies on tbl as regards colombian classrooms, we feel that few have shed light on how beneficial its implementation can be for students’ communicative competence, where both oral and written production are involved. this is the reason why this study advocated for the tbl approach implementation in my particular efl classroom, where traditional teaching methods were applied as a way to facilitate relevant improvements on students’ communicative competence. method this research follows the qualitative paradigm as described by merriam (1998), who characterizes qualitative research as understanding the meaning people have constructed, in which reality is a main component, the researcher is the primary instrument for data collection and analysis, and fieldwork is usually involved as well as inductive research strategies. in regard to the type of research, this project was developed under the action research method, following the fourstage cycle suggested by mertler (2006): planning, acting, developing, and reflecting. this cycle was 99 improving 10th graders᾽ english communicative competence through the implementation... proposed and adapted by different authors who have also defined action research as a process of inquiry that is conducted to improve conditions and practices by incorporating change and social action (carr & kemmis, 1983; elliott, 1991; kemmis & mctaggart, 1982; lewin, 1946). accordingly, this study used its results to promote changes in the english classes of a public school and to improve the participating educators’ teaching practices. planning actions as part of the planning cycle of this action research and in order to improve students’ english communicative competence, i planned on implementing two teaching actions through a series of steps. the actions consisted basically of (1) defining four thematic units coherent with students’ interests, needs, and the syllabus; and (2) implementing the tbl approach through the development of a series of tasks based on willis’ proposal (1996), whose insights significantly guided this study. additionally, to collect data for this study, i planned on using the following instruments: (a) field notes to record the events within the classroom; (b) two semi-structured interviews with my ct, one at the beginning and one at the end of my teaching actions implementation in order to know his opinion about my research and the improvements he identified regarding students’ communicative competence during my project implementation; (c) a survey of the whole class with multiple choice questions carried out at the end of my teaching actions to identify how students perceived their english communicative competence; (d) two semi-structured interviews with ten students selected and divided into three focal groups according to their participation in the english class, conducted at the same time as my ct interviews with the purposes of learning their opinion about my research, the improvements they perceived in their communicative competence after my implementation, and expanding information gathered through the survey; and (e) students’ artifacts, such as written texts and recorded oral presentations, collected as results of different tasks in order to identify improvements in students’ communicative competence. development of the actions the aforementioned teaching actions were developed during the acting cycle of this action research carried out throughout the second semester of this study and were aimed at fulfilling the study objectives. for the first action, defining four thematic units, i applied a survey in class to identify topics and activities the students were interested in. subsequently, my students voted for these topics as their favorite ones: music, movies and tv series, love, and sports. i later integrated these topics to the content established in the course syllabus, creating the four different thematic units for the rest of the year. however, because of issues of time, only two units were covered. the other action that i carried out was implementing the tbl approach through the development of some types of tasks suggested by willis (1996) in order to help students improve their english communicative competence. the development of those tasks was also based on willis’ (1996) framework for tbl that consisted of a pre-task stage, a task cycle (task, planning stage, report stage), and a language focus stage (practice and analysis stage). the types of tasks implemented were chosen according to the class content and the tasks’ level of difficulty as presented below. as part of the first unit, i implemented two tasks. the first one involved a listing and a comparing task which consisted of (1) choosing a favorite music style in groups of four, (2) sharing their previous knowledge and writing ideas on the music style, (3) reading an article in english about it, and (4) comparing information and making a list of new data about the music style. in the report stage, students reported orally their previous knowledge and new data to the class; and then, i corrected their pronunciation and written ideas in the focus language stage. profile vol. 18, no. 2, july-december 2016. issn 1657-0790 (printed) 2256-5760 (online). bogotá, colombia. pages 95-110 universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras100 buitrago campo the second task was focused on comparing and sharing personal experiences where students shared in groups of three the music styles they liked the most and least, and justified their answers in english. in the pre-task, we listened to a dialogue exemplifying how to carry out the task and students were given useful vocabulary and expressions to ask for and give opinions. some difficulties in the task were that few students used english orally in the sharing task and some wrote their preferences in spanish and translated them into english, losing the opportunity of using spontaneous language. from the discussion, the groups of students took notes on the similarities and differences found in their preferences, which were orally reported later. in the focus stage, students learned some linking words and completed a contextualized paragraph with verbs conjugated in simple present, and some sentences using the auxiliary do or does. in the practice stage, students wrote an opinion about a music genre using the language learned. subsequently, i developed a task in the second unit related to a tv series. to involve my students’ interests, we decided altogether on a tv series that they would like to watch. we watched an episode of the tv series and students had to write a summary, but few of them handed it in. two tasks were developed based on the tv series. the first one was a sharing of personal experiences task where students wrote an opinion about the tv series using the vocabulary and grammar previously learned. the second task involved the listing, ordering, sorting, and sharing of a personal experiences task, where students in groups of three decided if the tv series watched should be shown in colombia. they then listed and ranked three arguments that supported their decision, and decided on their best argument. after these tasks, i did not carry out a language focus stage because of time constraints. all the aforementioned tasks counted on pretasks where students were expected to activate their background knowledge, learn useful vocabulary for the task cycle, pronounce words or write sentences using part of the vocabulary taught, and be exposed to spoken and written english through short readings, dictations, audio recordings, videos, and posters. the task cycles and report stages that were developed involved a variety of activities and students’ interests. in these stages, i promoted group work and opportunities for students to speak and write in english with a meaningful purpose. finally, in the language focus stages, students were expected to improve their writing and speaking in english through the analysis and practice of the language learned throughout the task, and the revision and correction of relevant mistakes made by the group of students in terms of grammar, punctuation, syntax, and pronunciation during the task and report stage. data analysis to analyze the data collected, i first transcribed the interviews. then, i organized the transcripts and journal entries and numbered all the pages. next, following altrichter, posch, and somekh (1993), i read and coded the data for preliminary categories through open coding, which shed light on broader categories and recurrent themes in the data. to analyze the survey (appendix), i first arranged the responses gathered for each list question on a summary sheet and then i tabulated the quantity of responses and set some of them into percentages (bell, 1993). i finally interpreted and coded the data. in the case of the students’ artifacts, i compared some of them to identify changes on students’ communicative competence that helped me answer my research question. once i finished this analysis, i rearranged all the data in broader categories through focused coding and regrouped excerpts of the data (emerson, fretz, & shaw, 1995). next, i organized the categories in a frequency chart. in order to achieve validity, i triangulated the data obtained from the different data collection sources looking for patterns and recurrent categories, aiming for corroborating findings and verifying their consistency 101 improving 10th graders᾽ english communicative competence through the implementation... (altrichter et al., 1993). in that way, i was then able to construct core themes and draw some conclusions that helped me answer my research question. in the following section, i present a summary of what i found. findings the processes described in the previous sections, as part of the observation and reflection cycles of this action research, led to some meaningful results in this study, whose purpose was to improve students’ english communicative competence through the implementation of the tbl approach. these findings are divided into these two interrelated main themes: improvements on students’ english communicative competence and factors that affected the tbl approach implementation. some sub-themes were also identified, as shown in table 1. in the following sections, i provide further explanations of each of these findings. table 1. main themes and sub-themes drawn from the data analysis main themes sub-themes improvements on students’ english communicative competence • improvements on written production. • improvements on oral production. factors that affected the tbl approach implementation • factors related to students. • factors related to teachers. improvements on students’ english communicative competence data revealed that students improved their communicative competence through the implementation of listing, ordering and sorting, comparing, and sharing personal experiences tasks as part of the framework for tbl proposed by willis (1996). through these tasks students were able to speak and write in english with a purpose despite the language inaccuracy because sometimes students’ progress is more possible after lowering their anxiety by avoiding teacher’s corrections (peña & onatra, 2009), and in task-based instruction the main concern is not the small pieces of language, but the practical purposes for which language must be used (brown, 2001). nonetheless, students were sometimes able to construct well-structured sentences and activate their prior knowledge. as forero rocha (2005) states in her study conducted in a colombian high-school, it is very important to consider students’ prior knowledge when planning a tbl class. indeed, a good task generates opportunities for learners to experience, activate as much language as possible, and recall and use the language they already know (willis, 1996; willis & willis, 2007). the following extract from my journal illustrates that students were able to use grammar and vocabulary learned previously in class with a meaningful purpose through a sharing personal experience task about justifying the music styles they liked the most and least: i saw that students could use the grammatical structures and vocabulary learned previously in class to communicate meaning orally. they could use the grammar structures and vocabulary with a purpose that was expressing their music preferences to their classmates. in brief, the task could contribute to the development of the students’ communicative competence (journal, september 6, 2012). the aforementioned improvements were also evident in the students’ artifacts collected. for instance, i found that through sharing personal experiences tasks, students developed the ability to construct personal opinions in english and to justify their answers orally and in a written way, as this student answered when asked about his learning: “i learned to say the why of things, why i like something, and to give my own opinion”1 (focus group 2, october 31, 2012). this is contrasted with students’ 1 all of the excerpts from the focus groups were translated from spanish for publication purposes. profile vol. 18, no. 2, july-december 2016. issn 1657-0790 (printed) 2256-5760 (online). bogotá, colombia. pages 95-110 universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras102 buitrago campo lack of ability to share opinions before the action cycle, as shown by the following student’s words when asked about her learning in previous years: “i did not know [how to give opinions]. maybe we have studied it, but i do not remember” (focus group 1, october 31, 2012). this finding shows how “engaging learners in task work provides a better context for the activation of learning processes” (richards & rodgers, 2004, p. 223) and how the negotiation of meaning in tbl provides the input and output necessary for language acquisition. after analyzing three different opinions that students wrote before, in the middle and at the end of the implementation about a reading, a music style, and a tv series episode respectively, i found that by the end of the tbl implementation students were able to communicate their ideas in a clearer way and produce more accurate written language without leaving the importance of meaning aside. in this respect, willis (1996) states that students are likely to make mistakes at first, but they gradually get more accurate as their repertoire of language increases. the three sharing-personal-experiences tasks came with the same instructions and conditions: students had to write an opinion without any specific length by just using a dictionary, the vocabulary learned in the pre-tasks, and their background knowledge. the aforementioned improvements are illustrated in figures 1, 2, and 3, which are artifacts collected from the same student. these data also suggest that students’ language performance improves after their practice on the same task. bygate (2001) proved through a larger study on the influence of practicing a type of task that repetition led to greater accuracy, fluency, and complexity of performance on the same task. as for the oral part, some improvements in learners’ fluency, pronunciation, and accuracy were identified. this was evident the several times that i asked students for oral opinions, since their performance showed gradual improvements in terms of pronunciation, fluency, and they were able to construct short but wellstructured sentences in a spontaneous way. in fact, in the study conducted by forero rocha (2005), she showed that improvements of students’ oral interaction through the use of tbl in a large group occurred as a gradual process, which required providing several opportunities to practice the language; besides, a benefit of task repetition is that learners get more fluency in terms of pausing and speed (bygate, 2001). in the last focus groups that i carried out, students expressed that they improved their pronunciation and vocabulary thanks to the pre-task activities where we pronounced different words and i assessed students’ individual pronunciation. in the following excerpt from one of the final focus groups, a student explained how through the practices on pronunciation he made improvements: for instance, [the words] that you wrote on the board, [and you asked us about] how to say this [a word], so i started thinking “how do i say that?” if i knew how to say [for example] the word crazy, so i [said] “¡crazy!” (well-pronounced). then one started being aware of the pronunciation. (focus group 3, october 31, 2012) figure 1. student’s opinion about a story, may 31, 2012 figure 2. student’s music preferences, september 12, 2012 103 improving 10th graders᾽ english communicative competence through the implementation... figure 3. student’s opinion about a tv series, october 18, 2012 even though most of the students in the last survey gave the same score to their oral and written productions, i found that some students perceived more improvements in either of them, and my ct perceived more improvements in students’ written part as this excerpt from his interview at the end of my implementation shows: according to my observations, i have to recognize that students improved in their use of english, and is more evident the improvement in the written part. (ct’s interview, november 2, 2012) regarding the survey, 11 students gave a higher score to their written production than to their oral and for seven students the scores were the other way around (appendix). this finding is consistent with the results of ellis and yuan (2005) who, in a study on the effects of task planning on oral and written task performance, found that “the participants’ language was more accurate when writing than when speaking” (p. 186). students’ different perceptions of their improvements were also evident in one of the last focus groups, where a student commented: “i improved my writing ...and [i improved] the pronunciation more or less. now, i know how to write some things with the words that you gave us.” (focus group 1, october 31, 2012), and another student considered that: “[i improved] the speaking. someone gives me a text in english and i know how to pronounce it” (focus group 2, october 31, 2012). nevertheless, these students’ improvements seemed to be also affected by their particular learning styles (james & gardner, 1995) and participation in class, since the student who commented that her writing improved more than her pronunciation was not very participative in class and the student who expressed that he had improved his speaking skill was a very participative one. data also suggested that the tbl approach helped students in learning vocabulary. this is a significant finding because vocabulary acquisition is viewed as a key aspect to achieve a high level of proficiency in the target language (boers & lindstromberg, 2008) and is a useful tool for learners to maintain a certain degree of communication when they do not have enough knowledge on structures (celce-murcia & rosensweig, 1989). the pre-tasks that students were exposed to during the action cycle, involving posters, readings, games, audio recordings, and pronunciation activities, not only helped the students to develop the tasks but to expand their vocabulary, correct their pronunciation, and improve their ability to express written or oral ideas in english. in fact, the use of creative, colorful, or user-friendly material in the pre-tasks can help the students to increase their vocabulary as well as their understanding and motivation (forero rocha, 2005). when i asked about the learning during the implementation, a student in one of the final focus groups expressed that he expanded his vocabulary, which for him makes english learning easier: one learned the words much more. it is easier for learning english to know the vocabulary . . . i [improved my english level] about a 50 percent, in some word pronunciations and some words that i did not know. (focus group 3, october 31, 2012) furthermore, in the survey conducted to learn of my students’ perception of their english proficiency level after my implementation (appendix), 13 students indicated that their english proficiency level improved between 40 and 60%, and 71% of the students rated profile vol. 18, no. 2, july-december 2016. issn 1657-0790 (printed) 2256-5760 (online). bogotá, colombia. pages 95-110 universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras104 buitrago campo their english proficiency level as 3 on a scale of 1 to 5, which can be interpreted as a level that my tbl approach implementation helped to build. in general terms, the findings presented above are in accordance with the findings of other researchers who suggest that task based activities are effective methods to improve foreign language learners’ proficiency in communicative learning (tanasarnsanee, 2002; willis, 1996). factors affecting the tbl approach implementation data suggested that some factors affected negatively the tbl approach implementation in my efl classroom as well as the communicative competence development, which implies different aspects beyond language itself (gonzález peláez, 2008). those factors are related in part to some students and others to the teacher’s role. factors related to students a factor that affected negatively the tbl approach implementation was some few students’ lack of willingness to participate in some tasks and group work. probably, as willis (1996) asserts, “students sometimes expect ‘to be seen but not heard’” (p. 140). data showed that the students who participated voluntarily were usually the same and some few students participated only when i called on them, as illustrated in the following excerpt from my journal: i often asked the students if they had any questions about what i was explaining, but they never said anything. most of the students were very quiet. . . . the students on the right and left side of the classroom were sometimes talking or absent-minded because when i asked them questions about the information i just presented, the students who answered were always those in front and middle of the classroom. (journal, july 25, 2012) apparently, one of the causes of some students’ lack of participation was their fear of speaking english in public or of mispronouncing words, which is one of the important causes that interfere with the students’ oral participation in the classroom along with the lack of vocabulary, shyness, and fear of being humiliated (forero rocha, 2005; horwitz, horwitz, & cope, 1986; urrutia león & vega cely, 2010). this was supported by the following student in one of the last focus groups who said: “one rarely likes to speak, for instance, in my case, i don’t like to speak a lot in english because i don’t know and people laugh at me because i mispronounce” (focus group 1, october 31, 2012). nevertheless, data indicated that some of those students’ willingness to participate in the tasks improved throughout the days. in addition, data showed that some students rarely did homework or copied it from classmates. this extract from my journal shows this situation: i asked the students if they had read the summary that i gave them yesterday from the first episode of the tv series, but any student read it because “they had much homework for today.” i shared my disappointment and then, i improvised by asking the students who already knew the tv series to tell their classmates what had happened in the first episode. (journal, september 27, 2012) due to that lack of responsibility, sometimes i had to improvise or develop activities in class that were supposed to be students’ homework. this affected negatively the sequence of the planned tasks, which is one of the key aspects in the implementation and effectiveness of the tbl approach (salaberry, 2001; willis, 1996) factors related to teacher data indicated that my implementation of tbl was affected by my lack of experience with this approach and with developing the tasks proposed by willis (1996). this lack of experience was evidenced at the beginning of the implementation by the long time i devoted to the language focus stages, the development of teacher-centered tasks, my lack of enough modeling and vocabulary given to the students before developing the 105 improving 10th graders᾽ english communicative competence through the implementation... tasks, unclear instructions, and the imbalance between the opportunities to produce oral and written english in the tasks. the following excerpt from my journal shows the reasons why a pre-task and task did not work well: something that didn’t work well in the task was the time devoted to the oral practice because i asked the whole class to present the dialogue, so it took too much time . . . the pre-task didn’t work well either because it was very teacher-centered and the students were bored because the activities were not dynamic. (journal, july 26, 2012) regarding the balance between the opportunities to produce written and oral english in class, data suggested that i gave more opportunities to produce written language than oral, which i did not expect because my idea was to improve both as a whole following willis’ (1996) framework for tbl. when asked about the balance in the opportunities, my ct mentioned in his interview that “there were opportunities for both things, but most for the written part’’ (ct’s interview, november 2, 2012). this excerpt from one of the last focus groups also shows that some students perceived the lack of balance: s8: there were more opportunities for writing than for speaking. s7: yes, more for writing. s9: no, for speaking too. s8: but for speaking, there were fewer opportunities than for writing. every class we wrote, and every other class we pronounced. (focus group 1, october 31, 2012) probably, as willis (1996) states, in large classes like this one to give individuals enough chance to use the language naturally is more difficult. furthermore, another thing that could affect the implementation was that i could not follow some of the few steps that willis (1996) mentioned in her framework for tbl. for instance, the recordings that students may hear of others doing a similar task in order to compare outcomes were not accessible for me because this was my first time implementing tbl, and in agreement with the peña and onatra (2009) statement, “letting learners observe a model during the task cycle is an excellent guide to better understand the purpose and possible outcome of a task” (p. 21). in a few words, these factors related to the teacher show that some central roles that a teacher should assume in tbl in order to be effective were not properly performed, which include selecting, adapting or creating the tasks, forming a sequence of tasks, and preparing learners for tasks by providing partial demonstration of tasks procedures (richards & rodgers, 2004). conclusions and implications based on the findings i obtained, it was possible to conclude that the implementation of the tbl approach through the development of a series of tasks proposed by willis (1996), coherent with students’ interests and needs, succeeded in improving my particular efl classroom students’ communicative competence, which was the main purpose of this study. the exposure to english and the frequent opportunities to use the target language through the different tasks and pretasks developed in class, contributed significantly to improve students’ oral and written production, which was reflected in the different artifacts collected as well as the students’ participation. however, based on the focal groups conducted at the end of this study, some students perceived more improvements in either of them, somehow due to their learning style and willingness to participate in class. some of the main improvements identified in students’ communicative competence included vocabulary increase, fluency, accuracy, and pronunciation. another important aspect that contributed to the improvement of students’ english communicative competence was the importance given to meaning and purpose over the importance given to the language form in the different tasks developed. as students addressed their attention towards the form and grammar at the end of the tasks, they could use the language in a more spontaneous and meaningful way during the tasks profile vol. 18, no. 2, july-december 2016. issn 1657-0790 (printed) 2256-5760 (online). bogotá, colombia. pages 95-110 universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras106 buitrago campo avoiding teachers’ correction and peers’ critique, which are important causes of students’ anxiety (peña & onatra, 2009). in this way, students advanced from translating and writing isolated sentences to writing meaningful short paragraphs and expressing their opinions through tasks, such as the sharing of personal experiences one. nevertheless, all of this was a gradual process where activating students’ previous knowledge as well as the tasks repetition played an important role because this led to the increase of accuracy, fluency, vocabulary, and a better performance on the same task, as students’ repertoire of language increased and their management of the task cycle as well (bygate, 2001; willis, 1996). as for the factors related to teacher and students, i concluded that the role teachers assume in the tbl approach differs from the role in more “linguistic” or structure-oriented approaches, but it is equally crucial and affects the effectiveness of the approach implementation. likewise, students’ performances and improvements are somewhat affected by the teacher’s role and their own learning styles (james & gardner, 1995). additionally, this study entailed some implications for teachers’ practice. the first one is that teachers should pay careful attention to providing students with enough exposure to english and balanced opportunities for oral and written production in order to improve their communicative competence. also, teachers should not forget how much influence students’ interests, learning styles, and needs have on their learning process and production. these implications, however, should be seen in a contextualized way, taking into account the reality of the students who participated in this study and the fact that this was the first time they developed tasks through the tbl approach. in the end, this project provides a better understanding of the effects of the tbl approach on students’ english communicative competence, and contributes to the ongoing corpus of research knowledge regarding the tbl approach and communicative competence in efl classrooms (ellis, 2000; gutiérrez gutiérrez, 2005; littlewood, 2007; lochana & deb, 2006; nunan, 2005; savignon, 1972; willis, 1996). further research on these issues could explore to what extent the tbl approach can improve students’ communicative competence in different settings and learning conditions. references aldana gutiérrez, y., baquero rodríguez, m. j., rivero ortiz, g. a., & romero garcía, d. c. 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(1946). action research and minority problems. journal of social issues, 2(4), 34-46. http://dx.doi. org/10.1111/j.1540-4560.1946.tb02295.x. littlewood, w. (2000). task-based learning of grammar. teaching and learning update, 1, 40-57. littlewood, w. (2007). communicative and task-based language teaching in east asian classrooms. language teaching, 40(3), 243-249. http://dx.doi.org/10.1017/ s0261444807004363. lochana, m., & deb, g. (2006). task based teaching: learning english without tears. the asian efl journal, 8(3), 140-164. lopez, j. (2004). introducing tbi for teaching english in brazil: learning how to leap the hurdles. in b. l. leaver & j. r. willis (eds.), task-based instruction in foreign language education (pp. 83-95). washington, dc: georgetown university press. merriam, s. b. (1998). qualitative research and case study: applications in education. san francisco, ca: josseybass publishers. mertler, c, a. (2006). action research: teachers as researchers in the classroom. thousand oaks, ca: sage. ministerio de educación nacional. (2006). estándares básicos de competencias en lenguas extranjeras: inglés [basic standards of competences in foreign languages: english]. bogotá, co: author. nunan, d. (2005). task-based language teaching. cambridge, uk: cambridge university press. peña, m., & onatra, a. (2009). promoting oral production through the task-based learning approach: a study in a profile vol. 18, no. 2, july-december 2016. issn 1657-0790 (printed) 2256-5760 (online). bogotá, colombia. pages 95-110 universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras108 buitrago campo public secondary school in colombia. profile issues in teachers’ professional development, 11(2), 11-26. richards, j. c. (2006). communicative language teaching today. cambridge, uk: cambridge university press. richards, j. c., & rodgers, t. s. (2004). approaches and methods in language teaching. cambridge, uk: cambridge university press. salaberry, r. (2001). task-sequencing in l2 acquisition. texas papers in foreign language education, 6(1), 101-112. savignon, s. j. (1972). communicative competence: an experiment in foreign language teaching. philadelphia, pa: the center for curriculum development. savignon, s. j., & wang, c. (2003). communicative language teaching in efl contexts: learner attitudes and perceptions. international review of applied linguistics in language teaching, 41(3), 223-249. http://dx.doi. org/10.1515/iral.2003.010. skehan, p., & foster, p. (1997). task type and task processing conditions as influences on foreign language performance. language teaching research, 1(3), 185-211. http://dx.doi. org/10.1177/136216889700100302. tanasarnsanee, m. (2002). 3ps, task-based learning, and the japanese learner. the english teacher: an international journal, 5(2), 165-169. urrutia león, w., & vega cely, e. (2010). encouraging teenagers to improve speaking skills through games in a colombian public school. profile issues in teachers’ professional development, 12(1), 11-31. vélez-rendón, g. (2003). english in colombia: a sociolinguistic profile. world englishes, 22(2), 185-198. http:// dx.doi.org/10.1111/1467-971x.00287. willis, d., & willis, j. (2007). doing task-based teaching. oxford, uk: oxford university press. willis, j. (1996). a framework for task based learning. london, uk: longman. about the author ana carolina buitrago campo holds a b.ed. degree in foreign language teaching from universidad de antioquia (colombia). her research interests include teaching english and french as second languages and language acquisition. she has experience in teaching english from pre-school to higher education. currently, she works as a full-time english teacher. acknowledgements i am deeply grateful to my advisors dr. ana maría sierra and camilo andrés dominguez for their valuable feedback and continuous support. i also would like to thank my cooperating teacher, my tenth graders, my teachers at the school of languages and my family for their contribution to the success of this study as well as to my personal and professional growth. 109 improving 10th graders᾽ english communicative competence through the implementation... appendix: responses of survey applied after the teaching strategies implementation2 participants: 31 students (ss) of 34 question 1. mark with an x the statement that best describes how you feel in relation to different areas of your english level: a lw a y s a lm o st a lw a y s s o m e ti m e s r a re ly n e v e r n o r e sp o n se pronounce well the words learned in class. 0 15 13 2 0 1 speak fluently. 0 2 17 10 2 0 use good spelling when you write. 1 11 17 2 0 0 write coherent sentences in the correct order. 4 11 11 5 0 0 use grammatical structures learned in class correctly (simple present). 5 11 11 3 1 0 you are able to ask classmates for opinions. 3 12 7 8 0 1 you are able to give your personal opinion about music, tv series and movies in a written way using simple sentences. 4 9 13 5 0 0 you are able to give your personal opinion about music genres, tv series and movies in an oral way using simple sentences. 3 8 18 2 0 0 you use varied vocabulary (speaking and writing). 2 8 13 8 0 0 you can write coherent and clear paragraphs. 2 10 13 5 1 0 questions 2, 5, and 6. being 1 the lowest level and 5 the highest, rank from 1 to 5: 1 2 3 4 5 q2. your english level at this moment. 0 3 22 6 0 q5. your oral english production level. 0 3 22 6 0 q6. your written english production level. 0 2 19 10 0 question 3. mark with an x the percentage that describes your english level progress: 5 20% 20 40% 40 60 % 60 80% 80 100% number of students 4 9 13 5 0 question 4. if you consider that your english level improved, mark the characteristics from the class that helped you more (you can mark several options): # of ss the opportunities to speak english in class. 22 the vocabulary learned before every task. 18 the way the teacher taught (task based learning approach). 16 the possibilities to write in english inside and outside the classroom. 15 2 all the questions in this survey were translated from spanish for publication purposes. profile vol. 18, no. 2, july-december 2016. issn 1657-0790 (printed) 2256-5760 (online). bogotá, colombia. pages 95-110 universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras110 buitrago campo the exercises and grammar worksheets developed at the end of every task. 15 the listening activities in english. 9 the homework that the teacher assigned. 9 interpretations of questions 5 and 6: eleven students assessed their written production at a higher level than their oral production (eight ss: oral = 3 and written = 4. three ss: oral = 2 and written = 3/4). seven students assessed their oral production at a higher level than their written production (five ss: oral = 4 and written = 3. two ss: oral = 3 and written = 2). thirteen students assessed their oral and written production at the same level (3); just one student considered both production skills in level 4. 171profile vol. 15, no. 1, april 2013. issn 1657-0790 (printed) 2256-5760 (online). bogotá, colombia. pages 171-193 adapting features from the siop component: lesson delivery to english lessons in a colombian public school adaptación de las características del componente de siop: desarrollo de clase, en las clases de inglés en un colegio público colombiano hollman alejandro rativa murillo* institución universitaria colombo americana, única, colombia despite some school efforts to offer students the best second language learning, english language lessons are often taught with an overuse of the mother tongue. hence, an action research project was conducted in order to discover how to adapt some features of the sheltered instruction observation protocol (siop) component: lesson delivery, for the teaching of english in sixth grade at a public school in bogotá, colombia. data collection included observation checklists, field notes, surveys and artifacts. the findings demonstrated that the overuse of spanish–the students’ mother tongue–was reduced when in addition to implementing the lesson delivery component, the teacher developed vocabulary activities. finally, it was suggested that teachers have siop training for teaching content and to focus more on students needs. key words: lesson delivery component, siop model, teaching and learning english language. a pesar de algunos esfuerzos para ofrecer a los estudiantes un mejor aprendizaje de una segunda lengua, a menudo se recurre al uso excesivo de la lengua materna en las clases de inglés. con el objetivo de hallar la forma de adaptar algunas características del componente del protocolo de observación siop para la instrucción ‘sheltered’: desarrollo de clase, para la enseñanza de inglés en grado séptimo, se realizó un proyecto de investigación acción en un colegio público en bogotá, colombia. en la recolección de datos se emplearon formatos de observación, notas de campo, cuestionarios y evidencias documentales. los resultados demostraron que el uso excesivo de español –la lengua materna de los estudiantes– se redujo porque además de la implementación del componente desarrollo de clase, se llevaron a cabo actividades de vocabulario. con esta investigación se sugiere que los profesores adquieran conocimientos acerca del citado modelo para la enseñanza de contenidos, y que se enfoquen más en las necesidades de los estudiantes. palabras clave: componente desarrollo de clase, enseñanza y aprendizaje del idioma inglés, modelo siop. * e-mail: alejandrorativa89@gmail.com this article was received july 1, 2012, and accepted on february 4, 2013. universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras172 rativa murillo introduction in the process of learning a second language, apprentices have been using and tr ying several methodologies and strategies. some learners have obtained great results while others have not. it is difficult, almost impossible, to establish a specific way of learning for a person or a group of people. no matter if they have almost the same environment and educational background, there are always some slight differences that make teachers adapt their teaching according to students’ needs. as a result, these differences have been some of the reasons for pedagogues to implement bilingual education programs. second language learners (sll) have immersed themselves into the target language or second language (l2), for instance, while living in a city where the target language is used (speaking, writing, reading and listening). recognizing the target language as the “language that a non-native speaker is in the process of learning” (target language, n.d., para. 1), and a second language as the “language whose acquisition starts after early childhood [and is described as] any language that is not the mother tongue or native language” (second language, n.d., para. 1). on the other hand, a great number of slls have accepted the challenge to study in an immersion program in a non-english speaking city where the target language is not the means of communication for the majority of its citizens. this forces slls to be in touch with a language other than english, such as spanish. in these immersion programs, slls must use (speaking, writing, reading and listening) the target language all the time in many kinds of activities. in colombia, most schools are willing to be come bilingual. this desire obeys the fact that the colombian ministry of education has created programs that foster bilingualism such as programa nacional de bilingüismo and bogotá bilingüe en diez años (bilingual colombia program and bilingual bogotá in ten years). as a result, elementary and high school students take english classes provided by their respective schools; these, of course, have a variety of different bilingual educational programs. among the most common, one may find english immersion method (eim) and two-way bilingual education method (twb) with the latter being the most preferred since english teaching courses may include students’ mother tongue, in this case spanish. law 115 of 1994, articles 21 and 22 highlight the importance of second language acquisition. following the guidelines of this law and the desire to improve the knowledge of a foreign language, the colombian ministry of education established a plan called programa nacional de bilingüismo 2004-2019 in order to foster the command of a foreign language, which, in turn, is a way to improve the academic, cultural, and economic factors around the country (programa nacional de bilingüismo, 2010). later on, after agreement 253 in 2006, the council of bogotá established the project called bogotá bilingüe en diez años (colombia, concejo de bogotá d. c., 2006). its main objective is to provide an appropriate environment for citizens to achieve the ability to communicate in english based on the international standards found in the common european framework (cef). the bogotá bilingüe project suggests public and private schools adopt their own bilingual programs and models. for instance, miravalle school, located in the south of bogotá, set up the eim for their english classes. the main objective of eim is to develop second language proficiency while learning academic content such as science and maths (peregoy & boyle, 2008). however, the reality of this school is completely different; there is no english instruction for any content area. students take english lessons for three hours and twenty minutes per week and the real english language contact during lessons is uncertain since most of the time during a lesson delivery is in the students’ native language, spanish. therefore, 173profile vol. 15, no. 1, april 2013. issn 1657-0790 (printed) 2256-5760 (online). bogotá, colombia. pages 171-193 adapting features from the siop component: lesson delivery to english lessons... it is necessary to use immersion models to support the bilingual process in schools like miravalle, where this study was conducted. one of these models is the sheltered instruction observation protocol which, according to echevarria, vogt and short (2008), is an approach for teaching content to english learners in strategic ways that make the subject matter concepts comprehensible while promoting the students’ english language development. the purpose of this study is to explore how teachers can adapt features from the lesson delivery siop component to foster the use of english in a group of sixth graders at miravalle school. moreover, although siop was designed to teach content areas to english language learners (echevarria, vogt & short, 2008), in this project it was tailored towards english lessons. bear in mind that teachers at miravalle plan lessons following these steps: routine, explanation, application and clarification. lesson delivery component provides guidance to keep teachers on track according to their lessons preparations. for this research project, it is suitable to say that use and application of siop components imply changes and acceptance by teachers and school in order to avoid extensive use of spanish. research question • how can teachers adapt features from the lesson delivery siop component to foster the use of english in a group of sixth graders at miravalle school? sub questions • what are the key features of the lesson delivery component when implementing siop in an english class? • in what ways does the implementation of features from the lesson delivery siop component provide teachers with opportunities to foster the use of english? theoretical framework this project is based on the desire to identify how to apply siop in english lessons in a public school in bogotá, colombia. first of all, it is worthwhile to re vise some theories and their application to the objective of the project. they will appear in the following order: additive and subtractive bilingualism (lambert, 1974), bidirectional interdependence (cummins, 1979), and sheltered instruction observation protocol (siop) (echevarria et al., 2008). additive and subtractive bilingualism lambert (1974) refers to two categories for bilingualism: additive and subtractive bilingualism. on the one hand, an additive bilingual situation develops when the addition of a second language and culture does not replace or displace the mother tongue and culture. consequently, it works as an expansion to the linguistic repertoire in that both languages are considered useful for social and professional lives. on the other hand, subtractive bilingualism occurs when the learning of a major second language (e.g. english) weakens a person’s minor mother tongue (e.g. portuguese) and culture sometimes to the point of replacing them. this is an important theory to take into account during the project, because it illustrates the two states that our students can experience while learning a second language. besides, it is a suitable theory at the moment to show students the importance of both languages and the advantages of adding a new language to their repertoires. bidirectional interdependence cummins’ (1979) theory bidirectional interdependence states that certain l1 knowledge can be positively transferred during the process of l2 acquisition. the l1 linguistic knowledge and skills that a child possesses can be used to develop the corresponding abilities in the l2. this theory has two universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras174 rativa murillo significant contributions to this project. first, second language learners need to know that while learning an l2 they can implement and apply their l1 knowledge as l2 learning support. second, slls must compare and recognize the relationship between l1 and l2. as spanish and english share some language properties, students need to identify those circumstances and use them effectively in the second language learning process. english immersion method (eim) this method applies the idea of not using any l1, thus instruction is entirely in english. teachers strive to deliver lessons in simplified english so that students learn both english and academic subjects (“englishlanguage learners”, 2004). it could be possible to say that when people want to learn a language they must use—in speaking, writing, reading and listening— the target language all the time and for any situation. besides, mcgroarty (2001) said that one of the eim goals is to “build strong academic literacy skills and to give students access to subjects taught in the second language” (p. 348). according to gómez and hincapié (1998), some linguists believe that if people have been able to learn their l1 without using any language model, they should be able to learn an l2 in a similar way. since miravalle’s english curriculum was based on eim, it is important to understand its methodology and characteristics. two-way bilingual education method (twb) the two-way bilingual education method is a variant of the eim; mcgroarty (2001) affirmed that it was designed to assist students of minority and majority languages who want to learn and develop literacy skills in both of them. it is the most common teaching methodology for esls in elementary and high schools in bogotá, colombia. through this method, lessons are given in two languages to students (in this case spanish and english). the main goal of this method is that students become proficient in both languages. however, this method could present diverse difficulties since, at the beginning of this research, spanish was used almost all the time and for any situation. following twb characteristics, learners could use their l1 as a support when learning an l2 as cummins (1979) stated in his bidirectional interdependence theory. furthermore, in this instructional program the importance of becoming proficient in both languages is taken into account as lambert (1974) declared in the additive bilingualism theory. sheltered instruction observation protocol (siop) siop was the english language instructional model adapted and applied for this study. it was developed with the need to assist non-english speakers in their process of learning content areas, such as science and maths, while learning the english language (echevarria et al., 2008). in addition, it includes eight components for instruction (see table 1). for the development of this study, the lesson delivery component was tailored from instruction in english language lessons. this component guides teachers to follow their lesson plans by practicing some useful and easy tips: content and language objectives clearly supported, students engaged approximately 90% to 100% of the class period, and proper pacing of the lesson to students’ ability levels. this component is completely appropriate for this project as lesson delivery was recognized as the point where teachers lose their paths and forget their english or bilingual instruction. review of related literature throughout language learning, great amounts of theories and methods have been proved. a relevant quote from harbord (1992) affirmed that there must not be reasons to use spanish in the english lessons as a time-saver or to make life easier. then, even taking into account the great number of bilingual education 175profile vol. 15, no. 1, april 2013. issn 1657-0790 (printed) 2256-5760 (online). bogotá, colombia. pages 171-193 adapting features from the siop component: lesson delivery to english lessons... programs that exist, we find that few research studies on english immersion and two-way bilingual education method are presented. it is suitable to take as a point of reference two research projects developed in bogotá, colombia: torres (1998) and gómez and hincapié (1998). the first research project was done in an important english institute where l1 was not allowed at any time during the lesson delivery. this can be described as an immersion program. in contrast, the gómez and hincapié project was developed in two schools where l1 was used as the basic tool most of the time and applied to any situation in the classroom. this can be described as a non-immersion program. the use of the mother tongue in the foreign language process: a tool or a hindrance the study was based on the english immersion method (eim). a group of 16to 35-yearold students were distributed among four classes: two were experimental groups (eg) and the other two were control groups (cg). in the eg a guideline, designed by torres (1998), was used for esl teaching. through this guideline, the teacher and the students had specific situations for using some spanish, thereby increasing l1 use. besides, the other cg continued their classes without any modification. after a survey, most of the english learners agreed with the idea that l1 was a useful tool, and disagreed with the concept of only using l2 as a means of communication. therefore, the eg wanted to use more l1 in their lessons. however, the cg preferred to only use l2, despite the recognition of l1 as a helpful tool. so, all groups shared the idea that l1 use depends on situations, for example to give instructions, to explain grammar or to make corrections. however, students would not like their mother tongue to be put aside all the time. just as well, they did not want an english class with complete l1 exposure because they paid for l2 exposure (torres, 1998). in the english institute where the guideline designed by torres (1998) was applied, 70% of the students passed the course. this percentage was higher table 1. siop components (echevarria et al., 2008) lesson preparation examines the lesson planning process, including the language and content objectives, the use of supplementary materials, and the meaningfulness of the activities. building background focuses on making connections with students’ background experiences and prior learning and developing their academic vocabulary. comprehensible input considers adjusting teacher speech, modeling academic tasks, and using multimodal techniques to enhance comprehension. strategies emphasizes teaching learning strategies to students, scaffolding instruction, and promoting higher-order thinking skills. interaction reminds teachers to encourage elaborated speech and to group students appropriately for language and content development. practice/application provides activities to practice and extend language and content learning. lesson delivery ensures that teachers present a lesson that meets the planned objectives, promotes students’ engagement and paces the lesson appropriately. review and assessment considers whether the teacher reviewed the key language and content concepts, assessed student learning, and provided feedback to students on their output. universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras176 rativa murillo than that of the cg. as a result, students from the eg obtained better outcomes because through this use of l1 they had new opportunities to facilitate learning. as stated by harbord (1992), a brief clarification in l1 could be a more efficient path to comprehension. subsequently, the eg had benefits from clarification of grammar and vocabulary questions in l1. also, it was appropriate to correct mistakes in l1. finally, esl teachers in english immersion programs need to identify when to use l1 and why. and for this research it is important to remember torres’ (1998) results—the smaller amount of l1 the better. torres (1998) demonstrated that the mother tongue should not be ignored in an esl setting but it needs to be used appropriately. english teachers need to keep appropriate activities in mind for using l1. the use of first language in a low intermediate level for teaching english as a foreign language: a guideline this research project was based on the two-way bilingual education method (twb). it was developed in two non-bilingual high schools in bogotá where students were sixth graders around 12 and 13 years old. participants were organized into two groups, one eg and other cg. the eg followed a guideline planned by the authors; it was based on the four main parts of lesson activities: before, during, post, and feedback of the activity. the cg did not use any guidelines, though. through this guideline, the teacher and the students had specific situations for using spanish, thereby decreasing l1 use. after a questionnaire, the teacher and the students agreed on the situations in which l1 must be used: giving instructions, complicated tasks, and grammar explanation. eg and cg were assessed in the four basic language skills through a test. as it was previously said, eg obtained better results than cg in the pre-test, although, in the post-test both groups improved their outcomes but eg showed a tendency of better results, especially in one skill: speaking. these results could be associated with the guideline designed by gómez and hincapié (1998) as they proposed specific moments in class delivery for using spanish. throughout, this guideline eg increased l2 contact, developing more l2 knowledge. the researchers concluded that through l1 application learners could have problems in grammar, semantics, syntax and pronunciation, and that l1 differences are not helpful. language differences will provoke language interference, which clearly will affect language learning. as atkinson (1987) said, teachers need to be conscious of the quantity of l1 use and why, otherwise it will affect the esl process. however, in this study the l1 amount was reduced and it produced an improvement in speaking for the eg, showing a significant difference with the cg results. according to gómez and hincapié (1998), the eg obtained such a better result in speaking because through the guideline students were more able to use english in any task, in activities where they asked and answered questions using l2. since their english level was increased through more exposure, and spanish was reduced just for specific situations in the eg, students could have better outcomes. teachers need to identify specific situations and quantities of l1. concerning these results, we can conclude that the less l1, the better. this research was presented and analyzed two main reasons. first, it was taken as a point of reference to create the observation checklist used to observe the english lessons and identify the research problem. second, this study was done in two schools in bogotá, colombia, the same city where the present study was developed. here, both sides of the issue concerning the english immersion method and the two-way bilingual education method were presented. the amount of l1 use in esl classrooms must be identified and applied precisely: not as much as in non-bilingual schools, and not completely avoided as in english 177profile vol. 15, no. 1, april 2013. issn 1657-0790 (printed) 2256-5760 (online). bogotá, colombia. pages 171-193 adapting features from the siop component: lesson delivery to english lessons... institutes. furthermore, any english program, school, institution, or teacher should first ask her/himself some questions i.e. who are the learners? who are the teachers? what is the necessary program? how will it be implemented? (gómez & hincapié, 1998). as a result, through these questions, they will identify basic principles, needs, methodologies, and the fu ture of english language learners. method data collection in this action research project, qualitative data collection techniques were used as primary tools. the main sources of information were daily observation checklists of teachers during english lessons and field notes to record extra information after english classes. also, surveys were applied to gather opinions about the use of spanish in the english classroom. finally, artifacts were collected to follow students’ processes of english knowledge (see table 2). data sources observation checklist based on gómez and hincapié (1998) and torres (1998), an observation checklist was designed. it was used during lesson deliveries in order to gather information about the use of spanish throughout english lessons. consequently, the student-researcher checked for specific situations when the english teacher needed to employ spanish in the english classroom (see appendix a). field notes as they are a way of reporting observations, they were taken into account for the second observation as the english teacher began to use spanish for some unexpected situations, which were not calculated on the observation checklist. field notes were written after each english lesson and provided data as to when the english teacher used spanish to control students’ behaviors, for example. surveys since they are useful to collect information about specific aspects of the teaching method, surveys were provided for six english teachers and 41 sixth grade (class 6a) students from a public school in order to find out their opinions about the use of spanish during the english lessons. students’ surveys were designed to verify their attitudes about spanish use during english lesson since in previous observations some students did not agree on the use of spanish instruction. the surveys were also used to evaluate how effective, useful, and interesting the planned lessons were for the sixth graders (see appendixes b and c). teachers’ surveys they were designed with the main objective of finding out if teachers’ answers were following their english methodology and the school’s english methodology (eim). also, they were used to discover teachers’ opinions about the use of spanish in the classroom specially when thinking about bilingual contexts (see appendix d). artifacts portfolios were managed as artifacts. students designed portfolios during class time and wrote helpful information for english lessons divided into two sections: useful questions and vocabulary. portfolios were planned because previous observations showed that students were using spanish most of the time, especially when they did not know the correct vocabulary or how to ask a specific question. so with the help of portfolios the l1 use was reduced. as a result, 6a students applied the useful questions section to clarify doubts during instruction like “how do you universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras178 rativa murillo say correr in english?” furthermore, the vocabulary section was a kind of dictionary where students defined words by drawings, key words, synonyms or antonyms. however, spanish was not allowed (see appendix e). implementation as the main goal of this study was to explore how teachers can adapt features from the siop component lesson delivery to foster the use of english in a group of sixth graders at miravalle school, three english lessons were planned and delivered by adapting the following features from the siop model: content objectives and language objective clearly supported, students engaged approximately 90% to 100% of the period, and pacing of the lesson appropriate to students’ ability levels. furthermore, vocabulary activities such as word wall, matching, flash cards, cloze sentences, and personal dictionaries were developed during lessons in order to present, develop and assess useful words for class activities. finally, the teacher clearly presented correct gram mar structures to fulfill lesson tasks. an example is the structure of can: subject + can + verb in infinitive form, my alebrije can fly. the vocabulary activities and grammar structures were developed for two main reasons. first, to follow the siop features: key vocabulary was emphasized and a variety of techniques such as provide a model of a process, task, or assignment was used to make content concepts clear. and second, after observations and students’ surveys, it was found that english lessons provided very few vocabulary activities and grammar structure explanations, consequently, some students suggested it as a necessary procedure for language learning. keeping in mind the purpose of adapting features from the lesson delivery component, we decided that before it took action, a vital component was needed to successfully continue: lesson preparation. the lesson plan template was modified from the lesson plan template #3 found in echevarria et al. (2008). the lesson presented in table 3 shows how sixth graders go through several tasks in order to achieve a final objective, which is to identify a mayan mythology creature, an alebrije. through the lesson template, the student-teacher researcher clearly organized a lesson sequence based on vital siop features such as content and language objectives, key vocabulary emphasized, links between past experiences and learning, supplementary materials, and so on. the first step is to identify the topic, in this case following miravalle’s curriculum, mayan mythology and its topic-based alebrijes. then, it is suitable to recognize the group of students involved for several reasons, such as adaptation of content, appropriate speech, scaffolding techniques, higherorder questions, and pacing the lesson appropriately. furthermore, project was developed with a group of forty-one sixth graders during their english classes. table 2. research questions and instruments research questions source 1 source 2 source 3 how can teachers adapt features from the siop component: lesson delivery to foster the use of english in a group of sixth graders at miravalle school? observations checklist field notes surveys what are the key features of lesson delivery component when implementing siop in an english class? observations checklist field notes surveys in which ways does the implementation of features from the siop component: lesson delivery provide teachers with opportunities to foster the use of english? observations checklist surveys artifacts 179profile vol. 15, no. 1, april 2013. issn 1657-0790 (printed) 2256-5760 (online). bogotá, colombia. pages 171-193 adapting features from the siop component: lesson delivery to english lessons... table 3. first lesson plan topic: mayan mythology – alebrijes class: english class – group 6a date: 25 – oct -2011 content objective swbat identify a mayan mythology creature, the alebrije. swbat apply reading info about alebrijes by creating, drawing and describing one alebrije. language objectives swbat practice reading skills by reading “los alebrijes”. swbat write a description for their alebrijes using the following structure: it has a lion’s head. key vocabulary beak body claw ears eyes face fin fingers head horns legs mouth nose tail teeth tongue wings materials markers word wall poster “los alebrijes” reading high-order questions: what can your alebrije do? what illness can your alebrije cure? answer the questions using the following structure: my alebrije can fly – my alebrije can cure cancer. time: 10 20 30 40 50 lesson sequence: students will read the language objective building background links to experience: the teacher will ask: have you ever dreamed? have you ever dreamed of strange situations? have you ever dreamed about animals? in pairs, students will read “los alebrijes”. links to learning: the teacher will have a review of the pronoun “it”, third person neutral singular. review of the verb “has”, meaning and difference between have and has. review of the possessive ‘s. key vocabulary: the teacher will present a word wall poster, each word with its corresponding drawing beak – body – claw – ears – eyes – face – fin – fingers – head – horns – legs – mouth – nose – tail –teeth – tongue –wings the teacher will explain the structure to describe students’ alebrijes: it has a lion’s head – it has eagles’ wings. students will draw an alebrije and write its description using word wall vocabulary and the structure of a description. the teacher will ask the higher-order questions: what can your alebrije do? what illness can your alebrije cure? the teacher will remind students of the “can” structure, used in a previous lesson, in order to answer the questions. universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras180 rativa murillo students activities scaffolding: _x_ modeling _x_ guided _x_ independent grouping: _x_ whole class ___ small group _x_ partners _x_ independent processes: _x_ reading _x_ writing ___ listening ___ speaking strategies: ___ hands-on _x_ meaningful _x_ linked to objectives review and assessment: answer the questions: what can your alebrije do? my alebrije can fly. what illness can your alebrije cure? my alebrije can cure cancer. individual_x_ group _____ written __x_ oral ____ teacher reflection taking into account the lesson preparation component (echevarria et al., 2008), we feel that content objectives are required to focus the lesson ap propriately in order to support school and state stand ards for content areas. however, miravalle school did not use english as a means of communication to teach any content area. on the other hand, the english language class designed its curriculum following a topic-based structure where different topics were included like mayan mythology, colombian festivals, love and friendship day (valentine’s day), halloween, and christmas. based on the language objectives from echevarria et al. (2008), the teachers should incorporate in their lesson plans techniques that support students’ language development. for instance, in table 3 students developed reading and writing skills. furthermore, as the main objective of this research is to adapt features from lesson delivery component to english lessons, the alebrijes template presented in table 3 demonstrated activities that reinforce features 23 and 24: content and language objectives clearly supported by lesson delivery. then, key vocabulary was presented in order to achieve the siop feature key vocabulary emphasized and its corresponding activity, a word wall poster. this was a double-purpose activity: first, to present, develop and assess vocabulary, and second, to show students that with the help of simple images, they could understand vocabulary without the need to use spanish. supplementary materials, which were necessary to develop the lesson, were presented such as a word wall poster, copies of the reading about alebrijes, and markers. also, according to echevarria et al. (2008), materials are especially important for students who do not have the appropriate english level, academic backgrounds and/or who have language and learning difficulties. as stated previously, this project was developed with a group of forty-one sixth graders who were at a low intermediate english level. the word wall poster was a great help for most of the students to understand vocabulary easily. also, in the group of sixth graders there were two students with learning difficulties who could take advantage of the vocabulary activity supported by a poster with simple images and words in english. during lesson preparation it is important to plan questions that promote higher-order thinking skills, which is siop feature 15. most of the time, these questions are based on bloom’s (1956) taxonomy of educational objectives that includes six levels: 181profile vol. 15, no. 1, april 2013. issn 1657-0790 (printed) 2256-5760 (online). bogotá, colombia. pages 171-193 adapting features from the siop component: lesson delivery to english lessons... knowledge, comprehension, application, analysis, synthesis, and evaluation. in this first lesson about mayan mythology, the higher-order questions were: what can your alebrije do? and what illness can your alebrije cure? to answer these two questions, the teacher presented a grammar structure as a model to follow. students practiced the “can” structure as they had already studied it in a previous lesson in order to provide the answers my alebrije can fly and my alebrije can cure cancer. these answers showed students’ understanding of the “can” structure and their use of imagination. furthermore, building background was pre sented; it contains two siop features, links to ex perience and links to learning. first, links to experience is based on students’ prior knowledge. this feature was addressed with some questions: have you ever dreamed? have you ever dreamed of strange situations? have you ever dreamed about animals? the links to learning were the material, vocabulary and concepts that were covered beforehand in class. in the alebrijes lesson, there was a short review of the pronoun “it”, the verb “has”, and the possessive’s. after the lesson sequence, students read the “los alebrijes” text in pairs. concerning the lesson delivery component, students worked in pairs to achieve siop feature 25 about students’ engagement, and feature 24 regarding tasks that support language objectives. following the lesson sequence, students used their imagination and drew an alebrije; later on english learners described their alebrijes keeping in mind the teacher’s model: it has a lion’s head. finally, in lesson preparation, it is necessary to identify how students will develop their activities taking into account four stages: scaffolding, grouping, processes and strategies. also, it is necessary to plan how the topic will be reviewed and assessed. in this case it was individually and in written form (see appendix f and g for other implemented lessons). findings as the implementation was designed to respond to the research questions, they are presented below with their corresponding answers (see table 4). how can teachers adapt features from the siop component: lesson delivery to foster the use of english in a group of sixth graders at miravalle school? adapting english lessons based on the siop template, students admitted that the lessons were easy to understand; they learned more vocabulary and could use their imagination. in order to maintain students engaged most of the class time, teacher used images to present, develop and assess the new vocabulary, for example animals’ parts and words with the /f/ and /v/ sounds. furthermore, following the lesson delivery component from siop, spanish was reduced in several categories. however, the teacher used spanish to establish rapport and assist students with learning difficulties. also, teachers and students agreed on the idea to use spanish when comparing l1 and l2, controlling behavior, and giving the school’s administrative information. additionally, employing siop strategies such as key vocabulary at the beginning of the class, review of grammar and tenses structures, and personal dictionaries helped students increase the english language use participating actively most of the class time and reaching the class objectives. what are the key features of lesson delivery component when implementing siop in an english class? taking into account lesson delivery features and the data gathered, we found that students liked the idea of having objectives; most of the time at the end of the lessons sixth graders wanted to achieve them. besides, students liked sharing, helping and working with other classmates following the lesson delivery feature of promoting student engagement. it is important to know students’ strengths and difficulties in order to pace the lesson appropriately, plan ob jectives and group configurations correctly. universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras182 rativa murillo in what ways does the implementation of the siop component lesson delivery provide teachers with opportunities to foster the use of english? since students were engaged most of the time in class activities, they could easily apply their english knowledge. following a proper pacing and group configuration in the english classroom, sixth graders had more opportunities to practice their english knowledge. what’s more, they were conscientious of the importance of the english language: “si hablamos más en inglés, podemos aprender más y mejor” (if we speak more english, we can learn more and learn it better). at the same time, sixth graders were aware of the importance of english and the need for spanish: “español para explicar, inglés para practicar” (spanish to explain, english to practice). most of the students actively worked on their portfolios, personal dictionaries and useful questions. the need and use of english increased in students’ opinions. conclusion in concluding, this study shows that some of the findings from the literature review were confirmed. following the research project developed by gómez and hincapié (1998), in this study the use of spanish was reduced and narrowed to specific situations and, as a result, students shared better english outcomes. similarly, in this study the use of spanish was decreased in order to foster the use and need of english. according to cummins (1979), l1 knowledge can be positively transferred during the process of l2 acquisition. in the same way, sixth graders frequently compared l1, spanish and l2 english grammar structures. finally, as previously stated, the bilingual program of miravalle school is based on the english immersion method (eim); however, based on the observations, results and findings from this study, the school could make appropriate use of spanish if it focused the english curriculum on twb standards. table 4. matrix research questions source 1 source 2 source 3 how can teachers adapt features from the siop component: lesson delivery to foster the use of english in a group of sixth graders at miravalle school? observations checklist field notes surveys “divertido aprender las partes de los animales usando imágenes” (it was fun to learn the animals’ body parts using images). what are the key features of lesson delivery component when implementing siop in an english class? observations checklist field notes surveys “es un reto tener objetivos e intentar cumplirlos” (it was a challenge to have learning objectives and try to reach them). in which ways does the implementation of features from the siop component: lesson delivery provide teachers with opportunities to foster the use of english? observations checklist surveys artifacts “me gustó aprender los sonidos f y v y jugar con los trabalenguas” (i liked to learn about the /f/ & /v/ sounds and play with the tongue-twisters). 183profile vol. 15, no. 1, april 2013. issn 1657-0790 (printed) 2256-5760 (online). bogotá, colombia. pages 171-193 adapting features from the siop component: lesson delivery to english lessons... besides, since this research project demonstrated that the siop model effectively worked in english lessons, the school could use it as an english language instructional program. through twb implementation and siop adaptation, the suitable bilingual program for miravalle school should follow the two-way immersion siop (twiop) model. references atkinson, d. (1987). the mother tongue in the classroom: a neglected resource? etl journal, 41(4), 241-247. bloom b. s. (1956). taxonomy of educational objectives, hand book i: the cognitive domain. new york, ny: david mckay co., inc. colombia. concejo de bogotá, d.c. (2006). acuerdo 253 de 2006: por el cual se institucionaliza el programa bogotá bilingüe y se dictan otras disposiciones. retrieved from http://www.alcaldiabogota.gov.co/sisjur/normas/ norma1.jsp?i=22230 colombia. ministerio de educación nacional [men]. (1994). ley general de educación (ley 115 del 8 de febrero de 1994). retrieved from http://www.mineducacion.gov. co/1621/articles-85906_archivo_pdf.pdf cummins, j. (1979). cognitive/academic language proficiency, linguistic interdependence, the optimum age question and some other matters. working papers on bilingualism, 19, 121-129. echevarria, j., vogt, m., & short, d. (2008). making content comprehensible for english learners: the siop model (3rd ed.). boston, ma: allyn & bacon. english-language learners. (2004). in education week. retrieved from http://www.edweek.org/ew/issues/english language-learners/ gómez, g., & hincapié, n. (1998). the use of first language in a low intermediate level for teaching english as a foreign language: a guideline (unpublished master’s thesis). universidad distrital francisco josé de caldas, bogotá. harbord, j. (1992). the use of mother tongue in the classroom. elt journal, 46(4), 350-355. lambert, w. e. (1974). culture and language as factors in learning and education. in f. e. aboud, & r. d. mead (eds.), cultural factors in learning and education (pp. 91-122). bellingham, sw: fifth western washington symposium on learning. mcgroarty, m. (2001). bilingual approaches to language learning. in m. celce-murcia (ed.), teaching english as a second or foreign language (pp. 345-356). boston, ma: heinle & heinle. peregoy, s., & boyle, o. (2008). reading, writing and learning in esl: a resource book for teaching k-12 english learners (with myeducationlab) (5th ed.). boston, ma: allyn & bacon. programa nacional de bilingüismo (2010). retrieved from http://www.colombiaaprende.edu.co/html/productos/1685/article-158720.html second language. (n.d.). in education.com. glossary of education. retrieved from http://www.education.com/ definition/second-language/ tang, j. (2002). using the l1 in the english classroom. english teaching forum, 40(1), 36-43. target language. (n.d.). in education.com. glossary of education. retrieved from http://www.education.com/ definition/target-language/ torres, j. (1998). the use of the mother tongue in the foreign language process: a tool or a hindrance (unpublished master’s thesis). universidad distrital francisco josé de caldas, bogotá. about the author hollman alejandro rativa murillo  holds a b.a. in bilingual education (institución universitaria colombo americana, única, colombia). he currently works as a research assistant in the sirp research group at única in the “ethics matters research project.” his interests are teaching english as a second language and development as a future researcher. universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras184 rativa murillo appendix a: observation checklist this observation checklist aims to find out the extent of the english teacher’s use of spanish language during english lessons. the results will be used for research purposes only. school’s method: english immersion date:______________________________ activity: ___________________________ please, mark each time the teacher uses spanish during the lesson: time 0-20 min 21-40 min 41-60 min provide instructions explain grammar clarify vocabulary establish rapport re-explain a topic students did not understand ensure students understood express feelings/behaviors explain cultural differences correct students’ mistakes translation activity compare l1, spanish l2, english ask questions answer questions control behavior asking and giving school administrative info adapted from gómez and hincapié (1998) and torres (1998) 185profile vol. 15, no. 1, april 2013. issn 1657-0790 (printed) 2256-5760 (online). bogotá, colombia. pages 171-193 adapting features from the siop component: lesson delivery to english lessons... appendix b: first student survey this survey aims to find out your opinion of the use of spanish in the english classroom. your answers will be used for research purposes only. thank you for your cooperation! 1. you think the english class is _________ easy normal difficult why?___________________________________________________________________________ 2. do you think that your teacher should use spanish in the english lessons? yes____ no____ why? ___________________________________________________________ 3. do you like it when your teacher uses spanish in the english class? i don’t like it____ i like it a little____ i like it sometimes____ i really like it____ 4. check the reasons for using spanish during english lessons (more than one option is possible). to provide instructions to explain grammar to clarify vocabulary to establish rapport to re-explain a topic students did not understand to ensure students understood to express feelings and/or behaviors to explain cultural differences to correct students’ mistakes to compare l1, spanish and l2, english to ask questions to answer questions to control behavior to ask and give school administrative info other, please specify _______________________________________________________________ adapted from tang (2002). universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras186 rativa murillo appendix c: teachers survey this survey aims to find out your opinion regarding the use of spanish in the classroom, especially when thinking of bilingual contexts. your answers will be used for research purposes only. thank you for your cooperation! which grades are you teaching right now? ______________ 1. should spanish be used in the english classroom? why? 2. do you use spanish when delivering your english lessons? if affirmative… 3. check the reasons for using spanish during your english lessons (more than one option is possible). to provide instructions to explain grammar to clarify vocabulary to establish rapport to re-explain a topic students did not understand to ensure students understood to express feelings and/or behaviors to explain cultural differences to correct students’ mistakes to compare l1, spanish and l2, english to ask questions to answer questions to control behavior to ask and give school administrative info other, please specify _______________________________________________________________ adapted from tang (2002). 187profile vol. 15, no. 1, april 2013. issn 1657-0790 (printed) 2256-5760 (online). bogotá, colombia. pages 171-193 adapting features from the siop component: lesson delivery to english lessons... appendix d: second student questionnaire this survey aims to find out your opinion of the use of spanish in the english classroom. your answers will be used for research purposes only. thank you for your cooperation! 1. you think the english class is _________ easy normal difficult why?___________________________________________________________________________ 2. do you think that your teacher should use spanish in the english lessons? yes____ no____ why? ____________________________________________________ 3. what do you preferfor your teacher to use spanish or english in the lessons? spanish____ english____ why? ___________________________________________ 4. answer yes or no and why. did you like the alebrijes class? yes___ no___ why? __________________________________________________________________________ ______________________________________________________________________________ did you like the /f/ and /v/ sounds class? yes___ no___ why? __________________________________________________________________________ ______________________________________________________________________________ did you like the review of past and present tenses class? yes___ no___ why? __________________________________________________________________________ ______________________________________________________________________________ 5. check the reasons for using spanish during your english lessons (more than one option is possible). to provide instructions to explain grammar to clarify vocabulary to establish rapport to re-explain a topic students did not understand to ensure students understood universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras188 rativa murillo to express feelings and/or behaviors to explain cultural differences to correct students’ mistakes to compare l1, spanish and l2, english to ask questions to answer questions to control behavior to ask and give school administrative info other, please specify _______________________________________________________________ adapted from tang (2002). 189profile vol. 15, no. 1, april 2013. issn 1657-0790 (printed) 2256-5760 (online). bogotá, colombia. pages 171-193 adapting features from the siop component: lesson delivery to english lessons... appendix e: artifacts vocabulary useful questions samples taken from a student’s portfolio. universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras190 rativa murillo appendix f: second lesson plan topic: phonetics /f/ & /v/ sounds class: english class – 6a grade date: 1nov2011 content objective swbat identify and apply /f/ & /v/ sounds by saying a tongue twister. language objectives swbat listen and recognize differences between /f/ & /v/ sounds. key vocabulary find vote frog van frozen river knife wave materials markers flashcards /f/ & /v/ sounds tongue twisters written on slips of paper higher-order questions: which is the difference between pronouncing /f/ & /v/ sounds? time: 10 20 30 50 lesson sequence: students will read language objective. teacher will ask for the homework, words with f and v sounds, then write some words on the board and practice pronunciation. building background links to experience: practice pronunciation and recognize differences in common words that maybe students have heard before, facebook and volleyball. links to learning: teacher will review spelling of some words to check students’ understanding and differences of /f/ & /v/ sounds. key vocabulary: teacher will present some flashcards and ask students what images they know or recognize. then write the words, check spelling and pronunciation. modeling pronunciation by making slow and clear mouth movements. teacher will make a chart showing common spellings for the /f/ sound /f/ f (fell) ff (offer) ph (photo) gh (laugh) teacher will write a tongue twister on the board to model the /f/ sound: “frank found four frogs laughing on the floor”. all students will read it aloud three times. in pairs, students will receive a slip of paper with a tongue twister based on the /f/ sound written on it. then, they will read, learn and say the tongue twister. teacher will write a tongue twister on the board to model the /v/ sound: “vera drove to venice in a van”. all students will read it aloud three times. using the same pairs, students will receive a slip of paper with a tongue twister based on the /v/ sound written on it. they have to read and learn the tongue twister for homework. 191profile vol. 15, no. 1, april 2013. issn 1657-0790 (printed) 2256-5760 (online). bogotá, colombia. pages 171-193 adapting features from the siop component: lesson delivery to english lessons... student activities scaffolding: _x_ modeling _x_ guided _x_ independent grouping: _x_ whole class ___ small group _x_ partners _x_ independent processes: ___ reading _x_ writing _x_ listening _x_ speaking strategies: ___ hands-on _x_ meaningful _x_ linked to objectives review and assessment: read and say tongue twisters with /f/ and /v/ sounds. individual _x_ group _x_ written _x_ oral __x__ teacher reflection universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras192 rativa murillo appendix g: third lesson plan topic: past and present tenses review class: english class – group 6a date: 4 nov2011 content objective swbat recall and compare information about past and present tenses. language objectives swbat write sentences in past and present tenses. key vocabulary play watch go fly do cook stop study materials markers higher-order questions: which is your favorite fairy tale? do you remember any event from this story? time: 10 20 lesson sequence: students will read language objective. building background links to experience: what did you do yesterday? what do you do every day? links to learning: which of the following verbs do you need to add –ed to? watch – go live which of the following verbs do you need to add –es to? watch – go live key vocabulary: students will match the related words play to the park watch to australia go soccer fly chicken do tv cook a car stop math study homework 30 students will fill in a chart by writing the verbs of the vocabulary activity in past an present tenses. 193profile vol. 15, no. 1, april 2013. issn 1657-0790 (printed) 2256-5760 (online). bogotá, colombia. pages 171-193 adapting features from the siop component: lesson delivery to english lessons... 40 50 past present played watched went flew did cooked stopped studied plays watches goes flies does cooks stops studies clarify and review past and present rules and exceptions, for instance, when -y changes to -ied or –ies or students will complete cloze sentences in 2000, the teacher ___________ to school but nowadays he _______ to university. in 2000, she __________ pokémon but nowadays she __________ naruto. in 2000, he ___________ nintendo but nowadays he __________ xbox. homework, in your portfolio, 1. write about three activities you did last week using different verbs from the ones in class. 2. write about three activities your father or mother does every day using different verbs from the ones in class. student activities scaffolding: _x_ modeling _x_ guided _x_ independent grouping: _x_ whole class ___ small group ___ partners _x_ independent processes: ___ reading _x_ writing ___ listening _x_ speaking strategies: ___ hands-on _x_ meaningful _x_ linked to objectives review and assessment: homework, in your portfolio, 1. write about three activities you did last week using different verbs from the ones in class. 2. write about three activities your father or mother does every day using different verbs from the ones in class. individual _x_ group ___ written _x_ oral ___ teacher reflection profile vol. 12, no. 2, october 2010. issn 1657-0790. bogotá, colombia. pages 51-68 51 iranian efl and indian esl college students’ beliefs about reading strategies in l2 creencias de estudiantes universitarios iraníes efl e hindúes esl acerca de las estrategias de lectura en l2 alireza karbalaei* university of mysore, india the notion of “learner beliefs” has garnered much attention in the field of second language acquisition. although different studies have been conducted to study learners’ beliefs about language learning, little research has looked into the issue of l2 readers’ beliefs and their relations to reading strategies. this study investigated whether there are any significant differences between efl and esl readers in reading awareness of metacognitive strategies use when they are reading in english. 190 undergraduate college students completed the survey of reading strategies questionnaire. the results indicated that the subjects in both groups reported almost similar patterns of strategy awareness while reading; however, indians reported more awareness of global, support and total metacognitive reading strategies than iranians while no significant difference was reported when using problem-solving strategies. these results can contribute to the necessity of reading strategies training in both contexts. key words: metacognitive reading strategies, metacognition, efl and esl readers, cognitive processes. la noción de “creencias del estudiante” ha ganado mucha atención en el ámbito de la adquisición de la segunda lengua. aunque se han realizado diferentes estudios sobre las creencias de los estudiantes respecto al aprendizaje de la lengua, poco se ha investigado acerca de las creencias de los lectores de segunda lengua y su relación con estrategias de lectura. este estudio investigó si había diferencias significativas entre los lectores de inglés como lengua extranjera y los lectores de inglés como segunda lengua en cuanto a la conciencia lectora y el uso de estrategias metacognitivas cuando leen en inglés. ciento noventa estudiantes de pregrado completaron el cuestionario sobre estrategias lectoras. los resultados mostraron que los sujetos de los dos grupos reportaron un patrón casi similar al uso de conciencia de estrategia mientras leían. sin embargo, los estudiantes indios reportaron ser más conscientes respecto a estrategias metacognitivas lectoras totales, globales y de apoyo que los estudiantes iraníes, mientras que no se hallaron diferencias significativas al usar estrategias para la resolución de problemas. estos resultados pueden contribuir a la necesidad de capacitación en estrategias lectoras en ambos contextos. palabras clave: estrategias metacognitivas, metacognición, lectores de inglés como lengua extranjera y como segunda lengua, procesos cognitivos de lectura. * e-mail: alireza_karbalaei_2007@yahoo.com this article was received on december 17, 2009, and accepted on june 15, 2010. 52 universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras karbalaei introduction interest in second language acquisition, particularly as it relates to reading in the second language, has burgeoned in the past decade. this change has resulted in a growing demand for both effective reading courses as well as high-quality second language materials. research has demonstrated that, in essence, reading in a second language is a dynamic and interactive process by which learners make use of background knowledge, text schema, lexical and grammatical awareness, l1-related knowledge, and real-world knowledge, as well as their own personal purposes and goals, to arrive at an understanding of written material. at the same time, readers’ views of the nature of reading are seen to be shaped by their own social, cultural, and personal histories. according to anderson (2003), reading is the interaction of four things: the reader, the text, the fluent reading or “the ability to read at an appropriate rate with adequate comprehension”, and strategic reading, or “the ability of the reader to use a variety of reading strategies to accomplish a purpose for reading” (p. 8). discovering the best methods and techniques or processes the learners choose to access is the goal of research in reading strategies. in addition, reading is the kind of process in which one needs to not only understand its direct meaning, but also comprehend its implied ideas. as tierney and readence (2005) states, “learning to read is not [only] learning to recognize words; it is [also] learning to make sense of texts” (p. 51). it involves a great deal of cognitive capacity available for comprehension (pressley, 2002a). for example, good readers know that comprehension is most likely to occur from reading activity. they know how to relate what is being read to prior knowledge, how to predict what might be coming up in the text, and summarize what is being read (pressley, 2002a). these comprehension strategies are metacognitive concepts in reading. if students are capable of comprehending what they are reading through a variety of strategies, they will create an interested and self-regulative attitude toward the path of academic achievement. regarding the importance of reading comprehension, it should be pointed out that it is specifically the basic goal for esl/efl students to gain an understanding of the world and of themselves, enabling them to think about and react to what they read (tierney & readence, 2005). according to grabe (1991), reading is an essential skill and probably the most important skill for second language learners to master in academic contexts. since reading comprehension has been distinctively important both in first and second/foreign languages, reading strategies are of great interest in the field of reading research. reading research has also shed light on metacognitive awareness of reading strategies, perception of strategies, and strategy use / training in reading comprehension. theoretical framework metacognition metacognition is defined as “thinking about thinking” (anderson, 2002, p. 23). this term was first coined by flavell in the mid 1970s. according to byrd, carter, and waddoups (2001), it is account ed as self-awareness of mental process. oxford believes that metacognitive strategies “provide a way for learners to coordinate their own learning process” (1990, p. 136). others contend that metacognition refers to the knowledge and control that we have over our cognitive processes. as far as it is concerned with reading, it is common to talk about metacognitive awareness (what we know) and metacognitive regulation or control (knowing when, where, and how to use strategies; that is, what we can do). as a profile vol. 12, no. 2, october 2010. issn 1657-0790. bogotá, colombia. pages 51-68 53 iranian efl and indian esl college students’ beliefs about reading stategies in l2 whole, metacognition involves awareness and control of planning, monitoring, repairing, revising, summarizing, and evaluating. essentially, we learn strategies that support our comprehension (our awareness of strategies) and we learn how to carry out these strategies effectively (our control of strategies) (baker, 2002; 2008; pressley, 2002b). since its development in the late 1970s, the theory of metacognition has received a great deal of attention and serious consideration from cognitive and developmental psychologists as well as reading researchers. although the theory of metacognition originated from research on learning and memory, the success of research studies in cognitive/ developmental psychology, especially kreutzer, leonard, flavell, and hagen (1975) study on children’s metamemory, has undoubtedly exerted a significant influence on reading research. cognitive and developmental psychologists have provided reading researchers with deep insights into problems of reading comprehension, and have created an ongoing enthusiasm for further exploration and investigation of reading problems within the theoretical and conceptual framework of metacognition. research on the relationship between metacognition and reading comprehension has progressed through several different stages. during the early stages, research focused on the investigation of the relationship between metacognition and reading comprehension from the developmental perspective. brown (1980) and baker and brown (1984) were among the first influential researchers in this field. they concluded that young students are ignorant of metacognitive strategies in knowing when they are comprehending, knowing what they need to know and what they have comprehended, knowing where they fail to comprehend, and knowing what they need to do in order to repair comprehension failure. reading strategy research a strategy is an individual’s comprehension approach to a task; it includes how a person thinks and acts when planning and evaluating his or her study behavior. in effect, successful people are good strategy users; they know how to use a variety of goal-specific tactics, to execute a planned sequence for them, and to monitor their use (ad ams & hamm, 1994; gettinger & seibert, 2002; weinstein & mayer, 1985; weinstein & underwood, 1985). there are so many reading strategies employed by successful language learners who are able to find their own way, organize information, use linguistic knowledge of their first language when they are learning their second language, use contextual cues, learn how to chunk language, to name just a few. successful language learners know how to use such reading strategies efficiently. the purposes of reading strategies are to have general knowledge, to get a specific detail, to find the main idea or theme, to learn, to remember, to delight, to summarize and to do research (hyland, 1990). regarding the importance of reading strategies, pressley and afflerbach (1995) identified several key strategies that were evident in the verbal protocols they reviewed including: (a) overview before reading; (b) look for important information and pay great er attention to it; (c) relate important points to one another; (d) activate and use prior knowledge; (e) change strategies when understanding is not good; and (f ) monitor understanding and take action to correct inaccuracies in comprehension. the current understanding of reading strategies has been shaped significantly by research on what expert readers do (bazerman, 1985; pressley & afflerbach, 1995). these studies demonstrate that successful comprehension does not occur automatically. rather, successful comprehension depends on directed cognitive effort, referred to as 54 universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras karbalaei metacognitive processing, which consists of knowledge about and regulation of processing. during reading, metacognitive processing is expressed through strategies which are “procedural, purposeful, effortful, willful, essential, and facilitative in nature” and “the reader must purposefully or intentionally or willfully invoke strategies” (alexander & jetton, 2000, p. 295), and does so to regulate and enhance learning from text. through metacognitive strategies, a reader allocates significant attention to controlling, monitoring, and evaluating the reading process (pressley, 2000; pressley, brown, eldinary, & afflerbach, 1995). additionally, sheorey and mokhtari (2001) stated it is the combination of conscious awareness of the strategic reading processes and the actual use of reading strategies that distinguishes the skilled from unskilled readers. studies show that unsuccessful students lack this strategic awareness and monitoring of the comprehension process (garcía, jiménez, & pearson, 1998). research addressing metacognitive awareness and use of reading strategies by first and second language readers of english has shown that important reading strategies which deal with planning, controlling, and evaluating one’s understanding (e.g. setting purpose for reading, prediction, summarization, questioning, use of text structural features, self-monitoring, etc.) are widely used by first and second language readers (sheorey & mokhtari, 2001). furthermore, the supply of strategies used by proficient bilingual and biliterate readers often include some strategies that may be unique and particularly useful to reading in a second lan guage e.g. code-mixing, translation, and use of cognates (jiménez, garcía, & pearson, 1995, 1996). with respect to this issue, feng and mokhtari (1998) examined the reading strategies 20 chinese proficient college students employed when reading easy and difficult texts in english and chinese. they found that readers appealed to a wide-ranging supply of strategies while reading in english and chinese; however, a majority of the strategies employed while reading was used more frequently in english than in chinese. besides, more strategies were used when the subjects read difficult texts than when they read easy texts. in addition, sheorey and mokhtari (2001) examined differences in the metacognitive and perceived use of reading strategies among 105 united states (us) and english as second language (esl) university students in the us. they drew these conclusions: first, that both the us and esl students showed a high level of various reading strategies awareness; secondly, both groups attributed the same order of importance to categories of reading strategies in the survey, regardless of their reading ability or gender; thirdly, both esl and us high-reading-ability students showed comparable degrees of higher reported use for cognitive and metacognitive reading strategies than lower-reading ability students in the respective groups, and while the us high-reading-ability students seem to consider support reading strategies to be relatively more valuable than low-reading-ability us students, esl students attribute high value to support reading strategies regardless of their reading ability level. mokhtari and reichard (2004) also investi gated whether significant differences exist between first and second language readers in their metacognitive awareness and perceived use of specific strategies when reading for academic purposes in english. regarding this study, a total of 350 college students including 141 us and 209 moroccan students completed an instrument designed to measure their metacognitive awareness of reading strategies. the results revealed that despite the fact that the two groups had been schooled in significantly different socio-cultural environments, they reported remarkably similar patterns of strategy awareness and reported use when reading academic materials in profile vol. 12, no. 2, october 2010. issn 1657-0790. bogotá, colombia. pages 51-68 55 iranian efl and indian esl college students’ beliefs about reading stategies in l2 english. both groups demonstrated a moderate to high awareness level of reading strategies. as far as types of strategies reported by the subjects are concerned, moroccan students reported using certain types of strategies more often than their american counterparts. despite the rapidly expanding research on different aspects of second and foreign language reading, a limited number of research works has centered on reporting the type of metacognitive reading strategies efl and esl readers use while they are reading in english. in addition, no research currently exists regarding the study of the metacognitive awareness of reading strategies in different social, cultural, and linguistic contexts. as mokhtari and reichard (2004) stated, most of the research available has tended to focus on monolingual and bilingual children with similar backgrounds in specific metacognitive knowledge, metalinguistic skills, and reading performance. in addition, with the exception of a few research projects, most of the research on the reading strategies of first and second language readers has been limited to students at a lower level proficiency or those studying at secondary school or in pre-university programs. however, efl and esl university students have to read a large volume of academic texts in eng lish but many of them commence university studies unprepared for the reading demands placed on them (dreyer & nel, 2003). they show an inability to read selectively; that is, extracting what is important for the purpose of reading and discarding what is insignificant. also, they often select ineffective and inefficient strategies with little strategic intent (wood, motz, & willoughby, 1998). having known all about the importance of the reading strategies and their impact on learning, and considering the fact that no research has been done in relation to metacognitive reading strategies among efl and esl college learners, namely in iran and india and varying in cultural, linguistic, and educational backgrounds, this research work serves as the focus of the present study. my underlying hypothesis in doing this comparative study was that although both groups of subjects may be considered to possess the introductory language proficiency for college-level academic reading in english, they are not expected to utilize similar strategic awareness in dealing with their academic reading tasks thanks to the differences existing in their social, cultural, and educational backgrounds. i conducted the present research in order to find answers to the following two questions concerning students’ awareness of reading strategies while reading texts for comprehension: (1) are there any significant differences between efl and esl learners in their perceived use of reading strategies while reading an academic text in english? and (2) what reading strategies do efl and esl learners use more when they are reading an academic text in english? methodology subjects the participants in this study consisted of 189 college students including 93 indians and 96 iranians. the students, who were both freshman and sophomore and were admitted to their respective universities for full-time academic study, were majoring in english translation and literature. all the participating students had completed 12 years of schooling and had graduated from high school prior to their enrollment in college. according to a background information questionnaire, both groups for the most part had similar characteristics with respect to age (indian mean age = 20; iranian mean age = 22), proficiency level (indian mean = 17; iranian mean = 15), language of instruction (english 56 universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras karbalaei for both indian and iranian), and gender distribution (indian 54% males vs. 46% females; iranian 32% males vs. 68% females). clearly, the only obvious difference was the in structional context in which both groups were studying eng lish i.e. esl and efl. instructional context in this study, the participants were studying english in two completely different instructional contexts, which represent significantly different socio-cultural levels. what has attracted more attention in this study is the place or context in which instruction is taking place, particularly in regard to the instructional practices used in teaching reading to students. iranians are enjoying learning english in a monolingual society in which learning eng lish is confined to the classrooms while indians are experiencing it in a multilingual country in which, at least, three primary languages coexist: kannada, hindu, and english. it should also be mentioned that english is being learned as their second lan guage. however, nayar (1997) characterized the english situation existing in india today as esl1 thanks to some reasons including first, english is not “native” to the indian environment, although it is used extensively by a small but influential group of people “as a medium of communication in a variety of domains like education, administration, and commerce” (p. 15). second, in multilingual indians, english serves as a link language among educated indians, who typically speak a variety of indigenous languages. third, there is “a certain amount of environmental support for english in the form of, for example, popular english media and indigenous literature in english” (p. 15). fourth, english is one of the official languages of the country with the status of associate national language, and mastery of english is considered a social and educational accomplishment as described by gupta (1995, p. 76) as follows: [indians] secretly believe , if they do not openly say so, that competence in english makes a considerable difference in their career prospects politicians and bureaucrats denounce the elitism of [english-medium] students but surreptitiously they send their children to schools that teach it. ultimately, as kachru (1986) announced, english “has now become an integral part of the indian’s linguistic repertoire” (p. 32). in spite of the importance of english and demand for it, the teaching of reading in english in both countries (iran and india) at the college level is still fraught with a multitude of difficulties and obstacles or, better stated, it is an overlooked skill. however, it is crucial to mention that while the theoretical foundations and instructional approaches employed in teaching reading may be similar in some ways in both contexts, the indian students studying english in an esl setting have two obvious advantages over their iranian counterparts studying it in an efl context. first, they have more access to educational resources because most of their courses are presented or taught in english. second, english is considered a nativelike language for indian students, in most cases, while it is a foreign language for the iranian students with little exposure to it. materials reading comprehension test the test of reading comprehension was taken from kit of reading comprehension (rajinder, 2008). the time allotted to this study was 60 minutes as had been determined at the piloting stage. the reading passages used in this study included a general content, which were of interest to the students. also, running through k-r21, it was demonstrated that this reading comprehension test was reliable enough (0.78 and 0.68 for indians and iranians, respectively) for the relevant goals in the profile vol. 12, no. 2, october 2010. issn 1657-0790. bogotá, colombia. pages 51-68 57 iranian efl and indian esl college students’ beliefs about reading stategies in l2 current study. then, the test turned out to be suitable for this study after the correlation coefficient (0.70 and 0.66) between the toefl proficiency test and the test of reading in english in the piloting stage was calculated for creating a valid test. background questionnaire a background questionnaire was developed by the investigator for the purpose of eliciting information about the participants including age, gender, hometown and/or address, years of studying eng lish, and medium of instruction (see appendix 1). metacognitive awareness of reading strategies inventory (marsi) the students’ metacognitive awareness of reading strategies was assessed through this instrument, which was designed for measuring adolescent and adult students’ awareness and use of reading strategies while reading academic or school-related materials. the marsi questionnaire (see appendix 2) measures three broad categories of reading strategies including the following: • global reading strategies (glob), which can be thought of as generalized or global reading strategies aimed at setting the stage for the reading act (for instance, setting purpose for reading, previewing text content, predicting what the text is about, etc.); • problem-solving strategies (prob), which are localized, focused problem-solving or repair strategies used when problems develop in understanding textual information (for instance, checking one’s understanding upon encountering conflicting information, re-reading for better understanding, etc.); and • support reading strategies (sup), which involves using the support mechanisms or tools aimed at sustaining responsiveness to reading (for instance, use of reference materials like dictionaries and other support systems). the 30-item questionnaire was validated by mokhtari and reichard (2002) using large subject population representing students with equivalent reading abilities ranging from middle school to college. the internal consistency reliability coefficient for its three above subscales ranged from 0.89 to 0.93 and reliability for the total sample was 0.93, showing a reasonably dependable measure of metacognitive awareness of reading strategies. however, to see whether this question is reliable for the subjects of this study or not, it was given to 20 students of the similar group participating in the study for both contexts. based on the collected data, the reliability coefficient alpha for this questionnaire was calculated to be 0.70 and 0.65 for indian and iranian students, respectively, which confirmed the appropriateness of this questionnaire for both contexts. procedure the following procedures were adopted in or der to meet the objective of this study. first, the background questionnaire was given to the subjects after some modifications were made due to some recommendations given on the part of some advisors. second, the subjects were given the reading comprehension test in order to answer the questions based on the background knowledge on reading strategies. finally, the subjects were given the metacognitive reading strategies questionnaire after completing the reading comprehension test. the marsi instrument was administered to the subjects in a similar way in iran and india as was the case for all questionnaires in this study. it was conducted during a regular class period, with the help of the classroom instructors who were well acquainted with the general objective of the research 58 universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras karbalaei project. after an overview of the purpose of the study, a description of the instrument, and an explanation of the steps involved in completing it, it was presented to the subjects in both contexts by the researcher. the students were instructed to read each of the 30 statements in the marsi questionnaire, and circle the number which best described their perceived use of the strategies described in the statement using a likert scale ranging from 1 (i never or almost never use this strategy) to 5 (i always or almost always use this strategy). the students were also informed to work at their own pace and reminded to bear in mind the reading comprehension test and other academic reading materials while they were responding to the strategy questionnaire. lastly, they were told that there were no “right” or “wrong” responses to the statements and they could take as much time as they needed to complete the inventory. results the paired t-test was employed to analyze the data in this study. statistical representation of the analyzed data is given in the following tables: table 1 contains data regarding the first question: are there any significant differences between efl and esl learners in their perceived use of reading strategies while reading in english? as indicated in table 1, efl (iranian) and esl (indian) college students differed significantly in their total metacognitive reading strategies (t = 3,465; p < 005) and two of the subscales (global and support reading strategies) and 19 individual strategies. regarding the total reading strategies, indians as esl learners reported more use of these strategies (m  =  104.16;  sd = 12.81) than iranians as efl learners (m = 95.81; sd = 19.52). as far as global reading strategies are concerned, indians also reported more use of these strategies (m = 43.47; sd = 6.83) than iranians (m = 40.90; sd = 9.09). besides, with respect to support reading strategies, indians reported using these strategies more (m = 31.83; sd = 4.73) in comparison with iranian counterparts (m = 26.61; sd = 5.99). however, both groups of subjects reported the same use of problem-solving strategies. concerning the significant difference among individual strategies use on the part of both groups, in all except four strategies, indian students reported greater strategy use than iranian students. among the global reading strategies, indians reported to be better in using the strategies like setting purpose for reading, previewing text, determining what to read, resolving conflicting information, and confirming prediction while iranians reported better use of two strategies, namely, using typographical aids and critically evaluating what is read. with regard to problemsolving strategies, indians as esl learners reported using three strategies betterreading slowly and carefully, adjusting reading rate, and visualizing information readwhereas iranians, as efl learners, reported using only the strategy pausing and thinking about reading. regarding support strategies, indians reported their preference in using almost all strategies including note-taking, reading aloud, summarizing, discussing reading, underlining, paraphrasing, and asking questions while iranians reported better employment of using reference materials such as dictionary as a strategy. as table 1 indicates, for indian esl students, the means of individual strategy use ranged from a high of 4.23 (reading slowly and carefully) to a low of 2.60 (checking how text content fits purpose), with a low overall reported strategy usage mean of 104.16 (sd = 12.81). on the other hand, for iranian efl students, the mean of individual strategy usage ranged from a high of 4.13 (using reference materials) to a low of 2.34 (taking notes while reading), with an overall reported strategy usage mean of 95.81 (sd = 19.52). profile vol. 12, no. 2, october 2010. issn 1657-0790. bogotá, colombia. pages 51-68 59 iranian efl and indian esl college students’ beliefs about reading stategies in l2 table 1. differences in metacognitive awareness of read ing strategies used by iranian and indian students name strategy iranian indian t p-value mean sd mean sd glob1 glob2 glob3 glob4 glob5 glob6 glob7 glob8 glob9 glob10 glob11 glob12 glob13 prob1 prob2 prob3 setting purpose for read ing using prior knowledge previewing text before read ing checking how text content fits purpose skimming to note text characteristics determining what to read using text feature (e.g. tables) using context clues using typographical aids (e.g. italics) critically evaluating what is read resolving conflicting information predicting or guessing text meaning confirming prediction read ing slowly and carefully trying to stay focused on read ing adjusting read ing rate 3.26 3.45 3.13 2.56 3.18 3.06 2.84 3.22 3.55 2.90 3.19 3.63 2.94 3.77 3.73 3.10 1.29 1.26 1.32 1.18 1.34 1.08 1.35 1.30 1.12 1.05 1.10 1.10 1.32 1.20 1.01 1.21 3.71 3.48 3.65 2.60 2.89 3.44 2.78 3.27 2.89 3.56 3.82 3.65 3.73 4.23 3.51 3.63 .92 1.17 1.20 1.42 1.31 1.32 1.21 1.14 1.22 1.17 1.05 1.13 1.26 .99 1.27 1.23 2.751 .203 2.824 .209 1.479 2.154 .316 .281 3.870 4.112 4.022 .124 4.224 2.837 1.340 2.873 .007 .839 .005 .835 .141 .033 .753 .779 .000 .000 .000 .901 .000 .005 .182 .005 prob4 prob5 prob6 prob7 prob8 sup1 sup2 sup3 sup4 sup5 sup6 sup7 sup8 sup9 glob prob sup ors paying close attention to read ing pausing and thinking about read ing visualizing information read re-read ing for better understanding guessing meaning of unknown words taking notes while read ing read ing aloud when text becomes hard summarizing text information discussing read ing with others underlining information in text using reference materials paraphrasing for better understanding going back and forth in text asking oneself questions global read ing strategies problem-solving read ing strategies support read ing strategies overall read ing strategies 3.68 3.48 3.20 3.92 3.44 2.34 2.83 2.58 2.59 3.43 4.13 3.00 3.31 2.40 40.90 28.30 26.61 95.81 1.35 1.18 1.24 1.10 1.23 1.29 1.29 1.19 1.17 1.42 1.27 1.35 1.17 1.16 9.09 6.15 5.99 19.52 3.81 3.01 3.66 3.92 3.12 3.74 3.34 3.49 3.31 3.83 3.62 3.43 3.45 3.61 43.47 28.86 31.83 104.16 1.19 1.28 1.20 1.15 1.29 1.17 1.38 1.21 1.19 1.28 1.09 1.19 1.03 1.18 6.83 4.59 4.73 12.81 .698 2.617 2.571 .049 1.684 7.805 2.633 5.207 4.177 2.035 2.970 2.323 .867 7.163 2.198 .705 6.630 3.465 .486 .010 .011 .961 .094 .000 .009 .000 .000 .043 .003 .021 .387 .000 .029 .482 .000 .001 60 universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras karbalaei table 2. read ing strategies reported being used most and least by iranian and indian students iranian ( n = 96) indian (n = 93) name strategy name strategy sup6 prob7 prob1 prob2 prob4 glob12 glob9 prob5 glob2 prob8 sup5 sup8 glob1 glob8 prob6 glob11 glob5 glob3 prob3 glob6 sup7 glob13 glob10 glob7 sup2 sup4 sup3 glob4 sup9 sup1 using reference materials re-read ing for better understanding read ing slowly and carefully trying to stay focused on read ing paying closer attention to read ing predicting or guessing text meaning using typological aids (e.g. italics) pausing and thinking about read ing using prior knowledge guessing meaning of unknown words underlining information in the text going back and forth in text setting purpose for read ing using context clues visualizing information read resolving conflicting information skimming to note text characteristics previewing text before read ing adjusting read ing rate determining what to read paraphrasing for better understanding confirming predictions critically evaluating what is read using text features (e.g. tables) read ing aloud when text becomes difficult discussing read ing with others summarizing text information checking how text content fits purpose asking oneself questions taking notes while read ing prob1 prob7 sup5 glob11 prob4 sup1 glob13 glob1 prob6 glob12 glob3 prob3 sup6 sup9 glob10 prob2 sup3 glob2 sup8 glob6 sup7 sup2 sup4 glob8 prob8 prob5 glob9 glob5 glob7 glob4 read ing slowly and carefully re-read ing for better understanding underlining information in text resolving conflicting information paying closer attention to read ing taking notes while read ing confirming predictions setting purpose for read ing visualizing information read predicting or guessing text meaning previewing text before read ing adjusting read ing rate using reference materials asking oneself questions critically evaluating what is read trying to stay focused on read ing summarizing text information using prior knowledge going back and forth in text determining what to read paraphrasing for better understanding read ing aloud when text becomes hard discussing read ing with others using context clues guessing meaning of unknown words pausing and thinking about read ing using typological aids (e.g. italics) skimming to note text characteristics using text features (e.g. tables) checking how text content fits purpose furthermore, a closer look at table 1 indicates the fact that, for indian college students, 16 (48%) of the 30 strategies reported fell within the high usage category (3.5 or a higher mean), 14 strategies (42%) place in the medium usage category of mean (mean between 2.5 and 3.49), while none of the strategies fell in the low usage category (mean below 2.4). however, for iranian counterparts, the results were reported to be completely different; 7 (21%) of the 30 strategies reported fell in the high usage category; two strategies (6%) fell in the low usage category, while the remaining 21 (63%) strategies had means in the medium use range. profile vol. 12, no. 2, october 2010. issn 1657-0790. bogotá, colombia. pages 51-68 61 iranian efl and indian esl college students’ beliefs about reading stategies in l2 as far as the second research question is concerned (what reading strategies do efl and esl learners use better when they are reading in eng lish?), and as table 2 indicates, the strategies used by iranian and indian students have been ar ranged in order from most to least used. for more clarification, the top five and bottom five for each group are highlighted. among the mostused strategies, re-reading for better understanding (prob7), reading slowly and carefully (prob1), and paying closer attention to reading (prob4) were reported to be used by both groups, although iranians preferred to use the strategy of “using reference materials (sup6)” at the top and indians favored the use of “underlining information in text (sup5)” at the top. on the contrary, among the leastused strategies, three strategies were reported to be used less by both groups including using text features (glob7), using context clues (glob8), and checking how text content fits purpose (glob4). besides, indi ans reported making the best use of “note-taking” as a support strategy while reading although iranians preferred not to use this strategy as a useful one. regarding other strategies included in the table, both groups showed a mix of global, problem-solving, and support reading strategies. discussion in this study, i wanted to explore whether there were any significant differences in the metacognitive awareness and perceived use of reading strategies between efl and esl college students while reading academic materials. regarding this research hypothesis, both groups completed a 30item scale of marsi questionnaire. the results of the study showed that both groups exhibited almost similar patterns of strategy awareness and reported usage when reading college-level materials in english, although both of them were studying english in quite different socio-cultural environments (efl vs. esl). with respect to the differences existing between both groups, indian students reported using most types of strategies more often than did their iranian counterparts. as mentioned before, indians reported using almost all the strategies included in “support reading strategies” better than iranians such as summarizing, paraphrasing, note-taking, etc. this means that indians are more interested in using top-down strategies for more comprehension during reading while iranians are more hooked on using bottomup strategies as they are more interested in using reference materials like a dictionary to find the meaning of unknown words, which cause interference in comprehension, during reading. another justification for this result is that indians are good at writing as was observed by the researcher in the study done for the effect of paraphrasing strategy in both iranian and indian contexts, which can be accounted as the main reason for better use of the abovementioned strategies on the part of this group. in addition, both efl and esl college students reported using some problem-solving strategies as the most-used strategies such as “reading slowly and carefully” or “re-reading for better understanding”. it can be inferred at this point that both groups are not well aware of employing some useful and effective strategies for better comprehension such as summarizing, underlining, notetaking, etc. as a result, the findings reported in this study are related to the importance of metacognitive awareness of reading strategies among efl and esl college readers. the researcher believes that it is necessary and important for all readers to be familiar with the significant strategies proficient reading necessitates. as pressley and afflerbach (1995) articulate, teach ers can play a part in enhancing students’ awareness of such strategies and 62 universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras karbalaei in assisting them to become “constructively responsive” read ers. we should keep in mind that an awareness of strategic reading does not necessarily lead to ac tual use of these strategies while reading because students may be well aware of a strategy but using it in a real language situation necessitates more attention. however, the researcher contends that the integration of metacognitive reading strategies instruction within the overall reading curriculum plays a vital role in enriching students’ awareness of the mental processes involved in reading and the development of thoughtful and constructive responsive reading. teaching students can help, as sheorey and mokhtari (2001) support, students to become constructively responsive readers and can be regarded as a powerful way to promote skillful academic reading, which will, in turn, enhance academic achievement. in addition, metacognitive strategies help students “outline logical organization of a text”, distinguish a relationship between cause and effect, understand the problem and solution, and make comparisons (text structure) (hughes, 1989, p. 139). as such, students can become aware of and develop good reading processes to improve their comprehension. in effect, reading itself is a far more complex process than had been visualized earlier by reading researchers (dole, duffy, roe hler, & pearson, 1991). if efl and esl students’ reading comprehension can be improved by putting metacognitive strategies into practice in the context of reading, they will mostly benefit from meaningful learning and be propelled into multidimensional application in any realm of the educational field. therefore, incorporating learning strategy instruction into l2 classroom teaching promotes a way of thinking, a way of approaching a learning task or similar problematic situations for our learn ers. learners are coming into the l2 classroom with developing language skills and, often, low level study or learning skills as well. before the learners can become successful l2 learners, the dilemma of how to approach the learning process in the l2 context should be addressed. in response to the needs of the learners as learners, teaching learning strategies in the l2 classroom, whether in an efl or esl context, can provide learners with opportunities for success by encouraging them to apply the learning strategies they have internalized before and, also, to develop new ones. the findings presented here serve as a reminder that second or foreign language classroom learning is a complex process, related to a number of variables including but not limited to language learning strategy use. implications and recommendations the results of this study point to several practical implications for reading instruction in iran and india in efl and esl contexts, respectively. this can also be relevant for similar contexts in other countries. first, it is important for all second language readers, whether or not they are proficient in the target language, to be aware of the significant strategies proficient reading necessitates. as paris and winograd (1990) suggest, english teach ers could offer direct explanation of the processes and steps involved in reading strategically and constructively. for example, as sheorey (2006) mentions, the following steps must be taken into account: (a) describing what the strategy is, (b) explaining why the strategy should be learned and used, and (c) providing examples of the circumstances under which the strategy should be used. second, there are numerous ways to inform students about strategies. for instance, teach ers and students can brainstorm lists of reading strategies and can create class charts or reference handouts for students to utilize as they work. each strategy must be clearly defined, indicating what the strategy profile vol. 12, no. 2, october 2010. issn 1657-0790. bogotá, colombia. pages 51-68 63 iranian efl and indian esl college students’ beliefs about reading stategies in l2 is, why it is used, and how and when it can be used. an important point to be considered for many of the reading strategy studies is that readers’ behaviors are often simply described in terms of strategy type, such as “cognitive” or “metacognitive”, but fail to regard the description of the actual reading behaviors of the students. third, for any metacognitive reading strategy instruction program to be effective, it is important to design effective reading tasks and activities that are not only interesting, but they should also be meaningful and relevant to the objectives of the course. fourth, it is necessary for instructors to pro vide the essential motivation for learning to read and being a good reader. engagement in reading relies on a complex combination of both intrinsic and extrinsic factors. intrinsic factors include curiosity, aesthetic involvement, challenge, feeling of competence, and enjoyment. extrinsic motivations include recognition and performance (guthrie et al., 1996). motivation can be created from many sources including positive views about texts and the need for development in reading, students’ interest in tasks and content involved, the level of challenge offered by tasks and materials, the quality and amount of feedback given to students with regard to their work, the supports and scaffolds available to the learners, and the nature of learning context. suggestions for further research an area of future research could be to seek an answer to this idea of why certain strategies are used or not used in efl and esl contexts. individual learning styles may play a role in which strategies are implemented during the reading process. perhaps future research could examine the interaction between metacognitive reading strategies and learning styles using a group of efl and esl learners. further research is also needed to investigate the role of teaching some important strategies and studying their impacts on increasing reading comprehension of learners in both contexts. sim ply knowing what strategy to use is not sufficient and, thus, an investigation into the orchestration of strategies should be closely examined. finally, the researcher would recommend fu ture research to expand the current study into educational curricula. this will improve less and/ or more proficient english language learners’ reading abilities and awareness of literature in an attempt to increase students’ academic achievement in iranian universities as well as all educational institutions as a context in which english is taught as a foreign language. references adams, d., & hamm, m. 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(1998). examining students’ retrospective memories of strategy development. journal of educational psychology, 90, 698-704. about the author alireza karbalaei is an efl teach er and a ph.d. candidate for tefl at mysore university, india. his main research areas are read ing strategies, affective variables, language acquisition and learning, tefl, and tesl. regarding these subjects, he has published 13 articles in different journals. 66 universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras karbalaei appendix 1: students pro forma attention: please answer the questions honestly. we keep them strictly confidential. 1. name of the student: ____________________________________ 2. age: ______ 3. gender _______________________ 4. name of college ____________________ 5. class studying _____________________________________________________ 6. medium of instruction ______________________________________________ 7. are you coming from urban or rural areas? _____________________________ 8. i have ________ familiarity with english language. a. complete b. average c. a little 9. how many years have you been studying english except the usual classes in school? ______ years _____months. 10. what is your purpose of learning english? a. to continue education b. to travel c. to find a good job d. to compete with other students e. others (please write) _________________ 11. my attitude toward english is __________ a. positive b. negative c. no comment profile vol. 12, no. 2, october 2010. issn 1657-0790. bogotá, colombia. pages 51-68 67 iranian efl and indian esl college students’ beliefs about reading stategies in l2 appendix 2: metacogntive awareness of read ing strategies inventory direction: listed below are statements about what people do when they read academic or school-rated materials such as textbooks or library books. five numbers follow each statement (1, 2, 3, 4, 5), and each number means the following: – 1 means “i never or almost never do this”. – 2 means “i do this only occasionally”. – 3 means “i sometimes do this”. – 4 means “i usually do this”. – 5 means “i always or almost always do this”. strategy 1. i have a purpose in mind when i read. (glob) 2. i take notes while read ing to help me understand what i read. (sup) 3. i summarize what i read to reflect on important information in the text. (sup) 4. i try to get back on track when i lose concentration. (prob) 5. i underline or circle information in the text to help me remember it. (sup) 6. i use reference materials such as dictionaries to help me understand what i read. (sup) 7. i use tables, figures, and pictures in text to increase my understanding. (glob) 8. i use context clues to help me better understand what i am read ing. (glob) 9. i paraphrase (restate ideas in my own words) to better understand what i read. (sup) 10. i guess the meaning of unknown words by separating different parts of a word. (prob) 11. i think about what i know to help me understand what i read. (glob) 12. i preview the text to see what it is about before read ing it. (glob) 13. when text becomes difficult, i read aloud to help me understand what i read. (sup) 14. i think about whether the content of the text fits my read ing purpose. (prob) 15. i read slowly but carefully to be sure i understand what i am read ing. (prob) 16. i discuss what i read with others to check my understanding. (sup) 17. i skim the text first by noting characteristics like length and organization. (glob) 18. i adjust my read ing speed according to what i am read ing. (prob) 19. i decide what to read closely and what to ignore. (glob) 20. when text becomes difficult, i pay closer attention to what i am read ing. (prob) 21. i stop from time to time and think about what i am read ing. (prob) 22. i try to picture or visualize information to help remember what i read. (prob) 23. i use typological aids like boldface and italics to identify key information. (glob) 24. i critically analyze and evaluate the information presented in the text. (glob) 25. i go back and forth in the text to find relationship among ideas in it. (sup) 68 universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras karbalaei 26. i check my understanding when i come across conflicting information. (glob) 27. i try to guess what the material is about when i read. (glob) 28. when text becomes difficult, i reread to increase my understanding. (prob) 29. i ask myself questions i like to have answered in the text. (sup) 30. i check to see if my guesses about the text are right or wrong. (glob) 159profile vol. 12, no. 1, 2010. issn 1657-0790. bogotá, colombia. pages 159-179 designing proficiency tests to accredit previous knowledge in american and british literature in a bilingual education program diseño de exámenes de suficiencia para acreditar el conocimiento previo en literatura americana y británica en un programa de educación bilingüe césar julio león chica* catalina d’costa martínez** gisela franco jácome*** universidad el bosque, colombia this article aims at identifying the kind of american and british literature tests that can be designed to allow students who enter a bilingual education program at a private university in colombia to have their previous knowledge in these two subjects accredited through a proficiency test. students’ needs, opinions, beliefs, existing commercial tests, the university’s (specifically, the one where the study was conducted) literature programs, several anthologies, and competences required in the education program were all taken into consideration. then the tests were developed, piloted, and validated with a focus group composed of ten students of said program. the results indicated that students require previous knowledge, literary competence, and command of the english language because those are determining factors in successfully passing the tests. key words: previous knowledge, proficiency tests, american and british literature, competences este artículo busca identificar un modelo óptimo para un examen de literatura americana y británica que se puede diseñar para que los estudiantes que inician el programa de educación bilingüe de una universidad privada en colombia puedan acreditar el conocimiento previo en estas dos materias, mediante un examen de suficiencia. para el diseño de los exámenes se tuvieron en cuenta las necesidades y opiniones de los estudiantes, así como exámenes comerciales existentes, los programas de literatura de la universidad, varias antologías y las competencias requeridas por el programa de educación. los exámenes diseñados se pilotearon y se validaron con un grupo de 10 estudiantes del programa en mención. se determinó que los estudiantes requieren un conocimiento previo, competencia en literatura y un nivel competitivo en inglés, para aprobar satisfactoriamente los exámenes. palabras clave: conocimiento previo, acreditación, exámenes de literatura americana y británica, competencias * e-mail: cesarjulio76@hotmail.com ** e-mail: catadcosta@gmail.com *** e-mail: gfrancoj@hotmail.com this article was received on august 1, 2009 and accepted on january 20, 2010. 160 león chica, d’costa martínez & franco jácome universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras introduction literature has always been one of the strongest interests in the study of bilingual education. this leads to the focus of this research study which aims to find out what previous knowledge in american and british literature undergraduate students in the bilingual education teaching program bring with them to the university. the question of which process would be appropriate for the accreditation of this previous knowledge arose. according to webster’s third new international dictionary (1986, p. 13), “accredit is, 1. to put (as by common consent) into a reputable or outstanding category: consider, recognize, or acclaim as rightfully possessing uncontested status; 2. to give official authorization to or approval of ”. on the other hand, accreditation is defined as “the act or process of accrediting” which means that the knowledge students already had when they entered a university program could be validated in either of two possible ways described in the university’s student handbook: the first, homologation, is the equivalent of transfer credits and gives the same amount of credits for a subject studied at a different university or institution (ministerio de educación nacional [men], decree 0808 april 25, 2002, articles 3, 4 & 8). the second is a proficiency exam, which allows the student to prove his/her knowledge in a certain area by taking an exam. this has its legal foundations in law 30 (ley 30), articles 20 & 28, authorizing each university to develop its own student handbook where it specifies how it is going to handle different academic aspects (colombian congress, 1992). the interest in this particular topic arose from our experience as english teachers and some of the education students who also possessed a background of previous knowledge in both american and british literature. since they could not get their previous knowledge accredited, it was proposed that the university let us design the two proficiency tests to be used as a tool to accredit previous knowledge in those subjects. the researchers’ goals were to open doors in the faculty of education of the university that would allow students’ previous knowledge to be taken into account and allow future generations to be able to sit exams on the subjects which they considered themselves proficient in. accreditation saves students valuable time and, therefore, enables them to study new subject areas, thus the students of the bilingual education program at the university will optimize their time and their knowledge by getting the credits in these subjects accepted. when adults are studying and working full time, besides being parents and having other family obligations– as is the case of most of the students at this university– time is precious. the research questions our concern about this topic has evolved, and in order to take appropriate action, it was decided we should investigate this subject in depth. after having studied the problem, the following research question was posed: how can the university’s bilingual education students’ previous knowledge, the existing literature proficiency tests, and the university’s current american and british literature programs be taken into consideration in designing proficiency tests for these two subjects? hence, we formulated the following specific questions to find a solution to said problem: what previous knowledge of american and british literature do students bring to the university? what type of tests can be designed to evaluate students’ previous competence in american and british literature? how can the criteria of the topics be tested and developed? 161 designing proficiency tests to accredit previous knowledge in american and british literature... profile vol. 12, no. 1, 2010. issn 1657-0790. bogotá, colombia. pages 159-179 literature review imagine that instead of reading literature, you heard it told to you by storytellers around a campfire or a fireplace. telling and listening to make up stories, rather than writing them down, is part of the oral tradition. eventually, versions of these tales were written down. (carroll, feldman, kinsella, stump & wilson, 2002, p. 10) folk tales travel wherever people travel. (anaya, 2002, p. 10) after establishing the legal foundations to accredit the previous knowledge through the proficiency tests, we focused on defining the four important constructs of our research: proficiency tests, literature, prior knowledge, and competence. proficiency tests according to hughes (1989), “proficiency tests are designed to measure people’s ability in a subject regardless of any training they may have had in that subject. the content of a proficiency test, therefore, is not based on the content or objectives of any courses which people taking the test may have followed” (p. 9). if this is so, then theoretically anybody who has ability to perform in a specific subject is entitled to take a test to prove their abilities. in this case, knowledge and previous knowledge are not taken into account. “rather, proficiency is based on a specification of what candidates have to be able to do in order to be considered proficient” (hughes, 1989, p. 9). in webster’s third new international dictionary (1986), the definition of proficient is the following: “to be well advanced in an art, occupation, skill or a branch of knowledge: unusually efficient”. one of the proficiency tests for literature recog-nized worldwide is the graduate record exa-mination (gre) subject test (literature in english), which is not for undergraduate students, of course. even though it is a useful tool for comparative purposes, the researchers decided that the subject area test (sat) literature tests recommended by college level examination program (clep) are more adequate to the level and needs of the participants and the university. regarding the abovementioned data, hilliard (1999) asserts that “all standardized tests have their place, even the weak ones. without them we would have nothing —no way to hold people accountable for teaching or learning” (p. 38). in connection with this, our goal was to design the proficiency tests in order to account for students’ competences in literature through the mentioned tests. regarding tests, hilliard (1999, p. 63) asks: “then why use standardized tests at all?” schools and districts use them because they provide data and results that are essential for improvement. for these reasons, we took the theory and some models as test references. student performance data are essential elements in a healthy and successful improvement effort (glickman, 1993; fullan, 1991). these authors state that standardized tests, despite some shortcomings, provide numerical and intelligible data as to how well a learner is performing or improving, and vital information about patterns of strengths and weaknesses among students. literature to define this construct (a subject that focuses on special topics because it is content-based), we can start with long (2005), who says that literature 162 león chica, d’costa martínez & franco jácome universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras is the written record of man’s best thoughts and feelings, and english literature is the part of that record which belongs to the english people. in its broadest sense, literature includes all writing, but as we commonly define the term, it excludes works which aim at instruction and includes only the works which aim to give pleasure, and which are artistic in that they reflect nature or human life in a way to arouse our sense of beauty (long, 2005). according to the encyclopedia britannica (1994, p. 398), literature is a body of written works. the name is usually applied to those imaginative works of poetry and prose distinguished by the intentions of their authors and the excellence of their execution. literature may be classified into a variety of categories, including language, national origin, historical period, genre, and subject matter. when we study literature we deal chiefly with the great, enduring books, which may have been written in an older or a recent time, but which have in them timeless magic. in order to be considered proficient in literature, a person must understand each form of writing and be able to identify each text in its corresponding genre. prior knowledge as already said, this investigation intends to determine the role prior knowledge plays in determining what type of test will be designed in order for students to be acknowledged proficient in american and british literature. according to gonzález (2000), “what we don’t know prevents us from learning”. the author says that many research studies uphold the importance of a reader’s prior or previous knowledge. it is a fundamental variable in reading comprehension and in learning from texts. the researchers agree with him, and think that this is especially applicable when referring to literature. besides, gonzález (2000) states that there are special tasks focused on activating previous knowledge. in connection with this concept, hitotuzi (2005) mentions that “students are not a tabula rasa on which a supercilious teacher can record their knowledge; instead, they have knowledge and experiences of life and language (as well as other subjects, contents, and topics) which can contribute greatly to the learning process” (p. 98). in our case, some students of the bilingual education program had some previous knowledge and experience in literature and thus wanted this knowledge to be accredited through a proficiency test. hughes (1989) states that prior knowledge and content seem to have a certain degree of influence regarding proficiency; thus, he supports the idea that if students have previous knowledge of a topic –in our case, literature– it will affect their test results. similarly and following roschelle (2004), it can be stated that it would be very difficult to learn without prior knowledge because students construct new concepts from prior knowledge. since prior knowledge is based on experiences, it can be said that new knowledge is also defined by the new experiences in life. rico (2005) adds that “the level of proficiency is seen according to the students’ capacity to recognize and master the elements of the system” (p. 99). furthermore, he links several important concepts related with test design: proficiency, test design, competence, and previous knowledge. these elements supported our main goals in designing the proficiency tests in which, first, we found out what previous knowledge of american and british literature the participants had. in doing so, we followed hughes (1989), who emphatically points out that the first step in test designing or construction is the statement of the problem. the test must be “perfectly clear about what it is one wants to know and for what purpose” (p. 48). 163 designing proficiency tests to accredit previous knowledge in american and british literature... profile vol. 12, no. 1, 2010. issn 1657-0790. bogotá, colombia. pages 159-179 competences according to the colombian national ministry of education, competences are a set of knowledge, attitudes, disposition and skills (cognitive, socialaffective and communicative), all interrelated to help students in the learning process, including the development of a new sense of activity in new and challenging contexts (men, 2004). therefore, competence implies knowing, being, and knowing how to do. from the above, competences can be seen as the battery of knowledge, skills, and attitudes needed to carry out a determined activity and/or to solve problems in an autonomous and creative manner. according to smith & wilson (1990), “within chomskyan theory, there are two levels of assessments: the first is called the level of competence, the speaker’s knowledge of language which is purely linguistic, and the second is called the level of performance, the speaker’s use of language” (p. 20). competences play an important role in the program under study. when a student wants to accredit previous knowledge in literature, s/he should not only demonstrate competence in the english language, but in the literature subject. he needs to perform and accomplish tasks in regards to aspects such as the ones mentioned before: national origin, historical period, genres, and outstanding works, among other aspects of the subject matter. research design type of study the study was a descriptive qualitative research because “the researchers do not set out to test hypotheses, but rather to observe what is present with their focus, and consequently the data, free to vary during the course of the observation” (larsen-freeman & long, 1993, p. 10). according to these authors, this study follows a cross-sectional approach where the performance of a large group of subjects is studied, and the data are usually collected in one session. hence, we gathered the data through personal answers of the interviewees by means of questionnaires and oral interviews. according to the above-mentioned authors, “one of the characteristics of the qualitative paradigm is that it is not generalizable; it is process-oriented, subjective, grounded, discoveryoriented, exploratory, descriptive, and inductive. it is also holistic and assumes a dynamic reality” (larsen-freeman & long, 1993, p. 11). first of all, we wanted to find out if the participants had previous knowledge, and if so, if they were willing to take the tests to accredit their previous knowledge, to then be able to design the literature tests. the participants and setting the study took place at a private university in bogotá. the undergraduate program is called b. ed. program in bilingual education with emphasis on teaching english (licenciatura en educación bilingüe con énfasis en la enseñanza de inglés). it is one of the five options offered by the faculty of education. at the time that it first opened, it was the only faculty of education in colombia which offered a program specifically in bilingual education. this program has an afternoon schedule which leads us to think all its students are not recently graduated from high school. part of the population registered for this program is comprised of teachers who have many years of experience and want to increase their 164 león chica, d’costa martínez & franco jácome universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras professional standing. others are young teachers who need to work while studying for their degree. out of sixty four students of the faculty of education, ten students were selected as a focus population to answer a prior information questionnaire (see appendix 1). they replied that they did have previous knowledge in american and/or british literature, and also answered affirmatively to the question of wanting to present a proficiency test to have this knowledge accredited. their ages ranged from sixteen to fifty five. some of them studied at bilingual schools in the city; others either studied or lived for a time (varying with each individual) in english speaking countries. other students gave account of their previous knowledge in these areas due to personal interest and autonomous study. instruments and procedure as already said, at first we developed a prior information questionnaire (see appendix 1). we selected a questionnaire to collect the first information because it let us gather data in one or two sections. as burns asserts, questionnaires are “written sets of questions used to gain responses in non face-to-face situations; questions are usually focused on specific issues and may invite either factual or attitudinal responses” (1995, p. 117). after selecting a focus population, an interview was designed by the research team to ask the target population their opinions, beliefs and experiences with previous proficiency tests (see appendix 2). the information was obtained by directly asking the chosen and consenting participants, and recording their answers with an audio tape recorder; it was then transcribed in the computer for analysis. we bore in mind siedman (1991), who, concerning interviewing as qualitative research, states that “the purpose of in-depth interviewing is not to get answers to questions, nor to test hypotheses, and not to ‘evaluate’ as the term is normally used; at the root of in-depth interviewing is an interest in understanding the experience of other people and the meaning they make of that experience” (p. 19). those two instruments were chosen after reflecting on the type of question to be answered and the type of research that was being carried out. the information was typed into the computer, then organized; lastly the researchers carried out the analysis by closely following the steps that dealt with levels of analysis. in the literature review section it is stated that one of the main limitations of proficiency exams or standardized tests is the fact that they are designed to be taken by large groups of people at one time and, therefore, must necessarily be machine scored (barr, craig, fisette & syverson, 1999; hilliard, 1999; covey, 1989; ets, 2002). thus, commercial standardized tests were not a good option for our purpose. to avoid this limitation, the researchers took it upon themselves to design two “tailor-made” literature proficiency tests. in this task we considered the students’ needs, opinions, and beliefs, as well as the faculty’s requirements for the above-mentioned subjects. then the tests were developed and piloted with the previously chosen candidates. in the designing of the tests we took into consideration the data provided by the participants through instruments described above, as well as information from several literature textbooks, anthologies, the gre, the clep, and the sat. all these documents are related with literature subject tests and were used as references to design the two literature tests. the participants took the tests. then, both tests were assessed (graded) by the researchers and a final questionnaire was presented to the participants in order to learn their opinions about the literature tests (see appendix 3). 165 designing proficiency tests to accredit previous knowledge in american and british literature... profile vol. 12, no. 1, 2010. issn 1657-0790. bogotá, colombia. pages 159-179 data analysis after the ten interviews were carried out, they were transcribed uniformly in order to be analyzed with the computer software atlasti. this program is a tool designed with the objective of facilitating the qualitative analysis of large quantities or volumes of data, or information which has been gathered for research purposes. it is not meant to replace the human interpretation of the analyzing process, but its main purpose is to help to accelerate many of the activities implied in the qualitative analysis and interpretation such as text segmenting, quoting, and coding. students’ opinions regarding the type of test that should be designed the use of this program allowed the researchers to define certain categories based on the common patterns that resulted from the analysis of data. these patterns provided both quantitative and qualitative information about the students’ opinions regarding the type of test that should be designed to evaluate or to accredit their previous knowledge in literature. the categories found were previous knowledge, reasons for taking the test, type of test, number of questions, and testing time, as can be seen in table 1. these categories were defined by taking into consideration the number of times the target words were mentioned by each interviewee when we used the format shown in appendix 2. the categories shown in table 1 had, in turn, several subcategories. with the purpose of designing the literature proficiency tests, the researchers had to find out what the students thought the focus of proficiency test should be. there were three questions in the interview that focused on these aspects: one theory of the two literature tests previously mentioned, clep and sat, considers that a well prepared examination may include the following: authors, texts, historical periods, genres and figurative language, among others. the students’ answers reflect the same, since the interviewees said that they would like tests about authors, topics, historical contexts, different genres, and a combination of the above. ‘reasons’ was an important category for us, due to the need to know why the students wanted or were willing to take a proficiency test. the main motivations observed were to save time and to advance subjects in their studies. it should be noted that when the surveys and interviews were analyzed, the answers confirmed that the existing reasons stated above for taking proficiency exams were widely shared by the students at the university. the faculty’s dean and academic council understood these reasons and let us carry on with the design and validation of the tests. ‘the students’ interviews regarding type of questions revealed that they did not want closed questions based on memory. they expressed that they wanted short, open-ended questions, essays, and reading comprehension. the majority of the students interviewed answered that the number of questions should be between 1 and 20. as to the number of questions the test should have, 8 students said that they wanted from 1 to 20 questions; one student said that it should have from 1 to 10 questions; three students said from 1 to 50, and one student said from 1 to 100. however, taking into account the extent of the topics to be examined, and comparing it with the number of questions of the existing standardized exams, we considered that this was a very low number, as the average number of questions in existing literature proficiency examinations for undergraduate students is about one hundred. the gre has 230 questions, but this is only a reference 166 león chica, d’costa martínez & franco jácome universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras table 1. students’ opinions regarding the type of test that should be designed to evaluate their previous knowledge in literature categories sub-categories interviewees’ responses* 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 total previous knowledge analyzed texts 3 1 4 authors 4 2 3 4 3 1 4 2 23 biographies 1 1 genre 4 3 1 1 1 10 historical contexts 3 4 2 9 topics 2 1 3 2 1 1 1 11 reasons advanced subjects 1 1 2 motivation 1 3 1 5 negative motivation 2 2 no previous knowledge 1 1 2 save time 2 2 1 5 text analysis 1 1 university’s duty 1 1 2 test type closed questions 1 1 2 combination 1 1 1 1 3 1 1 9 essay 1 2 1 1 5 no closed questions 1 1 no memory 1 1 2 reading comprehension 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 8 short, open-ended questions 1 1 1 1 4 number of questions 1-10 1 1 2 1-20 2 1 1 1 1 1 1 8 1-50 1 1 1 3 1-100 1 1 testing time any semester 2 1 2 2 2 1 1 1 1 13 first semesters 1 1 1 2 1 6 * the ten participants of the study were named with codes (from 1 to 10) to maintain their anonymity. 167 designing proficiency tests to accredit previous knowledge in american and british literature... profile vol. 12, no. 1, 2010. issn 1657-0790. bogotá, colombia. pages 159-179 source as it is an exam for students who have completed a degree in literature and are seeking to obtain a master’s degree. this did not comply with our case, which was proficiency exams for undergraduate (education, not literature) students. therefore, we had to focus on the satclep examinations for accrediting literature as undergraduates, which is the nearest equivalent to what we were expecting to achieve in our program. considering the scope of the university’s currently existing programs in american and british literature, equivalent tests, and students’ answers, we considered that the adequate number of questions should be around 60 or 70 because not all of them were going to be multiple-choice and we would include some short answer, openended questions, and one essay question. the category testing time included two subcategories, and was aimed at finding out students’ preferences as to when, during their studies, they would want to take the proficiency tests. of the total of answers given, the majority indicated that they would take the test any semester; and the others indicated that they would like the opportunity of taking it during the first semesters (13) because what they had learned at school was still fresh in their minds. this question was solely for informational purposes because it had no usability. as noted by brown, it “has to do with the degree to which a procedure is practical to use”. however, the university students’ handbook states that proficiency examinations may be taken at any time during the undergraduate studies (1995, p. 52). taking into account that the objective of the study was to find out what the role of the previous knowledge was for designing a literature proficiency test, this was one of the most important categories. questions one, two, and eight from the interview provided the greatest amount of information regarding this category (see appendix 2). table 2 illustrates this, with answers given by three participants, about previous knowledge. the students’ comments in table 2 supported the quote from the clep (2007) in which it states that only if they had this “broad knowledge of literature” and “a familiarity with the basic literature terminology”, the participants were able to obtain good results as was observed when the tests were applied. the designing of the proficiency test and its outcomes having analyzed all of the above information from our three sources, students’ interviews, theory (university’s current programs, standardized tests, and anthologies), and the researchers’ points of view, we decided that the tests in american and british literature should have 70 questions each and one essay. these questions were thirty multiple-choice (30 points), a time line (10), reading comprehension (20), ten open-ended questions (10), and one essay (30). the numbers in parentheses are equivalent to the number of points each type of question would count for a total of one hundred points (100). the minimum passing grade was 70/100. the authors were chosen from those included in the current university’s programs for each of the subjects, and the most well-known authors not included in these programs, but who were taken from high school literature anthologies. after having corrected the literature proficiency tests presented by ten students at the university, the general results were as follows: half of the total number of students who took the literature proficiency tests passed thema majority passing british literature and a minority passing american literature. in british literature a great number passed the time line, multiple-choice, and reading compre168 león chica, d’costa martínez & franco jácome universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras table 2. some responses about previous knowledge on literature interviewees 1. would you like to take the proficiency test for american literature? why? 2. would you like to take the proficiency test for british literature? why? 3. what do you remember about your previous literature studies? 1 yes i would. basically because i do have some background knowledge about this subject, and i think that coming here to that class is going to be… i know its going to sound rude, but its going to be a little bit of a waste of time in the sense that i’m not really going to learn anything new, and there’s going to be an incredible amount of time that i’m going to spend in a class doing things that for most of the part i pretty much already know. so, i’m not really looking forward to taking the class. well, i would have liked to take it, actually i’m taking the subject right now and it’s been pretty much the same thing i just said but regarding british literature, in the sense that i’m coming to class and listening to stuff that i already know for the most part and making… i don’t know, writing essays on subjects i already know about, which i don’t really think i’m really using that time appropriately when i could be doing more useful things. i think more than the author, subject is concerned talking about particular periods of time. i’m really fond of drama, and i’m really fond in particular about renaissance drama, so everything about shakespearean drama i like, and i’m also very into modern fiction, things like… i really like that; we did take some classes on that back in school. poetry. particular authors, i’m not sure what i would say, things like taylor, swift or john milton, shakespeare come to mind, oscar wilde… 5 because i have a background and knowledge in american literature, and i believe that if i already know some of the topics and subjects a test will help me, to improve a given my, my, my grade on that particular subject. for the same reasons i have, i teach literature and i am aware of the different historical periods, and authors, and most important novels, and a test will help me a complete my career better. well, i remember a lot of things. basically, i understand that literature in different parts of the world has different contexts. in the united states we have different authors, and in england we have different authors as well, and we also have to take into account colombian literature; there are a lot of authors and periods that people study and try to understand in order to get the main influence of authors’ writings in their time, to see if they have achieved a knowledge and understanding of their culture and the times in which they are written, even presents writers or past writers. 10 yes. why? well, because i have read various american writers, and i consider myself knowledgeable on them. yes. why? for the same reason stated above. now i am taking british literature, and i recall since old english “beowulf ”, elizabethan period (shakespeare), samuel taylor c. wordsworth. 169 designing proficiency tests to accredit previous knowledge in american and british literature... profile vol. 12, no. 1, 2010. issn 1657-0790. bogotá, colombia. pages 159-179 hension; less than half passed short opened-questions; and everybody did well on the essay. finally, all of the students achieved a passing grade on the test, (60/100), but since the minimum grade for obtaining the proficiency credits was placed at 70%, most of the participants achieved it, but one person did not. the time allotted was adequate because all of the students used fewer than the three hours given, and only one person took two hours and fifty minutes. in american literature nobody passed the time line; one person passed the multiple choice section; one person passed the short open-ended question; and several passed the essay. one person did not complete it, and one person did not do it because she felt unable to do it. one person obtained a perfect score (30/30) on the essay. the time allotted was enough because all of the people who took the test needed less time to complete it. after the students sat the literature proficiency tests, they were asked to answer a final questionnaire (see appendix 3) in order for the researchers to obtain feedback on the tests. some aspects worth mentioning about the feedback results are the following: six students did not study at all for the test. however, five of them passed the test, which supports the idea that previous knowledge is important when taking a proficiency test. participant 5 said: “no studying; i just relied on previous knowledge”. before the students knew their results, more than half thought they had done acceptably and the rest thought they had done poorly. the main reasons mentioned were lack of study and preparation. nevertheless, the tests results obtained were usually better than what the participants thought. for example, participant no. 2, who answered acceptably, did very well (93/100); likewise, participant no. 9, who answered poorly, obtained the passing grade of 70/100. regarding the allotted time, three participants expressed that it was sufficient; four said it was adequate, and two thought it was excessive. in general, the students’ acceptance of the test was good even though they suggested some modifications. this can also be observed in the explanations given to question no. 7. some of these explanations contradict each other. as none of the reasons given was supported by a considerable majority, the researchers concluded that the tests should not be modified. findings, implications, and applications the tests were based on the type of questions that students wanted to have included as well as what the researchers determined from studying the university’s programs, the existing commercial tests, and several literature anthologies. this made it possible to combine both proficiency and achievement (theory-practice; previous knowledgeability/competence) in a more communicative type test. in general the researchers thought that the most difficult part of the test was going to be the essay, but the students’ results show that all of the participants did well, even those who expressed that it was difficult and long. as researchers, we thought that the participants were going to do very well on the reading comprehension part, as the answers can all be found in the text given if the participant has good reading skills, and because in the interview eight out of ten wanted it to be included in the test. however, this section did not produce the expected results. this may be due to the fact that many students read too fast, and did not pay sufficient attention to details during testing. the above has a definite relationship with what glickman (1993) expresses in that proficiency tests 170 león chica, d’costa martínez & franco jácome universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras are useful in determining patterns of students’ strengths and weaknesses in subject areas. with respect to the short open-ended questions, the results obtained by many of the participants were poor. this was unexpected because the questions included in the tests were designed around very well-known topics. it was also strange because in the interview students answered (see appendix 2) about the type of questions to be included in the test, three of the participants specifically asked to include this type of questions. it is important to acknowledge the fact that the profile needed for presenting these tests was that of having prior knowledge in either american or british literature, or in both. seven of the participants met this requirement either because they studied at bilingual schools or because they were teaching literature. this issue brings out the fact that there were three students who presented the proficiency tests without having the required profile. taking into account the students’ feedback on the tests, the following aspects should be noted: “it should be based on the university program” (participant 1); “some authors are not in the program” (participant 10). in connection to this, it should be kept in mind that the focus of a proficiency test is to validate the student’s previous knowledge in a given subject in order to accredit it; therefore, it must include a general overview of the subject area. a proficiency test is not intended to be limited to any course, curriculum, or single skill in the language. the following testimonies evidence some participants’ positive views about the tests: “it’s ok, better than the program” (participant 2); “it was good, adequate to the topic” (participant 4). although the test was the result of analyzing carefully the number of questions, the time allotted and the topics of several literature commercial tests, other general comments were that it was “too long” (participants 7, 8, 9, and 10). all the participants who passed with 70% or more had previous knowledge in literature from other studies either at high school, university or both, as was confirmed by the information obtained from the initial interviews. this finding was in addition to having taken the british literature course at the university in the semester just prior to taking the test. another reason that influenced the above-mentioned difference was that all the students who took this exam and passed it had a high level of english and could be considered bilingual since they were taking or had already passed english vi at the university. this was a very important factor because the test requires a full command of the english language. on the other hand, none of the participants had taken an american literature course at the university. additionally, the three participants with the lowest scores on the test were still doing the first levels of english at the university at the time they took the test. it was inferred, therefore, that they are not totally proficient in the english language which, as stated above, is a determining factor in the final result. this is illustrated with this excerpt: “i did not even try to do the essay because i did not understand what it was asking” (participant 4). the experience learnt from this research project shows that previous knowledge must be validated in order to both let students save time in completing their career and having the possibility of studying other subjects. this can be supported with gonzález’s words (2000) when he expresses that many research studies uphold the importance of a reader’s prior or previous knowledge. it helps, empowers, and is a fundamental variable in reading comprehension and learning from texts. there is a definite relation between students’ profile (background) and previous knowledge in 171 designing proficiency tests to accredit previous knowledge in american and british literature... profile vol. 12, no. 1, 2010. issn 1657-0790. bogotá, colombia. pages 159-179 order to obtain the accreditation of the latter, which is important to have in mind when the students ask to have their previous knowledge validated by presenting proficiency tests. if they do not have a good mastery of english, they will probably not be able to answer the essay. as the majority of the students who took british literature passed the test, the researchers think that the test may be a useful tool for the university in the future. although the results were different for the america literature test, it can be explained through the observations stated above that the reasons for this could be attributed to the students’ lack of previous knowledge, and their low command of english, and not to failures in the test design itself. this research demonstrated that the three aspects mentioned in the initial research question, students’ previous knowledge, the existing literature proficiency tests, and the university’s current american and british literature programs, were carefully studied and included in the design of the two proficiency tests. our general objective was also achieved despite what cohen (1994) says about standardized tests. this author believes there is a difference between proficiency tests, which are used mainly for academic purposes because they focus on theory, and achievement tests, used mainly for administrative purposes because they focus on abilities or competences. conclusions, limitations, and questions for further study the main conclusion after having carried out this research project was that both previous knowledge and competences are determining factors in the test results. the difference in the test results among the participants who had previous knowledge both in literature as well as mastery of the second language supports what the theories and studies mentioned before state, regarding testing. another important finding was that competences, evaluated through reading comprehension and essay writing, can also be taken into consideration when assessing both previous knowledge and competence in literature. two literature proficiency tests were designed and validated although, according to tesol literature, teachers do little collaborative research and most of the literature regarding proficiency tests is limited to language proficiency testing. the tests designed in this study achieved a synthesis of assessment methods, as well as a more communicative approach to literature testing. as proposed by hilliard (1999), they evaluate previous knowledge (theoretical subject content/literature) in the timeline, multiple choice section, and short open ended questions, as well as competences considered in the reading comprehension and essay writing. some limitations we had to deal with in this research project were that ten people comprised a small population compared to the total number of bilingual education students (111 at the time this research was initiated). nonetheless, this focus group was composed of the participants who met the required profile out of 64 participants who answered the prior information questionnaire. when people volunteer to participate in a study like this, they do not understand the importance of their commitment to the successful carrying out of a project. this leads to the fact that complying with their responsibility was not the participants’ priority, as it was for the researchers who depended on participants’ willingness and time availability to answer and pilot the tests, and had to accommodate our schedule to theirs. moreover, some of the interviewees’ personal conditions made us fall behind schedule in scoring the tests, in classifying and analyzing the 172 león chica, d’costa martínez & franco jácome universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras data. on more than one occasion, the researchers had to deal with interviewees’ personal difficulties and problems. another issue was that the only time that interviewees had was from 4 to 8 p.m. since most of them worked during the day and only arrived after 4:00 p.m. at the university. due to the lack of model literature tests that covered most of the aspects students wanted to be evaluated, we had to spend more time in designing them. due to the nature of the tests developed for this project, they had to be teacher corrected and could not be machine scored. after concluding the research we have the following questions for further study: how can the information obtained from the participants’ interviews be used to modify or improve the university’s current literature programs? how can the two proficiency tests resulting from this research be actually used by the university? should they be revised or modified; if so, by whom? should a question bank be developed in order not to repeat the exact test every semester? how can students’ abilities and competences be taken into consideration to improve the university’s literature programs? can there be another way of accrediting previous knowledge? the american and british literature tests were designed based on the students’ needs, the university requirements and program, theory about literature and testing, and commercial tests to accredit previous knowledge. competences and good command in english were essential factors in passing the tests. the tests were not published in this research to enhance its validity as they are going to be used by the university to accredit students’ previous knowledge. references accredit. (1986). in webster’s third new international dictionary, inc., 1, 13. proficient, 2, 1811. chicago: merriamwebster. anaya, r. (2002). folk literature. timeless voices, timeless themes, copper level. new jersey: pearson education, inc. atlastithe knowledge workbench: atlas.ti 5.2 (software); www.atlasti.com-sp4.html barr, m. a., craig, d. a., fisette, d., & syverson, m. a., (1999). assessing literacy with the learning record. portsmouth, nh: heinemann. brown, d. h. (1995). the elements of language curriculum. boston: heinle & heinle. burns, a. (1995). qualitative research studies. cambridge: cambridge university press. carroll, j. a., feldman, k., kinsella, k., stump, c. s., & wilson, e. (2002). learn about literature. new jersey: pearson education, inc. cohen, a. d. (1994). assessing language ability in the classroom. (2nd ed.). boston: newbury house. colombia. ministerio de educación nacional [men]. (2002). decree 0808 april 25, 2002 articles 3, 4, and 8: por el cual se establece el crédito académico como mecanismo de evaluación de calidad de transferencia art. 3, 4, 8. bogotá. colombia. ministerio de educación nacional [men]. (2004). ¿qué son las competencias? retrieved august 12, 07 from http://www.inesup.com/descargas/conceptodecompetencia.ppt colombian congress. (1992). ley 30 de 1992 art. 20, 28, 109: fundamentos de la educación superior. bogotá: autor. college-level examination program [clep] (2007). retrieved august 7, 2007 from http://www.collegeboard.com/ student/testing/clep/ex_el.html covey, s. (1989). the seven habits of highly effective people. new york: simon & schuster in educational leadership. 173 designing proficiency tests to accredit previous knowledge in american and british literature... profile vol. 12, no. 1, 2010. issn 1657-0790. bogotá, colombia. pages 159-179 esposito, j. j. 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(1989). testing for language teachers. cambridge: cambridge university press. larsen-freeman, d., & long, m. (1993). an introduction to second language acquisition research. new york: longman. long, w. j. (2005). outlines of english and american literature. an introduction to the chief writers of england and america, to the books they wrote, and to the times in which they lived. retrieved august 23, 07 from http://www.fullbooks.com/outlines-of-englishand-american-literature1.html popham, w. j. (1999). why standardized tests don’t measure educational quality. new york: teachers collage press. rico, c. (2005). searching for coherence in language teaching; the issue of teaching competencies. colombian applied linguistics journal, 7, 95-107. roschelle, j. (2004). learning in interactive environments: prior knowledge and new experience. dartmouth: university of massachusetts. siedman, i. (1991). interviewing as qualitative research: a guide for researchers in education and the social sciences. new york: teachers college press. smith, n., & wilson, d. (1990). modern linguistics. england: penguin books. about the authors césar julio león chica holds a b.ed. in bilingual education from universidad el bosque. he worked as an english teacher at the same university and currently works as a private english teacher. he is also the author of two english books. catalina d’costa martínez holds a b.ed. in bilingual education from universidad el bosque. she works as a teacher in some subject matters at the same university and is also an official translator. gisela franco jácome holds a b.ed. in bilingual education from universidad el bosque. she currently works as an independent english teacher. 174 león chica, d’costa martínez & franco jácome universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras appendix 1: prior information questionnaire the objective of this questionnaire is to establish which students, if any, of those studying bilingual education at the university, have any prior knowledge in the subjects of american and british literature. if they do have this prior knowledge, we want to find out where and when they obtained it; and to ask if they want this knowledge to be accredited through a proficiency test. if you are interested, it would be very valuable for our research project, if you would answer the following questions: personal data: name:______________________________________________________________________ date:_______________________________________ semester:________________________ 1. do you have any previous knowledge on american literature? yes ___ no ___ 2. how would you consider your level in this area? high = able to identify authors, writings, literary periods, and historical context and also to do reading comprehension activities about them. high? ____ medium = able to identify most authors, writings, literary periods and do some reading comprehension activities about them. medium? _____ low = only identify a few authors and their work, but are not sure about literary periods or historical context. not totally sure about doing reading comprehension activities. low? _____ 3. where did you obtain this knowledge? school? ___ university? ___ other? ___ which? _____________________________________________________________________ 4. when did you obtain this knowledge? approximate year? ______ 5. do you have any previous knowledge on british literature? yes___ no___ 175 designing proficiency tests to accredit previous knowledge in american and british literature... profile vol. 12, no. 1, 2010. issn 1657-0790. bogotá, colombia. pages 159-179 6. how would you consider your level in this area? *use the same criteria as in question 2 high? _____ medium? _____ low? _____ 7. where did you obtain this knowledge? school? school? ___ university? ___ other? ____ which? _____________________________________________________________________ 8. when did you obtain this knowledge? approximate year? _____ 9. would you consider taking a proficiency exam to validate this knowledge? yes___ no ___ 176 león chica, d’costa martínez & franco jácome universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras appendix 2: interview format used to find out the participants’ opinions and beliefs about proficiency tests taking into account the answers you gave in the prior information questionnaire regarding literature proficiency tests that you answered on april 10 and 23, 2007, we would be very grateful if you would reply the following questions: 1. would you like to take the proficiency test for american literature? why? 2. would you like to take the proficiency test for british literature? why? 3. would you like to take it/them during the first semester? why? 4. if you have already started the program of bilingual education, when would you like to take it/ them? 5. what kind of test would you like to take: – short open-ended questions – closed questions e.g. fill in the blanks, multiple choice or true and false. – reading comprehension – essay type – other? _____________________ which one ______________ 6. do you think that the test should be focused on? – authors – topics – historical periods – different genres of texts – a combination of the above – other_____ which one ______________________________ 7. how many questions do you consider that this test should have? from: – 1-10 – 1-20 – 1-50 – 1-100 – other? ______ why? ________________________________________ 8. what do you remember about your previous literature studies? 177 designing proficiency tests to accredit previous knowledge in american and british literature... profile vol. 12, no. 1, 2010. issn 1657-0790. bogotá, colombia. pages 159-179 appendix 3: questionnaire used after the proficiency tests were administered name: ____________________________________________________________________________ test: ____________________________________________________________________________ part a independently of the results you achieved on the proficiency literature test you took, we would appreciate if you would answer the following questions truthfully and objectively. 1. did you study for the test ? a. none b. a little c. more or less d. consciously 2. how do you think you did on the test? a. excellent b. acceptable c. poorly why? _____________________________________________________________________________ _____________________________________________________________________________ _____________________________________________________________________________ 3. what was your mental and physical disposition at the moment of taking the test? a. excellent, healthy, rested, optimistic b. tired, not well, sick, negative c. other? explain ___________________________________________________________________________ ___________________________________________________________________________ ___________________________________________________________________________ 4. how did you feel when you answered the literature proficiency test? a. relaxed b. comfortable c. nervous 178 león chica, d’costa martínez & franco jácome universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras 5. did you think the test was? a. easy b. normal c. difficult 6. regarding the allotted time (3 hours) was it? a. not enough b. sufficient c. adequate d. excessive 7. about the topics and questions, did the test: a. meet your expectations? b. was it too general? c. was it too specific? explain your answer. |__________________________________________________________________________ ___________________________________________________________________________ ___________________________________________________________________________ 8. grade the type of question from 1 to 5 being: 1 = very easy, 2 = easy, 3 = average, 4 = difficult, and 5 = very difficult. time line 10 points multiple choice 30 points short open-ended questions 10 points reading comprehension 20 points essay 30 points 9. observations: in your own words give us any feedback or suggestions to improve the test. _____________________________________________________________________________ _____________________________________________________________________________ _____________________________________________________________________________ 179 designing proficiency tests to accredit previous knowledge in american and british literature... profile vol. 12, no. 1, 2010. issn 1657-0790. bogotá, colombia. pages 159-179 part b after knowing the results you obtained in the proficiency test, please answer the following two questions: 10. grade the type of question from 1 to 5 being: 1 = very easy, 2 = easy, 3 = average, 4 = difficult and 5 = very difficult: time line 10 points multiple choice 30 points short open-ended questions 10 points reading comprehension 20 points essay 30 points 11. observations: in your opinion, what part of the test would you modify? _____________________________________________________________________________ _____________________________________________________________________________ _____________________________________________________________________________ 203profile vol. 18, no.1, january-june 2016. issn 1657-0790 (printed) 2256-5760 (online). bogotá, colombia. pages 203-217 http://dx.doi.org/10.15446/profile.v18n1.47807 contributions of a social justice language teacher education perspective to professional development programs in colombia contribuciones de una perspectiva de justicia social para la formación de docentes de lenguas a los programas de desarrollo profesional en colombia ana maría sierra piedrahita1* universidad de antioquia, medellín, colombia in this article, the author discusses the social justice language teacher education perspective and how it can help language teachers to develop a political view of their work and effect change inside and outside their particular school contexts. to do this, she briefly analyzes various professional development programs for teachers of english in public schools in one city in colombia to determine how these have or have not contributed to the development of a political perspective in teachers. finally, she discusses what the implementation of such perspective requires, provides some examples to illustrate how it may look in practice, and discusses some implications for different stakeholders. key words: language teacher education, professional development, social justice, teacher learning. en este artículo la autora discute la perspectiva de formación de docentes para la justicia social y cómo esta puede ayudar a los profesores de lenguas a desarrollar una visión política de su trabajo y realizar cambios dentro y fuera de sus contextos escolares. para lograrlo, ella hace un breve análisis de varios programas de desarrollo profesional para profesores de inglés de instituciones educativas públicas y determinar cómo estos han contribuido o no al desarrollo de una perspectiva política en los profesores. finalmente, la autora discute lo que requiere la implementación de esta perspectiva, da algunos ejemplos para ilustrar cómo esta puede verse en la práctica y discute algunas implicaciones para los diferentes actores educativos. palabras clave: aprendizaje del profesor, desarrollo profesional, formación de docentes de lenguas, justicia social. * e-mail: ana.sierra@gmail.udea.edu.co how to cite this article (apa, 6th ed.): sierra piedrahita, a. m. (2016). contributions of a social justice language teacher education perspective to professional development programs in colombia. profile issues in teachers’ professional development, 18(1), 203-217. http:// dx.doi.org/10.15446/profile.v18n1.47807. this article was received on december 11, 2014, and accepted on july 10, 2015. this is an open access article distributed under the terms of the creative commons license attribution-noncommercial-noderivatives 4.0 international license. consultation is possible at http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/. universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras204 sierra piedrahita introduction colombia is in the midst of educational reforms in which teachers are pressured to focus on specific knowledge and skills intended to enable students to be competitive in the world market. this focus on economic competitiveness challenges professional development programs to include a social justice perspective to provide in-service teachers with the tools to construct better futures for themselves and their students. unfortunately, for years a technical view of teachers’ learning and development has charac ter ize d language te achers’ professiona l development programs in colombia, closing off possibilities for in-service teachers to develop a political view of their work to effect change both within and outside the classroom. although there have been programs at the school and university level in which teachers have been offered a different type of professional development (e.g., cadavid múnera, quinchía ortiz, & díaz mosquera, 2009; sierra piedrahita, 2007a, 2007b; usma & frodden, 2003), most teachers have been treated as technicians (sugrue, 2004) who should be trained to implement the reform initiatives determined by the government. a clear example of this is the former national plan of bilingualism (2006-2010), which eventually became programa de fortalecimiento al desarrollo de competencias en lenguas extranjeras (2010-2014) and known today as programa nacional de inglés [national program for english], colombia very well! (2015-2025) that conceptualizes teachers as unskilled and lacking the necessary knowledge that others consider important to implement such reform. consequently, teachers are not considered as professionals who can make their own decisions based on their personal needs, interests, and working contexts. besides, this reform has resulted in high stakes testing and fewer opportunities for teachers to make independent decisions in their classrooms since they are normally told what to teach and how to teach it (robertson; samoff; sleeter; tatto; torres as cited in zeichner, 2011). therefore, language teachers in colombian professional development programs have been trained in the content and methodologies specified by policy makers. given this situation, language teachers should learn to incorporate more appropriate teaching practices into their teaching repertoire to be able to educate the kind of critical and active citizens our society demands. although this is also the job of teacher education programs, professional d e v e l o p m e nt p ro g r a m s n e e d t o i n c l u d e t h e knowledge, skills, and dispositions related to social justice that may allow teachers to challenge the injustices and inequalities present on a daily basis in different spheres of society. if teaching is a political act, then a social justice perspective can contribute to the kind of preparation teachers require to move to more equal and just teaching practices, which, at the same time, will set an example for students to follow inside and outside their schools. in this paper, i first provide a characterization of various professional development programs that have been offered to teachers of english in public schools in a major city in colombia, and connect that characterization with the current discourses governing the professional development of teachers in many places around the world. next, i introduce the idea of a social justice language perspective for the professional development of language teachers and discuss the importance and implications of such a perspective for the professional development of in-service language teachers. following this, i discuss what the implementation of this perspective requires; provide some examples to illustrate how it can translate into teaching practices; and detail a specific example of learning to teach under this perspective taken from a study that i conducted. finally, based on what scholars in the field have discussed and my own insights, i present some implications of this perspective for different stakeholders. 205profile vol. 18, no.1, january-june 2016. issn 1657-0790 (printed) 2256-5760 (online). bogotá, colombia. pages 203-217 contributions of a social justice language teacher education perspective to professional development... a characterization of professional development programs for language teachers professional development programs ( pdps hereafter) designed by professors in public and private universities or other private institutions in the country are in charge of instructing teachers on how the current reform works, and how it should be implemented. as a result, teachers are still offered the one-shot workshops, lectures, or courses, that is, the same old models that do not contribute much to their learning (fullan, 2001; mccotter, 2001; randi & zeichner, 2004). thus, their teaching practices and beliefs about teaching do not change, and even less, their visions as regards the role of teachers to effect change inside and outside their schools. i analyzed various pdps that have been sponsored and funded by the government in a major city in colombia. i wanted to examine their design and organization, the theoretical foundations underpinning them, and how they were possibly working towards helping in-ser vice teachers to develop a more political view of their work. the analysis indicates that: • most programs focus on language issues and do not include sociocultural, critical, and social justice approaches to language teaching. • most programs focus on providing teachers with the knowledge and skills determined by the government and the idea that they need to teach their students to be competitive in the world market upon graduation. • most programs do not include the development of attitudes and values in teachers that could help them use different teaching approaches with their students. • the theoretical foundations of most programs include theories of language learning, communicative competence, multiple intelligences and the like; however, sociocultural, critical, and social justice theories are not included as foundations for these programs. • most programs focus on courses and workshops, with the exception of one program that incorporated a peer coaching strategy to support teachers in their schools. • all programs are short-term and lack continuity as they depend on political contracts and alliances or availability of economic resources in the local government. therefore, these programs have focused on preparing language teachers with the knowledge and skills to be able to achieve the standards set by the government while lacking a commitment to prepare teachers in sociocultural, critical, and social justice approaches. consequently, language teachers should be offered pdps that include a combination of aspects or principles that are an integral part of working from a social justice perspective so that they are able to provide students with the kind of education that will lead them to become agents of social transformation inside and outside the schools. moreover, these programs should prepare language teachers to be critical thinkers and activists who, when dealing with issues of professional development, are able to establish a balance between the interest of the government and their own interests and needs as professionals so that their individual learning is not ignored (day & sachs, 2004). with the above-mentioned reform and what the colombian government has established in terms of teacher professional development, teachers are witnessing the prevalence of one of the two discourses that currently influence educational policies in relation to teacher professionalism (day & sachs, 2004). this discourse, known as “managerial professionalism . . . gains its legitimacy through the promulgation of policies and the allocation of funds associated with those policies” (day & sachs, 2004, p. 6). it aims at universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras206 sierra piedrahita redefining what teacher professionalism means and how teachers should practice it whether individually or collectively (day & sachs, 2004). according to day and sachs (2004), this discourse is system driven, has external regulations, drives reform agendas, has political ends, is competitive and market driven, and exerts control and compliancy on teachers. in contrast, the other dominant discourse, “democratic professionalism” (day & sachs, 2004, p. 5), is a preferable option for the professional development of teachers and attempts to transform teacher professionalism so that they have greater agency in their teaching (day & sachs, 2004). not surprisingly, a shift to greater teacher agency as professionals has not been popular among policy makers in colombia given that it is profession driven, has professional regulation, complements and moves beyond reform agendas, has professional development ends, is collegial, and points at teachers’ activism (day & sachs, 2004). although these two discourses of teacher professionalism have the intention of improving school teachers’ performance and skills and, consequently, improving student learning results, what differentiates one discourse from the other is how the improvement process is done and who controls it (day & sachs, 2004). clearly, the professional development of language teachers in colombia has been designed under the discourse of managerial professionalism described by day and sachs. because professional development is political, it then serves some people’s interests better than others (day & sachs, 2004); therefore, teachers should be attentive and make sure that the professional development they receive also serves their interests and needs. the field of teacher learning and professional development in colombia will not advance unless we move to other forms of professional development that are planned according to teachers’ needs, interests, working contexts and conditions, and with an emphasis on democratic professionalism. pdps planned that take these elements into consideration and with a focus on a social justice perspective will give teachers the preparation they need to provide students with the kind of education that will lead them to become agents of social transformation inside and outside the schools. a social justice language perspective for the professional development of language teachers the literature about social justice teacher education (sjte hereafter) indicates that there are at least three conceptions of the term social justice in teacher education (cochran-smith et al., 2009; zeichner, 2009, 2011). one conception is about distributive theories focusing on a just or equitable distribution of material resources and services in society. another conception is related to recognition theories focusing on social relations among individuals; that is, caring and respectful social relations where people are treated with dignity. the third conception focuses on both distributive and relational justice theories (cochran-smith et al., 2009; mcdonald as cited in zeichner, 2011; zeichner, 2009). zeichner (2011) states that sjte aims to respond to preparing teachers to teach in ways that contribute to a lessening of the inequalities that exist in school systems throughout the world between children of the poor and children of the middle and wealthy classes, and the injustices that exist in societies beyond systems of schooling, in access to shelter, food, healthcare, transportation, access to meaningful work that pays a living wage and so on. (p. 7) moreover, he observes that social justice in volves “the forming of linkages inside and outside education aimed at working for broad social change” (p. 18). thus, preparing teachers to work under this perspective, although challenging, is worth the effort to reduce the inequalities and injustices existing in 207profile vol. 18, no.1, january-june 2016. issn 1657-0790 (printed) 2256-5760 (online). bogotá, colombia. pages 203-217 contributions of a social justice language teacher education perspective to professional development... schools and society; however, it requires different stakeholders to learn to work together and with other actors in society to effect the desired social change. accordingly, the goals of sjte are to recruit and prepare a diversity of teachers to teach all kinds of students; to prepare teachers capable of working inside and outside their classrooms to change inequities in schools and in society, more than focusing on diversity (mcdonald & zeichner as cited in zeichner, 2011; zeichner, 2009); to acknowledge the social and political aspects of teaching and recognize the contribution of teachers to students’ life possibilities or opportunities; to prepare teachers to become leaders in reconstructing society through equity in opportunities and outcomes among the various groups existing in society; and to prepare teachers to teach in contexts where they are forced to accept forms of accountability that are narrow and punitive and that do not match the views of what they want to achieve with their students (hamel & merz; johnson et al.; sirotnik as cited in zeichner, 2011). s o ci a l just ice l angu age te acher e duc at ion (sjlte hereafter) is about moving beyond issues of language such as grammar, the four skills of language learning and so on, as well as sociocultural and critical approaches to language teaching to directly concentrate on teachers’ agency and responsibility to effect local and larger social change as they understand how societal structures affect educational and life chances for their students and their families (hawkins, 2011). scholars situated in both sjte and sjlte perspectives agree on a vision of advocating for social justice in education and teachers’ responsibility in being agents of change in their classrooms, schools, and in society at large. therefore, there is a need for committed teachers to educate and advocate for democracy and contribute to reduce existing inequities not only in schools but also in society by redistributing educational opportunities for students (cochran-smith et al., 2009). such work requires preparation of teachers who possess a combination of “knowledge; interpretive frameworks; teaching strategies, methods, and skills; and advocacy with and for students, parents, colleagues, and communities” (cochran-smith et al., 2009, p. 350). moreover, it requires teachers who are able to critique the larger structures, arrangements, and policies of schooling and consider the role they might play to challenge the system that promotes inequities (cochran-smith et al., 2009). in other words, teachers need to be activists and advocates for students (cochran-smith et al., 2009). to count on this kind of teachers, and more specifically language teachers, pdps should focus on helping in-service teachers develop a more political perspective about their profession. a social justice language perspective can offer in-service teachers a different view about their work and provide them with a focus for learning different from the knowledge and skills determined by reform initiatives promoted by the government. such initiatives normally embody a managerialist vision of teacher learning and development that is concerned with efficiency and productivity and excludes social and human benefits (mcinerney, 2007). hawkins (2011) observes that language teacher preparation and professional development programs often take into account competencies dealing with issues of language; that is, grammar, function, structure, and usage. to a lesser degree they take into account issues that align with sociocultural perspectives; that is, linguistically and culturally responsive pedagogies. however, they almost never provide teachers the opportunity to explore critical issues and approaches and even less a social justice approach to language teaching. accordingly, a sjlte approach not only emphasizes changing understandings of language learning, teaching, and usage; accepts the existence of inequities in education and imagines just social futures for people but emphasizes the responsibility of teachers in being agents of social change (hawkins, 2011). universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras208 sierra piedrahita nevertheless, teachers’ work in colombia is increasingly constructed around narrow, instrumental, and apolitical ways. these issues are reinforced through scripted and prescribed curriculum and standardized testing and other accountability measures that seem to be created to control teachers and not to promote their creativity or talent (mcinerney, 2007), and their potential to be critical thinkers and agents of change that can work to improve the life chances of their students. for language teachers to become the kind of critical thinkers and activists our profession requires, pdps should be geared to include a combination of aspects or principles that are an integral part of working from a social justice perspective. furthermore, they should be designed and structured taking into account many of the main characteristics of effective professional developments that the literature suggests and which come from a broad consensus among researchers, scholars, policymakers, and professional development specialists (elmore, 2002; hawley & valli, 1999). towards the development of a social justice language perspective in pdps pdps working from a social justice perspective should include a series of aspects, and these are not limited to the ones i present here. these pro grams should: • provide teachers with opportunities for collaboration, dialogue, reflection, and work to empower/legitimize teachers (hawkins, 2011). • provide teachers with many opportunities to consider and understand concepts, issues, and ideas related to teaching for social justice (enterline, cochran-smith, ludlow, & mitescu, 2008), concepts related to social theory can contribute to teachers’ understandings in this sense (brennan & noffke, 2009). • provide teachers with assignments that help them develop social justice principles and practices as well as assignments that address broader institutional inequities that impact students’ experiences (mcdonald, 2008). • plan activities in which teachers spend time interacting with community activists and people from neighborhoods who experience inequalities and injustices (zeichner, 2011) which will allow them to see and live things first hand. • help teachers become aware of the importance of enhancing students’ learning and their life chances (cochran-smith et al., 2009). • invite guest speakers to talk about their experiences as people who normally deal with social problems in their own neighborhoods. • provide teachers with the possibility to not only develop knowledge and skills for good teaching but also dispositions toward social justice. • emphasize the development of teachers’ behaviors, attitudes, and values that will help them to teach those to their students so that they can live as good citizens. once teachers learn the principles and practices of a sjlte perspective and the possible strategies to apply it in their classes, they can start to transform their teaching practices. nevertheless, given that teacher learning for social justice is not an easy job and teachers might be resistant to work from this perspective or might not want to assume this role of leaders of social change (zeichner, 2011), programs should start by promoting teachers’ awareness of the importance of teaching from this perspective, therefore, they can move from awareness to action in the work place (hawkins, 2011). since working from a social justice perspective may require many teachers to change their world views to understand the structural aspects of schools and then analyze and criticize the macro level structures, it is not realistic to expect teachers to work as activists (cochran-smith et al., 2009) in the early stages of their professional development process. cochran-smith et al. (2009) argue that dealing with 209profile vol. 18, no.1, january-june 2016. issn 1657-0790 (printed) 2256-5760 (online). bogotá, colombia. pages 203-217 contributions of a social justice language teacher education perspective to professional development... social justice issues at the individual level, that is, in teachers’ own classrooms, is an important starting point. once they accomplish this first step, they can be prepared to deal with social justice at the structural level, i.e., in the school and society. working this way might provide a bridge for them to move to criticize the larger structures that create schooling inequities (cochran-smith et al., 2009). nonetheless, for an appropriate implementation of pdps of this kind, designers and facilitators of programs should possess a number of qualities that would allow them to reach teachers and accomplish programs goals. designers and facilitators should see teachers as professionals, that is, as people who possess a broad body of knowledge about their area (noffke, 2009; zepeda, 2008) and a degree of autonomy to make decisions about their teaching (cochransmith & lytle, 1999; hoban, 2002); as people who are able to work collaboratively with others to reflect on and discuss their work (cochran-smith & lytle, 1999; hoban, 2002; noffke, 2009); as generators of knowledge (cochran-smith & lytle, 1999; hoban, 2002; noffke, 2009); as people who have the capacity to think critically about their work and promote changes; as people who can become critical and activists and aware of the consequences of their work in society; and as people who can develop moral and ethical values that guide their work. understanding these issues is paramount for designers and facilitators of pdps and as such they may require their own professional development in all the aspects, principles, practices, and qualities described above. a social justice perspective translated into teaching practices very often teachers wonder about the ways in which they can translate a social justice perspective into teaching practices. cochran-smith et al. (2009) provide examples of some of the practices that teachers who work from this perspective carry out with their students. it is important to acknowledge, however, that such practices are related to the different conceptions of social justice in teacher education presented above and it is also important that teachers understand which of them they ascribe to and want to promote through their teaching. teachers working from a social justice perspective: • pay a lot of attention to the knowledge and skills proposed in the curriculum and critique them in order to improve them. • redesign or design curricula including social justice issues. • connect curriculum to issues of oppression and racial and economic inequities. • challenge and alter the standard curriculum. • encourage students to question traditional ideas and expand their worldviews by exposing them to different points of view. • build on students’ cultural and linguistic resources, and attempt to reach every student. • accommodate and differentiate instruction. • promote critical thinking and deep questioning in students. • have and hold high expectations about all students and push them to meet those goals. • build good relationships with students and their families and respect student’s parents and work with them. • develop a culture of respect among students and between students and teacher. • know their students and care for them. • advocate for all students. • engage in community work and get students engaged in these kinds of activities for any sort of work that would contribute to the improvement of that community. • participate and build collaborations/coalitions to support students and improve schools. • participate in activism. universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras210 sierra piedrahita • break down racial or class barriers for students. • teach their students about democracy and civic engagement. • affirm and build on students’ differences. • create learning opportunities for their students being aware of how these would influence their life chances and live a successful future. • build on their students’ knowledge and skills. • make curriculum relevant and applicable to students. • know and understand students’ social and cultural contexts. • are fair to all students in the classroom without showing favorites. • challenge students’ stereotypes or biases related to race, class, gender, or sexual orientation. • value students’ diversity and establish a caring and inclusive environment (cochran-smith et al., 2009). clearly, these and other practices apply to language education and all subjects and areas of knowledge in schools, and thus, it is up to teachers to decide which practices they want and can carry out with their students because they believe they can contribute to their education. the following example illustrates how two english teachers in two public schools decided to incorporate a social justice perspective into their teaching practice and what they were able to achieve with their students. learning to teach for social justice within a pdp between january 2009 and december 2010, i conducted a case study with two public high school english teachers who participated in a pdp that a colleague and i created. this program consisted of a teacher community which included a study group, peer coaching, and workshops for a group of nine english teachers from two different public high schools that were located in a very poor and violent neighborhood. the study had as one of its purposes to understand the knowledge, skills, and attitudes related to social justice that both teachers developed as they were involved in this community. i include in this paper some examples of what was found in this sense to illustrate how a pdp that included a social justice perspective contributed to teachers’ learning and how what they learned helped them to change their teaching practices at the classroom and the school level.1 data collection sources were interviews, class observations, documents, and tape-recorded meetings of the study group and planning and feedback sessions with the teachers. data analysis included a combination of a deductive and an inductive approach. for the inductive approach i followed burnaford, fischer, and hobson (2001) and anderson, herr, and nihlen (1994) data analysis procedures. i read all sources of data several times and highlighted the passages that i considered relevant to my research questions. then, i coded passages using themes and categories relevant to these questions. for the deductive approach, i used concepts related to teacher learning and development and the theoretical framework that guided the study which provided some of the themes that emerged from the analysis. i compared and contrasted categories looking for relationships among them, wrote analytical memos to make sense of the data, and drew some preliminary interpretations. to ensure the validity or trustworthiness of my interpretations, i triangulated the different sources of data and did member checking by sharing the findings with the teachers (stake, 2006). data indicated that the two teachers developed a more critical perspective about their work which allowed them to change certain teaching behaviors that favored their teaching practices and, as a consequence, their students’ education. such teaching behaviors are in accord with the practices that teachers 1 it is not my intention to present the findings of the study in this paper. my intention is just to provide an example to show how teachers can learn to teach for social justice within a pdp. 211profile vol. 18, no.1, january-june 2016. issn 1657-0790 (printed) 2256-5760 (online). bogotá, colombia. pages 203-217 contributions of a social justice language teacher education perspective to professional development... who, according to cochran-smith et al. (2009), work from a sjlte perspective carry out with their students. this is, having and holding high expectations about all students, building good relationships with students, knowing students and caring for them, participating and building collaborations to support students and improve schools, making curriculum relevant and applicable to students, and knowing and understanding students’ social and cultural contexts. knowing students, caring for them, and building good relationships with them one of the teachers did not have a good relationship with her students. she did not treat them well since she became very impatient when they did not pay attention in class or did not want to participate. however, during her involvement in the pdp, she was able to consider the many social problems that affected the lives of her students and the difficult situations they have to face such as coming to class without having breakfast or being worried about the violence in their neighborhoods. being able to consider student’s social problems and their difficult economic situation gave this teacher the capacity to understand students’ behavior in class and thus she started to build better relationships with them by treating them well, dialoguing with them, and caring for them as illustrated by the following quote: before i was very indifferent or i told them off all the time and it didn’t help at all. i got very angry when i saw that they were not doing things the way they should. but now, i try to be more patient, to dialogue with them, to see that if they are not paying attention or working it is because something is happening and i have to find out what is happening. thus, i think that i have improved in that aspect; in the way i treat the students . . . i try to get along well with them, to dialogue with them, to be more patient. (interview, marcela, 06/15/09) the social justice component of the pdp offered this teacher the possibility to analyze and understand students’ personal and social issues that she was not able or open to understand before and helped her to reassess the way she related to them. making curriculum/lessons relevant and applicable to students and knowing and understanding their social and cultural contexts both teachers understood the importance of presenting topics related to students’ social and cultural contexts so that the lessons were relevant and applicable to their real lives. one of the teachers, for instance, incorporated activities with materials which were more related to the everyday life and experiences of her students. another thing is that you have to give students examples related to their experiences, the context where they are involved, as when we worked with [the topic of ] my family . . . students looked interested in that. [for instance] the names . . . they felt identified with those names [because] those were names from here [colombia]. then, all those details help you. (interview, cristina, 11/25/09) t h i s te a ch e r w a s abl e to u n d e rs t an d t h e importance of including in her classes materials with examples from students’ social and cultural contexts which allowed her to make her lessons more relevant and motivating for her students. having and holding high expectations about all students one of the teachers did not care much about students’ learning and how her lessons could contribute to their learning and the responsibility she had in that process, which, in turn, translated into not having high expectations of students. it was common to hear her complaining about the students and about their futures. along the process in the pdp, she realized she needed to change her attitude towards her students and her role as a teacher: universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras212 sierra piedrahita [i see] a change in my attitude concerning my role as a teacher, with my students. before i went to the classroom and taught. [i didn’t care if students] learned or not. [now] i see the responsibility that i have in their learning. . . . what was important [for me] before was to teach some topics even if the students didn’t learn about them. i realize now that what is important is that students learn something from a topic. (interview, marcela, /06/15/09) this change in attitude helped her realize the importance of having high expectations of the students so that they could learn more and, for instance, be more prepared to pass the entrance exam to a university, which would mean a chance for them to succeed in life and not to end up being part of the armed insurgent groups or gangs in their neighborhoods. participating and building collaborations to support students and improve schools finally, one of the teachers was able to promote, with my support, school change by challenging the system. the principal and coordinators changed some conditions to support the teaching of english due to our constant requests. they separated the english and spanish subjects which were organized as one area of study for which students needed to pass either one of them in order to pass the area. for example, students could fail the english class and still pass the area, a situation which was interfering with teachers’ efforts to change their teaching methodology. they also provided better teaching conditions to teachers by moving the english classrooms to the quietest rooms in the school for teachers to better implement the new teaching methodology, which included listening activities that were not working well due to the constant outside noise. this particular teacher started to voice her concerns in the school meetings. she also set an appointment with the principal to tell him about how the integration of english and spanish was not contributing much to her change of methodology. in this way, she was able to voice her concern in relation to this regulation and how it was affecting her teaching and her students’ learning. in this study, teachers’ work as agents of change remained at the classroom and the school level and did not cover the community outside the school because of time issues. with more time to work together, we might have been able to continue working in this direction and accomplish the kind of teaching for social justice that zeichner (2011) proposes. this example suggests that learning to teach for social justice is feasible and possible to achieve, and that language teachers when challenged or given the opportunity, are able to explore and align with a sjlte approach that not only emphasizes changing understandings of language learning, teaching and usage, accepts the existence of inequities in education, and imagines fair social futures for people but also emphasizes the responsibility of teachers in being agents of social change (hawkins, 2011). it is important to acknowledge that this pdp missed many of the features stated above that should characterize teacher learning for social justice and that could have provided both teachers with other important learning to improve their practice even more. most of what these teachers learned to do with their students was promoted through dialogue and collaborative work between them and me and their subsequent reflection on their practice. implications of a social justice language teacher education perspective implement ing a s o cia l just ice p ersp e c t ive in language education requires the support and commitment of different educational stakeholders. the suggestions below are based on discussions that scholars in the field have had in relation to sjte and sjlte and my own insights as regards how this support and commitment could be built. 213profile vol. 18, no.1, january-june 2016. issn 1657-0790 (printed) 2256-5760 (online). bogotá, colombia. pages 203-217 contributions of a social justice language teacher education perspective to professional development... teacher educators to prepare language teachers to work for social justice, we need to prepare teacher educators first. as zeichner (2011) states: “a major limitation in the social justice agenda, is the lack of capacity among teacher educators to do the job that needs to be done” (p. 16). he argues that many teacher educators have not had successful experiences working in the poor, diverse, and segregated schools systems that we currently have (zeichner as cited in zeichner, 2011). teacher educators need to model the same teaching practices and activism as well as the same caring, compassionate, and responsive relationships that they hope teachers promote with their own students in schools (conklin as cited in zeichner, 2011). moreover, they should be able to help teachers to deeply examine their attitudes and assumptions about education and their roles as teachers that may not allow them to work towards social justice in their own classrooms and schools. however, since teachers’ learning for social justice is not an easy job and teachers might show resistance to work from this perspective because they have to achieve what reform initiatives demand or because they do not want to assume this role of leaders of social change (zeichner, 2011), teacher education programs should start by raising teachers’ awareness of the importance of teaching from this perspective so that they can move from awareness to individual action and then to the structural for a broader social impact. additionally, language teacher educators should construct partnerships with schools to work on the design and implementation of curriculums and pedagogical strategies that are based on a social justice perspective. professional development program coordinators and policy makers give n t h at p ol i c y m a ke rs and m any pdp coordinators in the country work hand in hand to provide in-service teachers with programs to attain the goals set by the government in terms of language teaching and learning in schools, they should also work to include in those programs objectives that reflect a social justice perspective and that prepare teachers to become agents of change, not only in their schools but also outside them. preparing teachers in the knowledge and skills the government has established to help students to be competent in a globalized world, which normally offers possibilities for some students but not for all, is not enough if we really want to provide them with the kind of education they deserve and that can offer them better life chances. moreover, these stakeholders should move from pdps that focus on issues of language, that is, grammar, function, structure, and usage to include content and activities that focus on linguistically and culturally responsive pedagogies, that critically explore a social justice approach to language teaching, and that emphasize the responsibility of teachers in being agents of social change (hawkins, 2011). policy makers and pdp coordinators who really care about students’ learning and their possibilities to succeed in life should design pdps that combine the characteristics of effective professional development and the kinds of goals, principles, contents, and activities suggested above with the purpose of preparing in-service teachers to be able to work from a social justice perspective with their own students. researchers several issues should be considered by researchers in our language teacher education field. researchers should analyze and monitor pdps that attempt to infuse a social justice language perspective to really understand how teachers are learning to teach. moreover, keeping in mind that previous research has concentrated on teachers’ attitudes and ignored their actions (cochran-smith et al., 2009), researchers should study the impact of pdps in teachers’ actions inside and outside the schools. furthermore, they universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras214 sierra piedrahita should conduct studies of pdps in which the learning of in-service teachers in terms of social justice is followed and analyzed across time in order to see its evolution and the impact of such learning in their teaching practices. this last item leads us to a very complex but essential research issue which is to study the relationship between teacher learning and student learning. we need to understand how what teachers learn in pdps structures to promote a social justice language perspective can contribute to students’ learning. finally, researchers should conduct studies to determine the time it takes for teachers to move from awareness raising about social justice to individual action and then from individual action to action inside and outside the school as well as what it requires for teachers to move from awareness raising to action inside and outside the school. understanding all these issues will provide researchers with insights to theorize about teacher learning and professional development and stakeholders with ideas to plan pdps for in-service teachers accordingly. teachers in-service teachers themselves should commit to the work that a social justice perspective implies if they really want to provide their students with better life chances. given that teaching is a political act, teachers are called to learn to work from a political perspective such as this one and become the change agents our education system needs. in this sense, we need teachers who are committed to their students’ education and who do not give up the possibility to change the oppressive structures and practices we are experiencing in these neoliberal times (mcinerney, 2007). furthermore, in times of reform and accountability such as the ones we are living, educators should accept the need for change and work to design curricula and pedagogies that respond to the needs of their students and provide them with better life chances. administrators administrators should encourage and support language teachers to work from a social justice perspective by providing them with the necessary time and resources to participate in the pdps they are offered. they should welcome in their schools pdps that are designed to promote a social justice perspective in language teachers for the benefit of students. moreover, they should support teachers in building relationships with families and the community so that they can move from individual action to social action outside the schools. last, but not least, they should support teachers when challenging language regulations or policies that promote inequalities and injustices in schools and consider teachers’ perspectives and voices when deciding whether these should be implemented or not. because policies are enacted in schools, teachers can resist them, modify them, and appropriate them at the school level (mcinerney, 2007) after considering the benefits or drawbacks for students. final remarks teaching from a social justice perspective requires teachers’ understanding that they themselves are responsible for challenging inequities in society (c ochran-smith et al., 2009). they should be advocates for students and their efforts should support larger efforts for social change (cochransmith et al., 2009) as they understand that both inequities in education and low quality education are closely related to the lack of access to decent jobs, which affects people’s access to housing, healthcare, food, and so on (hawkins, 2011; zeichner, 2011) and, at the same time, the lack of all these basic needs might hinder students’ school attendance (hawkins, 2011). therefore, teachers are called to accept the responsibility they have in the construction of better futures for their students and as consequence a better society. however, constructing a better society is not 215profile vol. 18, no.1, january-june 2016. issn 1657-0790 (printed) 2256-5760 (online). bogotá, colombia. pages 203-217 contributions of a social justice language teacher education perspective to professional development... only the responsibility of teachers. although teachers can play a fundamental role in dealing with issues of inequities and injustices in schools, they are only part of the solution given that changing societies requires a broader political work at different levels (berliner as cited in zeichner, 2011). although for many stakeholders working from a social justice perspective may sound very idealistic, it is possible to accomplish. the example of the two teachers provided in this paper is precisely a proof of what teachers can achieve when they are willing to change their attitude and accept the challenge. language teacher educators, teachers, and in-service and pre-service language teachers are thus called to begin that change that our country needs and demands from us. we have all heard that teaching is a political endeavor; however, many of us do not fully understand what this implies. sjlte provides us with the opportunity to understand what it means to be political, make our job more meaningful, and contribute to a more equal and just society as we provide our students with access to learning and better life chances (cochran-smith et al., 2009). designing and implementing professional development programs that offer possibilities to teachers other than just preparing them to teach the knowledge and skills policy makers determine as important to be competitive in the world economy, is paramount in language education. therefore, pdps should be structured in a way that they will provide in-service teachers with the knowledge, skills, and dispositions that allow them to change their teaching practices and carry out more effective work with their students as they help them make important connections between language and the world around them and in a way that is meaningful for them. in other words, pdps should be designed in a way that can help teachers to separate or detach from language issues such as grammar, function, structure, and usage and move to provide teachers with the opportunity to understand their role in society and their responsibility as agents of social change. a sjlte perspective can offer this possibility to language teachers. exploring a different way of working with teachers that could help them construct better futures for their students is paramount in times of reforms such as the ones we are living. experiences for students in schools can be different, but we need to prepare in-service and pre-service teachers to be open to work from a social justice perspective that will allow them to understand the political purposes of education. there is still the hope that despite the many oppressive neoliberal reforms, teachers in our country can exercise their autonomy to achieve alternative, progressive, and emancipatory practices and promote socially just schools (mcinerney, 2007). references anderson, g. l., herr, k., & nihlen, s. a. 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(1999). the essentials of effective professional development: a new consensus. in l. darling-hammond & g. sykes (eds.), teaching as the learning profession: handbook of policy and practice (pp. 127-150). san francisco, ca: jossey-bass. hoban, g. f. (2002). teacher learning for educational change: a systems thinking approach. buckingham, uk: open university press. mccotter, s. s. (2001). collaborative groups as professional development. teacher and teacher education, 17(6), 685704. http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/s0742-051x(01)00024-5. mcdonald, m. a. (2008). the pedagogy of assignments in social justice teacher education. equity and excellence in education, 41(2), 151-167. http://dx.doi. org/10.1080/10665680801943949. mcinerney, p. (2007). from naive optimism to robust hope: sustaining a commitment to social justice in schools and teacher education in neoliberal times. asia-pacific journal of teacher education, 35(3), 257-272. http:// dx.doi.org/10.1080/13598660701447213. noffke, s. e. (2009). revisiting the professional, personal, and political dimensions of action research. in b. somekh & s. e. noffke (eds.), the sage handbook of educational action research (pp. 6-23). london, uk: sage. http://dx.doi.org/10.4135/9780857021021.n2. randi, j., & zeichner, k. m. (2004). new visions of teacher professional development. in m. a. smylie & d. miretzky (eds.), developing the teacher workforce (pp. 180-221). chicago, il: chicago university press. http:// dx.doi.org/10.1111/j.1744-7984.2004.tb00034.x. sierra piedrahita, a. m. (2007a). developing knowledge, skills and attitudes through a study group: a study on teachers’ professional development. íkala, revista de lenguaje y cultura, 12(18), 279-305. sierra piedrahita, a. m. (2007b). the professional development of a facilitator through a study group. profile issues in teachers’ professional development, 8(1), 91-101. stake, r. e. (2006). multiple case study analysis. new york, ny: the guildford press. sugrue, c. (2004). rhetorics and realities of cpd across europe: from cacophony towards coherence? in c. day & j. sachs (eds.), international handbook on the continuing professional development of teachers (pp. 67-93). glasgow, uk: open university press. usma, j., & frodden, c. (2003). promoting teacher autonomy through educational innovation. íkala, revista de lenguage y cultura, 8(14), 101-132. zeichner, k. m. (2009). teacher education and the struggle for social justice. new york, ny: routledge. zeichner, k. m. (2011). teacher education for social justice. in m. r. hawkins (ed.), social justice language teacher education (pp. 7-22). bristol, uk: multilingual matters. zepeda, s. j. (2008). professional development: what works. larchmont, ny: eye on education and the national staff development council. 217profile vol. 18, no.1, january-june 2016. issn 1657-0790 (printed) 2256-5760 (online). bogotá, colombia. pages 203-217 contributions of a social justice language teacher education perspective to professional development... about the author ana maria sierra piedrahita is an assistant professor at the school of languages, universidad de antioquia (colombia). she holds a phd in education—curriculum and instruction, from the university of wisconsin, madison, usa. her teaching and research interests include teacher professional development and learning, social justice education and curriculum in language teaching. 181profile vol. 13, no. 2, october 2011. issn 1657-0790. bogotá, colombia. pages 181-199 improving eleventh graders’ reading comprehension through text coding and double entry organizer reading strategies mejoramiento de la comprensión lectora de estudiantes de grado once mediante las estrategias de lectura de codificación de texto y organizador de doble entrada rocío mahecha* stellaurrego** erika lozano***3 policarpa salavarrieta school, colombia in this article we report on an innovation project developed with a group of eleventh graders at a public school in bogotá. its aim was to encourage students to improve reading comprehension of texts in english. it was conducted taking into account students’ needs, interests and level of english. to do it, we implemented two reading strategies: text coding and double entry organizer. we observed the students’ attitudes during two lesson plans, compared their level of comprehension before and after using the reading strategies and asked them to self-evaluate their performance. at the end, we could see their improvement, how they enjoyed doing the activities and became more confident. key words: double entry organizers, reading comprehension, reading strategies, text coding. en este artículo reportamos un proyecto de innovación desarrollado con un grupo de estudiantes de grado once de un colegio distrital de bogotá. el propósito era animar a los estudiantes a mejorar su comprensión de textos en inglés. para ello se tuvieron en cuenta sus necesidades, intereses y nivel de inglés. se utilizaron dos estrategias de lectura: codificación de texto y organizador de doble entrada. observamos la actitud de los estudiantes durante el desarrollo de dos lecciones, comparamos sus niveles de comprensión de lectura antes y después de utilizar las dos estrategias y les pedimos autoevaluar su desempeño. al final pudimos apreciar mejoría en los niveles de comprensión, el disfrute en la realización de las actividades y la seguridad que alcanzaron. palabras clave: comprensión de lectura, codificación de textos, estrategias de lectura, organizadores gráficos de doble entrada. this paper reports on a study conducted by the authors while participating in the profile teacher development program at universidad nacional de colombia in 2009-2010. the program was sponsored by secretaría de educación de bogotá, d.c. code number: 1576, august 24, 2009. * e-mail: rossymas@yahoo.com ** e-mail: marimarsol60@hotmail.com *** e-mail: erlomed@hotmail.com this article was received on january 29, 2011, and accepted on july 31, 2011. 182 universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras mahecha, urrego & lozano introduction although most of the students at the policarpa salavarrieta school liked their english class, they had problems when reading texts and trying to answer comprehension questions. this was evident not only in class but also when they took different examinations in which the main component was reading. we examined the low scores obtained by the eleventh grade students on the icfes exam1, english section, in the last three years, diagnosed the students’ likes, preferences and troubles at the moment of reading, and decided to plan a project. the innovation consisted of guiding the students in the use of two reading strategies: text coding and double entry organizer. that is, to come to understand a text following a planned process of reading that goes from the top-down skills to the bottom-up skills. in general, this innovation project sought to motivate the students not only towards reading but also towards english as a school subject in general by improving their levels of comprehension and, hopefully, getting better results on the icfes test. in the long run, we expect students to feel comfortable in their future careers or jobs because they have the domain to understand texts in english and, consequently, be successful. after planning the lessons, which included two workshops, we decided to compare the comprehension students had before applying the two strategies and after doing it. data was gathered through teacher’s observation notes, the students’ answers in the workshops and the self evaluation of their performance. this article includes the objectives, the literature reviewed about reading comprehension and reading strategies, and the analysis of the categories 1 icfes: the colombian examination for admission to university studies. it is applied to 11th grade students from all the colombian schools as a requirement to get the high school diploma. found during the development of the project to gether with the positive and negative aspects. the last section includes the conclusions about the improvement in students’ reading comprehension of texts in english and our suggestion as regards the necessity to keep working with the reading strategies and take advantage of the achievements of this innovation project with all the high school students in the institution. objectives to guide the 11th grade students at the policarpa salavarrieta school, morning shift, to read short passages by means of text coding and double entry organizer reading strategies. to examine the effect of text coding and double entry organizer reading strategies on the students’ comprehension level. context the group of students chosen for implementing the project was in the 1102 group at the policarpa salavarrieta school. this is an official school located in bogotá, colombia. there were seventeen girls and sixteen boys whose average age was 17. most of them belonged to the lower middle socioeconomic level. according to the common european framework, their level of english was a1; that is, knowledge of some words related to their immediate context and some short sentences. it seemed that most of them liked the english class and enjoyed it, but they lacked good reading habits. that is, they knew a limited amount of words, their comprehension of texts was very low or minimal and they had not been motivated towards the learning of english. literature review in order to develop the process of application of the two reading strategies mentioned above, 183profile vol. 13, no. 2, october 2011. issn 1657-0790. bogotá, colombia. pages 181-199 improving eleventh graders’ reading comprehension through text coding... different texts and authors were taken into account to clarify some aspects. the concept of reading comprehension, associated factors with reading, criteria for choosing the kind of text in the two workshops, theory about specific strategies and why to use an image as a complementary element to the text, were studied. to begin, according to aebersold and field (1997), reading is what happens when people look at a text and assign meaning to the written symbols in that text. the text and the reader are the two physical entities necessary for the reading process to begin. it is, however, the interaction between the text and the reader that constitutes actual reading (p. 15) as a process, reading implies stages, steps and attitudes because it is an active process between the subject and the object. that is, between the reader and the reading. nevertheless, more important than this relation is the interaction between both of them (rumelhart, 1977, in aebersold & field, 1997). for instance, the reader as an active element thinks about the themes of the text; then, he/she has many experiences, a wide or narrow background knowledge that influences the comprehension level. hence, the reader establishes relations with his/her context through the text. these relations can be intra, extra or inter textual. in this respect, urrego (2007) expresses that communicative competence is composed of prag matic and the linguistic competences and their interrelation. however, the author explains that different factors of pragmatic competence determine the linguistic one. we speak, read and write according to our thoughts, experiences, ideologies and social environment in the world. in other words, we have a formal verbal expression supported in the way we think. in the same way, linguistic competence includes socio-cultural fac tors. the role of these factors involved in reading, books, influence of the family, reading in the school, libraries, photocopies and the reader’s socio-economic situation confirm that the reader is an active subject in reading. outside factors connected to reading comprehension such as time of classes, timetable, number of students per class, individual and collective cultural level, personal likes and tendencies in reading, resources provided by the school, the teacher’s attitude and the general environment determine the progress or slowdown in the process of reading. however, “personality factors are more significant than socio-cultural variables and educational background for learning strategy preferences” (nunan, 1991, p. 170). these individual factors that influence learning, self-esteem, inhibition, risk taking, anxiety, and motivation also influence reading. aebersold & field point out, too, that “home, community, school, culture, and individual characteristics all shape the life experiences that readers bring to reading. they help form the complex persona of reader and form the basis for understanding the reading process” (1997, p. 8). all this background information they bring when reading is the schema. another important aspect concerning this matter, and mentioned by the same author, is that their success in understanding a given text is affected by the way they learned to read. from what has been said so far, we can note that key constituents make reading possible. “the reading comprehension process focuses on three elements: the text being read, the background knowledge possessed by the reader, and contextual aspects” (alderson & urguhart, 1984, in calderón agudelo, carvajal ávila, & guerrero lópez, 2007, p. 28). it was also important to consider the relationship between spanish (l1) and english (l2). when studying this relation and communicative 184 universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras mahecha, urrego & lozano competence, it is necessary to say that in l2 the thought and, to a certain extent, the reader’s ideology seems to be trapped by linguistic competence due to the lack of vocabulary and fluency that generates some frustration (urrego, 2007). in other words, comprehension is affected by schematic knowledge structures in the sense that these can facilitate or inhibit it when they are over or underutilized (aslanian study, 1985, cited by nunan, 1991). now, in the selection of the kind of texts to be used in the workshops, it was necessary to consider the purposes. these are the purpose of the text, the purpose of teaching and the purpose of learning. the first one refers to the writer’s purpose, which is to give information, to give his opinion about the text, to persuade. the second, the teacher’s purpose, could be to teach grammar, expressions, improve the students’ specific skills. the last one is the student’s purpose; that is to say, what the student wants to learn consciously or unconsciously. on the part of the student, it is very worthy to take into account the purpose of reading. it could be reading for pleasure and reading for information (grellet, 1981), but in this specific case, we pretended that our students read for pleasure as a first step to get them motivated towards this practice and make them feel more confident in the process. just as important as identifying the purpose of reading was to select the kind of text and the topic of it in order to follow an integral process of reading comprehension. both are determined by the mean ing they have for the students. the criteria to select a text are: 1) length: working with a short text seems to guarantee an improvement in the process of reading comprehension. 2) conciseness: words. that is, words have essential content that permit analyzing specific terms, learning new expressions, identifying key words and main ideas. 3) relation of text-image: this must not only be an illustrative element, but a motivator and, sometimes, indicator of the topic, especially when it appears at the beginning of a text. 4) relation of reader’s interest and theme: the kind of theme must touch the reader and be of his/her interests. in the same sense, swaffar, arens and byrnes affirm that after students are both comfortable and relatively articulated in expressing the messages of shorter readings such as ads, short articles about familiar, even sensational topics, and interviews, they are prepared to read longer texts on the basis of special interests or to engage in ‘pleasure reading’ as an outside activity (1991, p. 200). this has also been evidenced in other studies carried out in public schools in bogotá. in this respect, quiroga carrillo stresses that in the search of a topic, it is also necessary to have in mind that “the topics of the texts have an impact on students’ motivation” (2010, p. 20). besides the aspects mentioned so far, what matters most in this project is the explanation of two reading strategies to be used with the students in the lessons planned. the strategies are text coding and double entry organizer. the former refers to the action of assigning colors, stickers or any code to the text in order to find out the relations established in it (grammatical categories or main ideas). this strategy is motivational for students to the point they get engaged or involved in the reading process. they also read and interact meaningfully with the material by coding it (teachervision, 2010). the latter is a two-column device to write information about the text (pre-knowledge or reflections). according to gil-garcía and villegas (2003, cited in echeverry & mcnulty, 2010, p. 109), graphic organizers “have been linked to the development of higher thinking skills for reading comprehension”. some benefits of these reading strategies are the ability the students gain to organize ideas and establish relationships, to recover explicit information in a text, to deduce implicit information in it, 185profile vol. 13, no. 2, october 2011. issn 1657-0790. bogotá, colombia. pages 181-199 improving eleventh graders’ reading comprehension through text coding... to identify new vocabulary and main ideas, and to relate the text to the context, among others. graphic organizers, for instance, help “students recall and display information, and show relationships in content” (ben-david, 2002, in echeverry & macnulty, 2010, p. 109). finally, we should mention that we considered the selection of a text with an image. we did so because, although not all the texts include images that illustrate the content, they are very important keys to help the readers grasp the general idea of a text (wright, 1989). as mentioned above, reading is more than decoding letters and words; it goes beyond. therefore, it is necessary to keep in mind a wide sense of what reading is. all the time we “read” colours, grimaces and all kinds of symbols. so, the role of the image in the present world, even nowadays when the mass media and technology have a notable influence on the new generations, has helped readers become conscious of another text to be read and another way of reading. sometimes there is more information for readers in one image than in many words. it is true that “a picture is worth a thousand words” because the image is another text. pedagogical design the innovation project reported here is framed into the meaningful learning approach since both the criteria and the characteristics of the project are in agreement with this approach. that is, the topics selected for developing the workshops are relevant for the students. meaningful learning also includes the selection of materials in an objective and intentional way (ausubel, 1983). for this reason, the texts for the workshops were selected following the students’ likes expressed in the diagnostic survey (see appendix a). another aspect taken into account was their background as a starting point to increase the knowledge of the foreign language, vocabulary and structures. moreover, the two strategies applied in this approach let them establish relationships between different cognitive structures. for in stance, the interaction among words semantically connected, grammatical categories and the topic and/or main ideas the students reached. this aspect makes a difference in the traditional learning by repetition. as already said, the innovation or change project arises from the observation of low scores on the icfes exam during the last three years at the policarpa salavarrieta school. this situation may have been the result of the way reading is dealt with in the eleventh grade english class (as an exercise to solve vocabulary and grammar problems without following a specific objective). most of the time there has not been a planned sequence to develop the reading activities in the classroom. for those reasons, our work aimed to apply a new resource in the english class, specifically in reading. according to rogers (2005, p. 11, cited in kirklan & sutch, 2009, p. 10), “innovation is the application of a new resource or approach that changes social practice, creating some value […] by altering the social practice of teaching and learning […] if the idea seems new to the individual, it is an innovation”. as rudduck states, innovation “is conscious, planned, and involves some fundamental breaks with the known past” (1991, p. 56). it was conscious because it was thought to help a group of students improve their levels of comprehension of short texts in english and give them the confidence to get higher scores on reading tests. it was designed to be developed in two workshops in two lesson plans before the icfes test and change the handling of tests. innovation implies gathering information about innovation, in this case about reading comprehension, reading strategies, reading as a process, 186 universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras mahecha, urrego & lozano the two specific reading strategies, personality and socio-cultural factors, among others. it also involves making a decision on its usefulness and on the adoption or rejection of the innovation. finally, the innovators decide to confirm or refute the decisions made earlier (markee, 1997). therefore, it is necessary to introduce some changes in the classroom to talk about innovation since “changing old habits of thought and observation” is a crucial stage in the task of introducing innovation” (rudduck, 1991, p. 67). procedure this project was carried out with a group of thirty-tree students (though at the moment of implementing it some were not attending lessons) from the 1102 grade at the policarpa salavarrieta school. first, a diagnostic survey was applied to the group (see appendix a) as the starting point of the project. it aimed to identify their attitudes toward reading and their preferences with respect to kinds of texts and topics. based on the results of this survey, the topics for the readings to be part of the workshops were chosen. in appendix  b we include a sample containing the second text, and the corresponding lesson plan in appendix  c. simultaneous with the application of the workshops, class observation took place. to develop the project we decided to work as a team with clearly defined tasks. together, we discussed the literature review, the topics of the readings, the instruments for gathering and analyzing data. one of the teachers taught the lessons and the other two were the observers; one focused on the students’ attitudes and performance, and the other on the teacher. in order to observe how we could help students improve their level of reading comprehension, four different data sources were selected. one was the identification of students’ percentage of comprehension before and after implementing the two reading strategies. to do so, we asked them: how much did you understand before and after explaining and applying the text coding and double entry organizers strategies? they were requested to indicate, individually and in terms of percentage, how much they had understood the first time they read the texts and how much after applying the two reading strategies. as the second kind of data collection technique, students were asked to self-evaluate their perceived feelings and performance during the workshops by answering two questions: how did you feel before the reading comprehension activity? and what level of comprehension did you have in the process? here they could express their acceptance of the exercises, their attitudes towards reading and towards the topics of the passages. as has been mentioned, the third source for data gathering was class observation by two members of the team. it aimed at observing the students’ attitudes, performance and progress in reading comprehension through the application of the two reading strategies and to identify positive aspects and difficulties during the process. as a final source to analyze, we considered the teacher’s notes. although these notes are brief, they helped us support information concerning students’ behaviors and achievements, as well the observers’ records. results in connection with the objectives stated at the beginning of the project, the findings were organized into three categories or big themes: previous stage, guided process and main achievements (see figure 1). the first one refers to the base-line stage or diagnosis described before, which let us uncover the students’ attitude towards reading texts in english, the aspects that make understanding difficult as well as their preferences regarding the topic of those texts. the second 187profile vol. 13, no. 2, october 2011. issn 1657-0790. bogotá, colombia. pages 181-199 improving eleventh graders’ reading comprehension through text coding... category deals with the process of implementation of the two reading strategies in order to help them improve their level of reading comprehension. the last one has to do with the results of the innovation as observed in the students’ performance. previous stage this category was defined in order to show the strengths, as well as the difficulties the group of students possessed before the innovation. both were affecting their reading comprehension level. one of the strengths is the basic level of english students apparently had before starting the first workshop. we say strength because in some ways they were not new learners of the l2, and that scarce knowledge was an opportunity for us to guide them to a higher level. hence, their perception of this progress served as a motivator. as stressed by zabala palacio (2004), who did a study with adolescent students in a public school in bogotá we should bear in mind that the importance given to the students’ previous knowledge and to the english reading skills is an essential part in the learning process of a foreign language as it constitutes an important support for the development of reading competences in english (p. 106). moreover, during the warm-up they mentioned some words related to the topic chosen for the workshop following the diagnostic survey. then, applying the strategy of text coding, they assigned a color to those known words. it was strength because it helped them understand, because it was meaningful and eased the reading process. these are some examples of the students’ answers2: i identified some words. (student 1) i understood a little, but it was difficult for me. (student 2) 2 taken from the students’ self-evaluation of the activity, included in the lesson plans and translated into english by the authors. reading comprehension previous stage guided process reading improvement in knowledge of grammar learning new vocabulary improvement in inference more dynamic and playful lessons enjoying current topics greater participation development of autonomy and concentration main achievements strengths text coding achievements basic level of l2 motivation acceptance scarce vocabulary low grammar knowledge timetable length of the warm-up number of students selection of topics use of images and colors interest in strategies time allotted low grammar knowledge difficulties double entry organizer difficulties figure 1. categories showing the results of the innovation 188 universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras mahecha, urrego & lozano this could be seen in the students’ perceived percentage of comprehension before applying the two reading strategies (see figure 2, containing an overview of what was found in the whole class). besides known words, they identified transparent words and followed the teacher’s instructions given in english. figure 2. overview of the class’ level of understanding before and after applying the two reading strategies another of the strengths was the students’ motivation towards the method proposed in order to help them improve their level of comprehension. it represented a change in the way the process of reading had been addressed, using colors to identify key words. when they saw the map of colors in their text indicating the vocabulary, the grammar categories, and the relationships among those words, they deduced topics and stated main ideas in the table. moreover, after tabulating the students’ perceived percentage of reading comprehension that they had before applying the two strategies, it was evident that the majority had a low level (see figure 3). this was due to the fact that a representative number of students identified a few words, but no complete grammar structures. it seems to be a characteristic in most colombian public schools, as observed by other teachers: “difficulties comprehending texts in english have been observed for quite some time. these difficulties include lack of vocabulary and structures” (correales, mendivelso, & santacruz, 2000, p. 38). figure 3. students’ perceived percentage of comprehension before and after applying the two reading strategies these two aspects increased the level of difficulty and affected their performance in the exercise. for instance, those students who best knew the grammar structures of spanish could identify the categories in english –verbs, adjectives, nouns, adverbs– faster than the others. in consequence, a very low number of them could do a meaningful reading or a comprehensive reading by identifying topics, and the relationships among words to state definitions, descriptions, explanations and main ideas. thus, it could be said a few were touched by the text. connected to students’ motivation was their willingness to accept the teacher’s guidance to develop the workshops according to her instructions. from the very beginning of the project they were aware of the need to improve their level of comprehension of texts in english starting by the 0 10 20 30 40 50 60 70 80 90 100 % 1 4 7 10 13 16 19 22 25 28 before after before after student’s reading comprehension average 189profile vol. 13, no. 2, october 2011. issn 1657-0790. bogotá, colombia. pages 181-199 improving eleventh graders’ reading comprehension through text coding... knowledge they had. also, the effect of this on their future performance was another key aspect. finally, they were also happy with being part of a project. despite what has been said in connection to students’ strengths along the reading processes, there were some difficulties that seemed to affect the students’ level of reading comprehension. these were the lack of a wide vocabulary background as well as their scarce knowledge of the english grammar structures that appeared to be the same they presented in their mother tongue. in this respect we could perceive that their knowledge of spanish grammar was very poor and could have affected their comprehension of english grammar. these two aspects increased the level of difficulty and affected the students’ performance in the exercise by making the process go slow. for instance, those students who best knew the grammar structures of spanish could identify the grammar categories in english faster than the others, as evidenced in the following testimonies: when i started reading there were so many words i did not know. (student 3) i didn’t understand quite much, but there were phrases i could translate and got only a little bit about skaters. (student 4) besides the students’ inherent difficulties, there are some others related to the circumstances as the teacher observer stated: the circumstances in which the class took place. for instance, the time when the class was developed –the last two sections of a specific wednesday morning after the physical education class and the break. these conditions made the students arrive late. other factors that had an impact on the process of reading comprehension of texts in english were the big number of students in the class (33), the short time for the warm-up, and the length of the text in the second workshop. all these circumstances also affected the development of the innovation and did not allow students to finish the lesson according to the plan or in the time scheduled. guided process this category refers to the implementation of the two reading strategies chosen in the project. they were text coding and double entry organizer. in the former, the students were instructed to identify the known and unknown words in the texts and mark them with two different colors. this action included the cognates. then, they had to mark the grammar categories with different colors. for instance, verbs in blue, nouns in green, and so on. when they got familiarized with the exercise, most of them rejoiced, as can be read in the testimonies presented afterwards in the main achievements section. in a table drawn after the comprehension questions (see appendix b), the students had to write the unknown words and assign them the meaning according to the context or their experience. after that, they were instructed to draw connections among those words in order to establish the topics and write them in the corresponding row. here it is worth mentioning the support given by the illustration found at the beginning of the text used in the second workshop (see appendix b). after having the topics and the questions answered, they read the text again and could state the main idea in the double entry organizer table. most students admitted: “now i understand more” (student 5). along the process we observed that most of the students were captivated by the playful activity. they enjoyed it and could identify not only vocabulary or grammatical categories, but topics, functions and, at the end, the main idea of the text. on the contrary, the difficulties were evident in the case of those students who were late for class or had no colors. however, they enrolled in the process. 190 universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras mahecha, urrego & lozano another positive element was the selection of the topics for the workshops based on the diagnostic survey applied to the students as the starting point. it resulted in a very useful aspect for the innovation processes. thanks to this, it was possible to identify their preferences regarding the topics –hobbies, sports and animals– together with the use of illustrations and colors for the codification activity. moreover, it is possible to say that these aspects brought as a consequence the students’ interests in the two reading strategies and their implementation. this was evidenced by the positive attitude towards the methodology used in the process and the commitment shown by the majority of them during the development of the workshops. as one of the observer teachers noted: “for instance, in spite of most of the students having arrived late to the classes and chatting, after the teacher explained what the activity consisted of, they showed surprise and enjoyment. at the end, the majority was doing the exercise and just a few were cheating”. some expressed their pleasure with the activity: “teacher, i understood” (student 6). regarding the answers on the tests of the workshops after having implemented the reading strategies, it was noted that the students’ level of reading comprehension improved greatly. first, they had to read the text and choose the correct answer without any help, neither the teacher’s nor a dictionary’s. after explaining and applying the two reading strategies, the students read the text again and selected the answers. in most cases these were different and right. we noticed that the second time they developed the workshops, applying the two reading strategies, they changed most of the answers they had given before the implementation. these, in turn, let us compare and draw conclusions. nevertheless, there were two relevant problems: on the one hand, the handling of time for each section of the class and the time of the class in the weekly schedule –three hours per week–, which made it too difficult to cope with the lesson plan stages. on the other hand, the length of the second text provoked a break in the lesson plan development because the workshop could not be finished in only one section. the time dedicated to the warm-up was too long, so the reading process could not be finished in the same class. this consisted of having the students answer the comprehension questions before applying the two strategies and comparing the results with the ones after applying them. we spent a long period of the lesson in the first part of the workshops and the time left to develop the post reading stage and the feedback was insufficient. the wrong handling of time also interrupted the observation process of the last stage of comprehension, which was intended to allow students to identify implicit information, comprehend the structure of the text, start their production process, and develop their “argumentation skills” (zabala palacio, 2004). main achievements with respect to the main achievements observed while applying the two reading strategies, it is very likely that the students’ basic level of english eased the recognition of some specific terms. the students’ improvement in the level of reading comprehension was evident, first, through the use of colors that led them to the identification of related vocabulary, grammar categories, and the finding of relations among them which, in the end, allowed students to state their topics. these also may have helped them grasp the main ideas and it is very probable that the success in the answering of comprehension questions, by most of them, would have been affected by the accomplishment of these steps. at this point, it is certain that a majority of students showed positive feelings regarding the methodology that they found playful and dynamic 191profile vol. 13, no. 2, october 2011. issn 1657-0790. bogotá, colombia. pages 181-199 improving eleventh graders’ reading comprehension through text coding... since it gave them the opportunity to participate actively in the tasks. as zabala palacio (2004) states, a systematic methodology promotes the application of reading strategies and motivates students to read texts. this could be seen in some of their answers: at the end i understood the reading better, i learnt new words. (student 7) i felt i had learnt more about the language (student 8). the comprehension of the text was a little bit better thanks to the vocabulary learnt along the process (student 9). i liked the exercise because the topic is modern and the dynamic of the class was excellent (student 10). i liked the workshop. it was a very playful activity (student 11). in this activity i learnt vocabulary, grammar. besides, i clarify the topic of the last class with respect to pronouns, adjectives, verbs, among others. we worked as a team when answering the questions. at the end we classified the main ideas. we learnt the difference between main idea and topic of a reading (student 12). revising these comments together with the students’ answers in the workshops after applying the two strategies, we could infer that the expected results were reached since the students showed a highly increased level of comprehension and enjoyed it. in addition, and according to the teacher’s notes, it should be said that students’ scant vocabulary constitutes a considerable obstacle to understanding a text. nevertheless, students’ attitude, in most cases, was positive and they seemed to be willing to do the activities. i think and i am sure i can use this (strategy) as a reading strategy at the icfes exam and so, to have a good average, but i would like to have more activities because i would like to go to a higher level (student 12). the immediate effects of these two reading strategies on the students’ level of reading comprehension seemed to be confirmed by their responses to the activities; the results of the reading comprehension test and the information obtained as a result of their self-evaluation. figure 4 shows the students’ self-evaluation at the end of the second workshop and reflects progress in their level of understanding. figure 4. students’ self-evaluation after the second workshop the teacher’s application of the two strategies and the writing of some key words on the board were useful. students neither used the dictionary nor asked her for the meaning of unknown words. besides, they were very committed to the activity, as the teacher observers noted. thus, they appeared to gain more autonomy and concentration along the process. autonomy is defined as “an attitude toward learning in which students are prepared to take responsibility for their learning” (dickinson, 1995 in ariza, 2008, p. 49). as mentioned above, most of the students showed responsibility and commitment in doing the activity. furthermore, a big number of them kept on working without the teacher’s guidance. in this respsect, ariza adds that autonomy is closely related to motivation. that is, if the students are motivated, they participate actively in their own learning. this was part of what the observer-teachers expressed in their notes. concentration in this process had to do with the motivation, performance and results 0 20 40 60 80 100 120 % 1 4 7 10 13 16 19 22 25 28 before after 192 universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras mahecha, urrego & lozano obtained by the students in the two workshops. the majority was so attentive when understanding the methodology that even those who were late enrolled in the activity too. as they could see the immediate benefits or progress the two reading strategies represented, some started thinking about the icfes exam results and the university. this idea led us to agree with calderón agudelo et al., (2007, p. 33) that “we believe that students can succeed in the academic world if they know how to extract the principal ideas from a text”. in sum, the general evaluation made by the students showed a higher preference for reading and a change in attitude before their participation in the activity and before the class in general. conclusions and implications in general terms, it appears that the students understood the purpose of the reading strategies applied, text coding and double entry organizer. particularly, the former seems to have helped them recognize vocabulary and grammar structures, while the latter led them to identify topics and main ideas of the texts and the main difference between them. that is, one is a phrase and the other a sentence. moreover, having in mind the two objectives stated at the beginning of this project, the use of the two reading strategies would appear to be good tools to help students improve their level of comprehension in reading short texts in english. something to highlight was that the application of these reading strategies enhanced students’ selfesteem and they tended to become more confident readers. we were optimistic with respect to the possible results of developing this project at our school. these two reading strategies could be used, not only to improve the students’ level or reading comprehension on the icfes exam and later on at the university, but also to pursue their oral and written production. yet, there were some events that interrupted the normal progression of the classes and affected the consistence and coherence of the project. one of them was the time of the class on the timetable; another was the great amount of students in an english class; also, the vocabulary and reading habits that the students had. all these must be taken into account in the design and development of a future project. it is then necessary to consider the time, the length of the texts, the vocabulary –adapted for the students’ level and some other resources– like pictures or photographs. finally, we hope to implement these two reading strategies from now on and not only with the highest grade students, but also with the lower grades. taking into account the results obtained with this innovation, it could be possible that future researches aim to consider two investigation lines such as the use of tics (technologies of information and communication) in the reading comprehension process and the comparison be tween the reading process in l1 and l2. finally, it would also be necessary to reach the last stage related to production of the students’ point of view in which they develop the argumentative competence with an appropriate level of language. references aebersold, j. a., & field m. l. (ed.). (1997). from reader to reading teacher: issues and strategies for second language classrooms. new york, ny: cambridge university press. ariza, a. (2008). unveiling students’ understanding of autonomy: puzzling out a path to learning beyond the efl classroom. profile, issues in teachers’ professional development, 10, 47-73. ausubel, d. p. (1983). psicología educativa: un punto de vista cognoscitivo. méxico: trillas. calderón agudelo, s., carvajal ávila, l., & guerrero lópez, a. (2007). how to improve sixth graders’ reading 193profile vol. 13, no. 2, october 2011. issn 1657-0790. bogotá, colombia. pages 181-199 improving eleventh graders’ reading comprehension through text coding... comprehension through the skimming technique. profile, issues in teachers’ professional development, 8, 25-39. cave, s. (2010). about.com guide ­ a brief history of skate­ boarding. retrieved from: http://skateboard.about. com/cs/boardscience/a/brief_history.htm correales, r., mendivelso, o., & santacruz, f. (2000). reading comprehension: a viable challenge for public school students. profile, issues in teachers’ profes­ sional development, 1, 38-41. echeverry, l. m., & mcnulty, m. (2010). reading strategies to develop higher thinking skills for reading comprehension. profile, issues in teachers’ professional development, 12(1), 117-132. grellet, f. (1981). developing reading skills. cambridge: cambridge university press. kirklan, k., & sutch, d. (2009). overcoming the barriers to educational innovation. a literature review. retrieved from: http://www.futurelab.org.uk/resources/documents/lit_reviews/barriers_to_innovation_review.pdf markee, n. (1997). managing curricular innovation. cambridge: cambridge university press. nunan, d. (1991). language teaching methodology. new york, ny: prentice hall. teachervision. (2010). double ­ entry journals. retrieved from: http://www.teachervision.fen.com/writing/letters-and-journals/48536.html quiroga carrillo, c. (2010) promoting tenth graders’ reading comprehension. profile, issues in teachers’ professional development, 12(2), 11-32. rudduck, j. (1991). innovation and change. developing involvement and understanding. bristol, pa: open university press. swaffar, j. k., arens, k. m., & byrnes, h. (1991). reading for meaning: an integrated approach to language learning. new jersey, nj: prentice hall. urrego, s. (2007). aspectos socioeconómicos de la competencia pragmática que determinan la competencia lingüística. insights, 10, 49-53. wright, a. (1989). pictures for language learning. cambridge: cambridge university press. zabala palacio, f. o. (2004). strategies to support high school students’ reading comprehension in the english language. profile, issues in teachers’ professional development, 5, 98-109. about the authors rocío mahecha, pg in translation, english-spanish from universidad del rosario; ba in languages, spanish-english from universidad nacional de colombia; full-time teacher of english at the policarpa salavarrieta school; part-time teacher at universidad nacional de colombia, bogotá campus. stella urrego, pg in educational evaluation from universidad santo tomás; ba in languages spanishfrench from universidad nacional de colombia; full-time teacher of spanish at policarpa salavarrieta school; part-time teacher of spanish at universidad incca de colombia. erika lozano, ba in languages from universidad libre, electronic engineer from universidad central, pg in institutional educational projects management (gerencia de proyectos educativos institucionales); coordinator at the policarpa salavarrieta school. 194 universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras mahecha, urrego & lozano appendix a: diagnostic survey and results obtained 1. do you like reading? yes: 22 no: 6 2. do you read short texts in english? yes: 22 no: 6 3. where do you read those texts? only in the english class: 22 at home: 2 on the internet: 5 another: 8 4. how do you feel doing those readings? not anxious: 2 anxious: 9 a little bit anxious: 11 too anxious: another: 7 5. what do you think the biggest obstacle to understand a text in english is? vocabulary: 18 grammatical structures: 12 topic: another: 1 6. do you think a guide on reading strategies would help you to answer questions on a reading test? yes: 25 no: 0 7. what kind of topics do you prefer when reading in english? animals: 17% science: 6% history: 15% famous people: 11% inventions: 10% places: 11% sports: 20% how to do things: 7% another: 3% 195profile vol. 13, no. 2, october 2011. issn 1657-0790. bogotá, colombia. pages 181-199 improving eleventh graders’ reading comprehension through text coding... 8. what kind of text do you prefer to read in english? biographies: 6 letters: 9 essays: 5 poems: 9 advertisements: 5 reviews: 2 magazine or newspaper articles: 10 comics, cartoons: 16 another: 2 • questions 1 to 6 based on survey statistics for reading comprehension tests for esl/efl students and anxiety (june 14, 2004). available at: http://www.nelliemuller.com/survey_results_and_reflections_ on_reading_comprehension_tests_and_anxiety.htm. • question 7 based on reading surveys. available at: http://www.effectiveteachingsolutions.com/ readingsurveys.pdf • question 8 based on grellet, f. (1981). developing reading skills. cambridge: cambridge university press. 196 universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras mahecha, urrego & lozano appendix b: workshop no. 2 c.d. policarpa salavarrieta name: grade: date: i. read the text below and choose the correct answer. skateboarding a skater is a human being who enjoys riding a skateboard because it is fun. a lot of skaters could be classified as ‘punks’ but this is just a stereotype. true, some skaters wear tight jeans and a pair of emericas, but a lot of them just dress ‘normally’. there are vert skaters and street skaters. vert skaters skate in halfpipes. street skaters skate stairs and ledges and such. street is currently more popular than vert, mainly because it is easier to do. it does not mean that it requires less skill; it means that street requires no ramp, therefore it can be done in more places that vert. skateboarders are often said to be druggies, but this is simply not true... true skateboarders have no use for drugs. it’s all about landing those tricks! landing a trick is the ultimate high. skateboarding is not a fad; it’s a way of life. it was first started in the 1950s, when california surfers got the idea of trying to surf the streets. no one really knows who made the first board –instead, it seems that several people came up with similar ideas at the same time. in 1963, skateboarding was at a peak of popularity, and companies started holding skateboarding competitions. the style was mostly either downhill slalom or freestyle. this is more like dancing ballet or ice skating with a skateboard. since 2000, attention in the media and products like skateboarding video games, children’s skateboards and commercialization have all pulled skateboarding more and more into the mainstream. the benefit of this is that, of course, skaters are more accepted, and the assumption that all skaters are criminals is slowly being torn down. also, with more money being put into skateboarding, there are more skate parks, better skateboards, and more skateboarding companies to keep innovating and inventing new things. another benefit is that it is a very individual activity. there is no right or wrong way to skate. skateboarding still hasn`t stopped evolving, and skaters are coming up with new tricks all the time. boards are also continuing to evolve, as companies try to make them lighter and stronger, or try to improve on their performance. skateboarding has always been about personal discovery and pushing oneself to the limit. retrieved and adapted from about.com. skateboarding. (2010). a brief history of skateboarding. retrieved and adapted from http://www. urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=skater urban dictionary. (2010). skater. retrieved and adapted from http://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=skater 197profile vol. 13, no. 2, october 2011. issn 1657-0790. bogotá, colombia. pages 181-199 improving eleventh graders’ reading comprehension through text coding... 1. in line 2, what is a stereotype? a. a skater b. the way skaters dress c. classifying skaters as ‘punks’ 2. the best classification of skaters is: a. punks and druggies b. stairs and ledges skaters c. vert and street skaters 3. according to its history, skateboarding is associated with: a. surfing b. slalom c. freestyle 4. the rise of skateboarding is due to: a. the media b. commercialization of skateboarding products c. both a and b 5. the following are benefits of skateboarding except: a. skaters are more accepted nowadays b. skateboarding has received attention by the government, the media and businesses c. skateboarding hasn’t evolved since 2000 ii. use colors to identify the grammatical categories indicated: nouns, verbs, adverbs and adjectives. iii. complete the table below according to the headings. unknown words meanings according to the context or to your experience topics information given by the text main idea given by you after reading the text 198 universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras mahecha, urrego & lozano appendix c: lesson plan 2 lesson plan 2 erika lozano, stella urrego, rocío mahecha subject: english efl level: not real beginners topic: skaters grade: eleventh skills: getting the main idea of a short text about skateboarding. learning strategies: cognitive: • students identify the grammatical categories (verbs, adjectives, nouns, adverbs) they know. the teacher helps with some of them. • the teacher explains the difference between topic and main idea. • students give examples of topics and how to express main ideas. metacognitive: • students write down what they think about the activities done and what they learnt (self-evaluation: checking how well one is doing against one’s own standards). social affective: • in groups of four, students identify and unscramble some words (grammatical categories) in order to form coherent sentences. • the teacher helps with correction. learning styles: visual: • students look at an image and predict the content of a text. auditory: • the teacher gives instructions to the students about the image shown. • students describe the image and answer the teacher’s questions about the lifestyle of skaters. kinesthetic: • the students are organized in groups of four. each group receives a set of words to form sentences and paste them on the board. content objectives: • to recognize grammatical categories (verbs, nouns, adjectives, adverbs) in a text. • to identify topics. • to identify main ideas and secondary ideas. language objectives: • to recognize grammatical categories (verbs, nouns, adjectives, adverbs) in a text. • to develop vocabulary related to skaters. 199profile vol. 13, no. 2, october 2011. issn 1657-0790. bogotá, colombia. pages 181-199 improving eleventh graders’ reading comprehension through text coding... materials: photocopies of the text about skateboarding, web images of skaters, board and markers, a poster, colors. copies of the double entry organizer reading strategy samples. grammar points: grammatical categories (verbs, nouns, adverbs, adjectives) verb to be verb to wear pronouns nouns adjectives (colors) procedure: preparation 1: the teacher asks students: “what sports do you practice in your free time?” the students talk about the characteristics of skating. presentation 1: the students read the text the teacher hands out and answer the multiple choice questions neither looking in the dictionary for the meaning of unknown words nor asking the teacher. preparation 2: the teacher shows a picture of a boy on a skateboard and asks the students to describe skaters’ clothes and general characteristics. presentation 2: the teacher asks students to identify nouns and color them in the text. then, verbs, adjectives and adverbs and finally color each grammatical category. • the teacher hands out a copy of the double entry organizers to the students. these have unknown words in the left column and nothing in the right one for students to write down what they think about. they are also supposed to write down their opinions about some expressions taken from the text. • the teacher asks the students to read the text again and answer the multiple choice questions having in mind the two exercises completed earlier. • students compare their answers and check. the teacher helps with those students who could not answer. practice: • the teacher organizes students in groups of four. then, she gives each group a set of words to be unscrambled. the first group to form coherent sentences must paste them on the board (these words were taken from the same text). • the teacher helps the students check the sentences. evaluation: students write down what they think about the activities done. self-evaluation: students check how well they are doing against their own standards. expansion: taking into account the main idea of the text, the students write down a composition. 55profile vol. 13, no. 1, april 2011. issn 1657-0790. bogotá, colombia. pages 55-74 55 how do efl student teachers face the challenge of using l2 in public school classrooms? ¿cómo enfrentan los docentes practicantes de inglés como lengua extranjera el reto de usar una segunda lengua en las aulas de clase de la escuela pública? john jairo viáfara* universidad pedagógica y tecnológica de colombia as an efl student teachers’ advisor, i had constantly perceived that they regarded using the target language with their pupils inside their classroom as a challenge. that is why i became interested in investigating how thirteen student teachers in tunja public schools faced this issue. while participants were involved in a reflective teaching preparation model, i used field notes, interviews and their portfolios to explore their attitudes and strategies. findings revealed that their history as learners, their teaching context and preparation influenced their decisions. moreover, it was possible to identify the strategies they implemented to interact in english with their students. key words: communication strategies, efl student teachers, l2 in the classroom, student teachers’ challenges. en mi labor como tutor de estudiantes practicantes del inglés como lengua extranjera, he percibido constantemente que, para ellos, la utilización del inglés como medio de comunicación con sus estudiantes dentro de la clase es un reto. por esta razón, me interesé por investigar cómo trece estudiantes practicantes en colegios públicos de tunja afrontaban esta circunstancia. mientras los participantes se involucraban en un modelo reflexivo de preparación docente, utilicé notas de campo, entrevistas y sus portafolios para explorar sus actitudes y estrategias. los hallazgos revelan que sus decisiones fueron influenciadas por su trayectoria como estudiantes, su contexto de enseñanza y su preparación. además, se pudieron identificar las estrategias que utilizaron para interactuar por medio del inglés con sus estudiantes. palabras clave: estrategias de comunicación, estudiantes practicantes de inglés como lengua extranjera, retos de estudiantes practicantes, uso de segunda lengua en el salón. * e-mail: jviafara25@gmail.com this article was received on june 8, 2010, and accepted on december 6, 2010. 56 universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras56 viáfara introduction in regard to the teaching and learning of language skills, students’ exposure to constant practice is clearly a paramount condition for their mastery of these abilities. we might think that in efl settings, where practice opportunities can be limited, teachers’ use of the foreign language in classrooms is common; however, several expe riences have shown me that interacting in english inside the classroom continues to be a challenge for many educators or future educators in our country. during the efl practicum in secondary public schools, i have often observed that most cooperating teachers do not communicate with their students in english. other secondary and primary public school colleagues have honestly said they act similarly. moreover, along the semester in which this study took place, i noticed that student teachers spoke mostly in spanish or they translated almost every word they said to their students. the last situation led me to express my surprise to these prospective teachers. in turn, they revealed their reluctance to speak mostly in english to their pupils. student teachers thought that using more english in their classrooms could help their pupils’ english learning; nonetheless, they felt unable to achieve this aim and believed their students would understand only if the english class was conducted in spanish. they claimed pupils seemed to be lost, did not follow instructions and, as a result, their interest in lessons vanished. many expressed their impression that most of their pupils did not want them to speak in english because of the students’ lack of motivation to study the foreign language. using a reflective approach while guiding student teachers, i sought to explore how efl student teachers face the challenge of using english to communicate with their pupils in class. this endeavor involved an examination of both the factors that shape participants’ intentions to speak english in the classroom and the strategies they employ to communicate with their students in the target language. this study emerged as an opportunity to con tribute to the preparation of in-service and future efl teachers. this is especially significant considering that practicum experiences were conducted in public schools where teaching can be relatively challenging. public schools classes generally contain 40 or more students and teachers struggle with limited resources for language teaching. in addition, students’ social and economic conditions pose difficulties; their need for basic conditions to live properly can cause their interest in learning to be less than a priority. firstly, i will contextualize my investigation in relation to efl education theory. secondly, i will describe the teaching practicum that relates to student teachers’ preparation to face the challenge of using english in the classroom. thirdly, i will explain the research design of the study. finally, conclusions and pedagogical implications drawn from the data analysis will be shared. literature review two main areas will be included in the next section: the practicum as an experience to prepare student teachers and communication in the english classroom as a vehicle to enhance language learning. the practicum as an experience to prepare student teachers along the teaching practicum, student teachers are expected to integrate their previous university education to real school contexts. however, as capel (2001) and velez (2003) comment in their studies, very often the practicum becomes a complex experience in which student teachers might reveal concerns about their teaching strategies. 57profile vol. 13, no. 1, april 2011. issn 1657-0790. bogotá, colombia. pages 55-74 57 how do efl student teachers face the challenge of using l2... one of the preoccupations efl prospective teachers show refers to their communication with pupils by means of the foreign language. melnick and meister (2008) found out that providing efficient classroom communication along with classroom management and preparation for the course were the most notable concerns of a group of beginning teachers. likewise, prada and zuleta (2005) found that a group of pre-service teachers’ difficulties were connected with, among other issues, a code-switching dilemma; they doubted whether to employ english or spanish to communicate with their students. pre-service teachers claimed they used l1 more than the target language to prevent confusion and comprehension problems as well as to help students to feel relaxed. in order to support student teachers as they face their concerns during the practicum, i have generally followed a reflective approach (richards & lockhart, 1994; wallace, 1991). guiding student teachers is not based on prescription but on supporting their engagement in a critical thinking process to analyze their own practices in search for solutions to difficulties and doubts (barlett, 1990; pollard & tann, 1993; rodgers, 2002). farrell (2007) reports a case study in which a student teacher, using such a reflective approach, realized which maxims were governing her teaching practice and adopted new and more enriching principles to support her teaching. likewise, viáfara (2005; 2007) noticed that by means of this approach prospective teachers evaluated their own work, constantly keeping in mind how the particularities of their situations affected their plans. as a result, the student teachers often adapted or experimented with pedagogical strategies based on their own particular teaching situation and the previous knowledge built from theory or other sources. the efl classroom: principles and opportunities to support students’ language learning the constant use of english in the classroom is widely considered an opportunity to enhance students’ foreign language learning. from a social perspective to second language learning, interactionist theories claim that “verbal interaction is of crucial importance for language learning as it helps to make the facts of the l2 salient to the learner” (ellis, 1997, p. 244). taking part in conversations or oral exchanges benefits learners because they realize how the second language functions and thus this realization eventually leads them to participate in these interactions successfully. however, according to (krashen, 1981), learning the language by means of interaction depends on to what extent the input students are exposed to is comprehensible. additionally, scholars as littlewood (1984, p. 59) have remarked on the rel e vance of that input in regard to students’ immediate interests and its complexity. achieving comprehensible input also implies, as lightbown and spada (1993) assert, the modification of interaction by means of conversational adjustments such as slower speech, comprehension checks or self-repetition; hence, more proficient speakers and less skilful ones can keep their verbal communication. studies by seliger and slimani (in tsui, 1995, p. 149) evidenced that input produced spontaneously by students in conversations generated situations which implied more contact with the language and higher achievements in their learning. on the other hand, the previous assumption might be true only in some cases since other individuals seem to benefit just from listening and not actually engaging in the conversation. interaction in the classroom can also be influenced by individual personalities as well 58 universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras58 viáfara as the actions and attitudes of their teachers and classmates, among other issues. likewise, the use of communication strategies can encourage or limit opportunities for interaction (ellis, 1985). based on tarone (1981), communication strategies are classified as paraphrasing, borrowing, employing non-linguistic signals and avoiding interaction. of particular importance to this study is the “borrowing” strategy, which entails switching to the mother tongue. muñoz and mora (2006, p. 32) concluded in an investigation that such “codeswitching gave learners the possibility to use their l1 with communicative purposes” since pupils could find more resources to express their feelings and clarify information. as teachers and students code-switched from english to spanish, they developed discourse functions that involved topic switch, interjections and repetition. to close, language learning strategies such as code-switching support students’ development of linguistic and sociolinguistic competence (tarone, 1981); they are behaviors or actions that learners employ to make language learning more successful, self-directed and enjoyable (oxford, 1990). among oxford’s classification of these strategies, the compensation and the social ones are closely involved in the issue addressed in this study. part of the success learners can have when trying to interact using l1 in the classrooms depends on, as the next section discusses, how teachers guide them in this process. the role of teachers in supporting the use of english in the efl classroom the language used by educators in the classroom becomes a major source of input for foreign language learners. teachers lead, organize and monitor activities in the classroom providing ample occasions for students to listen to or engage in dialogues with them. since they are regarded as expert users of the target language, teachers become models to show how the language works. haycraft (1986, p. 11) gives relevance to the communication established in the efl classroom between student and teacher as follows: “students from the beginning must accustom themselves to normally spoken english”. likewise, sánchez (2001, p. 87) explains that “the main task for teachers should be to provide learners with opportunities to communicate in all possible contexts and to avoid overwhelming them with dialogues which are not found in students’ contexts”). scholars such as harmer (2007) explain that the way teachers talk to students resembles how parents talk to kids: adapting their speech to learners at lower levels, using physical movements and gestures, and trying to gain reassurance about the efficiency of pupils’ communicative efforts by becoming sensitive to the signs of comprehension. these are skills that new teachers need to acquire. similarly, the emotional climate of learning situations can also affect teachers’ efforts to interact with students by means of the foreign language: “in an environment where learners feel anxious or insecure, there are likely to be psychological barriers for communication” (littlewood, 1984, p. 58). teachers need to be sure pupils understand their speech and feel confident enough to attempt communication with their peers. in connection with the previous issue, bell (2005) determined that several of the most ac ceptable behaviors of effective foreign language teachers are related to their competent use of the target language, their use of it as the predominant means of classroom communication, their provision of opportunities for students to use the target language (both within as well as beyond the school), and their encouragement of foreign language learners to speak in the target language from the first day of class. 59profile vol. 13, no. 1, april 2011. issn 1657-0790. bogotá, colombia. pages 55-74 59 how do efl student teachers face the challenge of using l2... hernández and faustino (2006, pp. 217-250) found that a group of efl teachers in colombia considered the constant practice of english im portant in class; however, it was hard for them to carry out oral activities in lessons. students’ apathy, laziness, indiscipline, fear of being ridiculed and lack of commitment were all factors that compromised teachers’ intentions. furthermore, large and heterogeneous groups, low numbers of instruction hours per week as well as the lack of resources worsened the problem. in addition, pupils did not regard learning the foreign language as a valuable tool for their lives. a common characteristic in this classroom was that l1 was used in class more often than l2. spanish was used to explain, clarify, translate and provide examples. on the other hand, english was used in short interactions: to say goodbye and hello, instructions, commands, short dialogues and questions. similarly, wilkerson (2008) explored instructors’ use of their l1 (english) when teaching l2 (spanish). the researcher found that two instructors did not use or used l1 very little in class to communicate with students. two of them usually used code-switching and one of them spoke entirely in l1 to students in the classroom. l1 was used to save time, reduce ambiguity and demonstrate authority. instructors’ use of l2 was based on their beliefs about students’ skills to tolerate, solve and learn from the possible ambiguity generated as they interacted in the foreign language. finally, the author highlighted that teachers’ willingness to use the target language in the lessons might be influenced by their urgency to organize and manage their classroom. research design qualitative research guided this study. based on nunan (1992), i sought to describe the phenomenon of my interest within natural conditions. i followed a process-oriented approach and my intention was to comprehend student teachers’ attitudes from their perspective. i adopted the methodology of a descriptive case study. i sought to understand a phenomenon within a specific context, a unit, by revealing and interpreting its characteristics and the interrelated factors among them (merriam, 1988). finally, participants produced language naturalistically in classrooms, which was studied by means of interactional analysis (nunan, 1992). the context and participants in the study student teachers belonged to the modern languages (spanish-english) program in a public university. they enrolled in their teaching practicum, “práctica pedagógica y social,” in the tenth semester of their studies and spent sixteen weeks in schools. each one taught english for eight hours in two different classes. their previous pedagogical preparation included, in addition to five general pedagogical research courses, lessons on applied linguistics, elt methodology i and ii and teaching practice i. furthermore, seven levels of five-hour, weekly “communicative projects” courses, english phonetics and grammar helped pre-service teachers to develop their proficiency in english. the teaching practicum took place in public schools. these institutions had large classes, from 40 to 50 students in each classroom. most courses include boys and girls. english was taught for two to three hours per week. equipment and printed material for instructing students, in at least one school, were limited. students from social strata one to three attended these secondary schools. some of the students lived in tunja and others came from rural settings near the city. their economical conditions in many cases were precarious. these students’ english level was very low. the research asked participants to fill in a small form to elicit information about their classes and pupils’ motivation (see appendix 1). 60 universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras60 viáfara this source indicates that the youngest students, 6th to 8th grade, were apparently more enthusiastic to learn and, in particular, to learn english. student teachers counted on the support of university advisors and the school’s cooperating teachers. the six cooperating teachers in these institutions were between 45 and 55 years old. they were two men and four women who to date had worked in these institutions from 15 to 25 years. two of them had masters in english teaching while the others had specializations in various pedagogical fields. they taught english exclusively in the two institutions. the four teachers at institution b had an intermediate english level. the two teachers at institution a had a pre-intermediate english level. in general, these educators’ methodologies included emphasis on the teaching of grammar, reading and writing skills. four of them communicated constantly in spanish with their pupils while two of them alternated their use of l1 and l2. i worked with thirteen student teachers during the practicum. they were five male and eight female students. they were between 22 and 25 years of age. most of them were originally from cities in boyacá and one of them was from santander. seven of them were at school a and six at school b. judith, hermes, yina and jahir were at school  a working with the same cooperating teacher. nury, rene and angelina also taught at school a, but their cooperating teacher was different. the student teachers at institution b were marlon, lina and ana who shared the same mentor while camilo, dina and nemesis were guided by another cooperating teacher. participants’ efl learning history was similar to the panorama described by viáfara (2008): as secondary students, they had had a little exposure to english in efl lessons. likewise, teachers did not speak in english and when english was used, translation was a common practice. participants’ english level varied. in this group, hermes was close to a high-intermediate profi– ciency level. marlon, rene and camilo were at an intermediate stage. lina, nemesis, dina and ana were in a pre-intermediate stage and angelina, yina, nury, judith and jahir had a low-intermediate level. in general, most of them revealed problems of interference with spanish; translation was common and excessively employed as an attempt to build their ideas to communicate in the foreign language. data collection instruments and techniques i observed each student teacher’s 90-minute lessons twice during the semester and collected 26 observation forms totaling 84 pages filled with notes (see appendix 2). generally, participants did not know when they were going to be observed. in order to record my observation, i took ethnographic field notes (pentimalli, 2005) and paid special attention to students’ use of english to communicate with their students. when i had the opportunity, i supported these notes with audio-recordings. the audio-recordings of my conferences with student teachers comprised another instrument i used (appendix 3 includes examples of the questions asked). this took place one or two days after the observed class session. i recorded participants’ perceptions about their use of english in the lesson. two talks with each participant were recorded for a total of twenty-six audio recordings. in addition, i interviewed a group of students who attended participants’ classes (appendix 4 includes examples of the kind of questions asked). i usually asked 2 to 4 pupils of each class about the student teachers’ use of english and spanish, if they liked when their teachers spoke in the foreign language, and how they as students coped when english was used. i applied a non-structured 61profile vol. 13, no. 1, april 2011. issn 1657-0790. bogotá, colombia. pages 55-74 61 how do efl student teachers face the challenge of using l2... interview (seliger & shohamy, 1990) in order to hold a friendly conversation with the kids. i recorded their answers, taking notes immediately after our conversation. i interviewed a total of thirty-six kids in the twenty-six classes i visited. lastly, i took into account the student teachers’ portfolios (appendix 5 includes the guidelines provided to keep the portfolio). these artifacts included their plans and formats to analyze their progress through lessons, a weekly journal to reflect upon their experiences, and reading logs that contained participants’ views about how they employed theory in their practice. finally, student teachers selected meaningful materials, activities or learning situations to reflect upon their experiences. portfolios were shared with peers and professors to obtain feedback and exchange views. at the end of the semester, i reviewed pieces that contained participants’ thoughts in regard to their use of english in the classroom. in order to analyze the information collected, i employed techniques from grounded theory. constantly comparing and questioning the information i collected, i established commonalities which i then labeled (strauss & corbin, 1990). after this initial organization and identification of data, i engaged in categorizing the concepts as i put initial commonalties together. finally, by analyzing the relationship among the categories, i built a meaningful answer for my research questions. additionally, validity in my findings was one of my concerns. for this reason, methodological triangulation was considered among my various sources of data (merriam, 1988). in the next lines, the results of this study are revealed. i will use the following abbreviations to refer to the instruments from which specific pieces of evidence were taken: field notes of classes (fnc), transcription of a conference (tcf), student teachers’ portfolios (stpf), transcription of an audio recorded class (tac), and notes from unstructured interviews of pupils (npui). the use of the foreign language in the classroom: from constraints to new meanings the first topic reveals the factors that shaped participants’ intentions to speak in english to their pupils. as will be shown, at some points participants seemed not to react in relation to these factors; they felt unable to overcome the influence that some of these issues had on them. conversely, at other times student teachers acted to reduce the effect of these circumstances; they perceived the factors as opportunities to reshape their own learning. english in the classroom: beyond the burden of an old culture during participants’ secondary education, span ish was the main and almost exclusive means of communication in the efl classroom. lina, for example, mentioned that “i was always concerned about what i experienced at school since most of the english classes were in spanish. i had a different expectation” (tcf). several student teachers reproduced this same model, using spanish as the primary means of communication, with their pupils at the beginning of the practicum. scholars such as richards and lockhart (1994) and farell (2007) have established that pre-service or in-service teachers’ practices are influenced by their previous experiences as learners. however, a few participants did have learning experiences in which their teachers spoke in english. the following extract reveals how dina’s contact with the foreign language in class, as a secondary student, has shaped her views as an initial teacher: 62 universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras62 viáfara during these weeks, i have understood the importance of using the language inside the classroom. maybe from my personal experience in my high school as a student… i liked very much that my teacher spoke in english in some parts of the class. it was a challenge for me. (stpf) in addition, cooperating teachers reinforced this traditional culture of speaking spanish in the efl classroom. in fact, many demanded the use of l1 from these prospective teachers, asserting that pupils would not understand if student teachers talked to them in english. yina explained: i tried to use a little bit more of english in class, but the [cooperating] teacher asked me not to talk to them in english because they wouldn’t understand. i think that creates certain predisposition and you don’t explore, you don’t look at students’ reactions to check if they don’t really understand. (tcf) communicative nature of language as a real practice student teachers’ concept of what language was and how it functioned also seemed to be related to their actions in classrooms. some of them commented that english was a communication tool for real-life purposes and looking at their lessons, i could see they tried to implement this principle. one of them said, “my purpose is that students use the language to communicate whenever they need it” (tcf, rene). similarly, in a study conducted by gonzález (2008) that helped to establish teachers’ concept of communicative competence and how this concept was related to their practices as english teachers, one of her participants said that “the development of communicative competence implies thinking about the students themselves as well as the way they interact in the classroom” (p. 87). however, it seems that because students often regard english as external or irrelevant to their own lives, speaking in english with their pupils usually became a challenge. in order to overcome this challenge some resolved to “speak in english all the time [so that] students feel closer to the language” (tcf, angelina). similarly, one student reflected, “i would like my students to apply their grammatical knowledge to achieve communication in real life issues” (tcf, camilo). pupils’ lack of understanding and fear of being ridiculed participants paid a lot of attention to their students’ feelings towards the language. marlon commented that when he spoke in english “some students started to make faces or laughing, which i think means they don’t understand” (tcf). similarly, laughing at their peers who used english lowered the “victims’” self-confidence and discouraged them from using english: “students feel fear that their peers might laugh at them because of their pronunciation” (tcf, yina). it seemed pupils rejected english even though many times they understood what was said. participants explained that their pupils pretended not to understand or were lazy to make an effort to comprehend or use the language. that was the case of a student teacher who, as shown in the next extract, was about to start her class: st: ok, we are going to start. i am going to check the list. [i am going to call the roll] ss: ay, profe, no nos hable en inglés… ¿va a llamar a lista? [please teacher, don’t speak to us in english…you will check attendance, right?]. (fnc, ana) another circumstance was that student teachers perceived their pupils as individuals who would only feel comfortable in class if they were taught in spanish. thus, it was really difficult for participants to change this ingrained habit. in this regard, nury commented: “the idea is to talk just a little in english 63profile vol. 13, no. 1, april 2011. issn 1657-0790. bogotá, colombia. pages 55-74 63 how do efl student teachers face the challenge of using l2... since kids are used to being spoken in spanish. when i speak in english they get lost” (tcf). due to their constant effort, many pupils did become more cognizant of the function of the foreign language as dina reveals in the following excerpt: “i notice that at the beginning students did not agree when i talked in english, but after some time they tried to understand and it was a way for them to enjoy english” (stpf). in fact, when asked how they felt when student teachers talked to them in english, some learners said “it is good that he speaks in english because we get used to the language”; “i like when she speaks in english. one learns vocabulary and to use clues…to guess” (npui). classroom management and lesson organization data analysis revealed a close relation between pre-service teachers’ need to implement discipline and their inability to communicate with pupils in english: “i couldn’t speak english more frequently in a grade because it was difficult to control discipline” (stpf, nemesis). the following interaction in her class supports this issue. she had decided some students would not sit together in her class: st: [takes some time in assigning some students other places to sit]. sit down, attention. [she checks attendance] ss: [loud talking as she tries to check attendance] “me van a dejar llamar a lista o no?” [will you allow me to check attendance or not?] st: ok silence, silence. ss: [keep talking loudly] st: continúan así y los evalúo.[if you keep up this attitude, you will be given an evaluation.] ss. [keep talking loudly]. st: good morning, good morning… ss: [keep being loud] st: buenos días, me recuerdan que vimos la clase pasada… [good morning, can anybody remind me what we studied last lesson?]. (tac) this scenario reflects that classroom management and the use of l1 or l2 in the efl classroom have an effect on each other since students’ lack of understanding of what happens in the lesson seemed to generate disruption (prada & zuleta, 2005). similarly, hernández and faustino (2006) and wilkerson (2008) underlined that teachers consider classroom management an important reason to prefer the use of l1 in the foreign language classroom. data collected such as the previous extract from nemesis’ class challenged student teachers’ idea that changing from english to spanish would surely help them to control indiscipline. looking at themselves: limitations as chances to gain personal benefits at the beginning of the teaching practicum, being aware of their limitations to use the language properly made some participants feel insecure. four of them, lina, nemesis, dina and ana, had a pre-intermediate english level. nonetheless, they tried to overcome their fears as dina reveals it in the following excerpt: “at the beginning i was afraid to talk in english because of my knowledge and fluency, but i realized the problem is my self confidence” (stpf). they considered using english with their students as a way to improve their own proficiency: “i tried to speak in english also because i can keep my level and my students can learn something” (tcf, angelina). a variety of tactics to assemble communication channels inside the efl classroom after having considered the factors which shaped participants’ intentions to use l2 in the classroom, the next paragraphs discuss which strategies pre-service teachers used to try to achieve this purpose. 64 universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras64 viáfara raising awareness about using english in class several student teachers started their practicum discussing with pupils the role that english should have in the class. they addressed issues such as the benefits of learning english through practice and the possible effects of constant translation between l1 and l2. dana mentioned: “i got students to reflect about the importance to be involved in an english environment to handle pronunciation and comprehension” (tcf). by means of this reflection, pre-service teach ers sought to reduce students’ anxiety about understanding the language. apparently, this led some pupils to embrace using english in class; however, others continued to be reluctant. when resistance remained, student teachers agreed with their students on using various means to facilitate communication in english. for instance, camilo expressed that “at the beginning, i prepared a conversation about the importance of using english. they agreed to use 50% of english and 50% spanish” (tcf). nonetheless, imposing and not negotiating the use of english was an attitude which, for example, rené evidenced: “i demanded from them not to speak in spanish”. dosing out the use of english and spanish in the class as mentioned in the previous section, one group of participants revealed that they started promoting english as a means of communication from the start of the semester. another group, in contrast, increased their use of english gradually; they constantly monitored how their oral communication with their pupils by means of the foreign language functioned and supported the process by using specific strategies when necessary. in the following situation hermes is playing a game about answering personal information questions: st: pay attention to a new question. [he throws the ball]. how old are you? ss: [they remain silent]. st: pay attention. i am twenty three. ss: oh. ¿cuántos años tiene? [how old are you] [one of them said; then, they start talking about ages among themselves]. s1: mi papá tiene 33 años. [my father is 33].teacher thirty…? [he asks for help from his teacher to continue] st: yes…thirty three ss: [keep talking about the topic]. (tac) the student teacher leads the activity in english. he is attentive to help his pupils when they seem to have limitations to continue speaking in the foreign language. as they directly or indirectly express their lack of knowledge, hermes becomes a bridge to facilitate their communication. in addition to connecting their lessons with real life topics, as hermes did in the previous exchange, student teachers used english to involve learners in the following classroom situations. table 1. pre-service students’ uses of l2 in their efl classrooms stages of the lesson classroom situations at the beginning opening routines: greetings, calling the roll, talking about the plan for the lesson, class objectives and so on. breaking the ice: ask students about their routines or free time and talk about previous lessons. 65profile vol. 13, no. 1, april 2011. issn 1657-0790. bogotá, colombia. pages 55-74 65 how do efl student teachers face the challenge of using l2... in contrast, several student teachers who also spoke in english did not sufficiently monitor whether or not their pupils understood what was said. in this case, strategies to support pupils’ comprehension were not used. in the extract below, dina explains an activity students are expected to develop. st: you are going to write the words that you understand from the song. [she plays the song] st: [stops the song]. what did you understand? ss. [silence] st: mr. alvarado [she asks a student to say what he understood.] s1: [silence] st: bueno ¿qué palabras entendieron? [ok, which words did you understand?] [she plays the song again.] ss: [listen and take notes] st: ok words… [she collects a long list of words from students and writes them on the board.] (fnc) dina, in contrast to hermes, did not make sure kids had understood the instructions she had given in english before starting the exercise. she just continued the lesson and asked students for answers. she seemed to assume it was clear for them what they had to do. when a student in dina’s class was asked how he felt as his teacher spoke in english, he said: “i don’t understand because the teacher speaks too fast” (npui). spanish kept being used in class, even by those participants who generally opted for increasing speaking english. pre-service teachers perceived the use of l1 as necessary to support communication in the classroom. conversely, they believed that asking children not to resort to spanish created a negative feeling since that was a habit they had. data showed that participants used spanish for the purposes included in the next chart. during the lesson organizing and encouraging interaction assigning turns and encouraging participation, organizing group work, asking for students’ help (e.g. clean the board, stick something on the board). evaluation checking task accomplishment, providing feedback about performance, asking students to provide feedback on peers’ work, praising students’ performance. working in language skills pre-reading or pre-listening activities. involving students’ lives asking students’ opinions, asking for examples, explaining real-life themes of their interest, bringing sociocultural reality referents. meta-linguistic function talking about language use, answering their pupils’ questions, explaining grammar, introducing new vocabulary and providing linguistic clues. at the end of the lesson saying goodbye, mentioning procedures to close the lesson (organizing the classroom, putting belongings away…) and assigning homework, among others. 66 universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras66 viáfara table 2. pre-service students’ use of l1 in their efl classrooms general function specific uses to check and support comprehension (monitor if students understand what they are told in l2 in relation to what happens in the lesson). to verify and clarify students’ understanding. to check reading comprehension. to answer a clarification question. to make sure something will be done. to explain details in small groups. to provide a more detailed explanation. to teach (explicitly) the foreign language sometimes spanish functioned as a means to instruct pupils in certain areas of the foreign language. basically, student teachers expressed that they introduced new vocabulary and explained grammar points using l1. to support classroom management at certain times, participants spoke first in english and then in spanish. it was also common that classroom management instructions were communicated first in spanish and then in english. specific functions of spanish at this level involved: to try to control discipline. to request that procedures were followed. to question students about their attitude. to encourage students to participate and accomplish tasks. to allocate participation turns. to get students’ attention and keep them focused. to bring meaning to specific contexts student teachers used l1 to connect key aspects in situations or experiences students might have or will be familiar with and those events which were the topic in a specific class. thus they help to increase their chances to understand english. specific functions include: to review what was done last session. to provide feedback. to talk about future work in class. to develop pre-listening and pre-reading. to change the topic of conversation, thus their students did not get lost. to check students’ preparation for the lesson. schweers (2003), hittotuzi (2006), and higareda, lopez, & mugford (2009) have recently helped to reposition the use of l1 in the l2 classroom taking into account cultural, political, methodological and social factors. avoiding threatening ss’ identity, providing them security, and facilitating their interaction with peers are some of the benefits of using l1 these authors highlight. they also advise teachers about analyzing carefully how, when, and for what purposes they use and encourage their students to use l1. finally, their studies incorporate descriptions of the specific uses that l1 has in the l2 classroom. several of those match the ones included in the chart above. 67profile vol. 13, no. 1, april 2011. issn 1657-0790. bogotá, colombia. pages 55-74 67 how do efl student teachers face the challenge of using l2... a bridge to understand each other: resources to be competent communicatively communication strategies contributed to facili tate the interaction in english student teachers tried to establish. scholars such as tarone (1981) and oxford (1990) have widely explained how language learners make use of communication strategies in their attempts to engage in meaningful interaction with others. modifying one’s own speaking in english their willingness to interact in english with their pupils led participants to adjust their speech by speaking slowly and simplifying or reducing what they said. this was not always easy since student teachers generally had to be attentive to several aspects of their classes at the same time and eventually they forgot to do it. camilo expressed: “i try to speak in english as slowly as i can; however, sometimes i realize i am speaking too fast” (cft). including and emphasizing meaningful expressions in order to ease interaction to buttress the communicative process, participants often paraphrased what was said, provided examples, synonyms or clues, emphasized their message by means of cognates and words pupils already knew, recycled language they had taught, repeated what they thought was relevant, and used intonation to support meaning. in order to help a student, hermes did the following: s1: teacher ¿qué es bedroom? [what does bedroom mean?] st: it is the place where you find a bed, a lamp… s1: humm! la pieza…. [a bedroom]. (fnc) the student teacher provides a definition of the word and includes several words which might be more common so that his pupil could understand the new word. pupils developed mechanisms to connect with the strategies student teachers used, even if they did not comprehend what they were told at first. they asked other peers to clarify what the teacher had said, paid attention to other peers’ reactions or asked their teacher to explain again. to ask for clarification, they learned key words such as “what?” and “repeat please”, which helped them acquire the information they needed. body and graphic language participants also used non-linguistic elements such as contextual clues based on objects, their body, pictures and writing. i am trying to use miming. when i mime, translation is not needed for them to understand. if they don’t understand, other peers tell them the idea. miming makes the lesson funnier and they pay attention. (cft, dina) in addition, pre-service teachers usually wrote on the board what they said to support students’ comprehension. using translation participants translated sometimes by using a kind of interpretation of what was first said in english. in other words, they expressed a general idea in spanish based on the original english utterance. others translated word by word or literally. finally, spanglish, mixing the two languages in a single sentence, was also a common strategy. in the first sample, yina is teaching kids how to provide and ask for personal information. st: [asks ss and then write the question on the board] where do you live? ss: [read aloud from the board word by word] where/do/you/live? st: si yo les digo [if i tell you] “where do you live?” ¿tú que me dices? [what would you say to me?] [she indicates a specific student]. ss. [silence] 68 universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras68 viáfara st: “where do you live?” que significa [which means...]: ¿dónde vives? [where do you live?] estoy preguntando [i am asking you]: where do you live? (tac) yina tried to make students understand the question; she writes the question on the board, says it word by word and repeats it several times, but pupils don’t seem to comprehend. finally, she translates the question into spanish. in such situations, pupils would attempt to translate into english or they would press preservice teachers to do so. student teachers reported that they employed spanglish to reduce their pupils’ anxiety when they seemed not to understand and thus help their students to complete activities more quickly. conversely, some pre-service teachers would promote translation themselves. some participants used translation after first trying several times to get their message across in english while others used it simultaneously from the beginning of the lesson. several of them translated long pieces of speech, whereas others translated only key words. translation from l1 to l2 also took place, but it was a strategy that was employed less frequently in comparison to translating from english to spanish. participants used it to tell their pupils how an utterance was said in english. for instance: ss: voy a pasear [i am going on a trip] [says a student talking about “future plans”]. st: oh, you will take a trip. (fnc, marlon) student teachers mentioned that a drawback of this strategy was that it promoted students’ laziness in trying to understand. furthermore, they also remarked it could become a bad habit. teaching the lesson around topics which facilitate the use of l2 to begin with, student teachers built a framework for comprehension by means of contex tualizing the lesson in realistic scenarios. to accomplish this, they used several techniques. for example, student teachers made the language seem relevant to the students’ own lives and interests focusing the lessons on games, the sharing of personal information, stories, everyday classroom situations, and local culture references. this was the case in the following situation in which the student teacher checks attendance: st: luisa perez? ss: present. st: miguel camacho. ss: present, teacher. st: [asks the previous student] did you come last class? [he pointed back with his pen as showing something behind] then he repeats the question. ss: no, estaba enfermo. [no. i was sick]. (fnc) the student teacher goes beyond asking students if they are in class or not. he goes further and having this common classroom practice involves a student in a short conversation about his absence in class. though the student answers the question in spanish, his answer reveals he could understand. the student teacher employed body language which in the specific context of the conversation seemed to be effective. in another situation, rene explains about the homework they have to do: st: in the 1st part, you are going to look for the meaning of the words and then make a sentence using famous places. ss: [listen to him and some stick some pictures on their notebooks] st: for instance, plaza de donato is a famous place in tunja. ss: yes st: in the second point, you are going to describe that famous place in tunja. ss: describir un lugar famoso de tunja. [describe a famous place in tunja] st: like what? ss: plaza de bolivar, la casa del fundador… (tac) 69profile vol. 13, no. 1, april 2011. issn 1657-0790. bogotá, colombia. pages 55-74 69 how do efl student teachers face the challenge of using l2... the previous exchange reveals how student teachers’ referencing familiar places for students seems to increase their chances to comprehend the explanation and participate in the conversation. on the contrary, participants expressed that certain themes influenced the amount of english they produced during the class: i use less english in this opportunity. i think it was because of the topic. in the previous lesson the topic was “the future” and today “present perfect”. last class it was easier and students gave more examples about their future professions…sentences were shorter. present perfect is more complex…i think because of that today i used more spanish…well, i used both. (cft, marlon) for mario, talking about the “future” implied more possibilities to involve students since they talked about their plans, whereas a complex grammar topic for him, as “present perfect”, meant to speak also in the native language to support pupils’ comprehension. conclusions and implications the motivation and knowledge that teachers can inculcate in their students by speaking to them and promoting the use of english in classrooms can be substantial. thus, this study revealed a series of factors and strategies needing serious consideration to understand what can limit or favor student teachers’ attempts to speak in english during efl lessons. furthermore, the findings suggest several actions that can be taken to support prospective teachers in facing this communication challenge, increasing their pupils and their own leaning opportunities. student teachers’ initiative to speak english in the classroom was influenced by several factors. to begin with, participants’ history as learners revealed their tendency to create the same kind of environments they experienced when they were secondary school students; using spanish to communicate in the classroom was the rule and translation was a common practice. since english was scantily used by pupils and cooperating teachers, such conceptions were reinforced. likewise, participants were affected by the fact that their students had not been encouraged to communicate in english and those pupils who spoke in english run the risk of being ridiculed by others. finally, some participants faced serious challenges because of their low english level and their scarce experience in managing classrooms and indiscipline. all the circumstances mentioned above made them hesitant to speak in english. however, pre-service teachers’ conception of the language as a means for real communication and their perception of limitations as obstacles they needed to overcome led them to seek specific means to achieve oral interaction in english with their students. one strategy that student teachers applied was to discuss with their pupils how and why the target language should be spoken inside the classroom. they also tried to control the amount of english they used and made agreements with learners. furthermore, they altered their normal english speech using verbal and nonverbal language and communication. moreover, as part of their lesson implementation, they created or focused on meaningful contexts for students to make language more understandable. combining the previous strategies, participants tried to involve pupils in a friendly english speaking environment inside the classroom. in general, such strategies worked as long as student teachers monitored how and when they were employed. this implies that the idea is not to achieve communication with pupils in the foreign language at all costs or to impose the constant use of the foreign language while neglecting to monitor how successful communication with pupils is. this can produce not only frustration, but also rejection toward the foreign language by learners. 70 universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras70 viáfara in contrast, the goal should be to establish an atmosphere in which pupils feel secure and motivated when using the foreign language. student teachers should show pupils through various means that the foreign language can fulfill real purposes in life. furthermore, they can help their students to become aware and skilful in using communication strategies as tools to support their oral interaction and their learning of the language. it is relevant to count on university preparatory programs which provide prospective efl teachers plenty of opportunities to reflect upon english and to experience this language in its various communicative purposes. moreover, these programs need to integrate strategies that lead student teachers to become aware of which and how particular factors can affect their decisions as to using or not using the foreign language in the classroom. reflective practices can guide future teachers in exploring their beliefs about language, identifying how these conceptions originated and how they influence their teaching. cooperating teachers and advisors, as people who greatly affect student teachers’ pedagogical ideas, need to be tuned into the prospective teachers’ intentions to interact with their pupils in english. collaboration between these two parties might provide student teachers with valuable professional support from varied, but enriching perspectives. within their efl teaching practicum structure, universities should establish solid alliances with schools in order to help cooperating teachers keep familiar with the most current efl issues. references barlett, l. (1990). teacher development through reflective teaching. in j.c. richards & d. nunan (eds.), second language teacher education (pp. 202-215). cambridge: cambridge university press. bell, t. (2005). behaviors and attitudes of effective foreign language teachers: results of a questionnaire study. foreign language annals, 38(2), 259-270. capel, s. (2001). secondary students’ development as teachers over the course of a pgce year. educational research, 43(3), 247-261. ellis, r. (1985). understanding second language acquisition. oxford: oxford university press. ellis, r. (1997). second language acquisition research and language teaching. oxford: oxford university press. farrell, t. (2007). failing the practicum: narrowing the gap between expectations and realities with reflective practice. tesol quarterly, 41(1), 193-201. gonzález, m. e. (2008). english teachers’ beliefs about communicative competence and their relation with their classroom practices. profile issues in teachers’ professional development, 10, 75-90. harmer, j. (2007). how to teach english. essex: pearson longman. haycraft, j. (1986). an introduction to english language teaching. london: longman. krashen, s. (1981). second language acquisition and second language learning. oxford: pergamon. hernández, f., & faustino, c. c. (2006). un estudio sobre la enseñanza de lenguas extranjeras en colegios públicos de la ciudad de cali. lenguaje, 34, 217-250. higareda, s., lopez, g., & mugford, g. (2009). ¿duermes mucho tony? interpersonal and transactional uses of l1 in the foreign-language classroom. profile issues in teachers’ professional development, 11(2), 43-54. hittotuzi, n. (2006). the learners’ mother tongue in the l2 learning-teaching symbiosis. profile issues in teachers’ professional development, 7, 161-171. lightbown, p., & spada, n. (1993). how languages are learnt. oxford: oxford university press. littlewood, w. (1984). foreign and second language learning. cambridge: cambridge university press. merriam, s. b. (1988). case study research in education. san francisco: jossey-bass publications. 71profile vol. 13, no. 1, april 2011. issn 1657-0790. bogotá, colombia. pages 55-74 71 how do efl student teachers face the challenge of using l2... melnick, s., & meister, d. (2008). a comparison of beginning and experienced teachers’ concerns. educational research quarterly, 31(3), 39-56. muñoz, j., & mora, y. (2006). functions of code-switching: tools for learning and communication in english classes. how, 13, 31-45. nunan, d. (1992). research methods in language learning. cambridge: cambridge university press. oxford, r. l. (1990). language learning strategies. new york, ny: newbury house publishers. paulson, l. f., paulson, p. r., & meyer, c. (1991). what makes a portfolio a portfolio? educational leadership, 48(5), 60-63. pentimalli, b. (2005). observation in situ within ethnographic field research. retrieved from: //www.irit. fr/activites/gric/cotcos/pjs/methodologicalapproaches/datagatheringmethods/gatheringpaperpentimalli.htm pollard, a., & tann, s. (1993). reflective teaching in the primary classroom. london: cassell. prada, l., & zuleta, x. (2005). tasting teaching flavors: a group of student teachers’ experience in their practicum. profile issues in teachers’ professional development, 5, 157-170. richards, j.c., & lockhart, c. (1994). reflective teaching in second language classrooms. cambridge: cambridge university press. rodgers, c. (2002). voices inside school: seeing student learning: teacher change and the role of reflection. harvard educational review, 72(2), 230-250. sánchez, a. (2001). demystifying and vindicating communicative language teaching. how, 8, 83-87. seliger, h., & shohamy, e. (1990). second language research methods. hong kong: oxford university press. strauss, a., & corbin, j. (1990). basics of qualitative research: grounded theory, procedures and techniques. london: sage publications. soares, d. (2007). discipline problems in the efl classroom: is there a cure? profile issues in teachers’ professional development, 8, 41-58. schweers, c. (2003). using l1 in the l2 classroom. forum, 41(4). 34-37. tarone, e. (1981). some thoughts on the notion of communication strategies. tesol quarterly, 15, 285-295. tsui, a. (1995). introducing classroom interaction. london: penguin. vélez, g. (2003). student or teacher: the tension faced by a spanish language student teacher. colombian applied linguistics journal, 5, 7-21. viáfara, j. j. (2005). the design of reflective tasks for the preparation of student teachers. colombian applied linguistics journal. 7, 53-74. viáfara, j. j. (2007). student teachers’ learning: the role of reflection in their development of pedagogical knowledge. cuadernos de linguística, 9, 225-242. viáfara, j. j. (2008). from pre-school to university: student teachers’ characterize their efl writing development. colombian applied linguistics journal, 10, 73-92. wallace, m. (1991). training foreign language teachers: a reflective approach. cambridge: cambridge university press. wilkerson, c. (2008). instructor use of english in the modern language classroom. foreign language annals, 41(2), 310-320. about the author john jairo viáfara is an assistant professor at universidad pedagógica y tecnológica de colombia (uptc), in tunja. he holds a bed in education (english) from universidad nacional de colombia, a masters in applied linguistics (universidad distrital) and currently is a fulbright scholar working toward his phd at the university of arizona. his interests include pre-service and in-service teacher education, pedagogical research and elt methodology. 72 universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras72 viáfara appendix 1. form to elicit information about participants’ classes grade number of boys number of girls ages between previous teacher communicated in english general description of students’ attitudes towards english yes ( ) no ( ) appendix 2. counselors’ class observation form class observation number student teacher: date:_______________________ grade: time: ______________________ description of lesson student teacher’s comments 73profile vol. 13, no. 1, april 2011. issn 1657-0790. bogotá, colombia. pages 55-74 73 how do efl student teachers face the challenge of using l2... appendix 3. questions asked student teachers about their use of english during conferences 1. how did you perceive your use of english during the class? 2. do you think you are using more english or more spanish at this point? 3. do you feel comfortable using this language to communicate with your students? 4. how has your process to try to use english taken? 5. what strategies do you use to try to communicate with your pupils? 6. have the strategies worked? 7. why do you think this has been so? appendix 4. samples of questions asked student teachers’ pupils during the unstructured interview* 1. do you like english? 2. what do you think about this class? 3. does your teacher (student teacher) speak in english or in spanish during the class? 4. has s/he always talked in this language or has this changed? 5. what do you think about the fact that he/she speaks in this language? 6. how do you feel when the teacher talks in this language? 7. if s/he speaks in english, do you understand? 8. what do you do when you don’t understand? 9. what does the teacher do when you don’t understand? * questions were asked in spanish and translated into english for the purpose of this publication. 74 universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras74 viáfara appendix 5. guidelines to keep portfolios guidelines to keep your portfolio portfolio: “a purposeful collection of students’ work that exhibits their efforts, progress and achievements in one or more areas. the collection must include student participation in selecting contents, the criteria for selection, the criteria for judging merit and evidence of students’ self-reflection” (paulson, paulson, & meyer, 1991, p. 60). 1. how to start: • get a folder (spacious enough to store a good amount of material) and decorate. • file the evidences of your work chronologically (record dates), weekly. 2. the sections of the portfolio. a. reflection: include a weekly entry of a journal in which you reflect on your teaching practice: lesson planning, school contexts, interaction with pupils, what you learn, and what is difficult. b. keep your lesson plans and corrections when necessary in chronological order. c. include your reading logs (analytical summaries of readings: make connections between theory and practice, evaluate theory, and contextualize theory in your experience). d. include a collection of samples which reveal the most meaningful work or situations you have developed or experienced. write a text reflecting upon the meaning of this evidence in your teaching. 11profile vol. 16, no. 1, april 2014. issn 1657-0790 (printed) 2256-5760 (online). bogotá, colombia. pages 11-28 the role of songs in first-graders’ oral communication development in english el papel de las canciones en el desarrollo de la comunicación oral en inglés de niños de primero de primaria ivon aleida castro huertas*1 colegio tenerife—granada sur ied, bogotá, colombia lina jazmín navarro parra**2 colegio nuevo horizonte, bogotá, colombia we report on an action research project aimed at developing oral communication in first-graders, using songs as a strategy for young learners to use and enjoy english. it was developed at a colombian public school over three months. the teacher-researchers attempted to encourage students using simple and amusing songs to help them learn new vocabulary in english and develop oral skills from the very moment they began their literacy process. in this article, we attempt to share our findings obtained from data collected through direct observation, field notes, video recordings, and interviews that show the process followed by very young learners to acquire vocabulary by singing. key words: speaking skills, teaching english in primary school, using songs. reportamos un proyecto de investigación cuyo objetivo era desarrollar habilidades en la comunicación oral en niños de primero de primaria, a partir del empleo de canciones como estrategia para usar y disfrutar el inglés. el estudio se llevó a cabo en un colegio público colombiano, durante tres meses. las docentes-investigadoras trataron de motivar a los estudiantes con canciones sencillas y divertidas para ayudarlos a aprender nuevo vocabulario en inglés, a la vez que desarrollaban destrezas orales en la lengua inglesa desde el inicio de su proceso de alfabetización. en este artículo compartimos los hallazgos provenientes de los datos recogidos a través de observación directa, notas de campo, grabaciones de vídeo y entrevistas, que muestran el proceso seguido por los jóvenes estudiantes al adquirir vocabulario cantando. palabras clave: enseñanza del inglés en la escuela primaria, expresión oral, uso de canciones. * e-mail: ivoncastro09@yahoo.es ** e-mail: lijazminnav@yahoo.com how to cite this article (apa, 6th ed.): castro huertas, i. a., & navarro parra, l. j. (2014). the role of songs in first-graders’ oral communication development in english. profile issues in teachers’ professional development, 16(1), 11-28. http://dx.doi.org/10.15446/profile.v16n1.37178. this article was received on february 17, 2013, and accepted on october 19, 2013. universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras12 castro huertas & navarro parra introduction as t he do c ument of st andards in eng lish (ministerio de educación nacional [men], 2006) affirms, childhood has many advantages: from the morphological-biological aspects to children’s motivation, interest in learning new things, desire and need to communicate and understand the world, curiosity, spontaneity, and lack of fear of making mistakes. however, learning can be more effective if it is accompanied with funny and significant activities that involve movements, repetitions, and expressions that are engaging for children. even given this, however, children can manage some skills of the foreign language they are learning, but they cannot express themselves orally in the foreign language because they do not have sufficient knowledge. with this project, we intended for first-graders at nuevo horizonte school to develop their speaking skills through songs in english because these kinds of activities are a way to enjoy learning english; in addition, because songs have natural and genuine language, they are a helpful resource for new vocabulary and cultural aspects that can also be introduced. the nuevo horizonte school—where the project was applied—is located in zone 1, in usaquén (bogotá, colombia). it has a school institutional project (proyecto educativo institucional = pei)1 focused on developing communication skills and values for life. the students’ english levels are low because of the lack of specialists in that second language in the elementary school grades. at the secondary level, english teachers have made a number of efforts to expand the english level with the support of the city secretary of education, but the students are not interested in learning english because they 1 the pei of nuevo horizonte school is entitled “un nuevo horizonte, una esperanza de vida: comunicación y valores” (a new horizon, a new life expectation: communication and values). have other needs and their lives do not demand the use of a second language. in this context, and supported through an institutional project based in communication, we decided to carry out this teaching experience. from the full group, we chose an intentional sampling (moreno bayardo, 2000). our intentional sampling consisted of 18 students whose parents signed the consent to participate in the research; they were in the first grade of the elementary school of groups 1a and 1b and studied in the afternoon shift. conceptual framework people typically think that learning a foreign language is better and faster if it starts from the moment children can use at least speaking and listening skills in their own mother tongues. however, it is necessary to keep in mind where english as a foreign language is going to be learned to eliminate certain misconceptions and to clarify the scopes of teaching english to young learners. the first aspect to take into account is how policies in education set teaching practices, the possible results depending on the conception of education, and the reasons to teach a foreign language. cameron (2001) asserts that the classroom learning and teaching of foreign languages to young learners in their early ages are influenced by complex foreign language teaching policies created from the social, cultural, and political issues of any specified population. a second aspect to take into account is the target population: children between six and seven years old are beginning the process of acquiring the spanish linguistic code. according to cameron (2001), learning a foreign language at the age of five involves the development of pronunciation and listening comprehension but no progress in the grammatical aspects; this is because learning a language goes hand in hand with cognitive development. therefore, 13profile vol. 16, no. 1, april 2014. issn 1657-0790 (printed) 2256-5760 (online). bogotá, colombia. pages 11-28 the role of songs in first graders’ oral communication development in english a project to be implemented with young learners must be clear about what types of skills the children are able to develop and what to expect in other aspects of the english learning process. this clarity is important because it also defines the pedagogical course of action. limitations in the english teaching task cameron (2001) proposes breaking with the pattern of four macro skills, based on the fact that young learners between five and seven years old are able to develop two main oral abilities: vocabulary and discourse, the first one understood as lexical acquisition, the appropriation of meaning, and the formation of meaning webs and the second conceptualized as efficiency in interaction. in firstgraders’ language development, these two oral abilities prevail over the other language functions, and teachers must take into account basic principles to improve foreign language learning: 1. children cannot learn if they do not understand; the words and activities themselves must make sense to children. children under eight years old do not ask for further explanations; they proceed as though they understand and continue doing the activity, but there is not true learning. 2. teachers must consider children’s cognitive ages, using strategies to reinforce the foreign language learning; most of the time, repetition is necessary. 3. during the time that young learners cannot understand grammar rules, language acquisition takes place through games and activities based on their ages. 4. to develop discourse skills, it is imperative that the children participate and interact to use the language, and the first stage is to give children the tools to interact and develop them until they are pragmatically and sociolinguistically competent. 5. children learn through experiences, and thus classroom activities are an opportunity for language acquisition in a meaningful context. according to cameron (2001), children must acquire listening habits as well to participate in discourse. hence, it is imperative that children be good listeners, learning to respect speaking in turns and identifying stress, rhythm, and intonation depending on the intention of the communication. later, teachers must focus on vocabulary acquisition and its use in discursive performances. as nunan (1990) states, “we should encourage learners to take part in discourse, and through discourse, help them to master sentences” (p. 32). the use of songs in the learning process games are activities that children take more seriously and devote more time to, which makes them the best strategy to use in the learning process with elementary school children. classroom activities involving music “provide a link with home and school life and are often lively and fun” (brewster, ellis, & girard, 1992, p. 174). the first stages of language acquisition take place through a pleasurable process with the support of physical interaction accompanied by visual, vocal, and facial expressions and gestures— all of which stimulate responses in the children—and repetition by the adults, and this is the moment when a child learns about his/her culture. according to brewster et al. (1992), some of the advantages of using songs in class can be perceived in the process and in the learners, as follows: process: • variety is added to the range of learning situations. • the pace of a lesson can be changed, thus maintaining learners’ motivation. • more formal teaching can be “lightened,” thus renewing learners’ energy. universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras14 castro huertas & navarro parra • “hidden” practices of specific language patterns, vocabulary, and pronunciation can be provided. • any distance between teacher and learners can be reduced by the use of more light-hearted and “fun” activities. • areas of weakness and the need for further language work can be revealed. • the classroom environment becomes more fun. • songs contain words and expressions of high-frequency use, and they offer repetition. • songs facilitate memorizing when they are associated with linguistic items. learners: • listening skills, attention span, and concentration are improved. • learner participation is encouraged, thereby giving confidence to shy learners. • learner-learner communication is increased, which provides fluency practice and reduces the domination of the class by the teacher. • vocabulary is continuously reviewed and improved. • pronunciation continuously improves with practice. • learners have fun while they are learning. “a song is a very strong means of triggering emo tions that contributes to socialization (a song is collective); appeals to the ear (one listens to himself while singing); engenders pleasure (reproduction of a sound, enjoyment of the rhythm) and helps to develop an aesthetic taste (expressing feelings and sentiments)” (cakir, 1999, para. 2). method ac c ord i ng to marke e ( 19 97 ) and s a l c e d o (2003), the project we developed is not only an implementation of a strategy but an opportunity for teachers to reflect about our classroom practices and to conduct research in situ and based on our own experience. we implemented the stages of action research based on burns (1999), who quotes kemmis and mctaggart as follows: “action research occurs through a dynamic and complementary process, which consists of four essential ‘moments’” (p. 32): 1. reflection: based on our experience as language teachers, and observing the needs of our institutions, we identified one of the issues of interest to improve language processes. this first step entailed the analysis of a possible problem to solve or an issue to be improved. in our project, the main issue was developing oral skills in first-grade children between six and seven years old, taking into account that in these ages children are starting to develop their first language written skills. 2. planning: in this stage, we designed possible activities to develop oral skills, taking into account the participants’ ages and literacy levels and our intended objective. we chose songs as a teaching strategy and a source to motivate these young learners to develop oral skills. this stage also included the selection of data collection techniques, also taking into account the participants’ characteristics. hence, we selected video recordings and field notes, which were recorded during the development of three lessons. 3. action: we developed three lessons intended to exploit three songs with the students. the lessons consisted of using songs and consequently implementing complementary activities, with the aim of determining how much vocabulary students had learned from the activities and whether they were using what they had learned in other contexts or recognizing words in different types of exercises. the three songs that we chose were: hello, what’s your name, ten little indian boys, and the colors. the lessons were developed around these songs. 4. observation and reflection: after collecting the data, we analyzed the results and designed new activities to adapt our actions to the findings. 15profile vol. 16, no. 1, april 2014. issn 1657-0790 (printed) 2256-5760 (online). bogotá, colombia. pages 11-28 the role of songs in first graders’ oral communication development in english context we conducted this action research with children between six and seven years old who were in first grade at a public school in usaquén, a neighborhood located in the north of bogotá. it is a neighborhood with many social and economic problems such as the immigration of many people from other parts of the country because of the displacement phenomenon that has led groups of families to move constantly from place to place. as a consequence, children do not have an educational sequence; the presence of gangs and children who grow without parents are common phenomena. the children all came from poor families with low education levels; nearly all students had illiterate parents, and those parents who had some educational preparation did not have an approach to assisting their children in learning the english language. additionally, most of the children did not have exposure to english. finally, and as shown in figure 1, in their very early steps of the educational system (kindergarten and preschool), students do not have a deep relationship with a second language. this is because of policies that do not promote teaching and learning second languages. in a small number of cases, the children’s previous knowledge of english was limited to only a few words. data collection procedures two factors were taken into account to define the techniques for data collection: first, this action research study entailed implementing an innovative proposal, and second, the students we worked with were the youngest at the elementary school. (1) field notes: through this technique, we attempted to take objective notes about the context of the classes, kept track of one of the objectives of the project—to make english learning enjoyable and fun for first-graders using songs—and recognized the variables that influenced learning. one example of this is given in appendix a. figure 1. the situation of english language teaching in colombia specialized language teachers to support english in primary grades have disappeared from the public schools. the number of hours dedicated to learning english are, at most institutions, fewer than three hours a week only in december 2009 did the colombian government announce the intention to regulate english language teaching at the preschool level. children study english as a "subject lesson," meaning that contact with english occurs only in the academic context but not in other areas of the child's life. universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras16 castro huertas & navarro parra (2) video recordings: it was important for the project to record the reactions and participation of the students during the listening and complementary activities. this gave us evidence of their progress and/ or weaknesses. (3)artifacts: students’ production was part of the evidence to analyze whether the investigation objectives were achieved as well as the process of vocabulary acquisition. see examples of artifacts in appendix b. as already mentioned, the main objective of the present action research was to develop oral communication in first-graders at nuevo horizonte school using songs as a strategy for enjoying english. we carried out a series of activities planned to exploit three songs (see example in appendix c) with a group of 18 students from first grade whose parents signed an authorization form to use the information about their children in the present work. the project was conducted over a period of three months. during these sessions, field notes were taken and videos recorded. both teacher-researchers were responsible for developing the activities, and whenever one of us was doing the activity with the children, the other took the notes and recorded the video. additionally, at the end of each activity, we discussed the implementation and the results we were obtaining—the children’s reactions and performance—which helped us rethink how we were applying the lesson plans and their effectiveness compared with the objectives of this project. data analysis and results in the analysis of all of the collected data, we followed triangulation processes, which led us to identify main categories and certain subcategories. these are shown in figure 2 and explained below. the first category, strategies for effectively learning songs, showed us how children attempted to offset their limited knowledge of english and the strategies they used to obtain good scores or positive reinforcement as well as the strategies used by the teacher to obtain better results in class. from a different angle, the second category refers to all of the factors, whether internal or external, that could influence the children’s english production. figure 2. the role of songs in first-graders’ oral communication development in english using songs in oral communication development in english strategies for effectively learning songs need for a visual or physical referent repetition children pretend to understand imitation previous knowledge children’s attention span teacher´s encouragement motivation learning factors on production 17profile vol. 16, no. 1, april 2014. issn 1657-0790 (printed) 2256-5760 (online). bogotá, colombia. pages 11-28 the role of songs in first graders’ oral communication development in english strategies for effectively learning songs in this category, we examine some of the features that informed us about the strategies that help children to learn songs. the strategies found were: need for a visual or physical referent; repetition; imitation; how children pretend to understand songs; and their previous knowledge. need for a visual or a physical referent through the application of the three lessons, we noted that children could better understand each song’s vocabulary and meaning when we used a visual or a physical referent. that was the case with the lesson about colors. when ivon was doing her warm-up and preparation for the song, she showed some paper hands and she said the corresponding names of the colors of each. the following samples from our field notes illustrate our findings: ivon again showed the hands and asked them to say the name of the color that they remembered. (field notes, session 5) ivon showed the hand with the color and said its name, and the children repeated. (field notes) the use of the previous strategies helped ivon to ensure that students understood the name of the color, its meaning, and its pronunciation. we noticed that when students forgot the vocabulary, the visual or physical referent was sufficient to refresh the words and to thus increase their use of the english language. for significant learning to take place, it is ne cessary to connect the concept to the learner’s previous knowledge and experience or to a real context. these kinds of connections are important for young learners because the visual and physical referents build meaning webs. in connection to this, anglin, vaez, and cunningham (2004) state that “pictures used in conjunction with related verbal material can aid recall of a combination of verbal and pictorial information; . . . pictures will facilitate learning if they relate to relevant criterion test items” (p. 73). in our study, we saw that students understood the main words more quickly when we used visual or physical referents. in this way, they showed better understanding and learning of the concepts, and they could also use them properly outside of the context of the song. repetition during the development of the lessons, we found it necessary to repeat the songs’ vocabulary or structures or other vocabular y related to the lesson itself. the teacher had the students repeat the vocabulary to ensure its understanding and their improved retention of it, as well as the structures taught during some of the lessons. the frequency of the required repetition had to be done depended on the students’ ages; this was the case when they were learning the song about the numbers and the colors: lina repeats the lyric line by line, emphasizing the pronunciation of “little” and pointing to the number and the indian. ivon showed the hand with the color and said its name, and the children repeated. (field notes) according to cameron (2001), it is important to keep in mind students’ cognitive ages and to adopt language learning strategies consistent with the skills expected for their stages. hence, because these children were between six and seven years old, some repetition was necessary. this was the case when they were learning the song about the numbers: lina asks them to repeat the numbers forwards at the time that she points to the image. then she asks them to repeat backwards. (field notes) in this way, children could say more vocabulary that at the beginning they did not know or understand. similarly, the frequency with which we exposed children to the vocabular y, pronunciation, and structures through repetition allowed us to increase the probability that the children would acquire or learn universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras18 castro huertas & navarro parra the content we wanted to teach them. we also noted that learners could make significant connections between form and meaning. in connection to this, skehan (1998) wrote: repetition in what we hear means that the discourse we have to process is less dense; repetition in the language we produce provides more time to engage in micro and macro conversational planning. in acquisitional terms, repetition in conversation can serve to consolidate what is being learned, since the conversation may act as an unobtrusive but effective scaffold for what is causing learning difficulty. (p 33) imitation at the time that we implemented the lesson plans, some children used imitation to learn a word, give a correct answer, or pronounce the words or sentences the ways they were pronounced in the original source. at times, we noticed that this strategy gave them more confidence because they saw our positive reactions to some of their partners and they imitated the same behavior to receive the same reactions from us. we also noticed that imitation was present in two ways: the first was the children’s copying each other to give correct answers. for example, during the lesson plan about colors, the children did not say the colors as we told them to. one of the children would say one of the colors and receive positive feedback from the teacher. as soon as this happened, the others repeated the same word and used the same strategy with the other difficult vocabulary. another example is shown below: some of them did the exercise using imitation: they looked at another child’s notebook and repeated what she/he was doing. (field notes) this kind of imitation could result in the children’s learning certain words or the whole song, but it could also fail: at first, children did not repeat the color as the teacher wanted, but one of the students said the color and the others repeated. (field notes) the second way was a path that students followed to reach the pronunciation or structure given in the song. this was the case with the lesson plan about “your name.” the children listened to the song and realized that the structures previously presented by the teacher were in the song. when the teacher asked “what’s your name?,” they immediately imitated the answer given in the song. imitation is the first step and first evidence of progress of the development of the child’s intelligence. moreover, it is a technique of assimilating and accommodating the external inputs or stimuli that are given to children from their worlds, in our case, songs and vocabulary. with regard to this, piaget (2003) wrote: the extent to which the schemas integrate new elements determines how far accommodation to these elements can be continued as imitation when the models presented are identical with the original elements . . . accommodation to new data keeps pace with the ability to recapture them through reproductive assimilation . . . he is capable of reproducing them through circular reactions. (p. 8) children pretend to understand throughout the three lessons, we saw children following the song only for pleasure. children showed that they liked the rhythm of each song, which made them try to sing whether they knew the song or not. this was the case with the next sample: almost all of them seem to know the song and repeat it without music. but not all the children sang; they only repeated some relevant words and simulated that they were singing. when the song was played, they tried to sing and did some movements following the music. (field notes) however, we did give the students positive reinforcement each time they sang the song or they had an external motivator (camera) that made them sing. they pretended that they had learned the song quickly, and they moved their lips as if they were 19profile vol. 16, no. 1, april 2014. issn 1657-0790 (printed) 2256-5760 (online). bogotá, colombia. pages 11-28 the role of songs in first graders’ oral communication development in english singing or sang with sounds or imaginary words that had the same rhythm and were similar to the words in the song. the following example reflects this: from this part on, ivon is in charge of recording with the video camera. she moves all over the room and students keep singing. some like to face the camera, pretending they are really singing!!!! . . . almost all of them seemed to know the song and repeated it without music. but not all the children sang; they only repeated some relevant words and simulated that they were singing. (field notes) previous knowledge the pronunciation and vocabulary acquired in preschool english classes influenced the learning of some of the new words that we sought to teach through the songs. when we were teaching the lesson about numbers, in the diagnosis, some of the children showed that they knew some numbers. when we showed them the number ten (10), some students screamed “tueleven” [sic]. when the teacher said the correct name of the number, the children insisted with the same pronunciation, as shown in the following example: some of them pronounce the number 10 like “tueleven”. it seems they learnt number ten like that in preschool. (field notes) according to gass and selinker (2008), previous knowledge can include knowledge from the native language or a second language or from universal knowledge. hence, it must be understood as broad knowledge acquired from the child’s entire world. related to this fact, we noted another interesting aspect of previous knowledge during the lesson about colors. in the warm-up, we showed the children a rainbow and asked them the names of the colors in english. for example, when teacher lina asked about the complementary colors (pink, gray, brown, black, and white) while pointing at them, a boy answered the color pink, but he was not sure about the translation in spanish. another case of the use of previous knowledge was during the final activity in the colors lesson. we expected the children to activate the knowledge that they had acquired from the song using drawings of a cloud, rain drops, and an umbrella. children had to color the numbers into each of the drawings according to given instructions. it was evident that most of the students did not remember some of the mentioned colors so they used the previous knowledge strategy and used the same color they had used for the previous number (see appendix b). learning factors and their influence on production the second categor y that we found was the learning factors and their influence on production, in our case, oral production. in this category, we examined how some of the children’s own internal factors positively or negatively impacted their oral production. these factors were: children’s attention span, teacher’s encouragement, and motivation. children’s attention span we found that the children’s attention span was influenced by factors such as their ages, the kind of input, and the simultaneity of activities. first, let us remember that our participants were a group of children from six to seven years old. because of the students’ ages, the long sequences of the activities and sometimes the number of repetitions to learn a song caused them to lose interest in the song, in the images and in the process that we were carrying out. this was the case with the lesson about numbers. we repeated the song ten little indian boys, which had a length of one and a half minutes, nearly four times. we recorded: “the song ‘ten little indians’ seems to be too long for them!!!! they are tired and start to yawn” (field notes). we also observed that the characteristic sound made for indians distracted them: “they keep doing the sound of indians” (field notes). universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras20 castro huertas & navarro parra relatedly, we noticed that the children’s attention when they were learning vocabulary could be affected by the coincidence between the vocabulary exercise and another attractive activity. in our case, this happened when one of us was doing the warm-up; she wrote the word “colors” on the board and asked the students to write it in their notebooks and repeat the word more than once. we asked what colors a rainbow had. after some revisions of the way they were writing the word, we asked the students to draw a rainbow in their notebooks and to repeat the word more than once. the following shows what happened in this exercise: the students repeated the words, but they were not conscious about what they repeated because they were busy drawing the rainbow and coloring it. (field notes) in another activity, the number of repetitions of the song and the fact that the teacher stopped the song constantly to emphasize the names of the colors distracted the children: “some students lost concentration and began to do something different to the exercise” (field notes). another relevant aspect was the kind of input given to the children, which demonstrated that the children’s enjoyment of the music in the song could distract them. the next sample showed us this case: when the song began, some of the students were distracted by the rhythm of the song and began to dance, and the students who were concentrating on the song were distracted by the others. (field notes) in another case, however, the kind of input or activity helped us capture the children’s concentration. in the lesson about colors, ivon asked the children to draw their own hands in the notebook and to color the fingers according to her instructions. we observed that activities for which the children had to follow instructions were helpful for gaining their attention. the following extract gave us an example of the last assertion: ivon asked the children to draw their hands in their notebooks, and she gave them the instruction to color each finger with the color she suggested. this kind of exercise focused the attention of the children and triggered excitement in them. (field notes) teacher’s encouragement another factor that we found in the data analysis that could affect the children’s oral production was the teacher’s reinforcement of any of the children’s efforts. often, children do their classroom activities looking for their teacher’s approval, and whether they receive it determines their progress or setbacks in learning. on this, brewster et al. (1992) remark: the effort which the pupils put into participating and being attentive must firstly be rewarded by positive encouragement on the part of the teacher, and then followed up by provision of the necessary help to achieve improvement in those areas where inaccuracies occur, whilst at the same time avoiding making any potentially crippling criticism. (p. 13) we could see this in the lesson plan about numbers. although some children knew the numbers from one to ten, they had to make some effort to recognize, pronounce, and follow the numbers from six to ten. we congratulated them because of their efforts, and they showed happiness and the desire to improve their next attempts to do these activities as well as other exercises about the same topic. we noticed this in the next example: the song is repeated line by line. it is ok with the numbers 1, 2, 3 but from four to ten, it is a mess. lina congratulates them for the first attempt and makes them repeat the lyrics from four to nine. they seem to be ready to sing the whole song; their pronunciation is better. (field notes) motivation according to brewster et al. (1992), motivation is directly related to learners’ interest in the learning process and in how and what we teach them. in our case, the novelty and the discovery of another language 21profile vol. 16, no. 1, april 2014. issn 1657-0790 (printed) 2256-5760 (online). bogotá, colombia. pages 11-28 the role of songs in first graders’ oral communication development in english through the three songs and the corresponding activities were motivating forces for our students. this was noticed from the first time ivon arrived in the classroom, introduced herself to the children, and explained both the activities and the use of the camera: good reactions when the teacher was introduced; students in general show interest. some asked if ivon is also a teacher and if she is going to teach them something. [as mentioned at the beginning, lina was the preschool english teacher and she worked collaboratively with ivon to develop the project]. ivon explains that we want them to participate and have fun. also, she tells them that we will use a video camera in order to make a film of the classes and the videos are important. we also promise to show them the film later on. (field notes) in the numbers lesson, the children showed motivation because of the novelty of the presence of a camera in the classroom, and they made their best efforts to do the actions asked by the teacher. as can be read below, they used strategies to do all the activities as best they could: good pronunciation. from this part on, ivon is in charge of recording with the video camera. she moves all over the room and students keep singing. some seem to enjoy facing the camera, pretending they are really singing!!!! (field notes) another example that demonstrated their motivation was when ivon asked them the colors that they knew. as acknowledged by brewster et al. (1992), one of students’ interests is the pleasure they have when they learn or understand meanings, pronunciation, and so forth. following on this, the children realized that they knew the vocabulary and they could account for the knowledge they had. an example of this finding follows: ivon asks some questions to the students about the colors that they learnt in preschool. the students answered a good number of questions in group, and some of the questions were answered one by one. the students showed much excitement when the teacher asked the colors. the answers showed mastery of previous knowledge. conclusions as teachers, we have to know the possibilities and scopes of teaching english to very young learners as well as the cognitive processes of language learning at this stage. it is very likely that the lack of experience with young learners can cause us to lose sight of the ways children learn and communicate. this is evident in the moment of giving children instructions and in the kinds of activities we should plan for them. the cognitive development of first-graders allows them understand and produce discourse and vocabulary in very basic ways in the english language, although they might not be able to understand complex grammatical structures. in our experience, the children made evident the acquisition of new vocabulary and the creation of meaning webs in their first attempts to communicate orally in english: pointing to the object the teacher referred to in the foreign language, coloring the right number, establishing relationships between colors and referents from the environment, following instructions, and answering basic questions such as: what color is this? what is your name? what is this number? finally, we want to note the need to begin the english learning process from early stages, with realistic goals, not pretending that we will manage grammar but teaching that enjoying a second language can be something new and fun. throughout our action research, we noticed that the use of songs in teaching english enhanced positive feelings such as happiness, self-confidence, and enjoyment. references anglin, g. j., vaez, h., & cunningham, k. l. (2004). visual representations and learning: the role of static and animated graphics. in d. h. jonassen (ed.), handbook of research on educational communications and technology (pp. 865-916). mahwah, nj: lawrence erlbaum associates. brewster, j., ellis, g., & girard, d. (1992). the primary english teacher’s guide. london, uk: penguin. universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras22 castro huertas & navarro parra burns, a. (1999). collaborative action research for english language teachers. cambridge, uk: cambridge university press. cakir, a. (1999, noviembre). musical activities for young learners of efl. the internet tesl journal, 5(11). retrieved from http://iteslj.org/lessons/cakir-musicalactivities.html cameron, l. (2001). teaching languages to young learners. cambridge, uk: cambridge university press. gass, s., & selinker, l. (2008). second language acquisition: an introductory course. new york, ny: taylor & francis group. markee, n. (1997). managing curricular innovation. new york, ny: cambridge university press. ministerio de educación nacional. (2006). estándares básicos de competencias en lenguas extranjeras: inglés [basic standards of competence in foreign languages: english]. bogotá, co: imprenta nacional. moreno bayardo, m. g. (2000). introducción a la metodología de la investigación educativa ii [introduction to educational research methodology ii] (2nd ed.). mexico, mx: editorial progreso. nunan, d. (1990). designing tasks for the communicative classroom. (3rd ed.). new york, ny: cambridge university press. piaget, j. (2003). play, dreams, and imitation in childhood. london, uk: international library of psychology. salcedo, r. a. (2003). experiencias docentes, calidad y cambio escolar [teachers’ experiences, quality, and educational change]. retrieved from http://www.lablaa.org/blaavirtual/educacion/expedocen/expedocen8a.htm skehan, p. (1998). a cognitive approach to language learning. oxford, uk: oxford university press. about the authors ivon aleida castro huertas is an english and spanish teacher at colegio tenerife—granada sur ied in bogotá, colombia. she holds a ba in languages from universidad pedagógica nacional (colombia) and she has an ma in hispano-american literature from the instituto caro y cuervo (colombia). lina jazmín navarro parra holds a ba in spanish and languages (english and french) from universidad pedagógica nacional (colombia). she is the english teacher at the elementary school nuevo horizonte in bogotá, colombia. this paper reports on a study conducted by the authors while participating in the profile teacher development programme at universidad nacional de colombia, bogotá campus, in 2010. the programme was sponsored by secretaría de educación de bogotá, d.c. code number: 1576, august 24, 2009, and modified on march 23, 2010. 23profile vol. 16, no. 1, april 2014. issn 1657-0790 (printed) 2256-5760 (online). bogotá, colombia. pages 11-28 the role of songs in first graders’ oral communication development in english appendix a: field notes sample nuevo horizonte school session: 5 date: april 19, 2010 time: 4:30 p.m. (one hour programmed) place: first grade classroom stages of the activity observation other comments diagnosis about the colors ivon asks some questions to the students about the colors that they learnt in preschool. the students answered a great deal of the questions in group, and some of the questions were answered one by one. the teacher used some items in the classroom in order to complete the diagnosis of the colors. the students showed much excitement when the teacher asked about the colors. the answers showed good previous knowledge about the primary colors but the children had problems with purple and the complementary colors (white, black, and brown). some students referred to the colors they did not know with something of their worlds: helado (ice cream), tierra (soil). warming up ivon wrote the word colors on the board and asked the students to write it in their notebooks and repeat the word more than once. she asked what colors a rainbow had. after some revisions of the ways they were writing the word, ivon asked them to draw a rainbow in the notebooks and repeat the word more than once. ivon asked questions linking the numbers and the colors in the rainbow. the students repeated the words, but they were not conscious about what they repeated because they were busy drawing the rainbow and coloring it. one student showed different previous knowledge of colors when the teacher asked him: he said the name of the color pink, but he did not know its parallel name in spanish. at first, they answered the name of colors in spanish. when the teacher asked them in english several times, they answered in english without problem. look and say five of the students know the numbers from one to ten; they can identify them out of the context of the song and also can count them out of order. it is evident the influence of the mother tongue; they cannot write the figures correctly (5, 9, 6 written backwards), and when they are counting the numbers in english, they have problems with the numbers 8 and 10. sebastian does not know the number 7 even in spanish. some of them pronounce the number 10 like tueleven; it seems they learnt the number ten like that in preschool. universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras24 castro huertas & navarro parra stages of the activity observation other comments listen and repeat ivon showed some paper hands; each of them had the color and its name. she said the name of each color and asked them to repeat them, emphasizing pronunciation and some names of difficult colors (brown, purple, white, black). children were attentive and repeated all of the colors that were shown, and some of them said the name of some colors (red, blue, orange) before the teacher said their names. look and say ivon again showed the hands and asked them to say the name of the color that they remembered. she helped them with colors that they could not remember very well and used some connections with the children’s worlds. children showed that could remember and say the names of some colors, but they have problems with brown, black, and white. there was a phenomenon in this section: some students did not know very well the names of some colors or did not remember them, but correct answers given by other students helped them to correct the pronunciation or to use the right word. listen and say ivon played the song about the colors and asked them to say the colors in english that they could recognize in the song. when the song began, some of the students were distracted by the rhythm of the song and began to dance, and the students who were concentrating on the song were distracted by the others. despite the movements by some students, children liked the song. when they answered the question about the names of the colors in the song, some of them with excitement answered the colors that they heard, but obviously, they could not say all the colors that were in the song. a student wanted to answer the question but he used the vocabulary of numbers instead of the colors vocabulary. listen and say ivon played the song a number of times and asked about the colors in the song again. students recognized and said colors that in the first attempt they did not say as black. some students lost concentration and began to do something different in the exercise. some of them had a curious way to say the color yellow, with stress on the last part of the word. 25profile vol. 16, no. 1, april 2014. issn 1657-0790 (printed) 2256-5760 (online). bogotá, colombia. pages 11-28 the role of songs in first graders’ oral communication development in english stages of the activity observation other comments listen and repeat ivon repeated the song and stopped at in each color to have the children say the name of the color. ivon showed the hand with the color and said its name and the children repeated. ivon asked children to sing with the song and look at the camera. at first, children did not repeat the color as the teacher wanted, but one of the students said the color, the others repeated, and the teacher also repeated the color as a way of indicating that they must repeat the color. at the moment of saying “blue,” they said “glue,” and the teacher corrected the pronunciation. with the color “orange,” they tried to imitate the pronunciation and intonation of the color in the song. they presented problems with the colors “white” and “black” saying other words that were similar to them; in the case of black, they said the number one or made the sound of a duck. listen and color ivon asked children to draw their hands in their notebooks, and she gave them the instruction to color each finger with the color she suggested. they were attentive and repeated without problems the colors, and they showed that the color red was already known because after the teacher said the name, they said it correctly. they denoted excitement because of the camera and made the effort to sing, and some of them did it very well, but the problem with the colors brown, white and black lingered. but it was evident that all of the repetitions had a positive effect on the learning of the song. let’s check ivon told the children that she would show the finger and they must say its color. they had comprehension with almost all of the colors. they showed that when they did not know the color, they asked the teacher or other classmates. some of them did the exercise using imitation (they looked at the notebook of another child and repeat that s/he was doing). others used spanish to verify the color that they must use. this kind of exercise focused the attention of children and triggered excitement in them. the confusion between black and white lingered. they showed apparent control over the colors, and the teacher asked them to use spanish to know if they recognized the colors. universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras26 castro huertas & navarro parra appendix b: examples of an activity in lesson five about colors 27profile vol. 16, no. 1, april 2014. issn 1657-0790 (printed) 2256-5760 (online). bogotá, colombia. pages 11-28 the role of songs in first graders’ oral communication development in english appendix c: sample of activities developed in lesson 1 activity 1: ten little indian boys level: first grade age of group: between 5 to 7 years old time: two classes of 30 minutes approximately aims: ȟ learn and recognize the pronunciation of numbers from one to ten. ȟ develop the general and specific understanding of the contents of a song: main characters, the learned vocabulary, etc. ȟ have fun and feel a sense of achievement. description: the children learn a song about the numbers from one to ten and use them outside of the song. skills: listening and speaking skills. materials: ȟ a cd with the song ȟ a tape recorder ȟ a sheet with the image of an indian ȟ ten pieces of cardboard with the numbers from one to ten and their names ȟ copies of a “bingo” game in class: warm-up ȟ show the students a picture of an indian. ȟ ask them about the name of the picture (t: what’s he? ss: un indio). ȟ say the name in english (t: he’s an indian). ȟ repeat the name again and make the students sometimes repeat after you and sometimes say the word alone. ȟ ask them again the name of the picture and emphasize the answer in english. ȟ ask them about the sound an indian makes. ȟ explain that you will make the sound and they must say indian. then, you say indian, and they will make the sound. sing ȟ prepare pictures with the numbers from 1 to 10. ȟ play the cd. sing the song and have the students pay attention what you show them. ȟ play the cd several times repeating the previous exercise. universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras28 castro huertas & navarro parra ȟ play the cd and ask students to sing along with you. ȟ display the pictures with the numbers around the classroom. ȟ explain that the students will point to the picture of the number when they hear it in the song. repeat this exercise more than once. ȟ invite a volunteer to do the previous exercise in front of the partners. repeat the exercise with another student. ȟ without the song, point to each picture of a number and ask them the name of each one. do this more than once. ȟ play the cd and encourage them to sing alone. act out ȟ ask students to form groups of ten boys or girls. ȟ explain that they will sing the song and act as indians, dancing according to the numbers of indians in the song. play ȟ give the students a photocopy with a board divided into eight small boxes. ȟ ask them to choose eight from the ten numbers they learned and write them in the boxes, putting one number in each box without repeating any. ȟ explain that they will play bingo. you will say a number, and if they have this number on their board, they will draw an x on it. the first student that sings bingo is the winner. repeat the game more than once to give many students the chance to win. 115profile vol. 15, no. 2, october 2013. issn 1657-0790 (printed) 2256-5760 (online). bogotá, colombia. pages 115-126 diary insights of an efl reading teacher apreciaciones de un profesor de lectura en lengua inglesa escritas en un diario de clase sergio lopera medina*1 universidad de antioquia, colombia it is often argued that classroom diaries are subjective. this article explores the diary insights of a foreign language reading teacher. the inquiry was based on the following research question: what do the diary insights really evidence about the teaching practices of a foreign language reading teacher? as a research method, a case study was implemented. five instruments were used to collect data: diary of the teacher, observations, questionnaires, tests, and focus groups. given that motivation, interaction, reading improvement, and the application of reading strategies were supported by the research instruments, it would seem that a diary can be objective. key words: diaries, diary insights, reading in english, support. a menudo se argumenta que los diarios de clase son subjetivos. en este artículo se exploran las apreciaciones que un profesor de lectura en inglés como lengua extranjera registra en su diario. la indagación se basó en la siguiente pregunta de investigación: ¿qué apoya realmente las anotaciones de diario acerca de las prácticas de enseñanza de un profesor de lectura en lengua extranjera? como método de estudio se implementó el estudio de caso. se utilizaron cinco instrumentos para recolectar la información: diario del profesor, observaciones de clase, cuestionarios, exámenes y grupos focales. dado que estos instrumentos de investigación incidieron en la motivación, la interacción, la mejoría en lectura y en la aplicación de las estrategias de lecturas, se podría concluir que un diario puede ser objetivo. palabras clave: apoyo, apreciaciones de diarios, diarios, lectura. * e-mail: slopera@idiomas.udea.edu.co this article was received on december 3, 2012, and accepted on february 10, 2013. universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras116 lopera medina introduction researchers debate the usefulness of diar y studies in learning or teaching languages (bailey, 1991; bailey & ochsner, 1983; brown, 1985; long, 1980; schmidt & frota, 1986). concerns involve the diarist’s subjectivity in keeping a diary, the amount of time the diarist devotes (time-consuming), the inconsistent way to track ideas, and the lack of general conclusions. the purpose of this article is to explore and support some diary insights made upon reflection by a foreign language teacher in a reading course for graduate students. this article begins with the literature review and examines the characteristics of diaries, reading, motivation, and interaction. then, the methodology, the context, the course, participants, and the research instruments are presented. finally, findings are described and the conclusions, implications, and limitations are given. review of literature diary in the academic context, a diary is an academic instrument that is used to record introspective re flection in first person about someone’s learning or teaching (bailey, 1990). the teacher or student reports issues such as affective factors, perceptions, and language learning strategies (bailey & ochsner, 1983). diaries are useful to obtain classroom issues and constitute a valuable tool in order to discover teaching or learning realities that are not possible to be discovered through direct research observation (nunan, 1992; bailey, 1990; numrich, 1996). goodson and sikes (2001) state the importance of a diary: not only is a document of this kind useful for providing factual information, it can also help with analysis and interpretation, in that it can jog memory and indicate patterns and trends which might have been lost if confined to the mind. (p. 32) mcdonough and mcdonough (1997) argue that diary studies are helpful in language contexts as they support qualitative and quantitative information. diarists can also have an introspective and retrospective view of their teaching or learning process. russell and munby (1991), and palmer (1992) argue that diaries may provide a rich source of data in order to understand teachers’ practices. when teachers read their diaries they become conscious of what they know and really do and they reflect on their role as teachers. as a result, they may become critical (bailey, 1990). there are two types of processes for reading the diary: primary (also called direct or introspective) and secondary (also called indirect or non-introspective). in the first type the diarist is the person who reads and reflects about the learning or teaching process. in the second type, an outsider reads and interprets the diarist’s entries about his/her learning or teaching process (curtis & bailey, 2009). characteristics of diaries curtis and bailey (2009) state that teachers or learners usually keep hand-written diaries; however, they can also be audio-taped. the authors argue that this technical form could be time-consuming due the transcription it may need. instead, a word processed diary is a good option because having electronic information facilitates the data analysis. the authors also argue that diarists can use figures in order to represent ideas pictorially and such figures guide to identify issues such as interaction, motivation, and participation, among others. in the same vein, diarists can use their mother tongue or second language to record their ideas. when learners have a low proficiency level they face difficulties in making entries. a good option is to combine the mother tongue and target language to lessen students’ difficulties. conversely, keeping a diary becomes a very good option with which to practice the target 117profile vol. 15, no. 2, october 2013. issn 1657-0790 (printed) 2256-5760 (online). bogotá, colombia. pages 115-126 diary insights of an efl reading teacher language when learners have an intermediate or advanced level. on the other hand, there are drawbacks to diaries. schmidt and frota (1986), and seliger (1983) support that the nature of diaries is to keep a subjective perception of the diarist’s experiences leading to subjectivity. moreover, it could be difficult to categorize and reduce data when diarists do not have a consistent way of keeping a diary. nunan (1992) even questions if the conclusions made by a single subject can be extrapolated to other settings. however, curtis and bailey (2009) suggest the idea to keep diaries with subjective and objective issues. diarists may have entries that describe feelings or ideas that they had in a specific moment of the class, or they can also have facts of a specific issue that support their entries. as a result, it would be useful to have factual records as well as subjective ones in order to obtain a precise picture of the teaching or learning process. the authors suggest the following elements to consider when keeping a journal: • keep a detailed chronological record of the entries • include the day, date, and time of each entry • include also information about number of students and their seating arrangements • write a summary of the lesson • include handouts and assignments in the diary • write thoughts or questions to be considered later (p. 71) other elements can also be included: the ob jective of the diary is to record or develop ideas in stead of correcting or crafting; the language could be personal rather than academic or formal; the writing style has to make sense primary to the diarist, not to the outsider. diaries can be used as an assessment tool. brenneman and louro (2008) argue that diaries provide teachers a critical view of how individuals conceptualize and apply an issue in the process of learning. diaries tell teachers about insights into individual student’s language processes when teachers keep track of each student. in fact, diaries support anecdotal evidence of what learners do, understand, and misunderstand in a language class. thus, the teacher can use it to verify and give an account of the learning process. reading reading is a complex process in which the reader has to comprehend the text. alyousef (2005) states that reading is an “interactive process between a reader and a text which leads to automacity or (reading fluency). in this process, the reader interacts dynamically with the text as he/she tries to elicit the meaning” (p. 144). however, there are two important elements that the reader needs to possess: linguistic knowledge and background knowledge. the former refers to the awareness about the language, such as grammar or vocabulary structure. the latter involves the familiarity the reader has with the reading content. cassany (2006), gonzález (2000), grabe and stoller (2002), and weir (1993) support that the reader also needs a cognition process because she/he has to predict, interpret and memorize information in order to decode the message. foreign language readers have to make a bigger effort to interact with texts because they might face grammar or vocabulary difficulties (cassany, 2006). thus, the role of the teacher becomes crucial, as foreign language readers need to be guided to overcome those difficulties. reading models aebersold and field (1997) state that there are two essential models in reading: bottom-up processes and top-down processes. bottom-up processes involve readers building the text beginning from small units (letters to words) to complex ones (sentences to paragraphs). in the top-down processes readers have to integrate the text into their existing knowledge (background knowledge). grabe and stoller (2002) universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras118 lopera medina ask language teachers to use both processes with students in order to have successful readers. reading strategies reading strategies help learners interact with the readings and different authors highlight the importance of applying them in language learning settings (chamot, barnhardt, el-dinary, & robbins, 1999; hosenfeld, 1979; janzen, 2001; lopera, 2012; mikulecky & jeffries, 2004; osorno & lopera, 2012). when students are trained to use reading strategies they know what to do when facing troubles with readings (block, 1986). language teachers can use simple reading strategies such as previewing, predicting, guessing word meanings; or complex ones such as inference and summarizing. janzen (2001) proposes five classroom activities to work with the reading strategies: • explicit discussion of the reading strategies and when to use them • demonstration of how to apply a reading strategy (modeling) • involvement with the reading in terms of reading aloud and sharing the process while applying the strategies • discussion of the activities in the classroom • practice with the reading material of the course (p. 369) arismendi, colorado, and grajales (2011); block (1986); carrell (1998); lopera (2012); mikulecky and jeffries (2004); and poole (2009) have explored the application of reading strategies with students and their findings support their usefulness for learners. motivation motivation plays an important role in foreign language as it engages students in an active involvement to learn (oxford & shearin, 1994). chen and dörnyei (2007, p. 153) state that the function of mo tivation is to serve “as the initial engine to generate learning and later functions as an ongoing driving force that helps to sustain the long and usually laborious journey of acquiring a foreign language.” brown (2001) divides motivation into intrinsic and extrinsic. the former helps students engage in the activities for their own sake in order to satisfy internal rewarding such as learning, curiosity, or personal fulfillment. on the other hand, extrinsic motivation goes externally in order to avoid punishment or to satisfy reward such as good scores, prizes, or money. interaction brown (1994) states that interaction is the main part of communication in which people send, re ceive, interpret, and negotiate messages. the author suggests that language learning classrooms should be interactive even from the very beginning. the role of the teacher is crucial in order to prompt interaction in the classroom as she/he has to be a guide, a moderator, or a coordinator in the classroom. in the same vein, students also have to participate individually or in groups when the teacher asks them to do it. when these two agents give their parts, the results are more positive in the process of learning. finally, when teachers observe and record issues such as interaction, motivation, and application of reading strategies in their diary, they are better equipped to analyze, assess, and reflect upon their students’ processes. for the purpose of this paper, all these elements were taken into account. method this study followed the principles methodology of a multiple case study (creswell, 2007; merriam, 1998; tellis, 1997; yin, 2003) as the team of researchers1 wanted to support the teacher’s diary insights in a foreign language reading comprehension course. researchers used the grounded approach when they categorized the data (freeman, 1998). the following research question guided their inquiry: what do the diary insights really evidence about the teaching practices of a foreign language reading teacher? 1 it is worth mentioning that the author of this paper was a member of the team of researchers. 119profile vol. 15, no. 2, october 2013. issn 1657-0790 (printed) 2256-5760 (online). bogotá, colombia. pages 115-126 diary insights of an efl reading teacher context universidad de antioquia (medellín, colombia) asks graduate students to certify reading proficiency in a foreign language when getting specializations.2 students have two options: to certify by either attending a classroom course or by taking a proficiency test. students were given a third option in 2007 when the eale (enseñanza y aprendizaje de las lenguas extranjeras = teaching and learning foreign languages) research group designed a reading course in english in a web-based distance format. in 2009, eale decided to carry out a research project3 in order to compare the effects of a web-based course to a face-to-face course. the study of the teacher’s diary is derived from this research project. participants the teacher the teacher was part of the research team and as well as a full-time professor at sección servicios, 2 especialización (specialization) is a two-semester graduate program and the main objective is to update students in their academic fields. 3 there were six full-time teachers, one advisor, and three undergraduate students in teaching foreign languages on the research team. escuela de idiomas (school of languages). he had ten years of experience teaching foreign language reading comprehension courses for both graduate and undergraduate students. the students there were 27 students (17 women and 10 men); they were between 20 and 51 years old. students were in the first semester of different specializations in law: process law, constitutional law, family law, administrative law, and social security law. only one student dropped the course. the reading comprehension course the name of the course was english reading comprehension for graduate programs (competencia lectora en inglés para posgrados) and its main goal was to guide students in the use of different types of reading strategies in different types of readings. students attended the course tuesdays and thursdays from 6 to 9 p.m. the course lasted 120 hours and was divided and organized into five different units as shown in table 1. table 1. organization of the reading comprehension course unit name topics 1 word and their meanings dictionary use, parts of speech, cognates, affixes, word meaning in context. 2 reading strategies prediction, skimming, scanning, and graph interpretation. 3 development of reading skills sentence structure, topic, main idea, and referents. 4 text organization methods cause and effect, comparison and contrasts, description, narration, argumentation, and classification and categorization. 5 critical reading fact and opinions, tone, and arguments. universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras120 lopera medina data collection and analysis other research instruments accompanied the diary in order to triangulate data (ellis, 1989). the different sources of information helped researchers compare and validate the data issues encountered in the diary. there were a total of five instruments used to gather data: diary of the teacher, questionnaires, observations, tests, and focus groups. each instrument is explained below. diary of the teacher the teacher recorded all his reflections and observation about the teaching process of each class session in order to construct a critical view (bailey, 1990; jeffrey & hadley, 2002). the teacher kept the diary in english and took about two hours for each class to write each entry electronically. it took him about five months to finish the diary. it is worth stating that he was aware of and had experience writing the diary for research purposes. questionnaires students complete d t hre e quest ionnaires: evaluation of the course and the teacher, reading strategies and motivation, and self-evaluation. there were multiple choice questions and open questions for completing each questionnaire. tests two types of tests were used on students: before and after the pedagogical intervention (2 tests— pretest and posttest), and different tests for each unit of the course. regarding pretest and posttest, each test contained two readings texts, each with 13 multiple choice questions (the readings and questions simulated standardized tests like the test of english as a foreign language, toefl). students had to interact with reading topics such as inference, scanning, analyzing topics and main ideas. in the different tests of each unit, the teacher designed short readings that aimed at evaluating the topics of the unit. there were multiple choice questions as well as open questions on the tests. observations researchers observed ten class sessions. they examined issues such as teaching, behaviors, learning strategies, interaction, and participation in the classroom (brown, 2001). focus group students had a focus group session (dendinger, 2000) at the end of the course in order to discuss their learning experience. researchers prepared some open questions regarding interaction, application of reading strategies, vocabulary improvement, and positive and negative aspects of this course. the session was audio-taped. findings researchers mixed both primar y processes and secondary processes to read the diary (curtis & bailey, 2009). all the data were transcribed and researchers read and labeled the data individually. they then shared and discussed some important ideas in groups and coded the data in order to have categories. finally, consensus was obtained through data triangulation (freeman, 1998). researchers translated some excerpts from spanish to english in order to use them as support. researchers validated some diary entries made by the teacher in order to support objectivity. four main topics emerged from the diary: motivation, interaction, improvement, and the application of reading strategies. the findings are explained below. motivation the teacher reported that students’ motivation was mainly extrinsic, as they needed to fulfill the reading requirement in order to register for the second 121profile vol. 15, no. 2, october 2013. issn 1657-0790 (printed) 2256-5760 (online). bogotá, colombia. pages 115-126 diary insights of an efl reading teacher semester of their law specializations. researchers could support this reflection in the focus group, as some students commented on the need to fulfill the requirement (see sample 1). although students’ motivation was mainly extrinsic, researchers noted that students gained intrinsic motivation during the course. students’ perceptions changed positively toward the course and satisfaction was perceived. this issue is supported by the students’ comments in the focus group (see sample 2). sample 1. support of motivation teacher entry in the diary support (focus group) as all the students who registered for this course they are in the course because they needed to continue in the graduate program, they are not in the course because they wanted to learn how to read in english. i felt a little bit forced to take the course due to the language requirement for the second semester. i didn’t like english but i had to take the course. sample 2. support of intrinsic motivation teacher’s entry in the diary support (focus group) most of the students’ attitude is quite positive, they wanted to understand what they were reading, they didn’t want just to complete the exercises for obtaining a grade, they really wanted to take the opportunity to improve their english language skills and they are realizing this course (no matter is mandatory or the hours) may be a good possibility for doing it. i had phobia to study english but this course has changed my mind. i not only accomplished the requirement but also learnt and advanced. sample 3. support of participation teacher’s entry in the diary support (observations) i have perceived a very positive attitude from students in terms of doing the exercises, paying attention to class explanations and participating in class. students are willing to participate. sample 4. support of tiredness teacher’s entry in the diary support (observations and focus group) students being tired of a long day of work may not have the same attitude towards the class and they may not be very willing to complete and to participate actively in all the activities designed for class. students look tired. the course was programmed at night and we were tired. another motivational factor was participation. students’ participation was a constant in the course leading to a positive attitude. learners were willing to participate in the exercises suggested by the teacher. the teacher and observers noted this motivational issue, as shown in sample 3. on the other hand, the teacher observed that students looked tired due to their work load. students were tired because they worked during the day then finished up the day attending the course (see sample 4). universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras122 lopera medina interaction there were three types of interaction: interaction among students, interaction between the teacher and students, interaction with the material. in the first interaction a sign of cooperation was perceived among students. students worked together in order to do a reading activity assigned by the teacher. students interacted themselves confirming answers, checking understanding, discussing issues and, usually, working in pairs or groups. researchers noted that students helped each other. this was validated by researchers in the observations, as shown in sample 5. there was constant interaction between the teacher and students. the teacher asked the students to answer some questions about an exercise. in the same vein, students asked the teacher different questions when they had doubts about the exercises or the readings (see sample 6). finally, students interacted with the materials. the teacher asked the students to read texts and complete the activities designed by him. researchers noted that students interacted with the readings because they discussed the content and the answers based on the readings (see sample 7). sample 5. support of interaction among students teacher’s entry in the diary support (observations) i believe some of the cooperative work in the classroom really was effective mainly because i could notice how students were discussing the topics of the texts they were asked to read. students work and participate among them. sample 6. support of interaction between the teacher and students teacher’s entry in the diary support (observations) they did a lot of questions and they were always asking for the teachers’ approval. students asked questions to the teacher. sample 7. support of interaction with the material teacher’s entry in the diary support (observations) i could notice how students were discussing the topics of the texts they were asked to read, they also interacted on the questions and the possible answers they needed to complete. students discuss academic issues, they give their points of view about the exercise and the answers of the readings. 123profile vol. 15, no. 2, october 2013. issn 1657-0790 (printed) 2256-5760 (online). bogotá, colombia. pages 115-126 diary insights of an efl reading teacher improvement and application of reading strategies researchers observed that students had learned and applied the reading strategies taught in the course and this led to reading improvement. students also evidenced that they had learnt, as can be read in sample 8. another source that supports improvement was the assessment of units. the tests of the units support that students improved and applied the reading strategies. when the teacher corrected and evaluated the tests, he wrote comments like “it was a good exercise, congratulations” or “although the answers to the exercises were ok, you did not provide very precise answers.” moreover, the teacher quantitatively reported the scores on the tests (1 to 5, with 5 being the highest) and researchers validated that most of the scores ranged from 3.5 to 4.8. table 2. statistical analysis of the pretest and posttest statistics tests pretest posttest number of observations 26 26 minimum 2,000 7,000 maximum 11,000 10,000 median 6,000 9,000 mean 5,654 8,885 variance (n-1) 5,595 0,506 standard deviation (n-1) 2,365 0,711 finally, another source that supports improve ment was the test results. students improved considerably when researchers statistically compared the results of the pretest and posttest administered. statistics support that students improved in reading as the mean increased greatly (see table 2). limitations guiding and encouraging the project, the teacher was part of the research group. if the teacher had not been part of the research group, researchers would probably have had different findings. the teacher was aware of writing the diary for research purposes and this could be seen as leading. in fact, he knew the topics to concentrate on: interaction, motivation, the use of reading strategies, and improvement. finally, the number of students was limited and researchers do not claim that findings could be generalized to broader teaching or learning contexts. conclusions some researchers have argued that people are sub jective when they keep a diary (nunan, 1992; schmidt & frota, 1986; seliger, 1983). however, the findings of the research suggest that the entries of the diary can be supported by evidence provided by more objective instruments, such as tests. in fact, motivation, interaction, reading improvement, and the application of reading strategies were found in the diary and supported using different research instruments. sample 8. support of application of reading strategies teacher’s entry in the diary support (self-assessment questionnaire) during this unit, i could notice how students were actually doing a good job on understanding information from different types of text. while i collected information from students’ class tasks, i could notice very good answers to…i could say that students have improved their reading comprehension skills. at the beginning of the course i did not know much vocabulary, but now i have noticed that i can understand the readings. the course guided me to understand the readings. universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras124 lopera medina researchers found that participation, attitude, as well as extrinsic and intrinsic motivation were motivational factors in the diary. also, the academic contact among student-student, student-teacher, and student-material were supported as interactional issues in the course. finally, findings support that students improved and applied the reading strategies. based on the results, it seems to be that a diary is objective. implication one of the findings was related to tiredness. the teacher observed that students were tired due to the fact that they worked during the day and finished up the day attending the course. the previous finding implies the need to prepare interactive classes in order to engage students to be more active in class. it is suggested that teachers ask students to work in pairs or in groups, bring topics that deal with students’ interests, bring humor to class, and use a short and interesting opening activity to start a class (dörnyei & csizér, 1998) as these would be good options to raise motivation and avoid tiredness in classrooms. references aebersold, j., & field, m. 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(2003). case study research. design and methods. (3rd edition). thousand oaks, ca: sage publications. universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras126 lopera medina about the author sergio lopera medina, candidate for the phd in linguistics, ma in linguistics; specialist in teaching foreign languages. his research interests are teaching efl reading comprehension, compliments in pragmatics. he is a member of the research group eale (enseñanza y aprendizaje en lenguas extranjeras) and a full time teacher at universidad de antioquia (colombia). 97profile vol. 15, no. 1, april 2013. issn 1657-0790 (printed) 2256-5760 (online). bogotá, colombia. pages 97-108 pedagogical factors that influence efl teaching: some considerations for teachers’ professional development factores pedagógicos que influyen en la enseñanza del inglés como lengua extranjera: algunas consideraciones para el desarrollo profesional de docentes josé vicente abad* fundación universitaria luis amigó, colombia in this article we present the results of a qualitative research study on the pedagogical factors that influence english teaching in four public schools of medellín, colombia. twelve teachers were interviewed regarding three linguistic principles: communicative competence, native language effect, and interlanguage. the data analysis led to the identification of various factors, such as teachers’ linguistic ego, view of their teaching role, and attitude towards english, which shape english teaching and are tied to teachers’ education. it was concluded that teachers’ professional development must tap into these factors so teachers can effectively revise their beliefs and adjust their practices to ensure a high quality in their teaching. key words: linguistic principles, pedagogical factors, teachers’ professional development. en este artículo se presentan los resultados de una investigación cualitativa acerca de los factores pedagógicos que influyen en la enseñanza del inglés en cuatro escuelas públicas de medellín (colombia). doce maestros fueron entrevistados sobre tres principios lingüísticos: competencia comunicativa, efecto de la lengua nativa e interlenguaje. a partir del análisis se concluyó que factores como el ego lingüístico, la percepción del papel del docente y la actitud frente al inglés son determinantes en la enseñanza de esta lengua. se concluye que dichos factores deben ser incorporados en los programas de desarrollo profesional para que los maestros puedan revisar sus creencias y ajustar sus prácticas efectivamente y así asegurar la calidad de su enseñanza. palabras clave: desarrollo profesional docente, factores pedagógicos, principios lingüísticos. * e-mail: jose.abadol@amigo.edu.co this article was received on june 12, 2012, and accepted on september 4, 2012. universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras98 abad introduction an unprecedented educational reform in the field of language teaching and learning is well on its way in colombia since the ministry of education presented the national bilingual program (nbp) for the period 2004 – 2019, and whose most-cited publication to date has been the basic standards for foreign language: english (ministerio de educación nacional – men, 2006). the plan seeks for colombian citizens to become bilingual in english and spanish to strengthen the country’s position in the arena of global politics and transnational markets. although stakeholders at the academic, political, and financial levels agree on the need for a policy to guide the dissemination of foreign languages within the national territory, the program has not been free from criticism. on the one hand, some researchers (de mejía, 2006; usma, 2009) have warned that the plan, based on imported policies and adopted without any consideration of the local culture and knowledge, could easily contribute to widen the social gap between cultural minorities, underprivileged citizens, and elite economic groups. by demanding the same results from all colombian students without making any provisions for their social background, the plan accentuates the disparities between private and public education, and thus perpetuates existing conditions of inequality. on the other hand, the conditions to properly implement foreign language teaching and learning in colombian public schools are not given. some researchers (cadavid, mcnulty, & quinchía, 2004; valencia, 2006 as cited by usma, 2009) had already made this point back in times of the general education law (ley general de educación, 1994). paradoxically, although some changes have been made in the public sector, they are not enough to meet the ambitious goals set by the nbp1. this imbalance 1 according to the program, by the year 2019 all high school students should graduate with an english level of b1, and all english teachers should have an english level of c1 according to the common european framework of reference (council of europe, 2001). has once again brought to the forefront the impending need for a structural revamp of the public educational system, which appears to be humanly and logistically unprepared to measure up to the challenge presented by the current policy. teachers’ professional development in fact, when political and educational authorities consider the implementation of the program, the first question they must answer is how to prepare teachers for the task. the professional development of english teachers (tpd) in colombia, its challenges, and its implications have been in the center of academic discussion in recent years (cadavid, quinchía & díaz, 2009; cárdenas, gonzález & álvarez, 2010). in theory, tpd emerges from a genuine commitment between teachers and the academic, professional, and social communities they serve; it involves an intentional, systematic, and continuous process by which teachers further their personal, professional and political growth; and it entails the improvement of teachers’ attitudes, skills, and knowledge with regard to their practice. unfortunately, this is rarely the case in colombia. in this climate of concern as to the implementation of the plan and its impact on the public school system, particularly as concerns the professional development of teachers, an interdisciplinary group of researchers in the areas of psychology and english teaching at fundación universitaria luis amigó conducted a mixed research study about the psycholinguistic and the pedagogical factors that influence the teaching and learning of english as a foreign language in four public schools in medellín, colombia. following a quantitative approach, psychologists examined the psycholinguistic factors that either facilitate or encumber the learning of english as a foreign language in students ages nine through 12. with these psycholinguistic competences in mind, english teachers-researchers followed a qualitative approach to determine the pedagogical factors that 99profile vol. 15, no. 1, april 2013. issn 1657-0790 (printed) 2256-5760 (online). bogotá, colombia. pages 97-108 pedagogical factors that influence efl teaching: some considerations... influence the teaching of english at the participating schools. to that end we chose the three linguistic principles of language teaching according to brown (2007) i.e. communicative competence, interlanguage, and native language effect, as a starting point to discuss with teachers their perception of english teaching and learning in their classrooms. after the analysis, some unforeseen data emerged. we grouped them into three general categories: internal and external pedagogical factors, teaching and learning strategies, and teachers’ professional development. this article summarizes the results of the study’s qualitative component, and particularly focuses on the internal pedagogical factors and on the way they are linked to teachers’ professional development. at the end, in light of the demands posed by the nbp, a case is made for the inclusion of such factors in tpd programs so teachers can revise their beliefs and adjust their practices to ensure a high quality in their teaching. literature review pre-established categories the communicative competence is a comprehensive construct that encompasses all the necessary skills to communicate effectively through the use of verbal and non-verbal language (canale & swain, 1980; bachman & palmer, 1996). according to bachman and palmer (1996), language ability is divided into organizational knowledge and pragmatic knowledge. organizational knowledge comprises grammatical knowledge, re quired to operate at the word and sentence levels, and textual knowledge, which deals with the more complex aspect of text. pragmatic knowledge comprises functional knowledge, which accounts for the ability to communicate and interpret intentions; and sociolinguistic knowledge, which allows language users to effectively communicate within a socio-cultural context. in addition to these types of knowledge, the communicative competence also includes strategic competence and psychomotor skills. in the process of developing their communicative competence, learners move through a rather systematic process of reconstruction of the language of study. interlanguage is the scientific term used to describe the learners’ interim system of hypotheses about the structure and functioning of the target language that learners build up in their mind as they progress toward communicating with an ever closer-to-standard version of it (white, 2003; brown, 2007). the learners’ successful passage through these interlinguistic stages largely depends on the teachers’ instruction and feedback, a process that can be interpreted as a language-learning version of vygotsky’s zone of proximal development (vygotsky, 1978). learners’ native language greatly influences the development of their communicative competence in a foreign language, as it largely shapes their interlanguage, particularly in its initial stages. this influence is known as the native language effect. according to brown (2007), although the native language both facilitates and interferes with the learning of other languages, the interfering aspect of it is often more easily perceived in class. emerging categories by factors we refer to the conditioning forces that regulate the relations among the constituent elements of the teaching and learning process i.e. teachers, students, methodology, and subject matter (abad & maturana, 2010). internal factors are subjective and relational; they originate in the individuals and shape their classroom roles and relationships. some of them are students’ and teachers’ perceptions, beliefs and attitudes. in a recent study, lópez (2010) established that: (…) teachers’ perceptions are reflected in their attitudes. to be exact, one’s attitudes toward an innovation are the result of the perceptions (and quite possibly misconceptions) that one has about it. (…) [likewise] attitudes (…) are reflected in their behaviours. for example, a positive attitude towards innovation may be reflected by cooperative behaviour while an ambivalent universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras100 abad or negative attitude is likely to be reflected by non-cooperation or even resistance. (p. 64) although also influential, external factors lie to a greater or lesser extent out of the teachers’ and learners’ scope of control. some of them are class time and space, institutionally set curricula, educational policies, and socio-cultural context. with regard to strategies, orlich, harder, callaham, trevisan, and brown (as cited by maturana, 2011) consider them as plans thought out to achieve specific goals. learning strategies are behaviors in which students engage or techniques that they purposely apply to carry out a task or solve a problem (o’malley & chamot, 1990; oxford, 1990). teaching strategies are informed, intentional plans that guide teaching. for cole (2008) they are organized sets of principles that derive from teachers’ experiential or educational knowledge, but which also have relevance in a particular context. teaching strategies tend to be inclusive, so they work with students from different backgrounds; and most importantly, they engage students in their own learning. method researchers conducted the study only at public schools that were part of the “escuelas de calidad” program2 (secretaría de educación de medellín, 2010) in order to increase the likelihood that all participants came from the same socio-economic background, that teachers had had similar opportunities for professional education, and that students had had a similar level of exposure to english both inside of school and out. 2 “escuelas de calidad para la equidad y la convivencia” is a program set up by the secretary of education of medellín in 2005 to assist public schools located in impoverished environments that hence face the greatest educational challenges. the program’s goals include improving the socio-economic conditions of students, providing adequate learning environments, promoting the integral professional development of teachers, strengthening secondary education, and quali fying school administration. so far, 101 schools have been part of the program, and others were in the process of being incorporated to it. four schools from the program agreed to be part of the study. psychologists-researchers applied a battery of six tests to 111 students between nine to 12 years of age3 to measure their psycholinguistic skills. teachersresearchers simultaneously worked with the twelve respective english teachers at the 4 pre-selected schools. out of the twelve teachers interviewed, eleven taught in 4th and 5th grades, and only one taught in 6th grade. all of them have received a college education majoring in teaching. two teachers earned undergraduate degrees in basic education, and nine did it in areas such as spanish, literature, special education, and pedagogy. only the middle school teacher, who was also the only man in the group, majored in english teaching. their general teaching experience ranged from eight to 32 years, and their experience teaching english went from one to 20 years. all teachers except one have studied english through either in-service training arranged by the secretary of education or language lessons at local institutes. for the data collection the teachers first signed a consent form and completed a demographic survey. then, to identify the pedagogical factors that influence english teaching in the participating schools, the researchers applied a semi-structured interview (see appendix) that probed the teachers’ beliefs and perceptions about their own teaching and their students’ learning regarding the three linguistic principles described above. interviews were carried out in sessions of 20 to 30 minutes by different researchers on a one-on-one basis at each of the participating schools. as for the data analysis, interviews were initially recorded and transcribed. transcripts were then analyzed according to burn’s model (1999). researchers 3 the age range was used as a selection criterion because by then students have usually developed essential literacy skills in their native language and should be receiving english instruction at school as part of the mandates of the general education law. 101profile vol. 15, no. 1, april 2013. issn 1657-0790 (printed) 2256-5760 (online). bogotá, colombia. pages 97-108 pedagogical factors that influence efl teaching: some considerations... applied a deductive model to codify the pre-established categories, and an inductive model to classify the emerging ones. once both types of categories had been identified and described, they were subject to group discussions from which the final interpretations emerged. to maximize the validity of the study, researchers applied personal triangulation (denzin, as cited by lacorte, 1999) or investigators’ triangulation (burns, 1999; golafshani, 2003), which refers to the process by which different researchers analyze the same set of data in order to obtain a richer understanding of it while guarding against personal bias. analysis communicative competence, interlanguage and native language effect the teachers who participated in the study have adjusted their teaching to meet their students’ needs, but always within the restrictions set by the school’s curriculum and resources. they perceived the teaching and learning of vocabulary and the repetition of words as strengths, but mentioned aspects such as pronunciation, sentence structure and spelling as weaknesses that spilled over into their classes. from the perspective of developing the communicative competence, researchers concluded that the aforementioned factors have led the teachers in this study to favor organizational knowledge, often to the detriment of pragmatic knowledge. the teachers considered that abilities to analyze sentence structure (syntactic analysis), to reproduce speech sounds (phonemic awareness), and to recognize words in context (receptive vocabulary) were key factors in facilitating language learning. they often observed these skills in their students’ application of strategies such as translating words or phrases, repeating words or sounds, and identifying or coining terms. perceptions of the role of l1 in l2 teaching and learning varied greatly from one teacher to the other. teachers held differing and even opposing views regarding the use of translation and word coinage in the efl classroom. however, all the teachers who participated in this study agreed that a strong general knowledge of the native language facilitates the learning of the foreign language. when asked to consider how spanish as a native language influenced the learning of english, the participating teachers indicated that similarities between the two languages in aspects such as vocabulary and writing facilitated the process, but differences in other aspects such as sentence structure, and the disparity between english spelling and pronunciation made it difficult to learn. partially because of these contrasting differences between both languages, these teachers have focused on teaching the written component of english, while they have disregarded the oral aspect of it. internal pedagogical factors, teaching strategies, and tpd the analysis of the interviews revealed that most of the teachers who participated in the study had a low linguistic ego and a low image of themselves as english teachers. most of the teachers interviewed did not consider themselves to be adequately trained either linguistically or pedagogically to perform as english teachers. despite some english lessons they have taken, they regarded their english proficiency as insufficient and therefore inadequate to teach the language. some of them also emphasized that even though they had received general teaching training, they lacked knowledge regarding the teaching of foreign languages. when the teachers perceived that any of their language skills was insufficient, they usually shied away from teaching it. for instance, if teachers felt their pronunciation was deficient, they avoided teaching it directly, or brought the teaching of it to a minimum. however, in most cases, out of a deep sense universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras102 abad of moral responsibility (lópez, 2010), they resorted to other means such as technology, mass media, or external school aids to compensate for their own deficiencies and hence ensure that their students received significant input in the skills they lacked. we have called these measures compensatory teaching strategies. to illustrate the use of these strategies, one participant commented: i teach my children (…) within my possibilities, for i recognize that i do not have pronunciation or any of those things. i bring them the cd, i play it on the tv, i bring the dvd so they can learn pronunciation, so they won’t learn so many mistakes (from me). (interview 2)4 teachers’ attitudes toward english interplayed with their linguistic ego to determine not only the role they assigned to spanish in their classrooms but also the teaching strategies they used. teachers with a negative attitude towards english saw the learning of the first language as a pre-requisite to learning the second one. in addition, they tended to postpone the teaching of english in favor of teaching spanish. a case in point was a teacher who claimed: “(…) from a political standpoint, i think that teaching english is playing the game of a superpower that has done whatever it has wanted with the underdeveloped south american countries, so teaching english is not appealing to me” (interview 6)5. later she commented: “i told my students that if they did not know how to use spanish in its most basic form, i was not going to mess with english.”6 4 “yo les dicto la clase a mis muchachos (…) dentro de mis posibilidades, pues reconozco que no tengo pronunciación ni nada de esas cosas. yo les traigo el cd, se los pongo en el televisor, traigo dvd para que aprendan pronunciación, para que no aprendan tantos errores.” 5 “(…) desde la posición política me parece que (enseñar inglés) es seguirle el juego a una potencia que ha hecho con los países suramericanos subdesarrollados lo que les da la gana [sic], entonces no me llama la atención el inglés.” 6 “yo les dije (a los estudiantes) que si no sabían manejar en la forma más básica el español, que yo no me iba a meter con el inglés”. in contrast, teachers with a receptive and open attitude towards english saw the learning of the first and the second language as complementary processes that could take place simultaneously. they applied rudimentary elements of contrastive linguistics and turned to translation whenever they deemed it fitting to facilitate students’ learning. furthermore, even when they had a low linguistic ego, they were more likely to resort to compensatory teaching strategies. on another note, when teachers combined a receptive attitude towards english with a high linguistic ego, they tended to see the frequent use of spanish translation in the class as a negative practice that hindered communication and slowed down learning. in this respect one teacher said: “(…) we teach our students to translate too much, and this is a very serious and fatal mistake.”7 finally, it is worth noting that all the elementary school teachers were emphatic about the need to hire professionally trained english teachers to do the job instead of themselves, and that they traced their sense of inadequacy as language teachers back to deficiencies in their professional training and development. indeed, despite their differing positions as regards english and its teaching, they highlighted professional development as a crucial factor in defining the quality of their teaching. this was better stated by one of the participant teachers when she described a training course she had taken: look, we did an english course, we had a wonderful time, we laughed a lot (…) we did a portfolio and that was spectacular, and we finished off with an integration party. it was really nice, yes, but the experience here in the classroom, how do you bring that experience into the classroom? i think that we have to go beyond, so the teacher is trained in cognitive processes, in that part of how the child learns english. (interview, teacher 2)8 7 “(…) le enseñamos a los muchachos a traducir mucho, y eso es un error gravísimo y fatal.” 8 “vea, nosotros hicimos un curso de inglés, pasamos delicioso, nos reímos increíble (…) hicimos un portafolio y eso fue un 103profile vol. 15, no. 1, april 2013. issn 1657-0790 (printed) 2256-5760 (online). bogotá, colombia. pages 97-108 pedagogical factors that influence efl teaching: some considerations... discussion teachers in public elementary schools find it difficult to define communicative competence and may not necessarily be aware of its components as they were presented in this article. however, they are aware of the necessity to teach their students different aspects of the language in a way that responds to their interests and needs. this finding coincides with what gonzález (2008) found out in her own attempt to explore teachers’ beliefs and practices around the notion of communicative competence. the adequate development of students’ interlanguage hinges on both their personal attitudes and their psycholinguistic skills. the development of those skills over time could be tied to the learning strategies students apply, whose effectiveness and recurrence depend on the feedback they receive from their teachers. for instance, the use of translation could be an indication of the ability of students to perceive syntactical and semantic nuances in both languages. but if the teacher decidedly forbids this practice in all instances of the classroom, then students will feel discouraged to do it, and they will eventually do it less–at least in the presence of the teacher–and not as effectively as they could. this is by no means an apologia for the use of translation in the english classroom. however, in consonance with other authors (brown, 2007; o’malley & chamot, 1990), we concluded that teachers should assume the strategies that students apply on their own as windows that open up into their cognition. from that perspective, teachers will be better prepared to assess the conditions in which those strategies may favor learning. teachers’ self-image regarding their linguistic ego, their view of themselves as foreign language teachers, cuento espectacular y terminamos en integración. fue muy rica, sí, pero la experiencia aquí en el aula, ¿cómo trae uno esa experiencia al aula? yo creo que hay que ir más allá, en que el docente también se capacite en los procesos cognitivos, en esa parte de cómo el niño aprende el inglés.” and their attitudes toward the language they teach play a key role in defining what goes on in the classroom. teachers’ internal dispositions to teach, nonetheless, do not occur in a vacuum but in relation to external factors that set the conditions for teaching and learning. teaching is shaped by the society in which it occurs. from government authorities, to school administrative staff, to students’ families, different strands of society influence the work of teachers. cultural tides also alter the paths of teaching. the status of english as a foreign language is never neutral; it stems from cultural, historical, political and economic forces that operate at local and global levels (crystal, 2003). some teachers are critical about how these forces have operated to position english within their society and how english is used accordingly. this personal attitude towards english affects their view of themselves as english teachers, and ultimately, their teaching practice. english teachers in medellín public schools are a case in point. as presented in the previous section, some teachers hold a resistant position toward english whereas others are more receptive to it. through the analysis of these trends, we found that the role that teachers assign to l1 in the classroom is directly linked to both their personal attitude towards and their linguistic ego in l2. it is important to bear in mind that teachers in colombian public elementary schools often perform multiple teaching functions. whether they like it or not, they usually end up teaching english along with all the other areas of the curriculum. in this context, those teachers who have a high cultural resistance towards english and a low linguistic ego are more likely to privilege teaching in the mother tongue and to view it as a prerequisite to learn english. furthermore, as a result of this thinking, some of them may even overlook the teaching of the foreign language altogether. the class dynamics changes when teachers hold an open and embracing attitude towards english. in those cases, they tend universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras104 abad to view the learning of l1 and l2 as complementary processes that can take place simultaneously, and, in the face of personal limitations regarding linguistic knowledge, they are more inclined to use compensatory teaching strategies to ensure their students’ learning. conclusion teachers’ linguistic ego, their self-image as english teachers and their beliefs as regards the status of english in the local culture play a fundamental but often inadvertent role in efl teaching. teachers with a low linguistic ego tend to shy away from teaching the language skills they lack. as a result, many english teachers in colombian public schools may wind up favoring organizational knowledge over pragmatic knowledge and textual skills over oral skills. however, out of an admirable sense of moral responsibility, some teachers make use of compensatory teaching strategies to ensure that their students receive significant input in aspects of the language in which they are not sufficiently competent. teachers’ attitudes and perceptions concerning english also determine the role they assign to the native language in their classrooms. provided that most teachers in colombian public elementary schools teach all subjects, those with a resistant attitude to ward and a low linguistic ego in the foreign language tend to see l1 as a prerequisite to learn l2, and to favor the use of strategies such as translation. on the contrary, teachers with a responsive attitude and a high linguistic ego tend to see the learning of both languages as complementary processes, and to play down the use of translation. in any case, it is preponderant that efl teachers learn to observe and validate the strategies that their students use on their own, as their feedback as teachers affects the recurrence and effectiveness with which students will use those strategies in the long haul. teachers’ attitude toward english derives not only from their self-image as english teachers but also from the perception they have of the status of english in their local culture. teachers with strong negative feelings toward english may avoid teaching it, even if they are expected to do so. on the other hand, when teachers have a positive disposition toward english, they are more prone to seek and apply teaching strategies that promote language learning, even if they have a low linguistic ego. educational authorities and school administrators should keep these elements in mind when they select and appoint english teachers for their schools. finally, foreign language teachers’ professional development has the potential to reshape not only the teachers’ linguistic and pedagogical competences, but also their self-image in relation to language teaching, and their attitudes with regard to the language they teach. efl teachers are not mere technicians who replicate prescribed curricula or who enact imposed policies, but autonomous professionals who exercise personal and political agency with varying degrees of awareness. hence, in order to be effective, tpd programs should go beyond sporadic and cosmetic teacher training and consistently prompt teachers to delve deeper into the social and personal conditions that shape their roles and identities. although these programs should most certainly include pedagogical and linguistic aspects of language teaching, they should also help teachers tap into the perceptions and beliefs underlying their teaching, particularly those that affect their linguistic ego, their view of their teaching role, and their political and personal attitudes toward the foreign languages they teach. only through judicious and regular reflection upon such factors can teachers be enlightened as to the affective underpinnings of their teaching, and only then can they successfully make the necessary adjustments to improve their practice. 105profile vol. 15, no. 1, april 2013. issn 1657-0790 (printed) 2256-5760 (online). bogotá, colombia. pages 97-108 pedagogical factors that influence efl teaching: some considerations... references abad, j., & maturana. l. 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(2010). colegios de calidad para la equidad y la convivencia. retrieved from http://www.medellin.edu.co/sites/educativo/laeducaciontransforma/paginas/escuelasdecalidadparalaequidadylaconvivencia.aspx usma, j. (2009). education and language policy in colombia: exploring processes of inclusion, exclusion, and stratification in times of global reform. profile issues in teachers’ professional development, 11(1) 123-141. vygotsky, l. s. (1978). mind and society: the development of higher mental processes. cambridge, ma: harvard. white, l. (2003). on the nature of interlanguage representation: universal grammar in the second language. in c. j. doughty, & m. h. long (eds.), the handbook of second language acquisition (pp. 19-42). malden, ma: blackwell. about the author josé vicente abad holds a b.a. and a specialization in teaching english from universidad pontificia bolivariana (medellín, colombia) and a med from saint mary’s university (usa). he currently works as an english teacher, teacher educator and researcher at fundación universitaria luis amigó (colombia). his research interests include evaluation and teachers’ professional development. 107profile vol. 15, no. 1, april 2013. issn 1657-0790 (printed) 2256-5760 (online). bogotá, colombia. pages 97-108 pedagogical factors that influence efl teaching: some considerations... appendix: semi-structured interview interview for english teachers9 fundación universitaria luis amigó pedagogical and psycholinguistic factors that favor the learning of english as a foreign language facultad de psicología y ciencias sociales y grupo cilex construcciones investigativas en lenguas extranjeras (school of psychology and social sciences and cilex research group construcciones investigativas en lenguas extranjeras) purpose: the purpose of this interview is to find out about the perceptions and beliefs that english teachers in grades 4, 5 and 6 hold about communicative competence, native language effect and interlanguage as pedagogical factors that influence the learning of english. i. communicative competence a. beliefs 1. what is english for you? 2. what is english teaching for you? 3. what does teaching english entail? b. strategies 1. how do you recognize those students who have an aptitude to learn english and those who have difficulties in doing it? 2. do you adapt your teaching in any way based on those differences? 3. what adaptations do you make? c. factors 1. what factors favor the learning of english? 2. how do you perceive those factors in your classroom? 3. what factors encumber the learning of english? 4. how do you perceive those factors in your classroom? 5. do you believe that spanish is a factor that influences the learning of english? 6. do you perceive any relation between the contents studied in the spanish class and the contents studied in the english class? 7. how has spanish favored or encumbered your own learning of english? 8. how do you perceive the effect that spanish has on your students’ learning of english? 9 the original interview was conducted in spanish, but it has been translated for the purpose of this publication. universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras108 abad ii. mother tongue and interlanguage in psycholinguistic factors a. syntactic analysis 1. how do you perceive the native language effect on your students’ construction of sentences? (e.g. omitting the subject, pluralizing adjectives, reversing the nounadjective order) 2. how do you perceive your students’ development in using english-specific grammar structures? (e.g. using auxiliaries in questions and negative statements) b. phonemic awareness 1. how do you perceive the native language effect on your students’ pronunciation of english? (e.g. students tend to pronounce every letter they see or to reproduce spanish sounds as they read english words) 2. how do you perceive the transition of your students from producing sounds in their native language to producing english-specific sounds? (e.g. the sound of “th” in words like “thanks”, or the sound of “sh” in words like “shoe”) c. semantic analysis 1. how do you perceive the effect of native language on your students’ appropriation and use of english vocabulary? (e.g. through the use of false friends or real friends, or the coinage of words using spanish roots and english suffixes) 2. how do you perceive your students’ transition in the process of selecting and using vocabulary in context? (e.g. learning to use the definite article [the] in english, or learning vocabulary about specific topics like the family or the human body) do you have any final question or comment? thank you for your time and willingness to contribute to this research study. 29profile vol. 14, no. 2, october 2012. issn 1657-0790 (printed) 2256-5760 (online). bogotá, colombia. pages 29-43 identity of the teacher-researcher in collaborative action research: concerns reflected in a research journal la identidad del docente investigador en la investigación acción colaborativa: preocupaciones reflejadas en un diario de investigación darío luis banegas* university of warwick, uk & ministry of education of chubut, argentina in this paper i report the insights of my personal research journal as part of a collaborative action research project i facilitated in a secondary school where i teach english as a foreign language. i kept a journal so as to offer the natural history of my research towards my doctoral degree. in this project i worked together with four participating teachers but i assumed a complex identity as i was a teacher researcher i.e. doctoral researcher and a teacher. this entailed different roles and interests which generated opportunities and tensions. qualitative analysis of my journal reveals complex concerns at different levels which signal the individual struggles of a teacher-researcher involved in collaboration. key words: collaborative action research, journal writing, teacher-researcher identity. en este artículo presento un reporte de mis reflexiones sobre mi diario de investigación, que usé como parte de un proyecto de investigación-acción colaborativo que propicié en una escuela secundaria donde enseño inglés como lengua extranjera. llevé un diario con miras a ofrecer la historia natural de mi proyecto de doctorado. en este proyecto trabajé junto a otros cuatro docentes participantes y asumí una identidad compleja ya que fui docente investigador y docente participante. esto implicó diferentes roles e intereses que generaron tanto experiencias positivas como tensiones con mis colegas. el análisis cualitativo de mi diario revela preocupaciones complejas en diferentes niveles y señala las luchas individuales del docente investigador involucrado en colaboración. palabras clave: escritura de diarios, identidad del docente investigador, investigación acción colaborativa. * e-mail: dariobanegas@hotmail.com this article was received on december 27, 2011, and accepted on may 22, 2012. universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras30 banegas introduction in educational research, there are usually tensions between university-based researchers and teachers. such tensions may widen the gap between theory and practice or the feelings of lack of applicability that educational research may put forward for those in the classroom (kiely & davis, 2010). this perceived gap may be bridged if the classroom becomes a space of convergence for academics’ as well as teachers’ interests and needs through which educational reforms and implementations may be seen as a negotiated agenda (wedell, 2009). teachers should not be perceived as mere implementers but as knowledge generators (johnson & golombek, 2011; lópez-pastor, monjas, & manrique, 2011). therefore, classrooms within classroom research (vergara luján, hernández gaviria, & cárdenas ramos, 2009) could be regarded as ideal laboratories to test educational theories and produce new insights (borg, 2010; pica, 2005; stenhouse, 1981). furthermore, action research (ar) may become a powerful research methodology to encourage teacher research as well as collaborative work among teachers and researchers (banegas, 2011; borg, 2010; ellis, 2010; swantz, 2008) in order to promote reflective practice and collaborative professional development (burns, 2005b; elliot, 2009; glenn, 2011; koshy, 2010; mann, 2005; somekh, 2006). such a socially constructed stance implies that ar is participatory by nature (jones & stanley, 2010; koshy, 2010; reason & bradbury, 2008). nevertheless, this collaborative process towards reflective and effective practices rooted in classroom research may generate tensions among participating teachers and researchers as their dynamic identities may challenge naturalised practices or institutional relationships. in this paper i will report the insights of my personal research journal as part of a collaborative action research (car) project i facilitated in a secondary school where i teach english as a foreign language. this project of one academic year aimed at developing and implementing language-driven clil (content and language integrated learning) through teacher-developed materials and context-responsive contents. in this project i worked on a team of four participating teachers but my identity was more complex than that of the others as i was both a teacher and a researcher pursuing doctoral studies. needless to say, this identity entailed different roles and different interests which generated opportunities and tensions between the participating teachers and me. i kept a journal so as to offer the natural history of my research (silverman, 2010, pp. 334-336) towards my doctoral degree and development as an independent researcher. i was interested in answering two questions based on my journal: • what kind of entries did my journal feature? • in what ways did my identity as a teacherresearcher appear in the journal? collaborative action research in theory, collaborative action research (car) is expected to be a bottom-up process in which research demands and issues emerge from teachers rather than from researchers wishing to impose their own agendas (dörnyei, 2007, pp. 191-192; locke & riley, 2009). after all, car aims at overcoming the distance between researchers, reform-makers or policy makers (banegas, 2011; frederiksen & beck, 2010, pp. 136-139) and teachers (allwright, 2005; ellis, 2010, pp. 184 -185; freeman & johnson, 1998) or the western body-mind divide (somekh & zeichner, 2009). however, in practice we may find constant negotiation and compromise for a common goal since teachers and researchers must act within their institutions and therefore negotiate with institutional gatekeepers as well (gewirtz, shapiro, maguire, mahony, & cribb, 2009; waters, 2009). 31profile vol. 14, no. 2, october 2012. issn 1657-0790 (printed) 2256-5760 (online). bogotá, colombia. pages 29-43 identity of the teacher-researcher in collaborative action research... when the results derived from these opportunities are fed back into educational systems, car empowers not only teachers but also the institution as a whole (burns, 1999; rainey, 2011) with the aim of renewing programmes and broader curriculum changes (altrichter & posch, 2009; burns, 1999, 2005a, 2005b). put simply, car is crucial as teachers are not only the best people to carry out research on their own practices (van lier, 1994) but also the vital agents of change in any educational policies to be implemented regardless of their scale. the changes initiated by teachers may start with a socio-constructivist approach which affects their local context but then extends to other domains thus becoming a more socio-political approach which may underpin the renewal of educational systems (burns, 2005b). in relation to car projects and personal experience, these share common aims: teacher reflection, reflective practice (burns, 2010; taylor, rudolph, & foldy, 2008, pp. 658-662) and professional engagement (burns, 2005a; goodnough, 2010; moloney, 2009; pérez, soto, & serván, 2010) for improvement of classroom settings (brooks-lewis, 2010). collaborative partnerships may be formed by (1) teachers at the grassroots level, that is, teachers with or without knowledge of research methodology (feldman & weiss, 2010, pp. 31-32), (2) teachers linked up with university-based researchers to delineate and develop a project together (bruce, flynn, & stagg-peterson, 2011; gewirtz et al., 2009; rainey, 2011, stewart, 2006), and (3) a group of schoolbased teachers in which one has a dual identity of teacher-researcher (li, 2006; somekh, 2006; wiesemes, 2002) due to postgraduate studies, personal interests, or a part-time position in higher education. whatever the research group formation, teachers’ professional development and their active role should lead all actions in order to ensure the demo cratic validity, acceptance and commitment over time of any car project (somekh, 2010; somekh & zeichner, 2009; wells, 2009). identities among teachers and teacher-researchers in situations where the collaborative partnership occurs in a group of teachers where one is also a phd researcher, as it was my personal experience, it may be argued that initially there may be no issues of power or dominance since the researcher is also a teacher, more specifically, a colleague who is part of the institution in which the car project is put into motion. under these circumstances, teacher identities may not need to be re-examined. we may agree that teacher identity is usually granted when colleagues, students and other members of the community regard a teacher as a professional of teaching constantly developing and investing in teaching (clarke, 2009; norton & toohey, 2011). from this stance, a teacher who is perceived as such i.e. as a teacher may become a co-constructor of his/her own professional development through individual and collective actions (benson, 2007; ding, 2009, pp. 66-67) which will enhance teacher autonomy (benson, 2010). for example, wyatt (2011b) provides an account of a teacher whose practical knowledge in materials design, autonomy, and confidence grew as a result of an action research experience which enhanced his identity as a professional teacher. through a three-year action research project, goodnough (2010) aimed at understanding teachers’ modes of belonging and how they construct and deconstruct their identity when they become engaged in teacher-centred action research. in her study 50 teachers became part of a wider project which sought to improve science across the curriculum. results showed that the partici pating teachers saw themselves as creators of knowledge. these teachers realised how their universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras32 banegas teaching improved through car, a point noted in van lier (1994), thus taking responsible ownership (kiely & davis, 2010) of car findings and implications. goodnough (2010) notes that her role was multi-faceted ranging from teacher to researcher; however, she stresses her role as a facilitator of the action research process. i compare her role to mine as i intended to be a teacher-researcher facili tating the generation of knowledge for and from our classrooms. the need to investigate the teacher-researcher identity could be carried through narrative accounts such as journals as a tool for knowledge building and professional development. focusing on teacher enquiry, johnson and golombek (2011) explain that narrative as a mediator has three functions: (1) as externalisation, (2) as verbalisation, and (3) as systematic examination. in other words, teachers start to mean a concept when it has entered into a dialogic relationship with their teaching experiences, thus understanding the concept on the one hand, and making sense of teachers’ practices on the other. a multi-case study carried out by wyatt (2011a) investigated the benefits of teachers researching their own practices through ar. results derived from observations, interviews, and participants’ narratives showed that teachers became conscious of their achievements in helping others while simultaneously developing research skills. in addition, the narratives collected also indicated the rewarding and motivating nature of the research experience. all in all, teachers’ self-awareness of their potential, internal theories and naturalised practices helped them become more autonomous and reflective with others thus strengthening their identities as teachers looking into their own teaching. similarly, bruce et al. (2011) found out that teachers involved in car experienced shifts in their teaching perspectives and practices, increased their efficacy and developed an ability to overcome challenges. these studies seem to indicate that teacher identity is revitalised when teachers are involved in teacher research. in a similar vein, teachers who aspire to become researchers may also want to be perceived as such by their colleagues, not only at school but also in other educational spheres without losing the identity of being teachers. i may contend that teacher-researchers may not want to be seen as teachers doing research but as teachers and researchers in their own right. teacher-researchers may assume the identity of facilitators in the sense that they may organise meetings, lead car cycles and stages, provide input materials for their colleagues with which to create knowledge (avgitidou, 2010; goodnough, 2010) but simultaneously ensuring that research standards and methodologies are observed. in addition, these teacher-researchers are also teachers and therefore may be part of the teachers wishing to introduce changes locally. the question is to what extent these teacher-researchers behave like teachers and to what extent they prioritise their personal agendas and aims as researchers. therefore, i was interested in investigating my own journal to see how my reflections about being a teacher and a teacher-action researcher (jove, 2011) shed light upon my identities in tandem. the study in 2011, a group of four english language teachers and i decided to explore the benefits of language-driven clil (coyle, hood, & marsh, 2010; dalton-puffer, 2011; kiely, 2011) through car at the secondary school where we worked together in argentina. our aim was to develop contextresponsive pedagogies that met the demands of our students by employing our own developed materials and relevant topics the students had suggested. due to our aim of reflecting and acting on our 33profile vol. 14, no. 2, october 2012. issn 1657-0790 (printed) 2256-5760 (online). bogotá, colombia. pages 29-43 identity of the teacher-researcher in collaborative action research... practices, i suggested car as the most meaningful research methodology to use. as i was a teacher and had started my doctoral studies, we agreed that this project would be my phd research and the basis of other studies and publications. due to my own studies, i was on a study leave, which meant that i would teach only those lessons related to our car project. in terms of identities, i was the researcher and one of the participating teachers at the same time. therefore, our personal interests, time availability, and gains were different. while my colleagues would grow professionally as teachers, i would obtain a doctoral degree. in addition, while my fellow teachers still taught all their regular classes plus the new language-driven clil lessons, i only taught the latter in just one class as it was the only possible way which could allow me to observe my colleagues’ lessons. the car project spread over one school year (march-december 2011) and it included three cycles. each cycle consisted of the following stages: problem identification, action (lesson planning and materials development), intervention (teaching clil lessons with our own materials), and evaluation. as regards data collection methods, we concurred that i would obtain data through audio-recorded individual and group interviews, classroom observations, staff meetings, and student surveys so as to evaluate our classroom performances and suggest possible paths for exploration. in addition and following burns (2010), i also kept a personal research journal so as to record my own insights, questions, and reflections. this paper is based on that journal. the research journal: first approximations i kept my journal in english even though spanish is my l1, and as a word document. i believe i used english as i was engaged in teaching and on-going data analysis simultaneously and therefore felt more comfortable if all my writing was in english. although i re-read the journal several times during the research process, i never edited my entries and therefore many entries (e.g. extract 4) contain language mistakes. initially, i sought to write a daily entry as i believed that being systematic was a key element in my own development and teacher-researcher identity. nevertheless, my journal featured only 48 entries which amounted to 6,661 words. as i explained above, the car project consisted of three cycles. following each cycle i wrote 36 entries during cycle 1, 6 during cycle 2, and 6 again during cycle 3. i first classified these entries formally (a) as a teacher, (b) as a researcher, and (c) as a teacherresearcher. each classification was represented by 15, 23, and 10 entries, respectively. in general my entries as a researcher were the most dominant in cycle 1 only. this may be due to the fact that my identity as a teacher was strong from an institutional point of view after having taught for 10 years. however, i was a novice researcher and thus i needed to find spaces for exploring and understanding the responsibilities and implications of this new identity in relation to my phd research and my colleagues. in addition, cycle 1 was a novelty to everyone involved in the project and i had not started analysing data yet. i felt that once i managed my ‘under con struction’ identity as a researcher, i stopped writing journal entries as i must admit that my teaching interests and commitments increased. it may also be said that my journal entries decreased because i had started analysing the data collected and therefore spent more time as a researcher drafting the different chapters of my doctoral thesis. at the time i felt that i did not need to continue writing in my journal because my reflections and analyses were in my drafted chapters. universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras34 banegas however, i then noticed that this classification did not explore the contents of my journal further as i could not split the organic relationship within my teacher-researcher identity. when i revisited my journal for the writing of this article, i felt that many of my accounts as a teacher had been informed by knowledge from my formal education as a phd researcher. on the other hand, many of my decisions as a phd researcher had been determined by my classroom experience as a teacher. i then noticed that my journal entries could fit into three categories according to entry functions: (a) as event reminders (e.g. extract 1), (b) as reflections on action (e.g. extract 2), and (c) as concerns for action (e.g. extract 3). category (a) included factual information of events which took place in the classroom during my roles as a teacher and as a classroom observer as well as factual information about time and place of interviews. in category (b) i grouped those reflections and examinations of my own lessons and initial thoughts about data as i was involved in the process of transcribing interviews or typing field notes. last, category (c) comprised those entries which helped me focus on my concerns so as to plan future courses of action regarding data instruments of the car project and lessons. extract 1: topics: year 1: drugs year 2: nazis year 3: abortion (15 june 2011) extract 2: the lesson started off ok, but as time went by the debate got diluted and i could see that i was losing them and i couldn’t react. finally the voting sort of attracted their attention. i skipped the table and the note-taking thing as i had noticed that it hadn’t quite worked the previous lesson. therefore, i just let each rep talk and i would sum up their ideas on the board. (12 september 2011) extract 3: i’m beginning to think that one of the issues we will have is this clash of interests, between teachers and students, to what extent do we need to compromise in coming cycles? how to teach them responsibility, agency, that is, active participation (you can have your say, but you need to do sthg once we accept to give you a more active role, more interesting lesson involve that you participate more). (12 april 2011) i was surprised to see how my mind worked in the sense that my entries were either reminders of events or reflections on action, or concerns about the future development of the car project. table 1 shows the number of entries for each cycle. table 1 may show that in my constructing identity as a teacher-researcher, i felt inclined to write about my reflections and concerns about the overall project and data analysis. i noticed that most of my entries, and written concerns in particular, emerged during cycle 1 probably because i was at the beginning of my phd project. in this sense, the journal became a powerful supporting tool. however, once i was happy with the car project and i started with my data analysis, i stopped feeling the table 1. categorisation of entries according to function as event reminders as reflections on action as concerns for action total cycle 1 5 10 21 36 cycle 2 1 2 3 6 cycle 3 1 3 2 6 total 7 15 26 35profile vol. 14, no. 2, october 2012. issn 1657-0790 (printed) 2256-5760 (online). bogotá, colombia. pages 29-43 identity of the teacher-researcher in collaborative action research... need to resort to my journal to remember, reflect, or think ahead. while my entries as event reminders and reflections on action were part of my thesis writeup already, i became interested in examining my concerns for action and how these constructed my identity as a teacher-researcher. the research journal: concerns as a teacher-researcher i believed that my teacher-researcher identity was mostly characterised by my concerns for action and therefore my journal was a scaffolding tool to express my worries and anxieties. in order to discover the most relevant themes within category (c), that is, concerns for action, i resorted to inductive coding paying attention to common patterns, recurrent themes and words (nunan & bailey, 2009, p. 416). i then elaborated thematic categories and networks for thematic analysis (attride-stirling, 2001; braun & clarke, 2006; riessman, 2008, pp. 53-76). i used mindmeister software (www.mindmeister.com) for thematic network visualisation. the following figure (figure 1) illustrates my thematic analysis: as i suggested above, i believe that my journal was a collection of concerns about my complex identity as a teacher-researcher. although it was impossible or contrived to separate my identities and match them to specific entries, my concerns could still be placed along a continuum which showed whether these were more teacher/classroom-driven or researcher/phd-driven. in some of my entries, i wrote ‘now, in my phd mode’ particularly when i was concerned about data collection and analysis. as a teacher, i was concerned with reinforcing my identity as a successful and effective teacher given the fact that i was the ‘specialist’ in clil and therefore felt that my lessons had to be models, especially for the participating teachers observing my performance in the classroom. however, this concern was also influenced by my phd studies since i wanted to show that my doctorate research did have a direct impact on my classroom practice: extract 4: in my lesson for next week i need to show c that in clil activities have to follow bloom’s taxonomy and that content can’t be trivial. how? maybe i need to do more research about what the students know and don’t know about rock music and the cold war. need figure 1. thematic network derived from my research journal my teacher-researcher identity concerns as a teacher lesson planning materials development car schedule dominance as a researcher exposing colleagues role as a ‘specialist’ teachers’ autonomy concerns as a researcher universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras36 banegas to make sure that i provide her with good examples of activities based on authentic input. she doesn’t know clil. she has too see that thru me j. (10 may 2011) on the other hand, whether my entries referred to lesson planning or materials development (extract 5), my reflections aimed at planning my future actions based on self-evaluating my past performances and bearing in mind my time availability (extract 6) and stress (extract 7): extract 5: i’ve spent and enjoyed two days finding sources, selecting them, planning activities, calling r to provide me with more insights about american rock. of course all this is wonderful but it’s not real. i can personally do it because i’m almost doing this and that’s all. i’m a comfy position now, i don’t have to be running from one school to the next and spending my day marking exams. i’m at home sipping coffee, enjoying my place and working leisurely and if i want, i can devote a whole day to doing this only. (19 may 2011) extract 6: today i’ve started planning the lessons i’ve got to teach next week and i wonder whether i should plan them as if i were a full-time teacher or not. my point is that now i’ve got more time to devote to planning, adapting the coursebook, selecting and i can’t help it, i mean, i want to deliver ‘the’ lesson. however, i then need to bear in mind that the situation is not that normal in the sense that i’ll teach these two lessons only. something to definitely consider when analysing the data from observations and feedback from stu. (6 april 2011) extract 7: today it was my lesson 1 of the second cycle. i don’t know, i didn’t feel the same drive as in cycle 1. maybe i’m getting tired. overworking? maybe…the song was ok; however i noticed that the gaps were rather difficult for them. discussion was ok among groups and this idea of a representative was good for better organisation within each group. the activity about dr thomas was ok for the students realised about the issue themselves with little intervention from my part. good! (5 september 2011) firstly, the extracts above show the rather natural concerns of any teacher in relation to professional development and good practices. as a novice researcher, secondly, i was becoming aware of the influence of my phd researcher identity on my teacher identity. because i was on a study leave to pursue my doctoral degree, i had more time available for lesson planning than the other participating teachers. more importantly, i had invested interests since my belief was that the better my lessons, the more positive the data would be so that i could provide evidence of language-driven clil effectiveness. in other words, i needed to be alert to my personal motivations when analysing my classroom data. one concern was related to some unavoidable issues which forced me to reschedule and modify the data collection methods. in some cases, teachers’ limited free time (extract 8), teacher absences, national holidays, school meetings or my first experience with transcribing and coding recorded interviews (extract 9) required that some stages be extended because i had to postpone interviews and classroom observations: extract 8: now, i’ve got another challenge, to arrange a time for us three teachers to meet for my first focus group interview. i hope we can do it this week, let’s see how that goes. i’ll try to shut up. (4 april 2011) extract 9: after lunch i started with the transcription. panicked and some decisions to make. checked the different templates k. had given us and decided to use the one with numbered lines, names, text and room for comments. it’s taking me way way longer than expected as there’s too much overlap and broken sentences. i’m trying to jot down some ideas just in case i lose them. transcribing, i feel more at ease now. there might be problems with my classroom observations next week as there will be general school meetings to discuss the new secondary 37profile vol. 14, no. 2, october 2012. issn 1657-0790 (printed) 2256-5760 (online). bogotá, colombia. pages 29-43 identity of the teacher-researcher in collaborative action research... education system to be implemented from next year. i will have to reschedule observations. (8 april 2011) my journal also revealed personal concerns in my role as a teacher-researcher and the imposition of my own agenda and personal beliefs over my colleagues, a feeling that i also sensed in extract 4. the following extracts (extracts 10 and 11) may be an example of my reflections on not trying to influence my fellow teachers so that their actions would not be replications of my own, even when i felt that my practices had to be taken as models for theirs (extract 4). in addition, i did not want them to feel that i would evaluate or assess their performance i.e. i had to refrain from being judgmental: extract 10: don’t know now whether to follow them [participating teachers’ opinions] up in the one-to-one interviews. what if my asking for clarification/unpacking makes them change their mind or say something different because i may be signalling that i don’t agree with them? hmm. (8 april 2011) extract 11: we don’t think the school is a good place to actually produce the materials. we’ll work at home and then get together for a round-up of how we want to do them. i tried no to influence them, that is, i said that the materials could take any form, they could be a worksheet (my style) or like loose activities like the ones they developed. (12 may 2011) in relation to my concerns and dominance as a researcher, i sometimes felt that there existed a personal struggle within my teacher-researcher identity about power control at an internal, intramental level since my classroom-driven concerns would in fact determine many of my phd concerns. i also felt that my researcher-driven concerns influenced my teacher identity in my lessons (extract 6). conversely, i also felt that my established teacherself took over and i experienced internal conflicts in my own professional development. on two occasions, i wrote entries which seemed to indicate my belief that i could keep my teacher and researcher interests separate rather than viewing my teacher-researcher identity as a complex and rich opportunity for personal and social development. in this struggle i thought that my teacher identity had won over my researcher identity (extracts 12 and 13), thus impeding systematic data collection as planned: extract 12: today’s mistake: entered the classroom with my teacher’s mind rather than my researcher’s mind and i forgot to switch on the recorder. i missed the recap section of my lesson where the stu [students] provided a summary of the main things we had done previously. (13 june 2011) extract 13: lesson 1: today i taught this lesson which i forgot to record. quack. (17 october 2011) the inherent tensions of being a teacherresearcher generated dissonance with one of the participating teachers. as extract 14 shows, ‘c’ started the project willingly and was happy to observe my own teaching performance and provide me with constructive feedback following the pro forma document i had developed for data collection: extract 14: c offered to observe me and she asked me whether we could meet some time this week so that we talk more about this stage of the ar. (4 april 2011) however, after the second lesson that she observed, i noticed that she had become distant and avoided observing my lessons. at some point i asked her whether there were any issues but she limited herself to say ‘con vos trabajan mejor’ [the students work better with you]. simultaneously, the universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras38 banegas students began to voice their concerns about c’s practices and compared hers to mine. i felt that my presence and teacher-researcher identity had originated ethical issues as i was exposing c or perhaps making my lessons look better than hers. this was partially due to the fact that i had invested interests in the project and more time available. at the end of cycle 1, i wrote: excerpt 15: i told eand this is an issue i’ll need to raise later, that my presence in a class which is not mine, i mean, where i don’t teach regularly is causing tension with the regular teacher. she uses the mainstream coursebook and follows the syllabus. i teach with my own materials now and then and now the students think i’m great and that their teacher is not great. she’s being criticised. it’s not her fault, it’s just that i have the time and it’s part of the car. (17 june 2011) before the beginning of cycle 2, this teacher withdrew from the project and avoided all staff meetings as we used them to socialise our students’ evaluations of our practices. this situation affected me as i was going through a personal struggle. i wanted to be seen as a regular teacher but, after all, my professional development signalled that now i was a teacher specialising in clil and working towards a doctoral degree in applied linguistics. when we started developing our own materials, i wrote: excerpt 16: as i was going thru it, i began to observe my let’s say selfish, extrascientific interests in this car project. because i want things to go right i went to the first meeting armed with sources: wikipedia, articles from magazines, print outs for everyone, videos. my role is input/sources provider which is fine as i’ve got more time than my colleagues to do this and to be honest we’ve usually worked this way, why shouldn’t i do it now? my second intervention was that all handouts and photocopies for our students will be paid by me as i want to make sure money so to speak is not an issue. this is not usual but i don’t care as long as we know it’s for a good cause and everyone’s happy with it. (15 may) this personal development generated internal tensions in me, which became major concerns for action. on the one hand, i did not want to influence my colleagues for the sake of our car project’s success and personal gains (extracts 10-11), but on the other hand, i felt that i had to pursue my own motivations. furthermore, i believed that i was ethically supposed to guide them and voice my opinions more freely as an ordinary teacher but also as a specialist. in so doing, i would be helping my colleagues develop professionally and thus become, in my eyes, a true facilitator (extract 16). when i lived these tensions i decided to stop refraining myself from participating and began to feel the need to be more active in our recorded staff meetings (extracts 17 and 18): extract 17: this time i talked more. somehow i also need to record what i think and i must share it with the others so that they know what i think. (4 may 2011) extract 18: i shared my own reflections about developing materials because a wanted to know my views as a clil man. s did the same too. (2 june 2011) lastly, another aspect of my concerns about tensions in my complex identity arose when i mistakenly believed that my colleagues’ autonomy could affect the arranged development of the car project. under this view, my concerns as a teacherresearcher signalled that their autonomy, which in fact reflected the collaborative, democratic and bottom-up nature of our project, could limit my own autonomy and personal plans: extract 19: to some extent, s’s plan sort of advances what i have in mind for may and june but i’m not sure to what extent it’s intimate to the ar project as this is more of an individual endeavour to fight this lack of motivation and interest s perceives in her class. (19 april 2011) 39profile vol. 14, no. 2, october 2012. issn 1657-0790 (printed) 2256-5760 (online). bogotá, colombia. pages 29-43 identity of the teacher-researcher in collaborative action research... these reflections and entries helped me understand car in practice. more importantly, the journal acted as a supporting tool particularly at the beginning of the project as i experienced concerns about being a teacher and a phd researcher at the same time, at the same place, and through the same practices. i feel that the absence of data from cycles 2 and 3 coming from my own journal may indicate that i had started to develop and that i was comfortable with the process and products achieved and, therefore, the journal was not needed any more. discussion according to the literature reviewed in this article, car promotes professional development ‘with others’ provided issues and needs to improve classroom practices derive from teachers and interests. however, when a car project is run by a group of teachers in which one of them acts as a teacher-researcher and has other interests and other personal gains, participation and development create tensions in the complex identity as a teacher-researcher. such a development and investigation of the teacher-researcher identity may be recovered if the teacher-researcher who acted as a leader in the car project kept a personal research journal. in this article i put forward two questions i sought to answer by examining my own journal as part of a car project. in relation to my first question, my research journal featured only 48 entries (less than 7,000 words altogether) which i categorised as: (a) descriptive accounts of classroom practices, observations, meetings, and interviews with the participants, (b) reflective accounts on action from the classroom, observations, and interviews, and (c) concerns about aspects related to my teaching practices as well as my phd research responsibilities. these latter were the most important for me as they seemed to reveal that in fact the construction of my teacher-researcher identity was the purpose of the journal (figure 1). the entries i examined showed that i moved from externalisation of car research procedures and clil pedagogies to their verbalisation and full understanding of what they entailed (johnson & golombek, 2011). this process was made evident as i needed to write about them (e.g. extract 10). once i internalised these concepts, i stopped writing the journal. as regards the ways in which i delineated my teacher-researcher identity, my entries seem to stress that i was a concerned teacher-researcher interested in developing professionally, thus supporting clarke (2009). not only were these concerns related to my classroom practices or the research project at a personal level, but they were also related to the extent that i was pro moting professional development in an institutional or broader perspective by helping the participating teachers in the car project (see extract 18). these concerns were also linked to the inherent tensions of my complex identity. my major concern seemed to be how to balance my own interests and investment as a phd researcher and the interests and needs of the school and participating teachers. i was aware of the fact that success in the project and clil implementation depended on teachers’ and students’ constant participation. in this aspect, i needed to avoid coercive actions which showed that the teachers were working for me rather than with me (e.g. extracts 4, 10, and 15). i was aware that if the car project became contrived or staged, professional development at a personal or institutional level would have failed. overall, my concerns and tensions may signal that knowledge was generated through car (johnson & golombek, 2011; lópez-pastor et al., 2011) to overcome them as entries decreased. universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras40 banegas last, i am not sure of the extent to which my journal reflected the natural history of the car project as silverman (2010) recommends. this may be due to the fact that i was not consistent with writing entries on a daily basis and only reflected descriptive accounts, reflections on action (mostly triggered by less successful experiences as extract 2 and 9 show), and concerns for action mostly related to me. the journal does not offer systematic reflections about the central concepts of my phd project or achievements. however, the absence of these may signal that the lack of entries reveals that the project produced a positive impact and therefore there was no need to write about that in the journal but in the thesis. conclusion when teachers pursue postgraduate studies through car as a research methodology, issues of identity will arise, but these should be taken as instances of reflection on the role of research in teaching and on the bridges that need to be built between schools and higher education institutions for the common good as kiely and davies (2010) hope. when teacher-researchers engage in car as facilitators and participants who also generate invaluable data, it is vital that they keep a journal. the journal may reflect the natural history of the car project and also the professional growth of the teacher-researcher both as a reflective and com mitted teacher working with others and as a researcher concerned with conceptualisations and practical implications from and for the classroom. in this view, a journal becomes a rich source of data for investigating the interrelationships between identities and their development through car. while keeping a research journal is a must for the teacher-researcher, i suggest that every participating teacher could keep a journal too. if all participants involved are happy with sharing them or at least providing a brief account of the contents, recurrent themes or writing styles for socialisation, it could help one understand how identities are explored personally and socially. this act could serve as a fruitful opportunity to discuss how identities shape and are shaped by the complex and necessary dynamics underpinning classroom research in collaboration to exercise change and improvement from the bottom-up. references allwright, d. 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(2008). teaching reflective practice in the action science/action inquiry tradition: key stages, concepts and practices. in p. reason, & h. bradbury (eds.), the sage handbook of action research. participative inquiry and practice (2nd ed., pp. 656-668). london: sage. van lier, l. (1994). action research. sintagma, 6, 31-37. vergara luján, o., hernández gaviria, f., & cárdenas ramos, r. (2009). classroom research and professional development. profile issues in teachers’ professional development, 11(2), 169-191. waters, a. (2009). managing innovation in english language education. language teaching, 42(4), 421-458. wedell, m. (2009). planning for educational change. putting people and their contexts first. london/new york, ny: continuum. wells, g. (2009). dialogic inquiry as collaborative action research. in s. noffke, & b. somekh (eds.), the sage handbook of educational action research (pp. 50-61). london: sage. 43profile vol. 14, no. 2, october 2012. issn 1657-0790 (printed) 2256-5760 (online). bogotá, colombia. pages 29-43 identity of the teacher-researcher in collaborative action research... wiesemes, r. (2002). developing my theory of practice as a teacher-researcher through a case-study of clil classroom interaction (unpublished phd thesis). university of nottingham. wyatt, m. (2011a). teachers researching their own practice. elt journal, 65(4), 417-425. wyatt, m. (2011b) becoming a do-it-yourself designer of english language teaching materials. forum qualitative sozialforschung / forum: qualitative social research, 12(1), art. 33. retrieved from http://nbnresolving.de/urn:nbn:de:0114-fqs1101334 about the author darío luis banegas holds an ma in elt and is a phd candidate at  warwick  university  (uk). he teaches efl at secondary schools in esquel (argentina). he is involved in curriculum design and teacher education programmes in argentina. his main interests are:  clil, materials development, and action research.  13profile vol. 17, no. 1, january-june 2015. issn 1657-0790 (printed) 2256-5760 (online). bogotá, colombia. pages 13-24 http://dx.doi.org/10.15446/profile.v17n1.43383 narrative research into the possibilities of classroom-generated stories in english teacher education una investigación narrativa en torno a las posibilidades de los relatos realizados en clase en la formación del profesorado de inglés maría cristina sarasa*1 universidad nacional de mar del plata, mar del plata, argentina this paper summarizes a narrative inquiry carried out with forty volunteer undergraduate participants attending the course overall communication, in the english teacher education program in the school of humanities of the universidad nacional de mar del plata, argentina. it addresses their family/academic identities and personal practical knowledge—as articulated in their written narratives about a class activity concerning the telling of “unheroic” lives—produced by these students while exploring heroes in irish films. narrative interpretation of these undergraduates’ work yields categories of analysis concerning story protagonists’ origins, moral values, types of knowledge generated, and implications for english teacher education. finally, the paper discusses some issues its findings raise in this field. key words: initial english teacher education, narrative inquiry, pre-service teachers’ identities. este artículo resume una indagación narrativa realizada con cuarenta estudiantes voluntarios del curso comunicación integral del profesorado de inglés en la facultad de humanidades de la universidad nacional de mar del plata, argentina. aborda identidades familiares/académicas y el conocimiento práctico personal —manifestados en narrativas escritas sobre una actividad en clase acerca de vidas “no heroicas”— que surgen tras explorar héroes en películas irlandesas. la interpretación narrativa de los relatos arroja categorías de análisis sobre los orígenes de los protagonistas no heroicos, los valores morales emergentes, los tipos de conocimiento generados y sus posibilidades en la formación docente inicial en idioma inglés. finalmente, el trabajo discurre sobre algunas implicancias de sus resultados en este campo de la formación del profesorado. palabras clave: formación docente inicial de inglés, identidades de docentes en formación, indagación narrativa. * e-mail: mcsarasa@hotmail.com how to cite this article (apa, 6th ed.): sarasa, m. c. (2015). narrative research into the possibilities of classroom-generated stories in english teacher education. profile issues in teachers’ professional development, 17(1), 13-24. http://dx.doi.org/10.15446/profile.v17n1.43383. this article was received on may 08, 2014, and accepted on october 18, 2014. this is an open access article distributed under the terms of the creative commons license attribution-noncommercial-noderivatives 4.0 international license. consultation is possible at http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/. universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras14 sarasa introduction narrative inquir y on argentinean english teacher education is relatively new (de laurentis, porta, & sarasa, 2013; sarasa, 2013). thus, systematic research is needed to understand the value of carrying out narrative inquiry in this field. this work derives from a ten-year narrative research project on good university teaching by the education and cultural studies research group, school of humanities, universidad nacional de mar del plata, argentina (álvarez, porta, & sarasa 2011; sarasa, 2012). this paper deals with a narrative inquiry performed during the second semesters of the years 2011, 2012, and 2013 with undergraduates attending the sophomore course overall communication in the english teacher education program at the school of humanities, universidad nacional de mar del plata. the paper introduces narrative tales provided by students, inspecting their productions and their reported opinions on these class undertakings. it also endeavours to review some implications these interventions hold for english teacher education. the instances of narrative inquiry occurred after the class had studied heroic representations in three films about ireland: michael collins (jordan, 1996), the wind that shakes the barley (loach, 2006), and the guard (mcdonagh, 2011). the students were then requested to narrate orally the praiseworthy, s o c a l l e d “u n he roi c ,” e x i ste nc e s of ord i n ar y, unknown people. subsequently, the undergraduates were asked to write their tales and to assess the class experience. data examination yielded categories resulting from narrative scrutiny of gathered records. these categories were arrived at by identifying stories’ contents, revealing emerging themes in their english language teaching and learning production and reception milieu (pavlenko, 2007). they involved the nature of the stories’ protagonists, the principles these lives evinced, their worth to their narrators, and the academic potential these stories facilitated. in brief, these narratives allowed undergraduates to (re) formulate their educational identities and practices as prospective english instructors. lastly, this paper dwells on the implications narrative inquiries could have in the field of english teacher education. literature review narrative inquir y in education started with connelly and clandinin’s (1990) ground-breaking research. narrative involves phenomena under investigation and the method for examining those. narrative inquiry is rooted in dewey’s pragmatic philosophy (dewey, 1938/1998). it involves three dimensions of experience—sociality, temporality, and place—as articulated through the storied lives people lead (clandinin, pushor, & orr, 2007). narrative inquiry can empower teachers with its potential to transform teaching and learning by creating experiential resources. theoretical narrative inquiry within educational research has thrived (trahar, 2011). likewise, both empirical narrative inquiry in pre-service education and in-service teacher development have made rapid advances (murphy, huber, & clandinin, 2012). for example, a “pedagogy of life-telling” (elbaz-luwisch, 2002, p. 408) fosters te acher growt h t hroug h retrieving, listening to, and re-signifying publicly individual stories told in small groups, workshops, or courses, thus legitimizing personal tales in academic settings. these accounts reveal teachers’ “personal practical knowledge,” existing within their “past experience,” their “present mind and body,” and their “future plans and actions,” thus becoming “a particular way of reconstructing the past and the intentions of the future to deal with the exigencies of a present situation” (connelly & clandinin, 1988, p. 25). this knowledge is shaped and articulated in professional knowledge landscapes constituted “by a wide variety of components and influenced by a wide variety of people, places, and things” (clandinin & 15profile vol. 17, no. 1, january-june 2015. issn 1657-0790 (printed) 2256-5760 (online). bogotá, colombia. pages 13-24 narrative research into the possibilities of classroom-generated stories in english teacher education connelly, 1995, pp. 4-5) located in between theory and practice. the field of english teacher education has also scrutinized teachers’ personal practical knowledge manifested through their stories (bell, 2002). this special knowledge re-examined through narrative inquir y shifts language teachers’ p ositions in the classroom by allowing them to challenge the knowledge-transmission model, the drawbacks of the “apprenticeship of observation,” and grievances against instruction as “long on prescription, short on description” (lortie, 1975, p. vii). knowledge created by teachers and for teachers is crucial to their lifelong professional development and their classroom practices. in other words, true potential for english language teachers’ individual and social growth lies in pursuing narrative inquiry systematically (golombek & johnson, 2004). this field of english language teaching has thus become empirically concerned with narrative inquiry at diverse educational stages and in wide-ranging instruction locations (barkhuizen & wette, 2008; liu & xu, 2011). these inquiries house the potential to relocate experiences and effects, liberate students and teachers alike, reassess the value of the local with respect to the global, and educate instructors to become culturally and socially open towards their own teaching and their students’ existences (nunan & choi, 2010). narrative is not merely considered as a learning tool and as a research methodology but also as part of a democratizing pedagogy (nelson, 2011). in the same spirit, the role of narrative inquiry in english language teaching and learning has been reinterpreted as both research on teaching and teacher research and also as a process for professional development. this latter is a multifaceted, never-ending, situated, and personal trajectory. to conclude, there is an actual need for activities in english teacher education programs to actually engage in narrative practices that truly foster teacher development (johnson & golombek, 2011a, 2011b). research design context and participants the initial english teacher education program, school of humanities, universidad nacional de mar del plata, argentina, teaches a four-year course of study organized into four areas. the first comprises the four macro skills, generally striving to build nearnative speaker proficiency regularly utilizing novels, short stories, essays, and media products. the second includes the linguistic, grammatical, and phonological foundations of english. the cultural area studies the histories and literatures of mainstream englishspeaking cultures. finally, the teacher education area focuses on education, curriculum development, second/foreign language acquisition theor y and research, microteaching, and residence experiences. this paper reports a narrative inquiry undertaken during the second semesters of the years 2011, 2012, and 2013 involving 40 undergraduates—out of a total of 74—who volunteered their written contributions. seventeen were absent from classes while another 17 did not choose to offer their productions and were not asked to comply. these students all attended the sophomore course called overall communication. this subject belongs to the linguistic skills area. it endeavours to raise awareness about the past and present global roles of english (canagarajah, 2006) by focusing—through analysing print texts and films— on some postcolonial sites where the language is currently used. likewise, the course attempts to create contents pertinent to prospective english teachers’ education (álvarez, calvete, & sarasa, 2012). in october/november 2011, 2012, and 2013 each cohort spent approximately sixteen class hours dealing with the films michael collins (jordan, 1996) and the wind that shakes the barley (loach, 2006) in 2011, and with the former and the guard (mcdonagh, 2011) in 2012 and 2013, as part of a larger irish studies syllabus unit (sarasa & calvete, 2011). one important universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras16 sarasa topic concerned heroic representations in these three motion pictures (ó giolláin, 1998). once they had dealt with heroes in irish society and narrated the lives of some brave people of their own choice, the undergraduates were asked to participate spontaneously in a two-hour class where they would retell small, superficially “unheroic” lives. these should involve ordinary individuals whose experiences deserved to be narrated although they were not famous. aims, methodology, and data collection instruments the first aim of this inquiry was to conceptualize the forty written narratives on “unheroic” lives, and on the class experience itself, generated willingly by the three student cohorts in 2011-2013. the second was to consider the implications these narrative classroom interventions hold for english language teacher education. to achieve these goals, the methodology used was logically that of narrative inquiry, as defined below: story, in the current idiom, is a portal through which a person enters the world and by which their experience of the world is interpreted and made personally meaningful. viewed this way, narrative is the phenomenon studied in inquiry. narrative inquiry, the study of experience as story, then, is first and foremost a way of thinking about experience. narrative inquiry as a methodology entails a view of the phenomenon. to use narrative inquiry methodology is to adopt a particular narrative view of experience as phenomena under study. (connelly & clandinin, 2006, p. 477) thus, narrative inquiry understands experience as a “storied phenomenon” while “narrative research . . . [becomes a methodology for] inquiring storied experiences” (clandinin & murphy, 2009, p. 598). guided by this rationale, and following similar interventions (clandinin, steeves, & chung, 2007), this study envisages the course’s classroom experiences and their emerging accounts as the “reality” produced by participants in their crafted stories (bruner, 1991). narrative processes, undertaken during and after the classes, can be considered as forms of inquiry in themselves (xu & connelly, 2009). after the two-hour-long classes when undergraduates told their “unheroic” tales, all those students who had been present were requested to volunteer emailed written answers to an openended survey explaining the “average” life they had narrated, summarizing class events, and assessing the intervention. these stories were labelled “unheroic” in the sense that they were mostly tales about ordinary, run-of-the-mill people who were totally unrecognized, unlike the irish heroes of the films students watched. those undergraduates who did not submit their responses were not pressed to email their replies later. the current paper concentrates solely on the analysis of students’ written answers to the proffered questionnaire. the obtained written narratives were examined intensively to find conceptual throughlines. these running ideas were progressively refined after increasingly complex readings of the data gathered (corbin & strauss, 2007). the classification was carried out manually on a table in a winword file. each student (s) was assigned a number from 1 to 40, and identified accordingly (from s1 to s40) in order to give subjects an i.d. other than a pseudonym while respecting their anonymity. topics were categorized inductively, while students’ responses were preserved in their original form to sustain the character of narrative inquiry. this resulting categorization of emerging topics in their production and reception classroom contexts (pavlenko, 2007) was also matched against relevant theoretical literature as discussed at the end of this paper. results the nature of story protagonists from the total of 40 student resp ondents (designated with numbers running from s1 to s40), 17profile vol. 17, no. 1, january-june 2015. issn 1657-0790 (printed) 2256-5760 (online). bogotá, colombia. pages 13-24 narrative research into the possibilities of classroom-generated stories in english teacher education 28 indicated in their writings that they had chosen to narrate family members’ existences. students’ relatives comprised two great-grandparents, nine grandparents, 13 parents, two siblings, a great aunt, and an aunt. the remaining 12 narratives included five neighbours and/ or acquaintances, and seven historical actors and/ or film characters. generally speaking, these mostly “unheroic” lives acquired epic dimensions in their classroom context of production and reception. the two great-grandparents’ lives encompassed public events in europe (wwii) and private actions in argentina. one student’s slovenian great-grandfather “came here on his own to look for a better future for his family,” while her great-grandmother “stayed there [through wwii] and had to fight on her own to protect her family until they could be together again” (s6). they had surmounted difficulties and built a family life in the new continent. another great-grandfather “fought for the axis. . . . he [saw] the atrocities . . . committed in the name of nationalism. . . . he deserted the army in 1941 and came to argentina. . . . he sent for his family and earned his living by building houses” (s16). with their narratives, these greatgrandchildren honoured their forebears’ memories during the class. the nine students’ grandparents stories displayed, typically, lives devoted to hard work both inside and outside the home. one grandmother—raised in service in a foster home—“never stopped taking care of her sons, both daughters-in-law, and her three grandchildren” (s36). there were, for example, the following tales of abused or abandoned grandparents who broke free from their cycle of suffering: a grandfather “who, notwithstanding all the suffering he has gone through, grew strong enough to forgive his dying father” (s4); a grandmother “whose own mother had no money to support her and sent her to an orphanage” (s12); and an “alcoholic” with an “unfaithful husband” who, when her granddaughter was born, “went through a strict treatment all by herself, without receiving anyone’s help” (s28). one orphaned grandmother was a battered wife who lost two of her seven children to the argentinean dictatorship’s killings (1976-1983) and another two to illness (s7). the great aunt had overcome cancer (s7) while the aunt had donated her kidney to her own brother (s38). in brief, these people had led lives of suffering without complaining and had been rewarded with loving families. the 13 “lives of the parents” stories also involved the struggles of raising a family (e.g., s2 and s9). some, especially those in the 2013 cohort, had overcome serious odds. one student respected her parents “because i know all the sacrifices they made for my sisters and me. they left their families and their friends to start from scratch in a city they did not know” (s30). other parents had been forced to leave home at a relatively early age living from hand to mouth until they became relatively prosperous (s31, s35, and s37). two mothers prioritized their family life and remained married to older, chauvinistic husbands (s31 and s34). one sister was a young single mother (s3) while s27’s elder brother was a ballet dancer who “had to overcome a lot of obstacles” to engage in his “true passion.” as to the five neighbours and/or (family) ac quaintances, it is worth mentioning “a couple who has a shelter for dogs” and “show a true love and devotion for these animals, most of which have found new homes thanks to them” (s25). one undergraduate chose a family friend whose late daughter had adopted three teenagers…one year later she died in a car accident and the children survived. the judge told [the grandmother] that the three siblings should go to the orphanage if she did not take care of them. from the very beginning she decided to become [her grandchildren’s] tutor although she was seventy five years old. (s29) finally, the seven narratives about historical actors and film characters were due to the fact— exemplified by s21’s words—that “i wanted to talk universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras18 sarasa about someone i knew, my granddad, but then i felt it would be too personal and i didn’t want my partners to think i wanted to boast.” for example, this same undergraduate chose to talk about alicia nash because “when i saw the movie about john nash’s life for the first time, i admired this woman’s strength and love for her husband” (s21). two students (s19 and s20) decided to work together presenting, first, the bride in kill bill, since she is “a very ‘fashionable’ kind of antihero.” second, they referred to the marquis de sade in quills owing to “his struggle against censorship and those who wanted to ‘cure’ him by brutal means make him a very likeable character.” finally, they told the story of vera drake, in the homonymous film, since her “actions may produce a moral conflict on the viewer, but…she receives no money for this, believing her help to be an act of charity.” another student selected father pio from pieltrecina (italy), “a common man and a saint” (s11). in short, these narratives evoked the good qualities and dispositions these existences revealed. their mood was heroic since they were, in their narrators’ eyes, about little great people performing small remarkable deeds. knowledge derived from students’ reconstructed class experiences in broad terms, the classroom stories mirrored the valour that had emerged originally in the analysis of irish heroes’ lives (ó giolláin, 1998). this was made explicit by s15: “it is due to their determination and courage that we think of [our families] as heroes.” actually, the words “courage” (s7, s15, s17, s27, and s38), “brave,” and “bravery” surface naturally in several written tales (s1, s16, s19, and s20). for example, the group decided “to tell our relatives’ stories because…we admire their ability to overcome hardships or to do something brave” (s1). these words are linked to the verb “to encourage,” since the tellers were heartened existentially by their relatives’ deeds during the class (s12). this means that, even though the classes alternatively laughed and cried (s6, s12, s19, s20, s25, s26, s27, s31, and s32), all contributors appreciated these stories that “were teachings of courage, endurance and most important of love” (s7). the narratives were valued not only for the resolution portrayed in them but also because of their actual ordinariness and veracity: “what i remember is that most students talked about ordinary people who are not well-known but who have accomplished great things” (s21). mor a l pr i n c ipl e s e m e rge d n ot on ly f rom protagonists’ identities and accomplishments but were actually exemplified by the students’ attitudes during classes and the rapport they established. thus, the atmosphere was “moving” (s1) since the stories “aroused deep-rooted feelings” (s4 and s5). class participation involved listening “carefully” (s3), sitting and feeling “deeply engaged” (s10), while also remaining “silent and respectful” (s6) in an atmosphere of “trust” (s32). s40 explains that “what called my attention was all of us were listening to one other without moving [i.e., budging]. nobody cared about the time or his/her cell phone. we were respectful of each other and enjoyed listening to what the rest had to tell.” likewise, s37 confesses that “it was the only class in which every one of us truly wanted to hear what our mates had to say. none of us wanted to leave or do anything else but listening to the stories.” subsequently, there emerges personal knowledge generated by the class. the learning experience involved experiential (self ) knowledge since “for the first time we were able to openly express our most private feelings in an academic environment” (s4). in the same vein, s35 realized that “we are used to only talking about theory but we never talk about our lives.” for s30 the tales “were also a good way to know myself. i thought about things that i consider important about me and about other people.” one participant asserted emphatically that: 19profile vol. 17, no. 1, january-june 2015. issn 1657-0790 (printed) 2256-5760 (online). bogotá, colombia. pages 13-24 narrative research into the possibilities of classroom-generated stories in english teacher education not only were we learning, we were listening to what each other had to say, and we were anxious to know more and more about the person we had right next to us, and about their relatives’ life. it was a class of mixed emotions, we laughed and cried, but i repeat...we learnt. (s9) probably for the first time in their course of study, undergraduates seemed to have talked about each other’s narrative scenarios instead of retelling plots from novels, short stories, or films or reporting what linguists, grammarians, historians, or literary critics, among other experts, have to say about “reality.” s10 grasped this experience by claiming that “we were talking about things we cared and only we knew about and wanted the rest to know too.” s25 and s26 indicated jointly that “the students [were] the ones bringing information from their own lives… that [were] relevant to everyone at the same time for learning different things.” thus, the cohorts first transferred their newly acquired knowledge about the public irish lives explored in class and were able to “relate what we had seen in class…about [irish] heroes and our personal lives” (s11). second, by retelling their personal narratives, they constructed their own collective story, partly made up of their own shared knowledge and empathy, as expressed in the following quote: this gave us a kind of family feeling, our families had all gone more or less through the same things, all—or most—of us are immigrant descendants and our stories melted into one, the one of our great-grandparents/grandparents coming to this country looking for a better lifestyle. (s6) the possibility of inquiring narratively into their loved ones’ existences using the target language within a supportive community had both a liberating and a healing influence on tellers’ attitudes and the contents of their narratives. one student’s report on why she chose her grandmother (an orphan and a battered wife who mourned the loss of four children) is exemplary. it was the first time i talked about my family’s story in front of other people…i realized i had felt comfortable, that i had shared part of my family’s story that i had planned not to mention— because i felt ashamed—and i also realized that many other students’ unheroic characters, specially grandparents, had gone through tough situations just as my grandmother had. (s5) in short, it can be stated that the moral values both implicit and explicit in the stories, together with the experiential knowledge constructed, were related to epic insights into common lives. these heroic constructions were constitutive of participants’ identities, relating specifically to their sense of individual/family self-esteem and also a deep source of pride. self-reported views on the teaching implications of the intervention in the first place, participants saw their education as encompassing locations of their own choosing beyond the classroom. this was the case in 2011, as narrated below: this experience helped me to pay attention to other people, to see a huge part of their lives that could not be contained in a classroom. . . . after the class we all [several students] met in the student cafeteria and we kept on talking about our lives. i told them about my own life, my dreams, my plans, and we were all delighted to know more about each other. (s1) one reflection points to the content vs. form, t he or y v s . pr a c t i c e, and for ma l v s . i n for ma l learning disputes (johnson, 2006), splitting some english teacher education programs. it also aims to transcend the purely skill-oriented classroom that still predominates in some of these contexts. s7, s21, s27, and s28 became aware of these issues, sharing the assessment of the class as an instance when: we did practice our listening and speaking skills. . . . i learned a lot about my narrative and my classmates’ narratives, both universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras20 sarasa in academic and personal ways. the class had a perfect combination: we were all encouraged to talk, most of us wanted to talk, we all wanted to listen and we all wondered what the rest had to say. (s12) narratives were also empowering—especially for s3, s4, s31, and s40—because their course of study is highly demanding. thus, participants came to believe that if their grandparents, parents, and acquaintances had overcome terrible odds they themselves would be able to graduate from college one day. above all, the intervention stimulated these students to re-imagine more hopefully their future teaching: i realized how powerful we…can be because we can teach much more than a language…i hope [we] can understand…that every time we step into a class it is not only up to the teacher to make it memorable, it is also up to us. (s18) concurrently, some students perceived the social orientation of their upcoming in-service practices. thus, “i thought about things that i consider important about me and about other people. this could be useful to know what values i would like to teach to my students and how i want to act [before a class]” (s30). likewise, the educational potential of narrative inquiry was gauged in the following terms: i think this class is like a training for the future, because being is more than “giving a lesson,” and we should be prepared to work in places where social conditions are not good, or where students have difficult backgrounds that affect their process of learning. (s31) in brief, the contents and protagonists of students’ “unheroic” tales were truly larger-thanlife. the principles they espoused were far-reaching in their human scope. lastly, the experiences of telling and retelling were not only authentic but also transformative and pedagogically loaded. these undergraduates seem to have created resources for constructing a meaningful professional identity. discussion teaching has been memorably likened more to the flight of a butterfly than to the path of a bullet (jackson, 1968). this concluding section will also “flutter” between reflecting on the specific categories obtained in this study and associated ones in the literature. the current research strived to overcome several challenges english language teacher education still faces. for example, the profession needs to overcome the dichotomy between theory and practice and to legitimize teachers’ different ways of knowing (johnson, 2006). as this paper’s results suggest, narrative inquiries such as the present one might contribute empirically towards reconciling these oppositions. narrative research like the one carried out in overall communication reveals that tales loom large in teacher education by disclosing some of its storied components, that is, the language teacher’s identity, learner-focussed teaching, and membership within a community of practice (richards, 2010). even if the study needs scaling up, with more cohorts over longer periods and in more varied contexts, this inquiry suggests how english language teacher education can address the “need to be concerned with helping teachers to examine their own cultural assumptions and inquire into the background of their students” (smolcic, 2011, p. 15). it is important to highlight the fact that students’ accounts took on meaning mostly by virtue of their being shared, as the literature on narrative inquiry indicates (johnson & golombek, 2011b). telling and retelling stories allowed all the narrators to relive their past, their present, and, above all, their future, thus fulfilling the transformative aims of true narrative research (huber, caine, huber, & steeves, 2013). the narrated past—that is, the context of the “unheroic” narratives—and the lived, self-assessed present—that 21profile vol. 17, no. 1, january-june 2015. issn 1657-0790 (printed) 2256-5760 (online). bogotá, colombia. pages 13-24 narrative research into the possibilities of classroom-generated stories in english teacher education is, studying in the local english teacher education program—were domains of experience that presented hurdles and were even painful. however, telling and retelling past lives that illuminated tellers’ present existences offered sustenance not only for reliving the latter but, most importantly, for envisioning existences within a different, optimistic, personal, and professional future. these findings are sustained by current research in the field (clandinin, cave, & cave, 2011). finally, these classes allowed for the foundation of locations outside the classroom where stories could be retrieved, told, retold, shared, and re-enacted. students imagined the professional identity they wanted to attain and the teaching narratives they would like to perform one day. closing remarks the present experience started with a syllabus unit that explored heroic representation in nonmainstream english-speaking cultures in ireland. next, when asked to tell their own “unheroic tales,” students enjoyed full autonomy in determining the content, length, and protagonists of their tales. in brief, the students did not talk about short stories, novels, essays, films, songs, documentaries, or tv programmes as artefacts external to their lives—as they frequently do in some classes in their english teacher education program. instead, they reflected with their own stories during an inter vention produced and owned by both listeners and tellers. long ago, curriculum theory warned about the dangers of the hidden curriculum (jackson, 1968) and its null counterpart (eisner, 1985), while exposing the perversity of symbolic violence (lakomski, 1988). for their part, narrative inquirers argue that the curriculum is co-created in the spheres of the family and of the, generically speaking, school (murphy et al., 2012). this means that, since curriculum is co-built across sites and generations it cannot remain divorced from the identities of all those involved in its conception. firsthand and existential narratives— generated outside the university and comprising part of the curriculum understood as a life course (goodson, 2012) as the ones overall communication’s class participants shared—become legitimized as part of the academic curriculum, generated by all actors at the university. by concentrating on lives in the classroom, these interventions have tried to redress several liabilities and imbalances. this existential focus allowed the sharing of private, heritage, knowledge that could be recreated as personal practical knowledge to integrate, in time, a professional knowledge landscape (clandinin & connelly 1995), which is meaningful to participants. likewise, the current inquiry reassigned value to locally generated narrative knowledge away from the practices of linguistic and pedagogical imperialism as established by phillipson (1992). to this end, students translated their family identities and their heritages. simultaneously, they realized how empowering their choices were since these allowed them to find new voices and create different off-campus locales for creating knowledge and imagining their future teaching lives. eventually, the narrative inquir y herein reported re-signified the meaning of new sites and practices that allow for the construction of true knowledge in english teacher education relevant to instructors and learners alike. references álvarez, z., calvete, m., & sarasa, m. c. 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(2013). narrative inquiry within argentinean eflte: crafting professional identities and knowledge through students’ narratives. in l. renart & d. banegas (eds.), roots & routes in language education: bi-multiplurilingualism, interculturality and identity. selected papers from the 38th faapi conference (pp. 44-55). buenos aires, ar: faapi-apiba. sarasa, m. c., & calvete, m. (2011). re-presentations of histories and stories: a look into michael collins and the wind that shakes the barley. in g. obert & n. l. alfonso (eds.), actas del cuarto simposio de estudios irlandeses en sudamérica: percepciones de la irlanda contemporánea (n.p.). santa rosa, ar: universidad nacional de la pampa. smolcic, e. (2011). becoming a culturally responsive teacher: personal transformation and shifting identities during an immersion experience abroad. in k. e. johnson & p. r. golombek, (eds.), research on second language teacher education: a sociocultural perspective on professional development (pp. 15-30). new york, ny: routledge. trahar, s. (ed.). (2011). learning and teaching narrative inquiry: travelling in the borderlands. amsterdam, nl: john benjamins publishing. http://dx.doi.org/10.1075/sin.14. xu, s., & connelly, f. m. (2009). narrative inquiry for teacher education and development: focus on english as a foreign language in china. teaching and teacher education, 25(2), 219-227. http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j. tate.2008.10.006. universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras24 sarasa about the author maría cristina sarasa holds an english as an international language (eil) degree and an ma in higher education from the school of humanities, universidad nacional de mar del plata, argentina, where she is a tenured eil teacher educator in the department of modern languages and a researcher with the education and cultural studies research group. 43profile vol. 13, no. 2, october 2011. issn 1657-0790. bogotá, colombia. pages 43-57 investigating the information technology courses for pre-service and in-service english teachers in hong kong investigación de los cursos de tecnología de la información para profesores de inglés de pregrado y en ejercicio en hong kong chi cheung ruby yang* the hong kong institute of education, china this paper focuses on the views of twenty-six pre-service and eight in-service english teachers in hong kong concerning the information technology courses in their teacher education programmes. the findings of the study show that while both software applications and technological integration in teaching are highlighted in the course outline, the instructor focused more on the application aspect, with the technology integration being less emphasised. another important finding is that powerpoint was still the most commonly used application in teaching. likewise, usually the involved pre-service and in-service teachers just simply used different computer applications as alternatives to traditional teaching resources. this may reflect the fact that the information technology courses are not adequate to prepare teachers to teach with it. key words: english teacher education, information technology courses, in-service teachers, preservice teachers. este artículo se centra en las opiniones que tienen veintiséis profesores practicantes y ocho profesores de inglés en hong kong sobre los cursos de información de tecnología en sus programas de licenciatura. los resultados muestran que mientras las aplicaciones de software y la integración de tecnología se destacan en el esquema del curso, el instructor se enfoca más en los aspectos de aplicación. a su vez, la integración de tecnología no tuvo tanto énfasis. otro hallazgo importante es que power point siguió siendo la aplicación más empleada en la enseñanza. asimismo, los docentes y profesores practicantes involucrados generalmente solo usan diferentes aplicaciones de computadores como alternativas a los recursos de enseñanza tradicional. esto puede reflejar el hecho de que los cursos de información de tecnología no son adecuados para preparar a los profesores para hacer uso de esta en su labor educativa. palabras clave: cursos de información de tecnología, formación de profesores de inglés, profesores en ejercicio, profesores en formación. * e-mail: rccyang@ied.edu.hk this article was received on january 10, 2011, and accepted on april 27, 2011. 44 universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras yang introduction information technology (it, the term more commonly used in hong kong) or information and communication technology (ict) has played an important role in the school education in hong kong since the former chief executive, tung chee hwa, announced the it initiatives in his policy address of 1997. however, the problem was that teachers in general had little knowledge of using it to teach and the it culture at schools, especially primary schools, was not strong enough. thus, one of the initiatives to show the government’s serious commitment to it in education was by providing over 45,000 training places for teachers in 1997 (education and manpower bureau, 1998). in addition, the government set the long-term targets for teacher training in its document, information technology for learning in a new era: five­year strategy 1998/99 to 2002/03 as shown below: • by the 2000/01 school year: • all teachers reach at least the “basic” level1 of it competency; • all graduates of pre-service teacher education programmes reach at least the “competent” level2 of competency; • by the 2002/03 school year: • about 75% of the teachers reach at least the “comfortable” level3; 1 “awareness of the need to take up the new role as a learning facilitator, general computer operation and basic skills such as wordprocessing, surfing through the internet, as well as operating readily available educational software” (education and manpower bureau, 1998, p. 11). 2 that is the upper intermediate level which refers to the “capability to handle computer networking, resolve simple hardware and software problems, make more advanced use of authorware for lesson preparation etc., and understand the characteristics and uses of different it tools and resources” (education and manpower bureau, 1998, p. 11). 3 that is the intermediate level which refers to the “capability to use it tools and make use of teaching resources available on the internet and the intranet etc. in classroom teaching and lesson preparation” (education and manpower bureau, 1998, p. 11). • about 25% of the teachers reach at least the “competent” level; and • one to two teachers in each school reach the “creative” level4 (education and manpower bureau, 1998, p. 13) with these long-term targets, by the end of the 2002/03 school year, all teachers had attained the basic level, 77% of the teachers the intermediate level, 27% of the teachers the upper intermediate level and 6% of the teachers the advanced level. however, “while all teachers have been provided with basic training in the use of it, many are still not familiar with the application of it to enhance the effectiveness of learning and teaching” (education and manpower bureau, 2004, p. 7), though many of them (86% of the primary school teachers and 71% of the secondary school teachers) agree that using it can make teaching more effective (education bureau, 2007). it in education is perceived by both school heads and teachers as one of the major forces contributing to the progress of the implementation of curriculum reform. nevertheless, according to the figure provided by the education bureau (2007), only about 50% of the teachers in hong kong indicated that they use it frequently in class. therefore, one of the actions suggested by the education bureau (2007) is to continue to sharpen teachers’ it pedagogical skills by revising the existing it professional development framework for teachers. the revised framework highlights four dimensions: technical knowledge, pedagogical integration, managing and leading it, and socio-cultural awareness in using it (education bureau, 2007). 4 that is the advanced level which refers to the “capability to understand the functions of computer managed instruction systems, evaluate the effectiveness of instructional computer programs, design instructional materials with use of it, and choose appropriate it equipment to meet a school’s needs” (education and manpower bureau, 1998, p. 11). 45profile vol. 13, no. 2, october 2011. issn 1657-0790. bogotá, colombia. pages 43-57 investigating the information technology courses for pre-service and in-service... it training courses have been offered to all first year undergraduate students in the researcher’s institute (a publicly-funded teacher training institute in hong kong, with around 7,000 students attending it) as compulsory modules since the government’s implementation of the five-year strategy in 1998. the specially developed it courses for english majors have also been offered by the department of english for a number of years. this drives the motivation of the researcher, as the instructor of the courses, to conduct the present study which aims to investigate whether or not the it courses offered are adequate for strengthening the pre-service and in-service english teachers’ technical knowledge and sharpening their it pedagogical skills. with these two dimensions being highlighted, will the teachers use it in their teaching more frequently? these are the key issues that will be dealt with in this paper. this paper is structured in the following ways: first, the related literature about it courses for teachers is briefly reviewed. then, the research approach and method used are described. following that, the data collected are presented. finally, the findings are discussed and the implications for it courses in teacher education programmes are suggested. an overview of the professional training courses for teachers an it course for teachers not only needs to teach them to use it but also how to use it to teach. dawes (2001) quoted some of the key elements of effective teacher training from the teacher training agency (tta), which includes an identification of the current it level of the teachers, the required it knowledge, pedagogical applications of it, and time for practising what has been taught as well as considering ways to integrate it into teaching. siddiqui (2004) adds that the it course is most effective if it addresses the real problems faced by teachers when they integrate technology into their own teaching and can “model the forms of pedagogy that teachers can use in their classrooms” (p. 252). in terms of the format, the it course needs to combine lecture with discussion, individual and collaborative activities and opportunities for teachers to reflect on how to integrate what they have learnt into their own teaching. an optimal it course should be the one that can “combine instruction with discussion, reflection, application, and evaluation” (siddiqui, 2004, p. 253). watson (2001) suggests that whether or not teachers are willing and have the ability to integrate it into their teaching depends largely on the professional development they receive. she also identifies four approaches of it profes sional development: the ‘home-grown expert’, the ‘comfortable shoes’ approach, ‘let them struggle’ and the ‘killer application’. in the first approach, the tutor him/herself is a school teacher who knows clearly what works and what does not in teaching. the second approach, the ‘comfortable shoes’ approach to professional development, starts with the tutor’s demonstration and then the teachers work in small groups or individually. for the third approach, the tutor takes on the responsibility “to model the guide on the side role” (p. 187). finally, the ‘killer application’ approach adopts some attractive it applications to make teachers feel interested in using it. when using it as a means to enhance students’ learning, cox (1997) emphasises the importance of a substantial change in pedagogical practice. watson (2001, p. 183) also suggests a change which involves “change in the way teachers think about teaching and in their teaching practices”. king (2002) revealed three themes of perspective transformation in the teachers’ educational practice in her study of 175 46 universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras yang teachers enrolled in graduate education technology courses. these include changes in teaching meth ods, changes in preparation and research methods, and increased self-confidence. for teacher preparation and research methods, teachers will prepare new types of teaching materials (e.g. power point presentations) and collect resources from the web. for self-confidence, teachers become more confident and are ready to explore how to use technology to support their teaching. there are numerous research studies that investigate the effectiveness of information technology programmes in teacher education e.g. wild (1995), simpson et al. (1998), etc. while the technology courses may play a role in equipping teachers with knowledge and skills to use it in their teaching, there are some barriers that may hinder technology integration in the classrooms. these problems include a tight teaching schedule bounded by a heavy-content curriculum (dawes, 2001), time constraints, heavy workload (davis & smith, 2006), and the lack of parental cooperation/ involvement (strudler, et al., 1999). unlike wild’s (1995) study, which highlighted the it applications used by the student teachers during their teaching practice, this study aims to find out whether or not the it courses offered in the teacher education programmes are effective in preparing the participants to use it in their teaching. as in the study by bronack et al., (1999) the viewpoints of the involved pre-service and in-service teachers were gathered. to achieve the aim of the study, the following research questions were asked: 1. what are the involved pre-service and in service english teachers’ views of the it courses in their teacher education programmes? 2. do the teachers use it in their teaching more frequently after finishing the it courses in their teacher education programmes? 3. if so, what computer applications do the teachers use frequently and how do they use the applications in their teaching? design of the study to answer the aforementioned research questions, the it courses taught by the researcher were investigated. the participants involved and the it courses studied are described first, followed by the instruments and procedures of the study. participants a total of 34 participants (n = 34) (26 pre-service and 8 in-service english teachers) were involved in this study. among all of them, only 5 were males and 29 were females. it has to be acknowledged that the uneven number of pre-service and in-service teachers and male and female participants may affect the generalisation of the study. the pre-service teachers were final-year students of the four-year full-time ba (contemporary english and education) programme, whereas the in-service teachers were second and third-year students of the three-year mixed mode5 bed (language teaching) programme for serving non-graduate primary or secondary teachers offered by the teacher training institute in hong kong. the ba students’ (4 males and 22 females) ages ranged between 21 and 25 with an it level of competency of upper intermediate level. they were all pre-service, secondary school english teachers. for the in-service teachers (1 male and 7 females), their ages ranged between 26 and 45. one of them was a secondary school teacher and the others were all teaching in primary schools with their teaching experience ranging from 7 to 20 years. regarding the attained it level of competency, 43% of them had attained intermediate level, 43% had upper intermediate level and one of them (14%) had advanced level. 5 six part-time semesters plus 2 full-time summer blocks. 47profile vol. 13, no. 2, october 2011. issn 1657-0790. bogotá, colombia. pages 43-57 investigating the information technology courses for pre-service and in-service... the it courses the it courses investigated in this study were particularly designed for the pre-service and in-service english teachers in hong kong. the course undertaken by the ba students was named integrating information technology in the esl classroom. it was a core module for year 4 students whereas the bed course was called integrating information technology in elt which was an elective module offered for year 2 or year 3 participants. the two courses had the same number of teaching hours (30) spread over 10 to 15 weeks. there were 10 sessions in the ba course (one three-hour session each week) while the bed course had 15 sessions (two hours each session and there was only one session per week). the objectives and content of these two courses are more or less the same. they are aimed to enable participants to achieve the following: a. develop an understanding of the principles, concepts and roles underpinning the integration of information technology into english language teaching and learning; b. understand how information technology can be used to support and enhance the teaching and learning of english; and c. develop and evaluate teaching and learning activities and applications that involve the use of information technology to support english language teaching and learning (department of english, 2005). the details of the content of the two courses are shown in table 1. for the teaching and learning activities, only a small amount of class time was spent on lecturing. most of the time was given to participants’ hands-on practice of the software introduced, sharing and discussing how the introduced software and resources could be integrated into english language teaching and learning. the assessment tasks of the two courses are the same, including: i) a design of an it application (e.g. an electronic storybook, webquest, etc.) suitable for use with primary or secondary students; and ii) a written assignment explaining the principles of the integration of it and the design and procedures for using the designed it application in english language teaching (department of english, 2005). table 1. the objectives and content of the two it courses objectives course content a. • introduction to the rationale, principles, concepts and roles underpinning the integration of it in english language teaching and learning. b. • designing an electronic storybook with story maker or powerpoint. • exploring pedagogical implications of using it to support students’ english oral fluency and literacy development. • using the web for english language teaching and learning. • introduction to the use of smart board. • introduction to the use of multimedia learning centre. • pedagogical applications of corpus linguistics c. • critical evaluation and pedagogical application of software applications for english language teaching and learning. • evaluating the roles and possibilities of integrating it into english language teaching and learning. instruments and procedures this study adopted both quantitative and qualitative methods of data collection. the instruments 48 universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras yang included both a questionnaire and interviews. the questionnaire was developed by the researcher and was first piloted with another group of bed english-major students. some unclear wording was changed based on their feedback. the revised questionnaire was then checked by the coordinator of the it courses in the english department. the questionnaire was distributed to the involved pre-service and in-service english teachers in the last session of the two courses to find out their perceptions of the it courses. except for section i, which elicited the participants’ personal details including their ages, years of teaching experience (for the in-service participants only) and it competency level, all the question items (statements that are aimed to elicit respondents’ perceptions of the effectiveness of the it courses) were on a 4-point likert scale, ranging from ‘strongly agree’ to ‘strongly disagree’ (4 = ‘strongly agree’; 3 = ‘agree’; 2 = ‘disagree’; 1 = ‘strongly disagree’). a ‘neutral’ option was avoided because busch (1993, p. 735) thinks that “neutrality can lead to indecisive data”. twenty-six questionnaires were given out to the involved pre-service english teachers, with 20 questionnaires completed fully and returned to the researcher (i.e. 76.9% return rate). for those in-service english teachers involved, 8 questionnaires were distributed and 7 were returned (87.5% return rate). at the end of the participants’ field experience6 (about six months after the it courses), another set of questionnaires, which was comprised of both open and closed questions, was sent to the participants through e-mail to find out whether or not they used computers in their teaching more often than before; which computer application(s) introduced in past courses had they used, and how often they 6 field experience is one of the graduation requirements for both the pre-service or in-service teachers in their ba and bed programmes. used computers in their teaching. like wild’s (1995) study, this questionnaire was completed one week after the participants’ teaching practice. the completed questionnaires were returned to the researcher through e-mail. the return rate for the pre-service participants was 61.5% and all the returned questionnaires were from the female students. then, among the in-service participants, the return rate of the questionnaires was 87.5%. semi-structured interviews (see appendix a for the interview questions) were also conducted with three pre-service and three in-service participants at the end of their field experience. they were selected by convenience sampling because they were the researcher’s supervisees in the field experience. however, the participants’ participation in the interviews was totally voluntary with their consent having been obtained beforehand. these six english teachers (two males and four females) were interviewed so as to obtain more information about their use of computers in teaching. the interviews were audio recorded, transcribed and analysed qualitatively by the researcher using content analysis. through reading the interview transcripts carefully and in detail, central themes emerged and the data were then summarised in a systematic way. after that, the data were verified by the it course coordinator, as an independent coder, to examine whether or not the same patterns emerge again (seliger & shohamy, 1989). the agreement in coding between the two coders was above 80%. results to answer the research questions suggested at the beginning of this paper, the data collected through the questionnaire and interviews are presented in this section. with the use of a coding method, certain categories came out. for coding, it is defined by gibbs (2007, p. 38) as “a way of 49profile vol. 13, no. 2, october 2011. issn 1657-0790. bogotá, colombia. pages 43-57 investigating the information technology courses for pre-service and in-service... indexing or categorizing the text in order to establish a framework of thematic ideas about it”. by using qualitative content analysis (flick, 2002), central themes which were relevant for answering the research questions, including the teachers’ views of the it courses, their use of it in teaching and the computer applications used in their it, emerged. teachers’ views of the it courses overall, the results of the questionnaire show that the involved pre-service and in-service english teachers were rather positive about the it courses offered in their ba and bed programmes. from the figures shown in appendix b, it can be seen that, except for the responses given by the pre-service participants in items 3, 4, 12 and 15, the mean of many items is 3.00 or above. for the responses given by those in-service participants, no items are below a mean of 3.00. some positive feedback about the courses can be found in the open-ended question of the questionnaire: it was a good opportunity to learn some it skills that are useful to my daily teaching such as creating an e-book and a webquest. also, the software introduced in the course is user-friendly. (in-service respondent 1) i treasure the ample and useful websites suggested by the course instructor. (in-service respondent 6) although the respondents were satisfied with the it courses in general, 32% of the pre-service participants disagreed and strongly disagreed that they felt more confident in using it (item 3) after finishing the course (m=2.65; *sd=0.75). some illustrative views obtained from the follow-up interviews (the names of the participants listed below are pseudonyms) include the following: no. familiarity breeds confidence. the it course acquainted us with different programs, but not familiarizes us with them … the lack of intermittent assignments during the course prevented any deep understanding of the use of different software. (patrick) not quite because i have already acquired the computer literacy skills taught in the course. the course content is a bit easy for me. (cynthia) regarding the integration of it into english language teaching, there is some contradiction in the results obtained. while only one pre-service participant disagreed with the item, ‘the it course is effective in making me become more confident to integrate it into english language teaching’ (item 5), four pre-service participants (20%) and one in-service participant disagreed that they felt more confident about integrating it into english language teaching (item 4) (m=2.90; *sd=0.55 and m=3.14; *sd=0.69 for the pre-service and in-service participants, respectively). below is some negative feedback, collected from the interviews, of the participants: no. the course introduced me to the rationale behind using it, and how various applications may be used in the context of teaching. however, they were only some theories and were not integrated into micro-teaching. this puts a disjunction between knowledge and practice, which does not allow ‘confidence of using computers in classroom teaching’ to develop. (patrick) the course familiarized us with the use of many different kinds of computer applications such as audio and video capturing. however, the instructor did not give us adequate opportunities to have discussion and reflect on how the applications can be applied in teaching. i also expect her (the instructor) to give more lectures on technology integration theories. (annie) despite having the techniques, my ideas of integrating it into english language teaching are still not very clear and concrete. the course helps me to understand the teaching theories more than the techniques. (connie) teachers’ use of it in teaching the questionnaires returned by both the preservice and in-service participants after their field experience show that most of them had used it 50 universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras yang in their teaching (87% for the pre-service and all the in-service participants). also, 75% and 100% of them agreed and strongly agreed that after taking the it courses they use it in their english language teaching more often than before. one illustrative comment given by a participant is presented below: i use it more often than before because i can use other kinds of computer applications, not just powerpoint, in my english language teaching. for example, i can make e-books of some readers or storybooks which do not have the e-version. (in-service participant 7) for those who had used it in their teaching, slightly more than half of the pre-service participants (57%) indicated that they used it in most of the teaching, while 57% of the in-service participants used it at more than half of their teaching time. regarding the reasons some pre-service participants did not use it in their teaching, 44% of them indicated a time consuming and tight teaching schedule, followed by heavy workload (19%), lack of relevant teaching resources in the school (15%), avoidance of technical problems that may occur (11%), poor school facilities (7%), and lack of ideas integrating it into english language teaching (4%). avoidance of technical problems, lack of relevant resources and poor facilities in the school as well as tight teaching schedules were also suggested by the in-service participants as their reasons for not using computers in their teaching (see table 2 for details). other reasons for not using it in teaching mentioned by the participants in the open-ended question of the questionnaire and the follow-up interviews include: undoubtedly, using computers (especially using powerpoint) can draw students’ attention. however, i wonder if the use of computers would affect the interaction between the teacher and the students as they may only focus on the screen. (pre-service participant 14) there is no such a culture among my colleagues to use it in english language teaching and students are still required to do their compositions in handwriting. (in-service participant 6) actually, the course was good in terms of letting me know different useful software that i can use in teaching. however, my school did not have these kinds of software and so i didn’t have a chance to further explore the use of them. (in-service participant 3) basically, it made no increase in the frequency of my use (of it) because of my wanting to cope, in the first place, with the role of being a teacher and its various chores, e.g., lesson planning, rather than spending time on designing it teaching materials. also, the class i taught would have their public exam next year. the teaching schedule was so tight that made me don’t want to use it because it’s too time-consuming to do that. (cynthia, a pre-service participant) table 2. reasons for not using it in english language teaching reasons for not using it in english language teaching pre-service teachers in-service teachers n % n % lack of ideas of integrating it into english language teaching 1 4 0 0 avoidande of technical problems that may occur 3 11 2 40 lack of relevant teaching resources in the school 4 15 1 20 poor school facilities 2 7 1 20 heavy workload 5 19 0 0 time consumption 6 22 0 0 tight teaching schedule 6 22 1 20 51profile vol. 13, no. 2, october 2011. issn 1657-0790. bogotá, colombia. pages 43-57 investigating the information technology courses for pre-service and in-service... to briefly conclude, the it courses offered in the teacher training programmes may not guarantee teachers’ frequent use of it in teaching because the culture of using it and the availability of necessary resources in their schools are factors that determine their use of it. another important issue is that while it is considered that it can facilitate teaching, achieving the key teaching objectives is more essential. computer applications used in teaching among those pre-service participants who indicated that they had used it in their teaching, 52% of them used powerpoint and internet resources, followed by word processing (25%), vcds and/or dvds (13%), multimedia learning centre (mmlc) (6%) and e-books (4%). for the in-service participants, word and powerpoint were most commonly used (40%), followed by e-books (18%), internet resources (18%), and vcds and/or dvds (18%). a few of them (6%) used the mmlc system and flash animation. table 3 below shows the computer applications used by the participants in their english language teaching. with regard to the ways it was used in teaching explored from the interviews, the involved preservice and in-service teachers tried to apply what they had learned in the it courses and used computers in different ways instead of using powerpoint presentations only. the following are some examples mentioned by the participants: pre-service participants: i used powerpoint very often in my teaching, with pictures searched from the internet. (annie) for the form 4 class i taught, as they will have their public exam very soon, my teaching was just in a traditional form of direct knowledge transmission and i usually used word to show students the answers. but i also used the internet resources and played youtube videos. (cynthia) in-service participants: i often surf the internet to find some pictures and video clips about a certain lesson topic and then show them to my students in the classroom. interactive games from the internet are also used to teach grammar to make the lessons more fun. (emma) for the p1 (grade one) class i teach, i’ve tried to create an e-book adapted from a print storybook. with the audio and visual effects, the children found reading very interesting. (connie) at the end of the first term, i used webquest to guide my p6 (grade six) students to complete a project. the students need to search information from the internet and analyse the acquired knowledge. at the end, each group had to do a powerpoint presentation. (tony) to summarise, the teacher participants had tried to apply the different types of computer applications in their teaching. this was done after table 3. computer applications used in english language teaching computer applications used in english language teaching pre-service teachers in-service teachers n % n % word powerpoint e-books/electronic storybooks internet resources (including youtube videos and movie trailers) vcds and/or dvds multimedia learning centre (mmlc) flash 13 14 2 14 7 3 0 25 26 4 26 13 6 0 7 7 6 6 6 1 1 20 20 18 18 18 3 3 52 universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras yang finishing the it courses offered in their teacher training programmes as well as based on the objectives they wanted to achieve in the lessons. discussion and conclusions this study investigated the it courses for preservice and in-service english teachers offered by the teacher training institute in hong kong. the results obtained from the questionnaire and interviews are not consistent. from the findings of the questionnaire, it can be discovered that the pre-service and in-service english teachers involved were generally satisfied with the it courses offered in their ba/bed programmes. however, contradictory results were obtained from the follow-up interviews. the interviewees were rather negative about the course, particularly in the aspect of technology integration. one of the interviewees mentioned that she had already been competent in using the software introduced in the course. three interviewees also mentioned that they did not feel confident to integrate it into their teaching. this aspect is similar to the results of previous research studies (e.g. wild, 1995; simpson et al., 1998), which usually found that the it courses in teacher education programmes were not adequate to prepare students to use it in classrooms confidently because more emphasis of the technology programmes was put on the basic operation of computer software, with less teaching time being devoted to the pedagogical use of it. the participants in this study did not have great confidence in using it in english language teaching because the instructor introduced a lot of computer software and theories about using it but did not give them enough opportunities to have discussions and reflections on how different it applications can be used in teaching. regarding the use of it in teaching, many preservice and all in-service english teachers involved in this study used it in their teaching more than before after finishing the it courses. nevertheless, competency in computer operation does not guarantee frequent use of it because teachers’ uptake of it in their teaching may be hindered by other factors such as tight teaching schedules, lack of relevant resources and poor facilities in schools. definitely, the uptake of information technology in teaching should not only be determined by the frequency of its use. what is even more essential, in fact, is the consideration of the pedagogical purpose of using it. the higher frequency of it use is not the best strategy but, as the title of the consultation document on the third strategy on information technology in education published in 2007 suggests, teachers should use the ‘right technology at the right time for the right task’. finally, for the computer applications used in teaching, powerpoint was still the most commonly used application among the involved pre-service and in-service teachers, though word and internet re sources were also used by many of them. however, usually the participants simply used the different computer applications as substitutes for those traditional teaching resources (e.g. showing answers using word) or for motivating students (e.g. converting a print storybook into an e-book to arouse students’ reading interests). implications for information technology courses in teacher education programmes based on the results of this study, a number of implications can be drawn for information technology courses in teacher education programmes. first, teacher educators should try to strike a balance to familiarise participants with the operation of different software and computer applications and how these software applications can be used in their teaching. however, the 30-hour it courses offered the pre-service and in-service english teachers may 53profile vol. 13, no. 2, october 2011. issn 1657-0790. bogotá, colombia. pages 43-57 investigating the information technology courses for pre-service and in-service... not guarantee their developing competence in it and putting it into practice because teacher change is a complex process which certainly requires the teachers to be mentored and coached in their own classrooms by either the course instructors or more competent peers. with the teachers in hong kong who have attained at least a ‘basic’ level or even ‘competent’ level of it competency and for pre-service teachers, computer operation and software applications are not a problem for them. what is more important is technology integration into the curriculum. providing participants with more opportunities to have discussions on how the software and computer applications introduced in the course can be applied in teaching is essential, especially for those pre-service teachers who do not have much teaching experience. the contents of the it courses for the pre-service and in-service teachers need not be the same. as noticed in the interview responses, the pre-service and in-service teachers were different in terms of their it competence with the pre-service participants as already advanced it users rather than only possessing a familiarity with powerpoint and word processing. the difference in expertise and skills needs to be taken into consideration when proposing the it courses in teacher education programmes in the future. in assessment, microteaching should be in cluded as one of the assessment components. in the investigated it courses, the two assessment tasks (i.e. the design of an it application and the written essay) can only assess participants’ technical skills, and knowledge about the technology integration theories and academic writing skills. achieving a high grade in the course does not mean that the participants have the appropriate competence in technology integration. by in cluding microteaching, the participants can have opportunities to try integrating the it knowledge into real teaching. they should also be required to keep reflective journals so as to allow them to have more reflections on how the it knowledge acquired can be applied to teaching. finally, in the information technology courses in teacher education programmes, teacher educators should highlight the importance of using it to develop students’ higher-order thinking skills through, for example, the use of webquest and other project work. teacher participants should also be given opportunities to practice using educational software that makes learning more meaningful and supports students’ critical thinking (mehlinger & powers, 2002). references bronack, s. c., kilbane, c. r., herbert, j. m., & mcnergney, r. f. (1999). in-service and pre-service teachers’ perceptions of a web-based, case-based learning environment. journal of information technology for teacher education, 8(3), 305-320. busch, m. (1993). using likert scales in l2 research. tesol quarterly, 27(4), 733-736. cox, m. j. (1997). identification of the change in attitude and pedagogical practices needed to enable teachers to use information technology in the school curriculum. in d. passey & b. samways (eds.), information tech­ nology: supporting change through teacher education (pp. 87-94). london: chapman & hall. davis, a. & smith, k. (2006). drivers and barriers to the uptake of learning technologies: staff experiences in a research-led university. in j. o’donghue (ed.), tech­ nology supported learning and teaching: a staff perspec­ tive (pp. 125-145). hershey, pa: information science publishing. dawes, l. (2001). what stops teachers using new technology? in m. leask (ed.), issues in teaching using ict (pp. 61-79). london; new york, ny: routledge falmer. 54 universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras yang department of english (2005). module outline, eng2092e. unpublished internal manuscript. (available from the intranet, the hong kong institute of education, hong kong). education bureau (2007). right technology at the right time for the right task: consultation document on the third strategy on information technology in education. hong kong: education bureau. education and manpower bureau (1998). information technology for learning in a new era: five­year strategy 1998/99 to 2002/03. hong kong: printing department. education and manpower bureau (2004). empowering learning and teaching with information technology. hong kong: education and manpower bureau. flick, u. (2002). an introduction to qualitative research (2nd ed). london: sage publications. gibbs, g. (2007). analyzing qualitative data. london: sage publications. king, k. p. (2002). educational technology professional development as transformative learning opportunities. computer & education, 39(3), 283-297. mehlinger, h. d. & powers, s. m. (2002). technology & teacher education: a guide for educators and policymakers. boston; new york: houghton mifflin company. seliger, h. w. & shohamy, e. (1989). second language research methods. oxford: oxford university press. siddiqui, m. h. (2004). technology in teacher education. new delhi: aph publishing. simpson, m., payne, f., munro, r., & lynch, e. (1998). effective integration of information and communications technology in teacher education. journal of information technology for teacher education, 7(3), 431-446. strudler, n. b., mckinney, m. o., jones, w. p., & quinn, l. f. (1999). first-year teachers’ use of technology: preparation, expectations and realities. journal of technology and teacher education, 7(2), 115-129. watson, g. (2001). models of information technology teacher professional development that engage with teachers’ hearts and minds. journal of information technology for teacher education, 10(1&2), 179-190. wild, m. (1995). pre-service teacher education programmes for information technology: an effective education? journal of information technology for teacher educa­ tion, 4(1), 7-20. about the author chi cheung ruby yang is currently a teaching fellow in the department of english, the hong kong institute of education. she obtained her master of education and master of arts in applied linguistics at the university of hong kong. her research interests include it in english language teaching, classroom discourse analysis, and second language teaching and learning. acknowledgements i would like to express my sincere appreciation for the cooperation of my students in completing and returning the questionnaires. i would also like to take this opportunity to thank the six participants for sparing their precious time to participate in the follow-up interviews voluntarily. finally, i am grateful to the editor and the two anonymous reviewers for reviewing my paper and giving me valuable comments on the earlier draft of this article. 55profile vol. 13, no. 2, october 2011. issn 1657-0790. bogotá, colombia. pages 43-57 investigating the information technology courses for pre-service and in-service... appendix a. questions for the interview 1. did you use it in your teaching previously (before taking the it course)? if yes, what applications did you use? / if not, why? 2. do you use it in your english language teaching more frequently after taking the it course of your ba/bed programme? why/why not? 3. what computer application(s) do you usually use in your english language teaching? 4. do you think the it course of the ba/bed programme is effective in giving you more confidence in using computers? why/why not? 5. do you think the it course of the ba/bed programme is effective in giving you more confidence to integrate it into english language teaching? why/why not? 6. do you think the it course of the ba/bed programme is effective in giving you more ideas of integrating it into english language teaching? why/why not? 7. after finishing the it course of the ba/bed programme, how much do you know about the rationale behind using it in english language teaching? (i.e. what are the reasons for integrating it in english language teaching?) 8. do you think you can achieve these in your english language teaching? tell me one or two instances to illustrate that. 56 universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras yang appendix b. summary of the findings of the post-it course questionnaire questionnaire items sa a d sd m *sd teachers’ views of the effectiveness of the it courses 1. i have developed an understanding of the principles, concepts and roles underpinning the integration of it into english language teaching and learning. pre-service teachers 3 (15%) 17 (85%) 0 (0%) 0 (0%) 3.15 0.37 in-service teachers 2 (29%) 5 (71%) 0 (0%) 0 (0%) 3.29 0.49 2. i have developed an understanding of how it can be used to support and enhance the teaching and learning of english. pre-service teachers 2 (10%) 18 (90%) 0 (0%) 0 (0%) 3.10 0.31 in-service teachers 3 (43%) 4 (57%) 0 (0%) 0 (0%) 3.43 0.53 3. i feel more confident using it. pre-service teachers 1 (5%) 12 (63%) 4 (21%) 2 (11%) 2.65 0.75 in-service teachers 2 (29%) 5 (71%) 0 (0%) 0 (0%) 3.29 0.49 4. i feel more confident to integrate it into english language teaching. pre-service teachers 2 (10%) 14 (70%) 4 (20%) 0 (0%) 2.90 0.55 in-service teachers 2 (29%) 4 (57%) 1 (14%) 0 (0%) 3.14 0.69 5. the it course is effective in giving me more confidence to integrate it into english language teaching. pre-service teachers 3 (15%) 16 (80%) 1 (5%) 0 (0%) 3.10 0.45 in-service teachers 6 (86%) 1 (14%) 0 (0%) 0 (0%) 3.86 0.38 6. the it course is effective in giving me more ideas of integrating it into english language teaching. pre-service teachers 12 (60%) 7 (35%) 1 (5%) 0 (0%) 3.55 0.60 in-service teachers 6 (86%) 1 (14%) 0 (0%) 0 (0%) 3.86 0.38 7. i am capable of downloading some listening materials from the internet or other audio resources. pre-service teachers 5 (25%) 14 (70%) 0 (0%) 1 (5%) 3.15 0.67 in-service teachers 1 (14%) 5 (72%) 1 (14%) 0 (0%) 3.00 0.58 8. i am capable of downloading some video clips from vcds or dvds. pre-service teachers 5 (25%) 13 (65%) 1 (5%) 1 (5%) 3.10 0.72 in-service teachers 1 (14%) 5 (72%) 1 (14%) 0 (0%) 3.00 0.58 57profile vol. 13, no. 2, october 2011. issn 1657-0790. bogotá, colombia. pages 43-57 investigating the information technology courses for pre-service and in-service... 9. i am capable of downloading some video clips from youtube. pre-service teachers 8 (40%) 12 (60%) 0 (0%) 0 (0%) 3.40 0.50 in-service teachers 1 (14%) 5 (72%) 1 (14%) 0 (0%) 3.00 0.58 10. i am capable of creating some interactive exercises by using hot potatoes. pre-service teachers 8 (40%) 11 (55%) 0 (0%) 1 (5%) 3.30 0.73 in-service teachers 3 (43%) 4 (57%) 0 (0%) 0 (0%) 3.43 0.53 11. i understand that the word processor is a good tool to develop students’ writing skills. pre-service teachers 2 (10%) 14 (70%) 4 (20%) 0 (0%) 2.90 0.55 in-service teachers 2 (29%) 5 (71%) 0 (0%) 0 (0%) 3.29 0.49 12. i am able to use movie trailers as a kind of english teaching resources. pre-service teachers 6 (30%) 14 (70%) 0 (0%) 0 (0%) 3.30 0.47 in-service teachers 2 (29%) 5 (71%) 0 (0%) 0 (0%) 3.29 0.49 13. i am able to choose suitable internet resources for english language teaching. pre-service teachers 4 (20%) 15 (75%) 1 (5%) 0 (0%) 3.21 0.42 in-service teachers 5 (71%) 2 (29%) 0 (0%) 0 (0%) 3.71 0.49 14. i am able to use it to develop students’ higherorder thinking skills. pre-service teachers 2 (10%) 16 (80%) 2 (10%) 0 (0%) 2.95 0.51 in-service teachers 5 (71%) 2 (29%) 0 (0%) 0 (0%) 3.71 0.49 15. i am able to use it to facilitate students’ selflearning capabilities. pre-service teachers 2 (11%) 16 (84%) 1 (5%) 0 (0%) 3.05 0.39 in-service teachers 5 (71%) 2 (29%) 0 (0%) 0 (0%) 3.71 0.49 notes: 1. the numbers in the mean column are scores on a 4­point likert scale. sa = strongly agree; a = agree; d = disagree; sd = strongly disagree; m = mean; *sd = standard deviation 89profile vol. 16, no. 1, april 2014. issn 1657-0790 (printed) 2256-5760 (online). bogotá, colombia. pages 89-104 motivation conditions in a foreign language reading comprehension course offering both a web-based modality and a face-to-face modality las condiciones de motivación en un curso de comprensión de lectura en lengua extranjera (le) ofrecido tanto en la modalidad presencial como en la modalidad a distancia en la web sergio lopera medina*1 universidad de antioquia, medellín, colombia motivation plays an important in role in education. based on the ten macro-strategies proposed by dörnyei and csizér (1998), this article analyzes the motivation conditions in a foreign language reading comprehension course using both a web-based modality and a face-to-face modality. a case study was implemented as the primary research method, and five instruments were used to gather data: observations, a teacher’s diary, focus groups, questionnaires, and in-depth interviews. the use of teaching aids, mastery gains in reading, proper presentation of tasks, and lack of humor were among the similarities found in the courses. in contrast, constant motivation, technical support, interactions among students, anxiety, and a high number of exercises constituted some of the differences between the modalities. key words: comparison, face-to face modality, foreign language reading, motivation, web-based modality. la motivación juega un papel importante en la educación. basados en las diez macro-estrategias propuestas por dörnyei y csizér, este artículo analiza las condiciones de motivación en un curso de comprensión de lectura en lengua extranjera ofrecido en las modalidades a distancia en la web y presencial. se implementó un estudio de caso como método de investigación y se utilizaron cinco instrumentos para recoger la información: observaciones, diario del profesor, grupos focales, cuestionarios y entrevistas a profundidad. el uso de ayudas de enseñanza, la mejora en la lectura, la presentación adecuada de las actividades y la carencia de humor son algunas de las similitudes encontradas en estos dos cursos. en contraste, una motivación más individual y positiva, la interacción entre los estudiantes, la ansiedad y la cantidad de ejercicios se constituyen en algunas diferencias entre las dos modalidades. palabras clave: comparación, lectura en lengua extranjera, modalidad a distancia en la web, modalidad presencial, motivación. * e-mail: slopera@idiomas.udea.edu.co how to cite this article (apa, 6th ed.): lopera medina, s. (2014). motivation conditions in a foreign language reading comprehension course offering both a web-based modality and a face-to-face modality. profile issues in teachers’ professional development, 16(1), 89-104. http://dx.doi.org/10.15446/profile.v16n1.36939. this article was received on june 26, 2013, and accepted on october 18, 2013. universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras90 lopera medina introduction the prevalence of web-based learning is in creasing considerably at the university level due to its greater flexibility and opportunity (stern, 2004). this increase might be the result of options provided by the advancement of technology and the internet and mounting pressures caused by an individual’s community, government, and globalization. thus, faculty members are faced with offering web-based courses and programs to university students. some universities have even offered students two options to take web-based courses in order to satisfy the community and government: either a web-based modality or a face-to-face modality. the need to assess the benefits of each modality has become an important task, and the outcomes of a single course offered in these two modalities should be compared and contrasted (arismendi, colorado, & grajales, 2011). the results might guide faculty members to adapt or restructure programs in their educational settings in order to benefit students. this article aims to compare these motivational conditions bas ed on the ten macro-strategies proposed by dörnyei and csizér (1998) in a graduate course called comprensión de lectura para postgrado (reading comprehension for graduate students). this course was offered both in a web-based modality and in a face-to-face modality for foreign language readers at the universidad de antioquia, medellín, colombia. this article begins with a literature review and examines language teaching, motivation, and reading. then, the context, course, and characteristics of each modality are described, and the methodology is outlined. finally, findings, conclusions, and limitations are presented at the end of the article. review of literature reading reading is an interactive process between the writer and the reader. alyousef (2005) defines reading as “an interactive process between a reader and a text. the reader should interact dynamically with the text with the intention to understand its message” (p. 144). this author also states that the reader must possess two important elements in order to interact with the text: linguistic knowledge and background knowledge. the former involves awareness about the language, including vocabulary, grammatical structures, and tenses. the latter is linked to the familiarity the reader has with the text. other authors also support that reading involves a cognitive process (cassany, 2006; gonzález, 2000; grabe & stoller, 2002; weir, 1993). students must predict, memorize information for, interpret, pay attention to, and make hypotheses when they decode a written message. cassany (2006) argues that reading processes are more complex in a foreign language because students may face difficulties with syntax, grammar, vocabulary, or culture; additionally, they usually have to make a greater effort when they are trying to interact with the reading. as a result, it is very important to guide students with reading strategies. thus, developing a set of reading strategies is very important for learners. reading models because reading is an interactive process, readers must use both bottom-up processes and top-down processes. the former are linked to vocabulary and sentences in which readers construct the text from small units (from letters to words, then from words to sentences) (aebersold & field, 1997). the latter refer to the application of the text to existing knowledge (historical, cultural, or linguistic). grabe and stoller (2002) argue that students need to apply both processes in order to be successful readers. reading strategy approach chamot, barnhardt, el-dinary, and robbins (1999) and janzen (2001) highlight the importance of teaching explicit reading strategies to students in order 91profile vol. 16, no. 1, april 2014. issn 1657-0790 (printed) 2256-5760 (online). bogotá, colombia. pages 89-104 motivation conditions in a foreign language reading comprehension course offering both... to improve their interactions with the text. reading strategies help learners pay attention to textual cues, overcome difficult situations while reading, and integrate information from the text (block, 1986). these reading strategies may range from basic (e.g., previewing or scanning) to complex (e.g., inference or summarizing). janzen (2001) proposed five issues related to the reading strategy approach: • explicit discussion of the reading strategies and when to use them. • demonstration of how to apply a reading strategy (modeling). • involvement with the reading in terms of reading aloud and sharing the process while applying the strategies. • discussion of the activities in the classroom. • practice with the reading material of the course. (p. 369) some researchers have used reading strategies in classrooms and concluded that they are useful for learners (arismendi et al., 2011; block, 1986; carrell, 1998; lopera, 2012; mikulecky & jeffries, 2004; poole, 2009). researchers have also compared face-to-face courses to web-based courses in foreign or second language contexts, concentrating on learning styles, reading strategies, beliefs, and forms of assessment (arismendi et al., 2011; imel, 1998; national education association, 2000; o’malley, 1999; paskey, 2001; smith, ferguson, & caris, 2001; topper, 2007). regarding motivation, we found only one study that compared and contrasted a face-to-face course to a web-based course in an undergraduate english for academic purposes (eap) writing course. rubesch and mcneil (2010) found four major differences in these two modalities: social/interaction, convenience and flexibility, the new/fun/interesting/easy expectation, and the frustration factor. in colombia, research in teaching reading as a foreign language has been conducted mainly in faceto-face contexts (lopera, 2012; lópez & giraldo, 2011; mahecha; urrego, & lozano, 2011; poole, 2009; quiroga, 2010). some characteristics have been considered that are related to classroom environments, such as verbal communication in which the teacher leads the learning process, instances in which the teacher changes her/his agenda according to the students’ needs, and variations in her/his use of group techniques (mejía & villegas, 2002). in contrast, the role of the students is seen as that of a “recipient” because they are attempting to internalize knowledge, following the instructions and guidance given by the teacher. on the other hand, web-based education also involves some of the following characteristics. although the students and teacher do not have any physical contact, their interaction occurs through tools from the course. students can log in any time they want, and the role of the students is seen to be autonomous. in fact, students are expected to follow the academic instructions given by the teacher, such as reading the instructions, watching a video, surfing the web to find information related to a topic, answering a questionnaire, and adding discussion to a forum, among others. regarding research on webbased education in colombia, there are no studies on reading in a foreign language. in other countries, researchers including anderson (2003), dreyer and nel (2003), murphy (2007), white (1995) have explored the use metacognitive reading strategies in web-based education. motivation motivation is an essential factor to engage students in being actively involved in foreign or second language learning (oxford & shearin, 1994). there are two types of motivation: intrinsic motivation and extrinsic motivation (brown, 2001). the former refers to internal rewards, and the main objective is to learn. the latter deals with external rewards in terms of money, prizes, or grades. cheng and dörnyei (2007) argue that motivation “serves as the initial engine to generate learning and later functions as an ongoing driving force that helps to sustain the long and usually laborious journey of universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras92 lopera medina table 1. macro-strategies for motivation (adapted from dörnyei & csizér, 1998) macro-strategy some detailed activities 1. proper teacher behavior • show enthusiasm • establish a good rapport with students • show students you care about them 2. recognize students’ efforts • recognize students’ efforts and achievements • monitor students’ progress and celebrate their victories • make sure grades reflect students’ efforts and hard work 3. promote learners’ self-confidence • provide students with positive feed-back • teach students learning techniques • design tasks that are within the students’ abilities 4. create a pleasant classroom climate • bring in and encourage humor • create a supportive classroom climate that promotes risk-taking • use a short and interesting opening activity to start each class 5. present tasks properly • give clear instructions by modeling • give good reasons to students as to why a particular task is meaningful 6. increase learners’ goal-orientedness • help students develop realistic beliefs about english learning • find out students’ needs and build them into the curriculum • encourage students to set learning goals 7. make the learning tasks stimulating • break the routine by varying the presentation format • introduce various interesting topics • present various auditory and visual teaching aids • make tasks challenging 8. familiarize learners with l2 related values • introduce authentic cultural materials • remind students of the benefits of mastering english • encourage students to use english outside of the classroom 9. promote group cohesiveness and group norms • allow students to get to know each other • ask students to work toward the same goal • explain the importance of class rules 10. promote learner autonomy • adopt the role of facilitator • encourage peer teaching and group presentation • allow students to assess themselves 93profile vol. 16, no. 1, april 2014. issn 1657-0790 (printed) 2256-5760 (online). bogotá, colombia. pages 89-104 motivation conditions in a foreign language reading comprehension course offering both... acquiring a foreign language” (p. 153). the authors also state that a motivated learner may achieve her/ his goals when she/he persists in attaining proficiency, even if that person does not have much of an aptitude for learning a language. strategies for motivation crookes and schmidt (1991), dörnyei (1994), and oxford and shearin (1994) began to analyze motivation from its cognitive aspects and situational factors regarding classroom application in learning language contexts. dörnyei and csizér (1998) carried out a research project in which they asked two hundred english teachers in hungary to rank certain motivational teaching strategies in classrooms. as a result, they gathered ten macro-strategies for motivation, which they called “ten commandments for motivating language learners” (see table 1). motivation in web-based courses motivation has mainly been explored in face-toface contexts (gregianin & mezzomo, 2011), whereas in web-based education, researchers have focused on the permanence of students in these courses. dutton, dutton, and perry (2002), muilenburg and berge (2005), and roblyer (1999) found that many students drop out of on-line courses due to poor motivation. the absence of a learning atmosphere, distant contact among students, selfdiscipline, isolation, anxiety, and confusion are some of the reasons students are not motivated (hara & kling, 2003; marcus, 2003). however, cvitkovik and sakamoto (2009) emphasize that web-based learners need to have certain special features related to their learning strategies and autonomy: strategic competence, self-reflection and involvement in the learning process, activity within the learning environment, and application of a specific technique to a particular task. if learners do not possess all of these features, they become unmotivated. hurd, b eaven, and ortega (2001) list some principles for consideration when teachers are designing web-based courses to encourage motivation and autonomy: • students have the option for self-assessment and self-evaluation. • students have the opportunity to relate what they already know to what they are learning. • students have the possibility to reflect on how they learn. • students have the option to experiment with suggested learning strategies. • learners have the possibility to transfer what they have learned to other contexts relevant to their needs or interests. • students have the option to complete extra practice. • learners clearly understand the objectives and feel they have ownership of the course materials. this guidance can be applied during different stages of the learning process. in fact, wlodkowski (1978) suggests three different stages for motivational strategies: at the beginning of the learning process, during the learning process, and at the end of the learning process. • the first stage involves attitudes and needs. icebreaking activities, stating clear objectives for the course, and stating what will be required to be successful in the course are examples of motivational strategies for the learning process. • the second stage involves stimulation and effect. teachers can use motivational strategies, potentially including learner participation with questionnaires, different styles of presentation, humor, and different forms of class work (in groups, individually, and in class discussion). these strategies should be meaningful to learners. • the last stage involves competence and reinforcement. frequent feedback and the communication of progress to learners are important motivational issues for the learning process. universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras94 lopera medina finally, teachers can guide learners in the use of metacognitive strategies in order to become more autonomous. planning how to approach a task, monitoring its comprehension, and evaluating progress are some examples of metacognitive activities (anderson, 2002). method a case study was followed as a research design (creswell, 2007; yin, 2003). the research involved the methodology of an exploratory multiple case study, as the researchers wanted to further compare and contrast the motivations of the face-to-face course and of the web-based course using different instruments to gather data (creswell, 2007; merriam, 1998; tellis, 1997; yin 2003). participants were asked to sign a consent form stating that their participation was voluntary, and their identities were protected. participants the teacher the teacher held a masters degree in teaching for eign languages and had more than ten years of experience teaching face-to-face reading comprehension courses in graduate and undergraduate programs. however, it was his first experience teaching web-based courses, although he was quite motivated to have this experience. the teacher had computer skills and was part of the team who designed the web-course for the research project. for the purpose of this project, the same teacher taught both courses. the students a total of 56 students finished the course in both modalities. table 2 describes the general information of students. data collection and analysis data were gathered using five instruments: questionnaires, observations, in-depth interviews, focus groups, and the diar y of the teacher. the purpose of each instrument is explained below. questionnaires. three questionnaires were administered to evaluate the course and teacher, the students’ motivations and reading strategies, and the students themselves. these instruments were analyzed to verify the motivations. observations. this technique allows investigators to examine issues, such as behavioral interactions and participation, among others (brown, 2001). researchers observed different sessions of classes in the face-to-face course. the chats, forums, e-mails, and exercises of each unit were analyzed in the webbased course. focus groups. when the courses finished, the students were invited to participate in focus groups to discuss their academic experiences in a deeper way. researchers programmed four sessions (two per modality). teacher diar y. the teacher kept a diar y for each modality in english. he recorded all of his observations, thoughts, and reflections about the teaching process. the objective was to build an academic view of the two modalities (jeffrey & hadley, 2002). in-depth inter v ie ws. researchers selected four key respondents (two per modality) in order to validate the information (berry, 1999). for the selection of students, researchers chose the students who showed the highest and lowest motivations, accordingly. context this study was carried out at universidad de antioquia, medellín-colombia. graduate students in specializations are required to certif y their reading comprehension in a foreign language in order to be admitted to the second semester of their specializations. students have two options for this certification: taking a proficiency test or taking a face-face course. a third option was established in 95profile vol. 16, no. 1, april 2014. issn 1657-0790 (printed) 2256-5760 (online). bogotá, colombia. pages 89-104 motivation conditions in a foreign language reading comprehension course offering both... 2007 when the eale (enseñanza y aprendizaje de las lenguas extranjeras [teaching and learning of foreign languages]) research group designed a course in order to help web-based graduate students fulfill the foreign language requirement. two years later, eale decided to carry out the research project “effects of webbased and face-to-face instruction modalities in the reading comprehension of graduate students.” the objective was to compare students’ experiences with the web-based and traditional face-to-face courses. description of the course both the face-to face course and the web-based course followed a reading comprehension program for graduate students that lasted 120 hours. the program was designed to help students apply reading strategies in order to improve the reading comprehension process in foreign language. the course was divided into five units (see table 3). the face-to-face course students attended the face-to-face course twice a week (mondays and wednesdays) from 6 to 9 p.m. the teacher followed the format of a traditional classroom, explaining the topics as the students received the knowledge. he used a video beam, board, examples, demonstrations, and photocopies for his teachings and for the application of reading strategies. he mostly performed the following activities during the classes: • he told the students the objectives, methodology, evaluation, and the reading topics at the beginning of the course. • he wrote the agenda and activities for each class. • he reviewed the topic taught in the previous class. table 2. general information of students web-based students face-to-face students 38 students started the course (25 women, 13 men), and 30 finished. ages ranged between 23 and 49 years old. few students had prior experience with web-based courses before this course. 27 students started the course (17 women, 10 men), and 26 students finished the course. ages ranged between 20 and 51 years old. both web-based students and face-to-face students were enrolled in the first semester of different specializations:a social security law, constitutional law, family law, administrative law, or process law. some students dropped the courses because they passed the proficiency test before reaching the end of the courses. aespecialización (specialization—or a possible equivalent, diploma program) is a graduate program that usually lasts two semesters. students update their knowledge in their areas with this program. table 3. the reading comprehension program unit name topics 1 word and their meanings dictionary use, parts of speech, cognates, affixes, word meaning in context. 2 reading strategies prediction, skimming, scanning, and graph interpretation. 3 development of reading skills sentence structure, topic, main idea, and referents. 4 text organization methods cause and effect, comparison and contrasts, description, narration, argumentation, and classification and categorization. 5 critical reading fact and opinions, tone, and arguments. universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras96 lopera medina • he read aloud the readings in english. • he modeled the reading strategies. • he asked the students to work in groups in order to apply or practice the reading strategies. students selected a speaker to share the activities among the groups. • he gave feed-back on each activity to students. finally, in order to clarify instructions or an issue for the students, the teacher used spanish. the web-based course the web-based course was designed using the platform moodle (modular object-oriented dynamic learning environment), and the students had to spend 10 hours on it weekly. the course began with an introductory unit, which presented all of the information related to academic issues and to recommendations and sources, including the objectives, evaluation, topics, scheduling of activities, links for reading practice, online dictionaries, and bibliography. each unit displayed an introduction of the reading topic, the objective, a mind map, explanations with examples, practice with exercises and workshops, tests, links for extra practice, and bibliography. for the correction and evaluation of the activities, the platform offers two options: automated evaluation and manual evaluation. the former gives the scores and comments instantaneously. the latter takes some time because the teacher has to evaluate the learners’ activities, only then sending a comment and a score. students may have the option to improve or correct their exercises when the platform is programmed to offer multiple attempts. moodle platform moodle is the platform used for web-based courses at universidad de antioquia. this platform involves a constructivist and social constructionist approach, wherein both the teachers and students participate in and contribute to the interactions in educational settings (brandl, 2005). the platform offers many advantages for web-based education. it reports each activity completed by students using graphics and details, provides a complete register of user activity, and offers many tools, such as wikis, chats, forums, dialogues, and e-mail integration. finally, the interface of the platform is simple, efficient, and user-friendly. findings ten researchers participated in the data analysis (six teachers, three undergraduate students, and an advisor). all researchers examined the data individually in order to find patterns in the different instruments. then, they labeled and compared some important ideas in order to code and categorize the data. finally, the researchers used triangulation to validate the data (freeman, 1998) and translated certain excerpts from spanish to english. based on the macro-strategies proposed by dörnyei and csizér (1998), the researchers found several issues concerning motivation. proper teacher behavior both web-based students and face-to-face students stated that the teacher greatly motivated them. a sample of students’ comments about the teachers in the motivation questionnaires can be seen in table 4. table 4. support of proper teacher behavior web-based students face-to-face students • the teacher is quite motivating because he is always accompanying students. • he is always quite motivating. • the teacher is a dedicated person and always motivates students. • he knows how to motivate students. 97profile vol. 16, no. 1, april 2014. issn 1657-0790 (printed) 2256-5760 (online). bogotá, colombia. pages 89-104 motivation conditions in a foreign language reading comprehension course offering both... however, the researchers obser ved that the teacher was a more constant motivator (muñoz & gonzález, 2010) in the web-based course than in the face-to-face course. this web-based course was the first experience for most of the students, and they faced difficulties using the tools and submitting the exercises from the platform. this caused demotivation among the students, and the teacher had to stimulate them to participate or give them various opportunities to repeat an exercise. recognize students’ efforts observers noted that the teacher always monitored the students’ progress and stimulated the students by congratulating them when they completed the exercises in both courses. the teacher typed or used expressions like the ones shown in table 5. however, differences emerged regarding grades. web-based students expressed a high degree of anxiety when they did not receive an automated score from the exercises they had submitted. the teacher had to evaluate some of the exercises manually, and he took some time to do so. also, the platform did not help by giving students a score of 0.0 while they waited for the teacher’s correction. as a result, the students from the web-based course were quite worried about the results. one of the students expressed in the motivation questionnaire: another discouraging situation is that you cannot get the score of an exercise immediately after sending it if it requires review from the teacher; so, you have to wait without knowing if you did it right or wrong. promote learners’ self-confidence the learning strategies for reading were explicit in both courses. the web-based course offered explanations and examples of each reading strategy. also, each topic had some links for extra practice with reinforcing explanations and examples. on the other hand, the teacher was observed to introduce, model, and give examples of each reading strategy in the face-to-face course. students also expressed that they had learned or explored certain learning strategies in their reading. some of the students’ replies to the selfassessment questionnaire are shown in table 6. table 5. support of students’ effort web-based students face-to-face students • hey, it was a good exercise, congratulations • very good, congratulations • yeah, that’s right, congratulations • very good table 6. support of learners’ self-confidence web-based students face-to-face students • some of the aspects i highlight are that i find it easier to read texts in english. i enriched my vocabulary. i can read and interpret graphics with less difficulty. i can identify different kind of texts. i analyze and take main ideas from texts. it is easier for me to use the dictionary and technological resources. i learned a lot and am very motivated to keep on studying the language. • how to relate graphics with the titles of the readings. • i have learnt many reading strategies, especially, skimming, scanning, and previewing. • “the pre-reading strategies:” prediction, skimming, scanning. universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras98 lopera medina one of the differences between the modalities was that the web-based course gave more positive individual feedback to students than the face-to-face course. when students submitted each exercise, the platform and the teacher always gave a grade with a positive comment. comments such as “good job,” “congratulations,” and “it was a good exercise” were given on the platform. in fact, one of the students expressed in the motivation questionnaire: what motivates me is how direct and personalized the communication is. it is so nice to interact with the teacher; he is always willing to resolve your concerns. creating a pleasant classroom climate both modalities always followed a traditional format, in which the teacher or the platform presented the topic and gave examples, and then the students were called out to apply or practice the topic being taught. the teacher used a song to reinforce one of the reading topics in the face-to-face course; this was the only different activity for students. observers noted that humor was not present in classes but observed that face-to-face students had a more relaxed atmosphere than the web-based students, as the former students smiled among themselves, shared personal issues, and talked about their jobs during some moments of the class. however, this was not the case in the other group, as the web-based learners studied alone and lacked classmates with whom to share personal moments. hara and kling (2003) state that web-based students feel a degree of isolation in this modality. another difference is the number of the exercises in the web-based course. students complained about the quantity of exercises designed in the moodle platform. one of the students expressed the following in the self-assessment instrument: there are too many exercises, and we have to do them all. nevertheless, it is a sacrifice but we have to do them; it is a good idea to have fewer exercises. however, students had access to the platform at any time of the day, constituting an advantage and a difference compared to the face-face course. osorno and lopera (2012) reported that the availability of the platform helped learners to “work at any time or place leading to economize time, money, handle family, work, and study at the same time” (p. 50). present tasks properly observers noted that both web-based students and face-to-face students usually followed the provided tasks without any difficulty. also, they observed that the teacher and the topics presented in the platform were clear and illustrative to students. students did not usually have questions related to the topic. however, there was a difference in the students from the web-based course, as they encountered questions and difficulties regarding the use of the platform, especially at the beginning of the course. the teacher had to solve some technical questions for the students, such as how to use the tools in the platform, how to log in, how to navigate the platform, and how to submit a task, among others. in his diary, the teacher expressed the following: i realized that the teacher not only needs to be able to help students through content and grade their activities, but also be able to provide technical support to students on the different issues concerning the platform. (muñoz & gonzález, 2010, p. 77) as a consequence, researchers have categorized this new teacher’s role as a technical knowledge expert (muñoz & gonzález, 2010). increase learners’ goal-orientedness all students had an extrinsic motivation for the course because they had to certify their reading comprehension in a foreign language in order to be admitted to the second semester of their specialization. few students showed any intrinsic motivation toward the process of learning a foreign language. some of the students’ answers in the focus group can be seen in table 7. 99profile vol. 16, no. 1, april 2014. issn 1657-0790 (printed) 2256-5760 (online). bogotá, colombia. pages 89-104 motivation conditions in a foreign language reading comprehension course offering both... on the other hand, students did express a desire to include readings related to their law field. they argued that it was important to have some contact with materials dealing with the law because some common ideas or expressions are taken from the english language (see table 8). finally, it is worth noting that neither the webbased nor face-to-face students were taken into account when discussing issues such as topics, evaluation, planning, or methodology at the beginning of each modality. make the learning tasks stimulating the presentation of topics was supported by visual or auditory aids in both courses. in the faceto-face modality, the teacher used magazines, images, and video beams to explain the topics. he also read the readings aloud. in the same vein, the topics in the web-based course were accompanied by images and covers of magazines. most of the readings had audio to be played alongside them. however, there was a difference between the groups. in the face-to-face group, some of the readings dealt with current issues in colombia, which helped these students better activate their background knowledge than those in the web-based course. one of the face-to-face students expressed the following in the in-depth interview: through the readings, we learned about the language and were informed about current issues in colombia. familiarize learners with l2 related values in both courses, the teacher and students alike noted the benefits of mastering english, in this case, in reading in a foreign language. the students expressed that they had learned how to improve different issues regarding their reading strategies; this issue was constantly found in the diary of the teacher, the focus groups, the questionnaires, and the observations. in fact, some students expressed that they had gained some mastery in reading within the focus groups (see table 9). table 7. support of increase learners’ goal-orientedness web-based students face-to-face students i took the course because it was a requirement for the graduate program. well, we needed to take this course in order to be registered in the second semester of our specializations. table 8. support to include readings related to law web-based students face-to-face students because inside of texts of “derecho comparado” there are many ideas that are written in english and they cannot be taken away. and the readings have to be focused on topics related to law. table 9. support to familiarize learners with l2-related values web-based students face-to-face students well, i guess i accomplished the objective because i can get now the general ideas of a text. i now feel more confident to read texts in english and understand more. universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras100 lopera medina promote group cohesiveness and group norms one of the most important differences dealt with the interactions among students. in the faceto-face group, the students worked together, sharing academic experiences and personal issues. they formed groups to practice and apply the reading strategies they learned, and observers noticed group cohesiveness among the students. also, the teacher usually asked the students to work in groups in order to practice what he had taught. on the other hand, web-based students always worked individually, and the teacher did not promote interaction among students. muñoz and gonzález (2010) and osorno and lopera (2012) reported that the teacher lacked expertise because it was his first experience in this modality, although he had extensive experience in face-to-face contexts. in some entries of his diary, he expressed that the students did not interact with one another due to their attitudes: i have the feeling virtual students are not quite willing to participate; they are more concerned on completing the exercises and finishing their activities. (muñoz & gonzález, 2010, p. 80) i really believe students could use the forum, the chats, or the e-mails for asking about any doubt they could have; however, the students did not bother. still, the researchers took a deeper look at this issue and concluded that the teacher did not ask the students to work in couples or groups. students only had a few interactions in the chat involving general issues about the course: questions about the platform, feelings on their experience with the modality, deadlines, and evaluation. collison, elbaum, haavind, and tinker (2000) and muirhead (2004) suggest that web-based teachers must involve students on an interactional level in order to promote individual, as well as group, work. promote learner autonomy there were two important issues related to autonomy: positive self-assessment and lack of selfappropriated learning. the former was supported by the self-assessment questionnaires and focus groups. students evaluated their learning process in reading positively during the course in both modalities. on the other hand, students did not practice the reading strategies on their own, although they admitted they had learned much. instead, they did what they were asked to and did not go deeper into the process. this might be a result of the students’ solely extrinsic motivation for taking the course. the following comment taken from one of the observations supports the previous idea: one of the differences between the groups is that the teacher asked the face-to-face students to peer-assess. he sometimes asked students to evaluate their classmates’ process in a specific reading strategy exercise. however, this did not happen in the web-based course because the teacher never asked students to do it. conclusions and implications t h ro u g h t h e a n a l y s i s o f t h e t e n m a c ro strategies for motivation proposed by dörnyei and csizér (1998), the researchers have identified some similarities and differences between the investigated modalities. among the similarities were several positive aspects, such as the teacher’s motivation, monitoring, and congratulation of the face-to-face and web-based students. the teacher and the platform also explained, sampled, and used teaching aids for the students. moreover, the students gained mastery and used reading strategies and techniques when they were engaged with the readings given. however, the researchers also found some negative aspects, including the absence of humor to encourage a more relaxed atmosphere in both modalities. likewise, most students wanted to pass the courses because 101profile vol. 16, no. 1, april 2014. issn 1657-0790 (printed) 2256-5760 (online). bogotá, colombia. pages 89-104 motivation conditions in a foreign language reading comprehension course offering both... their completion was required before registering for the next semester; in other words, most were purely extrinsically motivated. often, students did not practice reading by themselves, and readings were not related to the field of law. furthermore, the students were not taken into account when the teachers set up the topics, evaluations, planning, or methodology at the beginning of the courses. the researchers identified several differences between the modalities. in the web-based course, the teacher was more a constant motivator, provided more positive individual motivation, and gave technical support to the students. however, the teacher did not prompt interactions among the students. webbased students also showed a high degree of anxiety due to the delays of their evaluations when they were manual. students also complained about the number of exercises they had to do on the platform. in contrast, the face-to-face students had a more relaxed atmosphere than the web-based students because they had contact with their peers, whereas web-based students worked alone. the teacher used readings related to colombia, thus drawing upon the students’ background knowledge in this modality. finally, the face-to-face teachers sometimes asked their students to assess their peers, promoting better group cohesion. as the use of web-based education in foreign languages is new in colombia, researchers should offer recommendations based on their experience. first, educational institutions are suggested to provide training programs to prepare foreign language teachers to work in this modality. this measure would help the teachers reflect upon and analyze their roles in education. second, a third modality in reading as a foreign language teaching could be explored, such as blended learning. this modality would mix some elements of face-to-face education and web-based education (bartolomé, 2004) in order to take into account the positive and negative aspects of each modality described in this paper. finally, it would be useful to involve students in topic selection, evaluation procedures, and the evaluation of these courses. it is important to give students the opportunity to define their own personal criteria in order to determine shared group goals. limitations the students showed a high level of extrinsic motivation, as they had to certify their foreign language proficiencies in reading in order to register for the second semester of their graduate program. if the students had not had to certify such a proficiency, the results may have been different. also, the teacher was a novice in the web-based modality and did not prompt interaction among the students, making analysis of this issue for this modality impossible. finally, the number of students was limited in this study, and the researchers do not claim that these findings can be generalized to broader contexts. references aebersold, j. a., & field, m. l. 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(2003). case study research: design and methods. thousand oaks, ca: sage publications. about the author sergio lopera medina, ma, is currently a phd student in linguistics and; a specialist in teaching foreign languages. he is a full-time teacher and a research member of eale (enseñanza y aprendizaje de las lenguas extranjeras) at universidad de antioquia (colombia). his research interests are including teaching efl reading comprehension and, compliments in pragmatics. the findings reported in this article correspond to the final results of the research project “effects of webbased and face-to-face instruction modalities in the reading comprehension of graduate students” sponsored by codi (code 539), universidad de antioquia, colombia. 185profile vol. 15, no. 2, october 2013. issn 1657-0790 (printed) 2256-5760 (online). bogotá, colombia. pages 185-197 returnees’ identity construction at a ba tesol program in mexico construcción de identidad de retornados en un pregrado en enseñanza del inglés para hablantes de otras lenguas en méxico leonardo rivas rivas*1 universidad de guanajuato, mexico this article has at its core the unraveling of factors that have influenced the identity of those who have been caught in between two worlds (mexico and the united states) and whom will be called preand in-service returnees from now on. a qualitative approach was chosen in order to delve deep into the participants’ lived experiences through narrative inquiry which in turn aided in the discovery of the elem ents that have influenced their identity construction. the data suggest that those same elements have been crucial in the creation of a small culture among the participants at a teacher education program in teaching english to speakers of other languages at a mexican university. key words: identity, in-service returnees, narrative inquiry, pre-service returnees. este artículo se centra en aclarar algunos de los factores que influyen en la identidad de las personas que se han visto atrapadas entre dos “mundos” (méxico y estados unidos), también conocidas como los “retornados”. se optó por un método cualitativo para ahondar en sus experiencias vividas mediante la indagación narrativa, la cual a su vez aportó al descubrimiento de elementos que influyen en la construcción de sus identidades. los datos sugieren que esos mismos elementos son de suma importancia en la constitución de una pequeña cultura dentro de la licenciatura en la enseñanza de inglés a hablantes de otras lenguas, en una universidad mexicana. palabras clave: identidad, investigación narrativa, retornados en formación inicial, retornados en formación permanente. * e-mail: swell037@gmail.com this article was received on january 31, 2013, and accepted on july 28, 2013. universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras186 rivas rivas introduction the objective of this research project had at its core the investigation of identity formation in students that have lived in the united states for a period of time and have come back to reside in mexico. these are students that are currently undertaking the ba in tesol (teaching english to speakers of other languages) at the university of guanajuato. this work was part of a research project conducted by a teacher-researcher at the language department and i was invited to be part of it, first as a participant and then as a way to be able to develop my thesis project in order for me to complete the ba tesol program at the university of guanajuato. personally, it is very important to discover how other pre-service and in-service returnees have dealt with the constant migration between the united states and mexico and how it has impacted their lives since i am myself one of many who emigrated as a child to the united states and have come back to reside in mexico. further, while living in both c ou nt r i e s , i h ave e x p e r i e n c e d s om e for m of discrimination from family, friends, and others based mostly on appearance, linguistic style, and linguistic choice. since joining the ba program, i became aware that i am not the only one who has undergone these types of discrimination; therefore, an interest in this area was awakened in me. i believe that by investigating this topic i will be able to better understand who i am and be better adept at finding a balance in my life and perhaps help those who are undergoing the difficult task of asking themselves who they are and how they are represented in the world that surrounds them. further, i believe that the findings could also help the ba program in that it may allow the student body to integrate mexican born and raised students with mexican born-american raised ones in a smoother and faster manner. the next segment will allow the reader to further understand how this project came about by relating some of the circumstances the researcher-participant has endured throughout his life. background since i came back to mexico in 2007, i have always considered myself different from almost everyone around me. one of the reasons is that i grew up in the united states with a more accepting ideology than most mexicans. further, when i had just arrived in mexico, i did not consider myself mexican because i had lived in the united states for 23 years and had acquired an american way of perceiving and interpreting life around me; therefore, i had a problem accepting some of the mexican customs, norms, and mores. another reason is that certain characteristics of my persona have always been pointed out to me both in the united states and mexico. for example, the way i look, speak, and carry myself. while in the united states, those around me never fully accepted me as an american and while in mexico, people never fully accepted me as a mexican. this, in turn, has hindered my perception of who i am in this world. when i had just arrived from the united states, i noticed that i tended to associate more with people whom i knew had an american background like myself. i believed we could relate more in terms of sports, tv shows, music, cartoons, and basically american culture. i also noticed that i felt more comfortable talking to them than i would with a mexican. nonetheless, as years went by, i noticed that i started feeling more mexican than before thus questioning who i really was in this world. hence, this is where my interest to research the identity of those who have had the experience of living both in the united states and in mexico comes from. fundamentally, trying to decipher the life experiences that have made us, returnees, different and how they 187profile vol. 15, no. 2, october 2013. issn 1657-0790 (printed) 2256-5760 (online). bogotá, colombia. pages 185-197 returnees’ identity construction at a ba tesol program in mexico have aided in the development of a particular culture at the university of guanajuato. literature review this section encompasses salient concepts which were taken in order to give this project the framework needed for a clear delineation of parameters. first, an understanding of the nature of what it means to be a returnee is highlighted followed by the concept of identity. last, the focus shifts to small cultures. returnees an important element in this research project is defining what a returnee is. according to mora (2011) a returnee is a person who was born in mexico, spent any given number of years in the united states and comes back to reside in mexico permanently for whatever reason. moreover, the amount of years the person spent in the united states gave way to shape the person’s identity. in this context, all of the participants are returnees since most of them were born in mexico, migrated to the united states at an early age and have come back to reside in mexico once again. for various reasons, they have ended up undertaking a ba tesol program at the university of guanajuato where the researcher has taken notice of their interaction patterns and how they stand out from their mexican born and raised schoolmates. the researcher, being one of the participants himself, has noticed that there are some commonalities amongst them—through their life experiences—and these in turn help define their identity inside the ba. the following topic explains the term identity. identity according to stets and burke (2000), identity has at its core, “the categorization of the self as an occupant of a role, and the incorporation, into the self, of the meanings and expectations of that role and its performance” (p. 2). moreover, identity can be taken as a term, “to reference how a person understands his or her relationship to the world, how that relationship is constructed across time and space, and how the person understands possibilities for the future” (norton, 2000, p. 5). a third stance states that identity encompasses, “one’s conception of self in the world” (mooney et al., 2011, p. 174). further, it is claimed that in post-structural perspectives, identity is, “fluid, context-dependent, and context-producing, in particular historical and cultural circumstances” (norton & toohey, 2011, p. 419). in this study, the returnees examined have all lived in the united states and have thus created an identity based on an americanized cultural perspective. nonetheless, throughout their lives they have been singled out because of their mexican roots, because of their accent, because of their looks, or because of other reasons. when they arrive in mexico to reside, they take on the challenge of engaging in an identity struggle between their american self and their rooted mexican one often falling into a zone which is in the middle of both and which constantly shifts from one to the other depending on who they are with. when they find themselves in each other’s presence, they seem to engage in feelings of nostalgia for their old country which gans (1979) describes as symbolic identity. moreover, they seem to bond with each other because of the language and because they have had similar experiences in life. baker (2010) posits that language becomes a symbol of belongingness to a language group. therefore, it is through language that these returnees bond. small cultures the term culture, at first glance, usually has the connotation of a large entity, ethnicity, nationalism, or internationalism (holliday, 1999). however, this term can also be applied to a smaller entity such as a universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras188 rivas rivas classroom, a family, or a small group of people (holliday, 1999). to a further extent, there is a difference between a sub-culture and a small culture in that sub-cultures are, “social groups which are perceived to deviate from the normative ideals of adult communities” (thornton as cited in holliday, 1999, p. 237). moreover, they are thought to be somewhat at odds with the large culture within which they exist. a small culture, on the other hand, is one which can be created for short or long periods of time between a tourist and a local, a teacher and his or her pupils, language students and their native-speaker teachers, workers and their boss, etc. moreover, a small culture has no relation to ethnicity, nationalism, or internationalism but to social groupings that are not subordinated by a large entity and which can also be used to interpret group behavior (holliday, 1999). the concept of small culture is of utmost im portance in this study because the participants seem to create one within their ba program. it is a culture they create for as long as they are involved in university amongst themselves and their classmates. moreover, it is defined by the concepts aforementioned and also, their bilingualism, their family, their language at home, their experiences with discrimination, their linguistic style, their linguistic choice, and their accent. all of these factors appear to have influenced the small culture they create at the ba program by giving them a salient status that can be noticed right away. research question the research questions which are posed in this project include the following: (1) what are the factors that have influenced the identity of a group of preand in-service returnees? and (2) how have those factors helped them to construct a small culture in the ba in tesol program? consequently, a qualitative approach was chosen in order to be able to understand the participants’ personal anecdotes which shed light on matters through a narrative inquiry stance. i will explain this in the following sections. method research site and participants the research site is the university of guanajuato’s language department, which is located at the heart of guanajuato, guanajuato, mexico. the participants undertake the ba which takes place on fridays from 3 p.m. to 9 p.m. and on saturdays from 8 a.m. to 6 p.m. the participants taking part in this project include six males who are between the ages of 19 and 29. they were all born in mexico and as young children migrated to the united states to different locations with their families for various reasons. throughout their lives they have lived similar experiences both in school and in their communities, thus, when they come together in the ba program, they seem to create their own group bringing with them their linguistic style, dress code, behavioral patterns, and similar anecdotes, all of which are relevant to this study. furthermore, they have all had difficulties fully fitting into their social circles within their academic context as well as in their communities. one of the main reasons why they decided to join the ba program is because they feel as if they would like to exploit their language abilities and because of their sense of helping others somehow. qualitative research this research is to be qualitative in nature. ac cording to maycut and morehouse (1994), “qualitative research examines people’s words and actions in narrative or descriptive ways closely representing the situation as experienced by the participants” (p. 2). in this case, the participants are asked to retell their life accounts through autobiographical narratives which are then examined, thus binding this research to a qualitative philosophical approach. 189profile vol. 15, no. 2, october 2013. issn 1657-0790 (printed) 2256-5760 (online). bogotá, colombia. pages 185-197 returnees’ identity construction at a ba tesol program in mexico moreover, based on coffey and atkinson (1996), there are different approaches to analyzing data in qualitative research. the one which was taken into consideration consists of the researcher describing what has been found in the data and interpreting it based on his or her own views. therefore, the researcher needs to intertwine selections from the data together with his or her own interpretations in order to recreate an understandable reality from the researcher’s point of view for the reader to be able to grasp (strauss & corbin as cited in maycut & morehouse, 1994). in addition, reflexivity was crucial for this study. reflexivity allows us to reflect on the past in order to give meaning to our present and future. moreover, to be reflexive, “not only contributes to producing knowledge that aids in understanding and gaining insight into the workings of our social world but also provides insight on how this knowledge is produced” (pillow, 2003, p. 178). since the researcher is also a participant in this project, it seemed most appropriate for him to provide his own perspective since he has also lived many of the experiences the other participants have related. narrative inquiry an element of utmost importance in this re search is the personal narration of the participants’ lived experiences through written autobiographies. webster and mertova (2007) state, “it provides researchers with a rich framework through which they can investigate the ways humans experience the world depicted through their stories” (p. 1). to a further extent, this method of investigation was chosen, once again, due to the nature of the questions posed in this project which deal with the complexity of attempting to understand and highlight the factors which have influenced the participants’ identities throughout their lives and at their present ba program and how these in turn have influenced the possible creation of a cultural phenomenon. dyson and genishi (as cited in webster & mertova, 2007) state that through our personal narratives we depict our cultural membership through the content of our personal stories. therefore, in this project it was a very useful method since all of the participants related their life stories. riessman (as cited in coffey & atkinson, 1996, p. 54) points out that this method of obtaining data is, “doing research with first person accounts of experience.” data gathering tools on a first instance, the participants were asked to write a short autobiography depicting their life across the mexican-american border, their upbringing, their schooling, the difficulties they may have had with learning both english and spanish, discrimination, and so forth. second, they were told they would be interviewed and recorded based on questions which were deemed relevant in order to broaden the topics explored in the data analysis section. the reason why they were asked to write autobiographies was because it would provide a starting point into narrative inquiry. having conducted the recorded interviews, we needed to transcribe the data in order to provide a textual representation which could be coded and analyzed. moreover, the participants were codified by using a letter from their first names and the number 1 next to it in order to highlight the fact that they were the first candidates that participated in this research. ethics an ethical code was established prior to the project in order to ensure parameters which would protect the identity and integrity of the participants as well as the researcher. warren (2001) states that “institutional boards and federal policy in various countries provide guidelines for the protection of subjects from physical or emotional harm” (p. 88). consequently, the participants were given a letter of informed consent whereby they were informed of the universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras190 rivas rivas depth and scope of the research project, the possibility of publication, and the fact that all evidence of their persona would be changed so that they are not identified. findings after analyzing the results, there were many themes that emerged such as complex identity struggle, ba group culture, spanish at home, family, accent and style, language choice, and discrimination. for the purposes of this article, i will focus on two: identity and ba group. identity when i joined this ba program, it was quite difficult for me to state whether i was american or mexican. i had already been in mexico for two years and i thought i was still an american; however, i noticed that people would remind me that i am mexican everywhere i went. consequently, i started thinking of myself as one but i would always retain some kind of allegiance to the united states due to my upbringing as a mexican-american. in the following excerpt taken from participant m1, a similar stance is taken: i didn’t really feel american because i was actually raised you know like a mexican i guess but you know since i have a lot of influences by school by friends by teachers you know. i mean they were all american you know i guess i mean that in a certain way was a part of me. but i mean at home you know i ate tortillas you know, frijoles and talk in spanish so you know. i don’t know…i thought i was mexican but at the same time i was a bit american. and also because i have an american nationality too. this participant mentioned that he did not really feel american because he was brought up as a mexican at home even when he lived in the united states. nonetheless, the influence he had over time in school from friends and teachers compelled him to have an american identity even to this day. participant m1 still feels a bit american due to his upbringing in an american context, just as is my case. even outside of the united states we feel the need or even desire to be part of that old country which is related to west’s definition of identity, “the desire for recognition, the desire for affiliation and the desire for security and safety” (as cited in norton, 2000, p. 78). gans (1979) describes this as symbolic allegiance, which means that the country one once lived in is nostalgically remembered. participant n1 expresses the same nostalgia having arrived in mexico three years prior to the interview: i feel much more mexican than american. i feel like just… just the inside a little bit of my inside is american just uh…to music preference to show preference is american i prefer uh… american media to spanish media but…i believe my culture, my way of thinking is mostly mexican just a just a little bit of american influence in there. participant n1 appears to have the need or desire to feel a little bit american. he appears not to be able to let go of his upbringing in the old country which is notable when he says that a bit of him is still american. to a further extent, participant r1 adamantly discusses his american identity after having returned to mexico for a number of years, “i don’t want to deny my american culture because my american culture marks who i am today i’m a professional english teacher.” participant r1 relates yet another example in the following excerpt, except this time it occurs through both of his languages. i’d say kind of both. here at the ba well i…since we are all speaking english i feel kind of like at home speaking english and when we leave the school i tend to be mexican since i need my spanish to get around. again we find that the participant still retains his american identity at the ba program through 191profile vol. 15, no. 2, october 2013. issn 1657-0790 (printed) 2256-5760 (online). bogotá, colombia. pages 185-197 returnees’ identity construction at a ba tesol program in mexico speaking english after which he is quickly able to change to his mexican one by speaking spanish, depending on where he finds himself. moreover, it seems as though all of the participants are able to do this. apparently, having been in mexico for years now, they find it is not as difficult for them to change their identity depending on who they are with, where they find themselves or even how long they have been outside the united states. participant n1 mentioned how he now feels mexican, however, he explains that when he had just arrived in mexico he felt american, “inside i wasn’t mexican, i was more american.” nowadays, he will not hesitate to mention that he is actually mexican. participant l1 exemplifies how time has enabled him to shift more to his mexican identity: five years ago i would say english 100%, i thought myself as an american, thought of myself as an american i mean i enjoy baseball games, i love barbecues, barbecue sauce i mean i like american culture a lot and uh…but then little by little as the years have gone by and i’m in mexico i feel a lot more mexican now. participant l1 had been in mexico for nearly six years at the time of the interview and was cognizant of the fact that as time went by, his identity had slowly shifted. five years ago he would have said he was american because it was fresh in his mind. nonetheless, as the years went by, he moved away from it into a more mexican mode. of particular interest with participant l1 is the fact that he is able to notice that he is neither american nor mexican and actually falls into what he calls a “gray area:” it makes me…first of all it makes me feel really proud you know. not too many people, i recently noticed that not too many people fall, i’m going to call it that gray area but i think i’m right in the middle sometimes i speak perfect spanish, i speak perfect english i can understand both exactly the same but uh i mean i feel very happy and when i had just gotten here from the united states i mean i was proud my ego was really boosted because people knew i wasn’t from here. through participant l1’s insight, it seems as though none of the participants really have a defined identity; it is more of an area that is neither from the united states nor mexico, the “gray area.” furthermore, it seems that they are aware of both identities and as time goes by, they seem to be slowly shifting away from the american identity into their mexican one without wanting to let go of their american past. it appears as though the participants have lived in an identity crisis since childhood. through the use of their narratives, they can relate recollections of this. for example, participant l1 expresses how his circle of friends never fully accepted him as mexican: i didn’t have an identity because you know my friends accepted me in the states, they knew who i was they knew about me and stuff but i was always the mexican with them you know, they were mostly white. the participant exemplifies how he was not fully accepted by his friends in middle school. even though he had been around his “white” friends for some time, they would always single him out as being mexican. to a further extent, he feels that the color of his skin made him a salient character in his circle: they would call me by my name and everything but everyone knew i was i was mexican you know i mean i’m the only brown person there so i was like fez in that 70’s show. seemingly, in this case it was the color of his skin which had an impact on his identity and he was and is able to notice it. not only was the color of skin a factor which singled many of the participants out as being mexican in their american context, but it was also pressure from their parents which enabled them to live in between two identities. in the following excerpt, participant s1 relates the following: well my mom, she was very strict and she was always like constantly reminding us like “don’t forget where you are from.” universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras192 rivas rivas don’t forget you’re mexican. and like don’t try to adapt fully to this culture because we are not from this culture. participant r1 was also influenced by his father: well, one of the main things that my father always taught me was to be proud of my heritage so i used to always stand highly stand up for my country even though i knew very little about it and i had no background knowledge of what my country was but i would never deny my nationality. from the previous excerpts it is notable that many of the participants may have been in a constant struggle with identity since childhood. norton (2000) describes identity as being a site of struggle because it is not permanent; thus, anyone can have a sense of mobility with identity shifting back and forth between them given the circumstances. such is the case with the previous recollections from the participants. they appear to have been in constant identity movement throughout their lives. when they were in the united states, they were not perceived as americans and many of them said that in mexico they were not perceived as mexicans, as r1 mentions: i feel i don’t have an identity in a sense that in the states, i’m not mexican to the mexican people and i’m not american obviously and in mexico i’m not mexican. the previous excerpt shows how complex identity can be and the difficulties that participants have faced when trying to fit into their context. however, they have found a place where they can be comfortable; this will be discussed in the following theme. ba group the returnees in the ba program seem to find each other quite quickly and naturally. they seem to approach someone they think or know is a returnee and who has some common ground. participant n1 relates the following: since the first day since we took the second day of testing in order to enter this school we quickly found each other. we found our little group and it’s like “oh you’re from here” and ever since then we just we just clicked together automatically. seemingly, the returnees in the ba program establish a group as soon as they find others who come from the united states. one commonality that is found in many of the participants is that they appear to bond with each other due to their past experiences in the united states. participant m1 mentions how he feels that he shares some common things with the rest of the returnees such as knowing “how it is” in the old country, perhaps referring to the lifestyle in the united states: well, yeah we share some common things. well, i share some common things you know with others…for example you know there is a couple of things you know, we lived in the states you know. we know how it is…you know and you know that’s basically what makes us makes some of us you know a little bit similar because well you know well you know how every…how everything is in the states you know and we know what each one of us goes through and then when we come here you know i mean in that sense you know we share you know some you know some things similar things. participant i1 adds the following, “in my case i try to find someone who i can feel comfortable talking to who i can relate to in some way who maybe has lived something similar to what i’ve lived has gone through something similar i’ve gone through.” when the participant was questioned further about which experiences he believes are similar he stated: for example, a similarity could be maybe growing up maybe in a certain area for example in my case, it was pretty troublesome where i grew up and maybe a classmate or someone else from the ba also grew up in the same place so i feel good talking about maybe making it out and that person may also feel good talking about how they were able to make it out so it’s those types of similarities that maybe form a close relationship amongst us and 193profile vol. 15, no. 2, october 2013. issn 1657-0790 (printed) 2256-5760 (online). bogotá, colombia. pages 185-197 returnees’ identity construction at a ba tesol program in mexico that maybe gives us confidence to be able to interact better with each other. participant s1 corroborated what participant i1 stated above. he mentions how he also looks for those who have had similar past experiences in the united states and how that helps them bond with each other. participant l1 relates the following concerning those commonalities: i mean n1 and i can identify because we grew up kinda in the same areas and stuff and uh we would talk about uh la culture, you know the hip hop, the uh the gangbangers over there and i mean all kinds of crazy things. it appears as though many of the returnees grew up in rough neighborhoods in the united states and the myriad of experiences they went through in those areas allows them to feel safe and comfortable when they find others with shared experiences in the ba. by sharing their experiences and coming together, they create, possibly, a unique small culture in the ba program since they are individuals who decide to remain together based on their experiences and their command of english. the participants do have friends who have never been in the united states in the program; however, the ones who have been in the usa can be found in each other’s presence more often than with the others. for example, it is far more likely for returnees to become good friends with each other than with a student raised solely in mexico. concerning their role in the ba, most participants seem to be aware of the fact that they are not just there to study but also to help others. participant s1 relates the following, “my initial role is a student and but not only a student but also a classmate be there for classmates when they need it.” participant m1 also relates something similar: my role here is i guess you know is a student but i don’t know i’m also here to help others you know cause i know there’s i got classmates who i don’t know probably need help i don’t…i guess in different things i’m not really sure what but you know if i’m able to help somebody too i don’t know i’m kind of like innate. once again we find a different participant feeling the need to help others in the ba. saying that he is “innate” when helping others, there seems to be a hint of his goodwill to be of assistance to the rest and this is perhaps a factor which has influenced his decision of becoming a language instructor. nic craith (2012) posits that in dual language environments where children have to assist their parents in day to day communication due to the fact that their parents were not fluent enough in the target language, there was a source of pride in some of the participants in her study since, “they imagined themselves as teachers” (p. 103). the salient feature in this case could be that it is not only him but most of the participants who share his view of being helpful. when asked how they could help others, participant i1 replied the following: yeah for example maybe being in the states helped me have maybe a little better pronunciation than some of my classmates. maybe the education i received was different than they received it and is maybe the type of education i have is what the teachers maybe ask for and want so i know i can help them in some sense and they can help they can feel helped from me um…identifying the differences they don’t know of. moreover, participant s1 relates similar thoughts, “sharing some…the pronunciation, we understand a little bit more vocabulary than our friends here at the ba.” participant l1 wanted others to know that he had a very good level of english and also wanted to cash in on his skill: i used to sell my assignments and my help to my classmates in the first and second semesters if they needed help i would charge them, “hey buy me lunch, give me 20 pesos” or something because i wanted to make a buck to you know make profit off of my skill. however, after a few semesters into the program he read an article which changed his mind about universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras194 rivas rivas charging his classmates and instead decided to help them, “after this uh this chapter that we read in sociolinguistics i didn’t do that anymore and i would help them a lot more” (l1). thus far, there seems to be a pattern in the participant’s identity formation concerning their friends in the ba. it seems as though they look for people with similar backgrounds in order to perhaps feel that they are not the only ones who come from the united states. participant n1 relates the following: we felt…personally i felt i was like oh my god i’m going to be the only one. i don’t know who i’m going to hang out . . . i was anxious i was like i’m going to be the only one. i was anxious, i was worried. i didn’t know how was…i didn’t know who i was going to fit in with because in high school i never fitted in with the rest of the group. as mentioned before, the participants seem to have had many experiences battling with their identity. they seem to always have a hard time fitting in in one place or another. n1 mentioned that he had a hard time fitting in in high school and as he entered the ba program, he did not want to be “the only one” referring to the status of returnee. therefore, it seems that they all want to find others who have shared the experience of having lived in the united states. discussion based on the analysis of the data, there seem to be common traits in the returnees within the ba program at the university of guanajuato which appear to facilitate the creation of a small culture amongst themselves. firstly, it appears as though they do not have a well-defined identity but can move from one to the other (american or mexican) based on who they are with. since childhood they may have felt exclusion from social circles due to their inability to speak english or the accepted linguistic variety which are sources of an identity crisis in their upbringing in the united states. moreover, once in mexico, they were also excluded from social circles again because of their linguistic variety in spanish. this opened the doors to discrimination since childhood, consequently, leading to feelings of alienation and not being fully accepted in their social circles. furthermore, there seems to have been a struggle with language in their homes when they were children. all of the participants were either not allowed to speak english in their home or their parents were shy about it. therefore, the language spoken in their home has always been spanish which may have served the purpose of keeping the participants rooted in the mexican culture and, consequently, not allowing them to fully immerse themselves in an american identity. moreover, their extended family was also a factor in their struggle with identity. they were always singled out as being the “cousin” from the united states. all of these instances of alienation seem to find some sort of meeting point in the ba when they come into contact with other returnees. apparently, there are two binding forces between them, the first is language and the second is their past. furthermore, they seem to enjoy talking to each other about their past experiences in the united states and how they “made out.” being in the ba seems to provide them with a safe-haven by allowing socialization with individuals who have undergone a similar upbringing. this reality, in turn, seems to create a culture of returnees. we can postulate that being a returnee perhaps means living a life of discrimination both in the united states and in mexico. as participant r1 mentioned, in the united states he was not american and in mexico he is not mexican. therefore, returnees seem to live in what participant l1 claims to be the “gray area.” in the ba however, they immediately create bonds with each other because they feel comfortable talking about their lives amongst themselves. perhaps in the ba they forget that they are in that “gray area” and perhaps they all feel at ease in their newly found environment culture. 195profile vol. 15, no. 2, october 2013. issn 1657-0790 (printed) 2256-5760 (online). bogotá, colombia. pages 185-197 returnees’ identity construction at a ba tesol program in mexico conclusion first, the answer to the question of how the ba in tesol preand in-service returnees construct their identity may lie in the lived experiences which have shaped the returnees in their quest through the united states and mexico. within these lived experiences we find salient factors which may have paved the way for an identity which is neither american nor mexican but one which stands in between and which they bring about depending on who they find themselves with. factors such as the language they spoke at home and in public, family relationships, accent, linguistic style, choice, and discrimination seem to have shaped their identity today. moreover, all of these factors play an important role in that they help the returnees discern how to behave when they are with one person or another. further, their identity appears to have been a constant battle because throughout their lives they have not been able to fit entirely into their context since they have always been singled out, more often than not in a discriminatory manner. the previous points are the main factors that have influenced the returnees’ identities in this study. these were important to highlight before moving on to answer the question regarding how these factors have helped them construct a small culture in the ba tesol program. fundamentally, having all lived similar experiences with not being able to fit in entirely into their contexts, some returnees appear to find themselves questioning who they are going to be socializing with when they enter the program. as they perceive different people speaking english, a language they have nostalgia for, they are quick to identify those who come from the united states through their accent. therefore, their keen sense of english language deviations appears to be a factor that helps them find each other in the program. moreover, returnees seem to be sensitive to educational settings because it is here where they have suffered the most discrimination. once they find others who speak english with a near native accent, they tend to become relaxed in their environment and establish bonds with each other through their life stories. returnees share these stories with each other and find that most of them have had to cross the border or have lived in similar places under similar circumstances. moreover, they appear to carry themselves with a sense of pride because of the high level of english they have, compared to their mexican born and raised classmates. another characteristic which apparently binds them is the american culture they were immersed in. they bond with each other through american music, sports, comedy, movies, neighborhoods, and the food they remember in their old homes. therefore, they are more prone to be found in each other’s presence than with others because they can reminisce about their upbringing. these were the factors that may have helped the participants shape their identity and create a small culture within the ba program. the following segment will posit the socio-cultural implications within the program. implications the implications which ensued from this research project for the ba program are the following. first, from a socio-cultural stance, it is vital for there to be an understanding of the fact that there is a small culture taking place within the program with returnees at center stage. as i have already mentioned, returnees tend to be seen in each other’s presence more often than in the presence of non-returnees. moreover, they can understand each other better because of their life experiences which they will often be heard talking about. returnees also hold themselves in high regard within the program because of the confidence they place in their language abilities, because of the way they dress, because of the things they talk about, and because of their bicultural knowledge. they are a group of people that stands out from the rest because universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras196 rivas rivas they are much closer to the american way of life and the language they are trying to teach. second, this project can help to better understand what can be seen as a social divide between those who learned english in the united states and those who learned it in mexico. through the careful orientation of the student body prior to the commencement of classes, this point can be highlighted in order to avoid what could be negative feelings towards returnees because of their proficiency and cultural knowledge. moreover, it can also help returnees to be less critical of accents when their mexican classmates speak english; it would help to integrate students in a much smoother manner. third, returnees can assist as a helping force for the advancement in the linguistic and cultural knowledge of the english language and the united states. since the program is made for those venturing into english language pedagogy, it is important for the students who have not really been exposed to the target language country to become culturally aware of their social practices, amongst other factors. in addition, returnees can be taken as native language models both in spoken and written discourse. by integrating returnees with students who do not have a high proficiency or articulation of the english language phonetic system, those students have a higher chance of improving their accent and vocabulary. to a further extent, it is known that writing in english and spanish is different. returnees and mexican students could perhaps mutually benefit from each other concerning writing conventions both in english and in spanish. further research one area which can be explored to a further extent would be the critical incidents which defined the course of the identity of the returnees. i believe that by analyzing specific moments which impacted their lives, a greater understanding may arise. a second area of study can be a more in depth analysis of the feelings involved in the shaping of the returnees’ identity. from infancy to adulthood, what are the different stages of feelings which returnees undergo after they cross the border? also, how do those feelings influence their representation in this world? finally, having established that there is a small separate culture taking place, it would be important to analyze whether returnees are their own ethnicity. this research project had at its core the identification of factors involved in the construction of identity in returnees. as a researcher participant, it was absolutely personal and important to establish the factors that have influenced me throughout my life in order to help others like myself to embrace the life we have had to endure. personally, it has been necessary to uncover the enigmas surrounding my persona in order to be better adept at representing myself in this world. in essence, it has helped me find a balance in my life and my hope is that others may also find it through this research enterprise. once one knows who he or she is, then it is difficult to become unbalanced which to my belief allows for a better world of understanding and acceptance. references baker, c. (2010). the foundations of bilingual education and bilingualism. new york, ny: mcnaughton & gunn. coffey, a., & atkinson, p. (1996). making sense of qualitative data. thousand oaks, ca: sage. gans, h. (1979). symbolic ethnicity: the future of ethnic groups and cultures in america. ethnic and racial studies, 2(1), 1-20. holliday, a. (1999). small cultures. applied linguistics, 20(2), 237-264. maycut, p., & morehouse, r. (1994). beginning qualitative research: a philosophic and practical guide. london, uk: routledge. mooney, a., stilwell, j., labelle, s., engøy, b., eppler, e., irwin, a., . . . soden, s. (2011). language, society & power: an introduction. new york, ny: routledge. 197profile vol. 15, no. 2, october 2013. issn 1657-0790 (printed) 2256-5760 (online). bogotá, colombia. pages 185-197 returnees’ identity construction at a ba tesol program in mexico mora, i. (2011). the “native-speaker” image spin: the construction of the english teacher at a language department at a university in central mexico (unpublished doctoral dissertation). canterbury christ church university, canterbury. nic craith, m. (2012). narratives of place, belonging, and language: an intercultural perspective. new york, ny: macmillan. norton, b. (2000). identity and language learning: gender, ethnicity, and educational change. essex, uk: pearson education. norton, b., & toohey, k. (2011). identity, language learning, and social change. language teaching, 44(4), 412-446. pillow, w. (2003). confession, catharsis, or cure? rethinking the uses of reflexivity as methodological power in quali tative research. international journal of qualitative studies in education, 16(2), 175-196. stets, j., & burke, p. (2000). identity theory and social identity theory. social psychology quaterly, 63(3), 224-237. warren, c. (2001). qualitative interviewing. in j.f. gubrium & j. a. holstein (eds.), handbook of interview research (pp. 83-101). thousand oaks, ca: sage. webster, l., & mertova, p. (2007). using narrative inquiry as a research method: an introduction to using critical event narrative analysis in research on learning and teaching. new york, ny: routledge. about the author leonardo rivas rivas has recently completed his ba studies in tesol at the university of guanajuato (mexico). he is currently the academic coordinator at boston academy, in león, guanajuato, mexico. he has presented in national and international conferences. acknowledgements gratitude goes to the students who participated in this research and to dr. irasema mora pablo at the university of guanajuato (méxico) who invited me to be part of her project. without either i would not have been able to explore the complexities of identity formation in returnees. 67profile vol. 14, no. 1, april 2012. issn 1657-0790. bogotá, colombia. pages 67-78 the impact of regional differences on elementary school teachers’ attitudes towards their students’ use of code switching in a south texas school district el impacto de las diferencias regionales en las actitudes de docentes de primaria respecto a la alternancia de códigos por parte de los estudiantes en un distrito escolar del sur de texas guadalupe nancy nava gómez* universidad autónoma del estado de méxico, méxico hilda garcía** texas a&m university-kingsville, usa this study focused on investigating whether the teachers’ geographical distribution influences their attitudes towards their students’ use of code switching. the study was guided by the following research question: are there differences between teachers’ opinions of the north elementary schools and teachers’ opinions of the south elementary schools, which are predominantly hispanic, towards their students’ use of code switching? if so, why? a twenty-item structured survey was utilized. the population consisted of 279 elementary school teachers at seven northern and seven southern schools in the same south texas region. the data were analyzed with descriptive statistics. findings showed that southern teachers had more prejudices towards code switching than those from the north, who were more receptive to this socio-cultural and linguistic phenomenon due to the ethnic makeup of their classrooms. key words: code-mixing, code switching, language maintenance, language shift, transitional programs. en esta investigación se buscó indagar si la ubicación geográfica de los maestros de primaria influía en su percepción acerca de la alternancia de códigos de los estudiantes de un distrito escolar del sur de texas. la pregunta central fue: ¿existe alguna diferencia entre la opinión de los maestros de escuela primaria del sur y aquellos maestros del norte, quienes son principalmente hispanos, en cuanto al uso de la alternancia de códigos de sus alumnos? en caso afirmativo, ¿por qué? se usó un instrumento de 20 reactivos. la población estudiada fueron 279 maestros de 7 escuelas primarias del norte y 7 del sur de la misma región. se usó un método de estadística descriptiva para analizar los datos. los resultados muestran que los maestros del sur tienen más prejuicios acerca de la alternancia de códigos que los del norte. estos últimos se caracterizan por ser más receptivos a este fenómeno sociocultural y lingüístico debido a la conformación de sus aulas de clase. palabras clave: alternancia de códigos, cambio lingüístico, mantenimiento de la lengua, mezcla de códigos, programas de transición. * nancynava77@yahoo.com.mx ** kuhig000@tamuk.edu this article was received on april 12, 2011, and accepted on november 20, 2011. universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras68 nava gómez & garcía introduction even though we might think we speak a standard form of a particular language, we most likely speak a variation of the same instead (yule, 2006, p. 195). code switching has usually been referred to as the use of more than one language in the course of a single communicative episode. the study of code switching has attracted a great deal of attention over the past two decades, most likely because it defies a strong expectation that only one language will be used at any given time (fishman, 1991). in addition, yule (2006) states that “going beyond stereo types, those involved in serious investigation of regional dialects have devoted a lot of survey research to the identification of consistent features of speech found in one geographical area compared to another” (p. 196). these dialectal studies consist of drawing dialect boundaries or isoglosses in order to identify certain linguistic features pertaining to one particular speech community. for this reason, this particular study focused on the analysis of geographical data pertaining to elementary school teachers’ opinions and beliefs about their students’ use of code switching in the same geographical region. the aim is to identify the differences that exist between the northern and southern elementary school teachers’ opinions in regard to the use of code switching in their classrooms, and the impact of these perceptions and beliefs on their students’ academic achievement. review of the selected literature throughout the years, code switching has been approached from two main angles in linguistic research. first, as part of the formal linguistics agenda, in which this phenomenon has been identified as the result of a series of linguistic and grammatical constraints. for example, gumperz (1997) stated that code switching is used when speakers build on the contrast between two grammatical systems to convey substantive information, in equivalent situations, that cannot be conveyed by the grammatical devices of a single system. code switching has also been studied as a social marker through which people identify themselves among other speakers of different languages. for example, gal (1988) pointed out that “code switching is a conversational strategy used to establish, cross or destroy group boundaries; to create, evoke or change interpersonal relations with their rights and obligations” (p. 247). according to chaika (1994) “sometimes a foreign language phrase will [be] thrown out to see if a stranger really belongs or is ‘one of us’” (p. 336). mexican-americans living along the south texas border region, for example, frequently employ words or entire phrases in spanish unconsciously, for example phrases such as: “i took my car to the service, y me dijeron que there was nothing wrong with it” (i took my car to the service, and i was told there was nothing wrong with it), or “¿me vas a ayudar con mi homework?” (are your going to help me with my homework?). it is believed that throwing around words or phrases as shown in these examples “may be a sign of proficiency in either the l1 or l2, resulting in commanding only few words or phrases” (pp. 336-337). in addition, bright (1997) stated that: it would never be possible to capture unconscious language change ‘in the act’ simply because its operations required too long a period of time. in this view, trying to observe language change is like trying to observe the motion of a clock’s hands: one cannot see the change, but if we look again later, we perceive that change has occurred. (p. 83) 69profile vol. 14, no. 1, april 2012. issn 1657-0790. bogotá, colombia. pages 67-78 the impact of regional differences on elementary school teachers’ attitudes towards... bright (1997) also goes on to mention that “once a change is initiated by a single individual (for whatever reason), its subsequent spread through a language community occurs when, and to the extent that, it is imitated by other speakers” (p. 85). in contrast, albert and obler (1978) point out that the second language is learned either like the first, at home or from peers (as in the case of children’s immigrant parents who make an effort to speak the new language (english) but have an accent, as a product of their mother tongue’s influence; however, children eventually learn the unaccented speech from their peers), or in the academic setting (p. 7). students have been able to imitate this language change by switching between codes (english and spanish) in different settings such as the classroom, at home, and/or with peers. moreover, when there is a linguistic contact situation in which one language is recognized as the dominant language and the other is exclusively confined to informal (or restricted) uses such as family and friends, social conflicts and linguistic tensions emerge as a result. code switching, related to the use of spanish and english along the south texas border region, for instance, has been associated with the fol lowing aspects: a) speaking disadvantages, b) cognitive deficiencies, c) lack of linguistic ability, d) lack of intelligence, e) low academic performance, f ) lack of prior knowledge and command of mother or target language, and g) use of language by a low social class or uneducated people. (nava, 2009) however, a new line of research about the use of code switching suggests that this linguistic phenomenon has to be analyzed and examined as a third or new mother tongue resulted from the contact between two languages within the same region or geographical location (chaika, 1994). code switching may be taken to represent a creole language, a product of the combination of two linguistic codes (yule, 2006). as pointed out by baker (2000), “from a linguistic and grammatical point of view, such stable code switching should not be analyzed in terms of donor or recipient language, but on its own terms as a third linguistic code or language” (p. 33). but, how can we describe the entailment between attitudes and teaching? the word attitude (from latin aptus) is defined within the framework of social psychology; attitudes are clearly described as a subjective or mental preparation for action. bilingual teachers develop a visible posture toward specific linguistic happenings in the classroom such as code switching. baker (2006) discusses the main characteristics of attitudes as follows: • attitudes are cognitive and affective. • attitudes are dimensional rather than bipolar. they vary in degree of favorability and unfa vorability. • attitudes predispose a person to act, but the relationship between attitudes and actions is not a strong one. • attitudes are learned, not inherited or genetically based. • attitudes tend to persist but they can be modified by experience. generally speaking, attitudes are seen as mental predispositions which could determine human behavior. changes in attitudes towards students belonging to a bilingual community or minority group are only possible if there is teacher awareness of the importance of students’ linguistic background. this paper reviews how geographical factors may influence teachers’ attitudes towards their students’ use of code switching, and relates this to the makeup of their classrooms. universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras70 nava gómez & garcía statement of the problem even though some elementary school teachers, who work with a highly predominant hispanic community, identified themselves as certified bilinguals, they do not believe that students should code switch in their classrooms. there are some studies (garza & nava, 2005, 2007; nava & garza, 2007; nava, 2009) indicating that elementary school teachers (who work with a highly bilingual community) consider that code switching should not be allowed in schools because it represents a detriment or disadvantage for bilingual students. moreover, research findings show that elementary teachers consider code switching to be the result of a lack of proficiency and a major cause of academic failure for those students whose mother tongue is one other than english. method data collection procedures a twenty-item structured survey was designed to ask open and close-ended questions. the items were designed taking into consideration the insight of garza and nava, 2005, 2007; nava and garza, 2007; nava, 2009. the geographical data section included grade level, years of experience, bilingual/ esl certification, dominant language, proficiency in the dominant language, and the classroom’s ethnic composition. this in turn contributed to the analysis and interpretation of the negative attitudes observed in teachers working in the southern schools compared to those teachers working in the northern schools; however, both groups of teachers belong to the same south texas geographical region. data analysis procedures descriptive statistics were utilized in analyzing the twenty-item survey. a quantitative type of research was carried out in order to review and report the results. spss (software package for social studies) was utilized as well. the twenty items were studied separately; they were categorized and analyzed from three different perspectives: cognitive, social, and teachers’ attitudes towards code switching. the items were analyzed in terms of the percentages of average usage in the narrative to present the results. the average scores were then compared on an item-by-item basis. this was done in order to facilitate and contrast the results obtained from the northern schools participants’ responses and those obtained from the southern schools participants’ responses. in this paper, the results from previous studies are included in order to compare the findings in this part of the study with previous ones and obtain a comprehensive overview of the elementary school teachers’ attitudes and beliefs towards their students’ use of code switching by analyzing the geographical data. selection of participants the survey was sent off by mail to the principals of each school and answered by 279 teachers from both northern and southern elementary schools of the same south texas geographical region. the elementary school teachers answering from the north totaled 129, while the participants from the south totaled 150. candidates had to meet the following criteria: (a) be a part of the same geographical region; (b) be certified elementary school teachers; and (c) have at least one year of teaching experience. previous research findings previous studies (garza & nava, 2005, 2007; nava & garza, 2007; nava, 2009) explored the cognitive aspects, social attitudes, and teachers’ attitudes and beliefs towards their students’ use of code switching in their classrooms. the following is a general overview of the previous research findings: 71profile vol. 14, no. 1, april 2012. issn 1657-0790. bogotá, colombia. pages 67-78 the impact of regional differences on elementary school teachers’ attitudes towards... cognitive perspective garza and nava (2005) reported that code switching represented a cognitive advantage. for example, it was found that automaticity in the switching of linguistic codes resulted from the different internal mechanisms that children use for a wide variety of purposes (p. 108). in addition, they suggested that automaticity was the result of the control obtained after internalizing both linguistic patterns. they also concluded that the use of code switching reflected the label of automaticity that bilingual children have achieved in both languages. overall, the results showed that teachers tried to eliminate code switching in their classrooms. as a result, the participant teachers used some strategies such as redirecting to the standardized language (english-only). as a final note, researchers in this study suggested that code switching could be considered as a communicative strategy resulting in cognitive flexibility that bilingual children may use for linguistic exchange rather than a deviant form of communication (garza & nava, 2005). social perspective in this paper (garza & nava, 2007), code switching was defined as the alternation between two languages. the participants in the study (n= 279) reported code switching in their everyday social activities. in addition, all participants believed that code switching should be accepted in schools; however, they reported not to allow it in their own classrooms. the majority admitted that they switch codes among friends and family, especially in relaxed and familiar settings. they reported that code switching is acquired at home, and that students switch codes more between first and third grades of schooling than in fourth and fifth grades. the participants responded that students switch codes with family and friends mainly and are able to communicate effectively with peers. therefore, code switching was restricted to informal uses or contexts rather than formal ones such as the academic settings (garza & nava, 2007; nava & garza, 2007). researchers also concluded that participants in the study considered that code switching should only be part of the bilingual students’ informal linguistic repertoire rather than a communicative strategy elementary students employed at school for academic purposes since it may result in poor academic achievement. in a nutshell, in this study it was found that the participants indicated they switched codes in a variety of contexts, mainly informal conversations (family, friends, etc.) but that they try to avoid it in the academic setting. therefore, code switching may be used mainly to accomplish two tasks: 1) fill a linguistic or conceptual gap, or 2) for other multiple communicative purposes (inclusion, exclusion, friendship, familiarity, rapport, etc.). code switching, as a natural language function, is neither appreciated nor accepted by many people because it conflicts with what society has come to know as “standard or conventional language”. the results obtained in this paper were conducive to a further investigation related to exploring how educators perceive and approach the facilitation of communication in the bilingual classroom as a critical issue for bilinguals’ academic success (garza & nava, 2007). teachers’ perspective the participants in this study reported that code switching is not an advantage when it comes to learning; they actually consider it to be a limitation that hinders effective communication in the english language. moreover, teachers stated that code switching is not accepted in their classrooms due to the mindset that it negatively affects elementary students’ academic performance. overall, the participants in this study indicated that they universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras72 nava gómez & garcía avoid code switching during the delivery of the instruction. findings also revealed that teachers from the south side of the region under study are not fond of code switching as a possible method of instruction and are completely against it, while the teachers in the north side of the region proved more receptive to it, and seemed to have a different pedagogical approach towards this particular linguistic phenomenon due to their classroom make up (nava & garza, 2007). data analysis: code switching and geographical differences fourteen schools were separated into two demographic areas, north and south. there were seven schools representing each area: n=129 participants from the north schools and n=150 participants from the south. the results obtained from each participant were given a numerical value in order to ease the interpretations of the obtained results. figure 1 indicates the number of teachers of a specific grade level for each geographical area. the number of participants who did not respond to this question was eight out of 129 from the north and two out of 150 from the south. the number of first grade teachers averaged 32 for both demographics. overall, the majority of participants from the north taught first grade. the number of surveyed candidates that taught second grade was greater for the south than for the north. the north averaged 23 while the south averaged 30. third grade averages totaled 23 teachers from the north and 27 from the south. the gap between the participants that were interviewed from both demographics was the following: the north equaled 26 while the south equaled 30. fifth grade had the lowest numbers for both demographics, aside from the non-responsive data. the fifth grade showed 17 teachers from the north and 29 from the south. figure 1. grade level 0 5 10 15 20 25 30 35 no response 1st.grade teachers 2nd. grade teachers 3rd.grade teachers 4th. grade teachers 5th. grade teachers south schoolteachers north schoolteachers n=279 figure 2 was divided by increments of five due to the number of teachers that responded to the survey. figure 2 shows that 9 out of 129 participants from the north and 2 out of 150 from the south did not respond to this question. the number of teachers responding to item number one (0-5 years of experience) totaled 47 from the north and 62 from the south. the number of candidates that responded to item number two (6-10 years of experience) added up to 28 from the north and 35 from the south. the number of participants that answered item number 3 (11-15 years of experience) was 20 from the north and 30 from the south. in essence, the number of teachers with more years of experience was less than those with fewer years of teaching experience. this figure also shows that the participant teachers that answered item number four (16-20 years of experience) were 12 from the north and 9 from the south. item number five (21-25 years of experience) shows three teachers from the north and two from the south. item number six (26-30 years of experience) demonstrates that the number of participants was 6 out of 129 from the north and 6 out of 150 from the south. the final category shows that both north and south school districts had 4 teachers with 30 years or more of experience of elementary classroom teaching. 73profile vol. 14, no. 1, april 2012. issn 1657-0790. bogotá, colombia. pages 67-78 the impact of regional differences on elementary school teachers’ attitudes towards... figure 2. years of teaching experience 0 10 20 30 40 50 60 70 no response 0-5 years 6-10 years 11-15 years 16-20 years 21-25 years 26-30 years 31-up years south schoolteachers north schoolteachers n=279 figure 3 indicates that six out of 129 northern bilingual/esl certified teachers did not answer this question, while all southern teachers did. the number of candidates that identified themselves as bilingual/esl certified totaled 101 out of 129 from the north and 121 out of 150 from the south. the number of teachers that were not bilingual/esl certified equaled 22 from the north and 29 from the south. figure 3. type of certification 0 20 40 60 80 100 120 140 no response bilingual/ esl certi�ed not bilingual/ esl certi�ed south schoolteachers north schoolteachers n=279 figure 4 identified the teachers’ dominant language; not just its use during the delivery of instruction but in their everyday lives. the number of participants that did not respond was eight out of 129 from the north. the data show that the majority of participants reported that english is their dominant language. for example, 100 out of 129 from the north and 101 out of 150 from the south defined english as their dominant language. the number of informants who reported speaking spanish was significantly lower compared to those who reported english to be their dominant language. the data show that 15 out of 129 northern schoolteachers spoke spanish and 40 out of 150 southern teachers spoke spanish as well. the number of participants that identified themselves as bilingual totaled six from the north and nine from the south. figure 4. dominant language 0 20 40 60 80 100 120 no response english as the dominant language spanish as the dominant language balanced bilinguals south schoolteachers north schoolteachers n=279 figure 5 shows the teachers’ proficiency in their dominant language (english). the number of participants that did not respond to this question was six from the north and one from the south. the majority reported being proficient in reading, writing, and speaking in the english language as shown in figure 5. the total number of teachers that answered this question was 104 from the north and 122 from the south. the response to reading (item #2) in their dominant language was 7 from the north and 27 from the south. the response to writing (item #3) equaled 5 out of 129 from the north and none from the south. in response to speaking (item #4), it shows that 7 teachers from the north and none from the south were able to speak only their dominant language. a possible reason that the numbers were so low for individual sections such as reading, writing, and speaking is due to the fact that the majority of teachers indicated they were proficient in all subcategories, not just one. universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras74 nava gómez & garcía figure 5. proficiency in the dominant language 0 20 40 60 80 100 120 140 no response teachers who answered reading writing speaking south schoolteachers north schoolteachers n=279 figure 6 shows the ethnic make-up of the teachers’ elementary classrooms. eight participants from the northern schools did not respond to this question, compared to one from the south. additionally, 102 northern teachers responded that their classrooms were made-up of hispanics (item #1) while the south had 146 out of 150 teachers. the ethnic component was anglos (item #2) in the elementary classroom as indicated by the participants from the north elementary schools (4 out of 129), while the participants from the south responded that 1 classroom out of 150 was anglo. figure 6. classroom ethnic make-up 0 20 40 60 80 100 120 140 160 no response hispanic origin anglo origin asian origin african-american origin other more than one nationality south schoolteachers north schoolteachers n=279 the numbers for asians in both geographical areas were too small to be statistically significant. for example, the participants from the north elementary schools reported one classroom having more asians than any other ethnic group while the ones from the south did not have any. the participants from the southern schools reported that they did not have any other ethnic group present (for example, african-american students); however, the candidates from the north indicated having ethnic groups besides hispanic students such as anglos, asians, and/or african-americans. fourteen teachers from the schools in the north part of the school district answered that they had more than one ethnic group in their classrooms as shown in the figure above. overall, there were no responses by teachers from the south that indicated that there was more than one ethnic group in their classrooms. data interpretation in the realm of teaching and learning, questions about the role of the first language in efl or esl classrooms have been commonly addressed. however, there are more questions than answers in the field. wright (2004, pp. 1-4) considers that teachers have different attitudes toward their students. moreover, she mentions the importance of those attitudes on the learners’ language development. characteristics such as race, religion, and the kind of native language are usually subject to categorizations and stereotyping. teachers usually create a particular framework to organize their perceptions once they identify differences among their students. the result of these differences relies on the students’ academic success. however, in order to explain those teachers’ attitudes and perceptions, it is necessary to address them from different perspectives. for this reason, wright (2004) suggests explaining not only the origin of those attitudes but also the effect of them on the learning process. if teachers are to teach appropriately they must be knowledgeable in the process of framing their attitudes so that they can encourage their students’ language learning process. a major finding in this study consisted of analyzing that the more contact 75profile vol. 14, no. 1, april 2012. issn 1657-0790. bogotá, colombia. pages 67-78 the impact of regional differences on elementary school teachers’ attitudes towards... teachers have with students of different linguistic backgrounds, the more tolerance they express towards their students’ mother tongues as observed in figure 6. unfortunately, teachers working in the seven schools located in the south are not as receptive as those teachers from the north schools. this fact has different interpretations. first, the southern schools were observed to serve a highly migrant community (undocumented in the united states) compared to those schools located in the northern suburbs where more resident communities or people with u.s. citizenship live. this may suggest that schools also serve as linguistic gates. that is, educational policies are executed in schools in various ways; one of them is by denying the students’ mother tongues and imposing the dominant language and dominant culture. teachers, then, have to transit their students rapidly from spanish to english by the third grade. for this reason, the majority of them do not emphasize the teaching of spanish since the students must be mainstreamed at an early age. this linguistic de-capitalization has negative cognitive effects since students whose mother tongue is different from english do not develop a cognitive and linguistic foundation in their mother tongue (spanish, in this particular case), resulting in low levels of proficiency and low academic achievement in both languages. in contrast, teachers working in the schools located on the north side of the school district are more receptive since their students come from different linguistic backgrounds. moreover, these teachers are not so strongly forced to transit students from their mother tongue to the target language as are those teachers from the south schools. although code switching is neither promoted nor allowed in schools in the north part of the school district, it is a socially and widely-accepted linguistic form of communication as observed on the playgrounds or in the surroundings of these schools. in a nutshell, geographically speaking, it was observed that the schools located in the south part along the u.s. border function as linguistic gates where children need to be fully and rapidly assimilated into the mainstream culture (english-only). even though a significant per centage of teachers reported being bilingual, they were observed employing english as the only language of instruction. moreover, teachers not only claimed to be certified bilinguals but also considered english to be their dominant language. regarding the teachers’ years of experience, most of the participants reflect that they are in their first years of teaching. this might imply little knowledge of the long-term effects of denying equal education and linguistic opportunities to their students. the results presented above support the research hypothesis presented in this study, suggesting that teachers from the northern elementary schools are more receptive towards their students’ use of code switching due to the makeup of their classrooms than those from the southern schools, whose student populations are significantly hispanic. conclusions this paper reviewed previous research findings on bilingual teachers’ attitudes toward the use of code switching in their classrooms. the role of the mother tongue is sometimes considered to be a way for teachers to set up and facilitate communication in the efl/esl classroom; however, when this phenomenon was studied in highly bilingual settings, codes switching was avoided and prohibited in some cases. the purpose of this paper was to raise teachers’ awareness regarding the importance of their own beliefs and thoughts about a particular group’s mother tongue while teaching in bilingual communities. teachers’ beliefs and perceptions toward their students’ mother tongue contribute to the delivery universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras76 nava gómez & garcía of instruction and the success of learning an l2. the diffusion of a particular language policy (english-only) can geographically have more far reaching linguistic consequences. in this study, it was found that there is more resistance towards code switching expressed by the majority of teachers from the south side of the region than those teachers from the north side of the region. according to the geographical data collected, a significant number of teachers from the northern schools have more contact with people of different ethnicity. in contrast, teachers from the southern schools work daily with a representative spanishspeaking community. geographically, the teachers from the southern schools have a larger concentration of hispanics in their classrooms. needless to say, these teachers have higher political pressure to transit their students from their mother tongue (spanish) to the target language (english) as fast as they can. on the contrary, the teachers from the north are more open to diversity due to the geographic distribution of the population in the area. another important factor to be considered is whether or not the participants from both sides of the area were esl/bilingual certified. the findings obtained in the demographic data analysis showed that the majority of the participants from the southern schools were bilingual certified compared to those participants from the northern schools. language loss is the result of a language shift situation. results indicated that bilingual/esl elementary schoolteachers predominantly speak english even when the population is largely of hispanic origin since these students first require the use and full proficiency of the spanish language. in other words, english represents the dominant language for the majority of the participants in this study, although the majority of the participants reported to be bilingual certified. surprisingly, the participants with a lower proficiency in the spanish language also reported that they switch codes during the delivery of instructions, which in turn explains the fact that they notice this during the students’ oral production. consequently, the study of code switching as a pedagogical device remains unexplored in this study. further investigations on the use of code switching, as a pedagogical tool, conducive to help students move from one language to the other (l1 to l2), needs to be addressed. the fact that students acquire their dominant language, spanish, at home and english at school may not only suggest why they code switch but may also explain why people have developed a great array of misinterpretations regarding this linguistic form. in addition, the geographical location fosters and motivates the constant linguistic contact between english and spanish since the southern u.s. border region constitutes the gate of an increasingly daily influx of spanish-speakers, resulting in a constant linguistic exchange. in this study, the majority of the teachers (98%) admitted that a vast amount of students switch codes during their earliest years in their classrooms (predominantly during the transition linguistic process [1st through 3rd grades]). this may be the result of the elementary students’ second language development process in which they highly rely on their native language in order to develop their target or second language. overall, the findings in this study revealed the need for developing a thorough and comprehensive investigation on the type of elementary school teachers’ preparation and training, especially those who work with bilingual communities without being bilingual (balanced bilinguals) themselves. this fact constitutes the core of this analysis: that teachers’ preparation should be supervised closely in order to avoid alienation and discriminatory practices towards students who speak a language other than english. 77profile vol. 14, no. 1, april 2012. issn 1657-0790. bogotá, colombia. pages 67-78 the impact of regional differences on elementary school teachers’ attitudes towards... a stronger emphasis on the preparation of bilingual elementary schoolteachers should be made in order to highlight the importance of being proficient in both languages. understanding what it is like to be bilingual would provide elementary schoolteachers a better insight into the process of learning/acquiring a second language. to sum up, the following can be concluded: due to the accountability era, the participants working in the southern elementary schools were observed to have more resistance towards their students’ use of code switching compared to those teachers from the participating northern schools. in addition, it was also noticed that there is more social, cultural, political and linguistic pressure on those teachers working closer to the borders than those who work in northern areas. this geographic situation may cause greater tension and pressure for teachers who are held accountable for transiting children faster from l1 to l2, compared to those teachers from the northern schools who deal with a more diverse school community. although the study was limited to a single school district, significant observation could be drawn on the results. further studies could be carried out on teachers’ perceptions and attitudes regarding the use of code switching in other areas in order to analyze the impact of this socio-cultural and linguistic phenomenon in different academic settings. for these purposes, code switching should be studied and analyzed by educators or scholars interested in the field rather than as a pure linguistic phenomenon commonly studied by linguists. references albert, m. l., & obler, l. k. (1978). the bilingual brain: neuropsychological and neurolinguistic aspects of bilingualism. london: academic press, inc. baker, c. (2000). a parents and teachers’ guide to bilingualism. clevedon: multilingual matters. baker, c. (2006). foundations of bilingual education. clevedon: multilingual matters. bright, w. (1997). international encyclopedia of linguistics (vol. 1). oxford: oxford university press. chaika, e. (1994). language, the social mirror. boston: heinle & heinle. fishman, j. a. (1991). reversing language shift. clevedon: england: multilingual matters. gal, s. (1988). the political economy of code choice. in m. heller (ed.), code switching: anthropological and sociolinguistic perspectives (pp. 243-261). berlin: mouton de gruyter. garza, e. a., & nava, g. n. (2005). the effects of code switching on elementary students in a border area of south texas: a teacher perspective, part i. journal of border educational research, 4(2), 97-109. garza, e. a., & nava, g. n. (2007). an exploratory investigation into social variables related to the use of code switching among bilingual children in elementary schools in a south texas border area, part ii”. journal of border educational research, 6(1), 69-80. gumperz, j. (1997). communicative competence. in n. coupland, & a. jaworski (eds.), sociolinguistics: a reader’s coursebook (pp. 98-159). london: macmillan press. nava, g. n., & garza, e. a. (2007). an analysis of elementary teachers’ attitudes and beliefs toward their students’ use of code-switching in a south texas border school district. texas association of bilingual education (tabe) journal, 9(2), 150-168. nava, g. n. (2009). elementary teachers’ attitudes and beliefs towards their students’ use of code-switching in south texas. lenguaje, 37(1), 135-158. yule, g. (2006). the study of language. cambridge: cambridge university press. wright, a. s. (2004). perceptions and stereotypes of esl students. tesl journal, 10(2), 1-4. universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras78 nava gómez & garcía about the authors guadalupe nancy nava gómez holds a phd in bilingual education from texas a&m university kingsville and worked there as visiting assistant professor in the department of bilingual education. she is currently working as assistant professor at the universidad autónoma del estado de méxico (uaem). her interests lie in areas of bilingualism, foreign language learning, second language acquisition, and literacy development. hilda garcía received her master’s degree in bilingual education from the department of blingual education at texas a&m university kingsville. she is currently a lecturer in the college of education at texas a&m university kingsville. her research interests are mainly focused on bilingualism, language contact and second language learning issues. 143profile vol. 14, no. 1, april 2012. issn 1657-0790. bogotá, colombia. pages 143-158 teachers’ beliefs about assessment in an efl context in colombia creencias de los profesores acerca de la evaluación en un contexto de inglés como lengua extranjera en colombia ana patricia muñoz* marcela palacio** liliana escobar*** universidad eafit, colombia there is evidence that teachers’ beliefs on teaching and learning exert an influence on the way they teach and assess learning, and on what students learn. therefore, it is central that overt attention is devoted to the perceptions teachers have and how they influence teaching and learning. in this article we describe a study on teachers’ beliefs about assessment, in general, and about the assessment systems used at a language center of a private university in colombia. surveys, written reports, and interviews were used to research the beliefs of sixty-two teachers. results indicate a contradiction between what they say they do and what they believe, suggesting that teachers need opportunities for reflection, selfassessment and more guidance on formative assessment practices. key words: assessment beliefs, assessment tools, formative assessment. diferentes estudios evidencian que las creencias de los profesores acerca de la enseñanza y el aprendizaje influyen tanto en la manera de enseñar y evaluar como en lo que los estudiantes aprenden. consecuentemente, es necesario prestar atención a las percepciones de los profesores y a cómo estas influyen en la enseñanza y el aprendizaje. en este artículo describimos un estudio realizado en un centro de idiomas de una universidad privada en colombia, sobre las creencias de los profesores respecto a la evaluación en general y a los sistemas de evaluación que se usan allí. exploramos las creencias de sesenta y dos profesores mediante encuestas, reportes escritos y entrevistas. los resultados indican una contradicción entre lo que los profesores dicen hacer y lo que creen. también sugieren que los profesores necesitan oportunidades para la reflexión, la autoevaluación y más orientación en prácticas de evaluación formativa. palabras clave: creencias sobre la evaluación, evaluación formativa, instrumentos de evaluación. * e-mail: apmunoz@eafit.edu.co ** e-mail: opalacio@eafit.edu.co *** e-mail: lescob17@eafit.edu.co this article was received on may 31, 2011, and accepted on september 7, 2011. universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras144 muñoz, palacio & escobar introduction a belief is a mental representation of reality which contains meanings, preferences and atti tudes that allow the rationalization of complex and different categories of experience including assessment (kelly, 1991; thompson, 1992; white, 1994). teachers’ assessments of student behaviour and performance, among others, are shaped by the theories they have in relation to teaching, assessment, and the nature of learning. therefore, visible attention devoted to the beliefs teachers have and the way in which those beliefs influence teaching are central for professional development (borko, mayfield, marion, flexer, & cumbo, 1997). the purpose of the study reported in this article was to examine teachers’ perceptions about assessment, in general, and, in particular, about their beliefs and practices as regards the oral and writing assessment systems developed at the language center (lc) of a private university in medellín, colombia. both systems were implemented in 2005 after formal instruction was provided to get teachers to evaluate applying the same standards, to design assessment tasks, and to give appropriate feedback. the study was conducted three years after the new assessment systems were incorporated in the lc classrooms. after this period researchers intended to observe if the assessment practices promoted by the institution had become part of the teachers’ belief system or if they still followed old practices which placed greater emphasis on grades without specific and descriptive criteria for assessment. the new assessment that the institution promotes is both formative and summative. for formative assessment, teachers conduct a series of ongoing assessments such as role-plays, debates, discussions, compositions, journals, etc. to help them identify areas that require further explanation, more practice, and methodological changes. formative assessment is also intended to provide feedback to students so they can improve their performance. the lc assessment systems also serve summative purposes; student progress is determined through two formal written and oral tests per course and reported at the end in the form of grades. for assessing the speaking ability of their students, teachers use the oral assessment system. the components of this system include: (a) a set of rubrics for different proficiency levels, each of which provides a scoring scale from 1.0 to 5.0, along with performance descriptors for the different aspects of oral language to be assessed, namely: communicative effectiveness, pronunciation, grammar, vocabulary, and task completion; (b) speaking standards for each course; (c) a set of suggested assessment tasks per course; (d) a scoring sheet for teachers to record assessment tasks and grades; (e) a report card that students receive during the midterm and final assessment feedback sessions; and (f) oral assessment guidelines, a document in which the lc oral assessment criteria and procedures are specified (muñoz, casals, gaviria, & palacio, 2004). for the assessment of writing, teachers use the writing assessment system which consists of a set of writing rubrics aligned with standards to be used for each course. in addition, it contains suggested tasks, writing conventions to check grammar, vocabulary, punctuation, and spelling problems, and the guidelines for teaching and assessing writing, a document in which the lc writing assessment criteria and procedures are described (muñoz, gaviria, & palacio, 2006). since the lc advocates assessment as a means of promoting improvements in instruction, the implementation of the oral and writing assessment systems was intended to influence positively both teaching and learning. teachers were therefore required to incorporate new assessment practices in their classrooms. they were asked to integrate assessment into instruction and to design tasks that would 145profile vol. 14, no. 1, april 2012. issn 1657-0790. bogotá, colombia. pages 143-158 teachers’ beliefs about assessment in an efl context in colombia be used both for collecting information and pro viding students with feedback. the new assessment practices may have placed new demands on teachers’ knowledge and skills and challenged certain beliefs the teachers had about the nature and goals of evaluation. additionally, since teachers’ assessment practices are also influenced by personal experience, education, and social background, they might have seen the proposed changes through the lens of their existing knowledge or experience. therefore, since beliefs and practices are connected, and teachers may hold beliefs that are not compatible with the practices called for in institutional plans (bliem & davinroy, 1997; borko, et al., 1997), it was essential to investigate those beliefs in order to foster meaningful teacher change in assessment beliefs and practices and to make adjustments, if necessary, to the already implemented assessment systems. literature review classroom assessment is guided and influenced by many factors. one of those factors is teachers’ beliefs about the nature and goals of assessment. essentially, the literature has identified two goals of assessment: pedagogical and administrative. the aim of pedagogical assessment is to support and improve learning and teaching thus providing a basis for reflection, discussion and feedback to all those involved in the assessment process. the pedagogical goal of assessment is manifested through formative assessment. this type of assessment guides teacher decision making about future instruction; it also provides feedback to students so they can improve their performance. stiggins (2007) suggests that the student’s role is to strive to understand what success looks like and to use each assessment to try to understand how to do better the next time. thus, formative assessments help both teachers and students to identify areas that require further work in order to improve instruction and student achievement. assessment used for administrative purposes aims at informing different stakeholders (teachers, parents, administrators, government agencies, institutions, etc.) of the results of instruction. these results can be used to rank institutions and certify learning, that is, assessment is also used for accountability. the administrative side of assessment is carried out through summative assessment which is usually conducted at the end of a course or unit. it is done through formal testing techniques and is aimed at measuring learners’ knowledge and skills. according to brown (2003), the conceptions teachers have about the process and purpose of assessment and the nature of teaching and learning affect all pedagogical acts. in his research on teachers’ beliefs about assessment, brown (2002, 2003) found that teachers hold one of four major conceptions of assessment: a) it is useful because it can provide information for improving instruction; b) it is necessary for making students accountable; c) it is necessary for making institutions accountable; and d) it is irrelevant to teaching and learning. if assessment practices rely on teachers’ beliefs about the nature and goals of assessment, it is necessary to identify such beliefs in order to arrive at a shared understanding of assessment and to see if there are disagreements between teachers’ conceptions and the assessment initiatives promoted by the institution or by new developments in the field. for instance, rueda and garcia (1994) investigated the attitudes and beliefs of three groups of third and fourth grade classroom teachers concerning the reading assessment of latino language minority students in urban classrooms of california. results show a discrepancy between the beliefs of teachers and those underlying many of the new educational initiatives in assessment and instruction. in another study, delandshere and jones (1999) examined three elementary teachers’ conuniversidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras146 muñoz, palacio & escobar ceptions about assessment. results indicate that teachers’ beliefs are shaped by externally defined purposes of assessment; by what they perceive as the official school curriculum and their position with regard to subject matter; and by how they understand learning and learners. brown (2003) also conducted a study among 525 new zealand primary school teachers to analyze the assessment practices and their relationship to learning, curriculum, and teacher efficacy. the results showed that teachers had multiple, correlated conceptions, and that complex models were needed to understand teachers’ thinking about the nature and purpose of assessment, teaching, and curriculum. brown concludes that to ensure success in the implementation of any new assessment policy or practice, it is necessary to take into account the complex structure of teachers’ conceptions of assessment. these studies highlight the need to establish the connection between what teachers believe about assessment and how these beliefs shape their practices. since different conceptions lead to different assessment practices, institutional efforts to promote shared understanding of assessment criteria would be pointless if teachers’ beliefs are not taken into account. therefore, it is not only crucial to reveal those beliefs, but also to get teachers’ aware of such conceptions in an attempt to foster reflection and guide them toward change. in the study of teachers’ beliefs, different research methodologies have been used. for instance, woods (1996) recommends varied methods of elicitation such as logs, video-based recall, collection of lesson plans, and interview questions. according to woods, interview questions should elicit anecdotes about teachers’ previous language-learning or teachingrelated experiences and the influence of these experiences on their current practices and views. eliciting data in the form of narratives or stories, he claims, helps researchers to access information which may not entirely be conscious because teachers may respond to general questions “according to what they would like to believe or would like to show they believe in the interview context” (p. 27). other researchers such as cheung (2000) and brown (2002) have suggested different models for the study of teacher beliefs. cheung, for instance, used a curriculum orientation inventory survey consisting of 20 items which were grouped into 4 major conceptions of assessment (i.e. academic, humanistic, technological, and social reconstruc tion). brown (2002) developed a teacher’s con ceptions of assessment (tcoa) inventory based on the assumption that four major purposes were sufficient to understand teacher’s beliefs about the purpose of assessment. these purposes were: (a) assessment improves teaching and learning; (b) assessment is about certification of students’ learning; (c) assessment demonstrates the quality of schools; and (d) assessment is irrelevant to the work of teacher and students’ learning. brown’s conception implies that assessment can be used to inform the improvement of students’ own learning and the quality of teaching (black & wiliam, 1998; crooks, 1988). the second conception refers to students’ performance in high-stakes examinations for entry in higher levels of education or for graduation requirements. the third is about the uses of assessment to evidence schools and teachers’ ability to provide quality instruction. lastly, the fourth conception is associated with assessment being irrelevant, based on the assumption that teachers know their students and the curriculum and, therefore, there is no need to conduct formal assessment. in sum, it is important to research teachers’ beliefs not only in terms of publicly declared general statements or propositions (interviews, surveys, questionnaires), but in terms of more personal or tacit beliefs, as manifested in specific activities or situations (specific activities, narra147profile vol. 14, no. 1, april 2012. issn 1657-0790. bogotá, colombia. pages 143-158 teachers’ beliefs about assessment in an efl context in colombia tives, stories, and reports). using different methods to elicit information will consequently produce data from different contexts, and thereby provide some degree of triangulation. research questions this study intends to respond to the following research questions: 1. what are the lc teachers’ current beliefs about assessment in general and about the lc oral and writing assessment systems, specifically? 2. do these beliefs match the assessment practices promoted by the lc? method in this study, teachers’ conceptions were exam ined using brown’s (2002, 2003) four major concep tions of assessment purposes (table 1). to enquire about these conceptions, researchers used surveys, interviews, and a written report of experiences. participants sixty two teachers (30 females and 32 males) who work in the lc’s adult english program were asked about their beliefs on assessment. they had been working at the institution for an average of eight years each. tables 2 4 present information about their age, native language, and educational background. data gathering tools teachers’ survey the survey was aimed at exploring beliefs about oral and writing assessment practices. it included 21 statements for which respondents were asked to rate each item on a 5-point scale in terms of their agreement (which ranged from totally agree to totally disagree). the statements were designed to examine the four conceptions about assessment proposed by brown (2002, 2003) presented in table 1. written report of experiences a writing activity was used to explore teachers’ past and current assessment practices. in part i of the activity, teachers were asked to describe what they did in the past in terms of assessment (techniques, instruments, criteria, record keeping, etc.), and what they do currently. in part ii, teachers were asked to list the three most relevant sources of change and elaborate on the reasons for having changed their assessment practices. the purpose of table 1. brown’s main conceptions about assessment assessment conceptions a. accountability of schools b. improvement of teaching and learning c. certification of students’ learning d. irrelevance to the work of teachers and students’ learning table 2. participants’ age age number percentage % > 50 4 6.45 40-49 13 20.97 30-39 30 48.39 20-29 15 24.19 table 3. participants’ native language language number percentage % spanish 46 74.19 english 13 20.97 both 3 4.84 table 4. participants’ educational level educational level number percentage % bachelor’s degree 38 61.29 high school 10 16.13 master’s degree 6 9.68 certificate course 4 6.45 teaching certificate 2 3.23 other areas* 2 3.23 * “other areas” refers to diploma courses, seminars and other nonformal education. universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras148 muñoz, palacio & escobar this activity was to determine if teachers had felt the introduction of the new assessment systems as an imposition from the lc. responses to the survey and the assessment experiences report helped the researchers understand the context and find common themes to be further developed in interviews. interviews ten teachers were invited to participate in a 30-minute interview. due to time constraints and incompatibility of schedules, five accepted the invitation. a semi-structured interview was used to obtain more in-depth information from teachers about the statements provided in the survey. teachers were given freedom to respond in the language they felt easier to express their ideas. two researchers conducted the interviews, one asking the questions and the other recording and taking notes. data analysis the survey was analyzed using descriptive statistics. part i of the written report was examined through a process of coding, that is, researchers read and reread the data to identify emergent categories and common themes (bogdan & biklen, 1998). the categories and themes were not previously established but emerged directly from the data. the analysis was conducted by three researchers (first, each one individually, and then together) in order to reach a consensus and to validate the information. the most common categories identified for part i were: assessment criteria, assessment techniques, knowledge and experience, and planning. the number of responses under each category was also quantified in order to determine which category was more important. part ii was analyzed by counting and ranking the most commonly mentioned reasons for change. the categories found were professional development, self discovery, and institutional policy. all the interviews were audio-recorded and transcribed to ensure that the whole interview session was captured and would provide data for analysis. to guarantee their reliability, the transcriptions were compared with the notes taken by one of the researchers. additionally, the transcriptions were returned to the interviewees for their approval and for clarification, if needed. the analysis was conducted through a process of coding identifying recurrent themes and emergent categories (bogdan & biklen, 1998). the three sources of data collection complemented each other in an attempt to triangulate the information and thus present a more valid and reliable picture of teachers’ beliefs. results and discussion teachers’ survey and interviews tables 5 8 present the percentage of agreement with the statements given for each of the four major beliefs about assessment. respondents indicated their opinion on a scale of 1 to 5, with 5 being “totally agree,” and 1 being “totally disagree.” as shown in table 5, teachers agreed that assessment can be used to account for the lc’s quality (55% and 23.3%) and good organization (48.3% and 31.7%). the implicit belief here is that assessment is an accurate way to evaluate the performance of the institution, and thus serves the purpose of accountability. the majority of teachers, as shown in table 6, agreed that assessment improves teaching and learning, and that the lc assessment tools are trustworthy. firstly, the data show that improvement is associated with the description or diagnosis of student performance and achievement as reflected in the statements “assessment provides feedback to students about their performance,” with which 90% of the teachers either agreed or agreed totally; 149profile vol. 14, no. 1, april 2012. issn 1657-0790. bogotá, colombia. pages 143-158 teachers’ beliefs about assessment in an efl context in colombia table 5. assessment is about accountability of schools accountability of schools scale frequency percentage % assessment is an accurate indicator of the lc’s quality. 1 2 3.3 2 1 1.7 3 14 23.3 4 33 55.0 5 10 16. 7 total 60 100 the oral and writing assessment systems enhance the efficiency of the lc organization. 1 2 3.3 2 1 1. 7 3 9 15.0 4 29 48.3 5 19 31.7 total 60 100 improvement of teaching and learning scale frequency percentage % the lc assessment tools provide more precision in feedback sessions 1 0 0 2 0 0 3 7 11.5 4 29 47.5 5 25 41 total 61 100 assessment determines if students meet course standards 1 0 0 2 2 3.3 3 22 36.1 4 28 45.9 5 9 14.8 total 61 100 assessment provides feedback to students about their performance 1 0 0 2 2 3.3 3 4 6.6 4 35 57.4 5 20 32.8 total 61 100 assessment results modify teaching practices 1 1 1.6 2 3 4.8 3 12 19.4 4 32 51.6 5 14 22.6 total 62 100 assessment helps students improve their learning 1 0 0 2 3 4.9 3 7 11.5 4 27 44.3 5 24 39.3 total 61 100 calibration sessions help teachers understand scoring methods better 1 1 1.6 2 0 0 3 3 4.9 4 18 29.6 5 39 63.9 total 61 100 table 6. assessment is about improvement of instruction universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras150 muñoz, palacio & escobar “assessment helps students improve their learning” (with 44.3% and 39.3% agreement); and “assessment determines if students meet course standards.” even though most teachers strongly agreed with the latter statement (45.9% and 14.8%), there were also 22 teachers (36.1%) who agreed less strongly with it, or who were uncertain about their opinion. to obtain more information on the conception of whether or not assessment determines that students meet course standards, the interviewed teachers were asked to provide further explanations. all the teachers explained that although they perceive the students are learning, sometimes the relationship between assessment and standards is not totally direct. they consider that this mismatch may be due to factors such as mixed ability groups, students’ learning pace, lack of time and the pressure to comply with the standards. secondly, the data show that whereas most teachers agreed that assessment modifies teaching practices (51.6% and 22.6%), 19.4% of the teachers neither totally agreed nor disagreed with this idea. during the interviews, all the teachers referred to assessment as a practice that can, in fact, help them to improve instruction. some of their comments also included feedback as a way of getting input from students concerning how instruction is going and making modifications in instruction. thirdly, table 6 demonstrates that the concept of improvement is also associated with the precision and objectivity of the assessment tools. the majority of teachers agreed that the lc assessment tools help them to provide more accurate feedback to students (47.5% and 41%), and to be more objective (41.9% and 29%). however, 22.6% of the respondents believe that the assessment instruments allow for subjectivity. this is not a surprising perception since all assessment processes are influenced by a degree of subjectivity. as rightly put by berlak, newmann, adams, archbald, burgess, raven, & romberg, 1992 (in broadfoot, 2005), every stage of the designing, constructing, managing and administering of assessment instruments —as well as the use of the data to make judgments about the possession of certain knowledge, skills and dispositions— involves human intervention and hence values that, separately and collectively, influence every stage of the assessment process. assessment is therefore not and can never be a science: it is a craft and a social process. (pp. 128-129) the belief that the assessment tools are of sufficient quality to be considered reliable and accurate, in addition to the understanding of the assessment criteria and scoring methods (29.6% and 63.9%), led teachers to agree that these instruments are wellaccepted by students (41.7% and 35%). however, further research will be needed to verify students’ perception of the assessment instruments. as can be seen in table 7, teachers’ opinion about assessment as a procedure for giving grades to students’ performance is scattered along the scale improvement of teaching and learning scale frequency percentage % the lc assessment tools help to rule out subjectivity in evaluation 1 0 0 2 4 6.5 3 14 22.6 4 26 41.9 5 18 29 total 62 100 the lc assessment tools are well accepted by students 1 1 1.7 2 4 6.7 3 9 15 4 25 41.7 5 21 35 total 60 100 151profile vol. 14, no. 1, april 2012. issn 1657-0790. bogotá, colombia. pages 143-158 teachers’ beliefs about assessment in an efl context in colombia table 7. assessment is about certification of student learning certification of student learning scale frequency percentage % assessment is assigning a grade to student work. 1 7 11.3 2 12 19.4 3 9 14.5 4 17 27.4 5 17 27.4 total 62 100 assessment places students into proficiency levels (a1, a2, b1, b2, etc.). 1 5 8.2 2 6 9.8 3 13 21.3 4 22 36.1 5 15 24.6 total 61 100 with slightly greater percentages towards agreement (27.4% and 27.4%). similarly, there is a great percent age of agreement with the concept that assessment places students into levels (36.1% and 24.6%). however, 21.3% of the teachers neither agreed nor disagreed, indicating uncertainty or doubts. based on the results, it could be said that there is a tendency to relate assessment to summative purposes. nonetheless, the percentages of teachers who agreed with the summative approach are lower than the percentages of teachers who viewed assessment as a tool to be used for formative purposes. this was revealed by the responses to the statements (see table 6): • assessment determines if students meet course standards • assessment provides feedback to students about their performance • assessment results modify teaching practices • assessment helps students improve their learning. taking these responses into consideration, we can say that the belief that assessment serves formative purposes is stronger than the belief that assessment is about summative decisions. the interviewed teachers validate this assumption when they said: what we attempt in an evaluative activity is to look at a student’s comprehension of a topic and his capacity to use the language to respond in a given situation. if i am an active part of the teaching process, the evaluative process… well, of the whole process, then why is it necessary for there to be a grade to evaluate the performance of the student, if i know that he is capable of communicating? (teacher 1) many times the grade does not measure how a student’s process is going along, which is what is really necessary for us to see. it doesn’t reflect the student’s process. (teacher 2) it’s not just a grade. it’s a grade that shows a student’s process. but if you think of it as “just give a grade,” then it seems to me that what’s happening is all about a number, and not about a process in and of itself. (teacher 4) assessment for me is like a follow-up to be done on the student and on his learning process, be it written or oral, depending on what one is evaluating. but it’s never about the grade, because many times the student gets nervous and fails just because he’s nervous. still, he really does know. (teacher 5) the analysis of the results for table 8 was carried out considering the lower end of the agreement scale, 1 and 2, as positive responses. this is due to the negative phrasing of the statements. as can be seen, teachers strongly disagreed with the idea that assessment is unfair to students (62.1% and 25.9%) and that it has little effect on teaching (49.2% and universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras152 muñoz, palacio & escobar table 8. assessment is irrelevant assessment is irrelevant scale frequency percentage % assessment has little impact on teaching. 1 30 49.2 2 18 29.5 3 8 13.1 4 3 4.9 5 2 3.3 total 61 100 assessment is unfair to students. 1 36 62.1 2 15 25.9 3 4 6.9 4 2 3.5 5 1 1.7 total 58 100 the lc assessment systems force teachers to teach in a way that goes against their beliefs. 1 24 38.7 2 22 35.5 3 9 14.5 4 7 11.3 5 0 0 total 62 100 assessment interferes with the way teachers teach. 1 31 50 2 13 21 3 9 14.5 4 9 14.5 5 0 0 total 62 100 teachers should be held responsible for inaccurate assessments (lack of calibration, poor prompts, etc.). 1 1 1.6 2 5 8.2 3 19 31.2 4 24 39.3 5 12 19.7 total 61 100 teachers conduct assessment but they make little use of the results. 1 2 3.3 2 12 19.7 3 15 24.6 4 24 39.3 5 8 13.1 total 61 100 29.5%). it could be said that the belief that assessment has a legitimate place within teaching and learning is strong among the teachers surveyed (see also table 6). in addition, teachers acknowledged the assessment values promoted in the lc. they did not consider that the assessment systems are imposed by the institution (38.7% and 35.5%) or that these systems interfere with their teaching style (50% and 21%). three of the interviewed teachers responded to the question, “do you think the lc assessment system interferes with the way teachers teach?” as follows: no, it’s something that indeed takes time, but to the degree you learn to handle that time and manage the system more quickly, it is more efficient… i think that if all of us teachers were in favor of the evaluation, that is, if in the basic courses we taught the students the criteria, by the time that they got to a higher level, we would be saving each other time. so, this is a team project. (teacher 4) 153profile vol. 14, no. 1, april 2012. issn 1657-0790. bogotá, colombia. pages 143-158 teachers’ beliefs about assessment in an efl context in colombia do the rubrics interfere? no, but it depends on how one manages them. they have to be used in an interactive way, because there are some students who get to an advanced course with no idea about how the rubrics work. (teacher 5) the previous quotes demonstrate that teachers hold that the assessment systems do not interfere with teaching practices, but rather, that these systems help them involve students in the assessment process, even in self-assessment. the implicit belief demonstrated by the interviews is that the lc assessment methods do not have detrimental effects on teacher autonomy and professionalism. it could also be deduced that the lc assessment policies do not create tensions between teachers and the institution. nonetheless, 14.5% of the teachers asserted that the assessment systems interfere with teaching. likewise, 14.5% partially agreed with that same statement. a possible explanation for this belief was provided by the interviewed teachers. they made it clear that time constraints and the need to comply with administrative duties –such as grading and attending meetings– are factors that hinder the flexible application of the systems. more concretely, they made reference to the administration of the mid-term and final written exams which constitute 60% of the total points needed to pass a course. they clarified, however, that the oral and writing assessment systems lend themselves to greater adaptability and therefore do not create interference. teachers strongly agreed with the statement to the effect that they are the ones responsible for providing accurate assessments (39.3% and 19.7%). the institution offers on-going teacher development opportunities to familiarize teachers with the assessment criteria and scoring procedures. at least partly due to this practice, it seems that teachers have internalized assessment as their own responsibility and, consequently, it has become more relevant to their work. when asked about the uses of assessment results, 39.3% and 13.1% of the teachers agreed that they make little use of the results. furthermore, 24.6% showed partial agreement. this finding seems to contradict teachers’ (generally positive) perception of assessment as a way to improve and modify teaching and learning (see table 6). a possible explanation for the contradiction is the discrepancy, evidenced in the literature, between what teachers believe and what they actually do in the classroom (tatto & coupland, 2003; breen, hird, milton, oliver & thwaite, 2001). in fact, it is likely that the lc teachers believe in assessment as a means for improvement while, at the same time, they are not yet able to use the assessment results in a practical way. written report of experiences past and current assessment practices the 62 teachers surveyed were prompted to think about their first years of teaching at the lc and to describe what they did then (hence the use of “then”) and what they are doing at present (hence, the use of “now”) in terms of techniques, instruments, criteria, record keeping, etc. upon reaching a consensus among researchers, they found the analysis of information rendered four overt categories for both “then” and “now”: assessment criteria, assessment techniques, knowledge and experience, and planning. assessment criteria, the category that garnered the greatest proportion of positive responses (61%), refer to the assessment tools and principles specified by the lc to measure students’ performance. overall, respondents suggested that there was a lack of consistent criteria and objective assessment instruments in the past. teachers commented that assessing in the past was arbitrary: only personal criteria, mostly making things up (teacher 31). very intuitive techniques (teacher 54). we didn’t have rubrics, universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras154 muñoz, palacio & escobar so my criteria were very different (teacher 22). some grades were based on assumption (teacher 13). assessing then was a more subjective experience, and the factors i took into account were very varied (teacher 17). in contrast, assessment tools, particularly rubrics, were highlighted as beneficial for accuracy in grading “now” (63% of the responses): objective point of view to grade students’ written process (teacher 5). assessing is harder but the process makes it much more objective (teacher 17). much better in terms of criteria and tools (teacher 12). i constantly use the rubrics to grade my students (teacher 22). more accurate in grading with the rubrics (teacher 58). more academic criteria (teacher 54). score every descriptor for each aspect in the rubric (teacher 15). these comments confirm, once again, teachers’ positive attitude toward the assessment systems. they demonstrate teachers’ growing confidence in assessment and a new certainty that they can be more precise while grading the students. the second largest grouping that teachers responded favorably to, assessment techniques, deals with the different assessment practices teachers use to determine students’ progress. the greatest percentage of responses (63%) under the “then” heading showed traditional techniques such as gap-fill quizzes, multiple choice tests, standard quizzes, or midterm and final exams. under the “now” heading, 58% of the responses referred to activities such as communicative-centered tests, content-based tests, evaluation of a combination of content and structure, or a variety of activities to assess. although a small difference is perceived between past and current assessment techniques, teachers were more able to name traditional assessment tasks than they were to identify communicative assessment methods. the teachers’ reference to standardized testing versus more alternatives to assessment such as discussion, role-plays, portfolio, and peer or self-assessment techniques is noteworthy. a logical conclusion is that teachers need to be better equipped, through education programs, for implementing a wide repertoire of procedures of assessing students’ performance that goes beyond traditional test formats. twenty nine percent of the responses grouped under “then” in the knowledge and experience category, had to do with the limited information and lack of experience teachers had in the past. some teachers expressed a “lack of ability to let students know where they were in their learning process” (teacher 37) or they “didn’t know clearly what to tell students” (teacher 21). some others said they had few ideas on what to do or that they used to pay little attention to assessment and feedback. in contrast, responses classified under “now” (32%) showed more awareness and understanding of assessment: everything (techniques, criteria) has developed in a positive way. i now know and do things better (teacher 43). i assess and analyze results with students and determine strategies to improve their performance (teacher 61). the students are sure about where they are in their learning process (teacher 37). i give feedback throughout the course (teacher 15). such comments reiterate the fact that some teachers have gained great confidence in the use of lc assessment practices. moreover, it seems that these teachers view assessment as an instrument to be used for formative purposes. the least frequent comments were related to planning (numbers 6 and 7 under “then” and “now,” respectively). teachers recognize planning was “more immediate and closer to the date” (teacher 6) in the past, as opposed to “spending time planning assessment” (teacher 19) or “planning way ahead of time” (teacher 6) now. such responses reveal a positive attitude towards planning assessment, 155profile vol. 14, no. 1, april 2012. issn 1657-0790. bogotá, colombia. pages 143-158 teachers’ beliefs about assessment in an efl context in colombia which is believed to be a tool used to address students’ needs and proficiency level. reasons for change the 62 teachers cited three basic reasons for having changed their assessment practices: professional development, self discovery, and institutional policy. a total of 69% of the responses correspond to change due to professional development programs such as in-service workshops, seminars, conferences, and scoring calibration sessions. according to respondents, teacher education is the main reason that leads to change in practices and beliefs. most of them comment that in-service courses offered by the lc give them new ideas and help them to improve different aspects of their pedagogical skills e.g. assessing in a more objective way, implementing better teaching techniques, and class management strategies. continuous education is crucial to my own discovery and growth (teacher 7). courses at university, seminars, conferences and in-service courses have been quite useful for my professional development, there is always something new to learn (teacher 24). attending courses and workshops is very important for me and i always find something new to start dealing with (teacher 28). self-discovery comes next as a reason for change (63% of the responses). most of the responses within this category also mentioned student feedback as a reason for change, which can be regarded as dual: receiving feedback from and giving feedback to students. the process of giving feedback to students raises teachers’ awareness of educational dimensions that need change such as assessment practices. this awareness is possible thanks to the interactions that exist between teacher and students. the spoken or written word that occurs in the classroom during feedback sessions or during a lesson is evidently what triggers a consciousness of the need for change. these interactive moments create crucial opportunities for both students and teachers to engage in a process of self-discovery. in a similar way, feedback from supervisors and colleagues can also trigger change. any academicsphere communication may lead to a teacher’s reflection upon current practices. twenty-six percent of the responses make reference to feedback from supervisors as a reason for change. the aforementioned beliefs suggest that selfdiscovery through feedback from different sources constitutes a significant factor in teachers’ reasons for having changed their assessment practices. according to richards, gallo and renandya (2001), change is a major dimension of teachers’ professional lives. however, this change manifests itself through modifications in teaching practices, adjustments of techniques, and awareness. as teachers become more aware of their beliefs and the way these become evident in their teaching, they will be more able to change their beliefs and practices in a constructive and beneficial way. batten (1991, p. 295) claims that if teachers are “encouraged to identify and reflect on the positive aspects of their teaching,” then positive change will come along. finally, institutional policies constitute another catalyst for change. many times teachers must adapt their practices and beliefs to the context in which they work. twenty-four percent of the responses, including those which mentioned the use of rubrics and compliance with institutional requirements, point to institutional policies as a reason for change. we can interpret this to mean that teachers must change at least as many times as their institution establishes new educational policies. however, the main catalyst that was named for change was teacher education initiatives (in-service courses, seminars, and conferences) followed by self-discovery, including feedback to and from both students universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras156 muñoz, palacio & escobar and supervisors. institutional policies constitute the last motivation for change. limitations a clear limitation of this study is the difficulty of researching the issue of beliefs. personal values are hard to conceptualize because in many situations they are unconscious constructs. on the other hand, another difficulty arises regarding the veracity of teachers’ responses. in an attempt to remain in good standing with the institution, teachers may not have wanted to express adverse opinions about the assessment systems used there. a further limitation was investigating teachers’ conceptions of assessment in isolation from their conceptions of teaching, learning, and curriculum. how assessment is conceived, and how those conceptions relate to those of teaching, curriculum, and learning, is relatively unexplored (dahlin, watkins, & ekholm, 2001), constituting a topic for further research. likewise, additional research is necessary to correlate variables such as age, native language, years of experience, and educational background with beliefs. these factors were not considered in this current study due to time constraints. conclusions and implications in response to the research question: what are teachers’ current beliefs about assessment in general and about the lc oral and writing assessment systems? the following can be concluded: the lc teachers believe that teaching and learning can improve with help from assessment and, as a result, they reject the conception of assessment being irrelevant. although teachers acknowledge the importance of assessment for accountability and certification purposes, they mainly view it as a means for academic improvement. in fact, it is clearly a belief among teachers that assessment serves formative purposes. assessment is viewed as a process of educational regulation in which teachers recognize the changes that need to be made to improve their teaching practices, and in which they introduce more meaningful learning activities. however, even though the conception of assessment for improvement is a strongly manifested belief, there is a tendency towards using summative procedures in the classroom as evidenced by both teachers’ comments on the use of traditional assessment techniques and a lack of ability in applying assessment results for improvement purposes. therefore, a possible discrepancy between beliefs and reported assessment practices might be revealed. nonetheless, further research, by means of observations and other data gathering sources, would be necessary to deepen our understanding of the connection between teachers’ beliefs and classroom reality. additionally, it is necessary to offer teachers professional development opportunities focused on reflection and self-assessment that allow them to become aware of their own beliefs in an attempt to bridge the gap between conceptions and practices. as pointed out by kahn (2000), implementing new standards in assessment may be pointless if teachers’ conceptions about assessment remain the same and unquestioned, especially if teachers continue to be unaware of their own beliefs. professional development programs also need to be accompanied by stronger efforts from the institution in order to foster formative assessment not just in theory but, more importantly, in practice. with regard to this view, the works of black and wiliam (2003) and black, harrison, lee, marshall, and wiliam (2003) can be outstanding referents. these researchers have long worked with the idea of assessment for learning, another term for formative assessment, where the first priority in assessment design and practice is to serve the purpose of promoting students’ learning. therefore it differs from assessment which is mainly designed 157profile vol. 14, no. 1, april 2012. issn 1657-0790. bogotá, colombia. pages 143-158 teachers’ beliefs about assessment in an efl context in colombia to serve the purposes of accountability, ranking, or certifying competence (black & wiliam, 2003). there is a need for promoting formative assessment techniques, such as peer and self-assessment, that can help teachers assess their students more in accordance with the heartfelt convictions of the institution and the instructors and that can better adjust to the actual needs of the classroom. in sum, it is important to minimize assessment which is associated with summative goals and, rather, to assure that assessment relates more closely with each teacher’s individual ability to improve results in teaching and learning. in relation to whether teachers’ beliefs match the assessment practices promoted by the lc, results indicate that teachers value the principles promoted by the institution. they consider that the oral and writing assessment systems do not interfere with their teaching style and that these do not harm teacher autonomy. furthermore, they view the institutional policies as the last factor influencing their beliefs about assessment practices. teachers’ acceptance of the systems is likely due to the trustworthiness of the assessment criteria and tools. they said they find rubrics to be particularly beneficial for improving assessment accuracy. teachers also acknowledge the benefits of professional development programs as the main element that leads to changes in practice. in addition, self-discovery through feedback from different sources constitutes a significant factor in teachers’ conceptions of assessment. these findings underscore the significant role professional development programs that emphasize reflection and awareness can play. such programs allow for teachers to have the opportunity to interact with each other to share experiences. finally, as a recommendation, if institutions want to move teachers into a preferred system of beliefs about assessment, it is crucial to take account of their pre-existing conceptions. a study of teachers’ beliefs about assessment can allow researchers, policy makers, and teacher-educators to delve into the factors that may contribute to use assessment as a means of improving teaching and learning standards. references batten, m. (1991). identification and development of teachers’ professional craft knowledge. in w. k. ho, & r. wong (eds.), improving the quality of the teaching profession: an international perspective (pp. 295-305). singapore: institute of education. black, p., & wiliam, d. (1998). assessment and classroom learning. educational assessment: principles, policy and practice, 5(1), 7-74. black, p., & wiliam, d. (2003). the development of formative assessment. in b. davis & j. west-burnham (eds.), international handbook of educational leadership and management (pp. 409-18). london: pearson. black, p., harrison, c., lee, c., marshall, b., & wiliam, d. (2003). assessment for learning: putting it into practice. buckingham: open university press. bliem, c. l., & davinroy, k. h. (1997). teachers’ beliefs about assessment and instruction in literacy. cse technical report 421. los angeles, ca: university of california. bogdan, r. c., & biklen, s. k. (1998). qualitative research for education: an introduction to theory and methods. needham heights, ma: allyn & bacon. borko, h., mayfield, v., marion, s., flexer, r., & cumbo, k. (1997). teachers’ developing ideas and practices about mathematics performance assessment: successes, stumbling blocks, and implications for professional development. teaching & teacher education, 13, 259-278. breen, m., hird, b., milton, m., oliver, r., & thwaite, a. (2001). what is the relationship between esl teachers’ pedagogic principles and their classroom practices? applied linguistics, 22(4), 502-530. broadfoot, p. (2005). dark alleys and blind bends: testing the language of learning. language testing, 22(2), 123-141. brown, g., t. l. (2002). teachers’ conceptions of assessment (unpublished doctoral dissertation). university of auckland, new zealand. universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras158 muñoz, palacio & escobar brown, g. t. l. (2003). teachers’ instructional conceptions: assessment’s relationship to learning, teaching, curriculum, and teacher efficacy. paper presented at the joint conference of the australian and new zealand associations for research in education, auckland, new zealand. cheung, d. (2000). measuring teachers’ meta-orientations to curriculum: application of hierarchical confirmatory analysis. journal of experimental education, 68(2), 149-165. crooks, t. (1988). the impact of classroom evaluation practices on students. review of educational research, 58(4), 438-481. dahlin, b., watkins, d. a., & ekholm, m. (2001). the role of assessment in student learning: the views of hong kong and swedish lecturers. in d. a. watkins & j. b. biggs (eds.), teaching the chinese learner: psychological and pedagogical perspectives (pp. 47-74). hong kong: university of hong kong, comparative education research centre. delandshere, g., & jones, j. h. (1999). elementary teachers’ beliefs about assessment in mathematics: a case of assessment paralysis. journal of curriculum and supervision, 14(3), 216-240. kahn, e. a. (2000). a case study of assessment in grade 10 english course. the journal of educational research, 93, 276-286. kelly, g. a. (1991). the psychology of personal constructs: a theory of personality (vol. 1). london: routledge. muñoz, a., casals, s., gaviria, s., & palacio, m. (2004). guidelines for oral assessment. cuadernos de investigación doc. 23. medellín: universidad eafit. muñoz, a., gaviria, s., & palacio, m. (2006). guidelines for teaching and assessing writing. cuadernos de investigación doc. 48. medellín: universidad eafit. richards, j. c., gallo, p. b., & renandya, w. a. (2001). exploring teachers’ beliefs and the processes of change. the pac journal, 1(1), 43-64. rueda, r., & garcia, e. (1994). teachers’ beliefs about reading assessment with latino language minority students. center for research on education, diversity & excellence. ncrcdsll research reports. berkeley, ca: university of california. stiggins, r. (2007). assessment through the student’s eyes. educational leadership, 64(8), 22-26. tatto, m. t., & coupland, d. b. (2003). teacher education and teachers’ beliefs: theoretical and measurement concerns. in j. rath & a. c. mcaninch (eds.), advances in teacher education series, 6 (pp. 123-181). greenwich, ct: information age. thompson, a. g. (1992). teachers’ beliefs and conceptions: a synthesis of the research. in d. a. grouws (ed.), handbook of research in mathematics teaching and learning (pp. 127-146). new york, ny: macmillan. white, r. t. (1994). commentary: conceptual and conceptional change. learning and instruction, 4, 117-121. woods, d. (1996). teacher cognition in language teaching. cambridge: cambridge university press. about the authors ana patricia muñoz is the coordinator of research and teacher education unit in the language center, universidad eafit, medellín, colombia. she holds an ma in tesol from eastern michigan university, usa. her current research interests cover assessment, evaluation, and motivation. marcela palacio is the academic assistant of the adult english program at the language center, universidad eafit, medellín, colombia. she holds a ba in languages from the universidad de antioquia, colombia. she has been an english teacher and researcher for more than 12 years. her current research interests cover assessment, evaluation, and motivation. liliana escobar is an english teacher at the language center, universidad eafit, medellín, colombia. she holds an mba with a specialization in management of information systems from nova southeastern university, usa and a master in sciences de l’éducation from université la sorbonne (paris v), france. 133profile vol. 12, no. 2, october 2010. issn 1657-0790. bogotá, colombia. pages 133-152 indigenous students’ attitudes towards learning english through a virtual program: a study in a colombian public university actitudes de estudiantes indígenas frente al aprendizaje de inglés a través de un programa virtual: un estudio en una universidad pública colombiana ruth elena cuasialpud canchala* universidad nacional de colombia, bogotá this article reports an exploratory study carried out at a public university in bogotá, colombia, with two indigenous students who took a level i virtual english-course during the second term of 2008 and the first term of 2009. the aim was to analyse their attitudes towards the learning of english through the virtual modality. interviews, observations and questionnaires were used for data collection. it was found that indigenous students felt frustrated taking a virtual english course, and that their motivation as regards the learning of this language is very low. thus, they need to be motivated and guided along the process. at the end, some recommendations for teach ing or tutoring indigenous students, learning english virtually or any of the other modalities of the english program at the university were derived. key words: indigenous students, virtual learning, online english courses, students’ attitudes. en este artículo se reporta un estudio exploratorio que se llevó a cabo en una universidad pública en bogotá, colombia, con dos estudiantes indígenas que realizaron un curso virtual de inglés durante el segundo semestre del 2008 y el primero del 2009. el objetivo fue analizar sus actitudes frente al aprendizaje de inglés a través de la modalidad virtual. la recolección de datos se hizo mediante entrevistas, observaciones y cuestionarios. se encontró que los estudiantes sienten frustración al tomar un curso de inglés virtual, por lo que su motivación hacia el aprendizaje de este idioma es muy baja. por tal razón, deben ser motivados y guiados en el proceso. al finalizar el estudio, se produjeron algunas recomendaciones para la enseñanza o la tutoría a estudiantes indígenas a través de ambientes virtuales o de cualquiera de las otras modalidades del programa de inglés en la universidad. palabras clave: estudiantes indígenas, aprendizaje virtual, cursos de inglés en línea, actitudes de los estudiantes. * e-mail: rukita77@googlemail.com this article was received on march 1, 2010, and accepted on july 7, 2010. 134 universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras cuasialpud canchala introduction nowadays the use of new technologies in education is more common than before, although in colombia there are many people who are still not used to this way of learning. in education, especially in secondary schools, it is considered essential and important to encourage students to learn by using these new technology instruments as eventually they will feel the necessity of using them. in big cities, students have the facilities of using computers and being exposed to the technological advances; even in small towns they may have access to these tools. but what about indigenous students who live in isolated and rural areas of the country? do they have access to technology the same as students in big cities? to answer these questions we have to take into consideration many social, cultural and even economical factors. due to the little or no use of new technologies in their communities, indigenous students face a difficult situation while attending university. in most cases students do not find guidance or assistance so they get tired of trying to learn this way. as an indigenous student and student of english philology i started to observe with preoccupation the fact that some indigenous students, in some assemblies, expressed no interest in taking english classes at the universidad nacional de colombia, bogotá campus, where they were doing their undergraduate studies. moreover, out of 358 indigenous students registered in 2007 at the university, only 10 registered for any of the four virtual english courses offered during 2008. thus, i started to think about the possibilities for these students’ to take an english course in the alex program at the university. alex is a program of the universidad nacional de colombia that aims to promote students’ autonomous learning of a foreign language, focusing on communicative competence through read ing comprehension (universidad nacional de colombia, 2008). at first, this program offered the courses through two modalities: intensive and face-to-face. however, the big demand of students willing to register for an english course led the alex staff to create a new modality: alex virtual. this modality has increased its quality and success guiding students’ english learning by establishing the courses to be blended. it means that students can learn through a virtual environment but at the same time through face-to-face sessions. this research document starts by presenting the research methodology, and then i include the objectives and the theoretical framework. there we can find information about the alex virtual program, the access indigenous students have to higher education, the multilingualism and multiculturalism phenomena we can find in our environment and finally, concepts related to motivating students during a language learning process. next, i present the findings that arose from the data analysis after having explored indigenous students’ experiences in a virtual classroom. finally, i present the conclusions, further research and implications of the study. objective of the study the main objective was to describe the english learning experiences of two indigenous students who took part in an english virtual course under the alex program. the specific objectives were the following: • to identify indigenous students’ background in regard to the use of new technologies in their english language learning process. • to analyze the indigenous students’ attitudes towards the learning of english and use of new technologies in the alex program. • to describe the motivation indigenous students have to take an english virtual course. • to draw some implications for teach ers to bear in mind when teach ing english to this population through the virtual modality. 135profile vol. 12, no. 2, october 2010. issn 1657-0790. bogotá, colombia. pages 133-152 indigenous students’ attitudes towards learning english... research methodology this study followed the qualitative paradigm. it focused on describing the happenings within a certain group of individuals in a specific context (wallace, 1998). this specific context has to do with the experiences indigenous students had when learning english through the virtual modality at universidad nacional. this description of happenings also follows a micro-ethnographic approach as it collects information through observation and interpretation of certain concerns and perceptions in just one context or with one specific group (de tezanos, 1998). observations, questionnaires, and interviews (see appendixes 1, 2 and 3) were used to collect relevant information about students' mood and attitudes. the phenomenological interview, which uses open-ended questions primarily, was chosen in order to have the participant reconstruct his or her own experience within the topic under study (seidman, 2006). the author states that when applying these interviews, people’s behavior becomes meaningful and understandable when placed in the context of their lives and the lives of those around them. besides, we followed the principles of unstructured interviews (trochim, 2006). a questionnaire was also applied to 20 indigenous students and aimed at exploring, in general terms, their english learning background, their use of new technology for learning and studying, and their experience learning english in the alex program (see appendix 1). the information derived from the questionnaire allowed me to decode the degree of motivation students had for taking an english course based on their experiences. likewise, i could examine to what extent they would like to take an english virtual course. participants the participants of the study were mainly two indigenous students who took an english virtual course in the alex program during the second term of 2008. fernando (student 1 hereafter), a third semester student of dentistry who came from the coconucos’ indigenous community in cauca, and omar (student 2 hereafter), a fourth semester student of vet medicine, who came from pasto’s indigenous community in nariño. there were also 20 other students, all of whom belonged to an indigenous community of colombia, enrolled in different undergraduate programs such as medicine, economics, engineering and law. some of them were finishing their majors but others were just starting. in their indigenous communities, many of them isolated, these students had learned little or nothing of english and computers. as a result, when they faced university for the first time, their use of technology tools was poor as well as was their english level. that is why most of them did not want to take an english course and those who did so failed most of the time or just dropped out. my role as a researcher i belong to an indigenous community located in nariño, in the southwestern region of colombia. therefore, i followed the principles of a participant observer that, according to trochim (2006), is the one who becomes a participant in the culture or context being observed. in this sense, as an indigenous student and as a student of english philology, i could share similar experiences with students in regard to educational background. first, i talked to the participants and asked for their collaboration. many said yes, because they wanted to report their point of view about the alex virtual english program. also, i used note taking in the discussion assemblies, in which the students expressed several times their wish for not taking an english course in the university, regardless of the modality. these notes were very valuable for the theoretical framework as they showed students’ wishes and reflected students’ immediate needs because many of them, 136 universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras cuasialpud canchala who usually participated in the assemblies, were about to finish their majors. this information was written and registered in a database as they created a student group. in the follow up observations, the two students felt free to express their perceptions of the course. the observations related to online sessions took place once a week for half an hour, and after that we had informal talks about their opinions and self-reflections. theoretical framework in the following paragraphs i first explain how the alex virtual english program works. second, i refer to the access indigenous students have to education in colombia, and specifically to the universidad nacional de colombia. third, i explore issues connected to multilingualism. the alex program alex is a program that promotes the autonomous learning of a foreign language, focusing on communicative competence through read ing comprehension (universidad nacional de colombia, 2008). during the first term of 2008, as a consequence of the big demand of students willing to complete the four levels of the language, the virtual modality was created, innovating the traditional learning and teach ing of foreign languages in the university. it has also had an impact on indigenous students’ awareness of the courses. in fact, some took a virtual course during this stage, but failed or dropped out because the level of english it used was “higher” than the level these students had. the alex program has three modalities through which the english language is taught: the intensive modality, in which each level lasts two months and classes are given face to face every day; the face-to-face modality, in which each level lasts one semester and classes are given four hours per week; and the virtual modality that uses a virtual environment with tools provided in the blackboard platform, which is equivalent to the virtual classroom e.g. discussion boards and chat rooms, among others. the follow-up of students’ progress is made through activities students develop during the week (universidad nacional de colombia, 2008). the alex virtual was launched in the first semester of 2008 and after being in a piloting stage, it has increased the number of students registered in the different levels which has shown the success of implementing this modality (cantor, 2009). the alex virtual english program alex virtual is a modality of the alex program that, through the use of internet sources, allows students to learn a new language using a virtual environment. they just need to be connected to the internet and have access to computer tools recommended by the program (headphones, microphone and web cam mainly). these tools and environment enable students to become aware of the autonomous methodology in foreign language learning (universidad nacional de colombia, 2008). medina (2009) describes the four components of the alex virtual methodology as follows: 1. projects. students have the possibility of finding out and analyzing information in the foreign language so they can gather knowledge about either the culture or their discipline in the foreign language. this helps students to develop collaborative work, practical knowledge and language skills. 2. cultural and academic meetings. these meetings include academic, cultural or recreational activities related to the foreign culture, the colombian culture or different academic disciplines. these activities help students reflect upon the relationships among cultures and disciplines. they can also participate in online 137profile vol. 12, no. 2, october 2010. issn 1657-0790. bogotá, colombia. pages 133-152 indigenous students’ attitudes towards learning english... meetings through video-chat at the cultural and academic meetings, english learning, and special lectures. 3. work at the resources center. access to the virtual courses and tutoring are the main goals intended there. traditional resources such as books, videos, and audio material are also kept there for students’ independent or assisted study. 4. work within the virtual environment. this is the main novelty of the program. it consists of the tools given by the learning management system blackboard-online course, discussion boards, online assessment, e-mail, etc. and other tools developed at the universidad nacional de colombia video chat application for online tutoring (medina, 2009, p. 120). on the other hand, cantor (2009) explains in her study the alex virtual grading system through which teach ers evaluate students’ progress. in consequence, the online sessions represent 60% and the face-to-face meetings represent 30% of the courses’ grade (15% attendance for tutorial sessions and 15% cultural events participation), as shown in table 1. indigenous access to education according to a study carried out by the consejo regional de indígenas del cauca (cric) and the organización nacional de indígenas colombianos (onic), the levels of school desertion of indigenous students in cauca, antioquia and la guajira are relevant. they show the following results: of 12,243 students registered in 1998 in sixth grade, by 2003 only 1,199 got their degree in high school. the main reasons for this failure are the following (álvarez, arbeláez, & montoya, 2009, p. 18): lack of money, low encouragement as regards studying, family problems, and cultural causes. in two exploratory studies carried out in mexico with indigenous students, schmelkes ( n.d.) and rebolledo (n.d.) found two similar facts as causes for students failure in schools, universities or any other institution of higher education. they agreed that one of the reasons was the economical situation that limits students’ chances to get in a university and the other was the low educational quality students receive in their communities. apart from those, rebolledo attributes this failure to the fact that the indigenous children are incorporated into countryside activities and labor. he states that more than a million indigenous children between 7 and 13 years old work instead of going to school. final exam (having stood the two progress tests is compulsory to be able to stand this exam) 40% 40% table 1. alex virtual grading system (cantor, 2009, p. 110) item percentage final grade activities, participation and quizzes 30% tutorial sessions attendance 15% 60% project work and cultural events participation 15% 138 universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras cuasialpud canchala indigenous students of the universidad nacional de colombia a similar case is perceived in colombia. there are few opportunities for indigenous students to have access to education. however, at the universidad nacional de colombia there is a program that allows or facilitates the admission of indigenous students. this is known as programa de admisión especial (paes) or special admissions program. in the first agreement known as acuerdo 022 de 1986, the consejo superior universitario (csu) of this university approved the creation of the paes program. since then, many indigenous students have benefited, as well as their communities. nevertheless, 3 years later, the csu agreed that the best high school students from poor towns should be also admitted to the university through the same program so they also could have equal opportunities as indigenous students did (acuerdo 093 de 1989). a year later, the best high school students from the country took part in the program, reducing the opportunities for the indigenous students as the admissions percentage was not modified. thanks to the benefits of this program, indigenous students at the universidad nacional de colombia are diverse in cultures, traditions and languages. they belong to communities such as arhuacos, koguis, wiwas, kankuamos (from sierra nevada de santa marta); ingas and kametsá (from putumayo); coconucos, paeses and guambianos (from cauca); and pastos (from nariño), to mention some. most of these communities are settled in isolated areas so they have kept their traditions and language throughout the years. indigenous students have been distinguished from the rest of the population as groups who maintain a different culture such as traditions, clothing style and language. this last feature is the most distinctive among indigenous communities. living in isolated areas has benefited the language maintenance as the interaction with “white people” is low. however, it also has affected their educational process as the access to higher education is limited. this poor educational background affects students when they face university work. in the universidad nacional de colombia, for example, many indigenous students have failed due to the level of education and knowledge the university requires or expects a regular student to have. in the assemblies organized by paes students in 2008, some changes in some academic statements were proposed in order to guarantee effectiveness in their learning process. in the first general assembly, students referred to our topic of interest on two points: 1. once admitted to the university, students from indigenous communities should not have to do the documental process through internet but instead by paes staff personally as many indigenous do not have access to internet in their communities or because the process is difficult. 2. they were conscious that english as a foreign language was a graduation requirement at university. therefore, they proposed a “curso de nivelación mixto” or a blended level 0 english course (oepaesunal-bogotá, 2008). facing multilingualism in colombia, there are about 87 ethnic groups and 710 indigenous communities settled in the 27 departments of the country (dane, 2005, as cited in álvarez, arbeláez, & montoya, 2009). according to landaburu (2004, as cited in álvarez, arbeláez, & montoya, 2009), in colombia there are 66 indigenous languages, but only 50 are spoken. the languages with more native monolingual speakers are arhuaca, andoke, cuiba, guhaiba y cubeo. usually, we have seen in the university students from the arhuacos communities speaking iku (the name 139profile vol. 12, no. 2, october 2010. issn 1657-0790. bogotá, colombia. pages 133-152 indigenous students’ attitudes towards learning english... of their language in their native language) among them as well as wayú students who communicate in wayú, their native language, when they are in groups. this fact maintains the native identity of these students; however, in this multicultural city, they need to communicate in spanish with the rest of the people. it will probably make them stronger bilinguals for they are adapting their culture to the culture of the people of the city. this way, exchanging culture and traditions can help us indigenous people explore and learn a new language. language learning involves the learning of culture. culture is the context within which we exist, think, feel, and relate to others. it is the glue that binds a group of people (brown, 1992). when a person is bilingual, he/she has learned two ways of life, the one in which this person has grown and the one to which this person has been introduced. some indigenous students are exposed to three languages, which mean three different cultures or “ways of life”. due to the expansion of globalization, some members of indigenous communities are using three or more languages: spanish, their indigenous tongue and a foreign language (velandia, 2007). in her study, this author recognizes three main aspects concerning difficulties with the language: first, the way in which the student means to acquire the english language; second, previous low preparation in the language; and third, the student is not used to self-monitoring his use of language. figure 1 shows the three language contexts in which indigenous students who study at the university are involved: when an indigenous student learns spanish for educational purposes, it implies a cultural exchange. just learning spanish with any purpose implies that the student should learn different traditions and customs of the people who speak the language as natives. with the migration of aborigines to big cities, their education is necessary. they need to communicate with others but if they speak only their native language, these others are not going to comprehend a word and communication will fail (barletta, 2009). indigenous students who come from a community in which spanish is learned as a second language become bilingual. there are usually indigenous teach ers who are also bilingual and who are prepared professionally in ethno-linguistics education. however, these teach ers are usually not well formed in methodologies and didactics that aim specifically at the teach ing of spanish as a second or foreign language (álvarez, arbeláez, & montoya, 2009), so the level of this second language might be low for this population too. english as a foreign language in the university curriculum based on my own experience as a student of english philology at the universidad nacional, it was really hard to start with the english learning process because from the first class i was introduced to the english language. most of my classmates knew english; some came from bilingual schools and others had travelled to english speaking counindigenous language (l1 context) in the indigenous community learning spanish (l2 context) at school learning english (l3 context) at university figure 1. contexts and languages in which indigenous students are involved. 140 universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras cuasialpud canchala tries. although i applied some learning strategies suggested by my teach er and classmates, it was difficult for me to feel motivated because it seemed as if the course turned more advanced with every class. this is mainly a consequence of the low educational level we receive in our communities. undergraduate students are expected to demonstrate proficiency in english, particularly in read ing academic texts, or to pass the four levels offered by the university. fortunately, the paes program of the university had not forgotten the low educational background of the members of this program. therefore, they provided tutors in different areas such as mathematics, chemistry, read ing comprehension, and physics in order to support students in their learning process. this project is maintained nowadays and many indigenous students have taken advantage of it. nevertheless, no guidance in english learning was taken into consideration. i was participating in a tutorial session in 2006 as part of a certificate in voluntary service. the sessions were sponsored by the former director of the paes program and were scheduled for 5 hours per week with the help of a german volunteer who spoke fluent english. the tutoring sessions were planned for paes student members. we helped them in the learning of english for 5 months. through the process i could see that students’ interest in learning english depends on their english learning background. many of them left the tutoring sessions because they felt they were a bit demanding and not a requirement. it was also seen that individual guidance is a better tool to improve the english learning process. students felt more confident when having a personalized environment or being in a group in which all of them started from the same level. in connection to this, a study carried out at the university with an indigenous student from putumayo aimed at improving his speaking skills through personalized tutorial sessions. it was found that the student could become more confident and progress at his own pace, according to his specific needs (velandia, 2007). the author also states that, as opposed to the regular classes, the tutoring was a pressure-free activity in which the student did not need to worry about grades. motivation motivation in the classroom is a key strategy to engage students in learning a foreign language. it is a dynamic and interactive process composed of beliefs, wants, reasons, and goals mediated by socio-cultural and historical conditions to learn a second or foreign language (bastidas, 2006, p. 154). motivation is an important quality that pervades all aspects of teach ing and learning. as schunk, pintrich and meece (2008) point out, motivated students display interest in activities; motivated teach ers feel that they can help students to learn, and motivated administrators facilitate teach ing and learning in their workplaces. as mentioned along this study, indigenous students learn differently, perhaps because they grew in a different context and with different traditions. therefore, finding a good way to encourage them to learn a foreign language through a virtual course is very demanding. first, because they need lots of motivation regarding the use of the applications of the virtual platform, which are in english, and second, because teach ers need to be aware of the students’ needs, demands and wants (perren, 1974, as cited in robinson, 1980). in a study carried out in 2008 with regular students taking a virtual course in level iv, medina (2009) points out certain limitations in regard to the use of the online tutoring sessions (ots). these limitations have to do with the lack of the required tools for the tutoring session such as a camera or a microphone which, according to her, 141profile vol. 12, no. 2, october 2010. issn 1657-0790. bogotá, colombia. pages 133-152 indigenous students’ attitudes towards learning english... made communication mainly type-based, whereas the main idea of the ots is to interact online with the other classmates as in real classrooms. for better foreign language learning through the virtual modality, medina refers to future tutors in the alex virtual program and manifests that they should understand how students learn and eventually this understanding would imply a better understanding of students’ strengths and weaknesses (2009, p. 133). we can see that the low accessibility to the materials needed to study with affects students’ language learning process. important aspects of the learning experience are transformed in the distance context, but whereas the tendency has been to focus on technology per se, it is not as important as other factors such as learner motivation, an understanding of the distance language context and the demands it places on participants, the responsiveness of the teach er, the accessibility of the learning context and the overall context of delivery (white, 2003). findings this study focused on exploring indigenous students’ feelings towards the virtual modality in the alex program at the universidad nacional de colombia. the 20 indigenous students surveyed about the virtual english courses in alex (see appendix 1) expressed their discomfort with learning through the virtual modality. most of them would feel more comfortable taking a face-to-face course because it was better for learning the language as they knew very little english, whereas starting a virtual course requires students to have previous knowledge of some english vocabulary and basic language structures. this can be seen in figure 2. of the 20 students surveyed, 16 of them were taking a regular face-to-face course (80%); 3 were studying an english course in the intensive modality (19%); and only 2 were taking an english course in the virtual modality (1%). this shows that no interest is given to the virtual courses at the university. according to the students’ answers, it is due to the high level of english students find in the materials they must use. the other two students that were followed up in their learning process showed a similar situation: they would feel more confident taking a face-toface course. besides, they manifested their wish for having personalized sessions or being in a group in which all of the students could start from level 0. three main difficulties were found as causes of indigenous students’ failure when taking a virtual course. these three difficulties affected students’ english learning process and also discouraged them and others to take the courses. the difficulties found along the study are shown in figure 3 and explained in the following paragraphs. intensive 19% figure 2. modality chosen by indigenous students for taking an english course. students' prior experiences vs. their experiences in the virtual modality english level educational context educational background use of new technologies the virtual english modality previous knowledge current knowledge the level of english used in the course methodology figure 3. describing students’ experiences. 142 universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras cuasialpud canchala students’ prior experiences vs. their experiences in the virtual modality the virtual environments entailed in the alex virtual modality posed difficulties for some students. some of them felt they would lose their shyness for participating in class as nobody was seeing them or making fun of their errors and mistakes. they were afraid of asking questions in english as they did not master the language. if they did not ask during the online tutoring sessions, they were not going to do it during face-to-face sessions unless they were alone with the tutor, which means they preferred having a personalized tutoring session. tutoring sessions, according to correa (2004, as cited in medina, 2009), can be seen as an educational process in which the main topics are human relationships and interaction among personalities in a spontaneous and educational environment. in this way tutoring involves individualized or group relationship with the students, structures and dynamics of their attitudes, aptitudes, knowledge, experiences in several educational environments, and “collaboration” to sum up both academic experience and daily life (correa, 2004, p. 45, as cited in medina, 2009). let’s start with the motivation students had for taking an english virtual course. when students were asked: would you like to take an english virtual course at alex program?, most of their answers corresponded to a no, and included reasons like the following: • some people have told me that this course is very hard because everything is in english, for example the chats, one can never understand them. there is no option of asking questions because the teach er will answer in english so it results even worse in that way. i think the online sessions should be in both languages spanish and english while we get used to the foreign language. • the explanations are very confusing and the questions asked are not well answered. • it is not a comfortable way. i have many doubts and this new modality would not help me to solve them at the right time. • for a good learning of english it is important for us to have a personalized guidance and face-to-face regular meetings. the use of computers in the class should be used as complementary tools meanwhile. • face-to-face classes are better because teach er prepares dynamic activities and workshops that can make you learn better rather than being in front of a computer for long time. (questionnaires, february 25, 2009) these reasons corroborate bello’s views (2008) when he affirms that learning a language in a virtual environment might result tiring. besides, some students considered it a limited learning alternative because if you have a question, the needed answer would not be provided at the right moment or even worse, the tutor would forget to answer that question (aguilar, 2003). as mentioned along this study, the lack of interest in learning english through this modality can be a result of indigenous low educational background in the language. this fact can be examined in the following paragraphs. indigenous students’ educational background during the interviews the two students showed frustration about the level of education they had achieved in their communities, not only in regard to the english language but in general educational aspects. although they had been good students, they did not experience the same situation when they started university. the level of education in a big city is much better when compared to the education children get in indigenous communities, even in small towns. the following interview shows these students’ point of view about the education they received in high school. interviewer: tell me, how did you learn english at school in your communities? 143profile vol. 12, no. 2, october 2010. issn 1657-0790. bogotá, colombia. pages 133-152 indigenous students’ attitudes towards learning english... student 1: at school? nothing…i attended a school only on saturdays from 8am to 4pm. i didn’t have time to attend a school during the week because i had to work and help my parents. (interview, september 14, 2008) the limited learning of english derives from the fact that indigenous students spend their school life among two contexts, school and countryside labor. they are more encouraged by their parents to learn how to write and read and then they have to start working to make the countryside and their lands produce. the two students who participated in this study were not happy with their educational background and more so when it came to the english language. they both demonstrated knowing very little english when compared with the level they faced in the virtual course. student 2 answered to the same question as follows: student 2: i would say it was bad, very bad. our teach er of english used to say that we were not going to need the english language because indigenous students are not supposed to present the part of english test in the icfes exam, so we were not interested in learning it. however, when i finished school, i realized that he was hugely wrong. we had to present the english part so i answered randomly because i didn’t know. (interview, september 14, 2008) this situation has not changed, and so new indigenous students may face similar difficulties when they start university. here, the motivation teach ers and parents give to students is not enough. the use of new technologies new technology tools have a big influence in students’ learning process. if they do not have a good knowledge of these tools they will not be able to manage, as it is wished, the virtual environments. this means that students have to get familiar with this new system. once they achieved that it would be easier for teach ers to foster motivation and support learning (lamy & goodfellow, 1999). students showed frustration once again because being in front of a computer for more than one hour was stressful and tiring. the participants manifested during the interviews that they were not used to studying with a computer all the time. here they expressed that in their communities, having a computer is not a dire necessity and so they just had to worry about working. students 1 and 2 manifested something similar in regard to the accessibility they had to computers or internet sources in their communities. when asked about the use they gave to these tools in their communities, they replied as follows: student 1: i didn’t have a computer at home in my community, and when i started university i felt it was a necessity. now, when i need a computer for typing essays or reports or searching for information in the internet i have to use the computer rooms that the university provides, i do not afford to buy one and i cannot spend all the time in the university so i still do not have much contact with this tools. i have improved my skills here but because it is necessary. student 2: as my friend says, it is really necessary. nowadays everything has to be done in a computer and the internet sources are also important. i have also improved my computer knowledge here; because at home i did not have one and at school the computers were few and we always had to share. (interview, november 7, 2008) as the previous extracts show, while being in their communities, they did not have too much contact with computers or with internet sources. thus, the skills they had acquired with these tools came when they started university. in the alex virtual modality, the basic knowledge they must have has to do with managing the blackboard platform, for example. however, they got easily lost during the online sessions because the texts were 144 universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras cuasialpud canchala in english. in some parts, the words or paragraphs that described the activities to be completed were translated into spanish. we can support this with the following notes: the student read many times what it said but he understood the texts and paragraphs by associating the words with spanish or by translating the words in another webpage. he took a lot of time to understand what a certain text meant. however, at the end of the session, the whole idea was not caught as a whole. he took half an hour and at the end, because he did not know the topics he decided not to continue and left it like that, stating that he would continue another day. (researcher’s notes online session, november 7, 2008, 10:30 a.m.) student 1 also expressed that he felt there was a lack of explanation about the blackboard platform and the right way of using it from the first class: interviewer: how have you gotten along with the use of the platform in alex virtual? student 1: well, bad. first of all, in the induction session you have to go to alex. there, they tell you to study the modules and they also show the topics that are going to be seen during the course. however, they never explain to you how to manage the blackboard or the virtual environment. for me the contents are ok, the problem is that when you navigate in the course is very complicated to understand as it is in english. (interview, october 23, 2008) here student 1 shows little motivation from the first day of class. he expressed that the explanation given by the alex program was not enough or the level of english was very advanced. the use of the applications of the platform provided such as the discussion boards and online tutoring sessions (ots) is relevant as they are considered to be the main bridges to connect the learning of english with the use of the new technologies, the main feature of alex virtual (cantor, 2009; medina, 2009). regarding this concept, it has to be said that these two indigenous students did not give use to these tools, although they knew they were part of the course. student 1: the participation in the discussion boards was not active. however, they are more understandable, it was just to discuss any topic the tutor puts on the discussion board. (november 15th, 2008) student 1 considered the discussion boards to be more understandable, which is a good aspect of alex virtual methodologies. he liked the idea that the teach er posed a given topic and students could share and exchange their opinions through this virtual application. this definition is also stated by cantor (2009), who mentions that the discussion board is an asynchronous tool which allows the exchange of ideas, debates and collaborative learning. on the other hand, in regard to the ots, students confessed they gave little use to this tool, mainly because of accessibility limitations: student 1: i never used the online tutoring sessions, i don’t have access to internet at home, and i don’t afford to pay outside, sometimes i go to the university’s computers rooms but they do not have the tools i need, e.g. headphones, microphone and webcam. i don’t feel comfortable going to the resource center. student 2: it was difficult to access to the internet resources as my friend states, and also because i could not understand how it worked. (november 15, 2008) acessibility limitation mainly affected the two students’ motivation and their participation in the ots. they were busy studying for each one of their majors that they forgot about attending the sessions or they thought it was not going to work. as medina (2009) points out, one of the limitations of the participation students give to the ots is the incomplete tools access. 145profile vol. 12, no. 2, october 2010. issn 1657-0790. bogotá, colombia. pages 133-152 indigenous students’ attitudes towards learning english... students’ attitudes towards studying through virtual english courses during the online sessions i followed up with student 1, who showed little interest doing the exercises. he also asked me several times for the meaning of some words and sentences. this situation was not very comfortable for him. thus, in the following online session student 1 started with the listening and speaking part. there was a set of words with the corresponding pronunciation for students to repeat. he did not do so, i guess, because i was there. so, he felt embarrassed. the following exercise shows the student’s frustration trying to understand an activity of classifying some words given in a square which were related to the house and the university context. while doing the exercise student 1 applied the association strategy. observer: do you recognize the words? student 1: well, just some. i can recognize these ones. classroom, read ing room, waiting room […] and no more, but because i associated them with the word room for which i know the meaning, je, je, je. these words can be easier to understand and classify. (online session – observation, november 22, 2008) however, at the end of the exercise he did not recognize some words like living room, rest room even though they had the word “room” that, according to him, made the phrase easier to understand. there were about 20 words to be classified in this exercise, and although he could put them in the right boxes through association, he said that in other sessions the vocabulary was more difficult. he took about 15 minutes to do the exercise but it was incomplete because of the words he did not recognize. in addition, he did not know how to check whether he was doing well or not. he did not know how to find the grading system the program uses in its different modules and exercises. during an interview the two students complained about the high level of english alex virtual contains. in addition, the attitude students had when facing this virtual environment was not positive; they showed they gave little importance to the learning of english. interviewer: why did you register in the alex virtual english course? student 1: i wanted to register the face-to-face course but at that moment it was already full. i had registered only four classes so i thought i would have time to attend another course. also, because english is required for graduation purposes. (interview, october 23, 2008) it seems students did not have enough motivation to register for a virtual course at the university. as seen in the previous extract, they registered for the course because there were not more options. thus, they were careless about the course they were taking, mainly because the level of english was very complicated. this can be observed in the following extract from the interview: student 1: english virtual is very complicated. student 2: we know nothing of english; i think teach ers should teach us like teach ing children. here, there are a lot of people that know english from primary or secondary school but we do not. (interview, october 23, 2008) these two students had serious problems following the grading system of the alex program too. they said it was not easy to follow the modules, again, because the level of english was too high for them. below we can read some reflections that explain, to a certain extent, how they were doing in the virtual english course. student 2: i have had problems with the last module; the read ing exercises are very confusing, they put very advanced read ings and they expect you to know a lot of vocabulary. in that part i 146 universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras cuasialpud canchala have had troubles. once, i had to search important news, choose one and present it but actually i didn’t do it because it demands me a lot of memorization. it was going to take me a lot of time so i preferred not going, i was not prepared. student 1: well, i remember doing well with a read ing about muscles, because in my subject (dentistry) we learn about that, but it was just one part of one of the modules. the thing is that if you do not complete one part you will not step ahead to the next part, so you will fail. (interview, october 23, 2008) at the end of the course student 1 passed to the next level but he did not want to register for another virtual course; he preferred to wait and see if it was possible to learn english through personalized or face-to-face classes. student 2 failed the course as he did not participate in cultural events and the progress tests were not good. another reason was that he was too worried about the exams and works in his major. both students were not doing so well in their majors either as the knowledge their classmates possessed was better. they admitted they needed to be more dedicated to what they were studying in the different courses –not only in studying english. conclusions and implications indigenous students, studying in undergraduate programs at the universidad nacional de colombia in bogotá, need to feel motivated and encouraged to learn english as a foreign language. they are conscious of the importance of the english language, but many of them have skipped this requirement by arguing they are already bilingual. thus, they do not have to learn another language. furthermore, they always feel afraid of taking english courses even in other modalities different from virtual english because its level of english is very high. the alex virtual program offers indigenous students an alternative way of learning a different language and also of improving their technological skills through the constant use of computer assisted language learning. moreover, being a blended modality, alex virtual offers students the chance to have the support they need through online sessions and face-to-face sessions. nonetheless, students feel they are not able to learn a language through this modality and this is the most relevant limitation that does not allow indigenous students to continue in the courses. indeed, indigenous students have many alternative ways and opportunities to take advantage of the courses, not only when learning a language, but also by having tutors of other areas to help them with their subjects. the tutoring sessions aim at increasing the confidence of the tutees (velandia, 2007). this confidence is what indigenous students need to achieve for them to feel engaged at learning english. as they point out, having the chance to attend tutoring sessions might help them achieve the level of english required for each course. otherwise, taking a level 0 course, in which all of them have the same level and in which all share similar needs, will be a good strategy for motivating them. alex virtual is narrowly linked to motivation as it is a relatively new learning/teach ing methodology for many students. therefore, offering more time for face-to-face tutoring sessions for this population can be a good strategy to make them feel motivated. further research and limitations as students’ attitudes towards the learning of english were very negative, the time spent for data collection in online sessions was not much. they spent maximum half an hour in an online study session; at other times they were busy in class or studying for exams so i could not interview them. having spent more time with them in online sessions would have allowed a deeper analysis of their english learning progress. 147profile vol. 12, no. 2, october 2010. issn 1657-0790. bogotá, colombia. pages 133-152 indigenous students’ attitudes towards learning english... indigenous students need to be assimilated into the new world; the new technologies are spread ing all around and they have to be able to manage them as future professionals. they also need a lot of encouragement that can help them to understand the necessity of learning the english language. it is important to mention that a tutorial program or personalized sessions could be good ways to improve their motivation towards the learning of english not only in the virtual modality but in the face-to-face courses. future researchers can start here. this research is just an exploratory study but the road to travel is very long. as we can see from the answers provided in the interviews carried out, these two students do not feel comfortable, though at the beginning of the course they felt a bit motivated for taking english in this new modality offered by the alex program. motivation is what these indigenous students need in order to be involved in this new project –the learning of english through a virtual course. here a long way starts, and it is important to continue with the follow-up of students’ progress and more regular face-to-face tutoring sessions. it is also relevant to mention that a new course only for indigenous students would be a great deal as a motivation to learn the language. they feel more comfortable learning in an environment in which all have the same level of english and all have some characteristics in common, as coming from an indigenous community or the educational background of such a community. this exploratory study has done just that, explore, and there are many things left to do for teach ers, future teach ers and society. they should bear in mind indigenous students’ cultural aspects. every student learns in a different way and indigenous students come from a different context and culture, thus, it is a challenge to discover the best way to teach to them the language, having them understanding that this does not imply they would lose their identity, another factor contributing to low motivation. references aguilar díaz, e. (2003). aula virtual, una alternativa en educación superior (1.ra ed.). bucaramanga: universidad industrial de santander. álvarez, c. a., arbeláez, o., & montoya, j. (2009). aprender y enseñar español como segunda lengua: elementos para la formación del profesor indígena colombiano. medellín: universidad pontificia bolivariana. barletta, n. (2009). intercultural competence: another challenge. profile. issues in teach ers’ professional development, 11, 143-158. bastidas, j. a. (2006). a framework to understanding motivation in the tesol field. profile. issues in teach ers’ professional development, 7, 147-160. bello, r. e. (2008). educación virtual: aulas sin paredes. retrieved august 26, 2010, from educar org web site: http://www.educar.org/articulos/educacionvirtual.asp. brown, h. d. (1992). sociocultural factors in teach ing language minority students. in p. a. richard-amato & m. a. snow (eds.), the multicultural classroom: read ings for content-area teach ers (pp. 73-92). white plains, ny: longman. cantor, d. (2009). discussion boards as tools in blended efl learning programs. profile. issues in teachers’ professional development, 11, 107-121. de tezanos, a. (1998). una etnografía de la etnografía. bogotá: ediciones antropos. lamy, m., & goodfellow, r. (1999). “reflective conversation” in the virtual language classroom. language teach ing & technology, 2(2), 43-61. retrieved august 26, 2010, from http://llt.msu.edu/vol2num2/article2/. medina riveros, r. (2009). interaction in online tutoring sessions: an opportunity to knit the english language learning in a blended program. profile. issues in teach ers’ professional development, 11(2), 117-134. 148 universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras cuasialpud canchala oepaesunal-bogotá (organización estudiantil programa paes, universidad nacional de colombia, sede bogotá). (2008). primera asamblea general programa paes. (acta 001 del 5 de abril de 2008). bogotá: author. rebolledo, n. (n.d.) bilingüismo y segregación escolar. la situación básica de los estudiantes indígenas en el distrito federal. retrieved august 26, 2010, from: http://www.comie.org.mx/congreso/memoria/v10/ pdf/area_tematica_12/ponencias/1452-f.pdf. robinson, p. (1980). esp (english for specific purposes). oxford: pergamon press. schmelkes, s. (n.d.). educación superior intercultural: el caso de méxico. retrieved august 26, 2010, from http:// proyecto.unlam.edu.ar/espec/htdocs1/%5cprograma s%5cindigenas%5cinformes%5cmexico%5c09%20 %20la%20educ.%20sup.%20ind%c3%adgena%20 en%20m%c3%a9x.%20silvia%20schmelkes.pdf. schunk, d. h., pintrich, p. r., & meece, j. (2008). motivation in education: theory, research, and applications (2nd ed.). upper saddle river, nj: merrill. seidman, i. (2006). interviewing as qualitative research: a guide for researchers in education and the social sciences. teach ers college, ed. new york: columbia university. trochim, w. (2006). qualitative methods. retrieved august 26, 2010, from research methods knowledge base web site: http://www.socialresearchmethods.net/kb/qualmeth.php. universidad nacional de colombia. (1986). disposiciones acerca del ingreso a la universidad de integrantes de comunidades indígenas. acuerdo 022 de 1986 (acuerdo 22 del 5 de abril de 1986). bogotá: consejo superior universitario. universidad nacional de colombia. (1989). programa de admisión para estudiantes de municipios pobres. acuerdo 093 de 1989 (acta 22 del 1.º de noviembre de 1989). bogotá: consejo superior universitario. universidad nacional de colombia. (2008). programa para el desarrollo del aprendizaje autónomo de lenguas extranjeras – alex. bogotá: author. velandia, d. (2007). tutorial plan to support the english speaking skill of an inga student of an initial teach er education program. profile. issues in teach ers’ professional development, 8, 121-130. wallace, m. j. (1998). action research for language teach ers. cambridge: cambridge university press. white, c. (2003). language learning in distance education. cambridge: cambridge university press. about the author ruth elena cuasialpud canchala holds a b.ed. in philology and languages english from universidad nacional de colombia, bogotá. she comes from an indigenous community in nariño and her main interest is in enhancing the learning of english in the indigenous population of the universidad nacional. 149profile vol. 12, no. 2, october 2010. issn 1657-0790. bogotá, colombia. pages 133-152 indigenous students’ attitudes towards learning english... appendix 1. students’ questionnaire dear student, the following questionnaire aims at getting information, based on your experience, from your point of view about learning english through the alex program at universidad nacional de colombia. this questionnaire is confidential and only intends to collect a set of opinions about the program. thanks very much for your sincere answers. personal information gender: m _ __ f ___ age: ___________ subject: ______________________ semester: ____________________ indigenous area: ________________ community: ___________________ native language: _______________ please answer the following questions: 1. have you taken an english course in the alex program during the last two years? yes ___ no ___ 2. in which level of english are you currently enrolled? level ___ i have completed the four levels already ___ 3. in which modality have you taken the english course(s)? face-to-face ___ intensive face-to-face ___ virtual ___ 4. how many times have you taken the levels of english? 5. each level once ___ each level twice ___ three times or more ___ other observations: _______________________________________________ ____________ __________________________________________________ 6. which was the main reason that caused you to take the english course in this modality? _______________________________________________________________________________ _______________________________________________________________________________ __________________________________ if you have taken an english virtual course, please answer the following questions: 1. have you experienced improvement in your english level? yes ___ no ___ why? __________________________________________________________ 150 universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras cuasialpud canchala 2. what do you think about the level of english used in this virtual modality? very high, i don’t understand ___ high, it is difficult but i might understand ___ it is ok, i understand what i have to do ___ easy ___ very easy ___ have you taken a virtual course before? yes ___ no ___ according to your own experience, feel free to express your point of view about any observation or suggestion you have about the methodology used for the teach ing of english through the virtual modality of the alex program _______________________________________________________________________________ _______________________________________________________________________________ __________________________________ if you have taken an english course in any of the modalities of the alex program please answer the following questions: 1. did your teach ers in high school in your community teach you english? yes ___ no ___ 2. did you have computer access and informatics classes at school in your community? yes ___ no ___ 3. what do you think about your level of english at this moment? i have a high level ___ i have a good level ___ i have a poor level ___ i do not know english ___ 4. do you have internet access at home? yes ___ no ___ 5. how do you manage internet and computer tools nowadays? very good ___ good ___ bad ___ very bad ___ 6. if you have never taken a virtual course, would you do it? yes ___ no ___ why ___________________________________________________________ _______________ _________________________________________________ thank you very much! 151profile vol. 12, no. 2, october 2010. issn 1657-0790. bogotá, colombia. pages 133-152 indigenous students’ attitudes towards learning english... appendix 2. interview guide for students name: __________________________ community: _____________________ native language: _________________ modality: _______________________ subject: _________________________ semester: _______________________ age: ____________________________ 1. please tell me how your english learning process was at the school in your community? _____________________________________________________________________ 2. how was the change for you from your community to a big city such as bogotá? ______________________________________________________________________ 3. how did you encourage yourself to take a virtual course this semester? ______________________________________________________________________ 4. how do you feel you have improved? how is it going? ______________________________________________________________________ 5. how do you feel managing the blackboard/platform? ______________________________________________________________________ 6. do you participate in chat sessions? __________________________________ 7. what tools do you use to learn english autonomously? how do you practice the topics studied in class? ______________________________________________________________________ 8. do you participate in face-to-face tutoring sessions? ___________________________________ 9. do you have comments in regard to the virtual english courses of alex? _______________________________________________________________________ __________________________ thank you very much! 152 universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras cuasialpud canchala appendix 3. observation sample the following information is given by students collaboratively and aims at analyzing data related to students’ feelings and attitudes towards the english virtual class. date: name: ________________________________ community: ___________________________ native language: _______________________ modality: _____________________________ subject: _______________________________ semester: _____________________________ age: ________________________________ how do you feel you did today? _______________________________________________________________________________ _______________________________________________________________________________ ____________________________________________ observer’s comments: _______________________________________________________________________________ _______________________________________________________________________________ _______________________________________________________________________________ _______________________________________________________________________________ _______________________________________________________________________________ _______________________________________________________________________________ thank you very much! 151profile vol. 16, no. 2, october 2014. issn 1657-0790 (printed) 2256-5760 (online). bogotá, colombia. pages 151-170 pronunciation instruction and students’ practice to develop their confidence in efl oral skills la instrucción de la pronunciación y la práctica de los estudiantes para el desarrollo de la confianza en habilidades orales en inglés como lengua extranjera ana cristina tlazalo tejeda1* nora m. basurto santos2** universidad veracruzana, xalapa, mexico the aim of this article is to inform on research intended to find out how pronunciation instruction of english as a foreign language was handled in the language classroom with elementary students and also understand if pronunciation instruction had an impact on students’ confidence when using it. in order to do this, a qualitative case study was carried out with learners of elementary english as a foreign language at the language school of universidad veracruzana, mexico. class observation, a written text, and semi-structured interviews comprised the data collection instruments. the findings showed that not only teacher pronunciation instruction is necessary when learning english as a foreign language but that a lot of student practice is key to developing and enhancing learners’ pronunciation as well. key words: english as a foreign language, efl pronunciation instruction, students’ confidence. el objetivo de este artículo es informar acerca de una investigación que pretendió explorar cómo se impartía la enseñanza de la pronunciación a estudiantes de inglés como lengua extranjera de nivel elemental en la facultad de idiomas de la universidad veracruzana, méxico. también se buscó entender si la enseñanza de la pronunciación tuvo un impacto en la confianza de los estudiantes al aplicarla. en este estudio de caso de corte cualitativo, las observaciones de clases, un texto escrito y las entrevistas semiestructuradas fueron los instrumentos utilizados para recabar los datos. los resultados mostraron que no solo se necesita la instrucción del maestro, sino que es necesario que los estudiantes practiquen autónomamente para desarrollar y mejorar la pronunciación de la lengua meta. palabras clave: confianza de los estudiantes, inglés como lengua extranjera, pronunciación. * e-mail: nideyan_24@hotmail.com ** e-mail: nbasurto@uv.mx how to cite this article (apa, 6th ed.): tlazalo tejeda, a. c., & basurto santos, n. m. (2014). pronunciation instruction and students’ practice to develop their confidence in efl oral skills. profile issues in teachers’ professional development, 16(2), 151-170. http://dx.doi.org/10.15446/profile.v16n2.46146. this article was received on january 17, 2014, and accepted on july 14, 2014. this is an open access article distributed under the terms of the creative commons license attribution-noncommercial-noderivatives 4.0 international license. consultation is possible at http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/. universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras152 tlazalo tejeda & basurto santos introduction the teaching and learning of a second or foreign language are complex processes for both teachers and students alike. however, every teacher has his/her own way of teaching based on the teaching methodology s/he decides to adopt. moreover, professors of the ba programme at universidad veracruzana, where the present study was conducted, may adopt more than one approach in their teaching due to the libertad de cátedra (academic freedom) that they enjoy at the university. that is, that some of them may choose to emphasize or focus more on specific aspects of the target language (tl) rather than on others. as a result of this choice, they may be neglecting the teaching of certain language skills or aspects of the tl that some students deemed more necessary. learning a new language requires the understanding of many aspects of the target language that happen at the same time. students have to acquire new words, new structures, and new grammar rules and even cultural aspects of the peoples where the target language is spoken. the ultimate goal of learners studying for the ba in english is to be able to produce it with proficiency in both the written and spoken modes. we all want to become competent users of the foreign or second language in order to be able to interact and be understood by native speakers and proficient users of that foreign (fl) or second language (sl). in order to be understood, not only grammar rules and appropriate lexis come into play but, more importantly, pronunciation is of the utmost importance. to ignore or neglect the explicit teaching of pronunciation would be to ignore the basis for language acquisition (pennington, 1996). furthermore, students who have serious pronunciation errors without treating them from the very start will face problems of intelligibility which will not allow them to achieve the main goal of language learning: to use it for communication purposes in real contexts. this is the rationale behind the present research. background the english language classes at universidad veracruzana are mainly based on a series of textbooks that teachers follow. however, teachers are free to choose complementary materials to focus on or help students develop and/or improve specific linguistic skills, grammar o lexis. nevertheless, it has to be mentioned that textbooks are the most important teaching tool that teachers use since evaluations are totally based on textbooks contents. students do not have specific courses that focus on pronunciation of the fl until the third term when they have to take a course called linguistic system which is not about phonetics or phonology but these are part of the contents. the english textbooks that students follow, from the first term, contain brief explanations and exercises on different aspects of pronunciation (see appendix a). however, not all units have an activity focusing on pronunciation. for this reason, the importance of how fl teachers deal with pronunciation and how this pronunciation instruction affects students’ performance in their oral communication deserves careful attention as all errors, if not taken care of at some point, are very likely to become fossilized and thus very difficult to eradicate (littlewood, 1984). furthermore, it is vital for students to acquire solid knowledge about pronunciation because outside the classroom they are going to face real situations where an intelligible speech is vital to be able to establish communication with other people. literature review in this section key concepts related to pronunciation will be reviewed as these guided the current investigation: pronunciation, the teaching of pro153profile vol. 16, no. 2, october 2014. issn 1657-0790 (printed) 2256-5760 (online). bogotá, colombia. pages 151-170 pronunciation instruction and students’ practice to develop their confidence in efl oral skills nunciation, pronunciation problems, and teachers’ and students’ perspectives about pronunciation. pronunciation although it can be said that pronunciation is not the most important aspect of fl learning it needs to be acknowledged that without adequate or intelligible pronunciation we would not be able to get our messages across when interacting with others in the fl. pronunciation is the action of producing sounds of speech to communicate a message (dalton & seidlhofer, 1994). for this reason, possessing a good pronunciation of the fl is vital in oral communication. in addition, it is important to recognize that foreign language students must aim at developing a good pronunciation but this does not mean that they have to sound exactly like a native speaker. rather, fl speakers need to be understood in the target language (celce-murcia, brinton, & goodwin, 1996). therefore, the focus on pronunciation needs to be considered as a crucial aspect in fl programs since, as research has shown, some errors will probably never disappear entirely. littlewood (1984) has asserted that “such errors are often described as fossilized, meaning that they become permanent features of the learner’s speech” (p. 34). the teaching of pronunciation consciously or unconsciously, teachers are always teaching pronunciation somehow (pennington, 1996). there are five different levels at which teachers can handle pronunciation in the language classrooms (pennington, 1996, p. 225): mechanical (e.g., repetition of minimal pairs); contextualized (e.g., repetition of key words in a listening passage); meaningful (e.g., choice of correct word in a sentence or reading passage); realistic (e.g., a role-play of a situation similar to one that one may face in real life); and real (e.g., discussion of the students’ real-life situation or concerns). however, in fl classrooms, explanations on aspects of pronunciation are through error-correction and seldom are explicit and detailed explanations provided (griffiths, 2011) to students. whether teachers are aware or not, they are always teaching pronunciation by being themselves one of the main sources of input of the fl in the classroom. for a long time teachers have used drilling as a way to teach and practice pronunciation (tice, 2004). although the overuse of drilling is not acceptable nowadays, this technique remains a useful activity in the classroom if it is applied appropriately. for example, drills can help students to gain confidence because they practice pronunciation as a group and there is no opportunity for others to make fun of somebody if s/he mispronounces a word. tice (2004) has mentioned that “for drills to be meaningful, learners need to understand what they are being asked to say. monotonous chanting of decontextualized language is not useful to anyone” (“when we should drill,” para. 1) the task of the teacher when drilling is to provide students with a model of a certain structure or just to repeat a word they have already seen and get them pronouncing in unison. this strategy helps students to build confidence and focus on pronunciation problems so that they can try to overcome them. it should be noted, however, that drilling should not be used too much because it can be boring and then it is unlikely to be useful at all (tice, 2004). students may acquire pronunciation habits from different places and from different people. however, it is the fl classroom where most of them may encounter the first fl input to adopt, adapt, or imitate taking their fl teachers and classmates as sources of examples of what to do or not to do. this is especially useful for those students who do not have the opportunity to live an fl immersion universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras154 tlazalo tejeda & basurto santos experience. consequently, teachers need to have a very good knowledge of what pronunciation entails so that they can help their students with their pronunciation problems (kelly, 2000). besides, it is in the foreign language classroom that students start establishing pronunciation habits (krashen & terrell, 1996). listening exercises that include reading help to develop productive skills and should be taken advantage of to teach pronunciation (pennington, 1996). while working on listening, teachers can work on individual sounds which, apart from increasing students’ intelligibility, will enable teachers to get students to realize the presence of speech properties such as rhythm, stress, and intonation (liangguang, 2010). on the other hand, if students are assigned reading aloud in reading sections they will have the opportunity to work on pronunciation. contrary to this point of view is that students’ native language spelling system can interfere with a successful pronunciation while they read in the fl (millrood, 2001). other techniques to introduce students to the matter of pronunciation are tonguetwisters and explicit explanations. pronunciation problems teachers should focus on the needs of their learners rather than generalize the teaching of pronunciation, especially when they are teaching groups of speakers of a given language as in this particular research context where all the students are native speakers of spanish. consequently, these students are very likely to share most of the common pronunciation problems. then, fl teachers need to be aware of this and integrate this knowledge in their classes. underhill (2005) and griffiths (2011) have pointed out that teaching pronunciation has been neglected by teachers. they concur that when pronunciation is studied or focused on in the classroom it tends to deal with specific pronunciation problems that happen in the precise moment of student performance. for this reason it is of vital importance for teachers to have well-developed plans to address pronunciation problems in the best possible way. an outstanding problem of teaching pronunciation is what to teach about it. there are important pronunciation aspects that fl teachers should take into account. firstly, they should be aware that they will find as many different pronunciation problems as they have students. secondly, teachers have to be aware of the first language phonetic system interference and thirdly, that they are supposed to have a satisfactory knowledge about variations and differences as well as possess proper theoretical pronunciation knowledge (kelly, 2000). once teachers have seen the reality of these pronunciation aspects they will be able to incorporate pronunciation explanations in their lesson plans and by doing so will assist their students in achieving satisfactory pronunciation for real and successful communication (griffiths, 2011). furthermore, teachers will “enable learners to surpass the threshold level so that their pronunciation will not detract from the ability to communicate” (celce-murcia et al., 1996, p. 8). in the first levels of english, students should be taught phonetics and phonology, which are the two fields of pronunciation study (celce-murcia et al., 1996; kelly, 2000). phonetics refers to the study of sounds while phonology “is concerned with how sounds function in relation to each other in language” (forel & puskás, 2005, p. 3). a sound knowledge of both will provide students with the ability to hear and correct mistakes on their own while learning pronunciation. teachers’ and students’ perspectives on pronunciation a starting point of language acquisition is that the learner has to think in that language, to deal with new grammar and vocabulary and, of course, he or 155profile vol. 16, no. 2, october 2014. issn 1657-0790 (printed) 2256-5760 (online). bogotá, colombia. pages 151-170 pronunciation instruction and students’ practice to develop their confidence in efl oral skills she has to be willing to sound differently (pennington, 1996). so, it is crucial to keep in mind what the position of learners is in pronunciation. during the process of fl learning, students are constantly adding words to their linguistic repertoire so they have to learn how to produce the new sounds that are in those new words. when pronouncing a word students are likely to make mistakes. it is very common to note that when a student makes mistakes, their peers are very likely to laugh at them. in turn, this makes most students feel a lack of confidence at the moment of speaking or using the tl. on the other hand, there are students who like to be corrected every single time they commit mistakes and there are teachers who consider doing so unacceptable. nowadays, fl teachers are likely to focus more on fluency than on accuracy. so, here is a potential conflict regarding teachers’ and students’ perceptions as to how acquiring pronunciation should be handled. on the other hand, teachers would say that learning pronunciation is the most difficult work in foreign language acquisition because it may cause inhibition, embarrassment, and fear of losing face (hedge, 2000). there are fl teachers who would admit their lack of thorough pronunciation knowledge. moreover, they may need to improve this skill themselves so that they can teach it (da silva, 2012). teachers should realize to what extent their learners are motivated to make all the necessary efforts to learn and practice pronunciation. nevertheless, although learners are the ones who are acquiring a new language and their perspective of the importance of all aspects of the language is still not formed, teachers should encourage them to do it because, although both teachers and learners are interested in pronunciation, it has for the most part been neglected in english as a foreign language (efl) classrooms (kelly, 2000). to sum up, as learners of a second or foreign language we need to be aware of what pronunciation entails so that we can work on those areas that may be problematic due to our native language background. with this in mind, we decided this research should answer the following questions: research question • do students receive pronunciation instruction in their classroom? • do students who are trained in pronunciation possess confidence when producing in the efl? method a qualitative approach was deemed to be the best way to answer the research questions. this was decided on two main grounds: (a) the study is to explore the context where the previous question emerged and (b) the fact that this investigation was not concerned with numbers, ages, gender or other statistical aspects but rather to explore patterns, feelings, and the meaning of a given situation (davies, 2007; silverman, 1997, 2005). qualitative case study we considered the best way to understand the situation under study was to adopt a qualitative case study approach to research. qualitative case study is used to gain understanding of an event or phenomenon which is influenced by the current situation, time, and environment. a case study can only be studied where it exists. it locates the observer in the environment that needs to be understood. also, its particularity is that the researcher has no control over the events (cohen, manion, & morrison, 2011). a case study involves different methods to collect data since it needs a lot of evidence. qualitative case study research usually involves interviewing, observing, and analysing documents. however, merriam (2001) has pointed out that seldom are these three strategies used equally. all the evidence collected is of a high value as it can universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras156 tlazalo tejeda & basurto santos be contrasted between what researchers observe, what people observe, think, and what they really do (gillham, 2000). hence, as this study seeks to gain understanding of how teachers handle or teach pronunciation in elementary levels of the language school of universidad veracruzana, it was thought that this goal could only be achieved by giving the participants the opportunity to express their own perceptions of the phenomenon under study together with observations of what was happening in the language classrooms. in the next section the site where the study was carried out and the participants who agreed to cooperate are described. research site and participants two elementary english language groups of the language school of universidad veracruzana in xalapa, veracruz, mexico, were observed and labeled as group a and group b for research purposes. although there were 18 students in group a and 11 in group b, only eight students—four from each group—were chosen to be interviewed later on (see table 1). their ages ranged from 18 to 20 years old. two male teachers of elementary english classes agreed to cooperate with this. one of them has been teaching efl for over 30 years and the other one has a ten-year experience as an efl teacher. the reason behind choosing these participants was that by being students of the lowest english level, they were very likely to have many pronunciation problems and their teachers were also very likely to have to deal with these. therefore, this represented a great opportunity to observe how teachers in the ba in english language program at universidad veracruzana dealt with pronunciation and the important role they play as one of the main input sources for students to acquire pronunciation habits. it must be noted that although the student participants expressed that they did not care whether or not their real names were used, it was decided to use pseudonyms to comply with ethics in qualitative research. table 1. research participants student participant observations veronica laura they were the ones who attended all the classes observed. they were chosen to be interviewed; they could listen to all the explanations of some pronunciation aspects that were mentioned in the clas. monica jesus they attended most of the classes observed. they sometimes had doubts about how to pronounce certain words in reading sections and they were explicitly taught about some pronunciation aspects in the classroom. javier erika naomi francisco they were the students that attended most of the classes in group a. another aspect taken into consideration in choosing them was that javier and erika had already taken classes with the same professor whereas naomi and francisco had not. teacher participants arnold has been teaching efl at universidad veracruzana for over 30 years. he has a ba in english and he studied courses for an ma in education. frank has been an efl teacher for 10 years approximately. he studied for an ma in hispanic studies in an american university. 157profile vol. 16, no. 2, october 2014. issn 1657-0790 (printed) 2256-5760 (online). bogotá, colombia. pages 151-170 pronunciation instruction and students’ practice to develop their confidence in efl oral skills data collection in order to collect data, it was decided to use three different types of instruments: class observation sheets, transcriptions of semi-structured interviews, and recordings of students reading aloud from a written text chosen for this purpose. class observation sheets at the beginning of the class observations, ana cristina used an observation sheet including general aspects about how she expected pronunciation would be handled in the classroom. she did class observations for five weeks. during the first week she realized that the two teacher participants dealt with pronunciation issues in different ways. so, it was necessary to design a different observation sheet, (see appendix b) based on the characteristics noticed in each group and thus be able to collect much richer data. reading aloud recordings the text chosen for this reading exercise was “master of horror” (see appendix c). although it is of an advanced language level, it was chosen because its length was considered suitable to give each student the opportunity to read it aloud in one session. a further important consideration was that this text featured a lot of regular verbs in the past and past participle. thus, asking the students to read it aloud and record them while doing this activity would allow us to be able to detect what pronunciation problems they had and what pronunciation knowledge, received in classes, they had been able to incorporate. interviews semi-structure interview guides were designed for both teachers and students (see appendix d). the interviews were carried out following the guides designed but in a flexible way. that is, giving the participants the freedom to express what they wanted to share and also how they wanted to be interviewed. for example, all students were interviewed in spanish not only because of their english level but because they mentioned they felt less nervous speaking in spanish when being recorded. on the other hand, the teachers preferred to be interviewed in english. ethical issues the closest interaction between researcher and participants happens during the process of data collection. oliver (2003) has noted that “such interactions inevitably generate situations involving ethical issues” (p. 45). therefore, as merriam (2001) states, “ethical dilemmas are likely to emerge with regard to data collection and in the dissemination of the findings” (p. 29). another important ethical consideration when collecting the data for this research was that in our regional and national educational contexts, asking research participants for their written consent is not always compulsory in the institutions where these researchers are affiliated. it has already been highlighted that in the area of tesol/elt in mexico, few researchers seem to be worrying about asking their participants for written consent as is customary in other parts of the world. they argue that mexico is said to have more of an oral culture; “in fact, from our first-hand experience, asking for consent in writing often puts the participants in our context on the defensive” (basurto santos & busseniers, 2012, p. 97). from the experience gained in basurto santos’ (2010) research, it seems that, rather than ask participants to fill out a written consent form, what is crucial during the collection of the data is to be sensitive to the local norms and expectations. finally, following silverman universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras158 tlazalo tejeda & basurto santos (2005), the participants were explained what the research was about and their role in this study so that they could decide freely whether they wanted to participate or not. findings and discussion after a careful analysis of all the data gathered by using the three instruments mentioned, which helped us in the process of triangulation, three main categories emerged: pronunciation instruction in the efl classroom, teachers as instructors of pronunciation, and pronunciation and students’ confidence. due to space limitations we chose to present the most salient themes that threw light on answering the research questions. pronunciation instruction in the efl classroom according to the analysis and interpretation of the data gathered through class observation and student interviews, the question concerning whether or not the students had pronunciation instruction in their efl classrooms could be answered. the findings of this study are in line with what has been found in previous studies. the instruction of pronunciation, at least with elementary students, is mainly of two types: drilling and “on-the-spot” correction of students’ mistakes (pennington, 1996; tice, 2004). besides, the time devoted to the instruction of efl pronunciation inside the classrooms was very limited and it was used, most of the time, to do the textbook pronunciation activities. that is, in both groups there was not a specific time allocated to the teaching of pronunciation on a regular basis. nor was there an emphasis on the importance of acquiring good pronunciation habits from the outset concerning the students in the ba in efl program. both teachers concurred that there is not enough time to do all the extra pronunciation activities i would like to since i have to cover the textbook. we [all efl teachers] have to do this because the students are assessed on the contents of the textbook so.” (arnold, interview) whereas arnold mostly used drills, a pronunciation technique which has been perceived as useful to teach pronunciation (tice, 2004), frank sometimes gave explanations about certain words that students showed difficulties with when pronouncing them (griffiths, 2011). one example from notes on class observations serves to illustrate a common technique employed by one of the teachers as part of the pronunciation instruction: veronica: largest /’aɪs.lənd/ frank: /’aɪ.lənd/ la “s” se acuerdan que no suena, [the “s” does not sound, remember?] largest /’aɪ.lənd/, veronica: largest /’aɪ.lənd/, frank: good! (class observation) the “repeat after me” technique was also very prominent in the data. it was a technique employed by both professors. here is a typical example of what was found in the class observation data: laura: /hot/ frank: /hɑːt/, no /hot/ . . . /hɑːt/ laura: /hɑːt/ . . . /hɑːt/, /sunny/, /warm/ frank: /’sʌn.i/ laura: /’sʌn.i/, /warm/, /drai/ frank: /wɔːrm/, no /warm/ . . . /wɔːrm/ laura: /wɔːrm/ (class observation) analyzing the data gathered though class observation, we saw that the transcript of the reading aloud activity together with the notes taken during this activity resulted in the following two catego159profile vol. 16, no. 2, october 2014. issn 1657-0790 (printed) 2256-5760 (online). bogotá, colombia. pages 151-170 pronunciation instruction and students’ practice to develop their confidence in efl oral skills ries: teachers as instructors of pronunciation and students’ practice of pronunciation. teachers as instructors of pronunciation choral repetition was the most prominent technique that appeared in the data gathered in group a. arnold had their students pronouncing chorally and when it was opportune to emphasize any aspect of pronunciation he used to mention the mark∪anthony effect, meaning, according to him, that it was the action of putting the words together by pronouncing them as one to make a reliable speech: arnold: like∪a night in the forest students: like a night in the forest arnold: like∪a students: like a arnold: like∪a students: like∪a arnold: mark∪anthony students: mark∪anthony (laughing) arnold: like∪a, like∪a (class observation) there was also evidence of explicit pronunciation explanations. for example, frank asked some of his students to remember that he had previously given them a list of regular verbs together with the rules to pronounce their past and past participle forms. as he had some new students in his group he offered a brief review of this topic. in the following extract here is an example to illustrate this: student: relaxed frank: relaxed everyone: relaxed frank: we can, apliquen la regla que ya saben [put into practice the rule that you already know] student: aaaah frank: no es /t/ /i/ /d/ entonces no metemos la otra sílaba, sólo que sea /t/ /d/ aumentamos una /i/, aquí como no es sordo relax, relax, relax entonces es una /t/ /rɪ’lækst/ /rɪ’lækst/ [no, it is not / tid/ then we do not have an extra syllable, unless we have a /t/ or /d/ then we add /i/. here as we have relax, relax, relax then the ending sound is /t/] (class observation) finally, in addition to these common ways of how pronunciation is dealt with in the classroom, efl teachers also provided their students with some pieces of advice about pronunciation. this help can be seen in the following extract: arnold: wow! that’s amazing! very good! excellent! remember intonation is very important, very, very important. it makes your english more intelligible when speaking with native speakers . . . if you listen to the radio in english, half an hour every day, this will make a difference in your life, then half an hour on internet in english, if you do this, i’ll give you 5 mexican pesos, yes? 5 pesos for half an hour (laughter) . . . it will help you to improve your pronunciation, you will focus on pronunciation, little by little you’ll be improving both: pronunciation and comprehension. and reading aloud . . . we sometimes do this in spanish, ok? do it!1 students: (laughter) yes, teacher, yes . . . (laughter). (class observation) pronunciation and students’ confidence with regard to the second research question posed in this study, the analysis of the evidence collected from class observations and the reading aloud activity helped to find out if students, who had received some pronunciation instruction in their efl classes, developed confidence when producing or pronouncing words and sentences in english. 1 this is a translation into english. the original quote was in spanish. universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras160 tlazalo tejeda & basurto santos due to the fact that participants of the reading aloud exercise had somehow been taught the pronunciation of some words included in the text, it was expected that they show confidence when facing those words again. the results of the transcriptions of the reading aloud activity showed the following: his most famous work, the /istori/ tells of a mad brother who entombs his sister /a laɪv/? in a /bault/ in the family /costum/. poe’s /macabra/? /estail/ is best seen, however, in another classic short /istori/. (reading exercise) this sample clearly shows how javier had not yet assimilated some of the instructions he had been taught (see appendix e). besides, we could also perceive his lack of confidence when he read with an interrogative tone and, at the same time, looked for approval. furthermore, the same occurred with students from group b: master of horror. born 200 years ago this year, the brilliant but tragic american writer edgar allan poe, who /die/ /age/ /for/ / for/..., is the /cridai/ /wit/ writing the /beri/ first detective story, being the of the modern short story and /birtually/ /inbenting/ the horror genre. it became apparent, in the analysis of data collected through class observations and the notes taken, that when students were asked to read a list of words, one per student, they always used a rising intonation at the end of the word when they were not sure about their pronunciation. the used this strategy to implicitly ask their efl teachers for feedback or help. it proved to be a good student strategy as they immediately got what they were looking for: either their teacher’s approval or the error correction: jesus: stormy? frank: /ˈstɔːr-/ well done! veronica: rainy raul: windy (class observation) all student participants attributed their lack of confidence when pronouncing some words to their lack of practice. this perception was shared by frank, one of the efl teachers who participated in this study. javier, francisco, laura, jesus, and monica also said they still used to get nervous and forget to apply the rules when doing oral activities in their efl classroom. finally, all participants showed awareness as to how important the existence of a pronunciation course could be and that teachers give more instructions to their students during the class. it is also worth mentioning that erika expressed that pronunciation instruction and practice should be mandatory “since we, as future teachers, will have to support others as well.” limitations an important number of limitations need to be considered. the main limitation was the number of participants, both students and efl teachers. no generalizations can be made from this study nor were they expected as this is a qualitative study. another limitation was the time to carry out this research. the topic and the number of instruments to collect the data deserved much more time so that more conclusions could have been drawn. finally, when students were asked to read the text aloud, they were afraid of being tested on their pronunciation because they had the idea that the researcher was there to evaluate or criticize them. this may have altered their reading aloud a bit. for this reason, the initial idea was to have all of them doing the reading exercise at the same time but due to the researcher’s and their timetables it was impossible. conclusions as mentioned at the beginning of this article, the main objective of this study was to find out how teachers handled pronunciation instruction in the 161profile vol. 16, no. 2, october 2014. issn 1657-0790 (printed) 2256-5760 (online). bogotá, colombia. pages 151-170 pronunciation instruction and students’ practice to develop their confidence in efl oral skills first levels of english in the ba of efl program at the language school of universidad veracruzana, mexico, and if or how this handling influences in students’ confidence. it can be concluded that not enough time is devoted to working on pronunciation. moreover, the time allocated to students’ work on pronunciation is used in having the students do drills or focusing on the textbook activities most of the time. this should be complemented with other types of pronunciation exercises if efl teachers want to avoid the fossilization of both pronunciation errors and students’ views on pronunciation as something that does not require much importance. concerning the students’ lack of confidence, it can be said that the students seem to need more time to practice and develop their oral skills so that they can assimilate the knowledge and thus be able to put it into practice when using the fl. both teachers and students need to be aware of how important it is to develop appropriate pronunciation habits from the outset. students will need all this in real communication situations and as future efl teachers. finally, there is a contradiction between what the participants think about pronunciation and their treatment of it. they say that pronunciation is vital but their actions do not show evidence of this. pronunciation instruction and practice with elementary fl learners seem to have been neglected for the most part. it would be very useful if communication in real contexts is the main aim of fl learning, that is, to have specific courses or parts of a course aimed at helping students develop and improve all aspects of pronunciation. further research due to the importance of all aspects of pronunciation in acquiring an fl language, much more research in efl classrooms is needed. for example, it would be interesting to find out how students in third term who are already taking the linguistic system class do or do not integrate this knowledge into their speaking and reading activities. it would also be useful to study to what extent and how students’ pronunciation problems affect their intelligibility in efl. finally, more research is needed to find out if students are failing their listening and oral tests due to their failure to recognize certain sounds and pronunciation patterns. this would be very relevant since it is known that these two areas are where students at the language school of universidad veracruzana have the most problems. ana’s reflection at the beginning of my research project i strongly thought that the pronunciation of students was affected only by what they were taught in the classroom. however, by carrying out this study i was able to visualize all the work that needs to be done to develop and improve the pronunciation process. the sources that i had to consult gave me a better understanding of the difficulties that students are very likely to face when acquiring new sounds which are very different from the sounds they are used to producing in their mother tongue. i gained a lot of understanding not only about the pronunciation problems that students face but, most importantly, i realized this research threw light on my own process as a learner of foreign languages. now i am aware that as a foreign language learner there is a lot of learning that has to be done independently and outside the language classroom. that is, it has led me to reflect on how i should work on my own foreign language learning process and redefine my process of pronunciation. but what i treasure most is the opportunity that this study gave me to understand that all language learning processes constitute a joint venture and effort between teachers and students. finally, i now clearly see that the progress in any area of acquiring a new language is a simultaneous work between what you are learning universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras162 tlazalo tejeda & basurto santos inside the classroom and the outside practice you have to do or arrange on your own. nora’s reflections as a supervisor of research projects with students whose first experience is a study like the one on which this article is based, i can say that it has always been gratifying to work with students who decide to research an aspect or topic of their choice rather than being given a topic to be researched or to incorporate in our own research projects. in my own experience, when students themselves decide what to research, they always choose something they relate to or something that is very meaningful to them as it has been something they have gone through or have always wondered about during their efl learning process. my very personal experience about supervising students who follow their own curiosities, doubts, or who are interested in finding out about something that relates to their personal learning process are more likely to carry out their projects with more enthusiasm and in a more systematic and serious way. their topics may appear to be simple but at the end of their research, albeit small and simple, they always show a greater capacity of reflection. for me, this is a very important beginning for a good future researcher. references basurto santos, n. m. (2010). transition in efl from secondary to preparatory in mexican state schools: participant perspectives. xalapa, mx: universidad veracruzana. retrieved from http://www.uv.mx/bdh/nuestros-libros/ escuela-estatal-ingles-english-foreign-language/ basurto santos, n. m., & busseniers, p. (2012). investigating english language classrooms in mexican schools: the issue of entry and access. porta linguarum, 17(1), 95-109. celce-murcia, m., brinton, d. m., & goodwin, j. m. (1996). teaching pronunciation: a reference for teachers of english speakers of other languages. new york, ny: cambridge university press. cohen, l., manion, l., & morrison, k. (2011). research methods in education. london, uk: routledge falmer. da silva, v. (2012). integrating pronunciation activities in brazilian efl classrooms. ple pensar línguas estrategeiras, 1(1). retrieved from http://www.ucs.br/etc/ revistas/index.php/ple/article/viewfile/1433/1087 dalton, c., & seidlhofer, b. (1994). pronunciation. oxford, uk: oxford university davies, m. b. (2007). doing a successful research project: using qualitative or quantitative methods. basingstoke, uk: palgrave macmillan. forel, c. a., & puskás, g. (2005). phonetics and phonology: reader for first year english linguistics. geneva, ch: university of geneva. retrieved from www.staff.uni-oldenburg.de/cornelia.hamann/download/phonology.pdf gillham, b. (2000). case study research methods. oxford, uk: bloomsbury academic. griffiths, b. (2011). integrating pronunciation into classroom activities. british council & bbc. retrieved from http:// www.teachingenglish.org.uk/articles/integrating pronunciation-classroom-activities hedge, t. (2000). teaching and learning in the language classroom. oxford, uk: oxford university press. kelly, g. (2000). how to teach pronunciation. harlow, uk: longman. krashen, s. d., & terrell, t. d. (1996). the natural approach: language acquisition in the classroom. new york, ny: prentice hall international. liangguang, h. (2010). reading aloud in the foreign language teaching. asian social science, 6(4), 148-150. retrieved from http://www.ccsenet.org/journal/index. php/ass/article/download/5683/4602 littlewood, w. (1984). foreign and second language learning: language acquisition research and its implications for the classroom. cambridge, uk: cambridge university press. merriam, s. b. (2001). qualitative research and case study applications in education. san francisco, ca: josseybass publishers. 163profile vol. 16, no. 2, october 2014. issn 1657-0790 (printed) 2256-5760 (online). bogotá, colombia. pages 151-170 pronunciation instruction and students’ practice to develop their confidence in efl oral skills millrood, r. (2001). teaching pronunciation: modular course in elt methodology. retrieved from http://es.scribd. com/doc/139640911/2-pronunciation oliver, p. (2003). the students guide to research ethics. berkshire, uk: open university press. pennington, m. c. (1996). phonology in english language teaching: an international approach. london, uk: longman. silverman, d. (1997). qualitative research: theory, method and practice. london, uk: sage. silverman, d. (2005). doing qualitative research: a practical handbook. london, uk: sage. tice, j. (2004). drilling 1. british council & bbc. retrieved from http://www.teachingenglish.org.uk/articles/drilling-1 underhill, a. (2005). sound foundations: learning and teaching pronunciation (2nd ed.). oxford, uk: macmillan. about the authors ana cristina tlazalo tejeda holds a ba in english language and a diploma in teaching spanish as a foreign language from universidad veracruzana, mexico. she spent a year in china as an exchange student. ana will be a teacher of spanish in the chongqing university of science and technology in 2014-2015. nora m. basurto santos holds a phd in applied linguistics and elt from warwick university, uk. she teaches courses in the undergraduate and postgraduate programs of the language school of universidad veracruzana, mexico. her research interests are qualitative studies as regards learners and teachers. she is a member of the sistema nacional de investigadores (national system of researchers). acknowledgments we would like to thank all the student participants who agreed to be part of this research. they provided us with a lot of insights by sharing their opinions and their thoughts in a very honest way. also, our deep gratitude to the teachers who allowed ana cristina to enter their classrooms, take notes and ask their students and themselves a lot of questions. this article is based on the research that ana cristina tlazalo tejeda carried out to complete her ba studies in june 2013. nora m. basurto santos was her research supervisor and was a co-writer/co-author of the present article. universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras164 tlazalo tejeda & basurto santos appendix a: contents focusing on pronunciation in textbook unit content 1 pronunciation (word stress) 5. listen and underline the stressed syllables. listen again and repeat. – bank clerk – waiter – lawyer – bus driver – security guard – shop assistant – writer – hairdresser – bodyguard – mechanic – nurse – journalist – pilot – secretary –receptionist – firefighter – graphic designer – teacher 2 pronunciation (“e” pronounced or silent) 8. listen and underline the words where the letter “e” is pronounced. listen and repeat. liked, wanted, hated, walked, looked, moved 3 no pronunciation content in this unit. 4 pronunciation (homophones) 9. listen and mark if the words in each pair sound the same or slightly different. listen again and repeat. (1) weather, whether (2) warm, arm (3) see, sea (4) wear, where 5 pronunciation /ʌ/ 8. listen and repeat. blood, flood, love, brother, mother, other, enough, rough, tough, money, some 6 no pronunciation content in this unit. 7 pronunciation (/i/ /i:/ /tʃ/ /s/) 6. listen and number the words in the order you hear them. listen again and repeat. eats – each – it’s, peach – peas – piece, cheese – she’s – sees, juice – choose – shoes 8 pronunciation (stressed syllables) 9. listen and underline the stressed syllable. listen again and repeat. (1) dra-ma = dra-ma-tic (2) co-me-dy = co-me-dian (3) his-to-ry = his-tor-ical (4) ar-tist = artis-tic 9 no pronunciation content in this unit. 10 pronunciation (/h/) 6. listen and circle the words where /h/ is pronounced. listen again and repeat. hurt, heart, hour, honest, ghost, exhaust, whole, perhaps, exhibition 165profile vol. 16, no. 2, october 2014. issn 1657-0790 (printed) 2256-5760 (online). bogotá, colombia. pages 151-170 pronunciation instruction and students’ practice to develop their confidence in efl oral skills appendix b: observation sheet group: ___________________________________ no. of ss: ___________________ date: _________________________________ class time: ______________________ aspects yes no observations students are exposed to reading aloud. the participation in reading and speaking activities is voluntary. aspects show confidence lack of confidence observations reaction of students when they face words that they do not know how to pronounce. how the teacher handles the previous situation. students practice speaking english through: participation in yes no observation giving comments/asking doubts. reading one exercise. reading section. reading a set of sentences chorally. reading a writing of their own. speaking activities. telling about the news they heard on the radio as homework. universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras166 tlazalo tejeda & basurto santos teaching pronunciation what triggers the explanation of pronunciation? student oral errors. pronunciation errors while reading. teacher initiative. what aspects of pronunciation does teacher explain? general observations: 167profile vol. 16, no. 2, october 2014. issn 1657-0790 (printed) 2256-5760 (online). bogotá, colombia. pages 151-170 pronunciation instruction and students’ practice to develop their confidence in efl oral skills appendix c: sample of the text for the reading aloud activity edgar allan poe, master of horror born 200 years ago this year, the brilliant but tragic american writer edgar allan poe, who died aged 40, is credited with writing the very first detective story, being the “architect” of the modern short story and virtually inventing the horror genre. his macabre horror stories, such as “the pit and the pendulum” and “the fall of the house of usher,” are now considered masterpieces of gothic terror. poe achieved all this while suffering from alcoholism; fighting against poverty and seeing many of his loved ones die terrible deaths around him. america’s first international writer, poe’s influence has been enormous, as one can see from the worldwide activities celebrating the bicentennial of his birth, stretching from the usa through france to russia. taken from: gleeson, c. (2009). “edgar allan poe, master of horror.” speak up, 24(286), 40-42. universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras168 tlazalo tejeda & basurto santos appendix d: interviews student interview guide name: ____________________________ group: ____________________________ 1. do you think pronunciation is important? why? 2. where or how do you learn pronunciation? 3. have you already taken pronunciation courses in the ba program? 4. do you consider that your professors teach you pronunciation? how? 5. during the time i observed your english class i realized the professor always advised you on how to pronounce the endings of regular verbs. do you already integrate this knowledge when reading or speaking? why? teacher interview guide name: ____________________________ group: ____________________________ 1. do you think pronunciation is important? 2. do you teach pronunciation in your class? 3. for professor of group a: i realized you work pronunciation by drilling your students. how do you determine whether or not they pronounce correctly if they do this activity as a group? 4. for professor of group b: i realized you sometimes advise your students on the pronunciation of some words. why do you think they still do not integrate that knowledge when pronouncing those words again? 169profile vol. 16, no. 2, october 2014. issn 1657-0790 (printed) 2256-5760 (online). bogotá, colombia. pages 151-170 pronunciation instruction and students’ practice to develop their confidence in efl oral skills appendix e: comparison between students’ pronunciation comparison between students’ pronunciation while reading the text “master of horror” aloud with the pronunciation in the cambridge dictionaries online (http://dictionary.cambridge.org/). the table below shows the aspects of pronunciation that had been taught in classes that were observed. group a aspects of pronunciation taught /k/ /θ/ /p/ /v/ the endings in regular verbs in the past /t/ /d/ /id/. /l/ don’t pronounce the “l” in words like calm, palm, balm. /e/ it is not pronounced “e” in words with “s” as initial consonant. mark∪anthony effect (put the words together). some specific words such as since, parade, belgium, month, chord, echo, ache, choir, chorus, chemistry, jewelry people, avon, vacuuming, calm. participants words they see in the paragraph how they pronounced them how the real pronunciation is erika stories, edited, devastating, southern, married, virginia, three, dismissed, important, considered /’stɔː.ris/ /’ed.ɪtid/ /’deb.ə.steɪ.tɪŋ/ /’sʌt.ən/ /’mær.id/ /birginia/ /tri/ /dɪ’smɪsed/ /ɪm’pɔː.tənt/ /kən’sɪder/ /’stɔː.ris/ /’ed.ɪtid/ /’dev.ə.steɪ.tɪŋ/ /’sʌð.ən/ /’mær.id/ /və’dʒɪn.jə/ /θriː/ /dɪ’smɪst/ /ɪm’pɔː.tənt/ /kən’sɪd.əd/ javier published, story, vault, style, published, death, /’pʌb.lɪʃt/ /istɔː.ri/ /bɒlt/ /estaɪl/ /’pʌb.lɪʃt/ /deθ/ /po/ /’pʌb.lɪʃt/ /’stɔː.ri/ /vɒlt/ /staɪl/ /deθ/ francisco palpable, story, satisfied, extended, ever, stories, featured, solve /’pæl.pə.bl ̩/ /estɔː.ri/ /’sæt.ɪs.faɪd/ /ɪk’sten.dɪd/ /eb.ər/ /’stɔː.ris/ /’fiː.tʃər/ /sɒl/ /’pæl.pə.bl ̩/ /’stɔː.ri/ /’sæt.ɪs.faɪd/ /ɪk’sten.dɪd/ /’ev.ər/ /’stɔː.ris/ /’fiː.tʃərd/ /sɒlv/ naomi stories, followed, received, public, both, based, death, worried, health, published, poem, considered, ever /estɔː.ris/ /’fɒl.əʊ/ /risaived/ /’pʌb.lɪk/ /bəʊt/ /-beɪsed/ /ded/ /’wʌr.id/ /helθ/ /’pʌb.lɪʃ/ /’pəʊ.ɪm/ /kən’sɪd.ə/ /eber/ /’stɔː.ris/ /’fɒl.əʊd/ /rɪ’siːvd/ /’pʌb.lɪk/ /bəʊθ/ /-beɪst/ /deθ/ /’wʌr.id/ /helθ/ /’pʌb.lɪʃt/ /’pəʊ.ɪm/ /kən’sɪd.əd/ /’ev.ər/ universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras170 tlazalo tejeda & basurto santos group b aspects of pronunciation taught /dʒ/ /v/ /t/ /j/ /ə/ /p/ difference between “can” and “can’t”. the endings in regular verbs in the past /t/ /d/ /id/. difference between /b/ and /v/. advice about stress and intonation. some specific words such as early, said, could, convenient, share, yet, river, russia , comfortable, chocolate, timetable, people, great, magic, mind, really, though, attractive, dining. participants words they see in the paragraph how they pronounced them how the real pronunciation is laura died, aged, credited, very, story, stories, pendulum, considered, achieved, poverty, loved, death /dai/ /eɪdʒ/ /cridai/ /bery/ /’stɔː.ri/ /’stɔː.ris/ /pondulum/ /kən’sɪd.əd/ /achieve/ /pober/ /lʌv/ /dits/ /daɪt/ /eɪdʒd/ /’kred.ɪtid/ /’ver.i/ /’stɔː.ri/ /’stɔː.ris/ /’pen.djʊ.ləm/ /kən’sɪd.əd/ /ə’tʃiːvd/ /’pɒv.ə.ti/ /lʌvd/ /deθ/ jesus russia, poor, impoverished, abandoned, died, named, educated, scotland, entered /’rʌʃ.ə/ /pɔːr/ /ɪm’pɒb.əir.ted/ /ə’bæn.dənin/ /daɪ/ /neimi/ /‘ed.jʊ.keɪ.tɪd/ /eskɒt.lənd/ /’en.tər/ /’rʌʃ.ə/ /pɔːr/ /ɪm’pɒv.ər.ɪʃt/ /ə’bæn.dənd/ /daɪt/ /neɪmd/ /‘ed.jʊ.keɪ.tɪd/ /’skɒt.lənd/ /’en.tərd/ veronica penniless, published, poems, virginia, beloved, died, entered, disowned /penniəls/ /’pʌb.lɪʃes/ /pəʊ.ɪms/ /bə’dʒɪn.jə/ /------/ /dai/ /’en.tər/ /dɪ’səʊnd/ /’pen.i.ləs/ /’pʌb.lɪʃt/ /’pəʊ. ɪms/ /və’dʒɪn.jə/ /bɪ’lʌv.ɪd/ /daɪt/ /’en.tərd/ /dɪ’səʊnd/ monica poem, earned, virginia, died, warmed, buried, attributed, unmarked, even /’pəʊ.ɪm/ /’ɜːned/ /bə’dʒɪn.jə/ /daɪ/ /’wɔrmid/ /burid/ /’æt.rɪ.bjuːt/ /ʌn’mɑːked/ /’iː.bən/ /’pəʊ.ɪm/ /’ɜːnd/ /və’dʒɪn.jə/ /daɪt/ /’wɔːrmd/ /ber.id/ /’æt.rɪ.bjuːtid/ /ʌn’mɑːkt/ /’veə.ri.əs.li/ /’iː.vən/ 49profile vol. 16, no. 1, april 2014. issn 1657-0790 (printed) 2256-5760 (online). bogotá, colombia. pages 49-62 english language teachers’ professional development and identities identidad y desarrollo profesional de docentes de inglés alberto mora*1 paulina trejo**2 ruth roux***3 universidad autónoma de tamaulipas, ciudad victoria, mexico this article analyzes the professional development of two english language teachers in a mexican language center. in particular, it explores the interplay between professional development, identity and agency, and the part played by english language teaching certificates in all of these. drawing on a case study methodology, which included the use of a series of three interviews and other qualitative data collection methods, the article demonstrates the intimate and intricate connection between teachers’ identities and their professional development. education implications for policy makers and practitioners are discussed. key words: certifications, english language teaching, identity, professional development. este artículo analiza el desarrollo profesional de dos profesoras del idioma inglés en un centro de lenguas de una universidad pública mexicana. en particular, el trabajo explora la relación entre desarrollo profesional, identidad y agencia. se utiliza la metodología de estudio de casos, la cual incluye el uso de entrevistas biográficas y otros métodos de recopilación de datos cualitativos. los resultados hacen evidente la íntima relación que existe entre la identidad de los profesores y su desarrollo profesional. se presentan las implicaciones del estudio para los desarrolladores de políticas educativas, los tutores de programas de desarrollo profesional e investigadores. palabras clave: certificaciones, desarrollo profesional, identidad, profesores de inglés. * e-mail: amora@uat.edu.mx ** e-mail: ntrejo@uat.edu.mx *** e-mail: rrouxr@uat.edu.mx how to cite this article (apa, 6th ed.): mora, a., trejo, p., & roux, r. (2014). english language teachers’ professional development and identities. profile issues in teachers’ professional development, 16(1), 49-62. http://dx.doi.org/10.15446/profile.v16n1.38153. this article was received on may 18, 2013, and accepted on november 1, 2013. universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras50 mora, trejo, & roux introduction over the last two decades, the literature has recognized the value of identity in understanding various aspects related to teaching english. in particular, researchers have identified the need to study teachers’ identity issues and their impact on classrooms and schools’ lives (hayes, 2005, 2009; varghese, morgan, johnston, & johnson, 2005). however, there is very little research addressing the relationship between english language teachers’ professional development (pd) and their identities. this article reports the professional development of two english language teachers in a mexican language center. in particular, it explores the interplay between professional development and identity and agency, and the part played by english language teaching (elt) certificates in all of these. theoretical framework the literature suggests that the practice of pd in elt has been informed by three different approaches: the individual approach, the institutional approach, and the teacher-led approach. although these approaches share some characteristics, the impacts they have on educational institutions and teachers’ pd profiles are different. the individual approach this approach saw the professional development of teachers as something that was essentially driven by their inner motivation and was exclusively reserved for those with career ambitions (craft, 2000). the teachers were perceived as the only persons responsible for their pd. edge (2002) stresses the argument that this view is closely linked to personal development and therefore entirely satisfying and fulfilling for those who are committed to the foreign language teaching profession. edge’s arguments place emphasis on the idea that this approach allows teachers to develop “coherently” because their pd will be based on their personal authenticity for each decision. however, the literature has also identified some limitations of this view of pd. for example, it sees teachers as isolated entities and ignores the fact that they are part of a “micro-cosmos” called school, which is immersed in a more complex “cosmos,” named society. therefore, the individual pd decisions made by one teacher will benefit or damage this cosmos (fullan & hargreaves, 1992). additionally, although some faculty members are able to develop professionally, others experience feelings of burnout, confusion, and frustration as a result of their isolation. this again could be detrimental not only for the individual but also for the teaching context and/or institution (bowen & marks, 1994; kohonen, 2002; roberts, 1998). finally, this view of pd overlooks the cultural aspects of different school environments (craft, 2000). institutional professional development this view refers to the situation in which policy makers or people with higher authority in an educational setting such as ministries of education, school districts, or individual schools provide their teachers with opportunities to participate in activities that would assist them in enhancing their professional practice. the advantage of encouraging pd in this way is that it may produce observable changes in a relatively short period of time. however, this view also presents a small number of weaknesses. it is a top-down approach in which something is done to the teachers rather than with them, frequently only to improve technical skills (craft, 2000; day, 1999; fullan & hargreaves, 1992). this approach, therefore, might lead to superficial cosmetic institutional changes (myers & clark, 2002) and difficulties in staff recruitment and retention (craft, 2000) as a result of teachers’ low levels of morale and high levels of stress. 51profile vol. 16, no. 1, april 2014. issn 1657-0790 (printed) 2256-5760 (online). bogotá, colombia. pages 49-62 english language teachers’ professional development and identities perhaps the most representative example of how this approach has been adopted in latin american countries through the use of elt international certifications is that described by gonzález (2009) in a study carried out in colombia. she describes the emphasis that the colombian ministry of education has placed on the adoption of foreign models of teacher training with the purpose of improving english language learning at a national level. programs such as the in-service certificate in english language teaching (icelt) and the teaching knowledge test (tkt) awarded by the university of cambridge are mandatory for all english teachers who wish to certify their teaching ability without considering contextual circumstances. similarly, schools and english teachers must follow the national english language learning program called bilingual colombia as prescribed by educational authorities at the national level. this policy, including its associated risks, has also been analyzed by scholars such as guerrero (2008), sánchez and obando (2008), and usma (2009). teacher-led professional development within this approach, teachers are at the center of every educational undertaking. teachers actively participate in their own professional development by designing paths based on their preferences, beliefs, and perceived needs. they typically receive all of the support they need, and their professional development efforts are valued (day 1999; pennington, 1989; richards, 2002). this, however, does not necessarily mean that teachers are free to pursue their professional development goals without considering institutional needs. a balance must be sought between “collegiality and individuality” (fullan & hargreaves, 1992, p. 2) that aims at meeting individual and institutional development needs. the positive aspects of this conception of pd are first, that it values the teachers’ expertise and their contributions to the institution. second, because pd experiences arise from the teachers’ interests, the teachers are more likely to be committed to them, and the changes that emerge from these experiences are deep and long-lasting (kohonen, 2002) and can be transferred to broader contexts such as the language classroom, students’ quality of learning, and language teachers’ personal lives. whereas in the previous two approaches, the concepts of identity and agency were overlooked and language teachers were often conceived of as technicians who merely needed to learn the right ways to teach (johnston, 2003), identity becomes a central issue in this approach to pd. we understand identity as a phenomenon that is in continuous change, being reconstructed across contexts and discourses (gee, 2000-2001; norton, 2000). four key elements that influence this reconstruction are culture, society, agency, and subjectivity. it is undeniable that we are social beings who are constructed through our everyday life experiences. the ways in which society and culture respond toward our everyday actions define to a great extent how this self is constructed. in addition to this, the power of global modern institutions can indeed affect the self in a variety of ways (giddens, 1991). however, we actively construct our selves through reflection and action. every person is a unique project of a self in the making. it is, in the end, individuals who empower the global institutions that shape selves (giddens, 1991; holstein & gubrium, 2000). similar issues are discussed by hayes (2005, 2009), hiver (2013) and varghese et al. (2005). the concept of agency is also relevant in this professional development model. biesta and tedder (2006) have defined agency as “the ability to exert control over, and give direction to one’s life” (p. 9). they argue that modern life requires us to respond in a more agentic way than would have been the case a few decades ago. this issue is evident in the rapidly changing nature of today’s schools, and this in turn universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras52 mora, trejo, & roux influences many of teachers’ pd needs. this is why it is of paramount importance to understand how teachers adjust to these changes and how these changes impact teachers’ senses of self. three aspects of the work of biesta and tedder (2006) are relevant for pd. one is their claim that agency is three-dimensional, featuring influences from the past, orientations toward the future, and engagement with the present. the second aspect is their argument that agency is not a single, measurable thing or simply an attribute of an individual. they propose what they refer to as an ecological understanding of agency in which someone’s agency depends on the context in which he or she operates. this means that someone can be agentic at home or school but that that may not be the case when it comes to decisions about professional development. and finally, they contend that agency is not fixed. this suggests that we can learn to respond differently, perhaps with more agency, in relation to decisions about professional development. method this paper is based on a case study methodology. this methodology enabled us to study teachers’ pd issues, focusing on a particular site and looking for depth and meaning. we therefore based our research around a mexican language center and, within this center, focused on a small number of english teachers. data were collected from six teachers who were very active participants in professional development activities. however, we selected two teachers, angeline and paris, for more intensive study for two reasons. they possessed the greatest number of elt and language certificates in the language center. we felt that these two teachers represented an interesting contrast in the way in which they themselves approached their professional development. they also represented two different models of institutional professional development in a language center. following seidman’s (2006) model of in-depth phenomenological interviewing, we conducted a series of three interviews with each participating teacher. these interviews took place at the language center over a six-month period. the two teachers agreed to speak in english during the interviews because they were fluent english speakers and they enjoyed using this language for different purposes. the first interview was about their professional development, with questions about their participation in education and in training and certification courses, their main reasons for pursuing these, their experiences with the certification process, their main sources of support and encouragement, and so forth. the second interview was about the different contexts that had played a role in their professional development, such as home, social and professional contexts, and so forth. the last interview was about the relationship between professional development, identity, and agency. a number of additional methods were used. some institutional documents were gathered and analyzed. for example, policy documents about the faculty’s professional development and individual records of teachers’ participation in professional development activities were reviewed. field notes about the teachers’ engagement with their certification courses and examinations were also taken. access to these data sources was easily gained because we conducted our research as insiders (busher, 2002). maxwell argued that insider researchers may become “a major source of insight, hypotheses, and validity checks” (as cited in radnor, 2001, p. 30). we adopted an emic, or inside, approach to data analysis because we were striving to understand pd and identity issues from the participants’ point of view (geertz, 1976). we first conducted an extensive exploration of the transcripts of the three interviews, developing categories of the different factors influencing the two teachers’ pd such as the 53profile vol. 16, no. 1, april 2014. issn 1657-0790 (printed) 2256-5760 (online). bogotá, colombia. pages 49-62 english language teachers’ professional development and identities language center’s approach to pd, the pd programs, the participants’ home contexts, their academic backgrounds, their employment trajectories, and so forth. the two participating teachers were extensively involved in the interpretation of the data. once the individual accounts were developed, we asked each teacher to read her respective account and make suggestions or propose alternative interpretations of the data. this resulted in very full accounts of their professional development. the school context the empirical part of this research took place in a language center (lc) that is part of a state university located in the northeastern part of mexico. the lc has a population of approximately 2,300 students per academic term. most of the students study english, but french and german are also offered. the current intake is widely diverse in terms of age (16 and over), education background, and socioeconomic status. in a recent study conducted in this setting, mora, trejo, and roux (2013) described that the student population is distributed as follows: 45% are students from local high schools (grades 10 to 12), 30% are undergraduate students, and 25% are professionals who study languages in their free time. courses at the lc are non-credit because the goal of the program is to help learners enhance their academic and/or employability profiles. the faculty is composed of 60 english language teachers, two teachers of french, and one teacher of german. most of the teachers are there on a part-time basis, work under semester contracts, and are paid by the class hour. many of them hold down other jobs in order to supplement their incomes. only a group of nine members of the academic staff are there fulltime, but they do not have tenure. they have been there for more than five years, coordinating academic programs such as the english language program, the self-access center, the ba in applied linguistics program, the professional development program, and the area of examinations and certifications. the lc has been a very active promoter of pd for english teachers. in particular, it has created opportunities for teachers to obtain certificates, both in english language proficiency and in english language teaching. it has been offering internationally recognized certification tests such as the test of english as a foreign language internet based test (toefl ibt) and the cambridge esol exams, including the tkt for more than five years now. the center has also been able to offer 13 versions of the icelt (formerly known as cote) by cambridge esol in collaboration with the british council over a period of 16 years. more than 150 teachers have been certified through these courses across the state. the promotion of these pd activities for teachers has been carried out with subtle differences between the last two administrations that the lc has had in the past eight years, one from june 2003 to june 2007 and the current one from june 2007 to the present. from their arrival, the former administration followed a very tight agenda of teacher professionalization in which certificates played a central role. the administrators first conducted a faculty professional needs analysis the purpose of which was to identify the faculty members’ needs in order to design an institutional pd plan. the needs analysis also served to inform the faculty’s re-selection and promotion process. they developed the criteria that would be used to (re)select the teachers: the teachers should possess a bachelor’s degree, preferably in elt, but this was not a requirement; they also needed to possess the cote/ icelt and a certificate in english language proficiency at the common european framework b2 level, such as the fce (cambridge esol first certificate in english) or the toefl itp. although it was not explicitly stated, this administration’s plan was to standardize the faculty’s professional profile and therefore improve the teaching provided by the center. universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras54 mora, trejo, & roux the teachers who met all of the criteria renewed their contracts and were given the opportunity to apply to a master’s degree program abroad. those teachers who lacked any of the requirements were given a deadline to obtain them. the outcome of that practice was a faculty downsize on the one hand and the creation of opportunities for development on the other. for example, those teachers who expressed their unwillingness to engage in the process of meeting the new institutional requirements set were not rehired; those teachers who fully met all of the requirements and obtained acceptance letters for postgraduate study from foreign universities received full financial support from the lc; and those who expressed their intention to participate in the new process were given the opportunity to take both an english language teacher certification course (cote) and a language proficiency certificate examination (toefl itp) at a low fee. the administration also developed a bachelor’s degree program in applied linguistics within the first three years of the teachers’ appointment. the current administration followed a similar plan to create similar minimum criteria for the selection, promotion, and development of faculty members. the minimum entrance requirement is a band 3 out of 4 on the tkt and a certificate in english language proficiency at the common european framework b2 level. this administration has continued to offer pd opportunities such as preparation courses for the tkt and an academic support program for the icelt. it has also invested energy, time, and money in the encouragement and support of the teachers’ pd efforts, such as offering discounts on the icelt tuition fees and giving rebates to those who obtain high scores on language proficiency examinations such as the fce or the certificate of advanced english (cae) by cambridge esol. however, the teachers’ employment status is not affected if they are unwilling to enroll in or unable to complete any of the pd programs the center offers. after four years, the results of this administration in terms of pd are mixed. some teachers have been able to certify their teaching ability through the icelt courses that have been offered at the center. others have not been able or willing to participate in or complete pd activities. similarly, the ba program in applied linguistics designed by the previous administration has become an important source of teachers in that some of the former students have joined the center’s faculty. only a small number of teachers have made individual efforts to engage in postgraduate study apart from institutional efforts. case study: the teachers angeline angeline is a hardworking and responsible person. she said that she became an english teacher because “i love english and have always been eager to share my knowledge with other people.” in fact, most of her academic and professional decisions have been influenced by her love for the english language. she said that she decided to study hotel and tourism management at the university because she thought that she would have opportunities to use foreign languages in that field. when she realized that that was not necessarily the case, she decided to get a part-time job teaching english to young learners. however, she did not have a positive experience there because the “kids were spoiled and i would not have the chance to enforce discipline there.” that is why she decided to move to her current job at the lc, where she teaches young adult and adult learners and where she feels happy because “the students are there because they want to, not because they have to.” at her present work, angeline considered that “the best definition of me as a teacher would be strict but friendly, and knowledgeable but conscious that i don’t know everything.” in fact, she thought that she was always “open to new knowledge and challenges that 55profile vol. 16, no. 1, april 2014. issn 1657-0790 (printed) 2256-5760 (online). bogotá, colombia. pages 49-62 english language teachers’ professional development and identities i can encounter in my profession.” she sees herself as a teacher who takes her profession very seriously and “my inner driving force is the main reason that pushes me pursuing different goals regarding my profession.” in particular, she said that she feels happy when she has students who really want to learn. she said she particularly enjoys watching her students succeed by obtaining english language proficiency certificates. she is always looking for opportunities to develop her english skills and those of the people around her. ever since she joined the faculty at her present job, she implemented a personal policy that forces her to use english with her colleagues and students at all times within the workplace, despite the fact that spanish is normally used outside of the class. home context angeline lives with her mother, father, and younger siblings in the city where she was born. both of her parents are professionals who have instilled in her “responsibility, love of reading, and enthusiasm to progress.” in particular, she feels that her parents have provided her with all of the economic and moral support needed to engage in academic and professional development activities, including the learning of english. she recalls that her parents once told her that “a quality professional needs to be well prepared and updated.” for example, she said that it was her mother who gave her the advice that the cote in the end would bring her great benefits, which she thinks was “proved right.” that is why she considers that obtaining english language teaching certificates is valuable in her profession. she reflects that the decision to pursue certificates in the end has been made by her, but “my parents support has definitely been really helpful and encouraging.” academic background most of angeline’s professional studies have taken place at the university where she now works. after she obtained her bachelor’s degree in hotel management, she resumed her english studies at the lc, where she now holds a teaching position and is one of the coordinators of the self-access center. she said that she first took the fce examination in december 2000 because “it was a requirement to work there” (at the language center). although she did not obtain the mark she had expected, she passed the exam, and she recalls that when she received her certificate she felt “really happy and with a sense of fulfillment.” in 2003, the administration of the language center implemented an internal policy requiring all uncertified teachers to enroll in the cote course. participation in the cote involved monthly threehour trips to another city within the state for the face-to-face sessions. at that time, she thought she was not prepared to take the course because “i didn’t feel ready then. i wasn’t quite ready to write essays in english, which is one of my weaknesses in the language.” she said she had no choice but to take the course; otherwise “i wouldn’t be hired.” however, when she was awarded her cote at the beginning of the year 2005, she says, “i couldn’t believe i got it, but i was thrilled and felt so proud of myself, because i had reached another professional and personal goal.” after she had completed the cote, she also took several other certificate tests. she says that she took them for different reasons. for example, in 2005, she was also required to take the toefl itp as part of the job requirements. she also took the fce again in 2006 because she “wanted to get a higher mark in it,” which she eventually did. she also took the toefl ibt in 2009 because “i was interested in getting a scholarship to do a master’s degree in the usa.” unfortunately, she said that her application for the scholarship was not approved, and so she was unable to participate in the program in the usa. however, she was admitted into a master’s degree program in the uk in 2010 because she met all of the requirements, including a good mark universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras56 mora, trejo, & roux on the ielts. she completed her master’s in the fall of 2011 and came back to work. employment trajectory angeline’s first job was in a private local english language institute, teaching english to young learners. however, she only worked there for a short period of time because of the discipline problems she said she encountered there. that is why she decided to move to her current job (the lc). because she is there on a part-time basis and does not have social security, she also obtained a job in a local public kindergarten so as to be given “you know, the benefits we all want in a job.” her professional life has taken place mainly in these two different contexts for the last eleven years. job context at the lc, her main roles have been as teacher and self-access advisor. as a teacher, she has more than ten years’ experience teaching the different levels of english proficiency offered there. however, she now teaches preparation courses for certificate examinations. she says she views her role as the fce preparation course teacher as challenging but also as an opportunity to continue improving her english language skills. she says that when she was offered to teach it, she felt she “was not prepared to teach at that level.” however, she considers that her experience taking different certificate examinations has given her the confidence of being able to prepare her students by “reassuring my english, researching about any grammar topic i know little about and preparing an interesting and valuable class for my students.” she has also worked as a self-access center (sac) advisor for almost three years now. these three years, though, were interrupted for one year when she was in the uk doing postgraduate study. angeline has thought about the relationship between the process of obtaining the cote and its application to her professional life. she says that although at the beginning she was unhappy with the institutional policy requiring her to participate in the cote course, “in the end i was really grateful with the person that pushed me to take it because the accomplishment of finishing and getting the certificate gave me such assurance in my teaching role as well as at the personal role.” she also believes that having completed the cote opened up for her new opportunities for development. she says that “i think it [the cote] was one of the things that helped me to get a scholarship for an exchange program in the uk” where she served as a spanish teacher of international students at a well-known british university for a period of three months. paris paris considered that she was “a hardworking and reliable person, student, and teacher.” she said that she learned to be independent and work hard for what she wanted from a very early age. she said that “nobody has given me anything just for free; everything i have is the result of my determination and hard work.” she also described herself as “a person who sets her own goals in life without caring about what others do.” she considered that she has managed to achieve goals in life because of her sustained efforts, patience, and selfconfidence. she is also convinced that this personal approach has strongly influenced her academic and professional decisions. as a teacher, she describes herself as “someone who likes to plan my classes to be able to solve any problems related to my students’ learning process.” she regards planning and preparation as essential aspects in any teaching situation. she said she knows “it takes time for me outside the classroom, but it is an investment, not a waste of time.” she sees planning as something that “contributes to my own confidence in front of the class and my students’ effective learning.” she says that she likes to read in advance about any topic they will be discussing in classes and that she often uses online resources for that. 57profile vol. 16, no. 1, april 2014. issn 1657-0790 (printed) 2256-5760 (online). bogotá, colombia. pages 49-62 english language teachers’ professional development and identities home context paris comes from a working-class family in which her father was the only one who worked and her mother stayed at home and took care of her and her sister. she grew up in a small apartment located in a quiet and inexpensive neighborhood. her parents instilled in her “the value of being independent and working hard for what one wants.” all of her formal education has taken place in local public schools. she said that she has managed to save her parents’ money by “taking advantage of all the scholarships i have earned thanks to my high grades at school.” she said that although her parents did not invest money in her education, she knows that she has always had their “moral help anytime, anywhere.” academic background as is the case with angeline, most of paris’s professional studies have taken place at the university where she now works. in 2005, she first obtained a bachelor’s degree in business administration. she graduated with honors, earning the highest gpa of all of her cohort. during her undergraduate program, she also studied english at the lc simultaneously. toward the end of her undergraduate program, she decided to take the fce, in march 2004, because “i wanted to achieve a good level of language knowledge.” ever since she joined the lc’s faculty in 2006, she says that she has had an active role in her development as a teacher, student, and person. she says that she has had the chance to obtain english language certificates such as the icelt and the applied linguistics updating diploma course for language teachers (alad) offered by the autonomous national university of mexico (unam). she participated in the former in 2007-2008 and in the latter in 2009-2010. in both programs, she had an outstanding performance, obtaining the highest marks. in addition, she says she has been able to “renew my toefl twice.” she considers that “having a degree, certificate, or diploma means you are willing to learn anytime, and the lc has emphasized the correlation between getting these documents and the range of job opportunities you can have and the money you can make.” paris views her participation in the different professional development activities as programs that “are going to help me to achieve bigger goals in my life in general.” she also says that her next logical step forward in her academic development is the pursuit of a master’s degree in a foreign country. she says that she strongly believes that all of the experience and preparation she has been gaining will be useful when “i study my master degree abroad someday.” she sums up the role of certificates in her development by saying that “these kinds of certification programs move you to learn and to be updated for today’s changing world.” employment trajectory b efore becoming an english teacher, paris held other two jobs. those jobs were related to her specialty, which was business administration. when she was soon to complete her bachelor’s degree, she worked as an office assistant in a local business for a short period of time. after graduating, she was then offered another job as a sales assistant with a local car dealer, where she also served for a short period of time. however, one day, a 55-year-old woman asked her to teach her private english lessons for a six-month period. there, she realized that “it was the beginning of a professional career.” she said that this profession “has given me a lot of challenges and rewards and is where i feel more confident and where i have achieved most of my professional and personal goals so far.” analysis of the case study t h e d a t a a n a l y s i s r e v e a l s t h a t t h e t w o participating teachers have achieved high levels of pd. this was evidenced by the fact that they have managed to participate in a wide range of professional universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras58 mora, trejo, & roux development activities in a short period of time. however, a deeper analysis of their descriptions of the ways in which they have participated in the different pd activities reveals that the process has been much more complex than it may seem. it seems that angeline took longer to develop this high degree of development than paris did. the biographical data we collected and presented about their pd allow us to explore possible answers to the question of why their pd processes have been rather different. perhaps the most likely answer to this question has to do with their identities. for a start, the two participating teachers were exposed to different ways of encouraging pd by their respective administrations. in the case of angeline, the administrators chose and made the arrangements to offer the pd activities that they felt were needed by the faculty. they also designed and implemented institutional policies regarding teacher participation in such activities. angeline started her participation in pd activities as a result of the policies implemented by this administration. in her narration, she described that she decided to take the fce examination because it “was a requirement to work there.” similarly, she also described how she was “pushed” to participate in the icelt course, “otherwise i would be fired.” that is to say, the beginning of her pd was a mere reaction to the professional demands established by her employer. her account of her reactions to these events revealed that she started the programs with little confidence in her academic ability. this was further evidenced by her description of how she was asked to teach the preparation course for the fce examination when she felt she was not prepared because of her weak writing skills in english. yet her participation in these programs appears to have had a resilience effect on her. those initial feelings of insecurity were transformed into emotions of resilience. she said in the interviews that she developed “a sense of fulfillment” and a desire for further professional advancement once she completed the icelt course. similarly, she mentioned that she now conceives of herself as the “teacher of the course that prepares students to take the fce examination.” in other words, her identity gained strength because of the requirement implemented by her authorities. paris, on the other hand, was a teacher during the 2007-2011 administration. the description paris provided of her experiences in the different pd activities suggests that she did not need much encouragement to par ticipate in the dif ferent activities. that is to say, she seems to have taken advantage of the different pd activities because she saw them as opportunities to “move you to learn and be updated.” her approach appeared to consist of having positive thoughts and being prepared for when opportunities arise. an analysis of her academic trajectory as an english teacher corroborates her adoption of this positive approach to pd. as soon as she completed a pd activity, she was presented with a new, perhaps more challenging, opportunity, which she was normally ready to seize. for example, she went from obtaining the fce to the icelt to the alad through to an academic stay in the usa over a fiveyear period. s econd, the pd programs themselves were identified as factors that played different roles in the two teachers’ development. the two lc administrations strongly relied on certificate examinations and courses such as the fce, toefl, icelt, and so forth to promote teacher pd, and these two teachers were frequent participants. the description paris provided of her experiences in the different pd activities suggests that she viewed her participation in the activities as opportunities to enhance her teaching practice. she said that those programs had helped her raise her “confidence” in being able to prepare her students better. in addition, she made it clear that she viewed such programs as part of a long-term learning process. that is to say, her approach appears to consist 59profile vol. 16, no. 1, april 2014. issn 1657-0790 (printed) 2256-5760 (online). bogotá, colombia. pages 49-62 english language teachers’ professional development and identities of seeing each and every pd activity as a means, rather than an ends, that enables her to achieve “bigger goals in life.” moreover, although she acknowledged in her account other benefits or “correlations” associated with the acquisition of teacher qualifications, such as “higher pay or possibilities for promotion,” she sees these as consequences rather than causes. angeline, in contrast, also highlighted the idea that her participation in the different pd programs had helped her become more confident in planning and teaching “interesting and valuable classes for my students.” however, she placed stronger emphasis on how the certification process had left her with a sense of the need to look for further pd opportunities. in particular, she stated in the interviews that once she was awarded the icelt, she developed a strong desire to pursue other, perhaps more challenging, teaching qualifications. in sum, although paris did not state it explicitly, these courses and programs may also serve as potential sources for strengthening teachers’ identities as competent professionals. third, there were differences between the two teachers in their degrees of pro-activity toward pd. in the case of paris, although she was a relatively new member of the elt profession when she began her pd journey at the lc, she was able to appropriately take advantage of and manage the pd activities available to her from the beginning because of the strong academic identity she had constructed as a result of her sustained achievements throughout her academic life. in contrast, angeline needed more time to reaffirm her confidence in order to face the different challenges that the required pd activities represented for her. her account revealed that her decisions about pd at the beginning of her career were made by merely reacting to institutional requirements. this was evidenced by her initial reluctance to participate in the icelt course because she felt she “was not ready for it” and because she saw it as “an imposition.” however, after seeing all of the benefits related to the award of such certificates, she adopted a more proactive role in her decisions about pd. for example, these decisions included the attempt to obtain “higher scores” on the toefl and ielts examinations and her application to, and eventual participation in, a master’s degree program abroad. our analysis of this case study suggests that a number of factors might play a role in these teachers’ pd. these include differences in the approach to pd adopted by the school administration, the impact that the pd courses and programs had on them, and their agentic orientations. the analysis then highlights both the complexity of the pd process and the value of the theoretical framework in revealing this complexity. conclusions: educational implications of the research the present research has some implications for educational policy and practice and for researchers. first, the findings of the case study make problematic the arguments that regard institutional approaches to pd as inadequate. it is common to find in the literature on pd the contention that institutional approaches are top-down, cause teachers low levels of morale and high levels of stress (craft, 2000), and lead to superficial cosmetic changes (myers & clark, 2002). in this case, angeline may have experienced feelings similar to those described by craft (2000) in the early stages of her development. however, her identity was greatly strengthened as a result of her participation in the different pd programs, in particular after completing the icelt course. therefore, the evidence of the case study suggests that the appropriateness of institutional approaches to pd may well vary significantly from teacher to teacher. in this case, it worked well for angeline but had little or no effect on paris. second, the findings also have implications concerning the issue of teacher empowerment and the role that elt certifications might play. the case study highlighted the idea that once the two participants universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras60 mora, trejo, & roux were awarded a certificate, they developed a stronger desire to pursue further qualifications. in other words, elt certificates may not only serve as evidence of someone’s ability to teach english. they may also serve as instruments of empowerment and as catalysts for further development. hiver (2013) and hayes (2005, 2009) described similar issues in their research contexts, which is why we believe that this finding deserves further exploration in subsequent studies. the previous issue, however, may have disturbing implications for policy-makers. although some teachers may have the financial resources, institutional support, and academic skills to pursue qualifications, others may not be that fortunate. this is especially true in the elt field, in which little or no support for pd is available owing to its low status (see johnston 2003; nunan, 2001; and pennington, 1992 for this point). this interpretation, of course, is only based on the participating teachers’ perspectives and our own observations (and without doubt, more research needs to be conducted that takes into account other perspectives such as those of their students and school administrators). however, if this were the case, then certificates would pose the risk of widening the pd gap between certified and uncertified teachers within an institution and among institutions. this is an issue that deserves further research. third, the findings also have implications for pd advisors. the evidence presented here suggests that teachers may exhibit different degrees of pro-activity towards pd. however, these degrees of pro-activity may well be altered. in the case of paris, she did not need much encouragement to participate in pd activities. although she was a relatively new member of the elt profession when she started her pd journey at the lc, she was able to appropriately approach the pd activities available to her because of the strong academic identity she had constructed as a result of her sustained achievements throughout her academic life. angeline, on the other hand, started her journey with doubts about her capability to successfully meet the academic demands of some pd programs. however, after seeing all of the benefits related to receiving such certificates, she experienced the arousal of a desire to pursue further pd activities, such as the attempt to obtain higher scores on the toefl and ielts examinations and to apply for a master’s degree program abroad. this gives support to biesta and tedder’s (2006) argument that teachers’ agency is constructed by experiences from the past, the present, and a vision toward the future. they go on to suggest that agency is not fixed. this means that teachers can learn to respond differently, perhaps more agentically, in relation to decisions about pd. in this case, angeline needed more time than paris to reaf f irm her confidence in facing the different challenges that the required pd activities represented for her. the implication for pd advisors is the need to understand teachers’ identities in order to determine the ways in which they can be encouraged and supported to develop professionally. this can be achieved through dialogical interactions with individual teachers about their past, present, and future experiences, which in turn can enable them to gain control of the directions of their professional lives. finally, the concepts of identity and agency have been very useful in our understanding of these teachers’ pd. in neither case would we have been able to make full sense of the ways in which they had approached their pd if we had not known what it was that they themselves were bringing to it. after collecting their biographical data through three interviews, however, we know a great deal about how their identities have been developing, where their agentic orientations come from, and the implications of these for teachers’ pd. for example, in the case of paris, we could never have understood why a new member of the teaching profession was able to appropriately manage the rigorous demands posed 61profile vol. 16, no. 1, april 2014. issn 1657-0790 (printed) 2256-5760 (online). bogotá, colombia. pages 49-62 english language teachers’ professional development and identities by the icelt and alad courses and to establish longterm professional plans if we had not learned in detail about her academic background and her vision for the future. similarly, if we had not analyzed angeline’s pd path as a teacher, we would have attributed her initial reluctance to participate in some pd activities to the institutional approach to pd adopted by her school authorities. however, after the analysis of her participation in subsequent, perhaps more challenging, pd activities and her description of her feelings of fulfillment after completing the icelt course, we are now in a better position to understand that she was then in the early stages of constructing her academic identity. we therefore contend that any analysis of teachers’ pd must consider the roles of identity and agency. references biesta, g., & tedder, m. 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(1992). what’s worth fighting for in your school? working together for improvement. berkshire, uk: open university press. gee, j. p. (2000-2001). identity as an analytic lens for research in education. review of research in education, 25, 99-125. geertz, c. (1976). from the native’s point of view. on the nature of anthropological understanding. in k. h. basso & h. a. selbi (eds.), meaning in anthropology (pp. 221-237). albuquerque, nm: university of new mexico press. giddens, a. (1991). modernity and self-identity: self and society in the late modern age. stanford, ca: stanford university press. gonzález, a. (2009). on alternative and additional certifications in english language teaching. the case of colombian efl teachers’ professional development. íkala, revista de lenguaje y cultura, 14(22), 183-209. guerrero, c. h. 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(2008). is colombia ready for “bilingualism”? profile issues in teachers’ professional development, 9(1), 181-196. seidman, i. (2006). interviewing as qualitative research: a guide for researchers in education and the social sciences. new york, ny: teachers college press. usma, j. (2009) education and language policy in colombia: exploring processes of inclusion, exclusion and stratification in times of global reform. profile issues in teachers’ professional development, 11(1), 123-141. varghese, m., morgan, b., johnston, b., & johnson, k., (2005). theorizing language teacher identity: three perspectives and beyond. journal of language, identity, and education, 4(1), 21-44. about the authors alberto mora holds a doctoral degree from the university of exeter, united kingdom. he also holds a master’s degree from the university of texas pan-american, usa. he currently works at the universidad autónoma de tamaulipas, mexico. his research interests include language teacher education and critical issues in tesol. paulina trejo holds a doctoral degree from the university of exeter, united kingdom. she currently works at the universidad autónoma de tamaulipas, mexico, where she teaches in the ba in applied linguistics program. ruth roux holds a phd in second language acquisition/instructional technology from the university of south florida, usa. she teaches in the ba in applied linguistics program at universidad autónoma de tamaulipas, mexico. 113profile vol. 13, no. 2, october 2011. issn 1657-0790. bogotá, colombia. pages 113-129 students and teachers’ reasons for using the first language within the foreign language classroom (french and english) in central mexico razones de alumnos y maestros sobre el uso de la primera lengua en el salón de lenguas extranjeras (francés e inglés) en el centro de méxico irasema mora pablo* m. martha lengeling** buenaventura rubio zenil*** troy crawford**** douglas goodwin***** universidad de guanajuato, mexico the present study explores the use of the first language in a context of foreign language teaching. this qualitative research presents the classroom practice and points of view of french and english teachers and students within a public educational institute in central mexico using the techniques of questionnaires and semi-structured interviews. the results show that teachers and the majority of students perceive the use of the first language as positive and part of the teaching and learning process. a small number of students do not like the use of the first language in the classroom and prefer that their teachers use the target language only. key words: first language use, qualitative research, students and teachers’ points of view. la presente investigación explora el uso de la lengua materna en un contexto de enseñanza de lenguas extranjeras. esta investigación cualitativa presenta la práctica docente y los puntos de vista de maestros y alumnos de francés e inglés en el contexto de una universidad pública del centro de méxico, mediante el uso de las técnicas del cuestionario y la entrevista semiestructurada. los resultados muestran que tanto los maestros como la mayoría de los alumnos perciben el uso de la lengua materna como algo positivo en el proceso de enseñanza-aprendizaje. un número reducido de estudiantes rechaza el uso de la lengua materna y prefiere que su clase de lengua extranjera sea dirigida exclusivamente en la lengua meta. palabras clave: investigación cualitativa, puntos de vista de alumnos y maestros, uso de la lengua materna. this article reports on a study financed by the division of social sciences and humanities of the universidad de guanajuato. * e-mail: imora@ugto.mx ** e-mail: lengelin@ugto.mx *** e-mail: rubiob@ugto.mx **** e-mail: crawford@ugto.mx ***** e-mail: goodwin@ugto.mx this article was received on december 2, 2010, and accepted on may 14, 2011. 114 universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras mora pablo, lengeling, rubio zenil, crawford & goodwin introduction historically the use of students’ first language (l1) has been looked upon negatively or even somewhat frowned upon due to communicative language teaching (clt) or even the audiolingual method (stern, 1991). some teachers would demand students not use the l1 and even at times reprimand its use. many times these teachers felt that the ‘english only’ or l2 rule would benefit their students’ learning process (cook, 2001). this is the case being explored here in central mexico. some language methodology books briefly discuss how l1 can be used in the foreign language classroom. these books tend to give friendly advice to the teacher or future teacher as how to handle the use of l1 (fournier, 1990; lado, 1990). this information at times seems to be lacking in theoretical backing and could be questioned as to its reasoning (gower & walters, 1983; lewis & hill, 1993; swain & lapkin, 2000). it is more practical information, perhaps, where teachers are often recommended and prescribed to not use l1 or only use l1 sparingly in their instruction. however, the philosophical reasoning behind these ideas is not explored in depth. one should also consider how the profession and educational institutions have viewed the use of l1 in its history. likewise, it is necessary to consider the extent of the evolution of our understanding of the use of l1 as well as how to use it throughout the years (richards & rodgers, 1986). this article presents the findings of a research project of french and english language teachers and students’ reasons for using the l1 within the context of a public university in central mexico. the goal of this research is to explore these reasons as to whether they use or do not use l1 and perhaps to what extent this has an impact on the teaching and learning processes. we, five researchers working at the same university for a number of years, are aware that l2 is the goal we have as language teachers and for our teachers, the l1 can be one tool in order to reach this goal of l2. research has been carried out to establish what the functions and quantities are for the use of l1 in esl contexts such as immersion programs. yet little research has been carried out concerning how teachers and students perceive the use of l1 and why they include or exclude it. we are looking specifically at an efl context where both participants (teachers and students) in essence share two languages (l1 and l2). it is our belief that it is important to value the use of l1 and understand more fully what teachers and students believe concerning the use of l1. this information will shed light on their points of view regarding its use and the reasons they use or do not use l1 in the teaching/learning processes. our interest in this research in our practice as teachers we are aware that l1 is part of our teaching and how perhaps we should re-examine the use of l1 to fully understand the complexities of its use. we have witnessed pedagogical techniques applied at our institution or used by teachers we have heard about to fine students a small amount of money for using l1. also, a reward system of points or candy has been utilized by teachers for students who only use l2. this may be considered a ‘dominate discourse’ because they force students to use l2 but perhaps more examination of these practices should be done. while this may seem friendly and harmless advice to teachers, what is evident is the hidden agenda behind such practices and this is what we are trying to explore. one may question these practices and wonder if the consequences are fully understood as to what these practices imply. when one thinks of these small gestures, one may see there is a power relationship between the teacher 115 students and teachers’ reasons for using the first language within... profile vol. 13, no. 2, october 2011. issn 1657-0790. bogotá, colombia. pages 113-129 and students where the teacher holds the power. these are only a few examples as to how the use of l1 may be seen within our profession and the reasons that we want to explore this phenomenon in the classroom practice. overview of efl and esl studies of l1 use for the overview, we will begin to look at how l1 has been seen throughout the years. brookslewis (2009) describes how different methods and approaches have dealt with the use of l1 in the classroom. the grammar-translation method was formally developed in the 18th century and its main objective was mainly to study grammar in detail and translate texts from the original into the learner’s language. the teacher did not have to be able to speak the target language in order to teach (lindsay & knight, 2006, p. 15). then the direct method was developed in the early 20th century in order to overcome the problems connected with grammar-translation. it moved away from translation and introduced the idea of lessons being conducted only in the target language (lindsay & knight, 2006, p. 16). from the direct method to the natural and audio-lingual approaches to clt, brooks-lewis pedagogically explains how l1 has been viewed with phrases such as “limited use”, “interference”, “exclusion of the l1” and “l1 is extraneous” (pp. 3-4). auerbach (1993) also provides information on the history of the ‘english-only roots’ (pp. 12-14) of an esl context. these key phrases make us realize the importance of looking at the issue from a deeper perspective. both authors provoke the foreign language teaching profession to rethink the use of l1 regardless of their context. we shall look specifically at the clt because it has influenced our context for a number of years. clt is very widely used in teaching all over the world. it has shifted the focus in language teaching from learning about the language to learning to communicate in the language. however, one of the problems associated with clt is that the emphasis on pair and group work can create problems in some classes. some learners, particularly adults, think it is a waste of time talking to other l2 speakers rather than a native-speaker teacher (lindsay & knight, 2006, p. 23). clt does not make use of l1 but perhaps it is frowned upon and students are encouraged to use only l2 within the classroom. the idea behind this methodology may be that the student should be immersed in the learning of l2 and avoiding l1 is a way to do so. this immersion is thought to be better for the student so the teacher tries to create a classroom environment where l1 is prohibited, hoping the students will use more l2. in retrospect, this type of thinking may carry aspects of control and power on the teacher’s part (brooks-lewis, 2009; hedge & whitney, 1996). the enforced “naturalness” of students speaking english gives the teacher control in many situations where it would otherwise be difficult (lewis, 1993, p. 10). this study was carried out in an efl context which is different from other studies such as those by cook (2001) and storch and wiggleswork (2009), which are based on studies in esl. cook (2001) explores how l1 is used in the classroom yet what is evident is that his study refers to the use of l1 in the esl context. other studies concerning the use of l1 deal with a spanish class in puerto rico (schweers, 1999), french immersion program using task-based learning in toronto (swain & lapkin, 2000), the use of arabic in an elementary english language classroom in the muscat region of oman (al-hinai, 2006), a spanish class at montclair university (edstrom, 2006), a task-based classroom in hong kong (carless, 2008), and with esl university learners in australia (storch & wiggleswork, 2009). from 116 universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras mora pablo, lengeling, rubio zenil, crawford & goodwin the abovementioned studies we can see a variety of contexts and languages such as arabic, french and spanish and also a growing interest in the area of the use of l1. atkinson (1987) makes a point that the use of l1 is somewhat overlooked within the pedagogical and training discussion and suggests a “postcommunicative approach which includes a more positioned and valued use of l1” (p. 241). this shows how the status of l1 use has evolved even more from the beginnings of clt. there has been previous research on how teachers use l1. edstrom (2006) cites the work of polio and duff duff (1994) concerning the use of l1 and provides eight categories: …classroom administrative vocabulary, grammar instruction, classroom management, empathy/solidarity, practicing english, unknown vocabulary/translation, lack of comprehension and an interactive effect in which students’ use of the l1 prompts their instructor to use it. (edstrom, 2006, p. 278) rolin-ianziti and varshney (2008) also mention a number of functions such as imparting knowledge concerning the l2 medium, classroom management, anxiety, and motivation (positive and negative). the reasons that teachers may use l1 vary due to the students’ level of language proficiency and the institutional curriculum. it seems that more l1 is accepted at lower levels of proficiency and gradually the use of l1 is reduced according to the higher level of proficiency. research questions the research questions used in this project were the following: 1. what are the reasons why teachers and students use (or do not use) l1? 2. how do these reasons impact the teachinglearning processes? methodology qualitative research was used within this project in order to explore reasons that teachers and students may or may not use l1 in the foreign language (french and english) classroom and their points of views. qualitative research “seeks to understand the meanings and significance of actions from the perspective of those involved” (richards, 2003, p. 10). in this research we are looking at the points of view of teachers and students concerning the use of l1 and the rationale for its use. denzin and lincoln (1994) define qualitative research as: … [a] multi-method in focus, involving and interpretive, naturalistic approach to its subject matter. this means that qualitative researchers study things in their natural settings, attempting to make sense of or interpret phenomena in terms of the meanings people bring to them. (p. 1) in this study, we wanted to explore the teachers and students reasons for using (or not using) l1 in the classroom. as such we are developing themes for the purpose of analysis under the concept of ‘thick description’. thick description is taken from the philosopher gilbert ryle in his parody of the two boys winking; as such, we adhere to the formal definition by denzin (1994): a thin description simply reports facts, independent of intentions or circumstances. a thick description, in contrast, gives the context of an experience, states the intentions and meanings that organized the experience, and reveals the experience as a process. (p. 505) so, we reveal our experiences, the institution’s as well as the participants’, in showing through the use of thematic thick description this process of the role of l1 emerging and impacting our programs. in this research we explore and survey two social groups (teachers and students) within a shared context in which we, the researchers, also are part of the social group of teachers. our participation 117 students and teachers’ reasons for using the first language within... profile vol. 13, no. 2, october 2011. issn 1657-0790. bogotá, colombia. pages 113-129 includes the ‘insider’ perspective, which also is part of the qualitative paradigm (blaxter, hughes & tight, 2006, p. 65). in the following section we will present the participants, the techniques and the data analysis process. participants of the study the number of participants was eight teachers (three french and five english) and one hundred and twelve university students (50 french and 68 english) between the ages of 18 and 26 years old. the majority of them was pursuing bachelor degrees in a variety of degree programs of the university and were studying in a range of language levels (beginners, intermediate and advanced). concerning the teach ers, two of the french teachers were native speakers and one was a non-native mexican french teacher with a range of five to fifteen years of experience. the two native speaker french teachers had taught all their teaching years at the university level while the non-native teacher had taught at an international french school and at the university. regarding the five english teachers, there were two native speaker teachers (twenty years and five years of teaching experience) and three non-native english teachers (two mexicans and one french canadian) with a range of five, twenty and twenty two years of teaching at university and primary school levels. all of the teachers taught a variety of levels: beginner, intermediate and advanced. the selection of participants was based upon providing a range of teachers and students. all the participants were explained the research objective and given the opportunity to participate or decline. consent forms were given to the participants who accepted and pseudonyms were used. techniques for data collection the two techniques used to collect the data were interviews and questionnaires. interviews were chosen as a way to create a space for conversation between the english or french teacher. specifically, we used semi-structured interviews with a number of questions (see appendix a) to guide the dialogue between the interviewer and teacher participant, yet we also tried to let the interview evolve depending on the interviewee’s responses. regarding the student questionnaires, they were used as an efficient way to obtain data from a large number of students to better represent their positions (see appendix b). we asked permission to give out the student questionnaires near the end of the class while the interviews were held individually in the researchers’ offices. concerning the use of language, the questionnaires were given in the students’ native language –spanish– while the interviews were carried out in french, english or spanish depending on the teachers’ preference of language. for this article the data is presented in english and translation was carried out by the researchers and four ba in tesol students at our university who received a small scholarship from the university. both the interviews and questionnaires were collected during the school year 2009. the following is the process we followed for the data analysis: 1. the data were collected from the students and teachers and coded. the coding of these collection techniques used “i” for teacher interviews and “q” for student questionnaire and also a number to represent the individual. 2. interviews were transcribed and translated. 3. all of the five researchers as a group read the data and discussed the data for general interpretation. 4. the data were divided into five groups and each researcher was given two groups of data to analyze individually. 118 universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras mora pablo, lengeling, rubio zenil, crawford & goodwin 5. two researchers of the same data groups shared their analyses and came up with emerging themes. 6. all of the researchers then discussed and identified the final emerging themes. based upon the above description of the data analysis, we shall now present the emerging themes. main findings the findings shall be divided into two sections: the teachers’ points of view and the students’ perspectives. these two perspectives are aimed at providing an in-depth analysis of the phenomenon of l1 use in the language classroom by the two major groups of participants. it should be mentioned that the results for french and english were very similar and did not seem to affect the results. in essence, the data of both groups referred to the teachinglearning process. table 1 presents the findings that will be discussed. the teachers concerning the teachers, six primary themes emerged from the interview data and provided insight as to how the teachers used l1 in the language classroom. it is worth mentioning that the data collected in this study suggest that all of the participating teachers accept that they use and allow the use of l1 in their classrooms to different degrees, depending upon various factors. the following are their reasons that teachers use l1. through these themes we will also show the classroom practices and points of view of the teachers. l1 as a pedagogical device for clarification teachers indicate that they employ l1 as a teaching tool for explaining aspects within the classroom such as instructions, grammar, unfamiliar vocabulary and expressions. according to the data, spanish is used in the classroom in order to save time and avoid lengthy explanations in the target language and to avoid ‘interrupting’ the pace of their lessons. for me it’s much easier to return to spanish. students were asking me about the ‘s’ ending…and i explain it in spanish because it would take me hours to explain it in english! (i1) [l1 is used for]…certain words or expressions in order to keep the moment going of an activity…it really depends on the circumstances of when i use it [l1]. (i2) i think it is essential in some cases to explain some things in spanish, because even if you give examples or do pantomime there are certain grammatical points that are very difficult for students to understand in spite of similarities between the languages. (i3) the above quotes illustrate how in primarily teacher-initiated exchanges the teacher has de cided to use l1 in order for the learners to better understand specific aspects of a class. these table 1. teachers’ points of view and students’ perspectives the teachers l1 as a pedagogical device for clarification l1 to establish rapport course level as a factor in determining the degree of l1 use excess use of l1 is negative implicit policy regarding l1 use in an educational context the students learning aid for clarifying or explaining instructions, grammar and vocabulary l1 use as socialization tool the negative aspect of using l1 119 students and teachers’ reasons for using the first language within... profile vol. 13, no. 2, october 2011. issn 1657-0790. bogotá, colombia. pages 113-129 quotes also show how teachers are conscious of their decision making. on the other hand, some teachers incorporate l1 in their classes in order to provide a comparative analysis of the languages, as the following excerpt shows: …comparisons between french and spanish are quite close. i have them reflect, and if i use spanish, i tell them to look at the phrase and think about how it would be said in spanish. and from there we proceed and they notice how to say it in french. what matters is that they perceive the similarities between the two languages. (i4) the above excerpt suggests that the teacher does not necessarily initiate communication with l1, but rather elicits l1 from the students in order for them to use it as a means of comparing aspects of both languages so they may use their own language for their learning experience and cognitive skills to help in the acquisition of the target language. the relevance of this quote rests in the fact that this particular use of l1 encourages the active participation of the students, whereas the teacher takes on the role of facilitator. it also represents a use of contrastive analysis which is used as a noticing activity of notification. l1 to establish rapport a number of data showed that teachers use l1, or they believe it is necessary to speak in spanish, in order to establish a connection with students at the outset. this rapport is also a means for establishing empathy with their students, especially since some of the native speaker teachers who participated in this study mentioned having had the same experiences when they learned spanish. the following data exemplifies this: kind of bond, make a connection with their students…just like chit chat with them…like about the weekend or something... i want to ask them about what they did on a holiday weekend and i know they can’t tell me in english, i’d ask and let them tell me in spanish like before the class or something. (i3) there are times when i tell them jokes out of the blue or when class is over and i tell them “class is over and i am going to tell a joke” and i switch to spanish…there are silly jokes but most of them laugh and that is how i gain their trust. (i5) both teachers coincide in that they use l1 to form a connection with students through the use of chitchat or jokes and they make a choice of lan guage to establish rapport in their classrooms. in doing so they attempt to lower the students’ affective filters to create a learning environment where they feel more at ease and have more confidence speaking and participating in class. also worth noting is that both teachers indicate the use of l1 for establishing rapport usually at the beginning or end of a class, which suggests that they perceive the use of l1 as a tool that can be used for different purposes at different times in the foreign language classroom. as a side issue related to rapport there are data to suggest that teachers use l1 to show empathy. both empathy and rapport have a connection because they look on the side of the students and a way to promote a better teachinglearning environment. i explain and i say to students that i know it’s not easy, i experienced the same as they did. i always speak of my experience because english wasn’t easy for me, no it wasn’t, i didn’t like it. (i1) by sharing this non-native teacher’s personal experiences in learning the target language, she demonstrates to her students that she knows what challenges and obstacles they are facing in their learning process. this knowledge is not only beneficial in that the teacher is more sensitive to the students’ learning needs and struggles, but it is also a positive factor for students to feel more comfortable and motivated in their language class. this might lead to an environment that is more 120 universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras mora pablo, lengeling, rubio zenil, crawford & goodwin conducive to successful learning. this teacher creates her rapport with her empathy of what students are facing. course level as a factor in determining the degree of l1 use while providing reasons as to why teachers used l1, an aspect that came up repeatedly was the level of l2. the students’ language level seems to be important in order to determine the amount of l1 in class. teachers agreed that the frequency of l1 use varied from one level to another, indicating that at lower (beginning) levels there was more acceptance of l1 in the classroom, while at higher levels they tended to prefer less use of l1. well, it all depends on the level…for example, with beginners it is different, with beginners when we begin lessons, we speak spanish to explain how the class will function, but little by little i introduce french. (i4) …by the third semester i used very little spanish... really, it was only so they could understand some tenses and they could know the meaning in spanish of these tenses in french. but in the advanced levels, basically no [spanish]…because we have synonyms in both languages. but with the beginners if you do not use their language, they get blocked, you begin to notice they are blocked and they don’t improve. (i2) these two excerpts indicate that the teachers are aware of the language level of their students and they have assessed how much and what type of l1 use should be permitted in their classes based on their students’ language level. by consciously distinguishing between levels and the degree of l1 use for each, the teachers demonstrate how they are inserting their beliefs and criterion into the learning environment and thus keeping classroom decisions to themselves. there is a sense of teachercenteredness revealed here in that the students appear to have little or no control over their classroom activity, specifically in the area of l1 use yet it represents teachers who are making decisions. excess use of l1 is negative having looked at reasons for using l1, we are now going to look at reasons not to use l1. we are going to show two examples of this: when i hear students are communicating in spanish at a table, i point it out to them and criticize them for it. i don’t tolerate it, especially when they are working in groups. with me it might work, or i might accept it, but in groups it is more interesting if they have no interaction in spanish, not even for defining terms. i think it could be more harmful. during the group work i monitor all of the tables saying: “oh! i can’t hear the sweet sound of french here. what’s going on? (i6) in the above excerpt the teacher does not accept the use of l1 in groups, perhaps because he sees this as the only opportunity for students to speak in french. even though he uses terms such as “don’t tolerate” and “more harmful”, in the end he thinks it is in the best interest of his students not to use l1. he also believes that the use of french is necessary for them to learn. another example of excessive use of l1 is presented by a teacher who believes that his use of l1 will benefit his students’ learning, yet later he reflects on this negative overuse: i just started teaching beginning levels and i found that i dug myself into a hole very quickly with the use of spanish. they were a beginning level and instead of starting to explain everything in slow or simple terms, what i did automatically was assume that they were a beginning level. you know it’s going to make it easier and the activity will be more successful if i start by giving the instructions in spanish but the problem is now that with these groups i’ve been with several weeks they understand a lot of the expressions the instructions and everything but because i’ve depended on using spanish so much that they expect it of me… (t3) 121 students and teachers’ reasons for using the first language within... profile vol. 13, no. 2, october 2011. issn 1657-0790. bogotá, colombia. pages 113-129 the teacher explains how he has used l1 and his overuse seems to have become a vicious circle and how the students expect it in the classroom. the students now seem to depend on this continued use of l1 which creates a problem and the use continues to occur in the classroom. he now realizes his problem which was based upon his own assumptions. students may depend on the native language if it is used a lot. again, there is no reference to learning theories or classroom techniques that are valid in both senses. here the only reference is that the teacher thought it would “make it easier” using spanish. but we do not know if the teacher is thinking of himself or his students. what is interesting is that the teacher is reflecting on his teacher development, which shows a sensitive, astute and concerned teacher. if we consider the two previous quotes, we find two underlying ideas that the use of l2 is ‘more interesting’ and the use of l1 “is easier”. in both cases the issue is based upon the teacher’s beliefs or assumptions. the conclusion of l1 or l2 is simply a personal teacher decision according to what is happening in the classroom. learning does not seem to be an explicit issue. another excerpt exemplifies this point as follows: …now i have intermediate levels and advanced levels, with them i only use it [l1] when we are looking for the meaning of a word that is in a text and it is difficult for me to explain it with words or i don’t feel like explaining it or drawing or mimicking depending on the word and if i need to go faster well i say the word in spanish. (t4) in the above quote, we can see that the teacher is making a decision about the use of l1 depending on the level. if it is a higher level, the teacher uses l1 to save time. the level of the language affects the teacher’s decision in whether or not to use l1 and the amount of use. implicit policy regarding l1 use in the educational context in the following examples we can see how teachers use l1 based upon an implicit policy of the educational institution. these policies may be influential for the teachers’ practice and may continue for many years. it is often the case that a teacher is told not to use l1 and this practice continues even when the prescribed methodology is not longer in use in the institution in the educational context. what i feel is that because of the requirements in the program, up until now we have always been told not to speak spanish, don’t speak spanish, don’t speak spanish in the classroom as such as french teachers we have always been restricted from using spanish in the classroom, so we were always trying to use as little spanish as possible in the classroom. (i3) well, first of all it [use of l1] is a problem. the written and unwritten law is: not a word of any language that is not french. (i6) the use of spanish, of anything written, nothing i’m familiar with but definitely unwritten, just to keep it limited, just to keep it limited but in terms of a policy that’s not really much of a policy. there’s nothing that says well that you should use it here or it could be helpful here. its more no restriction, it should be limited to this…ok they should be using a minimum of their native language, you should be asking them to use english the majority of time instead of saying sort of having consent about you know when it is appropriate...(i2) the teachers are not clear about an indication of a written document or an authority that has made such a statement concerning the use of spanish, but it is clearly a dominant discourse of the school. as researchers and teachers who have worked at this institute for many years, we know there is not a document that prohibits the use of l1. another teacher makes mention of an unwritten norm “but definitely unwritten”. finally, there is perhaps a statement of policy which is implied as: 122 universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras mora pablo, lengeling, rubio zenil, crawford & goodwin the written and unwritten law is not a word of any language that is not french. in the above quotes one may think that these implicit policies could be seen as a dominant discourse of a type of methodology prescribed for the teachers. whether a teacher decides to take on this dominant discourse or reject it could be a problem for the teacher or the institution in the actual teaching practice (hedge & whitney, 1996; howarth, 2000; mills, 1997). dominant discourse may continue for many years until it becomes part of the teachers’ belief system. by creating a dominant discourse that ‘no spanish’ should be used in the classroom, the students are being ‘socially depowered’ in the sense that they are restricted as to what extent they can express themselves as individuals (fairclough, 1989; 1992). this means that the teachers’ classroom practice has a direct relationship on the use of their classroom language and in turn this affects how the students use or do not use their l1. in a sense, the students may be seen as controlled concerning their use of l1. fairclough (1989, 1992) makes reference to the language (in this case the classroom language) being a part of a social and linguistic phenomena. since the language of the classroom has been predetermined, perhaps this forces the student to modify their behavior and take on a new role in a different language and perhaps even a different identity. on the other side of the power balance the teacher is given a powerful tool that can be employed in many ways. since the teacher is the only person who can fully use the language of the classroom, the teacher is in a position to exercise power. this could be a potentially dangerous situation if the language is used for purposes other than learning. unfortunately, the views expressed plac ing a negative view on the excessive use of l1 implies that the dominant discourse may be employed more as a tool of control rather than to make learning more salient. the students are being socially forced to cross a linguistic barrier when they enter the classroom. as they cross the barrier they are restricted to the use of tools. but, we do recognize that students naturally use l1 mainly at beginning level. the students the students’ perspectives are presented based on three primary themes which emerged from the data. this data provided insight as to how the participating students viewed the use of l1. learning aid for clarifying or explaining instructions, grammar and vocabulary this data seemed to be similar to that of the teachers. students, for the most part, indicate the reason why they use l1 as a learning strategy during their classes. the first example shows how the use of l1 is employed when a student does not understand a structure in the classroom. in this example we can see that if the learner does not have enough vocabulary, she or he naturally switches to spanish. i use spanish when i do not understand a phrase or structure to learn more. when i have enough vocabulary i do not speak spanish. (q3) well, we need it (l1) a lot, because there are phrases and sentences that we cannot easily understand. we need to speak a minimum of spanish to advance in our target language. i use it (l1) when i have a vocabulary doubt and it is necessary when the teacher is explaining grammar because it is easier to understand. (q20) when i use it, it is because i cannot find the right word in the foreign language…that i get the impression i am wasting time. (q10) these students mention how l1 is useful when trying to understand unfamiliar vocabulary, grammar or language. the teachers describe basically the same type of use for the same purposes. this 123 students and teachers’ reasons for using the first language within... profile vol. 13, no. 2, october 2011. issn 1657-0790. bogotá, colombia. pages 113-129 particular use of l1 appears to occur spontaneously during the lessons, and there is no evidence to suggest that the practice is discouraged by teachers. likewise, most students in this study seem to benefit from the use of l1, with a few exceptions which shall be discussed later in this section. the last quote shows how the learner uses l1 for vocabulary-related purposes, but adds the notion of ‘wasting time’, which suggests a concern on behalf of the student for better pacing in the classroom. also, the students and teachers alike place importance on the practicality and flow of their classroom activities. they seek to take advantage and optimize every minute of their one-hour class, trying to avoid unnecessary interruptions or delays with drawn out target language explanations or mimic. the following data excerpt reveals the use of l1 as a learning aid. when i do not understand it is comforting, because otherwise i get stressed trying to understand what is being said and i don’t get it. (q43) this student describes l1 as a tool that helps with understanding language components but more importantly as a means to reduce anxiety. however, these data also reveal the student’s point of view of l1 as a means of reducing anxiety and stress which result from not understanding aspects of the target language during class. l1 use as socialization tool in the questionnaires the majority of the students commented that the reason they use l1 is because it is a way to socialize with their classmates during the lesson. in the three excerpts below one can see how l1 is used to interact: i try not to use it but it is mostly to talk with my classmates about the day. (q27) when i talk with my classmates about other things i mostly use spanish. most of the time it is used when the team finishes and other have not, you start speaking in spanish. (q58) i use spanish in most of the class, talking with my classmates. (q17) in the quotes, “talk with my classmates” is repeated three times and this represents a natural use of l1 with students’ classmates in their native language, spanish. this use of l1 when they are socializing in the classroom seems to be a common practice. this type of talk refers to the normal chit chat that one uses which is not related to language learning. the negative aspect of using l1 within the data analysis there were a few excerpts concerning the negative aspect of the use of l1. in the four examples that follow we see an array of opinions concerning this: i think it [use of l1] is illogical and clearly it is wrong because if we are in a foreign language class the last thing we want to do is speak spanish. we need to learn the other language. (q33) when the teacher uses spanish, well, i think that i do not learn much or that class was useless. (q42) well, it bothers me because you are learning a language by practicing it and if you don’t practice, you won’t learn it. (q19) i think that it is important to not use spanish in class, because it is a way to become familiar with the language that way our ears can pick it up and our learning will be enhanced. (q11) in the first quote, the student makes a strong judgment on the use of l1 with phrases such as ‘illogical’, ‘clearly it is wrong’ and ‘the last thing we want to is speak spanish’. in the second excerpt the student uses the word ‘useless’, which might refer to an ineffective class. this student has a preference for a teacher who carries out the class in the target language. in the third excerpt the student makes a simple correlation between the use of l2 and learning l2: both go together. one could question this correlation. the last excerpt shows that the use of l2 should be employed in 124 universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras mora pablo, lengeling, rubio zenil, crawford & goodwin order to optimize the learning process so that the student is able to listen to the language. this seems to represents the probability that they may not have a lot of opportunities outside the efl classroom. this is important in an efl context when the target language is not used as much as in an esl context. when considering the students’ points of view in relation to the use of l1, a very different picture emerges. unlike the teachers that use l1 as a specific learning device or as an aid to bond with, the students use l1 for different reasons. they are summarized in the following three basic points: 1. l1 is a specific learning tool exclusively for clarification of meaning. 2. there is limited input of l2 in an efl context compared to an esl context. 3. l1 is used for non-class related issues among the students. this puts the l1 issue into a different realm. here the students are taking agency for using their native language and determining its use. at the same time it creates an indirect conflict with the issues voiced by the teachers in the study. the majority of the teachers placed l1 in the area of a teaching tool for a variety of reasons, whereas the students consider it a learning tool, but only in one specific context, which is the classroom. the students are using l1 mainly for clarification so that they may continue learning, whereas the teachers are saying it can be a learning tool for different functions or strategies. another interesting aspect that arises is the issue of rapport. the teachers indicated that l1 was good for establishing a relationship; the students in the study indicate that spanish is used for only their classmates and for social aspects. another aspect that is compelling is the students’ idea that l1 is exclusively for outside the class conversation. this is interesting in that it falls in line with the unwritten rule of ‘no spanish’ in the classroom. it is debatable as to whether this is a product of the students’ development or if it is the assimilation of a wider institutional discourse or from their teachers. the comment made expressing that it is illogical to use spanish in the classroom could imply that this is more the result of student discourse as opposed to an institutional one. conclusions and implications the reasons both french and english students and teachers in central mexico use l1 in the teaching and learning processes were similar to the reasons that l1 was used in other studies such as atkinson (1987), cook (2001), and harbord (1992). these uses are of positive value. having finished with this research and reflecting upon our own teachers and students, we concur with martin’s (2001) call for ‘a more comprehensive and flexible view of the role and possible use of l1’ (p. 159) for practice and cook’s (2001) opinion that l1 should be viewed in a more positive light. in addition, edstrom (2006) asks teachers to “reevaluate their moral obligations to their students and their objectives for the language learning process” (p. 289). the reasons teachers and students use l1 concerning this research are multifaceted decisions that students make while being immersed in the teaching-language processes of the target languages. both use l1 for reasons based upon their beliefs, assumptions, needs and desires. concerning practice, teachers in this study made decisions to use or not use l1 and these decisions were based upon their beliefs as teachers -what they felt was appropriate for the teaching and learning processes. these decisions were made at different parts of their teaching: before the teaching act, during the teaching act and even after something had happened in the class. this shows that teachers are responding to the teaching and 125 students and teachers’ reasons for using the first language within... profile vol. 13, no. 2, october 2011. issn 1657-0790. bogotá, colombia. pages 113-129 learning processes and analyzing the use toward a variety of situations in the processes. this information is of interest for current and future teachers of any language in either a target language or foreign language context because it shows the decision-making process of teachers and students and their functions. knowing about this decision-making process has teacher training implications of consciousness-raising in order to promote a positive value toward the use of l1 as mentioned by cook (2001). this consciousnessraising will allow teachers to question and make their own decisions as to how to use l1 in their classrooms. it will also help teachers understand that students’ use of l1 is a natural part of the learning process. this reflective thinking will hopefully permit teachers to respond to their students’ needs, to be more flexible and to explore their own belief systems. more research in other efl contexts could be carried out to see if the results are similar or even if there are other uses of l1. a comparison between efl and esl contexts could also be another aspect to research. efl contexts usually have limited input of language while esl contexts provide more input. in addition, efl contexts for the most part are homogenous groups with one common language such as spanish in this mexican context. in esl contexts teachers may have students who come from a variety of places; hence, their native languages are different. in both the efl and esl contexts the use of l1 is probably approached differently by the teachers and the students. another option for further research could deal with the quantity of the use of l1 in regard to students’ level of language proficiency, for example. do teachers use more l1 in beginning levels compared to intermediate or advanced levels? what was evident concerning this study was that the use of l1 has a facilitating and natural role within the learning process. it also provides a certain level of safe space for understanding the learning process and empathizing with students’ learning needs. however, one must realize that the use of l1 is not a simple formula but a complex decision-making process. both teachers and students use l1 while in the classroom. some students like using l1 and others do not. those that did not like to use l1 had their reasons for only wanting to use the target language. these are some of the complexities. there is not a perfectly attainable balance between when and how to use l1; rather, there is a dynamic decision-making process that occurs within the two groups of participants: the teachers and the students. participants are continually weighing their individual beliefs and learning objectives against those of the other participants and with the curriculum, and the result is a decision to use or not to use l1 and, if so, to what extent. what is evident upon completing this research is that l1 does in fact play an important role in the teaching-learning processes in foreign language contexts such as this one. references al-hinai, m. k. (2006). the use of the l1 in the elementary english language classroom. in s. borg (ed.), class­ room research in english language teaching in oman. muscat: ministry of education, sultanate of oman. retrieved from: http://www.moe.gov.om/portal/sitebuilder/sites/eps/english/moe/baproject/ch2.pdf atkinson, d. (1987). the mother tongue in the classroom: a neglected resource? elt journal, 41(4), 241-247. auerbach, e. r. (1993). reexamining english only in the esl classroom. tesol quarterly, 27(1), 9-32. blaxter, l, hughes, c., & tight, m. (2006). how to research. maidenhead, uk: open university press. brooks-lewis, k. a. (2009). adult learners’ perceptions of the incorporation of their l1 in foreign language 126 universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras mora pablo, lengeling, rubio zenil, crawford & goodwin teaching and learning. applied linguistics, 30(2), 216-235. carless, d. (2008). student use of the mother tongue in the task-based classroom. elt journal, 62(4), 331-338. cook, v. (2001). using the first language in the classroom. the canadian modern language review, 57(3), 402-423. denzin, n. k. (1994). the art and politics of interpretation. in n. k. denzin & y. s. lincoln (eds.), handbook of quali­ tative research (pp. 500-515). thousand oaks, ca: sage. denzin, n. k., & lincoln, y. s. (1994). handbook of qualita­ tive research. thousand oaks, ca: sage. denzin, n. k., & lincoln, y. s. (2000). handbook of quali­ tative research (2nd ed.). thousand oaks, ca: sage. edstrom, a. (2006). l1 use in the l2 classroom: one teacher’s self-evaluation. the canadian modern language review, 63(2), 275-292. fairclough, n. (1989). language and power. harlow: longman. fairclough, n. (1992). discourse and social change. cambridge: polity press. fournier, c. (1990). open for business. boston: heinle & heinle publishers. gower, r., & walters, s. (1983). a teaching practice hand­ book. london: heinemann. harbord, j. (1992). the use of the mother tongue in the classroom. elt journal, 46(4), 350-355. hedge, t., & whitney, t. (1996). power, pedagogy and prac­ tice. oxford: oxford university press. howarth, d. (2000). discourse. buckingham: open university press. lado, r. (1990). lado english series three. new jersey, nj: prentice hall regents. lewis, m. (1993). the lexical approach. the state of elt and a way forward. london: language teaching publications. lewis, m., & hill, j. (1993). source book for teaching english as a foreign language. london: macmillan heinemann. lindsay, c. & knight, p. (2006). learning and teaching eng­ lish: a course for teachers. oxford: oxford university press. martin, j. m. (2001). nuevas tendencias en el uso de la l1. elia, 2, 159-169. mills, s. (1997). discourse. london: routledge. richards, k. (2003). qualitative inquiry in tesol. new york, ny: palgrave. richards, j. c., & rodgers, s. (1986). approaches and methods in language teaching: a description and anal­ ysis. cambridge: cambridge university press. rolin-ianziti, j., & varshney, r. (2008). students’ views regarding the use of the first language: an exploratory study in a tertiary context maximizing target language use. the canadian modern language review, 65(2), 249-273. scheweers, w. (1999). using l1 in the l2 classroom. english teaching forum, 27(2), 6-13. storch, n., & wigglesworth, g. (2009). is there a role for the use of the l1 in an l2 setting? tesol quarterly, 32(4), 760-770. stern, h. h. (1991). fundamental concepts of language teaching. oxford: oxford university press. swain, m., & lapkin, s. (2000). task-based second language learning: the uses of the first language. lan­ guage teaching research, 4(3), 251-274. about the authors irasema mora pablo holds an ma in applied linguistics from the universidad de las américaspuebla and is currently a phd student in the applied linguistics program at university of kent, england. she works in the language department, university of guanajuato. her areas of interest are bilingualism, second language acquisition and sociolinguistics. 127 students and teachers’ reasons for using the first language within... profile vol. 13, no. 2, october 2011. issn 1657-0790. bogotá, colombia. pages 113-129 m. martha lengeling, former director of the language department, has worked at the university of guanajuato for 29 years and holds an ma in tesol from west virginia university and a phd in language studies from the university of kent. her areas of research are teacher training and teacher identity formation. buenaventura rubio zenil works at university of guanajuato. she holds an ma in psychology of the language from the university in poitiers, france, and is currently pursuing her doctoral studies in language sciences at the university of paris 1sorbonne nouvelle. her research areas are language learning autonomy and conversation analysis. troy crawford holds a ba from southern oregon university, an mba from university of guanajuato, an ma tesol from the university of london, and a phd from the university of kent, canterbury. he has worked in esl for 28 years in mexico focusing his research on second language writing. he has presented his work in france, england, the united states and mexico. douglas goodwin holds a phd in language studies from the university of kent, and an med from the university of manchester. he has over 18 years of elt experience and his research interests include film in elt, intercultural communication, and educational technology. he is currently the universidad de guanajuato language department chair. acknowledgements gratitude goes to the teachers and students who participated in this research and the financial support received to carry out this project. without both, we would not be able to understand the complexities of l1 use within the foreign language classroom. this study was financed by the division of social sciences and humanities of the university of guanajuato and carried out with members of a research area of applied linguistics of the same university. 128 universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras mora pablo, lengeling, rubio zenil, crawford & goodwin appendix a: questions used in the semi-structured interview for teachers 1. what do you think of the use of spanish in your foreign language class? 2. why (or why not) do you use spanish in your classes? explain. 3. if you use spanish, when do you use it? under what circumstances? are there any particular activities or moments in which you consider the use of spanish necessary? 4. do you think there are any advantages or disadvantages when using spanish for teaching or learning? 129 students and teachers’ reasons for using the first language within... profile vol. 13, no. 2, october 2011. issn 1657-0790. bogotá, colombia. pages 113-129 appendix b: questionnaire for students 1. what do you think of the use of spanish in your foreign language class? 2. do you like it when your teacher uses spanish? why or why not? 3. how do you feel when your teacher uses spanish in the class? 4. how much do you use spanish in the classroom without the teacher promoting its use? when do you use it? do you have a particular purpose? 35profile vol. 17, no. 1, january-june 2015. issn 1657-0790 (printed) 2256-5760 (online). bogotá, colombia. pages 35-53 http://dx.doi.org/10.15446/profile.v17n1.41821 a comparison of chinese and colombian university efl students regarding learner autonomy comparación entre estudiantes universitarios de inglés chinos y colombianos con respecto a su autonomía como aprendices ximena paola buendía arias*1 universidad surcolombiana, neiva, colombia this research seeks to gain deeper understanding of learner autonomy in english as a foreign language students from different cultures through the identification and analysis of similarities and differences between chinese and colombian students from two public universities: tianjin foreign studies university in china and universidad surcolombiana in colombia. data were gathered using questionnaires and interviews for comparative research. the participants’ responses were analyzed using quantitative methods such as independent samples t-test and qualitative methods such as data codification and triangulation were also used. the results indicate a significant difference between the two groups of learners regarding their autonomy. complementarily, their autonomy-enhancement difficulties were diagnosed. key words: comparative research, learner autonomy, similarities and differences. esta investigación busca obtener un mejor entendimiento acerca de la autonomía de los aprendices de inglés como lengua extranjera provenientes de diferentes culturas, mediante la identificación y el análisis de las diferencias y similitudes entre estudiantes chinos y colombianos pertenecientes a dos universidades públicas: universidad de estudios extranjeros de tianjin en china y la universidad surcolombiana de colombia. los datos se recolectaron usando cuestionarios y entrevistas para una investigación de tipo comparativo. las respuestas de los participantes se analizaron utilizando métodos cuantitativos tales como prueba t para muestras independientes; al igual que métodos cualitativos como codificación y triangulación. los resultados indicaron que hay una diferencia significativa en la autonomía de los dos grupos de aprendices. además, se diagnosticaron las dificultades que ellos presentan en el mejoramiento de su autonomía. palabras clave: autonomía del aprendiz, diferencias y similitudes, investigación comparativa. * e-mail: xpbuendia@usco.edu.co how to cite this article (apa, 6th ed.): buendía arias, x. p. (2015). a comparison of chinese and colombian university efl students regarding learner autonomy. profile issues in teachers’ professional development, 17(1), 35-53. http://dx.doi.org/10.15446/profile.v17n1.41821. this article was received on january 29, 2014, and accepted on october 17, 2014. this is an open access article distributed under the terms of the creative commons license attribution-noncommercial-noderivatives 4.0 international license. consultation is possible at http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/. http://dx.doi.org/10.15446/profile.v17n1.41821 http://dx.doi.org/10.15446/profile.v17n1.41821 http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/ universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras36 buendía arias introduction as a postgraduate student in china, i once read a speech given by woodrow wilson, princeton university’s 13th president, who said eloquently, “what we should seek to impart in our colleges is not so much learning itself as the spirit of learning” (1909, p. d18). although these wise words have taken on more life with the rise of learner autonomy in the educational world, both eastern and western educational systems are still struggling with lifelong learning enhancement. although different cultures are using their own ways and methods to promote learner autonomy in their classrooms, the results seem to be the same in all contexts: students lacking learner autonomy and having low english proficiency. several comparisons between eastern and western approaches to the d e v e l opm e nt of aut on omy h av e b e e n m a d e , and chinese students have been branded as not autonomous learners (honggang, 2008; spratt, humphreys, & chan, 2002; xu, 2009) and as at a disadvantage when compared with european students. conversely, western students have been found to have greater levels of autonomy (littlewood, 2001; zhang & li, 2004). however, students do not automatically become autonomous learners simply by being exposed to western education methods. on the contrary, from my experience as a teacher and student, colombian learners also face many difficulties when trying to develop their autonomy (ariza, 2008; cabrales, cáceres, & feria, 2010; fandiño, 2008). thanasoulas (2000) said that “learner autonomy mainly consists of becoming aware of and identifying one’s strategies, needs, and goals as a le ar ner and having t he opportunity to reconsider and refashion approaches and procedures for optimal learning” (p. 40). given this, c olombian and chinese students should first get to know themselves better as autonomous language learners and then, by becoming aware of their weaknesses and strengths, they will be better equipped to continue developing their autonomy. consequently, taking into account that crosscultural comparisons have been proved to be useful when gaining insights into how students from different cultures address the same issues, the main purpose of this study was to investigate the similarities and differences between chinese and colombian university students of english as a foreign language (efl). the hope is that the findings will encourage teachers and students to start working together on aspects that are hindering the development of learner autonomy in these countries. literature review i will explore here the issues regarding the panorama of learner autonomy in colombia and china, as well as some crucial aspects concerning this research. although there is no single or universal concept of learner autonomy, benson (2001) complemented holec (1985) and little’s (1991) considerations by defining autonomy as “the capacity to take control of one’s own learning in every potential aspect of control over learning management, cognitive processes, and learning content” (p. 45). benson reminds us that since these three levels do not represent a specific method of learning, students can display them in different ways and develop their autonomy in different degrees according to their unique characteristics as learners and their learning situation. likewise, the idea of power distribution promoted by the third level, that is, control over learning content, can be, to some extent, supported by other researchers’ viewpoints that highlight the value of negotiation with the teacher and of confrontation with the authority. for example, la ganza (2004) comments that the learner is not only expected to hold back from the teacher’s influence, but s/he also must develop a capacity for persistence in using the teacher as a resource. 37profile vol. 17, no. 1, january-june 2015. issn 1657-0790 (printed) 2256-5760 (online). bogotá, colombia. pages 35-53 a comparison of chinese and colombian university efl students regarding learner autonomy previous research findings into autonomous learning have been consistent with the conclusion that colombian students are still very dependent on their teacher (ariza & viáfara, 2009; cabrales et al., 2010; luna & sánchez, 2005). similarly, spratt et al. (2002) found that chinese students usually keep a clear view of the teacher’s duty and a less clear one of their own. zhang (2004) also identified reflection and self-assessment as the two major difficulties that chinese students encounter when developing their learner autonomy. he attributed this phenomenon to students’ excessive dependence on their teacher’s evaluation. other views concerning the nature of learner autonomy in language learning emphasize the importance of providing learners with the strategies and techniques for learning a language (cohen, weaver, & li, 1995; oxford, 1990). others suggest that it is about providing learners with the conditions and opportunities for exercising a degree of independence, for example, activities in class in which learners make choices or decisions about their learning, or participate in out-of-class learner directed project work. finally, macaro (2008) mentions the autonomy of choice, which involves learners taking control of the goal and the purpose of their learning. locke (1996) clarifies that for those “goals to be effective motivators for action, they must be: (a) established through the free choice and commitment of the individual, (b) specific and explicit, and (c) appear attainable” (p. 56). macaro claims that vague goals, or specific but easy goals, do not lead to higher achievement. xu’s survey study (2009) and honggang (2008) found that chinese learners are usually unable to have any definite objectives and also have instrumental goals that, in their absence, may cause learners to perform less autonomously than before. bearing the previous considerations in mind, individual differences were also considered a crucial factor when trying to compare language learners’ autonomy and get a deeper understanding with regard to how, how much, and how fast they learn the target language. for the purposes of this research, the following factors were considered relevant enough to be described here: learners’ beliefs about language learning, personality factors, learning styles, and learning strategies. the variety of beliefs that language learners bring to the classroom is decisive because this is what determines their approach to learning and the learning strategies they choose to use. besides, wenden (1986) states that “different views about language learning result in different kinds of success” (p. 5). additionally, success or failure in language learning is undoubtedly determined by personality factors. there are different aspects in a learner’s personality worthy of being mentioned here e.g., “extroversion/introversion, risk-taking, tolerance of ambiguity, empathy, self-esteem, and inhibition” (ellis, 1997, p. 518). scharle and szabó (2008) clarify that “personality traits, preferred learning styles, and cultural attitudes set limits to the development of autonomy” (p. 4). for example, if the communities students come from have a strong aversion to individualism and a preference for collectivism, students might be unwilling to take personal initiative. some students may find it difficult to handle uncertainty, and do everything they can to avoid it, so they may find it alarming to work without the constant supervision of the teacher. (scharle & szabó, 2008, p. 5) some other students may perceive the teacher as a figure of authority who is always there to tell them what to do. simultaneously, learning styles together with learning strategies are significant elements regarding autonomy-enhancement. ellis (1997) defines learning styles as the characteristic ways in which individuals orientate to problem-solving. benson, chik, and lim universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras38 buendía arias (2003) assert that “the asian learner is an individual whose learning styles and preferences are largely conditioned by values of collectivism, conformity, and respect for authority inculcated through early experiences at school and in the family” (p. 26). this is why they suggest that more and more “proposals for approaches to autonomy based on the idea of autonomous interdependence” (p. 28) should be conducted. the better control students have over their learning strategies, the more autonomous they will become as language learners. it is necessary to help students explore the wide variety of existing learning strategies so that they can identify which ones work better for them and how and when they can use them. scharle and szabó (2008) suggest that “learning strategies serve as tools to improve one’s language competence, and learners can really only be held responsible for their competence if they are aware of these tools” (p. 53). cabrales et al. (2010) found that the most used strategies by colombian students are note-taking, repetition, and translation. this finding implies then that most students are still learning under the patterns of a traditional learning approach. even though age was not a factor this research emphasized, benson (2007) points out that students’ autonomy and their potential for it varies according to their age. piaget (as cited in brown, 2007) asserts that at puberty a person becomes capable of abstraction, of formal thinking, and reaches direct perception. however, tudor (1999) brings out that younger learners might find it difficult to handle some strategies for they which they are not prepared cognitively. likewise, iowes and target (as cited in tudor, 1999) highlight that age could determine the degree of responsibility learners are used to and that is why giving them choices is a change that needs to be made gradually. finally, a survey of attitudes toward classroom english learning among 2,656 students from 11 different countries (eight in asia, three in europe) conducted by littlewood (2001) reached different conclusions. his findings call us to become aware that even though students’ views on language learning are apparently similar, there may still be significant differences in the way those beliefs and ideas are being fulfilled or put into practice. he enlightens us on how students from different countries understand or grasp the same concepts in different ways. therefore, the understanding of how students with different cultural backgrounds are perceiving learner autonomy and how they are actually following through on those concepts and beliefs might be a good starting point to identify how autonomous learning works in different contexts, and what can be done to continue fostering it according to the unique characteristics of different learning communities. in the specific context of tianjin (china) and neiva (colombia) where this research was carried out, only a few investigations with regard to learner autonomy have been conducted. as a result of a lack of understanding of how english language learners from two public universities in tianjin and neiva are trying to develop their learner autonomy, i consider these two public educational institutions to be in urgent need of more data on what the weaknesses and strengths of their students regarding learner autonomy are. by comparing students with different cultural backgrounds, it is expected that they get a better picture of what kind of cultural limitations they have and how they can enrich their autonomy practices from other students’ learning experiences. methodology according to the social comparison theor y proposed by festinger (1954), we see that “we need to compare ourselves to figure out our strengths and weaknesses, in order to have an accurate view of ourselves” (p. 8). this is why for years comparisons have been used for the study of society and all its 39profile vol. 17, no. 1, january-june 2015. issn 1657-0790 (printed) 2256-5760 (online). bogotá, colombia. pages 35-53 a comparison of chinese and colombian university efl students regarding learner autonomy institutions. hantrais (2007) asserts that crosscultural comparisons have been invaluable tools to demonstrate whether or not shared phenomena can be explained by the same causes. as a result, cross-cultural comparisons have yielded a well-earned reputation as a good means of arriving at a more profound understanding of how different societies work. ilesanmi (2009) defines cross-cultural research as a method “which focuses on systematic comparisons that compares culture to culture and explicitly aims to answer questions about the incidence, distributions, and causes of cultural variation and complex problems across a wide domain” (p. 82). hence, since the purpose of this study is to compare chinese and colombian english language learners in terms of their learner autonomy, comparative research design was adopted by using a qualitative approach with a comparative scope. qualitative data were gathered through in-depth semi-structured inter views and were supported by quantitative information collected through questionnaires. sample convenience sampling was used to select both the universities and the students. since the number of chinese students (2,132) was much larger than that of the colombian students (200), a probabilistic sampling was used to determine how many subjects would be considered a representative sample of the population. in this way, 314 chinese and 200 colombian students were the subjects selected. since the purpose of the interviews was to collect qualitative data, a smaller sample was required to facilitate the process of triangulation and analysis of the information. therefore, 6% of the total of the subjects already selected for the questionnaires was considered appropriate. in general, the subjects from both contexts had different financial backgrounds and their age ranged from 16 to 23. instruments questionnaire this research adopted the questionnaire designed by xu, wu, and peng (2004) to measure the degree of learner autonomy in chinese students learning english. the questionnaire has been also adapted to the needs of several other research studies to measure learner autonomy (e.g., honggang, 2008; xu, 2009) and has been found reliable. this instrument was originally written in chinese, but since colombian students do not speak or read chinese, it was translated into english (see appendix) by a native english speaker with high chinese language proficiency. the english version was subsequently checked by a chinese professor with high english language proficiency to corroborate the accuracy of the translation. interview an in-depth semi-structured inter view was used to allow the students to express their feelings and opinions freely. the interview was designed by the researcher and its questions were based on the questionnaire items and other aspects that the researcher considered important in the field of learner autonomy. data analysis procedures the data collected from the questionnaires were entered into spss 16.01 for the normality test. after ensuring that all sets of data were normally distributed, the independent samples t-test was conducted to find out whether there was a significant difference in learner autonomy between the two. the results were considered statistically significant when the p value was < .05. the results were given based on the five categories that comprised the questionnaire. 1 spss 16.0 stands for statistical package for the social sciences version 16. it is general statistical software tailored to the needs of the general public and is good for organizing and analyzing data. universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras40 buendía arias the qualitative data collected through the inter views were codified numerically and then subjected to content analysis. similarly, frequencies of existence of ideas were counted and recurring responses of different students were indicated. the classification of learning strategies proposed by oxford (1990) was used to analyse the questions related to learning strategies. triangulation was also needed to combine the results from the two types of data collected: quantitative and qualitative. results a description and analysis of the results are provided to determine if there is a significant difference between the way chinese and colombian students perceive their learner autonomy regarding the five aspects from the questionnaire. based on the questionnaire administered, an independent samples t-test comparing the mean scores of the chinese students with those of the colombian students located a significant difference between the means of the two groups, t(-6.375), p < .05. the mean of the colombian group (m = 116.63, sd = 16.771) was higher than the mean of the chinese group (m = 107.96, sd = 13.828). table 1 shows how the colombian group always had a higher mean in all the five aspects of learner autonomy studied through the questionnaire (see appendix), relating to their autonomy: total 1—evaluation of teacher’s aims and r e quirements—me asures students’ understanding of their english teacher’s goals; total 2—evaluation of establishing studying goals and plans—refers to students’ practical goals and study plans. total 3—evaluation of the learning strategy’s implementation—deals with the effective employment of strategies. total 4—evaluation of ability to monitor the usage of learning strategies— highlights monitoring strategies during practice. finally, total 5 shows the results of the evaluation of the english learning process. however, table 2 makes it more evident that chinese and colombian students were found to be significantly different in those five aspects evaluated through the questionnaire described above, because a s show n i n t he t abl e w he n c omp ar i ng b ot h groups, the sig (2-tailed) value was less than 0.05 (p < .05). this leads to the conclusion that colombian learners are likely to be more autonomous than chinese students when learning english as a foreign language. table 1. means between the two groups grouping n mean std. deviation std. error mean total 1 1.00 2.00 314 200 17.61 19.54 2.935 2.933 .166 .207 total 2 1.00 2.00 314 200 16.68 17.66 3.090 3.469 .174 .245 total 3 1.00 2.00 314 200 16.16 18.61 2.901 3.349 .164 .237 total 4 1.00 2.00 314 200 23.57 25.33 3.427 4.440 .193 .314 total 5 1.00 2.00 314 200 34.04 35.49 4.666 6.036 .263 .427 final total 1.00 2.00 314 200 107.96 116.63 13.828 16.771 .780 1.186 note. grouping 1.00 = chinese group; grouping 2.00 = colombian group 41profile vol. 17, no. 1, january-june 2015. issn 1657-0790 (printed) 2256-5760 (online). bogotá, colombia. pages 35-53 a comparison of chinese and colombian university efl students regarding learner autonomy these results together with the ones obtained from the inter views are shown in the following categories: evaluation of teacher’s aims and requirements according to the results, chinese students are less autonomous than colombian students. the main difference between these two groups of learners seems to reside in the fact that the chinese have less understanding than colombians of the reasons why their teacher’s goals are not clear to them and what they are expected to do with the goals. thus, in the case of colombian students, they claimed that the underlying reasons why they lacked clarity of their english teacher’s goals was because their teachers usually put more emphasis on the topics to be studied than the specific learning goals to be reached. one colombian student said in the interview, “the topics are always discussed, but we never talk about goals for the semester . . . we didn’t really talk much about it” (cos 5).2 in contrast, the chinese students said that if their teacher’s goals were not always clear to them it was not really important; they needed no justification for their english teachers’ actions in class since they simply have to do whatever the teacher says. a chinese student expressed the following, for instance: they didn’t tell us the purpose of the course. they just do it. i think it’s like a habit because we are being students for many years. so, we know the rules; they teach, we learn. (chs 2) 2 codes: cos = colombian student, chs = chinese student. table 2. independent samples t-test results levene’s test for equality variances t-test for equality of means f sig. t df sig. (2-tailed) mean difference std. error difference 95% confidence interval of the difference lower upper total 1 1.291 .256 -7.278 424.164 .000 -1.932 .265 -2.453 -1.410 total 2 5.165 .023 -3.357 512 .001 -.985 .293 -1.561 -.408 total 3 7.550 .006 -8.788 512 .000 -2.451 .279 -2.999 -1.903 total 4 16.578 .000 -5.059 512 .000 -1.763 .348 -2.448 -1.078 total 5 12.688 .000 -3.055 512 .002 -1.449 .474 -2.380 -.517 final total 10.696 .001 -6.375 512 .000 -8.675 1.361 -11.348 -6.001 note. total 1= evaluation of teacher’s aims and requirements; total 2 = evaluation of establishing study goals and plans; total 3 =evaluation of the learning strategy’s implementation; total 4 = evaluation of ability to monitor the usage of learning strategies; total 5 = evaluation of english learning process. universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras42 buendía arias finally, colombian students (40%) and chinese students (44%) expressed that the goals set by the teacher are often not reached because of a lack of time. chinese students added that teacher’s inadequate methodology is another main cause of this failure. the fact that just one colombian student admitted that it was his lack of hard work that led to failure in reaching his teacher’s goals (“i need to focus more on english and devote more time to english outside the class,” cos 4), proves that students from the two cultures are not quite conscious of what their roles and responsibilities as students are, forgetting then that although their english teacher is in the classroom to help and guide them, it also depends on them to become successful learners. limitations such as time should be definitely overcome by more individual work outside the classroom on the part of the students. based on the responses given to the questions related to this first category, it might be inferred that there was a general agreement among the colombian and chinese students that it is usually clear to them what their english teacher’s aims are. however, colombian students particularly placed higher value on their english classes and expressed how hard they try to get the most out of their teacher’s classes. they want to understand all that is going on in the classroom and benefit from it as much as possible. chinese students, on the other hand, even when knowing what their teacher’s goals are, seem to do certain activities or attend classes just because it is their duty as learners. but they are not really reflecting on what is going on in the classroom and what they are supposed to do with those teacher’s goals. the fact that chinese students do not reflect on some events that happen in the classroom such as the achievement of teacher’s goals could be attributed to a lack of reflection, corroborating zhang’s (2004) idea that reflection is one of the major difficulties of chinese students. since benson (2001) presents reflection as a key element to gain control over cognitive processes because it leads to action and change, weak reflective skills can be considered an area worthy of attention. although it can be implied from the previous considerations that colombian students have a higher degree of readiness for learner autonomy in the classroom than chinese students, the results also showed that both groups of students need to work harder outside the classroom to reach teacher’s goals, as well as becoming more aware of their roles as students. not surprisingly, these findings confirmed that colombian students’ lack of discipline and poor time management might negatively affect that individual work time outside of class, and consequently hinder their learner autonomy, as found by ariza (2008) and cabrales et al. (2010). evaluation of establishing study goals and plans the questionnaires showed that there is a significant difference between the two groups in establishing study goals and plans, finding colombian students at a higher degree of readiness, t(-3.357), p < .05, towards learner autonomy than chinese students. the findings revealed that a higher number of colombian students (48%) expressed that they have a clear plan for studying, compared to 27% of the chinese students who said so. another big difference between the two groups of learners is that colombian undergraduates are better at establishing their own goals and making efforts to reach them. when chinese students were asked about their own goals, they gave the following type of answer: i don’t care about that. i just do what the teacher asks me to do it. (chs 1) i’m not very clear why the goals are important. i don’t know how to set a goal. (chs 2) 43profile vol. 17, no. 1, january-june 2015. issn 1657-0790 (printed) 2256-5760 (online). bogotá, colombia. pages 35-53 a comparison of chinese and colombian university efl students regarding learner autonomy moreover, colombians definitely have more difficulty than chinese in setting specific schedules for carrying out their study plans. chinese students tend to be more disciplined in terms of schedules. they usually define days and specific hours for their english study. surprisingly, most colombian and chinese students were usually unable to mention specific goals because they focus more on general goals that do not really help them to take action on their learning process. in summary, there is a certain degree of learner autonomy in both groups of students. however, colombian learners seem to have more readiness for learner autonomy when mentioning their own goals and study plans. the fact that a higher number of chinese students do not set their own goals or do not have their own study plans could be interpreted as a lack of control over their learning management, which benson (2001) defines as the first level of control in learner autonomy. according to benson, if students do not exercise this control, they will not be able to manage the planning and organisation of their learning. besides, this phenomenon could also be attributed to the chinese learners’ dependence on their teachers’ decisions and instructions. on the other hand, both groups of learners showed difficulty in setting specific goals. this can be analysed as a lack of autonomy of choice that according to macaro (2008) refers to control over the learning goals, which is only possible when students have specific and explicit goals that can work as effective motivators for action. in this way, lack of knowledge about how to set effective goals might be hindering the development of learning autonomy in both educational settings. finally, even though chinese students are more disciplined than colombian students (which can be regarded as strength), they might not be exploiting this strong point as they could if they do not have their own clear study goals. evaluation of the learning strategy’s implementation the independent samples t-test revealed that there is a significant difference in learning strategy’s implementation between the two groups. when comparing these results to the ones gotten from the interviews, it was found that students from the two cultures have more similarities when it comes to speaking, grammar, vocabulary, listening and reading comprehension strategies. for receptive skills such as listening and reading, both chinese and colombian students always use cognitive strategies (defined as strategies for understanding and producing language) such as watching a tv series or movies with or with out english subtitles. similarly, colombian and chinese students appeared to use the same strategies to improve their grammar: social (understood as learning with others e.g., asking others for grammar explanations) and cognitive strategies (colombians 80%, chinese 66.7%) such as doing grammar exercises. both colombian and chinese students felt that they could improve their vocabulary strategies by using cognitive (colombian 53.3%, chinese 55.6%), memory (understood as remembering and retrieving new information), and social strategies. they both use the same vocabulary strategies except that colombian students pointed out the importance of memory strategies such as contextualizing words and grouping them, whereas chinese students highlighted the usefulness of cognitive strategies such as reading the same passages several times. regarding speaking, both groups of learners mentioned one compensation strategy (understood as using the language despite knowledge) that was to express meanings in their own words to make the ideas universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras44 buendía arias simpler. moreover, chinese students also referred to affective strategies (understood as the regulation of emotions) such as speaking to themselves in front of the mirror in order to feel more confident. the main differences between the two groups of learners reside in writing. students’ views on this skill suggest that writing in english is a totally different experience for colombian and chinese students. on the one hand, it seems that writing is not a skill that colombian students have much difficulty with. they claimed they use cognitive strategies such as reading. on the other hand, chinese students expressed how difficult it was for them to understand western logic and therefore being good at writing represents a challenge for them. they use cognitive strategies such as reading, trying to read western writing models, and memorizing lines from movies. others use metacognitive strategies (understood as the strategies for coordinating the learning process) such as reading about how to write. surprisingly, none of the students mentioned that they actually write in order to improve their writing. the conclusion from this category would seem to be that both groups of students are making excessive use of cognitive strategies, compared with the frequency with which they use other essential strategies for the development of learner autonomy, such as meta-cognitive and social strategies. based on the findings, the ranking ordering of learning strategy usage is presented in table 3. table 3. rank ordering of language learning strategy usage 6 (most frequent) cognitive 5 social 4 memory 3 metacognitive 2 compensation 1 (least frequent) affective table 3 reveals that students are using metacognitive, compensation, and affective strategies the least. that is to say that colombian and chinese students are using more direct strategies (dealing with the new language) during their language learning process than indirect strategies (general management of learning). this can be considered a negative finding because as posada (2006) points out, a learner should use direct and indirect strategies to support each other for the development of autonomy. in other words, colombian and chinese students are not exploiting indirect strategies as expected, which may pose an obstacle in their process of becoming more autonomous. on the other hand, one difference between the two groups of learners resides in their beliefs about learning a language. the fact that even when chinese students expressed that writing represents a big challenge for them—they do not actually write in english in order to develop this skill—might be attributed to their beliefs about language learning. wenden (as cited in ellis, 1997) states that when students put more emphasis on learning about the language, they tend to focus more on grammar and vocabulary, being then less likely to pay attention to the use of that language. chinese students might not be aware that the use of the language is essential, and that the same applies to all the skills, including writing. evaluation of ability to monitor the usage of learning strategies the results reported that although there are a lot of similarities between the two groups of learners with regard to the strategies they usually monitor, the major difference between chinese and colombian students in this category was related to their ability to find and solve problems in their method of studying. of the colombian students, 83% claimed that every time they found any difficulty in their learning 45profile vol. 17, no. 1, january-june 2015. issn 1657-0790 (printed) 2256-5760 (online). bogotá, colombia. pages 35-53 a comparison of chinese and colombian university efl students regarding learner autonomy process, they were able to find solutions for it. context and speaking problems seem to represent the two most common obstacles among colombian students. of chinese students, on the contrary, 45% asserted that they do not know how to overcome several obstacles that they found throughout their learning process. students particularly mentioned that they had difficulty in finding a good study method in terms of speaking and writing. the findings showed that chinese students are less autonomous than colombian learners when unable to solve learning problems by themselves. benson (2001) mentions that one of the elements necessary to exercise control over learning is the evaluation of learning. this means that monitoring the usage of learning strategies should help chinese students identify problems with their study method, but if after wards they are not able to find new effective methods, then there will be no changes and consequently no progress will be made. evaluation of english learning process of the colombian students, 86% expressed their willingness to take risks and get the most out of the opportunities they have to practice their english. chinese students (76%) said that it is very difficult for them to overcome emotional issues such as public speaking, embarrassment when making mistakes, and lack of self-confidence. they feel this prevents them from taking advantage of english practice opportunities. a chinese student said: “i was too shy to speak english because my oral english is so bad. i was very intimidated” (chs 8). additionally, the interview results revealed that both colombian and chinese students make good use of the available learning resources. the percentages demonstrate that chinese students make extensive use of the teacher as a human resource (41%). this can be interpreted as something positive in the sense that students see their teacher as somebody who can help them throughout their learning process. however, since students from all levels particularly mentioned that their teachers are a very good learning resource, it can also mean that chinese students are more dependent on their teachers than they should be. for example, one student said: “without the teachers i cannot learn the knowledge” (chs 9). the conclusion from this category is the fact that chinese students are less willing to take risks in order to get the most out of english practice opportunities. such hesitancy might be related to their difficulty in overcoming their emotional issues. if chinese learners do not succeed at overcoming issues such as shyness or lack of self-confidence, they will be less likely to be unafraid of making mistakes, or to become more extroverted. thus, a verification of scharle and szabó’s statement (2008) that “personality traits set limits to the development of autonomy” (p. 65). this totally applies to the case of chinese students’ autonomy which seems to be inhibited by their introversion, fear of negative evaluation, and lack of self-confidence. this latter is not a surprising result since zhang and li (2004) also reported that chinese learners show less confidence than western students. moreover, if chinese learners see their teachers as the main source of knowledge, they can be at risk of thinking that they cannot learn, improve, or find effective methods by themselves. this could make them more reliant on their teacher as the only person who possesses the needed knowledge or solutions and consequently has more authority. self-assessment self-assessment was an emerging category from the interview. even though neither colombian nor chinese students were familiar with the term “selfassessment,” they still practice it. colombian students (71%) seem to self-assess more often than chinese students (63%). both groups of students expressed that universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras46 buendía arias self-assessment is very important because it allows them to keep track of their progress and identify their weaknesses and strengths as learners. the students’ views on self-assessment led to the identification of different ways in which students evaluate themselves as learners (table 4). table 4. types of self-assessment type of selfassessment colombian students chinese students comparing themselves to others 61% 25% based on exams and grades 31% 50% based on other people’s opinions 8% 25% colombian students (61%) said that they are very competitive, not wanting to fall behind or be worse than others, whereas most chinese students prefer to evaluate themselves based on their exams and grades, as expressed in interviews: “i do that quite often. especially, when i finish my examination. i go back my home. and think about what i still don’t know” (chs 6). t h e re w a s a g e n e r a l a g re e m e nt b e t w e e n colombian and chinese students that their english teachers do not promote self-assessment practices. students said: i don’t think our teachers always do that. our teachers just busy themselves and didn’t care us. just silence, silence...and we just sit here and listen and listen. and she does nothing else. (chs 5) there are teachers who just give the class and they aren’t thinking about motivating us to do that. (cos 2) this statement suggests that teachers are failing in helping students gain knowledge of the reasons why self-assessment practices are important and how students can evaluate themselves as learners. cram (as cited in benson, 2001) argues those students’ willingness and ability to engage in self-assessment practices increase with teachers’ support and training. in other words, the role the teacher plays relating to the success of self-assessment practices seems to be very important to students from both cultural contexts. besides, the fact that chinese students based their self-assessment practices on exams suggests that they might be attaching more importance to external assessments of their proficiency rather than engaging more in internal assessments closely related to reflection on their goals and effectiveness of learning activities. benson (2001) asserts that the process of self-assessment itself is more important than students’ accurate assessments of their proficiency. holec (as cited in benson, 2001) explains that assessment is valuable because the learner needs to know at all times whether his performances correspond to his/her aims, and also whether s/he has made any progress towards their chosen objective. in other words, the predominance of language-proficiencybased assessments might be hindering students from engaging in other types of assessments that strengthen their reflective skills and help them critically evaluate their objectives and their action plans to achieve them. moreover, exams and grades are just an example of an official assessment that intends to keep actual records of students’ learning gains by requiring them to do assignments within a certain amount of time. this type of external assessment does not necessarily lead the students to choose a learning method, take personal initiative, or become more autonomous as learners. acknowledging that self-assessment is based on the perceptions of the students, but does not necessarily reflect evidence of learning gains, this, apart from being a limitation of the current study, 47profile vol. 17, no. 1, january-june 2015. issn 1657-0790 (printed) 2256-5760 (online). bogotá, colombia. pages 35-53 a comparison of chinese and colombian university efl students regarding learner autonomy opens up a new avenue for researchers wanting to investigate the link between autonomy and learning gains; fine grained research on this aspect is not only needed but welcome. conclusions differences between colombian and chinese students i n t e r m s o f e n g l i s h t e a c h e r ’s a i m s a n d requirements, it is clear that the major discrepancy between chinese and colombian students can occur when, even though chinese students claim to know their teachers’ goals for the course, they seem to fail in understanding that the goals for their english courses are not for the teacher but for them, having then implications in their roles as students. meanwhile, colombian students’ awareness of the importance of classes and of the benefits from working cooperatively with teachers in reaching their goals enhances their autonomy as learners by evidencing more reflection related to the way they react to their teachers’ aims and requirements. with respect to setting goals and having study plans, the difference between colombian and chinese undergraduates resides in the fact that chinese students might be more reliant on their teachers than colombian students, having then less control over their learning management and less awareness that teacher’s goals and action plans might not fulfil all their learning needs, so they need to have their own. moreover, outside the classroom, colombian students have difficulty in allocating time for their english study, putting the achievement of their own learning goals at risk. thus, colombian students might lose some control over learning management when failing at successfully organising their learning. similarly, colombian and chinese students’ beliefs about how to develop their writing skills differ considerably. chinese learners’ beliefs are more focused on learning about the language, whereas colombians pay more attention to the use of the language. clearly, this discrepancy in language learning beliefs has led both groups of learners to choose different writing strategies. therefore, the failure of chinese students in developing their writing skills successfully might be due to the lack of language-use based strategies. similarities between chinese and colombian students both groups of students attribute the failure in reaching teacher’s goals for the english course to the teacher or external factors such as time. this shows that chinese and colombian learners are clearer about teachers’ responsibilities than they are about their own duties, roles as students, and the efforts they are expected to put into their english learning process. another conclusion is that colombian and chinese students lack knowledge about how to set learning goals. they both showed a weakness when setting specific and explicit goals that would lead them to take action and promote changes. goal setting is a crucial factor in the development of learner autonomy and the process of becoming successful language learners. cognitive learning strategies are the most used among colombian and chinese undergraduates. on the one hand, this can be seen as a strong point that students are using direct strategies in order to manipulate or transform the target language (oxford, 1990); consequently, they become more proficient english learners. on the other hand, they are taking almost no notice of the importance of indirect strategies. this imbalance between the usage of direct and indirect strategies can be hindering the development of their learner autonomy since it is the interaction between these two that helps them gain control over learning and cognitive processes. universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras48 buendía arias to conclude, colombian and chinese students have more differences than things in common when it comes to their english learning process. however, both groups of students have their own strengths and weaknesses. even though colombian students appear to have a higher degree of readiness for autonomy compared with chinese students, they proved, as autonomous learners, to have a lot of weaknesses that need to be minimized. implications for practice the first recommendation to be made is that chinese students should be given more spaces to discuss their teachers’ aims and requirements, as well as be encouraged to reflect on those objectives and what impact the achievement of those goals can have in their own english learning process. from this, chinese undergraduates can benefit in a number of ways: first, students will be more likely to improve their performances in class if they are aware that they have to cooperate with the teacher to achieve the goals for the course; second, by reflecting on the impact of those aims on their english learning, they can realize whether or not they need to set other goals that suit them best and, consequently, help them improve their proficiency; finally, reflection is a crucial factor in the enhancement of learner autonomy and is essential for self-assessment practices. it is practically certain that without a fundamental shif t of p e d agog ic a l st rateg y by t he te achers themselves, students will not be given those discussion and reflection spaces. teachers should be required, then, to reflect on their own roles and start behaving more as facilitators able to raise awareness in learners and help them plan their independent learning. it is recommended t hat on t he one hand, colombian students need to become aware that their lack of discipline might be influenced by cultural aspects. therefore, they need to reflect on this issue and find ways in which they can become more disciplined learners who do not let their culture set limitations on the development of their learner autonomy. on the other hand, chinese students should strengthen this positive point by having specific learning goals for those study schedules that they easily stick to. undoubtedly, by being disciplined learners and having specific goals for their study schedules, students should see improved english proficiency as the result of harder work. they will also become better at managing their learning in terms of planning and organising it. chinese students should gain more knowledge about how learning strategies aimed at using the target language in natural or communicative ways can make more contributions to the successful development of their writing skills, rather than just using strategies that focus on aspects of the language itself. students’ english proficiency can be definitely improved by using strategies that go beyond grammar, vocabulary, or memorized phrases. self-assessment and reflective practices should be encouraged in both groups of students. even though chinese students appear to be in more urgent need of developing skills that allow them to become more reflective leaners who are able to evaluate their learning process and come up with solutions to possible problems, colombian students also need to improve their self-assessment practices. giving them more opportunities to promote self-assessment and reflective practices will help students gain more control over their learning and cognitive processes. besides, the better learners become at monitoring their learning process and overcoming learning obstacles, the more success they will achieve as high proficiency students. references ariza, j. a. 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(2003). becoming autonomous in an asian context: autonomy as a sociocultural process. in d. palfreyman & r. c. smith (eds.), learner autonomy across cultures: language education perspectives (pp. 23-40). new york, ny: palgrave macmillan. brown, h. d. (2007). principles of language learning and teaching (5th ed.). white plains, ny: pearson education. cabrales, m., cáceres, j. a., & feria, i. (2010). la autonomía en el aprendizaje del inglés y su relación con los trabajos independientes asignados a los estudiantes [autonomy in english learning and its relation with students’ independent assignments]. íkala, revista de lenguaje y cultura, 15(26), 119-150. cohen, a. d., weaver, s. j., & li, t. y. (1995). the impact of strategies-based instruction on speaking a foreign language. minneapolis, mn: university of minnesota. ellis, r. (1997). the study of second language acquisition. london, uk: oxford university press. fandiño, y. j. (2008). action research on affective factors and language learning strategies: a pathway to critical reflection and teacher and learner autonomy. profile issues in teachers’ professional development, 10(1), 195-210. festinger, l. (1954). a theory of social comparison processes. retrieved from http://faculty.babson.edu/ krollag/org_site/soc_psych/festinger_soc_com.html. hantrais, l. (2007) contextualization in cross-national comparative research. in l. hantrais & s. mangen (eds.), cross-national research methodology and practice. (pp. 3-18). oxford, uk: routledge taylor & francis group. holec, h. (1985). autonomy and foreign language learning. oxford, uk: pergamon. honggang, l. (2008). efl motivations and autonomy in english learning: an investigation of chinese nonenglish major undergraduates. celea journal, 31(5), 82-97. ilesanmi, o. (2009). what is cross-cultural research? international journal of psychological studies, 1(2), 81-96. http://dx.doi.org/10.5539/ijps.v1n2p82. la ganza, w. t. (2004). learner autonomy in the language classroom (unpublished doctoral dissertation). macquarie university, australia. little, d. (1991). learner autonomy: definitions, issues and problems. dublin, ie: authentik. littlewood, w. (2001). students’ attitudes to classroom english learning: a cross-cultural study. language teaching research, 5(1), 3-28. http://dx.doi. org/10.1177/136216880100500102. locke, e. a. (1996). motivation through conscious goal setting. applied and preventive psychology, 5(2), 117-124. http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/s0962-1849(96)80005-9. luna, m., & sánchez, d k. (2005). profiles of autonomy in the field of foreign languages. profile issues in teachers’ professional development, 6(1), 133-140. macaro, e. (2008). the shifting dimensions of language learner autonomy. in t. lamb & h. reinders (eds.), learner and teacher autonomy: concepts, realities and responses (pp. 47-62). amsterdam, nl: john benjamins. http://dx.doi.org/10.1075/aals.1.07mac. oxford, r. l. (1990). language learning strategies: what every teacher should know. rowley, ma: newbury house. posada, j. z. (2006). evaluating students’ autonomous learning through their uses of a self-access centre. colombian applied linguistic journal, 8, 53-73. scharle, á., & szabó, a. (2008). learner autonomy: a guide to developing learner responsibility. cambridge, uk: cambridge university press. spratt, m., humphreys, g., & chan, v. (2002). autonomy and motivation: which comes first? language teaching http://dx.doi.org/10.1017/s0261444806003958 http://dx.doi.org/10.1017/s0261444806003958 http://faculty.babson.edu/krollag/org_site/soc_psych/festinger_soc_com.html http://faculty.babson.edu/krollag/org_site/soc_psych/festinger_soc_com.html http://dx.doi.org/10.5539/ijps.v1n2p82 http://dx.doi.org/10.1177/136216880100500102 http://dx.doi.org/10.1177/136216880100500102 http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/s0962-1849(96)80005-9 universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras50 buendía arias research, 6(3), 245-266. http://dx.doi.org/10.1191/ 1362168802lr106oa. thanasoulas, d. (2000). what is learner autonomy and how it can be fostered? the internet tesl journal, 6(11), 37-48. tudor, i. (1999). learner-centredness as language education. cambridge, uk: cambridge university press. wenden, a. (1986). helping language learners think about learning. english language teaching journal, 40(1), 3-12. http://dx.doi.org/10.1093/elt/40.1.3. woodrow, w. (1909, july 1). would reorganize american college. the new york times, pp. d18-d19. xu, j. (2009). a survey study of autonomous learning by chinese non-english major post-graduates. english language teaching, 2(4), 25-32. http://dx.doi.org/ 10.5539/elt.v2n4p25. xu, j., wu, w., & peng, r. (2004). a survey and analysis of non-english major undergraduates’ autonomous english learning competence. foreign language teaching and research, 1, 64-68. zhang, y. (2004). an experiment of the development on learner autonomy through learner training. foreign language world, 24(1), 54-61. zhang, l., & li, x. (2004). a comparative study on learner autonomy between chinese students and west european students. foreign language world, 24(4), 15-23. about the author ximena paola buendía arias is an active member of the research group “comuniquemonos” at universidad surcolombiana, colombia. her areas of interest are english as an international language, language teacher education, chinese language, and web-based education. http://dx.doi.org/10.1191/ 1362168802lr106oa http://dx.doi.org/10.1191/ 1362168802lr106oa http://dx.doi.org/10.1093/elt/40.1.3 http://dx.doi.org/10.5539/elt.v2n4p25 http://dx.doi.org/10.5539/elt.v2n4p25 51profile vol. 17, no. 1, january-june 2015. issn 1657-0790 (printed) 2256-5760 (online). bogotá, colombia. pages 35-53 a comparison of chinese and colombian university efl students regarding learner autonomy appendix: english version of questionnaire on learner autonomy (adapted from xu et al., 2004) a. evaluation of english teacher’s aims and requirements strongly agree strongly disagree 1. i clearly understand the teacher’s aims. 1 2 3 4 5 2. it is easy for me to make the teacher’s goals into my own goals. 1 2 3 4 5 3. i clearly understand the importance of making the teacher’s goals my own, as well as studying hard to achieve those goals. 1 2 3 4 5 4. i clearly understand the teacher’s intention during in class learning activities. 1 2 3 4 5 5. in class, it is easy for me to keep up with the teacher’s pace. 1 2 3 4 5 b. evaluation of establishing study goals and plans. strongly agree strongly disagree 1. outside of assignments given by the teacher, i have a clear plan for studying on my own. 1 2 3 4 5 2. when studying english, i establish practical goals for myself based on my true english level. 1 2 3 4 5 3. i am good at adjusting my study plans based on my progress. 1 2 3 4 5 4. i am good at creating a practical study schedule for myself. 1 2 3 4 5 5. i am good at establishing study goals based on the requirements outlined by the class. 1 2 3 4 5 universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras52 buendía arias c. evaluation of the learning strategy’s implementation. strongly agree strongly disagree 1. i have a complete understanding of the learning strategy. 1 2 3 4 5 2. i can consciously employ effective strategies to improve my listening comprehension. 1 2 3 4 5 3. i can consciously employ effective strategies to improve my spoken english. 1 2 3 4 5 4. i can consciously employ effective strategies to improve my reading comprehension. 1 2 3 4 5 5. i can consciously employ effective strategies to improve my written english. 1 2 3 4 5 d. evaluation of ability to monitor the usage of learning strategies. strongly agree strongly disagree 1. i can consciously monitor the usage of listening strategies during practice. 1 2 3 4 5 2. i can consciously monitor the usage of speaking strategies during practice. 1 2 3 4 5 3. i can consciously monitor the usage of reading strategies during practice. 1 2 3 4 5 4. i can consciously monitor the usage of writing strategies during practice. 1 2 3 4 5 5. i am able to find and solve problems in my method of studying. 1 2 3 4 5 6. i am conscious of whether or not my method of study is practical. 1 2 3 4 5 7. if i realize that my method of study is impractical, i quickly find a more suitable one. 1 2 3 4 5 53profile vol. 17, no. 1, january-june 2015. issn 1657-0790 (printed) 2256-5760 (online). bogotá, colombia. pages 35-53 a comparison of chinese and colombian university efl students regarding learner autonomy e. evaluation of english learning process. strongly agree strongly disagree 1. outside of class, i take advantage of various opportunities to practice my english. (e.g., using english to talk to classmates about daily life, participating in english speaking activities, etc.) 1 2 3 4 5 2. i make an effort to overcome emotional issues that may hinder my english studies, such as shyness, anxiety, and inhibition. 1 2 3 4 5 3. i use available learning resources such as the library, internet, dictionaries, etc., to improve my english. 1 2 3 4 5 4. it is easy for me to put newly learned english into practice. 1 2 3 4 5 5. i often study with other people, such as practicing with a language partner or practicing and reviewing materials with classmates. 1 2 3 4 5 6. while practicing english, i am able to realize my own mistakes and correct them. 1 2 3 4 5 7. when i discover my mistakes, i understand the underlying reason for making them (e.g., interference from my mother tongue or a lack of familiarity with grammar rules, etc.). 1 2 3 4 5 8. i select effective methods to become a better language student (such as speaking with successful english students about their experiences, keeping a journal of my own progress, reading english newspapers, magazines, novels, etc.). 1 2 3 4 5 9. during the process of completing a certain english learning task, i keep in line with my predetermined plan. 1 2 3 4 5 10. during the process of completing a certain english learning task, i often check and correct my comprehension of previously studied material. 1 2 3 4 5 5profile vol. 14, no. 1, april 2012. issn 1657-0790. bogotá, colombia. pages 5-9 5 editorial narrative as a vehicle for teacher inquiry generated in the periphery, in particular, broadens the nature of stakeholders and its purposes. because it is from and for more diverse professional contexts, it is generating new uses by creating alternative systems for making practitioner knowledge public. for example, profile emerged in 2000 through the efforts of the national university of colombia and was explicitly ‘‘created with the idea of disseminating works by school teachers doing action-research in a teacher development programme’’ (cardenas-beltran, personal communication, june 9, 2010).1 i am very pleased to present this edition of our journal which, as always, brings about satisfaction and a variety of topics to share with our readership. as established in our mission, we are committed to gathering works by teachers of different educational levels and contexts as well as by teacher educators who engage in researching, inno vating and reflecting upon english language teaching issues. the works we present do not deal with only the scientific features that should characterize an academic publication like ours, but experiences that have to do with paths travelled and stories that can be told. that is the reason for opening this editorial with johnson and golombek’s quote. i am very pleased that said authors took profile as an example of initiatives that have emerged with the idea of disseminating works authored by teachers and which are the results of inquiry, reflection, and interplays between theory and practice. these elements are at the core of the professional development programmes the research group leading the journal fosters among practitioners as well as in the justifications raised by authors whose papers are accepted by our review boards. teachers as insiders, and as participants of events taking place in their teaching fields, face the challenge of reaching peers at a distance through the works they get published. in our particular case, the participation of writers with diverse profiles has helped us gain and work harder to maintain support of stakeholders who have to admit that beyond the positivist or prescriptive traditions in investigating in education, the narrative is a vehicle for teacher inquiry and that, as such, also works for the attainment of institutional purposes connected to research and the dissemination of knowledge. this edition gathers twelve articles from and for diverse professional contexts. all of them contribute to making practitioner knowledge public, as johnson and golombek point out. their kind appreciation for the nature of our work fits perfectly into the characteristics of the authors whose works are gathered here: two papers by colombian 1 johnson, k. e., & golombek, p. r. (2011). the transformative power of narrative in l2 teacher education. tesol quarterly, 45(3), 486-509. universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras6 cárdenas b. school teachers who took part in a teacher development programme carried out at the universidad nacional de colombia in 2009-2010, led by the profile research group which leads this publication; three articles by colombian university teachers, four contributions from other countries, and one manuscript by novice teacher researchers. additionally, we have two articles by teachers who report on the theses projects they developed as part of their master’s degrees. an interesting point to note here is that both of them first studied a professional development programme at our university and then engaged in postgraduate programmes. the issues from teacher researchers section contains an account written by mónica duarte romero, luz mery tinjacá bernal and marilú carrero olivares, who conducted an action research project in a public school in bogotá, colombia. their intention was to motivate sixth grade students to speak english through the use of songs. they describe the different activities and materials employed over a given period of time and endorse the concept that both songs and the pedagogical procedure followed helped students learn and pronounce new words freely and accurately. as confirmed by the authors, all of those teaching strategies have an impact on students’ motivation, provided they are immersed in a non-threatening environment. the discussion of intercultural communication, intercultural competence and teachers’ attitudes towards regional differences in the english class are issues of interest and debate, as can be read in the following three articles. first we present two studies conducted in two different settings in bogotá, colombia. mireya esther castañeda usaquén tells us about a study with adolescent students at a public school with the purpose of exploring how learners made sense of the culture-based materials incorporated in the english lessons she taught. she also describes the students’ perceptions about foreign cultures and provides hints for further applications in similar teaching contexts. this, i am sure, can be possible by examining the detailed account of the teaching procedures followed by the teacher-researcher. then, luis fernando gómez r. presents an account of an action research experience carried out in an advanced-english as a foreign language classroom of the language program at a university. the objective was to foster intercultural communicative competence through reading authentic literary texts within the framework of four constructivist approaches. the author highlights that we can engage learners to read authentic literary short stories, to negotiate meaning, to develop intercultural competence, and to construct cultural knowledge through social interaction. afterward, we can read about elementary school teachers’ attitudes towards their students’ use of code switching in a school district in the south texas border region (usa and mexico). guadalupe nancy nava gómez from universidad autónoma del estado de méxico and hilda garcía from the american texas a&m universitykingsville, report on regional differences and the reasons behind those teachers’ views. the opinions of the teachers from the north schools and those of the teachers of the 7profile vol. 14, no. 1, april 2012. issn 1657-0790. bogotá, colombia. pages 5-9 editorial south schools, which are predominantly hispanic, are explained and connected to regional differences, teacher qualifications and the expectations of the society. subsequently we will find two articles carried out in two colombian contexts and dealing with the topic of reading and speaking. sergio lopera medina describes the effects of strategy instruction in an english as a foreign language (efl) reading comprehension course carried out with undergraduate students at a university. the examination of data collected through the use of reading comprehension tests, teacher’s field notes and self-reflection, and a learning perception questionnaire revealed that students improved in reading comprehension. lopera also concluded that reading strategy instruction is not only beneficial, but a key element for promoting self-confidence, motivation and less dependence on the use of dictionaries. an action research study carried out with a group of eighth graders with the purpose of enhancing their speaking confidence when participating in an online radio show is reported in the article by nubia consuelo lemos tello. this cooperative learning-based endeavour was documented via surveys applied to students, audio and video recordings and a teacher’s journal. the goal of the project was not only attained thanks to the use of technology, but it also contributed to the improvement of the teacher’s performance as well as to the improvement of students’ engagement in decision-making. students’ and teachers’ perceptions of teaching and matters of learning is the common concern raised in the three articles that come next. luz edith herrera díaz shares with us a qualitative study conducted at a language centre of universidad veracruzana in mexico. the idea was to examine students’ perceptions of and experiences within self-access language learning, which was a new modality for them. the author presents the main themes that emerged from the study: ease and convenience of the no-class courses and their corresponding difficulties; expectations from this modality, experiences with autonomy, control over students, and preparation to face innovation, among others. suggestions for a more contextualized and critical adoption of innovations in the efl field are also given. we have another contribution from chile. this time, claudio díaz larenas, from universidad de concepción focuses on a qualitative study which let him identify the disciplinary strategies claimed to be used by a group of secondary classroom teachers of english in public or semi-public schools in his country. findings come from a semistructured interview whose examination followed the principles of semantic content analysis and the grounded theory. the author concluded that some of the teachers declared using a rising tone of voice and scolding and expelling difficult students from the classroom as key disciplinary techniques. likewise, other teachers claimed that disciplinary strategies helped them to accomplish the teaching aim in a lesson. the next paper, by ana patricia muñoz, marcela palacio and liliana escobar, presents the results of an investigation that sought to uncover teachers’ beliefs about universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras8 cárdenas b. assessment, in general, and about the assessment systems used at a language center of a private university in colombia. the analysis of the data obtained from surveys, written reports, and interviews indicates a contradiction between what they say they do and what they believe. this suggests that teachers need opportunities for reflection, selfassessment and more guidance on formative assessment practices. in the last paper of the first section, italian researchers gillian mansfield and franca poppi shed light on the debate of english as a foreign language or as a lingua franca and make the point that it is important to sensitise teachers of english as a foreign language towards teaching english as a lingua franca. the empirical study carried out in an italian university is used to show how teachers should take on board awarenessraising activities in recognition of other varieties of english which, albeit not exploited as benchmarks for language testing and certification, must nevertheless boast of a relevant place in the global scenario. the readers can find concrete examples in the corpus of chinese english news texts and the illustration of simple concordance activities. i am sure this paper will contribute to the construction of knowledge about what is happening in countries where there is an urgent need to strengthen the level of english in schools and whose policies are issued on the basis of globalisation. the second section, issues from novice teacher researchers, contains a paper written by tatiana méndez and andrea garcía who made a critical discourse analysis study as part of the fulfilment to opt for their b.a. degree in languages. these novice researchers delved into the characteristics of  elementary school  students’ power and solidarity relations in an english as a foreign language classroom in a school in bogotá, colombia. the project was carried out while the pre-service teachers were doing their teaching english as a foreign language practicum. the findings suggest that there are different forms of exercising power and solidarity in the classroom. as the authors conclude, their findings allow us to be aware of the complexities of the english language class.  it is also interesting to read that power can be resisted, challenged, or exercised by means of reproaches. solidarity, on the other hand, can take the form of taking sides to protect friends. lastly, the issues based on reflections and innovations section contains a work by colombian schoolteacher omar yezid lizarazo jara, whose innovation project concentrated on the use of a blog as a means to guide beginner students of a public school to understand and use adjectives appropriately when writing descriptions in english. this difficulty, commonly found in efl contexts, was faced by combining in and out of class practices, and backed with different activities and worksheets. contact time, extra curricular activities and exercises in the school’s resource center contributed to the improvement in the majority of the students’ descriptions and handling of the use of adjectives. as always, i am delighted to present a new product of the work led by the profile research group. it is hoped you will enjoy reading this first issue of profile 2012 and 9profile vol. 14, no. 1, april 2012. issn 1657-0790. bogotá, colombia. pages 5-9 editorial feel motivated to send your contributions for future issues. profile also hopes that the update of our guidelines for authors is more complete so that contributors have quite clear the parameters followed in our evaluation processes. needless to say, we are counting on your collaboration in spreading the word about our publication. melba libia cárdenas b. journal editor 15profile vol. 18, no.1, january-june 2016. issn 1657-0790 (printed) 2256-5760 (online). bogotá, colombia. pages 15-18 editorial http://dx.doi.org/10.15446/profile.v18n1.53928 editorial1* we are a community. we are an identifiable group, whose members are interested in interaction with one another for the sake of learning, and also for the enjoyment of exchanging experiences and ideas with sympathetic colleagues. (p. 388) 21 as human beings we are bound to be part of and live within a community. our first community, our family, surrounded and provided us with all the necessary tools to be able to join other communities along our childhood, adolescence, and early years of adulthood, namely the elementary, high school, and university as well as our circles of friends and acquaintances. when we decided to become teachers by conviction, chance, or destiny, we knew that our development and evolution would occur within groups of students and colleagues in academic and administrative positions. our community does not drastically differ from others: we act, interact, exchange, share, and even compete with its members. what makes us different is the love for learning, for feeding our brain and heart with the joy of having contributed one way or another to the progress of a pupil, a school, a region, a country and why not, the world itself. our teaching and learning communities give us food for thought in the form of problems to solve, challenges to face, paths to follow, truths to unveil, realities to face, and a myriad of ventures difficult to ignore. the odds are that we may take the risk to do things in search of excellence. one way of doing so is via research. as acknowledged in academic circles, research opens up an excellent opportunity to problematize our daily practice. our personal experience can be enlightened by the interchange of ideas with colleagues from similar or different worlds. we may benefit from the knowledge produced elsewhere but applicable in our unique circumstances. likewise, we can contribute to the profession by reaching our peers through forums such as academic journals. we are very aware of the big or small changes occurring in the very heart of the educational system: the community itself. the most hidden or forgotten corners of a classroom or an institution could be transformed by the action of a teacher who has faced his/her established ideas and has provoked a whole transformation visible in fresh * how to cite this article (apa, 6th ed.): nieto cruz, m. c., & cárdenas, m. l. (2016). editorial. profile issues in teachers’ professional development, 18(1), 15-18. http://dx.doi.org/10.15446/profile.v18n1.53928. 1 ur, p. (2002). the english teacher as professional. in j. c. richards & w. a. renandya (eds.), methodology in language teaching: an anthology of current practice (pp. 388-392). cambridge, uk: cambridge university press. this is an open access article distributed under the terms of the creative commons license attribution-noncommercial-noderivatives 4.0 international license. consultation is possible at http://creativecommons. org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/. universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras16 nieto cruz & cárdenas ideas, attitudes, and positions. we seek and find the teachers who take a step forward and work harder in order to make their work visible through publications. not only are these contributors mediators of knowledge, but they are also real agents of change because of their willingness to expound upon their critical views on the many different situations occurring within their own communities. we have gathered eight articles in the first section issues from teacher researchers. we begin with the work carried out by colombian schoolteacher paula andrea caicedo triviño while taking part in the teacher development programme led by the profile research group at universidad nacional de colombia over the last two years. in this first article we can read about the action research and innovation project she conducted with high school students in a public school in bogotá in order to examine their written performance in english classes while engaged in cooperative lessons. next, we present four articles dealing with teacher education. the first one, by colombian authors angela yicely castro garcés and liliana martínez granada, deals with the role that the collaborative planning, implementation, and evaluation of classroom projects, developed through collaborative action research, played in the professional development of in-service and pre-service teachers. following that one we can read a contribution from turkey. this time, sumru akcan shares with us the results of an investigation with novice non-native english teachers with the purpose of unveiling their opinions about the effectiveness of their teacher education programme and the challenges during their initial years of teaching. interestingly, the results show substantial differences between the content of novice teachers’ academic courses in their teacher education programme and the conditions they found in classrooms. after that, colombian authors orlando chaves and maria eugenia guapacha inform us about a study that followed a mixed-method. the investigation took place in cali (colombia) and was carried out within the premises of a professional development programme aimed at improving the practices of public english teachers through a practice-reflection-theory cycle. we can get acquainted with an eclectic approach tailored to the participants’ needs and interests which let both teachers and teacher educators attain said goal. the last article of this group of works in the field of teacher education comes from jorge eduardo pineda hoyos and luis hernando tamayo cano. they report on the implementation of a teacher’s professional development strategy that sought to foster e-moderator competencies among language faculty at a colombian public university and to examine the extent to which they understand the concepts of e-moderation and e-tivities. the results shed light on online processes, technical skills, and teachers’ personal characteristics that might be necessary in order to become e-moderators. the following three articles focus on academic writing and oral communication. the first one, by troy crawford, irasema mora pablo, and m. martha lengeling addresses, through narrative research methodology, the different factors that appear to 17profile vol. 18, no.1, january-june 2016. issn 1657-0790 (printed) 2256-5760 (online). bogotá, colombia. pages 15-18 editorial affect the on-going construction of second language authorial identity in a professional academic environment in mexico. we can learn about the struggles of two university professors to maintain their professional status in second language writing, a situation that is also present in many other countries, where the pressure to publish poses great challenges to scholars. then, josé vicente abad and paula andrea alzate tell us about the results of a study that involved two teacher-researchers at different colombian universities in order to train students—in their english courses—in the use of language learning strategies and to then assess the impact of strategies instruction on students’ preparation for and performance on oral exams. finally, we can find the work by jose david herazo rivera and anamaría sagre barboza, concerning the co-construction of participation through oral mediation in the english classroom. their study sought to look at how a colombian second language teacher mediated her ninth-grade students’ participation during classroom interaction. the findings let us understand how such mediation provided learners with frequent affordances to engage in meaning-making. issues from novice teacher researchers, the second section of our journal, brings this time a report derived from an action research project conducted by juan sebastián basallo gómez with adult learners in a colombian language institute. as can be read in his account, the students’ text selection processes, guided by systematically designed criteria and elaborated strategies, influenced learning and literacy. this is evidenced in the students’ motivation and opinions concerning reading in english. the last section, issues based on reflections and innovations, contains three interesting works in the area of language teacher education. first, we can read a critical account of foreign language education policy in colombia, with particular attention paid to english. in their article, camilo andrés bonilla carvajal and isabel tejada-sánchez analyse the impact of its multiple transitions over the past decades, some critical reception by scholars, and the actions that are being implemented with the purpose of fostering bilingualism in the country. i am sure their work will add to the debates raised by other scholars in regard to the suitability of linguistic policies in light of the diverse social, economic, and educational contexts teachers encounter to implement what is mandated by the national ministry of education. following that article ana maría sierra piedrahita discusses the contributions of a social justice language teacher education perspective to professional development programmes in colombia on the basis of the examination of some local programmes for teachers of english in public schools in one city in the country. the article depicts what the implementation of such perspective requires, illustrates how it may look in practice, and gathers some implications for different stakeholders should they be interested in contributing to the development of a political perspective in teachers. we close this edition with a contribution from brazilian authors telma gimenez, aparecida de jesus ferreira, rosângela aparecida alves basso, and roberta carvuniversidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras18 nieto cruz & cárdenas alho cruvinel. these postgraduate foreign language researchers are developing studies regarding the current educational situation in their country and share with us some preliminary remarks regarding policies for english language teacher education nowadays. the analysis of four programmes/policies embraces their innovative aspects vis-a-vis traditional practices and some conditions still needed to ensure advances in areas such as the curriculum and predominant ideologies. as always, we hope our journal reaches a wide range of educators. we also hope the communities of our readers can benefit from the contributions of authors from brazil, colombia, mexico, the united states, and turkey. we acknowledge the rigor of their works and look forward to more manuscripts in the areas they have addressed in their articles as well as in others that are embraced in the mission of our publication. maría claudia nieto cruz journal director melba libia cárdenas journal editor 207profile vol. 16, no. 2, october 2014. issn 1657-0790 (printed) 2256-5760 (online). bogotá, colombia. pages 207-210 accumulative index of published articles in profile vol. 16 (2014) number pages articles 1 153-165 arancibia aguilera, m. c. “the design of a rubric to evaluate laboratory reports in astronomy: academic literacy in the disciplines” [“el diseño de una rúbrica para evaluar informes de laboratorio en astronomía: la alfabetización académica en las disciplinas”] 1 105-118 arias rodríguez, g. l. “reading through esp in an undergraduate law program” [“lectura a través de inglés con propósitos específicos en un programa de derecho de pregrado”] 1 77-88 baleghizadeh, s., & mortazavi, m. “the impact of different types of journaling techniques on efl learners’ self-efficacy” [“el impacto de diferentes tipos de diario en la autosuficiencia de estudiantes de inglés como lengua extranjera”] 2 199-205 banegas, d. l., & velázquez, a. “enacting a people-centred curriculum in elt with teenage learners” [“la vivencia de un currículo basado en los actores de la clase de inglés con adolescentes”] 2 117-133 bonilla, s. x., & cruz-arcila, f. “critical socio-cultural elements of the intercultural endeavour of english teaching in colombian rural areas” [“elementos críticos socioculturales de la labor de enseñar inglés en áreas rurales colombianas”] 1 7-10 cárdenas, m. l. “editorial” [“editorial”] 2 11-20 cárdenas, m. l. “publishing and academic writing: experiences of authors who have published in profile?” ["publicación y escritura académica: experiencias de autores que han publicado en profile"] universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras208 1 119-136 carvajal medina, n. e., & roberto flórez, e. e. “collaborative work as an alternative for writing research articles” [“el trabajo colaborativo como alternativa para la escritura de artículos investigativos”] 1 11-28 castro huertas, i. a., & navarro parra, l. j. “the role of songs in first graders’ oral communication development in english” [“el papel de las canciones en el desarrollo de la comunicación oral en inglés de niños de primero de primaria”] 2 87-100 crawford, t., lengeling, m., mora pablo, i., & heredia ocampo, r. “hybrid identity in academic writing: ‘are there two of me?’” [“identidad híbrida: ‘¿hay dos yo?’”] 1 137-151 cuartas alvarez, l. f. “selective use of the mother tongue to enhance students’ english learning processes… beyond the same assumptions” [“uso selectivo de la lengua materna para mejorar el proceso de aprendizaje del inglés de los estudiantes…más allá de las mismas suposiciones”] 2 171-184 echeverri sucerquia, p. a., & pérez restrepo, s. “making sense of critical pedagogy in l2 education through a collaborative study group” [“dándole sentido a la pedagogía crítica en la educación en l2 a través de un grupo de estudio colaborativo”] 2 49-65 fajardo castañeda, j. a. “learning to teach and professional identity: images of personal and professional recognition” [“aprender a enseñar e identidad profesional: imágenes de reconocimiento personal y profesional”] 2 21-36 fajardo mora, n. r. “ideologies revealed during the construction of meaning in an efl class” [“ideologías reveladas durante la construcción de significado en una clase de inglés como lengua extranjera”] 2 101-116 garcía montes, p. a., sagre barboza, a. m., & lacharme olascoaga, a. i. “systemic functional linguistics and discourse analysis as alternatives when dealing with texts” [“la lingüística sistémica funcional y el análisis del discurso como alternativas para trabajar con textos”] 209profile vol. 16, no. 2, october 2014. issn 1657-0790 (printed) 2256-5760 (online). bogotá, colombia. pages 207-210 1 63-76 giraldo, f. “the impact of a professional development program on english language teachers’ classroom performance” [“el impacto de un programa de desarrollo profesional en el desempeño en clase de profesores de lengua inglesa”] 2 135-150 hernández méndez, e., & reyes cruz, m. “research culture in higher education: the case of a foreign language department in mexico” [“cultura de la investigación: el caso de un departamento de lenguas extranjeras en méxico”] 2 67-85 izquierdo castillo, a., & jiménez bonilla, s. “building up autonomy through reading strategies” [“formación en autonomía a través de estrategias de lectura”] 2 37-47 keranen, n., & encinas prudencio, f. “teacher collaboration praxis: conflicts, borders, and ideologies from a micropolitical perspective” [“la práctica colaborativa entre docentes: conflictos, fronteras e ideologías desde una perspectiva micropolítica”] 1 89-104 lopera medina, s. “motivation conditions in a foreign language reading comprehension course offering both a web-based modality and a face-to-face modality” [“las condiciones de motivación en un curso de comprensión de lectura en lengua extranjera (le) ofrecido tanto en la modalidad presencial como en la modalidad a distancia en la web”] 1 49-62 mora, a., trejo, p., & roux, r. “english language teachers’ professional development and identities” [“identidad y desarrollo profesional de docentes de inglés”] 1 167-180 muñoz-luna, r. “from drills to clil: the paradigmatic and methodological evolution towards the integration of content and foreign language” [“desde las repeticiones en el aula hasta aicle: la evolución paradigmática y metodológica hacia el aprendizaje integrado de contenido y lengua extranjera”] 2 7-10 nieto cruz, m. c., & cárdenas, m. l. “editorial” [“editorial”] universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras210 2 185-198 ortiz navarrete, m., & ferreira cabrera, a. “proposing a wiki-based technique for collaborative essay writing” [“propuesta de un modelo pedagógico para la escritura colaborativa de ensayos en un entorno virtual wiki”] 1 181-198 pineda, d. “the feasibility of assessing teenagers’ oral english language performance with a rubric” [“la viabilidad de evaluar el desempeño oral de los adolescentes en inglés con una rúbrica”] 1 199-206 rouse, m. e. “preparing the high school classroom for migrant english language learners” [“preparación del aula de secundaria para estudiantes migrantes que aprenden inglés”] 1 29-48 salinas vacca, y. “collaborative project work development in a virtual environment with low-intermediate undergraduate colombian students” [“desarrollo de trabajo colaborativo en un ambiente virtual con estudiantes colombianos de pregrado de nivel intermedio-bajo”] 2 151-170 tlazalo tejeda, a. c., & basurto santos, n. m. “pronunciation instruction and students’ practice to develop their confidence in efl oral skills” [“la instrucción de la pronunciación y la práctica de los estudiantes para el desarrollo de la confianza en habilidades orales en inglés como lengua extranjera”] 27profile vol. 15, no. 1, april 2013. issn 1657-0790 (printed) 2256-5760 (online). bogotá, colombia. pages 27-43 language policy and the manufacturing of consent for foreign intervention in colombia la política lingüística y la fabricación del consentimiento para la intervención extranjera en colombia marlon valencia* ontario institute for studies in education of the university of toronto, canada the present paper provides a critical analysis of colombia’s national program of bilingualism focusing on the ideologies behind it, how it facilitates the manufacturing of colombian citizens’ consent for foreign intervention through free trade agreements, and the progressive dismantling of public education. the program is analyzed with a critical language policy lens that brings into consideration the historical and socio-political factors of the colombian context. for this purpose, several news articles, policy documents, and academic essays are discussed. connections are made between this language policy, the interests of transnational companies, and how this policy helps portray the colombian public education system as inadequate to fulfill the government’s educational goals. key words: colombian language policy, education policy, free trade agreements, manufacturing consent, transnational companies. el siguiente análisis crítico del programa nacional de bilingüismo (pnb) en colombia hace énfasis en las ideologías que hay detrás de dicho programa y como este facilita la fabricación del consentimiento de los ciudadanos colombianos para la intervención extranjera a través de los tratados de libre comercio, al igual que la privatización progresiva de la educación pública. se analiza el programa de manera crítica teniendo en cuenta los factores históricos y sociopolíticos del contexto. para este propósito se discuten artículos de noticias, documentos del programa y análisis académicos. el artículo establece relaciones entre el programa, los intereses de compañías multinacionales y la manera como dicha política lingüística pone de manifiesto la insuficiencia del sistema educativo público colombiano para alcanzar sus propias metas. palabras clave: compañías multinacionales, fabricación del consentimiento, política educativa, política lingüística colombiana, tratados de libre comercio. * e-mail: marlonval24@yahoo.com this article was received on march 7, 2012, and accepted on november 14, 2012. universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras28 valencia introduction in a globalized world, the role of english as a mediational1 tool among different nation states (kachru, 1992) has encouraged non-native english speaking countries to re-examine their foreign language policies in order to accommodate the new demands of a globalized community that uses english to generate knowledge through intense and simultaneous interaction (graddol, 2007; tsui & tollefson, 2007; matear, 2008; menard-warwick, 2008; lee, wha, & mckerrow, 2010). colombia is one of the many countries currently fostering substantial changes to strengthen english as a foreign language (efl) instruction all over the national territory, as a response to globalization, while also attempting to revitalize indigenous languages in a project that the government calls programa nacional de bilingüismo 2004-2019 (npb = national program of bilingualism; ministerio de educación, 2006b, p. 5).this language policy (lp) was presented in late 2005 (usma, 2009a) as a subproject of the colombian ministry of education’s (ministerio de educación nacional = men) education revolution (revolución educativa), a macro-project that aims to expand the educational system’s coverage by offering quality education to colombians (gonzález, 2007). the npb appeared as the first long term lp that established specific goals to be reached in the whole educational system by 2019. the announcement of these goals produced an immediate reaction from practitioners and researchers, who started providing multiple critical analyses of the npb (de mejía, 2005; 1 i use sociocultural theory of the mind’s (sct) term “mediational tool” in this case to highlight the role of english as humanmade artifact, which may allow individuals and groups (or not, depending on their particular circumstances e.g. sexual orientation, physical ability, etc.) from different linguistic, cultural and socio-economic backgrounds not only to communicate and exchange information, but also to satisfy their needs or accomplish their projected goals (i.e. gaining access to higher education or more job opportunities in a globalized economy, etc.) (see swain, kinnear, & steinman, 2011 for more on mediation and sct). cárdenas, 2006; gonzález, 2007; guerrero, 2008, 2010; usma, 2009a, 2009b) as well as from ‘the public sphere’ (valdés, 2004), which in the case of colombia comprises students, parents, school administrators, professional associations, employers, and any colombian citizen without any kind of specialized knowledge or training in second language education (sle). moreover, the men’s laissez faire approach with regard to disseminating, mainly among members of the public sphere2, what the npb envisions as bilingualism and bilingual education has resulted in a myriad of interpretations of these concepts and what sle implies. these multiple interpretations of the npb are commonly reproduced by colombian media, precisely because as holborow (1999) puts it “(…) language is something about which everyone has an opinion because every speaker knows something about it” (p. 151). the multiple conversations and understandings of sle presented in the media are the main motivation for the present paper. the objective of this essay is to contribute to the existing scholarship on the npb by analyzing the socio-political context in which this policy was created in order to understand the ideologies and interests behind it. a substantial part of this critical policy analysis (tollefson, 1991; 2006) involves a discussion of the role of media i n manufacturing colombian citizens’ consent for international intervention through free trade agreements, as well as the progressive dismantling of public education by magnifying the flaws of the public education system and presenting the colombian state as incapable of providing quality public education. this article begins by presenting its theoretical orientation and methodology, which are followed 2 de mejía and fonseca (2008) provide a comprehensive set of guidelines aimed at clarifying theoretical concepts, issues as well as the types of bilingual education commonly found in spanish-speaking majority contexts in colombia. however, this document was created as a set of “guidelines for educational institutions wanting to offer [bilingual education]” (p. 5, my translation), not to inform members of the public sphere about the npb. 29profile vol. 15, no. 1, april 2013. issn 1657-0790 (printed) 2256-5760 (online). bogotá, colombia. pages 27-43 language policy and the manufacturing of consent for foreign intervention in colombia by a brief description of the linguistic and political neoliberal context in which this lp was created. next, the discussion is followed by an analysis of the ideologies and interests behind the npb, as well as how the media produce discourses which may serve to manufacture consent for the inadequacy of public education and foreign intervention through international trade agreements. theoretical orientation and methodology in discussing these issues, i will use a critical language policy (clp) lens to analyze the data presented. for tollefson (2006), clp falls within the “growing field of critical applied linguistics” (p. 42), a field that includes critical discourse analysis (cda), literacy studies, and critical pedagogy. he identifies three main components of clp: (a) a critical position with regard to traditional mainstream approaches to lp analysis, (b) clp includes research that attempts to produce social change and (c) clp research is influenced by the use of critical theory (2006, p. 42), which in the case of this essay also involves cda as a theoretical lens that allows a critical view and understanding of the power relations present in the multiple discourses (blommaert & bulcaen, 2000) regarding english language proficiency and english language education in colombia. clp engages in a historical-structural analysis of the sociopolitical and economic contexts in which language policies are created and applied, whereas the neoclassical approach (tollefson’s term for traditional research in lp) sees language planning as a response to planners’ perception of the language situation without taking into consideration lp’s stakeholders’ histories (tollefson, 1991). in short, the historical-structural approach sees lp research as “inescapably political” (tollefson, 2006, p. 49) and highlights the active participation of researchers in discussions that should lead to the creation of policies. consequently, for the purpose of this essay, the historical-structural approach to lp provides a holistic view that encompasses a wider range of factors that may inform the ideology/ies behind the npb due to its emphasis on “the origins of the costs and benefits confronting individuals and groups” (tollefson, 1991, p. 32) when learning or using a language, instead of looking at lp as if it occurred in a vacuum. in addition, bourdieu’s (1991) notion of language as a form of cultural and symbolic capital, as well as the concepts of ideology and hegemony will also facilitate data analysis. language as cultural capital for bourdieu (1991), linguistic skills, such as language proficiency, cultural knowledge, or any type of specialized skills, are all forms of cultural capital that can be exchanged in a “marketplace of social interaction” (de mejía, 2002, p. 36). this “marketplace” of interaction is a linguistic market in which a particular language, language variety or legitimate competence is highly valued over any other types of language competence or language varieties. as bourdieu (1991) puts it: “the constitution of a linguistic market creates conditions for an objective competition in and through which the legitimate competence can function as linguistic capital, producing a profit of distinction on the occasion of each social exchange” (p. 55). the current symbolic value of english can be attributed to the importance of this language as a meditational tool (kachru, 1992; graddol, 2007; tsui & tollefson, 2007; matear, 2008; menard-warwick, 2008; lee et al., 2010) to exchange and construct information, as well as to gain access to education and job opportunities; furthermore, the politics of global english are also closely related to the politics of globalization, as english is often regarded as the language of globalization (sonntag, 2003). as a result, english becomes a symbolic resource (de mejía, 2002). therefore, individuals that possess the symbolic resource universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras30 valencia of being highly competent in english could easily gain access to other valuable, educational and material or symbolic resources (de mejía, 2002), and such resources can “acquire a value of their own and become sources of power and prestige in their own right” (heller, 1994, as cited in de mejía, 2002, p. 36). this accumulated prestige of being proficient in english would be what bourdieu refers to as symbolic capital; in other words, cultural and symbolic capital present privileged individuals with access to material capital such as opportunities for upward mobility (bourdieu, 1991). hegemony and ideology hegemonic practices are defined by gramsci (1998) as “institutional practices that ensure that power remains in the hands of a few” (as cited in tollefson, 2006, p. 47). clp analyzes the practices that become invisible because society often regards them as natural and they commonly occur without being questioned (tollefson, 2006). tollefson (1991) argues that ideology “refers to normally unconscious assumptions that come to be seen as common sense” (p. 10). it is these common sense assumptions that get built into the institutions of society and work by legitimatizing what should be considered natural conditions that marginalized individuals and groups will not even question due to the characteristics inherent in or natural to ideologies that result in the manufacture of consent by the oppressed (tollefson, 1991). the term “manufacture of consent” was coined by lippman in the early 1920s and was further used by herman and chomsky (1988) to explain how media are used to fabricate public opinion in favor of “the political requirements of social order” (p. xi). one ideology present in elt that is of particular interest to this study is the ‘common sense’ assumption that english can be used as a tool for upward mobility in education or the job market, which tollefson (1991) argues is right at the core of the language education ideology. moreover, the relationship between language and ideology lies within the inextricable social nature of language since both language and ideologies are social constructs, or as holborow (2006) puts it, it is language’s “social rootedness” (p. 24) that makes it overlap with ideology. accordingly, it is through ideologies that hegemonic practices are built. moreover, tollefson (2006) explains the relationship between power and ideologies in bourdieu’s terms by saying that through hegemonic practices, the structures of social institutions make the linguistic capital of dominant and non-dominant groups unequal. data collection and analysis this lp analysis discusses not only this lp and its guidelines, but also takes into consideration other documents created by the men, newspaper articles, newscasts, a fictional video clip widely circulated through electronic social media (colombia 2005, 2009), as well as critical analyses written by colombian academics (de mejía, 2005; cárdenas, 2006; gonzález, 2007; guerrero, 2008, 2010; usma 2009a, 2009b). data are analyzed using the framework discussed above in order to come to an interpretation within the tradition of clp. linguistic and political context colombia is a country with a great linguistic diversity in which minority language groups speak spanish as a second language and have either a native amerindian language or a creole version based on english or spanish as their first language (l1) (de mejía, 2005). nation-wide, spanish is the majority language, a language that has dominated education, as well as political, cultural and most public domains since colonial times; therefore, spanish has constantly threatened colombia’s indigenous languages. 31profile vol. 15, no. 1, april 2013. issn 1657-0790 (printed) 2256-5760 (online). bogotá, colombia. pages 27-43 language policy and the manufacturing of consent for foreign intervention in colombia the npb was created during the first presidential period of álvaro uribe vélez, who was in office from 2002 until 2010. the uribe government was well known for introducing several important changes in colombian legislation, many of them particularly benefitting national and transnational companies. in late 2002, the government created a labor reform as an attempt to give corporations a break with expectations that they could offer more jobs to un employed colombian citizens (“reforma laboral”, 2007). the labor reform, also known as law 789 of 2002, extended day hours, depriving workers of earning night pay or holiday pay. hence, day hours that before law 789 went from 6:00 am to 6:00 pm, were changed to go from 6:00 am until 10:00 pm. this law also reduced the amount of termination pay that employers must pay in the case of wrongful dismissal. these employee pay cuts were made with the intention of giving 640,000 more people nationwide employment. the effectiveness of law 789 in reducing un employment rates was to be followed by a committee formed by two members of the senate, two members of the chamber of representatives, the minister of social protection and the director of the state’s agency of statistics dane. however, in 2007, due to this committee’s long silence in reporting the success or failure of the law, the central union of workers (central unitaria de trabajadores, cut) hired a group of researchers from the national university (universidad nacional de colombia) to do a follow up on the policy. this ad hoc group of researchers reported that unemployment rates did not decrease even though employers were saving approximately 4 trillion colombian pesos3 (cp) 3 as of july 17th, 2012, 1 american dollar is equivalent to $1778.42 colombian pesos according to colombia’s national bank, banco de la república. all further conversions were made using this exchange rate. http://www.banrep.gov.co/series-estadisticas/see_ts_ trm.htm#cotización per year by not paying their employees the wages that the 1991 constitution had previously granted them. these savings resulted in national and transnational companies becoming richer since law 789 came out (“reforma laboral”, 2007). the uribe government also continued the legacy of previous presidents that established unequal agree ments with transnational companies and foreign governments. these agreements in many cases contained clauses that invalidated international treaties that colombia had previously signed to protect its economy and biodiversity. ramírez (2005) mentions how treaties and alliances with foreign companies and governments not only tended to undermine local unions, but also included many unilateral benefits for the foreign investors that were detrimental to colombia’s products, its economy, its citizens and the environment, as can be seen in ramírez’s words when he refers to the “preferential agreements” that transnational companies usually get: other legal changes included tariff rebates, preferential agreements—which are not applied reciprocally to products produced in our country—tax exemptions, tax parity between national and foreign industries, facilitation of profit repatriation, compensation for nationalization, and special guarantees in the case of lawsuits against transnationals. cases of litigation between the state and private parties are referred to private arbitration tribunals whose decisions always end up favoring the rights of multinationals over the rights of the nation, resulting in enormous losses for the public treasury. (p. 35) this linguistic and political overview of colombia provides contextual information that helps to understand the possible motivations that the uribe government had to create the npb and the connection between this lp and neoliberal practices that favor the exploitation of colombia’s natural resources and its citizens by transnational companies. universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras32 valencia the national program of bilingualism (npb) in 2004, the british c ouncil (b c ), as the specialized institution leading the npb, advised the men on setting language competence goals for students and teachers using the proficiency levels established by the common european framework of reference for languages (cef) as benchmarks (ministerio de educación, 2006b, n.d.). accordingly, by 2019, all secondary graduates from both public and private schools are expected to reach the b1 level, a threshold level, which implies that language users can easily access and understand familiar matters regularly encountered in school, work and leisure activities (council of europe, 2001). university gradu ates and current efl schoolteachers must reach the b2 level, which according to the cef is a “vantage level” and implies a higher degree of complexity in the information that can be understood, which can include vocabulary on technical matters, while it also requires more elaborate writing skills. finally, with regard to teacher education, new graduates of these programs must reach the c1 level which is described as users who possess an effective operational proficiency. this last level expects language users to be able to produce more complex texts and interact efficiently in most academic and technical matters (council of europe, 2001). it is important to highlight that c1 comes right before c2, which is the highest level of proficiency presented by the cef. elt directives supporting the npb in 2006, legislators introduced law 1064 as a norm “for the support and strengthening of education for work and human development” (ministerio de educación, 2006c), a type of education that had been known as non-formal education up until that time (usma, 2009a). law 1064 not only changed the name of non-formal education through its article 1, but it also established that taxpayers’ money could go to accredited private institutions for the provision of educational services. at the same time, legislation encouraged more regulated and goal focused efl instruction throughout the country. as mentioned above, even though the men had adopted the cef as the benchmarks for language learning, teaching and assessment in colombia since 2004, this adoption came to be legislated only through decree 3870 of 2006’s article 2 (ministerio de educación, 2006d). this decree also required nonformal institutions that offer foreign language classes to establish clear goals, contents, methodologies, course schedules for their language programs, as well as the accreditation of language programs offered by universities (art. 3-6). thus, both public and private universities started assessing and reshaping their efl programs to accommodate the new requirements of the ministry of education (universia, 2008; unab, 2009; universidad del tolima, 2009; profesores de inglés, 2011; universidad de los llanos, n.d.). however, not all institutions must be accredited since decree 3870’s article 7 established that “programs offered by organisms of cooperation (…) would not require any certification” (ministerio de educación, 2006d, as cited in usma, 2009a, p. 129), which implies that the bc does not require any type of certification to advise the men for the npb. decree 3870 was soon followed by the publication of the men’s estándares (standards), a document providing guidelines for the teaching of efl for elementar y and secondar y schools as shown by a press release. this press release announced the application of tests in accordance with the cef and stated that 50% of the country’s english teachers were expected to reach the b2 level by 2010 and 100% by 2019 (ministerio de educación, 2007, as cited by usma, 2009a). nevertheless, the results of the english proficiency diagnostic test for teachers (prueba diagnóstica de inglés para docentes) administered on june 12, 2011, showed that out of 3,270 teachers who 33profile vol. 15, no. 1, april 2013. issn 1657-0790 (printed) 2256-5760 (online). bogotá, colombia. pages 27-43 language policy and the manufacturing of consent for foreign intervention in colombia took the test, only 496 were at the b2 level, which is 15% of the total (ministerio de educación, 2011). the language policy laid out by the npb through the proficiency just described is currently reflected on standardized national tests. this is precisely why icfes, the governmental organization in charge of assessing education and educational institutions, has made english a compulsory component of two of its five standardized tests known as pruebas saber (knowledge tests): prueba saber 11 and prueba saber pro4 (ministerio de educación, 2006a, 2011). the first standardized test is administered to students at the end of secondary school in grade 11, and is a requirement for access to postsecondary education, while prueba saber pro is the standardized test for specific academic areas that new professionals must take in their last year of their undergraduate degree. these two standardized tests already require basic level english proficiency; nevertheless, the men has been progressively adjusting its standardized tests to reflect the projected language competence goals5 (ministerio de educación, 2006a). ideologies and implications of this policy bilingualism according to the npb in her critical discourse analysis of estándares guerrero (2008) points to several discourse features of this document that present an essentialist notion of bilingualism which equals bilingualism to speaking spanish and english. first, guerrero points to the docu ment’s title: basic foreign language competence standards: english, as well as the document’s subtitle for its cover: teaching foreign languages: english. 4 these two standardized tests were formerly known as icfes and ecaes. 5 even though the revamping of pruebas saber in 2012 added an initial 3rd grade test to the existing tests for 5th, 9th and 11th grades, english has not been included as one of the areas to be tested in grades 3, 5, and 9. see www.icfes.gov.co the challenge! accordingly, the word english after the colon could mean two things: (a) there are more documents in the series that will establish standards for the teaching, learning and evaluation of other languages, or (b) english is the quintessential foreign language that should be taught while other languages can be disregarded (vélez-rendón, 2003, as cited in guerrero, 2008). besides, guerrero also points to the collocation of the phrases “being bilingual” and “globalized world” in the rationale presented by estándares for choosing english. she argues that the document equates bilingualism with globalization and then presents being a speaker of english as tantamount to becoming a recipient of the positive benefits associated with globalization, such as “broader communication, economic power, capitalism, multinational companies, foreign in vestors, better jobs, better living conditions, no geographical boundaries” (p. 32), among many others. the assumption that english is a universal language could easily be challenged in colombia, a country where children in remote rural areas often suffer violence and displacement due to the countr y’s internal armed conflict. thus, not all citizens of a low-income countr y such as colombia may see english language proficiency as a priority (bruthiaux, 2002). this holds true especially for children living in communities under cross-fire, taking into consideration that colombia is second in the world only to sudan in the number of people displaced by violence (cárdenas, 2006; guerrero, 2008). another interesting fact ab out estándares discussed by guerrero is that in the document’s ra tionale for choosing english, the authors distance themselves from their deliberate choice by mentioning the importance of this language in a globalized world, and presenting arguments that make their choice agentless. this implies that the men should not be held accountable for this choice because english is chosen as the language for bilingualism based on arguments universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras34 valencia that “everybody knows” (guerrero, 2008, p. 32) about. therefore, the decision of choosing english for the npb is presented as common sense since the men is only responding to the needs of the modern world. the men’s intention to avoid the responsibility of choosing english as the foreign language for the npb can also be seen when the ministry states that english was chosen because it reflects students’ and schools’ preferences given the autonomy that schools had to offer a foreign language of their choice since law 115’s introduction of article 21, which states that instruction in at least one foreign language must be offered (guerrero, 2008). in other words, estándares presents the choice of english as if schools and students had been given autonomy to study any foreign language and chose english, but there is no mention of the historical processes of foreign langue teaching policies in colombia that led to the teaching of english as the predominant foreign language in elementary, secondary, and tertiary education (see usma, 2009a and de mejía, 2002). english: spanish bilingualism = common sense as discussed above, in estándares the men is reducing bilingualism and bilingual education to the teaching and learning of english in majority spanish language contexts, an assumption which is presented as an unquestioned decision due to the important role of english as regards globalization. through this unquestioned assumption, the men presents english: spanish bilingualism not only as the most prominent option for the npb, but the entity also legitimizes this reductionist notion of bilingualism. the legitimization of such restrictive understanding of bilingualism leads to a manufacturing of consent in which ideologies become invisible for the co lombian citizens marginalized by the npb since the government introduces its arguments in favor of english/spanish bilingualism in estándares as rarely questioned because they are presented as if they simply were common sense (see tollefson, 1991). in the case of colombia the ideology behind the npb leads to an institutionalization of english as an “elitist resource” (tsui & tollefson, 2007, p. 2) due to the significant lack of economic, linguistic and human resources that public and especially rural educational institutions have to deal with in order to reach the npb’s proficiency goals (sánchez & obando, 2008). manufacturing consent: colombian media and public sphere’s reaction to the npb there are three recurrent themes that commonly appear on colombian media6 when referring to bilingualism or the npb, and these are: (a) unrealistic expectations from parents, employers or professional associations about the proficiency that students and professionals should have, (b) an unclear notion of bilingualism, which often leads to inaccurate assumptions about the learning and teaching of foreign languages and (c) a tendency to disregard the value of learners’ and teachers’ spanish competence. these three common assumptions are a result of misinformation among members of the public sphere with regard to what the men presents as bilingualism, as well as their lack of participation in the creation of a top-down policy like the npb. with regard to the public sphere’s unrealistic expectations about language proficiency, an article published by el país (peláez, 2009), a national newspaper from the city of cali, mentions how “finding a bilingual professional in the city of cali is a tough job,” which is further emphasized by how the article describes english as “the universal language for business.” in fact, finding a bilingual professional may seem challenging for employers like the selection and 6 all excerpts taken from colombian media (from both newspapers and television) are my translation since they originally appeared in spanish, except for colombia 2025, which has an englishsubtitled version. 35profile vol. 15, no. 1, april 2013. issn 1657-0790 (printed) 2256-5760 (online). bogotá, colombia. pages 27-43 language policy and the manufacturing of consent for foreign intervention in colombia development manager of fanalca (the national automobile parts manufacturer), interviewed for this article, as she observes that “not even graduates of bilingual schools or universities where other languages are spoken have a perfect command of the language.” thus, for this employer, bilingualism not only means gaining a certain degree of proficiency in english, as argued by the men’s reductionist definition, but it also implies having “a perfect command.” this common understanding of bilingualism as a perfectly balanced competence in a bilingual person’s first (l1) and second language (l2), where l1 competence is simply taken for granted, generates false expectations in what colombian’s in the public sphere may expect from the npb. another source of concern is that chief executive officers of professional associations, such as the president of the colombian human resources association acrip, consider “not being fluent in english” as “an obstacle for upward mobility in a company and its future projections” (peláez, 2009), which implies that non-balanced english/ spanish bilinguals might not be hired by like-minded employers. these examples show how terms such as “command of the language”, competence and fluency are used in different contexts and often conveying different meanings, which suggests that for some people being fluent may imply being able to use english for specific purposes (i.e. english for working as a flight attendant…) or in some other cases it could refer to balanced bilinguals with a “perfect command” of the language, something certainly beyond the scope of the npb, especially when the notion of ‘perfect’ fails to account for the complexity of second language proficiency, and balanced bilinguals are far from being the norm (cummins, 1989, 2001; cook, 1992, 1999; lightbown & spada, 2006; ortega, 2009; guerrero, 2010). the lack of information that the public sphere has about the npb, as well as the restrictive notion of bilingualism that this policy promotes are producing inaccurate assumptions about what bilingualism is and what learning or teaching a foreign language implies. some of these inaccurate assumptions about bilingualism can be seen in the article “bilingualism: benefits everywhere you look”, published in the newspaper el heraldo (bilingüismo: beneficios, 2008). in this article, a private school owner, paradoxically introduced by the reporter as an sle specialist due to her certification in educational administration and having an applied degree in math, explains how “bilingual people control the two languages to such degree that when they pronounce a word they make sure it is in the right language.” she further explains that at an early age a “child listens and reproduces all sounds perfectly, an ability that is progressively lost beyond the age of 11 or 12.” these comments again reinforce the idea that bilingualism implies a perfect command of the language or even worse, an assumption that students from bilingual schools should graduate “speaking 100% english” (“fontibón se la juega”, 2009), which could be interpreted as a subtractive form of bilingualism (cummins, 1989; 2001; guerrero, 2010) and links successful bilingualism to the critical period hypothesis (see muñoz & singleton, 2011, for a critical review of the cph and guerrero, 2010 for a discussion of how the men uses the term bilingualism in the npb). colombian media also echo the assumption that teachers should be held accountable for students’ limited english language proficiency, as suggested by the bc’s three diagnostic studies that are mentioned by the men as the raison d’être to create the npb (men, 2005; 2006a). in an article about the teacher training option offered by the bc, one of the bc’s teacher training coordinator says that “many times, the cause of the [students’] shortcomings is not in the [teaching] tools per se, but in knowing how to use them” (“fontibón se la juega”, 2009). furthermore, teachers appear as the culprits of students’ poor performance in more recent national results of pruebas saber published in universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras36 valencia a newspaper article whose headline reads “english teachers also fail” (“profesores de inglés”, 2011), which additionally mentions how colombia appears ranked as number 41 out of 44 countries in education first’s (ef, a swedish transnational company specialized in language training) english proficiency index (epi). according to ef, the epi provides transnational and comparable data on adults’ english proficiency gathered through four “free online english tests” voluntarily taken by over two million adults in 44 different countries (ef, 2011). in addition to this, in an interview, the minister of education mentions how pruebas saber 2011 show that 11 out of 100 school students have a pre-intermediate level of english language proficiency, which she, again, attributes to teachers’ english proficiency, and she points particularly to pre-service teachers currently attending second language teacher education programs across the country (rcn, 2011). as discussed here, media often portray teachers as the only culprits of students’ struggles to reach the proficiency goals set six years ago when the npb was launched; however, what the media fail to acknowledge are the many challenges that teachers encounter to teach their classes in public schools due to a lack of resources, professional development opportunities and administrative support (marulanda & berdugo, 2005; hernández & faustino, 2006; sánchez & obando, 2008). the npb, neoliberal reform and transnational corporations perhaps the men’s motivation for the npb can be best understood by examining the colombian governments’ close relationships with transnational companies, and the governments of canada and the u.s., two developed inner circle english speaking countries (kachru, 1992) with which colombia has free trade agreements (foreign affairs and international trade canada, 2012; office of the united states trade representative, 2012). according to president santos, the canada-colombia free trade agreement ‘will speed-up colombia’s economy,’ (presidencia de la república, 2012a, my translation) and the u.s.–colombia trade promotion agreement ‘means less poverty and more job opportunities’ for colombia (presidencia de la república, 2012b7, my translation). it is precisely in this political and economic context where globalization discourses favor english as a tool for economic development in outer circle and expanding circle countries (kachru, 1992) that see english as a tool for development (bruthiaux, 2002), especially due to the opportunities that it presents for process outsourcing as part of these free trade agreements (matear, 2008). even prior to the signing of both trade agreements, the influence of the governments of these two countries had played an important role in shaping the existing policies for exploiting mineral resources in colombia (ramírez, 2005). in fact, plan colombia, a u.s. initiative to combat drug trafficking and guerrillas in colombia, was lobbied at the u.s. congress by occidental petroleum and other u.s. companies that had helped finance george w. bush’s campaign (ramírez, 2005). this plan required the placement of colombian military anti-narcotics bases in three different zones of the country. the first base was located in the south of bolívar, where there has been an ongoing dispute between transnational companies and small-scale miners over one of the richest deposits of gold in the world; the second base was placed in norte de santander, alongside caño limón-coveñas, an oil pipeline that belongs to occidental petroleum; and the third base was established near ataco, in departamento del tolima (tolima state) where transnational companies have also shown an interest in the deposits of gold and 7 the canada-colombia free trade agreement came into force on august 15, 2011, and the u.s.-colombia trade agreement started on may 15, 2012 (ministerio de comercio industria y comercio, 2012). 37profile vol. 15, no. 1, april 2013. issn 1657-0790 (printed) 2256-5760 (online). bogotá, colombia. pages 27-43 language policy and the manufacturing of consent for foreign intervention in colombia other precious minerals found in this area. massacres and other violent attacks perpetrated by military and paramilitary groups supported by u.s. transnationals became common occurrences in these three mineralrich zones (ramírez, 2004). situations like these were also seen in putumayo, where agencies of the u.s. government, paramilitaries and the army have acted to protect harken energy’s investment in developing and exploiting one of colombia’s largest gas reserves (ramírez, 2005). on the other hand, the government of canada, “a country that has earned a reputation for strengthening legislation in favor of human rights” (ramírez, 2005, p. 38), has also played an important role in the creation of a mining code that benefits canadian mining transnational companies over the interests of colombia. this is the case of agencies such as the canadian international development agency (cida) and the canadian energy research institute (ceri). cida and ceri became actively involved in colombia during the 1996-1998 period when new legislation for mining, petroleum and environmental regulations for mineral extraction was being created. both ceri and cida contributed to the creation and enactment of laws that favored canadian transnational companies such as corona goldfields and grey star. cida and ceri played a key role in giving canadian transnational companies 73% of the mineral exploitation contracts to the detriment of colombia’s economy, society and environment by pushing tax cuts, tax exemptions, lack of environmental controls and alliances with transnational companies that made the state petroleum agency, ecopetrol, nearly disappear, as well as the state telecommunications agency, telecom, which was merged with nortel and three other multinationals (ramírez, 2005). the canadian transnational mining company corona goldfields offered to buy the properties of small and medium-scale miners of marmato, departamento de caldas (caldas sate), but ended up paying only 50% or even 20% of the value agreed on the lands. therefore, even though local small and medium-scale miners were not paid what they were promised, they could not do any mining activity on those lands either because they had already forfeited their rights to those lands, a situation that would legally make them trespassers on lands that they were never fully paid for (ramírez, 2005). more recently, in 2007, the colombian government attempted to pass new legislation that favored multinational companies by providing them with significant tax cuts, which went from 36.9% of the profits made on the minerals extracted in 2003 to 25.5% in 2008 (robledo, 2007). these new legislative changes would also go against the interests of small-scale miners by establishing standards that could be met by only transnational companies (robledo, 2009). the british council (bc) must also be mentioned in the discussion of the beneficiaries of the npb because the leading role of this institution is already generating significant revenue for this “multinational academic empire” (gonzález, 2007, p. 312). as usma (2009a) points out, in 2008 the bc advertised its ielts exam (international testing system) for 416,500 cp (234.20 usd), practice materials for a cost of 95,000 cp (53.42 usd), a preparation book for 90,000 cp (50.61 usd), and a preparation course for 935,000 cp (525.75 usd). all of these exam-related costs in a country where the minimum wage in 2008 was 461,500 cp (259.50 usd) a month8, which implies that a person on the minimum wage would require a full month of work to pay for the ielts test, two months to pay for a course and half a month to pay for the book and practice materials. on the other hand, 8 for 2012 the minimum wage in colombia is $566.700 cp (318.65 usd) (ministerio del trabajo, 2012). the cost of the ielts test, as of april, 2012 is $485,000 cp (272.71 usd), practice materials cost $98,500 cp (55.39 usd), and there are two options for test preparation: (1) one-day ielts workshops for $180,000 cp (101.21 usd), and (2) the ielts preparation course for $1,075,000 cp (604.47 usd). universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras38 valencia the bc could be making over 652,500,000,000, cp (366,898,707 usd), considering that in one year more than 1.5 million people take their tests offered in more than 100 countries (british council, 2008, as cited in usma, 2009a). this sum, according to usma (2009a) was five times colombia’s national budget for research in 2008. the colombian government’s motivations to create the npb can also be analyzed in colombia 2025, a futuristic video clip produced by the office of the vicepresident in 2009, which was widely shared through online social networks, web 2.0, and video-sharing websites such as youtube, facebook and wikispaces. this video projects colombia as the richest country in latin america by 2025, and it mentions how the countr y’s success is based on alliances between private and government owned industries, as well as transnational companies such as british petroleum, fox, microsoft, dreamworks, pixar, sony, shell, among many others. indeed, fox has already been producing television shows in colombia, as in the case of mental, a show filmed in bogotá for a fictional story that takes place in los angeles (“‘mental’ llega a la tv”, 2009). moreover, the english subtitled version of colombia 2025 predicted that in 2010 “large north american animation companies [will] come to our country and find creative capabilities, valuable talent and (a) committed government.” by 2017, the video predicts that “entertainment multinationals” will “increase their stake in our market”, which is why this video clip envisions that universal and sony will “establish their headquarters for the (south american) region in bogotá.” colombia 2025 constantly places an emphasis on the exploitation of natural resources as a tool for the country’s economic development. this can be seen in the following statement: “our biodiversity becomes actual wealth.” the narrator also mentions that colombia’s success could only happen “thanks to visionary leadership, audacious decisions and great national consensuses”, which suggest that all colombians must accept the government’s creation and application of policies like the npb, and other neoliberal reforms. even though colombia 2025 is mostly fiction, it provides valuable insights concerning what the uribe administration projected for the future of colombia, whose legacy can also be seen in the present administration of juan manuel santos (2010-2014), even though their relationships are currently tense9. santos introduced a controversial reform to tertiar y education, which academics, unionists and students view as a direct response to colombia’s free trade agreement with the u.s., and highly linked to the agendas of multiple transnational corporations. the government argued that this reform aimed to change the existing law 30 of 1992 of higher education and expand access by providing greater autonomy to educational institutions through deregulation, encouraging the participation of private industry in funding public institutions as well as the creation of for-profit educational institutions, and, thirdly, providing a system of financial aid in which colombian citizens could get loans to pay for their education (arango, 2011). however, this reform was overturned by a grassroots student movement, which was in great part fueled by a fellow student movement resisting neoliberal tertiary education policy in chile (barrio nuevo, 2011; “‘desde los 70’”, 2011). concluding remarks the main objective of this paper was to provide an overview of the socio-political context in which the 9 the relationship between uribe and santos has been progressively deteriorating since santos took office (“entre santos y uribe,” 2011), especially after uribe had a meeting with his political allies (july, 2012) to form an opposition coalition arguing that santos’ policies had ‘abandoned’ and ‘eroded’ what uribe had achieved with his ‘democratic security’ program (“álvaro uribe oficializa su oposición,” 2012). however, in terms of economic and social matters, uribe’s and santos’ policies are very similar since both of them favor international interests (angoso, 2012), which is why opposition senator jorge enrique robledo simply puts in these words: “uribe and santos represent the same, the extreme right” (angoso, 2012). 39profile vol. 15, no. 1, april 2013. issn 1657-0790 (printed) 2256-5760 (online). bogotá, colombia. pages 27-43 language policy and the manufacturing of consent for foreign intervention in colombia npb was created with the intention of analyzing the ideologies and motivations behind this policy. this lp was envisioned as a response to globalization which aimed to allow colombian citizens to participate in the rapid creation and exchange of knowledge and information made possible by english language proficiency. however, as devised, not only does this policy generate processes of exclusion and stratification through the standardization and marketization of english language teaching (see usma, 2009a), but it also serves as a means to manufacture consent among colombians for the intervention of foreign governments and transnational companies, as well as the implementation of neoliberal education reforms aimed at dismantling publicly funded education. this can be seen in the presentation of incomplete or superficial data on standardized test results in the media, which portray public schools and teachers unfavorably, without informing colombian citizens (in the public sphere) of the multiple challenges that efl teachers and public schools face to reach the npb’s projected goals. consequently, this lp, as well as the proposed reform to tertiary education, can lead the education system to ultimately serve the interests of transnational companies that require both highlyskilled and less-skilled workers. thus, elite private bilingual school students that possess the language competence legitimized by the market will be able to get high profile jobs if the government’s transnational outsourcing and natural resource exploitation projects go as planned, whereas students from public schools, urban areas and lower-middle class schools will face a challenge to meet the established proficiency requirements, something that could result in turning public schools students into a reserve army of unskilled labor (bowles & gintis, 1976; 2002). due to space limitations this paper focused only on the npb and the colombian context. however, a comparison between lp and education policy reform in chile with its english opens doors program (matear, 2008; menard-warwick, 2008), as well as how student movements in both countries have been actively collaborating with each other to resist neoliberal education policies is an area that presents valuable opportunities for future research due to the observed effectiveness of these transnational student movements in resisting top-down education policies associated with globalization. further research should also analyze the law of bilingualism (congreso, 2012) recently discussed in the colombian congress and its future implications. references álvaro uribe oficializa su oposición a santos. 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(2009b). globalization and language and education reform in colombia: a critical outlook. íkala, revista de lenguaje y cultura, 14(22), 19-42. valdés, g. (2004). between support and marginalisation: the development of academic language in linguistic minority children. bilingual education and bilingualism, 7(2/3), 102-132. about the author marlon valencia is a phd candidate in second language education, as well as in comparative international and developing education at the ontario institute for studies in education of the university of toronto (canada). his research interests include second language teacher education, language policy and planning, multiliteracies, and social identities in language education. acknowledgements i am deeply grateful to jim cummins, antoinette gagné, eve haque, ruth hayhoe, normand labrie, and ian martin, scholars whose work and mentorship greatly enriched this critical discussion and continue to inspire my research. i would also like to thank the three anonymous reviewers of this paper, and the profile editorial board for their helpful feedback. 125profile vol. 17, no. 2, july-december 2015. issn 1657-0790 (printed) 2256-5760 (online). bogotá, colombia. pages 125-136 http://dx.doi.org/10.15446/profile.v17n2.50563 motivation: the road to successful learning la motivación: el camino para un aprendizaje exitoso rocío espinar redondo*1 josé luis ortega martín**2 universidad de granada, granada, spain this research has the aim of highlighting the importance of motivation in the process of learning english as a foreign language. for that purpose, some factors that affect motivation are described, using as a starting point the answers obtained from a questionnaire given to students in their fourth year of compulsory secondary education. the main conclusions of the research show the fundamental role of factors such as the teacher, the four skills, students’ interests and daily habits, among others. finally, some guidelines for a teaching methodology are proposed with the intention of future development. key words: factors, foreign language learning, motivation, skills, students’ interests, teacher. esta investigación nace con el objetivo de resaltar la importancia de la motivación en el proceso de aprender inglés como lengua extranjera basándose en los resultados obtenidos en un cuestionario para alumnos de cuarto curso de educación secundaria obligatoria. las principales conclusiones de la investigación muestran el papel fundamental que juegan algunos de los factores que afectan a la motivación como el profesor, las cuatro destrezas, los intereses y hábitos de estudio de los alumnos, etc. en la parte final de la investigación se describe una serie de pautas para desarrollar una propuesta metodológica que tenga en cuenta los resultados de este estudio. palabras clave: aprendizaje de segundas lenguas, destrezas, factores, intereses de los alumnos, motivación, profesor. * e-mail: rocioer_13@hotmail.com ** e-mail: ortegam@ugr.es how to cite this article (apa, 6th ed.): espinar redondo, r., & ortega martín, j. l. (2015). motivation: the road to successful learning. profile issues in teachers’ professional development, 17(2), 125-136. http://dx.doi.org/10.15446/profile.v17n2.50563. this article was received on july 19, 2014, and accepted on january 30, 2015. this is an open access article distributed under the terms of the creative commons license attribution-noncommercial-noderivatives 4.0 international license. consultation is possible at http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/. http://dx.doi.org/10.15446/profile.v17n2.50563 mailto:rocioer_13%40hotmail.com?subject= mailto:ortegam%40ugr.es?subject= http://dx.doi.org/10.15446/profile.v17n2.50563 http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/ universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras126 espinar redondo & ortega martín introduction in recent decades, the role of the english language has increased throughout the world, and the necessity of fully understanding it is generally accepted. nevertheless, how this language is addressed in spain is still insufficient, which is clearly demonstrated in the results from the education first: english proficiency index (education first, 2012), in which spain is ranked in the group of “medium level of english” along with a small number of european countries such as portugal, italy, and france; the remainder, meanwhile, are at higher levels. this result is even worse if we focus our attention on andalusia, which is classified as having a “low level of english” in comparison with the other communities in spain. by observing these outcomes, two assertions can be made: 1. we recognise the importance of english 2. we are attempting to improve our english levels, but we are doing it erroneously. regarding the first statement, it is important to mention that the consideration of english as the essential tool for communication has forced the spanish government and educational institutions to attach importance to its presence in the learning development of children and teenagers. consequently, all students in primary and secondary education in spain are taught english as a foreign language (efl) as one of their compulsory subjects. since 2007/2008, students have begun learning english at the age of 6 (the first year of primary school), continuing to age 16 (the fourth year of compulsory secondary education [cse]) and, if they continue studying, also in bachillerato. furthermore, the spanish ministry of education introduced the mec programme1 in 2007, which was designed for students and teachers who wanted to improve their foreign language skills by living abroad for a short period of time. 1 characteristics of the mec (ministry of education and culture) can be found at https://sede.educacion.gob.es/catalogo-tramites/ becas-ayudas-subvenciones/para-estudiar/idiomas.html. c oncerning the s econd statement, we can confirm that it is also partly true because the current measures are less than sufficient, which is shown in the poor results (only 23% of the spanish population consider that they speak english well [education first, 2012]). one of the main criticisms of the spanish education system regarding teaching foreign languages is that students spend approximately 10 years learning english at school but that very few of them end secondary education with a b1 level (the level described by the common european framework of reference for languages, council of europe, 2001). there should definitely be some incongruities in the process of teaching english in spain that can explain the differences between the number of hours of english taught at school and the students’ low levels of the language at the end. consequently, this research will focus on the different factors that affect motivation in secondary school students who study english to discover if there is a connection between their low english levels and their motivation. motivation and foreign language learning definition of motivation the idea of motivation is a recurring topic throughout the history of language teaching and is considered fundamental for achieving positive results in any task. this long journey is reflected in the fact that there is no single definition, but instead a number of them. the existence of this variety of definitions shows the dif f iculty in describing motivation and its role in the process of learning a language. consequently, the first step is to clarify some of the problematic aspects of the term “motivation” as it was described in rodicio (1999): • motivation is not a physical feature; that is, it cannot be observed directly. 127profile vol. 17, no. 2, july-december 2015. issn 1657-0790 (printed) 2256-5760 (online). bogotá, colombia. pages 125-136 motivation: the road to successful learning • motivation is just one of the pieces in the complex mechanism that moves people’s conduct, but it is not the only one. with these problematic areas in consideration, it is important to remember some of the definitions that have been written in previous investigations: • crookes and schmidt (1991) identified motivation as learners’ orientation with regard to the goal of learning a second language. • madrid (1999) explained the concept of motivation as an individual state that is influenced by different factors such as beliefs, interests, goals, and wishes that demand an effort from students. • spolsky (2000) described motivation as the amount of time a learner is prepared to spend on learning tasks. • ortega martín (2002) explained that motivation is an individual’s disposition to learning a task that can be modified both by himor herself and by the surrounding circumstances. • cole (2007) defined motivation as the internal state that instigates, directs, and maintains behaviour. these are just general ideas to be considered in defining “motivation” that will be followed in this research. that is, motivation will be understood as what encourages students to freely devote their time to a specific activity. it encourages students not only to initiate the activity but also to continue working on it throughout their lives. these reasons are individual and personal and different in each individual context, and they can come from the students themselves or from external stimuli. theories about motivation in foreign language learning if the idea of motivation can be problematic to define, we find the same situation regarding the numerous theories and classifications put forth by authors. in this respect, some of the most famous theories about motivation in the field of foreign language learning will be mentioned. one of the most important theories comes from gardner (as cited in madrid, 1999) and his socioeducational model, which depicts the attitudes and motivation in foreign language learning and the distinction between integrative and instrumental motivation: • integrative motivation: consists of students’ desire to become part of the culture related to the language they are studying. students may identify themselves with the values and features of the culture that represents the language. therefore, they might want to learn english in order to live in an englishspeaking country, work or study in one, interact with people who speak the language, and so forth. • instrumental motivation: is connected with the idea of learning a language that will be used as a tool for different purposes. the language is not the students’ goal but their means to a higher purpose, such as studying, reading, or promoting. students with instrumental motivation think that english will be helpful for them, but they have no real interest in the language itself. another traditional classification has been the distinction between students who are intrinsically vs. extrinsically motivated by deci and ryan (2000), who explained intrinsic motivation as the choices people make for their own sake without considering any external component, such that they are intrinsically rewarded. this definition is close to gardner and lambert’s (1972) view of the subdivision of motivation into two separate aspects, but deci and ryan (2000) change the names of the categories in order to include some considerations that were left out of previous classifications. in this respect, intrinsic motivation was related to students’ interests and goals, that is, when they develop a skill for a task because it is their will. in contrast, extrinsic motivation consists universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras128 espinar redondo & ortega martín of external stimuli that influence students’ behaviour regarding the language. factors that affect motivation in terms of this point, different theories have been compiled. some of the most interesting authors and their classifications will be mentioned here. 1. spolsky (1969) refers to the most meaningful factors that affect the teaching/learning process: a. the teaching method. b. the age. c. the aptitude. d. the attitude. this last factor is the one that most affects motivation because it directly relates to the education context (teachers, friends, family, etc.) that surrounds the learner. 2. skehan (1989) lists four motivating factors as the most significant: a. the activities in the teaching/learning process: this factor is important because a great part of the learner’s interest in the language will depend on the types of activities developed in class. b. the final results: good results are understood as a reward for the learner, whereas bad results are similar to a punishment. in this case, motivation is the consequence of these results: students with good final results are going to be more motivated than students with bad results. c. internal motivation: this is connected to the student’s ideas about the language as a consequence of previous experiences and the use of the language at home, among others. d. extrinsic motivation: the influence of external stimuli such as rewards or punishments. 3. in the outcomes extracted from madrid’s (1999) research about the factors that affect motivation in efl learning, some factors were mentioned as the most noteworthy. these were as follows: a. the importance of the english language in the present society. b. the personal features of the english teacher. c. the types of tasks developed in class and the teaching methodologies that are implemented. d. features about the subject itself in comparison with other subjects. e. environmental factors (family, school, etc.). f. the intention of integration in english-speaking countries. 4. dörnyei (2001) presents three main types of motivational sources: a. course-specific components: the syllabus, teaching material, teaching method, and learning tasks. b. teacher-specific components: the teacher’s behaviour, personality, and teaching style. c. group-specific components: the dynamics of the learner group. the research objectives of the research the following are the objectives established for this research: 1. to discover some of the current factors that affect motivation in efl learning in the fourth year of cse in two different schools in granada, spain. 2. to study how other aspects of english teaching affect students’ motivation, such as the following: • the role of the english language in the student’s life. • the approach to the four skills and how they are treated in class. • the teacher’s role in the student’s motivation. • other factors. 129profile vol. 17, no. 2, july-december 2015. issn 1657-0790 (printed) 2256-5760 (online). bogotá, colombia. pages 125-136 motivation: the road to successful learning 3. to offer a methodological proposal in relation to the results obtained in order to reflect the most important factors that affect motivation in teaching practice. the sample this research took place among a group of 51 students (male and female) who were in their fourth year of cse, and their ages ranged from 14 to 17 years. this school level was selected because it is one of the most problematic levels of secondary education; it serves as a passage between compulsory and optional (bachillerato) education. as a consequence, some students in this year are willing to complete it in order to finish school, but others study hard in order to reach the bachillerato as well prepared as possible. because of this, there is a vast difference in students’ skill levels and also in their motivation. it can be considered that at this level, motivation as a key factor in the learning process is easier to identify and study. the students who participated in this investigation were not from the same school: group a was from a state high school, and group b was from a semiprivate school; both were located in the central area of granada. group a this sample consists of 14 boys and six girls who have different characteristics. at the school, this group is considered problematic compared with the other groups in the same academic year because some students have significant personal problems that usually interfere in their school lives. these problems are related to economic difficulties, cultural interference, and, as was mentioned above, lack of motivation. this is exemplified in the fact that only 10% of the students have passed all subjects in the second term of the school year. moreover, 35% of the students have repeated a year during cse. group b at this school, there are students from many different cultures and ideologies, despite the school’s religious orientation. this class comprises 31 students (19 boys and 12 girls), and the students are considered, in general, to be a hardworking group. it can be added that 3.2% of the students in this group have repeated a level during their cse. generally speaking, these students have higher english levels than those in group a, which can be seen in the percentage of students who have passed all of their subjects in the second term (51.6%). measurement tools and data collection two different procedures were used in order to systematically collect the data for this investigation: a questionnaire and a period of observation. the reason for selecting these two measurement tools for data collection is that they were considered to be appropriately suited to the research purpose. they are presented below: the questionnaire this questionnaire was considered the main measurement tool. in order to select its questions and items, the authors consulted different sources such as brown (2002), dörnyei (2001), and madrid (1998). the questionnaire was in spanish (because spanish is the mother tongue of most of the students) in an effort to avoid misunderstandings among students with difficulties in foreign languages. the students’ names were not asked so that they would answer the questions unguardedly. the questionnaire was “face-to-face”, with the researchers taking notes on what was said, and it consisted of 20 questions that were both openand closed-ended. the following is a brief classification of the questions: universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras130 espinar redondo & ortega martín personal information questions about three different aspects: • biological characteristics: age, sex, and mother tongue. • questions related to their academic lives. • questions linked to the role of english in their lives. after these personal questions, the remaining items were grouped into three different organizational fields: 1. items connected to the language itself and students’ interest in it (questions 1–8). 2. items dedicated to “english at home,” comprising queries about homework, the students’ parents, their study habits, etc. (questions 9–12). 3. items related to “english in the classroom,” with questions about the teacher, the four skills, the materials used, etc. (questions 13–20). the questionnaire’s validity was analysed by three experienced lecturers, as was explained in the theory of investigator triangulation described by guion, diehl, and mcdonald (2013). this method consists of using different investigators in the related field of study in order to check the resources and techniques that were used. if the group reaches the same conclusion, the research and its results can be considered valid. in this case, the experts studied the following aspects of the questionnaire: • the items are clearly presented, specifically the wording. • the items accurately reflect the information the student is being asked about. • the items are closely related to the students and their contexts. • the items do not present more than one piece of information each. • the items are relevant to the study of motivation. the period of observation in the field of education, observation is an important tool for data collection, usually as a complement to other techniques. it can be a useful device if it is properly used, for which good planning and organisation are needed. the first step is to determine the type of observation that will be developed (anguera as cited in lópez fuentes et al., 2012): • level of interaction between the observer and the observed. the observation will have two different periods: participative and non-participative. • level of systematicity: it will be a non-systematic observation. other devices finally, it is interesting to make a brief commentary about the computer programme that was used to analyse the data that were collected from the questionnaire. the programme was the most recent version of ibm spss 21 (armonk, ny, usa), which is one of the most popular databases used in research. for the qualitative data—that is, the open-ended questions—a series of charts were designed to cover this extra information. results first variable: personal information the average age of the participants in this research is 15.51 years, which means that despite the number of students who have previously repeated a level, the average age is appropriate for the level of the fourth year of cse (15–16 years). regarding sex, there were a total of 51 students, 33 male (62.7%) and 18 female (35.3%). the greater number of male than female students may be justified because both schools were traditionally single-sex schools (only boys), and although this situation has already changed, the higher number of male students could be a letover of this tradition, even more so in the last levels of secondary education. it is important to mention that 15.7% of the students have repeated a level. an interesting aspect 131profile vol. 17, no. 2, july-december 2015. issn 1657-0790 (printed) 2256-5760 (online). bogotá, colombia. pages 125-136 motivation: the road to successful learning of this variable is the great difference between the two groups of students: in group a, 35% had repeated a level, but in group b, only 3.2% had repeated a level. in order to consider the different marks the students had obtained, the marks were classified into five groups: (1) failed, (2) pass, (3) good, (4) very good, and (5) excellent. marks were grouped from 1 to 4.99 = failed, 5 to 5.99 = pass, 6 to 6.99 = good, 7 to 8.99 = very good, and 9 to 10 = excellent (see figure 1). figure 1 shows the great difference between the two schools: looking at the figure, it can be seen that group a has higher english levels than group b, considering that the students’ marks likely reflect their english levels. the main conclusion that can be drawn after observing these results is that the differences in the levels of students in the same class could be problematic for good development in the language teaching and learning process. the age of beginning to study is another key factor that can help us to understand students’ english levels. to group all of the answers, there are four different categories: 1. under 3 years of age 2. from 3 to 5 years of age 3. from 6 to 12 years of age 4. over 12 years of age. the selection of ages was not made randomly but was based on students’ ages at the beginning of each education stage: at 0–3 years of age, students can start nursery school; at 3–5, they start preschool; at 6–12, they begin primary education; and over age 12, they have begun secondary education (figure 2). thus, by analysing the age at which students began school, it can be established at what stage they began learning english. most students (45.1%) began to study english in elementary school (6 years); only 13.7% had begun learning english before they were 3 years old. muñoz (2006) demonstrated that young learners have better understanding of the concepts of new languages. nevertheless, the age of beginning to learn is not as important as the amount of exposure; as lightbown and spada (2006) summarised foreign language programmes that begin with very young learners but offer only minimal contact with the language do not lead to a great deal of progress. hence, the age and the amount of input can be determining factors in figure 1. english marks obtained by the students in both groups 0 2 4 6 8 10 12 14 16 18 group a group b n u m b e r o f s tu d e n ts school fail pass good very good excellent figure 2. starting age 41,2% from 3 to 5 years old from 6 to 12 years old 45,1% 13,7% less than 3 years old universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras132 espinar redondo & ortega martín learning languages, but we will not be focusing our attention on these aspects, given that we consider the age of beginning only as personal information, the same as age or native language. second variable: students’ interests this group of questions is essential to describing students’ motivation towards the language. the first important thing to know is whether or not students like english in order to consider that those who admit they do like it are likely to be more motivated to learn than those who do not. other factors will be considered and described subsequently, but this will be the basis for the explanation of the outcomes. in this research, 78.43% of the students liked english, and the remainder (21.57%) did not. in general, we can say that students usually like english not as a subject but as a language itself. this assertion can be made because they like english independent of their marks, for different reasons: most of the positive answers are related to students who enjoy using english in real life, such as for communication, travel, hobbies, and future plans. the remaining positive answers are connected with characteristics of the language itself (interesting, easy, beautiful, etc.). in the negative column, most of the answers are related to specific aspects of the language such as its difficulty, the required effort, and so forth. it is also significant to mention that 100% of students intend to improve their english levels because they are clearly aware of its current importance (96.1% of them think they will use english in the future). they have different justifications for their reasoning, such as having better work opportunities, traveling, and making friends. it is also worthy to note the importance of some students’ opinions about the language. the massive presence of the internet in these students’ lives has brought some benefits for learning languages, and one is the immense data bank of media that they can now access. nearly half of the students responded that they were accustomed to watching films or tv shows in english. apart from the previously mentioned hobbies, there are other daily activities in which students usually use english, for example, television, the internet (including social networks), mobile phones, computers, and games. the results show that in all of the aforementioned activities, the students who usually use english are those who confessed that they like it. in contrast, among the group of students who do not like english, more of them did not use it daily (see table 1). finally, regarding music, it is not necessary to mention that a very large percentage of the music available on the internet and on the radio is in english. the influence of music is unquestionable, but the intention of this query was to go further and discover if students were really interested in understanding and singing songs in english. the result of this query was that 82.4% of the students have looked for song lyrics in order to better understand the song at least once. third variable: english at home this group of questions is related to the students’ habits in relation to studying english at home. the table 1. students’ daily activities and their use of english television internet mobile phone yes no yes no yes no like english yes 24 16 36 4 25 15 no 2 9 8 3 4 7 133profile vol. 17, no. 2, july-december 2015. issn 1657-0790 (printed) 2256-5760 (online). bogotá, colombia. pages 125-136 motivation: the road to successful learning outcomes show that only 29.4% of the students usually study every day. another interesting point is whether they usually travel abroad with their families, and there is a great difference between the two groups of students: in group a, 60% of students do not travel abroad with their families, but in group b, the percentage increases dramatically to 95% of students. fourth variable: english in the classroom in the last group of variables, the point of interest is the connection between students’ opinions about the english language and how it is approached in the classroom. students had to select characteristics from a list to describe their english classes. the results show that most students used positive adjectives, such as interesting (64.7%), useful (58.8%), funny (45.5%), and innovative (39.2%). it is interesting to highlight that only 9.8% of the students considered their english classes difficult, and some (27.5%) described them as easy. regarding this result, we would like to comment that three students (all from group b) wrote commentary on this fact. they explained that in all of their years in secondary education, the topics and the level have always been the same, and therefore, although they selected some positive aspects of the class, they think their teachers should be more demanding in order to make the most of the english classes. the students were also asked about the characteristics of a good english teacher. these are the results: “having a good level of english” (86.3%), “making participative lessons” (66.7%), and funny lessons (60.8%). at the end of the list, they included characteristics such as “be young” (19.6%) and “be strict” (3.9%). as a final point, students had to answer questions about different skills and how they are approached in the classroom (figure 3). the results presented in figure 3 can be explained with students’ own justifications. they consider speaking the most important skill, mainly because they think that it is the skill they will use most oten in real life to communicate. those who answered all skills explain that they are all part of the language, and therefore, they are all useful depending on the context. those who mentioned grammar did so mainly because they consider that they will not be able to speak or write if they do not have the necessary knowledge of the language’s grammar. finally, students who selected listening did so because you should be able to speak but also to understand what others say. in this reasoning, we can perceive how students understand the english language mainly as a tool for figure 3. how skills are approached in efl classes 6,25% 81,25% 4,17% 8,33% grammar speaking listening all of them figure 4. level of difficulty as perceived by students 4,35% 30,43% 23,91% 23,91% 8,70% 8,70% none grammar speaking listening writing reading universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras134 espinar redondo & ortega martín oral communication, one of the main characteristics of the communicative approach. nevertheless, although students recognise the importance of the oral skills, these are also the most difficult skills along with grammar (see figure 4). conclusion and a methodological proposal the most significant results of the research are presented here based on the established objectives: there was an in-depth study of some of the current factors that affect motivation in the study of efl in the fourth year of cse at two different schools. it was discovered that currently, students are aware of the importance that english will have in their futures, and therefore, some of their primary motivations to learn it are to have better jobs, travel abroad to meet new people and new cultures, and live in an englishspeaking country, among others. all of the students in this research want to improve their english, and all of them have clear ideas in this respect. another important factor that affects their motivation levels is the idea that english is present in every aspect of their daily lives. consequently, they watch films and series in english, they listen to songs and read their lyrics in english, and they are becoming accustomed to reading magazines, blogs, etc. in english. they usually use english on their computers, on the internet, in social networks, and so on. additionally, how other factors in their lives and in their classrooms may affect their motivation was studied. specific factors were considered, such as the following: • the role of the english language in students’ lives. as was mentioned before, english is present in nearly every hobby, and therefore, it plays an important role in the students’ lives. in spite of this, some students are likely to use it and are not afraid of it, but a small part of them are still on guard. • the approach to the four skills and how they are treated in class. the results show us that students are more motivated when the focus of the lesson is on skills such as speaking and listening; they do not enjoy a high emphasis on grammatical aspects, and they missed some extra practice in other skills such as reading and writing. most students agree with the idea that the most important (or at least the most useful) skill is speaking, and therefore, they are ready to learn more and enjoy more in lessons in which this skill plays a central role. in contrast, more than half of the students agree with the fact that grammar is the most difficult aspect of learning english. it is not necessary to discuss grammar’s importance in this process, and consequently, it cannot be neglected, but it can be approached in different ways, likely in ways that are more related to students’ interests. • the teacher’s role in the students’ motivation levels. this is likely the factor that was most directly related to students’ motivation in the classroom. the students’ responses showed that in general, they preferred teachers with good english levels, although this was not a determining factor for them, and they also had teacher age preferences. nevertheless, from the students’ points of view, some factors are important such as having good english levels, having good pronunciation, and making funny and participative lessons. because of this, we can observe that students are more motivated with teachers who show proficiency in the language and who teach it through funny and participative activities. apart from these results, specific student comments showed the importance of the teacher in their learning english. • other factors such as the importance of games and of diversity in the materials used in class. in general, most students like the use of new 135profile vol. 17, no. 2, july-december 2015. issn 1657-0790 (printed) 2256-5760 (online). bogotá, colombia. pages 125-136 motivation: the road to successful learning technological devices in class to enhance their learning opportunities. the final objective refers to proposing a methodology that contains all of these factors in order to give students more reasons to be motivated. some guidelines are proposed here to consider in developing future work: • it is important to follow a communicative approach to the language because communication is the main reason students want to learn english. moreover, specific time should be devoted in each lesson for this purpose that “forces” students to use the language to talk about particular topics. • it would also be interesting to follow a task-based approach because each task can be oriented to a specific field of the students’ interests, and in each of these tasks, different materials can be used. then, all tasks should lead to a final task in which students must demonstrate what they have learned. this idea is also connected to the spiral approach, which uses graded activities that progress from easier to more difficult. this is also a device for considering attention to diversity, referring to the differences between higher and lower achievers. • equally important is the idea of scaffolding, that is, building students’ new knowledge in connection with their prior knowledge in order to avoid the problems students reported about repetitive content each year without learning anything new. scaffolding is also essential for students at lower levels because if a teacher knows a student’s starting point, it will be easier to target new concepts to that student. • in class, integrating the four skills is fundamental so that students will not miss practicing any particular skill, such as writing. • the need to use material that is linked with students’ interests, including information and communication technology. this material should contain interesting topics and should relate to students’ daily lives. therefore, the use of authentic materials, similar to what students will have to face in real life, is important. in this way, they will understand english as a real tool for their personal development. • regarding the classroom itself, it is important that the class be organised and systematic in order to make the most of each lesson and to not waste time. additionally, students respond better to activities if they know what will come next, and thus, it is important to have clear lesson guidelines. • the teacher should attempt to combine features that are important to students (as shown in the variable of the characteristics of a good teacher), for example: teaching with kindness and enthusiasm, having a good sense of humor, being patient, teaching in english as much as possible, developing rapport with students (knowing their names and some personal information is important), creating a positive but working atmosphere, encouraging students’ performance, and avoiding tension and anxiety in the classroom (mclaren & madrid, 1996). references brown, h. d. (2002). principles of language learning and teaching. london, uk: longman. cole, g. a. (2007). management theory and practice. london, uk: thomson learning. council of europe. (2001). common european framework of reference for languages: learning, teaching, assessment. cambridge, uk: cambridge university press. crookes, g., & schmidt, r. w. (1991). motivation: reopening the research agenda. language learning, 41(4), 469-512. http://dx.doi.org/10.1111/j.1467-1770.1991.tb00690.x. deci, e. l., & ryan, r. m. (2000). intrinsic and extrinsic motivations: classic definitions and new directions. new york, ny: academic press. universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras136 espinar redondo & ortega martín dörnyei, z. (2001). teaching and researching motivation. harlow, uk: longman. education first. (2012). ef english proficiency index. retrieved from http://www.ef.com.co/__/~/media/ efcom/epi/2012/full_reports/ef-epi-2012-reportmaster-lr-2.pdf. gardner, r. c., & lambert, w. e. (1972). attitudes and motivation in second language learning. boston, ma: newbury house. guion, l. a., diehl, d. c., & mcdonald, d. (2013). triangulation: establishing the validity of qualitative studies. gainesville, fl: university of florida. lightbown, p., & spada, n. (2006). how languages are learned. london, uk: oxford university press. lópez fuentes, r., berrocal de luna, e., expósito lópez, j., gallardo vigil, m. a., rodríguez sabiote, c., salme rón vílchez, p., & sánchez núñez, c. a. (2012). introducción a la innovación docente e investigación educativa [teaching innovation and educational research]. granada, es: grupo editorial universitario. madrid, d. (1998). guía para la investigación en el aula de idiomas [guide to the research in the language classroom]. granada, es: grupo editorial universitario. madrid, d. (1999). la investigación de los factores motivacionales en el aula de idiomas [the research in motivational factors in the language classroom]. granada, es: grupo editorial universitario. mclaren, n., & madrid, d. (eds.). (1996). a handbook for tefl. alicante, es: marfil. muñoz, c. (2006). accuracy orders, rate of learning and age in morphological acquisition. in c. muñoz (ed.), age and the rate of foreign language learning (pp. 107-126). clevedon, uk: multilingual matters. ortega martín, j. l. (2002). introducción a la motivación en el aula de idiomas [introduction to motivation in the language classroom]. granada, es: grupo editorial universitario. rodicio, m. m. (1999). los factores motivacionales extrínsecos en el aula de inglés. [extrinsic motivational factors in the english classroom] (doctoral dissertation). universidad de granada, spain. skehan, p. (1989). individual differences in second-language learning. london, uk: edward arnold. spolsky, b. (1969). attitudinal aspects of second-language learning. language learning, 19(3-4), 271-275. http:// dx.doi.org/10.1111/j.1467-1770.1969.tb00468.x. spolsky, b. (2000). anniversary article: language motivation revisited. applied linguistics, 21(2), 157-169. http:// dx.doi.org/10.1093/applin/21.2.157. about the authors rocío espinar redondo is a former student of english philology at the universidad de granada (spain) and a novice teacher of english as a second language. she has completed her studies with the master’s degree for teachers at universidad de granada, where this investigation took place in the 2012/2013 school year. josé luis ortega martín works as a principal lecturer at the universidad de granada, spain. he holds a phd in applied linguistics, and his professional activities have included school management, language teaching and teacher training as well as specific training for state teachers. 63profile vol. 17, no. 2, july-december 2015. issn 1657-0790 (printed) 2256-5760 (online). bogotá, colombia. pages 63-79 http://dx.doi.org/10.15446/profile.v17n2.44393 reflective teacher supervision through videos of classroom teaching* supervisión colaborativa docente a través de clases grabadas en video sandra mari kaneko-marques**2 universidade estadual paulista “júlio de mesquita filho,” araraquara, brazil the main objective of this paper is to briefly present roles of different teacher supervisors according to distinct models, highlighting the importance of collaborative dialogues supported by video recordings. this paper will present results from a qualitative study of an english as a foreign language teacher education course in brazil. the results indicated that collaborative supervision was an efficient tool to address adversities within educational contexts and that student teachers who observed their pedagogical actions through videos became more reflective and self-evaluative, as they provided a deeper analysis regarding their practice. with collaborative supervision, teacher candidates can be encouraged to recognize and understand the complexities of language learning and teaching both locally and globally. key words: collaborative reflection, post-observation session, teacher supervision. el objetivo de este trabajo es presentar diferentes roles de profesor supervisor según modelos distintos y destacar la importancia de diálogos colaborativos con apoyo de grabaciones de video. para lograrlo, se muestran resultados de un estudio cualitativo desarrollado en un curso de formación de profesores de inglés como lengua extranjera en brasil. los resultados indicaron que la supervisión colaborativa fue eficiente frente a la adversidad de contextos educativos. se concluyó que los estudiantes-profesores que observaron sus acciones pedagógicas a través de videos se volvieron más reflexivos y lograron autoevaluarse, ya que hacían un profundo análisis de su práctica. con supervisión colaborativa, se alienta a futuros profesores a reconocer y comprender las complejidades de la enseñanza y aprendizaje local y globalmente. palabras clave: reflexión colaborativa, sesiones de post-observación, supervisión docente. * this article is based on the phd study entitled, “the process of pedagogical practice (re)construction of pre-service english language teachers,” which was supervised by prof. dr. maria helena vieira-abrahão and financed by fapesp (number 08/53911-2). ** e-mail: sandrak@fclar.unesp.br how to cite this article (apa, 6th ed.): kaneko-marques, s. m. (2015). reflective teacher supervision through videos of classroom teaching. profile issues in teachers’ professional development, 17(2), 63-79. http://dx.doi.org/10.15446/profile.v17n2.44393. this article was received on july 11, 2014, and accepted on january 30, 2015. this is an open access article distributed under the terms of the creative commons license attribution-noncommercial-noderivatives 4.0 international license. consultation is possible at http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/. http://dx.doi.org/10.15446/profile.v17n2.44393 mailto:sandrak%40fclar.unesp.br?subject= http://dx.doi.org/10.15446/profile.v17n2.44393 http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/ universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras64 kaneko-marques introduction within the context of language teacher education, teaching practice has been analyzed from different perspectives. traditional perspectives conceive it as training, that is, a teaching activity is a moment to exteriorize the knowledge and skills acquired by teachers, who should demonstrate efficiency when applying techniques and strategies in their language classrooms (freeman, 2009). burns and richards (2009), richards (1998), wallace (1991), williams (2001), and zeichner (2008) argue that categorizing professional teacher preparation as training reduces teacher education to the mere application of strategies and techniques created and sustained by external researchers who are distant from the needs and particularities of a determined educational context. in reflective language teacher education, teaching practice occupies a relevant formative place because it is seen as one of the main scenarios for systematic observation, analysis, reflection, assessment, and action concerning language teaching and learning. in addition, it has become a context in which prospective teachers can reflect on their own practice, aiming at language teaching, learning optimization and continuous self-professional development. according to gebhard (2009), other teaching practice objectives in initial teacher education include developing teachers’ knowledge about school and classroom realities, improving teaching abilities and competences for professional practice, stimulating systematic observation and reflection about their pedagogical actions, and providing opportunities for future teachers to engage in collaborative projects. given that teaching practice is a relevant context for observation, analysis, and reflection, teacher supervision plays an important role in this process because it should be able to stimulate student teachers to reflect on their own practice if they take the leading role in problem solving and decision making (burns & richards, 2009). alarcão, leitão, and roldão (2009) affirm that different supervision approaches are directly related to conceptions of teacher education. because there are various models of language teacher supervision, it is relevant to distinguish supervision for developmental purposes, “which is oten seen as collaborative model” (young, 2009, p. 2), and that for evaluative reasons, which is usually associated with prescriptive approaches. in this paper, i aim to present and discuss the roles of teacher supervisors according to different models of supervision, highlighting collaborative dialogue between supervisors and student teachers in postobservation sessions supported by video recordings based on results obtained in a qualitative study. one of the goals of this investigation was to understand how future teachers evaluated their pedagogical actions and how they justified their decisions and solved problems in their teaching practice. in order to attain this goal, student teachers’ classes were observed and video-recorded, and these recordings were used as input for post-observation reflective sessions with the researcher, who also played the role of a supervisor. it should be mentioned that for the purposes of this paper, only data involving class observations and post-observation sessions will be discussed because our main goal is to reflect on the collaborative dialogue between supervisors and student teachers when discussing their pedagogical actions during teaching practice in post-observation sessions enhanced by videotaped lessons. the research data included teaching practice reflective journals, video-recorded class observations, and post-obser vation reflective sessions. class recordings are commonly used in teacher supervision to supplement observations and to enrich postobservation conferences (sewall, 2009). based on sewall’s point of view, these recordings were used to support discussions and reflections between student teachers and their researcher/supervisor. 65profile vol. 17, no. 2, july-december 2015. issn 1657-0790 (printed) 2256-5760 (online). bogotá, colombia. pages 63-79 reflective teacher supervision through videos of classroom teaching in the next sections, some relevant topics concerning teaching practice in language teacher education will be presented in order to discuss different models of supervision and supervisors’ roles. then, we will briefly describe the investigation design to examine information regarding its rationale, methodology, and the instruments used for data collection. ater that, some of the collected data and results for student teachers’ teaching practice and post-observation sessions will be discussed. teaching practice in pre-service language teacher education in this section, we will present various authors and their conceptions of reflective teaching. then, the purposes and characteristics of teaching practice in teacher education courses in brazil will be briefly discussed. previous studies (batista, 2007; celani, 2000; sturm, 2008; vieira-abrahão, 2001) have indicated that english as a foreign language (efl) teacher education courses still struggle to coherently balance theory and practice in order to enable future teachers to reflect critically on their pedagogical decisions and to theorize from their own practice by conducting their own studies. as kumaravadivelu (2006) argues, reflection and autonomy are key ways for teachers to become researchers in their own classrooms. when they recognize their potential to theorize from their own practice and practice what they theorize through observation, analysis, and evaluation, they become able to engage in continuous self-professional development. according to wallace (1991), zeichner (2001), and zeichner and liston (1996), reflective teaching can promote the ability of teachers to use tools to critically analyze and initiate changes in educational contexts. as a consequence, teachers are “empowered with knowledge, skill, and autonomy” (tudor, 2001, p. 23) to become engaged in their own professional development as well as active participants in decision making when they face the complexity of language teaching and learning. we believe that teachers have conditions to solve problems regarding their educational practice, as zeichner and liston (1996) affirm. as stated by the authors, reflective teachers are capable of examining their own practice and recognizing intrinsic values attributed to their teaching in both institutional and cultural contexts. the above-mentioned perspectives of reflective teaching will be taken into account to closely examine the school-based experience during pre-ser vice teacher education courses. in our particular context, teaching practice is developed in public schools (junior high and high schools), and brazilian educational legislation demands 400 hours of teaching practice including classroom observations, theoretical study in teacher education courses, and reports on teaching practice. the main objective of teaching practice in pre-service teacher education courses in brazil is to insert future teachers into school contexts so they can observe and experience educational realities. bailey (2006) states, “teaching practice is a comp onent of many professional preparation programs for teachers. it is predicated on the assumption that novice teachers need guided practice in learning how to teach” (p. 233). normally, the student teacher is placed with an experienced teacher who teaches a particular subject in a school. this future teacher is also supervised by a supervisors and/ or educators of the teacher education program based in the student’s university. for hiebert, morris, berk, and jansen (2007) the practicum experience is an opportunity to learn from teaching because student teachers have subject matter knowledge and analytical skills that allow them to analyze teaching and its effect on students’ learning. johnson (2009) argues that knowledge generated in practice teaching is organized around problems that universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras66 kaneko-marques emerge from practice and that are in contexts in which such problems are constructed. for this reason, analytical and reflective skills should be developed during pre-service courses so that future teachers are able to act autonomously in their classrooms and study their own practice (kumaravadivelu, 2003). this ide a of lo c a l k now le dge is simi l arly supported by birch (2009), who conceives local and global knowledge as glocalized pedagogy that “honors the knowledge and experience of local teachers who are experts in the cultural and social resources for learning and the participants’ openness to learning” (p. 134). according to the author, teachers should be empowered to be capable of looking at their own classrooms as a place to expand their practical and theoretical knowledge. in order to meet these objectives, future teachers need to be stimulated to (re)construct their knowledge and to reflect on their classroom practices during teaching practice. the role of supervisors is crucial in this formative process to ensure that this school experience leads to professional development. given that the importance and relevance of teaching practice for initial teacher education have been made clear, the next section of this paper aims to present different language teacher supervision models. then, supervisors’ roles in teaching practice will be briefly discussed. language teacher supervision and supervisors’ roles in this section, we will discuss different supervision models and supervisors’ roles in these models. then, some relevant aspects of the use of videos of classroom teaching will be presented. before discussing teacher supervision models and sup er visors’ roles in teaching practice, it is important to present our comprehension of supervision. this term has many distinct definitions, generally borrowed from the fields of general education and business and industry (bailey, 2006). according to kilminster et al. (as cited in muttar & mohamed, 2013), in broad terms, supervision can be defined as the “provision of guidance and feedback on matters of personal, professional and educational development in the context of trainee’s experience taking place” (p. 2). in language teacher education, wallace (1991) e s t abl i s h e d t wo d i f fe re nt c ate gor i e s , g e ne ral supervision, which is concerned with administrative aspects, and clinical supervision, which regards formative issues. the latter can be separated into a prescriptive approach and collaborative approach. according to the author’s descriptions, clinical supervision focuses on teaching and other classroom aspects, and “it implies a rejection of the applied science model and an acceptance of the reflective model of professional development” (wallace, 1991, p. 108). he understands clinical supervision as an interactive session between a super visor and a teacher with the purpose of discussing and analyzing previously observed classroom teaching in order to promote professional development. it is relevant to mention that clinical supervision might be implemented in a variety of ways and that it is understood differently by some authors; this will be discussed later in this section. bailey (2006) argues that language teacher supervision not only is concerned with positive aspects, such as helping language teachers achieve their professional development, but also includes less positive results such as providing negative feedback, ensuring that teachers adhere to program policies, and even firing them. some of the super visors’ responsibilities might involve “visiting and evaluating other teachers, discussing their lesson with them, and making recommendations to them about what to continue and what to change” (bailey, 2006, p. 3). however, these are not the only activities for which supervisors are responsible; their duties also include 67profile vol. 17, no. 2, july-december 2015. issn 1657-0790 (printed) 2256-5760 (online). bogotá, colombia. pages 63-79 reflective teacher supervision through videos of classroom teaching teaching courses and dealing with administrative tasks in teacher education programs. according to wallace (1991), a supervisor is “anyone who has . . . the duty of monitoring and improving the quality of teaching” (p. 107) teachers in a given educational context. in addition, gebhard (1990) states that supervisors are responsible for directing teachers’ teaching, offering suggestions, modeling teaching, advising teachers, and evaluating teachers’ teaching. s e w a l l ( 2 0 0 9 ) a d d s t h at sup e r v i s ors a l s o have to address another challenge because they play a dual role; they serve as mentors, guiding teachers, and as evaluators, assessing their teaching practice. furthermore, the author states that the term “supervisor” has a hierarchical connotation because it carries the meaning of an expert and novice relationship. we strongly defend a genuine collaborative and reflective environment between supervisors and supervisees.1 from our point of view, to comprehend this supervisor and supervisee relationship as a hierarchical one can be threatening or even negative, and it might not be beneficial to teacher development (kayaoglu, 2012). in teaching practice, this hierarchical idea of placing student teachers with an experienced teacher to observe and learn can be seen as an illustration of the craft model previously discussed by wallace (1991). the author explains that according to this model, “wisdom of the profession resides in an experienced professional practitioner: someone who is an expert in the practice of the crat” (p. 6), and it is expected that trainees learn by imitating the expert’s techniques and instructions. it is noticeable that within this model of teaching practice, supervision tends to reside in prescriptive approaches. there are various models of language teacher supervision; therefore, it is important to distinguish 1 the term supervisee is used by ho (2003), and it refers to future language teachers supervised by a teacher educator. sup er vision for de velopmental and e valuative purposes. the former is generally seen as a reflective and collaborative model, and the latter is usually associated with prescriptive approaches (young, 2009). bourke (2001) presents four different models of teacher supervision previously described by tanner and tanner (as cited in bourke, 2001): inspectional, production, clinical, and developmental. according to the first model, super visors are inspectors, and education is perceived as strict adherence to governmental policies, methods, and materials. the production model adopts a production-efficiency approach to education in which teachers are similar to factory workers who are responsible for preparing their students for institutional assessments. in the clinical model, a supervisor observes a lesson and discusses teaching events in a face-to-face interaction with the teacher to analyze teaching behaviors and activities. this model usually involves pre-observation conferences, and the actual observations, analysis, and strategies to be used in supervision conferences and post-conference analysis. however, there are some problems with this model because it assumes that elements of teaching events can be identified and classified by observing student teachers, and it also focuses on classroom instruction, ignoring curricular development and educational planning. according to this model, teachers should follow the instructions and techniques to be applied in their language classrooms in order to be considered efficient teachers. the fourth model—the developmental model—is defined as a cooperative problem-solving process, aiming at stimulating discovery, inquiry, and problem solving. it goes beyond specific teaching points and provides a creative and collaborative learning environment. bailey (2009) presents some other models of sup er vision bas ed on freeman’s mo dels of intervention, which include the directive, nondirective, universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras68 kaneko-marques and alternative options (freeman as cited in bailey, 2009). first, it is important to mention that freeman (1990) cites supervision as intervention, assuming that it presupposes that future teachers can benefit from the input and perceptions of a teacher educator (which is what we understand as feedback). according to the author, in directive forms of supervision, the teacher educator makes comments on student teachers’ practice and gives them suggestions to be implemented in their classrooms. the main objective is to improve the teacher’s performance according to the supervisor’s criteria or to a (pre)conceived lesson structure. in the alternative form of intervention, the teacher educator selects an issue from classroom teaching to be discussed with student teachers and gives them some alternatives to solve this problem in their teaching. the purpose of this model is to improve student teachers’ decision making and to develop their ability to articulate their knowledge and experience by providing informed choices. then, in non-directive supervision, the teacher educator gives student teachers the opportunity to make their own choices without inferring or directing them so that the student teachers can find their own solutions. the model’s main goal is to “provide the studentteacher with a forum to clarify perceptions of what he or she is doing in teaching and for the educator to fully understand” (freeman, 1990, p. 112). this does not necessarily mean that the teacher educator has to accept future teachers’ points of view or to agree with them. gebhard (1990) expands these models proposed by freeman (1990) by including another three models: collaborative supervision, creative supervision and selfexplorative supervision. in the collaborative model, the supervisor and the teacher work together to find a hypothesis and to identify teaching and learning problems. the supervisor participates in student teachers’ decisions, trying to establish a sharing relationship, instead of directing the student teachers. the creative supervision model is defined as the combination of the other four models (directive, nondirective, alternatives, and collaborative) to approach teachers’ specific needs in their educational context. it presupposes freedom and creativity because it allows for a combination of supervisory models, shiting supervisory responsibilities from the supervisor to other sources because it involves an application of insights from other fields not found in any of the other models. additionally, the self-explorative model can be interpreted as an extension of the creative supervision model because it allows both teachers and supervisors to gain self-awareness through observation and exploration, as they both “explore teaching through observation of their own and other’s teaching in order to gain an awareness of teaching behaviors and their consequences, as well as to generate alternative ways to teach” (gebhard, 1990, p. 163). regardless of the supervision model adopted in teacher education programs, supervisors should understand that these interactions might influence and shape teachers’ thinking and behavior, as argued by cheng and cheng (2013). as teacher educators and researchers, we should bear in mind that teachers perceive super vision differently because their experiences are influenced by their personal values and beliefs related to language teaching. we strongly believe that due to these factors, teachers might benefit distinctly from these interactions. within these different models of supervision, according to chamberlin (as cited in young, 2009), an effective supervisor should develop a clear program to improve student teachers’ performance and to nurture best practices through a process of reflective questioning. we defend that the role of the supervisor is to support teachers’ pedagogical knowledge construction through collaborative discussions of their pedagogical practice. these discussions can be enriched with class video recordings, which can be used as a tool to supplement 69profile vol. 17, no. 2, july-december 2015. issn 1657-0790 (printed) 2256-5760 (online). bogotá, colombia. pages 63-79 reflective teacher supervision through videos of classroom teaching post-observation sessions, as argued by sewall (2009) and sherin and van es (2005). historically, videos have been used in teacher education for different purposes since the 1960s, including micro-teaching, interaction analysis, video-based cases, and video club meetings (sherin & van es, 2005). among these different uses and purposes of videos, one feature stands out: they provide easy access to classroom interactions and events that would be impossible to remember without such a tool. sewall (2009) recommends that videotaped lessons be analyzed by teachers and supervisors cooperatively in order to be an effective instrument for pedagogical development. the author also defends the relevance of using videos in post-observation sessions because they allow for a more focused discussion of the lesson, as future teachers are able to revisit specific details of their teaching. in the next sections, the rationale and the research design will be briefly presented in order to discuss and analyze the interaction between teachers and supervisors in collaborative post-observation sessions with the support of video recordings of teaching practice. rationale this paper is mainly concerned with language teacher supervision, as it proposes the discussion of teacher supervisors’ roles in different supervision models of teaching practice, emphasizing the importance of the collaborative dialogue between teachers and supervisors supported by video-recorded classes in post-observation sessions. another indirect research objective we expect to address in this study is reflecting on the problem of teacher supervision concerning “what goes on during and what happens aterwards” these interactions, as it is rarely reported and analyzed, as indicated by cheng and cheng (2013, p. 4). oten, teachers receive feedback from their supervisors, indicating the need for changes in their classroom practices; however, they find difficulty in implementing such changes. bearing this background in mind, we agree with vieira’s (2009) affirmations on the importance of pedagogical super vision based on a critical pedagogy view. for this author, through this critical perspective on teaching practice and supervision, it is possible to transform pedagogical action, making it more conscious and deliberative and, thus, more susceptible to change, allowing for the recognition of its complexity and uncertainty. therefore, the main goal of student teachers’ pedagogical supervision is to support and help them to become supervisors of their own practice, supplying them with the will and ability to (re)conceptualize their pedagogical knowledge and to participate, individually and/or collectively, in the (re)construction of school pedagogy. we believe this is a form by which future teachers could be stimulated in their initial teacher education cours es to b ecome investigators of their own pedagogical practice. by studying their own classrooms, they can improve their abilities to (re)construct their knowledge about language learning and teaching process, aiming at a better comprehension of the complexities involved in this process in real school situations. by the same token, pimenta (2009) agrees with this relevance of teaching practice in teacher education, as she considers teachers’ practice and school pedagogy to be the starting and ending points of initial teacher education courses. future teachers should be stimulated to “reframe formative processes from the reconsideration of the knowledge needed to teach, putting pedagogical and school teaching practice as an object of analysis” (p. 17 [trans.]). however, some initial teacher education courses tend to fail in efficiently preparing teachers for different educational realities, and as a consequence, the professionals certified in these institutions begin working in school contexts without knowing how universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras70 kaneko-marques to address obstacles they find in their classrooms, as batista (2007) concluded in his research on teaching practice and teacher education. according to z eichner (2003), the lack of attention to teaching in social contexts in addition to reflective practice taken as an individual action encourage teachers to think of their problems as “exclusively theirs, with no relation to other teachers’ problems or no connection to educational systems” (p. 45 [trans.]). thus, teachers are unable to engage in a critical analysis of school situations in which they live, as they only worry about their individual flaws. this problematic scenario may have its origins in teacher education models in which there is a prevalence of transmission processes concerning knowledge production and recurrence of theoretical and practical dissociation (lenoir, 2006). therefore, we support the idea that initial teacher education s h o u l d c o nt r i b u t e t o t h e d e v e l o p m e nt o f a personalized reflective practice, appraising not only positive aspects but also small unsuccessful actions in everyday school practice. investigation design and methods the goal of the main study partially described here was to discuss the complexity of the pedagogical knowledge (re)construction process, attempting to understand prospective teachers’ pedagogical strategies used to cope with problems in their teaching practice. bearing this in mind, the objective of this paper is to discuss part of the collected data focusing on different supervisors’ roles in distinct models of supervision and to reflect on the collaborative dialogue between teachers and supervisors in postobservation sessions supported by video recordings. therefore, the main research design will be briefly presented, but only data concerning language teacher supervision, class recordings, and post-observation sessions focusing on the collaborative and reflective interactions between the researcher/supervisor and student teachers will be examined. the investigated context was a five-year initial teacher education course offered at night by a public university located in the state of sao paulo. the subjects offered to future english teachers aimed at the construction of communicative competence with the development of oral and written skills and the understanding of constituent elements of language teaching and learning. this course study was executed in teaching practice classes, which focused on the discussion, reflection, and consolidation of theories and variables regarding foreign language teaching and learning. according to brazilian educational legislation for teacher education courses, teaching practice should be completed in 400 hours through different activities that normally include the observation of an experienced teacher in a real school context, future teachers’ teaching practice, theoretical and practical classes at a university, and the elaboration of reflective reports about this experience supervised by a teacher educator. the participants of the main study were six student teachers (of both genders and ranging from 20 to 24 years old) and the teacher educator, but for the purposes of this paper, interaction excerpts only with two future teachers will be presented. student teachers answered a questionnaire in the beginning of the study. considering their previous language learning experiences, their responses revealed that their years of study of the english language ranged from two to eight years, and learning contexts covered mainly language schools and private tutoring. only one student had previous formal contact with the english language, which occurred in public school. of these six student teachers, four had previous english teaching experience, and the other two had portuguese language teaching experience at the time of the data collection. the teacher educator has a degree in literature (portuguese and english), as well as an ms and a phd 71profile vol. 17, no. 2, july-december 2015. issn 1657-0790 (printed) 2256-5760 (online). bogotá, colombia. pages 63-79 reflective teacher supervision through videos of classroom teaching in linguistics, and he has taught teaching practice in the investigated teacher education course since 2002. his research fields include english and portuguese teaching and learning and initial and continuing language teacher education. with the objective of supporting prospective teachers’ language learning and their construction of teaching knowledge through collaborative discussions of their pedagogical practice, class video recordings were used in teacher supervision to supplement observations and to enrich post-observation sessions. by using videos, pre-service teachers were provided with opportunities to observe their pedagogical activities and to become more reflective, as they could analyze their own practice more deeply. the researcher played the roles of teacher supervisor and teacher educator because she observed and video-recorded student teachers’ classes and provided feedback in collaborative and reflective post-observation sessions. this investigation can be characterized as qualitative (erickson, 1991; larsen-freeman & long, 1991) because it emphasizes the description and analysis of events in a foreign language teacher education course, focusing on the meanings of those events for the participants (student teachers, teachereducator, and teacher education researcher). this study can also be described as longitudinal because data collection was completed during two semesters in 2008 and 2009. to guarantee the validity and reliability of this investigation, data collection and analysis were based in the use of the instruments and procedures shown in table 1. table 1. instruments and procedures for data collection student teachers purpose student teachers’ classes purpose questionnaires to describe student teachers’ profiles and analyze their conceptions about efl teaching and learning. class observations (video-recorded) to study the elements of teaching practice. student teachers’ reflective journals to analyze proposed activities and student teachers’ reflection on teaching practice. research field notes to note on relevant issues concerning classroom events. post-observation reflective sessions (video-recorded) to reflect on teaching practice actions. teaching practice classes purpose teacher-educator purpose teaching practice course content to study both theoretical foundations and course objectives. interview (audio-recorded) to investigate the teacher educator’s profile and teacher education conceptions. class observations (video-recorded) to describe teaching practice development process. research field notes to note relevant issues concerning classroom events. universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras72 kaneko-marques discussion the primary sources of information for this study were student teachers’ class observations and recordings, post-observation reflective sessions, and reflective journals. for their teaching practice, future teachers taught efl classes in pairs in regular schools (junior high and high school). first, their classes were observed by the researcher/supervisor and videorecorded, and copies of the recordings were given to the student teachers so they could watch their class with the teacher educator and highlight interesting aspects of their teaching. the researcher/supervisor also chose relevant excerpts from their classes to be analyzed and discussed in post-observation sessions, which were also video-recorded. these sessions took place in the university context a few days ater the class was observed by the teacher. to initiate the discussion, the researcher/supervisor posed questions about prospective teachers’ impressions of the recorded class, indicating both positive and negative aspects of their lessons. post-observation sessions were mainly concerned with the reflection on their pedagogical practice in order to investigate student teachers’ ability to identify and to solve problems faced in their classroom practice. the main topics discussed with student teachers involved teaching approaches and procedures, teachers’ and students’ roles, grammar instruction, vocabulary teaching, coherence between activities and teaching objectives, and self-evaluation. in one of these post-obser vation sessions, two future teachers, henry and fred,2 mentioned after watching their first class recordings that their classroom procedures were mainly ruled by grammartranslation techniques and that their activities were teacher-centered. they were surprised to see that they were reproducing teaching models they did not believe in or support, as they realized that their pedagogical discourse diverged from their classroom 2 pseudonyms created by the researcher. practices. these future teachers concluded that having the opportunity to watch their classes and to reflect on their own practice helped them identify and solve pedagogical problems in their classrooms. the example of these two student teachers c o n f i r m s jo h n s o n’s ( 2 0 0 9 ) a s s u mp t i o n t h at maintaining these types of dialogue and reflection with teachers makes them actively link theoretical knowledge to their experiential knowledge, stimulating them to reorganize their pedagogical knowledge as they create new forms of interpreting their classroom practice. in the first classes taught by henry and fred, the proposed activities were teacher-centered, and students performed them individually. vocabulary building was based on lists and translations, and grammar instruction was ruled by traditional perspectives because they conceived grammar structure as an object to be explicitly presented and decoded (nassaji & fotos, 2004), as we can see in the excerpts below in which student teachers corrected grammar-focused exercises: excerpt 1 fred: he’s going to…? student: wash his hands fred: his hands, as mãos dele (translation in portuguese), right? (class 1) excerpt 2 fred: “my” would be what kind of pronoun? can you tell me? student: possessive? fred: possessive, right? (class 1) bearing these actions and procedures in mind, during their first post-observation sessions, the student teachers mentioned the following issues: excerpt 3 fred: one of the things i think is that the class was not dynamic, which is a negative aspect. the whole class, we stood there talking, practically just talking. 73profile vol. 17, no. 2, july-december 2015. issn 1657-0790 (printed) 2256-5760 (online). bogotá, colombia. pages 63-79 reflective teacher supervision through videos of classroom teaching researcher/supervisor: and what do you think of that? fred: i think that because of the theme and the varied student levels, i think it’s hard to work with other forms, but i think it would be positive to try to change something. researcher/supervisor: what would you change? fred: i think that there must be reading, but i think we have to try to do it a little bit more dynamically. i don’t know, i think we could try to work with reading in a different way…maybe give students an activity that they would have to work in pairs or in groups, so they could work alone, helping one another, then i think it would be more dynamic for them. henry: oh, i think it would be better. fred: they would know each other a bit more and i think that they are still too shy and it would help in classroom dynamics. (post-observation session 1) it was interesting to notice that henry and fred perceived “something wrong” in their lessons, as they commented that the lessons needed to be more dynamic. the proposed activity to place students in pairs or in groups would make their lessons more student centered and would favor students’ interaction. in their next lessons, they implemented these changes, so the activities were performed in pairs and in groups and focused on reading and discussing a text using reading strategies. students had to try to solve the comprehension questions on their own without using a dictionary. to correct the activity, the student teachers suggested that students check their classmates’ answers, using peer correction instead of teacher correction. in the second post-obser vation session, the student teachers compared their first lessons to the activities proposed and the changes they implemented: excerpt 4 henry: we changed our view of our students, we trusted them and we did one activity. fred: we did one activity in which they had to do it on their own, without our help, because we were bringing activities and correcting them together with students, reading with them, teaching grammar and such . . . so, we proposed an activity with comic strips so they could do it on their own to give them more autonomy that we detected we were not favoring. researcher/supervisor: and what did you think of this activity? fred: i think that the result was good. first, because they had contact with something different from what we were doing, translating word by word, which was something we didn’t want to do, but we were doing . . . maybe it wasn’t perfect, but there was an improvement, an evolution . . . and students started to participate more, and i think they are feeling more confident. (post-observation session 2) according to henry and fred, their new activities gave more autonomy and conf idence to their students, who participated more actively in their lessons. they criticized their teaching performance in their first lessons, and they believed the implemented changes brought about more positive results. at the beginning of their teaching practice experience, their lessons were structured on teacher presentation and explanation, students’ activities, and teacher correction. ater the collaborative and reflective postobservation sessions, the activities they proposed in their classrooms involved discussions in pairs and in groups and peer correction. in teaching practice classes at the university, the student teachers mentioned that due to the heterogeneity of students’ language levels, they did not know how to proceed, and because of this difficulty, they ended up proposing teacher-centered activities. in his reflective journal, fred compared the experience of observing an experienced teacher and his own teaching: excerpt 5 i could notice how hard it is to (self )reflect on our own pedagogical practice. it is much easier to observe and tell where the other teacher was wrong, than to envision where we were wrong. even though it is hard, this should be an exercise that we should always do, because it helps us improve our work as teachers. (reflective journal 1) universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras74 kaneko-marques it can be seen that fred considered self-evaluation and reflection on his own practice as a necessary activity for his professional development because it can improve his performance as a teacher. he emphasized self-reflection on his teaching activities in the classroom as a way to (re)construct his own practice, fostering continuous professional development. table 2 summarizes student teachers’ pedagogical a c t i v it i e s an d pro c e du re s du r i ng t h e i r c l a s s observations and feedback sessions, indicating the reasons for their actions with our interpretation of possible sources of previous knowledge to address their classroom needs and teaching problems. in order to justify their pedagogical actions and procedures in the language classroom, the student teachers were influenced by their personal values and intuition about language teaching and learning, previous language learning experiences, theoretical and practical knowledge, and research skills. these elements relate to different levels of reflection. when based on informal knowledge constructed by experiences and intuition about language teaching and learning, future teachers are oriented by practical reflection (liberali, 2008). however, when they present explanations based on research skills and theoretical and practical knowledge constructed throughout their teacher education course, they are guided by critical reflection. we support the argument that teachers need both theoretical and practical knowledge and research skills to engage in continuous professional development and in the production of knowledge about the language classroom. this way, teachers will be able to question education activities and educational contexts, oriented by critical reflection (kumaravadivelu, 2006). another interesting aspect regarding these reflective and collaborative post-observation sessions enriched by video-recorded lessons is that future teachers actively participated in the lesson discussion and analysis. they contributed to the majority of the reflective comments, which shows their development of autonomy, similarly to sewall’s results (2009). in these sessions, both supervisors and supervisees had the chance to highlight relevant aspects to be collaboratively discussed and analyzed, which favored equal dialogues without hierarchical connotations between the expert and novice teacher, as one of the participants mentioned in his reflective journal: table 2. pedagogical actions, reasons, and knowledge pedagogical activities/ procedures reasons/meanings knowledge/experience application of diagnostic test. evaluation conceptions (summative and formative). learner’s performance and feedback. theoretical and practical knowledge. research skills. teaching based on grammar translation. reflection on action and previous knowledge (selection process). personal values and intuition. previous language learning experience. individual and teacher-centered activities. response to insecurity and heterogeneity of students. personal values and intuition. previous language learning experience. 75profile vol. 17, no. 2, july-december 2015. issn 1657-0790 (printed) 2256-5760 (online). bogotá, colombia. pages 63-79 reflective teacher supervision through videos of classroom teaching excerpt 6 it is important to emphasize that what helped us in these reflections was the participation of the researcher in our teaching practice activities, because she discussed with us throughout our course how our classes were taught. (fred’s reflective journal 1) the results indicated that pre-service teachers with opportunities to observe their pedagogical actions through videos were able to become more reflective and to provide deeper analysis of their practice in collaborative post-observation sessions. it was also observed that due to the use of videos, student teachers could distance themselves from their own practice, which contributed to their analysis of and reflection on their pedagogical actions. conclusions in this section, we will present the conclusions of this study, pointing out some positive aspects of the collaborative and reflective dialogues generated in post-observation sessions with the use of video recordings in teaching practice. then, some limitations of this study will be presented. through self-evaluation and reflection in videosupported post-observation sessions, future teachers were able to analyze their pedagogical practice, (re) constructing it to favor their students’ languagelearning process and contributing to their professional development as educators. they tried to understand the reasons behind their pedagogical actions, indicating possible ways to change language teaching and learning situations according to the needs of their educational contexts. as both teachers and supervisors collaboratively analyzed class video recordings, an equal and supportive relationship between them could be developed. furthermore, by viewing their lessons, teachers were able to experience a different reflective practice, as they developed new ways to examine their classrooms and to critically self-evaluate their pedagogical actions. during the reflective and collaborative postobservation sessions, the student teachers established connections with theoretical course content, previous learning and teaching experiences, and their personal knowledge when analyzing their pedagogical actions in videotaped lessons. through collaborative supervision, future teachers were able to engage with their own professional development and become active participants in decision making regarding the complexity of language teaching and learning. they could also investigate their own pedagogical practice, aiming at a better comprehension of the language-teaching process in real school situations, as they were able to look at their own classrooms as a place to expand their practical and theoretical knowledge. figure 1. reflective cycle of teaching practice personal values and intuitions teaching practice research skills teaching and learning objectives educational contexts previous language learning experience teaching experience theoretical and practical knowledge universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras76 kaneko-marques figure 1 summarizes the different dimensions involved in student teachers’ pedagogical knowledge (re)const r uc t ion af ter v ide o-supp or te d p ostobservation sessions. during the sessions, it was possible to note that student teachers who observed their pedagogical actions through videos became more reflective and self-evaluative, developing their investigation skills, as they identified problems and searched for answers. when searching for these answers, they were influenced by their previous language-learning and teaching experiences and by theoretical and practical knowledge concerning language teaching and learning. it is important to recognize that this knowledge is viewed differently according to their personal values and intuitions of what works in an efl classroom. we believe future teachers also considered their learners’ objectives, taking variables of educational contexts into account when implementing changes in their teaching practice. thus, we conclude that with collaborative supervision, teacher candidates can be encouraged to identify and understand the complexities of language learning and teaching locally and globally, instead of formulating technical and universal solutions that might not cater to the specific needs of different educational contexts. one of the limitations of this study was that the researcher/supervisor did not observe prospective teachers’ classes over an entire school year and that other relevant aspects of language teaching could have been discussed with more collaborative and ref lec tive s essions and videotap ed less on debriefings. it is also important to implement these practices in other contexts of teacher supervision, involving more teachers and supervisors to analyze t he simi lar it ies and dif ferences of t he resu lts obtained. in addition, all classes were observed and videotaped by the researcher/supervisors. it would be interesting to suggest that teachers themselves record their lessons, delegating them more autonomy in this process. collaborative supervision through videos of classroom teaching can be implemented in other teacher education programs, but the particularities of those contexts should be analyzed in order to make this suggestion feasible for both supervisors and student teachers because it demands extra time from teaching practice classes. another important aspect to consider in its implementation is related to teacher education course curricula, which need to guarantee formative spaces for the use of video programs aiming at teachers’ professional development. furthermore, super visors should be able to develop strategies to improve student teachers’ teaching practice and nurture reflective practice. they are also expected to support teachers’ language learning and teaching knowledge construction through collaborative reflections on their pedagogical practice. because of these responsibilities, they should be highly qualified and experienced, as they need to be knowledgeable about teacher supervision, constructive feedback and collaborative projects in teacher education. references alarcão, i., leitão, a., & roldão, m. c. 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(2008). a pesquisa-ação e a formação teóricocrítica de professores de línguas estrangeiras [action research and critical foreign language teacher education]. in g. gil & m. h. vieira-abrahão (eds.), educação de professores de línguas: os desafios do formador (pp. 339-350). campinas, br: pontes. tudor, i. (2001). the dynamics of the language classroom. cambridge, uk: cambridge university press. vieira, f. (2009). para uma visão transformadora da supervisão pedagógica [towards a transformative visiono of pedagogical supervision]. educação e sociedade, 29(105), 197-217. http://dx.doi.org/10.1590/ s0101-73302009000100010. vieira-abrahão, m. h. (2001). formação acadêmica e a iniciação profissional do professor de línguas: um estudo da relação teoria e prática [academic education and professional initiation of language teachers: a study of the relationship between theory and practice]. trabalhos em linguística aplicada, 37, 61-81. wallace, m. j. (1991). training foreign language teachers: a reflective approach. cambridge, uk: cambridge university press. williams, m. (2001). learning teaching: a social constructivist approach-theory and practice or theory with practice? in, h. trappes-lomax & i. mcgrath (eds.), theory in language teacher education (pp. 11-20). essex, uk: pearson education. young, s. (2009). supporting and supervising teachers working with adults learning english. washington, dc: center for applied linguistics. retrieved from http:// www.cal.org/caelanetwork/resources/supporting.html. zeichner, k. m. (2001). educating reflective teachers for learner-centered education: possibilities and contradictions. proceedings of 16º encontro nacional de professores universitários de língua inglesa. londrina, brazil. zeichner, k. m. (2003). formando professores reflexivos para a educação centrada no aluno: possibilidades e contradições [educating reflective teachers for learnercentered education: possibilities and contradictions]. in r. l. l. barbosa (org.), formação de professores: desafios e perspectivas (pp. 35-55). são paulo, br: editora unesp. zeichner, k. m. (2008). uma análise crítica sobre a “reflexão” como conceito estruturante na formação docente [a critical analysis of reflection as a goal for teacher education]. educação e sociedade, 29(103), 535-554. http:// dx.doi.org/10.1590/s0101-73302008000200012. zeichner, k. m., & liston, d. p. (1996). reflective teaching: an introduction. mahwah, nj: lawrence erlbaum associates. 79profile vol. 17, no. 2, july-december 2015. issn 1657-0790 (printed) 2256-5760 (online). bogotá, colombia. pages 63-79 reflective teacher supervision through videos of classroom teaching about the author sandra mari kaneko-marques is an english professor at unesp-fcl-araraquara (brazil) and holds a degree in english, an ma in linguistics and a phd in applied linguistics. she has experience as an english teacher in high schools, language institutes, and universities. her research areas are teacher education, language teaching, and english for academic purposes. 195profile vol. 15, no. 1, april 2013. issn 1657-0790 (printed) 2256-5760 (online). bogotá, colombia. pages 195-206 the role of english pre-service teachers’ beliefs about teaching in teacher education programs el papel de las creencias de los profesores de inglés en formación sobre la enseñanza en los programas de formación docente judith castellanos jaimes* universidad externado de colombia this paper presents a review of studies on pre-service teachers’ beliefs about teaching. the purpose of the article is to show teacher educators the relevance of exploring such issue in the classroom. pre service teachers come into the teaching profession with beliefs about teaching; sometimes they are aware of them, other times they are not. the studies reviewed in this paper demonstrate that when teacher educators ascertain this principle, they clearly integrate it in their syllabi thus aiding pre service teachers to acquire awareness of their entering beliefs about teaching and to experience changes in them so that explicit beliefs guide and inform the act of teaching. teacher educators assist this process through reflection, course content, and learning activities, as well as by engaging in research activities. key words: beliefs about teaching, pre-service english teachers, teacher education programs. en este artículo se presenta una revisión de varios estudios sobre las creencias de los docentes en formación acerca de la enseñanza. el propósito es mostrar a los educadores de docentes en formación la relevancia de explorar este tema en el salón de clase. los profesores en formación entran a la profesión docente con creencias acerca de la enseñanza; algunas veces son conscientes de estas, otras veces no. los estudios aquí citados demuestran que cuando los educadores de docentes en formación asumen este principio, lo integran claramente en el currículo, y de este modo ayudan a los docentes en formación a ser conscientes de sus propias creencias iniciales y a transformarlas, de tal forma que les guíen e informen acerca de su labor pedagógica. los educadores apoyan este proceso por medio de la reflexión, los contenidos, las actividades de aprendizaje y las actividades investigativas. palabras clave: creencias sobre la enseñanza, programas de formación docente, profesores de inglés en formación. * e-mail: jucaja_98@yahoo.com this article was received on january 21, 2012, and accepted on october 29, 2012. universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras196 castellanos jaimes introduction pre-service teachers come into the teaching profession with beliefs about teaching; sometimes they are aware of them, other times they are not. these are informed by their own judgment of how high-quality teaching looks and works. in other words, they have entering beliefs that enlighten their own system of beliefs about teaching. moreover, entering beliefs about teaching come from their own experiences as pupils, significant interpersonal relations with their professors, mentors and classmates, and their reflection upon critical incidents in their first en counters with teaching. in fact, entering beliefs appear to be a construc tion, which implies that they are not static or do not remain the same over time; they are subject to experience changes or turning points when they come into contact with different components of teacher development: course content, reflection, and research, to mention some. for this reason, teacher educators should embrace a teacher education pedagogy that considers the central role of pre-service beliefs about teaching by both explicitly including this topic in the curriculum (for example through reflection, course content and learning activities) and doing research on it. the present article, on the one hand, provides teacher educators interested in conducting studies about pre-service teaching with a brief literature review of pre-service teachers’ beliefs about teaching. on the other hand, this article may raise awareness in all teacher educators of formal pre-service english teaching programs in colombia about the importance of taking into account prospective teachers’ entering beliefs and explicitly including this topic in the curriculum. i expect that the body of knowledge reviewed in this article allows going further in the understanding of the philosophical principles that support pre-service english teaching programs in colombia. likewise, it can provide researchers and teacher educators, who are engaged in developing situated know-ledge through research, with important findings to further understand pre-service english teachers’ entering beliefs about teaching. moreover, this article may raise awareness about the importance of undertaking intensive, collaborative studies through which the tefl education community “can strive to address the needs of students, teachers, teacher educators, and other stakeholders working to establish a common vision” (simmons et al. 1999, abstract section) of excellence in pre-service teacher education in a reform context in colombia. this article begins with a literature review targeted to the needs of many south american tesol contexts as regards pre-service teachers’ beliefs about teaching and includes research studies on the topic. finally, there is a conclusion that highlights the importance of undertaking more research on pre-service education. literature review some attention has been paid to teacher beliefs in recent years. they have been defined with various terms that include “teaching conceptions” and “teaching values”; likewise, they are also known as “teaching styles”, “teaching practices”, “teaching images” or “teaching approaches.” they all can be understood as “a teacher’s cognitive and other behaviors [that] are guided by and make sense in relation to a personally held system of beliefs, values, and principles that guide the act of teaching” (clark & peterson, as cited in maxson & sindelar, 1998, p. 5). this article uses the term beliefs about teaching, which refers to all the beliefs (ideas and preconceptions) that pre-service teachers bring with them when they enter an education program, about how their teaching looks and works, what kind of teacher they are and how they conceive teaching. there is a large body of literature about teachers’ beliefs and the categories that different scholars have developed are various: from the more general ones, such as teacher197profile vol. 15, no. 1, april 2013. issn 1657-0790 (printed) 2256-5760 (online). bogotá, colombia. pages 195-206 the role of english pre-service teachers’ beliefs about teaching in teacher education programs centered and student-centered practices, to more detailed ones. that is the case of pratt (1998), who proposes five teaching approaches: apprenticeship, transmission, developmental, nurturing and social reformist. first, apprenticeship teachers consider themselves as skilled practitioners with knowledge and wisdom to be taught. second, those who hold transmission beliefs would place significant stress on the trans mission of information, well-organized treatment of content, more dynamic time management, and/or the design of teaching material. third, teachers with developmental beliefs see themselves as facilitators of learning. fourth, nurturing teachers stress the principles of individual worth and self-respect and reciprocal trust, fair dignity, and respect. fifth, social reformists hold the beliefs that their own ideology is appropriate for all people. they place emphasis on locating improved technologies of instruction, approaches to knowledge, and ways of assisting cognitive or personal development of moral and political issues (pratt, 1998). kagan (1992) completed an extensive review of studies about pre-service and first year teaching. this period appears to constitute a single developmental stage during which novices acquire knowledge of pupils then use that knowledge to modify and reconstruct their beliefs about teaching. kagan reviewed three studies (calderhead & robson, 1991; mcdaniel, 1991; and weistein, 1990, as cited in kagan, 1992) and concluded that although the contexts of these studies differ, findings were cohesive in the sense that there is a central role of preexisting beliefs and prior experience that filter the content of course work and, despite course content, these beliefs/ images appear to be stable and inflexible. moreover, she reviewed studies conducted by laboskey, 1991; bullough, 1991; hollingsworth, 1989, and strahan, 1990, which confirm that candidates enter teaching practicum and student teaching with beliefs about teaching that have been derived in part from their own experiences as learners; however, when these images of self as teacher are not strong, the novices may be predestined to have difficulty. the findings reported in the previous studies point out that the initial focus of novice teachers is inward, that is to say, when novices are in the reality of the classroom, they first seek to confirm and validate their beliefs about teaching; gradually, when they find proper conditions, they begin to use their growing knowledge of pupils and classrooms to modify, adapt, and reconstruct their beliefs. also, they explore the role of preexisting beliefs that result from the interaction of their prior experiences as pupils in classrooms, theoretical knowledge from course work (knowledge base) and experiences during their practicum. it is relevant to consider that in a 2004 study, ambrose states that: many mathematics educators have found that prospective elementary school teachers’ beliefs interfere with their learning of mathematics. often teacher educators consider these beliefs to be wrong or naïve and seek to challenge them so prospective teachers will reject them for more generative beliefs. because of the resilience of prospective teachers’ beliefs in response to these challenges, teacher educators could consider alternative ways of thinking about and addressing beliefs, particularly the potential of building on rather than tearing down pre-existing beliefs. (p. 91) i therefore take the position that if pre-service teachers’ beliefs are thought to be incorrect or immature, then no teacher educator, course content or teaching experience could ever foster change or turning points in pre-service teachers’ construction of a self-image as teachers; as a consequence, professional development would never occur. on the other hand, if these beliefs are thought of as entering beliefs, product of the teacher-to-be experiences as a learner, then teacher educators will find a much more constructivist panorama; that is to say, “building on rather than tearing down pre-existing beliefs” as ambrose herself claims. universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras198 castellanos jaimes fung and chow’s (2002) study on preexisting beliefs set out to obtain a profile of pedagogical images of a group of student teachers, as well as to assess whether there is a congruence between their pedagogical images and classroom practices. findings concerning teaching students’ pedagogical images served as focus for the present study. the researchers start from the assumption that student teachers enter formal training with preconceptions of how teaching should take place. results indicated that the student teachers’ most common dominant teaching beliefs were the nurturing beliefs, followed by the mixed and the developmental ones (pratt, 1998), which have already been explained. however, in actual practices, student teachers’ approach was a mixture of the apprenticeship and the transmission approaches. in sum, the findings of this study to be considered in the present article include that whereas in practice students conceive themselves as having a more child-centered approach to teaching, in reality, their practices constituted more a teachercentered approach. similar findings were revealed in simmons et al.’s (1999) study. they conducted a 3-year exploratory study about secondary science teacher education. the authors investigated what were [...] the perceptions, beliefs, and classroom performances of beginning secondary teachers as related to their philosophies of teaching and their content pedagogical skills. [...] an analysis of video portfolios of beginning teachers provided classroombased evidence of their performance in both subject matter and pedagogical dimensions of teaching. among the findings [...] were that teachers graduated from their teacher preparation programs with a range of knowledge and beliefs about how teachers should interact with subject content and processes, about [...] what teachers should be doing in the classroom, [...] philosophies of teaching, and how they perceived themselves as classroom teachers. beginning teachers described their practices as very student-centered. observations of these teaching practices contrasted starkly with teacher beliefs: while teachers professed student-centered beliefs, they behaved in teachercentered ways. (simmons et al., 1999, abstract section). the purpose of maxson and sindelar’s (1998) study was to identify the beliefs, ideas, and knowledge that entry-level students bring with them as they begin their work in an elementary teacher education program. likewise, the study sought to determine how and if those beliefs changed as a result of coursework designed to challenge and clarify those beliefs. data utilized for the study involved two written exercises that posed open-ended questions designed to encourage self-awareness of students’ perspectives and their implicit beliefs about teaching. the data gathered in maxon and sindelar’s (1998) study seems to suggest that there may be minimally two basic types of students entering teacher prepara tion programs. the first one is composed of a group of pre-service teachers with clearly surfaced beliefs about teaching, and a second group is comprised of those who come into teaching without focused beliefs that can be clearly communicated. with respect to the changes initiated by the coursework designed to challenge or clarify their entering beliefs, the research suggests that students learn early to mouth program concepts, but do not always make the connections to their own beliefs and understandings. if learning is not assimilated into a learner’s existing cognitive structure, then students may be saying what we want to hear in our courses, but forgetting or misusing the information by the time they begin teaching in their own classrooms. these findings seem to resemble those of hollingsworth’s (1989) who claims that in the absence of cognitive dissonance, learning among novices remained shallow and imitative. an important implication of this study is the role of learning activities in initiating changes or turning points in the beliefs about teaching. the learning activities that a teacher educator explicitly designs to explore pre-service teachers’ beliefs are central to 199profile vol. 15, no. 1, april 2013. issn 1657-0790 (printed) 2256-5760 (online). bogotá, colombia. pages 195-206 the role of english pre-service teachers’ beliefs about teaching in teacher education programs assist pre-service teachers in making the connections to their own beliefs and understandings instead of only repeating program concepts. these and other studies have had impact on teacher education programs: when teacher education programs are designed to promote reflection, preservice teachers manifest more self-reflection and acknowledge limitations of their prior beliefs and knowledge. moreover, when learning teachers do not possess clear beliefs about teaching with which to integrate program knowledge, it remains superficial and easily replaced. that is to say, pre-service students should be aware of what they are doing in their classes and why they are doing it because they have reflected upon their classroom practices and actions and not just because they are blindly following principles and methodologies that form part of the program knowledge. therefore, the role of reflection is es sential for pre-service teachers’ growth to occur and programs must include a direct challenge to personal beliefs; otherwise, learning among teachers remains shallow and imitative. this challenge is achieved by including reflection and learning activities that a teacher educator explicitly designs to explore preservice teachers’ beliefs. the previous research studies support my ar gument that exploring pre-service teachers’ beliefs about teaching is crucial in teacher education. they also confirm that pre-service teachers enter a teaching program with beliefs about teaching which can be altered through various factors, events and people. other studies (johnson, 1992, 1994, 2007; wray, 1993; bailey et al., 1996; beach, 1994; borg, 2003; cabaroglu & roberts, 2000; mcgillivray & freppon, 2000; peacock, 2001) ratify the need to continue researching how pre-service teachers learn to teach and the key factors involved in such process; and beliefs about teaching are part of those key factors. nowadays, pre-service teachers are not always first career graduates. the longitudinal study by manuel and brindley (2003) with pre-service students of english in australia and the uk proves that the current tendency is an increase in the proportion of second and later career candidates in teacher education programs. this urgently requires a sensitive understanding on the part of teachers educators that a considerable number of pre-service teachers bring with them significant experience and expertise about teaching; that is, they are far from being tabulae rasae or blank slates with little knowledge about education. indeed, the pre-service teachers of this century enter teacher education programs “with deeply-held personal beliefs about the potential for the teacher to create, affirm, build connections and act to good effect (boomer & torr, 1987), constructing teaching as a potent force for change in society” (manuel & brindley, 2003, the significance of previous experience section, para. 1). a new profile of the pre-service teachers affirms the need to continue researching beliefs about teaching. manuel and brindley (2003) assert that: there has been considerable research undertaken over the past decade-and-a-half into the beliefs that pre-service teachers bring with them into teacher education courses: the nature of these beliefs, their representation in metaphor and story; the ways in which these beliefs influence not only what is learnt in preservice education, but how it is learnt and the implications of these things for teacher identity, professional development, and efficacy as classroom practitioners (cf. stuart & thurlow 2000; maxon & mahlios, 1994). (the significance of previous ex perience section, para. 3) these scholars’ words show the relevance and interest in researching how pre-service teachers learn to teach and the role of their entering beliefs. their research with pre-service teachers in australia and the uk avow: [...] the continued significance of personal beliefs and their role in developing teacher identity. it also demonstrates the ways in which the participants imagine the self as teacher-constructing universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras200 castellanos jaimes and representing this self in a range of ways that embodies their principles and ‘dreams’ as an educator. (manuel & brindley, 2003, the significance of previous experience section, para. 4) in the colombian context, there has been a growing interest in researching pre-service english teaching in colombia (gonzález & quinchía, 2003; cárdenas & faustino, 2003; viáfara, 2005; cárdenas, nieto & martin, 2005; quintero & guerrero, 2005; castellanos, 2005; faustino & cárdenas, 2006; quintero & piñeros, 2006; ayala, 2006; latorre, 2007; sierra, 2007; pineda & frodden, 2008; samacá, 2008; zambrano & inuasty, 2008; viáfara, 2010). some of these experiences have been documented and published in indexed colombian journals like calj, profile, ikala, folios and lenguaje. likewise, there are important experiences documented in theses from the master’s program in applied linguistics to tefl at universidad distrital francisco josé de caldas; other experiences have been socialized in national academic events. this has led to the development of important situated knowledge about pre-service english teaching in colombia. the aforementioned scholars and their significant research provide an important background of studies that relates to pre-service english teachers’ development in colombia, focusing on various as pects such as pre-service teachers’ development of re flective teaching, research skills, teaching practicum, development of knowledge, skills and attitudes and autonomy, among other topics. however, the majority of these studies do not include english pre-service teachers’ beliefs about teaching; except for castellanos (2005) and samacá (2008). this leads me to argue that there has been, to some extent, an abandonment of this essential component of pre-service teaching in the teacher education programs and even in the postgraduate programs that promote research on teacher development and education. the search of studies on pre-service english teachers’ beliefs about teaching in colombia yielded one case study conducted by castellanos (2005) and an action research carried out by samacá (2008). castellanos’ study is probably the first one that addresses pre-service teachers’ beliefs about teaching. her study focuses on pre-service english teachers’ construction of self-image as teachers and its purpose was to bring to light the elements that help preservice english teachers construct their self image as teachers. likewise, it provides findings related to how the participants perceive themselves as someone who is becoming a teacher and how their perceptions informed about turning points in the construction of their self-image as teachers. the findings show that there are several aspects and factors that play crucial roles in the construction of a self-image as a teacher. the findings suggest that pre-service teachers create their self-images through a combination of factors that interact among them. from that interplay, their pedagogical images are in a constant process of construction and change. there are three main factors that were highlighted as crucial for the construction of their self image as teachers. factor 1. the first one suggests a process of identification with teachers they have had at various stages in their lives who demonstrated knowledge, skills and positive attitudes towards the teaching and learning processes and their students in and outside their classrooms. the teachers-to-be seem to experience “the looking glass self ” (cooley, 1902), which implies that the more we see other people as being like ourselves, or the more significant a part that people play in our lives, the more likely we are to compare ourselves with them (suls & greenwald 1986; higgins, klein, & strauman, 1985). the process of imitating role models also supports calderhead and robson’s (1991) findings. they state that novices enter with clear images of good teaching that were related to their own classroom experiences as pupils. such images appeared to be derived from a few role models and were inflexible across classroom contexts. 201profile vol. 15, no. 1, april 2013. issn 1657-0790 (printed) 2256-5760 (online). bogotá, colombia. pages 195-206 the role of english pre-service teachers’ beliefs about teaching in teacher education programs factor 2. the second important factor that contributes to the construction of self-images as teachers is linked to the interaction and collaboration with cooperating teachers, supervisors, peers and other teachers. these agents have some characteristics that identify them as mentors. for instance, they foster self-reflection, guide classroom processes and management and hold ver y up-to-date views of teaching-learning and language. mutual help and support with their mentors contributed to enrich their pedagogical images. the collaboration with their mentors resulted in a process that empowered the participants to become active practitioners rather than mimickers of the methods of an experienced teacher. as active practitioners they explored their own teaching style. another benefit of a collaborative interaction is the decrease of a sense of isolation, bringing about emotional support. factor 3. a third factor that plays a crucial role in the construction of the teachers-to-be self-images is their system of beliefs about teaching and learning. simmons et al. (1999) state that beginning teachers have translated their experiential worlds of the classroom into a unique view of what constitutes good teaching and learning, and they define their philosophy of teaching based on these beliefs and experiences. examining the participants’ philosophy gave the study important insights into the pre-service teachers’ beliefs. general themes about the teaching styles emerged from the participants’ system of beliefs. the themes that best captured the beginning teachers’ beliefs comprise a first moment in their construction of a self-image as teachers when the transmission perspective dominated. a second stance in their process of construction suggests a mixture of the developmental image and the nurturing image (pratt, 1998). the consolidation of a system of beliefs about teaching and learning helped pre-service teachers get clear images of how their teaching looks and works and guided their decision-making in terms of classroom methodology, their role as teachers and the role of their students. the ideal image of a teacher along with the philosophy of teaching is a crucial aspect that sustains a student-teacher’s system of beliefs. in their process of self-image construction, beginning teachers hold strong views and beliefs of what teachers should be. in other words, they hold views of a subject of the imaginary and symbolic orders. the institutional practices and discourses that were identified as symbolic identifications for the pre-service teachers comprise the critical pedagogical outlook of a teacher, teachers as teacher-researchers and innovators, and teachers involved in reflective teaching. the findings suggest that teachers-to-be perceive themselves as people who have experienced an ongoing process of becoming. two moments that mark before and after in the construction were identified. during their first stage, preconceptions about teaching guided the pre-service teachers’ first encounter with it during their first practicum. a second stage is comprised of course content on critical pedagogy during the senior year. getting acquainted with critical pedagogy constitutes an axis for the participants’ change in their system of beliefs. they also attribute their new understanding of the teaching and learning process to the fact that they were able to put into practice critical pedagogical tenets and principles by articulating and applying a pedagogical project that lasted a full school year. the changes and shifts are evidenced in their teacher actions and the student actions which grow from a transmission perspective to a mixture of the developmental and the nurturing perspective. this turning point in the construction of their selfimage as teachers supports the notion of a process of transformative learning. likewise, this process is revealed in a new conceptualization of a teacher researcher, one who becomes part of the elt com munity through learning about innovations and their own engagement in research processes. universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras202 castellanos jaimes as a conclusion, change in pre-service teachers’ perception of themselves as language teachers was fostered by making connections between their knowledge base (pedagogy, methodology, classroom activities and the sort) and practice (their practicum, the implementation of a pedagogical project and the discipline of a teacher research process), and by being faced with difficult situations that posed challenges to their belief system (i.e. when engaged in a dialectic or, in other words, by a process of transformative learning). samacá (2008) carried out an action research study (with thirteen student teachers from a state university in the city of tunja) on the perceptions pre-service teachers hold concerning their image as future teachers, and how these perceptions might influence their teaching. the questions that this study investigated were: what do pre-service teachers’ responses to the literature about the socio-critical component of a pedagog y and communication course reveal about their image as future teachers? what aspects do pre-ser vice teachers focus on when discussing issues related to pedagogy and communication? and how do they connect these aspects to their views as teachers? this study helps teacher educators add to their understanding of pre-service teachers’ construction of their own images as teachers through discussions and reflections about the socio-critical component of a pedagogy and communication course. data were collected during one academic semester by means of field notes complemented with audio-recordings, students’ reflective journals and conferences. the findings of this study showed that pre-service teachers began developing empathy towards a social and critical way of teaching. their responses showed engagement and commitment in relation to their social and educational realities, reflecting and assuming critical positions that enhance personal, social and future professional transformation. moreover, being a teacher entails various roles in students’ integral education, such as guides, facilitators, and listeners. to carry out those roles successfully, pre-service students should transform themselves first in order to be able to transform their society. in sum, pre-service teachers’ reflective process showed that to become the kind of teachers they wanted, they had to think about their learners, their needs and interests, and their communities. other findings revealed four relevant aspects for the construction of their image as future teachers: first, a dialogical relationship (shor & freire, 1987) between students and teachers that help them both learn from each other and construct knowledge and social relationships and second, the instructional roles they are to develop in their classroom settings should involve seeing learning as a teaching practice, being motivators, and making students’ learning significant for their lives. the third one is models to be or not to be followed (critical people) which involve identifying teachers who can influence students’ lives to the point of adopting his/her profession (danielewics, 2001). lastly, the fourth one is called integral formation; that is, pre-service teachers stressed the role of teachers as educators, forming students for life. finally, the data showed pre-service teachers’ appreciation of what a teacher should become and his/her commitment towards the creation of more communicative classrooms where learners’ voices are also heard. this view of a communicative teacher might be grouped into two moments: the teacher as a communicator and mediator, considering the interaction between teaching and learning, and the teacher as a person who has an attitude towards change. as a conclusion, pre-service teachers were able to reflect upon their image as future teachers and those reflections depicted important issues that can be considered and analyzed in future research in the field of pre-service teacher education. these pre-service teachers’ perceptions present various factors that may 203profile vol. 15, no. 1, april 2013. issn 1657-0790 (printed) 2256-5760 (online). bogotá, colombia. pages 195-206 the role of english pre-service teachers’ beliefs about teaching in teacher education programs affect the construction of student teachers’ views of themselves as future teachers. conclusion the review of studies presented here demon strates the importance of undertaking intensive, collaborative studies through which the tefl community can strive to address the needs of pre-service english teachers. i maintain that it is paramount to continue working towards the establishment of a large body of local knowledge in the area of pre-service teaching in colombia. likewise, i invite teacher educators and researchers who are working to establish a common vision for excellent pre-service education and pertinent reform in colombia, and to view this article as a point of departure in their studies on english pre-service teaching. as the primary focus of this article is pre-service beliefs about teaching, i also suggest that the following questions for further research can be addressed: how do pre-service teachers’ belief systems match or mismatch their actions in their classrooms? what factors influence the belief systems of pre-service teachers as they gain experience in the classroom? how do pre-service teachers’ belief systems change when they are confronted with the constraints of school, district or national curriculum mandates (i.e. the common european framework of tefl)? the studies conducted by castellanos (2005) and samacá (2008) highlight the importance of mentoring so i propose the following queries in the area of preservice teacher mentoring: what roles can each of the stakeholders involved in teacher education play to prepare novice teachers that adapt to the constant challenges of efl teaching and learning? what is the role of innovation in the research and pedagogical components of the teacher education program in the pedagogical transformations of professors and pre-service teachers? in conclusion, teacher educators should keep in mind the premise that student teachers enter a teacher education program with beliefs about teaching, and explicitly integrate it in their syllabi through reflection, course content, and learning activities. i would like to argue that in such a way, they can assist student teachers in becoming aware of their entering beliefs about teaching and experiencing changes or turning points in them so that explicit and more generative beliefs guide and inform the act of teaching. how teachers can explicitly include student teachers’ beliefs in the curriculum represents the topic of the author’s upcoming article which proposes some learning and teaching activities for teacher educators of pre-service english teachers. the paper asserts that pre-service english education programs should consider student teachers’ self-images as teachers, beliefs about teaching, philosophy of teaching, relationship with students and ability to recognize important aspects and events that motivate decision making (freeman, 1989) as significant pillars; attention to pre-service english teachers’ self-images as teachers can be considered as an alternative to foster teacher development, and that programs that encourage student-teachers’ realization of their selfimages as teachers through specific learning activities build strong and clear beliefs about teaching thus contributing to lessening students’ struggles when they face their practicum and their initial experiences as novice teachers. finally, we teachers and teacher educators, as a community of researchers, are to address the moving and constant changes and challenges of education and reform in colombia and to do so, we ought to be able to structure and conduct research which will inform our decision-making for improved english language teaching and learning. universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras204 castellanos jaimes references ambrose, r. 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(1987). a pedagogy of liberation. dialogues on transforming education. westport, ct: bergin and garvey publishers, inc. sierra, a. m. (2007). developing knowledge, skills and attitudes through a study group: a study on teachers’ professional development. ikala, 12(18), 279-305. simmons, p. e., emory, a., carter, t., coker, t., finnegan, b., crockett, d., … labuda, k. (1999). beginning teach ers: beliefs and classroom actions. journal of research in science teaching, 35, 930-954. strahan, d. b. (1990). a developmental analysis of pre-service teachers’ orientations toward themselves, their studies, and their subject matter. paper presented at the annual meeting of the american educational research association, boston. suls, j. m., & greenwald, a. g. (1986). psychological perspectives on the self. new jersey, nj: lawrence erlbaum associates. viáfara, j. j. (2005). responding to observation: how student teachers’ use of their counselor’s notes support their preparation. profile issues in teachers’ professional development, 6, 141-156. viáfara, j. j. (2010). how do efl student teachers face the challenge of using l2 in public school classrooms? profile issues in teachers’ professional development, 13(1), 55-74. wray, d. (1993). student-teachers’ knowledge and beliefs about language. in n. bennett & c. carré (eds.), learning to teach (pp. 51-72). london, uk: routledge. zambrano, l., & inuasty, e. (2008). analysis of the teaching practicum in the light of the reflective teaching approach. lenguaje, 36(2), 447-471. universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras206 castellanos jaimes about the author judith castellanos jaimes  is a full-time professor at universidad externado de colombia. she also works other two colombian universities: pedagógica nacional and distrital francisco josé de caldas. she holds an m.a. in applied linguistics to tefl from universidad distrital and a b.a. in languages from universidad industrial de santander (colombia). 117profile vol. 16, no. 2, october 2014. issn 1657-0790 (printed) 2256-5760 (online). bogotá, colombia. pages 117-133 critical socio-cultural elements of the intercultural endeavour of english teaching in colombian rural areas elementos críticos socioculturales de la labor de enseñar inglés en áreas rurales colombianas sandra ximena bonilla1* universidad distrital francisco josé de caldas, bogotá, colombia ferney cruz-arcila2** king’s college london, london, united kingdom this article reports a study done with five english language teachers in colombian rural areas. questionnaires and interviews were used to see how these teachers understand their professional practice considering the contextual features of their regional workplaces. amongst the findings, we noticed that these teachers have to mediate between local and global tensions and also deal with socio-cultural matches and mismatches in their labours. it is hoped this work raises awareness of critical socio cultural factors involved in the teaching of english in rural settings and of the complexity of its intercultural dimension. key words: rural areas, rural education, sociocultural factors, teaching english as a foreign language. este artículo reporta los hallazgos de una exploración sistemática hecha con cinco profesores de inglés en áreas rurales. se usaron cuestionarios y entrevistas para vislumbrar la forma como ellos entienden su práctica profesional considerando las características contextuales de las regiones donde trabajan. dentro de los hallazgos notamos que los profesores tienen que mediar entre tensiones globales y locales; además, tienen que enfrentar discordancias y concordancias socioculturales en su labor. se espera que este trabajo cree conciencia sobre factores críticos socioculturales involucrados en la enseñanza del inglés en zonas rurales y sobre la complejidad de su dimensión intercultural. palabras clave: área rural, educación rural, enseñanza del inglés como lengua extranjera, factores socioculturales. * e-mail: ximenabvonilla@gmail.com ** e-mail: cruzferney@yahoo.com how to cite this article (apa, 6th ed.): bonilla, s. x., & cruz-arcila, f. (2014). critical socio-cultural elements of the intercultural endeavour of english teaching in colombian rural areas. profile issues in teachers’ professional development, 16(2), 117-133. http://dx.doi.org/10.15446/profile.v16n2.40423. this article was received on october 22, 2013, and accepted on march 25, 2014. this is an open access article distributed under the terms of the creative commons license attribution-noncommercial-noderivatives 4.0 international license. consultation is possible at http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/. universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras118 bonilla & cruz-arcila introduction since 2004 when the national programme of bilingualism (npb) in colombia started, educational institutions all over the country have been undertaking actions to try to reach the goals the programme has set out. schools and universities have implemented new strategies, have increased the number of hours to learn the subject matter, and have even included dramatic changes in their curricular organization. likewise, the aforementioned linguistic policy has generated a series of social and cultural implications by mandating every colombian citizen in rural and urban areas to be instructed in english. in this context, the role language teachers play in the national educational system is paramount. therefore, it is necessary to fully understand the significance of the teachers’ work. as a result of the importance being attributed to english language teaching, a great range of different studies have been conducted in recent years dealing with issues such as language teaching methodologies (lópez & bernal, 2009; pineda & frodden, 2008; viáfara, 2011), interculturality (olaya & gómez, 2013), a recent trend in information and communication technologies (ict) (rodríguez & hine, 2009), as well as classroom interaction and discourse analysis (castañeda-peña, 2008). similarly, some other research actions have been taken regarding the npb, including its limitations and implications (cárdenas, 2006; guerrero, 2008; sánchez & obando, 2008). yet little attention has been paid to the ways in which foreign language teaching has been dealt with in rural areas or to the ways in which language teachers in these regions have made sense of what they do. given this panorama, we decided to focus on the critical socio-cultural aspects involved in the english language teaching exercise from the rural teachers’ own perspective. the inspiration for this paper comes from an interest in exploring the socio-cultural dimension involved in the process of english language teaching in colombian rural areas in an attempt to envisage the implications for english teachers who develop professionally in rural work settings. hence, the study was guided by the following research question: what are the critical socio-cultural elements involved in the teaching of english as a foreign language (efl) in colombian rural areas unveiled through teachers’ perspectives of their professional milieu? in this paper, first, we briefly discuss the main theoretical tenets of the study. conceptualisation of rural education problematized by the relationship of socio-cultural factors of efl teaching is the core of the discussion. second, we explain how we conducted the exploration with a group of randomly selected rural teachers from different parts of the country. finally, we discuss the emerging findings, which mainly show that there are critical sociocultural elements which shape not only efl rural teachers’ practice but also their professional role. conclusions indicate that rural english teachers in colombia face particular challenges that, as with many other actions taken when implementing a national policy, have been overlooked. education in colombian rural areas according to perfetti (2003), in colombia there is a great historic gap between rural and urban systems of education. lakin and gasperini (2004) explained that this rural-urban gap in developing countries is caused by several reasons such as lack of schools, overcrowded classrooms, underequipped schools, children required to work, and teachers being under-qualified as well as not supported and poorly remunerated (see also, world bank, 2007). several years have passed from the time perfetti, lakin and gasperini conducted their studies and the colombian rural educational reality 119profile vol. 16, no. 2, october 2014. issn 1657-0790 (printed) 2256-5760 (online). bogotá, colombia. pages 117-133 critical socio-cultural elements of the intercultural endeavour... is still characterized by the aforementioned features that place language teachers in a difficult mediating situation between a linguistic policy and diverse context-bound, socio-cultural, economic, ethnic, and political conditions (cruz-arcila, 2013). at this point, it is relevant to clarify what is usually conveyed as rural. on the one hand, da silva (2004) explained that this is a term used to refer to areas of scarce population and that the concept can be very confusing except when understood from a geographical point of view. on the other hand, castro and reboratti (2008) proposed a continuum to deal with the complexity of what can be considered “rural” based on the number of inhabitants in it. these authors maintain that an area can be considered rural if it has less than 2,000 inhabitants. it can be considered urban if more than 50% of its people live in an urban setting. likewise, if an area has from 19% to 49% of its inhabitants in rural areas, it is considered an intermediate region. in our exploration, we found that in colombia the rural and urban concepts have been traditionally related to a geographical perspective much more than by using a continuum. therefore, it is common to find urban areas with even less than 2,000 inhabitants in the administrative centre of municipalities (da silva, 2004). notwithstanding this fact, for our study we contacted language teachers who work in rural areas in different levels of the continuum proposed by castro and reboratti (2008). socio-cultural factors involved in teaching efl in colombian rural areas considering the relationship between sociocultural factors and the teaching of efl, this article stands on the premise of viewing language as the means for the intercultural exchange the participants take part in (cruz-arcila, 2007; kramsch, 2008; vez, 2001). in language teaching, language is often seen from a narrow perspective when the processes of learning and teaching it are focused on the learning of the language itself (kumaravadivelu, 2003). other attempts to understand language teaching beyond its formal dimension have endeavoured to show it as an instrument of communication (larsen-freeman, 2000). however, both views of language teaching fail to account for a comprehensive perspective of what language teaching and learning entail. language facilitates human expression; therefore, it is developed in the social and cultural dimensions of each individual. from this last view, language is an expression of social diversity, ideologies, and power relationships. language permits the interrelation of values, beliefs, attitudes, and actions (bourdieu, 1998; foucault, 1984; gee, 2005; velásquez, 2002). taking into account language from the previous wider perspective, it is necessary to consider the socio-cultural factors of the teaching of english. the task of teaching english as explained above constitutes an intercultural association which bridges or challenges the approach to language (vez, 2001). in other words, the cultural backgrounds of teachers and students taking part in the language learning process might share aspects that consequently may facilitate cognitive associations. on the contrary, if they do not share them, this would undermine those associations (kramsch, 2008). intercultural communication has been a commonly tackled matter in foreign language teaching by scholars such as abdallah-pretceille (2001), byram (2000), kramsch (2001), and oliveras (2000), among many others. in this trend, researchers have also studied the role of culture in the foreign language teaching classroom (byram & risager, 1999; cortazzi & jin, 1999; hinkel, 1999, 2005; kramsch, 1993, 1995, 1998). although in some cases culture has been objectivised and seen as an additional goal in language teaching, more than an inseparable aspect of language (kramsch, 1995), the relationship between universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras120 bonilla & cruz-arcila language and culture has been cleared up thanks to the contributions provided from these studies. in the case of this article, we have delved into the relationship of critical socio-cultural factors involved in the endeavour of teaching a foreign language. the analysis of cultural factors in the process of foreign language teaching has usually prioritised the analysis of the foreign target culture (byram, 1989; nieto, 2002). in the same vein, the intercultural process taking place in the teaching and learning of a foreign language focuses mainly on the target and native cultures. this fact leaves behind the intercultural intricacies of the participants involved (trujillo, 2002). in our study, we also explored the relationship between the target language and the culture of teachers and students involved in the process as well as the implications derived. at this point, it is relevant to explain what sociocultural factors mean and the components they have. the term socio-cultural is a twofold concept which contains different senses but complementary links (kramsch, 1995). in the first case, culture in a broad outlook is understood as follows: a series of institutions, rules, rituals, conventions, categories, designations, appointments, and titles that constitute an objective hierarchy and which produce and authorise certain discourses and activities. but it is also constituted by, or out of, the conflict which is involved when groups or individuals attempt to determine what constitutes the capital within that field, and how that capital is to be distributed. (webb, schirato, & danaher, 2002, pp. 21-22) then, the different dimensions that compound culture shape the behaviour of a group of individuals. at the same time, these elements form boundaries that make this group see reality aligned in them. this action causes people in each group to develop particular interests around their roles in society and their expectations (brislin, 1993). based on this observation, bourdieu (1976) is our reference to define the social dimension of the socio-cultural whole. he defines society as an objective structure that tends to reproduce capitals through institutions like family, education, and marketing. in this fashion, reality becomes naturalized in the human interaction; it becomes unquestioned and taken for granted. in order to make a connection between the previous ideas and what has been developed by nostrand (1967) and seelye (1984) from a socio-linguistic perspective when defining the concept of culture in language teaching, we schematize the elements that we consider intertwine in a socio-cultural view for english teaching in rural areas (see figure 1). figure 1 contains the aspects that overlap the enterprise of english teaching in any context and, at the same time, they constitute the relevance of this study in rural areas. the components we established are economic situation, formal and functional constructs, social needs and class, social relationships and behaviour as well as the cultural and historical heritage of the groups involved. the economic situation has to do with the money-making development each of these cultures embraces. bourdieu (1976) explains that the economic capital enables individuals to access and comprehend others’ cultural capital. the formal and functional constructs have to do with the levels of conventionalism that language involves and the purposes it has in certain society. for examfigure 1. socio-cultural elements intertwining with the teaching of english in rural areas economic situation cultural and historical heritage social relationships and behaviour formal and functional constructs social needs 121profile vol. 16, no. 2, october 2014. issn 1657-0790 (printed) 2256-5760 (online). bogotá, colombia. pages 117-133 critical socio-cultural elements of the intercultural endeavour... ple, the use of words, expressions, gestures and so on, that are used in a social meeting among colleagues. in addition, social needs and class refer to what each culture would set as primary goals at the economic, educational, and social levels. social relationships and behaviours comprehend the social roles familiar to the people of the group. the behaviours that frame politeness, confidence, and insecurity are also part of this aspect. at last, this socio-cultural approach includes the cultural and historical heritage that embeds the traditions that are part of the rituals of the community and the value added to them (nostrand as cited in kramsch, 1995). the comprehension of these elements leads us to try to find how they further affect the development and professional growth of english teachers in rural areas. method this study was underpinned in an emergent research design; the data collected were mostly textual in nature, their focus on the participants’ views of the phenomenon and the findings were reached following an interpretative process. these characteristics made the study qualitative (dörnyei, 2007). we did not have a fixed plan to follow; on the contrary, since our main concern was to contact language teachers from rural areas we decided to be as flexible as possible in terms of the procedures we should follow to collect data from them. we collected data mainly through questionnaires and audio recordings, and semi-structured interviews. investigator triangulation1 (freeman, 1998) took place when collecting and analysing data. participants we are language educators who work in the capital city of colombia and our desire to explore rural language teachers’ insights represented quite a challenge in terms of finding those teachers willing to participate in the project. as a result, convenience sampling criteria (merriam, 2009) were used. we obtained five participants. two of them were our students in a master degree program, two of them were contacted in a lecture they attended, and the other one was referred by a colleague (see table 1 for a profile of participants). a consent form to participate in the project was given to them to sign to guarantee confidentiality of the data provided. 1 investigator triangulation is the one that takes place when more than one researcher participates in the analysis of data and negotiates meanings and interpretations with each other (freeman, 1998). table 1. participants’ general profiles participanta years of experience academic background workplace maría 1 b.a. in language teaching, master of didactics of language teaching in process turmequé, boyacá martín 3 b.a. in language teaching fusagasugá, cundinamarca mónica 5 b.a. in language teaching and already held an m.a. degree. rural area of bogotá magda 9 b.a. in language teaching master in process mistrató, risaralda manuel 15 b.a. in language teaching, distance study in process. fusagasugá, cundinamarca afor confidentiality, names presented here are pseudonyms. universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras122 bonilla & cruz-arcila data collection and analysis to collect data we used questionnaires and semi-structured interviews. these two instruments allowed us to gather rural teachers’ insights regarding the understanding of their professional role in their work settings. the questionnaires were useful to gather information in non-face-to-face situations (freeman, 1998) and to obtain the facts, behaviours, and attitudes the participants held towards the phenomenon of interest (dörnyei, 2007). by means of this instrument, we collected information regarding the professional background of the participants, their feelings about working in rural areas, their knowledge and opinions about the colombian linguistic policy and so forth (see appendix a for questionnaire). the semi-structured interviews served to gather information from those participants we had closer contact with. specifically, this instrument was used to gather more in-depth data about their experiences, feelings, concerns, and values (gay & airasian, 2000) related to the teaching of english in rural areas (see appendix b for sample questions). we followed the grounded approach to analyse data. that is, we started the analysis without pre-establishing any categories. instead, we named key ideas and concepts, grouped those ideas, found relationships and patterns, displayed the data, and finally, we defined the general categories emerging from the whole process (freeman, 1998). data analysis led us to reach some insights regarding the way socio-cultural factors of english language teaching mediate this endeavour in colombian rural areas and how language teachers have made sense of their professional role. it also led us to draw some implications for the practice of english language teaching in colombian rural contexts. findings since intercultural relationships mediated the analysis of data collected, it is relevant to identify some key cultural layers involved in the efl classroom. these were evident in the study as follows: (1) the teachers’ culture (mostly urban), (2) the students’ culture (rural) and the culture of the target language (english). this distinction, although not evident in the findings separately, played a major role in the internal organization of the categories. taking into account that when we talk about an intercultural experience in this study, we refer to the ways in which the cultural exchange happens not only between the native and the foreign language but also between the teacher’s and the students’ cultures. we found that in our scheme there are elements that become crucial in the language teaching and learning development of english in rural areas in colombia and this discovery led us to convey the following four emerging categories: matches and mismatches of sociocultural realities encountered in the classroom, learning english between global and local forces, a socio-cultural dimension sheds light on english teachers’ professional growth in rural areas empowering otherness rather than formal training, and the challenging socio-economic dimension that frames teachers’ labour. matches and mismatches of socio-cultural realities encountered in the classroom this category has to do with the diverse real ities that coexist in the context of the efl classroom in rural areas. according to byram (1989), to teach a new language is also to introduce students to a new system of meaning and its associated symbolic representations. as the realities involved in the classroom are so different in all the aspects of socio-cultural dimension mentioned in our theoretical discussion (economic situation of the groups involved, formal and functional constructs, social needs and class, social relationships 123profile vol. 16, no. 2, october 2014. issn 1657-0790 (printed) 2256-5760 (online). bogotá, colombia. pages 117-133 critical socio-cultural elements of the intercultural endeavour... and behaviours, cultural and historical heritage [galloway as cited in omaggio, 1993; nostrand, 1967; seelye, 1984]), there is a condensed and variable emerging reality created in the multicultural classroom. this new cultural environment contains matches and mismatches coming from the intercultural relationship developed through the teaching of the language that may facilitate or limit either the learning or the motivation for learning the foreign language. one of the mismatches addresses the critical socio-cultural balance in the aspect of social needs and class that delineate a disposition or motivation to learn another language. different cultures have been transformed by social factors such as media and policy that indirectly have created realities and have made them common knowledge (mclaren, 1997). in the case of students in rural areas whose cultural needs have been more influenced by community and family coexistence (lakin & gasperini, 2004), the learning of a foreign language does not represent a priority while this fact is, of course, not the case for the teachers whose cultural priorities have been transformed more directly by the bilingual educational policy in colombia. indeed, they have invested a great effort in learning the language and consider students should value it the way they do. in this sense, english language learning becomes, for teachers, an important goal to be reached and their beliefs point to their seeing it as a life priority. on the other hand, for rural students whose lives have been more focused on farming with its focus on physical labour, a foreign language is considered unimportant. it is seen as merely an additional subject to learn in the academic repertoire of school subjects. this idea strengthens their considerations for the language as somewhat irrelevant in the future reality. for example, maría stated: some [students] like english and they want to learn. others do not see why that is useful, its utility or functionality because in their context that is not used and they do not have expectations of continuing higher education.2 the excerpt also allows observation of how teachers’ ideas about their students’ realities are grounded in the attitudes shown in the classroom. recalling richards and lockhart (2006), beliefs in a language influence greatly someone’s disposition for understanding its importance. in this case, it is clear that the teacher struggles with the students’ reality to attempt to get them to understand the relevance of learning english. the teacher expects her students to value the english class whereas students’ reality does not demand the knowledge of a foreign language. this aspect also has to do with what kramsch (1995) refers to when she talks about the relationship between culture and language as a linguistic mediation in a “discourse community that is both real and imagined [and in this relationship] language plays a crucial role not only in the construction of culture, but in the emergence of cultural change” (p. 85). trujillo (2002) refers to this as cultural schemata stimulation. then, it is positive when both teachers and students are able to see the goals of the language out of the confines of the classroom experience as this would envision a future reality for a change. however, the cultural reality lived by students in rural areas differs from the teachers’ view and does not show them a possible goal that includes the use of a foreign language. within the classroom interactions, a struggle for the importance of the language comes into play. on the one hand, teachers adopt a defensive view of the language as a life goal. on the other hand, rural students mainly have an immedi2 original transcripts are in spanish but have been translated for publication purposes. universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras124 bonilla & cruz-arcila ate ambition of fulfilling a personal goal—finishing their secondary studies—and not a professional one. however, we could also identify a sociocultural match between the teacher’s and students’ motivations that is built upon their cultural and historical heritage (nostrand, 1967; seelye, 1984). for example, according to manuel, it is difficult to motivate students with the english language. however, they still preserve the values of a small community in which we [teachers] can work, these values allow our work to be manageable and that we feel eager to do what we have to do. in the case of this teacher and his students, there is an intrinsic cultural match as the teacher feels identified with the values of the discourse community. we have to stress here that most of the teachers in the interviews revealed that although they grew up in an urban area, they went to teach in a rural area mostly because of family ties: either their families or themselves live or have lived in rural areas. the teacher quoted above pinpoints “the values of a small community” that reflect his ideas on what a small community is. bourdieu (1976), brislin (1993), canagarajah (2005), hinkel (1999), and omaggio (1993) have agreed on saying that ideas involved in our culture are our own biases to perceive other realities. in this sense, what the teacher considers valuable in the behaviour of a small community is what helps him develop his job as a teacher in a rural area even when there are contradictions. learning english between global and local forces this second category has to do with tensions related to the forces of globalisation that have influenced rural communities and teachers differently. in this sense, we can say that worldviews of teachers and students point to different routes. in one way, one of the clearest representations of local culture is in students’ cultural ties to their family backgrounds. rural families have not been impacted so severely with the idea of learning a foreign language that has come with globalisation. in colombia, policies for education have been highly influenced by globalisation and the need of learning the english language has been one of the driving forces behind that. this idea has been spread around the country with the goals of the nbp and, of course, it has more intensely involved english teachers. this is particularly the case in rural areas as teachers carry the responsibility of working towards the accomplishment of these goals. thus, framing their cultural ideas over the language is not only a personal and professional desire but also a national requirement. students in rural areas have been impacted more softly as they see their priorities in other fields. specifically, rural students are happy and comfortable living on their farms and their future expectations are balanced to preserve family links through the heritage of work and values of responsibility to protect them. if we consider the socio-cultural dimension of social relationships and roles, we can see that they are more connected to their concept of family. on the other hand, considering family heritage as part of the motivation to learn the language (nostrand, 1967; seelye 1984), the importance parents give to learning a foreign language is secondary. consequently, in most cases, students’ source of motivation to learn english is tied specifically to their academic context. their families have not had contact directly or indirectly with the language and do not assume it as imperative. therefore, their heritage makes them feel there are more prominent factors to focus their attention on. this can be evident in the following extract where madga pinpointed that: they [students] say “my future is in here, in here where i have the coffee fields” or in their tribes, in the organization that they already have but they do not see beyond that, for example leaving 125profile vol. 16, no. 2, october 2014. issn 1657-0790 (printed) 2256-5760 (online). bogotá, colombia. pages 117-133 critical socio-cultural elements of the intercultural endeavour... this country not even going to bogotá or becoming professional… the major ambition is to become a police officer. moreover, this excerpt allows us to see how for tribes, the specific case here, the learning of a foreign language is not a necessity. on the contrary, it can be considered a threat to their traditions since preserving their language is a symbol of preserving their culture (kramsch, 1995). as mentioned above, english teachers become directly influenced by globalisation through the demands organised in educational policies. in colombia, the government has committed english language teachers to a policy that is supposed to make the country bilingual by 2019. this fact has caused teachers to feel the weight of social responsibility in trying to fulfil those goals (cárdenas, 2006; guerrero, 2008). bearing in mind that teachers’ socio-cultural reality in this case frames the importance for developing a country’s goal at a global level, it also represents an irrelevant goal at a local level for students since other needs are prioritised in their life decision making. consequently, the teaching of the language in rural areas becomes a process highly influenced and mediated by two forces: global and local demands. magda also described her sentiments of frustration when she sees that her students do not advance as they are supposed to in the frames of the government’s demands: in my school there is also an agreement with sena (a national institute for technical education) but they do not teach an english course as such. i just believe that i will sign this year saying that students have supposedly achieved a b2 level. imagine, when this is not true! this participant emphasises that given the fact that the government has invested in and made efforts to develop links with institutions in charge of supporting teachers, she feels that she has the responsibility of demonstrating that students have reached the goals even if that is not true. in spite of this situation, she is being requested to do so. canagarajah (2005) suggests that in the cultural struggle of globalization of local communities, english teachers have found ways to dialogue and to negotiate the priorities of these forces. however, as it is clear here, the results of this dialogue are not leading to real positive results since the socio-cultural factors have been overlooked. a socio-cultural dimension sheds light on english teachers’ professional growth in rural areas empowering otherness rather than formal training exploring the socio-cultural dimension of english teaching in rural areas was also a window through which to observe what happens in the professional development of english teachers there. when analysing teachers situated in rural areas, we found that their professional growth does not follow parallel routes like those of teachers in urban areas. it is commonly known that teachers develop this process by establishing links between received and experiential knowledge (wallace, 1991), theory and practice (korthagen, 2001), and developing sense in their practice (schön, 1983). usually this process occurs by including formal assistance by attending seminars, conferences, and formal education. when analysing the teachers’ accounts, it was possible to see that their professional development occurs quite differently. although one of the issues relies on the accessibility teachers have to formal academic activities such as training sessions, they realise that investing time and efforts to reach these goals does not compensate them with something they can really apply in their reality. instead, these teachers chiefly become progressively permeable to students’ culture and their transformation sensitizes them more to otherness. for example, universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras126 bonilla & cruz-arcila as martín says, “[teaching in rural areas] gave me the possibility to know a culture that many think does not exist.” thus, sharing time with the community to understand what the others are and what their culture implies rather than formal training becomes relevant for their professional evolution. teachers in rural areas do not have many chances to work cooperatively with their peers due to their geographical separation. so, their work stands in isolation. alternatively, it is imperative to work more on their experiential knowledge (korthagen, 2001; schön, 1983; wallace, 1991) as this does not correspond to a certain group of principles developed in theory. since this experiential knowledge is integrated by more intuitive judgments, teachers value the fact of being in a particular community. in turn, this fact implies that teachers’ professional empowerment relies more on the socio-cultural knowledge and familiarity with the local community, as suggested by martín. empowerment takes place when people who are not normally given the possibility to make strategic life choices acquire the ability to do so (kaebber as cited in zhao, 2011). it is “a process through which people and/or communities increase their control or mastery of their own lives and the decisions that affect their lives” (kreisberg, 1992, p. 29). in short, we found that rural teachers’ professional development can be enhanced greatly by alternative actions oriented toward understanding and getting involved in the local community. the challenging socio-economic dimension frames teachers’ labour this last category explores the economic aspect of the socio-cultural dimension of english teaching and the way it frames the teachers’ labour in the classroom. as we have already explained, the socioeconomic dimension here has adopted bourdieu’s (1976) view of economic capital. this broad concept helped us analyse the socio-cultural factors for the teaching of english in rural areas as problematic since economics as a social factor delineates the access that cultures have to cultural capital. even though we are aware of the fact that socio-economic factors embrace a broad field of discussion, in this category we address them mainly in terms of exposure to opportunities for meaningful language use. then, our analysis consisted more of understanding how students and teachers in rural areas take advantage or struggle with resources and the impact they considered this fact had in their intercultural exchange with students. benson (as cited in pennycook, 2000) gives importance to the understanding of the whole context of the classroom to be able to mediate with the real needs students have in their learning process. he suggests that “in proposing a political orientation of learner autonomy, they would embrace issues such as the societal context in which learning takes place, roles and relationships in the classroom and outside” (p. 91). from this perspective, foreign language teachers in rural areas express that they undergo a lack of resources that is also linked to the limitations they may have in their intercultural exercise when trying to teach english. due to the economic difficulty of living in rural areas, some teachers became pessimistic when they found that access to resources hinders their intercultural exercise between students and the target culture. in this regard mónica states that: the lack of materials, didactic resources, books and the like, it is an obstacle for the appropriate teaching of english. they [students] do not even have an english dictionary. there are places where english is not even taught and if this is taught, it is by using street handbooks that are full of mistakes and children learn them. as mónica explains, the lack of resources is an issue that becomes too complex to be solved by a 127profile vol. 16, no. 2, october 2014. issn 1657-0790 (printed) 2256-5760 (online). bogotá, colombia. pages 117-133 critical socio-cultural elements of the intercultural endeavour... teacher’s pedagogical skills alone. the excerpts show how the teachers’ resourcefulness might lead them to think that using unreliable materials sold on the street could still be useful in their job. bourdieu’s (1976) ideas help us explain that this lack of resources impacts the access students can have to the cultural capital, which, in this case, would be the target language. without this contact, students lose learning opportunities. students neither have access to appropriate didactic tools nor to proper language input. the socio-cultural dimension lived by the students would also limit students’ extra resources that other contexts might provide. for example, daily practices in urban areas would probably include contact with the target language, while in rural areas contact with foreign languages is rather scarce if non-existent. mónica also makes this explicit when she emphasizes that practising english is not even part of students’ habits: “in the community there are not even habits to listen to music in english.” according to the explanation above, the establishment of this category contributed to identifying how policies that attempt to measure results coming from the teachers’ work regarding the application of nationwide bilingual programmes are arbitrary. standard evaluation of students’ proficiency has been also used for both rural and urban contexts without any differentiation. then, this category highlights the fact that socio-cultural factors need to be taken into account to establish more particular frames of result (cuesta, 2008; hannum, irvin, banks, & farmer, 2009). foreign language teachers of rural areas acknowledge that the socio-cultural and economic issues are the ones which affect more directly the way to give account of their students’ achievements. teachers say that rural students are ignored not only because they belong to disadvantaged areas but also because the policies idealise contexts that do not have the features of rural areas. this can be seen when computers were supplied to schools to allegedly give teachers more tools for their pedagogical exercises, but ended up being of little use, as reported by magda: “we have computers but there is no internet connection, then you have to work like when you are lacking all the resources anyways.” consequently, if policies are applied taking into account only the superficial layer of sociocultural conditions which is supplying the study material, all the other dimensions are ignored and the results would hardly be the same as those in urban areas. conclusions and implications the purpose of this article is to characterise the socio-cultural intricate features of the teaching of a foreign language in rural areas in colombia. we established as the core of our analysis the relationship between teachers and students as the cultural participants involved. in this task, we proposed a scheme to separate the elements that compose a socio-cultural dimension of language teaching specifically in rural areas. after this, we realised that there were factors that revealed critical areas for teachers to be able to cope with the expected learning results. those factors were primarily found in social needs and class, the economic situation, and cultural and historical heritages (bourdieu, 1976; nostrand, 1967; seelye, 1984). although formal and functional constructs and social relationships were present in the data analysis, it is worth noting that these aspects did not emerge as critical factors in this first exploration but will continue to be part of our research agenda. however, as a pedagogical conclusion, we can say that these elements of language function and behaviour can be used by teachers in more direct connection to the students’ local contextual situation rather than to foreign ones. the categories, which emerged following the steps in grounded theory mentioned above, show universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras128 bonilla & cruz-arcila the prominence of world views constructed in the cultural context lived specifically by the two different actors (teachers and students), the influence of formal institutions, and the impact of global demands for their transformations. due to the fact that rural language contexts do not offer ideal conditions to learning a second language, teachers highlight the fact that very little is known about the national policies in their context and consequently progress goes more slowly than expected. they coincidently understand it as a distant policy that the ministry of education has mainly for bilingual schools. foreign language teaching in rural areas must face many challenges originating from the notorious unbalanced and diverse factors that mediate this practice in every setting. as we found in this study, there are many issues that require a different plan of action for teaching languages in either urban or rural areas. thus, within the scope of what is urban and what is rural, there are many differences that should be considered when planning and undertaking the enterprise of teaching a foreign language. one key issue of difference relies on professional development. in this study, it was found that rural teachers would appreciate less conventional training that helps them get a broader perspective of and familiarity with the socio-cultural factors embedded in the teaching of a foreign language in a given rural area. consequently, urban-based standards to guide a national process of bilingualism are unfair, naïve, idealistic, and generally unrealistic. this last consideration is accentuated when, for example, we look at the characteristics of the bilingual process undertaken in colombia. if the aim of a bilingual process is to foster intercultural dialogue (kramsch, 2008; vez, 2001), then a comprehensive and more ecological understanding of bilingualism emerges, an understanding which relies on the use of two languages to “educate generally, meaningfully, equitably and for tolerance and appreciation of diversity” (garcía, 2009, p. 20). as a result, local social realities and cultural capitals should be more valued. for instance, indigenous languages could also be awarded importance and recognition in this process of bilingualism. thus, language teachers could also be trained to support language education in this regard. we also want to stress that there is little research done in the area of foreign language teaching in colombian rural areas since research done in the field of language teacher education has hitherto been urban-centred. we strongly believe that language teacher educators and researchers should not overlook processes in rural areas of the country. we hope this paper inspires other researchers to delve further into this issue. all in all, this article attempts to reach an understanding of the ways in which the foreign language teaching profession is being conceived by teachers who work in the difficult conditions of rural areas and whose agenda does not seem to be well enough appreciated in the national plans. in this exploration, we found out how multifarious socio-cultural factors make language teaching in rural areas a complex process in which teachers have to mediate between local particularities and global demands. references abdallah-pretceille, m. 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(2008). the development of a novice teacher’s autonomy in the context of efl in colombia. profile issues in teachers’ professional development, 9(1), 143-162. richards, j. c. , & lockhart, c. (2006). reflective teaching in second language classrooms. cambidge, uk: cambridge university press. rodríguez, c., & hine, n. (2009). media as medium in colombian education: how media and ict are changing communication and the curriculum in the school. colombian applied linguistics journal, 11(1), 115-123. sánchez, a. c., & obando, g. (2008). is colombia ready for bilingualism? profile issues in teachers’ professional development, 9(1), 181-195. schön, d. a. (1983). the reflective practitioner: how professionals think in action. london, uk: ashgate. 131profile vol. 16, no. 2, october 2014. issn 1657-0790 (printed) 2256-5760 (online). bogotá, colombia. pages 117-133 critical socio-cultural elements of the intercultural endeavour... seelye, h. n. (1984). teaching culture: strategies for intercultural communication. lincolnwood, il: national textbook company. trujillo, f. (2002). towards interculturality through language teaching: argumentative discourse. cauce, revista de filología y su didáctica, 25, 103-119. velásquez, j. (2002). integrating e-mail projects to english classrooms: looking for intercultural understanding. colombian applied linguistics journal, 4, 78-84. vez, j. m. (2001). formación en didáctica de las lenguas extranjeras [training in foreign languages teaching]. rosario, ar: homo sapiens. viáfara, j. j. (2011). how do efl student teachers face the challenge of using l2 in public school classrooms? profile issues in teachers’ professional development, 13(1), 55-74. wallace, m. j. (1991). training foreign language teachers: a reflective approach. cambridge, uk: cambridge university press. webb, j., schirato, t., & danaher, g. (2002). understanding bourdieu. london, uk: sage. world bank. (2007). colombian rural education project (apl phase ii). retrieved from http://www.worldbank.org/ projects/p082908/colombia-rural-education-projectapl-phase-ii?lang=en zhao, z. (2011). empowerment in a socialist egalitarian agenda: minority women in china’s higher education system. journal of gender and education, 23(4), 431-445. about the authors sandra ximena bonilla holds a master degree in applied linguistics to tefl from universidad distrital francisco josé de caldas, colombia, where she is a full time professor. she has published articles concerning language, culture, and education. she is currently a candidate for the doctor in education degree (university of east london, uk). ferney cruz-arcila, holds a master in applied linguistics to tefl (universidad distrital francisco josé de caldas, colombia). his research interests are bilingualism, interculturality, teachers’ identity and rurality. he has published articles about bilingualism and tefl. he is working toward a phd in language, discourse and communication (king’s college london, uk). universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras132 bonilla & cruz-arcila appendix a: interview3 this interview aims at gathering your insights about your professional experience as an efl teacher in a rural area. the interview does not have any evaluative purpose and we guarantee that the information provided will be confidential and used for research purposes only. background 1. how long have you been teaching english? 2. what is your academic background? 3. where have you worked as an english teacher? experience 1. how did you end up working in a rural area? 2. how do you describe the experience of working in a rural area? 3. what differences can you point out between the rural context where you work now and other contexts you have worked in? 4. what do you know about the national programme of bilingualism? 5. what impact has the npb had in the context where you work? 6. what is needed to improve the teaching and learning processes of english in the region? 7. how do you describe your role as an english teacher in a rural context? additional comments 3 both the interview and the questionnaire were originally created in spanish but were translated for publication purposes. 133profile vol. 16, no. 2, october 2014. issn 1657-0790 (printed) 2256-5760 (online). bogotá, colombia. pages 117-133 critical socio-cultural elements of the intercultural endeavour... appendix b: questionnaire the following questions attempt to explore personal opinions about your professional experience as an english teacher in a rural area. please answer them thoroughly; the information provided will be used for research purposes only. 1. how long have you been teaching english? 2. what is your academic background? level name of course institution 3. where have you worked as an english teacher? institution rural area urban area 4. why are you working in a rural area? 5. how do you describe the experience of working in a rural area? 6. what differences or similarities will you point out between working in a rural or urban area? 7. what do you know about the national programme of bilingualism-npb? 8. what impact has the npb had on the context where you work? 9. what is needed to enhance language learning and teaching processes in the region in terms of : resources the context professional level personal level local needs other 10. how do you describe the role of an english teacher in a rural area? other comments 113profile vol. 14, no. 2, october 2012. issn 1657-0790 (printed) 2256-5760 (online). bogotá, colombia. pages 113-129 efl students’ perceptions about a web-based english reading comprehension course percepciones de estudiantes de inglés como lengua extranjera acerca de un curso de comprensión lectora apoyado en la red érica gómez flórez* jorge eduardo pineda** natalia marín garcía*** universidad de antioquia, colombia web-based distance education is an innovative modality of instruction in colombia. it is characterized by the separation of the teacher and learners, the use of technological tools and the students’ autonomy development. this paper reports the findings of a case study that explores students’ perceptions about an english reading comprehension course in a web-based modality. findings show that students have different opinions about the course, its content and objectives, its level of difficulty, the time students invested in the course, adults’ learning, and the role of the teacher. we perceived that this course represents an academic challenge; it is conducive to learning, and favors students’ autonomous use of time. key words: perceptions, reading comprehension, web-based distance education. la educación virtual es una modalidad de instrucción innovadora en colombia. se caracteriza por la separación del profesor y los estudiantes, el uso de recursos tecnológicos y el desarrollo de su autonomía. este artículo muestra los hallazgos de un estudio de caso que explora las opiniones de los estudiantes acerca de la educación virtual. se revelan las diferentes creencias sobre el curso, su contenido, objetivos y nivel de dificultad, el tiempo invertido por los estudiantes y el papel del profesor. encontramos que este curso puede ser considerado como un desafío académico en el que se facilita el aprendizaje y el uso autónomo del tiempo. palabras clave: comprensión de lectura, creencias, educación a distancia apoyada en la web. * e-mail: ekira06@yahoo.fr ** e-mail: jorgeeduardopineda@gmail.com *** e-mail: natymaring@hotmail.com this article was received on january 2, 2012, and accepted on april 30, 2012. universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras114 gómez flórez, pineda & marín garcía introduction this research study was carried out at the school of languages, universidad de antioquia, medellín, colombia. the study took place in a reading comprehension course in english offered to graduate students of the school of law. we used a case study methodology to explore the different perceptions students had about web-based distance courses. we found six main perceptions concerning the course: its content and objectives; its level of difficulty, the time invested in the course, adults’ learning, and the role of the teacher. literature review in this section of the paper, we will discuss some key concepts for our study which aimed at exploring the students’ perceptions while enrolled in a web-based distance reading comprehension course in english. we will define 4 main concepts: distance education, e-learning, online learning and web-based education and we will refer to their characteristics, benefits and drawbacks. additionally, we will briefly mention the current situation of distance education in colombia. then, we will provide a description of the moodle platform. finally we will explore what reading in a foreign language entails. distance learning, e-learning and web-based learning distance learning, e-learning, online learning, and web-based learning are terms that are sometimes used interchangeably. they are used as synonyms because of their multiple commonalities referring to the way the instruction is carried out. in this kind of instruction, two agents are involved (a learner and an instructor), it occurs at different times and/or places, and it uses multiple instructional materials (moore, dickson-deane, & galyen, 2011) unesco’s distance learning resources network defines distance education as an instructional delivery that does not obligate or require the student to be physically present at the same location as the instructor. audio, video and computer technologies are now used as delivery modes (as cited in marcelo, puente, ballesteros & palazon, 2002, p. 21). in addition, king (2002) states that in distance education synchronous and direct interaction are not required during normal day-to-day activities and that communication is available through discussion using e-mail or electronic bulletin boards. similarly, keegan (1996) refers to distance education as an umbrella term for correspondence education, e-learning, online learning, web-based and virtual learning (as cited by moore et al., 2011, p. 130). distance learning is one of the most known terms; it refers to the access students have to learn in distant places. these terms are different due to the evolution distance learning has undergone. this evolution makes reference to the valuable role technology has taken on in this kind of instruction (moore et al., 2011). ellis (2004, as cited in moore et al., 2011, p. 130) mentions that e-learning not only bases instruction on internet, intranet, web-sites and cd-rom, but also on audio, video, and tv. it is evident that technological tools characterized this modality of instruction, but tavangarian, leypold, nölting, röser, and voigt (2004, cited in moore et al., 2011, p. 130) mention that e-learning cannot be characterized as only procedural but that there is also evidence of the transformation of the individual’s experience due to the process the individuals follow constructing knowledge. similarly, online learning is defined by different authors as “access to learning experiences via the use of some technology” (benson, 2002; carliner, 2004; conrad, 2002, as cited in moore et al., 2011, p. 130). moreover, hiltz and turoff (2005) and 115profile vol. 14, no. 2, october 2012. issn 1657-0790 (printed) 2256-5760 (online). bogotá, colombia. pages 113-129 efl students’ perceptions about a web-based english reading comprehension course conrad (2002) argue that online learning is a more recent or improved version of distance education. web-based education according to sampson (2003), web-based education is a mode of delivery which includes learning independently by using self-study texts and asynchronous communication. keegan (1996, cited in sampson, 2003, p. 104) states that distance learning is characterized by the following aspects: (1) the sepa ration of teacher and learners, (2) the influence of an education organization, (3) the use of technical media, (4) the provision of two way communication, (5) and occasional face-to-face meetings. our distance learning course has all the characteristics stated above except for the occasional face-toface meeting that never took place; therefore, we chose the term web-based education to refer to this modality of instruction along this paper. king (2002) and hannay and newvine (2006) establish a series of benefits and drawbacks regarding web-based distance education. they state that the main reason that people choose these courses is the personal convenience they offer and that participation in the course can take place anytime/anywhere. distance courses fit the students’ busy schedules and the students can access the course from anywhere. however, king (2002) identifies that one of the biggest problems of these courses is their low completion and high dropout rate. he argues that the lack of feedback, feelings of isolation, frustration with technology, anxiety and confusion contribute to an unsuccessful completion of the course. similarly carr-chellman, dyer and breman (2000, cited in king, 2002, p. 160) state that slow connections, browser or software interfaces incompatibility and servers going down can generate frustration related with technology. they also argue that frustration with technology will continue to be a factor that will generate problems in the future, although technology related factors are the main determinants of success or failure in web-based distance education. stepp-greany (2002) also mentions other benefits of web-based distance education in a study that aimed at determining students’ perceptions of (a) the role and importance of the instructor in technology-enhanced language learning, (b) the accessibility and relevance of the lab and the individual technological components in student learning, and (c) the effects of technology on foreign language learning experiences. in this study, she found that the role of the instructor was perceived as very important by the participants since the students believed that the instructor provided assistance with language and fostered interaction with them. she also found that the participants’ cultural knowledge, their listening and reading skills as well as their independent learning skills were enhanced as a result of the exposition to the technological tools implemented in the program. however, she states that the participants’ perceptions of the individual technological components were divided. the participants in her study were first and second semester students of spanish enrolled in a technology enhanced learning program which included internet activities, cd-rom, electronic pen pals, and threaded discussions. distance education in colombia facundo (2002) states that e-learning is most popular at the post graduate level in colombia. however, until 2002 there were no online programs offered at the master’s and doctorate level. he also argues that typically, it is professionals who are unwilling to submit themselves to the limitations of a traditional classroom who turn to e-learning alternatives because they offer more flexibility and take less time. some of the obstacles faced by e-learning proponents in colombia universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras116 gómez flórez, pineda & marín garcía are as follows: limited internet access, under developed tech culture, a shortage of confidence in e-learning, not enough promotion and training for teachers in challenging economic or geographic circumstances. in colombia the most popular fields where e-learning has been used are education engi neering and the health sciences. facundo (2002) elicits some recommendations regarding the implementation of web-based education. he states that e-learning can be promoted through institutional agreements, more concern over the spread of pirated material, the creation of open access courses, broader net coverage so that service is cheaper and more accessible, marketing campaigns, and promotion of usefulness of virtual tools in the areas of research and e-learning. moodle platform another concept that we want to discuss is the moodle platform on which the web-based course of the study operates. moodle stands for modular object-oriented dynamic learning environment. moodle is an intuitive, template–based, opensource system. it allows teachers to manage lessons, assignments and quizzes and also keeps automatic log reports of each student (brandl, 2005). moodle allows the integration of many resources in web-based distance courses. among the resources that moodle offers are text-based or html-formatted documents, audio, video, powerpoint presentations and flash-based applications (ardila & bedoya, 2006; brandl, 2005). among the testing and assessment strategies, moodle has the following question types: multi-choice, true/false, matching, short answer, fill-ins and open-ended questions. ardila and bedoya (2006) and brandl (2005) state that one of the advantages of moodle as a learning management system is that the teacher can design lessons that take the learner step-bystep in the course and the advancement from one lesson to the other is allowed only if the learner demonstrates mastery in the topic of the lesson. reading in a foreign language finally, we want to discuss what it means to read in a foreign language. grabe and stoller (2002) state that reading goes beyond drawing meaning from the printed page and interpreting it appropriately. they state that reading encompasses several other aspects. for example when you read, you search for simple information, you skim quickly, you learn from texts, you integrate information and, if you need to write, you search for the information needed to write, you critique the texts you read and finally you can read for general under standing. a proper definition of reading must take into consideration the fact that reading implies several processes which make it an active and fluent activity. therefore, alderson (2000) and grabe (1999, 2000) (as cited in grabe & stoller, 2002, p. 17) define reading as a rapid, efficient, interactive, strategic, flexible, evaluating, purposeful, learning, and linguistic process that makes reading a fluent activity. the study this was a descriptive and exploratory case study with a holistic and interpretative approach as defined by creswell (2007) and yin (2003), which derived from a major study that aimed at exploring the effect of the modality of instruction, (face-toface and web-based distance learning) on a reading comprehension course in english. the objective of this minor study was to explore the different perceptions students had about an english reading comprehension course in a web-based modality. context the exchange of knowledge with other universities around the world has become an issue for the universidad de antioquia (colombia) and 117profile vol. 14, no. 2, october 2012. issn 1657-0790 (printed) 2256-5760 (online). bogotá, colombia. pages 113-129 efl students’ perceptions about a web-based english reading comprehension course foreign languages play a key role. as a strategy to accomplish this objective, the university has implemented a certification of foreign language pro ficiency. students can certify linguistic competence either by taking a proficiency test or by taking faceto-face or web-based distance courses. in order to meet the foreign language requirement established by the institution, a group of teachers from the school of languages designed an english reading comprehension course for graduate students in a web-based distance modality. it is a 120 hour completion course. it has 5 modules, the first three modules last 30 hours each, the fourth module lasts 20 hours and the fifth lasts 10 hours. the course explores topics such as words and their meaning, reading strategies, development of reading skills, methods of text organization and critical reading and includes different tools such as forums and chats to discuss course content, videos to provide explanations about the topics and content of the course, questionnaires and links to other websites to provide exercises and practice. at the end of each module there is an exam to check students’ learning process. participants the students who participated in this study were from the school of law. we decided to carry out this research study with these students because they were the next to take the reading compre hension courses (web-based and face-to-face) offered by the school of languages to certify language competence. there were 38 students, 13 men and 25 women registered in the web-based course. their ages ranged from 23 to 44. they were enrolled in different graduate programs such as criminal law, family law, and administrative law. their experiences learning english and taking web-based distance courses were very limited. they reported in the interviews, focus groups and questionnaires that they had studied english in high school and some of them had taken basic english courses in language institutes. regarding their experience taking web-based distance courses, only two students said they had taken courses in this modality of instruction related to other areas different from learning english. data collection through the development of the english reading comprehension course in the web-based distance modality, we gathered data from three different instruments: a questionnaire, two indepth interviews and two focus groups, in order to carry out triangulation and have saturation of data (creswell, 2007; yin, 2003). before partici pating in the study, we used a consent form in which we informed the students of four aspects: 1) the participation in the study was optional, 2) they could leave the study whenever they wanted, 3) the information gathered would be used for research purposes only, and 4) their participation in the study would not affect their physical, academic and working well-being. although the instruments were designed to learn of the students’ use of reading strategies, motivation, and perceptions such as difficulties with the platform, time invested material and the role of the teacher, we decided to use only the information regarding to the perceptions the students had about the web-based distance course for the purpose of this study. the questionnaire, the focus groups sessions and the in-depth interviews took place in spanish in order to make sure that students understood and answered the questions clearly and felt comfortable sharing their perceptions and feelings towards the course. the students’ opinions and perceptions were translated into english to be used in this paper as evidence of our research study. universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras118 gómez flórez, pineda & marín garcía the questionnaire included three types of questions: a likert scale from 1 to 4 where 1 was strongly agree and 4 strongly disagree, open and close ended questions, and multiple choice questions. the questionnaire was published on the platform of the course, where the students could download it, fill it in, and upload it again to the platform. in other cases, the students sent the questionnaire to the teacher’s e-mail address (see appendix a). when the course ended, we carried out two focus group sessions with approximately 12 students per session in order to obtain information related to their perceptions of the process: the platform, the teacher, the contents, their motivation, their reading comprehension process, among others. these focus group sessions were guided by a moderator who belonged to the research team. there were also two observers who took notes. these discussions were tape recorded and each of them lasted around one hour and a half (see appendix b). finally, we conducted two in-depth inter views with two students we considered as key re spondents (see appendix c). we selected them as key respondents because the opinions they gave us during the focus group sessions were neither very positive nor very negative towards the course. we used in-depth interviews because we wanted to explore deeply the informants’ opinions about the course (mertler, 2006). the interviews were also semi-structured because we used a guide with themes but if new questions emerged during the conversation they were included freely. the interviews were carried out by one of the members of the research group and they lasted around 30 minutes. the students participated in the focus groups and the interviews voluntarily. the sessions were face-to-face and audio recorded. data analysis focus groups and in-depth interviews were tape recorded, then transcribed. we read the transcriptions and the answers from the questionnaire to find patterns. we met once a week with the purpose of comparing the patterns identified previously. we found recurring themes which further turned into broad categories based on the saturation of data and the triangulation of our interpretations (freeman, 1998; alttrichter, posch & somekh, 1993). findings as already mentioned, our study focuses on identifying the perceptions or opinions of the students after participating in a web-based distance course. for the purpose of this study, we define perception as the process of attaining under standing of reality by organizing information gathered through the senses. this process helps us understand the world and also helps us recognize objects and events with clear locations in space and time (pomerantz, 2006, pp. 50-70). we found six main topics of student perceptions concerning the course: its content and objectives; its level of difficulty, the time invested, the role of the teacher and adult learning. we summarized the findings from our study in table 1. perceptions about the tools, activities and advantages of the course the participants in our study reported several perceptions about the tools, activities and advantages that the web-based distance course offered. after taking the course, the students mentioned that the platform has several positive features: it was user friendly and the communication with the teacher was fluid. they pointed out the use of the forum, the chat and the e-mail in order to discuss 119profile vol. 14, no. 2, october 2012. issn 1657-0790 (printed) 2256-5760 (online). bogotá, colombia. pages 113-129 efl students’ perceptions about a web-based english reading comprehension course topics related to the course content, to share knowledge, to ask questions and to obtain feedback from the teacher and sometimes from other students. however, some students reported that sometimes the e-mail was more effective than the chat for communication. they also highlighted the implementation of tutorial videos to explain the content of the course. for example, isabel1, a student of the course, said in an interview: “the course has useful tools: forums, the teacher, our classmates, the internet and the online dictionary (…)” (in-depth interview, october 2009, p. 4).2 the students pinpointed that the course has several advantages: they indicated that this modality of instruction allows the students to manage their own time, they do not have to go to a specific place to attend a class or any other event, the teaching 1 we changed the names of the informants in this paper in order to keep confidentiality. 2 the interviews, the questionnaires and the focus groups were conducted in spanish. a translation into english is provided for the purpose of this publication. table 1. main findings aspect perception activities and advantages of the course • user friendly platform (moodle) • use of chats, forums, and instant messages to ensure a fluid communication with the teacher level of difficulty • higher than expected at the beginning of the course • very demanding time invested • the course is highly time consuming teacher’s usefulness and facilitation • constant teacher support • the teacher becomes a technical expert and an immediate feedback provider (muñoz & gonzález, 2010). course content and objectives • the course was expected to be grammar-based • the readings of the course were expected to be about law • the course was expected to deal with the translation of texts adult learning process • the participants in the course thought their ages would hinder their learning process process is personalized because it is always available on the internet and there is constant and direct contact with the teacher or instructor. similarly, king (2002) and hannay and newvine (2006) state that one of the primary benefits of web-based distance education is that the student does not have to go to a university campus which represents saving travel time. perceptions about the level of difficulty at the beginning of the course the students had the perception that the level of difficulty would be low, but after having taken the course, they realized the level of difficulty was higher than expected. they reported that the number of questionnaires and activities was high. although the students perceived the course as very demanding, the participants felt highly motivated to take other courses in the same modality of instruction because of the benefits web-based courses represent, for example, saving time and universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras120 gómez flórez, pineda & marín garcía money as they did not have to go to a specific place at a specific moment. pedro wrote this comment on the self-evaluation format: “i thought the course was going to be easier or less demanding and at the end i realized it was not. however, i save time because i don’t have to go anywhere” (self-assessment format, june 2009, p. 3). the participants said that the level of english expected in the course was high and suggested a previous vocabulary unit to perform well in the reading comprehension course. perceptions about the time invested generally, the students thought that a webbased course would be less time consuming than a face-to-face course. the students reported the importance of working in the course every day; they suggested that the course should have lasted more than six months. for instance, claudia reported the following in a focus group: “the course was very time consuming. it was necessary to spend a long time [at least two hours daily] in the activities, exercises, and in the personal activities” (focus group 1, july 2009, p. 19). the students pinpointed that they invested more time in this course than in their graduate program. they also mentioned that they learned to manage their own time to do the activities and questionnaires and to participate in forums and chats. they suggested this course should last at least one year, to be taken during their graduate studies. perceptions about the teacher’s usefulness and facilitation when facing a web-based course, the students thought that the teacher’s support was insufficient and that they had to work on their own and had to be autonomous. in this course the students reported the constant teacher’s support that motivated them to do all the activities. for example, luciana mentioned the following in an interview: “i thought that i would not have very good support from the teacher, but i realized that the support was excellent” (focus group 2, july 2009, p. 14). they also mentioned that because the teacher is available to answer the students’ questions, the learning process is perceived as personalized. for instance, maría said in one of the focus group sessions: i could ask for help as many times as i wanted to and the teacher answered as many questions as i asked. (…) in web-based courses you can develop individuality, in face-to-face courses you cannot say that you do not understand the texts because the classmates might get bored… in the web-based course you can have such communication between the teacher and the student. (focus group 1, july 2009, p. 14) in connection to this, muñoz and gonzález (2010) state that teaching in web-based envi ronments represents new roles for teachers; they have to become technical knowledge experts, immediate feedback providers, interlocutors between teachers and students, they have to advise how to manage time and they have to become constant motivators. they also state that these new roles are a challenge not only for regular efl teachers but also for those who have specific training in the use of learning platforms. similarly, zhang and cui (2010) in a survey study carried out in china found that participants in web-based courses perceived the teachers’ role as consisting of helping learners to learn effectively by offering students help or telling them what to do, discussing their progress and telling students about their difficulties. the teacher is perceived as a key aspect in web-based distance courses, the teacher is responsible for providing feedback. 121profile vol. 14, no. 2, october 2012. issn 1657-0790 (printed) 2256-5760 (online). bogotá, colombia. pages 113-129 efl students’ perceptions about a web-based english reading comprehension course perceptions about the course content and objectives the participants developed different per ceptions of what the course and its contents would be about. some students expected: 1) to learn the verb to be; 2) they believed that the readings of the course were going to be related to law; and 3) some of them expected a translation course. some of these perceptions remained during and after they finished the course and some of them changed at the end. the students complained because they said they did not achieve their expected objectives in six months, for example, to translate texts accurately; to understand a reading word by word, to acquire listening skills and to learn the language holistically. for example, martha expressed the following in a focus group: i could not achieve the objective, we could not! i mean, i learned to read a little, but if i have to do an exam about a text in this moment i can translate it but not quite accurately, just by parts. (focus group 1, july 2009, p. 3) after taking part in this course, the participants’ perceptions of the course content and objectives changed because they realized the real focus of the course was reading comprehension, improving vocabulary and providing students with reading strategies not only in english but also in spanish, instead of translation and the study of grammar. eduardo expressed in one the focus group sessions the usefulness of the strategies acquired in the course to read in spanish: “i must read so many resolutions, so i decided to use scanning strategy to choose what was useful and what was not, so i read quicker. (…) these techniques are helpful for everything you must read” (focus group 1, july 2009, p. 15). as baker (1986, in hannay & newvine, 2006, p. 2) argues, one of the major drawbacks of web-based distance education is that the separation of the instructor and the students can cause problems comprehending course information, for example, the content or objectives and course expectations are often not clear. perceptions about the adult learning process some students who participated in the webbased course had strong perceptions about how age affects their successful performance in this modality of instruction and their learning of english. they believed their ages were not appropriate to learn english. they felt sure young students and children are more skilled than adults in the process of learning a foreign language. they kept this belief throughout the course. the students in this course were not comfortable with the results of the process because they thought their ages implied less memory, less reading comprehension abilities and more time consumption to understand something. for example, gustavo mentioned the following in an interview: “an adult does not learn the english language as easy as youngsters or children” (indepth interview, october 2009, p. 2). regarding these perceptions, tyler-smith (2006) states that adult on-line learners have certain advantages and disadvantages over their younger counterparts for learning. some of the advantages the author mentions, based on knowles (1984, p. 12), are that adult learners’ life experience “becomes an increasing resource of learning”; they also apply what they learn and learn on a problem solving approach. in addition, adults base their internal motivation on “self-development, career advancement and achievement”, therefore, their motivation is not based on getting passing grades or qualifications to obtain specific employment. however, according to the cognitive load theory (sweller & chandler, 1994; sweller, 1999; universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras122 gómez flórez, pineda & marín garcía and sweller, paas & renkl, 2003, cited in tylersmith, 2006), adult learners could be confronted with some limitations regarding e-learning as “having limited digital literacy experience and being generally far less adept at decoding the multimedia interfaces involved with e-learning than their younger counterparts” (tyler-smith, 2006, p. 76). this is also supported by eshet-alkalai (2004, cited in tyler-smith, 2006), who explains that: digital literacy involves more than the ability to use software or operate a digital device; it includes a large variety of complex cognitive, motor, sociological and emotional skills, which users need in order to function effectively in digital environments. (p. 78) tyler-smith (2006), based on whipp and chiarelli (2004, p. 6), also highlights that not only adult learners, but every first time e-learner faces multiple challenges such as “technical access, asynchronicity, text-based discussions, multiple conversations, information overload and isolation” (p. 78). similar to these authors’ ideas, the participants in our study attributed their difficulties with tech nology to their ages. they said adults are not accustomed to technology, computers and to web-based distance courses. they believed that a young person who has more technological skills performs better in this kind of modality than someone who is a grown up and is not used to technology at the same level. we also noticed that students who had negative perceptions about technology did not trust it at all. although the learners had different sources of communication in the moodle platform such as chats and forums, some of them continued sending their workshops or their messages to the teacher by e-mail because they were more accustomed to using it in their jobs and in their everyday lives. conclusions and implications the use of tools such as chats, forums and the use of e-mail as well as the inclusion of video tutorials built positive perceptions towards the web-based course. on the one hand, the implementation of different tools allows the students to communicate with the teacher, increases the sense of support and decreases the sense of loneliness and abandonment because the teacher and other students can provide feedback and discuss topics related to the content of the course. on the other hand, the use of tutorial videos provides the students with visual, illustrative and graphic explanations of the course content. web-based education entails several benefits such as: saving time and money because people do not have to travel to attend classes at a specific time or in a particular place, which motivates them to undertake studies in this modality of instruction. we noticed that people prefer saving time and money rather than paying attention to the course level of difficulty. similarly, web-based courses are time consuming and they help students develop time management skills and a big sense of responsibility. hannay and newvine (2006) in a study com paring distance learning and traditional learning found that the participants in distance learning courses preferred those courses because they had other commitments that limited their ability to take classes in the traditional format. they also found that the participants in distance courses felt highly attracted to these courses because they save time and money since they do not have to travel to take classes. moreover, teacher support is not minimized in web-based courses as students thought at the beginning of the course. the students felt that the teacher was available 24/7 because s/he answered the messages, graded the exercises, and posted messages on the forums to promote students’ interaction and participation on a daily basis. therefore, it is paramount for pre-service and in-service teachers to be well-prepared to play the role of constant advisors, to promote the use of 123profile vol. 14, no. 2, october 2012. issn 1657-0790 (printed) 2256-5760 (online). bogotá, colombia. pages 113-129 efl students’ perceptions about a web-based english reading comprehension course each tool and answer students’ doubts to decrease students’ anxieties and misconceptions about webbased courses. for the students to self-assess their per formance and measure the level of achievement of their goals, the course content and objectives must be explained and discussed from the beginning. it is important to design an induction unit for webbased courses that can be either face-to-face or web-based distance to make sure students have a concise idea of the course content and objectives. the induction unit can also deal with aspects such as the basic features of the course, the platform and the evaluation proposal. the possible result of the induction program is to lessen students’ anxiety and improve their performance in the course. although the students thought that certain ages prevented them from learning english in a webbased environment, the moodle platform is user friendly, is intuitive, and offers multiple tools that allow students to get accustomed to using it very quickly. besides, the course objective is to provide students with strategies to comprehend written texts in english; therefore, the course can be taken by everybody regardless of age and linguistic background. the main concern was not age, but the fact that it was a new learning experience, both linguistically and technologically. this kind of courses are a new option for students to continue their preparation to better compete in the current global world and to have access to diverse and updated information. limitations of the study during the development of this research study, we faced different limitations that need to be taken into consideration for further research. the first limitation deals with the need to research the perceptions of web-based distance education of a larger number of students, including students from different academic programs, and taking into account more than one group. the act of researching only one group from a specific academic program limits the assertions made in the findings. the second limitation we faced relates to the fact that this study emerged from a major study. the objective of that study was to research the effect of face-to-face and web-based english reading comprehension courses in graduate students at the universidad de antioquia. accordingly, the data collection techniques were addressed to explore students’ interaction, motivation, perceptions and strategies used in these two modalities of in struction. although the focus of the major study was not only to search the students’ perceptions about this modality, we decided to conduct this minor study because we observed and could infer the different perceptions the participants had when we collected and analyzed the data. for further research, we considered it necessary to design data collection instruments that directly addressed the subject matter and that could deeply explore students’ perceptions about web-based distance courses and how these perceptions change throughout the course. finally, we think the fact that students had to take this course as a requirement in order to continue their graduate studies changes their perceptions not only of web-based distance education, but also of english reading comprehension courses. it would be interesting to explore in further research the perceptions students have about this kind of courses in circumstances where they take them voluntarily. references altrichter, h., posch, p., & somekh, b. (1993). professors investigate their work: an introduction to methods of action research. london: routledge. ardila, m., & bedoya, j. (2006). la inclusión de la plataforma de aprendizaje en línea moodle en un curso de gramática contrastiva español, inglés. íkala, 11(17), 181-205. universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras124 gómez flórez, pineda & marín garcía brandl, k. (2005). are you ready to ‘moodle’? language learning and technology, 9(2), 16-23. conrad, d. (2002). deep in the hearts of learners: insights into the nature of online community. journal of distance education, 17(1), 1-19. creswell, j. (2007). qualitative inquiry and research design: choosing among five approaches (2nd ed.). thousand oaks, ca: sage publications. facundo, a. (2002). la educación superior a distancia/virtual en colombia. retrieved from: http://portales.puj. edu.co/didactica/pdf/tecnologia/educacionvirtualencolombia.pdf freeman, d. (1998). doing teacher research: from inquiry to understanding. boston, ma: heinle & heinle. grabe, w., & stoller, f. (2002). teaching and researching reading. england: pearson education. hannay, m., & newvine, t. (2006). perceptions of distance learning: a comparison of online and traditional learning. merlot journal of online learning and teaching, 2(1), 1-11. hiltz, s., & turoff, m. (2005). education goes digital: the evolution of online learning and the revolution in higher education. communications of the acm, 48(10), 59-64. king, f. (2002). a virtual student. not an ordinary joe. the internet and higher education, 5(2), 157-166. marcelo, c., puente, d., ballesteros, m., & palazon, a. (2002). e-learning, teleformación: diseño, desarrollo y evaluación de la formación a través de internet. barcelona: gestión 2000. mertler, c. (2006). action research: teachers as researchers in the classroom. thousand oaks, ca: sage publications. moore, j., dickson-deane, c., & galyen, k. (2011). e-learning, online learning and distance learning environments: are they the same? the internet and higher education, 14, 129-135. muñoz, j., & gonzález, a. (2010). teaching reading comprehension in english in a distance web-based course: new roles for teachers. profile issues in teachers’ professional development, 12(2), 69-85. pomerantz, j. (2006). perception: overview. in l. nadel (ed.), encyclopedia of cognitive science (pp. 527-537). london: nature publishing group. sampson, n. (2003). meeting the needs of distance learners. language learning & technology, 7(3), 103-118. stepp-greany, j. (2002). students’ perceptions on language learning in a technological environment: implications for the new millennium. language learning & technology, 6(1), 165-180. tyler-smith, k. (2006). early attrition among first time elearners: a review of factors that contribute to dropout, withdrawal and non-completion rates of adult learners undertaking elearning programs. merlot journal of online learning and teaching, 2(2), 73-85. yin, r. (2003). case study research: design and methods. thousand oaks, ca: sage publications. zhang, x., & cui, g. (2010). learning perceptions of distance foreign language learners in china: a survey study. system, 38(1), 30-40. about the authors érica gómez flórez is a full time teacher at universidad de antioquia. she also holds a master in language teaching from the university of rouen (france). she is a member of the eale research group at universidad de antioquia, medellín, colombia. jorge eduardo pineda is a full time teacher at universidad de antioquia. he holds a master in language teaching from universidad de caldas (colombia). he is a member of the eale research group at universidad de antioquia, medellín, colombia. natalia marín garcía is a foreign language student at universidad de antioquia. she is a member of the eale research group at universidad de antioquia, medellín, colombia. 125profile vol. 14, no. 2, october 2012. issn 1657-0790 (printed) 2256-5760 (online). bogotá, colombia. pages 113-129 efl students’ perceptions about a web-based english reading comprehension course appendix a: motivation questionnaire universidad de antioquia escuela de idiomas questionnaire about motivation the information you provide in this questionnaire will only be used for the purposes of this study and will not have any effect on the final result of the course. please mark from 1 to 4 whether you agree or disagree with the following statements. a. motivation 1 strongly agree 2 agree 3 disagree 4 strongly disagree 1. the course has motivated me to read in english. 2. i feel motivated when i have a global understanding of a reading. 3. i read different texts from the ones studied in class. 4. the readings used in class motivate me to use different reading strategies. 5. the level of difficulty of the texts used in class motivates me to keep working in the course. 6. i feel discouraged when i don’t understand a reading. 7. i actively participate in the activities of the course (assignments, workshops, questionnaires, tests). 8. i follow the teacher’s observations and recommendations. 9. the teacher has motivated me because _______________________________________________________________________________ _______________________________________________________________________________ 10. i feel discouraged about the teacher and about the course because _______________________________________________________________________________ _______________________________________________________________________________ universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras126 gómez flórez, pineda & marín garcía b. the course 1. have you had any trouble when using the platform? _______________________________________________________________________________ _______________________________________________________________________________ 2. what kind of problems have you experienced? _______________________________________________________________________________ _______________________________________________________________________________ 3. how much time do you invest in the course every week? (choose 1) a. less than 5 hours______ b. between 5 and 10 hours______ c. more than 10 hours_______ 4. what resources do you use besides the ones offered by the platform to achieve your objectives a. online resources _____ b. help from other people_____ c. e-mail the teacher____ d. e-mail to other participants of the course____ e. dictionary online____ f. paper-based dictionary____ g. online translator_____ 5. when you have a question about the topics studied in class, you a. ask the teacher____ b. ask another participant in the course____ c. use the dictionary or the material available in the platform___ 6. when you work in the platform, you a. read the theory, see the explanations first and then you take the questionnaires____ b. take the questionnaires without checking the explanations___ c. follow the order proposed in the course___ d. follow a different order from the one proposed by the course___ e. print the exercises, answer them and later answer the questionnaires in the platform___ f. save them in a word document, answer them and later answer the questionnaires in the platform___ g. answer the questionnaires in the platform___ 127profile vol. 14, no. 2, october 2012. issn 1657-0790 (printed) 2256-5760 (online). bogotá, colombia. pages 113-129 efl students’ perceptions about a web-based english reading comprehension course c. reading strategies please mark from 1 to 4 whether you agree or disagree with the following statements 1 strongly agree 2 agree 3 disagree 4 strongly disagree i use the reading strategies studied in the course when i read in english. i’ve improved my reading skills due to the reading strategies studied in the course. my vocabulary in english has improved due to the strategies studied in class. universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras128 gómez flórez, pineda & marín garcía appendix b: focus group guide universidad de antioquia escuela de idiomas guiding questions a. how would you define the experience of taking this reading comprehension course? b. what advantages and disadvantages have you found in this course? c. how would you define the role of the teacher in this course? d. do you think your reading comprehension skills have improved after taking this course? e. do you feel motivated to read other english texts different from the ones studied in class? f. do you used the reading strategies studied in class in you graduate program? g. what is your opinion of the distribution of the content in the platform? h. what would you change about the course if you were going to take it again? 129profile vol. 14, no. 2, october 2012. issn 1657-0790 (printed) 2256-5760 (online). bogotá, colombia. pages 113-129 efl students’ perceptions about a web-based english reading comprehension course appendix c: in-depth interview guide universidad de antioquia escuela de idiomas interviewer’s name: _________________________________________________ interviewee’s name: _________________________________________________ date: __________________________ place: _________________________ recommendation: let interviewees speak spontaneously. help them get involved in the activity. foster a relaxed environment. guiding questions 1. tell us something about your experience learning english before taking this course. 2. what is your opinion of the learning of english after taking this course? 3. what difficulties did you experience when taking this course? 4. what is your opinion of the resources offered by the platform? 5. what would you change about the course? 6. tell us something about the steps you followed when taking the exams at the end of each unit. 7. how did you use the communication tools offered by the platform? (chat, forums, e-mail, instant messages) 25profile vol. 17, no. 1, january-june 2015. issn 1657-0790 (printed) 2256-5760 (online). bogotá, colombia. pages 25-33 http://dx.doi.org/10.15446/profile.v17n1.43438 first year university students’ use of formulaic sequences in oral and written descriptions el uso de secuencias formulaicas de estudiantes de primer año en descripciones orales y escritas eric gómez burgos*1 universidad de los lagos, puerto montt, chile the present article investigates the use of first year university students’ formulaic sequences in written and oral texts in an english as a foreign language context. the corpus of the study consists of eight descriptive texts—four written and four oral—which were composed of four students of english pedagogy at a university in santiago, chile. the investigation is a case study where the corpora were analysed qualitatively. the results show that first-year students use similar formulaic sequences in written and oral texts and many of the expressions generally used in spoken discourse are used by students in written texts. key words: formulaic sequences, lexical bundles, oral and written discourse, pre-fabricated chunks. este artículo presenta el uso de secuencias formulaicas de estudiantes universitarios de primer año en textos orales y escritos. el corpus del estudio está formado de ocho textos descriptivos, de los cuales cuatro son textos escritos y cuatro son textos orales. los textos fueron desarrollados por cuatro estudiantes de pedagogía en inglés de una universidad en santiago de chile. la investigación es un estudio de caso, y el análisis de datos es cualitativo. los resultados muestran que los estudiantes usan secuencias formulaicas idénticas tanto en el discurso oral como escrito, y muchas de las expresiones utilizadas en el discurso escrito son particulares del discurso oral del género de descripción. palabras clave: discurso oral y escrito, léxico, secuencias formulaicas, secuencias pre-fabricadas. * e-mail: ericgomezb@gmail.com how to cite this article (apa, 6th ed.): gómez burgos, e. (2015). first year university students’ use of formulaic sequences in oral and written descriptions. profile issues in teachers’ professional development, 17(1), 25-33. http://dx.doi.org/10.15446/profile.v17n1.43438. this article was received on may 13, 2014, and accepted on october 16, 2014. this is an open access article distributed under the terms of the creative commons license attribution-noncommercial-noderivatives 4.0 international license. consultation is possible at http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/. universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras26 gómez burgos introduction during the last decades many studies have been reported in the area of formulaic language (wood, 2002) due to the importance of understanding the role of formulaic sequences in oral and written discourse in everyday communication. most of the studies have been carried out in native speaker language, clinical language, and second language learning (wray, 2009), paying special attention to the role of isolated patterns in language production, how these patterns play a part of everyday communication, and how they are involved in fluent language production. the necessity of understanding how language is composed and how people acquire or learn it is an important field in linguistics studies because language has been used to communicate ideas, feelings, and transmit knowledge and experiences to the rising generations throughout histor y (c ook, 2003). therefore, it is essential for human beings inasmuch as without it society would not exist since the majority of our social activities are not conceivable without the use of words. people develop or enhance many of these activities without conscious analysis: they communicate ideas, feelings, and transmit knowledge and experiences to others because language use is in many ways “a natural phenomenon beyond conscious control” (cook, 2003, p. 3). this means that there are some activities which seem to be intrinsic to human life and some aspects of language use that are more natural than others. according to an approach to language based on systemic functional linguistics (sfl), language is seen as meaning potential (halliday & hasan, 1985; halliday & matthiessen, 2004), that is, speakers of a language have an infinite number of options in terms of meanings to perform different social activities. from this perspective, it seems that we do not need to know about language to use it well; it means that we need to have an amount of pre-fabricated chunks stored in our memory and then we are going to retrieve them from memory at the moment we need them. therefore, the use of formulaic sequences is an important constituent of discourse production and a relevant component in language learning (hyland, 2007). despite the fact that formulaic language is an important component in the production of fluent discourse, there is little research related to the inclusion of this area in english as a foreign language teaching in chile and how they are included in descriptions. for this reason, this study aims at describing the use of first-year students’ formulaic sequences in written and oral descriptions through the identification of the category of formulaic sequences in written and oral texts provided by biber, conrad, and cortes (2004), and the verification of the use of formulaic sequences in written and oral texts. formulaic language in oral and written descriptions in efl over the years, the phenomenon of formulaic language has been studied by many authors like bal (2010); biber et al. (2004); chen and baker (2010); conklin and schmitt (2008); ellis, simpson-vlach, and maynard (2008); rafiee, tavakoli, and amirian (2011); wei and ying (2011); wood (2002, 2010); and wray and perkins (2000). these authors have carried out their research in order to define what formulaic language constitutes, its characteristics, and the emphasis on the importance of drawing second or foreign language learners’ attention to standardized multiword expressions. however, studies related to formulaic sequences (henceforth fss) in descriptions are limited or inexistent, and much of the research performed in this area has been done on written discourse (halliday, 1987), but it is equally, if not more important in spoken discourse; to our knowledge, there are limited studies conducted in this area. different attempts to reach a consensus have been made to define fss since they are essential 27profile vol. 17, no. 1, january-june 2015. issn 1657-0790 (printed) 2256-5760 (online). bogotá, colombia. pages 25-33 first year university students’ use of formulaic sequences in oral and written descriptions in discourse. it seems that there is agreement on defining fss as “multi-word units of language, stored in long-term memory as single lexical units” (wood, 2002, p. 31). consequently, retrieving these formulaic sequences is an important process because they are fundamental when communicating with others. in effect, the mind uses the long-term memory to store a number of prefabricated chunks of language, which are then used in language production. it means that we do not generate sentences each time; we use what is stored in our memory. however, these pre-fabricated chunks are not going to exist in isolation, “but rather in discourse” (conklin & schmitt, 2008, p. 75); after all, we need to use these fixed expressions in a specific context. in general terms, most of the language people use is formulaic. altenberg (as cited in wray & perkins, 2000) claimed that as much as 70% of an adult native language may be formulaic; for that reason, the use of these fss is present in all languages since language itself needs to use all of these expressions. the relevance of fss is not only in speech but also in written language, so the sequences are considered to be important elements in discourse because they facilitate efficient communication, and particularly fluent speech (wood, 2010). biber et al. (2004) proposed to classify fss into a functional classification of common lexical bundles across register in order to characterize the difference between written and oral speech. they distinguished three main classifications: stance expressions, discourse organizers, and referential expressions. they defined stance expressions as “stance bundles which express attitudes or assessments of certainty that frame some other propositions” (p. 384); for instance, to choose a, i think or i would like to. discourse organizers are those that reflect “relationships between prior and coming discourse” (p. 384); for example: previously known as, not only . . . but also, because it is when. referential bundles make direct reference to “physical or abstract entities, or to the textual context itself, either to identify the entity or to single out some particular attribute of the entity as especially important” (p. 384), such as: one of the most, most of my, or into the mountains. this taxonomy is used in this study to classify the fss used by participants when producing oral and written descriptions. flowerdew (2004) claimed that “discourse is instantiated in texts” (p. 583) and can be presented written or orally; therefore, particular genres reflect the characteristics of discourse and how information unfolds in the texts. in order to develop oral and written descriptions speakers and writers need to bear in mind the differences between oral and written discourse and the schematic structure of the genre of description, namely orientation and description; these aspects are essential to compose this genre as they are socially conveyed in a specific community. generally speaking, oral discourse is quite different from written discourse in many aspects. chafe (1982) mentioned some differences between writing and speech. the former seems to be marked by more nominalization, more genitive subjects and objects, participles, attributive adjectives, serial and sequenced phrases, complement clauses, and more relative clauses. the latter appears to have more first person references, more speaker mental processes and fillers; in the same way, speech is marked by hesitations and performance errors, while written speech is more prepared, more accurate. neither written discourse nor the spoken one is more organized; they are organized in different ways. spoken language tends to have more clauses in the system and with fewer lexical items in the clause because it is spontaneous and describes actions more than things. the major differences between speech and writing are that one is essentially transitory and the other is designed to be permanent (brown & yule, 1987); that is, spoken discourse tends to be more spontaneous than written discourse since it is more prepared and reflective. universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras28 gómez burgos with regard to the genre of description, it is one of the most important genres in any language system and also one of “the most widely used genres across all of the learning areas” (knapp & watkins, 2005, p. 97). description allows people to categorize or classify a range of experiences, observations, and interactions. it is used in many text types, such as riddles, observation or information reports, and/or descriptive essays. according to rose and martin (2012) descriptions have two main stages, namely orientation and description and they present information on one object, place, situation, or person. within the two stages of the genre of description (orientation and description), some important elements need to be considered in order to be developed. for instance, the use of sensory details of sight, sound, taste, texture, emotion, and smell; the use of rhetorical devices such as the simile, metaphor, or other comparisons; specific descriptive attributes beyond the obvious one of topic build an overall, dominant impression of a topic organization based on the author’s chosen attributes and some others. all of these elements are included in the texts, and they are connected with different fss that allow speakers and writers to compose oral and written texts supported with information that flows through these two stages; therefore, discourse unfolds in the genre of description. method this is a non-experimental and descriptive case study based on discourse analysis since it identifies and evaluates the use of first-year students’ formulaic sequences in written and oral descriptions. it includes qualitative research methods and was conducted in santiago, chile, during june 2012. participants participants were four first-year students of english pedagog y attending english grammar lessons, at a university in santiago, chile. they were from 18 to 25 years old. their proficiency in english was estimated to be the pre-intermediate level. instruments the present study is based on an analysis of eight texts: four are written descriptions and four are spoken ones. the corpus was collected in june. procedure the corpus collection was carried out during june in 2012. the students were given a task to develop during the lesson: they had to describe their favourite place, first in written form, and then in spoken language. after data were collected, the eight texts were analysed according to the taxonomy named functional classification of common lexical bundles across register, proposed by biber et al. (2004). the analysis was done based on the number of occurrences of the use of fss, the types of complexity, and the differences between the written and oral texts, and then the fss identified were classified in one of the three main categorizations given by biber et al.: stance expressions, discourse organizers, and referential expressions. analysis and discussion of the data as stated in the research methodology, the text analysis was approached by considering biber et al.’s (2004) taxonomy of lexical sequences, subdivided into three main groups: stance expressions, discourse organizers, and referential expressions. these three criteria were identified in all texts and their use has to do with the extension of the texts. table 1 shows the information about the eight texts collected. table 1 illustrates that written descriptions are more extensive than oral descriptions because oral texts are shorter than written ones in terms of number of words. this situation is similar regarding the number of fss identified in the texts since there 29profile vol. 17, no. 1, january-june 2015. issn 1657-0790 (printed) 2256-5760 (online). bogotá, colombia. pages 25-33 first year university students’ use of formulaic sequences in oral and written descriptions is a close relation between extension of the text and number of fss identified in the descriptions. in general terms, the majority of written descriptions have more words and more fss while oral texts lack a vast majority of fss in the texts. fss in written descriptions as stated previously, written texts are more extensive than oral ones; therefore, more fss can be identified. the results of fss identified in the four written descriptions are illustrated in figure 1. the data show that the participants wrote similar texts in terms of number of words because the range of words goes from 192 to 261 words. just as well, the results illustrate that there are 78 fss in the texts which are part of the classification called stance expressions, 26 expressions are part of discourse organizers and 55 lexical bundles correspond to referential expressions. they also follow similar patterns in terms of the number of words for each of the three categories, that is, there is homogeneity among the distribution of the three criteria. table 2 shows some examples of the three categories in text 1a. one of the most significant results in this category stands for the number of expressions used by the students in the second category: discourse organizers, which represents 12%. this category is the least used by the participants in the texts in both written and oral texts; nonetheless, in the written description the percentage represents a significant number of occurrences. at the same time, the use of referential expressions obtained 36% in terms of their inclusion in the written texts, and stance expressions are the most used with 36% occurrence in the four descriptions. figure 2 summarises fss identified in the written descriptions. table 2. examples of fss in text 1a stance expressions discourse organizers referential expressions to choose; i have; if i had; i would visit; i know; we have; i’ve ever seen; i love it; it has been changed to; is situated in; which has acquired; we can find; i think; i would like to. and; thankfully; because; but; which; previously known as; but in my opinion; there is nothing more; to be in contact with; like this. most of my country; one of the most beautiful; this time; now; it is a place; the colonies of; many beautiful places; in nature itself; some day; most of my world. table 1. distribution of texts type of texts participant no. of words no. of fss identified written texts 1 237 41 2 210 41 3 192 30 4 261 47 oral texts 1 237 54 2 136 23 3 102 18 4 176 32 figure 1. number of fss in written texts 0 5 10 15 20 25 30 35 stance expressions discourse organizers referential expressions text 1 text 2 text 3 text 4 universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras30 gómez burgos figure 2. fss in written descriptions 52% 12% 36% stance expressions discourse organizers referential expressions fss in oral descriptions regarding the results obtained from the four oral texts, they show similar results to the ones from the written texts. however, there are many fillers which were part of the recorded texts, for instance: mmm, huh, which are common characteristics of orality. figure 3 shows the results. figure 3. number of fss in oral texts 0 5 10 15 20 25 text 1 text 2 text 3 text 4 stance expressions discourse organizers referential expressions figure 3 illustrates that the categor y called discourse organizers is the lowest in terms of the number of fss used by students when presenting a description orally; it represents 30%. the most common fss in this criterion are: because, well, for that, and we can see. the use of stance expressions is the highest classification used by the students with 53% occurrence of these expressions in the texts; for instance: i see, we can find, i would like to, i know, i think that, and i don’t know. figure 4 shows that the fss identified in the four oral texts were distributed among three categories; namely, stance expressions, discourse organizers, and referential expressions in different percentages of occurrence in the texts. regarding stance expressions, 66 examples were used by participants in all the text (56%); discourse organizers had 38 expressions in the texts (38%); and of the referential expressions, 31 occurrences in the oral descriptions (31%). figure 4. fss in oral descriptions 56% 38% 31% 0% 10% 20% 30% 40% 50% 60% stance expressions discourse organizers referential expressions general identification of fss in descriptions bearing in mind the taxonomy provided by biber et al. (2004) the general results illustrate that the category called stance expressions was the most used by the participants in the study. according to biber et al. these bundles express attitudes, assessments, or certainty that frames some other proposition. for that reason, more use of these expressions is identified in the texts because the texts are related to descriptions which link information from different periods of time and the texts are related to the writers own points of view. l i ke w i s e, t h e s e c on d c ate gor y, d i s c ou rs e organizers, was the least used by them. biber et al. (2004) defined them as sequences which reflect relations between prior and coming discourse. there is a lack of these lexical bundles in the written texts, 31profile vol. 17, no. 1, january-june 2015. issn 1657-0790 (printed) 2256-5760 (online). bogotá, colombia. pages 25-33 first year university students’ use of formulaic sequences in oral and written descriptions possibly because the students are doing their first year and do not have a sufficient amount of fss stored in their memory, so they cannot retrieve them. in the oral texts the students used more discourse organizers in contrast to the lack of them in the written texts. even though the use of these fss rose in the oral texts, it is the lowest category in all the texts. by the same token, the use of the third category, referential expressions was employed by the students as well. these lexical bundles are defined as fss which refer to entities, or to the textual context (biber et al., 2004). the inclusion of these pre-fabricated structures was in all the texts, and it represents the second category most used by the students. the expressions used the most were most of, around the, full of, a lot of. the last one is considered an informal sequence mostly used in oral texts, but in this case it is used in the written descriptions as well. taking into account what halliday (1987) claimed, the students’ written texts are related to self-monitored discourse because they had more time to develop them; on the contrary, their oral texts correspond to spontaneous discourse since they had to improvise when describing their favourite place. likewise, the written texts seem to be more structurally developed because the language tends to be more academic than that in spontaneous speech where texts are more fluent; nonetheless, expressions used in the written descriptions are more related to oral language than written discourse because of the use of informal expressions such as i think, a lot of, so, to name a few. bearing in mind the different fss identified in the written and oral corpus, the texts appear to be similar. the most common lexical bundles used by the students were i think (that) and my favourite place is both being part of the first classification: stance expressions. as chafe (as cited in halliday, 1987) proposed, there are some differences between a written and an oral text, but in this case the written texts seem to be oral texts because they have some first person references. conclusion bearing in mind that fss constitute a large portion of spoken discourse (schmitt & carter, 2004), the use of them is relevant not only for native speakers, but also for second or foreign language learners because these pre-fabricated expressions are part of discourse and speakers use them unconsciously, so that the fss are stored in the long-term memory and then retrieved from it to the working memory. in light of the previous premise, the main purpose of this study was to analyse the fss that first-year students use in written and oral descriptions. the results provide evidence that the use of these expressions in written texts is very similar to the fss used in oral texts, that is, the students’ written texts have the structure of an oral text because they use many lexical bundles which are frequently part of oral speech. it seems that novice students develop texts in oral forms mostly instead of written forms, probably because of their level of proficiency in the target language and their exposure to the genres being developed. the findings reveal that the participants use the fss and these are an important part within the texts. the most outstanding finding shows that students are more familiar with oral texts than written ones, to our knowledge; the reason could be that writing is a more difficult task that requires more knowledge on the part of the writer since it is an epistemic activity, that is, when you write you construct knowledge and experience, and novice students have not had exposure to different genres in the foreign language; therefore, in terms of structure, there is a lack of knowledge as to how a written text is to be developed. from the findings reported above, this study not only confirms the importance of fss in discourse, but it also reveals some gaps in knowledge and practice regarding the inclusion of fss in english as a foreign language teaching. even when the quantity of students involved in this work was a limitation, this case-study is a contribution to the field because it provides more universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras32 gómez burgos information about the necessity of reflecting upon how the fss are part of discourse and how they can be included in formal instruction in different levels and programmes. based on that, more research in the area is needed so as to improve the students’ development of language skills in the foreign language. in sum, the four participants of this research use fss when they develop written or oral descriptions, but they are not always successful when they choose the expressions in written descriptions, and they are not so varied. as previously stated, the proper use of idiomatic expressions is an important constituent of language learning (wray, 2000); consequently, its use in both oral and written texts is necessary in order to develop fluency in discourse. according to wood (2010), fluency in a foreign language is a function of pauses and hesitations and their connection with pragmatics and structures. thus, pre-fabricated structures are essential in developing oral fluency in foreign language lessons, so, teachers of english as a foreign language need to design tasks which include the use of lexical bundles to help foreign language students gain more fluency in the language. similarly, students have to b e clear ab out the structure of texts since when they describe a particular issue or situation, there is some structure to follow and some sequences are mostly used in written texts, others in oral ones, because patterns of formulaic language vary according to genre (wray, 2009). thus teachers need to provide students with opportunities to be in contact with these lexical bundles by offering proper input that will allow them to use these expressions in a better way. it appears that students need more exposure to these expressions; therefore, more research in the area is needed to share experiences about the inclusion of fss in direct instruction in foreign language environments. references bal, b. (2010). analysis of four-word lexical bundles in published research articles written by turkish scholars (master’s thesis). georgia state university, usa. biber, d., conrad, s., & cortes, v. (2004). if you look at lexical bundles: lexical bundles in university teaching and textbooks. applied linguistics, 25(3), 371-405. http:// dx.doi.org/10.1093/applin/25.3.371. brown, g., & yule, g. (1987). discourse analysis. new york, ny: cambridge university press. chafe, w. (1982). integration and involvement in speaking, writing, and oral literature. in d. tannen (ed.), spoken and written language: exploring orality and literacy (pp. 35-53). norwood, nj: ablex. chen, y., & baker, p. (2010). lexical bundles in l1 and l2 academic writing. language learning & technology, 14(2), 30-49. conklin, k., & schmitt, n. (2008). formulaic sequences: are they processed more quickly than nonformulaic language by native and nonnative speakers? applied linguistics, 29(1), 72-89. http://dx.doi.org/10.1093/ applin/amm022. cook, g. (2003). applied linguistics. oxford, uk: oxford university press. ellis, n., simpson-vlach, r., & maynard, c. (2008). formulaic language in native and second language speakers: psycholinguistics, corpus linguistics, and tesol. tesol quarterly, 42(3), 375-396. flowerdew, j. (2004). the discursive construction of a world-class city. discourse & society, 15(5), 579-605. http://dx.doi.org/10.1177/0957926504045033. halliday, m. a. k. (1987). spoken and written modes of meaning. in r. horowitz & s. j. samuels (eds.), comprehending oral and written language (pp. 55-87). san diego, ca: academic press. halliday, m. a. k., & hasan, r. (1985). language, context, and text: aspects of language in a social-semiotic perspective. oxford, uk: oxford university press. 33profile vol. 17, no. 1, january-june 2015. issn 1657-0790 (printed) 2256-5760 (online). bogotá, colombia. pages 25-33 first year university students’ use of formulaic sequences in oral and written descriptions halliday, m. a. k., & matthiessen, c. m. (2004). introduction to functional grammar. london, uk: edward arnold. hyland, k. (2007). genre pedagogy: language, literacy and l2 writing instruction. journal of second language writing, 16(3), 148-164. http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j. jslw.2007.07.005. knapp, p., & watkins, m. (2005). genre, text, grammar: technologies for teaching and assessing writing (1st ed.). sydney, au: unsw press. rafiee, m., tavakoli, m., & amirian, z. (2011). structural analysis of lexical bundles across two types of english newspapers edited by native and non-native speakers. modern journal of applied linguistics, 3(2), 218-236. rose, d., & martin, j. r. (2012). learning to write, reading to learn: genre, knowledge and pedagogy in the sydney school. sheffield, uk: equinox. schmitt, n., & carter, n. (2004). formulaic sequences in action: an introduction. in n. schmitt (ed.), formulaic sequences: acquisition, processing and use (pp. 1-22). amsterdam, nl: john benjamins. http://dx.doi. org/10.1075/lllt.9. wei, l., & ying, h. (2011). on the role of formulaic sequences in second language acquisition. us-china foreign language, 9(11), 708-713. wood, d. (2002). formulaic language in thought and word: vygotskian perspectives. cahiers linguistiques d’ottawa, 30, 29-48. wood, d. (2010). formulaic language and second language speech fluency: background, evidence and classroom applications. new york, ny: continuum. wray, a. (2000). formulaic sequences in second language teaching: principle and practice. applied linguistics, 21(4), 463-489. http://dx.doi.org/10.1093/ applin/21.4.463. wray, a. (2009). future directions in formulaic language research. journal of foreign languages, 32(6), 2-17. wray, a., & perkins, m. (2000). the functions of formulaic language: an integrated model. language and communication, 20(1), 1-28. http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/ s0271-5309(99)00015-4. about the author eric gómez burgos is a teacher of primary education with a minor in english (bachelor of primary education-english). he holds a master’s in applied linguistics to english as a foreign language from pontificia universidad católica de chile. he is a teacher in the areas of efl methodology and efl writing. 125 http://dx.doi.org/10.15446/profile.v18n2.52813 understanding the role of teaching materials in a beginners’ level english as a foreign language course: a case study el papel de los materiales de enseñanza en un curso de inglés para principiantes: un estudio de caso elio jesús cruz rondón* leidy fernanda velasco vera** universidad de pamplona, pamplona, colombia learning a foreign language may be a challenge for most people due to differences in the form and structure between one’s mother tongue and a new one. however, there are some tools that facilitate the teaching and learning of a foreign language, for instance, new applications for digital devices, video blogs, educational platforms, and teaching materials. therefore, this case study aims at understanding the role of teaching materials among beginners’ level students learning english as a foreign language. after conducting five non-participant classroom observations and nine semi-structured interviews, we found that the way the teacher implemented a pedagogical intervention by integrating the four language skills, promoting interactive learning through the use of online resources, and using the course book led to a global english teaching and learning process. key words: alternative material, beginners, course book, english as a foreign language, teaching materials. el aprendizaje de una nueva lengua puede ser un reto para la mayoría de la gente debido a las diferencias en la forma y en la estructura entre la lengua materna y la nueva; sin embargo, hay algunas herramientas que facilitan la enseñanza y el aprendizaje de una lengua extranjera. este estudio de caso tiene por objetivo comprender el papel de los materiales de enseñanza y su contribución a los aprendices de nivel elemental del inglés. por medio de cinco observaciones de clase no participante y nueve entrevistas semi-estructuradas, se encontró que el profesor integró las cuatro habilidades lingüísticas, los recursos en línea promovieron un aprendizaje interactivo, y el libro de texto lideró un proceso integral de enseñanza y aprendizaje del inglés. palabras clave: inglés como lengua extranjera, libro de texto, material alternativo, materiales de enseñanza, principiantes. * e-mail: elio.cruz@unipamplona.edu.co ** e-mail: leidy.velasco@unipamplona.edu.co how to cite this article (apa, 6th ed.): cruz rondón, e. j., & velasco vera, l. f. (2016). understanding the role of teaching materials in a beginners’ level english as a foreign language course: a case study. profile issues in teachers’ professional development, 18(2), 125-137. http://dx.doi.org/10.15446/profile.v18n2.52813. this article was received on august 31, 2015, and accepted on february 10, 2016. this is an open access article distributed under the terms of the creative commons license attribution-noncommercial-noderivatives 4.0 international license. consultation is possible at http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/. profile vol. 18, no. 2, july-december 2016. issn 1657-0790 (printed) 2256-5760 (online). bogotá, colombia. pages 125-137 universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras126 cruz rondón, & velasco vera introduction foreign language teachers should implement a myriad of instructional materials to “help to teach language learners” (harsono, 2007, p. 170). for example, applications for digital devices, video blogs, educational platforms, and textbooks, among others, are essential to teach english as a foreign language (efl). however, according to oviedo, “most efl teachers in colombia seem to rely on a course book usually produced by a ‘north’ american or british publisher and sold as a global course book in many parts of the world” (as cited in macías, 2010, p. 12). although english teachers use several materials in the classroom, the course book remains to be the most frequently utilized resource when it comes to choosing what materials to implement to teach efl. as undergraduate researchers we decided to focus our attention on the teaching materials implemented in an efl classroom in order to understand how they were used and how students reacted towards their implementation in the class. consequently, this case study was carried out in a beginners’ level english course in a bachelor of arts in foreign languages program at a public university in colombia. the participants consisted of 21 students (10 girls and 11 boys). the purpose of this study was to understand the role of teaching materials in an efl classroom and to identify the students’ reactions towards their implementation. this research attempted to answer three questions: what are the teaching materials implemented in a beginners’ efl classroom? how are the teaching materials implemented? and how do beginner level students of english react towards the implementation of the teaching materials? literature review extensive research has explored the variety of teaching materials implemented in the class. for this inquiry, studies were classified into three main areas: firstly, the use of authentic materials in an efl classroom (kelly, kelly, offner, & vorland, 2002; kilickaya, 2004; tamo, 2009). these authors found that the use of these resources had a positive effect on learner motivation; they provided authentic cultural information, as well as exposure to real language, and they supported a more creative approach to teaching. however, their research also revealed that authentic materials often contain difficult language, unneeded vocabulary, and complex language structures, which can cause unnecessary difficulties for the teacher in lower-level classes. secondly, the role of course books and the positive and negative aspects of using a course book (bonilla medina, 2008; charalambous, 2011; chou, 2010; issa, 2007; zohrabi, 2011). according to these authors, the course book serves as a tool for teachers to support their classes and reinforce students’ independent work. course books also state the lesson objectives, explaining what the learners are expected to do. they may catch students’ attention as they have visual images and include different activities for each module in order to develop the four key language skills (listening, speaking, reading, and writing). however, the use of a course book may encompass a restrictive process where the teacher follows a repetitive format: reading the instructions, completing the exercise, and making corrections. thirdly, the studies conducted by garcía laborda (2011), harsono, (2007), harwood (2010), johansson (2006), kitao and kitao (1997), and tomlinson (2012) examined the appropriateness and implementation of teaching materials, highlighting the importance of selecting teaching materials in accordance with the learners’ needs, evaluating the pertinence of materials for their students, and adapting them if necessary. moreover, the implementation of teaching materials usually follows one of these conditions: using an existing material, adapting any material to specific criteria, and creating a new material suitable for the teacher and students’ needs. context and pedagogical implementation in this study, participants took four lessons a week. each lesson lasted two hours and was held either in an 127 understanding the role of teaching materials in a beginners᾽ level english as a foreign language course... ordinary classroom or in a language laboratory. the classrooms were spacious and comfortable. the language laboratory was equipped with an interactive whiteboard, speakers, and 30 personal computers. at the beginning of the elementary english course, students were given the names of three books to read throughout the semester: the canterville ghost, lord arthur savile’s crime, and the model millionaire along with a list of activities to be completed. for example: doing a role-play, creating a song, making a comic strip, creating a newspaper and writing a horoscope for the book characters. the first activity that we observed was the role play. first, students read the selected book individually. then, in groups of four or five, the participants wrote a script for a creative role-play. finally, they performed the role-play in their english class in front of the teacher and their classmates. students presented four roleplays throughout the four observations we did; three of them were about the summary of the corresponding chapters and the other was about changing the end of the story. the use of role-plays allowed students to integrate reading, writing, and speaking as they read the two chapters from one of the three set texts. they then wrote the script for the role play, and third, they performed the finished product. the second activity, writing song lyrics, involved students’ completion of an independent reading at home. they read two chapters per week from the set text the canterville ghost. after that, students worked in groups of three or four, listening to different songs to choose the melody of an existing song. then they wrote a song based on the reading of the chapters and the selected tune. finally, students brought a poster with the lyrics and a cd player. students selected the soundtrack of popular songs (e.g., magic by selena gómez and las avispas by juan luis guerra); while performing the song, most of their classmates were singing it as well. along with the course book, students used two online resources throughout the english course in order to practice english in the languages laboratory. these resources were: edmodo and online webpages. edmodo is an educational networking website for teachers and students; it was used to take online exams, upload relevant information in english, comment on publications, and share grammar and vocabulary exercises during the semester. the teacher always used edmodo to assign the students homework to be completed independently and autonomously. additionally, other webpages were used to complete independent exercises such as: pronunciation and phonetics, uploading and translating the lyrics of a song; commenting on the song of a classmate, watching videos, creating and uploading a menu for a restaurant based on vocabulary provided by the teacher. every wednesday in the language laboratory, students took a listening quiz. during our fourth classroom observation, we realized that before going to class, students listened to a specific audio from the global elementary textbook (clandfield & pickering, 2010). this independent work involved making lists of unknown words and listening to the audio clips as many times as the students wished. once in class, students sat in their previously allocated seating and took a 30-minute quiz. the teacher always required students to take notes while the audio was playing. students started up their computers, signed in to their edmodo accounts, and answered the five multiple choice test questions by clicking on the answers while the audio was played a second time. the software would automatically end the quiz. finally, the teacher read each question and all the students compared their answers. additionally, after taking the quiz, the students worked on a previously chosen webpage for 30 minutes.1 activities involved practicing phonetics, watching videos, uploading and translating the lyrics of a song, and taking quizzes. 1 for example, the teacher involved students in several online activities using: https://elt.oup.com/, http://www.mansioningles.com/, http://www.saberingles.com.ar/, http://www.learnenglishfeelgood. com/, http://myenglishlab.com/courses-top-notch-2e.html, and www. inglesdivino.com. profile vol. 18, no. 2, july-december 2016. issn 1657-0790 (printed) 2256-5760 (online). bogotá, colombia. pages 125-137 universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras128 cruz rondón, & velasco vera a typical activity involved individual work that allowed the students to put on their headphones and click on each image, listen to the pronunciation, and repeat. after that, the teacher wrote on the board (as shown in table 1) the phonetics of ten words and students identified the correct spelling of each word. table 1. phonetic exercise 1. /ka:/ = car 6. /θʌm/ = thumb 2. /kæt/ = cat 7. /witʃ/ = witch 3. /t∫ea/ = chair 8. /b:ɜd/ = bird 4. /iə/ = ear 9. /h:ͻs/ = horse 5. /ʃauə/ = shower 10. /trein/ = train then, they completed a pronunciation exercise in which there was a table (see table 2) where they repeated and identified the correct end sound; for instance, /s/ or a /z/. table 2. pronunciation exercise costs = /s/ knows = /z/ cooks = /s/ reads = /z/ drinks = /s/ speaks = /s/ has = /z/ comes = /z/ buys = /z/ does = /z/ finally, the teacher gave the students the opportunity to play a game called “stress monster” where they started to identify the correct stress of different words. this game allowed students to improve their knowledge of intonation and pronunciation. the textbook, global elementary, proved to be an essential resource for the class, as students worked with it one and a half hours each class. the teacher stated that the foreign language program had selected this book because it is aligned with the common european framework of reference and provides current cultural information and a variety of activities in accordance with the current trends in teaching. customarily, the teacher followed some patterns while implementing the course book. first, students worked with the resource autonomously. mostly, class time was devoted to the speaking section. before going to class, the students read each exercise, listened to the cd, and solved the questions from each section. second, once in the classroom, they compared their answers as the teacher asked each student to complete some exercises. they received a point each time they answered correctly and, at the end of the term, they received a grade according to the quantity of points earned. third, the students practiced using the course book’s interactive cd, and submitted a pdf file with the exercises from each unit. in addition, students followed a four-phased process: first, reading comprehension; second, writing as a result of the previous reading; third, speaking during an oral performance in the classroom; fourth, a listening activity based on their classmates and the teacher’s instructions. the course book consisted of ten units divided into seven sections. the first section was grammar, which provided a small chart with examples of each topic. there was a grammar summary at the end of the course book called “grammar focus” containing the explanation of the grammar rules for each of the ten units, and different types of exercises. the teacher offered an english adapted package containing exercises that included the explanation of basic grammar rules (present tense, possessive, have/have got, etc.), phonetics, and a list of irregular verbs, alphabetically organized with the translation, and the conjugation in simple past and past participle. the teacher explained that this adapted package complemented the course book grammar section, which failed to provide an adequate quantity of examples. according to the teacher, students used the package at least once per week during the 129 understanding the role of teaching materials in a beginners᾽ level english as a foreign language course... explanation of grammar; however, we observed only one activity during our first classroom observation. it seems that the english adapted package was useful for the explanation of grammar during the class. in addition, the teacher followed the grammar translation method to take advantage of using the native language of students and henceforth, to assist the explanation of grammar rules which might help students master the learning of english grammar. furthermore, the use of translation helped those who did not fully understand the teacher’s directions and required additional support. the second section was vocabulary, which provided a chart with the words required to develop several exercises (e.g., matching images and words, gap filling, finding words in the grid, or choosing the correct synonym for the given word), which allowed students to work with the new vocabulary in order to have them learn by practicing instead of memorizing by rote learning. the third section was pronunciation; the course book connected this section with listening because it provided exercises in which students listened to an audio clip, paying attention to the speaker’s intonation, accent, and rhythm in order to orally repeat a series of sentences at the end of the clip. the course book also provided students with matching exercises, in which they chose the correct accent, as well as gap filling exercises to complete what the speaker was saying in the audio and to select the correct phonetic sound. the fourth section was reading; it presented a series of texts containing cultural information, for instance: shakespeare’s tragic families, clans from scotland, world cinema, and english breakfast culture shock. then, the grammar was explained using sentences from the readings. students read and analyzed short texts and then answered some questions related to the topic, which included multiple-choice, true or false, open-ended and short answers. the fifth and sixth sections were linked to the vocabulary, pronunciation, reading, writing, and speaking sections. the seventh section was speaking, which offered dialogues, role plays, and other activities based on real life situations that allowed students to practice the language using several contexts. besides, the textbook provided activities that helped students to develop their oral production by providing tasks to be solved individually or in pairs; for instance, walking around the classroom and asking others who can or cannot do something; practicing a dialogue in pairs to be performed in front of the class. the speaking skill was the principal focus inside the classroom because students interacted orally with the teacher and their classmates not only to answer the questions but also to ask directions, to clarify doubts, to talk about homework, class and extra-class activities, and to carry out the oral activities proposed during the class, such as role plays, songs, dialogues, and so on. generally speaking, the course book was the main teaching material used during the course as the teacher relied on the book to plan her classes, to teach, and to evaluate students. additionally, the course book integrated the four language skills simultaneously and developed the linguistic, socio-cultural, and communicative competence, ensuring a global english teaching and learning process. method taking into account that the focus of this inquiry was on understanding the role of teaching materials (a particular case), we decided to conduct a qualitative study “through detailed, in-depth data collection involving multiple sources of information (e.g., observations, interviews, audiovisual material, and documents and reports), and report a case description and case-based themes” (creswell, 2007, p. 73). therefore, we conducted five non-participant classroom observations because observing participants in their natural setting allowed us to identify not only how teaching materials were implemented, but also how students reacted towards them. in addition, we implemented nine semi-structured interviews because we wanted to explore not only profile vol. 18, no. 2, july-december 2016. issn 1657-0790 (printed) 2256-5760 (online). bogotá, colombia. pages 125-137 universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras130 cruz rondón, & velasco vera the teacher’s but also the students’ perceptions of the importance of teaching materials. although we observed all the 21 students taking the course in the classroom observations, we purposefully selected five key informants to be interviewed: the teacher, two male students and two female students who were willing to participate. once the participants consented to their participation, they were informed of their rights and responsibilities (e.g., their participation would not involve economical remuneration; and they would have the possibility to withdraw at any time without any consequence). the participants’ identities have been protected by assigning numbers to each of them (e.g., participant 1); the teacher has been addressed using this same label. findings data were organized and analyzed using maxqda (a qualitative data analysis software) and following hatch’s (2002) typological analysis, which allowed us to reduce data into a set of typologies in light of the research questions. in other words, we decided to group the whole data set into three groups (typologies) based on the research questions. data were reduced into a set of typologies in light of the research questions. as a result, three findings emerged that will be explained below. integrating skills through reading book activities the implementation of diverse activities around reading allowed the teacher and her students to integrate the four language skills. the students followed a two-step process: first, students individually read two chapters from the selected book and wrote the scripts to the role plays or the song lyrics; second, while some performed the role play or the song, the rest of the students paid attention to the performances. these activities involved a written comprehension exercise outside the classroom and an oral comprehension and production exercise inside the classroom. integration of the four skills allowed learners to read the two chapters, to write the lyrics after having selected a tune for the song, to perform the song, and to listen to others. although there were some time limitations which restricted the number of activities that we were able to observe, this finding may echo abdrabo (2014), who highlighted the importance of integrating the four skills: listening, speaking, reading, and writing, because “the philosophy of the ‘integrated-skills approach’ (isa) was derived from the notion that in natural, day-to-day experience, oral and written languages are not kept separate and isolated from one another” (p. 8). in fact, the use of the set text allowed the integration of the four skills. for example, all of the participants agreed that the book helped them to improve their speaking skills. participant 1 stated: the reading book contributed to the oral production because we carried out several exercises such as creating a song, talking about a situation, performing a role play, allowing us to improve our speaking. participant 2 said: the reading book was useful to improve our speaking because we had to perform a lot of role plays, so we were able to practice our oral competence every week. moreover, the teacher also stated: i want them to participate and to speak as much as possible, so i’m very flexible when correcting the grammar. i tell them all the time that it’s more important to take a risk and speak whenever they can instead of being afraid of making a mistake, because if they don’t speak the language, they won’t improve their oral production. this may have had a positive effect on students because they seemed to feel comfortable using the language in the classroom. moreover, all of the participants agreed that the reading selections were the most important tool to improve their reading skills. for instance, participant 3 stated: 131 understanding the role of teaching materials in a beginners᾽ level english as a foreign language course... the more we read, the more we improved; it’s like when we read in spanish, we need to practice to develop our reading skills, so the reading books allowed us to be better readers. thus, it can certainly be argued that the use of a set text is significant in the cultivation of the students’ perception that their reading ability will improve in the long term. in addition, during our classroom observations we noticed that students had to pay attention to their classmates’ performances because the teacher usually asked questions related to these presentations. for example, they had to identify the original song from the soundtrack selected to create their own, and they also had to explain what the new ending proposed by their classmates was. similarly, the set text was useful to improve the students’ writing skills, as participant 2 stated: when we read, we acquire new vocabulary which is useful to write a composition later on, for example, during the exam we know more words to write in the production section. this may explain how the participants were aware of the importance of the set text because it allowed them to improve this particular linguistic competence. for example, in order to answer the teacher’s questions at the end of each performance, students were also required to take notes while listening to their classmates’ presentations. in conclusion then, the way in which the teacher implemented different activities through a reading selection gave the students the opportunity to integrate reading, writing, listening, and speaking skills. in doing so, students not only read and understood the text but also prepared an oral performance based on the main ideas from the reading. promoting interactive english teaching through online resources being in the language laboratory facilitated the use of online resources. during our fourth classroom observation we realized that, firstly, students accessed the new english file elementary online,2 and they chose the pronunciation section to practice with vowels, diphthongs, consonants. based on these activities, we noticed that online resources were implemented as a way to teach english more interactively, to allow students to actively engage in a meaningful learning process. students seemed to have enjoyed these classes in the language laboratory because they were more active than those in ordinary classrooms. as participant 2 explained: i enjoyed having classes at the laboratory; we had all the technological resources to learn efl. in addition, i felt more comfortable working there because we knew what we had to do. and the activities on the computers were supposed to be done autonomously. using online webpages allowed students to enjoy a different experience while learning english. through innovative activities, the students were actively engaged in meaningful learning that involved more than just learning grammar rules and vocabulary through me morization and repetition. the teacher selected several webpages that offered a myriad of activities. for example, new english file elementary online promoted the learning of phonetics. during our fourth classroom observation, we realized that students learned independently using their headphones. once the activity was set and explained, students worked on their own listening to the different phonics. they also played a game called “stress monster” to practice the pronunciation of several words. while doing the activity, the teacher emphasized the importance of learning phonetics from the beginning of the learning process because, according to her, students in an elementary course would be able to acquire the correct pronunciation of the language. during the second and third classroom observations, we realized that these types of activities allowed participants to learn interactively most of the time. 2 https://elt.oup.com/student/englishfile/elementary/?cc=co& sellanguage=en. profile vol. 18, no. 2, july-december 2016. issn 1657-0790 (printed) 2256-5760 (online). bogotá, colombia. pages 125-137 universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras132 cruz rondón, & velasco vera second, the webpage inglesdivino.com was selected to allow students to learn by singing. as participant 5 affirmed: i loved ingles divino because i could learn through music and singing as you find karaoke versions of many songs, you also can play the song with the lyrics going down on the screen. i can practice my listening skills, pronouncing and singing my favorite songs. this opinion was echoed by the teacher who also stated: “ingles divino is a webpage with songs, and it has the karaoke version, so students can sing and enjoy.” according to her, learning by singing is one of the best ways to learn. while being interviewed, the teacher added: “i try to make them learn by having fun.” the teacher used a methodology that motivated them to actively participate in her classes by singing and enjoying while learning the target language. third, the webpage mansioningles.com promoted the use of the four language skills because it has different sections for grammar, vocabulary, listening exercises, reading, videos, and games. according to the teacher, “mansion ingles also has a lot of interactive exercises, it has everything, listening, reading, everything.” the fact that this webpage uses both the native and the target language is beneficial for the beginners as they can understand the instructions of each exercise and complete it accordingly. fourth, the webpage saberingles.com focused on the listening skill because students were exposed to listening to native speakers of english through videos all the time. participant 3 stated: i liked saber ingles because we can watch videos and listen to them all the time which is very important and we understand some words and phrases and so we feel motivated to learn and listen more and more. the teacher also stated: “i liked saberingles.com, where there are a lot of audios with different difficulty [levels] to challenge students.” she went on to explain that, although saber ingles offers different sections for grammar, vocabulary, and so on, she focused on the use of videos from different webpages to train students in their oral comprehension competence. the selected videos were the most challenging as they included cultural information. as stated by the teacher, her students learned how to fully benefit from them. finally, these webpages were implemented to complement edmodo as they provided several alternatives for learning and practicing listening and speaking skills interactively. the teacher expressed: “i selected different webpages because they provide different options for each taste so maybe each student might find a webpage appropriate for them.” in other words, students were given a variety of webpages to select the most suitable for their learning style and needs. likewise, edmodo was a versatile tool used for several interactive purposes that allowed the integration of the four language skills. firstly, edmodo was essential for the teacher to communicate with students outside the classroom, for instance, providing information for the class as well as for extra-curricular purposes. participant 4 explains her experience with edmodo: it allows us to be attentive to what the teacher uploads and what she has to say about the activities for the next class and extra-class activities; for example, when we had the english cultural event she sent all the instructions to participate, we wrote some compositions and posted them on edmodo. in addition, during our fifth classroom observation, we noticed that the teacher usually provided a list of useful words for each topic. during this class, for example, the teacher explained to the students: “as you know, you have to create a menu for next week; therefore, i’m going to post on edmodo a list of words about food to guide your work and to practice.” through this resource, the teacher was able to maintain contact with students outside the classroom. additionally, edmodo served as the source of vocabulary for students as the teacher uploaded the corresponding bank of relevant vocabulary for the next class session. it also represented a valuable 133 understanding the role of teaching materials in a beginners᾽ level english as a foreign language course... space where students could be informed about all the activities conducted during the semester. secondly, edmodo provided opportunities for stu dents to take listening quizzes every wednesday. the teacher stated: “i use edmodo to evaluate my students every wednesday and to practice their oral comprehension competence.” in addition, there were some advantages and disadvantages when using edmodo to evaluate students. on the one hand, it was an innovative strategy to conduct the evaluation because the teacher adapted the difficulty of the quiz depending on the complexity of the audio; on the other hand, it might have represented a threat for students as they were beginners and may have felt anxious while taking online quizzes. indeed, taking into account that the quizzes were timed, some students seemed to be under pressure when time was running out. these two perceptions were confirmed during the second interview, as participant 2 explained: every time that the teacher asks me about a specific question, i feel a little bit nervous to the point that it makes me give a wrong answer. it is a shame because i know that i know the answer. however, the continuous practice, as the teacher stated, may have facilitated her students to become familiar with these tools and to improve their listening skills. thirdly, edmodo was used to practice listening, reading, and writing skills. for example, they listened to a song of their preference and shared it through edmodo. this activity involved reading the lyrics of the songs posted by their classmates and commenting on what they found interesting. participant 1 said: we uploaded songs to edmodo that allowed me to improve my listening skills because i looked for the lyrics and wrote them on a notebook, and then i listened to it so many times, this way i learned the song and learned lots of vocabulary. therefore, edmodo was the platform to share and comment on songs among the students in order to practice their oral comprehension and written production competence. similarly, the use of songs was a fascinating strategy implemented by the teacher because students were motivated to share their preferences and, at the same time, to discover their classmates’ interests, similarities, or differences. generally speaking, edmodo promoted an interactive and engaging learning/teaching process because it offered several options for the teacher and students. moreover, edmodo facilitated the integration of the four language skills. indeed, having posted the lyrics of the songs, students were able to sing a song aloud while reading its lyrics. this strategy helped those struggling with the spelling of certain words. more importantly, providing students with the lyrics allowed them to comprehend the meaning of the song more easily. english teaching and learning through the course book implementing a course book fostered independent work outside the classroom, as well as the completion of exercises during class time. the advantage of the course book is that it offers exercises for practicing contextualized vocabulary, which is more meaningful than just presenting a bank of words for students to learn by heart and forget after a while. participant 3 stated: the textbook is the most important material because we can learn lots of vocabulary and practice with its exercises; it is complete and allows us students to learn faster and we have a more significant learning because i know that what i have learned through the textbook, i will not forget it easily. students were able to improve their oral and wri tten abilities as they connected the word with its pronunciation. participant 5 affirmed: the textbook contributes to the enhancement of my pronunciation because it offers a variety of exercises to improve my oral skills and to work with the speaking [skill] all the time during the class. this perception was echoed by participant 4 who stated: profile vol. 18, no. 2, july-december 2016. issn 1657-0790 (printed) 2256-5760 (online). bogotá, colombia. pages 125-137 universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras134 cruz rondón, & velasco vera the textbook is very important for the class because we develop all the four skills with it, especially the speaking [skill] as we participate orally in class to answer the questions proposed by the teacher. the course book did not only help students realize that the way a word is written and pronounced in english is different from spanish, allowing them to identify the differences between their native and target language pronunciation of words, but it also facilitated students learning about culture, combining the linguistic competence along with the socio-cultural and communicative competence. participant 2 stated: the textbook offers some texts that include a lot of information about other countries so we can learn not only about the language itself but also about its culture, which is motivating. students were interested in the topics presented in the textbook because they noticed that they included current and interesting facts about the english language. in addition, the readings included the rules from the grammar section; for instance, in shakespeare’s tragedies, students practiced the possessive s’; which facilitated the inclusion of several sections and promoted a global learning process. although the course book provided several samples of written passages that linked reading and writing activities in order to help students produce coherent and cohesive compositions, the exercises usually required the use of more than one skill. the textbook offered a variety of exercises that ensured the integration of the different language skills and competences. with regard to the integration of skills, participant 4 stated: i think that the textbook is useful for the speaking [skill], because we have a lot of dialogues and role plays and we can practice with our classmates and at home. moreover, we learn expressions for our repertoire so we can be more fluent and accurate. students were interested in practicing their speaking skills; they seemed to be more confident using the target language after rehearsing in small-group activities. students were highly motivated because the dialogues and role plays provided a real-life context. for example, during the fifth classroom observation, students practiced a dialogue about going to an electronics store. they related this situation to shopping in an electronics store in their hometowns. as participant 1 explained: the situations presented in the textbook are adequate because we know that they are real and that anglophone people talk like that. we are not learning how to speak with a native speaker but we can learn how to speak as natives do. generally speaking, the textbook was the main teaching material used during the course as the tea cher relied on the book to plan her classes, to teach and to evaluate students. additionally, the textbook integrated the four skills simultaneously and developed the linguistic, socio-cultural, and communicative com petence, ensuring a comprehensive english teaching and learning process. pedagogical implications this case study evidenced the importance of the teaching materials in the efl teaching and learning process. hopefully, its findings may be constructive not only for teachers but also for students when selecting and implementing these materials as tools to facilitate the teaching/learning of efl. on the one hand, teachers would learn how to select the teaching materials and use them appropriately according to students’ interests and needs. on the other hand, students would realize how to take advantage of the teaching materials available in order to use them satisfactorily. with regard to the setting, we acknowledge the importance of spending more time in a language laboratory in order to give learners the opportunity to use interactive tools such as webpages and online resources. this may increase students’ motivation towards the learning of the foreign language as they would be able to notice that learning a foreign language nowadays can be done using different tools and methods for every student’s learning style. 135 understanding the role of teaching materials in a beginners᾽ level english as a foreign language course... however, it is necessary to conduct a long-term research study to fully understand the phenomenon under analysis. moreover, it would be helpful to interview more participants to obtain a complete idea about the role of teaching materials. we must also take into account our limited experience on the field as undergraduate students and novice researchers. finally, we encourage other novice researchers to continue researching teaching materials because it is one of the main factors that influence students’ learning process. therefore, an in-depth understanding of the role of teaching materials in a beginners’ level classroom is necessary, as suggested in the present study and in other recent studies that have explored the same topic (aguirre sánchez, 2004; benavides, murcia, & niño, 2009; bonilla medina, 2008, jánica, rey, & rosado, 2006; morales & beltrán, 2006; núñez pardo & téllez téllez, 2015; ramos holguín & aguirre morales, 2014; rivera cuayahuitl & pérez carranza, 2015). conclusions teaching materials played an essential role in efl teaching and learning. printed and online materials were implemented during the course; six teaching materials were identified: the reading book, edmodo, online pages, the course book, the audio cd, and the english adapted package. the reading book provided students with several opportunities to integrate the four skills. in other words, following a four-phased process, students employed more than one key skill in each activity. in addition, the reading book cultivated students’ oral and written productions and vocabulary acquisition for communicative purposes. providing efl learners with a variety of activities and opportunities to integrate the four linguistic skills is essential to spark their interest in learning the target language to communicate. hence, they will acknowledge the importance of the reading book when they realize that they can improve more than simply their reading skills through its implementation. the implementation of online resources such as edmodo and the webpages was an appropriate strategy to complement the traditional course book which may increase students’ motivation during their learning process. in other words, edmodo and the webpages complemented each other appropriately. on the one hand, edmodo offered an interactive platform for learning english that required the learners to practice more than one language skill at a time. on the other hand, the webpages contributed to the improvement of the students’ pronunciation through phonetics exercises, songs, games, and videos, developing especially their listening and speaking skills. the strategies used to introduce the online resources as teaching materials for learners is also important because most of the students may think of the internet as a medium for leisure activities. once they recognize the role of the internet in learning a foreign language, they will take advantage of the benefits that online resources offer for their learning process. the course book ensured a comprehensive english teaching and learning process, fostering the inclusion of grammar, vocabulary, pronunciation, reading, writing, listening (through the audio cds included in the course book), and speaking. in addition, the linguistic, socio-cultural, and communicative competences were developed simultaneously. nevertheless, an adequate knowledge of how to implement the course book efficiently is essential for its effectiveness as a learning and teaching resource; without proper usage, the course book could be irrelevant. generally speaking, the way teaching materials were implemented throughout this course facilitated students’ efl learning process and motivated them to positively embrace the use of the target language, to overcome their difficulties and to master the a1-level of english that they sought to achieve. profile vol. 18, no. 2, july-december 2016. issn 1657-0790 (printed) 2256-5760 (online). bogotá, colombia. pages 125-137 universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras136 cruz rondón, & velasco vera references abdrabo, n. 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(2015). influence of contextual factors on efl mexican teachers’ beliefs and the use of textbooks. how, 22(2), 75-90. http://dx.doi. org/10.19183/how.22.2.152. tamo, d. (2009). the use of authentic materials in classrooms. lcpj journal, 2(1), 74-78. retrieved from http://www. lcpj.pro/skedaret/1277547685-74_pdfsam_lcpj,%20 per%20shtyp.pdf. 137 understanding the role of teaching materials in a beginners᾽ level english as a foreign language course... tomlinson, b. (2012). materials development for language learning and teaching. language teaching, 45(2), 143-179. http://dx.doi.org/10.1017/s0261444811000528. zohrabi, m. (2011). coursebook development and evaluation for english for general purposes course. english language teaching, 4(2). 213-222. http://dx.doi.org/10.5539/ elt.v4n2p213. about the authors elio jesús cruz rondón is an undergraduate student in the bachelor of arts program in foreign languages at universidad de pamplona, colombia. mr. cruz has participated in two congresses in the efl educational field in colombia, one in san josé de cúcuta as speaker and another in medellín as participant. leidy fernanda velasco vera is an undergraduate student in the bachelor of arts program in foreign languages at universidad de pamplona, colombia. her research interests focus on the processes involved in reading and writing. profile vol. 18, no. 2, july-december 2016. issn 1657-0790 (printed) 2256-5760 (online). bogotá, colombia. pages 125-137 129profile vol. 18, no.1, january-june 2016. issn 1657-0790 (printed) 2256-5760 (online). bogotá, colombia. pages 129-147 http://dx.doi.org/10.15446/profile.v18n1.49592 strategies instruction to improve the preparation for english oral exams1* instrucción en estrategias para mejorar la preparación para las pruebas orales en inglés josé vicente abad2** paula andrea alzate3*** fundación universitaria luis amigó, medellín, colombia this article presents the results of an inter-institutional research study that assessed the impact of strategies instruction on students’ preparation for and performance in oral exams. two teacher-researchers at different universities trained 26 students in their respective b1-english-level courses in using language learning strategies. the study included preand post-intervention tests and on-line questionnaires after each oral exam. after comparing the test scores and analyzing the questionnaire responses, we arrived at two main conclusions: first, that strategies instruction, especially in combination with evaluation rubrics, promotes students’ autonomy and enhances their oral test performance. second, that students’ use of language learning strategies is influenced by instructional variations tied to the relative importance that teachers ascribe to specific aspects of oral communication. key words: language learning strategies, oral assessment, preparation for oral exams, rubrics, strategies instruction. en este artículo presentamos los resultados de una investigación inter-institucional que evaluó el impacto de la instrucción en estrategias en la preparación para pruebas orales. dos docentes-investigadores de diferentes universidades capacitaron a 26 estudiantes de nivel b1 en el uso de estrategias de aprendizaje. el estudio incluyó la administración de pruebas antes y después de la intervención y de cuestionarios después de cada prueba. los datos nos permitieron llegar a dos conclusiones: primero, la instrucción en estrategias, especialmente en combinación con el uso de rúbricas, promueve la autonomía y mejora el desempeño en pruebas orales. segundo, el uso de estrategias está influenciado por variaciones en la instrucción asociadas a la importancia relativa que cada maestro asigna a aspectos específicos de la comunicación hablada. palabras clave: estrategias de aprendizaje en lenguas, evaluación oral, instrucción en estrategias, preparación para pruebas orales, rúbricas. * this article presents some of the final results of an inter-institutional study titled, estrategias de aprendizaje que favorecen la preparación del estudiante para la evaluación de su desempeño respecto a su competencia comunicativa en inglés (code number 38169). this study was collectively sponsored by fundación universitaria luis amigó, universidad pontificia bolivariana, and universidad de antioquia, and involved the participation of researchers from the language teaching programs of these three institutions. also, the preliminary findings of this study were presented by the authors during the vi coloquio internacional sobre investigación en lenguas extranjeras that took place in september of 2014 at universidad nacional de colombia, bogotá. ** e-mail: jose.abadol@amigo.edu.co *** e-mail: paula.alzatero@amigo.edu.co how to cite this article (apa, 6th ed.): abad, j. v., & alzate, p. a. (2016). strategies instruction to improve the preparation for english oral exams. profile issues in teachers’ professional development, 18(1), 129-147. http://dx.doi.org/10.15446/profile.v18n1.49592. this article was received on march 10, 2015, and accepted on august 13, 2015. this is an open access article distributed under the terms of the creative commons license attribution-noncommercial-noderivatives 4.0 international license. consultation is possible at http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/. universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras130 abad & alzate introduction the global imperative to communicate effectively in an international language has gained english a preeminent place in the curriculum across the different levels of education in colombia. this privileged position of english in colombian schools is what the national law of bilingualism (república de colombia, 2013) and a recent succession of language policies (ministerio de educación nacional [men], 2006, 2014) dictate. the continual changes these policies have undergone over the last decade have led some local academics to question whether it is possible to effectively implement them (peláez, roldán, & usma, 2014; usma, 2009). however, since the onset of the national bilingual program 2004-2019 (men, 2006) to its reformulation as the national plan of english 2015-2025: colombia very well (men, 2014),1 language policy in colombia has been consistent in at least two aspects: first, that colombian professionals need to achieve high levels of english proficiency;2 second, that they need to certify those levels of competence through standardized tests.3 despite the ambitious goals set by the national government, inconsistencies between the teaching and the evaluation of english are the order of the day in colombia. in a phase-1 exploratory study, restrepo and medina (2014) observed that the results students obtain in english oral exams are usually not in proportion to the efforts they make to prepare for 1 while we were preparing the final version of this article, the new government of president santos nullified the national plan of english 2015-2025, thus rendering it the shortest-lived language policy in colombia’s history to date. a new language policy to replace it had yet to be formulated. 2 professionals across different areas of study must reach a b1 level of proficiency and english teachers must reach a c1 level according to the common european framework of reference (council of europe, 2001). 3 all undergraduate students must demonstrate these levels of competence in the saber-pro examinations, which are a mandatory requirement for college graduation. in addition, public school teachers are expected to take the annual diagnosis test to certify their english proficiency. both tests are administered by the national institute for the evaluation of education (icfes). them. furthermore, many college students study only for passing the exams, but they fail to understand, retain, and transfer linguistic knowledge. as a result, these students’ learning gaps show up in course examinations that seek to evaluate their overall communicative competence (bachman & palmer, 1996; canale & swain, 1980). students’ difficulties to demonstrate their english competence on school examinations largely occur as a result of ignoring or misusing language learning strategies (restrepo & medina, 2014). this deficiency could in turn be linked to the teachers’ lack of knowledge or initiative to instruct students on how to use learning strategies to prepare for their evaluations, a lesson which educators often overlook because they neither see the need to teach it nor consider it a part of their teaching role. aware of the need to find solutions to this problem, researchers from three english teaching programs in medellín, colombia, decided to conduct this project in search of a context-appropriate manner to help students improve their preparation for and performance in english oral evaluations. literature review types and forms of evaluation in language teaching some differences have been established between evaluation, assessment, and testing. evaluation serves as an umbrella term that encompasses the application of different means and procedures to judge student achievement, teaching effectiveness, and curriculum appropriateness (brown & abeywickrama, 2010). assessment involves the continuous collection of information about students’ learning to inform decisions conducive to the improvement of teaching and curriculum. finally, testing is a mechanism used to measure students’ level of achievement as regards the development of language skills or the appropriation of new knowledge (arias, maturana, & restrepo, 2012; brown & abeywickrama, 2010). 131profile vol. 18, no.1, january-june 2016. issn 1657-0790 (printed) 2256-5760 (online). bogotá, colombia. pages 129-147 strategies instruction to improve the preparation for english oral exams evaluation activities can be classif ied into different types and forms. there are two main types of evaluation. once specific moments of learning and teaching have taken place, summative evaluations are administered to verify students’ partial or total achievement of specific learning go a ls (hadji, 1997). for mative e valuation, on t he ot her hand, ent ai ls an ongoing gat her ing of i n for m at i on ab out stu d e nt s’ l e ar n i ng t h at teachers can use to inform and adjust their course planning (council of europe, 2001). formative evaluation encompasses all continuous evaluation that teachers integrate into a course sequence in order to remedy students’ difficulties, strengthen their learning, and prepare them for summative examinations that will require them to display their language abilities (arias et al., 2012). evaluation is also classified into two forms. traditional evaluation entails a significant degree of teacher control over the expected student answers whereas alternative evaluation involves more freedom of production in this regard (arias & maturana, 2005; maturana, restrepo, & ferreira, 2009). language learning strategies research in the field of language learning strategies formally started out with rubin’s (1975) work. she observed that good learners communicate an d l e ar n t h rou g h t h e t arge t l ang u age, s e e k opportunities to practice it whenever possible, d e vel op st r ate g i e s to ove rc ome i nte r a c t i ona l inhibitions, make informed guesses regarding unknown language uses, pay attention to both meaning and form, and monitor their speech and others’. she proposed an initial classification that includes direct and indirect strategies. although the strategies she described continue to be included as some of the most used by effective language learners, much has been researched, questioned, discussed, and adjusted since her seminal study appeared. later research work focused on defining and classifying learning strategies. in her earlier work, oxford (1990, 1994) defined learning strategies as behaviors, actions, steps, or techniques that students intentionally use to improve their progress in developing their language skills. chamot and o’malley (1990, 1994), who conducted studies parallel to oxford’s, concluded that students use strategies to regulate their emotional disposition towards learning and to select, acquire, organize, integrate, and retrieve linguistic knowledge. both proponents (chamot & o’malley, 1990, 1994; c ohen & weaver, 2006; grif f iths, 2004, 2007; oxford, 1990, 1994, 2011; wenden & rubin, 1991) and critics (coyle & valcárcel, 2002; ellis, 1994; macaro, 2006) of the language learning strategies theory have acknowledged the difficulty in providing not only a clear definition but also a broadly accepted classification. however, according to cohen and weaver (2006), a certain degree of consensus has been achieved in regard to specific characteristics of the learning strategies. first, they are considered to be part of a larger set of learner strategies that also include use strategies. second, learning strategies are purposely used by students to achieve specific learning goals, which var y in their immediacy and complexity. ultimately, however, strategies are aimed at helping students develop their communicative competence in the second language. third, students’ selection and use of strategies largely depend on personal factors such as age, gender, learning style, and motivation; and on external factors such as linguistic task, skill focus, target language, and educational and cultural contexts. fourth, strategies are not used in isolation but as part of clusters. finally, whether simultaneously or in sequence, the way in which strategies are coordinated and organized, although influenced by external factors, is always a decision of the learner (cohen & weaver, 2006). universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras132 abad & alzate starting with the general notion of learner strategies, cohen and weaver (2006) proposed various types of classification. learner strategies can be classified depending on the language skills they favor, whether they are productive (writing and speaking) or receptive (reading and listening). nonetheless, there are general skill-related strategies, such as vocabulary, grammar, or translation strategies, which cut across the different skills. in addition, learner strategies can be classified into use or learning strategies depending on the learner’s goal. use strategies include retrieval, rehearsal, communication, and cover strategies. learning strategies, on the other hand, have been traditionally classified based on function into cognitive, metacognitive, social, and affective strategies (chamot & o’malley, 1990, 1994; oxford, 1990). learners employ cognitive strategies to manipulate information in order to facilitate its learning. thus, cognitive strategies are directly tied to the specific tasks learners want to complete and to the learning objectives they want to achieve. therefore, cognitive strategies refer to the steps learners take to solve problems that require the direct analysis, synthesis, and reconf iguration of new learning material (palincsar & brown, 1984; wenden & rubin, 1991). metacognitive strategies (chamot & o’malley, 1990, 1994; cohen & weaver, 2006; diaz, 2015; klimenko & álvarez, 2009; oxford, 1990, 1994, 2011) allow students to “step back” and manage their language learning through a continuous cycle that involves planning, monitoring, and evaluating what they learn and how they go about learning it. they focus on the before, during, and after of any learning task, which could be as simple as writing a paragraph and as complex as developing their overall language competence. according to cohen (2011), social strategies allow learners to interact with other speakers, such as classmates and teachers, to facilitate the completion of a task and the learning process in general. affective strategies, on the other hand, help students regulate their emotions, motivation, and attitudes towards the task at hand. they also help reduce anxiety and provide encouragement (cohen, 2011). in line with the strategies’ classification described above, we conceive strategies as thoughts and actions purposely employed by learners to manage and selfdirect their learning. language learning strategies allow students to regulate their emotional dispositions and social interactions around learning, and to apply specific cognitive and metacognitive mechanisms in response to specific learning tasks. nevertheless, strategies are ultimately aimed at supporting the development of students’ communicative competence. taking into consideration the educational context of our country, the revision of the literature in the field, and the results obtained in a previous project, we decided to embark on this study to assess (a) the impact of strategies instruction on the degree of students’ strategy use in preparing for oral exams and (b) the effectiveness of students’ strategy use on their evaluation performance. finally, we decided to focus on oral tasks because they serve as immediate and accurate indicators of students’ actual linguistic competence and because of the cognitive, affective, cultural, and interactional abilities that students must employ to successfully complete such tasks. method this study subscribes to the qualitative research paradigm, which aims to go into detail about how human beings experiment and perceive social phenomena as they occur. from a constructivistinterpretivist perspective, researchers appreciate the point of view of the participants regarding the object of investigation and recognize the impact that a research study may have upon their experiences and lives (gonzález monteagudo, 2000; hernández, 1997; ortiz, 2000). 133profile vol. 18, no.1, january-june 2016. issn 1657-0790 (printed) 2256-5760 (online). bogotá, colombia. pages 129-147 strategies instruction to improve the preparation for english oral exams as an educational action research, the study i nv o l v e d a p r o c e s s t h r o u g h w h i c h t e a c h e rresearchers sought not only to understand some issues that affect their teaching practice, particularly a s re g ard s e v a lu at i on , but a l s o to e ng age i n specific actions directed towards the improvement of stu d e nt l e ar n i ng w it h i n t he i r ow n s cho ol communities. based upon the findings of a phase-1 descriptive study, this particular project specifically involved a pedagogical intervention that aimed to improve students’ strategy use to prepare for their oral evaluations. we believe, notwithstanding, that qualitative and qu ant it at ive me asu res us e d for t he d at a collection and analysis are not competing but rather complementary so long as the integrity of the participants is not compromised. for this study in particular, although we did not apply any form of probability sampling, we did collect and analyze quantitative data to enrich the understanding of the phenomenon under investigation. therefore, from a methodological perspective, the study approaches what johnson, onwuegbuzie, and tu r ne r ( 2 0 07 ) have d e nom i nate d a “ qua l + quan research.” participants participants included two groups of 12 and 14 english-teaching students from two private universities in medellín, c olombia, and their respective instructors. they were part of the b1-english level4 courses in their corresponding undergraduate programs. students from both institutions came from a middle-class socio economic background. there were 17 females and nine males, both of them from ages 18 to 25. 4 according to the common european framework of reference (council of europe, 2001). procedures sampling although quantitative data were used in this study for triangulation purposes, the research team chose participants not through probability but through deliberate sampling (lankshear & knobel, 2004). we5 collected data from only two groups of students for philosophical, technical, practical, and ethical reasons. in the first place, as a research team, we wanted to gain insight on the impact of strategies instruction by means of studying our own classes rather than other teachers’. in addition, from the inception of the study we decided that dat a wou ld b e col le c te d in inter me diate (b1) english courses, because prior studies (chamot, barnhardt, beard, carbonaro, & robbins, 1993; c ohen, we aver, & l i, 1996) have shown t hat students at this level of competence benefit more from strategies instruction than students at any other proficiency level. nevertheless, due to course allocation processes, only two members of the team were assigned intermediate level courses during the data collection period, so we ended up working with only those two classes. finally, due to ethical considerations, these two teachers provided strategies instruction and administered the pre and posttests to all the students in both classes, but as a team we used only the data supplied by the students who signed the consent forms, thus following what bell (2010) has called “opportunity sampling” (p. 150). 5 the pronoun we is used throughout the article to refer to the authors and, through them, to the entire research team who participated in the project. the team was made up of nine people, including teachers, advisors, and assistant students who performed various roles over the course of the study. the term instructors, however, refers exclusively to the two teacher-researchers who collected the data and supplied the strategy instruction to their respective classes. it is worth pointing out that of these two instructors, only one (josé abad) co-authored this article. universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras134 abad & alzate table 1. action plan objective instrument 1. to diagnose students’ communicative competence as regards their oral production before the intervention. • rubric for diagnosis assessment: oral book report 2. to determine students’ knowledge and use of learning strategies to prepare for the oral evaluation. • questionnaire 1 (appendix a) 3. to train students in using learning strategies to prepare for their oral evaluation. • intervention protocols • teachers’ narratives 4. to assess students’ communicative competence as regards their oral production after the intervention. • rubric for summative assessment: oral movie review (appendix b) 5. to determine students’ use of learning strategies after the intervention. • questionnaire 2 6. to assess the effectiveness of learning strategies instruction. • rubrics for diagnosis and summative exams • questionnaires 1 and 2 data collection the collection of the data involved a strategy i nst r u c t i on i nte r ve nt i on , pre and p o st te st s (diagnosis formative assessment and final summative a s s e s s m e nt ) , a n d t h e app l i c at i on of on l i n e questionnaires after each evaluation. table 1 illustrates the steps, objectives, and instruments used. in order to guarantee the reliability and internal validity of data-collection instruments (rubric and questionnaires), the researchers who participated in the study designed them as a group and later submitted them to the e valuation of external researchers and test designers. to ensure the validity of the oral exams scoring, a researcher different from the course instructors served as co-evaluator for both the diagnosis and the summative exams. students’ scores in the oral exams were reached through a consensus between the course instructor and the external evaluator. intervention with the strategies instruction workshop, the two instructors trained students to recognize and use learning strategies to prepare for their oral exams. the inter vention, which was applied only once, lasted four hours and was divided into two sessions of two hours each. the instructors conducted the workshop separately with their respective classes. in line with the recommendations made by cohen (2011) and chamot (2005), both teachers delivered the strategies instr uction workshop through the following stages: (a) activation of previous knowledge, (b) definition of learning strategies, (c) classification of learning strategies, (d) teacher modeling of learning strategies, (e) students practice with learning strategies, and (f ) students’ demonstration of strategy application. however, the instructors were allowed to modify the order of the previous stages and the way in which they 135profile vol. 18, no.1, january-june 2016. issn 1657-0790 (printed) 2256-5760 (online). bogotá, colombia. pages 129-147 strategies instruction to improve the preparation for english oral exams conducted them in accordance with their teaching style and with the institutional principles that guide instruction at each university. the workshop was specifically geared towards helping students prepare for their course final summative evaluation, which consisted of an oral review of a movie of their choice. therefore, taking into consideration the test-specific requirements, both teachers incorporated as part of the intervention a general analysis of the results obtained by their students in the previous diagnosis evaluation, of the speaking-oriented strategies included in both questionnaires, and of the common rubric and the way in which the learning strategies could help students prepare to meet the evaluation criteria established in it. data analysis during this stage, three data sources were considered: (a) the answers to the closed questions of the questionnaire that indicated students’ degree of recognition, selection, and use of learning strategies before and after the intervention;6 (b) the results obtained by students on both oral exams; and (c) the answers provided for the open-ended questions in the last part of the questionnaires in which students were required to describe and evaluate the strategies they used to prepare for each oral evaluation. an external advisor guided us through the pro c e ss of ana ly s is and i nte r pre t at i on of t he quantitative data obtained from both the first section of the questionnaires and the test scores. for the analysis of the test results, we first calculated the total scores and the scores for each of the rubric domains within a range of 10. then, to determine t he prog ress made af ter t he inter vent ion, we 6 the set of strategies included in this instrument was preselected by the research team based on an analysis of oxford’s (1989) strategy inventory. calculated the means and then established the difference between the values obtained for both the diagnosis and the summative exams. finally, we identified general trends in the overall results and specific discrepancies between the results shown by the two groups. qualitative data from the second part of both questionnaires were analyzed following an inductivedeductive process of categorization, grouping, and interpretation through nvivo® software. researcher triangulation was employed through three stages of co dif ication (by individual res earchers, by codification sub-teams, and by the whole research group) in order to validate the categorization of the results. finally, the research team validated the interpretations with one another. results strategies selection and use in order to assess the impact of strategies instruction on the degree of students’ strategy use, we compared the results of the closed-response section of the questionnaires that were administered af t e r e a c h e v a lu at i on . a lt h ou g h 2 6 s tu d e nt s participated in the study, only 22 students answered the questionnaires. figure 1 shows the average use of strategy before and after the intervention. strategies are organized from top to bottom according to the gain they experienced in terms of student use after the intervention. out of the 12 strategies presented in the questionnaires, 10 had an increase in the proportion of student use, and only two of them had a decrease. the strategies that had the most significant growth were monitoring pronunciation and fluency, monitoring and adjusting the preparation for the activity, and planning the preparation for the activity. the two strategies that experienced a decrease in student use were asking for clarifications and expressing feelings and opinions. universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras136 abad & alzate note. a number value was assigned to the likert-scale responses as follows: i did not use it = 0; i used it little = 1; i used it to some degree = 2; i used it a lot = 3. b efore the inter vention, the strategies that students used the most were identifying the task’s purpose and summarizing the essential information; in contrast, the strategies that students used the least were asking the teacher for clarification about the evaluation and asking for pronunciation corrections. after the intervention, the strategies that students used the most were identifying the task’s purpose, monitoring pronunciation and fluency, summarizing essential information , and planning the preparation for the activity whereas the strategies that students used the least continued to be asking the teacher for clarification about the activity and asking for corrections on their pronunciation. figure 2 shows the growth in strategy use, which was established after comparing the use of each strategy before and after the intervention. figure 1. strategy use before and after intervention in relation to the most used strategies, the qualitative data showed that the use of rubrics played a part in helping students identify the purpose of the activity. for instance, when asked about the most effective strategy he had used to prepare for these tests, one student answered: i am familiar with this type of evaluation (oral presentation), and i know by experience that it is very important to take the time to read the rubric, to analyze it, and to identify what is the most relevant (for that evaluation) and what could also be a challenge when presenting. (student 16)7 in addition, it is worth noting that metacognitive strategies that involved planning and adjusting the 7 the original comments in spanish were translated for the purpose of publication. 1,91 1,41 2,14 2,45 1,00 2,73 2,45 2,41 2,68 2,59 2,32 2,73 2,09 1,45 2,05 2,32 0,86 2,55 2,27 2,23 2,45 2,14 1,86 2,14 0,00 0,50 1,00 1,50 2,00 2,50 3,00 express feelings and opinions about activity ask for clari�cations about activity make connections with prior knowledge work collaboratively ask for pronunciation corrections identify activity purpose reorganize information for comprehension practice speech summarize essential information plan preparation for activity monitor and adjust preparation monitor pronunciation and �uency before instruction after instruction 137profile vol. 18, no.1, january-june 2016. issn 1657-0790 (printed) 2256-5760 (online). bogotá, colombia. pages 129-147 strategies instruction to improve the preparation for english oral exams figure 2. growth in strategy use after intervention preparation for the activity were not only among the ones most used but also among the ones whose use grew the most. they were followed by cognitive strategies such as summarizing and reorganizing the information and practicing the speech. students recurrently used these strategies before and after the intervention. in contrast, social and affective strategies that involved, for instance, expressing opinions and asking for clarifications and corrections were not only the least used but the ones whose use decreased the most. these quantitative data from the questionnaires are consistent with the results obtained in the analysis of the open responses that students gave as regards the strategies they used. the analysis done through nvivo revealed that in terms of the amount of information that students provided regarding strategies, 50% of the references corresponded to cognitive strategies, 25% to metacognitive strategies, 15% to social strategies, and only 10% to affective strategies. the results shown by the questionnaires indicate that strategies instruction increased the students’ use of learning strategies. results also show that strategies instruction especially favored the purposeful use of metacognitive strategies, even though cognitive strategies were the ones most consistently used across all stages of the study. this evidence suggests that students in general were somewhat familiar with cognitive strategies, even before the instruction they received, which is not surprising given that cognitive strategies are the most widely known in these students’ academic context. instruction, however, proved to be fundamental in getting learners acquainted with metacognitive strategies and with the way in which they could use them to better the effectiveness of their overall test preparation. this effect of strategies instruction became clear in the significant growth in the use of metacognitive strategies that students exhibited during the second evaluation. -0,18 -0,05 0,09 0,14 0,14 0,18 0,18 0,18 0,23 0,45 0,45 0,59 express feelings and opinions about activity ask for clari�cations about activity make connections with prior knowledge work collaboratively ask for pronunciation corrections identify activity purpose reorganize information for comprehension practice speech summarize essential information plan preparation for activity monitor and adjust preparation monitor pronunciation and �uency universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras138 abad & alzate table 2. mean performance scores in oral evaluations criteria group 1 (n = 12) group 2 (n = 14) pre-test post-test progress pre-test post-test progress organization 8.00 8.67 0.67 5.79 6.43 0.64 speaking skills 7.33 7.83 0.67 8.43 8.43 0.00 content 7.58 8.50 0.92 8.43 8.64 0.21 verbal exp. 7.50 7.42 -0.08 8.43 8.86 0.43 time 9.00 9.33 0.33 9.86 9.86 0.00 visual aids 7.33 9.67 2.34 7.43 9.14 1.71 total 7.72 8.35 0.63 7.96 8.37 0.41 note: all figures are presented in a range of 10, including those originally evaluated in a range of 5, to facilitate comparison. strategies impact on students’ preparation for and performance in oral exams to assess the effectiveness of students’ strategy use on their evaluation performance, we compared the results obtained by both groups in the preand postintervention tests, as shown in table 2. these results show that, on average, students from both groups improved on their total test scores after they received strategies instruction. out of the 26 participants, six of them decreased their test scores whereas 19 increased them. of the 12 students from group 1, 11 obtained a higher score in the final test, and only one of them (the lowest-performing student) obtained a lower score than she had gotten on the first test. on the other hand, of the 14 students from group 2, eight improved their test scores and six lowered them. nonetheless, students from the group 2 had obtained very high scores in linguistic aspects such as speaking skills, content preparedness, and verbal expression on the diagnosis test, and most of them either kept or improved those scores on the second exam. figure 3 shows the progress of the test scores for both groups. here it is important to clarify the domains speaking skills and verbal expression as used in the evaluation rubric (appendix b). speaking skills were defined as the ability of students to pronounce clearly, to speak at an adequate pace, to use proper volume, and to make adequate use of pauses during their speech. on the other hand, verbal expression referred to the students’ ability to appropriately use contentspecific terms within grammatically correct structures to retell and analyze the stories they had selected for their presentation. although both groups of students had an increase on their test scores, their improvement was not homogeneous. on the one hand, students from group 1 increased in use of visuals, content and preparedness, organization, and speaking skills, but they decreased in their verbal expression. in other words, they improved 139profile vol. 18, no.1, january-june 2016. issn 1657-0790 (printed) 2256-5760 (online). bogotá, colombia. pages 129-147 strategies instruction to improve the preparation for english oral exams figure 3. students’ progress on test scores in all the criteria set for the evaluation except for their verbal expression, which actually decreased. on the other hand, students from group 2 increased in their use of visual aids, organization, verbal expression, and content and preparedness, but they had no improvement on either their use of time or their speaking skills, albeit they had the highest scores for speaking skills from the first evaluation, and they kept them that way. although these latter students improved the quality of their discourse and the form of their presentation, their speaking skills stayed the same. variations in the results obtained by both groups seem to be in alignment with the emphasis that teachers put on certain aspects of the oral evaluation during the instruction, as expressed by them in postdata collection discussions. the teacher of group 1 perceived that many students, when preparing for oral exams, had the tendency to focus excessively on organizational aspects of their presentation, often because they were afraid of making mistakes. as a result, he said, many students wound up memorizing their speech from a script and later reciting it during the presentation, w hich u lt imately af fe c te d t he overa l l f low of communication. therefore, he instructed students to focus on understanding and communicating ideas (preparedness), even if that meant making a few grammar or vocabular y mistakes. he also highlighted the importance of adequately using visuals and organizing the discourse within a logical structure to increase clarity and facilitate the audience’s comprehension. in contrast, the teacher of group 2 declared that she gave her instruction from a holistic perspective of what the communicative competence is. nonetheless, in the first assessment she noticed that although her 0,67 0,33 0,92 -0,08 0,67 2,34 0,63 0 0 0,21 0,43 0,64 1,71 0,41 -0,5 0 0,5 1 1,5 2 2,5 speaking skill & v time limit content & prep. verbal exp. organization visuals total group 2 group 1 universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras140 abad & alzate students showed an overall good level of language proficiency, they had difficulties in the use of discourse as refers to the appropriation of the type of text that was required from them. some of them, for instance, retold a story in their own words, but they failed to analyze the story’s basic literary elements and to follow the structure of an oral presentation, as the task instructions required. after asking students to pay closer attention to the formal aspects of their discourse, she observed that they were indeed ameliorated for the second exam, particularly as regards students’ appropriation of the text type. evidently, teachers favored some aspects of oral communication over others in their instruction. although such emphasis may have come from particular teaching styles, it was mostly a conscious attempt from the teachers to address the communication problems and learning needs that they had observed in their specific groups of students. this relative importance that teachers ascribed to specific aspects of the oral evaluation appeared to have a direct effect on the way students prepared for the second exam. discussion strategies selection and use with respect to the use of strategies to prepare for english oral exams, results suggest that the cl e are r t h e i nst r u c t i on prov i d e d by te a ch e rs regarding the evaluation activity, the less will students have to resort to them for additional clarification. furthermore, in line with other studies on assessment (jonsson & svingby, 2007; panadero & jonsson, 2013; picón jácome, 2013), this research shows that sharing rubrics with students in advance may help them identify the purpose of the evaluation activity and may give them a heightened sense of control over their test preparation. to attain these benefits, however, rubrics should clearly describe the learning objectives to be achieved, the procedural requirements to be met, and the evaluation criteria upon which performance will be assessed. results also seem to indicate that direct strategies instruction increases students’ awareness of learning strategies and their subsequent use. this holds true particularly for metacognitive strategies, which, as opposed to most cognitive strategies, call for direct instruction so that students can really grasp what they are and how they can be used to enhance learning (cohen & weaver, 2006). moreover, when strategies instruction is specifically incorporated into a language course to assist students in better preparing for their oral exams, it appears to increase the students’ use of metacognitive strategies such as planning, monitoring, and adjusting their test preparation, which are pivotal for students to have a successful test performance. in conclusion, students’ selection and use of strategies to prepare for an oral evaluation seems to be directly affected by the quality of the instruction they receive from teachers. using carefully designed rubrics and sharing them with students before the evaluation enhance their comprehension of what is expected of them and how they can achieve it, thus increasing their sense of autonomy. we believe that when rubrics are used in tandem with strategies instruction as part of a comprehensive instructional system, students are empowered with a greater sense of control over their learning, and they can prepare more effectively to increase their test performance. strategies impact on students’ preparation for and performance in oral exams results indicate, nonetheless, that even though strategies instruction does contribute to improve students’ preparation for and subsequent performance in english oral exams, instructional variations derived from teachers’ focus on specific aspects of the evaluation also affect students’ strategy use. 141profile vol. 18, no.1, january-june 2016. issn 1657-0790 (printed) 2256-5760 (online). bogotá, colombia. pages 129-147 strategies instruction to improve the preparation for english oral exams previous work in the field of language learning strategies (cohen & weaver, 2006; griffiths, 2007; oxford, 1994, 2011; tragant & victori, 2012) has already pointed out that the selection and use of learning strategies depend on a number of factors, such as age, gender, learning style, and type of activity. the results of this study also suggest that the perceived importance of specific aspects of the evaluation on the part of the teacher might be connected to the strategies that students use in preparing for it. this perceived importance of aspects such as verbal expression, language skills, organization, and preparedness is directly linked to the value that teachers assign to them during instruction. r e g ard l e ss of how pre s c r ipt ive st r ate g i e s instruction may sometimes appear, it is ultimately the teachers’ responsibility to gear it towards meeting the language learning needs of their students. however, teachers must bear in mind that the relative priority they give to some aspects of language might influence their students’ choice of strategies and, ultimately, their overall language learning process. references arias, c. i., & maturana, l. m. 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(2012). language learning strategies, course grades, and age in efl secondary school learners. barcelona, es: universidad autónoma de barcelona. usma, j. a. (2009). education and language policy in colombia: exploring processes of inclusion, exclusion, and stratification in times of global reform. profile issues in teachers’ professional development, 11(1), 123-141. wenden, a., & rubin, j. (eds). (1991). learner strategies in language learning. new york, ny: prentice-hall. about the authors josé vicente abad works as associate professor at fundación universitaria luis amigó (medellín, colombia). a member of eilex research group, he coordinates both the research line in evaluation and the semillero en evaluación de lenguas extranjeras (student research group in language evaluation). his research interests include language evaluation and teacher professional development. paula andrea alzate is finishing her ba in english teaching at fundación universitaria luis amigó (medellín, colombia). she works at the columbus school and is also a member of the semillero en evaluación de lenguas extranjeras. her interests include language evaluation and research in education. universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras144 abad & alzate appendix a: questionnaire 1 researchers in the field of language teaching from fundación universitaria luis amigó, universidad pontificia bolivariana, and universidad de antioquia participated in the project learning strategies that favor students’ preparation for english oral exams. to collect data for this study, we ask that you please answer the following questionnaire. 1. general information complete the requested information. full name* age* participating institution* type of evaluation activity* book report ☐ movie review ☐ *required 2. strategies language learning strategies are defined as behaviors, actions, steps or techniques that students use to improve their progress in developing their language skills (oxford, 1990). this section is related to the learning strategies you could use during your preparation for english oral exams. part a: scale indicate if you used the following preparation activities. if so, tell to what extent you did it by selecting the option you consider the most appropriate in each case.* 0 = i did not use it; 1 = i used it a little; 2 = i somewhat used it; 3 = i used it a lot. 145profile vol. 18, no.1, january-june 2016. issn 1657-0790 (printed) 2256-5760 (online). bogotá, colombia. pages 129-147 strategies instruction to improve the preparation for english oral exams 0 1 2 3 1. you clearly identified the main purpose of the activity you were preparing for. 2. you planned your preparation for the evaluation activity. 3. you made changes in your preparation while you were evaluating its effectiveness. 4. you practiced the speech to be given during the oral exam. 5. you corrected your pronunciation and fluency during the preparation. 6. you established connections between the chosen text by the team for the presentation and your previous experiences. 7. you summarized the essential information of the text you were to present. 8. you reorganized the information in order to facilitate its comprehension. 9. you worked collaboratively with your partners in the assignment and completion of different tasks to prepare for the oral exam. 10. you expressed to your partners your feelings and opinions about the exam and the way you prepared for it. 11. you asked for clarifications about what had to be done for the exam. 12. you asked others, including the teacher, to correct your oral production. universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras146 abad & alzate part b: questions answer the following questions, providing all the information you consider to be relevant. 1. how did you prepare for the exam? describe the process in detail, including those strategies that were not described in the previous section. _______________________________________________________________________________ _______________________________________________________________________________ _______________________________________________________________________________ _______________________________________________________________________________ 2. how was the team work carried out? describe the difficulties and achievements you had during the preparation for the exam. _______________________________________________________________________________ _______________________________________________________________________________ _______________________________________________________________________________ _______________________________________________________________________________ 3. how did you handle the feelings generated by the exam during your preparation? _______________________________________________________________________________ _______________________________________________________________________________ _______________________________________________________________________________ _______________________________________________________________________________ 4. of the strategies you used to prepare for the exam, which were the most effective? why? _______________________________________________________________________________ _______________________________________________________________________________ _______________________________________________________________________________ _______________________________________________________________________________ 5. of the strategies you used to prepare for the exam, which were the least effective? why? _______________________________________________________________________________ _______________________________________________________________________________ _______________________________________________________________________________ _______________________________________________________________________________ 6. if you could take the exam again, which changes would you make in your preparation in order to improve your performance during the exam? _______________________________________________________________________________ _______________________________________________________________________________ _______________________________________________________________________________ _______________________________________________________________________________ 147profile vol. 18, no.1, january-june 2016. issn 1657-0790 (printed) 2256-5760 (online). bogotá, colombia. pages 129-147 strategies instruction to improve the preparation for english oral exams appendix b: rubric for summative evaluation: movie review instruction. in pairs you’re going to choose a film of your interest and do an oral presentation about it. for the oral presentation take into account the following: ȟ describe its main elements: characters (2-3), plot, setting, conflict, and resolution ȟ make sure your presentation has an introduction, development, and conclusion and connect them ȟ express your point of view about the film you’re going to be assessed based on the following rubric. assessment will be individual. assessment criteria (adapted from bauer-ramazani, 2005) ranges outstanding appropriate developing weak organization. the introduction provides overview of presentation; presentation supports introduction; conclusion reinforces main points and your opinion about the film. 10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1 speaking skills and voice. clear articulation/pronunciation; proper volume, speaking rate, and pauses. 10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1 content & preparedness. content throughout the presentation is wellresearched; presenter is well-prepared, describes elements of the story told through the film and supports his/her opinion. 10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1 verbal expression (grammar, vocabulary). presenter uses contentspecific terms and concepts; speaks in complete sentences that are easy to understand and follow; retells story in his/her own words. 10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1 time limit. the presentation is within the allotted time limit. (3-5 minutes for each presenter) 5 4 3 2 1 visuals. visuals are attractive and enhance the presentation; illustrate important points, which should be brief and precise. 5 4 3 2 1 score observations 49profile vol. 15, no. 2, october 2013. issn 1657-0790 (printed) 2256-5760 (online). bogotá, colombia. pages 49-67 exploring efl pre-service teachers’ experience with cultural content and intercultural communicative competence at three colombian universities indagación sobre la experiencia con el contenido cultural y la competencia comunicativa intercultural de docentes de inglés en formación, en tres universidades colombianas alba olaya*1 universidad distrital francisco josé de caldas, colombia luis fernando gómez rodríguez**2 universidad pedagógica nacional, colombia this article reports the findings of a qualitative research project that explored pre-service english teachers’ perceptions of and attitudes toward the aspects of culture and intercultural competence addressed in their english classes in the undergraduate programs at three colombian universities. findings reveal that pre-service teachers are mainly taught elements of surface culture and lack full understanding of intercultural competence. they also see culture as a separate aspect of their future teaching career. we provide alternatives so that pre-service teachers might overcome limitations of the teaching of culture as preparation for their future teaching career in the foreign language classroom. key words: cultural content, deep culture, intercultural communicative competence, pre-service teachers, surface culture. este artículo reporta los hallazgos de una investigación cualitativa que indagó sobre las percepciones y las actitudes de los profesores en formación en el área de inglés respecto a los contenidos culturales y la competencia cultural que se abordan en las clases de inglés, en tres universidades colombianas. los hallazgos revelan que los docentes en formación primordialmente tratan aspectos de la cultura superficial y no tienen total claridad de qué es la competencia comunicativa intercultural. también conciben la cultura como un aspecto desligado de su futura profesión docente. se sugieren algunas alternativas para que los profesores en formación puedan superar las limitaciones de la enseñanza de la cultura y se preparen para su futura carrera docente en el salón de inglés como lengua extranjera. palabras clave: competencia comunicativa intercultural, contenido cultural, cultura profunda, cultura superficial, docentes en formación. * e-mail: albaolaya@yahoo.com ** e-mail: lfgomez@pedagogica.edu.co this article was received on september 24, 2012, and accepted on may 15, 2013. universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras50 olaya & gómez rodríguez introduction the development of intercultural communicative competence (icc) in the english as a foreign language (efl) context has become a necessity rather than an option in our contemporary society. the ongoing process of globalization and the amalgamation of diverse communities worldwide demand second language learners and teachers to develop cultural awareness. hinojosa (2000), kramsch (2001), hernández and samacá (2006), and barletta (2009) argue that one of the main missions of foreign language teaching is not only to prepare students and teacher educators to learn linguistic structures and to speak another language fluently, but to instruct them to become aware of cultural boundaries, misunderstandings, and the way of life of a foreign culture. genc and bada (2005) state that language teaching has begun to recognize that there is an intricate relationship between culture and language, because teaching language str uctures without considering the aspects of the target culture is inadequate. despite these salient ideas about the inclusion of culture in the efl classroom, the teaching of culture and the development of icc still require more attention and research, more concretely, in colombian efl education. therefore, this article explores how efl pre-service teachers deal with the fusion of language and culture. statement of the problem authors such as byram (1997), lázár (2003), and chlopek (2008) assert that one of the main problems in efl classrooms is that language teachers often restrict the inclusion of cultural content in the language classroom. the study of grammar forms and communicative functions has dominated language syllabi and restricted learners’ ability to become culturally competent. taking into account that the study of the target culture remains an unripe topic in the educational setting, including colombia, we, as teacher-researchers, wanted to conduct a diagnostic research by exploring and identifying what actual perceptions, knowledge, and attitudes efl pre-service teachers at three universities in bogotá had in regard to the insertion of culture in the english class and, in this way, detect the level of understanding of icc they had. furthermore, we wanted to inquire about the teaching practices they were given to develop icc at the language programs they belonged to. we think that this diagnostic study, which focuses on efl pre-service teachers’ actual voices and opinions, will allow us to determine to what extent culture and icc are part of their preparation in the classroom and what methodological alternatives they should embrace to foster intercultural awareness in a more conscientious way. theoretical framework culture and intercultural communicative competence are the main theoretical constructs that guided this exploratory study. culture sihui (1996) and prieto (1998) claim that the development of culture is facilitated through the process of social communication because any set of behaviors, beliefs, and ideologies are necessarily embraced by the members of a particular community through language. the inseparable bond between language and culture leads to observe that english learners must essentially learn meanings of the target culture, rather than simply studying grammar forms and communicative functions. the common european framework of reference to languages (council of europe, 2001) indicates that learners do not simply communicate, but develop interculturality, and that linguistic and cultural contents in the classroom contribute to enhance icc and create positive attitudes to new cultural experiences. robinson (as cited in castro, 2007) indicates that many teachers highlight the importance of “practicing 51profile vol. 15, no. 2, october 2013. issn 1657-0790 (printed) 2256-5760 (online). bogotá, colombia. pages 49-67 exploring efl pre-service teachers’ experience with cultural content and intercultural... culture” in the classroom rather than trying to define it. robinson claims that culture should be viewed from four definitions: the behavioral definition (set of patterns that are shared and that may be observed in terms of actions and events), the functionalist definition (social rules governing and explaining events), the cognitive definition (the knowledge shared by a cultural actor and other actors, and that helps them to interpret the world), and the symbolic definition (system of symbols used by the individual to assign meanings to different elements and events). despite efl teachers’ attempts to incorporate cultural content in their teaching practices, culture continues being seen from the behavioral definition. therefore, it is conceived as a static, accumulated, and classifiable concept that can be taught and learned with no effort (paige, jorstad, siaya, klein, & colby, 2003). aspects of culture such as celebrations, food, tourist places, and important people, which are classified as elements of surface or observable culture (hinkel, 1999), seem to be the most common contents discussed in the efl context. in this sense, there is a need to address significant aspects of deep culture from the functionalist, cognitivist, and symbolic levels (as proposed by robinson, 1988) that are very often omitted, including, for instance, attitudes to life, personal and collective ideologies, beliefs, and customs that constantly change through generations. in fact, trujillo (2002) suggests that culture changes through time and this endless transformation must be the main object of interest in the language classroom. intercultural communicative competence (icc) icc is defined as the “ability to ensure a shared understanding by people of different social identities, and [the] ability to interact with people as complex human beings with multiple identities and their own individuality” (byram, gribkova, & starkey, 2002, p. 10). byram (1997) proposes a model of icc composed of three main factors or savoirs: the first factor is knowledge of “social groups and their products and practices . . . and of the general processes of societal and individual interaction” (p. 51). the second factor consists of skills: the skill of interpreting, the skill of relating, and the skill of discovering, which all together help individuals to learn, explain, and compare the meaning of a given situation or documents from another culture. the third factor of icc involves having positive attitudes such as openness, empathy, readiness, and curiosity about cultural expressions that may be similar or quite different from one’s own. with knowledge, skills, and attitudes, learners can develop, as proposed by byram (1997), another savoir that he calls critical cultural awareness which is the ability to analyze critically that our own and the target cultures are different and dynamic because all human beings do not behave and think homogeneously, but act and see life in varied ways. byram (1997) claims that critical cultural awareness is “an ability to evaluate critically and on the basis of explicit criteria perspectives practices and products in one’s own and other cultures and countries” (p. 53). in this sense, the intercultural speaker becomes critical when he/ she “brings to the experiences of their own and other cultures a rational and explicit standpoint from which to evaluate” (p. 54). similarly, banks (2004) argues that the citizens of this globalized society need to acquire knowledge, skills, and attitudes in order to coexist with other cultural communities and cultural borders. banks also affirms that critical cultural awareness means to support human rights and equality, as well as to accept the inclusion of minority groups into the mainstream society. this competence reduces the proliferation of stereotypes, prejudices, and misrepresentations of others, and allows learners to see the deeper aspects of culture. these views of icc become a relevant epistemological notion for those efl learners who are preparing to become efl teachers. universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras52 olaya & gómez rodríguez research methodology research questions: supported by the previous theoretical framework, our research was led by the following questions: what perceptions, knowledge, and attitudes do efl pre-service teachers have in regard to the incorporation of the cultural component in the efl class? how might efl pre-service teachers foster icc through the cultural contents studied in their english class? context of the study this research was carried out at three universities in bogota. two are state founded universities while the other one is private. the three universities offer an undergraduate teaching program—in english or languages—which provides teaching and training for those who want to teach english in the efl context. their programs consist of ten semesters and are completed by credit hours. the programs are composed of different areas of knowledge of which the field of foreign languages is the most important one in terms of time distribution, credit hours, and number of subjects. advanced levels, with which our study was conducted, took english lessons 6 to 10 hours a week. participants in order to select the students to participate, we asked the directors of the language departments of each institution to let us develop this study with a group of fifth semester learners. a total of 51 upperintermediate efl students, aged 18 to 22, from the three institutions participated, including both females and males: 16 students from u1,1 15 students from u2, and 20 students from u3. the reason for choosing upper-intermediate students was that, at this point 1 u1, u2, and u3 stand for the three universities where the study was conducted. of their career, they already had enough background knowledge and experience to give account for the cultural experiences in their english classes. one of the main features of the participants is that they are efl pre-service teachers. therefore, they are given professional training to become english teachers. as part of their preparation, they not only need to have a good english level to teach future generations, but be knowledgeable about teaching methods and theories related to culture and icc, since they need to be qualified to teach in the on-going era of globalization. instruments for the study, we selected three data collection instruments: (a) questionnaires focused on three core aspects: knowledge, perceptions, and attitudes toward culture (see appendix a). participants answered the questionnaires individually when we visited each institution. (b) during our visits, we also used an individual semi-structured interview, which was recorded on tape, transcribed later and saved in a file. the interview was conducted in english because we were aware that we were interviewing teachereducators and we wanted to expose them to speaking in the target language about their preparation in terms of the cultural aspects they had been instructed in. the interviews consisted mainly of four questions: the cultural topics approached in the english class, students’ preferences for any cultures, opinions about the importance of culture, and the cultures existing in the classroom. the questionnaire and the interviews contained open-ended questions because we wanted to observe participants’ broad range of feelings, thoughts, and opinions about their experiences with contents of culture; in other words, to have data from their varied perspectives. (c) we also made a documentary analysis of the study plans of the programs in which participants were enrolled. the purpose was to observe whether or not study plans included any explicit cultural contents in english courses. 53profile vol. 15, no. 2, october 2013. issn 1657-0790 (printed) 2256-5760 (online). bogotá, colombia. pages 49-67 exploring efl pre-service teachers’ experience with cultural content and intercultural... data analysis in order to analyze the data, we followed the grounded approach principles because, instead of basing our study on a prior hypothesis, we interpreted and found similar patterns and themes that emerged f rom t he d at a col le c te d. we did an in-dept h exploration of the data in order to find efl pre-service teachers’ knowledge, perceptions of, and attitudes toward culture through a color coding system. color coding allowed us to establish the frequency and to identify the similar opinions students had given. after that, we decided to, as freeman (1998) suggests, name, group, find relationships, and display data contained in the questionnaires. data were displayed in the order participants had answered each question so that we could identify patterns and relationships (see appendix b). we also did the same process separately with the other two instruments (interviews and study plans). later, through a process of triangulation which consists of analyzing multiple sources of information or points of view on the phenomenon that is being investigated (freeman, 1998), we established relationships with the data collected in the questionnaires, interviews, and study plans in order to see if salient patterns appeared among all of them. this triangulation made possible verification that the data were reliable and consistent since we realized that the same opinions and patterns were present in the other instruments. we recognize, obviously, that the study plans did not show evidence of students’ voices, but were useful to establish relationships as to what extent they incorporated cultural content and if students knew the information described in them. in the findings section, we will use the following codes to analyze and interpret data: questionnaires (q), interviews (i), participants (p), and university (u). it is important to say that the units of analysis taken from students’ answers are verbatim. that is why some of them have grammar mistakes or are in spanish. findings and discussion in this section we will describe and discuss the findings of our research. first, we will refer to pre-service teachers’ knowledge and perceptions about culture and icc. then, we will explain their perceptions towards cultural contents, methodologies, and resources used in their classes. finally, we will report about their attitude as to what extent they consider culture and icc important for their professional teaching career. perceptions of theories on culture and icc since participants were pre-service teachers, we wanted to inquire about their knowledge of culture in the efl context, involving theories and definitions of culture and icc, and the dynamic nature of culture as useful information for their teaching careers. data showed that most of them gave a general definition of culture based on traditional views. they defined it as a set of customs, habits, identity, beliefs, traditions, and values of a particular community, as can be seen in the following examples. culture...are the several characteristics that set or define a society. (p4, q, u3) culture is the main characteristics of, of a town, of a country, of a city [sic]. (p1, i, u1) a set of beliefs, behaviors, thoughts, customs, that are learned and transmitted in a group of people. (p1, q, u2) participants’ answers demonstrated that they seemed to have a static view of culture. words like “main characteristics” and “learned and transmitted” suggest that they think that culture is unquestionably transmitted without suffering any possible alteration or transformation. none of the pre-service teachers recognized culture as relative and changeable. this finding supports trujillo’s view (2002) that efl learners and, in particular, efl pre-service teachers need to become aware that elements of surface culture should not be the only contents to study in the classroom. universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras54 olaya & gómez rodríguez when students were asked about what icc was, most of them gave partial definitions. this supports the fact that students lack knowledge of this competence. for instance, at u1 only four pre-service teachers defined icc as ability, others had a partial or vague view of it, and some others did not provide any answer. at u2, six participants, out of fifteen, answered that icc was an ability or skill, while the other seven did not define the term. similarly, a few students from u3 defined icc better when compared with u1 and u2 students, but most of them gave an incomplete definition: is the ability to interact with other cultures. (p3, q, u2) competence to talk with people from other places and with other culture. (p15, q, u3) moreover, students seemed to confuse communicative competence with icc since they believe that being able to communicate appropriately with speakers from the target language is the main priority, as shown in these data samples: learning a [sic] foreign communication. (p3, q, u1) yes, i think is important because is the language which i want to learn. (p1, i, u3) i can learn english more, i can learn english easier. (p4, i, u2) thus, they need to be guided to acknowledge the significant role culture and intercultural awareness play in the process of communication and as part of their training to become teachers in the future. this finding strongly relates to byram’s (1997) claim that individuals must attain certain levels of intercultural understanding in order to develop critical intercultural awareness with respect to their own country and others since, according to the participants’ answers; they are more concerned about how to communicate with speakers of the target culture than to deal appropriately with their cultural differences. figure 1 shows participants’ level of understanding of icc at the three universities. perceptions of icc show that only a limited number of pre-ser vice teachers had some general idea about the concept, but none of them referred concretely to knowledge, skills, or attitudes as essential components of icc. figure 1. efl pre-service teachers’ definitions of icc 4 6 4 8 7 8 3 0 3 0 2 4 6 8 univ. 1 univ. 2 univ. 3 de�ned icc incorrectly de�ned icc as an ability do not know what icc is cultural contents reviewed in and outside of the english classroom another aspect we wanted to explore referred to cultural topics they discussed in their english classro om. all of t hem mentioned asp ec ts of surface culture, including history, tourism, arts, entertainment, and food; being history and tourism the most salient aspects. it is important to note that only 8 participants out of 51 answered that they had discussed “social and historical aspects.” however, they did not report which social and historical facts they had studied, and this may imply that they had not internalized or critically learned those particular facts. surprisingly, these pre-service teachers never referred to aspects of deep culture such as relationships, culture shock, cultural misunderstanding, relations of power, social class, politeness, discrimination, otherness, attitudes to life, and identity. data showed that they are often trained to teach observable and surface elements of culture. this finding indicates that they still need their teachers’ help to become aware of the dynamism and transformation of deep elements of culture because, as data suggest, they learn culture at an informative and superficial level, rather than from 55profile vol. 15, no. 2, october 2013. issn 1657-0790 (printed) 2256-5760 (online). bogotá, colombia. pages 49-67 exploring efl pre-service teachers’ experience with cultural content and intercultural... a critical and reflective perspective. as pre-service teachers they need to be more critically prepared on concepts of culture so that they do not replicate a superficial approach to culture when assuming a teaching position in an efl classroom in the future. as hernández and samacá (2006) highlight, learning about culture goes beyond studying a list of facts about history, music, arts, or geography. similarly, it is our understanding that pre-service teachers should address issues of deep culture as identity, social clash, attitudes, and conflicting values and beliefs that might differ from their own, but that will empower them to deal with otherness and complex interaction among individuals from the target culture. a way to promote this discussion of the foreign culture is suggested by álvarez and bonilla (2009), who state that learners should be engaged in interactions through a collaborative and a dialogical process because students should take a critical position about the target culture, departing from the understanding and analysis of their culture. besides these topics of surface culture studied in class, pre-service teachers admitted that they had done research on cultural contents outside the classroom. as they were asked if they did research on culture, 38 students reported that they had researched on their own initiative while 12 had not. figure 2 shows this aspect more specifically at each university. figure 2. efl pre-service teachers’ autonomous research on culture 12 12 14 3 3 6 0 2 4 6 8 10 12 14 univ. 1 univ. 2 univ. 3 have not done research on culturehave done research on culture additionally, most students recognized that they had done more research on the anglophone cultures than on their own culture, while just a few students had done more research on their own culture than the target culture. sixteen participants from the three universities acknowledged that they had investigated other cultures different from the anglophone and their own. over all, data revealed that more learners had initiative to do research on the anglophone cultures without their teachers’ request. however, most of the topics students acknowledged having researched included history, beliefs, music, science, art, literature, and food. these topics confirm the finding that pre-service teachers mainly focus on aspects of surface culture, since they seem to be probably influenced by the topics addressed in their language classes. this fact was clearly evidenced in the data as only few students reported having researched deep aspects of culture such as impolite behaviors and slang. in short, the positive finding is that they acknowledged being autonomous when learning elements of the anglophone cultures outside the classroom. the limitation that we identified as analysts of the data is that students need to be encouraged to research cultures different from the anglophone ones in order to create more diverse and inclusive intercultural awareness, since interculturality implies the discussion of different nations around the world that do not necessarily have to belong to the anglosaxon civilization. this will allow efl pre-service teachers in their future teaching positions to promote an open environment of inclusion and diversity, since they will surely teach learners from different cultural backgrounds within colombia. from the data, only one pre-ser vice teacher acknowledged that he had researched some elements of deep culture, such as behaviors, expressions, and accents. on the other hand, those participants who answered they had never done research on their own initiative argued that they were not interested universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras56 olaya & gómez rodríguez in culture, had no time to investigate, and were not motivated to study that topic. others did not answer why they lacked interest. they only said they had never done any type of research. some comments related to the question are: i think i have too many homeworks [sic] to do and i don’t have time. (p3, q, u1) because i am not interested on that. (p2, q, u2) i think that it’s a lack of self-work and initiative, a lack of motivation. (p4, q, u3) the fact that several efl pre-service teachers are not concerned about learning cultural content on their own indicates that they are not totally aware of the real need of becoming intercultural in our current society and that they need more guidance to understand that icc is not an innate ability, but one that is acquired and taught through conscious instruction. in this sense, those teachers who instruct pre-service teachers need to address the study of cultural content more purposely in their classes so that pre-service teachers do more research and discuss this topic more often in order to become better intercultural english speakers and more qualified efl teachers. one interesting perception articulated by one pre-service teacher regarding the reasons for doing research on his own is: i think is important to know how the others had acted and why they had done know and understand the other can help us growing like people and as teachers we would need it [sic]. (p8, q, u1) this participant and another from u2 recognized that their interest in learning cultural content is because they think it is an important aspect for their future teaching career. the other 49 participants at the three universities said that they had initiative to learn about culture because they were planning to travel abroad and because they were just interested in learning this kind of information. some of their opinions are: i think it’s important because maybe we will travel. (p2, i, u2) because if i want to travel to some other place, i have to know about that culture. (p12, q, u1) because i like to learn more about countries i’m studying. (p4, q, u3) what people do there and what we do here and maybe the places where we can go. (p6, i, u2) participants’ answers indicate that they still need to be instructed by their teachers to see culture not only as a tool to meet their traveling and tourists’ interests, but to be prepared to become english teachers in the future, since the language programs in which they are enrolled aim at preparing qualified teachers in the colombian context. at this point we were able to establish a significant correlation: since most participants see culture as informative and at a surface level, which will allow them to travel as tourists and to communicate when traveling, they still need to become more aware of culture at a deeper level. as a conclusion, participants seem not to be familiar with the distinction of surface and deep levels of culture because they have not been trained to recognize those levels. as a consequence, with their teachers’ assistance, pre-service teachers are called upon to become more aware of icc and consider more mindful reasons to see the study of culture in the efl classroom, not only for traveling plans, but also for their role as future english teachers and citizens of a multicultural world. this finding leads us to reflect on what quintero (2006) points out: that an intercultural person is one rooted in his/her own culture but, at the same time, open to the world; a person who observes the unknown from the known, and who interacts with otherness from his/her own affirmation and selfassessment, that is to say, one who becomes critical of the globalized world around him/her. additionally, data gave us interesting insights as to which topics participants would like to study regarding culture. some of them said that they would like to study 57profile vol. 15, no. 2, october 2013. issn 1657-0790 (printed) 2256-5760 (online). bogotá, colombia. pages 49-67 exploring efl pre-service teachers’ experience with cultural content and intercultural... features of deep culture (without being aware that those aspects belonged to deep culture), including behaviors, accents, the culture of u.s. native-american indians, body language, educational systems, and politeness. however, the majority stated that they would like to study aspects such as historical facts, food, landmarks, “special days,” the arts, important people, and traditions in general. these responses support once more the fact that pre-service teachers’ perceptions about culture rely on the surface level of culture, and that they have not become aware of deeper aspects. history seems to be the most required aspect they would like to study, but they see history as an opportunity to learn factual information from the past, but do not reflect how historical events have caused cultural conflicts, resistance, and social differences. figure 3 presents the level of surface and deep culture that students would like to learn in the english classroom. figure 3. level of cultural content efl pre-service teachers would like to learn 5 5 9 2 3 2 8 7 9 0 3 6 9 univ. 1 univ. 2 univ. 3 learners would like to learn surface aspects of culture learners would like to learn deep aspects of culture learners did not answer clearly or did not answer the question consequently, data revealed that students need to apply different manifestations and expressions of deep culture (attitudes to life, gender, race, social classes, prejudices, how people act in certain circumstances, ideologies, individuality, etc.) so that they will be able to foster icc more appropriately. this can be connected to nieto’s (2002) concern that these deep cultural aspects are manifestations of economic, political, and social power that should be discussed to promote critical intercultural awareness in the classroom. importance of incorporating culture in the efl classroom according to the participants, it is important to incorporate culture in the english classroom because it is related to language. twenty students, out of 51, established a relationship between culture and language: because the english language is part of the culture and it is important to know cultural aspects! (p3, q, u2) it is important, every language [is part of a] culture, so if we study about [culture] we can understand the language much better. (p7, q, u1) because learning a foreign language implies learning the culture, too. (p10, i, u3) these opinions reveal that almost half of the participants from the three universities think that language is a medium through which to acquire culture. they perceived culture as an essential element to negotiate meaning in real social situations of life. this finding contrasts with the notion of surface culture that most of them have. at least half of the participants identified the link between language and culture as dynamic in actual cross-cultural interaction, but it does not mean that they are aware of this cultural feature as dynamic. also, because only less than half made this connection, the other half needs to see culture as a powerful agent when speakers from diverse backgrounds engage in the process of communication. some of their answers indicate that including culture in the elf classroom is just for the sake of learning language and gaining general knowledge of a culture, but they do not see it as determinant component in authentic communicative practices, as these samples suggest: is very important because of this why i can know about other cultures and other aspect from other countries in the world [sic]. (p2, q, u1) universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras58 olaya & gómez rodríguez i think it is quite important because, because the cultural component improves the process of learning languages. (p7, i, u2) because it is a good way to improve our knowledge. (p4, q, u3) these views emphasize that english teachers should become foreign culture teachers, having the ability to teach learners to experience and analyze the home and target cultures through communicative language practices in the classroom, rather than in informative terms. another important finding in the data was that only five out of 51 participants thought culture would help them to become more qualified english teachers in the future: because it is important knowing other cultures for our selfdevelopment like teachers. (p5, q, u3) because first, i’m going to be a teacher, i’m going to teach this. (p6, q, u1) as a teacher we have to know different cultures to teach the other, to teach to the kids. (p3, i, u2) we might observe, then, that teacher educators need to instruct pre-service teachers to consider cautiously to what extent the aspect of culture is a crucial element to qualify their teaching career, since they have not thought about this point yet. pre-service teachers’ preferences about cultures to be studied when students were asked if they were more inclined to learn about a specific english culture over another, most of them said they were. twenty-four participants tend to study one anglophone culture over the other: yes, i studied the cultures and the food. the united states and british. (p7, i, u2) i would like to know more about british culture than american culture. (p12, q, u3) inglaterra ya que es un idioma, más limpio que el norteamericano [i prefer british english because it is a cleaner language than the american one]. (p2, q, u3) opinions show that efl pre-service teachers are sometimes biased about cultural groups as they did not explain why they preferred one culture over another. learners’ predisposed and simplified views seem to be the result of their lack of solid icc. in this sense, english teachers are called upon to help students to become more critical in regard to preconceptions of certain cultural groups. pre-service teachers need more guidelines to understand that, for instance, there is not a “better” and “cleaner” english accent. on the contrary, all cultures and languages are different and unique, and english variations, from the perspective of lingua franca,2 can never be categorized as “cleaner” or “better,” because english is a universal language that not only functions as a means for individuals to communicate worldwide, but has different variations and accents. english is one of the most popular languages that has facilitated intercultural encounters regardless of notions of language purity and appropriate use. over all, this finding from data suggests that pre-service teachers still need to create more positive attitudes to respect and value differences, rather than excluding them just because they have stereotypes and reductionist labels on them. another relevant finding from data is that pre-ser vice teachers do not have clear opinions about the people and lifestyles of other cultures. most of them only made generalizations and stated ambiguous opinions of foreign people. views such as: “american people are more businessmen than colombian people” (p4, q, u1) and “i know that they have a lot of different aspects of us but i do not know any specific point” (p7, i, u2) demonstrate that their opinions are hedged on general stereotypes or that they simply do not know about deep attitudes, particular characteristics, or cultural behavior of the foreign culture. this information is significant in 2 a language used to make communication possible among speakers who do not share a mother tongue, in particular when it is a foreign language, distinct from speakers’ mother tongues. 59profile vol. 15, no. 2, october 2013. issn 1657-0790 (printed) 2256-5760 (online). bogotá, colombia. pages 49-67 exploring efl pre-service teachers’ experience with cultural content and intercultural... this study because it shows again that students have mostly focused on the study of language forms and on the surface level of cultural aspects and have not completely envisioned, with their teachers’ help, deep aspects in regard to complex social relationships. stereotypes and unawareness of the people of the target culture lead us to conclude that efl pre-service teachers still require developing more conscientious icc. they must become critical thinkers who are able to interpret, compare, and discover—skills proposed by byram (1997)—intricate meanings of the target and their own culture. when pre-service teachers were asked which characteristics a person should have in order to become aware of cultural aspects, they recognized that an intercultural person requires having tolerance, openness, respect, patience, and curiosity. nonetheless, 16 participants from the three universities did not answer this question. similarly, when being asked if they thought they had the characteristics they had mentioned in the previous question, 44 students were unable to answer this question (see figure 4). figure 4. efl pre-service teachers’ recognition of their own attitudes to become intercultural unable to recognize they had positive attitudes to become intercultural able to recognize they had positive attitudes to become intercultural 14 14 16 2 1 4 0 4 8 12 16 univ. 1 univ. 2 univ. 3 data showed that although participants listed positive attitudes, they found it difficult to recognize they held them. it seems to be that pre-service teachers need to build those positive attitudes, as suggested by byram (1997), in order to develop icc and to be more convinced that they can be capable of adopting them as part of their qualification to become efl teachers. in fact, byram has stated that any person can become intercultural, but it requires effort, preparation, and awareness. methodologies and resources used to teach and learn culture the most common methodology used at both u1 and u3 when discussing culture is students’ presentations, while at u2 teachers’ presentations are a salient method. this might indicate that u2 follows a more teacher-centered approach than u1 and u3, where teachers’ presentations are less frequent. in this direction, u1 implements teachers’ presentations in a lesser degree, while u3 students reported that teachers’ presentations are sporadic, since pre-service teacher education students have to do research on cultural issues and give their own presentations as part of their preparation to become english teachers. in regard to home videos, u3 participants ac knowledged that they often used this kind of methodology. u1 students sometimes use home videos, while u2 students rarely use them to learn culture. role-plays are more used at u2 than in the other two universities, but the students at the three universities said that they have sometimes role-played situations related to cultural content. in conclusion, the most common instructional activity to study culture is through students’ oral presentations. students at the three universities (33 participants out of 51) reported that videos and movies are the most used resources to study culture in class. however, they did not give concrete examples of those visual materials. listening activities rank the second place. contrary to what many might think, the internet was not recognized as a significant resource in the language classroom. only seven efl education students, out of the 51 mentioned, said they used the internet as an effective way to learn culture. nonetheless, they did not say if they often used the internet as an extra class resource to research content for their presentations. it universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras60 olaya & gómez rodríguez seems to be that they use the internet to prepare their presentations outside the classroom, but it is not often used as a class activity to learn cultural content. a third resource that participants valued is reading materials, including books, articles, and magazines. data showed that u2 students have more access to reading material than u1 and u3 students. this information may be consistent with the methodologies used at u1 and u3 where teaching culture is mainly based on students’ presentations. results indicate that u1 and u3 teachers still need to encourage learners to read books, documents, and stories as ideal resources to acquire cultural content in order to complement the oral presentations they already have as a methodology. moreover, efl students of pre-service education were very critical about how culture should be taught in the english class. essentially, they would like to have more involvement and more experiential learning. their answers mostly depended on the methodology used at each university. u2 students would like to have more presentations and discussions through which they can compare and contrast cultural groups. since u2 students reported that teachers mostly give presentations, they would like to participate more in class discussions. u1 students asserted that they would like to have a “more reflective,” “deeper,” and “critical” analysis of cultural content. they would also like to do research and read books, and if possible, to talk to and meet native speakers. some u3 students recognized that the current ways through which they learn culture are good. however, they would like to have options different from oral presentations. they suggested the use of real life situations, reading short stories, and chatting with native people online. in brief, participants’ answers from the three universities still demand more significant methodologies which could involve them in a more critical and experiential way focused on more meaningful student-centered approaches. interestingly enough, students also mentioned that classes should reduce the great emphasis on grammar and include more cultural content. students’ opinions seem to relate to what we observed in the study plans from the three universities. at u1, the study plan includes six semesters of english courses in which the cultural component is not evident. it is the teacher’s decision whether he/she includes any cultural issues to be discussed. however, there are three courses that address “society” of the foreign language. similarly, at u2, all the english courses from first to ninth semesters focus on the development of language proficiency, but there are four courses that include cultural components: language and communication (fourth sem.); language, society, and culture (sixth sem.); and literature in english 1 and 2 (eighth and ninth sem.). by contrast, u3 devotes six courses named “anglophone languages and cultures.” however, the courses focus on elements of the surface culture, and this superficiality supports the fact that the teaching of culture in the efl context, as claimed by byram (1997) and hinkel (1999), lacks a deeper perspective. in addition, there are two courses oriented towards one aspect of culture: english literature in seventh and eighth semesters in which the study of literary works and authors is addressed. there are four more courses called emphasis and competences development which in some cases may be oriented towards the study of culture, but it also depends on the teacher’s decision when he/she is assigned the course. the description of the study plans may indicate, when relating them to students’ answers, that teacher and students are making a great effort to include culture, but, in general, it is mainly oriented to language study because the study plans neither describe nor contain cultural aspects to be studied. they only stress the importance of developing communicative competence through language forms and communicative functions. the findings summarized in this section invite us to reflect upon the importance of including this core 61profile vol. 15, no. 2, october 2013. issn 1657-0790 (printed) 2256-5760 (online). bogotá, colombia. pages 49-67 exploring efl pre-service teachers’ experience with cultural content and intercultural... component in the teaching of english. in order to reach this aim, there is a need to re-shape the fundamentals of the efl context: the institution’s study plans, the teacher’s conceptions of culture and icc, the syllabus, the methodologies, the resources and activities. for instance, institutions can make the icc component more visible in their study plans and programs so that its inclusion does not depend on a teacher’s decision. similarly, teachers can replicate effective icc experiences from their colleagues such as the one presented by agudelo (2007) where he encouraged his students to explore and analyze the relationship between language and culture and its role in the field of language teaching through the use of critical pedagogy, and by addressing issues of cultural and linguistic diversity and intercultural communication. in addition, teachers can implement strategies as the ones mentioned by fleet (2006) in order to teach culture: saying in our own words what we have read or heard, doing research on cultural issues, sharing different culture views, personalizing cultural contents, discussing cultural misunderstandings, and giving presentations on lifestyles and different ideologies, among others. we can use authentic materials as the ones described by peterson and bronwyn (2003): films, news broadcasts, and television shows; websites; photographs, magazines, newspapers, restaurant menus, travel brochures, and other printed materials. an example of deep cultural contexts is proposed by álvarez and bonilla (2009), who engaged students in ethnographic work about subcultures (vegetarians, body builders, and gays) in order to examine and understand diverse groups that deviate from traditional representations of homogeneous culture. we personally suggest discussing literary works, studying history critically rather than informatively, and addressing conflicting and debatable topics about discrimination, xenophobia, homophobia, race, gender roles, hatred, human rights, relations of power, politeness, social differences, consumer societies, the working class conditions, the world economy, and the growth of globalization, among others. these topics are not only realistic, but provide learners with the capacity to become reflective and critical about how people from other cultures as well as their own see these topics, and how those issues might favor or affect the relationships among the diverse cultural groups around the world and within learners’ own cultural backgrounds. conclusions and implications based on the three research questions, findings lead us to address the following conclusions: 1. the development of this study helped us envision mainly two assets of english-language programs so far: (a) raising students’ awareness on the importance of cultural topics and their relationship to language. (b) helping students become autonomous and interested in learning about cultural topics. 2. although cultural content has become part of the language classroom, there must be a significant change by including both elements of surface and deep culture, since the latter is poorly studied in the classroom. for the particular professional necessities of students involved in pre-service teacher education, they need more instruction on how to teach elements of surface and deep culture in the efl context. 3. pre-service teachers need further preparation to compare and interpret cultural content. rather than just being understanding, they should become more critical about issues of otherness, power relationships, ideologies, and identity. since this kind of learners already possesses an appropriate language level, critical and interpretative processes might possibly be achieved if teachers incorporate aspects of deep culture. this change will allow pre-service teachers to become more critical intercultural learners. universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras62 olaya & gómez rodríguez 4. students involved in teacher education are still influenced by stereotypes and misconceptions of other cultural groups. this might be caused because the teaching practices are primarily oriented to the study of superficial culture. teachers are called upon to find alternatives so that they help prospective efl teachers to reduce false misrepresentations of other people through more pertinent materials in which cultural conflicts, behaviors, and ideologies can be discussed. 5. although prospective teachers of english in colombia seem to have a positive attitude towards culture, there is a great necessity to help them to create stronger personal attitudes to become intercultural as regards tolerance, curiosity, readiness, and openness, since they are not totally convinced of having those attitudes and, in most cases, do not recognize they have them. 6. it is the responsibility of teacher education programs at the three universities where the study was conducted to get prospective english teachers aware that studying culture implies more than just gaining information in a received way or from a tourist’s perspective. as future educators, they must see culture as part of their teaching career so that they are able to instruct their students on icc and, if possible, contribute to the process of helping others to face the current process of globalization. therefore, in regard to the first research question, pre-service teachers’ perceptions of and attitude toward cultural content need to be strengthened along their teaching training so that they might become more prepared efl teachers. 7. with respect to the second research question, university teachers should start to train preservice teachers in colombia to become more aware of icc theories. icc can be fostered among pre-service teachers not only through the study of contents and the development of class activities about culture, but with theories of what icc is as they are involved in epistemological discussions about english teaching methods and theories in order to become better qualified teachers in the colombian context and competent intercultural beings in this globalized world. it is important to say that the teaching of culture is best approached by creating an open and tolerant atmosphere wit hin t he s cho ol and classro om community itself (fleet, 2006), where members surely come from diverse backgrounds of their own country. pre-service teachers in particular must value and appreciate their own national differences to later appreciate foreign groups. not only celebrating cultures of all types, but establishing critical views can empower pre-service teachers to develop critical icc so that they will be able to accept all students in the efl classroom regardless of race, color, social class, age, sexual orientation, educational level, and ideology. language should be a means to learn about all the cultures and subcultures of the world. as found in this research, pre-service teachers and learners belonging to language programs at several universities in the efl context still need more preparation, methodologies, themes, and positive attitudes to become better intercultural interpreters of diversity and stronger advocators for inclusion and difference. references agudelo, j. j. (2007). an intercultural approach for language teaching: developing critical cultural awareness. íkala, revista de lenguaje y cultura, 12(18), 185-217. álvarez, j. a., & bonilla, x. (2009). addressing culture in the efl classroom: a dialogic proposal. profile issues in teachers’ professional development, 11(2), 151-170. banks, j. a. (2004). introduction: democratic citizenship education in multicultural societies. in a. j. banks (ed.), diversity and citizenship education: global perspectives (pp. 3-15). san francisco, ca: jossey-bass. 63profile vol. 15, no. 2, october 2013. issn 1657-0790 (printed) 2256-5760 (online). bogotá, colombia. pages 49-67 exploring efl pre-service teachers’ experience with cultural content and intercultural... barletta, n. (2009). intercultural competence: another chal lenge. profile issues in teachers’ professional development, 11, 143-158. byram, m. (1997). teaching and assessing intercultural communicative competence. clevedon, uk: multilingual matters. byram, m., gribkova, b., & starkey, h. (2002). developing the intercultural dimension in language teaching: a practical introduction for teachers [pdf version]. retrieved from http://www.lrc.cornell.edu/director/intercultural.pdf castro, d. (2007). inquiring into culture in our foreignlanguage classrooms. colombian applied linguistics journal, 9, 200-212. chlopek, z. (2008). the intercultural approach to efl teaching and learning. english teaching forum, 4, 10-27. council of europe. (2001). common european framework of reference for languages: learning, teaching, assessment. cambridge, uk: cambridge university press. freeman, d. (1998). doing teacher research: from inquiry to understanding. boston, ma: heinle & heinle. fleet, m. (2006). the role of culture in second or foreign language teaching: moving beyond the classroom experience. retrieved from eric database. (ed491716) genc, b., & bada, e. (2005). culture in language learning and teaching. the reading matrix, 5(1), 73-84. retrieved from http://www.readingmatrix.com/articles/genc_ bada/article.pdf hernández, o., & samacá, y. (2006). a study of efl students’ interpretations of cultural aspects in foreign language learning. colombian applied linguistic journal, 8, 38-52. hinkel, e. (ed.). (1999). culture in second language teaching and learning. new york, ny: cambridge university press. hinojosa, j. (2000). culture and english language teaching: an intercultural approach. cuadernos de bilingüismo, 1, 107-114. kramsch, c. (2001). context and culture in language teaching. oxford, uk: oxford university press. lázár, i. (2003). incorporating intercultural communicative competence in language teaching education. strasbourg, fr: council of europe publishing. nieto, s. (2002). language culture and teaching: critical perspectives for a new century. london, uk: lawrence erlbaum associates. paige, r. m., jorstad, h., siaya, l., klein, f., & colby, j. (2003). culture learning in language education: a review of the literature. in r. m. paige, d. l. lange, & y. a. yershova (eds.), culture as the core: integrating culture into the language curriculum (pp. 47-113). minneapolis, mn: university of minnesota. peterson, e., & bronwyn, c. (2003). culture in second language teaching. eric digest. retrieved from http:// w w w.cal.org/resources/digest/digest_p dfs/0309 peterson.pdf prieto, f. (1998). cultura y comunicación [culture and communication]. méxico, mx: ediciones coyoacán. quintero, j. (2006). contextos culturales en el aula de inglés [cultural contexts in the english classroom]. íkala, revista de lenguaje y cultura, 11(1), 151-177. robinson, g. l. (1988). cross-cultural understanding. new york, ny: prentice hall. sihui, m. (1996). interfacing language and literature: with special reference to the teaching of british cultural studies. in r. carter, & j. mcrae (eds.). language, literature, and the learner: creative classroom practice (pp. 166-184). london, uk: longman. trujillo, f. (2002). towards interculturality through language teaching: argumentative discourse. cauce, revista de filología y su didáctica, 25, 103-119. universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras64 olaya & gómez rodríguez about the authors alba olaya holds a ba degree in spanish and modern languages from universidad pedagógica nacional (upn, colombia), and an ma in applied linguistics from universidad distrital francisco josé de caldas (colombia). she is a member of the research group hypermedia, testing, and teaching english at upn, and a full time teacher at universidad distrital francisco josé de caldas. her research interests are icts and interculturality. luis fernando gómez rodríguez holds a ba degree in english and spanish from universidad pedagógica nacional (colombia), an ma in education from carthage college, usa, and a phd in english studies from illinois state university, usa. he is a member of the research group hypermedia, testing, and teaching english, and a full time teacher at upn. his research interests are interculturality and the teaching of literature in efl. 65profile vol. 15, no. 2, october 2013. issn 1657-0790 (printed) 2256-5760 (online). bogotá, colombia. pages 49-67 exploring efl pre-service teachers’ experience with cultural content and intercultural... appendix a: questionnaire answer the following questions about the incorporation of cultural content in the english classroom. feel free to answer in english or spanish. be honest with your answers. they will only be used for academic or research purposes. your identity will be confidential. section i 1. do you consider that the cultural component has been incorporated to the syllabus of your english class? yes: ____ no: ____ 2. give a short definition of the following terms: culture: _________________________________________________________________________ intercultural communicative competence:_______________________________________________ 3. if your answer to question 1 is yes, tick the cultures that have been discussed in your english class. a. your own culture ☐ b. anglophone cultures ☐ c. other cultures ☐ 4. if your answer to question 1 is yes, which cultural aspects have been discussed in your english class? (e.g., historical aspects, social aspects, tourism, etc.). _______________________________________________________________________________ _______________________________________________________________________________ 5. have you done research about cultural aspects of other countries by your own initiative? yes: ____ no: ____ why ____________________________________________________________________________ why not? ________________________________________________________________________ 6. which aspects have you taken into account? _______________________________________________________________________________ _______________________________________________________________________________ 7. what kind of cultural knowledge would you like to study in your english class? _______________________________________________________________________________ _______________________________________________________________________________ universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras66 olaya & gómez rodríguez section ii 1. do you think it is important to incorporate the cultural component in your english class? why? why not? ________________________________________________________________________ 2. do you feel more inclined to learn about a specific english-speaking culture over another? why? ___________________________________________________________________________ why not? ________________________________________________________________________ which ones? ______________________________________________________________________ 3. what ideas/opinions do you have about the people and lifestyles of other cultures? _______________________________________________________________________________ _______________________________________________________________________________ 4. do you think you have changed your opinion/ attitude about the cultures based on something you learned in your english class? _______________________________________________________________________________ _______________________________________________________________________________ 5. what qualities should a person have in order to become aware of cultural aspects? do you have any of them? _______________________________________________________________________________ _______________________________________________________________________________ section iii 1. which methodology has been implemented in order to get to know the english-speaking/ anglophone cultures? tick the one(s) that apply. a. presentations given by students ☐ b. presentations given by the teacher ☐ c. home-videos made by students ☐ d. role-plays ☐ e. simulated tv/radio programs/interviews ☐ other _______________. please, specify:___________________________________________ 2. what kind of resources/materials has been used in your english class to study cultural content? _______________________________________________________________________________ _______________________________________________________________________________ 3. how do you think the cultural component should be approached in your english classes? _______________________________________________________________________________ _______________________________________________________________________________ 67profile vol. 15, no. 2, october 2013. issn 1657-0790 (printed) 2256-5760 (online). bogotá, colombia. pages 49-67 exploring efl pre-service teachers’ experience with cultural content and intercultural... appendix b: sample of displayed data from questionnaires students’ answers from university 2 section i: question 2 students’ views of icc p1: is the ability to communicate with people that haven’t the same culture that i have. p2: no answer given. p3: learning of foreign communication. p4: it’s the ability to get a good relationship with people from other countries. p5: no answer given. p6: it’s a way to demonstrate what you know about another culture, you can speak and have to own new point about it. p7: to learn more about other cultures. p8: ser capaz de comprender, analizar y construir un juicio crítico sobre cómo puede y ha podido ser entendido el mundo [being able to understand, analyze, and construct a critical judgment about how the world can be possibly understood]. p9: learn about different cultures and practicing them. p10: for development mores speaking and learn with our partners. p11: relations between people of different countries. p12: no answer given. p13: the class there is communication between the teachers and the students. 195profile vol. 14, no. 2, october 2012. issn 1657-0790 (printed) 2256-5760 (online). bogotá, colombia. pages 195-211 new educational environments aimed at developing intercultural understanding while reinforcing the use of english in experience-based learning nuevos entornos educativos destinados a desarrollar la comprensión intercultural y a reforzar el uso del inglés mediante el aprendizaje basado en experiencias leonard r. bruguier* university of south dakota, usa louise m. greathouse amador** benemérita universidad autonóma de puebla, mexico new learning environments with communication and information tools are increasingly accessible with technology playing a crucial role in expanding and reconceptualizing student learning ex periences. this paper reviews the outcome of an innovative course offered by four universities in three countries: canada, the united states, and mexico. course objectives focused on broadening the understanding of indigenous and non-indigenous peoples primarily in relation to identity as it encouraged students to reflect on their own identity while improving their english skills in an interactive and experiential manner and thus enhancing their intercultural competence. key words: communication technologies, experiential learning, identity, indigenous peoples, intercultural understanding. cada vez es más fácil tener acceso a nuevos entornos de aprendizaje que utilizan herramientas de comunicación e información en las que la tecnología desempeña un papel crucial en la expansión y la reconceptualización de las experiencias de aprendizaje del estudiante. en este artículo se revisa el resultado de un curso innovador que se ofreció en cuatro universidades de tres países: canadá, estados unidos y méxico. los objetivos del curso se centraron en ampliar la comprensión de los pueblos indígenas y no indígenas, en particular en relación con la identidad. esto alentó a los estudiantes a reflexionar sobre su propia identidad, a la vez que mejoraban sus habilidades del inglés de una manera interactiva y experimental, logrando así mejorar su competencia intercultural. palabras clave: aprendizaje experiencial, comprensión intercultural, identidad, pueblos indígenas, tecnologías de la comunicación. * retired and deceased since march 23, 2009. ** e-mail: greatamador@gmail.com this article was received on october 16, 2011, and accepted on april 12, 2012. universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras196 bruguier & greathouse amador introduction daily interaction with people having dif ferent values, gestures, social mores, and ways of perceiving reality seems to have become without a doubt the norm rather than the exception in a world where we seem to be living in each other’s backyards (finger & kathoefer, 2005; friedman & berthoin, 2005). in an increasingly more globalized and consequently more culturally diverse world, finding effective ways to help students acquire meaningful intercultural competence has become an important goal. this paper reports on a project that involved undergraduate students from four universities in three neighboring countries; the united states, canada and mexico, who used technological resources to create an intercultural community of mutual learning. with the aid of technology and telecommunications, the opportunity to create an intercultural classroom where learning networks were constructed became a reality. the overall aim of this project was to encourage students to reflect on their own identity, interactively and experientially, and thus enhance their intercultural competence, improve their skills in english as a foreign language, and cross cultural borders, all through the use of computer technology, which enabled them to communicate actively in a virtual environment. helping our students communicate with other students of different nationalities and cultures required aiding them in developing themselves “as intercultural speakers or mediators who are able to engage with complexity and multiple identities and to avoid the stereotyping which accompanies perceiving someone through a single identity” (byram, gribkova & starkey, 2002, p. 10). recent advances in information and communication technologies, particularly the effective use of virtual classrooms and the internet, have given new meaning to geographical boundaries as distance becomes increasingly irrelevant. this paper demon strates how a mediated collaborative educational endeavor using communication technology can help students acquire experience and skills in intercultural communication, foreign language learning and computer-mediated communication, thus fulfilling several important educational objectives. according to grosse (2002, pp. 22-23) “learning how to handle the technology and dealing with different cultures can pose the biggest challenges”. the project described in this article gave our students the opportunity to experience some of these challenges first-hand through an approach to ‘using’ experience for learning. the results and implications of this project will be discussed. background of the closing the distance education project in late 2002 the closing the distance education partnership project (cdepp) was first conceived by a group of university professors who were interested in providing their students with the opportunity to learn and work with students of different cultural, ethnic and racial backgrounds without having to rely on their physical presence in the classroom. in the summer of 2003 a partnership was formed among four institutions of higher education: the university of wisconsin-stout, usa (uw-s), university of south dakota-vermillion, usa (usd), first nations university of regina, saskatchewan, canada (fnu) and the benemérita universidad autonóma de puebla, mexico (buap). representatives of these four universities –in three neighboring countries with very different historical experiences and cultural heritages– met together in a virtual class experience over a period of 18 months, communicating via internet and phone calls. they then came together in puebla, mexico, in the summer of 2003 to sit down and develop a multi-disciplinary course that would satisfy the general and specific interests of each. 197profile vol. 14, no. 2, october 2012. issn 1657-0790 (printed) 2256-5760 (online). bogotá, colombia. pages 195-211 new educational environments aimed at developing intercultural understanding... after considerable discussion of the different interests involved, the participating professors and authorities from the four universities named the course: the peoples of north america: identity, change and relationships, which reflected the main themes to be studied in the course. the primary goal of this cybernetic course was to provide students of diverse cultural backgrounds opportunities to enhance their learning by bringing the diversity of the larger world into the classroom. the objective was to use experiential learning methodology applied in a nontraditional way to create a sense of community within the virtual classroom, despite the distance and variations in culture and language among the students. central to accomplishing this task was the understanding that increasing intercultural awareness among students contributes to the overall education of all students, whatever their cultural, racial or ethnic background. in today’s pluralistic world, which is becoming closer and smaller through technology, it is believed that those whose education has prepared them to work effectively and respectfully in a diverse global community will be more successful. the general description of this course leaned heavily upon exploring relationships among both indigenous and non-indigenous peoples of north america (see appendix). one variation in the title and course description on the part of first nations university by instructor william asikinack was: systems of indigenous identity, culture and society, with the following course description: this course will examine concepts central to indigenous identity, including those categorized as cultural, social and psychological. the holism of indian perspectives will be demonstrated. in the uw-s syllabi the following details about the course were given: this is an experimental course and for most of you unlike any other course you have taken. perhaps the best skill you can bring to the course is a sense of adventure and a sincere desire to learn. because of the experimental nature of the course, we, your instructors, cannot predict exactly where we will go or where we will end, except to say that we will most certainly have a profound learning experience. no one else in north america has been enrolled in a course of this nature. you are the first. at the buap information was sent to students in different career areas of social science and the humanities, who, having shown a good command of the english language, might be interested in participating in the course. the invitation stated: come and take part in a new, experimental, multicultural course where you will have the opportunity to interact with students from canada, and the usa and actively practice your english. this course aims to foster intercultural understanding and appreciation of native and non-native cultures through unique experiential learning experiences available through the “magic” of technology in a virtual e-learning classroom. our interest as educators was to establish a dialogue among students coming from these three north american countries with 3 different official languages and many differences in their diverse socio-economic, racial, ethnic, geographic and political backgrounds. by creating an uncommon experiential learning environment through the use of the latest technology and telecommunications tools, we hoped to provide our students a creative, rewarding educational experience that would ultimately succeed in preparing them to live and work successfully in a global society. our hope was that the experiential learning experiences offered by this course would sup plement overall classroom-based learning experiences and give students the opportunity to cross cultural borders and put the theories they were learning in class into practice. although students participating in the cdepp were not engaging in an experiential learning experience in the classic sense universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras198 bruguier & greathouse amador (e.g. a study-abroad experience), they were in fact coming face to face with experiential learning every time they entered the virtual classroom and met with their classmates and teachers from different cultural, ethnic and racial backgrounds. while learning theory is important, real-life experience offers students opportunities to encounter the complexities of intercultural communication, to connect what they learn in class to what occurs in the real world, and to question their own beliefs and assumptions when dealing with behavior and practices that may not fit their pre-existing ideas. according to cheney (2001, p. 91), “experiential methods are ideal for intercultural communication precisely because culture is experienced” (emphasis was given in the original). “ultimately, the intercultural journey seems to be one of facing ourselves as we become aware of and responsible for the meanings we create and through which we then interpret our experiences” (seelye, 1996, p. 12). in this article, we shall first assess the relevant pedagogical uses of communication technology in the creation of a non-typical experiential educational experience and review the important role that experiential learning plays in a long-distance intercultural classroom setting. next, we will present the course objectives and describe the way the course was organized. we shall conclude by discussing the outcomes of the project, hence exploring the overall implications with respect to learner interaction throughout its duration. literature review computer technology – a pedagogical tool it is increasingly obvious that information and communication technologies (cellular telephones, ipod touch, ipads, etc.) have become an essential part of life –at home, at work, or in almost any setting– for a great number of people in the world today. the nielsen company, a market research group, affirm in their social media report (2010) that social networking is the number one activity online, and it has increased by 43 per cent since 2009. accordingly, americans spend one third of their time online, networking and communicating through social networking sites (over 906 million hours a month). it has been found that using technology as a teaching tool promotes student participation and interaction (absalom & marden, 2004; boles, 1999; campbell, 2004). absalom and marden (2004, p. 421) found that having their students engage in e-mail exchange “encourages the most reticent students to participate”. computer-mediated technology and live online interaction can open up and create educational spaces that entice students to communicate in different, creative ways, and to explore and learn about other cultures. through computer tech nology collaborative learning is enhanced (eastman & swift, 2002; li, 2002) and it has acquired a new meaning. in addition, “collaborative learning promotes higher achievement as well as personal and social development” (li, 2002, p. 504). reich and daccord (2008) point out that the best use of technology comes when “teachers are doing less of the teaching and students do more of the learning” (p. xvii). activities that require students to work in groups with one another via computer technologies are being used more and more to encourage peer collaboration. studentcentered activities with a technological component foster creativity and empower students to take charge of their own learning. in the e-learning model students not only work individually, but also engage in collaborative learning for gathering information, examining issues and resolving problems. 199profile vol. 14, no. 2, october 2012. issn 1657-0790 (printed) 2256-5760 (online). bogotá, colombia. pages 195-211 new educational environments aimed at developing intercultural understanding... communication technology has added a new dimension to intercultural education, offering students and teachers the opportunity to step out of the classroom and transcend geographical boundaries without need of a passport or visa. it is clear from the literature reviewed that the influence of communication technologies on teaching and learning goes beyond the classroom. e-mail, chat rooms, facebook, computer conferencing and so on are tools that can “offer contemporary students and faculty truly extraordinary potential for re-designing and expanding the learning envi ronment” (bazzoni, 2000, p. 101). computer-mediated communication provides a framework for teaching and learning from a distance. the importance of experiential learning in acquiring intercultural competence intercultural competence is essential for good communication with people from a different culture. in a broad sense, being interculturally competent means being open to trying to understand and respect people from other cultures when communicating with them in any form. all the participants of the cdepp considered exploration of the intercultural dimension of people from different cultures as something of utmost importance since that was the driving force that brought us together to design and teach the peoples of north america: identity, change and relationships. the intercultural dimension is concerned with -helping learners to understand how intercultural interaction takes place, -how social identities are part of all interaction, -how their perceptions of other people and others people’s perceptions of them influence the success of communication -how they can find out for themselves more about the people with whom they are communicating. (byram et al., 2002, p. 15) helping students develop skills for discovery and interaction, behaviors that constructively ex press feelings e.g. tolerance, respect, empathy, compassion, and flexibility, which will ultimately lead them to understanding the “other” (seelye, 1996, p. 14), clearly expresses the fundamental views that the cdepp were founded upon: in such work, we are leading and supporting people to explore new views of reality and to develop new frames of reference for categorizing and explaining behavior. we are suggesting that one can adjust to new ways of being and doing and that life will be richer and deeper for having encountered differences. we call attention to strategies for encountering change, unfamiliarity, and ambiguity in creative ways. our work demonstrates that it is both possible and positive to realize that what is taken as “common sense” is indeed “cultural sense”. it becomes possible to see that the consensual reality in which one lives is only real to the extent that one believes and accepts the power of that consensus. and we suggest that such realization is partner to the development of consciousness, that is, the capability to become self-reflective about habits of heart and mind and the ways these are expressed in daily life. the importance of introducing students to new perspectives beyond those of their particular community is fundamental to successful learning. experiential learning requires reflection and critical analysis of experiences in order to make the experiences educational (mintz & hesser, 1996; silcox, 1993; welch, 1999). in preparing them for living and working together in global communities it is important that students are given the opportunity to search other points of view and ways of thinking. when dealing with problem-based education it is clear that this is crucial, for it is impossible to solve a problem without first analyzing and under standing the nature of it. the initial analysis leads to the development of a hypothesis, which must be tested on some kind of action. this then requires further analysis and reflection, as it is in this universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras200 bruguier & greathouse amador reflection that learners come to make sense out of the new information and experiences (silcox, 1993). much of the literature that revolves around inter cultural learning strongly emphasizes problem posing education. this kind of learning involves the whole student on both the affective and cognitive levels because it engages the learner in the learning process by connecting the subject matter to the student’s life or way of thinking, which is strongly influenced by his/her cultural, ethnic and racial background. consequently, shor (1993, p. 26) notes that, “through problem-posing, students learn to question answers rather than merely to answer questions. in this pedagogy, students experience education as something they do, not as something done to them”. philosophies of experiential education built upon jean piaget’s model of learning and cognitive development take into account learning in different contexts. learning takes place as people test concepts and theories based on experiences they have lived, and from these experiences develop new concepts and theories. as denoted by piaget, there must be a balance between these two processes. citron and kline (2001) place learning “in the mutual interaction of the process of accommodation of concepts or schemas to experience in the world and the process of assimilation of events and experiences from the world into existing concepts and schemas”. similarly, organizational theorist kurt lewin (1952) argued in the 1940s that personal and organizational development results from a process in which people set goals, theorize about prior experience, then test their theories through new experiences, and finally revise their goals and theories after evaluating the results of the new experiences. it is important to remember that experiential education is embedded in constructivist theories of teaching and collective or cooperative learning. constructivist theory proposes that knowledge is constructed individually and collectively as people reflect upon their experiences, thereby converting experience into knowledge (geary, 1995). according to this theory, meaning is not intrinsic in experience. rather, knowledge is socially constructed as people observe and interpret it (mcnamee & faulkner, 2001; searle, 1995). kolb (1984, p. 41) agrees when he states that “learning is the process whereby knowledge is created through the transformation of experience”. kolb (1984) illustrated a “simple description of the learning cycle” based on the above-mentioned work of kurt lewin (1952), which is still relevant today. as can be seen in figure 1, the cycle begins with a concrete experience, followed by observation and reflection, which are assimilated into the formation of abstract concepts and generalizations from which suggestions, ideas or implications for action are realized. lastly, these lead to testing the idea or implications of concepts in new situations, followed by another concrete experience, which starts the cycle anew. figure 1. diagram of kolb’s cycle of experiential learning concrete experience {1} forming abstract concepts {3} testing in new situations {4} observation and re�ection {2} according to this model of experiential learning, in order to transform experience into knowledge, learners must begin with their own concrete experience. they then engage in re flective observation and move to a stage of abstract 201profile vol. 14, no. 2, october 2012. issn 1657-0790 (printed) 2256-5760 (online). bogotá, colombia. pages 195-211 new educational environments aimed at developing intercultural understanding... conceptualization, during which they begin to comprehend the experience, which finally brings them to active experimentation of the concepts. in this model, observation and reflection is an essential component of experiential education. the cycle is implied as a continuing spiral, where the learning achieved from new knowledge acquired is formulated into a prediction for the next concrete experience. within the cdepp we found that as students approached a new intercultural experience, the first part of the cycle was a type of absorption or immersion in the actual “doing” of the readings, questioning or direct interaction. the reflection stage was stepping back from the experience and noticing differences, comparing and contrasting the familiar with the new. in terms of academic assessment, the most important stage is conceptualization, where students generalize and interpret events by asking: what does this mean? understanding general principles and theories is central for explaining the experience. in the last step testing the new theory or principle in new situations is essential to the learning experience. at this stage, the student has an opportunity to change behaviors or thinking and apply these changes to a new set of circumstances. specific actions can then be made from direct or inferred reflections that have been refined based on the initial concrete experience. this process involves intentional preparation and the transfer of new knowledge to concrete actions (montrose, 2002). experiential learning is being taken into account more and more by many educational institutions since the relationship between experience and reflection in the experiential learning process insures significant long-term learning. the united nations educational, scientific and cultural organization (unesco) endorses this fundamental approach to student-centered learning for a sustainable future claiming that experiential learning engages students in a concrete experience that involves the learner to make a critical analysis of the situation and enables them to shape new knowledge so that it can be used at a later time when a similar situation is encountered. what makes this an educational endeavor is not so much the activity in and of itself, but it is the analysis of the activity that is made through personal reflection, discussion, writing, or projects that assist the learner to make the transition from experience to integrated meaning and consequently to understanding (cox, calder & fien, 2010; montrose, 2002). according to montrose (2002), experiential learning methodology is intended to promote and encourage a solid academic agenda, where justifiable grades, academic course credit, and concrete experiences can all be integrated, not only in terms of the curriculum and the syllabus, but in daily activities as well. this learning model of obtaining educational results from direct experience can be and is structured, allowing academic credit to be awarded. the experiential learning that takes place in the cdepp stems from pedagogy that actively engages the student in the phenomena that they are studying. when students develop their own research agenda, engage in critical thinking and test their interpersonal skills, they directly encounter an alternative world view, learning through analysis and reflection, including the consequences of the larger social and ethical implications of this knowledge. this learning approach engages students in an intentional process of critical thinking and hands-on problem-solving. it often develops with the smallest amount of the common institutional structure being presented to the student before the actual learning experience. students in an experiential learning situation do not memorize and parrot back information: they create and produce their own ideas and work through possible solutions to complex problems. this integration universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras202 bruguier & greathouse amador of concrete action, analysis and reflective thought makes possible the evaluation of the overall learning experience through intentional, measurable learning goals and objectives (montrose, 2002). as itin (1999, p. 93) points out: experiential education engages “carefully chosen experiences supported by reflection, critical analysis, and synthesis”, which are “structured to require the learner to take initiative, make decisions, and be accountable for the results”. the project described in this section are the participants of the cdepp project and how the course was set up and carried out. participants and class composition the students and the two professors participating from uw-s were non-indigenous caucasians, who primarily came from families that had immigrated to the usa from a scandinavian country at least 2 generations before (the class at uw-s started with 24 students and ended with 18). the participants of fnu were indigenous and included 6 students. two of the students and the teacher were from the anishinaabe indigenous group, and the other 4 students were cree. of the six students enrolled in the course from usd, 2 were dakota (sioux) and 3 lakota (sioux) and one caucasian, non-indigenous; the instructor was mestizo, indigenous-american. the students participating at the buap were a mixed group: 7 native mexicans (mestizo: spanish-indigenous), 1 exchange student from california who considered herself “chicana” (daughter of mexican-born parents who moved to the usa, where she was born), 1 russian-ukrainian, and 1 nicaraguan student. the two participating professors (authors of this article) at the buap were cuban-american, and native american-lakota, sioux from the yankton sioux reservation in south dakota. at the end of the course, a total of 40 students –17 men and 23 women– had participated from beginning to end. the majority of the students were in their 3rd year of undergraduate studies and there was one master’s level student. the youngest student was 20 and the oldest 47. the majority of the students were in their midtwenties. four men and 2 women professors participated in the course along with 1 special guest speaker, joseph marshall iii, a lakota scholar and writer from rosebud sioux indian reservation in south dakota. class procedures the class was held every tuesday morning from 9 a.m. to 12:00 p.m. (in canada an hour earlier) for 13 weeks and was structured in the following manner: • segment one live television lecture led by instructor(s) at one of the universities: 30 minutes. • ten minute break. • segment two in-class discussion at each site with video and audio turned off: 30 minutes. • segment three interactive live television ses sion with all students and professors participating for 45 minutes. • five minute break. • segment four online chat/email exchange for 30 minutes, arranged in six groups consisting of students from uw-s and students from usd, fnu, and buap. total: 180 minutes. all class sessions were taught in english with all the professors participating in the course. facilitation alternated among the participating professors (see the course outline at the end of this work with the list of topics presented in this course) in each of the universities. joseph marshall iii, a visiting professor at the university of south dakota during the semester in which the course was given, gave 203profile vol. 14, no. 2, october 2012. issn 1657-0790 (printed) 2256-5760 (online). bogotá, colombia. pages 195-211 new educational environments aimed at developing intercultural understanding... the opening class. his presentation was important in several aspects. conceivably, however, his most valuable contribution to the course was the precedent he set for all the classes to follow, which was one of total respect, collaboration, and wonder, which invited us all to join in and explore this new unfamiliar territory. marshall, a very gifted storyteller, used his talents as such in giving this first class. at the end of his presentation, imparted with calmness and clarity, he answered questions. he was very willing to clarify words and concepts not understood by the spanish-speaking participants and he expanded on many of these to help the nonindigenous students, especially those from uw-s, who, not wanting to offend their indigenous classmates at this first encounter, were unsure of the appropriate terms to use. an important discussion opened on this first day of class, which revolved around the best way to refer to indigenous people of canada and the usa and from this discussion many misconceptions were aired, reviewed and changed. the different ideas concerning appropriate vocabulary reflected the cultural differences and stereotypes that students possessed. examples of these came up often throughout the course. such pre-assumptions were discussed repeatedly, appearing as important themes in long threads of comments made in e-mail interactions. while the spanish-speaking students had a good grasp of the english language and were able to receive clari fication when needed, the class as a whole seemed to be constantly immersed in an ongoing negotiation of meanings commonly encountered in intercultural situations. and although english was the language of the class, many words and meanings in spanish and of the 4 indigenous languages spoken by the students in the class were also brought into the virtual classroom, into e-mails and chat session interactions. this opened windows of opportunity for participants to explore and understand each other more fully. course evaluation students’ overall grade for the semester was based on the aggregate of three portfolios and was determined by the professor in charge of their class in their home university. basic rules and requirements for all students participating in this course were the following: students were required to keep a weekly process journal that included thoughtful and critical reactions to the following parts of the course: • readings • live television lecture • in-class discussion at stout • interactive live television session involving all four universities and three countries • online e-mail exchanges and chats. three times during the semester students were required to turn in a formal portfolio in which they organized the ideas and observations from their weekly process journal into a cohesive narrative showing what they were learning and how their understanding changed. students were expected to include in these journals quotes from the readings in support of their ideas. each of these portfolios received a grade. • portfolios 75% • classroom citizenship & attendance 25% analysis qualitative data from approximately 700+ online chats generated in segment 4 of the class, responses to open-ended questions, and information from students’ portfolios were all collected and categorized according to themes. these were reviewed and analyzed using the thematic analysis technique. thematic analysis allowed us to identify themes based on three criteria: recurrence, universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras204 bruguier & greathouse amador repetition, and forcefulness (owen, 1984). recurrence refers to the same thread of meaning, in different words, coming up in different parts of the text being analyzed. repetition refers to the same word, phrase, or sentence, representing an idea or concept, occurring in multiple places. forcefulness refers to the emphasis given to a particular idea to show its importance or the intensity of the speaker/ writer’s feelings. thematic analysis was very helpful in discerning not only themes that emerged within each of the participant’s data, but also themes that we found common among all of our students who participated so actively in this course (zorn & ruccio, 1998). initially to help them interact outside the virtual classroom setting with other students and teachers, students were organized into 6 groups of 6 students each: two students from the uw-s and one student from each of the other universities. teachers were involved with all the groups. after 2 sessions, this format began to change. without any teacher intervention, the groups opened up to each other, creating a “free-for-all” where all students eagerly participated. from this point on, all e-mails were sent to everyone in the class and anyone from the class was free to reply to any of the letters and / or all e-mails. e-mails were answered in different ways and from contrasting perspectives e.g. according to the student, her/his cultural background, language and form of expression. these online discussions were almost all written informally, consisting of a question being posed or an answer to a question already posed. often the great amount of feedback about comments regarding an email would open to other topics, some related to the class and some not, but all clearly demonstrating a healthy curiosity about what others in the group thought about a topic. some students became messenger buddies with other students, engaging in online chat sessions, which were usually carried out in a written form, though there were also verbal exchanges. the mexican students especially enjoyed the verbal exchange although they commented that they inevitably summed up what had been said in writing. the following is an excerpt of a chain of e-mail exchanges demonstrating how they were conducted, the type of themes that were discussed, how these were started, and how they opened to other related topics dealing with students’ interests and concerns. students’ names have been changed to protect their identity. their enthusiasm and interest in sharing their thoughts on the different class themes can be traced in the following email exchange that begins with comments about the class, thoughts about multicultural metaphors and a bit of family background and interrelated reflections: hey ya’ll... just like everyone else, i’d first like to say that this class is taking off quite well. about the comment from carl (maybe the wrong spelling, sorry sir): i silently disagreed with your statement that the united states of america is still a “melting pot”. i have come to the conclusion that differences in cultures should be celebrated… i apologize for the generalization, white people were the ones that wrote the books, and coined the term “melting pot”. for them, this “melting pot” was a way for the united states to justify our apparent lack of understanding other cultures. for example, try to imagine what this shows america as saying: “i don’t care about my culture, so why should you?” i for one /do/ care about my culture, and i want to learn more about it. thanks guys ;) hey everyone, my name is andy wilson. i am currently enrolled into the telecommunications program here at university of wisconsinstout… the main point i would like to address is how most of us from uw-s feel we do not have very strong cultural beliefs. although, this may not be obvious to us, of course we have all gained some culture from our past. i think we are more susceptible to look past what we have gained from the past and 205profile vol. 14, no. 2, october 2012. issn 1657-0790 (printed) 2256-5760 (online). bogotá, colombia. pages 195-211 new educational environments aimed at developing intercultural understanding... look at what we have gained from our own lives and beliefs we feel we have decided on. for example with me, i feel work ethic has been a quality and belief that has been engrained in me. this type of quality seems to be part of most of wisconsin and the midwest, since we have been acknowledge for our hard work. for instance people within the south and some amongst the east coast have acknowledged wisconsin for their ideals and hard work. thanks, jake heyits janet and ginger from stout. we found today’s discussion really interesting because there were many points of view expressed. my name is janet and i’m from st. paul mn. i am dutch, welsh, irish and german. i don’t have that strong of a sense of my cultural background but i was introduced to the mexican culture when i was younger. my best friend/ neighbor since i was 3 wks old is mexican and we basically grew up together and i took part in celebrations and meals. i have visited durango mexico 3 times and stayed for about 3 weeks at a time. i am very interested in either studying abroad or living in mexico in the future. although this isn’t my heritage, i find it to be a very important part of my life. my name is ginger and i’m from spring valley, wi. i am german and a little bit polish. i don’t know too much about my cultural background. i am however exposed to different cultures on a regular basis. i work at a hotel so i have the opportunity to meet different individuals from all over the world and they are very willing to discuss their culture. i also work with mexicans and have a learned a lot about the mexican culture and their traditions. please e-mail us back and tell us a little about yourselves. hello everybody, this is ana from mexico and i would like to say that this is being a great experience for me. i find this course pretty interesting. i must confess that i wasn’t aware of many things that have been discussed during these two sessions. and i hope to keep learning more about them. i’d like to learn more about identity and all the factors that influence over the acculturation situation. ana hi to everyone, this is tere from mexico i didn’t come last class so i couldn’t send you a message, so i just want to say that i’m so glad to be in this class, to know you and to learn more about the different cultures represented in this big class. i’m so sorry for the mistakes in my grammar if there is one; you know that i’m still learning. thank you. bye i admire you and our classmates in mexico for taking a class being conducted in a language that is not your first language. i have understood everyone very well. my english isn’t perfect either and i am a terrible typist so i hope you understand me, too. professor at usd students’ reflections on their learning experience at the end of the course all students were asked to fill out a questionnaire regarding their learning experience. the majority of students who completed the questionnaire (n=36) found the course very interesting (96%), valuable, meaningful and/ or worthwhile (98%), and motivating and fun (95%). they felt that the email and chat exchanges helped them to further understand themes discussed in class (98%), they enjoyed doing the final portfolio project (92%), and they reported they were glad they had participated in the course (98%). 98% said they felt that their opinions about the groups represented in the class had changed significantly and in a positive way. the questionnaire results were supported by comments made in their journals and portfolio reports, but more substantially they came from responses made in email exchanges during the last segment of the class period. other questions asked referred to what the students had most enjoyed about the class. many mentioned having the opportunity to see, hear, talk to and exchange thoughts, questions and ideas with someone from another part of america and a background different from their own. they enjoyed learning about history, culture, universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras206 bruguier & greathouse amador current events, and life in general from real people, not simply from a book, a movie, or a talk show. our conclusion, based on many of these comments, is that the project indeed fulfilled our objective as it encouraged our students to examine more closely their own beliefs, attitudes, values and feelings. as the course developed they became more keenly aware of any personal ethnocentric feelings they might have or have had, and they began to understand how this could be an obstacle or wall blocking their understanding of others (gudykunst & kim, 2003). this type of self-reflection about their own self-awareness is also reported and discussed in a research project on email discussions between taiwanese and american students by ya-wen teng (2005). as noted in the literature related to effective intercultural communication teaching, it should include reflection on one’s own culture (cheney, 2001) to ensure optimal learning. according to the majority of students’ comments about the project, they felt that on the whole, the course allowed them to study, evaluate, and even re-evaluate, different topics and issues from diverse points of view and compare them to their own. students voiced opinions about their in creasing awareness of several ethnocentric attitudes they had had before the course, and how they were able to analyze them with clarity, coming to an understanding of their origin and an awareness of the influences that had sustained them. one student commented: when i was in germany in the summer of 2002 i heard the term “towel-heads” in german used to describe people of islamic faith (mainly taliban) also is to describe the near two million turks in southern germany which differs from the catholic majority. i don’t know about canada or mexico but there are other countries that have used racial/ethnic denigration. this discussion has made me think about these kinds of attitudes and examine some of my own…surely not all arabs are terrorists and not all white males in the milwaukee area are jeffrey dahmers. conclusions the interaction during class time was very lively and interesting, and the participants were very motivated. the voices of the indigenous students were active during the televised parts of class, though in the part of the class that pertained to exchanging written commentaries via email they were not as active. students at the university of south dakota seemed slow to engage in the written exchange of comments, but by mid-semester they became quite active. students in canada participated a bit less, although the professor participated on a more regular basis, speaking about the situation of the first nation people of canada. we suspect that the lack of internet involvement could have been attributed to insufficient computer and internet connections and to students’ hesitancy to add to the flow of thoughts and ideas. professors participated freely in the class and in email interaction, sharing information, clarifying doubts that arose and answering specific questions. there was always plenty of space available for students to carry on the interactions. at first, the students at the buap were a bit timid during the televised sessions and in their written messages. these students felt somewhat apprehensive and shy about speaking and writing in englisha foreign language for most of them. however, after the first couple of sessions they felt more comfortable and engaged in making more comments during the televised part of class as well as in emails. the students at uw-s were for the most part the quietest of all the students during the televised part of the class; even when directly asked, their 207profile vol. 14, no. 2, october 2012. issn 1657-0790 (printed) 2256-5760 (online). bogotá, colombia. pages 195-211 new educational environments aimed at developing intercultural understanding... participation was low-key. this reaction did not change during the course; however, these students were very active in their internet communications. they asked questions, expressed thoughts, revised thoughts and opened up much more than we saw in the televised sessions of the class. when the uw-s students were questioned about their silence in the classroom sessions they answered via email. here are a few examples of what they said: hi everybody! i just wanted to comment on why wisconsin, stout doesn’t comment. for me this is all a learning experience, we are able to learn so much about other cultures. the real stories. i feel bad that we don’t learn more of other cultures throughout high school, before college. i feel that is part of the ignorance of the us; it’s all about us. it seems a lot of the things we learned are only the “good” stories the whites did for the native americans. hopefully through this class we will be able to take our learning farther and one day we can all be a “community”. not so unknowing of each other’s countries. and hopefully this will encourage better political interactions, one not so dominant. i love learning about the other cultures; it has definitely broadened my horizons! another student wrote: i couldn’t have said it better myself, actually! most of the time i’m just absorbing all the new information that is coming in! this class has been great; i’ve learned so many things. specifically, i’m very proud that i was part of this class; i look forward to sharing my knowledge with others. from canada one of the students added to the discussion saying: i am glad that we all can learn from this class. we need to be aware of different cultures in order to understand. there needs to be a willingness to learn by the other culture before this can happen. when the course was over, students and teachers alike participated in the overall evalu ation. many positive comments were made. the only negative comments were in reference to the occasional technological difficulties, such as seeing each other but having no sound or vice versa, that occurred during the course. there was also the occasional difficulty in receiving the readings with time enough to read, especially for the mexicans who needed more time to go through the material. as far as the course itself, the overall evaluation was that it was a very successful and challenging course that really propelled everyone to explore both within and beyond themselves, their communities and their countries. it stimulated thought, challenged old viewpoints and introduced new and different ways of looking at many issues. student participation in the class, both orally in the televised segments and in the emails was most successful. students grasped the conceptual framework of the syllabus and commented succinctly on the subject matter. they found the class not only informative, but fulfilling and enriching as well. in closing, we have chosen one comment of the many that students sent via email or wrote in a final paper relaying their overall feelings about the course: from a mexican student: now that the course finished our task was to write about all the things that we have been through in this course. first of all i would like to start with some of the topics that were discussed in the course. the theme that i was interested the most was “identity”. i remember mr. marshall told us that being aware of whom and what we are is very important. i totally agree with this idea. i think that in order to be able to identify ourselves from others first we need to know ourselves better, we need to know where do we come from and finally taking into account all the process that we have passed through we will be able to know what we have become. although some of us may not like the final product of that process, we still have the opportunity to make some adjustments in order to improve ourselves. i learned the things that i expected to learn universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras208 bruguier & greathouse amador and much more which makes me more than happy. i realized that i still need to learn more about my country and others, it was very interesting to know what other people think about my culture and it was more interesting to tell them the way we see and think about them. i think that all of us learnt many things about each other and everybody was interested on knowing more. in general the course was amazing; i found it more than interesting, helpful and fun. also my english has improved a lot!! i 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(1993). a how to guide to reflection: adding cognitive learning to community service programs. philadelphia: brighton press. shor, i. (1993). education is politics: paulo freire’s critical pedagogy. in p. mclaren & p. leonard (eds.), paulo freire: a critical encounter (pp. 25-35). new york, ny: routledge. ya-weng teng, l. (2005). a cross-cultural communication experience at a higher education institution in taiwan. journal of intercultural communication, 10. retrieved from http://www.immi.se/intercultural/ zorn, t., & ruccio, s. (1998). the use of communication to motivate college sales teams. journal of business communication, 35(4), 486-499. welch, m. (1999). the  abcs  of  reflection: a  template  for  students  and  instructors to  implement written re flection in service learning. nsee quarterly, 25(2), 23-25. about the authors leonard r. “horse” bruguier was born on the yankton sioux reservation in wagner, south dakota. he held a phd in history and served as director of the institute of american indian studies and oral history center for 15 years and was history department professor at the university of south dakota when he retired to live in mexico in 2004. louise m. greathouse amador is a professor and researcher at the instituto de ciencias sociales y humanidades alfonso veléz pliego at the benemérita universidad autónoma de puebla (mexico) in the graduate program in langauge sciences. she holds a phd in sociology, ba and masters in applied linguistics. her research focuses on educational alternatives for constructing a culture of peace based on “humane education”. universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras210 bruguier & greathouse amador appendix: description of the course the peoples of north america: identity, change and relationships the main course objectives and outline for the course that were agreed upon and later implemented by the four participating universities in the summer 2003 meeting were: main course objectives: 1. broaden the understanding and perspective of indigenous and non-indigenous peoples of north america in areas of identity, change and relationships; 2. prepare students for service within their respective communities; 3. prepare students for the global society and workplace. course outline: i. introduction a. course overview; b. instructor introduction. ii. identity objectives: a. provide students a means and method of understanding the relationship between heritage and identity; b. introduce students to the debates and discussions of concepts such as race, ethnicity and multi culturalism. iii. ethnocentrism, stereotyping and norming. objective: pose the question of how we think others perceive us, and how we perceive others. iv. contemporary realitiesglobalism/colonialism objectives: a. expose students to and discuss the various opportunities and threats presented by globalization; b. ask students to identify the forces that have contributed to their understanding of race and ethnicity. c. introduce students to the widening gap between the rich and poor, both intra-nationally and internationally. 211profile vol. 14, no. 2, october 2012. issn 1657-0790 (printed) 2256-5760 (online). bogotá, colombia. pages 195-211 new educational environments aimed at developing intercultural understanding... content area 1 ȟ provide students a means and method for understanding the relationships between heritage and identity, and ȟ introduce students to the debates and discussions surrounding the concepts of “race, ethnicity, culture and multiculturalism”. content area 2 ȟ pose the question of how we think others perceive us and how we perceive others. content area 3 ȟ expose students to and discuss the various opportunities and threats presented by globalization. ȟ ask students to identify the forces that have contributed to their understanding of race and ethnicity. ȟ introduce students to the widening gap between the rich and the poor, both intra-nationally and internationally. 115profile vol. 18, no.1, january-june 2016. issn 1657-0790 (printed) 2256-5760 (online). bogotá, colombia. pages 115-127 http://dx.doi.org/10.15446/profile.v18n1.48000 struggling authorial identity of second language university academic writers in mexico1* la lucha de identidad de escritores académicos universitarios de segunda lengua en méxico troy crawford2** irasema mora pablo3*** m. martha lengeling4**** universidad de guanajuato, guanajuato, mexico this paper explores the different factors that appear to affect the on-going construction of second language authorial identity in a professional academic environment in mexico. through narrative research methodology from a qualitative paradigm, the everyday struggles of two university professors to maintain their professional status in second language writing are explored. the areas of study for these two are chemistry and penal law. with data the learning processes of entering into a community of second language writers are studied as well as the problems they faced and how they resolved them. finally, the process of negotiating an authorial identity in a second language seems to be a constant underlying struggle composed of a variety of psychological factors. key words: identity, narrative, second language academic writing, writer struggles. en este artículo se exploran los diferentes factores que parecen impactar la construcción de identidad de autor permanente en un medio académico profesional en méxico. esta búsqueda se da a través de la metodología narrativa desde un enfoque cualitativo de la lucha cotidiana de dos profesores por mantener su status profesional en la redacción en segunda lengua. sus áreas de trabajo son química y derecho penal. los datos recopilados permitieron explorar los procesos y problemáticas del ingreso a una comunidad de autores de segunda lengua. finalmente, se ilustra cómo este proceso de la creación de una identidad de autor es una continua batalla que está compuesto de una gama de factores psicológicos. palabras clave: identidad, lucha del escritor, narrativa, redacción en segunda lengua. * this research was funded by the department of research and graduate studies of the universidad de guanajuato (daip). ** e-mail: crawford@ugto.mx *** e-mail: imora@ugto.mx **** e-mail: lengelin@ugto.mx how to cite this article (apa, 6th ed.): crawford, t., mora pablo, i., & lengeling, m. m. (2016). struggling authorial identity of second language university academic writers in mexico. profile issues in teachers’ professional development, 18(1), 115-127. http://dx.doi. org/10.15446/profile.v18n1.48000. this article was received on december 22, 2014, and accepted on july 24, 2015. this is an open access article distributed under the terms of the creative commons license attribution-noncommercial-noderivatives 4.0 international license. consultation is possible at http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/. universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras116 crawford, mora pablo, & lengeling introduction self-concept (or self-schema) is the organized structure of cognitions or thoughts that we have about ourselves. it includes the perceptions we have of our social identities and personal qualities, as well as our generalizations about the self based on experience. (michener, delamater, & myers, 2004, p. 79) the theme of identity has been researched extensively in the past twenty years and continues to be a significant topic to be researched (burr, 2003; charon, 1998; hall, 2002; norton, 1997, 2000, 2013). charon (1998) outlines the complex relationships involved in identity, which he describes as: an important part of self-concept. it is who the individual thinks he or she is and who is announced to the world in word and action. it arises in interaction, it is reaffirmed in interaction, and it is changed in interaction. it is important to what we do. (p. 5) several important points appear in the excerpt above. when referring to “self-concept,” charon assigns a projection, persona, or wish fulfillment part to identity. charon also suggests that we reveal our identities via motivated actions in interacting with others. identity might be figuratively represented by a mirror that reflects who we are, how we see ourselves, how we perceive others, and how other people perceive us. norton (2000) also mentions the implication of language and how language command ascertains identity: it is through language that a person negotiates a sense of self within and across different sites at different points in time, and it is through language that a person gains access to—or is denied access to—powerful social networks that give learners the opportunity to speak. (p. 5) the use of language, whether it is spoken or written, is how a person can enter into a group. identity is to a significant extent established, negotiated, and developed through discourse. from this we can see that identity is fluid, and ever-changing depending on what someone wants to achieve. taking into consideration the aspects of fluidity and language, we will look at the complexities of bilingual writers whose professional writing identity is expressed in another language, not their native language, and in essence whose writing identity straddles two cultures (barron, 2003; moreno, 2002). furthermore, the work of cintron (1997), guerra (1998), and kells, balester, and villanueva (2004) propose rhetoric as an element that is deeply connected to identity. this in turn leads directly to baca (2008), who confirms “rhetoric as a mediating, identity-forming activity” (p. 8). therefore, the present research explores the continuous second language writing practices and learning processes of two academic professors in a large public university in mexico (universidad de guanajuato). the research uses narrative inquiry and examines how the two professors confront diverse elements that influence and/or play a strong role in the creation of their authorial identity based upon their opinions and lived experiences. additionally, the participants’ approaches and strategies used for academic writing in a second language (english and german) is studied and their relationship to sustain and develop the participants’ academic identity and position. at the same time, this research goes beyond the basic issue of first language writing identity. although the issue of writing identity is a strong element of this research, the internal language and identity struggles to find a voice emerge as a key issue in this research. this issue of bilingual voice and its relationship to writer identity is an area that needs to be researched more in order to understand second language writing and, more specifically, academic writing. second language writing and identity second language writing has always been at the core of heritage language education, but only recently has it opened up more in the english as 117profile vol. 18, no.1, january-june 2016. issn 1657-0790 (printed) 2256-5760 (online). bogotá, colombia. pages 115-127 struggling authorial identity of second language university academic writers in mexico a second language (esl) field (leeman, rabin, & román-mendoza, 2011). in fact, in recent decades there has been a growing interest in the multifaceted relationship between language and identity. this has made sociocultural concerns more relevant in recent years insofar as they are now being considered as relevant (block, 2007). nevertheless, there has been little research on bilingual academic writers in university settings where attention is given to the professional practices of second language writers and, in particular, to writers’ language choices and discourse identities which emerge through individual professional practice (olinger, 2011; storch, 2005). there are powerful studies, such as that by ivanič (1998), that explore in detail the construction of identity in first language users or those by matsuda (1997, 1999, 2003), who has studied in-depth issues of contrastive rhetoric and the author’s voice using english as the benchmark for evaluation. the issue that seems to be less explored is the voice of the actual user and how it is dealt with on a daily basis in the user’s professional work life. more importantly, the previous work does not locate the second language user as the focus, but the language itself. in fact, if looked at in detail, the only close definition that is given by ivanič (1998) is the concept of “autobiographical self,” which is the ever evolving complexities of one’s past self and this was not designed for intercultural work because her participants all were native speakers of english. this definition is perhaps too broad for the purpose of our study. as such, it has been reduced in scope to a smaller definition for english as a foreign language (efl). our participants deal with multiple literacies and languages to construct their experiences of second language writing. as a result, the definition of identity used in this article attempts to bridge the gap between the native (l1) and the second (l2) languages and relies on the definition that the participants give as a result of using a second language as a means of communication (yang, 2013). therefore, this article provides a space for the two participants to tell their stories, collective or individual, in an ethnographic setting where reflexivity is present to explore the past and present and how they are interrelated. the emphasis of the research is on the participants, rather than their use of language (olivas, 2009). here the participants are narrating a personal story which is part of their professional life and focuses on the use of a second language as a tool to maintain their academic status within their respective academic communities. while there is much evidence of the work in the field of authorial identity construction (armengolcastells, 2001; bell, 2000; casanave, 2004; clark & ivanič, 1997; clegg, 2008; connor, 1996; crawford, lengeling, mora pablo, & heredia-ocampo, 2014; kroll, 1990; purves, 1988; russell, 1991; simmons, 2011; wodak, 2012), this work has a strong tendency to focus on the english language as a benchmark for evaluation and/or validation. furthermore, this research tends to reduce or limit the internal influence of the first language and the social patterns that accompany them, making the writing process about english only (canagarajah, 1993; crawford, 2007; holliday, 2005; kubota, 2002). in fact, there is indeed a widespread conception that because english is the international language that bridges multiple cultures, learning english enables understanding of the world and cultural diversity, despite its odd fallacy that any english speaker has international understanding. (kubota, 2002, p. 22) there s eem to have b een fe w attempts to understand the influence of identity inside scholarly engagement from the point of view of the users where priority is given to the processes the users live when writing in a second language (simmons et al., 2013). here we are looking at how the second language writers use a second language as a professional tool and its interconnection with the concept of author identity. specifically, we consider how the two universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras118 crawford, mora pablo, & lengeling professors deal with the process of creating a working model of writing that works for them and allows them to publish in a second language within their specific disciplines, which are not part of the realm of language studies. in this case, we are looking at two professors that research in the areas of public safety and chemical engineering. the study: participants and narrative research we selected two second language users that are quite successful as researchers in our institution, in the sense that they have demonstrated the ability to publish effectively in a second language. between them, they have published over 150 articles in international peer reviewed journals within their professional areas of expertise. both are members of the national organization of researchers (sistema nacional de investigadores, sni) and hold a level two status (three levels in total). initially, they were asked to write a narrative frame that described their preparation in second language writing (barkhuizen, 2014b). the narrative frame served as a tool to create a backdrop for an open-ended interview process. this narrative was an opportunity for the participants to generate their own voice and establish agency at the beginning of the research process. the idea was to let the participants be more participative in the research process. the aforementioned was carried out based upon the theoretical construct of narrative research, which is an open and flexible approach. barkhuizen (2014a) describes the complexities of narrative research thus: what stories are, and indeed what narrative research is, however, remains far from agreed upon in language teaching learning [ltl] research. there is no single, all-encompassing definition of narrative (research), probably because the same situation exists in other disciplines from which empirical work in ltl draws its theoretical and methodological assumptions and approaches. (p. 450) this disagreement shows the problems and also the similarities that are found when defining what constitute narrative research (stanley & temple, 2008). we decided to take a position of flexibility in the sense that we allowed our research participants to help shape the narratives by using the open-ended interviews based upon the narrative frames. we also tried to create a thick description by also opening up a discussion of the data with the participants, something which allows for the data to speak more for itself and also shape the result of the study (denzin & lincoln, 2000; holliday, 2002). in order to do so, the two participants analyzed the transcribed data and discussed it with us to see if our written perspectives were a true reflection of their lived experience as second language writers as well as the sociopolitical discourses that made particular meaning-making options available to them (pavlenko, 2007). this is because our participants are immersed in a writing process that combines their chosen discipline with a possibly forced second language writing option which is part of their professional identity. therefore, narrative is an ideal approach to examine the participants’ professional practice and their second language writing experiences (pavlenko, 2007). by constructing narratives, participants were engaged in narrative “knowledging” (barkhuizen, 2011) by making meaning of certain important issues and experiences in their professional practice, and thereby giving these issues and experiences coherence so that we and the participants were better able to understand and interpret them. this was all done in order to construct the participants’ stories and give light to their identity. this provides the reader with a multifaceted view of bilingual writing identity which was constructed through the lived experience of the participants in the research process. the two participants were given the option to decide on what language they would like to use in this research; we also gave them pseudonyms to protect their identity. 119profile vol. 18, no.1, january-june 2016. issn 1657-0790 (printed) 2256-5760 (online). bogotá, colombia. pages 115-127 struggling authorial identity of second language university academic writers in mexico findings the initial stages of writing in a second language: the influence of another person for both participants, the process of beginning to write in a second language started due to their professional lives. neither one was interested in writing in a second language; it was forced upon them. first when they studied for their respective phd degrees and then later as a requirement within the institution where they work. one completed his doctoral studies in penal law with a specialization in criminology from a german university and his area of expertise is public security. the other earned his doctorate in chemical engineering in mexico. in the area of chemistry, the participant had to learn english. on the one hand, they needed to enter a new academic world and write in the language which is highly regarded in their profession. for one of the participants it was english and for the other participant it was german. however, both of them had the influence of a tutor or supervisor who helped them at the beginning and corrected their work in their graduate studies. in the next excerpt, a participant describes how his supervisor advised him how to approach academic writing: my supervisor used to tell us: “write your article in spanish,” and he would translate it into english. well, he speaks english perfectly, but he used to say: “do it and i will do the translation”… but then, i think he didn’t do the translation. he wanted us to present the ideas and he used that document as a basis to rephrase it, right? probably, back in that time, i understood “oh, i will write it in spanish and then i will try to translate it”, but after a while i realized that it was not right because the article didn’t fulfill my expectations. i understood that what i had to do was to write in english from the very beginning. (gerardo)1 1 the data samples were translated from spanish to english for publication purposes. for the other participant, who writes in german, he had a similar situation: one day my supervisor told me “you are going to learn german. i just got you a scholarship”, and honestly, i said “oh, my god!” so, at nights, i used to go to the goethe-institut (cultural institute of the german federal republic) to learn german. (jesus) when he started to write in german, his tutor had an important role as a reviewer and guide of his work: my article was reviewed by klaus, my supervisor. so, i wrote it and he said “this is bad…pzazpzaz” and he gave it back to me “correct it,” and i corrected it. (jesus) being a “newcomer” to the second language writing process is far more complex than just knowing the language; the participants’ areas of expertise also played an important role. most of the material they read and had access to was in the second language. this is where this unique process of having to deal with multiple literacies begins to manifest itself in the writing process. jesus mentions this in the following: in my area of law, the biggest and strongest part is in german. the gringos have a very big conceptual issue when writing, even the british, well, the british less than the gringos. so, i don’t read [in english] in my area. i read a little more in british english because the british has fewer conceptual issues [sic]. as seen above, there is a process that begins where the participant classifies academic writing in his area, as well as ideological thinking, that is, the conception the participant has about the three countries: the united states, britain, and germany. this implies a sociological process that influences the written language development for this person. he clearly states he has problems with how americans write. furthermore, this same participant acknowledges his closeness to german and lets his students know that his area of law is written in german, so that they should perhaps start reading in german. this passes on one of the underlying conflicts to another new group: his universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras120 crawford, mora pablo, & lengeling students. now his students are forced to start dealing with multiple literacies in their profession. in the excerpt below, we can appreciate how this participant is connected to german emotionally: so, emotionally i am closer to german. i acknowledge that in my area. i always tell students that penal law is written in german. it starts in german, so…i try to read the originals. fortunately, there are many translations, but they are translations. (jesus) this displays an emotional tie to the language and its relationship to penal law. it also shows how he uses german in order to understand specifics of his area. this use of german in his content area also has an effect upon his teaching and writing. this in turn implies the possibility that the use of german is occurring at a subconscious level concerning writing and possibly his thinking. this type of dual literacy does not occur in first language writing. it is this issue of two languages or more at play in the process of creating a written voice that becomes more complex for the second language author. this form of complexity does not exist for the monolingual writer; it can only be appreciated by a bilingual or multilingual writer. this emotional connection becomes a powerful force within the writing process and needs to be dealt with by the second language user. as he clearly manifests that a translation of an academic work is considered weaker, he wants his students to read the originals. this starts to raise a deeper question. does he consider his own writing as a translation or a weaker version of knowledge? the process of writing in a second language entering into a new academic discourse community is a complex task. it involves struggles, conflicts, and differences of writing conventions between l1 and l2. this in turn has emotional impacts on the writer. having a plan or strategies concerning how to approach this new writing process is needed as well as how to transform the participants’ new writing identities in their l1 identities and negotiate these identities into l2. these two participants seemed to overlap their two writing communities (l1 and l2) simultaneously. at the beginning, they relied on their l1 to start writing in their l2: at the beginning, the problem i had was that i tried to be very literal. i don’t know, i thought about the idea in spanish and then i tried to translate it and many times you realize that it doesn’t necessarily work. (gerardo) jesus’ first technique to approach writing in german was to rely on his l1 and directly translate his writing. but with experience, he became aware of the differences between these two languages and the problems of this abovementioned translation technique. before starting to write, the same participant mentions how important it was to have a plan and to know exactly what he wanted to express: for me it is like writing a diary. i mean, you write the diary at the end of the day when you know what you are going to write, which step to follow. if i don’t know how this is going to start and how it is going to end…i need to know exactly where i am going. the structure is always, always, always in spanish, the big structure, and then i tried to think about it in another language. in german sometimes it is difficult, but i tried and it gets reduced, because german is very concise. (jesus) according to this participant, the structure he followed was spanish-based and then he tried to follow the same in german, but it is not rhetorically possible to accomplish. this in turn could be linked to the idea that the use of translation is not an appropriate step in the writing process. as these participants get more and more involved in their second language writing communities, they find their own resources and strategies to approach their writing tasks. for example, gerardo mentions how reading in the l2 has helped him to approach l2 writing: 121profile vol. 18, no.1, january-june 2016. issn 1657-0790 (printed) 2256-5760 (online). bogotá, colombia. pages 115-127 struggling authorial identity of second language university academic writers in mexico maybe i don’t do it as spontaneous as i would like, sitting and using the keyboard in the computer. my procedure is more like “i’m going to read some articles to get familiar with the topic, how it is structured in english and then i will start to write” and then if i get stuck, i will read again to see how they have a paragraph, to get some ideas and then i continue, and finally i review and then i read it again. but sometimes you never believe you are correct. this participant is always questioning what he writes in l2, but at the same time, he relies on what he has written and published previously to follow the organization of a text. the next excerpt illustrates this: before i start writing, i read one of the articles i have already published, to get familiar with the terminology or the form, how to organize the ideas. i try to read some articles related to the topic. (gerardo) to become familiar with the topic he is writing about, it becomes essential for this participant to feel more confident in approaching writing in l2. these strategies give him security and confidence to write in another language. the same participant elaborates on this process: well, i have many texts and i know where they are. i know, for example, where the references are and it is faster, i pull all the references i’m going to use. all the texts that i read, i mark them, so i know exactly where they are, or more less, when i write. i don’t have a big space, but i put all the books on the desk, with little papers. (gerardo) b oth par ticipants acknow ledge the us e of previously written work in order to produce a new one. for publication purposes, they seem to rely on their own past work before embarking on the task of writing a new article. perhaps using these successful pieces of work helps the participants understand what they have to do for the next articles they are writing. reading in l2 also plays an important role in this process and can be seen as a way for them to adapt their writing to l2 academic standards. in essence, what can be seen is a cyclic process of permanent construction of a text, where each new text is built on the previous one. it is almost as if the second language writing process is one of continuous development. time is an important element in the progression. one participant mentions how he plans the way he writes in the l2: when i have time, i dedicate four or five hours, i mean, from 11:00 p.m. to 5 or 6:00 a.m., preferably on vacations. unless i have many ideas, i write them all, half an hour and ready. i put them in order and then i leave them in standby until i have the time to structure them correctly. (gerardo) when the manuscript is submitted to an academic journal and they receive the reviewers’ comments, both participants experience anxiety. the anxiety is not related to their professional knowledge, but it is connected to how these participants may perceive what they have written in another language. the focus seems to be on how they are interpreted as writers and the anxiety is related exclusively to issues of second language conventions. this type of anxiety is much less likely to occur for a native writer: the corrections the supervisor made for us were…always the same. every time we were doing better and better, but above all, the way we structured our ideas. probably in spanish we tend to write long sentences and in english we need to rephrase them in short sentences, even the most basic things. at the beginning it was “please, have a native speaker review your document because you have many mistakes” but lately, they don’t make those comments. it is more like “careful with the typos.” (gerardo) the process of writing in an l2 can be stressful, but with time and more practice, the participants can see how they develop their use of academic language in another language and they seem to be entering into a new discourse community. this entering is a type of socialization that requires public acceptance in an academic community. the following excerpt shows how gerardo goes about this process: universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras122 crawford, mora pablo, & lengeling maybe there was a moment in which i think you become familiar with the reading, with all the information that we have in our area, all the information we have to review is in english. [when i write now] i think it looks more like the ones seen in journals. the key is what it looks like in an academic journal. the goal is public acceptance of an academic activity that requires outside validation. this implies that producing a replicate of an existing text is a positive goal in the academic social context. a critical framework is required because it becomes easy to see that a process cannot be separated from a product, and language cannot be divorced from culture. this is due to the consideration that a writer may bring different types of professional knowledge based on lived experiences to the writing activity. as a result, internal tensions may arrive where the focus deals with conforming to linguistic patterns, rather than producing knowledge. this is where the user is forced to shift from l1 to l2. language shift: goodbye l1 and welcome l2 from a s o ciolinguist ic p oint of v ie w, t he participants’ language shift has been gradual and one participant has shown through the narrative to be more dominant in the second language than in his native language. becoming a user of the l2 in the academic world might imply the language shift which refers to one language becoming more dominant than the other. in the case of these two participants, spanish was their native language and english and german were the second languages. gradually, over time, the language of the wider academic community (english and german) displaces the minority language (spanish), as in the case of the following participant: i think that one is forced to begin to be bilingual, in the sense of writing. i think the identity…they force you to…if you want to publish in the important magazines, well, they are in english, and so they force you to do this part of your job in english. so, i think they could even tell you, “forget your spanish, your native language.” for example, when you go to conferences, you have to write the presentation, the slides of power point presentations in english, the proceedings in english, so technically they force you to lose your identity because of the context where you work. (gerardo) even when he continues to use both languages in different professional contexts, english satisfies his professional needs and spanish is reserved exclusively for his private life, as he points out: i think there have been cases that, due to the demands of the profession of chemical engineering, you need to either move in english or not, or you drown in the ocean. but there have been people that they have done it and the evidence is that, for example, they are not in the national researchers’ system, they do not have promep [programa de mejoramiento del profesorado/program of professional development] profile, they do not have collaboration with other colleagues, or they find it difficult to send students on exchange programs to continue with their postgraduate studies. it is almost like…an excess in spanish is something…like spanish is exclusively for your private life. (gerardo) with being a bilingual person and a competent user of english, the professional doors seem to open easier in his field, not only for publishing but also for establishing contacts in other countries, using english as a lingua franca. this needs to be seen as an underlying conflict because the user is required to use a second language to be professionally accepted. and at work, english is the most important because they indirectly ask you to use it. if you want to have an important contact in a different country, it doesn’t matter in which country. for example i have a colleague in denmark but he is chinese, so we have to speak in english. (gerardo) the influence of the l2 in his personal and professional encounters becomes more evident in the following extract. english has gradually infiltrated his l1 writing and this seems to interfere at times. now 123profile vol. 18, no.1, january-june 2016. issn 1657-0790 (printed) 2256-5760 (online). bogotá, colombia. pages 115-127 struggling authorial identity of second language university academic writers in mexico the user is also dealing with stress when writing in his native language: sometimes, when they ask me to write an article in spanish, it is more difficult than doing it in english, because i am more used to the structure in english, and in spanish…it should be simpler but it is not. (gerardo) the other participant comments on how he recognizes that he now writes in spanish as he would write in german. this is interesting because the l2 is moving in and affecting his l1 at a deeper rhetorical level. jesus’s excerpt shows the internal conflict that can be felt by a bilingual writer as he works out how to separate the languages in his professional writing: i’m less redundant in german than in spanish and in english than in spanish. i think i am more precise due to the language, it forces you to be more…for example, germans can say “i’m going to explain three things to you” and it means three things, one, two, three. and in spanish they say “i’m going to tell you some things.” it is not like one, two, three, then when you write it is four, five. so, in spanish, i do the same. i’m going to express three ideas in three points. the paragraph that is more difficult for me is the first one, because in the first one you need to explain the presentation of the problem, my theoretical framework, and my conclusions, and after that it is simpler. it is the same structure, so it is always the same. writing professionally in another language for publication (and specifically in english) has been regarded as a sign of success in the academic world and in particular in the institution where these participants work. however, the dominance this language has on their lives carries over to how they see their l1. they now seem to find it more difficult to write in l1. they initially relied on their l1 to approach l2 writing and now they seem to rely more on l2 writing to approach l1. here we can observe the conflict of trying to establish a second language writing identity. a shifting identity is present in the sense that these professionals have to deal with two rhetorical patterns, two discourse communities, and two different writing standards. this creates a space for underlying conflict at psychological and social levels that are manifested through language use. this process of moving between languages is present because of the fact that the users are bilingual. the traditional writing processes rarely discuss the aspect of working inside the frame of more than one language. conclusion it can be clearly seen that there are multiple conflicts or struggles that occur in the second language writing process for these participants. it is also clear that the issue of dealing with two languages is a factor in relation to the participants’ authorial identity. how this is explained or classified leaves some room for debate. we, as bilingual researchers, have selected the “iceberg model” (see figure 1) within the conceptual frame as outlined by cummins (1992, 2001) as a possible way to illustrate what may be happening underneath the surface of the participants in their unique approaches to dealing with second language writing. the basic reasoning is that the participants have made a continuous reference to different types of struggles focused on the use of second language writing. never was there a reference to a struggle in connection to their professional knowledge as university professors or researchers. this implies that it is possible for an underlying linguistic conflict to be present that is not visible in the participants’ professional writing, but only in their personal narrative of language use. the users of a second language are engaged in a surface fluency use of the language in the production of their texts for their professional activities, but at the same time they are also engaged in developing an underlying operating system to deal with the use of the second language. these underlying operating systems seem to be comprised of social universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras124 crawford, mora pablo, & lengeling and psychological issues that tend to fall outside the traditional framework of authorial identity; even though it is evident they influence it. past focus has been on the surface results rather than looking closer at the underlying issues. here, what we have done is to draw attention to the hidden battle and struggles that academic writers have in writing in another language. most of the issues brought forward are centered on personal and social issues that are indirectly related to writing in a second language, but definitely influence it. the result is that we do need to carry out more research on the common underlying proficiency and its impact on not only the individual, but the broader social issues of second language writing in terms of writer identity. in particular as regards how it is interconnected to the construction of professional knowledge and the norms that make this knowledge acceptable for publication. we have also struggled to try to define exactly what identity is and how it is dealt with in second language writing, even though we have not been able to offer a clear definition of what it is. we have, through this study, come to have a better understanding of how second language users find a place for second language writing in their professional lives. as researchers in the field of applied linguistics, we have tried to let our co-workers from the university take control of their agency in the narrative and present it from their perspective of actual successful users of the language in specific academic disciplines. these participants have shown how a second language has slowly moved into aspects of their professional life, impacting the participants at different levels. the participants have had to return to their l1 for guidance rather than the l2; this implies a serious shortcoming of the l2 classroom in terms of figure 1. the iceberg model (cummins, 2001) 125profile vol. 18, no.1, january-june 2016. issn 1657-0790 (printed) 2256-5760 (online). bogotá, colombia. pages 115-127 struggling authorial identity of second language university academic writers in mexico policy and practice in the teaching of second language writing. on the other hand, it was also explicitly stated that the l2 now, in turn, influences the l1 writing. this is what illustrates this permanent underlying struggle that a second language writer lives with. this struggle, in particular, should be addressed in the efl/esl classrooms where language production for evaluation purposes appears to displace production for professional or contextual purposes. these participants have worked over a long time to find a process where in the end the goal of writing is being able to use language for specific purposes in their professional lives. they both have found success, but they found it outside of the social space of second language learning. this should be a cause for concern among efl/esl writing professionals e.g., the way in which we have treated aspects of identity in the past and the value that has been placed on the first language knowledge that is brought into the discussion by the user. it would seem to be sensible to re-address much of the past research on second language writing and try to place a stronger focus on the user, rather than on language itself to better understand second language writing. writing is a socially constructed activity that involves far more than just a simple linear process of production of a different set of linguistic rules. it is a deeper complex struggle that requires more research in particular of bilingual writers. references armengol-castells, l. 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(2013). conflicts and configurations in a liminal 127profile vol. 18, no.1, january-june 2016. issn 1657-0790 (printed) 2256-5760 (online). bogotá, colombia. pages 115-127 struggling authorial identity of second language university academic writers in mexico space: sotl scholars’ identity development. teaching & learning inquiry: the issotl journal, 1(2), 9-21. stanley, l., & temple, b. (2008). narrative methodologies: subjects, silences, re-readings and analyses. qualitative research, 8(3), 275-281. storch, n. (2005). collaborative writing: product, process, and students’ reflections. journal of second language writing, 14(3), 153-173. wodak, r. (2012). language, power, and identity. language teaching, 45(2), 215-233. yang, s. (2013). autobiographical writing and identity in efl education. london, uk: routledge. about the authors troy crawford holds an ms in labor psychology from universidad de guanajuato, an ma in tesol from the university of london, and a phd in language studies from the university of kent. he is a member of the mexican national research system focusing his research on identity in second language writing. irasema mora pablo is a professor at universidad de guanajuato, mexico. she holds a phd in applied linguistics from the university of kent, uk. she has conducted research on bilingualism, latinos’ studies, identity formation, and native and non-native teachers and has published chapters and articles in mexico, the united states, and colombia. m. martha lengeling works at universidad de guanajuato and holds an ma in tesol (west virginia university) and a phd in language studies (university of kent, uk). she is the editor of the mextesol journal and currently is a member of the mexican national research system. her areas of research are teacher training and teacher identity formation. 13profile vol. 17, no. 2, july-december 2015. issn 1657-0790 (printed) 2256-5760 (online). bogotá, colombia. pages 13-27 http://dx.doi.org/10.15446/profile.v17n2.44194 global professional identity in deterretorialized spaces: a case study of a critical dialogue between expert and novice nonnative english speaker teachers identidad profesional global en espacios desterritorializados: un estudio de caso de los diálogos críticos entre profesores de inglés no nativos carmen helena guerrero nieto*1 universidad distrital francisco josé de caldas, bogotá, colombia bryan meadows**2 fairleigh dickinson university, teaneck, usa this study analyzes the online, peer-peer dialogue between two groups of nonnative english-speaking teachers who are attending graduate programs in colombia and the united states. framed by the theoretical concepts of critical pedagogy and global professional identity, a qualitative analysis of the data shows that their expert vs. novice roles played a significant part in shaping their positions on the four themes that they discussed: the role of english language teaching in the global world, institutional constraints on teachers, whose culture to teach, and linguistic diversity in the classroom. this study highlights the responsibility of teacher education programs to cultivate healthy nonnative english speaker teachers’ professional identities given the global complexities that continue to unfold around these teachers. key words: critical pedagogy, expert/novice teachers, global professional identity, nonnative english speaker teacher. en este estudio se analiza el diálogo en línea entre profesores de inglés no nativos, estudiantes de maestría en colombia y estados unidos. el estudio se sustentó en pedagogía crítica e identidad profesional global. el análisis de los datos muestra que los roles experto/novato jugaron un papel relevante en las posiciones que los participantes asumieron con relación a cuatro temas: el papel de la enseñanza del inglés en el mundo global, las limitaciones institucionales sobre los docentes, qué cultura enseñar, y la diversidad lingüística en el salón. este estudio señala la responsabilidad de los programas de formación docente en promover un desarrollo saludable de la identidad profesional de los profesores no hablantes nativos, dadas las complejidades globales a las que se enfrentan. palabras clave: identidad profesional global, pedagogía crítica, profesores expertos/novatos, profesores de inglés no nativos. * e-mail: helena.guerrero.ud@gmail.com ** e-mail: meadowsb@fdu.edu how to cite this article (apa, 6th ed.): guerrero nieto, c. h., & meadows, b. (2015). global professional identity in deterretorialized spaces: a case study of a critical dialogue between expert and novice nonnative english speaker teachers. profile issues in teachers’ professional development, 17(2), 13-27. http://dx.doi.org/10.15446/profile.v17n2.44194. this article was received on june 28, 2014, and accepted on march 14, 2015. this is an open access article distributed under the terms of the creative commons license attribution-noncommercial-noderivatives 4.0 international license. consultation is possible at http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/. http://dx.doi.org/10.15446/profile.v17n2.44194 mailto:helena.guerrero.ud%40gmail.com?subject= mailto:meadowsb%40fdu.edu?subject= http://dx.doi.org/10.15446/profile.v17n2.44194 http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/ universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras14 guerrero nieto & meadows introduction the field of english language teaching (elt) is recognized as a global phenomenon. in many ways, globalization has exposed contradictions and opened the door to elt professionals being able to challenge the conventional boundaries of authority and legitimacy in terms of both what content to teach and who will teach it (kachru, 1986, 1991). for example, elt scholarship in the critical tradition (phillipson, 1992) has illustrated the historical legacy of colonialism, which marginalizes nonnative english speaker teachers (nnests) for not meeting the british australian north american (bana) cultural and linguistic profile. the global spread of elt now means that the majority of english teachers worldwide are nnests (canagarajah, 1999; seidlhofer, 2005). however, it is still common for nnest job applicants to be scrutinized for their place of origin and skin color rather than their linguistic expertise and pedagogical training (braine, 2010; mahboob, 2010; rudolph, 2013). as fundamental constructs such as legitimacy and authority are being challenged and redefined from multiple vantage points within the profession and across the globe, university teacher education programs have an important duty to develop nnests who can navigate these professional debates with agency and legitimacy. our stance is that teacher education programs that serve nnests should be informed by critical pedagogy such that nnests may resist the colonial legacy of elt, which could work against them professionally. in this paper, we report on a pedagogical intervention that brought together in dialogue nnests who were attending graduate programs in teacher education in colombia and in the united states. the two sets of students were connected using an online education platform and exchanged commentary on readings in critical pedagogy; we view dialogue as a key to unlocking subconscious pedagogical knowledge. our research question was the following: how do graduate students’ dialogues provide them with spaces to activate critical awareness of their global professional identity? conceptual background global professional identity the complex interconnections that are characteristic of globalization today present important challenges for second-language teacher education (slte) (kumaravadivelu, 2012; lauder, brown, dillabough, & halsey, 2006; warschauer, 2000). the range of contexts in which teacher candidates may enter is diverse. slte has expanded beyond a training orientation to a broader charge that includes the cognitive dimensions of teacher practice and teachers’ professional identities (richards, 2008). following ur (2002), we recognize teachers as committed to the profession, connected to the elt community, principle-driven, and autonomous. the elt field today requires a professional identity that is also globally minded, that is, aware that any teaching context is situated at both global and local scales simultaneously (kanno & stuart, 2011; varghese, 2011). we refer to this as a global professional identity. this notion of global professional identity requires that teacher preparation programs address the dual scales of global and local to help teacher candidates “to make sense of various tensions and challenges” (varghese 2011, p. 20) they encounter in the profession that could disadvantage them professionally (hawkins & norton, 2009; kumaravadivelu, 2012; pennycook, 2004). nonnative english speaker teachers (nnests) historically, the labels native speaker (ns) and nonnative speaker (nns) have demarcated lines of professional legitimacy within the elt field. critical scrutiny of the privilege of the ns label took shape in the 1990s and continues to the present (braine, 2010; 15profile vol. 17, no. 2, july-december 2015. issn 1657-0790 (printed) 2256-5760 (online). bogotá, colombia. pages 13-27 global professional identity in deterretorialized spaces: a case study of a critical dialogue... holliday, 2006; kabel, 2009; liu, 1999; mahboob, 2010; mckay, 2003; samimy, 2008). this body of research encourages elt professionals to recognize that (a) the ns/nns labels are social constructions rather than inherent personal attributes, (b) bana cultural and linguistic varieties may not always be the appropriate models for students, and (c) effective language teaching requires both linguistic and pedagogical expertise and nss and nnss must demonstrate both in hiring situations (mahboob, 2010). this line of critique is taking the field toward a more inclusive stance by which forms of expertise in english-speaking environments worldwide, that were previously discredited for being nonnative, incorrect, or inauthentic, are finding legitimate spaces (e.g., english as an international language [eil], english as a lingua franca [elf], english for specific purposes [esp]). critical pedagogy for second language teacher education given these professional challenges presented to nnests, critical pedagogy becomes a necessary component of language teacher education programs that can help them shape a global professional identity that maximizes their agency in the field. existing studies have demonstrated the merit of critical pedagogy for language teacher development. to take two examples, brutt-griffler and samimy (1999) and diaz-greenberg and nevin (2003) show how reexamining the world through a critical lens makes teaching and learning in a language teacher education program more meaningful and situated. to freire (1970), the objective of critical pedagogy is transformation. to achieve this goal, he introduces dialogue, liberating teaching, and problem-posing strategies. for our pedagogical intervention, we adopted dialogue as the strategy for promoting critical reflection among our participants. the concept of dialogue positions teachers and students in a horizontal relationship in which the contributions of both are valued (freire, 1970, 2002; shor & freire, 1987; wink, 2000). pedagogical intervention: schoology exchange we are both english language teacher educators and faculty members at schools of education, one in colombia and one in the us. our teacher education programs serve students who will be labeled nnests upon entering the profession and who will likely encounter disadvantages in the elt profession tied to the colonial legacy. we are both influenced by critical theory (pennycook, 2010) and believe that questioning received commonsense is beneficial for all stakeholders in the field (e.g., scholars, teachers, students, administrators). we designed an online pedagogical intervention t o i mp l e m e nt w it h b ot h g roup s of s tu d e nt s simultaneously during the semester. we selected the online educational platform schoology to be the means by which we could bring our two classes together while inhabiting distinct geographic locations (i.e., colombia and the us). this technology allowed for a deterretorialized space online in which students could explore the critical notions that were being introduced to them while gaining knowledge about global and local perspectives through dialogue with one another. we agree with matsuda (2003) that nns teachers require the opportunity to make connections with each other and that the benefit is maximized when these collaborations can be accomplished in transnational, globalized spaces. as teacher educators, we found this pedagogical intervention to be a way to encourage in our graduate students the type of global professional identity that will serve them professionally. to d e t ai l t he op e r at i on of s cho ol o g y, we presented students with three critical readings and led them to form dialogue exchanges around their universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras16 guerrero nieto & meadows reactions to the readings. in sequence, the readings explored (1) conventional notions of elt methods (kumaravadivelu, 2003), (2) post-structural notions of culture in the language classroom (kramsch, 1998), (3) the role of nnests in the profession (mahboob, 2010), and (4) the role of students’ native languages (l1) in language classrooms (risager, 2007). ater each reading, individuals in one class would post messages to the schoology wall. students in the counterpart class would then type comments following each post, and a conversation chain would develop as commenters responded back and forth. the design of the online platform allowed for what bailey, curtis, and nunan (2001) refer to as an “interactive group journal” (p. 70). participants posted their reflections on course readings and were encouraged to respond to the posts of others. this design allowed for participants to formulate their ideas about language teaching and to build their professional voices in reciprocal relationships with fellow language teachers. importantly, although we initiated the critical dialogue, the two groups of students took ownership of the conversation by introducing their own topics to the conversation strands. our two groups represent language teachers at different stages in their professional careers. we recognize the graduate students at the colombian site as expert teachers because of their, on average, seven years of classroom experience teaching english as a foreign language (tefl). the fourteen participants in this group hold ba degrees in tefl, and all are colombian. their ages range between 28 and 35 years; four teach at the college level, and the rest teach in high schools. conversely, we recognize the graduate students at the united states site as novice teachers. of the twelve students, only one reported firsthand experience teaching english in his home country; the remaining eleven had no teaching experience. the class consisted of eight females and four males who ranged in age between 25 and 38 years. an additional characteristic was that the twelve were international students who planned to obtain their master’s degrees in the united states and return to their home nations to take up teaching positions. five students came from saudi arabia, five from china, one from oman, and one from israel. although the two sets of participants represented both experts and novices, they shared received status as nnests. the expert-novice dialogue led both sides to analyze, struggle to understand, and call into question commonsense notions that are currently under debate within the field. to us, this type of dialogic exchange is an important part of slte programs because we understand teacher development to be a collaborative project of professional meaning-making (bailey et al., 2001). following roberts (1998), contact with experienced teachers can help pre-service teachers in developing a professional identity “not by the particular content of a mentor’s thinking but by the attitude they display towards their own practice” (p. 77). the research on slte (borg, 2004; roberts, 1998; tsui, 2003) recognizes differing qualities between expert and novice teacher groupings and recognizes that those differences appear in their talk about their practice. for example, olshtain and kupferberg (1998) found that experienced language teachers in their study grounded their reflective narratives in reallife classroom events (i.e., realis discourse), whereas novice teachers grounded theirs in the hypothetical and the potential (i.e., irrealis). method we followed a cas e study res earch design because of the characteristics of our setting and our populations. case studies have been defined as a research method that allows the researcher to examine a particular unit (i.e., case) in depth in a specific context. that is, the aim is for researchers to interpret 17profile vol. 17, no. 2, july-december 2015. issn 1657-0790 (printed) 2256-5760 (online). bogotá, colombia. pages 13-27 global professional identity in deterretorialized spaces: a case study of a critical dialogue... what is happening in that particular setting and not to extrapolate generalizations beyond the immediate setting, as described in merriam (2009). data collection we collected all student contributions to the schoolog y site over the course of a university semester (i.e., 15 weeks). there were 26 responses to the assigned course discussion topics, which in turn gathered a total of 118 response comments as students developed conversation chains after each posting. the majority of posts and comments were written, with a small portion consisting of audio/video; these postings constitute the primary data source. a secondary source of data came from interviews with the participants in the united states one year following the schoology project. interviews were scheduled based on student availability and in three sessions: (1) two students from china, (2) three from saudi arabia and one from oman, and (3) one from israel. the aim of the interviews was to elicit from participants reflective statements about the significance of the dialogues for their teacher development. general questions were organized beforehand (e.g., could you describe the schoology project? what do you feel you learned from it?), but impromptu questions were also used to probe student responses during the interview. interviews were not feasible at the colombian site, so we had to work with the data that were available, as is the case for qualitative research (holliday, 2007). moreover, because the interviews were secondary data sources, this did not negatively impact the analysis. participants at both sites granted the researchers permission to use the qualitative data for research purposes. data analysis procedures we collaborated in the data analysis using online conferencing tools, beginning with qualitative coding procedures on the schoology postings. these procedures (creswell, 2008; freeman, 1998) were conducted in three stages: (1) memoing the schoology data with the initial development of codes and themes, (2) applying codes to the data, and (3) sorting and grouping themes by rate of occurrence while closely considering their interrelationships. we worked independently on each stage, but the overall process was collaborative in that we checked with one another at the conclusion of each stage to compare results and negotiate discrepancies. this collaboration supports the trustworthiness of the findings. additionally, it is worth noting that our personal experiences working with our students as their course instructors played some part in our analysis. we came to know our respective groups of students well by talking with them and observing them during class time and by reading their written assignments. following holliday (2007), our personal experiences in the research settings served a supporting role in the data analysis as a whole. our thematic analysis focused on the ways in which students integrated critical pedagogy into their self-positioning in their schoology contributions online. extending from our interest in critical pedagogy, our lens during coding was on students’ positions that challenged conventional boundaries in the elt field and other similar stances that expressed empowerment or social consciousness. findings we use the labels teacher education program in colombia, (tepic) and teacher education program in the united states, (tepus) to protect the anonymity of the sites and use pseudonyms when referring to individual students. below, we establish some contextual differences that helped shape the students’ responses. we then present and discuss the four themes that emerged in the data: the role of elt, universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras18 guerrero nieto & meadows institutional constraints, whose culture to teach, and linguistic diversity in language teaching. we discerned a number of contextual factors that we believe had an impact on the ways students participated in the schoology project. first, we recognized the different ways the two groups invoked teacher knowledge. for example, the tepic participants showed a greater grasp on “received knowledge” and “experiential knowledge” (wallace as cited in bailey et al., 2001, p. 99) because of their many years of teaching and their graduate coursework. the tepus participants frequently invoked experiential knowledge as language learners but not as teachers, as is consistent with the apprenticeship of observation (lortie, 1975). where olshtain and kupferberg (1998) found pre-service teacher narratives grounded in irrealis, the hypothetical, we found that pre-service teachers in our setting did speak to realis classroom experiences, but they did so from the perspective of language students rather than teachers. second, we realized that the students were participating in teacher education programs with different curricular foci. for example, the coursework at tepic is firmly entrenched in critical theor y, and the program objectives reflect this, stating, for example, that the main objective is to engage students in a critical examination of the pedagogy/culture relationship. in contrast, the design of the tepus is largely skills-based and does not include critical pedagogy as a component. thus, the schoology project was the first exposure to critical pedagogy for the tepus students. a third contextual factor is that the students were imagining for themselves different teaching contexts. the tepic students were in-service teachers who were already engaged in k-12 school populations and sometimes in areas of economic poverty, which brings stress to their professional settings. the tepus students, however, were preparing themselves for future teaching positions at universities in their home nations where social poverty is not as prominent an issue. given these contextual factors, we constructed table 1 to illustrate a summary of our findings. we inserted constructed descriptors to provide some flavor to the reader regarding how each student group developed each theme. because the tepus group showed variance in their contributions, their column sometimes shows more than one descriptor in one cell. theme one: the role of elt we acknowledge that our decisions as instructors had a hand in the themes that developed in the students’ exchanges online. this first theme likely originated with the first assigned reading on critical language pedagogy (kumaravadivelu, 2003). students at both locations read the same article and then used the schoology platform to exchange their reflections on the reading. tepic participants the tepic participants, for the most part, communicated a vision for elt as a source of transformation and empowerment, a worldview consistent with critical pedagogy. diego and daniela spoke passionately to the income gaps that define public education in colombia and directly invoked paradigm change. karen wrote that “the system is the problem” and gave a call to action: “we as future magisters have to face the reality and be part of the solution with our strategies and methodologies, also with our voices.”1 their stances are consistent with their critical theory coursework, in which tools of symbolic violence (bourdieu, 2003) such as neoliberal discourses are deconstructed, and their function to naturalize the commonsense of elite groups (armaline & hoover, 1989) is exposed. consistently, these participants spoke to their responsibilities as 1 student samples are reproduced verbatim. 19profile vol. 17, no. 2, july-december 2015. issn 1657-0790 (printed) 2256-5760 (online). bogotá, colombia. pages 13-27 global professional identity in deterretorialized spaces: a case study of a critical dialogue... instructors for transformative action for social change within the field of elt. tepus participants many tepus participants saw themselves as entering into a profession in which they would make a direct contribution to individuals who wanted to gain employment skills or education credentials. for example, jing described in detail the commoditized value of english for schooling in china but also wished for a better pedagogy that focused on english as a communicative tool: children begin to learn english when they are in kindergarten and students need to pass english test if they want to go to high school, college and graduate school, even though most of them will never have opportunity to speak english. language is a tool of communication, if we never have chance to talk to others, why we need to learn this language . . . [a]s english teachers, we need to provide students opportunities to use this language, rather than let them memorize vocabulary and grammatical rules. a smaller group of tepus participants commented that institutional establishments (i.e., “the system”) need to be changed, thus reflecting, to some extent, the critical stances expressed so clearly in the tepic contributions. for example, xiu ying remarked: “i really command us to make effort to change the condition.” another student, faiza, took notice of what is lost in neoliberal language education policy: “english is a useful tool for communicating and business while it might lead to lose a native language.” faiza’s statement could suggest that she is establishing a broader view for elt that expands beyond seeing potential economic benefits to also perceiving the social harm to communities that are disadvantaged by neoliberal economic markets. the data pertaining to this theme show tepic participants aligning themselves with transformative action in elt. the tepic participants saw the role of elt as providing a medium for critical praxis towards empowerment and social transformation, table 1. summary of themes with accompanying descriptors tepus descriptorstepic descriptorsthemes elt as an economic/educational commodity; potential for loss of native language elt as transformative and empowering the role of elt acknowledged the institutional constraints on teacher practices from a student perspective from a teacher perspective, challenge-packed curricular models; promote locally relevant language education policy institutional constraints american culture is the focus of instruction; see future selves as conduits of american culture support “third space” culture; sensitive to the dangers of colonialism whose culture to teach? diversity allowed, but for pragmatic reasons and as long as it does not impinge on superiority of the standard support diversity in principle; reintroduce that which is erased by standard language ideology and colonialism linguistic diversity in language teaching universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras20 guerrero nieto & meadows and they explicitly rejected the neoliberal marketing of english. however, many—but not all—tepus students articulated a vision of elt that is bound up in economic and educational advancement, echoing neoliberal discourses. informative to us were the occasions when a tepic participant would include a strong statement of social action in their post and the tepus participant would subtly not address that statement in their written response back to the tepic student. what can we make of the fact that the tepus students, as a group, were largely silent regarding the sociopolitical ramifications of the elt profession? it is possible that tepus students were indeed sensitive to the sociopolitical struggles within elt but did not feel comfortable responding in a public forum. it is also possible that the tepus students were not able to relate to the distressing situations invoked in the tepic contributions. it is difficult to tell with certainty in this case, but what can be said is that the tepic students were overwhelmingly clear on the transformative role of elt. the tepus responses adhered to the popular narratives that are regularly used to sell the elt profession. we wonder if this is a function of their novice status: how does one question a system that one is not yet fully a member of? still, faiza’s and xiu ying’s comments stood out from the tepus contributions because they suggested that these novice teachers are actively building a global professional identity that is transformative in orientation. theme two: institutional constraints both sets of participants spoke to their struggle to rectify the tension between institutional oversight and teacher autonomy. this theme also originated with the kumaravadivelu (2003) reading, which problematizes the reproductive powers of institutions to maintain status quo social hierarchies and can thwart attempts by classroom teachers at the local level to take action for social justice. tepic participants tepic participants communicated their awareness of the power of institutions to control people’s behavior, and, in this case, teaching practices (foucault, 1972). they were self-conscious about adopting language teaching frameworks that were foreign to colombia. for example, teresa explicitly challenged the common european framework because [it] does not take into account the different contexts in which language must be learnt and suppose that everybody learn the same way, with the same speed have same access to resources and opportunities to practice, while the reality is totally different. in the same post, she challenged the relevance of methodologies developed in north america and western europe, stating that “different methodologies developed in different countries” because they “have to be adapted or modified depending on the context we are working with.” her argument alludes to the p ost-metho d condition (kumaravadivelu, 2012; prabhu, 1990) by which no method is universal. the challenge of language teaching professionals outside the bana context is to generate methods that derive from the conditions and constraints that are unique to their settings. sandra reiterates this view and proposes that elt must be relevant to student contexts and must be approached as a “form of giving meaning and not as a form of imposing or slavering.” these critical perspectives (e.g., post-method conditions and the privilege of the bana context) are part of the elt critical tradition and are included in the tepic coursework. tepus participants in their responses, the tepus participants acknowledged the english language classroom as situated within larger sociopolitical structures. they sympathized with the critique of government institutions and their constraining influence on 21profile vol. 17, no. 2, july-december 2015. issn 1657-0790 (printed) 2256-5760 (online). bogotá, colombia. pages 13-27 global professional identity in deterretorialized spaces: a case study of a critical dialogue... language teaching both in colombia and in the countries they were familiar with (i.e., saudi arabia, china, and israel). this was a point of similarity that appeared prominently in the tepus/tepic student exchanges. the interviews allowed us to understand how tepus participants interpreted the critical stance put forth by the tepic participants. for example, esther recalled the following: they wanted to teach and the way the government wanted them to teach. they seemed very passionate. i can relate to my situation of teaching english to israeli students. i could understand the situation where the government is telling you how to teach. abdulaziz concurred with a bit more critical tone: we have the same thing in [my country]. the government controls the educational system which i don’t agree with so i found that similar to the educational system in colombia. which is interesting. in fac t, ab du laziz was unique among t he tepus students in his overt criticism of educational institutions and his willingness to act for paradigm change. he offered this type of commentary multiple times during the dialogue: we as future teachers should start changing the way of teaching at least inside our classrooms…sometimes we are incapable of changing the whole education system in our countries…we can at least a cause of changing it. both the tepic and tepus participants sympathized with one another as teachers in much larger bureaucracies that they had limited influence to change. both groups articulated challenges to the status quo, although abdulaziz was unique in his view of language teachers as agents of change. these are significant points of alignment that bring into clear focus for teachers the tight inter-connections that tie their work at the local level to broader systemic design at the global level. despite the shared sentiment that was revealed in the data, it is also clear that the two groups were approaching the institutional constraints from differing perspectives. the tepic participants truly struggled with this topic in their daily professional lives. in contrast, the tepus participants could only speak from the perspective of a teacher-in-themaking. the reader will note abdulaziz’s use of “we as future teachers.” theme three: whose culture to teach? it is important that students in slte programs consider very closely how they approach the concept of culture in their elt because global complexities render problematic conventional boundaries of language, culture, and nation (risager, 2007). the transmission model, the notion of learning culture according to a series of facts about a nationalized cultural group, is no longer tenable when we take seriously the complexity and variability of global english language encounters (forsman, 2012). to initiate a critical dialogue on culture teaching between our students, we assigned a post-structural treatment of culture as offered in kramsch (1998). that reading formed the basis for this thematic grouping. tepic participants the tepic participants framed the classroom according to critical pedagogy, a place of meaningmaking in locally relevant contexts. consistent with this view, the tepic participants communicated challenges to conventional boundaries of language and culture in their teaching. diego posted his response to the kramsch (1998) reading, taking up her notion of a third space classroom culture. kramsch suggests that teachers and learners must create a “third culture” in the l2 classroom. the third culture is a conceptual space that recognizes the l2 classroom as the site of intersection of multiple worlds of discourse. she recommends that teachers universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras22 guerrero nieto & meadows must encourage learners to create this third culture and not allowing either the home culture or the target culture to hold hostage to its particular values and beliefs. in describing a third culture that stands distinctive from either the home or target cultures, diego is also alluding to the zone of proximal development (vygotsky, 1978). he is saying that the classroom is not limited to either a or b, options that are predetermined outside of the classroom. instead, he argues for a new alternative, one that is determined in the collaborative dialogue between teacher and students (wells, 2009), in other words, an option c. this perspective on what a classroom can be is also empowering because it includes student agency in the process of meaningmaking and thus learning (freire, 1970, 2002). in regard to whose culture to teach, the tepic participants were vocal about the potential dangers of elt as a device of cultural colonialization. participants such as claudia portrayed the imposition to teach english culture as oppressive and lamented that local cultures are not visible in english teaching material: as we have to follow what others say in national and international level, we also have to learn english culture. it is imposed to us in the different resources and materials we use for teaching that language. our beautiful flowers, fields, weather, costumes and way of live is not seen in textbooks neither in other sources. tepus participants the tepus participants, novice entrants to the field, recognized essentialist notions that link culture, language, and nation. we offer a representative example: min and nadia commented that english teachers must learn american culture to be effective. in their conceptualization, there is little place for nonamerican content in an english language classroom: we disagree about the idea that english teachers should place more energy on the native culture. since we study english with the teachers, we should know all things related to the english language including the american culture…what we mean is that teachers are not prohibited to introduce the native culture, but the purpose about what they teach is let students to learn english well. the result is a sort of geographic segregation whereby english “belongs” in certain geographic locations, what kachru (1986) labeled the “inner circle.” the tepus participants appeared to be concerned with learning correct english, feeling themselves to be in the most appropriate place in which to learn it. in interviews, they reported that they would return to their countries to represent for their students authentic american english and culture. for example, jun described himself as a gateway for his students to the ns language and culture: “i came here to learn authentic english, so i will tell my students, ‘listen to me’.” theme four: linguistic diversity in language teaching the teachers at tepus and tepic considered l i ng u ist i c d ive rs it y and how t he y p o s it i one d themselves on this topic in terms of their classroom teaching: what varieties of english are sufficiently legitimate for academic study in my classroom? what forms of language are legitimate for classroom discourse? in developing this theme, the students drew on the previous kramsch (1998) reading as well as one additional reading on the transnational paradigm approach to culture pedagogy, authored by risager (2007). tepic participants in general terms, the tepic participants advocated for diversity, which includes not only varieties of english but also learning styles, views of the world, and cultures. they acknowledged the importance of the students’ l1 for obvious pragmatic reasons (i.e., beginners cannot follow the target language instructions). however, their discussion reached 23profile vol. 17, no. 2, july-december 2015. issn 1657-0790 (printed) 2256-5760 (online). bogotá, colombia. pages 13-27 global professional identity in deterretorialized spaces: a case study of a critical dialogue... a different level; the tepic participants supported diversity on principle for the value that it brings to learning and to society. here is claudia: helping our students to understand that there is not one language more important over the other, and being aware of how different and similar languages and human beings are, could be a good starting point for motivate them to accept differences, accept people how they are and building a more peaceful world. additionally, paola linked diversity to mutual respect and acceptance in the classroom, stating that “my language no matter the accent should be accepted as part of what i am.” in the same post, paola also challenged standard language ideology (lippigreen, 1997), noting how that ideology tends to erase the non-standard from public consciousness as well as the arbitrariness of its social value. here, she is responding to a previous posting from qiang, a tepus participant: hi [qiang], it is very nice to know the name of some dialects of your country but unfortunately, because of the existence of standard languages, we are not aware of them. i do believe that if a person sounds weird when he speaks with a special accent in a specific community, it is because the society has chosen the “right” languages to be used in specific context and the “not appropriate” or informal ones. here, she broadens the discussion to global levels, underscoring that education systems around the world privilege standard languages. as such, the negative effects of language standardization in china and in colombia are in fact similar and representative of global processes. this is an important connection that undoubtedly contributed to paola’s global professional identity. her remarks echo the critical work on language standardization that was formalized in b ourdieu (197 7) and that resonated in later studies that challenge the linguistic status quo and re-envision the language classroom as a place of social transformation (harmon & wilson, 2006). further, the tepic participants are more sensitive to standard language ideology as part of the colonial legacy and recognize the need to resist its ongoing effects. as paola studied in her slte program, colonialism benefits from essentialist hierarchies that place people and their cultural practices in specific levels of privilege, and those levels are presented as intractable. tepus participants drawing on the kramsch (1998) class reading, the tepus participants related discussions of standard english to the linguistic landscapes of the national contexts they were most familiar with. they took interest in linguistic diversity but established a strict hierarchy when thinking of their own future teaching. here is qiang’s post: for me i think it is always good to have the language varieties. and since there are also many english versions around the world, as a teacher of english, i prefer to focus on the standard english while i also want to build up the students’ awareness that there are also varieties there. what’s your opinion guys. very glad to have you here to discuss. thank you. the issue of legitimate language has to do not only with the right sort of linguistic capital but with the methodologies with which to teach it. inspired by risager’s (2007) reading, the tepus participants explored multilingual instruction in their imaginings of future teaching. as a representative example, jun wrote that he supported the use of the students’ l1 in his future teaching: if i explain the language questions by using the target language as well, i can definitely confirm that the beginners will be crazy and lose the confidence to keep learning! but not for advanced learners: if i teach advanced learners, i prefer to explain the questions and express the knowledge by using the target language in order to construct a great language environment. the tepus participants supported diversity for pragmatic, instructional concerns and only so far as universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras24 guerrero nieto & meadows it did not threaten the supremacy of the standardized variety. at the same time, they were acting out the ns fallacy, searching to acquire the correct english from the correct speakers. if elt is about acquiring linguistic and social capital, then logically, it would make sense for future teachers to seek that capital before assuming responsibility for their own classrooms. as did their counterparts, the tepic participants also supported the use of students’ l1 in the classroom on practical grounds. however, and consistent with their expert status and training in critical theory, they discussed linguistic diversity in ways that transcended the immediate and instrumental, and they embraced diversity as a principle for critical praxis. linguistic diversity is not just about communicative functions (i.e., message): it is also the message itself. it is about signifying the world in all of its diversity in the classroom. the tepus participants recognized language diversity along strict dividing lines. for example, non-standard varieties are fine for the classroom but not as a focus of legitimate language instruction. similarly, for students such as jun, a language teacher could integrate the students’ first language but not at the advanced levels. this is a distinction based on principles of practicality, not of inclusion. conclusion online communication technologies, such as schoology, allow elt professionals to establish contact with one another around the globe. such transnational conversations help to shape the complex global professional identities that are now required in the elt profession. this case study has captured one instance of a sustained dialogue between expert and novice nonnative speaker teachers on the issues of colonial legacy and the native speaker bias in elt. following critical pedagogy, we view peer dialogue as a valuable opportunity for raising critical awareness of professional teacher identity in a globalized world. thematic analysis closely examined the ways that the tepic and tepus participants integrated critical perspectives into their online discussions as they positioned themselves and others as elt professionals. all teachers benefit from periods of reflective practice in conjunction with colleagues (bailey et al., 2001), so we do not view the expert teachers as having completed professional identities; a global professional identity should be an ongoing process for both novice and expert teachers. speaking generally, we recognize that each set of participants belongs to the characterization of either expert or novice based on the literature review presented above. emerging from this, we characterize the expert teachers (tepic) as offering a narrative of empowerment in which most of their discourse was about challenging conventional boundaries in elt. in contrast, the novice teachers (tepus) put together a narrative of induction, whose discourse originated from their experience as learners. this is not true for all of the students, however, given that we witnessed students such as abdulaziz and faiza make critical statements that suggested transformative action and/ or social consciousness. the distinct ways that the two groups incorporated critical theory into their discussions also underscored for us the different orientations between our two teacher education programs. the ways in which the tepic participants fluently took up positions that were consistent with critical pedagogy made apparent what the tepus site was missing. this conclusion gives us inspiration for updating the tepus coursework to better reflect the critical knowledge students will need as nnests as they progress into the profession. we are careful not to equate novice status with an uncritical stance. we feel that critical stances benefit language teacher education across global contexts, but we also recognize that each teacher develops a professional stance according to many factors in their particular contexts. 25profile vol. 17, no. 2, july-december 2015. issn 1657-0790 (printed) 2256-5760 (online). bogotá, colombia. pages 13-27 global professional identity in deterretorialized spaces: a case study of a critical dialogue... the legacy of colonialism in elt means that nnests face professional obstacles that are not based on their linguistic and pedagogical expertise (e.g., race, origin, residence, linguistic heritage). our view is that language teacher education programs have an important role in involving nnest students in these fundamental questions, and organizing and facilitating these exchanges between professionals is one way to develop such involvement. we believe that, especially for pre-service teachers, a healthy global professional identity comes with practical experiences and the sharing of those experiences with colleagues in professional communities—especially the experts. the participants’ discourse was a dialogue in the true sense of the word. although we never perceived the tepic participants as trying to force their views on the tepus participants, we did find indications during interviews that the tepic participants had had a longterm effect on how the tepus participants envisioned their future teaching practices. one year later in interviews, the tepus participants noted the passion of the tepic participants and their insistence on social action. additionally, at least two tepus participants described using schoology in the future to bring language students together across national borders to practice their english and to speak about their local contexts. this suggests that these two participants are moving away from their comfort zones in which native speakers are the only legitimate partners for english language practice. looking beyond this initial experience with critical dialogue in deterretorialized spaces, we see additional ways in which we could enrich this pedagogical ac tivity. for example, there could be a task that required students to reflect, restate, and react to one another. at times, we were disappointed to find that participants were talking “past” each other. additionally, we would like to have students do close readings of research literature and to use those theoretical understandings as bases for their arguments and positions in the dialogic space. this may lead to a more dynamic and enriching exchange with long-term effects that are more immediately apparent. this study provided unique insights into expertand-novice dialogue in the context of nnests. it is worthwhile to continue exploring these issues for nnests and their professional identities in the elt field because this can benefit our understanding of language teacher education for the global society. references armaline, w. d., & hoover, r. l. 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(1998). reflective-narrative discourse of fl teachers exhibits professional knowledge. language teaching research, 2(3), 185-202. http:// dx.doi.org/10.1177/136216889800200302. 27profile vol. 17, no. 2, july-december 2015. issn 1657-0790 (printed) 2256-5760 (online). bogotá, colombia. pages 13-27 global professional identity in deterretorialized spaces: a case study of a critical dialogue... pennycook, a. (2004). critical moments in a tesol praxicum. in b. norton & k. toohey (eds.), critical pedagogies and language learning (pp. 327-345). cambridge, uk: cambridge university press. http://dx.doi.org/10.1017/ cbo9781139524834.017. pennycook, a. (2010). critical and alternative directions in applied linguistics. australian review of applied linguistics, 33(2), 16.1-16.6. phillipson, r. (1992). linguistic imperialism. oxford, uk: oxford university press. prabhu, n. s. (1990). there is no best method—why? tesol quarterly, 24(2), 161-176. http://dx.doi. org/10.2307/3586897. richards, j. c. 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(2009). the meaning makers: learning to talk and talking to learn (2nd ed.). bristol, uk: multilingual matters. wink, j. (2000). critical pedagogy: notes from the real world. new york, ny: addison wesley longman. about the authors carmen helena guerrero nieto is a phd and ma from the university of arizona. she holds an ma from universidad distrital francisco josé de caldas (colombia). she is a faculty member in the ma program in communication education and is the main researcher of the research group critical studies on language and educational policies. bryan meadows is an assistant professor in the sammartino school of education at fairleigh dickinson university (nj, usa). he holds a phd from the university of arizona and an med from the university of houston. his research examines language teacher education through a critical lens. 55profile vol. 18, no.1, january-june 2016. issn 1657-0790 (printed) 2256-5760 (online). bogotá, colombia. pages 55-70 http://dx.doi.org/10.15446/profile.v18n1.48608 novice non-native english teachers’ reflections on their teacher education programmes and their first years of teaching reflexiones de profesores novatos y no nativos del inglés sobre sus programas de formación y sus primeros años de instrucción sumru akcan1* boğaziçi university, istanbul, turkey this study investigates novice non-native english teachers’ opinions about the effectiveness of their teacher education programme and the challenges during their initial years of teaching. the results of a survey administered to fifty-five novice teachers and follow-up interviews identify strengths and weaknesses in their teacher education programme and catalogue the difficulties they faced when they started to teach. the study found significant differences between the content of novice teachers’ academic courses in their teacher education programme and the conditions they experienced in classrooms. the major challenges of their first years of teaching were related to lesson delivery, managing behaviour, unmotivated students, and students with learning disabilities. the article includes suggestions to prepare teachers for the actualities of working in schools. key words: in-service teacher development, non-native english teachers, novice teachers, teacher education programmes. este estudio se centra en las opiniones de profesores principiantes de inglés, no nativos, sobre la eficacia de sus programas de formación como profesores y los retos durante sus primeros años trabajando. los resultados de una encuesta administrada a cincuenta y cinco profesores principiantes y entrevistas posteriores permiten identificar fortalezas y debilidades en el programa de formación del profesorado y catalogar las dificultades que tuvieron que afrontar en el comienzo de su carrera docente. se encontraron diferencias significativas entre el contenido de los cursos académicos de los profesores principiantes en su programa educativo y las condiciones experimentadas en sus clases. los retos principales de sus primeros años como profesores tienen que ver con la impartición de la lección, la gestión de la conducta, el alumnado desmotivado y alumnos con dificultades de aprendizaje. el artículo incluye sugerencias para preparar a los profesores para las realidades del trabajo en las escuelas. palabras clave: formación permanente del profesorado, profesores de inglés no nativos, profesores principiantes, programas de formación del profesorado. * e-mail: sumru.akcan@boun.edu.tr how to cite this article (apa, 6th ed.): akcan, s. (2016). novice non-native english teachers’ reflections on their teacher education programmes and their first years of teaching. profile issues in teachers’ professional development, 18(1), 55-70. http://dx.doi.org/10.15446/ profile.v18n1.48608. this article was received on january 27, 2015, and accepted on july 28, 2015. this is an open access article distributed under the terms of the creative commons license attribution-noncommercial-noderivatives 4.0 international license. consultation is possible at http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/. universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras56 akcan introduction this study investigates the opinions of turkish novice english teachers about the effectiveness of their teacher education programme in light of the challenges they have experienced in their first years of teaching. novice teachers, according to farrell (2012), have started to teach english within three years of completing their language teacher education programme. veenman (1984) characterizes their first teaching experience as a type of “reality shock.” newly qualified teachers might find themselves in a struggle for survival as they strive to adapt to an unfamiliar professional community in their induction years. the first few years of teaching are a critical time for professional development (farrell, 2009; warford & reeves, 2003). during this period, novice teachers either strengthen the belief that they will become competent teachers or they leave the profession (tschannen-moran & woolfolk hoy, 2007). for the novice english teacher, challenges may include feelings of stress (mann, 2008); the potential for misunderstandings in a culturally diverse classroom (hooker, 2003); and isolation leading to loneliness and frustration (numrich, 1996). bullough, knowles, and crow (1991) noted that new teachers’ initial concerns are usually about relationships with students, problems of classroom management, and unfamiliar instructional methods. despite the good intentions and thoughtful planning of teacher education programmes, the first years of teaching have long-term implications for job satisfaction and length of career (cochran-smith, 2004; darlinghammond, 2003). the phenomenon of novice teachers taking on the characteristics of existing teachers is known as “teacher socialization.” teacher induction programmes aim to provide systematic and sustained assistance, specifically for beginning teachers in the early years of their profession for at least one school year. the new teachers begin to understand the school culture and the needs of students (huling-austin, 1990). once they are members of the school community, they embrace the rules and expectations created by the veterans around them and gradually they adopt the same practices (bliss & reck, 1991; shin, 2012; zeichner & gore, 1990). learning about teaching is a situated process; the new teacher is socialized into a “community of practice” in which novices “move toward full participation in the sociocultural practices of a community [and gradually they] learn about the relations between newcomers and old-timers, and about activities, identities, artefacts, and communities of knowledge and practice” (lave & wenger, 1991, p. 29). senom, zakaria, and shah (2013) investigated the challenges faced by novice english as second language (esl) teachers in malaysia in the early years of teaching. this nationwide large-scale study examined novice teachers’ socialization experiences. the data related to socialization problems were categorized into four groups: those concerning students, school community, the teaching profession, and parents. the problems concerning the students included their lack of interest in learning, misbehaviour, lack of discipline, and negative attitude towards the learning of english. problems concerning the school community included the burden of teaching assignments and administrative responsibilities, high expectations, lack of support and guidance, isolation, and school politics. problems concerning the teaching profession included the discovery that their teacher preparation programme had been inadequate, fatigue, time-consuming lesson planning, and the application of pedagogical theory to classroom practice. problems concerning parents stemmed mostly from the high expectations that parents had for their children and their children’s teacher. despite the struggles, the novice teachers also found pleasure in the process of becoming a teacher and rewards in the form of student learning. these and the guidance they received from colleagues and administrators provided the motivation to remain in the profession. 57profile vol. 18, no.1, january-june 2016. issn 1657-0790 (printed) 2256-5760 (online). bogotá, colombia. pages 55-70 novice non-native english teachers’ reflections on their teacher education programmes... tarone and allwright (2005) claim that the “differences between the academic course content in language teacher preparation programmes and the real conditions that novice language teachers are faced with in the language classroom appear to set up a gap that cannot be bridged by beginning teacher learners” (p. 12). one might ask how second language teacher education programmes can minimize the gap and prepare teacher candidates for the conditions they will find when they get a teaching job. farrell (2012) also argues that one of the reasons why young teachers leave the profession is that preservice teacher preparation and in-service teacher development are not aligned. novice teachers suddenly lose contact with their teacher educators just when they feel they must meet the performance standards expected of their more experienced colleagues. such expectations include the necessities of lesson planning, lesson delivery, and classroom management. other than their own resources, they have only the support and guidance of fellow teachers and administrators, which may or may not be forthcoming. invariably, beginning teachers must reconcile the pedagogy espoused in their university courses with the reality of teaching. in doing so, they are likely to encounter a set of norms and behaviours that clash with their previous experiences (sabar, 2004; scherff, 2008). johnson (1996) reported that second language (l2) teacher education programmes are often criticised because they do not convey the sort of knowledge that teachers need most when preparing and teaching lessons in real classrooms. novice teachers complain that in teacher education programmes they got too much theory and too little practice. richards (1998) explained that novice teachers do not automatically apply the knowledge they received in preparation courses because as teachers t he y have to const r uc t and re const r uc t “ne w knowledge and theor y through participating in specific social contexts and engaging in particular types of activities and processes” (p. 164). on ref lection, novice teachers found that practice teaching experiences that approximated “real” te a ch i ng we re t he mo st helpf u l p ar t of t he i r preparation programmes (atay, 2007; faez & valeo, 2012). faez and valeo (2012) found that novice teachers of english increased their perceptions of efficacy as they gained experience in the classroom. the key issue in second language teacher education, then, is what teachers need to learn most and how their learning can have a beneficial impact on their future teaching practice. the purpose of this study was to investigate novice english as a foreign language (efl) teachers’ perceptions of their preparedness to teach and the challenges they encountered in their first years of teaching in primary and secondary schools. the research questions of this study were: 1. what are novice turkish efl teachers’ opinions about their teacher education programmes? 2. what parts of a language teacher education programme have novice turkish efl teachers found useful and why? 3. what concerns and difficulties do novice turkish efl teachers have in their first year of teaching in the turkish context? method the study is an explorator y case study. the exploratory process gives way to collect data and allows patterns to emerge to define problems and explain causal links in real-life interventions. exploring can include activities such as providing information, giving reasons, or making a causal statement (bogdan & biklen, 1998; patton, 1990; yin, 1994). this study is specific to a concern emerged in a context and aims to explore the novice teachers’ attitudes towards their teacher education programme and the challenges in the first years of teaching. universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras58 akcan the context the foreign language education department in the faculty of education at a well-known englishmedium university in istanbul (turkey) aims to prepare efl teachers to teach in primary, secondary, and high schools. prospective english teachers are provided with a foundation in theoretical and applied methodology through courses in linguistics and literature, the teaching of grammar and the four basic language skills, principles of first and second language acquisition, materials development, syllabus design, language testing, and approaches to foreign language teaching. the programme offers courses such as school experience and teaching practicum in cooperating schools. teaching practicum places each fourth-year student in classrooms with three experienced teachers at three different grade levels in various state and private schools. a university supervisor from the department provides additional supervision and support. the student teachers visit the schools regularly and observe lessons taught by the three cooperating teachers. in the course of the practicum they observe for 45 hours and teach six 40-45 minute lessons. a cooperating teacher observes each student-taught lesson and provides feedback. the university supervisor and a cooperating teacher together evaluate each student’s performance and provide oral and written feedback. the cooperating teachers are selected by the school administration. although they are chosen for their experience and willingness to work with student teachers, they do not receive any formal training in supervision. the participants the turkish education system is under the supervision of the ministry of national education. education is compulsory from ages 6 to 14 and it is free in public schools. in turkey, there are public and private schools at the primary, secondary, and high school levels. english language instruction starts at grade 2 in public schools and at kindergarten (3 to 4 years-old) in private schools. participants in the study included 55 novice efl teachers teaching at public and private primary, secondary, and high schools in the marmara region (north-west) of turkey. twentynine teachers were primarily working with young learners (k-4), and the remaining 26 teachers were teaching in secondary and high school levels. all had less than three years of teaching experience after having graduated from a foreign language teacher education programme. of the 55 participants, 50 were female and five were male. their ages ranged from 23 to 27 years. they comprised a homogeneous group in terms of teacher training, language learning experience, and proficiency in english. data collection and analysis the participants filled out a questionnaire composed of both open-ended and closed-ended questions. the researcher used the questionnaire called survey of teacher education programs (step), which was developed by williams-pettway (2005) for the pur pose of gathering data concerning teachers’ satisfaction with their teacher education programme (see appendix). the data collection took place in the academic year of 2012-2013. it is organized around components of the national council for the accreditation of teacher education’s accreditation process in the us, such as knowledge, skills, dispositions, field experiences, and quality of instruction. the researcher, with the help of expert input, adapted the questionnaire to the turkish context and added seven open-ended questions that inquired specifically about the structure and content of the teacher education programme and participants’ concerns during their first years of teaching. the questionnaire was adapted based on the teaching competencies of the ministry of national education in turkey and then the questionnaire was evaluated by the experts (academics) who were specialized in 59profile vol. 18, no.1, january-june 2016. issn 1657-0790 (printed) 2256-5760 (online). bogotá, colombia. pages 55-70 novice non-native english teachers’ reflections on their teacher education programmes... the fields of teacher education and language teaching. lastly, the questionnaire was revised based on their feedback and comments. out of fifty-five teachers, fifteen volunteer teachers also participated in focus group interviews for the purpose of gathering more detailed information about their concerns and difficulties. the focus group interviews were run with a group of three to four teachers. responses to the closed-ended items were examined for frequenc y and percentages, and responses to the open-ended questions focus group interviews were analysed for content. the constant comparative method was used (bogdan & biklen, 1998) for the purpose of identifying themes. an interpretive, naturalistic method was used for the purpose of interpreting the teachers’ experiences (gall, borg, & gall, 1996). findings the teacher education programme all the participating novice teachers agreed that their teacher education programme provided them with a good foundation in english language teaching. however, they thought that there was more emphasis on theory rather than practice and that theory and practice were not integrated in the programme. asked to identify the strengths of the programme, 85% (47 teachers) of the teachers said that the practice teaching experience in a school setting gave them an opportunity to test their knowledge and skills at different grade levels, requiring them to deal with different student characteristics; 77% (43 teachers) said that the teacher education programme stimulated critical thinking and problem solving in context; and 88% (48 teachers) said that the programme helped them to learn a variety of teaching strategies and how to adjust teaching methods to the purpose of a lesson. a majority of the teachers emphasized the need for more practice teaching, starting early and being offered throughout the programme rather than saving it until the final year. furthermore, they wished they had had more teaching opportunities in young learner classrooms, including kindergarten, so that they could better learn to cope with the difficulties unique to teaching at that level. they felt the need for better instruction on dealing with classroom management problems, and they believed that they should have been offered more practical information about teaching students with learning disabilities. in addition to practice teaching in classrooms, there had been opportunities for peer teaching in the university classro om, and the teachers considered this to be a valuable introduction to teaching methods. all 55 teachers had the peer teaching experience since “peer teaching” is one of the main requirements of the methodology courses in the teacher education programme. the teachers integrated their theoretical knowledge to practice through peer teaching sessions in their courses. some of their statements are quoted below: to be able to have the opportunity of peer teaching was one of the most useful experiences in my university education. (ayşen) by observing our peers and reflecting on their teaching performance, we learned not only how to observe but also reflect upon their teaching which we can use later on our own teaching skills. (zeynep) it helped me to evaluate my own teaching and see my strengths and weaknesses. (ece) peer teaching helped us share our ideas and respond[ing] to my peers’ reactions improved my thinking and deep understanding. it helped me to see different ways of doing things in other people’s classrooms. (serkan) i had the opportunity to put into practice what i learned. but it was a little bit artificial as they were not real students but my friends. lack of authenticity is the main problem in peer teaching. (cansu) although the teachers valued peer teaching, they also knew that teaching in real classrooms was universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras60 akcan completely different. all of the teachers emphasized the importance of the school experience and teaching practicum courses which were offered in the last year of the programme. in their appraisal of university supervisors and cooperating teachers, 74% (41 teachers) of the novice teachers thought that their cooperating teachers had been influential and resourceful; 85% (47 teachers) thought that their university supervisor had provided clear feedback and suggestions; 77% (43 teachers) thought that the university supervisor and cooperating teacher had collaborated with them to evaluate their performance in the classroom. however, they reported that their university supervisors had little or no teaching experience in primary and secondary schools and thus had insufficient practical knowledge of real classroom practice. some of what they said included: i think it will be more effective if instructors have teaching experiences, so students can benefit from their experiences. (mehtap) our instructors should learn more about the real schools and their situations in order to prepare us better as teachers. (didem) in their appraisal of coursework, 85% mentioned that their teachers had used appropriate instructional materials and demonstrated enthusiasm when teaching. however, in addition to the course content of the practicum course, they wished that their teachers had offered more explicit guidance to help them improve their language proficiency. they suggested that watching and discussing video recordings of lessons in real classrooms would be helpful, and that projects directly related to the content of the ministry of education’s english language curriculum would have helped them to become more familiar with it. the first years of teaching the greatest challenge of the first years of teaching was classroom management. for this reason, most of the teachers chose activities such as drills and dictation, which restrict behaviour and minimize potential problems. some of the teachers drew attention to the problems of managing behaviour in classrooms for young learners. their comments included: it is not easy to make group or pair work with young learners. at university we . . . included group work in our lesson plans. but in real life it does not work well because managing little kids in group work creates chaos in class. now i usually prefer drills, dictation and role-playing in my classes. honestly, i must say that i cannot use any of the activities that i learned at university. i should follow the teacher books. . . . also, i should focus on grammar and vocabulary because the exam period is coming up. (merve) my main problem was classroom management. i could not decide how to respond to specific misbehaviours. . . . i think classroom management is a skill that improves through experience. (zehra) classroom management and motivating students seem to be harder than one can think when you are not in an actual classroom. (şeyma) the participating teachers also experienced difficulty in the implementation of the communicative approach in their classes. they explained in their teacher education programme they had learned and practiced the communicative approach for the teaching of english but that they were not able to use communicative methods in their classrooms because their classrooms were too crowded and they were expected—in the short time available—to prepare their students for national examinations. it was not possible in crowded classrooms to do group work, but most could get their students working in pairs. their method of checking comprehension was to ask questions and receive answers. some had tried to use discussions to motivate students to express themselves in english, but when the students’ proficiency was not sufficient to maintain a discussion, the teachers resorted to drills to teach certain phrases. other difficulties included unmotivated students and students with learning disabilities. the majority 61profile vol. 18, no.1, january-june 2016. issn 1657-0790 (printed) 2256-5760 (online). bogotá, colombia. pages 55-70 novice non-native english teachers’ reflections on their teacher education programmes... of the teachers stated that they did not know how to deal with students who have learning disabilities. they were also lack of skills and strategies that could be used when their students were unwilling to learn and had behaviour problems. to cope with these difficulties, the teachers asked for help from experienced colleagues and sought out books and articles about effective teaching strategies. one of the teachers (ebru) expressed her gratitude towards her school by noting that: “the school administration, the counselling department and my colleagues helped and guided me in every difficulty i had. i wouldn’t have survived my first year without their support.” suggestions for improving the teacher education programme the novice teachers made suggestions to improve the quality of the teacher education programme that they all graduated from. they thought that exchange programmes, such as the erasmus programme (european community action scheme for the mobility of university students) would be helpful, or an online environment in which teacher candidates could interact with teacher candidates in other countries, an innovation that would help improve their communication skills as it helped to broaden their understanding of education. erasmus is a european union student exchange programme at the tertiary level in which teacher candidates take courses and receive training for one semester or a year at the host institution. with this opportunity, the teacher candidates can improve their language skills and increase their knowledge towards other cultures. this study also indicated that most of the teachers wanted to be better informed about the conditions they would encounter as novice teachers, especially the challenges of working in crowded and underfunded state schools. they mentioned the need for more explicit guidance from university supervisors and mentors, both to improve their teaching skills and to develop their language proficiency. the teachers appreciated feedback about their classroom language use and the ways to improve their english language proficiency. they wished to hear more from their mentor teachers about their classroom language use to be able to use the target language more spontaneously for a more enriched interaction in the classroom. the novice teachers reported that some of the teachers to whose classrooms they were assigned were neglectful of the teacher trainees they were supposed to help. hence these novice teachers recommended training and a better selection process to identify interested and capable mentors. orland (2001) made the following statement about mentor teachers as teacher educators: “learning to become a mentor is a conscious process . . . and does not emerge naturally from being a good teacher” (p. 75). they need to have more preparation for supervision and school administrators should be more careful in assigning mentor teachers for the practice teaching programmes as mentors for pre-service teachers. as m i g ht b e e x p e c te d, ot he r su g ge st i ons addressed issues that had also been identified as weaknesses in the programme: a practical classroom management course, the use of video recordings of situations in actual classrooms, and how to work with learning disabled students. discussion and conclusion the novice teachers in this study reported that there was more emphasis on theory rather than practice in the teacher education programme. the teachers emphasized the need for more practice in the programme, starting the first year. it is a paramount responsibility of teacher educators to connect generalized theory with the specifics of practice. this should be the goal of the practicum, the preparation of teacher candidates for classroom realities. since the teacher candidates, as a rule, do not know exactly where they will get a teaching job, it is important that universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras62 akcan they develop the ability to adapt their generalized knowledge and skills to classrooms at different levels. even though the novice teachers in this study had a rich theoretical education with practical experiences thrown in, their primary concerns when they started to teach were different; they had to learn quickly how to manage unruly student behaviour, and they were given the priority of covering the required material in preparation for national examinations. this study showed that the novice teachers’ initial concerns and challenges in the first years of their teaching are similar to the early studies in the field (farrell, 2009; bullough et al., 1991; senom et al., 2013; warfood & reeves, 2003). in the present study, the teachers’ concerns are primarily related to classroom management, implementation of the communicative approach in classrooms, unmotivated students, and students with learning disabilities. the novice teachers also reported that their relationships with cooperating teachers could have been more fruitful when they were student teachers. the cooperating teachers could have been more influential and resourceful by providing more time to give feedback and establishing an environment in which the student teachers question and reflect on their own teaching. akcan and tatar (2010) had conducted an earlier study in the teacher education programme from which these novice teachers had graduated. the purpose of the study was to investigate the content of feedback given to teacher candidates by university super visors and cooperating (mentor) teachers during supervisory conferences. they found that the feedback the university supervisors gave in postlesson conferences with student teachers tended to promote reflection and self-evaluation whereas the feedback given by the cooperating teachers was more prescriptive and directive. the cooperating teachers contributed to a one-way flow of direct suggestions about classroom practice that discouraged any dialogue between the student teacher and themselves. considering this finding, school administrators, with the guidance of university supervisors, should be more careful when matching student teachers and cooperating teachers. a short supervision training programme for mentor teachers can be conducted by university supervisors to help them with their supervisory roles. studies have shown that when cooperating teachers are better prepared for their supervisory roles, teacher candidates develop more positive attitudes towards teaching (guyton & mcintyre, 1990). starting teachers need positive support (brannan & bleistein, 2012; villani, 2002), and the use of support groups is one way to provide it. online support groups through e-mail and discussion boards can provide support networks that help teachers with similar concerns to communicate with one another and engage in collaborative reflection (merseth, 1991). a continuing relationship with peers and a university supervisor after graduation and during the first year of teaching would also be helpful. as a final remark, there is a need to collect more data on the teaching experiences of graduates from teacher education programmes in general. baecher (2012) believes that the lack of data may be preventing t e s o l p r o g r a m m e s f r o m p r e p a r i n g t e a c h e r candidates to work effectively with english language learners. similarly, farrell (2008) has characterized the personal, social, and psychological demands faced by novice english teachers as they struggle to adapt to the realities of their work. their feedback is invaluable as we undertake to meet the needs of teachers and learners in teacher education programmes. references akcan, s., & tatar, s. (2010). an investigation of the nature of feedback given to pre-service english teachers during their practice teaching experience. teacher development, 14(2), 153-172. http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/ 13664530.2010.494495. 63profile vol. 18, no.1, january-june 2016. issn 1657-0790 (printed) 2256-5760 (online). bogotá, colombia. pages 55-70 novice non-native english teachers’ reflections on their teacher education programmes... atay, d. (2007). beginning teacher efficacy and the practicum in an efl context. teacher development, 11(2), 203-219. http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/13664530701414720. baecher, l. (2012). feedback from the field: what novice prek-12 esl teachers want to tell tesol teacher educators. tesol quarterly, 46(3), 578-588. http://dx.doi. org/10.1002/tesq.43. bliss, l. b., & reck, u. m. (1991). profile: an instrument for gathering data in teacher socialization studies. paper presented at the annual meeting of the eastern educational research association. boston, usa. bogdan, r. c., & biklen, s. k. (1998). qualitative research for education: an introduction to theory and methods (3rd ed.). boston, ma: allyn & bacon. brannan, d., & bleistein, t. (2012). novice esol teachers’ perceptions of social support networks. tesol quarterly, 46(3), 519-541. http://dx.doi.org/10.1002/tesq.40. bullough, r. v., knowles, j. g., & crow, n. a. (1991). emerging as a teacher. new york, ny: routledge. cochran-smith, m. (2004). editorial: the problem of teacher education. journal of teacher education, 55(4), 295-299. http://dx.doi.org/10.1177/0022487104268057. darling-hammond, l. (2003). keeping good teachers: why it matters and what leaders can do. educational leadership, 60(8), 6-13. faez, f., & valeo, a. (2012). tesol teacher education: novice teachers’ perceptions of their preparedness and efficacy in the classroom. tesol quarterly, 46(3), 450471. http://dx.doi.org/10.1002/tesq.37. farrell, t. s. c. (ed.). (2008). novice language teachers: insights and perspectives for the first year. london, uk: equinox. farrell, t. s. c. (2009). the novice teacher experience. in a. burns & j. c. richards (eds.), the cambridge guide to second language teacher education (pp. 182-189). new york, ny: cambridge university press. farrell, t. s. c. (2012). novice-service language teacher development: bridging the gap between pre-service and in-service education and development. tesol quarterly, 46(3), 435-449. http://dx.doi.org/10.1002/tesq.36. gall, m. d., borg, w. r., & gall, j. p. (1996). educational research: an introduction (6th ed.). white plains, ny: longman. guyton, e., & mcintyre, d. j. (1990). student teaching and school experiences. in w. r. houston, m. haberman, & j. sikula (eds.), handbook of research on teacher education (1st ed.). (pp. 514-534), new york, ny: macmillan. hooker, j. (2003). working across cultures. stanford, ca: stanford university press. huling-austin, l. (1990). teacher induction programs and interships. in w. r. houston, m. haberman, & j. sikula (eds.), handbook of research on teacher education (1st ed.). (pp. 535-548). new york, ny: macmillan. johnson, k. e. (1996). the vision versus the reality: the tensions of the tesol practicum. in d. freeman & j. c. richards (eds.), teacher learning in language teaching (pp. 30-49). new york, ny: cambridge university press. lave, j., & wenger, e. (1991). situated learning: legitimate peripheral participation. cambridge, uk: cambridge university press. http://dx.doi.org/10.1017/ cbo9780511815355. mann, s. (2008). teachers’ use of metaphor in making sense of the first year of teaching. in t. s. c. farrell (ed.), novice language teachers: insights and perspectives for the first years (11-28). london, uk: equinox. merseth, k. k. (1991). supporting beginning teachers with computer networks. journal of teacher education, 42(2), 140-147. http://dx.doi.org/10.1177/002248719104200207. national council for the accreditation of teacher education. (2002). professional standards for the accreditation of schools, colleges, and departments of education. washington, dc: author. numrich, c. (1996). on becoming a language teacher: insights from diary studies. tesol quarterly, 30(1), 131153. http://dx.doi.org/10.2307/3587610. orland, l. (2001). reading a mentoring situation: one aspect of learning to mentor. teaching and teacher education, 17(1), 75-88. http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/ s0742-051x(00)00039-1. universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras64 akcan patton, q. m. (1990). qualitative evaluation and research methods (2nd ed.). london, uk: sage publications. richards, j. c. (1998). beyond training: perspectives on language teacher education. new york, ny: cambridge university press. sabar, n. (2004). from heaven to reality through crisis: novice teachers as migrants. teaching and teacher education, 20(2), 145-161. http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j. tate.2003.09.007. scherff, l. (2008). disavowed: the stories of two novice teachers. teaching and teacher education, 24(5), 13171332. http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.tate.2007.06.002. senom, f., zakaria, a. r., & shah, s. s. a. (2013). novice teachers’ challenges and survival: where do malaysian esl teachers stand? american journal of educational research, 1(4), 119-125. http://dx.doi.org/10.12691/ education-1-4-2. shin, s. k. (2012). “it cannot be done alone”: the socialization of novice english teachers in south korea. tesol quarterly, 46(3), 542-567. http://dx.doi.org/10.1002/tesq.41. tarone, e., & allwright, d. (2005). second language teacher learning and student second language learning: shaping the knowledge base. in d. j. tedick (ed.), second language teacher education: international perspectives (pp. 5-23). mahwah, nj: lawrence erlbaum. tschannen-moran, m., & woolfolk hoy, a. (2007). the differential antecedents of self-efficacy beliefs of novice and experienced teachers. teaching and teacher education, 23(6), 944-956. http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j. tate.2006.05.003. veenman, s. (1984). perceived problems of beginning teachers. review of educational research, 54(2), 143178. http://dx.doi.org/10.3102/00346543054002143. villani, s. (2002). mentoring programs for new teachers: models of induction and support. thousand oaks, ca: corwin. warford, m. k., & reeves, j. (2003). falling into it: novice tesol teacher thinking. teachers and teaching: theory and practice, 9(1), 47-65. http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/1354 060032000049904. williams-pettway, m. l. (2005). novice teachers’ assessment of their teacher education programs (unpublished doctoral dissertation). auburn university, usa. yin, r. (1994). case study research: design and methods (2nd ed.). thousand oaks, ca: sage publishing. zeichner, k., & gore, j. (1989). teacher socialization. in w. r. houston, m. haberman, & j. sikula (eds.), handbook of research on teacher education (1st ed.). (pp. 329348). new york, ny: macmillan. about the author sumru akcan is an associate professor in the department of foreign language education at boğaziçi university (turkey). she holds an ma in english as a second language (university of cincinnati, usa) and a phd in second language acquisition and teaching (university of arizona, usa). her research focuses on teacher education. 65profile vol. 18, no.1, january-june 2016. issn 1657-0790 (printed) 2256-5760 (online). bogotá, colombia. pages 55-70 novice non-native english teachers’ reflections on their teacher education programmes... appendix: questionnaire for novice teachers survey of novice language teachers who completed their teacher education programmes data collected from this survey will be analysed to learn more about your teacher preparation experiences. participants will not be identified. thank you. part 1. demographics please circle your answers or complete the information as appropriate. name of the educational institution where you are now teaching: ____________________________ ________________________________________________________________________________ status of the educational institution (state vs. private): ____________________________________ the high school you graduated from: __________________________________________________ gpa (bachelor’s degree program): ____________________________________________________ female ( ) male ( ) your age: ______ 1. at what level are you presently teaching? a. early childhood & elementary (k-4) b. secondary and high school (5-12) 2. for how many years have you been teaching since you graduated from your teacher education programme (including the current year)? a. one year b. two years c. three years d. more than three years part 2. knowledge, skills and dispositions* * dispositions—the values, commitments, and professional ethics that influence behaviours toward students, families, colleagues, and communities and affect student learning, motivation, and development as well as the educator’s own professional growth. also, dispositions are guided by beliefs and attitudes related to values such as caring, fairness, honesty, responsibility, and social justice (national council for the accreditation of teacher education, 2002). universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras66 akcan indicate the extent of your agreement by selecting and putting a tick (√) in the table below. strongly disagree disagree agree strongly agree 3. my teacher education programme provided me with a good foundation in english language teaching. 4. my teacher education programme enabled me to understand different language proficiency levels of students and their different learning styles. 5. my teacher education programme stimulated critical thinking and problem solving in a particular teaching context. 6. my teacher education programme helped me to learn a variety of teaching strategies and how to adjust teaching methods in a lesson. 7. my teacher education programme taught me a variety of assessment techniques and how to use them effectively. 8. my teacher education programme taught me how to evaluate the effectiveness of my teaching. 67profile vol. 18, no.1, january-june 2016. issn 1657-0790 (printed) 2256-5760 (online). bogotá, colombia. pages 55-70 novice non-native english teachers’ reflections on their teacher education programmes... part 3. field experiences and practice teaching indicate the extent of your agreement by selecting and putting a tick (√) in the table below. strongly disagree disagree agree strongly agree 9. my practice teaching experience in a school setting provided me with opportunities to employ my knowledge, skills, and dispositions with respect to different grade levels and student characteristics. 10. my practice teaching helped me to develop the competencies needed for a teaching career. 11. my practice teaching provided opportunities to use technology in support of teaching and learning. 12. my cooperating teacher was influential and resourceful in developing my career as a teacher. 13. my cooperating teacher modelled the best teaching practices. 14. my university supervisor provided clear feedback and suggestions for improving my teaching. 15. my university supervisor had realistic expectations of me as a teacher in training. 16. my university supervisor, cooperating teacher, and i collaborated to evaluate my performance during my practice teaching. universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras68 akcan part 4. quality of instruction indicate the extent of your agreement by selecting and putting a tick (√) in the table below. strongly disagree disagree agree strongly agree 17. instructors in my teacher education programme used appropriate instructional materials. 18. instructors in my teacher education program modelled multiple teaching strategies that help all students to learn. 19. instructors in my teacher education programme were enthusiastic when presenting course content. 20. instructors in my teacher education programme showed respect for students’ opinions. 21. instructors in my teacher education programme modelled oral and written communication skills effectively. part 5. open-ended questions your brief responses are much appreciated. 22. identify three major strengths and/or weaknesses of your teacher education programme. _______________________________________________________________________________ _______________________________________________________________________________ _______________________________________________________________________________ _______________________________________________________________________________ 23. suggest two or more ways to strengthen your teacher education programme. _______________________________________________________________________________ _______________________________________________________________________________ _______________________________________________________________________________ 69profile vol. 18, no.1, january-june 2016. issn 1657-0790 (printed) 2256-5760 (online). bogotá, colombia. pages 55-70 novice non-native english teachers’ reflections on their teacher education programmes... _______________________________________________________________________________ 24. circle the response that best describes your level of satisfaction with your teacher education programme. a. excellent b. good c. fair d. poor comment: _______________________________________________________________________ 25. which method(s) do you often use in your lessons? (you may circle more than one response.) a. audiolingual method b. communicative language teaching c. content-based language instruction d. other: (please indicate) comment: _______________________________________________________________________ 26. which technique(s) do you often use in your lessons? (you may circle more than one response.) a. role-playing b. discussion c. pair-work d. group work e. drills f. other: (please indicate) comment: _______________________________________________________________________ 27. if there are any methods or techniques that you cannot use in your lessons for reasons such as classroom environment, student characteristics, etc., please explain the difficulty and the reasons. _______________________________________________________________________________ _______________________________________________________________________________ _______________________________________________________________________________ _______________________________________________________________________________ _______________________________________________________________________________ _______________________________________________________________________________ 28. did the peer teaching experiences in your methodology courses contribute to the improvement of your teaching skills? if so, in what ways? if not, why not? _______________________________________________________________________________ _______________________________________________________________________________ _______________________________________________________________________________ _______________________________________________________________________________ _______________________________________________________________________________ universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras70 akcan _______________________________________________________________________________ 29. have you experienced any particular problem or challenge during your first few years of teaching? please specify the problem, the cause, and, if appropriate, how you responded to the challenge. _______________________________________________________________________________ _______________________________________________________________________________ _______________________________________________________________________________ _______________________________________________________________________________ _______________________________________________________________________________ _______________________________________________________________________________ 30. do you have any suggestions for improving the quality of the teacher education programme? please be specific. _______________________________________________________________________________ _______________________________________________________________________________ _______________________________________________________________________________ _______________________________________________________________________________ _______________________________________________________________________________ _______________________________________________________________________________ 31. what advice would you give to teacher candidates who will soon graduate and start to teach? _______________________________________________________________________________ _______________________________________________________________________________ _______________________________________________________________________________ _______________________________________________________________________________ _______________________________________________________________________________ _______________________________________________________________________________ 79profile vol. 14, no. 1, april 2012. issn 1657-0790. bogotá, colombia. pages 79-89 effects of strategy instruction in an efl reading comprehension course: a case study efectos de la instrucción de estrategias en un curso de comprensión de lectura en inglés como lengua extranjera: un estudio de caso sergio lopera medina* universidad de antioquia, colombia strategy instruction is useful in teaching contexts. this paper examines the effects of strategy instruction in an efl reading comprehension course carried out with 26 undergraduate students at a colombian university. as a research method, a case study was implemented. there were three instruments with which to collect data: reading comprehension tests, teacher’s field notes and self-reflection in class at the strategy instruction phase, and a learning perception questionnaire. given that students improved in reading comprehension, it would seem that reading strategy instruction is indeed very useful. also, it was noted that when students applied reading strategies, they became more self-confident and this in turn enhanced their motivation. finally, when students applied the reading strategy approach, the use of dictionaries decreased considerably. key words: dictionary use, improvement in efl reading comprehension, reading strategy instruction, self-confidence. la instrucción basada en estrategias es útil en los contextos de lectura. este artículo reporta los efectos de instrucción basada en estrategias de lectura en inglés como lengua extranjera a un grupo de 26 estudiantes de enfermería de una universidad colombiana. como método de investigación se llevó a cabo el estudio de caso. para recolectar la información, se aplicaron tres instrumentos: pruebas de comprensión de lectura, notas de campo y la autorreflexión en clase en la fase de instrucción de estrategias, y un cuestionario de percepción de aprendizaje. debido a que los estudiantes mejoraron en la comprensión de lectura, se concluye que la instrucción basada en estrategias de lectura parece ser beneficiosa. se observó que cuando los estudiantes aplicaban las estrategias de lectura, mostraban mayor autoconfianza, lo cual incrementó su motivación. además, cuando los estudiantes aplicaban el enfoque de estrategias de lectura, el uso del diccionario disminuyó considerablemente. palabras clave: autoconfianza, instrucción basada en estrategias, mejora en la comprensión de lectura en inglés, uso del diccionario. * e-mail: serggiolop@hotmail.com this article was received on april 27, 2011, and accepted on november 21, 2011. universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras80 lopera medina introduction there is a common belief among educators that appropriate strategy use has a good impact on students when they are trained to apply effective strategies. janzen (1996) proposes that strategy instruction is useful in reading contexts because students develop knowledge about the reading process. janzen (1996), winograd and hare (1988), and karbalaei (2001) have focused on the reading strategies that readers use here and throughout in processing written input and have made some suggestions on how to teach reading comprehension in foreign language (fl) / second language (sl) contexts. this paper reports a case study of the effects of strategy instruction in an english as a foreign language (efl) reading course with students at the universidad de antioquia, medellín, colombia. this paper begins with a review of the relevant literature followed by the research method and research question. then, the data collection and analysis procedures are described. finally, it reports the main findings and proposes some conclusions and an implication. literature review this section covers the concepts of reading strategy instruction, motivation, reading, and reading strategies. the process of reading strategy instruction according to wenden (1985), and oxford (1990), learner strategies allow learners to take responsibility for their own language learning. they posit that these learning strategies help them to solve learning problems, and as a result, students may become autonomous language learners. according to wenden and rubin (1987), the process of learner strategy instruction consists of two important issues: the first one is the description of strategies that successful language learners use, presented as typologies. the second one is training fl/sl students in how to apply strategies that have been proven effective. when the reading strategies are outlined by good readers, teachers can use them to motivate poor readers thereby helping them learn more effectively (hosenfeld, 1979). block (1986) supports the idea that reading strategies help learners to execute a task iden tifying which textual cues they have to focus on, to gauge how to make sense of what they read, and to know what to do when they have problems understanding the text. the reading strategies involved in this process range from the simplest (e.g. scanning, guessing word meaning, previewing), to the most complex (e.g. summarizing, making inferences, and identifying tone). carrell (1998) states that the difference between good and bad strategies is about using the strategies consciously or unconsciously. in order to have effective second language (l2) reading strategy instruction, she suggests the involvement of two important metacognitive factors that can be applied in fl/l2 reading strategy instruction: knowledge of cognition, and regulation of cognition. the former guides readers to be aware of the reading strategies they use when reading. the latter asks readers to choose appropriate or more effective strategies that will help them here and elsewhere to have a better understanding of the text. research in reading has proved that when teachers use explicit reading strategies in classrooms, students improve their performance. hamp-lyons (1985) and kern (1989) contrasted two different groups and found that a group that followed the strategy training did better than the one that did not follow this strategy instruction. winograd and hare (1988, p. 134) outline five recommendations that teachers should follow in order to apply strategy instruction successfully: 81profile vol. 14, no. 1, april 2012. issn 1657-0790. bogotá, colombia. pages 79-89 effects of strategy instruction in an efl reading comprehension course: a case study • explain the strategy to be covered in the lesson. • describe the importance and benefits of using the strategy. • model how to use the reading strategy. • highlight when and where to use the strategy. • show students how they can assess whether they are using the strategy successfully or unsuccessfully. motivation when teachers apply strategy instruction in a consistent and realistic manner, students are engaged and this may increase their motivation. bastidas (2006) claims that “motivation is a dynamic and an interactive process composed of beliefs, wants, reasons, and goals mediated by socio-cultural and historical conditions to learn a second or a foreign language” (p. 154). when students are guided to have a clear purpose in reading, motivation plays a very important role. guthrie (1996) states that this motivation, or engaged reading, is beneficial because it is based on the cognitive characteristics of the reader. the reader uses cognitive strategies and interacts socially to learn from texts. therefore, a motivated reader is better equipped to negotiate the process of reading comprehension. reading reading is an interactive process in which the writer and the reader dialog through a text. barnett (1989, cited in omaggio, 1993) defines reading as communication, as a mental process, as the reader’s active participation in the creation of meaning, and as a manipulation of strategies. moreover, day and bamford (2000) posit that reading is the construction of meaning from a printed or written message. for academic purposes, reading is important because it is one of the most frequently used language skills in everyday life, as witnessed by the use of internet. students search for information through the web and most of it is published in english. “as a skill reading is clearly one of the most important, in fact in many instances around the world we may argue that reading is the most important foreign skill, particularly in cases where students have to read english material for their own specialist subject but may never actually have to speak the language; such cases are often referred to as english as a library language” (mcdonough & shaw, 1993, p. 89). reading strategies mikulecky and jeffries (2004) state that when learners receive strategy instruction, they build “on their already-established cognitive abilities and background knowledge” (p. 183). students may also view reading strategies as a problem solving activity which takes the place of translating. through this approach, students increase their confidence and motivation. as a result, they may have faster access to the reading material they have to use in their academic contexts. poole (2009) points out that “a number of studies show the connection between increased reading strategy use and skilled reading among second language learners at the post-secondary level” (p. 30). nunan (1999) highlights a typology of reading strategies developed by teachers in the eltu (english language teaching unit) at a chinese university. his list is summarized and modified for this paper, in table 1. in order to guide students to use helpful strategies when they read in a foreign language, the teacher can design certain tasks. tasks are exercises intended to facilitate learning and in which there is an objective to reach. a task is defined as any structured language learning endeavor which has a particular objective, appropriate content, a specified working procedure, and a range of outcomes for those who undertake the tasks. ‘task’ is therefore assumed to refer to a range of work plans universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras82 lopera medina which have the overall purpose of facilitating language learning – from the simple and brief exercise type, to the more complex and lengthy activities such as group problem, solving or simulation, and decision making. (breen, 1987, cited in nunan 1989, p. 6) some important aspects of language learning must be included when designing activities, namely, activation and building of background knowledge, activities to work on the comprehension of the specific message, or activities dealing with reflection and discussion. when designing tasks for students, one of the most recommended routines is to design them following the format of pre-activities, whileactivities, and post-activities (lopera, 2003). research question what, if any, are the effects of reading strategy instruction in an undergraduate group taking a reading comprehension course? research method this paper reports an exploratory case study (cresswell, 2007; merriam, 1998; tellis, 1997; yin, 2003) used as the research method to understand the effect of reading strategy instruction on students’ reading comprehension. a case study is the most qualitative method used in information systems. it involves a phenomenon which has to do with real issues and one’s taking into account the context (myers, 1997). in terms of this study, the teacher is seen as a researcher because she or he explores the effects of reading strategy training in his students (freeman, 1998). on the other hand, researchers can also use a quantitative analysis in order to support data. one kind of quantitative design is pre-experimental. in this process, an evaluation is administered at the beginning of the experiment; then, treatment takes place with the group; finally, the same evaluation is given after the treatment in order to confirm the results. it is worth noting that this study favors qualitative analysis, and that the quantitative part aims at endorsing findings. context and group profile a group of the faculty of nursing at universidad de antioquia was chosen to explore the effects of strategy training in reading comprehension in english as a foreign language. reading comprehension courses i and ii are included in their curriculum. for this case study, reading comprehension i was table 1. typology of reading strategies developed by chinese university teachers (based on nunan, 1999) strategy comment having a purpose knowing what you want to gain from the text previewing making a quick survey of the text, identifying the topic, main idea skimming getting the author’s point of view scanning looking for specific details predicting anticipating what is coming next inferring getting the ideas that are not explicit cohesive devices identifying functions of conjunctions guessing word meaning using context, word structure, cognates background knowledge using what one already knows and applying it to new ideas in the text. 83profile vol. 14, no. 1, april 2012. issn 1657-0790. bogotá, colombia. pages 79-89 effects of strategy instruction in an efl reading comprehension course: a case study taken as the setting for data collection. participants were instructed in the typology of reading strategies stated above in the section of reading strategies, namely: having a purpose, previewing, skimming, scanning, predicting, inferring, using cohesive devices, guessing word meaning, and activating background knowledge. there were 26 students in the class. there were 24 women and 2 men, and their ages ranged from 19 to 22 years old. the course lasted 20 weeks, with one class period of four hours a week. the course was taught in the students’ mother tongue (spanish), but the exercises and readings were in english. both the teacher and students used spanish because the students did not feel sure of expressing their opinions, asking or requesting clarifications as well as giving explanations in english. the participants expressed a high level of motivation to attend this course because they knew the importance of being skilled readers for their academic purposes. research procedure the researcher used three instruments in the process of data collection: the first instrument was a reading comprehension test which consisted of two paragraphs with 20 multiple choice questions that included main ideas, referents, guessing word meaning, and inference. students had to circle the best answer based on four options. students were allowed to use dictionaries and had 90 minutes to take the test. this test was implemented both at the beginning and at the end of the course. the second instrument was the documentation of the pedagogical intervention of the teacher, done through field notes in the class sessions and self-reflection in a diary, as the teacher was the researcher in the study. the teacher followed the five recommendations outlined by winograd and hare (1988) as described above in the section of the process of reading strategy instruction. the teacher also involved the experience-text-relationship (etr) method which has been applied usefully by researchers (carrell, pharis, & liberto, 1989; au, 1979). this method helps learners to activate and/ or develop their background knowledge of the text. this method also helps learners to monitor their reading comprehension and to become aware of the reading strategies they use when the teacher uses the reading strategy instructions. the teacher followed a diary in order to collect information of the process that students followed. a set of pedagogical activities are described: • the teacher told the students the purpose for each reading strategy. he also emphasized the benefits of using them. • both the teacher and students looked at the title of the selected text and predicted the possible content of the reading. the teacher selected authentic readings not only about their specific area (nursing) but also about social issues, tourism, technology, education, and medicine. the teacher always motivated the students to activate their background knowledge related to the content of the text. • the teacher usually introduced a reading strategy by explaining and modeling how to approach and apply the reading strategy to the text. during this process, the teacher highlighted some repair strategies such as using the context to guess the meaning of unknown words, continuing to read until the meaning becomes clear, re-reading difficult or problematic parts, finding the most important parts of the text, and asking classmates or the teacher for help. • after the explanation, the teacher asked the students to do some exercises with the readings in order to apply a reading strategy or a set of reading strategies which had been just introduced. in order to apply the said reading universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras84 lopera medina strategies, the teacher designed pre, while, and post activities for each reading. the teacher also asked the students to work in small groups of two or three students; the teacher timed the activities in order to prompt the students to be fast readers. they were allowed to use dictionaries. • in the classroom, the teacher was always around the small groups in order to observe their reading endeavors and was always available to answer questions or guide students. • when time for a specific activity was up, the teacher asked certain students to socialize the possible answers to the whole group. • at this socialization stage, the teacher en couraged the students to relate the content of the reading to their personal experiences by applying the experience-text-relationship (etr) method. • the teacher demonstrated to students how they could assess themselves. he asked the students to summarize and socialize the most important parts of each reading as a way of assessing the process of applying the reading strategies. • public praise was given by the teacher as a motivational strategy for learners. • the teacher took notes in his diary during the development of the classes. • homework was assigned for each class, and students socialized it with the whole group at the beginning of each class. most of the homework emphasized the reading strategy being worked in class; the homework had to be done individually. finally, the third instrument was a learning perception questionnaire (see appendix). it was an open questionnaire about students’ experience as regards the reading strategy learning process; it was administered at the end of the course. data analysis and findings the analysis of data shows that students improved in reading comprehension after having had the strategy instruction. reading comprehension test the results of the first and second tests given to the 26 students are different, but they both keep the same structure and the same level of difficulty. they are shown in table 2 and figure 1, and suggest an overall gain in reading comprehension ability. table 2 and figure 1 show that the average score of evaluation moved positively (mean before= 9.69; mean after= 12.12). the median shows that 50 percent of the students selected more than 9 and 13 questions right on both tests respectively. this means that the course had a positive impact on students. this positive movement is represented in the graphic which shows that the mean on the second test is higher than the mean on the first test (black arrows). nevertheless, the variation (std. deviation) increased (before= 2.494; after= 3.456). this variation suggests that new tries have to be applied in order to improve and check efficiency. regarding the qualitative part, the teacher made notes in his diary related to students’ group work, their performance on the tests, and the use of dictionaries in class. when learners took the first test, their time was mostly devoted to using the dictionary; most of the learners wrote the meaning of unknown words in the paragraphs. five students out of 23 finished the test in 60 minutes; the others handed in their tests after the allotted 90 minutes. some questions (two or three) were left out by four students. finally, the teacher noticed that some students doubted or were not sure of the answers they marked. students were faster on the second test. eight students finished the test in 40 minutes, and the others took an hour. they considerably lessened 85profile vol. 14, no. 1, april 2012. issn 1657-0790. bogotá, colombia. pages 79-89 effects of strategy instruction in an efl reading comprehension course: a case study the use of dictionaries compared to the use on the first test. nobody left out questions on this test, and only three students wrote the meanings of some unknown words in the paragraphs. the teacher noticed that students seemed to feel more confident when answering the questions. pedagogical intervention to persuade students of the importance of each topic –that is, of each reading strategy– the teacher modeled it and showed how, when, and where to use it. he then gave students two readings to which they could apply each topic (having a purpose for reading, previewing, skimming, scanning, predicting, inferring, identifying cohesive devices, guessing word meaning, and activating background knowledge). the teacher made notes about the students’ application of the reading strategies and these notes resulted in the following observations: • in the early stages of the experiment, some students used their fingers to guide their eyes across the lines of the paragraphs. the teacher interpreted this to mean students were reading word by word. however, towards the end of the strategy training period, students did not use their fingers to follow the reading in the last topics of the strategy training. thus, for the teacher-researcher, this appeared to indicate that students were using the context to guess the meaning of unknown vocabulary. • when the teacher moved around the classroom in order to observe whether or not the students were applying the reading strategy approach, he noticed that the students showed an awareness of knowledge of cognition (carrell, 1998). they produced expressions like “let’s look at the title, subtitles, and images first, then…”; “read the first and last sentence of each paragraph to get the main idea”; and “let’s use the context to get the meaning of that word.” • at the beginning of the course, some students claimed that reading in english was difficult and complex. they also said that the readings were too long and that they could not handle them. the teacher noticed that their motivation was low. during the course, however, the students’ motivation and attitudes toward reading changed. through the process of reading strategy instruction, students were able to develop and apply reading strategies which resulted in a boost of their confidence. figure 1. results of the first and second tests value scale of test 26 20 5 1 2 7,5 10 12,5 15 17,5 20 test table 2. results of the first and second tests before instruction after instruction valid missing mean median std. deviation minimum maximum 26 0 9.69 9.00 2.494 7 16 26 0 12.12 13.00 3.456 5 20 n=26 universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras86 lopera medina • when homework was checked, the teacher asked them if they had followed the recommendations given. some of them said that it was difficult with some readings, especially the ones about technology; but the ones about medicine, social issues, and nursing were okay and they said “they were workable.” learning questionnaire the teacher analyzed the answers on the questionnaire (see appendix) by categorizing as follows the students’ comments into the most significant issues: application of reading strategies they now apply reading strategies when they read materials in english. they can also manipulate unknown vocabulary because they try to contextualize the words in the reading, or by using morpho-lexical strategies. use of dictionary they noticed that the frequency in the use of the dictionary could be decreased when they used the reading strategies mentioned above. also, they observed that they saved time when they did not use it. self-confidence on the questionnaire, they stated that they now felt more confident when reading in english because they could interact with the reading in order to get the meaning. also, after the strategy instruction, they felt more confident with the vocabulary. the course they were of the opinion that the methodology implemented in the course was quite useful; it facilitated the understanding of the readings. they felt they were more skilled after the strategy instruction. findings the three instruments –tests, teacher’s field notes and self-reflection in class at the strategy instruction phase, and a motivation questionnaire– were contrasted with one another in order to find similarities. the answers to the research question “what, if any, are the effects of reading strategy instruction on an undergraduate group taking a foreign language reading comprehension course?” are the following: • the effects of the reading strategy instruction were quite useful for these foreign language readers because they improved in reading comprehension. • when the students applied the reading strategies, their self-confidence improved and this resulted in higher levels of motivation. • when the learners applied the reading comprehension strategies as they read, the use of a dictionary was considerably reduced. conclusions and implication the primary goal of reading strategy instruction is to improve students’ reading comprehension. this paper has shown that students improved not only in efl reading comprehension but also in knowledge of strategies. with the strategy instruction, students were able to develop meta-cognitive awareness in using reading strategies. moreover, students’ attitudes and motivation changed positively toward reading in a foreign language. specifically, students gained self-confidence as they showed they could interact with different kinds of readings. finally, as the students applied the reading strategies as they read, the use of a dictionary was reduced as a consequence of reading strategy instruction. however, with these and no doubt other students, it was necessary to guide them in order for them to become autonomous. 87profile vol. 14, no. 1, april 2012. issn 1657-0790. bogotá, colombia. pages 79-89 effects of strategy instruction in an efl reading comprehension course: a case study this study did not cover how, if at all, the process of becoming autonomous learners is linked to the use of reading strategies. knowing how to use reading strategies helps efl readers to interact with the reading but it does not mean that they are autonomous readers. further research is necessary to examine the issue of learner autonomy when students are applying reading strategies. references au, k. h. p. (1979). using the experience-text relationship method with minority children. the reading teacher, 32, 677-679. bastidas, j. a. (2006). a framework to understanding motivation in the tesol field. profile issues in teachers’ professional development, 7, 147-159. block, e. (1986). the comprehension strategies of second language readers. tesol quarterly, 20, 463-494. carrell, p. (1998). can reading strategies be successfully taught? aral, 21(1), 1-20. carrell, p., pharis, b., & liberto, j. (1989). metacognitive strategy training for esl reading. tesol quarterly, 20, 463-494. cresswell, j. w. (2007). qualitative inquiry and research design. choosing among five approaches. thousand oaks, ca: sage publications. day, r., & bamford, j. (2000). extensive reading in the second language classroom. cambridge: cambridge university press. freeman, d. (1998). doing teacher research: from inquiry to understanding. boston, ma: newbury house. guthrie, j. t. 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(2004). reading power. united states: pearson, longman. myers, m. (1997). critical ethnography in information systems. in a. s. lee, j. liebenau, & j. i. degross (eds). information systems and qualitative research (pp. 276300). london: chapman & hall. nunan, d. (1989). designing tasks for the communicative classroom. cambridge: cambridge university press. nunan, d. (1999). second language teaching and learning. boston: heinle & heinle. omaggio, a. (1993). teaching language in context. boston: heinle & heinle. oxford, r. l. (1990). language learning strategies: what every teacher should know. boston: heinle & heinle. poole, a. (2009). the reading strategies used by male and female colombian university students. profile issues in teachers’ professional development, 11(1), 29-40. tellis, w. (1997). application of a case study methodology. the qualitative report, 3(3). retrieved from www.nova. edu/ssss/qr/qr3-3/tellis2.html wenden, a. (1985). learner strategies. tesol newsletter, 14, 1-4. wenden, a., & rubin, j. (eds.). (1987). learner strategies in language learning. hertfordshire: prentice hall. winograd, p., & hare, v. c. (1988). direct instruction of reading comprehension strategies: the nature of teacher explanation. in c. e. weinsten, e. t. goetz, & universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras88 lopera medina p. a. alexander (eds.), learning and studying strategies: issues in assessment instruction and evaluation (pp. 121-139). san diego: academic press. yin, r. k. (2003). case study research. design and methods. (3rd ed.). thousand oaks, ca: sage publications. about the author sergio lopera medina, candidate for the phd in linguistics; ma in linguistics; specialist in teaching foreign languages, universidad de antioquia, colombia. he is a full time professor at universidad de antioquia. his research interests are teaching efl reading comprehension, compliments in pragmatics. 89profile vol. 14, no. 1, april 2012. issn 1657-0790. bogotá, colombia. pages 79-89 effects of strategy instruction in an efl reading comprehension course: a case study appendix: learning questionnaire*1 universidad de antioquia – escuela de idiomas – sección servicios learning questionnaire in reading comprehension in english dear student, the following questionnaire is aimed at verifying your progress in reading comprehension in english as a foreign language. please answer the questionnaire as objectively as possible. the information gathered here will be used for research purposes in human sciences. proper names will not be used in order to protect the informants’ identities. you agree with participating as soon as you fill out this questionnaire. last name: ___________________ name: ____________________________ age: _________________________ social strata: _______________________ year you finished your undergraduate program: _____________________________ do you have an undergraduate degree? yes____ no____ do you have a job? yes____ no____ are you graduated from a public high school? yes____ no____ has this course helped you improve your reading ability in english? yes____ no____ why?____________________________________________________________ ________________________________________________________________________________ what did you learn in this course?_____________________________________________________ do you feel more confident reading texts in english? yes____ no____ why?____________________________________________________________ ________________________________________________________________________________ what was the positive part of this course?_______________________________________________ what about the negative part?________________________________________________________ * this questionnaire was administered in spanish and translated into english for the purpose of this publication. 111profile vol. 18, no. 2, july-december 2016. issn 1657-0790 (printed) 2256-5760 (online). bogotá, colombia. pages 111-123 http://dx.doi.org/10.15446/profile.v18n2.53314 argumentation skills: a peer assessment approach to discussions in the efl classroom habilidades de argumentación: un enfoque de evaluación por pares a los debates en el aula de inglés como lengua extranjera diego fernando ubaque casallas* freddy samir pinilla castellanos** centro cultural colombo americano, bogotá, colombia this paper presents an exploratory action research study carried out by two english as a foreign language teachers in a private, non-profit institution in bogota, colombia, with a group of 12 learners in a b1 english course. these students faced difficulties elaborating on their ideas when discussing issues in class. the study placed emphasis on the use of argumentation outlines and peer assessment to boost learners’ argumentative abilities. audio-taped conversations and open-ended interviews were used to understand the impact on the pedagogical intervention. findings revealed that argumentation outlines and peer assessment can promote learners’ awareness and ability to engage in argumentation processes. moreover, peer assessment appears to be an essential tool for enhancing personal and collaborative learning, as well as for promoting learner reflection and agency. key words: argumentation skills, experience, peer assessment. este artículo presenta un estudio de investigación acción exploratoria llevado a cabo en una institución privada en bogotá, colombia, con un grupo de 12 estudiantes en un curso de inglés b1. estos estudiantes enfrentaron dificultades al elaborar sus ideas al discutir temas de clase. el estudio usó esquemas de argumentación y una evaluación por pares para impulsar las habilidades argumentativas de los alumnos. se analizaron conversaciones audio grabadas y entrevistas abiertas donde se reveló que los esquemas de argumentación y la evaluación por pares promueven el conocimiento y la capacidad de participar en los procesos de argumentación. la evaluación por pares resultó ser una herramienta fundamental para mejorar el aprendizaje personal y colaborativo, al igual que para promover la reflexión y actuación del alumno. palabras clave: evaluación por pares, experiencia, habilidades de argumentación. * e-mail: dubaque@javeriana.edu.co ** e-mail: fpinilla@colombobogota.edu.co how to cite this article (apa, 6th ed.): ubaque casallas, d. f., & pinilla castellanos, f. s. (2016). argumentation skills: a peer assessment approach to discussions in the efl classroom. profile issues in teachers’ professional development, 18(2), 111-123. http://dx.doi.org/10.15446/ profile.v18n2.53314. this article was received on october 1, 2015, and accepted on march 28, 2016. this is an open access article distributed under the terms of the creative commons license attribution-noncommercial-noderivatives 4.0 international license. consultation is possible at http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/. universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras112 ubaque casallas, & pinilla castellanos introduction language learning research in the english as a foreign language (efl) field has often focused on the exploration and study of assessment practices as a way to improve learning (j. d. brown, 1998). importantly, the notable shift from structural teaching approaches to communicative, humanistic, and learner-centered approaches (shaaban, 2005) has opened up space for teachers to see students as active constructors of knowledge (o’malley & valdez pierce, 1996). for h. d. brown (2004), practices such as self and peer assessment involve students in their own destiny, encourage autonomy, and increase motivation. peer assessment has then been considered uniquely valuable because it motivates students to be more careful in their work and amplifies their voice in the learning process (black, harrison, lee, marshall, & wiliam, 2003). nevertheless, not much has been documented in terms of assessment as a collaborative endeavor carried out by learners to claim ownership of their own learning processes. for cheng and warren (2005), peer assessment has been more commonly incorporated into english language writing instruction where peers respond to and edit each other’s written work with the aim of helping with revision. although psychological studies have shown that argumentation skills are associated with high-order cognitive skills, such as conceptual change (nussbaum & sinatra, 2003) and nonverbal reasoning (mercer & littleton, 2007), as well as with learning outcomes (p. bell & linn, 2000), little has been done in the efl field to explore and document how learners can improve argumentation skills through oral tasks and the implementation of peer assessment practices. therefore, there is still a fertile ground for new research that has the potential to impact language learning from the learners’ perspective. the present paper presents a classroom research study where peer assessment was used to improve learners’ oral argumentative skills. the study is based on the assumption that peer assessment is relevant for developing students’ critical thinking, communication, lifelong learning, and collaborative skills (nilson, 2003), and for helping students to become realistic judges of their own performance, enabling them to monitor their own learning experience, rather than relying solely on their teachers for feedback (crisp, 2007). theoretical background the notion of experience: the value of experience in language learning this study takes on kolb’s (1984) notion of experience. kolb contends that experience is an essential element that cannot be left aside from the classroom as it is a crucial part of the learners’ learning process. according to kolb in any learning activity, learning processes need to be seen as top priority since “each act of understanding is the result of a process of continuous construction and invention through the interaction processes of assimilation and accommodation” (p. 26). as for this, it is essential to see experience as the umbrella term to understand language learning processes. kolb also argues that “experience provides conceptual bridges across life situations such as school and work, portraying learning as [a] continuous, lifelong process” (p. 33). thus, learners’ experiences when starting to learn a new language can help account for linguistic as well as personal learning processes in the new language. learning through and from experience is a dimension that cannot be detached from the efl classroom. for dewey (1938), if an experience arouses curiosity, strengthens initiative, and sets up desires and purposes that are sufficiently intense to carry a person over dead places in the future, continuity works in a very different way. every experience is a moving force. then, its value can be judged only on the ground of what it moves toward and into. (p. 14). hence, in order to make the learners’ experience of learning a language move away from instrumentalized views where only linguistic outcomes matter, one needs to 113profile vol. 18, no. 2, july-december 2016. issn 1657-0790 (printed) 2256-5760 (online). bogotá, colombia. pages 111-123 argumentation skills: a peer assessment approach to discussions in the efl classroom acknowledge that learning through and from experience places learning in the context of our lived experience and participation in the world (murrell, 2000). peer assessment cohen (1994) contends that assessment plays an important role in processes of learning languages and should be included in the procedures of evaluating both the students’ language performance and the language learning process. in this respect, for assessment to be a meaningful component, it needs to involve learners actively (keppell & carless, 2006) so that the assessment process can be more transparent to them. as for this, j. d. brown (1998) argues that assessment requires learners to judge both their own performance learning a language and that of their peers. then, peer assessment practices will give not only teachers but also learners a clearer view of the actual learning processes. peer assessment is particularly congruent with active and self-regulated learning, emphasizing students’ involvement and the development of social, cognitive, and meta-cognitive skills, some of which are professionally relevant (van den berg, admiraal, & pilot, 2006). peer assessment is thus an interesting alternative to help learners regulate and monitor their own learning (lew, alwis, & schmidt, 2010). because peer assessment requires students to closely judge their peers’ work, it seems to promote critical and reflexive thinking (taras, 2010). hence, peer assessment is more than an instrumental tool to evaluate learners’ performance; it may be considered more as an approach for learners to ponder upon and enhance their own learning experience. moreover, since peer assessment can be considered as a form of peer tutoring (donaldson, topping, & aitchison, 1996), there can be advantages for both tutor and tutee (hartley, 1998). then, peer assessment may have a positive impact upon all students’ behavior and attitude toward their own learning (freeman, 1995), which makes it a valuable resource for teachers and learners in the efl classroom. argumentation skills the development of spoken language skills is well documented (wells, 1987). however, little has been said in terms of how argumentative skills, understood in this study as one of the components of communicative competence (widdowson, 1978), are being developed in the efl classroom. argumentation skills integrate both the capacity to make use of a linguistic repertoire and the capacity to use language with a communicative purpose. although a communicative purpose can be achieved without the use of augmentation skills, we hold the view that argumentation must be conceived as a dialogic process in which opposing or similar claims meet, as well as a discourse mechanism whereby the user of the language can demonstrate his/her ability to use knowledge acquired for effective communication (widdowson, 1978). people use arguments on a daily basis for different purposes, like persuasion, negotiation, debate, consultation, and resolving differences of opinion (van eemeren, grootendorst, & henkemans, 1996); thus, “argumentation or the use of arguments plays a critical role in the development of critical thinking and in developing a deep understanding of complex issues and ideas” (deane & song, 2014, p. 100). actually, argumentation is a fundamental cognitive skill required for the 21st century thinking citizen (kuhn & crowell, 2011). the ability to generate and evaluate sound arguments has received increasing recognition as fundamental to good thinking (mercier, 2011), since “argumentation is a dialogue in which participants may take many different positions and change their minds as it proceeds” (deane & song, 2014, p. 100). therefore, argumentation skills are not detached from hymes (1972) and bachman’s (1990) notion of communicative competence that has to do with the functional use of language. both authors emphasize interaction among learners and the use of meaningful and contextualized language. universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras114 ubaque casallas, & pinilla castellanos context of the study this study was carried out in an adult english program at a private, non-profit english institution in bogota, colombia. in order to promote the students’ language ability, the institution assists them in becoming autonomous learners by providing them with different learning strategies and tools they have to put into practice during the learning process. the institution’s learning and teaching philosophy builds on cooperative learning, defined as “group learning activity organized so that learning is dependent on the socially structured exchange of information between learners in groups and in which each learner is held accountable for his or her own learning and is motivated to increase the learning of others” (olsen & kagan, 1992, p. 8) to organize and orient pedagogical and learning practices. the study involved the authors as teacher researchers and a class of 12 young-adult learners whose ages ranged from 20 to 36 years. the learners’ proficiency corresponds to level b1 as defined by the common european framework of reference (cefr). they participated for a period of six months in a number of class activities and interviews conducted by the researchers. the purpose of the interviews was to provide an account of the learners’ language learning processes on the development of argumentation skills through a process of peer assessment, whereby learners could document and keep track of their own involvement in the learning process (keppell & carless, 2006). diagnosis when exploring communicative activities in the classroom, informal assessment exercises made it evident that learners were feeling neither confident nor at ease with the oral skills they had to put into practice when discussing issues in class. in order to understand their perceptions, learners were invited to participate in an online survey that aimed at documenting how their language learning processes had been carried out regarding oral skills. in the first part of the survey, learners were asked to choose the area they had the most difficulty with when answering a question (see figure 1). figure 1. learners’ difficulties when answering questions choose the option(s) that best relates to the most difficult part when you answer a question: developing the idea presenting examples using grammar properly other 0% 10% 20% 30% 40% 50% 60% 115 argumentation skills: a peer assessment approach to discussions in the efl classroom fifty percent of the participants seemed to be concerned with not having the ability to develop ideas as expected. some of the comments they wrote for this question reinforce this perception: because there are some cases where i don’t have enough knowledge about the specific topic to argument the answer. (s1)1 sometimes, i’m going around the bush. (s2) i used to forget the structures when i speak. [sic] (s3) sometimes i feel afraid about my pronunciation and i have to make effort to express my ideas. [sic] (s4) because on moment i don’t remember the correct word. [sic] (s5) i can’t find the words that i want to use for developing the ideas, i don’t know how begin to show all that i want to say. (s6) (survey, question 1) in the same survey, and in order to see whether learners’ performance was different when developing ideas in writing, they were asked to answer a question that had to do with poverty as a global issue: “what do you think about poverty as a global problem?” this short written exercise showed that most of the ideas presented in writing needed either more elaboration or were just too short. some of the answers are presented below: this is a mix of different causes: discrimination and social inequality, wars also vulnerability to natural disasters. [sic] (s1) in my opinion poverty is the general problem of the society, since around the world there are few people rich and they manage business, for example in colombia the same families always govern. [sic] (s2) as for my the poverty is an problem general for all person because when who in a society is poor, the other person even the rich people will be affect, only when the situation is regular for all people in the area, so all can be good and peace. [sic] (s3) (survey, question 3) interestingly, when learners were asked what teachers had done in class to help them improve speaking skills, this is what they said: 1 all students’ names are either fictional or labeled as s# to protect their identities. some of them said that in my experience as a language learner, teachers have done exercises about speaking in groups about different topics. [sic] (s4) well really many times, the teachers has showed how develop the argument but the students sometimes don’t get concept or don’t remember so when we need to use the method, it isn’t. [sic] (s2) my teacher taught me words and expressions that i can say when i am speaking, and the teacher explained me the order that i can follow in order to improve argumentation skills. [sic] (s5) (survey, question 4) although learners accounted for some learning experience, it had not been effective enough. according to their views, following the strategies presented by their teachers was not an easy task. method this study took on methodological principles of action research. action research was seen as a process in which planning, acting, observing, and reflecting (newby, 2010) were pivotal to document and understand learners’ experiences on the pedagogical problem of this study. nonetheless, and bearing in mind that as teachers we develop personal theories that are constructed in action and constituted reflexively in our everyday practice (schön, 1983), action research was also selected because our aim as professionals was not only to improve learners’ abilities to elaborate on ideas but also to make sure that our pedagogical views were integrated in and reconstructed by developing the study. pedagogical intervention newby’s (2010) conception of action research, planning, acting, observing, and reflecting were em braced as the guiding elements for the instructional component of the study; then, by acknowledging that our personal theories on this matter were relevant to constructing a more meaningful practice (schön 1983), we began by putting together personal perspectives on the subject of argumentation. this collaborative endeavor profile vol. 18, no. 2, july-december 2016. issn 1657-0790 (printed) 2256-5760 (online). bogotá, colombia. pages 111-123 universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras116 ubaque casallas, & pinilla castellanos came to its realization through lesson planning. lesson planning was an essential element of the planning stage of the action research process through which we were able to map and envisage the acting processes. through lesson planning, assessment was addressed to be implemented and fostered from a collaborative peer-learning perspective. this collaborative view intended to empower learners to appraise the quality, value, and level of learning when they value their classmates’ interventions. this peer approach to assessment was further used to enhance learning and contribute to learning efficiency and quality (al-barakat & al-hassan, 2009). the second stage of this intervention dealt with acting and observing. we implemented a previously configured set of activities that in essence was geared towards promoting oral argumentation skills and documenting how these skills might improve as a result of peer assessment practices in class discussions. data collection and findings data collected through audio recording of oral tasks and interviews were analyzed through content analysis procedures. this approach to scrutinize data is a general term for a number of different strategies used to analyze text (powers & knapp, 2006). because content analysis is “a research method for the subjective interpretation of the content of text data through the systematic classification process of coding and identifying themes or patterns” (hsieh & shannon, 2005, p. 278), it was considered appropriate for determining and describing the characteristics of the oral data collected. learners’ argumentation skills in oral tasks oral tasks are best described here as communicativeoriented activities learners performed both during and at the end of a work unit. it was assumed that a task is an activity that places emphasis on meaning, involves communication and problem-solving, and relates to realworld situations (skehan, 1998). oral tasks were often supported by the use of reading material. readings were used to provide learners with some information input and trigger further discussions. reading is a situated activity in which the interaction of linguistic knowledge, background knowledge, and interpretative work are put together to make sense of the world that surrounds us (baynham, 1995). learners had the opportunity to read about topics they later had to talk about, and they were asked to follow a simple argumentation outline (see table 1) to help them develop their ideas when speaking. they were expected to use the four expressions shown in table 1. table 1. first argumentation outline as for me (1) for instance (3) since (2) you know (4) the following transcriptions result from an oral task and illustrate the students’ use of argumentation skills following the outline shown in table 1: as for me the cultural has changed over time a lot since it was customary that the family was together the people was more formal than today, they people tend to be reserved for instance a lot person eat their food alone, in the same way before the people was more kind today dressed to very formal and they prefer to be reserved with the private life, you know your grandparents sure were formal with traditions customary. in a meeting had a formal etiquette and a good table manners whoever today we are more individual, a lot of times, the family aren’t together at the same time to eat we are informal you can see less ties on the street and the offices and the people likes to show their life through internet in addition our table manners are different since we are together to eat…aren’t we? [sic] (oral task: how has culture changed over time? john) this oral task made it evident that john could follow the outline provided. however, when developing his idea a couple of problems emerged. grammar seemed to be an area where little reflection or monitoring was 117 argumentation skills: a peer assessment approach to discussions in the efl classroom made at the time of speaking. john was not aware of the mistakes made in this regard. pronunciation was as well an area for improvement. in the following examples, the outline was partially incorporated: yes, the culture has changed over time since i am not so older but i have seen some things that surprise me every day. i am going to tell you three examples to show you my opinion. so, first before the people were more respectful with other people, they always greeted someone when they go to someone’s house, but now teenagers do not greet anyone. second, before there were a lot of taboos with some topics like parties, drugs, sex, boyfriend, but now or recently these topics are pretty normal and usual to talk these topics with anyone. third, it is important to say that before when we wanted to visit someone you had to take to give something for instance some bread or maybe some fruit but as we can know now, nobody do that and it is so polite you know the time has changed and the culture too, it hasn’t? [sic] (oral task: how has culture changed over time? carolina) as for me, culture have been having a lot of changes through time, hasn’t it? since the age when our grandparents were kids they were very innocent with topics that nowadays aren’t a taboo for children. for instance, they hadn’t yet now that the kids of the same age ask them knows but also the content of brands new clothes. [sic] (oral task: how has culture changed over time? david) in all cases, the outline of argumentation provided forced the students indirectly to elaborate on their ideas. this linguistic feature placed emphasis on a deeper learning process. it had a bearing on how learners at the time of speaking modified and articulated new mental processes in order to adapt to the new communicative demands. in each of the cases presented above, the outline was used differently. arguably, the communicative intention of each learner as well as his/her vocabulary repertoire and grammatical competence modified the final outcome of the oral task. of particular note here is that “speaking was more than making the right sounds, choosing the right words or getting the constructions grammatically correct” (chastain, 1998, p. 330). speaking or the ability of producing an accurate idea was contingent upon personal skills to incorporate the new outline of argumentation to make it work with previously learned schemas and the personal ability to modify existing information stored in memory. after having found similar performances in other learners’ tasks, it was evident that just providing learners with an outline for argumentation was not enough. there was a need for a collaborative learning approach from which learners could benefit. thence, oral tasks within the classroom incorporated an assessment follow-up process in which learners were expected to value their classmates’ efforts when participating in all discussions. according to davies (2006) peer assessment has been increasingly used as an alternative method of engaging students in the development of their own learning. as such, peer assessment could help students’ self-assessment by their judging the work of others and in turn gaining some insights regarding their own performances, since peer assessment is in essence a process in which students evaluate the performance or achievement of peers (topping, smith, swanson, & elliot, 2000). thus, peer assessment was aimed at helping learners claim ownership of their own learning processes and classroom practices by having them make analytical judgments of oral tasks. with respect to how peer assessment was approached by learners, the comment below illustrates the kind of oral interventions made in class during the follow-up process: in my understanding, carolina started her opinion with yes. she doesn’t use “as for me” to introduce her opinion. she explains her opinion with three arguments. in the first she tried to express that people were more respectful before but the first argument as for me it isn’t clear since i didn’t understand the verb that explain the action that people did before and teenagers don’t do in this moment. she describe with a great arguments the culture changes over time but she made a little mistakes in pronunciation for instance words profile vol. 18, no. 2, july-december 2016. issn 1657-0790 (printed) 2256-5760 (online). bogotá, colombia. pages 111-123 universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras118 ubaque casallas, & pinilla castellanos like usual, talk, changed and use anybody instead of somebody. finally, she made a grammar mistake in a final tag question: she said “the time has changed and the culture too, it hasn’t?” and the correct form is: the time has changed and the culture has changed too, haven’t they?” [sic] (oral task: how has culture changed over time? peer assessment comment, leonardo) in this assessment comment, a couple of ideas were brought forth. firstly, there is a comment regarding how the argumentation outline provided was used by carolina. regarding this, it seems relevant to make use of the expression provided to state one’s opinion inasmuch as it can help ideas run smoothly. this expression is not just stating one’s opinion but also is making the transition for the following argument provided. nevertheless, such assessment sheds light onto the personal yet linguistic schemas already put into practice. these schemas had to do with how learners as individuals expected others to make use of the argumentative outline when debating or discussing the given issues in class. by valuing others’ interventions, peer assessment seemed to assist in the development of important argumentative skills, including reflection upon learners’ own argumentative skills (mello, 1993), and the making of peer assessment an argumentative and metalinguistic/ communicative task. secondly, another issue brought up had to do with the positive feedback provided. it was mentioned that “she describe with a great arguments the culture changes over time but she made a little mistakes in pronunciation for instance words like usual, talk, changed and use anybody instead of somebody” [sic]. such appraisal worked to encourage the learner assessed to continue providing solid arguments when developing ideas. kolb’s (1984) notion of experience indicates that learners can become increasingly self-directed and responsible for their own learning. it can be argued that through the assessment of oral tasks learners created individual knowledge regarding their own argumentation skills and abilities to be used in connection with certain vocabulary. however, if knowledge is created through the transformation of experience as contended by kolb, knowledge constructed by learners in this study was not only the result of the combination of grasping and transforming experience (kolb, 1984), but also the result of a collaborative endeavor where peers co-constructed new learning schemas that helped modify the existing ones. learners’ perceptions of experience semi-structured interviews (j. bell, 1999) were used to explore and document learners’ perceptions regarding the implementation of oral tasks and peer assessment. learners participated in two individual interviews that took place at the end of a work unit. for kvale and brinkmann (2009), speaking of qualitative research, “interviews attempt to understand the world from the subjects’ points of view, to unfold the meaning of their experiences, to uncover their lived world prior to scientific explanation” (p. 1). thus, interviewing was suitable for accessing personal perspectives on the experimented approach. data collected through interviews were analyzed to group learners’ perceptions. on this matter, learners made it evident that having used the outline of argumentations helped them perform more straightforward when discussing different topics. of particular note is that most of the learners’ answers referred to peer assessment as a personal opportunity to contribute to others’ learning processes. according to mcdowell (1995) peer assessment is one form of innovation which aims to improve the quality of learning and empower students in contrast to more traditional methods, which can leave learners’ feeling disengaged from the overall assessment process. then, peer assessment from the learners’ perspective was a means to an end. through it, they performed not only as active participants of their own learning process but also as co-constructors of their peers’. this made peer assessment a shared responsibility for learners 119 argumentation skills: a peer assessment approach to discussions in the efl classroom (somervell, 1993) where they monitored not only the performance of others but also the meaning/content of their own oral interventions. importantly, learners seemed to be willing to assess but at the beginning they did not feel empowered to do it: well, as for me, first, i feel very happy to learn about the structure to give my ideas to the other person or to the other people because before the class i did not know about the structure but i learned about the structure to write a paragraph but for me it’s is more important that i can speak better than i spoke before. so, as for me i think that i am speaking better so i am trying to do my best with the structure, i am trying to memorize the structure and use the structure for the argumentation. . . . well, as i said, as i told you, i did not know the structure but, it is good for me to speak better so, the challenges have been looking for the words to express my ideas…words to develop my ideas. so, for me it had been good to explore more vocabulary and some expressions that you gave to us. actually, i have tried to do this morning the assessment to my classmate but it is difficult for me because you have to listen you have to analyze you have to give your assessment to your classmate and you have to know, because you are going to give your assessment you have to know about the grammar about the correct words to speak. [sic] (interview, jose, unit 1: process regarding assessment and use of the argumentation outline) in the account above, the learner expressed his gratitude towards the assessment outline provided. according to jose, assessing others’ oral tasks became really challenging since he felt he needed to know more to provide meaningful comments. peer assessment seen from the eyes of jose was indeed a reflective learning tool (saito, 2008), yet it required him to be more prepared when valuing others’ oral performance. jose also suggests that there is a learning timeline as to what he could do and what he is doing now. the use of the adverb before appears to signal a change of perspective regarding his personal perception of the learning experience. it is worth mentioning that the difficulties jose has encountered in making assessment comments may be the result of the development of a better understanding of his own critical judgment. in carol’s personal assessment, her learning account turned out to be informative regarding how she perceived the learning process itself. i am...speak different in this moment because i am sure with ideas, i am sure what mistakes i have, i work in it, it is difficult because it is like a frequently mistake like a “maña” [bad habit], it is difficult that you correct himself, it is difficult, himself, because you never pay attention. i tried to record all days i read all the lesson but when speak spontaneously i forget again i need to focus attention in this. and the argumentation outline, i use it in my conversation with indian people, i try to connect with the classes, i try to connect with the…but it is difficult because the phone conversation is difficult with the indian person, when i think a lot, i lose the idea…now about assessment, it is useful, because you listen your voice but you do not pay attention in your mistakes, when you listen in your voice in audio you say “my voice is that” and yes it is a surprise, i think my voice is strong but my voice is soft, i am not surprised with that i am surprised with a paisa english because i am from bogota but i have a paisa accent but i am trying to correct this because it is embarrassing for me. [sic] english have a different accent. (interview, carol, unit 1: process regarding assessment and use of the argumentation outline) in carol’s interview the division between before and now became recurrent. moreover, assessment worked as a tool not only to identify linguistic difficulties but also as a learning tool for her to recognize herself as an efl speaker. the fact that she also brought up the idea of making an attempt to improve suggests that her learning process was a personal choice that made a difference in her life (martin, 2004). in the other interviews, themes like attempting, now vs. before, and difficulties were also found. nevertheless, each process and experience seemed to locate difficulties and attempts to improve within a unique personal scope. profile vol. 18, no. 2, july-december 2016. issn 1657-0790 (printed) 2256-5760 (online). bogotá, colombia. pages 111-123 universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras120 ubaque casallas, & pinilla castellanos changing practice on the basis of experience the last stage of this study was reflecting. after having observed how by means of peer assessment practices learners were able to contribute to their peers’ learning processes regarding argumentation skills, we could not help noticing that within the activities we prepared, peer assessment was limited to providing valid and meaningful comments regarding what was said in terms of language performance, not in terms of content. moreover, we did not focus much on valuing learners’ feedback to improve the quality of our teaching. therefore, we decided to incorporate learners’ thoughts and ideas not only regarding the argumentation outline but also in terms of how assessment should be carried out to improve their learning as well as our teaching. the emphasis here was mainly to make use of peer observations in our decision-making activity when planning lessons. this was aimed at acknowledging that in our practice there were several benefits derived from learners’ appreciations and performances. such acknowledgement and reflection led us to make use of learners’ experiences on the matters of oral tasks to bridge them with our own pedagogical practice. therefore, we came to the realization that we could make the argumentation outline a bit more flexible by providing learners with other expressions (see table 2). table 2. second argumentation outline as for me (1) however (4) since (2) for instance (3) you know (5) this new outline of argumentation posed a positive challenge to learners. they had to expand on their ideas by contrasting the argument(s) provided. the new outline allowed learners to collaborate so as to understand how to use it. in spite of being modeled by other speakers, including us (teachers), it was still puzzling for some learners. some were able to use it upon the first attempt but others needed to be exposed to it for a longer period of time. although learners were able to use it in the end, it was evident that the assessment received from peers was again essential to learn to handle the new outline. conclusion according to the results of the study, peer assessment seems to be a key component when improving argumentation skills in the efl classroom. assessment had a bearing on how learners constructed oral practices around the discussion of different topics. whilst learners used peer assessment as a strategy to reflect upon their practices (cheng & warren, 1999), such engagement unveiled that the more assessment there was on oral tasks the more critical they became regarding their own argumentative skills. learners were able to choose a personal path to set action plans when difficulties regarding their abilities were spotted, and they also collaborated among themselves, suggesting and giving opinions so that action plans could be discussed and integrated into further actions, such as how to complete a task (beatty, 2003). it is important to pinpoint here that the findings suggest that learners became engaged in a kind of self-directed learning, defined as “a process in which individuals take the initiative, with or without the help of others, in diagnosing their learning needs, formulating learning goals, identifying human and material resources for learning, choosing and implementing learning strategies, and evaluating learning outcomes” (knowles, 1975, p. 18). self-directed learning promotes learner agency, which refers to “the capability of individual human beings to make choices and act on these choices in a way that makes a difference in their lives” (martin, 2004, p. 135). as such, learners appear to have acted within the possibilities afforded by the social structures in which they were situated (miller, 2003). the above considerations relate to the concept of autonomy. during the process of the learning and 121 argumentation skills: a peer assessment approach to discussions in the efl classroom teaching carried out in this study, both the learners and we as teachers were engaged in promoting a mo re autonomous and reflective process regarding argumentation skills and peer assessment practices. autonomy can be defined as “the competence to de velop as a self-determined, socially responsible, and critically aware participant in (and beyond) educational environments, within a vision of education as (inter) personal empowerment and social transformation” (jiménez raya, lamb, & vieira, 2007, p. 1). this notion can shed some light onto how learners developed a critical stance when assessing others. this critical stance moved beyond the mere correction of linguistic features into a more personal empowerment. learners acted as co-constructors of knowledge produced through the assessment of oral tasks. arguably, these served to open up a space for learners to exercise their agency as language learners, which means that they performed as language learners and language users within the possibilities afforded within the classroom 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(2008). agency in the classroom. in j. p. lantolf & m. e. poehner (eds.), sociocultural theory and the teaching of second languages (pp. 163-186). london, uk: equinox. wells, g. (1987). the meaning makers: children learning language and using language to learn. london, uk: hodder & stoughton. widdowson, h. g. (1978). teaching language as communication. london, uk: oxford university press. about the authors diego fernando ubaque casallas works for the centro cultural colombo americano and pontificia universidad javeriana (colombia) as an efl teacher. he holds an ma in applied linguistics to the teaching of english from universidad distrital francisco josé de caldas (colombia). freddy samir pinilla castellanos works for the centro cultural colombo americano (bogotá) as an efl teacher. he holds a bachelor’s degree in education from the university of south carolina (usa). his research interests have to do with assessment practices in the efl classroom. profile vol. 18, no. 2, july-december 2016. issn 1657-0790 (printed) 2256-5760 (online). bogotá, colombia. pages 111-123 77profile vol. 16, no. 1, april 2014. issn 1657-0790 (printed) 2256-5760 (online). bogotá, colombia. pages 77-88 the impact of different types of journaling techniques on efl learners’ self-efficacy el impacto de diferentes tipos de diario en la autosuficiencia de estudiantes de inglés como lengua extranjera sasan baleghizadeh*1 shahid beheshti university (g.c.), tehran, iran mahboobeh mortazavi**2 payame-noor university, tehran, iran this article reports on an investigation of the impact of different methods of journaling on self-efficacy of learners of english as a foreign language. sixty upper-intermediate iranian english language learners were randomly assigned to three experimental conditions, namely no-feedback, teacher-feedback, and peer-feedback, and one control group—no-journal condition. the no-feedback condition learners kept reflective journals but could not share their reflective notes with other learners or their teacher, while the teacher-feedback condition learners used collaborative reflective journals with their teacher. the peer-feedback condition learners shared collaborative reflective journals with their peers, and the nojournal condition learners did not use reflective journals throughout the treatment period. an analysis of variance showed that the students with the two feedback conditions seemed to have gained a higher self-efficacy at the end of the treatment period. key words: collaborative journals, reflection, reflective journals, self-efficacy. en este artículo se presenta una investigación sobre el impacto de la utilización de diferentes tipos de diarios en la autosuficiencia de estudiantes de inglés como lengua extranjera. sesenta estudiantes iraníes con nivel de inglés intermedio superior fueron asignados al azar a tres condiciones experimentales: sin retroalimentación, con retroalimentación docente y con retroalimentación de par. hubo, además, un grupo de control —sin utilización de diarios—. los estudiantes bajo la condición “sin retroalimentación” escribieron diarios de reflexión, pero no podían compartir sus notas con otros estudiantes o el profesor; mientras que los estudiantes de la condición “retroalimentación docente” escribieron diarios de reflexión en colaboración con el docente. los estudiantes de la condición “retroalimentación de par” compartieron diarios de reflexión colaborativos con sus compañeros y, finalmente, el grupo de control no utilizó diarios de reflexión a lo largo del periodo de investigación. el análisis de las variaciones evidenció las dos condiciones de retroalimentación que más permitieron a los estudiantes adquirir autosuficiencia. palabras clave: diarios colaborativos, reflexión, diarios de reflexión, autosuficiencia. * e-mail: sasanbaleghizadeh@yahoo.com ** e-mail: mortazavi.0m@gmail.com how to cite this article (apa, 6th ed.): baleghizadeh, s., & mortazavi, m. (2014). the impact of different types of journaling techniques on efl learners’ self-efficacy. profile issues in teachers’ professional development, 16(1), 77-88. http://dx.doi.org/10.15446/profile.v16n1.37184. this article was received on february 18, 2013, and accepted on october 16, 2013. universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras78 baleghizadeh & mortazavi introduction originally coined and conceptualized by bandura (1977) as a person’s belief in his or her capability to successfully perform a particular task, the term self-efficacy was defined by wood and bandura (1989) as “beliefs in one’s capabilities to mobilize the motivation, cognitive responses, and courses of action needed to meet given situation demands” (p. 408). a similar account was given by eden (1988), according to whom self-efficacy represents beliefs about one’s ability to achieve desired outcomes. sherer and adams (1983) also identify self-efficacy as “the belief that one can successfully perform a behavior” (p. 899). selfefficacy theory states that self-efficacy can influence behavior and behavioral change to a great extent. the findings of research in educational psychology introduce self-efficacy as one of the most important factors influencing education-related success (clemes & bean, 1990; diseth, 2011; gist & mitchell, 1992; mccoach & siegle, 2001a, 2001b; siegle & mccoach, 2007; zimmerman, 2000) and a strong determinant of individuals’ attempts, perseverance, strategizing, and subsequent performance (heslin & klehe, 2006). moreover, considerable correlation has been found between self-efficacy beliefs, achievement motivation, and self-regulated learning strategies (yusuf, 2011). siegle and mccoach (2007) argue that, in the case of learners whose under-achievements result from their personal characteristics, pedagogical programs should primarily aim at designing interventions that help the educators change students’ attitudes and views in order to increase their self-efficacy. the results of studies in the field of educational psychology support the fact that, among the four main characteristics of self-efficacy, environmental perceptions, goal orientation, and self-regulation, high achievers mainly possess the first. in fact, high achievers have widely been reported to be self-efficacious, believing in their ability to perform well in academic contexts (bandura, 1986; schunk, 1984). this quality can be attributed to the fact that highly self-efficacious people invest more effort and persist longer than those who are low in self-efficacy (schwarzer, 1997). moreover, when they are held up, self-efficacious individuals recover more quickly, commit to their goals, select challenging settings, explore their environments, and create new environments (bandura, 1977; heslin & klehe, 2006; schwarzer, 1997). those considered underachievers, in contrast, reportedly had low selfefficacy (reis & mccoach, 2002; supplee, 1990), which led them to view a negative outcome as verifying the incompetence they identified in themselves. beliefs in one’s self-efficacy have not been reported to be static and stable, but rather, to “be sensitive to subtle changes in students’ performance context, and to interact with self-regulated learning processes” (zimmerman, 2000, p. 82). thus, learning conditions can be manipulated in favor of improving self-efficacy in individuals, and instructional presentations and teacher/student interactions can be designed in such a way as to maximize the influence of the soon-tobe-discussed four sources of efficacy, as identified by bandura (1977). hence, given the prominent role of self-efficacy in individual learning processes and outcomes, looking for techniques to develop and increase students’ self-efficacy is not only reasonable, but also even essential. furthermore, empirical studies aimed at shedding light onto ways in which teachers can help their students feel more self-efficacious seem to be warranted. therefore, as empirical studies investigating the role of reflection in the improvement of self-efficacy remain sparse, the present study aims to investigate whether using reflective journals in general and collaborative dialogue journals in particular can increase students’ self-efficacy. the current study, then, intends to address the following questions: (a) whether journal writing increases a cohort of upperintermediate iranian english learners’ self-efficacy beliefs; (b) whether journals can increase the learners’ self-efficacy when written collaboratively; and (c) profile_16_1(taco)31mar2014.indd 78 25/04/14 10:51 79profile vol. 16, no. 1, april 2014. issn 1657-0790 (printed) 2256-5760 (online). bogotá, colombia. pages 77-88 the impact of different types of journaling techniques on efl learners’ self-efficacy whether collaborative reflective journals yield a differential impact when the feedback is provided by an instructor or a peer. theoretical framework for the present study the purpose of this study was to determine the impact of different types of journaling techniques on the feelings of self-efficacy among a group of upperintermediate iranian english language learners studying at a private language school. bandura (1977) identified four sources of selfefficacy: performance accomplishments, vicarious experiences, verbal persuasion, and emotional arousal. performance accomplishments can be encouraged by demonstration and mentoring, followed by self-instructed successful performance. in other words, students who have been successful in the past are more likely to believe they will be successful in the future. vicarious experience can be induced by observing others performing an activity (e.g., a task considered to be difficult by the individual). such observation can generate a feeling in the observers that they will also be able to perform difficult tasks if they demonstrate ample persistence in their efforts, as observers can learn about or visualize themselves performing successfully. having observed others perform a task, these learners can also avoid making the mistakes other learners had made in similar activities. exhortation and positive suggestions have also been proven to contribute to self-efficacy. verbal persuasion can build self-efficacy when individuals are praised for their competence and consistent efforts that have enabled substantial improvements (bandura, 1977). finally, emotional arousal and undesired physical conditions have been reported to correlate negatively with self-efficacy (bernadowski, perry, & del greco, 2013; leganger, kraft, & røysamb, 2000; luszczynska, gutiérrez-donã, & schwarzer, 2005). to highlight the links between reflection and self-efficacy, this study focuses on the ways by which the use of collaborative and non-collaborative reflective journals can evoke self-efficacy beliefs by tapping into the aforementioned different sources of self-efficacy in learners. this paper also investigates how performance accomplishments, vicarious experiences, and verbal persuasion can be embedded in each particular type of journal as a pedagogical tool to increase learners’ self-efficacy. increasing students’ self-efficacy: a historical overview over the past few years, much research (dunlap, 2005; siegle & mccoach, 2007; van den boom, paas, & van merriënboer, 2007; to name only a few) has focused on the ways by which educational programs can help learners feel better about themselves; in particular, researchers investigating first and second language acquisition have tried to identify mechanisms by which self-efficacy can be increased among learners and/or teachers (kohn, 1994). thus, in these two scopes (i.e., generality or specificity), selfefficacy has been the focal point of many studies in education and psychology (eden, 1988; judge, erez, & bono, 1998; judge, locke, & durham, 1997; lee & bobko, 1994). a review of the relevant literature revealed that many researchers (bray & kehle, 2001; kehle, bray, & chafouleas, 2002; schunk & hanson, 1985, 1989; sherer, maddux, mercandante, dunn, jacobs, & rogers, 1982) have aimed to find and/or adjust pedagogical techniques contributing to the development and improvement of self-efficacy in students in order to maximize the four sources of selfefficacy originally introduced by bandura (1977). with regard to the first source, performance accomplishment and past experience, it has been theorized that, when individuals endure difficulties and successfully overcome setbacks to accomplish a task, the success offers support for the belief that they can succeed again, yielding a perception of profile_16_1(taco)31mar2014.indd 79 25/04/14 10:51 universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras80 baleghizadeh & mortazavi self-efficacy (bandura 1977; sherer et al., 1982). therefore, a contribution of self-appraisal after a task’s accomplishment to developing self-efficacy seems plausible. because reflection has been reported to aid the development of metacognitive processes, including self-appraisal (katz, 2001), it seems plausible to view one’s beliefs on self-efficacy as potentially structured by reflective thoughts on past achievements (bandura, 1997). in the literature on learning, the second identified source of self-efficacy, vicarious experience and observing others perform a task, was identified by schunk and hanson (1985) as a hugely influential boost to self-efficacy during skill acquisition. in the literature of child learning and acquisition, it has been found that children with the chance to observe a model performing a task will develop a higher sense of self-efficacy, particularly if the role model is considered to be similar to or on par with the observer (bandura, 1982). similarly, in a study investigating the links between self-efficacy and cognitive achievement, schunk (1989, p. 17) reported the use of models having a “similar or slightly higher” level of competence was effective in promoting observers’ self-efficacy. self-modeling, in which an individual is videotaped while performing a task and then later given the chance to watch the edited version, which does not include her/his unsuccessful behaviors and attempts, was also reported by bray and kehle (2001); kehle et al. (2002); and schunk and hanson (1989) as effective in increasing students’ self-efficacy. teachers have been confirmed as helpful models in learning contexts (schunk & hanson, 1985). the literature on self-efficacy improvement has specifically focused on feedback from teachers, investigating the role of verbal guidelines and feedback as the third source theorized by bandura (1977). having amply reviewed the literature on the impact of teacher feedback on self-efficacy, siegle and mccoach (2007) regarded the research on teacher feedback as mainly suggesting that teachers plan their feedback with the following considerations: to aid students as they try to come up with explanations for their lack-of-effort when they perform poorly; to focus on students’ abilities to succeed at reasonably difficult tasks; and to approach any offers of unsolicited help with caution. finally, the present literature review suggests that a desirable emotional and physical status have been reported to contribute positively to feelings of self-efficacy (bandura, 1977; leganger et al., 2000; luszczynska et al., 2005). reflection and self-efficacy self-ref lective skills have been reported to contribute to self-efficacy beliefs (bandura 1989, 1997; dunlap, 2005; katz, 2001). as suggested by bandura (1989), self-efficacy judgment gradually replaces external guidance as cognitive self-reflective capabilities develop. researchers, such as bandura, have introduced reflection as a positive contribution to an individual’s self-efficacy. nevertheless, studies providing empirical support for the impact of reflection on self-efficacy beliefs are scant. the rest of this section of the paper describes two such studies. aiming to investigate the impact of problembased learning (pbl) on college student self-efficacy, dunlap (2005) conducted a study in a computersupported learning environment. in dunlap’s study, thirty-one undergraduate university computer science learners in a software engineering course collaborated, reflected on their work, and were provided with regular feedback by their instructor for 16 weeks. the learners’ self-efficacy was measured both prior to the treatment and at the end of the course using the general perceived self-efficacy scale, ultimately increasing significantly. although dunlap’s study provides valuable insight into the role of reflection profile_16_1(taco)31mar2014.indd 80 25/04/14 10:51 81profile vol. 16, no. 1, april 2014. issn 1657-0790 (printed) 2256-5760 (online). bogotá, colombia. pages 77-88 the impact of different types of journaling techniques on efl learners’ self-efficacy and feedback on reflection in the development of selfefficacy beliefs, the study could not offer a complete image of the issue, as it does not accommodate the potential effects of peer feedback on reflection. van den boom et al. (2007) conducted a study to investigate the impact of reflection on the de velopment of self-regulatory abilities. in their study, two experimental conditions, in which learners used on-line reflective activities and received prompts and feedback, were compared to a control condition (n = 18) in which learners did not reflect on their learning process. in one of the experimental conditions (n = 15) the tutor offered feedback which was designed to evoke reflections, while in the other experimental condition (n = 16), peers provided the feedback. the researchers aimed to find out whether students’ reflective activities, combined with suggestive feedback from a peer or tutor, would be able to improve the learners’ selfregulation and learning outcomes. the results of their study showed that reflection, combined with feedback, positively impacted students’ self-regulated learning. according to the findings of their study, the learners who received feedback on their initial reflections and developed reflective dialogues showed a higher development of self-regulation in general but did not demonstrate any difference from their counterparts in the control group who did not use collaborative journals in terms of the self-efficacy score. method participants the participants for this study were 150 iranian female english language learners studying at an upperintermediate level at a language school in iran. they were given the general self-efficacy questionnaire developed by sherer et al. (1982). to make sure the students in the four conditions would be homogenous, sixty upper-intermediate iranian english learners whose scores on the questionnaire (mean = 41.49, sd = 16.82315) ranged between 19 (one standard deviation above the mean) and 35 (one standard deviation below the mean) (mean = 25.05, sd = 4.45096) were chosen and randomly assigned to four conditions each consisting of fifteen learners. no-feedback condition the learners in the no-feedback condition (nfc) were assigned to keep reflective journals and collect their reflective notes on the effectiveness of the materials covered in the classroom and the way they were presented by their teacher. they were also asked to write notes about their learning strategies, goals, and problems they encountered comprehending the lesson and internalizing the language, as well as the strategies they applied to overcome those problems and to achieve the goals. they were also required to write about the efficacy of those strategies and how they believed they led to better learning. however, the writers were not given the opportunity to share their reflective notes with other learners, nor could they benefit from their teacher’s feedback. given that bandura (1977) introduced prior successful achievements as a source of contribution to selfefficacy expectations, keeping a reflective journal in which the strategies, their effectiveness, and how they led to better learning is documented was believed to increase the learners’ self-efficacy. such reflective journals could offer the participants a tangible record of their performance accomplishments, enabling them to remember how they had succeeded in overcoming their learning difficulties. the feedback conditions the learners in the teacher-feedback condition (tfc) and peer-feedback condition (pfc) were asked to use collaborative reflective journals. tfc learners were briefed on how to keep a reflective journal and instructed to share their reflective journals with their teacher, while pfc learners were required to share their profile_16_1(taco)31mar2014.indd 81 25/04/14 10:51 universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras82 baleghizadeh & mortazavi reflective notes with their peers. during a one-hour briefing session, tfc learners were taught how to use collaborative reflective journals and to exchange them with their instructors; they were instructed to submit their journals to their teacher every other session, with the expectation that they would be returned with feedback from the teacher on the content of their reflective notes. the teacher commented on and, at times, asked questions regarding the use of the strategies reported by the learners in this condition, as well as on the other learning-related events and emotions documented in journals. collaborative journals exchanged with the instructor allowed the participants not only to record their achievements but also to receive verbal guidelines from their teacher on the use of such strategies. the learners in the pfc, in contrast, were instructed on how to use collaborative reflective journals by a peer who was chosen by the learners themselves prior to the intervention to add his or her written feedback in their journals every other session. the peers were asked to avoid adding comments regarding the structure of the reflective notes and language problem comments, instead merely focusing on the content, which was mainly supposed to include information on the use and efficacy of the implemented strategies, lessons their peers had found hard to learn, and their feelings and opinions regarding the materials and the teachers’ methodology. such collaborative journals exchanged with peers could offer the participants the opportunity to gain access to vicarious experiences and verbal guidelines. ten entries were submitted to the teacher by the learners in each of the three experimental conditions at the end of the intervention. the control group finally, the learners in the no-journal condition (njc) did not use reflective journals throughout the term; they did, however, study the same materials and were taught in the same manner as those under experimental conditions. moreover, the learning hours were the equal for the learners in the control group and those in the experimental groups. instruments along with individually written reflective journals and collaborative reflective journals, the instruments use in this study included the general self-efficacy scale by sherer et al. (1982). the general self-efficacy scale by sherer et al. (sgses),1 which was developed to include 17 items “to assess generalized self-efficacy expectations, consists of two subscales: general self-efficacy and social selfefficacy” (sherer et al., 1982, p. 663). the results of a study by sherer and adams (1983) suggest that this general self-efficacy scale not only has construct validity, but that it also can be used “as a measure of expectancies of personal ability to initiate and persist in the performance of behaviors” (p. 899). the general self-efficacy subscale has proven to be more useful than the social self-efficacy subscale. in view of the fact that imam (2007) reported the internal consistency, temporal stability, and measurement validity of the sgses for general self-efficacy, as well as that the new general self-efficacy scale only seems to possess a slight advantage over sgses and other measures of self-efficacy (scherbaum, cohen-charash, & kern, 2006), sgses seemed to be appropriate for use in the present study. in the present study, cronbach’s α = 0.81 was estimated as the internal consistency of the new general self-efficacy scale. instructional materials the course consisted of 42 hours of general english instruction. all four of the skills—speaking, writing, 1 the “s” at the beginning of the acronym stands for sherer et al. so that the scale can be distinguished from the one developed by schwarzer (1997). profile_16_1(taco)31mar2014.indd 82 25/04/14 10:51 83profile vol. 16, no. 1, april 2014. issn 1657-0790 (printed) 2256-5760 (online). bogotá, colombia. pages 77-88 the impact of different types of journaling techniques on efl learners’ self-efficacy reading, and listening—were addressed throughout the term. most of the class activities, however, were designed to help the learners improve their speaking skills. the upper-intermediate book of the total english series was taught as the main course book. procedure the scores of the four groups on the sgses were compared using a one way anova (f [3, 56] = 0.60, α = 0.61) to make sure that the groups were homogenous in terms of general self-efficacy prior to the treatment. having attended a briefing session on what to include in their reflective notes and how to use a reflective journals, the learners of nfc were assigned to keep reflective journals but were not given the chance to share their reflective notes with the other learners or their teachers. these learners were instructed to include ideas about the efficacy of the teacher’s methodology and the materials, the parts they had found difficult to understand, and as the strategies they used to overcome those difficulties to facilitate learning; they were required to submit their journals of at least ten entries to their teacher. the students in tfc and pfc were instructed to use collaborative journals. tfc learners were also briefed on how to use collaborative reflective journals and to exchange them with their instructor. these learners were asked to submit their journals to their teacher every two sessions, and the journals would be returned with feedback on the form and content of their notes at the following session. the teacher’s feedback was offered only cautiously, as the findings of zimmerman and martinez-pons’s (1990) study suggested that unsolicited advice or help can be regarded by students as signals of low ability. thus, the teacher/researcher tried mostly to offer help and advice when students openly asked for help, posed a question, or explicitly mentioned a problem they had faced in the process of their learning. the learners in the pfc group were asked to use collaborative reflective journals with their peers. throughout the term, they were encouraged to exchange their reflective journals with their fellow classmates and to add written feedback to their journals. the pfc learners were asked to comment on the strategies documented in their friends’ journals and to share ideas freely on the form and content of their fellow classmates’ reflective notes. they were told that their comments on their partner’s reflective notes should not be mainly focused on target language errors; instead, more attention should be paid to the content of the entries. the learners were also told they could include questions to be answered by their partner. they were able to choose their partners themselves and were required to exchange their journals with their partner every two sessions with the expectation of reacquiring the journals during the following session, so that by the end of the term each journal would have ten entries. finally, the njc learners were not instructed to use reflective journals throughout the term and did not benefit from the reflective techniques. at the end of the term, all of the students in the four groups were given sgses once more, and their self-efficacy scores were calculated. results to investigate whether reflective journaling techniques have any signif icant ef fec t on the performance of students on the posttest of the general self-efficacy scores, descriptive statistics for the sgses score were calculated. the tfc gained a higher mean score (m = 70.80) compared to other conditions. the learners in the pfc (m = 67.53) also outscored the nfc (m = 51.13) and njc (m = 35.13) learners. the results also indicated that the learners in the nfc outscored the learners in the njc in the posttest. a one-way anova was run using spss 16.0 to probe the effect of each type of journaling on students’ self-efficacy. table 1 demonstrates the results of the analysis of the one way anova. profile_16_1(taco)31mar2014.indd 83 25/04/14 10:51 universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras84 baleghizadeh & mortazavi as it can be seen in table 1, the difference in means in the sgses posttest was proven to be significant (α = 0.00). moreover, the one-way anova yielded a significant main effect of the experimental conditions f (3, 56) = 46.94. the effect size, calculated using omega squared (ω²), was .061, indicating a medium effect. given that the learning hours, instructional materials, and teaching methodology were similar in all conditions and that the learners in four conditions had been chosen from a group of learners scoring within one standard deviation from the mean after the administration of a pre-test and being randomly assigned to one of four conditions, it was believed that the differences in the posttest mean scores could be attributed to the interventions and use of various types of reflective journals. thus, the journaling technique had a significant effect on the performance of students on the posttest of the sgses. furthermore, to address the question as to whether different journaling techniques had a differential impact on the learners’ self-efficacy, the post-hoc scheffe’s test was run in order to locate the exact differences among the four mean scores. table 2 shows the results of the post hoc scheffe’s test. as displayed in table 2, a significant difference was found between the mean scores of the learners who were instructed to use collaborative journals with their teacher (tfc) and those in the nfc or njc groups. in fact, the students in the tfc (m = 70.80) outperformed the students in the other groups on the posttest. however, the mean difference between the students in the tfc and pfc was not detected as significant, indicating that collaborative journal writing in both forms (peer and teacher) were effective. in addition, a significant difference can be seen among the mean scores of the pfc, nfc, and njc groups. table 2 also demonstrates that students who used non-collaborative reflective journals and did not receive feedback from either their peers or their instructor (nfc) were still able to outperform njc learners, showing that reflective journaling alone is also able to assist students with developing selfefficacy beliefs. table 1. one-way anova posttest of gse score for all groups sources sum of squares df mean square f sig. between groups 12166.050 3 4055.350 46.945 .000 within groups 4837.600 56 86.386 total 17003.650 59 table 2. scheffe’s tests njc (mean = 51.13) pfc (mean = 51.13) tfc (mean = 51.13) nfc (mean = 51.13) group 16.00* -16.40* -19.66* nfc 35.66* 3.26 tfc 32.40* pfc * the mean difference is significant at the 0.05 level. profile_16_1(taco)31mar2014.indd 84 25/04/14 10:51 85profile vol. 16, no. 1, april 2014. issn 1657-0790 (printed) 2256-5760 (online). bogotá, colombia. pages 77-88 the impact of different types of journaling techniques on efl learners’ self-efficacy discussion the purpose of this study was to answer the three previously posed questions regarding the effectiveness of reflective journals in promoting a sense of selfefficacy in students learning english. with regard to the first question, the findings of this study suggest that journals, regardless of whether they are written collaboratively or non-collaboratively, positively affected students’ selfefficacy. the results of this study show that those learners who collected their reflective notes in the form of reflective journals (nfc) gained higher selfefficacy scores on the posttest compared to those who did not use the journaling technique (njc). this effect can be explained by the fact that those learners who kept a reflective journal had a tangible record of their performance accomplishments, which could facilitate the identification of effective strategies in different learning contexts. further, the nfc learners possessed a written record of the ways in which they had achieved their goals, reminding them of the fact that they had succeeded in overcoming difficulties; as theorized by bandura (1977), prior successful achievements could lead to increases in their expectations regarding selfefficacy. thus, these data are in line with previous research on the role of prior achievement on selfefficacy, supporting katz’s (2001) idea that reflection can positively affect self-efficacy. with regard to the second question, the results indicate that students in the tfc and pfc groups showed significant improvements in self-efficacy, regardless of the type of reflective journaling technique they used. in particular, the data suggest that students who were engaged in writing collaborative reflective journals with a peer or their teacher achieved higher self-efficacy compared to those who either did not use the reflective technique of journaling or did not share their reflective notes with others. hence, this study confirms the findings of the previous investigations on the role of feedback in self-efficacy promotion (e.g., dunlap, 2005). the present study, therefore, provides evidence on the efficacy of the collaborative journals in increasing the learners’ sense of self-efficacy while proving that collaborative, reflective journals possess an advantage over non-collaborative journals regarding their effects on learners’ self-efficacy beliefs. one way to account for this difference is to refer to the fact that those learners who used collaborative reflective journals with their peers and received feedback from a fellow classmate benefited from their vicarious experiences, which might have contributed to the growth observed in pfc learners’ self-efficacy beliefs. reading about the ways in which a fellow classmate has accomplished a goal, successfully carried out a task, or overcome a learning problem, learners in the pfc might have believed that they will also be able to perform these difficult tasks with more persistence and effort. having the chance to look at a record of strategies used by their friends (journals), these learners might as well have felt more self-confident in determining which strategies would lead to success and which, to failure. regarding the performance of the learners in pfc, the results of the present study are in accordance with the conclusions of bandura (1982, 1994) on the sources of self-efficacy. the fact that the tfc learners were able to outperform the learners who did not keep a collaborative reflective journal (nfc) could also be explained by this cohort of learners’ having their teacher as their mentor, as he or she could model success for these students. this conclusion echoes those of schunk and hanson (1985), who argued that teachers can function as good role models to demonstrate the development of skill. further, teachers provide valuable feedback on the adequacy of a student’s persistence and on the effectiveness of his or her learning strategies. nevertheless, the results of the current study are inconsistent with those of van den boom et al. (2007), who reported that students receiving feedback on their initial reflections and then developing reflective profile_16_1(taco)31mar2014.indd 85 25/04/14 10:51 universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras86 baleghizadeh & mortazavi dialogues showed a higher development of selfregulation in general but did not demonstrate any difference from their control counterparts, who did not use collaborative journals in terms of self-efficacy score. one possible source of such an inconsistency could b e the us e of dif ferent instr uments for measuring self-efficacy, as van den boom et al. applied a subscale for the motivated strategies for learning questionnaire to measure the self-efficacy of the participants in their study. this observed incongruence might also have resulted from the fact that the participants in the previous study were asked to generate a reflection note in a structured electronic format before receiving external feedback, which was further elaborated upon through a successive series of exchanges between the student and feedback provider. the third step, which comprised elaboration on the feedback for the reflective note, was missing in this study; this omission might have affected the impact of the students’ reflections on self-efficacy. nevertheless, because van den boom et al.’s study lacked an experimental condition in which learners could use reflection without receiving feedback on their reflective notes, the abovementioned reasons should be considered with caution. finally, regarding the third question, the analysis of the data in the present study indicated no significant difference between the scores of tfc learners and those of pfc learners. this result provides evidence for the significance of the feedback, regardless of its source. this highlights the importance of peer feedback and can act as an impetus for further research on the effectiveness of such feedback in various contexts. conclusion and implication for classrooms the findings of the current study provide empirical support for the effectiveness of reflective journals in general and of collaborative reflective journals in particular in promoting english language learners’ sense of self-efficacy. these findings should motivate instructors to encourage reflection among their learners and to appreciate the role of feedback given to the learners’ reflective notes. the findings of this study could confirm theoretical arguments in the literature (bandura, 1977, 1982, 1989, 1994) claiming that recording prior achievements and vicarious experiences could potentially increase self-efficacy. reflective journals providing the learners with the opportunity to record their learning-related activities can offer a tangible record of their efforts towards the achievement of learning goals. instructors are thus advised to make learners aware of the advantages such reflective notes can offer and to promote the use of such reflective techniques in their classes. it is also suggested that collaborative reflective journals exchanged by peers can make beneficial vicarious experiences available to the learners who otherwise might only encounter a list of their own previous accomplishments. this can act as an impetus for instructors to incorporate the use of collaborative reflective journals into their classroom activities so that learners can find out how classmates have striven to accomplish their goals and to benefit from vicarious experiences. such collaborative reflective journals can also be shared with the instructor, who can then add the element of verbal persuasion by commenting on the learners’ reflective notes, in turn contributing to an increase in the learners’ self-efficacy. clearly, much more research must be undertaken to provide us with sufficient evidence to confidently state that reflection can affect self-efficacy. moreover, more research is required on the differential impacts of teacher and peer feedback on self-efficacy beliefs. future research in this area could also examine the impact of reflective journals in different forms on specific self-efficacy, also called contextual or situational self-efficacy, which pertains to individuals’ beliefs in their ability to handle a specific task effectively in a learning context. profile_16_1(taco)31mar2014.indd 86 25/04/14 10:51 87profile vol. 16, no. 1, april 2014. issn 1657-0790 (printed) 2256-5760 (online). bogotá, colombia. pages 77-88 the impact of different types of journaling techniques on efl learners’ self-efficacy references bandura, a. 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(2001). long-term follow-up of self-modeling as an intervention for stuttering. school psychology review, 30(1), 135-141. clemes, h., & bean, r. (1990). how to raise children’s selfesteem. los angeles, ca: price stern sloan. diseth, a., (2011). self-efficacy, goal orientations and learning strategies as mediators between preceding and subsequent academic achievement. learning and individual differences, 21(2), 191-195. dunlap, j. c. (2005). problem-based learning and selfefficacy: how a capstone course prepares students for a profession. educational technology research and development, 53(1), 66-85. eden, d. (1988). pygmalion, goal setting, and expectancy: compatible ways to raise productivity. academy of management review, 13(4), 639-652. gist, m. e., & mitchell, t.r. (1992). self-efficacy: a theoretical analysis of its determinants and malleability. academy of management review, 17(2), 183-211. heslin, p. a., & klehe, u. c. 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(2001a). why try? factors that differentiate underachieving gifted students from high achieving gifted students. paper presented at the annual profile_16_1(taco)31mar2014.indd 87 25/04/14 10:51 universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras88 baleghizadeh & mortazavi meeting of the american educational research association, seattle, usa. mccoach, d. b., & siegle, d. (2001b). factors that differentiate gifted achievers from gifted underachievers. paper presented at the annual meeting of the american educational research association, seattle, usa. reis, s. m., & mccoach, d. b. (2002). underachievement in gifted and talented students with special needs. exceptionality: a special education journal, 10(2), 113-125. scherbaum, c. a., cohen-charash, y., & kern, m. j. (2006). measuring general self-efficacy: a comparison of three measures using irt. educational and psychological measurement, 66(6), 1047-1063. schunk, d. h. 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(1982). the self-efficacy scale: construction and validation. psychological reports, 51(2), 663-671. siegle, d., & mccoach, d. b. (2007). increasing student mathematics self-efficacy through teacher training. journal of advanced academics, 18(2), 278-312. supplee, p. l. (1990). reaching the gifted underachiever: program strategy and design. new york, ny: teachers college press. van den boom, g., paas, f., & van merriënboer, j. j. g. (2007). effects of elicited reflections combined with tutor or peer feedback on self-regulated learning and learning outcomes. learning and instruction, 17(5), 532-548. wood, r., & bandura, a. (1989). impact of conceptions of ability on self-regulatory mechanisms and complex decision making. journal of personality and social psychology, 56(3), 407-415. yusuf, m. (2011).investigating relationship between selfefficacy, achievement motivation, and self-regulated learning strategies of undergraduate students: a study of integrated motivational models. procedia-social and behavioral sciences, 15, 2614-2617. zimmerman, b. (2000). self-efficacy: an essential motive to learn. contemporary educational psychology, 25(1), 82-91. zimmerman, b. j., & martinez-pons, m. (1990). student differences in self-regulated learning: relating grade, sex, and giftedness to self-efficacy and strategy use. journal of educational psychology, 82(1), 51-59. about the authors sasan baleghizadeh is an associate professor of tefl at shahid beheshti university (g.c.) in tehran (iran), where he teaches courses in applied linguistics, syllabus design, and material development. his research interest lies in investigating the role of interaction in english language teaching. he has published numerous research and practical papers in international journals, including the tesl reporter, tesl canada journal, elt journal, language learning journal, modern english teacher, the teacher trainer, and profile issues in teachers’ professional development. mahboobeh mortazavi is currently a phd student of tefl at payame-noor university in tehran (iran). her research focuses on efl teacher education, scaffolding, and self-regulated learning. profile_16_1(taco)31mar2014.indd 88 25/04/14 10:51 149profile vol. 15, no. 2, october 2013. issn 1657-0790 (printed) 2256-5760 (online). bogotá, colombia. pages 149-163 the impact of explicit feedback on efl high school students engaged in writing tasks el impacto de la retroalimentación explícita en tareas de escritura en lengua inglesa de estudiantes de secundaria roxanna correa pérez*1 mariela martínez fuentealba**2 maría molina de la barra***3 jessica silva rojas****4 mirta torres cisternas*****5 universidad católica de la santísima concepción, chile the aim of this article is to examine the impact of feedback on content and organization in writing tasks developed by learners of english as a foreign language. the type of study is qualitative and the research design is a case study. one study involved three students and a female teacher, and the second consisted of three students and a male teacher. research instruments involved were a structured interview, a writing task in class and document analysis. the findings show that students feel motivated to re-write a writing task when the teacher provides feedback on content and organization. moreover, there was evidence of improvement in the students’ writing when they incorporated the teacher’s comments. key words: feedback, motivation, writing, writing tasks. el objetivo de este estudio es examinar el impacto de la retroalimentación, orientada a contenidos y organización, en escritos desarrollados por aprendices de inglés como lengua extranjera. el tipo de investigación es cualitativa y el diseño un estudio de casos. un caso se conformó con tres estudiantes y una profesora, el segundo quedó compuesto por tres estudiantes y un profesor. en relación con los instrumentos, se utilizaron una entrevista estructurada, una tarea de escritura y el análisis documental. los resultados muestran que los estudiantes se sienten motivados a reescribir una tarea de escritura cuando el profesor comenta las ideas y la organización de esta. además se evidenció una mejora en los escritos de los estudiantes al incluir las sugerencias del profesor. palabras clave: escritura, motivación, retroalimentación, tareas escritas. * e-mail: rcorrea@ucsc.cl ** e-mail: mariela.martfuent@gmail.com *** e-mail: natymolina9@gmail.com **** e-mail: jessica.silva.r@gmail.com ***** e-mail: gabriela.azulado@gmail.com this article was received on september 24, 2012, and accepted on july 20, 2013. universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras150 correa pérez, martínez fuentealba, molina de la barra, silva rojas, & torres cisternas introduction many issues may happen with the teacher and learner interaction during the english as a foreign language (efl) teaching and learning process. thus, teachers are always concerned about what is occurring with their learners during lessons. they want students to learn from their mistakes; in this case, language teachers expect students to learn a new language by being aware of the aspects they need to improve. that is why they provide comments to learners when correcting. some of the teachers do respond (in written or oral form) to their students’ tasks without noticing the effect it may produce on the students. the researchers of this study, during their pre-service experience, have noticed that language teachers provide these comments in different ways: some of them mark the text with ticks or crosses, while others provide the correct answer or just refer to an aspect that needs to be improved (vocabulary, grammar, or other). the last five years spent at different schools and in educational contexts have helped us to notice that learners are not conscious that receiving feedback gives them the opportunity to be led down the right path, hence, the potential to learn and improve their writing competence. therefore, if students are not involved in understanding the feedback provided, they will not improve their language competence, regardless of the amount of time they spent trying to learn it. this reality implies that improving is a matter of personal commitment and not a matter of time. learners need to apply those comments given by their teachers to their learning process in order to avoid committing the same mistakes over and over. hence, in order to better understand the impact of informing the students about their weaknesses or strengths during the process of learning a foreign language, the researchers consider it relevant to carry out an in-depth research project. for this reason, in this study we examined in detail the impact of explicit feedback provided on content and organization in writing tasks, and whether this response motivates efl learners to improve. in the first part of this article, the reader will find a review of the principal concepts of this research such as feedback, writing, feedback on writing and motivation. in the second part, methodological aspects are described. in the third part, all the data collected are revealed and then analysed. in the last part, a summary of the conclusions is presented. concept framework in order to define feedback in second language ac quisition, the concept of acquisition will be clarified. acquisition is considered as the use and understanding of a language in terms of conveying messages instead of learning (krashen, 1981). the concept of feedback on second language acquisition will be revised. feedback according to ur (2006), “feedback, in the context of teaching in general, is the information that is given to the learner about his or her performance of a learning task, usually with the objective of improving this performance” (p. 242). the author states that feedback is the information that explains how well or poorly learners performed. the main objective is to identify the potential areas where some improvements could be made as well as to foster students’ autonomy. in the same context, aparicio (2007) adds that feedback is the information given by the teacher to students about their performance. the author suggests that feedback is the information an instructor gives to his learners about their performance so they are able to check themselves and be more successful in fulfilling the goals of a course. gattegno (as cited in nunan, 1995) suggests that feedback is a fundamental element during the teaching and learning process of each individual learner since it allows not only the correction of errors during a written assignment, but also the establishment of 151profile vol. 15, no. 2, october 2013. issn 1657-0790 (printed) 2256-5760 (online). bogotá, colombia. pages 149-163 the impact of explicit feedback on efl high school students... rapport and a consistent relationship between the learners and the teacher. students react to feedback looking for teachers’ approval. however, ur (2006) emphasises the idea that when giving feedback it cannot be possible to avoid the idea of giving judgement. ur explains that teachers have feelings and different point of views, and it is difficult not to get involved when they assess. for this reason ur states that “teachers are sometimes urged to be ‘non-judgmental’ when giving feedback; in my opinion this is unrealistic. any meaningful feedback is going to involve some kind of judgment” (p. 242). furthermore, ur (2006) identifies as one component of feedback correction the student’s own explanation about his/her performance in a particular task. as a second component the author identifies assessment, which allows students to know how good or bad their performance was. sometimes teachers and learners think that correction is just related to mistakes instead of giving positive comments to the students. indeed, according to the researchers of this study, it might be said that some teachers tend to relate correction with errorcorrection instead of providing positive comments. types of feedback nunan (1995), brown (2000), and ur (2006) agree that, at least, there are two levels of feedback: positive feedback and negative feedback. furthermore, feedback can be classified into two types: explicit feedback and implicit feedback. explicit feedback is that which is extremely clear and evident and is perceived by the students. conversely, implicit feedback is not evident; the student has to notice it and know how to use it to foster his/her learning. sheen (2004) has brought to light an inclusive concept, which is corrective feedback (cf). according to this author, “the term ‘corrective feedback’ is used as an umbrella term to cover implicit and explicit negative feedback occurring in both natural conversational and instructional settings” (p. 264). a matter for debate has been the role of cf in second language acquisition. some authors like schmidt (1990, 1992) and long (1996) claim that negative feedback plays a facilitative and crucial role in ac quisition. furthermore, long believes that from the interaction between the teacher and learners, implicit negative feedback can give students a chance to pay attention to linguistic form. this focus, of the learner, on the linguistic forms may foster the student’s acquisition of the language. schmidt (1990, 1992) adds that students should notice by themselves the space between the interlanguage, understood by selinker and gass (2008) as “interlanguage transfer is the influence of one l2 over another” (p. 152), and the target language since it allows the improvement of the acquisition of the language. however, krashen (1981), schwartz (1993), and truscott (1996) differ from long (1996) and schmidt’s (1990, 1992) beliefs by pointing out that just positive feedback is enough for students to acquire a second language. moreover, they add that there is no sense in using negative feedback and it may cause damaging effects on the language development. ur (2006) compares the role of positive and negative feedback and states that “it is true that positive feedback tends to encourage, but this can be overstated [whereas] negative feedback, if given supportively and warmly, will be recognized as constructive, and will not necessarily discourage” (p. 257). it is interesting to notice the positive aspect of negative feedback and the negative side of positive feedback. indeed, providing only positive feedback is not advisable because students can think that they are doing well when they are not. however, negative feedback should be given in a constructive and warm way. universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras152 correa pérez, martínez fuentealba, molina de la barra, silva rojas, & torres cisternas writing based on harmer (2003), musumeci (1998), nunan (1995), olshtain (2001), and ur (2006), we point out that writing is the expression and the association of ideas which can be either in people’s mother tongue or another language, being the association of ideas the most difficult to students. the principle idea of any writer is that their piece of work may be read but, as the reader’s feedback (i.e. comments, opinions) is not received immediately any piece of writing should include conventions and mechanical devices to make the reader’s understanding effortless. in fact, any a piece of writing should have two components: coherence and cohesion. the first one means that all the ideas in a paragraph flow smoothly from one sentence to the next, and cohesion refers to the use of transitional expressions or words to guide readers and show how the parts of writing relate to one other. feedback on writing feedback on writing is the information or comments given by a reader to a writer in relation to organization, ideas, and writing mechanics. it is also a useful tool for writers in order to achieve their purpose, which is to let the readers understand what the writers want to convey. furthermore, ur (2006) notices that content is the most relevant aspect in a piece of writing because it includes the ideas and events the writer wants to express. for this research project, feedback on writing will be considered as the comments given by the teacher to the students about their writings/writing tasks. moreover, it can be concluded that feedback on writing is an essential element as part of the process approach to writing. the main purpose of feedback is to provide important information to the writers so they can use it to modify their mistakes (ferreira, 2006). indeed the most important element in a writing task is content. for that reason, feedback should be given principally on content and organization instead of on language forms. however, teachers should correct some language mistakes if and when they really affect the meaning of the message or if they are basic (celce-murcia, 2001; harmer, 2003; ur, 2006). motivation giving explicit feedback is a way that some teachers use to motivate students to improve; in fact, the research question of this study (does explicit feedback, provided in content and organization in writing tasks, motivate efl learners?) is related to the motivation that explicit feedback may cause in efl learners. dörnyei (2001) defines motivation as that which “concerns the direction and magnitude of human behaviour, that is: the choice of a particular action, the persistence with it, the effort expended on it” (p. 8). the author states that motivation is what guides people’s behaviour. likewise, motivation occurs when the reason or the will to improve and constant effort are present. in addition, it influences how people deal with different situations. in addition, according to ur (2006), motivation is classified into two types: extrinsic and global intrinsic motivation. “extrinsic motivation is that which derives from the influence of some kind of external incentive, as distinct from the wish to learn for its own sake or interest in tasks” (p. 277). therefore, extrinsic motivation can be understood as the external stimulus that students receive in order to learn. this kind of motivation should be provided first by teachers, second by parents, then by classmates, trying to enhance learners’ performances in writing, to go beyond the task. in the case of intrinsic motivation, miller, benefield, and tonigan (1993) as well as perry (1998) mention that writing tasks that require high levels of cognitive engagement are related to higher levels of intrinsic motivation and self-monitoring activities. moreover, brown (2000) agrees with ur (2006) in the sense that motivation is a relevant aspect in the learning process. brown (2000) thinks that 153profile vol. 15, no. 2, october 2013. issn 1657-0790 (printed) 2256-5760 (online). bogotá, colombia. pages 149-163 the impact of explicit feedback on efl high school students... “motivation is a key to learning” (p. 160). in addition, brown classifies motivation into three different perspectives: behaviouristic, cognitive, constructivist. the first one is related to the desire to receive positive reward. the second one deals with the basic human needs. and the third one has to do with the social context (the community). likewise, motivation can be classified as gardner and lambert suggest. gardner and lambert (1982) distinguish “instrumental mo tivation,” which occurs when the learner’s goal is functional (e.g. to get a job or pass an examination), and “integrative motivation,” which occurs when the learner wishes to identify the culture of the l2 group. another kind of motivation is “task motivation”—the interest felt by the learner in performing different learning tasks. (gardner & lambert as cited in ellis, 1995, p. 300) the concept of task motivation, suggested by gardner and lambert, was considered in this research because the motivation towards the task facilitates its accomplishment. finally, celce-murcia (2001), harmer (2003), and ur (2006) agree that the essential element in writing tasks is content, and furthermore, feedback on writing is a vital constituent inside the process approach. for this reason, although teachers should correct language mistakes, they should give feedback on content and organization principally; that is, global errors instead of local errors. according to ferris (2002), global errors “are errors concerning overall content, ideas, and organization of the writer’s argument [and] local errors refer to minor errors such as grammar, spelling, or punctuation ‘that do not impede understanding’ of a text” (p. 22). nevertheless, no matter the kind of feedback provided, students should know how to use it. method this study is an exploratory qualitative inves tigation and the type of research is a descriptiveinterpretative one because, from the description of the phenomenon, some concurrent ideas were identified among the different sources of information. this research study has action research characteristics because the participant teachers took part in it actively during the research with the purpose of gathering information about the teaching and learning of the writing process of their own classes. the main objective of this study was to find out how explicit feedback, focused on content and organization of written messages, motivates students to carry out writing tasks. the specific objectives established were to identify the kind of feedback provided by teachers in writing tasks, to study how important it is for learners to receive explicit feedback on writing tasks, to analyze students’ motivation to rewrite and improve a task after receiving explicit feedback and to compare students’ opinions about the importance of receiving feedback and the second written task.1 participants for this research, two groups of participants were chosen, one of students and another of teachers. the selection criteria were the following: (a) third and fourth year students from a subsidised high school from concepción, chile, who had had english lessons since fifth grade and a regular attendance of 90%. their level of english, according to the school teacher, corresponds to lower intermediate. (b) teachers: those having five years of language teaching experience, belonging to a subsidised educational system and teaching english in secondary education, at the same school as the participating students. with the criteria mentioned, six students and two teachers were selected, and each of them participated voluntarily. 1 the re-written task after receiving feedback on content and organisation. universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras154 correa pérez, martínez fuentealba, molina de la barra, silva rojas, & torres cisternas data collection the data were collected with the use of one structured interview and a document analysis method olog y. the document analysis was carried out examining a collection of participating students’ writing tasks, carried out before and during the investigation. the purpose of analysing previous and current students’ written samples was to identify the kind of feedback provided by the teacher in writing tasks, to get a general idea of teachers’ knowledge of feedback and to analyze students’ motivation to rewrite the topic after receiving explicit feedback. in order to do that, a rubric was given to participating teachers to guide the feedback they provided in the second writing task. the structured interview was conducted in the students’ mother tongue, spanish. furthermore, the structured interview focused on the importance of explicit feedback in writing tasks for learners in order to understand how motivation affects the quality of a written task. data analysis during the data analysis, the data were tabulated and for the purpose of this research, the researchers analysed the data in each case. case 1 considered three students and the teacher of subsidised school 1; in case 2, researchers considered three students and the teacher of the subsidised school. the information collected was analysed through content analysis techniques, which includes the following phases: data to be analysed were selected, units of meaning or categories were determined, the properties of these categories were defined and finally the data were classified in each category. the document analysis carried out by the re searchers intended to observe and take notes about the different codes and characteristics that teachers used when giving feedback. the analysis was carried out according to the feedback categories defined below. affective feedback: it is the extent to which we value or encourage a student’s attempt to communicate (brown, 2000). cognitive feedback: it is the extent to which we indicate an understanding of the message itself (brown 2000). positive feedback: positive feedback has two principal functions: to let students know that they have performed correctly and to increase motivation (nunan, 1995). negative feedback: the teacher’s overall attention towards mistakes (brown, 2000). neutral: it simply informs the speaker that the message has been received (nunan, 1995). explicit: it is extremely clear and evident and it is perceived by the students (university of cambridge, 2005). implicit: it is not evident, the students have to notice it and know how to improve their performance (university of cambridge, 2005). then, the structured interview was tabulated in order to study how important it is for learners to receive explicit feedback on writing tasks. once the whole data were collected, the analysis was carried out and the answers were analysed applying content analysis methodology. after the development of the individual analysis, a comparative analysis was made in order to see what common aspects and differences might be observed among the participants. to analyze students’ motivation to rewrite the task after receiving feedback, through the writing task, a completely new writing process was undertaken. first, students wrote an autobiography; second, the teachers gave feedback on content and organization. third, the students rewrote the autobiography. once students returned the tasks, the researchers compared the two papers and analysed them in order to notice which the students’ improvements in the writing tasks were. finally, a comparison between specific objective 2, to know how important it is for learners to receive 155profile vol. 15, no. 2, october 2013. issn 1657-0790 (printed) 2256-5760 (online). bogotá, colombia. pages 149-163 the impact of explicit feedback on efl high school students... explicit feedback in writing tasks; and specific objective 3, to analyze students’ motivation to rewrite and improve a task after receiving explicit feedback, was carried out with the purpose of corroborating if they were consistent between what they manifested in the structured interview and what they produced in the writing task after receiving explicit feedback. findings objective 1: to identify the kind of feedback provided by the teacher in writing tasks this analysis was based on the following categories: affective feedback, cognitive feedback, positive feedback, neutral feedback, negative feedback, explicit feedback, and implicit feedback. two teachers were compared for this analysis. to analyze each case, the information in table 1 was used for the purpose of classifying each teacher in the categories that most represent them. both teachers give explicit negative feedback because they indicate where the mistake is, especially in grammar and spelling. to support the teachers’ way of giving feedback, ur (2006) mentions that giving only positive feedback may not have a positive impact on students because they can think that they are doing well when they are not. besides, this author states that negative feedback can be constructive if it is given in a supportive and kind manner. however, there is one teacher who provides positive explicit comments while the other gives the correct answers. otherwise, both teachers provide cognitive feedback because they understand what students want to express. nevertheless, there is one teacher that gives affective feedback because the teacher praises students to persist in doing the task. in table 2 it can be observed that the teacher marks in red and uses codes for grammar and spelling. moreover, the participating teacher uses criteria such as requirements (name, author of song, reason), spelling, grammar, and vocabulary. also, the teacher writes the correct version of the mistake. however, the teacher neither writes comments nor gives a mark but indicates the score. nevertheless, it is important to mention that the teacher has other ways to mark the mistakes like underlining, question marks, and parentheses. after observing the feedback provided by the teacher, one can notice that the teacher gives feedback mainly based on negative aspects. table 1. categories of feedback affective feedback positive feedback explicit feedback implicit feedback negative feedback explicit feedback implicit feedback neutral feedback cognitive feedback positive feedback explicit feedback implicit feedback negative feedback explicit feedback implicit feedback neutral feedback universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras156 correa pérez, martínez fuentealba, molina de la barra, silva rojas, & torres cisternas table 2. feedback provided by teacher 1 category example teacher marks in red. (to be) afraid for (of ) do (doing) that (so)* teacher uses codes for grammar and spelling. teacher includes aspects to be assessed. teacher writes the correct version. because (it doesn’t) don’t teacher tallies the score. teacher underlines. said (expresses) teacher uses question marks. teacher uses parentheses. * the corrections made by the teacher using red are shown in parentheses. 157profile vol. 15, no. 2, october 2013. issn 1657-0790 (printed) 2256-5760 (online). bogotá, colombia. pages 149-163 the impact of explicit feedback on efl high school students... in this case, the teacher’s tendency is to provide explicit negative feedback because the teacher marks all students’ mistakes and giving the correction of the mistake could be considered as supportive since the teacher wants to show the students what the correct answer is. otherwise, it is important to mention that the teacher marks in red, which could be interpreted as if the participating teacher were stigmatising mistakes. in this analysis, there is no evidence of positive and neutral feedback. there is no proof of affective feedback. nonetheless, since the teacher responds to the student’s message, it could be inferred that there is cognitive feedback because the teacher understand students’ ideas. in table 3 below, it can be seen that the teacher marks in red. moreover, the participating teacher provides the correct answer. also, the teacher gives comments and suggestions about content. besides, the teacher provides the final mark but not the points awarded for the task. it is relevant to realize that the teacher corrects the mistakes in other ways. for example, the teacher adds punctuation and crosses out extra words. also, the teacher circles mistakes and wrongly-used words. in this case, the teacher provides explicit feedback and both positive and negative feedback because the teacher gives positive comments and marks the mistakes. the teacher also provides cognitive and table 3. feedback provided by teacher 2 category example teacher provides the correct answer. teacher gives comments and suggestions about content. teacher provides positive comments. teacher crosses out extra words. teacher circles mistakes. universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras158 correa pérez, martínez fuentealba, molina de la barra, silva rojas, & torres cisternas affective feedback. it is affective as the teacher gives positive comments which encourage students to continue writing. it is cognitive because the teacher understands the message and reacts. the teacher reacts with comments and by correcting the mistakes. objective 2: to know how important it is for learners to receive explicit feedback in writing tasks relating to the importance of receiving explicit feedback for learners in writing tasks, a structured interview was applied. the objective of this interview was to learn students’ opinions and preferences about receiving feedback. for this reason, six questions were designed. these were in the students’ mother tongue, spanish, as the purpose was to learn students’ opinions instead of measuring their level of english. the analysis is separated into two case studies. in general, it is important for the students to receive explicit feedback on writing tasks, because they can improve their linguistic competence. it is important to mention that students prefer receiving feedback in spanish in order to understand better the teacher’s comments. moreover, most of them prefer receiving feedback from their classmates because they trust them. there are three students who prefer receiving feedback from the teacher too since the teacher’s comments help them to avoid making the same mistakes. furthermore, students like oral and direct feedback in general. however, two of them prefer written feedback because this way they can avoid speaking to the teacher in english. in addition, another student points out that since she does not understand feedback in english, she cannot improve her writing. table 4 shows some of the evidence commented on. some students report that the explicit comments made by the teacher help them. but, in general, students say that they do not understand comments in english because of their low level of competence. nevertheless, one of the interviewees manifests that comments help her to improve grammar aspects and ideas as can be found in table 5. table 4. students’ preference when receiving teacher’s explicit comments2 interviewees how do you prefer to receive the explicit comments that your teacher provides about a writing task in the english class? explain. student 3 i prefer to receive them in spanish. student 5 orally and written. table 5. students’ beliefs about receiving teacher’s explicit feedback interviewees how do you think your teacher’s explicit comments during a writing task help you in the english class? student 1 to learn more…but i do not consider them, because i never understand them. student 6 correction helps not to make a mistake again. question 3 was conducted to learn of students’ perception towards how the explicit feedback provided by the teacher helped them when they did the writing task in the english lesson. the tendency is that all of the students mention that receiving feedback from their teachers helps them to avoid making the same mistakes and helps them feel more confident. there is one student who says that, in spite of the teachers’ comments being important, s/he does not pay attention to them. 2 questions and excerpts have been translated from spanish. 159profile vol. 15, no. 2, october 2013. issn 1657-0790 (printed) 2256-5760 (online). bogotá, colombia. pages 149-163 the impact of explicit feedback on efl high school students... in relation to the feedback provided by the teacher, the students said that they do not like receiving feedback since they feel uncomfortable and because the teacher just explains once. however, one student did not say anything about the last point. students’ answers are illustrated in table 6. in table 7 one of the students manifests that she likes receiving written feedback as that way she avoids speaking with the teacher. and some other interviewees mention that they like receiving instant feedback. table 6. students’ preferences when receiving feedback: teachers vs. peers interviewees who do you prefer to receive comments from, teachers or classmates? explain why student 1 from my classmates, because it is more symmetrical relationship. i feel more uncomfortable with teachers and i do not understand a thing. student 2 from my classmates because i look for someone good and trustworthy who will answer in spanish. table 7. students’ preference at the moment of receiving feedback interviewees how do you prefer to receive comments? explain why student 1 in written form and without talking to the teachers. student 6 directly, i prefer to be told immediately, to correct as soon as possible. objective 3: to analyze students’ motivation to rewrite and improve a task after receiving explicit feedback two cases were analyzed. the results were analyzed under three categories related to the writing assessment: emergent categories (length of message), predetermined categories (content: improvement of ideas and organization: logical sequence of ideas and structured paragraph), and predetermined categories by participating teachers (use of linking words, neatness, and grammar and spelling). it is important to mention that all the students re-wrote their task. in general, according to the category of length of message, it might be said that some students shortened the pieces of writing. however, two students increased the length of the autobiography. for example, student 4 had 96 words in the first piece of writing and then 155 words after receiving feedback from the teacher. in terms of content: improvement of ideas, most of the students kept the same ideas and two learners improved them. this happened because the students who did not add new ideas after the feedback provided were those who had well organized ideas in the first task. however, there was a student who did not write more ideas as she did not understand the feedback provided by the teacher. the two students who improved their ideas did so because the teacher suggested it. for example, student 1’s original writing (before receiving feedback) was about his opinion of a famous character; the feedback of the teacher pointed to the title (if you were leonardo da vinci, how would your days be like), then said: “you were asked to write your biography and not his, nor your opinion about him.” in the student’s second writing (after receiving feedback), he starts: “i’m leonardo da vinci i was boiring [sic] in 1440.” in the category of organization: logical sequence of ideas and structured paragraph, the majority of the universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras160 correa pérez, martínez fuentealba, molina de la barra, silva rojas, & torres cisternas students had logical sequences of ideas. these were mainly in chronological order because the task was to write an autobiography. for instance, student 5 started talking about her parents, then about her childhood; after that, about her career and finally, she talked about the present. also, students had well balanced paragraphs; they had almost the same number of lines per paragraph. however, two students had unequal paragraphs because these did not have a similar number of lines. in relation to the use of linking words, there was evidence that all the students used them correctly in general, even though they utilised only a few of them which were the common ones such as so, and, since. to exemplify this, student 5 used the following linking words such as so, and, when, which were correctly used. with regard to the categor y of neatness, all students wrote neat pieces of writing. they used legible hand-writing and the writing task was well presented. for example, student 6 had a clear piece of writing, with legible hand-writing and a well-presented writing task as well. it is important to mention that one student largely improved the neatness of the piece of writing and this improvement contributed to the understanding of the writing process. finally, in the category of grammar and spelling, it was evident that students improved their grammar and spelling, making fewer mistakes in general. for instance, student 6 corrected several grammar mistakes which had been indicated by the teacher. this occurred because the teacher, when giving feedback, provided the correct version of the mistake. however, only one student did not follow the teacher’s feedback and kept the same mistakes. it might be concluded that most of the students carried out the task correctly. however, two students did not follow the instructions of the writing task, thus they did not write an autobiography. most of the students felt motivated to re-write the task. furthermore, they improved their writing after receiving the explicit feedback provided by the teacher. the students incorporated the comments provided by the teachers, especially on content and grammar and spelling. nevertheless, there was one student who did not improve her writing in any category; this student declared that she did not understand feedback provided in english. objective 4: to compare students’ opinions about the importance of receiving feedback and the second written task as table 8 shows, most of the students were consistent between what they declared in the structured interview and what they did after receiving feedback. however, there was only one student who was inconsistent because she said that she did not consider feedback in english since she did not understand it. however, she incorporated the feedback provided by the teacher in her writing. conclusions throughout the whole process the researchers have tried to find out whether explicit feedback, provided on content and organization in writing tasks, motivates efl learners. in order to have a logical sequence of conclusions, this section will be organized by the specific objectives and their corresponding hypotheses. according to the study of the document analysis of the two case studies provided by participating teachers, we can conclude in general that teachers do not give feedback on content and organization systematically or that they are not aware of it and give it unconsciously. in fact, it can be interpreted that neither students nor teachers have a culture of feedback. however, teachers know how to assess error correction in writing tasks as they specifically pay attention to local errors. ur (2006) mentions that giving only positive feedback may not have a positive impact on students because they can think that they 161profile vol. 15, no. 2, october 2013. issn 1657-0790 (printed) 2256-5760 (online). bogotá, colombia. pages 149-163 the impact of explicit feedback on efl high school students... table 8. comparison of students’ opinions and second written task31 students opinions about feedback comment on second written task 1 i prefer to receive written comments in spanish, if not i do not consider them. i prefer to receive comments from my classmates. i usually do not correct. this student re-wrote the task and improved the ideas following the teacher’s feedback which was in english. therefore, it can be said that student 1 was not consistent with what she manifested in the structured interview. 4 i like to receive good explanations, written or oral. my teachers and classmates’ comments help me a lot, because i can improve my writing in english. i generally try to overcome my mistakes. student 4 stated that he preferred receiving feedback. also this student liked receiving feedback since he could improve his performance in the writing task and in class. as a result, student 4 improved grammar and spelling mistakes as the teacher marked and gave the correct version of them. besides, the student kept his ideas and organization as he received positive feedback on them. 5 i prefer to receive written or oral comments from teachers and classmates. these comments give me more confidence when writing. i try to put the comments into practice. this student kept her ideas and organization in the writing task and corrected some grammar and spelling mistakes as indicated so she followed the teacher’s feedback. therefore, what the student did in her writing task after receiving feedback matched with what she declared in the structured interview. 3 students’ opinions have been translated from spanish. are doing well when it is not so. besides, this author states that negative feedback can be constructive if it is given in a supportive and kind manner. for that reason, it is important to mention what harmer (2003) states about the role of feedback which is not only to correct students, but also offer assessment on their performance. through the data analysis the researchers may conclude that when giving feedback, participating teachers provided feedback that could be classified in these categories (use of linking words, neatness, grammar and spelling). some of them are considered basic categories in the process of writing by practitioner researchers, but what was intended was to go one step forward and demand the students’ best efforts in terms of content, logical sequence of ideas, and structured paragraphs. what could be observed in the structured interview, in terms of students’ opinions, is that in general students like receiving explicit feedback in order to improve their written tasks. furthermore, students said they preferred to receive feedback from their partners. this is emphazised by gattegno (as cited in nunan, 1995), who recognises the importance of the establishment of a consistent relationship between teachers and students. in addition, harmer (2003) states that written feedback influences students’ final products and also orients students’ writings. the direct relation between students’ opinions about feedback and their improvement in writing tasks is also evident. universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras162 correa pérez, martínez fuentealba, molina de la barra, silva rojas, & torres cisternas after the document analysis of the writing task, we can conclude that the kind of feedback provided by teachers does impact on students’ motivation, in fact, it was demonstrated that students improved their pieces of writing in the following categories: content: improvement of ideas, grammar and spelling. moreover, there is a relation between categories of length of message and grammar and spelling. and in relation to the category of organisation students do not have problems. the relationship between teachers and students also has an impact. for instance, teachers can create significant learning through giving the appropriate feedback. on the contrary, brown (2000) says that negative cognitive feedback can cause students to perceive that their writings are totally bad and they will feel frustrated. in addition, the assumptions proposed by the researchers were confirmed. the first one, which was related to learners’ improvement in writing tasks after receiving explicit feedback on content and organization from teachers, was confirmed. this is evidenced in both cases in the data analysis chapter as students improved their ideas and organization. the second one, related to positive changes in learners’ attitude towards the writing task after receiving explicit feedback on content and organization, was also successfully confirmed. it can be verified since the majority of the students re-wrote and improved the task incorporating the comments given by the teachers because they felt motivated. the comparison between students’ opinions about the importance of receiving feedback and the re-written task, once they had received feedback on content and organisation, showed that most of the students’ opinions were consistent with what they stated in the structured interview and what they did after receiving feedback on the writing task. to sum up, it might be concluded that explicit feedback motivates efl learners as they become aware of their writing process by knowing their strengths and weaknesses. this demonstrates the impact of providing feedback to efl students which then leads them to improve their writing. nevertheless, if corrections do not happen, learners cannot modify their mistakes. references aparicio, n. (2007). monitoring, error correction, and giving feedback [powerpoint slides]. retrieved from http://www. slideshare.net/jema/monitoring-error-correction and-givimg-feedback brown, h. d. (2000). principles of language learning and teaching. new york, ny: addison wesley longman. celce-murcia, m. (2001). teaching english as a second or foreign language. new york, ny: heinle cengage learning. dörnyei, z. (2001). teaching and researching: motivation. london, uk: longman. ellis, r. (1995). understanding second language acquisition. new york, ny: oxford university press. ferreira, a. (2006). estrategias efectivas de feedback positivo y correctivo en el español como lengua extranjera [effective positive and corrective feedback strategies in spanish as a foreign language]. signos, 39(62), 379-406. ferris, d. (2002). treatment of error in second language student writing. ann arbor, mi: the university of michigan press. harmer, j. (2003). the practice of english language teaching. london, uk: longman. krashen, s. (1981). second language acquisition and second language learning. los angeles, ca: pergamon press. long, m. h. (1996). the role of the linguistic environment in second language acquisition. in w. c. ritchie & t. k. bhatia (eds.), handbook of second language acquisition (pp. 413-468). san diego, ca: academic press. miller, w. r., benefield, r. g., & tonigan, j. s. (1993). enhancing motivation for change in problem drinking: a controlled comparison of two therapists’ styles. journal of consulting and clinical psychology, 61(3), 455-461. 163profile vol. 15, no. 2, october 2013. issn 1657-0790 (printed) 2256-5760 (online). bogotá, colombia. pages 149-163 the impact of explicit feedback on efl high school students... musumeci, d. (1998). writing in the foreign language curriculum: soup and (fire)crackers. retrieved from eric database. (ed433725) nunan, d. (1995). language teaching methodology: a textbook for teachers. london, uk: prentice hall. olshtain, e. (2001). functional tasks for mastering the mechanics of writing and going just beyond. in celcemurcia (ed.), teaching english as a second or foreign language (pp. 207-217). boston, ma: heinle & heinle. perry, c. (1998). a structured approach to presenting theses: notes for students and their supervisors. australasian marketing journal, 6(1), 63-86. schmidt, r. (1990). the role of consciousness in second language learning. applied linguistics, 11(2), 129-158. schmidt, r. (1992). awareness and second language acquisition. annual review of applied linguistics, 13, 206-226. schwartz, b. (1993). on explicit and negative data effecting and affecting competence and linguistic behavior. studies in second language acquisition, 15(2), 147-163. selinker, l., & gass, s. (2008). second language acquisition: an introductory course. new york, ny: routledge. sheen, y. (2004). corrective feedback and learner uptake in communicative classrooms across instructional settings. language teaching research, 8(3), 263-300. truscott, j. (1996). the case against grammar correction in l2 writing classes. language learning, 46(2), 327-369. university of cambridge esol examinations (2005). teaching knowledge test, glossary. cambridge, uk: author. ur, p. (2006). a course in language teaching: practice and theory. cambridge, uk: cambridge university press. about the authors roxanna correa pérez, b.a. english teaching, university teaching diploma, and m.a. in higher education, from universidad católica de la santísima concepción (chile) and certtesol (sussex university, trinity college of london). she teaches methodology in the english pedagogy program at universidad católica de la santísima concepción, chile, where she has also been head of the english pedagogy program and curriculum advisor. mariela martínez fuentealba, efl teacher graduated from universidad católica de la santísima concepción in chile. nowadays, mariela is working at a public high school in a small city where she teaches english and organizes different activities to encourage students to use the language. maría molina de la barra, graduated in secondary english education from universidad católica de la santísima concepción, chile, in 2010. nowadays, maría is working at a public high school in concepción, chile, where she teaches english. jessica silva rojas, english teacher graduated from universidad católica de la santísima concepción in chile. after her graduation, she started to work in different types of schools and after a year, moved to the usa. there, she worked in the splash program in elon elementary school. nowadays, she is working with an ong giving english lessons. mirta torres cisternas, graduated from universidad católica de la santísima concepción, chile, in 2010 as an efl teacher. after a year of working at the high school level, she started teaching socially deprived students (from 2011 to the present) at the elementary level. 199profile vol. 16, no. 1, april 2014. issn 1657-0790 (printed) 2256-5760 (online). bogotá, colombia. pages 199-206 preparing the high school classroom for migrant english language learners preparación del aula de secundaria para estudiantes migrantes que aprenden inglés megan elizabeth rouse*1 universidad santo tomás, bogotá, colombia in united states schools, the rate of immigrant english language learners is rapidly rising, affecting the lives of both students and teachers. this article will discuss the best ways to facilitate the students’ language learning in a school setting; the type of structure, goals, and standards that can be expected; as well as ways to change the preconceived notions of teachers. the implications of this work are significant. we are obligated to support our english language learners with up-to-date teaching approaches and modifications to harness their strengths and enable them to succeed as learners in an englishspeaking setting. key words: concept attainment model, english language learners (ell), learning process, multimodal approach, schools, success. en las escuelas de los estados unidos, el índice de estudiantes inmigrantes que están aprendiendo inglés crece rápidamente, lo cual afecta las vidas de estudiantes y maestros. en este artículo se analiza la mejor forma de ayudar a los estudiantes en su proceso de aprendizaje, mientras se encuentran en un ambiente de adquisición de lenguaje; incluyendo el tipo de estructura, metas y estándares que se pueden esperar, además de cambiar nociones preconcebidas por parte de los profesores. las implicaciones de este trabajo son significativas. se debe apoyar a los estudiantes que están aprendiendo inglés con estrategias de enseñanza actualizadas, en las cuales se tengan en cuenta sus fortalezas para permitirles tener éxito como aprendices de inglés. palabras clave: escuelas, estudiantes de inglés, éxito, método multimodal, modelo del concepto del logro, proceso de aprendizaje. * e-mail: meg_rouse@hotmail.com how to cite this article (apa, 6th ed.): rouse, m. e. (2014). preparing the high school classroom for migrant english language learners. profile issues in teachers’ professional development, 16(1), 199-206. http://dx.doi.org/10.15446/profile.v16n1.38581. this article was received on june 28, 2013, and accepted on october 11, 2013. universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras200 rouse introduction a major change facing schools in the united states today is the rapid growth of the english language learner (ell) population—students who immigrated to the u.s. from non-english speaking countries and have not yet mastered english sufficiently to enable them to fully succeed in their education. with the influx of ell students into schools in the u.s., we must learn the best ways to accommodate them in the classroom. “present demographic trends in the united states indicate that by the year 2026, one in every four children in our public schools will be an english language learner” (garcia as cited in smith, 2004, introduction section, para. 1). questions concerning how much language a student should acquire within a certain period of time, and what goals and standards an instructor should have for these students to enable them to succeed, are areas that need to be addressed. it is important to know the appropriate amount of progress to expect for each student, based on the language level with which they began studying in u.s. schools. early and marshall (2008) emphasize the rapidly increasing ell population in north america and the need to design approaches that will best help these students to learn and process both literature and language in the general education classroom. teaching professionals should undergo professional development to help them better understand the needs of ell students, the foundation upon which each of these students enters their new learning environment, and how we as teachers can best be prepared. finally, teachers must know how to assist and develop an appropriate approach to facilitate the learning of ell students. perceptions and attitudes of ells, nclb, and ell professional development impediments to ell learning include teacher attitudes towards ell students, the misdiagnosis of ell students as learning disabled, and the lack of professional development. batt (2008) noted that a sizeable gap in achievement exists between the scores of those not in need of special language instruction and hispanic students. furthermore, he noted “a higher percentage of non-certified [english as a second language] teachers [in schools] than all other teaching areas” (p. 39). batt designed that study to attempt to remedy this disproportion. no child left behind, nclb (2001), emphasized the importance of the closure of this gap to meet its mandate, which called for schools not only to account for the progress of english language learners but also to, “improv[e] instruction programs for limited english proficient children by acquiring and upgrading curricula and related instruction materials” as well as to “provid[e] training, aligned with state and local standards, to school personnel and participating community-based organization personnel to improve the instruction and assessment of limited english proficient children” (nclb, 2001, p. 286). general education teachers in that study also recognized the unsympathetic attitudes of some fellow teachers towards ell students who claim that “teachers and administrators don’t understand [their] needs and how to teach them . . . i have people in my building that refer to my kids as ‘them’ . . . we still have a high number of staff who say things like, ‘they shouldn’t be here’” (batt, 2008, p. 40). it is important to strive for empathy and understanding of the struggles of ell students, as “being unable to comprehend the language of instruction in school often lead to strong negative emotions” (washburn, 2008, p. 247). by confronting these attitudes, ideas and obstacles, teachers can create meaningful and effective educational approaches and modifications for ells. this outcome is especially important considering “the enormous potential that teachers have to become significant adults in the lives of these immigrant adolescents” (brittain, 2009, p. 108). as 201profile vol. 16, no. 1, april 2014. issn 1657-0790 (printed) 2256-5760 (online). bogotá, colombia. pages 199-206 preparing the high school classroom for migrant english language learners ell students make their transition into u.s. schools, teachers can have a strong impact not only on their academic achievement but also on their personal development. an article by spinelli (2008) elucidated another issue facing ell students—the inaccurate labeling of these students as learning disabled—which can lead to placing them in an inappropriate classroom. spinelli notes that “standardized procedures are invalid and unreliable for ells because they do not adequately distinguish between learning and/or communication disorders and the lack of language proficiency” (p. 103). cultural and linguistic barriers may influence testing scores that appear to indicate a learning disability. in fact, the scores may be solely due to “the student’s difficulty acquiring two languages simultaneously” (p.103). the consequences of students being labeled incorrectly can be detrimental to their education, including being “denied access to the general education curriculum; being placed in [programs] with more limited curriculum . . . and negatively impact[ing] [their] self-perception” (p. 104). the misrepresentation of students as learning disabled will create a negative ripple effect upon their educational endeavors. spinelli (2008) discusses evaluation measures that could be implemented to enable students to be placed where they can be best educated and evaluated. these measures include curriculum-based assessments to determine both the background knowledge of a student and performance-based assessments. findings of a study by de ramirez and shapiro (2006) on the general population as well as for spanish speaking students show that “curriculumbased measurement can be a viable methodology for evaluating the rate of progress of . . . ells” (p. 356). spinelli (2008) also notes that classrooms should be examined to determine whether the environment is conducive to ell learning in areas of “environmental style, interaction style, instructional strategies for cognitive style, instructional strategies for cognitive responsiveness, and assessment style” (p. 107). it is important that these students be comprehensively and accurately assessed so that they are placed in classrooms best suited to their needs. l e n s k i , e h l e r s z av a l a , d a n i e l , a n d su n irminger (2006) note that, “many teachers have little experience with ells and may not understand the challenges faced by students in the process of acquiring english” (p. 25). spinelli (2008) reports that, “according to a recent survey by the national center for education statistics, just 27 percent of teachers report feeling well prepared to teach ells, and only 12.5 percent of teachers with ells in their classrooms have participated in ell-related training during the past three years” (p. 102). this evidence indicates the lack of teacher preparedness with respect to ell learning and recognition of the educational needs created by the presence of ell students. studies such as that by batt (2008) were created to discern from current teachers what they feel needs to be improved within the realm of ell education. the challenges and suggestions determined by batt’s study were then used to create meaningful professional development. the idaho board of directors for english as a second language (esl) formed a focus group that designed the survey executed by batt (2008), coded possible responses, and sent the survey to rural schools in idaho with the largest numbers of ell students. teachers participating in the idaho association for bilingual education also took the survey, with a total of 131.5 surveys returned. the results of the survey indicated the need for more qualified teachers to work with ell students both in ell and in general school classrooms. professional development in the realm of ell education is necessary because ell students “are disadvantaged if assessment, evaluation and curriculum do not make allowances for their distinctive differences” (lenski et al., 2006, p. 24). the results of the survey indicate understaffing and added universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras202 rouse duties placed on ell instructors as stressors that have a negative impact on the programs, and that an overall restructuring of ell is vital. batt (2008) concluded that professional development would enable both ell and “mainstream” teachers to help ell students acquire language proficiency. brice, miller, and brice (2006) note that “students in ell classrooms . . . and general education classrooms all benefit from more lesson pl ann i ng and co -pl an ni ng w it h ot he r s cho ol professionals” (p. 242). hiring of more specialists, when possible, would also be advantageous. even though budgetary considerations may be a concern, batt’s recommendations that these results be used as an impetus for providing valuable services and professional development are appropriate. the multimodal approach once a learning community recognizes the im portance of focusing on ell students, specific avenues for approaching these students within the classroom can be addressed. perhaps the most important method was that of the “multimodal approach to integrating language and content teaching,” (early & marshall, 2008, p. 377) into a high school english classroom for esl students. as teaching professionals, it is important to know how to facilitate learning without insulting the intelligence and abilities of ell students. the case study by early and marshall (2008) focuses on this need. the authors examined a single classroom of esl students in vancouver, canada, where 200 of the 1,200 students were enrolled in the esl class. the particular classroom was that of sondra marshall who taught two transitional english classes in the school. twenty-eight students from both classes agreed to participate in the study. after completing this transitional class, students are moved into a regular classroom with native english speakers the following year; thus, it is necessary for these students to gain the necessary abilities to succeed in that setting. the aims of the study were to examine the approach and to measure its success. in addition, early and marshall hoped to show that “students can be supported to grow in their interpretation and appreciation of english literature” (p. 381). after preliminary interviews and self-evaluations, which were transcribed and recorded, students who were enrolled in the study were observed for four weeks. evaluations of students’ writings were also collected. students were then put into groups of three. they chose a short story and were given directions on using a mandala graphic organizer, a form of visual representation used by the teacher to depict what took place in each story with respect to characterization, style, and theme. students were asked to engage in dialogue with one another to find symbols and visuals representing each category. each student would then choose from one of the three categories to write an essay in class. rance-roney (2008) note that teachers not only need, “to support english language learners in their english acquisition, but also [need] to create a classroom culture that encourages shared experiences and a construction of knowledge that legitimizes all class members” (p. 19). such an approach to classroom instruction accomplishes this aim by challenging the students and allowing them to make choices such as which group to join, which story to analyze, and which of the three areas to write their papers on. these choices allow them to take control of their english instruction and to feel that they have a stake and a voice in it. the results gathered from exit interviews and self-evaluations from both teachers and students at the culmination of the study conclude that not only did students grow in their language skills and abilities to understand literary texts, but they also enjoyed the tasks. students were encouraged, along with their classmates, to read and re-read a text until they understood it, and then move to the next level by interpreting said understanding symbols and entire essays. twenty-six of the 28 students felt that the 203profile vol. 16, no. 1, april 2014. issn 1657-0790 (printed) 2256-5760 (online). bogotá, colombia. pages 199-206 preparing the high school classroom for migrant english language learners activity was advantageous, and the scores of students’ papers reached a level that had not previously been achieved (early & marshall 2008). the concept attainment model similar to this multi-modal model that engages students in creating symbols that represent a theme of a story is the use of the concept attainment model in which pictures are used to communicate an idea. this model “is an instructional technique proposed by jerome bruner that targets the ‘big idea’ or concept” (bruner et al. as cited in boulware & crow, 2008, p. 491). by displaying examples and non-examples of an idea simultaneously, students construct the meaning of what a given concept may be through hypothesizing. this activity may be performed through the use of pictures or words. because thinking and reasoning occur on multiple levels, learners benefit from the opportunity to examine concepts through examples and non-examples that highlight different aspects of the concept presented. connecting what is known to what is unknown is the basis of developing concept attainment. the concept attainment strategy can be used with students of all ages, ells, pupils with special needs, and gifted students. it can be applied in many contexts to develop comprehension using narrative or expository trade books, pictures, words or phrases, and concrete objects. (boulware & crow, 2008, p. 495) depending on the level of language fluency, the use of simplified examples together with pictures or simple words can communicate an idea to an ell student. “concept attainment emphasizes placing learners in active roles . . . and uses examples to develop understanding . . . store[d] in long term memory” (eggen & kauchak 2006, p. 196). concept attainment allows an ell student to think critically while the teacher decides how much and in what way english will be incorporated into the lesson. students can then verbalize their hypotheses to the best of their ability. modification to classroom assignments and ell instructor support in personal communications with both general education teacher, t. harper (june 23, 2009), and ell instructor, a. parrett (november 17, 2008), the importance of ell support was emphasized. harper notes that ell instructors have a wealth of information and knowledge that can assist general education teachers in modifying assignments and instruction. lewis-moreno (2007) emphasizes that “collaboration between the esl teacher and mainstream teachers in a school is crucial. the esl teacher should be an on-site resource for content-area teachers [who is] able to share and model a wide repertoire of reading, writing, vocabulary, and note-taking strategies to scaffold instruction” (p. 774). dong (2004) indicates that modifications within general education courses are urgent with the rise in the number of ell learners in the u.s. he proposed “three main instructional modifications . . . setting up language objectives along with content curricular objectives, anticipating esl-related difficulties, and providing cultural background information” (p. 204). ell students must not only understand the language of the assignments they are given, but also must understand the cultural setting to achieve full understanding. sheltered instruction is another modification of classroom instruction that many experts suggest. in this approach, ell students “do not compete academically with native english speakers [but rather] teachers use physical activities, visual aids, and the environment to teach important new words for concept development” (national clearinghouse on bilingual education as cited in freeman & freeman, 2000, “what is sheltered english?,” para. 1). hansen-thomas (2008) notes that, “sheltered instruction combines both triedand-true instructional techniques that characterize what experienced educators know as good teaching practices and instruction specially designed to meet universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras204 rouse the linguistic and educational needs of immigrant and nonimmigrant second-language learners in u.s. schools” (p. 165). assisting ell during assessments a major concern within education is how to accommodate students during testing situations when students of all backgrounds and limitations are required to participate according to nclb. “title i of nclb requires that ells attending public schools at levels k-12 should be assessed in the various language domains . . . and must be included in . . . standardized testing” (lenski et al., 2006, p. 24). while very little research on this particular topic was found, one study focused on “test performance of english-language learners using an english dictionar y,” (albus, thurlow, liu, & beilinski, 2005, p. 245) in which 202 students were given two reading passages to interpret both with and without a dictionary. after this round of testing, students were given a post-test questionnaire in which they demonstrated their personal dictionary skills and were asked whether they utilized the dictionary during the testing. the results showed that the presence of the dictionar y did not have a significant impact on student scores but also found that, “intermediatelevel . . . students in the hmong ell group who used the dictionary . . . performed better than did the control group” (albus et al., 2005, p. 245). students with advanced or low language capabilities rarely used the dictionaries. albus et al. (2005) speculate that knowing that this test did not affect grades or graduation could have affected the testing outcome, as 95.8% of the students commented that dictionary availability during testing would be advantageous. even though the aim of the study did not provide any groundbreaking results in relation to this modification, it is a first step in finding ways to provide assistance and modifications for ell students. conclusion every teacher must assume responsibility for his or her classroom as well as for the educational community in which the instruction and advancement of ell take place. as these ell students embark on their journey of learning a new language and navigate their way through secondary education, their learning needs, placement, and achievement must be understood by teachers, administration and governmental entities alike. teacher training in all high school subjects is absolutely crucial to enable teachers to dispel misconceptions, to acquire knowledge of ell strategies and modifications and to encourage cooperation in dealing with problems and success. the approaches discussed in this review article have been found to be the most valuable in recent ell research. one approach is not better than another. however, a combination of approaches used in the classroom according to the specific needs of students will be most advantageous. there is even a greater need than originally believed for a focus on the needs of ell students particularly in providing assistance during state testing. this need is emphasized by the lack of resources available for this purpose. it is necessary to include this particular information, because not only was there only one study of this type, but even the results of that study did not prove to be advantageous to ells. accordingly, more studies should be conducted to discover new ways of modifying state testing. teachers should be encouraged to begin studies in their own classrooms to report on and share new techniques and strategies as they prepare their students for state exams and for classroom work in general. furthermore, it is in the interest of all educators and entities involved to promote research and ell teacher training in order to overcome stereotypes and to communicate specific information about the learning journey of ells. overall, it is the responsibility of each instructor to know what approaches to use with his or her subject 205profile vol. 16, no. 1, april 2014. issn 1657-0790 (printed) 2256-5760 (online). bogotá, colombia. pages 199-206 preparing the high school classroom for migrant english language learners matter and in the classroom environment to assure that students are not only learning but also reaching their full potential. it is a far too common to witness ell students slipping through the cracks of our educational system. these students may be labeled as lazy or as trouble makers because their teachers mistakenly believe that their lack of strong conversational english is an indication of their inability to handle classroom assignments or understand instructions. it is only through appropriate professional development that teachers can better understand how to modify and plan for ell students’ success both in learning and in integrating into a new cultural setting and educational system. each instructor must be dedicated to his or her students and be willing to implement the appropriate approaches. all of the areas mentioned, including ell professional development, the multimodal approach, the concept attainment model, modification of classroom assignments, ell instructor support and assistance to ells during assessments, are merely the tip of the iceberg to enable us to meet the challenge facing u.s. schools today. references albus, d., thurlow, m., liu, k., & bielinski, j. (2005). reading test performance of english-language learners using an english dictionary. journal of educational research, 98(4), 245. retrieved from eric database. (ej698786) batt, e. g. (2008). teachers’ perceptions of ell education: potential solutions to overcome the greatest challenges. multicultural education, 15(3), 39-43. boulware, b. j., & crow, m. l. (2008). using the concept attainment strategy to enhance reading comprehension. the reading teacher, 61(6), 491-495. brice, a. e., miller, k. j., & brice, r. g. (2006). language in the english as a second language and general education classrooms: a tutorial. communication disorders quarterly, 27(4), 240-247. brittain, c. (2009). transnational messages: what teachers can learn from understanding students’ lives in transnational social spaces. high school journal, 92(4), 100-114. de ramirez, r., & shapiro, e. s. (2006). curriculumbased measurement and the evaluation of reading skills of spanish-speaking english language learners in bilingual education classrooms. school psychology review, 35(3), 356-369. retrieved from eric database. (ej788265) dong, y. r. (2004). preparing secondary subject area teachers to teach linguistically and culturally diverse students. clearing house, 77(5), 202. retrieved from the eric database. (ej704104) early, m., & marshall, s. (2008). adolescent esl students’ interpretation and appreciation of literary texts: a case study of multimodality. canadian modern language review, 64(3), 377-397. retrieved from eric database. (ej790398) eggen, p. d., & kauchak, d. p. (2006). strategies and models for teachers: teaching content and thinking skills (5th ed.). boston, ma: pearson education. freeman, d., & freeman, y. (2000). sheltered english instruction. eric clearinghouse on languages and linguistics washington dc. retrieved from eric database. (ed301070) hansen-thomas, h. (2008). sheltered instruction: best practices for ells in the mainstream. kappa delta pi record, 44(4), 165-169. retrieved from eric database. (ej797289) lenski, s. d., ehlers-zavala, f., daniel, m. c., & sunirminger, x. (2006). assessing english-language learners in mainstream classrooms. reading teacher, 60(1), 24-34. retrieved from eric database. (ej749427) lewis-moreno, b. (2007). shared responsibility: achieving success with english-language learners. phi delta kappan, 88(10), 772-775. retrieved from eric database. (ej767458) no child left behind act of 2001. retrieved from http:// www.ed.gov/policy/elsec/leg/esea02/index.html universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras206 rouse rance-roney, j. (2008). creating intentional communities to support english language learners in the classroom. english journal, 97(5), 17-22. smith, p. c. (2004). pre-service teachers’ attitudes regarding esl students. academic exchange quarterly. retrieved from http://www.thefreelibrary.com/pre-service+teac hers’+attitudes+regarding+esl+students-a0116450609 spinelli, c. g. (2008). addressing the issue of cultural and linguistic diversity and assessment: informal evaluation measures for english language learners. reading & writing quarterly, 24(1), 101-118. retrieved from eric database. (ej781942) washburn, g. n. (2008). alone, confused, and frustrated: developing empathy and strategies for working with english language learners. clearing house: a journal of educational strategies, issues and ideas, 81(6), 247-250. retrieved from eric database. (ej805251) about the author megan elizabeth rouse holds a ba in english literature from truman state university (united states) in 2005 and masters of teaching and teaching certification from lindenwood university (united states) in 2010. she has worked at universidad santo tomás, bogotá with the instituto de lenguas fray bernardo de lugo op since 2011. 129profile vol. 13, no. 1, april 2011. issn 1657-0790. bogotá, colombia. pages 129-137 129 the effect of direct and indirect corrective feedback on students’ spelling errors el efecto de la retroalimentación directa e indirecta sobre los errores de ortografía de los estudiantes sasan baleghizadeh* mehdi dadashi** shahid beheshti university, g.c., tehran, iran the study presented here is an attempt to examine the role of indirect feedback in promoting junior high school students’ spelling accuracy in english. it compares the effect of direct feedback with indirect feedback on students’ written work dictated by their teacher from their textbooks. two classes were selected from the zanjanrood district in iran. forty-four male students in two groups, one from school a (the direct feedback group) and the other from school b (the indirect feedback group) were treated differently regarding their spelling errors for six weeks. the results obtained revealed that indirect feedback is a more effective tool than direct feedback in rectifying students’ spelling errors. keywords: direct feedback, dictation, indirect feedback, spelling errors. el estudio que aquí se reporta busca examinar el papel de la retroalimentación indirecta, en la promoción de la precisión en la escritura en inglés, de estudiantes de educación secundaria. se comparan los efectos de la retroalimentación directa e indirecta en los trabajos escritos de los estudiantes, provenientes de los libros de texto y de dictados hechos por el profesor. se seleccionaron dos grupos del distrito zanjanrood en irán a los que se les dio, durante seis semanas, un tratamiento distinto respecto a sus errores de ortografía. en total, eran cuarenta y cinco estudiantes de sexo masculino, distribuidos en dos grupos: uno de la escuela a (el grupo que recibió retroalimentación directa) y otro de la de la escuela b (el grupo que recibió retroalimentación indirecta). los resultados mostraron que la retroalimentación indirecta es una herramienta más efectiva que la directa, cuando se trata de rectificar los errores de ortografía de los estudiantes. palabras clave: dictado, errores de ortografía, retroalimentación directa, retroalimentación indirecta. * e-mail: sasanbaleghizadeh@yahoo.com ** e-mail: p_mehdi.2002@yahoo.com this article was received on june 10, 2010, and accepted on november 30, 2010. profile13-1_cuerpo.indd 129 27/04/11 14:44 130 universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras baleghizadeh & dadashi introduction english has its own unique orthographic rules and system, which challenge even those whose first language uses a version of the roman alphabet. students and teachers often complain about not finding any reliable rule for english orthography. in fact, english has a very systematic set of soundspelling correspondences (chomsky & halle, 1968; schane, 1970; venezky, 1970). these sound-spelling correspondences allow english teachers to combine the teaching of phonetic units with graphemic units. after having been taught the mentioned combinations, it is often up to the students to master this spelling system. in the course of their learning, we, as teachers, witness some inconsistencies or, simply put, some spelling errors in their written work. however, these errors are signs of learning along the road toward improvement. after presentation of new words, most often schoolteachers expect an immediate mastery on the students’ part, which is not feasible considering the complex cognitive processes at work. instructors can help their learners by providing them with constructive feedback that will test their hypotheses about new word spellings. for example, learners may tend to look for one-to-one letter-sound correspondence and then discover that they get into a lot of trouble. extricating themselves from this situation calls for a tactful way of giving feedback. schoolteachers often measure their learners’ spelling ability by dictating words and sentences from students’ textbooks. this dictation, however, differs from conventional dictation in which a teacher reads the text three times: once at a normal speed then chunk by chunk with pauses in between and for the third time at a normal speed. dictation at state schools in general and at junior high schools in particular aims at measuring spelling errors and for that reason teachers repeat words and sentences as many times as possible at a slow speed to make sure that students have written them down. it goes without saying that dictation is not the only way for measuring spelling; there are other alternatives such as multiple-choice, matching and writing the missing letters. having taught english at state schools for many years, the second researcher’s curiosity was raised when seeing learners making those spelling errors which had been corrected in their previous written work. he then decided to sort out this problem with spelling errors committed by learners during dictation. he thought that students did not pay attention to his corrective feedbacks. therefore, he decided that this kind of feedback would not work. the second researcher attempted to see students’ contribution in correction because when everything was spoon-fed to them (all the errors were corrected and ready at their disposal), students would take it for granted and did not ponder over them. therefore, he concluded that instead of providing them with correct forms we should push them to correct and produce. allwright (1975), hendrickson (1978), and vigil and oller (1976) proposed that pushing learners in their output, rather than providing them with correct forms, could benefit their interlanguage development. that is why this researcher wondered if he could get them to correct their own errors in such a way that could lead them to discovery learning. this kind of reflection was an impetus to having the researchers conduct this study. the significance of this study can be justified on the grounds that appropriate spelling is a sign of literacy; moreover, it can set the stage for similar studies even in the first or the second language context in iran. we wonder whether or not the same results are obtainable in farsi, most iranian students’ mother tongue. profile13-1_cuerpo.indd 130 27/04/11 14:44 131profile vol. 13, no. 1, april 2011. issn 1657-0790. bogotá, colombia. pages 129-137 131 the effect of direct and indirect corrective feedback different scholars in the field of sla place tall orders on the teachers’ plates and, as a result, quite versatile models for speech and sentence correction have emerged like those of vigil and oller (1976) and brown (2001), just to name a few. the lack of similar studies focusing specifically on spelling was felt and as a result this paper will explore the gap in the iranian context in the literature on spelling instruction which had not been dealt with for years. if similar studies on the strategies (circling, underlining and coded error feedback) of giving feedback on spelling errors are carried out and the same results are obtained, autonomous and discovery learning can occupy the place of passive and parrot-like imitation of teachers’ modeling in spelling instruction. in teaching farsi, school teachers traditionally tended to correct every single spelling error and students were supposed to write the correct form of these words in one or more lines for the next dictation. this tradition has been transferred to teaching foreign languages at schools. although it is not without its merits, to make it work more efficiently, the way teachers provide their students with feedback should change. there is a great potential in giving feedback that sometimes may transcend the benefits of even the very act of the teaching. we think teaching along with no feedback or inappropriate feedback would in most cases result in disappointment on the part of both students and teachers. therefore, it is worth mentioning the studies carried out so far on giving feedback. review of the literature the usefulness of teacher feedback, be it in writing or oral, is a subject of heated discussion and debate. even a cursory reading of the literature on feedback will reveal that it is widely used as an equivalent to error correction. as lee (1997) has noted, attitudes towards error correction have evolved from the strict avoidance of errors and hence quick and direct error correction before the 1960s, to the condemnation of error correction as harmful and unnecessary in the late 1960s, and to a more critical view of the need and value of error correction in the 1970s and 1980s. the controversy over the topic of error correction, however, remains unresolved in the 1990s. (p. 465) research on foreign language writing has mostly been based on how to respond to student writing through teacher corrective feedback and student writers’ desire for teacher feedback on their written errors (ferris & roberts, 2001). ferris, pezone, tade, and tinti (1997) stated that response to student writing was the teachers’ most crucial task and regarded its role as one way, among others, to motivate and encourage students. it is our belief that if teachers in our context indicate a written grammatical error on a student’s paper and provide the correct form in one way or another, the student will realize the error and will not repeat it in his or her future writings. since spelling is the mechanics of writing, the second researcher was eager to draw on the techniques applied in the field of l2 writing and attempted to focus specifically on spelling ability, which is part of the writing skill. therefore, the studies done in the area of giving feedback on the written works of learners can be fruitful. these studies are consulted as follows: ashwell (2000) indicated that teachers believe that correcting the grammar of student writers’ work will help students improve the accuracy of subsequent writing. research evidence on error correction in l2 writing classes showed that students who receive error feedback from teachers improve in accuracy over time (ferris & roberts, 2001). there is also research evidence which proves that students are eager to receive error feedback and they think that it helps them improve their profile13-1_cuerpo.indd 131 27/04/11 14:44 132 universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras baleghizadeh & dadashi writing skill in the target language (chandler, 2003; ferris & roberts, 2001; leki, 1990). in most efl/esl settings the question has more to do with how to provide error correction rather than whether or not to give feedback (brown, 2001). so many techniques and strategies have been utilized by teachers. for instance, correction may be partial; that is, marking only some major patterns of errors on a student paper rather than marking all types of errors in a text. partial or selective error feedback has been favored by some researchers for it helps students to focus on their more serious problems in writing. on the contrary, traditional or direct correction would cause them to become bored with every error on a paper (ferris, 1995; hendrickson, 1978). lalande (1982), who welcomes comprehensive error feedback, argued that students need detailed feedback; otherwise, they may be misled by selective error feedback because students may mistakenly think that the rest of their writing is completely right. as lee (2004) asserted, error correction can be operationalized in terms of direct and indirect correction. in direct correction the instructor provides the correct forms in students’ faulty sentences. therefore, both detection and correction are entirely the responsibility of the teachers. indirect correction, on the contrary, refers to prompting students about the location of errors line-per-line (hyland, 1990). the already-mentioned focus of the related literature in this field, which is the main concern of this paper, is the distinction between direct and indirect error correction strategies. these are the two main strategies utilized by teachers to respond, comment on and correct grammatical errors to improve students’ accuracy in writing. direct error feedback or overt correction is provided when the teacher writes the correct form on the student’s paper, while indirect error feedback is provided when the teacher indicates the location of the error on the paper by underlining, highlighting or circling it without providing the correct form (lee, 2004). indirect feedback is regarded as “coded error feedback” if the indication of the error is marked with a symbol representing a specific kind of error such as t=verb tense, sp=spelling (lee, 2004). if the indication of the error is done by kind of error (spelling, verb tense), it is called “uncoded error feedback” (lee, 2004). for editing a paper with indirect feedback, the student is required both to identify the type of error and to self-correct the error whereas in direct feedback what the student does is only to transcribe the teacher’s corrections onto the paper (ferris, 2003).there is research evidence suggesting that indirect error feedback is more helpful for students’ long-term writing development than direct error feedback (ferris, 2003; fratzen, 1995). for example, chandler (2003) examined two esl undergraduate groups receiving either direct or indirect error feedback during a 14-week semester. the results indicated that indirect error feedback with student self-editing contributes to accuracy more than direct error feedback. similarly, lalande (1982) compared two groups: one with direct feedback and the other with indirect feedback using correction codes over a semester. it was found that the group which had received indirect coded error feedback had more accuracy in writing by the end of the semester. the studies carried out by ferris and roberts (2001) and lee (1997) included groups which received no correction at all in their research. there were no significant differences between the groups’ ability to edit their papers; what is more, the students who were given corrective feedback outperformed the no feedback group on the selfediting task. lee (1997) compared efl college students’ writing in hong-kong and found that students who received indirect feedback performed profile13-1_cuerpo.indd 132 27/04/11 14:44 133profile vol. 13, no. 1, april 2011. issn 1657-0790. bogotá, colombia. pages 129-137 133 the effect of direct and indirect corrective feedback better than the group with no feedback in selfediting. according to ferris et al (1997), students who primarily received indirect error feedback make fewer errors in subsequent writings than the students who received mostly direct feedback. there is plenty of research evidence in both l2 and l1 to show that teacher feedback which focuses principally on correcting the errors tends not to produce substantive or even measurable improvement in the quality of students’ learning. therefore, a group of researchers see little, if any, benefit in devoting valuable classroom time to providing feedback to students’ errors (brandl, 1995; cohen, 1987; hendrickson, 1978; leki, 1990). research has further revealed that students express preferences for overt correction; that is, they expect their teachers to point out and correct their errors. a growing body of research has accounted for students’ preferences about and their views on the utility and instructional value of instructor feedback. students, regardless of cultural origin, appear to share certain beliefs about the functions of formal education. as schulz (2001) noted, they see the teacher as an expert “knower” whose role is to explain and provide feedback. problems and relevant questions 1. is there any evidence to support that two types of teacher feedback in spelling instruction, including direct correction and indirect correction, provide different results? 2. is direct/overt correction of spelling errors by the teacher i.e. underlining the errors and providing the correct forms effective in improving the spelling abilities of the students? 3. is indirect correction i.e. underlining the spelling errors and leaving the correction to students effective in improving students’ spelling ability? a central issue when correcting the spelling errors in written works of the students is deciding how much correction to provide. coloring in red ink all over the page has the dire consequence of giving not only negative affective feedback but also negative cognitive feedback. despite the findings of studies, practice lags behind the research. many teachers still tend to correct errors in a traditional way. they impose themselves as authorities and make comments. we will explore whether teacher indirect feedback can lead students to think about what they have corrected and then improve their long term spelling ability. teachers should take the roles of coach, facilitator, mentor and guide instead of insisting only on the roles of examiner, critic, judge, proofreader and copyeditor. instructor feedback should be viewed as an ongoing conversation between the teacher and the students in which students have their own say. this ongoing conversation between the teacher and the students will be materialized by assigning students the correction of their own errors which in turn would lead to the teachers equipping their students with a range of strategies. design this study includes two independent variables and one dependent variable. the independent variables are two approaches for dealing with errors and the dependent variable is the scores of the participants. participants two classes from two different villages in the znjanrood district in iran were selected for this study. students in both classes whose ages were 14 and 15 and consisting of 22 male students each were third graders of a junior high school. they were randomly assigned to two experimental conditions, profile13-1_cuerpo.indd 133 27/04/11 14:44 134 universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras baleghizadeh & dadashi hence school a forming the direct feedback group and school b forming the indirect feedback group. procedure for six weeks the students were treated differently. in each week both groups and classes were supposed to have a dictation. the first dictations were counted as pre-tests and the last ones as post-tests. in the final dictations the second researcher included almost all of those words and sentences which students had found problematic in the previous dictations and had received feedback on them. the participants in school a received direct correction of their errors. in the case of the second group, school b, the errors were only indicated and underlined, but the actual corrections were left to the students. in the case of indirect correction, the papers were returned to the students, they were asked to correct their errors and hand the papers in to the teacher. those spelling errors which had not been corrected by the students were finally corrected by the teacher. all the papers were scored on the basis of the number of spelling errors. for each single erroneous letter 0.25 points were subtracted. as common practice, dictated words and sentences were taken from students’ textbook and similar for both groups during treatment. when sentences were dictated they were repeated three times but words were dictated only twice. materials the third grade english textbook was the source of the dictation of the words and sentences. in each session each lesson dialogue and pattern sentences plus ten words from word lists of each lesson were dictated. results and discussion table 1 shows the descriptive statistics for the direct feedback group. it is obvious that there is not a significant difference between the mean scores of preand post-tests. this is evidenced by the results obtained through a matched t-test t (21) = 1.93, p=.06. this suggests that giving students direct feedback on their spelling errors does not significantly improve their subsequent performance on a dictation test. table1. descriptive statistics for the direct feedback group pair n m sd pre-test 22 14.29 .71 post-test 22 14.29 similarly, table 2 shows the descriptive statistics for the indirect feedback group. this time the results of the matched t-test revealed that there is a significant difference between the mean scores of the preand post-tests t (21) = 5.14, p=.001. this means that indirect feedback is a more successful tool in improving students’ dictation than direct feedback. table 2. descriptive statistics for the indirect feedback group pair n m sd pre-test 22 15.02 .84 post-test 22 16.01 the statistical figures for the indirect feedback group show a drastic change in post-test scores, which suggests they performed better in their final dictation given the fact that the dictated words and sentences were the same for both groups during the treatment. this significant difference observed on students’ final performance can be attributed to the indirect feedback with which their errors were dealt with. ellis (1994) argues that knowledge of form depends on implicit learning, whereas knowledge profile13-1_cuerpo.indd 134 27/04/11 14:44 135profile vol. 13, no. 1, april 2011. issn 1657-0790. bogotá, colombia. pages 129-137 135 the effect of direct and indirect corrective feedback of meaning involves a more conscious processing. since the ability to spell words is the knowledge of form, this argument by ellis (1994) seems to account for the second group’s achievement and gain on one aspect of the formal knowledge of the words. the second group experienced a kind of implicit feedback that according to the results was conducive to learning. getting indirect feedback, learners are provided with the opportunity to act on their own initiative in production; however, when getting direct feedback, they are provided with correct forms to copy, leaving the initiative to their teacher. in other words, students in the second group experienced a kind of meaningful exercise in which they compared their own version with the target and correct form which in turn led to discovery learning. therefore, studies of the error treatment led some researchers such as allwright (1975), hendrickson (1978) and vigil and oller (1976) to propose that pushing learners in their output, rather than providing them with correct forms, could benefit their interlanguage development (all cited in lyster, 1998). the mechanism by which this feedback is given to the learners was the focus of some studies which have been touched upon in the review of the related literature. these studies have examined the role of the indirect feedback in students’ written work or speech; however, the rarity of the research focusing specifically on the spelling errors was an impetus for the researchers to examine the impact of the indirect feedback on students’ spelling improvement. conclusion to round up the results obtained, this study shows a beneficial role of self-correction led by teachers in promoting the accuracy of spelling of efl junior high school students. the study reveals that receiving direct feedback or mere teacher feedback without the students’ engagement in the revision and the correction process is not effective and desirable in improving the spelling accuracy in such a classroom. as teacher feedback is believed to be the major and vital component of the classroom events in efl context and is favored by most iranian students, the outcome of this study does not devalue teacher feedback but suggests its importance and value when and only when it comes in the form of indirect feedback along with students’ contribution. therefore, it is fruitful to design additional classroom activities in which students engage themselves in the process of revision and self-correction. this is possible if teachers find efficient ways of correction and students receive indirect corrective feedback. furthermore, teachers should determine their own priorities; that is to say, the first priority should be to invite students to correct their own spelling errors because they benefit from correcting their spelling errors in such a way that they become aware of their recurring errors. since the study was not conducted in a tightly controlled and manipulated situation, we cannot rigorously generalize it to every situation. however, it could be claimed that the indirect corrective feedback rather than the traditional copy editor kind of feedback on spelling errors will work to the students’ advantage at least in the region where the second researcher has been teaching due to the fact that most teachers here use dictation to measure the spelling and coping abilities of their students. considering the fact that teachers in this region (zanjanrood) most often use this kind of dictation and direct corrective feedback –and the second researcher himself used to practice the same procedure– he conducted this kind of action research to make sure that indirect corrective feedback on spelling errors would be better than the other way around. due to the fact that spelling errors on the one hand were the major problems in his class, and correct spelling gives a sense of the literacy of the writer to the reader on the other 136 universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras baleghizadeh & dadashi hand, he conducted the study around spelling problems. since teachers of the farsi language try the same technique for measuring spelling, they need to conduct an action research around this problem to see whether or not self-correction or indirect feedback really works in their classes. references allwright, r. (1975). problems in the study of the language teacher’s treatment of learner error. in m. burt & h. dulay (eds.). new directions in second language learning, teaching, and bilingual education: on tesol‘  75 (pp. 96-109). washington: tesol. ashwell, t. (2000). patterns of teacher response to student writing in a multiple draft composition. journal of second language writing, 9, 227-258. brandl, k. (1995). strong and weak students’ preferences for error feedback options and responses. modern language journal, 79, 194-211. brown, h. d. (2001). teaching by principles: an interactive approach to language pedagogy (2nd ed.). ny: longman. chandler, j. (2003). the efficacy of various kinds of error feedback for improvement in the accuracy and fluency of l2 student writing. journal of second language writing, 12, 267-296. chomsky, n., & halle, m. (1968). the sound pattern of english. new york: harper and row. cohen, a.d. (1987). student processing of feedback on their compositions. in a. l. wenden and j. rubin (eds.), learner strategies in language learning (pp. 31-40). englewood cliffs, nj: prentice hall. ellis, r. (1994). the study of second language acquisition. oxford: oxford university press. ferris, d.r. (1995). teaching esl composition students to become independent self-editors. tesol journal, 4, 18-22. ferris, d.r. (2003). response to writing. implications for second language students. mahwah, nj: lawrence erlbaum. ferris, d. r., pezone, s. tade, c. r., & tinti, s. (1997). teacher commentary on student writing: descriptions and implications. journal of second language writing, 6, 155-182. ferris, d. r., & roberts, b. (2001). error feedback in l2 writing classes: journal of second language writing, 10, 161-184. fratzen, d. (1995). the effects of grammar supplementation on written accuracy in an intermediate spanish content course. modern language journal, 79, 329-344. hendrickson, j.m. (1978). error correction in foreign language teaching: recent theory, research, and practice. modern language journal, 62, 387-398. hyland, k. (1990). providing productive feedback. elt journal, 44, 279-285. lalande, j.f. (1982). reducing composition errors: an experiment. modern language journal, 66, 140-149. lee, i. (1997). esl learners’ performance in error correction in writing: some implications for teaching. system, 25, 465477. lee, i. (2004). error correction in l2 secondary writing classrooms: the case of hong kong. journal of second language writing, 13, 285-312. leki, i. (1990). coaching form the margins: issues in written response. in b. kroll (ed.), second language writing: research insights from the classroom (pp. 57-68). new york: cambridge university press. lyster, r. (1998). negotiation of form, recasts and explicit correction in relation to error types and learner repair. language learning, 48, 183-218. schane, s. (1970). linguistics, spelling and pronunciation. tesol quarterly, 4, 137-141. schultz, r.a. (2001). cultural differences in student and teacher perceptions concerning the role of grammar instruction on corrective feedback: usa-colombia. modern language journal, 85, 244-258. venezky, r.l. (1970). the structure of english orthography. the hague: mouton. vigil, n. a., & oller, j. (1976). rule fossilization: a tentative model. language learning, 26, 281-295. profile13-1_cuerpo.indd 136 27/04/11 14:44 137profile vol. 13, no. 1, april 2011. issn 1657-0790. bogotá, colombia. pages 129-137 137 the effect of direct and indirect corrective feedback about the authors sasan baleghizadeh is an assistant professor of tefl at shahid beheshti university, g.c. of iran, where he teaches applied linguistics, syllabus design, and materials development. he has published in tesl reporter, elt journal, and the teacher trainer. mehdi dadashi is currently an ma candidate of tefl at shahid beheshti university, g.c. of iran. he has vast experience in teaching english at iranian state schools. he is interested in exploring the language learning problems of bilingual children. profile13-1_cuerpo.indd 137 27/04/11 14:44 45profile vol. 14, no. 2, october 2012. issn 1657-0790 (printed) 2256-5760 (online). bogotá, colombia. pages 45-62 the accented efl teacher: classroom implications el acento del profesor de inglés como lengua extranjera: implicaciones pedagógicas argemiro arboleda arboleda* universidad del valle, colombia ángela yicely castro garcés** universidad del tolima, colombia this article reports the findings of a research study on how significant having a foreign accent is for non-native english as a foreign language teachers and learners at university level. it points out the perceptions that teachers and students have about the most relevant issues in the teaching and learning processes. data were collected by means of a questionnaire answered by thirty-two participants: eight colombian teachers, eight foreign teachers, eight colombian students, and eight foreign students. the findings show that although both teachers and students recognize the importance of having a native or native-like accent, they do not see this as the most relevant qualification to teach a language, nor the sole criterion positively affecting learning. key words: accent, efl, native, non-native, pronunciation. en este artículo se reportan los resultados de un estudio acerca de la importancia que tiene, para profesores no nativos y estudiantes de inglés como lengua extranjera, poseer un acento extranjero en un contexto universitario. se presentan las percepciones de profesores y estudiantes sobre los aspectos más relevantes en los procesos de enseñanza-aprendizaje. la información se recogió mediante un cuestionario aplicado a treinta y dos participantes: ocho profesores colombianos, ocho profesores extranjeros, ocho estudiantes colombianos y ocho estudiantes extranjeros. los resultados muestran que aunque todos reconocen la importancia de un acento nativo o casi nativo, no lo perciben como el aspecto más relevante para enseñar una lengua ni como el único criterio que incide positivamente en el aprendizaje. palabras clave: acento, inglés lengua extranjera, nativo, no-nativo, pronunciación. * e-mail: jairoarboledamolina@yahoo.com ** e-mail: angelayicely@gmail.com this article was received on january 16, 2012, and accepted on april 22, 2012. universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras46 arboleda arboleda & castro garcés introduction much concern has been raised about the ability of non-native english teachers to serve the interests of english as a foreign language (efl) or english as a second language (esl) students; namely, to become proficient in a language that is not their own. specifically, doubt has been cast as to whether an english teacher whose language is characterized by flaws in pronunciation, intonation, and grammar patterns, among others, is still in a position to effectively meet his students’ needs for successful communication. in other words, can a non-native english speaker, an accented english teacher, be a good language model for her/his students? this article seeks to discuss the role of non-native english teachers in their students’ language learning process. to do this, the authors have inquired into research findings in the multilingualism, the efl, and the esl areas. they have also drawn from native and non-native efl and esl classroom teachers’ and students’ perceptions, as well as from those held by native speakers of english outside the efl/esl teaching profession. review of literature the bilingualism issue much of the discussion dealing with the nonnative english teacher, irrespective of whether he is in an efl or an esl context, focuses on whether he is bilingual. generally speaking, bilingualism, as a sociolinguistic phenomenon, is the co-existence or use of two languages for communicative purposes. easy to understand, right? a problem arises, however, when an attempt to define the term bilingual is made, for there is no such thing as a sole definition of it. to make it worse, a definition of bilingual is usually made or chosen on subjective grounds, in spite of counter-evidence. for example, the oxford advanced learner’s dictionary (2000) defines bilingual as being “able to speak two languages equally well because you have used them since you were very young” (p. 109). now, let us see what is implied in this definition. first, knowing a language is being reduced to only the oral production domain, when in fact, we all know that there is much more to it, namely, reading, listening, and writing. second, the notion equally well casts some doubt, since except for those who have grown up using two languages, it is virtually impossible to attain a balanced linguistic proficiency. thus, a claim can be made that in the case of a foreign language speaker, no matter how well he uses the language, he feels better perfor ming in his mother tongue. third, since you were very young leaves aside the greatest number of people who have learned a new language either in their late youth or adulthood. the question is, then: under a definition of bilingualism, like the one provided by the oxford advanced learner’s dictionary (2000), is someone who has learned english as a foreign language a bilingual person? clearly not. if so, can someone who does not fit this definition, and so is not bilingual, be an esl/efl teacher? again, no. canagarajah (1999) argues that rather than a matter of linguistic abilities, it is a social, political, and even racial matter that is at stake when considering the abilities and role of non-native efl/esl teachers. in his view, this is so serious an issue that it has come to undermine people’s otherwise positive perceptions of these professionals. commonly-accepted classifications of bilingual people based on empirical studies, researchers have come to classifying bilingual people in the light of two main criteria: age and linguistic skills or proficiency. the age factor the critical period hypothesis, advanced by lenneberg (1967), which was initially connected to 47profile vol. 14, no. 2, october 2012. issn 1657-0790 (printed) 2256-5760 (online). bogotá, colombia. pages 45-62 the accented efl teacher: classroom implications first language research, claims that there is a biological period when language can be more easily acquired. lenneberg (1967) and bickerton (1981) make strong statements in favor of a critical period before which and after which certain abilities do not develop. in this same line of thought, researchers such as singleton and ryan (2004), among others, argue that a critical stage for second language acquisition occurs around puberty. this has led some to assume, incorrectly, that by the age of 12 or 13 you are “over the hill” when it comes to the possibility of successful second language learning (brown, 1993. p. 52-53). klein (2002) suggests a well-thought classification of bilingual people and states that: in accordance with the age factor, individuals are classified as early bilinguals. these are the ones who have acquired their second language while being very young. they are subdivided into (a) simultaneous bilinguals, that is, they acquired their two languages at the same time; and (b) sequential bilinguals, those whose second language was acquired after their first language. a second class is made up of late bilinguals or those who have acquired their second language at an age other than their childhood. (p. 1) he expands this concept with a more detailed classification, warning that there are no clearlydefined levels of bilingual skills but rather a language continuum, according to which the following classification is set up. • passive bilingual: a person who is a native speaker of one language and is capable of understanding but not of speaking the other language. • dominant bilingual: a person who is more profi cient in one of the two languages, showing nativelike proficiency in his second language (l2). • balanced bilingual: someone who is more or less equally proficient in both languages, but will not necessarily pass for a native speaker in both languages. • equilingual: he who, in any situation in both languages, passes for a native speaker i.e. he is indistinguishable from a native speaker. this is the strictest feeling of bilingualism advocated by some language planners and, unfortunately, by some language scientists. these four categories are usually linked to what language skills the bilingual individual exhibits in his use of the l2: • listening: this is the minimal competence a bilingual is expected to have in the second language. thus, a passive bilingual is one who can only cope with this skill in the second language, whereas in his first language he is normally proficient in the four skills. • speaking: this is the ability you generally expect a dominant, a balanced, as well as an equilingual to have. • reading: this is the threshold where a dominant bilingual often drops out for his second language, but not inevitably. • writing: it is well known that writing is a difficult skill for people to master, even in their native language for it calls for refined knowledge of grammar, syntax, vocabulary, and mechanical aspects of the language, among others. hence, an equilingual and a balanced bilingual are expected to be proficient in l2 writing. (information retrieved from http://www.bklein.info/ buc_categorize.html) the preceding discussion calls for exerting caution so as to not consider this bilingual classification approach complete. this incompleteness is apparent because just as in the case of any other abstraction, it leaves aside important considerations. for example, it does not take into account the existence of real people who are highly proficient in reading comprehension and in writing but are poor in understanding oral language and in speaking the second language. likewise, cases have been reported which show that language learners have overridden the neurobiological critical period effects in their pursuit to achieve native-like language proficiency, as canagarajah (1999) points out when referring to his own case. universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras48 arboleda arboleda & castro garcés the correct pronunciation issue the concept correct pronunciation is an elusive one. as early as 1959, the webster’s new collegiate dictionary introduces its pronunciation guide pointing out that the standard of english pronunciation, so far as a standard may be said to exist, is the usage that now prevails among the educated and cultured people to whom the language is vernacular; but since somewhat different pronunciations are used by the cultivated in different regions too large to be ignored, we must frankly admit the fact that, at present, uniformity of pronunciation is not to be found throughout the english-speaking world. (p. ix) for some seemingly hidden reasons however, a great number of people at the decision-making echelon insist on pushing the idea of a uniform, unique concept of english pronunciation. fortunately for many, since such a stance is based on subjective, interest-group serving grounds, it can be easily challenged. although important, pronunciation of a language is by no means the sole criterion for language proficiency, nor is it really the most important one. thus, there are cases of people who have less than perfect pronunciation of a second language, but they are still highly proficient in other areas of it. brown (2007) believes that a modern version of this phenomenon might be called the arnold schwarzenegger effect. who would doubt that california’s governor is proficient in the english language, just as is any other american? in the end, if a correct pronunciation is a discrete, mental elaboration, shouldn’t we speak of comprehensible pronunciation instead? the issue of the accented esl /efl teacher the credited webster’s new collegiate dictionary defines accent as “the prominence given to a syllable or a word which makes it stand out to the attention above adjacent syllables or words” (1959, p. vii). within the context of this article however, we refer to accent as the quality of a person’s speech that, in the view of language authorities, sets this person apart, as not belonging to mainstream, or not fitting the (idealized) norm. it is within this context that we speak of the accented teacher, particularly the esl/efl teacher. partially borrowing from kachru (1986) and from political economy terminology, canagarajah (1999) introduces the notions center speakers of english and periphery speakers of english and uses these two terms to refer to a native english speaking teacher and a non-native english-speaking teacher, respectively. she points out that those in the first group are the ones whose first language is the vernacular english of britain, the united states, australia, and new zealand. in the second group are those on the periphery, that is, outside these four countries, even if they speak english as a native language or a second language, as in canada, ghana, sierra leona, for example. these are so-called accented teachers, the ones whose speech is deemed foreign. this distinction may lead to an interesting question: is this simply a matter of individual linguistic abilities, or is there more than that? that is, is this a sociolinguistic phenomenon, realized within political and economic conditions? let us consider some recent developments concerning school districts in arizona, which has sparked a hot debate between some education officials and practicing teachers, and which may help shed some light on the discussion involving accented english teachers. in an article published in the influential wall street journal, jordan (2010) reports a surprising move made by the arizona department of education, namely that “teachers whose spoken english it deems to be heavily accented or ungramma tical must be removed from classes for students still learning english” (p. 1). according to this author, 49profile vol. 14, no. 2, october 2012. issn 1657-0790 (printed) 2256-5760 (online). bogotá, colombia. pages 45-62 the accented efl teacher: classroom implications the motivation of the education authorities is to guarantee that low-proficiency level students are taught by native-like english proficiency teachers. she also says that in order to pave the ground for what arizona’s teachers believe will be punitive actions, the education department has scheduled classroom observations statewide to evaluate teachers’ oral production –with a focus on pronunciation, correct use of grammar, and writing skills. but what are people’s perceptions of accented english at large, and of accented english teachers, in particular? one of our subjects, an american native speaker of english, who is referred to here as reliever 3, speaks her mind as follows: no offense meant, but why would you want to? i guess, as an american i find the variation of accents to be beautiful. i will admit that americans don’t all have the same accent either, so which one do you want? after all do you like a texas drawl, the clipped speech of a new yorker, the california slang, southwestern spanglish, or a midwestern slur? i have always lived in the us and never traveled farther than just over the canadian border; yet, everywhere i go, i am told i have an accent. funny thing is that most of my life has been spent in the same area and even there i have an accent. i wouldn’t worry as much about accent as i would just learn the language. i will also admit that a good friend of my family had lived in the us for 30 years and her japanese accent was so strong many people had a hard time understanding her. a friend of mine in college was from romania and her accent after 15 years was still pretty strong also. she spoke in romanian to her family and explained to me that it wasn’t the accent that was important but the fact that she learned english. reliever 3 seems to confirm what is now commonplace: accents exist; they are a reality, a reality people should live with. also interesting is the fact that even center speakers of english, like reliever 3, admit to having been made aware of how different their speech sounds. fortunately for society at large, it is usage that makes a language, not prescription. but in the realm of the esl/efl profession, what could be the effects of having an accent, particularly when the teacher is not a center speaker of english? frustrated italian, another participant in this study, aired her feelings in a rather moving way: i’m italian, and i have been living in london for seven years, where i graduated in fine arts from an american university. after that, i moved to thailand to take my tefl certificate and my grades turned out to be higher than the rest of the class (all native speakers). this is due to my wide knowledge of both italian and english grammar, and also to the fact that i had already learned english as a foreign language. therefore, i know the process one has to go through to actually learn a new language. i also speak french, spanish, and studied german in school. i’m not saying that nobody would hire me, but all the jobs i was interested in, said on the application: do not apply if you are not a native speaker. fair enough, but all i’m saying is, i’m young, energetic and i love teaching, and if i lied about my nationality they wouldn’t even notice it. all i can do is to rely on that one job out of ten, which gives a chance to nonnative speakers too. this person’s experience is not much different from that of an austrian who was thankful to be an informant: i lived in australia for 42 years, had a business there, got a university degree, did a tesol course, studied english, etc. i had no problems teaching buddhist nuns in tibet, but when i applied for a job, teaching english in graz (austria), recently, i was knocked back because i was born in –wait for it... austria! i am so frustrated, i could scream!” (frustrated 2) these testimonies give rise to an important question: why is it that after being licensed by an accredited institution a graduate is told that he cannot be hired because his qualifications do not meet current standards? luckily for this italian, this austrian, and many others in their situation, timely research is contribuniversidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras50 arboleda arboleda & castro garcés uting to disclaim the superiority of a certain kind of english or certain accent over the others. one of these enlightening endeavors is leikin, ibrahim, eviatar, and sapir’s (2009). they conducted a study in israel with sixty participants from different language backgrounds who were exposed to hebrew phrases recorded in different foreign language accents. the researchers found that it was easier for the hebrew speakers to recognize the material, independently of the accent it was spoken in, than it was for the other subjects. based on their findings, leikin and his colleagues concluded that second language acquisition is facilitated by having learners interact with a teacher who shares their own accent, who speaks their first language, and who is ready to assist them in learning more about their new language. the research team’s findings are corroborated by the present study which found that, sometimes, l2 students favor non-native teachers because, in their opinion, these teachers are in a better position to help them in their error correction process, as they know their students’ language needs, a crucial factor in establishing teacher student rapport. research questions this study seeks to answer two questions: 1) how significant is it for non-native efl teachers and learners at university level to have a foreign accent? 2) what perceptions do efl teachers and students have about the most relevant issues in the teaching and learning processes? aims the aim of the study is to shed light on the role of the accent in foreign language teaching and its influence on foreign language learning so that decisions can be made and implemented to better serve students’ needs while helping teachers improve their language skills. method subjects of the study the study was carried out in an academic context with subjects involved in efl teaching and learning. the sample was made up of 32 participants, classified into two groups: 16 efl teachers with different teaching experiences and nationalities (eight colombian university teachers and eight foreign university teachers, in different countries) and 16 efl students from beginning to advanced level and different nationalities (eight colombian college students, in colombia, and eight foreign college students, in different countries). this number of participants allowed us to gather data with which to analyze the perceptions that teachers and students have of teachers whose first language is not english, more specifically of teachers who are believed to be accented, and the preferences that students have regarding teachers’ accents when it comes to taking english classes and how these perceptions might influence efl learning. for the colombian context, eight foreign teachers who have lived and worked in other parts of the world were considered in order to look at any differences that may be found in other places. the eight colombian teachers in the study have all worked at university level and taught different levels of english, so their teaching experience and perceptions may be similar. nonetheless, they have lived diverse experiences while teaching in colombia or while living abroad, which may have helped change their perceptions. the sixteen efl students in the study have had different classroom experiences. comparing the experiences of foreign and colombian students helped us analyze how the language teaching and learning processes and the student perceptions in colombia may be different from those in other parts of the world. 51profile vol. 14, no. 2, october 2012. issn 1657-0790 (printed) 2256-5760 (online). bogotá, colombia. pages 45-62 the accented efl teacher: classroom implications data collection tools a semi-structured five-scale questionnaire was designed in order to get a good grasp of the per ceptions that efl students have of non-native or accented efl teachers and constraints that these teachers experience because of their foreign accent. results the different perceptions that efl students may have of non-native efl teachers and the constraints that efl teachers experience because of their foreign accent motivated this study. table 1. teachers’ demographic information code origin efl levels taught years of experience educational level t1f korea beginners to advanced 10 ma t2f korea beginners to intermediate 20 phd t3f china beginners to intermediate 3 ma t4f china beginners 4 ma t5f saudi arabia beginners to advanced 8 ma t6f venezuela beginners to advanced 14 phd t7f uruguay beginners 5 ma t8f honduras beginners to advanced 10 ma t1c colombia beginners to advanced 5 ba t2c colombia beginners to advanced 20 ba t3c colombia beginners to intermediate 12 ma t4c colombia beginners to intermediate 8 ba t5c colombia beginners to advanced 20 ba t6c colombia beginners to advanced 16 ba t7c colombia beginners to intermediate 10 ma t8c colombia beginners to intermediate 5 ba note: the coding in the far left column stands for the following variables among participants: t= teacher, 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 = number assigned randomly, f= foreign, c= colombian. following is a series of tables and figures that present the different variables and the number of tokens that occurred during the data collection stage. the analysis compares perceptions and preferences among participants, based on students’ educational levels and teachers’ experiences. group 1: the efl teachers table 1 shows the demographic information for the sixteen teachers who participated in the study. universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras52 arboleda arboleda & castro garcés in group 1, each of the sixteen teachers answered 5 questions (see appendix a). although teachers could choose an option and answer the questions as close-ended ones, they could also expand their answers and give reasons to justify their choice. the answer to each question drew the following results: figures 1a and 1b. question 1: what kind of teachers did you have when you were learning english? native speakers, non-native speakers or both? figure 1a. kind of teachers foreign teachers had n . answers a 7 b c anative bnon-native cboth 0 1 2 3 4 5 6 º figure 1b. kind of teachers colombian teachers had a b c 0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 anative bnon-native cboth n . answersº as shown in figure 1a, six out of eight foreign teachers had both native and non-native teachers while learning english. the other two (t2f and t6f) had non-native english teachers only. meanwhile, figure 1b shows that six colombian teachers were taught by native and non-native teachers. the other two (t5l and t6l) had native english teachers only. one essential aspect to analyze in these data is whether having native, non-native or both kinds of teachers changed their perceptions of what kind of teachers were better for them when learning a language. figures 2a and 2b clearly present teachers’ preferences as learners. when analyzing foreign teachers’ preferences, it is noted that at least one of them (t8f) preferred native teachers, although he mentioned that both native and non-native teachers did a great job. besides, t2f and t6f, who only had non-native teachers, coincided in saying that they preferred both native and non-native teachers for similar reasons, such as being able to contrast between teachers who know what their students’ needs are because they also know the students’ native language and teachers whose pronunciation is a very good model to follow. meanwhile, t5l and t6l, who only had native speakers as teachers, admitted to having no preference as long as their teachers knew the language very well. figures 2a and 2b. question 2: did you have any preferences for native or non-native speakers? please explain. figure 2a. foreign teachers’ preferences 0,0 0,5 1,0 1,5 2,0 2,5 3,0 3,5 4,0 anative bnon-native cno preference dboth a b c d 4,5 n . answersº 53profile vol. 14, no. 2, october 2012. issn 1657-0790 (printed) 2256-5760 (online). bogotá, colombia. pages 45-62 the accented efl teacher: classroom implications figure 2b. colombian teachers’ preferences a b c d anative bnon-native cno preference dboth 0,0 0,5 1,0 1,5 2,0 2,5 3,0 3,5 4,0 4,5 n . answersº tables 2a and 2b. question 3: as an english teacher, what are the most important characteristics a teacher should have? table 2a. efl teacher’s characteristics i participant foreign teachers t1f patience, easygoingness. t2f language knowledge. t3f teaching based on students’ learning needs. t4f knowledge of students’ l1 and needs for learning the language. t5f ability to motivate students. t6f patience and love for what you do. t7f flexibility, patience and tolerance of diversity. t8f fluency in the target language and good teaching skills. are good and so none of them preferred native speakers only. there was the case of t1l who believed that non-native speakers were better because they could help spanish speakers understand english better. teachers from the two groups expressed similar opinions about the characteristics a teacher should have. tables 2a and 2b show what these english teachers think is the most important when they enter a classroom and deal with students. having a good command of the language is, in fact, important. nevertheless, it is not the only essential characteristic a teacher should exhibit. there are some other relevant issues that matter for them such as patience, creativity, tolerance of diversity, and awareness of students’ needs, among others. on the other hand, 50% of the foreign teachers preferred both native and non-native teachers for reasons such as finding a bigger challenge in native speakers and having better rapport with non-native speakers. fifty percent of the colombian teachers also mentioned that both native and non-native teachers universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras54 arboleda arboleda & castro garcés table 2b. efl teacher’s characteristics i participant local teachers t1l love for teaching and patience. t2l creativity, fluency and dedication. t3l patience and dedication. t4l patience and knowledge. t5l good knowledge of the language and patience. t6l good human being. t7l creativity, flexibility and a good teaching philosophy. t8l patience, love for teaching and knowledge of the target language. figures 3a and 3b indicate that twelve out of sixteen teachers stated that having a foreign accent is not relevant for them. when it came to justifying their answers, teachers mentioned reasons such as “the ultimate goal when learning a language is communication, not accent”, “teaching english is not only a matter of pronunciation”, and “a teacher’s accent does not affect students’ learning process.” however, a few teachers are still concerned about having a foreign accent themselves because, from their point of view, it affects students’ language learning process or because students can question the teacher’s ability to speak the language if he does not have at least a nativelike accent. tables 3a and 3b include a summary of the experiences the participating teachers recalled in connection to their foreign accent. some of the negative accent-related experiences such as those of t1f, t2f, t3f, t7f and t4l do not seem to be due to their foreign accent but to pronunciation concerns. in all cases, these teachers figures 3a and 3b. question 4: is having a foreign accent relevant for you as an english teacher? why? figure 3a. accent relevance for foreign teachers a b b ayes bno 0 1 2 3 4 5 6 n . answersº figure 3b. accent relevance for colombian teachers a b ayes bno 0 2 4 6 8 n . answersº 55profile vol. 14, no. 2, october 2012. issn 1657-0790 (printed) 2256-5760 (online). bogotá, colombia. pages 45-62 the accented efl teacher: classroom implications table 3a. efl accent-related experiences participant foreign teachers t1f the reaction “what!” what did you say? makes me feel bad. t2f at the beginning, many americans said “pardon”? or what did you say? t3f in china my english is better than my colleagues, but in the united states sometimes native speakers can’t understand my english. t4f the understanding of my english depends on where i am and who i am talking to. when the addressee needs to understand me, they understand my accent very well (when i am a potential customer). on the opposite, when i need to argue on some issues in which the addressee needs to say sorry or pay me, they pretend they don’t understand my accent. t5f in my country there is no problem with my foreign accent because nobody expects you to speak english exactly like a native. it is ok as long as your pronunciation is clear. but in america, it sometimes frustrates me when native speakers don’t understand me. i would doubt if my foreign accent caused the problem. t6f in the united states people seem to like those who have an accent, so that has been a good experience for me. american people usually compliment my “accent”. the bad experience would be not being understood because of my “incorrect” pronunciation. t7f back home i used to teach 5th grade and i was assigned two american students as teaching assistants. one day while teaching with them we both said a word at the same time and of course our pronunciation was different. i felt very bad when one of my students said: “how are we supposed to learn with you if you don’t know how to say the words in real english?”. that was shocking for me, and all because the non-native accent. a good experience is that i am completing my degree as an esl teacher and have communicated with people from more than 90 countries while being at graduate school. t8f as a teacher in the united states i remember an arab student that got somehow disappointed to find out i was not american (she thought i was african american and not hispanic). other students liked the fact that i was not american, so they could ask me questions, such as: do you know why americans do this or that? or how do they express this or that? note: this information was written by each participant and not edited by the authors. table 3b. efl accented-related experiences participant colombian teachers t1l i’ve had different experiences recording audio scripts at the university for a test students have to take at the end of their program. once i had to administer this test, and while students were taking the listening section, they didn’t notice it was my voice. they didn’t say anything. after the test, they said that woman’s voice was very clear. t2l many students have asked me if i have traveled to the united states and i answer “never”. they feel surprise because of my english level. t3l i have only had good experiences. t4l once i was talking to a girl named jackie and i would call her “yackie” changing the /j/ to /y/. one day she couldn’t put up with it and made me correct my mistake – i was calling her “yucky!” t5l when i started college in the united states i moved into the dorms and had to share space with girls from all over the world. it was hard to understand them. t6l when i was in high school in the united states girls used to really like the way i used to speak english as a latin boy, so i never worried about my accent, plus i never had problem communicating. t7l i haven’t had any outstanding experience to mention because of my foreign accent. t8l when i was in the united states people asked me where i was from. some said my english was very good and my accent never hindered communication. note: this information was written by each participant and not edited by the authors. tables 3a and 3b. question 5: recall any good or bad experiences you may have had because of your foreign accent. include experiences as a teacher or any other experiences outside the classroom –in your country or in an english-speaking country. universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras56 arboleda arboleda & castro garcés table 4. students’ demographic information code origin english level s1f korea beginner s2f korea advanced s3f china intermediate s4f china intermediate s5f saudi arabia intermediate s6f venezuela beginner s7f uruguay advanced s8f honduras intermediate s1c colombia advanced s2c colombia beginner s3c colombia beginner s4c colombia intermediate s5c colombia intermediate s6c colombia intermediate s7c colombia beginner s8c colombia beginner note the coding in the far left column stand for the following variables among participants: s= student, 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 = number assigned randomly, f= foreign, c= colombian, b= beginner, i= intermediate, a= advanced. are quite aware of their having a non-native accent. what is positive is the way some teachers such as t6f, t1l and t6l take it and the good experiences they can recall today. group 2 – the efl students the table below shows the demographic information for the sixteen students who participated in the study. in group 2, each of the sixteen students answered 5 questions (see appendix b) – although students could choose an option and answer the questions as close-ended ones, they could also expand their answers and give reasons to justify their choice. figures 4a and 4b. question 1: have you ever had contact with native english speakers? figure 4a. foreign students’ contact with native speakers ayes bno cliked the accent ddidn’t like the accent a b c d 0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 n . answersº figure 4b. colombian students contact with native speakers ayes bno cliked the accent ddidn’t like the accent a b c d 0 1 2 3 4 5 6 n . answersº figures 4a and 4b show that eleven out of sixteen students have had contact with native english speakers and most of them have liked their accents, except for one foreign student who mentioned that he did not like the accent of a native speaker he had contact with because he could not understand much of what this person said. furthermore, figures 5a and 5b, below, show that universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras58 arboleda arboleda & castro garcés figures 7a and 7b. question 4: if you could choose your english teacher for the advanced levels, would you prefer him to be a native or a non-native? why? figure 7a. choosing my teacher ii: foreign students a b b anative bnon-native 0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 n . answersº figure 7b. choosing my teacher ii: colombian students a b anative bnon-native 0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 n . answersº students also ranked the characteristics they considered essential in an english teacher. their responses are gathered in figures 8a and 8b. all students agreed that good pronunciation is a must for an english teacher. yet two foreign students thought that speaking with a native-like accent was important, while three of them felt that the teacher needed to know the language, regardless of the accent. only three students considered pronunciation to be relevant. on the other hand, for most colombian students, having teachers who spoke with a native-like accent was much more relevant, as 75% of them believed that speaking with a native-like accent was an important characteristic an english teacher should possess. figures 8a and 8b. question 5: circle the characteristics you consider important in your english teacher: figure 8a. efl teacher’s characteristics ii: foreign students agood pronunciation bspeaking with a native-like accent cknowing the language no matter the accent n . answersº a b c 9 0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 figure 8b. efl teacher’s characteristics ii: colombian students agood pronunciation bspeaking with a native-like accent cknowing the language no matter the accent a b c 9 0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 n . answersº profile_14-2_(taco)27agosto2012.indd 58 8/10/12 12:02 57profile vol. 14, no. 2, october 2012. issn 1657-0790 (printed) 2256-5760 (online). bogotá, colombia. pages 45-62 the accented efl teacher: classroom implications having had contact with native speakers did not make students dislike their non-native teachers’ accents. just the opposite, some of them stated that having a teacher with a non-native accent was good because they could understand more clearly when their teacher spoke. figures 5a and 5b. question 2: do you like the accent of your current non-native english teacher? figure 5a. my teacher’s accent: foreign students’ preferences 9 a b ayes bno 0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 n . answersº figure 5b. my teacher’s accent: colombian students’ preferences 9 a b ayes bno 0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 n . answersº the panorama changed significantly when in questions 3 and 4 students were asked to choose the kind of teacher they preferred – native or nonnative. figures 6a, 6b, 7a and 7b, below, show that a native teacher was preferred in most cases, even by beginners: 75% and 85% of the foreign students preferred a native speaker in their beginning and advanced levels, respectively. in the case of colombian students, 85% and 100% of them preferred a native speaker in their beginning and advanced levels, respectively. students gave different reasons to prefer either native or non-native teachers. some mentioned that they were more likely to have better rapport with a non-native teacher because he would know the students’ needs and native language, which would ease their error correction process. conversely, regarding language proficiency, students expressed that a native speaker knew the language better and so posed a bigger challenge for them. figures 6a and 6b. question 3: if you could choose your english teacher for the beginning levels, would you prefer him to be a native or a non-native? why? figure 6a. choosing my teacher i: foreign students a b b anative bnon-native 0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 n . answersº figure 6b. choosing my teacher i: colombian students a b b anative bnon-native 0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 n . answersº 59profile vol. 14, no. 2, october 2012. issn 1657-0790 (printed) 2256-5760 (online). bogotá, colombia. pages 45-62 the accented efl teacher: classroom implications conclusions the purpose of this study was to answer these two questions: 1) how significant is it for nonnative efl teachers and learners at university level to have a foreign accent? 2) what perceptions do efl teachers and students have about the most relevant issues in the teaching and learning processes? from the teachers’ answers on the teachers’ side, the data analysis reveals that they recognize the importance of having a native or native-like accent. yet, they do not see this as the most relevant qualification to teach a language, nor do they think this is the sole criterion which positively affects language learning. most teachers believe that in addition to having a good command of the target language, it is important for the teacher to be patient, creative, tolerant of diversity, and aware of students’ needs. from the students’ answers on the students’ side, and just as in the case of the teachers, they feel that pronunciation is a key factor in language teaching. likewise, most colombian students and just a few foreign students believe that having teachers who have a native or a native-like accent greatly enhances their language learning process. the authors contend that although meaningful, the accent should not be given the most importance in measuring teachers’ language proficiency. they believe that actions should be taken to acknowledge the key role played by periphery efl teachers who have come to outnumber center speakers of english in the teaching profession. thus, they feel that even if generalizations cannot be made from this study, its findings can be instrumental in having educational authorities at different levels of decision-making offer non-native efl teachers the support they need for further language qualification, so that they can better meet their students’ needs. references accent. (1959). webster’s new collegiate dictionary (p. vii). cambridge: the riverside press. bilingual. (2000). oxford advanced learner’s dictionary (p. 109). oxford: oxford university press. bickerton, d. (1981). roots of language. ann arbor: karoma. brown, h. d. (1993). principles of language learning and teaching. san francisco: prentice hall. brown, h. d. (2007). principles of language learning and teaching. white plains, ny: pearson education, inc. canagarajah, a. s. (1999). interrogating the ‘native speaker fallacy’: non-linguistic roots, non-pedagogical results. in b. george (ed.), non-native educators in english language teaching (pp. 77-92). mahwah, nj: laurence erlbaum associates. correct pronunciation. (1959). webster’s new collegiate dictionary (p. ix). cambridge: the riverside press. jordan, m. (2010). arizona grades teachers on fluency [on line]. the wall street journal. retrieved from http:// online.wsj.com/article/sb1000142405274870357250457 5213883276427528.html kachru, b. b. (1986). the alchemy of english: the spread of non-native englishes. oxford: pergamon. klein, b. (2002). categorization of bilingualism/multilingualism. retrieved from http://www.bklein.info/buc_ categorize.html leikin, m., ibrahim, r., eviatar, z., & sapir, s. (2009). listening with an accent: speech perception in a second language by late bilinguals. psycholinguistic research, 38, 447-457. doi: 10.1007/s10936-009-9099-1 lenneberg, e. h. (1967). biological foundations of language. new york, ny: wiley. singleton, d., & ryan, l. (2004). language acquisition: the age factor. clevedon: multilingual matters. universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras60 arboleda arboleda & castro garcés about the authors argemiro arboleda arboleda holds a ba in modern languages from universidad del valle (colombia), and an ma in tesol from the university of kansas (usa). his professional interests include efl writing, general english, and translation. his publications include different articles on efl writing. he currently works for universidad del valle cali, colombia. ángela yicely castro garcés holds a ba in modern languages, a diploma in reading and writing pedagogy from universidad del cauca, colombia, and an ma in tesol from ball state university (usa). her professional interests include materials design and contrastive rhetoric. her publications include a book on dialect studies (lambert academic publishing, 2011) and several articles on language teaching. she currently works for universidad del tolima, colombia. acknowledgements the authors are indebted to all those who participated in the study and to the profile journal reviewers for their valuable contribution. 61profile vol. 14, no. 2, october 2012. issn 1657-0790 (printed) 2256-5760 (online). bogotá, colombia. pages 45-62 the accented efl teacher: classroom implications appendix a: teachers’ questionnaire dear english teacher, we kindly ask you to answer some questions regarding accent. we are exploring how significant having a foreign accent is for non-native english teachers. we designed the following questionnaire to share the experiences of other teachers like you. the information you provide will help us get a better grasp of teachers’ experiences in different countries. nationality: ____________________________ years of teaching experience:_______________ levels you have taught:_____________________ 1. what kind of teachers did you have when you were learning english? native speakers_______ non-native speakers________ both______ 2. did you have any preferences for native or non-native speakers? please explain. 3. in your opinion, what are the most important characteristics a teacher should have? 4. is having a foreign accent relevant for you as an english teacher? why? 5. tell about any good or bad experiences you have had because of your foreign accent. include experiences as a teacher or any other experiences outside the classroom -in your country or in an english speaking country. thanks for your cooperation. universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras62 arboleda arboleda & castro garcés appendix b: students’ questionnaire dear student, as english teachers, we are concerned about your learning process; therefore, we would like to find out about your experiences and preferences when learning a language. english level: ________________ nationality:__________________ 1. have you ever had any contact with native speakers of the language? yes____ no____ 2. did you like their accent? yes____ no___ why? ___________________________________________________________________________ 3. do you like the accent of your current non-native english teacher? yes____ no____ why? ___________________________________________________________________________ 4. if you could choose your english teacher for the beginning levels, would you prefer him to be a native or a non-native? why? ___________________________________________________________________________ 5. if you could choose your english teacher for the advanced levels, would you prefer him to be a native or a non-native? why? ___________________________________________________________________________ 6. circle the characteristics that you consider important in your english teacher: a) good pronunciation b) speaking with a native-like accent c) knowing the language, regardless of the accent. 7profile vol. 17, no. 2, july-december 2015. issn 1657-0790 (printed) 2256-5760 (online). bogotá, colombia. pages 7-10 editorial if you want one year of prosperity, grow grain. if you want ten years of prosperity, grow trees. if you want one hundred years of prosperity, grow people. chinese proverb the ideal with which the profile journal was born fiteen years ago was to give a voice to the teachers who took part in the professional development programs sponsored by the secretaria de educación de bogotá and offered by the profile research group. fiteen years later, the profile journal still maintains a special space for the teachers to disseminate their knowledge gained through experience and research. the voices of other professionals, namely, novice and experienced researchers and writers, can also be read today as the nurtured seed planted years ago rendered its fruit, consolidating the journal and positioning it in the a1 category granted by publindex the administrative department of science and technology of colombia, colciencias. many thanks to our reviewers and editorial teams whose support has been vital in attaining this goal. as the chinese proverb selected to open our edition goes, growing people is one of the guiding premises of profile. teachers grow as researchers when they are able to formulate a problem, devise instruments to explain a phenomenon, obtain results and produce conclusions. parallel to research, teachers are faced with the task of writing a paper that explains the research process. the profile research group has coached the research process of many pre-service and in-service teachers in the different cohorts of the teacher development programs and research seminars it leads. in the same way, the profile journal has accompanied many of them in the process of putting their ideas on paper, resulting in many publishable articles that are made public together with those authored by experienced writers. growing people means understanding the processes researchers and writers go through. understanding is accompanying, reading, re-reading, and giving prompts, feedback and deadlines. when teachers have their articles published in profile, the conviction is that they have managed to surpass initial fears and have struggled with themselves to make a product, a product that may last a hundred years as information passes from one generation to the next. not only writers grow as their works are published. we have grown as a publication that continuously embraces more members of a community of peers from the local context to the international context. this is the moment to welcome dr. liliana cuesta as a new reviewer of our publication. please be welcome and join us in this common effort of empowerment that benefits writers, reviewers, and readers alike. http://dx.doi.org/10.15446/profile.v17n2.50572 http://dx.doi.org/10.15446/profile.v17n2.50572 universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras8 nieto cruz & cárdenas we have gathered eleven articles in this second issue of the seventeenth volume of profile journal. they are contributions from brazil, colombia, iran, mexico, spain, and the united states. the issues from teacher researchers section contains nine articles—seven address teacher education and two address teaching issues. the first article embraces a joint venture of carmen helena guerrero nieto and bryan meadows, who analyze the online, peerpeer dialogue between non-native english-speaking teachers attending graduate teacher education programs in colombia and the united states. their study allows us to learn about the participants’ perceptions in connection to the role of english language teaching in the global world, institutional constraints on teachers, the dilemma of choosing a culture to teach, and the issue of linguistic diversity in the classroom. next, iranian authors goudarz alibakhshi and najibeh dehvari present the findings of a study that sought to uncover english as a foreign language (efl) iranian high school teachers’ perceptions of continuing professional development. as their data indicate, their perceptions embrace skill development, continuous learning, keeping up to date, learning for interest, and teachers’ professional revitalization. the authors also portray the main activities participants engage in with the intention to develop professionally, namely, work, formal education, and attending and presenting at continuing professional development events. we continue with the work by eva estefania trujeque moreno, fátima encinas prudencio, and maria thomas-ruzic, who share with us a study framed within the premises of a sociocultural perspective of second language teacher education. the investigation they report here involved the examination of six experienced non-native english-speaking teacher-researchers’ views regarding key moments in the profession. it should be noted that this article helps us become acquainted with a multi-theoretical model to address processes of authorship development in the english as a foreign language teaching profession as well as with the contributions it can make to the construction of english as a foreign language professionals as scholars. then, sandra mari kaneko-marques’ article informs us of a study regarding an english as a foreign language teacher education course in brazil with the purpose of scrutinizing different teacher supervisors’ roles according to distinct models and the importance of collaborative dialogues supported by video recordings. as the author states, this investigation provides evidence that student-teachers who observed their pedagogical actions through videos became more reflective and self-evaluative and provided a deeper analysis regarding their practice. next comes a work by diego fernando macías and jesús ariel sánchez concerning the classroom management problem among colombian pre-service foreign language teachers. their study draws our attention towards certain challenges, from inadequate classroom conditions to explicit acts of misbehavior, and gives us good food for thought when guiding prospective teachers. 9profile vol. 17, no. 2, july-december 2015. issn 1657-0790 (printed) 2256-5760 (online). bogotá, colombia. pages 7-10 editorial aterwards, we gather two articles that address issues studied in mexico. first, we have gerrard mugford and oscar ramírez cuevas’ work on an issue that has received little attention to date: gushing—an excessive use of words when faced with difficult situations. they concentrated on the appropriateness and effectiveness of gushing when employed by advanced students facing difficult situations. the pedagogical intervention that framed this investigation provided rich insights into the phenomenon and suggests that gushing is an area that demands extensive attention so that students can develop communicative competence. in the second article, alejandra nuñez asomoza invites us to learn about mexican students’ perceptions of the impact of content language integrated learning (clil) in a ba program in foreign languages. her investigation not only depicts the participants’ perceptions about the clil classes they are offered in the program but also derives implications and recommendations for the implementing of clil classes in tertiary education. following this article, we have a research report focused on the importance of motivation in the process of learning english as a foreign language as evidenced in a questionnaire answered by spanish students in their fourth year of compulsory secondary education. from this study, rocío espinar redondo and josé luis ortega martín conclude that the teacher, the treatment of the four skills, students’ interests, and daily habits play a fundamental role. in turn, these factors guide them to suggest several hints for a teaching methodology intended to affect motivation for language learning. we close the first section of this edition with gabriel eduardo cote parra’s article. he reports on an action research study that sought to explore the sort of interactions foreign language learners go through while using a wiki as a supporting tool for a face-to-face research course. as the author stresses, the participants’ posts revealed that class tasks promoted an asynchronous voluntary interaction among participants in which they shared knowledge and experiences while expressing their opinions and points of view. the posts enabled students to actively participate in the face-to-face class as well. the second section, issues from novice teacher researchers, includes an article contributed by jefferson caicedo. he presents an account of teacher activities and adolescent students’ participation in a colombian efl classroom. the author identifies and describes the types of teaching activities developed in class, the characteristics of students’ responses to those activities, and the way the target language was used in the classroom. finally, in the issues based on reflections and innovations section, we present an article by luis fernando gómez rodríguez, whose work helps us learn about the cultural content in three efl textbooks. the author examines whether textbooks include elements of surface culture or deep culture, and his findings invite teachers to address deep-rooted aspects of culture that might help english as a foreign language learners build more substantial intercultural competence in the language classroom. if we compare our first issue back in 2000 to this latest edition, we can see that the goal that marked the birth of the journal is intact: the spreading of the work produced by teachers universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras10 nieto cruz & cárdenas and for teachers. with the passage of time, the journal has evolved in search of excellence and within the standards given by publindex-colciencias, the colombian national agency for academic publications, and has framed itself in international referencing systems and databases as well. we are very proud to have achieved our indexation in publindexcolciencias, in category a1, ater fiteen years of publication. a whole life is ahead of us. maría claudia nieto cruz journal director melba libia cárdenas journal editor 109profile vol. 15, no. 1, april 2013. issn 1657-0790 (printed) 2256-5760 (online). bogotá, colombia. pages 109-124 emotions as learning enhancers of foreign language learning motivation las emociones como potenciadoras de la motivación en el aprendizaje de una lengua extranjera mariza g. méndez lópez* argelia peña aguilar** universidad de quintana roo, mexico the present article reports on a study that explores the effects of the emotional experiences of mexican language learners on their motivation to learn english. in this qualitative research we present how emotions impact the motivation of university language learners in south mexico. results suggest that emotions, both negative and positive, contribute to enhancing and diminishing motivation. although negative emotions may be considered detrimental to foreign language learning, the findings of this study show that negative emotions serve as learning enhancers. results also evidence that mexican language learners perceive negative emotions as positive for their language learning process. key words: emotional experiences, foreign language learning, motivation. en este artículo se presenta una investigación en la que se exploran los efectos que causan las experiencias emocionales en la motivación de estudiantes mexicanos al aprender inglés. con base en un estudio cualitativo se presenta cómo las emociones inciden en la motivación de estudiantes universitarios en el sur de méxico. los resultados sugieren que las emociones, tanto positivas como negativas, contribuyen a potenciar y disminuir su motivación. se encontró que a pesar de que las emociones negativas pueden afectar el aprendizaje de una lengua extranjera, estas actúan incluso como potenciadoras del aprendizaje. los resultados también indican que los estudiantes mexicanos perciben las emociones negativas como positivas en su proceso de aprendizaje. palabras clave: aprendizaje de lenguas extranjeras, experiencias emocionales, motivación. * e-mail: marizam@uqroo.mx ** e-mail: argelia@uqroo.mx this article was received on may 5, 2012, and accepted on october 19, 2012. universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras110 méndez lópez & peña aguilar introduction from the first motivational studies, affective aspects have been considered to be as important as language aptitude in language learning success (gardner & lambert, 1972; gardner, 1985). however, no consideration was given to these until humanistic education brought attention to the affective domain. affective factors research in foreign language learning has concentrated on constructs such as self-esteem and learners’ beliefs (aragão, 2011). although this research has advanced our knowledge of these factors, emotions have not yet been given enough attention in foreign language learning research (imai, 2010). although the introduction of the humanistic methods e.g. the silent way, community language learning and suggestopedia acknowledged the important role of affect in language learning, some scholars did not consider this approach beneficial for language learning. while some authors favoured the use of affective strategies or humanistic activities in language classes (arnold, 1998; arnold & brown, 1999), others state that english language teaching (elt) teachers should be more concerned with the language they are supposed to help students learn (gadd, 1998). currently, researchers recognize the need to review motivation from an affective perspective (macintyre, 2002; dörnyei, 2005, 2007; meyer & turner, 2006). nevertheless, motivation research in foreign language learning has largely focused on studying it as if motivation were a stable, non-dynamic construct which is not developed through interaction with teachers, peers, subject content and context (dörnyei, 2000; larsen-freeman, 2001; ellis, 2004; shoaib & dörnyei, 2004). some studies have concentrated on establishing correlations between motivation and language proficiency (ellis & larsen-freeman, 2006), while other studies have focused on identifying and analysing diverse motives and validating motivational theories, instead of concentrating on the development of motivational strategies than can help students to cope with the process of learning a foreign language (cheng & dörnyei, 2007). consequently, motivation has largely been researched within a quantitative approach which has provided diverse results in the field of english language teaching. although some studies have been done on emotions in elt (hurd, 2008, garret & young, 2009; bown & white, 2010; imai, 2010, aragão, 2011), they have not concentrated on the connection of these to the motivational behaviour displayed by foreign language learners. due to this situation, our research question was: what effects do emotional experiences have on foreign language learners’ motivation? thus, this study aims to contribute to the body of knowledge on how foreign language learning motivation is shaped by emotions. origin of this research project our research interest was based on a piece of research one of the researchers had undertaken (méndez, 2003). in this previous study, affective strategies were found to be amongst those least used by students. this was surprising for us since the study was carried out in mexico, which is a collectivist society (hofstede, 2010). mexicans in general are people who make use of social and affective skills in all areas of their lives. why, then, were mexican students not making use of affective strategies? current motivation literature states the need to start researching foreign language learning motivation from an affective perspective (macintyre, 2002; dörnyei, 2005, 2007; meyer & turner, 2006). the new direction scholars suggest regarding motivation research matched with our interest in affective strategies by combining these with motivation, which is considered to be a factor that can make a student succeed or not succeed in their language learning process. therefore, our study focused on the role played by the emotional experiences foreign language 111profile vol. 15, no. 1, april 2013. issn 1657-0790 (printed) 2256-5760 (online). bogotá, colombia. pages 109-124 emotions as learning enhancers of foreign language learning motivation learners undergo during classroom instruction, and how these impact their motivation. overview of motivation and emotions studies in order to understand the role of emotions in language learning motivation, we focused on two theoretical constructs: motivation and emotions. motivation the motivation construct is a ver y complex one that cannot be analysed from an isolated angle (dörnyei, 2001). different motivational approaches have been developed in order to try to understand this multifaceted construct. four motivational psychology theories have been selected as those informing the interpretation of this study’s results: self-efficacy theory (bandura, 1997), attribution theory (weiner, 1992), self-worth theory (covington, 1998) and selfdetermination theory (deci & ryan, 1985). according to bandura (1994), self-efficacy refers to “(...) people’s beliefs about their capabilities to produce designated levels of performance that ex ercise influence over events that affect their lives” (p. 71). these beliefs are the ones that shape how people feel, think, motivate themselves and behave. according to this theory, people with a high level of self-efficacy engage in tasks with the conviction that they possess the capabilities needed to succeed in them. in contrast, a person with a low level of selfefficacy avoids difficult tasks and resorts to their personal weaknesses to justify their lack of effort to pursue certain goals. self-efficacy beliefs affect human activity cognitively, affectively, motivationally and socially. people tend to plan what to do and how to achieve their goals, so this planning is shaped by the beliefs people have about their abilities to achieve such goals. self-efficacy beliefs influence people affectively because, as a result of their ability assessment, some people are more prone to suffering from depression when involved in a challenging or threatening situation. however, positive self-efficacy feelings can encourage people to continue making their best effort in order to achieve specific goals. thus, a person’s life course is determined by the abilities they believe they possess. attribution theory assumes that human motivation is a result of the need to know the reason why something has happened. thus, causal attributions of a phenomenon can be given to a person or to environmental factors. if a student, for example, has had very bad learning experiences which he or she attributes to his or her capacities, he or she might not be willing to participate in any learning activity again because he or she considers that the cause of failure is something he or she cannot change (his or her cognitive ability); however, if a learner considers that the reason for failure is that he or she did not make his or her best effort, then he or she could go into a new learning situation with the disposition to make his or her best effort so he or she can have better results this time. according to the most well-known scholar weiner (1980), “the most salient causal inferences are ability and effort, but many other factors are also influential” (p. 393). according to covington (1992), self-worth theory “(...) assumes that the search for self-acceptance is the highest human priority, and that in schools self-acceptance comes to depend on one’s ability to achieve competitively” (p. 74). thus, in schools learners are considered as worthy as their abilities to achieve educational goals imposed by schools and teachers. as such, a student’s value is measured only through school achievement. this being the case, in school achievement, the focus of student life, different actions are performed by students in order to protect their self-image. ability equals worth in schools, and it is this premise that makes students develop strategies such as over striving or cheating to protect themselves from negative appraisal of their ability by their peers. universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras112 méndez lópez & peña aguilar according to ryan and deci (2000), selfdetermination theory focuses on “(...) investigating people’s inherent growth tendencies and innate psychological needs that are the basis for their selfmotivation and personality integration” (p. 68). they consider that the construct of motivation lies in a continuum of self-determination that goes from amotivation (lack of motivation) through external, introjected, identified and integrated regulation (externally regulated) to intrinsic motivation (in trinsically regulated). ryan and deci’s (2000) final type of motivation on the continuum, intrinsic motivation, is “(...) the inherent tendency to seek out novelty and challenges, to extend and exercise one’s capacities, to explore, and to learn” (p. 70). in order for this type of innate motivation to be maintained, ryan and deci identify three conditions that need to be present: competence, relatedness and autonomy. thus, it is not only that people need to feel competent in the different actions they perform throughout their lifetime, but they also need to feel that these actions are self-initiated in a supportive environment. relatedness refers to the need people have to be accepted, respected and connected to significant others in their social environment. according to the abovementioned authors, the social environment in which people grow is a crucial determinant of the enhancement or diminishment of intrinsic motivation. motivation is powerfully influenced not only by learners’ personalities but also by personal ex periences, cognitive processes and the social context. learners’ behaviour is determined by the need to protect their self-image and to preserve their self-worth, and is influenced by significant others and the socio-cultural context in which they live. thus, motivation is powerfully influenced not only by learners’ personalities but also by personal experiences, cognitive processes and the social context. all of these factors imply an array of emotions and feelings aroused in intraand interpersonal interactions. a complex interaction of numerous student and situational characteristics determines foreign language learners’ motivation. given that language learning is a socially constructed process, the diversity of emotions experienced is a crucial aspect impacting on the motivational behaviour displayed by foreign language learners. emotions feelings and emotions experienced by students are considered important in understanding learning processes, student motivation and effective teaching (pekrun, goetz, titz & perry, 2002; meyer & turner, 2006). feelings and emotions are said to be a result of the evaluation students make of particular situations while learning (pekrun, 2000). these evaluations are influenced by previous experiences, the social context and their personal goals (pekrun et al., 2002; sansone & thoman, 2005). this is of particular relevance to the learning of a foreign language since students mostly come with previous positive or negative experiences; sometimes the new learning environment is very different from previous ones, and they may have a diversity of motives for engaging in foreign language learning. the interplay of all these variables in one emotional event during classroom instruction may have different meanings for individual students and cause diverse effects on students’ motivation (do & schallert, 2004). the resulting tasks learners decide to carry out account for the amount of motivational energy variation language learners go through during the different stages of their learning process (shoaib & dörnyei, 2004). emotional experiences play a significant role since behind the reasons for deciding to study a foreign language or keep up with the task, emotions and feelings are involved. those feelings and emotions experienced during foreign language learning/instruction are then important to understand so language teachers can adjust their approach to one that can help them reduce the negative impact 113profile vol. 15, no. 1, april 2013. issn 1657-0790 (printed) 2256-5760 (online). bogotá, colombia. pages 109-124 emotions as learning enhancers of foreign language learning motivation emotions can have on learners’ motivational energy, and enhance the promotion of those emotions that can activate learners’ motivation. pekrun et al. (2002) found that anxiety was the emotion most frequently reported in five studies conducted using quantitative and qualitative ap proaches. however, these studies reveal that students reported as many positive emotions as negative ones; thus the array of emotions students go through during learning is vast. a significant outcome of pekrun et al.’s studies is the discovery of the role played by meta-emotions (feelings about emotions) on the management of emotions. pekrun et al. suggest that making learners aware of their feelings about their emotions may be a tool teachers should use to help students face and overcome negative emotions as well as foster positive ones. according to scherer (2005), feelings and emo tions prepare people to act; this implies that if some one is acting in certain ways, the experience of a feeling or emotion can make him or her stop that particular action (changing their motivational energy) or continue making the best effort possible to achieve a particular goal. thus, the change in motivational energy can be positive or negative; it depends on the interplay of emotions with internal and external factors. in addition, feelings and emotions can help someone to redirect their motivational energy. in the course of academic work, students can find that something strongly interests them and redirect all their attention and motivation toward that particular task. garret and young (2009) explored the emotional reactions originated during a portuguese as a foreign language course for a period of eight weeks. although their study was not focused on accounting for emotions, emotions became the core of the description provided by garret’s responses to instruction, revealing the significant role emotions play in language learning processes. garret and young (2009) described 255 positive emotional experiences and 69 negative ones. positive and negative ex periences were mainly engendered because of the teachers’ voices, social relations, cultural learning and language awareness. imai (2010) investigated the manifestation of emotions during group-work preparation for a second language oral presentation. he found that during task preparation language learners’ mental processes were structured through the verbalisation of their emotions, which then developed into common group feelings. thus, emotions felt by the three members of the group served to construct the same feelings towards the activity through negotiation of their reactions to the learning task they were carrying out. from this, imai (2010) concludes that even negative emotions can be a developmental resource for foreign language learners. although conducted under a self-regulatory framework, the study carried out by bown and white (2010) also reflects the emotional experiences learners in classrooms go through. in the individual reflections of three learners, the interaction of their previous language learning experiences, current learning events and goals played a significant role in their motivational behaviour. in this self-regulated framework where instances of face-to-face interaction were minimal and requested by learners, the facilitator’s gestures and verbal feedback caused such negative emotions in one student that she withdrew from the course. these result showed how even the scarce contact with instructors initiated by learners in this learning context evoked such negative emotions that their motivation was impacted. these students’ emotions in face-to-face interaction with instructors were evoked because of the instructors’ body language, non-verbal expressions and feedback provided. thus, the significant effect of instructors in the elt field was displayed even in autonomous language learning experiences, which confirms that the development of positive interpersonal relations in language learning universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras114 méndez lópez & peña aguilar processes is a core aspect of instilling motivation and effective elt. research design this study followed a qualitative approach since our purpose was to gain a deep understanding of the emotional reactions engendered during foreign language classroom instruction. the purpose of qualitative research is to examine any social phenomenon by enabling the researcher to go into the participants’ naturalistic setting and try to get a comprehensive understanding of it (bryman, 2004). in the following section we will present the participants, the techniques and the data analysis process. participants of the study this study was carried out in a public university in south mexico. a group of 24 students who were starting their second year of the elt programme was best suited for the purpose of the investigation. the group selected was chosen because the teacher in charge of the language class agreed to give us access; thus, convenience sampling was exercised (bryman, 2004). purposeful sampling was employed and the sample was small because the intention was to obtain rich information about students’ emotional experiences in classroom language instruction and the effect of those on motivation. as stated by mertens (1998), “in interpretive/constructivist work, samples tend to be relatively small because of the depth of information that is sought from each case or individual” (p. 264). although researchers of the study are part of the elt programme staff, the main researcher was not teaching during the study period. participation was voluntary and 18 students agreed to share their emotional experiences during classroom language instruction. students were informed about the purpose and activities involved in this investigation. consent forms were given to the participants who used a pseudonym while participating in the study. no intervention on participants’ classes was made since, as do and schallert (2004) advise, “studies are needed that focus on emotions and moods embedded in a real context rather than induced and separated out for investigation” (p. 620). methods of data collection qualitative methods allow the gaining of a deep understanding of the motives behind human behaviour (barbour, 2008). data were gathered through personal narratives, an emotional reactions journal and semi-structured interviews. participants completed these three techniques using their native language / their mother tongue because we did not want to restrict their emotional descriptions. personal narratives were selected as the instrument to find out about the development of students’ motivation to register in the elt programme. personal narratives were written at the beginning of the study period. according to oxford (1995), “ the technique of writing language learning histories gives learners the opportunity to describe their own language learner experiences and express their feelings about those experiences” (p. 581). since this study is focused on students’ feelings, we felt that this instrument would be best suited to finding out not only the origin of the students’ motivation but also of the feelings experienced during those specific moments when motivation developed. one of the main advantages of personal narratives is that they give us access into learners’ private worlds and provide rich data (pavlenko, 2002, 2007). since emotions are not always observable, the best way to get into people’s feelings and emotions is to let them narrate them to us. interviews were identified as a suitable source of data to explore students’ affective experiences. according to yan and horwitz (2008), “(...) studies that encourage learner reflection through interviews (…) would seem to have the potential to yield a richer understanding of learners’ perceptions (…)” (p. 153). 115profile vol. 15, no. 1, april 2013. issn 1657-0790 (printed) 2256-5760 (online). bogotá, colombia. pages 109-124 emotions as learning enhancers of foreign language learning motivation a semi-structured interview guide was designed to be used as a general guide so that some issues that were not considered by the researcher but that participants considered important could be addressed in the interview. 18 interviews were recorded, transcribed and then analysed at the end of the term (see appendix). in this study, the journals were focused on those events students experienced during classroom instruction that triggered in them an emotional reaction. students were asked to keep a journal over 12 weeks of their term. students were free to report about any emotion felt in their journal entries which were sent electronically weekly. according to hascher (2008), students’ journals “(…) are a useful qualitative approach to explore students’ emotions (…) they offer a precise view on an individual’s perspective and they enable a contextsensitive understanding of emotions in schools” (p. 95). data analysis the study followed a grounded theory approach for data analysis (glaser & strauss, 1967), which consists of a set of data collection and analytic procedures through which the researcher derives an abstract theory of a process, action or interaction of a particular phenomenon (charmaz, 2004; creswell, 2009). the data analysis was divided into four stages. in the first stage personal narratives were read to understand the motivational events that led students to register in the elt programme. in the second stage students’ emotional journal entries were read over the 12 week period in order to identify the emotions experienced by students during classroom instruction. then, the journal entries were collapsed into three sets and imported to nvivo 8 software to aide analysis of the study period (weeks 1-4; weeks 5-8; weeks 9-12). stage three included the transcription and analysis of the interviews. this stage allowed us to verify that some patterns identified in journals were also present in the final interviews. the final stage included the analysis of journal sets and interviews in nvivo 8 software. units of text were grouped together in analytic categories and were given a title. data were systematically reviewed to ensure that references under analytic categories supported these categories. participants of this study were asked to confirm that the conclusions we drew from the information provided by them corresponded to the world they wanted to present to us. participants were also asked to check transcripts of the interviews and edit their content if desired. although some participants did edit or add to the final interviews used for analysis, most students left them as transcribed. based upon the above description of the data analysis, the emerging themes are presented in the following section. findings the categories that emerged from our data analysis are presented in four sections: positive effects of positive emotions, negative effects of positive emotions, negative effects of negative emotions and positive effects of negative emotions (see table 1). this last one is presented with its corresponding subcategories: language learning awareness, language learning strategies and developing motivational strategies. these three perspectives are aimed at presenting a richer and more complete picture of the diversity of responses found in mexican students’ emotional experiences. the data were translated into english for the purpose of this publication. real names of participants have been changed throughout the whole article. effects of emotional experiences on language learners’ motivation all (18) students considered that emotions, both positive and negative, were of great importance for their language learning process because emotions universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras116 méndez lópez & peña aguilar encouraged them not to quit their language classes and gave them the drive to overcome those academic problems they were facing, as they reported: (...) emotions are of great importance, without them i would have been a mediocre student...leaving everything half-assed, and thanks to them i am still at university. i consider that there are not good or bad emotions ... good as well as bad ones ended up being good because without the bad ones i would not have had the push to make my best effort at university. (enrique, interview) as revealed by all (18) students in the study, emotions were positive because they helped them think about their role as language learners, made them realize those areas they needed to work on and, most importantly, made them reflect upon their responsibility as language learners. positive effects of positive emotions students experienced positive emotions that allowed them to have feelings of enhanced self-efficacy. these feelings allowed them to attest their language advancement, which contributed to removing their insecurity and giving them confidence, as expressed by some students: ...for instance when teachers told me something good about my performance in class, i felt really happy ... i was so enthusiastic all day in classes. you feel great ... you feel like participating more in class because you know you are doing things right. (akira, interview) as the term advanced, students felt more confident because they were able to see that their efforts were paying off, especially in examination marks, which are very valuable for mexican students: happiness because i saw the results ... i could confirm that if i worked hard i could have good results ... this is what makes ... this is what makes me feel happy ... knowing that yes, i can! (kenya, interview) confidence allowed students to take some risks in their language learning process and some started to refer to mistakes as something that they have to go through in order to be able to speak a foreign language. students also started looking for ways to introduce phrases or vocabulary they had heard on tv shows in english (usa tv) in order to make their oral and written output more natural. these small decisions allowed them to reenergise and helped them to keep motivated. negative effects of positive emotions students experienced feelings of self-efficacy after completing tasks successfully. nonetheless, 16 of table 1. categories and subcategories effects of emotional experiences on language learning motivation category 1 positive effects of positive emotions category 2 negative effects of positive emotions category 3 negative effects of negative emotions category 4 positive effects of negative emotions • self-efficacy feelings • positive learning environment • reloading their motivational energy • resting on their laurels • feeling insecure • poor class participation • negative learning environment • learning english perceived as difficult • language learning awareness • language learning strategies • developing motivational strategies 117profile vol. 15, no. 1, april 2013. issn 1657-0790 (printed) 2256-5760 (online). bogotá, colombia. pages 109-124 emotions as learning enhancers of foreign language learning motivation them recognised that after a positive emotion they did nothing to improve their language learning process: well ... a negative emotion leads you to analysis … happiness … um, there is nothing to analyse there because you are happy as you obtained what you wanted, but negative experiences are the ones we need to think about, reflect on and look for the positive side of. you have to look for that positive side in order to be more proactive or a winner, we can say in that respect. (jimmy, interview) students reported that after a positive emotion there was nothing to do but enjoy the feeling, so they did not think about it. this is the only negative effect positive emotions had on students’ motivation. negative effects of negative emotions negative emotions were frequently experienced by this group of students. there were different factors that triggered negative emotions such as: teachers’ marking systems, feedback approaches and learning environment. for the first time students were facing being spoken to in english for the whole class period, and doubts about their degree choice started to emerge from the very first week of the term. half of the students (nine) revealed in their personal narratives having wanted to study something different but, because of financial reasons, they had had to choose a degree at the local university. this fact made them doubtful about being in the elt programme. having obtained such a low mark made me feel really bad and has made me think about the english language teaching programme being the right degree for me. (jane, journal. weeks 1-4) feeling unsure of being able to finish the degree caused insecurity in students, which contributed to their fears. students’ fears led some (nine) to see english learning as a very difficult task that they were not able to accomplish. if i was feeling confident, ok about my development in class– this week made me feel really down. this was because of a writing task...we all felt that our work was not perfect but good. however, i realised it wasn’t. it was completely frustrating (…) i wonder if i will be able to learn english someday! (jaded-journal. weeks 1-4) this perception was magnified by the presence of an advanced group of students in class. by looking at this group’s performance, students realised the great gap between them and the advanced group. students’ confidence deteriorated because they started to make comparisons with more proficient learners in the group. the language proficiency difference contributed to a lack of group cohesion, which made the learning environment very ineffective: i had an oral presentation and i thought, ‘i don’t want that guy to come’. i feel intimidated when he is in the class because i think he is going to say something … someone told me he criticises and makes fun of the rest of the class … so i now feel frightened even in oral exams because i don’t want to take it with him because besides being beaten by him he is going to make fun of me and that is my fear. (esperanza, interview) lack of group cohesion contributed to students’ feelings that they were not allowed space and time to practise. this feeling led them to think they were not making any progress and perceived their pronunciation to be not as good as that of their classmates. this constrained their participation in class because they knew that some classmates would mock them. fearing the teacher’s feedback and their peers’ mockery led students to stop trying in class. this made some students feel angry with themselves but they reported that sometimes their fear of mockery was higher than their desire to speak fluently. although students reported that being afraid of speaking english and having a fear of their peers’ mocking were constant feelings throughout the term, they also revealed, importantly, that the effects of these events were short-lived because they could not spend all the time recalling a specific negative event. universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras118 méndez lópez & peña aguilar positive effects of negative emotions it seems contradictor y that, although some (nine) students reported not having chosen the elt programme at the university as their first choice, they were struggling hard in order to continue in the course in spite of their constant negative experiences. however, from the perspective of self-determination theory, mexican participants may have internalised as their own the demands of their parents and relatives to whom they feel a very strong attachment. as suggested by bao and lam (2008), “people from collectivistic cultures may still be motivated when they act on the demands of in-group others because they can internalize such demands” (p. 270). negative emotions started to emerge during the first sessions of the course. students’ knowledge was very basic and they started to panic when unable to understand everything the teacher was saying or explaining. fear, worry and sadness were the three main negative emotions students experienced during the first third of the term. students reported being afraid of being laughed at while participating in class activities, worried about not being able to understand everything the teachers were explaining, and sad about their lack of vocabulary which restricted their participation in class. the language proficiency difference in the group pushed low proficient learners to develop their language abilities. it was because of this that students started to develop a sense of re sponsibility towards their language learning process, which led them to develop learning and motivational strategies from the very first week of the term: well …i asked a student from the last semester to help me re view my pronunciation for the oral exam. (esperanza, journal. weeks 5-8) i have to think that i am at a learning stage … i do not have to ask myself what i cannot do at this stage … i have to work on this. (angelica, journal. weeks 1-4) language learning awareness students’ constant comparisons with their proficient peers not only made them feel sad and frightened, it also made them aware of the time and effort needed to be able to speak fluently: well … i have tried to do certain things so i can feel good about myself and do not feel sad or down because i see the advanced students. if they are more proficient it is because they have studied more and i do not have to feel bad about it. on the contrary, i have to make my best effort in my studies. (natalia, interview) thanks to all these experiences in class i am more conscious of the need to invest more time to study at home … i have been looking for web pages to practise and chat with native speakers so i can learn expressions and be able to speak better. (ricardo, journal. weeks 1-4) students embraced negative emotions as learning opportunities because all of them (18) referred to these negative events in class as a way of understanding what they were doing wrong and how to improve on that particular skill. most students’ (17) fear focused on their speaking ability because it was the skill that caused their peers to make fun of them. students started to look for vocabulary to enrich their oral participation, practised their vocabulary by watching tv shows in english (usa tv programmes), encouraged peers to practise with them in order to gain confidence, and dedicated more time to reviewing the topics covered in class at home. i analysed myself and realised that i have to practise my english every day … i registered in a conversation workshop and started to review every night the notes from my class. (jimmy, journal. weeks 1-4) most students (16) reported recognising areas in which they were making mistakes, while others started to develop resilience towards negative experiences. some students (ten) stated that these negative ex 119profile vol. 15, no. 1, april 2013. issn 1657-0790 (printed) 2256-5760 (online). bogotá, colombia. pages 109-124 emotions as learning enhancers of foreign language learning motivation periences were things they needed to overcome if they wanted not only to pass the course, but also to finish the degree. students considered these negative experiences as a natural process that needed to be faced if they desired to speak a foreign language. this is clearly expressed in the following references: when participating in class and making some minor errors, i realised there is nothing wrong with making them … we all have to go through that … and by not taking the mockery or offensive criticisms into account … i think this is the best i have done to feel motivated to make my best effort in the future. (jaded, journal. weeks 1-4) i think in a negative way but thinking carefully…positive because every time i am at the front saying something or explaining something … speaking in public helps me to overcome this weakness that i need to be a strength in the future… (jane– journal. weeks 9-12) although some (nine) students felt insecure about their abilities to learn a foreign language during the first third of the term, most of them (16) convinced themselves that it was a matter of practice and not a lack of intellectual ability (covington, 1992). this contributed to students looking for solutions to improve their language knowledge by making use of different learning strategies that could help them to learn in more easily. language learning strategies from experiencing the very first negative emotions in class, students started to look for ways to make their language learning process an effective one. students resorted to the use of learning strategies to diversify their approach to learning english. students reported making use of diverse strategies in order to overcome those learning difficulties they were facing in their daily classes. some (eight) students reported not feeling upset about the language proficiency of the advanced students but motivated to be able to speak like them in the future. the group of proficient students helped beginner students to develop resilience towards negative feelings experienced by their language level difference and encourage less proficient students to make their best efforts, as reported by the different ways they used to approach their learning concerns: i don’t have to feel worthless in class just because others participate or understand better than me. i have to make my best effort to be at their level. (natalia, journal. weeks 1-4) i started to listen to conversations in english, to watch movies to practise my vocabulary and pronunciation … and i am also listening to songs in english. (dayana, journal. weeks 1-4) language learning strategies were tools students made use of in order to develop their language abilities and their confidence in class. as their ultimate goal was to get a university degree and move on to employment in order to fulfil other needs in their lives, students also resorted to the use of motivational strategies to keep them stimulated to continue in the elt programme and finish it. developing motivational strategies all (18) students agreed that maintaining their motivation was their own responsibility. however, they also considered that teachers could contribute greatly to it by making classes more dynamic and learning activities more fun. students also recognised that their families were a part of this responsibility. they considered that they needed that affective push from mothers, fathers, siblings and friends to reenergise. students reflected on their family values when referring to being motivated. most students (16) resorted to emotional self-regulation and selfencouragement in order to keep their motivation energy at good levels: universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras120 méndez lópez & peña aguilar believe in myself … believe that i can achieve my goal of learning english and finishing the degree if i desire … i have to set some goals and complete certain activities that i have planned to learn more every day … believe that i can do it. (kenya, journal. weeks 9-12) every day when i arrive at class i repeat to myself that everything is going to be all right and i believe it. (ricardo, journal. weeks 5-8) students seemed to have developed resilience towards negative emotions. all students referred to the experience of negative feelings as positive for their language learning process. they all recognised that during their future life they would have to face many negative events so they had to be prepared to face them. conclusions emotional experiences were identified as having a significant role in mexican students’ motivational behaviour during classroom instruction. educational scholars have affirmed that emotions play a significant role in motivation to learn (garret & young, 2009; bown & white, 2010; imai, 2010). in fact, participants in this study reported that attention to affect was the difference in the motivational behaviour they displayed in their language classes. emotional experiences had a significant influence on students’ motivation. emotions, both positive and negative, have an important impact on foreign language learners’ motivation, since they can activate or deactivate motivational behaviour (pekrun et al., 2002). experiencing both types of emotions was considered significant for students’ language learning process since they helped them to regulate learning, as well as to regulate emotions. motivation was revealed as dynamic and evolving. diverse emotional influences impacted the motivational behaviour of this study’s participants. although students ex perienced more negative situations than positive ones, they turned these into positive outcomes. the predominance of negative activating emotions (fear, worry and sadness) in this study might have triggered students’ motivational behaviour to overcome those negative emotions in future academic tasks, and this might explain their motivation maintenance. the frequent and sometimes intense negative emotions reported to be felt by participants in our study were not enough to diminish their overall motivation, since all the participants revealed themselves to be highly motivated to finish the elt programme (ryan & deci, 2000). negative emotions had the negative effect of causing demotivating behaviour in some students. however, students revealed that negative emotions led them to reflect on the situation experienced, which allowed them to re-evaluate the event and adjust their motivation accordingly. the reflection process described by participants included an attribution stage in which learners gave themselves an explanation of why the event resulted in that emotion (weiner, 1992). participants of this study realised that although there were many factors influencing the way they reacted to emotional experiences, they could only change similar events in the future by improving their language level. as students attributed these negative feelings to their language proficiency, they immediately resorted to the use of learning strategies that helped them face negative emotions and kept them motivated. we believe this realisation during the reflection process is the one that led students to focus on those areas they needed to improve upon in order to enhance their language learning process. thus, although negative emotions had an immediate negative effect on students’ motivational energy, causing such behaviour as task avoidance and withdrawal from class participation, subsequent reflection allowed students to overcome that negative impact and to reenergise in order to continue their learning process. motivation in language learning cannot be de veloped in a vacuum; certain conditions need to be 121profile vol. 15, no. 1, april 2013. issn 1657-0790 (printed) 2256-5760 (online). bogotá, colombia. pages 109-124 emotions as learning enhancers of foreign language learning motivation present before motivation can be initiated. language learning is a process replete with negative and positive emotions, thus appropriate management of students’ emotions is necessary for language teachers to enable them to help their students make their emotions work for them and not against them. the creation of a positive learning environment should therefore be the first aim language teachers strive for. this can be created through promoting group cohesion and establishing good teacher-student relationships. by showing genuine interest in students’ learning processes, teachers will inspire trust, confidence and a motivating learning environment. reflection should also be encouraged so learners can understand their emotions better as learners, and this can help students set individualised goals to work toward. a peer-support scheme could be set up so students have a space to talk about their learning worries, and where feelings of affiliation can be promoted. self-evaluation should be encouraged on a weekly or monthly basis so students can review the strategies they are using, the success–or lack of success–they are having with them, and can set new objectives to work towards. more research needs to be carried out in diverse contexts in order to find out what outcomes are derived from negative emotions and how specific contexts modify their impact on motivation. future research also needs to make a comparison of the emotional experiences encountered by lower-level and proficient learners. do students at different levels react differently to the same emotional experiences? this research has uncovered a range of context governed factors affecting language learning mo tivation. it also provides evidence for understanding the developmental process of motivation and how language learners become responsible thanks to the reflection on emotional experiences during language instruction. we hope that the results presented can assist in the understanding of emotions experienced by language learners during classroom instruction and inform the design of interventions and activities to help language learners manage negative emotions. references aragão, r. 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(1980). human motivation. new york, ny: holt, rinehart and winston. weiner, b. (1992). human motivation: metaphors, theories and research. newbury park, ca: sage. yan, j. x., & horwitz, e. k. (2008). learners’ perceptions of how anxiety interacts with personal and instructional factors to influence their achievement in english: a qualitative analysis of efl learners in china. language learning, 58(1), 151-183. about the authors mariza g. méndez lópez holds a phd in education from the university of nottingham, uk. she has worked at the universidad de quintana roo for 16 years. she coordinates a research group on individual differences in language learning. her research interests include affect, emotions, motivation and language learning strategies. argelia peña aguilar has been a professor-researcher at the universidad de quintana roo for eight years. she holds a master’s degree in translation and interpretation. she is currently studying the effects that contemplation can bring to children in the programa de servicio social: adopta un amigo peraj programme. universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras124 méndez lópez & peña aguilar appendix semi-structured interview guide 1. how would you describe your language learning experience during this first year of studying in the english language teaching programme? why? 2. has your experience in this first year changed your original motivation? how? why? 3. can you recall any emotional reactions experienced during this first year? 4. what situations caused these affective reactions? 5. how did you behave when experiencing an emotional reaction? 6. did these emotional reactions interfere with your language learning classes? how? 7. did any of your emotional reactions have an influence on your motivation? how? why do you think this happened? 8. who/what was responsible for the way you reacted? 9. what did you do about those reactions? how did you manage them? 10. do you consider that your emotional reactions were important to your language learning motivation? 11. how do you think your motivation could have been improved? 12. who do you think is responsible for maintaining that original motivation you brought to the english language teaching programme? why? 13. what keeps (or would keep) your motivational energy high? 14. have any of your previous ideas about learning english changed in this first year? why? 15. what have you gained from being involved in this research study? 29profile vol. 19, no. 2, july-december 2017. issn 1657-0790 (printed) 2256-5760 (online). bogotá, colombia. pages 2929profile vol. 19, no. 2, july-december 2017. issn 1657-0790 (printed) 2256-5760 (online). bogotá, colombia. pages 29-39 http://dx.doi.org/10.15446/profile.v19n2.57428 formulaic language and efl requests: sensitive wording at the right time lenguaje formulaico y peticiones en inglés: formulación apropiada en el momento oportuno gerrard mugford* universidad de guadalajara, guadalajara, mexico i examine whether teaching formulaic language raises english as a foreign language learners’ awareness of pragmatic resources when expressing requests. to carry out this research i adopt a qualitative selfreflective approach which encourages students to use formulaic language when making requests. by responding to discourse completion tasks, learners were given the opportunity to reflect on whether the use of formulaic language enhances their ability to come across in acceptable and appropriate ways. results indicate that by developing learners’ knowledge and via the use of pragmalinguistic and sociopragmatic resources, students at all levels have a much greater chance of achieving their communicative objectives and of becoming more pragmatically competent in the target language when making requests. key words: english as a foreign language, formulaic language, pragmatics, requests. examino la enseñanza de lenguaje formulaico para expresar peticiones con el objetivo de aumentar los recursos pragmáticos de los alumnos de inglés como lengua extranjera. para llevar a cabo esta investigación adopto un enfoque cualitativo y auto-reflexivo que alienta a los estudiantes a utilizar el lenguaje formulaico para expresar peticiones. al responder a textos con situaciones discursivas, los estudiantes tuvieron la oportunidad de examinar si el uso de lenguaje formulaico mejora su habilidad para interactuar en formas aceptables y apropiadas. los resultados indican que al desarrollar sus conocimientos y el uso de recursos pragmalingüísticos y sociopragmáticos, los estudiantes en todos los niveles tienen una mayor probabilidad de alcanzar sus objetivos comunicativos y de ser pragmáticamente más competentes cuando expresan peticiones en la lengua meta. palabras clave: inglés como lengua extranjera, lenguaje formulaico, peticiones, pragmática. * e-mail: gerrymugford@yahoo.com how to cite this article (apa, 6th ed.): mugford, g. (2017). formulaic language and efl requests: sensitive wording at the right time. profile issues in teachers’ professional development, 19(2), 29-39. http://dx.doi.org/10.15446/profile.v19n2.57428. this article was received on may 14, 2016, and accepted on december 3, 2016. this is an open access article distributed under the terms of the creative commons license attribution-noncommercial-noderivatives 4.0 international license. consultation is possible at http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/. universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras30 mugford introduction this paper was motivated by the observation that my english as a foreign language (efl) students’ use of the target language inside and outside the classroom in mexico reflects, by and large, grammatical accuracy in making requests, but lacks contextual sensitivity. for instance, when wanting to talk to a teacher, students often start the conversation in the following way: • “i have a question…” • “i want to ask you something…” • “i need to talk to you…” • “i have a problem…” without determining whether the addressee is available or willing to comply, students run the risk of being seen as imposing before they have even had a chance to formulate the request itself. in order to raise my students’ awareness of the potential problem when formulating requests and exploring possible options, i presented a class of 26 advanced language students with eight situations where they were asked to frame a request. they were not given any previous instruction on making requests and were free to answer in any way they wanted. the answers revealed that the students often failed to convey appropriate levels of consideration, indirectness, and politeness. consequently, through classroom instruction, i presented learners with pragmatic resources for conveying requests. in a follow-up class, learners were asked to respond to the same situations with the aim of ascertaining whether they now came across in politer ways. however, rather than correcting the learners’ work, i asked them to compare their own answers before and after instruction and reflect on which answers conveyed greater sensitivity and appropriateness. i argue that this is a more effective way of raising students’ awareness than the teacher providing feedback on the correctness of learners’ answers. literature review in this section i define and discuss the concept of formulaic language in terms of conversational routines and i outline the importance of formulaic language in developing fluency in the target language. formulaic language the use of formulaic sequences are widespread in language use and covers a wide range which, following carter (1998) and wray (2008), includes idioms, collocations, proverbs, catchphrases, quotations, idiomatic similes, and discoursal expressions such as social formulae (e.g., how’s it going?) and structuring devices (e.g., let’s get started!). formulaic language is, therefore, an umbrella term that refers “to the larger units of processing—that is, lexical units that are more than one word long” (wray, 2008, p. 3). however, such a definition reveals little about the pragmatic dimension of formulaic expressions as language users construct and convey communicative meaning. to embrace the pragmatic dimension in “fixed and semi-fixed multi-word phrases (or lexical chunks),” thornbury and slade (2006) differentiate between lexical phrases and conversational routines. they contrast lexical phrases, which are “multi-word items that constitute a single grammatical unit (such as a verb, noun, or adjective) but have no specific pragmatic function,” (pp. 62-63) with conversational routines which convey pragmatic information contained in “fillers, discourse markers, utterance launchers, tags, expletives etc.” (p. 63). conversational routines reflect a socio-interactional function (thornbury & slade, 2006) which can be key to successfully making requests. as argued by aijmer (1996), requests can be conveyed through a range of strategies including ability (e.g., could you…), willingness (e.g., will you…), and want (e.g., i want you…). however, request strategies cannot solely rely on grammatical functions. they also need to be tempered by politeness 31profile vol. 19, no. 2, july-december 2017. issn 1657-0790 (printed) 2256-5760 (online). bogotá, colombia. pages 29-39 formulaic language and efl requests: sensitive wording at the right time strategies depending on the addressee and the context. politeness may adopt one of the following strategies: • the use of a question instead of a declarative sentence. • the choice of a suggestion rather than a request. • the choice of modal auxiliary. • the choice of subject. • giving reasons for doing something rather than stating one’s wishes abruptly. • softening the force of an impassive speech act. (aijmer, 1996, p. 138) formulaic language can provide foreign-language users with ready-made pre-fabricated expressions (nattinger & decarrico, 1992) so that they can fluently negotiate such face-threatening acts (brown & levinson, 1987) as making a request since this may threaten the face (goffman, 1967) of the addressee. formulaic language, pragmatics, and efl an essential aspect to achieving communicative competence (bachman, 1990; canale, 1983) in the target language is the development of pragmatic competence. locastro (2012) defines pragmatic competence as “the knowledge that influences and constrains speakers’ choices regarding use of language in socially appropriate ways” (p. 307). pragmatic competence is key to formulating appropriate requests in the target language because interactants need to know what acceptable and permissible choices are in a given context. giving learners formulaic expressions helps them to develop appropriate request strategies and saves them time in having to construct a request strategy every time they wish to make a request. furthermore, widdowson (1990) argues that formulaic expressions “figure so prominently in competence, it does not seem reasonable just to disregard their existence and leave their learning to chance” (pp. 95-96). nattinger and decarrico (as cited in widdowson, 1989) argue that communicative competence is not so much a matter of knowing rules for the composition of sentences and being able to appropriately employ such rules as it is “knowing a stock of partially preassembled patterns, formulaic frameworks, and a kit of rules, so to speak, and being able to apply the rules to make whatever adjustments are necessary according to contextual demands”. (p. 135) this argument places formulaic expressions in a strong position for helping to develop communicative competence in the target language. carter and mccarthy (1997) argue that “fixed expressions play an important part in spoken language in particular in maintaining and establishing relationships and in reinforcing shared knowledge and social conventions, and referring to common cultural understandings” (p. 15). furthermore, thornbury and slade (2006) argue that knowledge of formulaic expressions helps efl users to save time when communicating or even to gain time when formulating their utterances. developing pragmatic resources making a request potentially threatens the face of the respondent (brown & levinson, 1987) as it intrudes on the addressee by potentially limiting his/her freedom of action (cohen & ishihara, 2010; márquez reiter, 1997) and exposes the requester to possible rejection. in order to maximise the possibilities of success, the requester needs to show thoughtfulness, justification for making the request, and a willingness to compensate the respondent on an appropriate occasion in the future. this can be achieved by minimising the level of intrusion by employing mitigation, avoiding imposition through the use of indirectness (leech, 2014), and boosting the face of the respondent through rapport enhancement (spencer-oatey, 2008). whilst the teaching of requests has largely concentrated on practising correct structures (e.g., the use of the modals can and could), efl teachers often fail to alert learners to the basic motivations behind request universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras32 mugford strategies which stem from “neg-politeness” whose “function is mitigation, to reduce or lessen possible cause of offense” (leech, 2014, p.11). therefore, when formulating requests, efl learners should be made aware of how to express consideration, give a justification, enhance the face of the respondent, and convey gratitude. this can be done in the following ways: 1. demonstrating consideration. this may be direct or indirect and involves recognising that the requester is taking up the addressee’s time, asking whether he/ she is available and presupposing his/her willingness to comply. consideration can be expressed checking on availability: can you give me a second? (direct) and are you busy at the moment? (indirect); preparators: i need you to do me a favour (direct) and i would really like to ask you something (indirect); getting a pre-commitment: please don’t say no (direct) and is there any chance of you doing me a favour? (indirect); and minimising the imposition: this will only take a minute of your time (direct) and i know you are a really busy person (indirect) (ishihara, 2010; spencer-oatey, 2008). 2. focusing on the reason behind the request as the speaker aims to achieve compliance through the use of grounders: i came away from home without my wallet; downgrading the imposition: i see you are not using your calculator at the moment. any chance of using it? (spencer-oatey, 2008). 3. boosting the face of the respondent through rapport enhancement by making the addressee feel good (lakoff, 1973). this can be done through sweeteners: if there is someone i can always count on for help; and everyone says you’re the right person to ask. 4. showing willingness to compensate by promising to pay the respondent back: just ask me any time, and i’ll help you with anything you need; by displaying indefinite gratitude: i will be eternally grateful; by offering actual payment: i’ll pay you for your time (ishihara, 2010; spencer-oatey, 2008). the use of these pragmatic devices allows targetlanguage users to minimise potential offence when conveying requests and this may need to be explained to efl learners. research framework to understand how formulaic expressions can help efl users construct appropriate requests, i adopt a qualitative research approach that aims to build on the pragmalinguistic resources (leech, 1983; thomas, 1983) that the learners already employ to convey requests. i try to raise their awareness of whether they were employing pragmalinguistic resources appropriately or not. furthermore, thornbury and slade (2006) argue that an underuse of formulaic language leaves efl users “relying on their grammatical knowledge to generate well-formed but essentially unidiomatic language” (p. 219). therefore, my underlying research question is: can efl users be encouraged to use formulaic expressions to develop and reinforce the appropriate use of request strategies? language of description in order to construct a language of description to evaluate whether students improved their performance in making requests, i adopt leech’s (1983) and thomas’s (1983) use of pragmalinguistic and sociopragmatic resources. pragmalinguistic resources reflect the different ways of carrying out a speech act. this may range from using direct or indirect language to using softeners and intensifiers (kasper & rose, 2001). meanwhile, sociopragmatic resources are used to implement the appropriate use of pragmalinguistic resources in a given context, taking into consideration, for example, the interpersonal relationship, the level of closeness/distance, and degree of power (kasper & rose, 2001). the use of formulaic expressions provides pragmalinguistic resources for making requests. however, these need to be used in ways that are appropriate, sensitive to the addressee, and applicable to the context. 33profile vol. 19, no. 2, july-december 2017. issn 1657-0790 (printed) 2256-5760 (online). bogotá, colombia. pages 29-39 formulaic language and efl requests: sensitive wording at the right time method to raise efl users’ awareness of their use of request strategies, i adopt a reflective experiential research approach which encourages students to notice and develop a self-awareness of their own language use. this is especially challenging “since pragmatic language use is a very complex phenomenon with a lot of contextual factors influencing its actual performance [therefore,] it is of paramount importance to carefully design the methods that elicit learners’ production or comprehension/awareness of a particular pragmatic feature” (martínez-flor & usó-juan, 2011, p. 49). in order to collect learner response data, i used “production questionnaires” or discourse completion tasks (dcts) “which require the informant to produce some sort of authentic language data as a response to situational prompts” (dörnyei, 2007, p. 103). therefore, i asked students to review their own use of requests and after instructional intervention, to reflect on any perceivable changes they could identify in their own work. i carried this out using pre-teaching, teaching, and post-teaching phases. in the pre-teaching phase, students were asked to respond to eight dcts. in a follow-up activity, two weeks later, students were asked to reflect on their answers and take into account sociopragmatic aspects such as closeness/distance and level of imposition placed on the respondent. in the teaching phase, students were given a range of formulaic expressions that focused on the addressee’s availability (e.g., are you busy?), softening the reasons behind the request (e.g., i know you don’t like to lend…) and cross-cultural differences (e.g., level of directness). with these expressions, students were in a position to increase their range of pragmalinguistic and sociopragmatic resources. in the post-treatment stage, students revisited the dcts and wrote and developed new responses. in a follow-up stage, they compared the results from their first attempt with those of their second attempt and evaluated by themselves whether they considered that there had been an improvement in their strategies. this reflective approach aimed to make students themselves aware of their own progress rather than putting the teacher in the evaluative role. participants the participants in the study comprised 26 advancedlevel mexican students, studying at a public university in guadalajara, mexico. they were between 20 and 24 years old, and there were 17 women and 9 men. they had had very little contact with native speakers so that they had had extremely limited exposure to “authentic l2 output” (thornbury & slade, 2006, p. 219). this means that they very often relied on grammatical forms and knowledge to formulate requests rather being able to reflect and reproduce actual target-language usage. instrument dcts or “production questionnaires” (dörnyei, 2007, p. 103) were used because they offered students an opportunity to reflect on their response and examine different ways of requesting. however, dcts suffer from the drawback that they lack spontaneity and project what participants might say rather than what they would actually say. however, i am trying to identify the resources that the participants want to employ and the two sets of answers give students one way to evaluate their progress. initial class: making requests without any previous pedagogical intervention, i asked learners to respond to the eight situations. the situations invited students to request help from teachers, peers, and work colleagues and focused on borrowing computers, seeking help studying, finding places on campus, and so on (see dcts in the appendix). for reasons of space i will only provide six responses. they are: universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras34 mugford handing in work late: excuse me, mr. klemz i couldn’t finish my homework because it seems difficult for me, is there a problem if i give it to you later? morning teacher, i couldn’t hand my homework on time because i couldn’t print it correctly, could you give me an extension? when requesting to hand in work late, the requesters used alerters (spencer-oatey, 2008) such as “excuse me, mr klenz”, and “morning teacher” but used little mitigation which may have been expected in a studentteacher relationship. however, there was indirectness e.g., “is there a problem if i give it to you later?” and “could you give me an extension?” seeking help from another student: hey, i really try but i haven’t understood anything these two weeks, can you help me to catch up? hello, can you help me out with the class please? when seeking help from another student, there was minimum greeting and no checking as to the respondent’s availability or a willingness to help. instead, there was the direct “can you help me to catch up?” and “can you help me out . . . ?” the respondents were not given the option of refusing. borrowing a computer: excuse me. i’m having problems with my laptop and i need to present. may i borrow yours, please? hi, i got a serious problem here. i’m supposed to give a presentation but my laptop is totally dead. would you be so kind to lend me use yours for the next hour? when wanting to borrow a computer, there was a minimum of greeting but some use of grounders e.g., “i’m having problems with my laptop” and “i got a serious problem here. i’m supposed to give a presentation but my laptop is totally dead.” however, there was no attempt to achieve a pre-commitment or offer a preparator. rather, there was the direct request to borrow the computer. in all these six answers there was no attempt at enhancing the respondent’s face or expressing gratitude. the answers indicated that the participants had some problems regarding the use of grammatical structures and vocabulary but these did not seriously diminish communication. whilst employing modal verbs such as can, could, may, and would, students used a limited range of pragmatic sources and they were not sensitive to showing consideration, employing mitigation, and avoiding imposition. i did not grade the work or comment on the appropriateness of the answers with the students. second class: reflecting on requests two weeks later, and in order to sensitise the learners on how to make requests, i asked them to reread the dcts individually and reflect on the contexts in terms of relationships (e.g., student-student and studentteacher), level of imposition placed on the respondent (e.g., borrowing a laptop and asking to hand in work late). i then asked the learners to look over their answers and to consider the appropriateness and acceptability of the answers. consequently, the learners asked how their answers could sound more polite, less imposing, and more grateful. third class “teaching” requests in the following week, in a third class, the students were presented with the pragmalinguistic “structure” of making a request. students were shown how to express consideration, mitigate the request, make the respondent feel “good”, offer repayment in the future and convey gratitude. teacher instruction aimed to help learners to realise that the use of formulaic language can aid them in appropriately formulating requests. consideration can be expressed by asking whether the addressee is available, giving him/her freedom of action to comply and acknowledging the possible inconvenience of the request. availability can be expressed with are you free? and do you have a minute? 35profile vol. 19, no. 2, july-december 2017. issn 1657-0790 (printed) 2256-5760 (online). bogotá, colombia. pages 29-39 formulaic language and efl requests: sensitive wording at the right time freedom of action options include i wonder if you could help me… and can i ask you something? acknowledging the inconvenience of the request can be formulated with i don’t want to bother you but… and i know you’re a really busy person… at the same time, and as previously mentioned, consideration can be expressed indirectly to show even more thoughtfulness towards the respondent. by explaining the reasons behind the request, the requester can reduce possible “burden” and “irritation” factors. weighty requests that demand significant time and attention can be justified with expressions such as i know this is a lot to ask… and i would not normally ask you this… requests that ask the respondent to do something that he/she is not normally prepared to do can be prefaced with i know you don’t like to lend your things… and i know you are really careful with… in doing so, the requester may try to highlight uniqueness and the fact that he/she would not in normal circumstances make this request. in expressing gratitude, offering repayment, and making the respondent feel good, the requester needs to consider levels of effort and inconvenience required to carry out the request. minor requests may need to be accompanied by only a cursory display of gratitude. however, serious requests may be accompanied by more heartfelt expressions. gratitude may be immediate, future, or indeterminate: i really appreciate your doing this for me and i am so grateful (immediate); i will show my thanks by… and i will take you out next week (oriented towards the future); and i will be ever so grateful and i will be eternally grateful (indeterminate). repayment can also be immediate (e.g., i will obviously pay you for your trouble) focused on the future (e.g., i can pay you back next week) and be indeterminate (e.g., i will do the same for you one day). meanwhile, making the respondent feel good can be achieved by recognising his/her knowledge, skills, and disposition: you know all about this and you have studied this (knowledge), you’re really good at this and you have a knack/flair for… (skills) and you are a person who always… and if there is someone i can rely on… (disposition). when making a request, the efl user also needs to take into account possible pragmalinguistic and sociopragmatic cross-cultural differences. for instance, english tends to rely heavily on indirectness and distancing with, for example, the semi-formulaic would you mind… and i wonder, would you be willing to…? (leech, 2014, p. 143). by comparison, mexican spanish— the first language of these students—often employs imperatives to convey requests. for instance, there is a notable contrast between would you mind lending me a pen in english and préstame una pluma (lend me a pen) in spanish. efl learners need to understand that there may be considerable differences in request strategies between their first language and the target language and teachers can play a key role in alerting students to such differences. fourth class: re-making requests three weeks later, the learners were again asked to respond to the eight situations. they were not given any additional instructions regarding how to respond to the dcts. however, the underlying hope and expectation was for students to employ pragmatic strategies that had been presented and discussed in the previous class, that is, how to express consideration, to mitigate the request, to make the respondent feel “good”, to offer repayment in the future, and to convey gratitude as part of the “structure” of making a request. fifth class: follow up results in the final class the following week, students were presented with the two sets of responses that they had given to the eight situations: the pre-instruction and the post-instruction responses. the students were asked to evaluate whether they thought that there had been an improvement or a more extensive use of formulaic universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras36 mugford expressions in their post-instruction answers. for reasons of space, only a limited number of examples with much edited comments from the students can be offered. in the following example, the learner argued that the post-instruction request to hand in work late was an improvement: pre: excuse me, mr. klemz i couldn’t finish my homework because it seems difficult to me, is there a problem if i give it to you later? post: i know you don’t like to receive homework after the date you specified. could you give me the opportunity to give you the homework later? the student argued that the post-instruction response reduces possible annoyance factors behind the request with “i know you don’t like to receive” and through the use of the modal could. in the following example, also asking to hand in work late, the post-instruction response shows more consideration and indirectness: pre: morning teacher, i couldn’t hand my homework on time because i couldn’t print it correctly, could you give me an extension? post: i know that you don’t like to receive homework late but i would like to ask you for an extension because i had some issues and i couldn’t deliver it. the post-instruction response is less imposing on the teacher with “i know that you don’t like…” and the use of the modality “i would like…” by comparison, the pre-instruction response fails to demonstrate sufficient consideration or the option to refuse. in both cases, the post-instruction responses appear to recognise the status of the teacher and give him/her due recognition through the use of formulaic expressions that demonstrate indirectness and tentativeness. when asking for help from another student, the students showed more consideration in the postinstruction responses and gave the respondents more options to comply as can be seen in the following example: pre: hey, i really try but i haven’t understood anything these two weeks, can you help me to catch up? post: excuse me, it is really difficult for me to understand the teacher, and i see that you are really good at it. could you help me and explain me the most important topics so far? the post-instruction response begins with the alerter (“excuse me”), an explanation (“it is really difficult for me…”) and an attempt to make the hearer feel good (“i see that you are really good at it”). this signals an improvement over the pre-instruction response which is more imposing, direct, and offers few options to refuse. the progress of some learners was more noticeable than others. i was less interested in seeing learners achieve target-language accuracy and more in expecting an improvement in their own terms. for instance, in the following example there was an overall improvement since the request showed more optionality even if the basic request stayed the same: pre: hello, can you help me out with the class please? post: hey, ismael, can you help me out with the class? whenever you have free time, i’d appreciate it. in this example, the learner did not change his request for help which may still be seen as demanding, but at least there was an attempt at consideration with “whenever you have free time” and a display of gratitude with “i’d appreciate it”. whilst the post-instruction responses may not reflect target-language requests, they do reflect an improvement over the initial attempts and, more importantly, communicatively offer more chances of success. conclusion the learners were given the opportunity to critically examine their own answers and reach their own conclusions regarding pragmalinguistic and sociopragmatic appropriateness and acceptability. whilst the post-instruction responses can still be improved on grammatically and pragmatically, they reflect the first step in raising efl learners’ awareness regarding their use 37profile vol. 19, no. 2, july-december 2017. issn 1657-0790 (printed) 2256-5760 (online). bogotá, colombia. pages 29-39 formulaic language and efl requests: sensitive wording at the right time of the target language. as a teaching mode, it promotes and encourages learner-centred understanding and development of language use and could be applied to other speech acts, for instance, complaining, disagreeing, and making excuses where it is important to come across in appropriate and acceptable ways. i have answered my research question in that the teaching and learning of formulaic expressions can help efl users come across in more appropriate and acceptable ways when making requests. this can be achieved by developing the learners’ knowledge and use of pragmalinguistic and sociopragmatic resources. furthermore, formulaic language provides foreignlanguage users with ready-made pre-fabricated expressions (nattinger & decarrico, 1992) so that they have a much greater chance of achieving their communicative objectives. references aijmer, k. (1996). conversational routines in english: convention and creativity. london, uk: longman. bachman, l. f. (1990). fundamental considerations in language testing. oxford, uk: oxford university press. brown, p., & levinson, s. (1987). politeness: some universals in language usage. cambridge, uk: cambridge university press. canale, m. (1983). from communicative competence to communicative language pedagogy. in j. c. richards & r. w. schmidt (eds.), language and communication (pp. 2-27). london, uk: longman. carter, r. (1998). vocabulary. london, uk: routledge. carter, r., & mccarthy, m. (1997). exploring spoken english. cambridge, uk: cambridge university press. cohen, a. d., & ishihara, n. (2010). describing speech acts: linking research and pedagogy. in n. ishihara & a. d. cohen (eds.), teaching and learning pragmatics (pp. 56-74). harlow, uk: longman. dörnyei, z. (2007). research methods in applied linguistics. oxford, uk: oxford university press. goffman, e. (1967). interaction ritual: essays on face-to-face behaviour. garden city, us: anchor / doubleday. ishihara, n. (2010). class observation and teaching demonstrations. in n. ishihara & a. d. cohen (eds.), teaching and learning pragmatics (pp. 123-144). harlow, uk: longman. kasper, g., & rose, k. r. (2001). pragmatics in language teaching. in k. r. rose & g. kasper (eds.), pragmatics in language teaching (pp. 1-10). cambridge, uk: cambridge university press. http://doi.org/10.1017/ cbo9781139524797.003. lakoff, r. (1973). the logic of politeness: or minding your p’s and q’s. in c. corum, t. c. smith-stark, & a. weiser (eds.), papers from the 9th regional meeting of the chicago linguistic society (pp. 292-305). chicago, us: chicago linguistic society. leech, g. (1983). principles of pragmatics. london, uk: longman. leech, g. (2014). the pragmatics of politeness. oxford, uk: oxford university press. http://doi.org/10.1093/acprof :oso/9780195341386.001.0001. locastro, v. (2012). pragmatics for language educators: a sociolinguistic perspective. new york, us: routledge. márquez reiter, r. (1997). linguistic politeness in britain and uruguay: a contrastive study of requests and apologies. amsterdam, nl: john benjamins. martínez-flor, a., & usó-juan, e. (2011). research methodologies in pragmatics: eliciting refusals to requests. elia, 11, 47-87. nattinger, j. r., & decarrico, j. s. (1992). lexical phrases and language teaching. oxford, uk: oxford university press. spencer-oatey, h. (2008). face, (im)politeness and rapport. in h. spencer-oatey (ed.), culturally speaking: managing rapport through talk across cultures (pp. 12-47, 2nd ed.). london, uk: continuum. thomas, j. (1983). cross-cultural pragmatic failure. applied linguistics, 4(2), 91-112. http://doi.org/10.1093/ applin/4.2.91. universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras38 mugford thornbury, s., & slade, d. (2006). conversation: from description to pedagogy. cambridge, uk: cambridge university press. http://doi.org/10.1017/cbo9780511733123. widdowson, h. g. (1989). knowledge of language and ability for use. applied linguistics, 10(2), 128-137. http://doi. org/10.1093/applin/10.2.128. widdowson, h. g. (1990). aspects of language teaching. oxford, uk: oxford university press. wray, a. (2008). formulaic language: pushing the boundaries. oxford, uk: oxford university press. about the author gerrard mugford works at universidad de guadalajara, mexico, and holds a phd from the institute of education, university of london. his current research interests include critical pedagogy, interpersonal language use, and linguistic politeness. 39profile vol. 19, no. 2, july-december 2017. issn 1657-0790 (printed) 2256-5760 (online). bogotá, colombia. pages 29-39 formulaic language and efl requests: sensitive wording at the right time appendix: discourse completion texts • you have started studying a foreign language and you find it difficult to keep up with the rest of the class. finally, you ask a classmate as you are desperate for some help. what would you say? • you have to give a powerpoint presentation to your work colleagues and your laptop is not working for some reason. a colleague has a laptop and you urgently need to borrow it. what would you say to him/her? • there is an important mid-semester examination coming up. for personal reasons, you cannot take the exam that day. you need to ask the teacher, whom you do not know very well, if you can do the exam on another day. you know the teacher doesn’t usually allow this but you think this is a special case. what would you say to him/her? • you have to submit your homework by e-mail. you have saved it on a usb. a friend has a computer with an internet connection. what would you say to him/her? • at school, you have booked a lab computer for 2:00 p.m. it is now 2:10 p.m. and the user, whom you do not know, is still using it. what would you say to him/her? • you need to ask a teacher, whom you do not know very well, for an extension to hand in your homework late. what would you say to him/her? • you are new at school and you can’t find the library. you have already asked your teacher once. how would you ask him/her for directions a second time? • you are in a class which you are finding difficult to understand. at the end of the second week, you ask another student for help. what would you say? 159profile vol. 14, no. 1, april 2012. issn 1657-0790. bogotá, colombia. pages 159-172 the english as a foreign language / lingua franca debate: sensitising teachers of english as a foreign language towards teaching english as a lingua franca el debate del inglés como lengua extranjera o como lengua franca: sensibilización de docentes de inglés como lengua extranjera hacia la enseñanza del inglés como lengua franca gillian mansfield* university of parma, italy franca poppi** university of modena and reggio emilia, italy the function of english as a lingua franca for communication needs rethinking in the teaching of english as a foreign language classroom as a consequence of globalisation. the present contribution is an empirical study carried out in an italian university environment which aims to show how teachers should take on board awareness raising activities in the recognition of other varieties of english which, albeit not exploited as benchmarks for language testing and certification, must nevertheless boast a relevant place in the global scenario. this can be achieved in practical terms by interrogating an expressly made corpus of chinese english news texts and carrying out simple concordance activities. key words: awareness raising, concordances, english as a foreign language, english as a lingua franca, globalisation. debido a los procesos de globalización, la función del inglés como herramienta internacional o como lengua franca para la comunicación exige un replanteamiento de la enseñanza del inglés como idioma extranjero. en este artículo se presenta un estudio empírico llevado a cabo en un contexto universitario italiano que pretende mostrar cómo los docentes deberían desempeñar actividades para facilitar el reconocimiento de otras variedades del inglés que, al no ser utilizadas como modelos de evaluación y certificación lingüística, exigen en cambio una mayor atención en el escenario global. en la práctica, esto puede realizarse analizando un corpus específico de textos periodísticos en inglés chino y llevando a cabo actividades sencillas de concordancias. palabras clave: concordancias, inglés como lengua extranjera, inglés como lengua franca, facilitación del reconocimiento, globalización. * e-mail: gillian.mansfield@unipr.it ** e-mail: franca.poppi@unimore.it this article was received on june 30, 2011, and accepted on november 2, 2011. universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras160 mansfield & poppi introduction the worldwide spread of english is just one of the many different developments subsumed under the general phenomenon of globalisation. it is furthermore associated with boundless mobilities and, as such, is the language of globalisation (gnutzmann & intemann, 2008, p. 9). if, on the one hand it is true that language is a vital commodity in the globalised world, it is on the other also true that globalisation raises issues for second language learning and teaching. as a result, the function of english as an international tool or as a lingua franca (elf) for communication needs rethinking in the english as a foreign language (efl) classroom. this does not only require that teachers help their students develop the linguistic skills needed to understand various kinds of accents and in turn be understood by others, but it also paves the way for an enhanced awareness of the existence of non-native speakers all over the world who use english as a means of communication. with this in mind, it is essential that teachers respond appropriately (and pragmatically) to equipping their students with the skills needed in the face of cultural and linguistic differences emerging between interactants in an international context, as, for example, mauranen (2006) has highlighted in her study of misunderstanding and repair strategies in elf communication. the present contribution is an empirical study which investigates how instances of written elf can be used to make efl teachers come to terms with the concept of the other; in particular, the other with respect to the standard (british or american) english model, object and target of an institutional teaching syllabus. this otherness exists in its own right and as a natural consequence of cultural and sociolinguistic realities in other parts of the world. thanks to developing technology and the widespread availability of documents, teachers are now in a position to access and save in electronic format –assembled as a general or specific corpus and which they can subsequently interrogate– a large amount of authentic english data from all corners of the world. this innovative means of retrieving and investigating information about the language has clear implications for future teacher training courses and the updating of efl teaching methodology. the work we present is supported by corpus evidence provided by a collection of articles from the on-line version of the china daily newspaper, published in china, a country belonging to kachru’s (1985) expanding circle1. the aim of our analysis is two-fold, both purposes linked to each other like a pair of stepping stones: 1) to sensitise teachers of the existence of different englishes around the world, which represent the voices and interests of different non-native speakers in their sociolinguistic and cultural uses of the language by identifying unfamiliar or even inventive lexicogrammatical features that appear in the corpus; 2) to propose an analytical framework that can be applied to any variety of texts in order to enhance efl teaching methodology. thus we emphasize that the main aim of this paper does not lie in an attempt to investigate how much regularity/stability there actually is in the use of a standard form of english (efl), but simply to raise awareness and acceptance of other englishes. from a contextual point of view, the paper will first provide some background information on the italian university teaching context, and then focus on some of the main issues prevalent in the efl and elf debate. after a description of our objectives, methods and materials, preliminary data will be provided from a small-scale case study, carried 1 regarding the englishes spoken around the world, kachru devised a three circle concentric model inner, outer and expanding. 161profile vol. 14, no. 1, april 2012. issn 1657-0790. bogotá, colombia. pages 159-172 the english as a foreign language / lingua franca debate: sensitising teachers of english... out on a corpus of articles from the on-line version of the china daily newspaper. results from this study will serve as a possible instance of good practice for teachers in creating awareness-raising activities for themselves (and consequently their students), such as interrogating a corpus of articles from the above-mentioned newspaper (or indeed others) and investigating unfamiliar localised forms that may be identified (with respect to the standard language) by means of a simple concordancing software2. the italian educational context at present english is the dominant language in the educational sector in italy, as all over the rest of europe, where it is primarily taught as the first foreign language and almost totally efl biased, where accuracy is considered to be the norm, be it regarding productive skills in either the written or the spoken code. native and non-native speakers alike demand allegiance to and achievement of the native speaker standards; neither pronunciation nor general written works are allowed to present any l1 interference. moreover, efl teaching institutions (in secondary and further education) design their courses often to match the requirements of international examination boards such as the university of cambridge english for speakers of other languages (esol), who base their examinations on the descriptors of the common european framework of reference (cefr)3. this design is also confirmed 2 the software used in this particular case was the freely downloadable concapp. 3 the common european framework of reference is available at: http://www.coe.int/t/dg4/linguistic/source/framework_en.pdf. it is a document that consists of a series of levels (a1, a2, b1, b2, c1, c2) across five language strands – listening, spoken interaction, spoken production, reading and writing. it has been designed with adult language learners/users, as well as self-assessment in mind. it has the benefit of not being specific to any country or context and offers a continuum for identifying language proficiency within a self-assessment grid. by requirements in both academic and other professional circles where international certifications such as esol (first certificate english, cambridge advanced and proficiency) and (test of english as a foreign language) toefl4 attest the non-native speaker’s ability to produce native speaker-like language and are seen as a kind of valid visiting card or key qualification on a curriculum vitae. in the particular case of italy, university degree syllabuses look to and apply the cefr for benchmark levels of students’ competences, where an “accurate” b1 is required of non-language specialists reading for degrees in disciplines ranging from the sciences to the humanities, and a highly desirable c1-c2 for language specialists. interestingly enough, esol covers a less specific 130 countries around the world while on the toefl site5, reference is made to acceptance in the inner circle countries (kachru, 1985). both sites thus imply, rather short-sightedly, that both british and american standards are the only acceptable norms on a worldwide scale. indeed, what is emerging (seidlhofer, 2008, p. 169) with some clarity is that in view of the present globalisation through english and of english, insistence on a ‘monochrome’ native-speaker standard has now become an anachronism that inevitably leads to some confusion in the discourse of and about linguistics and language teaching which manifests itself in a number of contradictions and discrepancies. what we need is a critical appraisal of language use and language teaching analogous to what we find in other areas of english study, and a fostering 4 while toefl does not take the cefr into consideration it likewise establishes the strict criteria candidates need to satisfy in order to achieve a particular level of competence. the toefl test measures your ability to use and understand english at the university level. and it evaluates how well you combine your listening, reading, speaking and writing skills to perform academic tasks. http://www. ets.org/toefl/. 5 see above. universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras162 mansfield & poppi of language awareness in the true sense of the word with regard to how language functions in social contexts of use. to be able to move forward, it is necessary for teachers to take on board the present reality which does not rely on the hegemony of the norm-based standard english, be it the british or the american model. while noting the increasing need for a lingua franca, which english may provide, seidlhofer (1997, p. 54) highlights its repercussions on the teaching of english: [this constellation of factors] creates the opportunity to use the teaching of english, from early schooling onwards, as an integrative force equipping young people with two crucial assets simultaneously: the instrumental one of access to a lingua franca, and the educational one of fostering language awareness.6 this move forward will have no chance of survival unless, as seidlhofer (1997, p. 54) affirms, “teacher education is carefully re-evaluated, rethought, and re-formed”, implying that teachers, both native and non-native speakers of english, must no longer simply teach what they themselves were taught to do and how to teach it in their teacher training courses. seidlhofer (1997) supports her claim by proposing a rather useful analogy with other areas of life, such as healthcare: while there are sound arguments and great demands for various forms of ‘alternative medicine’, most doctors still rely exclusively on a repertoire of drugs and surgery simply because this is what they were taught in medical school. genuine change in healthcare can only come in the wake of changes in medical training. (p. 54) such a claim is still relevant more than ten years on and needs to be applied, in our opinion, more extensively in the italian university system. furthermore, it is also our view that undergraduates reading for language degrees come to 6 bold in original. changed to italics here. the university under the false impression that they will be learning the language rather than about the language. hence, teachers must set themselves the task of helping students to overcome an initial difficulty in adjusting to more theory-oriented investigative lessons that focus not on the form of the language but its particular meaning and function in the speech context. this confirms the general consensus among scholars reported by jenkins (2006, p. 173) on the importance of language awareness on the part of teachers, teacher trainers and educators in all three circles, and the need for them, together with their students, “to learn not (a variety of english), but about englishes, their similarities and differences, issues involved in intelligibility (the strong link between language and identity, and so on)”. indeed, it is this conviction that triggered the suggested awareness-raising activities proposed in the latter part of this contribution, for the very reason that language teachers must move away from viewing the nonnative language as if operated in a social void. it is vital to realize the essential fact that language is, above all, a social creation and that communication is a social act. in most communities the speakers’ status depends on their linguistic abilities; their intelligence, personality and even value as human beings may all be judged according to their style of speaking. because of these factors, a socially oriented linguistics is unquestionably of immediate and practical relevance to non-native language learners; sociolinguistic research and themes must be integrated into l2 courses. (loveday, 1982, p. 176) efl vs elf teachers must come to terms with the fact that university students will be confused by what is meant by efl and elf. for them the acronyms might seem synonymous, since their practical language studies go under the name of efl, yet what learners are required to do is to make use of their 163profile vol. 14, no. 1, april 2012. issn 1657-0790. bogotá, colombia. pages 159-172 the english as a foreign language / lingua franca debate: sensitising teachers of english... institutional language training to carry out prospective future language activities in the outside “international” world. consequently, for the uninitiated italian student, efl and elf could mean one and the same thing, but it should be made clear that in the italian language learning environment at least, the “variety” taught is only one, and more importantly, not necessarily “the one” they will encounter in other non-native speakers of english from other nations. furthermore, in many italian university english departments, we are faced with a somewhat schizophrenic situation: while on the one hand, in all parts of the course of studies except practical language classes (i.e. cultural studies, literary studies, linguistics and language education) we celebrate multiculturalism, pluricentrism, post colonial ‘writing back’, language variation and change and pluri-and multilingualism, on the other, the ideal, as far as language proficiency is concerned, is very much that of a usually monolingual native speaker of standard english. as we have already implied, the spread of english has an ambivalent character: it is a lingua franca necessary for international communication and it is a vehicle for the spread of a culture influenced by the united states of america and, to a lesser extent, western europe. the term “spread” is of the utmost significance and used in contrast to the potentially synonymous “distribution” as explained by widdowson in his dichotomy of the two terms (“distribution denies spread”, 1997, p. 140). neither do we intend the transplantation of a standard form of british or american english according to a phenomenon of “macdonaldisation” or franchising of pizza hut and kentucky fried chicken around the world. teachers should get their students aware that, paradoxically, aiming at native-like command of the language may even prove counterproductive and discouraging in successful elf communication, especially in consideration of the risk of unilateral idiomaticity, while it will make efl communication more rewarding psychologically. native speaker varieties, therefore, might be considered to be ‘unrealistic standards’ and consequently unreachable goals for non-native learners who need the language for different purposes than do native speakers. non-native speakers have to be intelligible to other non-native speakers as most of them will never communicate with a native speaker of english. as a consequence, it will be the task of efl teachers to help their students develop common pragmatic strategies of achieving reciprocal understanding.7 awareness raising awareness raising means incorporating into the learning curriculum a familiarity with other realities that students are more than likely to meet in any of the inner, outer and extended circles, of which they may themselves become a permanent or temporary member once they have left their formal learning environment. while it is indeed not difficult for students to envisage interacting with native speakers in a native-speaker environment e.g. london or new york, teachers must realise that efl training does not prepare their students to cope with the pragmatic difficulties of communicating with other non-native speakers like themselves in paris, milan, and singapore according to the professional activity they take up after graduating. as jenkins (2006, p. 173) aptly claims, awareness raising fits well with another area of broad agreement among we’s (world englishes) and elf researchers: 7 see studies by mauranen (2006), seidlhofer, breiteneder and pitzl (2006) on misunderstanding and repair strategies between non-natives. universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras164 mansfield & poppi the need for a pluricentric rather than monocentric approach to the teaching and use of english. this approach, it is believed, would enable each learner’s and speaker’s english to reflect his or her own sociolinguistic reality, rather than that of a usually distant native speaker. this has direct consequences when it comes to setting the objectives for l2 learners who happen to be living in inner circle environments: “the critical question to ask is, with whom do l2 speakers of english (want to) interact? this is a crucial question for tesol countries such as the united states and the united kingdom, but one that is rarely asked” (jenkins, 2006, p. 173). it seems that it is just taken for granted that learning activities will simulate face to face interaction with a native speaker standing opposite, or “at the other end of the line”. the transition from efl speaker to elf user should be clear in the minds of the efl teachers who will no longer look then to the benchmark levels of competence as the only objectives of their language teaching. acceptance and recognition of such a transition will be proof that they themselves have become advocators of awareness raising and that they are in a position to transmit it to their students. indeed, it is with this dichotomy in mind that we suggest greater and more constant attention should be paid by the teacher not just to language competence according to the native speaker norm, but to exposure to other varieties that are becoming more prominent in the world today. for this reason we decided to create an example corpus of world english to make our point. the choice fell on chinese english as represented in the china daily online newspaper, but the analytical framework that we devised could be used according to individual interest or curiosity regarding any other particular variety. methods, objectives and materials as we have attempted to stress so far, questions about the relationship between elf and efl, particularly their impact on the english language classroom, must be addressed in view of learning objectives. while there is no getting away from the fact that any teaching requires the definition of goals and objectives i.e. something that the teaching and learning is directed at (in pedagogical terms, prescription), learning goals in language teaching have traditionally been formulated with reference to standard language (seidlhofer, 2008, p. 159) as we have highlighted in previous paragraphs. what we, as seidlhofer (2008, p. 168), are advocating is not a rejection of all norms and standards, but a reappraisal of their justification. particular attention should be paid to such issues as communication, accommodation and identity formation. there is no thoroughly described –let alone institutionalised– variety of efl as yet and so it is not possible to teach and learn it, yet necessary to recognise it. as widdowson (2003) puts it, “linguistic description cannot automatically meet pedagogic requirement” and it would therefore be wrong to assume that “findings should directly and uniquely inform what is included in language courses” (p. 106). language teachers should thus refer to, but not defer, linguists. in light of the above considerations, the present study has been devised with the main aim in mind of raising teachers’ and subsequently students’ awareness of the existence of several englishes and not just the standard one on which their institutionalised learning is based. accordingly, the present writers have devoted their focus of attention to articles published in the china daily, the only national english-language daily newspaper distributed in china. headquartered in beijing, 165profile vol. 14, no. 1, april 2012. issn 1657-0790. bogotá, colombia. pages 159-172 the english as a foreign language / lingua franca debate: sensitising teachers of english... with bureaus in shanghai and guangzhou, and a web site (www.chinadaily.com.cn) that projects 6 million hits a day, china daily has long been the prime news source for foreign businessmen, diplomats, and academics engaged in china. the newspaper has a world-wide readership, as it is distributed in 150 countries. the corpus includes 130 articles from the local news section, collected over a period of two years (2006 and 2007) totalling about 100,000 tokens and 9,100 types. media language in general never fails to present a rich source of material for awareness raising activities; newspapers in particular offer numerous written text types worthy of study as confirmed by kachru’s analyses (1992, pp. 309-311) on headline language, matrimonial advertisements, obituaries in south asian newspapers, which illustrate what he calls variety specific “meaning” in deviation. he notes how a native speaker of english, who is not familiar with the cultural and linguistic pluralism in south asia, would consider these language varieties deviant and/or erroneous from a lexical, collocational and semantic point of view. corpus collection is indeed becoming a more frequent kind of activity which teachers themselves can carry out with specific tasks in mind for their students, rather than relying on readymade, more generalised reference corpora (e.g. the british national corpus; the bank of english) for the simple tasks of meaning searches as well as lexico grammatical patterns. o’keeffe, mccarthy and carter (2007) emphasise the relevance of corpora to language teaching materials, writers, course designers and language teachers and the pedagogical relevance of corpus findings in terms of understanding the vocabulary needs of language learners. recent research (anderson & corbett, 2009) has more particularly addressed the exploration of english with online corpora, suggesting numerous activities for students to explore the lexis, grammar, discourse and pronunciation of given text types and genres. more recently still, mansfield and poppi (in press) suggest ways in which students can also be encouraged to create their own specialised corpora to pursue investigations into areas of particular interest (e.g. evaluative adjectives on promotional websites, discourse markers, use of personal pronouns in political speeches, and so on). from the above, a clear development can be traced in methodological procedure with an emphasis on authenticity of materials and research purpose, whereby creative responsibility is gradually handed down /passed on from textbook writer to teacher, that is, from readymade authentic materials for teachers to exploit albeit with guidance, to authentic material that they collect themselves for their students. these can either be tasks searching for recurrences of linguistic phenomena in a more norm-directed context by means of generalised reference corpora, or those that will highlight the kinds of linguistic variety that emerge from the china daily corpus devised for the present study. redressing the balance in course objectives teachers should take into account not only the short-term objectives of their courses (the achievement of a certain level of competence in some or all of the language skills that match the norm-based efl inner circle standards of learning the language), but also long-term ones, which should reflect the reality of the world outside the institutional environment and the actual use or performance of english in a myriad of circumstances/situations, that is, also by learning about the language. one objection from elf scholars to the standardised forms of international examinations is that they clearly aim to test the standard norm (british english for cambridge esol and american english for toefl) and consequently require universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras166 mansfield & poppi candidates to produce as near as possible native speaker competence in the contextualised task they are set. we would suggest that this is a form of “tunnel vision” on the part of examination boards. indeed, little or no space is allowed for the presentation of “non-standard” or more localised varieties of english in the written texts used for comprehension. as far as receptive skills are concerned, while varieties in accent (british, american, australian, scottish, etc.) in the listening comprehension section may be included, the same cannot be said of the content of written documents, which will remain within the bounds of the standard structural, lexical and pragmatic forms. therefore, in an age where teaching and testing are so clearly dependent on each other, the one justifying the relevance and existence of the other, as it would appear above, it is high time that we started proposing new contents in the efl learning programme (also in view of possible future assessment at the end of the learning process) that truly reflect both the productive and receptive skills of non-native speakers of english, skills that they are likely to need in the world of global communication. as far back as 1982 kachru8 was already advocating a certain awareness on the part of the language trainer in devising a particular methodological and attitudinal approach that would incorporate the following points into the language syllabus, and which are applicable to the kind of sensitizing we are advocating for our italian students, many of which are retrievable from the corpus collected: 1. sociolinguistic profile: an overview of english in its world context with discussion of selected major varieties, their users and uses. a clear distinction to be made between the use of 8 the text referred to is the 1992, 2nd edition, pp. 360-361. english in a monolingual society, as opposed to a multilingual society; and its implications (e.g. code mixing, code switching). 2. variety exposure: an exposition of the repertoire of major varieties of english, native and non-native: their uses and users, specific texts related to various interactional contexts, shared and non-shared features at different linguistic levels. 3. attitudinal neutrality: for teaching purposes, one might focus on one specific variety and at the same time emphasise awareness and functional validity of other varieties. 4. range of uses: the functional appropriateness of the lectal range of varieties within a specific variety (e.g. from educated varieties to pidgins and basilects). 5. contrastive pragmatics: the relationships of discoursal and stylistic innovations and their relationships to the local conventions of culture (e.g. strategies used for persuasion, phatic communion, apologies, condolences, regrets). 6. multidimensionality of functions: the linguistic implications of the functional range as in, for example, the media, literary creativity, administration, and the legal system. it is worth mentioning here various studies carried out in europe in general concerning the acceptance of native speaker norms both on the part of the teacher and the learner. as far as the latter is concerned, timmis (2002) carried out a survey on 400 english students in 14 different countries which revealed that it was the learners themselves who were highly oriented to achieving a native-speaker competence. on the other hand, murray (2003, p. 160) revealed that swiss non-native teachers (more than native speakers teaching in switzerland) were not inclined to accept a model based on european lingua franca 167profile vol. 14, no. 1, april 2012. issn 1657-0790. bogotá, colombia. pages 159-172 the english as a foreign language / lingua franca debate: sensitising teachers of english... english, probably due to the fact that they had invested heavily themselves in near-native speaker competence and did not wish to see their achievement devalued. in the italian situation, with examination-oriented teaching requiring specific competences, and students requiring recognition of language achievement in the form of certification, there appears to be no escaping the fact that the emphasis is still predominantly on the nativespeaker norm. sample activities considering the relevance of identity in media texts, and in particular newspapers, it is always good practice for teachers to ask students to note the sociolinguistic elements peculiar to news texts, that is, linguistic features that indicate concepts such as identity, relevance and proximity (mansfield, 2005) with reference to readership. newspapers are written with a particular readership in mind; a national newspaper will cover both national and international newsworthy events, while a more local one will focus on more local events. it is interesting to note how local newspapers create a local identity relevant to its local readers who are identified in and through the way news is reported. from a qualitative study of several local newspapers in the county of yorkshire (united kingdom), mansfield (2005) noted how a local newspaper creates its own identity, of which it is also proud, as clearly indicated in the masthead (the yorkshire post: yorkshire’s national newspaper; the asian express: yorkshire’s no.1 asian newspaper). in the quantitative/qualitative analysis we propose here, teachers should invite students to observe similar newsworthy features of identity and relevance in the readers of the china daily and their particular implications and significance in the context of this national paper’s “local news sections”. the first step is to carry out a frequency sort of the types and tokens in the corpus. by scrolling down the list and leaving aside for the moment function words that are bound to be highly frequent (definite/indefinite articles, prepositions, etc.) it is possible to note the frequency of content words and also “unusual” tokens/types, whether they occur as singletons or are more recurrent, as the following analysis will show. this is the starting point for investigating the data. investigating features of identity a word frequency sort of the china daily corpus will highlight the number of times the possessive “china’s” occurs (259 occurrences 0.2711 %), as seen in the sample extract in figure 1. one preliminary investigation using the concordance would be to identify the right collocates to determine the “objects” of china’s possession. as the examples in figure 1 show, it can be seen that “china’s” collocates with “national” in n+1 and “defence” in n+2 position, revealing national priorities relating to defence and economy (china’s national defence policy, china’s national defence and armed forces; china’s national economic development). already emerging from this small sample are long noun groups with heavy premodification, which further investigation will confirm as a recurrent linguistic feature. in fact, there are numerous occurrences of china’s defence expenditure, china’s border and coastal defence, china’s gdp, and so on. it could be hypothesised then that this type of chinese english text will reveal a tendency to information packaging in noun phrases (e.g. china’s second-largest trading partner, china’s comparatively underdeveloped capital markets, china’s deepening reform and opening up to the outside world). universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras168 mansfield & poppi similar investigations could then be carried out on post-modification to discover a possibly similar phenomenon. elf users as agents of change scrolling down the frequency sort also reveals “unusual” lexical items, such as “surnamed” (41 occurrences 0.0429 %). an efl expert would naturally expect to find “named” or “called” relating to a person or people and indicate this as erroneous. a concordance will subsequently present all the 41 occurrences on the screen (figure 2). looking to the left of the keyword, the student can identify all the kinds of people, more or less specific (woman, figure 1. sample concordance of “china’s” right sort figure 2. sample concordance of “surnamed” right sort man, shanghai man, wildlife expert, dog’s owner) that are “surnamed”. returning to previous considerations on noun group structuring, we think it would be interesting to investigate pre-modification of other terms in what appears to be unusual noun groupings and expressions. such a case found in the frequency sort was the hyphened “left-at-home” which occurred 17 times (0.0178%); investigation then showed that a) it was always followed by the noun “children” and b) contextual features indicated references to demands, needs, helping of such children, thus relating to a socio-cultural factor prevalent in the lives of chinese families. 169profile vol. 14, no. 1, april 2012. issn 1657-0790. bogotá, colombia. pages 159-172 the english as a foreign language / lingua franca debate: sensitising teachers of english... this particular example may be discussed in terms of sinclair’s (2003) concept of semantic prosody as identified through corpus investigation: a corpus enables us to see words grouping together to make special meanings as to the reasons why they were chosen together. this kind of meaning is called semantic prosody; it has been recognised in part as connotation, pragmatic meaning and attitudinal meaning, but it rarely appears in reference works that do not derive their evidence from corpora. (p. 178)9 according to firth’s famous claim, “you shall know a word by the company it keeps” (1957, p. 11), an examination of the co-text around the key word (to the left or to the right) will give insights into 9 capitals in original. whether the term has positive or negative connotations. in the case of “left-at-home”, while we have seen that it is always followed by “children”, it is the other words surrounding it (help, want, needy) that contribute to suggesting a negative prosody (figure 3). national sociolinguistic impact sociolinguistic insights can be noted in other uses of “unusuality” in words or newly created terminologies coined to reflect the changing realities of china in recent years. an example that was again taken from the frequency sort was “informationization” (31 occurrences 0.0324%) with purely technological connotations (figure 4). figure 3. sample concordance of unusual pre-modification in noun groups “left-at-home children” figure 4. sample concordance of “unusual” words informationization (unsorted) universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras170 mansfield & poppi cultural impact likewise “harmonious society” appears as a frequent collocation (18 times – 0.018%) and catchphrase10 that is seen in the context of positive semantic prosody with the recurrence of noun and verb forms to do with building, establishing and creating a harmonious society. lines 2 and 3 also evidence premodification with “socialist”. on similar lines to the formation of abstract nominalisation (“informationalisation”) there is also a singleton in the corpus of “good-neighbourliness” (“it works to promote good-neighbourliness, mutual benefit and win-win”), which again is an unusual term relating to harmonious societies. so it can be seen that corpus investigations are a useful tool in order for the teacher to organise awareness raising activities that will stimulate students to reflect on the question of otherness. 10 the whole context of use is explained in one of the texts in the corpus: the catchphrase “harmonious society” first appeared in november 2002 in the report of the 16th cpc national congress, which discussed building a moderately prosperous society in the first 20 years of this century. in september 2004, “building a harmonious socialist society” was first put forward by the 16th cpc central committee at its fourth plenary session, and in 2005 president hu jintao addressed the topic in his keynote corpora are indeed a double-edged investigative tool for both teachers and learners in the sense that the teachers can use them to enhance their own awareness and also to introduce students to an awareness raising instrument and methodology that they themselves can be trained to apply in other varieties of elf. simple user-friendly concordancing software makes the task a fruitful one in terms of discovery learning. these activities also train teachers (and students in turn) to search beyond limited dictionary definitions which are not likely to come up with many of the above words and expressions in the particular contexts in which they have been examined in the examples. for this reason, it is our view that corpus investigation work provides a welcome means of best practice in teacher training and teaching methodology due to the wealth of insight it brings to elf. speech at the party school of the cpc central committee. in october 2006, the cpc identified the general requirements of “building a harmonious socialist society” as “democracy and the rule of law, equity and justice, honesty and fraternity, vigor and vitality, stability and order, and harmony between man and nature”. “the building of a harmonious society is a process of mass involvement and can only be achieved when every individual’s interest is respected and fulfilled,” wang says. figure 5. sample concordance of “harmonious society” noun group 171profile vol. 14, no. 1, april 2012. issn 1657-0790. bogotá, colombia. pages 159-172 the english as a foreign language / lingua franca debate: sensitising teachers of english... conclusions globalisation changes the conditions under which language teaching and learning take place. in this sphere, as in others, some of the most significant changes are economic. people have always learnt languages for economic reasons. some commentators have suggested that languages are coming to be treated as economic commodities, and that this view is displacing traditional ideologies in which languages were primarily symbols of ethnic or national identity. even without going as far as to claim that languages are nothing but commodities, however, we feel that the teaching of english at italian universities should accommodate students’ global needs for the language –most specifically the teaching of english as an international lingua franca and as a world possession (gupta, 1999). english language education should reflect the diversity of the language and prepare learners with the co-operative skills that they require in their daily lives. this approach would include more emphasis on pragmatic fluency (house, 2002), intercultural communicative competence (gnutzmann, 1999) and enhanced language awareness as the present study has tried to show. we have particularly wanted to show how in the re-visiting of any teacher training programmes it is essential to include awareness raising in the recognition of other varieties, which albeit not exploited as benchmarks for language testing and certification, must nevertheless boast a relevant place in the global scenario. this is the ultimate challenge that efl teachers have to meet if english language learning is to take concrete strides forward in today’s globalised world. references anderson, w., & corbett, j. (2009). exploring english with online corpora, an introduction. basingstoke and new york, ny: palgrave macmillan. firth, j. r. (1957). papers in linguistics 1934-1951. london: oxford university press. gnutzmann, c. (ed.) (1999). teaching english as a global language: native and non-native perspectives. tübingen: stauffenburg. gnutzmann, c., & intemann, f. (2008). introduction: the globalization of english. language, politics, and the english language classroom. in c. gnutzmann, & f. intemann (eds.), the globalisation of english and the english language classroom (2nd ed.) (pp. 9-24). tübingen: narr francke attempto verlag. gupta, a. f. (1999). standard englishes, contact varieties and singapore english. in c. gnutzmann (ed.), teaching and learning english as a global language: native and non-native perspectives (pp. 59-72). tübingen: stauffenburg verlag. house, j. (2002). developing pragmatic competence in english as a lingua franca. in k. knapp, & c. meierkord (eds.), lingua franca communication (pp. 245-267). frankfurt am main: peter lang. jenkins, j. (2006). current perspectives on teaching world englishes and english as a lingua franca. tesol quarterly, 40(1), 157-181. kachru, b. b. (1985). standards, codification and sociolinguistic realism: the english language in the outer circle. in r. quirk, & h.g. widdowson (eds.), english in the world: teaching and learning the language and literatures (pp. 11-30). cambridge: cambridge university press (with the british council). kachru, b. b. (1992). teaching world englishes. in b. b. kachru (ed.), the other tongue, english across cultures (2nd ed.) (pp. 355-365). urbana and chicago: university of illinois press. universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras172 mansfield & poppi loveday, l. (1982). the sociolinguistics of learning and using a non-native language. oxford, new york, ny: pergamon press. mansfield, g. (2005). small world? the foregrounding of identity, relevance and proximity in local news reporting. la torre di babele. rivista di letteratura e linguistica, 3, 225-243. mansfield, g., & poppi, f. (forthcoming). bridging the gap between the academic classroom and the professional world through the transfer of knowledge and skills. proceedings of clavier 2010 conference “transferring knowledge across disciplines and academic communities”, 29-30 june 2010. mauranen, a. (2006). signalling and preventing misunderstanding in english as lingua franca communication. int’l j. soc. lang, 177, 123-150. murray, h. (2003). swiss english teachers and euro english: attitudes to a non-native variety. bulletin suisse de linguistique appliqué, 77, 147-65. o’keeffe, a., mccarthy, m., & carter, r. (2007). from corpus to classroom. language use and language teaching. cambridge: cambridge university press. seidlhofer, b. (1997). rethinking teacher education: setting an agenda for applied linguistics. vienna english working papers, 6(2), 53-62. seidlhofer, b. (2008). standard future or half-baked quackery? descriptive and pedagogic bearings on the globalisation of english. in c. gnutzmann & f. intemann (eds.) the globalisation of english and the english language classroom (2nd ed.) (pp. 159-173). tüebingen: narr francke attempto verlag. seidlhofer, b., breiteneder, a., & pitzl, m. l. (2006). english as a lingua franca in europe: challenges for applied linguistics. annual review of applied linguistics, 26, 3-34. sinclair, j. (2003). reading concordances. london, new york, ny: pearson longman. timmis, i. (2002). native-speaker norms and international english: a classroom view. elt journal 56, 240-49. widdowson, h.g. (1997). eil, esl, efl: global issues and local interests. world englishes, 16(1), 135-146. widdowson, h. g. (2003). defining issues in english language teaching. oxford: oxford university press. about the authors gillian mansfield is associate professor of english language and translation at the university of parma. her research interests include discourse analysis, pragmatics and corpus linguistics with reference to the analysis and translation of media language texts. at present, she is researching the interactional features of verbal humour in the tv sitcom. franca poppi is associate professor of english language and translation at the university of modena and reggio emilia. her initial work was concerned with learner autonomy and advising in self-instruction, but she has since then concentrated on the linguistic, social and psychological dimensions of discourse analysis. her current research areas include, besides discourse analysis and language variation, inter cultural communication and the sociolinguistics of english as a lingua franca. 7profile vol. 14, no. 2, october 2012. issn 1657-0790 (printed) 2256-5760 (online). bogotá, colombia. pages 7-10 7 editorial if you’re a teacher researcher and you are sharing what you know, then you’ve found a voice for yourself.*1 welcome to this edition of the profile journal, which contains twelve articles with a variety of issues and perspectives. as we can see by its contents, all of the articles have had a steering force: the authors’ commitment to share what they know. their knowledge derives, in turn, from what they have studied, and what they have learned as a result of teaching, research and reflective processes. the quote above, taken from smiles and short (2006), sparks us to think about the role of teachers’ voices in different scenarios. first, we can witness in the authors’ decision to engage in publishing endeavours that they do not only want to find meaning to what they do and to keep knowledge for themselves. on the contrary, they are aware of the importance of making their understandings public through publishing so that they can add to the profession’s existing knowledge and, hopefully, interact with other practitioners sharing similar interests. second, participating in publication projects contributes to strengthening journals that have envisioned the possibility of giving a protagonist role to teachers who belong to different backgrounds, not only to the ones who are part of core or of the hegemonic countries that lead the production of reference literature and periodicals. third, sharing what we know through publishing gives us the opportunity to explore and develop our writing skills, to discover our own voice as writers. in regard to this, we have witnessed how some authors have submitted their works to our journal in two or three different editions. in other cases, we have also learned about the publication of their works in other periodicals and seen how they persevere in their attempt to make their voices heard. although none of the said roles is an easy task, profile maintains its resolution to serve as a forum for teachers and teacher-researchers to share their work, their reflections and thoughts with a wide audience like ours. let us take a look at the contents of this edition. in the issues from teacher researchers section we can read ten papers. first, the article by the colombian schoolteachers marlén rátiva velandia, andrés leonardo pedreros torres and mónica núñez alí provides an account of the action research they conducted in order to examine the role that some activities based on web materials had on the development of high school students’ reading skills. we can also get acquainted * smiles, t. l., & short, k. g. (2006). transforming teacher voice through writing for publication. teacher education quarterly, 33(3), 133-147. universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras8 cárdenas b. with the pedagogical procedures employed by the research team as well as the data gathered through the use of questionnaires, surveys and artifacts along the study. the following five articles address issues concerning english language teachers and shed light on implications for initial teacher education and professional development, among other areas. the article by darío luis banegas, from argentina, is an action research report about the insights of his personal research journal as part of a collaborative action research project he fostered in the secondary school where he taught english. the study, which involved other participating teachers, revealed information regarding the opportunities and tensions that emerged as a result of the participants’ roles and interests. in this paper, the reader can also find rich and varied sources that were used by the researcher and which can illuminate other studies following, in particular, the action research method. then we have the work authored by the colombian teacher-educators argemiro arboleda arboleda and ángela yicely castro garcés. they present the results of an investigation that examined how significant having a foreign accent is for non-native english as a foreign language teachers and learners at university level. the participants belonged to different countries and expressed their views by answering a questionnaire. they consider that it is important to have a native or native-like accent, but that this is not the most relevant qualification to teach a language, nor the sole criterion positively affecting learning. we continue with an article that focused on teachers’ perceptions of oral corrective feedback and their practice in english as a foreign language (efl) classrooms. edith hernández méndez and maría del rosario reyes cruz, from the mexican universidad de quintana roo, carried out a descriptive study whose results show that teachers in general have a positive perception of oral corrective feedback. they also concluded that unfocused oral corrective feedback and implicit strategies were predominant in practice; corrective feedback provided by the instructor is preferred to that provided by peers; and self-correction is the least popular form of correction. next comes the article by rosalba cárdenas ramos and fanny hernández gaviria, from universidad del valle in colombia. they gather the results of an exploratory investigation that inquired into colombian in-service teachers’ perspectives in relation to an opportunity to teach and learn standards in english. there we can read about the three teachers’ perspectives that emerged from the study: general considerations that underlie opportunities to learn; standards and conditions in educational institutions and other institutional factors such as human and material resources. understanding beliefs, teachers’ beliefs and their impact on the use of computer technology is the theme of the theoretical review authored by colombian teacher héctor alejandro galvis. he highlights key definitions and examines works regarding beliefs in education and english as a foreign language, their impact when inte grating technology, the effects of teachers’ beliefs on the use of technology, and models attempting to explain human behavior and the use of computers. as galvis expresses, 9profile vol. 14, no. 2, october 2012. issn 1657-0790 (printed) 2256-5760 (on line). bogotá, colombia. pages 7-10 editorial it is hoped that the article can be of interest to efl teachers and language program administrators. afterward, we can read the manuscript by érica gómez flórez, jorge eduardo pineda and natalia marín garcía, from colombia. they report the findings of a case study about efl students’ perceptions about a web-based english reading comprehension course developed in a public university. findings show that students have different opinions about the course, its content and objectives, its level of difficulty, the amount of time students invested in the course, adults’ learning, and the role of the teacher. subsequently we will find two articles concerned with assessment. in the first one, iranian teachers sasan baleghizadeh and zahra zarghami tell us about an experimental study that sought to examine the impact of conferencing assessment on university students’ learning of english grammar. as the authors explain, the results evidenced that the experimental group performed significantly better than the control group on a given post-test. likewise, the attitudes of the participants toward grammar learning in the experimental group significantly changed from the first administration of a questionnaire to its second administration. in the second article, colombian édgar picón jácome shares the findings of an action research project he conducted in a school located in the united states with the purpose of establishing the role of a teacher student partnership on writing assessment in promoting high school students’ autonomy. to do so, he used symbols as the form of feedback and a rubric containing criteria negotiated with the students as the scoring method. results showed that the students developed some autonomy and that in doing so, the role of the teacher was paramount. we close the first section of our issue with the article by ana maría correa díaz, from colombia. this author informs us about an investigation she led to explore the use of the moodle platform to teach foreign trade to university students who studied subjects in the english language in colombia. as can be read in it, the pedagogical processes contributed to the development of students’ writing, speaking and research competences in the target language as well as to their motivation, self-learning and the development of said competences. in the second section, issues from novice teacher researchers, we find the paper by laura verónica jiménez guamán. it is based on a descriptive and interpretative qualitative study she conducted in a public school in colombia as part of the last stage of her ba studies. in her article we can learn how a virtual community on facebook let her examine efl teenagers’ social identity. as pointed out by the author, the teenagers’ ways of expressing themselves were mainly manifested through conversations and posts and these, in turn, evidenced their social identity inside said community. in the last section, issues based on reflections and innovations, we have the article by leonard r. bruguier and louisa m. greathouse amador. the authors provide a description of an innovative course offered by four universities in canada, the united states, and mexico in order to broaden the understanding of indigenous and nonuniversidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras10 cárdenas b. indigenous peoples primarily in relation to identity. as can be read in the portrayal of their innovation and in the testimonies from some participants, the interactive and experiential nature of the course motivated students to reflect on their own identity and enhanced their intercultural competence. it also played a paramount role in the improvement of their english skills. i am sure this paper will contribute to our understanding of aspects such as international partnerships and intercultural awareness, among others. i do hope you find this second issue of profile 2012 interesting and useful. as always, i should acknowledge the hard work of the profile research group, who accompanies me in the various tasks we face day by day. our gratitude goes to the members of the advisory board and editorial and scientific committees too. their collaboration –despite their busy agendas in different parts of the world– is very much appreciated. finally, i wish to point out that we have continued updating our guidelines for authors so that they feel clearer about aspects taken into consideration concerning the submission and evaluation processes that make up part of our publication policies. they can be consulted in the contents of this issue as well as in our website. should you have any doubts when preparing your manuscripts, do not hesitate to contact us. as always, your comments and contributions are welcome! melba libia cárdenas b. journal editor 119profile vol. 16, no. 1, april 2014. issn 1657-0790 (printed) 2256-5760 (online). bogotá, colombia. pages 119-136 collaborative work as an alternative for writing research articles el trabajo colaborativo como alternativa para la escritura de artículos investigativos nancy emilce carvajal medina*1 universidad pedagógica y tecnológica de colombia, tunja, colombia eliana edith roberto flórez**2 universidad santo tomás tunja, colombia academic writing in english in our context is a significant aspect that can be innovative when a convergence model of writing stages is used along with collaborative work. this article reports on a study aimed at analyzing how collaborative work relates to undergraduate electronics students’ academic writing development in english as a foreign language at a colombian university, following some specific writing stages. field notes, students’ artifacts, and semi-structured interviews were the instruments used to gather information. the results showed that writing is achievable if students can follow stages and receive feedback from the teacher. additionally, collaborative work allowed students to write research articles in an easy and dynamic way. key words: academic writing, collaborative work, feedback. los escritos académicos en inglés, en nuestro contexto, representan un aspecto significativo que puede ser innovador cuando se usa un modelo de convergencia en las etapas de la escritura a través del trabajo colaborativo. en este artículo se presenta un estudio que buscó analizar cómo el trabajo colaborativo se relaciona con los escritos académicos que desarrollan en inglés los estudiantes de pregrado de ingeniería electrónica de una universidad colombiana, que seguían etapas específicas de escritura. para la recolección de la información se tuvieron en cuenta apuntes, escritos hechos por los estudiantes y entrevistas semi-estructuradas. los resultados muestran que la escritura es viable si los estudiantes siguen las etapas y reciben retroalimentación por parte del profesor. así mismo, el trabajo colaborativo permitió la escritura de artículos de investigación de una forma fácil y dinámica. palabras clave: escritos académicos, trabajo colaborativo y retroalimentación. * e-mail: n.carvajalmedina@email.wsu.edu.co ** e-mail: elianarbrt9@gmail.com how to cite this article (apa, 6th ed.): carvajal medina, n. e., & roberto flórez, e. e. (2014). collaborative work as an alternative for writing research articles. profile issues in teachers’ professional development, 16(1), 119-136. http://dx.doi.org/10.15446/profile.v16n1.36965. this article was received on february 1, 2013, and accepted on august 9, 2013. universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras120 carvajal medina & roberto flórez introduction this article aims at sharing the results of a research project based on collaborative work as a way to write research articles with undergraduate electronics students at universidad santo tomás (usta), a private university located in tunja, colombia. this project was carried out from 2011 until 2012. teaching writing in a foreign language, in this case english, is not an easy mission, and the need to write research articles in english in order to be socialized into other institutions or published in magazines is a great challenge. based on the previous statements, this current research proposed to observe and explore the ways students developed academic writing abilities. the prop os a l was est ablishe d b as e d on a pedagogical intervention in which collaborative work was applied in the electronics engineering program to a group of undergraduate students in their tenth semester. these students wrote research articles using topics related to their majors. the idea was to help participants find an enjoyable way to write research articles and to provide them with the appropriate writing input by following specific stages, modified according to the hyland model and the standards of the institute of electrical and electronics engineers (ieee). implementing collaborative work strategies was another goal of the intervention. statement of the problem after a questionnaire and a written exercise were administered to electronics engineering students, characteristics of their written production in english as a foreign language were identified. the analyses of these instruments showed that students recognized and used some english language structures and vocabulary. they also appeared to enjoy working in groups because they could achieve their academic goals more easily as a team. the participants in this project also mentioned that they wanted to write academic papers, such as research articles, in order to improve their writing skills. the written diagnosis exercise that was applied to the students reflected that when they read a text related to basic bioinstrumentation systems, they wrote the summaries in their own words based on this material. this written exercise allowed us to examine the ways that the learners used language, in terms of form and function, and what kinds of english technical vocabulary dominated their writing. when students created their written exercises, it was evident when they were struggling with certain items of writing, such as incoherent sentences, incorrect grammatical structures, a lack of connectors and punctuation marks, and the limited use of technical vocabulary, among others. this analysis showed that most of the students had difficulties in academic writing. based on the abovementioned aspects, the research question that guided this project was as follows: what does collaborative work among tenthsemester electronics engineering students at usta inform us about their academic writing development? research setting and participants context this research project took place at usta, a private catholic university in colombia. this institution was created in 1996 in tunja, and it aims at promoting the integral education of its students and staff based on the principles proposed by santo tomás de aquino. this university has approximately 2,500 students from a number of cities and towns throughout colombia. english as a foreign language is a mandatory subject in all academic programs at the university and constitutes a prerequisite for attaining any degree. students take five obligatory levels of english. participants the selected participants were a group of nine students in their tenth semester in the electronics 121profile vol. 16, no. 1, april 2014. issn 1657-0790 (printed) 2256-5760 (online). bogotá, colombia. pages 119-136 collaborative work as an alternative for writing research articles engineering faculty at usta: five men and four women. these students were not attending english classes because they had already completed the five required language levels. the main criterion for selecting english for specific purposes (esp) students was the type of english program they had experienced. additional criteria for selecting the participants came from the needs analyses and the students’ similar profiles and needs regarding writing in english. the engineer’s role an electronics engineer played a very significant role throughout this project when he helped students to use correct technical vocabulary and proper ieee standards and verified the appropriate contents of the articles. he was a great support in this project, sharing meaningful ideas that were considered by the students in their written compositions. the researchers’ role as researchers, we were participant observers throughout the entire process and were responsible for collecting data, watching interactions, taking notes, and evaluating and reflecting on the use of materials and the activities implemented. we focused our attention on writing activities—guiding the implementation process throughout the research project. literature review in this research, the main concern was to identify what collaborative work among students from electronics engineering could tell us about their academic writing development. in order to achieve this goal, it was necessary to contemplate five key issues: the definition of academic writing (research articles); the definition of esp; clarifying how collaborative work might be integrated into the development of this proposal; clarification of the ieee standards; and the importance of feedback in this research. academic writing and the ieee standards today, writing is a skill that is becoming essential in education because students and teachers share their ideas and academic outcomes through articles, books, and essays, among others. feng-checkett and checkett (2006) state that being able to write well and express yourself will help you throughout the rest of your life. there are at least three situations in which writing may take place most often: at school, at work, and at home. genesee (1994, p. 130) states that “writing is a language process in which the individual creates meaning by using symbols to construct a written text.” however, most efl students see writing as a tedious, complex, and time-consuming process. thus, students assume a reluctant attitude when writing in english. this fact leads us to consider the role teachers are playing when they guide the writing process. what opportunities are truly being offered in order to turn writing into a pleasure? how can the gap between writing and other language skills development be reduced? there is a need to break down barriers and build bridges towards making the writing process pleasant. coryell (2008, p. 5) affirms that, “writing is also a valuable tool for learning. when you write you must think extensively about your subject. when you write, you are likely to make new connections that you might not have made if you had not written about the subject.” thus, writing became a very important tool for the participants in this research, electronics engineering students, because it allowed them to share their research outcomes and explore their own viewpoints. by following a guided cooperative reflection and writing process, students began to unveil and understand the criteria for and implications of academic writing. rodríguez (2004, p. 28) affirms that the “academic writing process needs knowledge of forms and universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras122 carvajal medina & roberto flórez functions, but it also requires assuming academic commitment, responsibility, and discipline.” based on this definition, we would say that the use of collaborative work might produce positive interdependence that would permit students to develop these values. when students work in groups, they have the opportunity to realize what their roles are and how these roles may affect, in a positive or a negative way, the final written product and academic performance of the group. thus, academic writing demands time, effort, and permanent discipline. academic writing may be guided by guidelines such as the apa (american psychological association) or the mla and, in the case of electronics engineers, ieee. a convergence writing model was created based on the writing stages proposed by hyland (2003), the ieee standards, and some of the principles of cooperative work. on the one hand, hyland (2003, p. 15) points out that the writing process should develop “student’s abilities to plan a rhetorical problem, propose, and evaluate solutions.” he noted a number of stages to be followed in the writing process: first, selection of the topic by teachers or students; prewriting, including brainstorming and note taking; composing, putting ideas on paper; response to draft, the process in which teachers or peers comment on students’ ideas; revision, which includes refining ideas; followed by response to revisions, when the teachers respond to ideas, organization, and style; then, proofreading and editing, which include checking and correcting structures; evaluation, during which teachers evaluate the progress throughout the process; and publishing, which concerns circulation or presentation. figure 1 displays the stages described above. on the other hand, the ieee is the world’s largest professional association dedicated to advancing technological innovation and excellence for the benefit of humanity. ieee and its members inspire the global community through their frequently cited publications, conferences, technology standards, and professional and educational activities. ieee provides useful guidelines for electronic engineers to follow when they want to publish research outcomes. writing and submitting papers for publication are essential for electronics engineers and for undergraduate electronics engineering students. this group of students is taught english for specific purposes. currently, the process of teaching english as a foreign language is focused in many parts of the world on esp, defined as the teaching of english used in academic studies or professional purposes. duan and gu (2005) defined esp as a pedagogy in which the syllabus, contents, and methods are determined according to the needs of learners’ specialized subjects. students who want to learn esp should have basic knowledge of english and previous knowledge of their disciplines, because esp is generally designed for intermediate and/or advanced students. for instance, at usta, all of the students who belong to the different academic programs complete five english levels, and the final level is based on esp because it focuses on learners’ specialized subjects and therefore the contents are organized according to the students’ needs. thus, the figure 1. model of the writing process (hyland, 2003) selection of topic prewriting composing response to draft revising respond to revisions proofreading and editing evaluation publishing 123profile vol. 16, no. 1, april 2014. issn 1657-0790 (printed) 2256-5760 (online). bogotá, colombia. pages 119-136 collaborative work as an alternative for writing research articles participants in this project had already completed these levels of english, and they had previous knowledge about their specialized subjects in english. it would have been difficult to work with students who did not have basic knowledge of the english language and some technical vocabulary, an important reason to include esp during the development of this proposal. in this way, knowing the needs of a particular community allows teachers to make decisions in terms of the teaching approach to be implemented. in our case, we saw that cooperative work might support students’ academic writing practices. according to artz and newman (1990), cooperative work is seen as a small group of people who work as a team to solve a problem, complete a task, or achieve a common goal. in this research, by working cooperatively, engineering students discussed academic topics, generated ideas, found solutions to specific problems, made decisions, and established agreements and disagreements. additionally, more sympathetic relationships and a more positive work atmosphere began to emerge as part of the dynamics of group work. this cooperative work also permitted participants to activate their background knowledge in terms of biomedicine and english. finally, they wrote research articles, which are considered a positive social outcome. when developing a cooperative approach in an efl context, both teachers’ and students’ roles change. montecino and williams (2001) state that when people work together, they have to recognize the varying group roles. thus, during the writing process developed in the different workshops applied in this research, electronics engineering students and teachers held roles such as leader, encourager, harmonizer, compromiser, facilitator, monitor, and listener. subsequently, a model that comprised cooperative work and synthesized clear academic writing guidelines for electronics engineering students was a necessity at usta. that is how the convergence writing model emerged. the convergence writing model as previously mentioned, the convergence writing model was created considering the writing stages proposed by hyland (2003), the ieee standards, and some of the principles of cooperative work. the word “convergence” means the linking of two or more things that approach one specific goal—in this case, one writing stage is supported by the following ones. thus, the model created resembles a snail (figure 2). figure 2. the convergence writing model (cwm) second stage first stage generating ideas drafting third stage last stage improving quality final paper research article co ll aborative w o r k this model comprises four vigorous stages that will be presented as follows: • first stage: generating ideas—when students give ideas and opinions in order to select the topic on which to work. • second stage: drafting—in this stage, students are able to put ideas on paper. • third stage: refining and editing—when students have received feedback and comments from the teacher in order to better organize the information, which helps students check their mistakes and correct themselves. • last stage: final paper, improving quality— teachers and students carefully check the final documents before delivering them to be published. universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras124 carvajal medina & roberto flórez the electronics engineering students were positive and enthusiastic when they faced each one of the stages proposed, even when the writing process was not simple because it required training, practice, and careful planning to promote effective communication among the group participants during the entire process. one thing that may have contributed to this attitude was the feedback given. feedback feedback is one of the most common strategies teachers use to correct students’ performance. zeus and skiffington (as cited in arcas, 2004) define feedback as the way people give opinions or assess a person’s behavior. the electronics engineering students received constant written and oral feedback in order for them to self-reflect on their individual and group progress. feedback became a dialogue or interaction between the students and teachers. toward this end, the researchers used an error correction chart proposed by hedge (1988, see appendix). it contained different symbols and their related meanings. this tool allowed the participants in this project to be aware of their mistakes and to analyze if the mistakes were related to spelling, grammar, or sentence order, among others. the students discovered their mistakes, and then they corrected them on their own because they were familiar with the use of the codes. research method this research was developed using a qualitative approach. according to williams (2006), a qualitative approach is a general way of thinking about conducting qualitative research. it describes, either explicitly or implicitly, the purpose of the qualitative research, the role of the researcher(s), the stages of research, and the method of data analysis. additionally, a qualitative approach gathers information about human beings as related to people’s behaviors, beliefs, opinions, and interactions. based on the previous concept, this study was framed within this approach in that we established specific stages in order to apply the workshops and to conduct data collection and data analysis. moreover, we attempted to observe, analyze, and understand the behaviors, attitudes, and ways of thinking of the participants in this research, electronics engineering students. type of research this project was developed using an action research methodology. according to wallace (1998), action research is small-scale intervention in realworld functioning and the close examination of the effects of this intervention. moreover, wallace states that action research is situational because it is concerned with diagnosing a problem in a specific context and attempting to solve it in that context; it is usually collaborative, with teams of researchers and practitioners working together on a project. action research is participatory and self-evaluative in order to improve practice in one way or another. in this case, we identified a problem in a specific esp group, and two researchers designed a writing model that was presented in ten workshops. then, the data collected were analyzed in order to generate categories and conclusions. data collection instruments field notes, artifacts, and semi-structured inter views were the instruments used to gather infor mation. the field notes led us to take notes about how electronics engineering students interacted among themselves and with the teacher. they also allowed us to realize how the students’ research article writing processes were characterized. the artifacts provided information about the students’ writing progress, considering their processes from the beginning to the end. semi-structured interviews were used to 125profile vol. 16, no. 1, april 2014. issn 1657-0790 (printed) 2256-5760 (online). bogotá, colombia. pages 119-136 collaborative work as an alternative for writing research articles learn the participants’ opinions about the workshops that were implemented and how the proposed convergence writing model related to their academic writing processes. the interviews also attempted to learn how the collaborative work was perceived by the electronic engineering students. pedagogical design for the pedagogical design, we utilized relevant aspects from academic writing as well as the theory that lies behind collaborative work. the question that guided this study was: what does the implementation of workshops using the convergence writing model under the principles of collaborative work inform us about electronics engineering students’ writing processes at usta? the researchers designed and im plemented a new model for writing in ten workshops. the students who participated in this research had been developing projects considering contents related to biomedical instrumentation, and therefore, those topics were included in the workshops. table 1 depicts the activities implemented in each of the applied workshops. the first stage was a diagnosis to identify aspects of the students’ academic writing as well as the ways the participants worked in groups. subsequently, the researchers provided the participants the chronogram of the activities. prior to the implementation of the workshops, an introductory session was held in which the researchers created materials and activities to illustrate the main constructs to the participants and encouraged them to write through collaborative work. the researchers introduced and explained each of the writing stages based on the new model. similarly, they explained to the students the different activities they needed to complete, the amount of time they had for each task, the importance of feedback, and the decision to work in groups. the topics considered for developing the academic writing workshops that emerged from the research interests of the participants who were already settled in other subjects were: “design of a robot for brain surgery,” “design of a prototype to detect shapes to be used in brain surgery,” and “design of a robotic arm prototype oriented to surgical applications.” the development of the first workshop started with key constructs: academic writing and collaborative work. in this workshop, the students organized their teams, and the teacher-researchers gave them a short article in english based on electronics engineering topics. the students skimmed the full text and became aware of the importance of writing research articles in english. when the students were developing parts of the first and second workshops, they were asked to generate ideas (first stage: brainstorming session) and to create a mind map based on a picture given by the researchers. then in the third workshop, students began the second stage (drafting) of the new model, in which they were able to identify main and supporting sentences. in addition, they had a clear understanding of the six different parts of a research article: abstract, introduction, materials and methods, analysis of results, conclusions, and references. we organized activities to introduce the electronics engineering students to the research article writing process, including an explanation of how paragraphs should be developed, by providing samples from different sources and styles. for the initial compositions, the students considered the mind maps that they had previously created themselves and established the different roles each would play during the writing process. in order to support the step-by-step writing process, field notes were taken to monitor and verify how the activities made sense to students as well as to record impressions of conversations and interactions among project participants. in the fourth workshop, the learners studied connectors and how to link sentences and paragraphs. in the fifth workshop, an error analysis chart, taken universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras126 carvajal medina & roberto flórez table 1. workshops implemented in this project workshops activities workshop 1 cwm stage 1: generating ideas workshop 2 knowing about academic articles workshop 3 cwm stage 2: drafting composing sentences workshop 4 cwm stage 3: refining and editing providing tools workshop 5 learning about written academic articles in collaborative work collaborative work and writing activities the students developed a brainstorming activity based on a picture. they also applied skimming and scanning reading to a research article that was used as a model. the students shared ideas, and the full group created a mind map. they shared knowledge about the main topic and supporting sentences. they analyzed the structure of academic articles. the students began to organize ideas for an academic article taking into account main and supporting ideas. the students played different roles during the development of the activities implemented in the workshops. students began to familiarize themselves with the meanings of some of the connectors, and they wrote sentences with logical connectors. the students received their first comments from the teacher, and they grew accustomed to using error chart analysis. workshops activities workshop 6 refining and correcting workshop 7 gathering information workshop 8 cwm stage 4: improving quality editing final polishing writing the conclusion workshop 9 cwm stage 4: improving quality workshop 10 cwm stage 4: improving quality collaborative work and writing activities the students considered their mistakes and began the process of composing: writing and rewriting with the correct use of punctuation marks. the students made decisions related to the use of technical vocabulary. the students kept improving their written compositions and applied the ieee standards. the students submitted the final writing product. the students defended the written documents through oral presentations. 127profile vol. 16, no. 1, april 2014. issn 1657-0790 (printed) 2256-5760 (online). bogotá, colombia. pages 119-136 collaborative work as an alternative for writing research articles from hedge (1988), was presented and explained in order to guide students toward self-correction. in this way, students began to develop the third stage: refining and editing. students began to submit their first compositions and to receive feedback on form and content. they then had to improve their writing based on the comments provided by the teachers and the engineer who was in charge of the class. these comments emphasized the language students needed to master, the content or expressions they needed to clarify, the correct technical vocabulary, and the use of punctuation marks. all of these facts emerged in the sixth workshop. in the last workshops, students’ papers were returned so that they could make final adjustments in order to develop the final stage: improving quality. in addition, guidelines were given to the students in order to fulfill the standards established by the ieee. by the end of the exercise, the participants were able to complete the entire writing process following the stages established in the convergence model. findings different items, such as the research findings, were included in two main categories and five subcategories that arose from the current research project (see table 2). the main objective of this project was to analyze how collaborative work and the implementation of the convergence writing model related to undergraduate electronics engineering students’ academic writing development in english as a foreign language at usta. table 2. categories and subcategories established through the data analysis what does collaborative work among tenth-semester electronics engineering students at usta inform us about their academic writing development? sub-questions categories subcategories what features of collaboration are recurrent as electronics engineering students develop their academic writing skills? collaborative features: roles, values and a participatory environment • teamwork: a determinant of learners’ and teachers’ roles • values that emerged among participants as a result of cooperative writing practices • providing a confident environment strengthens students’ writing skills development and teamwork what does the implementation of a writing model reveal about undergraduate electronics engineering students’ academic writing development as they create their research articles? adapting a practical model of writing to strengthen students’ academic writing styles • a convergence writing model and linguistic features development • feedback as a way to raise students’ self-confidence in writing academic papers universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras128 carvajal medina & roberto flórez the grounded theor y approach was used to analyze the data collected. strauss and corbin (1990) state that this approach consists of a set of steps to formulate hypotheses based on conceptual ideas that guarantee a useful theory by creating categories based on the data gathered. in order to validate the findings of this study, we used methodological triangulation. collaborative features: roles, values, and a participatory environment this category answers the first sub-question of this project: what features of collaboration recur while electronics engineering students develop their academic writing skills? this category highlights how each group was characterized according to their performance, the different roles that each participant played during the research article writing process, and the values that were necessary to achieve common goals. this category also explains the relationships that emerged among students, their tutor-engineer and the teacher-researchers while the learners were working in the groups, and it also describes and analyzes the characteristics of cooperative work that emerged when the electronics engineering students worked together. from the aspects mentioned above, the following subcategories emerged. teamwork: a determinant of learners’ and teachers’ roles this subcategory refers to how the different activities developed by each of the groups, as they progressed through the different proposed writing stages, permitted the electronics engineering students to develop specific work roles. we observed that most students showed a positive attitude during the development of each workshop and enjoyed working in groups, because they could help each other, and also that they acquired specific roles and conducted significant negotiations. the roles that each study participant—electronics engineering students (ees), the teacher-researchers (tr) and the engineer tutor (et)—assumed were significant. the teacher-researchers and the engineer tutor continuously guided the electronics learners in their writing processes. students became more engaged in their projects’ development and did their best even as they presented weaknesses when they were writing their research articles. each of the participants contributed meaningful ideas and information to create an academic paper. among the different writing activities linked with collaborative work, there emerged different kinds of roles from informal and spontaneous conversations, and these roles allowed each participant and each variety of teamwork to be characterized by specific features. each of the implemented workshops encouraged the participants to take on different work roles, such as leaders, harmonizers, facilitators, and compromisers, among others. the process was very useful because the students helped each other and learned new things from their partners without pressure from the teacher. this study created a positive pedagogical tool for the researcher because the participants were motivated to write in groups. from the beginning of the development of the first stage, the students worked collaboratively, considering the strategies of collaborative work. excerpt 1 the activity related to the picture was very meaningful because we noticed the way each participant interacted even if some of them participated more than others within their groups. for example, s1, s2 and s3 expressed ideas often, whereas s4, s5 and s6 shared opinions after fg interacted, and s7, s8 and s9 interacted after the first and second groups expressed their ideas a few times. (march 30, 2011, field notes, researcher’s analysis) excerpt 2 today when the students were reading the article to be followed as the example, in group 1, s1 led the activity, s4 took the initiative 129profile vol. 16, no. 1, april 2014. issn 1657-0790 (printed) 2256-5760 (online). bogotá, colombia. pages 119-136 collaborative work as an alternative for writing research articles to develop the activity and s7 asked questions about the way they could do the activity. (april 6, 2011, field notes, researcher’s analysis) excerpt 3 all of the electronics engineering students have special characteristics. for example, s1 enjoys being the leader of the group. (april 11, 2011, field notes, researcher’s analysis) in the samples above, it was evident how the students began to immerse themselves in the proposed activities and how each member of each group adopted a specific role in an autonomous way. thus, we can conclude that no one can become a leader, harmonizer, guide, or monitor unless s/he feels the desire to do so. roles are not imposed but discovered and strengthened. values that emerged among participants as a result of cooperative writing practices this subcategory refers to the values that emerged among the participants when they were developing the different writing activities. the permanent dialogue among the ees, the tr, and the et about the writing processes that developed permitted the participants to become more empathetic, to be careful with how they expressed opinions or critiques and to be able to recognize their mistakes and weaknesses. thus, values such as respect, tolerance, commitment, and responsibility began to take shape beginning in the first workshop. by workshop ten, more respectful attitudes were shown. the emergence of this set of values permitted the groups to make more meaningful and productive negotiations and decisions when they edited papers, for instance, when selecting correct article titles, connectors, and the pictures to be displayed, among other decisions. in conclusion, we can say that the electronics students, the et and the tr were willing to work together and that they enjoyed and supported collaborative writing practices. the participants exchanged their opinions in a respectful and tolerant way. everyone was willing to listen to others, making the writing process meaningful, easy, and dynamic. each participant’s voice was heard. excerpt 4 when we began to talk to the students for the first time, we were a little bit nervous because we didn’t know the students’ answers about this project…but later on, we felt so good because most of them were listening to us carefully…they are very polite with us and asked questions about the project such as: “teachers, how much time can we take to work on the writing project in the biomedical classes?”1 (march 30, 2011, field notes, researcher’s analysis) excerpt 5 respect value was evident from the beginning to the end of the project…today was the last session, and each group defended their research articles; while the first group was explaining their topic, the rest of the groups were listening to them…so they respect each other. (june 1, 2011, field notes, researcher’s analysis) excerpt 6 q9: did you like working on writing with your classmates? s1: yes teachers. in our group, there were different situations in which we were disappointed because we had different ideas, but finally we always took decisions and made agreements and finally we could write our research article in a group. s6: also, i learned how to listen to my classmates, and i accepted their opinions respectfully.2 (interviewees 1 and 6, question 9) working in higher education private and public institutions has allowed us to see how students develop projects and make oral presentations to fulfill class requirements. one observation is that no one is particularly interested in what other groups 1 the original excerpt was in spanish. 2 the original excerpt was in spanish. universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras130 carvajal medina & roberto flórez are doing. in this category, interviews and field notes demonstrated how initial disrespectful and careless attitudes began to be replaced by mindful and thoughtful opinions. therefore, cooperative work permitted values such as tolerance, commitment, and responsibility to emerge, and it strengthened the academic writing practice. thus, students could write texts such as the sample provided in figure 3. providing a confident environment strengthens students’ writing skills development and teamwork from the beginning of this research, the tr planned and implemented activities in which students felt comfortable and pleased. the ees, et, and tr sat at round tables to establish conversations instead of giving lectures. the tr and et were always willing to resolve students’ doubts during all parts of the process, demonstrating how collaborative work emerged when participants had the chance to work in groups; how students interacted among themselves; and how students felt supported by their classmates, the et, and the tr, which allowed them to create a confident environment when they were writing their research articles in english as a foreign language and when they held informal conversations using both spanish and english. according to panitz (1996, p. 8), there are benefits of working collaboratively: “create an environment of active, involved exploratory learning, build self-esteem in students and enhance students’ satisfaction which the learning experience provides greater ability of students to view situations from others’ perspectives.” thus, making writing a team activity rather than an isolated practice made it possible to realize this vision of learning. excerpt 7 s4: …in english, teacher?// rt: yes, please, try to speak in english// s4: ok, the map has different ummm…how do you say “categorías” in english, teacher?// rt: categories // s4: yes, yes, categories… today when students were trying to understand the meaning of a mind map and its organization, students expressed their ideas in english and spanish…we noticed that when some students didn’t know how to express a word in english, they asked for help from the teacher and from their partners…or when one student pronounced a word badly, immediately others pronounced the word correctly. (april 6, 2011, field notes, researcher’s analysis) from the sample above, we can say that when a relaxed and confident environment was created, in formal learning groups emerged and students ex figure 3. sample of students’ artifact 131profile vol. 16, no. 1, april 2014. issn 1657-0790 (printed) 2256-5760 (online). bogotá, colombia. pages 119-136 collaborative work as an alternative for writing research articles pressed their ideas freely and in a relaxed way. students were not afraid of correcting or being corrected by others in relation to pronunciation or meaning. thus, this environment permitted students to solve language-related problems and finally understand mind maps. thus, collaborative work can be seen as a small group of people who work as a team to solve a problem, complete a task or achieve a common goal (artz & newman 1990). excerpt 8 q6: based on your experience with collaborative work in english, which of the following activities did you actively participate in? why?—sharing knowledge, interacting with each other, negotiating, making decisions, solving problems, having fun while learning. s6: i remember when we asked for a favor from our classmate s1 because we wanted him to check our paper, and we accepted our mistakes and we helped each other.3 (interviewee 6, question 6) these samples demonstrate that the attitudes assumed by the engineer-tutor, teacher-researchers, and students influenced the way the students worked. they were more collaborative and became more conscious of the mistakes they made. in the end, this self and group reflection led students to write more coherent and cohesive papers. adapting a practical model of writing to strengthen students’ academic writing styles this category attempts to answer the second subquestion of this proposal: what does the implementation of a writing model reveal about undergraduate electronics engineering students’ academic writing development as they create their research articles? furthermore, this category describes the process in which electronics engineering students were involved in writing an academic paper using technical vocabulary, correct sentence structure, and paragraphs with connectors, main ideas, and supporting ideas, as 3 the original excerpt was in spanish well as the correct organizational order that a research article requires and the importance of providing timely feedback. from the aspects mentioned above, the following subcategories emerged: a convergence writing model and linguistic features development this subcategory refers to linguistic features in terms of language (technical vocabulary, correct sentence structure, paragraphs with connectors, main ideas, supporting ideas, the correct order of images, and well-organized information) that were evident in the students’ artifacts after we implemented a new model of writing (convergence model, see figure 2). at the end of the implementation of this proposal, three research articles were created. nine students worked on a robotic prototype with different ap proaches. all of those articles were analyzed in order to identify the linguistic aspects we mentioned in the previous paragraph. this subcategory revealed that students were able to better organize information if they followed a model that explained to them what to do and how to do it before writing, but it was necessary to encourage the students to write academic papers in order to help them to achieve their academic goals. as they participated in the writing activities, the students followed the stages proposed in the convergence model, which was demonstrated in their written papers. they expressed how this model supported them in understanding how to write a research article. excerpt 9 the students completed the first stage, and it was not easy. the students tried to do their best. this session was very important because they established the topic to be worked on, they generated ideas, and they organized the different sections of the articles, the main topics and the subtopics in a mind map. in conclusion, they are ready to start the second stage. (march 6, 2011, field notes, researcher’s analysis) excerpt 10 (introduction) universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras132 carvajal medina & roberto flórez a surgical procedure is a difficult task that depends of many variables that can’t be controlled directly and of the ability and experience that the medical dr. has in the field. nowadays the operating room needs to be a safety environment where the technology and the human skills are combined to improve the quality of complex procedures where a human life is at risk. the robotics systems present a new paradigm of possibilities to this procedures giving to the precision and the stability that the medical personal requires in an operating room and sometimes, providing images of the action region that the medical doctor can’t see in a simple sight. however, these systems are not perfect, there are expose toward many factors that affects their functionality and put in risk the procedure [sic]. (students’ artifact, s1, s2, and s3) observing the student artifacts below, it can be noted that the participants improved their use of appropriate technical vocabulary and connectors and the way they organized the information into paragraphs: excerpt 11 besides, this was done with digital logic used for a truth table and it is necessary to take into account the variables to use and replace the power. (students’ artifact, s7, s8, and s9) excerpt 12 however, these systems are not perfect, there are expose toward many factors that affects their functionality and put in risk the procedure [sic]. (students’ artifact, s1, s2, and s3) excerpt 13 although most of robotic applications are in test or in process of investigation, many of these applications are already used in the world with good results. (students’ artifact, s4, s5, and s6) these samples strengthen the idea that writing is a skill that develops progressively. as a result of participating in guided written practice and following each of the stages of the writing convergence model, the students found support for organizing ideas, conjugating verbs and using connectors. on a similar note, students clarified the structure to consider when creating articles, such as the abstract, introduction, previous work, materials and procedures, data analysis, conclusions and references. feedback as a way to raise students’ self-confidence in writing academic papers this subcategory illustrates how feedback from the electronics engineer and the english teachers was meaningful to the participants because it allowed them to raise their confidence when they were writing in the foreign language; increased their ability to correct mistakes themselves; and contributed to the texts’ enrichment. according to zeus and skiffington (as cited in arcas, 2004), feedback may become a supporting tool for others when one person’s opinions are provided. once students were asked to produce their first drafts, feedback was provided with the purpose of empowering the writing process. this feedback was used again in the third stage proposed in the convergence model, when students rewrote and revised their compositions until they reached the final stage (improving quality). finally, it is necessary to identify the best way to encourage students to write, even if they make mistakes. it is important to find a way to guide them in this process and to help them understand their errors, because it is not easy to write research articles. the students were able to improve the quality of their written compositions through feedback and the use of the error analysis chart, which were necessary in order to help students become aware of their mistakes while they were writing their research articles, which were the final outcome for this study. figure 4 shows the symbols used on the error analysis chart. for instance, when students needed to check conjugation, the symbol that represented this mistake was the letter (v); (wo) meant wrong word order; (^) appeared when something was missing; and (φ) appeared when the information included was not necessary. in this way, the electronics students recognized their mistakes, analyzed what was wrong and, finally, 133profile vol. 16, no. 1, april 2014. issn 1657-0790 (printed) 2256-5760 (online). bogotá, colombia. pages 119-136 collaborative work as an alternative for writing research articles made corrections. the students progressively became familiar with the use of the codes we implemented. excerpt 14 describes the way feedback was provided and how it determined the students’ responses to the writing process. it should be noted that when students were writing their research articles, they had sufficient time to submit the tasks and to correct their mistakes. the students did not develop the writing activities under pressure, and the tr attempted to bolster the students’ self-confidence no matter what the mistake was. excerpt 14 today we noticed that students felt calm even if they received some corrections because we gave them enough time to correct their mistakes. something important is to provide feedback to them as soon as possible because otherwise, they could lose the rhythm of the work. we don’t try to be rude with them; we were worried because our intention was not to make them feel bad… even if they had more mistakes, we gave them just one part and afterwards we’d let them know the rest of their mistakes, and we made sure that they understood what to do, asking questions such as “you know what i mean? do you understand us? is it clear?” (may 4, 2012, field notes, researcher’s analysis) the last sample demonstrated that the four characteristics related to feedback emerged when students received timely feedback and they had sufficient time to correct their mistakes. feedback became an important tool for providing the students the confidence and the time to reflect on and make the necessary changes. conclusions using the convergence writing model by incorporating principles of cooperative work allowed us to conclude that academic writing is a practice that needs to be clearly guided in its initial stages; otherwise, it could become dense, complex, and frustrating. academic writing requires being supported from the beginning by peers and experts who allow students and professionals to realize how ideas may be shaped and organized and how cohesion and coherence may be provided to a piece of text by using the appropriate writing mechanics, among other aspects. students’ needs and interests count when making decisions about topic writing in order for writing to become truly meaningful. the electronics engineering figure 4. sample of students’ artifact (s4, s5, and s6) universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras134 carvajal medina & roberto flórez students achieved their ultimate goal, which was to write a research article, because they were internally motivated; their voices were heard by the teacherresearchers and the engineer tutor when they made decisions about the topics they wanted to address. working collaboratively allowed participants to develop values such as empathy, respect, tolerance, and responsibility. by listening to each other and recognizing each other’s limitations, the stage was set for them make meaningful contributions when they wrote their papers. the students changed their visions about academic writing and about the idea of writing in group. at the beginning, they were reluctant to believe that reading each other’s ideas would allow everyone to grow and write a coherent and nurtured article. at the end of the process, that was the product that resulted: a research article in which the visions of each group member were presented. roles such as leader, harmonizer, listener, compromiser, encourager, facilitator, guider, and organizer emerged spontaneously and characterized all of the participants (the electronics students, the engineer-tutor, and the teacher-researchers) throughout the research. additionally, the constant dialogue and feedback among participants facilitated the creation of an appropriate work atmosphere in which ever yone felt confident without being concerned about the mistakes being made. references arcas, j. 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(2001). writing in and across new contexts. paper presented at the national writing across the curriculum conference, bloomington, in. panitz, t. (1996). a definition of collaborative vs cooperative learning. london, uk: metropolitan university. rodríguez, v. (2004). academic writing for prospective teachers at universidad de la amazonia (unpublished master’s thesis). universidad distrital francisco josé de caldas, bogotá. strauss, a., & corbin, j. (1990). basics of qualitative research: grounded theory procedures, and techniques (2nd ed.). thousand oaks, ca: sage publications. wallace, m. (1998). action research for language teachers. cambridge, uk: cambridge university press. williams, m. (2006). reading on the rise: a case study of a reading first school. minneapolis, mn: capella university. 135profile vol. 16, no. 1, april 2014. issn 1657-0790 (printed) 2256-5760 (online). bogotá, colombia. pages 119-136 collaborative work as an alternative for writing research articles about the authors nancy emilce carvajal medina holds an ma in language teaching. she is a full-time teacher at universidad pedagógica y tecnológica de colombia (uptc). a doctoral fulbright scholar in 2013, her research interests are in critical thinking, social inclusion, inter-culturalism and multiculturalism. she belongs to the knowledge in action research group at uptc. eliana edith roberto flórez holds an ma in english language teaching at uptc. she works as an english teacher and researcher at santo tomás university in tunja (colombia). she enjoys working with students to help them meet their academic goals. universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras136 carvajal medina & roberto flórez appendix: error analysis chart (hedge, 1988) 123profile vol. 17, no. 1, january-june 2015. issn 1657-0790 (printed) 2256-5760 (online). bogotá, colombia. pages 123-141 http://dx.doi.org/10.15446/profile.v17n1.39499 from awareness to cultural agency: efl colombian student teachers’ travelling abroad experiences de la concientización a la agencia cultural: las experiencias en el extranjero de futuros profesores de inglés john jairo viafara gonzález*1 j. aleida ariza ariza**2 universidad pedagógica y tecnológica de colombia, tunja, colombia colombian english as a foreign language student teachers’ opportunities to grow as educators through international sojourns do not usually subsume the traditional study and residence abroad goal. this was the case for our participants who engaged mainly in working abroad with study being ancillary. fifty student teachers from two public universities reported how their international sojourn bolstered their intercultural learning. three different programs, disconnected from participants’ academic institutions, became vehicles for their experiences abroad. surveys and interviews reveal that participants’ origin, selected programs, and contextual circumstances influenced their intercultural learning. as a result, intercultural development gravitated towards awareness of intercultural patterns, critical reading of culture, and pre-service teachers’ repositioning to build cultural agency. implications suggest the need to connect traveling abroad programs to undergraduate curricula. key words: efl pre-service teachers; ethnocentrism; ethno-relativism; intercultural learning; work, study, and residence abroad. las oportunidades de crecimiento que futuros docentes colombianos de inglés obtienen al participar en programas para viajar al exterior, usualmente no reflejan las metas en el área de residencia y estudios en el extranjero. un porcentaje alto de los participantes reportaron experiencias de trabajo, relegando sus objetivos académicos a un segundo plano. cincuenta estudiantes de dos universidades públicas, quienes viajaron con tres programas no conectados oficialmente con sus universidades, reportan cómo su experiencia fortaleció su aprendizaje intercultural. encuestas y entrevistas develaron el origen y perfil de los participantes, los programas seleccionados y circunstancias contextuales como factores en su aprendizaje. además, los participantes identificaron patrones interculturales, lograron una lectura crítica de la cultura y un reposicionamiento en la construcción de agencia cultural. las implicaciones discuten la necesidad de conectar estos programas de viaje con los currículos de pregrado. palabras clave: aprendizaje intercultural; etnocentrismo; etnorelatividad; profesores en formación de inglés como lengua extranjera; trabajo, estudio y residencia en el extranjero. * e-mail: viafarag@email.arizona.edu ** e-mail: aleariza1971@gmail.com how to cite this article (apa, 6th ed.): viafara gonzález, j. j., & ariza ariza, j. a. (2015). from awareness to cultural agency: efl colombian student teachers’ travelling abroad experiences. profile issues in teachers’ professional development, 17(1), 123-141. http://dx.doi. org/10.15446/profile.v17n1.39499. this article was received on august, 13, 2013, and accepted on july 31, 2014. this is an open access article distributed under the terms of the creative commons license attribution-noncommercial-noderivatives 4.0 international license. consultation is possible at http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/. universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras124 viafara gonzález & ariza ariza introduction the realm of contexts for the exploration of foreign language learning has expanded as globalization and technology attract learners with the promise of more opportunities to develop their communicative competences. in the last decades, travelling abroad has become one the most desired options for university learners to acquire and develop foreign language skills and knowledge of the target culture. likewise, in colombia, an increasing number of university students from various fields embark on programs to travel, mainly to the united states to learn english. the proliferation of these experiences around the world has led to the development of study and residence abroad into a research field in itself. within the existing published research in this area, students from the us and europe travel to central and south american countries to engage in study and residence abroad experiences (marx & pray, 2011; petras, 2000; pray & marx, 2010; santamaría, santamaría, & fletcher, 2009; sharma, aglazor, malewski, & phillion, 2011). however, latin american students are rarely the focus of studies when they travel to the us and europe. thus, the research published in this field does not substantially represent these sojourners. in this regard, this study seeks to expand the focus of research to include latin american countries, providing information that higher education institutions in the region can employ to take a critical stance about the impact of these programs on students’ education. additionally, this inquiry looks at the us as a host country for the target population. this article describes our examination of english as a foreign language (efl) pre-service teachers’ professional preparation in connection with their experiences abroad. in particular, we seek to uncover what student-teachers’ experiences abroad reveal about their construction of their intercultural competence. the next section reviews concepts in the study abroad field and the development of intercultural competence, as well as research conducted in the field. literature review study abroad the long tradition of studying abroad dates back to the 1600s. at that time, finnish students willing to enroll in post-secondary educational institutions travelled to sweden where universities had already been founded (cushner & karim, 2004). university involvement in study abroad programs has continued to the present day. in nations like the us and the uk, universities organize student trips and integrate study and residence abroad into their curriculum (coleman, 1997). since study abroad programs had their origin in universities, one might think that only academic interests have guided the configuration of these programs. however, cushner and karim (2004) point out that this has not always been the case. religious, private, nonprofit, and commercial institutions play a prominent role in this field by arranging students’ overseas sojourns through their programs which might not be associated with any academic institution. in colombian universities, at least in the two target institutions in this study, the companies involved in participants’ experiences abroad exhibited a commercial nature. student te achers eit her contacted companies which function independently from their universities or individuals with no official connection with universities and programs. there was no institutional support from their universities to participate in the experiences. these companies usually offer job opportunities with much less emphasis placed upon educational objectives. though some of the programs might require that all students take a course in a college or university, this is the exception, not the rule. there 125profile vol. 17, no. 1, january-june 2015. issn 1657-0790 (printed) 2256-5760 (online). bogotá, colombia. pages 123-141 from awareness to cultural agency: efl colombian student teachers’ travelling abroad experiences is a separation between educational institutions and companies, and an emphasis on the commercial nature of travelling abroad programs. in this sense, regarding the colombian context, participants’ work abroad, which might include formal study, informal study, or none at all, and its detachment from the universities, complicates the traditional definition of these experiences as “study and residence abroad” with an emphasis on “study.” thereby, we propose a definition that more effectively reflects the essence of our participants’ experiences. study abroad in our work denotes the wide variety of educational options: formal and informal, provided and self-pursued, and short and long within the context of participants’ enrollment in travelling abroad in connection with working assignments. despite differences, colombian students, as other university students around the world, usually enroll in travelling abroad programs in order to acquire “‘culture based’ international education” (engle & engle, 2003, p. 4). the following paragraphs review the main tenets and models underpinning the development of intercultural communication. the development of intercultural knowledge, attitudes, and competences s cholars in diverse fields as anthropolog y (camilleri, 2002), social psychology (j. m. bennett, 2008), study abroad (byram, 1997), foreign and second language learning (fantini, 2009), and international education (deardorff, 2008) have become interested in the development of intercultural communication, attitudes, skills, and competences. from the various mo dels thes e s cholars prop os e to understand intercultural development, and the most well-known and influential conceptualizations stem from byram and j. m. bennett. byram (1997) defines intercultural competence (ic) as attitudes in relation to readiness to suspend disbelief and judgment with respect to others’ meanings, beliefs and behaviors and a willingness to suspend belief in one’s own meanings and behaviors, and to analyze them from the viewpoint of the others with whom one is engaging. (p. 34) for j. m. bennett (2008), the abilities necessary for ics are of paramount importance, thus she defines ic as, “a set of cognitive, affective, and behavioral skills and characteristics that support effective and appropriate interaction in a variety of cultural contexts” (p. 97). t h e s e aut h or s e n c ou r a ge a fo c u s on t h e development of attitudes of openness towards an honest but respectful critical analysis of l1 and l2 cultures in order to gain knowledge and understanding in the search for tolerance and respect for diversity. in order to acquire the required broad-mindedness to act inter-culturally, one must shape his or her intellectual critical and reflective abilities, so that the chances to develop negative affective and emotional states towards others and one’s culture decrease. m. j. bennett’s (1993) developmental model of intercultural sensitivity (dmis) is associated with a social psychology tradition and attempts to explain an individual’s evolution from ethnocentric to ethnorelativist attitudes in six stages. denial, defense, and minimization represent sequential stages of ethnocentrism while moving through the next three stages, acceptance, adaptation, and integration represent ethno-relativism. byram’s (1997) mo del, ro ote d in t he f ield of language learning, was appropriately named intercultural communicative competence (icc). the intercultural speaker, the center of byram’s model, enters the communicative scene with previously acquired knowledge and attitudes which she or he continues developing in interactions with speakers from other cultural and linguistic backgrounds. the ideal intercultural attitude emerges through the universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras126 viafara gonzález & ariza ariza relativization of beliefs, behaviors, and meanings which, in turn, lead to valuing others’ cultural expressions. in byram’s model, knowledge and attitudes aggregate to the procedural perspective of skills. interculturally competent speakers need to be able, on the one hand, to interpret cultural manifestations and connect these expressions between cultures and, on the other hand, to discover cultural meanings, which often occur through interaction. the development of reflective attitudes, which can be enhanced by participating in educational experiences, encourages intercultural growth. in this case, teachers guided by their educational ideologies can integrate political and critical frameworks to shape students’ intercultural skills (byram, 1997). intercultural competence and study abroad: what research reveals a review of studies targeting pre-service teachers who enrolled in long-term study 1 abroad experiences demonstrates an increase in intercultural sensitivity (cushner & mahon, 2002; medina-lópez-portillo, 2004). however, short-term experiences also benefit par ticipants (anders on, l awton, rexeis en, & hubbard, 2006; pence & macgillivray, 2008; sharma et al., 2011). among the multiple variables which shape preservice teachers’ intercultural learning, researchers have identified the complexity of experiences (jackson, 2008); direct contact with people and contexts (medina-lópez-portillo, 2004; williams, 2005), pre-, while, and post-orientation (jackson, 2008; medina-lópez-portillo, 2004), and proficiency in the target language (medina-lópez-portillo, 1 in this study, we characterize study abroad programs as short or long-term based on our adaptation of engle and engle’s (2003) classification. accordingly, we will call a program from three to 23 weeks a short-term program. a long-term program lasts six months or more. this means that the programs lasting more than one year will be part of the latter category. 2004). other variables include pre-service teachers’ metacognitive abilities to perceive and understand their changing attitudes, the relevance and dynamics of these processes, and the role that their critical reflection plays in their growth (cushner & mahon, 2002; jackson, 2008; sharma et al., 2011). in t h e su r ve ye d stu d i e s , pre s e r v i c e te a chers’ intercultural competence indicates their transformation from ethnocentric to more ethnorel at ive att itu d e s . in t h is ve i n , cush ne r and mahon (2002); larzén-östermark (2011); pence and macgillivray (2008); and sharma et al. (2011) found that pre-service teachers questioned their perceptions, creating options to build and negotiate new understandings of themselves and the world around them. t h i s t r a n s f o r m a t i o n r e s u l t s i n a b e t t e r appreciation and respect for cultural diversity (jackson, 2008; lee, 2009; medina-lópez-portillo, 2004; osler, 1998), which enhances the development of empathy and confidence (cushner & mahon, 2002) and the readiness to solve misunderstandings a n d r e d u c e p r e j u d i c e s ( l a r z é n ö s t e r m a r k , 2011). pre-service teachers adopted more critical perspectives towards their own countries (cushner & mahon, 2002; medina-lópez-portillo, 2004; trilokekar & kukar, 2011). further development of intercultural competence also involved higher levels of identification with the host culture (lee, 2009), adaptation to cultural differences (anderson et al., 2006), risk-taking attitudes to try new cultural experiences (jackson, 2008), and integration of new global identities (jackson, 2008; trilokekar & kukar, 2011). among the limitations in pre-service teachers’ intercultural growth, marx and pray (2011) identified racist participant attitudes that contributed to feelings of vulnerability which in turn led to decreased communication with local mexicans and a reinforcement of participants’ racist attitudes. other 127profile vol. 17, no. 1, january-june 2015. issn 1657-0790 (printed) 2256-5760 (online). bogotá, colombia. pages 123-141 from awareness to cultural agency: efl colombian student teachers’ travelling abroad experiences constraints included persistent stereotyping (jackson, 2008; osler, 1998; tusting, crawshaw, & callen, 2002), overestimation of participants’ intercultural competence (jackson, 2008), a lack of awareness about power issues in socio-economic geopolitics (osler, 1998), the feeling of being an outsider, and the difficulty of building new meanings (trilokekar & kukar, 2011). method context and participants this qualitative, descriptive case study (merriam, 1988) involved 50 student teachers from two public colombian universities. twelve pre-service teachers, 24%, belonged to a university with a four-year english teaching program located in a principal city. studying in a populous urban area might imply more access to various opportunities for travelling abroad. the remaining 38 students, 76%, studied at a regional fiveyear-degree-program, post-secondary institution in a modern languages (spanish-english) program or in a foreign languages (english-french) program. in the latter setting, it is important to mention that preservice teachers come mainly from small towns. a total of 50 student teachers, nine males and 41 females from 20 to 30 years of age at the moment of their sojourn participated in the study (see figures 1 and 2). figure 1. participants’ ages 10% 75% 13% 2% 16-20 20-25 25-30 30 + figure 2. participants’ gender men 15% women 85% most participants had never traveled abroad before. the majority travelled when they were in the seventh semester of their program, though some of them participated in earlier or more advanced stages of their studies (from fourth to tenth semesters). for most of them, the length of their experience varied from one to two years (see figures 3 and 4). neither of the two programs required student teachers to travel abroad to obtain their degree. these prospective efl teachers took the initiative and made their own decisions and arrangements to enroll in travel abroad programs. figure 3. semester in which undergraduate program participants traveled 0% 5% 10% 15% 20% 25% 30% 35% 40% 3rd 4th 5th 6th 7th 8th 9th 10th % students universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras128 viafara gonzález & ariza ariza figure 4. time spent abroad while in the program 4% 11% 29% 56% 1m-3m 3m-6m 6m-1y 1y-2y travel abroad programs student-teachers enrolled in three different kinds of programs to travel to the us: au pair (29 students), work abroad (9 students), and teaching assistantship 2 (12 students) (see figure 5). au pair offers candidates the possibility of joining an american family through the daily care of its children and assures a rich cultural experience while being treated as another member of the host family. requirements to join this program include: ages from 18 to 26 years old, a secondary education degree, some experience caring for children, a background check and proficiency in conversational english. work abroad touts their program as an opportunity to get acquainted with the american culture by working for different types of commercial enterprises such as summer camps, resorts, and theme parks. english improvement and adding international work experience to one’s resume are two of the advantages this program advertises. to enroll, applicants (ages 18 to 29) need sufficient proficiency in english and to be at an advanced stage in their university studies. 2 the original names of these programs were not included. they have been changed, but the names we selected reflect their general nature. figure 5. students per program 23% 58% 19% teaching assistanship au pair work usa the third program, teaching assistantship, recruits overseas students to become elementary or high school teacher assistants. furthermore, they might become “cultural ambassadors.” in order to enroll, applicants need to be from 21 to 29 years old, proficient in english, and pursuing a degree in education. this might be the only case in which student teachers’ experience abroad is connected, somehow, to their educational field. based on these programs’ web pages, and our participants’ voices, living a rich cultural experience is at the core of what the programs offer. however, “cultural experiences” are regarded as merely getting acquainted with food, festivals, and music, among others. enjoying cultural involvement through living with native english speakers, taking courses, or working on their assignments are described as means for experiential learning on these web pages. these practices supposedly lead to the sojourner’s self-growth, moving from a level of mono-cultural awareness to a level of intercultural mediation. data collection instruments data are related to participants’ former work and residence abroad experiences in the us, from 2004 to 2011. participants were contacted via e-mail by researchers in this study who clearly explained the 129profile vol. 17, no. 1, january-june 2015. issn 1657-0790 (printed) 2256-5760 (online). bogotá, colombia. pages 123-141 from awareness to cultural agency: efl colombian student teachers’ travelling abroad experiences aim of the research. student teachers had attended classes guided by either one or the two researchers in the past, thus participants were acquainted with the researchers. an online survey (appendix a) and a semi-structured interview (appendix b) were used to collect data for this study from 2011 to 2012. the online survey was piloted and refined; 100 student teachers were contacted and 50 surveys were fully completed. this instrument explored student teachers’ personal backgrounds, expectations before the sojourn, and intercultural experiences. seven semi-structured interviews were conducted face to face and nine were developed using video calls in cases when both researchers and participants were in different geographical locations. these talks were audio recorded. through this instrument, the researchers aimed at expanding participants’ responses in the surveys, as well as exploring in depth their multifaceted cultural experiences while living abroad. our interview protocol explored student teachers’ perceptions of their selection and preparation process, and problematic areas in the initial program stages. we also addressed participants’ interaction with americans concentrating on their self-perception along with their attitudes towards the foreign culture during their time abroad. finally, we considered the benefits and the challenges of the experiences. data analysis and findings principles from the grounded theory (corbin & strauss, 1998) provided guidelines used to classify data. multiple readings of the information collected allowed us to determine the themes connected to our research objective. while we systematically compared, contrasted, and reduced data, we defined and labeled patterns. this supported us to build a comprehensive framework to answer our query. methodological and researcher triangulation were used to assure reliability within the process (janesick, 1994). figure 6 represents the overarching categories established to summarize and organize the data. we identified two main intertwined dimensions throughout participants’ international sojourn: the elements affecting intercultural development (represented by the rectangles) and the levels of interculturality participants revealed (represented by the circles). figure 6. summary of categories in findings becoming aware of cultural patterns becoming a critical reader of l1 and l2 cultures developing conditions for ic agency the nature of programs th e c h allen g e o f b ein g latin -a m erican v ar ie d s et ti n g s pe rm ea ti n g in te rc u lt u ra l ex p er ie n ce s the first dimension encompasses the nature of the program in which students engaged, the multifaceted settings where experiences occurred, and the perceived stereotyping participants felt subjected to because of their latin-american origin. the second level, student teachers’ intercultural competence development emerged in the mist of the aforementioned influences. participants gained awareness of cultural characteristics from their host and their native countries, attempted to take a critical stance of l1 and l2 cultures and seemed to start transiting from an ethnocentric to a more ethno-relative attitude. to begin with, the following pages describe the nuances of the factors shaping the experiences. universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras130 viafara gonzález & ariza ariza the factors affecting pre-service teachers’ intercultural learning the nature of the programs though par ticipants were efl pre-s er vice teachers, they did not necessarily enroll in programs which were attuned to their academic backgrounds. as revealed above in figure 5, only 23% (12 students) s elec ted teaching assistantship, the program providing an experience in the teaching field. the remaining number of participants opted for au pair (29 students, 58%) and working abroad (9 students, 19%). data show that the opportunities for interaction and formal or informal instruction leading to intercultural development were contingent upon the circumstances created by the programs in which the pre-service teachers participated. fifteen student teachers in the au pair program, five in the work abroad program, and seven in the teaching assistantship program provided answers that guided us to establish this first factor. the following excerpt illustrates this influence: i worked as a cashier in a restaurant. then, interaction was not really varied. it mainly took place with the people i worked with. i only talked to clients when they paid their bills. (34, wa, int)3 though programs claimed participants would find a facilitating environment for cultural experiences, the opposite sometimes occurred as the previous testimony shows. pre-service teachers adapted to conditions which were far from ideal and tried to access the learning opportunities that interaction with others would bring them. consequently, these opportunities appeared as random events, rather 3 through this manuscript, numbers identify the participants; the abbreviations following the numbers refer to the program participants enrolled in: au pair (au), working abroad (wa), and teacher assistantship (ta). regarding data collection instruments, int stands for interview and s for surveys. participants’ original testimonies in spanish have been translated into english by the researchers keeping faithful to the original ideas. than affairs organized, controlled, and monitored by the programs. generally, in the au pair program, the approach families adopted in integrating participants, either as family memb ers or as s omeone just providing a service, can be seen as a factor influencing p a r t i c ip a nt s’ opp or tu n it i e s f or i nt e rc u ltu r a l development which was akin to how the rules and dynamics of working assignments in work abroad and placement policies in teaching assistantship affected student teachers. varied settings permeating intercultural experiences the concept of setting encompasses the influence that the places, the inhabitants of those places, and the circumstances characterizing those contexts exert on participants’ options to develop intercultural abilities. this finding parallels medina-lópez-portillo’s (2004) and williams’ (2005) studies, which also found that direct contact with people and contexts influences intercultural learning. based on our participants’ responses, we identified the kind of setting in connection with the social interactions that student teachers could experience and the multicultural nature of the us as salient topics to discuss in this section. in general, student teachers were categorized according to the places where they lived and worked: 15 stayed in small rural areas (sra), 15 in small urban areas (sua), and 20 in large urban areas (lua). whereas students from the three groups reported they stayed in sua, only student teachers enrolled in au pair and work abroad travelled to sra and only participants in au pair and teaching assistantship stayed in lua. thus, while students in au pair were placed in any of the three settings, students in work abroad and teaching assistantship were placed in more specific contexts. in the case of the work abroad program, participants were mostly assigned to work at resorts located in small towns, and student teachers 131profile vol. 17, no. 1, january-june 2015. issn 1657-0790 (printed) 2256-5760 (online). bogotá, colombia. pages 123-141 from awareness to cultural agency: efl colombian student teachers’ travelling abroad experiences in the teaching assistantship program were mostly sent to a specific major city of the us and its suburbs. w h i l e 4 2 p a r t i c i p a nt s f o u n d s u b s t a nt i a l opportunities for interaction within their host community or the place where they worked, a total of eight students did not. among the latter group, six were female students in the au pair program, one was a male student in the teaching assistantship program (both of them long-term programs), and one was a male student in the work abroad program (a shortterm program). in addition, four of these participants were in sras, two in suas, and two in luas. though in general participants’ agency affected their opportunities for interaction with others, their settings facilitated or constrained their opportunities for intercultural knowledge and skills construction: well, all the time i shared experiences with people from other cultures. the group i remembered the most was at the university with arabs, yes, arabs, muslins. i practiced their rituals with them and so i learned a lot…i realized they were equal to us, and just have a different point of view. (24, au, int) the participant above talks about university courses she attended. this setting gathered people f rom d i f fe re nt c ou nt r i e s and c u ltu re s w h i ch precipitated multicultural contacts. the student teacher’s willingness and initiative to experience her peers’ cultural rituals become fundamental for intercultural learning. the multicultural nature of the us was highlighted by 15 student teachers in the au pair, three in the work abroad and two in the teaching assistantship programs. overall, participants claimed they were positively affected by multiculturalism since their stereotypes were often challenged and they formed a more accurate view of individuals from those other countries. the challenge of being latin-american this theme focuses on the images that individuals from the us and colombia hold of each other when they interact. our study informs us of how these stereotypes shaped participants’ intercultural attitudes. for 10 student teachers, seven in the au pair, two in the work abroad and one in the teaching assistantship programs, their encounters with people in the us became negative experiences when they felt discouraged to communicate due to stereotypes about latin-americans. the composition of this group reveals that all of them except one were women and most of them (7) were in a long-term stay in the host country. in contrast, two participants in the teaching assistantship program, one of them a man and the other a woman, mentioned that they did not suffer or notice any kind of discrimination because of their being colombians. the 10 students who reported stereotyping e x p r e s s e d t h at t h e i m a g e o f c o l o m b i a w a s reduced to drug dealing, poverty, violence, and underdevelopment. this type of stereotyping and its effects has been documented by marx and pray (2011). their findings suggest how stereotypes, which us student teachers took with them, led them to include mexicans within a general negative latin-american profile, constraining the student teacher’s interaction opportunities. the evidence below supports our results: every time american people asked me about my origin and i answered i was from colombia the first thing they mentioned was drugs. initially that bothered me, but i learnt not to react every time because they would continue picking on me. (45, au, s) the attitude of the previous student demonstrates how she faced negative stereotyping which initially had a negative impact, but subsequently led to the development of a mitigation strategy used in future encounters. moreover, as mar x and pray (2011) found, the effects of this stereotyping on our participants encouraged the reinforcement of prejudices against the us culture: universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras132 viafara gonzález & ariza ariza for people in the us we are not colombian, mexican, bolivian people, we are latin-american, but we are not the same. the majority of them (us people) care about themselves; they do not realize what happens around the world. (8, au, s) the previous participant reacted to the idea of latin-americans comprising a single undifferentiated cultural group, a belief many us citizen exhibit, by responding with her own stereotype of americans as egocentric and ignorant. on the positive side, this prejudice about latin-americans seems to broaden the participant’s awareness of her national culture. in addition to the aforementioned factors, our findings describe the nuances of participants’ apparent gains in their intercultural attitudes, abilities, and knowledge at different levels. student teachers’ intercultural learning becoming aware of cultural patterns participants’ awareness of both colombian and us cultural patterns evidenced an embryonic development of intercultural competence. this stage was embryonic in the sense that in their international sojourn student teachers started to identify cultural differences between their own culture and the host country. data collected showed that 29 (58%) of the participants became aware of cultural patterns. specifically, the numbers above correspond to five (55%) of the students in the work abroad program, eight (66%) in the teaching assistantship program and 16 (55%) in the au pair program. as can be seen, this pattern appeared in students who participated in the three programs. consequently, short or long stays abroad can generate participants’ cultural awareness. cultural awareness seems to constitute the f irst phas e of et hno-relat ivism, “accept ance,” conceptualized by m. j. bennett (1993). it implies that differences at the cultural level are acknowledged but not judged in regard to individuals’ behaviors and the actual state of affairs around them. framing this initial stage of our findings within byram’s (1997, p. 34) model, we can argue that our participants demonstrated “knowledge of self and others,” allowing them to discern cultural patterns and to interact accordingly. as an instance of cultural awareness, we would like to remark that 10 student teachers’ comments acknowledged the cultural richness of colombia, the need to value positive aspects in colombia, and the importance of gaining understanding regarding what colombian society might focus on in order to improve living conditions. this idea can be evidenced in the following excerpt. then i started analyzing my life in colombia and i was aware about how brave many people are when they fight for their dreams and needs. sometimes while being in colombia we criticized how violent, contaminated, and poor (mentally and physically) we can be. but being away one realizes how valuable it is to be in colombia…your culture comes to gain a higher appreciation. (49, au, s) as for t he p ar t i c ip ant s’ c ons c i ous ne ss of american cultural patterns, it was evident that the us was conceived as a multicultural country, so that generalizing the way an american would act was difficult. similarly, participants perceived certain behavioral patterns and attitudes that might represent cultural features: for example, the way you greet is a little bit different and it varies from person to person. we are more polite and they (us people) are less affectionate; they were not so close to their children. (2, ta, int) inasmuch as colombian student teachers in their us sojourn identified and respected cultural divergences showing tolerance, our findings aligned with studies conducted by lee (2009), medina-lópezportillo (2004), and osler (1998). 133profile vol. 17, no. 1, january-june 2015. issn 1657-0790 (printed) 2256-5760 (online). bogotá, colombia. pages 123-141 from awareness to cultural agency: efl colombian student teachers’ travelling abroad experiences becoming a critical reader of l1 and l2 cultures some participants moved a step forward from awareness of cultural differences to taking a critical stand concerning both cultures. on the whole, 36 (72%) student teachers voiced their critical interpretations of the l1 and l2 cultures. seven of these participants were in the work abroad program (78%), nine in the teaching assistantship program (66%) and 20 in the au pair program (69%). these percentages show that participants in all three types of programs, regardless of how long they stayed, exhibited critical readings of l1 and l2 cultures. our conception of a critical reader of culture aligns with byram’s (1997) postulates regarding the interpretation of cultural manifestations and the interconnections that individuals are able to establish between cultures. people’s existing knowledge propels their ability to interpret cultural meanings. by virtue of the intercultural experience student teachers lived, favorable patterns of the american culture were identified; among them the high environmental consciousness, social organization, and respect. in addition, participants highlighted positive attitudes such as hard work, patience, and respect as well as the value american people give to listening: there (us) organization and effort make things work better. attitudes such as respecting copyright, making pedestrians a priority, and recycling become reasons why a country might be perceived differently. (1, ta, s) on the other hand, egocentric attitudes, showing distant social relationships and being less affectionate were characteristics some participants in this study perceived as common in the american culture. these perceptions are connected to one’s views of the way people interrelate in the home country. becoming acute readers of the realities that surrounded them opened the possibility for the participants to challenge stereotypes about the american culture. owing to this, student teachers de velop ed more understanding and empathic attitudes towards the cultural differences between the home and host countries. such growth in their intercultural competence is evident in the excerpt below: when i was in colombia my perception of people from other countries was solely based on what books showed me especially prototypes. for example, for me american were cold, strategic, junk-food eaters, and greedy, but, when i arrived to the us i realized they were not like that, not all of them were robots. (48, au, s) similar to participants in studies conducted by cushner and mahon (2002), and larzén-östermark (2011), the previous student’s examination of her perceptions about american culture seemed to allow her to build a more nuanced and realistic view of us people. in addition to assuming a critical stance towards the l2 culture, there were instances in which they provided analytical perspectives regarding their home culture: i had always been quite timid; i was not open enough to talk to people. once i arrived to the us and i met people from colombia who told me that people from my region were shy, i started to notice it, and it’s true. we are unsociable, no, no unsociable, timid, introverted. (45, ta, int) participants’ critical reading of their own culture has also emerged in studies by cushner and mahon (2002), medina-lópez-portillo (2004), and trilokekar and kukar (2011). developing conditions for cultural agency student teachers’ responses led us to identify another characteristic in their intercultural growth. six (66%) student teachers in the work abroad program, seven (58%) in the teaching assistantship program and 20 (68%) in the au pair program expressed that universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras134 viafara gonzález & ariza ariza the international sojourn had modified both their attitudes and personality traits. this shows that participants in the three programs, whether in short or long stays abroad, were individually influenced by their experiences. regarding the first level of transformation, we established five spheres to group the qualities student teachers reported they had adopted as a consequence of their experience. the most common quality referred to tolerance and involved other traits such as flexibility, patience, respect, open-mindedness, and understanding to avoid light judgment of others. the second in frequency was the adoption of assertive attitudes in connection to building a stronger character and being more mature. a third trait was students’ becoming self-sufficient and independent. the fourth trait gravitated towards self-confidence in connection with extroversion and spontaneity leading to risk-taking. discipline, responsibility, and organization comprise the last sphere. the following excerpt provides some evidence supporting this finding, i also adapted to superabundance of resources. for them it is easier than for us to throw to the garbage things they have not even used as food, paper, or technological resources…now i am more tolerant and open in regards to differences with other people. i value more my own culture and the efforts we make to develop our activities. i am more resourceful and i know better about how to treat foreigners who live in colombia. (7, wa, s) a reduced number of participants’ answers evidenced the remaining stage of intercultural competence identified within what we have called cultural agency. fourteen (28%) students in the three programs: four (45%) students in the work abroad program and two (17%) in the teaching assistantship program explained the y had taken actions to transform aspects in their lives due to their experience abroad. similarly, eight (29%) participants in the au pair program claimed they experienced changes. from those eight students in the au pair program, four were the only ones, considering the three programs, who claimed they had tried to produce a change in other people’s ethnocentric views. o u r u n d e r s t a n d i n g of t h e e m e r g e n c e of transformative actions within the experience concurs with buttjes and byram’s (1991) reference to “the transcultural level: . . . the learner is able to evaluate intercultural differences and to solve intercultural problems” (p. 143). the aforementioned statement implied acknowledging and understanding differences as a starting point to take action and change as cultural beings. likewise, a few individuals look for diverse strategies to make such change permeate the perceptions that the foreign country communities hold regarding, in this case, the colombian culture. this level of understanding is revealed in the evidence below. talking about stereotypes, the american family i lived with believed colombia was a poor, underdeveloped country where people were usually armed and selling drugs. though trying to change people’s mind is difficult, i showed them that, despite colombia has some problems, these are not different from the social and political difficulties usa faces. (29, au, s) in addition to revealing how this participant’s identity might have started to be reshaped, this excerpt also attests to what m. j. bennett (1993) defines as “adaptation” in regard to ethno-relativism. the student teacher’s adaptation moves from a cognitive to a behavioral level, but it also can include the affective realm. adaptation as a result of international sojourns has also been documented by anderson et al. (2006) in the context of short-term visits to an english speaking country. modifications might have also occurred in participants’ lifestyles. some of them consider that their transformations, which started in the us, continued even when they returned to colombia: that was another habit that started to grow when i was there, i started reading more books, to set aims about how many books 135profile vol. 17, no. 1, january-june 2015. issn 1657-0790 (printed) 2256-5760 (online). bogotá, colombia. pages 123-141 from awareness to cultural agency: efl colombian student teachers’ travelling abroad experiences i would read, so i started to cultivate this aspect about reading there. (6, ta, int) though, as illustrated above, several student teachers might have progressed towards higher stages of intercultural competence, more complex stages as the ones reported in cushner and mahon (2002), jackson (2008), and sharma et al. (2011) were not identified. whereas these researchers’ participants developed metacognitive skills such as their acknowledgment of the importance of their intercultural processes and their consciousness of the function that their critical reflection had in their progress, colombian pre-service teachers’ reports did not account for this type of metacognition. conclusions and pedagogical implications this paper reports on how the experience of efl colombian student teachers working and living in the us is related to their development of intercultural competence. in brief, the nature of the programs framed participants’ opportunities for intercultural learning. working became the main agenda in these programs, superseding student teachers’ expectations of for m a l a c a d e m i c l e ar n i ng and of te nt i me s constraining the likelihood of informal interaction. in only one type of program, teacher assistantship, did working assignments involve participants’ field of expertise. the us’s multi-culturality offers student teachers fertile terrain in which to establish relationships that lead to increased intercultural knowledge. however, the kinds of settings and the opportunities for interaction within those settings bolstered or hindered participants’ development. in addition, while the negative stereotyping of latin-americans constituted a psychological factor which inhibited some participants in their efforts to connect with the host culture and sometimes fed prejudices towards the us, these stereotypes also influenced participants’ reaffirmation of their national identity. student teachers’ testimonies evidenced gains achieved through three stages: at the first level, they disclosed intercultural awareness as they were able to identify cultural differences between their own and the host country cultures. in a second stage, individuals developed a more nuanced view of both cultures through the analysis of positive and negative aspects of the two countries. similar percentages of students in the short-term and the two long-term programs evidence “cultural awareness.” regarding “the critical reading of culture,” there were also approximate percentages between shortand longterm programs. a third stage of ic development addressed student teachers’ understanding of cultural differences as a starting point to take action and change as cultural beings. the percentages of students exhibiting “cultural awareness” and a “critical reading of culture,” in contrast to those who reported adopting specific actions, were substantially higher in all the three programs. metacognitive skills, which also imply higher stages of ic development, were not evidenced in our participants’ responses. the private and commercial nature of companies for traveling and working abroad in this study substantially problematizes what should be the real nature of traveling, working, and studying abroad for student teachers. bearing the previous issue in mind and considering that universities cannot stop student teachers from enrolling in these programs if they so wish, universities most suitable course of action should be to propose alternatives. the conclusions reported so far suggest the need for university administrators to align with teachers and students in order to plan and design traveling abroad programs whose nature reflects efl student teachers’ professional field. this population’s learning throughout their international sojourns should not universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras136 viafara gonzález & ariza ariza mainly be the product of their individual agency and fortuitous circumstances. it is evident that the decisions which make a substantial difference in participants’ experiences, for example, the assignment location and undergraduate program trajectories, require deeper and more informed considerations. taking advantage of colombian universities’ offices to facilitate international cooperation, university officials can work on establishing strategic alliances to learn from the experience of higher education institutions located overseas. of special interest should be institutions with substantial trajectories in programs which clearly value the “study” abroad experience as much as or more than the working abroad experience. establishing cooperation can begin by arranging conferences and visits, not only to learn about those other university programs, but to negotiate the establishment of bilateral study abroad programs. teams composed of university officials, teachers w ho have studie d abro ad in count r ies w here languages of interest are spoken, and student teachers previously involved in these international sojourns can work together. they can generate and monitor the implementation of plans to evaluate traveling abroad experiences. subsequently, the product of this evaluation can be configured into plans to design new programs which are informed by the myriad factors affecting particular populations of students. based on this study, an initial issue regarding the planning of new programs can be to aim not only at participants’ development of “cultural awareness” and “critical interpretation” of l1 and l2 cultures, but also to target students’ cultural agency and metacognition. considering documented experiences, the adoption of pre-, during, and post stages in participants’ preparation for study abroad resonates as a robust alternative to advance their intercultural abilities. integrating structured and sequential academic preparation into the study abroad experience would probably require reshaping curricular elements. university teachers become the most relevant leaders to conduct this task. to begin with, a pre-sojourn course, proposing a critical approach to looking at culture in contrast to the traditional encyclopedic perspective becomes a helpful alternative. in order to achieve this goal, student teachers can, for instance, take part in tele-collaboration to establish contact with people and cultural artifacts in their countries of interest. these experiential activities can be shaped and informed by theoretical constructs and research in the area of intercultural competence. awareness of cases found in studies by means of individual and group tools like journals and discussions, can equip participants with strategies to better manage issues as stereotyping, cultural differences, and shock, among others. stu d e nt te a ch e rs’ c on clu s i ons f rom t h e i r participation in the pre-sojourn course can become the starting point for them to involve metacognitive skills. this might be possible if they set their own learning goals before enrolling in the experience and employ specific tasks to monitor those objectives while they travel. thus, participants can make self-directed contributions to their intercultural learning benefitting from a well-informed and coherent program. finally, they can gain from a post-sojourn phase in which they look retrospectively at their process in order to explore the effects of their international experience at the emotional, psychological, and professional levels. references anderson, p., lawton, l., rexeisen, r. j., & hubbard, a. c. 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(2008). the impact of an international field experience on preservice teachers. universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras138 viafara gonzález & ariza ariza teaching and teacher education, 24(1), 14-25. http:// dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.tate.2007.01.003. petras, j. (2000). overseas education: dispelling official myths in latin america. frontiers: the interdisciplinary journal of study abroad, 6(1), 73-81. pray, l., & marx, s. (2010). esl teacher education abroad and at home: a cautionary tale. the teacher educator, 45(3), 216-229. http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/08878730.201 0.488099. santamaría, l. j., santamaría, c. c., & fletcher, t. v. (2009). journeys in cultural competency: pre-service us teachers in mexico study-abroad programs. diaspora, indigenous, and minority education, 3(1), 32-51. http:// dx.doi.org/10.1080/15595690802584166. sharma, s., aglazor, g. n., malewski, e., & phillion, j. (2011). preparing global minded teachers for us american classrooms through international cross-cultural field experiences. delhi business review, 12(2), 33-44. trilokekar, r. d., & kukar, p. (2011). disorienting experiences during study abroad: reflections of preservice teacher candidates. teaching and teacher education, 27(7), 1141-1150. http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j. tate.2011.06.002. tusting, k., crawshaw, r., & callen, b. (2002). ‘i know, ‘cos i was there’: how residence abroad students use personal experience to legitimate cultural generalizations. discourse & society, 13(5), 651-672. http://dx.doi.org/10 .1177/0957926502013005278. williams, t. r. (2005). exploring the impact of study abroad on students’ intercultural communication skills: adaptability and sensitivity. journal of studies in international education, 9(4), 356-371. http://dx.doi. org/10.1177/1028315305277681. about the authors john jairo viafara gonzález holds a bed in philology and languages, english, from universidad nacional de colombia and an ma in applied linguistics to tefl from universidad distrital francisco josé de caldas (colombia). he is currently a phd candidate in second language acquisition and teaching from the university of arizona. he is a main researcher of the retele research group indexed in colciencias. j. aleida ariza ariza holds a bed in philology and languages, english-spanish from universidad nacional de colombia, and an ma in applied linguistics to tefl from universidad distrital francisco josé de caldas (colombia). currently she is an assistant professor at universidad pedagógica y tecnológica de colombia. she is also a main researcher of the retele research group indexed in colciencias. 139profile vol. 17, no. 1, january-june 2015. issn 1657-0790 (printed) 2256-5760 (online). bogotá, colombia. pages 123-141 from awareness to cultural agency: efl colombian student teachers’ travelling abroad experiences appendix a: online survey*4 dear participant, the aim of this survey is to explore your perceptions in regard to your experience while living or studying abroad. please read and answer carefully each one of the following questions. fill in a survey for each experience you had abroad. we appreciate your participation in this study. background information 1. what was your age range when you when you travelled? ☐ 16 to 20 ☐ 20 to 25 ☐ 25 to 30 ☐ over 30 2. write the year when you started and when you finished your experience abroad. 3. write the number of the last academic semester you enrolled in before your trip. 4. select the travel abroad program in which you participated. ☐ au pair ☐ teaching assistantship ☐ work usa ☐ other which? _________________________________________________________________________ 5. how long were you part of that program? ☐ 1 to 3 months ☐ 3 to 6 months ☐ 6 months to 1 year ☐ 1 to 2 years ☐ more than 2 years 6. write about the city/town where you lived. describe the place and the people there (number of inhabitants, origin, other characteristics, urban or rural context?). * data collection instruments in appendix a and b were originally administered and conducted in spanish. they have been translated into english by the authors of this manuscript to match the language in the main body of the document. universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras140 viafara gonzález & ariza ariza 7. how do you think that your interaction with the people in this community might have contributed to the purpose of your trip? 8. did the program in which you participated offer you any preparation for the experience? ☐ yes ☐ no 9. if you chose a positive answer for the previous question, describe how that preparation was. interculturality 10. do you think that the way you perceived yourself and others—talking about the context where your experience abroad took place—changed because of the experiences you underwent there? explain. ☐ yes ☐ no 11. to what extent do you consider that this experience affected your comprehension of the values, beliefs, and attitudes of the people who lived in the country where you stayed? describe specific situations you might have experienced. 12. have you noticed any changes in the way you act in connection with your experience abroad? explain your answer. suggestions question number 7 in this survey explores the previous preparation you might have undertaken before the trip. after your experience, what do you think the preparation should include? as one of the means for data collection, this study includes an interview. if you decided to participate in the interview, which of the following options would be the most suitable for you? ☐ face to face ☐ skype ☐ messenger other, which? _____________________________________________________ 141profile vol. 17, no. 1, january-june 2015. issn 1657-0790 (printed) 2256-5760 (online). bogotá, colombia. pages 123-141 from awareness to cultural agency: efl colombian student teachers’ travelling abroad experiences appendix b: semi-structured interview protocol 1. in regard to the traveling abroad program, what would you change starting from the selection, then preparation process, and after that the other stages of the experience? 2. how would you describe your interaction with the people you met during your experience abroad? 3. did this experience change the perception you had of yourself? yes or no? explain “how”. 3a. did your perception of the us culture change because of the trip? yes or no? explain “how”. 4. how do you think your expectations of becoming a foreign language teacher might have changed as a consequence of your experience abroad? in your survey, you reported you gained in _____________. why do you think this occurred? 41profile: issues teach. prof. dev., vol. 20 no. 1, jan-jun, 2018. issn 1657-0790 (printed) 2256-5760 (online). bogotá, colombia. pages 41-56 https://doi.org/10.15446/profile.v20n1.59412 creating machinima (3d) and real life videos in an esp classroom creación de machinima (3d) y videos reales en un salón de inglés con propósitos específicos carol anne ochoa alpala1* william ricardo ortíz garcía2** universidad santo tomás, tunja, colombia this research paper reports on the development of oral presentation skills in a 3d virtual world called moviestorm machinima, in contrast with real-life videos. in this way, the implementation of both types of videos sought to promote the improvement of oral communication skills, specifically oral presentations in a foreign language, as well as promoting collaborative work. the study involved 60 students from different semesters of a private colombian university from the schools of electronic engineering, computer science, and law, focusing on english for specific purposes. the results showed how students from different faculties worked collaboratively to achieve one goal: improve their oral presentation skills. key words: english for specific purposes, machinima, moviestorm, presentation skills, real life videos. este artículo de investigación versa sobre el desarrollo de habilidades de presentación oral, en un mundo virtual en 3d denominado moviestorm machinima, contrastado con videos reales. de esta manera, la implementación de los dos tipos de videos buscaba promover el mejoramiento de las habilidades de presentación, específicamente, producción oral en un idioma extranjero, así como promover el trabajo colaborativo. dicho estudio involucró a 60 estudiantes de las facultades de ingeniería electrónica, sistemas y derecho de diferentes semestres de una universidad privada de colombia, con un enfoque de inglés con propósitos específicos. los resultados mostraron cómo los estudiantes de diferentes facultades trabajaron colaborativamente para alcanzar una meta: mejorar sus habilidades de presentación. palabras clave: habilidades de presentación, inglés con propósitos específicos, machinima, moviestorm, videos reales. * e-mail: carol.ochoa@usantoto.edu.co ** e-mail: william.ortiz01@usantoto.edu.co how to cite this article (apa, 6th ed.): ochoa alpala, c. a., & ortíz garcía, w. r. (2018). creating machinima (3d) and real life videos in an esp classroom. profile: issues in teachers’ professional development, 20(1), 41-56. https://doi.org/10.15446/profile.v20n1.59412. this article was received on august 2, 2016, and accepted on october 3, 2017. this is an open access article distributed under the terms of the creative commons license attribution-noncommercial-noderivatives 4.0 international license. consultation is possible at https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/. universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras42 ochoa alpala & ortíz garcía contextualization of the problem and rationale this research was conducted with students of electronic engineering, computer science, and law from universidad santo tomás (usta), a private colombian catholic university located in an intermediate size city. they must demonstrate competence not only in understanding english as a foreign language (efl), but must also be able to express themselves appropriately and make contextualized language use. at times, students have difficulty speaking english because they do not feel prepared to assume this challenge due to personal reasons like fear of mispronunciation, among other aspects. this project seeks to create a collaborative environment through real life videos and the software moviestorm, which may allow students to prepare for better oral production. moreover, it seeks to implement the use of 3d virtual worlds in the university setting as educational tools used to simulate real life cases, thus facilitating the contextualization of educational processes and raising awareness about the importance of significant learning. furthermore, these tools might help students face real everyday situations at a personal and professional level. research question what is the relationship between the creation of real life and virtual videos and the development of oral presentation skills, focused on english for specific purposes (esp) environments among undergraduate students from the usta? objectives general • to involve undergraduate students in the creation of videos in order to contribute to the development of their oral presentation skills in an esp course. specific • to create real life and 3d videos based on technical topics. • to promote the use of videos as pedagogical tools in esp courses. • to compare real life vs. moviestorm (3d) videos in terms of the development of oral presentation skills. theoretical framework in this section of the paper, we present the theoretical framework describing all the aspects of studies about 3d virtual worlds used as tools in teaching efl in an esp course. english has quickly become the language of globalization and, as such, it is important to recognize its worldwide use and its relevance to different disciplines and areas of knowledge. english for specific purposes esp appeared due to the need to integrate different english fields, topics, and users’ interests. paltridge and starfield (2013) point out that “[esp] refers to the teaching and learning of english as a second or foreign language where the goal of the learners is to use english in a particular domain” (p. 2). in usta, esp is not a tool efl teachers use very often as the main focus of the general english classes, although the university does offer some esp courses. in some cases, it is used to motivate students to improve and develop their english skills. most of the english classes at usta are not focused on esp, but it could be used as an alternative way for students to learn english. what we also want to demonstrate is that the use of esp will help students have different perspectives about the process of learning a second language in terms of developing their foreign language skills. belcher (as cited in bathia, anthony, & noguchi, 2011) “traces the development of esp along sociodiscoursal, sociocultural, and sociopolitical tracks. in other words, esp is always concerned with the ‘socio’ or the society in which the language is functioning” (p. 147). 43profile: issues teach. prof. dev., vol. 20 no. 1, jan-jun, 2018. issn 1657-0790 (printed) 2256-5760 (online). bogotá, colombia. pages 41-56 creating machinima (3d) and real life videos in an esp classroom in this way, when students are able to relate the knowledge they are acquiring in their undergraduate programs with esp, they will generate meaningful learning in terms of improvement and development of their english skills since they are able to practice in real situations and contexts by using english methodologies that are different from what they use in standard classes. besides, it is helpful for efl teachers who want to carry out their job with effectiveness, while incorporating other methodologies that can provide a wide variety of possibilities in teaching the language. esp has been one of the components in some of the english courses at usta, especially the highest levels, and its characteristics in this institution are as follows: 1. these courses are designed to engage undergraduate students in meeting their professional goals, in terms of technical english. 2. the courses are designed as a complement of regular english classes. 3. students bring technical material to the classes, mostly video and reading texts. students are interviewed at the beginning of the course regarding the topics, activities, and resources they would like to include in the course. this means students participate in syllabus design since it is flexible and allows them to negotiate with the esp teacher. regarding this type of courses, marculescu (2015) carried out a study on esp at the bucharest university of economic studies with first-year students from the faculty of finance, insurance, and banking and the faculty of international business and economics. “this study focused on project work for the purpose of improving and assessing the students’ knowledge of english, especially their oral communication skills” (marculescu, 2015, p. 230). according to marculescu, “at the end of the research, the students improved their oral skills based on what is now called the 21st century education movement which emphasizes the four cs: critical thinking, communication, collaboration, and creativity” (p. 230). simulation according to meihami, meihami, and varmaghani (2013) “a simulation game tries to copy various activities of real life in the form of games for different purposes: training, analysis, or prediction. some examples are war, business, and role games” (p. 60). according to the authors, “there are three types of simulations”: live simulation: it involves humans and or equipment, an activity and a stage where they can act in a real way. time is continuous as in real life. for example, video war games and car batteries testers. virtual simulation: it involves human beings or equipment on a computer-controlled stage. the time comes in discrete steps, allowing users to concentrate on what is important. for example: a flight simulator. constructive simulation: no human or computer involved as participants. more than time, simulations are handled in suitable time sequences. for example, hurricane simulators take into account temperature, pressure, and wind currents. (p. 60) simulation in this project is defined as imitation and projection of real life. it is a space where you can recreate real-life events. the study we are conducting at the usta is about real life video vs. moviestorm through machinima, which employs virtual simulation to resemble real-life cases with students of different undergraduate programs. this is used in video games that recreate being on a battlefield or driving a car, among other situations. it is also used in the field of business to assume roles that can be carried out in real life. in education we find experiences such as metaverses, where participants can choose and design an avatar, receive a conference or virtual class, and be transported from one context to another simply by moving the avatar and creating learning communities according to their tastes, needs, and interests. meihami et al. (2013) pointed out that “the simulation gives users the feeling of being in a real context that requires the development of motor skills and analysis to understand these environments and know how to behave in them as they would in real life” (p. 61). universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras44 ochoa alpala & ortíz garcía machinima machinima refers to the use of real-time computer graphics engines to create a cinematic production . . . in a broad sense, any piece of linear audiovisual content such as a short film or series made with settings, characters, or video game engines can also be seen as machinima. (machinima, n.d., para. 1-26) machinima in this research is a key concept, as it was the end-product after resorting to moviestorm (see figure 1), the software that allows students to create their projects. although there are many subscribers to moviestorm, studies on the use of this software by efl students to create machinima area are scarce. one study by butler (2012) involved students from queensland university of technology in the program of law and consisted of two courses where students learned, through simulations and virtual environments, how to develop negotiation and mediation skills as well as to address legal and ethical issues related to contract formalities. in the end, the results showed that the motivation of students towards certain subjects improved and that they were able to recognize the importance of creating virtual spaces that reflected the application of their profession in real-life (butler, 2012). this research is one of the studies related to our proposal, as it involves law students who simulate, in a virtual world, legal cases which reflect real-life environments and communication. according to meyers (2014): communication in a virtual world is then dependent on two levels of meaning making: in-world comprehension of digital action and a translation of that meaning to out-world significance. the two levels of meaning combined become a “literacy” of digital play. to be fluent in this kind of literacy requires immersion in the culture of the space. (p. 670) therefore, the use of the machinima technology through the software moviestorm, takes students from a virtual space to real contexts in order to portray real life situations and give meaning to the simulation of different experiences related to english language learning. moviestorm according to the moviestorm official website (www. moviestorm.co.uk), “this is a 3d real-time software used to create animated films with machinima technology”. it is licensed software which has been used in the educational field with students of different educational levels to recreate situations of everyday life, using avatars that allow them to have another identity in the virtual world. figure 1. scene in a moviestorm-machinima 3d video created by the participants 45profile: issues teach. prof. dev., vol. 20 no. 1, jan-jun, 2018. issn 1657-0790 (printed) 2256-5760 (online). bogotá, colombia. pages 41-56 creating machinima (3d) and real life videos in an esp classroom moviestorm is a good tool for university students as it allows them to explore another way to create videos using different tools such as sceneries, characters, colors, cameras, and editing, among others. however, students at usta are not very familiar with this kind of tools even while having access to the technological devices to use them. the present project about the contrast between real life videos and machinima produced through moviestorm emerged as an innovative way to take advantage of these technological materials within an esp course while promoting the development of oral presentation skills in two environments: real-life vs. 3d. use of video in esp if it is demonstrated that students like videos, these could become an important part in academic spaces where the students can find additional tools to learn and improve their english skills. learning a language implies applying various strategies to receive input from other sources and not just the teacher. arthur (as cited in çakir, 2006) claims that “videos can give students realistic models to imitate for role-play and can increase awareness of other cultures by teaching appropriateness and suitability” (p. 68). using videos is a way to involve students in different issues and situations while at the same time using an approach that provides authentic language input. guidelines to support english oral presentations nowadays, english is one of the most spoken languages all around the world. it is used for different matters such as education, science, politics, arts, and literature, among many other fields. english is a tool used to express and share information, as well as a means for connecting people by breaking down language barriers. one method that might allow english language learners to interact is oral presentations, such as those discussed in this research paper. oral presentations might allow students to be part of a globalized world which demands better, qualified professionals willing to face new challenges and take risks. therefore, many authors have proposed different guidelines and recommendations to do oral presentations in any language. according to burns (2008), there are some do’s and don’ts to have clear: 1. “consider your audience”. it is important to convey to your audience information they have not heard before and they would consider relevant to know (para. 1). 2. “practice”. a presenter has to read his/her notes many times before making the presentation. it is advisable to practise with all equipments needed in order to avoid having any “equipments flubs” (para. 2). 3. “avoid reading”. an audience needs to know you are prepared, so you can use some notes but not read insofar as possible (para. 4). 4. “use visual aids”. appealing visual aids support your presentation. some examples could include powerpoint presentations, handouts, charts, transparencies, slides, although these should not be so extensive but helpful for your presentation (para. 6). 5. “maintain eye contact”. keep eye contact with the audience as much as possible in terms of capturing the audience’s attention (para. 8). sukitkanaporn and phoocharoensil (2014) carried out a study with 26 students of the m.a. in english at thammasat university (thailand) that further illustrates the development of oral presentation skills. “the method used was a cross-sectional research survey. the students were divided into two groups: students who studied [the course] and those who did not” (p. 95). according to the authors, “the students who took the course on presentations were more organized but they should mostly improve their delivery, while the students who did not take the course should improve their organization/ content, as well as their delivery” (p. 91). the authors universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras46 ochoa alpala & ortíz garcía concluded that “the course ‘effective presentations’ should be a required course for all graduate students” (sukitkanaporn & phoocharoensil, 2014, p. 91). in the same way, king (as cited in živković, 2014) states that “oral presentations represent an opportunity for developing real-world communications as well as leadership skills” (p. 469). according to king (as cited in živković, 2014): among the many advantages of designing oral presentations for students are: • bridging the gap between language study and language use; • using the four language skills in a naturally integrated way; • helping students to collect, inquire, organize and construct information; • enhancing team work; • helping students become active and autonomous learners. (p. 469) oral presentation skills courses are crucial in any undergraduate program but at times, these kinds of courses are not common or explicitly required in university studies since they are not taken as specific subjects. however, students at usta, given the holistic education promoted in the curriculum, must develop oral presentation skills which are included in their subjects in a subtle way. in the esp and general english courses, these skills are taught through the teachers’ guidance, demonstrations, presentations and oral reports, among other techniques. method this study corresponds to a mixed method research, which includes quantitative and qualitative data. besides, it was a proposal that involved elements of action research at a basic level (only one cycle) as described by metler (2014) taking into account different stages: initial reflection, planning, action, observation, and reflection. the process in this research is described as follows: initial reflection: description of the situation about a concern on the development of oral presentation skills; planning: an instructional design was created based on the use of real-life videos vs moviestorm videos; action: the implementation of the instructional design; observation: the results displayed during the process and finally, reflection: analysis and understanding of the outcomes regarding the implementation of videos. thus, this research was based on students developing oral presentation skills through video production in groups, as well as obtaining new literacy abilities through the use of moviestorm. in this regard, the project was developed in two principal phases, keeping in mind an instructional design. in the first one, students were asked to create a real video on a topic of their study programs and consider some guidelines of english proficiency and editing. in the second phase, students worked on a project with the tool moviestorm machinima about a specific topic of their study programs. participants the participants in this study comprised 60 preintermediate english level students from law, computer science, and engineering at usta. they were between 19 and 24 years old, and there were 23 women and 37 men. these students came from different parts of the country. participants were informed about their role in the present project; in that sense, they were asked about their voluntarily participation as well as their rights in terms of ethical principles for educational research, consent, and privacy. in the same way, they signed a written consent form previously discussed and accepted by every single participant before they provided any information and allowed us to use their real-life and machinima videos as part of this study. data gathering instruments we used three instruments to collect data: an interview, a survey, and students’ artifacts. furthermore, we analyzed the information and systematized it. the instruments are described below. 47profile: issues teach. prof. dev., vol. 20 no. 1, jan-jun, 2018. issn 1657-0790 (printed) 2256-5760 (online). bogotá, colombia. pages 41-56 creating machinima (3d) and real life videos in an esp classroom interview in this study, we used a semi-structured interview since it contains “components of both, structured and unstructured interviews. [the] interviewer prepares a set of same questions to be answered by all interviewees; however, additional questions might be asked during interviews to clarify and/or further expand certain issues” (dudovskiy, n.d., para. 5). the interview is an instrument necessary to collect data which reflect a person’s attitudes, interests, issues, and opinions regarding a specific topic proposed or researched by the interviewer. in this way, the interviewer collects data which will help him/her arrive at an understanding of the way people act, think, and conceive the world. in the present project about reallife videos vs. machinima, interviews (see appendix a) are used to obtain information regarding the students’ experiences and consider their strengths and weaknesses when dealing with two kinds of videos for educational purposes in their english learning process. survey marshall and rossman (2006) point out that “a survey research is the appropriate mode of inquiry for making inferences about a large group of people based on data drawn from a relatively small number of individuals in that group” (p. 125). in this study, surveys (see appendix b) seek to corroborate information about the use of videos by undergraduate students, that is, the information gathered through the interview format and students’artifacts to create the research categories that arise or are common in the three elements of information gathering. in the format of the survey, open and close-ended questions were answered by the participants regarding the implementation of videos as an educational tool, the ability to talk about specific topics, learn about video production, and work together in order to contribute to the improvement of oral presentation skills. students’ production through videos (artifacts) videos “should be characterized as an information source within which data could be identified. to create data, the researcher strategically selected video segments from an available corpus and used them for a specific analytic purpose” (goldman, erickson, lemke, & derry, 2007, p. 18). therefore, in this research, real-life and moviestorm videos were gathered as a set of data in order to categorize and analyze them, taking into account the participants’ performances. to collect these data, a pedagogical intervention based on the students’ videos was implemented in order to see how this intervention worked in this specific context. since this investigation analyzed oral presentation skills and new language abilities in computer software, the videos were an ideal tool for this study. methods of analysis information was collected using the three instruments mentioned above: the interview, survey, and students’artifacts. the data produced by these instruments were analysed, compared, and systematized in order to provide information on the students’ production and opinions regarding the use of both videos. the purpose of this type of research was to use a pedagogical intervention to analyze the results obtained from moviestorm vs. real-life videos in the esp classroom. findings first stage: use of real-life video to promote oral presentation skills the participants were asked to create their own real-life videos based on some parameters for the design of educational videos and presentation skills. such parameters included the technical part (editing) and aspects such as pronunciation, intonation, stress, language use, and body language, among other considerations. universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras48 ochoa alpala & ortíz garcía during the creation of the real-life educational videos, participants were asked to write scripts based on a topic related to their majors. then, they received feedback on their writing from us in order to make corrections. final corrections were made on coherence of ideas and video production. in total, students spent 12 hours of class time writing and creating videos, keeping in mind comments that we had already given them. to illustrate the procedure, we will describe one video made by the law students. they were asked to form groups of three people and to think of a topic that was related to their field of study; in some cases, students worked by pairs. one of the groups chose the topic “violation of human rights in colombia”. so, we asked them to write a script which was corrected by us and then they started preparing it in terms of pronunciation, intonation, and stress. they took enough time before recording themselves using cellphone devices. the results seen in the videos and analyzed from the rubric (see table 1) were as follows: in 70% of the videos students did not look natural as regards their body language; on occasions, they looked nervous because of the camera, read the dialogues instead of presenting them, memorized the script and then repeated it without the necessary pauses which made them sound artificial. one of the most noticeable aspects observed in the real-life videos was the creativity shown in making this kind of videos where students changed their scenarios, used objects around them, and assumed different roles within the situations on their specific majors. through this kind of video students learned new vocabulary and demonstrated knowledge about specific topics and their application to real contexts. we could see in the videos and from an analysis of the rubrics in terms of grammar that only some students focused on the grammatical correctness in spoken english, even though they were given some feedback during the writing of their scripts before recording the video. in terms of pronunciation, 80% of the students did not pay much attention to this aspect. for example, when they used technical words, participants mispronounced some of them. also some participants used different lexical resources since they wrote their scripts on topics related to their professions. students with a major in law and engineering participated in this investigation. for the most part, their reactions to filming real-life videos were varied. most of the law participants found that producing reallife videos was appealing to them since their overall confidence in front of an audience made it easier to face a camera. on the other hand, it was found that some of the engineering participants found the real-life video activity difficult due to the need for spontaneous and natural acting when the camera is set on them. besides, most of the participants from the different majors thought that speaking in english made them feel more anxious because they do not manage english as properly as their mother tongue. the students were interviewed about the use of educational videos in an esp course: teacher: do you think the use of real life videos influences your oral production skills in english regarding pronunciation, intonation, stress, fluency, and body language? table 1. rubric for real-life videos presentation skills: organization, content, delivery, pose, visuals (40%) coherence-cohesion (15%) lexical resource (15%) grammatical range (15%) pronunciationintonation-fluency (15%) 49profile: issues teach. prof. dev., vol. 20 no. 1, jan-jun, 2018. issn 1657-0790 (printed) 2256-5760 (online). bogotá, colombia. pages 41-56 creating machinima (3d) and real life videos in an esp classroom s1:1 i think it does contribute somewhat, it helps to improve fluency and development in public. (interview) s2: i think it is useful because we do not have the opportunity to speak in english during the day and by doing these exercises, the structure of these sentences, and speaking you perform better and you learn more. (interview) s3: by using the real-life video, you use body language and english proficiency orally. (survey) in the previous excerpts the students said that reallife videos helped them improve fluency, pronunciation, and public presentations; besides, they could perform better in english and learn more. taking into account the previous opinions, it was observed that even though presentation skills improved, using videos in the esp classroom implied repetition, perseverance, accurate use of language, appropriate use of technological resources, body language, and lexical range among other aspects mentioned above. we observed in the videos that there is still a lack of understanding related to some technical vocabulary used by the students during their presentations and a lack of pauses, intonation, fluency, and so on. during the survey, the students expressed their opinions regarding the creation of real life videos as shown in figure 2. in general, the creation of real-life videos was useful for the participants to practice and develop oral presentation skills since the creation of these videos engages body language, creativity, and language use. second stage: the use of machinima the second stage of the project was about the creation of a moviestorm video. we wanted to use moviestorm machinima because it is used around the world for some people who might like to use this kind of tools in order to do different things through new 1 participants are identified with a letter s followed by a number. all the answers given by participants were translated from spanish into english. technologies. because of current pedagogical activities, for instance, the incorporation of technology, students might feel motivated to use it in order to face difficult tasks; for that reason, we incorporated this machinima technology to increase students’ motivation and to create new spaces to practice the language. one machinima characteristic is the creation of animation through video games. in this stage, participants were asked to write their own scripts once again. they were trained in the use of machinima when the teacherresearchers presented the technology step by step. the first step was for participants to bring their computers to the classroom. they logged into moviestorm and followed our instructions on producing and editing their machinima videos. participants were given time to explore the different icons and terminology offered by the platform. they created their first avatars and simulations through settings, environments, and objects around each situation. there were some issues related to camera movement and sound incorporation. these problems arose from a lack of knowledge in specific software language and in training time needed by efl students to edit and produce their video content. figure 2. question 5 from the survey 5. creating a real life video (for example, a cellphone recording) is useful for developing my oral presentation skills (pronunciation, fluency, intonation, etc.) 47%48% 5% totally agree agree neither agree nor disagree universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras50 ochoa alpala & ortíz garcía some of the participants (especially the law students) had some trouble during this stage. they found it hard using some items in the creation of characters and settings, as well as using the 3d cameras in the virtual environment. those students also thought they needed more vocabulary to use moviestorm because there were some items they did not know how to use. they also thought the software was hard to use because there were some aspects such as details related to clothes, settings and characters’ behavior that they could not successfully utilize. in the video analysis and the rubric (see table 2), 60% of the participants created good videos in terms of specific issues such as pronunciation, organization of grammatical structures to deal coherently with a suitable dialogue, accurate handling of cameras, and incorporation of different items to deal with avatars’ movements and actions; 65% of the participants demonstrated coherence and cohesion in the recording of the moviestorm video, in terms of the organization, the presentation, and delivery of it. seventy-five percent of the students used a great deal of lexical resources, taking into account specific topics related to their professions. regarding grammatical range, 80% of the participants from the faculties of law, computer science, and electronic engineering made mistakes with the use of pronouns, possessive adjectives, verbs and some technical words, among other things, during the production of the 3d video. regarding pronunciation, intonation, and fluency, 70% of the students did not pay enough attention to these aspects (even though they did not have to use body language) perhaps due to the technological problems they claimed they had during the recording and editing of the video. finally, the delivery of the video in most of the cases (70%) resulted in a video with good delivery resorting to creativity, the use of the software, role-plays through avatars, and scenarios, among others (see figure 1 for a sample of the participants’ machinima). law students did not think moviestorm was a suitable tool to work with because they said, “real life videos is sort of an easier way to use because the only tool we need is our speech” (interview excerpt). students also think that they can use the body language that is meaningful because it supports their ideas, considering, of course, that they do not waste time using technology tools that make things harder. nevertheless, law students pointed out: “using this kind of resources such as moviestorm as part of the class is an appealing strategy because it is different from other typical activities as using a book or filling out copies” (survey excerpt); however, they think moviestorm is not an entirely meaningful tool because it limits some aspects like spontaneous performances and body language useful to express feelings and they can not express them through avatars. on the other hand, engineering students (computer science and electronic) consider moviestorm to be a good tool for developing their oral presentation skills. first, they claimed that if they did not have a camera recording them, they would be able to act more easily because they might not feel pressured in any way, so they would have a better performance. they feel motivated when they have to use technology; for instance, one participant said: “when we record ourselves and listen there is a chance to delete, be aware when the words are mispronounced and if necessary to record it again” (interview excerpt). engineering students also think these kinds of tools help them look for new ways to learn because they find moviestorm a table 2. rubric for moviestorm videos coherence-cohesion (25%) lexical resource (25%) grammatical range (20%) pronunciation-intonationfluency-delivery (presentation skills) (30%) 51profile: issues teach. prof. dev., vol. 20 no. 1, jan-jun, 2018. issn 1657-0790 (printed) 2256-5760 (online). bogotá, colombia. pages 41-56 creating machinima (3d) and real life videos in an esp classroom new way to improve their english language level. in the same way, they recognized that real-life videos are a good tool because, as they expressed: “we use the english we know and have the chance to improvise if necessary” (interview excerpt) in order to be able to communicate what they mean. students claimed the problem they found in moviestorm is related to licenses considering that they are expensive and when the trial period expires, some items are restricted. they also pointed out, “there is a disadvantage because body language is limited a lot” (interview excerpt); they cannot use the body language they usually do to support the ideas they want to express. in general, engineering students perceived 3d video to be suitable because they could practice english without pressure and because it is a different tool; they also recognize the current importance of incorporating technology in classes. finally, they expressed that they liked 3d videos because when they listen to their recordings, they can analyze their mistakes and correct them. the students were interviewed about the use of educational videos in an esp course: teacher: which video, real life or moviestorm, do you think is more appropriate for you in order to perform an oral presentation? s4: for me it was moviestorm, since when we recorded ourselves and listened there was a chance to delete it, be aware about the things that were not correct and if necessary to record it again. (interview excerpt) s5: in my case, it is moviestorm because it is something different from other tasks, instead of the first video where we got nervous and we had to prepare so well the dialogues, so in this case we start improvising more, acting more, and using the tools we got. (interview excerpt) creating videos can make students solve problems. for example, in the present research using 3d video, participants had trouble using the software and the organization of the presentation as such. however, working as a team, they tried to solve any difficulties to create videos based on a topic related to their professions and, in the end, they overcame the negative aspects and produced well-planned 3d videos by using the software moviestorm. during the survey, the students expressed their opinions regarding the creation of 3d videos as shown in figure 3. figure 3. question 6 from the survey 6. creating a 3d video (for example, machinima) is useful for developing my oral presentation skills (pronunciation, fluency, intonation, etc.) 42% 37% 11% 10% totally agree agree disagree neither agree nor disagree in general terms, students claimed that the creation of moviestorm videos was a good technological tool to develop oral presentation skills in a different way by using specific software to create characters, assume roles, and talk about a technical topic. students also realized that this kind of activities lets them recreate real life situations in different contexts. esp in the implementation of videos: students’ perceptions videos are tools that have been used for years in english classes in order to incorporate different input material for students to have different sources, especially in listening and speaking development. the main idea of using esp videos is to have a pedagogical strategy for practising that allows students to learn while at the same time to connect english with their studies and careers. universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras52 ochoa alpala & ortíz garcía some participants in this study think that using videos in esp courses is attractive because they think this is a way to practice english and study topics they really care about, and this is thus an accurate strategy. they pointed out that if they use vocabulary about their major it will be useful in their future: “it is something useful when i travel abroad, i am sure”, “integrating something i am learning with something i like, i get interested so much more, because in the future i will use it, it motivates me a lot” (interview excerpts). for that matter, most of the participants think that when going abroad where english is spoken, they will use this sort of vocabulary and it will represent an advantage in terms of learning and communication. law students as well as engineering students agreed that using esp videos for practising is a good strategy. law students preferred real-life videos whereas engineering students preferred moviestorm; they shared their points of view about having those activities which they found nicer, more useful and meaningful. as they expressed: “we can reinforce both aspects at the same time: english and the topics of our study program¨ (interview excerpt). in this way, there is no doubt about the advantages of creating esp videos in courses since students in general like their study program. what this means is that if they are motivated in their fields, they will have that empathy for esp. there is nevertheless a small percentage of students who thought they would not feel motivated using esp videos in english classes. “i personally believe that it would be a motivation or a limitation, you know? i want to learn the daily vocabulary and i do not just want to talk about my program of studies” (interview excerpt). it means some participants might think learning a language does not necessarily imply studying about things they usually like because they would also like to have a free space which they can use to do different things related to their academic programs. even though they knew from the beginning of the esp course about the objectives and requirements, it was more appealing for them to switch from one esp topic to a general topic. during the project, most students agreed using esp courses helped them build up knowledge they might use in the future. students think that when using esp, they get interested in english because they feel they will have the opportunity to connect the new knowledge they are acquiring with previous knowledge and thus make relating to things they are studying easier and making learning english more meaningful. some students’ answers about the perception of using esp topics are shown in the following excerpts: teacher: how do you describe your oral english production related to the use of your career topics? s4: well, i think that in my learning process it is good and those topics motivate me because i like my career a lot, it means, it is not just another topic, besides it helps to learn new words i might use when i travel in the future. (interview excerpt) s6: i personally believe that it would be a motivation or a limitation, i want to learn the daily vocabulary and i do not just want to talk about my career it depends on…not everybody likes what they are studying. (interview excerpt) s7: integrating something i am learning with something i like, i get interested so much more, because in the future i will use it, it motivates me a lot. (survey excerpt) finally, content knowledge is a relevant aspect in an esp course because students use the foreign language to talk about a topic in their profession. in the creation of both videos, real-life vs. 3d, students wrote their scripts in english about a specific technical topic in order to show what they learned by investigating and studying the topic. some students decided to present their topics through role-plays, assuming situations related to their university programs. in the end, the participants belonging to different undergraduate programs highlighted videos as comprising good technological tools for esp classes. they can also be autonomous outside of the classroom, even though they receive guidance 53profile: issues teach. prof. dev., vol. 20 no. 1, jan-jun, 2018. issn 1657-0790 (printed) 2256-5760 (online). bogotá, colombia. pages 41-56 creating machinima (3d) and real life videos in an esp classroom and feedback from the teacher. moreover, videos can help students in terms of learning english and in the development of oral presentation skills. going back to the initial question (what is the relationship between the creation of real-life and virtual videos in the development of oral presentation skills, focused on esp environments, directed to the undergraduate students from the usta?), we can find some similarities in the implementation of both kinds of videos based on the data obtained from the participants: 1. participants made some mistakes regarding english grammar use. 2. they did not revise the pronunciation of words before presenting the topics. 3. they wrote their scripts to create a more accurate presentation. 4. they changed their scenarios or resources they had in order to be more creative. 5. they worked collaboratively. 6. they reflected on the use of both videos in terms of oral presentation skills. 7. in both videos, students paid much more attention to the delivery of the video rather than english language use. 8. they did not use the appropriate pauses in both videos. 9. they used language appropriate to the content in both environments. regarding the differences in the implementation of both videos: 1. in the real-life videos, the participants had a medium with which to use their body language: gestures, postures, eye contact, hand movements, and so on. however, in most of the videos, their body language was limited during their presentations. they focused more on remembering the scripts and looking well dressed. 2. in the 3d videos, the use of the software was more difficult for students than using their cellphones for creating real-life videos. 3. the participants claimed that with the use of reallife videos they could express more feelings, body language, and language use rather than 3d videos. 4. most of the students pointed out that through the 3d video they felt less afraid of using esp since they were not exposed to a camera that made them feel intimidated. 5. law students highlighted they preferred real-life videos to create their presentations while engineering students preferred 3d videos instead, given the nature of their majors. conclusions the use of real-life and 3d videos in the esp classroom promotes the development of oral presentation skills that allow students to talk about their professions and other topics, facing contexts where they can represent real life situations. therefore, videos prepare students to assume real life presentations in terms of pronunciation, intonation, body language and, in general, english usage. when undergraduate students use different materials such as real and 3d videos to learn english as a foreign language, they can make this experience meaningful and enhance their lives as future professionals. due to the characteristics of the students’ study programs, law students found real-life videos easier than the 3d ones because they are used to making oral presentations and they found, in this kind of videos, a way to improve aspects when performing related to their body language as well as their speech. engineering students prefer to use virtual videos because they are familiarized with different computer programs and applications. using machinima videos as part of the project allows students to think that learning languages can be different, interesting, or innovative. students can see this technology as a current tool that might allow them to be part of the globalization trend and become aware that they themselves can explore the world. using moviestorm videos allowed students to focus on specific things related to their speech such as intonauniversidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras54 ochoa alpala & ortíz garcía tion, pronunciation, fluency, phonetics stress, and so on. when students analyzed their videos, they were capable of reflecting on different aspects and points of their oral presentation skills. thus, we conclude that when students use different tools before having an oral presentation and then analyze their performance, they can build self-confidence and start losing their fears when they present in public. references bhatia, v., anthony, l., & noguchi, j. (2011). esp in the 21st century: esp theory and application today. proceedings of the jacet 50th commemorative international convention, tokyo, japan. burns, m. (2008). guidelines for oral presentations. retrieved from http://www.auburn.edu/~burnsma/oralpres.html. butler, d. (2012). second life machinima enhancing the learning of law: lessons from successful endeavours. australasian journal of educational technology, 28(3), 383-399. https://doi.org/10.14742/ajet.841. çakir, i. (2006). the use of video as an audio-visual material in foreign language teaching classroom. the turkish online journal of educational technology – tojet, 5(4), 67-72. dudovskiy, j. (n.d.). interviews [web log post]. retrieved from https://research-methodology.net/research-methods/ qualitative-research/interviews/. goldman, r., erickson, f., lemke, j., & derry, s. j. (2007). selection in video. in s. j. derry (ed.), guidelines for video research in education: recommendations from an expert panel (pp. 15-23). chicago, us: data research and development center. retrieved from https://drdc. uchicago.edu/what/video-research-guidelines.pdf. machinima. (n.d.). in wikipedia.org. retrieved from https:// en.wikipedia.org/wiki/machinima. marculescu, c. (2015). teaching esp in the digital era: the use of technology in project-based learning and assessment. proceeding of the 11th international scientific conference of elearning and software for education (pp. 228-235). university of bucharest, romania. marshall, c., & rossman, g. b. (2006). designing qualitative research (4th ed.). london, uk: sage publications. meihami, h., meihami, b., & varmaghani, z. (2013). call in the form of simulation games: teaching english vocabulary and pronunciation through sims. international letters of social and humanistic sciences, 8, 57-65. metler, c. a. (2014). action research: improving schools and empowering educators (4th ed.). thousand oaks, us: sage publications. meyers, e. (2014). using machinima as cultural probes to study communication in children’s virtual worlds: an exploratory approach. in iconference 2014 proceedings (pp. 669-674). berlin, de: ischools. paltridge, b., & starfield, s. (eds.). (2013). the handbook of english for specific purposes. chichester, uk: wiley-blackwell. sukitkanaporn, t., & phoocharoensil, s. (2014). english presentation skills of thai graduate students. english language teaching, 7(3). 91-102. https://doi.org/10.5539/ elt.v7n3p91. živković, s. (2014). the importance of oral presentations for university students. mediterranean journal of social sciences, 5(19), 468-475. https://doi.org/10.5901/mjss.2014. v5n19p468. about the authors carol anne ochoa alpala holds a b.ed. in modern languages from universidad pedagógica y tecnológica de colombia (uptc) and an m.a. in languages from uptc. she also holds an m.a. in education and new technologies from udima. currently, she is a phd candidate in research and pedagogy at unade. william ricardo ortíz garcía holds a b.ed. in modern languages: english-spanish and a specialization in human rights teaching from uptc. he also holds a master’s degree in higher education from universidad internacional iberoamericana (puerto rico and mexico). he is a phd candidate in research and pedagogy at universidad americana de europa. 55profile: issues teach. prof. dev., vol. 20 no. 1, jan-jun, 2018. issn 1657-0790 (printed) 2256-5760 (online). bogotá, colombia. pages 41-56 creating machinima (3d) and real life videos in an esp classroom appendix a: interview2 1. do you think the use of real-life videos influences your oral production skills in english regarding pronunciation, intonation, stress, fluency, and body language? 2. which video, real-life or moviestorm, do you think is more appropriate for you in order to perform an oral presentation? 3. what are the aspects, either positive or negative, of real-life videos? 4. what are the aspects, either positive or negative, of moviestorm videos? 5. how do you describe your oral english production related to the use of your career topics? 6. what suggestions would you make for oral presentations using real-life videos vs. moviestorm in an eventual course? 2 the interview is originally in spanish universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras56 ochoa alpala & ortíz garcía appendix b: survey3 the following survey focuses on a research project about the use of videos as pedagogical tools directed to undergraduate students from usta, in order to explore technological fields regarding the english learning processes. please, answer the survey honestly. indicate to what extent you agree or disagree with the following statements: statement td d nad a ta 1. presenting a topic in english in front of the teacher and classmates causes me anxiety. 2. presenting in english using a real-life video (for example, a cellphone recording) causes me anxiety. 3. presenting in english using a 3d program (for example, moviestorm) causes me anxiety 4. presenting in english on topics related to my career is useful for my lifelong learning. 5. creating a real-life video (for example, a cellphone recording) is useful for developing my oral presentation skills (pronunciation, fluency, intonation). 6. creating a 3d video (for example, moviestorm) is useful for developing my oral presentation skills (pronunciation, fluency, intonation). note. td = totally disagree, d = disagree, nad = neither agree nor disagree, a = agree, ta = totally agree 7. from your perspective, which video (real-life or moviestorm) might or might not contribute to your development of oral presentation skills? justify your answer. 8. to what extent do you consider that the use of virtual programs (moviestorm) contribute to your english learning process in terms of oral production skills? justify your answer. 3 the survey is originally in spanish. 189profile vol. 17, no. 2, july-december 2015. issn 1657-0790 (printed) 2256-5760 (online). bogotá, colombia. pages 182-191 accumulative index of published articles in profile vol. 17 (2015) number pages articles 2 29-42 alibakhshi, g., & dehvari, n. “efl teachers’ perceptions of continuing professional development: a case of iranian high school teachers” [“la percepción de docentes de inglés como lengua extranjera acerca del desarrollo profesional continuado: el caso de profesores iraníes de bachillerato”] 1 35-53 buendía arias, x. p. “a comparison of chinese and colombian university efl students regarding learner autonomy” [“comparación entre estudiantes universitarios de inglés chinos y colombianos con respecto a su autonomía como aprendices”] 2 149-163 caicedo, j. “teacher activities and adolescent students’ participation in a colombian efl classroom” [“actividades de enseñanza y participación de estudiantes adolescentes en una clase de enseñanza de inglés como lengua extranjera en colombia”] 2 137-146 cote parra, g. e. “engaging foreign language learners in a web 2.0-mediated collaborative learning process” [“inclusión de estudiantes de lenguas extranjeras en procesos colaborativos de aprendizaje mediados por la web 2.0”] 1 87-102 diaz, i. “training in metacognitive strategies for students’ vocabulary improvement by using learning journals” [“entrenamiento de estrategias metacognitivas para mejorar vocabulario a través de diarios de aprendizaje”] 2 125-136 espinar redondo, r., & ortega martín, j. l. “motivation: the road to successful learning” [“la motivación: el camino para un aprendizaje exitoso”] 1 25-33 gómez burgos, e. “first year university students’ use of formulaic sequences in oral and written descriptions” [“el uso de secuencias formulaicas de estudiantes de primer año en descripciones orales y escritas”] universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras190 2 167-187 gómez rodríguez, l. f. “the cultural content in efl textbooks and what teachers need to do about it” [“el contenido cultural en los textos de inglés y qué necesitan hacer los profesores al respecto”] 2 13-27 guerrero nieto, c. h., & meadows, b. “global professional identity in deterretorialized spaces: a case study of a critical dialogue between expert and novice nonnative english speaker teachers” [“identidad profesional global en espacios desterritorializados: un estudio de caso de los diálogos críticos entre profesores de inglés no nativos”] 1 55-72 herrando-rodrigo, i. “attitudes and discourse: spanish practitioners’ and undergraduates’ survey results” [“actitudes y discurso: resultados de encuestas a profesionales y estudiantes de medicina”] 2 63-79 kaneko-marques, s. m. “reflective teacher supervision through videos of classroom teaching” [“supervisión colaborativa docente a través de clases grabadas en video”] 1 105-120 lara herrera, r. “mexican secondary school students’ perception of learning the history of mexico in english” [“la percepción de alumnos mexicanos de secundaria cuando aprenden la historia de méxico en inglés”] 2 81-99 macías d. f., & sánchez, j. a. “classroom management: a persistent challenge for pre-service foreign language teachers” [“manejo del salón de clase: un reto persistente para docentes practicantes de lenguas extranjeras”] 2 101-110 mugford, g., & ramírez cuevas, o. “when students say far too much: examining gushing in the elt classroom” [“cuando los alumnos dicen demasiado: análisis del uso excesivo de palabras en clases de inglés como lengua extranjera”] 1 7-9 nieto cruz, m. c., & cárdenas, m. l. “editorial” [“editorial”] 2 7-10 nieto cruz, m. c., & cárdenas, m. l. “editorial” [“editorial”] 191profile vol. 17, no. 2, july-december 2015. issn 1657-0790 (printed) 2256-5760 (online). bogotá, colombia. pages 182-191 2 111-124 nuñez asomoza, a. “students’ perceptions of the impact of clil in a mexican ba program” [“percepciones de los estudiantes sobre el impacto de la enseñanza de contenido-lengua integrados en un programa de pregrado en méxico”] 1 157-166 restrepo ramos, f. d. “incidental vocabulary learning in second language acquisition: a literature review” [“aprendizaje incidental de vocabulario en la adquisición de una segunda lengua: una revisión de literatura”] 1 143-156 romaña correa, y. “skype™ conference calls: a way to promote speaking skills in the teaching and learning of english” [“llamadas para conferencia en skype™: una forma de promover la habilidad de habla en la enseñanza y aprendizaje del inglés”] 1 13-24 sarasa, m. c. “narrative research into the possibilities of classroom-generated stories in english teacher education” [“una investigación narrativa en torno a las posibilidades de los relatos realizados en clase en la formación del profesorado de inglés”] 1 73-86 tolosa, c., ordóñez, c. l., & alfonso, t. “online peer feedback between colombian and new zealand fl beginners: a comparison and lessons learned” [“retroalimentación virtual de pares entre aprendices principiantes de lengua de colombia y nueva zelanda: una comparación y lecciones aprendidas”] 2 43-62 trujeque moreno, e. e., encinas prudencio, f., & thomas-ruzic, m. “exploring authorship development among mexican efl teacher-researchers” [“exploración sobre el desarrollo de la autoría en los profesores-investigadores de inglés como lengua extranjera”] 1 123-141 viafara gonzález, j. j., & ariza ariza, j. a. “from awareness to cultural agency: efl colombian student teachers’ travelling abroad experiences” [“de la concientización a la agencia cultural: las experiencias en el extranjero de futuros profesores de inglés”] 73profile vol. 19, no. 1, january-june 2017. issn 1657-0790 (printed) 2256-5760 (online). bogotá, colombia. pages 73-88 http://dx.doi.org/10.15446/profile.v19n1.55957 developing the oral skill in online english courses framed by the community of inquiry el desarrollo de la habilidad oral en cursos de inglés online, enmarcados por la comunidad de indagación luz edith herrera díaz1* darlene gonzález miy2** universidad veracruzana, veracruz, mexico over the last decade, the community of inquiry framework has proved successful for online learning experiences in diverse disciplines, although studies in the teaching of english as a foreign language arena are still scarce. in this vein, this article reports a preliminary study about the development of the oral skill in a basic english online course, uncovering the relationship between the community of inquiry framework (with its three forms of presence: teaching, cognitive, and social) and some indicators of the oral skill. findings, based on learners’ perceptions, confirmed the existence of such framework and suggest that the teaching presence fosters grammar, accuracy, and vocabulary. discussion of findings, limitations of the study and future possible research actions conclude this report. key words: community of inquiry, foreign language teaching-learning, online education, oral skill. en la última década, el modelo de comunidad de indagación ha demostrado ser efectivo en experiencias de aprendizaje en línea en diversas disciplinas. no obstante, los estudios en el campo de la enseñanza del inglés aún son escasos. en este orden de ideas, el presente artículo reporta un estudio preliminar acerca del desarrollo de la habilidad oral en un curso de inglés en línea, así, se revelan algunas relaciones entre las presencias de este modelo (docente, cognitiva y social) y algunos indicadores de la habilidad oral. los hallazgos, basados en la percepción de los estudiantes, confirman la existencia de dichas presencias y sugieren que la docente contribuye a la mejora de la gramática, la precisión y el vocabulario. finalmente, se presentan conclusiones, limitaciones y futuros aspectos por indagar. palabras clave: comunidad de indagación, educación en línea, enseñanza-aprendizaje de lenguas extranjeras, habilidad oral. * e-mail: luherrera@uv.mx ** e-mail: darlene_glez@hotmail.com how to cite this article (apa, 6th ed.): herrera díaz, l. e., & gonzález miy, d. (2017). developing the oral skill in online english courses framed by the community of inquiry. profile issues in teachers’ professional development, 19(1), 73-88. http://dx.doi.org/10.15446/profile. v19n1.55957. this article was received on february 29, 2016, and accepted on october 29, 2016. this is an open access article distributed under the terms of the creative commons license attribution-noncommercial-noderivatives 4.0 international license. consultation is possible at http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/. universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras74 herrera díaz & gonzález miy introduction education, as a strategy to transform societies into knowledge societies, in which knowledge is shared through diverse possibilities of communication (extended by technology and networks), should promote the production, distribution, and socialization of information in order to empower individuals (unesco, 2005). thus, as active participants of the educational process, teachers have been facing a condition in which technology has become an important element in education. although distance education is not new, only recently has this movement become official according to the ministry of education in mexico. as a result, several mexican universities have implemented distance education by creating flexible online options for everyone to have access to formal higher education (estados unidos mexicanos, presidencia de la república, 2012). in this way, the authorities have intended to facilitate access to knowledge, to increase the education level of the population, and to assure the universal right to education according to the declarations of unesco (1998) and the organización de estados iberoamericanos para la educación, la ciencia y la cultura (oei, 2010). however, this flexibility in education should be assumed from a systemic point of view, so that we understand this educational phenomenon as a whole. thus, online distance education (ode) should be understood from a global perspective, and not simply in terms of geographical locations and time constraints regarding a physical classroom. learning in virtual learning environments (vle) provokes ruptures in the ways knowledge is generated, situating learning within the learner’s scope, and making the educational process a reality (aguirre & edel, 2013). moreover, these new learning perspectives encourage the teacher to become a facilitator, a guide, and an instructor that accompanies the learners in their educational quest. therefore, learners are urged to play a more active role, but not only for individual action, but for collaborative work in a virtual learning community; aspects that will determine their learning experience. specifically, in the field of language learning, ode has challenged the area of teaching english as a foreign language (tefl) in terms of the development of linguistic skills. although technology has been present in this area for a long time, and computer assisted language learning (call) has benefited from technological tools that have provided educational resources in the target language, most online courses have focused on reading, writing, and listening skills (jordano de la torre, 2011). regarding the oral skill, which we perceive as being traditionally conceived as the product of the verbal interaction between the learners and the instructor in a face to face context, levy and stockwell (2006) assert that it is the most difficult to teach, practice, and evaluate through technology. consequently, fostering the development of the oral skill through call, in online education, seems to be a complex issue that demands different approaches in order to succeed in the context of a vle. in an emerging knowledge society that incorporates new ways of learning and thereby increasing our intellectual capital, the ability to communicate verbally in a foreign language complements the profile of the learners who aim to accumulate their own capital. in this context, the current research article examines the development of the oral skill in online english courses that embraced the pedagogy framed by the community of inquiry (coi) (garrison, anderson, & archer, 1999). accordingly, we present a literature review related to the coi framework, specifically in the field of tefl. then, the aim and questions that underlie this research are established, followed by the methodology considered for the data collection and analyses, which finally lead to the findings that are discussed afterwards. 75profile vol. 19, no. 1, january-june 2017. issn 1657-0790 (printed) 2256-5760 (online). bogotá, colombia. pages 73-88 developing the oral skill in online english courses framed by the community of inquiry literature review the oral skill in tefl among others, gordillo (2011) has defined oral skill as the capacity of expressing oneself verbally for communicating, based on the linguistic rules of a language. it is divided into two complementary skills: listening (the receptive skill) and speaking (the productive skill); both of them are produced within a communication act, in which the speaker and listener communicate among themselves, not individually. the oral skill indicators to be considered in this research are four: fluency and coherence, lexical resources, grammatical range and accuracy, and pronunciation. within the parameters determined in the certification exam ielts (institutional english language testing system, 2007) and the british council, they are defined as follows: [fluency and coherence] is the ability to talk with normal levels of continuity, rate, and effort and to link ideas and language together to form coherent, connected speech. the key indicators of fluency are speech rate and speech continuity. the key indicators of coherence are logical sequencing of sentences, clear marking of stages in discussion, narration or argument, and the use of cohesive devices (e.g., connectors, pronouns, and conjunctions) within and between sentences. (ielts, 2007, p. 12) in kaye’s words (n.d.), fluency and coherence refer to how good the candidates are at keeping talking at the right speed and how good they are at connecting their ideas together; additionally, speakers need to be able to understand and follow the rules of language at word, sentence, and text levels. (para. 8) a second indicator of the oral skill is the lexical resource, which makes reference to the range of vocabulary the candidate can use and the precision with which meanings and attitudes can be expressed. the key indicators are the variety of words used, the adequacy and appropriacy of the words used, and the ability of circumlocution (get round a vocabulary gap by using other words) with or without noticeable hesitation. (ielts, 2007, p. 12) in other words, this is about the amount of vocabulary the candidates have and “how well they use it. as well as the rules of language at a word level, this criterion considers the communicative functions of speech and the social meaning of speech” (kaye, n.d., para. 9). grammatical range and accuracy is another indicator that is evaluated in the oral skill, and it refers to: the range and the accurate and appropriate use of the candidate’s grammatical resource. the key indicators of grammatical range are the length and complexity of the spoken sentences, the appropriate use of subordinate clauses, and the range of sentence structures, especially to move elements around for information focus. the key indicators of grammatical accuracy are the number of grammatical errors in a given amount of speech and the communicative effect of error. (ielts, 2007, p. 12) another way to understand grammatical range and accuracy has to do with “how much vocabulary the candidate has, and how well he uses it; along with the rules of language at a word level; this criterion considers the communicative functions and the social meaning of speech” (kaye, n.d., para. 10). finally, pronunciation is the last of the indicators of the oral skill that we are considering in this study, and it is understood as: the ability to produce comprehensible speech to fulfill the speaking test requirements. the key indicators will be the amount of strain caused to the listener, the amount of the speech which is unintelligible and the noticeability of l1 influence. (ielts, 2007, p. 12) to be more precise, this indicator relates to “how well the candidate pronounces the language and the communicative effect of the candidate’s pronunciation. within this indicator, speakers need to be able to produce the phonological features of speech.” (kaye, n.d., para. 11) universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras76 herrera díaz & gonzález miy although the importance of the oral skill in a foreign language is undeniable, its evaluation is one of the most complex and controversial aspects in the tefl field (weir, o’sullivan, & horai, 2006). as luoma (2004) states, it is not an easy task to find the most appropriate ways to connect the objectives of evaluation with the corresponding activities or with the most appropriate instruments to assess the way a person communicates verbally. according to escalona, medina, and escalona (2010), in the english language teaching (elt) milieu, it is known that the communicative approach to language teaching and learning has guided current programs in many language schools and higher education institutions; however, the oral production still seems to be disregarded. escalona et al. assert that the lack of oral communication is a reflection of the use of traditional approaches focused on the grammatical skill. this usually threatens the quality of the learners’ oral expression by limiting their achieving of the required standards of communicative competence. that is to say, they learn the language, but their level is not good enough to perform in a real communicative context (hernández, 2010). this condition is augmented by the lack of activities and/or opportunities that may promote the oral skill in online courses, thereby restraining the learners’ ability to communicate verbally in their context. online pedagogy in language learning associated with the complexity of developing and evaluating the communication skills in vle, the pedagogical aspect appears. learners and teachers should adopt specific roles that lead to the achievement of their learning goals. in this sense, the coi framework (garrison et al., 1999), comprising the cognitive presence, the teaching presence, and the social presence, seems a viable option to guide the learning process towards a meaningful learning experience. the social presence, as defined by garrison et al. (1999), is the “ability of the participants in a community to project themselves socially and emotionally as real people” (p. 89). that is, in their learning environment, the participants establish a comfortable atmosphere by demonstrating signs of affection such as greetings, use of names/nicknames, and sense of community; factors that foster communication and create group cohesion. on the other hand, the cognitive presence refers to the “extent to which participants construct and confirm meaning through sustained reflection and discourse in a community of inquiry” (garrison et al., 1999, p. 89). this presence characterizes the inquiry process in four phases: triggering event, exploration, integration, and resolution. finally, the teaching presence is understood as the “design, facilitation, and direction of the social and cognitive processes with the purpose to achieve personal, meaningful, and educational outcomes” (garrison et al. 1999, p. 90). regarding the research about the coi, there is some concerning its application in different disciplines such as education, business, and technology1, but research in the specific field of tefl is more limited.2 these studies have confirmed the existence of the three types of presence described by garrison et al. (1999) during the development of the corresponding courses. most implementations and research have taken place at universities in north america, europe, and asia, where the language is the medium of instruction, but not the learning objective. yet, the findings are limited and have been investigated in cultural, educational, and 1 see akyol, garrison, & ozden, 2009; arbaugh, 2008; arbaugh, bangert, & cleveland-innes, 2010; burgess, slate, rojas-lebouef, & laprairie, 2010; garrison, cleveland-innes, & fung, 2010; goda & yamada, 2013; ke, 2010; kumar, dawson, black, cavanaugh, & sessums, 2011; lambert & fisher, 2013; shea & bidjerano, 2010; stein et al., 2007; stodel, thompson, & macdonald, 2006; vaughan & garrison, 2005. 2 see alavi & taghizadeh, 2013; arnold & ducate, 2006; asoodar, atai, vaezi, & marandi, 2014; chen, 2012; lomicka & lord, 2007; olesova, richardson, weasenforth, & meloni, 2011; randrianasolo, 2013; tolu, 2010; yamada, goda, matsukawa, hata, & yasunami, 2014. for a summary of these studies see gonzález miy & herrera díaz (2015). 77profile vol. 19, no. 1, january-june 2017. issn 1657-0790 (printed) 2256-5760 (online). bogotá, colombia. pages 73-88 developing the oral skill in online english courses framed by the community of inquiry linguistic settings different from the latin-american context, which is the setting of this study that has taken place in veracruz, mexico. learning theories in distance education in this scenario, we conducted a piece of research in the area of tefl and ode, specifically concerning the development of the oral skill in virtual courses. this would be analyzed by means of the social, cognitive, and teaching presence that, as suggested by the coi framework (garrison et al., 1999), should intervene in an online learning experience. on this ground, this research is based on a group of theories that incorporate, on the one hand, a pedagogical foundation integrated by the transactional distance theory (moore, 1993), constructivism (ausubel, 1983; vygotsky, 1978), and the language learning pedagogy (whong, 2011). on the other hand, the technological basis is integrated by the vles and the call (thomas, reinders, & warschauer, 2013a). the transactional distance theory emerges from distance education, in which “distance” exists not only geographically, but also in the interactions between the teacher and the learner, the environment and the behaviors. according to moore (1993), this “separation” affects both teaching and learning as there is a psychological and communicational gap, which could easily lead to confusion. it is this psychological separation that is referred to as transactional distance, and it demands specific teaching and learning strategies (instructional dialogue, structure, and autonomy) to be reduced. constructivism is known as a psychological and philosophical view, which assumes that what a person learns is the result of the constructions of knowledge based on his/her experiences and through interaction (schunk, 2012). constructivism has, among other things, been the foundation of the learner-centered approach; therefore, the teacher’s and learner’s roles have adopted different, specific characteristics. the teacher is expected to generate the conditions for the learners to interact with contents in an active way, as well as to generate the opportunities for them to socialize knowledge. therefore, the learner is expected to take an active role, self-regulating and collaborating with others to approach contents from different perspectives. this view of social learning is well recognized in the work of vygotsky (1978), from whose perspective is the social component that transforms the personal experiences of the learner and leads to a reorganization of mental structures. this is often referred to as dialectic or cognitive constructivism (schunk, 2012). here, the cognitive function suggests that learners are able to monitor and evaluate a stimulus and develop a response; however, learners are not passive entities as they are able to control the learning process. in the context of language learning, when learners are trying to learn a new element of the target language, they often compare it to the repertoire they have already learned, then make a hypothetical plan and try it. if such hypothesis is correct, they accept or reject it and try a new one. in this trial and error exercise, grammatical rules are learned individually, but when learners take this knowledge to a social environment of exchange, internalization of knowledge takes place and conducts to a reorganization of thoughts (shastri, 2010). the conceptions sustained by ausubel (1983) may be helpful to understand the “meaningfulness” of learning experiences. in his view, meaningful learning is an extension of the knowledge that the learner already has. this basis, previous to knowledge or the cognitive structure, serves as an anchor for new information; that is, linking new information to existing information leads to meaningful learning. however, it is important to understand that meaningful learning cannot only happen by association; there should be an interactive process. thus, this interaction between previous and new knowledge is what modifies the existing cognitive structure and makes learning meaningful. universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras78 herrera díaz & gonzález miy figure 1 shows how the pedagogical and technological sides are interconnected by the coi, all aiming at the development of the oral skill. language learning pedagogy, specifically the communicative approach, seems like a feasible way to reach the goals for verbal and written communication, since its focus is on language use instead of on learning language and grammatical rules (whong, 2011). thus, learners are encouraged to speak as much as possible in order to communicate, emphasizing the process rather than the final product. mistakes are treated secondarily with the teacher being careful not to cause the learners distractions while communicating and interacting. furthermore, by using authentic materials or those specifically created for language learners (often found in efl textbooks), learning is promoted in an environment where linguistic situations are created to simulate reality. in this sense, the communicative approach promotes an active learning process through interaction between the users. regarding the technological foundation, the vles consist of the hardware for the installation of learning resources, which are placed on the cyberspace and accessed through the internet (leakey, 2011). they are also referred to as management learning environments (mle) or course management systems (cms), which offer learning and evaluation materials as well as communication means to be used among learners and instructors. these environments facilitate the administration of educational materials and their delivery to their users; such materials include multimedia resources that accelerate learning and foster learners’ autonomy. additionally, their availability, automatic rev ision, com mu nicat ion tools, a nd information storage, represent advantages for both the learners and instructors, making them functional for distance learning (leakey, 2011). this technological scenario encompasses the call approach, which serves as a methodology that, according to thomas et al. (2013b), aims to use digital equipment in the teaching-learning field. in words of leakey (2011), call is better understood as the exploration, sometimes coherent, sometimes disparate, of all aspects of the human-computer axis, with the primary goal of figure 1. pedagogy and technology for online language learning pedagogy transactional distance theory constructivism language teaching pedagogy online distance education community of inquiry (col) oral skill information and communication technologies virtual learning environments computer assisted language learning 79profile vol. 19, no. 1, january-june 2017. issn 1657-0790 (printed) 2256-5760 (online). bogotá, colombia. pages 73-88 developing the oral skill in online english courses framed by the community of inquiry 2. what is the connection between the social, cognitive, and teaching presence of the coi and the indicators of the oral skill? 3. how do learners’ oral skills develop at the end of the course? method as previously mentioned, this study focuses on the learners’ perspectives about the development of their oral skill in online english courses through the lenses of the coi model. for that reason, this study has adopted a constructivist view in order to understand how reality is built and maintained (silverman, 2013). as well, it has embraced an interpretive perspective that sustains that any attempt to understand “reality” must be based on the experiences of the people in that social reality (gray, 2013). thus, the researcher intends that the meanings of such experiences emerge from themselves and not from prejudices and preconceptions that may limit the participants’ views (creswell, 2014). to analyze this phenomenon, an embedded mixed method design was used. according to creswell (2014), this method rests on one or more forms of data within a larger design, in which the researcher can collect data during, before or after an intervention. the fieldwork was carried out in an online english (level 2) course during a school period (februaryjuly 2015), at a public university in the southeast of mexico. communicative tasks and other types of class activities such as grammar explanations, exercises for practice, and assignments were fully developed online at the university’s educational platform (eminus), and supported by email and videoconference sessions, while exams were taken in situ. one of the researchers worked as a facilitator of the course, which allowed her to participate directly and to incorporate the coi elements, as considered appropriate; while the other one participated in the interviews and data analysis. enhancing the process of second-language teaching and learning, be it in curriculum design, delivery, testing, feedback, monitoring or evaluation, by means of the generation of improved computer-based platforms, courseware, learning environments and pedagogies. (p. 22) in the context of online education, language learning, by means of computer-mediated communication, is known as distance computer assisted language learning (dcall) (lamy, 2013). within this theoretical framework, our research aims to explore language learning in vle, specifically the development of the speaking skill in online courses, since as tudini (2005) points out, it is essential that distance online language courses provide opportunities for oral interaction. research problem unlike face-to-face learning, when working in virtual contexts “the oral skill is weakened, since existing technologies do not have a solid methodological base [for] its maximum development” (morales & ferreira, 2008, p. 96). in other words, in online courses, the speaking practice is not often provided or it is limited to repetition and the learners’ progress is rarely followed up on. in this way, the oral skill, understood as an instrument for communication, should not be overcome by the writing, reading, or listening skills, which are more easily adjusted to online courses. therefore, it was the aim of this research to find out how learners developed this skill when they were provided with opportunities to do so by means of an online language course. research questions in the current study, we aim to analyze and describe the contribution of the coi framework for the development of the oral skill in an online language course. for this purpose, the following research questions are proposed: 1. what is the learners’ perception of the coi types of presence in the online language course? universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras80 herrera díaz & gonzález miy participants’ description as mentioned before, this study took place at a public university in veracruz, mexico, in an online english ii course with the 12 students registered in the course. the sample, purposefully chosen (patton, 2002), consisted of nine participants (four female students and five male students) from 19 to 31 years old from the following majors: nutrition, odontology, accounting, communication, medicine, topography, and engineering. the inclusion criteria considered those undergraduate students registered in the online english course, who accepted to participate, after being informed about the purposes and procedures of the current study. on the other hand, the exclusion criteria consisted of not considering those undergraduate students, registered in this course, but who had a certified level of english over a2 (common european framework for languages). finally, the elimination criterion refers to those students who even if they were registered in the course, dropped out or were found to be inactive for three or more weeks. data collection as shown in table 1, for data collection we applied a semi-structured interview, an online survey, and pre and post oral tests in order to look at variations on the development of the oral skill. these methods and their corresponding instruments provided data about the learners’ performance regarding the oral skill, the existence of the social presence, cognitive presence, and teaching presence in the course, and their relationship with indicators of the oral skill such as: pronunciation, fluency and coherence, grammar and accuracy, and lexical resources. since this investigation was carried out in two phases, qualitative and quantitative, we made a practical summary of the data collection techniques and their corresponding instruments and functions, which is displayed in table 2. in the first approach to fieldwork, for the qualitative phase, an interview, which was originally going to be sent (via e-mail) to the learners, was done face to face when they attended the final oral exam (which was compulsory). the answers to these interviews were inductively analyzed and some links between the teaching presence and the oral skill emerged. document analysis (digital registers) and participant observation of the learners’ use of information and communications technology (ict) tools as well as their work and interaction on the platform (eminus) were also carried out in this phase, and qualitatively processed later on. in the quantitative approach to this study, we used a quasi-experimental treatment in which the dependent variable was the oral skill with its respective indicators (fluency and coherence, pronunciation, grammar and accuracy, and lexical resources). it was measured through two standardized oral exams that were graded according to rubrics already established by the english department evaluation committee. the independent variable was the coi model with its respective social, cognitive, and teaching presence. additionally, a survey, suggested by the coi model and based on a likert scale, was given to the learners. the analysis of the data gathered in this phase was deductively done and statistically treated. table 1. methods and instruments for data collection method instrument validity data analysis data processing interview coi-oral skill interview judges qualitative inductive survey coi questionnaire arbaugh et al. (2008) quantitative deductive test oral test rubric standardized test quantitative deductive 81profile vol. 19, no. 1, january-june 2017. issn 1657-0790 (printed) 2256-5760 (online). bogotá, colombia. pages 73-88 developing the oral skill in online english courses framed by the community of inquiry since we are reporting here only the results obtained from the interview, the oral exams, and the survey, these are the instruments presented in table 2. validity the following considerations were taken for the sake of validity. a standardized oral english exam, designed by an efl evaluation committee and applied at the same time, under same conditions in all the campuses of the university, was used to register the results of the students’ first and last evaluations. the consistency of the coi questionnaire was sustained by the work of arbaugh et al. (2008) and yu and richardson (2015), and it has statistically demonstrated its reliability. additionally, the interview questionnaire was revised by a tefl expert in order to validate the consistency and congruency of its spanish translation. data analysis according to the mixed perspective of this study (creswell, 2014), qualitative data, that is, the recorded interviews, were analyzed deductively and the coi presence and the indicators of the oral skill were coded by using the software atlas.ti. on the other hand, through the analysis of quantitative data, in order to evaluate the development of the oral skill, we compared the grades of both preand post-oral exams (applied at the beginning and end of the course), which consisted of a teacher-student dialogue and a role-play suggested on a performance rubric. findings learners’ perceptions of coi presence in the course once the data obtained from the coi questionnaire were processed, the results from the option totally agree (the most popular one) were integrated into a chart in an attempt to demonstrate how the participants perceived each of the coi presence in the course. it must be mentioned that all the answers were distributed between totally agree and agree. figure 2 shows that the teaching presence revealed the highest values, especially in the dimension “design and organization”, which refers to the teacher’s action when communicating the learning goals, topics, table 2. data collection phases phase data collection technique instrument function qualitative interview questions’ guide relating the learners’ perceptions about the coi presence and the oral skill indicators. knowing the learners’ experiences regarding their development of the oral skill in this online course. quantitative test (pre/post) oral english exam comparing the learners’ performance according to the oral skill indicators: fluency and coherence, pronunciation, grammar and accuracy, and lexical resources. online questionnaire/survey coi questionnaire (likert scale) describing the learners’ perceptions about the coi presence, the use of ict, and their oral production (during the course). universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras82 herrera díaz & gonzález miy submission dates, and instructions to complete the course successfully. in other words, this teaching presence is identif ied when the teacher provides information about the operative aspects of the course for an adequate performance. the second best evaluated dimension was “facilitation”, that is, the dialogic actions that the teacher established to guide the class, to keep interest and to promote participation. “direct instruction”, which refers to the teacher’s feedback on the students’ activities and the teacher’s participation in the group forums, appeared in the last place. as a whole, the social presence had low values according to the participants’ view. social interaction, represented in figure 2 as “interpersonal communication”, was the highest evaluated dimension; while “cohesive communication”, also understood as collaboration, was lower. this denotes a lack of interrelation among the learners, hence, a scarce sense of belonging to a community. connections between the coi presence and the indicators of the oral skill regarding the cognitive presence, that is, the process in which a topic is developed from introduction, treatment, and analysis to conclusion through exchange and discussion of ideas, the graphic reported a low level of involvement of the participants. therefore, on average, this turned out to be the presence with the lowest percentage. with reference to verba l expression and the dimensions of the teaching presence, findings obtained through the analysis of interviews, figure 3 reveals a positive relationship between “direct instruction” and the indicators “lexical resource” and “grammatical range and accuracy” of the oral skill. similarly, “facilitation” was positively related to “grammatical range and accuracy”, another indicator of oral skill. however, “design and organization” did not show any relation to the oral skill indicators. figure 2. coi presence in the online english course 70% 60% 50% 40% 30% 20% 10% 0% d e si g n a n d o rg a n iz a ti o n fa ci li ta ti o n d ir e ct i n st ru ct io n in te rp e rs o n a l co m m u n ic a ti o n o p e n c o m m u n ic a ti o n c o h e si ve c o m m u n ic a ti o n tr ig g e ri n g e ve n t e xp lo ra ti o n in te g ra ti o n r e so lu ti o n teaching presence social presence cognitive presence 58% 44% 33% 30% 22% 15% 15% 19% 19% 22% 83profile vol. 19, no. 1, january-june 2017. issn 1657-0790 (printed) 2256-5760 (online). bogotá, colombia. pages 73-88 developing the oral skill in online english courses framed by the community of inquiry figure 3. links between the teaching presence and the oral skill teaching presence design and organization direct instruction facilitation grammatical range and accuracy lexical resource oral skill pronunciation fluency and coherence = = = = = = development of learners’ oral skill after having analyzed the learners’ grades on both oral tests, we came up with the following findings. regarding the development of the oral skill, results obtained from the pre/post oral tests showed evidence of an increment in the participant’s scores in the second (post) test given to the learners at the end of the course. that is to say, eight out of the nine participants scored higher in the final exam, as shown in figure 4 in terms of the oral skill, this shows improvement in the indicators: grammar, vocabulary, and pronunciation. it can be observed that the lowest increase was 2 points, the highest was 9 points and 3.5 points was the mode. eight out of nine learners improved in their oral performance even if the initial grades were below the minimum to pass (11, considering that the highest grade would be 20). in other words, six of the learners who had failed their first oral test, were able to pass the second one; while only one learner not only got a failing grade on the second exam, but a lower grade also. figure 4. comparative scores of pre and post oral tests 12 8 8 7 17 7 12 6 9 17 14 17 10 20 11 14 10 8 english oral exam 25 20 15 10 5 0 participant 1 exam 1 exam 2 participant 2 participant 3 participant 4 participant 5 participant 6 participant 7 participant 8 participant 9 universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras84 herrera díaz & gonzález miy hardly existed in the online course. furthermore, arnold and ducate (2006) suggest the need to research the role of the students’ native language and the levels of the cognitive presence and the social presence. in this particular case, participants were enrolled in an efl course and their first language was spanish, but as their level of english was very limited, their participation in forum discussions did not occur or was poor, and often supported by automatic translators (frequently inaccurate). these aspects agree with chen’s (2012) findings concerning the cognitive presence, which demonstrate that learners did not engage in productive dialogue. in the same vein, in this research the learners’ contributions to discussion were limited and these were habitually posted on the deadline, affecting the flow of the discussion. limitations it can be said that the course itself was one of the most representative limitations of this study. as these online english courses do not focus on a communicative approach, the development of the oral skill is very limited and most activities are intended to develop writing, reading, and listening skills. another limitation was that teachers can operate most courses without having the possibility to modify, adapt, or add different activities to the ones preloaded on the platform. future research although the teaching presence proved a positive connection with the indicators of the oral skill, this research will continue exploring deeper into the relation between the coi framework and the development of such skill, especially through the social and cognitive presences. it would be worth doing further research with the aim of exploring other technological applications that, along with the coi pedagogy, may contribute to the field of tefl in online environments. discussion and conclusions as has been shown in the previous section, results obtained from this exploratory research revealed a connection between the coi framework and the indicators of the oral skill in an online english course. although the participants’ general perception of their interaction with the teacher is hardly perceived, the teaching presence, in its dimensions “facilitation” and “direct instruction”, has become positioned as the most and best perceived presence. regarding the social presence, in the learners’ view, its levels are low and although there is communication among the learners inside the course, it is perceived as very limited, making it difficult to establish a community. participants recognized their participation as just sufficient enough to accomplish the minimum course requirements, that is to say, there is a low level of involvement, both individually and collectively, which might prevent higher levels of cognitive presence. according to these findings, the oral skill is basically promoted by the teacher. however, this finding raises the issue of course design as a factor that may favor the teaching presence and disregard the social and cognitive presences in the development of the oral skill. this matter could be explored further through deeper observation and documental analysis. as stated by ke (2010), the teaching presence should be the first element to be considered when establishing a community, thus, learners would adapt their social presence and cognitive presence based on such teaching presence. in accordance with this claim, findings presented in this study revealed that it is the teaching presence itself that showed a connection with the grammar, accuracy, and vocabulary indicators of the oral skill. it seems that the scarce perception of the cognitive presence in this study is consistent with alavi and taghizadeh’s (2013) research, in which they also found that the four stages (triggering event, exploration, integration and resolution) proposed by the coi model 85profile vol. 19, no. 1, january-june 2017. issn 1657-0790 (printed) 2256-5760 (online). bogotá, colombia. pages 73-88 developing the oral skill in online english courses framed by the community of inquiry online english for academic purposes (eap) assessment in virtual classes. computers & education, 70, 291-300. http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.compedu.2013.08.016. ausubel, d. 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(2014). what psychological factors enhance a language learning community? toward effective cscl design universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras88 herrera díaz & gonzález miy for language learning based on a coi framework. in e. popescu, r. w. h. lau, k. leung, & m. laanpere (eds.), advances in web-based learning – icwl 2014 (pp. 43-55). switzerland: springer. http://dx.doi. org/10.1007/978-3-319-09635-3_5. yu, t., & richardson, j. c. (2015). examining reliability and validity of a korean version of the community of inquiry instrument using exploratory and confirmatory factor analysis. the internet and higher education, 25, 45-52. http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.iheduc.2014.12.004. about the authors luz edith herrera díaz is a professor-researcher in the language center at universidad veracruzana; a counselor in the self-access center and the coordinator of the master in tefl program in veracruz. she holds a phd in language studies (kent university, uk). her research interests include language teaching-learning modes, educational innovation, and language policies. darlene gonzález miy is an efl teacher and an online facilitator. she holds an ma in tefl (universidad de jaén, spain). she is currently studying in a phd in educational systems and environments program at universidad veracruzana (mexico). her research interests include educational models and environments, online distance education, and language learning. 143profile vol. 17, no. 1, january-june 2015. issn 1657-0790 (printed) 2256-5760 (online). bogotá, colombia. pages 143-156 http://dx.doi.org/10.15446/profile.v17n1.41856 skype™ conference calls: a way to promote speaking skills in the teaching and learning of english llamadas para conferencia en skype™: una forma de promover la habilidad de habla en la enseñanza y aprendizaje del inglés yeferson romaña correa*1 universidad distrital francisco josé de caldas, bogotá, colombia this article presents the results of a research project on the teaching and learning of english through the use of skype™ conference calls. the research was carried out with a group of 12 english as a foreign language adult learners in the language institute of universidad distrital francisco josé de caldas, bogotá, colombia. the findings of this study suggest that skype™ conference calls might be considered as an influential computer-mediated communication tool in order to promote english as a foreign language adult a1 learners’ speaking skill, especially for social interaction purposes and oral reinforcement of both language fluency and course contents outside of classroom settings. key words: computer-mediated communication tools, skype™ conference calls, speaking skill. este artículo presenta los resultados de una investigación sobre la enseñanza y el aprendizaje de inglés a través de llamadas para conferencia en skype™. esta investigación se realizó con un grupo de 12 estudiantes adultos de inglés como lengua extranjera en el instituto de lenguas de la universidad distrital en bogotá, colombia. los resultados de este estudio muestran que las llamadas para conferencia en skype™ pueden influir positivamente a la hora de promover la habilidad de habla de estudiantes adultos de inglés como lengua extranjera, especialmente con fines de interacción social y refuerzo oral tanto de los contenidos de clase como la fluidez en el lenguaje fuera del aula de clase. palabras clave: habilidad de habla, herramientas de comunicación mediadas a través del computador, llamadas para conferencia en skype™. * e-mail: tapias143@hotmail.com how to cite this article (apa, 6th ed.): romaña correa, y. (2015). skype™ conference calls: a way to promote speaking skills in the teaching and learning of english. profile issues in teachers’ professional development, 17(1), 143-156. http://dx.doi.org/10.15446/profile. v17n1.41856. this article was received on february 1, 2014, and accepted on october 20, 2014. this is an open access article distributed under the terms of the creative commons license attribution-noncommercial-noderivatives 4.0 international license. consultation is possible at http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/. universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras144 romaña correa introduction according to pawlak, waniek-klimczak, and majer (2011) the ability to speak in a foreign language is a difficult and arduous task; this is because the acquisition of speaking involves the master y of different language subsystems to the point that they can be employed automatically in spontaneous communication. therefore, one of the main functions of language teachers should be to provide as many opportunities as possible for their learners to develop their speaking skill in the target language so that they can interact with others under varied linguistic and social circumstances using such language subsystems appropriately and spontaneously. this is comprehensible in the sense that for many pupils the prime goal of learning a foreign language is to be able to speak it. this is essentially because many learners acknowledge that by being able to speak a foreign language, they are able to communicate with people of other countries, ethnic groups, race, and so on. being able to speak a foreign language also builds their confidence, self-esteem, comprehension, and more (vaseki, 2013). consequently, teaching practices should help them to achieve that goal to the best of their ability (grauberg, 1997). however, helping students to develop such speaking skill tends to be a demanding task for many foreign language teachers due to the fact that “organizing lessons to practice speaking english can be a big challenge for both teachers and students” (baker & westrup, 2003, p. 1). this is due to the fact that developing the speaking skill in a foreign language entails learners acquiring the ability to place focus on comprehension and production simultaneously, which is difficult to achieve because of limited resources as well as the impact of a wide range of social factors that often determine successful or unsuccessful attainment of communicative goals (pawlak et al., 2011). some of those factors which affect successful oral language production include the learners’ ages, language knowledge and proficiency, and their motivation, among others. traditionally, the teaching of speaking has taken place within formal classroom settings. recently, with the rapid growth of information and communication technologies (icts), computers and internet-based technologies play a more relevant role in the teaching of the english speaking skill and english in general. thus, more and more english language teachers have opted for incorporating such emerging technologies into their everyday teaching practices as such “technologies can empower them as teachers and improve their teaching as well” (smith & baber, 2007, p. 11). with such a great influence of information te chnolog ies in human interac t ion, l angu age teachers’ and students’ communication is not limited exclusively to live classroom interaction. on the contrary, computers and internet-based technologies offer a vast variety of options for online synchronous and asynchronous communication between language te achers and students. “such communicat ion that takes place between human beings via the instrumentality of computers is known as computermediated communication—cmc” (herring, 1996, p. 1). skype™ constitutes a useful cmc tool in order to achieve such human-computer interaction as a means for exchange of language knowledge and information. additionally, skype™ allows “learners to interact, modify and elaborate their input (doughty & long, 2003) while engaging in meaningful ‘conversation’” (long & doughty, 2009, p. 1949). in reference to the specific context where this research was carried out, class observations showed that the participants in this study tended to have low scores, especially while assessing their spoken production. they had limited opportunities to speak english during their ordinary classes. in other words, learners had rather limited access to the target language both inside and outside the classroom, which is the norm in the majority of foreign language contexts (pawlak et al., 2011). furthermore, spanish is the language spoken by the majority of the population 145profile vol. 17, no. 1, january-june 2015. issn 1657-0790 (printed) 2256-5760 (online). bogotá, colombia. pages 143-156 skype™ conference calls: a way to promote speaking skills in the teaching and learning of english of the learners’ country. this reality did not help them much as their exposure to the target language, especially for oral language practice, was mainly restricted to their english class. the above outlined facts stood for vital reasons and motivation to start this research with the main objective of promoting the english as a foreign language (efl) adult a1 learners’ speaking skill through skype™ conference calls outside of classroom settings1 at ilud.2 the oncoming sections of this article discuss: first, the concepts of speaking skill in foreign language teaching and learning, cmc tools in language learning and teaching, and skype™ conference calls in language learning and teaching. second, the main methodological features of this research project are described, including: type of study and data collection instruments, context, participants, and pedagogical intervention. third, the results and discussions sections are presented. finally, the conclusions and pedagogical implications of this research project are portrayed. speaking skill in foreign language teaching and learning from an international point of view, this study had its foundations based on the common european framework of reference for languages—cefr (council of europe, 2001). with reference to the cefr, the language level of the target group of this study was that of basic users (a1 level). the cefr establishes that the speaking skills of a1 english language users must be divided into spoken interaction and spoken production skills. in relation to the spoken 1 in this study, the term out of classroom settings is synonym of the term out-of-class learning and it refers to “curricular and noncurricular learning experiences for pupils and students outside the school environment” (resnick, 1987, p. 35). it might also be understood as “any kind of learning that takes place outside the classroom” (benson, 2011, p. 62). 2 language institute of universidad distrital francisco josé de caldas. interaction skills, the cefr states that language users must “be able to ask and answer simple questions in areas of immediate need or on very familiar topics” (council of europe, 2001, p. 26). in relation to the spoken production skills, language users must be able to “use simple phrases and sentences to describe where they live and people they know” (council of europe, 2001, p. 26). with that understanding, this study sought to provide efl adult a1 english users with a space where they could develop their spoken interaction and spoken production skills through the use of skype™ conference calls. in this respect, the use of skype™ conference calls aimed at generating more opportunities for adult learners with a1 language level proficiencies to orally reinforce everyday course contents and main language items studied in their classes. from a national and local perspective, this study found its support in the programa nacional de bilingüismo (pnb, national bilingual program) and bogotá y cundinamarca bilingüe (bcb) programs. the first one—pnb (ministerio de educación nacional, 2004)—seeks to create appropriate spaces and conditions to educate the colombian population in a foreign language (english in this case) so that they can have more and better working and inclusion opportunities in the changing world that we live in nowadays. the second one—bcb—looks for designing short, medium, and long-term strategies, among both public and private institutions, that will enable their citizens to be competitive in english as a foreign language (concejo de bogotá d.c., 2006). based on these national and local policies, skype™ conference calls might become valuable tools to contribute to these paramount goals of the colombian nation as english language learners could promote their speaking skill and initiate themselves into reaching the expected language proficiencies. many of my students’ everyday talks confirm that the speaking skill still remains an unsatisfied ability universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras146 romaña correa in the language classroom. as a language teacher, i usually hear statements of this type from my students: “i understand many things i hear in english but when i have to speak, i feel like i cannot say a word,” or less optimistic positions like: “i have studied english for years and i cannot speak english yet. i feel i will not ever speak english.” from the teachers’ perspective, thornbury (2005) cites the following examples: “my students always say that they want more speaking, but i don’t know how to teach it, apart from giving them lots of useful expressions” or “my business students are good at giving presentations, but they can’t have even the simplest presentations. how can i help them improve?” (p. 1). these teachers’ and learners’ common declarations just corroborate bygate’s (1987) assumption that speaking is in many ways an undervalued skill in the language classroom. they also express some of the common dilemmas that teachers face when trying to address the teaching of speaking (thornbury, 2005). similarly, baker and westrup (2003) state that speaking is a neglected language skill in many classrooms. in fact, the speaking skill is viewed by many language teachers and students as one of the most challenging skills to develop when teaching or learning a foreign language. regarding this, brown and yule (1983) state that “learning to talk in the foreign language is often considered to be one of the most difficult aspects of language learning for the teacher to help the student with” (p. 25). likewise, thornbury (2005) affirms that speaking represents a real challenge to most language learners. this has been the main reason behind the formulation of this action research project as a response to the need of finding alternative ways to promote the speaking skill outside the classroom setting. computer-mediated communication tools in language learning and teaching given that nowadays cmc is widely recognized as an academic field, it is quite pertinent to provide a definition of what is understood by cmc throughout this research study. from a broad point of view, thurlow, lengel, and tomic (2004) define cmc as “any human communication achieved through, or with the help of, computer technology” (p. 15). in other words, cmc refers to “an integration of computer technology with our everyday lives and it studies how human behaviors are maintained or altered by exchange of information through machines” (wood & smith, 2005, p. 4). from the perspective of language learning and teaching, kern and warschauer (2000) state that cmc allows language learners with network access to communicate with other learners or speakers of the target language. this assumption just validates the idea that skype™ conference calls might constitute a precious tool to generate meaningful communication and interaction among the participants of this research study. more importantly, the students’ progress can be closely monitored in their spoken language skill from the use of skype™ conference calls. in this regard, levy and stockwell (2006) state that cmc tools provide a method where teachers and researchers alike can monitor learner output easily and relatively non-intrusively. cmc a l lows for t wo t yp es of on line commu n i c at i on : s y n c h ron ou s an d a s y n c h ron ou s communication (lamy & hampel, 2007; wood & smith, 2005). for the purpose of this study, skype™ conference calls are framed under the principles of synchronous communication tools. hrastinsky (2008) affirms that media such as video conferencing and chat commonly support synchronous communication and they have the potential to support e-learners in the development of learning communities. in this respect, richards and schmidt (2002) state that in computer assisted language learning, synchronous communication refers to communication that is instantaneous, with all participants logged onto their computers and sending messages in real time. language classes often use this type of communication in the form of internet chat, or with specialized programs (p. 533). 147profile vol. 17, no. 1, january-june 2015. issn 1657-0790 (printed) 2256-5760 (online). bogotá, colombia. pages 143-156 skype™ conference calls: a way to promote speaking skills in the teaching and learning of english hrastinsky (2008) affirms that the advantages of synchronous communication include the fact that “learners and teachers experience synchronous e-learning as more social and avoid frustration by asking and answering questions in real time. synchronous sessions help e-learners feel like participants rather than isolates” (p. 52). similarly, but with focus on the language-teaching field, lamy and hampel (2007) affirm that synchronous communication fosters peer collaboration and can be used to give feedback to students as well. skype™ conference calls in language learning and teaching sheppard (2006) reminds us that skype™ is a free computer program you can use to make telephone calls over the internet and that you can also use it to make conference calls and video calls, to chat, and to transfer files. furthermore, abdulezer, abdulezer, and dammond (2007) affirm that “skype™ can dramatically alter how you exchange information, how you meet new people, and how you interact with friends, family, and colleagues” (p. 9). chen and cordier (2008) maintain that skype™ offers one of the most popular voice-over internet protocol services and with a computer, an internet connection, and a few simple steps, foreign language speakers and learners can connect with and call one another across time zones. chen and cordier also point out that with skype™ you can dial a contact (provided the person you are calling has also downloaded skype™) and talk to and from any country, using a headset and microphone plugged into your computer. though there are many different things that can be done through skype™ nowadays, for the purpose of this study, the main skype™ features used during its development and implementation were the conference calls. although many consumer audio and video conferencing tools are available on the market (ichat, skype™, msn messenger, etc.), literature on the use of such tools is still scarce (kinoshita, 2008). godwinjones (2005) explored the use of skype™ and podcasting for language teaching and learning purposes in online environments. overall, he found that both skype™ and podcasting can be considered “disruptive technologies” in that they allow for new and different ways of doing familiar tasks and offer intriguing opportunities for language professionals and learners, as they provide additional channels for oral communication. (p. 9) similarly, elia (2006) conducted a research study where she explored the effect of skype™ for language learning in tandem.3 for this, she used and recommended the mixxer (http://www.languageexchanges.org/) which is a free educational website for language exchanges via skype™. she concluded that skype™ language learning through “mixxer” can be a convincing application to be widely supported, experimented, and its efficacy monitored in different language learning contexts, as it can be a valid aid in trying to support language learners who always face problems connected to the difficulty in having contact with native speakers. (p. 275) more recently, coburn (2010) conducted an action research study focusing on the online teaching of english conversation through skype™, a voip (voice over internet protocol). [he concluded that] information elicited from interviews with eight conversation facilitators showed how conversation assignments needed to be designed in order to facilitate interaction patterns conducive to language learning. in other words, there was a need to introduce new tasks for weaker students though this implied that students would need to bring printed resource materials with them to the online conversations. as for the intermediate students who already possessed sufficient linguistic resources to interact more easily, increased task variety 3 tandem language exchange: launched in edinburgh in 2007, tandem is a popular language exchange program run by the edinburgh university students’ association (eusa). (http://www.eusa. ed.ac.uk/getinvolved/eusaglobal/languages/tandem/) universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras148 romaña correa and more student-centered topics could offer relief for struggling conversation facilitators and students. (p. 1) in colombia, research in the area of language teaching and learning through skype™, especially for the promotion of the english speaking skill, is rather new and unexplored. recently, beltrán (2009) conducted a research study in which she explored “the use of skype™ chat for improving writing skills in an a2 adult learners group” (p. 4). she concluded that skype™ text chat prompts students’ motivation through the use of technology and is an opportunity to improve the teacher’s performance. although the target population of beltrán’s study was similar to the population of this study in regard to the participants’ chronological age (adult learners), their language levels, learning context, and research focus were totally different from those specified in this study. method type of study and data collection instruments this research project was carried out under t h e fe atu re s an d c on d it i on s of a qu a l it at i v e research. according to corbin and strauss (2008), “qualitative research allows researchers to get at the inner experience of participants, to determine how meanings are formed through and in culture, and to discover rather than test variables” (p. 12). within the umbrella term of qualitative research is found what has been called action research. “action research is defined as an investigation conducted by the person or the people empowered to take action concerning their own actions, for the purpose of empowering their future actions” (sagor, 2005, p. 4). burns (2010) adds that action research can be a very valuable way to extend our teaching skills and gain more understanding of ourselves as teachers, our classrooms, and our students. the data analysis procedure chosen in this study was a qualitative data analysis. according to dey (1993), “a qualitative data analysis involves breaking data into bits, and then ‘beating’ the bits together. it is a process of resolving data into [their] constituent components to reveal [their] characteristic elements and structure” (p. 31). similarly, corbin and strauss (2008) define qualitative data analysis as “a process of examining and interpreting data in order to elicit meaning, gain understanding, and develop empirical knowledge” (p. 1). taking into consideration that a whole range of procedures can be employed in analyzing qualitative data (darlington & scott, 2002; dey, 1993; norton, 2009), the methodology of data analysis adopted in this study was grounded theory. “grounded theory is a specific methodology developed by glaser and strauss in 1967 for the purpose of building theory from data and it denotes theoretical constructs derived from qualitative analysis of data” (corbin & strauss, 2008, p. 1). in order to successfully develop grounded theory, it is necessary to use a procedure called coding (auerbach & silverstein, 2003; corbin & strauss, 2008). richards and schmidt (2002) define coding as a “research technique in which data that have been collected are turned into classes or categories (i.e. codes)” (p. 81) while auerbach and silverstein (2003) understand it as “a procedure for organizing the text of the transcripts, and discovering patterns within that organizational structure” (p. 31). the data collection instruments chosen for the development and application of this project were the researcher’s reflection journal, surveys, and focus groups. the journal provided the researcher with a space in which to reflect critically and analytically upon emerging events and constraints of the study, learners’ talk, and classroom procedures related to the intervention process of this research study. in this regard, burns (2010) states that journals are extremely “useful as a way of capturing significant 149profile vol. 17, no. 1, january-june 2015. issn 1657-0790 (printed) 2256-5760 (online). bogotá, colombia. pages 143-156 skype™ conference calls: a way to promote speaking skills in the teaching and learning of english reflections and events in an ongoing way” (p. 89). a total of three focus groups of four participants each were administered by the end of the pedagogical inter vention phase of this study. according to stringer (2007), “focus groups provide other means of acquiring information and might be characterized as a group interview” (p. 73). in this respect, burns (2010) affirms that “focus groups have the advantage of taking the individual spotlight off one speaker, who may get ner vous or anxious ab out being interviewed, and allowing ideas and thoughts to be triggered by others in the group” (p. 77). one survey was administered by the end of the pedagogical intervention process of this study. according to stringer (2007), “a survey may provide a very useful tool for extending the data collection to a broader range of participants in later stages of action research” (p. 38). burns (2010) also affirms that “sur veys conducted by your students about their views on various aspects of language learning can provide you with good sources of information” (p. 54). context and participants this research took place at universidad distrital francisco josé de caldas (b ogotá, c olombia), especially in the ilud, which is the language institute of the university. the action research focal group consisted of 12 efl adult a1 learners whose ages varied from 18 to 40 years old. four of the participants were men and eight of them were women. the learners’ educational backgrounds also varied as they came from different socio-economic groups and academic backgrounds. the study population consisted of students from different faculties of the university, professionals of different vocations, and self-employed people who learn english for varied reasons. at the moment of implementation and development of this research study, its target population was taking an introductory i english course. the level of english of the group consisted of basic users (a1) according to the cefr. the general purpose of the course, according to the syllabus, was to provide the group with basic grammatical forms of english and to develop appropriate pronunciation patterns. it also aimed at raising the learners’ awareness in terms of form, meaning, and function of the language features learned along the instruction process. pedagogical intervention this research study was divided into three main stages: pre-, while, and post pedagogical imple mentation. • pre-stage: this initial stage was essentially devoted to informing the participants and the administrative staff at ilud of the main objectives of the implementation of this research project. • while stage: during the pedagogical intervention of this project, the online skype™ conference calls were implemented. fifty hours of the pedagogical intervention were held according to the participants’ time availability. thus, these online sessions were scheduled on saturday and sunday evenings from 5:00 to 9:00 p.m. it means that the 50 hours of the online skype™ conference calls were covered within a total of eight weeks. three (maximum four) participants, plus the researcher of the study integrated each online session. before the online sessions, the researcher provided the participants with a set of questions based on the main topic of discussion of the session, so participants were familiar with the questions they were to talk about during the online sessions. the topics of discussion for the online sessions were the same topics that the participants had previously covered during their ordinary face-toface sessions. these topics were chosen since the idea was to provide learners with the opportunity to orally practice the same topics that they had gone through during their live sessions. thus, each session mainly intended to practice and develop universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras150 romaña correa the learner’s speaking skill through an onlinebased learning environment. • post stage: once the 50 hours of pedagogical intervention were covered with online skype™ sessions, two data collection instruments were applied by the researcher. the first one was a survey and the second one was a focus group. both instruments aimed at collecting data related to the participants’ insights on the experience of making use of skype™ conference calls to promote their speaking skill about their course contents. results in order to arrive at the following outlined results, it was necessary to go through the following coding steps: open, axial, and selective coding. these coding phases were defined and understood as follows: during the first step, open coding, the researcher began by “breaking data down into manageable pieces, reflecting upon those data and conceptualizing what he thought the data were indicating” (corbin & strauss, 2008, p. 193). the second term, axial coding, was understood as the process of crosscutting or relating concepts to each other (corbin & strauss, 2008). the final step in the analysis of data in this study—selective coding— consisted of “selecting the central category, relating it to other categories, validating those relationships and filling in categories that needed further refinement and development” (corbin & strauss, 2008, p. 116). the central or core category in this study was identified as: promoting social interaction skills in english language learning. this core category has the ability to explain or convey “theoretically” what this research study was all about (corbin & strauss, 2008). this emerging core category is supported by the following subcategories: fluency reinforcement and oral reinforcement of course contents. through this process of data analysis, it was necessary to fall back on the principles of triangulation in order to validate the emerging conclusions and findings resulting from the process of seeking relationships between categories as named by corbin and strauss (2008). triangulation has to do with “the process of collecting data from several different sources or in different ways in order to provide a fuller understanding of a phenomenon” (richards & schmidt, 2002, p. 565). discussion promoting social interaction skills in english language learning this category aims to show that the use of skype™ conference calls promotes efl a1 adult learners’ social interaction skills outside the classroom setting. nash and calonico (1996) define social interaction as “a process of communication and mutual influence involving contact between two or more minds” (p. 68). social interaction is defined by fitch and sanders (2005) as a diverse, multidisciplinary convergence of interests that include conversation analysis, pragmatics, discourse analysis, ethnography, and the subarea of social psychology called language and social psychology. in this study, skype™ is understood as a computer-mediated communication tool that uses the internet as the main means of online communication and social interaction. in this respect, dumova and fiordo (2010) affirm that the introduction of social interaction technologies has helped the internet to reflect the real world with its rich social connections and interactions more closely. it is not a secret that those social connections have been greatly impacted by the use of new technologies and computermediated communication tools such as skype™. therefore, the shift from more traditional social interaction settings such as the language classroom to a more computer-driven learning environment might represent a challenge for both language teachers and learners. in this respect, dumova and fiordo state that the lack of physical presence is challenging but 151profile vol. 17, no. 1, january-june 2015. issn 1657-0790 (printed) 2256-5760 (online). bogotá, colombia. pages 143-156 skype™ conference calls: a way to promote speaking skills in the teaching and learning of english social interaction technologies enable learning as the key process of virtual work to be achieved more deeply. this was in essence the main purpose of this study as the major goal was to provide learners with a computer-driven learning environment that enabled them to interact with others while using and communicating in the target language. the learners’ need to socially interact with others was one of the most recurrent patterns identified throughout the data collection and analysis stages of this study. it was found that this social interaction need was evident in a high number of occasions all through the students’ surveys, focus groups, and the teacher’s reflective instrument. more specifically, it was found that learners seemed to notice a relevant connection between language and social interaction practices. in this respect, fitch and sanders (2005) identify a bilateral relationship between language and social interaction: “language use is examined with reference to the social interactions that comprise it and social interactions are examined with reference to the language use that forms and organizes them” (p. 4). from this statement, it could be inferred that learners in this study seemed to notice the relevance of using the target language with the main purpose of socially interacting with their peers through the use of skype™ conference calls. the following excerpts, collected from the same learner in different data collection instruments and corroborated by an entry taken from the researcher’s reflective instrument, show clear examples of the above discussed need for social interaction through the use of the target language: excerpt 1 i think that skype™ helps me speak with my other classmates out of the classroom and i can practice my english this way. (student 4, survey)4 4 excerpts from students have been translated from their original language, spanish. excerpt 2 yes, student 2 is right. skype™ is good because i can practice english with my classmates and with friends that i have from other levels. (student 4, focus group) excerpt 3 students expressed that they liked skype™ because they could interact in english among them. they also said that they could use skype™ conference calls to keep in touch with their old friends at a low price. (researcher’s reflective journal, third online session) as noticed in the above-presented excerpts, students acknowledged that skype™ conference calls helped them practice their language skills and at the same time expand their social relationships; not only with their classmates but also with other people they knew from diverse contexts. it was also evidenced from the excerpts that students seemed to use the language as a means of constructing their social networks which is congruent with maynard and peräkylä’s (2003) assumption that “it is partly through language that humans ‘do’ the social world” (p. 233). the following subcategories are linked to the previously outlined category and also respond to the research question of this study. fluency reinforcement the participants of this study agreed that they had reinforced their oral language f luenc y by means of the skype™ conference calls. this can be evidenced through the following excerpts, collected from the same learner in different data collection instruments. excerpt 4 i feel that the skype™ conference calls have helped me speak better and more fluently in english. (student 10, survey) excerpt 5 when you are in the skype™ conference calls, you have time to organize your ideas while another person is speaking. then, you can speak better and more confidently. (student 10, focus group) universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras152 romaña correa in this study, the idea of reinforcement is understood as the “strengthening of a response as a result of repetition followed by a positive reward” (richards & schmidt, 2002, p. 453). similarly, ashford, lecroy, and lortie (2001) define reinforcement as “anything (a reinforcer) that follows a behavior and increases the likelihood of that behavior” (p. 92). according to miller (2006), “a reinforcer is any event or stimulus that follows a behavior closely in time and increases the frequency of that behavior” (p. 48). this way, the idea of reinforcement in this study is understood as the strengthening of a certain language system (such as fluency) that can be developed or acquired by the language learner in his/her learning process. in relation to the idea of fluency, richards and schmidt (2002) claim that in second and foreign language teaching, fluency describes a level of proficiency in communication, which includes: (a) the ability to produce written and/or spoken language with ease. (b) the ability to speak with a good but not necessarily perfect command of intonation, vocabulary, and grammar. (c) the ability to communicate ideas effectively. (d) the ability to produce continuous speech without causing comprehension difficulties or a breakdown of communication. (p. 204) for the purpose of this study, the level of fluency which has been analyzed and taken into account is that of “the ability to speak with a good but not necessarily perfect command of intonation, vocabulary, and grammar” (richards & schmidt, 2002, p. 204). this level of fluency has been chosen as it represents the most concurrent patterns identified throughout the data collection and analysis stages of this study. additionally, in this study, f luenc y is referred specifically to speaking; however, today the concept is also being used as regards other major skills, such as “reading fluency” and “fluency in writing” (richards & schmidt, 2002; simensen, 2010). as noticed in the above-presented excerpts, learners agreed that through the skype™ conference calls they felt they could communicate in english more fluently as they had the necessary time to organize their ideas in mind while other participants were doing their interventions. furthermore, the fact of informing learners with anticipation of the main topics or ideas to be discussed throughout each skype™ conference also seemed to help them become more fluent in their spoken language as they could plan ahead and slightly structure their ideas before the actual skype™ conference took place. on top of that, the main purpose of the skype™ conference calls was to orally reinforce the same language contents that learners had previously been exposed to during their ordinary face-to-face sessions. it means that they were already familiarized with such contents which made it easier for them to actively participate in the online skype™ conference calls with ease and fluency. the use of skype™ conference calls helped learners reinforce their oral language fluency as they could communicate in the target language more effortlessly and with an easier command of language. this statement responds to the principle that “fluency is typically measured by speed of access or production and by the number of hesitations” (nation & newton, 2009, p. 152). this was evidenced through the following excerpts: excerpt 6 i think that the skype™ conference calls have helped me to speak english more fluently and more confidently as well. (student 9, focus group) excerpt 7 after this skype™ conference today, i noticed that students 5 and 9 could communicate in english more fluently and with less pauses than before. (researcher’s reflective journal, fourth online session) as n ot i c e d i n t h e pre v i ou s s a mp l e s , t h e skype™ conference calls seemed to have a direct 153profile vol. 17, no. 1, january-june 2015. issn 1657-0790 (printed) 2256-5760 (online). bogotá, colombia. pages 143-156 skype™ conference calls: a way to promote speaking skills in the teaching and learning of english influence on the learners’ oral language fluency. this was demonstrated as learners agreed that by means of the online skype™ encounters, they could communicate in the target language more effortlessly, with less hesitation and better speed production. such manifested reinforcement in the learners’ oral language fluency might have been influenced by various aspects, among them: (a) their active engagement in the skype™ conferences, (b) allocated time for preparing their participation of ever y skype™ conference with anticipation, and (c) the fact that learners were familiarized with the topics of discussion during the skype™ conferences. whatever the influencing factor might have been, it was evidenced that the skype™ conference calls seemed to have a positive effect on the learners’ oral language fluency, especially when reinforcing course contents. oral reinforcement of course contents the participants of this study also agreed that through the skype™ conference calls they had been able to orally reinforce course contents and increase their english practice from out-of-class learning environments. this can be evidenced through the following excerpts, collected from the same learner in different data collection instruments and corroborated by an entry taken from the researcher’s reflective instrument. excerpt 8 the good thing of the skype™ conference calls is that one can practice the topics that we study in class but in an oral way. this way, one progressively forgets about the fear to speak. (student 1, survey) excerpt 9 yes, with these skype™ conference calls, one can practice in a spoken way what we study in the face-to-face class. excerpt 10 students affirmed that one of the best things of the skype™ conference calls is that they can practice and reinforce the same topics that have studied in class but in an oral way. (researcher’s reflective journal, second online session) as stated above, the word reinforcement in this study is understood as “anything (a reinforcer) that follows a behavior and increases the likelihood of that behavior” (ashford et al., 2001, p. 92). on the contrary, the word course content in this study refers to all the different activities, language-related exercises, and linguistic items that integrate a language program. having said this, and as it has been evidenced in the above-presented excerpts, participants in this study declared that skype™ conference calls might be considered as a valuable and potential tool for oral reinforcement of course contents, especially in the field of language teaching and learning. in this respect, flewelling and snider (2005) state that technological tools (such as skype™) “can help instructors address the oral skills in a more balanced fashion since it can so effectively facilitate oral language reinforcement” (p. 96). additionally, it was noticed that learners were highly engaged into participating in the online skype™ encounters. this was evidenced through their positive and enthusiastic reactions and feelings towards the proposed skype™ conference calls with the main purpose of oral practice of class topics. this can be supported through the following excerpts: excerpt 11 yes, i really enjoyed the skype™ conferences because i could talk about the same themes of the class but with more time and in a more comfortable way. (student 5, focus group) excerpt 12 i always felt really good in the skype™ conferences with the teacher and my other classmates because the topics of the conferences were the same topics of the class. also, the teacher gave us the questions to talk about in the conferences with anticipation, so it was easy for me to talk about the same topics that we had studied in class before. (student 6, survey) thus, it can be inferred that the skype™ conference calls influenced learners’ engagement to orally practice course contents for the following two reasons: first, the skype™ conference calls made it universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras154 romaña correa easier for them to speak about the same topics of their face-to-face sessions as they were already familiarized with such topics. this way, learners could continue expanding and reinforcing their course contents with a different, fashionable, and attractive method. second, the skype™ conference calls influenced the learners’ engagement to practice course contents as they had much more time to talk and express their own opinions about such contents than during their face-to-face sessions. that is to say, the idea of having more time to talk about the proposed topics through the skype™ conference calls seemed to engage learners to participate more actively in the online encounters. conclusions and pedagogical implications this research aimed at promoting efl adult a1 learners’ speaking skill through skype™ conference calls out of classroom settings at ilud. the analysis and interpretation of data drew the following conclusions in response to this main objective. it was found that the skype™ conference calls might be considered an influential cmc tool to promote efl adult a1 learners’ speaking skill, especially for social interaction purposes out of classroom settings. this finding was evidenced as the participants in this research project acknowledged that the skype™ conference calls helped them practice their language skills and at the same time expand their social relationships, not only with their classmates but also with other people they knew from diverse contexts. it was also evidenced that learners used the language as a means of constructing their social networks which is congruent with maynard and peräkylä’s (2003) assumption that “it is partly through language that humans ‘do’ the social world” (p. 233). additionally, it was evidenced that the skype™ conference calls might also help learners in the reinforcement of both their fluency in the target language and their language course contents out of formal classroom settings. it was evidenced that the skype™ conference calls might also help learners increase their english practice from out-of-class learning environments since learners acknowledged that through the skype™ conference calls they tended to have much more time to practice their spoken language skills than during their face-to-face sessions. any english language researcher, instructor, or learner who decides to implement skype™ conference calls with the main purpose of promoting social interaction skills towards english language learning (main findings of this study), should take into account these recommendations: the participants in this study suggested that the smaller the number of people participating in the online skype™ conferences, the better they are as they could have more time to speak and practice their english language knowledge and skills. they also suggested that the skype™ conference calls could be implemented through other subject matters in the curriculum with academic and pedagogic purposes. they suggested that teachers and learners from any subject matter from the curriculum could arrange to have skype™ conferences with different purposes; for example, to delve deeper into specific classroom contents, to revise and conclude with unfinished classroom topics, or simply to provide feedback on any homework or assignment from the face-to-face sessions. it is also recommended asking students to be on hand half an hour or a minimum of fifteen minutes before the actual time of the skype™ conference, so that any technical or technological problems can be solved before the actual conference scheduled times. references abdulezer, l., abdulezer, s., & dammond, h. 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(2013). learning a foreign language: a quick guide to understanding spanish, french and german foreign language training, special conjugations training, verbs for training, syllables and how to learn foreign languages with training toys. kobo edition (ebook). clinton gilkie. wood, a. f., & smith, m. j. (2005). online communication: linking technology, identity, and culture. mahwah, nj: lawrence erlbaum associates. about the author yeferson romaña correa holds an ma in english language teaching—autonomous learning environments—from universidad de la sabana (colombia) and is certified in esol (english for speakers of other languages) with the icelt (in-service certificate in english language teaching) course. profile vol. 18, no. 2, july-december 2016. issn 1657-0790 (printed) 2256-5760 (online). bogotá, colombia. pages 7-10 7 editorial* by having access to and making explicit the knowledge base that is expected of teaching professionals, tots [teachers of teachers] and aspiring teachers are afforded opportunities to submit their evolving understanding of the profession to scrutiny, with a view toward the ongoing development of professional knowledge. (p. 35)1 a grain of sand does not represent much in isolation. placed with many others, it becomes a beach. this metaphor exemplifies what happens with our contributions to the world of research. the research carried out by many of us occurs in specific contexts, takes small samples and its generalizations are applicable to reduced populations. we expect that our results may contribute to the solution of a local situation or problem. placed together in the long run, the small and the big contributions may cause a great impact in the field of study or work in which we develop our professional life. the construction of knowledge is not an easy task. it demands the participation of many and challenges research practitioners in different ways. the expert researchers are expected to take the lead, to carry the torch that illuminates the path for other researchers and, just as well, to have the freshness to continue with the formulation of always-interesting questions and the wit to find intelligent answers. novel researchers develop their research topics from needs they feel but carry with them insecurities in theoretical and methodological constructs. regardless of our experience, research is always a challenge that demands a lot from us and impacts our timetables, our professional performance and even our personal lives. irrespective of our research experience and the role we play in education, we receive the call to participate at the level of our knowledge, needs and opportunities. in terms of knowledge, we can and do learn from one another. the experience provides tools, insights, experiences, and a vision. the inexpert person profits from this source of knowledge but simultaneously feeds the skilled with fresh ideas, new perspectives and the inherent motivation newcomers bring with them. needs, on the other hand, represent an opportunity for acting in specific or general contexts and on small or large scales with big or small populations. we can act upon and have an impact on the lives of our students, our small communities, our city and country at various levels. our context, our personalities, our problems, the good and the bad * how to cite this article (apa, 6th ed.): nieto cruz, m. c., & cárdenas, m. l. (2016). editorial. profile issues in teachers’ professional development, 18(2), 7-10. http://dx.doi.org/10.15446/profile.v18n2.57561. 1 diaz maggioli, g. (2012). teaching language teachers: scaffolding professional learning. plymouth, uk: rowman & littlefield education. this is an open access article distributed under the terms of the creative commons license attributionnoncommercial-noderivatives 4.0 international license. consultation is possible at http://creativecommons. org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/. http://dx.doi.org/10.15446/profile.v18n2.57561 universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras8 nieto cruz & cárdenas points of our institution, our fellow coworkers, all of these variables offer opportunities for improvement. how happy we should feel if we are able to change even a single aspect of the daily life we carry out in our small worlds with the help of the community we are immersed in and surrounded by. now we want to share with you some news. first, we are pleased to let you know that profile has just been indexed in latamplus, a digital collection of full-text peer reviewed journals that can be accessed at no cost. as you might know, databases constitute important channels to make journals more visible. we hope we get acceptance in more channels like that, so that we can reach a wider audience. second, we wish to welcome the new scholars who have accepted our invitation to take part in the reviewing processes of profile, namely: ester johanna de jong (university of florida, usa), irina elgort (victoria university of wellington, new zealand), jesús garcía laborda (universidad de alcalá, spain), steve graham (arizona state university, usa), juan ramón guijarro-ojeda (universidad de granada, spain), penny haworth (massey university institute of education, new zealand), hanna komorowska (university of social sciences and humanities, poland), maggie kubanyiova (university of birmingham, uk), icy lee (the chinese university of hong kong), florence lai ping ma (macquarie university, australia), gloria park (indiana university of pennsylvania, usa), robert poole (texas a&m university corpus christi, usa), rosane rocha pessoa (universidade federal de goiás, brazil), anna siyanova (victoria university of wellington, new zealand), neomy storch (the university of melbourne, australia), and stuart webb (university of western ontario, canada). we gladly welcome them. their contributions, together with the support received from scholars who have accompanied us for several years, will be decisive to maintaining the rigor of our publication. in this edition we have gathered ten papers. the first section, issues from teacher researchers, contains five articles dealing with teacher education elt (english language teaching), and testing. we begin with eulices córdoba zúñiga’s work which contains the findings of a study carried out with beginner efl (english as a foreign language) students of a language program in a colombian public university. the aim of the study was to implement task-based language teaching as a way to facilitate the integration of the four language skills, help learners improve their communicative competence in english, and foster interaction. afterwards, elizabeth ruiz-esparza barajas, cecilia araceli medrano vela, and jesús helbert karim zepeda huerta report the first stage of an investigation that has involved five mexican universities interested in unveiling university teachers’ thinking about out-of-class teamwork. in this article we can learn about positive and negative opinions which suggest further courses of action to face the lack of success in promoting deep learning and in developing students’ socio-cognitive abilities. in the next article, yimer andrés morales cortés addresses the role the teaching practice had on novice teachers’ attitudes towards teaching. the study, conducted with a group of pre-service teachers at universidad pedagógica y tecnológica de colombia, shows the profile vol. 18, no. 2, july-december 2016. issn 1657-0790 (printed) 2256-5760 (online). bogotá, colombia. pages 7-10 9profile vol. 18, no. 2, july-december 2016. issn 1657-0790 (printed) 2256-5760 (online). bogotá, colombia. pages 7-10 editorial contributions of the practicum in providing opportunities to consider what teaching entails and its role in helping future teachers to reflect, develop awareness and positive attitudes towards the teaching profession. next, we can find a report on a collaborative work between colombian and north american teachers. marcela palacio, sandra gaviria, and james dean brown tell us about their experience in tests design with a group of teachers at the english for adults program of a colombian university. descriptive statistics, item analysis, correlational analyses, reliability estimates, and validity analyses were taken into consideration in order to ensure the quality of the process of tests design. finally, we present the article by roberto alvira whose work revolves around an action research study carried out with colombian efl learners who were exposed to screencasting-a web 2.0 tool conceived as a means to foster improvement of their writing skills. the findings of the study evidence that the use of coded, written, and oral feedback is widely accepted by students and yields positive results in their writing performance. interestingly, the second section of our journal, issues from novice teacher researchers, brings this time four articles by prospective colombian teachers. this, no doubt, confirms that both teacher educators and pre-service teachers are fully committed to the importance of making research visible via publication. first of all, ana carolina buitrago campo shares with us an action-research project that sought to improve adolescent students’ communicative competence in english through the task-based learning approach. the author also describes how she incorporated that approach into the development of four thematic units aligned with the syllabus and students’ interests and needs. following that one we can read a contribution by diego fernando ubaque casallas and freddy samir pinilla who describe an exploratory action research study carried out at a language institute with a small group of learners. emphasis was placed on the use of argumentation outlines and peer assessment to boost learners’ argumentative abilities. as the authors stress, findings revealed that argumentation outlines and peer assessment can promote learners’ awareness and ability to engage in argumentation processes. additionally, peer assessment appears to be an essential tool for enhancing personal and collaborative learning, as well as for promoting learner reflection and agency. after that, elio jesús cruz rondón and leidy fernanda velasco vera inform us about a case study aimed at understanding the role of teaching materials among beginner level students learning english as a foreign language. the conclusions indicate that the way the teacher implements a pedagogical intervention by integrating the four language skills, promoting interactive learning through the use of online resources, and using the course book can lead to a global english teaching and learning process. we close this section with an issue that has not been explored much in the colombian current teaching contexts: secondary students’ beliefs about their english class. this query, posed by jessica villarreal suarez, jully vanessa muñoz taborda, and jorge mario perdomo santacruz, led to a conclusion that students’ beliefs are attached to their experiences in their universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras10 nieto cruz & cárdenas english classes. according to the participants, discipline, monotony, the lack of interesting material, and the impact of the language among the students are issues to bear in mind should students be given a voice in the development of national policies of language learning. the last section, issues based on reflections and innovations, depicts an innovative work implemented by spanish teacher maría martínez lirola with students of english at a tertiary level. it seeks to allow students acquisition of emotional competences. we can learn about how the use of different cooperative activities specifically designed for such purpose showed their effectiveness and made students aware of what they had learned. we may now conclude by highlighting the fact that the inclusion of the work of many professionals from different contexts, with different visions enriches our understanding of our small and, at times, not so small worlds. we hope both prospective and experienced teachers and researchers find those articles interesting. we also hope the communities of our readers can benefit from the works of authors from chile, colombia, mexico, spain, and the united states, whose commitment to submit their works to scrutiny and to comply with the evaluation process proved worthy. now, it is your turn to face the challenge and think about contributing to our knowledge base by sending in your manuscripts! maría claudia nieto cruz journal director melba libia cárdenas journal editor 105profile vol. 19, no. 1, january-june 2017. issn 1657-0790 (printed) 2256-5760 (online). bogotá, colombia. pages 105-118 http://dx.doi.org/10.15446/profile.v19n1.53955 language learning shifts and attitudes towards language learning in an online tandem program for beginner writers cambios lingüísticos y actitudes hacia el aprendizaje de lenguas en un programa virtual tándem para escritores principiantes constanza tolosa1* the university of auckland, auckland, new zealand claudia lucía ordóñez2** diana carolina guevara3*** universidad nacional de colombia, bogotá, colombia we present findings of a project that investigated the potential of an online tandem program to enhance the foreign language learning of two groups of school-aged beginner learners, one learning english in colombia and the other learning spanish in new zealand. we assessed the impact of the project on students’ learning with a free writing activity done as pretest and posttest and used a semi-structured interview to explore their attitudes towards language learning and their perceived development of their native language. data analysis indicated statistically significant gains in foreign language writing and positive attitudinal changes toward foreign and native language learning. key words: computer mediated communication, foreign language writing, language learning shifts, tandem language learning. presentamos los resultados de un proyecto que investigó el potencial de un programa de comunicación virtual tándem para mejorar el aprendizaje de lengua extranjera de dos grupos de adolescentes jóvenes principiantes, uno en colombia en el aprendizaje de inglés y otro en nueva zelanda en el aprendizaje de español. evaluamos escritura libre como pretest y postest para determinar el impacto del proyecto en el aprendizaje de cada lengua, y con una entrevista semiestructurada exploramos las actitudes de los estudiantes hacia sus clases de lenguas y su percepción del desarrollo de su lengua madre. el análisis de los datos arrojó ganancias estadísticamente significativas en la escritura en cada lengua extranjera y cambios positivos en actitudes hacia el aprendizaje de la lengua extranjera y la materna. palabras clave: aprendizaje de lenguas en tándem, cambios lingüísticos, comunicación mediada por computador, escritura en lengua extranjera. * e-mail: c.tolosa@auckland.ac.nz ** e-mail: clordonezo@unal.edu.co *** e-mail: dcguevaran@unal.edu.co how to cite this article (apa, 6th ed.): tolosa, c., ordóñez, c. l., & guevara, d. c. (2017). language learning shifts and attitudes towards language learning in an online tandem program for beginner writers. profile issues in teachers’ professional development, 19(1), 105-118. http://dx.doi.org/10.15446/profile.v19n1.53955. this article was received on november 3, 2015, and accepted on july 22, 2016. this is an open access article distributed under the terms of the creative commons license attribution-noncommercial-noderivatives 4.0 international license. consultation is possible at http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/. universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras106 tolosa, ordóñez, & guevara introduction as a consequence of the vertiginous increase in communication between speakers of different languages worldwide, foreign language learning is not only important today as an academic task but it is a 21st century imperative that provides speakers with access to information and people in the target language. however, in largely monolingual countries like colombia, learning foreign languages is hampered by lack of contact with speakers of the target language. language education is increasingly turning to computer mediated communication (cmc) to facilitate contact between learners with native speakers of the languages they are learning. cmc is broadly defined as the way in which telecommunications technologies have combined information technology and computer networks to offer new tools to support teaching and learning (warschauer, 1997). while implementing these types of activities in foreign language learning environments is increasingly popular, research into the effects of this implementation is just beginning (dooly & o’dowd, 2012), with the majority of studies documented within post-secondary contexts (see o’dowd & ware, 2009, for a review). the study reported here aimed to advance our understanding of how cmc, and specifically tandem communication, can support foreign language (fl) learners in developing their beginner language skills by communicating with speakers of the target language in writing. using a sociocultural view of learning, we present in this article findings of a project that investigated the potential of a reciprocal peer tutoring (i.e., tandem) program to enhance the fl learning of two groups of school-aged beginner learners, one group located in colombia and the other in new zealand. the study extends the findings of a previous tandem project documented by the researchers (tolosa, ordóñez, & alfonso, 2015). it is located at the intersection of two bodies of research as identified by ware and hellmich (2014): it focuses on learning outcomes and how technology might influence them, and it uses technology as a site for learning where new learning environments “expand semiotic resources and new modes of communication” (p. 141). theoretical background cmc refers to communication between two parties connected by technological devices. it is also described as a pedagogical tool that enables groups separated in time and space to engage in active production of shared knowledge through exchanges that can be synchronous (in real time) or asynchronous (in deferred time) (warschauer, 1997). research on cmc points at advantages over face to face language learning such as meaningful communicative engagement (lafford & lafford, 2005), increased motivation (gonzález-lloret, 2003), particularly towards written production (kern, 1995), enhanced practice of the target language in a trustful environment, and a more equitable participation between learners (warschauer, 1997). it has been suggested that written online communication provides an ideal medium for students to benefit from, since it allows greater opportunity to attend to and reflect on the form and content of written communication. in asynchronous online communication students have more time to plan, compose, revise, and edit their texts as well as opportunities to read and reflect on their interlocutors’ texts (warschauer, 2005). in other words, writing online supports writing as a process, as it promotes genuine interaction (manchón, 2011). this interaction removes the barriers of time and space that characterise remote language learning (salaberry, 1996), although there is a loss of immediacy as learners have to wait for their peers’ response (andrews & haythornthwaite, 2007). one kind of cmc, the one relevant to the present study, is tandem learning between pairs of students from different linguistic backgrounds. the students are learning as a fl the language that the other student of the pair holds as l1. this pairing establishes a tutor-tutee relationship based on the assumption that students will have equal 107profile vol. 19, no. 1, january-june 2017. issn 1657-0790 (printed) 2256-5760 (online). bogotá, colombia. pages 105-120 language learning shifts and attitudes towards language learning in an online tandem program... levels of expertise in their respective l1s. this form of tutoring often relies on structured academic activity and has been found to increase language development (fantuzzo & ginsburg-block, 1998). it is also likely to increase student self-confidence and positive attitudes towards the fl (thurston, duran, cunningham, blanch, & topping, 2009), as it is based on the principles of autonomy and reciprocity (brammerts, 1996). the notion of tandem is underpinned by a sociocultural view of learning as mediated by social interaction with a more knowledgeable other: a person who possesses a better understanding or higher level of ability than the learner; the learning partners then work in what is known as the zone of proximal development (vygotsky, 1978). in recent years, a broader scope of the zone of proximal development has been adopted that is not restricted to interactions between a learner and a more knowledgeable other but that also includes peer-to-peer interaction and interaction with technology (lantolf & thorne, 2006; warschauer, 2005). this collective scaffolding provides a space in which learners support one another’s development by collaboratively taking their linguistic output to a higher level (lantolf, 2012). philp, adams, and iwashita (2014) explain that increased appreciation of the value of peer-to-peer interactions is supported by both a cognitive perspective (e.g., long’s [1996] interaction hypothesis) and a sociocultural perspective in which learning is “collaborative, in the sense of participants working together toward a common goal . . . a jointly developed process and inherent in participating in interaction” (philp et al., 2014, p. 3, p. 8). tandem enhances opportunities for fl learners to practise communication, negotiate meaning, and take on new roles, as van den branden (2006) puts it, “by understanding language input and by producing language output, i.e. by interacting with other people in real-life situations through the use of language, the goals that the learner has in mind can be (better) achieved” (p. 4). applying these notions to fl writing, peers engage in mutual scaffolding, helping each other to extend their writing abilities. peer responses provide an authentic sense of audience and may promote writers’ autonomy and confidence (ware & o’dowd, 2008), as well as develop communicative competence and inspire more learner participation (hyland, 2003). however, peerto-peer work may have disadvantages. for instance, hyland and hyland (2006) point to limitations in the interactions because learners may lack communication and pragmatic skills, or hold different expectations about the interactions when coming from different cultural groups. other researchers have questioned the ability of peers to offer support to others who are in the same learning process (mendonça & johnson, 1994). despite these reservations, when the tandem is organized between pairs who have similar language ability in the fl, it provides an opportunity for learners to use their language with a peer who is experiencing the same process and may have fewer inhibitions to use the fl and be more willing to help her/him (brammerts, 1996). researchers have also begun exploring how interac t ive wr it ing can promote interc u ltura l communication in tandem projects where students communicate with international partners by developing a different set of competences and skills increasingly viewed as important for communicating online in the 21st century (guth & helm, 2010). tandems can be done via email exchanges as was the case in a study that used authentic cultural communicative tasks between senior high school students in both the united sates and hong kong, who described the exchanges as positive and felt that writing their emails was easier and faster and error correction was useful (greenfield, 2003). in another email tandem, canga alonso (2012) analysed three e-mails produced by students at different times for reciprocity and corrections of texts, concluding that the principle of reciprocity holds while corrections varied across time. reciprocity was also included in a study between advanced exchange students in japan that universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras108 tolosa, ordóñez, & guevara communicated with japanese students who volunteered to interact via a bulletin board system (kitade, 2008). the author concluded that the preparation of written texts increased the collaboration between the pairs and helped students consolidate l2 knowledge. cmc and tandem studies suggest the potential of interactive writing for promoting online communication skills, arguably introduced by an increasingly networked, interactive world outside the classroom. interactive writing in online spaces, whether with local or global interlocutors, has been shown to afford language learners the opportunity to hone their understanding and application of the writing process; it may also help them develop cross-cultural understanding. participants and intervention the project involved a group of 27 eleven-year-old students in a public school in auckland, new zealand, learning spanish as a fl and a class of 30 peers with ages from 11 to 14 learning english as a fl in a public school in bogotá, colombia. the students in both sites were beginner learners of the language and were placed in dyads with comparable foreign language levels, based on their performance on a parallel fl diagnostic test, to ensure that they would be able to actively engage in peer tutoring. a number of students were paired into triads to accommodate the higher number of colombian students. at the end, only data from participants who completed all the tasks -the 27 new zealand participants and 21 colombians-were used. the students participated in reciprocal peer tutoring through asynchronous written interaction in moodle, sending each other messages on topics chosen by their teachers on the basis of the topics dealt with in their language classes (students’ selfdescriptions and descriptions of family, hobbies, likes and dislikes, schools and classrooms, lunch boxes, cities, and favourite celebrities). each participating student received their unique username and password to ensure privacy and security, and the data were only accessible to the students, teachers, and researchers involved in the project. the teachers carried out the project in the context of their regular classes. they were asked to dedicate one session per week of their normal curriculum to the peer writing project. the session should have ideally taken place with each student at a computer, but this was not possible with the colombian group due to limitations in the availability of machines. every week for eight weeks, students sent each other a short message in their fl on the week’s designated topic. the peer tutors read the messages in their l1, identified errors, and provided feedback to their tutees. the tutees then considered their tutors’ corrections and suggestions and edited the messages, which they resubmitted as final versions to complete the cycle of writing-feedback-rewriting. this process continued until students completed five sets of messages in their l2. the teachers agreed to provide minimal writing support, yet introduced sequentially the types of possible corrections to be done in texts (identify the error, provide the correct answer, provide an explanation, suggest alternative ways of expressing their ideas). unfortunately, the process could not be followed perfectly in the colombian school because it did not have complete resources and the students’ work was constantly interrupted by multiple events unrelated to school activities. a major disruption occurred when the posttest data were being collected, which led the colombian research team to include the last message in moodle as a part of the posttest. the study the study aimed to assess the impact of the communicative activity on the students’ fl learning, on their attitudes towards it, and on their metalinguistic awareness in their l1. the following questions were answered in the study: 1. do young native speakers of spanish and english engaged in online tandem interaction improve 109profile vol. 19, no. 1, january-june 2017. issn 1657-0790 (printed) 2256-5760 (online). bogotá, colombia. pages 105-120 language learning shifts and attitudes towards language learning in an online tandem program... their writing in the fl when they have their texts corrected by peers? if so, what do they improve on? 2. do these young learners report changes in their attitudes towards learning the fl as a result of their participation in the tandem interaction? if so, what changes do they report? 3. do these young learners learn something about their l1 in the interaction by tandem? if so, what do they learn? a mixed methods design was used with the following data collection and analysis methods: 1. to answer the first question about what students learned in fl writing, we used quantitative data from a pretest/posttest free-writing fl task and qualitative data from a semi-structured interview. for the writing task students were given one class period (50 minutes) to draft on paper what they would write to their peer overseas to introduce themselves, including personal information, likes, and preferences. in the colombian school the students could only use four computers located in their english classroom and they only had 20 minutes to complete the writing task at the end of the semester, while for the pretest they had had one 50-minute lesson. as a result, the final paragraphs were too short in comparison to the new zealand paragraphs, so the last message written on moodle was added to the paragraph written as a posttest for analysis. all the messages sent within the eight weeks were copied without modifications for safekeeping, and compiled by the order of interactions between peers in dyads (first paragraph sent by a tutee to a tutor, tutor’s response, tutee’s edit of the first draft, and so on). we computed a quantitative measure of writing proficiency for the pretest and posttest from a variation of the measures of fluency, accuracy, and complexity adapted from wolfe-quintero, inagaki, and kim (1998). this measure assumes that as language learners progress, they will write sentences that are more grammatically and lexically complex, they will write with fewer errors, and they will write more words in a given time period. following this assumption, we initially marked all the complete sentences in each paragraph written by the students. then, we counted the total number of words in each text, the number of simple, complex, and compound sentences, the number of clauses per sentence, and the number of error-free words and sentences. for each paragraph, fluency refers to the number of words per sentence; accuracy accounts for the number of error-free words and sentences; and complexity computes the number of complex and compound sentences. to obtain total values for writing proficiency, we produced a simple average of the fluency, accuracy, and complexity measures for each paragraph. we used the anderson-darling normality test on the data sets for pretests and posttests to check for normal distribution. since they did not show normal distributions, we applied the non-parametric wilcoxon test to determine significant differences between the means of pretests and the posttests, instead of the t-student test. the results were complemented with qualitative data from the interview, related to the learning of syntax, spelling, and punctuation in the fl. 2. to answer the second and third questions on the young learners’ changes in attitudes towards fl learning and on development of the students’ l1, we used data from the semi-structured interviews. in colombia, all 21 students were interviewed by the researcher to collect comments about their experience of reciprocal peer tutoring with their peers around four themes: the online tutoring experience, perceived gains in fl, perceived gains in l1, and attitudes towards language learning. in new zealand, 12 students chosen by the classroom teacher as representatives of three different levels of academic performance in the fl and engagement in universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras110 tolosa, ordóñez, & guevara the project were interviewed. the interviews were transcribed and their information categorized as we looked for specific information related to the three research questions. findings writing in the foreign language the students’ writing ability was analysed based on texts written before and after the eight week intervention. the texts were analysed for accuracy, fluency, and complexity. table 1 shows the results of the wilcoxon tests for pretests and posttests in colombia and new zealand. as can be seen, there are statistically significant differences at p ≤ 0.05 in accuracy, complexity, and final score for the texts produced by the colombian peers. this indicates that the number of both simple and complex sentences increased while the number of syntax, spelling, and punctuation errors decreased in the final paragraphs. however, the results for fluency, with no statistically significant difference, indicate that the number of words did not increase. these results are consistent with lapadat (2002), who found that in tandem interaction, students tend to produce shorter messages but messages which are better constructed, more pragmatically adapted to the receiver, and more coherent. table 1 also presents the results for the new zealand peers, which, on the other hand, show statistically significant differences at p ≤ 0.05 for all measures, including fluency. this may have been a result of better access to technology and more focused work in the project from the new zealand group. these results indicate that positive changes occurred in both groups after the intervention. it seems that the online interaction contributed to improve fl writing in both groups, in spanish for new zealand peers and in english for the colombian. at the end of the intervention both groups of students wrote significantly more correct and more syntactically complex paragraphs. these data are supported by the qualitative data of the interviews, where the colombian students provided richer information about their learning than their new zealand peers. participants from both groups asserted that they learned about their fl. they identified aspects such as syntax, spelling, and punctuation as part of their learning. in relation to syntax, 16 out of 21 colombian peers mentioned that they learned about syntactic aspects of english such as word order, verb conjugation, and singular and plural forms of verbs and adjectives. according to them, this helped them improve their writing. on the new zealand side, 5 out of 12 interviewed table 1. wilcoxon test results for colombian (n = 21) and new zealand (n = 27) pretests and postests pretest posttest w col nz col (test + last message) nz col nz mean sd mean sd mean sd mean sd fluency 3.82 1.15 3.1 0.76 4.26 1.01 4.34 1.44 -0.80 -3.77*** accuracy 3.11 1.98 3.12 1.82 4.08 2.47 3.79 1.35 -2.46* -3.02** complexity 5.34 2.10 3.47 1.86 7.32 3.25 4.30 1.39 -3.10** -2.16* final score 4.04 1.37 3.20 1.29 5.05 2.16 4.08 0.75 -3.20** -3.60*** ≅ p ≤ 0,10; *p ≤ 0,05; **p ≤ 0,01; ***p ≤ 0,001 111profile vol. 19, no. 1, january-june 2017. issn 1657-0790 (printed) 2256-5760 (online). bogotá, colombia. pages 105-120 language learning shifts and attitudes towards language learning in an online tandem program... students also indicated gains in spanish, but they only referred to word order, which seemed to be what stood out for them in their interactions. a colombian peer, for example, said that he learned about the order of nouns and adjectives: [aprendí] que [en español] va primero el objeto que la cualidad [y en inglés] va primero la cualidad que el objeto, por ejemplo “my blue sweater.” ([i learned] that [in spanish] the object goes before the quality [and in english] the quality goes before the adjective, for example “my blue sweater”). (col, 3) this is repeated by another student: aprendí también que primero va la cualidad y luego el objeto, por ejemplo, brown eyes en español es ojos cafés. (i also learned that the quality goes first and then the object; for example, “brown eyes” in spanish is ojos cafés). (col, 5) in turn, one of the new zealand students also talked about his learning regarding the order of nouns and adjectives in spanish: “i used to put ‘grande’ before a noun, and they say you have to put the noun first before the adjective” (nz, 3). other new zealand peers also stated that they learned about word order, although they did not provide specific examples: “[in the corrections i learned things] like positions of some words the wrong way” (nz, 2). finally, another student said: “[i learned] where the words are put around. uh, the word order. yeah” (nz, 11). the colombian students talked about more than word order. for example, one of them mentioned his gains in the correct use of verbs in english, which he acknowledges are used differently in spanish: “y bueno pues uno aprende que no es have cuando [dice los] años, [ahora digo] ‘i am 12 years’ (well, one learns that it is not have when [you talk about] age. [now, i say] ‘i am 12 years’)” (col, 3). spelling was another aspect of learning for all students. participants from both groups, 15 in colombia and six in new zealand, expressed that they also learned about spelling rules in the fl. in colombia students highlighted their gains in the use of the capital i for the personal pronoun i: ahora ya sé muchas cosas de inglés, como [el uso de las] mayúsculas… siempre escribía [yo en inglés] con minúscula; [antes] se me olvidaba, pero ahora no (i know many things in english now, as [the use of ] capital letters…i always wrote [i] in low case; i would forget it before, but not now). (col, 8) correspondingly, five new zealand peers also expressed their gains in spelling and mentioned their improvements in the use of accents in spanish: “urm… mostly it’s about my spelling and…how they…put in…an e and then they have signs above them? they correct [sic] me on that” (nz, 10). other students also mentioned that they learned about accent placement: “[i learned] all about the accents and where it goes” (nz, 5), or “urm, [i learned] where the accents go above what we have” (nz, 11). regarding the use of accents, a colombian peer said that he learned that these are not used in english: “yo le colocaba tilde a football y en inglés no [se usa la tilde] (i used to put the accent on ‘football’ and in english [accents] are not used” (col, 13). finally, both colombian and new zealand peers indicated that as a result of the intervention, they were more aware of the importance of punctuation in their writing. a colombian peer said: “aprendí [a usar] los signos de puntuación. cuando termina una oración [debo] colocarle un punto; antes no lo hacía (i learned [to use] punctuation marks; when a sentence ends, [i have to] write a period. i didn’t do it before)” (col, 9). another colombian student stated that he learned that he has to use punctuation all the time: “ya sé que no se me puede olvidar [usar] los puntos y las comas (i know that i can’t forget [using] periods and commas)” (col, 3). new zealand peers also commented on their leaning of punctuation: “[i learned sometimes punctuation” (nz, 1); and “[i learned] how to put the exclamation mark and where to put the question mark” (nz, 6). universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras112 tolosa, ordóñez, & guevara l1 development the process of correcting their peers’ messages on the platform also contributed to improve students’ awareness of different aspects of their l1. in colombia 18 out of the 21 participants confirmed this, while the other three indicated that their knowledge of l1 did not improve. on the new zealand side, six of the 12 students interviewed expressed that correcting their peers’ texts helped them improve what they knew about english. although participants strengthened their knowledge of their l1, the gains were declared differently in each group. on the colombian side, students highlighted their improvements in aspects such as spelling and punctuation, while new zealand peers pointed out gains in their awareness of the meaning of their texts and the correct use of the language. a colombian girl, for example, indicates that she improved her spelling in the l1. she mentioned that correcting her peer’s paragraphs contributed to strengthen what she already knew about spanish, “pues uno corrige y así mejora [su propia lengua]… por ejemplo [el uso de las] tildes (you correct and that way you improve [your own l1]…for example [the use of ] accents)” (col, 4). another student agreed with her: “sí aprendí [español] porque ellos tienen errores que uno sabe, por ejemplo [el uso de las] tildes (i did learn [spanish] because they make mistakes that you recognize. for example, [the use of ] accents)” (col, 15). additionally, other students noticed the importance of the use of accents for the sake of meaning: [corregir fue] un poco difícil…[le corregí] las tildes, por ejemplo en papá y mamá, que [significan] diferente cuando no tienen [tilde] ([correcting was] a little difficult…[i corrected] accents, for example in “papá–father” and “mamá–mother” whose [meaning] is different when they don’t have [an accent]). (col, 13) there were also advances in the use of punctuation in spanish: yo mejoré en puntuación [con las correcciones], porque tildes, comas y puntos antes no las tenía en cuenta [ahora sí] ([with the corrections] i improved in punctuation because before i did not care about accents, commas, and periods [now i do]). (col, 11) due to the limited use of punctuation marks, it was frequent for the students to forget them: pues a ver, yo sí corregí cosas que yo sabía, aunque a veces se me olvida al escribir…[por ejemplo usar] puntos…ahora sí me acuerdo [de usarlos] (well, i corrected things i knew, although i forget them when i write [for example to use] periods…now i do remember [to use them]). (col, 10) new zealand peers also indicated that they improved aspects of their english. for example, a student declared that during the intervention he realized that he must be more careful in his use of the language when he is writing: “oh, yup [i learned things about english]. because i missed out on a few things in my own english, and when i actually see them, i can correct myself as well” (nz, 2). similarly, another student pointed out that he learned to pay more attention to the meaning of his texts: “urm, i think i learned a lot about making sure that it makes sense, because i don’t always check for [meaning]” (nz, 9). furthermore, a student commented that she had to reflect on her l1 to both identify the correct structures of english and then be able to explain them to her peers: if they write a sentence, it kind of makes me sit for a little while, and i keep reading it back to myself, and say, “yeah, that’s right”, or “no, that’s wrong”, and i keep changing so i could teach them the best i could… so, if it’s “my father name is christopher”, i’ll read it several times, but i said it’s better “my father’s name is christopher” rather than saying “my father name is christopher”… oh, because, well, in their example, if you break the sentence, it would be “my fathers–name is christopher”. but then, if i put an apostrophe there, it would’ve sound [sic] a bit different. so, then, i make it as easy as possible for them to understand. (nz, 5) 113profile vol. 19, no. 1, january-june 2017. issn 1657-0790 (printed) 2256-5760 (online). bogotá, colombia. pages 105-120 language learning shifts and attitudes towards language learning in an online tandem program... attitudes towards fl learning in both countries the young learners who were interviewed expressed positive attitudes towards fl learning. they stated that learning the fl through interaction with native peers increased their interest in fl learning, made the learning process easier, and provided them with the opportunity to learn about their peers’ lifestyles, providing them with development of intercultural understanding. furthermore, colombian students showed interest in receiving corrections from their peers, and also suggested extending the intervention in the school. in new zealand, young learners expressed their interest in continuing to learn spanish. students in both groups reported in the interviews that their interest in learning the fl was enhanced because of the intervention. a colombian boy, for example, said that he felt more motivated to learn english because he was able to do it with a native speaker: “[me gustó aprender inglés con este proyecto] porque uno habla con gente que sabe inglés ([i liked learning english in this project] because you speak with people that know english)” (col, 13). another colombian participant found it interesting to learn english because he participated in activities that were different from the activities they usually did in class: era chévere [participar en los intercambios] y lo que [estoy haciendo en el colegio para aprender inglés]…porque uno siempre tenía que estar leyendo o estudiando y uno ahora [aprende] con otras personas de otros países (it was nice [to participate in the interaction] and what i [am doing in the school to learn english]…because we were always reading or studying, and now [we learn] with people from other countries). (col, 9) likewise, learning spanish through interaction with native speakers was also positive for new zealand students: “[this project makes me more interested in learning spanish because] we were partners, with someone from their country, doing it with us, and helping…yeah. [it is more interesting] than just the thing from the teacher” (nz, 11). additionally, another student highlighted the fact that he had the opportunity to learn with other peers because they faced similar difficulties: it was a fantastic experience to me, because i found it really easy to communicate with them, and at times, they would write back my suggestions but i couldn’t really understand it at the very beginning because they replied in spanish and said “bla bla bla; you didn’t quite get this right.” and then when i was giving the suggestions, i use them in english as well, so then, i kinda felt like they knew how i was feeling when i see it in spanish. (nz, 5) the interaction with native speakers also facilitated the fl learning process, as stated by a colombian young learner: “[me gustó] mucho, porque como ellos nacieron hablando inglés…como que se le hace más fácil a uno aprenderlo (i liked it very much, because since they were born speaking english…it seems easier for one to learn it)” (col, 8). this was reiterated by one of his classmates: [me gustó aprender inglés con este proyecto] porque uno habla con gente que sabe inglés y ellos hablan siempre inglés, [y] así aprende uno más con gente que…le enseñen a uno ([i liked learning english in this project]) because we speak to people that know english and they always speak english…so, we learn more with people…that teach us). (col, 9) a new zealand peer added that age closeness also facilitated the interaction: “urm, i think it’s just a lot easier if you work with someone of your same age because it’s like…you understand it a little more better [sic] what each other is talking about” (nz, 5). students in both colombia and new zealand mentioned that they enjoyed learning the fl through interaction with other students overseas because this allowed them to learn about their peers’ culture and lifestyle, as a colombian peer stated: me gustaba mucho [participar en este proyecto] porque hablábamos con gente de otros países. [aprendí que a] alex le gusta mucho el hockey y es de china. [me gustó] porque nos comunicábamos con universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras114 tolosa, ordóñez, & guevara ellos (i liked [participating in the project] very much because we talked with people from other countries. [i learned that] alex likes hockey very much and that he is from china. i liked it because we communicated with them). (col, 9) another student also mentioned what he learned about his peer’s culture: [aprendí que mi amiga] es [de la] india; la mamá trabaja en un restaurante [indio]; ella en su lonchera lleva muchas cosas de su país ([i learned that my friend] is [from] india; her mom works in an [indian] restaurant; she packs many things from her country in her lunch box). (col, 17) similarly, new zealand peers said that they enjoyed learning spanish with the colombian students because they also learned about the country and the culture: “because it was fun learning spanish too; then i got to learn about other people’s culture and them and everything [sic]” (nz, 11). they also had the opportunity to identify the differences between new zealand and colombia: oh yeah! learning spanish is really fun, and… in the text, i think is better because…now i know that their lifestyle is not the same as ours, and their city is very crowded, and they have a lot different lifestyle to the people in new zealand [sic]. (nz, 2) colombian participants were pleased when they had their texts corrected. corrections made them feel confident and stimulated their learning: ellos nos corregían…eso era bonito porque como ellos saben inglés le enseñaban a uno…porque aprendí más, porque él me corregía palabras y todo (they corrected us…that was good because they know english and they taught us…because i learned more, because he corrected my words and everything). (col, 11) the young learners accepted the corrections and considered them as a part of their learning process: [me gustó participar porque] ellos nos enseñan inglés, hacemos textos y ellos nos corrigen…porque si yo lo hacía bien ella me felicitaba y si no pues ella me corregía…porque sólo en medio de textos puedo aprender más cuando nos corrigen nuestros errores ([i liked participating because] they teach us english, we write texts and they correct them…because if i wrote correctly, she congratulated me, and if i didn’t, she corrected me…because just through texts i can learn more when they correct my mistakes). (col, 12) some students in colombia considered it important to extend the project in the school: hacer esto [los intercambios] en el colegio es bueno, porque uno conoce nueva gente y pues eso lo anima a uno [a aprender] (implementing this [the tandem] in the school is good because we can meet new people and this encourages us [to learn]). (col, 19) one of his classmates agreed with him: [a mí me gustaría] que todos los [niños] del colegio también [participaran], porque ellos también [aprenderían y] conocerían nueva gente y pues eso lo anima a uno [a aprender] ([i would like] for all the students in the school to participate, because they would also [learn and]…meet new people. so, it encourages us [to learn]). (col, 15) finally, some new zealand students said that after participating in the project they felt motivated to continue learning spanish: “it makes me want to do it even more because when i made a mistake, it makes me want to try harder to make it correct” (nz, 9). one of his classmates also stated that he was interested in learning more spanish: “i like learning spanish with this project because i like meeting new people and it was fun talking to colombians, and i still go on about my spanish thing” (nz, 10). discussion this study sought to assess the impact of tandem communication between young learners of english and spanish as foreign languages in bogotá, colombia, and auckland, new zealand, on their skills in fl writing, their attitudes towards fl learning, and their knowledge of their l1. the results are positive in the three aspects of learning studied in both groups of students. quantitative 115profile vol. 19, no. 1, january-june 2017. issn 1657-0790 (printed) 2256-5760 (online). bogotá, colombia. pages 105-120 language learning shifts and attitudes towards language learning in an online tandem program... analysis showed statistically significant differences between the means of pretests and posttests, with an advantage for the posttests in the measures of the students’ writing. analysis of the interviews provided further information on the students’ language learning as well as their report of positive changes in attitude toward fl learning. furthermore, the students expressed having liked the opportunity to interact with and learn from peers from a distant country. such positive results are remarkable and all the more meaningful considering the great differences in the conditions in which the two groups worked. in a previous study of tandem corrective interaction between similar groups of colombian and new zealand beginners (tolosa et al., 2015), where we focused on comparing types and frequency of feedback produced by the participants, we provided a plausible explanation for these similar positive learning outcomes which seem to originate in the tandem intervention. our previous study indicates that even though the students could not identify all the errors produced by their peers, the tandem activity provided a proper context for language practice and authentic interaction, where peers were a real audience for each other. similar results were also reported by ware and o’dowd (2008) and lafford and lafford (2005) who emphasized the importance of meaningful communicative engagement and the motivation that a real audience provides to writing in an fl. conscious reflection on language form required by the tandem format has been found to improve fl skills (fantuzzo & ginsburg-block, 1998), even if there are variations on writing accuracy (canga alonso, 2012), both of which were observed in the present study. another characteristic of the participants in the present study— which makes it surprising that all actually developed both fl and l1 through their interaction— is their very beginning level of proficiency in the fl. in our previous study (tolosa et al., 2015), we reported that our participants, also at a very low level of fl language development (i.e., cef a1), read each other’s messages with real interest in what they said, acted as experts in their l1, and accepted their peers’ novice level in it because they knew they were also novices in their respective fl. the qualitative data from the present study show similar high levels of motivation and willingness to participate in the interaction in the two groups of students. as brammerts (1996) asserts, learners in tandem arrangements are interested in each other as individuals as well as sources of language input. this interest transpired in the interviews carried out in the present study; the students felt comfortable with each other since they shared the beginners’ learning path while at the same time relied on each other’s expertise in their l1s. other disadvantages shared by all participants were revealed in our previous study (tolosa et al., 2015) when we noted that the same intervention produced interactions limited in content and scope because of the low level of proficiency of the students and limited collaboration established by the one-way descriptive texts interchanged. we also found that the tutees did not follow up on their peers’ feedback but just accepted the direct correction of their errors, which prevented the detection of conscious gains in the process and pointed towards the need for more instruction on giving and receiving feedback and more teacher intervention and monitoring of the interaction process. but in spite of all this, tandem interaction seems to make a real difference. the significant advance it produces in fl writing and the motivation it causes in the participants towards fl work after a very short intervention, even under unfavorable conditions, speak for its potential for exploitation as a learning environment. the fact that the students spoke about the mechanics of writing in the interviews seems to indicate that they have all developed their metalinguistic skills, a common outcome of tandem interactions (thurston et al., 2009). the principle of autonomy of tandem exchanges resulted in enhanced academic skills and metacognitive strategies for these learners, such as analysing their language universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras116 tolosa, ordóñez, & guevara learning process and recognizing different ways in which their own languages work. for 21st century learners, these skills may be valuable not only for their language learning. the promise of cmc seems to be its potential to bridge learning contexts and facilitate the delivery and construction of knowledge while allowing for personal and ubiquitous connections among learners and between learners, teachers, and their technological environments (crompton, 2013). there was little doubt that learners in both contexts would be motivated to engage in authentic communication with peers of their same age. the intercultural gains cited in other studies (guth & helm, 2010; ware & kessler, 2013) were evident in many responses during the interviews. the opportunity to interact with real speakers of the language was a first for most learners in both contexts. they were curious and delighted to learn about each other, yet frustrated that their fl was limiting. however, having eight weeks to know each other gave students the sense of belonging to a wider community of fl learners, one that they would like to continue and extend to others in their schools. finally, there is a methodological achievement in the present study in spite of its exploratory nature and small size: it was able to detect formal gains in fl writing and gains in l1 metalinguistic knowledge. this had been impossible in our previous study (tolosa et al., 2015), where we tried detecting these gains in the messages interchanged in the virtual platform and failed because of the characteristics of the interchange and the lack of training and monitoring mentioned above. final remarks this study has provided further evidence of the potential of cmc to enhance fl learning. even under unequal circumstances, the young learners (and their teachers) in this study persevered in communicating with each other driven by the motivation to learn about each other and from each other. linking classrooms through online tools that are increasingly ubiquitous and affordable may be the site of language learning preferred by learners in this century. a clear limitation of the study is the sample size of the two classrooms, as well as the different conditions under which the schools worked. however, with gains in fl, l1 and intercultural understanding, this small scale study presents a model that could be expanded and replicated with learners in different contexts and different languages. tandem learning in online spaces at school level seems a promising way forward for learners and teachers as well as for researchers. references andrews, r., & haythornthwaite, c. 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(1998). second language development in writing: measures of fluency, accuracy, and complexity. honolulu, hi: university of hawaii press. about the authors constanza tolosa: lecturer and teacher educator in foreign language education, faculty of education, the university of auckland, new zealand. she is currently involved in projects on the implementation of the language curriculum in primary schools in new zealand and the use of technologies in language teaching and teacher education. claudia lucía ordóñez: associate professor, faculty of human sciences and faculty of engineering, universidad nacional de colombia – sede bogotá. her research explores pedagogical innovation and its impact on learning in all academic areas, with emphasis on language education. diana carolina guevara: english teacher, english service programme, universidad nacional de colombia, currently a candidate for the masters in applied linguistics–spanish as a foreign language, at universidad javeriana. her research interests are the use of technologies in foreign language teaching and bilingual education. acknowledgements the authors would like to thank the teachers and students who participated in this project, especially dora inés mesa, the colombian teacher whose master’s thesis inspired this article. data analysis was partially funded by a mobility grant from colciencias (conv. 650-2014). 205profile vol. 13, no. 1, april 2011. issn 1657-0790. bogotá, colombia. pages 205-213 teaching efl academic writing in colombia: reflections in contrastive rhetoric la enseñanza de escritura académica en colombia: reflexiones en retórica contrastiva juan d. gómez* universidad de antioquia, colombia this essay relates observations to the reasons that advanced students of english as a foreign language in colombia struggle with english composition. it identifies some cultural, academic, and disciplinary influences that may obfuscate their assimilation of the conventions of written english. it concludes by proposing that the teaching of context awareness would help said students in their writing of academic texts in english. key words: contrastive rhetoric, efl composition, pre-service english teacher education, teaching english as a second language. este ensayo relata observaciones acerca de las causas por las cuales los estudiantes de nivel avanzado de inglés como lengua extranjera tienen dificultades al redactar en dicha lengua. el ensayo señala algunas causas culturales, académicas y otras relacionadas con el campo específico de estudio, que podrían obstaculizar la asimilación de las normas del inglés escrito. finalmente, propone que la enseñanza del reconocimiento de contexto les ayudaría a estos estudiantes a redactar textos académicos en inglés. palabras clave: enseñanza del inglés como segundo idioma, formación inicial de docentes de inglés, redacción en inglés como lengua extranjera, retórica contrastiva. * e-mail: jdgomez7@gmail.com this article was received on july 15, 2010, and accepted on january 26, 2011. profile13-1_cuerpo.indd 205 31/03/11 17:06 206 universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras gómez introduction i teach academic writing in medellín, colombia. my students are enrolled in an undergraduate degree program that expands and deepens their english proficiency (most have had basic english in high school) and prepares them to become teachers of english to elementary and high school students in their immediate environs. they are all three or four semesters away from graduating and for the most part have a level of proficiency in english that is equivalent to a b1 on the cefr (common european framework of reference  for languages) scale. for over a decade, i have taught composition in state and community colleges in new york state. my students there were both native speakers of english and speakers of other languages. the obstacles that my current students face in colombia differ both in kind and degree from those of my previous experience, and this essay is an attempt to identify some of the reasons why this is so.1 having said this, my purpose is not to present colombian culture as a monolithic entity but, rather, to encourage views that recognize the hybridity that is manifest in any culture and to highlight how multiple sources, including national culture, educational background, and disciplinary culture can converge to create unique obstacles for efl students (connor, 2002, p. 504). what i focus on here are socially valued discourses and rhetorical norms that are recognized by most of the population and are of particular importance to those who see them as a prerequisite to a professional and upwardly mobile career. for this group of individuals, a group that includes my students and colleagues, there is social 1 the observations and conclusions that i present here are specific to the students that i teach but i would be surprised if they are not also applicable to other efl students in spanish speaking countries. and ideological meaning built into the language and language use that i describe here; meaning that promises social, professional, and academic advantages if applied.2 i present here my observations as to the probable causes of these obstacles and how they converge to challenge spanish speaking students who hope to become conversant in the logic of english composition or academic writing (by this last term i refer to a range that encompasses those essays that my students write for me, and those articles that my colleagues submit to journals such as this one).3 i conclude by proposing that making context awareness, an approach that emerges from the field of contrastive rhetoric, a part of teaching composition could begin to address the problems cited. literature review efforts to identify the source of errors in composition writing have taken a variety of forms, but it has always been acknowledged that it is a difficult task to perform because errors often have multiple origins (londoño, 2008, p. 138). contrastive rhetoric began as a tool toward this end in robert kaplan’s essay “cultural thought patterns in inter-cultural education” (1966). kaplan looked at the compositions of english language students and evaluated them by focusing on the cultural contexts from which the students came and the rhetorical strategies employed. since then, contrastive rhetoric has bloomed from an area of study to an area proper of applied linguistics. in the 1980s, this approach gave rise to a trend in a comparative identification of rhetorical techniques (purves, 1988). during the 90s the focus shifted to cross cultural studies that compared 2 for a more detailed look at the role of culture in tesol see atkinson (1999). 3 what my students have is an inability to assimilate, what robert kaplan called, almost five decades ago, the logic of english. 207profile vol. 13, no. 1, april 2011. issn 1657-0790. bogotá, colombia. pages 205-213 207 teaching efl academic writing in colombia: reflections in contrastive rhetoric linguistic (unity, coherence, and organization) and rhetorical features (classical appeals to logos, pathos, and ethos). these studies also sought to identify a more definitive understanding of how a student’s l1 knowledge influences the learning of english. this focus on the contexts in which english and english writing are taught has been echoed by those who would like to see all formal learning from perspectives informed by the cultural constructs in which they take place (school, educational, local and national contexts (holliday, 1994; 1996), (hottel-burkhart, 2000). more recently, contrastive rhetoric has turned its attention to the process and products of what is written for publication and professional purposes. examples of this include flowerdew (1999), golebiowski (1998), and moreno, (1998). the problem at present, my students believe that in order to say, “i would like the students to use english more often during class” one should write that, “promoting the oral acquisition in student performance follows closely with the planning objectives of the cooperating teacher.”4 they believe that the second sentence is more correct, more acceptable, and that they should strive to compose sentences like this. kaplan identified the kind of indirect reasoning that generates sentences like this as common to romance languages, and this may be so, but this does not go far enough to explain why my students have a mistaken idea of how english works. for my students, not knowing how english works means that even with an adequate knowledge of english vocabulary and grammatical rules 4 for this example we will overlook the misuse of the definite article which appears to be a common challenge for spanish speaking efl students. they remain unable to eliminate foreign features from their text, features at the discourse level that affect comprehension and assessment of the text (mauranen, 1993, p. 158). because my students do not understand how english works and believe that they do, one must first begin by identifying the causes of the misunderstanding. this task must then be followed by correct models and finally reinforced by their application of what they have learned in the writing that they produce. this process would be longer and more arduous if they knew nothing of academic writing in english. their process of mis-education begins in high school where evidently little writing instruction is offered. an informal survey of forty two of my students, all from different high schools, to find out how many written assignments of three paragraphs or more (in spanish or english) they had been asked to write in their last year of high school revealed that eighty nine percent of them were asked to write two essays or less and twenty two percent were not asked to write any essays at all. four students reported to have written three or more essays, twelve said that they wrote two, fifteen were only asked to write one essay, and nine students were not asked to write any essays at all. this is, of course, not a formal survey, but serves as a convenient sample for present purposes. students who graduate high school and continue on to public universities face a similar situation. the public universities in medellín do not have a general writing requirement for students. individual academic departments are allowed to determine the importance of composition to their disciplines and design courses and requisites accordingly. paradoxically there is, however, a state mandate for all students to demonstrate a basic level of english proficiency that is enforced in 208 universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras gómez every department of public institutions of higher learning.5 from this data, one can conclude that for most students in public universities who attended public high schools (public and private academic tracks generally remain independent, a fact that reflects the rigid social structure of the country as a whole), the norms, preferences, and rules about written communication were not learned in the classroom but gleaned from their cultural and disciplinary context. in these they find models that give them a sense of the preferred structural points and rhetorical organization. and, the preferred form of communication that successful, educated, and influential persons use is a formal one. it follows, then, that given the importance that typical discourse and rhetorical practices have in any given culture, the beliefs that my students and colleagues hold about composition have been significantly shaped by these forces. formal communication in colombia is in large part euphemistic and allusive. by formal i mean language that is stilted, ceremonious, concerned more with structure and sound than subject matter and that is conventional in that it seeks to be in accordance with local expectations. formal communication, as i and my students experience it, is composed of baroque sentences with multiple sesquipedalian adjectives and adverbs. its use is dictated as much by the social or professional standing of the speaker as it is by the situation in which he speaks so that informal settings are often the places for professionals to speak in a formal register. my colleagues, whether emailing me, composing a report for peers or organizing a presentation 5 the three largest private universities in medellín have either some general writing requirement or, like the public ones, requirements defined by each department. for the general public adhere to the norms of formal communication. an email informing me of the cancellation of a weekly meeting usually begins with ‘respected’ or ‘esteemed professor’ and is followed by ‘we should like to take this opportunity to inform you that ….’ presentations of the kind that occur in any faculty meeting are frequently prefaced by ‘at this time we would like to make known the conclusions determined by the administrative body charged with …’ here is an example of the circularity and formality that my students are exposed to in their cultural context. when the president of my university in medellín was recently interviewed in the university newspaper, he was asked: ¿porqué hay consumo de drogas dentro de la universidad? (why is there drug use inside the university?) to which he replied: el consumo y el comercio ilícito de drogas no es exclusivo de las universidades, ni tampoco de los establecimientos educativos de secundaria donde también se presentan estos fenómenos. ese es un problema nacional y mundial que afecta a la sociedad en general. hoy en día el mismo gobierno colombiano reconoce la magnitud perniciosa de lo que se conoce como microtráfico y la proliferación de las llamadas ollas o casas de vicio. colombia no sólo es un país productor y exportador de estupefacientes sino que pasó a ser consumidor. (uribe, 2010) why is there drug use inside the university? the use and sale of drugs are not unique to universities or to high schools, where these also occur. it is a global and national problem that affects society at large. today the colombian government has come to recognize the harmful effects of petty drug sales and the spread of drug houses. colombia is a country that not only produces and exports drugs but has become one that also consumes them.6 6 my translation. 209profile vol. 13, no. 1, april 2011. issn 1657-0790. bogotá, colombia. pages 205-213 209 teaching efl academic writing in colombia: reflections in contrastive rhetoric his response is not an answer to the question, although it is presented as such. this is not to imply that verbosity is a trait of solely efl students who speak spanish. american undergrads (and the occasional faculty member) come to the university with similar ideas about the equivalency between volume and substance. but the case here seems aggravated by the syntactical allowances of spanish, the hierarchical traditions in spanish speaking countries, and the pressures on students to sound professional so as to have more and better opportunities of landing a job in a market where there are few. as an american, i enjoy the ceremonial tone that all this gives to our everyday chores because it gives me, and what i do, a greater sense of importance than is warranted. as an outsider, i can see this manner of speaking for what it is, or rather, is not. it is not efficient and effective communication but substance subordinated to ritual, form, and custom. my students on the other hand see it, live it, and know it to be a means, the preferred means, by which educated people communicate. this misunderstanding is made manifest in their struggle to see written language as functional and pragmatic rather than aesthetic. so for the majority of them, brevity and precision are secondary to making their sentences resemble the tone and syntax of a papal bull. the question then is what would make them so prone to imitation rather than assimilation? coincidentally, a formal style that is identified by its reflexivity and property (of language) to comment on itself, metalanguage without a referent, is particularly attractive to students who feel insecure or unsure about the validity of what they want to say. as a consequence, my students imitate and have been imitating for years. to ask them to do anything more as the efl students that they are would be, i believe, unrealistic and counterproductive. they cannot assimilate because they lack what widdowson calls ‘contextual dependency’. the reality of language use depends on it being localized (widdowson, 1998) and my students, because they are not in contact with a native english speaking community, lack this localization and have thus not internalized english as a semantic resource (712). unlike esl students for whom the need to master a second language is pressing, for my students it is a nine-to-five affair, if that much. efl students who study in their home countries have a choice. their social relationships depend on their native language as well as their professional relationships. without a real need there cannot be real learning. this is another challenge that should be acknowledged and is related to why outside influences are so quickly and thoroughly adopted; why many of my students learn to see english as a set of dance steps to memorize without ever learning to hear the beat. there are of course exceptional cases made so by talent and/or determination but these serve to prove the norm. returning to the aforementioned student sentence, we can see a second distinguishing feature, namely, that he was miming not just syntactical forms but lexical ones as well, both form and content, both of which were only marginally related to what he wished to convey.7 he subordinated his message and gave priority to a weak and lengthy sentence that conformed to the formal structure favored by his culture and chose terms that he had no doubt read and heard spoken by professionals in the field, terms like oral acquisition, planning activities, and 7 in this act of imitation the student was, in effect, defining his identity; his identity as an english speaker and future professional educator. by identity i mean how he “…understands his relationship to his social and professional world ...” and how that relationship is constructed across time and space (norton, 1997, p. 410). 210 universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras gómez student performance, terms which he then used indiscriminately. the sentence thus becomes a typographical unit rather than a logical one (kaplan, 1966, p. 11) where adherence to what is perceived as academic discourse actually “...masks a lack of genuine understanding” (elbow, 1991, p. 137). all of this despite the fact that the student in question has the tools with which to express himself: the knowledge of vocabulary and grammar. he misuses these tools because he has not yet learned how english works. it is a well documented fact that poor writers are concerned primarily with surface features while good writers are concerned with the rhetorical situation, the audience, and the circumstance which elicits the discourse (spack, 1984). what the student in question has learned to do is to imitate. he imitates the syntactical structure that his local culture promotes and the vocabulary used in our disciplines (education, language learning, etc.). this is where cultural and disciplinary contexts combine to the detriment of efl students because oftentimes it is we the teachers who inadvertently confirm and reinforce his assumptions about vague, indirect writing and the value of multi-syllabic utterances where basic ones would do the job. every discipline has its jargon with which students attempt to describe phenomena. specialized terminology is intended to make more concise or precise a description of something for which our present vocabulary does not account for and, more often than not, this is what it does. we in the social sciences however frequently find ourselves tangled up in language while trying to describe language because, like the cultural tendencies described above, we sometimes lose sight of the ends and are seduced by the means. this makes sense of course because our subject of interest is words and the animal that uses them. academic journals, conferences, round tables, and newsletters are the places where this entanglement occurs. for my students, unfortunately, and others like them, they are not a nuisance: they are models to emulate. that professional writing in linguistics, teaching, literature, and foreign language teaching is barnacled with incautious semantic and syntactical expressions will not be a revelation to many because it has long been assumed to be an inconvenient hazard in these professions. that it can distort and inhibit students’ attempts to learn english may be. stylistic and syntactical solecisms have their effects magnified in the field of english language learning, particularly in my experience with colombians learning and working with english as a foreign language. here are some representative examples, to wit: in my view, part of doing so involves basing the development of new teaching ideas, in the first instance, on an effort to properly understand and appreciate the pragmatic value in much of current elt pedagogy; and then, secondly, to attempt to add on to them in a two-way, negotiated manner –a ‘building up’ rather than a ‘tearing down’ or ‘throwing away’ approach. (waters, 2009, p. 12) from a published letter to the editor: our students should work to temper the ascendancy of any disciplinary power that inhibits their ability to acquire the agency needed to be self fashioning individuals. (gómez, 2010, p. 5) from a scholarly article: the argument being forwarded within an expanded view of language policy is that language policy needs to be understood in a broader way by focusing not only on ideology, management and practice, but also on the devices, or mechanisms which are used to alter policies, some overt, others covert, some explicit and open while others implicit, covert and hidden. (shohamy, 2009, p. 53) 211profile vol. 13, no. 1, april 2011. issn 1657-0790. bogotá, colombia. pages 205-213 211 teaching efl academic writing in colombia: reflections in contrastive rhetoric from a conference panel “putting value in evaluations: students forging responsible ownership pathways” this workshop focuses on reinforcing public speaking tenets using a multifaceted assessment involving peer feedback, instructor coaching, video review, and self-evaluation. attendees reproduce actions of learners in a tertiary level public speaking course, incorporating critical approaches while structuring and analyzing their own (and their peers’) presentations. (wilhelm, 2009, p. 15) language like this not only diminishes accessibility and influence but it corrupts.8 it is not just my students that are misled by examples like this but my colleagues. for most of them, english is their second language and they look to their respective professional publications and forums to stay abreast of new trends, research, and discussions. they, in turn, refer their students to them, thus potentially perpetuating the cycle. the same cycle of cultural assumptions that they need to reassess in order to communicate effectively in their academic field. complex syntactical constructions are used by novelists to convey subtle tones of meaning or to create aggregate images. in academic prose they can sometimes be used for the benefit of the reader. to understand them one needs practice reading and discussing and analyzing texts. to use them effectively, however, and not just ape their features requires practice. practice expressing basic ideas using simple and compound sentences and then, practice writing highly complex sentences using specialized language. my students lack practice in both of these areas. 8 some of what this kind of language corrupts and the reasons it is used can be found in george orwell’s “politics and the english language” (1946). solutions teaching academic writing with a focus on ‘context awareness’ is one of the ways to counteract cultural and disciplinary influences while providing students with the practice that they need (practicing, unlike the passive act of reading, is a more reliable path to partial assimilation). helping students to identify the presence of different contexts and discourses would lead to an acknowledgement of the power of their cultural context to shape and distort their use and understanding of language. this help will, in turn, begin to prepare them for academic writing, and do so while avoiding the academic monopolization of knowledge. we could guide their writing choices without acculturating them so that academic writing or the content instructor becomes the sole source of writing knowledge (bernhardt, 1986, p. 193). teaching context awareness in composition classes begins with a basic understanding of the cultural dissonance that exists between texts written in spanish and those written in english. to do this one can begin by identifying a clear set of basic rhetorical guidelines in english which can then be compared to spanish speaking models so as to define points of commonality and difference. the contrastive studies conducted in asian contexts by zhu (1997) and scollon and scollon (1997) are particularly interesting and informative sources in this area. to compensate for the lack of writing time that is given to efl students, teachers need to complement vocabulary building and reading comprehension with writing activities. they need to remember that clear writing is not a natural byproduct of the mastery of the former two skills but independent of them. students need opportunities to write about what they like and feel and this need can not be substituted by asking them to read, analyze, and comment on texts written in english. 212 universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras gómez what we can do is to be more mindful of the language that we use in our writing and, when addressing this subject, to avoid the dichotomy that is often presented as the only possible solution to teaching composition to esl and efl students. i am referring to the either-or premise that pits the academic english model of composition against those models used in non-english speaking cultures where english is taught. this false dichotomy claims that students should either integrate by adopting the norms of the bigger and more influential culture or emancipate by continuing to use the native rhetorical structures when writing or speaking in english (mauranen, 1993). neither of these options is useful to my students because by rejecting the model used by academics in the u.s. and elsewhere they would be limiting their possibility of finding employment and being able to take advantage of opportunities for professional and academic advancement. absolute integration would be, aside from the obvious conflicts with national and cultural identity, an ideal that is difficult for most of them to achieve as long as they live in a non english speaking country. the sensible approach would be for them to learn how to identify the different contexts in which they live, work, and learn and become as versed in them as is necessary so as to accomplish their particular needs or goals.9 the choice of context and the emphasis placed on it are decisions that should be left to each student because, ultimately, the rewards and/or consequences will also be hers/his. in this area, we instructors should limit ourselves to identifying, defining, and explaining contexts. 9 my use of the term context is akin to how the term genre has been used in the literature of english language learning. it has been understood there as a rhetorical means of mediating private intentions and social exigent; it motivates by connecting the private and the public, the singular and the recurrent (miller 1984). considering our role from this perspective would, aside from helping our students to have a more complete understanding of the language, result in more realistic, achievable goals, a more frank attitude toward language learning, and with these more students who are motivated by their real, if moderate, achievements without being discouraged by an ideal level of proficiency that they may not gain. references atkinson, d. (1999). tesol and culture. tesol quarterly, 33(4), 625-654. bernhardt, s. (1986). applying a functional model of language in the writing classroom. in b. couture (ed.), functional approaches to writing: research perspectives. (pp 186-199). norwood, n.j: ablex. connor, u. (2002). new directions in contrastive rhetoric. tesol quarterly, 36(4), 493–520. elbow, p. (1991). reflections on academic discourse: how it relates to freshmen and colleagues. college english, 53(2), 135-155. flowerdew, j. (1999). writing for scholarly publication in english: the case of hong kong. journal of second language writing, 8, 123-146. golebiowski, z. (1998). rhetorical approaches to scientific writing: an english-polish contrastive study. text, 18, 67-102. gómez, j. (2010). a view on the symbolic power of english. asocopi newsletter, 5-6. holliday, a. (1994). appropriate methodology in social context. cambridge: cambridge university press. holliday, a. (1996). developing a sociological imagination: expanding ethnography in international english language education. applied linguistics, 17, 234-255. hottel-burkhart, n.g. (2000). the canons of aristotelian rhetoric: their place in contrastive arabic-english studies. in z. m. ibrahim, n. kassabgy, & s. 213profile vol. 13, no. 1, april 2011. issn 1657-0790. bogotá, colombia. pages 205-213 213 teaching efl academic writing in colombia: reflections in contrastive rhetoric kaplan, r. b. (1966). cultural thought patterns in intercultural education. language and learning, 16, 1-20. londoño, d. a. (2008). error analysis in a written composition. profile issues in teacher’s professional development, 10(1), 135-146. mauranen, a. (1993). cultural differences in academic discourse: problems of a linguistic and cultural minority. the competent intercultural communicator, 157-174. miller, c.r. (1984). genre as social action. quarterly journal of speech, 70, 151-167. moreno, a. i. (1998). the explicit signaling of premise-conclusion sequences in research articles: a contrastive framework. text, 18, 545-585. norton, b. (1997). language, identity, and the ownership of english. tesol quarterly, 31 (3), 409-429. orwell, g. (1946). politics and the english language. horizon, 13(76), 252-265. purves, a.c. (1988). writing across languages and cultures: issues in contrastive rhetoric. newbury park, california: sage. scollon, r., & scollon, s. (1997) point of view and citation: fourteen chinese and english versions of the “same” news story. text, 17, 83-125. shohamy, e. (2009). language teachers as partners in crafting educational language policies? ikala, 14(22), 45-67. spack, r. (1984). invention strategies and the esl college composition student. tesol quarterly, 18(4), 649-670. uribe, a. (2010). interview. alma mater. universidad de antioquia, 10, 11. waters, a. (2009). conference notes. retrieved june 20, 2010 from: http://www.englishuk.com/en/english-uk/ news-events/elt-methodology-in stormy-waters-at annual-teachers-conference widdowson, h.g. (1998). context, community, and authentic language. tesol quarterly, 32(4), 705-716. wilhelm, t. (2009). tesol convention. retrieved from: ttp://www.tesol.org/s_tesol/convention2009/docs/ advanceprogramv2.pdf zhu, y. (1997). an analysis of structural moves in chinese sales letters. text, 17, 543-566. about the author juan d. gómez, phd, teaches composition and literature at la escuela de idiomas, universidad de antioquia, colombia. 131profile vol. 14, no. 2, october 2012. issn 1657-0790 (printed) 2256-5760 (online). bogotá, colombia. pages 131-144 the impact of conferencing assessment on efl students’ grammar learning impacto de la evaluación mediante conferencias en el aprendizaje de la gramática en estudiantes de inglés como lengua extranjera sasan baleghizadeh* shahid beheshti university, g.c., iran zahra zarghami** allameh tabataba’i university, iran this article reports on a study that was carried out in order to examine the impact of conferencing assessment on students’ learning of english grammar. forty-two iranian intermediate university students were randomly assigned to an experimental and a control group. the participants in the experimental group took part in four individual and four whole class conferences. the participants in the control group studied the same grammatical points but they were not involved in conferencing assessment. the results of the study showed that the experimental group performed significantly better than the control group on the given post-test. moreover, the attitudes of the participants toward grammar learning in the experimental group significantly changed from the first administration of a questionnaire to its second administration. key words: alternatives in language assessment, assessment for learning, conferencing assessment. en este artículo se reporta un estudio llevado a cabo con el fin de examinar el impacto de la evaluación mediante conferencias en el aprendizaje de gramática inglesa. cuarenta y dos estudiantes universitarios iraníes, de nivel intermedio, fueron asignados aleatoriamente a dos grupos: uno experimental y otro de control. los estudiantes del grupo experimental participaron en cuatro entrevistas individuales y cuatro con toda la clase. los del grupo de control estudiaron los mismos elementos gramaticales pero no estuvieron involucrados en conferencias de evaluación. los resultados del estudio mostraron que el grupo experimental tuvo un desempeño significativamente mejor que el del grupo de control en el examen que se realizó al final del proceso investigativo. además, se halló que las actitudes de los participantes del grupo experimental hacia el aprendizaje de la gramática cambiaron entre la primera y la segunda aplicación de un cuestionario. palabras clave: alternativas en evaluación del lenguaje, evaluación del aprendizaje, evaluación mediante conferencias. * e-mail: sasanbaleghizadeh@yahoo.com ** e-mail: zarghami_z@yahoo.com this article was received on january 31, 2012, and accepted on june 1, 2012. universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras132 baleghizadeh & zarghami introduction in every country, educational policymakers place great emphasis on tests and test scores. tests are considered to be measurement tools and, more often than not, important decisions about people are made based on their test scores. people usually think that it is the test itself and the score on the test which are so important. however, the fact is that “it is the use to which we put their results that can be appropriate or inappropriate” (bailey, 1998, p. 204). tests, however, are just one of the possible methods of assessment. practitioners in the field of education make a distinction between tests and assessment. as brown (2004) states, “tests are formal procedures, usually administered within strict time limitations, to sample the performance of a test-taker in a specified domain” while “assessment includes all occasions from informal impromptu observations and comments up to and including tests” (p. 251). reliability and validity of a test were considered to be the two most important issues in designing traditional tests such as multiple-choice items and other standardized tests. such tests were constructed in a way to ensure both objectivity and ease of administration and scoring. since the 1990s, there has been a major paradigm shift in language testing and assessment domain. the short comings of standardized tests convinced specialists to replace traditional tests with new kinds of language assessment. portfolios, journals, self and peer-assessment, and many other techniques have been introduced in order to evaluate students’ achievement. brown and hudson (1998, p. 657) state that using the term “alternative assessment” for the newly introduced methods of language assessment is counterproductive because the term implies something completely new and distinct from what was done before. they suggest the term “alternatives in language assessment” for these methods of language assessment (brown, 2004, p. 252). the last decade has also witnessed another widespread change in language assessment concepts and methods. one of the main reasons for such a shift is the growing interest of practitioners in the concept of “assessment for learning,” which means considering teaching, learning, and assessment as an integrated and interdependent chain of events (lee, 2007). assessment for learning is best defined as a process by which assessment information is used by teachers to adjust their teaching strategies, and by students to adjust their learning strategies. based on this view, assessment, teaching, and learning are interdependently linked, as each one imposes its own effect on the others (assessment reform group, 2002). conferences, a special type of purposeful conversation or discussion between teachers and learners, can be regarded as a new form of evaluating students’ achievement in different educational settings. genesee and upshur (1996) argue that conferences involve both teachers and learners visiting each other in an office or classroom to discuss the students’ performance in their learning process. they stress that during a conference the focus of the instructor should be on the learners and their needs in the learning process they are experiencing. since the inception of alternative assessment methods, a number of researchers have tried to investigate the effectiveness of using these new methods of assessment on language learning of different students. ross (2005) has investigated the impact of using formative methods of assessment on foreign language proficiency growth by involving eight cohorts of foreign language learners in an eight-year longitudinal study. the results of this study indicate that formative assessment practices yield very positive effects on language proficiency growth. cheng and warren (2005) have investigated the benefits of peer-assessment in english language programs. in their study, undergraduate 133profile vol. 14, no. 2, october 2012. issn 1657-0790 (printed) 2256-5760 (online). bogotá, colombia. pages 131-144 the impact of conferencing assessment on efl students’ grammar learning engineering students attending a university in hong kong were asked to assess the english language proficiency of their peers. their study also compares peer and teacher assessments. the findings suggest that students had a less positive attitude toward assessing their peers’ language proficiency, but they did not score their peers’ language proficiency very differently from the other assessment criteria. firooz-zareh (2006) examined the relationship between alternative assessment techniques and iranian students’ reading proficiency. throughout a whole semester, two techniques of self-assessment and conferencing were put into practice in the experimental group. the findings of his study ensure the inclusion of alternative assessment techniques in assessment and instruction. likewise, besharati (2004) looked into the impact of alternative assessment techniques as regards iranian students’ listening compre hension. again, a combination of the two techniques of self-assessment and conferencing were put into practice in the experimental group. the results of this study pointed to the positive effects of incorporating alternative assessment procedures onto the listening comprehension skills of iranian university learners. linn, baker, and dunbar (1991) have proposed eight criteria for validation of performance-based assessment, such as many alternative assessments methods, as follows: serious validation of alternative assessments needs to include evidence regarding the intended and unintended consequences, the degree to which performance on specific assessment tasks transfers, and the fairness of the assessment. evidence is also needed regarding the cognitive complexity of the processes students employ in solving problems and the meaningfulness of the problems for students and teachers. in addition, a basis for judging both content quality and the comprehensiveness of the content coverage needs to be provided. finally, the cost of the assessment must be justified. (p. 20) the present study reviewing the available literature reveals that much of the research regarding the efficacy of alternative assessment methods has been carried out in english as a second language (esl) contexts and these studies have focused on reading and writing skills. the application of alternative assessment methods, however, has grown rapidly beyond the esl context to many varied situations, specifically in english as a foreign language (efl) contexts. to date, the effectiveness of alternative assessment methods, incorporating principles of assessment for learning has not been investigated in the efl learning context of iran. therefore, more empirical research is required to examine the impact of alternative assessment methods and assessment for learning techniques on language learners’ attitudes and their achievements. therefore, the present study aims to investigate the efficacy of conferencing assessment procedure on grammar learning of iranian efl students and their attitudes toward formal grammar learning by seeking to answer the following research questions: 1. does conferencing assessment have any impact on iranian efl students’ grammar learning? 2. does conferencing assessment change the attitude of iranian efl students toward formal grammar learning? 3. does traditional summative assessment change the attitude of iranian efl students toward formal grammar learning? 4. is there any change in the attitude of the students in both groups (conferencing versus traditional assessment) toward formal grammar learning? method participants the participants for this study were 42 iranian intermediate efl students (22 females and 20 males) universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras134 baleghizadeh & zarghami majoring in different fields (information tech nology, computer engineering, accounting, etc.) in one of the branches of the university of applied science and technology in tehran, iran. they were freshmen with an average age of 22. the participants were members of two classes taking a course named general english i. these classes, both taught by the same teacher, were randomly assigned to one experimental group (n=20) and one control group (n=22). instruments the main instrument used in this study was a 50-item grammar test consisting of 25 multiple choice and 25 error recognition items. the test was administered to both groups in the first and last sessions of the experimental period. the questions were based on the topics students were supposed to study during the course general english i, namely, (a) verb tenses (including simple present, simple past, future, present continuous, past continuous, future continuous, present perfect, past perfect, future perfect, present perfect continuous, past perfect continuous, and future perfect continuous), (b) auxiliary verbs, (c) coordination (including coordinating conjunctions and conjunctive adverbs), and (d) subordinators (including relative pronouns and adverbial subordinating conjunctions). there were 12 items from each topic except verb tenses, which included 14 items in the test, most of which were adopted from previous actual samples of the test of english as a foreign language (toefl), officially released by educational testing service (ets). some of the test items are provided in appendix a. given that the items were selected and adopted from various sources, there was a need to check the reliability as well as the content validity of the test. the reliability of the test, measured through kuderrichardson 21 formula, turned out to be 0.89 and its content validity was approved by the course instructor as well as by an efl university professor. this test served three purposes in this study: it was used as the pre-test as well as the posttest. moreover, it functioned as an instrument to determine the homogeneity of both groups at the beginning of the study in terms of their gram matical knowledge. to find out the attitude of iranian university students regarding formal grammar learning, a questionnaire developed by schulz (2001) was used. this questionnaire was administered two times (once at the beginning and then at the end of the treatment period to determine whether or not the participants’ responses on the first administration would differ from their responses on the second administration of the questionnaire. the questionnaire had a five-point scale in likert format (strongly disagree, disagree, undecided, agree, and strongly agree). the minimum and maximum scores on this questionnaire were 13 and 65, respectively. the reliability of this questionnaire calculated through cronbach’s alpha level formula was acceptable (α >.60). in order to collect appropriate data for the study, the following steps were taken. in the first session of the treatment, the grammar test was administered to both groups. in addition, the questionnaire was given to all the participants and some explanations were given by the instructor to help learners complete the questionnaire. throughout the ten-week semester, the conferencing assessment technique was utilized for the experimental group based on the grammar points programmed to be taught in the class. the procedure for implementing this technique in the experimental group was a conference checklist, which was a set of questions to be asked by the instructor and was used as the specific treatment for this group. it can be considered as a kind 135profile vol. 14, no. 2, october 2012. issn 1657-0790 (printed) 2256-5760 (online). bogotá, colombia. pages 131-144 the impact of conferencing assessment on efl students’ grammar learning of treatment in that the participants gave the in structor feedback on their strengths and weaknesses in grammar tasks and the instructor provided them with necessary feedback regarding their problems and helped them overcome their weaknesses. the main purposes of these conference sessions were the following: (a) to allow the instructor and the students to talk about learning different grammar points constructively, (b) to provide both the teacher and the students with an invaluable source of information about the students’ progress in their learning, (c) to identify the gaps in the students’ understanding of the subject matter as well as to provide them with the necessary positive feedback to motivate them, and (d) to create a supportive atmosphere for the students to experience problem solving and information sharing processes (stiggins & chappuis, 2005). the checklist (appendix b) included two sets of questions, namely: a. the questions asked in the first conference. examples: • what do you think about your grammar ability? • how do you try to learn grammar? sample responses from the learners: it’s terrible. i don’t like grammar. (student 4) yes, if i try very hard i can be successful. (student 8) a good learner is someone who is really careful about all the details. a good grammar learner is also somebody who has a very good memory. (student 17) b. these questions were asked after covering each of the grammar structures mentioned before: • do you think you have been successful in learning this grammatical structure? • what is your weakness in this lesson? sample responses from the learners: yes, i have been successful to some extent. (student 2) now i am able to answer grammar questions easily. i can use these structures in my language accurately. (student 19) i always had problems with different tenses, especially in my speaking, but now i can use them accurately in my writing and speaking. (student 11) in the first session of individual confer encing, each of the learners was supposed to answer the first set of questions of the conference checklist. at this time, the instructor was required to create a comfortable setting to perform face-toface conferences which would allow the learners to talk about their problems freely. the students were advised to feel relaxed in all the conference sessions. they were assured that the main purpose of the conferencing assessment was to identify their thoughts, strengths, and weaknesses in order to help them improve their learning. after completing each grammar point, the participants were required to respond to the second set of questions of the conference checklist either individually or in whole class conferences. based on their answers, the instructor provided them with appropriate oral feedback to help them overcome their problems in learning that specific grammatical feature. the instructor’s feedback was supposed to be consistent with the following english language teaching rules: • giving relevant, practical, and constructive feedback. • making feedback specific rather than general. • giving feedback as immediately as possible. • focusing on the points that may help or lead to more achievements. • concentrating on one particular point at a time. • using non-threatening language, especially for giving negative feedback. • considering the learners’ needs and wants. • making sure that the feedback is understood by the learners. universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras136 baleghizadeh & zarghami on the whole, the participants took part in eight conferences (four individual conferences for each learner and four whole class conferences). all the conferences were conducted orally in english and on average lasted for eight minutes. the instructor gave the participants ample time to talk about their problems and then provided them with appropriate feedback. in the control group the routine syllabus –based on the presentation, practice, and pro duction (ppp) model– was followed without any resort to alternative assessment techniques. in the control group the procedure was as follows: the instructor taught the units and then the participants did the exercises. the participants were not involved in any individual or whole class conferences. the students were passive most of the time except the time they were doing the exercises. at the end of the treatment period (about ten weeks), the participants in both groups were given the post-test. reasoning that the time interval (ten weeks) was long enough for the participants not to remember the items from the first admin istration, the pre-test was administered as the post-test, too. besides, the same grammar learning attitude questionnaire was given to all the participants to see whether their responses on the first administration had differed from their answers on the second administration. the researchers analyzed the results of the participants’ scores on the preand post-tests of grammar by using an independent samples t-test. the scores of the participants on the preand postcourse questionnaire were analyzed by using both paired and independent samples t-tests. all statistical analyses were carried out using statistical package for social sciences (spss) version 15.0 with alpha set at .05. results after administering the pre-test, the partici pants’ scores were used to check for the homogeneity of both groups at the outset of the study. the descriptive statistics of the pre-test are presented in table 1. table 1. descriptive statistics for the pre-test groups n m sd experimental 20 17.40 2.13 control 22 17.45 2.17 an independent samples t-test was used to see if there was any statistically significant difference between these two groups. table 2 shows the results. table 2. t-test for pre-test scores of both groups mean difference df t sig. -.05 40 -.82 .93 p<.05 the results indicate that there was not a statistically significant difference between the mean scores of both groups t (40)=.82, p=.93. thus, it can be concluded that both groups of the students participating in this study met the condition of homogeneity. after the ten-week treatment period, con sisting of 18 sessions, the post-test was administered. the descriptive statistics of the post-test are presented in table 3. table 3. descriptive statistics for the post-test groups n m sd experimental 20 41.20 2.16 control 22 36.36 2.08 137profile vol. 14, no. 2, october 2012. issn 1657-0790 (printed) 2256-5760 (online). bogotá, colombia. pages 131-144 the impact of conferencing assessment on efl students’ grammar learning to answer the first research question of the study, an independent samples t-test was used to compare the mean scores of both groups (see table 4). table 4. t-test for post-test scores of both groups mean difference df t sig. 4.83 40 7.37 .001 p<.05 the results revealed that there was a significant difference between the mean scores of both groups t (40)=7.37, p=.001. this suggests that the participants in the experimental group significantly outperformed their peers in the control group on the post-test. therefore, the first research question was answered in the positive, which suggests that conferencing assessment played a substantial role in grammar learning of the participants in the experimental group. in this study, the same questionnaire was administered at the beginning and at the end of the experiment to compare the participants’ attitudes toward formal grammar learning before and after the treatment period. to answer the second research question, two paired samples t-tests were used to compare the probable differences between the participants’ attitudes in each group toward formal grammar learning prior to and after the treatment period. table 5 displays the data obtained from the experimental group. the results show that the mean difference (3.60) is statistically significant t (19)=3.70, p=.002, which suggests that the conferencing technique worked with the participants in the experimental group and changed their attitudes as well. thus, the second research question was answered positively, too. however, as table 6 shows, conducting a paired samples t-test for evaluating the participants’ attitudes in the control group regarding formal grammar learning revealed that there was no significant difference before and after taking part in the traditional summative assessment t (19)=-.66, p=.51 (see table 6). this revelation suggests that the answer to the third research question is negative. in order to investigate the fourth research question, an independent samples t-test was performed on the post-course questionnaire scores of both groups. the descriptive statistics of the postcourse questionnaire are presented in table 7. table 5. paired samples t-test for the participants’ attitudes in the experimental group control group n m sd t df sig pre-course questionnaire 20 40.30 3.94 3.70 19 .002 post-course questionnaire 20 43.90 5.50 p<.05 table 6. paired samples t-test for the participants’ attitudes in the control group control group n m sd t df sig pre-course questionnaire 22 38.27 3.71 .66 21 .51 post-course questionnaire 22 39.18 5.50 p<.05 universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras138 baleghizadeh & zarghami table 7. descriptive statistics for the post-course questionnaire scores groups n m sd experimental 20 43.90 3.36 control 22 39.18 5.50 the results of an independent samples t-test revealed that there was a significant difference between the mean scores of both groups in the post-course questionnaire scores t (40)=3.32, p= .002) (see table 8). thus, it can be concluded that using alternative assessment procedures positively changed the attitudes of the participants toward formal grammar learning. table 8. t-test for post-course scores of both groups mean difference df t sig. 4.71 40 3.32 .001 p<.05 discussion this study set out to investigate the efficacy of alternative assessment methods in efl contexts. more specifically, the main purpose of this study was to examine the impact of conferencing assessment on iranian efl students’ grammar learning. furthermore, the data shed light on possible differences in terms of the participants’ attitudes toward grammar learning prior to and after implementing different treatment conditions. in brief, the results reported above revealed two relatively related findings. first, the participants who took part in the conferencing assessment showed significantly more improvement as compared to their peers in the control group. and second, these students revealed positive attitudes toward formal grammar learning after expe riencing this alternative assessment method. therefore, it can be concluded that integrating teaching, learning, and assessment processes through alternative assessment procedures may have positive effects on efl learners’ achievements in grammar learning and their attitudes toward its learning. the findings of the present study corroborate the findings of studies conducted by besharati (2004), firooz-zareh (2006), and ross (2005) in that incorporating alternative assessment procedures in language classes would have a positive effect on students’ learning. viewing language tests as an ongoing process of assessment can change their nature from being an assessment tool to a learning tool and can be used as an effective way to improve students’ learning and their attitudes about it. considering the first research question, the findings of the study pointed to the significant effects of this alternative assessment procedure on iranian efl students’ grammar learning. these results lead us to conclude that implementing alternative assessment procedures and applying principles of assessment for learning have promoted grammar learning of the participants of this study more than the traditional summative as sessment technique. the results obtained in this study can be at tributed to the following reasons: 1. feedback based on assessment is one of the most powerful issues in teaching and learning. maximizing the quality, appropriateness, and use of feedback should be a core aim of all assessment procedures. feedback can drive a loop of continuous change and improvement for both the teacher and student, as both learn from each other (stiggins, 2002). 2. the assessment procedure used in this study may have encouraged the participants to take responsibility for their own learning by engaging them in self-assessment, reflection, 139profile vol. 14, no. 2, october 2012. issn 1657-0790 (printed) 2256-5760 (online). bogotá, colombia. pages 131-144 the impact of conferencing assessment on efl students’ grammar learning goal setting, monitoring, and communicating their own progress (anderson, 1998; rash, 1997). as stiggins (2005) states, when students actively participate in assessing their learning by interpreting their performance, they are in a better position to recognize the important moments of personal learning. this helps them identify their own strengths and needs and discover how to make better instructional decisions. 3. a desirable aim of teaching and assessment is to encourage independence in learners by making them capable of controlling their own learning. the alternative assessment procedure utilized in this study propelled the participants of the experimental group into independence by involving them in the assessment process, decision making, and goal setting. it has been argued that participating in alternative assessments can assist learners in becoming skilled judges of their own strengths and weaknesses, which can develop their capacity to become self-directed and autonomous learners and thus develop lifelong learning skills (brindley, 2001). 4. by encouraging learners to observe and analyze target grammar items for themselves, alternative assessment procedures reinforce their natural tendency and ability to make sense of language and to systematize it. the alternative assessment technique used in this study involved learners in doing consciousnessraising tasks which highlighted certain grammatical topics for them and encouraged them to learn for themselves (ellis, 1993). 5. one of the most important purposes of assessment for learning is the role it plays in students’ motivation. knowledge and understanding of what is to be achieved is not enough. students must want to make the effort and must be willing to keep on engaging, even when they find the learning task difficult. assessment that encourages learning promotes motivation by emphasizing progress and achievement rather than failure (harmer, 1987; stiggins, 2004). in this study, the participants of the experimental group were in a position to judge whether or not success is within or beyond reach, whether or not learning is worth the required effort, and whether they should strive for it or not. as for the second and third research questions of the study, the ones which were intended to investigate the impact of alternative and traditional assessment procedures on iranian efl students’ attitudes to formal grammar learning, it was found that conferencing assessment, through the course of the study, had significantly changed their attitudes. each of the following issues can be considered as a probable reason for the change in the students’ attitudes toward formal grammar learning in this study. 1. experiencing a new assessment method (guskey, 2003; ho, 2003; scouller, 1996; spavold, 2005). students’ previous learning experiences, mainly formed in teachercentered grammar translation classes, had shaped negative attitudes toward grammar learning. being involved in an innovative learning situation in which the learners are asked to speak about their strengths and weaknesses in learning different grammatical points wherein the main focus of the teacher is to help students overcome their problems is likely to enhance learners’ attitudes toward learning. 2. making the learners sure that they are capable of learning (stiggins & popham, 2008). encouraging learners to talk about the learning universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras140 baleghizadeh & zarghami processes they are experiencing can help them become more aware of what they are learning as well as how they are learning it. this situation can increase the sense of wanting to learn in the students and consequently affects their attitudes toward learning. 3. providing learners with a set of clearly defined learning goals (stiggins, 2002). in conferencing assessment the learners are encouraged to talk about their improvements in learning the subject matter. in this process, they are not just thinking about what they have learnt, but how they are learning. in thinking about how they learn, they can achieve a better understanding of the learning goals and develop positive feelings regarding the learning processes they have undertaken. 4. motivating them to learn (race, 1995). in volving learners in the assessment and decisionmaking processes is an effective way to increase their self-esteem and motivate them to learn more. with the conferencing method, the focus of instruction and assessment is on the learners’ ideas, beliefs, and needs in a specific learning situation. in such cases, the learners will feel the ownership of the assessment and are, therefore, more motivated to learn. concerning the last research question, the significant difference between the attitudes of the conferencing group and those of the control group on the post-course questionnaire lends support to the valuable role of communication and face-to-face interaction in changing learners’ attitudes toward grammar learning. as harris and bell (1994) indicate, “[a]ssessing without communication is of doubtful value: communication between the teacher and the learner is an es sential part of the learning process and should be on a regular basis” (p. 18). interactive communication between the instructor and the students during the conferences in this study might have affected the instructor’s teaching by providing her with more information about each of the students’ personality type, learning styles and strategies, feeling toward the learning processes they were involved in, and their desires and needs in the course of study. all this information helped the instructor support, guide, monitor, and teach the students more effectively. when the students perceived such relevance between what they wanted and what they received from the teacher during the teaching and assessment processes, they might have been more motivated to learn, which could have affected their attitudes toward learning in positive ways. the results of this study also point to the importance of considering the learners’ needs and ideas in teaching, learning, and assessment processes (kaufman, 2000). student-involved classroom assessment can be effective by providing teachers with constant needs analyses and increased understanding of the students’ concerns and problems. it can also be helpful for learners by encouraging them to identify their own strengths and weaknesses, to promote their autonomy and independent learning skills, and to increase responsibility for their own learning. students’ involvement in decision-making and assessment processes can enhance their motivation by creating a situation for optimal learning, introducing expected learning goals, providing appropriate feedback, promoting meaningful learning, and facilitating students’ development in independent learning, which in turn can affect their attitudes toward learning. conclusion the purpose of this study was to investigate the impact of conferencing assessment on grammar learning of iranian efl students and their attitudes toward formal grammar learning. the 141profile vol. 14, no. 2, october 2012. issn 1657-0790 (printed) 2256-5760 (online). bogotá, colombia. pages 131-144 the impact of conferencing assessment on efl students’ grammar learning overall emergent picture drawn from this study suggests that conferencing assessment has a positive impact on efl students’ grammar learning and can change their attitudes toward grammar learning. using process-oriented assessment procedures like conferencing assessment can provide ample opportunities for both teachers and students to communicate with each other. hence, teachers can facilitate learning by providing students with appropriate descriptive feedback in their learning process and help them identify their problems. in this way, students and teachers can work as as sessment partners who have clear-cut learning goals and specific assessment tasks. this process can lead students to take control of their own success and to accept responsibility for their own learning. this will naturally motivate them for more effective learning and greater achievement. as the last word, it should be mentioned that assessment should not be considered as something independent of instruction. to be more authentic, assessment should be based on the learners’ behaviors exhibited during formative and continuous evaluation and students must be aware of the expected outcomes of instruction and assessment, the processes involved, and the criteria on which they will be evaluated. references anderson, r. s. (1998). why talk about different ways to grade? the shift from traditional assessment to alternative assessment. new directions for teaching and learning, 74, 5-16. assessment reform group. (2002). assessment for learning: 10 principles. port melbourne: cambridge university press. bailey, k. m. (1998). learning about language assessment: dilemmas, decisions, and directions. boston: heinle & heinle. besharati, f. (2004). the impact of alternative assessment techniques on iranian students’ achievements in listening comprehension skills (unpublished master’s thesis). al-zahra university, iran. brindley, g. (2001). outcomes-based assessment in practice: some examples and emerging insights. language testing, 18(4), 393-407. brown, h. d. (2004). language assessment: principles and classroom practice. white plains, ny: pearson education. brown, j. d., & hudson, t. (1998). the alternatives in language assessment. tesol quarterly, 32(4), 653675. cheng, w., & warren, m. (2005). peer assessment of language proficiency. language testing, 22(3), 93-121. ellis, r. (1993). second language acquisition and the structural syllabus. tesol quarterly, 27(1), 91-113. firooz-zareh, a. r. (2006). the effectiveness of alternative assessment and traditional methods of testing on iranian efl adult learners’ reading proficiency (unpublished master’s thesis). allameh tabataba'i university, iran. genesee, f., & upshur, j. (1996). classroom-based evaluation in second language education. cambridge: cambridge university press. guskey, t. r. (2003). how classroom assessments improve learning. educational leadership, 60(5), 6-11. harmer, j. (1987). teaching and learning grammar. london: longman. harris, d., & bell, c. (1994). evaluating and assessing for learning. london: kogan page. ho, l. (2003). selfand peer-assessments vehicles to improve learning. ctdl breif, 6(3). retrieved from http://www.cdtl.nus.edu.sg/brief/v6n3/sec5.htm kaufman, l. m. (2000). student-written tests: an effective twist in teaching language. the journal of the imagination in language learning and teaching, v, 1-5. lee, i. (2007). assessment for learning: integrating as sessment, teaching, and learning in the esl/efl writing classroom. the canadian modern language review, 64(1), 199-214. linn, r. l., baker, e. l., & dunbar, s. b. (1991). complex, performance-based assessment: expectations and validation criteria. educational researcher, 20(8), 15-21. universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras142 baleghizadeh & zarghami race, p. (1995). what has assessment done for us and to us? in p. knight (ed.), assessment for learning in higher education (pp. 61-74). london: kogan page, ltd. rash, a. m. (1997). an alternative method of assessment: using student created problems. primus, 7, 89-95. ross, s. (2005). the impact of assessment method on foreign language proficiency growth. applied linguistics, 26(3), 317-342. schulz, r. a. (2001). cultural differences in student and teacher perceptions concerning the role of grammar instruction and corrective feedback: usa-colombia. the modern language journal, 85(2), 244-256. scouller, k. m. (1996). influence of assessment method on students’ learning approaches, perceptions, and pre ferences: assignment essay versus short answer examination. research and development in higher education, 19(3), 776-781. spavold, z. (2005). using formative assessment to raise pupil motivation: a small classroom-based study. school science review, 86(317), 119-123. stiggins, r. j. (2002). assessment crisis: the absence of assessment for learning. phi delta kappan, 83(10), 758-765. stiggins, r. j. (2004). new assessment beliefs for a new school mission. phi delta kappan, 86(1), 2227. stiggins, r. j. (2005). from formative assessment to as sessment for learning: a path to success in standardbased schools. phi delta kappan, 87(4), 324-328. stiggins, r. j., & chappuis, j. (2005). using studentinvolved classroom assessment to close achievement gaps. theory into practice, 44(1), 11-18. stiggins, r. j., & popham, w. j. (2008). assessing students’ affect related to assessment for learning. washington, dc: council of chief state school officers. about the authors sasan baleghizadeh is an assistant professor of tefl at shahid beheshti university, g.c. in iran, where he teaches courses in applied linguistics, syllabus design, and materials development. his published articles appear in journals like profile, elt journal, and modern english teacher. zahra zarghami holds an ma degree in tefl from allameh tabataba’i university in iran. she has vast experience of english language teaching at different proficiency levels. her research interest lies in issues related to assessment for learning. 143profile vol. 14, no. 2, october 2012. issn 1657-0790 (printed) 2256-5760 (online). bogotá, colombia. pages 131-144 the impact of conferencing assessment on efl students’ grammar learning appendix a: sample test items directions read the following sentences and choose the correct option (a, b, c, or d). 1. finish washing the caps and then your mother _________ them. a. will dry b. dries c. will have dried d. dried 2. fish have nostrils ______________are used for smelling, not for breathing. a. they b. what c. whom d. that 3. some birds can travel at speeds approaching one hundred miles an hour and a few land animals can so. a. some birds b. miles an hour c. land animals d. so 4. some gestures, such as methods of counting nor insulting, vary from society to society and are clearly learned a. such as b. nor insulting c. and d. clearly learned a a b c d b c d universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras144 baleghizadeh & zarghami appendix b: conference checklist directions the following questions will be asked in a comfortable setting. the session will be carried out in a face-to-face situation. the students should feel safe and comfortable without any worry about the as sessment atmosphere. they should be assured that the teacher is only interested in their thoughts, strengths, and weaknesses and helping them to facilitate learning grammar. the teacher can ask the students to elaborate on answers by using questions like: ȟ can you tell me more about it? ȟ what else do you suggest? the more the students talk, the more the teacher can get insight on their students and their process. part 1 the following questions will be asked in the very first session before doing anything: ȟ what do you think about your grammar ability? ȟ do you think you are successful in learning grammar? ȟ who is a good grammar learner? ȟ how do you try to learn grammar? ȟ which strategies do you use in learning grammar? ȟ what do you do if you have problems in background information in grammar? ȟ what do you do if you have problems with the meaning of key words in the process of learning grammar? ȟ what do you do if you have difficulty in comprehending the structure of the context that you are going to learn? ȟ what does your teacher do in helping you to improve your weaknesses in learning grammar? ȟ what do you do in removing your friend’s problems in learning grammar? part 2 the following questions will be asked after covering each unit of the book: ȟ do you think you have been successful in learning the grammar structures? ȟ what is the reason for your success/failure in learning these grammar points? ȟ what is your strength in this lesson? why do you think so? ȟ what is your weakness in this lesson? why? ȟ in which part do you have a problem? educational background, vocabulary, or comprehension of the passages? ȟ why do you think so? what is your reason? ȟ which strategy do you utilize in the process of learning grammar? ȟ which strategy do you utilize in overcoming your barriers? 111profile vol. 17, no. 2, july-december 2015. issn 1657-0790 (printed) 2256-5760 (online). bogotá, colombia. pages 111-124 http://dx.doi.org/10.15446/profile.v17n2.47065 students’ perceptions of the impact of clil in a mexican ba program percepciones de los estudiantes sobre el impacto de la enseñanza de contenido-lengua integrados en un programa de pregrado en méxico alejandra nuñez asomoza*1 universidad autónoma de zacatecas, zacatecas, mexico content and language integrated learning is an innovative pedagogical approach used in educational institutions worldwide. this study considers information and experiences from various settings in order to explore content and language integrated learning within the mexican context. this study reports the perceptions of students in a ba program. through the study’s using qualitative research, the students’ voices students reveal their emotions, struggles, benefits, and opinions related to taking content and language integrated learning classes. the analysis of the participants’ information shows the potential for implementing content and language integrated learning programs in mexico in that it suggests some areas of improvement for teachers, material design, administrators, and institutions in general. key words: content and language integrated learning, material development, mexican context, students’ perceptions, tertiary bilingual education. el enfoque pedagógico de enseñanza de contenido-lengua integrados es una tendencia innovadora en los sistemas educativos del mundo. el estudio se basa en la información y experiencia de varios contextos donde se ha usado este enfoque para explorarlo en el contexto mexicano. el artículo reporta las percepciones de estudiantes de licenciatura para conocer más sobre la enseñanza de contenidolengua integrados. a través de la investigación cualitativa, las voces de los estudiantes revelarán las emociones, dificultades, ventajas y opiniones al tomar clases con este enfoque. el análisis de datos muestra el potencial de la implementación de programas de enseñanza de contenido-lengua integrados en méxico, mientras sugiere áreas de oportunidad para docentes, diseño de materiales, administrativos e instituciones en general. palabras clave: contexto mexicano, diseño de materiales, educación superior bilingüe, enseñanza de contenido-lengua integrados, percepciones de los estudiantes. * e-mail: nuaa011308@uaz.edu.mx how to cite this article (apa, 6th ed.): nuñez asomoza, a. (2015). students’ perceptions of the impact of clil in a mexican ba program. profile issues in teachers’ professional development, 17(2), 111-124. http://dx.doi.org/10.15446/profile.v17n2.47065. this article was received on november 4, 2014, and accepted on january 30, 2015. this is an open access article distributed under the terms of the creative commons license attribution-noncommercial-noderivatives 4.0 international license. consultation is possible at http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/. http://dx.doi.org/10.15446/profile.v17n2.47065 mailto:nuaa011308%40uaz.edu.mx?subject= http://dx.doi.org/10.15446/profile.v17n2.47065 http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/ universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras112 nuñez asomoza introduction there are two main objectives for this study, the first being to give a voice to students pursuing their ba in foreign languages (licenciatura en lenguas extranjeras, lilex) at universidad autónoma de zaca tecas (uaz) to express their perceptions about the content and language integrated learning (clil) classes they are currently offered in the program. the second objective is to offer valuable information to other students, teachers, school administrators, and mexican institutions in general on the potential of implementing clil classes in tertiary education. by listening to students’ perceptions, i intend to draw a detailed picture that describes their experiences in terms of their opinions, challenges, strategies, and feelings when receiving content classes in a foreign language, english. based on the students’ perceptions as presented in the present study, i offer proposals that could aid in improving the program considering particular features such as the contents, materials, teacher training, and class methodology. i hope this information will positively impact how english classes are perceived across uaz. hopefully, the data will also serve as a starting point for additional research about clil in order to understand how this phenomenon works in mexico and how teachers, students, and society in general can benefit from it in this particular context. context of the study the foreign language ba program at uaz in northeast mexico opened in august 2011, after ten years of curriculum planning and design. the program lasts four years, and students are offered three majors in the field of applied linguistics: teaching, translation, or enterprise-services assistant. one of the main innovations of this program is that along with the variety of subjects that students take, they are required to take a foreign language (l3) of their choice, which could be german, french, or italian. all subjects (except the l3) in the first three semesters are taught in spanish, and when students start the fourth semester, all of the core subjects (except the l3) are taught in english. students’ english language competence is monitored every semester by their taking a toefl sample test, on which they should increase their score by 30 points each time. in terms of the program’s teaching staff, they must also fulfill particular requirements in order to be hired. in general, teachers are expected to have at least an undergraduate degree in linguistics, teaching, or any other area depending on the subject they will teach. they must also have an english level equivalent to c1 according to the common european framework of reference for languages (cefrl), and they should preferably have at least a b1 (cefrl) level in any other foreign language. literature review this section provides a collection of terms and definitions that serve as frames of reference for the study. education and language policies education and how it is implemented in different contexts has been closely related to the particular linguistic features of the agents and participants who take part in the education processes in different domains. the inclusion of languages (especially english) in schools’ curricula has gained great importance over the last years. seidlhofer (2011) notes how english as a lingua franca “is spreading in various and varied manifestations and adapted to the needs of intercultural communication” (p. 17) in different contexts. therefore, its consolidation has been imminent in response to the communication needs of individuals around the world. governments from nearly every country have been faced with the fact that implementing english language teaching in schools is very important if they want to be immersed 113profile vol. 17, no. 2, july-december 2015. issn 1657-0790 (printed) 2256-5760 (online). bogotá, colombia. pages 111-124 students’ perceptions of the impact of clil in a mexican ba program into and keep up with the rapid flow of information and communication with their counterparts around the world. c ons i d e r i ng t h e wor k an d s tu d i e s b e i ng conducted regarding not only bilingual but also multilingual education in different parts of the world (costa & d’angelo, 2011; lorenzo, casal, & moore, 2010), it can be said that this is a trend that has proven to be successful in different contexts. it shows great potential to address some of the major issues in education systems worldwide in terms of language, and it also offers solutions in this area. defining clil countries and institutions that have implemented the use of foreign or second languages in their education systems and curricula have worked with an innovative pedagogical approach that has come to be known in recent years as clil. according to coyle, hood, and marsh (2010), “[clil] is a dual-focused educational approach in which an additional language is used for the learning and teaching of both content and language” (p. 1). thus, it is important to emphasize that the attention that is given within a classroom to both language and content should be balanced because clil “is an innovative fusion of both” (coyle et al., 2010, p. 1). it is because of this duality and potential flexibility, which characterizes clil, that it is conceived as an integral approach. therefore, graddol (as cited in coyle et al., 2010) describes it as the “ultimate communicative methodology” (p. 5). it was claimed that the main feature that set clil above the most popular communicative methods known in the 1990s was the “the high level of authenticity” (coyle et al., 2010, p. 5) that could be reached through it. clil in tertiary education costa (2009) explains how “studies on clil . . . have continued to increase in terms of its outcomes in primary and secondary schools, but there is still a lack of research at the tertiary level” (p. 85). although research is still limited in regard to clil as it is implemented or perceived in universities, there have been important efforts to identify the phenomena present in this context, and there is in fact increasing interest in the matter. costa (2009) mentions that because of the rapid change in the academic trends in schools around the world, students and teachers face a reality in which knowledge is mostly accessible to those who speak english because it is considered the lingua franca of today. recently, european countries have made remarkable progress regarding the implementation of clil in their universities, and they are viewed as models for institutions in other parts of the globe where this approach has been recently and slowly entering tertiary-level education. clil in mexico unlike european countries that have developed and implemented clear linguistic policies for their education models and other instances of their government structures (coleman, 2006; daltonpuffer, 2011; lorenzo, 2007), mexican authorities have only recently acknowledged learning english as a foreign language (efl) as a policy that must be officially implemented in schools (davies, 2009). related to this occurrence, maza (2012) observes how mexico has faced important problems in this area because of the lack of human resources—teachers who are professionals in the field of efl. even though efforts are being made to support efl in this country, there is still a long way to go before english teachers and the mexican educational system in general are able to accomplish what has been accomplished so far elsewhere, especially in european countries, in implementing clil. this comparison, according to davies (2009), “is relevant because mexican public elt is increasingly modeled on the cef [council of europe framework]” (p. 10). therefore, it is highly possible that some tertiary universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras114 nuñez asomoza education institutions in mexico are working on designing or operating clil programs because this pedagogical approach has been proven to be successful in other parts of the world. method research questions to explore the issues participants face regarding using clil at this stage of their learning process, the following research questions were proposed: (1) what are students’ perceptions about clil courses in the ba in foreign languages program? (2) what are the major challenges students face in clil courses, and what are the strategies they use (if any) to help themselves reach their learning objectives? (3) what are students’ perceptions regarding the benefits of taking clil classes? qualitative research according to gonzalez (as cited in cohen, manion, & morrison, 2011), “qualitative research prov ides an in-dept h, int r ic ate, and det ai le d understanding of meanings, actions, non-observable as well as observable phenomena, attitudes, intentions, and behaviours” (p. 219). all of these features that are inherent to qualitative research were found to be useful and efficient for exploring and explaining the study’s findings. merriam (2009) states that “qualitative researchers are interested in understanding how people interpret their experiences, how they construct their worlds, and what meaning they attribute to their experiences” (p. 5). given that qualitative research focuses specifically on portraying participants’ perceptions in order to understand their experiences with clil, the research questions were designed in such a way that the potential answers would describe in detail the participants’ visions about the issues discussed. in addition, dörnyei (2007) highlights that “qualitative research is very helpful in deciding what aspects of the data require special attention because it offers priority guidelines that are valid by the main actors themselves” (p. 39). given this important feature of qualitative research, classif ying the participants’ data was more practical because some of the main topics had already been identified or noted by the study participants. research participants the study required volunteers in their fifth semester. after they learned the study details and how it would be conducted, a total of 11 students volunteered to participate, six women and five men. before the data collection process began, all participants were asked to sign a letter of consent, and additional information about the study and its procedures was provided. data collection instruments and procedures data for the research were gathered using semistructured interviews “in which the researcher uses a written list of questions as a guide, while still having the freedom to digress and probe more information” (mackey & gass, 2005, p. 173). additionally, semistructured interviews, according to mcdonough and mcdonough (1997), “allow for greater flexibility . . . for example in changing the order of the questions and for more extensive follow-up responses” (p. 183). it was thought that the instrument’s flexibility would also allow participants to perceive the task as less stressful, and this would encourage them to provide useful and more authentic information. once the interview guidelines were produced in accordance with the research questions, the data collection process began by agreeing on individual inter view schedules proposed by the students within a time frame set up by the researcher. before participants were interviewed, they were made aware of the procedures and ethical policies and the protocol 115profile vol. 17, no. 2, july-december 2015. issn 1657-0790 (printed) 2256-5760 (online). bogotá, colombia. pages 111-124 students’ perceptions of the impact of clil in a mexican ba program to be followed in the task. because participants had different levels of english or spanish proficiency, they were asked to choose whether they wanted to be interviewed in either english or spanish. this option was provided to ensure the comfort of the participants so they could express themselves freely and without linguistic obstacles.1 results and discussion derived from the data analysis, the following sections present the information about the students’ perceptions regarding various aspects of the clil courses. perceptions about clil during the interviews, participants were asked to describe their feelings about having to take content classes in english. figure 1 shows a scale that contains the information expressed by the participants. the emotions and feelings that had positive connotations are grouped on the left side of the scale, and those with a negative connotation are placed on the right. as shown in figure 1, there was a balance between the participants’ positive and negative emotions in terms of quantity given that the number of positive and negative categories is the same. this feature is also interestingly mirrored in the way students expressed their ideas during the interviews. the majority of the answers had both positive and negative elements, which can be observed in the following examples: “i felt excited, but at the same time, i was fearful” (sara) and, “i was happy and nervous at the same time” (gerardo). it is worth mentioning that the emotions and feelings expressed by the participants did not vary greatly despite the fact that their levels 1 as part of the ethical policies, interviewees were assigned pseudonyms in order to protect their identities. it is also important to mention that ten of the eleven participants asked to be interviewed in spanish, and therefore, the extracts presented throughout the article were translated into english by the researcher. regina’s interview was completely carried out in english. of language command differed. although for the majority of students who defined themselves as native speakers of english (nse), emotions were mainly positive, as observed in the quotes “i was pretty excited!” (regina) and “i felt happy and less anxious” (gisela), participants still reported having a sense of uncertainty about what clil classes would be like. figure 1. scale of emotions expressed by participants about their first perceptions of clil classes happy pretty excited excited less anxious challenged fearful worried anxious nervous uncertain positive negative in addition to the emotions and feelings that the students could identify, other factors played an important role in how the students perceived this educational model. mehisto, marsh, and frigols (2008) observe that the teachers and the material design are two of the most important elements for working successfully with the clil approach. considering this, participants were questioned about their initial perceptions of their teachers and classmates and the materials in the clil classes. table 1 presents the answers regarding the three elements that were previously mentioned, and a detailed analysis and discussion about them follow in the next sections. perceptions about teachers teachers are regarded as one of the main elements within a classroom, and in the case of this study, the role of teachers is crucial to how the approach is perceived by students. it is worth noting that presently, all of the clil teachers working at lilex are native speakers of spanish. before taking classes universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras116 nuñez asomoza in english, the students had interacted with the same lecturers in spanish only, and thus, knowing that these same teachers would begin to speak english inside the classroom caused curiosity in most of the students in a variety of aspects. for example, one of the participants stated: i noticed that in regards to the teachers’ pronunciation, i was surprised! i was used to something else, so it was a weird change . . . it was weird because i expected it to be like back there [in the united states] . . . i expected perfect pronunciation, and i saw it wasn’t like that. . . . but then one realizes that pronunciation is the least important; what really matters is the content. (maira) pronunciation is one of the main aspects of language that speakers perceive during an interaction, and it is to be expected that students would consider this feature to be important in clil classrooms. in regard to learning a language or learning through a language, students and teachers have certain beliefs about pronunciation and accents. many of these beliefs could originate mainly from previous experiences or interactions with speakers of the target language, or they could simply emerge from expectations about what language pronunciation should be like. as shown in table 1, the participants who were inter viewed consisted of both nses and nnses. students self-identified during the interviews as members of either group despite the fact that even among them, the english proficiency differed. to define themselves as members of either group, participants considered a variety of aspects, resulting in the expression of different ideas. for instance, when asked about her identity as an nse or nnse, one of the participants specified: i’m a native speaker of spanish because i was born here [in mexico]. from when i was born until i was eleven years old, i was here. however, i’m a native speaker of english, but in the academic aspect . . . when i speak spanish is something very colloquial. in fact, that’s something i want to change a little, but my english is more academic; i can easily use a different level of language. (maira) the previous self-definition of this participant cle arly c ons i d ers her di f fe rent sk i l ls i n b ot h languages, and this feature can make this particular student a member of both groups under different circumstances. however, because of this identity that participants share, and because of their high language table 1. first perceptions about teachers, classmates and materials in the clil classes teachers • need for training in command of the language (english) • need for training in terms of content • need for training in terms of class dynamic • english pronunciation was native-like or non-native • need for empathy and patience with students classmates • identification with native speakers of english (nse) and non-native speakers of english (nnse) • feeling of shock and tension during classes and among students (nse) • changes in the academic performance of the majority of students • discrimination and bullying materials • content and language appropriateness • identification of “new” academic genres • learning of new vocabulary in the target language (english) • limited material diversity 117profile vol. 17, no. 2, july-december 2015. issn 1657-0790 (printed) 2256-5760 (online). bogotá, colombia. pages 111-124 students’ perceptions of the impact of clil in a mexican ba program proficiency in general, nses’ perceptions of the clil teachers’ english pronunciation in terms of accent was different than those of the nnses, which was noted in the first quote in this section. lippi-green (1997) notes that “when a native speaker of a language other than english acquires english, accent is used to refer to the breakthrough of native language phonology into the target language” (p. 43). taking into account the participants’ perceptions of the teachers’ accents, the teachers’ language proficiency was questioned in some cases, as can be observed in the following quote: i would say that half the teachers were well prepared, overqualified even. i would say: “they have a very good level of english, and they make their classes interesting; it looks like we’re learning.” some teachers who didn’t seem to have good training have surprised me! they have helped me a lot. (javier) the participants’ perceptions about the teachers’ language proficiency are similar to those found by aguilar and rodríguez (2012). in their study, some of the students were concerned about the fact that their teachers were not nses, but they reported overall satisfactory perceptions of the clil classes in relation to how the teachers spoke the language of instruction and the class in general. as can be obser ved in the previous quote, in the end, the participants’ perceptions about this aspect of the clil class at lilex can be categorized as positive. perceptions about classmates within a classroom, students engage in interactions not only with the teacher but also with their classmates. this is possibly one of the most significant experiences for students in that they share various encounters with each other. regarding their perceptions of their classmates, the participants made revealing statements. it was in this aspect that the separation of the nse and nnse groups was clearly defined. the following quote by an nse participant illustrates the situation: i saw a lot of tension because in the first semesters, when it was like pure spanish, i remember that gisela and i used to struggle a lot! and our classmates obviously saw that…and we were like: “oh come on help us,” . . . and everybody was like: “oh no, i know and you don’t.” and now that it’s in english, the ones who were above, now they’re below, and some of them ask me for help, and i’m like, “oh yeah, i’ll help you.” . . . that’s the tension. and most of them, they feel very frustrated in english. (regina) in contrast, an nnse participant reported the following observation: those who come from or have lived in the united states are the ones who come mainly from small towns. they come back and group together, and sometimes they isolate us or we isolate ourselves. it’s like one always finds a group to fit in. (roxana) from t he quotes ab ove, it is e v ident t hat participants perceive differences among them, and they describe them according to their group m e m b e r s h i p s . t h e s e d i s t i n c t i o n s m a d e b y participants themselves evidently had an impact on the environment in the clil classroom. par t i c ip ant s re p or te d how t he cl a ss ro om environment changed once the courses began being taught in english. the class dynamic changed, identities were redefined or questioned, and all of this led to attitudes that turned negative in some cases: about my classmates, i saw an attitude of shock because some of them are non-native speakers and some of us (two or three) are native speakers or close . . . and i saw a change in them, a decrease in their academic performance. that makes one feel bad because i used to be one of the weak students, and now . . . they’re below . . . i feel like their self-esteem went down, and their behavior towards us is very strong. it’s like they say: “you can speak better than me.” (gisela) the implications of these changes are quite rele vant to how students learn throug h clil. mehisto et al. (2008) state that “clil classes work to create life experiences and at the same time to universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras118 nuñez asomoza tap the innate language learning ability we all had as young children and adolescents” (p. 32). in this study, the nses experienced the clil approach when they began taking classes in spanish during the first three semesters of the major, whereas for the nnses, the process began in the fourth semester. it is very interesting to see how even when both groups had the experience of working with clil in different stages of their learning processes, their reactions towards each group were similar and yet had different outcomes. when nnses had the advantage of speaking spanish, they were reported as not helping the nses, but when the language of instruction changed to english, the nnses were able to receive help from nses. this particular phenomenon cannot be generalized to all students taking clil classes in this program, or for that matter, any other program. this behavior could just be perceived as a characteristic of this particular cohort. thus, it would be advisable to consider the presence of interactions of this type in other clil groups in order to reach a final conclusion about how different categories of speakers might react in clil environments at school. perceptions about materials the last aspect the participants evaluated was material design. overall, the participants had positive perceptions of the materials in that they found them to be appropriate in terms of language and content. the following quote exemplifies this idea: [materials] were appropriate; i found them understandable. i even expected a higher level, something more difficult for me to understand, but it was the opposite. i started reading, and i saw that i could understand the texts. they were appropriate for our level, and i stopped being nervous. (gerardo) from the quote above, it can be interpreted that after having contact with the materials in the clil classes, the students were able to reduce their anxiety about not being able to follow the class or the readings given by their teachers. by having a positive first experience with the materials, participants managed to build new perceptions of the classes and the target language. according to coyle et al. (2010), materials, in addition to teachers and students, are essential in a clil classroom because they are linked to motivation and anxiety, two significant factors in the process of language learning. the fact that students feel that they are able to work with materials allows them to feel confident, and they can therefore concentrate on other aspects of the learning process: “i receive [the content] without worrying about not understanding; instead, i can concentrate on the subject” (maira). in addition to having a positive perception of the materials in the clil classes, the participants recognized another important aspect related to the courses and the tools used in them. they were able to identify genres and vocabulary that were completely new to them in english, as is highlighted in the following statement: for example, linguistics is something very different. it’s not just learning grammar because there are texts about other topics that are very different from those that one is used to reading.” (ramiro) identifying academic genres is one of the main features of clil, and it is also considered one of the most important skills that clil students should develop. therefore, these findings derived from the participants’ observations coincide with the research analysis of clil genres by llinares, morton, and whittaker (2012). they emphasize the importance of recognizing the types of texts and discourses that are to be found in clil classes. in doing so, teachers can design materials that prepare students to manage different genres successfully, and the class dynamic will change in favor of students. if students are in fact already on the path of acknowledging clil genres, as was expressed in their answers to the questions, then the actual work with them would be expected to become more efficient. 119profile vol. 17, no. 2, july-december 2015. issn 1657-0790 (printed) 2256-5760 (online). bogotá, colombia. pages 111-124 students’ perceptions of the impact of clil in a mexican ba program challenges faced in clil courses in response to the question “what has been the most challenging aspect you have faced in the english content classes?”, nearly all students responded that academic writing was the main difficulty they had encountered: “writing [has been difficult] because i didn’t have much practice. i hardly ever wrote in english, so i have had to practice” (leo). another participant noted the problems he had had with academic writing and the possible reasons for that: writing is difficult, especially essays. i think the reason is that i have lowered my reading rhythm. before, i used to read more and i wrote better, i mean back in the united states, and now that i came back [to mexico], i find obstacles to keep reading. (javier) as was mentioned earlier, students discovered new genres within the clil classes that made it challenging for them to keep up with the class content and the tasks. earlier, it was also mentioned how teachers are responsible for the usage and design of materials that help students gain a better sense of the genres they need to be familiar with in a clil classroom. however, other factors influence students’ perceptions of the difficulty level of the clil class. in this sense, another participant mentions, “speaking has been the most difficult. . . . fear takes over me, and i block; i forget all the words; it’s horrible!” (roxana). in regard to these aspects that participants perceived as difficulties, davies (2009) notes that one of the major challenges for english students in mexico is that “they are not offered the english they are more likely to need, for medicine, engineering, business administration, and so on” (p. 14). therefore, the participants’ previous expressions appear to be plausible given that their knowledge until they began the formal clil classes was mostly general rather than academic, even in the case of some nses. another challenging aspect that was reported by participants is “the grammar, because here in mexico, they focus too much on grammar structures” (gisela). students are generally concerned about this feature of language because knowledge of english grammar has been traditionally highly valued in mexico. this perception coincides with what maza (2012) identifies as one of the main disadvantages for implementing clil in mexico, which relates to balancing acquiring and understanding content at the students’ language proficiency levels. from the quote by gisela, it can be interpreted that the focus on language form is still present and plays an important role in the clil classes students currently receive at lilex. in addition to the previous concern expressed by the participants, there was a reference to their difficulties in increasing their toefl scores. as was mentioned earlier, the program requires students to take a sample test to measure their language proficiency each semester. however, participants have faced problems in regards to performing this activity: on the toefl, i haven’t been able to increase my score. on the contrary, i lowered my score for a long time and now i think i’m exactly like i was when i decreased. that causes me uncertainty that i can’t…i mean, i’m sure i know more than when i started the major. (ramiro) according to vency and ramganesh (2013), the toefl is one of the most popular instruments used by institutions worldwide to help them measure their students’ language proficiency. considering this, there should be a direct relationship between students’ performance in the clil classes and their results on the toefl exam. the fact that the participants’ perceptions of their performance on this test were negative can be linked to the other issues they identified as problematic in the clil classes, such as academic writing and reading. participants are in fact perceiving an increase in their language command and what they can do and achieve while performing various tasks within the clil classroom. however, van de craen, mondt, allain, and gao (2007) report that for the case of universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras120 nuñez asomoza young learners, “if, however the learning of reading and writing takes place in the first language, the learner’s most important language for academic achievement remains the first language” (p. 7 1). although the previous findings are mostly applicable to students between 9 and 10 years old according to van de craen et al., it could be that some of the nnse students in this clil program experienced difficulties in this area because they had not fully developed academic skills in english, whereas nses who went to school in an english-speaking country did build these academic skills to a higher level. however, van de craen et al. (2007) note that for older students, “results seem to depend much more on individual variation, teacher characteristics, and intraand interpersonal variation and abilities” (p. 72). considering all of the previous information, it would be worth working especially with nnses or weak nses (students who came back to mexico still as young learners) to help them develop their cognitive, academic, and linguistic skills in general. because these students are only in the first year of the clil experience, they would still have the time to improve, and they would be able to see progress in their daily academic performance as well as in less frequent but compulsory activities, such as taking the toefl exam. benefits about clil classes table 2 shows the results of the perceptions expressed by the participants as advantages or disadvantages in taking clil classes at lilex. interestingly, the items that the participants reported as being disadvantages correspond to a certain extent to most of the challenges they encountered in the clil classes. as mentioned previously, the items that participants perceived as difficulties or challenges were related to their academic skills and development within the clil classroom. however, there are two salient items in this group of what participants perceived as disadvantages: (1) not having a strong foundation in spanish and (2) their mexican pride was crushed. the first item reported by participants is relevant because it reflects a well-known linguistic fact that is a link between knowledge of the l1 (mother tongue) and learning the l2 (agustín llach, 2009). as agustín llach (2009) notes, there is still controversy in determining whether the influence of the l1 is positive or negative in acquiring the l2. however, the fact that the participants mention this particular issue as something that concerns them is important to be considered at least in regard to the affective elements that impact how they learn the second language through clil classes: i think that we should have a specific class in spanish…writing maybe. we should take it as something extra, because sometimes one focuses on english, but we don’t know spanish…so, how’s that possible? (ramiro) from the quote above, it can be interpreted that students are probably looking to their l1 to find something close to what they are doing in the l2 in terms of academic skills. although the table 2. advantages and disadvantages for taking clil classes advantages disadvantages • practicing the language (english) • increasing english levels • using language (english) in a different context • learning academic vocabulary • increasing toefl score in some skills • difficulty understanding some classes • not having a strong foundation in spanish (english is stronger) • context for language use is unfamiliar • mexican pride is crushed • toefl score has lowered or stayed the same. 121profile vol. 17, no. 2, july-december 2015. issn 1657-0790 (printed) 2256-5760 (online). bogotá, colombia. pages 111-124 students’ perceptions of the impact of clil in a mexican ba program writing systems in english and spanish are different (crawford, 2010), students might possibly feel closer to or more familiar with the academic genres if they knew them well in spanish first. in a study conducted by aguilar and rodríguez (2012), there is reference to the fact that students suggested including some sort of translation into their l1 as part of their interactions with teachers in the clil classroom. this finding could provide evidence that students enrolled in clil classes could consider it helpful to be able to access some information in the l1. the second item relates to participants’ selfidentifying as being native or non-native speakers of english. this issue was observed to influence the interactions of both groups within the clil classroom, and it is also linked to students’ perceptions of the language used as the medium of instruction at this stage of their education process: it is a disadvantage [to use english] in terms of pride, but it is an advantage because it helps us increase the level of students, and this prepares us for a different type of context. it’s not just learning english as a language but as something that we use in other contexts. (maira) despite the fact that some of the participants could perceive their mexican pride as being threatened by the usage of a language such as english, they did perceive the benefits and advantages they would have by learning this language: “the focus of the major is that [learning english], so it obviously has to happen… we have to do it” (leo) and “this is as it should be, because if this is what we are focusing on, then classes have to be taught in english” (ramiro). it is observable that students are aware that this is a step they have to take in their learning process, and they know that it is something they will eventually need to see as natural. because of this awareness about having to use english in their content classes, the students also see advantages in the clil approach. according to table 2, most of the items identified as advantages related to developing academic skills and practicing the language. in this sense, one of the participants voiced the following idea about the advantages she has perceived: this is a great opportunity to be bilingual and then trilingual…it is awesome because besides learning the language, one also learns the culture and many concepts that simply...a common speaker would just have a “normal” conversation . . . but, for example, they can’t talk about linguistics or teaching. (sara) s ome of t he a dv ant age s are p e rc e ive d by various participants as being disadvantages at the same time and vice versa. however, according to their expressions, this serves as a sort of motivation that encourages students to continue working on improving themselves in academic aspects in general. participants’ suggestions for the clil classroom regarding future clil students (groups in the first and third semesters), the participants recommended prior preparation and practicing skills such as speaking or reading in the target language (english). based on their experiences in over a year of working with the clil approach in the program, the participants stated that having prior preparation in the language and reviewing the core concepts (subject content) they had seen in previous semesters would have allowed them to feel more confident when they began the clil classes. it was also noted that the teacher’s role is very important, especially in clil classrooms. students’ suggestions for the clil teachers included improving the methodology and material design, introducing a ss i g n me nt s i n e ng l i sh i n e arl i e r s e me ste rs , empathizing with students, and extra tutoring. the students suggested promoting coordinated work with students, teachers, and administrators to learn about what happens inside clil classrooms, support student projects and improve facilities and material access. universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras122 nuñez asomoza conclusions from the research conducted in this study, important information has been revealed. this study’s findings will undoubtedly serve as a basis for implementing other clil programs at uaz and at other universities across this country. based on these findings and considering the research questions, it can be concluded that: 1. students have an overall positive perception of the clil courses offered in the ba in foreign languages at uaz that sets an optimistic premise for the successful implementation of other clil programs at this institution and at other mexican universities. however, participants identify many areas that could be improved in regard to teachers, classmates, materials, and the environment in general. 2. students in the clil program at lilex struggle mainly with developing academic skills such as academic writing, identifying and using academic genres, and vocabulary. students have not used any particular strategies to improve these aspects, although they are aware of their weaknesses and possible ways to overcome them. 3. students perceive the benefits of taking clil classes by being able to use the language in a different context and improving their academic skills. however, they would like to have deeper knowledge of the spanish language. although they feel positive about learning school contents in english, some of them are concerned about this language threatening their mexican pride. in addition to the above, and considering the findings of the study, it is advisable that the ba in foreign languages program and potential clil programs to be offered at uaz or other tertiary education institutions in mexico consider the following ideas: a. training the teachers through international certifications that guarantee advanced command of the english language. although the latest research in the field of world english (crystal, 2003; jenkins, 2009) debates the idea of using standardized exams (e.g., ielts, toefl) to measure a person’s linguistic competence, these exams are still acceptable ways to keep teachers updated and prepared to a certain extent until new instruments or trends are released. b. training teachers in methodology for clil classes and material design. in addition to having advanced knowledge of the language of instruction, teachers also need to be current on ways of delivering both content and language (hillyard, 2011). having expertise in teaching strategies, methods of assessment, and material design would give teachers more tools to provide students with what they need in order to acquire deeper knowledge about their major and other areas of interest to them. c. training and updating teachers about current issues in their areas of specialization, preferably in english so they can have deeper knowledge of the content and language they teach in the clil classroom. as mentioned previously, it is important that teachers be in constant training, not only to know more about what they do and what they teach inside the classroom but also so they can place themselves in students’ shoes. doing so would sensitize teachers and lead them to be empathic with their learners, thereby strengthening the affective aspects of language learning. d. careful design of the clil curricula so that the approach is implemented at least in the main subjects of the program beginning in earlier semesters. operating a clil program is complex because many factors and aspects must be considered. thus, constant revisions of how the program is working and implementing action research about the situations related to operating a program of this type would allow for reflections 123profile vol. 17, no. 2, july-december 2015. issn 1657-0790 (printed) 2256-5760 (online). bogotá, colombia. pages 111-124 students’ perceptions of the impact of clil in a mexican ba program and actions regarding the appropriateness of starting clil instruction earlier in a ba program. e. including workshops or multidisciplinary training for english and content teachers in order for students to develop general and specific academic skills. collaborative work among language and content teachers would easily allow for enriching and improving the clil syllabus, and having teachers as models of cooperative work would undoubtedly positively impact the environment so that students could leave behind issues of division and discrimination within the school domain, thus translating into tolerant behavior outside of school. f. promoting campaigns by students, teachers, and administrators in which english is appreciated as a global (crystal, 2003) language that allows for intercultural communication and knowledge exchange. gaining knowledge and fostering reflection on the new trends of language policies worldwide would help students contextualize the type of education they are receiving. this would also sensitize learners, teachers, and administrators to be more tolerant of and open to debates and reflection about languages and education issues in general. recommendations for future research this study is the first of its type to be conducted at lilex and at uaz, and therefore, there are a number of areas for research that could be exploited in order to increase the knowledge about the clil phenomenon at the micro and macro levels. these recommendations for further research could include the following ideas: (a) contrasting students’ perceptions about the clil courses at lilex with the perceptions of the clil teachers, (b) studying the perceptions about native speakers of english (mexican-american students) working with the clil approach in mexico, and (c) studying the effects of clil classes on students’ performance on the toefl exam. references aguilar, m., & rodríguez, r. (2012). lecturer and student perceptions on clil at a spanish university. international journal of bilingual education and bilingualism, 15(2), 183-197. http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/13670050.2011. 615906. agustín llach, m. (2009). the role of spanish l1 in the vocabulary use of clil and non-clil efl learners. in y. ruiz de zarobe & r. m. jiménez catalán (eds.), content and language integrated learning: evidence from research in europe (pp. 112-129). bristol, uk: multilingual matters. cohen, l., manion, l., & morrison, k. (2011). research methods in education. oxon, uk: routledge. coleman, j. (2006). english-medium teaching in european higher education. language teaching, 39(1), 1-14. http:// dx.doi.org/10.1017/s026144480600320x. costa, f. (2009). iclhe/clil at the tertiary level of education: state-of the art. studies about languages (kalbu studijos), 15, 85-88. costa, f., & d’angelo, l. (2011). clil: a suit for all seasons? latin american journal of content & language integrated learning, 4(1), 1-13. http://dx.doi.org/10.5294/ laclil.2011.4.1.1. coyle, d., hood, p., & marsh, d. (2010). clil: content language integrated learning. cambridge, uk: cambridge university press. crawford, t. (2010). esl writing in the university of guanajuato: the struggle to enter a discourse community. guanajuato, mx: universidad de guanajuato. crystal, d. (2003). english as a global language. cambridge, uk: cambridge university press. http://dx.doi. org/10.1017/cbo9780511486999. dalton-puffer, c. (2011). content-and-language integrated learning: from practice to principles? annual review of applied linguistics, 31, 182-204. http://dx.doi. org/10.1017/s0267190511000092. universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras124 nuñez asomoza davies, p. (2009). strategic management of elt in public educational systems: trying to reduce failure, increase success. tesl-ej, 13(3), 1-22. dörnyei, z. (2007). research methods in applied linguistics: quantitative, qualitative, and mixed methodologies. oxford, uk: oxford university press. hillyard, s. (2011). first steps in clil: training the teachers. latin american journal of content & language integrated learning, 4(2), 1-12. jenkins, j. (2009). world englishes: a resource book for students. oxon, uk: routledge. lippi-green, r. (1997). english with an accent: language, ideology and discrimination in the united states. london, uk: routledge. llinares, a., morton, t., & whittaker, r. (2012). the roles of language in clil. cambridge, uk: cambridge university press. lorenzo, f. (2007). the sociolinguistics of clil: language planning and language change in 21st century europe. revista española de lingüística aplicada, 20, 27-38. lorenzo, f., casal, s., & moore, p. (2010). the effects of content and language integrated learning in european education: key findings from the andalusian bilingual sections evaluation project. applied linguistics, 31(3), 418-442. http://dx.doi.org/10.1093/applin/amp041. mackey, a., & gass, s. m. (2005). second language research: methodology and design. new jersey, nj: routledge. maza, m. a. (2012). content and language integrated learning: advantages and disadvantages. tlatemoani revista académica de investigación, 9, 1-11. mcdonough, j., & mcdonough, s. (1997). research methods for english language teachers. london, uk: hodder education. mehisto, p., marsh, d., & frigols, m. j. (2008). uncovering clil: content language integrated learning in bilingual and multilingual education. oxford, uk: macmillan education. merriam, s. b. (2009). qualitative research: a guide to design and implementation. san francisco, ca: john wiley & sons. seidlhofer, b. (2011). understanding english as a lingua franca. oxford, uk: oxford university press. van de craen, p., mondt, k., allain, l., & gao, y. (2007). why and how clil works: an outline for a clil theory. views, 16(3) 70-78. vency, h. j., & ramganesh, e. (2013). is language proficiency taken care of at higher education level? need for self-efficacy of post graduate students. journal of language teaching and research, 4(6), 1176-1183. http:// dx.doi.org/10.4304/jltr.4.6.1176-1183. about the author alejandra nuñez asomoza holds a ba in tesol by the university of guanajuato (mexico). she works at the universidad autónoma de zacatecas (mexico), where she is a teacher trainer and teaches linguistics. in 2014, she was awarded the degree of ma in english language teaching with distinction by the university of southampton (uk). 45profile vol. 15, no. 1, april 2013. issn 1657-0790 (printed) 2256-5760 (online). bogotá, colombia. pages 45-60 identity-forming discourses: a critical discourse analysis on policy making processes concerning english language teaching in colombia discursos que forjan identidades: un análisis crítico de discursos en la formulación de políticas sobre la enseñanza del inglés en colombia wilder yesid escobar alméciga* universidad el bosque, colombia this article addresses a critical problem about asymmetrical power relationships and uneven conditions in english language education exerted via identity shaping discourses in the document educación: visión 2019 issued by the colombian ministry of national education. the study follows the critical discourse analysis method. it characterizes discursive strategies which, in turn, unveil power structures, means of control, and subject positioning of submission and dominance inherent in three main categories: being bilingual, being successful, and being colombian. it concludes that discourses are being strategically employed by the colombian ministry of national education to change or preserve ideologies and to widen gaps between socio-economic groups to protect the interests of only a small segment of the population. key words: critical discourse analysis, dominance and control, language identity, power. este reporte postula una problemática de relaciones desequilibradas de dominio, poder, control y de la desproporcionada distribución de recursos en la enseñanza del inglés en colombia, lo cual es perpetrado por discursos que moldean la identidad, en el documento educación: visión 2019 publicado por el ministerio de educación nacional de colombia. el estudio sigue los principios del análisis crítico del discurso. esta investigación caracteriza estrategias discursivas que a su vez develan estructuras de poder, medios de control, y posicionamiento de sumisión y dominio en tres categorías: ser bilingüe, ser exitoso y ser colombiano. el estudio sugiere que el ministerio de educación nacional está empleando discursos para manipular ideologías y generar inequidad entre grupos sociales en tanto que protege los intereses de un segmento de la población exclusivamente. palabras clave: análisis crítico del discurso, dominio y control, identidad lingüística, poder. * e-mail: escobar.w@gmail.com this article was received on june 29, 2012, and accepted on november 19, 2012. universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras46 escobar alméciga introduction discourse, identity, power and control appear to be practices that sometimes escape our attention in our teaching practices but that exert an enormous influence in education nonetheless. this research study looks into english language educational policies that could potentially be seen as “practices which systematically form the objects of which they speak” (foucault, 1972 as cited in cameron, 2001, p. 15) and postulates a problem when this identity forming potential is, on the one hand, taken for granted by people resulting in greater opportunities for institutions like the ministerio de educación nacional (colombian ministry of national education, men for its acronym in spanish) to take advantage thereof to safeguard their own interests; and on the other hand, manipulated by the men to nurture identities that would naturally accept processes of exclusion, unequal social structures and thus, unfair educational conditions governed by foreign intentions. therefore, this report begins by presenting the document educación: visión 2019: propuesta para la discusión (education: vision 2019: proposal for discussion, men, 2006a) as a sample of the discursive dynamics which seek to transform identities to protect specific interests. then, it substantiates the problem by introducing an overview of english language policymaking processes in colombia followed by an exploration of literature on the concepts of identity, discourse, power and control. finally, it analyzes the document education: vision 2019 (men, 2006a) in light of these concepts as well as in the principles proposed by fairclough (2003), drawing conclusions which appeal to the questions about identity formations set forth in the project. english language teaching policy making in colombia: an overview a great concern for having english language teaching standards in the colombian educational system arose in the first half of the last decade. consequently, the men sought the adoption of principles and patterns from the common european framework (cef) for the teaching of english and legitimized this implementation in the years that followed through policies like programa nacional de bilingüismo (national bilingualism program) (men, 2004); education: vision 2019: a proposal for discussion (men, 2006a); plan nacional de desarrollo educativo (national plan for educational development) (men, 2007); estándares básicos de competencias en lenguas extranjeras: inglés. (basic standards for competences in foreign languages: english; men, 2006b). in response to this initiative, ayala and álvarez (2005) critically presented some implications of adopting the cef for the teaching of english in colombia. their study was founded on theoretical principles of bilingualism and bilingual education. their study was also organized around three main concerns: the need to understand colombia’s geographical conditions as different from those of european countries; the need to consider the specific characteristics of english language teachers and students in colombia; and the particularities of the colombian educational system and its policy making processes. even though this article and many others (e.g. sánchez & obando, 2008) advocated for colombia’s own construction of a set of english language teaching standards based on colombia’s context and its specific socio-cultural needs, not only was the cef readily accepted, it also became a conscious and unconscious reference point for many, if not most, of the english language practices which systematically fosters identities in regard to how we understand ourselves as english language users. for instance: testing practices under the cef standards categorize teachers’ and students’ levels of english proficiency within a given social place based on foreign contextual information: some are b1 teachers; some are a2 students and so on and so forth, 47profile vol. 15, no. 1, april 2013. issn 1657-0790 (printed) 2256-5760 (online). bogotá, colombia. pages 45-60 identity-forming discourses: a critical discourse analysis on policy making processes... and this categorization is now willingly accepted by institutions to measure their teachers, and by teachers and students to define themselves as language users. in 2008, when the standards had already been adopted by the colombian educational system, guerrero (2008) studied the document basic standards for competences in foreign languages: english. teaching in foreign languages: the challenge! her research report was guided by theory on critical discourse analysis (cda) and on the symbolic power of language. guerrero (2008) explains connotations strategically assigned to concepts of bilingualism for the purpose of vindicating the bilingualism plan designed for colombia. the article unveils a tactical alliance between the british council (bc) and the men which sought to preserve and protect interests of varying natures. guerrero (2008) concludes that being bilingual is intended to mean speaking english, and that the concept of “bilingualism” is presented as a monolithic and homogeneous idea. others have sought to resist this power and control directly and/or indirectly, advocating for sociocultural considerations in english language teaching and policy making. pardo (2007), for example, raises awareness about the linguistic diversity in colombia and illustrates the hierarchical stratification to which languages are subjected by means of different social acts. in his article, he pinpoints some flaws in the educational system and attributes them to the fact that policy makers are not qualified to make decisions that seek the social, cognitive, and emotional wellbeing of the country’s citizens. colombia is a linguistically and socially diverse country and this diversity comes with a great richness in terms of knowledge; however, this diversity also suggests a great level of intricacy in the educational processes that the nation must understand in order to undertake the process of change. colombia’s educational authorities should identify the numerous linguistic needs facing the country (mejía, 2011). in brief, the identity-transforming power of english language policies in colombia has taken many shapes: from coming to understand as bilinguals those who speak english (regardless of whether or not they speak any other language), to determining who is competent to teach the language and dictating how these individuals should teach. the aforementioned researchers identified three main aims that the men has been strategically achieving through discourses on english language policy. first, the men has imported and enforced foreign standards to govern colombia’s foreign language teaching processes and, in so doing, disregarded socio-cultural considerations. second, it has been changing people’s minds in order for them to assume those standards as the ruling factor that defines teachers and students as second language users. finally, it has established tactical alliances to protect interests different from english language education stratifying and excluding, thereby, languages, individuals, institutions, and communities. therefore, this research report attempts to answer the following questions using the textual analysis framework of cda provided by fairclough (2003): • what identity-forming discourses regarding english language teaching can be unveiled in the document education: vision 2019? • what do discursive strategies reveal about the way content is being produced, presented, handled, transformed, and/or manipulated in the document education: vision 2019? theoretical framework foucault (1988) speaks about identity processes in terms that are entirely related to affiliation dynamics. he proposes the existence of an “unlimited supply” (e.g. of values, knowledge and religions, among others). from such a supply, human beings can find correspondences and/or discrepancies and consequently take one of four options: (1) adopt them and reproduce them with little or no questioning, (2) universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras48 escobar alméciga accept them by giving them their own interpretation and thus undergoing a process of appropriation, (3) prevent them from constructing knowledge and exclusively taking aspects of their own culture, and (4) suppress them and ignore them leaving no room for construction but rather, for negation about the different possibilities otherness could bring about. identity in this case is a matter of choice that is governed by our understandings and perceptions of the world’s supply. herein, one may find correspondences; things and choices that individuals totally or partially subscribe to or that are ascribed to the social environment; and/or discrepancies, things that do not match the individual’s or group’s interests and that, accordingly, are totally or partially rejected. likewise, norton (1997) agrees that identity is constructed through relationships. she refers to identity as the way in which people understand their relationship to the world, how that relationship is constructed across time and space, and how people understand their possibilities for the future in light of this relationship. essentially, people establish different types of relationships with the world depending on numerous factors, one of them being language. block (2007) refers to this phenomenon as language identity, and associates it with language expertise, language affiliation and language inheritance. expertise is how proficient a person is in a language, dialect, or socio-dialect. affiliation refers to how an individual views a particular language dialect or socio-dialect and what attitudes she or he adopts toward it. finally, inheritance is a matter of being born into a family or community that is associated with a particular language, dialect, and socio-dialect. bucholtz and hall (2004) mention a more detailed explanation of the relationship between language and identity in general. one of the most valuable contributions is their exploration of the sub-concepts that compose the umbrella concept of identity. “sameness”, they note, is what allows individuals to imagine themselves as part of a larger group, whereas “difference” is a distance marker between those who perceive themselves as unlike even within the same group. consequently, they use the term “markedness” as the way in which similarities and differences are organized hierarchically in social contexts. markedness is very important in this case, because it usually represents a default status of social categories such as masculinity, whiteness, heterosexuality and so forth. anyone differing from the standard is, thereby, predetermined to have to take additional actions to position him or herself in society. understanding these concepts allows us to unveil uneven wealth distribution and conditions for different social groups as lister (2006) does in his exploration of globalization and identity. as we can see, there are many different types of linguistic needs that affect different social groups in colombia, but the nation is only focused on addressing one type of linguistic need for a small segment of colombia’s population (vargas, 2010) thus, one kind of bilingual education that benefits only a specific sector rather than all as it is falsely advertised. escobar and gómez (2010) carried out a bibliographical investigation whereby the authors identified unequal conditions and identity related processes that are constructed and constituted through language. the authors draw clear associations to and from english language teaching and policymaking to advocate for socio-cultural considerations regarding english language teaching and policy making practices. similarly, cuasialpud (2010) argues on behalf of indigenous students at university level in colombia that their access to education is diminished by the institutional systematized registration practices and, above all, by the students’ own language barriers. these students speak spanish as a second language and have not been embraced by a bilingual program that supports them in their spanish learning. she also describes some cultural implications of learning english as a third language when members of such 49profile vol. 15, no. 1, april 2013. issn 1657-0790 (printed) 2256-5760 (online). bogotá, colombia. pages 45-60 identity-forming discourses: a critical discourse analysis on policy making processes... communities already struggle with the learning of spanish as a second language, inarguably a greater need for these individuals. furthermore, norton (2000) makes reference to the close relationship between identity and learning made possible by the strong and direct relationship that exists between identity and discourse. mccarthy (1991) implies that discourse is the study of language in use; that is, the study of meaning in context. one aspect of language clusters vocabulary, structures and functions together to exert modes of communication; another aspect is interaction among people and the association of language with specific and general contexts. thus, it is worth noting that some discourse analysts focus their attention on a given piece of language or socio-linguistic function. cameron (2001) argues that defining discourse as language beyond the sentence level or language in use falls short; she depicts it as ways of being in the world, or forms of life which integrate words, acts, values, beliefs, attitudes and social identities, as well as gestures, glances, body postures and clothing. in his words, “a discourse is a sort of identity kit which comes complete with appropriate costumes and instructions on how to act, talk and often write so as to take a particular social role that others will recognize” (gee, 1996, p. 56). in addition, gee (1999) comes to the conclusion that discourse is a system by which meaning is emitted, gathered and appropriated. put another way, discourse is a multifaceted and complex social act which encloses all aspects of individual and collective identity and thus plays a significant role in forming and transforming identities (huerta, lópezreza, & garcía, 2007). foucault (1988) defines discourse as “a set of historically grounded statements that exhibit regularities in presuppositions, thematic choices, values, etc.; that limit what can be said about something, by whom, when, where, and how; and that are underwritten by some form of institutional authority” (cited in mckay & wong, 1996, p. 579). having this definition as a point of reference makes it possible to observe regularities in presupposition, thematic choices, and values through discourse analysis. according to mccarthy (1991), these considerations are relevant to the study of relationships between a language and the context it is used in. we construct and reconstruct our views about the world as well as our relationships to one another through discourse. it is also through discourses of language that we use strategies to position and reposition our ‘selves’ with regards to thinking, doing, and being. (clark, 2010, p. 20) in this respect, gale (1996) suggests that educators, institutions, and policy makers are co-constructors of knowledge, identity and culture. if educators, as co-constructors of knowledge, identity and culture communicate colonial, gender biased, racist, and/or degrading messages to a community by hierarchically stratifying languages, regulating access to english education, and teaching english in technical ways with little or no regard for the analysis of its content, then it is very possible that such a community learns english at the expense of its self-value and freedom. just as van dijk (1993, p. 254) states, “modern and more effective power is mostly cognitive, and enacted by persuasion, dissimulation, or manipulation, among other strategic ways to change the minds of others in one’s own interests.” discourse has a part in the production and reproduction of both domination and resistance to it. fairclough (2003) complements explaining discourse in three ways: […] firstly as ‘part of the action. we can distinguish different genres as different ways of (inter) acting discursively’ […]; secondly, discourse figures in the representations of the material world, of other social practices, reflexive self-representations of the practice in question […]; thirdly and finally, discourse figures alongside bodily behavior in constituting particular ways of being, particular social or personal identities. (p. 27) universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras50 escobar alméciga hawthorn (1992) added to this by saying that “ the nature [of discourse] shapes the terms in which an individual perceives the world, regardless of conscious intentions” (cited in mckay & wong 1996, p. 585). now we could say that discourses are not merely expressions of individual and collective identities but are guided by intentions to safeguard interests and strive for specific objectives, thus shaping identities. furthermore, discourses not only exert power, they also maintain control. this difference between power and control that i am introducing is based on bernstein (1998), who notes that the two concepts are closely interrelated operating on different levels of analysis. in the empirical sphere, relations of power create, justify and reproduce limits between different group categories: gender, social class, nationality, etc. in other words, power is exerted to create division and to widen the gap in social groups through power acts on the inter category relationships. control, on the other hand, establishes legitimate communication forms relevant to the different categories. we could say that control establishes legitimate forms of communication and generates the legitimate relations between categories. control signals the relations of power within the limits of each category and power informs about the nature of this relationship and it is through discourse that they are justified in order for them to be exerted. in summation, identity is a historical and sociocultural structure which makes the ever-changing co-formations of relationships possible between the self and the world and that, through discourse, allows us to identify, understand, conceive, construct, and accept or reject the different possibilities within a given time and space while seeking individual or collective interests. accordingly, identity is closely and directly related to discourse since this is how individuals act and interact, position themselves and are positioned in a social place, a way of being in the world, and thus a way to form and transform identities. research method this study falls within the boundaries of critical discourse analysis (cda) and its objectives concern the examination of written text to characterize identity related processes shaped by educational policies regarding english language education in colombia. in order to achieve this end, this research is informed by fairclough (2003), who describes two levels of analysis. a first level, called intra-textual analysis, studies the relationships between the linguistic and semantic components within the text, finding lexical and syntactical relations that unveil ways in which words and phrases create, influence, shape, and manipulate meaning to represent or misrepresent concepts, social events and intentions in order to influence the minds of the readers, thus transforming their identities. for instance, in the next excerpt, command of english as a foreign language (men 2006a, p. 55), this analysis evidences the relationship that the word english has, with the title of the section as well as with the whole section to form and transform meaning. then, the analysis recognizes elements which were included in representation of others that had been excluded and determines which ones were given the greater prominence seeking to reveal the intentions behind these practices as illustrated by fairclough (2003). for instance, the excerpt below shows how actors are being omitted and exposes the prominence given to english and english users over all other languages. it is a given that english is the most widespread language–it is calculated that it is spoken by about 1,400 million people out of which only a third of that number are native speakers1. (men, 2006a, p. 55) as such, the analysis identifies discursive strategies such as nominalization, prominence, generalization, and re-contextualization in order to recognize identity 1 all data excerpts were translated from spanish into english by the author. emphasis in data excerpts has been added by the researcher to aid the analysis. 51profile vol. 15, no. 1, april 2013. issn 1657-0790 (printed) 2256-5760 (online). bogotá, colombia. pages 45-60 identity-forming discourses: a critical discourse analysis on policy making processes... forming discourses within the paradigm of english language teaching in colombia. in addition, it attempts to ascertain the scope, power, and resonance of such discourses within the text as proposed by fairclough (2005). that is to say, as fairclough (2005) suggests, that some structures of this text are formed, produced, reproduced and transformed to shape identities through the implementation of strategies and that these strategies are, in turn, elaborated in and through discourse. subsequently, a second level of analysis, called inter-textual analysis, examines the relationships between the text object of study and other texts such as policy-documents and also includes other voices in a discursive framework to complement, validate, and support the assumptions and assertions that emerged from the intra-textual analysis. in brief, it could be said that this analysis followed five steps. first, an extensive exploration of literature on identity, discourse, power, and control to clarify and understand concepts; second, numerous detailed readings of the data to gain a general understanding of the text; third, a meticulous analysis of vocabulary and sentence use within the text to unveil ways and strategies in which content was being produced, handled, manipulated and presented; fourth, an extensive search for other sources to confront or complement the assumptions; and finally, a categorization of findings. the intratextual analysis unveiled themes and patterns to characterize and categorize the issues surrounding discourses about bilingualism in policy making and the inter-textual analysis aided the validation of the assertions made about the document. findings upon a close examination, the document edu cation: vision 2019 recurrently employs words, ex pressions, and associations to form and transform meaning. these usages encompass three main discursive themes: being bilingual, being successful and being colombian. these themes comprise the identity-forming content found in the document; however, only the first two categories will be presented in this report due to text-length constraints. discourses about being bilingual education: vision 2019 makes reference to the need to speak another language in addition to spanish in colombia. in order to achieve that goal, government agencies like the men have created programs that are being categorized under labels of bilingualism. in addition to this document, many documents with similar aims have been published or sponsored by the men such as plan nacional de desarrollo educativo 2006-2010 (national plan for educational development, men, 2007), and plan nacional de bilingüismo (national bilingualism plan, men, 2004). herein, there are affiliations to beliefs, ideas, choices, interests in, and concepts of what bilingualism and bilingual education should be. it is therefore important to examine not only what is understood by “being bilingual” in colombia today, but also, how government institutions wish it to be understood and why. on the one hand, grosjean (1992, as cited in cenoz & genesee, 1998) depicts bilingual individuals as, “[…] fully proficient speakers who have specific configurations of linguistic competencies that reflect, in part, unique interactions of the languages they know” (p. 18). on the other hand, escobar and gómez (2010) explain language as non-standard, culturally mediated, and identity bound: therefore, being bilingual involves different experiences, contexts, processes, languages, and socio-historical backgrounds. in this document, however, “being bilingual” is portrayed in general terms as the speaking of english alone. hence, it is not only that people thoughtlessly understand bilingualism as speaking english, but rather, “the british council has worked on a universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras52 escobar alméciga campaign to spread the use of english around the world since the early years of the 20 th centur y” (phillipson, 1992, 2000, as cited in guerrero 2008, p. 28) and this redefinition of the concept strategically suits this purpose by gradually distorting the vision of bilingualism in order to pursue the council’s own interests. in this way, education: vision 2019 employs a discursive strategy that fairclough (2003) calls exclusion, inclusion, and prominence. this strategy suggests that the author purposefully composes a text from a representative point of view in which some elements are distorted by being included, excluded, misrepresented and/or deliberately given greater salience. this strategy is visible even in the headings of sections of the document education: vision 2019, since one heading bears the title: “command of english as a foreign language” (men, 2006a, p. 55) wherein the author implies that by including the word english, being bilingual then is equivalent to speaking english and english alone, thereby placing all other languages in the background. the word english in the heading of the document section changes the meaning of the whole sentence and the whole section of the document because now english is representing the concept of foreign languages, thus endorsing the teaching of english while excluding all other languages. in addition, the discourses used in the colombian national plan of bilingualism uniquely validate english in the plan’s practices, policies, standards and so forth. as such and drawing from guerrero’s (2008) study, discursive strategies are employed by these two organizations to preserve structures and protect interests. furthermore, this document employs a discursive strategy that fairclough (2003) calls nominalization: the actors are “backgrounded” or completely omitted in an attempt to justify the exclusive recognition of english as a foreign language for the national plan of bilingualism endorsed by the ministry of education. it states that english was adopted as the foreign language because it is the language most widely spoken and that it is the language of science and trade. however, the article fails to make reference to the source this information was taken from or the processes undertaken in order to arrive at these conclusions: through law 115 of 1994 and the recently implemented national bilingualism plan it is sought to turn this skill into a skill for all. given that english is the language most widely spread–it is calculated that it is spoken by about 1,400 million people out of which only a third of that amount are native speakers. and because it is the trade language of science and technology and the language of international business, the program has focused on promoting its teaching in educational institutions at all levels. (men, 2006a, p. 55) how english is the most widely spoken language and who calculates how many people speak it is deliberately left unsaid. similarly, the tendency to misinform, to word things advantageously, to create and obfuscate social, political, economic and educational “realities” spreads out into all colombian contexts. should colombians have better language and academic skills, they would be able to better understand and react to these, and many other, dis cursive strategies. howe ver, the do cument delineates three main plans to improve the quality and competitiveness of the country. the first of the three programs is the implementation of technology in teaching procedures. the second program addresses the spreading of english as a foreign language in the colombian education system. the third program addresses the implementation of components in the curriculum to develop general labor skills (pp. 49-61). and as we see, there is neither a plan that contemplates spanish language teaching, or minority language community education, nor a plan directed toward teaching contents and core disciplines which would allow a student to gain a holistic understanding of his or her physical and social surroundings and realities. 53profile vol. 15, no. 1, april 2013. issn 1657-0790 (printed) 2256-5760 (online). bogotá, colombia. pages 45-60 identity-forming discourses: a critical discourse analysis on policy making processes... although, embracing diversity is one of the men’s mottos, the document unveils a clear and strong intention of implementing and enforcing standards that reflect a “homogeneous” form of british english. the english standards, created by the ministry of education based on the common european framework make explicit delineation of the skills the students must develop to understand and be understood in the english language. adopting a common reference point with other countries will allow colombia to see its advances in relation to other nations and to introduce international parameters to the local context. (men, 2006a, p. 57) linguistically speaking, there are actually many varieties of any language which offer speakers or writers specific features by which they can be recognized and positioned in society, as hawkins (2004) proposes, and which means that accent, dialect and general language selection are regionally generated and determined; for example, american english is different from british english and there are also many other variations within. the paragraph above sets the common european frame work as the common reference point and delineates it as the correct set of international parameters to follow; a standard not only to be compared to, but also to measure communicative performance within colombia. measuring was done taking as a reference point the level scale from the common european framework for english as a foreign language. this framework, resulting from ten years of research, privilege skills that allow oral and written communication in different contexts and establish the performance levels language users must reach. (men, 2006a, p. 55) these lines explicitly state that the basis for meas uring bilingualism in the “bilingual colombia” program is the cef. for the ministry of education, “bilingualism” means speakers with standardized configurations that reflect homogenized interactions, g lobally “me asurable and comparable” to t he processes and achievements of other learners under completely different conditions. in direct opposition to this association, escobar and gómez (2010) in their investigation into the identity, language and thought of the nasa people of colombia encountered that language is made in and about a specific territory and its particular characteristics. that is, in identity constitution, language and territory are not isolated from one another, but rather are in direct connection constructing each other. that is, community creates language about its life and its territory while language, in turn, creates conditions for community life by opening communication channels for cohesion and membership through which members find and strive together the common interests specific to that community. in colombia, foreign language standards and procedures are being adopted and implemented while disregarding their social and cognitive impact. ayala and álvarez (2005), for example, tell us about the considerations that were taken into account for the elaboration and implementation of the common european framework of references for foreign language teaching in europe. one aspect particularly evident was the rather unique geographical condition of european countries: many neighbouring countries have diverse language backgrounds, and thus, struggle to communicate with each other and achieve commercial and cultural trade. this social condition differs from colombia’s geographical characteristics where all neighbouring countries have spanish as their official language with the exception of brazil, which deems portuguese as its official language. language diversity is found within colombia where there are indigenous languages and foreign languages spoken by different communities of people who form the nation and who have great needs for education and general linguistic rights to achieve full membership as citizens of country. as pardo (2007) informs us, within colombia there exist 65 indigenous languages from 14 linguistic families as well as two creoles, english, colombian universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras54 escobar alméciga sign language, arabic, hebrew, korean and chinese. therefore, we can infer that the men’s vision on bilingualism and bilingual education does not embrace actual colombian diversity, neither does it consider the different socio-political and cultural conditions and needs that are present in the nation, including asymmetrical access to education. on the other hand, the word dominar in men (2006a) means having a full command of the lan guage and conveys a ver y high expectation by placing explicit emphasis on the proficiency level that colombian students should attain irrespective of the conditions provided. “having a full command of a foreign language represents a comparative advantage, an attribute for the people in their competence and competiveness” (p. 55). in colombia, most political, academic and social discursive acts take place in spanish; therefore, co lombian citizens are in great need of improving their language skills to become better communicators in spanish first and to understand the different natures and purposes of all of these discourses before which they are often unable to react. however, for the ministry of education being bilingual means holding no regard for colombians’ first language (l1). the document mentions three plans to improve educational quality in colombia: implementation of computer information systems and increased technology in education, command of the english language, and general labor skills. the document is composed of sixty two pages, not one of which is devoted to strategies for the improvement of spanish either as the second language of indigenous groups or as the official language of colombia. uneven english education conditions have always been an issue in colombian schooling as the document acknowledges. traditionally, attaining a full command of a foreign language has been a privilege of just a few people, almost always from high socioeconomic status. the law 115 issued in 1994 and the recent implementation of the national bilingualism plan seeks to make this skill available for all. (men, 2006a, p. 55) having a command of english is associated with word privilege and goes back to the past with the word traditionally being a luxury for some and a problem for others. this inequality is now being resolved and will one day belong only in history books. however, if we take a look at the dynamics of education today, we can observe that schools are categorized according to their english teaching levels and performance into “bilingual schools” and “schools that offer intensive english.” the former suggests that even the government acknowledges different levels of access to english language education. in short, the men has published and sponsored documents that gradually and strategically distort the concept of bilingualism in colombia. in the docu ment education: vision 2019 the men has mis represented the concept of bilingualism in the following three ways: (1) it defines bilingualism as the speaking of english, thereby backgrounding all colombian native languages (spanish included); (2) it attempts to homogenize by reducing recognition of language ability to one arbitrary standardized form and by adopting rigid teaching models that are culturally insensitive at best and irrelevant at worst; and (3) it falsely claims to equally provide opportunities of access to this form of bilingual education to all citizens of the nation. in addition, through this document the men also rendered associations between the concept of bilingualism and the concept of success, which will be characterized in the next category. discourses about being successful being academically, professionally, and socially successful are salient themes of the document education: vision 2019 as well as in other texts regarding colombia’s bilingualism plan and the teaching of en glish in general. therefore, this study attempts to identify, 55profile vol. 15, no. 1, april 2013. issn 1657-0790 (printed) 2256-5760 (online). bogotá, colombia. pages 45-60 identity-forming discourses: a critical discourse analysis on policy making processes... describe and explain the instances, ways, and strategies in which the concept of success is conveyed. as such, it is claimed that there is an erroneous association between speaking english as a second language and succeeding academically, professionally, and/or socially. guerrero (2008) suggests that there are individual, institutional, or foreign interests behind such discourses and, as weber (1978) puts it, every system of authority attempts to establish and cultivate beliefs in its legitimacy. here, the concept of success is used to underpin the implementation of the colombian bilingual plan as conceived by the ministry of education. initially, speaking english is associated with academic success in the document when it is mentioned as one of the three strategies set forth to achieve academic improvement in national school curriculum. the introductory heading for these three programs reads: three strategic programs to improve the quality and competitiveness of the people and the country (men, 2006a, p. 49) similarly, the document fosters other associations with the concept of success. being able to communicate in a foreign language is an indispensable skill in today’s world. it not only makes academic and professional mobility possible for people, but is the basis upon which society’s competitive capacity is constructed as well as a tool to open doors to new cultures and new experiences and, as such, acquire knowledge that would have been out of reach otherwise. having a full command of a foreign language represents a comparative advantage, a trait of competence and competitiveness. (men, 2006a, p. 55) this paragraph suggests that being able to communicate in a foreign language (english) is an essential skill that represents the means to academic and professional mobility, and the lack thereof could cause knowledge to slip away and stay out of our reach. the author is overemphasizing the importance of english by giving it prominence over any other language or knowledge and attributing “unique” characteristics to it that are, by no means, exclusive or specific to that particular language, given that knowledge can slip away as well as be constituted in any language. furthermore, “being able to communicate in a foreign language is an indispensable skill in today’s world” evokes the idea of functionality in the modern world. on the one hand, we now know that when the document mentions foreign language, it is referring specifically to english. so we can then understand the intended meaning of this expression as speaking english is an indispensable skill in today’s world. on the other hand, the expression “today’s world” encapsulates all contexts and conditions of the world into one with the characteristics that are valid and positive in their eyes. for instance, the men depicts the world as globalized, cosmopolitan, uniformed, technologydriven, and homogeneously structured where there are limitless evenly-distributed opportunities and cyclical dynamics of power and control. it is imperative to understand that today’s world has myriad settings with unique conditions and that it is not all an english-speaking cosmopolitan business world mediated by computerized technology. there are other paradigms that may be rural or different in any other way, but essential for the social and economic sustainability of any nation nonetheless. fairclough (2003) calls this discursive strategy “representations as re-contextualization” because it involves transferring a specific reality from a given place to another with completely different characteristics to project it as true and relevant and it is misrepresenting the concept of success as being present only in the city life of technological development. even further, the term ‘mobility’ has different connotations from which its meaning is derived. in a geographical sense, for example, it may refer to the need of europeans to move around the continent for work, school and other purposes. in the academic sense, mobility may refer to having a widely accepted universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras56 escobar alméciga schooling within the continent. an individual may have studied his or her first year of university in france and if he or she wanted to or had to move to the netherlands, this school year could be accepted for the purpose of continuing his or her education. on the professional level, mobility may refer to the possibility of advancing, progressing, and climbing the socio-economic ladder within professional or academic fields. however, this term is used in the document in the following way: it not only makes academic and professional mobility possible for people, but it is the basis on which society’s competitive capacity is constructed as well as a tool to open doors to new cultures and new experiences and thereby acquire knowledge that would be out of our reach otherwise. (men, 2006a, p. 55) none of the three characteristics of mobility mentioned above is applicable to the colombian context. firstly, moving from country to country for work or school purposes is not very common unless people are close to the borders and even in such cases, it would not represent a need to speak another language; and secondly, professionally speaking, it is hard for someone to be the company’s doorman today and advance to the managerial ranks of the company tomorrow simply through the acquisition of language skills. conditions are not favorable for all of these types of mobility to take place in colombia. speaking specifically about the english language, let us take as an example the role of the medellin metropolitan police force during the inter-american development bank conference in 2009 in medellin and the cartagena metropolitan police force in the week leading up to easter sunday (castro, 2010). in these cases, policemen and policewomen received english language instruction to serve the needs of the anglophone tourists. when these cases occur, english language learning is not providing any type of mobility; instead, the role of the police figure is being belittled to perform the duties of tourist guides and serve tourists from other countries. in addition, where the document says “speaking english is the basis upon which society’s competitive capacity is constructed”, the men is narrowing society and social validity to the english-speaking world. so, achieving social status requires the ability to speak english just as being socially successful requires the same. however, when observing reality closely, english is learned and taught in a dynamic of servitude and subjugation through obeying foreign standards, catering to others’ interests, imitating, and replicating others’ values rather than as a way of existing in the world under ones’ own terms. the next excerpt unveils another view held about success in relation to financial power: traditionally, attaining a full command of a foreign language has been a privilege of just a few people, almost always from a high socioeconomic status. law 115 issued in 1994 and the recent implementation of the national bilingualism plan seeks to make this skill available for all. (men, 2006a, p. 55) english is here being historically associated with colombia’s highest social classes, and thus, to purchasing power. so what the text is saying is that now, thanks to the program, success will be imparted to all regardless of their purchasing power. sadly, in colombia there are no conditions of equality, especially in the area of english language education, because to obtain equality requires financial investment in teachers’ professional development and in physical and environmental resources such as good school facilities, books, media, and other materials. economic conditions are very different from one social stratum to another and thus educational results also differ. the subsequent quote makes yet another point about the view of success held by the author: in colombia only a very small minority (less than 1% of the population) reaches a good enough proficiency level to understand and write diverse texts, communicate fluently and 57profile vol. 15, no. 1, april 2013. issn 1657-0790 (printed) 2256-5760 (online). bogotá, colombia. pages 45-60 identity-forming discourses: a critical discourse analysis on policy making processes... function socially and professionally in the english language. (men, 2006a, p. 55) this passage highlights that only a very small portion of the colombian population is able to function socially in english. however, colombia has very few contexts in which english is spoken. while there are some micro-contexts in schools and organizations, if we wanted to talk about an englishspeaking context in colombia, we would be able to name only the san andrés and providencia islands. there is not only any real need to function socially in english in colombia but it is also tremendously difficult to find english-speaking contexts in the country. in brief, discourses have been adopted and adapted by the men to draw false and fallacious connections between the concepts of success and bilingualism in three specific ways. first, the document suggests that the learning of english embodies the concept of success disregarding unequal socio-economic realities of the countr y. second, it implies that knowledge construction and thus academic success is only possible through the speaking of english. third, it suggests that academic, professional, and social mobility is experienced in direct relation to english proficiency and that everybody is provided with equal access to learning and, consequently, equal mobility. these fallacies belie the meaning of being colombian leading us thereby to characterize the different connotations about it given by the men in another category entitled “discourses about being colombian”, which is not presented here due to text length constraints. conclusions many affiliations to interests, ideologies, values, knowledge, and intentions, as well as several ways of understanding and conveying the relationships between the individual and the english language (identities) were unveiled in the discourses of the document education: vision 2019. thus, they are categorized and characterized into three main identity-forming discourses: discourses about being bilingual, being successful, and being colombian, although only the first two are addressed in detail in this work. additionally, discursive strategies such as nominalization, re-contextualization, overgeneralization, prominence, etc. were made evident throughout the analysis of the document highlighting how some things were strategically omitted while others were deliberately employed to persuade, dissimulate, and manipulate their audience in pursuit of particular interests. the colombian ministry of education is progressively and strategically reducing the concept of being bilingual from any of a number of languages to considering only english and spanish, leaving aside other colombian languages and transforming the colombian language paradigm into a form of english “monolingualism.” these distortions of the concept can have negative implications in cognitive, cultural, linguistic and identity interrelationships. in other words, standardization, homogenization, and simplification of the notion of language are being fostered in the quest for power and control, consequently overthrowing the value of local knowledge, difference and diversity. these processes use marketing strategies wherein the spread of english is promoted by assigning it false characteristics and properties: english becomes a good or a product that needs to be produced massively through standardized procedures. all of this is causing our educational system to deteriorate by spreading socio-cultural fallacies and turning education into a marketplace that sells knowledge to the highest bidder, excluding those who do not have the resources to bid or to bid high enough. canagarajah (2005) relies heavily on discourse analysis to highlight the various strategies used to universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras58 escobar alméciga dominate and undermine different identities: for example, local knowledge is often made to appear archaic, silly or untrustworthy. in the same way, one language can be shown as the modern language of development while others are projected as primitive and ignorance-inducing depending on the purpose sought. the ministry of education projects english as the modern language of development and as the only language through which knowledge construction can take place, thus depicting it as the language of success. in order to prioritize the foreign over the local, the men has adopted discourses and taken cues from foreign sources. for example, it has translated a reality from a faraway context to the colombian one with its uncritical implementation of the common european framework, which was put into practice in europe as the result of ten years of study in the european context for the european context and considering the geographical and linguistic necessities and characteristics of the european continent. no such studies of linguistic context and characteristics were executed in colombia. consequently, english language teaching policies in colombia are rife with discursive practices that systematically shape the identities of those they address to strategically introduce procedures which seek to benefit specific social groups, thus broadening the gap between social groups by providing unequal and disingenuous opportunities rather than making appropriate language education truly available to all, as it falsely purports to do. references ayala, j., & álvarez, j. a. 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(2006b). estándares básicos de competencias en lenguas extranjeras: inglés. formar en lenguas extranjeras: ¡el reto! lo que necesitamos saber y saber hacer. bogotá, co: imprenta nacional. colombia. ministerio de educación nacional [men]. (2007). plan nacional de desarrollo educativo. retrieved from: http://planeacion.univalle.edu.co/a_gestioninformacion/ plandeaccion2008-2011/pnd_2010_educacin%20pdf1.pdf 59profile vol. 15, no. 1, april 2013. issn 1657-0790 (printed) 2256-5760 (online). bogotá, colombia. pages 45-60 identity-forming discourses: a critical discourse analysis on policy making processes... cuasialpud, r. e. (2010). indigenous students’ attitudes towards learning english through a virtual program: a study in a colombian public university. profile issues in teachers’ professional development, 12(2), 133-152. escobar, w., & gómez, j. 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(1996). multiple discourses, multiple identities: investment and agency in second-language learning among chinese adolescent immigrant students. harvard educational review, 66(3), 577-608. mejía, a. m. (2011). bilingual education in colombia: towards a recognition of languages, cultures and identities. colombian applied linguistics journal, 8, 152-168. retrieved from http://revistas.udistrital.edu.co/ojs/ index.php/calj/article/view/176 norton, b. (1997). language, identity, and the ownership of english. tesol quarterly, 31(3), 409-429. norton, b. (2000). identity and language learning: researching identity and language learning. hong kong: pearson education. pardo, n. (2007). diversidad lingüística y tolerancia en colombia. colombian journal of bilingual education, 1, 11-23. sánchez, a. c., & obando, g. v. (2008). is colombia ready for “bilingualism”? profile issues in teachers’ professional development, 9, 181-195. van dijk, t. a. (1993). principles of critical discourse analysis. discourse and society, 4(2), 249-283. vargas, m. r. (2010). towards a discourse for criticism in language teaching: analysis of sociocultural representations in mass media. profile issues in teachers’ profes sional development, 12(2), 179-190. weber, m. (1978). economy and society (vols. 1-2). berkeley, ca: university of california press. universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras60 escobar alméciga about the author wilder yesid escobar alméciga holds a master’s degree in applied linguistics to tefl from universidad distrital francisco josé de caldas (colombia). he is an assistant professor at the universidad el bosque (colombia) and his research interest is in discourse analysis. he is currently a member of the research group “educación universitaria unbosque.” 43profile vol. 17, no. 2, july-december 2015. issn 1657-0790 (printed) 2256-5760 (online). bogotá, colombia. pages 43-62 http://dx.doi.org/10.15446/profile.v17n2.44441 exploring authorship development among mexican efl teacher-researchers exploración sobre el desarrollo de la autoría en los profesores-investigadores de inglés como lengua extranjera1 eva estefania trujeque moreno*2 fátima encinas prudencio** benemérita universidad autónoma de puebla, puebla, mexico maria thomas-ruzic***3 university of colorado, boulder, usa this article presents a multi-theoretical model to address processes of authorship development in the english as a foreign language teaching profession. working within a sociocultural perspective of second-language teacher education, the authors examined six experienced nonnative english-speaking teacher-researchers. perceptions of their key moments in the profession were analyzed using a mixedmethod approach that combined document analysis with personal narratives. the findings indicated that both authoring (products and activities in their profession) and self-authorship (transformational processes throughout their careers) contributed to constructing these english as a foreign language professionals as scholars. key words: authoring, authorship development, self-authorship, sociocultural perspective in secondlanguage teacher education. en este artículo se presenta un modelo multiteórico y multinivel para identificar el proceso en el que los autores se desarrollan en el área de la enseñanza del inglés como lengua extranjera, proceso identificado como desarrollo de la autoría. este modelo se desarrolló bajo una perspectiva sociocultural de la formación de profesores que presenta una muestra de las percepciones de seis profesores investigadores mexicanos en el área de inglés como lengua extranjera. se utilizó un método mixto que combinó el análisis de documentos con narrativas personales. los resultados de esta investigación indicaron la presencia de momentos significativos de su autoría (productos y actividades) y su autoautoría (procesos de transformación), que contribuyeron a la construcción del desarrollo de la autoría de estos profesores-investigadores. palabras clave: autoría, auto-autoría, desarrollo de la autoría, perspectiva sociocultural en la formación de profesores de una segunda lengua. * e-mail: evatrujeque@gmail.com ** e-mail: fatimaencinas@gmail.com *** e-mail: maria.thomas-ruzic@colorado.edu how to cite this article (apa, 6th ed.): trujeque moreno, e. e., encinas prudencio, f., & thomas-ruzic, m. (2015). exploring authorship development among mexican efl teacher-researchers. profile issues in teachers’ professional development, 17(2), 43-62. http://dx.doi. org/10.15446/profile.v17n2.44441. this article was received on july 16, 2014, and accepted on january 3, 2015. this is an open access article distributed under the terms of the creative commons license attribution-noncommercial-noderivatives 4.0 international license. consultation is possible at http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/. http://dx.doi.org/10.15446/profile.v17n2.44441 mailto:evatrujeque%40gmail.com?subject= mailto:fatimaencinas%40gmail.com?subject= mailto:maria.thomas-ruzic%40colorado.edu?subject= http://dx.doi.org/10.15446/profile.v17n2.44441 http://dx.doi.org/10.15446/profile.v17n2.44441 http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/ universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras44 trujeque moreno, encinas prudencio & thomas-ruzic introduction english as foreign language teacher researchers (efl trs hereater) in mexico represent a small but growing number of scholars in the field of language teaching. they participate in a variety of academically related activities in their profession, including teaching, researching, coordinating, publishing, presenting, developing curricula, designing materials, assessing students’ competences, and supervising thesis projects. they develop professionally through their engagement in these activities in academia, and they become authors. this study’s main purpose was to explore and trace these processes in efl trs’ careers. drawing from the work on authoring and self-authorship, we propose a new theoretical notion: authorship development, which we use and develop in our analysis. a few studies related to this topic have been carried out in recent years. however, many of them have investigated contexts such as authorship and publication practices in the social sciences (bebeau & monson, 2011), authorship and collaborative research (welfare & sackett, 2010), the authorship construction of young scientists in mexico (carrasco, kent, & keranen, 2012), and self-authorship as a meaning-making stage in adulthood involving a balance between “subject” (elements of knowing that we are identified with and embedded in) and “object” (elements that we can reflect and operate on) (baxter magolda & king, 2012; kegan, 1994). some of these have shed new light on scientists’ trajectories and their productivity, whereas others have focused more on developmental theories in adulthood. ramírezromero (2011), studying mexican efl trs’ professional development trajectories, reports a lack of research on workplaces, classroom practices, productivity, and the processes involved in developing as an author. because research activities have recently become an indicator of efl trs’ professional development (richards, 2011), the issue of efl trs’ increasing productivity has been receiving more attention in the literature (reyes cruz & hernández méndez, 2014). this study proposes a multi-theoretical model to address authorship development (hereater ad). the model was used to explore six experienced mexican teacher-researchers’ perceptions about their key moments in the profession. from this sociocultural perspective, the present study investigates what being an “author” in the profession means to individual scholars. figure 1 shows the initial multi-theoretical model created in this study to describe and analyze efl trs’ professional development from an ad perspective. theories associated with teacher professional development from a sociocultural perspective were linked with current theoretical thinking on processes connected to becoming an author and theories that seek to explain the adult cognitive development referred to as self-authorship to create a theory of authorship development. theoretical framework a sociocultural approach to professional development in english language teaching teacher education has been transforming and moving from training towards development and adopting a more sociocultural perspective, after vygotsky (1978) and the many scholars who worked from a vygotskian perspective. from this stance, cognitive development in human beings is subject to “cultural practices and circumstances of their communities” (rogoff, 2003, p. 3). the integration of cognitive, developmental perspectives with sociocultural perspectives brings together a framework that allows us to trace how trs learn. using this new, integrated frame, ad in the profession can be viewed as an individual but also a social developmental process that involves 45profile vol. 17, no. 2, july-december 2015. issn 1657-0790 (printed) 2256-5760 (online). bogotá, colombia. pages 43-62 exploring authorship development among mexican efl teacher-researchers participation and networking in the english language teaching (elt) community. authorship development (ad): authoring and self-authorship developing as an author involves learning from specific moments in one’s career, whether as a foreign language teacher or another type of professional. this study proposes the term ad to refer to the cumulative authoring and self-authorship experiences that shape elt trs’ professional development. the term authorship has been defined and/or described from different perspectives. it was initially viewed as a way to produce scientific knowledge in academia and mainly focused on what research writers could produce (e.g., carrasco & kent, 2011; lillis & curry, 2010; overington, 1977; among others). authorship has also been related to the rhetorical features that a writer must manage in order to become an author (kellogg, 2008). another perspective is offered from an adult development angle that is concerned with self-authorship, a high-level thinking order in adulthood, a concept developed by baxter magolda and king (2012) drawing from kegan’s (1994) and kegan and lahey’s work (2009). the self-authoring mind the development of any writer has to do with his/her experiences in the world. the extent to which authors develop in different disciplines is also affected by their adult development. kegan (1994) explored humans’ mental complexity in order to depict how people make sense of the world and constructed a theoretical framework to explore the trajectory of mental adult development that involves a selfauthorship construction. kegan and lahey (2009) draw the development of mental complexity as shown in figure 2. figure 2. the trajectory of mental development in adulthood c o m p le xi ty time authorship development sociocultural theories of teacher professional development authoring – becoming an author self-authorship – processes of personal and professional development p ro fe ss io n a l d e ve lo p m e n t figure 1. the initial theoretical model explaining professional development from an authorship development perspective universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras46 trujeque moreno, encinas prudencio & thomas-ruzic in their theory of adult development, kegan and lahey (2009) identify five stages or orders of mind, four of which are generally developed in adulthood. these are the instrumental mind, the socialized mind, the self-authoring mind, and the self-transformative mind. in the instrumental stage, adults see their own impulses as primal, are unable to see others’ perspectives, and cannot reflect upon themselves or identify patterns in their personalities. at this level, adults are subject to their desires. in the socialized mind, individuals are aware of the influence of others’ perspectives in their lives as well as their needs. they are capable of putting their individual interests under a reflective lens, yet they also rely on others to generate answers. then, when they reach a self-authoring mind, adults possess the skills to differentiate themselves from others, evaluate their own value systems, and shape their identities. at this point, individuals are able to manage conflict and achieve leadership. finally, adults in the selftransformative order, a very small minority, are able to reflect on the limits of their own work. they can recognize what is in some way partial or incomplete in their work or perspectives and make space for revision and development. furthermore, they grasp the incompleteness of systems as a fundamental part of their own construction. authorship development via networks networks contribute to trs’ development through socialization and exposure to new contexts in which they continue learning and developing (higgins & kram, 2001). johnson (2009) suggests that we “include teacher’s networks” in teacher education programs: a social network and a professional one (p. 6). networks are relevant in a number of ways. teachers of english as a foreign language share a range of professional practices (wenger, 1998) and communication genres as members of a professional organization. the members of the mexican efl community tend to follow certain paths in their professional development. efl trs often publish a variety of text types such as research proposals, reports, assignments, tests, projects, articles, biographies, memoires, and textbooks and are expected to manage the rhetorical features of each of these. publishing implies a consolidating stage in their lives and therefore part of a significant career transition. career transitions are opportunities to develop networks (ibarra, 1999) and are hence associated with key productive moments in trs’ careers. ad, then, is influenced by the trs’ establishment of networks. figure 3 summarizes the theories explored in this study and shows how sociocultural theory serves as a frame to explore ad. in particular, the authors made use of two specific notions. authoring (products and activities) was recognized as an ad component on the “professional” side of trs’ lives, and selfauthorship (transformational and developmental processes throughout their careers) was found on the “personal” side. both concepts helped us to trace ad processes in trs’ lives. authors’ apprenticeship moments apprenticeship theory (lave, 2011) claims that all individuals are apprentices of their own evolving practices, and apprenticeship is subject to social, historical, and cultural contexts that influence how an individual makes meaning. in the efl teaching profession, becoming an author involves a variety of key teaching and learning processes. these encompass the persuasive rhetorical features of english, developing cognitive skills, negotiating meanings, socializing knowledge, interacting with experts, participating according to the sometimes unspoken rules of the elt academia, and identifying oneself as a professional writer, among others. in the process of becoming authors, trs develop in both 47profile vol. 17, no. 2, july-december 2015. issn 1657-0790 (printed) 2256-5760 (online). bogotá, colombia. pages 43-62 exploring authorship development among mexican efl teacher-researchers the professional and personal domain to meet the performance standards of the profession. thus, trs’ experiences as apprentices may bring interesting insights into this matter. language and literacy contexts of elt tr professionals in mexico in mexico, scholars from different disciplines are expected to manage the pressure of publishing demands. local publishing practices are affected by global policies (lillis & curry, 2010). therefore, in this knowledge society era, many scholars live by the idea of “publish or perish” if they want to obtain funds and belong to elite research circles such as the sni, the national organization of researchers of the consejo nacional de ciencia y tecnologia (conacyt). in the mexican elt community, becoming an author has recently turned into an indicator of development in the profession (ojeda, 2012). the professional development of a nonnative english teacher in mexico is a particularly complex and ongoing process related to the acquisition of high proficiency across a range of discourse practices and literacy in two languages, for instance, language proficiency, content and contextual knowledge, specialized cognitive knowledge, theory development (richards, 2011), and training and reflective skills (richards, 1989; singh & richards, 2006; wallace, 1991). the professional development of mexican elt scholars has been influenced by the professional standards of teachers of english to speakers of other languages (tesol), driving an increase in the demands of both training and developmental programs. today, most ba graduates from efl teaching programs in mexico need to have at least a c1 (common european framework of reference) in english and possess the methodological skills to teach the language effectively. additionally, elt programs encourage teachers to demonstrate their research skills when developing figure 3. a theoretical approach to authorship development sociocultural theory in second-language teacher education (johnson, 2009) networking, career socialization processes, individual factors authors and writing, production, knowledge production, publishing, thesis supervision adult development, cognitive perspectives, life trajectories, development of decision making skills authoring (overington, 1977; lillis & curry, 2010; carrasco, kent, & keranen, 2012) self-authorship (baxter magolda & king, 2012; kegan, 1994) theories explored emerging categories theory authorship development (ad) universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras48 trujeque moreno, encinas prudencio & thomas-ruzic research proposals (sayer, 2007). thus, efl teachers must meet different teaching and learning demands in a range of social contexts. efl scholars have a privileged position because english is the international language for social interaction and publication (lillis & curry, 2010); the status and currency of english give trs access to a number of other contexts and disciplines. for example, there are elt trs in mexico who publish with scholars from different fields of knowledge, such as carrasco et al. (2012). these scholars must also adapt to the challenges of being nonnative speakers (crawford, 2010; mora pablo, 2013). reaching national and international audiences is one of the reasons mexican elt teacher-researchers publish in both english and spanish (as reported in this study). ramírez-romero (2010, 2011) states that most elt publications in mexico are in spanish (56%), followed closely by english (40%). being able to write and publish in these two languages gives these trs opportunities to do research and establish networks. in summary, elt trs need to continuously to adapt and develop in order to meet or exceed professional expectations for teaching and scholarship—locally as well as nationally and internationally. research questions the questions that guided this study were the following: what do key moments in mexican efl teacher-researchers’ professional development reveal about their development as authors? what evidence can illuminate these participants’ self-authorship development? what is the relationship between these teachers’ ad and their participation in elt networks and other fields? method the present study is a collective case study that was used instrumentally (stake, 1995) to trace authorship development in the professional development trajectories of six mexican efl scholars. a number of cases were viewed as part of a “bounded system over time through detailed, in-depth data collection involving multiple sources of information rich in context” (creswell, 1998, p. 61). a mixedmethod research design and two instruments were used to examine experienced efl teacher-researchers’ authoring and self-authorship, respectively, content analysis of trs’ curricula vitae and interviews. these instruments guided the data collection process to identify key professional development moments that revealed ad in the career from the perspectives of authoring (lillis & curry, 2010; richards, 2011), selfauthorship (baxter magolda & king, 2012; kegan, 1994), and networking (higgins & kram 2001; johnson, 2009). thus, the data obtained were used complementarily (quantitative and qualitative) to develop interpretations (creswell, 2003). the cvs provided by these scholars were professional documents that contained information about their identities, schooling, publications, presentations, memb erships, ass o ci at ions, and dist inc t ions, among other relevant aspects and products of their academic lives. the analysis of the cvs aimed to locate authoring as indicators of the trs’ productivity. personal narratives from interviews were used to delve into key moments in the scholars’ careers that revealed self-authorship. narrative inquiry makes possible an analysis of teacher thinking because it leads to opening teachers’ mental lives (johnson, 2009) and regarding teachers as “knowing professionals or agents of change” (johnson, 2009, p. 1). narratives in this context are viewed as forms of mediation, verbalization and systematic examination from a sociocultural perspective (johnson & golombek, 2002, 2011) as well as products of social interaction immersed in defined cultural, historical, and social settings. narratives also offered the opportunity for us to identify similarities and differences among trs’ career paths and to study what was revealed about their ad. 49profile vol. 17, no. 2, july-december 2015. issn 1657-0790 (printed) 2256-5760 (online). bogotá, colombia. pages 43-62 exploring authorship development among mexican efl teacher-researchers procedure the instruments were chosen and designed, piloted, and then redesigned. first, the number of participants and the selection criteria described above were defined. experienced trs who actively publish are all busy scholars with demanding schedules. thus, from twelve initial candidates, only six were included in the study. these participants sent their cvs and were interviewed about their professional development in a twenty-minute interview via skype. spanish was the language used for the narrative interview in order to create an atmosphere of confidence and comfort as well as to generate rapport with the participants. participants three female and three male mexican efl trs participated in this study. at the time of the study, the participants were active contributors to the elt discourse community in mexico and prominent mexican trs working at public universities in different states of mexico. they were acknowledged scholars with different distinctions. the three male trs were part of the sistema nacional de investigadores (sni), the national organization of researchers of the consejo nacional de ciencia y tecnologia (conacyt), which acknowledges the contributions of high-level researchers to science and technology. ramíreztable 1. teacher researchers’ background tr average experience in years (elt and elt training) ba studies ma studies phd studies part of the sni rosaa 31 psychology (mexico) education (uk). distance program education (usa) yes julio 27 pedagogy (mexico) courses, workshops, and seminars education (usa) yes sebastian 20 tourism (mexico) english teaching (mexico) applied linguistics (mexico) applied linguistics (uk) yes claudia 18 english teaching (mexico) applied linguistics (mexico) applied linguistics (australia). distance program no manuel 10 languages (mexico) english teaching and applied linguistics (usa) english and education (usa) yes isabel 9 english teaching (mexico) applied linguistics (mexico) applied linguistics (semi-distance) no a the trs’ names are pseudonyms. universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras50 trujeque moreno, encinas prudencio & thomas-ruzic romero (2009, 2010, 2011) reported five academics with this recognition in 2009 and twenty in 2011 (see table 1). this indicator matches the growing number of investigations in the area. all of the participants held a phd degree and actively published in english; most of them also published in spanish. they were involved in a variety of activities such as researching, lecturing, creating materials, training teachers, developing curricula, and tutoring. furthermore, they belonged to different national and international networks and associations such as recale (an academic network on foreign languages), rile (a research network on foreign languages), mextesol (the mexican teachers’ association of english as a second language) and tesol (teachers of english as a second language), as well as other professional associations. trs’ roles the p ar t icip ants in t his study had held a number of positions and consequently a number of responsibilities in different education programs. all had taught english and/or content classes for pre-service teachers in the area of elt, led research projects, and coordinated a variety of programs in higher education. table 2 presents an overview of the participants in order of their time in the field. table 2. teacher researchers’ academic profiles (highlights/chronology) rosa t (39)a r (30) c (23) • studied for her ma at the same time she obtained her cote (certificate for overseas teachers of english). • started the line of research she has studied for seventeen years now. • performed her phd studies at a us university. • felt more like a researcher than a teacher owing to her position in a research center. julio t (32) r (28) c (22) • taught classes while studying for his ba in pedagogy. • as a teacher trainer in a public university, spent fiteen years or so taking courses and learning from the interactions with prestigious scholars in mexican higher education. later studied for his phd at a very prestigious university in the usa. • went back to his home university in mexico and started working (not by choice) in the foreign languages department, where he started a new line of research that has increased his productivity significantly. claudia t (28) r (28) c (7) • had the opportunity to study in england during the last year of her ba because of her recognition as the best student of her generation by the mexican government. • started working for a very important mexican public university and soon aterwards received different travel and training opportunities to develop as an english teacher. • decided to study for her ma. her thesis supervisor was the head of the postgraduate department at that time. • when her daughter started her bachelor’s degree studies, she started her phd. balanced her professional and personal lives (taking care of her family and raising her children). 51profile vol. 17, no. 2, july-december 2015. issn 1657-0790 (printed) 2256-5760 (online). bogotá, colombia. pages 43-62 exploring authorship development among mexican efl teacher-researchers sebastian t (20) r (21) c (18) • studied his ba in tourism while he taught english. • took the cote certification, became a cote instructor and then started his ba to become an english teacher in the uk. later, he decided to continue with his ma and phd. • felt that the publication of his first article was very significant in his career and motivated him to continue publishing. • was strongly influenced by a mexican scholar who was working on indigenous languages and felt a “moral responsibility” to do research in that area. this was a turning point in his career. manuel t (14) r (9) c (8) • had to do many translations from english to spanish for a ba research project because his professor did not understand english. • grew interested in translation and applied for a scholarship to study for his ma in the usa, where he worked with senior researchers. • applied for another scholarship to study for a phd at the same us university and followed his line of research. here, he had access to a number of resources and networks to achieve high productivity. • obtained a position as a teacher-researcher at a mexican public university. isabel t (12) r (9) c (6) • had a difficult time while studying for her ba at a mexican public university because of problems with professors who did not meet her expectations. • moved to another city in mexico for her ma studies. this was a private university where she learned to conduct research. • felt encouraged by her professors to become a teacher researcher during her ma studies. • moved again to a different city to work at a public university where she was given the opportunities to participate and lead a number of projects. note. t = teaching, r = researching, c = coordinating/administrative work. anumbers express years of experience. findings ad in trs’ professional development: authoring the trs’ authoring was identified through their products and activities in the profession. what these scholars created or produced during their careers, such as designing, applying, and assessing teaching materials, on-site and distance courses, projects, supervising theses, and research publications, are the core of efl trs’ authoring. the cvs explored in this study provided data mostly on the number of the trs’ national and international publications and presentations. these were considered national when they were published in journals, publishing houses, or universities in mexico and international if the trs’ products were published in a foreign organization or institution. publications publication data available through the cvs offered information about what the trs’ had published throughout their careers. the results indicated that the publication rates of the efl trs in this study universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras52 trujeque moreno, encinas prudencio & thomas-ruzic were high compared with the national average of 1.2 publications per author per year (ramírez-romero, 2011). in addition, the data in this study indicated that the trs were likely to have published a variety of text types in both languages, english and spanish. these were books, book chapters, book reviews, articles, memoirs, and materials. the results from this exploration are shown in table 3. a number of patterns emerged when analyzing the trs’ authoring in terms of their publication results. the trs in this study publish mostly nationally, but some also publish internationally. either in national or international publications, their authoring was developed in two languages: spanish and english. table 4 shows the number of publications that the trs had in the two languages. table 4 shows the number of publications the trs had in spanish and in english in order of highest to lowest number. the results indicated that manuel and rosa had published more in english while julio and sebastian had published more in spanish. the trs’ publications were classified as national or international according to the origin of the journals and/or publishing houses they wrote for. figure 4 shows the trs’ interactions with national and international contexts in terms of publication. figure 4. number of teacher researchers’ publications: national and international 0 10 20 30 40 50 60 70 80 julio sebastian claudia manuel isabel rosa national international the results in figure 4 indicate that nearly all of the participants had more national than international publications with the exception of rosa, the only female among the three with major international productivity. in the case of the male participants, their productivity was greater than that of the female table 3. teacher researchers’ publications: text types books book chapters book reviews articles memoirs materials total na int na int na int na int na int rosa 0 1 2 6 0 0 5 8 4 1 1 28 julio 22 2 14 2 0 6 25 12 12 0 0 95 claudia 1 0 7 1 0 0 6 1 0 0 7 23 sebastian 3 0 8 0 2 0 14 8 4 0 1 40 manuel 1 1 3 1 0 2 10 9 2 0 1 30 isabel 2 0 4 1 0 0 2 1 5 0 0 15 note. na = national publications, int = international publications. 53profile vol. 17, no. 2, july-december 2015. issn 1657-0790 (printed) 2256-5760 (online). bogotá, colombia. pages 43-62 exploring authorship development among mexican efl teacher-researchers trs. julio and sebastian had greater international productivity in contrast to their national publications, w he re as manu el’s i nte r nat i ona l and nat i ona l productivity were quite similar. the numbers of males’ and females’ national and international publications suggest gender differences connected to authoring in the field, at least in this small sample. presentations giving talks in national and international forums that were mostly concerned with foreign languages and/or education was a way of socializing research for most of these trs. presenting was another experience in the profession that all of the participants in this study had engaged in both nationally and internationally; we thus viewed presenting as an authoring component. the data shown in figure 5 about presentations were collected from the cvs. the results show that julio, sebastian, and claudia were the trs with the most presentations. julio, sebastian, and claudia had presented significantly more in national forums, whereas manuel and isabel, the youngest trs, had more international presentations. thesis supervision and tr’s productivity the data collected in this research suggested a connection between trs’ thesis supervision and their productivity. being a thesis supervisor was also an interesting stage in trs’ lives because many of them had coauthored articles with their students. figure 6 illuminates this connection. figure 6. thesis supervision vs. teacher researchers’ publications theses supervised tr's publications 0 10 20 30 40 50 60 70 80 90 100 julio rosa isabel sebastian manuel claudia table 4. teacher researchers’ publications in spanish vs. their publications in english publications in spanish publications in english julio 88 manuel 22 sebastian 24 rosa 18 claudia 16 sebastian 16 rosa 10 isabel 8 manuel 8 claudia 7 isabel 7 julio 7 figure 5. teacher researchers’ number of presentations at national and international events national international 0 10 20 30 40 50 60 70 julio sebastian claudia rosa isabel manuel universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras54 trujeque moreno, encinas prudencio & thomas-ruzic figure 6 indicates that julio and rosa supervised the most theses. these scholars show comparatively high productivity overall and the most years of experience as scholars. during the inter views, some trs reported a connection between the theses they had supervised and their productivity. for example, rosa, the most experienced tr, highlighted these apprenticeship experiences during her interview. publishing with her students was a meaningful authoring experience in her academic life. an excerpt from her interview is shown below: i tutored my student in that topic, which was the same topic of my phd thesis, and ater she finished, i told her that she had to publish. then, what i gave to her, the idea of publishing…that expanded her horizons, and now she publishes on her own…she has three or four articles, one of them in the mextesol journal… that was the first time; then, i liked it so much that i continued doing it. . . . right now, i am working on that, writing a book with my students. i think that we should do this more…once you give this to your students, they don’t let it go, such as this student who continues publishing.1 julio also shared rosa’s thesis super vision experience; they viewed thesis supervision as a type of shared authoring experience that in some cases resulted in coauthored publications. the journey toward selfauthorship: summary of trs’ key moments in the efl profession how these trs made sense of the key moments in their careers indicated how their contexts and decisions had allowed them to develop and to become authors in the profession. evidence of this was the number and variety of turning points, or what we 1 the tr’s answers were originally in spanish. the translation was made for publication purposes. would like to call “inflection” moments, that were reported in the interviews (see table 2). that is, the trs’ career paths were influenced by a variety of contexts through their study and work experiences. rosa, julio, and sebastian, for example, are experienced trs who earned their bas in areas outside of english teaching per se, respectively, psycholog y, pedagog y, and tourism. rosa and sebastian were teaching english2 during their ba studies and then entered into the area of foreign languages. julio started a dual career, one in pedagogy and the other in foreign languages, when as a new phd, he was invited to join the foreign languages department at the public university where he was working. the youngest trs, manuel and isabel, built their elt backgrounds on their ba studies in elt and completed their doctorates at relatively early ages. the power of networking in the efl profession is e vident w hen analyzing t he trs’ cvs. this professional document showed that what these trs do in the profession is cumulative, though not precisely related to the time they have been in the profession. table 5 shows the trs in order of their total number of publications and presentations—national and international. table 5. teacher researchers’ publications and presentations publications presentations julio 95 julio 88 sebastian 40 sebastian 67 manuel 30 claudia 44 rosa 28 rosa 27 claudia 23 isabel 25 isabel 15 manuel 10 2 because of their considerable english levels. 55profile vol. 17, no. 2, july-december 2015. issn 1657-0790 (printed) 2256-5760 (online). bogotá, colombia. pages 43-62 exploring authorship development among mexican efl teacher-researchers networking: national and international participation developing networks via national and international associations is considered an indicator of trs’ disciplinary growth as stated by ramírez-romero (2009) in his report on the state of the art in the field. the types of networks trs belong to range from elt associations, research groups, editorial participations, and other types of activities connected to other fields of study. however, only their memberships in specific official associations were taken into consideration in figure 7 because these were explicitly addressed in a specific section of the trs’ cvs. figure 7. national and international associations national interational total 0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 julio rosa sebastian manuel isabel claudia figure 7 shows that julio, sebastian, and manuel were the ones with more memberships to national associations, whereas rosa, manuel, and isabel were members of at least one international association. discussion trs’ authoring: productivity the trs who had earned their ma or phd degrees in english-speaking countries were likely to have more publications in english. those whose work was primarily national and local (i.e., julio and claudia) had published more in spanish than in english, although publishing in spanish did not necessarily mean only national participation. rosa’s publications in spanish were in other countries in latin america in addition to mexico. thus, the trs’ productivity appears to be related to the institutions where they studied and the networks they established when they lived in other countries or based on the nature of their research interests. being able to publish in two languages seemed to be a powerful tool for gaining access to a variety of discourse communities in elt and other fields. self-authorship: becoming teachers, researchers, and authors identifying as a teacher, researcher, and author is part of what the trs reported when asked about how they perceived themselves in the profession. overall, their answers revealed that their teaching and researching experiences had transformed them. although their backgrounds are different, all of them had gone through processes of change that influenced the ways they felt and thought about their careers (see table 2). the trs’ professional development was immersed in dynamic processes in a range of different contexts. these results also show that the trs identified as teachers in the early years of their careers and later as teacher educators and/or researchers. on this continuous journey, a feeling of consolidation and career satisfaction seemed to appear ater roughly a decade of researching, as observed with isabel and manual (tr6 and tr5) (see appendix). in this process, the trs viewed their authoring research as key in their consolidation in the efl profession. different generations and different contexts the early specialization of sebastian, manuel, and isabel can be associated with the development of the field in recent decades and can be viewed as a universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras56 trujeque moreno, encinas prudencio & thomas-ruzic response to the higher demands of specialization that we see today. nevertheless, for all of the trs in the study, completion of the doctorate was followed by an increase in the number of publications. in addition, the trs’ national and international schooling contexts, the types of programs in which they had studied, and the networks they had established represented the most outstanding factors that contributed to their high levels of productivity in the profession. the trs in this study who had studied in phd programs offered by a foreign university had to travel or live in an english-speaking country to do their research; the data show that their internationally earned doctorates had implications for the forums in which they later published. in sum, the contexts in which these trs studied and worked also defined the people they met, which allowed them to interact with specific communities. this social dimension in the trs’ lives can be viewed as having a crucial impact on the construction of their ad. institutions and networks: national and international settings we can assume that the institutional culture in which these trs had worked and studied was influential in their professional development. as was mentioned earlier, at the time of this study, all six trs worked at public universities in mexico, and these institutions provided them with the opportunities as well as expectations to continue developing in the profession. in addition, all had the opportunity to study at english-speaking institutions in the usa, the uk, or australia during their doctorates. such study allowed them access to a number of research tools and opportunities to socialize with well-known senior researchers in high-productivity cultures. trs’ connections with national and international networks were thus also influenced by the places where they had worked, studied, and presented. interactions with other members of the discourse community helped to forge collaborations, especially following their ma studies and developing further during their phd programs. the two trs, julio and manuel, with the most publications cited networking as key in their careers. manuel, during his interview, stated, “they [networks] will be very valuable for my future research projects.” this statement suggests that networking in the efl profession allows trs to participate in national and international contexts. in this regard, networks were also identified as reciprocal (ibarra & deshpande, 2007); that is, the more networks the trs belonged to, the more collaboration and productivity they and the other network members could have. gender although it was not a focus of the study, the discrepancy in terms of publication rates for the male and female tr participants is noted and discussed briefly below. the productivity of the three men was strikingly higher than that for the three women. for purposes of comparison, consider three tr pairs matched in terms of their approximate lengths of professional experience in years: rosa t (39) r (30) and julio t (32) r (28); claudia t (28) r (28) and sebastian t (20) r (21); and manuel t (14) r (9) and isabel t (12) r (9). rosa’s number of publications (28) was less than 30 percent of julio’s (95). in the second pair, claudia had 23 publications and sebastian had 40. finally, manuel and isabel, the youngest tr pair, also showed this tendency; manuel had 30 publications, but isabel had 15, half of manuel’s number (see table 6). this discrepancy between the male and female trs’ numbers of research products may be attributable to various sociocultural factors, specifically relationships and caregiving responsibilities in their everyday or professional lives, as indicated in the interview data shown in table 7. rosa and claudia spoke of balancing time between their families and their careers. isabel, the 57profile vol. 17, no. 2, july-december 2015. issn 1657-0790 (printed) 2256-5760 (online). bogotá, colombia. pages 43-62 exploring authorship development among mexican efl teacher-researchers youngest tr, did not mention parent or child issues. from rosa’s and claudia’s perspectives, motherhood, caregiving and other women’s social roles were viewed as influences on their productivity and professional trajectories over time. conclusions our findings and analyses indicate that ad is an inclusive framework that can be used for understanding professional development in trs’ lives. facts from this study show interesting patterns across individual efl teachers’ professional development related to their participation in academic professional communities. their participation also provided key information about what ad looked like for each of them. differences among the participants in terms of gender and experience related to their amounts of authoring in the profession. the cvs and the analyses of personal narratives helped to uncover how teacherresearchers’ professional and personal lives converge and shape, and are shaped, by their ad. most of the trs viewed themselves as authors in the profession when they carried out research. they perceived publishing in english and spanish as key moments, or achievements, in their emergence as authors. thesis supervision, networking, and coauthoring with students and peers were viewed by some of these scholars as key authorship development moments. thus, the authoring component in the profession was viewed as an indicator of participation and additionally of development. the male participants in this study had higher productivity (in terms of publications) than did the females. this gender-associated result provides additional evidence that adults’ sociocultural histories and participation need to be taken into account in their professional development, and it represents a new area of interest for the authors’ further explorations into ad. table 6. female vs. male teacher researchers’ publications female trs nat int total male trs nat int total rosa 12 16 28 julio 73 22 95 claudia 21 2 23 sebastian 32 8 40 isabel 13 2 15 manuel 17 13 30 table 7. female trs’ experiences while developing in their careers rosa t (39) r (30) “i moved to the us with my children. during that time, my mother died; it was very painful then.” (she moved to continue with her phd studies and stayed where she was for four and a half years.) claudia t (28) r (28) “my development did not happen by doing my bachelor’s, master’s, and doctorate all at once but by doing each thing little by little…working, doing other things, experiencing, studying…and, well, also your normal life…not everything is work; you also need to live your personal life…you have to take care of your family and raise your children…in that sense, i feel i was like measuring out things.” a a the trs’ answers were originally in spanish. the translation was made for publication purposes. universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras58 trujeque moreno, encinas prudencio & thomas-ruzic the two concepts used to address the concept of ad were authoring and self-authorship. in this study, authoring was used to refer to a more quantitative and objective process that was measured or regulated in terms of trs’ productivity in the profession through their developed materials and curricula, published research and text production, and thesis supervision as well as presenting papers and establishing networks with members of academic communities. selfauthorship was used as a personal and developmental process related to maturity and consolidation both professionally and personally. the interrelationships of these processes over time in the profession were defined as ad. these two dimensions of ad helped us to describe what becoming and being an author looked like for the efl professionals who were involved in the study. on one side, there were self-transformation and consolidation moments in these trs’ lives that fell on the personal and professional borders, and these moments were key in constructing the trs’ selfauthorship. on the other 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(1994). in over our heads: the mental demands of modern life. cambridge, ma: harvard university press. 59profile vol. 17, no. 2, july-december 2015. issn 1657-0790 (printed) 2256-5760 (online). bogotá, colombia. pages 43-62 exploring authorship development among mexican efl teacher-researchers kegan, r., & lahey, l. l. (2009). immunity to change: how to overcome it and unlock the potential in yourself and your organization. boston, ma: harvard business school press. kellogg, r. t. (2008). training writing skills: a cognitive developmental perspective. journal of writing research, 1(1), 1-26. lave, j. (2011). apprenticeship in critical ethnographic practice. chicago, il: university of chicago press. lillis, t., & curry, m. j. (2010). academic writing in a global context: the policies and practices of publishing in english. new york, ny: routledge. mora pablo, i. 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(2010). las investigaciones en la enseñanza de lenguas extranjeras en méxico, una segunda mirada [research in foreign language teaching in mexico: a second look]. mexico city, mx: cengage learning, universidad de sonora, universidad autónoma de morelos, universidad autónoma del estado de hidalgo. ramírez-romero, j. l. (coord.). (2011). estado del conocimiento de las investigaciones sobre los procesos de enseñanza-aprendizaje de las lenguas extranjeras en méxico (2000-2011) [state of knowledge of the research on the processes of the teaching and learning of foreign languages in mexico (2000-2011)]. in a. ávila, a. carrasco altamirano, a. a. gómez galindo, m. t. guerra ramos, g. lópez bonilla, & j. l. ramírez romero (eds), una década de investigación educativa en conocimientos disciplinares en méxico (2002-2011): matemáticas, ciencias naturales, lenguaje y lenguas extranjeras (pp. 297-341). mexico: comie. reyes cruz, m., & hernández méndez, e. (2014). productividad y condiciones para la investigación: el caso de los profesores de lenguas extranjeras. sinéctica, 6(42), 1-7. retrieved from http://www.sinectica.iteso.mx/?se ccion=articulo&lang=es&id=636_productividad_y_ condiciones_para_la_investigacion_el_caso_de_los_ profesores_de_lenguas_extranjeras. richards, j. c. (1989, june). beyond training: approaches to teacher education in language teaching. presented at a workshop on second language teacher education. macquarie university, sydney. richards, j. c. (2011). exploring teacher competence in language teaching. the language teacher, 35(4), 3-7. rogoff, b. (2003). the cultural nature of human development. oxford, uk: oxford university press. sayer, p. (2007). exploring options for titulación in licenciaturas in elt in mexico: a case study. mextesol journal, 31(1), 57-74. singh, g., & richards, j. c. (2006). teaching and learning in the language teacher education course room: a critical sociocultural perspective. paper presented at the relc international conference on teacher education in language teaching, singapore, singapore. stake, r. e. (1995). the art of case study research. thousand oaks, ca: sage. wallace, m. j. (1991). training foreign language teachers: a reflective approach. new york, ny: cambridge university press. welfare, l. e., & sackett, c. r. (2010). authorship in student-faculty collaborative research: perceptions of current and best practices. journal of academic ethics, 8(3), 199-215. universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras60 trujeque moreno, encinas prudencio & thomas-ruzic about the authors eva estefania trujeque moreno (ma, english teaching, benemérita universidad autónoma de puebla [buap], mexico) is a full-time english teacher at the buap, where she is involved in developing the elt curriculum and teaching materials. her research areas are efl teachers’ professional development and english for specific purposes. fátima encinas prudencio (ma, english teaching, warwick university, uk) has worked as a teacher educator for 30 years. she has coordinated the elt undergraduate and graduate program at the benemérita universidad autónoma de puebla (mexico). her main research interests are literacy and teacher professional development. maria thomas-ruzic (phd, linguistics, university of colorado, usa) has a 40-year career in language teacher development, incorporating research interests in discourse analysis, professional and adult development, and mentoring. she directs the master’s program for tesol professionals in linguistics at the university of colorado. wenger, e. (1998). communities of practice: learning, meaning, and identity. cambridge, uk: cambridge university press. vygotsky, l. s. (1978). mind in society: the development of higher psychological processes. cambridge, ma: harvard university press. 61profile vol. 17, no. 2, july-december 2015. issn 1657-0790 (printed) 2256-5760 (online). bogotá, colombia. pages 43-62 exploring authorship development among mexican efl teacher-researchers appendix: career mapping sample for additional research tr5 career mapping theses supervised (cd) [r] [r] (cd) (cd) (r) (r) [r] presentations ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ publications [a] [a] (bc) (a) [a] [a] [a] [a] (bc) (a) [a] (a) (bc) (bc) [b] [m] (a) (a) [m] (a) (b) [a] (a) [a] (a) [a] (a) [bc] coordinating positions + + research positions → a ← → a ← → l ← → a ← → a ← → l ← recognitions ★ ★ ★ ★ ★ thesis projects ¡ ¤ £ teaching positions g certifications (t) (l) 1999 2000 2001 2002 2003 2004 2005 2006 2007 2008 2009 2010 2011 2012 2013 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras62 trujeque moreno, encinas prudencio & thomas-ruzic theses projects na int activities na int subdivision undergraduate ¡ ¡ new teaching position guest teacher: g master’s ¤ ¤ new research position → ← → ← assistant: a leader: l doctoral £ £ new coordinating position ì ì publications na int certifications na int book [b] (b) teaching [t] (t) book chapter [bc] (bc) language [l] (l) book review [br] (br) articles or reviews [a] (a) presentations na int memoirs [m] (m) t t theses supervised na int direction reader jury co-direction undergraduate ¢ £ (d) (r) (j) (cd) master’s ¤ ¤ [d] [r] [j] [cd] doctoral © © {d} {r} {j} {cd} networks na int formal recognitions na int « « 135profile vol. 16, no. 2, october 2014. issn 1657-0790 (printed) 2256-5760 (online). bogotá, colombia. pages 135-150 research culture in higher education: the case of a foreign language department in mexico cultura de la investigación: el caso de un departamento de lenguas extranjeras en méxico edith hernández méndez1* maría del rosario reyes cruz2** universidad de quintana roo, chetumal, mexico in the case of mexico, until recently, many universities focused mainly on teaching, but recent changes have led to new appointments in research, administration, and community service. there now seems to be, however, a view of the predominance of research in the academic environment. therefore, the purpose of this paper was to examine and identify, through the lens of organizational theory and a current model of research culture in an academic setting, some characteristics of the research culture in the department of languages and education at a public university in southeast mexico. following the international tendencies and models in higher education, we see that the research culture observed in this university resembles more a market culture than other types of culture, although some traits of hierarchy culture provide cohesion in the organization. key words: foreign languages, higher education, research culture. en méxico, hasta hace algunas décadas, muchas universidades se enfocaban principalmente en la función de docencia. sin embargo, recientemente se han dado cambios en la asignación de nuevas funciones: investigación, gestión y extensión. no obstante, la investigación parece tener actualmente un lugar preponderante en el ambiente académico. el propósito de este artículo es examinar e identificar, mediante la teoría de las organizaciones y un modelo actual de cultura de investigación en contextos académicos, algunas características de la cultura de la investigación en el departamento de lengua y educación de una universidad pública del sureste mexicano. siguiendo tendencias y modelos internacionales de educación superior, la cultura que se observa en esta universidad se asemeja más a una de mercado que a cualquiera de otro tipo, aunque algunos rasgos de la cultura jerárquica permiten la cohesión en la organización. palabras clave: cultura de la investigación, educación superior, lenguas extranjeras. * e-mail: edith@uqroo.mx ** e-mail: rosreyes@uqroo.mx how to cite this article (apa, 6th ed.): hernández méndez, e., & reyes cruz, m. (2014). research culture in higher education: the case of a foreign language department in mexico. profile issues in teachers’ professional development, 16(2), 135-150. http://dx.doi.org/10.15446/profile.v16n2.40819. this article was received on november 13, 2013, and accepted on may 15, 2014. this is an open access article distributed under the terms of the creative commons license attribution-noncommercial-noderivatives 4.0 international license. consultation is possible at http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/. universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras136 hernández méndez & reyes cruz introduction in recent decades, an interesting research topic in education has been that of the academic career and the changing academic profession (blackmore, brennan, & zipin, 2010; brennan, 2006; galaz fontes & gil antón, 2009; gil antón, 2000; grediaga, 2001; schuster & finkelstein, 2006). the university faculty today have a different profile and function than they had in the last century. there seems to be a view of the predominance of research in the academic environment as schuster and finkelstein (2006) point out: “a powerful countervailing trend is unmistakable: a clear faculty perception of the increasing importance of research and publication for purposes of promotion and tenure” (p. 129). similarly, layzell (1999), referring to the american faculty, claims: “faculty reward structures appear to be heavily geared toward research and scholarship” (p. 3). others in the literature share this view as well, according to rhoades (2000). in the particular case of mexico, many universities used to focus mainly on teaching, but there has been a drastic change towards and emphasis on research, administration, and community service.1 supported by some national and institutional policies (for example, the program for faculty development—promep, for its acronym in spanish, and the introduction of an annual plan of activities for each professor, which has to be approved by the administration), faculty members in some public higher institutions are not only obliged to develop the four main functions (teaching, research, administration, and community service) but to maintain a balance amongst them. interestingly, however, economic incentives and rewards are greatly skewed towards research and researchers. the national system of researchers, (sistema nacional de investigadores, 1 the term “service” here coincides with the one used by layzell (1999) in higher education: “faculty work is comprised of instruction, research, and service activities” (p. 15). sni) and the productivity reward program (beca de desempeño al personal académico), for example, encourage faculty to conduct research and train new researchers by providing them with grants, scholarships, funding, and awards. financial incentives have been the most appealing among faculty and, to some extent, have promoted an increase in research productivity at many universities in mexico. these changes, of course, have not been pervasive in all universities and their implications are not alike in every institution. some, such as the unam (universidad autónoma de méxico), have been traditionally strong research universities, and have conducted research since their origins. nevertheless, largely, public state universities, which do not have a long historical past, are now dealing with these changes in the academic profession. a distinctive situation also occurs if we consider the different disciplines. clark (1987) highlights the great influence a discipline has on research activity, and rhoades (2000) claims that the institutional setting, the departmental and college settings shape faculty work. for example, faculty in the natural sciences have always embraced the function of research eagerly. nonetheless, in other disciplines, such as modern languages, the focus had been traditionally on teaching. although research on higher education’s changing environment in mexico is now prolific (chavoya, 2001; estévez, 2007; galaz fontes, 2002; galaz fontes & gil antón, 2009; gil antón, 1994; grediaga, 2001; montero, 2011; padilla, 2003; parra, 2002), research concerning professors of modern languages or foreign language education, specifically, had been disregarded in mexico until this decade when encinas and busseniers (2003) and ramírezromero (2007, 2010, 2013) conducted studies which focused mainly on the research productivity of foreign language teaching and learning. there are very few studies concerning research carried out by modern language faculty and there 137profile vol. 16, no. 2, october 2014. issn 1657-0790 (printed) 2256-5760 (online). bogotá, colombia. pages 135-150 research culture in higher education: the case of a foreign language department in mexico seems to be a gap in the literature regarding the research culture in which they are immersed or the research culture they wish to develop. while discussion in mexico has revolved mainly around the changing academic career of faculty, there seems to be little concern for how these changes have occurred, how the faculty have responded to them, and what the institutions are doing with these changes. therefore, the purpose of this paper is to examine and determine, through the lens of organizational theory and the model of the research culture of salazar-clemeña and almonte-acosta (2007), some characteristics of the research culture in a particular unit of analysis: the department of foreign languages and education at a public university in southeast mexico (one of the youngest public universities in mexico). we intend to shed light on the idiosyncrasies of this department faculty and some university administrators with regard to research. our interest is to clarify how the research culture is being shaped by these professors and administrators by means of an analysis of their responses to the current institutional research policies and agenda, the departmental conditions and the environment for research, the financial support for research, incentives offered, collaboration with colleagues from the same department or external colleagues, and their perception of the needs and challenges in research. the paper is organized into four sections. the first section examines organizational theory in relation to universities as organizational units. the second describes the research method used and details of participants, instrument, and data analysis. the third includes the findings and discussion of the categories of analysis, such as the policies, research agenda, work climate, incentives, and so forth. finally, the conclusions are given although these can only be of a preliminary nature as further and more extensive research needs to be carried out. organizational theory in organizational theory, the interactionist approach focuses on the subjective meanings emerging from social interaction, that is, the organization of reality is interpreted by its members and an intersubjective world is shared and built among these members in the everyday life of the organization (ahumada, 2001). this perspective emphasizes social action, language and communication, the construction of meanings, and the organizational culture in order to understand the social interaction. for the purpose of this paper, the organizational culture approach was used as we examined the perceptions, attitudes, and behaviors of some members of two groups (faculty and administrators), who play a very important role in this organizational unit. additionally, the methodology proposed by this approach is more suitable for this research. next, there is detailed information about this perspective. organizational culture concerning the organizational culture, the concept of culture has been defined and redefined many times by scholars. cameron (2008) argues that the agreement most discussions of organizational culture (cameron & ettington, 1988; o’reilly & chatman, 1996; schein, 1996) has arrived at is that “culture is a socially constructed attribute of organizations which serves as the ‘social glue’ binding an organization together. [culture represents] how things are around here or the prevailing ideology that people carry inside their heads” (cameron, 2008, p. 3). as institutions, universities also develop an identity, values, attitudes, and beliefs. some of them are explicit, and many are implicit; some are shared and others are group specific. this then means that in an organization, such as a university, culture is not always homogeneous. there are, therefore, different perspectives in approaching the organizational culture and these are discussed in detail below. universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras138 hernández méndez & reyes cruz conceptual frameworks of organizational culture schein (1984, 1985, 1991) proposes three different levels for viewing organizational culture: level 1. this consists of the artefacts and creations of the organization, such as symbols and rituals. level 2. here we have the consciously held values, beliefs, etc., that guide the behavior of the members of the organization. level 3. this level makes up the unconscious ideas and beliefs deep-rooted in the employees of the organization. this is the essence of the organization and has the greatest influence on the individual’s behavior. according to hatch (1993), schein’s definition and conceptual framework remains the dominant ones for organizational culture studies. however, martin and meyerson (1988) claim that this approach has as its shortcoming the absence of comparing and contrasting the manifestation of ideas in actual practices and the perception of these by people outside the organization. thus, triangulating information obtained about the cognitive component with artefacts and behaviors is recommended. an alternative paradigm is the competing values framework (quinn & rohrbaugh, 1983), which has been very useful in identifying and profiling the dominant cultures of organizations. this framework consists of two dimensions: vertical and horizontal. the vertical dimension differentiates cultures that emphasize flexibility, discretion, and dynamism from those which focus on stability, order, and control. concerning the horizontal dimension, there are criteria that distinguish cultures, which focus on an internal orientation, integration, and unity from those which emphasize an external orientation, differentiation, and rivalry. these two dimensions together form four quadrants, each representing a distinct set of organizational culture: clan, adhocracy, market, and hierarchy. the clan culture is considered, according to cameron (2008), as a friendly place to work where people share a lot of themselves. leaders are thought of as mentors, coaches, and, perhaps, even as parent figures. . . . success is defined in terms of internal climate and concern for people. (p. 435) loyalty, tradition, and collaboration as well as commitment are valuable in this culture. for the organization, teamwork, participation, and consensus are very important. the adhocracy culture is perceived, following cameron (2008), as “a dynamic, entrepreneurial, and creative workplace. . . . effective leadership is visionary, innovative, and risk-oriented” (p. 35). in addition, commitment to experimentation and innovation are ideas shared by the members. the organization is very concerned about being at the leading edge of new knowledge, products, and/or services. consequently, readiness for change and meeting new challenges are important. the organization’s long-term goal is on growing rapidly and acquiring new resources. a market culture is “a results-oriented workplace. leaders are hard driving producers, directors, and competitors. . . . outpacing the competition, escalating share price, and market leadership dominate the success criteria” (cameron, 2008, pp. 35-36). winning is the main goal of the organization. the hierarchy culture, according to cameron (2008), is characterized as a formalised and structured place to work. procedures and well-defined processes govern what people do. effective leaders are good coordinators, organizers, and efficiency experts. maintaining a smooth-running organization is important. the long-term concerns of the organization are stability, predictability, and efficiency. formal rules and policies hold the organization together. (p. 36) 139profile vol. 16, no. 2, october 2014. issn 1657-0790 (printed) 2256-5760 (online). bogotá, colombia. pages 135-150 research culture in higher education: the case of a foreign language department in mexico given that in an organization such as a university we may observe some specificities or variation (as we are dealing with different people with probably different objectives), it seems that both frameworks—schein’s definition of culture and the competing values framework (quinn & rohrbaugh, 1983)—can complement each other. at a higher institution, students, faculty, and administrators (with different statuses) can form subcultures, although there might also be a dominant culture. in this study, we consider the perspective of faculty and administrators, which can lead us toward identifying a more dominant culture or different subcultures. research culture in academic contexts based on schein’s (1984) definition of culture, we can say that a research culture is the shared, taken-for-granted implicit assumptions that members of a university hold about research. that also determines how they perceive, think about, and behave with respect to research activities. with regard to research culture in higher education, meek and davies (2009) point out that: higher education institutions must provide a supportive environment if research is to flourish. in some developing countries, higher education institutions were originally established mainly to engage in teaching and it will take a good deal of effort and an appropriate policy environment to nourish a research culture. (p. 76) salazar-clemeña and almonte-acosta (2007) conducted a study whose aim was to understand the research culture from the perspective of faculty and how this affects the productivity of the faculty in some higher education institutions in the philippines. they operationalized the construct research culture adopting indicators from previous studies (bland & ruffin as cited in pratt, margaritis, & coy, 1999; de haven, wilson, & o’connor-kettlestrings, 1998; dundar & lewis, 1998). table 1 lists these indicators below along with their operationalized definitions: table 1. indicators of a research culture (based on salazar-clemeña & almonte-acosta, 2007, p. 4) indicators operationalized definitions institutional research policies and agenda research agenda based on the institution’s philosophy, goals, mission and vision, as well as its research emphasis and strategies for supporting and promoting research. departmental culture and working conditions departmental research programs and strategies designed to encourage and sustain research productivity among the faculty and graduate students. budget for research funds allotted by the institution for research, ability of the institution and its departments to tap external sources and obtain research grants. infrastructure provision of a research unit, adequate research services, and facilities for the conduct of research. collaboration with and access to research professionals in other institutions ability to provide means for linkages with other institutions, local or international, in order to create intellectual synergy. policies and guidelines on research benefits and incentives rules and procedures on the granting of financial and non-financial rewards for research. research committee research monitoring body that screens the types of research conducted and looks into ethical dilemmas involved, especially in sensitive fields. publications quality and quantity of research produced by the faculty members. universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras140 hernández méndez & reyes cruz in addition to these indicators, salazar-clemeña and almonte-acosta (2007) point out the need to include three other components in the analysis: faculty workload; faculty knowledge, abilities, and attitudes to conduct research; and the institutional policies for research. all these together seem to be suitable elements for identifying the research culture of a higher education institution. therefore, the organizational culture perspectives discussed above and these indicators which are particular to the research culture at a university, are guiding this study. method the purpose of this research is descriptiveoriented, and we chose a public university in southeast mexico, and particularly the department of foreign languages and education as our unit of analysis, for this case study. we collected data by using a semi-structured interview whose questions were based on the framework proposed by salazar-clemeña and almonte-acosta (2007). three institutional administrators (the vice-president, the dean of graduate studies and research, and the dean of political sciences and humanities), and five faculty members (three women and two men; one professor and four associate professors) from our department were interviewed. the five faculty/researchers were selected by analysing first the whole department faculty research outputs, their profiles, and their membership to the two main research groups within the department. then, only five representative members from the whole faculty were selected to obtain a range. we triangulated the data by using the interview contents from the administrators and the faculty members, organizational/institutional documents, and data on the faculty research outputs. the analysis and discussion were guided by the theoretical proposals by salazar-clemeña and almonte-acosta (2007), schein (1984, 1985, 1991), and the competing values framework (quinn & rohrbaugh, 1983). findings and discussion this section is organized into three parts. first, we present and discuss the data obtained from the university administrators. next, we do the same but this time with the faculty from the department of languages and education. finally, we compare and contrast both perspectives to shed light on the complex picture of the research culture in this organization. we develop the discussion considering the abovementioned theoretical perspectives. the administrators’ perspective institutional research policies and agenda there was no consensus among the administrators about the existence of a research agenda. nonetheless, the three administrators mentioned the interest of the president and the planning office to encourage educational research (by means of financial support) in order to obtain data that are required by higher education accreditation organizations. all shared the idea that the research policies are agreed upon as needed, and they vary to some extent according to the authorities (the president, the vice-president, or the dean of graduate studies and research), and some have been established differently in the departments; that is, some deans and heads of departments adapt these policies internally. they also agreed that academic freedom can also be observed in the research function. departmental culture and working conditions one administrator did not perceive the existence of subcultures within the institution, nor according to the disciplines, but two administrators believed that some disciplines are more oriented towards research while others are inclined toward 141profile vol. 16, no. 2, october 2014. issn 1657-0790 (printed) 2256-5760 (online). bogotá, colombia. pages 135-150 research culture in higher education: the case of a foreign language department in mexico more teaching or community service activities. two administrators distinguished two sets of professors in the institution: (1) those that have a doctoral degree, have a high level of research output, are more oriented to research, and are members of the sni; and (2) those who have only a master’s degree, limited research skills, and devote more time to teaching or community service. they also agreed that this situation has led the teachers to experience some discontent due to the existing external and internal incentives—mainly economic ones—that are intended to reward and stimulate the faculty’s research productivity. we should mention that teaching does not encourage the same level of compensation as research. to encourage and sustain research productivity, the institution promotes among the faculty their evaluation and accreditation in national programs such as the sni, the promep from the mexican ministry of education, and the productivity reward program. although participation in these programs is “optional,” the institution values members in the sni mainly because they conform to an indicator for rankings and for the authorization of federal funds. one administrator mentioned that some faculty are more interested in research because that is the more rewarded function, and she suggested that there should be a balance in the incentives considering also teaching, administration, and community service. one administrator acknowledged that faculty in the department of foreign languages and education have traditionally been devoted to teaching and some are now coping with difficulties conducting research because of their limited knowledge and skills. he believes that some need more help and that the more experienced professors can actually integrate them into the research projects, but he thinks that doing research is also of a personal interest and not everyone has such an interest. thus, some teachers only do what they are required to do, which is to produce at least one publication a year. budget for research according to two administrators, professors are expected to obtain financial support from external organizations to conduct research. however, this has been observed to be a difficult task for the faculty. they attributed this situation to the excessive paperwork and the lack of interest on behalf of the professors. given that some type of research can be carried out with few resources, some faculty members are not motivated to seek this external financial support. however, being the leader of a project with external financial support is highly respectable and is looked upon favorably by researchers and the institution. the department of languages and education is perceived by the administrators as a department with incipient research projects that are externally financed. institutionally, there are grants to conduct small-scale research projects for faculty members, and grants for graduate and undergraduate students’ writing of their theses. this strategy has increased the rate of graduation, which is highly valued by the institution for rankings, accreditation and funding. federal funds are also provided to all the existing research groups in the institution in order to defray the costs of visiting scholars as well as visits to other institutions. all administrators agreed that faculty rarely complain about funding for research. infrastructure only one administrator highlighted the lack of infrastructure for the graduate programs. a lack of communication between faculty members and the department in charge of infrastructure seemed evident. the university does not have a research building; faculty work in their own offices and some universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras142 hernández méndez & reyes cruz adequate research resources such as databases are available, although one participant pointed out there are “not enough and most of them are not specialised.” however, the administrators said that the faculty do not complain about this situation. collaboration with and access to research professionals in other institutions the administrators agreed that collaboration with external colleagues is increasing, but they consider this as part of the faculty’s responsibility. there are some grants for visits to other institutions, but they are very limited. faculty usually invite or visit external colleagues using external financing. policies and guidelines on research benefits and incentives the participants agreed that incentives are mainly pecuniary, although sometimes they may consist of payment for the publication of a book, grants for travelling, fewer instruction hours, or a better office, among other reasons. however, these rewards are assigned with discretion. with regard to the financial rewards, the national programs have explicit guidelines and rules. all the requirements are clearly stated as well as the procedures of evaluation. these programs classify researchers in different levels or ranks, each one implying different requirements and productivity: the higher the rank, the more money researchers receive. research committee the administrators acknowledged the absence of a research committee in the institution, which supervises the processes of research and ensures ethical standards of research involving human subjects. they are not aware how researchers in the institution ensure that the rights of research participants are protected. publications there was partial agreement among the administrators that the most common type of publication in the institution is book chapters followed by journal papers. they all perceive a rise in the number of publications of the whole faculty in recent years, but there is a shared belief that proceedings and book chapters (published by the same university) are the most prolific ones because they imply less time and effort. the faculty institutional research policies and agenda no institutional research agenda is known among the professors, although they perceive there is an interest in developing educational research, as funding has been lately provided for projects in this field. two professors are unaware of the university’s research lines or its mission and vision with regard to research. the research policies are associated mainly with budget distribution among the different research groups, and the distribution of instructional workload, research, community service, and administration. with regard to the former, in the department of languages and education there are two research groups which get some funding from the federal government. however, not everyone is part of a research group and these people do not have access to these funds. additionally, professors in a research group can be members or collaborators,2 and one professor in the interview mentioned that she, as a collaborator, has not received any financial support. 2 members are officially registered in the ministry of education, and they are compelled to demonstrate productivity and to be evaluated; collaborators are not officially registered. 143profile vol. 16, no. 2, october 2014. issn 1657-0790 (printed) 2256-5760 (online). bogotá, colombia. pages 135-150 research culture in higher education: the case of a foreign language department in mexico as to the workload distribution, this varies according to the faculty academic rank. in the department there are “professors” and “associate professors”. according to one institutional policy, the former have fewer student contact hours and can devote more time for research. associate professors are assigned more instruction hours and the time allocated to conduct research is reduced. consequently, the institutional demands of research outputs are also different: associate professors are compelled to produce one publication annually, while professors must produce at least two publications. all the professors interviewed expressed agreement with this policy, but their main concern was the time dedicated to administrative issues, which consume longer than the amount of hours institutionally allotted for this function. this is what one associate professor, who is also a coordinator of a master’s program, said regarding this: out of my 40 hours, 12 or 15 are devoted to teaching; and a similar amount is dedicated to administration. i work all mornings doing that, and i do research at home, at nights or very late at night if i am still in the mood . . . i’d like to have more time for research because, at the same time, that would help me to improve my teaching. (female associate) similarly, the policy regarding the time for course preparation seems to be unacceptable by the faculty since they perceive the time to be insufficient for this task (half an hour per course hour). the policy of distribution of time per function is perceived by most of the interviewees as inefficient, unreal, and unreasonable. the faculty mentioned that some implications of these policies can be observed in a reduction of research output or its quality as well as in the quality of teaching or less student/tutors contact hours. let us see below two faculty members’ reflections: i think i should dedicate more time to teaching, and i guess i don’t do it because i spend more time thinking about research. (male associate) i devote less time to tutoring and community service...and there are many administration issues that just come up...they hadn’t been planned previously and the faculty has to do them with no excuse and at that precise moment. (female professor) given that the institution evaluates the faculty performance every year taking into consideration teaching, tutoring, administration, and community service, and their contract depends on this, faculty feel pressed and find this situation very stressful. this performance contract for all faculties has been a policy in this university since 2005, and faculty in this department did not complain about it. departmental culture and working conditions there is a feeling among faculty that the administration is not supportive at all of their research activity. one of them said, “nobody cares if i do research or not as long as i meet the requirement of one publication.” three faculty members agreed they feel motivated to do research and enjoy this activity. they also believe that teaching has been neglected to a certain extent not only because faculty are tending to prefer research, but also because administrative issues and community service consume a lot of time. two faculty members (both hold masters’ degrees) said they do not feel motivated to conduct research; they prefer teaching and feel the need to learn more about how to do research. one notable difference between all these faculty members is their research productivity and the rewards they receive. the first three receive monetary incentives through several programs. conversely, the second two receive very little or no incentive at all, because teaching is not rewarded as well as research is and this is the activity to which they devote more time. universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras144 hernández méndez & reyes cruz mentoring among the faculty members3 (with regard to research) does take place in the department, according to the faculty interviewed, but it is not a pervasive practice. they pointed out that factors such as personality, interests, benefits, or drawbacks affect the mentoring, and some highlighted that mentoring is very time-consuming. two of them agreed that mentoring is very helpful, and they would like this to be institutionalized to avoid the informality and to encourage the “experts” to mentor. other subgroups and subcultures identified are the research groups, which derived from a national policy of the ministry of education. faculty members who share one or two lines of research and who work collaboratively among themselves form the research groups at this university. in the department of languages and education, there are two research groups to which most of the faculty belong. however, some faculty members work individually because their interests do not match those of the existing research groups or because of other personal issues. the faculty interviewed perceive collaboration between research groups as nonexistent; only some sporadic activities have been carried out together. they all agreed that although both groups share some research topics, they tend not to work collaboratively. budget for research there is a belief among some faculty that there is a tendency to benefit one research group over the other, or to favor members instead of collaborators. most of them agreed that the budget allotted for research is insufficient for everyone, but they suggested that with a rotation system everybody could benefit. one interviewee, comparing this 3 we understand mentoring as the help that a more experienced researcher provides a less experienced colleague to conduct research. situation with other public universities, emphasized that “here we have much better conditions.” infrastructure some highlighted the need for specialized software or databases. they have solved this problem by getting external financing. in general, they think the infrastructure is adequate in the institution. collaboration with and access to research professionals in other institutions collaboration with research professionals is incipient yet seems to be increasing slowly. both research groups are working with colleagues from other universities, who they contact or get to know at conferences. mobility is almost non-existent in the department and they accept the need to do more about it. policies and guidelines on research benefits and incentives the function of research and the granting of non-financial rewards (e.g., recognition) for research are not important for the head of the department, according to the faculty. for her or him, the research activity seems to be a responsibility of the academic unit, the graduate studies and research office rather than that of the department, which concentrates more on teaching, community service activities, and administration. the faculty agreed that the policies and guidelines on research benefits and incentives (external) are transparent and precise. research committee no research committee exists in the institution, according to the informants. each researcher individually does or does not consider ethical issues in the conduction of research. the more experienced researchers are more aware of the great magni145profile vol. 16, no. 2, october 2014. issn 1657-0790 (printed) 2256-5760 (online). bogotá, colombia. pages 135-150 research culture in higher education: the case of a foreign language department in mexico tude of research ethics, and suggest the institution should have a research committee. publications all agreed that the most frequently published product is conference proceedings, followed by book chapters, and then peer reviewed or referred articles (mainly national, but increasingly international). they believe that proceedings are a less rigorous academic product and less time-consuming. on the other hand, book chapters are more abundant than journal papers because there is a budget in the academic unit assigned for the publication of books. however, books co-edited or published by other institutions and in which faculty of this department participate, are still at an embryonic stage. integrating the administrators’ and the faculty’s perspectives following salazar-clemeña and almonteacosta’s (2007) model, the research culture in this department seems to be still in process. so far, various factors such as the policies (national and institutional), the rewards structures, and the knowledge, skills and interests of the faculty have been identified as the ones shaping this research culture. whether interacting with others or alone, each factor seems to have an effect on the research activity. some administrators distinguished two types of faculty members: those who favor research more over the others, and those who show a tendency to favor teaching. similarly, faculty manifested both tendencies: some said they prefer and devote more time to research whereas others expressed a preference for teaching and administration. interestingly, this preference has to do with their academic rank, academic profile, and the incentives they get. the higher the rank, the higher the academic profile, and the more incentives they get, the preference is towards research. however, this tendency does not mean a lack of interest in research by those who do less research activity. they acknowledged the need to conduct research and are willing to do it if mentoring and time are provided. some of them recognized they need more training to conduct research, but very little is done in this regard, institutionally speaking, since provision of courses or workshops with experts, or policies to adjust the workload distribution are not part of the organizational agenda. time, precisely, seems to be perceived by all faculty interviewed as the main factor that affects the research activity. the policies on the workload distribution seem not be working for anyone, and one function at least seems to be neglected. it is unlikely for faculty members to have a performance balance in all the functions, as the institutional policy establishes. those who conduct research claimed they needed to work extra time because it is a very demanding task. all faculty members agreed that administration is usually the function that takes much more time than that allotted by the institution. with regard to the rewards, most of the financial rewards or incentives are oriented toward research and perceived by the administrators and some faculty as motivating and encouraging. faculty members feel stimulated to conduct research because, besides the financial reward, they get more recognition and respect in academia. actually, rewards for teaching are very limited and the institution itself does not have any other way to acknowledge this function. although one administrator and one faculty member expressed their discontent with these policies and suggested there should be also incentives for the other functions, the general goal seems to be to increase and sustain research in the institution because it is apparently beneficial for everyone: faculty can participate in universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras146 hernández méndez & reyes cruz incentives and reward programs, and the institution, in terms of accountability and funding, benefits if more research and tangible outputs are evidenced. this reward structure seems to be working well for only some of the professors who have the knowledge and skills, although they do not always have all the time needed, and they have to make efforts and work extra time to get the research done. however, there are some faculty members who admit to having a lack of knowledge and skills, and some even lack enthusiasm towards conducting research. for these, some research incentives may be accessible but in a very limited way because they need to compete with other more experienced researchers (there are institutional and national incentive programs), and the research outputs are evaluated quantitatively and qualitatively. although there seems to be some discontent among the people interviewed, this does not apply for everyone. two of them mentioned that nobody complains overtly about this issue although they disagree with the type of incentives and the procedures followed. as to the budget and infrastructure to conduct research, perceptions of faculty and administrators coincided in their saying that although it is by no means the ideal situation, the resources so far are adequate. this response probably has to do, on the one hand, with the fact that the institution promotes faculty participation in national programs, which provide funding for research. being the leader of a national financed research project entails prestige in the incentive programs and among the faculty and the institutional administration. it is now common practice to see a colleague’s picture in the university’s newsletter or its web page who garners respect for having received external funding for a research project. thus, some professors feel motivated to submit proposals to get external financial support and to be able to conduct research that is more sophisticated. on the other hand, some faculty who do not participate in these programs, or if they do their proposal is not accepted, may just conduct research that does not need a lot of investment: some books or updated papers, fieldwork at the same institution, and ideas from their everyday classes. since a research agenda is not explicitly known, no one is obliged to participate or be responsible for a research project, although it is highly recommended and recognized, and faculty are increasingly doing it. this issue is interesting because, apparently, research in this department emerged more because of a national policy or an international trend towards “research universities” rather than because of a conviction of the role and benefits that research can bring to society. throughout the interviews, nobody mentioned why research became another function for the faculty and an interest for the institution. although the development plan of the university (universidad de quintana roo, 2013) does highlight some research lines (education is one of them), their scope is so wide that everything can fit in. the fact that some faculty are unaware of these lines tells us how important they are for the institution. faculty members are free to do research (unless they have a project of a particular national or state program): they choose the topics, the problem, and methodology, the people to work with, the times, and so forth. although there is an institutional policy for faculty to assess their research activity annually (one publication per year for associate professors, and two for professors), quality is irrelevant as it is not evaluated. it seems, therefore, that the only concern is the quantity, a way to show that the institution is doing research for accountability purposes. this preoccupation for quantity and not for quality can also be observed in the lack of institutional support for training faculty in research 147profile vol. 16, no. 2, october 2014. issn 1657-0790 (printed) 2256-5760 (online). bogotá, colombia. pages 135-150 research culture in higher education: the case of a foreign language department in mexico matters. faculty members are required to publish and it is taken for granted they know how to do it. however, one administrator and two professors pointed out that, in general, faculty in language programs had been focused traditionally on teaching, but with the new policies, they now have to do research. however, not everybody is interested or has the skills to conduct research. as the institution seemingly does not help these professors to become researchers, we wanted to know if among the colleagues there was some type of mentoring or help, or guidance from the more experienced ones. however, it was evidenced through the interviews that mentoring is not taking place ordinarily in this department; people are collaborating mainly only with others with similar research experience. professors claimed that mentoring other colleagues is very time-consuming and this would yield less research outputs (consequently, loss of pecuniary incentives, less prestige, and so on). if this activity were to be rewarded, they said they would do it. collaboration between the research groups also seems absent, although they may share some topics or research problems. considering the competing values framework (quinn & rohrbaugh, 1983), the research culture in this department can be identified more as a market culture since it is a results-oriented workplace. however, some features of the hierarchy culture can also be observed. for example, formal rules and policies (derived mainly from national policies) hold the organization together. although procedures and processes have not been well defined, they govern what people do. the incentive structure can actually be thought of as the guideline for academic life in the institution. there is an emphasis on success or “winning” measured by rates, means, rank, level, and so forth. competition is not only outside the university, but also inside. high research productivity is considered the most valuable asset and a symbol of prestige and success. nonetheless, the quality and impact of the research conducted does not seem to be something faculty or representatives think about. conclusions following the international tendencies and models in higher education, the culture observed in this public university in southeast mexico resembles more a market culture than any other type of culture, although some traits of hierarchy culture provide cohesion to the organization. overall, research is perceived as just another function of the workload, as more work to be done; there was scarce evidence of a genuine interest in knowledge, in learning, in advancing, in looking at research as something that can benefit society in general. an attitude of passiveness towards the ongoing changes, the new policies, and regulations in both administrators and faculty could be observed. decisions seem to be made without consensus, without the inclusion of the different participants, and the decisions are rarely questioned. the structure of incentives (not only institutional but national) plays a decisive role, as well as policies, rules and procedures which are used as instruments to have faculty conduct research and, above all, to have products for accountability reports. faculty members respond to them according to their individual attributes, which segments the culture into two main subcultures: the set of faculty qualified and inclined to conduct research, and those whose academic profiles limit them for research. however, there is no cultivation of mentoring, coaching or of leaders caring for others. this makes the culture more competitive and individualistic. universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras148 hernández méndez & reyes cruz 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(2007). developing research culture in philippine higher education institutions: perspectives of university faculty. paper presented at the regional seminar “competition, cooperation, and change in the academic profession: shaping higher education’s contribution to knowledge and research,” hangzhou, china. paris, fr: unesco forum. retrieved from http://unesdoc. unesco.org/images/0015/001578/157869e.pdf schein, e. h. (1984). coming to a new awareness of organizational culture. sloan management review, 25, 3-16. schein, e. h. (1985). organizational culture and leadership. san francisco, ca: jossey bass schein, e. h. (1991). what is culture? in p. frost, l. morre, m. louis, c. lundberg, & j. martin (eds.), reframing organizational culture (pp. 243-253). san francisco, ca: sage. universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras150 hernández méndez & reyes cruz schein, e. h. (1996). culture: the missing concept in organizational studies. administrative science quarterly, 41(2), 229-240. schuster, j. h., & finkelstein, m. j. (2006). the american faculty: the restructuring of academic work and careers. baltimore, md: johns hopkins university. universidad de quintana roo. (2013). plan estratégico de desarrollo institucional (2013-2016) [plan of institutional development, 2013-2016]. quintana roo, mx: author. about the authors edith hernández méndez holds a phd in hispanic linguistics from ohio state university, usa. she is a full time professor at universidad de quintana roo and member of the national system of researchers in mexico. her research interests include language acquisition, language learning and teaching, and sociolinguistics. maría del rosario reyes cruz holds a phd in international education from universidad autónoma de tamaulipas, mexico. she is a full time professor at universidad de quintana roo and member of the national system of researchers in mexico. her research interests include pedagogical beliefs, epistemological beliefs, beliefs about language learning, and educational technology. 153profile vol. 16, no. 1, april 2014. issn 1657-0790 (printed) 2256-5760 (online). bogotá, colombia. pages 153-165 the design of a rubric to evaluate laboratory reports in astronomy: academic literacy in the disciplines el diseño de una rúbrica para evaluar informes de laboratorio en astronomía: la alfabetización académica en las disciplinas maría cristina arancibia aguilera*1 pontificia universidad católica de chile, santiago, chile a rubric was developed to evaluate laboratory reports written by undergraduate students of astronomy and astrophysics from universidad católica de chile. the process of elaboration, peer validation, and application of the rubric to the evaluation of written tasks extended from august 2011 to august 2012. the instrument proved to be effective as an assessment tool that guides teachers towards the fundamental criteria that must be considered when evaluating their students’ writing. moreover, the instrument provides useful guidelines to direct students’ attention towards the critical components of the laboratory report genre. key words: academic genre, academic literacy, assessment, laboratory report, rubric. se elaboró una rúbrica para evaluar informes de laboratorio escritos por estudiantes de pregrado de la carrera de astronomía y astrofísica de la universidad católica de chile. el proceso de elaboración, aplicación y posterior validación de la rúbrica por expertos abarcó desde agosto del 2011 hasta el mismo mes del 2012. el instrumento mostró efectividad como una herramienta que guía a los profesores hacia los criterios fundamentales que deben considerarse cuando se evalúan informes de laboratorio. además, la rúbrica propuesta establece parámetros que enfocan la atención del estudiante hacia las características fundamentales del género informe de laboratorio. palabras clave: alfabetización académica, evaluación, género académico, informe de laboratorio, rúbrica. * e-mail:cristina.arancibia@gmail.com how to cite this article (apa, 6th ed.): arancibia aguilera, m. c. (2014). the design of a rubric to evaluate laboratory reports in astronomy: academic literacy in the disciplines. profile issues in teachers’ professional development, 16(1), 153-165. http://dx.doi.org/10.15446/profile.v16n1.37232. this article was received on february 21, 2013, and accepted on october 18, 2013. universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras154 arancibia aguilera introduction at the turn of the twenty-first century, fairclough (2000) announced the birth of a new rhetoric of reconciliation that advocates for economic progress and social justice. this alignment, however, has not been the only new development. in the last ten years, as rose (2005) claims, the discourse of economic production has colonized education as well as social and scientific research. the demands imposed by capitalist economic models to improve and increase production have extended to academic life. this philosophy is embodied in the aggressive emphasis that many universities place on the evaluation of the academic performance of their scholars, which is based almost exclusively on the production and publication of papers in widely known indexed journals. this emphasis on publication has posed a challenge to the high school and tertiary education curriculum to develop writing competences that prepare students for professional and academic life. successful writing programs in australia (christie & martin, 2007) seek to re-contextualize science into the school curriculum. that is, these writing programs translate the scientific discourse produced at the research level into a pedagogic discourse to develop in their high school students the writing competences that will prepare them to write in the fields of science and technology in tertiary education. similar efforts have been made in numerous countries, which have years of experience in the implementation of writing laboratories in schools and universities. unlike developed countries, latin america has been struggling for decades to raise the population’s literacy level in its mother tongue. most public schools focus on the development of general literacy skills in primar y and secondar y schools, to the detriment of the implementation of a curriculum focused on the formation of academic skills that would train students in the abilities necessary to meet the demands of tertiary education. studies conducted in a number of nations in south america (arnoux, di stefano, & pereyra, 2002; bazerman, 2000; carlino, 2003, 2004, 2006; rosales & vásquez, 1999) confirm that academic failure in the region during the freshman year of college is largely due to difficulties in the completion of reading and writing tasks that constitute the core of most college courses. this situation remained unaltered until the early twenty-first century, when the tentative implementation of writing courses in universities in argentina, chile, and other south american countries began. a decade later, the experience in chile has proven successful; however, the courses currently offered are not open to the entire community of students but, rather, have been tailored to serve the needs of a few schools in the university. in the meantime, professors have also expressed their concern as to the urgent need for the development of reading and writing skills in english, as this is the lingua franca of scientific publication. this problem adds to the fact that academic literacy in the native language (l1) does not automatically transfer to a foreign language (l2). in most cases, having to work in both languages may be the cause of strong sources of interference that affect the writer/speaker’s performance in the mother tongue and in the target language. for the past 20 years, government policies have aggressively tackled the teaching of english in chilean schools; however, results from international exams evaluating the implementation of numerous measures to improve the level of english proficiency in students show only modest progress. universidad católica de chile acknowledges that this problem affects foreign language teaching at the elementary and high school levels and requires every student to certify they have reached an intermediate level of proficiency in english before the completion of their undergraduate studies. freshmen who fail an exam that is given to all students upon entrance to university must take 155profile vol. 16, no. 1, april 2014. issn 1657-0790 (printed) 2256-5760 (online). bogotá, colombia. pages 153-165 the design of a rubric to evaluate laboratory reports in astronomy: academic literacy in the disciplines english courses and obtain certification before they finish their studies. however, such courses aim to develop general communicative skills that favor the development of oral production skills. this paper describes and discusses the interdisciplinary process of elaborating a rubric (see appendix) that helps professors from the department of astronomy from the pontificia universidad católica de chile to evaluate laboratory reports written by sophomore students of licenciatura en astronomía (teaching of astronomy major). the paper provides an overview of academic literacy in tertiary education in south america, specifically in the chilean context. then, it focuses on a brief description of the conditions for the production of a laboratory report in the field of astronomy. finally, the paper tackles the use of rubrics to guide the process of producing and assessing written discourse in the field of astronomy. academic literacy in south american universities the epistemic nature of reading and writing places both processes at the core of the debate over the critical role that the comprehension and production of academic texts has in highly literate contexts. it is well known that reading and writing in academic environments in many south american countries is mostly addressed in tertiary education, quite late considering the cognitive complexity that encompasses the development of receptive and productive skills in disciplinary areas. in addition to a late start in the development of academic literacy skills, obsolete teaching practices in high schools value the rote reproduction of content taught in class over the development of an enquiry-based approach to learning. writing instruction in most latin american high schools is disregarded as an epistemic tool, as its use has been reduced to the reporting of facts discussed in textbooks. in countries such as chile, writing is not considered part of the national selection system to enter university. this mode of selection was eliminated from the national admission examination in 1966, and its inclusion has not been a matter of concern since then. the consequence of chile’s longstanding exclusion policy has been the creation of a gap between the literacy abilities that freshmen have developed over the course of twelve years of schooling and the high demand of the writing tasks faced by students in their first year at university. the context of university freshman classes is dominated by the significant number of individuals who exhibit only a modest development of academic literacy skills, aggravated by little experience in the performance of research tasks. looking for and finding information in libraries and electronic sources often become insurmountable obstacles to first year students. in addition, freshmen see themselves forced to overcome academic shortcomings in a trial and error fashion, as there is no one to assist them in the process of becoming active apprentices in the academic community (arnoux et al., 2002; bazerman, 2000, 2012; carlino, 2003, 2004, 2006). as we have asserted earlier, writing in academic settings implies the construction of an identity, a process that begins with individuals stepping into a disciplinary arena and observing from a peripheral standpoint how knowledge is processed, negotiated, and communicated between experts. this period is then followed by a training stage in w hich apprentices apply particular disciplinary discourse traditions not only to transmit information but also to exchange ideas and evaluate and validate their own perspectives in strict adherence to the norms and conventions of the community (harvey, 2005; harvey & muñoz, 2006; moyano, 2007). the laboratory report genre in astronomy genre studies conducted in chile (har vey, 2005; har vey & muñoz, 2006; núñez & espejo, universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras156 arancibia aguilera 2005; oyanedel, 2005; parodi, 2005) argue for the importance of establishing conceptual differences between a discourse community (swales, 1990) and a community of practice (lave & wenger, 1991). according to harvey and muñoz (2006), the former refers to what swales calls a socio-rhetorical group, that is, a circle with the purpose of maintaining and extending knowledge. a community of practice refers to the development of a master-apprentice relationship as a result of group interaction between members of a community who hold different levels of knowledge and skill development. the foundations of academic literacy lie in the master-apprentice bond constructed as a result of interaction and discourse negotiation, which is not limited to communication between experts and apprentices but also including interaction between apprentices holding different skills and proficiency levels in writing (rose & martin, 2012). as wenger (1998) postulates, communities of practice, unlike discourse communities, are open to new members and provide them with opportunities to participate and continuously acquire and contribute knowledge. this research is in accord with the notion of the community of practice, as its definition best supports the principles of academic literacy in the university context. the basis of our proposal is rooted in the genre-based approach to writing that emerged in the mid-1980s in australia and new zealand, among other countries. the principle that justifies this approach is that human beings process and understand meaningful pieces of information; therefore, texts are processed as social events that occur in situational contexts in which writers use language to meet rhetorical purposes. according to callaghan and rothery (1988), martin and rothery (1993), and rose and martin (2012), teaching writing entails the creation of awareness of how different texts are structured to satisfy a given communicative goal. the implication here is that teachers must emphasize not only linguistic resources authors use to convey meaning but also discourse structure, register, and concept use and control. the genre-based approach takes a top-down perspective, as it emphasizes the social functions of a text, defined by the interweaving of three essential components: field, tenor, and mode. the field lays the grounds for the events to be narrated, discussed, described, and so forth. the tenor refers to the social roles enacted by the readers and writers of the laboratory report. finally, the mode, in the specific case of the laboratory report, denotes a densely written task (rose & martin, 2012). we conducted a semi-structured interview prior to the analysis of the two hundred laboratory reports written by undergraduate students of licenciatura en astronomía from instituto de astrofísica (institute of astrophysics) of the pontificia universidad católica de chile that comprise the corpus of this study. the interview consisted of four questions, the purpose of which was to help the researchers visualize the purpose of the laboratory report, the stages that comprise its structure, and the purpose each stage serves in the overall process of knowledge construction entailed in this type of writing in the discipline. the interviewee was the professor teaching taller de astronomía (astronomy workshop) i and ii at the time this study was conducted. the answers provided by the teacher show that an adequate laboratory report aims to communicate the results of an exp eriment and includes an abstract, objectives, introduction, a reference to the experiment performed and the procedure carried out, results and analysis, and, finally, conclusions. in all, the representation of a laboratory report that faculty members seem to agree upon defines the genre as the synthesis of an experience, including the procedure used in the performance of the experiment. however, they also consider a laboratory report to be bibliographic research that integrates different 157profile vol. 16, no. 1, april 2014. issn 1657-0790 (printed) 2256-5760 (online). bogotá, colombia. pages 153-165 the design of a rubric to evaluate laboratory reports in astronomy: academic literacy in the disciplines perspectives on a single topic. this definition forms the basis of the process of developing a rubric to evaluate laboratory reports. rubrics to guide the process of producing and assessing written tasks in efl the extensive use of rubrics for evaluative purposes has become a new trend in education. in 2001, the common european framework of reference (cefr) produced a complete description of linguistic, sociolinguistic, and pragmatic competences that learners of foreign languages must demonstrate at different levels of proficiency in the performance of written and oral tasks. the rubrics presented by the cefr show a detailed account of elements that play a critical role in oral presentations, face to face interactions, letter writing, and other communicative tasks that are fulfilled in either the oral or written modes of language. the production of texts in a foreign language entails a strategic organization of linguistic, socio linguistic, and pragmatic resources and the combination of different competences involved in writing in l2. flower and hayes (1981) and hayes (1996) suggested that written production can be conceived as a three-stage process, which mainly consists of planning, translating, and revising. each stage in the cognitive model postulated by flower and hayes is subdivided into sub-stages that involve cognitive processing in which l2 learners engage while composing. in most cases, english as a foreign language (efl) learners tend to divide planning into a stage of rehearsal in which individuals analyze the purpose of a given writing task to consider the type of audience they are addressing and mobilize the necessary language resources to adjust their writing to the objective of the task. during the translation stage, l2 learners display compensation strategies to counterbalance the lack of linguistic, sociolinguistic, and/or pragmatic resources while writing. another strategy commonly used by individuals is called “trying out,” the mechanism by which learners test the appropriateness of using certain language resources in specific contexts. the evaluation stage is characterized by two sub-stages, monitoring and self-correction or repair, metacognitive strategies usually used by foreign language learners to reflect upon their own writing. in the late 1990s and early twenty-first century, hayes (1996) and deane, sabatini, and fowles (2012), respectively, suggest that writing is a social activity, the learning of which involves developing strategies to accomplish the array of purposes that underlie negotiations of discourse in every culture. deane et al. (2012) expand what had been claimed by bereiter and scardamalia (1987), flower and hayes (1981), and hayes (1996) in an updated model of writing that synthesize these earliest models. given that writing is a social activity that results from the negotiation of genre in every culture, our enquiry into the assessment of writing tasks applies a psycho-sociolinguistic approach to this public activity. writing as a psycholinguistic activity entails myriad complex cognitive abilities that writers must mobilize and apply during the process of composing. deane (2010) and deane et al. (2012) suggest grouping the complex skills involved in the writing process under the sets of abilities that would globalize the essence of every skill activated while composing. the authors argue that, in the process of writing, there is a set of reflective, expressive, and receptive skills involved, which matches the planning, translation, and revision skills in classical models. the activation of skills across the process of writing is closely connected to the multiple cognitive representations of pragmatic, sociolinguistic, and linguistic competences in play during composing. these competences have a critical role in the successful completion of the written task and become fundamental in the design of a rubric that universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras158 arancibia aguilera may assist professors and students in the process of teaching and learning to write. the authors distinguish three fundamental skills in what they postulate as a competency model, that is, a representation of the competences at play in writing. the model proposed by deane (2010) distinguishes a first skill, language and literacy, which operates at a sentence level and comprises conventions underlying the use of standard language, clarity and variety of sentence structure, and command of vocabulary. the second skill is writing strategies, and its main focus is document level skills, or the competences of organizing, placing emphasis, and developing a topic in writing tasks. the third and last skill is critical thinking for writing, which involves content-related and socially defined background skills, that is, abilities pertaining to the mastery of argumentation and evaluation beyond the adjustment to standards for writing in academic settings, such as those related to the social role that a writer has in the academia. the rubric proposed in this study follows the principles postulated by deane (2010) and deane et al. (2012) for assessing writing in academic settings. there are three components to the rubric discussed in this paper. the first are the criteria or conditions that a written task must meet. next are the descriptors or explanations of the criteria at each level of performance. the third component is the scaling or level of proficiency writers usually show in the performance of a written task. criteria and scaling to evaluate writing performance in laboratory reports writing as a psycholinguistic activity entails triggering the reflective, expressive, and receptive modes of thought that are at work across the process of writing. every mode of thought activates cognitive skills connected to the pragmatic, sociolinguistic, and linguistic representation of the writing task during planning, writing, and editing (bereiter & scardamalia, 1987; flower & hayes, 1981; graham & perin, 2007; marinkovich, 2002). the criteria identified for the rubric proposed in this paper conform to several forms of the cognitive representations that derive from the pragmatic, sociolinguistic, and linguistic competences involved in writing. according to deane (2010), the first of the varied representations constructed in the writing process is social and rhetorical elements. this representation refers to a mental image of the written task that writers construct in light of the social and institutional context in which the writing task is embedded. the second representation corresponds to what deane calls conceptual elements, a representation of the subject matter to be dealt with. the third is textual elements and comprises representations of the text structure and coherence. the fourth is verbal elements, which entail the linguistic representation of sentences and propositions. the last corresponds to lexical/orthographic elements, which show how verbal elements are instantiated in written texts. based on the numerous mental representations that play a critical role in cognition during writing (deane, 2010), the rubric we propose in this study identifies as its first criterion the conventions of the laboratory report. this standard defines competent writing as the writer’s demonstrated ability to take an impersonal theoretical approach to the task of addressing the rhetorical problem. a competent writer is able to use language and expressions in a manner appropriate to the conventions of a formal register. in addition, a writer at a competent level presents information synthetically and shows some creativity in the communication of information. creativity is understood as the ability the writer has to express the product of their findings in his/her own words. the second criterion corresponds to conceptual reasoning, the substantial mastery of disciplinary 159profile vol. 16, no. 1, april 2014. issn 1657-0790 (printed) 2256-5760 (online). bogotá, colombia. pages 153-165 the design of a rubric to evaluate laboratory reports in astronomy: academic literacy in the disciplines concepts that a competent writer demonstrates in the careful selection of ideas that exceed in quality and number the concepts delineated by a reference framework traditionally known to a learner. under conceptual reasoning, we can also consider the ability to construct coherence, that is, the skill of a proficient writer in controlling the inclusion and exclusion of information on the basis of his/her knowledge of the target audience. disciplinary writing implies that a task is being addressed to an audience that is familiar with the topic of discussion; therefore, a skilled writer knows what information to omit due to its obviousness. another criterion considered essential to the evaluation of academic writing is discourse knowledge. this standard implies that a writer at a proficient level can produce a written task that follows a textual pattern, but it also considers the rhetorical movements or move and step analysis discussed by swales (1990). rhetorical movements, according to swales, are the foundations of genre because these moves give every section of the research paper, journal article, or laboratory report the essence by which we recognize an introduction as such (swales, 1990). finally, the last criterion considered fundamental for writing in a foreign language is use of linguistic resources. this aspect involves the ability to use complex grammatical structures and an accurate selection of vocabulary to communicate ideas with precision and clarity. a proficient writer is capable of selecting a wide variety of connectors to produce a coherent and cohesive piece of writing that fits the demands of a laboratory report in the target field. the scaling defines three levels of proficiency, namely : competent, functional, and initial. the names chosen for the scales conform to the principle underlying evaluation for learning (east, 2009; knoch, 2011), that is, observed mistakes identify the challenges learners must tackle to advance to a higher level of performance. the performance level named competent comprises skills that clearly go beyond core expectations. that is, competent writers show a critical and reflective approach to the issue being discussed, demonstrated in the ability of individuals to integrate and apply new knowledge with some independence from what recognized authors postulate about the topic under study. the next level is called functional and describes the ability of an individual to complete a writing task by meeting the basic requirements. at this level, writers usually engage in the completion of the writing task with very little independence from what authorities assert about the issue being discussed. this level is manifested by the choice of concepts and linguistic resources to paraphrase what other authors assert about the topic. there is little space for interpretation and discussion of the task by the author. the last level, called initial, is intended to describe writers who have not yet reached the basic level of expectations. at this level, readers are most likely to find concepts incorrectly used or defined and the presence of many mistakes in the choice of linguistic resources. one of the greatest challenges that professors may face when designing a rubric is the complexity that demands the description of abilities according to criteria for every performance level. such descriptions require a clear assessment of abilities that are involved in writing that are not considered part of the disciplinary content. most professors ignore the technical names of standards or cannot make a clear distinction between them. another possible difficulty is the approach the professor takes when describing abilities, as most feedback concentrates on negative aspects of assignments. the design proposed in this paper focuses on abilities that characterize each performance level; therefore, the concepts are positive and indicate the challenges the student must overcome to reach a level of writing that qualifies them to be considered part of a given community of knowledge. universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras160 arancibia aguilera the classical models of writing proposed by bereiter and scardamalia (1987) suggest that a way to scaffold students’ advances for a more mature level is to provide them with common phrases or expressions grouped according to their rhetorical functions; for example, introducing a new idea, elaborating the idea previously introduced, etc. students could then count on the linguistic resources necessary to construct a fluent and well-structured writing task. the idea we propose in this paper consists of developing lists of linguistic resources grouped according to the rhetorical function they serve in the different sections of a laboratory report. these guidelines would awaken students’ awareness of how experts structure an abstract in a laboratory report. an analysis of how information is conveyed linguistically gives students a basis from which to start their own writing tasks. another critical aspect in the design of a teaching/ learning instrument of evaluation is the feedback that teachers may derive from its use. an essential feature of a rubric is its focus on competences, that is, the emphasis on skills that characterize the writing process at a competent, functional, and initial level. the focus on competences usually describes what the individual can do at a certain level of proficiency. the strength of a rubric as a teaching/learning instrument of evaluation lies in the positive statement of the skills an individual is capable of displaying during the complex process of planning, composing and revising. consequently, the feedback generated by the use of rubrics to evaluate written tasks concentrates on the skills the writer exhibits in the completion of a task and also provides the writer with information about how distant/close their writing may be to becoming competent. conclusions this paper reasserts the classical reading-writing connection that makes both activities fundamental to academic literacy in tertiary education. comprehension is critical, as discourse is the product in which habits of thinking are realized. that is, written production entails the careful selection, evaluation, and integration of information in a discourse to provide a critical view of different perspectives that coexist in the study of a given phenomenon. currently, writing is no longer seen as a solipsist cognitive process that begins and ends with the individual. today, writing entails the performance of a social and political activity that involves the negotiation of identity in close connection with the individual’s social role in a community. the concept of communities of practice, developed in the late 1990s by wenger (1998), serves as the basis of academic literary. this concept has been found to represent perfectly the apprentice-expert-other apprentice relationship that scaffolds the development of literacy skills in new members. this apprentice-expert relationship has been, as a matter of fact, almost non-existent in most south american universities. this phenomenon is explained by the dominant belief that the development of academic literacy is a responsibility of high school teachers. consequently, for a long time, universities did not assume their share in the responsibility of fostering the development of skills to comprehend and produce the discourse at the heart of every academic community. the result of this long-standing belief has certainly affected the academic performance of undergraduates, who frequently struggle to meet the requirements of an academic life that does not provide them with the necessary tools to succeed. the design of a rubric that serves the purpose of evaluating written tasks and specifying useful guidelines to write laboratory reports has resulted in an arduous but rewarding task because it has enabled the construction of an interdisciplinary dialogue between astronomers and linguists to create an instrument of evaluation that responds to the production conditions of laboratory reports in astronomy in a foreign language. 161profile vol. 16, no. 1, april 2014. issn 1657-0790 (printed) 2256-5760 (online). bogotá, colombia. pages 153-165 the design of a rubric to evaluate laboratory reports in astronomy: academic literacy in the disciplines inspired by a model of writing suggested by deane (2010) and encouraged by the proposal of a genrebased pedagogy by rose and martin (2012), the rubric described in this paper emphasizes the competences involved in the representation of the rhetorical problem in its social, discursive, linguistic, and disciplinary aspects. the rubric we propose describes skills writers usually demonstrate at an initial, functional, and competent level of performance. the scaling conforms to a view of writers as apprentices who are expected to evolve from a beginner level of proficiency in writing to an advanced performance level that will allow them to become potential members of the community of practice, as defined by astronomers. references arnoux, e., di stefano, m., & pereyra, c. (2002). la lectura y la escritura en la universidad [reading and writing at university]. buenos aires, ar: eudeba. bazerman, c. (2000). shaping written knowledge: the genre and activity of the experimental article in science. madison, wi: the university of wisconsin press. retrieved from http://wac.colostate.edu/books/bazerman_shaping/ bazerman, c. (2012). genre as social action. in j. p. gee & m. handford (eds.), the routledge handbook of discourse analysis (pp. 226-238). london, uk: routledge. bereiter, c., & scardamalia, m. (1987). the psychology of written composition. hillsdale, nj: lawrence erlbaum. callaghan, m., & rothery, j. (1988). teaching factual writing: a genre based approach. marrickville, au: dsp literacy project, metropolitan east region. carlino, p. (2003). alfabetización académica: un cambio necesario, algunas alternativas posibles [academic literacy: a necessary change, some posible alternatives]. educere, 6(20), 409-420. carlino, p. 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(2009). evaluating the reliability of a detailed analytic scoring rubric for foreign language writing. assessing writing, 14(2), 88-115. fairclough, n. (2000). new labour, new language? london, uk: routledge. flower, l., & hayes, j. r. (1981). a cognitive process theory of writing. college composition and communication, 32(4), 365-387. graham, s., & perin, d. (2007). writing next: effective strategies to improve writing of adolescents in middle and high schools—a report to the carnegie corporation of new york. washington, dc: alliance for excellence in education. harvey, a. (2005). la evaluación en el discurso de informes es critos por estudiantes universitarios chilenos [evaluation of discourse in written reports by chilean university students]. in m. pilleux (ed.), los contextos del discurso (pp. 215-228). santiago, cl: frasis. harvey, a. m., & muñoz, d. 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(2005). democratising the classroom: a literacy pedagogy for the new generation. journal of education, 37, 131-167. rose, d., & martin, j. r. (2012). learning to write, reading to learn: genre, knowledge and pedagogy in the sydney school. sheffield, uk: equinox publishing. swales, j. m. (1990). genre analysis: english in academic and research settings. cambridge, uk: cambridge university press. wenger, e. (1998). communities of practice. cambridge, uk: cambridge university press. about the author maría cristina arancibia aguilera, doctorate in linguistics from pontificia universidad católica de valparaíso, works as an assistant professor in the department of linguistics at pontificia universidad católica de chile. her areas of expertise include the evaluation of comprehension and production of discourse in foreign language and critical discourse analysis. acknowledgements i would like to thank dr. gaspar galaz from the instituto de astrofísica of the universidad católica de chile for his valuable feedback and continuous support for the undertaking of the research summarized in this paper. this article is part of the project fondedoc 2011 “la evaluación de informes de laboratorio escritos en inglés por estudiantes de licenciatura en astronomía: una mirada interdisciplinaria” funded by the pontificia universidad católica de chile. 163profile vol. 16, no. 1, april 2014. issn 1657-0790 (printed) 2256-5760 (online). bogotá, colombia. pages 153-165 the design of a rubric to evaluate laboratory reports in astronomy: academic literacy in the disciplines appendix: rubric for the evaluation of laboratory reports proyecto fondedoc 2011-2012 criteria competent functional initial conceptual reasoning definition: command of disciplinary concepts in the theoretical framework, analysis, and discussion of results of an observation of a phenomenon. criteria: precision and correctness in the use of disciplinary concepts. [100-90] the report presents a theoretical framework that shows there was a revision of the relevant bibliography in the area. the analysis and discussion of the results of the experimental application (observation of phenomenon) show a mastery of ideas pertaining to astronomy. [80-89] the theoretical background presents a suitable revision of the relevant bibliography in the area. the analysis and discussion of the results of the experimental application demonstrate a good management of disciplinary concepts. some concepts are dealt with superficially. [70-79] the theoretical framework shows a partial revision of the relevant literature on the phenomenon to be observed. there is a regular level of comprehension regarding the phenomenon observed. this comprehension is illustrated in the partial development of the analysis and discussion of results. [60-69] the presence of a scantily developed theoretical framework indicates a poor revision of the relevant bibliography in the area. the analysis and discussion of the results show a poor explanation of the data related to the phenomenon under observation. [50-59] the development of a theoretical framework is based on personal opinions and scant revision of the bibliography related to the phenomenon to be observed. the analysis and discussion of the results show no elaboration of analysis or argumentation but a reiteration of ideas previously stated. universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras164 arancibia aguilera criteria competent functional initial discourse knowledge definition: ability to produce a report that follows a canonical textual organization. criteria: coherent organization of ideas in the different sections that comprise a laboratory report. [100-90] the writing task perfectly fits the discourse pattern of the laboratory report. every section of the report (abstract, introduction, theoretical framework, methodology, analysis and discussion, and conclusions) is developed in close relation to its rhetorical purpose (e.g., the introduction presents a general overview of the problem and defines the purpose of the report). (80-89) the writing task fits the standards set for a good laboratory report. the writing task presents all the sections (abstract, introduction, etc.) identified for a laboratory report. the sections that comprise the laboratory report present an adequate depth of development. [70-79] the writing task fits the standards set for an acceptable laboratory report. the writing task presents all the sections (abstract, introduction, etc.) identified for a laboratory report. the sections that compose the laboratory report present limited depth of development. [60-69] the writing task excludes some sections of the laboratory report. information corresponding to a clearly identified section of a traditional laboratory report is included in other sections, creating confusion in the reader. [50-59] the writing task excludes all sections that comprise a laboratory report. the report is presented in an essay-like format. conventions of the laboratory report definition: awareness of the social communicative purpose served by a laboratory report. criterion: ability to maintain a voice and tone appropriate to the purpose of a lab report. [100-90] the stance or theoretical perspective of the author (use of third person) and formality in language perfectly fit the conventions established regarding the production of a scientific report. [80-89] the stance or theoretical perspective of the author (use of third person) frequently fits the conventions established regarding the production of a scientific report. only occasionally are there a few shifts from a distant to a more personal style, but these shifts are limited to two or three sentences in the whole report. [70-79] there are regular shifts from a distant to a more personal style when presenting methodology, results, and conclusions. register shifts (use of informal expressions) may affect the communicative purpose of the writing task. [60-69] there are numerous shifts from a distant to more personal style of communicating information. register shifts (use of informal expressions) affect the communicative purpose of the writing task. [50-59] the report shows an absence of formal language. this is evidenced by the violation of register conventions regarding the use of a distant personal style (the writing task shares many characteristics with spoken language). 165profile vol. 16, no. 1, april 2014. issn 1657-0790 (printed) 2256-5760 (online). bogotá, colombia. pages 153-165 the design of a rubric to evaluate laboratory reports in astronomy: academic literacy in the disciplines criteria competent functional initial use of linguistic resources definition: ability to select grammatical structures that communicate meanings clearly. criteria: precision in the choice of vocabulary and typical expressions of the genre. cohesion: linguistic resources that provide the text with semantic unity. [100-90] the report shows an outstanding use of syntactically complex grammatical structures and an accurate selection of vocabulary and expressions to communicate ideas with precision and correctness. a close examination of the task shows a wide use of a range of connectors to link information at the sentence and paragraph level to create a highly coherent piece of writing. [80-89] there is a correct use of grammatical structures. the choice of vocabulary shows items not commonly used by native speakers in the context of a lab report in astronomy, but they can be perfectly understood by any academic audience familiar with the issue being discussed. the writer makes use of a moderate variety of connectors to construct a coherent piece of writing. [70-79] a large number of syntactic structures show interference from the student’s mother tongue. the choice of vocabulary confirms a lack of precision and limited lexical resources due to elementary linguistic proficiency in the foreign language. elementary linguistic proficiency in the l2 results in a limited use of connectors. [60-69] most syntactic structures present strong interference from the student’s mother tongue. the choice of vocabulary shows a poor selection of low frequency words and expressions in the area of astronomy. the written task presents some local coherence. [50-59] syntactic structures present strong interference from the student’s mother tongue. the choice of vocabulary is limited to low frequency words and expressions. most expressions correspond to direct translation from expressions in the writer’s mother tongue. the text shows a minimum presence of connectors. 69profile vol. 15, no. 2, october 2013. issn 1657-0790 (printed) 2256-5760 (online). bogotá, colombia. pages 69-84 student-teachers’ teaching techniques: actors in pupils’ extrinsic motivation as they speak técnicas de enseñanza de los docentes practicantes: actores en la motivación extrínseca de los estudiantes a la hora de hablar leidy tatiana báez dueñas*1 leidy marcela chacón vargas**2 universidad pedagógica y tecnológica de colombia this article describes a research project we carried out in order to study the role of student-teachers’ teaching techniques as regards their pupils’ extrinsic motivation as they partake in communicative speaking activities at a public school in tunja, colombia. data were gathered by means of field notes, focus groups and student-teachers’ documents. findings revealed that student-teachers assume different roles regarding their teaching techniques depending on the stage of the class (presentation, practice, and production). the techniques, at the same time, constitute the nature of these roles. explorers, keepers, and producers were the main roles that participants assumed when they involved their students in communicative speaking activities. key words: development of speaking skill, efl student-teachers, extrinsic motivation, teaching techniques in efl. este artículo describe un proyecto de investigación llevado a cabo para estudiar la función que tienen las técnicas de enseñanza empleadas por los docentes practicantes en la motivación extrínseca cuando sus estudiantes participan en actividades orales comunicativas, en un colegio público de tunja (colombia). los datos se recolectaron por medio de notas de campo, grupos focales y los planes de clase de los futuros docentes. los resultados revelaron que las técnicas de enseñanza empleadas por los practicantes tienen diferentes funciones dependiendo de la etapa de la clase (presentación, práctica o producción) en que se usen. los principales papeles que los participantes adoptaron al involucrar a sus estudiantes en actividades orales comunicativas fueron: exploradores, cuidadores y productores. palabras clave: desarrollo de habilidad oral, docentes de inglés en formación, inglés como lengua extranjera, motivación extrínseca, técnicas de enseñanza del inglés. * e-mail: leidytatis23@hotmail.com ** e-mail: myleydy4@hotmail.com this article was received on december 8, 2012, and accepted on july 1, 2013. universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras70 báez dueñas & chacón vargas introduction due to the fact that in colombia the efl teaching process is more demanding every day, analyzing the different factors that take place in the daily teaching practices for qualifying this process is a must. however, in a context like the student-teachers’ practicum, the issues related to teaching techniques, students’ extrinsic motivation and oral skills deserve special attention as they have not been deeply explored. so, it is highly important to analyze how these elements work together for enhancing teaching practices. in that respect, our initial concern to develop this project emerged from our personal experiences as student-teachers in a public school in tunja. in this context, students’ motivation to perform in english as a foreign language was extrinsic; their oral participation mainly depended on external or physical rewards, so student-teachers were moved to use them as a tool in the development of their pupils’ speaking skill. this was done with the purpose of implementing a communicative approach. bearing in mind this previous assertion, we feel it is crucial to bring up the constructs from interactionism, one of the efl acquisition theories, as it emphasizes the importance of communicative contact between speakers, a statement supported by authors like pica (1994) and long (1985) when they assert that conversational interaction facilitates fl acquisition under certain conditions. this assertion should guide student-teachers to reflect on those techniques that take part in encouraging students as regards their speaking development. in terms of such techniques, it was valuable to think about the activities implemented by studentteachers when conducting the english teaching and learning process. as these strategies appeared as sources of motivation, their relationship with students’ extrinsic motivation during their practice of oral skills in english required a wide exploration. in that sense, reflecting on the global efl context, we see that motivation is one of the factors that influences the extent to which people succeed or fail in any learning process. it is easy in language learning to claim that a learner will be more successful with a type of intrinsic motivation, but it has also been said that some individuals “have little capacity for internal motivation and must be guided and reinforced constantly. the use of incentives is based on the principle that learning occurs more effectively when the student experiences feelings of satisfaction” (weller, 2005, “internal motivation is longer lasting,” para. 1). equally important, at the national level, la ley general de educación (ministerio de educación nacional [men], 1994), states that communicative competence development in a foreign language has to start at the early educational levels. all the same, the curricular guidelines for teaching english (men, 2006) establish that language teaching has been deemed relevant in using the language as a key element of communication through interaction; so it demands the application of techniques in the foreign language teaching process that keeps students motivated to use english orally. unfortunately in our immediate context there is a lack of studies focusing on student-teachers in order for them to characterize their teaching techniques. one of the reasons why this situation has not been explored, as it should be, is because most of the time current research has been focused on students’ intrinsic motivation and the activities teachers use to promote it following the thought that, as indicated by bruner (cited in brown, 2000), “one of the most effective ways to help students think and learn is to free them from the control of rewards and punishments” (p. 165). so this project was focused on the counterpart of this issue. then its main purpose was to analyze and characterize the role of studentteachers’ teaching techniques regarding their pupils’ 71profile vol. 15, no. 2, october 2013. issn 1657-0790 (printed) 2256-5760 (online). bogotá, colombia. pages 69-84 student-teachers’ teaching techniques: actors in pupils’ extrinsic motivation... extrinsic motivation as they partake in communicative speaking activities at a public school in tunja. from this situation, we realized the considerable responsibility student-teachers have in encouraging their students to speak in class because this is one of the most neglected skills in these settings, even though foreign language acquisition theories are based on communicative principles. in our immediate context, students felt excited to speak in class when their teachers provided them with rewards or positive feedback. then, it shows that students do not necessarily use english in class just because they are intrinsically motivated. it means that the techniques used by the teacher can be one of the ways to cause the speaking skill to become a need for students. in that respect, vilímec (2006, p. 33) claims that the “teacher’s main task will therefore be to make sure that the students know what to practice, and that they practice effectively, together with organizing the activities and checking while students are performing.” in that sense studentteachers’ techniques constitute an important factor concerning students’ motivation to learn english. at the same time, this study also considered a population that was not a common source of research, perhaps because of its little experience in teaching. in that way, it was interesting to know how studentteachers as members of a new generation in the educational field put into practice their pedagogical knowledge for achieving the goals of english teaching based on the students’ extrinsic motivation. literature review bearing in main the main objective of this study, one sees that this chapter provides theoretical considerations under which it was framed as well as our own conceptual constructs. appealing to the student-teacher concept, there is one that is closely related: pre-service teaching. this is understood by schön (as cited in wallace, 1991) as “the stage where beginning teachers obtain substantial on-campus coursework that they expect to transfer directly to the in-school practical setting where they begin to act as a teacher” (p. 13). it means that preservice teachers are those prospective teachers who are putting into practice their knowledge in a real classroom environment after a complete teaching training program. along with this concept, it is also meaningful to mention that novice teachers constitute a source of creativity, innovation, and motivation that spring up in the implementation of strategies geared to their students’ benefit. this is related to t he results of t he study conducted by gürbüz (2006) whose aim was to investigate student-teachers’ own perceptions of pre-service english language teachers’ strong and weak areas of language teaching practice in a turkish context. in gürbüz’s words, outcomes showed that student-teachers were very good at preparing visually attractive, colorful, and creative materials appealing to students’ needs and interests, and catering to all learning styles and all types of intelligences. secondly, they were able to create a positive and receptive learning atmosphere in class and to establish rapport with students. their good interactional skills in the classroom were directly related to their motivation and enthusiasm in teaching. although student-teachers themselves did not list motivation as their strength, it was easily observable in their creativity and effort regarding their materials and activities preparation. finally, another point not mentioned by studentteachers was good lesson planning, which emerged as a strength in their teaching. the other theoretical layer from those established in the research question is teaching techniques. these have been understood as the implementation of activities that teachers carry out in their classroom with their students. bearing in mind the goals they universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras72 báez dueñas & chacón vargas set, educators work in specific areas of the teaching process. in that respect, we found brown’s assertion useful (as cited in gavilán, 2008). he claims that: a teaching technique is a superordinate term to refer to various activities that either teachers or learners perform in the classroom since they include all tasks and activities. in addition, they are almost planned and deliberate, considering they are the product of a choice made by the teacher that can be addressed to the pedagogical units or components of a classroom session. (p. 165) at the same time crookes (2003, p. 144) states that, “an activity is a segment of classroom life. . . intended to cover all distinguishable behavioral segments in a classroom.” following this line of thought, we feel it is clear that even though teachers’ planning includes the activities to be developed in the classroom, these intentions are influenced by how actions actually take place, depending on the stages of the class, as well as students’ characteristics (learning styles, type of motivation, interests, needs, etc.), among others. we can say that teaching techniques acquire sense depending on how they are implemented by educators; additionally, the objective they pursue is based on their students’ needs. so, it implies the design and application of different activities that respond to both teachers’ use of strategies and the objectives of class segments. appealing to the literature, there is a study carried out by gavilán (2008). its outcomes gave us lights as to characterizing the nature of teaching techniques. the chief aim of this research was to describe the activities implemented by two firstsemester english teachers and categorize them within the frame of language teaching techniques stated by brown (2001): controlled, semi-controlled, and free within the context of a languages teaching program. the techniques used for data collection were based upon class observations, teachers’ logs, and a semistructured interview. looking at the outcomes of this investigation, we can say that teaching techniques acquire sense depending on the control teachers place on them; additionally, as already mentioned, the objective they pursue is based on their students’ needs. so, it implies the designing and application of different activities that respond to both the teachers’ control and to the objectives of the class segments. at the same time, the accomplishment of such objectives is intrinsically related to the students’ abilities to face the challenges through the instructional segments of a class. extrinsic motivation is the following key concept we will discuss. it is important to say that in spite of the fact that intrinsic motivation is more valuable and permanent than the instrumental one, it has also been demonstrated that students need outside stimuli (grades, prizes, extra points, public recognition, etc.) as a guarantee for successful performance in classrooms. this aspect is reinforced by akey (2006) when she claims that “in the educational setting, students need incentives to perform, so one of the real situations that teachers must face is to provide students with tangible rewards” (p. 5). at the same time, deci (1972, p. 23) explains that “extrinsically motivated behaviors are carried out in anticipation of a reward from outside and beyond the self. typical extrinsic rewards are money, prizes, grades, and even a certain type of positive feedback.” those outcomes provided us with contributions in terms of understanding extrinsic motivation as a way of making students more confident when achieving the learning goals that an activity enhances in their learning process. rewards cannot be enough to sustain the idea of an intrinsically motivated student, but they can be sufficient for maintaining extrinsically motivated students’ effort at any task as well as at any skill development. to support the previous assertions, there is an exploration about different ways in which motivation 73profile vol. 15, no. 2, october 2013. issn 1657-0790 (printed) 2256-5760 (online). bogotá, colombia. pages 69-84 student-teachers’ teaching techniques: actors in pupils’ extrinsic motivation... has been conceived according to the development of teaching and learning approaches in psychology and in tesol (teaching english to speakers of other languages). it was conducted by bastidas (2006) who called it “a framework to understanding motivation in the tesol field.” in this article the author presents an overview of the approaches used to contextualize motivation in psychology and apply it to tesol. this study states that traditionally, motivation was studied in behavioral terms in the psychological context. in the tesol field, two types of motivation were proposed: instrumental and integrative. in recent studies, the study of motivation from a cognitive perspective, where intrinsic and extrinsic orientations are its main constructs, has been proposed. t he l i g ht c om i ng f rom t h is stu dy l e t s us understand the value and the importance of the outer world in students’ learning. on the contrary, it must be a motivational channel through which intrinsic force surrounded by the extrinsic one results in more realistic, authentic and meaningful experiences in the efl classroom. the last spinal cord concept for this investigation was communicative speaking activities. looking at the theory, brown (1994, p. 245) stated that among the most important features in communicative language teaching (clt), the following aspects are present or noteworthy: “language techniques are designed to engage learners in the pragmatic, authentic, functional use of language for meaningful purposes. in the communicative classroom, students ultimately have to use the language, productively and receptively, in unrehearsed context.” it means that what turns an activity into a communicative one is the opportunity students have to express their thoughts and feelings as clearly and concretely as possible which leads them to gain confidence and achieve the communicative goals when facing any oral or written situation. likewise, through communicative activities learners establish relationships with others where they negotiate meaning and assume different roles. considering the speaking skill and its connection with communicative activities, we found littlewood’s taxonomy (1991, pp. 16-36) useful. he classified communicative activities into two further categories: functional activities and social interaction activities. in regard to the first one, the chief goal is to encourage students’ ability to use the language they know to achieve the goals of communication like solving problems or making decisions. turning to the second one, the social interaction activities attempt to extend the pragmatic use of the language. it means that communication is mediated by the context in which its participants have to adapt their discourse in terms of how, when, where, and what to say. research design with the purpose of answering the question stated in this study, we followed the principles of qualitative research, defined by merriam (as cited in nunan, 1998, p. 77) as “an intensive, holistic, descriptive analysis of a single entity, phenomenon of social unit.” this approach was selected because the project was framed in a social environment where a specific situation was described, analyzed and characterized. moreover, this research was descriptive as well as interpretative, guided by the case study approach. this methodology is defined in yin’s terms (1984, p. 23) as “an empirical inquiry that investigates a contemporary phenomenon within its real-life context; when the boundaries between phenomenon and context are not clearly evident; and in which multiple sources of evidence are used.” it also presented a detail account of the phenomenon under study and contains a description to collect information in order to interpret and construct new knowledge. universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras74 báez dueñas & chacón vargas setting and participants this research took place at a public school in tunja, colombia, where our participants were immersed, more specifically at universidad pedagógica y tecnológica de colombia (uptc). the participants in this investigation were tenth semester pre-service student-teachers in the modern languages program at uptc. this was a group of three people. the three pre-ser vice teachers were particularly selected because their practicum took place at a public school where the two researchers had a good opportunity to get the data. those student-teachers were in the last phase of their university formation, but also in the first stage of their professional life. it means that they possessed knowledge of different disciplines that are present in their program curriculum i.e. pedagogical projects, communicative projects, didactics i and ii, applied linguistics, grammar, phonetics, literature, etc. in addition, they had previously had experiences in teaching english for about thirty sessions or classes throughout their eighth and ninth semesters. data collection instruments and methodology with the purpose of achieving the research objective of this investigation, four instruments were used: field notes, focus group (audio recorded meetings), student-teachers’ documents (lesson plans) and students’ interviews. thirty observations of the studentteachers’ classes were conducted and recorded in a form (see appendix a). this instrument was structured into two main parts. in the first one, the researchers wrote a detailed description of what happened in the classroom. in the second one, the information gathered in the first part was organized as well as connected with theory. each participant was observed ten times for the purpose of achieving the following objectives: to identify the oral teaching techniques as well as the different extrinsic motivators (rewards, positive feedback) implemented by pre-service teachers as their students developed speaking activities. secondly we audio recorded four focus group sessions with the three participants along the development of the project. the chief discussion topics were: the type of activities that student-teachers conducted in class for students to talk; the extrinsic motivators used in class; the teaching sequence that was followed in class and the different topics and materials implemented (see appendix b). the student-teachers’ documents were the third instrument adopted. in this project the documents were the pre-service teachers’ lesson plans which participants had prepared for their classes. thirty of those were taken for the analysis. the purpose was to see what types of activities the student-teachers designed and how those activities were related to their students’ extrinsic motivation as they developed their speaking skill. at the same time, a semi-structured interview was applied to forty-five students to get their perceptions about the activities their teachers implemented in class and how those learners got involved in them (see appendix c). the methodology implemented for analyzing the data collected was based on grounded theory, strauss and corbin (1990). the cornerstone of this premise revolves around coding procedures, defined as the steps through which the information is divided, conceptualized and reintegrated in different ways. based on that, once the information was gathered, the analysis process started. we made a detailed reading to study the primary instrument and to establish common issues, which were validated with the information provided by the secondary ones. our use of primary and secondary instruments entailed a data triangulation process. in this respect, it is important to say that two types of triangulation were used. the first type was methodological triangulation (c ohen, manion, & morrison, 2000), as 75profile vol. 15, no. 2, october 2013. issn 1657-0790 (printed) 2256-5760 (online). bogotá, colombia. pages 69-84 student-teachers’ teaching techniques: actors in pupils’ extrinsic motivation... previously explained, with the use of various in struments for data collection. the second one was investigator triangulation. in that sense, each piece of information collected through each single instrument was analyzed in an individual form. then, the findings were analyzed to establish common patterns. in addition, evidence was encoded for facilitating the presentation of the findings. in that respect, field notes were codified as (fn); group interviews as (gi); focus group as (fg); pre-service teachers’ documents as (pd) and video recordings as (vr). furthermore, the participants were given fictitious names keeping in mind the ethical principles in research, for respecting the participants’ image and privacy. additionally, the participants’ narratives were translated into english by the researchers. findings figure 1 summarizes the study’s emerging categories, which are presented in a metaphoric way; we have associated them with the role of a sower when following the three different stages of seed growth. the sower is the symbolic representation of student-teachers’ teaching techniques, in which the student-teachers assume different roles depending on the three main stages of growth (seed sowing, seed growth, and hay harvest). these, in turn, reflect the three main phases that student-teachers follow in their classes: presentation, practice, and production. these stages constitute the nature of the intensity or use of student-teachers’ teaching techniques in this investigation. those categories are: teaching techniques: explorers for sowing the seed, teaching activities: keep ers during s eed growth, and teaching strategies: producers at the harvest. teaching techniques: explorers for sowing the seed this category concerns the significance studentteachers’ teaching techniques play in the initial stage of a class. at this phase, teaching techniques appear as explorers of students’ context in order to activate their previous knowledge. these techniques seek to generate language in authentic situations. the purpose is to boost students’ interests and engage their emotions, curiosity, and attention as preliminary motivation to link the development of the class; this assertion is supported by velandia (2008, p. 9) when figure 1. teaching techniques’ roles sprinklers energizers harvesters helpersnutrients providers teaching tecniques: explorers for sowing teaching activities: keepers during seed growth teaching strategies: producers at the harvest teaching techniques’ roles universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras76 báez dueñas & chacón vargas she states that “the use of warm up activities increases students’ attention and helps us link the processes of the class.” in other words, motivate and engage students at the beginning of the lesson (brown, 2001). here, students’ motivation is influenced by teaching techniques focused on external factors like personal information sharing and visual aids. those techniques are framed within outer motivational issues because of their instrumental aim. in terms of personal information sharing, the teacher is the one who expected students to talk about their immediate context, appealing to activities such as questions, the use of realia, and discussions of one’s own experiences. in regard to this, bailey (as cited in brown, 1994, p. 156) says that “when external power wants the l2 learner to acquire the l2, there is an extrinsic influence.” at the same time, the use of visual aids appears to help students talk at the presentation stage. this motivates students to focus on the topic of study, making connections and establishing relationships between what they see and their previous knowledge (schemata). in that respect, brown (2007) stated that pictures can be used in many stages of the instructional process to introduce and motivate the study of new topics. then, personal information sharing and the use of visual aids constitute the two following subcategories under which the roles of student teachers’ teaching techniques at the initial stage are supported. on site information: nutrients provider to initiate students’ oral participation this subcategor y describes how pre-ser vice teachers’ teaching techniques, which involved the use of realia, personal questions, and discussions of experience at the presentation stage, functioned as students partook of communicative activities. it means that this type of activities arouses students’ interest to participate orally by means of short dialogues and conversations about the external world of learners. in the reality of this study, the role of teaching techniques as on-site information nutrients providers in students’ oral performance was evident e.g. when the teachers started the class asking questions about their students’ own world and most of them raised their hand to give answers, evident in the following excerpt: in one class, the teacher started asking us about the gifts that we have received on birthdays and christmas and the whole class wanted to participate. (gi 3, homero) at the same time, the premise of this subcategory is supported by student-teachers. they claim that questioning their pupils about aspects close to them arouses their interest and bolsters their willingness to share experiences thus confirming castrillón’s (2003, p. 63) ideas: “it is important to include learners’ life aspects in the process because these increase their interest and desire to participate.” for instance, when the class starts i call students by their names and ask them: what is your father’s name? what is your favourite tv program? and aspects that are familiar for them in order to motivate and encourage them to talk in english. (fg 1, mora) we have to try to relate a common students’ issue with the grammar aspect that is going to be taught in order for students to understand and find it useful. (fg 3, mora) visual helpers for making students recognize the ground this subcategory involves the role that visual aids, as a teaching technique, play in the presentation stage. it is related to the support given by activities with posters, pictures, flashcards, frieze, comic strips, puzzles, and so on, to help students understand the topic of the class and feel motivated to use english orally. these activities have an extrinsic component reflected on the materials presented which boosts pupils’ risk-taking attitude to speak. in regard to this, luchini (2006, p. 129) affirms: “visual stimuli are an 77profile vol. 15, no. 2, october 2013. issn 1657-0790 (printed) 2256-5760 (online). bogotá, colombia. pages 69-84 student-teachers’ teaching techniques: actors in pupils’ extrinsic motivation... economic and effective way of providing a topic of conversation without giving the learners words or phrases to manipulate.” based on data, we determined that pupils’ attention increased when they had contact with colorful visual resources. they felt excited, impressed, able to concentrate, willing to participate, and made themselves clear. in relation to this issue, studentteachers stated: the purpose is to bring posters, images because nowadays students do not learn by just using the board. (fg 2, mora) i like to bring posters, memory charts, comic strips and all that material that catch their attention and i have realized that they participate more and make associations easily. (fg 1, fresa) teaching activities: keepers during seed growth this category refers to the roles assumed by the student-teachers’ teaching techniques at the practice stage. those roles are sprinklers and energizers. through these, pupils put into practice the input offered during the presentation stage; as harmer (2007, p. 364) claims: “practice is the space to set up activities that involved the application, exercise or reproduction of the language item to be taught.” our characterization of the activities implemented at this stage resulted in the configuration of two main roles: pupils’ world representation: sprinkler for keeping them talking and diverse activities inclusion: energizer for learners’ oral growth. pupils’ world representation: sprinkler for keeping them talking this subcategory represents the role that studentteachers adopt to bring their students’ world into the classroom, maintaining their oral participation. “if the teacher uses the environment that surrounds children’s lives to be expressed in english, young learners will see the foreign language as a means to express their experiences in their daily life” (monsalve & correal, 2006, p. 137). this role takes place when clear instructions, examples, and a safe atmosphere are provided in the practice stage. these constitute outer elements that support the desire to participate. in regard to the student-teachers’ voice, a common view is to contextualize students through both clear instructions and examples. i always start with my own example to foster students’ examples sharing. (fg 7, sandia) it is a matter of motivating students to talk about familiar topics, daily situations in their contexts, to make they feel confident to develop the activities. (fg 7, fresa) diverse activities inclusion: energizer for learners’ oral growth this second role comes from the inclusion of different activities which resulted in the students’ oral skill improvement. this role constituted a tool for maintaining pupils motivated as they talked, similar to what happens with a plant when it is fertilized. at this point, a well-known notion takes places: “in variety there is enjoyment.” it refers to the energy students get when they are in contact with different strategies that impel them to speak. at the same time, there is the connection that they find between those techniques and their individual learning styles for learning. in that sense student-teachers say: listening exercises, videos and discussions or debates around these are important for keeping students’ attention; to sum up, materials and activities variation is needed. (fg 6, mora) an additional ingredient that complements this role as an energizer is the competition characterized by extrinsic rewards (extra marks, happy faces, grades, etc.) that move students to take part in oral activities. looking at theory, byrne (1984, p. 99) states, “we do not wish the students to become excessively competitive, but we want to recognize that competition universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras78 báez dueñas & chacón vargas provides a valuable force to a purposeful use of language.” this seems to relate to why pre-service teachers appeal to students’ extrinsic motivation while they are talking. they love external motivators; these are one of the best ways to encourage them to speak in english. (fg 5, mora) the students are happier and try to participate more when they receive extra points, so they can improve their pronunciation and vocabulary. (fg 5, sandia) they get excited when i give them extra points for their participation and when these help them to improve their scores. (fg 4, mora) teaching strategies: producers at the harvest this last category aims to define and characterize the role student-teachers’ teaching techniques have at the production stage. here, these strategies represent the sower who has to collect the fruits. it means that the seed has grown and it is time for the harvest, as happens with students at the end of a class. at this point they are expected to put into practice what they have learnt with not so much dependence on the teacher. in that respect, authors such as cross (1992), harmer (2007), nunan (1991), and woodward (2001) agree that the stage of production is the period of the class in which students are asked to use the stock of their lin guistic knowledge creatively in less artificial situations or tasks. behind this category there is one role. variety of activities implementation: harvester of uncontrolled oral performance this subcategory revolves around the role that student-teachers’ teaching techniques have at the production stage in relation to the pupils’ oral production. here, it works as a gatherer of evidences of what was gained by students in terms of their speaking ability enhancement. considering that the production stage is more centered on the learner, student-teachers exert less control on their teaching techniques in order for pupils to complete them in a creative and free way. with the purpose of reaching this point, where students perform orally in a comfortable and confident atmosphere, it is necessary for these activities to include interaction, extrinsic motivators and an opportunity to bring reality into the classroom. in that sense, the following lines present the two main techniques applied by pre-service teachers at the last stage of a class. in regard to this subcategory, pre-service teachers expressed that during the development of these activities they assumed a passive role in order to allow students to demonstrate their oral performance. it means that they did not interrupt their pupils’ oral participation so frequently in order to avoid causing them to lose confidence: when i implement team work or peer work in the production stage of my class, i want my students to express themselves using what i teach them while they are in a comfortable atmosphere. (fg 4, sandia) my students like to demonstrate what they know in oral activities while they are in groups and when familiar topics are set. furthermore i try to avoid interventions while they are talking, i prefer to provide them feedback at the end. (fg 2, fresa) students get motivated to participate in oral activities when extra points and marks are given at the moment of their team (peer group) participation. they also feel more comfortable because me as the teacher is controlling or limiting their performance. (fg 6, mora) as the researchers in this study, we could perceive that when the activities offered students a clear view of their reality, spaces for interaction, and the inclusion of the competitive component, they stayed interested and confident while completing the activities. this previous assertion let us state that, even though extrinsic motivation is not so favored by research, it is a powerful tool for guiding pupils in order to arouse their inner desire for learning a 79profile vol. 15, no. 2, october 2013. issn 1657-0790 (printed) 2256-5760 (online). bogotá, colombia. pages 69-84 student-teachers’ teaching techniques: actors in pupils’ extrinsic motivation... language in a particular context like this and— why not—for others too. in other words, students’ extrinsic motivation must not be considered as a negative factor against pupils’ language learning; on the contrary, it offers a chance to keep them working actively for developing not only speaking but the other communicative skills. conclusions and pedagogical implications student-teachers’ teaching techniques became the extrinsic motivational root and, consequently, the influence behind the development of a particular skill like student speaking. in that sense, the first category was teaching techniques: explorers for sowing the seed. this category represented the initial roles assumed by the sower, in this case studentteachers’ teaching techniques, to initiate the seed sowing process or the presentation stage. under this assertion, two subcategories emerged: on site information: nutrients provider to initiate students’ oral participation and visual helpers for making students recognize the ground. the second category established was teaching activities: keepers during seed growth. here, the coming two subcategories appeared as the roles as sumed by the student-teachers’ teaching techniques along the practice stage: pupils’ world representation: sprinkler for keeping them talking and, diverse activities inclusion: energizer for learners’ oral growth. the last category: teaching strategies: producers at the harvest, symbolizes the roles of the teaching techniques at the production stage. in that respect, one role was ident if ie d: var iety of ac t ivit ies implementation: harvester of uncontrolled oral performance. accordingly, this study revealed the value of variety as one of the teaching techniques’ characteristics considering that learners are more willing to learn when they find fun, challenge, satisfaction, competition, and recognition when participating in those activities. findings in this study also let us set some im plications. further research is needed to delve more into the issue of how student-teachers update their pedagogical knowledge, contributing sources of change, innovation and improvement in the language teaching and learning profession. in the same vein, cooperating teachers at schools should take advantage of student-teachers’ teaching techniques as sources for the development of other communicative skills. it means that the perspectives proposed by the new generation of language teachers need to contribute to the educational field, so these should be implemented in classrooms. creating this possibility can also favor the establishment of more cooperative relationships between pre-service teachers’ practices and in-service teachers’ experiences during the practicum. finally, this investigation can open a space for reshaping teaching models used at schools, as well as the training provided to student-teachers at universities. on the one hand, primary and secondary english teachers may adopt the methodologies and strategies implemented by pre-service teachers in their classrooms for the purpose of becoming more updated, qualifying their teaching, and increasing students’ motivation for learning. on the other hand, it should also imply for universities to include a provision for early research-teaching immersion experiences for young teachers. this practice would enhance those novice teachers’ autonomy to assess their own pedagogical interventions. references akey, t. m. (2006). school context, student attitudes and behavior, and academic achievement: an exploratory analysis. new york, ny: mdrc. bastidas, j. (2006). a framework to understanding motivation in the tesol field. profile issues in teachers’ professional development, 7(1), 147-159. universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras80 báez dueñas & chacón vargas brown, d. (1994). principles of language learning and teaching (2nd ed.). englewood cliffs, nj: prentice hall. brown, d. (2000). principles of language learning and teaching (4th ed.). new york, ny: addison wesley longman. brown, d. (2001). teaching by principles: an interactive approach to language pedagogy (2nd ed.). new york, ny: longman. brown, d. (2007). principles of language learning and teaching (5th ed.). new york, ny: pearson longman. byrne, d. (1984). teaching oral english. hong kong, hk: longman. castrillón, o. (2003). encouraging the development of children’s oral communicative competences through play. profile issues in teachers’ professional development, 4(1), 58-65. cohen, l., manion, l., & morrison, k. (2000). research methods in education. london, uk: routledge. crookes, g. (2003). a practicum in tesol: professional development through teaching practice. cambridge, uk: cambridge university press. cross, d. (1992). a practical handbook of language teaching. london, uk: prentice hall. deci, e. (1972). intrinsic motivation, extrinsic reinforcement, and inequity. journal of personality and social psychology, 22(1), 113-120. gavilán, f. (2008). a study of the dominant type of technique (controlled, semi-controlled and free) of two english teachers from a languages teaching program. profile issues in teachers’ professional development, 10(1), 163-180. gürbüz, n. (2006). different perceptions of pre-service english teachers’ strengths and weaknesses in the practicum: a case study in turkey. elted, english language teacher education and development, 9, 39-46. harmer, j. (2007). the practice of english language teaching (4th ed.). harlow, uk: pearson education. littlewood, w. (1991). communicative language teaching. cambrigde, uk: cambrigde university press. long, m. h. (1985). a role for instruction in second language acquisition: task-based language teaching. in k. hyltenstam & m. pienemann (eds.). modelling and assessing second language acquisition (pp. 77-99). clevedon, uk: multilingual matters. luchini, p. (2006). enhancing learners’ motivation and concern for improving their pronunciation at a translator program in argentina. how, a colombian journal for teachers of english, 13, 125-137. ministerio de educación nacional (1994). ley general de educación [general law of education]. bogotá, co: author. ministerio de educación nacional (2006). estándares básicos de competencias en lenguas extranjeras: inglés [basic standards of competence in foreign languages: english]. serie guía nº 22. bogotá, co: author. monsalve, s., & correal, a. (2006). children’s oral communication in english class activities: an exploratory study. profile issues in teachers’ professional development, 7(1), 131-146. nunan, d. (1991). language teaching methodology: a textbook for teachers. london, uk: prentice hall. nunan, d. (1998). research methods in language learning. cambridge, uk: cambridge university press. pica, t. (1994). research on negotiation: what does it reveal about second-language learning conditions, processes, and outcomes? language learning, 44(3), 493-527. strauss, a, & corbin, j. (1990). basics of qualitative research: grounded theory, procedures and techniques. california, usa: sage publications. velandia, r. (2008). the role of warming up activities in adolescent students’ involvement during the english class. profile issues in teachers’ professional develop-ment, 10(1), 9-26. vilímec, e. (2006). developing speaking skills (master’s thesis). university of pardubice, czech republic. 81profile vol. 15, no. 2, october 2013. issn 1657-0790 (printed) 2256-5760 (online). bogotá, colombia. pages 69-84 student-teachers’ teaching techniques: actors in pupils’ extrinsic motivation... wallace, m. (1991). training foreign language teachers. cambridge, uk: cambridge university press. weller, m. (2005, march 14). general principles of motivation. los angeles business journal. retrieved from http://www.ndsu.edu/ndsu/nlillebe/tandl/teaching tips/motivating/motivate.html woodward, t. (2001). planning lessons and courses. designing sequences of work for the language classroom. cambridge, uk: cambridge university press. yin, r. (1984). case study research: design and methods. beverly hills, ca: sage publishing. about the authors leidy tatiana báez dueñas holds a b.a. in modern languages, spanish and english, from universidad pedagógica y tecnológica de colombia (uptc), tunja. she currently works as a spanish and english teacher at a private school in tunja (colombia). her research interests include autonomy, academic writing, materials design, classroom interaction, and listening comprehension. leidy marcela chacón vargas holds a b.a. in modern languages, spanish-english, at universidad pedagógica y tecnológica de colombia, tunja. she is a full time english teacher at universidad de boyacá and an active member of retele research group at uptc. her research interests include autonomous learning, language and technology, and materials design. universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras82 báez dueñas & chacón vargas appendix a: class observation form universidad pedagógica y tecnológica de colombia facultad de ciencias de la educación escuela de idiomas research project date:__________________________ place:__________________ grade:______ student-teacher’s name: research question: what is the role of efl student-teachers’ teaching techniques on their pupils’ extrinsic motivation as they partake in communicative speaking activities at a public school in tunja? what is happening in reality? ________________________________________________________________________ ________________________________________________________________________ ________________________________________________________________________ ________________________________________________________________________ organizing information and providing details ________________________________________________________________________ ________________________________________________________________________ ________________________________________________________________________ ________________________________________________________________________ 83profile vol. 15, no. 2, october 2013. issn 1657-0790 (printed) 2256-5760 (online). bogotá, colombia. pages 69-84 student-teachers’ teaching techniques: actors in pupils’ extrinsic motivation... appendix b: first focus group agenda universidad pedagógica y tecnológica de colombia facultad de ciencias de la educación escuela de idiomas research project date:__________________________ place:__________________ grade:______ research question: what is the role of efl student-teachers’ teaching techniques on their pupils’ extrinsic motivation as they partake in communicative speaking activities at a public school in tunja? objective: to identify and go deeper into the type of activities that student-teachers conduct in class for students to talk. topics for discussion: ȟ which are the objectives of the oral activities that you implemented in class? ȟ describe the oral activities that you implement in class. ȟ what is your students’ reaction towards these activities? universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras84 báez dueñas & chacón vargas appendix c: interview1 universidad pedagógica y tecnológica de colombia facultad de ciencias de la educación escuela de idiomas research project objective: to explore students’ perceptions of their extrinsic motivation when developing speaking activities in the efl classroom. date:______________ 1. when do you find a classroom topic interesting for you in the english class? 2. to what extent do materials or resources raise your interest to speak in english? 3. describe the way you participate in the activities proposed for the english class. 4. in which moment of the class do you feel more enthusiastic to participate orally? why? 5. when the teacher provides you with oral feedback, how do you feel? 1 the original interview was applied to students in spanish as it is their mother tongue. 207profile vol. 15, no. 1, april 2013. issn 1657-0790 (printed) 2256-5760 (online). bogotá, colombia. pages 207-221 “buddy system”: a pedagogical innovation to promote online interaction sistema de amigos: una innovación pedagógica para fomentar la interacción en línea martha isabel espitia cruz* anna kwinta** universidad de la sabana, colombia recent technological development has created new pedagogical practices in the efl classroom to maximize the time for students to use the language by considering online tools. whilst working in a pedagogical context with new technologies, some educators were concerned with how online inter action in efl content-based classes could be effectively promoted with university students. it was difficult to design and carry out online activities that students would find interesting enough to participate in and interact with their peers and teachers. thus, this pedagogical innovation shows how two efl teachers implemented a peer feedback strategy to foster online interaction. the outcomes point to new strategies as well as pedagogical possibilities to motivate students’ interaction when working in online environments. key words: collaborative learning, collaborative online learning, online interaction. el creciente desarrollo tecnológico ha creado nuevas prácticas pedagógicas en el aula de clase de inglés como lengua extranjera para maximizar el tiempo en ambientes virtuales. por trabajar en un contexto pedagógico donde se están implementando nuevas tecnologías, algunos profesores se preocuparon por promover la interacción y participación en línea de estudiantes universitarios en la clase inglés. dado que fue difícil diseñar y llevar a cabo actividades en línea para que los estudiantes participaran e interactuaran con sus compañeros y maestros, el artículo expone en qué consistió la innovación pedagógica que dos profesoras de inglés implementaron como estrategia de realimentación para fomentar la interacción en línea. los resultados reflejan la necesidad de crear nuevas estrategias y posibilidades pedagógicas para motivar la interacción de los estudiantes cuando trabajan en entornos virtuales. palabras clave: aprendizaje colaborativo, aprendizaje colaborativo en línea, interacción en línea. * e-mail: marthaisabel.es@gmail.com ** e-mail: aniakwinta@googlemail.com this article was received on june 29, 2012, and accepted on november 15, 2012. universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras208 espitia cruz & kwinta introduction the use of technology in everyday life activities is becoming more popular and as a result, technological development has found itself at the core of local and national policies in countries like colombia. in colombia, national and local governments have made significant efforts to enhance the use of technology for educational practices with the purpose of enabling all citizens to enroll in academic programs. as stated by bonk and cunningham (1998), “technology is becoming increasingly interactive and distributed such that individual learners have available, at rapidly declining cost, the means to participate in incredibly complex networks of information, resources, and instruction” (p. 26). keeping in mind the national policies and considering the benefits of implementing technology in the classroom, the universidad de la sabana and its foreign languages and cultures department have implemented tools such as virtual sabana where fo-rums allow students and teachers to have asynchronous virtual classes and tutorials. unfortunately, in spite of the investment, online interaction has not happened as was expected by the academic committee of the languages and cultures department. a concern that has emerged in the abovementioned community centers around how to foster students’ use and interaction with the tools that are available in the virtual space virtual sabana; especially how students can take advantage of the forums to participate, interact and enhance their learning process. using technology outside the efl classroom as a way to maximize face-to-face classes has been seen and adapted as a powerful source to foster students’ learning experiences. according to curtis and lawson (2001), “in general, while learning in online environment, students’ interactions are restricted to text only messages on screen. this medium of interaction may inhibit the degree of collaboration that is possible by limiting the extent and depth of interactions” (p. 24). making resources available for students to access at any time, enabling different types of interaction, providing students with tools to develop self-directed learning skills, and advancing students’ collaborative learning are some of the valuable aspects that the use of virtual spaces such as forums and blogs can bring to the efl classroom. this pedagogical innovation is aimed at encouraging efl students’ participation in online forums and their describing how they experienced feedback when interacting in online environments. the article analyses students’ views on peer feedback and explores students’ and teachers’ reflections about the collaborative construction of learning and about the implementation of the “buddy system” as the way to socialize peer feedback. needs analysis the leading concern of this pedagogical innovation was that online interaction did not happen the way teachers and administrators expected. by considering the mentioned concern, two english teachers who work for the languages and cultures department decided to create a system that was implemented for one academic semester (16 weeks). the system was implemented with the purpose of making students responsible for reviewing and providing feedback for a classmate as a way of promoting online interaction and learners’ autonomy. the two teachers who carried out this pedagogical innovation were in charge of the three elective courses for students who wanted to take content-based subjects so that they could use and practice english. the content-based subjects considered for this pedagogical innovation are not part of the curricu lum. as mentioned before, they are elective courses that are offered for students who, after completing the levels of english that are part of the curriculum, want to improve and develop more advanced communicative skills in english. this so called “buddy 209profile vol. 15, no. 1, april 2013. issn 1657-0790 (printed) 2256-5760 (online). bogotá, colombia. pages 207-221 “buddy system”: a pedagogical innovation to promote online interaction system” consisted of pairing students up so that they knew whose work they had to revise and comment on. giving and receiving constructive feedback was part of the evaluation of the course; students who did not participate in the forums to check their peer’s participation were not graded and this had a knock-on effect on their peers’ grades. therefore, students had an academic obligation that was part of their evaluation and a moral obligation with their peers. the implementation of the buddy system and the analysis of the experience are described throughout this article. other issues that were considered in the needs analysis were that the type of interaction that had taken place in the platform did not show evidence of students’ awareness of their learning process and of their possibilities to learn and develop language skills autonomously. as a result, the two teachers, who were in charge of the 3 courses where this pedagogical innovation was implemented, decided to use online environments with the objective of promoting selfdirected learning strategies such as self-evaluation. however, when using online environments a further issue arose: it was more time consuming and difficult for teachers to provide feedback due to the amount of students participating in the online activities and to the number of posts students were sharing, thus, the strategy of peer feedback was implemented. promoting online interaction in an efl contentbased course is challenging for teachers if we consider aspects such as students’ and teachers’ beliefs about the use of online forums and the time spent in class. when planning this pedagogical innovation, possible drawbacks were considered. this was done with the intention of foreseeing potential problems so that the teachers were prepared for all situations. the drawbacks are explained by jochems, kirschner and kreijns (2002), who talk about pitfalls when interacting in online environments: the first pitfall is the tendency to assume that social interaction will occur just because the environment makes it possible. the second pitfall is the tendency to forget the social / socialpsychological dimension of social interaction that is salient in various levels of non-task contexts (i.e., off-task interactions). social interaction encompasses all interactivity between group members, including casual conversations and task-oriented discussions. (p. 9) the pitfalls considered by the authors just mentioned were considered and as a result some actions such as including peer feedback in the evaluation of the course and assigning a buddy were planned. as stated by herrington, oliver, and reeves (2003), “unfortunately, the reality of online collaborative learning is discouraging” (p. 12). the discouragement mentioned by the authors refers to aspects such as online forums being mostly used as a tool for online distance courses where participants do not share a physical space to interact; in other words, forums have been implemented as a way to provide students and teachers with a space to interact when they do not have one. another aspect of discouragement is that in the case of face-to-face classes where students and teachers go to the same classroom, they do not need a virtual space to interact because they have the classroom and in this way spaces like forums might seem unnecessary. as a result, this report considered how the population under study failed to interact using online forums because they could ask, comment, participate or make proposals, among other things, in the classroom and, consequently, they could have swifter and more practical answers. considering these aspects, the two teachers who conducted this study made an effort to let students know that the online classes and forums were an extension of the face-toface classes and that the purpose of using them was to maximize in-class discussions, debates and topics. similarly, another potential problem considered before the implementation was how students ex pressed their difficulty to comment on and grade another student’s work. so, the materials were closely universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras210 espitia cruz & kwinta linked to in-class sessions and were aimed at rein forcing the knowledge on a given topic. the resources used for peer feedback were designed to enhance student’s own learning through revising the task’s requirements and criteria and, thus, having to re-analyze their own work. having a clear list of criteria, students could feel confident and sufficiently equipped to take on the role of a reviewer and provide appropriate feedback or critique their peers’ work. this clarity of objectives would allow them to understand the feedback provided by their online partner, or as we called her/him, ‘buddy.’ likewise, authors like curtis and lawson (2001) explain why interaction in online environments can bring drawbacks: online interactions lack the non-verbal cues that are a component of face-to-face contact, and this reduces the extent of the communication that occurs. much online conversation occurs asynchronously, with substantial delays in receiving a reply. this may have both advantages and disadvantages for the participants. (p. 22) this pedagogical innovation intended to consider the pitfalls shown and take advantage of the valuable aspects that working with technology can provide for efl students. setting and participants the study took place in the foreign languages and cultures department of a private university near bogotá, colombia. the population under study was a group of advanced efl learners who enrolled in three elective courses with the intention of improving their communicative abilities in the foreign language through the study of content rather than language systems. the courses that were available for students dealt with topics about intercultural studies and strategies to improve their oral communicative competence when interacting with people from different cultures. these courses required four hours per week over sixteen weeks; the weekly four hours were divided into three hours of face-to-face classes with the fourth hour an asynchronous virtual learning space. the intention of the virtual hour was to maximize the time in face-to-face classes by giving students the opportunity to discuss and explore the topics without the time boundaries we have in face-to-face classes. it was essential to keep those online sessions appealing to students and ensure they would participate to improve their class performance and to broaden their knowledge on a given topic through interaction with other students. the virtual sessions and their tasks were also designed to develop a variety of academic and study skills, such as research, analytical and communication skills as well as awareness of academic development and evaluation processes. some of the online ac tivities involved researching a given topic and sharing the findings in a forum; others were focused on analyzing materials provided in the online session (articles, videos, etc.) and producing tasks based on the analyzed material as well as in-class input and discussions. similarly, the students had to participate in a reflective blog describing what they had learned during the term. the blog was a way for the participants to revise the knowledge gained in class and through online interactions; it was also a way of selecting the information that they found most appropriate and useful for them. overall, students had specific tasks for the online sessions and they had to use forums in virtual sabana to participate, contribute and share ideas, questions or suggestions. furthermore, students created their own blogs to share their final tasks and products. theoretical considerations the implementation of this pedagogical in novation considered constructs that were drawn from a socio-cultural approach to learning. this theoretical framework was built with the purpose of framing 211profile vol. 15, no. 1, april 2013. issn 1657-0790 (printed) 2256-5760 (online). bogotá, colombia. pages 207-221 “buddy system”: a pedagogical innovation to promote online interaction the innovation and making it coherent in terms of evaluation and type of activities. it is important to understand how the sociocultural approach of learning emerged. back in the 50’s bruner (1957) introduced a cognitive theory where he used the ‘word scaffold’ to describe young children’s oral language acquisition. bruner stated that a child acquires a language through scaffolds that allow her/ him to go step by step from easy to more complex stages. also, bruner (1957) and piaget (1929) wrote about cognitive constructivism, a theory that states that learning a language is possible due to an inner capacity that human beings have. until that moment, theoreticians had considered only cognitive aspects to explain the language acquisition and learning processes. it was not until vigotsky (1986) and his concept of the zone of proximal development (zpd) that context was considered as an important factor when learning a language. later, social constructivism relied on vygotsky’s concept of zpd and it was there when learning was understood based on the connection with the sociocultural context in which the learner is immersed. vygotsky, as cited by bonk and cunningham (1998), “stated how individual mental functioning is inherently situated is social interactional, cultural, institutional, and historical contexts. therefore, to understand human thinking and learning, one must examine the context and setting in which that thinking and learning occurs” (p. 35). according to the authors, the cognitive functioning does not take place in isolation; rather, each individual is immersed in a context that determines ways of behaving and interacting and at the same time ways of learning. understanding language learning by considering the context and the individual’s mind was the first step that theoreticians took in the process of approaching language learning. the initial constructivism evolved and social constructivism came about. according to bonk and cunningham (1998), social constructivism views learning as a “connection with an appropriation from the socio-cultural context within which we are all immersed” (p. 32). this is the framework this pedagogical innovation considered in order to design the activities and the peer feedback system. based on the needs analysis, it was imperative to consider an ap proach that takes into account the current context of students to motivate them and to implement tools that students could use in their interaction in online environments. within this framework culture and context are relevant factors that mediate learning. the intention in this pedagogical experience was to create a community of learning where students could learn from their peers and where each member of the community could have a real role and responsibility to contribute to the community. in agreement with tirado and martínez (2010), the expression learning communities describes that community where individual learning activities are incorporated in a collective effort to understand and gain the target knowledge. at this point, it is important to understand that the concept of learning communities comes from the “communities of practice” coined by wegner (1998). in communities of practice and learning the participation of the members is fundamental. wegner (1998) states that “participation refers not just to local events of engagement in certain activities with certain people, but [the] more encompassing process of being active participants in the practice of social communities and constructing identities in relation to these communities” (p. 4). this description is precisely what this pedagogical innovation aimed at: the purpose was to actively engaged students so that they could participate and collaborate in the collaborative construction of learning. in this pedagogical innovation, learning is [...] thus not only participation in discourse communities, but is also the process by which people become members of discourse universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras212 espitia cruz & kwinta communities, resist the membership in such communities, are marginalized from discourse communities, or make new ones. such membership shapes opportunities to learn, and, ultimately, learning. (moje & lewis, 2007, p. 20) the pedagogical proposal shared in this article intended to promote membership as an opportunity to learn and collaborate with others’ learning as well. collaborative learning was a further construct that was considered when planning the innovation. hine and rodríguez (2009) explain and show evidence of how “collaborative learning fosters individual accountability in a context of group interdependence in which students discover information and teach that material to their group and, perhaps, to the class as a whole” (p. 120). the students in the courses under study met for three weekly hours that placed time restrictions on teachers’ ability to work in depth on discussions and debates or to share and comment on students’ pieces of writing. this concept of collaboration where learning was considered when planning the implementation was adapted to the online environment students had to use. taking the core concepts of collaborative learning and constructivism when working with online en vironments has generated proposals like the one made by siemens (2004). the author suggests the ‘connectivism theory’ where knowledge is suggested to be not only in the human being but also in other sources like technology. thus, siemens suggests maintaining connections to ease learning processes. technology becomes essential in this process. having in mind the principles of this theory, the purpose of this innovation was to provide students with the necessary tool so that they could establish the necessary connections in an online collaborative learning environment to foster and motivate language learning. technology is part of our reality and has been deployed in many different aspects of life. learning is no exception. the tools offered by recent electronic communication devices allow users to communicate regardless of distance or time and to access and publish information. the possibilities for learning with technology are wide-ranging due to the variety of resources available but the tools do not have to be used just because they are available; it is imperative for teachers and researchers to investigate and report on the pedagogical ways to implement technology in the classroom, especially when distance is not an issue. in this sense, cummins (2008) suggests that [...] an additional reason why convincing research evidence for the impact of technology on achievement is lacking is that the power of technology is very much under-utilized when it is harnessed only to transmission-oriented pedagogy and thus large effects are unlikely to be observed. (p. 66) technology cannot be used as a trendy methodology; to really utilize the resources, research needs to be done. the pedagogical innovation shared in this article is based on the assumption that learning is socially mediated and constructed and that technology offers a considerable amount of resources that need to be taken into consideration. as stated by jochems, kirschner, and kreijns (2002), “social interaction is important for establishing a social space in which a structure can be found that encompasses social relationships, group cohesion, trust and belonging, all of which contribute to open communication, critical thinking, supportive interaction, and social negotiation” (p. 10). in this innovation the buddy system, the virtual space virtual sabana and resources such as forums and blogs were combined to guarantee a social space that was not limited to the classroom time and space and in that way to promote and maintain social interaction beyond the class. also, it is important to consider that the activities included as part of the innovation were constructed within the same parameters; social constructivism and the connectivism theory were the basis for the type of 213profile vol. 15, no. 1, april 2013. issn 1657-0790 (printed) 2256-5760 (online). bogotá, colombia. pages 207-221 “buddy system”: a pedagogical innovation to promote online interaction activities offered to the students. all of them aimed at collaborating and motivating students to improve their language knowledge. warschauer (1995) stated how “the most potent collaborative activities involve not just finding and using information, but rather actively making use of technology to construct new knowledge together” (p. 17). the innovation and its activities responded to the intention of implementing technology and promoting social collaboration as a way of learning. the pedagogical innovation based on the initial concerns–the assumptions and potential problems–and after integrating some theory, this pedagogical innovation was designed and implemented. the target population was three contentbased elective courses which shared as a common goal and interest the importance of intercultural studies when learning a foreign language. there was another common goal that was the intention of the program and the teachers: to promote autonomy and self-direction to learn the target language. the project although the three courses that are part of the innovation shared the common goals of (1) the study and reflection of intercultural issues when studying english as a foreign language, and (2) the implementation of tools to promote autonomy and self-direction, the content of each course differs. thus the two teachers in charge analyzed and identified appropriate topics by considering the common goals. as a result, three topics were suggested: the importance of non-verbal communication when interacting with people from different countries, looking and preparing for employment abroad and the importance of festivities and holidays as part of culture and identity. these three common topics allowed students and teachers to accomplish the objectives of the common goals and to establish a clear relation with the specific contents of each subject. the three topics mentioned in the previous paragraph were the core of the course project, which was the same for all three courses. each topic was figure 1. planner of the activities for the virtual hour universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras214 espitia cruz & kwinta developed through the implementation of weekly collaborative tasks that established the steps to follow to accomplish a more comprehensive final task. as previously mentioned, the courses consisted of three face-to-face instruction hours and one virtual. the face-to-face hours were planned to work on the specific contents of each subject and the asynchronous online hour was the scenario to carry out the project. in figure 1 the planner of the activities for the virtual hour and their relation is shown. each week students had one topic and collaborative activities aimed at a collaborative goal for each term. the buddy system since the intention of the asynchronous online session was to implement collaborative tasks, the teachers in charge decided to implement the “buddy system”. the idea of promoting online interaction through the “buddy system” was based on the assumption that students could work well and benefit from using virtual environments effectively without having to meet in person. teachers wanted to give students the possibility to interact with other students who were taking subjects related to inter cultural studies. so, the teachers chose to combine three content-based courses that aimed at developing students’ language and communication skills through the study of intercultural issues in creating an online project that would allow those students to ‘meet’ virtually, interact, and perhaps exchange ideas and different perspectives on a variety of topics. initially, students were working in pairs in what we called a ‘buddy system’; an idea based on the as sumption that ‘buddies’ could support each other rather than compete, as they were not classmates. this experience also enabled students to access the ideas, knowledge and materials shared in another course that was part of the project and that, in turn, would have enriched their work and further developed their knowledge on the subject. the ‘buddy lists’ were essentially lists of pairs of students who did not attend the same classes and therefore had to participate in on line forums in order to provide and receive feedback. teacher’s role taking into consideration that the online project’s main aims were to raise awareness of the importance of intercultural issues when learning english as a foreign language, and to develop students’ autonomy as learners and to equip them with tools that would be appropriate for selfand peer-evaluation, the role of the teacher in the online interaction was in some ways limited to providing guidance, final evaluation and feedback. however, and according to the answers gathered in a questionnaire that was applied (see appendix b), what became an essential tool for students was the ability to provide appropriate feedback and hence was the teachers’ main focus in terms of preparing students for the project. it was crucial for students to grasp the idea of providing constructive criticism; they had to learn about the importance of giving an explanation for each negative remark and, more importantly, suggestions and ideas on how their work could be further developed and improved. establishing and explaining criteria for evaluation was another vital part of this process and clear instructions on how to provide feedback and what each criterion meant were stressed both in class as well as in the online forums. it was also necessary to add that each week, apart from the online project forum, where the students would upload their tasks, there was also a help forum for students to post specific questions regarding the task. the platform was established to provide online support to students. this tool, however, did not prove to be very popular with the project’s participants and they much preferred contacting the teacher via email to ask for additional help. based on the answers provided by the students in the mentioned questionnaire, this choice 215profile vol. 15, no. 1, april 2013. issn 1657-0790 (printed) 2256-5760 (online). bogotá, colombia. pages 207-221 “buddy system”: a pedagogical innovation to promote online interaction could have been due to the fact that the tool was not sufficiently promoted in class and therefore students turned to their preferred way of communicating. student’s role at the very heart of the online project was the principle that once students learned how to evaluate their own and their peers’ work, they could become more independent and therefore better learners. their role consisted mainly of firstly, completing their own assignment and uploading it on a forum on time in order to allow their ‘buddy’ to evaluate the work based on the criteria established by the teacher; and secondly, of checking and evaluating their partner’s work and providing suggestions on how the assignment could be improved. this is where the idea of constructive criticism, often emphasized during the in class sessions, became essential to establishing meaningful and useful online interactions. setting up this project meant that students could benefit from the knowledge gained in class and further develop their skills outside the classroom whenever it was convenient to them. naturally, there was concern that not setting students particular time for the online session would result in their not completing the work on time, especially in the case of less disciplined participants who have not fully developed their time management skills. this issue was addressed by establishing a time limit or a deadline for each task, allowing the students to select the most convenient time to complete set work, as well as limiting time for online peer feedback. students’ online interaction affected their grade and the ability of the partner to complete their work. for instance, if participant a did not complete the work by the deadline, it meant participant b (buddy) was not able to fulfill all the requirement of a given task, as they could not provide feedback on a non-existent assignment. taking into account the data gathered in the questionnaire applied, we believed that this would be a motivational factor for students to complete their work on time, so as not to be responsible for their partner’s failure to complete the task. learning tasks tasks were essentially collaborative. the main focus and purpose of introducing the online collab oration platforms were to enable students to maximize their learning experience by providing additional space for developing skills and knowledge gained in class as well as to help students to develop autonomous learning strategies. this methodology is in accordance with the philosophy of universidad de la sabana, where there is currently a strong emphasis on developing these crucial academic skills. having to provide a critique of peers’ work would certainly increase students’ analytical and evaluative skills as well as enhance their ability to manage their time due to specific time constraints for submitting their own work and evaluation of peer’s assignment. this section explains some of the tasks that were planned for students. • employment in canada: in this task students had to look for a job ad for them and justify in a paragraph why they chose that job and in the particular country. also, they had to talk about the documents (visas, etc.) they need to have for this job application. they posted the document with the information required and their peer had to revise if the activity was well done and adhered to the requirements stated. • a successful cv: this was another collaborative task where students chose what they considered to be the essential elements that every successful cv should have. they made a list with annotations containing additional tips about every section of the cv. they justified the chosen tips and created their cv. they posted the document with the information required and their peer had to revise if the activity was well done and adhered to the requirements stated. universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras216 espitia cruz & kwinta • personal blog: students created a personal blog where they included their cv and the criteria for a successful cv. they posted the link of the blog with the information required and their peer had to revise if the activity was well done. in one of the classes the teacher had to adjust the activity because students asked to have another topic for their blog. students wanted to write a more academic article so the teacher asked them to choose one of the topics discussed in class and then write a problem-solving essay. they posted the link of the blog with the information required and their peer had to evaluate the work. member roles initially, the idea was to establish interaction between students of all three courses in open forums. nevertheless, there was a concern, based on previous experience with using online forums, that the students would not participate regularly and that the criteria for evaluating each other’s work would be difficult to establish. as a result, we decided that putting students into pairs, or ‘buddies’, especially when pairing them up with students from a different group, would benefit them much more. the idea was to avoid having students from the same group working together online, as we feared that providing criticism of each other’s work would cause friction and affect the face-to-face interactions in class. in the first term, this proved to be effective to some extent, as the students were still learning how to evaluate their own and others’ work. in the second term, and after the experience of the first one, which included late submissions and insufficient feedback, students realized that their lack of commitment could affect their performance and most importantly their peers’ performance. when students commented on their responsibility with their classmates, teachers decided that students were sufficiently prepared to interact with the members of the same group, hoping that having students from the same group interact among them would also increase the quality and quantity of the feedback. additionally, it was much easier for students to meet deadlines, as the newly established pairs would constantly remind each other of the upcoming deadlines. in the last term, the emphasis was put on in-class interaction due to the nature of the given task. students were still working in pairs; however, this time the peer feedback or critique did not take place until the very end of the project. it was conducted in class. the interaction amongst students was still a crucial part of the project at that stage, but the evaluation was not the main focus. students interacted with each other to create a presentation, a form of an advertising campaign, which required a lot of online communication (mainly due to lack of time in class) and therefore the aim of the project was still being achieved by encouraging students to organize, plan and develop set tasks as a team. this required using all the skills they had previously been taught in class. feedback initially, feedback was intended to be concise and straightfor ward. formats were designed by the teachers to provide students with tools such as checklists (see appendix a) with the intention of specifying the criteria for evaluation so that students could focus on the content of their peers’ tasks by looking at specific aspects. it was clearly stated in the forums that not meeting any of the criteria according to a peer would have to be followed by detailed comments and suggestions on how to further develop the work and in this way the teachers wanted to guarantee that students would be sure about the comments they provided and those they got in return. also, there was a separate grade for providing feedback and it comprised five percent of students’ term grade, a guideline which proved to play a role in motivating the students to participate in the forums. 217profile vol. 15, no. 1, april 2013. issn 1657-0790 (printed) 2256-5760 (online). bogotá, colombia. pages 207-221 “buddy system”: a pedagogical innovation to promote online interaction according to the aims of the project, the main source of feedback should have been peers. however, peer feedback was restricted to the criteria included in the evaluation form and students were asked to post additional comments only if their ‘buddy’ did not meet some of the criteria. teachers’ feedback consisted mainly of face-to-face interaction, where the student would receive a hard copy of the evaluation sheet with additional and much more detailed comments about their work, as well as a grade. although initially the idea was for teachers to also participate in the online forums, we concluded that it would have potentially affected students’ interaction amongst each other and defeated the purpose of their becoming independent learners. therefore, teachers’ participation was sporadic and occurred only when there was lack of communication between students or a genuine problem with the task. evaluation for the purpose of the online project, the most effective way for students to evaluate each other’s work was to use a clear and concise format that would allow them to reflect upon their own work through reconsidering the task’s criteria. the checklist format seemed the most appropriate. it was time-effective and considerably less complex than open questions about a peer’s work. the criteria mentioned in the checklist matched the task’s instructions (also provided in a straightforward, step-by-step format), which were explained in class as well as being available in the online forum. conclusions it was encouraging to view the results of an online questionnaire (see appendix b) given to students. we found that the assumptions regarding the benefits and the potential challenges linked to the development of the online project matched the comments sent by the course participants. it was extremely important for the sessions to be closely linked to the online project in order to enable students to work independently on the topic and gain more knowledge on the subject whilst developing academic skills. according to the answers in the survey, most of the students agreed that this purpose was achieved and added that all the online sessions were an extension of the in-class sessions. they helped them understand the topic better and in many ways complemented the lessons. students added that there was always sufficient time to complete those tasks and, furthermore, this was one of the important aspects to be considered in creating the task. another important point to add is that the sessions helped the students prepare for their exams, allowed them to focus and explore topics that were relevant and useful to them (i.e. cv writing) as well as expanded their vocabulary. presentations were chosen as the most useful activity; blogs, reflective papers and mind maps were also mentioned. it seems that providing a wide variety of tasks has worked well and each student was able to benefit from the sessions and find activities suitable for their needs. in terms of suggested improvements to the online session content, students wanted to see the instruc tions for the online sessions in the form of a presentation. they also thought that introducing online debates might be a good idea. one of the students suggested that keeping very strict deadlines on each task would help to motivate the participants to upload their contributions on time. upon reflection, teachers have realized that re-opening forums in order to allow students who were unable to participate when the assignment was active ultimately led to other students assuming that they would have an opportunity to upload missing work at a later time. this made them prioritize other academic commitments over their online project and affected their motivation. students also suggested strengthening the links between the in class and online sessions by engaging in a discussion about the task before it is assigned. universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras218 espitia cruz & kwinta this did take place to some extent; however, it was usually after the task was posted online, which meant there was not much room for introducing changes to the assignments. students also thought it would be interesting to mix the topic covered in class with a free topic to allow for more creativity. we believe that this would benefit the students to a great extent as long as the criteria for each task remain clear. all the students who took part in the survey agreed that the questions included in the feed back checklists allowed them to better under stand the criteria of each task and evaluate their ‘buddy’s’ contributions in a more objective manner. they mentioned that the ‘step-by-step’ instructions and the checklist criteria enabled them to understand the purpose and the expected outcome of the session and that the system made peer and self-evaluation easier. as we had hoped, the feedback provided by peers was easily understood by the students and was useful in terms of re-evaluating the work. students liked the fact that their ‘buddy’ was patient, not strict at all, yet helpful in terms of having someone look over their work before it and they were graded by the teacher. nevertheless, we worried that if some students had been completely objective in their judgment, it would have affected their ‘buddy’s’ grade and therefore have been an admission to being too lenient in terms of evaluating their peers’ ability to meet all the criteria. as we had anticipated, this system enabled students to gain a different perspective on their work and that proved to be very beneficial to them. pedagogical implications technology has become a useful, meaningful, and therefore important tool in educational contexts. this is why many researchers, not only in colombia but also around the world, have been encouraged to analyze the use of icts within educational contexts. important journals such as tesol or tesol quarterly have published important articles that in a practical way give accounts of the use and influence of technology in educational settings. authors like kern (2006) and cummins (2008) have reflected upon technology and its use in a context like the united states and the findings of their studies have suggested teachers should take actions to use technology in the classroom due to its potential benefits. thus, in a context as colombia, research in the area of the use of icts in education can be done by considering studies and practices that local and international researchers have explored. the comments made by students and the reflec tion of the teachers in charge of this innovation sug gest new strategies and pedagogical considerations to motivate students’ interaction when working in online environments. by giving students an academic and a social responsibility, students participated more and were more motivated because they felt what they could say was important. collaboration and participation are two factors that allowed students to recognize and use their academic voices, especially when commenting on their classmates’ pieces of work. the recognition and use of their own voice enrich the academic ex periences due to the fact that they help students avoid passivity. the role of teacher in this part is to enhance the production and socialization of individual ideas and contributions. according to shor (1992), “students are people whose voices are worth listening to, whose minds can carry the weight of serious intellectual work, whose thought and feeling can entertain transforming self and society” (p. 26). when encouraged to use her/his own voice the student becomes self-confident and, consequently, it is going to be easier for him/ her to share and recognize his/her valuable ideas and thoughts. we hope that peer feedback will become a source of information and inspiration for teachers who are dealing with similar contexts in the efl classrooms. 219profile vol. 15, no. 1, april 2013. issn 1657-0790 (printed) 2256-5760 (online). bogotá, colombia. pages 207-221 “buddy system”: a pedagogical innovation to promote online interaction references bonk, c. j., & cunningham, d. j. (1998). searching for learner-centered, constructivist, and sociocultural components of collaborative educational learning tools.  in c. j. bonk, & k. s. king (eds.), electronic collaborators: learner-centered technologies for literacy, apprenticeship, and discourse (pp. 25-50). mahwah, nj: erlbaum. bruner, j. (1957). on perceptual readiness. psychological review, 64(2), 123-152. cummins, j. (2008). technology, literacy, and young second language learners. in l. parker (ed.), technology mediated learning environments for young english learners (pp. 61-98). new york, ny: lawrence erlbaum associates curtis, d., & lawson, m. (2001). exploring collaborative online learning. jaln, 5(1), 21-34. herrington, j., oliver, r., & reeves, t. (2003). a development research agenda for online collaborative learning. educational technology research and development, 52(4), 53-65. hine, n., & rodríguez, c. (2009). media as medium in colombian education. colombian applied linguistics journal, 11(1), 115-123. jochems, w., kirschner, p., & kreijns, k. (2002). the sociability of computer-supported collaborative learning environments. educational technology and society, 5(1), 8-22. kern, r. (2006). perspectives on technology in learning and teaching languages. tesol quarterly, 40(1), 183-205. moje, e., & lewis, c. (2007). exploring opportunities to learn literacy: the role of critical sociocultural literacy research. in p. enciso, e. moje, & c. lewis (eds.), reframing sociocultural research on literacy (pp. 15-48). london, uk: lawrence erlbaum associates. piaget, j. (1929). the child’s conception of the world. london, uk: paul trench and trubner. shor, i. (1992). empowering education: critical teaching for social change. chicago, il: the university of chicago press. siemens, g. (2004). connectivism: a learning theory for a digital age. retrieved from http://www.elearnspace. org/articles/connectivism.htm tirado, r., & martínez, j. (2010). creando comunidades virtuales de aprendizaje: análisis del progreso de las interacciones. revista de educación, 353, 297-328. vygotsky, l. (1986). thought and language (2nd ed.). cambridge, ma: mit press. warschauer, m. (1995). computer-mediated collaborative learning: theory and practice. honolulu, hi: university of hawaii, second language teaching & curriculum center. wegner, e. (1998). communities of practice: learning, meaning, and identity. cambridge, uk: cambridge uni versity press. about the authors martha isabel espitia cruz has studied and worked in colombia. she holds an m.a. in applied linguistics from universidad distrital francisco josé de caldas and an undergraduate degree from universidad pedagógica nacional. currently working at universidad de la sabana, her research interests include the use of icts in efl learning and teaching and the professional development of language teachers. anna kwinta holds an ma in english philology and teaching specialization and has been the head of the methodology section of students’ society ‘lingo’ at opole university in poland. she also holds a celta qualification from hammersmith college in london. she is currently working at universidad de la sabana (colombia). universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras220 espitia cruz & kwinta appendix a: reflective paper (blog) checklist online session: project create a blog reflecting what you have learned about the importance of non-verbal communication in modern day society. peer’s name: _______________________________ date: _____________ answer the following questions based on the information your peer included in the blog. put a tick in the yes box if the blog includes the item or no if it does not. has your ‘buddy’… explained the purpose or the thesis of the reflective paper in the blog? (introduction) yes no explained what non-verbal communication is and why it is important? (introduction) provided a minimum of three examples showing the importance of non-verbal communication in modern-day society? (main body) ensured the examples are convincing and address the topic sufficiently? (main body) provided evidence to support his/her examples? (main body) summarized the key points and explained how he/she will use this knowledge in the future? (conclusion) organised the information in a clear and logical way so that it is easy to follow? ensured that the language used is clear? provided the sources he/she used in the reflective paper? included a minimum of 600 words? if you have answered no to any of the above questions, please make sure you provide details below: additional/general comments: reviewer’s name: _____________________________________________ based on the comments made by your reviewer and the information in this checklist, add the missing information to the forum. 221profile vol. 15, no. 1, april 2013. issn 1657-0790 (printed) 2256-5760 (online). bogotá, colombia. pages 207-221 “buddy system”: a pedagogical innovation to promote online interaction appendix b: project questionnaire dear student, the purpose of this questionnaire is to gather information about your experience in completing the online activities. the main objective is to get honest answers that will allow us to analyze your experience and improve the course in the future. choose one answer for each one of the statements. 1. did you feel that the online project was appropriately linked to the in class sessions? yes ____ no ____ why? ___________________________________________________________________________ 2. did the activities help you to reinforce the knowledge gained in the course (e.g. body language, looking for employment, etc.)? yes ____ no ____ why? ___________________________________________________________________________ 3. were the questions included in the checklists for online activities helpful in understanding the criteria in each task? yes ____ no ____ why? ___________________________________________________________________________ 4. did the checklists enable you to objectively evaluate your ‘buddy’s’ work? yes ____ no ____ 5. was it easy to understand your peer’s evaluation of your work? yes ____ no ____ 6. which of the online activities did you find most useful and why? choose one. ☐ forums ☐ mind maps ☐ reflective papers ☐ blogs ☐ presentations 7. how would you improve the online activities to make them more appealing? 8. what did you find useful about the ‘buddy’ feedback in your online sessions? 9. what would you improve? 10. what type of comments did you write? why? ___________________________________________________________________________ 149profile vol. 17, no. 2, july-december 2015. issn 1657-0790 (printed) 2256-5760 (online). bogotá, colombia. pages 149-163 http://dx.doi.org/10.15446/profile.v17n2.48091 teacher activities and adolescent students’ participation in a colombian efl classroom actividades de enseñanza y participación de estudiantes adolescentes en una clase de enseñanza de inglés como lengua extranjera en colombia jefferson caicedo*1 universidad del valle, cali, colombia the present study concerns the activities teachers develop and ninth-graders’ participation in responses to those activities. the objectives of this study were to identify and describe the types of teaching activities developed and how students respond to them and to show how the target language is used in the classroom. the data collection was conducted through daily field notes and a diary. the findings show that in the classroom, the teacher develops twelve types of activities, and the percentage of use of the target language is low. key words: class activities, foreign language, mother tongue, student participation. el presente estudio da cuenta del tipo de actividades desarrolladas por una maestra y la respuesta/ participación de los estudiantes del grado noveno en esas actividades. los objetivos de esta investigación fueron identificar y describir el tipo de actividades desarrolladas, la forma como los estudiantes responden a éstas y mostrar el uso de la lengua extranjera en el salón de clase. para recolectar los datos se usó registro diario de y un diario de campo. los resultados muestran que en el salón de clases la docente desarrolla doce tipos de actividades y que el porcentaje de uso de lengua extranjera es bajo. palabras clave: actividades de clase, lengua extranjera, lengua materna, participación estudiantil. * e-mail: jefferson.caicedo@correounivalle.edu.co how to cite this article (apa, 6th ed.): caicedo, j. (2015). teacher activities and adolescent students’ participation in a colombian efl classroom. profile issues in teachers’ professional development, 17(2), 149-163. http://dx.doi.org/10.15446/profile.v17n2.48091. this article was received on december 30, 2014, and accepted on march 17, 2015. this is an open access article distributed under the terms of the creative commons license attribution-noncommercial-noderivatives 4.0 international license. consultation is possible at http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/. http://dx.doi.org/10.15446/profile.v17n2.48091 mailto:jefferson.caicedo%40correounivalle.edu.co?subject= http://dx.doi.org/10.15446/profile.v17n2.48091 universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras150 caicedo introduction it seems that the manner in which teaching activities are developed promotes or restrains students’ use of the target language (l2) inside the classroom. consequently, this issue has been a matter of attention and concern during my over five years teaching foreign languages (english and french). furthermore, in the last two years, classroom observations in my teaching context have triggered research needs on the aforementioned issue. these observations showed that the use of english (mainly in public schools in cali, colombia) is not significant and that students’ participation in english class is low. for instance, a study by hernández gaviria and faustino (2006) revealed that spanish is the language that predominates in the english classrooms in public schools in cali and that teachers and students communicate in l2 when asking for short directions, answering questions, and participating in dialogues. similarly, in an article published in 2010 in the newspaper el país1 and at the webpage of the colombian ministry of education (“bilingüismo aún,” 2010), it is stated that both teachers and students have deficient levels of english, and the situation is worse with students from public schools. one of the interviewees, dr. cardenas from universidad del valle (colombia), argued that among the causes of this backwardness are the unfavourable teaching conditions and teachers’ unpreparedness to teach english. however, studies conducted in various english as a foreign language (efl) settings (akram & malik, 2010; peace corps, 1989; richards, 2006) argue that students’ low english use is also attributable to the disconnected ways in which foundational skills are addressed in the different activities that are developed in language classes. 1 the source text is in spanish; it was translated into english by the author of the current research. contrary to what many authors state (almarza sánchez, 2000; brown, 2007; gocer, 2010; harmer, 2007a; hinkel, 2006), it appears that many teachers disregard or have found it difficult to integrate the four foundational language skills (speaking, writing, listening, and reading) into their language teaching activities. for instance, an activity that involves reading is not seen as a source for exploiting other language skills, which could foster a holistic use of language and superior student involvement. it appears that there exists a close relationship between the types of classroom activities teachers develop and students’ participation in and responses to them. some authors defend the idea that activities must be developed in a way that fosters learners’ active involvement (harmer, 2007a, 2007b; hinkel, 2006; richards, 2006). as is known, language-teaching activities should aim to develop communicative skills (klippel, 1984; peace corps, 1989; richards, 2006), and activities should be developed in a way that shows each skill as a subset or constituent of a whole, the language. as a result, learning outcomes should improve if activities are carried out in such a way that they integrate various foundational language skills; if activities are meaningful for the students, they will feel more motivated to participate, and this will create an enriching teaching-learning process. because of the connection between the teacher’s activities and the students’ responses to them, it is necessary to look at language teaching activities and their impact on students. thus, this study aims at identifying and describing types of teaching activities, the way students respond to them and the ways the target language is used in the classroom. this research was developed to fulfill some of the requirements for passing the course classroom research seminar ii, which is part of the syllabus of the ba in foreign languages (english-french) in the school of language sciences at universidad del valle (colombia). some of the purposes of the course 151profile vol. 17, no. 2, july-december 2015. issn 1657-0790 (printed) 2256-5760 (online). bogotá, colombia. pages 149-163 teacher activities and adolescent students’ participation in a colombian efl classroom are to acquaint pre-service teachers with research methods, instruments, techniques, and their future teaching environments. pre-service teachers are also encouraged to reflect about possible research problems in order to ultimately report the findings in a semester final project. review of the literature many scholars have addressed the question of classroom activities in the efl classroom, students’ participation and responses, and the ways that either l1 or l2 are used. all of these aspects are of the utmost relevance for the present study and will be further discussed next. teaching activities richards and schmidt (2010) define teaching activities as “any classroom procedure that requires students to use and practise their available language resources” (p. 9). richards (2006) contends that in communicative language teaching (clt), activities have to include role-plays, group work, and projects with which fluent use of language can be promoted rather than focusing on formal aspects of language such as grammar. because the main purpose of the teachinglearning process is to have students use the target language fluently, classroom activities must focus on negotiating meanings, correcting misunderstandings, and using strategies to avoid disruptions in communication. richards also characterizes activities that focus on fluency as follows: “reflect natural use of language, focus on achieving communication, require meaningful use of language, require the use of communication strategies, produce language that may not be predictable, and seek to link language use to context” (p. 14). equally, riddell (2003) describes a group of activities that are useful for fostering language skills, grammar, and vocabulary, as well as the role of the teacher before and during each stage of a given activity. riddell states that before an activity, teachers must identify the most suitable activity based on their class levels, their learners’ average ages, class features and time available, and the targeted language aspects. some suggestions during the activity are as follows: “be varied in your choice of activities from lesson to lesson. practice activities need to be carefully selected, and properly set up with instructions and examples. practice activities should be as relevant and interesting as possible” (riddell, 2003, pp. 94-95). according to klippel (1984), “activities for practising a foreign language have left the narrow path of purely structural and lexical training and have expanded into the fields of values education and personality building” (p. 6). he describes activities in terms of their topics, the speech acts involved, level, organisation, preparation, time, language focus, and educational aims. klippel makes the following points about designing teaching activities: since foreign language teaching should help students achieve some kind of communicative skill in the foreign language, all situations in which real communication occurs naturally have to be taken advantage of and many more suitable ones have to be created. two devices help the teacher in making up communicative activities: information gap and opinion gap. information-gap exercises force the participants to exchange information in order to find a solution (e.g. reconstitute a text, solve a puzzle, write a summary). opinion gaps are created by exercises incorporating controversial texts or ideas, which require the participants to describe and perhaps defend their views on these ideas. another type of opinion gap activity can be organised by letting the participants share their feelings about an experience they have in common. (klippel, 1984, p. 4) other points made by klippel (1984) are that activities should help students recognize themselves in the target language, and for that to occur, the activities have to be meaningful and create students’ interest, which will improve their performance. universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras152 caicedo learning is more effective if the learners are actively involved in the process. learner activity in a more literal sense of the word can also imply doing and making things; for example, producing a radio programme forces the students to read, write, and talk in the foreign language as well as letting them ‘play’ with tape recorders, sound effects, and music. (klippel, 1984, p. 5) klippel’s (1984) conception of activities is in agreement with the view of skills integration that were mentioned earlier in this study and with richards and schmidt’s (2010) definition of what efl activities imply that learners will be doing. thus, the question of teaching activities, as was stated earlier, is crucial in language teaching and learning. accordingly, there are many more theoretical and practical documents that can be consulted by the novice teacher to become familiar with the theory and practice of activities or by the expert teacher to continue widening the insights on this overarching issue. gunduz (2004), for instance, conducted a study in which the main purpose was to “investigate the effects of activity types on learners’ language production in a classroom setting” (p. 31). other relevant works are those of allegra and rodríguez (2010), clutterbuck (1999), gairns and redman (1986), granger (1998), harmer (2007b), hinojosa cordero and quinatoa mullo (2012), howard-williams & herd (1989), nielsen nino, (2010), and seymour and popova (2003). the aforementioned documents are very relevant because they contain practical and theoretical ideas for teaching the foundational and subsidiary language skills, that is, vocabulary, grammar, and pronunciation. students’ participation/response authors have addressed the matter of participation in both efl and english as a second language (esl) classrooms. as stated in a document by the peace corps (1989), participation is inextricably related to activities inasmuch as students’ participation increases if the selected activities involve them. solihah and yusuf (n.d.) conducted a study in which they aimed to describe the quality of students’ classroom participation and its factors. in their study, they observed an english teacher and 13 seventh-graders of a public junior high school in bandung (indonesia); the study reveals that students’ participation in and contributions to activities were low and they preferred to keep silent; the teacher’s control of the classroom processes and the students’ lack of confidence in participating are dominant. in the same way, a study by majid, yeow, ying, and shyong (2010) sought to “explore students’ perceptions of class participation and its benefits, barriers to their participation, and the motivational factors that may improve their class participation” (p. 1). the study was conducted with students who had graduated, but it shows important findings about the issue of classroom participation, and it also serves as a proof that concerns about this matter are present not only at the elementary and high school levels but in higher education as well. majid et al. also found that: a majority of the students agreed that class participation was helpful in their overall learning. it was interesting to note that over 90% of the students said that instead of talking in a big class, they usually preferred participating in small group discussions. they also indicated that they were more likely to participate in classes taught by friendly and approachable instructors. the major barriers to class participation, identified by the respondents, were: low english language proficiency, cultural barriers, shyness, and lack of confidence. (p. 1) language use inside the classroom the idea of no l1 use inside the language classroom is the product of the direct method, which appeared in the late 19th century. it appears that it was (and is still today) considered that if only the target language was used in the classroom, the teaching-learning process would have better outcomes, at least in terms of 153profile vol. 17, no. 2, july-december 2015. issn 1657-0790 (printed) 2256-5760 (online). bogotá, colombia. pages 149-163 teacher activities and adolescent students’ participation in a colombian efl classroom communication. nonetheless, it is important to note that teachers should not see l1 use as a “sacrilege” to the learning process. accordingly, hamer (2007b) questions the ban on using l1, presents a series of the advantages and disadvantages of using l1 in l2 classrooms, and summarises how and when to use students’ l1 in class. harmer (2007a) maintains that: the first thing to remember is that, especially at beginner levels, students are going to translate what is happening into their l1 whether teachers want them to or not. it is a natural process of learning a foreign language. on the other hand, an englishlanguage classroom should have english in it, and as far as possible, there should be an english environment in the room, where english is heard and used as much of the time as possible. for that reason, it is advisable for teachers to use english as oten as possible, and not to spend a long time talking in the students’ l1. however, where teacher and students share the same l1 it would be foolish to deny its existence and potential value. (pp. 38-39) to know more about language use inside the language classroom, one can review the studies by hitotuzi (2006), lasagabaster (2013), muñoz hernández (2005), and sánchez, pernía, rivas, and villalobos (2012). context of the study this project was carried out at a public high school in the city of cali, colombia. the pedagogical methods are oriented toward integral, inspiring development in which learning takes place in cooperation with others and the formative process is developed based on the values of the human being. regarding teaching english, the school has adopted the requirements of the national bilingual plan (nbp) 2004–2019, and the english teachers stated that they used the communicative approach. the students who were observed received three hours of english per week, and because of an agreement that the institution established with sena (servicio nacional de aprendizaje [national apprenticeship service]), the students receive extra classes once a week; this is to reinforce their english skills and to train them with employment focus. participants the group of participants was composed of 39 teenagers (20 female and 19 male between the ages of 14 and 17) and their teacher. the teacher holds a major in modern languages and a series of diplomas and certifications for teaching english. she has been teaching for 24 years, and at the time of the observations, she was a full-time teacher at the school where the study took place. method to conduct this qualitative research, a review of research studies was carried out to shed light on the nature of ethnography, how to conduct classroom observation, daily field notes, and keeping observation records (allwright & bailey, 1991; fernández loya, 2002; geertz, 1973; gutiérrez quintana, 2007; hernández sampieri, fernández collado, & baptista lucio, 1991; nunan, 1992; sandin, 2003). in regard to qualitative studies, hernández sampieri et al. (1991) state that they allow for deeper data and better contextualization of situations. this is an ethnographic study, and in order to develop it, nonparticipant observation was conducted from january 26 to april 26, 2012. during this period, nine lessons were observed and recorded. procedure to develop this ethnography, i rely mainly on hernández sampieri et al. (1991), and during my fieldwork, i made nine recorded observations. the initial stage of the research was devoted (with the guidance of my research tutor) to revising and consulting in order to build the conceptual framework. this allowed for familiarizing myself with the emic vocabulary, different research approaches, universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras154 caicedo the methodological traditions, and developing group workshops with the aim of clarifying doubts. the second phase consisted of preparing and selecting aspects to observe, which paralleled the fieldwork with the nonparticipant observations, daily field notes, and the reflection diary keeping. in this phase, the research questions were also established: what activities does the teacher develop in order to promote the foundational and subsidiary language skills in the classroom? how do the students participate in and respond to the activities? what is the relationship between the activities developed and the l1/l2 use inside the classroom? the third phase was devoted to constructing the body of the project, that is, the writing process. in the fourth phase, the observation records and daily field notes were refined and analysed. in this phase, the activity types and categories were also established. the fith phase was mainly devoted to analysing those types and categories; during this period, there was a revision and rereading of all the materials as well as data coding in which three categories of data were processed: teaching activities, skills and language aspects, and students’ participation and responses. a recoding process followed in order to reduce the categories to more concrete ones according to their frequency of appearance. finally, the data were interpreted for the conclusion statement. each of the aforementioned phases was done with the advice of my methodology course professor. table 1. categories and subcategories found in the data analysis teaching activities students’ participation/ response skills and language aspects subcategories 1. oral instruction/explanation in l1 2. summoning students’ attention and/or giving orders in l1 3. asking questions in l1 or verifying students’ comprehension 4. oral instruction/explanation in l2 5. summoning students’ attention and/or giving orders in l2 6. asking questions or clarifying in l2 7. written instruction in l2 8. silent reading 9. unscramble writing 10. dialogues/role plays 11. oral construction of sentences 12. correcting assessments 1. order and discipline 2. oral participation in l2 3. group participation/ repetition 4. oral production in l1 5. repetition in l2 6. nonverbal participation and responses 1. oral production 2. listening comprehension 3. written production 4. reading comprehension 5. grammar 6. vocabulary 155profile vol. 17, no. 2, july-december 2015. issn 1657-0790 (printed) 2256-5760 (online). bogotá, colombia. pages 149-163 teacher activities and adolescent students’ participation in a colombian efl classroom data analysis during the nonparticipatory observations, the information was gathered through daily field notes and recordings. i later coded and classified the data, naming and grouping them by frequency of appearance. to do this, i used the microsoft word tool color text highlighter, which helped to better distinguish and establish the categories. the reflective diary was useful for registering impressions of what was being observed, reflecting on what was going well or poorly in the study, and compiling ideas for how to process and name the categories. findings after the process described in the previous section, it was possible to identify three types of categories and subcategories, as shown in table 1. teaching activities here, activities refer to all realizations or practices that the teacher conducted inside the class during the nine observations and that suggest the use of any language or subsidiary skills. the following were the twelve teaching activities that were identified: • oral instruction/explanation in l1: this happened when the teacher spoke in spanish to the students to illustrate and/or clarify information about the teaching, institutional information, and so forth: teacher: chicos, él viene observar la clase, él va estar el resto de la clase con nosotros [guys, he’s here to observe the class; he will stay with us for the rest of the class]. • summoning students’ attention and/or giving orders in l1: when the teacher asked students to pay attention, keep silent, behave, and so on or when she asked them to do something: teacher: no quiero que se hablen entre parejas porque cada pareja tiene un libro diferente [i don’t want pairs to speak among you because each pair has a different book]. later, ater the teacher notices that students are talking too much, she asks them if they have already finished the exercise, to which they respond in the affirmative. thus the teacher tells them: entonces todos me entregan los cuadernos [so all of you give me your notebooks]. • asking questions in l1 or verifying students’ comprehension: when the teacher talked to students to check if they had understood information or an instruction that had been given to them or given to obtain information from them: teacher: a ver...levanten la mano quienes no hicieron la tarea [let’s see…raise your hands those who didn’t do the homework]. • oral instruction/explanation in l2: when the teacher used l2 to give directions or illustrate or clarify information about the teaching, institutional information, etc.: teacher: today, you’re going to have reading practice; i’m going to bring books. • summoning students’ attention and/or giving orders in l2: when the teacher used l2 to ask for students’ attention, ask them to keep silent and behave, etc. or when she ordered them to do or not to do something: teacher: last week, i only received one work. i’m really disappointed, very bad homework. i told you you can work at home. you’re going to have a bad grade...1! finish the homework and gave [sic] me the workbook. you’re really relaxed. students: (just whispers of concern). • asking questions or clarifying in l2: when the teacher asked students questions and/or checked whether they had understood the information or instruction given to them: teacher: and you? when are you going to me? she went, she went; and you? do you feel nervous about me? universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras156 caicedo • written instruction in l2: when the teacher wrote any information or instruction on the whiteboard or on a sheet of paper in l2: on the whiteboard is the direction for a quiz: write sentences with the following words: 1. don’t – my – soda – like – friends. 2. are – from – where – you? 3. does – girl – the – not – study – here 4. favorite – english – subject – my – is 5. live – do – where – you? a student: profe, ¿qué hay que hacer? [teacher, what do we have to do?]. the teacher does not respond. • silent reading: the teacher gave the students books that contained stories. the reading was done sometimes individually and sometimes in pairs, and the students had to follow the teacher’s instructions: teacher: those are my books; you have to care for them. i love my books. the first one is this. students: (they just listen; everybody is silent, and then there were very low whispers). teacher: ok people, be quiet; you have to read the title. first, read the title; second, underline the unknown words; look up the unknown words in your dictionary; etc. teacher: ¿qué van a encontrar allí? el verbo to be, el verbo hablar, el verbo comer, etc. [what are you going to find in the reading? the verb to be, the verb to speak, the verb to eat, etc.]. some of the books the students read were: treasure island by robert louis stevenson and the crane’s gift by steven and megumi biddle. • unscramble writing: the teacher wrote some scrambled sentences on the whiteboard, and the students had to work individually to write (unscramble) them on a sheet of paper, which took place during assessment processes: teacher (orally): you have to write words with these words. don’t cheat please, don’t cheat. students: profe, ¿qué hay que hacer? [teacher, what do we have to do?] (the teacher does not answer and continues writing on the whiteboard). 1. parents – home – are – at – today – my 2. the – don’t – students – like – pets 3. they – why – here – are? 4. they – people – wonderful – are 5. me – please – help – teacher • dialogues/role plays: this occurred during assessment processes as follows: the students have to work in pairs or individually in order to create a conversation about any of the topics studied during the term. each pair goes in front of the class and acts out a structured and predictable question-answer dialogue about their personal information, including like and dislikes. unpaired students performed the dialogue with the teacher: a. what is your favorite place? b. my favorite play is soccer. a. no, no, place. b. my favorite place is palmeto. a. do you have pets? b. yes, i have three. a. where do you work? b. i don’t work, name. a. where do you study? b. i study in... a. what you favorite subject? b. my favorite is english. a. what is favorite singer? b. my favorite singer is... a. umh! this is singer is amazing. b. do you see tv? a. yes b. what is your favorite serie? (at this point, the teacher (in spanish) asks the pair to stop because they are going off the topic). 157profile vol. 17, no. 2, july-december 2015. issn 1657-0790 (printed) 2256-5760 (online). bogotá, colombia. pages 149-163 teacher activities and adolescent students’ participation in a colombian efl classroom • oral construction of sentences: the teacher, standing in front of the students, started a sentence and then chose a student and asked her/ him to complete it. the student is helped by the teacher when necessary: teacher: you are...(the students continue), you are very good people. teacher: i love dancing, do you love dancing? (to another student). do you love dancing? student: i don’t love dancing. • correcting assessments: after an assessment process, the teacher invited the whole class to review the answers. the teacher asked or started the statement, and the students participated, giving the correct answers orally. teacher: ok, if you stay five minutes, i can correct the quiz. i will say the sentences as they are. students: (scream joyfully) teacher: number one: my… students (orally): my – parents – are – athome – today (claps and screams). teacher: number two: the students… students: don’t – like – pets (claps and screams). teacher: why… students: why – are – they –here?(claps and screams) teacher: they… students: they are – wonderful – people. teacher: (she just points to the sentence) student: teacher help me please.2 some points to make about this category are as follows: the activity that was most practised is oral instruction/explanation in l1, with an absolute frequency of 22 (24.7%). if other activities in l1 are added, l1 use frequency increases to 35 (39.3%). in contrast, certain l2 activities had a frequency of 54 (60.7%). in a sense, one could say that the activities genuinely promoted the target language use or that the teaching-learning process in this classroom is more developed in l2 than in l1. this is appealing, taking into account that in this particular context—a non-bilingual public school—there is evidence of lack of resources and materials (at least for teaching english) and that there is little need for target language 2 oiexl1 = oral instruction/explanation in l1, sssal1 = summoning students’ attention and/or giving orders in l1, aqvl1 = asking questions in l1 or verifying students’ comprehension, oiexl2 = oral instruction/explanation in l2, sssal2 = summoning students’ attention and/or giving orders in l2, aqcl2 = asking questions or clarifying in l2, wil2 = written instruction in l2, sread = silent reading, uw = unscramble writing, d/rp = dialogues/role plays, ocs = oral construction of sentences, cass = correcting assessments. figure 1. absolute and percentage frequency of teaching activities2 o ie xl 1 ss sa l1 aq vl 1 o ie xl 2 ss sa l2 aq cl 2 w il2 sr ea d uw d/ rp o cs ca ss 24,7% 12,4% 2,2% 14,6% 22,5% 9,0% 3,4% 3,4% 3,4% 1,1% 1,1% 2,2% 0,0% 5,0% 10,0% 15,0% 20,0% 25,0% 30,0% universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras158 caicedo use. similarly, contrasting the subcategor y oral instruction/explanation in l1 with oral instruction/ explanation in l2, there is a gap in that the former appears 22 times and the latter 13 times. however, this must not be cause for concern because the reviewed literature states that it is appropriate to use l1 when giving instruction, clarifying, and so on, especially at beginner levels. yet what one can lament is the few times dialogues/role plays and oral construction of sentences occurred. figure 1 presents more details about the teaching activities. skills and language aspects • oral production: this took place mainly when the teacher developed activities such as dialogues, responses to comments, orders, explanations, and oral assessments, which could take the form of either student-student or student-teacher interactions. student: hello! everybody. students: hello! student: my name is jj3 and . . . another student: teacher, can i make him a question? student: how old are you? (repeats three times, but jj does not answer because he does not understand). (seconds later) jj?...my name is jj another student: hello! how old are you. my name is…grado noveno [ninth grade]. do you /laif/ vallado?4 • listening comprehension: this skill was used when the teacher spoke in l2 and when she had students do role plays (dialogues, conversations). teacher: remember; i can help you, but i’m sorry, i am very angry with you. you don’t need me; you don’t want my help. student (during a dialogue): i /laif/ in vallado. i /laif/. teacher (correcting him): i /liv/. (the student stutters and hesitates because of the teacher’s interruption). 3 a pseudonym for the student. 4 name of a neighbourhood. student: i live with my parents. my favorite pet, my fa…i am fiteen years old. teacher: where are you from? student: i am from cali. • written production: this occurred only during assessments, and students always worked individually when using this skill. for instance, the teacher asked the students to write a list of verbs and create sentences with them. teacher (direction for a writing exercise written on the whiteboard): write 15 verbs = present – past participle. make 5 sentences in present – past participle with he.5 • reading comprehension: this took place during assessments or in-class exercises. either the teacher gave students a handout with a short story or tale or students copied an instruction from the whiteboard. the activity was individual, or sometimes in groups. for instance, students had to read while paying attention to verb conjugations (present, past, past participle), unknown words, and so forth. students could use their dictionaries once they had finished the reading: (on the whiteboard): exercise no. 2 with texts. 1. read the three texts again and: look for: subject – verbs – predicates/complements 2. look at the verbs and say what is its tense. teacher: read the three texts again. students: what is again? • grammar: students used this subsidiary skill when they were asked to unscramble sentences, making lists of verbs in the present and past participle tenses: (on the whiteboard): escribir el pasado simple y el pasado participio de los siguientes verbos [write the simple past and past 5 it was not possible to obtain the result of this exercise, and thus, no example is provided. 159profile vol. 17, no. 2, july-december 2015. issn 1657-0790 (printed) 2256-5760 (online). bogotá, colombia. pages 149-163 teacher activities and adolescent students’ participation in a colombian efl classroom participle for the following verbs]: put, play, fly, sing, dance, study, sleep, come, love, go, eat, drink. • vocabulary: this subsidiary skill was utilized through readings, and it mainly occurred during assessments. it took place individually and in groups. some of the texts the students read were: the strange case of dr. jekyll and mr. hyde by robert louis stevenson, black beard’s treasure by jenny dooley, and love or money by rowena akinyemi. student: (during a reading exercise: what does it mean “come”? student: what does it mean “from”? it is noteworthy that the most practiced skill in the classroom was listening at 62.9%; this was likely not intentional but a byproduct of the instruction process. it has to be considered, as was already mentioned, that during the observation process, the teacher used no technological devices to develop listening activities. this implies that the target language the students listened to was the teacher’s or the other students’; thus the teacher’s and classmates’ inputs had a crucial role in the context that was observed. figure 2 better describes this matter. figure 2. absolute and percentage frequency of skills and language aspects6 15,7% 62,9% 4,3% 7,1% 5,7% 4,3% 0,0% 10,0% 20,0% 30,0% 40,0% 50,0% 60,0% 70,0% op lc wp rc gr voc 6 op = oral production, lc = listening comprehension, wp = written production, rc = reading comprehension, gr = grammar, voc = vocabulary. students’ participation/response • order/discipline: students remained calm, kept volumes low, remained silent, paid attention to the teacher, and so on. this student’s response was closely related with assessment: (during a silent reading): latecomers continue entering the classroom in complete silence. by waving her head and hands, the teacher tells students to sit down. the students respond by body language too. nobody speaks during the reading. • oral participation in l2: this sometimes occurred impromptu or spontaneously, and at other times, it was the product of the teacher’s overt input, as an instruction, an order, a clarification, a correction or corrective feedback. (interacting with the teacher) teacher: i love dancing, do you love dancing? (teacher repeats) do you love dancing? female students: i don’t love dancing. (one student repeats) i don’t love dancing. • group participation/repetition in l2: when the whole class participates (most of the time) as result of the teacher’s input. (whole class is creating sentences). the teacher continues encouraging the students to create more sentences. she has them repeat them, then she writes each sentence on the whiteboard): 6. they are very good soccer players. 7. my classmate is funny. 8. you are crazy people. 9. i love dancing. • oral production in l1: when students communicated in spanish to ask for clarifications, answer questions, and so on: teacher (during a reading test): what’s that? student: para traducir [for the translation]. • repetition in l2: when students reproduced what the teacher had just said. sometimes, students repeated to help the teacher keep the class calm. teacher: ok babies; come on, sit down. universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras160 caicedo students (helping the teacher): vea que sit down; sit down hombre. (because the students could not remember the way to reproduce the whole sentences in english, they combined l1 and l2). (minutes later) teacher (to a student who is misbehaving): be quiet! f. student: be quiet, be quiet f. • nonverbal participation/response: when students participate through gestures or body language. they did this in order to follow the teacher demands, instructions, etc. teacher: do you feel nervous about me? (student affirms by moving his head). teacher: stop, be quiet! f and n come here. (the students obey the teacher). as was mentioned before, listening comprehension was the skill that took place in the classroom most oten. this fact could be closely related to one of the ways the students most participated (responded), which was oral participation in l2, with eight (26.7%) appearances. a possible interpretation here is that if the teacher used l2 in the classroom, the students were likely to use this input to communicate in l2 as well. another aspect to note is the amount of nonverbal participation/ response, with an absolute frequency of eight (26.7%). this is undeniable proof that even though students sometimes do not participate or respond orally to the teacher or to other classmates, they do understand what is being said to or asked of them. see figure 3 for more details on the students’ participation and responses. other findings in the correlation between students’ participation and responses and the activities that provoked them, this study found that if the teacher used l1 to communicate with the students, they were likely to respond or participate in l1. additionally, if the teacher communicated in l2 and the students understood what she said but did not have the vocabulary or did not know or felt unsure about how to answer her in l2, they were likely to use nonverbal communication or body language to participate or respond. figure 3. absolute and percentage frequency of students’ participation and responses7 6,7% 26,7% 6,7% 30% 3,2% 26,7% ord op/l2 gprl2 op/l1 rep/l2 nvpr other important aspects are that group and individual participation were very low; this means that the teaching activities did not significantly involve students. similarly, it cannot be affirmed that any activity or activities provoked students’ indiscipline or misbehaviour; on the contrary, activities such as silent reading helped to keep students in order and calm. conclusions the purposes of this study were the following: first, to identify and describe the types of teaching activities developed in a ninth-grade classroom. it was found that the teacher developed 12 types of activities, including activities that intended to present content (oral instructions/explanations in l1), control discipline (summoning students’ attention and/or giving orders in l1), and assessing students’ 7 ord = order/discipline, op/l2 = oral participation in l2, gprl2 = group participation/repetition, op/l1 = oral participation in l1, rep/l2 = repetition in l2, nvpr = nonverbal participation/ response 161profile vol. 17, no. 2, july-december 2015. issn 1657-0790 (printed) 2256-5760 (online). bogotá, colombia. pages 149-163 teacher activities and adolescent students’ participation in a colombian efl classroom comprehension (asking questions in l1 or verifying students’ comprehension). the second objective aimed at examining how the students responded to the teacher’s activities. the results showed that students reacted in different ways, for instance, by following the teacher’s instructions (e.g., order/discipline) but they decided in which language to respond, for example, oral repetition in l2 and oral production in l1. the last research purpose was to explore how the target language was used in the classroom. the observations and data in figure 3 indicate that although receptive skills—that is, listening comprehension (62.9%) and reading comprehension (7.1%)—received much more attention (70%), productive skills—oral production (15.7%) and writing production (4.3%)—were less emphasized (20%). as stated before, receptive skills took place when students heard the teacher talk (instructing them) in l2, when she had students listen to themselves in role plays (dialogues, conversations), and during readings during assessments or in-class exercises. in contrast, productive skills accordingly took place mainly when the teacher developed activities such as dialogues, when students responded to the teacher’s comments, orders, etc., and during assessments in which students had to write lists of verbs and create sentences with them. one of the implications of this study is that al though there was significant use of the target language in the classroom, it was the teacher who dominated participation. this explains why receptive skills were predominant in the class that was observed, something that has been found in other studies elsewhere (alvarado rico, 2013; davies, 2011; johnson, 1995; prieto castillo, 2007; urrutia león & vega cely, 2010). it is important to acknowledge that receptive skills help students develop language proficiency but that teachers need to create better conditions for a balanced articulation of receptive and productive skills. additionally, more work is needed to increase the use of the target language in the classroom. i do not oppose integrating l1 in foreign language classes, but its use must be pedagogically guided. it must be used for strategic purposes but must not dominate the classroom language environment. one call this study makes is for teachers to reflect on and design pedagogical strategies to involve their students and foster l2 communication in the classroom. references akram, a., & malik, a. 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(2013). the use of the l1 in clil classes: the teachers’ perspectives. latin american journal of content and language integrated learning (laclil), 6(2), 1-21. http://dx.doi.org/10.5294/laclil.2013.6.2.1. majid, s., yeow, c. w., ying, a., & shyong, l. r. (2010). enriching learning experience through class participation: a students’ perspective. cooperation and collaboration in teaching and research: trends in library information studies education. retrieved from http:// 163profile vol. 17, no. 2, july-december 2015. issn 1657-0790 (printed) 2256-5760 (online). bogotá, colombia. pages 149-163 teacher activities and adolescent students’ participation in a colombian efl classroom conf.euclid-lis.eu/index.php/ifla2010/ifla2010/ paper/view/10/10. muñoz hernández, c. a. 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(2003). 700 classroom activities. oxford, uk: macmillan. solihah, i., & yusuf, f. n. (n.d.). classroom participation: a case of a junior high school students in efl context. retrieved from http://file.upi.edu/direktori/ fpbs/jur._pend._bahasa_inggris/197308162003121fazri_nur_yusuf/kumpulan_artikel--ppt/paper_ conaplin_participation_fazri%26intan.pdf. urrutia león, w., & vega cely, e. (2010). encouraging teenagers to improve speaking skills through games in a colombian public school. profile issues in teachers’ professional development, 12(1), 11-31. about the author jefferson caicedo is a fith-year student in the school of language sciences at universidad del valle (colombia). he has taught english and french for more than five years and has given talks at national and international events. acknowledgements i thank professor omaira vergara for her advice and institución eduactiva henrique olaya herrera for allowing me to conduct the study reported on here. last but not least, i appreciate the support of professor josé a. alvarez for helping me make this study publishable, and “xime-ldu” for encouraging me to keep going. 97profile vol. 18, no.1, january-june 2016. issn 1657-0790 (printed) 2256-5760 (online). bogotá, colombia. pages 97-114 http://dx.doi.org/10.15446/profile.v18n1.44269 e-moderating and e-tivities: the implementation of a workshop to develop online teaching skills in in-service teachers e-moderación y e-actividades: implementación de un taller para desarrollar habilidades de enseñanza en línea de profesores en ejercicio jorge eduardo pineda hoyos1* luis hernando tamayo cano2** universidad de antioquia, medellín, colombia this paper reports the experience of implementing a teacher’s professional development strategy that sought to foster e-moderator competencies among language faculty at a colombian public university. the study aimed at finding the extent to which participants understood the concepts of e-moderation and e-tivities. we analyzed the participants’ performance in three different tasks to give account of the incorporation of the concepts. the results from the analysis of the tasks showed that participants understand online processes, they have some technical skills and they have many personal characteristics that will help them become e-moderators. key words: e-moderation, e-moderator, e-tivity, foreign language teaching, higher education, online course, teacher’s professional development. en este artículo se reporta la experiencia de implementación de una estrategia de desarrollo profesional docente que tuvo como objetivo la adquisición de competencias en moderación en ambientes virtuales de aprendizaje de profesores de lengua extranjera en una universidad pública colombiana. se buscó identificar hasta qué punto los participantes en el curso incorporaron los conceptos de e-moderación y de e-actividad en su repertorio pedagógico por lo que se analizó el desempeño de los participantes en tres tareas diferentes. los resultados muestran que los participantes comprenden los procesos de educación en línea, poseen habilidades técnicas básicas y tienen características personales que les ayudarán a convertirse en e-moderadores. palabras clave: curso virtual, desarrollo profesional docente, e-actividades, educación superior, e-moderación, e-moderador, enseñanza de lenguas extranjeras. * e-mail: eduardo.pineda@udea.edu.co ** e-mail: lhernando.tamayo@udea.edu.co how to cite this article (apa, 6th ed.): pineda hoyos, j. e., & tamayo cano, l. h. (2016). e-moderating and e-tivities: the implementation of a workshop to develop online teaching skills in in-service teachers. profile issues in teachers’ professional development, 18(1), 97-114. http://dx.doi.org/10.15446/profile.v18n1.44269. this article was received on july 4, 2014, and accepted on july 28, 2015. this is an open access article distributed under the terms of the creative commons license attribution-noncommercial-noderivatives 4.0 international license. consultation is possible at http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/. universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras98 pineda hoyos & tamayo cano introduction online education and technology-enhanced learning are becoming important issues for higher education programs and language education is no exception. higher education institutions should think about offering faculty professional development programs to develop skills that would help them cope with “the pressures of adapting their current teaching ideologies and practice to align with rapidly expanding digital tools and expectations for learning and teaching” (salmon & wright, 2014, p. 53). these professional development programs should help faculty develop skills to cope with students’ challenging abilities to engage in more informal learning opportunities outside the classroom. however, higher education institutions offer faculty opportunities to develop those skills usually as workshops that favor a technological exploration of certain tools, but neglect their pedagogical use (daniel, 2012; herman, 2012; macdonald & poniatowska, 2011; salmon & wright, 2014). in addition, faculty shows some resistance as regards attending training workshops because they usually represent increasing academic responsibilities and inadequate time allowance and incentives (allen, seaman, lederman, & jaschik, 2012; mcquiggan, 2012). teachers in our institution have several needs regarding the development of moderation skills and the design of online language activities since when teaching online, they are more concerned about assigning grades than promoting interaction or designing new activities for their courses. to respond to the needs of our language faculty, we designed a professional development strategy that helps them develop the skills to deal with the new challenges they face when trying to embed technology into their teaching. the program focuses not only on the instrumental use of the tools, such as setting up a blog; it also focuses on its pedagogical use. for example, reflecting on the ways to use a blog to teach a concept or to develop a skill such as identifying the main idea of a text. our professional development program takes participants from a techno-centric focus to a knowledge-centric focus and seeks to be a successful, outcome-driven professional development opportunity exploring the process participants undertake to develop the skills necessary to teach in online and blended learning environments, also called e-moderation competencies (figg & jaipal, 2012; macdonald & poniatowska, 2011; salmon, 2011). literature review the course was designed based on two concepts: e-moderation and e-tivities. in this section of the paper, we will go through some experiences in which the concepts of e-moderation and e-tivites are part of a professional development program and we will examine those concepts. although there are many studies regarding the deployment of professional development programs in higher education, the experiences regarding the implementation of professional development programs focusing on the concepts of e-moderation and e-tivities are not very numerous; the experiences we found report the existence of collaborative, team-based, online learning designs with different purposes such as (1) helping faculty at campus-based universities introduce and deploy a new learning management system (lms) and (2) moving from a single professor taking responsibility for a unit or a course to a team approach or (3) establishing an effective process for the development of contextualized knowledge and skills in online teaching in order to enhance student learning outcomes (gregory & salmon, 2013; salmon & wright, 2014; salmon, gregory, dona, & ross, 2014). the implementation of professional development programs based on the concepts of e-moderation and e-tivities have “proven suitable for the design of brand new courses and for transforming face-to-face, campus-based courses into online or blended versions” (salmon & 99profile vol. 18, no.1, january-june 2016. issn 1657-0790 (printed) 2256-5760 (online). bogotá, colombia. pages 97-114 e-moderating and e-tivities: the implementation of a workshop to develop online teaching skills... wright, 2014, p. 55) as well as to provide an effective professional development route for larger numbers of staff (salmon et al., 2014; salmon & wright, 2014). finally, shin and bickel (2012) report that in order to have successful professional development strategies or programs, training needs to be aligned with the trainees’ needs so participants perceive training as something positive for their professional practice. e-moderation e-moderation is a term coined by salmon (2011) that refers to processes of managing the communication among teachers and students in online environments and the skills online teachers or e-moderators employ to establish a teacher’s presence in an online environment. salmon (2011) developed a model for appropriately moderating an online course (see figure 1). salmon (2011) summarizes her model as follows: at stage 1 individual access and the ability of participants to use online learning are essential for group learning to develop. stage 2 involves individual participants establishing their online identities and finding others with whom to interact. at stage 3, participants give each other information relevant to the course. this stage is characterized by cooperation and support for each person’s goals. at stage 4, group discussions start and the interaction becomes more collaborative. at stage 5 participants use the system to achieve their goals, seek to integrate online into other forms of learning and reflect on their learning process. each stage requires the participants to master certain technical skills, figure 1. the five-stage model of online teaching and learning (salmon, 2011, p. 32) development knowledge construction conferencing facilitating process information exchange online socialization learning access and motivation1 2 3 4 5 providing links outside closed conferences supporting, responding searching, personalizing software facilitating tasks and supporting use of learning materials sending and receiving messages familiarizing and providing bridges between cultural, social, and learning environments setting up system and accessing welcoming and encouraging a m o u n t o f in te ra ct iv it y universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras100 pineda hoyos & tamayo cano in the bottom left of each step, as well as e-moderating skills, on the right top of each step. the levels of interactivity, shown in the “interactivity bar” that runs along the flight of the steps, also increase and the kind of information and messages that the participants exchange also change through the steps and the stages of the model. (p. 32-33) this model underlies several assumptions: (1) online learning goes beyond “undertaking activity on a computer . . . online learning . . . includes . . . interaction between neural, cognitive, motivational, affective, and social processes” (azevedo, 2012, p. 31). (2) learning is a process where transformation takes place in leaps and bounds and (3) participants in an online setting learn about working online along with learning about the topic with, and through other people. success of online learning depends on the appropriate integration of learning about technologies and learning through or with technologies (macdonald, 2004). the model seeks to promote the interaction between groups of peers and the e-moderator who plays the role of mediator and supporter (berge, 2007). the implementation of the model to design courses has benefits for designers, e-moderators, and participants. designers know how participants are likely to exploit the system at each stage, e-moderators enjoy working online and find that their processes run smoothly, and participants feel they can control their own learning by focusing on tasks and processes (hopson, simms, & knezek, 2001; salmon, 2011). e-tivities the term e-tivity refers to the “frameworks for enabling active and participative online learning by individuals and groups” (salmon, 2013, p. 5). e-tivities have several characteristics: they make the work of the teachers more productive and focused, they are focused on the learners; they transfer the knowledge to the resources and the learners’ skills to access information because they are based on the idea that knowledge is socially constructed; e-tivities are cheap and are easily combined with face-toface environments (richards, 2005; salmon, 2013). rumble (2010), reflecting on the costs of producing learning materials as an aspect that may hinder innovation in higher education and advocating for the implementation of e-tivities, says that: preparing online learning materials is a very expensive business. few academics or teachers have all the necessary skills, the time and the desire to spend months creating texts and video. there is usually a need to frame the production of material on a project with one or more subject experts, instructional designers and web developers. and sometimes mobile application developers, information specialists and more people are required to produce a single piece of material. e-tivities help saving costs because they use existing resources, are reusable, are adaptable and are based on the participants’ exchange of knowledge. (p. 264) herrington, reeves, and oliver (2010) suggest that e-tivities promote engagement because they build up robust and usable knowledge through authentic tasks and situations. laurillard and scharmer (as cited in salmon, 2013), characterize e-tivities as a way of accessing and digitally applying teachers’ creativity, vision, and inspiration. method this study is a single instrumental case study with a holistic and interpretative approach to data analysis. it is single instrumental because it focuses on a specific issue; it uses a holistic and interpretative approach to analyze the data because the entire case is examined and descriptions, themes, and interpretations related to the case are presented (creswell, 2007; merriam, 1998; stake, 1995; yin, 2003). we followed a case study as a research approach because it allowed us to explore and analyze the course to answer the following research questions: (1) what e-moderator competencies from the ones proposed by salmon’s (2011) model of online 101profile vol. 18, no.1, january-june 2016. issn 1657-0790 (printed) 2256-5760 (online). bogotá, colombia. pages 97-114 e-moderating and e-tivities: the implementation of a workshop to develop online teaching skills... learning and teaching are identified in the forum discussion in the course? (2) what characteristics from the ones proposed by salmon (2002, 2013) are identified in the e-tivities designed by the participants in the course? (3) what are the strategies and activities that the participants of the course display for each stage of salmon’s (2011) model of online learning and teaching in an online course? course description in this section of the paper, we will provide a description of the course used as a professional development strategy. the course has been offered twice (2013, 2014) and had a 32-hour intensity. the first time in a blended modality with 10 hours of faceto-face meetings and the other 22 hours were used for asynchronous work such as forum participation and preparation of e-tivities and readings and the second time completely online. the course runs on the moodle platform and has five units. unit 0 is an introductory unit containing a welcome message, the methodology, the content, the course timetable, the assessment, two forums, the references used in the course, and the course and teachers’ evaluation. unit 1 explores the concepts of e-moderation and e-tivity. it has a video about the reasons to include technology in the classrooms and readings and presentations that explore the main concepts of the course. unit 2 explores internal-tomoodle resources. it contains video tutorials on how to set up a questionnaire, a chat room, an assignment, a forum discussion, a sample and a tutorial to design a rubric to assess a forum discussion. unit 3 explores external-to-moodle resources. the unit presents video tutorials of different resources for teaching reading and listening, a video about the advantages of using an lms or the open web as a learning platform. the final unit of the course embodies the assessment, where participants have to design and upload an e-tivity. participants there were 20 participants in this study, 14 teachers from the first version of the course and six teachers from the second version. none of the participants had any prior experience working with e-tivities or with the concept of e-moderation, but most of them had previously worked with the moodle platform at least once in their academic or professional life. see figures 2, 3, and 4 for more information about the characteristics of the participants. figure 2. participants’ ages figure 3. participants’ level of education figure 4. participants’ employment status 5% 57% 38% 20-30 30-40 40-50 24% 66% 10% undergraduate degree master's degree pursuing graduate studies 76% 24% lecturer full-time faculty universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras102 pineda hoyos & tamayo cano table 1. e-moderator online competencies chart quality / characteristic 1 . c o n fi d e n t 2 . c o n st ru ct iv e 3 . d e v e lo p m e n ta l 4 . fa ci li ta ti n g 5 . k n o w le d g e s h a ri n g 6 . c re a ti v e understanding of online processes technical skills online communication skills content expertise personal characteristics data collection instruments and analysis we, as moderators, asked the participants to complete three tasks during the eight weeks that the courses lasted. participants’ contributions to a forum discussion for tasks 1 and 3 and an assignment submission for task 2 were used as data sources in order to obtain qualitative information; the instruments also allowed for some quantitative analysis in terms of frequencies and percentages, which are reported in the results section. in task 1, par ticipants had to dis c uss t he principles of e-moderation and the roles and skills of e-moderators; they posted their contributions to a forum discussion that was later collected for analysis. this task was analyzed in light of the e-moderators’ competences outlined by salmon (2011). there was at least one contribution per participant and the time allowed for completing this task was one week. table 1 shows the instrument used to analyze this task. in task 2, participants had to design an e-tivity. e ach par ticipant designed one e-tivity w hich they published in a space for online assignments submission in the platform and the e-tivities were collected at the end of each course. this task was analyzed using a checklist based on the characteristics of e-tivities: title, a clearly explained purpose, a brief summary of the task, clear instructions for the participants, requested responses from an individual to others, instructions for the e-moderator, total time allowed for the completion of the activity, and link to the next activity as described in table 2. 103profile vol. 18, no.1, january-june 2016. issn 1657-0790 (printed) 2256-5760 (online). bogotá, colombia. pages 97-114 e-moderating and e-tivities: the implementation of a workshop to develop online teaching skills... table 2. characteristics of e-tivities checklist aspect yes no 1. does the e-tivity have a title? 2. does the e-tivity clearly explain its purpose? 3. does the e-tivity provide a brief summary of the overall task? 4. does the e-tivity provide clear instructions to the individual participants as to what they should do? 5. does the e-tivity request responses from an individual to others? 6. does the e-tivity clearly indicate what the e-moderator will do? 7. does the e-tivity state the total time allowed for completion? 8. is the e-tivity linked to the next e-tivity? and, in task 3, participants had to describe the strategies and activities that could be incorporated in an online course based on salmon’s (2011) model. there were about 42 posts since each participant had contributed at least twice. this task was analyzed using a three-column chart: the first column contains the stages described in the model (access and motivation, online socialization, information exchange, knowledge construction and development). the second column comprises the strategies in the model (setting up and accessing the system, sending and receiving messages, carrying out activities, reporting and discussing findings, conferencing, course-related discussions, critical thinking applied to subject material, making connections between models and work-based learning experiences, use of conferencing in a strategic way, and reflection on learning process). the third column presents some of the activities or actions that can be carried out in each stage: for example, welcome and encouragement, introductions and icebreakers, assigning roles and responsibilities, asking questions and encouraging discussions and reflection. results this segment of the paper reports the results from the analysis of the tasks assigned to the participants. r e s u lt s f rom ta s k 1 re p or t t h e e m o d e r ator competencies. results from the second task report on e-tivity design and the results from the third task give an account of the strategies and activities the participants may implement in an online course based on salmon’s (2011) model. results from task 1 the results from this task are reported in terms of the competences we identified from the ones proposed by salmon (2011) and are not intended to make a difference between the competencies that the participants brought to the course and the ones they developed during the course. also, the results are not universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras104 pineda hoyos & tamayo cano intended to make a categorization of the competencies in the blended and the online versions of the course. these results seek to answer the research question: what e-moderator competencies from the ones proposed by salmon’s (2011) model of online learning and teaching are identified in the forum discussions? the forum discussions from participants in both versions of the course show several personal characteristics that can help participants develop the necessary skills to become e-moderators. they show determination and motivation to become e-moderators. the following post reflects how the concept of e-moderation helps a participant understand what an online teacher should be: i hadn’t had the opportunity of studying the concept of e-moderation and now that we have discussed it i think it was what i needed to understand what an online teacher should be. i think i need to continue exploring but you have opened a new topic i really want to learn more about.1 (p8) 1 excerpts used in the article were translated from spanish for publication purposes. they also show a positive attitude, commitment, and enthusiasm for online learning. the following participant’s contribution shows that she is very motivated towards online learning and she harbors a strong desire to be trained in the use of technology in education: i feel very motivated towards online learning. i believe we all need to be trained in the use of ict. computers and technology are here to stay and we, teachers, need to learn how to use them. i really want to continue learning more about online learning and e-moderation. (p11) another characteristic participants developed in both versions of the course was to establish an online identity as e-moderators which means creating an online presence by means of a profile picture and a personal e-moderating style that are reflected on writing and message style. all participants built their profiles in the platform with a personal description, a picture, and a brief summary of interests. a sample is presented in figure 5. s e n s i t i v i t y t o o n l i n e r e l a t i o n s h i p s a n d communication is another personal characteristic figure 5. sample of a participant’s profile 105profile vol. 18, no.1, january-june 2016. issn 1657-0790 (printed) 2256-5760 (online). bogotá, colombia. pages 97-114 e-moderating and e-tivities: the implementation of a workshop to develop online teaching skills... identified in the participants’ contributions that allow e-moderators to facilitate online processes; it implies providing suitable feedback and using language appropriately (salmon, 2011). these posts are examples of these characteristics: e-moderators should pay close attention to the participation of students to give feedback and promote reflection among students. (p4) when communicating with my students online i take into account that i need to be careful with language and that i need to be very clear to avoid confusion and disorientation. (p11) reflecting on the role of different language skills in online learning also shows the participants’ willingness to work in online learning environments. a participant discusses the role of the written language in online settings to give instructions and to promote clarity: online settings generate more elaboration, the writing language as a means of interaction is more elaborated. in face-to-face settings it is different because you give instructions and if students don’t understand you simply repeat what you say. in online settings you don’t have those immediate moments to clarify. in online settings students do what they think they have to do according to the instruction. (p18) creating and sustaining a useful and relevant online learning community also appeared in the discussions in the forums in both courses. however, this would be an issue to further explore. this post reflects that discussion: learning occurs when there is interaction among students, students and online environments, and students and teachers. therefore, being part of a community or a group is fundamental to learning. (p19) regarding technical issues, participants had the basic technical skills and the willingness to be trained as e-moderators such as reasonably good keyboard skills and some experience using networked computers or an lms (salmon, 2011). however, they stressed the need to know how to use special features of software to be incorporated in their online lessons. participants in both versions of the course seem to be able to build online trust, to help others in online environments and to understand the potential of online learning to support students (salmon, 2011). salmon defines those competences as necessary skills prospective e-moderators should have to become e-moderators. the following posts show how participants think online learning helps them find ways of addressing their students’ needs and how they help their students feel confident in their online courses: online learning provides new and interactive ways of addressing my students’ needs. (p2) understanding the potential of online learning is very important because i can relate to my students and help them feel confident in an online course. (p3) they also showed other characteristics such as being able to appreciate the basic structures of online conferencing and the web. in this post from a participant, we can see an example of this appreciation: in web-based environments there are some tools like forums that can be used for discussions of certain topics by debating and explaining reflections. (p4) participants in both versions of the course seem to know how to pace discussions and use time online. in this post, a participant explains how he facilitates discussions in his online classes: i involve my students in the discussions by giving them topics of their interests and giving students time to study them before asking them to post their opinions. (p5) table 3 shows a summar y of t he qu a lit ies and the characteristics identified in the forum discussion in task 1. universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras106 pineda hoyos & tamayo cano table 3. qualities and characteristics of the participants based on salmon (2011) quality characteristics personal characteristics • determination and motivation to become e-moderators • establishing an online identity as e-moderator • sensitivity to online relationships and communication • positive attitude, commitment, and enthusiasm for online learning • creating and sustaining a useful, relevant online learning community technical skills • appreciating the basic structures of online conferencing and the web and internet’s potential for learning • good keyboard skills and some experience using networked computers understanding of online process • building online trust and helping others • understanding the potential of online learning and groups • knowing how to pace discussions and use time online results from task 2 this section of the paper reports the characteristics of the e-tivities the participants designed. the characteristics of the e-tivities are based on salmon’s (2002, 2013) e-tivity framework. the results from this task are intended to give account of the characteristics identified in the e-tivities, hence, the results are not intended to provide a deep analysis of the e-tivities designed in each version of the course (blended and fully online). however, we will provide a certain degree of comparison. the results from this task seek to answer the research question: what characteristics from the ones proposed by salmon (2002, 2013) are identified in the e-tivities designed by the participants in the course? all of the e-tivities in both versions of the course had a title. salmon (2002, 2013) states that the title of an e-tivity must entice the student to take part in the activity; plus, it should be very brief and requires creativity from the e-moderator. during the first time the course was offered, 67% of the e-tivities stated their purpose and only 32% of the e-tivities showed this characteristic in the second version of the course. the purpose of an e-tivity allows the students to know what objectives or aims they will achieve or understand better. salmon (2002, 2013) suggests using verbs and linking the e-tivity with the objectives or outcomes of the unit, module, or course program. similarly, during the first time the course was offered, 67% of the participants provided a summary of the task while in the second version only 32% of the participants did. further exploration is required to find out why participants paid more attention to this feature in the first version of the course; we discuss some of the possible reasons in the conclusions of the study. salmon (2002, 2013) suggests that the summary of the task should be clear: it should contain brief instructions on how to take part in the activity and what to do and she strongly suggests including only one question or task per message. e-tivity design can help students become more motivated to undertake the e-tivity and students will know exactly what is expected of them and what they will achieve. figure 6 shows one of the e-tivities designed by the participants in the course. it presents the title (getting to know your topic), the purpose (present the student’s topic to her/his classmates), and a brief summary of the e-tivity. 107profile vol. 18, no.1, january-june 2016. issn 1657-0790 (printed) 2256-5760 (online). bogotá, colombia. pages 97-114 e-moderating and e-tivities: the implementation of a workshop to develop online teaching skills... forty-one percent of the e-tivities designed during the first version of the course had instructions and 59% of them had this characteristic during the second version. salmon (2002, 2013) states that participants in an online course should know in advance what is expected from them and they should be clear on what they have to do and how. not to include this feature in an e-tivity can generate confusion, despair, and demotivation. figure 7 shows the instruction included in one of the participant’s e-tivity: to take the exam the student has to consider aspects such as literary theory and terminology of the narrative. a l t h o u g h t h e s p a r k , w h i c h re f e r s t o t h e information that will be provided as the starting point for the activity, was a feature discussed and explored in the materials used in both courses, none of the e-tivities designed showed it. the spark begins the process of group learning and knowledge figure 6. example of an e-tivity figure 7. instructions in one e-tivity title of the e-tivity purpose of the e-tivity instructions of the e-tivity summary of the e-tivity universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras108 pineda hoyos & tamayo cano construction by enticing students to learn (salmon, 2002). presenting issues, dilemmas, problems, or challenges to students is fundamental in an e-tivity (salmon, 2013). since most of the participants come from face-to-face settings and most of their teaching practices happen in traditional classrooms where activities might be introduced differently, they might not recognize the importance of this feature in an e-tivity. during the first time the course was offered, only 38% of the e-tivities requested responses from an individual to others. in other words, asking participants to react to other participants’ comments or opinions. howe ver, an outstanding 62% of the e-tivities designed during the second version tended to promote interaction among participants by asking them to answer others’ opinions. this might be due to the need of explicitly establishing relationships with others in online environments due to the lack of physical presence (salmon 2002, 2013). figure 8 shows that the participants in a forum must comment on at least two posts from other participants. during the first time the course was offered, just 38% of the e-tivities designed indicated what the e-moderator should do and, remarkably, 62% in the second version. salmon (2002, 2013) argues that e-tivities should clearly state what the e-moderator will do, how and when she/he will do it. for example, summarizing, giving feedback, teaching points, and closing the e-tivity. on average, only 35% of the e-tivities in both versions of the course stated the total time allowed for completion, and the estimated total study time for the activity. salmon (2002, 2013) indicates that to allocate time is important for both e-moderators and students. for e-moderators, time should be abundant, especially if the e-tivities are set for novice learners. for learners, on the other hand, time is crucial because they need it to understand what they have to do and how. salmon also suggests that e-moderators be highly sensitive to timing and pacing. finally, during the first version of the course, only 4% of the e-tivities were linked to a future activity. however, during the second version of the course, the instructor placed emphasis on this feature and 95% of the e-tivities showed it. salmon figure 8. e-tivity requesting responses from one individual to others request responses from one individual to others 109profile vol. 18, no.1, january-june 2016. issn 1657-0790 (printed) 2256-5760 (online). bogotá, colombia. pages 97-114 e-moderating and e-tivities: the implementation of a workshop to develop online teaching skills... (2002, 2013) explains that e-moderators can suggest additional resources to help with the completion of the task. she also suggests that e-moderators should indicate whether the resources are required or optional and they should be placed at the end of the e-tivity. figure 9 shows how one participant linked the resources in one e-tivity. figure 10 shows the characteristics of the e-tivities designed by the participants, including a moodle resource such as a questionnaire and an externalto-moodle resource such as links to other sites or a youtube video. results of task 3 this section of the paper presents the results of the third task. each stage of the model presents the strategies and activities, outlined and discussed by participants in the task alongside their connection or correlation to salmon’s (2011) model. these results seek to answer the research question: what are the strategies and the activities participants of the course display for each stage of salmon’s (2011) model of online learning and teaching in an online course? we understand strategies as the plan to achieve an objective and activities as the actions. figure 10. characteristics of the e-tivities designed by the participants 100% 67% 67% 41% 0% 38% 14% 26% 4% 100% 32% 32% 59% 0% 62% 85% 43% 95% ti tle pu rp os e ta sk su m m ar y in st ru ct io ns sp ar k re sp on se s r eq ue st em od er at or 's ro le tim e all ow ed lin ke d to th e n ex t a ct ivi ty version 1 version 2 figure 9. activities linked in an e-tivity in this e-tivity, participants have to go to a website, choose a video, prepare and post a presentation to finally post it in a forum universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras110 pineda hoyos & tamayo cano stage 1: access and motivation salmon (2011) states: “the participant in an online course needs information and technical support to get online and strong motivation and encouragement to put [forth] the necessary time and effort” (p. 34). she argues that e-moderators welcome students and offer them support at this stage. if there is a balance between regular opportunities to contribute and the capacity of learners to respond to the invitation, motivation to participate occurs. twenty-four percent of the participants reported strategies such as an instruction book to access the web-based course, 5% suggested an e-mail message with instructions, and 14% suggested the use of videoconference using different types of software to set up an orientation session before starting the course. among the activities reported by the participants in the course, 28% of them considered that making the e-moderator and the students acquainted could be an activity in this stage, 14% proposed assigning tasks to students to familiarize them with the system and to follow the steps to access the platform, and 9% recommended setting up an faq (frequently asked questions) resource. these strategies and activities are meant to gain access quickly and easily to the system, to improve the participants’ attitude towards learning online and to get effective help (tsui as cited in salmon, 2011). stage 2: online socialization at this stage, participants get used to being in the new online environment and from the start of this stage e-moderators should seek to create an environment that will enhance the well-being of the online group. fourteen percent of the participants suggested online communication using videoconference software, 38% proposed creating a discussion forum where all the participants meet, and 9% suggested creating a chat room to interact as a strategy that can be used at this stage. twenty-eight percent of the participants suggested a brief introduction about their expectations for the course, 14% recommended a post about a specific topic to promote interaction, 5% suggested asking students to upload their picture in their profile, 14% proposed asking students to introduce themselves and 5% suggested asking students to answer a survey about their personal and professional information, and sharing the survey with other students. stage 3: information exchange participants will view the system as an active and lively human network and it should provide participants with access to information in the s am e w ay. e m o d e r at or s s h ou l d e ns u re t h at every participant has a role to play and is actively participating; they also should ensure that discussions and e-tivities focus on discovering or exploring easily accessible answers (salmon, 2011). in this stage, 23% of the participants suggested clear explanations about the ways of participation and information sharing among participants as strategies that could be carried out. as for the activities or actions for this stage, 8% of the participants proposed video conference software or platforms, 14% recommended presenting the timetable of activities with opening and closing dates, 4% suggested describing participants’ roles, and 14% proposed setting up the appropriate platform tools for students to engage in information exchange. stage 4: knowledge construction participants start formulating and writing down ideas or they start understanding a topic. they respond to others’ messages in a participative way. participants engage in very active learning activities, widening their own viewpoints and appreciating different perspectives. at this stage, e-moderators should ask more questions, seek more discussion, motivate, challenge, compliment, and encourage all participants (salmon, 2011). suitable activities for this stage are forum discussions and wikis based on the content of the course (23%), and discussions and reflections 111profile vol. 18, no.1, january-june 2016. issn 1657-0790 (printed) 2256-5760 (online). bogotá, colombia. pages 97-114 e-moderating and e-tivities: the implementation of a workshop to develop online teaching skills... in forums and wikis about a topic from the class (14%). in addition, 9% of the participants mentioned participating in video forums, blogs, mini projects, debates, and essays using forums, wikis or chat rooms. stage 5: development at this stage, participants are responsible for their own learning through computer-mediated opportunities and need little support from the e-moderator. they may demand better access, faster responses, and more software. a very important issue at this stage is to design activities that assure p ar t icip ants are indep endent on line and c an appreciate and personalize their online learning experiences (salmon, 2011). it is also interesting to note that the first three stages of the model present higher frequencies than the two following stages. some insights as to why this happened are explored in the following section. conclusions and implications this study sought to identify the extent to which the participants in a teacher’s professional development strategy understand the concepts of e-moderation and e-tivities. the conclusions reached from this study are not definitive and deeper exploration of the concepts as well as an exploration of the notions of e-moderation and e-tivity being used in real teaching situations is needed. the conclusions of the study will be reported in the same order as the results, providing a summary of each result with an interpretation. conclusions from task 1 the forum discussion in the first task revealed that the par ticipants in the cours e emb o died several characteristics from the ones proposed by salmon’s (2011) model. the participants showed several personal characteristics necessary to become e-moderators. for example, determination and motivation to become e-moderators; they also demonstrated a positive attitude, commitment, and enthusiasm for online learning. the participants in the course were also able to establish an online identity by creating an online presence. they also showed sensitivity to online relationships and developed technical skills that helped them be better e-moderators such as appreciating the basic structures of online conferencing as well as their potential for learning. additionally, they showed other technical skills that were developed outside the course such as having good keyboard skills and some experience using networked computers. these technical skills contributed to having a course without many technical obstacles. in conclusion, the forum discussion in task 1 seems to reflect the basic characteristics that teachers need in order to become e-moderators. however, characteristics that are part of salmon’s (2011) model and that participants did not report in the discussions include controlling groups, bringing in non-participants, and using special software features for controlling, weaving, and archiving; these characteristics require further exploration in a future version of the course. conclusions from task 2 a l t h o u g h t h e e t i v i t i e s d e s i g n e d by t h e participants in the course in the second task showed that they considered most of the characteristics of e-tivities proposed by salmon (2013) (all the e-tivities included a title), there were significant differences in the e-tivities designed in the blended version of the course and the e-tivities designed in the online version of the course such as specifying the purpose and the summary of the e-tivities. the e-tivities, in the blended version of the course, presented a higher percentage in purpose and task summary. however, the e-tivities designed in the online version of the course predominantly included instructions, responses from one student to others, e-moderator’s role, a time limit allowed to finish the task and a link to universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras112 pineda hoyos & tamayo cano the next e-tivitiy was included. a possible explanation for this is that even if both versions of the course had the same intensity in terms of time, in the online version of the course, participants may have spent more time analyzing and exploring the theory and the examples of e-tivities provided. however, a deeper exploration including interviews of the participants, both moderators and students, an implementation of the e-tivities in a real-life online course, observation of the online courses to see the e-tivities put into practice, and more practice designing e-tivities are needed to determine the reasons why they paid more attention to some characteristics than others in different versions of the course. in addition, the lack of a crucial feature of e-tivities in both versions of the course i.e. the spark which aims at motivating participants to carry out the e-tivity, seems to happen due to three reasons: (1) the participants may not have considered it important, even if we, as tutors in the course, explained, presented, and explored the characteristics of e-tivities in the same manner, (2) the spark is a characteristic that is not widespread to faceto-face activity or task design; and (3) participants’ lack of experience designing e-tivities. conclusions from task 3 the participants in the course outlined several strategies and activities that they would implement in each of the stages from salmon’s (2011) model. although it may be difficult to come up with ideas of strategies and activities to be implemented in an online course, the participants suggested clear and well established examples of strategies and activities that were directly linked with a tool (forums, video, forums and blogs) for the first three stages of the model. however, for the last two stages, the strategies and activities were feeble and were not linked directly to a tool; the participants proposed writtenbased strategies and activities; a reason for this may be that the last two stages of salmon’s model aim at formulating and writing down ideas to understand a topic and, at the final stage, participants are responsible for their learning. it would be necessary to properly link the design of strategies and activities for each stage of the model, the course or module or program’s objectives, and the suitable tools for the deployment of those strategies and activities. it would also be necessary to delve into the effects of the implementation of those strategies and activities in a real online course. to sum up, although the study analyzed the participants’ contributions in forums and the design of e-tivities in the light of salmon’s (2002, 2011, 2013) principles and theories, other sources of information such as interviews of participants or focus groups can be taken into consideration to broaden the scope of the study to get to reliable generalizations about the stage the participants are in as regards the development of their e-moderating skills and the level of understanding of the stages in salmon’s (2011) model and their appropriation of the concept of e-tivity. nonetheless, we believe that this teachers’ professional development strategy we offer to develop e-moderator competencies among our language faculty will serve as a good starting point for future proposals at our institution, and possibly, in other settings. references allen, e., seaman, j., lederman, d., & jaschik, s. 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(2005). the design of effective ict-supported learning activities: exemplary models, changing requirements, and new possibilities. language learning and technology, 9(1), 60-79. rumble, g. (2010). flexing costs and reflecting on methods. in e. burge, c. gibson, & t. gibson (eds.), flexibility in higher education: promises, ambiguities, challenges (pp. 264-301). athabasca, ca: athabasca university press. salmon, g. (2002). e-tivities: the key to active online learning. london, uk: routledge. salmon, g. (2011). e-moderating: the key to teaching and learning online (3rd ed.). new york, ny: routledge. salmon, g. (2013). e-tivities: the key to active online learning (2nd ed.). new york, ny: routledge. salmon, g., & wright, p. (2014). transforming future teaching through “carpe diem” learning design. education sciences, 4(1), 52-63. http://dx.doi.org/10.3390/ educsci4010052. salmon, g., gregory, j., dona, k. l., & ross, b. (2014). experiential online development for educators: the example of the carpe diem mooc. retrieved from http:// www.gillysalmon.com/uploads/1/6/0/5/16055858/ experiential_online_development_for_educators_the_example_of_the_carpe_diem_mooc-_bjet_pre_ peer-reviewed.pdf. shin, j. k., & bickel, b. (2012). building an online community of inquiry with student-moderated discussions. in l. england (ed.), online language teacher education: tesol perspectives (pp. 102-121). new york, ny: routledge. stake, r. (1995). the art of case study research. thousand oaks, ca: sage. yin, r. k. (2003). case study research: design and methods. thousand oaks, ca: sage publications. universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras114 pineda hoyos & tamayo cano about the authors jorge eduardo pineda hoyos is a full time faculty member at the school of languages of universidad de antioquia, holds a bachelor’s degree in language teaching from universidad de antioquia and a master’s degree in english language teaching from universidad de caldas (colombia). he is currently a doctoral student at universitat oberta de catalunya. luis hernando tamayo cano is a full time faculty member at the school of languages of universidad de antioquia, holds a bachelor’s degree in foreign language teaching from universidad de antioquia and a master’s degree in education from universidad pontificia bolivariana (colombia). 13profile vol. 18, no. 2, july-december 2016. issn 1657-0790 (printed) 2256-5760 (online). bogotá, colombia. pages 13-27 http://dx.doi.org/10.15446/profile.v18n2.49754 implementing task-based language teaching to integrate language skills in an efl program at a colombian university implementación de la enseñanza de lenguas mediante tareas para integrar las habilidades lingüísticas de estudiantes en un programa de inglés como lengua extranjera de una universidad colombiana eulices córdoba zúñiga* universidad de la amazonia, florencia, colombia this article reports the findings of a qualitative research study conducted with six first semester students of an english as a foreign language program in a public university in colombia. the aim of the study was to implement task-based language teaching as a way to integrate language skills and help learners to improve their communicative competence in english. the results suggest that the implementation of task-based language teaching facilitated the integration of the four skills in the english as a foreign language context. furthermore, tasks were meaningful and integrated different reading, writing, listening, and speaking exercises that enhanced students’ communicative competences and interaction. it can be concluded that task-based language teaching is a good approach to be used in the promotion of skills integration and language competences. key words: integration, language skills, task and communicative competence, task-based language teaching. este artículo presenta los resultados de una investigación cualitativa llevada a cabo con seis estudiantes de primer semestre de un programa de enseñanza de inglés como idioma extranjero en una universidad pública colombiana. el objetivo del estudio fue implementar la enseñanza de idiomas basada en tareas como una manera para integrar las habilidades del idioma extranjero y ayudar a los estudiantes a mejorar sus competencias comunicativas. los resultados sugieren que este enfoque ayudó a integrar las cuatro habilidades de la lengua. las tareas eran significativas y combinaban diferentes ejercicios en cada habilidad, los cuales mejoraron la comunicación y la interacción entre los estudiantes. en conclusión, la enseñanza de idiomas basadas en tareas facilita la integración de las habilidades lingüísticas. palabras clave: enseñanza de lengua basada en tareas, habilidades del lenguaje, integración, tareas y competencias comunicativas. * e-mail: eu.cordoba@udla.edu.co how to cite this article (apa, 6th ed.): córdoba zúñiga, e. (2016). implementing task-based language teaching to integrate language skills in an efl program at a colombian university. profile issues in teachers’ professional development, 18(2), 13-27. http://dx.doi.org/10.15446/ profile.v18n2.49754. this article was received on march 21, 2015, and accepted on march 12, 2016. this is an open access article distributed under the terms of the creative commons license attribution-noncommercial-noderivatives 4.0 international license. consultation is possible at http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/. universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras14 córdoba zúñiga introduction this article reports the findings of a qualitative study conducted in the english as a foreign language (efl) program of a university in florencia, colombia. the research study seeks to implement task-based language teaching (tblt) as a way to integrate language abilities, taking into account that they are taught in isolation in the majority of english classes. six different tasks were implemented with students enrolled in the first semester to help them integrate the language skills. in doing so, the participants improved their language competence and were better prepared to learn english as it is used in daily life, for instance, when they spoke, read, listened, and wrote simultaneously. tblt was implemented as a response to the way teachers at this university taught english in the first semester, that is, lessons were planned for the mastering of listening, reading, writing, or speaking without proper integration of these four abilities. second, the students participated in almost all the class activities when they were based on one skill only. however, participation decreased when these exercises integrated reading, writing, listening, and speaking in the same lessons. in addition, some students showed a lack of interest and were reluctant to participate in the classes when these were based on reading or writing. this situation led me to conduct this study in order to enrich the efl language learning process in the program and help students improve their language learning. many researchers and teachers have shown the benefits of integrating language skills in english education. they all state that learning english is more productive when students learn the four skills in a single lesson because it is the way in which learners will probably use the language in their daily lives. according to baturay and akar (2007), integrating language skills is fundamental for learners to be competent in the second language (l2) and promote english learning naturally. this integration enhances efl learning through constant practice and allows students to express their ideas through writing messages, understanding aural and written messages, and holding conversations. freeman (1996) states that “tasks are always activities where the target language is taught for a communicative purpose (goal) in order to achieve an outcome” (p. 23). under those considerations expressed above, this study tried to demonstrate that through the implementation of tblt, language abilities were integrated to promote meaningful language learning. theoretical framework the field of language teaching has experienced numerous changes in the last few decades. new trends in language teaching and learning try to promote communicative competence instead of mastering grammar, vocabulary, reading, writing, or listening in isolation. at the present, tblt promotes real practice in the target language and offers different contexts for language study (izadpanah, 2010). based on this premise, the theoretical constructs for this study are: task-based language teaching, tasks, and skill integration. task-based language teaching tblt provides opportunities to experience spoken, reading, listening, and written language through meaningful class assignments that involve learners in practical and functional use of l2. as a consequence, tblt promotes and stimulates the integration of skills through completing daily-life activities that improve students’ communicative competence because it offers learners the possibility of practicing the target language constantly. the students see learning as a way to explore active class exercises that bring up genuine communication in which they solve problems and show creativity. the above-mentioned features of tblt suggest that this methodology promotes actual language use that facilitates the integration of the abilities successfully. nunan (1999) supported this idea when stating that tblt requires listening, speaking, reading, and writing in the same exercise to complete the problem posed by the task. the use of this method in class usually brings real-life 15profile vol. 18, no. 2, july-december 2016. issn 1657-0790 (printed) 2256-5760 (online). bogotá, colombia. pages 13-27 implementing task-based language teaching to integrate language skills in an efl program... work that allows the practice of all the language abilities. this helps students to explore different communicative opportunities inside and outside the classroom, which benefit the practice of language by conducting tasks that are closely or related to the day-to-day life. furthermore, kurniasih (2011) highlighted that the objective of tblt in english is to enhance the use of language as a means to focus on authentic learning. to achieve this objective, it is essential to promote realistic assignments that allow the students to meet their language needs. in order to make this possible, the four language skills should be integrated to increase learners’ competences and language acquisition. additionally, richards and rodgers (2001) highlighted that tblt enhances the creation of learning tasks that suit the needs of the learners and help them master all skills successfully by providing different class exercises to complete their work. ellis (2009) discussed some criteria that distinguish tblt from regular teaching activities. he explained that this methodology focuses on the integration of language learning where students are expected to conduct creative activities, infer meaning from readings and oral messages, and communicate their ideas well. finally, li (1998) argued that tblt facilitates language learning because learners are the center of the language process and, in that way, it promotes higher proficiency levels in all language skills. nunan (2005) also stated that tblt is an approach that enables skills integration. it lets students understand, produce, manipulate, or interact in the classroom. this approach usually requires real tasks in which students have the main roles and use the four skills constantly. this helps learners to explore the possibilities of communicating orally and in writing and of comprehending texts and oral messages to complete the task. willis (1996) and carless (2007) acknowledged the importance of this approach because it emphasizes authenticity and communicative activities. for them, when tblt is applied in class, learners assume active roles, and learning and reflections are constant. tasks in language learning in english language education, tasks are viewed as important components to help develop proficiency and to facilitate the learning of a second or foreign language by increasing learners’ activity in the classroom. nunan (2004) affirms that “tasks aim at providing occasions for learners to experiment and explore both spoken and written language through learning tasks that are designed to engage students in the authentic, practical, and functional use of language” (p. 41). in this vision, the role of a task is to stimulate a natural desire in learners to improve their language competence by challenging them to complete clear, purposeful, and real-world tasks which enhance the learning of grammar and other features as well as skills. additionally, richards et al. (as cited in nunan, 2004) consider tasks as “an activity or action which is carried out as a result of a process to understand a language. for example, drawing a map, performing a command, buying tickets, paying the bills, and driving a car in a city” (p. 7). these types of tasks normally require the teacher to specify the requirements for successful completion, set the goals of the task, and provide different classroom practices that normally do not take place in an english class. furthermore, long (1985) states that a task is a piece of work undertaken for oneself or for others, freely or for some reward. examples of a task include painting a fence, dressing a child, filling out a form, buying a pair of shoes, making an airline reservation, borrowing a library book, taking a driving test, typing a letter, weighing a patient, sorting letters, and so on. in this sense, richards and rodgers (2001) argue that “tasks are believed to foster a process of negotiation, modification, rephrasing, and experimentation that are at the heart of second language learning” (p. 228). nunan (1999) points out that tasks activate and promote l2 learning through discussions, cooperation, and adjustment. in general, tasks allow learners to have more exposure in the language learning process by increasing rehearsal opportunities in which they prepare themselves to universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras16 córdoba zúñiga perform daily-life tasks that help them gain knowledge and experience in the target language. task implementation the process to implement tblt in english classes has been highly discussed among various language theorists (e.g., estaire & zanon, 1994; lee, 2000; prabhu, 1987; skehan, 1996; willis, 1996). they highlight that there are three main steps to perform a task. first is the “pre-task stage” in which the teacher introduces the topic and provides the instructions such as the content, the objectives for each one of the steps within the task, and the way to present it. referring to this stage, willis and prabu (as cited in gatbonton & gu, 1994) and littlewood (2004) suggest that this stage creates an overview of what the students need to know to accomplish all the requirements of the assignment. moreover, skehan (1998) indicates that this phase is an overview or introduction about all the rules learners need to follow to complete the tasks correctly. frequently, this period of task development is used to choose the topic of the task, plan how the students will present their work, or to consider the criteria to evaluate the results of the task and to determine actions to be taken regarding the performance of the students. ellis (2006) suggests the “during task” phase as the next step; he says that two basic things should be done. first of all, the analysis should be made of how the task is going to be developed, and secondly, the analysis of how the task will possibly be completed. seedhouse (1999) states that it is necessary to guide the learners while they are doing the work, ask the students to show their progress on what they are reading, writing, what videos they are listening to, or check if they are listening to what has been provided to them, and as a final point, provide meaningful feedback to them. numrich (1996) and junker (1960) add that, at this level, learners must be open-minded to make changes to their presentations and reports. crookes and gass (1993) support this by saying that learners need to be flexible to revise, repeat, and reorganize their work once they receive support from the teacher. at this stage, the students negotiate among themselves to answer questions from the teacher and members of the group, review content, and reset those areas that need to be improved upon to submit their report. the final moment would be the “post-task” phase. lynch (2001) affirms that this moment involves the analysis and edition of the observations, opinions, and recommendations of the group and the teacher about the performance of learners in the task outcomes. in relation to this phase, ellis (2014) considers that once the learners have conducted the task it is important to review their errors; this can be done by asking the whole group about the performance of their classmates, checking the teacher’s notes, or asking students to selfevaluate their presentations. another important action to consider is to invite learners to improve the possible mistakes and to assign follow-up activities. in addition, willis (1996) remarks that this phase encourages learners to automatize their production, make decisions on the results of the task, and evaluate which plan to follow to guarantee progress in the language. finally, rahimpour and magsoudpour (2011) and long (1985) indicated that this process is necessary for the learners because it is the opportunity to reflect upon what they have done. integration of language skills some current research on teaching english language associates the integration of the four skills with an improvement in the target language. wallace, stariha, and walberg (2004) suggest that the integration of language skills provides natural situations in which listening, speaking, reading, and writing are developed in a single class to enhance english learning. as seen in this view, this way of teaching favors l2 learning because students are trained to use the language effectively, in different contexts, purposes, and cases. nunan (1999) also supports this idea by saying that the integration of language skills is important to develop a genuine 17profile vol. 18, no. 2, july-december 2016. issn 1657-0790 (printed) 2256-5760 (online). bogotá, colombia. pages 13-27 implementing task-based language teaching to integrate language skills in an efl program... communicative competence and improve learners’ language proficiency by participating in linguistic and communicative activities that promote authentic language usage. furthermore, hinkel (n.d.) points out that the teaching of language skills can not be conducted through isolable and discrete structural elements (corder, 1971, 1978; kaplan, 1970; stern, 1992). in reality, it is rare for language skills to be used in isolation; e.g., both speaking and listening comprehension are needed in a conversation and, in some contexts, reading or listening and making notes is likely to be almost as common as having a conversation. (p. 8) this is shared by ellis (2014) and dickinson (2010) who state that integrating language skills facilitates the development of linguistic (including grammatical competence) and communicative abilities. specifically, tblt offers english classes an emphasis on the integration of the language skills by providing learners with more exploration and practice in each one of the skills. research question based on the theoretical construct of tblt that suggests that this methodology is fundamental to integrate language skills, this study aims at analyzing the impact of tblt to integrate language skills in the first semester students in an efl program at a public colombian university. therefore, the study seeks to answer the following research question: to what extent does tblt promote the integration of the four language skills in the first semester students enrolled in an efl program at a public colombian university? method i followed a case study research design due to the characteristic of the context and the specific population. the process involved planning, observing, acting, and reflecting on the data from a small number of participants. according to baxter and jack (2008), “a qualitative case study methodology provides the tools for researchers to study complex phenomena within their contexts” (p. 545). this model helped me to deeply analyze the phenomena that were affecting english learning in a particular site and try to seek solutions to the difficulties the students had regarding the integration of the language skills. based on yin’s (1984) definition, a case study is a process that examines and describes a particular case thoroughly with the objective of gathering an in-depth understanding of the problem under analysis. context of the study this study was conducted in an efl program that is part of a public university in the southern region of colombia. this institution is the only public university in the region and its students come mainly from hard-toaccess towns and villages in the region. students at this university are diverse in terms of age, education, culture, and socioeconomic status. the academic emphasis of the university is on ecology and agronomy. the efl program has about 500 students distributed among 14 groups. the curriculum of the program is divided into nine semesters where english and pedagogy are the emphases. the semesters are organized in levels according to the common european framework (council of europe, 2008). consequently, the first and second semesters are basic english i and ii, respectively. the third, fourth, and fifth semesters are organized as intermediate english i, ii, and iii correspondingly. the sixth, seventh, and eighth semesters are placed as advanced english i, ii, and a conversational course, but in the ninth semester the learners do not study english because they have to choose their graduation option. the efl program is composed of 10 full-time teachers, 21 part-time teachers (i am included in this group of teachers), and a coordinator. they all have different academic labors in the development of the university term and they all work under semester contract. additionally, the program has four tenuredtrack professors who have to teach vacation courses. the universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras18 córdoba zúñiga majority of the part-time teachers hold a bachelor degree in english as a foreign language teaching, eight of the 10 full-time teachers hold master degrees in different fields of language teaching and the remaining two are master candidates. three of the four tenured-track professors hold master’s degrees and one is a master candidate. finally, the program has a self-access center, an english lab, a specialized room with a tv set, a home theatre, and an audio recorder. the research study took place in the basic english course i. this group was divided into two groups of 25 students each. for the study, only group a was selected; this course had 25 learners and six of them gave consent to participate in the study. the participants were young learners; the age range was from 16 to 22 years. they had an a2 level in english, based on the parameters of the common european framework (council of europe, 2008). they were chosen as participants because they all had the same challenges and they were in the same semester and group. data collection instruments following baxter and jack (2008) qualitative case studies give researchers the opportunity to examine a problem through the use of different data collection tools. a series of six interviews and the same number of observations were conducted to provide validity to the research study. observations according to jacobson, pruitt-chapin, and rugeley (2009), the use of observation provides direct access to the phenomenon under consideration by proving accurate and complete information from the behavior of the participants. based on the evidence that observations are fundamental to conduct a research study, the participants were observed as a group and individually along a semester. during the observations, i concentrated on the behavior, performance, and interaction of the students while they developed the tasks. an observation checklist was used to guide the observation process. referring to this, belisle (1999) and wajnryb (1992) indicate the need to follow an observation checklist in qualitative research because it facilitates and assists the observation. interviews according to laforest (2009), semi-structured interviews are used to gather qualitative information, help to identify needs and priorities, and monitor students’ changes. in my case, they also facilitated discussion and analysis of the data. i used six semistructured interviews to learn the students’ background, to examine the impact of the methodology proposed on solving the difficulty under consideration, and to confirm and triangulate the information from the observations. each interview lasted 40 minutes approximately and the students were informed that their answers would be used only for the purpose of the study. sometimes, the students were asked to elaborate further when their answers were not sufficiently clear. all the interviews were audio recorded and transcribed for later analysis. the interviews were conducted at the beginning, during the implementation, and after applying tblt in class. data analysis and interpretation in order to analyze the data, i followed a constant comparison strategy to examine the information of the problem under study. based on creswell (2007), the constant comparison strategy is a series of procedures that help researchers to analyze and think about social realities. i followed a systematic plan of action in which i first transcribed the observations and the interviews. secondly, i read the information several times to identify the recurring themes and recorded the data on the margins. then, data were segmented with repetitive words and voices from the participants. data are shown in the case study session that defines the participants in the research study. 19profile vol. 18, no. 2, july-december 2016. issn 1657-0790 (printed) 2256-5760 (online). bogotá, colombia. pages 13-27 implementing task-based language teaching to integrate language skills in an efl program... procedure to achieve the research objectives and answer the question of the study i designed and implemented six tasks that included assignments in all skills. this process lasted 20 hours spread across the semester and i took into account the concepts and steps discussed in the literature review. prior to the application of the tasks, i explained to the participants the methodology to be applied as well as the activities that were going to be completed, so the learners knew in advanced the procedures to be used and the estimated time available for them to fulfill every task. finally, i shared the decision to work in pairs and i said to them that the topics to be developed were all included in the course program (see appendix for a description of each of the tasks). the first stage of the development of the tasks started with the “pre-task phase” in which i illustrated for the students the chronogram-requirements of the task, showed them the topics, set the goals and procedures of the task, and provided additional instructions to develop the activities. similarly, i asked the students to form pairs, discuss the outcomes and the what, how, when, and where they were going to submit the product for every skill. as soon as the participants understood the goals and introductions, i gave them an article, a video, and some audios about the topic of the task (describing family members). then, they started by reading the article, watching videos, and listening to the audios. at this stage, the participants listed some characteristics of typical families, generated ideas in pairs, provided answers to the reading and listening questionnaires, and started a short conversation between themselves about their presentation. then in the second phase “during task,” while the students were working, i answered and asked questions, checked their work, and provided recommendations for them to prepare the reports on each one of the skills. after they had identified the main characteristics on families from the article, video, and audios, they compared their families to those mentioned in the material i had previously given to them. subsequently, they had a pair-work discussion about the topic and showed the draft of the description they had already made. next, i gave them some suggestions based on what i checked from the conversation and read from the initial reports and questionnaires. once the participants received my comments, they made some changes to their responses and reorganized their presentations without complaining, but the remaining three students asked for more detailed recommendations. at this stage, the students were familiar with working in every skill because they presented reading, listening, speaking, and writing reports. in the final phase, “post-task,” the students firstly submitted the final record from the audios, the video, and the article and, at the same time, delivered the written description of their families and did an oral presentation about the same topic. after their presentation, i gave them the opportunity to self-evaluate and then suggested that other pairs evaluate their classmates’ performance: this was done by asking questions on how the pairs had performed on the oral presentation. they identified the areas where they needed to work on and self-corrected some of the difficulties they had. then, i explained the topics that i thought needed major improvements, gave advice on how to improve them, and recommended a follow-up task. at this stage of the process, the participants were able to integrate all language skills in the class activities through a step-by-step process that enabled them to present meaningful outcomes in the four skills. findings and discussion in this section i describe and discuss the findings of the study. first of all, i show the participants’ perception about tblt to integrate the four language skills. later, i present the participants’ view of integrated skills in efl learning, and finally, i point out the participants’ motivation during the development of the task. universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras20 córdoba zúñiga learners’ perception about tblt to integrate the four language skills the general findings of this research demonstrated that all the participants see tblt as a way to encourage the use and integration of the four language skills in their efl classes. they considered that this methodology could be helpful to incorporate the abilities through performing tasks that included a variety of exercises to help them to develop their capabilities in each of the abilities. nicol1 expressed that “they preferred tblt rather than other ways of language learning because this method offered the opportunity to increase their expertise in all the abilities and not only on one or two” (interview 2). andres said that the implementation of an everyday life task such as “describing family members” fostered the integration of the four language skills in an optimistic way (interview 3). in the same interview, yasney stated: “classes are better now because we all practice the four skills at the same time.” these participants had this perception about tblt because this approach facilitated the development of different class exercises that covered specific assignments in reading, writing, listening, and speaking. this familiarized the participants with integrated classroom tasks and provided more interaction, helping students to become better english learners. this is connected to cuesta (1995) who affirmed that tblt assisted learners to develop their skills in the l2. linked to the previous benefit of tblt in efl, some participants mentioned that the use of this methodology integrated the skills because it was an interesting way to promote the successful development of authentic class activities, in which they were asked to finalize real-world tasks that increased significant practice such as discussions, skimming and scanning articles, and written reports. eunice stated that “every task was the possibility to advance in all my language skills from contextualized 1 the names used here are pseudonyms. exercises that helped me to learn” (interview 3). ana supported eunice by saying that “task[s] involved reading, writing, listening, and speaking assignments that were natural and helpful to learn english” (interview 4). in interview 6, carlos said: “i feel the need to speak english in the classes and to integrate reading, speaking, listening, and writing in a single lesson because i think it is one of my major weaknesses to be fulfilled along with the academic year.” carlos further affirmed that “the assignments helped them to understand that skills integration provided them with realistic language learning.” in observations 4, 5, and 6, carlos and nicol showed that it was not a problem for them to integrate skills in a class any longer. the participants shared these perceptions because the majority of activities they received were related to contextualized exercises and they had the opportunity to carry out creative tasks where the integration of language skills was kept in mind and demanded active personal involvements to learn how to improve their skills in the target language easily and naturally. the students also highlighted that the tblt methodology facilitated the researcher to keep a balance among all four skills. as a consequence, learning how to write, understand written messages, understand oral language, and communicate thoughts were taught simultaneously. in observations 5 and 6, nicol, eunice, and ana seemed to prefer tblt rather than other ways of language learning because this method offered the opportunity to increase their expertise in all the abilities and not only in one or two. this finding indicates that this approach caught their attention and promoted rehearsal opportunities by doing different exercises that were based on their interest and covered all the skills. this position is also shared by andres who stated that “the implementation of tasks encouraged me to work on my weaknesses in the language, especially the unpleasant feelings to read, write, and listen” (interview 5-6). these findings are supported by prior research targeting the same situation. hu (2013) concluded that 21profile vol. 18, no. 2, july-december 2016. issn 1657-0790 (printed) 2256-5760 (online). bogotá, colombia. pages 13-27 implementing task-based language teaching to integrate language skills in an efl program... the tblt method brought real life purposes to the class in which learners are expected to prepare and practice the language constantly. the participants equally suggested that tblt created more diverse and inclusive exposures in the target language practice. they had more opportunities to rehearse and interact with their classmates and the teacher-researcher by asking and answering questions from the articles and holding conversations with the classmates about the task. in interview 5, yasney expressed that she “liked to work with tblt in class because [she] prepared well by practicing with [her] classmates.” in observations 4 and 5, it was evident to see this and other learners (5) participating in all the exercises. in relation to this, xiongyong and samuel (2011) affirmed that tblt is seen by students as a great methodology to enhance language practice opportunities. these results revealed that tblt integrated and opened students’ possibilities of being part of the class through constant practice. additionally, some participants claimed that this approach facilitated the acquisition of l2 through making decisions, learning by doing, and facing different challenges that tasks demand from the students and the teacher. in an informal talk after observation 5, yasney supported this claim by saying “the implementation of tasks-based language teaching increased the opportunities to learn english and raised confidence to prepare high quality assignments that were based on classmates’ life.” for them, tblt fostered a longlife learning process. it means that this methodology promoted exploration, negotiation, and cooperation among the teacher and students to find solutions to problems and complete the task. this is supported by barnard and viet (2010) who concluded that tblt helped to increase cooperation and negotiation among the participants. to sum up, tblt may also be a good way to integrate skills by creating a framework that allows the practice of suitable class activities in which learners have to reach specific class aims for every skill. carlos affirmed that “the assignments helped them to understand that skills integration provided them with realistic language learning” (interview 5). additionally, andrea expressed that she improved her language competences in part because tblt integrated the language skills and she practiced the language. for these participants the use of task played an important role to learn the target language easily and naturally, and they improved their skills in the language. participants’ view of integrated skills in efl class with respect to the integration of language skills in efl classes, there were two positions. first, at the beginning the students were not familiar with the methodology of integrating language skills in class. then, their perception was that the integration might be a great way to learn a language, but they were not totally sure about the benefits of integrating the skills in classes because they said that it demanded more work and it would be better to master one skill and then the rest. however, this position changed during the development of the tasks in which it was observable that the students did a lot of exercises to finalize the work successfully. in interview 5, yasney stated that “the integration of language skills is a useful and a successful mechanism to enhance the students’ english language.” this position was shared by andres, who said that “the integration of language skills resulted in a very useful way to keep a balance in the four language skills.” andres also expressed that “the integration is fundamental to learn the language as it is used in the real life.” in part, the participants had this perception because at the end of the study they got used to performance class work that had specific assignments for every skill. despite the fact that their performance in each skill presented some error, the process to complete the task and to learn the language notions and functions was remarkable. the students were committed to not only present a final product of the task, but also to learn from universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras22 córdoba zúñiga their classmates’ suggestions, share their results of their tasks, and show that they were able to make significant improvement in their learning progress. participants’ motivation during the development of the task apart from integrating language skills, tblt helped the participants to be motivated, it raised their selfesteem, and enabled them to praise their own and others’ work. they were motivated by the structure of the tasks (stages), the goals of each phase and the clear purposes, the teacher-researcher willingness to correct meaningfully, and the kind of activities they developed. nicol said that “the research-teacher and the organization of the task encouraged her to feel good in the class” (interview 4). similarly, yasney expressed that “the steps of the assignments and the teacher made [her] be willing to take part in the class development easily” (interview 5). andres also manifested that working with tblt motivated him to be a better english learner. the positive attitude of these participants about the implementation of tasks in class was in part due to their high performance, the meaningful feedback and positive attitude, and disposition of the teacher-researcher. it means that in order to foster learners’ motivation, it is necessary to plan the class activities well and provide them with correct feedback. with respect to the perspective of the participants about the role of tblt to motivate them, they claimed this approach provided them with opportunities to be engaged in the class, to practice and negotiate as to improve their speaking, listening, and writing skills in a comfortable, communicative, and collaborative atmosphere, where they learned to work cooperatively, respect and value other classmates’ points of view. in observations 4, 5, and 6, it was common to see the participants sharing ideas, clapping their hands to congratulate their classmates for their performance and helping them to find the correct word to express an idea. it was also noteworthy to observe the participants working in groups, listening to other pairs attentively, and paying sincere compliments or giving positive feedback. these findings are shared with chuan (2010), who concluded in his study that tblt helped students to be self-confident to practice the language without anxiety. in fact, during the development of tasks learners were encouraged to trust in their capacities and felt confident to take an active role in class because the classes were closely related to their background. nicol declared in interview 6 that: the use of tasks helped me to be a better english student that was able to express her feelings and thoughts in a friendly environment, in which learning, negotiation, discussion was possible. i said i improved a lot in the subject because i felt confident and accepted mistakes as a learning strategy. this confirmed the idea that tblt may also be a good way to foster motivation and language learning at the same time due to the fact that learners are led to have social discussions, group interaction, and build social community networks in the class. nicol stated that “tblt served as a potential strategy that motivated students to be willing to participate in class discussions” (interview 5). this was evidenced in the development of the implementation in that each participant wanted to show the results of their tasks in the classroom. in this respect, andres stated that “the implementation of these assignments brought more complex assignments and placed more responsibility on the students” (interview 6). this is connected to hyde (2013) who argues that tblt is an ideal way to improve motivation and selfefficacy. this may have let participants to perceive tblt as a way to reinforce, share decision making, and praise their work. conclusion the findings of this study suggest that tblt is a meaningful approach to integrate language skills in an efl program. the participants performed class assignments that helped them to develop tasks which 23profile vol. 18, no. 2, july-december 2016. issn 1657-0790 (printed) 2256-5760 (online). bogotá, colombia. pages 13-27 implementing task-based language teaching to integrate language skills in an efl program... included continuing exercises in receptive and productive skills and have more time to practice doing tasks that required the integration of language skills in a lesson through the use of contextualized and meaningful activities that support natural language acquisition. linked to this benefit, the implementation of these assignments had a positive impact to improve students’ communicative competences, as can be noted by the students’ responses. these tasks increased the students’ experience in the language by providing them with more opportunities to rehearse the language meaningfully. they negotiated among themselves, showed their points of view about the class development, and shared the results with their classmates orally and in writing. also, they searched information, read articles to get main ideas, and supported their reports. finally, the implementation of tblt was an effective way to develop learners’ self-awareness and class atmosphere where the teacher and the students participated in the lessons. the students became aware of the importance of being responsible in the class activities and took main roles in the learning process by creating meaningful tasks that facilitated the acquisition of new vocabulary, the implementation of real activities that augmented learning, and the change of misconceptions about how to learn each one of the skills. recommendations with respect to the use of tblt to facilitate skills integration in an efl context, the results of this study suggest english teachers need to bear in mind that the use of this methodology is meaningful because it promotes language learning naturally and this motivates learners to be involved in the class activities. however, i highly recommend creating clear purposes and discussing the topics of the task with the students beforehand in order to increase practice. when the students are involved in decision making, they participate and perform the tasks easily and feel important in the class. based on the findings of the study, i also suggest providing learners with positive feedback, reminding them how important it is to reach the goals of the task, assign clear assignments for every skill, check the result of the tasks, and finally, assign follow-up activities if necessary. these recommendations are necessary to increment the possibility of advancing in the task and consequently of improving students’ learning process. however, this study suggests that future review and research need to be conducted to broaden the theoretical framework of tblt as a skills integration facilitator. further analysis of the impact of tblt to integrate language skills in beginners constitutes another new good field of inquiry. it would be interesting to know to what extent students of basic english become independent learners through the implementation of this methodology. also, it would be necessary to explore other approaches to integrate language skills and compare them with tblt to determine the advantages and disadvantages of each one of them for learners of basic english. references barnard, r., & viet, n. g. 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(2001). approaches and methods in language teaching. cambridge, uk: cambridge university press. http://dx.doi.org/10.1017/ cbo9780511667305. seedhouse, p. (1999). task-based interaction. elt journal, 53(3), 149-156. http://dx.doi.org/10.1093/elt/53.3.149. skehan, p. (1996). a framework for the implementation of task based instruction. applied linguistic, 17(1), 38-62. http://dx.doi.org/10.1093/applin/17.1.38. skehan, p. (1998). task-based instruction. annual review of applied linguistics, 18, 268-286. http://dx.doi.org/10.1017/ s0267190500003585. wajnryb, r. (1992). classroom observation tasks: a resource book for language teachers and trainers. cambridge, uk: cambridge university press. wallace, t., stariha, w. e., & walberg, h. j. (2004). teaching speaking, listening and writing. brussels, be: international academy of education. willis, j. (1996). a framework for task-based learning. london, uk: longman. xiongyong, c., & samuel, m. (2011). perceptions and implementation of task-based language teaching among secondary school efl teachers in china. international journal of business and social science, 2(24), 292-302. yin, r. k. (1984). case study research: design and methods. newbury park, ca: sage. about the author eulices córdoba zúñiga is an efl teacher with diverse teaching experience in universities and institutes. since 2011, he has been working for universidad de la amazonia (colombia). he holds a master’s degree in english didactics. his research interests include english as a foreign language methodology, didactics, and teachers’ professional development. universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras26 córdoba zúñiga appendix: description of the tasks task i describing family members objective reading to find main points in an article about typical families. speaking to describe and compare students’ own families based on the information they found in the article. listening to find main points and discuss in pairs the similarities with participants’ own family. writing to write a description of the students’ families. activities reading answering questionnaires: select appropriate words to use in context. speaking class and pair discussions, drama, and role-play. listening short talks about audios and the video. writing writing texts on family members. task ii describing the students’ towns, cities, or departments objective reading to locate or recall facts or details explicitly presented in the text. speaking to talk in detail about the town, city, cities, or department. listening to share main and specific ideas to describe towns, cities, or department. writing to write a short formal description of the town, city, or department where the student comes from. activities reading reading and saying: asking for confirmation. speaking short oral presentation, debates in pairs, and giving opinions. listening responding to questions through an interview: round table discussion. writing picture description. task iii making a basic weather report objective reading to identify or describe characters, setting, sequence, or events. speaking to give a weather report practicing the basic vocabulary. listening to identify basic vocabulary to talk about a weather report. writing to write a basic weather report. activities reading finding correct words related to a weather report: getting the main point from the text. speaking dialogue, interview, oral weather report. listening answering class questions, looking for clarifications, and predicting. writing weather report writing. task iv buying a bus ticket objective reading to identify steps described in the passage. speaking to give and receive directions to buy a ticket. listening to identify the steps to buy a ticket. writing to report the way to buy a ticket. 27profile vol. 18, no. 2, july-december 2016. issn 1657-0790 (printed) 2256-5760 (online). bogotá, colombia. pages 13-27 implementing task-based language teaching to integrate language skills in an efl program... activities reading filling in airlines forms, writing the information to check in. speaking public announcements, sustaining a conversation. listening understanding native speaker. writing filling in airlines forms, writing the information to check in. task v talking about a busy day objective reading to select appropriate words to use in context when intended meaning is clearly evident. speaking to answer questions related to explicit or implicit central ideas in informational texts. listening to organize information presented in audios and videos. writing to write information to answer questions related to explicit or implicit central ideas in informational texts. activities reading mapping, charting, charting, and summarizing. speaking compare, explain, justify, predict. listening compare, explain, justify, predict. writing report, narrate, socialize. task vi last vacation objective reading to identify and summarize the major events, problem, solution, conflict in a text. speaking to ask and answer questions from the text aiming at sharing point of view and vacation routine. listening to recognize the major events, problem, solution, conflict in the audios and the video. writing to summarize the most important fact and opinions about last vacation. activities reading predicting, guessing, and making inferences about the reading. speaking justifying, explaining, comparing, narrating. listening predicting, guessing, and making inferences about the audios and video. writing writing a collage of last vacation, sharing facts and opinions about vacation. speaking dialogue, interview, oral presentation, debate. listening exchanging information, expressing agreement and disagreements. writing report, short story of last vacation, formal paper 29 http://dx.doi.org/10.15446/profile.v18n2.53364 exploring university teacher perceptions about out-of-class teamwork explorando las percepciones de profesores universitarios acerca del trabajo en equipo fuera de clase elizabeth ruiz-esparza barajas* universidad de sonora, hermosillo, mexico cecilia araceli medrano vela** universidad de juárez del estado de durango, durango, mexico jesús helbert karim zepeda huerta*** universidad autónoma de nayarit, tepic, mexico this study reports on the first stage of a larger joint research project undertaken by five universities in mexico to explore university teachers’ thinking about out-of-class teamwork. data from interviews were analyzed using open and axial coding. although results suggest a positive perception towards teamwork, the study unveiled important negative opinions. these opinions suggest the lack of success in promoting deep learning and in developing students’ socio-cognitive abilities. findings were used to develop a survey to be applied to more teachers to gain a broader perspective and to corroborate results. key words: higher education, out-of-class teamwork, teacher educators, teacher perceptions. este estudio reporta la primera etapa de una investigación en conjunto con cinco universidades mexicanas, en donde se explora el pensamiento de profesores universitarios acerca del trabajo en equipo fuera de clase. los datos recolectados a través de entrevistas fueron analizados utilizando la codificación abierta y axial. aunque los resultados sugieren una percepción positiva hacia el trabajo en equipo, el estudio reveló opiniones negativas importantes. estas opiniones sugieren la falta de éxito en promover el aprendizaje profundo y en desarrollar las habilidades socio-cognitivas en los alumnos. los hallazgos se utilizaron para elaborar una encuesta a aplicarse a más profesores para obtener una perspectiva más amplia y comprobar resultados. palabras clave: enseñanza superior, formadores de docentes, percepciones de profesores, trabajo en equipo fuera de clase. * e-mail: elruiz@guaymas.uson.mx ** e-mail: cecymedrano@ujed.mx *** e-mail: jesushzepedah@uan.edu.mx how to cite this article (apa, 6th ed.): ruiz-esparza barajas, e., medrano vela, c. a., & zepeda huerta, j. h. k. (2016). exploring university teacher perceptions about out-of-class teamwork. profile issues in teachers’ professional development, 18(2), 29-45. http://dx.doi. org/10.15446/profile.v18n2.53364. this article was received on october 1, 2015, and accepted on march 28, 2016. this is an open access article distributed under the terms of the creative commons license attribution-noncommercial-noderivatives 4.0 international license. consultation is possible at http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/. profile vol. 18, no. 2, july-december 2016. issn 1657-0790 (printed) 2256-5760 (online). bogotá, colombia. pages 29-45 universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras30 ruiz-esparza barajas, medrano vela, & zepeda huerta introduction the use of group work as a learning strategy may be recently gaining importance in the mexican university learning context due to the emerging global challenges of the work environment where the ability to work on a team has been regarded as a valuable asset (kremer & mcguiness, 1998; portillo mares, 2011). authorities of mexican universities preparing individuals for the work environment also agree on the benefits of teamwork, such as the universidad autónoma metropolitana (uam), which states on its webpage that teamwork should be used as a pedagogic technique for student centered learning (uam, 2013). mexican education at all levels has traditionally been lecture-centered. students sitting in lockstep listen to the teacher or work on their own (stein, 2004). it is not only students who are used to a lecture-centered classroom environment, but also teachers who are used to being the center of attention (smith & macgregor, 1992; stein, 2004). teamwork, as a relatively new pedagogic approach in higher education in mexico, presents a challenge by confronting expectations of the classroom working environment (borg, 2006). a colorful kaleidoscope of perceptions, expectations, beliefs, and methods when using teamwork is expected to be found among teachers within the country. teamwork “used both in and out of class” (davis, 1999, p. 1) may be used for short tasks within a class period or for longer projects during the entire school term. ten researchers from five public mexican universities became interested in exploring teachers’ and students’ perceptions on out-of-class group work. the voice of teachers from the universities of sonora (unison), durango (ujed), nayarit (uan), colima (ucol), and guerrero (uagro) are here presented as the results of the first phase of a larger study. the aim of the study is to delve into the factors influencing the use of this pedagogic strategy within mexican undergraduate foreign languages or language teaching programs. researchers who are members of the recale (foreign languages and academic bodies network, for its initials in spanish) collaborated in the design and collection of data from faculty and students at their home university. the views of ten teachers, two from each university, were explored and used to design a questionnaire which will be administered to all of the teachers of the above mentioned programs. since there appears to be no consensus in the literature about a clear division among the terms group work, teamwork, and collaborative learning, they may be used indistinctly in the present paper to refer to three or more students working together “mutually searching for understanding, solutions, or meanings, or creating a product” (smith & macgregor, 1992, p. 10). from traditional teaching to group work from its origins, learning has been an instinctive and natural social process in which individuals learn from each other starting with their very early days (race, 2014). modern pedagogies, such as socio-constructivism, emphasize the implementation of teamwork as conducive to learning (blatchford, kutnick, baines, & galton, 2003). according to race and pickford (2007), more learning happens when students work in small groups, rather than listening to lectures. moreover, they claim that learning can be enhanced when “students interact simultaneously with each other, and learn from each other” (p. 32) in out-of-class small group meetings by discussing and exchanging ideas. the view of a group of students working together in the classroom to achieve a common task or learning objective is gradually becoming more frequent around the world as this paradigm gradually pervades former lockstep environments in higher education (lillo zúñiga, 2013; lópez hurtado & viáfara gonzález, 2007). however, the inclusion of a new teachinglearning strategy involves more than just organizing students into groups to work together (lillo zúñiga, 2013; portillo mares, 2011). teachers are perceived more 31 exploring university teacher perceptions about out-of-class teamwork as organizers or facilitators of learning experiences, while students are seen as active agents interacting with the course content (zárate & moiraghi de pérez, 2004). teachers who prepare group work activities no longer perceive of themselves as know-it-all experts delivering their wisdom, but as expert promoters or “designers of intellectual experiences” (smith & macgregor, 1992, p. 10) for their students. benefits of group work group work has been reported to increase student active participation and enhance learning outcomes (davis, 1999). the development of the highly valued transferable skills such as oral communication and the ability to solve problems has also been observed in small groups. developing the ability to listen to others’ ideas thoughtfully and analytically and build on others’ work can only be done when working with others (race, 2014). for the language classroom the use of group work increases each student’s opportunity to use the target language (long & porter, 1985). despite benefits and advantages, misinterpretation of what group work entails and assuming that all individuals will naturally work in groups without problems or misunderstandings may yield a number of undesired outcomes. the challenge of out-of-class group work may be enhanced by the absence of a figure of authority to monitor the groups’ activity. however, fiechtner and davis (1984) suggest that those groups that work in class and out-of-class create a more cohesive group, enhancing the learning experience through group work. problems acknowledged in the literature motivation to work in a group is considered to be a severe obstacle when setting group work tasks (kerr & bruun; morgan; as cited in davies, 2009). uncommitted group members may influence the whole group effort and dynamic when committed group members reduce their own efforts upon perceiving they are doing all of the work. one of the common problems observed by both teachers and learners is the free rider, who seeks to take advantage of the work of others while reaping the benefits (davies, 2009; davis, 1999; mcgraw & tidwell, 2001; medrano vela & delgado alvarado, 2013; quinn, 2012). students’ reaction to free riders may result in the sucker effect (kerr as cited in davies, 2009), which makes another group member become a free rider too. large groups may promote the number of free riders, the sucker effect, or social loafing. a group member who does not feel part of the group may become a social loafer. social loafing is characterized by a reduction of effort when forming part of the group in which members do not feel committed to the group (davies, 2009). another common undesired outcome could be that students divide the work to be done into equal parts, later collected by the group member responsible for putting all the parts together and turning in the completed work. though apparently every student would be working and doing his or her part, there is no discussion or interaction among group members (medrano vela & delgado alvarado, 2013; oakley, brent, felder, & elhajj, 2004), being unaware of the actual contents of the rest of the final product. other problems faced by group members are type and quality of communication among group members, difficulty in attending out-of-class meetings, different perceptions on ethics and on the way the work should be approached, having different grade expectations and clear leadership among group members (mcgraw & tidwell, 2001). a disadvantage observed specifically in language classroom group work may be that students with a higher command of the language, either written or oral, do most of the work (davies, 2009). it is not only that a teacher may well perceive that the written paper or the oral presentation does not reflect the language ability of weaker students, the problem goes beyond that. language level heterogeneity among group members may result in stronger students doing all the work without much profile vol. 18, no. 2, july-december 2016. issn 1657-0790 (printed) 2256-5760 (online). bogotá, colombia. pages 29-45 universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras32 ruiz-esparza barajas, medrano vela, & zepeda huerta participation from weaker students, depriving both strong and weak students from the benefit of discussion and ideas exchange. grouping students the way groups are conformed is another aspect which may influence interaction among participants, thus affecting the group’s outcome. although teachers may think that students prefer selecting their group members, a study involving 155 students revealed that only one out of two participants reported having a good group experience in this situation (fiechtner & davis, 1984). the authors concluded that their worst experience in group work was with self-selected members, rather than with teacher-selected group members. race (2014) claims that allowing students to decide who to work with could bring the advantage of members having a sense of belonging, though there is the risk of some students left without a group. while some authors favor a teacher decision on group formation, though carefully planned (blatchford et al., 2003; hassanien, 2006; johnson & johnson, 1999; parmelee & michaelsen, 2010), others consider that some students may feel uncomfortable with the decision, and they should be allowed to change groups (oakley et al., 2004; zárate & moiraghi de pérez, 2004). self-selected groups are reported to “have a higher propensity for cheating” (oakley et al., 2004, p. 11) or to cover for one another, as illustrated in a recent study in méxico (medrano vela & delgado alvarado, 2013) where high achievers complained about working with free riders during the whole semester due to pre-existing relationships. high achievers felt relieved when final project group members were teacher-selected (medrano vela & delgado alvarado, 2013). developing group work skills undesired experiences and a sense of unworthiness may be avoided if sufficient attention is given to understanding the benefits and expectations of group work (hassanien, 2006; mcgraw & tidwell, 2001) by all those involved. oakley et al. (2004) claim that the management and interpersonal skills required to effectively participate in teamwork are not innate in students nor are they in teachers. becoming effective group members who aim at effectively contributing and cooperating in the group’s task achievement requires conscious effort on behalf of both the participants and the teachers. students need to be helped in understanding the importance that being able to work in groups may have in their professional life (oakley et al., 2004). however, working in groups requires the development or enhancement of the necessary skills. oakley et al. add that students should be gradually introduced to group work participation and its characteristics. ground rules established at the beginning of the task and clear establishment of roles, responsibilities, consequences, and expectations may be crucial for successful group work. although participants should be able to take over the group’s dynamics, the teacher may intervene when necessary. the teachers’ role is to provide appropriate scaffolding which will lead students to perceive the need to exchange ideas and discuss their points of view in route to building their own understandings and contribute to the groups’ task (lillo zúñiga, 2013). undeniably, it is the teacher’s task to guide students who, upon arrival at university, may lack the required skills for being effective group members (davies, 2009; dolmans, wolfhagen, van der vleuten, & wijnen, 2001; hassanien, 2006; smith & macgregor, 1992). previous experiences and group work it should not be expected for someone to be able to appropriately guide students on effective group work approaches when previous learning experiences have not included this approach to learning and teaching (borg, 2006). implementing group work requires more than changing the seating arrangement (portillo mares, 33 exploring university teacher perceptions about out-of-class teamwork 2011; quinn, 2012; stein, 2004). research literature has highlighted the importance of teachers’ perceptions and beliefs which filter every interpretation of their work (johnson & johnson, 1999; prieto navarro, 2007; woods & çakir, 2011). teachers who have only experienced a traditional approach to teaching will be guided by this principle in the classroom unless deep seated beliefs are challenged and modified, resulting in the adoption of new teaching practices (borg, 2006). only when existing beliefs based on previous experiences are challenged can these previous perceptions be reconsidered and modified (hayes, 1995). a review of the literature reveals that most studies regarding the implementation of group work, interactions, and teachers’ and students’ beliefs have mostly taken place in north america and europe with few studies conducted in ibero-america where mexico is located. an example is a research project conducted in 2004 and 2005 where lópez hurtado and viáfara gonzález (2007) look into the implementation of a cooperative learning approach in the public school context in colombia. the ability to work on teams is one of the generic competences many mexican universities seek to help students develop. the researchers from the five universities involved in this research project considered that, in order to plan the development of this competence, it was first necessary to find out the beliefs regarding group work of those involved in its implementation: teachers and students. description of the study aim as stated above, the aim of this study was to explore university teacher perceptions of the ba in english language teaching (elt) or similar programs at the five universities previously described about out-of-class teamwork. specifically, the study sought to find out teachers’ opinions of teamwork in relation to learning and whether these teachers assigned students activities to be carried out in teams and out-of-class. the study also aimed to discover whether the teachers organize this type of work and the ways in which they carry out this organization. research design this is the first phase of a larger mixed-mode research project which seeks to find out the teachers’ and students’ perceptions about out-of-class teamwork and whether problems are common in five state universities in mexico in the bachelors in the elt program or similar programs with the purpose of finding solutions. therefore, this study will collect qualitative data from a small sample of teachers from the five universities to find out these perceptions. the information from the data will serve to develop a questionnaire to be applied to the rest of the teachers and students to compare the results. therefore, the present study is one of the most relevant parts of the whole research since it is foundational to the development of the instruments to be applied in future stages of the research to all of the teachers and students of the mentioned programs in participating universities. in exploring teacher thinking, the current paper is qualitative in nature and consistent with denzin and lincoln’s (1994) description of the nature of qualitative inquiry by exploring and “understanding phenomena from the point of view of the participants” (p. 2). the instrument was a semi-structured interview which provided uniformity and flexibility by guiding the interviewing process with the questions but at the same time giving researchers freedom to delve into interesting aspects and issues of responses. there were seven questions in the interview which was carried out in spanish, the participants’ mother tongue (see appendix a for the english version of the interview). the purpose of the first question was to find out teachers’ opinion about teamwork in general while the second question intended to uncover whether teachers used out-of-class teamwork and the type of work they assigned. the profile vol. 18, no. 2, july-december 2016. issn 1657-0790 (printed) 2256-5760 (online). bogotá, colombia. pages 29-45 universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras34 ruiz-esparza barajas, medrano vela, & zepeda huerta third question investigated whether this collaboration was of common use while the fourth question tried to detect the way teachers organized teamwork. the fifth and sixth questions sought to discover the advantages and disadvantages teachers perceived about out-ofclass teamwork while the last question asked for their perception about what students thought about this topic. participants the participants were a small group of ten teachers belonging to the five universities. one full-time teacher and one part-time teacher from each university were interviewed to collect data from the two types of teachers who work at these five state universities. data collection one researcher in each university got in touch with the teachers, briefly explaining the research and asking for their collaboration. a consent form was signed by those willing to participate, allowing for the interview to be audio recorded. five of the researchers and the ten teachers agreed on the time and place for the interview to take place, which lasted approximately an hour. recordings were later transcribed. confidentiality is guaranteed by referring to participant teachers as teacher 1 (t1), teacher 2 (t2), and so on. data analysis a data-driven approach was used to create a framework for analyzing all the information provided by teachers. lecompte and goetz (1982) state that “creating categories for coding is the first step of analysis” (p. 39) in qualitative research. therefore, open and axial coding was carried out first to allow the themes to emerge from the data following the suggestions for data reduction made in creswell (1998) and lecompte and goetz. open coding was conducted by half of the researchers. this consisted of reading the ten teachers’ transcripts several times and writing down all the themes they talked about in order to discover, compare, and contrast the emerging themes. axial coding was then conducted. themes similar in meaning were grouped to form broader themes. data were read again by these researchers and themes and subthemes were compared, contrasted, discussed, and agreed upon by the researchers. then, transcriptions and the open and axial coding were sent to the rest of the researchers to be examined for corroboration, thus conducting a member check which is getting interpretations revised by colleagues as suggested by lecomte and goetz. the seven broad themes and 14 subthemes that emerged from the data can be seen in table 1. table 1. themes and subthemes of teachers’ perceptions about teamwork theme subtheme 1. opinions a) positive b) negative 2. assignment types a) class delivered b) oral production c) virtual 3. frequency factors 4. organizational processes 5. advantages a) learning b) abilities c) motivation 6. problems a) organization b) training c) assessing 7. perceptions of students’ opinions a) positive b) negative c) neutral d) group dependent results and discussion opinions teachers’ perceptions about teamwork were positive and negative. with regard to the positive perceptions, teacher 1 expressed that what an individual student can do is not comparable in quality to what three can do and 35 exploring university teacher perceptions about out-of-class teamwork also that teamwork sums ideas, opinions, experiences, and knowledge. this teacher’s comment reflects what students reported in hassanien’s (2006) study where the exchange of ideas was perceived as a valuable experience. a very interesting argument was posed by teacher 7, who at first said that the importance of teamwork depended on the theories of learning that teachers support. he explains that if a teacher conceives learning as a social process as in socio-constructivism, then the teacher will logically devise activities to have teamwork. teacher 7 adds that students need to develop teamwork abilities for the workplace, as stated by kremer and mcguiness (1998), portillo mares (2011), and race (2014). he further states that teamwork “is fundamental” regardless of theories of learning because nevertheless, teachers should prepare students for the labor market where they will need to work as teams. there were three other teachers who mentioned the importance of the development of group work skills for the workplace. two full time teachers (t1 and t5) commented that group work is a process, acknowledging working on teams is not a natural ability that needs to be developed, as stated above by davies (2009), lillo zúñiga (2013), lópez hurtado and viáfara gonzález (2007). teachers’ statements as a whole suggested that the reasons for the positive opinions about teamwork are related to quality of work (t1), theories of learning (t7), and students’ future employment needs. teacher 8 mentioned that it was through group work that cooperation skills and empathy towards others was developed, as claimed by smith and macgregor (1992). on the other hand, there were some negative opinions expressed by three teachers. teacher 8 considers teamwork could be effective and enriching, elaborating on the use of the word “could” because it doesn’t necessarily occur due to interior group dynamics. teacher 9 adds that when real teamwork is carried out, it is good, but that the students do not really know how to work on teams. these two comments reinforce the acknowledgement that working in groups requires special abilities and skills which may not be innate in all individuals. these statements unveil teacher awareness of problems in teamwork but they perceive that the problems are on the students’ side, disregarding the teachers’ role in the development of these skills. two teachers (t1 and t2) commented that students did not feel comfortable when working in groups. this comment may reveal students’ previous negative experiences during group work; arguably, developing group work skills could modify those feelings. it is noteworthy that, as a whole, teachers’ opinions about teamwork are positive. assignment type assignment types were very varied and were classified as class delivered, oral production, and virtual. examples of class delivered were planning microteaching, actual microteaching, videos, and article summaries. examples of oral production were presentations, application of theory in practice, phonetics, different projects, exhibits and explanations of them. finally, examples of virtual assignments were online research surveys and interviews. teacher 4 explains that these last two assignments belong to his research methodology ii course where students have to learn to investigate in preparation for their thesis work. frequency factors the frequency of teamwork assignments varied from two teachers that preferred teamwork carried out in class to two teachers who planned this type of work after every unit and for each of the partials, as can be observed next. teacher 1 said that in the english class he assigns teamwork after each unit while teacher 3 states that in practical courses it is easier to assign teamwork of what was seen in class such as designing material for elt. teachers also said that the assignments depended on the type of course (t3), topic, homework, and semester of instruction as in teacher 10’s comment in which he said that he didn’t assign out-of-class teamwork to the first semester students until they had more experience carrying out teamwork. profile vol. 18, no. 2, july-december 2016. issn 1657-0790 (printed) 2256-5760 (online). bogotá, colombia. pages 29-45 universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras36 ruiz-esparza barajas, medrano vela, & zepeda huerta organizational processes as stated above, teachers perceived the organization of out-of-class teamwork as a process. the way in which teamwork is organized by teachers is varied, consisting of a number of steps. for instance, teacher 1 divides the group depending on the number of students and the course time. he assigns themes, asks for progress, monitors, and carries out a final revision. teacher 2 said that if he sees that the group is not integrated, he makes changes in team members. this comment echoes oakley et al. (2004) and zárate and moiraghi de pérez (2004) above, when stating that there are times when groups are experiencing difficulties and teachers need to intervene. teacher 3 adds that he assigns teamwork at the beginning of the course presenting instructions, things to include, places to search for the information, the things to be evaluated, and the way students are going to be evaluated. data above suggest that teachers are aware that teacher intervention is important in organizing the teams, monitoring, rearranging a group when necessary, and providing clear expectations of the work to be carried out. one interesting issue that was unveiled and reported by five teachers was concerning the ways in which students are organized into groups. while most literature suggests groups should be teacher-selected (davis, 1999; fiechtner & davis, 1984), teachers 6 and 7 expressed that they let students organize themselves while teacher 4 said that it was teacher led. in addition, teachers 3 and 8 commented that they carried out both types of organization (fiechtner & davis, 1984). finally, teacher 10 expressed a surprising statement by saying that to avoid only one or two students working, he does not organize out-of-class teamwork anymore, only in-class. this teacher is aware of the common problems taking place in group work, such as the free rider, the sucker effect (davies, 2009), or the division of work without any discussion among team members (davis, 1999; medrano vela & delgado alvarado, 2013; oakley et al., 2004). this statement, in addition to some of the statements issued for frequency factors in which teachers preferred to control teamwork in class, suggests problems. although most of the teachers stated positive opinions of this type of work, at a later stage of the interview negative perceptions started to arise. this point will be discussed in the problems section of this paper. advantages the three main advantages perceived by teachers are related to learning, abilities, and motivation. all the teachers agreed that by sharing knowledge and discussing ideas with their peers, student learning is enhanced. examples of this interpretation are given as follows: teacher 9 said that learning is standardized because the less knowledgeable students learn from the ones that know more since the knowledgeable students push the less knowledgeable ones to reach a higher standard to complete the assignment. teacher 7 stated that by collaborating with each other, students reach a deeper, meaningful, and permanent level of learning (davis, 1999). teacher 7 explained that students share ideas and argue what should the assignment include and later the content to be included is revised and agreed upon among them. teacher 10 added that it helps students to get used to problems and allows for strategy development to solve interpersonal conflicts (oakley et al., 2004). therefore, at the same time that students are involved in deep learning (entwistle & waterston as cited in davies, 2009), they develop cognitive and social abilities (kremer & mcguiness, 1998; lillo zúñiga, 2013). finally, regarding motivation, teacher 2 expressed that the synergy, force, and energy that the team creates is higher than the one an individual would produce, boosting students’ motivation. participants perceived many advantages in the use of group work as a learning strategy. problems teachers specified that the problems perceived in out-of-class teamwork were mostly related to 37 exploring university teacher perceptions about out-of-class teamwork organization, training, and assessing. for the first subtheme, organization, teachers 6 and 7 said that sometimes teachers cannot afford the amount of extra work and effort the organization of teamwork requires. teacher 7 stated that teachers need to invest time to convince people, train them, and follow up on their teamwork. the wording used by teacher 7 is interesting since he has to “convince” students which could suggest that students are not willing to participate. this comment is consistent with comments above which state that students need guidance and training when working on teams and teachers need to have the time to do it. another problem mentioned was the selection of group members, which was regarded as “problematic” by teacher 2 since he said that teacher selection functions partially and student selection functions better. in relation to the problems of the subtheme, training, each of the ten teachers emphasized the need for training students. as teacher 3 clearly explained, there are students that do not know how to work on teams, however, their individual work is quite good. later, teacher 3 added that it would be good to train them so that they really work on teams. eight teachers agreed that all the work is carried out by only some of the team members and there are ones that do not work but get the credit. clearly free riding is a common problem. lack of student commitment, difficulties in getting together, conflict among them, incorrect planning, and work distribution were also mentioned by participants as sources of conflict. all these difficulties experienced by team members reflect a lack of understanding of what group work really entails. development of the abovementioned transferable skills may help them overcome these negative experiences and learn to interact with others despite the difficulties encountered. one quite worrisome issue was that only teacher 2 stated the need for training teachers to implement teamwork. this finding suggests that the majority of the teachers perceive that they do not need any training and that it is the students who should be trained. teacher 7 stated that he never imposes on the organization of the team members while teacher 3 states that sometimes there are students that he knows will do the work of their friends. in addition, teacher 8 gives the assignment in written form to make sure students understand the task and only “sometimes” organizes the groups. this reveals a lack of awareness of the teachers’ role in helping students develop group work values and skills. teachers are to provide appropriate guidance; however, for such guidance to be delivered, teachers themselves need to develop the skills to become effective group work developers. concerning the subtheme of assessing, teacher 5 argued that the team is evaluated and not the ones who worked. this comment suggests the awareness of the presence of free riders or social loafing. teacher 10 added that if peer evaluation is carried out, students cover for each other, assigning maximum marks regardless of their awareness of work imbalance within the team. although the teacher does not mention whether this was a team where the students selected their group members, it is clear that there is either friendship or peer pressure among team members to cover for each other. although teacher 10’s comments reveal knowledge about modern pedagogies in favor of teamwork promotion, he refused to assign out-of-class teamwork because he couldn’t be sure whether all of the group members worked. perceptions of students’ opinions teachers had a variety of comments about students’ thinking in relation to out-of-class teamwork. positive assumptions were voiced only by teacher 5, who stated that when students become aware that they are actually learning they get engaged and even enjoy looking at other teams’ work. in contrast, two participants said their students thought teamwork undermines their individual effort (t1, t9) and another two mentioned they disliked it due to difficulties in getting together (t5, t7). other perceptions against teamwork were related to time consumption (t5, t9) and problems on agreeing on what is to be done (t2). profile vol. 18, no. 2, july-december 2016. issn 1657-0790 (printed) 2256-5760 (online). bogotá, colombia. pages 29-45 universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras38 ruiz-esparza barajas, medrano vela, & zepeda huerta neutral views were in terms of students being indifferent to teamwork (t4) and unawareness of their students’ perceptions about working on teams (t8, t10). finally, under the group dependent subtheme, success in group work was subject to how members got along with each other (t3, t8). negative views referred to the teachers’ perceptions regarding the students’ lack of awareness of the importance of teamwork for the development of the transferable skills, abilities, and values which are likely to be important in their future professional life. for instance, the abilities are to carry out a professional project in the workplace together with other coworkers, being able to accept constructive criticism, and arguing, negotiating, and sharing ideas with others. to summarize, the participants’ data were very informative and rich in insights. at the beginning of the interviews most teachers stated positive perceptions about teamwork. their comments disclosed awareness of the theoretical aspects about modern theories of learning and pedagogy which emphasize the implementation of teamwork since the teachers were at ease discussing the benefits associated with socio-constructivism and collaborative learning, as should be recalled. moreover, a noteworthy issue was that teamwork was judged “crucial” regardless of the theories of learning because it was perceived as a skill students needed to acquire for future employment. however, teachers were also quite aware of the problems that teachers and students face. they are related to organization, student training, and assessing this type of work. as should be recalled, among the sources for these problems were the difficulty for students to meet, free riders due to differences in commitment to the task assigned, and conflicts among students who only like to work with their friends. all of the teachers stated that students did not know how to work as teams. however, it was not mentioned who would be responsible for providing the training. currently, in the mexican context, it is unlikely for students to reach university already possessing the skills to work as teams. therefore, teachers need to be prepared to develop these skills in the students. half of the participants said their students’ perception towards teamwork was not positive. the most important issue that arose from this study was the suggestion that the benefits of collaborative learning and socioconstructivism are not being reached. this is because partial learning is being achieved instead of deep learning since the lack of student commitment, conflict among students, incorrect work distribution, and working only with friends are not conducive to learning. it should be recalled that the following step in the research was to develop a survey using the teachers’ perceptions that were stated by them. because of the relevance of the findings, it was now considered crucial by the researchers to continue investigating teachers’ thinking about out-of-class teamwork and to survey all of the staff of the five universities to have a broader perspective and to corroborate results. designing the survey the perceptions taken from the analysis of the teachers’ data were foundational in designing the new instrument. all of the teachers’ perceptions were listed and then separated into single statements so that they contained only one idea. to simplify the organization of the survey, similar statements were grouped together in sections. at the end, the survey contained five sections and 43 statements. the final version of the survey can be observed in appendix b. it is important to mention that the study was conducted in spanish since this is the mother tongue of nine of the teachers to be sampled. the exception was a french teacher. the measurement scale used for the five sections corresponded to a 6-point positively-packed agreement rating-scale consisting of two negative and four positive points, following brown (2004). number 1 corresponded to strongly disagree and 6 to strongly agree. the survey was then piloted with two teachers from each participant university. upon answering it, they 39 exploring university teacher perceptions about out-of-class teamwork provided feedback on the content and the format. this was discussed by five participant researchers and the survey was edited. modifications included statement rewriting for clarity and changing an agreement scale for a frequency one for the last section of this instrument, that is, section e, items 33 to 43 (see appendix b). once the survey was completed it was sent to the other researchers for their comments. the survey was perceived to be ready (see english version in appendix b). conclusion the aim of the study was fulfilled since it was possible to explore the thinking of a small number of university teachers of the bachelors in the elt program or similar programs in five universities. teachers’ initial comments were positive, however, a contrasting point of view was revealed when addressing practical issues regarding implementation and follow-up of task assigned. teachers perceived group work was not being successful in promoting deep learning and in developing the social and cognitive abilities expected in students. this failure was attributed to students’ lack of knowledge and ability to work on teams. student training in this respect was perceived to be required unanimously. literature clearly states that it is the teachers’ task to develop the skills to work on teams. however, it may be expected that earlier education levels of instruction should have developed these skills. the reality in the mexican university context is that many of our students have not acquired the skills which would provide many benefits during their student life and could empower them upon joining the world of work. therefore, it is essential that teachers include in their courses strategies to develop teamwork abilities and skills in their students. in the event that training for students were to be provided, teachers would also need to develop the abilities to effectively plan, organize, monitor, and evaluate teamwork that will enable them to cope with the challenges which may still arise. as the results of this study unveiled some serious issues, the need to confirm the results is of great importance. therefore, the survey will collect the perceptions of all of the full-time and part-time teachers of the participating ba in english language teaching program or similar programs, or at least of a greater sample of teachers in the five different state universities. references blatchford, p., kutnick, p., baines, e., & galton, m. 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(2004). turning student groups into effective teams. journal of student centered learning, 2(1), 9-34. parmelee, d. x., & michaelsen, l. k. (2010). twelve tips for doing effective team-based learning (tbl). medical teacher, 32(2), 118-112. http://dx.doi.org/10.3109/01421590903548562. portillo mares, d. m. (2011, july 29). trabajar en equipo desde el aula [teamwork from the classroom]. cnnexpansion. retrieved from http://www.cnnexpansion.com/ opinion/2011/07/28/trabajar-en-equipo-desde-el-aula. prieto navarro, l. (2007). autoeficacia del profesor universitario: eficacia percibida y práctica docente [efficacy of university professors: perceived efficacy and teaching practice]. madrid, es: narcea. quinn, t. (2012). g-r-o-u-p-w-o-r-k doesn’t spell collaboration. phi delta kappan, 94(4), 46-48. http://dx.doi. org/10.1177/003172171209400412. race, p. (2014). the lecturer’s toolkit: a practical guide to assessment, learning and teaching. london, uk: routledge. race, p., & pickford, r. (2007). making teaching work: ‘teaching smarter’ in post-compulsory education. london, uk: sage. smith, b. l., & macgregor, j. t. (1992). what is collaborative learning? in a. goodsell, m. maher, v. tinto, b. l. smith, & j. t. macgregor (eds.), collaborative learning: a sourcebook for higher education (pp. 11-30). university park, pa: national center on postsecondary teaching, learning, and assessment. stein, r. (2004). mexican and u.s. schools: a world apart. the term paper, 3(1), 4-5. universidad autónoma metropolitana. (2013). técnicas didácticas centradas en el alumno [learner-centered teaching techniques]. retrieved from http://hadoc.azc. uam.mx/tecnicas/aprendizaje.htm. woods, d., & çakir, h. (2011). two dimensions of teacher knowledge: the case of communicative language teaching. system, 39(3), 381-390. http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j. system.2011.07.010. zárate, h. z., & moiraghi de pérez, l. e. (2004). el grupo en el aprendizaje: ventajas y desventajas de la técnica de la dinámica de grupo [the learning group: advantages and disadvantages of the group dynamics technique]. retrieved from http://www.unne.edu.ar/unnevieja/web/ cyt/com2004/1-sociales/s-039.pdf. 41 exploring university teacher perceptions about out-of-class teamwork about the authors elizabeth ruiz-esparza barajas holds a doctor of applied linguistics from macquarie university at sydney and an ma in education from the university of london. she is a full time professor and researcher at the university of sonora in mexico. she has held different administrative positions. her research interests are teacher education and assessment. cecilia araceli medrano vela has an ma in educational technology and elt from the university of manchester and is currently a phd student at the university of southampton. she is a full time professor and researcher at the university of durango in mexico. her research interests are competence development and assessment. jesús helbert karim zepeda huerta has an ma in applied linguistics from the universidad autónoma de nayarit where he teaches economics, technology, material design, and language teaching. he participated in exchange programs for english language teacher education in the usa. he belongs to the educational policies, language, and tourism research group. profile vol. 18, no. 2, july-december 2016. issn 1657-0790 (printed) 2256-5760 (online). bogotá, colombia. pages 29-45 universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras42 ruiz-esparza barajas, medrano vela, & zepeda huerta appendix a: semi-structured interview for teachers1 1. what is your opinion about teamwork? 2. what type of out-of-class teamwork assignments do you plan for students to carry out? 3. how often do you assign out-of-class teamwork? 4. how do you organize from your classroom out-of-class teamwork? what else do you do? 5. what advantages have you seen in out-of-class teamwork? 6. what are the main problems that you have encountered in out-of-class teamwork? 7. on a scale of 1 to 10, to what extent do your students like you to assign them out-of-class teamwork? why? 1 the english translation of the interview was made for publication purposes since the original language was spanish. 43 exploring university teacher perceptions about out-of-class teamwork appendix b: out-of-class teamwork research project survey2 dear university teacher: the purpose of the present research project is to look into university teacher perceptions about out-of-class teamwork. several teachers working at five mexican state universities (unison, ucol, uan, ujed, and uagro) will be asked to comment on this teaching strategy. we would appreciate your collaboration in answering the present survey if you use out-of-class teamwork as part of your teaching practice. the group of researchers participating in this study ensures you that no personal information will be revealed, and neither will individual opinions be disclosed. please select the option that best reflects your opinion according to each statement. item strongly disagree disagree somewhat agree moderately agree agree strongly agree a. out-of-class teamwork: 1 2 3 4 5 6 1. encourages collaboration. 2. encourages student integration. 3. promotes interaction. 4. prepares students for a professional life. 5. is a process that takes time for students to assimilate. 6. develops social abilities. 7. develops cognitive abilities (e.g., critical thinking, problem solution, strategies, etc.) 8. is more work for the teacher. 9. ends with a team product. 10. optimizes class time. 11. socializes knowledge and abilities among members. 12. makes every student work. 13. functions depending on group attitude. 14. must be carried out by dividing work among group members. 15. depends on participants’ affinities. 16. requires teacher follow-up. 2 the english translation for the survey was made for publication purposes since the original language is spanish. profile vol. 18, no. 2, july-december 2016. issn 1657-0790 (printed) 2256-5760 (online). bogotá, colombia. pages 29-45 universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras44 ruiz-esparza barajas, medrano vela, & zepeda huerta 17. reflects homogeneous knowledge of group members. b. the teamwork assignment: 1 2 3 4 5 6 18. is of better quality than individual work. 19. sums each team member’s potential. 20. reflects application of theory into practice. 21. impacts individual grades. c. the frequency of teamwork assignments depends on: 1 2 3 4 5 6 22. the topic. 23. the subject matter. 24. the course content organization. d. the students: 1 2 3 4 5 6 25. that work harder learn more. 26. know how to work on teams. 27. are equipped with sociocognitive skills (e.g., can discuss experiences adding new ideas and knowledge, know how to argue, etc.). 28. present better work in groups than individually. 29. work individually despite being assigned to work in teams. 30. divide the work and then put it together. 31. re-group inside the team. 32. tend to report that every member worked although it isn’t always true. never seldom sometimes fairly often very often always e. i as a teacher: 1 2 3 4 5 6 33. give instructions and explain the expected work well. 45 exploring university teacher perceptions about out-of-class teamwork 34. give students practice in class prior to the teamwork that will be requested. 35. organize the team (i decide who the team members are). 36. intervene if necessary and make changes (e.g., i change members on already made teams). 37. make sure work has been done as teams (everybody worked the same). 38. use rubrics to mark/grade. 39. explain all the elements i’m going to mark when work is assigned. 40. ask for work that develops research skills. 41. ask students to prepare for oral presentations on a topic in class. 42. request students to use electronic media when carrying out the assignments. 43. request students to present their teamwork using electronic media (e.g., powerpoint, flash, web pages, etc.). thank you for your time and collaboration! please select or provide data: full-time teacher______, hourly-based_________, academic degree(s) _________________________________________________________ age between -25____, 26-35____, 36-45____, 46-55____, 56-65_____, more_____ years of teaching experience (in general) ____________ sex: male____, female ____ profile vol. 18, no. 2, july-december 2016. issn 1657-0790 (printed) 2256-5760 (online). bogotá, colombia. pages 29-45 171profile vol. 16, no. 2, october 2014. issn 1657-0790 (printed) 2256-5760 (online). bogotá, colombia. pages 171-184 making sense of critical pedagogy in l2 education through a collaborative study group dándole sentido a la pedagogía crítica en la educación en l2 a través de un grupo de estudio colaborativo paula andrea echeverri sucerquia1* sebastián pérez restrepo**2 universidad de antioquia, medellín, colombia in this article we discuss our experiences in the process of understanding critical pedagogy within an english teachers’ study group which was created for the purpose of learning how to teach language from a critical perspective. we particularly focus on the challenges of meaning making around critical pedagogy, as we realized that we were not all able to similarly enter this discourse. to illustrate our processes of understanding theory individually and collectively, some of the group members’ narratives are used as examples of our different perspectives. we argue that making sense of critical pedagogy, as part of a process of professional development, implies spaces and situations of personal confrontation with theory and support in collaborative learning through dialogue. key words: critical pedagogy, study group, teacher development, teacher education, teacher learning. presentamos nuestras experiencias del proceso de comprender la pedagogía crítica por parte de un grupo de profesores de inglés, que fue creado con el propósito de aprender cómo se puede enseñar la lengua desde una perspectiva crítica, en diferentes contextos en medellín. nos enfocamos particularmente en los desafíos que implica construir significado sobre la pedagogía crítica cuando no todas las integrantes podían acceder a este discurso de la misma manera. para ilustrar nuestro proceso de comprensión individual y grupal de la teoría, utilizamos las narrativas de algunas integrantes del grupo como ejemplos de nuestras diversas perspectivas. planteamos que darle sentido a la pedagogía crítica como parte de un proceso de desarrollo profesional implica espacios y situaciones de confrontación personal con la teoría, así como apoyo en el aprendizaje colaborativo a través del diálogo. palabras clave: aprendizaje del maestro, formación de maestros, grupo de estudio, pedagogía crítica. * e-mail: paula.echeverri.sucerquia@gmail.com ** e-mail: nicknombre@gmail.com how to cite this article (apa, 6th ed.): echeverri sucerquia, p. a., & pérez restrepo, s. (2014). making sense of critical pedagogy in l2 education through a collaborative study group. profile issues in teachers’ professional development, 16(2), 171-184. http://dx.doi.org/10.15446/profile.v16n2.38633. this article was received on july 1, 2013, and accepted on january 15, 2014. this is an open access article distributed under the terms of the creative commons license attribution-noncommercial-noderivatives 4.0 international license. consultation is possible at http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/. universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras172 echeverri sucerquia & pérez restrepo introduction in recent years the colombian government has focused its attention on the promotion of bilingual education as a strategy to respond to the demands of global markets and to support economic development. in this endeavor, several initiatives have been undertaken at the national and local levels, including the use of imported standards like the common european framework of reference as guidelines to measure language proficiency and to design curricula; in addition, there has been a greater investment in the revision of the quality of teacher education programs and the creation of professional development programs for in-service teachers. with the increasing interest in colombia to promote bilingual education, the use of relevant language pedagogies that value local identities is at stake: market driven educational goals, along with imported language proficiency standards, contrast with a context where social inequalities, violence, and poverty abound and with the lack of teacher preparation to help students achieve international standards. aware of these issues and willing to find pathways to counteract them in our pedagogical practices, the coordinators of two english programs1 in colombia decided to invite teachers in their programs to create a study group in january, 2011. a variety of practicing teachers joined the group: undergraduate students in a foreign language teacher education program, students in a foreign language master’s program, some recently graduated teachers, and a few teacher educators. the group started with 12 members of which six remain to this day. one of the reasons that brought us together as a study group was the need of finding alternative pedagogies that would help 1 an english program for teenagers and a teacher education program in foreign languages. us reconfigure second or foreign language (l2) education in the colombian context and under our particular socioeconomic and cultural conditions. this was especially important to us given that most literature in our field has been produced abroad and that our educational system does not seem to prioritize locally-constructed knowledge. critical pedagogy was the orientation we chose as an initial point of departure in aiming at a pedagogy that strives for particularity (“embedded in a particular social milieu”), practicality (that “aims for a teacher-generated theory of practice”), and possibility (“that empowers participants” [kumaravadivelu, 2001, pp. 538-544]). of all our experiences in the study group,2 we particularly focus in this article on our first challenge: the process of making sense of critical pedagogy as we realized that we were not all able to similarly enter this discourse—its language, concepts, principles, and so forth. this happened due to several reasons, including our differing levels of familiarity with critical pedagogy and difficulty of understanding critical pedagogy discourses, often characterized as abstract and complex. furthermore, we struggled at implementing the idealistic vision of critical scholars in the realities of our educational settings. in the process of meaning making around critical pedagogy, we refer to the effects of individual confrontation with the theory as well as collective meaning making as a learning community. to illustrate this process, we present and discuss the narratives3 of four of the group members4 as a way 2 as part of our experience in the study group, we conducted a case study research project with the purpose of exploring our experiences of professional development. in this piece we concentrate on one of the salient themes we identified. the overall results of this research are reported in a different article. 3 we prepared these narratives for a presentation at the american educational studies association (aesa) annual meeting in 2012. 4 although four of us initially prepared our narratives for the presentation at the conference, only two of us engaged in the writing of this article (with the other authors’ consent). 173profile vol. 16, no. 2, october 2014. issn 1657-0790 (printed) 2256-5760 (online). bogotá, colombia. pages 171-184 making sense of critical pedagogy in l2 education through a collaborative study group to privilege the teacher voice as we describe our experiences. we focus on these narratives because they illustrate the differences in the nature of such experiences given our diverse academic and teaching backgrounds; moreover, doing this privileges our voices as relevant sources to construct theory about our practice (kumaravadivelu, 2001). a focus on individual narratives about professional development experiences aligns with our effort in the study group to “create a democratic setting,” where all our voices are valued and all participants are “in control of deciding what knowledge about their practice they want to access and how” (saavedra as cited in anderson & saavedra, 1995, pp. 230-231). this similarly reflects the importance we gave in the study group to our personal histories, which we used to understand and interpret ideas and practices so that we could eventually assist one another in mutual transformation through dialogue. we begin this piece by providing some information about the study group, including the reasons why we decided to study critical pedagogy and a description of the methodology we used as part of the learning process. we briefly describe who the authors of the selected narratives are, followed by a discussion and exemplification of themes that we identified in relation to the issue of developing an understanding of critical pedagogy. we finish with some arguments to support why gaining conceptual clarity and understanding of theory are fundamental in teacher development to increase self-awareness and reflexivity so that eventually we arrive at better informed pedagogical practices. we intend to contribute to the literature on critical language teacher development, particularly concerning the process of understanding, appropriating, and/or interrogating theory. why a study group on critical pedagogy in l2 education in this section we will offer some theoretical background to justify our focus on critical pedagogy in relation to second and foreign language education. we start by identifying two broad orientations in language education that have also permeated language teacher education: an instrumentalist orientation and a critical orientation. then we refer to the relevance of a critical orientation in language education in the colombian context and its implications for teacher professional development. an instrumentalist vs. a critical orientation in l2 education and l2 teacher education renowned authors in the field of l2 teaching like pennycook (1990) and crookes (2009) have argued that there is a gap between the field of language education and educational theory at large. pennycook (1990) explains that language education has largely been influenced by linguistics and psycholinguistics and this has resulted in a positivist and instrumentalist orientation towards language and knowledge in general (pennycook, 1990, 2004). a characteristic of this orientation is the marked focus on the teaching of language structures and communicative functions that have little to do with students’ lives outside the classroom. this instrumentalist orientation, often called “technical” and “practical” as well, has similarly affected l2 teacher education. crookes (2009) argues that most teacher education programs have focused on “the preparation of technicians who deliver language instruction with no other major concerns” (p. 46). in contrast to an instrumentalist view approach to teacher education, authors like osborn (2000) and crookes (2009) point out that along with a focus on language and language universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras174 echeverri sucerquia & pérez restrepo instruction, teachers need to become aware of their own views and values concerning language teaching and to understand and explain their role as language teachers in their particular society. this perspective is often called a “critical” orientation in language teacher education; this orientation draws attention to the importance of theory to interpret teaching practice and understand the local social realities in connection to larger social issues (leistyna, lavandez, & nelson, 2004). such understanding may not only give the teacher elements for a social critique, but also facilitate awareness of the self and the world necessary to problematize teaching practice—for example, by generating questions about the social, political, economic, and cultural factors that shape our pedagogical practices. the field of l2 teacher professional development and teacher education in colombia is not devoid of tension between an instrumentalist and a socially-relevant, more critical orientation. for example, in her study about models currently used in professional development programs in colombia, gonzález (2007) found that the most popular model, the icelt, considers teachers mainly as instructors. their needs as learners are reduced to the language improvement component. it ignores important aspects that they see as priorities in their daily work such as school violence, early pregnancies, anorexia and bulimia, and lack of hope for the future. (pp. 320-321) within this model teachers seem to be regarded as mere deliverers of content that is not related to students’ lives, as trainers in skills that do not necessarily help students cope with issues they face every day. similarly, in her study about current approaches used in foreign language teacher education programs in colombia, cárdenas (2009) found that transmission and skills-based models still persist. however, there seems to be a growing tendency among foreign language teacher education programs in colombia for more socially relevant models, like the social-constructivist, which is a critical approach that places a greater focus on the social and on the teacher’s holistic development. she explains that programs within this perspective focus on “giving prospective teachers the chance to develop their own teaching style . . . taking into account the particularities of their contexts and the parameters provided to teachers” (p. 101). this approach coincides with a critical orientation to teacher education in that it pays greater attention to local contexts and their needs. the language teachers and language teacher educators who are part of this study group identify this instrumentalist versus critical tension in our practice too. we often find that the educational system where we work often privileges an instrumentalist notion of language education while disregarding students’ local context. in a country like colombia, where signs of oppression and injustice are so evident, we believe that english teachers here will be doing their students a disservice if they limit themselves to teaching grammar structures and communicative functions that are not related to students’ real lives. in our search we learned that in order to advance a critical agenda as language teachers, we needed to first “develop political and ideological clarity in order to increase the chances of academic success for all students” (bartolomé, 2004, p. 98) and also develop “conceptual understanding of practice” (crookes, 2009, p. 113). such clarity and conceptual understanding may lead to awareness of the self—ideas, beliefs, practices, attitudes, and so forth—and awareness of the world while connecting the particular with the global, that is, understanding social realities in connection to current structural issues like systemic gender violence, unemployment, domestic violence, and so forth. 175profile vol. 16, no. 2, october 2014. issn 1657-0790 (printed) 2256-5760 (online). bogotá, colombia. pages 171-184 making sense of critical pedagogy in l2 education through a collaborative study group likewise, this awareness of the self and the world is necessary so that teachers are better able to problematize their practice. in conclusion, teachers in this study group identify with a critical perspective because we believe that as educators we cannot just focus on the teaching of language structures and remain indifferent to the social realities of our students. the following are some of the most important characteristics of the critical language teacher development5 we strived for in the study group: • rejects the notion of teachers as content deliverers, as implied in an instrumentalist/ technical orientation to language education and l2 teacher education. • privileges local context and teacher practice to imagine new possibilities and produce locally situated knowledge. • entails helping teachers to develop the conceptual, political, and ideological clarity necessary to understand and transform practice. • focuses on theory that enables teachers to develop self-awareness, to critically read the world, and problematize their practice. because we intended to avoid simply regurgitating theory, but understand it rather and critically appropriate it and/or interrogate it, it was necessary to develop conceptual clarity; this task became our initial goal as a learning community. in the following section we will refer to the strategies we used to achieve conceptual and theoretical clarity of critical pedagogy. 5 even though we acknowledge the differences between teacher education and teacher development literatures, we use both as referents for two reasons. one, in the critical realm these literatures do not differ ostensibly (as far as theoretical principles are concerned), and two, our study group includes both pre-service and in-service teachers, making both literatures equally relevant to our experience. consequently, when a generic term may be used, we selected “teacher development.” the study group the coordinators of two programs (an english program for teenagers and an undergraduate program in foreign language teaching) initially organized this study group in january, 2011. the group was comprised of seven members who all had different levels of teaching experience and different entry points as regards critical pedagogy literature. there were three undergraduate students and two graduate students (from the bachelor’s and master’s program in foreign language teaching) who had already been teaching english in programs for children, youth, and adults, and two professors who had been teaching in the same undergraduate program; one is the study group leader and thesis advisor for the graduate students and the other one is the practicum advisor for one of the undergraduate students. we met for two or four hours every week to discuss readings we had previously selected collaboratively. at the beginning, we discussed our concerns and needs, and then we made decisions about expectations, methodology, and topics to be addressed in the study group. we started with reading texts about critical theory and critical pedagogy. given that the language in the texts was new and difficult to understand for most of the group members, we used a wide variety of activities to foster comprehension of the texts and the theory, including drawing sketches to interpret and visualize abstract concepts, elaborating mind maps of the more theoretical readings, developing discussion questions, preparing reading reports, and negotiating meaning through dialogue with peers. in addition to these comprehension strategies, we used other strategies to encourage self-reflection such as designing and completing self and peer-evaluation reports and transcribing our own interventions in some meetings.6 another activ6 as part of the data collection process for our study, we audio universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras176 echeverri sucerquia & pérez restrepo ity we did that became an important strategy for self-reflection and comprehension/appropriation of theory was preparing presentations for national and international events. writing up our scripts for these events pushed group members to use theory to explain perspectives on language education and processes of professional growth. for one of these events, some of the group members prepared narratives to be presented during a symposium at an international conference. of the several themes that emerged from our study (which we report on in a separate article), we decided to address in this presentation the process by which we tried to make sense of critical pedagogy. as mentioned earlier in this paper, we selected this theme because it constituted our first challenge as learners of critical pedagogy, so we decided to use our individual narratives to illustrate the process. the ones who engaged in the preparation and presentation of this symposium were four of us: patricia,7 the study group leader; diana, a professor/practicum advisor; nadia, an undergraduate student in her senior year doing her practicum, and santiago, an undergraduate student in the middle of the program. patricia is one of the study group’s founders and the leader. she has been a teacher educator for over ten years. because she was the most knowledgeable in the group about critical pedagogy, she often played the role of a facilitator. when she became acquainted with freirean pedagogy and critical pedagogy, she became aware of the relevance of a critical approach in language education that was responsive to the needs of the complex colombian context. diana, another teacher educator with 15 years of experience as an english teacher, has recorded some of the meetings (for example, those where we discussed our own and peer evaluations) and later, we identified and transcribed our own interventions in the meeting. this strategy proved to be a very useful activity to foster self-awareness. 7 the names provided here are pseudonyms. an interdisciplinary background—language teaching, special education, and latin american studies. as a tutor at an extension program and practicum advisor at a teaching program, diana became concerned with how to reorient her teaching towards a more critical stance in her teaching practices. in spite of being an undergraduate student, nadia already had enough english teaching experience with children to convince herself that she needed better strategies to have a greater impact on her students’ lives. she did her practicum while still taking part in the study group. her reflections along this time period showed her growing concern on becoming a language teacher who was able to go beyond just teaching the target language in her classes. as for santiago, he pursued the last third of the same teaching program’s core subjects during 2012. past experiences as a journalism major awakened in him the need to address, as an english teacher, his students’ social realities. these realities often remain invisible in school curricula. the authors of this article revisited the narratives we discussed in our presentation at the conference. we selected and analyzed those excerpts that, in our opinion, depicted the experiences of making sense of critical pedagogy. we briefly discuss these narratives in light of the theory we read concerning language teacher education and learning. making sense of critical pedagogy in the study group as we previously explained, making sense of critical pedagogy theory was an important issue for us due to our differing levels of familiarity with critical pedagogy, the abstract character of critical pedagogy language, core concepts and principles, and the lack of concrete examples in many critical pedagogy texts. we organized the selected narratives into two main themes; each theme refers to two differentiated though interdependent stages in 177profile vol. 16, no. 2, october 2014. issn 1657-0790 (printed) 2256-5760 (online). bogotá, colombia. pages 171-184 making sense of critical pedagogy in l2 education through a collaborative study group the process of making sense of critical pedagogy. the first one is related to understanding theory at an individual level (i.e., when preparing the readings for meetings or making sense of the theory read and discussed after the meetings, etc.); and the second one relates to how we made sense of theory in our interactions in the group, particularly as we negotiated relationships of power so that they did not constrain our process of understanding theory. trying to understand critical pedagogy concepts and theoretical principles individually during our initial meetings, the study group leader provided some guiding questions to facilitate the reading process, given that the texts were dense, full of unfamiliar concepts and a great amount of information. this situation often resulted in members feeling confused and frustrated. making sure that we understood the language, concepts, and ideas in texts about critical pedagogy was important because this would facilitate the connections we made between theory and practice and because it would also allow for greater participation from everyone in group discussions. under the guidance of the group leader, we negotiated different comprehension strategies to tackle the readings individually. the challenges of meaning-making were different for each of us— it was either developing concepts, understanding abstract ideas, or contextualizing theory, depending on how familiar we were with critical theory at large or on our expertise as language teachers. the following excerpts from the narratives we selected show the differences in our perspectives concerning the strategies we used to achieve a better understanding of theory and greater conceptual clarity at an individual level. nadia: the challenge of developing abstract concepts. prior to my participation in the study group i was not familiar with critical pedagogy theory and was not fond of any other particular theory. for this reason, my decisions as an english teacher were mostly based on experience. the strategies we used in the study group helped me comprehend, internalize, and incorporate new concepts in my discourse while contributing to my making sense of the foundations of critical theory. for example, mind mapping was a strategy that helped me understand concepts and establish relationships between them; however, this was a difficult task because i had the tendency to focus on my experiences alone, and most of the texts were theoretical, without practical examples; just abstract concepts and ideas. my confusion was reflected at meetings as i had nothing to question in the texts. i committed to read more carefully, but i struggled with my old assumption that talking about practices was more important than theorizing about them. confronting the theory with my reality was a chance for making my reading a more conscientious activity. in this excerpt we can see how nadia, a student teacher at the time she participated in the study group, initially struggled with theory and therefore decided to resort to her own experiences to support her understanding. given that she had about two years of teaching experience (at the time of writing her narratives), she felt comfortable using it as a reference to make sense of theory; likewise, she recognized the importance of understanding the abstract ideas presented in texts so that she would be able to theorize about her practice. in the following excerpt we can see how santiago, another pre-service teacher, dealt with making sense of theory on his own in a very different way. santiago: from a personal to a shared understanding of theory. when reading texts on critical pedagogy, i took advantage of intratextual analysis; that is, trying to first grasp the correlations the author established between concepts in order to understand how they configure his/her stance. i find this intratextual reading a compelling step before doing an intertextual reading; by this i mean enriching my initial analysis of a text with additional readings and interpretations of similar topics by other authors or group peers. universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras178 echeverri sucerquia & pérez restrepo but understanding the theory on my own was not enough. i found that the informed discussions with my group peers were essential because they allowed me to see how clear a concept is to me, since i often had to reformulate my ideas in a way my group colleagues would understand. this attitude helped me gain deeper understanding because i was better able to give context to my theoretical constructions. from the very moment santiago joined our study group, he showed great confidence when tackling theoretical texts that seemed to be difficult to the other participants. in the group, we attributed his skill of understanding difficult concepts to the fact that santiago was an avid reader and that he was familiar with discourses in various social sciences. however, unlike nadia, santiago had little teaching experience and therefore, he felt less confident, relying on experience to understand theory; still, he found it was important to give context to the concepts in the texts to reassure his comprehension of theory. in contrast with the previous excerpts from narratives, the following ones depict the experience of the two teacher educators in the group in their efforts to either understand or facilitate understanding of theory. diana: testing my understanding of critical pedagogy while mentoring a student teaching project. as a personal strategy, i try to connect what i read with my reality. nevertheless, this strategy was put to the test when i had to supervise a practicum student who is also a member of this study group. influenced by her participation in the group, she planned an action research project intended to promote a democratic environment and to raise awareness about social issues. guiding her in the development of this project was a challenge because i was used to supervising projects dealing with the improvement of language skills alone. in this experience i faced two limitations. first of all, when looking at the critical pedagogy literature, i found that what had been written elsewhere does not always fit into what we live in the colombian setting; a context where the social and economic differences are so highlighted. the second challenge was to guide such research project with my limited understanding of critical pedagogy. only after 10 months of working on the project with the student teacher, i, we, finally got a clearer understanding of the issue she wanted to address. this entailed reconstructing the original project but with the satisfaction of having gained greater conceptual clarity. like nadia, diana was better able to make sense of theory as she made connections with her pedagogical practice. supervising a practicum project based on critical pedagogy principles challenged her to test her understanding of theory and to give context to the literature produced elsewhere. this experience defied her confidence for some time, but it provided her with new learning opportunities, as she discussed in the group on several opportunities. in the following excerpt patricia refers to a different challenge she faced as the group leader. patricia: the challenge of supporting the process of making sense of critical pedagogy. as the study group leader, i found myself with the great responsibility of facilitating understanding of theory. even though the study group participants identified with the goals of critical pedagogy, it was difficult for them to understand the texts, which i could notice in some of their interventions; some of them recognized that this happened as a result of their lack of familiarity with critical pedagogy discourse or lack of rigor in the process of reading. likewise, it was challenging for me to negotiate strategies that actually helped everyone to better understand the readings while being careful not to provide all explanations myself or to impose my own ideas about critical pedagogy. my purpose as the study group leader was to foster the teachers’ construction of knowledge about critical pedagogy through a process of progressive scaffolding of theory. i strived for individual comprehension of the readings before moving into a negotiation and construction of meaning in our interactions with colleagues in the group, hoping that this would lead us to informed self-reflection and self-knowledge. 179profile vol. 16, no. 2, october 2014. issn 1657-0790 (printed) 2256-5760 (online). bogotá, colombia. pages 171-184 making sense of critical pedagogy in l2 education through a collaborative study group in contrast with the other three narratives, patricia’s excerpt exposes the challenge of promoting understanding of theory without imposing her own views, while at the same time fostering a progressive and collaborative learning process. her own challenge became the group challenge as we strived for becoming more confident about our individual—and then group constructions—rather than solely on her knowledge and leadership. the previous narratives reveal similarities and differences in the ways we approached critical pedagogy. for all of us the strategies we used individually to understand (or facilitate understanding of ) theory were successful in helping us start grasping the theory as presented by experts, at least to the point of gaining greater clarity before participating in group discussions. in the study group it was often mentioned that the reading activities pushed us to be more rigorous in our readings, though we recognized that better comprehension was achieved once we related the readings to our experiences (as diana commented in her narrative) and as we shared our understandings in the group (as explained by santiago in his narrative). exploring the unknown made us feel vulnerable and uncomfortable at different levels, both in the case of pre-service teachers as well as the most experienced teachers, which resulted in particular ways of dealing with these feelings. for example, while nadia (who expressed not being fond of a particular theory) resorted to focusing on practice and not on theory as presented by the authors, santiago (a student who was more used to reading complex texts in philosophy and psychology) initially limited himself to understanding the authors’ point independently from his experience. resorting to what they were familiar with increased their confidence in their process of making sense of theory. dealing with these individual struggles in understanding critical pedagogy was not an easy task, so we always found ourselves reaching out to colleagues for support and collaborative learning, as suggested in some of the narratives. given the feelings of vulnerability, establishing an environment of trust was of utmost importance; this entailed an attitude of solidarity (putting oneself in someone else’s position to understand her/his point of view) and open-mindedness (to realize that there are multiple ways to understand an issue). in a similar experience of collaborative learning related by luna et al. (2004), they call this process developing “critically supportive relationships” (p. 75) through which group participants co-construct knowledge. we refer to this stage in the process of meaning making in the following section and discuss the influence of power relationships in the dynamics of collaborative learning. making sense of theory through our interactions in the study group trying to understand the readings through individual comprehension activities was not enough to internalize the new knowledge, as explained by santiago in his narrative excerpt. it was necessary to share and compare our individual understandings with group colleagues in order to collaboratively make sense of theory and our individual experiences. in both individual and group efforts to understand theory, our different levels of experience, expertise, ability to understand abstract concepts, and knowledge of the topic influenced our ability to understand critical pedagogy, either positively or negatively. the following set of narratives gives an account of how the statuses we created based on such differences generated certain dynamics of power in the group thus creating or hindering possibilities to co-construct knowledge about the topic. diana: those who know vs. those who don’t know. diversity and power within the study group were initially defined by our universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras180 echeverri sucerquia & pérez restrepo educational level (undergraduate, graduate), roles within the group (coordinator, co-researchers, studentresearchers), as well as ability to understand theory. likewise, these characteristics influenced the kind of relationships we established among us. for example, i perceived situations where someone in the group may think that “because s/he understands theory better, s/he knows more than me, and therefore what i say is not relevant, so i better don’t say what i think.” this situation reminds me of the analogy that skutnabb-kangas (as cited in wink, 2000, p. 89) mentions when she refers to power relations. she explains that most of the time we play in an a team or a b team. i, for instance, feel i am in the a team when i understand easily what we read and then i feel comfortable. but at other times i am in the position of those who don’t understand, the b team, and therefore i feel uncomfortable because i think i have less power of incidence and intellectual contribution and therefore, it affects my self-esteem. i don’t think the study group members are intentionally playing in one team or the other; unfortunately, we are so accustomed to being in one team or the other that we are not aware of this situation. in this excerpt diana brings about a situation in the group that affected our learning: the power dynamics that we established. she explains how, depending on how empowered or disempowered we felt in comparison to others in the group, our motivation influenced our participation in discussions and activities, which either constrained or facilitated our learning. however, as illustrated in the following narratives, we used critical pedagogy to counter the power dynamics that were so embedded in our experience of collaborative learning. santiago: interdependence to build understanding. in my interventions i strived for maintaining the authors’ level of abstraction in the texts and i found that this fact prevented some of my peers from participating. in other words, using the authors’ language in my interventions resulted in the exclusion of some group members from the conversation. however, thanks to the discussion of critical pedagogy concepts like voice, as elaborated by freire (1987), pennycook (2001) (as quoted in becerra, 2005), or by hooks (2010), and also thanks to self and peer-evaluations, i began to question this position i used to take. i started to see more clearly how my understanding of theory was so limited to abstract concepts and that this fact limited the possibilities i had to apply these concepts to real life situations. the awareness i developed from this experience led me to better appreciate my study group mates as peers who provided me with practical knowledge i may lack. this is why i came to prefer starting by a collective construction of meaning with my colleagues and then, only when we established a common ground, i started to introduce the authors’ concepts in the discussion. in this sense, my realization of the interdependence that exists among colleagues to develop conceptual clarity has convinced me that the theoretical, text-based knowledge i so highly praised in my past academic experiences needs empirical evidence to come to life. in the previous excerpt, santiago recognizes again his initial reliance only on theory as presented in the texts and how he moved from staying at this individual level of comprehension to trying strategies to negotiate meaning with his peers. he found in the interaction with colleagues the opportunity to contextualize theory and therefore develop greater conceptual clarity. more importantly, he explains that theory motivated his change of attitude, which also happened in nadia’s case, as we can find in the following excerpt. nadia: finding relevance in our contributions to discussions. reading about critical pedagogy made me more aware of situations of discrimination, oppression, and domination; thus, i have become more confident of ideas that previously were mere intuition. from that process of awareness, i started noticing certain attitudes in me. i realized that i expressed questions and ideas related to readings more often, even when my discourses were not as elaborated as the others’. critical pedagogy helped me get used to the idea that all of us contribute to the learning process. though we knew that there were power relations in the group, we were able to communicate and work collaboratively, or give suggestions to one another in 181profile vol. 16, no. 2, october 2014. issn 1657-0790 (printed) 2256-5760 (online). bogotá, colombia. pages 171-184 making sense of critical pedagogy in l2 education through a collaborative study group spite of our statuses. however, i did not often share examples of my own teaching practice to the group. the writing of these narratives helped me realize that it is much more what i have kept (referring to teaching experiences) than what i have shared. i used to think that my experiences were my own and not necessarily sources of examples to understand theory. now i know that it is not about boasting of what i have done, but about sharing, reflecting, and growing together. critical pedagogy helped me to understand that my ideas are as valid as others’ and that my feelings and experiences in the teaching practicum should be expressed because they count. like santiago, nadia recognizes the contribution of critical pedagogy theory to her change of attitude. however, while in santiago’s case theory helped him add greater value to his colleagues’ contributions, theory helped nadia to better appreciate her own knowledge gained through experience, thus enabling her to participate more often. nadia, as other group colleagues, showed concern for a lack of sophistication in her discourse, especially if compared to santiago’s; this issue created certain dynamics of power that influenced participation in group discussions. but critical pedagogy literature encouraged nadia and other group participants to challenge their fear to participate. in the following excerpt patricia, the study group leader, discusses how she dealt with power dynamics in an effort to foster a positive and collaborative learning environment. patricia: negotiating authority. as the study group leader, i tried to foster a process of negotiation of meaning about theory among group members along with a process of self-reflection and self-knowledge. to achieve this required an environment of trust where we felt that it was ok to expose our ignorance, lack of understanding, or the contradictions we found in ourselves as a result of self-discovery. creating such an environment took several months but it was essential in the process of collaborative construction of knowledge as group members became more confident and added value to their own experiences and conceptualizations. even though we tried to create an environment where group members felt safe in order to establish a positive relationship with theory, there were times when some of my colleagues did not feel at ease because they felt confused and threatened by the fact that others seemed to understand or know more which generated conflict in the group and affected participants’ self-esteem. as a collective, we also realized that confrontation in this space we shared was necessary at times to gain a better understanding of theory and ourselves. our inquiry group became a site to consciously and constantly negotiate power as we learned about critical pedagogy. this exercise of balancing power and authority implied a great effort for me in two ways: one, as i often reminded myself of not falling into the contradiction of imposing my views on others while advocating for democracy; and two, motivating the group to become less dependent of me and take initiative, especially when i was not there or when i did not express my opinions. to contrast the effects of the power dynamics we created, we constantly engaged in the exercise of reflecting on our different positions in the group and their effect on our learning. like her colleagues, patricia refers in her narrative to the centrality of power in the group dynamics. she also explains that critical pedagogy helped group participants become more aware of their own fears and possibilities. something that she adds in relation to power dynamics and collaborative learning is that even though the group strived for a positive learning environment, conflict and confrontation were also part of their experience and that these were used to create learning opportunities. in conclusion, peer collaboration was needed in our learning process to facilitate our making sense of theory, as evidenced in the previous excerpts. however, learning as a collaborative construction did not occur without conflict. as explained universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras182 echeverri sucerquia & pérez restrepo in the narratives, the ways we positioned ourselves in the group or how we were positioned by others generated power relations that affected the dynamics of our learning process as individuals and as a group. for example, greater power was given to someone according to educational attainment levels, experience, knowledge, and so forth, which in turn helped us create ideas about self-efficacy and learner identity. fortunately, critical pedagogy helped us to uncover the effects of power relations in our performance, attitudes, and learning, as posited by santiago and nadia. being able to name how we positioned ourselves or were positioned by others was necessary, as patricia suggests in her narrative, to challenge these power dynamics to facilitate learning and to create a positive environment. the strategy we used to overcome harmful power dynamics was to constantly characterize, reflect upon, and interrogate our positioning within the group. conclusions in this article we offer a glimpse into one of the issues we faced while participating in a study group on critical pedagogy: how we tried to make sense about theory. this issue became relevant because we found that in order to visualize possibilities for incorporating critical pedagogy and arrive at better informed pedagogical practices, developing conceptual clarity and understanding of theory is fundamental. developing this clarity was a very complex process given the sophistication of the language in some texts on critical pedagogy, and the reduced number of local publications on the topic, among other reasons. in this study group’s experience of sense-making we identified two different but interdependent stages: an individual process of understanding the readings using comprehension activities and a collaborative process of learning with and from peers. these two stages are interdependent because, as johnson (1996) explains, theory alone cannot “fully and completely inform practice. [theory] can inform practice only to the extent to which teachers themselves make sense of that theory” (p. 766), which may be more likely to happen if they learn theory in relation to their practice and in collaboration with others, as suggested by sociocultural perspectives on learning. following leont’ev and vygotsky, johnson and golombek (2003) explain that cognitive development occurs in the movement from social mediation to internal mediation, that is, internalization. in the experience of the study group, we assumed the internalization of theory as an inward-outward-inward process through which we individually tried to understand theory based on our background knowledge, experience, and so forth, and eventually share, compare, and negotiate individual understandings with others, thus collaboratively constructing knowledge and internalizing the theory we explored. collaboration in the context of the study group facilitated the learning of the critical pedagogy theory; similarly, this theoretical support provided us with a language to name what occurred in our practices and the opportunity to visualize alternative pedagogical actions in language education, as stated by johnson and golombek. even though our experience in the study group confirms that teachers’ learning of theory was possible with special thanks to our mutual support and collaborative construction of meaning, it is important to remark that the group constituted both a mediational space and a space of conflict and confrontation. our individual differences, along with the way we positioned or were positioned in the group, generated power dynamics that either fostered or hindered collaborative learning. we argue 183profile vol. 16, no. 2, october 2014. issn 1657-0790 (printed) 2256-5760 (online). bogotá, colombia. pages 171-184 making sense of critical pedagogy in l2 education through a collaborative study group that group participants should acknowledge such dynamics of power not just to challenge them and facilitate learning, but as a strategy for personal and professional growth. with this paper we attempted to use our voices (narrative excerpts) to explain how teachers from different backgrounds make meaning about theory and practice collaboratively. we want to call the readers’ attention to the importance of creating learning spaces for teachers where they try to make sense of theory and practice in order to gain conceptual clarity and eventually develop better informed practices. in our case, clarity has not only helped us become more aware of our pedagogical practices, but also more aware of ourselves—our own beliefs, values, and prejudices, as well as contradictions in our attitudes and actions. from our experience in the study group we derived some conditions that we find necessary in making sense of theory—to understand, appropriate, and/or interrogate theory individually and working collaboratively with peers.8 • improving our reading habits. the different strategies we used to get a better understanding of what the authors tried to convey in the texts (preparing reading reports, answering reading comprehension questions, preparing discussion questions, and constructing mind maps), not only facilitated our reading but at the same time allowed us to confront our different understandings, assess our own and others’ reading quality and, ultimately, to take reading as a very rigorous task. • recognizing that understanding theory may take some time. it was important for us to be self-critical and recognize that it was possible 8 these conditions may apply to similar spaces in a teacher education program or in a teacher development program. these are not precisely derived from the narratives presented here, but from our overall experience in the study group. not to understand theory right away; that it is not an easy, linear process. not being able to understand, however, often created feelings of frustration and confusion. • creating a positive learning environment. in situations like the one described above, an environment of trust is essential to learning collaboratively, because it may decrease the effects of the anxiety often produced by complex content, and abstract concepts or ideas. it may also boost group participants’ confidence in exposing their fears, ideas, biases, or lack of understanding. in our study group, striving for genuine dialogue and promoting democratic relationships contributed to a positive environment. • using our current and past experiences to give context to theory. at times the younger group participants underestimated the importance of sharing their experiences and therefore lost opportunities to arrive at a better understanding of theory. personal experience gains a new meaning when it is examined through the lenses of theory. building comprehension of theory and its relation to practice is a process that starts with the individual, but it is when we join others in this task that we confront our understanding with that of others; when we negotiate meaning and put our individual conceptualizations to the test. but learning collaboratively with colleagues is not a process devoid of tensions; based on their personal characteristics, educational attainment levels, teaching experience, and so forth, participants in a study group position themselves or are positioned by others generating power dynamics that influence learning. for this reason, teachers should acknowledge how these dynamics affect them to increase their opportunities for personal and professional growth. universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras184 echeverri sucerquia & pérez restrepo references anderson, g. l., & saavedra, e. (1995). “insider” narratives of transformational learning: implications for educational reform. anthropology & education quarterly, 26(2), 228-235. bartolomé, l. (2004). critical pedagogy and teacher education: radicalizing prospective teachers. teacher education quarterly, 31(1), 97-122. cárdenas, r. (2009). tendencias globales y locales en la formación de docentes de lenguas extranjeras [global and local tendencies in foreign language teachers’ formation]. íkala, revista de lenguaje y cultura, 14(22), 71-106. crookes, g. (2009). values, philosophies, and beliefs in tesol: making a statement. cambridge, uk: cambridge university press. gonzález, a. (2007). professional development of efl teachers in colombia: between colonial and local practices. íkala, revista de lenguaje y cultura, 12(18), 309-332. johnson, k. e. (1996). the role of theory in l2 teacher education. tesol quarterly, 30(4), pp. 765-771. johnson, k. e., & golombek, p. (2003). “seeing” teacher learning. tesol quarterly, 37(4), 729-737. kumaravadivelu, b. (2001). toward a postmethod pedagogy. tesol quarterly, 35(4), 537-560. leistyna, p., lavandez, m., & nelson, t. g. (2004). critical pedagogy: revitalizing and democratizing teacher education. teacher education quarterly, 31(1), 3-15. luna, c., botelho, m. j., fontaine, d., french, k., iverson, k., & matos, n. (2004). making the road by walking and talking: critical literacy and/as professional development in a teacher inquiry group. teacher education quarterly, 31(1), 67-80. osborn, t. a. (2000). critical reflection and the foreign language classroom. westport, ct: bergin & garvey. pennycook, a. (1990). towards a critical applied linguistics for the 1990s. issues in applied linguistics, 1(1), 8-28. pennycook, a. (2004). critical moments in a tesol praxicum. in b. norton & k. toohey (eds.), critical pedagogies and language learning (pp. 327-346). cambridge, uk: cambridge university press. about the authors paula andrea echeverri sucerquia is an assistant teacher at the school of languages, universidad de antioquia (colombia). she holds a phd in education—curriculum and instruction. her teaching and research interests include critical pedagogy, teacher development, and efl curriculum. sebastián pérez restrepo is an undergraduate student pursuing his fifth year in the foreign language teaching program at universidad de antioquia (colombia). he teaches at an extension english program for teenagers at the same institution. his areas of interest include critical pedagogy and bi/multilingualism. 81profile vol. 17, no. 2, july-december 2015. issn 1657-0790 (printed) 2256-5760 (online). bogotá, colombia. pages 81-99 http://dx.doi.org/10.15446/profile.v17n2.43641 classroom management: a persistent challenge for pre-service foreign language teachers manejo del salón de clase: un reto persistente para docentes practicantes de lenguas extranjeras diego fernando macías*1 universidad surcolombiana, neiva, colombia jesús ariel sánchez**2 ee miller elementary, fayetteville, usa this qualitative descriptive study aimed to ascertain the extent to which classroom management constituted a problem among pre-service foreign language teachers in a teacher education program at a public university in colombia. the study also sought to identify classroom management challenges, the approaches to confronting them, and the alternatives for improving pre-service teachers’ classroom management skills. the results revealed that classroom management is a serious problem with challenges ranging from inadequate classroom conditions to explicit acts of misbehavior. establishing rules and reinforcing consequences for misbehavior were the main approaches to classroom management, although more contact with actual classrooms and learning from experienced others were alternatives for improving classroom management skills. key words: classroom management, foreign language, pre-service teachers, teacher education. este estudio cualitativo descriptivo buscó determinar en qué medida el manejo de clase constituye un problema para docentes practicantes de lenguas extranjeras en un programa de licenciatura en inglés en una universidad pública colombiana. el estudio buscó identificar los desafíos de manejo de clase, el enfoque para afrontarlos, y las alternativas para mejorarlos. los resultados revelaron que el manejo de clase es un problema serio que va desde condiciones inadecuadas del salón hasta actos explícitos de indisciplina. establecer reglas y consecuencias por indisciplina fueron el principal enfoque de manejo de clase mientras que mayor contacto con sitios de práctica y aprender de otros con experiencia fueron alternativas de mejoramiento. palabras clave: docentes practicantes, educación docente, lengua extranjera, manejo de clase. * e-mail: diego.macias@usco.edu.co ** e-mail: jesussanchez@ccs.k12.nc.us how to cite this article (apa, 6th ed.): macías, d. f., & sánchez, j. a. (2015). classroom management: a persistent challenge for preservice foreign language teachers. profile issues in teachers’ professional development, 17(2), 81-99. http://dx.doi.org/10.15446/profile. v17n2.43641. this article was received on may 23, 2014, and accepted on january 9, 2015. this is an open access article distributed under the terms of the creative commons license attribution-noncommercial-noderivatives 4.0 international license. consultation is possible at http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/. http://dx.doi.org/10.15446/profile.v17n2.43641 mailto:diego.macias%40usco.edu.co?subject= mailto:jesussanchez%40ccs.k12.nc.us?subject= http://dx.doi.org/10.15446/profile.v17n2.43641 http://dx.doi.org/10.15446/profile.v17n2.43641 http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/ universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras82 macías & sánchez introduction the student teaching practicum, which constitutes the first time many students in teacher education programs actually teach in real classrooms, is considered an “opportunity [for pre-service teachers] to apply theoretical knowledge and skills, previously gained in the [teacher education] classroom, to authentic educational settings” (williams, 2009, p. 68). however, this practicum generates various challenges that pre-service teachers will face. issues such as overcrowded classrooms, students at different levels of language proficiency (sariçoban, 2010), “classroom discipline, assessing students’ works, the organization of class work, relationships with parents, and insufficient and/or inadequate teaching materials” (veenman, 1984, p. 143) oten plague teachers when they first enter the teaching profession. soares (2007) claims that teacher educators overlook the issue of classroom management by putting forward theories and pedagogy that revolve around the concept of ideal learners. this leaves preservice teachers with a sense of hopelessness and with “little but their intuition to guide them” (soares, 2007, p. 43) in coping with disruptive situations and incidents in their classrooms. although “teacher education programs cannot hope to account for all the different types of settings and conditions beginning teachers will inevitably encounter” (farrell, 2006, p. 212), it is their responsibility to guide preservice teachers into discovering alternatives and implementing strategies to deal with issues inherent to the teaching profession, including classroom management. this guidance eases their transition from teacher preparation programs to real classroom settings and thus increases their likelihood of success. we administered a questionnaire and interviewed pre-service teachers, practicum supervisors, and cooperating teachers in an english teacher education program to determine if classroom management constituted a problem and to identify classroom management challenges, the approaches used to confront them, and the alternatives for improving classroom management skills. although this is not the first study to address the issue of classroom management in colombia or elsewhere, it served to diagnose the problem of classroom management in this teacher education program. review of the literature the teaching practicum the teaching practicum has been defined as “the major opportunity for the student teacher to acquire the practical skills and knowledge needed to function as an effective language teacher” (richards & crookes, 1988, p. 9). a practicum experience can be classified as direct or indirect. in a direct experience, student teachers adopt a supervised or unsupervised teaching position in a real classroom, whereas in indirect experiences, they watch someone else teach the class (cruickshank & armaline, 1986). the participants in this study were engaged in a direct supervised teaching experience. according to richards and crookes (1988): the practice teaching typically begins with observation of the cooperating teacher, with the student [teacher] gradually taking over responsibility for teaching part of a lesson, under the supervision of the cooperating teacher. supervision may take the form of occasional or regular visits by the supervisor, reports to the supervisor from the cooperating teacher or the student, peer feedback, or conferences with the supervisor. (p. 20) in relation to the support provided by schools and colleagues, farrell (2003) showed that “the transition from the teacher training institution to the secondary school classroom is characterized by a type of reality shock in which the ideals that were formed during teacher training are replaced by the reality of school 83profile vol. 17, no. 2, july-december 2015. issn 1657-0790 (printed) 2256-5760 (online). bogotá, colombia. pages 81-99 classroom management: a persistent challenge for pre-service foreign language teachers life” (p. 95). in learning to face this reality, pre-service teachers must face and address many types of issues and challenges including classroom management. classroom management: definition and causes classroom management has been defined as the “actions taken to create and maintain a learning environment conducive to successful instruction” (brophy, 1996, p. 5). it is also thought to consist of integrating four areas: “establishing and reinforcing rules and procedures, carr ying out disciplinar y actions, maintaining effective teacher and student relationships, and maintaining an appropriate mental set for management” (marzano, 2003, p. 88). it follows that classroom management should not be seen as synonymous with classroom discipline; it involves those other aspects mentioned above that are equally inherent to teaching. crookes (2003) similarly sees a well-managed classroom as a relatively orderly room in which “whatever superficial manifestations of disorder that may occur either do not prevent instruction and learning, or actually support them” (p. 144). what the above definitions of classroom management have in common is establishing an appropriate environment and therefore order in the classroom so that teaching and subsequently learning can take place. classroom management has been regarded as a serious challenge for many pre-service and even in-service teachers (balli, 2009; quintero corzo & ramírez contreras, 2011). the challenge stems from many possible issues involved in managing a classroom. brown (2007) affirms that classroom management involves decisions about what to do when: • you or your students digress and throw off the plan for the day. • an unexpected but pertinent question comes up. • some technicality prevents you from doing an activity. • a student is disruptive in class. • you are asked a question to which you do not know the answer. • there is not enough time at the end of a class to finish an activity that has already started. in regards to the impact of classroom management on the teaching practicum, stoughton (2007) revealed that classroom management was identified by pre-service teachers “as a subject about which there is a fairly wide disparity between what is taught in university classes and seminars and the theoretical construct upon which many behavioral plans are based” (p. 1026). equally important are the specific problems pre-ser vice teachers find during their practicum. these may include disruptive talking, persistent inaudible responses, sleeping in class, unwillingness to speak in the target language (wadden & mcgovern, 1991), “insolence to the teacher, in sulting or bullying other students, damaging school property, refusing to accept sanctions or punishment” (harmer, 2007, p. 126) and lack of interest in class (soares, 2007). even though classroom management is an area of interest and preoccupation for pre-service language teachers, it has not been extensively researched in colombia. chaves varón (2008), in looking at the strengths and weaknesses in a teaching practicum, found that student teachers were not being properly trained to manage a classroom, and insuasty and z ambrano castillo (2011) identified classroom management as one of the most commonly discussed issu e s du r i ng t he fe e db a ck s e ss i ons b e t we e n supervisors and pre-service teachers. castellanos (2002) found that factors such as the environment and teachers’ attitudes were among the causes of children’s aggressive behavior when playing competitive games in the english classroom. this study highlighted students’ self-esteem and teachers’ fair treatment in class as elements that might help universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras84 macías & sánchez teachers to maintain positive atmospheres in their classrooms. prada castañeda and zuleta garzón (2005) also identified some of the difficulties (e.g., giving instructions, introducing the topic, managing the classroom) that four primary school pre-service teachers had in their practicum and the strategies they used to deal with them (e.g., reflecting on their own experiences and knowledge, setting objectives for immediate action, and examining whether or not their actions had been successful). in a more recent study, quintero corzo and ramírez contreras (2011) sought to help teachertrainees overcome indiscipline in the english as a foreign language (efl) classroom. they found heterogeneous classes, lack of academic interest, affective factors, parental neglect, and education policies as reasons for indiscipline in efl classes. some of the strategies participants claimed to be effective in coping with discipline problems were: • making instructions clear and giving them before grouping students. • keeping learners busy, always giving them something to do within the allotted time. • managing time wisely. • preparing and including attractive materials. • stating rules for class procedures and activities, emphasizing the consequences for breaking the rules. • giving the students responsibilities. • changing activities frequently. • monitoring students by walking around the classroom. • respecting differences among learners, considering their backgrounds and learning paces and styles. (quintero corzo & ramírez contreras, 2011, p. 68) these studies have helped to consolidate a rather scarce but growing body of research in the area of classroom management in english language teaching in colombia. this phenomenon has become a prominent challenge for many pre-service teachers who are about to enter the teaching profession. these teachers constantly struggle to implement strategies to reduce the negative impact of poor classroom management in their practicum. classroom management models and approaches a number of approaches have been proposed to help teachers address classroom management in their lessons. wolfgang and glickman (1986) talked about three categories for problem solving in classroom practice: relationship/listening, rules/rewards, and confronting/contracting. the first stresses the need for a facilitating environment in which the teacher supports students’ inner struggles to solve problems in class. the second focuses on the teacher’s taking control of the environment, and rewards, rules, and punishment are used to ensure students’ appropriate learning behavior. the third emphasizes the teacher’s constant interaction with the students, both working together to arrive at joint solutions to problems of misbehavior; students are encouraged “to take responsibility for their actions but need the active involvement of a kind but firm teacher” (wolfgang & glickman, 1986, p. 19). other models for classroom management include the assertive discipline model (canter & canter, 1976), which suggests that at the beginning of the year, teachers must establish a discipline plan that includes rules and procedures and consistently apply consequences for misbehavior, and the withitness and overlapping model (kounin, 1970), which focuses on teachers constantly scanning the whole classroom to assess if students are paying attention or doing what they are supposed to, also known as “eyes in the back of his head” (kounin, 1970, p. 81). this model also highlights overlapping, or what the teacher does when he has two or more matters to address at the same time. another model is the choice theory model (glasser, 1990), which sees teachers as leaders and attempts to rid them of the thought that if students 85profile vol. 17, no. 2, july-december 2015. issn 1657-0790 (printed) 2256-5760 (online). bogotá, colombia. pages 81-99 classroom management: a persistent challenge for pre-service foreign language teachers are not punished, they do not learn. teachers are urged to help students make good decisions and to remind them that they are capable of performing and behaving well in class. this model also encourages teachers to conduct class meetings whenever they deem it necessar y so that students can evaluate themselves and design plans for improvement. weber (as cited in pellegrino, 2010) similarly talks ab out three authority typ es: traditional, which involves students’ following the teacher’s management based on cultural learned behaviors; legal/rational, through which the teacher establishes his authority ater creating and reinforcing a set of values and rules whereby “obedience is not owed to the individual, but rather the impersonal order instead”; and charismatic authority, which “relies on personal devotion to the figure that possesses the qualities exalted by the followers” (weber as cited in pellegrino, 2010, p. 64). such models and approaches helped us to characterize the issue of classroom management in the present study and to answer the research question related to how pre-service teachers currently deal with classroom management issues in the practicum. although it is not our goal here to fully advocate a particular approach to managing the classroom, we are more inclined to consider views such as wolfgang and glickman’s (1986) confronting-contracting perspective, glasser’s (1990) choice theory model, and weber’s legal/rational authority based on rational values and established rules. nonetheless, we must highlight that no classroom management style or approach should be fully adopted or constructed without taking into serious consideration the characteristics of the teaching setting. the present study may help teachers to determine which approach or model best fits the needs of their particular contexts. method this study followed a qualitative descriptive orientation in that it involved interacting with people in their social contexts and talking with them about their perceptions (glesne, 2011) regarding classroom management. accordingly, the study considered participants’ views initially gathered through a questionnaire and then further explored them via semi-structured interviews. the study was conducted in the context of an undergraduate efl teacher education program at a public university in colombia. students enrolled in this program had to take 147 credits to be certified as efl teachers. the program curriculum was organized into three large formation fields: discipline specific, teacher professional identity, and socio-cultural identity & development (trans.). the first of these sought to help students develop their communicative competence in english, and the third aimed at developing students’ sociohumanistic competencies. however, it was the second field—teacher professional identity—that focused directly on the areas of pedagogy and didactics. these areas involved courses such as general pedagogy, methods, and the teaching practicum. within the field of teacher professional identity, students had to complete two practicum periods, which were meant to give them the possibility of gaining experience by teaching english for one academic semester at a primary school and another one at a secondary school, both usually located in the same city where the teacher education program was offered. as stated in the course objectives of the teaching practicum syllabus, this teaching experience “gets pre-service teachers involved with aspects such as lesson planning, teaching skills, students’ assessment, extra-curricular activities, use of resources, and reflection and self-evaluation” (universidad surcolombiana, 2004, p. 2, [trans.]). universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras86 macías & sánchez pre-service teachers are placed in a school in mutual agreement with the practicum coordinator. cooperating teachers are then chosen according to the courses available at each school and whether or not they accept to work with a pre-ser vice teacher throughout the semester. finally, practicum s up e r v i s or s are app oi nt e d by t h e pr a c t i c u m coordinator based on their availability and workload regulations established by the university. typically, practicum supervisors must observe pre-service teachers and meet with them at the university to give them feedback on lesson plans and observations at least once a week. the questions that guided this study were as follows: • to what extent is classroom management perceived as a problem for pre-service teachers in their practicum? • what classroom management challenges do pre-service teachers typically encounter in their practicum? • what characterizes the approach pre-service teachers use to deal with classroom management issues in their practicum? • what are participants’ views of possible alternatives for improving pre-service teachers’ classroom management skills throughout their efl teacher education program curriculum? participants the study involved the participation of 34 preservice teachers, 10 practicum supervisors, and 17 cooperating teachers in the efl teacher education program. there were 20 female and 14 male preservice teachers. seventeen were in public primary schools and 17 in public secondary schools. similarly, 18 of the 34 pre-service teachers were in their first practicum period, with the remaining 16 in their second period, which means that the latter group had one semester of accumulated teaching experience as pre-service teachers. cooperating teachers (13 female, 4 male) and practicum supervisors (6 female, 4 male) were selected based on their extensive experience hosting and supervising pre-service teachers, 6-7 years for the former and 10 years average for the latter both in primary and secondary schools. participants were initially approached in person as a group in one of the practicum meetings at which they accepted participation in the study of their own free will by signing a consent letter. following the ethical procedures, they were then asked to respond to an initial online questionnaire (appendix a). aterward, a smaller sample of 10 pre-service teachers, six practicum super visors, and six cooperating teachers from among those who had agreed to be part of the study was invited for follow-up semi-structured interviews (appendix b). each interview was arranged in consultation with those participants who had stated in the questionnaire that classroom management constituted a problem in the practicum and who had agreed to take part in a follow-up interview. codes1 were used throughout the study to guarantee the principles of anonymity and confidentiality. data collection and analysis the use of these methods and types of participants contributed to validating the data and achieving triangulation. we piloted the questionnaire with colleagues and some former students of the same teacher education program. the purpose of the questionnaire was to collect participants’ demographic information and to gain their initial insights on the research questions. the follow-up semi-structured interview sought to obtain a more in-depth view of the answers provided in the questionnaire and to elicit potential stories or additional insights regarding classroom management. 1 pt1 = pre-service teacher 1, ct1 = cooperating teacher 1, ps1 = practicum supervisor 1. 87profile vol. 17, no. 2, july-december 2015. issn 1657-0790 (printed) 2256-5760 (online). bogotá, colombia. pages 81-99 classroom management: a persistent challenge for pre-service foreign language teachers we used grounded theory as the approach to analyze the data. corbin and strauss (1990) observe that this technique enables researchers to conceptualize the social patterns and structures of the information through a constant process of comparison. grounded theory is a systematic process that involves three main stages as follows: open coding involves using colors to code the different patterns that emerge as a result of comparing the data. in this study, these codes were directly connected to the research questions. after a rigorous process of comparison, we named every phenomenon and copied and pasted all of the related statements in a separate document to define the initial preliminary categories. axial coding occurs within one category, making connections between subgroups of that category and creating connections between one subcategory and another. here, we found relationships between the subcategories, and we then designed a chart (table 1) containing four main categories and the associated subcategories. these categories were broken down into specific issues that helped explain the general findings of the study. this chart was permanently improved as more data emerged and as a result of the constant process of comparison. selective coding similarly involves validating relationships and refining and developing the final categories (corbin & strauss, 1990). categories are integrated, and a grounded theory emerges. in this final stage, we were able to integrate all categories into the final four broad categories, which helped us to present the findings in a more orderly fashion. table 1. final categories and subcategories final categories subcategories preliminary categories classroom management affects teaching regardless of subject or experience classroom management is an inherent part of the teaching profession • classroom management is a challenge for teachers of any subject, not just language teachers • classroom management affects both pre-service and in-service teachers regardless of their experience classroom management influences time for instruction • time for instruction is wasted when the teacher is solving classroom management issues challenges and factors that affect classroom management the classroom environment in both primary and secondary settings • overcrowded classrooms and seating arrangements • excessive heat and noise • lack of or insufficient resources pre-service teachers’ inappropriate self-perceptions during the practicum • it is hard for pre-service teachers in high schools to abandon their role as college students and assume a teacher’s role students’ attitudes and language levels at both primary and secondary schools • insufficient levels of language competence evidenced in both settings • unwillingness to participate in class, especially in secondary schools • lack of attention and motivation in class equally present in both types of settings universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras88 macías & sánchez final categories subcategories preliminary categories students’ explicit acts of misbehavior in both settings • disruptive talking • failure to do in-class work or homework • use of cellphones or other devices, mainly in secondary school settings • yelling at each other • physical aggression • insulting or bullying other students • showing disrespect to the teacher pre-service teachers’ approaches to managing the classroom focus on maintaining control • establish rules and consequences from the beginning • talk louder to the class to regain attention • remind students of who is in charge • intimidate students with negative remarks or low grades • assign students extra work to keep them busy • get into verbal confrontation with students, most likely in high school settings • threaten to get parents involved focus on achieving students’ involvement and positive dispositions • build rapport with the class • raise awareness among students about their behavior in class • motivate students through feedback and dynamic activities • get students involved in the lessons alternatives for improving classroom management contact with real teaching settings • a course on classroom management with a practical component in current settings • more observation tasks in real classrooms prior to the practicum • become more familiar with classroom management policies in authentic settings learning from others • seminars by experienced teachers or successful pre-service teachers • raise awareness of the importance of attitudes such as being friendly and kind with the students in the practicum • promote students’ successful teaching practices during their practicum 89profile vol. 17, no. 2, july-december 2015. issn 1657-0790 (printed) 2256-5760 (online). bogotá, colombia. pages 81-99 classroom management: a persistent challenge for pre-service foreign language teachers findings the following categories illustrate the main findings of the study: classroom management affects teaching regardless of subject or experience some of the participants, particularly cooperating teachers in high schools, claimed that the classroom management issues pre-service teachers encountered in the practicum were inevitably part of the teaching profession and not exclusive to language teaching. they were aware that it was something pre-service teachers had to confront and learn along the way regardless of the subject they had to teach. for example, ct3 made the following claim: now i realize that many student teachers have to suffer because of the indiscipline of the students, but it is not only with efl student teachers, it is with all the teachers, with the math teacher, the p.e. teacher, the religion teacher, with all of them… students misbehave. further evidence of classroom management being a problem was observed when pre-service teachers in secondary school claimed that classroom management interfered with instructional time. they stated that they oten had to stop the lesson to solve all kinds of situations in class: all the time one spends managing the discipline…organizing things…the class does not last one hour but forty minutes and what can one do in forty minutes?...time flies and one can do nothing. (pt4) similarly, pt18, while doing his practicum at a high school, felt that it was difficult to use the teaching methods and strategies he had been taught in the teacher education program because he had to devote so much time to organizing the students before he could start the lesson: at times, all that [we learned in the teacher education program] about the communicative methodology…is complicated to manage…because one has to concentrate on getting the students to settle down, to be seated, to listen to the instructions, and then the last ten minutes is the time we have for class. this can b e conne c te d to far rel l’s (2003) observation that the ideals that pre-service teachers receive during their preparation programs are replaced by the hard reality of school life. this may have led participants to perceive mismatches between what they had learned in their teacher preparation and what they encountered in real school classrooms. challenges and factors that affect classroom management managing the classroom during the practicum was initially reported as a serious problem on the online questionnaire by participants in both primary (62%) and secondary (47%) school settings, and the follow-up interviews provided more robust evidence of the same tendency. figure 1 shows a condensed view of the problems identified by participants in both settings. in regards to specific classroom management challenges that pre-service teachers encountered in their practicum, many such challenges had to do with external, nonacademic factors that influenced students’ behavior or did not contribute to an adequate learning atmosphere in the context of primary and secondary schools. one such factor was the high temperatures in class because the weather in the city was usually very hot and the classrooms were not equipped with air conditioning or ceiling fans. noise from outside was another factor that was usually caused by different sources (people on the street, students in other classrooms, cultural and social activities inside the school, etc.). in addition, other factors included overcrowded classrooms, universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras90 macías & sánchez inconvenient seating arrangements, and lack of or insufficient resources. the comments below illustrate some of those problems: these are relatively large groups of 40 students with whom one has to deal, with many problems such as noise, indiscipline, the changing moods of students. (pt6) sometimes the classroom was hot; there were ceiling fans but some of them just did not work. there was no air conditioning… and the room was large and there were windows, but anyways the heat was always felt…students said that it was very hot. (pt12) another factor that made classroom management difficult, especially for pre-service teachers at high schools, was that they could not see themselves as teachers in the practicum: “at the beginning one does not see oneself as a teacher but as a college student that is carrying out an activity” (pt2). they felt that this had serious implications because the high school students did not see them as their teachers either, and they were more inclined to challenge their authority and be disrespectful toward them. therefore, they felt they needed to be firm and assertive so that their students would take them more seriously. pt4 made the following remark: i had a lot of problems to gain the respect i deserved, to be seen as a teacher…because they addressed me as “viejo” (old man), or they talked to me as if i were one of them. then gaining their respect has been really difficult, as well as getting them to follow the instructions i give them. this may inevitably lead pre-service teachers to feel uncommitted and discouraged from doing the job or developing a passion for the teaching profession. as claimed by pellegrino (2010), “novice teachers, who are viewed by most students as temporary and not supreme authority in the classroom, have a more difficult time establishing traditional authority in the classroom” (p. 3). some other issues were related to students’ language levels and attitudes toward the class. these issues included students who had difficulties understanding or expressing their ideas in english, unwillingness to participate, and lack of attention and motivation in class. this lack of interest and motivation, according to practicum super visors figure 1. participants’ perceptions of problems during the practicum 0 5 10 15 20 knowledge and use of the target language having good relationships with the school giving feedback implementation of standards for competencies in lesson planning integrating language skills assessing students' learning process re�ection and journal keeping use and availability of materials and resources knowledge of learners and the learning process promoting autonomous learning classroom management and environment other(s) 91profile vol. 17, no. 2, july-december 2015. issn 1657-0790 (printed) 2256-5760 (online). bogotá, colombia. pages 81-99 classroom management: a persistent challenge for pre-service foreign language teachers at pr imar y and hig h s cho ols, was s omet imes accompanied by feelings of boredom and frustration, which then led to students being disruptive and caused other classroom management issues. to further illustrate the issue of lack of interest and attention in class, pt10 commented on an incident he had with one of his students. the pre-service teacher contacted the student’s parents because the child was not showing any progress or interest in class. the child’s mother then came to the school and said that her son was having conflicts with another boy who was bothering him. the pre-service teacher said that he was not aware of that incident and that he was still concerned about the child’s lack of progress in class. in the end, the child’s mother blamed the pre-service teacher for not paying enough attention to what was going on in class. this incident equally served to illustrate the relationships with parents, noted by veenman (1984), as another factor that pre-service teachers have to face during the practicum. linked to the previous factors, there were other issues ranging from minor acts of misconduct (e.g., disruptive talking, tardiness, failure to do homework) to major acts of misbehavior such as yelling at each other, physical aggression, and insulting or bullying other students. for instance, ct5 told us about an episode a pre-service teacher at a secondary school had in one of his colleague’s lessons: one day she [the pre-service teacher] had a group of students who got into a fight in class and then as the incident was getting out of control, she requested the cooperating teacher’s assistance. however, there was such chaos that the academic coordinator had to go to the classroom to try to settle everyone down. soon ater, a police officer was called in, ater a few moments…in the middle of the chaos…the students got hold of the police officer’s gun. the officer noticed the gun was missing when he was outside the classroom. the gun was immediately recovered from the top of a desk. later the students stated that they had taken the gun just for fun. this may have been an isolated incident, but it certainly had a huge impact on the pre-service teacher in that it let her experience the complex reality of classrooms, especially in terms of the potential dangers of situations like this one. when the incident occurred, the pre-service teacher reported that she was shocked but also somewhat relieved because she had seen how the cooperating teacher and the academic coordinator had also not been able to manage the situation. as a former practicum supervisor, one of the researchers had pre-service teachers come to the feedback sessions with great discomfort and frustration because of the extreme situations they faced at their practicum sites. pre-service teachers’ approaches to managing the classroom regarding the approaches that pre-service teachers used to manage their classrooms, responses varied depending on the nature of the problem or situation. however, focusing on maintaining control appeared to be the most predominant approach among pre-service teachers across school settings. most of the participants, including cooperating teachers and supervisors, claimed that pre-service teachers made great efforts to control students’ behavior in class by establishing and reinforcing strict rules from the beginning and reminding students of the harsh consequences if they did not follow the rules. this approach typically involved talking louder to the students to regain their attention, writing notes in their notebooks so that their parents could see them, reminding students of who was in charge, intimidating students with negative remarks or low grades, assigning extra work in class just to keep them busy, and at times getting into verbal confrontations with students. in this respect, pt26 affirmed that students’ lack of discipline was very common in class and so, at times, he had to raise his voice, talk louder to the students, and be tough with universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras92 macías & sánchez them so that they would pay attention. pt1 made use of similar strategies: sometimes i regain their attention by talking loudly and angrily. i change their seats. sometimes i see myself confronting them, and then i bring the students’ records folder [with the intention of writing a negative remark]. the strategies used by these pre-service teachers tended to reflect an authoritarian approach to managing the class, which has common characteristics with the assertive discipline model (canter & canter, 1976) and the traditional authority type (weber as cited in pellegrino, 2010). another tendency, mainly among pre-service teachers at secondary schools, was to seek the assistance of the cooperating teacher or to refer students directly to the discipline coordinator or principal whenever they misbehaved in class. this was perceived by a small number of practicum supervisors as strong dependence on others and may have contributed to reaffirming the view that pre-service teachers did not see themselves as teachers who were capable of managing situations on their own. to a much lesser extent, three of the pre-service teachers at primary schools and one at a secondary school favored a more friendly approach to managing the classroom. they privileged actions such as building rapport, raising awareness among students about their behavior in class, motivating students through positive feedback and dynamic activities, and involving students in the lessons. some of these actions can be associated with the categories of relationship-listening and confronting-contracting (wolfgang & glickman, 1986) to problem solving characterized by the teacher’s being supportive while working collaboratively with the students to build a positive learning environment. in this respect, pt21 made the following remark: i talked to the student alone and then tried to make him reflect on what happened in class. i asked him what makes him feel uncomfortable, why he gets into so much disruptive talking, why he misbehaves in class. one of the cooperating teachers similarly added: student teachers try to bring them many games because this is what cooperating teachers do not do; they do not play with the students…then some student teachers try to be more active, more dynamic (ct14) these pre-service teachers used an approach based on gaining students’ confidence and respect. this way of managing conflicts and disruptive actions may have a strong connection with the personality type of each pre-ser vice teacher. based on our personal experience with pre-service teachers in the same teacher education program, some of them were usually calm and patient and therefore appeared to be more effective at managing the classroom. similarly, as was claimed by one of the practicum supervisors, these pre-service teachers may have adopted this style as a result of “having accumulated experience from their first practicum period mostly in high school” (ps2). additionally, two of them had acted as substitute english teachers for short periods of time at two private schools in the city. alternatives for improving classroom management in terms of alternatives that the efl teacher e du c at i on pro g r am c ou l d i mpl e me nt to help pre-s er vice te achers improve t heir classro om management skills, participants in both types of settings emphasized that the program should offer them more opportunities to be involved in authentic school settings. most pre-service teachers and some cooperating teachers claimed that this could be achieved through different strategies, such as a course on classroom management with both theoretical and practical components, more specific observation 93profile vol. 17, no. 2, july-december 2015. issn 1657-0790 (printed) 2256-5760 (online). bogotá, colombia. pages 81-99 classroom management: a persistent challenge for pre-service foreign language teachers tasks prior to the beginning of the practicum, more supervision and feedback during the practicum, and spending more time in current school contexts so that they could get acquainted with classroom management policies. specifically, pt22 commented: i think that we need a bit more reality. it is too much theory, and sometimes one gets to the classroom and one has forgotten everything. it would be something that prepares us better so that one gets there and feels ready, like i know what to do, i know what i can find there, i know what things may go well and what things may go wrong. it has to be something that brings us closer to the reality of the schools. pt26 similarly affirmed: the micro-teaching sessions of the methods courses should take place in the real context…in a classroom with 40 students and not just for one or two classes but for two months or a month…so that at the time of the practicum when we get a group of students to teach…we have had a previous warm-up to get to this. participants also highlighted the relevance of learning from experienced in-service or successful pre-service teachers, which could be in the form of seminars, debates, or talks. for instance, pt7, pt4, and ps9 felt that there should be workshops and talks with practicum supervisors and pre-service teachers where they could share their both positive and negative experiences in classroom management. these workshops, added ps9, may also serve to highlight pre-service teachers’ attitudes such as being friendly and kind with the students during the practicum and familiarize them with the school context, especially in terms of guidelines or regulations for effective classroom management. conclusions participants in this study indicated that classroom management is a serious problem for most pre-service teachers in their practicum across primar y and secondary school settings. similarly, the phenomenon of classroom management appears to be inherent to the teaching profession, and it affects instructional time. the classroom management challenges preservice teachers usually encounter, regardless of the school setting, range from inadequate conditions in the classroom environment, pre-service teachers’ seeing themselves as college students as opposed to teachers, and learners’ negative attitudes and low language levels to more explicit acts of misbehavior such as physical aggression, insulting or bullying other students, and showing disrespect to the teacher. it was also evidenced that pre-service teachers’ dominant approach to managing the classroom centered on maintaining control through establishing rules and reinforcing consequences for negative behavior; only a few focused on seeking student involvement and cultivating students’ positive dispositions toward the class. additionally, more and earlier contact with real teaching settings and opportunities to learn from other successful or more experienced others were identified as the main alternatives for improving classroom manage ment skills. participants equally suggested alternatives that include a course on classroom management, which has never been offered by this teacher education program; more observation tasks, which have been limited to two or three hours before the practicum starts; and promoting and socializing successful teaching practices with new pre-service teachers throughout the practicum. recommendations future c ur r ic u lum re visions and res e arch initiatives in this teacher education program should contribute to integrating the practical and theoretical input (yan & he, 2010) and to strengthening the existing school-university partnerships in preparing universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras94 macías & sánchez language teachers. such partnerships can help to reduce the gap between pre-ser vice teachers’ experiences as provided by teacher education programs and the real school settings where they have to conduct their practicum. similarly, these curriculum revisions should respond to participants’ suggestions such as learning from experienced others and more and earlier involvement with real school contexts. further analysis of the classroom management approaches participants appeared to favor in this study constitutes another avenue of inquiry. it would be interesting to generate opportunities for preservice teachers to characterize and reflect on their own approaches to managing the classroom and so encourage them to explore other approaches (e.g., glassner, 1990) by which the teacher becomes a leader manager as opposed to a boss manager or by which students can assume responsibility for their own behavior and take a more active role in building a more effective learning atmosphere. limitations of the study if we were to perform this study again, we would use classroom observation as another method to collect data because it would give us more explicit evidence of the problem and would help us validate the perspectives obtained through the questionnaires and the interviews. it would also be relevant to seek the involvement of school students so that their views as other key players in the practicum experience can either reaffirm or challenge those provided by pre-service teachers, practicum supervisors, and cooperating teachers. references balli, s. j. (2009). making a difference in the classroom: strategies that connect with students. lanham, md: rowman & littlefield education. brophy, j. (1996). teaching problem students. new york, ny: guilford. brown, h. d. (2007). teaching by principles: an interactive approach to language pedagogy. white plains, ny: pearson longman. canter, l., & canter, m. (1976). assertive discipline: a takecharge approach for today’s educators. seal beach, ca: canter & associates. castellanos, a. (2002). management of children’s aggressiveness when playing competitive games in the english class. profile issues in teachers’ professional development, 3(1), 72-77. chaves varón, o. (2008). formación pedagógica: la práctica docente en la licenciatura en lenguas modernas de la universidad del valle [teacher education: the practicum at the modern languages licenciatura of universidad del valle]. lenguaje, 36(1), 199-240. corbin, j. m., & strauss, a. (1990). basics of qualitative research: grounded theory procedures and techniques. newbury park, ca: sage. crookes, g. (2003). a practicum in tesol: professional development through teaching practice. new york, ny: cambridge university press. cruickshank, d. r., & armaline, w. d. (1986). field experiences in teacher education: considerations and recommendations. journal of teacher education, 37(3), 34-40. http://dx.doi.org/10.1177/002248718603700307. farrell, t. s. c. (2003). learning to teach english language during the first year: personal influences and challenges. teaching and teacher education, 19(1), 95-111. http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/s0742-051x(02)00088-4. farrell, t. s. c. (2006). the first year of language teaching: imposing order. system, 34(2), 211-221. http://dx.doi. org/10.1016/j.system.2005.12.001. fowler, j., & şarapli, o. (2010). classroom management: what elt students expect. procedia: social and behavioral sciences, 3, 94-97. glasser, w. (1990). the quality school: managing students without coercion. new york, ny: harper & row. 95profile vol. 17, no. 2, july-december 2015. issn 1657-0790 (printed) 2256-5760 (online). bogotá, colombia. pages 81-99 classroom management: a persistent challenge for pre-service foreign language teachers glesne, c. (2011). becoming qualitative researchers: an introduction. boston, ma: pearson education. harmer, j. (2007). the practice of english language teaching. oxford, uk: pearson education. insuasty, e. a., & zambrano castillo, l. c. (2011). caracterización de los procesos de retroalimentación en la práctica docente [characterizing the feedback processes in the teaching practicum]. entornos, 24, 73-85. kounin, j. s. (1970). discipline and group management in classrooms. new york, ny: holt, rinehart & winston. marzano, r. j. (2003). what works in schools: translating research into action. alexandria, va: association for supervision and curriculum development. pellegrino, a. m. (2010). pre-service teachers and classroom authority. american secondary education, 38(3), 62-78. prada castañeda, l., & zuleta garzón, x. (2005). tasting teaching flavors: a group of student teachers’ experiences in their practicum. profile issues in teachers’ professional development, 6(1), 157-170. quintero corzo, j., & ramírez contreras, o. (2011). understanding and facing discipline-related challenges in the english as a foreign language classroom at public schools. profile issues in teachers’ professional development, 13(2), 59-72. richards, j. c., & crookes, g. (1988). the practicum in tesol. tesol quarterly, 22(1), 9-27. http://dx.doi. org/10.2307/3587059. sariçoban, a. (2010). problems encountered by studentteachers during their practicum studies. procedia: social and behavioral sciences, 2(2), 707-711. soares, d. (2007). discipline problems in the efl class: is there a cure? profile issues in teachers’ professional development, 8(1), 41-58. stoughton, e. h. (2007). “how will i get them to behave?”: pre service teachers reflect on classroom management. teaching and teacher education, 23(7), 1024-1037. http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.tate.2006.05.001. universidad surcolombiana. (2004). microdiseño curricular de práctica docente [curricular micro-design for the teaching practice]. neiva, co: author. veenman, s. (1984). perceived problems of beginning teachers. review of educational research, 54(2), 143178. http://dx.doi.org/10.3102/00346543054002143. wadden, p., & mcgovern, s. (1991). the quandary of negative class participation: coming to terms with misbehavior in the language classroom. elt journal, 45(2), 119-127. http://dx.doi.org/10.1093/elt/45.2.119. williams, j. (2009). beyond the practicum experience. elt journal, 63(1), 68-77. http://dx.doi.org/10.1093/elt/ ccn012. wolfgang, c. h., & glickman, c. (1986). solving discipline problems: strategies for classroom teachers. newton, ma: allyn & bacon. yan, c., & he, c. (2010). transforming the existing model of teaching practicum: a study of chinese efl student teachers’ perceptions. journal of education for teaching, 36(1), 57-73. http://dx.doi. org/10.1080/02607470903462065. about the authors diego fernando macías works as an assistant professor of english at the english teacher education program at universidad surcolombiana. he is a fulbright scholar who is currently pursuing his phd in second language acquisition and teaching at the university of arizona, usa. his interests include language teacher education and learning technologies. jesús ariel sánchez is a teacher from ee miller elementary in north carolina, usa. he holds an ma in english language teaching from universidad de la sabana (colombia) and an in-service certificate in english language teaching from the university of cambridge, uk. his research interests include classroom management and photography as a language learning tool. universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras96 macías & sánchez appendix a: questionnaire note: the interview and questionnaire formats presented here were used with pre-service teachers. those for supervisors and cooperating teachers followed the same pattern but were worded accordingly. aim: to obtain participants’ views on the issue of classroom management in the practicum of an efl teacher education program. directions: this questionnaire contains a series of items regarding your practicum experience. please read and respond each question accordingly. open questions may be answered in english or spanish. 1. gender: male ___ female ___ 2. period of teaching practicum: 1st period _____ 2nd period _____ 3. current teaching practicum: primary education ___ secondary education ___ 4. select from the aspects below those you consider to represent great difficulties in your teaching practicum: ☐ lesson planning ☐ implementation of basic standards for competencies in efl ☐ knowledge and use of the target language ☐ integrating language skills ☐ knowledge of learners and the learning process ☐ classroom management and environment ☐ assessing students’ learning processes ☐ use and availability of materials and resources ☐ reflection and journal keeping ☐ giving feedback ☐ promoting autonomous learning ☐ having good relationships with the school community ☐ other(s)? please specify: _______________________________________________________________________________ _______________________________________________________________________________ _______________________________________________________________________________ 97profile vol. 17, no. 2, july-december 2015. issn 1657-0790 (printed) 2256-5760 (online). bogotá, colombia. pages 81-99 classroom management: a persistent challenge for pre-service foreign language teachers 5. which of the following do you perceive as problems in your practicum lessons? ☐ overcrowded classrooms ☐ students at different levels of language proficiency ☐ sitting arrangements ☐ noise ☐ heat ☐ lighting ☐ social and cultural activities ☐ insufficient and/or inadequate teaching materials ☐ time and length of the lesson ☐ students’ lack of interest and motivation in class ☐ disruptive talking ☐ inaudible responses ☐ sleeping in class ☐ tardiness and poor attendance ☐ failure to do in-class work ☐ failure to do homework ☐ cheating on tests ☐ unwillingness to speak in the target language ☐ insolence to the teacher ☐ insulting or bullying other students ☐ damaging school property ☐ refusing to accept sanctions or punishment ☐ use of cellphones or electronic devices ☐ other(s)? please specify: _______________________________________________________________________________ _______________________________________________________________________________ _______________________________________________________________________________ 6. what do you typically do when any of the situations or actions in question 5 above occurs in any of your classes? _______________________________________________________________________________ _______________________________________________________________________________ _______________________________________________________________________________ 7. how oten do you… or are you… in your practicum lessons? universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras98 macías & sánchez a lw a y s v e ry o ft e n s o m e ti m e s r a re ly n e v e r allow students to freely express their opinions. use embarrassment to correct students. friendly and respectful to students. show enthusiasm for the subject. establish clear rules from the beginning of the course. display a strict attitude towards classroom control. arrive on time for class. start class on time. end class early. spend time taking attendance. use group work in the classroom. allow students to eat or drink in class. strictly enforce attendance policies. remove students who are causing problems in the classroom. use eye contact as a classroom management method. use l1 in the classroom. allow students to enter class late. allow students to leave class to answer a phone call. monitor students’ class work by walking around their seats. vary activities in your practicum lessons. have to stop your lessons to address students’ misbehavior. encourage students to work on the assigned inor out-of class tasks. encourage students to self-evaluate their behavior. welcome students’ suggestions for managing your classroom. (adapted from fowler & şarapli, 2010) 8. what alternatives should the efl teacher education program offer student-teachers to help them improve their classroom management skills? _______________________________________________________________________________ _______________________________________________________________________________ _______________________________________________________________________________ 99profile vol. 17, no. 2, july-december 2015. issn 1657-0790 (printed) 2256-5760 (online). bogotá, colombia. pages 81-99 classroom management: a persistent challenge for pre-service foreign language teachers appendix b: interview guide 1. what have been the most difficult factors you have had to address in your teaching practicum? _______________________________________________________________________________ _______________________________________________________________________________ _______________________________________________________________________________ 2. in terms of classroom management, what would you say are the most common difficulties you usually confront in your practicum? _______________________________________________________________________________ _______________________________________________________________________________ _______________________________________________________________________________ 3. can you tell me about a time in your practicum when you had a problem with classroom management? what happened? what did you do? _______________________________________________________________________________ _______________________________________________________________________________ _______________________________________________________________________________ 4. what strategies do you use to handle the classroom management issues in your teaching practicum? _______________________________________________________________________________ _______________________________________________________________________________ _______________________________________________________________________________ 5. did the efl teacher education program curriculum provide you with enough orientation in strategies for managing problems related to classroom management before you started your practicum? _______________________________________________________________________________ _______________________________________________________________________________ _______________________________________________________________________________ 6. what strategies should the efl teacher education program implement to help pre-service teachers improve their classroom management skills? _______________________________________________________________________________ _______________________________________________________________________________ _______________________________________________________________________________ 7. is there any other comment or idea that you would like to add? _______________________________________________________________________________ _______________________________________________________________________________ _______________________________________________________________________________ 125profile vol. 15, no. 1, april 2013. issn 1657-0790 (printed) 2256-5760 (online). bogotá, colombia. pages 125-138 analyzing the effect of technology-based intervention in language laboratory to improve listening skills of first year engineering students el uso de la tecnología en el laboratorio de idiomas para el mejoramiento de las habilidades de escucha de estudiantes de ingeniería de primer año madhumathi pasupathi* vit university, india first year students pursuing engineering education face problems with their listening skills. most of the indian schools use a bilingual method for teaching subjects from primary school through high school. nonetheless, students entering university education develop anxiety in listening to classroom lectures in english. this article reports an exploratory study that aimed to find out whether the listening competences of students improved when technology was deployed in language laboratory. it also investigated the opinions of the students about using teacher-suggested websites for acquiring listening skills. the results of the study indicated that the use of technology in a language laboratory for training students in listening competences had reduced the anxiety of the students when listening to english. further, there was a significant improvement on the part of students in acquiring listening skills through technology-based intervention. key words: english as a second language, english for academic purposes, higher education, listening skills, technology based learning. muchos estudiantes de ingeniería de primer año en india tienen problemas con sus habilidades de escucha en inglés; experimentan ansiedad al momento de escuchar conferencias en inglés, pese a que provienen de colegios donde se sigue un modelo bilingüe para enseñar materias desde la primaria hasta la secundaria. con el objetivo de averiguar si las competencias de escucha de los estudiantes mejoran cuando se introduce la tecnología en el laboratorio de idiomas, se realizó un estudio exploratorio en el que se tuvieron en cuenta las opiniones de los estudiantes acerca del uso de sitios web sugeridos por el docente para adquirir habilidades de escucha. los resultados indican que el uso de la tecnología en el laboratorio de idiomas reduce la ansiedad de los estudiantes al momento de escuchar conferencias en inglés y que progresan significativamente en sus habilidades de escucha. palabras clave: aprendizaje basado en tecnología, educación superior, habilidades de escucha, inglés como segunda lengua, inglés para propósitos académicos. * e-mail: madhumathi.p@vit.ac.in this article was received on july 1, 2012, and accepted on october 7, 2012. universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras126 pasupathi introduction research on communication skills mostly fo cuses on intrapersonal skills such as speaking and writing. intelligible communication takes place through interpretive skills such as listening and reading. listening is a primary criterion for starting any communication. listening is not just hearing, but interpreting with concentration the ideas or words uttered by a speaker. therefore, teaching listening skills needs to become the foundation for imparting instruction of other communicative skills such as speaking, reading and writing. according to miller (2003), more than 40% of communication is carried out through listening, 35% of communication through speaking and the remaining 25% of communication through reading and writing. in the indian classrooms, most of the teachers practise the traditional method of instruction, in which, roughly more than 99% of communication activity involved is listening by the students. therefore, it is necessary to find out the students’ levels of listening proficiency in order to evaluate the students’ comprehension of the subjects taught in classrooms. depending on the results, the students’ inadequacy in listening skills could be offset by training them via using modern methods of teaching a language. technology in language laboratory the use of technological aids like computers has become a significant feature in english language teaching (elt) classrooms. teaching aids such as tape recorders, vcrs, and projectors were used in the classroom for effective teaching until some time ago. however, during the recent past, effective teaching strategies have shifted to internet based learning. usage of technology-enabled strategies is made possible through using computers. there is no doubt that using the internet for language teaching will occupy the central role in elt and learning for quite some time to come (coiro, 2003). the 21st century generation continues to grow up with technology and students of this generation use technology with ease. the use of technology has changed people’s abilities to access information including receive communication and has had a great impact on students’ learning abilities (anderson, 2000). there are many technological tools that could be used in classrooms to improve english as well as the technology skills of the students. wang (2005) argues that the use of technology in english classrooms, especially for english as foreign language (efl) students, has many advantages. students can improve communicative skills such as listening, reading, writing and speaking. it enables students to communicate worldwide through the internet, search for information online, use software to learn skills and evaluate them, publish their work and read technology texts. in addition, he points out that integrating technology in language classrooms changes the learning approach from a behavioural learning approach to a constructivist learning approach. research on the use of technology proves that listening can be improved through audiovisual aids. xiaoqiong and xianxing (2008) used technology to display films to motivate students to learn a foreign language. along with a dvd player, they also showed students a computer with attractive pictures and interesting information gathered from the internet about the movie being shown. results suggested that by watching and listening to engrossing materials, students were immensely motivated to learn english. xiaoqiong and xianxing (2008) further found out that this method greatly improved the listening comprehension of the students. they assert that by using traditional audio materials in efl classes, teachers can teach listening, but when visual materials accompany the audio, the students’ enthusiasm in improving their listening skills increase. computer mediated learning is the current trend in teaching methods. therefore, it is essential 127profile vol. 15, no. 1, april 2013. issn 1657-0790 (printed) 2256-5760 (online). bogotá, colombia. pages 125-138 analyzing the effect of technology-based intervention in language laboratory... for the student and facilitator to equip themselves with facilities that are capable of providing all of the technical tools required in the classroom. hsu (2010) emphasises that the use of technological tools inside the classroom is highly effective for the intended purpose of teaching, provided the computer used has good technical support, and peripherals like a microphone and an efficient loudspeaker system. he believes that by using a good computer, the user can imitate speaking by listening to the voices in a webbased system. therefore, it is necessary that in order to practice listening in a language laboratory, the computer must be equipped with good microphones, headphones, and speakers. research by chiu, liou and yeh (2007) on speaking skills utilizing computers identified that a computer-assisted language learning application, automatic speech recognition (ars), assisted students in meaningful speech interactions. the study found that the application of asr aided college freshmen, particularly non-english major students in improving their language skills. kung and chuo (2002) evaluated students’ perceptions of learning english using online esl/ efl resources and their attitudes towards using internet as a supplement to in-class instruction. the results showed that students appreciated the internetbased language learning process using teacher recommended esl websites. although much research has been done on the effectiveness and feasibility of using technology in language classrooms, there are some disadvantages like start-up expenses, copyright issues, and other potential inconveniences. using educational technology tools in esl/efl classrooms such as esl websites, web-based language learning, along with language learning packages from the internet, assist students in developing their language and communication skills. in other words, studies confirm that the substitution of an on-line learning environment may enhance language learning and development (kung & chuo, 2002; ware, 2004; yuan, 2003; hsu, 2010; wang, 2005; chiu et al., 2007; xiaoqiong & xianxing, 2008). purpose of the study c ont e mp or a r y s t u d i e s d e p i c t t h e u s e of technology-based learning as an effective method of teaching and learning (xiaoqiong & xianxing, 2008). after sufficient surveying of internet websites with free esl resources, three websites (www.learnto-speak-english-esl.com, www.esl-lab.com, www. americanrhetoric.com) were selected for training students in listening. the aim of selecting these websites was to motivate students to shed themselves of their anxiety in english language listening. these selected websites each differed in their resource com position, including conversation, songs or public speeches for learning listening skills. this exploratory study aims to examine whether the use of technology in a language laborator y helped participants to reduce their anxiety and improve their listening comprehension. it also aims to investigate participants’ opinions about the selected esl websites to improve their listening comprehension. participants and context the participants in this study were 65 students attending an english language laboratory listening course at a private university in india. the students were completing their first year in the bachelor’s degree program in engineering. out of 65 students, 19 were female and 44 were male. the students on average belong to the low intermediate level of listening proficiency. according to the american council on teaching of foreign languages (actfl) proficiency standards (2012), students entering undergraduate education in the esl context were expected to have a high intermediate level of listening proficiency. recognising the need for improving its standard of students’ listening skills, the university provides a compulsory language laboratory course universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras128 pasupathi for enhancing the listening skills of first year students. this study was implemented within the students’ listening skills practical laboratory course. prior to the study, demographic details of the students were collected. all of the students had at least ten years of formal learning in the english language. however, there was a range of difference in language learning techniques in their school classrooms. of the 65 students, nine students were from regional (local language) medium schools and 56 students were from english medium schools. with regard to advisory boards, 35 students were from the central board of secondary education, 11 students from the indian council of secondary education board of studies and 19 students from the tamil nadu state board. moreover, 23 students had secured below 60% in english and the remaining 42 students secured above 60% in english on their higher secondary examinations. it was identified that 25% of the schools used languages other than english to teach all subjects and 35% of the schools taught all subjects using a bilingual method. that is, they taught the subject using both the local language and english. the remaining 40% of the schools used only english for teaching all their subjects. the data collected showed that students entering higher education with various school backgrounds had developed anxiety in attending classes at the undergraduate level (boud, cohen, & sampson, 2001). in addition, students had certain difficulties in listening to teachers’ lectures in english because the data collected revealed most of the students were not accustomed to listening to lectures in english at the school level. at the same time, students had the desire to improve their listening skills. more than three quarters (75.4%) of the students were interested in improving their listening skills. therefore, it was necessary to identify the specific skills required for mastering the intermediate level of listening so that the students could subsequently be trained in the language laboratory. research problem students entering engineering higher education face problems listening in english. the national assessment of educational progress (2009) had explained that little progress was made in reducing the gap between bilingual and english learning students. but english was the medium of instruction and the student language composition of the class was multilingual; hence, a bilingual method of teaching was not possible. this situation was due not only to the fact that students used english study tools and texts, but also due to the fact that students were from different indian states with different local languages. furthermore, students from different educational backgrounds faced problems when listening to lectures in english. it was identified through the questionnaire (refer to appendix a) that students had anxiety when listening in english as many of the students did not have enough exposure to listening in english in secondary schools. therefore, it was found that the students had to be trained in the english language laboratory to improve their listening skills and additionally reduce their anxiety when listening to lectures in english. procedure as enumerated in actfl (2012), research on the teaching and learning of listening skills should focus on specific skills such as understanding gist, background knowledge, all types of conversations, native speakers’ languages, face-to-face speech of a standard spoken language, idiomatic expressions and slang, tone, style, main ideas, specific information contemplating a wide variety of topics, reading between lines and predicting vocabulary meaning. these are the specific listening skills required of engineering students for mastering the intermediate level and entering the advanced level of skills in listening. three online websites were utilized to resolve problems encountered in listening. the plan of 129profile vol. 15, no. 1, april 2013. issn 1657-0790 (printed) 2256-5760 (online). bogotá, colombia. pages 125-138 analyzing the effect of technology-based intervention in language laboratory... utilising these websites for training students in listening skills was well explained to students, so that the accuracy of language learning would be improved (foster & skehan, 1996; mehnert, 1998). randall’s esl cyber listening lab (www.esl-lab.com) was selected with the idea of training in the specific intermediate skills such as understanding gist, using background knowledge, interpreting conversations, understanding native speakers’ languages, and identifying specific information and main ideas. the websites had a number of conversations that were arranged at three levels of learning–easy, medium and difficult. initially students were trained in the easy levels for two weeks as a warm up and to ensure a pleasant listening experience. then the conversations of medium level and difficult level were randomly played for students to practise listening. each audio clip had a set of questions related to the conversation, allowing the students to test their listening skills themselves. teacher frank’s website (http://www.learn-tospeak-english-esl.com) was selected to train the students in specific listening skills such as comprehending idiomatic expressions and slang, tone and style, identifying native sounds and the speaker’s pers-pective. teacher frank had devised songs for learning english with an excellent scope of exposure to authentic native speakers’ languages, tone and style. moreover, songs were different from conversations and added variety to the exercises. these songs were played in every class to enhance the activities in the language laboratory. every song had lessons for testing purposes, so students we were tested on their listening comprehension while listening to the songs. the third website selected was approximately similar to traditional classroom lectures. the american rhetoric website (www.americanrhetoric.com) was chosen with the purpose of motivating students through the use of extra audiovisual aids and to train students in specific listening skills such as understanding standard face-to-face speech, contemplating a wide variety of topics, reading between lines, predicting vocabulary meaning and understanding every word uttered in speech. this website had famous speeches spoken by world famous personalities at various times such as john f. kennedy: inaugural address, fdr: pearl harbour address, mary fisher: 1992 republican national convention address. moreover, students were taught to identify the structure of the speech in terms of introduction, context and conclusion. in addition, it was assumed that by listening to these speeches students would be motivated to attain high ethical values in life. since this website dealt with advanced skills in learning listening, it was introduced to the students only after four weeks of training using the other two websites. the students attending the language class were trained in using these online esl resources in every language laboratory class. students had two hour slots of lab class during which they were trained in these websites one after the other for five months. the first lab class hour was allocated for training using conversation and songs and the last hour for listening to public speeches. sample tests were also conducted to get them confident in the activity they were engaging in. at the end of the course, the students were asked to take a listening test weighted with 50 marks and the marks obtained were analysed to identify the improvement in listening skills. the students were given a questionnaire to fill in at the end of the language laboratory class. this two part questionnaire concentrated on self-assessment of listening skills and ability (see appendix a) and students’ attitudes towards using the three websites (see appendix b). it also aimed to find out which, if any, problems were encountered by students during this process. limitations of the study students were trained only during weekly lab hours. students were not trained in lessons nor were universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras130 pasupathi they given any assignments outside the class hours. it was left up to the students to study or make any outside preparation. questions were framed in the questionnaire to find out how many students were interested in using the three websites outside the class hours. inconvenience caused due to internet connection problems was solved by using other language laboratory facilities at the university. to overcome technical problems like poor internet connectivity and connection failure, materials were downloaded from the websites and used in class through lcd projection and speakers. the use of unknown words in the listening materials was one difficulty faced by students. the cambridge advanced dictionary was installed into the language laboratory system and students were trained on how to search for definitions of unknown words. in this study, students were trained in listening to general resource material available on the three websites; we did not focus on any websites which had engineering-related materials. it was expected that the use of general resources would reduce student anxiety and enhance their listening skills, plus give them the tools to further learn engineering-related materials on their own. therefore, the websites with general concepts in different modes such as conversation, songs and public speeches were identified. the study was limited to the selected few websites, although a number of websites were available. the three websites and their materials were incorporated sufficiently within the structure of the course. however, care was exercised in the selection of these websites. results the central idea of using these websites was to relieve students of their anxieties when listening to lectures in english. after training, it was found that students changed their opinion of listening to conversations and lectures in english after the laboratory training. in figure 1, the dark shade represents pre-training results and the light shade represents post-training results. figure 1. pre and post training results on anxiety 6 23 64 11 2 26 44 24 0 10 20 30 40 50 60 70 strongly disagree disagree agree strongly agree there was significant change in students’ attitudes towards listening in english after the training. almost two-thirds of the participants (64%) agreed that usage of technology was user friendly and helped them to get rid of their anxiety. in comparison to pretraining, 40% of the students were influenced by and reduced their anxiety by using the three websites. moreover, 20% of the students were very confident in listening to their classroom lecture in english after undergoing this course. results of the self-assessment test revealed that the students were confident in using the lower intermediate skills such as understanding gist, background information, main ideas, and specific information. in figure 2, the dark shade represents the initial self assessment and the light shade represents final self-assessment. figure 2. results of initial and final self-assessment on specific skills 65 78 58 65 70 80 48 68 0 20 40 60 80 100 gist background information main idea speci�c information 131profile vol. 15, no. 1, april 2013. issn 1657-0790 (printed) 2256-5760 (online). bogotá, colombia. pages 125-138 analyzing the effect of technology-based intervention in language laboratory... after training, there was nearly a 15% improvement on the part of the students in using these skills. students were very confident in understanding the main idea of a conversation and understanding the gist of the spoken context. initially, students found it difficult to concentrate, had problems in understanding the exercises and would resort to guessing based on their background knowledge. during training, students began to understand that concentration on the subject of conversation was more important than using background knowledge in the subject. after training, nearly 75% of the students knew that using background information to understand some parts of the conversation would distract them from the main idea of the conversation. in contrast, recollecting specific information was carried out with less confidence by 40% of the students. overall, students performed well in acquiring the intermediate skills by using technology. by comparing the final self-assessment survey with the results of the test, it was obvious that students performed better on the test than they expected (see table 1). the marks obtained in identifying main ideas, using background knowledge, and recollecting specific information indicate that students had performed better on comprehension tests in comparison to their self-assessment. the self-assessment test indicated that the students were confident in getting the gist and identifying main ideas. the test results prove that students acquired higher test scores than their self-assessment tests predicted. in comparison to the other skills, students have secured a lower score (70%) in recollecting specific information. it is important to note that activities related to recollection involve quick memory and having accurate data and that more practice may be necessary in order to retain information successfully. higher intermediate level skills such as under standing native speakers’ language, idiomatic ex pressions and slang, tone, sty le and sp eakers’ perspectives demanded more participation on the part of the students. the selection of songs for training in these skills was appropriate and so the students had significant improvement in learning these skills. in the initial self-assessment, students scored 46% in understanding native speakers’ language, 25% in identifying idiomatic expressions and slang and 58% in analysing tone, style and speakers’ perspectives. however, in the final self-assessment, students had scored 84% on understanding native speaker’s languages, 74% on identifying idiomatic expressions and slang and 86% on analysing tone, style and speakers’ perspectives. a comparison of these results proved that students acquired these skills and registered nearly 50% of improvement respectively. it suggests that the use of songs positively influenced skill acquisition. moreover, the students felt it was easy to learn idiomatic expressions and slang through songs. the reasons for significant (more than 40%) improvement in listening to native speakers was because all the materials obtained from the internet for listening training utilized native speakers’ voices. the continuous exposure to the native speakers’ voices in the language laboratory could have tuned the ears of table 1. comparison of final self-assessment and testing data items tested through randall’s laboratory final self-assessment testing getting the gist 78.2% 73.6% using background knowledge 65% 74% identifying main idea 80% 87% recollecting specific information 68% 70% universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras132 pasupathi the students in listening to native speakers. however, students had difficulty understanding complex and typical accents. students felt very comfortable listening to global english accents. in figure 3, the dark shade represents the initial self-assessment and the light shade represents final self-assessment. figure 3. results of initial and final self-assessment on specific skills 46 84 25 74 86 58 20 40 60 80 100 native speaker idiomatic expressions & slang tone style & speaker perspective even though students showed improvement in identifying idiomatic expressions, they still had problems identifying culture-specific terms. it was found that using songs worked well in training students to identify tone, style and speakers’ perspective. this could be due to the high entertainment value of the songs that interested and motivated them to perform well in acquiring these skills. the comparison of the final self-assessment score with that of the test results revealed that the students acquired higher levels of proficiency in english (see table 2). concerning understanding the native speakers’ voices, 84% of the students accepted their enhance ment on the final self-assessment test. the test results proved that 96% of the students achieved the skills of listening to native speakers’ voices. this result proved that after training the students were capable of listening to speakers of english, which in turn would help them comprehend classroom lectures. surprisingly, 74% of the students felt that they were able to identify the idiomatic expressions and slang, and results of the test concurrently showed 65.6% of the students recognised idiomatic expressions and slang. similarly, more than 80% of the students recognized their capacity in identifying tone, style and speakers’ perspectives, which approximately matched the test results. students treated advanced skills such as understanding face-to-face standard speech, interpreting a wide variety of topics, reading between the lines, and understanding every word as difficult skills. in the initial self-assessment, more than three quarters of the students had difficulty in using these skills. in figure 4, the dark shade represents the initial self-assessment and the light shade represents final self-assessment. figure 4. results of initial and final self-assessment on specific skills 48 71 26 59 9 44 22 55 0 20 40 60 80 face-face speech wide variety topic reading between lines every word table 2. comparison of final self-assessment and testing data item tested through frank songs final self-assessment testing native speakers’ voices 84% 96% guessing meaning of idiomatic expressions and slang 74% 65.6% tone, style, speakers’ perspective 86% 83.4% 133profile vol. 15, no. 1, april 2013. issn 1657-0790 (printed) 2256-5760 (online). bogotá, colombia. pages 125-138 analyzing the effect of technology-based intervention in language laboratory... further, students initially had problems with intermediate skills. therefore, acquiring advanced skills could be more difficult for them. this was also due to less experience on the part of students in practising these advanced skills during their secondary educations. therefore, the extensive practice of these skills during the language laboratory course helped more than half of the students acquire advanced level skills in listening. the final self-assessment test result showed that 71.2% of the students improved their listening skills of face-to-face standard speech whereas 48% felt their skills were sufficient in the initial self-assessment. there was more than a 30% improvement in understanding the meaning between spoken lines. in the initial self-assessment, only 9% of the students felt confident listening between the lines. however, the final assessment disclosed that 44% of the students enhanced their skills listening between the lines in a spoken context. nevertheless, students improved their skills in interpreting a wide variety of topics (26% to 59%) and understanding a wide variety of words (from 22% to 55%) from initial to final self-assessment. the american rhetoric website offered a variety of world famous speeches, which was an added ad vantage, where students had opportunity to listen to valuable speeches. therefore, students were motivated and reinforced to listen to a wide variety of topics. the study identified that the improvement in the correct use of background knowledge helped students in interpreting the meaning between lines in standard spoken speech. students who performed well on questions related to background information also performed better in reading between the lines (see table 3). it could be reasoned that once students were not distracted using background knowledge, they were able to perform well and concentrate better on the subject of standard spoken speech. their keen attention to the subject matter without any distraction enabled them to read between the lines. although the self-assessment results revealed that the students (71.2%) felt less at ease in understanding the face-to-face standard english speech of famous personalities, the result of the test disclosed that 80% of the students did in fact understand the standard public speech. since the students were new to the higher education system, around 60% of them felt it was difficult to understand the meaning of a wide variety of topics. the results reported that 53.2% of the students felt confident in listening to a wide variety of topics. nearly 44% of the students felt confident in detecting meaning between the lines and the test results showed that 35.2% of the students earned good results in the desired skill. around 55% of the students felt it was difficult to listen to and interpret every word in speech. this might be due to students’ lack of knowledge of culturally specific terms, complex vocabulary and subject specific terms. students’ attitude in using technology for learning listening skills randall’s cyber lab has conversation on general topics, which are not related to engineering subjects. when students were asked (see appendix b), 72.3% table 3. comparison of final self-assessment and testing data items tested through american rhetoric self-assessment testing standard face-to-face speech 71.2% 80% understanding a wide variety of topics 59% 53.2% detecting meaning between the lines 44% 35.2% listening and interpreting every word 55% 52% universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras134 pasupathi of them replied that listening to general topics was helpful. as the students experienced anxiety in attending the college, using subject-specific resources for improving listening might not help them in reduci ng their anxiety. therefore, they preferred online resources outside the engineering subject matter. in the initial stage of listening students were not distracted because the audio length was not more than two minutes in the easy level of listening. students faced problems of distraction when the audio length was longer than three minutes. it was identified that 80% of the students encountered some problem in listening to audio without video. therefore, while practicing the difficult level at randall’s cyber lab, students asked for repetition of audio. the purpose of the listening practise was to get them familiar with listening, so the students practised with the audio until they felt confident in answering the questions. the beneficial part of the practice exercise was that the students along with audio could view default questions with answers, which enabled them to crosscheck the correctness of their comprehension. overall, 72% of the students felt comfortable accessing the websites without teacher supervision. hence, 64.6% of the students enjoyed working with randall’s cyber lab website. the concept of learning english through songs captivated the students’ attention. data collected revealed that more than 95% of the students enjoyed working through the teacher frank song resources. more than 83% of the students expressed that working with this website facilitated their changing their attitude towards listening. that is to say, it played a major role in improving students’ attitudes and reducing anxiety. an added benefit was that listening to songs was entertaining for students, in that these songs provided subtitles along with videos (sueyoshi & hardison, 2005). the testing part that was held subsequent to using these materials facilitated students as well as the instructor in evaluating listening comprehension. however, 57.6% of the students stated that operating within the website without the instructor’s supervision was difficult. the major problem encountered with the american rhetoric’s website was that students needed to spend lot of time listening. since the students had to listen to long speeches, 58% of them felt it was less interesting to work with this website than the others. however, 83% of the students stated that materials used in this website were beneficial and highly informative. students felt that listening to lectures of famous personalities influenced their attitude toward life. they agreed that these speeches not only increased their proficiency in listening but also developed their personality. it is important to note that each of the websites had its own positive and negative effects, and students preferred using a mix of elements like conversation, songs and speech during class hours. thus, most of the students appreciated using all three websites during each lab session. altogether, 89% of the students preferred using e-resources in the language laboratory. they found that these innovative practises in language the labora tory motivated them to learn english. as a result, students showed interest in learning other communicative skills through this method of learning. when students were asked about using these websites outside class hours, 86% of the students said that they were interested in using these websites outside class, but the subsequent answer showed that only 35.7% of the students had actually used the websites outside of class. the possible interpretation of this could be that the students were busy with subjectspecific homework and did not have time to use the websites. it could also be that many students lacked internet facilities at home to be able to use these web resources. when asked if students wanted to know of other websites for learning on their own, 61% of the students responded positively. more than 78% of the students had recommended these resources to their peers. all of these responses suggested that students 135profile vol. 15, no. 1, april 2013. issn 1657-0790 (printed) 2256-5760 (online). bogotá, colombia. pages 125-138 analyzing the effect of technology-based intervention in language laboratory... would like to use these online resources by themselves in the near future. students might have realised that e-resources were necessary for their career and that they would need to learn standard communicative skills themselves, which might help them in meeting global job opportunities. conclusion the results of the study revealed that technologybased intervention for training students in listening competences and reducing their anxiety when listening to lectures was successful. the students showed significant improvement in acquiring listening skills. this result is similar to the opinion of moran, ferdig, pearson, wardrop, and blomeyer (2008) who feel that digital tools and learning environments increased the comprehension ability of students. the post-test results reported that students had improved from preintermediate to low-advanced level skills in listening. therefore, this study concludes that technology-based teaching and learning facilitates students in acquiring listening skills. further, various studies could be conducted to identify whether the use of technologybased intervention improves other communicative skills such as writing, reading and speaking. students had positive opinions about using technology for learning and improving listening skills. moreover, students appreciated and supported the employment of the three esl web resources for improving listening skills in the language laboratory. they felt technology-based learning was less time consuming. supporting aids like video, subtitles, and dictionaries assisted students in improving listening skills. the study observed that repeated practice with web resources produced better results. even though students enjoyed working with these websites, they required constant motivation to use the internet for improving their communicative skills. this study suggests that implementing these methods in school language laboratory classes will help students to overcome their fear and anxiety of listening in english when they first begin higher education. thus, teachers ought to offer additional online resources to further enhance students’ listening skills. moreover, students should be provided with a separate time slot for one or two hours every day to use e-resources in conjunction with traditional lan guage training. finally, it would be even more beneficial if these methods of technology-based training could be implemented first in higher secondary schools. references american council on the teaching of foreign languages [actfl]. (2012). proficiency guidelines. retrieved from www.actflproficiencyguidelines2012.org anderson, j. (2000). learning and memory: an integrated approach. new york, ny: john wiley & sons. boud, d., cohen, j., & sampson, j. (2001). peer learning in higher education. london, uk: kogan page. chiu, t., liou, h., & yeh, y. (2007). a study of web-based oral activities enhanced by automatic speech recognition for efl college learning. computer assisted language learning, 20(3), 209-233. coiro, j. (2003). reading comprehension on the internet: expanding our understanding of reading comprehension to encompass new literacies. reading teacher, 56(6). retrieved from http://www.readingonline.org/ electronic/rt/2-03_column/ foster, p., & skehan, p. (1996). the influence of planning time and task type on second language performance. studies in second language acquisition, 18, 299-323. hsu, m. h. (2010). proposing an interactive speaking improvement system for efl learners. expert systems with applications, 37(1), 414-418. kung, s. c., & chuo, t. w. (2002). students’ perceptions of english learning through esl/efl websites. tesl-ej, 6(1). retrieved from www.tesl-ej.org/wordpress/issues/ volume6/ej21/ej21a2 / universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras136 pasupathi mehnert, u. (1998). the effects of different lengths of time for planning on second language performance. studies in second language acquisition, 20, 13-23. miller, l. (2003). developing listening skills with authentic materials. esl magazine. retrieved from www.elthillside.com/up/files/article4.doc moran, j., ferdig, r. e., pearson, p. d., wardrop, j., & blomeyer, r. l. (2008). technology and reading performance in the middle-school grades: a meta-analysis with recommendations for policy and practice. journal of literacy research, 40(1), 6-58. national assessment of educational progress. (2009). the nation’s report card: reading 2009 (ncec 2010-458). washington, d.c.: institute of education sciences, u.s. department of education. sueyoshi, a., & hardison, d. (2005). the role of gestures and facial cues in second language listening comprehension. language learning, 55, 661-699. wang, l. (2005). the advantages of using technology in second language education. t.h.e. journal, 32(10), 1-6. ware, p. d. (2004). confidence and competition online: esl student perspectives on web-based discussions in the classroom. computers and composition, 21, 451-468. xiaoqiong, h., & xianxing, j. (2008). using film to teach efl students english language skills. changing english, 15(2), 235-240. yuan, y. (2003). the use of chat rooms in an esl setting. computers and composition, 20, 194-206. about the author madhumathi pasupathi  holds a ba in english literature from bharathiar university (india) and an ma in english and comparative literature from pondicherry university (india). she works as a research associate at vit university, vellore, tamil nadu (india). her areas of interest are english language standardization, computer assisted language learning and english language teaching. 137profile vol. 15, no. 1, april 2013. issn 1657-0790 (printed) 2256-5760 (online). bogotá, colombia. pages 125-138 analyzing the effect of technology-based intervention in language laboratory... appendix a: listening skills self-assessment checklist 1. name: 2. branch: 3. gender: 4. board in school and state: 5. marks in higher secondary: 6. language used for teaching all subjects at school: 7. language used for teaching english: a. english b. both english and regional language c. regional language 8. i would understand if engineering subjects were taught in english: a. strongly disagree b. disagree c. agree d. strongly agree. 9. i feel comfortable listening to lectures in english at university: a. strongly disagree b. disagree c. agree d. strongly agree. 10. i want to improve my english listening skills: a. strongly disagree b. disagree c. agree d. strongly agree. 11. do you experience anxiety while attending the first year of higher education? 12. i can get the gist of what i hear in english. 13. i can use background information to understand the meaning of the spoken context. 14. i can understand the meaning in the conversation. 15. i can identify the main ideas in the conversation. 16. i can recollect the specific information from the conversation. 17. i can predict vocabulary meaning in familiar areas of lecture. 18. i can understand native english speakers. 19. i can understand idiomatic expressions and slang in english. 20. i can identify the tone, style and speakers’ perspective in a spoken context. 21. i can understand face-to-face speech of standard spoken language. 22. i can understand wide varieties of topics when listening to a speech. 23. i can detect the meaning between the lines. 24. i can understand every word uttered by the speaker. universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras138 pasupathi appendix b: students’ attitude towards using websites for learning to listen comment on the following statements based on your personal experience while working with the below mentioned websites: randall’s cyber listening laboratory: i enjoyed working with this website. listening to general topics helped me to rid my anxiety when listening. listening to the audio without video was distracting. operating within the website was difficult without teacher’s instructions. i had to spend much time on listening. frank songs: it is interesting and changed my attitude towards learning. listening to the song with the captions is helpful to understand the meaning. listening to the song with the video is distracting. operating within the website was difficult without teacher’s instructions. i had to spend much time on listening. american rhetoric: i enjoyed working in this website. listening to the lecture with the text is useful. i got useful information working with these websites. operating within the website was difficult without teacher’s instructions. a long speech requires much concentration; otherwise it is distracting. i had to spend much time on listening. listening to the lectures without dictionary reference is difficult. i will suggest these websites for my friends. i will use (prefer) esl resources for learning other communicative skills. i want the teacher to suggest some other website(s) in order to practice on my own. i used these websites outside the class hours. 21profile vol. 18, no.1, january-june 2016. issn 1657-0790 (printed) 2256-5760 (online). bogotá, colombia. pages 21-38 http://dx.doi.org/10.15446/profile.v18n1.53079 using cooperative learning to foster the development of adolescents’ english writing skills1* incidencia del aprendizaje cooperativo en el avance de adolescentes en la escritura en inglés paula andrea caicedo triviño2** colegio juana escobar, bogotá, colombia seventh grade teachers at a colombian public school chose cooperative learning as a strategy to improve student’s social performance and as a tool to get learners to enrich their academic level. this article reports on an action research and innovation project focused on the results eight students obtained in their written performance in english classes during three cooperative lessons. this article gathers some existing research on writing skills and cooperative learning and a presentation and analysis about students’ real expectations and thoughts about writing in the english language. the systematization of this teaching experience also sheds lights on further actions to analyze closely students’ texts construction in a cooperative environment. key words: adolescents’ learning process, cooperative learning, foreign language acquisition, processoriented writing, writing strategies. las profesoras directoras de séptimo grado de un colegio oficial en colombia eligieron el aprendizaje cooperativo como estrategia para mejorar los problemas de convivencia de sus estudiantes al igual que su nivel académico. este artículo presenta un proyecto de investigación acción e innovación y los resultados obtenidos por ocho de estos estudiantes en tres lecciones cooperativas sobre producción escrita en inglés. además, se incluye una descripción de la escritura como habilidad comunicativa y del aprendizaje cooperativo y una presentación y análisis de las expectativas e ideas de los estudiantes participantes acerca de lo que significa para ellos escribir en inglés. esta experiencia pedagógica es apenas el inicio de un futuro y más amplio análisis acerca de la construcción de textos en un ambiente de cooperación. palabras clave: aprendizaje cooperativo, aprendizaje de lenguas extranjeras, aprendizaje en adolescentes, escritura como proceso, estrategias de escritura. * this paper reports on a study conducted by the author while participating in the profile teacher development programme at universidad nacional de colombia in 2014-2015. the programme was sponsored by secretaría de educación de bogotá, d.c. code number: 2916, august 20, 2014. ** e-mail: drusos81@yahoo.com.mx how to cite this article (apa, 6th ed.): caicedo triviño, p. a. (2016). using cooperative learning to foster the development of adolescents’ english writing skills. profile issues in teachers’ professional development, 18(1), 21-38. http://dx.doi.org/10.15446/profile.v18n1.53079. this article was received on march 1, 2015, and accepted on september 25, 2015. this is an open access article distributed under the terms of the creative commons license attribution-noncommercial-noderivatives 4.0 international license. consultation is possible at http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/. universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras22 caicedo triviño introduction juana escobar school is a public institution in bogotá, colombia, where students are continuously questioned about solving social problems with the strategy of promoting their autonomy and, at the same time, reinforcing their capability to see their partners as a support when it is needed to think about innovative ideas. the school community is distinguished by its heterogeneity which is reflected in the various problems students have in academic, discipline, and health aspects. seventh graders at the juana escobar school have made evident the problems they have with academic and social performance in different classes; their study habits, their examinations results, and their behavior during the classes are clear examples of this situation. these are the reasons why their assigned teachers decided to adopt cooperative learning (cl) as a strategy to reduce the negative influence these aspects have had on their classes, since cooperative lessons permit strengthening several features such as autonomy, leadership, partners’ interaction, verbal and written communication, among many features (arias, cárdenas, & estupiñán, 2005; johnson, johnson, & holubec, 1999). the abovementioned cooperative characteristics were integrated into english classes to help these seventh graders acquire a major consciousness of their learning process. this is because they have evidenced some serious difficulties in basic aspects of english as a foreign language (efl) such as vocabulary acquisition and sentences construction. however, it was necessary to emphasize only one skill to make the project more narrow and precise. having this and the english classes’ characteristics in mind, it was considered as essential that these youngsters learnt how to write in a progressive but effective way. the writing learning process is a common teachers’ concern (almazroui, 2008). many efl teachers have difficulties with students’ spelling of some words, the copying of word by word from some texts, sentences arrangement, and the coherence of texts, just to name some. when learning to write, we usually tend to reproduce in written forms what we express orally and forget the importance contained in the edition of our texts, even if it is only a sentence. these complications become more momentous when what we want to say is supposed to be written in a foreign language; each student makes his or her own mistakes and it starts to be a challenge to the teacher to correct them and to make each learner overcome them. by writing cooperatively, these difficulties could be reduced; if each student among the group has a role to play (johnson et al., 1999) and through his or her contributions the group reaches the proposed goal, each student would move for ward in his or her learning process thanks to cooperative skills. consequently, the project objective was to analyze the role of cooperative skills/work in the improvement of students’ writing skills and to be more specific about the results obtained in each planned activity; the research question was: what can be observed in students’ writings when they are engaged in cooperative learning? because this article is intended to be a starting point in light of students’ perceptions about writing in english, cooperative work and roles within a group when cooperating play a very important role in what learners do during the lessons, which may differ from what the teacher expects. literature review writing skills foreign languages (fl) teachers may have certain difficulties teaching the four language skills (listening, speaking, reading, and writing) whether using several strategies or explaining them as separated aspects of the language and these problems become more evident when they want their students to make a significant 23profile vol. 18, no.1, january-june 2016. issn 1657-0790 (printed) 2256-5760 (online). bogotá, colombia. pages 21-38 using cooperative learning to foster the development of adolescents’ english writing skills improvement in their communication performance (scott, 1995). though there is no magic formula to acquire a certain skill suddenly, practice and the appropriate feedback from those who are “experts” can be a good starting point to develop a higher level in that skill. let us see then what specifically occurs with writing skills. some time ago, literacy, as a right to everyone, was not really an important matter; it was related to the upper classes or some privileged groups which had the opportunity to be in contact with this communicative form (rivers, 1972). currently, it has become a necessity to be literate not only to know how to communicate with the closest people around us, but also to know how to do it within an academic or professional context (hyland, 2009). to be more specific, writing—which is a “young” activity in relation to the evolution of the human being—has taken place in several fields in academic and personal life; such as feelings expression, academic purposes, social networks, or personal growth (graham & perin, 2007). however, it is yet a skill which needs to be taught in order to be properly used (rivers, 1972) and there is no better place for this than school. but then, what is it that we call writing? what do we need in order to structure a well-developed piece of writing? in regard to writing, we cannot forget the existence of several approaches that come from research and teaching practice (yi, 2009) and have been used to support the validity of the effort to improve writing skills, not only in theory but also in practice through actions in the classrooms. product oriented, process oriented, and reader oriented are the three main approaches which focus on the text, the writer, and the reader, respectively (hyland, 2009). because of the purpose of this article, the focus will be on the process approach. peregoy and boyle (2001) affirm that in the 60s, writing was a students’ creative activity in which teachers did not pay too much attention to the mistakes the learners made but to aspects such as the content, the freedom in choosing the topic, and the novelty in each written text. however, this practice sometimes made it impossible to read the students’ creations because of the numerous errors. years later, this creative writing theory evolved into one that supported the idea of writing as a process; it placed emphasis on three perspectives which, according to hyland (2009), have definitely supported this approach. the first is expressivist, in which “thinking precedes writing” (hyland, 2009, p. 18). the second is cognitive, where writing is developed in five phases: prewriting, where the author conceives the ideas according to the potential reader; the drafting phase, where the writer puts the ideas on paper; the revising phase, where the author evaluates the text from the perspective of giving a determined message or if the text is appropriately written according to the audience; if so, the text needs editing and then it will be ready for publishing. finally, the third perspective, social, has to do with the particular situation of the writing process; the specific author’s experience and context. according to harmer (2007) the steps mentioned in the cognitive perspective cannot be described as a linear process since in the middle of writing we may need to re-plan or re-edit our ideas in order to make a better final draft. that is the reason why in the academic field students may need to be supported during all the writing process, perhaps not only by the teacher but also by their partners who may offer interesting ideas; furthermore, learners have also the opportunity to check unknown meanings in print or virtual dictionaries or in reference books. this writing process leads to a continuous reflection on the texts elaboration and on new learning strategies; it is what arapoff (1967) has described as active thinking, a way in which the writer organizes the ideas having in mind the purpose, relevance, and scheme in the text, thus he or she cares about other things apart from spelling. it is relevant that the writer considers who universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras24 caicedo triviño the audience is, what the specific intention is when writing, and the register used to elaborate a more planned writing, which is clearly distinguished from the spoken discourse (barnett, 1989; harmer, 2007). the writer stops to think about how the different drafts are constructed and, progressively, this method becomes a skill that the learners start using daily. process oriented writing makes text construction easier by reason of having just one task at a time (peregoy & boyle, 2001); it becomes a more friendly activity which is not felt as a “must” but as an enjoyable encounter with one’s own thoughts. in addition, process oriented writing develops into a much more interesting assignment for learners and teachers alike; it is not only a matter of having in mind an idea and capturing it in a text but also a process of building carefully the ideas to be transmitted and the feedback that will be given about that written work (barnett, 1989). teachers are much related to the way students assume their writing skills; it is a big responsibility to give an encouraging opinion about students’ expressions of their impressions and ideas; teachers should also be active thinkers before leading their learners into the writing process. regarding writing in efl, figure 1 summarizes the perspectives some authors have about this topic. these perspectives can be divided into four categories: learning through the process, advantages of writing in fl, disadvantages of writing in fl, and feedback. according to the authors in figure 1, when students are writing in a second language (l2) t h e y b e c o m e m o r e c o n f i d e nt t h a n k s t o t h e subdivision of steps during the process. they learn macro strategies while they are in this practice of pre wr iting, draf ting, re vising, editing, and publishing and micro strategies when they devote themselves to the text form; then, students are explicitly learning the process oriented writing (barkaoui, 2007; hinkel, 2015; leki, cumming, & silva, 2008; peregoy & boyle, 2001). the advantages mentioned by these researchers about process oriented writing are (a) the importance the students’ experience has when they are writing; that is, learners have a certain degree of freedom, they find the possibility of coming back to check what they have produced so far; (b) they have also the opportunity to start writing even if they do not know the fl perfectly, thanks to the knowledge they have of their mother tongue; (c) in several opportunities it proves easier for students to communicate in writing than by speaking, especially when they do not feel confident enough to stand in front of the class; and (d) little by little, students find their own writing style (barkaoui, 2007; hinkel, 2015; leki et al., 2008; peregoy & boyle, 2001). r e g a r d i n g t h e d i s a d v a nt a g e s o f p r o c e s s oriented writing, first, the l2 learner could be among a multilevel group, even regarding l1 literacy knowledge, and this situation could affect his or her appropriate performance. second, the spelling correction in academic texts is limited, which may affect the conventional language learning rules and the future performance these students will have with a more advanced writing. regarding feedback, students are motivated by the fact that they receive comments not only from the teacher but also from their partners. this makes the process of writing to be less like a pressure for the student and more like a cooperative space to share knowledge within a friendly environment; much of it occurs as a class discussion rather than as an individual exercise. cooperative learning cooperation is one of the paths humankind has followed along its evolution. it has permitted people to leave their primitive lives, become more human, learn from others, and also teach what has been necessary to move forward as a species (ferreiro & espino, 2000). cooperation can be conceived as more than 25profile vol. 18, no.1, january-june 2016. issn 1657-0790 (printed) 2256-5760 (online). bogotá, colombia. pages 21-38 using cooperative learning to foster the development of adolescents’ english writing skills just sharing with others; it implies having in mind a particular goal and working with enough spirit and responsibility to complete it. this notion applies also to classrooms where in many opportunities we can observe that students have an objective but many of them do not know how to achieve it or do not even have the opportunity to try because of the competitive classroom environment. at this point, cl could be a solution to this lack of interest or empathy. cl is a concept which embraces many different aspects that can be easily associated with a harmonious learning environment; it is a strategy for the classroom that is used to increase motivation and retention, to help students develop a positive image of self and others, to provide a vehicle for critical thinking and problem solving, and to encourage collaborative social skills. (calderón as cited in christison, 1994, p. 140) this conception permits taking into account not only academic purposes in class but also goals related to students’ self-esteem, new ways of thought, or a conscious and a critical point of view about the relation with others. if we describe cl main components, it can be easier to understand a little more about what it implies. according to johnson, johnson, and holubec (1995) and arias et al. (2005), cl is related to five main principles: positive interdependence: students have the responsibility of acquiring certain learning but they have also a commitment with the learning of the other participants of the group. promotive interaction: during the discussions about the purposed topic in class, students are reinforcing their educational progress. group processing: can be defined as the selfevaluation each group makes at the end of the lesson; they reflect upon their achievements and errors during the proposed activity. this allows the group to improve continuously in the positive interdependence acknowledgement. figure 1. foreign language writing characteristics peregoy & boyle (2001) 1. students write from their experiences. 2. writing helps in revising and editing. 3. more freedom while writing since there will be more time to correct possible errors. 4. every step during writing permits students to be more con�dent and have a more conscious learning. barkaoui (2007) 1. acquisition of macro strategies (cognitive) and micro strategies (form and word searches). 2. explicit teaching of the writing process. 3. feedback gotten from partners is motivating and useful. 4. teacher feedback must be balanced and not overwhelming neither careless in order to keep the student motivated. 5. feedback could be done as a class discussion to realize how some errors affect writing and how to face them. 6. provide students with opportunities to write even if they do not have the needed mastery for doing it. leki, cumming & silva (2008) 1. due to the fact that l2 writers probably already have a certain literacy degree in l1, they can take that knowledge to help create the assigned texts in l2. 2. learners are more willing to write than to speak in l2. 3. students are more likely to improve their writing abilities with the support of partners and teacher. 4. l2 learners could be among a multilevel class even in l1 literacy. hinkel (2015) 1. the writer �nds his own style. 2. the teaching of in�exible academic writing is limited. 3. esl learners could be at a disadvantage since the process approach does not permit them to acquire the same vocabulary as �rst language (l1) learners and then academic writing would be a critical weakness when they are asked to produce more advanced level texts. fl writing universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras26 caicedo triviño cooperative skills: cl turns out to be a complex task since students are asked not only to learn academic skills but also interpersonal skills that must be taught by the teacher to help learners entirely handle them and become participants in real teamwork. learners must then know each other, trust each other, communicate effectively, support each other, and solve possible conflicts constructively. the emphasis the teacher makes on each skill depends on the needs the groups have through the lessons. indiv idual accountability : e ach le ar ner is supposed to make a certain effort if the group has really achieving a goal in mind. for that reason each one is assigned a different role during the activities. johnson et al. (1999) go further when they propose different types of roles the learners could assume according to the requirements they have to meet: roles to help the group formation. roles to help the group to work. roles to help the students to express what they know and relate it to previous knowledge. roles to help to encourage the learners’ thought and reasoning. the roles which are the most relevant for this research are the roles to help the group to work, those in which the group achieves its goals and keeps efficient relations. the ones chosen for the project were (arias et al., 2005): organizer : guides t he group work, makes sure everyone in the group has the opportunity to participate. recorder: takes notes of the group’s decisions, keeps the documents the group uses and produces. o b s e r v e r : c o r r e c t s p o s s i b l e m i s t a k e s i n explanations and summaries, controls the group timing. relationer : helps the group relate previous knowledge with the new knowledge and ensures that everyone in the group is following the presented topic. cooperative writing this strategy differs from the one of writing alone since students have the chance to overcome as a team the possible obstacles they may face in an individual task; vocabulary recognition, brainstorming about any chosen topic, giving a certain structure to the text they want to elaborate, and error correction (curry & hewings, 2003). e l e m e n t s l i k e i n d i v i d u a l a c c o u n t a b i l i t y and positive interdependence are continuously implemented when writing cooperatively (duin, 1986); each student has his or her own responsibility about making a positive contribution to the group in order to reach the proposed goal and thus, discussing the means that could lead to that objective. every time students are involved in a cooperative activity, they have the chance to reflect upon their performance during such activity; when sharing these ideas with their partners, they are taking advantage of promotive interaction and reinforcing the social skills required to make this approach more than a matter of group activity. the characteristics combination already mentioned creates the perfect environment for learning under agreed parameters, receiving useful and friendly feedback, sharing ideas respectfully, and permitting everyone in the class to improve personally and as a team. method i carried out a study that followed the principles of action research and innovation in education (mcniff, 2013; mills, 2007) which came from my interest in the difficulties some of my students had in putting their thoughts or ideas on paper when writing in english. the research mentioned was implemented having in mind the real situation of four seventh graders’ courses around social and academic aspects and included cl principles as an approach to help those students to be more conscious about their performance during some of the classes they attended. this proposal 27profile vol. 18, no.1, january-june 2016. issn 1657-0790 (printed) 2256-5760 (online). bogotá, colombia. pages 21-38 using cooperative learning to foster the development of adolescents’ english writing skills on cooperative learning was made by the school counselor for the assigned teachers in that grade, and after reading and gathering some information about this approach, these teachers, me included, considered that each one of the four seventh grade courses had to be divided into nine groups of four learners, each student with a different cooperative role. the groups were arranged taking into account the students’ academic level, their learning style (vallejos, n.d.), leadership characteristics in some of the students, and their social behavior during the classes. after the groups were organized, each assigned teacher started to plan the lessons following cl procedures (arias et al., 2005) according to the needs of the courses and the corresponding topics included in the curriculum. even though i worked with the four classes mentioned, i decided to focus on just two groups: group 1 (students a, b, c, and d) and group 2 (students e, f, g, and h) which were selected at random to make my research much more focused. consistently, i decided to concentrate on the possible effects cl could have on these students’ writings due to the fact that our classes in the previous year emphasized written production and the results were not what i expected; students had problems constructing appropriate and coherent texts. procedure as has already been mentioned, the intention of implementing cl in the english lessons was to revise the effect that approach could have on students’ progress while writing in an fl. taking that aspect into account, it was necessary to plan three different lessons, carried out from september to november 2014, which involved written activities and distributed work for each group. the first two activities had comparative adjectives as a main topic and the third one was a free writing exercise. after each lesson, students and teacher evaluated their processes through cooperative skills management. the classes were planned according to arias et al. (2005) “global vision” of a cooperative lesson (p. 135) in which they propose five steps towards a well-developed lesson: (a) previous decisions and objectives approach, (b) lesson approach, (c) monitoring and intervention, (d) evaluation and processing, and (e) activities explanations to the students. the lessons were developed in six stages following the phases burns (1999) presents as not necessarily separated or exclusive from each other: exploring, identifying, and planning; collecting data; analyzing and reflecting, hypothesizing and speculating; intervening and observing; reporting, writing, and presenting (see figure 2). these phases though did not follow a strict order during the research development. stage 1. before the first lesson was developed, students answered individually a brief questionnaire (appendix a) so that the teacher could learn their impressions corresponding to writing and both individual and group work. after this activity, i was able to get an overview of what the previous knowledge of the students was concerning the topics which would become our main subjects in the coming lessons. stage 2. in l ess on 1, we did comp arat ive sentences writing (appendix b); students were asked to write a sentence in cooperative groups using an adjective i gave them on a piece of paper. in the group they assumed the correspondent cooperative role assigned by the teachers. the student performing the role of relationer checked the comparative rules to help the group remember the necessary information for writing this kind of sentences; the recorder took notes about their partners’ ideas; and the observer corrected possible mistakes in the sentence. when they finished, the organizer dictated the sentence to the teacher or passed it on a piece of paper for the sentence to be written on the whiteboard and later made the appropriate corrections. this lesson was developed in five rounds. universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras28 caicedo triviño stage 3. in lesson 2 “the old me,” students took some time to draw themselves at the age of 5; later they were asked to discuss with the group which personal and physical characteristics could be included in a written description of them at that age. next, they had to write each one’s description taking into account that they had to compare the kids they used to be with their present adolescent selves. stage 4. questionnaire 2 just involved two headings for the student to complete: 1. i think the activity done the last lesson was… 2. while doing last lesson activity i felt… in this way, i could monitor the success of the activity in terms of pertinence for the students and see if they were as engaged with it as i considered they were. stage 5. in the free writing activity students grouped to write a paragraph in any style and register according to their preferences. they could choose whether they wanted to write among the set groups or if they wanted to write in pairs or individually (the implications of working individually while in a cl lesson will be discussed in the findings section). stage 6. at the end of the lessons, students were asked (questionnaire 3) about their impressions and feelings about their performance during the classes mentioned (appendix c). findings the data collected came from questionnaires, lesson plans, observation, and field notes that were analyzed following the principles suggested by burns (1999) in which reflection is a continuous matter during the whole investigation process. when i began the study, i started separating different types of data in folders and had a sheet of paper in each one for note taking. in this way, it was easier to start scanning and comparing data to find general patterns in the samples related to the objective of the project. figure 2. phases of the study stage 1 questionnaire 1 previous knowlege concerning writing and cooperative work. stage 2 lesson 1 comparative sentences stage 3 lesson 2 the old me stage 4 questionnaire 2 feelings and impressions concerning the work done. stage 5 lesson 3 free writing stage 6 questionnaire 3 final impressions 29profile vol. 18, no.1, january-june 2016. issn 1657-0790 (printed) 2256-5760 (online). bogotá, colombia. pages 21-38 using cooperative learning to foster the development of adolescents’ english writing skills the information was narrowed from those p atte r ns , w h i ch to ok a l ot of t i me s i nc e t he questionnaires i was dealing with contained openended questions which made students’ answers more realistic and related to their feelings and thoughts. in comparing the data, i created charts to group the eight students’ answers and see more clearly the categories mentioned and repetitions in some of the students’ answers. from all this analysis two categories emerged: cooperative work role in the english classroom and students’ cooperative process oriented writing. cooperative work role in the english classroom the analysis of this category led me to center on the five principles of cl: positive interdependence, promotive interaction, individual accountability, group processing, and cooperative skills. although students had a general vision of cooperative work before the lessons started (appendix a), everyone gives an opinion to make the work be okay. (student a, recorder)1 the one who doesn’t know can be helped by the others, which is team work. (student g, observer) they had serious difficulties when understanding and implementing their roles within the group and assuming such role as a part of the entire cooperative process maybe because, in spite of the fact that in every one of the three lessons students had the same roles, they were in some way modified by the lesson contents and dynamics. for example, the recorders who were in charge of taking notes and keeping the group documents confused the moments when they were supposed to write their partners’ comments, engage in brainstorming, or create ideas for composing the required texts for each lesson. 1 the samples in this article have been translated from spanish. the difficulties mentioned were made evident during all the classes when students constantly asked about what they were supposed to do as organizers, relationers, observers, or recorders. it was, of course, disappointing, since i devoted around 7 or 10 minutes at the beginning of these lessons to arrange the classroom, explain the roles assignment, the academic and cooperative skills objectives of the lesson, and the times for each step in it (appendix b). however, all this information was a continuous question during the whole class. b e s i d e s t h is , i ob s e r ve d t hat t he p o s it ive interdependence (johnson et al., 1995) decreased progressively in the two groups. in lesson 1, students were ver y interested in ensuring that the whole group was involved in the activity and the sentence construction process; in lesson 2, only students b, d, and e performed the activity as it was proposed. student a was continuously standing up and the other students just made their self drawings and did not write any comparative sentence. in lesson 3, which i considered would be the most productive i n te r ms of att itu d e s and p e r for m anc e to b e analyzed, the results were the opposite. as students could make the decision of not working within the complete group but in pairs, some of the students in group 1 even decided to work individually and when i asked about the reason, they argued they did not want to have to reach an agreement about the topic, so they preferred to work this way and avoid conflict. however, at the moment of checking the work done, only student b was doing a paragraph about her routine. group 2 decided to work together and asked many questions regarding grammar and appropriate vocabular y. these discussions and continuous questioning about the right path to achieve any goal (durán & vidal, 2004) are what confirm the previous conception students had about cooperation before the lessons began: universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras30 caicedo triviño the whole group is thinking, everybody can give an opinion and is more likely there will be right answers. (student e) regarding group processing, even when i considered that self-evaluation would be a difficulty in terms of the objectiveness students could have at the moment of evaluating cooperative skills management during the lessons, i have to say it was very productive. as i monitored the groups, i observed positive attitudes towards the effective achievement of the proposed goals given at the beginning of each lesson. students told each other off for standing up and leaving the group, for making so much noise, for not performing their role within the group, and so on, and at the end of the lessons, when the moment came to make the groupprocessing chart (figure 3) and evaluate everybody’s work, they did not forget any of these details. figure 3. lesson 2, group 2 processing-chart2 in lesson 2, for example, the cooperative skills students evaluated were: 1. stay in the group 2. speak in a quiet voice 3. express ideas and opinions 4. promote partners’ participation 5. help partners to remember 2 figure 3 headings from left to right: members (e, g, f, h) and skills (1 to 5). students e and h clearly stood out because of the accomplishment in all of the skills which facilitated the academic purposes of the lesson. these cooperative skills were not purely academic but were more related to social performance of each group inside the whole class or as a whole constructing the best conditions to move forward in each step of the lesson. on the part of the learners, after making an approach to cooperative work, they considered it as a useful tool to improve their skills. regarding cooperative skills roles during the lessons, they see the relevance of having a role in a group, if it is so that they want to achieve a certain goal. nevertheless, in many opportunities there was a notorious decrease in the roles assumption as the activities became more formal; this contradicts what they said in the questionnaires 1 and 3: i liked [my role] very much because i could listen to the others’ thoughts. (student e, relationer) [my role made sense] because we learnt to work more orderly. (student d, organizer) some students believed they perform better if they work in a group; they think their ideas have more support if their partners act as a guarantor of the thoughts and impressions they have (appendix a). this is a positive aspect if we consider only cl as a tool in class, but if we ask students to work individually in any moment this mistrust could become an obstacle for the learner to participate effectively in class. students’ cooperative process-oriented writing during the project development, it was possible to identify several aspects related to the students’ writing and cooperative skills. learners recognized writing as a process since in the cooperative lessons they were always elaborating previous drafts to come up with the final text; every time they were asked to write they did it first in their mother tongue; moreover, they used to have an extra piece of paper apart from 31profile vol. 18, no.1, january-june 2016. issn 1657-0790 (printed) 2256-5760 (online). bogotá, colombia. pages 21-38 using cooperative learning to foster the development of adolescents’ english writing skills their notebooks to arrange sentences from their ideas (peregoy & boyle, 2001). this implies they gave real importance to writing; it is something they wanted to do step by step in order to give the right message to their reader (barkaoui, 2007). however, when teaching adolescents it can be hard to get them involved in the same manner in the activities the teacher proposes, and in this case, it was not the exception. from the eight students who contributed to this project, only three did the activities showing responsibility and real commitment during the entire process, which affected to some extent the “success” of the tasks done. during lesson 1, it was interesting to see how every student in the two groups was committed to do the task of building sentences. they participated and worked on the coherence and syntax of each sentence, they seemed to be interested in writing a c c u r ately and t he y d i d s o ; af te r t wo rou nds of comparative sentences, they started writing coherent ly (l ek i et a l., 2008). l ess on 2 “ the old me,” was a little less productive since, as i explained before, only three students decided to work on the activity (figure 4), and they did an amazing job since they easily completed the task working almost individually, though it was not the pedagogical objective. in figure 4 it is evident student d made an ef for t to write coherent s entences taking into account grammatical aspects. during the lesson, she was continuously asking if she was doing a good job, and in this manner took advantage of the editing and revising steps in process oriented writing, which permitted her to be more confident about the text she was creating and at the same time about her learning process (peregoy & boyle, 2001). student d was interested in making her message clear to the reader and she wrote regardless of the fact she did not know all the vocabulary she wanted to use (barkaoui, 2007). figure 4. “the old me:” sample from student d lesson 3, free writing, was an opportunity to identify some mistakes students made when using the dictionary and for the teacher to check closely the writing process of the students who decided to complete the activity. student b, for example, started by writing in spanish first to clarify her ideas and then she started to translate. she did not seem very sure about her vocabulary knowledge and after all, she did not want to receive help from her partners as she could only trust the dictionary and me when writing. yesterday when more leave of school i went where my grandmother and placed to play football, baseball and secretly, with my cousin later more accompany to my grandmother to buy the market, later i went to the house, see tv to my put sleep. [sic] in relation to group 2, they did cooperative work in this lesson and wrote about ghosts. the ghost are transparent and fly, also are white and bad, the ghost are small and big the like live in the darkness. my like that the ghost frighten to people. [sic] they were concerned about the accuracy of the text and asked questions about the syntax; however, the use of dictionar y was reduced. they were confident (peregoy & boyle, 2001) and motivated by the fact that they obtained mostly feedback from the group (barkaoui, 2007). process oriented writing universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras32 caicedo triviño was a motivation for this exercise due to the support students had from each other in editing, the freedom at the moment of choosing a topic, and when they asked the teacher about any possible mistake they made. it will always be motivating to see students who make an effort to write and express their ideas or points of view in english even when they do not comprehend grammar rules completely. conclusions after analyzing the role of cooperative work in the improvement of students’ writing skills, which was the project objective, i can conclude that cl and writing skills can be worked together to improve several academic and personal skills. nevertheless, i consider that three lessons did not provide enough time and practice to achieve all the expected results. there are many aspects to consider in the implementation or improvement of this approach application if it is going to be used as a learning strategy. surveys are a determinant starting point to know students’ real expectations and a tool to track the perceptions students have about the work developed in classes, not only in cooperative lessons but as a constant evaluation of the teaching processes. b efore implement ing co op erat ive less ons, students should have one or two informative lectures about the elements involved in such classes. this could have many advantages, firstly, for the teachers, who can receive from the students questions about t he co op erative fe atures w hich would p er mit improvements in the lesson plans and provide a wider knowledge of such features. secondly, for the students, who could find it interesting working in teams if they consider the ideas of progress, help, and cooperation as instruments which, properly used, would take their strengths or weaknesses to a different level. cooperative lessons work to improve social skills in the classroom; unfortunately, the sample groups could not work in agreement with the groups’ organization the teachers proposed but i consider it was more a matter of time than of cooperative skills themselves. we were already ending the school year and did not have time to use other strategies like rearranging the groups according to the students’ empathy. having in mind the research question, i ask what could be observed in students’ writings when they were engaged in cooperative learning, disregarding the difficulties involved in writing in l2. processoriented writing is an excellent starting point to revise students’ interests in writing, ensure their vocabulary improvement, their style correction, and how confident they are in the abilities they have. even though the project lasted a few weeks, there was enough time for the students to notice the importance of a step by step edition when writing coherently; this, i consider, will be useful when they face text construction in future lessons, since they will feel more independent about resorting to their previous knowledge. during the project, learners started to be more conscious about the importance of expressing their ideas on paper to make others understand the message and although on many occasions they preferred to use spanish in some daily expressions, i, as their teacher, tried to avoid that situation which was an obstacle at the moment of writing. it was necessary learners noticed that; those who devoted attention to the proposed activities evidenced a significant improvement in their vocabulary and use of certain grammatical structures thanks to the editing process of their writings. these conclusions lead me to determine that since process-oriented writing approach only gives one a perspective of what writing means, it cannot be the only source teachers and students use when they are trying to expand this skill. other approaches are needed to create more formal texts and to present other perspectives about creation in writing, which address the interests and needs of each student during the academic year. 33profile vol. 18, no.1, january-june 2016. issn 1657-0790 (printed) 2256-5760 (online). bogotá, colombia. pages 21-38 using cooperative learning to foster the development of adolescents’ english writing skills further implications cl is a strategy which is worth it to continue working on future lessons; this project has only been an approach to it and it would be necessary to work much more in it so that teacher and students completely master what cl involves. there are several details in this approach that need to be considered in the improvement of lesson planning and learners’ appropriation of their roles during the classes. writing, though difficult, is a valuable source of prospects to improve l2 acquisition in schools. sometimes it is impossible to track every student’s progress in this skill but it is really worth it to take the time for it and to give meaningful feedback to learners. many times, due to curriculum requirements, teachers have to implement many strategies in many lessons, which do not always provide the results we expect. this is why it would be more useful to concentrate on just one activity so that we can focus more rigorously on students’ results and progress. references almazroui, k. 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(1999). el aprendizaje cooperativo en el aula [cooperative learning in the classroom]. buenos aires, ar: paidós. leki, i., cumming, a., & silva, t. (2008). a synthesis of research on second language writing in english. new york, ny: routledge. mcniff, j. (2013). action research: principles and practice. new york, ny: routledge. mills, g. e. (2007). action research: a guide for the teacher researcher. columbus, nj: pearson. peregoy, s. f., & boyle, o. f. (2001). reading, writing and learning in esl: a resource book for teaching k-12 english learners. new york, ny: longman. rivers, w. m. (1972). teaching foreign-language skills. chicago, il: university of chicago press. scott, v. m. (1995). rethinking foreign language writing. boston, ma: heinle publishers. vallejos, s. p. (n.d.). herramientas didácticas y docentes: el test de david kolb [didactic and teaching tools: david kolb’s test]. retrieved from http://www.rmm.cl/index_ sub2.php?id_contenido=10497&id_seccion=2816&id_ portal=432. yi, j. (2009). defining writing ability for classroom writing assessment in high schools. pan-pacific association of applied linguistics, 13(1), 53-69. about the author paula andrea caicedo triviño holds a bachelor degree in humanities from universidad pedagógica nacional (colombia) and a diploma in translation english-spanish from universidad del rosario (colombia). currently, she is a full time english teacher at colegio juana escobar, bogotá. 35profile vol. 18, no.1, january-june 2016. issn 1657-0790 (printed) 2256-5760 (online). bogotá, colombia. pages 21-38 using cooperative learning to foster the development of adolescents’ english writing skills appendix a: questionnaire 1 complete the headings writing your opinion about each one of the mentioned aspects: 1. i think writing is… _______________________________________________________________________________ _______________________________________________________________________________ _______________________________________________________________________________ 2. writing in spanish is… _______________________________________________________________________________ _______________________________________________________________________________ _______________________________________________________________________________ 3. writing in english is… _______________________________________________________________________________ _______________________________________________________________________________ _______________________________________________________________________________ 4. the advantages of working individually are… _______________________________________________________________________________ _______________________________________________________________________________ _______________________________________________________________________________ 5. the disadvantages of working individually are… _______________________________________________________________________________ _______________________________________________________________________________ _______________________________________________________________________________ 6. the advantages of working in groups are… _______________________________________________________________________________ _______________________________________________________________________________ _______________________________________________________________________________ 7. the disadvantages of working in groups are… _______________________________________________________________________________ _______________________________________________________________________________ _______________________________________________________________________________ universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras36 caicedo triviño appendix b: lesson plan sample cooperative lesson 1: comparatives content area: english classes: 702-703-704 previous decisions and objective posing group size: four students students’ assignment to each group: taking into account who the leaders of the class are and who needs to improve in academic and discipline aspects. classroom arrangement: u shaped. materials: english-spanish dictionaries, comparatives list previously elaborated in class. roles assignment: students write short sentences to tell the class about their appearance in the past comparing it with their actual appearance. time: 15 minutes for the teacher to explain the activity, skills, and evaluation percentages. 15 minutes for ss to draw themselves when they were 5 years old. 15 minutes to provide students with vocabulary and useful expressions. 10 minutes for ss to brainstorm about physical or intellectual aspects they want to compare. 40 minutes for sentences writing. five minutes to organize the classroom. academic objective: strengthen ss skills in brainstorming, writing with a purpose, sharing their ideas, using previous concepts, and listening to others’ opinions. cooperative skills objective: stay in the group, speak in a quiet voice, express ideas and opinions, and promote partners’ participation. lesson planning cooperative procedure description: mutual questioning technique will be used. ss are asked to draw themselves on a piece of paper to reflect on their appearance when they were 5 years old. after that, ss brainstorm with their group on which topic could be relevant to make a comparison of their way of being when children and their current way; they can include physical or personality issues. finally, ss write in sentences next to their drawings of those aspects. 37profile vol. 18, no.1, january-june 2016. issn 1657-0790 (printed) 2256-5760 (online). bogotá, colombia. pages 21-38 using cooperative learning to foster the development of adolescents’ english writing skills positive interdependence: resources: ss will be given just one dictionary. roles: organizer (directs the brainstorm and encourages the group), recorder (verifies the group writings), observer (verifies the group is really working), and relationer (consults the comparatives rules). reward: if the whole group finishes 5 minutes earlier than the given time, they get extra points. success criteria: cooperative skills are 50% and the written product 50% of the grade. individual responsibility: following instructions and performing his/her role in the group to reach success. groups’ cooperation: respect other groups’ activity development. intervention the t will explain the role of each s, the cooperative skills, success criteria, time, and will solve questions during the lesson. evaluation and processing students and teachers evaluate their own performance during the lesson having in mind the skills and objectives set. activities explanation to the students learners are given the topic of the lesson, the objectives in it, the cooperative lessons they must take into account during the whole class as success criteria. in the same way, the teacher tells them about the time limit for each activity during the lesson and reminds them about the roles they are playing in this specific lesson. universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras38 caicedo triviño appendix c: questionnaire 3 answer the following questions: 1. what is your role in the lessons? _______________________________________________________________________________ _______________________________________________________________________________ _______________________________________________________________________________ _______________________________________________________________________________ _______________________________________________________________________________ 2. how did you feel playing this role? _______________________________________________________________________________ _______________________________________________________________________________ _______________________________________________________________________________ _______________________________________________________________________________ _______________________________________________________________________________ 3. did this role make sense in your group? _______________________________________________________________________________ _______________________________________________________________________________ _______________________________________________________________________________ _______________________________________________________________________________ _______________________________________________________________________________ 4. what would you do different in a future lesson? _______________________________________________________________________________ _______________________________________________________________________________ _______________________________________________________________________________ _______________________________________________________________________________ _______________________________________________________________________________ 5. would you like to have a different role in the group? if so, which one? _______________________________________________________________________________ _______________________________________________________________________________ _______________________________________________________________________________ _______________________________________________________________________________ _______________________________________________________________________________ 41profile vol. 19, no. 2, july-december 2017. issn 1657-0790 (printed) 2256-5760 (online). bogotá, colombia. pages 41-55 http://dx.doi.org/10.15446/profile.v19n2.60220 high school efl teachers’ identity and their emotions towards language requirements la identidad de profesores de secundaria de inglés como lengua extranjera y sus emociones acerca de los requisitos de lengua julio césar torres-rocha* universidad libre, bogotá, colombia this is a study on high school english as a foreign language colombian teacher identity. using an interpretive research approach, i explored the influence of the national bilingual programme on the reconstruction of teacher identity. this study focuses on how teachers feel about language requirements associated with a language policy. three instruments were used to collect the data for this research: a survey to find out teachers’ familiarity with the policy and explore their views on the language policy and language requirements and other aspects of their identity; autobiographical accounts to establish teachers’ trajectories as language learners and as professional english teachers; and semi-structured interviews to delve into their feelings and views on their language policy and requirements for english teachers. key words: english as a foreign language, language policy, language requirements, teacher identity, teacher emotions. este es un estudio sobre la identidad de profesores de inglés de secundaria en colombia. se exploró la influencia del programa nacional de bilingüismo en la construcción de la identidad profesional de los profesores de inglés usando un enfoque investigativo interpretativo. este estudio se centra en cómo se sienten ellos con respecto a los requisitos de lengua asociados con la política de lengua. se utilizaron tres instrumentos para recolectar información: una encuesta para averiguar la familiaridad de los profesores con las políticas y explorar otros aspectos de su identidad; narrativas autobiográficas para establecer las trayectorias de los docentes como aprendices y profesores de lengua; y entrevistas semi-estructuradas a los participantes seleccionados aleatoriamente para profundizar en sus sentimientos y perspectivas sobre la política de lengua y sus requisitos para profesores. palabras clave: identidad del profesor de inglés, inglés como lengua extranjera, política de lengua, requisitos de lengua, sentimientos de los profesores. * e-mail: julioc.torresr@uniulibrebog.edu.co how to cite this article (apa, 6th ed.): torres-rocha, j. c. (2017). high school efl teachers’ identity and their emotions towards language requirements. profile issues in teachers’ professional development, 19(2), 41-55. http://dx.doi.org/10.15446/profile.v19n2.60220. this article was received on september 20, 2016, and accepted on march 9, 2017. this is an open access article distributed under the terms of the creative commons license attribution-noncommercial-noderivatives 4.0 international license. consultation is possible at http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/. universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras42 torres-rocha introduction the present study deals with how language requirements associated with language policies affect english as a foreign language (efl) teachers’ professional identity since teachers, as agents of both the formation of social learning and of professional identities (wenger, 2000), are essential for the design and implementation of any educational policy. the reason for this interest has to do with the implementation of foreign language policies in colombia with a rather unsuccessful outcome in the last decade. however, the real impact of language policies on teacher identity is yet to be established. with this purpose, it is important to recognise the different aspects that have been found to be part of professional language teachers’ identities. for instance, teachers’ intercultural competence (duff & uchida, 1997), their language learning experiences, their beliefs or conceptions and practices (borg, 2006), and their trajectories or imagined futures represent essential parts of language teacher identities. also, their status as non-native english speaker teachers (nnest), who “can be good role models for english language learners but that they might lack knowledge about the target language and cultural norms” (menard-warwick, 2008, p. 617), is part of their identities. all these issues have been taken into consideration in previous studies, but little research has been conducted on how language requirements associated with a language policy can impact identities as far as emotions, perceptions, and trajectories. according to day (2004), in teacher education, one important goal is to prepare teachers who are informed and flexible to manage the imposed changes in the curriculum and education policies while trying to understand issues such as teachers’ sense of educational aim, practices, teacher identity, and agency. interestingly, as beijaard (1995) asserts, high school (hs) teachers’ identity is essentially linked to their subject area, which is the case of the present study of hs efl teachers who face imposed changes, requirements, and policies in colombia. in my view, the top-down strategy implemented by the national ministry of education (men in spanish) up to now has affected teachers’ professional identity in different ways, but in what positive or negative ways? i consider it necessary to evaluate the impact on teachers’ identity of the previous national bilingual programme (nbp) before embarking upon a new programme called “colombia very well”, intended for the 2015-2025 period. therefore, i would like to explore the following questions and achieve the objectives proposed in this study. questions in what way do hs efl teachers feel that the language requirements associated with the national bilingual policy affect their identity as language learners and as professional language teachers? what other aspects do efl teachers feel have influenced the development of their identities? objectives to explore hs efl teachers’ perception of language requirements associated with the nbp. to determine participants’ trajectories as language learners and teachers. to find out the positive or negative effects that the language requirements cause in teacher identity as language learners and professional language teachers. to identify other aspects teachers perceive influence their identity besides language proficiency. colombian efl context the colombian school system is divided into two types of schools: private schools and state schools. the first group is self-funded and represents 10% of the schools in the country. the second sector is the official school group where most of the colombian children study; it represents 90% of the schools and is funded by the state, specifically the men. schools are structured into common levels of study for basic education. basic primary education, year levels 1 to 5 and basic secondary 43profile vol. 19, no. 2, july-december 2017. issn 1657-0790 (printed) 2256-5760 (online). bogotá, colombia. pages 41-55 high school efl teachers’ identity and their emotions towards language requirements education, year levels 6 to 9. years 10 and 11 of secondary education are supposed to be for humanities, sciences, and technical-vocational secondary education. this study concentrates on secondary education teachers who belong to the public sector of education and teach 11to 16-year-old children from grades 6 to 11. problematic situation policies usually take into consideration teachers’ competences or more specifically subject knowledge but not their experience and their knowledge of the sociocultural or socio-political context; at least this is the case of the nbp in colombia. in 2006, the men decreed that english in schools had to be strengthened and they created a “bilingual bogotá” programme, and afterwards, a “bilingual colombia” programme. both programmes targeted the whole privateand stateschool sectors, aiming at fostering the development of proficiency in “standard” varieties of english (american and/or british) in primary and secondary education. however, these programmes were not welcome or fully supported by scholars in colombia (gonzález, 2007; de mejía, 2006). they state that the lack of attention to the linguistic complexity of the country and the limited notion of bilingualism (spanish-english) perpetuate inequalities in terms of linguistic prestige and do not permit the construction of a more tolerant colombian society. they also mention the inadequacy of professional development models established by nbp, the need to deconstruct the english language teaching’s (elt) prevailing neo-colonial discourses, the construction of a local discourse of elt, and the creation of mechanisms of dialogue between policy makers, and teacher educators and researchers. a foreign language policy was established in colombia in 2006 through a national bilingual programme (spanish-english). this language policy has not been as successful as the authorities expected due to different factors. to me, they are: first, a top-down approach of language policy without taking into account teachers’ viewpoint; second, the implications of a national policy in terms of the scope of the nbp, and a lack of english teachers’ professional development; third, the inattention to indigenous languages in the colombian territories, presuming the nation is a monolingual and mono-cultural society and therefore denying the multicultural and multilingual nature of the nationstate (de mejía, 2006). according to blackledge (2002), many times, “democratic, multilingual societies that apparently tolerate or promote heterogeneity, in fact undervalue or appear to ignore the linguistic diversity of their population” (p. 69). for this scholar, “a liberal orientation to equal opportunity for all masks an ideological drive toward homogeneity, a drive that potentially marginalizes or excludes those who either refuse or are unwilling to conform” (p. 69). english language requirements for students and teachers have been a conflicting issue in the elt field in colombia due to various reasons. one reason is the neoliberal policies of recent governments; another is the promotion of only one language (english) for the purpose of globalisation and internationalisation which underlie the objectives of linguistic imperialism and native speakerism, and thirdly, the imposition of a standardised language competence for not only hs students and teachers but also university students and professors. in sum, english requirements might generate opportunities, development, and internationalisation, but they can also bring about marginalisation, lack of access, and confusion for language students and teachers in the colombian context as well. in this paper, i have presented first a short introduction of the rationale and the efl colombian context of study. in the next sections, three important constructs for the study will be introduced: community of practice, identity, and language policy. after this, the methodology, techniques used, and the participants are presented. finally, data analysis is explained and the findings of a three-stage case study are presented using a sequential order in order to lead the reader to a final universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras44 torres-rocha section on discussions, conclusion, and implications for further research. theoretical framework and literature review community of practice (cop) learning, understood as social participation, implies not only involvement in the activities of the communities of practice one belongs to but also the construction of subjectivities and identities in relation to those communities. these identities are constructed based on shared meanings. wenger (1998) understands the learning communities as a net of interconnected dimensions (meaning, practice, community, and identity) that define each other and characterise the learningdevelopment relationship. in wenger’ s conception, community is understood as a social configuration in which what one does is defined as something worth doing and one’s participation is important. in this way, one’s identity is constructed and communicated in various discourse forms, reflecting how learning changes who we are and how we become members of a determined community by creating personal histories. this process shows modes of belonging or identification: engaging, imagining, and aligning with the practices of a community (wenger, 2000). according to wenger (2010), identities are formed within a cop, which can be regarded as a social learning system. in this sense, the colombian elt is a cop which has emergent structures, complex relationships, dynamic boundaries, on-going negotiation of identity, and cultural meaning. it is also a simple social unit where learning defines who we are. therefore, both the concepts of identity as well as of cop are essential parts of wenger’s theory because they are interdependent. besides, “identity reflects a complex relationship between the social and the personal where learning is social becoming” (wenger, 2010, p. 183). in the cop, competences and experiences lead to peripheral learning and partial participation, and the tension between them results in knowledge transformations in order to prevent stagnation and uncritical reproduction from happening. it is here where the sense of identity is constructed in the present; it also includes the past and the future in the trajectory toward the goal. however boundaries, understood by wenger (2000) as fluid and tacit limits that define the cop, can have positive and negative effects on the members of the community. in the elt community in colombia, shared practice, by its very nature, creates identity boundaries; however, imposed language policy requirements might create limitations or lack of access. the latter type of boundaries are artefacts representing language exams or requirements, which instead of bridging over boundaries in a community, can create marginalisation because they might be misinterpreted or interpreted blindly and therefore might affect learners’ and teachers’ identity. to sum up, “if knowing is an act of belonging, then our identities are a key structuring element of how we know” (wenger, 2000, p. 238). in the same way, knowing, learning, and sharing knowledge are parts of belonging or identifying. also, identity is crucial to social learning systems for three reasons according to wenger (2000): first, our identities combine competence and experience into a way of knowing. second, our ability to deal productively with boundaries depends on our ability to engage and suspend our identities. third, our identities are the dynamic constructs in which communities and boundaries become realised as an experience of the world. (p. 239) boundaries are the product of sharing learning but they might be used to exclude or marginalise others when imposed from an external authority rather than constructed in a cop. this might be the case of the language requirements established by the men. 45profile vol. 19, no. 2, july-december 2017. issn 1657-0790 (printed) 2256-5760 (online). bogotá, colombia. pages 41-55 high school efl teachers’ identity and their emotions towards language requirements identity as language learner and as professional language teacher researchers have recognised the need to study learners’ identity in the last two decades i.e. the interrelationship between identity and l2 learning (block, 2006; day, 2004; norton, 2000; pavlenko & blackledge, 2004) and teachers’ identity issues and their impact on teaching. according to varghese, morgan, johnston, and johnson (2005), it is necessary to distinguish between research on teachers’ professional identity in general and language teacher identity. in the latter, sociocultural, sociolinguistic, and ethnic considerations take centre stage. varghese et al. summarised the most important issues in identity research as the following: first, “identity is multiple, shifting, and in conflict; second, identity is crucially related to social, cultural, and political context; and third, identity is being constructed, maintained, and negotiated primarily through discourse” (p. 35). a perspective of identity from a social psychology posture is adopted and it is articulated in the present study with the theory of cop mentioned above. in the same way, the trajectories of hs efl teachers as learners and as language professionals are explored. in social psychology, identity entails having a personal and a social identity (liebkind, 2010). social identity is based on an individual’s membership in social groups. therefore, language teachers’ personal identity is based on their personal biography, interests, likes/ dislikes, and knowledge—including beliefs, personal theories, and personal practical knowledge—whereas their social identity is defined through multiple memberships: a member of a collectivity of teachers; the membership of a certain social class with certain restricted access to power, a certain income group, and educational level; and their membership in a cultural or national entity (norton, 1997). for example, “a teacher might identify strongly with a disadvantaged school community, or a teacher might include him or herself in the collectivity of all english teachers of a nation as opposed to policy makers or students in general” (glass, 2012, p. 138). he/she might feel like a non-native speaker of english as opposed to a native speaker, he/she might or might not feel proficient in english, and he/she might be encouraged or threatened by educational policies vis-a-vis advancing professionally. interest in teacher identity in the elt field is fairly recent (liu & xu, 2011; norton & early, 2011; tsui, 2007). a review of the literature shows that three main themes have been widely discussed. the first is “the relationship between teachers’ linguistic positions and professional identity” (liu & xu, 2011, p. 590). these studies explore how the dichotomy of native-speakers (ns) / non-nativespeakers (nns) has troubled nns teachers, making them feel inferior and incompetent as legitimate language education professionals (jenkins, 2005; park, 2012; pavlenko, 2003). the second theme explores conflicts between social and professional identities (varghese et al., 2005) and suggests that there is an undeniable relation between teachers’ professional identities and their socially constructed identities (e.g., gender, race, and ethnicity). these previously mentioned studies defend a holistic, dynamic view of understanding how the negotiations between teachers and the wider socio-cultural contexts have shaped their professional identity. the third theme explores how teacher identity is mediated in educational reforms (liu & xu, 2011; tsui, 2007), the mediating role of power relationships in the process of identity formation. making use of the cop theory (wenger, 1998), one sees that these studies situate identity in a central focus and highlight “the need for teachers to reconstruct their identity to cope with new challenges” (liu & xu, 2011, p. 590), such as healthy nns identities, socio-political identities, teaching methodologies, and top-down policies. language policy at the national level, colombia has implemented a language policy within a specific geopolitical context where the major business partners have been the usa and canada, through the exploitation of mineral universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras46 torres-rocha resources carried out by multinational companies, the implementation of unbalanced free trade agreements, and the monopolisation of the provision of english (english teacher training and consultancy service for the men of other multinationals like the british council). according to valencia (2013), this language policy, which intended to make colombian citizens legitimate participants of the globalised world through the democratization of the use of the english language, has turned into a policy that generates processes of exclusion and stratification through the standardisation and marketing of english. such an impact on society has directly affected english learners’ and teachers’ identity constructions by setting “asymmetrical power relationships and uneven conditions in english language education” (escobar, 2013, p. 45). this has also imposed identity shaping discourses. escobar (2013), in a critical discourse study, analyses the colombian language policy documents and concurs that the use of discourse strategies has positioned the colombian elt cop in a disadvantageous and vulnerable place. at an international level, caihong (2011) has evidenced other identity shaping factors related to language policy. for example, in a university in china, he highlights the powerful influence of policy upon teachers’ identity changes. they are basically concerned with their sense of competence and satisfaction in terms of knowledge, ability to do research, and horizons. the disciplinary nature of college english teaching became a critical factor that affects university efl teachers’ identity and career development. he states that without the disciplinary nature of college english teaching being recognised, the construction of professionalism in the college english teaching faculty will just be unexplainable. caihong concluded that “their professional identities are shaped and reshaped in the process of negotiation and balance between personal beliefs and rules at institutional, disciplinary, and public levels” (p. 18). according to sharkey (2009) “learning and teaching are always affected by institutional contexts and their policies, ranging from the classroom policies that teachers establish or enact tacitly or explicitly, to the larger rings of policy set by schools, organizations, districts, states, and/or country” (p. 48). in colombia, for example, the national agenda, colombia bilingüe, is the subject of much discussion and debate, raising issues such as: how bilingualism is defined, who is included/ excluded in this definition, and how english language proficiency will be determined (gonzález, 2007). to sum up, the most relevant points highlighted in this section are: the concept of identity as a process of identification with one or several cops; the aspects of identity of members of elt cop that are multiple, shifting, and conflicting; and the social nature of the construction or reconstruction of efl professional identities, which are shaped by economic, cultural, and political factors, especially language policies. all studies reported here have commonalities in the sense that they share a postmodern perspective of identity; they are interested in the processes of efl teacher identity construction, and they also share the use of qualitative methods to discover, explore, or understand professional identity. in most of the studies, researchers are engaged in investigating through the use of different forms of narratives like autobiographies, diaries, interviews, and reflective journals. the present study followed similar perspectives, constructs, and methodologies. method interpretative perspective the methodological focus of this study is framed within an interpretative perspective of enquir y, particularly the constructivist tradition where reality is constructed, analysed, and regarded critically by the researcher with the help of the participants. within the qualitative approach to research, a case study could be defined as a naturalistic inquiry in ontological (a holistic or systemic perspective of the “self ” in terms of their experiential understanding, and 47profile vol. 19, no. 2, july-december 2017. issn 1657-0790 (printed) 2256-5760 (online). bogotá, colombia. pages 41-55 high school efl teachers’ identity and their emotions towards language requirements multiple realities); epistemological (a constructivist orientation to knowledge); methodological (a centrality on interpretation); and axiological (a shared value system of a cop) terms. this study on teachers’ experiences and beliefs is both qualitative and subjective because it is a shared construction between my participants and me through dialogues and reflections. creswell (1994) argues that people seek understanding of the world in which they live and work. they develop subjective meanings of their experience. these meanings are varied and multiple, leading the researcher to look for complexity of views rather than narrowing meanings into a few categories or ideas. (p. 8) the narrative used either as an autobiographical account or an interview was analysed in broad thematic structures and used details provided by the informants. techniques as mentioned in the literature review, most of the studies (liu & xu, 2011; norton & early, 2011; park, 2012; pavlenko, 2003; tsui, 2007) used interviews and biographic narratives as data to research teacher identity. narratives can be defined as “personal and human dimensions of experience over time, and take into account the relationship between individual experience and cultural context” (clandinin & connelly, 2000, p. 20). riessman (2008) says that a narrative is a way of conducting case-centred research. it can be taken from interviews, observation, and documents. “as a general field narrative enquiry is grounded in the study of the particular” (p. 5). pavlenko (2007) states that narratives are now widely used to present people’s complex lives, experiences and identities in complex scenarios of multilingual and multicultural communities. therefore, i also utilised narratives to unveil the human experience, the particular and the sociocultural aspects related to the construction of teacher identities. since “storytelling happens relationally, collaboratively between speakers and listeners” (andrews, squire, & tamboukou, 2013, p. 201), i reconstructed teachers’ narratives to present them in a holistic manner by selecting, organising, connecting, and evaluating events, experiences, and feelings as meaningful for a particular audience: the teachers themselves. i carried out a three-stage case study and an instrument was used for each stage of the process. at the beginning, 14 out of 20 experienced hs efl teachers completed a survey designed with some closed questions and a few open questions. it was developed to gather data in the first stage of this study. its objective was to explore hs efl teachers’ perceptions of language requirements associated with the nbp. in the second stage, which consisted of writing a narrative or autobiographical account of their language learning process, only four teachers agreed to continue in the study. these four teachers were sent a request to write their language learning biographies as learners and as teachers within the last eight or nine years of the implementation of the nbp. its purpose was to determine participants’ trajectories as language learners and teachers. in the third stage, three teachers agreed to participate in an interview to go deep into their perception of the language requirement and how this language policy influenced their identities as learners and as professional language teachers in the past, at present, and in the future. participants i will describe the four participants that remained in the second and third stages. gloria, who did not participate in the third stage of the study, is an experienced english teacher at a state school. she has had a hard time trying to comply with the requirements of the nbp but has been able to succeed in achieving her goals in spite of her socio-economic background. linda is an experienced english teacher at a state school who has struggled to comply with the requirements of the nbp as both learner and practitioner. universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras48 torres-rocha although she wanted to study medicine before starting her studies in education, she has developed her identity as a persistent, devoted teacher who slightly disagrees with the language policy but wants to belong to the elt community. mike studied engineering before he decided to become a teacher. he is now an experienced english teacher at a state school. he is a committed practitioner. he has developed his identity as a confident professional who wants to comply with the nbp requirements and trusts educational authorities. finally, stella, who first started studying law, is an experienced english teacher. she strives for professional development and high performance for the benefit of her students. she is critical not only of the language policies but also of the conditions she has to work in, besides being a research conscious practitioner. all of them share the aim of improving elt education in colombia. data analysis the collected data were analysed in a way that the findings obtained in one stage informed the next in order to present the “subject reality” (pavlenko, 2007, p. 166). the analysis and findings helped to relate the information and to match themes. in this section, the first stage depicts the informants’ contexts, participation in and familiarity with the nbp, their perception of proficiency and determining factors in the identity, and language policy. the second and third stages render the findings that merged out of the thematic analysis, using data from both sources, the autobiographical accounts and the interviews. figure 1 shows the process followed. the survey result analysis was based on descriptive statistics that, basically, display the percentages and frequencies through graphs. the analysis of biographical accounts was made based on pre-determined narrative structure: present, past, and future of teachers’ language and professional learning processes. i partially used the phases of thematic analysis suggested by braun and clarke (2006) and saldaña (2013). first, i made myself familiar with the data and generated initial codes across the entire data by using colour coding and side comments. next, i coded all data so that i was able to find patterns or themes. i followed saldaña’s (2013) suggestion to use analytic memos to start refining the codes and the themes. then, i started searching and reviewing codes that might become prevalent themes in each stage of the study. after that, i defined and named similar themes and selected relevant extracts so that i could produce a report at the end. final themes, filtered by the researcher’s view and interpretations, are related to the main aims of this study which is framed in the theory of cop and how shared beliefs reflect the kinship and boundaries of a group. i focused my attention on emerged trends or significant insights that could provide me with evidence of feelings, perceptions, and views of the influence of language policy in teacher identity. figure 1. research design • survey • 14 participants • interview • 3 participants • autobiographical account • presented as a narrative analysis and fidings stage threestage one stage two • 4 participants 49profile vol. 19, no. 2, july-december 2017. issn 1657-0790 (printed) 2256-5760 (online). bogotá, colombia. pages 41-55 high school efl teachers’ identity and their emotions towards language requirements following the same procedure as with the autobiographies, the interview analysis was made taking into consideration the themes that emerged in the interaction that took place in a semi-structured mode with a few guiding questions. i merged the significant insights gained in the data collection process at my convenience in the findings. additionally, i presented them in a sequential and meaningful order to re-present, reconstruct, and express informants’ reported experiences, as andrews et al. (2013) suggest presenting narratives, which go from experience-centred to sociocultural oriented approaches. findings first stage survey hs teachers were surveyed to characterise the population and to find out about their perception of language requirements associated with the nbp, their own perception of their english level and other aspects of their professional identity. i sent the survey to 20 elt master’s candidates who were in their second year at a university in bogota. i used survey monkey to design, administer, and get the results of the survey. out of the 20 students, 14 responded, showing a 70% return rate. based on the answers for questions 1 to 3, i was able to find out that the informants were all experienced hs teachers who had been teaching english from 9 (nine teachers) to 15 (five teachers) years. nine female teachers and five male teachers participated in the survey. out of the 14 teachers, 13 worked at public schools and one worked at a private institution. the results of questions 4 and 5 showed there is some familiarity with the nbp and the levels of proficiency established in it, because eight participants said that they were familiar with the language policy, whereas five were not familiar and one did not answer. however, they all managed to rank themselves in the levels of proficiency in english established in the policy and therefore in the nbp. eleven classified themselves at the b2 level, two at the c1 level, and one at the b1 level, according to the common european framework. this might imply that they all are, to a certain extent, familiar with the levels of reference used and required by the language policy and therefore by the nbp. question 8 aimed at establishing teachers’ perceptions as legitimate participants in the elt community in colombia. out of 14 teachers, 12 answered they felt they were legitimate users of english based on a screening process they had to go through to become english teachers, their achievements on the international english language testing system (ielts), their knowledge of pedagogy, and the use of a standard variety of english. however, two teachers expressed their feelings of exclusion by saying that “the government says that colombian teachers are not well prepared in english” (stella, survey). this might be because english teachers were questioned about whether their knowledge was at the level needed to carry out the established language policy. thus, with the legitimacy of their knowledge being questioned, and their promotion and status being affected, these teachers faced a sense of confusion about their professional identity and career development from the very beginning of the implementation of the nbp. almost ten years later, two teachers still felt that they neither belonged to a community of practice nor were recognised: i also teach in primary school and i do not have the opportunity to practice my english and as a consequence few people know i am an english teacher. (linda, interview) in question 9, teachers were asked about their perception of the language requirement. the results showed three positions mainly: one group (five teachers) said that the requirements do not respond to the context and reality of the colombian society. another group (five teachers) said that if the government wanted them not universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras50 torres-rocha only to achieve the required level of english but also to improve their methodology, the men should make sure that all teachers get the proper training. the last group (four teachers) expressed their unfamiliarity with the policy and its requirements. the results of questions 10 and 11 lend themselves to determine that there was a difference in participants’ self-image as language learners and as professionals because they prioritised language proficiency as learners (eleven teachers), whereas intercultural competence was preponderant in their identity as professionals, even though they regarded language proficiency as an important aspect of their identity. it is interesting how being a non-native speaker was ranked in the lowest position, showing that this condition might not have impacted their identities as language users as much as the other two aspects: language proficiency and intercultural competence. the last question aimed at identifying other aspects of their identities they considered important as learners and as professionals. they highlighted the following four aspects: professional ethics, personal experiences, previous knowledge, and reflective teaching practice. to find out more about the results of stage one, second and third stages were set to delve into their personal histories and establish if the language requirement actually had been significant in their trajectories as professional language teachers. second stage reported trajectories out of the 14 teachers who completed the survey, i chose four teachers keeping in mind the following criteria: they all were hs teachers, they had more than ten years’ experience, they answered all the survey questions and they were familiar with the nbp. they were asked to write a language autobiography and to sign a consent form. in the autobiographies, three pre-categories were set up from the beginning, indicating one trajectory as a language learner, another trajectory as a language teacher, and the other future trajectory or imagined future within a new language policy in colombia. it is necessary to mention that only four teachers handed in their autobiographical accounts. trajectories as language learners. language requirement might have affected teachers’ language learning experience because the four participants did different things to improve their level of english while studying for their undergraduate degree. however, not one mentioned the international language test results as a proof of their proficiency level in english in their autobiographies or interviews, although they were aware of their existence. one reason could be that the access to international tests is very limited for the efl teachers and their cost is too high for the efl community in colombia. they all mentioned they wanted to improve their level of english proficiency to work abroad, pursue their studies at a master’s level, or improve their teaching practice. they seemed to be more concerned about their own qualification and their students’ improvement than they were about international standards, globalisation, or internationalisation. this might indicate that either the language policy had not reached the target population or the hs efl community of teachers had not appropriated it thoroughly. consequently, this might indicate that the language requirement established by the external authorities does not coincide with the boundaries established by the internal cop (colombian elt community). the participants can assign a different value to these language requirements, which do not relate to their proximate context. teachers perceived them as alien elements that did not determine their belonging to the efl cop. they would rather take the chance to learn from others (partners and teachers) to improve their level of english proficiency and receive feedback from colleagues or more knowledgeable people. however, in the first stage, the role of language proficiency was seen as highly determining in their identity. 51profile vol. 19, no. 2, july-december 2017. issn 1657-0790 (printed) 2256-5760 (online). bogotá, colombia. pages 41-55 high school efl teachers’ identity and their emotions towards language requirements participants’ current professional learning. reporting on their present state, teachers were aware of the complex realities of their efl classrooms. they were positioned in their role and responsibility as english language teachers. moreover, they had become critical of educational policies and were willing to participate in their implementation, despite their hard teaching conditions, students’ lives in their communities and limitations implicated in the context. they worked towards a higher educational status by studying for a graduate degree at the same university to provide their students with a better quality of education as evidenced in stella’s and gloria’s written account. at this stage, although they all also showed willingness to reach the objectives established by the different programmes or policies established by the men, their professional identity started shifting from the fixed conception of language proficiency to other defining aspects of their professional identity such as: awareness of context and limitation of working conditions, as mike and linda stated in their narratives. participants’ imagined future. the participants looked forward to completing their graduate studies to become better practitioners by “changing paradigms in english language teaching and using new methodologies to bring better opportunities to learners” (gloria, autobiography). they knew that their professional development was a social responsibility besides being a personal goal. one of them wanted to become a professor at the university level even though she knew that this would require a lot of investment and effort to achieve (linda, interview). another teacher wanted to continue her professional development as far as english improvement and methodology were concerned (stella, autobiography). the other teacher would like to continue contributing to the consolidation of foreign language policy to the best of his abilities (mike, interview). as we can see, professional identity has evolved throughout their trajectories but, consciously or unconsciously, teachers have been affected by the language policy in the last ten years of its implementation. what is more, the theme of achieving a high level of language proficiency is pervasive in their narratives. third stage only three of my initial participants (stella, linda, and mike) were willing to get to this stage where they were interview by me. i used the information collected throughout the study focusing on viewpoints regarding language requirement associated with the nbp and positive and negative feelings the teachers had about the impact of the language requirements of the nbp. challenge, achievement, hope, and expectancy are some of the positive feelings teachers had about the nbp and its requirement for teachers. i think it [the c1 in the ielts] is the confirmation that i know and that gives me kind of security of what i am doing in the classroom, and actually my students feel secure with me in the classroom. (stella, interview) however, they also held negative feelings such as limitations, frustrations, scepticism, and disappointment towards the foreign language policy defined by the men and its pertinence. they express these views in their interviews and autobiographies as follows: students do not have food to prepare their breakfast, lunch, or dinner. they do not have money to buy a notebook or a pencil, and they suffer family violence, among others. and i as a teacher should face those situations, trying to engage students in the class, telling [them] they have to know that english is important for them. (linda, autobiography) i know c1 is kind of difficult to find in public schools in english teachers, the problem is that when we learned, . . . english, we wanted to travel, we wanted to go out, we wanted to do so many things instead of ending up in a public (state) institution . . . so many good teachers, in terms of english level proficiency, travel or work in different private institutions that are demanding good teachers and the payment is much better, so public institutions lack of good teaching because of that reason. (mike, interview) universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras52 torres-rocha as we can see, there are different opinions and feelings about the language policy. they depend on the context in which teachers work, their views on language education, and their awareness of students’ environment in relation to the policy. in these extracts identity is reflected in a dynamic and conflicting way since teachers feel satisfied when complying with the language requirement but at the same time, they know the circumstances are not ideal for them or their students to achieve the desired standards. regarding teachers’ views of language policy and therefore nbp, mike seemed to have internalised the mainstream discourses and made them part of his identity: they [policies] should have affected in my life, in my teaching practice because i follow them, i’ve read some of them, i’m not a really good reader unfortunately, and sometimes i avoid getting into politics and things, i feel that it is a kind of a pressure, . . . their policies, and i read what they want us to do and they want the students to achieve, and i think that they are good…everything that the government does is supposed to be good for people, and this is not an exception. this is supposed to be good. (mike, interview) whereas, the others were very critical of the language requirements and the pertinence of the foreign language policy, as presented by the informants: bilingualism programs presented by the government with any name or in period of time, are so far from the realities that exist in our schools and aim to eventually submit annual statistics which in my opinion are far from the education of our learners. (gloria, autobiography) up today, sixth, seventh, and eighth graders have three hour of class per week, and ninth to eleventh graders have four. the policies and governmental projects look for bilingualism process in colombia by 2025; nevertheless, i do not see how it can be a reality with such a reduced exposure to the foreign language. (stella, autobiography) due to paper extension constraints, i used only linda because i found her narratives to be representative of most hs efl teachers’ “life realities” (pavlenko, 2007). i selected, organised, and put together the narratives of autobiographies and interviews and briefly narrated linda’s construction and reconstruction of her professional identity within the historical, social, and political complexities of her context (see appendix). reflection and conclusion this study has offered a critical interpretive account of mainly three teachers that engaged in the whole process. it has been concerned with a critical perspective of a language policy from the people that bear its implementation. it has also contributed new aspects to the understanding of the construction of teacher identity in a particular socioeconomic context in five ways. first, being an english teacher was not the first choice of the informants who are now committed educators, showing that identity is dynamic. this agrees with varghese et al.’s (2005) view of identity. second, teachers knew about the language policies and language requirements but most of them did not feel that they had access to opportunities for development, demonstrating that power relations shape identity, which concurs with the views of liu and xu (2011) in their study of inclusion and exclusion of language teachers. third, feelings towards the english language requirements demonstrated to be conflicting factors influencing teachers’ construction and reconstruction of their identities. the subject matter (english) is an essential part of their identities, but their identity is not limited to their subject matter. there were many other external and internal factors that influenced teachers’ professional identity as members of the efl cop, confirming that identity is multifaceted. this agrees with the viewpoint of norton and early (2011) and glass (2012). fourth, teachers’ trajectories have changed their identities throughout their lives but this change, to my view, has been exerted by the language policy, rendering how external circulating discourses percolate local identities. this view is also expressed by valencia (2013) 53profile vol. 19, no. 2, july-december 2017. issn 1657-0790 (printed) 2256-5760 (online). bogotá, colombia. pages 41-55 high school efl teachers’ identity and their emotions towards language requirements when he refers to the discourses of bilingualism in colombia. finally, foreign language policy in colombia does not only have a negative side as regarded by the local elt experts, but it also contributes positively to the teachers’ development and achievement, even though it has been implemented in a managerial perspective of professionalism. in addition, the implementation of a top-down foreign language policy in colombia through the nbp has entailed, for teachers, a change or a reconstruction in identity as language learners as well as professional language teachers. based on the gathered data and my interaction with the teachers and their narratives, the policy has also encouraged them to become better language users and reflective practitioners and therefore better language teachers with or without the help of the authorities. they have evolved from being a below average language learner to becoming well prepared, well-informed, and critical professional language teachers. linda, gloria, stella, and mike might represent the majority of english teachers in urban areas in colombia. they have struggled to get an education, strived for improvement and succeeded in becoming professional english teachers in spite of many barriers, lack of access and social recognition, and discriminatory policies. they have walked us through their identity construction as a life-long learning experience. references andrews, m., squire, c., & tamboukou, m. 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(2013). the coding manual for qualitative researchers (2nd ed.). los angeles, us: sage. sharkey, j. (2009). imbalanced literacy: how a us national educational policy has affected english learners and their teachers. colombian applied linguistics journal, 11, 48-62. tsui, a. b. m. (2007). complexities of identity formation: a narrative inquiry of an efl teacher. tesol quarterly, 41(4), 657-680. http://doi.org/10.1002/j.1545-7249.2007. tb00098.x. valencia, m. (2013). language policy and the manufacturing of consent for foreign intervention in colombia. profile issues in teachers’ professional development, 15(1), 27-43. varghese, m., morgan, b., johnston, b., & johnson, k. a. (2005). theorizing language teacher identity: three perspectives and beyond. journal of language, identity, and education, 4(1), 21-44. http://doi.org/10.1207/ s15327701jlie0401_2. wenger, e. (1998). communities of practice: learning, meaning, and identity. cambridge, uk: cambridge university press. http://doi.org/10.1017/cbo9780511803932. wenger, e. (2000). communities of practice and social learning systems. organization, 7(2), 225-246. http:// doi.org/10.1177/135050840072002. wenger, e. (2010). communities of practice and social learning systems: the career of a concept. in c. blackmore (ed.), social learning systems and communities of practice (pp. 179-198). london, uk: springer. http://doi. org/10.1007/978-1-84996-133-2_11. about the author julio césar torres-rocha is a teacher educator at universidad libre (colombia) and currently a doctoral candidate in education (tesol) at university of exeter, uk. he holds an ma in research methods in applied linguistics and elt from warwick university (uk) and an ma in applied linguistics to tefl from universidad distrital francisco josé de caldas (colombia). 55profile vol. 19, no. 2, july-december 2017. issn 1657-0790 (printed) 2256-5760 (online). bogotá, colombia. pages 41-55 high school efl teachers’ identity and their emotions towards language requirements appendix: linda’s narrative linda defines herself as an experienced english teacher at a state school who has struggled to comply with the requirement of the nbp and evolves from a weak language learner to a responsible and informed efl practitioner. she has developed her identity as a persistent, devoted teacher/guide who slightly disagrees with the language policy but wants to belong to the colombian elt community. tracing linda’s answers from the beginning of this study from the survey and autobiography to the stage of interviewing, i found that she did not want to become an english teacher; instead, she wanted to study medicine, but due to financial reasons she ended up enrolling in a professional teaching programme at a state university in bogota. she said she was not cut out for english but after sorting out health and family problems, investing long hours in studying with the help of more knowledgeable partners, she was able to reach an acceptable communicative competence that allowed her to graduate as an english teacher. at this moment, she identifies herself as an english teacher although she still feels unrecognised as a legitimate participant in her community because her work has been not only in high school but also in primary school. primary school teachers in this context are teachers who have to teach english without being specialists even though this is not linda’s case now because she holds a ba in education majoring in english. she did not feel very confident with her language proficiency and since she started to study for her degree, she had always been looking for opportunities to improve her level of english. after finishing her undergraduate studies, she started to work in the private sector; however, only after more than 8 years working there did she manage to pass the screening process to work in the public or state sector. she has been working in a government-funded school for 4 years, even though she had already worked for a long time in the private sector. currently she is pursuing her graduate studies at a private university in the area of english didactics. 219profile vol. 18, no.1, january-june 2016. issn 1657-0790 (printed) 2256-5760 (online). bogotá, colombia. pages 219-234 http://dx.doi.org/10.15446/profile.v18n1.48740 policies for english language teacher education in brazil today: preliminary remarks políticas para la formación de profesores de inglés en el brasil de hoy: primeras aproximaciones telma gimenez1* universidade estadual de londrina, londrina, brazil aparecida de jesus ferreira2** universidade estadual de ponta grossa, ponta grossa, brazil rosângela aparecida alves basso3*** universidade estadual de maringá, maringá, brazil roberta carvalho cruvinel4**** universidade federal de goiás, goiânia, brazil in the last decade brazil has begun to tackle the educational challenges of a developing country with a young population. the scale of such a demand is a result of the social and cultural inequalities that have historically been existent. recent official policies and programs have addressed this gap by promoting greater opportunities for teacher education, and for the teaching of english as a foreign language. in this paper we discuss four of these programs/policies by highlighting their innovative aspects vis-à-vis traditional practices. we conclude that, despite quantitative advances, much still needs to be done to guarantee qualitative improvements in areas such as the curriculum in order to challenge the continuing influence of predominant ideologies. key words: brazil, education, english as a foreign language, policy, programs. en la última década, brasil ha comenzado a afrontar los retos educativos de un país en desarrollo con una población joven. la escala de tal demanda es el resultado de las desigualdades que se han producido históricamente. políticas y programas oficiales recientes han abordado este vacío mediante la promoción de mayores oportunidades para la formación del profesorado, y para la enseñanza del inglés como lengua extranjera. en este artículo discutimos cuatro de estos programas/políticas, poniendo de relieve sus aspectos innovadores frente a las prácticas tradicionales. llegamos a la conclusión de que, a pesar de los avances cuantitativos, aún queda mucho por hacer para garantizar mejoras cualitativas en áreas tales como el plan de estudios para contraponerse a la continua influencia de las ideologías predominantes. palabras clave: brasil, educación, inglés como lengua extranjera, política, programas. * e-mail: tgimenez@uel.br ** e-mail: aparecidadejesusferreira@gmail.com *** e-mail: rbasso@uem.br **** e-mail: cruvinelroberta@gmail.com how to cite this article (apa, 6th ed.): gimenez, t., ferreira, a., alves basso, r. a., & carvalho cruvinel, r. (2016). policies for english language teacher education in brazil today: preliminary remarks. profile issues in teachers’ professional development, 18(1), 219-234. http://dx.doi.org/10.15446/profile.v18n1.48740. this article was received on february 3, 2015, and accepted on july 10, 2015. this is an open access article distributed under the terms of the creative commons license attribution-noncommercial-noderivatives 4.0 international license. consultation is possible at http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/. universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras220 gimenez, ferreira, alves basso, & carvalho cruvinel introduction we are brazilian postgraduate foreign language researchers developing studies regarding the current educational scenario in our country. in this article we discuss some developments resulting from the adoption of policies aimed at teacher training in light of the implementation of the national policy for the education of school teachers and the internationalization of academic production represented by the “s cience without b orders” program. our focus is on the following four different policies and programs: the national development plan for teachers in public educational systems and network (parfor), the professional development program for teachers of english in the united states (pdpi), english without borders, and the national policy for inclusion and diversity. all these policies/ programs bring with them consequences for the teaching and learning of the english language, which is our field of expertise, and which is an area that has been greatly affected by the processes of globalization (park & wee, 2014; ricento, 2015; rubdy & saraceni, 2006). we argue that these initiatives are an attempt to tackle the gaps in the field of teacher or language education by exhibiting (dis)continuities that reveal the complexity of policy enactment (ball, maguire, & braun, 2012). these policies and programs share the common purpose of improving the existing educational outcomes of public education in order to create a fairer and more democratic society that embraces the rich variety of the country’s cultural resources and, at the same time, establishes links with a global perspective. in response to the national policy for teacher education, which was implemented in 2009 with the purpose of guiding and regulating teacher education initiatives, and the launching of the “science without borders” program, both traditional and innovative practices have been designed and implemented. these practices have resulted in a mix that reflects continuities and, at the same time, points to new developments. the hybrid nature of these policies exemplifies their inherent tensions because they attempt to introduce new practices while accommodating established norms and habitus.1 our reflections are grounded on the notion that policies are processes that are discursively represented and that they are subject to “interpretations” as they are enacted (ball et al., 2012). these interpretations are made concrete through specific actions by different actors when they engage in social activity that is imprinted with meanings, and those meanings can be traced back to those policies. from this perspective, policies cannot be completely understood without considering the interface that exists between texts, practices, and understandings. in the four examples addressed in this text, we discuss elements of habitual practices and innovations which are mingled, as the policies create the “circumstances in which the range of options available in deciding what to do are narrowed or changed, or particular goals or outcomes are set” (ball, 1994, p. 19). in the following sections each author will present her own perspective on the challenges posed by these educational policies or programs by discussing their relevance to the declared goal of narrowing e du c at i ona l g ap s i n br a z i l, w h i ch have b e e n associated with the maintenance of social and cultural inequalities for a long time. parfor—national development plan for teachers in public educational systems and network this program was created based on the premise that education is a public good and therefore 1 according to bourdieu (1977), the concept of habitus refers to a set of acquired knowledge with dispositions that are incorporated through life; “dispositions that are both shaped by past events and structures, and that shape current practices and structures and also, importantly, that condition our very perceptions” of the latter (p. 170). 221profile vol. 18, no.1, january-june 2016. issn 1657-0790 (printed) 2256-5760 (online). bogotá, colombia. pages 219-234 policies for english language teacher education in brazil today: preliminary remarks everybody is entitled to it. it is a means to human development so that democratization of access and the expansion of higher education is part of an agenda aimed at social inclusion (nussbaum, 2011; nussbaum & sen, 1993; walker & unterhalter, 2007). in this context policies and programs emerge as new possibilities for educational, political, and social outcomes. although the great expansion of higher education occurred over the past years there still are some disparities among social groups and places (mccowan, 2013). as a developing country, brazil is striving to include a larger percentage of its youth in higher education. according to the national institute of studies and research (inep, 2005), in 2001 brazil had only 12.1% of its young people studying at this level, the smallest percentage in latin america. argentina, chile, and uruguay reached a corresponding level of 30% in 2002 (sguissardi, 2006). in addition, brazil needs to qualify 400,000 in-service teachers in order to meet the declared governmental goal of educating 30% of the population from ages 18-24, as established by the national plan for education—pne (2001-2011). in order to achieve this goal, in 2009 the government launched, among others policies and programs, an emergency program called parfor, which was financed by capes, an agency linked to the ministry of education. the program is to be developed in collaboration with state secretariats, municipalities, and higher education institutions by offering: (a) face-to-face undergraduate courses as a first degree; (b) a complementary second degree for those already holding a degree (e.g., a portuguese language teacher who takes spanish as a second qualification); and (c) pedagogic development for sign language teachers. primarily, the program was developed due to the large number of in-service teachers who do not hold a degree in the subject they are teaching (e.g., portuguese language teachers who also teach english without holding a degree in english). for those teachers the program offers a complementary second degree to increase teachers’ qualification. parfor cours es are of fered by 106 public universities and 32 non-profit private institutions; they have to take into account regional and local demands as well as teachers’ professional needs. due to the demand across brazil, in 2013 parfor offered 361,020 places for students to be enrolled in the following three categories: 71.07% first degree; 26.31% second degree; and 2.62% pedagogic development.2 however, only 30% of the total places were taken.3 pedagogy leads the ranking with 15.46%, due to the fact that according to the parfor report for 2009-2013, only 68% of portuguese language in-service teachers had a degree. in terms of foreign languages, 3.82% of english teachers had a degree and 2.61% of spanish teachers (fundação capes, 2013). to give an idea of the scale and scope of parfor, between 2009 and 2013 the program offered 2,145 classes in 422 municipalities in 24 states, with 70,220 attendees. in 2013, the greatest number of places for student enrollment was from municipalities in the interior of the country, where demand is higher. table 1 shows these numbers in detail. additionally, the widespread reach of the program can be exemplified by the number of schools involved: in 2013 there were 24,380 participating schools, with at least one teacher from each school enrolled (capes, 2013). the challenges of such an endeavor are huge due to the continent-like size of brazil. furthermore, 2 all the courses are taught face-to-face . the categories differ in course length: the first undergraduate degree courses are taught over 4 years with a minimum of 2,800 hours; the second degree is between 2 and 2½ years and between 800 and 1200 hours, both including 400 hours of pedagogic practices. the last one, pedagogic development, is a one-year course with a minimum of 540 hours. 3 the places are offered based on the demand from each municipality, however, the number of places requested, and the number of in-service teachers who are willing to attend, means that in certain locations the targets are not fulfilled. according to the parfor report the discrepancy between the number of places that are offered and the number of teachers that are enrolled needs to be more accurate. universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras222 gimenez, ferreira, alves basso, & carvalho cruvinel the professional duties of the participating teachers means that the courses have to be attended during weekends and school holidays (june and january), and teacher educators have to travel to schools in journeys that can take up to 10 hours or more either by car or by boat. this is the case of the amazon region, where most of the schools are in remote areas. according to the parfor report for the period 2009-2013 (capes, 2013), the two biggest states from the northern region of brazil, pará and amazon, reached levels of 71.49% and 62.37%, respectively, for in-service teachers attending their first undergraduate degree, as shown in table 2. this means that, in these regions parfor has reached one of its goals to qualify in-service teachers to improve the quality of education. regarding the education of language teachers, parfor targets spanish (26 groups), english (43 groups), and portuguese and english (19 groups), totaling 88 groups, predominantly in states located in the north and northeast regions. given a high level of demand in comparison with other states, the state of pará contains the largest number of groups enrolled in table 1. number of attendees by degree course (2009-2013) year first undergraduate degree second complementary degree pedagogic development totals 2009 8,826 1,208 0 10,034 2010 22,012 2,387 95 24,494 2011 11,279 1,040 0 12,319 2012 13,221 3,300 307 16,828 2013 5,214 1,150 181 6,545 total 60,552 9,085 583 70,220 source: parfor report 2009-2013 (fundação capes, 2013) table 2. number of in-service teachers (inset) enrolled in first undergraduate degree courses state number of inset number of inset under qualified number of attendees studying for first undergraduate degree percentage amazon 44,441 9,276 5,785 62.37% pará 88,750 29,406 21,022 71.49% source: parfor report 2009-2013 (fundação capes, 2013) 223profile vol. 18, no.1, january-june 2016. issn 1657-0790 (printed) 2256-5760 (online). bogotá, colombia. pages 219-234 policies for english language teacher education in brazil today: preliminary remarks courses offered by two public universities: spanish (3 groups), english (19) and portuguese and english (19). in relation to english language teachers, who are the focus of this paper, there are about 2,140 participants, which represent 73% of the workforce. this means that currently, there are a great number of teachers teaching english without proper qualifications (pará state secretary of education, 2014). preliminar y assessments reveal that parfor has reached its goal across the country, especially in the regions where people have restricted access to qualification and higher education opportunities. the innovative aspects associated with parfor are related to a modality which considers the existing professional milieu of practicing teachers and supplies professional development in a manner that makes it feasible for teachers to participate. as this contextualization reveals, the teaching of english in brazilian schools is carried out in less than ideal conditions, a situation in need of change and which has been addressed by initiatives such as parfor. another program launched by the government in 2011 both exposed and also tried to remedy the deficient educational outcomes in this area. although it did not have teacher education as a goal, this program has the potential spinoff of creating opportunities for initial english language teacher education. english without borders the “english without borders” (ewb) program was launched in 2013 as an ancillary program to “science without borders” (swb)—an initiative at the federal level to raise the academic profile of the country at the international level. the swb program offers scholarships to academics (mainly undergraduate students) to complete part of their education abroad in prestigious higher education institutions. the duration of such experience varies, but in general during six months to one year the students develop projects and engage with research groups in strategic areas for development, such as biotechnology, computer science, renewable energy, creative industry, among others. as such, it follows the worldwide trend for the internationalization of higher education, another step towards a globalized academia that draws mainly on english to carry out its teaching/research activities. according to the swb website (science without borders, 2014) the program is justified as follows: every highly qualified academic or research center around the globe is experiencing an intense process of internationalization, increasing its visibility and addressing the needs of today’s globalized world. brazilian institutions need to rapidly engage in this process since several factors still hinder a more international view of the science made in the country. the educational system, for instance, has no current actions aimed to effectively amplify the interaction of native students with other countries and cultures. (para. 2) in addition to revealing the aspirations of brazilian higher education institutions (to be highly qualified, become visible, and address the needs of a globalized world), the description hints that several factors prevent this aspiration from becoming reality. although there are no official national language proficiency assessments in brazil, informal surveys carried out in 2014 by an independent organization revealed that brazil was ranked number 38 in terms of english language proficiency among 63 countries (english first, 2014). that poor record can partly be explained by the historical lack of policies aimed at improving the teaching of foreign languages in schools. the outcomes of this negligence were clear: the program administrators soon found out that the applicants to participate in swb (mostly undergraduate students) could not achieve the levels required by the majority of the universities in english speaking countries or those with english as a medium of instruction. ewb was thus created to help raise those proficiency levels so as to enable the awarding of approximately 100,000 scholarships by the year 2015. universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras224 gimenez, ferreira, alves basso, & carvalho cruvinel one of the requirements for potential candidates is a satisfactory command of english, as represented by the scores defined by the receiving institution. a series of measures aim at implementing such a program; a management team, coordinated by academics, is in charge of follow-up activities carried out in 63 federal universities, 20 state universities and 30 federal institutes. these activities include: the administration of placement tests (mainly toefl itp); the offer of online courses (my english online); and faceto-face language courses offered by universities, which are funded by the federal government. these courses aim at preparing students to succeed in proficiency tests such as toefl and ielts. each participating university associated with ewb defines their capacity to administer the tests and teach the face-to-face classes. they receive funding according to that capacity. english plays a vital role in the swb operations. table 3 shows the 10 main countries of destination for scholarship recipients. table 3. number of “science without borders” students per country in 2013 country full phd split phd postdoctorate undergraduate total united states 118 1,183 799 2,927 5,027 portugal 129 314 136 2,356 2,935 france 97 445 266 1,884 2,692 spain 49 374 193 1,848 2,464 canada 53 265 141 1,686 2,145 united kingdom 158 277 300 1,204 1,939 germany 94 258 178 1,223 1,753 australia 30 108 65 681 884 italy 22 120 58 479 679 holland 33 102 70 432 637 note. n=22,046. source: http://www.cienciasemfronteiras.gov.br/web/csf/estatisticas-e-indicadores. 225profile vol. 18, no.1, january-june 2016. issn 1657-0790 (printed) 2256-5760 (online). bogotá, colombia. pages 219-234 policies for english language teacher education in brazil today: preliminary remarks given that these data are from 2013 (no updates were available at the time of writing), one can see that in the first years of the program the majority of the candidates went to countries where english is either the first language or is used as a medium of instruction. the fact that portugal appears as the second choice is testament to the fact that language proficiency was an issue (portuguese is the official language in brazil) at the earlier stages of the program and justifies the low percentage of scholarships awarded so far. both the scale and range of actions at a national level are unprecedented. many of those directly involved highlight the satisfaction of having a foreign language finally being the object of public policies, with funding from the government (abreu, 2014). two key points have been reported as positive outcomes: the involvement of academics in all stages of the program and the extension of similar actions to other foreign languages, to the point that ewb now forms part of “foreign languages without borders,” a broader program that includes portuguese as a foreign language. these recent developments suggest that this policy is “in the making,” since one of its paradoxes had not yet been addressed: a policy that depends heavily on the knowledge of foreign languages (especially english) was launched without actions that would improve the language proficiency of potential candidates. if the creation of ewb (and now its extension) is a sign of the policy’s porous nature, it is also true that the original version of swb had short-term goals, due to the political uncertainties surrounding the potential reelection of the incumbent president.4 the acknowledgement that long-term policies would have to incor p orate te acher education initiatives, and the absence of the humanities area in the swb program, coupled with the diplomatic efforts 4 the president’s term was from 2011-2014. she was re-elect-president’s term was from 2011-2014. she was re-elect-resident’s term was from 2011-2014. she was re-elect-was re-electre-elected in late 2014, which gives the program a chance of a longer life. to increase the presence of the portuguese language abroad, can be seen as justifications for that inclusion. this addition has the strategic purpose of attracting students to brazilian universities, thus giving a “green and yellow”5 color to the internationalization of higher education. at the same time, the expansion of the program to include other languages (french, italian, spanish, german, japanese, and mandarin) goes against the tide of english as medium of instruction. brazilian policies seem to be favoring both the development of english language proficiency for the majority of the swb candidates and the enhancement of the teaching of other foreign languages, although on a much smaller scale. despite the potential danger of being accused of paying lip service to multilingualism, this decision points to a promising direction that establishes the value of learning a foreign language. considering that the english language is the second language most taught in brazilian state schools, those in charge of offering the ewb courses are also teacher educators in languages courses, where prospective english language teachers receive their preparation. it seems inevitable that the effects of the program will spill over into that preparation, since those student teachers with higher levels of proficiency are being invited to ser ve as instructors in the preparatory language courses offered by universities to potential swb candidates. it is as yet unknown if the approach adopted to teach in state schools (favored by languages courses) will be the same as that which will be used in the university language courses, and how that could impact on the conceptualizations of novice teachers (still student teachers) regarding language teaching and learning. at first sight it seems that these are two different educational contexts, with separate learning objectives and goals, but it is likely that some convergence will result from the arrangement, especially if the goal of state school education is seen 5 green and yellow are national colours of brazil. universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras226 gimenez, ferreira, alves basso, & carvalho cruvinel as a step towards participation in the swb program. the presentation of several papers and symposia at two recent events about teacher education in connection with the program6 are indications that although initial teacher education was not envisaged, the ewb program is engendering new practices and creating new meanings for novice teachers of english. we are still at the early stages of this policy but it is possible to identify that its enactment has been creatively constructed: it limits and frames spaces for action by english language teacher educators, but at the same time it also allows them the freedom to imprint new directions. this freedom also poses one of the challenges for those teacher educators; how to deal with the competing discourses about english as a lingua franca (elf) and standard english. the innovative aspects of the policy are clear: english, and now other foreign languages, is the object of the government’s attention. however, these innovations are carried out in tandem with more traditional precepts in english language teaching. by that, we mean specifically the fact that the english language is assumed to be the language of native speakers, thus subscribing to a view that as long as the candidates learn to use american or british english (as reflected in the toefl itp/ibt and ielts options), they will be able to communicate in academic settings. this situation reveals a tension between more recent academic discourses about elf and english as a native language (gimenez, calvo, & el kadri, 2011; mauranen, 2012; seidlhofer, 2011). the preference for the american variety can be seen in the choice of placement tests administered to about 500,000 candidates, the platform my english online— which is provided by cengage learning and national geographic—and the courses at the institutions 6 the international congress of the brazilian association of english language and literature teachers—abrapui, maceió, 2014, and the fift h latin american conference on language teacher edu-fifth latin american conference on language teacher edulatin american conference on language teacher education—clafpl, goiânia, 2014. to prepare candidates to successfully achieve the necessary language proficiency scores. in this sense, the decisions regarding which variety to privilege follow a traditional curriculum, in which the native speaker is taken as the model. although the literature on elf argues for the need to consider the diversity of the english language and its appropriation by speakers in different parts of the world, calling into question central tenets of linguistic theory (widdowson, 2000, 2012), the enactment of the brazilian internationalization policy has to rely on what is practically achievable. in the words of one of the members of the management team: the choices are made depending on the partnerships established by the program. the aim is not to privilege any variety of english. all the english language speaking countries’ embassies, governments and universities are in touch with the ewb managing team in order to set new partnerships. a single partnership with only one country could not take into account all of our needs. there are ongoing negotiations with other countries, but due to the worldwide crisis, it hasn’t been easy for the partners to contribute with the program. (questionnaire, september 2014) (gimenez & passoni, 2014, p. 6) despite the recognition that there are other varieties of english, these are restricted to the so-called “inner circle” countries (kachru, 1986) and thus the arguments presented by elf researchers do not find fertile ground, perhaps because practical considerations have to b e taken into account (gimenez & passoni, 2014). high-stakes tests such as the ones used by swb play a central role in the choice of teaching materials and curriculum decisions. while the academic field debates whether lingua franca communication can lead to the characterization of a new variety of english (and its legitimation through grammar books, dictionaries, and internationally recognized tests), the practical world of policy enactment, although led by academics, carries on with what is available, thus reinforcing the tradition in 227profile vol. 18, no.1, january-june 2016. issn 1657-0790 (printed) 2256-5760 (online). bogotá, colombia. pages 219-234 policies for english language teacher education in brazil today: preliminary remarks english language teaching that favors native speaker varieties. it is to the practical world, where ideologies of the native speaker as the ideal norm thrive, that we turn next. pdpi—professional development program for english teachers in the united states of america the goal of improving the teaching of english in public schools, a need which was highlighted by the swb program, is shared by the pdpi. this program was conceived to create opportunities for public school teachers to improve their skills in a country where english is the first language. it is coordinated by capes in partnership with the us embassy in brazil and the fulbright commission, with the support of the national council of education secretaries (consed). its aims, as expressed in its website7 are: • to strengthen the teacher’s oral and written fluency in english. • to share teaching and evaluation methodologies to encourage student participation in the classroom. • to encourage the use of online resources and other tools both in the continuing education of teachers and in the preparation of lesson plans. the objectives of the program hint at what is considered to be deficient: the poor language c omp e te n c e of te a ch e rs , m e t h o d ol o g i e s t h at discourage student participation, and the lack of use of online technologies. in order to tackle these “deficiencies,” in its initial phase, the program selected 70 participants,8 who were 7 http://www.capes.gov.br/cooperacao-internacional/esta dos-unidos/certificacao-em-lingua-inglesa. 8 for this participation, teachers had to present a toefl minimum score of 53 points in the modality internet based test or 153 points in the computer based test mode. the same procedure applies to a candidate who has held the international english language test system (ielts) with a minimum score of 4.5 points. divided into three groups and who attended an eightweek course at the university of oregon (eugene, usa) on different occasions (2011 and 2012). during the course, the teachers had classes in english, culture and history, technology, the theory and practice of language teaching methodologies, and pair meetings with tutors. the teachers also had the opportunity of face-to-face class observations during visits to local schools, and participated in cultural events. the american english institute faculty of the university of oregon also provided practical workshops on a variety of topics. the second phase, in 2013, selected 540 participants who went to different universities across the united states to attend a six-week program divided into two course modalities: methodolog y and language development. the former was designed for teachers with advanced knowledge in english in order to develop and/or learn new teaching and learning methodologies; the latter was aimed at teachers who needed to improve specific skills in english. in the third edition, the program selected another group of 540 participants, also for an intensive six-week course in 2014, also in different universities, following the same format as the second edition. the preparation of teachers of english in countries where it is a native language is not a novelty, especially if we consider the various exchange programs promoted by american or british agencies in the decades following the end of world war ii (gimenez, serafim, & alonso, 2006). however, the current efforts by brazilian and american institutions are introducing two new elements: first, a focus on school teachers, as opposed to university professors, who were the professionals targeted by those exchange programs, and second, the scale of the pdpi. in the past, very few english language schoolteachers had the opportunity to go abroad for development. these new elements can be explained by the pressing need to improve the learning of english in schools and the size universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras228 gimenez, ferreira, alves basso, & carvalho cruvinel of the demand for teacher education, as the statistics presented in the previous sections make clear. despite its attempt to address one of the many challenges facing the brazilian educational system, the pdpi runs the risk of reinforcing the view that native speakers “know best,” a view that goes against the idea of the importance of the empowerment of local knowledge. an initial investigation of some participants’ views9 confirms this possibility: as we had our english classes with other students from all over the world, i think that our placement in the oral skills class was not well analyzed. we were all teachers and didn’t learn a lot in these classes. it would be better to take a course at the university within a specific program designed for us. i really don’t think the oral skills classes were productive. another point to mention is about our meetings with the tutors. those students who had good tutors were able to improve their english. however, usually they were first year university students, with little experience, very young, and they did not have much empathy. (elis, interview, our translation from portuguese) although it is well intended, there is a risk that, by sending teachers abroad, the local realities will not be considered, no matter how satisfactory the experience is from the point of view of living in an englishspeaking country, even if for a short while. holliday (2011) also notes that the predominant cultures of countries where english is a native language can have an overwhelming influence over local cultures, and he favors a view of the language that goes beyond national borders. a program like the pdpi tends to reinforce those boundaries since it assumes a detached view of teaching methodologies, one that can be transposed anywhere in the world. the importance of the context cannot be minimized in programs like this. 9 the ongoing phd project of one of the authors of this paper (carvalho cruvinel) aims at investigating the perceptions of the parthe par-participants in this program. nevertheless, it is also necessary to consider the fact that going abroad, albeit for a few weeks, produces effects in terms of subjective evaluations of the experience, as the following excerpt demonstrates: the experience i had in the us contributed to my enhancement. the possibility of immersion undoubtedly helped me to be more fluent and it gave me some empowerment. i feel more confident with my english. when i came back i brought the proposal to school, to speak only in english here. (laila, interview, our translation from portuguese) the fact that teachers travel to the united states both reinforces the ideology of the native speaker as the norm for english language teaching in brazil and also assigns prestige to those participants. in this sense, participating teachers accumulate symbolic capital and have their identities as teachers legitimized by that participation, when, for instance, their students value them more as teachers because of their experience abroad. it seems, therefore, that the pdpi works mainly to improve the self-esteem of teachers and to boost their confidence. however, due to the lack of follow up studies we cannot assert whether it actually changes classroom practices. it is in the classroom, after all, where the aforementioned programs really matter. in the next section we will discuss a policy that aims at producing new subjectivities by addressing issues of race. policy for diversity and inclusion in the previous sections we have presented data and discussed how some policies have been enacted in brazil and the challenges they pose to those responsible for making them happen. the same is true for the policies implemented by the brazilian government regarding the issues of inclusion and diversity. in the last fifteen years, brazilian administrations have been trying to create a fairer and more democratic society through educational and linguistic policies which have direct implications for the education of teachers 229profile vol. 18, no.1, january-june 2016. issn 1657-0790 (printed) 2256-5760 (online). bogotá, colombia. pages 219-234 policies for english language teacher education in brazil today: preliminary remarks of english as a foreign language (efl). this issue is the focus of the following section. although these policies are broad and include issues of inclusion, we will focus in this section on the issue of race, which is understood in this specific context as a socially-constructed phenomenon (giddens, 1989). one important aspect about brazil is that it is often referred to as a “color blind” country which celebrates the so-called “myth of racial democracy.” this means that some brazilians claim that they believe that people’s skin color is unimportant, or that brazil is a multicultural society without problems related to racism. however, many statistics and a large body of research, unequivocally show that brazil is a country that has many problems regarding inequality that are related to race, and that these problems also intersect with issues of social class and gender. for these reasons, as mentioned above, incorporating the issue of racial identity into the curriculum is important, not just in the general field of education, but also in the fields of applied linguistics and efl. such developments demonstrate that the area of efl in brazil is attuned to what is happening worldwide in terms of tackling inequality and bringing to the discipline discussions about a more diverse, inclusive society. one of the important initiatives related to the promotion of diversity and inclusion in the school curriculum was the publication of the national curriculum parameters of foreign languages in 1998 (ministério da educação [mec], 1998). these guidelines introduced the concept of cross-curricular themes and strengthened the need to bring to the fore issues relating to inclusion and diversity, mainly in the area of cultural plurality, within which we can locate race and ethnicity. another impor tant polic y change was the publication in 2003 of federal law 10.639/2003, which made the teaching of african history and afrobrazilian culture compulsory in the school curriculum. as a result of that mandatory orientation, since 2003 all university courses in brazil, including those aimed at efl teaching (mec, 2004) have to include in their teacher education curricula approaches to address racial identity in the classroom. this legislation was a response to an international agreement signed in 2000, during a meeting in south africa (the durban declaration10), designed to tackle the issue of inclusion; one of the aspects specifically mentioned was racism. even though brazilian legislation and the curriculum guidelines made the inclusion of issues of race and racism compulsory, teacher educators allege that there is not enough space allocated within the curriculum to reflect on the issue deeply enough to give them confidence (azevedo, 2010; camargo, 2012; ferreira, 2009; melo, rocha, & silva júnior, 2013; urzêda-freitas, 2012). this means that the efl teacher educators and curriculum developers at the university level need to make an effort to include the issue of racial identity in their curricula. despite these criticisms, there have been some advances concerning research that addresses the importance of raising awareness of racial issues in the efl curriculum, as the literature produced in brazil has shown (ferreira, 2006, 2012, 2014; moita lopes, 2002; pessoa, 2014; santos, 2011; silva, 2009). these discussions are aligned with research outside brazil that emphasizes the need to include the issue of racial identity in english language teaching and tesol (teaching of english to speakers of other languages). table 4 demonstrates the main arguments by those scholars in relation to racial identity. as can be seen from table 4, the area of applied linguistics around the world is highlighting the importance of addressing racial identity as part of education within the field of efl. in this sense, applied linguists and efl teacher educators need 10 an english version of the declaration can be found at http://www.un.org/wcar/durban.pdf. universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras230 gimenez, ferreira, alves basso, & carvalho cruvinel to address issues that are related to their localities and social practices: in the case of brazil and many other countries, race is an issue that demands reflection (ferreira, 2007). in this sense, it seems that brazilian society is advancing in terms of educational and linguistic policies, as discussed above. however, efl teaching courses still need to be more proactive in terms of inserting these discussions in curricula, which unfortunately is not happening throughout brazil. considering that when english is taught, or when teachers are prepared to teach english, this occurs through the medium of discourse, then that discourse should be permeated by peoples’ identities regarding race, which remains a fundamental issue in brazilian society, and many others worldwide. table 4. issues to be considered in the field of applied linguistics and efl regarding racial identity critical applied linguistics, then, is more than just a critical dimension added on to applied linguistics: it involves a constant skepticism, a constant questioning of the normative assumptions of applied linguistics. it demands a restive problematization of the givens of applied linguistics and presents a way of doing applied linguistics that seeks to connect it to questions of gender, class, sexuality, race, ethnicity, culture, identity, politics, ideology, and discourse. (pennycook, 2001, p. 10) discourse in the classroom, as in any other context, is determined by particular social and historical contingencies that define how students and teachers can act in the discourse based on the power relations exercised within that discourse, and in light of how they are mutually perceived as social individuals, which involves their social identities of gender, race, sexuality etc. (moita lopes, 2002, p. 61) rather than viewing race and class as fixed categories that determine the use and learning of a second language among particular racial or socioeconomic groups, poststructuralist and constructivist approaches allow one to explore how race and class get constructed by social practices and discourses and how people with certain racial and socioeconomic status get positioned or position themselves in learning and using a language. (kubota, 2003, p. 37) at the same time that recent research on language learning emphasizes the multiplicity of learners’ identities, a growing group of researchers is interested in exploring how such relations or identifications as race, gender, and sexual orientation may impact the language learning process. (norton & toohey, 2011, pp. 423-424) when we look at the role of storytelling in both crt (critical race theory) and tesol, the notion of identity is not a fixed essence, but rather an assemblage of positions, narratives, and discourses constructed from relationships, experiences, and individual positionality. (liggett, 2014, p. 118) 231profile vol. 18, no.1, january-june 2016. issn 1657-0790 (printed) 2256-5760 (online). bogotá, colombia. pages 219-234 policies for english language teacher education in brazil today: preliminary remarks conclusions the policies and programs presented in this text directly or indirectly address some of the challenges of educating english language teachers in brazil. framed within the larger goals of meeting the demand for teachers, among which english language professionals are given prominence, these initiatives reveal the efforts of brazilian authorities to provide greater access to improved learning opportunities. we presented the macro indicators for parfor, which showed that although large numbers of teachers are enrolled in teacher education courses, there is still more work to be done in this respect in order to achieve the purpose of promoting human development in remote areas. the northern region of brazil is the area that has been most successful, and it is the area where demand for these courses has been considerably higher than in other regions. some innovative aspects of this program are the possibility of practicing teachers obtaining a second degree, and the preparation of teachers to use sign language. traditional elements can be seen in the curricula of these courses, which follow the existing paradigm of pre-service teaching, thus ignoring the fact that that course participants already have teaching experience. two other initiatives explicitly aimed at the improvement of english language proficiency—the ewb and pdpi—reveal the interconnections between local and global pressures, as teachers face dilemmas about how to deal with the ideologies of english as a native language and elf. some innovative aspects of these initiatives are the special attention given to foreign languages, with funding from the federal government, and the scale of the opportunities given to brazilians to study abroad. some traditional aspects can be seen in the curriculum of the pdpi and the assessment choices of ewb, which reinforce the idea that native speakers’ english is the goal to be achieved, despite the diversity of situations in which language users will need to communicate. in relation to the policies aimed at recognizing issues of diversity and inclusion, we singled out the issue of race in order to point out that recent legislation has created the need for teachers to be educated in how to deal with racism in english language classes. we have shown that despite a prolific literature, both in brazil and abroad, supporting this perspective, much remains to be done. some examples of innovative aspects of this policy are the recognition that race is integral to the brazilian constitution society and the fact that so-called “color blindness” needs to be examined critically. some traditional aspects of this policy can be seen in the way that teacher education programs have dealt with this mandate, largely ignoring its implications in languages courses. as ball et al. (2012) have highlighted, policies can be represented in different ways by different actors. as academics, we brought out our representations about recent brazilian educational policies. from this perspective, we chose to present them in terms of their goals and achievements, seeing in them elements of both tradition and innovation. the enormous challenge of educating teachers to supply the growing demand of a developing country in the context of globalized policies was touched upon. we identified the new opportunities that have been offered to professionals, but we also noted that the concern with quantity may have put qualitative assessments (such as specific curricula for in-service teachers, the use of english as a lingua franca, and professional preparation for a racially sensitive curriculum) in second place, enabling traditional practices to continue to flourish. references abreu, d. 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(2012). elf and the inconvenience of established concepts. journal of english as a lingua franca, 1(1), 5-26. http://dx.doi.org/10.1515/ jelf-2012-0002. about the authors telma gimenez is currently associate professor at universidade estadual de londrina, paraná, brazil, where she teaches applied linguistics and english as a lingua franca in the undergraduate degree program and supervises postgraduate research on foreign language teacher education and educational policies. she is a researcher funded by cnpq. aparecida de jesus ferreira is currently associate professor at uepg, state university of ponta grossa, paraná, brazil, where she teaches teaching practice, in the language course for undergraduate students and is a lecturer in the ma course of language, identity, and subjectivity at the same institution. rosângela aparecida alves basso is a university researcher at the department of modern foreign languages at the state university of maringá, paraná, brazil. her professional interests include language teaching education and development, higher education policies and distance learning. roberta carvalho cruvinel is an english teacher in brazilian public schools. she holds a master degree in applied linguistics from university of brasilia and is currently pursuing a phd degree in linguistics from federal university of goiás and developing part of her research at the institute of education, london. acknowledgements this work was financially supported by capes—brazilian ministry of education (grants pdse-4136/2014-04, bex 9436/13, bex 4136/14-4, bex 10758/13-5). we thank sean stroud for the language editing of an earlier version of this text. 127 https://doi.org/10.15446/profile.v20n2.61724 improving l2 oral accuracy and grammatical range through self-assessment of video speech drafts mejoramiento de la precisión y rango gramatical oral a través de la autoevaluación de versiones de videos martin javier caicedo pereira*1 british council, pereira, colombia jhonny alexander lozano bermúdez**2 universidad de ibagué, ibagué, colombia luis alfonso vanegas medina***3 universidad surcolombiana, neiva, colombia this action research study examines the effect of self-evaluation on grammatical range and grammar accuracy on the english speaking performance of 27 foreign language university and pre-university students enrolled in three different language centers, in three different cities in colombia. participants were asked to record themselves answering different ielts-type tasks for four times during a 6-week period and score and reflect towards their performance using ielts-type analytical scoring rubrics and journals. researchers used journals to register impressions, thoughts, and judgments observed during the process. the findings led to conclude that learners highly benefit from applying self-assessment techniques using videos of their production and a language benchmark to compare with in the improvement of their oral language accuracy and grammatical range. key words: grammatical range, oral language accuracy, self-assessment, videos. el presente estudio de investigación acción examina el efecto que tiene la autoevaluación sobre el rango y la precisión gramatical en la producción oral de 27 estudiantes universitarios y preuniversitarios matriculados en tres diferentes centros de idiomas de colombia. a los participantes se les pidió que se grabaran, calificaran y evaluaran mientras respondían diferentes tareas similares a aquellas del examen ielts cuatro veces, durante un período de seis semanas, implementando rúbricas de calificación tipo ielts. por su parte, los investigadores usaron un diario para registrar impresiones, pensamientos y juicios observados durante el proceso. los hallazgos llevaron a concluir que los estudiantes se benefician enormemente de la aplicación de técnicas de autoevaluación, utilizando videos de su producción oral y un referente lingüístico comparativo en la mejora de la precisión del lenguaje oral y rango gramatical. palabras clave: autoevaluación, precisión del lenguaje oral, rango gramatical. * e-mail: martin.caicedo@oup.com ** e-mail: jhonny.lozano@unibague.edu.co *** e-mail: vanegasluisalfonso@gmail.com how to cite this article (apa, 6th ed.): caicedo pereira, m. j., lozano bermúdez, j. a., & vanegas medina, l. a. (2018). improving l2 oral accuracy and grammatical range through self-assessment of video speech drafts. profile: issues in teachers’ professional development, 20(2), 127-142. https://doi.org/10.15446/profile.v20n2.61724. this article was received on december 23, 2016 and accepted on january 31, 2018. this is an open access article distributed under the terms of the creative commons license attribution-noncommercial-noderivatives 4.0 international license. consultation is possible at https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/. profile: issues teach. prof. dev., vol. 20 no. 2, jul-dec, 2018. issn 1657-0790 (printed) 2256-5760 (online). bogotá, colombia. pages 127-142 universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras128 caicedo pereira, lozano bermúdez & vanegas medina introduction this research project aims to investigate how learning and being competent in english as a foreign language (efl), specifically in the speaking domain, can be achieved by designing a teaching framework based on fostering in students the necessary abilities to carry out self-assessment of their speaking production, and hence, triggering the necessary devices to develop more autonomous, self-directed, and better language learners. aspects of self-assessment are primarily associated with the autonomy and self-directedness a language learner can display in learning settings. as self-directedness is a common trait of adult learners (jarvis, 1985), this research focused on university english language learners enrolled in the language centers of universidad surcolombiana, universidad de ibague, and universidad eafit. this allowed finding language learners whose level of motivation was not necessarily bound to extrinsic motivational factors such as a passing grade or graduation requirements, but to intrinsic factors such as personal and professional rewards that come with being fluent in english. theoretical framework this section comprises the pedagogical and theoretical pillars of the research, and it includes an objective analysis of previous work on the area of self-assessment of foreign and second languages. we first explain how the concept of self-assessment is interwoven with those of oral accuracy and oral grammatical range as well as its impact in the consolidation of the speaking domain in a second language, closing with a brief justification of the use of video in the implementation of pedagogical practices related to second language learning. self-assessment according to chalkia (2012) self-assessment is the capacity that a person has to judge his/her performance and to make decisions about him/herself and his/her abilities. other authors such as mcmillan and hearn (2008) have also asserted that self-assessment “stands alone in its promise of improved student motivation and engagement, and learning” (p. 1). “self-assessment is more accurately defined as a process by which students: 1) monitor and evaluate the quality of their thinking and behavior while learning and 2) identify strategies that improve their understanding and skills” (p. 40). therefore, for the purpose of this research, self-assessment is defined as the process by which students emit judgments of both the process and the outcomes of their linguistic products, comparing the results against defined criteria resulting in a conscious evaluation of where they are and the learning path to be followed in the journey of reaching the goals established by the criteria. a term used commonly but erroneously when addressing the issue of self-assessment is self-monitoring. shunk (as cited in mcmillan & hearn, 2008) states that self-monitoring is a constituent element embedded in the process of self-assessment as a necessary skill for effective self-assessment that involves focused attention to certain aspects of behavior or thinking. another important element associated with the process of selfassessment is that of self-judgment. self-judgment is the capacity of identifying and judging the progress towards the targeted performance (mcmillan & hearn, 2008); this judgment produces in students a significant idea of where they are, what they know, and what they still need to learn (bruce as cited in mcmillan & hearn, 2008). implications of self-assessment in the classroom can also be recognized. in light of metacognition, which involves the capacity to monitor, evaluate, and know what to do to improve performance as mcmillan and hearn (2008) have claimed, self-assessment activates the necessary internal mechanisms that “includes conscious control of specific cognitive skills such as checking understanding, predicting outcomes, planning activities, managing time, and switching to different learning activities” (p. 42). these skills are positively related to increasing achievement and, most importantly, such skills can be taught to students (shunk, 2004). three 129 improving l2 oral accuracy and grammatical range through self-assessment of video speech drafts profile: issues teach. prof. dev., vol. 20 no. 2, jul-dec, 2018. issn 1657-0790 (printed) 2256-5760 (online). bogotá, colombia. pages 127-142 particular elements can be associated with the benefits that self-assessment brings to the learning-teaching process within and beyond the classroom (mcmillan & hearn, 2008). when teachers and learners establish clear learning goals and articulate evaluative criteria that enable students to access to their own work: 1. english language learners actively engage and participate in the learning process and become more connected to the learning outcomes. 2. self-assessment promotes scaffolding as teachers learn to pass the responsibility of evaluation to their students and this action includes pedagogical practices such as modeling, goal setting, evaluation, strategy adjustment, and reflection. 3. also, self-assessment increases motivation and engagement when students believe that they can successfully complete a task. self-assessment of speaking skills is an area that is still in debt of providing practitioners with more empirical evidence that supports its effectiveness and sheds light on how to implement it in the classroom (castañeda & rodríguez-gonzález, 2011). however, there are sources that orient the methodology that should be considered when implementing self-assessment in teaching practices, especially carried out by training students on how to do it. castañeda and rodríguez-gonzález (2011) assert that in order for self-assessment to be successful and produce desirable outcomes, guidance and explicit awareness through training intervention are required. several other researchers stress the importance of creating classroom practices that foster training students in the essentials of self-assessment for increasing its effectiveness. researchers like alfallay; chen; orsmond et al.; patri, stefani, and taras (as cited in castañeda & rodríguez-gonzález, 2011) demonstrated that in order to boost the efficacy of self-assessment and involve students in the evaluation process to activate long term learning, factors like intervention and feedback, practice, clear criteria, and training should be taken into consideration. they also investigated the methodology to be used when undertaking the endeavor of training students in how to conduct self-assessment. they claim that before actual assessment takes place, training, using a tutorial or workshop, should be developed in order to improve students’ understanding of the criteria, and thus enhance students’ assessment quality. wiggins (1993) used examples of previously marked products for class discussion and analysis; and, despite coming from the research field of writing, scholars have argued that teacher intervention is determinant to successfully involve students in the self-assessment process (min, 2005; stanley, 1992). the speaking skill, oral accuracy and grammatical range according to bygate (2006, 2009), de saint-léger (2009), and shumin (1997), speaking entails a complex and unique cognitive processing task that is difficult for second language learners to accomplish. speaking requires the learner to construct meaning by producing information while employing effective linguistic, nonlinguistic, and contextual parameters such as language control, body language, and interlocutor-receptor relationships. given the aforementioned, scholars agree on the importance of speaking as a pivotal skill in language learning and, hence, of its importance (cohen, weaver, & li, 1995; hughes, 2013; martínez-flor & usó-juan, 2006; shumin, 1997). the speaking skill must be analyzed from their three main dimensions of performance (skehan, 1996): accuracy, complexity, and fluency. in his article, skehan (1996) identifies accuracy as concerned with “a learner’s capacity to handle whatever level of interlanguage complexity she has currently attained” (p. 46). based on this account, an english language learner who is trying to produce language that is more accurate will notice positive results in terms of his or her performance in the foreign language, as it becomes automatic due to the controlled nature of the linguistic features universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras130 caicedo pereira, lozano bermúdez & vanegas medina associated with speaking. hence, accuracy is considered to be essential for the language to become automatic (ahmadian & tavakoli, 2011). as such, for the purposes of this research, the speaking skill is analyzed considering grammar accuracy and grammatical range. the level of proficiency in speaking is, besides being determined by its cognitive demand, influenced by other factors amongst which we can count selfconfidence and anxiety, as stated by castañeda and rodríguez-gonzález (2011). de saint-léger (2009) states that over time, as anxiety decreases, self-confidence increases since learners perceive themselves as capable of performing a task, making the assertion that this inverse relationship prompts teachers to assist l2 learners in developing self-confidence and a sense of achievement (graham, 2004). self-assessment fosters self-confidence and, hence, enhances speaking production, which has been documented by de saint-léger (2009) when she claims that the self-perception developed by means of implementing self-assessment techniques evolves as positive outcomes in relation to l2 vocabulary, fluency, and self-confidence in speaking, establishing a direct connection between the benefits of self-assessment and the enhancement of the speaking skill. it is also necessary to remark on the importance of oral production for learners when it comes to mastering a wide array of grammar structures. as swain (as cited in gómez, 2014) argues, “if learners are given the opportunity to practice language structures naturally in order to achieve grammatical competence, their production will likely be increased and it will also aid acquisition” (p. 54). the oral language outcomes that are envisioned to display improvement due to a controlled, though automatic use of grammatical structures, are framed in the task students are set to execute, and that task should elicit the expected linguistic features (accuracy and fluency) in a standardized environment. although participants are prompted and given time to plan their answers in the speech drafts, they might eventually incorporate abilities acquired during the stages of these tasks in their daily-life oral production. according to the english language testing system handbook (ielts, 2007), “grammatical range and accuracy refers to the range and the accurate and appropriate use of the candidate’s grammatical resource” (p. 12). one of the purposes of the current academic intervention is to expand the grammar structures employed by learners in their discourse; therefore, it is fundamental to define the most relevant elements of grammatical range and accuracy. they are then the pedagogical and theoretical pillars to sustain this research. video speech drafts in learning environments canning-wilson (2000) defined video recordings as “the selection and sequence of messages in an audiovisual context” (p. 36), and added that video technique is, best-case scenario, characterized as the determination and arrangement of messages in a varying media setting. austin and haley (2004) argue that the educator who uses videos in the classroom permits second/foreign language learners the opportunity to view and effectively participate in lessons. videos can be controlled; students can pause and rewind them in order to understand and/ or listen again. in his studies, hobbs (2006) suggests that videos increase motivation and boost language learning due to their capacity to catch students’ attention. research question for this study we attempted to answer this research question: “does self-assessment of video speech drafts improve speaking grammatical accuracy and range in b1 learners?” this research concentrated on answering this question as we, teacher-researchers, are convinced that the speaking domain concerns one of the highest expectations second language learners have, which is to be able to fluently and clearly communicate their thoughts in an oral way (young, 1990). 131 improving l2 oral accuracy and grammatical range through self-assessment of video speech drafts profile: issues teach. prof. dev., vol. 20 no. 2, jul-dec, 2018. issn 1657-0790 (printed) 2256-5760 (online). bogotá, colombia. pages 127-142 method we determined that the best course of action was using a research design which would respond to the context in which researchers were immersed in, that is, action research. action research is the disciplined process of inquiry, conducted by those taking the action (sagor, 2000); in this case, the researchers/ teachers. action research then presents itself as the most adequate approach to conduct the research as it allows the practitioners to be engaged in a research process with all the canonical tenets that need to be followed, but addressing a specific classroom situation, allowing for a simpler, yet sound framework to conduct the process. to produce results that were reliable and that effectively and objectively answer the research question, a combined approach to research was considered that would effectively analyze both quantitative and qualitative results. in this sense, research was designed to provide qualitative results in the form of students’ and researchers’ comments, judgments, and appreciations during the process and analyzed by searching recurring themes within the data previously collected. in the same vein, we foresaw the production of quantitative data related to the frequencies, means, and statistical deviation of the results yielded from the application of the experiment, and that were statistically analyzed to offer a correlation between both the quantitative and qualitative data and, in our doing so, being able to provide sound and reliable answers to the research question. researchers also generated conditions for learners to produce language orally by developing a task based on the one used in ielts (international english language testing system) when evaluating speaking. ielts speaking tests are normally an encounter between one candidate and one examiner and are designed to take between 11 and 14 minutes. during this test, three stages are developed: introduction, individual long turn, and two-way discussion. researchers have selected the second moment of the exam, individual long turn, as the framework for performance, since it has been observed that it contains the required features for the intervention: grammatical range and accuracy. according to seedhouse, harris, naeb, and üstünel (2014), in long-turn tasks the candidate receives a card and is asked to orally respond to it. the candidate is given a minute to plan and two minutes to speak. in order to collect data in a reliable manner, researchers have opted for giving participants one minute to plan and one minute to produce. participants 27 students from the three institutions, 14 men and 13 women were chosen as they are part of efl classes the researchers were teachers from. all of them have studied in the language institutes for at least one and a half years and take five, 100-minute sessions of english lessons per week. their overall proficiency level is b1 according to the common european framework of reference (cefr). their ages range from 17 to 27 years old: 34% are between 17 and 20, 48% are between 21 and 24, and the other 18% are between 25 and 27 years old. most of them are digital natives and the others are digital immigrants (prensky, 2001), meaning that all of them use technological devices and are acquainted with social media and web tools. materials in order to collect the data in this study, information on the students’ self-assessment process was gathered and analyzed to determine to what extent self-assessment traits influenced their oral ability, specifically in grammar accuracy and grammatical range. the study was designed to be developed in four stages to cope with the four conditions suggested by ross (2006) to carry out an appropriate self-assessment process: • define the criteria by which students assess their work. • teach students how to apply that criterion properly. • give feedback on their self-assessment. universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras132 caicedo pereira, lozano bermúdez & vanegas medina • help in using self-assessment data to improve their performance. data collection instruments based on the research question, researchers considered it pertinent to collect both kinds of data: qualitative and quantitative. qualitative due to its suitability in knowing students’ perception in the use of self-assessment and to evaluate the effectiveness of the training model implemented; and quantitative to measure their progress in grammatical range and accuracy when speaking. next, we give a description of each of the data collection instruments. pre-test and post-test one pre-test and one post-test related to oral production were developed in order to measure learners’ initial and final level of oral ability in terms of accuracy and grammatical range. the task performed by the students was based on the ielts speaking test, part 2, in which students have one minute to prepare a 2-minute dialogue about a topic prompted by a card. for this study, the task was shortened giving students one minute to prepare and 1-minute to speak. students’ performance on each test (pre-test and post-test) was assessed by the teacher-researchers using an adapted version of the ielts rubric (see appendix). researchers adjusted the rubric, so that only grammatical range and accuracy were assessed by it, designing a scale from 1 to 5, being 5 the highest score. semi-structured interviews two semi-structured interviews were applied along the research project, one during the first stage whose objective was to recognize students’ background knowledge of the concepts of self-assessment, oral accuracy, and grammatical range; a second interview was administered right after the last recording took place aimed at identifying what students’ understanding of the same concepts applied in interview 1 was, and how they, the students, had changed during the research process. the main purpose was to gather information about students’ thoughts regarding the adoption of self-assessment strategies and their effect on their learning process. each interview consisted of a total of 20 questions, ten open and ten closed questions and took approximately 10 minutes to answer. the teacher-researchers applied individual interviews using participants’ l1, with the purpose of getting more objective and accurate answers. teachers’ journals along the study, we wrote our insights about the process in a journal. we completed an adapted version of the field notes template designed by acero (2012) and implemented by centeno, montenegro, montes, and rodriguez (2013) in their research study. the template encloses questions related to students’ reactions towards the use of video recordings, attitude towards the selfassessment strategies implemented, learners’ participation in the tasks, and weaknesses and strengths experimented during the study. the aim of this instrument was to collect our insights along the process, and triangulate the information with the one provided by the students in their journals and in the interviews. students’ journals they served as the instrument students used to write their thoughts about the application of self-assessment techniques to the video speech drafts recorded during the training intervention. this activity was guided by a set of questions that helped students reflect upon their oral proficiency in accuracy and grammatical range, as well as feelings about the application of self-assessment as a strategy to improve their oral competence. the students were given a journal model consisting of five closed questions with the possibility of complementing their answers in a comments section; participants were asked to write their entries right after each evaluation of their video recordings. 133 improving l2 oral accuracy and grammatical range through self-assessment of video speech drafts profile: issues teach. prof. dev., vol. 20 no. 2, jul-dec, 2018. issn 1657-0790 (printed) 2256-5760 (online). bogotá, colombia. pages 127-142 video recordings subjects’ video recordings were the main source of data for analyzing oral production. subjects recorded themselves at different stages (see below) to register and evaluate their performance and construct the path of improvement that would take them to an evidential enhancement of their oral performance. intervention procedure we designed an instructional device to provide learners with fundamentals of self-assessment, grammatical range, and accuracy as well as a detailed session to instruct learners on how to implement mailvu, the online tool selected to video-record students’ spoken production, due to its practicality and facility to use. the process of the intervention consisted of a sequence of nine stages as follows: stage 1: self-diagnosing and sensitizing in the first stage of the interventions students were required to reflect upon their spoken production abilities; to do this, learners were given a kwl form (what i know, what i want to know and what i learned) to elicit the features of grammar they effectively use when speaking. prior to the completion of the form, learners and researchers undertook a brainstorm methodology to focus on the grammar forms students had been previously exposed to; in this manner, participants would have a better foundation of what items to include in the form. the kwl form gave us evidence of the extent to which learners were aware of their own needs regarding oral production in terms of grammar accuracy and grammatical range. stage 2: grammar features analysis after learners were exposed to the strategy to be used and reflected upon their own grammar needs for oral production, they were engaged in analyzing the grammar features of video samples provided by us. teachers and learners watched two videos from youtube of candidates performing the “long turn” task of ielts, one posted by the academyenglishhelp (2014) and the other by fardin (2011). we paused the video at specific moments to identify the grammar features the candidates used when speaking plus we prompted learners to detect the possible candidates’ strengths and weaknesses when speaking. we and the learners observed samples of two rubrics to assess the grammatical range and grammar accuracy of candidates undertaking the “long turn” task of ielts. the first rubric is the one used by ielts and the second was designed only to correlate the results of the two rubrics. the purpose of observing the rubrics was to give learners clear models of grammar that could be identified when judging the candidates’ performance. stage 3: awareness of expected performance unlike previous stages, this phase focused on modeling the type of performance participants were expected to achieve taking into consideration their level of proficiency. for this stage, learners were prepared to identify the features of the desired performance in the ielts “long turn” task. during this phase participants and researchers analyzed two videos of candidates carrying out the “long turn” task of ielts and focused on the grammar elements that a band 3 and a band 61 candidate applied during the test; these levels were selected as models of poor and expected performance for learners. while observing the videos, learners and researchers applied the adapted rubric to assess oral production in grammatical range and grammar accuracy. this analysis enabled learners to reflect on the needs they had in order to improve their oral production, having as a reference a model of speaking to follow; it also empowered learners to assess a task similar to the one they were to undertake, supported by a rubric. 1 band 3 and band 6 refer to the performance based on the rubric applied by ielts on its exams. ielts rubric places candidates in a 1-9 band system. universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras134 caicedo pereira, lozano bermúdez & vanegas medina stage 4: practice we designed prompts similar to the ones that are used in the “long turn” task of ielts and gave learners different opportunities to plan and produce language using them. learners were asked to work individually and were required to record their performance using their mobile phones, tablets, or any technological device that permitted them to record their speaking; once learners had recorded their videos they were analyzed using the rubric. afterward, learners were given new prompts and were asked to work in pairs; in this opportunity learners helped each other rank their performance using the rubrics. stage 5: identifying the gap in this stage learners analyzed their own videos with the purpose of identifying the grammatical range and grammar accuracy, elements that they had in common with the samples that had been shown in previous stages. during this stage, participants identified how the mistakes they made in their videos affected the message they wanted to convey; researchers reviewed with students some basic and complex grammar structures in order to expand their options when speaking and to avoid mistakes that had been common among participants. learners and researchers organized and consolidated the findings of this analysis in their journals. stage 6: strategies to improve learners socialized the content of their journals in class and brainstormed to seek possible solutions to the issues they encountered in their productions. learners received training on how to record their own videos using the tool mailvu. we selected mailvu due to the facility this website offers to record and share video messages; moreover, this tool can be used for free. stage 7: resources to improve we gave learners instructions about how to proceed to record a new video, using a prompt that contained a topic similar to the ones used in ielts “long turn” tasks; these tasks usually ask candidates to plan a talk about a specific subject. once videos were recorded, every learner was asked to observe and assess his or her performance by applying the same rubric designed for the task and that had been employed in previous stages. upon completion of the recording, learners were asked to assign a mark to their performance in grammatical range and oral accuracy, then, learners created a new entry in their journals, in which they described the experience of applying the rubric to self-assess their performance. stage 8: speaking task learners were given instructions to work on a new video speech draft; on this occasion learners were assigned a new prompt to perform the “long turn” task. then learners recorded the video and assessed their product; learners sent their videos and rubrics to researchers via email by sharing the link of the video retrieved from mailvu and attaching their rubrics. stage 9: comparing assessments we assessed the video drafts submitted by participants and applied the rubric designed to assess their performance focusing on grammatical range and accuracy. this phase allowed us to contrast and compare the self-assessment process undertaken by participants with the assessment done by researchers; this process was crucial to determine the weaknesses and strengths of learners to self-assess their performance. we also conducted an analysis to determine to what extent the oral production of learners had improved in terms of grammatical range and accuracy. conclusions and observations of the self-assessment and videos of learners were socialized and discussed in plenary, so participants could have a clear grasp of what positive and negative aspects were encountered. stages 8 and 9 of the intervention were repeated to give students the opportunity to be familiarized with the procedure. 135 improving l2 oral accuracy and grammatical range through self-assessment of video speech drafts profile: issues teach. prof. dev., vol. 20 no. 2, jul-dec, 2018. issn 1657-0790 (printed) 2256-5760 (online). bogotá, colombia. pages 127-142 results and data analysis both quantitative and qualitative data were collected and analyzed in order to fulfill the objectives of this research study. quantitative data were gathered through the numerical scoring of the oral production rubrics applied in stage 9 of the pedagogical intervention; whereas qualitative data were examined following coding procedures for detecting salient themes from the collected information as proposed by burns (2009), who suggests to identify the relevant topics that repetitively appear in the voice of participants collected in their journals and through interviews. categories and subcategories were organized to summarize and classify the collected data. we revised the data collected from the 27 participants’ samples, then categories and sub-categories coding procedures, as suggested by burns (2009), were applied to identify relevant data, repetitive ideas, and how patterns were connected among them and categories. bearing in mind the objectives of this study and the previously described procedures, we found in the open coding phase the sub-categories shown in table 1. table 1. indicators from the open coding phase mistakes identification performance comparison language judgment correct use of grammar sense of improvement sentence complexity variety of structures impact of error students get acquainted with the technique. contrasting ideas advantages of using video recordings after identifying the categories, sub-categories were also recognized to detect relation among sub-categories which, after merging the indicators and the objectives of the study, resulted in three categories that grouped the identified indicators (see table 2). table 2. final category chart categories sub-categories self-assessment awareness mistakes identification sense of improvement language judgment grammar recognition correct use of grammar range of structures video speech drafts students get acquainted with the technique advantages of using video recordings category 1: self-assessment awareness mistakes identification among the main aspects detected in this area and from the analysis of the qualitative data the participants registered in their journals as well as taking the videos as the source of their examination, the following are the aspects that were remarked upon during the analysis: • subjects recognized their strengths and weaknesses in their oral performance. having learners assess their own products empowered them to tackle the aspects they needed to improve upon. • subjects exhibited elaborated judgments to refer to their mistakes; apart from spotting their slips, they could justify their observations in their journal entries, explaining the mistakes they made and providing empirical justifications for them. universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras136 caicedo pereira, lozano bermúdez & vanegas medina • subjects displayed a key factor of self-assessment: the capacity of making decisions that impact their learning process. they proposed paths to follow in order to solve those mistakes they had been able to recognize through the analysis of their video speech drafts. • subjects evidenced capability to focus their selfassessment on specific grammar features of their spoken language; this enabled them to seek improvement in the detected areas. sense of improvement participants reported improvement in various aspects: confidence, clarity, error-free sentences, and verb forms. video-recording their faces while undertaking the task was a situation that challenged the confidence of learners; researchers noted that participants seemed to be nervous and anxious. another aspect that was classified in this indicator was the improvement in the intelligibility of the message conveyed by participants. they could use the first recorded videos to compare their own performance and draw conclusions regarding how they have improved in this domain. the correctness in the sentences that learners used in their discourse while doing the activity were favored, according to the data obtained from the journals, as they gave learners the sense that their production was getting better; additionally, a reduction of mistakes in their utterances was noticed. participants also reported improvement in specific aspects of grammar in which they may have presented difficulties; in this regard, subjects claimed that simple structures were used correctly, and this became another factor to determine the improvement they were experiencing. these findings were also observed and annotated by teacher-researchers in their journal: “students show less mistakes when speaking, hence, it can be concluded that, in fact, their oral production was improved.” language judgment as previously defined in this paper, self-assessment is the capability of learners to make decisions about their performance based on the ideas they create upon observation of their own production. this definition is closely related to what we observed in the data obtained from participants; after the analysis process, it was noticed that learners registered in their journals judgments about their language; subjects demonstrated a wider view to describe the elements that made up part of their discourse; this might have contributed to a more critical perspective to evaluate their production. an instance of this enhancement of critical thinking can be noticed in the first and the last entries that addressed the question: “do you feel satisfied with your performance in this activity? why?” no, i felt nervous and i had a lot of mistakes... now, i use more different tenses and words than i used before... when i hear myself i am aware if i use the right words to express what i want to. (subject 4, journal entry 1) participants also revealed that the lack of grammar structures used in their video speech drafts was related to the deficiency in their knowledge of linguistic features of the language. category 2: grammar recognition indicators that suggested improvement in terms of accuracy and grammatical range of participants in their spoken production were consolidated and grouped in this category. correct use of grammar data analysis suggests that learners acknowledge the importance of grammar in their oral production. some of the information gauged from participants’ journals reveals that participants were not only aware of how grammar can contribute to their oral production, but also valued the correct use of grammar when analyzing their video speech draft. 137 improving l2 oral accuracy and grammatical range through self-assessment of video speech drafts profile: issues teach. prof. dev., vol. 20 no. 2, jul-dec, 2018. issn 1657-0790 (printed) 2256-5760 (online). bogotá, colombia. pages 127-142 now i am more aware of using a more accurate grammar. (subject 22, journal entry 3) i am more aware that i need to use correct grammar. (subject 25, journal entry 3) i answered what i needed with good grammar. (subject 26, journal entry 3) there was a close relationship between the selfassessment practices of learners and their improvement in grammar accuracy. range of structures data collected suggest that learners attempted to incorporate complex structures into their oral production when recording their video speech drafts; by doing this, participants seemed to have expanded their grammatical range. i used past continuous and present simple recording my video. (subject 17, journal entry 4, authors’ translation) i have improved, because now i use more grammar structures. (subject 13, journal entry 3, authors’ translation) connecting participants’ ideas with seedhouse et al.’s (2014) length and complexity are two traits of complex oral speech. video after video, it could be noticed how participants increased the attempts to incorporate these two characteristics into their speech. it was also observed by researchers that verb forms that appeared to be difficult for learners were included in their oral production. category 3: video speech drafts the use of videos to record the learners’ performances in oral production and to apply self-assessment techniques enabled learners to have an artifact with which to review their own weaknesses and strengths. data collected suggest that the usage of video speech drafts contributed in two aspects: students getting acquainted with the technique of recording themselves and the advantages of using video recordings to improve oral production. the following are the main results regarding this category: • when using videos, subjects expressed having felt a certain level of anxiety and nervousness, even though they were given alone time for the recording; this feeling was reduced the more they got acquainted with and felt familiar with the tool. • another constraint participants had in the first video they recorded was the time they were given to plan versus the time they had to speak; participants complained about the limitation in terms of time to set their ideas and articulate them with their oral production. • the use of video recordings was fundamental to achieve the objectives of this study; only through the usage of this tool could learners and researchers keep track on how self-assessment was impacting the oral production of participants in terms of grammar accuracy and grammatical range. researchers and participants valued the use of video recordings as this strategy enabled them to refer, when necessary, to learners’ oral production to assess, identify improvement, and tackle weaknesses, among other decisions that were made during the intervention; for example, when researchers showed videos to provide learners with models of desired performance, learners were encouraged to compare their own production with the candidates’ production in the videos. quantitative data analysis complementing the qualitative data presented above, the quantitative data accounted for the numerical scoring of the oral production rubrics. the results shown in table 3 were obtained after processing the scores participants gave themselves on their oral speech using the rubrics. universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras138 caicedo pereira, lozano bermúdez & vanegas medina table 3. preand post-test results comparison for grammar accuracy and grammatical range for subjects grammar accuracy grammatical range difference recording 1 (pre-test) 3.00 2.56 0.44 recording 2 3.30 2.57 0.72 post-test 3.37 3.04 0.33 difference 0.37 0.48 in terms of grammar accuracy, it scored higher in the pre-test in comparison with grammatical range; nonetheless, when analyzing results of the post-test, grammatical range had a greater improvement in terms of relative results compared to grammar accuracy. the grammar accuracy post-test rose from 3.00 to 3.37 with a 0.37 increase, but grammatical range went from 2.56 to 3.04 resulting in an improvement of 0.48, 0.11 more than grammar accuracy. these results led us to ascertain that participants were more aware and applied more sound language strategies to expand the vocabulary and length of their oral utterances than focusing on how accurate their language was produced. the above results were compared with the score researchers gave participants in both preand post-test. for validity purposes, both researchers and participants’ scores were analyzed at the end of the research process and participants’ marks were not revised up until researchers had revised students’ production (see table 4). table 4. preand post-test results comparison for grammar accuracy and grammatical range for researchers grammar accuracy grammatical range difference pre-test 2.58 2.31 0.27 post-test 3.54 3.23 0.31 difference 0.96 0.92 notice that the tendency was similar in both cases (subjects’ scores and researchers’ scores). there was a higher mark for grammar accuracy in the pre-test; yet, the total increase was lower as the difference between post-test for both aspects showed how the growth was only 0.4, 0.7 lower than the participants’ own scores. participants were also asked about their perception of self-assessment (see table 5). table 5. self-assessment and degree of satisfaction do you feel satisfied with your performance in this activity? yes no freq. % freq. % pre-test 5 18% 22 82% post-test 22 82% 5 18% after processing the individual answers of the subjects, it can be evident, as seen in table 5, that the number of subjects whose perception of having a positive attitude or feeling of satisfaction towards their performance increased from 19% in the pre-test, to 85% in the posttest. in terms of their oral grammar accuracy, students’ answers are summarized in table 6. table 6. oral ability: grammar accuracy do you think your oral ability in terms of accuracy has improved after this activity?  yes no freq. % freq. % pre-test 14 51% 13 49% post-test 23 86% 4 14% when processing and analyzing the frequency, subjects answered positively to the third question (see table 7). it can be observed that, even though the number of students who expressed that they had, indeed, improved, the growth from the results in the pre-test compared to the ones in the post-test were not as considerable as the ones of grammar accuracy. 139 improving l2 oral accuracy and grammatical range through self-assessment of video speech drafts profile: issues teach. prof. dev., vol. 20 no. 2, jul-dec, 2018. issn 1657-0790 (printed) 2256-5760 (online). bogotá, colombia. pages 127-142 table 7. answers to oral ability: grammatical range do you think your oral ability in grammatical range has improved after this activity? yes no freq. % freq. % pre-test 13 49% 14 51% post-test 18 66% 9 34% as seen in table 7, 50% of the subjects (13), when answering the question about grammatical range in the pre-test, answered that their ability had somehow improved, and despite the increase in the number of subjects who answered positively (16), the increase only represented 12% (3 subjects). when paralleled with the results in the question regarding grammar accuracy, the difference is significantly lower, which can lead to validate the conclusion that subjects’ awareness of self-assessment impacted more significantly grammar accuracy than grammatical range. conclusions self-assessment, posterior application of improvement techniques based on mistakes identification, and subsequent implementation of learning paths to overcome those mistakes based on language benchmarks, have been mostly used in the domain of written production. due to the transient nature of the spoken word (hughes, 2013), self-assessment of oral production has not been explored which has left aside the application of self-assessment techniques as a means for oral speaking improvement. this is where technology comes to the aid of language teaching. by using video speech drafts and multimedia resources to exemplify speaking benchmarks, learners were able to undertake the daunting task of revisiting their own oral production in order to identify and analyze their mistakes or shortcomings, and based on this analysis define their own routes of improvement implementing their own improvement strategies. as an added bonus to this activity, the research yielded evidence that the use of video speech drafts to improve students’ oral skills in the domains of grammar accuracy and grammatical range, also had a positive effect in the learners’ sense of improvement, that is, their motivation was positively impacted as they could see their progress as they saw the different videos they recorded. regarding the grammatical areas taken into consideration for the current study, participants were more likely to detect their flaws in terms of accuracy, and raise awareness of the correct use of grammar which led to an improvement of other elements inherent to oral production, such as fluency and use of vocabulary. on the other hand, grammatical range appears as a more challenging aspect, since learners displayed difficulties to widen the structures they used in their video speech drafts. about the usage of video recordings, it was established that they can become a useful source of reflection for students. participants of this study constantly highlighted this technique as a good opportunity to practice and assess their own oral performance and, at the same time, to lead them to improvement in various areas of spoken production. the findings of this project can be taken as a reference to incorporate self-assessment practices in english language teaching contexts, and may also be included in curriculum designs attempting to promote self-direction among learners. references academyenglishhelp. 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(2009). self-assessment of speaking skills and participation in a foreign language class. foreign language annals, 42(1), 158-178. https://doi. org/10.1111/j.1944-9720.2009.01013.x. fardin, f. (adapter). (2011, august 30). real ielts speaking band 7 [video file]. retrieved from https://www.youtube. com/watch?v=_2oawkqigrw. gómez, d. (2014). the impact of peer and self-assessment on teenage b2 students’ use of present prefect simple, present perfect continuous and past perfect simple in their spontaneous spoken production (master’s thesis). universidad de la sabana, chía, colombia. graham, s. j. (2004). giving up on modern foreign languages? students’ perceptions of learning french. modern language journal, 88(2), 171-191. https://doi. org/10.1111/j.0026-7902.2004.00224.x. hobbs, r. (2006). non-optimal uses of video in the classroom. learning, media & technology, 31(1), 35-50. https://doi. org/10.1080/17439880500515457. hughes, r. 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(2014). the relationship between speaking features and band descriptors: a mixed methods study. ielts research reports online series, (2). retrieved from https:// 141 improving l2 oral accuracy and grammatical range through self-assessment of video speech drafts profile: issues teach. prof. dev., vol. 20 no. 2, jul-dec, 2018. issn 1657-0790 (printed) 2256-5760 (online). bogotá, colombia. pages 127-142 about the authors martin javier caicedo pereira holds an m.a. in english language teaching for self-directed learning from universidad de la sabana (colombia), and a graduate diploma in tesol from anaheim university (usa). he currently works as adjunct professor at the master of english didactics at universidad de caldas, as well as regional assessment specialist for oxford university press in latin america. his research interests focus on assessment, icts in language learning, and self-directed learning. jhonny alexander lozano bermúdez is an english language teacher with more than 10 years’ experience working with varied ages and levels. his research interests mainly focus on autonomous learning and selfassessment. he holds a degree in social communication, an elt diploma from anaheim university and a master degree from universidad de la sabana. luis alfonso vanegas medina is an efl teacher-researcher invited by the foreign language department at universidad surcolombiana. he holds a graduate diploma in tesol from anaheim university and a masters in english didactics from universidad de la sabana. his current research interests include clil methodology and the use of tics in efl lessons. www.ielts.org/-/media/research-reports/ielts_online_ rr_2014-2.ashx. shumin, k. (1997). factors to consider: developing adult efl students’ speaking abilities. english teaching forum, 35(3), 8-13. shunk, d. h. (2004). learning theories: an educational perspective. upper saddle river, us: merrill prentice/hall. skehan, p. (1996). a framework for the implementation of task-based instruction. applied linguistics, 17(1), 38-62. https://doi.org/10.1093/applin/17.1.38. stanley, j. (1992). coaching student writers to be effective peer evaluators. journal of second language writing, 1(3), 217-233. https://doi.org/10.1016/1060-3743(92)90004-9. wiggins, g. p. (1993). assessing student performance: exploring the purpose and limits of testing. san francisco, us: jossey bass. young, d. j. (1990). an investigation of students’ perspectives on anxiety and speaking. foreign language annals, 23(6), 539-553. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1944-9720.1990. tb00424.x. universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras142 caicedo pereira, lozano bermúdez & vanegas medina appendix: rubric to self-assess oral ability (accuracy and grammatical range) accuracy: refers to the language produced. it may contain errors but they should not interfere with communication. grammatical range: refers to the use of complex structures (present perfect simple and continuous, past perfect simple and continuous, future perfect and conditionals) and simple structures (present, past, and future simple). 1 my grammar is almost entirely inaccurate which affects meaning, communication, and understanding. i fail to produce basic or complex structures correctly. 2 i make constant major and minor errors that affect meaning, communication, and understanding. i show control of very limited patterns. i use only simple structures with mistakes that affect understanding. 3 i make several major errors and just some minor ones, but they rarely affect communication, meaning, and understanding. i sometimes use complex or simple structures and these may contain mistakes that may affect understanding. 4 i produce occasional major errors and only some minor ones showing an imperfect control of patterns. i produce some misunderstanding, but message and communication are not unduly affected. i use regularly complex and simple structures with few mistakes that do not affect understanding. 5 i consistently use correct sentences to convey a message with just a few major or minor errors. i frequently use simple and complex structures naturally and correctly. in order to keep a record of your performance in each recording, we invite you to fill in the following chart. recording # date topic accuracy (1-5) grammatical range (1-5) total score comments (type of mistakes, variety of structures, frequency of errors) 1 2 79 https://doi.org/10.15446/profile.v20n2.65609 foreign language planning: the case of a teacher/translator training programme at a mexican university planificación lingüística de lenguas extranjeras: el caso de un programa para maestros de lengua y traductores virna velázquez*1 universidad autónoma del estado de méxico, toluca, mexico edgar emmanuell garcía-ponce**2 universidad de guanajuato, guanajuato, mexico the present article reports on a study that set out to investigate the effectiveness of strategies and decisions formulated in foreign language planning to ensure learners’ language achievement in a higher education context which trains learners to become english or french teachers or translators. by drawing on data collected from simulated proficiency tests and interviews with students, teachers, and administrators, the findings show that the foreign language goals have not been met as stipulated in the curriculum, and that there are several shortcomings in the foreign language planning that need the educational community’s consideration. this article also discusses some factors that should be considered in foreign language planning in order to meet language goals in educational contexts. key words: curriculum, english as a foreign language, language planning, low proficiency level, teacher training. el presente estudio se realizó con el objetivo de explorar la efectividad de estrategias y decisiones como parte de una planificación de lenguas extranjeras. esta planificación lingüística se ha implementado para promover la competencia lingüística como parte de una licenciatura que prepara estudiantes para ser maestros o traductores de inglés o francés. al explorar datos estadísticos y de entrevistas con estudiantes, maestros y administrativos, los resultados muestran que los objetivos de las lenguas extranjeras no se han logrado y hay varias limitantes con respecto a su planificación. estos resultados son de gran relevancia para entender algunos factores que deberían ser considerados en una planificación lingüística con objetivos concernientes a las lenguas extranjeras en contextos de enseñanza y aprendizaje. palabras clave: bajo nivel de lengua, curriculum, formación docente, inglés como lengua extranjera, planificación lingüística. * e-mail: virnalenguas@hotmail.com ** e-mail: ee.garcia@ugto.mx how to cite this article (apa, 6th ed.): velázquez, v., & garcía-ponce, e. e. (2018). foreign language planning: the case of a teacher/translator training programme at a mexican university. profile: issues in teachers’ professional development, 20(2), 79-94. https://doi.org/10.15446/ profile.v20n2.65609. this article was received on june 12, 2017 and accepted on march 9, 2018. this is an open access article distributed under the terms of the creative commons license attribution-noncommercial-noderivatives 4.0 international license. consultation is possible at https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/. profile: issues teach. prof. dev., vol. 20 no. 2, jul-dec, 2018. issn 1657-0790 (printed) 2256-5760 (online). bogotá, colombia. pages 79-94 universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras80 velázquez & garcía-ponce introduction language planning (lp) is defined as the search for and formulation of strategies to cover linguistic needs of target people who learn languages for educational, political, and employment purposes (tollefson, 1994). the strategies in lp can be formulated following two broad perspectives: (a) lp in communities or societies involving sociolinguistic factors (i.e., corpus and status planning) and (b) lp for language education purposes (i.e., language acquisition planning) (baldauf & kaplan, 2007; cooper, 1989). in the latter planning category, decisions are strategically planned in order to set and achieve linguistic goals in teaching and learning contexts. in order to ensure lp’s effectiveness, a number of measures are used to evaluate its processes and thus effectiveness. the aim of this article is to evaluate the effectiveness of foreign language planning (flp) that has been implemented at a university in mexico which trains learners to become english or french teachers or translators during a fiveyear training programme. three research questions were thus formulated to guide the study: 1. how effective is the current flp in the faculty of languages? 2. what can we learn from the learners’, teachers’, and administrators’ perceptions concerning the flp as a process to ensure learner achievement? 3. what alternative actions should be taken into account by the community in order to ensure the effectiveness of foreign language planning and thus language learner achievement? language planning for gadelii (1999), lp involves decisions that a group of people (i.e., linguists or government) makes, plans, and applies to solve issues related to a language or languages, in cases of bilingualism or multilingualism. haugen (1996) alludes to weinrich as the first scholar who first used the term lp during a seminar given at columbia university in 1957. regardless of the fact that lp is nowadays considered a legitimate field of study, the different angles which are used to approach lp processes have not been exempt from controversy. in particular, the need for adequate frameworks or theory through which the processes involved in lp are explained and evaluated has been highlighted: we are particularly limited with respect to any systematic social theory-guided approach to why certain selective, elaborative, and codification attempts succeed (i.e., why they are accepted by the desired target populations), whereas others fail. (fishman, das gupta, jernudd, & rubin, 1971, p. 304) despite fishman et al.’s (1971) call for a theory-based approach for lp, recent research literature has still put forward the need for such an approach which facilitates the formulation of strategies and evaluation of processes as part of lp (see amorós, 2008). however, there are indeed agreed processes which can be followed in lp. these processes involve: 1. describing; 2. predicting; 3. explaining the processes; and 4. suggesting valid generalisations about the processes and results. firstly, descriptions are elaborated regarding the influence of agents on (a) which behaviours, (b) of whom, (c) by which means, and (d) with which results. secondly, after the influence is described, the facts that are perceived to be involved in the language learning process are predicted. thirdly, the facts alongside their processes are explained. finally, generalisations are formulated, and results are suggested. in order to obtain effective outcomes, mesthrie, swann, deumert, and leap (2009) suggest that lp should go through the following stages: 1. penetration. this requires that a language planner enters the target community, and analyses the linguistic situation. 2. participation. this involves carrying out decisionmaking work regarding the language or languages under study. 81 foreign language planning: the case of a teacher/translator training programme at a mexican university profile: issues teach. prof. dev., vol. 20 no. 2, jul-dec, 2018. issn 1657-0790 (printed) 2256-5760 (online). bogotá, colombia. pages 79-94 3. legitimacy. the changes and/or strategies planned are officially legitimised in the speech community. 4. identity. in order to ensure the effectiveness of their implementation, language planners should formulate strategies with which speakers or users are likely to feel identified. 5. distribution. once the community is gradually accepting the strategies, language planners need to distribute and strengthen the planned strategies so that the lp goals are achieved. however, it is not always possible for strategies formulated in lp to yield expected outcomes. therefore, baldauf (2004) argues that in order to ensure effective outcomes, lp should include: • all the decisions formulated in the lp work, including those that are not entirely accepted or implemented by the target community; • strategies planned to alter or change the language; • description of the decisions or strategies that the language planner considers relevant in relation to the linguistic objectives; and • alternative measures that guarantee their implementation. in line with fierman (1991), baldauf (2004) and payne (2007) we agree that lp should include decisions strategically planned to alter or change a linguistic situation or aspects of (a) language(s). however, he goes further to emphasise the need to formulate alternative strategies in order to ensure the effectiveness of lp. baldauf ’s suggestion is of particular relevance for lp in educational settings which have not been exempt from shortcomings. these shortcomings are claimed to be largely motivated by the educational system and characteristics of the linguistic community and curriculum, among others, as well as having an impact on learners’ language achievement, attitudes, and motivation (tergborg, lastra & moore, 2006). however, as we shall discuss later in this article, lp in educational contexts should take into account not only instructional (i.e., teachingand learning-related practices) but also perceptual (i.e., speakers’ perceptions and attitudes) factors in order to ensure its effectiveness. regarding the former factors, gonzález, vivaldo, and castillo (2004) suggest the following strategies: 1. attainable objectives must be set in order to allow the education system to develop learners’ multiculturalism and multilingualism. this requires the design of syllabi which unifies the linguistic competence that learners need to develop in each education level in the country. 2. language teaching programmes must be designed in a way that the attainment of linguistic goals, clearly divided by proficiency levels, is ensured. 3. learners should be provided with language standard frameworks in order for them to assess and promote the progress of their linguistic competence. 4. foreign language teaching must incorporate professional standards, involving linguistic, cultural, and pedagogical competence. 5. teaching and learning resources must be improved and provided at all educational levels. 6. collaborative dialogue should also be promoted in order to develop and coordinate educational policies for a more solid, holistic, and equitable language education. these strategies are of great importance for the purpose of exploring the effectiveness of the flp decisions and strategies in the teaching and learning context in which the study took place. as we will see, it also seems important that alternative actions are formulated, implemented, and evaluated to ensure the effectiveness of teaching and learning practices and thus language achievement. so far, we have seen that research literature has long put forward the call for a theoretical and methodological approach which facilitates the processes and effectiveness of lp. the lack of such an approach may universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras82 velázquez & garcía-ponce be due to the diverse objectives, languages, contexts, speakers, and communities that planners have sought to investigate, making it almost impossible to converge on effectively common lp strategies. as a consequence, research literature has yielded different strategies or methods to approach a linguistic situation in a speech community. the absence of this approach has been extrapolated to language educational settings, where linguistic competence goals have not been fully met as expected. this is the case of the research context of this study where learners have been seen not to develop a foreign language competence as stipulated in the official curriculum. with the aim of understanding the factors that may be motivating the shortcomings of the current flp in this context, this study firstly examines the attainment of language proficiency goals as stipulated in the curriculum. it secondly explores the learners’, teachers’, and administrators’ perceptions concerning the decisions and strategies that have been formulated and implemented in order to achieve these linguistic goals. as we shall see, some of these decisions and strategies mirror fierman’s (1991), baldauf ’s (2004), and payne’s (2007) suggestions for planning languages, but others need the language community’s consideration in order to ensure the effectiveness of the flp and thus learner achievement in this teaching and learning context. the study the present study was motivated by perceptual evidence that a high number of learners in this context was unable to meet the language goals stipulated in the curriculum. as we shall see, this evidence was corroborated by the results of diagnostic exams (garcía ponce, 2011), which are known in this context as mock exams (see below). the learners’ low language proficiency raised the need to explore and evaluate the current flp strategies with a view to understanding how learners in this teaching and learning context may develop more effective linguistic and interactional skills. this research interest was reinforced by the fact that these learners are being trained to become language teachers or translators and will rely on their language skills to effectively teach or translate the foreign languages. moreover, it is known in this faculty that due to their low proficiency level, these learners sometimes compete for jobs with individuals whose profession is not related to language teaching or translation studies, but whose language competence is higher than theirs (garcía ponce, 2011). research context the study took place in the faculty of languages at the universidad autónoma del estado de méxico (uaem). this university is a higher education institution whose language faculty currently offers a five-year programme aimed at training learners to become english or french teachers or translators. this institution was established in the early 1990s in the city of toluca, mexico. it initially began offering the ba in english and, in subsequent years, the ba in french language and culture. in 2003, the administration decided to merge both programmes, and the teacher/translator training programme (i.e., ba in languages) was then created. as stipulated in the curriculum (uaem, 2010), learners are expected to develop abilities which promote knowledge of and reflection on the foreign language, teaching practices, and translation skills. due to practical constraints, the present paper is unable to encompass all the strategies that are planned and implemented for each major (i.e., language teaching or translation). however, the paper is a starting point to understand the strategies and decisions that converge during the flp for both english and french. concerning these two target languages, the goals in this institution are the following: • speak english or french with precision; • initiate a wide range of practical, social, professional and abstract topics; • participate with ease in discussions of their area (language teaching or translation studies); and 83 foreign language planning: the case of a teacher/translator training programme at a mexican university profile: issues teach. prof. dev., vol. 20 no. 2, jul-dec, 2018. issn 1657-0790 (printed) 2256-5760 (online). bogotá, colombia. pages 79-94 • use a wide range of discourse strategies during communication, which is not affected if learners make mistakes. (uaem, 2010, pp. 18-19) specifically, learners are expected to develop a minimum linguistic competence of b2 according to the common european framework of reference for languages (cefrl), and an intermediate proficiency level in the fl in which they are not majoring. in order to facilitate the achievement of these objectives, learners are given an active responsibility for their academic progress at their convenience (uaem, 2010). this active responsibility involves not only making decisions as to the selection of subjects and hours of study per semester, but also finding opportunities which promote language learning autonomy (uaem, 2010). participants as previously stated, the purpose of this study is twofold. firstly, it aims to determine the effectiveness of the strategies and decisions in flp. in order to attain this, we used the results of mock exams of 122 learners (81 majoring in english, and 41 majoring in french) enrolled in semesters iii, vi, and ix (see simulated proficiency tests section). secondly, it explores learners’, teachers,’ and administrators’ perceptions regarding the strategies and decision-making involved in the flp work carried out by the institution. for this, in order to understand the strategies, interviews were conducted with 18 learners, 12 teachers, and 14 administrators. the 18 participant learners (three learners of english and three learners of french taking semesters iii, vi, and ix, respectively) were chosen randomly from attendance lists, contacted in their classrooms, and invited to participate in this study under no obligation. the participant teachers, of english and french, were also teaching in those semesters and were invited to participate in the interviews. in the case of the administrators, only those that actively participate in the design of the flp were chosen and invited to participate. in total, 44 informants participated in the interviews which were held at their convenience over a period of three months. simulated proficiency tests mock exams in this context are administered every semester following two broad aims: (a) to promote learners’ awareness of their foreign language competence, and (b) to evaluate learners’ language achievement in relation to the curriculum’s linguistic goals. it should be noted that these exams follow the same structure and sections of international language certifications in order to train learners in passing these tests and thus obtain language certificates which they will need in order to work in the mexican labour market. the analysis of the results of these exams (122) followed a quantitative approach, involving simple total numbers, averages, and percentages (please refer to appendices a, b, and c for more information). interviews the interviews with the three groups of this educational community (i.e., learners, language teachers, and administrators) were recorded in order to facilitate the explorations of the flp. three interview guides were designed, one for each group, consisting of 25 to 34 items. face validity of the interview guides was ensured by three scholars who (a) were familiar with lp strategies and language teaching, (b) participated as pilot informants; and (c) gave feedback as to the structure of the items and guides. the recorded interviews were conducted in spanish in order to avoid the participants’ concerns about the correctness of their responses, and to promote a rapport between the interviewer and participants. the recorded interviews were transcribed completely in order to explore from micro and macro lenses the informants’ perceptions concerning the decisions and strategies in the flp. the transcribed data were then analysed through a meaning categorisation which is believed to facilitate the identification of patterns, themes, and meaning (berg, 2009). this involved identifying extracts manually, and universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras84 velázquez & garcía-ponce attributing them to theme categories and sub-categories which emerged from the data. in order to protect the participants’ identity, the words “learner”, “teacher”, or “administrator” and an identification number (e.g., teacher 5) were used in the results and discussions. results and discussion in order to address the first two research questions (i.e., how effective is the current flp in the faculty of languages? and what can we learn from the learners’, teachers’, and administrators’ perceptions concerning the flp as a process to ensure learner achievement?), this section discusses the results concerning the explorations of the flp in this higher education context. the discussions revolve around five macro themes: (a) foreign language planning, (b) learners’ foreign language proficiency, (c) language teaching and learning practices, (d) foreign language classes and learner motivation, and (e) language resources and learner autonomy. overall, the evidence corroborates that the learners’ language proficiency was low and suggests that there is a number of shortcomings in the flp which needs alternative actions in order to ensure learner achievement progressively. foreign language planning overall, the elicited data indicated various perceptions concerning the flp carried out by the faculty of languages. twenty-five percent of the administrators’ responses suggested an endorsement for continuous planning and evaluation of the foreign languages: english and french, as suggested in extract 1. extract 1 of course [flp] is important because our ba programme is in languages. (administrator 7) this endorsement reflects moreau’s (1997) and cooper’s (1997) suggestions that languages should be continuously planned and evaluated in order to guarantee an effective implementation of strategies. in line with moreau (1997) and cooper (1997), weinstein (1980) highlights that lp needs to be in continuous development and evaluation so that language planners or the community design and implement corrective or alternative actions. seventy percent of the participant learners’ responses suggested that learners, as well as teachers and administrators, should take part in the flp processes. for example, learner 11 (english) mentioned the following: extract 2 i think that everybody should participate; the director, sub-director, mostly teachers, but students should also voice their opinions. learner 11’s response suggests the idea that the whole community should participate in the decisionmaking of the flp. what is interesting in the phrase “but students should also voice their opinions” is that learner 11 reveals a perceived lack of learner participation in this decision-making. according to fierman (1991), all the members of a community should participate in the process of planning a language in order to promote effective implementation. as we shall see below, there was a number of perceived shortcomings related to the flp. these shortcomings were particularly associated with the administration’s emphasis on teaching practices, neglecting learningrelated practices as suggested by the informants. these perceived shortcomings in turn reveal the failure of the current flp to formulate strategies taking into consideration learner voices and perceptions. learners’ foreign language proficiency when asked about learners’ proficiency level, 50% of the participant learners felt that the proficiency level was generally low. this was also felt by administrator 8, as suggested in extract 3. extract 3 i think that in general it is considerably low. i have been interviewing language coordinators from other institutions and they do not hire graduates from this faculty. their reason is that they are perceived [by the coordinators] to have a low language proficiency. 85 foreign language planning: the case of a teacher/translator training programme at a mexican university profile: issues teach. prof. dev., vol. 20 no. 2, jul-dec, 2018. issn 1657-0790 (printed) 2256-5760 (online). bogotá, colombia. pages 79-94 forty-five percent of the informants (involving learners, teachers, and administrators) were aware that this low learner achievement was against the stipulations of the curriculum. for example, this feeling was suggested by teacher 2 (french) as follows. extract 4 regarding the curriculum, i believe that [the results from the tests] are low because we are training future english or french language teachers and they should have a higher language proficiency level than the public in general. in exploring the mock examinations, the results confirmed a low proficiency level of learners in semesters iii, vi, and ix. moreover, these results indicated higher passing grades of learners majoring in french than learners majoring in english. table 1 may explain the varied results of english and french examinations: table 1. proficiency levels of mock examinations semester english french iii b1 (pet) a2 (delf) vi b2 (fce) b1 (delf) ix c1 (cae) b2 (delf) note. pet = preliminary english test, fce = first certificate in english, cae = certificate in advanced english, delf = diplôme d’études en langue française, dalf = diplôme approfondi de langue française. as shown in table 1, there was a mismatch between the proficiency levels of the mock examinations in english and french. learners in semesters iii and vi took english examinations whose proficiency levels were b1 and b2, whereas learners majoring in french took examinations with equal proficiency levels but in semesters vi and ix. the immediate issue that emerges from this evidence is that learners majoring in english or french were set unequal linguistic goals, as indicated in table 1. it is thus likely that learners after taking the teacher/translator training programme in this context develop different levels of english and french proficiency. it is interesting that some participants were aware of this mismatch, for example: extract 5 i think that students are achieving higher proficiency levels in french than in english . . . we have spotted a tiny mistake in placing [students] in a b2 level when their level is b1 and maybe this makes them believe that they have a high level. (teacher 7, english) as suggested in extract 5, it seems that learners majoring in french were obtaining higher results, but from a lower proficiency level than learners majoring in english. the results of the mock examinations also showed low learner participation (see appendix c). the implication of low learner participation in these exams is that learner achievement in general cannot be determined with accuracy. however, based on the results of the learners that participated in these exams, it is apparent that the linguistic goals stipulated by the curriculum were not met. mentioned by three administrators, the low learner achievement hinders learners from obtaining an international language certification that demonstrates, at least, a proficiency level of b2, the minimum proficiency level required to work as language teachers in many schools in mexico, as suggested in extract 6. extract 6 it is a problem that there are students and graduates who cannot work because of their [low] proficiency level and we have to do something. (administrator 13) this evidence not only highlights the community’s failure to meet the linguistic goals stipulated in the curriculum, but also raises the need for alternative strategies or actions in flp, as suggested by baldauf (2004). language teaching and learning practices as discussed previously, the evidence shows that the learners’ proficiency was generally low and in contradiction with the stipulations of the curriculum. it is possible that the low proficiency levels are universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras86 velázquez & garcía-ponce largely influenced by the learners’ failure to carry out actively learning-related practices outside the classroom, as consistent with baldauf and kaplan’s (2007) contention. the faculty of languages has tried to promote learner autonomy outside the classroom by encouraging learners to carry out a self-study of two hours for each hour in language classes, that is, if learners study the language for six hours in classrooms, they are expected to practise it for 12 hours on an autonomous basis, as suggested in extract 7. extract 7 we reduced the class hours so that students work autonomously because they are required to obtain a certain proficiency level. this decision would motivate them to use the self-access centre or carry out study by themselves. (teacher 1, english) however, learners were considerably perceived by the participant teachers and administrators not to carry out these autonomous learning practices. this shortcoming was felt by teacher 9 (french) as follows. extract 8 we are not promoting learner autonomy correctly because the student goes to the self-access centre because his teacher asked him to go; not because he wants to go there and practise. in extract 8, teacher 9’s statement suggests the feeling that learner autonomy inside and outside the language classroom has not been promoted as expected. moreover, she suggests the feeling that learner autonomy is not effectively encouraged when learning practices are imposed upon learners. the lack of learner autonomy was corroborated by eight participant learners who admitted that they only practised the foreign language in classrooms. in exploring the reasons that motivated the lack of learner autonomy, 60% of the participant learners felt that it was a consequence of a “great amount of workload” that they have ever y semester, but also their “irresponsible attitudes,” as admitted by learner 4 (french): extract 9 i do not think that there is a lack of promotion. i do believe that students are not interested in using those resources. in response to the aforementioned limitations, 45% of the informants (18 students, one teacher, and one administrator) suggested an alternative strategy, a foreign language immersion which involves the whole community speaking the foreign languages inside and outside classrooms in order to promote learner involvement and autonomy. for example, teacher 5 (english) recommends the following: extract 10 we need to re-implement that programme called “english everywhere” and try other activities. and we, as administrators and teachers, need to speak english or french. the shortcomings of the flp concerning learners’ low language achievement may also be a consequence of the considerable emphasis placed on strategies for teaching practices, without taking into consideration learning-related practices, attitudes, and perceptions. this suggestion is supported by the participant teachers’ perceptions that agreements and decisions during the official meetings run by the administration mostly centre on language teaching practices, implying a failure to include in the flp actions associated with learners’ attitudinal, perceptual, and interactional behaviour inside and outside the classroom, as suggested in extract 11. extract 11 sometimes i think that [flp] is not working, taking into account that each student is different. despite the fact it is been carried out, i believe that learners should be considered in the decision-making of those meetings. (teacher 7, english) this evidence reveals the need to address these limitations and incorporate them into the flp since learners, as foreign language speakers, are ultimately the target of the current flp (cooper, 1997). 87 foreign language planning: the case of a teacher/translator training programme at a mexican university profile: issues teach. prof. dev., vol. 20 no. 2, jul-dec, 2018. issn 1657-0790 (printed) 2256-5760 (online). bogotá, colombia. pages 79-94 foreign language classes and learner motivation when asked about their perceptions as regards the foreign language classes, 58% of the informants (involving all the teachers and three learners) believed that there were class time constraints which limited the opportunities to integrate the four language skills and thus affected learner achievement, as suggested by learner 9 (english) in extract 12. extract 12 maybe [the administrators] should extend the class hours because sometimes we just practise grammar topics. we should also practise the four skills. they should not reduce them; they should increase them. in this faculty, the class time for the foreign languages ranges from five to six hours per week. the informants mentioned that the class time was reduced by breaks of ten minutes per each hour of class that are given to learners, and extra activities (e.g., conferences, presentations, events, etc.) which require both teachers and learners to attend. as a consequence, 25% of the participant teachers and 25% of the participant administrators suggested that the class time for the foreign languages be increased by eight to 15 hours per week, as suggested by administrator 11. extract 13 we should use the previous schedule. that is to say, we should increase the number of class hours. six hours are few, in my opinion. i think that the hours for language classes should be eight or ten as in the old schedule. it is important to note that in the previous programmes, the class time for the foreign languages was about 20 hours per week, but learners were still perceived to develop low proficiency levels. besides class time constraints, most of the participant learners felt that the classes were not attractive or dynamic, displaying negative attitudes towards the teaching approaches that were adopted in the classrooms. in line with these perceptions, watts (as cited in coupland, sarangi, & candlin, 2001) raises the possibility that strategies as part of lp may not yield the expected outcomes if users or speakers do not endorse them as part of their interests. the participant learners felt that the unattractive teaching approaches that were adopted in the classroom resulted in low learner motivation towards learning the foreign language as follows. extract 14 [language teachers] should make their best to keep students motivated regarding learning the language because we all began the semester feeling motivated and then we start feeling demotivated. then, they should find other strategies for their teaching methods. (learner 3, english) in extract 14, learner 3 suggests an interplay between learner motivation and language achievement which has long been the focus of language education research. however, this learner’s statement is not clear as to the source of learners’ low motivation concerning teaching practices. nine of the participant teachers felt that learners’ low motivation was caused by a reliance on textbooks, as cautioned by terborg, garcía landa, and moore (2006). according to the participant teachers, it is the administration which has imposed the use of textbooks despite the fact that the content of the textbooks is not related to the objectives of the curriculum. in response to this reliance, 66% of the participant learners suggested that too much emphasis should not be placed on textbooks while practising the languages, and that these resources should be used as support materials. moreover, 27% of the participant learners felt that low learner motivation was a consequence of the grammar practice that has dominated the practice of the language skills. this idea is supported by learner 10 (french), as suggested in extract 15. extract 15 teaching and learning grammar should not be the main objective in our classes because there are other important language areas. universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras88 velázquez & garcía-ponce in response to this, the participant learners suggested that an integration of language skills is promoted in language classes without prioritising grammar. it is apparent from the above evidence that there is a need to evaluate continuously the effectiveness of decisions and strategies in the flp, and to suggest alternative actions which will ensure the achievement of learners’ foreign language competence. however, in this context, exploring the implementation and effectiveness of strategies inside classrooms may be limited by the teachers’ “teaching freedom” (libertad de cátedra in spanish) which is promoted across the university. the teaching freedom enables teachers, using their discretion, to adopt the teaching approaches that they consider effective in promoting language learning. this also implies that the teachers’ teaching behaviour inside the classroom cannot be influenced or imposed upon. administrators and language teachers claimed that the effectiveness of strategies was thus assessed through teachers’ comments on and discussions about the strategies during the official meetings. in order to continuously evaluate the flp, some administrators and teachers suggested that peer classroom observations are carried out in order to determine the effectiveness of both teacherand learner-related strategies inside the classroom strategies. this strategy would not restrict teachers’ teaching freedom since it would be carried out as onlooker (non-participant) classroom observations with a view to enhancing teaching and learning practices. language resources and learner autonomy in this higher education context, different resources and spaces are at the learners’ disposal to develop their four language skills, grammar, and vocabulary. for example, there is a self-access centre where a number of materials (aural, visual, and written) are available to learners. other resources include: language workshops where learners are encouraged to practise and develop the four language skills; international visiting assistants with whom they can practise the communicative aspect of english and french; and the library where learners have access to research and teaching literature in english and french. the possibility of practising the target languages is acknowledged by learner 7 (english) in extract 16. extract 16 here in the faculty, there are different resources. workshops are carried out to promote each of the language skills in english or french, or conferences during which you receive suggestions on what to do. these resources are in line with gonzález et al.’s (2004) recommendation that learners should be provided with the resources and spaces where they can develop their language skills. however, despite the range of materials, activities, and spaces that are available to learners in this context, 52% of the participants claimed that learners’ involvement and use of these resources were generally low, as suggested in extract 17. extract 17 i think that they [students] do not participate as they should. i think that they are not taking advantage of the resources, and it is not the teachers’ fault. (teacher 3, english) some of the participant learners felt that the main reason of learners’ low involvement was again time constraints, as stated by learner 11 (english). extract 18 i sometimes do not use the resources because of time constraints. i have been interested in attending the workshops with the american girls, but i have not had time. this evidence thus suggests shortcomings of the flp which caused heavy workloads on learners, hindering them from promoting autonomy, involving abilities, language skills, time management skills, and the like. in response to this, a participant teacher suggested that time frames, namely, between 12:00 and 89 foreign language planning: the case of a teacher/translator training programme at a mexican university profile: issues teach. prof. dev., vol. 20 no. 2, jul-dec, 2018. issn 1657-0790 (printed) 2256-5760 (online). bogotá, colombia. pages 79-94 13:00, are established during which learners are free to practise the language skills that need to be improved. however, it may not be an effective strategy since the participant learners’ responses suggested perceptions that indicated negative attitudes towards the imposition of activities outside the classroom. rather, their responses suggested an endorsement for language practice outside the classroom on an autonomous basis, as suggested in extract 19. extract 19 i ask my students to do extra activities on something that they like in order not to impose the activities. they practise activities of skills they need to develop. i try to encourage this because i know that if there is something in which they do not like, they are not going to be interested. then, i try to motivate them. (teacher 10, french) the above evidence suggests that the faculty of languages provided learners with the resources where they could develop their foreign language competence. however, possibly motivated by heavy workloads on learners, there was a perceived low learner involvement in these resources. this perceived low learner involvement links back to the lack of learner autonomy inside and outside the classroom. again, it seems possible that learner autonomy and achievement are enhanced if the strategies in flp take into consideration the learners’ perceptions, and are formulated towards the enhancement of learning practices inside and outside the classroom. in sum, the evidence indicated that the learners’ proficiency level was low. this evidence appeared to be in contradiction with the objectives of the curriculum. in exploring the learners’, teachers’, and administrators’ perceptions concerning flp, the evidence suggested that flp decisions and strategies are implemented to meet the linguistic goals of both the foreign languages. however, as reported by the participant learners and some teachers, it seems that the learners’ voices and perceptions were not being included as part of the flp processes. this was to some extent based on the learners’ feelings that the decisions and strategies in flp were centred on teaching practices, suggesting in turn a failure to consider and evaluate learning practices. it is possible that the emphasis on decisions and strategies related to teaching practices resulted in low learner motivation and autonomy. based on this evidence, we thus call for decisions and strategies involved in flp work which take into account learners’ perceptions and opinions in order to ensure their endorsement and thus their effectiveness to promote foreign language competence. conclusions the primary aim of this paper was to explore and evaluate the flp that the faculty of languages at the uaem carried out to meet the linguistic goals stipulated in the curriculum. as a starting point, the explorations of the flp, firstly, considered the results of english and french simulated proficiency exams that this educational context administered to determine learners’ foreign language competence. the explorations then examined perceptual data in order to develop a better understanding of the flp strategies and decisions and their effectiveness in promoting learner achievement. the evidence indicated that learner achievement in three semesters was generally low. secondly, it showed a mismatch between the proficiency levels that learners majoring in english and french were expected to develop. in exploring the learners’, teachers’, and administrators’ perceptions regarding flp, the evidence suggested that there were shortcomings in the decisions and strategies concerning teaching and learning practices which, in turn, influenced learner achievement, attitudes, and autonomy. the above evidence highlights the importance of formulating alternative strategies in order to ensure learners’ language achievement. thus, in addressing the third research question (“what alternative actions should be taken into account by the community in order to ensure the effectiveness of the flp and thus language universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras90 velázquez & garcía-ponce learner achievement?”), this community needs to ensure that alternative strategies are designed to enhance both teachingand learning-related practices inside, as well as outside, classrooms. in particular, subsequent strategies in the flp should take into account the teachers’ and learners’ perceptions of the processes involved in teaching and learning the foreign languages. this may, firstly, guarantee that the strategies designed following their voices and perceptions are implemented by teachers and learners inside the classroom. secondly, the teachers’ and learners’ endorsement for these strategies may in turn result in enhanced learning practices which can be extrapolated to environments outside the classroom with a view to promoting learner autonomy. the contribution made by this paper was threefold: firstly, the evidence showed that in order to ensure the effectiveness of an lp, there is a need for continuous evaluations which explore the implementation of decisions and strategies. secondly, alternative actions need to be formulated in cases when strategies appear to be rejected by the speech community. thirdly, all the members’ voices and perceptions of the processes should be taken into consideration in order to formulate (alternative) strategies which may result in a greater endorsement and thus effective implementation in the speech community, in this case, the faculty of languages at the uaem. references amorós, c. (2008). diferentes perspectivas en torno a la planificación lingüística. in i. olza moreno, m. casado velarde, & r. gonzález ruiz (eds.), actas del xxxvii simposio internacional de la sociedad española de lingüística (sel) (pp. 17-29). pamplona, es: servicio de publicaciones de la universidad de navarra. baldauf, r. (2004, may). language planning and policy: recent trends, future directions. paper presented at the american association of applied linguistics conference, portland, us. retrieved from https://espace.library.uq.edu. au/view/uq:24518. baldauf, r. b., & kaplan, r. b. (2007). language planning and policy in latin america: ecuador, mexico, and paraguay (vol. 1). clevedon, us: multilingual matters. berg, b. l. (2009). qualitative research methods for the social sciences (7th ed.). boston, us: pearson education. cooper, r. l. (1989). language planning and social change. cambridge, uk: cambridge university press. cooper, r. l. (1997). la planificación lingüística y el cambio social. cambridge, uk: cambridge university press. coupland, n., sarangi, s., & candlin, c. n. (2001). sociolinguistics and social theory. london, uk: pearson. fierman, w. (1991). language planning and national development: the uzbek experience. berlín, de: mouton de gruyter. https://doi.org/10.1515/9783110853384. fishman, j. a., das gupta, j., jernudd, b. h., & rubin, j. (1971). research outline for comparative studies of language planning. in j. rubin & b. h. jernudd (eds.), can language be planned? (pp. 293-305). honolulu, us: university of hawaii. gadelii, k. e. (1999). language planning: theory and practice. evaluation of language planning cases world-wide. paris, fr: unesco. garcía ponce, e. e. (2011). planificación de lenguas extranjeras en la facultad de lenguas de la uaem (unpublished master’s thesis). universidad autónoma del estado de méxico, toluca, estado de méxico. gonzález, r. o., vivaldo j., & castillo, a. (2004). competencia lingüística en inglés de estudiantes de primer ingreso a instituciones de educación superior del área metropolitana de la ciudad de méxico. méxico, d.f.: unidad autónoma metropolitana. haugen, e. (1966). language conflict and language planning: the case of modern norwegian. cambridge, uk: cambridge university press. https://doi.org/10.4159/ harvard.9780674498709. mesthrie, r., swann, j., deumert, a., & leap, w. (2009). introducing sociolinguistics (2nd ed.). edinburgh, uk: edinburgh university press. moreau, m.-l. (1997). sociolinguistique: les concepts de base. sprimont, be: mardaga. 91 foreign language planning: the case of a teacher/translator training programme at a mexican university profile: issues teach. prof. dev., vol. 20 no. 2, jul-dec, 2018. issn 1657-0790 (printed) 2256-5760 (online). bogotá, colombia. pages 79-94 about the authors virna velázquez is a professor at universidad autónoma del estado de méxico. she holds an ma in applied linguistics (uaemex) and a phd in linguistics (unam). she has published articles related to the indigenous languages situation in mexico. her research interests include sociolinguistics and second language acquisition. edgar emmanuell garcía-ponce teaches in the ma in applied linguistics in elt program in the departamento de lenguas, universidad de guanajuato. he holds a phd in elt and applied linguistics from the university of birmingham, uk. his research interests are centred on the interplay between classroom interactions and teacher and learner beliefs. payne, m. (2007). foreign language planning: towards a supporting framework. language problems and language planning, 31(3), 235-256. https://doi.org/10.1075/ lplp.31.3.03pay. terborg, r., garcía landa, l., & moore, p. (2006). the language situation in mexico. current issues in language planning, 7(4), 415-518. https://doi.org/10.2167/cilp109.0. tollefson, j. w. (1994). planning language, planning inequalities. london, uk: longman. universidad autónoma del estado de méxico, uaem. (2010). curriculum de la licenciatura en lenguas. toluca: author. weinstein, b. (1980). language planning in francophone africa. language problems and language planning, 4(1), 55-77. https://doi.org/10.1075/lplp.4.1.04wei. universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras92 velázquez & garcía-ponce appendix a: english language results: b1, b2, and c1 pet (b1) reading & writing listening speaking average 6.70/10.0 6.77/10.0 6.90/10.0 6.78/10.0 fce (b2) reading writing use of english listening speaking average 4.64/10.0 6.65/10.0 5.27/10.0 4.67/10.0 7.95/10.0 5.81/10.0 cae (c1) reading writing use of english listening speaking average 5.81/10.0 6.92/10.0 4.42/10.0 3.74/10.0 6.67/10.0 5.49/10.0 93 foreign language planning: the case of a teacher/translator training programme at a mexican university profile: issues teach. prof. dev., vol. 20 no. 2, jul-dec, 2018. issn 1657-0790 (printed) 2256-5760 (online). bogotá, colombia. pages 79-94 appendix b: french language results: a1, b1, and b2 delf a2 listening reading writing speaking average 4.84/10.0 8.54/10.0 7.06/10.0 7.37/10.0 6.95/10.0 delf b1 listening reading writing speaking average 6.92/10.0 8.32/10.0 6.84/10.0 6.9/10.0 7.24/10.0 delf b2 listening reading writing speaking average 5.73/10.0 6.53/10.0 6.4/10.0 7.66/10.0 6.58/10.0 universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras94 velázquez & garcía-ponce appendix c: students’ participation in mock exams of 2009 level no. of students enrolled in the semester no. who enrolled for the exams no. of students who actually sat the exams pet b1 (3rd semester) 94 76 62 delf a2 (3rd semester) 89 39 37 fce b2 (6th semester) 19 28 2 delf b1 (6th semester) 5 8 2 cae c1 (9th semester) 41 31 17 delf b2 (9th semester) 5 8 2 89profile: issues teach. prof. dev., vol. 20 no. 1, jan-jun, 2018. issn 1657-0790 (printed) 2256-5760 (online). bogotá, colombia. pages 89-101 https://doi.org/10.15446/profile.v20n1.63658 queer english language teacher identity: a narrative exploration in colombia identidad queer de profesores de inglés: una exploración narrativa en colombia 1roderick lander* ucl institute of education, london, united kingdom this article presents partial results of research exploring links between language teacher identity and queer identity in english language teachers working in colombia. three gay male teachers participated in a narrative research project framed within a poststructural perspective on identity. i conducted and recorded semi-structured interviews with the participants and then carried out a thematic analysis of these interviews which led to the emergence of three main themes. here, i present the most prevalent theme, that of being a gay language teacher in the colombian context which reveals that the participants all live their queer identity alongside their language teacher identity with ease although they do recount instances of homophobia which have impacted their day-to-day lives and their careers. key words: identity, language teacher identity, queer identity. este artículo presenta resultados parciales de un estudio que exploró las relaciones entre la identidad del profesor de lenguas y la identidad queer en docentes de inglés que trabajan en colombia. tres profesores gais participaron en un estudio narrativo enmarcado en una perspectiva post-estructuralista de la identidad. para recolectar los datos se realizaron entrevistas semiestructuradas con los participantes y se llevó a cabo un análisis temático que condujo a tres categorías emergentes. este artículo se enfoca en el tema principal, ser un profesor de lenguas gay en el contexto colombiano. esta categoría devela que los participantes viven su identidad queer con su identidad como profesores de lenguas cómodamente, aunque se refieren a momentos de homofobia que han impactado su vida diaria y sus carreras. palabras clave: identidad, identidad del profesor de lenguas, identidad queer. * e-mail: lander.roddy@gmail.com how to cite this article (apa, 6th ed.): lander, r. (2018). queer english language teacher identity: a narrative exploration in colombia. profile: issues in teachers’ professional development, 20(1), 89-101. https://doi.org/10.15446/profile.v20n1.63658. this article was received on march 29, 2017, and accepted on september 18, 2017. this is an open access article distributed under the terms of the creative commons license attribution-noncommercial-noderivatives 4.0 international license. consultation is possible at https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/. universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras90 lander introduction the recent “social turn” in applied linguistics has seen sociocultural theory applied to english language teaching (see lantolf & thorne, 2006) which has in turn meant an increasing focus on the teacher-student and student-student interactions in the language learning process. many factors are at play in these interactions including language teacher identity (lti). i became interested in lti when, as a foreigner, i observed that a large number of my english teaching colleagues openly identified as gay or lesbian, something which conflicted with my impression of colombia as a traditionally conservative society. my curiosity about this prompted me to design my master’s research project to find out if any connection existed between these teachers’ language teacher identities and their sexual orientation. my guiding research questions were: 1. are there connections between language teacher identities and queer identities? 2. what influence does the colombian context have on these identities? i use the term “queer” in order to associate the project with the existing research on non-heteronormative identities that has drawn on poststructuralism and queer theory. however, the participants all refer to themselves as “gay” so i use that term when referring to their sexual identities with the understanding that this is one of the referents of queer. this article will focus on the second research question, placing context at the forefront. with this in mind, it is relevant to mention that despite the traditionally conservative nature of colombian society, people who identify as lesbian or gay in colombia have seen significant moves towards equality with their heterosexual peers under the law. the lgbt (lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender) knowledge base equaldex (2016) lists that, for example, in colombia same-sex couples are recognised as the legal parents of their children; same-sex marriage was legalised in 2016 and transgender people can serve openly in the colombian military. colombia is thus one of the most progressive countries in latin america regarding lgbt rights. this study aimed to investigate whether or not this was reflected in the reality of the lived experiences of gay language teachers in colombia. literature review the nature of identity it was following norton’s (1995) seminal article that researchers in the field of applied linguistics began to turn their attention to the topic of identity. since then, applied linguistics has taken a “broadly poststructural approach to identity” (block, 2007, p. 863) reflected in norton and toohey’s (2011) definition of identity as “diverse, contradictory, dynamic and changing over historical time and social space” (p. 417). such has been the interest in identity research that block (2013) wrote of the field being “immersed in identity” (p. 14). this immersion has provided no shortage of definitions of identity. aneja (2016) stated that, “individuals’ identities are dynamic and encompass individual agency and the local and community context, as well as connections to global discourses and ways of making sense of the world” (p. 574). gray (in press) concurs, stating that “identities are plural and dynamic; that they emerge (or are constructed or performed) in social interaction; that they are sensitive to context; and that they are relational” (p. 9). furthermore, the vital role of language in identity creation is clearly illustrated by norton (2010), every time we speak we are negotiating and renegotiating our sense of self in relation to the larger social world and reorganising that relationship across time and space. our gender, race, class, ethnicity, sexual orientation, among other characteristics, are all implicated in this negotiation of identity. (pp. 350) it is within this poststructural framework, understanding identity as something multifactorial that is in constant development, constructed in social processes 91profile: issues teach. prof. dev., vol. 20 no. 1, jan-jun, 2018. issn 1657-0790 (printed) 2256-5760 (online). bogotá, colombia. pages 89-101 queer english language teacher identity: a narrative exploration in colombia using language and influenced by social context, that i pursued the project. despite the acknowledged fluctuating, evolving nature of identity, gray (in press) asks how, can identity be said to entail a temporary point of attachment to a subject position (and therefore to some extent be inherently ephemeral) and at the same time be used to discuss more enduring senses of self in terms of gender, race and class? (pp. 10-11) the existence of these “enduring” factors appears to contradict the idea that identity is something in constant evolution. gray (2016) answers his own question when explaining that some facets of identity could be described as “sedimented” (p. 232) because an individual has the experience of doing, or living this facet over and over again for a long period of time in their life so that for them it has developed constancy. this implies that for most people some aspects, such as identification with a particular group, may seem temporary, while other factors, like gender that is perpetually repeated over time, appear to be permanent. language teacher identity turning specifically to lti, varghese, morgan, johnston, and johnson (2005) argued the importance of research in this topic when they describe that learning processes involve “the teacher’s whole identity” (varghese et al., 2005, p. 22). they explained that teacher identity is a “critical component in the sociocultural and sociopolitical landscape of the language classroom” and a “crucial component in determining how language teaching is played out” (varghese et al., 2005, p. 22). in the 2016 special edition of tesol quarterly the editors begin with a quote from clark (2009) who suggested that as a profession we ought to make a “serious recognition that our work as teachers shapes and is shaped by our very mode of being” thus “thinking about the formation of our identities is crucial for all of us in education” (p. 186). these authors clearly emphasise the critical role of lti and argue strongly that research into this topic is a crucial pursuit in order to fully understand the processes of language teaching. varghese et al. (2005) proposed three principal factors in the construction of language teacher identity: its inherent instability; the social, cultural, and political setting; and language. within the first factor, the idea that identity is not fixed, the authors emphasised the “primacy of agency” (varghese et al., 2005, p. 23) which allows individuals to have a central role in shaping their own identities. although agency is undoubtedly an integral part of a poststructural view of identity, it is important to remember that in the professional domain language teachers are likely to be influenced by the rules and norms of the institutions where they work. language teachers will possibly have to follow rules that force them to act in a certain way as discussed by moore, edwards, halpin, and george (2002). the second factor varghese et al. (2005) discussed is the impact of the social, cultural, and political setting on identity thus furthering the possible role of a teacher’s workplace on their identity formation. they make the distinction between those aspects of identity that a person assigns to her/himself, “claimed identity”, and those aspects that are bestowed upon individuals by external sources, “assigned identity” (varghese et al., 2005, p. 23), which inevitably include a person’s place of work. finally, they stated that “identity is constructed, maintained and negotiated to a significant extent through language and discourse” (varghese et al., 2005, p. 23). they illustrate the importance of this by invoking the subjugation carried out by the labelling of teachers as non-native-speakers. varghese et al.’s three factors reflect the general theories of identity formation discussed above. queer identity nelson (1999), while recognising the tradition of identity research in applied linguistics, decried the neglect of sexual identity issues. more than 15 years later a search of the literature reveals existing teacher identity universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras92 lander research (kanno & stuart, 2011; trent, 2016; tsui, 2007) but also exposes continued neglect of teachers’ gendered and sexual identities. this is particularly evident in colombia where there is almost no evidence of research into sexual identity issues in either the databases or the prominent english language teaching journals. in rondón’s (2012) study, lgbt students reported feeling ill at ease in the english as a foreign language (efl) classroom as they are constantly concerned about revealing their sexuality. rondón suggests that this impacts directly upon their participation in activities and ultimately on the development of their language skills. some research has also been done concerning gender identity and its role in the language learning process (see castañeda-peña, 2008). although nelson (2004, 2009) has since explored the topic, it is obvious that the call for research on queer language teacher identity made by varghese, motha, park, reeves, and trent (2016) reflects a continuing and urgent need for examination of the topic. the term “queer”, “a broad term for a wide range of non-normative sexual and gender identifications” (gray, 2016, p. 225), is used as a counterpoint to heteronormativity which cameron and kulick (as cited in gray, 2016) defined as “those structures, institutions, relations and actions that promote heterosexuality as natural, selfevident, desirable, privileged, and necessary” (p. 225). nelson (1999, p. 374) reported that the term queer has two functions. firstly, it dispenses with essentialist labels of sexual identity thus promoting a more poststructural perspective, and secondly, it acts as a kind of shorthand for individuals who do not conform to heteronormativity. these two functions create a tension; on the one hand signifying a reaction against labelling of people but at the same time being a label. in the academic realm the role of queer theory, according to nelson (1999), is inquiry, seeking to expose the ways in which sexual identities are created by language and culture and the ways in which these perpetuate heteronormativity. nelson (1999) exemplified a poststructural perspective on queer identity when she stated that “sexual identities are facts not acts, they are not what people are, but what they do” and that “it is difficult to separate sexual identity from other acts of identity because identities are not just multiple but are mutually inflicting” (p. 376). she also affirmed that “interacting socially and discursively involves producing and interpreting sexual identities” (nelson, 1999, p. 375). this framework is thus highly relevant when considering data gathered in oral interviews which can be considered as sites of the production and interpretation of identity. disclosure of queer identity the act of “coming out” demonstrates the divide experienced by queer language teachers between who they are inside and who they are outside the classroom. nelson (1999) argues that for heterosexual teachers, declarations of their sexual identities are a natural, everyday occurrence. they need only make a comment about what they did at the weekend with their husband or wife and children for them to incorporate their sexual identity into their teacher identity without thinking. in contrast queer teachers have to make a deliberate decision about whether or not it is appropriate to reveal this information about themselves. nelson (2004) explains how a poststructural perspective on identity problematizes the act of coming out for queer language teachers. if identity is in endless flux, then there is no stable, pre-existing queer identity for these teachers to reveal in class. however, as discussed above, most teachers experience their sexuality as constant due to the phenomenon of sedimentation described by gray (2016). therefore, the reality is that teachers who do not fit into the heteronormative mould are in fact forced to decide whether to reveal this in class or not. nelson’s (2009) research found divergent opinions among teachers about whether it was appropriate to come out in the classroom. some felt that it was essential as “sexual identity was integral to every part of life” (p. 99) 93profile: issues teach. prof. dev., vol. 20 no. 1, jan-jun, 2018. issn 1657-0790 (printed) 2256-5760 (online). bogotá, colombia. pages 89-101 queer english language teacher identity: a narrative exploration in colombia whereas others felt that it should remain private. kanno and stuart (2011) insisted that “becoming an l2 teacher requires the commitment of the self, not just playing an assigned role in the classroom” (p. 239). they implied that a teacher must incorporate all aspects of their identity into their work, presumably including their queer identity, thus requiring teachers to come out. this stance seems to ignore that in some parts of the world admitting to non-heteronormative sexual identity in the classroom might be dangerous for teachers, putting them at risk of both losing their job and physical harm. this is recognised by lipkin (as cited in donahue, 2007) who commented that the act of coming out was “the last frontier, a leap into a wholly different territory marked by serious taboos” (p. 81). despite this danger, kupfer (2000) concluded that a certain level of intimacy is required between teacher and student to engage students and to facilitate the learning process. kupfer detailed the positive sequelae she attributes to revealing her sexuality in the classroom: lgbt students feel more included, she provides an authentic example of a lesbian for the students who would otherwise resort to stereotypes to inform their perceptions, and finally she says that honesty is demonstrated as an integral value of the classroom. method i collected the data presented and discussed in this article in the first semester of 2016 as part of my master’s dissertation project. this article focuses, as already mentioned, on my second research question exploring the lived experience of gay english language teachers in colombia. following creswell (2007) a narrative research approach was taken. he describes narrative research as “studying one or two individuals, gathering data through the collection of their stories, reporting individual experiences, and chronologically ordering … the meaning of those experiences” (p. 54). the oral interviews conducted yielded data resembling creswell’s personal experience story which “is a narrative study of an individual’s personal experience found in single or multiple episodes, private situations, or communal folklore” (p. 55). barkhuizen (2014), referring to language teaching, states that narrative research “is concerned with the stories teachers and learners tell about their lived and imagined experiences” (p. 450). this approach therefore suited my priority to focus on the individuals, their stories, and their experiences. there was no intention to focus on any particular predetermined issue. additionally, reissmann (as cited in menard-warwick, 2011) asserts that “a central function of narrative is the construction of identities” (p. 565) thus demonstrating the appropriateness of this approach in identity research. the participants participant selection was carried out using creswell’s (2007) homogenous and convenience sampling criteria. i approached the three male efl teachers who agreed to participate in the study because i knew that they identified themselves as gay and were open about this with their colleagues. i hoped that this openness would make them willing to discuss the interaction between their sexual identities and their professional identities. two of the teachers are in their early thirties and the third is in his early fifties. one works in a public school and private university, and the other two work in a public university. all of the teachers are colombian; two of them graduated with the same undergraduate degree in foreign language teaching from a public university in colombia and the third studied a previous version of the programme. at the time of the study two of the teachers had a master’s degree and one was in the final stages of his master’s. as long ago as 1990, rampton argued that the term non-native speaker should be supplanted by other terms. however, i will designate these three teachers as non-native speakers of english because colombian research journals demonstrate that the term non-native speaker is still in use in the colombian context and because the participants refer universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras94 lander would result in the production of a different data set. although i agree with this position it is important to note that i wished to highlight the stories of the participants and so i was as quiet as possible in order that they were allowed to talk at length on what they perceived to be relevant. it was only at a complete stop in the participants’ narratives that i intervened. however, it is important to recognise that other factors such as my demeanour, my clothes, my being a foreigner, and my being a gay man will all have had an impact. a different interviewer would have had a different impact on the interview and the data produced. it was made clear to the participants that they could use spanish if necessary although the interviews were conducted in english. data analysis i began the process of data analysis by listening repeatedly to the recordings while taking notes. i analysed these for recurring themes within each participant’s narrative and for stories contributing to answering my research questions. three main themes emerged from the data: participants’ language learning history, participants’ reasons for becoming a language teacher, and being a gay language teacher in the colombian context. i transcribed pertinent sections of the interviews not following the conventions of transcription for conversation analysis. i justify this method by reiterating my wish to focus on the content, not the form of the narrative thus placing the participants’ voices front and centre with as little distortion as possible of what they actually said. therefore repetitions, false starts, and syntactical errors can be seen in the transcriptions. to save space i have used ellipses to avoid presenting lengthy extracts that do not contribute directly to the theme being discussed. precedent for this can be found in the literature (see for example gray, 2010; tsui, 2007). a thematic analysis was thus conducted and this paper will present findings related to the third theme, being a gay language teacher in the colombian context. to themselves as such. all participants signed a consent form and pseudonyms have been used to preserve their anonymity. data collection i conducted three hour-long, semi-structured interviews with each participant, thus collecting three narratives, each lasting for three hours. the reason for collecting the narratives over three interviews is described by seidman (1991). the first interview functions as an ice-breaker, allowing the interviewer and interviewee to establish a relationship and allowing for a broad overview of the narrative to be recounted. in the second interview, the interviewee should be encouraged to go into more detail about parts of the narrative that the interviewer identifies as pertinent for the study. finally, the third interview is conceived as an opportunity for both parties to clarify any doubts or ask any questions to complete the narrative. in collecting the data, i wished to ensure the participants’ sense of freedom and ease to talk. the subject matter made it imperative that the participants felt comfortable and able to share their reflections on this topic with the researcher. polkinghorne (2005) explained that “researchers need to demonstrate to the participant that it is safe to be open and revealing of deeply personal feeling and information” (p. 143). at the same time, considering the notion of social interaction as the site of identity construction, i required a method that would allow participants to be comfortable and free to construct their narrative. i thus chose semi-structured interviews. dörnyei (2007) described interviews as a known “communication routine” (p. 134) thus allowing participants to anticipate the format. also, mann (2011) viewed interviews as “sites of social interaction, where ideas, facts, views, details and stories are collaboratively produced by interviewee and interviewer” (p. 8). this definition places a spotlight on both the interviewer and the researcher and implies that the data produced are thus specific to this pairing. changing the interviewer 95profile: issues teach. prof. dev., vol. 20 no. 1, jan-jun, 2018. issn 1657-0790 (printed) 2256-5760 (online). bogotá, colombia. pages 89-101 queer english language teacher identity: a narrative exploration in colombia findings by far the largest of the themes that emerged from the data was that of being a gay language teacher in colombia. i present here some extracts from the participants’ narratives that illustrate how their professional and sexual identities are “mutually inflecting” (nelson, 1999, p. 376) beginning with the issue of disclosing their sexual identity. coming out in the classroom for most people who do not conform to the heterosexual norm, a significant issue in their lives is the revealing of this information to their family, friends, and colleagues. for the participants in this study the issue of coming out in their professional contexts and in class with students uncovered some noteworthy and conflicting points. two of the participants, alex and josé, deal with this issue in a similar manner that could be summed up as neither advertising, nor denying their sexuality. i’m not the person who’s going, “oh hi! i’m gay.” . . . with some kids that immediately realise, “hey teacher are you gay?” i have no problem to say “yeah, i’m gay”. they are like, “really?” (alex, interview 2) i don’t say hello to my class or to my colleagues and i say, “hello, i’m gay”. no, i don’t do that. but but i don’t deny it . . . and i guess most of them know i’m gay . . . i do my job and they respect me so, so i feel very comfortable. it was a long process. (josé, interview 1) in 2007 the editor’s note in a special edition of the journal of gay and lesbian issues in education noted that “coming out is still difficult, if not impossible for many teachers” (p. 2). cultural context, educational setting, perhaps the teacher’s age, and previous experiences of coming out are some of the factors that might contribute to this difficulty. the strategy described by alex and josé could be seen as a compromise and it could be argued that according to their narratives it is possible for a gay teacher in their contexts to be honest about her or his sexuality. on the other hand, the lack of complete openness does also suggest that these teachers are not totally sure about coming out to their class. however, a third interpretation of the way these teachers’ deal with coming out in the classroom could argue that in fact these teachers do not view their sexuality as a great concern. it is there, part of their identity, but they do not treat it as a major concern. josé hints at the fact that he did not always have this attitude and the following fragments of his narrative help to build a picture of the process he has been through to feel comfortable as a gay language teacher. i’m relaxed with the fact that i’m gay . . . it wasn’t always that way. years ago, i was so concerned with that. i was so uptight, i was so . . . restless . . . because i was so concerned about the fact that i was gay. (josé, interview 3) right now, i feel comfortable with myself and i know who i am but during that process i thought, ah, ok, i need to be excellent because if i’m not very good at what i’m going to do then they are going to see that i am gay and they are going ah they are going to point at me and they are gonna say, “he’s gay”. (josé, interview 1) somehow the thing of being good at something and trying to excel at things was somehow an idea that i had to kind of cover or support the fact that i was gay . . . i still had you know this little like thought in my head that that’s not good, that’s not good because i grew up in a catholic family and in this society. (josé, interview 1) josé describes an explicit concern that if he was thought to be a bad teacher people would focus on his sexuality and set him apart for being gay. he is clear that he is including himself in that potential criticism when he states that striving for excellence as a teacher may have been his way of hiding his sexuality, denoted as something negative by his catholic background. josé’s sexual identity and his professional identity were thus not always compatible for him and his process reflects the assertion by norton and toohey (2011) that not only are the various facets of identity often in conflict but they are also subject to evolution over time as josé’s narrative demonstrates. carlos, on the other hand, describes a very different evolution in his attitude to revealing his sexuality to universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras96 lander his colleagues and students. he feels that it has always been evident that he is gay and early in his career this didn’t appear to be an issue. my students, eh, i, the ones i went out with when i was younger than them, they knew i was gay, and they knew my boyfriend . . . once a month we would have parties together. (carlos, interview 2) there was thus no problem in the past for carlos to socialise with students and take his boyfriend along. however, he explains that this situation has changed. you don’t know what students might say. then i don’t say exactly that i’m living with a man but but i don’t say i have a a girlfriend or a, or that i’m living with a woman. i, i use the spanish le. it is like a neuter, a neutral term. (carlos, interview 1) i never tell my students i’m gay . . . i mean of course they know i am . . . i always say “my partner” . . . i use indirect ways, i never say “him” because i sort of feel that eh some people in colombia still feel that it is a bad thing. (carlos, interview 2) it is obvious that a change has taken place in carlos’ attitude to revealing his sexuality. he is now much more guarded and unwilling to do this in class. this is particularly interesting considering that he is still teaching in the same institution, the institution has no religious affiliation and he has, over the years, held positions of seniority at that institution, suggesting that he might feel at ease in that environment. carlos’ attitude is however challenged when he describes an occasion when one of his students was open about being gay in class. she’s a student and she says about her girlfriend and stuff eh in front of the other people. i haven’t been able and i, i don’t think i would be able to make that conversation, or to to make it a class conversation topic. but it was very interesting that although she said that people did not react. (carlos, interview 2) carlos makes it clear here that it is possible to be openly gay in his classroom. it is not the situation that prevents him from being explicit about his sexuality; rather, it is he himself who doesn’t feel able to do this. workplace influence it would seem logical to suggest that the institution where a teacher works would have a bearing on their decision to be open about their sexuality, and there is some evidence for this in the participants’ narrative. i would speculate that within the largely conservative colombian society institutions professing an explicitly catholic orientation would be less favourable to their teachers being openly gay. the opposite of this hypothesis would suggest that the state schools that are ostensibly free from religious influence would be more welcoming of teachers who identify as gay or lesbian. in fact, my own personal experience negates this hypothesis as i have never experienced homophobia during my four years working in a private catholic institution in colombia, and the participants’ narratives illustrate that the situation is not as clear as the hypothesis suggests. josé’s narrative seems to demonstrate that his place of work is crucial to his being an openly gay language teacher. especially at the university where i work, which is a public university, it’s a very special place, ah in terms of openness, sexual differences. well i, here you don’t feel, you don’t feel that much that being gay or lesbian, or whatever you are, it’s a problem. (josé, interview 1) josé later corroborates this with an anecdote from the classroom that illustrates that his students were unfazed when he revealed his sexuality. they asked for my opinion . . . and i openly answered in a way that they realised that i was gay . . . and they just didn’t say a word . . . the issue here is not, “am i gay or not?” the issue here is, “am i a good teacher or not?” (josé, interview 2) despite this confidence in his own case, josé makes it clear that the ease with which he can be openly gay is largely because of his place of work. the university is a place for diversity, for discussion, and for argumentation . . . so, maybe because of the fact that i am in this specific place . . . or because of the fact that i’m gay i might have found a specialists spot for me to develop here. (josé, interview 2) 97profile: issues teach. prof. dev., vol. 20 no. 1, jan-jun, 2018. issn 1657-0790 (printed) 2256-5760 (online). bogotá, colombia. pages 89-101 queer english language teacher identity: a narrative exploration in colombia i’ve heard stories about people being you know, eh, rejected at jobs here in [name of city] because of being too gay, because eh people could tell. (josé, interview 2) we have already seen that josé has not always felt this freedom to be himself. he explains the role played by the institution and his colleagues in allowing him to freely reconcile the two aspects of his identity: being a gay man and a language teacher. it helped me because there is freedom here. and i saw gay teachers working . . . of course you used to hear the comments like, “he’s so gay” . . . but then i heard “ah no, but, he speaks very well the language. he’s a very good teacher.” (josé, interview 1) i learned that that [being gay] didn’t affect my teaching. that somehow students were more concentrated on my level of proficiency in the languages or the activities that i brought to class. and i realised that good planning and improving my planning was even more important that thinking of trying to hide who i was. (josé interview 2) josé’s experience of being a gay language teacher has thus been strongly influenced by his work environment. on the other hand, incidences of homophobia in the narratives of carlos and alex serve to complicate this comfortable situation presented by josé. impact on career path carlos recounts that more than 20 years ago, when he was completing his undergraduate degree in language teaching, the actions of his cooperating teacher meant that he never taught a class in the practicum part of the course. i think it was because i was . . . a gay man, i did a practicum, in which i did not have to study at all, ah to teach . . . i think it was because of my being gay, and being very visibly gay . . . in practice two we had to teach and then i did teach, but to the teacher . . . she asked me to teach her english, because she felt i spoke better english than she did . . . so i never really taught a group of people. (carlos, interview 1) carlos thus describes a situation where, although he was not explicitly discriminated against for being gay, he presumes that his teacher did not feel it was appropriate for a gay man to teach her class. on another occasion, early in his career, carlos had a temporary contract in a catholic school. his section head at that point seemed to steer him away from that school to another institution. she told me there was a call for a vacancy at the [local institution] and that she knew the principal would not call me . . . i think it is because of my being gay . . . for a catholic school it was not like very good and then i applied to the [local institution] and ever since i have been somehow related to the [local institution]. (carlos, interview 1) in these two examples, it can be seen that other people’s attitudes to carlos’ sexuality and his unsuitability for their professional setting has influenced his career. the impact of the local catholic context can also be detected and it is not a coincidence that the local institution to which he was directed has no religious affiliation. the historical legal context is also cited by carlos as a factor in being a gay language teacher in colombia when he describes sitting the national exam to become a teacher in the state school system. in colombia, there is something called el concurso docente [competitive examination for teacher placement in state school system] and in 1990 just before, eh, graduation, there was one. and i applied, with several friends who were gay, and . . . none of us passed the contest . . . and then i remember also that we had some friends that were not very good in english . . . people that were not like the best students they passed the contest . . . in 1994 . . . a rule was was taken out according to which gay people could not be teachers. so, at that time of the contest maybe that’s what they thought . . . but anyway we did not pass the contest. (carlos, interview 1) rather than express frustration about these events, carlos adopts a positive perspective on these influences on his career that he understands result from other people’s attitude to his sexuality. universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras98 lander i think that secretary of education people may have been following the law . . . but i think in general the people who have eh eh done things for my being gay have been doing it, somehow i’ve been kind of defended by them . . . on the one hand she actually, she did something that affected my life enormously . . . so she was kind of defending me but she understood or she knew that i would not be for that school, because, i think because of my being gay . . . but that she still had to help me somehow because she saw potential. (carlos interview 1) it is also carlos who has experienced explicit homophobia in his professional setting. once, a mother . . . complained that that i was too faggoty to, for, for, for teaching her children . . . my bosses . . . they actually said to the woman that that she shouldn’t think of that but rather that i was a very good teacher. (carlos, interview 2) what is interesting about carlos’ narrative is that these events, which could easily be framed as homophobic, took place at the beginning of his career when he was relaxed about revealing his sexuality to his students and colleagues. paradoxically, he does not recount any recent instances of discomfort with his position as a gay language teacher and yet he is now unwilling to be clear about his sexuality in the classroom. homophobia in a public school in contrast, when i asked alex, who works in a state school, if he had experienced homophobia he was quick to reply, “absolutely”. the principal i have . . . she’s completely . . . homophobic. she’s always doing these kind of jokes which are not really nice in in the meetings. she’s talking about the kids who are really girly in a not really nice way. at the, at the beginning i said ok, i’m going to be quiet . . . but then when the things were like ok, i’m saying this but, and i’m going to make you understand that it’s to you, yeah, she’s not being direct but a little bit sarcastic in my presence . . . i started being like in the same game. (alex, interview 2) she said, “ha, look the only thing that these kind of ‘locas’1 [gay] can do is just go and dance or maybe go and and cut mm and cut some people hair, or going to a salon.” and i remember i just turned to look at her and i say, “really, so that’s what you think. so, you shouldn’t go to a salon if you going to mistreat these people like that because they are those who are trying to make you feel comfortable with the ugly thing that maybe you have. don’t you think so?” (alex, interview 2) alex is evidently on the receiving end of homophobic comments from his head teacher who does not seem to be at ease with alex’s identity as a gay language teacher in her school. he also describes how students can be on the receiving end of discrimination. it was like they decided to put all the possible gay people in my classroom, yeah, so for me it was all right, but then there was this comment, “ah ok, it’s just that you know we decided that it was better for you to be with people like you in the classroom.” . . . two or three kids heard that and they, they say, “teacher, why they are saying that we are in the gay group?” yeah, so i remember that i said that i need a meeting with you, with the principal . . . and i said i need you to respect me . . . if we are going to create a kind of segregation here just let me know and i’m going to start looking for some help in the education eh minister or something like that because i don’t think in a public school this is going to be all right. and also, respect these kids, they are trying to understand who they are. (alex, interview 2) alex is clearly not afraid to stand up to his head teacher, a security that comes from the fact that he has passed the concurso docente, the national exam for teachers who wish to work in the state system. he is protected by his status as a government employee. a further point of interest comes from alex’s description of his time in a previous job, in a private catholic high school where it seems that being gay was not a problem for his employers. 1 loca is a derogatory term in spanish for a gay man who is very effeminate. 99profile: issues teach. prof. dev., vol. 20 no. 1, jan-jun, 2018. issn 1657-0790 (printed) 2256-5760 (online). bogotá, colombia. pages 89-101 queer english language teacher identity: a narrative exploration in colombia i felt so free to be to some extent mm myself . . . i was not scared to say, to say i agree or disagree with this or that, in fact i think i loved that school because they were not talking about other different conditions in a very hard and punish way. (alex, interview 3) it might be expected that homophobia would be more evident in the context of a private catholic institution, but alex’s narrative refutes that expectation. conclusions the most obvious, and perhaps unsurprising, conclusion that can be drawn from the data presented is that the day-to-day experience of queer identifying efl teachers in colombia is complex and varied. the participants did not describe one coherent attitude towards revealing their sexual identity in their professional milieu nor did they describe consistently their experiences of being gay language teachers. all three narratives do however show that queer identity and language teacher identity can coexist easily in the colombian context. alex and josé are comfortable simultaneously living these two aspects of their identity. carlos, although he does not feel able to be so explicit, is also comfortable and supposes that despite his reticence his colleagues and students are aware that he is gay. i would speculate that the age difference between carlos and the other participants may account for this difference. it can thus be concluded that these two identities are compatible in these three efl teachers. in addition, all three participants place importance on their immediate professional context. however, it is not possible to draw general conclusions about these institutions as while alex was welcomed into a private catholic institution carlos felt that he had been directed away from that particular context. whereas josé feels that a public university has been instrumental in his journey to becoming comfortable being a gay language teacher, alex has encountered explicit homophobia within his public secondary school. this reality points to the probability that it is individuals within institutions that play the greater role rather than the general ethos of an institution itself. in fact, some of the extracts presented clearly demonstrate other peoples’ discomfort with the participants’ sexual identities. the project was well designed for the in-depth study of my three participants. however, the personal nature of narrative research implies that the findings are highly specific to the teachers interviewed and their professional contexts. the findings are not easily generalizable. in order to broaden the knowledge created by this project it would be pertinent to carry out the project with teachers with a different profile. most urgently it would be important to add the voices of female teachers who identify as queer to the data. following donahue’s (2007) assertion that “learning to teach is about . . . negotiating identities, finding out who one is in the classroom” (p. 75), it would be interesting to carry out a longitudinal study following queer identifying student teachers as they study for their undergraduate degree to gather data on queer language teacher identity formation. concerning the influence of a teacher’s workplace, one limitation of the research is that all three of these teachers work in urban settings and it is important to note the role of setting upon the acceptance of diversity. i would speculate that gay language teachers in rural settings in colombia would tell very different stories. the implications for the efl classroom echo kupfer (2000) and kanno and stuart (2011). all teachers, including those identifying as queer, bring all aspects of their identity into the classroom and being comfortable with these aspects, not having to hide a fundamental part of themselves, directly contributes to classroom dynamics and thus the learning process. teachers who openly identify as queer not only provide queer students with a role model but they also demonstrate the importance of honesty in the classroom. in a small way, the scarce research on queer identifying language teachers has been added to by this project. perhaps the knowledge created in this project might provoke more research on the topic and thus increase universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras100 lander understanding of queer language teacher identity issues in colombia and how these impact upon local teaching and learning processes. references aneja, g. a. 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(2010). the construction of english: culture, consumerism and promotion in the elt global coursebook. basingstoke, uk: palgrave macmillan. https://doi. org/10.1057/9780230283084. gray, j. (2016). language and non-normative sexual identities. in s. preece (ed.), the routledge handbook of language and identity (pp. 225-240). london, uk: routledge. gray, j. (in press). introduction. in j. gray & t. morton (eds.), social interaction and elt teacher identity. edinburgh, uk: edinburgh university press. kanno, y., & stuart, c. (2011). learning to become a second language teacher: identities-in-practice. the modern language journal, 95(2), 236-252. https://doi. org/10.1111/j.1540-4781.2011.01178.x. kupfer, r. (2000). retracing my journey toward selfacceptance and effectiveness as a lesbian teacher. in j. s. ritchie & d. s. wilson (eds.), teacher narrative as critical inquiry: rewriting the script (pp. 150-170). new york, us: teacher’s college press. lantolf, j. p., & thorne, s. l. 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(2012). lgbt students’ short range narratives and gender performance in the efl classroom. colombian applied linguistics journal, 14(1), 77-91. https://doi. org/10.14483/22487085.3814. seidman, i. (1991). interviewing as qualitative research. new york, us: teacher’s college press. trent, j. (2016). the identity construction experiences of early career english language teachers in hong kong: great expectations and practical realities. research papers in education, 31(3), 316-336. https://doi.org/10.1080/0267 1522.2015.1037336. tsui, a. b. m. (2007). complexities of identity formation: a narrative enquiry of an efl teacher. tesol quarterly, 41(4), 657-680. https://doi.org/10.1002/j.1545-7249.2007. tb00098.x. varghese, m., morgan, b., johnston, b., & johnson, k. a. (2005). theorizing language teacher identity: three perspectives and beyond. journal of language, identity and education, 4(1), 21-44. https://doi.org/10.1207/ s15327701jlie0401_2. varghese, m., motha, s., park, g., reeves, j., & trent, j. (2016). in this issue. tesol quarterly, 50(3). 545-571. https://doi. org/10.1002/tesq.333. about the author roderick lander holds a ba in french with film studies from king’s college, london and an ma in tesol from the ucl institute of education in london. between 2012 and 2016 he worked as an english teacher in various universities and a private bilingual school in medellin, colombia. 137profile: issues teach. prof. dev., vol. 20 no. 1, jan-jun, 2018. issn 1657-0790 (printed) 2256-5760 (online). bogotá, colombia. pages 137-150 https://doi.org/10.15446/profile.v20n1.62860 critical incidents of transnational student-teachers in central mexico incidentes críticos de profesores de inglés transnacionales en formación en el centro de méxico josé irineo omar serna-gutiérrez1* irasema mora-pablo2** universidad de guanajuato, guanajuato, mexico this study is an exploration of the life-changing decisions and changes which the participants underwent, and which led them to pursue an education in english language teaching (or languages). the foremost objective of this study was to highlight the critical incidents from the past, present, and teaching practice of transnational students in a ba in tesol program who are also english teachers in central mexico. through a narrative analysis, critical incidents in the lives of transnational student/teachers were identified. the findings of this research showed how the participants could explore their identity formation process through the critical incidents. key words: critical incidents, in-service teachers, identity, narratives, transnational. este estudio marca, por lo tanto, una exploración de las decisiones que tomaron los participantes y que cambiaron o influyeron en su decisión de continuar con una carrera en enseñanza del inglés (o de lenguas). el objetivo principal de este estudio fue resaltar los incidentes críticos por los que han pasado profesores de inglés transnacionales, en el pasado, presente y durante su práctica docente actual. a través de un análisis narrativo, se identificaron varios incidentes críticos en la vida de los maestros-estudiantes transnacionales. los resultados de esta investigación mostraron cómo a partir de incidentes críticos, los participantes pudieron explorar su formación de identidad personal y profesional. palabras clave: identidad, incidentes críticos, narrativas, profesores en servicio, transnacional. * e-mail: sernaomar@ugto.mx ** e-mail: imora@ugto.mx how to cite this article (apa, 6th ed.): serna-gutiérrez, j. i. o., & mora-pablo, i. (2018). critical incidents of transnational student-teachers in central mexico. profile: issues in teachers’ professional development, 20(1), 137-150. https://doi.org/10.15446/profile.v20n1.62860. this article was received on february 22, 2017, and accepted on august 25, 2017. this is an open access article distributed under the terms of the creative commons license attribution-noncommercial-noderivatives 4.0 international license. consultation is possible at https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/. universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras138 serna-gutiérrez & mora-pablo introduction this paper aims to explore the critical incidents before and during the ba in tesol program (teaching english to speakers of other languages) of a group of in-service transnational teachers in a public university in central mexico and the impact on their teaching practice. the study is qualitative in nature and follows a narrative methodology. through narrative data collection techniques, critical incidents were identified. this study is part of a larger scale project funded by the secretariat of public education (sep) through the program for professional teacher development (prodep) in which three universities; universidad de guanajuato, universidad autónoma de tamaulipas, and the university of texas at san antonio, collaborated. background our motivation to explore the lives of transnational students comes from the background of one of the authors. he lived in the us for the first twenty years of his life, always having constant contact with mexico. his family and he would travel to mexico almost every year to spend the winter holidays with family; it was a meeting point for all of the family. this movement between the two nations shaped his identity over time, and influenced his interest in studying this phenomenon of transnationalism. based on these personal experiences, transnationals who participated in this study underwent a molding of identity through their constant movement between the us and mexico. this movement leads to what is known as critical incidents. the concept of critical incidents arose in this study after the data analysis. we noticed that the participants had pivotal moments in their lives that led them toward english language teaching. we decided to use the term critical incidents after learning about this idea in a course of the ba in tesol program. literature review critical incidents historically, the analysis of critical incidents has been used in fields such as psychology and education. flanagan (1954) coined the term critical incident technique (cit) and used it to conduct “direct observations of human behavior in such a way as to facilitate their potential usefulness in solving practical problems and developing broad psychological principles” (p. 327). scholars interested in critical incident analysis have a broad spectrum of definitions in regard to the breadth of the term. for example, measor (as cited in rolls & plauborg, 2009) defines critical incidents as part of critical phases. these critical phases can be categorized into three types: (1) extrinsic critical phases, (2) personal critical phases, and (3) intrinsic critical phases. extrinsic critical phases are related to external factors affecting the critical incidents, such as, sociocultural or sociohistorical factors in the context of the participants. personal critical phases arise from major changes in the participants’ personal lives, such as marriage, divorce, childbirth, or death of a relative. intrinsic critical phases are periods where the participants were faced with important decisions in their professional lives, or in this case, important decisions regarding their choice to study for a ba in tesol (rolls & plauborg, 2009). a further explanation of critical phases provided by sikes, measor, and woods (2001) is that critical phases are longer periods of time in which critical incidents take place. the different circumstances surrounding the three critical phases that we mentioned before were the catalyst for the critical incidents that were discovered and interpreted by both we and the participants. tripp (2012) provides a definition of critical incidents as being “events or situations which mark a significant turning-point or change in the life of a person” (p. 24). the critical incidents in this project were significant not only in the description of the event, but also in its 139profile: issues teach. prof. dev., vol. 20 no. 1, jan-jun, 2018. issn 1657-0790 (printed) 2256-5760 (online). bogotá, colombia. pages 137-150 critical incidents of transnational student-teachers in central mexico cause and result. tripp explains that we have not only to describe what happened, but also to determine what caused the incident to happen. the theory behind the interpretation of critical incidents implies that “their [critical incidents] criticality is based on the justification, the significance, and the meaning given to them” (angelides, 2001, p. 431). meaning that as researchers, we must justify our interpretation of the critical incident by proving its significance and meaning. this is achieved by a reciprocal process of reflection between the researcher and the participants in the data collection stages, and more specifically in the e-mail interviews. schon (as cited in angelides, 2001) states that “when an incident that surprises the researcher occurs, it becomes the stimulus for reflection, and this reflection leads to the decision about the incident’s criticality” (p. 431). the stimulus arose from the identification of specific situations in which the participants experienced a change that influenced their decisions to enroll in the ba in tesol program and to become english teachers. transnationals becoming professionals authors have used different terminology to label transnationals. some, such as zuñiga and hammann (2009), have used the term “sojourner” to describe those who do not have plans of staying in a permanent location as immigrants. perhaps a more exact way to address these transnationals is as moctezuma (2008) calls collective transnational migrants. moctezuma defines a collective transnational migrant as: the organized migrant who has a certain level of association; a type of organization, therefore, superior to that of migrant networks or clubs. at the same time, it refers to formal, permanent organizational structures with negotiating capabilities vis-à-vis the state and binational recognition. (p. 93) trueba (2004) expands on the definition and states that transnationalism implies the development of “transnational identities” and “social relations”, which implies that transnational families undergo particular experiences. in jerdee’s (2010) research she discusses a trait of these transnational families as follows: when these families return to mexico for extended visits or permanent stays, their children, who have always identified themselves as “mexican,” lack the knowledge and language skills necessary to navigate the mexican school system. (p. 2) in the case of the students in this study, they are all members of a formal and permanent organization, which in this case is the ba in tesol program they study in in central mexico. not only do they share this community, but they also share other communities outside of the ba program, such as being members of the tesol community. in addition, they all have ties with family and friends in the us. membership in these different communities creates social relations and these can lead to critical incidents. these incidents can be reflected in their choice to become english language teachers (elts). it was due to this factor, in combination with others, that students had a hard time adapting to the education system when they returned to mexico and found refuge in the ba in tesol program. however, it is noticeable that as they progressed through the ba program, they found a place where they could see themselves develop as professionals in the future. professional identity norton and toohey (2011) in their post-structuralist view, define identity as “fluid, context-dependent, and context-producing, in particular historical and cultural circumstances” (p. 419). identity can be defined as individuals’ “concepts” or “images” of themselves. for the formation of a professional identity, these “concepts” and “images” develop in the training stage and are influenced directly by their teaching practice. (kumpusalo et al., 1994, p. 70) in the description of identity, many models exist for describing it. one model proposes that “the identificauniversidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras140 serna-gutiérrez & mora-pablo tion of an individual requires the consistent circulation of certain signs of identity and certain metapragmatic models through events that include, refer to or presuppose that individual (wortham, 2006, p. 38). the signs of identity mentioned by wortham (2006) in this study are found throughout the critical incidents described by the participants. these signs of identity all delineate the participants’ transnational identity, and later their professional identity. authors such as clarke, hyde, and drennan (2013) define professional identity as a continuous process of interpreting and re-interpreting experiences. through the ongoing analysis of critical incidents, participants in this study were able to interpret and re-interpret their professional identity. also, participants discuss where they see themselves in the future within tesol. for the previous, beijaard (as cited in clarke et al., 2013) states that this continuous process “does not answer the question of whom i am at the moment but who i want to become” (p. 9). through the different data collected the participants describe different contexts in which their professional identity is shaped and transformed. these different contexts along with the change in time molded the participants’ professional identity. professional identity or teacher identity is described by bullough as the beliefs teachers have regarding teaching and learning and on which they base their teaching decisions (as cited in beijaard, meijer, & verloop, 2004). the critical incidents connected to professional identity explored in this study, in many ways, represent previous beliefs held about language teaching and how those beliefs were modified after the incident. research questions and objective this study explores critical incidents of transnational student-teachers throughout different stages of their lives. “as human beings, we are creating narratives as we live our lives” (watkins-goffman, 2006, p. 6). this progression in the life of transnational student-teachers brought about the research questions of this study, which are: (1) what are the critical incidents of transnational students before participation in the ba in tesol program? (2) what are the critical incidents during the ba in tesol program of transnational students? and (3) what are the critical incidents of transnational students in their teaching practice? through this exploration or as it is known in narrative research “narrative knowledging” (barkhuizen, 2011, p. 395), we have been able to identify critical incidents. after “narrative knowledging” took place, the foremost goal of the research project was/is to explore critical incidents of transnational students. narrative inquiry this study was qualitative in nature. the methodology chosen for this study is narrative inquiry or analysis. narrative inquiry and its data collection tools, according to flick (2006, p. 23), focus on biographical experiences, but larger topics and contexts are also studied. this study explores specific types of experiences; those of transnational students, and a specific context; transnational students in mexico studying for a ba in tesol. the biographical experiences that are studied are the critical incidents that the transnational participants underwent before and during their ba studies, and in their teaching practice. narrative inquiry was adopted for this research to tell the stories of the participants. this methodology emphasizes “what people’s stories are about” (chase, 2011, p. 421) through a negotiation process between the participant and the researcher. this is known as “narrative dialogue” (barkhuizen, 2011, p. 394), which is a reflective practice that makes meaning of their experiences. narrative inquiry has several characteristics, as listed by ospina and dodge (2005): (1) [narratives] are accounts of characters and selective events occurring over time, with a beginning, a middle, and an end; (2) they are retrospective interpretations of sequential events from 141profile: issues teach. prof. dev., vol. 20 no. 1, jan-jun, 2018. issn 1657-0790 (printed) 2256-5760 (online). bogotá, colombia. pages 137-150 critical incidents of transnational student-teachers in central mexico a certain point of view; (3) they focus on human intention and action—those of the narrator and others; (4) they are part of the process of constructing identity (the self in relation to others); (5) they are coauthored by narrator and audience. (pp. 144-145) collection techniques as we defined the data collection tools, we realized that we needed to involve our participants in this process. as mora pablo (2014) explains, “the qualitative researcher is led by his or her data in different directions to the ones initially anticipated and will often have to bring in during the research process other techniques for data collection or corroboration” (p. 41). the techniques for data collection included a range of narrative strategies: (1) autobiographies, (2) semi-structured interviews, and (3) e-mail interviews. the first stage of the data collection was to gather and analyze autobiographies provided by the participants. after the autobiographies were analyzed, semi-structured interviews were conducted as a means to expand on the data gathered in the autobiographies. lastly, an e-mail interview was conducted to focus on the critical incidents discovered in both the autobiographies and the semi-structured interviews. table 1 outlines the data collection techniques employed along with a description of how they were utilized within this study. denscombe (2007, p. 288) describes these stages of analysis as an “iterative”, non-linear process consisting of five stages: (1) preparation of the data (i.e., reading and transcribing interviews), (2) familiarity with the data (i.e., identifying occurrences of critical incidents), (3) interpreting the data (i.e., making connections with literature and data), (4) verifying the data (i.e., going back to the interviews and contacting participants for clarification if necessary), and (5) representing the data. participants the participants of this study were all students in a ba in tesol program at universidad de guanajuato (guanajuato campus) and also in-service teachers at different institutions in the state of guanajuato. participants were within the 19-25 age group and three females and one male were selected. however, the determining factor for their selection was their transnational background. table 2 presents each participant along with such background. ethics according to christians (2011), there are two necessary conditions when giving participant informed consent. the first is that participants voluntarily participate without any forceful action from the researcher. following this advice, participants were given a consent form informing them of the nature of this study. to protect the integrity of the participants, they were given pseudonyms. table 1. data collection technique description autobiographies participants were asked to write as many details as they could recall about their experiences in the us and in mexico. semi-structured interviews employed as a means to expand on what was written in the autobiographies. allowed us to have insights into the participants’ opinions and feelings on their transnational experiences. e-mail interviews conducted asynchronously. universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras142 serna-gutiérrez & mora-pablo data analysis and findings the critical events in this study are organized according to temporality. clandinin, pushor, and orr (2007) describe temporality as being a part of the common places of narrative inquiry. according to those authors, temporality can be understood in the following terms: “events and people always have a past, present, and a future. in narrative inquiry it is important to always try to understand people, places, and events as in process, as always in transition” (p. 23). through a careful analysis, it was found that the critical incidents which were identified occurred at three different moments in the participants’ lives: before they entered the ba tesol program, during the ba program, and during their teaching practice. before entering the ba in tesol program before entering the ba in tesol program, these participants underwent a series of stages where they discovered that the ba in tesol program was the right decision for them. the critical incidents that led to their decision of enrolling in the ba program were different, having only the final result in common. these pre-ba program critical incidents are analyzed as what tripp (2012) describes as asking both what happened and how it happened, which lead to a description of the deeper structures of how the incident occurred. for some transnationals, their motivation to seek out elt comes from an influential person in their lives who noticed something in them and advised them to pursue teaching. in ian’s case, a teacher at his high school in romita, guanajuato, noticed personal qualities in him with potential to be a teacher as well as his linguistic capital. the teacher let me know that he had heard good things about my english and how i helped my classmates and mainly my teachers. i had a close relationship with this teacher and we got along well, so his advice for me to become an english teacher was taken very personal. since he gave me the advice to become an english teacher, it is something that i had in mind always thinking about how it happened that he advised me to become an english teacher. (ian, e-mail interview) ian’s experience is an example of what others notice in transnational students. they stand out because of their linguistic capital and in ian’s case his personal qualities of helping others. linguistic capital comes from bourdieu’s notion of cultural capital (as cited in morrison & lui, 2000). linguistic capital is defined by morrison and lui (2000) as “fluency in, and comfort with, a high-status, world-wide language which is used table 2. research participants participants transnational background ian ian spent about 16 years in the us. he was always in constant contact with mexico and even spent about three years in mexico during those 16 years. he lived in keizer and salem, oregon. he returned to mexico in 2007 to the city of romita, guanajuato. martha martha spent about nine years in the us, moving there when she was seven years old. she returned to mexico when she was 17 years old to the city of salamanca, guanajuato. maria maria spent seven years in the us, living in arizona. she returned to mexico when she was 14 to the city of valle de santiago, guanajuato. norma norma was born in the us, in santa barbara, california. she was constantly moving between the us and mexico. she would spend several years in elementary school in the us and then she would study at others in mexico. she then decided to move to mexico to the city of romita, guanajuato 143profile: issues teach. prof. dev., vol. 20 no. 1, jan-jun, 2018. issn 1657-0790 (printed) 2256-5760 (online). bogotá, colombia. pages 137-150 critical incidents of transnational student-teachers in central mexico by groups who possess economic, social, cultural, and political power and status in local society and global society” (p. 473). they further explain that students who “possess [linguistic capital], have access to, or develop linguistic capital, thereby have access to better life chances” (morison & lui, 2000, p. 473). ian’s ability to help others was a signal for his teacher that he should take on the teaching profession. he takes this advice to heart and follows through. for others, the decision to enter the ba tesol program arises out of an unexpected “plan b”. as in martha’s case, where her initial plan was to study psychology but because she suffered problems with the admissions exam she could not enter the program. this critical phase can be described as what measor (as cited in rolls & plauborg, 2009) calls an “extrinsic critical phase”, as external factors influenced her decision to seek an alternative. my first try at an admission exam was negative. i needed more knowledge about what is studied here in mexico. (martha, autobiography) her poor performance on the exam pushed her to seek out an alternative as one of the main reasons for returning to mexico was to obtain a university education. as jerdee (2010) discusses, when transnational students return to mexico, they “lack knowledge and language skills necessary to navigate the mexican school system” (p. 2). like many other transnationals who return in hopes of getting an education, they encounter critical incidents in which they must take an alternative route. in the case of martha, the alternative route is an education in tesol. sometimes, the decision to take the route in tesol comes from an early age while learning the language due to the circumstances of living in what can be seen as a foreign culture. in maria’s case, her struggle with the language can be interpreted within measor’s “personal critical phase” (as cited in rolls & plauborg, 2009), as it would later lead her toward a life changing decision. now that i think about it, being an english teacher interested me a lot. i could remember how bad it felt not to understand others, and for that reason i decided to help others learn english. (maria, autobiography) later she expands and describes a specific critical incident from her language learning experience. this incident occurred at her elementary school in the us during a classroom game: i remember when i was in my second-grade class, which was the year i actually started to learn and use the language . . . when i won one [the teacher] only had chocolates and lollipops. [she] asked me, “what you want: a chocolate or a lollipop?” so i said “a popsicle”. my classmates laughed in my face and said, “it’s not a ‘popsicle’ it’s a lollipop”. i remember i felt very embarrassed and like they all hated me . . . i guess i just did not want others to feel left out in situations just because of their language barriers. (maria, e-mail interview) maria describes an incident when she made a mistake and used the wrong word for lollipop. at first it seems like a trivial mistake, to confuse “popsicle” with “lollipop”, but the emotional impact that it had on her was much greater. incidents such as these, where there are “language barriers” in transnationals’ communication can be seen as critical incidents of “anxiety and tension” (sikes et al., 2001, p. 104). these feelings of “anxiety and tension” later served as motivational factors for her to pursue a ba degree in tesol as she explains above. the previous participants underwent critical incidents in their early education that in one way or another influenced their decisions to become english teachers. for norma, this decision arose through a series of events. this series of events can be described as measor’s “intrinsic critical phases” (as cited in rolls & plauborg, 2009) because she was faced with an important decision regarding her professional and academic life. her journey began while studying english at a language school and studying a different major. at that time, she had been studying psychology, but an interest in universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras144 serna-gutiérrez & mora-pablo tesol began to grow and it was probably her english lessons that planted the seed. i was impressed by their way of teaching. i truly fell in love with those teachers. they are perfect teachers in my eyes. (norma, e-mail interview) her positive experience with those teachers while studying english at the language department of universidad de guanajuato led her to question if she was doing the right thing. she discovers that it was not beneficial for her to continue with psychology and began to look for other options. when i entered psychology, i was sure that it was the right decision. then while in the ba [psychology] i discovered that it wasn’t. i just didn’t want [elt] to go wrong again. (norma, e-mail interview) the previous comment came after she was asked why she decided to study a certification course in language teaching before studying for the ba in tesol. she explains that before she entered the ba in tesol program, she wanted to make sure it was the right decision for her. luckily, her experience in the diplomado was positive and soon after she enrolled in the ba program. these critical incidents took place before the participants decided to enroll in the ba in tesol. they are part of different critical phases that led them to make life-changing decisions. the final result is the same; however, the events that led them to make a decision would later shape their professional identity in many different ways. to many, these incidents at first glance may seem insignificant and meaningless. as tripp (2012) puts it, critical incidents at first may appear “typical rather than critical” (p. 25). however, in the same sentence he states that these “typical” incidents become critical only after analysis of the incidents takes place. ian, maria, martha, and norma all narrated critical incidents which occurred before entering the ba program that in one way or another led them to choose a path in tesol. these incidents began as early as childhood when learning the english language, and all the way up to adulthood by helping others learn the language in high school. during the ba program once the participants decided to enroll in the ba program in tesol, they went through another set of critical incidents. the role of these critical incidents during the ba program later demonstrated to be of great importance, as they had a direct impact on their professional identity. for students such as martha the ba program brought many changes to their lives. one of the most significant consequences of enrolling in the ba program was that it pushed her toward a job in elt. at the moment which i was told that i needed a job i was in shock because it was never in my plan to become a teacher. unfortunately, at that specific moment i was going through a lot of economic problems so i really did not have an option but to get the job. i also thought about quitting the ba because i did not consider myself capable of giving a class. i did not consider myself prepared for that. (martha, e-mail interview) when martha enrolled in the ba program, she was not aware that having a teaching job was an important part of the program. not only was it a requirement for the program, but she also needed to teach due to economic reasons. both of those reasons motivated her despite her feeling unprepared. she was forced to make a decision that would determine her academic and professional life, thus, this can be identified as an “intrinsic critical phase” (measor as cited in rolls & plauborg, 2009). not only did she begin to teach, but was also able to figure herself out as a professional. before entering the ba program, she simply wanted to study for the sake of studying. she did not have a clear vision of her future. however, her experiences in the ba program and on the job have helped her make sense of where she wants to be professionally. 145profile: issues teach. prof. dev., vol. 20 no. 1, jan-jun, 2018. issn 1657-0790 (printed) 2256-5760 (online). bogotá, colombia. pages 137-150 critical incidents of transnational student-teachers in central mexico until this day i do not think teaching is for me. however, the ba is asking me now to have a class to be able to pass some classes and i am independent now so i need an income to sustain myself. i sometimes enjoy my profession, but it is something i do not plan to do the rest of my life. (martha, e-mail interview) although, most students enter the ba program in tesol to become english teachers, she does not see herself teaching in the future. she is mainly teaching now because it is a requirement for the ba, and to provide for herself. instead she sees herself in higher education. honestly, i see myself as a doctor . . . weather in education, psychology, or research. (martha, semi-structured interview) martha’s plans for the future have become clearer. through her experience in the ba program and teaching, she now knows that her true goal is to continue studying and eventually obtain a phd. it should also be relevant to mention that this excerpt demonstrates an inconsistency within her professional identity. although she is currently teaching, her imagined identity is not that of a teacher, but that of a doctor in different fields. similar to martha’s events, maria also began to teach because it was a requirement in the ba program and out of economic need. both of these participants’ stories parallel in that aspect. i started teaching in a public school in a very poor area. i had 40 students in six classes. i did not know how to teach anything nor how to control the students in the first place. however, since going to school required to spend money on the bus ride and on food, my parents did not have money at that time and i had to find a way to study and work at the same time. (maria, e-mail interview) maria also details her feelings of insecurity due to her lack of preparation at that time. however, because it was a requisite of the program and she lacked economic support from her parents, she had to teach. for these participants, entering the ba program has not only given them the opportunity to teach, but also to change their perspective on elt. maria, for example, makes it apparent that she now has a broader view of what she can do with her linguistic capital. the ba has really opened my view of all of the things i can do with my english. and even when i might have any other difficulty i could practically work anywhere just because of the language. (maria, e-mail interview) maria displays an optimistic view of her linguistic capital and feels confident that it can open more doors for her. ian conveys entering the ba program as a phase or more specifically, as an “intrinsic critical phase” (measor as cited in rolls & plauborg, 2009). ian’s critical phase began as early as in his first semester of the ba program. he describes these phases as stages and clearly states how each phase is different. these incidents lead him, as strauss ( cited in sikes et al., 2001) puts it, to explore his new conceptions that were created through the ba program in tesol. i recall those phases being different stages in which i was in. i remember that first and second semester were stages in which i was introduced to the ba and i was becoming adapted to the new lifestyle in which my weekends . . . were going to be spent at school. there were a few moments in which i felt pressured due to the work load in these semesters (first and second), but i don’t think there could have been a better way for me to adapt to this new lifestyle . . . the second phase, i believe, began in third semester in which loads of theory were given to me. although i felt more pressured than in first and second semester, i got the opportunity to begin working, and i attempted to relate theory with what i was doing amongst my students. i began to notice the connections . . . i enjoyed the job opportunity i had at the moment, and this made me feel as if i was studying something i really enjoyed and felt as if i could teach for a living. i would interpret this as a critical incident. i had my first job and i was happy with teaching and trying out new things in the classroom. (ian, e-mail interview) universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras146 serna-gutiérrez & mora-pablo ian makes it clear that his different phases in the ba program helped him adapt to the student lifestyle and to find a profession that he could see himself practicing for a living. it is through both experiences in the ba program and in his teaching practice that he makes connections and finds his vocation. the incidents these students live while in the ba program help them in many ways. they helped them discover who they were and where they stood/stand in the elt profession. they are able to begin a journey in elt, or decide that elt is not for them. the critical incidents that the participants undergo while in the ba program are related to tripp’s (2012) “historical dimension”: “how knowing something about what has happened to us and what we have done, tells us something about who and where we are, and where we might be going” (p. 97). in any case, it helped them see in what direction to steer. this set of critical incidents occurred once the participants had entered the ba in tesol program. they all described the different aspects of the ba program; beginning to teach and going through an adaptation phase in the ba program. martha and maria began to teach out of economic need and because it was a requirement for the ba. these two participants also shared that through teaching and the ba program their perspectives on teaching changed or were consolidated. ian, on the other hand, described his process of adaptation to the ba program, and depicted it as a two-phase process. on the job from the data, we found that the participants had critical incidents early in their lives that affected their teaching in particular ways. for some, their learning experience in the us affected their perspective of the mexican school system upon returning as we see with maria and norma. for participants such as martha, the influence of her family and previous work experience were critical incidents which can directly be correlated with her teaching practice. maria construed her experience of learning the language, and described it as “natural”. she made a comparison between the manner in which she learned the language and how her students are learning it. i learned english by going to two different classes. at the start of my day in second grade elementary i would start by going to class with my normal teacher . . . then i would go with my esl teacher after recess . . . i remember playing with barbie dolls along with the other students who were there but we would play in silence because the dolls could not speak if it was not in english. (maria, e-mail interview) as for my students now, i find they have to learn grammar and i wish i did not have to teach that to them but, i have to . . . they don’t have much exposure so they really cannot just learn naturally like i did. however, they are still kids, and deserve to have fun. i could just look up how to teach grammar online and stuff, but would this really teach them english? (maria, e-mail interview) based on measor’s “extrinsic critical phase” (as cited in rolls & plauborg, 2009), which in maria’s case refers to learning the language, her attitude towards the teaching of grammar is identified. maria holds a strong opinion toward the teaching of grammar and questions if grammar instruction is truly necessary. the critical incident at hand is her experience in her esl classes. this incident has given her a strong opinion against the teaching of grammar. going to school in the us can also have an impact on how these transnational students see their teachers and themselves as teachers. in norma’s story, she described her american teachers and her mexican teachers in a very peculiar way. bad (her teacher) . . . in my opinion, she was very strict because the context was different for me. when i was in the us, the teachers were very loving, and even did this on the back (patted). here they tell you “shut up!”, and i would say, “why are they screaming at me, they wouldn’t do that over there.” but, now that i am a teacher, i understand that the context is different. (norma, semistructured interview) 147profile: issues teach. prof. dev., vol. 20 no. 1, jan-jun, 2018. issn 1657-0790 (printed) 2256-5760 (online). bogotá, colombia. pages 137-150 critical incidents of transnational student-teachers in central mexico this comparison between the two types of teachers later influences her teaching style. in her autobiography, she stated that she tried to be a loving and sweet teacher, but much to her dismay she had to change her teaching style. she drew from her memories of her teachers in the us, and made comparisons with her teachers in mexico. at first, this comparison was negative as she viewed her mexican teachers as aggressive. however, once she obtained some knowledge of the context, she was able to understand their behavior and even adopted this in her own teaching. when the children ignored me when i used to talk so sweet, i guess it sounded insecure for them. it was like they did not respect me, just for being sweet. i guess they were just not used to that. (norma, e-mail interview) when she began to teach, she approached her students in a “sweet”, loving way. nonetheless, her students did not react positively to this behavior, and she felt that they were not respecting her. her students were not the only ones who reacted to her “sweet” teaching style. teachers also told me i needed to show more authority, otherwise they (students) would take you as a joke. (norma, e-mail interview) in combination with her students’ reactions, and her co-workers’ advice, she decided that the best option was to consider the context in which she was working and changed her teaching style. basically, i got to believe and take my role as the teacher, like it’s no joke i’m the teacher and then i got to speak firmly to them without fears, without unbelieving my role. i don’t get so “playful” or dynamic anymore, because when i decide to be a little more relaxed with them to test if they could handle it, it turns all into a mess. every once in a while i like to spice up my class, although i am aware i’m taking a risk and they probably go crazy. again, they are probably not used to that “freedom” per se. they really perform better with the guidance and even control from teachers in my own experience and context. (norma, e-mail interview) norma’s story depicted the complexities of teaching. she came into the profession with an idea that teachers were “sweet”, but she soon realized that due to her context, she needed to become the “strict mexican teacher”. through this “intrinsic critical phase” (measor as cited in rolls & plauborg, 2009), she was able to define herself as a teacher, and also describe the students in her context. there are many factors that influence who we are as teachers. in norma’s case, the context and her experiences with teachers in the us and mexico all had a tremendous impact on her teaching style. in martha’s story, we see how her family and past employment experiences shaped her attitude towards her students. i think that not only my experience working in high school, but also the way i was raised at home. my parents always asked so much from me. i was expected to do perfect all the time and now i expect my students to do the same. this has been a problem for me because of course my students do not respond as i expect and now i have understood that they do not really have to. a lot of students say i am very strict and i think so too, but the way i am has worked for me and i feel comfortable working like this. i see my students as if their learning was my responsibility and so i think that is why i am so hard on them. (martha, e-mail interviews) martha’s family values of hard work were demonstrated through her working at an early age while still in high school. these values now reflect in her teaching, despite the response from her students. with martha, we have an example of how her personal identity transfers over to her professional identity. the critical incidents previously explored affected the participants’ teaching practice in different ways. maria, for example, had an apparent, negative view toward grammar instruction in the classroom, which was a result of her own language learning experience. norma explained a similar story. she assimilated a teaching style based on her experience with us teachers. this teaching style later proved to be unfruitful for her context, thus resulting in a change of teaching style. universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras148 serna-gutiérrez & mora-pablo martha described how her family values influenced her as a teacher, and how it reflected in her teaching. conclusions through this study, we were able to explore critical incidents in the lives of transnational student/teachers in the ba program in tesol. the theme of critical incidents arose after the data were analyzed. we discovered that the participants had gone through critical incidents during different critical phases. three different critical phases in the data were found. the reasons that led the participants toward making a decision to study for a ba in tesol varied, but their linguistic capital played a key role in the decision. the first critical phase that was identified was before the students had entered the ba in tesol program from their experiences in the us learning the english language. in this phase, different critical incidents were found. for one of the participants, it was an outside influence from a teacher who motivated him to choose to pursue a ba in tesol. his teacher noticed a quality in him other than his linguistic capital that was representative of a good teacher. for other participants, the motivation to enroll in the ba in tesol program came from an intrinsic factor. for participants such as maria, motivation came from the urge to help others learn the language. as she stated in her story, she did not want other students to struggle as she did while learning the language. the critical incidents for the four participants were different, but they all resulted in the life-changing decision of enrolling in a ba program in tesol. after the students had made their decisions to enroll in the program, they began a new critical phase. this phase occurred during their formation process in the ba program in tesol. for most of the participants, the nature of the ba program drove them to seek a teaching job. this was one of the first critical incidents that participants, like martha, went through in the ba program. for others, such as ian, the notion of the concept of critical incidents was more notable, and he was able to describe his experience in the ba program as a process in which different stages were involved. he started in the acquisition stage, where he was introduced to new concepts, and later was able to apply these concepts and see them at work in his teaching practice. for most, the critical incidents during the ba program phase motivated them to teach. the final critical phase that was described in this study was their teaching practice. some participants had a noticeable influence in their teaching practice from their own learning experience. in the cases of norma and maria, the influence from their experiences in the us was extremely evident. maria took from her experiences learning the language, and norma from her experiences with teachers in the us. from those experiences, their perceptions on how to teach a language, and how a teacher should behave in class were shaped, thus creating their teacher identities. however, just as identities are in constant change and negotiation, their perceptions on teaching practices and teacher behavior also changed as they gained more experience. through these three critical phases, we were able to explore and re-story different critical incidents in the lives of transnational student/teachers in this context; the ba program in tesol. we discovered that the incidents one has in life are directly correlated to the decisions we make. however, this exploration led us to more questions and possible directions that could be taken using the analysis of critical incidents. implications and limitations this study aids in understanding the motives behind transnationals’ decisions to become english teachers. through the analysis of critical incidents, we were able to explore the identity formation of transnational efl student-teachers before the ba program in tesol, during the ba program, and in their teaching practice. the analysis of these critical phases can lead to a better understanding of the life-changing decisions these individuals made when deciding to become elts. 149profile: issues teach. prof. dev., vol. 20 no. 1, jan-jun, 2018. issn 1657-0790 (printed) 2256-5760 (online). bogotá, colombia. pages 137-150 critical incidents of transnational student-teachers in central mexico this analysis could benefit the ba program in tesol at universidad de guanajuato by providing the program designers with valuable knowledge when adapting or changing curriculum to explore or make use of the experiences transnational students wield. however, this study could have a greater impact with several modifications. the limitations of this study are strictly technical, and if not present, could have provided a lengthy discussion of critical incidents. one of these principal technical constraints was the number of participants. in the future, we would like to work with more than five participants in order to have a larger sample of critical incidents, thus finding more similarities or differences. further research as we mentioned before, from the data we were able to identify three critical phases consisting of critical incidents. for future research, we suggest that these three phases be dissected separately, as each is rich in data. for the first phase, the researcher can take many directions. he or she can explore the influence of family or the influence of having learned the language on their decisions to pursue a ba in tesol. for the second phase, while in the ba program, the researcher may develop a framework of the process or critical phase of going through the ba program in tesol. this could be used to describe how or if this process influences participants’ teaching practice and professional identity formation. references angelides, p. 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(2006). learning identity: the joint emergence of social identification and academic learning. new york, us: cambridge university press. zúñiga, v., & hamann, e. t. (2009). sojourners in mexico with us school experience: a new taxonomy for transnational students. comparative education review, 53(3), 329-353. https://doi.org/10.1086/599356. about the authors josé irineo omar serna-gutiérrez is an in-service teacher-student at universidad de guanajuato. he currently teaches english at universidad de guanajuato in the department of languages. he holds a ba in tesol and is currently studying for an ma in applied linguistics in english teaching at universidad de guanajuato. irasema mora-pablo is a full-time teacher at universidad de guanajuato in the language department and currently coordinates the ma program in applied linguistics in english language teaching. she holds a phd in applied linguistics (university of kent, uk). her areas of interest are bilingualism, latinos studies, and identity formation. acknowledgements we would like to thank prodep-sep for funding this study and also the participants who shared their stories with us. 165profile vol. 15, no. 2, october 2013. issn 1657-0790 (printed) 2256-5760 (online). bogotá, colombia. pages 165-183 role of systematic formative assessment on students’ views of their learning el papel de la evaluación formativa en las percepciones de los estudiantes sobre su aprendizaje hugo nelson areiza restrepo*1 universidad del valle, colombia this article presents a partial report of a small qualitative research study that explored the students’ views of their learning during and after the implementation of formative procedures such as self-assessment, feedback, and conferences. the article also includes their perceptions about this implementation. the research was carried out with a group of students of english enrolled in an extension program of a colombian public university. the results showed that formative assessment helped these learners to be aware of their communicative competence and to perceive the situations in which they developed this awareness; it also enabled them to experience success in their learning. also, learners identified the purposes of this kind of assessment and perceived formative assessment as a transparent procedure. key words: autonomy, formative assessment, metacognition. este artículo presenta el reporte parcial de un pequeño estudio de investigación de tipo cualitativo que exploró las percepciones de los estudiantes sobre su aprendizaje durante y después de la implementación de una evaluación formativa sistemática y sus visiones sobre este tipo de intervención. el estudio se llevó a cabo en un grupo de estudiantes de inglés pertenecientes a un programa de extensión de enseñanza de lenguas extranjeras en una universidad pública colombiana. los resultados mostraron que la evaluación formativa ayudó a estos estudiantes a ser conscientes de su competencia comunicativa y a reconocer las situaciones en las que se generó tal conciencia; además, también les permitió experimentar éxito en su aprendizaje. asimismo, los estudiantes identificaron los propósitos de este tipo de evaluación, la cual percibieron como un proceso transparente. palabras clave: autonomía, evaluación formativa, metacognición. * e-mail: hugoareiza@gmail.com this article was received on july 1, 2012, and accepted on may 10, 2013. universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras166 areiza restrepo introduction not until recently has there been an increased interest in formative assessment (fa) as a studentcentered procedure that informs teachers and students about students’ learning. it is the springboard for students to take control of their learning and for teachers to align their instruction to their learners’ needs. there is much literature and research about fa but little has been reported in our local academic community on our reflections and practices as teachers regarding fa, its connections to metacognition and autonomous learning, and the advantages and drawbacks of implementing it. some works, however, have been reported on this issue (ahumada, bonilla, & del campo, 2010; arias & maturana, 2005; ariza, 2008; ariza & viáfara, 2009; bernal & lópez, 2009; cárdenas, 2010; cortés & sánchez, 2005; martínez, 1996; rodríguez, 2007; sierra & frodden, 2003; torres, 2009). furthermore, the findings of some of these studies may partially explain why there is not much literature on fa locally. bernal and lópez (2009) conducted research about the perceptions of some colombian languages teachers on language assessment and the way they use it in the classroom. they concluded that teachers who did not receive instruction on evaluation did not relate assessment to enhancing learning. they also concernedly reported that a few universities in colombia offered instruction in evaluation to languages teachers. moreover, arias and maturana (2005) also conducted qualitative research on the discourses and practices on assessment of some english teachers in a public university and found out that there were confusions in their understandings and practices on language assessment in the classroom, and that the kind of fa they provided lacked systematicity, rigor, and continuity. these studies may indicate our still limited understanding of all concepts beneath assessment in both our practices and discourses. autonomy in language learning and formative assessment for this study it was necessary to first understand the complexity of conceptualizing learner autonomy, how the development of metacognitive skills may promote it and how some research has explored this issue. sinclair (1999), in a survey review of publications on autonomy in language learning, identified four views of autonomy that should be carefully interpreted within a particular, social, political, and educational context. one view is that it is concerned with providing learners with opportunities for exercising a degree of independence. another view is that it involves or includes a capacity for making informed decisions about one’s learning, and this capacity needs to be developed through introspection, reflection, and experimentation in the form of “learner training” or some other kind of intervention by a facilitator. another view considers that such a capacity can be developed only through social and collaborative learning, rather than any intervention. for others, it is a question of learners’ rights, or freedom from constraint, and represents an opportunity for social transformation. these different views agree on the fact that autonomy implies students making decisions that transform them and their surroundings whether there is an intervention or not. littlewood (1999) proposes two types of autonomy: proactive and reactive. the former suggests a “natural” drive of some learners to take control of their learning and is more present in western cultures while the latter implies some kind of input aimed at promoting such a drive in those who are not autonomous and is particularly for learners in the east asian cultures. it may also turn into a preliminar y stage towards proactive autonomy. rivers (2001) illustrated this proactive autonomy among experienced language learners taking another language for their first time through an ethnographic 167profile vol. 15, no. 2, october 2013. issn 1657-0790 (printed) 2256-5760 (online). bogotá, colombia. pages 165-183 role of systematic formative assessment on students’ views of their learning study. the data were gathered in 1993 and 1994 from 11 learners of georgian and kazakh at the university of maryland at college park. he found out that these students exhibited three common types of behaviors: self-assessment of progress and learner style/learning strategy preference issues, learner autonomy, and self-directed language learning. these experienced language learners accurately assessed their learning styles, any learner-teacher style conflicts, and any learner style conflicts within the class. they demonstrated a high tendency towards autonomy and used self-directed language learning strategies to modify the learning environment and aspects of their learning, including type of input, workload, and course structure. hence, these behaviors or characteristics of autonomous learners and other successful language learners, as rubin (1975) reported, may serve as models or examples for those who are not and need to attain those skills necessary to self-regulate their learning. they can achieve this by providing them opportunities to develop those skills. in language education specifically, cotterall (2000, p. 109) argues that “autonomy . . . is not a goal only for highly committed students but is an essential goal of all learning.” little (1999) explains that the development of learner autonomy depends on the exercise of that responsibility in a neverending effort to understand what one is learning, why one is learning, how one is learning, and with what degrees of success. hence, autonomy is inherently related to metacognition. peters (2000) and mcmillan (2010) define metacognition as the ability of learners to be aware of and monitor their learning. rivers (2001) complements this definition by stating that metacognition embraces two executive functions: self-assessment and self-management. his reports of metacognition research studies imply that in formal settings teachers can promote metacognition taking into consideration the stress on self-assessment abilities before stressing the implementation on selfmanagement ones. therefore, metacognitive skills make up part of the development of autonomous learning and may possibly be triggered through fa. assessment is a systematic ongoing process that determines to what degree of complexity students know and understand aspects of the curriculum, and how well they demonstrate that understanding. there are different classifications of assessment of language learning such as traditional or alternative, or according to the learners’ expected response (brown, 2004; brown & hudson, 1998; genesee & upshur, 1996; o’malley & valdez, 1996; oosterhof, 2003). nonetheless, the most simple and practical classification of assessment relies on its purpose (arias, areiza, estrada, marín, & restrepo, 2010). then, assessment can become summative or formative. the former is comprehensive and attempts to summarize students’ learning at some point in time or cycle, or at the end of a course or a whole language program (cizek, 2010; hadji, 1999; pryor & torrance, 2002). hadji (1999) points out that summative assessment is characterized by those tasks which determine if learners have achieved the goals as regards the standards of a course or a program. conversely, the latter is a common classroom procedure that focuses on the learning process and it is by nature diagnostic, remedial, regulatory, ongoing, self-regulating, timely, and accurate (arias et al., 2010; cizek, 2010; de ketele & paquay as cited in jorba & casellas, 1997). fa occurs when teachers facilitate students’ understanding of their own learning in ways that enable them to learn better, plan their learning by doing something with the information that is delivered to them in a comprehensible language. arias et al. (2010) and cizek (2010) affirm that fa be provided through learning cycles which allow them to set learning goals and a road map to attain them. instead of opposing summative and formative evaluation as the literature often proposes, delgado universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras168 areiza restrepo (1998) rather suggests a coherent and complementary relationship. assessment is not only referred to as just rewarding and punishing by grading and calculating these accumulative grades as summative assessment usually becomes, but as an attempt to understand how students are learning. this understanding necessarily leads to provide teachers’ feedback to students and promote their self-reflection and self-regulation. hence, providing proper fa also leads to accurate summative assessment (estrada & vallejo, 2006). fa can happen in varied forms such as selfand peer-assessment, portfolio assessment, or studentgenerated tests to quote some examples. however, the ones that seem fundamental in raising students’ awareness as a key to promote self-regulation are students’ self-assessments and teachers’ feedback. self-assessment is an “appraisal by a student of his or her own work or learning process” (o’malley & valdez, 1996, p. 240); it is generally students’ insights on strengths, weaknesses, and ways of improvement. watson (2002) reports several reasons for using selfassessment and justifies it from a learner’s autonomy lens: it is a prerequisite for a self-directed learner and can raise learners’ awareness of language, effective ways of learning, and their own performance and needs; and it also increases motivation and goal orientation in learning. furthermore, some aspects of language learning, such as effort and learner beliefs can be assessed only through self-assessment; and it can reduce the teacher’s work load. brown (2004) has identified four types of selfassessment: assessment of a specific performance in which a student assesses his or her performance, indirect assessment of competence which is a student’s perception of his or her general language ability, metacognitive assessment that is strategic in nature and aimed at planning and monitoring learning, and socioaffective assessment whose purpose is to reflect on affective factors in learning. these four types of selfassessments can be presented combinatively to the learner depending on the particular characteristics and purposes of the teaching scenario. if students’ self-assessment is their perceptions of their learning, teachers’ feedback is the experienced voice of learners’ progress and constraints. both learners’ and teachers’ perceptions are equally important in a democratic classroom and provide a more accurate panorama of what learners are doing and the input for students’ self-regulation. feedback is the result of interaction between the teacher and students about the learning process. after a test or a performance task, students always want to know how they did on it. brown (2004) supports the idea that scoring and grading would be incomplete if the teacher does not offer feedback to students with information that will help them self-regulate their learning and the teacher direct her/his practice as well. it is possible to nicely “confront” students’ and teachers’ voices of their learning in a scenario such as conferences. brown (2004) refers to conferences as a routine part of language classrooms that may facilitate the academic improvement of students. such interaction offers the great advantage of oneon-one interaction between teacher and student, and the teachers’ being able to direct feedback targeted to students’ specific needs. for brown (2004, p. 265), in a conference “the teacher plays the role of a facilitator and guide, . . . not of an evaluator. in this intrinsically motivating atmosphere, students need to understand that the teacher is an ally who is encouraging selfreflection and improvement.” this teacher-student friendly talk may be encouraged through generic questions which often relate to students’ achievements and drawbacks at any cycle of their learning process, and often seek to offer positive “washback”. conferences are by nature formative and are not to be scored or graded. no one can deny that students’ self-assessment, conferences, or teachers’ feedback may happen in cidentally and have a positive impact on students’ 169profile vol. 15, no. 2, october 2013. issn 1657-0790 (printed) 2256-5760 (online). bogotá, colombia. pages 165-183 role of systematic formative assessment on students’ views of their learning learning and on teaching; nonetheless, it is unpredictable when these may occur, but any kind of fa should be planned and implemented on a regular basis. that is why good quality fa is guaranteed if it is provided with rigor, systematicity, and continuity so it attains its purpose (arias et al., 2010). some research on fa and its connections to metacognition and autonomy has tried to explain this intrinsic relationship to the benefit of the learner and as a guideline to the teacher. one of the most wellknown works regarding fa is a lengthy literature review by black and wiliam (2006). they conducted research between 1988 and 1997 and analyzed empirical work with both qualitative or quantitative evidence on issues related to the practices and understanding of fa. they ranged over various age groups across several school subjects and involved several countries. this lengthy work was not an easy task for the researchers because the research reports they analyzed lacked sufficient detail about the practical use of the methods. furthermore, they argue that successful implementation of methods of this kind is heavily dependent on the social and educational cultures in the context of their development, so that they cannot be merely “replicated” in a different context. many were the themes that emerged and, just to quote some relevant to this project, they revealed that innovations, which included strengthening the practice of fa, produced significant and often substantial learning gains. another finding was related to current teacher practices: the picture that emerged was that fa was weak; in relation to effective learning it seemed that teachers’ questions and tests encouraged rote and superficial learning. furthermore, teachers’ feedback to students often seemed to serve social and managerial functions, often at the expense of the learning functions. these findings suggest that fa might be beneficial if it is solely learning oriented and if there is a deep understanding on its underlying principles and implementation. in colombia, it seems, there is no any empirical research reported in academic journals regarding fa of any kind in the field of language education, and little qualitative research has been reported. in fact, the findings of bernal and lópez (2009) and arias and maturana (2005) concluded that there is a need to offer training for languages teachers on assessment of language learning. on the one hand, arias and maturana (2005) in their research on assessment practices and discourses of 21 english teachers of two public universities found a confusing coexistence of summative and fa; an imprecise definition of the linguistic construct in terms of skills; excessive emphasis on the organizational— not the pragmatic—area of language knowledge; the importance of non-linguistic aspects in pass/ fail decisions; the indiscriminate use of assessment and testing; and the scarce consideration of several assessment task qualities. moreover, the lack of teachers’ work stability, of clear assessment guidelines and agreement, and of formal and systematic recording of ass essment results contribute to teachers passing students without the required com municative competence. in addition to that confusing coexistence of summative and fa, the feedback and self-assessment which are key procedures of this kind of assessment were not promoted with the rigor, continuity, and systematicity necessary to fulfill the purpose of fa which is to enhance learning. on the other hand, bernal and lópez (2009) conducted res e arch ab out t he p erceptions of eig hty-two colombian language teachers on language assessment and the way they used it in the classroom. they found out that their perceptions and practices were related to whether or not they received instruction on evaluation as pre-service or in-service teachers. for instance, those who had it, saw assessment as an integral part of instruction and as a tool to guide the learning process. conversely, those who did not receive any instruction on evaluation did not universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras170 areiza restrepo relate assessment to the enhancement of learning. they rather reported evaluation as grading, as an obligation stemming from an administrative request and as a tool to force students to study what is being taught. the researchers also concernedly reported that few universities in colombia offered instruction in language assessment and general evaluation to languages teachers. although these studies do not embrace the reality of colombian languages teachers because of the number of teachers who provided data, it is not a coincidence that the findings and conclusions of these studies suggested confusions on assessment not only in their discourses but also in their practices, and that from the many institutions in colombia that offered language teacher education only a few offered some kind of instruction regarding evaluation. however, some qualitative research has been conducted regarding fa of any kind and its connection to metacognition and autonomy. to mention some, martínez (1996) conducted a small qualitative study on the perceptions of students of esp courses at a local university on the role of assessment in students’ self-control of their learning. the study concluded that when the implementation of assessment shifted to the process of learning rather than the products of learning, students were much more motivated to take control of their own learning. in addition to this, students revealed a capacity for self-evaluation of their goals, expectations, and weaknesses. for them it was important but not essential to get a pass/fail mark in terms of their learning; what really mattered was self-assessing their reading process and selfmanaging their learning. in this study it would have been very interesting to observe the teachers’ voices in relationship to what they observed in those learners. sierra and frodden (2003) implemented a case study aimed at developing student autonomy through the implementation of self-assessment and learning strategies in an english course for students of different academic programs at a well-known university in medellín. data were collected from students’ reflections on their linguistic and attitudinal problems concerning their learning at the beginning of the course, and their self-assessments on linguistic and attitudinal aspects and students’ interviews at the end of the course. some of the themes that emerged evidenced students’ better motivation for language learning, positive attitudes towards their learning and con sequently more responsible learners which entitled them to improve their linguistic performance. they also increased their commitment towards the course and began to incorporate metacognitive strategies such as planning and evaluation of their learning process. another important finding to highlight is the idea that for promoting these positive achievements it is essential that an autonomous teacher, acting as a facilitator, provide psychosocial and technical support. for the first function the teacher requires some personal qualities: the capacity to motivate learners and the ability to raise learners’ awareness. technical support is related to helping learners to plan and carry out their independent language learning, helping learners to evaluate themselves and helping them to acquire the skills and knowledge needed to plan and evaluate their learning. this study clearly shows the relationship between fa in the form of self-assessment aimed at promoting metacognition and self-regulation and at the same time provides some insights on the role of teachers’ feedback provided with the sole interest of enhancing students’ autonomous learning. in a qualitative study by cortés and sánchez (2005) on profiles of autonomy in the field of languages, they analyzed data from four public university students of a language teacher education program through classroom observations, interviews, and surveys. one of the main findings was that autonomous learners self-evaluated their learning, spotted their weaknesses and strengths, monitored their learning in their pursuit of attaining learning goals, set up learning 171profile vol. 15, no. 2, october 2013. issn 1657-0790 (printed) 2256-5760 (online). bogotá, colombia. pages 165-183 role of systematic formative assessment on students’ views of their learning goals and considered self-evaluation necessary for improvement. admittedly, literature has widely shown the characteristics of autonomous learners as this research successfully did in the local context but it would have been very enlightening if it had envisaged how to promote autonomous learning in those learners who were not yet autonomous. rodríguez (2007), in a preliminary report of an action research project with a group of 21 efl learners at a higher education institution which consisted of the implementation of self-assessment practices, analyzed students’ samples, journals, and interviews. in one of his findings, he reported positive insights as regards the application of self-assessment materials. students’ self-reported that they had the opportunity to reflect on their weaknesses and strengths. likewise, they suggested self-assessment practices as a procedure to be implemented across the different levels in the institution and agreed on the fact that self-assessment helped them improve and overcome many of their learning difficulties they had before the implementation. unfortunately, as a preliminary report, it neither stated the teachers’ views of students’ improvement as a way to validate this finding nor the role of the teachers’ feedback. method this study followed a qualitative-exploratory, descriptive, and interpretive approach (bonilla & rodríguez, 1997; burns, 1999; johnson, 1992; leedy & ormrod, 2001) characterized by an intervention. the study aimed at observing, understanding, and interpreting the role of fa on students’ views of their learning and their views on this kind of assessment. the questions that guided this study were: • what is the role of the implementation of systematic fa on students’ views of their own learning? • how do students perceive this implementation regarding their learning? the context this study took place in a foreign language learning program of a public university in medellín, colombia. at the moment of implementation the english program offered a basic program of 10 levels, a 40 hour course each level and some other advanced courses. the program was based on a communicative approach aimed at providing students with the necessary tools to communicate in everyday situations related to social and professional life situations and entertainment. participants nine students signed a consent form; they were three male and six female students who enrolled as beginner learners of english. their ages ranged from 18 to 40 years old and they came from very heterogeneous social and educational backgrounds. their interests in studying english were as varied as their backgrounds; some had an intrinsic motivation to learn, others wanted to learn as a requirement of their current or future jobs or careers, others started studying a foreign language while they could enroll in an undergraduate program in a university, and others took the course as a preparation to travel to an english speaking country. implementation of fa as a teacher of a 40-hour course, i implemented a cycle of fa which consisted of different assessment tasks. the first assessment task consisted of a role play called survey in the english classroom; it was a survey of student pairs and the objective was to ask and provide personal information in english as surveyors and surveyees. the second was a written task called writing an e-mail/letter in which students had to write an email/letter to their parents reporting the behavior of a younger brother/sister. after each task, and without knowing my report on their performance, learners filled out a self-assessment universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras172 areiza restrepo form of their work in that particular task (see ap pendix a).1 the form had generic questions about whether learners reached the expected objectives or not and possible ways to overcome their difficulties. then, each student requested a short conference with me, during class time, in order to compare what they had self-assessed and what i had assessed on their performance. after this short talk, some students, by their own initiative, decided to do some remedial work if they considered it necessary. at the end of the course, students took an institutional final exam at the end of each level. later, students filled out a final selfassessment form of their communicative competence, plans to improve, and whether or not they considered they had passed the class objectives (see appendix b).2 finally, we had a conference whose objectives were to find out about their perceptions of their learning process during the course and insights about the impact of the implementation (see appendix a). table 1 summarizes the cycle of the implementation in chronological order. 1 students filled out this form in spanish since they were beginners and their responses were translated from spanish into english and the questions for the interview are also a translation in english from the original version in spanish. 2 students filled out this form in english since they mainly had to mark options and could write comments in spanish, their native language. the interview was in spanish and the quotes from this interview were translated from spanish into english for this article. data gathering and analysis during the implementation phase, data were in the form of a collected document relevant to the re search context gathered from the participants’ selfassessments and a representation of verbal recordings (freeman, 1998) which was a transcription of a semistructured audiotaped interview with students after the course was over (see appendix b). the instruments served to describe the role of fa on students’ learning and their perceptions about this form of assessment. the analysis of data combined inductive and deductive approaches in terms of the presence of each category in the participants’ perceptions. in order to enhance the validity and reliability of the study (burns, 1999; freeman 1998; johnson, 2002; leedy & ormrod, 2001) data and methodological triangulation was applied. findings data yielded meaningful information to describe the role of fa on students’ views of their own learning and their perceptions about its implementation in the course (see figures 1 and 2). table 1. formative assessment cycle 1. task 1: role play: survey in the english class 2. self-assessment of task 1 3. conference on performance of the task 1 4. remedial work on task 1 5. task 2: written task: writing an e-mail/letter 6. self-assessment of task 2 7. conference on performance of the task 2 8. remedial work on task 2 9. self-assessment of the whole process 10. conference or interview on their views of learning and sfa 173profile vol. 15, no. 2, october 2013. issn 1657-0790 (printed) 2256-5760 (online). bogotá, colombia. pages 165-183 role of systematic formative assessment on students’ views of their learning the role of fa on students’ views of their learning one of my interests throughout this study was to inquire about how fa may influence students’ perceptions about their learning. all data collection instruments served to build these perceptions and draw conclusions about the effectiveness of this kind of assessment for enhancing their metacognition and consequently their autonomous learning. mainly, students reported fa helped them become aware of their weaknesses and strengths in their communicative competence3 and of the situations in which this awareness arose; and thanks to fa they experienced a sense of achievement because they realized they had learned. 3 for the analysis of students’ self-assessment of their communicative competence i used bachman and palmer (2002) as a reference. strengths and weaknesses in communicative competence all instruments but the final self-assessment task did not directly request students to report the weak nesses and strengths of their communicative competence (see appendixes a and b). then, students’ accounts of their learning were more a by-product of their reflective skills encouraged by very generic prompts. data depicted a recurrent tendency to refer to strengths in pragmatic knowledge in a far much higher frequency than those in organizational knowledge. conversely, there was a more recurrent tendency to refer to their weaknesses in terms of organizational knowledge than pragmatic knowledge (see table 2). the fact that students provided specific infor mation on their strengths and weaknesses in rela tionship to what is being learned supports the idea that figure 1. role of fa on students’ views of their learning role of fa on ss’ views of their leraning strengths and weaknesses of their communicative competence awareness of situations in wich ss’ realized of their learning sense of achievement pragmatic knowledge organizational knowledge by fa procedures outside the classroom unspeci�c situations by classroom situations different from fa figure 2: students’ perceptions of fa ss’ perceptions of fa purposes as a transparent process to identify weaknesses to identify strengths to enhance learning universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras174 areiza restrepo students were able to assess their learning by making explicit that knowledge and those abilities through procedures that helped them think and reflect on what is or is not being learned. it is not surprising that they referred more often to pragmatic knowledge as regards their strengths and organizational knowledge as their weaknesses because during teaching there was far more stress on communication rather than on a descriptive study of the language as the main learning goals; organizational knowledge was presented as a part of what is required to attain communication. what did i learn exactly? i learned to introduce myself and request information from other people, who they live with, what they do, their names and ages, if they have a family and children, their marital status, if they work or go to school. (interview to student 1, page 1 transcription) my main difficulties were the pronunciation, asking questions, and saying numbers, using the possessive pronouns instead of the personal pronouns, saying some letters of the alphabet, and the intonation in questions. (self-assessment instrument of task 1, student 3) awareness of situations in which students realized their strengths and weaknesses only data gathered from students’ interviews confirmed the situations that resulted in this aware ness. their awareness came to light through different situations which not necessarily involved fa procedures such as assessment tasks, self-assessments, conferences, or remedial tasks, but also classroom situations different from fa procedures, some others outside the classroom and others they did not specify (see table 3). table 3. awareness of situations situations in which students realized of their learning number of students by fa procedures 5 by classroom situations different from fa 6 outside the classroom 5 unspecific situations 5 regardless of the situations in which students’ insights about their learning process emerged, the fact that students reported them through self-assessment instruments and the interviews suggests that the habit of having students exposed to fa and making explicit what they are learning may have triggered an awareness of what they were able to do or not do with the language and what they knew about the language in various situations: table 2. students’ report of their communicative competence pragmatic knowledge organizational knowledge instrument strengths weaknesses strengths weaknesses self-assessment of task 1 9 ss 3 ss 5 ss 5 ss self-assessment of task 2 6 ss no ss 8 ss 7 ss final self-assessment 9 ss 6 ss 8 ss 6 ss comments on final self-assessment 2 ss no ss 1 st 7 ss student interviews 9 ss 1 st 4 ss 8 ss 175profile vol. 15, no. 2, october 2013. issn 1657-0790 (printed) 2256-5760 (online). bogotá, colombia. pages 165-183 role of systematic formative assessment on students’ views of their learning t: how did you realize those difficulties? s: by the self-assessment tasks and those assessment tasks we had with my classmates i realized that it was difficult to understand them; and by sharing with the teacher. t: sharing what with the teacher? s: well, talking to the teacher i learned that it was hard for him to understand what i said because i did not pronounce well. (interview of student 2, audiotape 1, page 6) t: what experiences made you become aware of that? s: classroom experiences specially because in the street one does not have the chance to interact with people who speak english, but in the classroom one realizes that one has made a good progress and that what one has been taught is really helpful. (interview of student 1, audiotape 1, pages 1-2) t: how did you become aware of your progress? s: mainly because before i was not eager to write but writing about what i do, like my daily routine, i managed to do it and was able to say that i do this or that someone does that, what he or she likes, what i like to do. t: what activities helped you realize that progress? s: writing about the daily routine, i had never written my routine in english. it was there that i said to myself that i had learned and had some basic elements to start a conversation; and when we worked with our partners i realized i can speak about others. (interview of student 6, audiotape 1, pages 21-22) t: what events made you realize what you have achieved? s: chatting through the messenger because sometimes i used to hang around trying to use english and failed to, but now i can; and many times by listening to music, talking to other people and no more. (interview of student 9, audiotape 1, page 9) sense of success through fa most students also experienced a sense of success through fa because they were aware of having achieved something and this awareness arose during fa procedures. in the interviews, seven students reported a degree of satisfaction because they realized they had learned thanks to fa. students reported some learning outcomes and a kind of satisfaction during different stages of the cycle of fa. this success is evidenced in the different instances used to assess their communicative competence: in the first task, the role-play survey in the english classroom, seven students achieved the objectives of the task and two agreed on the fact that they did not achieve the task successfully but requested a chance to remediate; and in the remedial work they evidenced they had corrected their problems and achieved the learning outcomes of the task. in the second task, writing an e-mail/letter, all students successfully completed the task and all of them corrected the minor language problems they had experienced after the conferences. finally, in the final exam, students demonstrated they were able to use the language properly in the communicative situations proposed for the level. these students passed the course with the basic language tools to use the language properly although they evidenced and self-reported having some language difficulties still: t: how did you achieve the possibility of catching up with what you should improve? s: well, i mean, correcting the mistakes…and then we analyzed and if they were still wrong, i corrected them again. sometimes one is assessed, and it is just a mark and one did not identify what was wrong, and then one does not correct oneself. and here if it was to correct two or three times, then it was corrected. (interview of student 3, audiotape 1, page 3) t: how did you discover having chances to do some remedial work when you failed in one assessment task? s: one learns from mistakes. i like that and it was very appealing. i had a second chance then we analyzed my writing and i rewrote it and there was still another mistake and i rewrote it until it was fully correct. (interview of student 5, audiotape 1, page 20) universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras176 areiza restrepo students’ views of fa another main concern i had throughout this study was to explore students’ opinions about the implementation of fa and if it actually fit its purposes. analysis of data from interviews with students yielded three main findings. firstly, students reported fa as a procedure that helped them identify their weaknesses and strengths. secondly, students considered fa as a transparent process in terms of how their learning outcomes and difficulties were reported and the accuracy of the reports of what they actually learned. purposes of fa students repeatedly asseverated the purposes of fa as a procedure that mainly helped them identify their weaknesses and enhance their learning. they barely indicated fa was intended to spot their strengths. however, in different stages in the course, students were able to report their strengths and weaknesses through self-assessment procedures along the course, namely, self-assessments, conferences, and the final interview which evidenced some of the purposes of fa, that is, to detect students’ strengths and weaknesses related to their communicative competence and enable them to make informed decisions about their own learning (see table 4). table 4. purposes of fa purposes of fa number of students to identify weaknesses 9 to improve 9 to identify strengths 3 the fact that most students did not see fa as a procedure that helped them identify their problematic areas even though they were asked to do so in different stages of the cycle was unexpected. this may be due to the fact that in their previous learning experiences, students were used to being assessed and tested and the results of these procedures highlighted what they mainly did wrong or the main difficulties they had. it is as if learning were “measured” as to what students could not learn first instead of what they actually learned: t: do you think making self-assessments is effective? s: i think it is, i know what i’m failing in. i think that without doing self-assessment as proposed in the classroom, one is not able to self-asses on his own. (interview to student 2, audiotape 1, page 7) fa as a transparent process in the interviews, all students identified fa as a transparent process. this was mainly because they built their own visions of their communicative competence and then they compared them with their teacher’s vision in order to agree on their learning outcomes and difficulties. although the reliability of students’ self-assessment results in relation to their communicative competence was not the objective of this research, the fact that students in all stages selfreported their learning outcomes and difficulties honestly, made the process transparent. moreover, the fact that later through conferences they compared what they self-assessed and what the teacher had observed to agree on what they did or did not learn made the procedure far more transparent and the assessment results more accurate and reliable: t: how do you feel talking to me when we compared your self-assessment with the assessment i completed about your performance in one task or during the whole course? s: usually, we agreed on what i had spotted like my weaknesses. it was like confirming what i had to work on. t: did you think that talk was effective? s: yes it was. because if one lies, one does not value what one really has to work on and one would go on regardless that. one has to confront oneself and with the teacher one analyzes, one has to encourage oneself to overcome those difficulties and that is an incentive to learn. (interview to student 4, audiotape 1, pages 14-15) 177profile vol. 15, no. 2, october 2013. issn 1657-0790 (printed) 2256-5760 (online). bogotá, colombia. pages 165-183 role of systematic formative assessment on students’ views of their learning in conclusion, fa did help learners form a picture of their learning regarding the strengths and problems of their communicative competence and perceive the situations in which they developed that awareness including those that exposed them to fa; additionally, it endowed them to experience success in their learning. also, learners labelled the purposes of this kind of assessment as mainly to identify their weaknesses and improve, and barely to identify their strengths. furthermore, learners observed fa as a transparent procedure. pedagogical implications even though we teachers all provide fa in many ways, the lack of systematization and clear focus as regards its purpose is self-defeating. at some point in our careers, we have failed to recognize the formative nature of assessment, its underlying principles and the most suitable alternatives for implementing it in the classroom as the findings suggested by the results of arias and maturana (2005), bernal and lópez (2009), black and wiliam (2006). this implementation is not a model but an example of the principles that guide fa. clearly, the systematic and rigorous implementation of fa (arias et al., 2010; cizek, 2010) by asking students to self-assess their learning, by providing feedback generated by students’ and the teacher’s insights about their learning, and by encouraging students to do something with that information gathered for the benefit of their learning, actually fostered the self-regulatory attribute of this kind of assessment (arias et al., 2010; cizek, 2010; de ketele & paquay as cited in jorba & casellas, 1997). this kind of proposed assessment also went beyond grading and attempted to understand students’ learning from the teacher’s and the learners’ points of view. these different voices also helped to provide a more accurate summative assessment as claimed by estrada and vallejo (2006), who considered that proper fa leads to accurate summative assessment. in the end, proper fa in the classroom focuses teachers’ and learners’ attention on learning and not on grades, scores, or pass/fail marks. equally important, there is no doubt that the path to autonomous learning is the learners’ exercise of his/her responsibility to understand one’s learning (little, 1999); but it is the teacher’s responsibility to provide learners with those opportunities to exercise it, especially if they are those reactive autonomous learners as littlewood (1999) coins them. therefore, fa is a way to provide those opportunities as the participants of this study experienced: they self-assessed their learning in different learning cycles, received teacher’s feedback in a friendly and democratic atmosphere by their own initiative, tried to overcome their problematic areas, and had enough transparent criteria to decide on their readiness for their next learning challenge. in order to attain those desired autonomous behaviors from these students they, as stated by rivers (2001), focused on the development of self-assessment skills which are prior to self-regulation. in addition, encouraging learners to self-assess their learning first and promoting their selfregulation later were required to make learning explicit. accordingly, instruction as well as self-assessment also stressed the use of some metalanguage to refer to learning. these learners started experiencing the capacity that autonomy involves as a certain range of highly explicit behavior that embraces both and the content of learning as explained by little (1999). the fa proposal somehow complied with little’s view (1999) that in the autonomous classroom it is essential that the learner be stimulated to develop an awareness of the aims and processes of learning and to develop a capacity for critical reflection, which also implies having students reflect on their strengths/ weaknesses and progress in various linguistic skills. then, the participants in this study were able to describe the language from the organizational and universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras178 areiza restrepo pragmatic knowledge and how they were developing their communicative competence. unfortunately, because of its small dimension, this study could not explore, observe, and describe how learners kept an eye on how they monitored their learning strategies for example, but rather in what they were learning and to what extent. the development of metacognitive skills at the level of strategy assessment as proposed by leaver and oxford (1996) is another key element that needs special attention from the teacher to be introduced regularly and systematically as part of fa. teachers can engage in systematic fa regardless of the load of work they think it would represent; providing fa in the classroom helps teachers and learners monitor their learning in more practical ways. teachers do not have to keep track of the students’ learning process on their own; involving students in monitoring their progress also helps teachers to keep track of students’ progress easily. selfassessment instruments can be recycled and/or reused (as we usually do with much of our teaching material) every time students are assessed. in advance, students manage to assess their learning without having to wait passively for their teacher to mark exams, record and report the results. later, through a short but effective teacher-student dialogue during class time, they can discuss and agree about their learning. this process can become part of the classroom routine as many others without requiring extra work from the teacher. giving room to fa as part of our teaching routines may be time consuming at the beginning but practical and rewarding in the end. to sum up, actively involving students in their assessment by asking them to describe their learning gains and constraints, and by giving value to the voices in their own learning regarding the expected outcomes of the course program guided a very local and small group of people to experience a sense of democracy in the classroom. a call for more democratic procedures is a need and a must as a way to promote a much more humanized society. simple but meaningful classroom procedures may guide us to meet some of our ideals. references ahumada, l., bonilla, m., & del campo, m. 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(2002). defining and investing formative assessment. in j. pryor, & h. torrance (eds.), investigating formative assessment: teaching, learning, and assessment in the classroom (pp. 8-20). philadelphia, pa: open university press. universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras180 areiza restrepo rivers, w. (2001). autonomy at all costs: an ethnography of metacognitive self-assessment and self-management among experienced language learners. modern language journal, 85(2), 279-290. rodríguez, e. (2007). self-assessment practices: an empowering tool in the teaching and learning efl processes. colombian applied linguistics journal, 9, 229-246. rubin, j. (1975). what the “good language learner” can teach us. tesol quarterly, 9(1), 41-51. sierra, a., & frodden, c. (2003). promoting student autonomy through self-assessment and learning strategies. how: a colombian journal for english teachers, 10, 133-166. sinclair, b. (1999). survey review: recent publication on autonomy in language learning. elt journal, 53, 309-329. torres, s. (2009). promoting critical thinking through the use of portfolios and self-assessment. how: a colombian journal for teachers of english, 16, 25-54. watson, r. (2002). using self-assessment for evaluation. english teaching forum, 40(1), 16-19. about the author hugo nelson areiza restrepo is an assistant teacher at universidad del valle (colombia). he holds a master’s in didactics of english from universidad de caldas (colombia) and a bachelor degree in foreign languages education from the university of antioquia (colombia). he has worked in teacher education programs in colombia and efl/esl in secondary schools in colombia and the usa. 181profile vol. 15, no. 2, october 2013. issn 1657-0790 (printed) 2256-5760 (online). bogotá, colombia. pages 165-183 role of systematic formative assessment on students’ views of their learning appendix a: students’ self-assessment of tasks 1 and 2 and interview questions students’ self-assessment of tasks 1 and 2 1. how did you feel doing this task? 2. how do you assess your performances in this task? 3. do you think you achieved the goals this task meant to assess? why? 4. in what aspects do you feel you succeeded? 5. in what others did you experience difficulties? 6. how do you think you can overcome those difficulties? interview questions at the end of the course 1. which were your main achievements in level i? 2. how did you become aware of those achievements? 3. which were your difficulties in this level? 4. what have you done to overcome those difficulties? 5. how did you feel making self-assessments in this course? 6. do you think that the procedure of making self-assessments in this classroom is effective? 7. how do you feel talking to me about your self-assessments and your performance in the assessment tasks? 8. do you think that this conversation is effective? 9. do you think that your perception about your performance and mine really matched? 10. how did you discover the need to do remedial work? 11. what attitudes or behavior do you think helped you or would help you to improve your performance or overcome your difficulties? universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras182 areiza restrepo appendix b: final self-assessment of the whole process read the self-assessment guide for level i. mark the most suitable statement for your case and make the comments you consider necessary or important. yes no ns comments i can: introduce myself and to others in formal and informal settings ask basic personal questions in formal and informal settings understand basic personal information (written/oral) say/write basic personal information ask someone about his/her routine and free time understand questions about my routine and free time (written/oral) *ns: not sure. yes no ns comments i know when and how to use: intonation of yes/no questions intonation of information questions pronunciation of basic vocabulary intonation of yes/no questions verb to be in present affirmative statements negative sentences questions subject pronouns: i/he/she/it/you/we/they possessive adjectives: my/his/her/our/their saxon possessive: ’s a/an/the regular plural forms and some irregular plural forms affirmative statements negative sentences simple present affirmative statements negative sentences questions adverbs of frequency (always, usuallly, sometimes, etc.) expressions of time vocabulary of family members vocabulary of routine and free time vocabulary of professions/occupations numbers and the alphabet 183profile vol. 15, no. 2, october 2013. issn 1657-0790 (printed) 2256-5760 (online). bogotá, colombia. pages 165-183 role of systematic formative assessment on students’ views of their learning i think i’m ready for level ii because __________________________________________________________________________________ __________________________________________________________________________________ __________________________________________________________________________________ __________________________________________________________________________________ i think i’m not ready for level ii because __________________________________________________________________________________ __________________________________________________________________________________ __________________________________________________________________________________ __________________________________________________________________________________ for overcoming my difficulties i need to: __________________________________________________________________________________ __________________________________________________________________________________ __________________________________________________________________________________ __________________________________________________________________________________ 179 https://doi.org/10.15446/profile.v20n2.67095 self and peer correction to improve college students’ writing skills la auto y la co-corrección para mejorar la habilidad escrita de estudiantes universitarios irais ramírez balderas* patricia maría guillén cuamatzi** universidad autónoma de tlaxcala, tlaxcala, mexico this paper describes college students’ writing development process during their foreign language classes throughout a semester. self and peer correction were implemented to promote error awareness along with the use of an error code and error log in a fifth semester class. the results show that both strategies benefited students’ writing skills and self-awareness which in turn produced, among other outcomes, the development of critical self-assessment of their writing and responsibility for their own learning. this study highlights the importance of allocating class time for continuous training to allow students to systematize their writing practices. key words: peer correction, self-correction, writing skills. aquí se describe el desarrollo de la escritura de un grupo de universitarios durante un semestre. se implementaron las estrategias de auto y co-corrección para promover la conciencia del error a través del uso de un código y un registro de error con un grupo de quinto semestre. los resultados muestran que ambas estrategias beneficiaron las habilidades de escritura de los estudiantes y su conciencia de los errores además del desarrollo de la auto-crítica de su escritura y la responsabilidad por su aprendizaje. se resalta la importancia de proveer a la escritura un espacio dentro de la clase donde la práctica constante produzca la sistematización de las prácticas de escritura. palabras clave: auto-corrección, co-corrección, habilidades de escritura. * e-mail: irais.ramirezbalderas@uatx.mx ** e-mail: patriciamaria.guillencuamatzi@uatx.mx how to cite this article (apa, 6th ed.): ramírez balderas, i., & guillén cuamatzi, p. m. (2018). self and peer correction to improve college students’ writing skills. profile: issues in teachers’ professional development, 20(2), 179-194. https://doi.org/10.15446/profile.v20n2.67095. this article was received on august 17, 2017 and accepted on february 8, 2018. this is an open access article distributed under the terms of the creative commons license attribution-noncommercial-noderivatives 4.0 international license. consultation is possible at https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/. profile: issues teach. prof. dev., vol. 20 no. 2, jul-dec, 2018. issn 1657-0790 (printed) 2256-5760 (online). bogotá, colombia. pages 179-194 universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras180 ramírez balderas & guillén cuamatzi introduction the current education goals in the b.a. program in english language teaching (elt) of the universidad autónoma de tlaxcala (uatx) include the development of academic literacy including writing in english. due to the challenges that the development of academic writing poses, it has emerged as a research interest in higher education in mexico as evidenced by the studies carried out on this topic and context (encinas, keranen, & salazar, 2010; englander, 2010; martins, 2005; mora, 2017; roux, 2012; roux, mora, & trejo, 2011). according to hidalgo (2010), such challenges may be caused by the lack previous instruction in academic writing in both spanish and english. in order to develop students’ writing skills, a series of strategies should be implemented in the general english classes to help them become more independent and effective writers which, in turn, could benefit their motivation as well as their transit to writing more complex texts such as academic documents. writing, as the other three language skills, is an intellectual, creative, and methodological process that implies the investment of time and practice to develop it to the fullest in order to achieve clarity and effectiveness. there is a series of steps and strategies that may facilitate it for learners like generating ideas; assembling them coherently; organizing them to write a first draft, which is revised several times; rewriting until the final version is produced. the revision stage is crucial since it promotes and orientates the improvement of the text. if self and peer correction are added as strategies during this stage, learners do not only gain a more appropriate and accurate final version of their text but also knowledge of the writing-as-a-process stages. in addition, the learners can use error codes and error logs during self and peer correction in order to provide and follow-up explicit feedback in an attempt to foster self-awareness of the areas that need improvement. the knowledge and awareness resulting from the practices described above seem to help learners to produce better drafts, be more independent writers, and motivate them to cope with the difficulties of developing the writing skill. the b.a. program in language teaching at universidad autónoma de tlaxcala this study was carried out with students of fifth semester of the b.a. in language teaching at uatx in mexico. the university has implemented a new educational model called “humanistic and integrative model based on competencies” (ortiz, 2014), which follows the socio-constructivist theory centered in learning. the b.a. in language teaching is an on-site program based on competencies development with 58 learning units organized in eight semesters during which english or french is taught as a foreign language (learners decide on their preferred language). the courses comprising the program are distributed among three main areas: basic, vocational-discipline, and elective. the basic area is made up of 11 units that enable students to obtain the knowledge, skills, attitudes, and values needed to access higher learning units. the vocational-discipline area comprises 31 learning units and aims to deepen the knowledge, skills, attitudes, and values needed to exercise their labor as language teachers. finally, the elective area is made up of 12 learning units, eight related to linguistics and language teaching and four in which students have the possibility of choosing an additional foreign language. teaching writing as a process teaching writing as a process presupposes a change in the teachers’ approach and practices. murray (2003) holds that many english teachers “teach writing as a product, focusing their critical attention on what their students have done, as if they had passed literature in to us” (p. 3). that is, many teachers tend to consider learners’ writing as if it were literature which it is not. moreover, english teachers tend to assign a specific subject or theme for the learners to write about which may, on the one hand, demand knowledge about a 181 self and peer correction to improve college students’ writing skills profile: issues teach. prof. dev., vol. 20 no. 2, jul-dec, 2018. issn 1657-0790 (printed) 2256-5760 (online). bogotá, colombia. pages 179-194 topic that students are not familiarized with and on the other, play against their motivation if the learners are not interested in the topic. when teaching writing as a process, teachers should not expect students to write well from the beginning since teachers should consider the stages of pre-writing, writing, and re-writing. learners usually read the final text and are not aware of the drafting and correcting that are necessary to produce it. that is why teaching writing should be approached in a way that learners are guided through the edition process, which helps them to become aware not only of the stages for producing a text but also of the strategies that work for them to improve their writing. in addition, the use of tools like the error code and error log is beneficial for the development of their autonomy as writers. lalande (1982) found that american students who used error codes to correct errors in german had greater improvement in writing than the students who had their errors corrected by their teachers, while ferris (2011) states that a longitudinal study showed a clear advantage for the use of error logs to improve students’ writing even though the results are not conclusive (due to the small sample included in the study). it is the teacher’s role is to facilitate the time and opportunities for learners to write in a social environment using self-help and external tools. the use of tools provided by the teacher such as an error code and an error log along with explicit guidance may help students to become cognitively aware of the process of writing a text. writing as a process writing—as well as reading—is not an innate ability or competence since it goes beyond knowing how to write a simple message to communicate something. tierney and pearson (1983) argued that it involves “continuous, recurring and recursive transactions among readers and writers, their respective inner selves and their perceptions of each other’s goals and desires” (pp. 18-19). within this complexity, they claim that the writing process contains five main stages: planning, drafting, aligning, revising, and monitoring which will be briefly described below. planning the planning stage is believed to be what differentiates novice and expert writers. hayes and flower (1980) suggest that the former scarcely plan their text while the latter set explicit rhetoric objectives that allow them to revise globally their text which benefits its effectiveness. understanding that learners are at different stages of development and providing them with knowledge about the stages of the production of written texts is a good beginning for the advancement of the teaching of writing. for tierney and pearson (1983), this stage of writing entails two complementary processes: goal-setting and knowledge mobilization. goal-setting planning includes a series of other steps such as setting the topic, objectives, goals, and purposes of the text to be produced. on the other hand, knowledge mobilization refers to brainstorming, that is to say, the generation of first ideas. some of the strategies that can be taught in this stage comprise note-making, outlining, mind mapping, and free writing, among others. mcdonald and salomone (2012) include other essential strategies like thinking, talking to other people, and reading related material which seem obvious to experienced writers but are sometimes neglected by novice writing learners. in sum, planning allows the writer to consider the subject and the audience which raises awareness of the appropriate level of formality and language required to produce the text. once the writer has a clearer notion of the purpose of the text as well as the main idea(s) and has gathered details, examples, reasons, or content that could be included in the text, s/he is ready for the next stage. drafting during this stage, the writer makes a case and structures a rough version of the text. it is at this stage where the main ideas and the writer’s position should universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras182 ramírez balderas & guillén cuamatzi be clarified. this is why it takes into consideration the stage of alignment because, while the learners are drafting, they must adapt their text to the audience they are writing for and they must follow the appropriate rules of language and vocabulary. however, this stage should not be confused with revision since its purpose is to write. after revision and correction, the writer will be able to fine tune the text. aligning the process of aligning not only focuses on the coherence of the text but also on the writer’s stance about the topic and the mode. the stance might be challenging, sympathetic, or critical, to mention some, and the impact mode refers to the effect that the writer desires to generate: convincing, persuading, supporting, and so on. aligning also takes into account the audience that will read the text. it is not the same to produce a written text for college students as for primary school students. it is clear that the changes required by the text do not occur on a single draft. alignment presupposes a cycle of recurrent rewriting, revision, and drafting. the revision process is a fundamental stage for improving the quality of the text produced and offers vast opportunities for teachers to provide learners with the tools and strategies that may facilitate their independence and progress in their development as writers. revising according to hinkel (2015), “to be college and career-ready writers, students must take task, purpose, and audience into careful consideration, using words, information, structures, and formats deliberately” (p. 24) so writing is not merely taking ideas from one’s head and placing them onto the paper. a writer must choose the lexical items that best represent his/her ideas and cause the desired impact. this stage is not only about accuracy; it comprises coherence and flow. for tierney and pearson (1983), revising is an ongoing process of rethinking the paper, reconsidering the arguments, reviewing the evidence, refining the purpose, and reorganizing the presentation. it is this stage of the process that shows the writers’ degree of autonomy since the more capable they are of identifying the weaknesses of their text and adapting it to the requirements of the audience, the more autonomous they are, which may be an indicator of the learners’ progress in the spectrum that ranges from novice to experienced writing. revising can be assisted by an external agent which can be the teacher or a classmate as well as a tool like the aforementioned error log and error code. both agents and tools provide learners with feedback and support that may help them to focus on specific areas to improve. the constant use of such tools may benefit the internalization of the criteria commonly used to evaluate writing which would facilitate the monitoring stage. monitoring writers must be able to evaluate what they have developed. this is called monitoring which according to tierney and pearson (1983), “occurs tacitly, but it can be under conscious control” (p. 17). the monitor favors the evaluation and tracking of, as well as the control over, the other stages (i.e. planning, alignment, drafting, revising) because it evaluates if they have been done properly. this stage together with revising can be supported by self and peer evaluation and error codes and logs because novice writers are unaware of the weaknesses of their texts and find it difficult to focus on certain areas to improve. if such agents and tools are not used, learners may become overwhelmed by the difficult tasks of revision and monitoring which may demotivate them and cause the infamous writer’s block. correction in writing as a process in the past, the evaluation of written texts in the english as a foreign language (efl) context was limited to the identification and/or correction of the linguistic errors produced by the learner, especially spelling and grammar as stated by zohrabi and rezaie (2012). this 183 self and peer correction to improve college students’ writing skills profile: issues teach. prof. dev., vol. 20 no. 2, jul-dec, 2018. issn 1657-0790 (printed) 2256-5760 (online). bogotá, colombia. pages 179-194 approach resulted in the disregard of essential aspects related to the text itself, to the learners, and to the process of writing. for cassany (2000) writing should be understood beyond the mechanics of writing such as spelling, calligraphy, and layout to incorporate aspects that are more helpful to determine the adequacy of a text like vocabulary, grammar, cohesion, structure, and register. taking these aspects into consideration may provide useful information to the learners so their texts may better match their teachers’ expectations. as for the students, the traditional approach constrains learners’ participation in the assessment of their own texts causing underdevelopment in the awareness of their weaknesses. such weaknesses may be in the text as a product and/or in the process of writing since learners are used to submitting a written assignment and obtaining a score sometimes without receiving formative feedback which would provide suggestions for improvement. this approach may affect their motivation for writing. this is why cassany (1989) suggests what he calls comprehensive evaluation which takes into account the text produced by the learner in addition to the sequence of actions followed to produce it; from the preparation to the production and the edition stages. the previous comments do not mean that traditional correction should be completely eliminated from the teachers’ practices since they should be sensitive to the learners’ needs in terms of their level of l2 proficiency and development as writers. learners in basic or elementary levels of l2 seem to expect and want error correction that includes the linguistic ones as well. this can be done by balancing the types of feedback in addition to focusing on different aspects of writing according to the different stages of the writing process. if writing is not taught as a process, it becomes a one-time text production, so the learner writes an assignment with the objective of fulfilling a requirement set by the teacher. that is, viewing writing as a process instead of as a product which would encourage learners to see writing as an opportunity to express their views about a topic and as a learning experience built on the possibility of improving the text through drafting, correcting, and editing to submit a final version of which they may feel proud and satisfied. self-correction in writing teachers have traditionally provided feedback on errors to students; however, in current teaching approaches other ways of providing feedback and correcting have been incorporated. according to bitchener, young, and cameron (2005), self-correction is an indirect feedback where the teacher provides students with choices that would allow them to discern the correct form by themselves. these authors consider that regardless of the mode, that is, self or peer, it is the teacher who makes the errors salient in a way that seems accurate since teachers usually set the items that should be corrected bearing in mind the students’ stage of linguistic and writing proficiency. another feature of self-correction is that it draws the students’ conscious attention to their individual errors which pushes them not only to notice their errors but to correct them. this, in turn, can be a good form of becoming aware of their most common errors and identify problem areas to resolve. studies on self-correction (hanrahan & isaacs, 2001; kubota, 2001; maftoon, shirazi, & daftarifard, 2011) have found its positive effects such as the reduction of the amount of errors made by the students. other findings are that self-correction was more effective than teachers’ correction and recasts, plus it favored the learners’ positive attitude towards error correction and triggered metacognitive discussions in the classroom which could provide opportunities for learning. fahimi and rahimi (2015) also found that self-assessment instruction prepares students to plan and revise their texts as well as to evaluate the progress of their writing. the results above make a case for instructing and involving students in self-correction practices with the objective of not only improving their writing but also their metacognitive skills. universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras184 ramírez balderas & guillén cuamatzi peer correction also known as peer feedback or peer review, peer correction has proved to be an effective means of aiding writing development since it actively involves learners in the learning and teaching process. some authors (kamimura, 2006; zeng, 2006) have shown that peer feedback offers many ways to improve learners’ writing. this method consists of learners giving and receiving feedback about their writing from their peers, that is, other learners. it may be implemented in the classroom to “enhance learner autonomy, cooperation, interaction and involvement” (sultana, 2009, p. 12). thus, comparing one’s writing to others’ offers the opportunity to broaden and deepen learners’ thinking and understanding of their writing process and language use in two ways: as readers, they enhance their critical reading skills and as writers, learners foster their critical thinking skills when revising their pieces of writing on the basis of peers’ feedback (moussaoui, 2012). some of the most important benefits of implementing peer correction in the classroom are that the learning responsibility is shared with learners which shows them that their opinion is valued; both teachers and learners gain insights into the writing process; learners’ active participation in the correction activity “provides a more supportive atmosphere as the feedback received from classmates is less threatening, and as a result of these the authoritative role of the teacher is no more reinforced” (pishghadam & kermanshahi, 2011, p. 218); it saves time and effort for many efl instructors (miao, badger, & zhen, 2006) and allows teachers to assess learners’ writing on a regular basis thereby reducing the negative effects of time constraints and large class sizes. in addition, it is not uncommon that learners give feedback according to given criteria established by the teacher which may be checklists, feedback sheets, error codes, and error logs. these tools are helpful for the process of error correction and provide learners with a guide to classify errors which may reduce levels of anxiety. self and peer correction, according to yang’s (2010) research results, empower the students to monitor, evaluate, and edit their texts to improve them since selfcorrection facilitates the identification of grammatical errors. in addition, peer correction helps them to notice the others’ opinions about their texts. in this way, students provide and receive support from each other building a true learning community which is the aim of the educational model at uatx. error code in order to support learners to carry out the revision stage, error codes and logs can be used. correction codes are instruments that provide learners with feedback on their writing which allows the students to revise their understanding of certain linguistic items. in this way, learners identify errors or what they believe are errors about the form and function of a variety of lexical and grammatical elements. using error codes is practical and beneficial since it helps teachers and learners to approach text revision as a problem-solving task; they provide learners not only with clear parameters about what to revise but also with a common set of symbols which standardizes the text reviews as long as the code is clear and has been explained to the users. buckingham and aktuğ-ekinci (2017) consider that the correction codes also help teachers to provide individualized feedback in subsequent drafts in a timely manner without putting an extra workload on themselves. actually, the code symbols prevent the use of many words to provide feedback and allow a more efficient use of time. in addition, if error codes are used during self and peer correction, during the teaching of writing as a process, learners may become more reflective about and autonomous in their writing. error log along with error codes, learners may also use an error log for written accuracy in particular. in this study the students used the error log to keep track of 185 self and peer correction to improve college students’ writing skills profile: issues teach. prof. dev., vol. 20 no. 2, jul-dec, 2018. issn 1657-0790 (printed) 2256-5760 (online). bogotá, colombia. pages 179-194 the number of errors made with regard to some error categories such as verb tense, subject-verb agreement, word choice, punctuation, and capitalization, among others. this instrument aids learners to monitor the kind and frequency of the errors they make in the writing tasks so that they will become aware of those linguistic items that they need to improve upon. method the main objective of this exploratory study was to find out if the use of self and peer correction processes in the english class during writing instruction resulted in higher quality texts. the specific objectives were to find out what were the most common types of errors made by the students and discover if the recurrent use of self and peer correction had an impact on the amount of errors made. the participants were nine students, seven females and two males whose ages ranged from 20 to 22 years old. they were in the sixth semester of the b.a. in language teaching at uatx. in order to learn about the participants’ writing habits, a short survey was applied to the learners; it helped to set the students’ writing practices. furthermore, the data were collected through two written assignments based on the tasks of the course book and which were revised using an error code and implementing peer correction so two versions of each assignment were submitted (rough and final drafts). in addition, students were asked to register their errors in an error log in order to monitor the type and amount of errors made. at the beginning of the semester the teacher explained how to use the error code and that the writing skill was going to be developed in a systematic way. that is, carrying out the five stages of the writing process. the first assignment was to write a paragraph about their college life-style, the second text produced was an invitation letter to spend the summer with a close friend, the third was a fiction story, and the last one was to express their thoughts about students who work. the second text ranged from 100 to 150 words while the last one ranged from 350 to 400 words. the error code and error log used for self and peer correction was taken from zemach and rumisek (2003) who suggest a list of 25 error symbols (see appendix a) with their definition and exemplification to clarify each one. in the regular english class, students submitted their writing tasks as a first draft and they were redistributed by the teacher to implement peer correction. after this first review, students were required to check their partners’ identification of errors and correct them (self-correction) with the intention of improving their writing. finally, a final draft was submitted to the teacher. students were also required to include the first peer-reviewed draft with the final version of every written assignment as evidence of the process. moreover, students were asked to fill in the error log (appendix b) according to the mistakes marked during peer correction process (appendix c). findings the most salient information coming from the short survey applied at the beginning of the semester was that two of the students wrote first in spanish and then translated their texts into english while the rest wrote directly in english. of the latter, five used prewriting strategies like making notes but four of them did not. all the participants considered that the most challenging elements as regards writing in english were the use of grammar rules, writing interesting texts, and originality. eight participants thought expressing their ideas and the use of appropriate vocabulary were quite challenging. on the other hand, five of them considered that generating ideas for writing was quite easy. the error code provided the students contained symbols for 25 types of errors like spelling, word order, wrong form, adding and eliminating words, connectors, and run-on sentences, among others. students 3 and 9 had the highest rates of types of errors with 12 followed by student 5 with 11 types of errors, and students 1 and 7 had five types of errors. appendix d shows the texts universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras186 ramírez balderas & guillén cuamatzi produced by student 3 before and after peer correction. the lowest rate was five types of errors made by students 2, 4, 6, and 8. it was interesting to see that even though some students clearly had a higher level of proficiency in english, they had errors that seemed to be fossilized. for example, student 2 had only six types of errors which were word choice, articles, unclear sentences, verb tense, verb form, and missing words. she committed a mistake related to verb tense only in her first version of assignment 1 and never made it again but the other five types of errors were present in all of her texts which led the researchers to hypothesize that some of those errors were real problem areas for the student although unclear sentences and missing words could be corrected once the student develops more awareness of the audience and is guided to write her ideas more explicitly. the most common errors that the participants made in general in their four texts submitted were word choice, verb form, and missing words. it was also found that these types of errors continued to occur throughout the different assignments. this information helped the teacher to implement activities that would help the students to express the doubts they had about the three types of errors and practice them such as extracting parts of the texts and sharing them with the class to find possible solutions to the errors, explaining why the word or verb form should be changed. in some cases, students were recommended to do certain grammar exercises, however, they were suggestions that may or may not have been followed by the learners. since participation in those activities was not assessed due to the fact that they were not included in the official syllabus and evaluation criteria for the course, we could not attest for their effect. another common error was word order. this type of error appeared at different points of the participants’ writing but eight of the nine students corrected this error successfully in the final version of the second assignment. on the other hand, the type of error that students did not find in any occurrence was unclear fragments. however, it is worthwhile to mention that the texts analyzed were peer and self-corrected so the teacher at that point had not yet provided feedback; that is, the teacher could identify other errors that the students overlooked. the following types had a single occurrence: the improper use of capitalization, singular, plural, pronouns, and subject-verb agreement. this is due to the fact that most of the students in this group had an appropriate level of english from the first semester and were the first generation of the program which means that most of them had taken an entrance level test. most of the students in this group had taken extra school english classes and some had recently returned to mexico from the united states where they had studied in high schools. the following paragraphs will refer to specific participants that attracted our attention because of the results in their error logs. student 4, who probably had the highest level of proficiency, can be said to have committed only one type of error at a time. that is to say, the six types of error she produced were made only once each but in different moments. for example, in the first draft of assignment 1 there were errors of word form and subjectverb agreement which were successfully self-corrected in the final version where there was a missing word error. the same happened in the second assignment where in the first version, the student had a word order error and in the final version had a word choice error and run-on sentence. we consider that different errors come up in different versions of the assignment because, in each stage, the students extended their compositions which would potentially open the door to additional unsupervised errors. in terms of the frequency of errors tracked in the error log, it was observed that the errors participants had from the first to the fourth assignment varied. five participants showed a decrease in their mistakes having from one to six fewer errors. in two cases, they had the same number of errors in the first and final writing; however, in the final version of assignment 187 self and peer correction to improve college students’ writing skills profile: issues teach. prof. dev., vol. 20 no. 2, jul-dec, 2018. issn 1657-0790 (printed) 2256-5760 (online). bogotá, colombia. pages 179-194 2 and first draft of assignment 4 they reduced their errors. only in one case, the participant kept the same number of errors in the first and final draft of assignment 2 and the final version of assignment 4 and increased one in the first draft of assignment 4. interestingly, the remaining participant made more errors in the last three writings than in the first one which could have been caused because she went from producing a very controlled and short first text to freer, more extensive texts. this is another effect observed during the teaching of writing as a process. it seems to encourage students to write more and take more risks since they appreciated the opportunity they had to experiment with language as the assignments required them to express themselves. furthermore, when students received the second draft of the assignment, they went through the revision process which comprises identifying, classifying, and correcting the mistakes they made. they also dealt with the topic of the fourth assignment which was “students who work” because some of them are workers as well as students. with the implementation of these processes, it was possible to create a favorable environment to develop students’ writing skill to do their best with the aid of the materials and the input from peers and the teacher. even though number and frequency of errors are important elements to measure progress, a more important effect was sought and achieved—raising students’ awareness of writing as a process and experiencing the benefits of self and peer correction in the hope that they will continue to implement such stages and tools in their future academic writing tasks. another aspect observed was that students worked more comprehensively, engaging with their classmates as writers and readers which provided them with benefits such as more confidence to write and lower levels of anxiety. in addition, the roles of the agents in the classroom were reorganized since the teacher was not seen as the owner of knowledge but as a facilitator, as topping (1998) pointed out: peer assessment involves students directly in learning, and might promote a sense of ownership, personal responsibility and motivation . . . peer assessment might also increase variety and interest, activity and interactivity, identification and bonding, self-confidence, and empathy with others—for assessors, assesses, or both. (p. 256). that is, teammates enjoyed the same academic status which made them feel more comfortable when working in pairs, to ask when they had doubts, and to propose and provide solutions not only to their own problems but to their peers’ too. conclusions as a conclusion of this classroom experience, it can be said that self and peer correction as well as the writing as a process approach are worthwhile practices that can be implemented in the writing tasks included in the regular english textbooks. self-correction raises the students’ awareness about their errors, allowing them to correct the errors themselves and in that process become responsible for their learning and therefore, more independent of the teacher. it also helps them to focus on their own errors as opposed to what happens normally in the classroom where, due to time constraints, teachers address the most common errors found in the assignments which might not be completely relevant to the students who do not make such mistakes. as for peer correction, it was evident that the way students provided feedback to their partners was done in a friendly, respectful manner which brought about opportunities for them to confirm or disconfirm what they believed was right or wrong. sometimes the assessment could be wrong because the feedback came from a partner, however, the students were close enough to ask for clarification from the student who provided feedback and with the help of the teacher, find out who was right, leading to learning. it was also observed that the students developed evaluative and critical skills from their second draft since their errors declined. spelling, capital letters, pronoun universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras188 ramírez balderas & guillén cuamatzi errors, and the rest committed only once proved to be easy to correct. some of these errors are identified and marked by the computer but it has been seen that when the students do not receive feedback or receive it but in an untimely manner, they continue to make these errors. if peer and self-correction help learners to polish their texts even a little, it will still save time for the teacher when checking their texts and teachers will be able to focus on items that the students have not been able to resolve themselves. the processes of peer and self-correction carried out systematically contributed to maximizing students’ writing skills through the support of several parties such as error correction tools (the error log and error code) and input from their peers and teachers along with their previous knowledge. in turn, the interaction of these aspects as well as others as motivation to write, interest in the topic, and so forth, bring about chances for discussion, awareness raising, and noticing which can be used as bonding mechanisms by which the students and teachers work together to improve the students’ skills. this formative orientation may result in the formation of a learning community where everybody contributes to each other’s learning. because this is a small exploratory study, the authors cannot claim that self and peer correction resulted in significant progress, however, it was observed that throughout the semester of implementation, students became quite comfortable with providing and receiving peer correction and their attitude towards writing seemed to improve. the authors consider these practices should be explored further as well as their results. in order to do so, more english teachers working in this program could be instructed in the writing as a process approach as well as the self and peer correction practices so there is a higher possibility of researching their effects in the development of the writing skill as well as in providing learners with continuity and homogeneity (at least as much as possible and appropriate) in the approach to error treatment and to writing. this is especially important in our context because the students are english teacher trainees who will have the responsibility of developing better literacy practices in their future students. references bitchener, j., young, s., & cameron, d. 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(1998). peer assessment between students in colleges and universities. review of educational research, 68(3), 249-276. https://doi.org/10.3102/00346543068003249. yang, y.-f. (2010). students’ reflection on online self-correction and peer review to improve writing. computers & education, 55(3), 1202-1210. https://doi.org/10.1016/j. compedu.2010.05.017. zemach, d. e., & rumisek, l. a. (2003). college writing: from paragraph to essay. oxford, uk: macmillan publishers. zeng, y. (2006). peer feedback in college slw classroom. sino-us english teaching, 3(3), 23-35. zohrabi, m., & rezaie, p. (2012). the role of form-focused feedback on developing students’ writing skill. theory and practice in language studies, 2(7), 1514-1519. https:// doi.org/10.4304/tpls.2.7.1514-1519. universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras190 ramírez balderas & guillén cuamatzi about the authors irais ramírez balderas holds a phd in applied linguistics from macquarie university (australia). she is a full-time teacher in the elt program at universidad autónoma de tlaxcala and representative of the research group on teaching and learning of english. her research interests include communities of practice, teachers’ professional development, and academic literacy. patricia maría guillén cuamatzi holds a phd in applied linguistics from macquarie university (australia). she is a full-time teacher in the b.a. in the elt program at universidad autónoma de tlaxcala. she is a member of the research group on teaching and learning of english. her research interests include communities of practice, learning, and academic literacy. 191 self and peer correction to improve college students’ writing skills profile: issues teach. prof. dev., vol. 20 no. 2, jul-dec, 2018. issn 1657-0790 (printed) 2256-5760 (online). bogotá, colombia. pages 179-194 appendix a: error code (zemach & rumisek, 2003) sp = spelling the boy was afeared of the dog. (afraid) wf = word form they were education in many different countries. (educated) wc = word choice we bought the rug after describing the price. (discussing) wo = word order mona is reading always on her bed. (is always reading) sing = singular noun john works as an investment brokers. (broker) pl = plural noun there are many advantage of living abroad. (advantages) art = article a enthusiastic employee is an asset for a company. (an) inf = too informal the committee is not gonna change the plans of the project. (going to) ? = meaning unclear the government plans to create every child goes to school. (plans to create a fund allowing every child to go to school) pron = pronoun the company’s profits continue to be good, so it will expand you product line. (its) s / v = subject/verb agreement several people from my country attends the class. (attend) v-tense = verb tense last year, we go to visit relatives in a neighboring city. (went) v-form = verb form i will be go to the dentist next week. (will go) v-pass = passive verb the workers forced to work for twelve hours by management. (were forced) cs = comma splice the store ended its sale, it marked the remaining goods. (…sale, and it). ro = run-on sentence if the temperature drops, the lake will freeze last year it froze for several months. (…freeze. last year…) frag = fragment because the cinema was old and no longer in use. (because…in use, it was closed and the property was sold.) co = connecting word examples: while we finished dinner, we went to meet the new neighbors. (after) the laboratory lacks modern equipment, or it is still used for many experiments. (but) inf = ger = infinitive/ gerund line through the law attempts ending smoking in all public building. (to end) word = delete prep = preposition donations were given into the charity. (to) punct = punctuation the summer is long hot and humid (…long, hot, and…) c = capitalization the white house is the place of residence for the president of the united states. (white house) π = start a new paragraph ^ = add a word completion ^ the project is expected in six to eight months. (completion of the projects…)(prep) universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras192 ramírez balderas & guillén cuamatzi appendix b: error log (zemach & rumisek, 2003) assignment 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 type of error sp wf wc wo sing pl art inf ? pron s/v v-tense v-form v-pass cs ro frag co infin/ger x prep punct c ¶ 193 self and peer correction to improve college students’ writing skills profile: issues teach. prof. dev., vol. 20 no. 2, jul-dec, 2018. issn 1657-0790 (printed) 2256-5760 (online). bogotá, colombia. pages 179-194 appendix c: pallant’s writing model (2004) brainstorm ideas revise and rewrite organize ideas planning write third draft evaluate teacher feedback evaluate (self & peer) evaluate (self & peer) write �rst draft write second draft teacher evaluation and making start here universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras194 ramírez balderas & guillén cuamatzi appendix d: samples of peer correction work or study: what should i choose? nowadays working is an important decision, because students will start to become independent. studying is only a life’s tool, inasmuch as students will face a lot of challenges and the degree is not a guaranteed ^ job. in this world anything is unsured since everyone has to look for those experiences for survives in this life. when people finish their studies they are unemployed because no one, specifically companies, want to to give them an employment because they do not have experience in whatever area. however, how this companies ask for experience if they do not give them the opportunity. in this country, mexico ^, is difficult to get a job. it does not care if you were a brilliant student or if you have the experience most of the time they want money to give you the job. type of error punct wc/wf/add / wc/wf wf add / wc punct the extract above shows the errors identified in peer correction. the following extract shows the corrected version produced after peer correction. the version below should be then reviewed by the teacher to provide feedback and polish the text. work or study: what should i choose? nowadays, working is an important decision because students will start to become independent. studying is only a life’s tool inasmuch as students will face a lot of challenges and the degree does not a guarantee of job. in this world anything is for sure since everyone has to look for those experiences to survive in this life. when people finish their studies they are unemployed because no one, specifically companies, want to give them an employment because they do not have experience in whatever area. however, how those companies ask for experience if they do not give them the opportunity. this is the case of mexico, where is difficult to get a job. they do not take in account if you were a brilliant student or if you have the experience. most of the time they want money to give you the job. 7profile vol. 17, no. 1, january-june 2015. issn 1657-0790 (printed) 2256-5760 (online). bogotá, colombia. pages 7-9 http://dx.doi.org/10.15446/profile.v17n1.48168 editorial the need was felt instead, by many of us in the south, to look for different kinds of explanation, not only to gain a more clear understanding of the conflictual social processes that affected our lives but also to assist in re-channeling collective energies toward a better course of action for justice and equity. (p. 1)1 fals-borda illuminates our path and our vision in many different ways. first of all, we are very clear as to truly understanding what he means by the south; it is us, people from below the equatorial line down to the antarctic circle, especially in the western hemisphere. we americans from the south are turning our heads to ourselves to gain a deeper introspection. we are starting to truly perceive who we are, what we are made of, and what our dreams and goals are. we have travelled a long way influenced by truths spoken by others for other contexts. at some point in history we made them fit, or tried rather, into our own background. mistake many would say; necessity others would agree; part of a process is our understanding. this is true in many different fields of action, including academia. our beacons in the construction of knowledge in the field of language learning, teaching and research were until recently academicians from the north, namely the united kingdom and the united states. yes, we departed from what happened in similar though different environments and tried to see the connection with what was going on in our particular surroundings. but things started to change. our ideas, beliefs, and behaviors could be perceived and acted upon in new fashions because there are people from our own territory building new knowledge without feeling different or inferior on intellectual grounds. as fals-borda indicates, we are performers of our present and future not only because we understand what is going on but because we have realized the forces that emerge from within. the publication of works carried out by practitioners, novice teacher-researchers, experienced researchers, and teacher educators evidences the emergence of such forces. the articles that they publish in journals like ours portray what happens in their educational settings, contribute to the development of our professional knowledge, and provide grounds for further actions. gathering voices from different scenarios and from different teachers’ backgrounds is a matter of justice and equity. this way, we can acknowledge 1 fals-borda, o. (1995, april). research for social justice: some north-south convergences. plenary address at the southern sociological society meeting, atlanta, ga. retrieved from http://comm-org.wisc.edu/si/falsborda.htm. universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras8 nieto cruz & cárdenas due recognition to the forces emerging from grassroots teachers as well as to the wellestablished communities where more experienced educators work. in this edition we have gathered ten articles whose authors are spread over seven countries, namely: argentina, chile, colombia, mexico, new zealand, spain, and the united states. this diversity evidences not only the coverage of our readership, but the increasing interest of academic communities in the kinds of works we promote in profile. the issues from teacher researchers section begins with two articles regarding teacher education. first, argentinian teacher maría cristina sarasa shares with us a narrative research project into the possibilities of classroom-generated stories in an initial english teacher education program. in her work she shows how she conceptualized the participants’ written narratives on “unheroic” lives and derives the implications these narrative classroom interventions hold for english language teacher education. next, eric gómez burgos reports on a study conducted with first year chilean students of english pedagogy about the use of formulaic sequences in written and oral descriptions in an english as a foreign language context. as pointed out by the author, students resort to similar formulaic sequences in written and oral texts and many of the expressions generally used in spoken discourse are used by students in written texts. a comparison of efl (english as a foreign language) university students regarding learner autonomy comprises the work authored by colombian teacher ximena paola buendía arias. her study sought to gain deeper understanding of this subject matter in learners from different cultures through the identification and analysis of similarities and differences between chinese and colombian students from two public universities. after that, spanish teacher isabel herrando-rodrigo shares with us a survey-based study that aimed to explore the attitudes of spanish practitioners and undergraduate students towards english as the vehicular language in the field of medicine and towards medical electronic popularizations as an alternative to medical research articles. the pedagogical implications drawn from the positive results of the study stress the students’ awareness of the use of english and the new-born genres or communication channels. then, we present the exploratory study carried out by constanza tolosa, claudia lucía ordóñez, and tania alfonso who aimed at comparing the performance of online tutors of two groups of eleven-year-old beginner students of english in colombia and spanish in new zealand. the article let us get acquainted with the kind of feedback provided by each group of tutors; this feedback was analyzed in terms of language corrected, error input, and types of feedback provided. in the last article of this section of issues from teacher researchers we can read the report of itala diaz’s qualitative study. in it, the author describes the training in metacognitive strategies to help beginning young learners with difficulties as to increasing and retaining vocabulary. to do so, the cognitive academic language learning approach instructional model and journaling progress were used and monitored. 9profile vol. 17, no. 1, january-june 2015. issn 1657-0790 (printed) 2256-5760 (online). bogotá, colombia. pages 7-9 editorial the issues from novice teacher researchers section includes a report on the study conducted by mexican teacher romero lara herrera, who focused on mexican students’ perceptions of learning the history of mexico in english through content-based instruction. remarkably, we can learn from this study that despite students’ initial rejection to learning the subject concerning the history of mexico in english, most of them acknowledge that content-based instruction is a meaningful approach to do so. three papers have been gathered in the last section, concerning issues based on reflections and innovations. in the first one we can read about the investigation led by colombian teachers john jairo viafara gonzález and aleida ariza ariza who describe an examination of english as a foreign language (efl) pre-service teachers’ professional preparation in connection with their experiences overseas. interestingly, we learn what student-teachers’ experiences reveal about the construction of their intercultural competence. we continue with the work by yeferson romaña correa on an investigation into the teaching and learning of english to adult learners through the use of skype™ conference calls. as noted in the results of the study, skype™ conference calls might be considered as an influential computer-mediated communication tool in order to promote the learners’ speaking skill, social interaction, oral reinforcement, and language fluency out of classroom settings. we close this edition with an article authored by falcon dario restrepo ramos, who explores previous studies that address the incidental learning of vocabulary in second language acquisition. the revision of key literature in the area contributes to our understanding of vocabulary learning through incidental means, the relationship between reading and incidental vocabulary learning, and the strategies and tasks that promote the incidental learning of vocabulary. as you can observe from the articles published in this edition, it is possible to ascertain that knowledge comes from many parts of the world. from the 10 articles included in this edition, six are from the americas, five from countries geographically located south of the united states, two were produced in countries with a tradition as producers of knowledge, and one is from the country that has shaped our own identity because of the transmitted language and culture. regardless of the point of origin, researchers and writers are struggling to construct a universe in which our thoughts are more important than personal or country-related features without disregarding local contexts from which we can derive lessons in the universe of learning and teaching a foreign language, english in this case. we hope the works we present in this edition can provide enriching lessons. enjoy your reading! maría claudia nieto cruz journal director melba libia cárdenas journal editor 99 http://dx.doi.org/10.15446/profile.v19n_sup1.68624 analysis of documents published in scopus database on foreign language learning through mobile learning: a content analysis análisis de documentos publicados en scopus acerca de la enseñanza de lenguas con el uso de dispositivos móviles: un análisis de contenido huseyin uzunboylu1* near east university, mersin, turkey zeynep genc2** university of kyrenia, kyrenia, cyprus the purpose of this study is to determine the recent trends in foreign language learning through mobile learning. the study was conducted employing document analysis and related content analysis among the qualitative research methodology. through the search conducted on scopus database with the key words “mobile learning and foreign language learning”, the study is based on the analysis of the documents published between the years 2005 and 2017; their distribution took place by years, subject areas, document types, country/regions, and the affiliated universities of the authors. the varied findings revealed that the analysis of the studies published on scopus database was important in terms of content for the significance of foreign language learning through mobile learning. key words: content analysis, foreign language, foreign language teaching, mobile learning. el objetivo de este estudio es identificar las tendencias recientes sobre la enseñanza de lenguas extranjeras con el uso de dispositivos móviles. se trata de un análisis documental y de contenido dentro de la metodología de la investigación cualitativa. la búsqueda se realizó en la base de datos de scopus con las palabras clave “enseñanza con dispositivos móviles” y “aprendizaje de lenguas extranjeras” en documentos publicados entre el 2005 y el 2017. el análisis de los documentos se hizo de acuerdo a su distribución por años, materias, tipo, país/región, y universidades de los autores. los resultados revelan que este tipo de análisis tiene importancia para la enseñanza de lenguas extranjeras con el uso de dispositivos móviles. palabras clave: análisis de contenido, enseñanza con dispositivos móviles, enseñanza de lengua extranjera, lengua extranjera. * e-mail: huseyin.uzunboylu@neu.edu.tr ** e-mail: zeynep.genc@neu.edu.tr how to cite this article (apa, 6th ed.): uzunboylu, h., & genc, z. (2017). analysis of documents published in scopus database on foreign language learning through mobile learning: a content analysis. profile: issues in teachers’ professional development, 19(suppl. 1), 99-107. http://dx.doi.org/10.15446/profile.v19n_sup1.68624. this article was received on september 3, 2017, and accepted on november 9, 2017. this is an open access article distributed under the terms of the creative commons license attribution-noncommercial-noderivatives 4.0 international license. consultation is possible at https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/. profile: issues teach. prof. dev., vol. 19, supplement 1, 2017. issn 1657-0790 (printed) 2256-5760 (online). bogotá, colombia. pages 99-107 universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras100 uzunboylu & genc introduction the literature survey reveals that mobile learning has become a rapidly expanding research and application area in many educational institutions, particularly universities, as a result of the increasing technological capacity of mobile devices that attract new users and provide advanced opportunities along with the widespread use of wireless networks (rahimi & mouri, 2016; uzunboylu, hursen, ozuturk, & demirok, 2015). extensive theoretical and conceptual frameworks have yet to be found that explain the relationships between the characteristics of rapid and, at times, groundbreaking technological developments and their role in the users’ daily lives and educational potentials (basöz & can, 2016; ozcan & bicen, 2016; pachler, bachmair, & cook, 2010; saran & seferoğlu, 2010). however, mobile learning is becoming increasingly widespread both in the scope of “formal” and “non-formal” education and has gained significance by attracting the interest and attention of practitioners and researchers in all areas of education. national and international conferences, new books, and periodicals which can be used for both in and out of class activities clearly demonstrate the importance attributed to mobile technologies in education (madieva, tausogarova, & tayeva, 2016). this learning model that provides the opportunity to learn “anytime, anywhere,” for which the mobile technologies are used, also supports (a) individual learning in which the learners can determine their learning speed, (b) situated learning that includes a real context, and (c) cooperative learning in which the individuals work in groups and learn through helping each other (baskan & ozcan, 2011; bicen & uzunboylu, 2013; cheon, lee, crooks, & song, 2012; çuhadar & yücel, 2010; naismith & corlett, 2006; traxler, barcena, & garcía-laborda, 2015). foreign language education is one of the educational fields in which technology plays a significant role. mobile learning is also prominent in foreign language education (bicen, sadikoglu, & sadikoglu, 2015; kukulska-hulme, 2006; saran & seferoğlu, 2010; uzunboylu & ozcinar, 2009) and even in language testing (garcía-laborda, giménez lópez, & magal royo, 2011; garcía-laborda, magal royo, & bakieva, 2016). tablet computers, more functional “smartphones” with operating systems as android and ios, digital cameras, personal digital assistants (pdas), mp3 players, and e-readers have become widespread, particularly among the younger population (baglama, yikmis, & demirok, 2017; sert & boynueğri, 2017; uzunboylu & tugun, 2016). along with this, foreign language education with mobile devices in technology-supported language education has become a field in which many research projects and applications are conducted (godwin-jones, 2011). learners can reach language learning materials more easily and quickly and get in touch with others anytime, anywhere in mobile supported language learning. by the very nature of digital technologies that are used, it becomes easier for the learners to participate in both collaborative and individual learning activities simultaneously and/or non-simultaneously (akça, demir & yilmaz, 2015; bajrami & vela, 2017). this brings up a potential that contributes to the development of all language skills. a variety of language materials and learning tools with mobile technologies can provide opportunities for autonomous and situated learning, encourage social interaction, and strengthen motivation of students (hu, 2017). the literature review reveals studies that investigate the use of mobile telephone for educational purposes. for example, ring (2001), in his study, provided access to distance learning materials in a business course both from computers via internet and from mobile phones using wap (wireless application protocol) features and has investigated their effectiveness. the distance learning materials included only written content and interactive quizzes. moreover, reminders and notifications were sent to the mobile phones of the participants by researchers. according to the questionnaire conducted following the application, all 101profile: issues teach. prof. dev., vol. 19, supplement 1, 2017. issn 1657-0790 (printed) 2256-5760 (online). bogotá, colombia. pages 99-107 analysis of documents published in scopus database on foreign language learning... of the participants expressed that the mobile technology added a positive value to the course. ninety-three percent of the participants stated that mobile learning was useful when commuting while 50% expressed that they would have doubts about courses delivered through mobile technologies only. this finding points out that it is more favorable to use mobile phones to support traditional education environments rather than to use it alone. jones and marsden (2004) in their project “text worm” designed a system in which the students can respond via text messages to the multiple choice or open-ended questions that are reflected on the board through an overhead projector during the lesson. with computers that can receive text messages, the researchers evaluated the responses of students in real time and sent the results instantly to the students’ mobile phones. the researchers have reported that the students found this application useful; however, they have been distracted while reading and answering the open ended questions from their mobile phone screens. the researchers have also pointed out that paying for sending text messages is one of the downsides of this application. regan, nash, and licata (2000) have investigated the effectiveness of the sms (text message) feature of mobile phones together with the web in teaching spanish. the findings of this research revealed that the mobile phones have a positive impact on the language learning process. however, the participants complained regarding the small screens of the mobile phones. thornton and houser (2005) have sent the definitions of english words to students’ mobile phones and investigated the effectiveness of this method and the reactions of students. pre/post-test results have revealed that vocabulary courses delivered via sms through mobile phones are effective in vocabulary building. ninety-three percent of the students have reported positive views towards mobile learning. in another study, levy and kennedy (2005) sent the definitions of words and idioms via short messages at pre-designated intervals to the students of italian. at the end of the research the students were asked about the number and timing of the messages. the participants reported that the most convenient time to receive messages is between 9 am and 10 am and that the best number of messages is two in a day. koren (1999) and abdulhay (2015) emphasized that for effective english language learning and vocabulary acquisition in particular; in-class activities are not sufficient and that practices and applications should be carried out outside the classroom as well. although this implication is stated by many educators, students do not make enough effort outside the classroom (e.g., baturay, 2007; kuimova, uzunboylu, & golousenko, 2017). the most important reason for this can be explained as the students’ lack of internal motivation to start studying. however, the significance of motivation for effective learning is stated by all educators. in a study conducted by korkut and akkoyunlu (2008), information and computer literacy self-efficacy of foreign language teacher candidates were investigated. the findings of the research revealed that the teacher candidates could use computers and that the possession of a computer and the contribution of computer courses in the education faculty curricula were stated as the reasons for this. moreover, when the computer literacy of the teacher candidates were evaluated in terms of sex variable, the findings of the research revealed that there was a significant difference in favor of male candidates. in addition, ozdamli and uzunboylu (2015) examined the mobile learning adequacy and perceptions of teachers in secondary schools and showed that teachers were motivated to use mobile learning in education; however, their adequacy levels for using mobile learning were not high enough. the literature review reveals that there are many studies conducted on mobile learning. the purpose of this study is to analyze the research conducted on english as a foreign language (efl) teaching through the method of mobile learning. under the scope of this universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras102 uzunboylu & genc general aim; the answers to the following sub-objective questions are sought: • how are the efl teaching and learning documents distributed over the years? • how is the distribution of efl teaching and learning according to subject areas? • how is the distribution of efl teaching and learning according to document type? • how is the distribution of efl teaching and learning according to country/regions? • how is the distribution of efl teaching and learning according to the affiliated universities of the authors? the purpose and importance of the study the purpose of this study is to systematically analyze the articles on scopus database with selected key words based on themes through discussing other related basic concepts. through the research the views regarding the use of mobile learning in foreign language learning will be evaluated to contribute to further studies in the related subject areas. limitations • this research is limited to the selected and reviewed documents in the scopus database. • the research is limited to the documents published from the years 2005 to 2017, accessed through near east university scopus database. • the content analysis of the documents is limited to the five themes specified above. method the study was conducted employing document analysis and related content analysis among the qualitative research methodology. the document analysis was restricted to efl teaching and learning. the basic process in content analysis is to compile similar data within the framework of specified concepts and themes and interpret them organized in a way that readers can understand (yildirim & şimşek, 2006). content analysis is a scientific frame that allows a systematic analysis of written, verbal, and other resources (demirok, baglama, & besgul, 2015; tavşancil & aslan, 2001). cohen, manion, and morrison (2007) define content analysis as presenting the messages included in the existing documents briefly and succinctly. data collection and analysis within the scope of the research on foreign language learning through the mobile learning method, a search was conducted primarily on scopus database using the key words “mobile learning and foreign language learning” from the years 2005 to 2017 and yielded 32 documents of efl teaching and learning. the documents retrieved through the scopus database were analyzed, integrated by correlation with each other, and the data were analyzed through content analysis. findings the distribution of the documents by years at this stage of the research the distribution of the documents from the years 2005 to 2017 was examined. in this context, 32 studies were accessed through scopus database, their distribution is presented in table 1. table 1. distribution of the documents by year year frequency percentage 2017 2 6.25 2016 4 12.5 2015 4 12.5 2014 4 12.5 2013 2 6.25 2012 3 9.3 2011 4 12.5 2010 3 9.3 2009 3 9.3 103profile: issues teach. prof. dev., vol. 19, supplement 1, 2017. issn 1657-0790 (printed) 2256-5760 (online). bogotá, colombia. pages 99-107 analysis of documents published in scopus database on foreign language learning... year frequency percentage 2008 0 2007 1 3.1 2006 0 2005 2 6.25 total 32 100 when the studies on efl learning through mobile learning method were analyzed it was revealed that the majority of the studies were conducted between the years of 2011 and 2016. the first study was conducted in 2005; and it was revealed that in 2006 and 2008 there were no studies. distribution of the documents by subject areas when the studies on efl teaching and learning through the mobile learning method were analyzed, it was revealed that most of the studies were conducted in the subject area of computer science (23) and social sciences (18). it was also revealed that the fewest number of studies was conducted in the subject area of psychology (see table 2). distribution of the documents by document types when the studies on foreign language learning through the mobile learning method were analyzed it was revealed that the majority of the studies were published as conference papers (21). there was one book and one book chapter on foreign language learning through the mobile learning method (see table 3). distribution of documents by author countries when the author countries of the studies on foreign language learning through the mobile learning method were analyzed it was revealed that the majority of the studies were conducted in china (5). there were two studies from turkey (see table 4). table 2. distribution of the documents by subject areas subject area f % computer science 23 71.8 social sciences 18 56.25 arts and humanities 3 9.3 business, management, and accounting 3 9.3 mathematics 3 9.3 engineering 2 6.25 psychology 1 3.1 total 32 100 table 3. distribution of the documents by document types document type f % conference paper 21 65.6 article 8 25 book 1 3.1 book chapter 1 3.1 conference review 1 3.1 total 32 100 table 4. distribution of documents by author countries country f % china 5 15.6 japan 4 12.5 spain 4 12.5 italy 3 9.3 taiwan 3 9.3 bulgaria 2 6.25 turkey 2 6.25 australia 1 3.1 brazil 1 3.1 canada 1 3.1 iran 1 3.1 malaysia 1 3.1 portugal 1 3.1 romania 1 3.1 sweden 1 3.1 total 32 100 universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras104 uzunboylu & genc distribution of documents by the authors’ affiliated universities when the affiliated universities of the authors of the studies on foreign language learning through the mobile learning method were analyzed, it was revealed that the author who published the most was affiliated with tokushima university in japan. this might be related to the fact that japan is a developed and industrialized country and therefore using mobile devices for foreign language learning as a part of technological development is frequently studied (see table 5). table 5. distribution of documents by the authors’ affiliated universities affiliation f % tokushima university 3 9.3 kyushu university 3 9.3 universidad de cadiz 3 9.3 university of rousse 2 6.25 japan science and technology agency 2 6.25 bei-zheng junior high school 1 3.1 chihlee university of technology 1 3.1 osel srl 1 3.1 universidad de cordoba 1 3.1 universiti teknologi mara 1 3.1 bogazici university 1 3.1 near east university 1 3.1 bohai university 1 3.1 jilin university 1 3.1 national chung cheng university 1 3.1 total 32 100 conclusion and discussion in the research designed as content analysis that was initiated with the search conducted on scopus database with the keywords “mobile learning and foreign language learning” and restricted to efl teaching and learning, five themes were specified and a total of 32 documents were accessed and the documents analyzed with regard to the specified themes. according to this, when the distribution of the documents by the years published from the years 2005 to 2017 was analyzed, the studies conducted on efl teaching and learning through the mobile learning method increased in time while the highest number of studies, 12, were conducted between the years of 2011 and 2016. it is noticeable that there were no studies conducted in 2006 and 2008. the studies conducted on efl teaching and learning through the mobile learning method from the years 2005 to 2017 were analyzed and it was found that the highest number of studies was conducted in the subject area of computer science (23) and social sciences (18). the fewest number of studies was conducted in the subject area of psychology. the studies conducted on efl teaching and learning through the mobile learning method from the years 2005 to 2017 were analyzed and it was revealed that the majority of the studies were published as conference papers (21). there was one book and one book chapter on foreign language learning through the mobile learning method. the countries of the authors of the studies on efl teaching and learning through the mobile learning method from the years 2005 to 2017 were analyzed and it was revealed that the majority of the studies were conducted in china (5). this implies that both subjects were given significance in china. there were two studies from turkey. the sources of the studies published on efl learning through the mobile learning method from the years 2005 to 2017 were analyzed it was revealed that mostly there were two publications. when the graphic was analyzed it was found that the highest number of studies was published in security and communication networks. when the affiliated universities of the authors of the studies on foreign language learning through the mobile learning method from the years 2005 to 2017 were analyzed it was revealed that the author who published the most is from tokushima university. 105profile: issues teach. prof. dev., vol. 19, supplement 1, 2017. issn 1657-0790 (printed) 2256-5760 (online). bogotá, colombia. pages 99-107 analysis of documents published in scopus database on foreign language learning... references abdulhay, h. 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(2005). learning italian via mobile sms. in a. kukulska-hulme & j. traxler (eds.), mobile learning: a handbook for educators and trainers (1st ed., pp. 76-83). abingdon, uk: routledge. madieva, g., tausogarova, a., & tayeva, r. (2016). innovations in teaching linguistic disciplines. new trends and issues proceedings on humanities and social sciences, 2(5), 184-192. naismith, l., & corlett, d. (2006, october) reflections on success: a retrospective of the mlearn conference series 20022005. paper presented at the mlearn 2006 conference, athabasca university, banff, canada. ozcan, d., & bicen, h. (2016). giftedness and technology. procedia computer science, 102, 630-634. https://doi. org/10.1016/j.procs.2016.09.453. ozdamli, f., & uzunboylu, h. (2015). m-learning adequacy and perceptions of students and teachers in secondary schools. british journal of educational technology, 46(1), 159-172. https://doi.org/10.1111/bjet.12136. pachler, n., bachmair, b., & cook, j. (2010). mobile learning: structures, agency, practices. london, uk: springer. https:// doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4419-0585-7. rahimi, a., & mouri, s. (2016). the impact of computer-assisted language learning on iranian efl students’ vocabulary learning. global journal of foreign language teaching, 6(4), 210-217. https://doi.org/10.18844/gjflt.v6i4.1673. 107profile: issues teach. prof. dev., vol. 19, supplement 1, 2017. issn 1657-0790 (printed) 2256-5760 (online). bogotá, colombia. pages 99-107 analysis of documents published in scopus database on foreign language learning... about the authors huseyin uzunboylu holds a phd in education from ankara university (turkey). he is an assistant professor in the department of computer education and instructional technology at the near east university (north cyprus). zeynep genc is currently pursuing her phd degree in education at the near east university and works as a part time lecturer in the educational sciences faculty at the same university. 21profile vol. 16, no. 2, october 2014. issn 1657-0790 (printed) 2256-5760 (online). bogotá, colombia. pages 21-36 ideologies revealed during the construction of meaning in an efl class ideologías reveladas durante la construcción de significado en una clase de inglés como lengua extranjera néstor ricardo fajardo mora1* universidad distrital francisco josé de caldas, bogotá, colombia this article reports on an interpretive qualitative study conducted at a public university in bogotá with 26 pre-service social studies teachers. it is focused on unveiling which ideologies are discovered when they construct the meaning of texts through text-based tasks in an english as a foreign language class. the data were collected by using class video recordings and students’ artifacts. the data analysis procedure follows an inductive process based on grounded theory. results indicated three subsidiary categories called shattering the establishment, perspectives from a counter-hegemonic position, and resisting the mainstream. furthermore, there is the core category habitus, which assembles those subsidiary categories in an internalized system of fixed dispositions. key words: construction of meaning, grounded theory, habitus, ideology, text-based task. se reporta un estudio de tipo cualitativo interpretativo adelantado en una universidad pública de bogotá con 26 docentes en formación, de una licenciatura en educación básica con énfasis en ciencias sociales. este artículo se concentra en develar las ideologías mostradas por ellos en el proceso de construir el significado de los textos a través de tareas basadas en escritos durante las clases de inglés como lengua extranjera. la información se recolectó mediante las producciones de los estudiantes y la grabación de las sesiones de clase. los datos fueron analizados inductivamente siguiendo la teoría fundamentada. los resultados indican tres categorías subsidiarias: resquebrajando el establecimiento, perspectivas desde una posición contra-hegemónica y resistiendo la corriente dominante. habitus es la categoría central que engloba los conceptos subsidiarios como resultado de un sistema internalizado de disposiciones fijas. palabras clave: construcción de significado, habitus, ideología, tareas basadas en textos, teoría fundamentada. * e-mail: nerifamo@yahoo.es how to cite this article (apa, 6th ed.): fajardo mora, n. r. (2014). ideologies revealed during the construction of meaning in an efl class. profile issues in teachers’ professional development, 16(2), 21-36. http://dx.doi.org/10.15446/profile.v16n2.39773. this article was received on september 9, 2013, and accepted on february 26, 2014. this is an open access article distributed under the terms of the creative commons license attribution-noncommercial-noderivatives 4.0 international license. consultation is possible at http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/. universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras22 fajardo mora introduction this article informs a research study conducted with a group of pre-service social studies teachers about which ideologies are revealed while they are making meaning of english texts in an english as a foreign language (efl) class. the purpose of studying ideology addresses the need to understand the political and sociological framework from which pre-service social studies teachers build their meanings of texts. in other words, efl teachers might reflect on how students perceive the meaning of texts powerfully permeated by the social and political structures in which students are immersed. in this sense, the following question guided this study: which ideologies does a group of pre-service teachers reveal when constructing the meaning of texts? the ideologies can emerge in an efl setting where pre-service social studies teachers have an array of opportunities to contrast their representations about historical issues, to debate their ingrained values towards sensitive matters (abortion, egalitarian marriage, racism), to confront their beliefs about teachers’ role in intercultural contexts, and/or to challenge their understandings—even feelings—in relation to contemporary concerns. in view of that, the researcher proposes a methodology that connects pre-service teachers’ real needs with their personal and professional growth. it is possible to do so if they find texts that are appealing and relevant to their field and which engage them in a meaningful way. accordingly, three theoretical perspectives of ideology will be addressed as well as a final reconstruction of this concept made by the researcher. the paper begins with the theoretical framework, which is followed by the pedagogical and research designs. next come the findings’ section, the conclusions, and pedagogical implications. theoretical framework ideology: a platform of ideas, values, and beliefs to unveil the term ideology has different historical meanings (eagleton, 2007) that come out of a broad spectrum where the term ideology has been understood as a way to determine the thought patterns ingrained in a society as those meanings that come from a rather narrow society where ideas are established for the purpose of maintaining the ruling class. van dijk (1998) ascertains that “ideologies are the foundation of the social beliefs shared by a social group” (p. 49). this socio-cognitive perspective of ideology establishes that ideologies are constructed in group members’ minds. it also establishes that social beliefs organize, determine, and control the opinions of a group; these beliefs reflect what is considered as true or false, correct or incorrect, and good or bad in a society. van dijk ascertains that “beliefs may be constructed, stored, reactivated, organized in larger units, and such processes take place in the accomplishment of all cognitive tasks” (p. 21). aspects of life such as worries, fantasies or fears may also be beliefs. this research study evokes in its data analysis this concept of beliefs given that pre-service social studies teachers are expressing their beliefs toward one topic or another in conjunction with efl learning. the second perspective of ideology presented in this study is based on eagleton’s theory (2007). he claims that ideology “is a matter of ‘discourse’ rather than of ‘language’” (p. 223). ideology “represents the points where power impacts upon certain utterances and inscribes itself tacitly within them” (p. 223). the concept of ideology tries to unveil the struggle between an utterance and its concrete conditions in order to achieve goals. these conditions to 23profile vol. 16, no. 2, october 2014. issn 1657-0790 (printed) 2256-5760 (online). bogotá, colombia. pages 21-36 ideologies revealed during the construction of meaning in an efl class make accomplishments are considered as the struggle of power to maintain and reproduce social life. in this sense, eagleton argues that “ideology is less a matter of the inherent linguistic properties of a pronouncement than a question of who is saying what to whom for what purposes” (p. 10). this approach of ideology determines that the relationships between subjects and social objectivity are complex and those relations are mediated by discourses. finally, the third perspective of ideology considered here is developed from mclaren (2003), who defines it as the production and representation of ideas, values, and beliefs and the manner in which they are expressed and lived out by both individual and groups. simply put, ideology refers to the production of sense and meaning. it can be described as a way of viewing the world, a complex of ideas, various types of social practices, rituals, and representations that we tend to accept as natural and as common sense. (p. 205) society is organized around different social practices and rituals that generate a feeling of belonging. people who share these feelings tend to accept social rules without restrictions. consequently, “ideology is the result of the intersection of meaning and power in the social world” (mclaren, 2003, p. 205). considering previous definitions of ideology, i would like to propose my own. ideology is the platform of ideas, values, and beliefs from which people build meaning of the world and the ways they employ to enact and live according to that platform. in other words, it is what makes meaning for people and how they act out based on their way of thinking. certainly, ideology deals with the tension existing in power—to empower and disempower people and there are many different levels of each one of these conditions. that is to say, each group of people that shares or defends its particular ideas has a particular ideology. construction of meaning according to wells (1995), the construction of meaning can be described in three characteristics. the first is that “meanings are made, not found” (p. 237). this characteristic involves the interdependence between action and knowledge because meanings must be actively constructed from learners’ background. moreover, meaning is constructed for the reason that it has a purpose and motivation which can be evaluated as valuable and valid according to learners’ purposes and needs. the second characteristic mentioned by wells (1995) is related to the impossibility of constructing the meaning detached from learners’ personal interests, cultural backgrounds, and/or levels of familiarity with the content of the discussed subject. subsequently, the meanings are constructed socially and systematically. the third characteristic of construction of meaning recognizes the transactional nature of learning and teaching. wells (1995) has emphasized that “what we learn depends crucially on the company we keep, on what activities we engage in together, and on how we do and talk about these activities” (p. 238). learning cannot be analyzed apart from individual and social values that affect the construction of meaning. wells (1995) has declared: “learning is as much a social as an individual endeavor and meanings that are constructed occur, not within, but between individuals” (p. 238). according to well’s perspective, learning and teaching are anchored to a social enterprise wherein the construction of meaning is shaped not only by individual characteristics but also by social factors that deal with an ideological platform towards values, beliefs, and ideas built within the communities. after presenting the main constructs of the study, i will now describe my pedagogical and research design. universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras24 fajardo mora pedagogical design “if learning is not meaningful to students, it is irrelevant what the teacher does.” (wink, 2005, p. 75) the pedagogical design that i proposed and carried out was task-based learning (ellis, 2006; murphy, 2003; willis, 1996; and wink, 2005). this approach indicates the path along which the transformative pedagogy can cement and fill the gap between experience, theory, and practice. task-based learning delineates a powerful tool to carry out any teachers’ goal from a communicative perspective. this starting point indicates that “the teacher is in a unique position to assess how far the contribution of learners to tasks . . . would help develop the potential in task-based learning” (murphy, 2003, p. 359). in this train of thought, those efl teachers who plan their teaching practices based on tasks will able to enhance not only their pedagogical practices, but also their students’ performances in terms of accuracy, fluency, and/or complexity. likewise, i implemented a specific vision of task: text-based tasks. since this instructional design was planned to be carried out in the course called foreign language text comprehension, the selection of suitable texts from available resources and their grading were at the core of the course. according to willis (1996), the word text can be seen from different perspectives, e.g., a continuous piece of spoken or written language. thus, the texts included a wide variety of information (audio recordings, radio or tv broadcasts, visual resources and/or images). from now on, i will use the term text without distinction. transformative pedagogy: upstream against “stupidification” “teachers and students . . . need learning contexts that empower them as learners and as inquirers who actively search out new questions.” (short & burke, 1989, pp. 205-206) transformative pedagogy unfolds to reveal the characteristics of pre-service teachers who have developed a high level of criticism that allows them to feel free to express their own way of thinking and construct their opinions and conclusions, but framed by the understanding of society. transformative pedagogy is connected to the setting of pre-service social studies teachers because it reflects upon the real state of order from a critical perspective that provides a deep analysis into the fossilized positivism that over many years fostered an asocial analysis of things, facts, and ideas. giroux (2003) argues how these ideas had “subordinated human consciousness and action to the imperatives of universal laws” (p. 28). the nature of education started to develop a critical theory of social education through analysis of the culture, mass media, ideology, power, and authoritarianism as instruments of imperative rationality. in this sense, the nature and purposes of education are starting an upstream that unmasks current mainstream canons that search for a society in which justice succeeds despite the presence of real conditions of injustice. as a result of this counter-hegemonic education, the work of teachers cannot be limited to the “stupidification” (macedo as cited in bahruth & steiner, 2000, p. 119) of education in which “students have learned to respond to the expectations of the teacher: 25profile vol. 16, no. 2, october 2014. issn 1657-0790 (printed) 2256-5760 (online). bogotá, colombia. pages 21-36 ideologies revealed during the construction of meaning in an efl class parroting, memorizing, and regurgitating from a series of facts and official bodies of knowledge promoted by the mainstream canon” (bahruth & steiner, 2000, p. 119). the teachers’ mission is the other way around, to wit: to empower their learners’ learning processes; thus, learners will be able to analyze the status quo of reality. learners inquire about the world around them, but also they need to reflect upon themselves. with these purposes of education—among others—it is possible to build up the transformative pedagogy i have claimed. a curriculum that is able to fulfill the requirements of transformative pedagogy is the transformative curriculum presented by henderson and hawthorne (1995), who proposed the 3s scaffolding: “transformative subject learning, transformative self learning and transformative social learning” (pp. 6-12). this model takes into account learners’ previous knowledge in order to enhance the learning of english via the contents. in other words, one must empower learners’ knowledge as a starting point to develop efl learning. moreover, henderson and hawthorne stress the necessity of putting into practice “inquiry responsibility rather than obedience to authority” (p. 10). finally, transformative education strengthens the democratic, civility, and diversity issues for learners. research design i define this research as an “interpretive qualitative study” (merriam, 2002, p. 6) since it provides me with a framework to analyze and describe my particular context in detail. merriam (2002) has argued that “the researcher is interested in understanding how participants make meaning of a situation or phenomenon, this meaning is mediated through the researcher as instrument, the strategy is inductive and the outcome is descriptive” (p. 6). consequently, this research explored the ideologies that emerged with the learning of efl in the scenario of the class relating my students’ concerns, as well as those associated with my own experiences as a teacherresearcher. according to this situation, merriam (1988) has stated that “qualitative research is an effort to understand the situations in their uniqueness as part of their particular context and their interactions there” (p. 35). context for the research study the study took place at a public university in bogotá, colombia, specifically with pre-service social studies teachers enrolled in an undergraduate program called licenciatura en educación (bachelor degree in education). this undergraduate program establishes three levels of english as a foreign language, which are foreign language i, foreign language ii, and finally, foreign language text comprehension. participants they consist of a group of 26 pre-service social studies teachers, eight females and eighteen males whose ages range from eighteen to thirty-four years old. most of them are in seventh semester of their program in the course called foreign text comprehension. this course meets two sessions per week of 100 minutes each. it is a mandatory subject. data collection procedures strauss and corbin (1990) have defined grounded theory as a qualitative research method in which theory emerges from the data through the implementation of an inductive process rather than a deductive one. accordingly, freeman (1998) argued that “in a grounded analysis you are uncovering what may be in the data” (p. 103). i selected two instruments for data collection: first, video recordings and second, students’ artifacts such as personal written exercises, oral discussions, written guides or video clips. these universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras26 fajardo mora instruments helped me to find out what ideologies pre-service social studies teachers reveal when they construct the meaning of a text. findings the data analysis process led me to identify one core category and three subsidiary categories that answer the research question: what ideologies does a group of pre-service teachers reveal when constructing the meaning of texts? as stated by strauss and corbin (1990), a core category must be the sun positioned in an orderly systematic relationship to its planet. i called the core category that emerged from the analysis of the data habitus (bourdieu, 1977) and it will be explained in detail after the analysis of the three subsidiary categories. in figure 1, i present the relation among subsidiary categories with the core category and then i argue each one of them separately. shattering the establishment the establishment is a term coined by henry fairlie (1955), a british journalist, in the london magazine “the spectator”. he asserted that: by the “establishment”, i do not only mean the centres of official power—though they are certainly part of it—but rather the whole figure 1. categories from the data analysis matrix of official and social relations within which power is exercised. the exercise of power in britain (more specifically, in england) cannot be understood unless it is recognised that it is exercised socially. (n.p.) data analysis allowed me to discover the fact that pre-service social studies teachers analyzed and inquired into the issue of power throughout the tasks programmed in the intervention plan. according to mclaren (2003), “oppositional ideologies” are those which “attempt to challenge the dominant ideologies and shatter existing stereotypes” (p. 207). consistent with this perspective, the participants were constantly showing their oppositional ideologies towards the existence of domination. for example, they were always questioning the capacity of some countries, considered as world powers, to interact with other countries in equal conditions. participants identified as andrecar and cicas acknowledged the existence of the power issue among strong and weak countries and also the co-existence and tension among them. each one of them exists thanks to the existence of the other. however, the relationship is asymmetrical because the strongest countries dominate the weakest. i do not think that it is possible for a strong country to trade with a weaker one without controlling it because there is a power relation mediated by disadvantages that at the same time generates manipulation. weaker countries depend on the requests of the strongest countries. as a consequence the trade exchange and business are unequal. (tsk2, andrecar, shapex)1 i think that it is not possible because the fittest, the strongest [country] is [the one] who controls and dominates; the fittest is the one who survives. (tsk2, cicas, shapex) 1 codes used: tsk# = number of the task, shapex = sharing personal experiences, prtsk = pre-task, vrt = video recording transcription, l = line(s) of the sample, prosolvi = problem-solving task, creactpha = creation action phase. from a counter hegemonic position: the case of mass media resisting the mainstream: looking for one’s place in society what ideologies does a group of preservice teachers reveal when they construct meaning of texts? shattering the establishment core category habitus subsidiary categories 27profile vol. 16, no. 2, october 2014. issn 1657-0790 (printed) 2256-5760 (online). bogotá, colombia. pages 21-36 ideologies revealed during the construction of meaning in an efl class oppositional ideologies, which shatter the establishment, were also identified through the data analysis when pre-service teachers attempted to unveil how people or groups of people, also identified as the establishment, influenced the behaviour, emotions, and reactions of others. this was the case of the participant cicas, who commented on the drawing of “the yellow kid” (outcault, 1896, see appendix for details of this cartoon). he claimed: i see a yellow kid who sells newspapers thanks to headlines. the yellow kid generates profits for the newspapers. yellow journalism manipulates the feelings of the people of the united states. (tsk4, cicas, prtsk) as the reader can perceive through this excerpt, cicas unveiled his oppositional discourse because he revealed the use and impact of journalism on society. it was an explicit concern about power and how it worked through both official and social relations within society. in this case, yellow journalism influenced people’s behaviour since reporters “manipulate the feelings of the people of the united states.” the subsidiary category, shattering the establishment, was also enlightened by reflections of pre-service teachers about the relationship between efl and power. participants pointed out the issue of power as being in a close relationship with efl because this language is used as a tool with the capacity to influence two important spheres of people’s lives: politics and economics. the development of english language competencies is viewed as a given right or as a delegated authority with the capacity to transform learners’ thoughts. i assume that [english] is vital in the workplace. besides it is a tool to acquire new knowledge and to meet people. likewise, i think that english language learning is a strategy not only for political domination but also economical. (tsk1, jccar, shapex) in addition, the relationship between efl and power was well supported by a process of homogenization. the english language was understood as a tool of domination that was used with the purpose of homogenizing a perception of the world that dismissed other voices to comprehend reality through other languages. finally, throughout the characterization of the subsidiary category, shattering the establishment, pre-service teachers reflected upon how uses of power masked strategies to be exerted. they pointed out that power was possible due to inherited social practices that maintain the ruling class as the paradigm to follow. mclaren (2003) has argued the following in this sense: hegemony refers to the maintenance of domination not by the sheer exercise of force but primarily through consensual social practices, social forms, and social structures produced in specific sites such as the church, the state, the school, the mass media, the political system, and the family (p. 202). the participant andrecar gave us a clear example of how the dominant culture gained the consent of those who are oppressed because it “is good for [the] strongest countries”. she used the concept of hegemony—argued by mclaren (2003)—as she declared, “[strong countries] don’t use force to control the economies of the weaker countries”. as a result, the “strongest countries . . . avoid unions of workers or resistance in the intervention” (tsk2, shapex). perspectives from a counter hegemonic position: the case of mass media this subsidiary category accounts for not only the perception of pre-service social studies teachers towards the power of communication, but also reflects on messages filtered to society by power or “the how” that is used for communication by a small group of people who owns the modes of communication. data analysis sheds light on those two issues. giroux (1988) claimed that “the develuniversidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras28 fajardo mora opment of technology and science, constructed according to the laws of capitalist rationality, has ushered in a form of domination and control that appears to thwart rather than to extend the possibilities of human emancipation” (p. 74). print media have been involved in a fight to control information and the tools used to captivate readers day after day. moreover, the issue of “truth” depends on who says what to whom with a clear intention to increase sales. in this sense participant kevra wrote as follows: i believe that cartoon shows the confrontation among newspapers in new york in order to capture readers’ attention. i think this cartoon says that the truth depends on who says it. according to this, the newspapers just think about selling the information. (tsk4, kevra, prtsk) modern life is permeated by a big amount of advertising which creates needs and requirements in our daily lives. advertising sells values, ways of being, and ways of acting more than selling a product itself. in this fashion, advertising influences the decisions of people who buy goods and services uncontrollably. in a socialization task where participants showed their perspective regarding the issue of consumerism, participant mrom expressed the following: first, i attempt to show through video how advertisement has manipulated us and how it is searching for, defining, and compelling our decisions directly or indirectly. second, we wanted to show how advertisement uses many tools with the purpose of capturing our attention; for example, double meaning. a publicist is expecting for people to define their needs—most of the time unnecessary needs—in an unconscious way where the double sense influences the decisions to consume. (vrt3, l165-172, mrom)2 previous samples show how advertisements built their own reality, which articulates its own rules. advertising is a communicative manifes2 originally in spanish. translated by the author. tation integrated to the area of consumerism and social values transactions whereby the need to produce a consumerism ideology is vital for industry or, in mrom’s words, “how advertisement has manipulated us.” so far the analysis of participants’ voices has shown their ideas toward communication as an issue that has power. this power of communication imposes ideas, values, and beliefs on its receivers. now, let us consider a participant’s perceptions around consequences of imposition in communication. the participant disa perceived the power of communication as a matter of imposition that makes people feel miserable. the means of communication and brands impose some consumption patterns that seem affordable to everybody. these consumption patterns depend, on the one hand, on the economical and social viability that people have, and, on the other hand, are based on people’s desires. when consumption patterns are compared with people’s reality, then they become frustrated people. (vrt2, l6-12, disa)3 participant disa analyzed imposition in communication as a phenomenon that generates people’s tendency toward “becoming frustrated people.” if people cannot satisfy their needs created through the power of communication they feel frustrated. this level of dissatisfaction is not real because people actually supply basic needs but in conjunction with created “needs” spurred on by means of communication; they feel the need to buy more, to have more and to store more with the purpose of reaching a minimal level of satisfaction. in accordance with the previous idea, i could analyze how participants perceived the psychic consequences of the power of communication in people’s behaviours. participant anvarg explained as follows: 3 originally in spanish. translated by the author. 29profile vol. 16, no. 2, october 2014. issn 1657-0790 (printed) 2256-5760 (online). bogotá, colombia. pages 21-36 ideologies revealed during the construction of meaning in an efl class the purpose of this video was not so much to show the amount of individual consumerism or mass consumerism, but to show the existing consequences at a personal and a psychological level. [to analyze] how some consumer habits become compulsive. that is the purpose of this video. (vrt4, l409-412, anvarg) the power of communication affects people’s behaviour because it is such an amount of power that it turns people into compulsive consumers. for example, compulsive buyers, compulsive gamblers, compulsive overeaters, compulsive drinkers, sex addicts, drug addicts, those obsessed with aesthetics, television, and smoking. in turn, cicas argued a current trend that he called “homo consumer” and explained this contemporary trend under the slogan: “consumption, therefore i am” (tsk5.1, shapex). pre-service social studies teachers analyzed how teenagers and other young people are lured into feeling the power of communication through messages that sell the ideal life at a global level where the internet is confused with inherent, where cell phones, video games, virtual communities, and the most known brand names are the gadgets and labels to involve them in a deceptive virtual world. towards the issue of teenagers, participant edwoso declared that teenagers do not live in a geographical space but in a globalized and interconnected world. those global adolescents better absorb the media culture and become the most assiduous consumers. he concluded as follows: during last decade, young people have been converted into the main target of marketing. global teenagers are the big hope of the economic global system. elissa moses, vice-president of the first new york publicity agency brain waves, describes the apparition of the young demographic sector as “one of the biggest opportunities to do business of all times.” (tsk5.1, edwoso, shapex) participant edwoso explained how teenagers are the target group of multinational corporations because they are the most malleable customers who create fidelity with specific brand names. despite geographical distances, cultural and economic differences, and even religious practices, the younger people all over the world live in a parallel universe. this parallel universe facilitates the exchange of same fashions, listening to the same music, sharing codes and preferences, and reflecting the same likes and even dislikes among youngsters despite the fact that they live on the opposite sides of the planet. those “global teenagers” are reflecting similarities in tastes and pleasures sold by big brand makers from new york, paris, hong kong, sao paulo, cape town, or bogotá. young people meet and fulfill their dreams at malls, “the bastion of consumerism,” as was stated by participant calix. once we have analyzed the first two subsidiary categories, we can follow up with the third one that reported what ideologies emerge in a group of preservice social studies teachers as they construct the meaning of texts. resisting the mainstream: looking for one’s place in society this subsidiary category explains what solutions, reflections, and actions participants proposed to resist and, as well, solve the problems detected throughout the two previous subsidiary categories which evidence forms of domination and control. giroux (1988) has established that teachers as transformative intellectuals require combining reflection and action with the intention to empower their students as critical subjects who are not only able to confront injustices but also able to seek a world without “oppression and exploitation” (p. xxxiv). in the following lines, i present how pre-service teachers proposed actions framed into the counterhegemonic angles that allowed teachers to be critical subjects who combined reflection and action. pre-service students always wrote in the first person. the personal pronoun i is repeated universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras30 fajardo mora throughout their reflections. i interpreted their used of the first person i as the search for a place in the world that permitted them to understand it from a critical perspective and be conscious of it. conscientization is a route that opened pre-service teachers’ eyes regarding their inner feelings, assumptions, even biases. the characteristic of being conscious is linked to the capacity to question daily life. mclaren (2003) has contended that to pose questions is more difficult than to answer them. problem posing is a matter of reflecting continuously about common sense, a matter of “to make the strange familiar and the familiar strange” (p. 189). pre-service social studies teachers gave evidence of “liberating memory” (giroux, 1988, p. xxxiv) given that they recovered historical events that portrayed continuous struggles of social movements that demanded people’s rights. moreover, they were social movements that are not resigned to the oppressor determinism but generate resistance processes with the intention to overcome conditions of subjugation. participants constructed reflections that supported how they tackle liberating memory from an unfamiliar concern. we, as educators, have to rescue these ancestral values and apply them in the classroom. we have to show our students history from different points of view but creating in them a historical perspective that allows them to see that there is not a unique view of the world because other possibilities exist such as the view which includes ancestral culture. (tsk6.1, jomipar, shapex) so far we have analyzed the counter-hegemonic ideologies revealed by these transformative preservice teachers. they criticized power per se, that is, those who use their power to manipulate the population because they realized the consequences of a homogenized public opinion. moreover, social studies teachers proposed alternatives for struggling mainstream canons into the school setting. now, we will examine the ideas of pre-service teachers concerning oppression and exploitation generated by the “communication crisis” (beaugrande, 1997, p. 59), in which common sense is not questioning the mainstream canon of “who is saying what to whom for what purposes” (eagleton, 2007, p. 10). participants in the study assumed their role as transformative teachers who demanded that education confront the current level of advertisements which controls and manipulates people’s decisions. mrom used the expression “to awaken the conscious” as teachers, to wit: as teachers, we need to awaken the conscious of educating children properly. now, i remember the phrase that i had listened to many years ago: “educate the child, so that you don’t have to punish the adult.” nowadays, this is our role as teachers: to teach the facts of life. (vrt3, l188-191, mrom) to finish, pre-service social studies teachers, as transformative teachers, were subjects who sought a world without oppression and exploitation. they proposed the school setting as the context wherein they can resist mainstream canons. pre-service social studies teachers identified themselves as part of the “upstream in the mainstream” (bahruth & steiner, 2000, p. 119). taking into account the previous two ideas that explain their concerns about consumerism and their proposals as teachers, i think it is time to unveil pre-service students’ ideologies around the school and education. in broad terms, pre-service teachers considered the school as a place of continuous struggle. they developed a critical theory of social education through analysis of the culture, ideology, and authoritarianism as instrumental rationality; in this sense, the nature and purposes of education were starting a new era of appreciation: the search for a society in which justice succeeded despite real conditions of injustice. giga voices this as follows: 31profile vol. 16, no. 2, october 2014. issn 1657-0790 (printed) 2256-5760 (online). bogotá, colombia. pages 21-36 ideologies revealed during the construction of meaning in an efl class i believe we are in an epoch of barbarism in which, despite our being from the same ancestors, we attack each other mercilessly. as a social studies teacher, to face this reality is quite difficult because we educate meaningless values that are imposed; it is more sensible and coherent to teach values from below, from our ancestors, and toward the restoration of respect for the other and respect for the earth. thus, we can raise awareness within our society which has its own culture and identity. as a consequence, we would not continue emulating european or north american cultures. (tsk7, giga, shapex) giga asserted that the teacher’s job is “difficult” and insists on the need to educate by including ancestral values. there was a clear sample as to how a teacher can fight the mainstream because the sample proposes “to raise awareness in our society.” moreover, giga promoted analysis of “our culture, our identity” as a way to develop a critical stance in social studies teaching. teachers’ work cannot be limited to the “stupidification” (macedo as cited in bahruth & steiner, 2000, p. 119) of the education in which learners repeat just what their teachers have said previously. the teacher’s mission is the other way around: to empower learners’ learning processes so that they will be able to analyze the status quo of reality. learners inquire into the world outside them, but they also need to reflect upon themselves. wilpri’s voice was warning us about this danger of considering the school and teachers to be in a messianic position. i do not think that i can convert students into absolutely nothing. it is not in my power or obligation to decide if this is good or bad for my students. the only thing i can really do is to provide elements of analysis, and then each student can freely decide. (tsk6.1, wilpri, shapex) transformative pre-service teachers became conscious of school possibilities and bestowed special relevance upon the construction of their students’ subjectivity. wilpri highlighted the need as a teacher to “provide elements of analysis to his students and permit them to ‘decide.’” this kind of pedagogy is contrary to the parrot model that prevails in schools and even in discussions about freedom whereby the teacher establishes the viewpoint. transformative pre-service teachers understood the school as a place in which students have to be challenged in terms of cognition and freedom, a place for choices and liberty. a school should be contextualized with the social necessity for teachers to be masters and researchers. finally, concerning teachers who teach build up arguments, jomipar advised us in this perspective: as we can see, the job is not easy, but neither is it impossible. we do not want for our students to adopt a single position because that would be catastrophic and incoherent. my job is to challenge and generate in them a cognitive conflict which guarantees the construction of new cognitive structures from which they can learn their own reality. finally, teachers must be researchers who encourage their students to live as critical, creative, and transformative subjects. (tsk6.1, jomipar, shapex) transformative pre-service teachers as intellectuals insisted on a sort of school where social inequalities are discussed and also where personal aims are achieved throughout the curriculum (social studies, mathematics, science, arts, languages, etc.). transformative teachers persevered to instill in their pupils a critical perspective about the current world including when those pupils found something to change, to do it. transformative teachers adhered to the principles of radical pedagogy that reflects on pedagogy as cultural politics where different kinds of subjectivities and types of knowledge are framed by a particular context which answers to specific interests. to understand transformative teachers’ concepts that change their pedagogical practices to radical practices is required for study under an ontouniversidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras32 fajardo mora logical perspective. the transformative intellectual is committed to new concepts and methodologies. teachers who are called transformative intellectuals require acknowledging errors in the past that caused pain and suffering with the intention of becoming conscious of the historical conditions in which events occur. as a result, liberating memory helps as a warning to comprehend that “people do not only suffer under the mechanism of domination; they also resist” (giroux, 1988, p. xxxv). the three subsidiary categories that attempt to reveal the pre-service teachers’ ideologies which emerge during the construction of text meaning are these: shattering the establishment, perspectives from a counter-hegemonic position: the case of mass media, and resisting the mainstream: looking for one’s place in society. habitus: core of ideologies revealed while constructing meaning the core category that enlightens what ideologies were revealed when pre-service teachers construct meaning is habitus, a concept developed by bourdieu (1977) to explain the mechanisms that frame men and women every day. habitus, by which [bourdieu] means the inculcation in men and women a set of durable dispositions which generate particular practices. it is because individuals in society act in accordance with such internalized systems . . . that we can explain how their actions can be objectively regulated and harmonized without being in any sense the result of conscious obedience to rules. (eagleton, 2007, p. 156) in this research study i found the core category habitus throughout the instruments used to collect the data (students’ artifacts and class video recordings). at this point it is important to remember that students’ artifacts and class video recordings were the result of the instructional process whereby they analyzed and discussed issues related to the field of social studies. the habitus revealed by this group of students towards the application of darwin’s theory on the expansion of the u.s. during the latter part of the 19th century and the beginning of the 20th is exemplified as follows: people often interpret social and political theories according to their convenience because in the field of social studies theories are submitted for different interpretations; nothing is fully established in the field of social studies. in that sense, the theories are often misunderstood. for example, bolívar’s ideas are not the same for president uribe as they are for president chávez. (tsk2, migonz, prosolvi) ok, this is the idea. we consider darwin’s theory to be too broad. it permits a wide interpretation concerning whatever the perspective is and it is appropriate to cases at hand…whether conquest, power, or expansionism cases. the theory of natural selection is applicable to all of these. (vr1, l102-105, yesgam)4 habitus allowed them to categorize as adequate, worthy and right to make use of a theory. right and wrong parameters in the use of theory were defined as how useful a theoretical framework is vis-a-vis personal needs. a previous excerpt claimed the use of theory with the purpose of legitimizing and protecting someone’s own arguments where personal interests are privileged. these students coincided on the “convenience” pattern in the adaption of knowledge. this sample argued in favor of accommodation of the theory to personal interests, taking into account personal conveniences and intentions. most students revealed their ingrained perceptions, or habitus, towards the role of the newspaper and its responsibility when publishing news. the following excerpts exemplify a generalized perception: 4 originally in spanish. translated by the author. 33profile vol. 16, no. 2, october 2014. issn 1657-0790 (printed) 2256-5760 (online). bogotá, colombia. pages 21-36 ideologies revealed during the construction of meaning in an efl class the press has the responsibility of offering reliable and true information; it is an ethical duty. (tsk3, stvper, creactph) in this sense, another student claimed the following: i think that the press is a means of information. the reporter would be limited to informing the public and be responsible for interpretations of reality. the press is responsible for what happens after publishing news. (tsk3, natmon, creactph) both students’ excerpts emphasized the role of newspapers in terms of duties, reliability, and truthfulness as a call for ethical practices. habitus as the core category opened up possibilities for explaining how pre-service teachers could build a practical scheme of perception and appreciation that would permit them to classify as adequate or inadequate, worthy and unworthy, and evaluate parameters about right or wrong, as we have seen in previous samples. the core category habitus was built on these three subsidiary categories, which were shattering the establishment, perspectives from a counterhegemonic position: the case of mass media, and resisting the mainstream: looking for one’s place in society. throughout the identification of those subsidiary categories the core category habitus was present at all times. next, i focus on the conclusion and the pedagogical implications that i found after the analysis of the data. conclusion this research paper discussed the ideologies revealed by a group of pre-service teachers when they are engaged in social, political, and cultural issues through tasks based on texts. the first subsidiary category—shattering the establishment—provided facts regarding how pre-service social studies teachers constantly gave evidence of ideologies that inquired into power while simultaneously constructing the meaning of texts. the discussions posed by participants attempted to unveil the manipulation of power in favor of a few. as part of this questioning of the mainstream, participants reflected on the relationship between the english language and power that is used as a tool of domination and homogenization. the second subsidiary category which tackled the ideologies revealed by this group of pre-service teachers is from a counter-hegemonic position: the case of mass media. in this subsidiary category, participants inquired as to who informs what, to whom, and with what purposes. as pre-service social studies teachers, they revealed ideologies that resisted any kind of manipulation exerted by means of communication and with special attention to colombian networks. texts proposed in the instructional design allowed participants to ask about the current model of global communication where advertising plays a crucial role. participants were touchy about this subject matter and made public their warnings in regard to advertising due to the reality of the negative consequences of planetary overconsumption, nature, and humanity itself. resisting the mainstream: looking for one’s place in society, is the third subsidiary category that emerged from the data in this group of 26 pre-service teachers. giroux (1988) has called on current teachers to act as critical subjects able to propose alternatives to improve this chaotic world. through this category, i could analyze the tireless search of this group of pre-service social studies teachers who observe in the school system one alternative of changing. participants were conscious of their role as agents of change, as future educators and also as citizens. their search for a better society started with their conscientization towards the issues addressed. they perceived themselves as teachers that know. as wink (2005) has asserted, they knew that they universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras34 fajardo mora knew. this consciousness empowered them as agents of change. pre-service students’ role in society was confronting the status quo. they confronted how mass media manipulate information with the purpose of favoring a few and controlling the population. they perceived current communication trends as a trap that encaged current society and homogenized it. they tackled any kind of domination that exerts oppression over people. their claims were made from ethical stances whereby their role as citizens was unquestioned and their efforts as teachers could not be postponed. pre-service social studies teachers reveal their ideologies based on their habitus from start to finish whereby the process of the construction of meaning of texts is concerned. in other words, pre-service teachers constructed the meaning of texts based on that internalized system of fixed and acquired dispositions and also on a range of personal possibilities within these dispositions that outlined schemes of perception, thought and action. students’ personal experiences were developed from the inculcation of social structures into their subjectivity. thus, pre-service teachers integrated not only their previous knowledge, assumptions, and intertextuality, but also their ideologies that would emerge toward those lasting and transferable dispositions, better known as the core category habitus. finally, the role of pre-service social studies teachers in colombian society can be understood as one of transformative teachers who, in education, have a cornerstone in the search for an egalitarian society. the role of the school is undeniable given that that institution is the place to fight for freedom, justice, and human and civil rights. as result of this research study, i, as teacher researcher, can say that from now on my pre-service social studies teachers should be called transformative pre-service social studies teachers. pedagogical implications tasks based on texts are an option to be implemented in those settings where efl learning is characterized by rejection, boredom or lack of interest. to create a community of inquirers within the english language classroom would engage those learners who do not find in efl learning a professional or a personal option. as a consequence, during the research experience english classes became the space where students could share reactions encouraged by readings. this experience provided the opportunity for classes to speak, reflect, and interact in the english language. taking into account students’ needs, backgrounds, and interests encourages them to participate effectively in the classroom because it gives them a voice and an active role in their process of efl learning. participants in this study had the opportunity to interact with texts related to social, historical, and economic issues, which enabled them to contrast and enrich their own vision of the world through the knowledge of others’ visions. efl teachers have the need to unveil their students’ ideologies or assumptions as regards english and its learning; furthermore, teachers need to design tasks according to the characteristics of their learners. references bahruth, r. e., & steiner, s. f., (2000). upstream in the mainstream: pedagogy against the current. in s. f. steiner, h. m. krank, p. mclaren, & r. e. bahruth (eds.), freirean pedagogy, praxis and possibilities: projects for the new millennium (pp. 119-145). new york, ny: falmer press. beaugrande, r. (1997). the story of discourse analysis. in t. a. van dijk (ed.), discourse as structure and process (pp 35-62). london, uk: sage publications. eagleton, t. (2007). ideology: an introduction. london, uk: verso. 35profile vol. 16, no. 2, october 2014. issn 1657-0790 (printed) 2256-5760 (online). bogotá, colombia. pages 21-36 ideologies revealed during the construction of meaning in an efl class ellis, r. (2006). the methodology of task-based teaching. the asian efl journal quarterly, 8(3), 19-45. retrieved from http://www.asian-efl-journal.com/september_2006_ ebook_editions.pdf fairlie, h. (1955, september 23). political commentary. the spectator. retrieved from http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ the_establishment#cite_note-0 freeman, d. (1998). doing teacher research: from inquiry to understanding. boston, ma: heinle publishers. giroux, h. (1988). teachers as intellectuals: toward a critical pedagogy of learning. westport, co: bergin & garvey. giroux, h. (2003). critical theory and educational practice. in a. darder, m. p. baltodano, & r. d. torres (eds.), the critical pedagogy reader (pp. 27-56). new york, ny: routledge falmer. henderson, j. g., & hawthorne, r. d. (1995). transformative curriculum leadership. columbus, oh: prentice hall. mclaren, p. (2003). life in schools: an introduction to critical pedagogy in the foundations of education. boston, ma: allyn and bacon. merriam, s. b. (1988). case study research in education: a qualitative approach. san francisco, ca: jossey-bass publishers. merriam, s. b. (ed.). (2002). qualitative research in practice: examples for discussion and analysis. san francisco, ca: jossey-bass publishers. murphy, j. (2003). task-based learning: the interaction between tasks and learners. elt journal, 54(4), 352-359. outcault, r. f. (ca. 1896). yellow kid drawing. the new york public library, miriam and ira d. wallach division of art, prints and photographs, print collection. retrieved from http://web-static.nypl.org/exhibitions/ spanexhib/image-bald_cartoon.html short, k. g., & burke, c. l. (1989). new potentials for teacher education: teaching and learning as inquiry. the elementary school journal, 90(2), 193-206. strauss, a. c., & corbin, j. m. (1990). basics of qualitative research: grounded theory procedures and techniques. london, uk: sage publications. van dijk, t. a. (1998). ideology. a multidisciplinar approach. london, uk: sage publications. wells, g. (1995). language and the inquiry-oriented curriculum. curriculum inquiry, 25(3), 233-269. willis, j. (1996). a framework for task-based learning. edinburgh, uk: addison wesley longman. wink, j. (2005). critical pedagogy: notes from the real world. new york, ny: addison wesley longman. about the author néstor ricardo fajardo mora holds a bachelor degree in modern languages, spanish-english and a postgraduate in language and pedagogical projects from universidad distrital francisco josé de caldas, colombia. he also holds a master’s in applied linguistics to tefl from the same university. he has been working in education since 1996 in primary, secondary, and university. currently, he works for the social studies undergraduate program at universidad distrital francisco josé de caldas as a teacher-researcher. universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras36 fajardo mora appendix: students’ artifact sample 139profile vol. 19, no. 1, january-june 2017. issn 1657-0790 (printed) 2256-5760 (online). bogotá, colombia. pages 139-153 http://dx.doi.org/10.15446/profile.v19n1.56209 a learning experience of the gender perspective in english teaching contexts aprendizajes de la perspectiva de género en los escenarios para la enseñanza del inglés claudia patricia mojica1* universidad de los andes, bogotá, colombia harold castañeda-peña** universidad distrital francisco josé de caldas, bogotá, colombia eighteen colombian english teachers participated in a course with an emphasis on gender and foreign language teaching in a master’s program in bogotá. this text describes the design, implementation, and the learning in this educational experience. the analysis of the course was based on a view of learning as a process of participation rooted in the praxis of english teachers’ classrooms. this experience reveals that gender is a relevant category in the frame of english language teacher education as it provides teachers with tools from a broader social and educational perspective. this reflection also leads to implications for teachers’ practices with a gender perspective. key words: english teachers, gender and foreign language education, language teacher education, learning, participation. dieciocho profesores de inglés participaron en un curso con énfasis en género y la enseñanza de lengua extranjera, en el marco de un programa de maestría en bogotá. este texto describe el diseño, la implementación y los aprendizajes que surgen en esta experiencia educativa. el análisis del curso se basa en una comprensión del aprendizaje como el resultado de un proceso de participación en la práctica de la enseñanza de los docentes. esta experiencia revela que género es una categoría importante en el marco de la educación de la enseñanza del inglés, por cuanto aporta elementos desde una perspectiva social y educativa. esta reflexión revela algunas implicaciones para la práctica de docentes sensibles a la categoría género. palabras clave: aprendizajes, educación de docentes de inglés, género y educación en lengua extranjera, participación, profesores de inglés. * e-mail: cp.mojica10@uniandes.edu.co ** e-mail: hacastanedap@udistrital.edu.co how to cite this article (apa, 6th ed.): mojica, c. p., & castañeda-peña, h. (2017). a learning experience of the gender perspective in english teaching contexts. profile issues in teachers’ professional development, 19(1), 139-153. http://dx.doi.org/10.15446/profile.v19n1.56209. this article was received on march 15, 2016, and accepted on october 21, 2016. this is an open access article distributed under the terms of the creative commons license attribution-noncommercial-noderivatives 4.0 international license. consultation is possible at http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/. universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras140 mojica & castañeda-peña introduction one of the major commitments that the field of education has assumed in the last decades worldwide is the incorporation of the gender perspective. education is the means by which it is possible to reach gender equity1 and foster gender justice and fairness (connell, 2011; unesco, 2015). in this sense, colombia, like many other countries around the world, has attempted actions such as improving access to education particularly for girls/women; however, this has not been enough to transform gender relations in the school. the school is considered one of the social places for the gendered cultural reproduction; therefore, it has been suggested that the gender perspective be incorporated into the teaching framework, the curricular contents of all subjects, and into all teachers’ professional development (alcaldía de medellín & subsecretaría de planeación y transversalización, 2010; calvo, rendón, & rojas, 2006; fuentes vásquez & holguín castillo, 2006). foreign language teaching contexts are not exempt from the responsibility of incorporating the gender perspective to help educational institutions battle gender inequities. these particular learning settings2 also display that meanings related to gender turn, in many occasions, into sexist practices, hegemonic ideas, or differential treatments that disfavor students’ learning experiences (hruska, 2004; litosseliti, 2006; sunderland, 2000b; pavlenko & piller, 2001). some researchers claim that 1 the terms gender equity and gender equality tend to be used interchangeably; there has not been a general agreement on the difference of these two concepts. nonetheless, “gender equality is the result of the absence of discrimination on the basis of a person’s sex in opportunities and the allocation of resources or benefits or in access to services. gender equity entails the provision of fairness and justice in the distribution of benefits and responsibilities between women and men” (unesco, 2010, p. 17). some people see the concept of equality as a more general objective, and equity is understood as a stage or strategy to achieve the first one (unesco, 2015). we will use here the term gender equity. 2 although this is not inherent only in foreign language classrooms as gender permeates other educational spaces and social settings outside the classrooms. language teachers should be more aware of aspects such as gendered discourses of texts/contents and issues related to power during class interaction, as this may help or hinder learning opportunities, language access, and meanings that students may learn about gender representations (castañeda-peña 2008b; hruska, 2004; litosseliti, 2006; sunderland, 2000a, 2000b). within this view, we argue that foreign language teachers should consider not only students’ linguistic knowledge, but also the knowledge students learn through language socialization processes taking place in classrooms settings. this knowledge is related to culture, values, beliefs, and issues of morality and respect (duff & talmy, 2011). furthermore, some scholars and teachers in the field of second language acquisition (sla), bilingualism, and foreign language education (hruska, 2004; litosseliti, 2006; pennycook, 1999; piller & pavlenko, 2001; sunderland, 2000a, 2000b) claim that gender and language in the foreign language classroom are relatively untheorized and unexplored. therefore, these authors have strongly recommended practitioners to include gender in their work, practices, and research interests. colombia presents some relevant research that points to the importance of gender in foreign language contexts (castañeda, 2012; castañeda-peña, 2008a, 2008b, 2009, 2010; durán, 2006; rojas, 2012); nonetheless, these studies have not been tantamount to the inclusion of gender in english teachers’ professional development. foreign language educators have been largely informed by sla research which focuses on cognitivist approaches to language learning, leaving gender on the margins (piller & pavlenko, 2001). unless teachers’ professional development (tpd) programs in teaching english as a foreign language (tefl) education integrate gender awareness courses or seminars, english teachers will not be prepared to recognize ways in which gender meanings are transmitted and legitimated, and how gender inequities are (re)produced in their teaching contexts. 141profile vol. 19, no. 1, january-june 2017. issn 1657-0790 (printed) 2256-5760 (online). bogotá, colombia. pages 139-153 a learning experience of the gender perspective in english teaching contexts teachers are key agents of change within this process and, therefore, need to receive training in these matters during their teaching professional development (connell, 2011; esen, 2013). in order to contribute to filling in this gap in tpd in tefl education and have it aligned with this educational commitment, we offered an optional course for in-service english teachers in a master program in applied linguistics to tefl in bogotá, colombia, with a gender orientation. the objective with this course was to raise gender awareness within practices and contexts of teaching. this article accounts for this course experience; thus, in what follows we will present the theoretical and methodological considerations drawn for the design/ implementation of the course. the analysis of this course experience will be presented from two perspectives: first, a reflexive analysis of the learning process that we as teachers of this course experienced in relation to the methodology and objectives we aimed for. second, we will explain the scope the student-teachers (sts) displayed within their teaching contexts and practices in relation to the gender awareness they developed through the course. theoretical framework this section shows some relevant theories helpful to understanding the approach of this course with a gender orientation in the field of english teaching. we draw on the critical approach to reflect on and question english teachers’ roles in their daily praxis, and the components that should be included in the contexts of english teachers’ education. another theory implied here is what wenger (1998) termed communities of practice (cop); this learning approach reflects the methodology and teaching decisions made in the framework of this course proposal. finally, we will present the concept of gender as a category constructed through interaction with others, as well as its importance in light of the course of identities and language learning. teachers’ professional development (tpd) from a critical approach there are various works that point to the teachers as actors that may reproduce gender inequality in educational scenarios (calvo et al., 2006; esen, 2013; verma, 1993). this happens because teachers grow up in a society and transmit implicit and explicit values, expectations, and norms by means of which students are socialized to learn gender roles, gender relations, and gender behaviors and attitudes in society. likewise, it has been claimed that teachers are fundamental agents to address and struggle gender inequalities in their teaching contexts (calvo et al., 2006; esen, 2013; unesco, 2015); for this aim, teachers should receive training in their professional development trajectory to help them gain gender awareness, reflect on it within the context of their practice, and find strategies to attempt to eliminate gender inequalities. in colombia there have been some experiences of tpd and gender equity that show important findings and understandings but they have not been permanent experiences within the field of tpd (calvo et al., 2006). some of these experiences, reported in this state of the art by teachers of different areas of knowledge, were designed and carried out by the gender school of universidad nacional de colombia, asociación distrital de educadores (ade), and the world bank. nonetheless, “teachers’ continuing education has not incorporated gender equity in colombia” (calvo et al., 2006, p. 1). this is one of the challenges that prevail in the tpd in this country (díaz tafur, 2002). therefore, it comes as no surprise that tpd for english teachers had not incorporated a gender perspective either. a state of the art about english teachers’ professional development in colombia reveals that in-service teachers expect to find professional development programs that transform their working conditions, develop their teaching competence, and produce knowledge in areas such as classroom management, the teaching of values, universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras142 mojica & castañeda-peña and the relationship between the academic life and theirs/ their students’ fulfillment. what seems interesting for this discussion is that most of these tpd programs focus mostly on the second expectation, the development of the teaching competence, while leaving the others aside (cárdenas, gonzález, & álvarez, 2010). thus, for the purpose of including what tpd in tefl education has been left out, the perspective of gender contributes to a great extent to enhancing the teaching practice. in this sense, critical theory becomes an important asset to analyze tpd in tefl education; it calls for the acknowledgement that english teachers’ role is not merely as instructional teachers, learning how to teach english, and whose main concern revolves around developing students’ linguistic competence. english teachers also have social responsibilities as educators, that is, they need to understand the ways in which they are carriers of gender codes that reproduce inequalities and the ways in which hidden and formal curricula transmit and legitimate sexist behaviors, segregation, and discrimination (calvo et al., 2006; esen, 2013). hence, in accordance with the importance of including a critical approach to tpd for english teachers, as it prevents teachers from falling into these instrumentalist views of their practice and broadens the horizon of their practice and roles as political and social teachers, we can see that “educators need to approach learning not merely as the acquisition of knowledge but as the production of cultural practices that offer students a sense of identity, place, and hope” (giroux, 1992, p. 170). we situate this learning experience within the field of the critical approach since it furthers the view of english teaching aimed to understand and critique assumptions connected to power relations and cultural politics that cause inequalities and discrimination in tesol settings (pennycook, 1999). the learning perspective the methodology of this course is based on the premise that teachers’ learning is likely to be produced within their teaching settings and their particular conditions of work (johnson, 2009). thus, learning is seen as a process of meaning construction produced in people’s daily practices (wenger, 1998). cop underscores the importance of the practice by viewing it as the epistemological site where it is possible to define how people learn and the ways in which they develop knowledge of that community. from this standpoint, it is argued that the meaning(s) people produce out of their personal experience of engaging in those practices is what counts as learning. accordingly, this view of learning helps us carry the tasks proposed to promote a meaningful learning within sts’ teaching contexts. this learning perspective turns into a tool allowing teachers to become more aware of gender within the exercise of “theorize the practice and practice the theory” (bullough as cited in diaz maggioli, 2012, p. 12). gender from a postmodern perspective and acknowledging the contributions of scholars such as butler (1990) and foucault (1992), gender is understood as a sociocultural category by which the issue of the body is connected to everyday social and cultural practices and discourses. litosseliti (2006) describes gender as the social behaviors, expectations, and attitudes related to being male and female; she asserts that the features that have been designated to the sexual difference are cultural constructions, socially determined and alterable. yet, for the design of the course, and with the objective of understanding gender inequities in education and the possibilities for transformation, we positioned this social category as “discourses of multiplicities” (castañeda-peña, 2009, p. 25). this pluralistic vision promotes the idea that “there is not a particular masculinity, but masculinities; and there is no single femininity, but femininities . . . both masculinities and femininities constitute and reconstitute subjects establishing permanently changing 143profile vol. 19, no. 1, january-june 2017. issn 1657-0790 (printed) 2256-5760 (online). bogotá, colombia. pages 139-153 a learning experience of the gender perspective in english teaching contexts asymmetrical relationships in contexts where they participate” (castañeda-peña, 2009, p. 25). we believe understanding gender as “discourses of multiplicities” helps address the normalization of differential discourses and the endorsement of explicit and tacit ideas that cause gender inequalities. in other words, we can avoid centering our understanding of this category from a dualist and essentialist view of male/female, masculinity/ femininity, or girls/boys, which favors the production of rigid, fixed, hegemonic, and often discriminatory connotations of how the genders should be or act. this vision of gender, among other issues that were part of the course, would eventually give sts some tools to understand language learning as a socializing process for the construction of gender subjectivity and the (re)production of gendered rules, relations, practices, and representations in the setting of their language classrooms (litosseliti, 2006). description of the course identity and language learning was one of the optional courses offered within the master program for english language teachers in a state university in bogotá, colombia. the course was implemented in the second semester of 2014. although this master program includes subjects related to social and cultural issues within the components of what in-service teachers should know, this was the first time a course with a gender emphasis was implemented in this graduate program. the participants a total of 18 students, in-service english teachers, who are candidates in this master program registered voluntarily to take this course. there were 13 women and five men; 10 teachers worked in state schools, three teachers worked in bilingual schools,3 four teachers 3 bilingual schools refer here to schools that teach subjects in english and spanish. worked in university programs, and one teacher who worked in virtual english online programs. general objective a purpose of the course was for sts to be able to relate to issues of gender in their teaching environments. in other words, the course aimed at raising gender awareness and the relationship it had with their teaching practices and contexts. by enabling this, we planned to achieve the following specific goals: 1. to identify different ways in which gender has been tackled in english language teaching (elt) contexts. 2. to increase knowledge about the issues research in the field of gender and language learning has pointed out. 3. to reflect upon the readings and relate them to their particular teaching scenarios. 4. to be inspired by other research works carried out by language teachers/researchers that evidence how they have dealt with or analyzed the category of gender in their teaching practices. 5. to identify and apply approaches, concepts, methods, strategies, and reflections in their own teaching practices by using the perspective they have acquired about gender. teaching approach as a result of the learning perspective adopted (cop, wenger, 1998) and the vision of “participate and learn” (diaz maggioli, 2012, p. 12), the teaching approach focuses on situating the sts’ gender awareness in real teaching conditions. thus, sts participated through oral presentations and debates presenting their own opinions and reflections (there were written and oral pieces of work). there were guest speakers in some of the sessions; we thought it would be inspiring for sts to listen to some teachers who had researched gender issues in elt contexts locally. additionally, personalized tutoring sessions were offered for those sts who wished to get oriented in the practical tasks proposed in the course. universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras144 mojica & castañeda-peña tasks beyond the sts’ active participation in debates and oral presentations, we wanted to propose two important activities to achieve the goal of situating sts’ gender awareness in their teaching contexts. the first activity was a teacher’s journal in which sts’ observed their classes with the purpose of raising questions and problematizing those observations in the light of gender. the objective was to supplement what they had been reading in the course with what was actually going on in their classes. in the second task, sts conducted a smallscale research. sts could do this exercise either by choosing a topic of the content of the course that seemed interesting to them, or by using information or aspects of their observation journals that were important, meaningful for them to inquire more; they used research techniques to collect data (interviews, class observations, etc.). contents and resources gender has been an issue of interest in the field of education in general; nevertheless, we attempted to focus this perspective on the area of foreign language learning/teaching. this program sought to show sts that gender has been an important issue in their professional context, and therefore english teachers should also be concerned with these types of matters as part of their responsibilities as language educators. we organized the contents into four areas of the teaching practice: gendered interaction, language teaching materials, class contents, and teacher’s pedagogy.4 furthermore, the use of short videos, documentaries, and international and local research reports facilitated sts’ learning. 4 if the reader is interested in getting a deeper understanding on this, then a review of the following references will be useful: hruska, 2004; litosseliti, 2006; norton and pavlenko, 2004; sunderland 2000a, 2000b. learning outcomes these learning expectations were framed on the abilities that sts were expected to achieve through the two tasks. 1. to problematize their teaching contexts and practices in light of the gender category. 2. to exemplify the perspective that they have acquired about gender through their small-scale projects. assessment taking into consideration the pedagogical proposal, it is clear that we needed to take the sts’ products and their personal process—the presentation of their smallscale research projects, written reflections, observation journals, and their active participation in debates and presentations—as the means for the evaluation of the course. the following section will describe what happened during the implementation of this course, and whether the proposal was relevant for sts’ teaching practices. learning outcomes of the innovation the outcomes of having implemented this cutting edge course are to be presented in two sections from which the issue of learning has a twofold effect; on the one hand, we will necessarily consider the course’s teaching proposal: methodology, tasks, and contents. on the other hand, we will refer to the sts’ learning within the framework of this course. both standpoints, learning with respect to the teaching proposal and sts’ learning, point to some important considerations for the field of english language teacher education as we will demonstrate through the discussion of this analysis. the data used for this reflexive analysis derive from three sources: firstly, some tutoring meetings audiorecorded with the sts through which we attempted to gain understanding of their personal perceptions, questions, and concerns with regard to the contents and the tasks of the course; secondly, a questionnaire that 145profile vol. 19, no. 1, january-june 2017. issn 1657-0790 (printed) 2256-5760 (online). bogotá, colombia. pages 139-153 a learning experience of the gender perspective in english teaching contexts was applied at the end of the course (see appendix); and finally, the different written assignments through which sts reflected on their understandings of the contents of the course and the connections they made within their own teaching contexts. in order to avoid bias or monopolize the interpretations of this reflection, we drew on the voices of different sts of this course so as to re-construct what took place through this learning experience. learning with respect to the teaching proposal we will start by considering some of the challenges that we faced when addressing the contents of the course. thus, for example, the concept of gender was intended to be presented, as stated in the theoretical framework, from a social and cultural approach rather than a product of the biological difference. nonetheless, we noted that some of the sts were initially relating gender with the concept of sexual diversity, as it is presented in the following extract taken from the final questionnaire: it is something totally ignored by most of teachers. for instance, i had never thought in the possibility or search gender issues in an english class. it sounded to me more refer to a psychological session to help a student to clarify his/her beliefs and positions towards his/her sexual orientation. what an ignorant i used to be!! [sic] given the fact that gender and sexual diversity are part of the field of sexual identity, it is frequent that these two concepts are treated or understood as interchangeable or the same issue, but they are certainly not the same. as teachers of teachers (tot), we learned through this experience that this confusion may cause tensions among the sts of the class, as there may be sts who are interested in approaching a gender perspective in their teaching scenarios but not willing to deal with issues of sexual diversity.5 this is something we find 5 the aim of this course did not involve dealing with sexual diversity issues. worth reporting, as this common misconception would need to be addressed directly and from the beginning of a future similar (or same) course in order to avoid ambiguity and confusion. as we became familiar with this confusion, we decided to incorporate a class session in which the differences between these concepts were briefly stated. beyond presenting gender as a concept, we were expecting to help sts take note that gender is not a matter that is deemed to be the differences among boys/girls or men/women within the field of learning a foreign language. the next extract illustrates the way in which sts perceived this concept within their working context: i learned that gender does not necessarily happen from a “male vs female or vice versa” perspective. it happens among or inside femininities and masculinities in the exercise of power. in my research process, i was able to see particularly that boys dominated other boys, and girls were not necessarily the “victims” as they are usually seen in most of the cases. as it can be noted, gender is perceived as an issue that is co-constructed with others in the social interactions and, as this st states in the extract, “it happens in the exercise of power.” this extract evidences that the st was able to find how gender operated within the interaction of her students in class. furthermore, this st draws on the multiplicity framework—when referring to “masculinities and femininities” (castañeda-peña, 2009)—to acknowledge that there is not one masculinity or femininity but different possibilities to be and perform as a boy/girl. this understanding was important since differential frameworks often may not be useful to recognize issues related to power and inequality across and among femininities or masculinities (pavlenko & piller, 2001). now we would like to refer to the methodology of the course and how sts responded to the pedagogical tasks we proposed. certainly, this learning approach (situated in sts’ teaching settings) appeared to be a good proposal to achieve meaningful learning; however, universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras146 mojica & castañeda-peña what appeared to be right also gave rise to moments of frustration and confusion, as acknowledged by this st’s response: it was a cocktail of emotions, many times i was confused and did not see the concept of gender anywhere; i thought it was something imposed. i lived moments of discouragement and confusion. however, the collaboration with the group and observing other studies cleared my doubts. this extract describes how some sts experienced the tasks of the observation journal and the small-scale research. as can be noted from the st’s perception— feelings of discouragement and confusion—this is a rather complex task that cannot be achieved just by looking at the classroom. the complexity of this task stems from learning to sharpen the view with regard to what is tacit, what is taken for granted, and what is embedded in natural and routinized teaching/learning environments. this is also a challenging task due to the fact that it is hard to problematize issues that usually pass unnoticed, as we may believe this is just the natural way of these learning environments. we could actually feel the effort sts were making to try to identify gender issues in their english classrooms (classroom dynamics, use of materials, the curriculum, etc.). nevertheless, we were also able to see from other st’s samples that this was a process: it took some time for sts to acquire this gender view in their classes and understand the implications it brings to their practices. the fact that sts had to comply with these tasks, as part of the course demands, certainly increased the pressure on having to write their observation journals. for instance, there were three students who told us they were willing to do the task of the observation journal but they had not been able to find any specific moments or aspects in their classes related to gender and language learning. the strategy here in order to help sts with this task was to use other sts’ contextual samples in which gender was evident. we thought this strategy might lessen the confusion and discouragement, as sts could realize what their classmates were doing and how they were interpreting it. this was part of the cop, where sts were able to share new understandings, doubts, and what they were learning in their classrooms with regard to this new perspective. here we have one of the st’s examples from the observation journal that we used in class to show these sts’ ideas of how gender could be identified in their class scenarios. the extract describes one event of a st’s english class in which her pre-school students were learning different professions: but the it did not finished with the girl’s question, when she was presenting herself, she said “my name is michel, i am pilot and i work at the airport” and a boy raised his hand and told me: “teacher she did not do it right because she should have said flight attendant instead of pilot” and the girl said “i said it right because i want to be a pilota,”6 and when she said that some children laugh at her and i asked them not to do that because she was right. . . . in this case, language shows that there is not differentiation in words for this occupation “pilot” is piloto or pilota7 (pilota is possible to say it in spanish),8 my student felt angry about it; maybe she was feeling this was not fair, because she has the total right to be whatever she wants even though there is no female name for that. [sic] this excerpt shows when a st recognized a gendered discourse. a gendered discourse is not as tacit or implicit as other types of classroom interaction issues. these discourses can be traced because they say something related to men or women. in this case, the st notes how the use of this discourse produces power relations among her students creating discursive subject positions: “gendered discourses position women and men in certain ways, and at the same time, people take up particular gendered subject positions that constitute gender more widely” (sunderland, 2004, p. 22). what is 6 the girl uses the word “pilot” in english but applies a grammar rule of spanish which consist of adding the vowel “a” at the end of the word to reflect a female connotation. 7 what the teacher means here is that in english the word “pilot” is sexless, and that is why it is possible to think of this occupation for men and women. 8 the word “pilota” does not actually exist in spanish. 147profile vol. 19, no. 1, january-june 2017. issn 1657-0790 (printed) 2256-5760 (online). bogotá, colombia. pages 139-153 a learning experience of the gender perspective in english teaching contexts interesting from this extract, besides helping the three sts who expressed difficulty writing in their journals, is that the st who writes this journal entry can identify an unfair situation through gendered discourses of her english class. this leads us to think that through this observation task, sts were also problematizing gender in their contexts, as we had expected them to do. the evident anxiety in the sts’ process around this task cannot be avoided, yet we learnt that it may be reduced throughout the collaboration and dialogue with others. in this respect, johnson (2009) highlights the importance of dialogic mediation and collaboration in the processes of teachers’ learning: teaching as dialogic mediation involves contributions and discoveries by learners, as well as the assistance of an “expert” collaborator, or teacher. instruction in such a collaborative activity is contingent on teachers’ and learners’ activities and related to what they are trying to do. (p. 63) during the classes, we opened spaces to share sts’ subjective experiences, understandings, and questions; they needed to be verbalized and analyzed in cooperation with other members of this cop (wenger, 1998). we perceived that there was a co-construction in the production of new meanings regarding these pedagogical tasks. despite the complexity of the small-scale research and the difficulties that sts reported while doing it, we found that this task allowed them to become aware of the importance of a gender view in their teaching contexts. several sts reveal in their oral and written reports that they managed to discover and learn different issues in terms of their roles as english teachers, their possibilities to use this information to make changes in their teaching practices, and the importance of these views for their teaching practices. although the next section will present sts’ learning, table 1 summarizes the themes addressed in sts’ small-scale research studies. all of them were analyzed with a gender orientation and comprised a fundamental element of analysis. sts’ learning within the framework of the gender-oriented course this section will present some of the aspects that sts identified through their small-scale research exercises with respect to the gender analysis in their teaching contexts. the following extract illustrates not only what the st discovers in her practice but also accounts for the st’s ability gained through her research. this narrative account displays the moment of an english class in which teenage students coordinate a role play activity in the restaurant. the host in the entrance of the restaurant (classroom) was a boy, most of the clients were families (parents and children) there were not waiters just waitress, they were five, the cashier was a boy and the manager too, but the cooks were women, while the girls were table 1. main gender themes explored by sts material design role-play activities feminist pedagogy in debates unveiling gendered discourses students’ sexist ideologies/ discourses the class participation and the sitting arrangements the analysis of vocabulary in students’ written texts understanding femininities and masculinities students’ conversation while working in groups the use of fairy tales and the gender stereotypes students’ interaction while working in groups opportunities for class participation: resistance and domination universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras148 mojica & castañeda-peña working very hard, their dialogues were longer, the boys had the easier performance. however, boys had the best position taking into account how a restaurant works. in addition, talking about the clients, families, the wives went into the restaurant walking behind their husbands and they did not ask for the reservation, the boys were the clients who appeared in the reservations’ list. the waitress took the orders’ men first. certainly, i saw that women had many responsibilities and organized everything, but they were not the bosses. on the contrary, boys enjoyed some privileges with a less effort. [sic] unlike other examples in which gender is identified by explicit gendered discourse, this extract reflects that gender becomes an issue of reflection as the st problematizes the way her students assigned gender roles that represent symbolically more advantageous social positions for boys than for girls—girls played more domestic roles and did not have important social parts in the sketch, e.g., they held more back-stage responsibilities. we perceived in this interpretation an ability that the st gained since this situation could have passed unnoticed if she had not drawn on a gender view to understand this situation which was due to the routinized dynamics of organization in these sorts of typical english class activities. this analysis allows one to understand that through these subtle forms of organization the legitimation and reinforcement of gender relations and gender social positioning arise. it is precisely these types of subtle interactions which impact the gender subjectivities in the school (garcía suárez, 2003). furthermore, the st manages to problematize two other aspects that are connected to girls/boys’ learning experiences: the st finds that girls have more difficult and longer dialogues to learn, as well as more responsibilities in the organization of the role play. another st who explored his students’ social relationships turned his attention to a problematic situation in which he reported sexist discourses among students. as he describes in his final written report of the small-scale research, he “observed behaviors and patterns related to gender that hinder[ed] and limited students’ participation in class.” this st comments that in a group activity, a boy had conflicts with the girls of his group, and questions the st for having him work with girls. when the st tries to inquiry what is going on in the group he obtains the following reply from the boy: teacher: what is going on camilo? why don’t you like that women talk to you? camilo: i don’t know, maybe it is chauvinism…i do not listen to women, not even to my mum.9 in this particular situation, the st describes some gendered discourses used by this boy in class that show sexist ideas that do not favor girls’ images to justify the fact of not having to work with them. the question that remains in this case is how teachers deal with these types of gender relations in class. teachers cannot simply insist students work without having any conflict during their group work. before discussing the learning acquired in this case, we will present another example related to the design of material that is connected to this reflection of the teachers’ role. one st designed a story using role reversals to study the topic of professions and illustrate some gender stereotypes. the main character of her story is a man who is looking for a job as a housekeeper in bogotá. the st wanted to expose her students to the idea that both women and men could be good housekeepers. from essentialist and patriarchal discourses, this is a job that is usually thought to be assigned exclusively to women/girls (pérez, 2012). at first, the st was interested in learning the type of gendered discourses that emerged when her students read the story. however, the st manifested that although her students produced gendered discourses, she felt she did not know how to react towards these stereotypical discourses, as she did not want to impose ideas on her students or judge her students’ imaginaries. as a result 9 our own translation from the final small-scale research report. 149profile vol. 19, no. 1, january-june 2017. issn 1657-0790 (printed) 2256-5760 (online). bogotá, colombia. pages 139-153 a learning experience of the gender perspective in english teaching contexts of this, this st raises questions about her own role and the possibilities that might be available to her in order to promote more progressive ideas about gender beliefs and imaginaries. as part of the sts’ learning, we found that these two sts raised questions in relation to the ways they could address gender meanings that do not favor gender representations. sts realized that it was complex to react counter-hegemonically. we identify a concern towards this issue as they felt accountable for tackling those meanings that were taking place in their contexts. it would require that sts continue this process, as we believe it is through experience and in the exercise of their practice that teachers can gain expertise and a better understanding of how to deal with these responses in the classrooms. we also believe that the course did not directly provide sts with the tools to transform these situations. yet, we find it valuable that sts acknowledged that their roles as english teachers should go beyond teaching a linguistic code. as a matter of fact, sts manifested an interest in becoming agents of change in ways to create equal opportunities for participation and generating more progressive discourses as part of their practices. the next extract shows this point: the project was then aimed at portraying gender positioning through the analysis of students’ and teacher’s daily interactions. as the findings showed a “subordinated” or “disempowered” group of students, boys and girls, who had apparent little human agency and were denied the possibility to access power and knowledge, a small pedagogical intervention was carried out in order to empower the “powerless”. this reply accounts for a st’s experience in her smallscale project. through this, the st manages to notice unequal opportunities in students’ class participation. based on this discovery, the st created a pedagogical inter vention (changes in her class participation dynamics) in which students who did not participate in class increased their opportunities in their class participation; as the st says, she empowered them to do so. hence, changes in teachers’ practices are shaped by teachers’ reflections and what they problematize in their classrooms, and not by the impositions of the methodology of the course. on this matter, this transformation in st’s practice was a product of her own decision in the process and reflection during their participation in our course and her individual learning processes. although we acknowledge the complexity of the course tasks, it was through the analysis of the data sts collected in their teaching settings that our participants started to discover particular things and meanings that had not been evident to them before. hence, knowledge and abilities sts gained were not a product of empty readings or of trying to imagine what it would be like to consider gender as an analytical category for their teaching practices. these things learnt—translated in products such as the materials for tefl, discoveries and reflections, and decisions—were produced in the engagement and the complexity of their daily practice (wenger, 1998). conclusions this course aimed at helping english teachers raise awareness on gender issues that occur in their classrooms or teaching practices. as a result of it, sts were able to achieve most of the learning objectives we had set up for this course. thus, for example, sts managed to discover and identify some problematic situations that had usually passed unnoticed by them; for instance, aspects related to the identification of unfair situations, sexist discourses and behaviors, and asymmetry in class participation. these sts would not have been able to recognize all these problematic matters if they had not participated in this optional course and developed small-scale research in their teaching contexts. consequently, we argue that english teaching education or tpd programs should turn their attention to these types of experiences to incorporate universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras150 mojica & castañeda-peña what is being left out, improve teachers’ reflection processes about their practice and role, and equip sts with the attitudes, skills, and the knowledge that they would need to work towards the goal of gender equity in the foreign language teaching contexts. the analysis of the data indicates that these courses prevent english teachers, as we explain in the conceptual framework, to fall into instrumentalist views of their roles as english instructors. sts broaden their perspective of their roles as english teachers embracing a position as english educators with a social responsibility; this can be perceived in this reply of the final questionnaire, where we asked them openly if they would recommend the course to other english teachers: i would strongly recommend it because we, teachers, must gain awareness on gender issues that underlie human relations in educational settings as well as the possibilities we have, as agents of change, to subvert socially constructed beliefs on gender that perpetuate social inequities. likewise, we noted that sts’ learning implied, for some of them, to think of and implement strategies to avoid, for example, class participation imbalances. nevertheless, we also observed that not all of the teachers were able to transform the issues they identified as problematic in their teaching contexts; this is meaningful within the teaching experience of this course as it allows reflecting on what is needed to be included in the course program. in this sense, we think that this course aimed solely to raise teachers’ gender awareness; but it did not incorporate an explicit agenda through which sts could learn skills for combating aspects such as sexist discourses, students’ gender imaginaries that favor a patriarchal view, or students’ attitudes in regard to certain unfair gendered meanings. for this reason, we think it would be relevant to offer another course in which sts are provided with the necessary support and follow-up so as to find practical solutions to transform the issues of gender inequality identified in their classes. finally, it is important to assert that we do not intend to assume this teaching practice as a “recipe” for how and what to teach when considering a gender perspective in the field of tefl. we are aware of the fact that there may be other ways to do this. additionally, we expect to account for this course with the spirit and hope to initiate a debate, based on this experience, on what we think is meaningful and important in order to include the gender perspective within the field of tpd programs in tefl. unless this perspective starts occupying a more privileged place in research, theory, and in this current academic community’s attention, this field of english teachers’ education will remain gender blind and the possibilities to attempt to achieve gender equity in english teaching classrooms will continue being just isolated experiences in which only a few english teachers will engage. references alcaldía de medellín, & 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(2000a). new understandings of gender and language classrooms research: texts, teacher talk, and student talk. language teaching research, 4(2), 149-173. sunderland, j. (2000b). review article: issues of language and gender in second and foreign language education. language teaching, 33(4), 203-223. https:/doi.org/10.1017/ s0261444800015688. sunderland, j. (2004). gendered discourses. new york, ny: palgrave macmillan. https:/doi.org/10.1057/9780230505582. unesco. (2010). reorienting teacher education to address sustainable development: guidelines and tools. bangkok, th: author. retrieved from http://unesdoc.unesco.org/ images/0018/001890/189054e.pdf. unesco. (2015). a guide for gender equality in teacher education policy and practices. paris, fr: author. retrieved from http://unesdoc.unesco.org/images/0023/002316/231646e. pdf. verma, g. k. (ed.). (1993). inequality and teacher education: an international perspective. london, uk: falmer press. wenger, e. (1998). communities of practice: learning, meaning, and identity. cambridge, uk: cambridge university press. https:/doi.org/10.1017/cbo9780511803932. about the authors claudia patricia mojica holds an ma in applied linguistics from universidad distrital francisco josé de caldas. she is a doctoral candidate in education at universidad de los andes (bogotá, colombia). she is interested in teachers’ education, social issues related to subjects’ identities in language learning environments, and qualitative research methodologies. harold castañeda-peña holds a doctoral degree in education, goldsmiths, university of london. he is an assistant professor of the school of science and education at universidad distrital francisco josé de caldas (bogotá, colombia). he is interested in gender, information literacy, and videogaming in relation to language learning and teacher education. 153profile vol. 19, no. 1, january-june 2017. issn 1657-0790 (printed) 2256-5760 (online). bogotá, colombia. pages 139-153 a learning experience of the gender perspective in english teaching contexts appendix: final questionnaire we would like to ask you some questions about the course we have just finished. this is not part of your evaluation process, thus it is important to be as clear and honest as possible. 1. what meanings or new discoveries were you able to make throughout the course? 2. how can we perceive gender in our own teaching environments? provide examples. 3. if you had to tell someone what this course was about, what would you say? 4. would you recommend the course? why? 5. what lessons learnt, if any, did you construct by means of your research process? 6. how did you feel throughout the development of your small scale research project? engaged, frustrated, motivated, and other? _________. try to explain why you felt like this. 7. what type of difficulties will english teachers encounter if they are to have a gender perspective in their teaching practices or in their learning environments? 8. do you feel that what you learned in this class is transferable to your teaching practice? if so, why? 9. will you keep gender in mind when teaching english? thanks for your answers!!! 73profile vol. 17, no. 1, january-june 2015. issn 1657-0790 (printed) 2256-5760 (online). bogotá, colombia. pages 73-86 http://dx.doi.org/10.15446/profile.v17n1.41858 online peer feedback between colombian and new zealand fl beginners: a comparison and lessons learned*1 retroalimentación virtual de pares entre aprendices principiantes de lengua de colombia y nueva zelanda: una comparación y lecciones aprendidas constanza tolosa**2 university of auckland, auckland, new zealand claudia lucía ordóñez***3 tania alfonso****4 universidad nacional de colombia, bogotá, colombia we report on an exploratory study comparing the performance as online tutors of two groups of beginner eleven-year-old students of english in colombia and spanish in new zealand. the native speaker students of the foreign language the others were learning corrected paragraphs written by their peers. the feedback provided by each group of tutors was analyzed for (1) language corrected, (2) input on errors, and (3) types of feedback provided. we found that both colombian and new zealand tutors willingly provided corrections to their peers and used other feedback strategies to foster attention to linguistic form. the colombian tutors identified a higher number of errors, but the new zealanders provided more detailed comments. we draw lessons from the exploration. key words: collaborative on-line learning, foreign language learning, foreign language writing, online teaching and learning. éste es un estudio exploratorio en el que comparamos el desempeño como tutores-en-línea de dos grupos de niños de 11 años, principiantes en inglés en colombia y español en nueva zelanda. como nativos de la lengua extranjera que los otros aprendían, cada grupo corrigió párrafos de sus compañeros. las correcciones se analizaron buscando (1) lenguaje corregido, (2) frecuencia y (3) tipos de correcciones. encontramos que todos los tutores indicaron gustosamente correcciones a sus compañeros y utilizaron otras estrategias para llamar su atención hacia la forma del lenguaje. los tutores colombianos identificaron más errores, pero los tutores neozelandeses produjeron comentarios más detallados. concluimos extrayendo algunas lecciones de la exploración. palabras clave: aprendizaje de lengua extranjera, aprendizaje en colaboración en línea, enseñanza y aprendizaje en línea, escritura en lengua extranjera. * this article extends the analysis already published in tolosa, east, and villers (2013), where only the feedback by the colombian participants on the writings produced by the new zealand ones was considered. ** e-mail: c.tolosa@auckland.ac.nz *** e-mail: clordonezo@unal.edu.co **** e-mail: tcalfonsoq@unal.edu.co how to cite this article (apa, 6th ed.): tolosa, c., ordóñez, c. l., & alfonso, t. (2015). online peer feedback between colombian and new zealand fl beginners: a comparison and lessons learned. profile issues in teachers’ professional development, 17(1), 73-86. http://dx.doi. org/10.15446/profile.v17n1.41858. this article was received on february 1, 2014, and accepted on october 15, 2014. this is an open access article distributed under the terms of the creative commons license attribution-noncommercial-noderivatives 4.0 international license. consultation is possible at http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/. universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras74 tolosa, ordóñez & alfonso introduction in the present article we report findings from an exploratory study of an online intervention aimed at overcoming the challenges faced by schoolteachers who have to teach a foreign language that they are learning themselves (scott & butler, 2007) and to foreign language (fl) learners who are limited in their possibilities of authentic interaction with native (l1) speakers. the intervention and the study originated in new zealand and explores the ways in which two groups of beginner eleven-year old students, one of spanish learners in auckland, new zealand, and one of english learners in bogotá, colombia, provide and receive written feedback in an online reciprocal peer tutoring environment. some background research providing students with opportunities to interact authentically and meaningfully in the fl language is a frequent concern of language teachers, and language learning online seems to offer optimal conditions for this kind of interaction. furthermore, online interaction has been found to impact linguistic d e ve l opm e nt ( g a s s & ma c ke y, 2 0 0 7 ) . wh i l e collaboration among learners facilitates language learning by increasing motivation and authenticity, providing feedback, and fostering communities of learning (ortega, 2009), work online provides opportunities for quality language input and output and focuses attention on linguistic form (mackey & polio, 2009). interaction in computer mediated communication (cmc) provides contextualization in learning, which gives learners the opportunity to engage in the social construction of knowledge with a wider range of interlocutors (kitade, 2008), and specifically allows the most genuine type of collaboration where learners interact with experts who are l1 speakers of the target language (kern, 2006; kern & warschauer, 2000). peer feedback on second language writing is collaboration which enhances linguistic development and has b een ass o ciated with greater learner participation, improved communicative competence, and higher levels of metacognition (hyland, 2003). since its focus is principally on language form, written online communication seems to provide greater opportunity to reflect on and attend to the form and content of communication. in asynchronous virtual interaction students have more time to plan, produce, revise, and edit their texts and more possibility to read and analyze their peers’ texts (schuetze, 2011; warschauer, 2005). this has been found by gonzález-lloret (2003) to increase learners’ motivation as they perceive reading and writing as more authentic activities. peer tutoring is interaction for educational purposes between a more competent peer and a less competent learner who construct learning in collaboration. for this reason authors like duran and monereo (2005) have characterized peer tutoring as asymmetrical. in reciprocal tutoring, on the other hand, peers alternate in their roles of tutor and tutee, creating mutual assistance and social support. this encourages mutuality and allows both peers to benefit from the interaction, reducing dependency in the relationship (fantuzzo, king, & heller, 1992). according to ware (2004) peers working in second language writing scaffold and help each other in improving their writing skills; their mutual responses provide an authentic sense of audience, autonomy and confidence in writing. hyland (2003) indicates that this mutuality also helps develop communicative competence and stimulates participation. however, some researchers question the ability of peers to support others who are going through the same learning process (mendonça & johnson, 1994) or who may lack communicative and pragmatic skills and understand interaction in culturally different ways (hyland & hyland, 2006; ware, 2004). 75profile vol. 17, no. 1, january-june 2015. issn 1657-0790 (printed) 2256-5760 (online). bogotá, colombia. pages 73-86 online peer feedback between colombian and new zealand fl beginners: a comparison... specific research on peer-tutoring through error correction (corrective feedback) has explored the types of feedback provided (ayoun, 2001, 2004; ellis, loewen, & erlam, 2006), their effectiveness on linguistic accuracy in l2 (bitchener & knoch, 2010), and learners’ perceptions of this effectiveness (weaver, 2006). there have also been critiques of the claims that such studies have made (truscott, 1996), particularly of claims that corrective feedback has long-term effects. more attention has been given recently to written feedback by ellis (2009), who proposed a typology for it, and others (see bitchener & ferris, 2012 for a review), who have carried out studies mostly in university settings, with a few exceptions (choi & li, 2012; oliver, 1998). some studies have established correlations between virtual corrective feedback and language learning (blake, 2000; o’rourke, 2005; vinagre & muñoz, 2011). ferris (2010) declares that studies show evidence for l2 development and improvement in writing accuracy when corrective feedback is provided under the right conditions. there has also been interest in studying the processes by which corrections and feedback are provided. vinagre and lera (2008), for example, classified the corrections provided via email by university learners of english in spain and spanish in ireland into three categories: identification of the error, providing the accurate form—or remediation—, and providing information on how to correct. the authors suggest that corrections are more effective for spelling and vocabulary errors, while morphosyntactic errors, which were present in 75% of the corrections, are more effectively treated with remediation for promoting linguistic development. in reciprocal peer tutoring through virtual interaction organized between children learning english in spain and spanish in scotland, thurston, duran, cunningham, blanch, and topping (2009) also found that peer corrections were mainly morphosyntactic while peer support was based on giving the right answers. ware and o’dowd (2008) compared the language used and the frequency and type of feedback provided in asynchronous discussions by learners acting as formal e-tutors or e-partners; the former provided formal correction, the latter optional feedback. they found that all learners liked receiving feedback, but they only provided it when required; they “were not always equipped with a strong enough understanding of the structure of their native languages to provide quality metalinguistic explanations” (p. 55). the findings suggest that it is necessary to ensure that learners can actually provide the required feedback. greater structure in the peer tutoring process can enhance the nature and scope of the feedback provided during reciprocal peer tutoring, as ware and o’dowd (2008) showed in a two-year study of post-secondary learners of english and spanish. and in an exploratory study comparing face-to-face and e-feedback between english as a second language (esl) pairs of students, the group working online showed that they were aware of the needs of their peers and made balanced, critical comments (guardado & shi, 2007). the participants declared that they preferred to confirm the quality of the feedback with their teacher, but that they had learned in the process. the intervention for the study we report on here, online peer tutoring interaction was established between a co-ed group of 28 eleven-year old beginners (year 7) learning spanish as a fl in a state intermediate school in auckland and 24 comparable peers (5th and 6th grades) learning english as an fl in a private school in bogotá. the auckland school volunteered for the intervention and study when the school’s principal invited the research team at the university of auckland to undertake research on the school’s universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras76 tolosa, ordóñez & alfonso spanish program. researchers at universidad nacional de colombia were contacted to find the comparable group in bogotá. since most private schools in colombia are now bilingual or becoming bilingual from preschool and many schools beginning the process are not co-ed, a school was contacted serving children who did not have a level of english at the end of primary that allowed them to enter proper immersion bilingual schools in bogotá, for different reasons. the participating group in bogotá consisted of 15 male and 9 female students, paired with students in a parallel class of 13 male and 15 female students in auckland. both groups of students were beginners in their study of their respective foreign language. in both countries the participants were ranked in their fl attainment based on their scores on an fl pretest; then they were suitably paired with students with similar scores. this made their level of fl comparable and ensured that all students could participate w it hout fe elings of ins e c ur it y, infer ior it y, or inadequacy (thurston et al., 2009). the intervention consisted of a reciprocal peer tutoring writing scheme in which the dyads interchanged and responded to each other’s paragraphs in moodle, an online learning management system that allows secure exchange of messages and availability only to the participants in the study. the intervention had many restrictions. the types of tasks to be used, for example, were restricted by the beginning level of proficiency of the students. and quite traditional language teaching methods used by the teachers and, in the colombian case, big limitations of access to computers within the school also limited pedagogical possibilities. nevertheless the students exchanged paragraphs with their peers on topics decided between the teachers and the research team for eight weeks. they used language that they had already studied in their fl classes, like personal descriptions, family and school life, their city, and their favorite music and hobbies. the students had to read the paragraphs and send them back to their peers with linguistic feedback, so the peers could produce their final versions. this process of sending a paragraph on a topic, giving feedback, making corrections, and probably commenting again was to be repeated until each student had produced exchanges on at least five of the assigned topics. the study the study was exploratory, seeking to investigate different aspects of the impact of the online peer tutoring program to inform subsequent, more focused studies. it had three general aims: (1) to examine the ways in which the students tutored each other, (2) to assess the effects of the tutoring process on l1 and fl language proficiency, and (3) to detect any changes produced in the students’ motivation and attitudes towards the study of foreign languages. both quantitative and qualitative measures were used on different types of data: first, a free writing activity was used to assess the writing skill in the fl before and after the intervention. an attitude questionnaire and an fl spanish/english test were developed in parallel by the researchers in each country and also administered as preand posttests. a sub-sample of each participating group provided a semi-structured interview describing the tutoring experience from their point of view. and finally the texts interchanged by the participants in the online platform were used as data in the study. in this article we report specifically on the performance of the two groups as tutors, with regard to the error correction provided by each group of l1 speakers for the corresponding fl learners. the following questions guided this dimension of the study: 1. what linguistic aspects were corrected by the peer tutors? 2. how frequently did they correct errors? 3. what types of feedback did they use? 77profile vol. 17, no. 1, january-june 2015. issn 1657-0790 (printed) 2256-5760 (online). bogotá, colombia. pages 73-86 online peer feedback between colombian and new zealand fl beginners: a comparison... to answer these questions, the data from the online platform were captured as word processing documents. each paragraph interchanged over the eight weeks of the intervention was copied without modifications. it was decided to analyze, as evidence of interaction, only paragraphs which had been interchanged three times. this limited the amount of data analyzed, changed the number of participants in the study, and forced different decisions on data selection for the two participating groups of students. in the case of the new zealand data, only 17 dyads which had produced three exchanges on the first three topics were considered for analysis. from these pairs, ten had this exact number of exchanges on the three first topics, four had them on four, and three had them on all five. the dyads that were excluded had enough exchanges only on fewer than three of the five topics. the c olombian dat a pres ente d more of a challenge. only 11 dyads produced three exchanges or more on the first topic only. since the purpose of this part of the study was to analyze the types of corrections made by the participants and it was necessary to analyze a number of paragraphs corrected by the new zealand participants similar to that corrected by the colombian group, it was decided for these data to also consider paragraphs with only two exchanges. this decision resulted in the selection of 18 dyads that had completed two exchanges or more on the three first topics assigned. from these pairs, five had exchanged three messages on the first topic and two on the others, four had exchanged four messages first and then just two on the second and third topics, two had exchanged six and nine messages on the first topic and just two on the rest, and seven had exchanged just two messages on all three topics (see table 1). this situation indicated that the colombian participants probably had less direction from their teachers, had preferred extended conversations at the beginning of the intervention, and had been more consistent at correcting their peers’ paragraphs in spanish than at producing and revising their own paragraphs in english. table 1. number of dyads and exchanges analysed topic nz col no. of exchanges ≥3 ≥3 ≥2 1 17 11 7 2 17 0 18 3 17 0 18 the chosen messages were subsequently analyzed looking for answers to the three research questions, that is, looking for types of errors identified, frequency of identification of each type, and classification of the type of feedback produced. the errors identified were classified as grammar, vocabulary, or spelling mistakes. punctuation was initially included as a category, but difficulties in the use of the moodle platform to make punctuation corrections clear muddled results in this category. findings the students interacted online for a total of eight weeks, from mid-october to middecember 2010. data provided by moodle recorded two types of actions from the participants: views and posts (see table 2), with a total of 7,755 views and 896 posts in the eight week period. views indicate that students were interested in the project and willing to interact with their peers. posts correspond to paragraphs on a topic, corrections, or updates of the information. table 2. register of activity during the interaction activity/ month views posts october 1,497 237 november 6,111 650 december 147 9 total 7,755 896 universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras78 tolosa, ordóñez & alfonso a total of 2,038 words were written in spanish, 37 words per message on average. the total number of words per topic in spanish decreased from 831 on the first topic to 718 on the second one and 489 on the third one. longer messages were found on the topics in english, even though these included a smaller total number of messages, with an average of 55 words per message. the total number of words was 2,894. here the total number of words per topic decreased as well from 1,418 on the first one to 774 on the second one and 702 on the third one. the length of the messages did not increase as learning in spanish or english increased. this may have been due to decreased motivation or decreased time dedicated to the intervention, as the school year came to an end. answers to the first research question about linguistic aspects of language corrected by the peer tutors referred to how the instructions the teachers provided on error correction and feedback were put into practice. students had been instructed in ways to give feedback but had not been given guidelines on specific aspects of language they needed to correct, like noun-adjective agreement or verb conjugations. table 3 presents the total number of corrections made across the three topics analyzed. the total number of errors identified by the colombia peers was 377 while the new zealand peers identified 368. the errors most frequently detected by the colombian peers were grammatical (175), while the new zealand peers identified spelling errors the most (244). spelling errors came in second place for the colombian peers (115), while grammar errors were second for the new zealanders (111). finally we have vocabulary errors for both groups (87 and 13). table 3 shows the figures corresponding to this research question. the following are examples of the three types of errors: “mi coplianos esta es 17 de decembere” (my birthday is december 17) and “i have 11 years.” the colombian peer identified esta es as a grammatical error (two verbs meaning the same: is is), the word coplianos as a vocabulary error, and decembere as a spelling error (tolosa et al., 2013). in turn, the new zealand peer identified i as a spelling error, the missing word old as a grammar error, and the use of the verb have instead of be as a vocabulary error. to answer the second research question about the errors corrected, the numbers of errors identified by the students were compared with the numbers of errors identified by the researchers (table 4). in all categories, the colombian peer tutors identified and corrected more than 50% of the errors in their peers’ messages. the highest number of errors was vocabular y errors (79%), followed by grammar (68%) and then spelling (56%). the new zealand peer tutors did less well in identifying grammar and vocabulary errors. feedback was highest for them in spelling (57%), followed by grammar (45%) and then vocabulary (35%). in answering the third research question on types of feedback, categories of feedback like direct error correction, rewrite, and explanation were identified. the corrections were counted only once per type in each message. the results in table 5 show that the new zealand tutors produced a larger variety of types of feedback, even though they corrected fewer errors in general. providing the correct answer for an error identified was the most frequent form of feedback. all peer tutors used it, as shown by the numbers corresponding to the number of participating dyads. other forms of feedback were used sparingly by the colombian tutors. the new zealand tutors added a good number of corrections though unnecessary corrections. furthermore, they produced a lot of comments on the content of their peers’ paragraphs. this probably accounts for the higher total number of words on the topics initiated by the paragraphs in english. a few tutors in both groups provided explanations of the corrections made. for example, a learner of 79profile vol. 17, no. 1, january-june 2015. issn 1657-0790 (printed) 2256-5760 (online). bogotá, colombia. pages 73-86 online peer feedback between colombian and new zealand fl beginners: a comparison... spanish wrote: “en mi familia esta es mi madre mi padre mi hermana mi hermano mi gato y yo” (in my family there is is [sic] my mother, my father, my sister, my brother, my cat and i). the peer eliminated the extra form of the verb to be explaining the grammar error with “this is not necessary” and provided the correct form of the verb to be (tolosa et al., 2013). in turn, a learner of english wrote the word favorite in one of her messages, and the tutor felt the need to indicate: “in new zealand, we spell favorite as favourite.” a colombian tutor provided the most complete grammatical explanation in all the data, demonstrating a very good knowledge of the grammar of her language and very good tutoring skills: hola [name]. the errors that i have highlighted belong mostly to the same category. when you are describing anything in spanish, the adjectives need to agree (= follow the same pattern) as the nouns they are describing. so, if you are describing pelo which is masculine, your adjectives need to be masculine too: rubio, rizado, largo (remember that in spanish we signal masculine usually ending in o and feminine ending in a most times). (tolosa et al., 2013, p. 12) table 3. errors corrected by peer tutors peer tutor grammar spelling vocabulary total topic 1 colombian nz 35 39 61 111 20 5 116 155 topic 2 colombian nz 69 38 28 67 42 2 139 107 topic 3 colombian nz 71 34 26 66 25 6 122 106 total colombian nz 175 111 115 244 87 13 377 368 table 4. frequency of feedback on errors peer tutor errors identified by peer errors identified by researcher % of feedback gra spe voc gra spe voc gra spe voc topic 1 c nz 35 39 61 111 20 5 61 107 115 188 25 18 57% 36% 53% 59% 80% 27% topic 2 c nz 69 38 28 67 42 2 101 73 43 107 54 7 68% 52% 65% 63% 78% 28% topic 3 c nz 71 34 26 66 25 6 96 68 46 134 31 12 74% 50% 57% 49% 81% 50% total c nz 286 111 359 244 100 13 506 248 633 429 147 37 68% 45% 56% 57% 79% 35% universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras80 tolosa, ordóñez & alfonso the best explanations by the new zealand tutors were given about the use of capital letters, which the colombian peers almost never used: “make sure when you say a person’s name or a new sentence you use capital letters” and “remember capitals for people’s names and for starting sentences.” there were a few instances in which students completely re-wrote or partially re-phrased sentences in the original paragraph. for example, a new zealand student said “soy no baja y no alta” (i am neither short nor tall), and the corresponding colombian tutor re-wrote the sentence saying “soy mediana” (i am of average height). in this way the tutor demonstrated that she understood the message and then improved it (tolosa et al., 2013). an example of rewriting from the english paragraphs occurred when a colombian student wrote: “take you…i love you name my name is bad, all in colombia so called natalia ¿call me you photo my email?” the new zealand tutor surprisingly understood what she wanted to say and re-wrote the message completely in capital letters: “a better way to write it: thank you. i love your name, i don’t like my name. lots of people in columbia are called natalia. send me a photo by email.” in other examples the tutors showed themselves willing to help their peers, even though they produced unnecessary incorrect feedback. for example, a new zealand student wrote “mi numero de telefono es…,” without accent marks in número and teléfono but otherwise correct. the colombian peer offered an unnecessary vocabulary change (underlined here): “mi numero de telefono telefónico es…” the tutor probably considered the other form more common or more sophisticated (tolosa et al., 2013). similarly, a colombian student wrote in her second paragraph “is rap singer” (uppercase in the original). the new zealand tutor provided a good correction for table 5. classification of feedback provided type of correction peer tutor topic 1 topic 2 topic 3 total error identified colombian nz 1 2 2 1 0 0 3 3 correct answer provided colombian nz 17 18 17 18 17 18 51 54 comment on the content colombian nz 0 12 9 9 0 6 9 27 explanation provided colombian nz 3 3 1 0 1 1 5 4 text re-written colombian nz 0 3 1 3 2 2 3 8 wrong correction colombian nz 1 4 3 2 0 3 4 9 unnecessary correction colombian nz 1 8 0 2 0 4 1 14 total colombian nz 23 59 25 41 20 36 76 119 81profile vol. 17, no. 1, january-june 2015. issn 1657-0790 (printed) 2256-5760 (online). bogotá, colombia. pages 73-86 online peer feedback between colombian and new zealand fl beginners: a comparison... the subject of the sentence, and an unnecessary vocabulary one: “he is rap singer rapper.” illustrations of wrong corrections also come from both groups of tutors. when a new zealand student used the wrong spelling for her nationality in “soy necolandesa” (i am a new zealander, neozelandesa in spanish), her colombian tutor tried but failed in her attempt to provide a proper correction: “soy necolandesa, necolandeza” (tolosa et al., 2013). new zealand tutors, on the other hand, often produced wrong corrections when they did not understand what the colombian students had tried to say. this is the case in the following two original errors: “haf the hair curli” (meaning i have curly hair) and “have a filed of basketball” (meaning my school has a basketball field). the corrections provided were “half the hair” and “filled with basketball.” it was probably easy for the english speakers not to understand these attempted sentences, as they use spanish grammar with deleted subjects and adjectives after nouns. comments were included in the messages by both groups of peer tutors, although the new zealand comments outnumbered the colombian ones by far. a good number of comments were only social, which showed that the students considered their interaction conversation (tolosa et al., 2013). some peers even attempted to establish online friendships: “excellent! i like talking to you,” said a colombian student with good english; and his new zealand peer answered: “i like talking to you too”. and in response to her colombian peer asking how she was after describing her school, a new zealand tutor responded “i’m good, i’m in 7 grade!! your school sounds very cool. do you facebook?” comments from the new zealand tutors often included praise for what their tutees said and personal information in response to the content: “wow only one mistake good work keep at it do you have a facebook?” “that was really good i like rihanna to i like the song only girl;” “great work my best friends are ella, gabrielle, savanna, amber, talia, cecilia;” and “my school has lots of nature too. i am in 1st form or year 7 or 6th grade.” some comments referred to the process of writing: a colombian student who had a higher level of english said “i am still working on this entry” (uppercase in the original), for example (tolosa et al., 2013). other comments indicated problems in understanding, like “i don’t understand what the blue writing says,” by a new zealand tutor. another new zealand tutor tried to stimulate his colombian tutee to write about one of the established topics: “don’t you know a celeb?” but table 4 only includes comments containing feedback about the language in the original paragraphs, which in turn include the ones containing praise. there were many of these: “buen trabajo” (good job) by the colombian tutors and “great work” by the new zealanders. some of the new zealand tutors even attempted comments in spanish: “muy bien ingle’s” (incorrect, but meaning “very good english”). and the most interesting comments contained both praise for the peer or social content and specific guidance in an aspect of language to improve. one of these was produced by a colombian tutor: “tienes un buen español te felicito tienes que mejorar los (me) pero tienes un buen español te mando muchos saludos” (you have good spanish, congratulations. you need to improve on the use of me, but you have good spanish. best regards) (tolosa et al., 2013). and several more were found in the conversations initiated with the spanish paragraphs: “well done very good. not every thing is in capitals;” “great job xxx can you please check my words that need the __ on top of it. bye;” “it’s great to get to know you and you have awesome english! just remember that you include lower-case and upper-case.” discussion the present comparative analysis of the messages produced by the students in the online peer-tutoring universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras82 tolosa, ordóñez & alfonso context focused on the same points analyzed by tolosa et al. (2013): the aspects of language corrected by the tutors, the frequency with which feedback was provided, and the types of feedback provided. the results corroborate discussion points raised by the previous analysis of the feedback given by the colombian students in tolosa et al. (2013) and also show some interesting differences. dealing with corroboration first, this comparative analysis showed that participants in the intervention in both countries were willing to contribute their feedback and used different strategies and correction techniques focused on linguistic form. a good number of mistakes were not identified and some tutors were not always capable of providing accurate feedback or explanations, but in general students demonstrated an ability to participate autonomously and to provide their partners with corrections. the online learning environment also seems to have provided for practice of the foreign language and opportunities to engage in authentic interaction. the interaction with same age native “experts” in the foreign language added a level of authenticity to learning rarely experienced by foreign language learners either in c olombian or new z ealand classrooms. the peers were a real audience for each other and their short messages were read with genuine interest, despite coming from beginners. the peers’ reciprocal corrections reduced the usually vertical power structure that correction by “experts” usually produces. the “experts” assessed their novice peers’ messages knowing they would be in a similar position when their messages in the foreign language were assessed in turn. as to the differences revealed, tolosa et al. (2013) found that the majority of the corrections produced by the colombian tutors on the spanish paragraphs were grammatical, followed by spelling and vocabulary, as in other studies with students of different ages (blake, 2000; choi & li, 2012; o’rourke, 2005; vinagre & muñoz, 2011). nevertheless, the new zealand tutors identified spelling errors the most, and then grammar and vocabulary mistakes. the very low level of english in the colombian group may provide an explanation for this. they gave their english sentences mostly a spanish structure without subjects and with adjectives after nouns, which may have posed a special challenge for their new zealand tutors. the few corrections on vocabulary errors in both groups were attributed by tolosa et al. (2013) to a greater possibility of inference in asynchronous virtual written communication, which allows extended time to read and analyze messages. but the number of vocabular y errors identified by the new zealand tutors in the english paragraphs appears excessively small in comparison with the number of identifications by the colombians. this is corroborated in the next analysis. the new zealand tutors identified only 35% of the vocabulary errors in their colombian peers’ paragraphs in english, while the colombians identified over three quarters of the vocabulary errors in the spanish paragraphs. similarly, while the colombian tutors correctly identified over two thirds of the existing grammar errors, the new z ealand tutors only identified 45%. the two groups of tutors coincided only in identifying over half of the spelling errors made by their corresponding peers. several explanations are possible for the big differences in the number of errors identified by the two groups of tutors. tolosa et al. (2013) indicate that the limited time that the new zealand children had in their computer sessions to produce their messages and correct their peers’ may have been a factor. nevertheless the conditions under which the colombian tutors worked during the intervention were even less convenient: while the new zealand school had a proper computer room with a computer for each student, the colombian school had a computer room with only 11 working computers that had to be shared with other classes. 83profile vol. 17, no. 1, january-june 2015. issn 1657-0790 (printed) 2256-5760 (online). bogotá, colombia. pages 73-86 online peer feedback between colombian and new zealand fl beginners: a comparison... another possibility is that the new zealand tutors may not have recognized the errors because the sentences produced in english by the colombian peers were incomprehensible. this would point again to a very low level of english in the colombian group. alternative explanations given by tolosa et al. (2013) are that the new zealand tutors chose to focus on only the most important issues in the paragraphs for them; that they may have comprehended the messages easily enough without noticing all the mistakes; that they may have chosen to focus more on the understanding than on the mistakes; that they may have wanted to give their obviously beginner peers credit for their efforts; or that they may have felt uncomfortable correcting so many mistakes. nevertheless all these explanations apply also to the colombian tutors as there is a general mismatch between the actual errors in both sets of paragraphs and the frequency of corrections from both groups of tutors. as tolosa et al. (2013) indicate, the types of feedback that the students provided concur with simi l ar f indings in t hre e comp arable studies (thurston et al., 2009; vinagre & lera, 2008; ware & o’dowd, 2008). the reasons why the students preferred providing direct error correction (answers) to their peers rather than providing explanations may lie in the fact that the former is easier. alternatively, the tutors may have thought that providing the answer would be more helpful. however, it is also possible that only a few of them provided explanations because they were not always in a position to provide one, as has been suggested by ware and o’dowd (2008). it may also be that students lack the pragmatic or cultural predispositions to provide effective feedback beyond direct error correction (hyland & hyland, 2006; mendonça & johnson, 1994). a final finding can be added which is not related directly to the research questions explored in the study. it relates to the tutees’ responses to the feedback they received. analysis of the different versions of the messages initiated with the spanish paragraphs and the difficulty found within the ones initiated with the english paragraphs to select a sample of topics with three exchanges indicates that the tutees accepted the corrections provided by their tutors without question. they did not attempt to produce new versions of the messages, but rather considered the work finished. this may have been because tutors were perceived as experts with a final say on their paragraphs, or because they found the revision process too complex. again as tolosa et al. (2013) indicate, this makes it impossible to answer the research question about language learning in the participants. it also indicates that there are two variables to control in future research on peer tutoring: first, both tutors and tutees may need more instructions on how to provide feedback and what to do with the feedback received; and second, the teachers definitely need to monitor the peer exchanges and provide additional feedback. the teachers’ follow up may prevent students from learning mistakes from erroneous corrections, for example, or allow for better exploitation of unnecessary ones. and, more interestingly, it may help learners acquire skills in providing metalinguistic explanations in their mother tongue, thus contributing to l1 development. lessons learned lessons learned throughout the present study, some of them already derived from the previous study by tolosa et al. (2013), may inform future research. the most important lesson is that an eight week peer tutoring program at the end of the school year is not enough to really produce and impact on the learning of the foreign language or on first language development. for writing proficiency to develop, online peer tutoring programs should probably be sustained for longer periods of time to allow for continuous social and academic interaction, as well as for extended opportunities for feedback. online peer tutoring evidenced benefits of other kinds as other universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras84 tolosa, ordóñez & alfonso studies have shown (east, tolosa, & villers, 2012), but real learning probably needs a lot more time, especially at an early stage of language learning, as was the case in the present study. second, since students provided mainly grammatical feedback, it seems that they needed more explicit instruction on how to detect and correct formal features of their mother language. this connects to a third lesson: the fact that some required feedback was either missing or inaccurate, together with the fact that tutees appeared to receive the feedback without question, points to the danger of learning mistakes. so besides recommending the training of tutors on how to give feedback, it would be important to train tutees on what to expect and what to do with the feedback. this can probably be more effective if both tutors and tutees focus on one or two specific error groups that can occur in the task(s) at hand. fourth, in accord with guardado and shi’s (2007) observation that students prefer to confirm the peers’ feedback with that of the teacher, teachers should maintain oversight of the process and outcomes of the peer interactions, intervening to ensure the quality and consistency of the feedback provided and using this intervention to direct further instruction and training in linguistic form. this was even more necessary at the very beginning level of the participants in the present study, because the fact that the students had only started learning their fl meant that they did not have enough language to communicate beyond basic sentences. and finally, the messages exchanged were oneway descriptive texts. this did not promote richer social collaboration as other types of tasks would provide. a modification suggested for future projects, then, may be to organize the peer-tutoring experience around a variety of more interactive types of tasks which allow for richer language learning that better exploits the advantages of the social environment naturally created in the online environment. it would be important to continue exploring online peer tutoring between fl learners and l1 learners, especially at basic education levels. it is difficult to find studies that are comparable to the present one and with students of this age group that allow for a broader discussion on the benefits (or lack thereof ) of peer tutoring experiences like the one described in this study. references ayoun, d. 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(2009). international on-line reciprocal peer tutoring to promote modern language development in universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras86 tolosa, ordóñez & alfonso primary schools. computers & education, 53(2), 462472. http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.compedu.2009.03.005. tolosa, c., east, m., & villers, h. (2013). online peer feedback in beginners’ writing tasks: lessons learned. iallt journal of language learning technologies, 45 (1), 1-24. retrieved from http://www.iallt.org/iallt_journal/ online_peer_feedback_in_beginners_writing_tasks_ lessons_learned. truscott, j. (1996). the case against grammar correction in l2 writing classes. language learning, 46, 327-369. http://dx.doi.org/10.1111/j.1467-1770.1996.tb01238.x. vinagre, m., & lera, m. (2008). the role of error correction in online exchanges. in f. zhang & b. barber (eds.), handbook of research on computer-enhanced language acquisition and learning (pp. 326-341). hershey, pa: igi publishing. vinagre, m., & muñoz, b. (2011). computer-mediated corrective feedback and language accuracy in telecollaborative exchanges. language learning & technology, 15(1), 72-103. retrieved from http://llt.msu.edu/issues/ february2011/vinagremunoz.pdf. ware, p. (2004). confidence and competition online: esl student perspectives on web-based discussions in the classroom. computers and composition, 21(4), 451-468. http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.compcom.2004.08.004. ware, p., & o’dowd, r. (2008). peer feedback on language form in telecollaboration. language learning & technology, 12(1), 43-63. retrieved from http://llt.msu.edu/ vol12num1/pdf/wareodowd.pdf. warschauer, m. (2005). sociocultural perspectives on call. in j. egbert & g. m. petrie (eds.). call research perspectives (pp. 41-51). mahwah, nj: lawrence erlbaum. weaver, m. (2006). do students value feedback? student perceptions of tutors’ written responses. assessment & evaluation in higher education, 31(3), 379-394. http:// dx.doi.org/10.1080/02602930500353061. about the authors constanza tolosa is a lecturer in the faculty of education at the university of auckland, new zealand. her research interests concern language teaching and learning, teachers’ beliefs and practices, e-learning in languages, and bilingual and multicultural education. claudia lucía ordóñez is an associate professor in the department of foreign languages, universidad nacional de colombia, bogotá campus. she is doctor of education (language/cognitive development and education), harvard university (2000). she directs the universidad nacional research group “from pedagogical conceptions to pedagogical practices,” in which dr. tolosa is a co-researcher. tania alfonso finished the philology and languages program at universidad nacional de colombia in 2013 and is now a student of the linguistics program at the same institution. 65 http://dx.doi.org/10.15446/profile.v19n_sup1.68518 english language teachers’ perceptions on knowing and applying contemporary language teaching techniques percepciones de docentes de inglés sobre el conocimiento y aplicación de técnicas contemporáneas para la enseñanza de idiomas esen sucuoğlu1* near east university, mersin, turkey the aim of this study is to determine the perceptions of english language teachers teaching at a preparatory school in relation to their knowing and applying contemporary language teaching techniques in their lessons. an investigation was conducted of 21 english language teachers at a preparatory school in north cyprus. the spss statistical package was used for the data analysis. frequency and percentages were used to analyse the english language teachers’ knowledge, desire to learn, application of the innovative language techniques in their classrooms, experience of problems as well as teachers’ frequency of technique usage and where they learned these techniques. this study shows that the most known contemporary technique is communicative and less known contemporary language teaching techniques are blended/hybrid. key words: english language teaching, contemporary teaching techniques, english teachers. este estudio busca determinar las percepciones que profesores de inglés en una escuela preparatoria tienen respecto al conocimiento y aplicación en sus clases de técnicas contemporáneas de enseñanza de idiomas. los participantes fueron 21 docentes de una escuela prepraratoria en el norte de chipre. se utilizó el paquete estadístico spss para el análisis de los datos. la frecuencia y porcentajes sirvieron para analizar el conocimiento de los docentes, su deseo de aprender, la aplicación de técnicas innovadoras en sus clases, los problemas detectados, frecuencia del uso y dónde aprendieron dichas técnicas. el estudio muestra que la técnica contemporánea más conocida es la comunicativa y la menos conocida la mixta o híbrida. palabras clave: docentes de inglés, enseñanza del inglés, técnicas contemporáneas de enseñanza. * e-mail: esen.sucuoglu@neu.edu.tr how to cite this article (apa, 6th ed.): sucuoğlu, e. (2017). english language teachers’ perceptions on knowing and applying contemporary language teaching techniques. profile: issues in teachers’ professional development, 19(suppl. 1), 65-79. http://dx.doi.org/10.15446/profile. v19n_sup1.68518. this article was received on september 3, 2017, and accepted on november 7, 2017. this is an open access article distributed under the terms of the creative commons license attribution-noncommercial-noderivatives 4.0 international license. consultation is possible at https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/. profile: issues teach. prof. dev., vol. 19, supplement 1, 2017. issn 1657-0790 (printed) 2256-5760 (online). bogotá, colombia. pages 65-79 universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras66 sucuoglu˘ introduction for decades researchers have attempted to determine the best methods for providing english language instruction, especially for non-english speaking populations. the focus on english language teaching (elt) strategies has led to the development of a wide range of approaches that include individualized instruction, group activities, and collaborative learning models (hubackova, 2016; kuimova, uzunboylu, & golousenko, 2017). existing research often integrates multiple approaches in its exploration of methods that provide the greatest level of success for language knowledge. current approaches include communicative, constructivist, reflective, webbased, blended/hybrid, neurolinguistic programming, cooperative/collaborative, content-based, task-based, differentiated, participatory, multiple intelligences, project-based, strategies-based, and problem-based language teaching. research into the connection between these approaches and learner outcomes relate benefits when applied to different learner populations. in some cases, researchers have explored just one or two of the methods, while others have explored single approaches with assessments before and after the application of the teaching strategy. the main aim of this study is to determine the perceptions of the english language teachers regarding to what extend they are aware of the contemporary language teaching techniques and to what level they apply these techniques in their classess. literature review communicative language teaching communicative language teaching (clt) is an instructional approach that focuses on interactions in the target language to support the authentic adaptation of language (mohammed, sidek, & murad, 2016). in addition, ellis (2015) studied the application of clt in the development of language skills, but considered two different approaches frequently used. ellis looked at the differences between “focus-on-forms” and “focuson-form” as they apply to systems of communicative instruction. the first, focus-on-forms, requires instruction that focuses on grammatical learning in which learners are instructed in the correct forms of language in the hope that they can then apply these to communicative interactions. ellis argued that this type of approach assumes that the learner can transfer noncommunicative learning of forms to language-based interactions, which does not always occur. instead, ellis emphasizes the value of focusing on the correct forms used in language expression so that learners can develop a sense of the sound of correct language. focus-on-form, the second, is a strategy in clt through which the instructor reflects on correction of the communications that occur rather than instruction in grammar. learning must then be transferred to communicative interactions. ellis (2015) maintained that focus-on-form allows for the correction of communication and the facilitation of error correction during language learning and supports the continuation of a communicative task. this contradicts some traditional views that teachers should not take action when a student is performing a communicative task. ellis argued that focus-on-form and focus-on-forms do not have to be mutually exclusive, but could be complementary elements in a communicative language process. constructivist language teaching the constructivist approach to language teaching is linked to the belief that students develop understanding of language through their experiences, which in many cases should be influenced by the students’ views and interests. rather than using traditional approaches to develop language around rote learning and repetition, the constructivist approach seeks ways to authenticate language learning by determining how students can engage in and be a part of the language learning experience. wang (2014) maintained that language educators can promote the acquisition of language skills by providing 67profile: issues teach. prof. dev., vol. 19, supplement 1, 2017. issn 1657-0790 (printed) 2256-5760 (online). bogotá, colombia. pages 65-79 english language teachers' perceptions on knowing and applying contemporary language teaching... students with language opportunities through which they integrate their own interests and perspectives into the language learning process. wang (2014) further claims that language learners can benefit from the use of different online mechanisms to support a constructivist approach to developing language skills. wang proposed the use of wikis and collaboration between peers in online forum to help learners develop, modify, and advance their language skills. in particular, wang looked at the use of wikis so that individual learners could collaborate with others in the creation of wikis and could improve their writing skills and vocabulary through peer-based support. wang found that most of the students studied developed a high level of language engagement through the use of this constructivist approach in which the learners formed specific collaborative interactions of their own choosing. the wiki-mediated environment ensured that learners were engaged in the learning process and maintained continued interest in the topics they selected. the social interactions were a powerful learning tool for the adaptation of written language skills. reflective language teaching researchers, including pickering (2007) and pennington and hoekje (2014), have recognized the value of reflective learning strategies as a means of enhancing language understanding and engaging learners. pickering maintained the value of using tools, including learner diaries, self-evaluation tools, and peer assessments as the basis for developing and facilitating reflective learning. this is linked to the belief that learners are best able to determine what their needs are and where their limitations lie. subsequently, the educator can benefit from creating an interaction with learners that fosters exploration of potential and needs through a self-evaluation process (pickering, 2007). the aim of reflective language teaching is to advance the learners’ capacity for self-evaluation and autonomous learning (pickering, 2007). pennington and hoekje (2014) also maintained the value of reflective practices, arguing that language is valuable when it is developed within a context that is pertinent to the understanding and perceptions of the learner, especially in regard to the priority for language learning. subsequently, learners benefit from processes that require they examine their own process of language adaptation (pennington & hoekje, 2014). in alignment with this view, it is evident that the english language teaching that allows for a continuous process of personal assessment is beneficial because it not only defines strengths and weaknesses, but shapes the learners’ understanding of their progress over time. web-based language teaching web-based language teaching has been identified as a significant means of exploring different topics in language development and improving writing proficiency for english language learners (magalroyo & garcía-laborda, 2017). web-based language teaching can include a variety of different approaches to instruction, including explorative and interactive approaches that promote improvements in language acquisition (bikowski & vithanage, 2016; garcíalaborda, magal royo, litzler, & giménez lópez, 2014). bikowski and vithanage (2016) evaluated the use of a web-based collaborative writing task during in-class instruction in english language skills and found distinct benefits over this approach. these authors collected a range of different types of data, including assessments, sur veys, inter views, and observations as a means of determining how learners engaged in web-based collaborative writing tasks. when compared to traditional classroom writing instruction, bikowski and vithanage found that learners valued the collaborative experience and found the web-based approach engaging. before and after assessments of their performance on writing tasks also showed measurable improvements. universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras68 sucuoglu˘ the use of web-based tools, including those that improve communication, support clarity in expression, and promote learner engagement, was perceived as a beneficial step in improving english language acquisition (bicen & uzunboylu, 2013; bikowski & vithanage, 2016; ozcan & genc, 2016). the web-based approach, which expanded upon more common computer-assisted language learning (call), fostered the use of interactive media and collaboration that enhanced learning opportunities and direct communication. coordinated measures to enhance collaboration supported improvements in individuals integrating new english language skills (baglama, yikmis, & demirok, 2017; bikowski & vithanage, 2016). blended/hybrid language teaching increasingly, interest in online teaching has led to the focus on hybrid or blended instruction. while some educators focus on one or the other of these approaches, supporters of blended or hybrid instructional modalities believe that it is just a matter of time before this will become the most prevalent approach for instruction (mcneil, 2016). mcneil (2016) and akyol and garrison (2011) recognized that online learning methods have both benefits and drawbacks, but educator experience with the hybrid modality improves the quality of instruction (mcneil, 2016). preparing educators in english language instruction for the use of blended or hybrid approaches enhances the opportunity for learner success. mcneil (2016) maintained that the benefits of hybrid or blended instruction come from the fact that it can be used to individualize instruction and allow learners at a higher level of proficiency to develop their skills further than can their lower level peers. contrary to popular belief, mcneil also maintains that it is important for educators to recognize that hybrid instructional modalities are not a replacement for instructional process, but another way of delivering instruction. subsequently, professional development and understanding of the instructional paradigm is essential to creating beneficial experiences for learners (mcneil, 2016). for example, mcneil argued that hybrid learning experiences require educators to develop more learner-centered elements in their instruction, rather than less. because of the loss of faceto-face time with learners, instructors need to develop systems through which they engage and work with individuals in a manner that seems authentic. though hybrid systems may be more convenient for learners and provide more opportunities for instruction, they are not inherently easier to develop or implement than their classroom-based counterparts. neurolinguistic programming approaches neurolinguistic programming (nlp) approaches can be used in the context of english language instruction as a means of addressing some of the issues that learners face in the instructional environment (lashkarian & sayadian, 2015). it is not uncommon for english language learners to experience a broad range of responses to the instructional process, including anxiety that can hinder their capacity for self-improvement (lashkarian & sayadian, 2015). lashkarian and sayadian (2015) studied the application of nlp techniques in the classroom setting to improve attitudes and motivation for learning for 60 junior high school students in iran. these researchers demonstrated the use of nlp techniques to bolster student attitudes and motivation for learning and to improve testing performance on language acquisition skills. lashkarian and sayadian (2015) recognized the importance of assessing student learners who experienced nlp techniques and those who were provided with traditional instruction aligned with a textbook. the researchers provided 12 weeks of instruction to two different student groups and assessed the student performance prior to the instruction and then after the 12 weeks were completed. the outcomes of their study showed that the nlp approaches that were applied to relieve anxiety and improve attitudes towards learning were beneficial (lashkarian & sayadian, 2015). not 69profile: issues teach. prof. dev., vol. 19, supplement 1, 2017. issn 1657-0790 (printed) 2256-5760 (online). bogotá, colombia. pages 65-79 english language teachers' perceptions on knowing and applying contemporary language teaching... only did student performance on assessments improve when comparing the two groups, but educator reports, as measured through a teacher questionnaire survey, showed improvement in communication, motivation, and anxiety (lashkarian & sayadian, 2015). cooperative/collaborative language teaching because communication is often a collaborative process through which give and take is necessary, researchers have explored the benefits of using cooperative learning and collaborative teaching techniques in language instruction (mohammed & mahmoud, 2014; ozdamli & tavukcu, 2016). mohammed and mahmoud (2014) studied the application of a cooperative language learning (cll) approach to advance the language acquisition skills of second-year university students in saudi arabia. a key aspect of this program was the use of peer collaboration as an essential part of the development of written language skills, one of the weak areas for this population. these authors argued in favor of the use of cll approaches to enhance the writing skills of learners through personal interactions, self-assessments, and encouragement towards developing linguistic competence. though collaborative and cooperative language instruction approaches can be aligned with outcomes that show improved vocabulary performance and improved language understanding, competency in written language performance varies significantly. mohammed and mahmoud (2014) recognized that not all students demonstrated high levels of performance improvement through the application of cll approaches. in fact, many still made significant errors and did not always demonstrate adaptations to their written language. the outcomes of the study by mohammed and mahmoud still support the general assertion of benefits derived from cll approaches to instruction in post-secondary language learners, but they underscored the importance of creating collaborative relationships that are beneficial to both sides of the cooperative assignment. content-based language teaching content-based instruction focuses on aligning specific goals and language objectives to instructional content (bigelow, dahlman, & ranney, 2006). this approach is defined by the premise that language objectives should be clearly defined and content should be aligned with these objectives in order to determine if substantial change occurs as a result of the instructional process. in language instruction, it is especially important to understand the expectations related to content to provide an evaluative process. content-based language teaching not only requires the development of objectives, but the creation of a link between content and the approaches to meeting those objectives (bigelow et al., 2006). lesson planning and curriculum development have to be aligned with expected goals. subsequently, academic content in instruction that is based on english language learning must define the areas of proficiency that will be a part of the curriculum development for each class, and should align connections with educator planning (bigelow et al., 2006). bigelow et al. (2006) maintained that one of the challenges in this approach is that sometimes content overshadows the learning process. specifically, educators may be driven by the content rather than by the obtaining of learning objectives. subsequently, these researchers maintained that teachers need to look at language learning and actual acquisition skills as a primary component of the learning objectives in order to create content and planning through which these skills can be obtained. task-based language teaching lee (2016) recognized that there is an increasing focus on online learning opportunities, especially in relation to language learning. in alignment with this view, lee also argued the value of implementing task-based learning instruction in order to achieve the best outcomes for learners in this kind of growing instructional environment. this author maintained universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras70 sucuoglu˘ that benefits can be derived from instructional content that focuses on autonomous learning strategies in the online environment through task-based instruction. lee (2016) studied the use of skill-integrated tasks by a group of learners in order to assess their perceptions of the instructional process. this researcher used a variety of data collection methods to evaluate the impacts of this approach for elementary language instructional courses. lee maintained that learners who participated in structured courses were able to work independently and obtain specific information from this kind of instructional format. subsequent engagement was often found to be beneficial when used in conjunction with this approach. lee’s (2016) study was interesting because it demonstrated that different types of tasks can be presented in online formats with varying degrees of success. digital technologies and new methods of communication provide a foundation for creating engagement with learners (lake & ross, 2015). at the same time, the use of technology can be distancing for learners who have not had a considerable level of experiencing with online or computer-based instruction (basöz & can, 2016; uzunboylu, hursen, ozuturk, & demirok, 2015). the benefits of this modality are directly linked to familiarity with computer-based instruction, a reflection shared by many introducing new approaches to instruction in primarily traditional educational environments. differentiated language teaching pilat, solomintserva, shevchenko, svintorzhitskaja, and ermakova (2014) studied the introduction of foreign language instruction as a major component of russian higher education as a means of understanding factors that can influence instruction and the underlying reason for differentiated learning techniques. these researchers maintained that in many countries, students leave higher education with a sufficient level of language proficiency in english to participate in communicative tasks outside of the school setting. at the same time, they also recognized that many do not have the necessary skills or accuracy in either understanding or language expression to take part in authentic interactions with english language speakers. the main reason for disparities is that there are different levels of motivation, different reasons for learning, and different mandatory levels of performance. pilat et al. (2014) went on to maintain that benefits can be derived from recognizing these variances and creating a more effective approach to language teaching by integrating differentiated strategies. these authors argued that learners may need different levels of support to develop proficiency and to advance their capacity for self-assessment and language development. these elements require educators to understand the different levels of language training, different motivations, and different educational requirements that students may bring to the table. participatory language teaching participatory language teaching reflects the call for a greater level of personalization and methods of engagement in instruction. al-seghayer (2014) maintained that this is a major concept being promoted in english teacher preparation programs in other countries, including saudi arabia. al-seghayer argued that professional development needs to relate the contextual nature of language learning and the benefits from participatory interactions through which learning can be advanced. participatory instruction is related to the belief that language is culturally defined and that any measures to develop language aptitude have to reflect cultural collaboration or integration as a part of the learning process. this includes participation that is learner-centred and can help to promote language skill acquisition through a variety of methods. educators are more successful if they have opportunities to learn this kind of participatory instruction from other professionals or mentors who can help advance their understanding of instructional approaches (al-seghayer, 2014). 71profile: issues teach. prof. dev., vol. 19, supplement 1, 2017. issn 1657-0790 (printed) 2256-5760 (online). bogotá, colombia. pages 65-79 english language teachers' perceptions on knowing and applying contemporary language teaching... multiple intelligences language teaching the concept of multiple intelligences goes back to the authorship of howard gardner (as cited in ghamrawi, 2014), who believed that learners learned in a variety of different ways. aptitudes in different areas, including visual, spatial, and musical-rhythmic, could be contrasted with traditional learning modalities. rote learning approaches are only beneficial to a very small portion of the population, and most learners fall into one of gardner’s other dimensions of intelligence (there are eight in total). ghamrawi (2014) maintained that educators can benefit from applying this theory to the development of language skills at a variety of different educational levels. english language instruction that allows for an understanding of these dimensions promotes learning in different ways that students can explore. english language learning can be introduced in different ways to address the intelligences of all people in the classroom setting (seker, 2016). this approach improves the ability of learners of different intelligences to take part in the instructional process and improve their overall performance. subsequently, ghamrawi maintained that it is important to include multiple intelligences in english as a second language (esl) classrooms, especially when addressing the needs of a varied learner population. multiple intelligences instructional strategies, including differentiated learning modules based on the different dimensions of intelligence, can promote gains across populations (ghamrawi, 2014). project-based language teaching dooly and sadler (2016) recognized the value of exploring language teaching in a variety of ways. these researchers argued that project-based learning could be applied to english language acquisition by integrating varied technologies and different activities to support the resolution of specific problems. language teaching then becomes contextualized and the learners express their ideas and perspectives through collaborative partners that can help them understand and resolve specific problems (dooly & sadler, 2016). dooly and sadler (2016) further expounded upon this idea by developing an integrated and innovative approach that includes both technology and strategies for improving language function. these researchers explored existing teaching approaches and compared them with project-based language instruction. the belief that students motivated to resolve specific problems will have a greater ability to adapt and integrate language more freely to communicate about the project were essential elements in this study. the exploration of this approach indicated that there are clear links between project-oriented instructional elements and the capacity for integrating authentic language. strategies-based language teaching garcía magaldi (2010) maintained that developing a sense of autonomy in language learners is essential to their motivation to continue and their capacity for language adaptation and use. garcía magaldi argued that language learning often focuses on the development of self-assessment techniques and the capacity for autonomy both in learning and using the language. without a level of autonomy that is achieved through the instructional process, learners are unlikely to utilize the language once given an authentic or contextualized opportunity to speak or write. strategies-based language teaching looks at specific issues, including autonomy and self-awareness, and seeks methods to support instruction that is based on continued learning outside of the classroom (abdulhay, 2015; garcía magaldi, 2010). garcía magaldi (2010) supported the use of learning strategies that promote learner autonomy, improve performance, and look at ways of creating authentic language experiences outside of the classroom. this included promoting an understanding of the use of language with peers and society in general. in order for learners to be autonomous, they must first universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras72 sucuoglu˘ understand how language impacts how they interact. subsequently, the author identified major theories about the strategic use of language and methods to support authenticity in the use of language outside of the classroom (garcía magaldi, 2010). problem-based language teaching othman and shah (2013) explored the use of a problem-based learning approach for students in language classes in order to assess its impact on conveying necessary content and in the development of language skills. this study related the impacts of this approach on 128 students, divided into two groups, one of which received traditional text-related instruction and the other receiving problem-based language teaching. the outcomes of the study showed significant improvements in the performance of learners who received problem-based instruction, especially in tasks that were related to writing. this approach reflects the belief that critical thinking skills are essential to language acquisition. this is less related to the development of grammar systems and more to the content and context in which language develops. othman and shah (2013) argued the value of understanding the importance of exploring different ways of communicating information as a part of the development of communication skills. the use of real life problems as a foundation for communication creates a greater degree of authenticity in the development of language skills. the integration of critical thinking skills into the development of language becomes an essential step in this process that advances vocabulary learning and fluency. method research design the research is a quantitative descriptive research project that aims to determine the perceptions of english language teachers teaching at the preparatory school of near east university in relation to their knowing and applying innovative language techniques in their lessons. population and samples samples were selected randomly among the english language teachers teaching at the preparatory school in near east university. the investigation was conducted with 21 english language teachers at the near east university preparatory school in north cyprus. instrumentation as an instrumentation of this study, a questionnaire in relation to taking perceptions of english language teachers regarding whether they know about and apply innovative language techniques in their classrooms was conducted with 21 english language teachers teaching at the preparatory school of near east university. the researcher developed the questionnaire by herself. data analysis data were analyzed using the spss statistical package. frequency and percentages were used to analyze the english language teachers’ knowledge, desire to learn, application of the innovative language techniques in their classrooms, experience with problems as well as teachers’ usage frequency and where they learned these techniques. there are 15 sections and 6 sub-questions in each section. findings as shown in table 1, 95.2% of the english language teachers are aware of clt. one of them indicated that s/he desired to learn about this technique. the majority of the teachers are not even aware of the technique. eight teachers reported that they want to learn about this technique whereas four do not desire to learn about it. more than half (61.9%) of the teachers indicated that they know about the reflective language teaching technique. nearly half of them do not want to learn about the technique. this finding is quite interesting. it is worth 73profile: issues teach. prof. dev., vol. 19, supplement 1, 2017. issn 1657-0790 (printed) 2256-5760 (online). bogotá, colombia. pages 65-79 english language teachers' perceptions on knowing and applying contemporary language teaching... searching whether the reason is the technique itself or the teachers’ unwillingness to learn about it. nearly all of the teachers (95.2%) are aware of the web-based language teaching technique. one of them indicated that s/he does not desire to learn about this technique. very few of the teachers (14.3%) are aware of the blended/ hybrid language teaching technique. this is a very small percentage. most of the teachers are not aware of this technique. however, the number of teachers desiring to learn this technique is really small. half of the teachers do not desire to learn this technique. seventy-one point four percent of the teachers are aware of the nlp language teaching technique. among those who do not know about the technique, one indicated that s/he is willing to learn about the technique. seventy-six point two percent of the teachers know about the cooperative/collaborative table 1. english language teachers’ knowledge and desire to learn the innovative language techniques innovative language teaching techniques teachers’ awareness of the innovative language teaching techniques teachers’ having a desire to learn the innovative language teaching techniques yes no yes frequency percentage frequency percentage frequency communicative language teaching 20 95.2 1 4.8 1 constructivist language teaching 9 42.9 12 57.1 8 reflective language teaching 13 61.9 8 38.1 4 web-based language teaching 18 85.7 3 14.3 2 blended/hybrid language teaching 3 14.3 18 85.7 9 nlp language teaching 15 71.4 6 28.6 5 cooperative/collaborative language teaching 16 76.2 5 23.8 3 content-based language teaching 17 81 4 19 1 task-based language teaching 18 85.7 3 14.3 2 differentiated language teaching 8 38.1 13 61.9 6 participatory language teaching 10 47.6 11 52.4 8 multiple intelligences language teaching 15 71.4 6 28.6 5 project-based language teaching 15 71.4 6 28.6 3 strategies-based language teaching 9 42.9 12 57.1 8 problem-based language teaching 15 71.4 6 28.6 2 universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras74 sucuoglu˘ language teaching technique; whereas two of the teachers do not want to learn about the technique. nearly all of the teachers (81%) know about the content-based language teaching technique. only one of the teachers desires to learn about the technique whereas the majority of them do not want to know about the technique. eighty-five point seven percent of the participants are aware of the task-based language teaching technique. among those who do not know about the technique, only one of them wants to learn about it. thirty-eight point one percent of the teachers are aware of the differentiated language teaching technique. those who are not aware of the technique do not want to learn the technique. nearly half of the english language teachers (47.6%) know about the participatory language teaching technique. among those who do not know about the technique, three of them reported that they do not desire to learn about it. seventy-one point four per cent of the teachers know about the multiple intelligences language teaching technique. among those who do not know about the technique, one of them reported that s/he does not desire to learn about it. seventy-one point four per cent of the participants are aware of the project-based language teaching technique. among those who do not know about the technique, half of them reported that they do not want to learn about it. nearly half of the teachers (42.9%) know about the strategies-based language teaching technique. among those who do not know about the technique, four of them reported that they do not want to learn about it. seventy-one point four per cent of the teachers know about problem-based language teaching technique. among those who do not know about the technique, the majority of them reported that they do not desire to learn about it. as shown in table 2, the most used innovative language technique is communicative language teaching technique and the least used is multiple intelligences language teaching technique. constructivist language teaching, project-based language teaching, and blended/ hybrid language teaching techniques are also favorable. table 2. whether the teachers who are aware of the innovative language teaching techniques apply them in their lessons innovative language teaching techniques yes no frequency percentage frequency percentage communicative language teaching 19 95 1 5 constructivist language teaching 6 66.7 3 33.3 reflective language teaching 4 44.4 5 55.6 web-based language teaching 3 33.3 6 66.7 blended/hybrid language teaching 2 66.7 1 33.3 nlp language teaching 7 53.8 6 46.2 cooperative/collaborative language teaching 5 27.8 13 72.2 content-based language teaching 3 21.4 11 78.6 task-based language teaching 1 33.3 2 66.7 differentiated language teaching 1 50 1 50 participatory language teaching 4 40 6 60 multiple intelligences language teaching 1 11.1 8 88.9 project-based language teaching 10 66.7 5 33.3 strategies-based language teaching 4 44.5 5 55.5 problem-based language teaching 12 80 3 20 75profile: issues teach. prof. dev., vol. 19, supplement 1, 2017. issn 1657-0790 (printed) 2256-5760 (online). bogotá, colombia. pages 65-79 english language teachers' perceptions on knowing and applying contemporary language teaching... table 3. whether the english language teachers who apply the innovative language teaching techniques in their lessons experience any problems innovative language teaching techniques yes no frequency percentage frequency percent communicative language teaching 2 12.5 14 87.5 constructivist language teaching 5 83.3 1 16.7 reflective language teaching 2 50 2 50 web-based language teaching 1 33.3 2 66.7 blended/hybrid language teaching 1 50 1 50 nlp language teaching 5 71.4 2 28.6 cooperative/collaborative language teaching 3 60 2 40 content-based language teaching 2 66.7 1 33.3 task-based language teaching 1 100 differentiated language teaching 1 100 participatory language teaching 2 50 2 50 multiple intelligences language teaching 1 100 project-based language teaching 3 60 2 40 strategies-based language teaching 2 50 2 50 problem-based language teaching 4 50 4 50 table 4. how often the english language teachers apply the innovative language teaching techniques in their lessons innovative language teaching techniques always often sometimes rarely never f % f % f % f % f % communicative language teaching 1 5 11 55 7 35 1 5 constructivist language teaching 1 11.1 2 22.2 3 33.3 3 33.3 reflective language teaching 2 15.4 3 23.1 2 15.4 6 46.2 web-based language teaching 1 5.9 2 11.8 2 11.8 12 70.6 blended/hybrid language teaching 1 50 1 50 nlp language teaching 1 8.3 3 25 2 16.7 6 50 cooperative/collaborative language teaching 1 7.1 2 14.3 6 42.9 2 14.3 3 21.4 content-based language teaching 10 62.5 4 25 2 12.5 task-based language teaching 2 11.1 6 33.3 6 33.3 3 16.7 1 5.8 differentiated language teaching 1 20 1 20 3 60 participatory language teaching 1 14.3 2 28.6 2 28.6 1 14.3 1 14.3 multiple intelligences language teaching 2 15.4 1 7.7 2 15.4 5 38.5 3 23.1 project-based language teaching 1 10 2 20 4 40 3 30 strategies-based language teaching 1 16.7 3 50 2 33.3 problem-based language teaching 2 22.2 1 11.1 4 44.4 2 22.2 universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras76 sucuoglu˘ english language teachers can face difficulties while applying innovative language techniques. however, table 3 reveals that the participants of this study do not face many difficulties. as the most known and applied technique, teachers face less difficulties while applying communicative language technique. most difficulties are experienced while applying constructivist and nlp language teaching techniques. table 4 shows that 50% of the participants indicated that they always apply the blended/hybrid language teaching technique in their lessons. similarly, 55% of them reported that they often use communicative language teaching in their studies. furthermore, 42.9% of the language teachers said that they sometimes apply the cooperative/collaborative language teaching technique in their classrooms. table 5 shows that, apart from web-based, nlp, and blended/hybrid innovative language teaching techniques, the participants had been familiar with the other techniques while they were undergraduate students. teachers got their familiarity with web-based and nlp language teaching techniques mostly from seminars. on the other hand, participants had become familiar with the blended/hybrid language teaching technique equally while they were an undergraduate student and while they attended seminars. conclusion existing studies on the use of a variety of language teaching systems demonstrate the range of ways that language skills can be developed. fostering positive learning environments is an essential component of most of the current approaches to instruction. some of the prevalent approaches used in english language instruction include: communicative, constructivist, reflective, web-based, blended/hybrid, nlp, cooperative/ collaborative, content-based, task-based, differentiated, participatory, multiple intelligences, project-based, table 5. where the english language teachers have learned about the innovative language teaching techniques innovative language teaching techniques university seminar at work others f % f % f % f % communicative language teaching 14 73.7 3 15.8 1 5.3 1 5.3 constructivist language teaching 7 77.8 1 11.1 1 11.1 reflective language teaching 10 76.9 2 15.4 1 7.7 web-based language teaching 7 38.9 8 44.4 1 5.6 2 11.1 blended/hybrid language teaching 1 50 1 50 nlp language teaching 6 42.9 8 57.1 cooperative/collaborative language teaching 11 73.3 3 20 1 6.7 content-based language teaching 13 76.5 3 17.6 1 5.9 task-based language teaching 14 87.5 1 6.3 1 6.3 differentiated language teaching 5 83.3 1 16.7 participatory language teaching 8 88.9 1 11.1 multiple intelligences language teaching 9 69.2 2 15.4 1 7.7 1 7.7 project-based language teaching 9 81.8 2 18.2 strategies-based language teaching 8 100 problem-based language teaching 10 83.3 2 16.7 77profile: issues teach. prof. dev., vol. 19, supplement 1, 2017. issn 1657-0790 (printed) 2256-5760 (online). bogotá, colombia. pages 65-79 english language teachers' perceptions on knowing and applying contemporary language teaching... strategies-based, and problem-based language teaching. generally, web-based and hybrid systems are gaining increasing attention because of the prevalence of computer-based systems in classrooms. in addition, task-based and problem-based learning instructions strive to integrate new ways of adapting language and creating a context within which language learning can occur. this study shows that the five most known innovative techniques are communicative (95.2%), web-based (85.7%), task-based (85.7%), content-based (81%) and cooperative/collaborative (76.2%) language teaching techniques. on the other hand, the five least known innovative language teaching techniques are blended/ hybrid (14.3%), differentiated (38.1%), constructivist (42.9%), strategies-based (42.9%) and participatory (47.6%) language teaching techniques. teachers’ desires to learn these techniques are low; in other words, these techniques are less known and teachers do not want to learn about them. the most known and applied language teaching techniques are communicative, problem-based, and project-based innovative techniques. the participants of this study stated that they do not face many difficulties. the most known and applied technique that teachers face less difficulties with while applying is the communicative language technique. most of the difficulties are experienced while applying the constructivist and nlp language teaching techniques. in this sense, undergraduate education is really important. as long as the curriculum of undergraduate studies is innovated, teachers become more active in their classrooms. similarly, seminars are important sources for teachers to renew 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(2014). using wikis to facilitate interaction and collaboration among efl learners: a social constructivist approach to language teaching. system, 42, 383-390. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.system.2014.01.007. about the author esen sucuoğlu studied english language teaching at near east university, turkey. he holds an ma in english language teaching and a phd in educational administration, supervision, planning, and economics from the same university. 55profile vol. 19, no. 1, january-june 2017. issn 1657-0790 (printed) 2256-5760 (online). bogotá, colombia. pages 55-72 http://dx.doi.org/10.15446/profile.v19n1.54184 comparing the internet usage of pre-service language teachers with teachers of other subjects: distance learning vs. on-campus learning comparación del uso de internet entre docentes de idiomas en formación y docentes de otras áreas: educación a distancia frente a presencial mehmet firat1* harun serpil2** anadolu university, yunusemre, turkey teachers play a crucial role in helping individuals gain adequate internet competency, which requires teachers themselves to be internet-literate. the purpose of this study is to investigate the internet use of the distance and on-campus pre-service teachers of language and other disciplines by multiple parameters. a total of 789 teacher candidates participated in this survey. the findings show that the candidate teachers in on-campus and distance-learning programs have an average level of internet usage adequacy and that the younger candidate teachers and those in higher classes use the internet more frequently. pre-service foreign language teachers have been found to have a moderate level of internet usage frequency, adequacy and technology ownership in comparison with the other preservice teacher groups. key words: internet in education, open and distance education, pre-service language teachers. los maestros juegan un papel crucial para facilitar que las personas adquieran competencias adecuadas para el uso de internet. esto requiere que los maestros mismos sean diestros en dichas competencias. el propósito de este estudio es investigar el uso de internet, a distancia y dentro del campus, de los futuros profesores. un total de 789 docentes en formación participaron en este estudio-encuesta. los resultados muestran que los docentes, tanto dentro del campus como en los programas de aprendizaje a distancia, tienen un nivel medio en lo que respecta al uso de internet. los docentes más jóvenes y los mayores utilizan internet con más frecuencia. se ha encontrado que la suficiencia y la apropiación de la tecnología, así como la frecuencia de uso de internet por parte de los futuros profesores de idiomas, son moderadas en comparación con docentes en formación de otras áreas. palabras clave: educación abierta y a distancia, internet en la educación, profesores de idiomas en formación. * e-mail: mfirat@anadolu.edu.tr ** e-mail: hserpil@anadolu.edu.tr how to cite this article (apa 6th ed.): firat, m., & serpil, h. (2017). comparing the internet usage of pre-service language teachers with teachers of other subjects: distance learning vs. on-campus learning. profile issues in teachers’ professional development, 19(1), 55-72. http://dx.doi.org/10.15446/profile.v19n1.54184. this article was received on november 13, 2015, and accepted on july 21, 2016. this is an open access article distributed under the terms of the creative commons license attribution-noncommercial-noderivatives 4.0 international license. consultation is possible at http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/. universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras56 firat & serpil introduction the information technology (it) trend has taken over the world with the rapid popularization of the internet, leading to its ubiquitous use in education and bringing out important innovations in the field (becker, 1999). the internet has helped improve the speed and scale of the development of today’s technology and allowed it to acquire new dimensions. as a result, the need for internet-literate individuals has grown (coiro, knobel, lankshear, & leu, 2014). to date, various studies have been conducted regarding media literacy, information literacy, computer literacy, technology literacy, and internet literacy (leu, kinzer, coiro, castek, & henry, 2013) and, more specifically, regarding the digital literacy of foreign language teachers (guikema & menke, 2014), and the internet literacy of english as a foreign language (efl) teachers (bolandifar, 2013; cakir & atmaca, 2015; çelik, 2013; cirit, 2015; dashtestani, 2014; dias & bocorny, 2014; khany & boghayeri, 2013; khassawneh, 2012; kia heirati & ahmadi alashti, 2015; shin & son, 2007). providing numerous opportunities for using authentic materials, unlimited learning, and synchronous or asynchronous communication styles, foreign language teachers in their teaching have greatly benefited from the web 2.0 tools like blogs, wikis, podcasts, and social networking (sturm, kennell, mcbride, & kelly, 2009). internet literacy is closely related to computer literacy, which is now of great importance in our everyday life (dinev & hart, 2005). a skills-based definition of internet literacy includes viable research strategy, semiotics, and political debates (livingstone, 2004). livingstone and helsper (2010) defined internet literacy as a multidimensional construct that encompasses the abilities to access, analyze, evaluate, and create online content. internet literacy can be considered to be a type of media literacy (livingstone, 2004). basically, media literacy can be defined as the ability and skill to analyze, evaluate, communicate, and access unwritten and written messages in various digital formats. on the other hand, internet literacy can be defined as the skill of finding, editing, understanding, analyzing, evaluating, and producing information through the internet. internet literacy has become an essential competency for people today. helping individuals gain this competency is socially accepted as a teacher’s duty and responsibility (kurbanoğlu & akkoyunlu, 2002). most of the research on the internet literacy of preservice language teachers and their views and experiences of using the internet in language teaching so far has found that these teachers are positive towards using the internet in language teaching (cirit, 2015; eyyam, meneviş, & doğruer, 2010; khany & boghayeri, 2013; khassawneh, 2012; kia heirati & ahmadi alashti, 2015; kuo, 2008; shin & son, 2007), with the notable exception of hismanoglu (2012) who reported some negative attitutes toward information and communication technologies (ict) by preservice efl teachers studying in distance education programs. related research various internet literacy research has focused on different target groups (sinha, bhattacharjee, & bhattacharjee, 2013; wulandari, 2013), including the internet literacy of children and young people (eagleton, guinee, & langlais, 2003; livingstone, bober, & helsper, 2005; livingstone, 2007; chang, 2013). however, currently the available research on the internet usage of teachers is very limited, and no study is available regarding the internet usage status of pre-service teachers studying in on-campus education faculties and open education faculties. however, some relevant studies are noteworthy. caywood and duckett (2003) compared online vs. on-campus learning in teacher education. one hundred and forty students participated in the study, half of these online and the other half on-campus. students self-selected the format 57profile vol. 19, no. 1, january-june 2017. issn 1657-0790 (printed) 2256-5760 (online). bogotá, colombia. pages 55-72 comparing the internet usage of pre-service language teachers with teachers of other subjects... in which they took the course. according to the results of the study, no significant differences between these two groups were found in the measurement of initial learning or follow-up performance. in 1998, 2,250 teachers in the usa participated in a national survey concerning the internet usage of 4th grade to 12th grade teachers (becker, 1999). it was determined that 39% of the teachers had internet connection in the class, 59% had internet connection at home, and 27% had no internet connection at all. also, it was found that mathematics teachers used the internet the least, at 9%. it was shown that the teachers had average internet usage adequacy and those under 30 used the internet more frequently compared to those above 30. additionally, teachers adopting constructivist approaches were also using the internet more often compared to those with an objectivist approach. another study conducted by liang and chao (2002) aimed to determine the internet literacy of primary and secondary school teachers in taiwan. nine hundred and seventy-five primary and secondary school teachers participated in the study. at the end of the study, it was found that the male teachers were more internet literate than the female teachers and the younger teachers were more literate than the older teachers. it was also observed that the internet literacy of the managers and teachers did not differ significantly. it was also concluded that the internet literacy of teachers did not depend on the city or rural area they were living in. in a study by mohamed zaki (2013), the ict and internet usage of 236 pre-school teachers in australia and malaysia was examined. it was determined that there was no internet access in the schools of more than half of the teachers and that the older teachers’ internet usage was low. livingstone and helsper (2010) examined the role of selected measures of internet literacy in relation to teenagers’ online experience. data were collected from 789 uk teenagers through a national survey. internet usage was found to positively correlate with internet literacy, online opportunities, and risks. smarkola (2008) conducted research on technology literacy in education, examining 160 students and 158 experienced teachers, and found significant differences in technology use across grade levels. the findings showed that the lower grades meet the national technology literacy standards better than the upper grades. various studies have been conducted regarding the internet usage of teachers in turkey. in a study conducted by akkoyunlu (2002), the purpose of internet usage and the teachers’ opinions on internet usage were analyzed. for this purpose, a survey was developed by the researcher. it was concluded that only 9% of the teachers were not using the internet, and among the rest of the teachers, the internet was used mostly for communication. in another study by akkoyunlu and yılmaz (2005), pre-service teachers’ information literacy levels, internet usage frequency, and purpose of internet usage were investigated. according to the results, the higher the information literacy levels of teachers, the higher was the internet usage frequency. additionally, pre-service teachers were found to use the internet primarily to access information. in another study conducted by atav, akkoyunlu, and sağlam (2006), internet access opportunities and the internet usage purposes of the pre-service teachers were discussed. two hundred and fifty-nine students from the first and final years of the faculty of education, the department of secondary school science, and the department of mathematics of hacettepe university participated in the study. a survey form was developed as a datacollection tool. they found that 86.9% of the pre-service teachers used the internet and 41.3% accessed internet via internet cafes. the internet was used by the majority of the pre-service teachers for multiple purposes, such as accessing information, homework, performing projects, and for communication (e-mails, chat). universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras58 firat & serpil there have also been some studies conducted to analyze the usage of the internet and application of internet-assisted language teaching (ialt) by turkish efl teachers. çelik (2013) found that turkish efl instructors were not fully aware of the latest technologies available to them and that they mostly use the internet to teach structural rather than communicative aspects of language. these instructors were also found not to rate themselves highly concerning their skill at fostering learner autonomy and interactivity by using the internet. bozdoğan and özen (2014) concluded that the majority of the turkish pre-service efl teachers were found to be self-efficacious in the use of ict, and while higher experience and confidence correlate positively with using ict, lack of knowledge, skills, or confidence has the opposite effect. focusing on the facebook use of pre-service efl teachers, cakir and atmaca (2015) found that the participants were favorable towards the use of facebook as an educational tool in english language classes and they thought that adolescents at the intermediate english level were the most appropriate group to teach via facebook. they also thought that this medium fit self-study purposes best. the researchers recommended teacher education programs to be properly upgraded to meet the current ict demands and help student teachers to gain the needed “teachnology” skills towards successful synthesis of the latest technology and appropriate teaching styles into their future classes. cirit (2015) found that almost all the pre-service efl teachers in her study were motivated to adapt internet tools for assessment, although they were challenged by the lack of guidelines and necessary training to help them use such web-based assessment technologies. a very recent mixed-method study (merc, 2015) found that turkish pre-service efl teachers did not adequately benefit from ict tools mainly due to the clear misalignment between teacher training programs and actual instructional environments regarding ict integration; also, the author points out the need for “a stronger link” between the two. as shown in this brief review of related research, although there are many studies regarding media literacy, information literacy, technology literacy, internet literacy, and the internet use by different groups, a very limited number of studies are available on the internet usage status of pre-service teachers from both on-campus and distance-learning programs. therefore, this study is considered to fill in this gap in the research and become a useful sample research for future studies in this direction. in this study, the internet usage of pre-service teachers was studied based on the parameters of internet usage frequency, adequacy, and experience. purpose the purpose of this study is to investigate the internet usage of the pre-service teachers in the faculty of education and the faculty of open education in anadolu university including terms of internet usage frequency, internet usage adequacy, and internet usage experience. in this context, answers to the following questions are sought: 1. what is the internet usage status of pre-service teachers in on-campus and distance-learning programs? 2. does the internet usage situation of on-campus and distance-learning pre-service teachers differ depending on their department, class, or gender? method this study is a form of survey research aiming to ascertain the internet usage status of offand on-campus pre-service teachers. this section comprises the subsections of participants, data-collection tool, data collection processes, and data collection analysis. participants the participants consisted of 472 pre-service teachers from the faculty of education from the academic year 2012-2013 and 317 pre-service teachers 59profile vol. 19, no. 1, january-june 2017. issn 1657-0790 (printed) 2256-5760 (online). bogotá, colombia. pages 55-72 comparing the internet usage of pre-service language teachers with teachers of other subjects... from the faculty of open education from the academic year 2013-2014. a total of 789 pre-service teachers participated in the study. convenience sampling was performed in the study. the research was performed by contacting students from each department, for which contact permission was obtained, and those who it was possible to reach were given this survey. information regarding the programs that pre-service teachers were registered for in the faculty of education is given in figure 1. as seen in figure 1, the number of participants is quite high in some programs (37%), whereas this number falls as low as 2% in others. sub-factors were combined because the number of students per sub-factor regarding their departments varied substantially. as a result, sub-factors with close participant numbers were ascertained. as a result, participating students from english teaching, french language teaching, and german language teaching classes were combined under foreign language education and students from primary school mathematics teaching, pre-school teaching, and classroom teaching classes were combined under primary education. since the number of students from the information technology (it) department was high, these students were categorized under the it label. demographical information of pre-service teachers from the faculty of education who participated in the study in the academic year 2012-2013 is given in table 1. figure 1. programs of teacher candidates program in french language teaching prog. in primary school mathematics teaching program in english language teaching program in pre-school education program in guidance and psychological counseling program in arts and crafts education program in primary school education program in social studies education program in german language teaching program in computer education and inst. tech. 37% 4%2% 10% 3% 4% 4% 7% 18% 11% universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras60 firat & serpil as can be seen in table 1, the numbers of participants from each group became more evenly distributed by combining the departments of pre-service teachers. however, candidates from the upper classes were observed as having more participation in the studyplus there were a greater number of female candidates than male candidates. besides the faculty of education, 317 pre-service teachers from the undergraduate pre-school teaching program of the faculty of open education also participated in the research. demographics for these pre-service teachers are presented in table 2. as seen in table 2, candidates from the faculty of open education that participated in the investigation were mostly from higher classes. on the other hand, it can be seen that the dominant age group is 20-29, reaching 85%, the age variable provided for open education students. the age distribution of distance education students shows a wide variety of difference compared table 1. demographic information of pre-service teachers of the education faculty characteristics frequency (f) percentage (%) departments information technologies 174 36.9 primary education 184 39.0 foreign language education 114 24.2 classes 1st grade 71 15.0 2nd grade 131 27.8 3rd grade 113 23.9 4th grade 157 33.3 gender female 272 57.6 male 200 42.4 table 2. demographic information of pre-service teachers of the open education faculty characteristics frequency (f) percentage (%) classes 3rd grade 97 30.6 4th grade 220 69.4 age < 20 2 .6 20-29 272 85.8 30-39 41 12.9 > 40 2 .6 gender female 314 99.1 male 3 .9 61profile vol. 19, no. 1, january-june 2017. issn 1657-0790 (printed) 2256-5760 (online). bogotá, colombia. pages 55-72 comparing the internet usage of pre-service language teachers with teachers of other subjects... to students of face-to-face programs. since this is from the undergraduate pre-school teaching program, almost all of the participants are female. data-collection tools in this study, two different survey forms were used as data-collection tools. the survey for the faculty of education programs consists of two sections. in the first section, pre-service teachers were asked three questions regarding their department, class, and gender. in the second section of the survey, they were asked three questions regarding their internet usage. a new survey was developed for the pre-service teachers from the faculty of open education. as the target population and the age range were very large and the type of education was different, another datacollection tool was developed. unlike the initial survey, this new survey collected information regarding the technology used by participants. as the faculty of open education’s pre-service teachers access the content of the classes online, the technology they use varies. also, the question from the first survey “how long have you been using the internet?” was not asked in this survey, considering the extensive age range of those with formal education. in the process of developing survey forms, drafts were created using the literature review. these drafts were then presented to four field experts in the first survey and to six experts in the second survey. they were then edited in light of the feedback received. for the first survey, survey forms were administered to 10 pre-service teachers from the target population, and to 12 pre-service teachers for the second survey. thus, the pilot application was performed and surveys were finalized. data-collection process as this study was conducted to reveal the internet usage status of pre-service teachers, data were collected using two separate data-collection tools in two different faculties over two years. in the academic year 20122013, data from different departments of the faculty of education were collected. the data-collection tool was printed and distributed to the departments with the permission of the respective management. feedback from 472 pre-service teachers was received during this period. a similar procedure was followed for the pre-service teachers in the faculty of open education. permission was obtained from the faculty dean of the pre-school teaching program and the data-collection tool was transferred to an electronic medium in order to allow it to be distributed to the students via e-mail. in this way, feedback was received from 317 students. data analysis independent two-sample t-tests and one-way anova parametric tests were used in the analysis of data from the investigation. the bonferoni test, one of the most common post-hoc tests, was used to determine groups that showed significant differences in terms of anova. the bonferroni method is a common multiple comparison test and it does not require the equal sample number principle (miller, 1977). descriptive statistics such as percent (%), medium (), and frequency (f) were also used along with the parametric tests. parametric statistics require the assumption of the normality of distribution (mcmillan & schumacher, 2001). experimental studies are often conducted in social sciences as well. the use of a parametric statistic does not cause a significant deviation if the size of each of the sample subgroups is 15 or larger (büyüköztürk, 2007). findings the results are shown under two titles as “internet usage of pre-service teachers from the faculty of education” and “internet usage of pre-service teachers from the faculty of open education.” the data regarding these two groups were not analyzed together because they were collected in different years, the items of surveys varied, and education models differed. universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras62 firat & serpil internet usage of pre-service teachers from the faculty of education internet usage frequency, duration in years of internet use, and internet usage adequacy were reviewed in research that was performed to determine the internet usage status of 472 pre-service teachers from the faculty of education during the academic year 2012-2013. information regarding the daily average internet use frequency of candidates in relation to their departments is given in figure 2. the coding is as follows: 1 = “less than 1 hour,” 2 = “between 1-3 hours,” 3 = “between 4-6 hours”, 4 = “between 7-9 hours,” and 5 = “10 or more hours.” according to these results, pre-service teachers were found to use the internet 1-3 hours a day, with the average value regarding the internet usage frequency ( = 2.14). it pre-service teachers were found to be the program that uses the internet the most, at approximately 4-6 hours a day, while primary school mathematics pre-service teachers were found to be the group that uses the internet the least, with an average of one hour a day. other programs that use the internet the most are preschool, painting, english, and french. information regarding the internet usage adequacy of pre-service teachers according to their departments is given in figure 3. in the survey, there was a question as to how well the pre-service teachers perceived themselves in terms of internet usage. this was expressed through: 1 = “basic level,” 2 = “average level,” 3 = “advanced level.” preservice teachers declared themselves as having average internet usage adequacy with an  = 2.11 average. as can be seen in figure 3, the pre-service teachers in the french teaching program are those who regard themselves as the most adequate with an  = 2.41 average. it followed the french teaching program with  = 2.18. the program with the most people regarding themselves as the least adequate is the primary mathematics teaching program with an  = 1.9 average. information regarding how many years the pre-service teachers had been using the internet in relation to their departments is given in figure 4. in figure 4, 1 = “less than one year,” 2= “between 1-3 years,” 3 = “between 4-6 years,” 4 = “between 7-9 years,” 5 = “10 or more years.” as can be seen in figure figure 2. daily average internet use frequency of pre-service teachers program in primary school education program in arts and crafts education program in pre-school education program in primary school mathematics teaching program in french language teaching program in computer education and inst. tech. program in german language teaching program in guidance and psychological counseling program in english language teaching program in social studies education 1,84 1,65 2,29 1,79 2,31 2,15 1,45 2,12 2,61 1,72 0 1 2 3 63profile vol. 19, no. 1, january-june 2017. issn 1657-0790 (printed) 2256-5760 (online). bogotá, colombia. pages 55-72 comparing the internet usage of pre-service language teachers with teachers of other subjects... 4, the highest average belongs to painting teachers ( = 3.48), while social sciences ( = 3.32), it teaching ( = 3.28), and class teaching ( = 3.26) follow. it can be concluded that generally all departments are close to 3, meaning that they have been using the internet actively for 4-6 years. internet usage in relation to department a one-way anova test was conducted in order to determine if the internet usage of pre-service teachers displays a significant difference in relation to their departments. the results of the anova test are given in table 3. figure 3. internet usage adequacy of pre-service teachers according to their departments program in primary school education program in arts and crafts education program in pre-school education program in primary school mathematics teaching program in french language teaching program in computer education and inst. tech. program in german language teaching program in guidance and psychological counseling program in english language teaching program in social studies education 2,1 2,01 2,19 1,95 2 2,09 1,91 2,41 2,19 2,04 0 1 2 3 figure 4. internet usage years of pre-service teachers program in primary school education program in arts and crafts education program in pre-school education program in primary school mathematics teaching program in french language teaching program in computer education and inst. tech. program in german language teaching program in guidance and psychological counseling program in english language teaching program in social studies education 3,32 3,26 3,48 3,26 3 3,13 3 3,24 3,28 2,86 0 1 2 3 universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras64 firat & serpil table 3. anova multiple comparison test results dependent variable groups md p (2-way) frequency of internet use per day it–primary education .79973 .0001 it–foreign language education .65880 .0001 primary education–foreign language education -.14092 .529 internet usage year it–primary education .02043 .987 it–foreign language education .24955 .057 primary education–foreign language education .22912 .088 internet usage adequacy it–primary education .15705 .068 it–foreign language education .07562 .998 primary education–foreign language education -.08143 .881 table 4. comparison of internet usage of pre-service teachers according to their classes dependent variable groups md p (2-way) frequency of internet use per day 1st year–2nd year -.39920 .024 1st year–3rd year -.46466 .007 internet usage year 1st year–2nd year -.34695 .043 1st year–3rd year -.37093 .031 1st year–4th year -.49116 .001 as can be seen in table 3, a significant difference between it pre-service teachers and primary and language teaching pre-service teachers was found regarding the “daily average internet usage frequency” in relation to their respective departments. according to the results, it pre-service teachers use the internet more frequently on a daily basis than both primary school pre-service teachers and language teaching pre-service teachers, at a significance level of p < 0.01. the reason for this may be that the it department regularly uses the internet in the course of its duties. no significant difference was found when internet usage years and internet usage adequacy of pre-service teachers were compared. this indicates the comparability of the internet usage experiences and internet usage adequacies of these pre-service teachers. internet usage according to classes a one-way anova test was used to determine whether the internet usage of pre-service teachers in relation to their classes shows a significant difference. the results of the anova test are given in table 4. the table only includes the statistics of the groups with significant differences. 65profile vol. 19, no. 1, january-june 2017. issn 1657-0790 (printed) 2256-5760 (online). bogotá, colombia. pages 55-72 comparing the internet usage of pre-service language teachers with teachers of other subjects... as seen in table 4, significant differences were found between the internet usage frequency and internet usage years of pre-service teachers. it was determined in relation to internet usage frequency that junior candidates used the internet most frequently, at a significance level of p = 0.007, and sophomore candidates used internet more frequently than the freshmen candidates, at a significance level of p = 0.024. similarly, senior candidates were found to have more internet usage experience than freshmen, at a significance level of p = 0.001, junior year students, at p = 0.031, and sophomore students, at p = 0.043. these findings show that higher class students generally use the internet more frequently than lower class students and that they have more internet experience. this difference seems to work against the first-year students. the reason for this might be because the freshmen have inadequate access to the internet as a result of the fact that they have recently begun university and because they are younger. on the other hand, it is noticeable that there is no significant difference between the internet usage adequacies of pre-service teachers. internet usage according to gender independent two-sample t-tests were used to determine if there are significant differences between internet usage statuses in relation to the gender of preservice teachers. results of the t-test are given in table 5. as a result of the dependent two-sample t-test, a significant difference was found between the daily average internet usage frequency and internet usage adequacy of the pre-service teachers in relation to their genders. according to this, male pre-service teachers were found to have a significantly higher internet usage frequency ( = 2.29) than female pre-service teachers ( = 2.03), [t(470) = 2.901, p = 0.004 < 0.05]. furthermore, male candidates were found to have significantly higher internet usage adequacy ( = 2.19) than female candidates ( = 2.04), [t(470) = 2.436, p = 0.015 < 0.05]. however, no significant difference was found between internet usage years based on gender. these findings show that male pre-service teachers use the internet more frequently than female pre-service teachers and that they perceive themselves as more adequate than female candidates. internet usage of pre-service teachers from the faculty of open education acquired technologies, internet usage frequency, and internet usage adequacy were considered in order to determine the internet usage status of pre-service teachers in the open faculty of education. the data regarding the technological device ownership by 317 preschool teaching program pre-service teachers are given in figure 5. table 5. independent sample t-test regarding technology scores of the students based on their schools groups n  ss t p (2way) frequency of internet use per day female 272 2.0368 .91246 -2.901 .004 male 200 2.2900 .96985 internet usage year female 272 3.1434 .85780 -1.847 .065 male 200 3.2950 .91221 internet usage adequacy female 272 2.0478 .63239 -2.436 .015 male 200 2.1950 .67024 universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras66 firat & serpil in figure 5, it can be seen that 37.2% of pre-service teachers own only a computer, 33.8% a computer and a smartphone, and 18.6% own a computer, a smartphone, and a tablet. on the other hand, tablet usage is observed to be as low as 0.9%. in general, it is determined that preservice teachers from the faculty of open education own at least one of these three tools. information regarding the internet usage frequency and internet usage adequacy of pre-service teachers from the faculty of open education is summarized in figure 6. figure 6. internet usage frequency and adequacy of distance pre-service teachers internet usage adequacy internet usage frequency 1,6 1,7 1,8 1,9 2 2,1 in figure 6, the coding is as follows: 1 = “between 0-2 hours,” 2 = “between 2-4 hours,” 3 = “between 4-6 hours,” 4 = “between 6-8 hours” and 5 = “8 or more hours.” internet usage adequacy was coded as: 1 = “basic level,” 2 = “average level,” and 3 = “advanced level.” according to this, we can say that internet usage frequency is between 2-4 hours a day and that internet usage adequacy is at an average level considering the average for pre-service teachers from the faculty of open education. the internet usage status of pre-service teachers based on demographics was analyzed. in this, the internet usage status of pre-service teachers from the faculty of open education was analyzed or broken down according to their classes and ages. the comparisons were not made according to gender or department. the reason for this was because the students participating were from only one program and only three of these were male. internet usage according to class three hundred and seventeen pre-service teachers from the 3rd and 4th years of the faculty of open education’s preschool teaching program participated in the study. independent two-sample t-tests were used to determine the internet usage status of candidates in relation to their classes. results of independent twosample t-test are given in table 6. figure 5. technologies owned by distance pre-service teachers pc + smart phone + tablet pc tablet + smart phone pc + tablet pc pc + smart phone only tablet pc only smart phone only pc f % 59 18,6 1 0,3 10 3,2 107 33,8 3 0,9 19 6 118 37,2 67profile vol. 19, no. 1, january-june 2017. issn 1657-0790 (printed) 2256-5760 (online). bogotá, colombia. pages 55-72 comparing the internet usage of pre-service language teachers with teachers of other subjects... as a result of the two independent sample t-tests, a significant difference was found between the daily average internet usage frequency of candidates in relation to their departments, and no significant difference was found between internet usage adequacies as a result, the internet usage frequency of candidates in the 4th year was found to be ( = 1.88), which is significantly higher than of those in the 3rd year ( = 1.58), [t(315) = 2.34, p = 0.019 < 0.05]. however, the internet usage adequacy of 4th year candidates ( = 2.07) was not found to have a significant difference in comparison to the internet usage adequacy of the 3rd year pre-service teachers ( = 1.96), [t(315) = 1.57, p = 0.117 < 0.05]. these findings suggest that the internet usage frequency of pre-service teachers in upper classes is significantly higher statistically, and internet usage adequacy is also higher, although not significantly higher in a statistical sense. this finding is similar to the internet usage status of candidates in the faculty of education in relation to their class. internet usage according to age independent two sample t-tests were used to compare the internet usage frequencies and internet usage adequacies of pre-service teachers from the faculty of open education. the test revealed that there were no significant differences in terms of internet usage frequency, whereas significant differences were found in internet usage adequacy. since there were two people under 20 and two people over 40, these ranges were combined with the closest ranges. as a result, age ranges were transformed into two groups: “under 30” and “over 30.” the results of the independent two-sample t-tests are given in table 7. when examining the internet usage frequency of the pre-service teachers from the faculty of open education, one can see that those under 30 use the internet more frequently than those over 30. however, this situation did not cause a significant difference. as can be seen in table 7, the internet usage adequacy of the candidates from the faculty of open education shows a significant difference. the internet usage adequacy of candidates under 30 ( = 2.09) is significantly higher than that of the candidates over 30 ( = 1.72), [t(315) = 4.126, p = 0.000047 < 0.001]. this finding indicates that younger pre-service teachers see themselves as more adequate in terms of internet usage. findings regarding the internet usage status of pre-service teachers from the faculty of open education are parallel to those of the pre-service teachers of the faculty of education. table 6. internet usage according to independent sample t-test results groups n  ss t p (2-way) frequency of internet use per day 3rd year 4th year 97 1.5876 .86304 -2.34 .019 220 1.8864 1.11887 internet usage adequacy 3rd year 4th year 97 1.9691 .60301 -1.571 .117 220 2.0773 .54767 table 7. results of independent sample t-test by age group n  ss t p (2-way) frequency of internet use per day <30–>30 years old 274 1.8102 1.04851 .650 .516 43 1.6977 1.10270 internet usage adequacy <30–>30 years old 274 2.0949 .55316 4.126 .000047 43 1.7209 .54883 universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras68 firat & serpil comparison of the internet usage adequacies of on-campus and distance pre-service teachers independent two-sample t-tests were used to compare the internet usage adequacies of on-campus and distance pre-service teachers. results of the independent twosample t-tests are given in table 8. no significant difference between the internet usage adequacies of pre-service teachers of formal programs ( = 2.11) and the pre-service teachers at the faculty of open education ( = 2.04) were found as a result of independent two-sample t-tests[t(787) = 1.468, p = 0.142 > 0.05]. this finding suggests that the opinions of pre-service teachers in formal or open education regarding internet usage adequacy is similarly at above the average level. discussion in this study, internet usage of pre-service teachers is studied and compared or analyzed in terms of three basic dimensions: internet usage frequency, internet usage adequacy, and internet usage experience. regarding the findings about the internet usage of 472 pre-service teachers in the faculty of education, it was found that they use the internet for 1-3 hours per day, have an average level of internet usage adequacy, and have been active internet users for 4-6 years. pre-service teachers from the it and french teaching programs perceive themselves as the most adequate in internet usage. the it program uses the internet the most while the primary school mathematics program uses the internet the least, confirming becker’s (1999) finding on mathematics teachers. the daily internet use of it pre-service teachers is significantly more frequent than both primary school pre-service teachers and language teaching pre-service teachers. the reason for this might be the fact that the it program requires internet usage in its courses. regarding the internet usage of candidates according to their classes, generally the older (higher year) students use the internet more frequently and have more experience with the internet. the reason for this may be because having just begun university; freshmen have limited access to the internet. on the other hand, no significant differences are observed between the internet usage adequacies of candidates based on their class year. this might be because candidates from all programs perceive themselves as having an average level in terms of internet usage. male pre-service teachers have a significantly higher internet usage frequency and adequacy level than female candidates. however, there is no significant difference among internet usage years according to gender. these findings show that male pre-service teachers use the internet more frequently than female pre-service teachers and regard themselves as more adequate in terms of internet usage, which supports tekerek and ercan’s (2012) finding that male teachers have a more positive attitude than their female colleagues towards using the internet in their teaching. regarding the technology owned by the pre-service teachers in the faculty of open education, the results indicate that 37.2% of candidates own a computer only, 33.8% own a computer and a smartphone, and 18.6% own a computer, a smartphone, and a tablet. this table 8. results of independent sample t-test of internet usage adequacies group n  ss t p (2-way) internet usage frequency open education 317 2.0442 .56642 -1.468 .142 formal education 472 2.1102 .65208 69profile vol. 19, no. 1, january-june 2017. issn 1657-0790 (printed) 2256-5760 (online). bogotá, colombia. pages 55-72 comparing the internet usage of pre-service language teachers with teachers of other subjects... finding shows that the pre-service teachers from the faculty of open education generally use computers and smartphones. furthermore, it was determined that pre-service teachers from the faculty of open education own at least one of these three tools. this shows that the pre-service teachers from the faculty of open education own sufficient technology for internet access. according to the findings, the internet usage frequency of faculty of open education’s pre-service teachers is between 2-4 hours per day and their internet usage adequacy is at an average level. these findings correspond to those of the candidates from the faculty of education. the findings from analyses in relation to classes show that the internet usage frequencies of the higher-class pre-service teachers are significantly higher. higher classes are also found to have higher internet usage adequacy; however, this is not statistically significant. this finding corresponds to the internet usage status of faculty of education candidates based on their class. the analysis of the internet usage frequency of the faculty of open education’s pre-service teachers in relation to their ages has revealed that candidates under 30 used the internet more frequently than those over 30. this finding corresponds to that of becker (1999) who found that teachers under 30 use the internet more frequently. concurrently, it also corresponds to the finding of mohamed zaki (2013), who determined older teachers’ internet usage to be lower. additionally, the internet usage adequacy of the candidates under 30 was found to be significantly higher than that of those over 30. this finding is also in line with the faculty of education pre-service teachers’ internet usage adequacy. no significant difference has been identified between the internet usage adequacy of pre-service teachers in on-campus and in distance-learning programs. the reason for this may be because the opinions of the preservice teachers concerning their levels in on-campus and distance-learning programs are similarly above average. furthermore, even though their internet usage frequency and the number of technologies they own is high, pre-service teachers from the faculty of open education regard themselves as moderately adequate. conclusion and suggestions a total of 789 pre-service teachers participated in the research, which was conducted in order to investigate the internet usage of pre-service teachers at the faculty of education and the faculty of open education. the findings indicate that the internet usage status of preservice teachers at both the faculty of education and the faculty of open education is quite similar. overall, the pre-service teachers use the internet for 2.5 hours on average per day. also, it has been concluded that their internet usage adequacy is average. furthermore, the preservice teachers from the faculty of open education own at least one of the following: a computer, a smartphone, and a tablet. within the limits of the study, the analysis of the internet usage of the pre-service teachers by various parameters has determined that the internet usage frequency of pre-service teachers from more senior classes is higher than that of the junior classes. the younger pre-service teachers perceive themselves as more adequate and use the internet more frequently. according to becker (1999), the reason for this is because young people grow up with technology and have a higher tendency to use technology. in relation to internet literacy, pre-service teachers from the faculty of open education regard themselves as being adequate and having an average level, although their internet usage frequency is high and the technology they own is sufficient. considering that the internet is frequently used in the services provided for the faculty of open education, students from the faculty of open education need to improve their internet-usage adequacy. to this end, open lessons or courses teaching how the internet can be used efficiently need to be offered and guidelines and reference sources need to be increased. teachers can also be helped to gain internet universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras70 firat & serpil and information literacy skills through in-service or pre-service training (akkoyunlu & yılmaz, 2005). by using the internet more efficiently, teachers can be encouraged to increase their communication with others, interactions within the school, interactions outside the school, participation in professional development activities, and their computer and internet knowledge (schofield & davidson, 2000). whereas the internet use frequency has been found to be the highest for the french teachers, overall, language teachers’ frequency of using the internet and their adequacy of internet usage are at moderate level and do not differ significantly from other pre-service teacher groups. this adequacy level supports yu’s (2014) finding that the majority of the taiwanese preservice efl teachers perceived that they have “adequate” computer literacy. pre-service language teachers also seem to have a sufficient number of technological tools at their disposal. future experimental and descriptive studies can be conducted with regard to other factors affecting pre-service teachers’ internet literacy/usage. similar research from different countries with higher numbers of participants will contribute to the findings in this field as well. larger scale studies on internet literacy will further improve the currently available study results by augmenting their scientific validity and reliability. references akkoyunlu, b. (2002). use of internet by teachers and their opinions on the issue. hacettepe university journal of education, 22, 1-8. akkoyunlu, b., & yılmaz, m. (2005). prospective teachers’ information literacy level, internet usage frequencies and purposes of their internet usage. eurasian journal of educational research (ejer), 19. atav, e., akkoyunlu, b., & sağlam, n. (2006). prospective teachers’ internet access facilities and their internet usage. hacettepe university journal of education, 30, 37-44. becker, h. j. (1999). internet use by teachers: conditions of professional use and teacher-directed student use (vol. 1). irvine, ca: center for research on information technology and organizations. bolandifar, s. (2013). teachers’ attitudes toward integrating internet technology in english language classes. international journal of language learning and applied linguistics world (ijllalw), 4(3), 81-93. bozdoğan, d., & özen, r. 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(2013). new literacies: a dual level theory of the changing nature of literacy, instruction, and assessment. in d. e. alvermann, n. j. unrau, & r. b. ruddell (eds.), theoretical models and processes of reading (6th ed., pp. 1150-1181). newark, de: international reading association. liang, m. t., & chao, j. y. (2002). investigating into the internet literacy of elementary and junior high school teachers in taiwan. world transactions on engineering and technology education, 1(1), 129-131. livingstone, s. (2004). media literacy and the challenge of new information and communication technologies. the communication review, 7(1), 3-14. http://dx.doi. org/10.1080/10714420490280152. livingstone, s. (2007). youthful experts? a critical appraisal of children’s emerging internet literacy. in r. mansell, c. avgerou, d. quah, & r. silverstone (eds.), oxford handbook on icts (pp. 494-513). oxford, uk: oxford university press. livingstone, s., bober, m., & helsper, e. (2005). internet literacy among children and young people: findings from the uk children go online project. london, uk: lse research online. livingstone, s., & helsper, e. (2010). balancing opportunities and risks in teenagers’ use of the internet: the role of online skills and internet self-efficacy. new media & society, 12(2), 309-329. http://dx.doi.org/10.1177/1461444809342697. mcmillan, j. h., & schumacher, s. (2001). research in education: a conceptual introduction. london, uk: longman. merc, a. (2015). using technology in the classroom: a study with turkish pre-service efl teachers. the turkish online journal of educational technology, 14(2), 229-240. universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras72 firat & serpil miller, r. g., jr. (1977). developments in multiple comparisons 1966-1976. journal of the american statistical association, 72(360), 779-788. http://dx.doi.org/10.2307/2286459. mohamed zaki, f. z. (2013). ict and internet usage in early childhood education: a comparative study of australian and malaysian teachers’ beliefs and current practices (master’s thesis). queensland university of technology, australia. schofield, j. w., & davidson, a. l. (2000, april). internet use and teacher change. paper presented at the annual meeting of the american educational research association, new orleans, usa. shin, h.-j., & son, j.-b. (2007). efl teachers’ perceptions and perspectives on internet-assisted language teaching. call-ej online, 8(2). sinha, m. k., bhattacharjee, s., & bhattacharjee, s. (2013). ict and internet literacy skills for accessing to e-resources available under n-list programme: a case study of college library users of barak valley, south assam. library philosophy & practice. smarkola, c. (2008). developmentally responsive technologyliteracy use in education: are teachers helping students meet grade-level national technology standards? journal of educational computing research, 38(4), 387-409. http:// dx.doi.org/10.2190/ec.38.4.b. sturm, m., kennell, t., mcbride, r., & kelly, m. (2009). the pedagogical implications of web 2.0. in m. thomas (ed.), handbook of research on web 2.0 and second language learning (pp. 367-384). hershey, pa: information science reference. http://dx.doi.org/10.4018/978-1-60566-190-2. ch020. tekerek, m., & ercan, o. (2012). analysis of teachers’ attitude towards internet use: example of chemistry teachers. creative education, 3(3), 296-303. http://dx.doi. org/10.4236/ce.2012.33047. wulandari, t. d. (2013). the needs of internet literacy in an ongoing process of economic stability. jurnal ilmu komunikasi, 10(1), 49-62. yu, l.-t. (2014). the computer literacy and use: the case of taiwanese pre-service elementary school english teachers. international journal of english language education, 2(1), 128-142. http://dx.doi.org/10.5296/ijele. v2i1.4897. about the authors mehmet firat holds a phd in educational technology, anadolu university (turkey). he is assistant professor at anadolu university, open education faculty, department of distance education. harun serpil is currently working as the interpreter-translator and pa for the rector of anadolu university. he earned his undergraduate degree from the department of education in teaching english as a foreign language (tefl) at anadolu university in 1996 and his phd in curriculum and instruction from the university of wisconsin-madison. 203profile vol. 19, no. 2, july-december 2017. issn 1657-0790 (printed) 2256-5760 (online). bogotá, colombia. pages 203-223 http://dx.doi.org/10.15446/profile.v19n2.59583 a basis for the design of a curriculum incorporating music and drama in children’s english language instruction fundamentos para el diseño de un currículo que incorpora la música y el arte dramático en la enseñanza de inglés a niños mónica rodríguez-bonces* universidad de la sabana, chía and pearson education, bogotá, colombia this article presents the foundations to design a curriculum that integrates music and drama as strategies for the teaching of english as a foreign language. besides promoting interdisciplinarity, this curriculum seeks to improve the language level of those children attending continuing educational programs at any higher education institution. the interdisciplinary curriculum not only innovates the offer of english courses for children—music and drama—but also promotes meaningful learning and creates a positive attitude in children so that a high degree of interest in learning a foreign language exists. the article, besides explaining the basis for curriculum design, highlights the advantages of integrating music and drama as a medium for the teaching of a foreign language. key words: curriculum design, drama, english as a foreign language, interdisciplinary, learning methodologies, music. el presente artículo presenta el fundamento para el diseño de un programa curricular para el aprendizaje del inglés que integra la música y el arte dramático como vehículos de aprendizaje. dicho programa, además de propiciar un trabajo interdisciplinario, busca mejorar el nivel de lengua requerido por un grupo de niños participantes de los cursos de un programa de extensión. el programa no solo innova el tipo de cursos de inglés para niños —música y arte dramático— sino que promueve el aprendizaje significativo y crea en los infantes una actitud positiva que promueve un alto nivel de interés en el aprendizaje del idioma extranjero. además de presentar las bases de la estructura curricular, el artículo también menciona múltiples beneficios al integrar la música y el arte dramático como medios de enseñanza de una lengua extranjera. palabras clave: arte dramático, diseño curricular, interdisciplinariedad, metodologías de aprendizaje, música. * e-mail: monica.rodriguez2@pearson.com how to cite this article (apa, 6th ed.): rodríguez-bonces, m. (2017). a basis for the design of a curriculum incorporating music and drama in children’s english language instruction. profile issues in teachers’ professional development, 19(2), 203-223. http://dx.doi.org/10.15446/ profile.v19n2.59583. this article was received on august 13, 2016, and accepted on february 1, 2017. this is an open access article distributed under the terms of the creative commons license attribution-noncommercial-noderivatives 4.0 international license. consultation is possible at http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/. universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras204 rodríguez-bonces introduction bilingualism has become one of the major aspirations in today’s society. advances in communication and technologies place increasingly higher demands on the knowledge of another language. today, in many latin american countries, english occupies the focus of the curriculum, from pre-school to higher education. countries such as colombia, panama, mexico, ecuador, peru, argentina, and brazil have invested in school reforms and teacher training programs to better english language proficiency (kamhi-stein, díaz-maggioli, & de oliveira, 2017). in fact, they have established national bilingual programs in which english is the main foreign language for learning. many latin american countries usually begin bilingual education during the first years of schooling. for example, “ecuador” and “panama bilingüe” demand that schools offer foreign languages from first grades (ministerio de educación [meduca], 2016). curriculum planning and within it school vision, mission, and syllabi should be formed in response to not just global tendencies but also local needs. it means every country has particular needs and contexts that should be considered when offering bilingual education programs. for instance, some regions may demand people learn english for tourism while others english for health. in the same way, some students learn english for travelling while others for working. additionally, the task of developing and implementing bilingual education programs falls not just to institutions of primary and middle school, but also to those of higher education that offer foreign language extension/enrichment programs, especially for children. bearing in mind that in colombian higher education institutions must follow the national government’s objectives for standards of quality in foreign language; and after reviewing the types of programs for children offered by various universities, i observed that while many universities offer programs that make use of games and music, so far no program has integrated music and drama for the teaching of english. for this reason, it was worth investigating a curricular structure that integrated methodological strategies for english language teaching with music and drama for children from the ages of 7 to 11. this article presents the key aspects to consider in undertaking the design of a musicand drama-based foreign language curriculum for children. context a principal challenge in the attainment of a high level of language mastery rests in the effective transition from one level of schooling to another. in colombia, one hopes that by 2025 a fifth grader will have reached level a2 according to the common european framework of reference for languages (cefr, consejo de europa, 2002). while many primary and middle school institutions have increased their hours of english instruction or modified curricula in order to offer content subjects in english, chiefly math and science, many families still turn to enrichment programs in order to supplement their children’s foreign language formation. some of these enrichment programs are offered by universities and/or language institutes. the supplemental english classes many children take to enhance their learning of the language permit greater weekly contact with the language and thus superior levels of competence, especially if one takes the cefr’s recommendations for instructional hours into account (see table 1). table 1. cefr class hours level number of hours a1 90 a2 200 b1 375 b2 575 c1 775 c2 995 205profile vol. 19, no. 2, july-december 2017. issn 1657-0790 (printed) 2256-5760 (online). bogotá, colombia. pages 203-223 a basis for the design of a curriculum incorporating music and drama... according to nunan (2001), in spite of the various disadvantages related to time (number of class hours) or with the fact that students do not actually learn everything that is covered in class, class time should be used efficiently in order to emphasize the linguistic aspects which are most pressing for students. nunan (2001) also explains that although the improvement of communicative abilities is one teaching objective, there are other objectives concerning the development of learning habits. this seems evident if one considers that an improvement in learning habits may result in an improved level of language. one way of bolstering learning habits and developing learning strategies is through programs that integrate the arts. some studies done about the relation between arts and learning explain this statement. as a way of example, the dana foundation (2008) did research which evidenced that motivation, abilities for learning, memory, and habits of thought improved when studying arts. consequently, any curriculum should consider, among other aspects, the interests and needs of students, set clear content learning outcomes, guide learning strategies, set the hours of instruction, and strengthen students’ skills and knowledge. likewise, one must consider which concepts and components of music and drama will be taught and how. in conclusion, a curriculum that integrates music and drama represents innovation in terms of processes of teaching and learning. additionally, it fulfills national requirements and allows universities to strengthen goals related to quality and the provision of services through enrichment/extension programs. state of the art as part of the basis for the development of a curricular proposal, familiarity with the work of other researchers in the field of musicand drama-based english teaching is essential. the following section presents several studies pertinent to this subject. foreign language instruction must involve meaningful communication. it means any exchange of information should be relevant and related to the background of the learner (echevarría, vogt, & short, 2017). for instance, marschke (2004) examined how a specific form of drama in education—drama methods— can create communication and authentic experience in foreign language learning. the concepts of acting and motivation comprise the theoretical pillars of the project. drama is a practical process that can occur through task-based learning (tbl). tbl in this research is defined as an approach that permits learners to engage in communicative interactions through “authentic” tasks. thanks to the integration of drama and tbl, one of the most basic goals of curriculum design is the development of cultural competence, understood as the ability to interact in different cultures. this study, in one of its main contributions, definitively shows that a task-based curriculum leads to a critical stance regarding culture. another study that incorporates drama, specifically process drama and tbl is the one done by hitotuzi (2014). the dramatic problematizer model (dpm), which is a seven-stage framework that incorporates critical pedagogy, process drama, and tbl, was used in a pedagogic intervention in a rural school in brazil. process drama let participants talk and reflect on local issues while using the foreign language. incorporating drama techniques not only enriches children’s social interactions but also provides the professor with innumerable tools related to the construction of characters, scenes, and contexts for communication to take place. in this vein, naoko (2006) explored how six-year-olds in primary school and their teachers reacted to the integration of drama as a pedagogical tool in english class. participants discussed the applicability of drama as a method of instruction in an academic environment where it previously had not been used. results varied, as students overwhelmingly welcomed drama while some teachers did not see it as universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras206 rodríguez-bonces useful. the study reveals that drama has great potential to create communicative situations in various contexts. chukueggu (2012) examined dramatic activities as a tool to foment a positive and receptive attitude toward english. through a theoretical review, having as a basis the socio-cultural theory of vygotsky, the author summarizes the activities, theoretical basis, and benefits of drama in language learning. the strategies proposed in this paper shed light on the diversity of activities that can be included in an interdisciplinary curriculum. benefits relate to motivation and self-confidence, betterment of communication skills, authentic language use, and proper pronunciation. research also exists as regards the use of drama in the study of english in situations involving linguistic difficulties related to phonetics, pragmatics, or sociolinguistics. peláez falla and segura fernández (2008) concluded that role-play, improvisation, and physical theater improve students’ oral performance. it is possible to say that these studies propose drama as a valid method for improving students’ communicative competences. the following studies, unlike those already described, discuss the use of music in the study of english. to begin with, lowe (2002) defines the contextual components derived from the integration of music and other art forms in the language curriculum. the results suggest that children were able to communicate more efficiently through the integration of music in their language class. along the same lines, sharifah (2002) investigated the effects of a music-based methodology for the study of english in shah alam (malaysia). findings indicated that teachers perceive music to be a useful tool for english instruction. teachers who used music in class felt that student learning improved. other studies have identified a direct relationship between music and communicative skills, such as those by milovanov, huotilainen, välimäki, esquel, and tervaniemi (2008), regarding pronunciation, and bedoya bedoya, lozano ñustez, muñoz riaño, pal forero, and sarmiento ceballos (2007) for vocabulary. the goal of milovanov et al.’s study was to examine the relationship between musical aptitude and pronunciation. the objective of the study by bedoya bedoya et al., on the other hand, was to identify deficits in english vocabulary comprehension, retention, and transfer due to social, economic, and academic aspects through incorporating drawing and painting in the english class syllabus. both studies explored whether artistic and musical features directly influenced learning. results showed that students with good oral skills exhibited higher musical achievement and, in the second case, that lexical competence improved by virtue of these artistic components. medina (2002, 2003) carried out studies that provide a firm base for the use of music in language teaching for children. research made use of various musical formats, including sung and illustrated texts, texts sung without illustrations, spoken and illustrated texts and spoken texts without illustrations. findings showed that music facilitates information retention, takes students’ needs into consideration, activates prior knowledge, helps children reach linguistic goals, improves pronunciation through repetition, is pleasing to the ear, creates trust, is relaxing, offers authentic language, and provides examples of the language as used in real situations. pérez aldeguer and leganés lavall (2012) analyzed the value of language as an interdisciplinary tool for primary school language instruction. although their exploratory study focused on the teacher’s perspective, it sheds light on music’s ability to catalyze student learning as a “high-quality learning tool” (p. 137). another important finding involved teachers’ lack of knowledge regarding the use of music as a versatile didactic resource for objectives related to lexical substitution, phonological patterns, or cultural education. according to the study, foreign language teachers’ weak musical training places these objectives out of reach. the european music portfolio: a creative way into languages project (ludke & weinmann, 2012) is perhaps 207profile vol. 19, no. 2, july-december 2017. issn 1657-0790 (printed) 2256-5760 (online). bogotá, colombia. pages 203-223 a basis for the design of a curriculum incorporating music and drama... one of the most important contributions regarding the interdisciplinary approach to music and languages. its principal goal is to enable primary school teachers to integrate music and language instruction so that students meet learning objectives in both subjects. the project presents the foundation for the learning and teaching of music and of foreign languages. it then explores the interrelation of the two subjects from an intercultural, cognitive, and communicative point of view. finally, from a practical standpoint the european music portfolio (emp) provides online and classroom activities for teacher use. the relationship between music and language has to do with motivation, development of concepts, learning environments, and creativity. the aspects of music established in the emp reinforce the curricular focus mapped out in the design proposed by this article. the authors focus on four domains of music that interconnect in the development of musical competence (see figure 1). figure 1. four domains of music learning in the emp music listening representing music discussing music making music while the curriculum described in this article does not aim to produce musicians, it is still instructive to consider these domains, as they allow us to formulate relevant goals. children enjoy music and develop musical and linguistic skills while they participate in activities especially designed for language learning. in fact, the emp integrates musical activities such as percussion, playing instruments, dance, and so on, figure 2. parallels between elements of music and language through a communicative focus (ludke & weinmann, 2012, p. 30) phrase language and (inter-)cultural awareness sentence paragraph text song or musical piece chorus or section phrase motif language interaction music interaction intonation stress timbre rhythm meter pitch stress timbre melody pitch rhythm musiclanguage universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras208 rodríguez-bonces with the development of communicative, lexical, and intercultural skills. figure 2, taken from the emp, makes use of an interdisciplinary approach in order to show parallels between common elements of music and language, aspects which jordana (2008) delves into regarding the use of musical exercises to correct speech disorders. at the time of writing this paper, no evidence shows the results of integrating language and arts in latin america. barriga monroy (2011) says this research in language-arts is new and what has happened in countries like colombia is some practitioners teach arts focusing on creativity, innovation, and reflection. in conclusion, the various studies described in this section show that existing projects separately incorporate music and drama as instructional strategies. therefore, the principal objective of study for this article is the creation of a program that integrates both drama and music. as casals and suárez (2012) state: the interdisciplinary is indispensable in the skills-based framework to which today’s education must adhere. in this context, music as well as language (and in this case drama) are not only instruments of learning, construction and communication of knowledge, but also of artistic creation and the guidance of actions in diverse contexts. consequently, the union of both (or all) of these can aid in the development of communicative (linguistic and cultural-artistic) competences. (p. 1, translated by the author) theoretical framework a theoretical underpinning is as crucial as knowledge of previous investigations into the integration of music and drama in english language teaching. when considering the possibility of designing a curriculum that includes two art forms, one should consider at least two key concepts along with theories of language learning: first, curriculum design and second, interdisciplinary learning as viewed from a competence-based perspective. curriculum design in agreement with richards (2010), curriculum design refers to all the actions related to planning and implementation in the development or refurbishment of a curriculum. this process is systematic; it involves a series of steps that, properly carried out, will guarantee the successful attainment of the objectives developed by any institution; in this research, a higher education institution that offers an enrichment english class for children. chapter ii of 1994’s law 115 in colombia addresses all aspects of curriculum and plan of studies. in this sense, one would define a curriculum as: the whole of the criteria, plans of study, programs, methodologies, and processes that contribute to the integral formation and construction of cultural identity at the national, regional, and local level, including human, academic, and physical resources, in order to put policies into practice and carry out the proyecto educativo institucional.1 (ministerio de educación nacional [men], 1994, article 76, translated by the author) at the same time, the cefr defines curriculum as: a sequence of educational experiences which may or may not be under the control of an institution. in this way, the curriculum does not end with the finalization of formal studies, but rather continues as part of a lifelong learning process. (consejo de europa, 2002, p. 173, translated by the author) in other words, a curriculum establishes a process of teaching and learning that goes beyond a list of content topics or set of learning strategies. the definition given by rodgers (as cited in richards, 2010) clarifies that a curriculum is broader than a syllabus; the syllabus refers to content while a curriculum includes all activities associated with the norms and guidelines of the institution. 1 in colombia, every educational institution must have a proyecto educativo institucional (pei), a document which serves as a mission statement and long-term plan, covering everything from pedagogical strategies to staff and student regulations and management. 209profile vol. 19, no. 2, july-december 2017. issn 1657-0790 (printed) 2256-5760 (online). bogotá, colombia. pages 203-223 a basis for the design of a curriculum incorporating music and drama... various classifications of curricula according to type are possible. table 2 summarizes several kinds of curricula. the open or flexible and the interdisciplinary or integrated curricular models facilitate the inclusion of the arts in the teaching of english. the former allows for creativity on the part of the teacher and can be revised according to context. it can be recreated by teachers and is centered on processes that underlie formative assessment. the latter, according to ortiz (2006), allows the study of important topics from the perspective of each academic area, and for the sharing of skills, expertise, and knowledge, specifically. ortiz summarizes the following characteristics of the integrated curriculum: 1. knowledge, skills, and concepts are connected with new ideas. 2. the student is important, but learns at her/his own pace. 3. the student uses information from her/his environment in order to acquire authentic learning. 4. the teacher is a facilitator who foments the thought processes that help students understand and assimilate new information meaningfully. 5. the teacher presents facts and skills through generative topics that originate in the real lives of students. 6. the curriculum aims at students’ possessing the skills and concepts to function effectively as a member of society. without a doubt, the integration of the arts into english language instruction offers varied options for learning; by making use of the competences related to each subject, teachers base planning around generative topics related to english language learning. for this reason, the resulting syllabus is thematically organized. table 2. types of curricula open or flexible constantly revised and modified. the teacher is the principal agent of curricular revision. centered on process and formative assessment. prioritizes meaningful learning. closed predetermined in its strategies, content, and activities. usually several actors are in charge of its design. focused on progress more than process, and rote learning. overt content-based. represented by plans and programs of study, which clearly show evidence of information from various subjects. based on the experiences of students. design involves teachers and other actors. latent not necessarily in written form. content-based. represented by a system of roles, expectations, and functions which are modified according to circumstance. the teacher basically controls its execution. inquiry-based based on the pursuit of knowledge. questioning develops the student’s critical capacity and stimulates creative potential. outcome-based based on the type of assessment. expresses an achievement or milestone which a student should reach by the end of the process. globalized in the twenty-first century, students are prepared to handle global issues. the inclusion of knowledge, skills, values, and attitudes is recommended. interdisciplinary or integrated aimed at developing competences, which are integrated into the development of knowledge. universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras210 rodríguez-bonces we cannot say that the development of a curriculum is finite, as it allows for evaluation and adjustment. however, we can affirm that familiarity with the curriculum design and its implications is necessary before going on to develop the syllabus, given that the syllabus is a list of contents that comprises only one part of the curriculum. competences the development of an interdisciplinary curriculum such as that proposed here should take into account two basic competences: communicative and artistic. the basic standards of competence in artistic education (men, 2011) are related to other basic competences such as communicative, scientific, mathematic and civic. the men (2011) clearly states, “artistic education, through interaction with other areas of knowledge, contributes to the strengthening of basic competences, while also benefiting the development of the competences proper to artistic practices” (p. 79). without a doubt, this belief is borne out by this curricular proposal. in agreement with the men, three essential competences must be taken into account in order to create plans of study consistent with institutional intentions and pedagogical currents of thought: • the institutional component, which corresponds to the institutional mission. • the pedagogical component, which involves the institution’s pedagogical model. • the disciplinary component, which encompasses the artistic and cultural practices the institution wishes to implement. with regard to the final component, we must clarify that here, art functions as a means and not an end, given its role in an interdisciplinary approach. artistic competence is itself defined through the competences associated with artistic education. these are knowledge, skills, and attitudes, related to particular contexts, within specific domains (men, 2010). the men based artistic education on four aspects (2010): 1. three competences: sensibility, aesthetic appreciation, and communication 2. three types of processes to acquire these competences: reception, creation, and sharing 3. the different products that the student creates because of these processes 4. the cultural and social contexts with which the student interacts (p. 12) a curriculum that involves the arts has an interrelation with communicative competence through the reception of an audience, students as creative agents, and the representation of what has been learned and created in a disseminating event. these artistic products are the result of a learning process and, finally, a framework that moves from the cultural to the intercultural through contact, which reaches beyond the local to the interpretation of and relation to the global. when integrating drama and music in the english class, communicative competence relates to two visions, one from the perspective of the arts and one from the perspective of language, being the language embedded in the arts. from the artistic perspective, communicative competence seeks for the subjects that exercise it to gain access to and from ties with artistic and cultural contexts in order to relate to these through artistic production and symbolic transformation. a work of art as an aesthetic fact not only permits the establishment of a student’s level of mastery of artistic language, but also enables union and dialogue between spectators around this work. consequently, this competence is comprised of two fundamental components: production and symbolic transformation. (men, 2010, p. 43) this means that communication will take place when the student transmits her or his interpretation of reality to an audience. 211profile vol. 19, no. 2, july-december 2017. issn 1657-0790 (printed) 2256-5760 (online). bogotá, colombia. pages 203-223 a basis for the design of a curriculum incorporating music and drama... table 3 presents the components for the organization of artistic education in the curriculum (men, 2010, p. 82). artistic education allows for the integration of knowledge. it is precisely here that communicative competence from a linguistic perspective relates to the arts. artistic education creates a learning environment in which english communicative competence develops. communicative competence presents language in different communicative situations in which the linguistic, sociolinguistic, and pragmatic aspects of the language play a significant role (men, 2007). proposal for a model of curriculum design the model of curriculum design shown in figure 3 is based on the work of johnson (1989), tyler (1986), and brown (2007). figure 3. curricular design model 5. documentation 3. implementation 1. needs analysis 2. objectives and content statement 4. assessment of curriculum this model suggests a cyclical practice, as the final stage allows for self-evaluation, through which one can reconsider or reformulate the diagnosis of needs, resulting in improvement of pedagogical practices. i explain this further below. needs analysis the curriculum should respond to the needs and interests of the learners. one should bear in mind that most of the children participating in an enrichment course also receive english instruction in their respective schools. therefore, the primary consideration is that the program be innovative and motivating for the children, thus giving them the opportunity to meet the proposed standards while also maximizing their cognitive potential through the arts. needs vary from one institution to the next, and from one student to another. the analysis allows us to consider the population, including not just students but also teachers, directors, and parents; all of these actors, directly or indirectly, are involved in the program’s development. through the needs analysis it is also possible to recognize existing resources as well as those that one can eventually obtain. it is even possible to diagnose language level and formulate a suitable implementation according to the context. for example, given that in an enrichment course schedule there is a variable, it may be more practical to offer courses in the afternoons or on the weekends. table 3. components for the organization of artistic education in the curriculum (translated by the author) institutional component pedagogical component disciplinal component social component • pei • curriculum • school mission • pedagogical model • conception of arts • learning environments • areas • knowledge, processes, products, contexts • social and cultural contexts • partnerships with cultural organizations universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras212 rodríguez-bonces we can collect this information from multiple sources, including interviews, questionnaires, document analysis, and comparisons or benchmarking with the offerings of similar programs at other universities. appendix a sketches an example of a diagnosis of needs. the diagnosis forms the basis of curriculum design. graves (2000) judges that in order to design a foreign language course, the context should be taken into account, as this is where the initial needs of the population can be identified, leading to a more meaningful teaching and learning process. in general, institutions of higher education convene students of distinct cultural, social, and economic backgrounds. for this reason and in accordance with the model of curriculum design in this article, conducting a diagnosis is indispensable in order to clearly identify the type of population and its needs and interests. appendix b shows an interview used as an instrument to diagnose. the interview seeks to create a teacher profile in order to determine if the course teacher should be a language teacher with additional artistic formation, or an arts teacher with knowledge of english. objectives and content statement determining the objectives allows for the creation of a flow chart, given that other large-scale actions derive from the objectives. according to richards (2010, p. 120), the purposes of formulating objectives are to: 1. define the program 2. give guidance 3. focus instruction 4. describe changes in learning once one defines the objectives, the next step is the syllabus or table of contents. according to dubin and olshtain (2000) this can take any of five formats, as shown in table 4. ortiz (2006) says that interdisciplinary topics “are organized by the intermingling of emergent concepts, patterns, and designs. larger disciplines are mixed by utilizing skills, concepts, and attitudes which are themselves universal” (p. 44). in this case, the thematic focus will be a point of departure in order to teach the language by means of music and drama. for this reason, the matrix format is recommended as it begins with a thematic focus and permits flexibility, as was stated above. it is worth noting that with the arts, contents is adapted by the institutions, as the men (2010) clarifies below: the understanding and the pedagogical application of knowledge in general, based on the development of competences…is not concerned with the definition of thematic content in artistic formation, as these are determined according to each artistic practice and, accordingly, their establishment is the work of the teachers and institutions. (p. 21) table 4. format of table of contents (dubin & olshtain, 2000) syllabus format characteristics linear linguistic principles determine the intensity of the content. it is strict in that it does not permit the teacher to modify the content sequence. modular integrates thematic content with grammar. appropriate for programs that seek to make materials more flexible. cyclical themes reappear in different units, with increasing complexity. matrix begins with thematic content and continues with a progression of the same topics in different situational contexts. includes communicative activities. story-line one story makes up the thematic focus of grammatical and functional concepts. 213profile vol. 19, no. 2, july-december 2017. issn 1657-0790 (printed) 2256-5760 (online). bogotá, colombia. pages 203-223 a basis for the design of a curriculum incorporating music and drama... table 5 shows the artistic activities that may be incorporated. table 5. musical and dramatic activities for the teaching of english drama music games improvisation mimesis physical theater sound and movement props and costumes immediate reaction imitation gesture and emotional interaction non-verbal representations narrative skills dramatic composition scenic recreation role-playing staging caricature sketch future drama mimicry comic strip puppets acting round phonemic awareness setting literature to music troupe rhythm song percussion composition musical genres pantomime appreciation instruments melody verses background noises vocal sounds and emotions plays on words musical games soundtracks ballads vocal reproduction intonation pronunciation interpretation once the program’s target population and its teachers have been decided upon, the administrative staff can formulate the program objectives. at this point, is it possible to include language learning objectives based on the cefr? the answer is affirmative. for example, the institution of higher education, which developed the curriculum proposed here, formulated the following objectives for its english program for children: a. prepare the children in diverse competences (communicative, intercultural, and artistic) in order to reach level a2 according to the cefr. b. offer children the opportunity to learn english through two methodological strategies, music and drama. the selection of content is important for program development. content should be selected in accordance with the guidelines provided by the cefr. since the goal is to create an interdisciplinary curriculum, content must depart from a thematic focus that allows teachers of other subjects to integrate the interdisciplinary aspects. this integration will be easier if, after deciding on themes, the communicative and intercultural aspects are incorporated. then the arts teacher will be able to decide on a series of activities involving the proposed themes. appendix c shows the contents of one part of a three part lesson which makes up a unit in an enrichment program for children. we can clearly see several aspects including theme, communicative competence, intercultural competence, and the contributions of the arts in the dramatic and musical components. this example also includes linguistic components such as vocabulary, auditory discrimination, and grammar. table 6 explains each component of an interdisciplinary matrix, which goes beyond a simple list of topics. in conclusion, a curriculum design, which integrates different subjects must also strengthen an interdisciplinary content matrix. it not only tackles a thematic focus but also develops linguistic, interdisciplinary, cultural, and communicative components, all in light of learning objectives. implementation one should consider four factors related to implementation: resources, time, methodologies, and content assessment. owing to university autonomy, each institution of higher education will decide how to take these on. universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras214 rodríguez-bonces content provides the basis for the adoption, adaptation, or creation of materials. the generation of language and arts activities will follow the selection of thematic, communicative, and intercultural content. at this step, the process of language acquisition in children should be taken into consideration. in our time, social and cognitive learning theories have gained greatly in importance; in addition to the studies of brain functioning, we can determine distinct learning styles and strategies. these theories are fundamental in an arts-integrated curriculum so that teachers can plan student-centered learning. one can plan instruction from three different perspectives: linguistic, dramatic, and musical. keeping in mind that program content has already been established, i feel the internet may prove useful to those teachers who require materials or activities. various web sites exist in which teachers share their lesson plans and activities. nonetheless, at the procedural level the adoption of a format such as that presented in appendix d is recommended. using this form as a guide, teachers plan first at the linguistic and then at the artistic level. the contribution of musical as well as drama activities to foreign language acquisition is well defined. table 7 briefly presents the principal contributions—in terms of methodological and theoretical aspects—of each art form toward the creation of an interdisciplinary curriculum. the process of assessment is constant. after finishing each module, the students will complete an evaluation which will prepare them for the future when they take standardized tests. given the role of artistic competence, part of the assessment will consist of a “show” in english. although music and drama are the means through which learning takes place, i recommend the rubric shown in table 8 in order to assess the child’s process in the use of these arts toward english language learning. as part of the artistic education competence, selfassessment is recommended. this is the student’s assessment of her own work and goals that she has met; meant to recognize areas of competence, and identify areas of difficulty. the teacher in charge of artistic education must encourage skills related to self-criticism in students. if pedagogical purposes table 6. components of a matrix of interdisciplinary curriculum thematic focus list of themes for each lesson. the selection of themes was made in accordance with the age and interests of the children. communicative competence the communicative functions for each topic are determined by the competences proposed by the cefr. pragmatic aspects, communicative skills, and curriculum guidelines established by the men are also taken into consideration. intercultural competence interculturality is defined as the cultural aspects of the home language in relation to other cultures. many of these aspects strengthen the civic competences established by the men. interdisciplinary component the contributions of music and drama to english language instruction. the artistic competences are formulated in terms of activities. linguistic component aspects related to language, including syntactic, phonologic, orthographic, semantic, and grammatical. 215profile vol. 19, no. 2, july-december 2017. issn 1657-0790 (printed) 2256-5760 (online). bogotá, colombia. pages 203-223 a basis for the design of a curriculum incorporating music and drama... table 7. drama and music from a methodological perspective drama music athiemoolam (2004) defines the role of drama in education as the use of different theater techniques as a transversal curricular tool that allows the student to examine reality through fantasy and delve into the true significance of actions as a linguistic and communicative objective. explores interand intra-personal strengths. augments and reinforces physical and social skills. role-play is a method of teaching and learning in which children create imaginary worlds. drama helps the student explore the social and linguistic implications of language learning. the student and the teacher are always able to give feedback on what has been accomplished, discuss its implications, and negotiate future activities. the students are able to deepen their learning through process drama, which promotes critical thinking (hitotuzi, 2014). drama stimulates and strengthens intelligences including the inter/intrapersonal and the kinesthetic. naturally explores interculturality. provides other purely linguistic elements such as prosody, semantics, etc. speech and listening are related. stress, volume, speed, and tempo all give the listener a clear concept of the emotion being spoken (prosody). music develops distinct intelligences, including linguistic, logical-mathematic, spatial, and interpersonal. songs permit the examination of lyrics and vocabulary comprehension (lynch, 2005). rhythm, tempo, and stress improve pronunciation. facilitates the distinguishing of sounds. positive influence on memory and retention of terms. creates an environment in which children are emotionally and socially stimulated. and process results are clear, the student should always be able to critically judge her own processes and its product. (men, 2011, p. 78) in this manner, the rubric (see table 8), which the teacher uses to evaluate the student, can always be used by the student as a self-assessment tool. assessment of the curriculum in this phase, we determine whether our objectives on all sides have been met or not. in fact, this assessment integrates the processes related to teaching, learning, and administration. constant assessment, whether formal or informal, allows us to decide how well the curriculum has been implemented and what steps are necessary for continued improvement. using the work of rogers (as cited in gelineau, 2012), the evaluator should ask the following questions while carrying out a curricular evaluation: • have the objectives been met? • what has occurred in the university and in the classroom with the implementation of the new curriculum? • what opinion do the people directly involved with the curriculum hold? • is the enrichment program a success compared with those of other universities? here can be included, for example, data on the number of students entering the program. • is the interdisciplinary work sufficient? • is it necessary to provide teachers with some kind of professional development? • what are children’s and parents’ perceptions of the english program? documentation documenting the curriculum design is especially important for processes of certification and quality assurance. these documents also can serve as a guide universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras216 rodríguez-bonces for teachers and assist the leadership in self-assessment and improvement. the institution can evaluate its curriculum design process and, with data collection, analyze the results. in fact, the men’s guide no. 4 or self-assessment manual (men, 2014) can be used as the chief tool for annual institutional review and therefore document the impact of the interdisciplinary curriculum proposed here through responses to the questions related to the academic administration indicator (table 9). the options for conducting the self-assessment also include interviews, questionnaires, and observations. there should always be a file with the results of the initial phase of the cycle of curriculum design and subsequent recommendations. all the documents that account for the curriculum design show evidence of a rigorous, high-quality process. conclusion the presented curriculum design offers an opportunity for teaching innovation. an enrichment english program for children can follow the groundwork discussed in this article and thus institutions become able to fulfill their extension programs mission as demanded by the higher education colombian system. among the general characteristics of the curriculum proposed in this article, one can find it aligns with national standards. it also takes into account art-anddrama competences, theories of children’s language learning, interdisciplinary activities, and formative and summative assessment. this proposal, while simple in appearance, confronts multiple considerations for enrichment programs. first, interdisciplinary work is advised. the collaboration table 8. music and drama rubric 2 3 4 5 communication never communicates ideas precisely, clearly, and fluidly or masters vocabulary. almost never communicates ideas precisely, clearly, and fluidly or masters vocabulary. most of the time communicates ideas precisely, clearly, and fluidly and masters vocabulary. always communicates ideas precisely, clearly, and fluidly and masters vocabulary. performance never attempts to use the language in musical and dramatic activities. almost never attempts to use the language in musical and dramatic activities. most of the time attempts to use the language in musical and dramatic activities. always attempts to use the language in musical and dramatic activities. participation never demonstrates a positive attitude toward following directions. does not display a positive attitude toward class participation. almost never demonstrates a positive attitude toward following directions. almost never displays a positive attitude toward class participation. usually demonstrates a positive attitude toward following directions. positive attitude toward class participation. always demonstrates a positive attitude toward following directions. excellent attitude toward class participation. use of class time easily becomes off-task. wastes time or wastes the time of classmates. frequently off-task. at times disrupts the learning of others. occasionally off-task but does not disrupt class. excellent use of class time. is never off-task. 217profile vol. 19, no. 2, july-december 2017. issn 1657-0790 (printed) 2256-5760 (online). bogotá, colombia. pages 203-223 a basis for the design of a curriculum incorporating music and drama... between english-, music-, and drama-area teachers promotes the integrated curriculum. the incorporation of music and drama goes beyond the mere singing of a song or simple role-plays. the integration of music and drama promotes meaningful learning and creates a positive attitude since children engage in “authentic” situations while using the foreign language. second, the adoption or design of materials is a concern. at present, this type of curriculum faces a lack of materials on the market suitable for an approach in which english is taught through art and drama. educators need to plan carefully to evidence language and content objectives. third, the curriculum design proposed in this article provides different tools for practitioners. a cyclical process starts with a needs analysis and ends with assessment. the process includes rubrics, activities, themes, and outcomes. finally, this article, rather than presenting a thoroughly prepared curriculum, leaves the door open so that each institution can use this approach together with its own innovations in order to improve the quality of its educational offerings. references athiemoolam, l. (2004, december). drama in education and its effectiveness in english second/foreign language classes. paper presented at the first international language learning conference (illc), universiti sains malaysia, penang. barriga monroy, m. l. (2011). estado del arte y definición de términos sobre el tema “la investigación en educación artística” [related literature and definition of terms about the topic “research in artistic education”]. el artista, 8. bedoya bedoya, p. i., lozano ñustez, m., muñoz riaño, s. m., forero pal, s., & sarmiento ceballos, j. i. (2007). fortalecimiento de la competencia léxica del inglés como lengua extranjera a través de diferentes técnicas artísticas [strengthening english language lexical competence through diverse artistic techniques] (undergraduate thesis). universidad de la salle, bogotá, colombia. brown, d. (2007). teaching by principles: an interactive approach to language pedagogy. white plains, us: pearson. casals, a., & suárez, m. (2012). música y aprendizaje de lenguas en el marco competencial [music and language learning under the competences framework]. retrieved from academia.edu. chukueggu, c. o. c. (2012). the use of drama and dramatic activities in english language teaching. the crab: journal of theatre and media arts, 7, 151-159. consejo de europa. (2002). marco común europeo de referencia para las lenguas: aprendizaje, enseñanza, evaluación [common european framework of references for table 9. academic indicators guide 4 men and support from interdisciplinary curriculum topic questions documents pedagogical strategy is the pedagogical strategy defined in the pei clear and explicit, and has it been adopted by the teaching staff? methodological basis for the teaching of music and drama plan of studies has a coherent plan of studies been constructed in conjunction with members of the teaching staff? plan of studies classroom observations standards have guidelines and standards been adopted for all levels and subject areas? standards competences student assessment is there an institution-wide system of student assessment used by all members of the educational community? rubrics videos of shows quizzes second language is there a structured process of foreign language teaching and learning? plan of studies curricular sequence universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras218 rodríguez-bonces languages: learning, teaching, assessment]. madrid, es: ministerio de educación, cultura y deporte. the dana foundation. (2008). learning, arts, and the brain: the dana consortium report on arts and cognition. new york, us: dana press. dubin, f., & olshtain, e. (2000). course design. new york, us: cambridge university press. echevarría, j., vogt, m., & short, d. j. (2017). making content comprehensible for english learners: the siop® model (4th ed.). boston, us: pearson. gelineau, p. (2012). integrating the arts across the elementary school curriculum. new york, us: cengage. graves, k. (2000). designing language courses: a guide for teachers. boston, us: heinle cengage. hitotuzi, n. (2014). the dramatic problematizer model: an approach towards the development of critical thinking in the efl classroom. the efl journal, 5(2), 1-22. johnson, r. k. (1989). the second language curriculum. new york, us: cambridge university press. http://doi. org/10.1017/cbo9781139524520. jordana, m. (2008). la contribución de la música en la estimulación de procesos de adquisición de lenguaje [incorporating music in the framework of language stimulation and intervention]. eufonia: didáctica de la música, 43, 49-62. kamhi-stein, l. d., díaz-maggioli, g, and de oliveira, l. c. (eds.) (2017). english language teaching in south america: policy, preparation, and practice. bristol, uk: multilingual matters. http://doi.org/10.21832/kamhi7975. lowe, a. (2002). toward integrating music and other art forms into the language curriculum. research studies in music education, 18, 13-25. http://doi.org/10.1177/132 1103x020180010301. ludke, k. m., & weinmann, h. (eds.) (2012). european music portfolio: a creative way into languages (teacher’s handbook). comenius lifelong learning project. retrieved from https://www.researchgate.net/ publication/260265824_european_music_portfolio_a_ creative_way_into_languages_-_teacher’s_handbook. lynch, l. m. (2005, november 30). 9 reasons why you should use songs to teach english as a foreign language: using songs to teach foreign language [web log post]. retrieved from http://bettereflteacher.blogspot.com/2005/11/9reasons-why-you-should-use-songs-to.html. marschke, r. (2004). creating contexts, characters, and communication: foreign language teaching and process drama (master’s thesis). queensland university of technology, australia. medina, s. l. (2002). using music to enhance second language acquisition: from theory to practice. retrieved from http:// www.forefrontpublishers.com/eslmusic/articles/238using-music-to-enhance-second-languageacquisitionfrom-theory-to-practice/. medina, s. l. (2003). acquiring vocabulary through storysongs. mextesol journal 26(1), 11-15. milovanov, r., huotilainen, m., välimäki, v., esquel, p. a. a., & tervaniemi, m. (2008). musical aptitude and second language pronunciation skills in school-aged children: neural and behavioral evidence. brain research, 1194(15), 81-89. http://doi.org/10.1016/j.brainres.2007.11.042. ministerio de educación, meduca. (2016). panamá bilingüe: informe de transparencia. ministerio de educación [bilingual panama: transparency report from the ministry of education]. panamá, pa. author. ministerio de educación nacional, men. (1994). ley general de educación [general educational law]. bogotá, co: author. ministerio de educación nacional, men. (2007). lineamientos generales para la enseñanza del inglês [general guidelines for the teaching of english]. bogotá, co: author. ministerio de educación nacional, men. (2010). orientaciones pedagógicas para la educación artística en básica y media [pedagogical guidelines for artistic education at primary and secondary schools]. bogotá, co: author. ministerio de educación nacional, men. (2011). lineamientos curriculares para la educación artística [curricular guidelines for artistic education]. bogotá, co: author. ministerio de educación nacional, men. (2014). manual de autoevaluación y clasificación de establecimientos privados 219profile vol. 19, no. 2, july-december 2017. issn 1657-0790 (printed) 2256-5760 (online). bogotá, colombia. pages 203-223 a basis for the design of a curriculum incorporating music and drama... de preescolar, básica y media, para la definición de tarifas [handbook of self-assessment and classification of private kindergaten, primary, and secondary schools for the definition of fees]. bogotá, co: author. naoko, a. (2006). the waterhole: using educational drama as a pedagogical tool in a foreign language class at a public primary school in japan (doctoral dissertation). the university of melbourne, australia. nunan, d. (2001). the learner-centred curriculum. cambridge, uk: cambridge university press. ortiz, e. (2006). retos y perspectivas del currículo integrado [challenges and perspectives of integrated curriculum]. cuaderno de investigación en la educación, 21, 35-56. peláez falla, m. n, & segura fernández, m. a. (2008). las técnicas escénicas y las técnicas corporales del actor como herramienta metodológica para cualificar el desempeño comunicativo del docente en el aula de clase [the actor’s stage and body techniques as a methodological tool to assess the teacher’s comunicative performance in the classroom] (undergraduate thesis). pontificia universidad javeriana, bogotá, colombia. pérez aldeguer, s., & leganés lavall, e. n. (2012). la música como herramienta interdisciplinar: un análisis cuantitativo en el aula de lengua extranjera de primaria [music as an interdisciplinary tool: a quantitative analysis in the primary foreign language classroom]. revista de investigación en educación, 10(1), 127-143. richards, j. c. (2010). curriculum development in language teaching. cambridge, uk: cambridge university press. sharifah, h. (2002). english teachers’ opinions on the use of music in the english classroom (unpublished undergraduate thesis). universiti kebangsaan malaysia, selangor, malaysia. tyler, r. w. (1986). principios básicos del currículo [basic principles of curriculum]. buenos aires, ar: troquel. about the author mónica rodríguez-bonces holds a phd in regional and economic integration and development from universidad de león (spain); and an ma in applied linguistics from universidad distrital francisco josé de caldas (colombia). she is currently the academic director for pearson colombia and ma counselor at universidad de la sabana. universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras220 rodríguez-bonces appendix a: needs analysis sample questionnaire: • why do you want to study in an english extension program at this university? • how often do you practice english outside your school? • what would you like to do different in this program? • do you like speaking english? writing, listening to and reading it? • do you feel comfortable in front of an audience? 221profile vol. 19, no. 2, july-december 2017. issn 1657-0790 (printed) 2256-5760 (online). bogotá, colombia. pages 203-223 a basis for the design of a curriculum incorporating music and drama... appendix b: teacher’s interview • should an interdisciplinary language program be created? explain. • which artistic component should be included in a language program for children? • what is the suggested teacher’s profile for a language program that integrates music and drama? • how would you integrate language and arts in a children’s language course? • how would you plan a language lesson integrating music and drama with it? how would you organize the group of children? universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras222 rodríguez-bonces appendix c: sample of content matrix, english program for children initial 1 thematic focus communicative competence intercultural competence drama component musical component linguistic component my classmates and me! saying hello and goodbye. introducing oneself and others. spelling names. telling age. describing objects by color. polite behavior: addressing people according to age and level of formality. utilize basic theater tools, such as competitive games, necessary to establish simple communication in english combine word games with clapping in binary rhythm, using english vocabulary to strengthen learning specific to the topic vocabulary: colors, greetings. grammar: my name is, i am, he/she is, her/ his name is. phonics: a, b my family portrait! describing family. asking and answering questions about family members. identifying names of family members. recognizing the importance of family in our society. being aware of different kinds of families using the body to develop stories or situations which have been set up in english and which are related to characters and/or the topic of family. sing simple songs and use gestural and physical expression in order to describe the composition of the family. vocabulary: numbers, family members. grammar: demonstrative adjectives, whoquestion phonics: c, d my favorite food talking about food: likes and dislikes. describing food and drinks. making polite requests and responses. recognizing the gastronomy from different countries. valuing respect and fairness. developing expressive skills based on gestural descriptions of food using mimetic games. reproducing short rhythmic sequences with constant rhythm, involving vocabulary related to favorite foods. vocabulary: food and flavors. grammar: simple present, yes/ no questions, affirmative answers using “have” and “have got”. phonics: e, f 223profile vol. 19, no. 2, july-december 2017. issn 1657-0790 (printed) 2256-5760 (online). bogotá, colombia. pages 203-223 a basis for the design of a curriculum incorporating music and drama... appendix d: interdisciplinary lesson plan form date:__________________ level:_________________________________________ unit/theme: __________________________________________________________ arts objective(s): ___________________________________________________________________________________________ ___________________________________________________________________________________________ ___________________________________________________________________________________________ language objective(s): ___________________________________________________________________________________________ ___________________________________________________________________________________________ ___________________________________________________________________________________________ key vocabulary materials and resources learning strategies language skills product (write the artistic product) assessment ___ reading ___ writing ___ speaking ___ listening ___ for drama: ___ for music: ___ individual ___ group ___ written ___ oral sequence: (write the class sequence – indicate times) comments: (to be written at the end of the lesson) 195 https://doi.org/10.15446/profile.v20n2.67996 tackling intermediate students’ fossilized grammatical errors in speech through self-evaluation and self-monitoring strategies reparación de los errores fosilizados de estudiantes de nivel intermedio en su habla por medio de estrategias de autoevaluación y automonitoreo anderson marcell cárdenas* centro colombo americano, bogotá, colombia the purpose of this action research study was to help english language intermediate students tackle fossilized grammatical errors in their speech, which were verb form, missing subject, and word choice. in order to do so, the researcher used visual input such as pictures and colored stickers for self-monitoring purposes, as well as self-evaluation charts for participants to follow up on their process; additionally, voice recordings and field notes were used to help the researcher keep track of students’ progress. results showed that participants developed more awareness and attentiveness towards their fossilized mistakes which were reflected in the repairs they were able to make along the implementation process. key words: english language learning, fossilization, self-evaluation, self-monitoring. el propósito de este estudio de investigación-acción fue ayudar a estudiantes de inglés de nivel intermedio a minimizar errores gramaticales fosilizados en su habla, los cuales fueron forma verbal, falta de sujeto y la selección de vocabulario apropiado. para lograr esto, el investigador usó estímulos visuales tales como fotos y calcomanías coloridas para propósitos de auto-monitoreo, al igual que formatos de autoevaluación para que los estudiantes siguieran su proceso; adicionalmente, grabaciones de voz y notas de campo fueron usadas para ayudar al investigador a hacer seguimiento de los participantes. los resultados mostraron que los participantes desarrollaron más conciencia y atención hacia sus errores fosilizados, lo cual se reflejó en las correcciones que pudieron hacer a través de la implementación del estudio. palabras clave: aprendizaje del idioma inglés, autoevaluación, auto-monitoreo, fosilización. * e-mail: acardenas@colombobogota.edu.co how to cite this article (apa, 6th ed.): cárdenas, a. m. (2018). tackling intermediate students’ fossilized grammatical errors in speech through self-evaluation and self-monitoring strategies. profile: issues in teachers’ professional development, 20(2), 195-209. https://doi. org/10.15446/profile.v20n2.67996. this article was received on september 28, 2017 and accepted on march 12, 2018. this is an open access article distributed under the terms of the creative commons license attribution-noncommercial-noderivatives 4.0 international license. consultation is possible at https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/. profile: issues teach. prof. dev., vol. 20 no. 2, jul-dec, 2018. issn 1657-0790 (printed) 2256-5760 (online). bogotá, colombia. pages 195-209 universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras196 cárdenas introduction the study took place at centro colombo americano’s (cca) downtown branch (bogotá) with 14 adult intermediate students who had been studying english for an average of two years. most of them are professionals who hold bachelors, masters, and doctoral degrees and were studying english because most of them needed to take international exams such as toefl or ielts as a job requirement or in order to apply to a foreign university. for the needs analysis to take place, which involved a series of teacher’s observations, the analysis of recorded samples from students through the use of an online tool called vocaroo.com, and a survey which participants completed, i discovered that while students had acquired a great level of fluency, their accuracy was being affected by different fossilized errors in their speech. this matches brown’s (2007) idea that it is quite common to “encounter” in a learner’s language different “erroneous” elements in their production despite their fluent command of the language. the results from the recordings showed the highest frequency of fossilization in verb formation, especially in the present and past forms. additionally, on a lower scale but also with a high frequency, students made repeated mistakes omitting the subject of a sentence. also, with a similar frequency, students misused vocabulary which did not match some ideas they intended to express. on the survey results, verb formation and tenses were two categories students pointed out as two of their most common mistakes, which matched results on recordings. likewise, surveys showed that students seemed to be familiar with some learning strategies, of which self-monitoring was one of the most common. however, this shows that even though they had an idea of some learning strategies, they misused them or did not know how to implement them, which is evident in their oral performance on the recordings for the needs analysis. as a result, the research question was stated as follows: to what extent might self-monitoring and selfevaluation strategies help adult intermediate students tackle their fossilized grammatical errors in speech? consequently, the specific objective of the research study was: to analyze the impact self-monitoring and self-evaluation may have on adult intermediate students’ verb form, missing subject, and word choice fossilized mistakes. literature review fossilization is a term coined by selinker (1972) who described it as a permanent local cessation of development in a language system or subsystem. this phenomenon affects most, if not all second language (l2) learners/users due to the fact that it can manifest itself in particular areas of a language which can be phonological, grammatical, or lexical (han & odlin, 2006). as some scholars might agree with the fact that such issue must be tackled, others have focused their attention on other elements of language development which somehow have disregarded the use of accuracy. for instance, brown (2001), ellis (2004), higgs and clifford (1982), nunan (2004), and savignon (2005), among others, have carried out studies related to providing students with meaningful interaction, for which communication has played the most important role in the classroom, pushing teachers to create opportunities for students to interact and convey meaning (terrell, 1991). on the one hand, students’ fluency in their l2 has increased thanks to the importance given by teachers to the role of interaction, but on the other hand, accuracy has been disregarded and fossilization has become a more common issue among learners. nonetheless, other scholars have tried to redirect their attention on accuracy; for instance, spada (1997) refers to form-focused instruction as a pedagogical effort to draw students’ attention to language form which can be done in an implicit or explicit way. additionally, ellis (2002) sees form-focused instruction as something necessary to develop l2 knowledge, an idea that agrees 197 tackling intermediate students’ fossilized grammatical errors in speech through self-evaluation... profile: issues teach. prof. dev., vol. 20 no. 2, jul-dec, 2018. issn 1657-0790 (printed) 2256-5760 (online). bogotá, colombia. pages 195-209 with norris and ortega (2000), who analyzed 49 formfocused instruction studies and concluded that explicit instruction had been more effective for students to gain accuracy than implicit instruction and that such effect had been durable. this information helps us understand that focusing on form is also a feasible way to help students in their l2 learning. brown (2007) states that the quality of the language of many students has been affected by errors that were not tackled on time, probably due to the lack of awareness, for which brown refers to form-focused instruction as conscious learning in which learners exercise an intentional control of their attention to an aspect of input or output. such awareness is connected to identifying errors that are produced when communication is taking place; additionally, some studies have been carried out (hennessey, 1999; kuhn & dean, 2004; martinez, 2006) and all of them have agreed that focusing on the way students construct their ideas is really important to avoid the acquisition of errors. this might have helped several teachers re-direct their attention towards form. han (2003) states that there is a lack of empirical studies on fossilization; therefore, evidence of fossilization has been anecdotal. however, several studies have been carried out regarding this phenomenon. wei (2008) carried out a study on the implications of interlanguage (il) fossilization in l2, for which he described five types of fossilization taking into account his native language, which is chinese. the results showed phonological, morphological, syntactic, semantic, and pragmatic fossilization; however, the current study was focused on morphological and syntactic fossilization, which are more related to the spoken grammatical fossilized errors identified in the population of this study. additionally, qian and xiao (2010), in a theoretical study on fossilization, stated that when it happens on a temporary basis it could be considered the greatest difficulty in second language acquisition, and mentioned that taking action that seeks to tackle emerging mistakes positively is a good option to avoid and resolve temporary fossilization. they focused their attention on three strategies which, according to them, could prevent fossilization: (a) taking the right attitude towards students’ mistakes, (b) paying attention to verbal output by grasping the relationship between accuracy and fluency, and (c) providing students with strategic feedback. hasbún (2007) carried out a study with 159 english as a foreign language (efl) university students for which eight different writing samples from each participant were analyzed. such samples were evaluated and errors were classified according to an error taxonomy; the most common errors were classified into eight categories: vocabulary, prepositions, pronouns, plurals, word order, agreement, verb forms (different from agreement), and spelling. this study shows a commonality with the present study for which verb forms, agreement, and word order are related to the three main spoken fossilized errors discovered in the current population. as mentioned above, there have been several studies which attempt to describe the phenomenon of fossilization; however, while some of them focus on strategies to minimize the impact of fossilization or to prevent them from happening in efl learners (qian & xiao, 2010); others focus on identifying different types of fossilized errors from a written or pragmatic perspective (hasbún, 2007; wei, 2008). strategies o’malley and chamot (1990) state that through the use of meta-cognitive strategies students might gain awareness that they lack due to the fact that these strategies “involve thinking about one’s learning process” (p. 8). this agrees with brown’s (2007) idea that the quality of students’ language has been affected due to a lack of awareness; consequently, conscious learning needs to take place, in other words, learners need to take intentional control of their attention. for the above reasons, two meta-cognitive strategies will be described and discussed below: self-monitoring and self-evaluation. universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras198 cárdenas self-monitoring o’malley and chamot (1990) defined self-monitoring as “checking one’s comprehension during listening or reading or checking the accuracy and/or appropriateness of one’s oral or written production when it’s taking place” (p. 46). additionally, brown (2007) refers to this concept as: “correcting one’s speech for accuracy in pronunciation, grammar, vocabulary, or for appropriateness, related to the setting or to the people who are present” (p. 134). something both authors have in common is that they refer to accuracy for which self-monitoring could be useful. nonetheless, some scholars have had differences of opinion regarding the use of self-monitoring. for instance, krashen (1990) proposed a hypothesis for which, in a learning process, students can monitor their language production and self-correct mistakes they might detect; however, he says that monitoring does not favor accuracy and does not help acquisition. krashen (2003) states that too much self-monitoring at a time is damaging for the acquisition of a language; however, terrell (1991) says that whereas krashen’s hypothesis can work for children’s language acquisition, adults need a greater amount of strategies in order to acquire language. in other words, strategies become necessary and self-monitoring plays a vital role in adult-language learning because it helps students regulate or be aware of comprehension at a task. there have been several studies on self-monitoring; for instance, levelt (1989) proposed the “perceptual loop” theory which intends to “check the intended message for its appropriateness, inspects the speech plan, and detects errors prior to its articulation” (p. 2). more recently, chang’s study (2010) examined the effect of self-monitoring on efl online learners’ academic performance and motivational beliefs with 90 college students. the study explored the effects of the use of self-monitoring strategies for study time, study environment, and predicting test score in a webbased course. results evidenced that participants who had used a self-monitoring strategy had experienced better academic performances and their motivation had increased compared to those who had not done it. it helped them complete academic tasks, alerting them to breakdowns in attention and comprehension. additionally, sánchez luján (2012) conducted a study on the effects of self-monitoring and self-reflection in a1 adult learners in a blended environment at a colombian university offering distance studies. participants were asked to observe and record their own behavior, which was registered through self-assessment tools. results showed that students were able to identify areas of improvement on their own. additionally, some of them expanded their level of reflection and monitoring and even developed awareness and the ability to reflect on their own learning. in other studies, pillai (2006) conducted a research study whose intention was to explore what repairs in the spontaneous production of speech revealed about the psycholinguistic processes of self-monitoring and self-repair. results showed that speech is not stopped immediately upon detection of a problem or production of an error; additionally, speakers seemed to have a tendency to continue speaking longer before they interrupted themselves. in another study, kormos (2000) investigated the role of attention in monitoring second language speech production analyzing the frequency for self-repairs and the correction rate of errors in the speech of 40 native speakers of hungarian. results showed that in l2 speech, error repairs had been more frequent than repairs in l1. findings also showed that lexical errors were repaired considerably more frequently than grammatical errors in l1 and l2. furthermore, results showed that students who had higher levels of proficiency in their l2 had corrected fewer mistakes than learners who had been at pre-intermediate levels. it was confirmed that l2 learners pay particular attention to lexical choice. in other words, it seems to be especially important in the case of l2 speakers that their production requires more attention than in l1. the above studies evidence a clear importance in the use of self-monitoring in order to help 199 tackling intermediate students’ fossilized grammatical errors in speech through self-evaluation... profile: issues teach. prof. dev., vol. 20 no. 2, jul-dec, 2018. issn 1657-0790 (printed) 2256-5760 (online). bogotá, colombia. pages 195-209 students tackle accuracy. some authors focused their attention on improving students’ academic performance (chang, 2010; sánchez luján, 2012); others focused on self-repairs (kormos, 2000; pillai, 2006), and others on enhancing students’ motivation and autonomy. none of the studies found have tried to tackle spoken fossilized errors, even though their ideas suggest that it could be feasible to tackle such errors. for these reasons, self-monitoring was used for this study. self-evaluation o’malley and chamot (1990) defined self-evaluation as “checking the outcomes of one’s own language learning against a standard after it has been completed” (p. 46) whereas brown (2007) refines the same definition as “checking the outcomes of one’s own language learning against an internal measure of completeness and accuracy” (p. 134). both definitions have something in common: students assess their own performance for a specific task which has taken place in a communication act. the concept of accuracy is part of the definition which means that self-evaluation can directly help students in the process of tackling their accuracy. studies on self-evaluation or what some may refer to as “self-assessment” indistinctively, have been done; for instance, schraeder (1996) made an attempt to foster independent learning by providing students with rubrics and checklists for self-assessing; she found that her students gained confidence and their self-esteem had been enhanced considerably because they had gained a sense of independence by taking the responsibility for their own learning. min (2005) conducted a similar study and discovered that students benefited from this process in skills improvement, confidence build-up, language acquisition, and meta-cognitive strategy use. additionally, tamjid and birjandi (2011), reviewing different empirical studies related to self-assessment or self-evaluation, concluded that providing students with the opportunity to selfor peer-assess will help them improve their metacognition which then will guide them to be better thinkers and learners. in all three cases, authors see self-evaluation as an effective tool which could provide something participants from the current study needed: improvement. in the study by sánchez luján (2012) results also showed that by participating in self-assessment practice, learners were able to identify their weaknesses, become aware of issues related to listening, speaking, and vocabulary, and become more responsible for their learning, showing positive reflections towards their selfefficacy and autonomy in the foreign language learning process. additionally, arciniegas (2008) conducted a study with high-beginner adult efl learners during a three-month cycle at the cca. he used learning journals to achieve learning goals. he concluded that due to the fact that students had had the opportunity to reflect upon their performance, they had been able to spot their own weaknesses and strengths. these helped them decide what was needed to cope with difficult aspects of the language. additionally, alvarez and muñoz (2007) carried out a study in a language center at a private university in colombia. the purpose of the study was to examine students’ attitude towards self-assessment; participants consisted of 94 students who received training in self-assessment by using self-assessment forms. results revealed that most students showed a positive attitude towards self-assessment and found it especially valuable for raising their awareness for the learning process. this is another piece of evidence of the usefulness of using self-assessment with the current population; it could help them raise awareness of their learning process, and more specifically, on how to tackle spoken grammatical fossilized errors. from the above studies, it can be concluded that: first, several studies on self-assessing or self-evaluation have been carried out during the last decade whose foci have varied; some have studied how the combination of self-assessment with other learning strategies could help students improve their performance or raise awareness as regards their learning process, as in the case of universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras200 cárdenas sánchez luján (2012) whose strategies matched the ones implemented in the current study. others have focused on the usefulness of using self-assessment techniques to improve students’ self-directed learning. another interesting finding is that authors do not seem to agree on the difference between self-evaluation and self-assessment; some of them use such words indistinctively as in the case of alvarez and muñoz (2007), arciniegas (2008), and goto and lee (2006), among others. however, based on o’malley and chamot’s (1990) definition, they are not so different after all; and as a conclusive idea, the current study has referred to both terms indistinctively as well, and will continue doing so throughout the article. method the type of study carried out was action research because it involved “taking a self-reflective, critical, and systematic approach to exploring your own teaching contexts” (burns, 2010, p. 2). burns also states that the main aim of action research is to identify a problematic situation and intervene, whose intention is to bring about changes and improvements. kemmis and mctaggart (1988) described four broad phases in a cycle research: the first one is planning, where the researcher identifies a problem and thinks of an action plan to bring about improvements. for the present study, a needs analysis took place through teacher’s observations, the analysis of recorded samples from students, and a survey which participants completed. also, i discovered that while students had acquired a great level of fluency, their accuracy was being affected by different fossilized errors in their speech. the second is action; here the plan is revised throughout the intervention. for the present study, the use of self-monitoring strategies like visual input and self-evaluation strategies such as charts took place. the third is observation; here the researcher observes the effects of the intervention on the participants and context. in my case, i observed participants’ performance and collected data through field notes and voice recordings. finally, the fourth stage is reflection, where the main goal is to evaluate and describe the effects that the action had on the context. for the present study, i was able to identify a significant impact on participants’ grammatical mistakes which is described in the data analysis. data collection instruments according to hendricks (2009), the implementation of multiple data collection strategies guarantees credibility in the research findings. as for this study, three instruments were used: first, field notes which, according to hatch (2002), provide the principal data that can be gathered through observation; i used this instrument through implementation in order to observe how participants self-monitored while interaction was taking place. the second tool was artifacts which, according to hendricks, are tools that can help determine whether an intervention has had an impact; the types of artifacts were “student-generated artifacts” (p. 81). they were a voice recording web tool called vocaroo.com and self-evaluation forms. with the former, participants recorded their voices in three different moments: firstly, for the needs analysis, secondly, in the middle of the implementation, and thirdly, at the end of the implementation process (a total of three recordings per student). the objective for the second and third recordings was to confirm to which extent students’ self-monitoring had increased. with the latter, participants evaluated their own work towards a specific goal: to self-monitor. finally, transcripts from recordings were used in order to examine and analyze data in detail which could guarantee a better and more reliable analysis (burns, 1999). in order to analyze raw data and make sense of them, i used the grounded theory approach, which is a systematic procedure that is used to generate a theory that explains a process, an action, or an interaction about a topic; in the present study, it helped to derive theory inductively from the data, which were systematically 201 tackling intermediate students’ fossilized grammatical errors in speech through self-evaluation... profile: issues teach. prof. dev., vol. 20 no. 2, jul-dec, 2018. issn 1657-0790 (printed) 2256-5760 (online). bogotá, colombia. pages 195-209 gathered and analyzed through a research process to discover categories, concepts, and properties and their interrelations (corbin & strauss, 2008). consequently, i decided to use grounded theory for two reasons: firstly, because existing theories had not addressed the issue that was studied in the same exact way (caicedo, 2011; hasbún, 2007; qian & xiao, 2010; wei, 2008); secondly, because this theory offered a step-by-step, systematic procedure for analyzing data which helped me go from open and axial to selective coding. with the initial open coding, i was able to form initial categories of information through segmenting information from which categories and subcategories in a very general way emerged. later, with axial coding i selected specific open coding categories and positioned those at the center of the process which made them become the core categories of the study. finally, with the selective coding i wrote the theory that emerged from the relation among the core categories from the axial coding. implementation at the cca, lessons are developed through the completion of tasks which requires a rigorous structuring of sessions by dividing activities into mini-steps or mini-tasks, each activity with its own set-up, execution, and evaluation stage. additionally, the lesson needs to be communicative which means that interaction is a must and there always has to be a “communicative event” which is described as an authentic, meaningful, outcome-driven performance that includes structures, vocabulary, functions, and topics from the day’s lesson which go beyond practice activities included in the textbook used. because of the nature of the research question, most of the implementation took place on the “communicative event” and “assessment” stages. the former because it was the most complete speaking opportunity for students to interact and use their oral skills in which fossilized grammatical errors in speech took place; consequently, self-monitoring fit into this particular stage of the lesson. for the latter, having an assessment stage allowed participants to use self-evaluation forms and reflect upon what they had done, and decide on an action plan. as mentioned above, the main sources of analysis were participants’ self-evaluation forms, my field notes, and participants’ transcripts from three recordings they made for the pre, while, and post stages. from the beginning of the implementation process, participants kept their self-evaluations in a folder which i collected three times during the whole process. i made copies of participants’ reflections and filed them with my field notes accordingly; in other words, a set of field notes would be filed with the self-evaluation forms that matched the same session. additionally, during the communicative events of each session, participants used the visual input to help them notice the areas they needed to pay attention to while speaking through pairs or group discussions. such visual aids were colored stickers which represented areas to pay attention to (red = verb forms, blue = vocabulary, and yellow = missing subject); students would paste them on their faces for their peers to self-monitor. once the event was over, students would reflect upon their performance by filling out self-evaluation forms. i would monitor students’ performance and pay close attention to their monitoring in order to take notes on field notes forms; via this tool, relevant information was gathered which was analyzed and used in the triangulation process. furthermore, in the middle and at the end of the implementation process, participants recorded their voices using vocaroo.com answering to a question related to their achievements in life. they sent their recordings to their e-mails and thanks to their level and willingness to participate in the research project, they made the transcriptions by themselves and e-mailed them to me. results table 1 represents the three main categories that emerged from data. the first category refers to an apparent sense of awareness students started developing universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras202 cárdenas towards the three main fossilized mistakes they were aiming at tackling. the second category refers to the fact that participants seem to have started developing a degree of attentiveness regarding their fossilized mistakes which could be evidenced in their repairs when interacting or trying to convey meaning. finally, the third category refers to participants’ apparent development of progressiveness regarding the tackling of their fossilized errors. these three categories will be described in more detail in the following paragraphs. table 1. categories that emerged from data research question: to which extent might self-monitoring and selfevaluation help adult intermediate students tackle fossilized grammatical errors in speech at a private colombian institution? categories developing attentiveness the effect of attentiveness on repairs developing awareness of fossilized mistakes developing a sense of progressiveness in tackling fossilized errors progressiveness on self-repairs category 1: developing attentiveness at the cca, students are usually instructed with cognitive and metacognitive learning strategies (o’malley & chamot, 1990) from the very beginning of their learning process. one of the main purposes of the institution is to help students become autonomous self-regulated learners; consequently, students’ attentiveness towards their learning is enhanced on a daily basis. nonetheless, attention towards accuracy tends to decrease, but it seems that the implementation of this study had an effect on the participants’ attentiveness. attention, as stated by kormos (2000), plays a vital role in learners’ self-repairs. the data show that participants have started to develop attentiveness towards their speech and the common errors they produce which could be evidenced in a subcategory that was identified: the effect of attentiveness on repairs. in the following part, i will describe how this subcategory emerged. subcategory: the effect of attentiveness on repairs it appears to be that participants of this study showed an improvement on the degree of self-repairs regarding their fossilized errors in speech. students were given visual aids (appendix) whose purpose was to help them be attentive to what areas of their language to pay attention to. as a result, such visual aids had an effect on participants’ attentiveness in a positive way. for instance, whenever students were paying attention to the visual aids, there was an increase in their self-repairs. as it can be observed in the excerpts below, in all cases presented, participants were attentive to the visual aids and were able to monitor the accuracy of their speech, especially regarding verb forms. this may suggest that the level of attention students had when self-repairing (kormos, 2000) their speech may have had a bigger impact on fossilized mistakes related to verb forms. i has had already been to… (se1, field notes 2) we take took turns to fulfill all the reps… (sa, transcript, recording middle implementation) she need, needed, needs to decide on... (sf, field notes 1) since i was in school, i had problems with that… (sh, field notes 2) people who is/are important… (sj, field notes 4) in contrast, whenever attentiveness was not part of participants’ priority while interacting, the degree of self-repairs decreased. this was witnessed in my observations, which evidenced this lack of attentiveness to visual aids or because they got distracted by some external factor, or simply their attention was not focused 1 s (student); a, b, i, etc. (letters assigned to each participant). 203 tackling intermediate students’ fossilized grammatical errors in speech through self-evaluation... profile: issues teach. prof. dev., vol. 20 no. 2, jul-dec, 2018. issn 1657-0790 (printed) 2256-5760 (online). bogotá, colombia. pages 195-209 on the areas they had been asked to self-monitor. they seemed not to repair their mistakes, as can be observed in the following excerpts. how is possible…” (si, field notes 1) and i fight [referring to a past experience] with the guys… (sd, field notes 2) when the person is an authority and have… (sf, field notes 2) i was the person who swimming the best… (sh, transcript, recording middle implementation) sometimes i start talking without paying attention… (sg, selfevaluation 5) i didn’t pay attention to verbs sometimes. (sj, self-evaluation 4) i forget to pay attention to the words. (si, self-evaluation 3) for instance, when people of different don’t sharing a native language. (sd, transcript, recording last stage implementation) based on teacher’s observations (field-notes and transcripts analysis) and students’ conclusions (selfevaluations), it seems that the degree of attention students have on their language could affect the degree of self-repairs they produce at a given task. in part this agrees with kormos and trebits (2011) when they state that due to working memory constraints, attentional resources are limited. and in spite of the strategies used, such memory constraints affected participants’ attention. as it can be observed in the first group of excerpts, participants were more successful at self-repairing their language mistakes when their attention was focused. however, whenever their attention decreased, their degree of self-repairs decreased considerably. this matches the idea of approaching error correction on form and meaning (ellis, loewen, & erlam, 2006) in which students develop the ability to pay attention to the forms they are using and the meaning they are conveying at the same time; here, attention is the primary resource which guarantees success when self-repairing. in other words, when participants’ attention was focused on the elements they knew they needed to pay attention to, their selfrepairs were more evident. category 2: developing awareness of fossilized mistakes metacognitive awareness is described by birdsong (1989) as “a reflection of the growth of two skill components involved in language processing: the analysis of linguistic knowledge into structured categories and the control of attentional procedures to select and process specific linguistic information” (p. 498). it is interesting to see how the above definition connects attention (the previous category) with awareness. although birdsong referred to two different components, i considered that the control of attentional procedures to select and process specific linguistic information is the area where this category emerged. participants had acquired fluency throughout their extensive experience learning english; however, fossilized mistakes in speech had become common when interacting with others. even though they had been trained in cognitive and metacognitive strategies for some time, because of the nature of the mistakes, such mistakes had become hard to detect in spite of the knowledge they had of specific grammatical topics. this has been evidenced in different studies mentioned previously such as hasbún’s (2007) and romero’s (2002) who have stated that in spite of students’ knowledge of certain grammar topics, certain elements still fossilize, or as han and odlin (2006) state, such cessation of development happens due to different reasons such as transfer, social factors, and compensation strategies. however, the implementation of self-monitoring and self-evaluation strategies seems to have helped participants develop awareness towards the fossilized mistakes this study aimed at helping them to tackle. in other words, students appeared to have discovered they had fossilized elements belonging to their language, and this was a very important step in order to aim at tackling a given mistake. as the scripts below show, students were able to select and process specific linguistic information which corresponded to their fossilized errors thus producing repairs on vocabulary, verb forms, and subject missing. universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras204 cárdenas my parents did a life changing...made a life change... (sc, field notes 1) i try to use correctly verb forms and auxiliaries. i have to practice past tenses. i am looking for exercises related to verb forms. sometimes i forget the subject, pay attention to the way i organize my ideas. (sb, self-evaluation 1) she need, needed, needs to decide on... (sf, field notes 2) i tried to use different verb forms and auxiliaries. i forget some past forms, i need to learn them. i tried to use the adjectives in a good way. i have problems to use the adverbs. i tried to use the correct order, when i am talking i forget to use the subject, i need to monitor my speech. (se, self-evaluation 1) she lose…lost her temper... (sa, field notes 2) i try to correct myself all the time. i need to identify the different problems in verb forms, review in order to identify all the problems. i try to use new vocabulary. i try to stop and correct if i make a mistake. (sg, self-evaluation 1) it’s crucial that she be able to say no... (sd, field notes 3) yes, i use verb forms. i need to work on the auxiliaries. i need to use them and be more attentive to the verb forms. i did well the use of adjectives and nouns, i need to work on the adverbs. i monitor the way i organize my ideas, i have to be careful when i use question forms. (sj, self-evaluation 2) students’ self-evaluations were vital in order to make the association with what was observed in their performance while self-monitoring. it seems that being aware of the areas of improvement helped them monitor more effectively their speech and, at times, tackle some specific fossilized mistakes which match studies such as nakatani’s (2005) and leow’s (2000) who agree on the fact that awareness-raising has helped students improve their performance, especially in speaking. as an example, it can be observed above that participants made reference to verb forms, the vocabulary they used (adjectives, nouns, adverbs), and the use of the subject in the sentences. this can be used as clear proof of students’ development of awareness on the fossilized mistakes they needed to pay attention to. category 3: a sense of progressiveness in tackling fossilized errors data have also shown that some participants seem to have had a progressive improvement towards tackling some of their fossilized errors in speech, which means that in spite of the difficulties they might have had at the beginning of the process, progressively there seemed to be an improvement in their self-repairs. additionally, it will be explained that apparently one of the fossilized errors (verb forms) appears to have been the strongest area in students’ self-repairs. subcategory: progressiveness in self-repairs different studies have come to the conclusion that self-monitoring has improved students’ performance (chang, 2010; kormos, 2000; sánchez luján, 2012). interestingly, the following excerpts taken from students’ recordings and my field notes are examples of how participants showed a progressive improvement in their performance. firstly, the transcript from sc indicates a progression in the way the student used verb forms when describing his experiences. in this case, he had been asked to describe a heroic experience he had had before. data seem to show a progression in the sense that for the first lines, several mistakes were made regarding verb forms; however, as the story continues, the usage of verbs is more accurate and as observed, he was able to correct mistakes he had produced at the beginning of the talk (self-repair). we went to a river we start eating like a bbq and we actually have in that moment a dog his name was toby in a moment while we was eating toby star to run out from us and go to the river he goes in the river and the current was too strong so we went with my brother and tried to save him because he was getting too far from us i started swimming and i had the opportunity to grab toby while i was trying to swim to the shore with him i started to get really really nervous so i started also like to drown and i was really scared. (sc, transcript 1, part of middle implementation recording) 205 tackling intermediate students’ fossilized grammatical errors in speech through self-evaluation... profile: issues teach. prof. dev., vol. 20 no. 2, jul-dec, 2018. issn 1657-0790 (printed) 2256-5760 (online). bogotá, colombia. pages 195-209 secondly, as the following excerpts from sa’s performance throughout several sessions show, there seems to be a progression or improvement towards his utterances. on the first field note, i registered an error in the form of the second verb; however, the following observations showed that the same student progressively tackled more effectively verb forms and tenses compared to the first session. as a result, it could be concluded that this category shows an apparent progression in participants’ tackling of verb form fossilized errors. even though at times participants’ self-repaired mistakes related to vocabulary and missing subject, a progression on these fossilized mistakes was not observed or found in the data. my father traveled for two months, so i need it… (sa, field notes 1) she lose…lost her temper... (sa, field notes 2) she had helped him... (sa, field notes 4) to sum up, there appeared to be a progressive improvement in participants’ self-repairs through self-monitoring, and such improvement was more evidenced on verb form repairs whilst repairs on the other two elements this study pretended to help students tackle (word choice and missing subject) did not have progressive improvement. interestingly, these results show a mismatch compared to what has been observed in previous studies (fathman, 1980; kormos, 2000; poulisse & bongaerts, 1994) which concluded that l2 learners paid considerably more attention to lexical appropriacy and in some cases phonological appropriacy rather than to grammatical elements such as verb forms. in other words, this study seems to be presenting a different tendency towards students’ self-repairs and attention development. additionally, it appears to be that focusing on more than one fossilized mistake in the study did not help participants focus on more than just one area, which may be considered for further studies. discussion as has been previously pointed out, each relevant aspect of this study (fossilization, self-monitoring, self-evaluation) had been addressed by different researchers (alvarez & muñoz, 2007; arciniegas, 2008; caicedo, 2011; chang, 2010; goto & lee, 2006; hasbún, 2007; kormos, 2000; pillai, 2006; qian & xiao, 2010; sánchez luján, 2012; wei, 2008); however, none had tried to address fossilization from the present study’s point of view. results can be taken as relevant data which firstly had an important impact on my teaching practices; i have implemented similar strategies with other students and classes in order to help them tackle similar issues regarding fossilized grammatical mistakes. additionally, fellow teachers from the institution where the study took place have become knowledgeable of these results thanks to teacher training courses where i have had the opportunity to share such practices, and many of those attending have expressed their willingness to adopt similar practices in their classrooms. moreover, in the national or english language teaching (elt) international context it is necessary to re-think the practices which are attempting to help students tackle fossilized errors in their speech, due to the fact that this is an area which has not been explored much in the last years. for this reason, this study could help raise awareness on the fossilization phenomena nationally and internationally and possibly cause a bigger impact than the one it had on me or my fellow colleagues. all in all, this research process allowed me to discover how self-monitoring and self-evaluation strategies impacted positively participants’ grammatical fossilized errors in speech. additionally, it is necessary to point out that self-monitoring and selfevaluation strategies need to be taken into account on a regular basis when lesson planning due to the fact that in spite of an increase in teachers’ practices using metacognitive strategies, people’s minds towards thinking of their own learning can still be lacking. consequently, several considerations need to be taken into account in order to aim at taking the best out of these strategies. universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras206 cárdenas • self-monitoring and self-evaluation require clear guidelines to avoid students’ subjectivity to interfere. • training in self-monitoring has to be focused on specific language or learning elements in order to facilitate students’ engagement and attention. • forms with the right questions and prompts facilitate students’ and teacher’s self-reflections. • strategies such as self-monitoring and selfevaluation should be worked one at a time, being too ambitious may interfere with students’ success upon using such strategies. • emphasis on the impact that metacognitive strategies have on people’s lifelong learning needs to be stated in class. there are several elements to consider when implementing self-monitoring and self-evaluation strategies in the classroom. following clear rules of thumb may guarantee students’ taking advantage of the opportunity, or on the contrary, not doing so may bring up negative effects on students’ learning and could mislead them towards misunderstanding or even rejection. to conclude, fossilization is a phenomenon which deserves further inquiry and attention. for instance, there are many more fossilized language subsystems that have not been taken into consideration in my context; consequently, carrying out research on other fossilized mistakes may also bring about useful insights which could affect positively the local and even national or international elt scenario. additionally, strategies such as self-monitoring and self-evaluation have been used and could be used in order to tackle different language issues; however, for further research it would be really interesting to inquire into peer-assessment practices in order to find out what the effect of this strategy would be on fossilization. finally, the idea of carrying out the present study with a bigger population or even with more than one group and more fellow researchers could also bring additional data which could definitely contribute to the understanding of the ways of tackling fossilized grammatical errors in speech. it would also be of interest to the academic community to perform a comparative study with participants with different native languages and cultural backgrounds to find out their commonalities and differences in terms of error fossilization and the strategies they employ to overcome them. references alvarez, m. e., & muñoz, a. 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(2011). working memory capacity and narrative task performance. in p. robinson (ed.), second language task complexity: researching the cognition hypothesis of language learning and performance (pp. 267-286). amsterdam, nl: john benjamin. https://doi. org/10.1075/tblt.2.17ch10. kuhn, d., & dean, d. (2004). metacognition: a bridge between cognitive psychology and educational practice. theory into practice, 43(4), 268-273. https://doi.org/10.1207/ s15430421tip4304_4. leow, r. p. (2000). a study of the role of awareness in foreign language behavior: aware versus unaware learners. studies in second language acquisition, 22(4), 557-584. https:// doi.org/10.1017/s0272263100004046. levelt, w. j. m. (1989). speaking: from intention to articulation. cambridge, us: mit press. martinez, m. e. (2006). what is metacognition? phi d elta kappan, 87, 696-699. https://doi. org/10.1177/003172170608700916. min, h.-t. 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(2006). self-monitoring and self-repair in spontaneous speech. k@ta, 8(2), 114-126. poulisse, n., & bongaerts, t. (1994). first language use in second language production. applied linguistics, 15(1), 36-57. https://doi.org/10.1093/applin/15.1.36. qian, m., & xiao, z. (2010). strategies for preventing and resolving temporary fossilization in second language acquisition. english language teaching, 3(1), 180-183. https://doi.org/10.5539/elt.v3n1p180. romero, j. (2002). the pragmatic fossilization of discourse markers in non-native speakers of english. journal of pragmatics, 34(6), 769-784. https://doi.org/10.1016/ s0378-2166(02)00022-x. sánchez luján, d. k. (2012). the effects of self-monitoring and self-reflection in a1 adult learners in an english blended learning environment (unpublished master’s thesis). universidad de la sabana, chía, colombia. retrieved from http://intellectum.unisabana.edu.co/ handle/10818/3161. savignon, s. (2005). communicative language teaching: strategies and goals. in e. hinkel (ed.), handbook of research in second language teaching and learning (p. 35). mahwah, us: lawrence erlbaum associates. schraeder, l. l. (1996). empowering esl students in the mainstream through self-assessment and contracted learning. retrieved from eric database. (ed407850) selinker, l. (1972). interlanguage. international review of applied linguistics in language teaching, 10(3), 209-231. https://doi.org/10.1515/iral.1972.10.1-4.209. spada, n. (1997). form-focused instruction and second language acquisition: a review of classroom and laboratory research. language teaching, 30(2), 73-87. https://doi.org/10.1017/s0261444800012799. tamjid, n. h., & birjandi, p. (2011). fostering learner autonomy through selfand peer-assessment. international journal of academic research, 3(5), 245-251. terrell, t. d. (1991). the role of grammar instruction in a communicative approach. the modern language journal, 75(1), 52-63. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1540-4781.1991. tb01083.x. wei, x. (2008). implication of il fossilization in second language acquisition. english language teaching, 1(1), 127-131. https://doi.org/10.5539/elt.v1n1p127. about the author anderson marcell cardenas holds an ma in english language teaching with emphasis on autonomous learning environments (universidad de la sabana, colombia). additionally, he holds an icelt certificate from cambridge university and has 10 years of experience teaching efl and as a teacher trainer. he is currently a full-time teacher and teacher trainer at centro colombo americano. additionally, he works as an academic consultant for the british council. 209 tackling intermediate students’ fossilized grammatical errors in speech through self-evaluation... profile: issues teach. prof. dev., vol. 20 no. 2, jul-dec, 2018. issn 1657-0790 (printed) 2256-5760 (online). bogotá, colombia. pages 195-209 appendix: visual aids all pictures adapted from www.supergrammar.com, http://www.supergrammar.com/p/top-secretfacebookfriends-page.html, and http://english76.webnode.es/topics/verb-tenses/ 101profile vol. 19, no. 2, july-december 2017. issn 1657-0790 (printed) 2256-5760 (online). bogotá, colombia. pages 101-120 http://dx.doi.org/10.15446/profile.v19n2.57581 improving language learning strategies and performance of pre-service language teachers through a calla-tblt model mejoramiento de las estrategias de aprendizaje y desempeño en inglés de profesores en formación en idiomas a través del modelo académico-cognitivo y basado en tareas para el aprendizaje de lenguas maria eugenia guapacha chamorro* luis humberto benavidez paz** universidad del valle, cali, colombia this paper reports an action-research study on language learning strategies in tertiary education at a colombian university. the study aimed at improving the english language performance and language learning strategies use of 33 first-year pre-service language teachers by combining elements from two models: the cognitive academic language learning approach and task-based language teaching. data were gathered through surveys, a focus group, students’ and teachers’ journals, language tests, and documentary analysis. results evidenced that the students improved in speaking, writing, grammar, vocabulary and in their language learning strategies repertoire. as a conclusion, explicit strategy instruction in the proposed model resulted in a proper combination to improve learners’ language learning strategies and performance. key words: learning strategies, task-based language teaching, tertiary education. este artículo versa sobre una investigación-acción en estrategias de aprendizaje en educación terciaria en una universidad colombiana. el estudio buscaba mejorar el desempeño en inglés y el uso de estrategias de aprendizaje de 33 profesores en formación en idiomas de primer año al combinar elementos de dos modelos: enfoque cognitivo y académico para el aprendizaje de lenguas y aprendizaje basado en tareas. los datos se recolectaron a través encuestas, un grupo focal, diarios de los profesores y estudiantes, pruebas de inglés y análisis documental. los resultados revelaron el mejoramiento de los estudiantes en la oralidad, escritura, gramática, vocabulario y en el desarrollo de estrategias de aprendizaje. como conclusión, la instrucción explícita en estrategias dentro del modelo propuesto resultó ser una adecuada combinación para mejorar el desempeño en lengua y en estrategias de aprendizaje de los estudiantes. palabras clave: aprendizaje basado en tareas, educación terciaria, estrategias de aprendizaje. * e-mail: maria.guapacha@correounivalle.edu.co ** e-mail: luis.benavidez@correounivalle.edu.co how to cite this article (apa, 6th ed.): guapacha chamorro, m. e., & benavidez paz, l. h. (2017). improving language learning strategies and performance of pre-service language teachers through a calla-tblt model. profile issues in teachers’ professional development, 19(2), 101-120. http://dx.doi.org/10.15446/profile.v19n2.57581. this article was received on may 21, 2016, and accepted on december 2, 2016. this is an open access article distributed under the terms of the creative commons license attribution-noncommercial-noderivatives 4.0 international license. consultation is possible at http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/. universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras102 guapacha chamorro & benavidez paz introduction language learning strategies (lls) have played an influential role in language learners’ learning process (chamot, 2009; cohen, 2014; cohen & macaro, 2007; oxford, 1990, 2013; rubin, 1975); also, explicit lls instruction enhances learners’ academic success (ehrman & oxford, 1995; oxford & nyikos, 1989). furthermore, language instructors interested in inquiring into their students’ learning preferences, in fostering the use of lls, and in orienting an effective foreign language learning (l2) instruction might contribute to their students’ academic success (oxford, 1990). language tasks have also shown to be effective in the teaching of languages and in fostering lls (chamot, 2009). based on these premises, as language instructors in a bachelor of arts in foreign languages programme, we embarked on this study to provide our first-year preservice language teachers with tools that will enhance their learning process and future teaching practices. the study also derives from the scarce lls research in our language programme. this was reflected in the lack of systematisation of data obtained from questionnaires administered to freshmen, inquiring into their lls use, study habits, learning styles, and language skills. it was also observed that freshmen’s lls repertoire was low, and that there was need for explicit lls instruction in the initial english language courses of the language programme. this action-research inquiry, therefore, aimed to improve the lls use and english language performance of 33 first-year pre-service language teachers through the cognitive academic language learning approach (calla) and task-based language teaching (tblt) methodology. the findings from this research serve as a diagnosis for the students involved in this study and for the language programme; therefore, curriculum improvements are suggested. pedagogical implications on how to integrate lls instruction with language tasks to enhance language teaching and learning are offered. these research questions were posed: main research question: to what extent do firstyear pre-service teachers improve their lls repertoire and language skills through the calla-tblt models? specific research questions: • what are the students’ most and least used lls? • what are the students’ strengths and weaknesses in language skills? • what types of tasks and learning resources will help these students improve their language performance and lls use? literature review for over 40 years, extensive research has shown the key role of lls in l2 instruction (cohen, 2014; cohen & macaro, 2007; griffiths, 2003, 2015; o’malley & chamot, 1990; oxford, 2013; oxford & schramm, 2007; rubin & thompson, 1994). however, there is still need for further research (cohen & griffiths, 2015; griffiths, 2015; oxford, 2013), more qualitative studies (griffiths & oxford, 2014), and more implementation of tblt with lls (macaro, 2014) informing the field with new findings. language learning strategies there have been significant attempts to define lls. we strived, however, to condense the concept as a set of specific, systematic, and deliberate actions and thoughts that enhance learners’ performance and make their learning more effective through varied language learning tasks (chamot, 2009; griffiths, 2013; o’malley & chamot, 1990; oxford, 1990, 2013). self-management (rubin, 2001), learner strategies (cohen & macaro, 2007; wenden & rubin, 1987), and self-regulation (dörnyei, 2005; zimmerman, 2002) are alternative terms to learning strategies, being specific actions that learners take on their own to enhance their learning. for macaro (2006), self-regulation is a more versatile term. self-regulation entails learners’ autonomy (allwright, 1990; holec, 1981), which in turn includes motivation (zimmerman, 2002), decision making, and control of their own learning experience. 103profile vol. 19, no. 2, july-december 2017. issn 1657-0790 (printed) 2256-5760 (online). bogotá, colombia. pages 101-120 improving language learning strategies and performance of pre-service language teachers... for this study, we stick to our working definition on lls since strategy is a useful concept referring to how learners address their learning (griffiths, 2015). moreover, we consider that explicit instruction develops students’ greater metacognition and understanding of their own learning process when they establish connections between the strategies they use with their effectiveness (chamot, 2009). we also believe that learners self-regulate and develop autonomy once they have gained certain maturation and experience with lls. taxonomies of language learning strategies lls have originated several taxonomies (o’malley & chamot, 1990; oxford, 1990, 2013; wenden & rubin, 1987). the differences are determined by the selected number of strategies, sub classifications, and distinct research methods used to group them more comprehensibly and accurately. although a broad number of lls have been proposed, language learners choose the strategies that fit their age, gender, cultural background, personality, proficiency, language learning needs and interests, and learning styles (chamot, 2009; cohen, 2014; oxford, 2013). we adopted oxford’s (1990) lls taxonomy since it has been widely used in lls research, making this classification valid and reliable. the model offers a detailed classification of direct and indirect strategies that can be intertwined with language tasks. oxford’s set of strategies leads to specific outcomes. although the author proposes a new lls classification in her updated strategic self-regulated (s2r) language learning model (oxford, 2013), she still suggests that learning strategies are teachable and that learners select the ones that address their learning purposes. further research might explore this new taxonomy. oxford’s (1990) taxonomy integrates lls with language skills (reading, writing, speaking, listening, grammar, and vocabulary). the author classifies 62 lls into two types: direct and indirect strategies. direct strategies (ds), subdivided into memory, cognitive, and compensation strategies, involve the learners’ mental processing of the target language. indirect strategies (is), subdivided into metacognitive, affective, and social strategies, foster learners’ language learning without directly involving the target language. table 1 presents oxford’s (1990) lls taxonomy. the combined model: cognitive academic language learning approach and taskbased language teaching a proper combination of lls instruction and language teaching methodology is essential to ensuring that effective instruction impact learners’ language performance. furthermore, strategy instruction should be tailored to the students’ needs and contexts in order to be effective (richards & lockhart, 1994; wenden, 1991). although diverse lls instruction models have been proposed (chamot, 2009; grenfell & harris, 1999; o’malley & chamot, 1990; oxford, 1990), all of them emphasise a continuous cycle introducing or modelling the strategy, generating contextualised practice, selfmonitoring and evaluating the learners’ progress, and expanding the strategies to new areas or tasks. language tasks have been useful to integrate both strategies and language instruction (chamot, 2009; oxford, 1990). for this study, the calla strategy model (chamot, 2009) was implemented due to its flexibility and sequential cycles, allowing learners to select their preferred strategy and practise it within contextualised activities. tbtl methodology was selected since it is a holistic and interactional language teaching and learning approach, favouring learner-centred instruction (ellis, 2009; willis, 1996). within tblt, tasks, through sequential cycles and elaborated sequences of tasks, based on real-world language, allow learners to use the target language for a communicative purpose in order to achieve an outcome (van den branden, 2006; willis, 1996). tasks also involve students’ awareness of how to learn and what strategies to select while doing a learning task (nunan, 2004). thus, both calla and universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras104 guapacha chamorro & benavidez paz table 1. language learning strategy taxonomy (based on oxford, 1990) d ir e c t s t r a t e g ie s m e m o ry • creating mental linkages: grouping, associating, placing new words. • applying new images and sounds: using memory, semantic mapping, using key words, representing sounds in memory. • reviewing well: structured reviewing. • employing action: using physical response, using mechanical techniques. c o g n it iv e • practicing: repeating, formally practicing, recognising and using formulas, recombining, practising naturalistically. • receiving and sending messages: getting the idea quickly, using resources for receiving and sending messages. • analysing and reasoning: reasoning deductively, analysing expressions, analysing contrastively, translating, and transferring. • creating structure for input and output: taking notes, summarising, highlighting. c o m p e n sa ti o n • guessing intelligently: using linguistic clues, using other clues. • overcoming limitations in speaking and writing: switching to the mother tongue, getting help, using mime or gesture, avoiding communication partially or totally, selecting the topic, adjusting or approximating the message, coining words, using a circumlocution. in d ir e c t s t r a t e g ie s m e ta co g n it iv e • centring your learning: overviewing and linking with already known material, paying attention, delaying speech production to focus on listening. • arranging and planning your learning: finding out about language learning, organising, setting goals and objectives, identifying the purpose of a language task, planning for a language task, seeking practice opportunities. • evaluating your learning: self-monitoring, self-evaluating. a ff e ct iv e • lowering your anxiety: using progressive relaxation, using music, using laughter. • encouraging yourself: making positive statements, taking risks wisely, rewarding yourself. • taking your emotional temperature: listening to your body, using a checklist, writing a language learning diary, discussing your feelings with someone else. s o ci a l • asking questions: asking for clarification or verification, asking for correction. • cooperating with others: cooperating with peers, cooperating with proficient users. • empathising with others: developing cultural understanding, becoming aware of others’ thoughts and feelings. tblt are compatible in their principles, leading learners to improve language and their lls repertoire through contextualised activities. chamot (2009) states that “calla is an instructional model designed to meet the academic needs of english language learners” (p. 1) through five cycles: preparation, presentation, practice, self-evaluation, and expansion. calla incorporates task-based learning strategies for learners to accomplish learning tasks. willis’ (1996) tblt framework was adopted. its three cycles, pre-task, task, and language focus, coincide with the five calla cycles. willis’ (1996) task typology (listing, ordering and sorting, comparing, problem-solving, sharing personal information, and creative tasks) were implemented in this design. figure 1 illustrates the combined callatblt model. 105profile vol. 19, no. 2, july-december 2017. issn 1657-0790 (printed) 2256-5760 (online). bogotá, colombia. pages 101-120 improving language learning strategies and performance of pre-service language teachers... the pre-task cycle in tblt and the preparation and presentation cycles in calla identify students’ prior knowledge which is linked to the new topic. teachers introduce the learning goals (tasks and strategies) and provide models of both task and strategy. techniques such as brainstorming are used to recall and elicit information. the task cycle in tblt and practice in calla involve students’ practice of the target language and learning strategy through cooperative learning activities. the task cycle is subdivided into three stages (task, planning, and report) in which students complete the task (individually, with peers, or in groups). students plan, organise, practise, and report the task to the class and receive feedback (from peers and/or teacher). practice in calla involves students practicing the strategy. the last cycles, language focus in tblt and selfevaluation and expansion in calla, encompass assessment of the students’ learning progress and independent work. language focus is subdivided into analysis and practice. the former leads students to examine specific features of the target language derived from the task; the latter encourages students to practise using the language in other contexts. in calla selfevaluation makes students reflect upon their learning process, and expansion invites them to apply their new knowledge into other contexts. empirical studies there has been extensive research on lls worldwide. for instance, tuckman and kennedy (2011) reported the effectiveness of eight lls in the freshmen’s performance of a midwestern university after explicit lls instruction in a psychology course. del ángel castillo and sessarego espeleta (2013) explored the lls most frequently used by successful english language learners at a chilean university. the results revealed that cognitive strategies were more frequently used than metacognitive strategies by successful learners. in colombia, orrego and díaz monsalve (2010) explored the concept of learning held by language instructors and first-year pre-service language teachers of a b.a. in foreign languages programme, and the frequency of lls used by these students. findings yielded that the concept of learning differs from learners and instructors, and that similar lls were used by the students in english and french language courses. in our workplace, hernández gaviria (2008) explored the lls that first-year students in an english language course used naturalistically. the findings yielded that the students understood the importance of lls in their learning process; however, students’ autonomy development needed to be fostered. although strategies such as goal setting, planning, compensation, and transferring were not considered by the students, figure 1. tblt and calla integration model (adapted from willis’ and chamot’s frameworks) pre-task introduction to topic and task and modelling preparation: activation of learners’ background knowledge presentation: lls introduction and modelling practice: prompt use of strategies and give feedback attend participate apply strategies with guidance self-assess strategies use strategies independently transfer strategies to new tasks self-evaluation: assess strategies expansion: support, transfer, apply task task planning report language focus analysis practice teacher responsibility student responsibility calla framework for strategies instruction (chamot, 2009)tbl framework (willis, 1996) universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras106 guapacha chamorro & benavidez paz they were able to identify their strengths and weaknesses, particularly those related to their linguistic knowledge. they also monitored and assessed their learning and generated, mainly, oral practice opportunities while the writing skill required more guidance. ramírez espinosa (2015) designed an english language course syllabus to foster students’ autonomy. the author suggests ten steps that contribute to an effective language course design impacting language teaching and learning. the steps include a context diagnosis, students’ autonomy profile identification, learner-training workshops, self-access materials design, needs analysis, a course syllabus plan, students’ interests and goals inclusion, an assessment plan, tblt approach implementation, students’ class involvement and contribution, feedback and peer-evaluation inclusion, and journals use. although all these studies contribute to the field of lls with valuable findings, our study makes a difference in its research design, provides explicit lls instruction covering a good number of strategies, and adopts calla for strategy instruction and tblt for language teaching. method setting and participants the study was conducted with 33 first-year preservice teachers from two classes (16 and 17 students respectively) during two academic semesters in english language course i and ii in a b.a. in foreign languages (english-french) programme at universidad del valle, colombia. these sequential language courses followed an integrated skills syllabus approach and were each scheduled three times a week with a two-hour class session. the subjects’ ages ranged from 16 to 26. a great percentage had studied in public schools. only a few students had initiated a major before. they manifested different language learning interests and evidenced an a2 english language level, according to the common european framework of reference (council of europe, 2001) and to the english language course ii. these students were selected since they were freshmen who needed support in their lls development from the outset and because they were teachers-to-be for whom this knowledge is essential. research design unlike extensive quantitative large-scale research conducted worldwide, this study reports an action research (creswell, 2012) by gathering quantitative and qualitative data. cardona, fandiño, and galindo’s (2014) design was adopted. this design consists of two cycles: cycle 1: a) observation: students’ profile, language level, and lls use and needs identification in diagnostic stage. b) planning: lls selection and tasks and learning resources design based on the students’ needs. c) intervention: calla-tblt implementation. d) reflection and evaluation: on-going assessment of the students’ improvement. cycle 2: a) planning: new lls, tasks and learning resources design and integration. b) intervention: new lls, tasks and learning resources implementation. c) reflection and evaluation: evaluation and analysis of lls, tasks and learning resources impact. data collection instruments and analysis data were gathered through surveys, a focus group, students’ and teachers’ journals, language tests, and documentary analysis, which are instruments used to document the students’ lls use and improvement (chamot, 2005; oxford, 1990). table 2 presents the research stages, objectives, and data collection instruments. data were analysed both quantitatively and qualitatively. colour coding was used to categorise data in all the instruments, using oxford’s (1990) lls taxonomy. language tests provided numeric scores. 107profile vol. 19, no. 2, july-december 2017. issn 1657-0790 (printed) 2256-5760 (online). bogotá, colombia. pages 101-120 improving language learning strategies and performance of pre-service language teachers... table 2. data collection techniques and instruments diagnostic stage (first semester) intervention-evaluation stages (second semester) o b je ct iv e s • to identify the students’ lls use and needs. • to identify the students’ strengths and weaknesses in language skills. • to identify the students’ areas of improvement in language skills and lls use. • to identify the tasks and resources that contributed to the students’ process. te ch n iq u e s a n d i n st ru m e n ts 1. a focus group: protocol of 11 questions for 18 students at the beginning of the semester. 2. survey: five questionnaires administered throughout the semester: four open-ended paper-based surveys and one closed-ended online survey with 111 detailed questions tailored to the students’ needs (griffiths & oxford, 2014). sill questionnaire (oxford, 1990) was adapted to design this instrument. 3. a diagnostic language test: (listening, reading, writing, grammar-vocabulary, and speaking) administered at the end of the semester. 4. a documentary analysis: checklist of nine students’ notebooks and nine portfolios collected at the end of the semester. 1. researchers’ and 31 students’ journals: four entries in the students’ journals: two were guided through specific questions; two more were free. 2. two language tests (midterm and final test) administered at the end of the semester, all language skills were evaluated. 3. final survey: open-ended questionnaire with 12 questions for 33 students at the end of the intervention. 4. a documentary analysis: checklist of 20 students’ notebooks and 20 portfolios (worksheets, extra materials). results and discussion diagnostic stage what are the students’ most and least used lls? a focus group, surveys, and documentary analysis answered this research question reported in table 3. shaded boxes represent the least used. table 3 shows that 68% of the 62 specific strategies were not used by the students. it is understandable that these freshmen were not familiar with many strategies that would benefit their overall learning. however, an adequate number (32%) between ds and is were found as the most used, meaning that they were possibly taught before or used naturistically by these students based on their learning styles and purposes. the students used more is than ds. this suggests a certain level of awareness and reflection on their learning process. within the metacognitive group (is), centring your learning was the most used strategy, revealing that the students made connections between prior and new information, paid attention to their process, and focused on listening. songs comprised the learning resources most used by the students, as reported in the focus group and surveys. songs were used to practice pronunciation and increase vocabulary and linguistic structures. it is usual that beginners centre their learning on songs and on the listening skill, diverting their attention from other academic resources and language skills that may enrich their linguistic knowledge. although listening provides input and practice opportunities, it is necessary to make students notice that “language cannot be approached mechanically and in isolation” (rubin & thompson, 1994, p. 40). the least used strategies, within this metacognitive group, were the universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras108 guapacha chamorro & benavidez paz table 3. most and least lls used by the students 62 specific strategies + used used d ir e ct s tr a te g ie s m e m o ry creating mental linkages: grouping, associating, placing new words. 0/10 10/10 applying new images and sounds: using memory, semantic mapping, using keywords, representing sounds in memory. reviewing well: structured reviewing employing action: using physical response, using mechanical techniques. c o g n it iv e practising: repeating, formally practising, recognising and using formulas, recombining and practising naturalistically. 9/15 6/15 receiving and sending messages: getting the idea quickly, using resources for receiving and sending messages. analysing and reasoning: reasoning deductively, analysing expressions, analysing contrastively, translating, and transferring. creating structure for input and output: taking notes, summarising, highlighting. c o m p e n sa ti o n guessing intelligently: using linguistic clues, using other clues. 0/10 10/10 overcoming limitations in speaking and writing: switching to the mother tongue, getting help, using mime or gesture, avoiding communication partially or totally, selecting the topic, adjusting or approximating the message, coining words, using a circumlocution. subtotal ds 9/35 (25%) 26/35 (75%) in d ir e ct s tr a te g ie s m e ta co g n it iv e centring your learning: overviewing and linking with already known material, paying attention, delaying speech production to focus on listening. 4/11 7/11 arranging and planning your learning: finding out about language learning, organising, setting goals and objectives, identifying the purpose of a language task, planning for a language task, seeking practice opportunities. evaluating your learning: self-monitoring, self-evaluating. a ff e ct iv e lowering your anxiety: using progressive relaxation, using music, using laughter. 3/10 7/10 encouraging yourself: making positive statements, taking risks wisely, and rewarding yourself. taking your emotional temperature: listening to your body, using a checklist, writing a language learning diary, discussing your feelings with someone else. s o ci a l asking questions: asking for clarification or verification, asking for correction. 4/6 2/6 cooperating with others: cooperating with peers, cooperating with proficient users. empathising with others: developing cultural understanding, becoming aware of others’ thoughts and feelings. subtotal is 11/27 (41%) 16/27 (59%) total of strategies 20 (32%) 42 (68%) 109profile vol. 19, no. 2, july-december 2017. issn 1657-0790 (printed) 2256-5760 (online). bogotá, colombia. pages 101-120 improving language learning strategies and performance of pre-service language teachers... learners’ arrangement and the planning and assessment of their learning process, which reflects the students’ inexperience in directing their learning. the common use of affective (encourage yourself) and social strategies (cooperating and empathising with others) reflected the students’ enthusiasm for their process, interacting with others, taking risks, working collaboratively and cooperatively, and tolerating differences. all which are overriding factors that might help them cope with the challenges that language learning entails. the focus group and surveys indicated that learners required strategies that help them lower their anxiety and feel confident when taking language tests or giving presentations. the most used ds, cognitive strategies (practising, receiving and sending messages, and creating structure for input and output) provide learners with opportunities to develop receptive and productive skills. since memory and compensation strategies were the least used, it might explain the students’ anxiety and low confidence level. these strategies facilitate the students’ recall and organisation of information easily, enrich their vocabulary, and help them overcome limitations when speaking. all in all, the fact that these students did not use all the lls at all times does not necessarily mean that they were not good learners (rubin & thompson, 1994) or that their learning was not effective (chamot, 2009; oxford, 2013); nevertheless, if they had implemented more specific and systematic strategies, their academic process could have been more effective. what are the students’ strengths and weaknesses in language skills? the focus group, surveys, and diagnostic language test answered this research question. the students’ self-perception informed that while listening was their main strength, reading, speaking, grammar, and vocabulary represented their weaknesses. the language test, however, indicated that speaking was the students’ strength (figure 2). this was an accumulative test which evaluated the students’ four language skills plus grammar and vocabulary in a separate component. it was administered to the 321 students at the end of the first semester. the results served as a diagnosis of their language level. the test results are presented as high scores (4-5) and low scores (0-3.9) of a grading scale from 0 to 5. figure 2. students’ strengths and weaknesses in language skills (diagnostic test) 0% grammarvocabulary listening reading speaking writing 20% 40% 60% percentage of students low scores (0 3.9) weaknesses l a n g u a g e s k il ls 85%15% 55% 18% 52% 80% 100% 73% high scores (4 5) strenghts 45% 27% 82% 48% according to figure 2, the students performed better in speaking, contrary to what they reported in the surveys and focus group. although the students manifested a low confidence level in speaking, the researchers’ observations reported their good language command during the speaking tasks. moreover, the oral production emphasis in the syllabus and the extensive practice during the course may have influenced the students’ positive results. listening was considered the students’ strength; however, the language test showed that only 45% of the students achieved good scores in this skill. it might be that listening to songs does not guarantee high achievement in listening tasks. throughout the english language course i, the students were exposed to audios different from songs, such as long conversations and interviews by native speakers. these tasks might have been different from the students’ purposes and more challenging since they were required to identify explicit and implicit information and specific patterns and discourse. thus, more practice, use of thought-provoking resources, and 1 one student was absent. universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras110 guapacha chamorro & benavidez paz awareness of varied functions and contexts of listening were necessary. reading, grammar-vocabulary, writing, and listening represented the students’ weaknesses. the first three skills were also confirmed by the students. it could be that reading, grammar-vocabulary, writing, and listening are complex skills, demanding the students’ use of specific strategies to achieve better results, or they might not represent the students’ interests. from these results, we could interpret that the students’ perceptions of their own strengths and weaknesses are distant from their actions and outcomes. intervention and evaluation stages after having diagnosed the students’ strengths and weaknesses in lls use and language skills, we designed tasks and resources that addressed both strategies and language. in the intervention stage, 33 out of 62 strategies were selected based on (a) the diagnostic stage yielding the least used lls by the students, (b) their relevance to our students’ learning foundations, and (c) their applicability to the course contents and language tasks. cognitive, affective (only encourage yourself), and social strategies were included despite the students’ common use in order to give them a more academic purpose. lowering your anxiety and taking your emotional temperature were not included since the language programme offers students psychological support. table 4 illustrates the selection and integration of the lls with language skills and three instruments (notebook, journal, and portfolio) used by the students to document their learning process. the students followed the instructors’ guidelines to organise their notes, record their process, and arrange hand-outs. three workshops were designed integrating calla and tblt (see the appendix for a workshop sample). eleven strategies were introduced in three four-week workshops based on the three syllabus topics: childhood and teenage stages, turning points in life, and the neighbourhood. the selected tasks and resources were crucial in the lls instruction and the students’ lls adoption and learning improvement. the following section presents the findings of the students’ tasks and learning resources preferences. what types of tasks and learning resources will help these students improve their language performance and lls use? the researchers’ and the students’ journals and the final survey answered this third research question, summarised in table 5. it is evident that the students preferred oral tasks to literacy tasks. this preference might be related to the students’ desire of getting input through conversations and interviews and to practising the language. the preferred listening tasks and audio-visual materials engaged the students in identifying general and specific information, summarising, classifying, and reporting descriptions, interviews, narratives, and documentaries. the images and videos supported the students’ listening comprehension. as to speaking, class discussion on different topics, presentations, and projects helped them improve their fluency, pronunciation, and self-confidence. although there was balance in all language skills instruction, reading and writing were the least preferred. we might interpret that tasks involving the students’ experiences are more engaging than reading and writing tasks that may be more challenging for them, this being a probable cause to avoid them. grammar and vocabulary, through dynamic classroom activities using techniques such as miming, total physical response, and visual aids at the beginning and end of each workshop, were well received by the students. these activities and materials activated the students’ memory, grouping, and association of words, and reinforced their prior learning. grammar worksheets were preferred to online grammar activities. this might be explained for the hand-outs features designed by the instructors, which provided clear explanations and contextualised examples. these materials are generally different and more challenging than the ones students usually consult on their own. their choice might reflect that the students raised awareness 111profile vol. 19, no. 2, july-december 2017. issn 1657-0790 (printed) 2256-5760 (online). bogotá, colombia. pages 101-120 improving language learning strategies and performance of pre-service language teachers... table 4. integration of lls with language skills and instruments direct strategies indirect strategies memory grouping (l, r, g-v) associating, using physical response (v) placing new words (r, s, w) structured reviewing (g-v) semantic mapping (l, r, w, s, g-v) using keywords (l, r) cognitive recognising and using formulas (l, r, g) getting the idea quickly (l, r) using resources for receiving and sending messages, analysing expressions (l, r, g-v) reasoning deductively, highlighting (r, g-v) taking notes (l, r, w, g-v) summarising (l, r, w) compensation getting help, using a circumlocution (s, w) metacognitive paying attention, finding out about language learning (l, r, s, w, g-v, j, n, p) organising, setting goals and objectives, self-monitoring, self-evaluating (j, n) identifying the purpose of a language task (l, r, s, w, g-v) planning for a language task, seeking practice opportunities (s, w) affective making positive statements, writing a language learning diary (j) social asking for clarification, asking for correction (l, r, w, s, g-v) cooperating with peers, cooperating with proficient users, developing cultural understanding (l, r, w, s, g-v) note. listening (l), reading (r), writing (w), speaking (s), and grammar-vocabulary (g-v). journal (j), notebook (n), and portfolio (p). table 5. the most and the least preferred tasks and resources most preferred least preferred tasks communication and interaction tasks, mainly oral: • experience sharing (oral presentations about turning points, childhood experiences, and quarter-life crisis). • problem-solving (discussions about teenage problems and solutions). • creative tasks (neighbourhood or city project, games and dynamic activities about grammar and vocabulary). • listing (main points and ideas from oral texts, slides that included lists of vocabulary in categories). reading and writing tasks about the same topics. resources grammar worksheets vocabulary slides audio-visual materials portfolio (from the teachers’ perspectives) journal portfolio (from the students’ perspectives) readings web pages (grammar, listening, online dictionaries, thesaurus links) universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras112 guapacha chamorro & benavidez paz and established criteria to select appropriate resources. online thesaurus dictionaries were disregarded; instead, google translator was consulted more. the students might have chosen this resource for its practicality and accessibility, ignoring the usefulness of thesaurus dictionaries as an academic tool in expanding their lexicon. the students preferred activities and materials that increased their language knowledge to reflective and introspective tools that could contribute to their selfassessment. in five journals and surveys students affirmed that portfolios did not contribute to their learning and did not reflect any outcome. the fact that the students did not deem journal and portfolios as their favourite tools probably means that they were not used to reflecting on their own process, writing in journals, organising materials, and adopting new and challenging tasks. it might be that previous school practices failed to train students in the use of reflective strategies. this is a matter of raising awareness gradually through explicit lls instruction in further courses. the researchers’ observations, however, reported the value of the portfolio and its contribution to the students’ organisation, fulfilment of assignments, autonomy when consulting extra sources, and transference of strategies to other areas. this result may have been influenced by the fact that the portfolio was graded, so the students met the requirement. to what extent do first-year pre-service teachers improve their lls repertoire and language skills through the calla-tblt models? the researchers’ and the students’ journals, final survey, documentary analysis, and language tests yielded the students’ areas of improvement in lls and language skills. the final survey indicated that 79% of the students found lls useful for their academic process, 3% found them redundant, and 18% did not answer. the reasons for using them were paraphrased: • to study, take notes, recall info and clarify doubts. • to be organised at home and in class. • to acquire info and classify vocabulary easily. • to improve the learning process. • they fit the learning style and study habits. • to develop critical thinking. • to be more reflective towards learning. • they motivate to review their lessons. • classes are more enjoyable and the reasons for not considering them useful were: • they generate pressure. • they are not practical. • they require time and effort. • they do not fit their learning style sixty-six percent of the students stated that they transferred the strategies to other subjects (french, spanish composition, english pronunciation, and morphology classes); this was corroborated in eight notebooks and six portfolios in which the students attached evidence voluntarily. table 6 summarises the findings of all instruments of the second stage. the shaded boxes indicate the lls used systematically by the students. to summarise, the students increased their lls repertoire and it seems that the explicit instruction influenced this result. both ds and is increased in a balanced way: ds = 63.2% (12 out of 19 instructed strategies) and is = 61.54% (8 out of 13). as to ds, the students incorporated memory strategies (43.74%, 325/743 occurrences) and continued using cognitive strategies (53.2%, 395/743 occurrences). this means that the students gained experience in using strategies that helped them organise and recall information easily as well as analysing the language more consciously. however, compensation strategies were not widely adopted by the students, similar to hernández gaviria’s (2008) finding. a possible cause was their low language level (beginners) and low oral interactions. students also incorporated is (249/361 = 69%), predominantly metacognitive strategies which are useful for planning, 113profile vol. 19, no. 2, july-december 2017. issn 1657-0790 (printed) 2256-5760 (online). bogotá, colombia. pages 101-120 improving language learning strategies and performance of pre-service language teachers... table 6. lls used systematically by the students (instruments, second stage) # of occurrences in 31 ss’ journals 2 rs’ journals 20 notebooks 20 portfolios final survey total ds used systematically 743 memory: 325 semantic mapping 5 9 15 36 15 80 using keywords 3 9 0 44 14 70 grouping 5 10 12 18 11 56 associating 0 7 n/a n/a 11 18 structured reviewing 26 8 17 8 6 65 using physical response 15 11 n/a n/a 10 36 placing new words 0 0 0 0 0 0 cognitive 395 highlighting 8 7 15 68 19 117 taking notes 2 13 18 27 17 77 recognising and using formulas 5 12 19 1 2 39 translating 1 12 10 15 0 38 practicing naturalistically 20 12 n/a n/a 15 47 using resources for receiving and sending messages 11 4 n/a 12 0 27 summarising 0 3 6 8 0 17 getting the idea quickly 0 3 n/a n/a 0 3 analysing expressions 5 5 n/a 0 5 15 universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras114 guapacha chamorro & benavidez paz # of occurrences in 31 ss’ journals 2 rs’ journals 20 notebooks 20 portfolios final survey total reasoning deductively 5 5 n/a 0 5 15 compensation 23 using a circumlocution 5 2 0 6 3 16 getting help 0 3 n/a n/a 4 7 is used systematically 361 metacognitive 249 paying attention 2 14 0 15 10 41 organising 7 7 18 n/a 8 40 setting goals and objectives 41 10 16 n/a 4 71 finding out about language learning 5 3 0 15 0 23 planning for a language task 3 8 5 23 0 39 self-monitoringevaluating 2 1 3 4 3 13 identifying the purpose of a language task 4 8 n/a n/a 1 13 seeking practice opportunities 8 0 n/a n/a 1 9 affective 40 making positive statements 23 13 0 n/a 0 36 writing a language learning diary 2 2 n/a n/a 0 4 social 72 cooperating with peers and with proficient users 17 14 n/a n/a 4 35 developing cultural understanding 10 9 n/a n/a 2 21 asking for clarification and correction 0 4 4 n/a 8 16 note. students = ss, researchers = rs, not applicable = n/a 115profile vol. 19, no. 2, july-december 2017. issn 1657-0790 (printed) 2256-5760 (online). bogotá, colombia. pages 101-120 improving language learning strategies and performance of pre-service language teachers... reflecting, and evaluating their learning. the least used strategies were self-monitoring and self-evaluating, which require students’ introspection and appraisal of their own learning. it could be that the students rely more on the teachers’ assessment than on their self-assessment. concerning the students’ language level, the two language tests administered to the students in the second semester, which corresponded to the midterm and final term tests, were used to measure the students’ improvements. the three tests (diagnostic, mid, and final term) were comparable in the sense that they assessed the students’ four language skills and grammar and vocabulary in a separate component, using communicative tasks. however, their level of complexity was adjusted to the course and students’ levels. figure 3 compares the results of the three tests. figure 3. diagnostic, midterm, and final term language tests 0% language skills diagnostic test high scores (4-5) mid-term test high scores (4-5) final test high scores (4-5) gr am m ar -v oc ab ul ar y li st en in g re ad in g sp ea ki ng w rit in g 10% 20% 15% 27% 45% 33%33% 51% 27%27% 85% 82% 85% 73% 48% 64% 18%30% 40% 50% 60% 70% 80% 90% p e rc e n ta g e o f st u d e n ts figure 3 illustrates that speaking remained as the students’ main strength, and that writing improved, followed, to a lesser extent, by grammar-vocabulary. our interpretation is that the course emphasis on oral interaction and the students’ motivation to speak in english might have influenced this result. moreover, the students’ preferred tasks (sharing experiences, problem solving, creative tasks, listing, and comparing) and strategies (practicing naturalistically, setting goals, planning for a language task, and cooperating with peers and proficient users) might have enhanced this language skill. the students’ writing skill might have been enhanced by the academic emphasis and purposes of the language course, even when writing tasks were not highly preferred by them. strategies such as semantic mapping and planning for a language task helped them structure their writing and oral presentations. the students’ grammar and vocabulary improvement might be associated with memory games, vocabulary slides, and grammar worksheets as their preferred learning resources. also semantic mapping, using keywords, grouping, associating, structured reviewing, and using physical response strategies might have influenced this result. it could also be that the grammar-vocabulary component was more difficult in the final test; that is why a low percentage of students achieved higher results. on the other hand, listening and reading decreased. the students’ low improvement could offer varied interpretations. it might be that these language skills still represent more of a challenge for the students, they might not represent their interests, or the final test language tasks were more difficult. it might be also associated with the fact that reading tasks and resources were not the most preferred by the majority of the students. conclusions this study attempted to improve the lls use and language level of 33 first-year pre-service language teachers. the overall results showed that our learners increased their lls repertoire and language production level as a result of explicit instruction. before the intervention, students used more is, and after the instruction both ds and is use were balanced. the students incorporated strategies that involved their language knowledge and their capacity to organise, select, plan, self-reflect, and self-manage their learning. the latter two were not fully developed. speaking remained the students’ strength and writing and grammar-vocabulary improved. listening was the students’ main weakness found in the language tests as opposed to their self-perceptions. universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras116 guapacha chamorro & benavidez paz communication and interaction tasks such as sharing experiences, problem-solving, creative tasks, and listing showed to be effective in improving the students’ productive skills. grammar worksheets, vocabulary slides, audio-visual materials, and portfolios (the latter from the teachers’ perspectives) resulted as having been useful resources contributing to the students’ language learning, particularly when designed by language instructors who base their designs on the students’ academic needs. additionally, structured notes (dates, titles, use of colours and columns, use of sticky notes) seem to contribute to learners’ organisation and information recall. concrete strategies also lead to reachable learning goals and outcomes. the calla-tblt model seemed to be effective in explicit lls instruction, leading to students’ improvement of speaking, writing and grammar, and vocabulary. these approaches follow similar principles and, when intertwined, facilitate lls and language tasks instruction. despite its short-term implementation, it was effective for these students; nevertheless, the calla-tblt model efficacy requires further confirmatory research. language learners, especially pre-service language teachers, need explicit lls instruction from initial levels so that they can build their own scaffolding system for learning languages and have that experience useful for their future teaching practices. thus, lls should be incorporated into the curriculum and the language courses syllabi, as well as tailored to the students’ needs. lls are teachable and transferable to other subjects but students may require some time to internalize and use them on their own. overall, a careful selection of lss, language tasks, learning resources, and appropriate strategy and language instruction results in being effective in improving students’ lls use and language performance. this instruction is effective when considering the students’ needs. our findings confirm the effectiveness of lls to help learners succeed academically, as demonstrated by theoretical and empirical research. the findings also confirm tuckman and kennedy’s (2011) findings of the effectiveness of lls and their explicit instruction to improve freshmen’s performance. ramírez espinosa’s (2015) suggestions on the features that make english language courses effective to foster learners’ academic success were also corroborated. limitations and recommendations the limitations of our study bring about recommendations for further research. fewer strategies should be selected and worked over a longer period of time to corroborate their effectiveness and learners’ language improvement. this is also to not overwhelm learners. combining checklists with free journal entries might help students self-monitor and evaluate more closely their own progress thus allowing instructors to keep track of and measure the students’ achievements more accurately. task complexity in language tests should be comparable so as not to affect the students’ test results (in our study, the final language test was probably more complex than the midterm test). oxford’s (1990) taxonomy is ambiguous at some points since some activities can fit into various strategies. we suggest, therefore, establishing specific criteria and sticking to them. references allwright, d. 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(2015). fostering autonomy through syllabus design: a step-by-step guide for success. how, 22(2), 114-134. http://doi.org/10.19183/how.22.2.137. richards, j. c., & lockhart, c. (1994). reflective teaching in second language classroom. new york, us: cambridge university press. http://doi.org/10.1017/cbo9780511667169. rubin, j. (1975). what the “good language learner” can teach us. tesol quarterly, 9(1), 41-51. http://doi.org/10.2307/3586011. rubin, j. (2001). language learner self-management. journal of asian pacific communication, 11(1), 25-37. http://doi. org/10.1075/japc.11.1.05rub. rubin, j., & thompson, i. (1994). how to be a more successful language learner. boston, us: heinle & heinle publishers. tuckman, b. w., & kennedy, g. j. (2011). teaching learning strategies to increase success of first-term college students. the journal of experimental education, 79(4), 478-504. http://doi.org/10.1080/00220973.2010.512318. van den branden, k. (ed.). (2006). task based language education: from theory to practice. cambridge, uk: cambridge university press. http://doi.org/10.1017/ cbo9780511667282. wenden, a. (1991). learner strategies for learner autonomy. london, uk: prentice-hall international. wenden, a., & rubin, j. (eds). (1987). learner strategies in language learning. hemel hempstead, uk: prentice hall. willis, j. (1996). a framework for task-based learning. new york, us: longman. zimmerman, b. j. (2002). becoming a self-regulated learner: an overview. theory into practice, 41(2), 64-70. http:// doi.org/10.1207/s15430421tip4102_2. about the authors maria eugenia guapacha chamorro is assistant professor at universidad del valle, cali, colombia. currently, she is a phd candidate at the university of auckland (new zealand). she holds an m.a. in english teaching and a b.a. in foreign languages. she is an efl instructor and has taught at all educational levels. luis humberto benavidez paz is assistant professor at universidad del valle, cali, colombia. he holds an m.a. in linguistics and spanish and a b.a. in foreign languages. he currently teaches efl, esp, eap, classroom research, and pedagogy. his research interests include interculturality, learning strategies, and curriculum design. acknowledgments we are deeply grateful to the students who participated in this research. our gratitude goes to professors orlando chaves and carlos mayora for their insightful comments during the proofreading. we also acknowledge the feedback provided by the anonymous reviewers. 119profile vol. 19, no. 2, july-december 2017. issn 1657-0790 (printed) 2256-5760 (online). bogotá, colombia. pages 101-120 improving language learning strategies and performance of pre-service language teachers... appendix: workshop sample childhood memories retrieved from google images pre-task ←→ preparation and presentation (4 hours) lls: grouping, taking notes, using key words, semantic mapping, placing new words, using a circumlocution, developing cultural understanding. task: students will share childhood anecdotes by using audio visual aids (slides, photos, objects, etc.) vocabulary learning strategy: grouping warm-up and pre-listening activity teachers’ instructions: divide the class into two groups and play hangman using the words from the box. have students use them in situations related to the topic. grow up memories holidays great-grandma kid football game friends pre-listening activity 1. do you remember how you spent your summer holidays when you were a child? 2. did you use to travel to visit some relatives or stay at home? what activities did you use to do? 3. what are the most unforgettable moments you remember from that time of your life? while-listening learning strategies: taking notes – using key words – grouping 4. listen to the conversation between vella and daniel and take notes by identifying key words and ideas. example: key words: grow up in chile idea: daniel grew up in chile. ____________________________________________________________________________________ ____________________________________________________________________________________ ____________________________________________________________________________________ universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras120 guapacha chamorro & benavidez paz 5. listen again and complete the following diagram with aspects related to childhood and detailed information given in the conversation. childhood memories trips games amazing lunch christmas new year 6. based on your notes and diagram, what can you report about the conversation? how did they spend their childhood holidays? post-listening learning strategy: placing new words – using a circumlocution 7. try to define the key words and expressions from the conversation. you can use a thesaurus dictionary to help you with synonyms. a. fond memories: _________________________________________________________________ expression in context: _______________________________________________________________ speaking learning strategy: developing cultural understanding 8. after listening to the conversation, what do you notice about the relationship between seasons and holidays? discuss with your classmates. 9. compare the school break that daniel used to experience with yours when you were a child. 10. establish similarities and differences between the school breaks in colombia and in other countries (consider break length, type of leisure activities, food, outfits, celebrations, etc.). homework 1. find out about others’ childhood memories (use internet, talk to the language assistant, ask a native english speaker, a friend, etc.). 2. interview or have an informal talk with your parents or relatives about their childhood. take notes to share in class. 139profile vol. 18, no. 2, july-december 2016. issn 1657-0790 (printed) 2256-5760 (online). bogotá, colombia. pages 139-150 http://dx.doi.org/10.15446/profile.v18n2.53388 students’ beliefs about their english class: exploring new voices in a national discussion creencias de los estudiantes acerca de su clase de inglés: explorando nuevas voces en una discusión nacional jessica villarreal suarez* jully vanessa muñoz taborda** jorge mario perdomo santacruz*** universidad del quindío, armenia, colombia the main objective of this study was to identify 6th to 11th grade students’ beliefs about their english class in a public institution in armenia, colombia. by means of interviews, drawings, and focus groups with 30 students, four beliefs were established. it was found that students’ beliefs are attached to the experiences they have lived in their english class; the discipline, the monotony, the lack of interesting material, and the impact of foreign language learning are the main related aspects. implications and recommendations for further research are proposed based on the necessity of giving students a voice in the development of current national policies of language learning and also in the debate about the effectiveness of these policies and their impact inside schools. key words: beliefs, classroom environment, english language learners, qualitative research. el objetivo principal de este estudio fue identificar las creencias de los estudiantes de los grados 6º y 11º acerca de la clase de inglés en una institución pública en armenia, colombia. por medio de entrevistas, dibujos y grupos focales con treinta estudiantes, cuatro creencias fueron establecidas. se encontró que las creencias de los estudiantes están asociadas a las experiencias que han vivido en su clase de inglés; la disciplina, la monotonía, la falta de material interesante y el impacto del aprendizaje de una lengua extranjera en los estudiantes son los principales aspectos involucrados. se proponen implicaciones y recomendaciones para investigaciones posteriores teniendo en cuenta que hay una necesidad de darle voz a los estudiantes en el desarrollo de políticas nacionales de aprendizajes de lenguas y en el debate sobre la efectividad de estas políticas y su impacto en las escuelas. palabras clave: ambiente del salón de clases, creencias, estudiantes de inglés, investigación cualitativa. * e-mail: jvillarreals@uqvirtual.edu.co ** e-mail: jvmunozt@hotmail.com *** e-mail: arandanos5@hotmail.com how to cite this article (apa, 6th ed.): villarreal suarez, j., muñoz taborda, j. v., & perdomo santacruz, j. m. (2016). students’ beliefs about their english class: exploring new voices in a national discussion. profile issues in teachers’ professional development, 18(2), 139-150. http://dx.doi.org/10.15446/profile.v18n2.53388. this article was received on october 1, 2015, and accepted on march 28, 2016. this is an open access article distributed under the terms of the creative commons license attribution-noncommercial-noderivatives 4.0 international license. consultation is possible at http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/. universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras140 villarreal suarez, muñoz taborda, & perdomo santacruz introduction it has been more than a decade since a nationwide campaign was officially started in favor of english learning inside colombian classrooms (galindo & moreno, 2008). nonetheless, such a big effort appears to be ineffective according to the same colombian ministry of education. it has recently been acknowledged that only one percent of high school students have reached the desired competence in english (ministerio de educación nacional [men], 2014). there is a good amount of research to suggest where the problem can begin to be understood. for instance, researchers suggest aspects like the dismissal of colombia’s actual linguistic reality in favor of a foreign language (galindo & moreno, 2008); lack of contextualization goals within regions and lack of articulation of all parties involved in the process (correa, usma, & montoya, 2014); inadequate use of budget and human resources to guarantee a real impact of a bilingual policy (cárdenas & miranda, 2014); a gap between goals and the reality of schools concerning curriculum, methodologies, and the linguistic competence of teachers (bermúdez & fandiño parra, 2012); the expansion of english at the expense of bilingual competence in spa nish and english besides other types of local bilingualism (de mejía, 2011). as can be seen, there is a tendency in recent research to show how english learning has become a sort of imposition in schools rendering any public policy an abstract endeavor. however, the theoretical arguments of this controversy take place outside schools. inside them, the main target of all this process—students—must endure every change of policy and continue to work in their classes. what students make of all these processes is a pending task for researchers in colombia. since the mid-eighties there have been a number of international (barcelos, 2003) and very few national studies interested in the understanding of students’ beliefs and their implications on foreign language learning contexts. the study of beliefs inside schools has gained research status and theoretical interest since beliefs have been proved to influence people’s actions (ajzen, 1991, 2005). according to brown and harris (2012), understanding students’ beliefs can contribute significantly to the development of optimal learning behavior and academic achievement. student’s beliefs can become very important not only to better understand the real impact of the current policy of language learning but also to determine more effective courses of action inside classrooms. it is regrettable that there is not enough research that can inform us of the current state of student’s beliefs in colombia since the influence of beliefs inside public schools is strong and sometimes lead to undesired practices and undesired results when they are not identified and treated accordingly (prieto, 2008). as such, that this study sought to explore students’ beliefs regarding their english classes in a public institution in the department of quindío (colombia). the study is based on the assumption that students’ beliefs are not only central to any learning process, they are of paramount importance to the learning of english as a foreign language (efl) and to all its actions and implications inside public schools. theoretical framework the concept of belief can be a little slippery considering it is a general concept with deep roots in philosophy. some authors claim that the term belief can be considered a construct or even an umbrella term for many other educational phenomena: attitudes, values, judgments, opinions, ideology, perceptions, conceptions, and so on (pajares, 1992). some authors have tried to make the concept clear by establishing its differences with similar concepts. for instance, yero (2002) affirms that beliefs are very different from knowledge in that the latter is the ultimate source of objective truth and theories while the former are the base for purposes of action. a theory uses reason and logic to establish statements of reality while beliefs 141profile vol. 18, no. 2, july-december 2016. issn 1657-0790 (printed) 2256-5760 (online). bogotá, colombia. pages 139-150 students᾽ beliefs about their english class: exploring new voices in a national discussion are based on information that can be factual or not (dewey, 1933); in this way we have beliefs about things we understand and about things we do not. a difference between beliefs and knowledge is also proposed by abelson (1979). this author claims that beliefs are very different from knowledge since beliefs are affective, experiential, and irrational. abelson highlights that beliefs can be related to either the actual state of the context where they are created or the ideal context in which individuals yearn to be. finally the author stresses that beliefs do not need to be consensual as they can be shared by a group of people or they can be highly subjective. in this same respect, ortega y gasset (as cited in savater, 1999) claim that when compared with ideas it is clear that we have ideas but we are our beliefs, we live in them because they give personal sense to our overwhelming reality. the difference between knowledge and beliefs is also supported by pajares (1992) who argues that this difference comes from the relation of knowledge with facts while beliefs are more related to personal judgment and assessment. in this sense, it is clear that knowledge is based on the use of reason and logic; it can be proved to be wrong and thus it is subject to change. beliefs, on the other hand, depend highly on the experiences and the sense people make of them for taking decisions in future events. in this way beliefs do tend to be stable in time and more resistant to change (yero, 2002). in the field of education this difference becomes important since a better way to understand what is going on in schools is not by analyzing theories but beliefs. recent studies on the issue claim that beliefs do not only belong to a cognitive dimension of people but also they give account of their social dimension (barcelos, 2003). according to this author, from this view beliefs can be dynamic and dependent on the interactions of individuals within a given context. this implies that beliefs can be subject to change if interaction is considered. this of course requires a research approach that can give evidence of such interaction and its influence on beliefs. summarizing, we can affirm that beliefs are personal judgments that can be rational or irrational about our reality. beliefs do not only give sense to reality but they guide our actions. the development of these judgments depends on the interaction of individuals within a context. thus beliefs can become a powerful influence upon actions and discourses within any given context. literature review research on beliefs, and more specifically on students’ beliefs, has increased only recently. there are some recent reports in the brazilian context by barcelos (2003) and kalaja, barcelos, aro, and ruohotie-lyhty (2015) in relation to students and student teachers. furthermore, there is some research on higher education students (see struyven, dochy, & janssens, 2005 for a review) and some quantitative extensive studies on student’s beliefs in new zealand (brown & hirschfeld, 2007, 2008). in relation to students’ beliefs and english classes in formal contexts of education there is also some evidence from asian schools. through observation and discourse analysis some beliefs could be established. for example, a pervasive belief among students was the advocacy of the translation method as an effective activity for learning languages. traditional beliefs like this are more frequent amid chinese students, a fact explained by the author as respect for traditions and culture in the chinese context of education (yu, 2013). a similar study by settar (2012) intended to establish what the beliefs of efl students in iraq were and how those beliefs affected students’ learning process. the participants in this research were 101 university students of efl. the instrument used to evaluate the students’ beliefs was horwitz’ (1988) questionnaire of beliefs about language learning inventory (balli). some categories were analyzed in the study where aspects like aptitude difficulty, strategies, and motivation were measured. it could be concluded that students believe that there are certain people that can learn languages better than others but they are very optimistic that they can learn it and universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras142 villarreal suarez, muñoz taborda, & perdomo santacruz have a very good performance. students also believed that it is easy to learn english but that it depends on the time spent for doing so. it was surprising to find out that students believed that memorizing lists of vocabulary without having contact with the language or the context itself is the best way to learn. besides, students reported a lack of motivation due to the wrong usage of some strategies while learning the target language. finally, students evidenced a desire to learn english because they believed it important for their professional lives but the lack of possibilities to get involved in effective language learning leads to frustration. from a south american perspective, in brazil some researchers highlight the importance of beliefs about second language acquisition (sla). barcelos (2003), in a critical review, analyses some studies about beliefs in order to discuss their content: methodology, definition of beliefs, the relationship between belief and actions, and the advantages and disadvantages. first, she starts a discussion about the term belief and its meaning given in previous research. secondly, she revises the research in order to place it into three different categories (the normative approach, the metacognitive approach, and the contextual approach). finally, she expounds upon the advantages of each approach and the instruments used by the researchers to collect data. taking into consideration this analysis, barcelos concludes that: beliefs about sla research has to move beyond a simple description of beliefs as predictors of future behavior to an investigation of beliefs in context. we need to understand how beliefs interact with students’ actions and what functions they play in students’ learning experiences in class or outside class. (barcelos, 2003, p. 29) finally, in colombia there is a mixed exploratory study of students’ beliefs in two public institutions (avella & camargo, 2010). one university and one high school were used as contexts for the research. through the use of questionnaires and observations the authors could affirm that the students are conscious about the importance of the language and how it can help them to get a job or to study abroad. they also fear the fact of being mocked by their classmates: students believe that mispronouncing words is one situation that affects their participation. the study’s conclusion was that students’ motivation towards several aspects of the class can affect their performance. the studies commented on here are useful to support two facts. first, the relation between students’ beliefs and their performance in the english classroom is an issue that should be taken into account by any teacher, policy maker, and institution to guide their decisions. second, there is not enough research in public high schools in relation to the state of students’ beliefs about their english class. this is another way to say that students have been mute for a long time in relation to bilingualism in colombia. this study is an attempt to listen to what students have to say about this process. context of the study the study was carried out in a public institution located in the southwest of armenia, quindío (co lombia). this city is considered by the ministry of education as one of the regions where there are “intensive efforts”, meaning there are many projects being developed inside schools sponsored by the colombia very well program, that is, textbooks, native english speakers, co-teachers, intensification of teaching hours per week, and so on. thirty students (fifteen from sixth grade and fifteen from eleventh grade) were volunteers to participate in the data collection activities. the participation of students from these grades was an informed decision based on the findings of harris, harnett, and brown (2009). these researchers found that beliefs of students finishing high school tend to be different from those of students finishing primary. in this way, five volunteer students from each grade (sixth and eleventh) were chosen at random to become part of the study. a common characteristic of the participants is that they all live in the vicinity of the school and most of them have studied at least four years in the institution. 143 students᾽ beliefs about their english class: exploring new voices in a national discussion academically, just one student, from eleventh grade, has been studying english out of the school curriculum; the other volunteers have studied english only at school. sixth grade students’ age ranges from 11-13 years and eleventh grade students’ age oscillated between 16 and 18. method as has been mentioned already, beliefs tend to be subjective and inter-subjective rather than objective because of the inner interpretations they produce within the context they arise from. if it is considered that beliefs “can vary or remain stable across time and space and eventually [become] mutually conflicting” (kalaja et al., 2015, p. 10) a comprehensive method of research should be used to better approach such complexity. thus, it was necessary to develop the project from a qualitative approach. this approach allows the researchers to address the complexity of beliefs more thoroughly. furthermore, taking into account that in colombia research on beliefs has not been a subject of much interest, this study constitutes an exploratory case study. according to yin (2003): “a case study is an empirical inquiry that investigates a contemporary phenomenon within its real-life context” (p. 18). a case study provides a unique example of real people in real life situations, enabling readers to understand ideas more clearly than simply by presenting them with abstract theories or principles (cohen, manion, & morrison, 2007). procedures three instruments were used in order to collect the information of the study: students’ drawings, focus groups, and interviews. the main instrument to collect data was students’ drawings of their english class. drawings can be a powerful tool to approach complex information when working with underage participants. according to diem-wille (2001), “pictures, drawings, and metaphors show a person’s emotional state of mind much better than verbal definitions or descriptors” (p. 119). clarebout, depaepe, elen, and briell (as cited in harris et al., 2009) argued that “drawings can be used to identify nuances and ambivalences within a person’s belief system, indicating they would be useful when studying pupil conceptions” (p. 3). following harris et al.’s (2009) study, each participant in the research was given a paper to draw their english class and was instructed to write a short caption of their drawing to better explain the images (figure 1). the presentation and explanation of their drawing were done in two focus groups. inside the focus groups students could explain their drawings to their classmates and discuss or come to agreement in relation to the particularities of their english class. answers and interaction were video recorded. finally, open interviews were carried out with each participant in order to have a more detailed source of information. the use of these three tools of data collection allowed a triangulation process of information giving the qualitative approach of the study an inter-subjective rigor required to have consistent results (cohen et al., 2007). data analysis each participant was given a numerical code to protect their identities so that their drawings and answers from the focus groups and interviews could be easily monitored. frequency of images and words in the interviews and focus groups were highlighted for further relation. as a result, four categories emerged out of the frequency and relation of images and words. each category was named after the same choice of words of participants and all comments related to it: the dark side, always the same, changes, and the english door. the dark side avella and camargo (2010) reported on the importance given by students to a classroom environment: students believe that this has direct influence upon their interaction and participation in class. similarly, in our study it was found that students believe their english profile vol. 18, no. 2, july-december 2016. issn 1657-0790 (printed) 2256-5760 (online). bogotá, colombia. pages 139-150 universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras144 villarreal suarez, muñoz taborda, & perdomo santacruz figure 1. drawing of the english class by one of the participants class environment is affected dramatically by a “dark side” inside the classroom. this dark side refers to a certain part of the classroom (a group of students) in which some students interfere negatively in the process of learning. this category was created because of the frequency in which some students from both 6th and 11th grades mentioned this event. while analyzing the drawings, we could find that some participants mentioned this issue several times. for example, student 2 (11th grade) made the following comment in his drawing: there is always a part of the classroom fooling around; they disrupt the class.1 during the focus groups, 11th graders expressed their inconformity about “the dark side”. for example, student 2 expressed that one of his partners, specifically student 5, belongs to “the dark side” because he and his group of partners do not pay attention to class instruction and 1 all the excerpts from the students have been translated from their original language, spanish, for the purposes of publication. 145 students᾽ beliefs about their english class: exploring new voices in a national discussion activities. besides, when the interviewer asked them about “the dark side” all the students agreed on the interference that this group of students creates. student 2 from the focus group emphasized that the people from this side talk loudly and a lot in spanish, making the development of tasks and participation almost impossible. while setting the influence that the dark side has in their english classes during the focus group, the interviewer asked: “do you feel that the dark side influences your learning process?” the students answered: their voices are just unbearable (student 2, 11th grade) interestingly, student 5 from 11th grade, whom his partners in the focus groups identified as belonging to this “dark side”, acknowledges that: yes, of course, that noise doesn’t leave anybody to concentrate some answers to the question “how do you feel in the classroom’s environment?” during the interview from 6th graders were: bad, students disturb, they make noise. (student 1) sometimes, the teacher has to talk them loud, they make too much noise. they stand up. (student 2) as has been shown, it is evident that the way students express their inconformity with this situation constitutes a belief about english class environment. a fact influencing this belief is the number of students per classroom. in this public school there are 34 students per classroom on the average. this situation makes the process of interaction, participation, and concentration difficult, allowing the creation of these “dark sides.” it is very interesting as well to see how both groups share this belief, especially the disadvantages that the dark side produces in their learning process. always the same this category refers to the routine students live in their english class; the use of photocopies was the most reported material in the classroom by students. students believed that the use of repetitive activities in the class makes it uninteresting. the frequency in which students from both grades mentioned the lack of interest related to this kind of material made its categorization possible. moreover, students’ organization and the teachers’ role within the classroom make up part of this category. this could easily be noticed in the drawings and comments of the students. for example, student 1 from 11th grade expressed the feelings evoked by the materials used by the teacher (photocopies) in his drawing (figure 2). he explains his drawing saying: my drawing expresses that almost all the classes are photocopies. while answering the interview question about materials in the classroom, some students commented as follows: dictionary and photocopies. (student 2, 11th grade) photocopies and audios. (student 2, 11th grade) dictionary, photocopies, and vocabulary. (student 1, 6th grade) only photocopies and the notebook. (student 3, 6th grade) also, in the drawings displayed in figure 3, the students showed other aspects that made some common events and dispositions in the class evident: classroom organization with desks in straight lines, teacher’s role (he or she is always in front of the classroom), individual work and a board full of instructions. as also stated by settar (2012), students are very perceptive about monotony. in this category, they feel that doing “always the same” is not only boring for them but also affects their performance during the class. this category evidences how traditional an english class can be, in this case, in a public institution. in fact, the influence of everyday experiences, in this case classroom experiences, affects the way beliefs are shaped (abelson, 1979; pajares 1992). for students, their english class is similar to any other traditional class where there is a teacher giving instructions to be developed individually and where every task is predictable. profile vol. 18, no. 2, july-december 2016. issn 1657-0790 (printed) 2256-5760 (online). bogotá, colombia. pages 139-150 universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras146 villarreal suarez, muñoz taborda, & perdomo santacruz figure 2. drawing of the english class by student 1 (11th grade) changes according to abelson (1979), beliefs can be related not only to the actual state of things in a given context but also to the ideal state of things in an imaginary situation. as such, it was possible to constitute a category with the comments students had about proposals to improve their english classes. this category refers to what students want to see in their english class: “changes”. this category is very informative since there is a great amount of possibilities that can be taken into account in order to improve any english class. in general terms, the lack of new material, the same way of developing the class, the absence of oral practice, and so on, are some of the aspects that students want to change. that is why this category shows how the class can be more interesting and appealing to the ideas and possible changes that the students suggest. some of the changes were stated as follows: english instead of spanish. that english classes be taught in spanish. (student 3, 6th grade) to learn other languages. (student 5, 6th grade) that the classes should become more practical not so much theory. (student 1, 11th grade) 147 students᾽ beliefs about their english class: exploring new voices in a national discussion that new things be taught, because it is always the same. (student 5, 11th grade) it is interesting to highlight how the beliefs students have about their ideal english class can be easily related to what researches discuss in academic contexts. for example, galindo and moreno (2008) argue: “thus to promote the bilingual development of colombian citizens in only one international language would disregard other linguistic realities of equal importance.” sixth grade students affirm something in the same respect since they want to have the opportunity “to learn other languages.” cárdenas and miranda (2014) stress the need to promote clear actions intended to improve the performance of teachers inside their classrooms. eleventh grade students claim that it is important “that new things be taught, because it is always the same.” on the other hand, when focus groups were done, the students expressed some clear and specific ideas that they believe can be very useful for the english class. for example: english games. (student 5, 6th grade) that we were taken to the computers’ room to play. (student 2, 6th grade) change the traditional things, photocopies. i think that it has happened for a long time and it’s so boring. it is time to change, isn’t it? so, more didactic topics and be more strict with the people that disturb the class. (student 2, 11th grade) as can be seen, students do not only talk about what they dislike but they also propose solutions. it is also evident that students demand “changes” for improving their performance and mostly for profiting their time in their english class. the english door this category emerged as a token of the frequency of answers in relation to the importance students give figure 3. samples from participants about the organization of their english class profile vol. 18, no. 2, july-december 2016. issn 1657-0790 (printed) 2256-5760 (online). bogotá, colombia. pages 139-150 universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras148 villarreal suarez, muñoz taborda, & perdomo santacruz to english in their lives. this was a belief shared equally by students from 6th and 11th grades. this category is very similar to the findings by settar (2012) and yu (2013). of this category it can be said that beliefs of students in the foreign language context tend to be related to an instrumental motivation towards the learning of english. students recognize the importance of english since they recognize they can use it for many other future activities. then, english becomes an entrance or door to other possibilities for students. for example, when asked about the importance of learning english, students answered as follows: for going to other countries. (student 1, 6th grade) for many things, to study and to work. (student 3, 6th grade) for many things, for getting a job here or abroad. (student 2, 11th grade) to open the doors for a job. (student 5, 11th grade) students acknowledge that speaking another language, in this case, english, is very important in their academic and professional lives. according to de mejía (2011), this kind of prestige that english has among public intuitions and the common people is evidence of how the learning of this language could be considered an imposition. for participants in this research the “use” and “advantages” english learning has in their future lives are very clear and almost unanimous, but this unanimity does not leave space for acknowledging the importance of developing competences in our mother tongue. for galindo and moreno (2008) the dismissal to give equal importance to both languages can result in poor outcomes in the development of english competences. conclusion the main goal of this research was to establish some students’ beliefs about the english class, specifically students from 6th and 11th grades. throughout the whole paper, we have seen that this is a complex and extensive work that needs to be analyzed deeply in many other aspects. nonetheless, some of the most general and remarkable beliefs could be established and analyzed and grouped into four categories: the dark side, always the same, changes, and the english door. in the “dark side,” students believe that this is a characteristic present inside the english class, a situation that affects dramatically their process of english learning. the evidence shows how the interference from one part of the classroom can be very harmful for the other students’ performance with the language. besides, from “always the same,” students believe that the monotony, in terms of materials, organization of the classroom and the teachers’ role, is a factor of negative motivation. students also report beliefs about the ideal characteristics in their english class. in the category “changes” it can be concluded that students believe that the implementation of new materials, the use of oral tasks, and encouraging activities can be very useful for catching students’ attention. besides, students also believe that the teachers need to be stricter with the students that do not want to work. students believe that a good english class requires all students to be involved in the activities but such activities must be appealing and not repetitive. as demonstrated in “the english door” category, students believe that speaking english is the best option for getting a better job and having a future abroad. this instrumental motivation towards english learning reinforces the prestige this language has in our culture. it is paradoxical then to see how a class where students firmly recognize the importance of its subject matter for their future lives (a luxury not all subjects in public school enjoy) is not developed in such a way as to turn this kind of motivation into effective learning. contrary to the findings by harris et al. (2009), beliefs of students beginning and finishing high school in colombia do not differ too much in relation to their english class. students share common and firm beliefs about methodology, discipline, and motivation towards the class. there is evidence to support that the use of traditional methods is deeply resented by students. thus, 149 students᾽ beliefs about their english class: exploring new voices in a national discussion the logic of action and consequences inside the english class can be established from the categories presented in this paper. the lack of appealing activities leads to a lack of involvement of all students; this in turn allows the creation of groups of students that disrupt the class and thus affect the participation of the whole class. finally, it is important to acknowledge the relevance of students’ beliefs about their classes. to be able to determine these beliefs is the first step toward addressing a complex process in public institutions. it seems that the best way to create and deal with bilingual policy in our classrooms is to consider students’ voices as a reliable source of information. our findings suggest that as long as students’ beliefs are disregarded they become a more powerful and invincible force influencing all actions. an effective way to balance these forces in an english learning context is to identify and understand the beliefs supporting them. limitations and recommendations in colombia, it is important to start reporting systematically about the beliefs of students in different levels of education: elementary and higher education. this would allow policy-makers and teachers to establish differences and similarities and, accordingly, to design effective methodologies. this study only focused on some levels of public education but more evidence is needed to strengthen the scope of this research. it is also important to consider teachers’ beliefs since their role is equally important. to establish differences and similarities in the groups of people just mentioned would be the necessary steps toward creating a framework of reference to understand a context where policy could be effective. references abelson, r. p. 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(2003). case study research: design and methods (3rd ed.). thousand oaks, ca: sage. yu, c. x. (2013). do learner beliefs about learning matter in english language education? malaysian journal of english language teaching research, 9(2), 19-35. about the authors jessica villarreal suarez holds a bachelor’s degree in modern languages from universidad del quindío. jully vanessa muñoz taborda holds a bachelor’s degree in modern languages from universidad del quindío. jorge mario perdomo santacruz holds a bachelor’s degree in modern languages from universidad del quindío. he has been professor at universidad del quindío for seven years and an english teacher in public schools for eight years. he has been a speaker in different seminars and academic events in colombia and mexico. 59profile: issues teach. prof. dev., vol. 21 no. 1, jan-jun, 2019. issn 1657-0790 (printed) 2256-5760 (online). bogotá, colombia. pages 59-74 https://doi.org/10.15446/profile.v21n1.69951 intercultural components in the multimodal structure of a language learning website componentes interculturales en la estructura multimodal de un sitio web para el aprendizaje de lenguas alejandro fernández benavides*1 universidad santiago de cali, cali, colombia the emergence of language learning websites has generated changes in intercultural communicative practices. particularly, these sites use a wide variety of modes of communication (visual, linguistic, spatial) which allow the presence of intercultural elements. this interpretative case study analyzes the semiotic structure of one lesson of the language learning website livemocha in order to unveil the presence of intercultural elements in it. data were analyzed following a method for multimodal analysis and byram’s model of intercultural communicative competence. findings suggest the essentialist view of culture on livemocha, based on festivals and food, and the potential promotion of some of byram’s intercultural skills. key words: intercultural communicative competence, language learning websites, multimodal social semiotics. la emergencia de sitios en línea para el aprendizaje de lenguas ha generado cambios en las prácticas comunicativas interculturales. particularmente, estos sitios usan una amplia variedad de modos de comunicación (visual, lingüístico, espacial) que permiten la presencia de elementos interculturales. en este estudio de caso interpretativo se analiza la estructura semiótica de una unidad del sitio en línea para el aprendizaje de lenguas livemocha con el fin de descubrir la presencia de elementos interculturales en él. la información se analizó siguiendo el método de álvarez para el análisis multimodal y el modelo de competencia comunicativa intercultural de byram. los resultados sugieren la visión esencialista de livemocha, basada en festivales y comida, y la potencial promoción de habilidades interculturales de byram. palabras clave: competencia comunicativa intercultural, semiótica social multimodal, sitios web para el aprendizaje de lenguas. * e-mail: alejandro.fernandez.benavides@correounivalle.edu.co this article comes from the thesis intercultural communicative competence in a social networking site for language learning, of my authorship, to obtain the m.a. degree in intercultural and interlinguistic studies. how to cite this article (apa, 6th ed.): fernández benavides, a. (2019). intercultural components in the multimodal structure of a language learning website. profile: issues in teachers’ professional development, 21(1), 59-74. https://doi.org/10.15446/profile.v21n1.69951. this article was received on january 22, 2018 and accepted on september 24, 2018. this is an open access article distributed under the terms of the creative commons license attribution-noncommercial-noderivatives 4.0 international license. consultation is possible at https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/. universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras60 fernández benavides introduction during the last decades, communicational practices have experienced a decisive revolution in terms of media of communication, spaces, and affordances. part of this transformation has been manifested in what some authors call “the visual turn” (álvarez, 2016c; kress, 1997). this turn has led to the preeminence of images in a wide variety of interactional landscapes. according to some authors (jewitt, 2009; van leeuwen, 2005), the use of images has overthrown the supremacy of text. evidence of this is the amount of paralinguistic elements in the design of web pages (michelson & álvarez, 2016), and text books (bateman, 2008) in today’s communicative environments (álvarez, 2016a; kress, 2010). particularly, one of the manifestations of the visual turn can be found in the web page design of social networking sites (snss) such as facebook, youtube, and twitter, among others (álvarez, 2014; michelson & álvarez, 2016). these sites, using web 2.0 technology, include a wide range of modes of communication allowing users to interact beyond linguistic means and using multimodal affordances (álvarez, 2016b, 2016d; brick, 2011). visual communication has also had an echo in educational contexts, especially in the creation of online applications for language learning. this is the case of social networking sites for language learning (snsll). snsll have adopted the web 2.0 technology and the interactional patterns of snss in order to offer spaces for language learning and worldwide interaction (brick, 2011; harrison & thomas, 2009). interestingly, snsll provide alternatives to establish intercultural communication and the acquisition of cultural knowledge, not only through their social interface, but also through their semiotic design. literature review previous studies have addressed the affordances of snsll in higher education contexts. for instance, brick (2011) researched the ease of use and access to the snsll livemocha, its positive and negative aspects, and the participants’ attitudes, perceptions, and behaviors towards this snsll. brick discovered that some advantages of livemocha were the opportunities to practice oral skills with other learners and to get immediate feedback. nevertheless, livemocha’s learning approach was lexical and some users were victims of cyber-flirting. similarly, álvarez analyzed the views of language (2016b) and learning (2016d) present in the semiotic design of the snsll busuu, examining the positioning and creation of identity (2016a) from the dynamic of participation in this website. the findings indicate that busuu is an ecological, linguistic, and social system composed of several subsystems and multimodal elements. each subsystem has a particular view of language learning where users work and develop their conceptions and skills from these views. consequently, busuu’s semiotic spaces evoke structural, interactional, and ecological views of language that work together to echo behaviorist, cognitivist, and constructivist theories of language learning. hence, the construction of identity in this site is developed from the activities, multimodal elements, learning dynamics, and syllabus. busuu encourages users to become active learners and to expand their linguistic repertoire through a system of rewards and communitarian online support. likewise, michelson and álvarez (2016), through a multimodal-semiotic analysis, examined the underlying meanings that the site of arcadia university (usa) assigned to the experience of studying abroad. the findings of this research showed that there is a prevailing touristic vision of studying abroad. discourses of tourism are achieved through the combination of diverse modes of communication, particularly the visual mode (photographs and spatial layout) and written language. the website appeals to the students’ desire, pleasure, and recreation to convince them to enroll in study abroad programs. therefore, the users of this program look for touristic “adventures” due to the experiences of other students and not an opportunity for academic 61profile: issues teach. prof. dev., vol. 21 no. 1, jan-jun, 2019. issn 1657-0790 (printed) 2256-5760 (online). bogotá, colombia. pages 59-74 intercultural components in the multimodal structure of a language learning website development. discourses of academic tourism are highlighted in the students’ section of the website where the learners who took part in this program narrated their academic experiences abroad as recreational activities. consequently, this site implicitly supports discourses of capitalism, consumerism, and market. the implicit message underlying these sites reflects the conception of education that business representatives and students have about international education. although michelson and álvarez’s research did not focus on snsll, their study is useful for the present article because it explores the affordances of multimodal analysis in a website. despite these outstanding studies in the field of education and multimodality, snsll and intercultural competence still require research. with this epistemological gap in mind, the present study focuses on the multimodal nature and the presence of intercultural components in the semiotic design of the snsll livemocha. hence, this study adopted an intercultural view of language learning, basically, byram’s (1997) intercultural communicative competence (icc) model. furthermore, i followed the tenets of multimodality proposed by kress (1997). these two views were articulated with considerations about the nature of snsll and their usage in higher educational contexts (álvarez, 2016a, 2016d; clark & gruba, 2010; zourou, 2012). these theoretical axes are addressed below. intercultural communicative competence following a vision of language learning as the development of linguistic, social, cultural, and critical skills, byram (1997) proposed his icc model as an alternative to enhance the process of language learning beyond the traditional linguistic/communicative abilities. byram mentions four competences involved in language learning: linguistic, pragmatic, sociolinguistic, and intercultural. here, i explain byram’s view of icc which is composed of five dimensions: attitudes, knowledge, skills of interpreting and relating, skills of discovery and interaction, and critical cultural awareness. the dimension of attitudes of openness and curiosity refers to the learners’ eagerness to decenter from their own cultural perspective and learn from others in a dialogue of equality and friendship. likewise, knowledge is defined as the set of information about the cultural products, practices, and interactive procedures of other cultures. the skills of interpreting/relating allow learners to decipher and associate documents and events from other cultures and to understand their significance in relation to the learners’ own cultural system. hence, the skills of discovery/interaction refer to the ability of operating attitudes, knowledge, and skills of relating and interpreting in real-time communication in order to discover new cultural elements. finally, byram (1997) describes the skill of critical cultural awareness as the learners’ “ability to evaluate, critically and on the basis of explicit criteria, perspectives, practices and products in one’s own and other cultures and countries” (p. 63). these skills aim at developing intercultural speakers capable of interacting and maintaining successful relationships with speakers of other cultures as well as keeping aware of the importance of freedom, democracy, and cooperation. however, the way cultural products and symbols operate might be better understood from a multimodal perspective of interactions. a multimodal view of communication understanding the icc dimensions gives us hints about how intercultural communication happens (byram, 1997). nonetheless, the role of symbols and socially created signs needs to be addressed in order to comprehend the semiotic dimension of communication. as kress (2010) explains, communication is a process that involves paralinguistic elements in the creation of messages. therefore, a wider view of communication should acknowledge the existence, transformation, and use of all types of socially constructed signs of communication. this is precisely the focus of multimodality. in this sense, multimodality is the study universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras62 fernández benavides of the creation, evolution, and nature of the different social signs used in communication (jewitt, 2005; kress, 2012; van leeuwen, 2005). the particularity of this approach is the acknowledgement and focus on a wide variety of communicative modes going beyond a purely linguistic view of language. in order to understand this perspective of communication, we need to know the main concepts related to multimodality. these concepts are: semiotic resources: in van leeuwen’s (2005) words: “the actions, materials and artifacts we use for communicative purposes” (p. 16). in other words, everything used to communicate and create meaning or the base units of a multimodal document. modes of communication: the semiotic resources are organized and materialized in modes of communication. these modes are grouped according to their communication origin. the new london group (1996) lists five modes of communication: linguistic, audio, spatial, gestural, and visual. intersemiotic relationship: the relationship of meaning construction and connections among semiotic resources, modes of communication, and their underlying meanings in a multimodal ensemble (kress, 2010). being aware of the semiotic and multimodal relationships within a multimodal ensemble will allow us to discover hidden messages and meaning relationships among different multimodal elements present in diverse documents. in this case, the target document was a lesson from a website for language learning. method this study was part of a macro project carried out in two colombian universities, universidad del valle (cali) and universidad javeriana (bogota), which aimed at inquiring about the affordances of snsll in higher education programs. this research follows principles of a qualitative descriptive and interpretive study (merriam, 2009) by drawing on a multimodal analysis of the semiotic structure of the snsll livemocha. although the only data source was livemocha, this research has the features of a case study: particularistic, descriptive, and heuristic (merriam, 2009; stake, 2005). it is particularistic because, among the numerous snsll, i chose livemocha (the particular case) as a sample of these websites; descriptive, because it characterizes deeply the conditions and nature of livemocha; and heuristic, or interpretive, because it unveils the creation of cultural meanings emerging from the relationship of multimodal elements. due to space restrictions, i focused on one language lesson of livemocha. data analysis to explore livemocha from a multimodal perspective, i adopted elements from the social semiotic approach. i followed álvarez’s (2016c) analytic model to examine multimodal texts. his proposal consists of four steps: examination of conditions of production and use, identification of base units, description of modes and their functions, and analysis of intersemiotic relationships (figure 1). these steps are not linear and might be applied to different kinds of texts. i used álvarez’s proposal because of its focus on multimodal elements and its applicability to websites such as livemocha. figure 1. steps of multimodal analysis (álvarez, 2016c, p. 102) conditions of production and use of text intersemiotic relationships base units composing text modes and their functions 63profile: issues teach. prof. dev., vol. 21 no. 1, jan-jun, 2019. issn 1657-0790 (printed) 2256-5760 (online). bogotá, colombia. pages 59-74 intercultural components in the multimodal structure of a language learning website steps of álvarez’s analysis 1. conditions of production and use of text: explanation of the social, cultural, historical, and material conditions under which a multimodal text is produced and disseminated. 2. identification of base units: recognition and description of the base units of the multimodal ensemble. 3. analysis of modes and functions: categorization of the base units, in terms of modes of communication, and analysis of their functions. 4. intersemiotic relationships: analysis of the relationships among the base units and modes of communication of a semiotic design and interpretation of the underlying messages of the multimodal structure. although álvarez (2016c) divides stages two and three in two steps, here (due to lack of space) i combined them into one step. after identifying and analyzing the multimodal elements on lesson w9, i used a matrix with byram’s icc components in which i classified the base units in terms of icc dimensions aiming to discover the intercultural relationships in this lesson. i discovered the semiotic coherence of the multimodal elements in the lesson and observed items that indicated how the (inter)cultural dimension was manifested in the semiotic design of livemocha. findings and discussion following álvarez’s (2016c) method for multimodal analysis, i studied the semiotic structure of lesson w9: “holiday celebration with friends” to explore the intercultural elements in it. this section has three parts: (a) analysis of conditions of production and use; (b) identification of base units, modes of communication, and their functions; and (c) intersemiotic relationships. conditions of production and use livemocha was a language learning website in a format of social networking site. founded in 2007, livemocha aimed to improve the experience of online language learning (clark & gruba, 2010). this was the first site of its kind and incorporated several language courses, activities, and a virtual community of users who supported each other’s learning process (brick, 2011). livemocha’s courses were divided into levels and lessons. the lessons had several activities and multimedia material to work on the four communicative skills. livemocha managed the concept of freemium, which means that some contents were free to the public and other functions had a fee (froberg, 2014). livemocha highlighted the opportunity of contacting native speakers and getting online support. the website was closed in 2016 and currently is part of the community hellolingo. with 35 language courses, livemocha reached 16 million users until 2016 (brick, 2011; clark & gruba, 2010; livemocha inc., 2016). livemocha had three main spaces: language lessons (levels and learning material online), help others (a space for grading and offering advice to other learners), and language learners (a section to meet users). language lessons had eight sections: introduction, vocabulary, usage, practice, and four sections of communicative tasks. furthermore, livemocha corresponds to a sociocultural context characterized by a push for english as a global force, the integration of new technologies in language teaching and new ways of socialization materialized by online environments. in fact, livemocha’s pedagogical orientation, content, and design portrayed a western view of language teaching (álvarez, 2014). for example, livemocha’s general information appeared in english and its syllabus for other languages was an adaptation of the morphosyntactic components of the english language. also, on livemocha some learning materials were just “translated” from english without previous pedagogical consideration (clark & gruba, 2010). this choice of material shows the dominant role of english and the logic of learning/ teaching in snsll. universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras64 fernández benavides tion that is not achieved just with communicational exchanges (byram, 2008; liddicoat & scarino, 2013). therefore, we need to understand how the relationship of contents and functions permitted learners to display intercultural skills. in the following section, i analyze the relationship between the semiotic design of livemocha and its intercultural dimension. identification of base units and modes of communication and their functions after analyzing the conditions of production and use of multimodal documents, researchers must identify, classify, and find the functions of the base units in the multimodal ensemble (álvarez, 2016c). here, i identify the base units and semiotic clusters composing two pictures of the introductory video in lesson w9. i present the analysis of these pictures to illustrate the process. in figure 2, we observe the semiotic structure of livemocha’s language units, which are composed of four semiotic clusters that group the base units of each section. semiotic clusters are sets of multimodal elements grouped harmoniously within a multimodal ensemble (álvarez, 2014). in figure 2, the semiotic clusters divide the space of each lesson and facilitate the navigation of users. for example, cluster one provides general information about the user, the lesson and the available rewards, and offers access to the main menu. semiotic cluster two locates users in the language lesson and gives them the option to navigate within the lesson sections. each section is represented by an icon. semiotic cluster three presents the learning material with which to study the lessons and develop the exercises. finally, semiotic cluster four offers interactive options for users to advance in, continue, or leave the current activity. all the semiotic clusters are divided by a different background color behind the visual and linguistic elements on the screen. this distribution of base units and semiotic clusters constitutes the semiotic structure of livemocha’s livemocha also reflects a global trend towards the development of online education. language teaching has been impacted by virtual education and the use of new technologies, especially web 2.0 (álvarez, 2014; conole & alevizou, 2010). some of the new possibilities are the secularization of education, autonomous learning, and virtual learning communities (álvarez, 2016a; pavlenko & norton, 2007). web 2.0 affordances offer virtual environments that enhance dialogue among people from different cultures (chotel, 2012; potolia & zourou, 2013), and the emergence of telecollaboration and tandem learning among users of different languages (livingstone, 2008; thorne, 2010). in livemocha, the interconnectivity and its learning environments changed the ways of socialization. livemocha addressed the concerns of communication and socialization in nontraditional spaces. by adopting the semiotic structure of snss like facebook, livemocha adapted to the dynamics of the social web to provide users diversified forms of socialization and identity construction. particularly, livemocha stressed its social nature in its online design, interactive tools, and learning spaces. livemocha was also successful in creating a sense of belonging among its members and thus in attracting more people. the statistics and length of operational time prove its success (brick, 2011; chotel, 2012; clark & gruba, 2010). consequently, livemocha members constituted an imagined community. on snsll, learners from different origins establish a connection based on learning experiences and mutual support, develop alliances, and become part of an imagined community of transnational language learning (álvarez, 2016d). engagement in imagined communities leads to investment in the target language, role negotiation, and transformation of the users’ imagined identity (norton & mckinney, 2011). although livemocha’s social media gave way to intercultural exchange, this exchange does not imply the development of intercultural competencies. developing icc skills requires a process of decentering and reflec65profile: issues teach. prof. dev., vol. 21 no. 1, jan-jun, 2019. issn 1657-0790 (printed) 2256-5760 (online). bogotá, colombia. pages 59-74 intercultural components in the multimodal structure of a language learning website lessons. notably, the white spaces and the background color show the divisions among semiotic clusters. the next step is to identify the base units composing the interface of the first section of lesson w9 (figure 3). figure 3. base units of livemocha’s interface: section 1. introduction in figure 3, there are 24 base units composing the semiotic structure of this screenshot. the introduction section consists of a video featuring a slideshow with voice over. the main modes of communication used are visual (icons, pictures, colors, symbols), linguistic (text and oral discourse in the presentation of the video) and spatial (the distribution that organizes the semiotic clusters). table 1 shows the functions of base units and their modes in figure 3. the base units’ functions in figure 3 appear organized in modes of communication. for instance, the visual base units (a, d, e, etc.) support the navigation, allow the interaction within the lesson, present the learning material, and enhance online support. the linguistic base units (b, c, p, etc.) show the general information of the lesson, the sections within it, the language material and interactive options regarding the language material. the spatial base units (f, v, x, o) distribute the elements and show the divisions among semiotic clusters by indicating the different functions of each space. interestingly, some base units fit within two different modes of communication (o, w, r) and accomplished more than one function in the first picture of the introvisual mode linguistic mode semiotic cluster 2 semiotic cluster 1 semiotic cluster 3 semiotic cluster 4 white space white space spatial mode white space white space figure 2. semiotic clusters and modes of communication on livemocha universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras66 fernández benavides table 1. base units and modes in figure 3 semiotic cluster base units mode function user/unit information user’s profile photo (a) visual to display the visual identity of users. icon of users’ lessons (b) linguisticvisual to provide access to learner’s lessons. title of the language lesson (c) linguistic to display the name and code of each lesson and to contextualize the lessons in terms of linguistic or cultural information. mocha points (d) visual to show users their reward in mocha points and to encourage them to get more points. livemocha credits (e) visual to show the users’ reward in credits and to encourage them to get more coins. background (f) spatial to focus the users’ attention on the learning material at the center of the screen. unit progression section icons (g-n) visual to allow users to navigate within the section of the lesson. background (o) visualspatial to show users that this is a separate space where they can move within the language lesson. learning material title of the lesson (p) linguisticspatialvisual to contextualize the learning material as part of a language lesson. the pink color in the title calls attention to the unit’s topic. title of the lesson section (q) linguisticspatialvisual to contextualize the contents in the slideshow and to inform about the topic of the lesson. slideshow (r) visuallinguistic to introduce the lesson through a show of slides related to the main topic of the lesson. support options (s-u) visual to offer support options online for the users (helplanguage-translation). background (v) spatialvisual to focus the learners’ attention and divide the different spaces on screen. interactive elements command buttons (w) visuallinguisticspatial to provide interactive options to continue the activities or sections of the lessons. background (x) visualspatial to focus the learners’ attention and separate the different spaces on screen. 67profile: issues teach. prof. dev., vol. 21 no. 1, jan-jun, 2019. issn 1657-0790 (printed) 2256-5760 (online). bogotá, colombia. pages 59-74 intercultural components in the multimodal structure of a language learning website ductory video of lesson w9. especially, the base unit r, which represents the introduction video itself, contained visual and linguistic elements that portrayed intercultural elements. these cultural elements emerging from the relationship among different multimodal elements are discussed in the following paragraphs. intersemiotic relationships in this step, i analyze how the relationship among semiotic elements in some sections (introduction, vocabulary, and read/speak) of lesson w9 illustrate the idea of interculturality on livemocha. section of introduction. the section of introduction in lesson w9 was a slideshow with a woman (nia) telling an anecdote about how she celebrated christmas with some friends of different cultures. two elements might suggest the presence of intercultural elements in the video: the pictures and the narration of the slideshow. in figure 3, we observe eight youngsters who appear to be from different countries (according to their clothes and physical appearance) sharing a special occasion in what seems to be a temple in the background. in this picture, gesture and gaze are used as part of the semiotic composition. both elements might communicate covert intercultural messages of openness. the youngsters in figure 3 are smiling while hugging each other. this gesture has the potential to invite users to establish relationships of social affinity and acceptance through the inclusion of people from different nationalities (kress & van leeuwen, 1996). additionally, when we observe people from different cultures smiling and hugging in a friendly manner, one can interpret a suggestion to accept others. furthermore, the characters in figure 3 look directly to users on the other side of the screen. in semiotic terms, this means that something is demanded from the viewer (michelson & álvarez, 2016). by posing this way the actors are, to some extent, asking users to share their joy and are implicitly transmitting the idea of valuing others regardless their cultural differences identified by clothing, race, or nationality. the smiles of the actors support this idea of acceptance. through this semiotic composition (gaze and gesture) livemocha tried to transmit covert intercultural content and potentially promoted attitudes of acceptance of other cultures. however, the representation of culture on livemocha was reduced to a set of traditions, physical appearance, and clothing, elements related to stereotypes and a view of culture focused on factual knowledge. from that perspective, culture is considered a static entity based on race and nationality. this misrepresentation of interculturality does not encourage learners to go beyond stereotypes or engage in processes of democracy and freedom as byram (1997) clearly proposes. in fact, in figure 3, interculturality is reduced to a superficial level (having friends of other countries and sharing celebrations). the website does not tell anything about minorities, social issues, intercultural dialogue, or intercultural misunderstanding, elements that need to be analyzed in order to comprehend the intricacies of intercultural communication (ware & kramsch, 2005). also, the title of the lesson “holiday celebration with friends” insinuates the superficial construction of interculturality. when combined with the images of the slideshow, the title might suggest positive attitudes and curiosity towards people from other cultures. nevertheless, the representation of culture on livemocha falls short in going beyond cultural information and the exotic dimension of the other (byram, 1997). in fact, the slideshow, presented ten pictures related to cultural elements of different celebrations (some of them in table 2). among them, i analyzed the first picture shown in the introductory video (figure 3) in order to unveil the representation of interculturality in the lesson. this was a big handicap on livemocha because, from an intercultural view of language teaching, accepting others and analyzing several perspectives about cultural themes are fundamental to acquire intercultural communicative skills and to engage in a dialogue with the universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras68 fernández benavides other in everyday relationships (byram, 2006; liddicoat, 2008; liddicoat & scarino, 2013). moreover, the narration accompanying the slideshow presents the overall view of interculturality on livemocha. in this narration, nia (the narrator) tells how her friends explored some cultural elements of each other’s cultures and shared their different holiday rituals without difficulties in spite of their cultural differences. below, i present the transcription of the narration. holiday celebration with friends. this year my friends and i decided to celebrate the holidays together since we were out of school for three weeks. my mom said that we could celebrate it at our house. when everyone arrived, my mom and sister had on red caftans. they looked so pretty. that night, we had a big feast and opened gifts. my mom and aunts made turkey, dressing, rolls, green beans, and much more. my grandmother made her famous fruitcake. everyone loved it. after we ate, we opened gifts like we normally would on christmas. since hannukah started before we left school, we honored my friend chris by giving him blue and white gifts since those are hannukah colors. hannukah does not always fall on the same day like christmas and kwanzaa. the next day was the first day of kwanzaa. so, we gathered around the table while my aunt [lit] the first candle on the kanara. the first day of kwanzaa is called umoya which stands for unity. we all went out to serve food to the homeless that day to represent unity. my name is nia which comes from the fifth day meaning purpose. all of my friends tell me it’s my purpose to serve them on that day. they are funny. we really enjoy the holidays together. when we get back to school, we will have a big chinese new year parade. i love how we can all embrace our different cultures and share our celebrations with each other. this was a wonderful holiday. the narration includes three elements suggesting the presence of intercultural elements: the appearance of different cultures, the description of their holiday traditions, and the reiteration of positive actions aimed at joining people in peaceful celebrations. although most of these elements could fit within the dimensions of attitudes and knowledge in byram’s model, the representation of culture and intercultural interaction is superficial. as he indicates, intercultural speakers must go beyond positive attitudes towards the others and must be ready to understand the intricacies of communication by using specific knowledge about the cultural symbols, products, and socialization processes of the interlocutor’s and one’s own cultures (byram, 1997; byram, gribkova, & starkey, 2002). nonetheless, in the narration, knowledge about others is seen only as a set of cultural facts and acceptance is reduced to sharing a celebration with foreigners. there is no evidence of understanding, changing the points of view, or accepting the otherness. what the text shows is an attempt to approach other cultures by using lists of rituals, foods, and celebrations and showing a positive attitude towards people from other nationalities. for example, nia mentioned three cultures: african american, jewish, and chinese. the first two cultures were widely discussed; the third one was mentioned briefly. the story focuses on nia’s holiday with her friends and her reflections about being part of a diverse cultural community. the description of different celebrations begins with nia’s familiar traditions. regarding the african american culture, nia presents the traditional african clothing (my mom and sister had on red caftans), holiday activities (we ate, we opened gifts like we normally would on christmas) and food (turkey, green beans, fruitcake) that are also common in american culture. nia also mentions christmas activities as part of her own culture that are similar to the american tradition. due to the proximity of both celebrations (christmas day is celebrated on december 25th and kwanzaa begins on december 26th), the narrator talks about cultural behaviors and customs of her african and american origins. this mention indicates how her african heritage influences the american culture and how the coexistence of both systems in her family might lead to the strengthening of affective links. part of the cultural illustration in this section is about some elements of african celebrations. these 69profile: issues teach. prof. dev., vol. 21 no. 1, jan-jun, 2019. issn 1657-0790 (printed) 2256-5760 (online). bogotá, colombia. pages 59-74 intercultural components in the multimodal structure of a language learning website elements were the description of kwanzaa, the activities to start kwanzaa (we gathered around the table while my aunt [lit] the first candle on the kanara), the meaning of the first kwanzaa day (umoya: unity) an important action reflecting the spirit of kwanzaa (we all went out to serve food to the homeless that day to represent unity) and the meaning of the narrator’s name (purpose). despite the promotion of peaceful coexistence through these cultural facts, the representation of holiday celebrations is based on stereotypes, foods, and festivals. this is a monolithic conception of culture. in this example, culture is seen as a static set of habits, clothing, and food which puts aside the immaterial and evolving essence of cultures. there is no evidence of intercultural understanding of how stereotypes might hinder intercultural communication, the role of nonverbal communication, and the management of sensible topics in intercultural exchanges. actually, nia talks about hannukah as an important celebration, mentions the colors of this festivity (blue/ white), and the days when it is celebrated. she also said that chris (her jewish friend) was honored by receiving gifts of blue/white colors. however, the idea of intercultural coexistence is materialized and reduced to a trivial participation (giving a present and sharing a festivity) and a limited set of traditions of other groups. this shows that livemocha considers the intercultural dimension under the lens of folklore, food, clothing, and festivals. although, livemocha tried to include other cultural perspectives and promote the acceptance of cultural differences (as nia declares: “i love how we can all embrace our different cultures and share our celebrations with each other. this was a wonderful holiday.”), the emphasis on interculturality is exclusively superficial and relies on the construction of cultural differences and tradition excluding the exchange of cultural patterns of behavior. section of vocabulary. in the section of vocabulary, the cultural presence appeared in the lexical elements shown and the icc skills were inferred from their semiotic design (table 2). livemocha presented cultural knowledge on the flashcards and examples. the cultural items displayed were divided into five categories: festivities (kwanzaa, ramadan, chinese new year, christmas, and hanukkah), clothing (caftan), cultural objects and symbols (kinara, dreidel, menorah, santa claus, christmas tree), food (potato latke, fruitcake) and actions (to pray). there were also two words without a picture (discipline, to display), however one of them (to display) had an example related to a cultural element: “the presents were displayed under the christmas tree.” table 2. lexical elements in the vocabulary section vocabulary slides icc skill kinara knowledge kwanzaa knowledge-attitudes dreidel knowledge potato latke knowledge ramadan knowledge discipline fruitcake knowledge chinese new year knowledge to display caftan knowledge-attitudes menorah knowledge santa claus knowledge-attitudes to pray knowledge-attitudes christmas knowledge-attitudes hanukkah knowledge christmas tree knowledge-attitudes most elements of the vocabulary section (table 2) suggest the promotion of declarative knowledge about other cultures through images and text (visual and linguistic modes of communication). in some cases, the elements of other cultures were represented as something universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras70 fernández benavides positive and interesting (figure 3), but again livemocha exhibits a conception of culture based on cultural facts. the four categories of lexical items evidence how livemocha’s idea of culture remains a static group of habits, customs, and materials, a totally discussed view of culture from an intercultural perspective of language learning (byram, 1997; liddicoat, 2008). read-speak section. in this section, learners read a prompt that was accompanied by an image. they recorded a message answering the questions provided in the prompt (figure 4). from a multimodal perspective, the section of read-speak highlighted the linguistic and visual modes of communication. the linguistic mode included the instructions to develop the activity and the command buttons below the picture. these base units—that were composed by size, color, location, and font type—guided learners in their communicative tasks and helped them to navigate within the lesson. figure 4. exercise in read-speak section although the activity could invite users to interpret and relate events from other cultures to their own reality, what livemocha exhibits is a task aimed to describe (describe what the people are doing at this celebration) and propose an action (what would you be doing if you had an invitation there) based on the cultural pattern presented. since the focus is descriptive and the interpretive potential of this task is reduced to an activity of observation, what users really did was to give an account of a stereotypical situation of the target culture and assimilate foreign behavior. unfortunately, the task lacks the sense of plurality and relies only on one single perspective to consider the social event presented. this view is far from what byram (1997) proposes and only promotes a narrow understanding of interculturality. concerning the visual mode of communication in this activity, the picture provides context and illustrates the task. this picture uses affordances of color, size, distribution, and cultural elements. from an intercultural view, the picture gives a sense of semiotic cohesion because it is part of the main theme of the lesson and presents the topic of cultural celebrations. the situation presented is a group of people at a restaurant enjoying a formal dinner. nonetheless, the picture is a stereotypical representation of english-speaking peoples which does not offer details about the interactions, behaviors, and social meanings that might occur in this event. in figure 4, there are some superficial and essential cultural traits reflected in the participants (people with western physical features), their clothing (formal), and the landscape of the picture reflecting a panoramic view of a city at night with skyscrapers as part of the background. showing this image to learners as a representation of the target culture implies that livemocha conceives interculturality from a superficial focus whose aim is communication at a simplistic level leaving aside critical cultural issues, multiple perspectives about social events, and the transformation of society. in fact, the information about cultural behavior in figure 4 is poor. users could not see exactly how communicational exchanges happen, neither the manners, gestures, or protocols of cultural behavior in the communicative situation. the picture solely shows a 71profile: issues teach. prof. dev., vol. 21 no. 1, jan-jun, 2019. issn 1657-0790 (printed) 2256-5760 (online). bogotá, colombia. pages 59-74 intercultural components in the multimodal structure of a language learning website clean place, no sign of disorder or dirt in the place or the attendants, and people who seem to behave as expected in a formal dinner. moreover, figure 4 shows a dinner on a ship, which is another of the particularities of the way livemocha portrayed culture. this activity is not common in the west, but the picture shows a stereotypical image of english-language speakers as white, wealthy people. although livemocha just tries to communicate typical images of the target culture, a teacher could use these images to explore some stereotypes and address critical themes. this could also help aware and informed users to identify possible intercultural relations. however, the content and promotion of intercultural skills are limited and, to some extent, incidental due to the tendency towards communication. perhaps, intercultural skills might be promoted by using support from outside the site to complement the tasks, but it would require the teacher’s critical view of livemocha’s cultural representation, for example, the comparison of popular culture and high culture in social events. the main topic of unit w9 was cultural celebrations. in byram’s (1997) terms, the sections analyzed insinuated the incidental presence of skills of attitudes and factual knowledge. despite livemocha’s attempts to include cultural elements and skills in its lessons, the center of the learning material was exclusively communicative and the intercultural dimension played a secondary role. as seen in the data, expressions of other cultures were added to the design from an essentialized and static view of culture based on folklore, food, and festivals. the idea of accepting others did not go beyond knowing about celebrations and sharing food. additionally, the lexical elements accompanying this unit showed a tendency towards superficial cultural knowledge; and where critical issues could have been discussed, the site only showed a stereotypical image of the target culture with a focus on description and reproduction of foreign activities. the idea of culture on livemocha was forged through the use of semiotic resources such as pictures, written text, and audio narration, which together establish intersemiotic relationships because they all articulate to construct meaning. the modes that permitted this construction of meaning were visual, spatial, and linguistic. although in this small analysis we saw that livemocha transmitted a superficial nation-based idea of culture, there were some traces of attitudes of openness and factual knowledge in the design of this website. that was not the case with other icc dimensions that were less salient. in this sense, livemocha failed in portraying a wider view of intercultural communication. some components of the icc model such as skills of interpreting/relating and discovery/interaction and critical cultural awareness were not explicit in livemocha’s semiotic design. furthermore, the skill of critical cultural awareness was the less salient on livemocha. due to livemocha’s focus on interactive aspects of language, the critical dimension of communication was not directly addressed in the learning material. álvarez (2014), brick (2011), and chotel (2012) explain that snsll have a strong tendency towards the communicative elements of language learning, mainly lexical and grammatical aspects, leaving aside critical elements that take part in communication. however, the site could promote these dimensions through its chat interface and the incorporation of some livemocha units in a syllabus based on an intercultural perspective of language learning. in sum, under byram’s icc model, the representation of the intercultural dimension on livemocha was reduced to factual knowledge and superficial interaction based on celebrations and traditions. although the production tasks had the potential to promote discussions about critical issues and the adoption of several perspectives about cultural events, the communicative focus was more salient on livemocha. these particularities played an important role in the semiotic design of a unit of livemocha and characterized the learning activities and material used by learners. despite the absence of universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras72 fernández benavides a clear intercultural proposal on livemocha, this study invites teachers to reflect on the potential of snsll as powerful tools to integrate culture in language learning and to analyze critically the cultural dimension on these websites. conclusions the relevance of digital communication and the establishment of virtual communities are important features of the 21st century society. moreover, the positioning of english as a global transactional language has led to the development of online platforms that offer alternatives to english language learning. snsll are one of these alternatives that promote webbased education and free communicational exchange. particularly, this study explored the link between livemocha and the presence of dimensions of byram’s icc model. through a novel method to analyze multimodal documents, i discovered that livemocha’s semiotic design seemed to promote intercultural elements of byram’s model such as attitudes, knowledge, and skills of interpreting/relating. basically, livemocha’s semiotic design relies on three main modes of communication: visual, linguistic, and spatial, embodying the work of semiotic resources such as pictures, icons, color, oral and written texts, and spatial distribution. these modes of communication interacted among themselves generating an intersemiotic relationship of coherence within the lesson in terms of thematic cohesion. especially, the relationship of pictures with the title of the lesson and the narration of the introductory video of lesson w9, showed that livemocha understood culture as a set of facts that learners can list and learn by heart without critical analysis or without taking on multiple perspectives about social issues. the photo, showing young people from different cultures hugging and smiling, reflects the type of attitudes that characterize snsll and place interaction at the center of language learning. also, the narration and the vocabulary section, full of cultural references, tried to promote attitudes of acceptance and knowledge about others, but they were framed in a stereotypical conception of nationality and ethnicity and showed only isolated items of cultural traditions from a superficial perspective of culture. additionally, the blurry presence of cultural behavior, lack of analysis of events, and positioning towards particular situations in the section of readspeak, seemed to leave aside the skills of interpreting/ relating in learners. in fact, livemocha did not show explicitly all the icc components and focused on the communicative dimension of language learning thus ignoring critical issues. this study also informs about implication for further research and pedagogical practice. further research should address more analyses on snsll and explore their semiotic structure in order to understand the intercultural dimensions and examine the presence of critical elements that could boost the development of critical and interactive intercultural skills. this analysis also showed that snsll still require research that must be developed to unveil their affordances in language education and the role of teachers in the creation and adaptation of digital material to promote icc in language learning. regarding the implications for pedagogical practice, the potential of these environments to promote intercultural skills could be further enhanced with a more active presence of teachers in enriching and adapting the contents of the website. designers of snsll should be aware of how the contents they present construct ideas about other cultures which could lead to construct stereotyped views or more constructivist and pluralistic conceptions of members of foreign cultures. references álvarez, j. a. (2014). language, learning, and identity in social networking sites for language learning: the case of busuu (unpublished doctoral dissertation). university of arizona, tucson, usa. 73profile: issues teach. prof. dev., vol. 21 no. 1, jan-jun, 2019. issn 1657-0790 (printed) 2256-5760 (online). bogotá, colombia. pages 59-74 intercultural components in the multimodal structure of a language learning website álvarez, j. a. (2016a). framing learners’ identity through semiotic designs on social networking sites for language learning. in j. a. álvarez, c. amanti, s. keyl, & e. mackinney (eds.), critical views on teaching and learning english around the globe (pp. 17-35). charlotte, us: information age. álvarez, j. a. (2016b). language views on social networking sites for language learning: the case of busuu. computer assisted language learning, 29(5), 853-867. https://doi.org /10.1080/09588221.2015.1069361. álvarez, j. a. 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(2005). qualitative case studies. in n. k. denzin & y. s. lincoln (eds.), the sage handbook of qualitative research (3rd ed., pp. 443-466). thousand oaks, us: sage. the new london group. (1996). a pedagogy of multiliteracies: designing social futures. harvard educational review, 66(1), 60-93. https://doi.org/10.17763/haer.66.1.17370n67v22j160u. thorne, s. l. (2010). the ‘intercultural turn’ and language learning in the crucible of new media. in s. guth & f. helm. (eds.), telecollaboration 2.0: language, literacies and intercultural learning in the 21st century (pp. 139-164). bern, ch: peter lang. van leeuwen, t. (2005). introducing social semiotics. london, uk: routledge. ware, p. d., & kramsch, c. (2005). toward an intercultural stance: teaching german and english through telecollaboration. the modern language journal, 89(2), 190-205. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1540-4781.2005.00274.x. zourou, k. (2012). de l’attrait des médias sociaux pour l’apprentissage des langues: regard sur l’état de l’art [on the attractiveness of social media for language learning: a look at the state of the art]. alsic, 15(1). retrieved from https://journals.openedition.org/alsic/2485. about the author alejandro fernández benavides works at universidad santiago de cali (colombia) as a full time professor in the faculty of education in the program of b.a. in foreign languages, english and french. he had led research in the fields of interculturality, critical pedagogy, and language teaching. he holds a b.a. in foreign languages and an m.a. in intercultural and interlinguistic studies from universidad del valle (colombia). acknowledgements i would like to thank professors josé aldemar álvarez and orlando cháves, and my life partner ángela cordero for their support and help during the revision of this article. all the glory to my god and savior jesus christ. 185profile vol. 18, no.1, january-june 2016. issn 1657-0790 (printed) 2256-5760 (online). bogotá, colombia. pages 185-201 http://dx.doi.org/10.15446/profile.v18n1.51996 unanswered questions in colombia’s foreign language education policy preguntas por responder en la política educativa de lenguas extranjeras en colombia camilo andrés bonilla carvajal1* university of delaware, newark, usa isabel tejada-sánchez2** universidad de los andes, bogotá, colombia following the trend of much of the western, non-english speaking world, colombia has tirelessly strived for spreading english education in an effort to augment economic benefits. this paper aims at providing a critical account of foreign language education policy in colombia, with special attention to english. it outlines the impact of its multiple transitions over the past decades through a historical description that overviews all previous policies, the critical reception by scholars, and present-day initiatives. we then move on to analysing the choice of english as a synonym for bilingualism and conclude with emerging questions that are to be considered for future debates and reassessments of colombia’s english-spanish bilingual education policy. key words: bilingual education in colombia, common european framework of reference, language policy, linguistic colonialism. siguiendo una tendencia general en el occidente no anglófono, colombia ha intentado incansablemente difundir la educación en lengua inglesa en aras de alcanzar beneficios económicos. este artículo busca ofrecer una descripción crítica de la política de enseñanza de lengua extranjera: inglés. se considera el impacto de las múltiples transiciones que ha sufrido la misma a lo largo de los años mediante una descripción histórica de las anteriores iniciativas, la recepción de parte de los académicos y la propuesta actual del gobierno. finalmente, se analiza la elección del inglés como sinónimo de bilingüismo para concluir con las dudas que suscita la política actual a fin de abrir un futuro debate y revaloración sobre la educación bilingüe español-inglés. palabras clave: colonialismo lingüístico, educación bilingüe en colombia; marco común europeo de referencia, política lingüística. * e-mail: andresca@udel.edu ** e-mail: mi.tejada10@uniandes.edu.co how to cite this article (apa, 6th ed.): bonilla carvajal, c. a., & tejada-sánchez, i. (2016). unanswered questions in colombia’s language education policy. profile issues in teachers’ professional development, 18(1), 185-201. http://dx.doi.org/10.15446/profile.v18n1.51996. this article was received on july 21, 2015, and accepted on october 1, 2015. this is an open access article distributed under the terms of the creative commons license attribution-noncommercial-noderivatives 4.0 international license. consultation is possible at http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/. universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras186 bonilla carvajal & tejada-sánchez introduction foreign language education has b ecome a common core subject in the colombian school and university system since it contributes—up to now, indirectly—to meet the criteria of standardised measurements,1 but also because of the outstanding role of english to achieve global communication in today’s world. our intention as scholars is to discuss the implications, advantages, and disadvantages of hegemonising language policies, as in colombian programmes for bilingualism and english education. most particularly, this paper will address the issue that language policy has constantly been altered due to political transitions disregarding education’s ultimate goal, namely, to produce critical and resourceful citizens who might contribute to a global society. after ten years of designing and implementing an explicit english-dominant foreign language education policy (programa nacional de bilinguismo in 2004 [national bilingualism program]), we deem it necessary to uphold the existing debate in two ways: 1. by outlining the initiatives preceding that enterprise as well as the current ones. 2. by providing open questions about the future and development of english-spanish bilingualism in colombia. this paper begins with a background review of all colombian linguistic educational policies, since their inception in the 19th century until now. next, it discusses colombia’s transitions in its policies, as well as draws open-ended questions that emerge from introducing english as a foreign language for colombian citizens. it is therefore our intention to address these reflections to all stakeholders in a persistent national education policy whose conversation urges to be expanded. 1 pisa being one of them: oecd’s programme for international student assessment. although pisa does not address language testing per se, it includes language-related skills such as reading, critical thinking as well as problem-solving (ministerio de educación nacional [men], 2008). case background previous attempts of a national foreign language teaching programme2 each administration has attempted repeatedly to implement a nation-scale english teaching plan. gómez delgado (1971) summarises some milestones in the national history up to 1970. the ever-growing governmental interest is obser vable and shared by different institutions to make the teaching and learning of foreign languages a more technical, scientific, and efficient process. in 1826 there was a national official policy to establish compulsory subjects across all national public schools such as spanish, latin, greek, french, english, and an indigenous language, the one with the most speakers depending on the region where the school was located (rivas sacconi, 1993). this well-intended law did not have any practical effects and it was followed by a series of reforms that would inevitably lead to the progressive suppression of latin, until its total extinction at the end of 1970. french, on the other hand, was adopted as a subject for secondary school (compulsory for grades 10 and 11) at the end of the same decade after a visit of colombia’s president to france. this did not spark any practical improvement in the students’ development of bilingualism either, and ten years later, in a report issued by the british council, the conclusion was that the ministry of education had no firm foreign language policy for students, and its decisions were a result of political pressures rather than educational considerations (british council as cited in de mejía, 2012b). it was not long b efore c olombia signed a political constitutional reform in 1991 that expressly provided (for the first time in colombia’s history) an 2 for a historical overview with special attention to other foreign languages, see cárdenas (2010). 187profile vol. 18, no.1, january-june 2016. issn 1657-0790 (printed) 2256-5760 (online). bogotá, colombia. pages 185-201 unanswered questions in colombia’s foreign language education policy open recognition of all indigenous languages, and of the country’s multilingual and cultural richness; furthermore, there was an economic policy expansion and massive admission of imports (usa and europe), which called for a need to improve the english level of students, and specially of their teachers. in february 1991 the colombian framework for english (cofe) project was created to be carried out in four years (it would not be concluded until 1997) between the government of the united kingdom, via the british council, and colombia, for an improvement in the teaching of english. the cofe project had a grass-roots approach to propose changes in bachelor programmes for teachers (licenciaturas) suggesting an increase in the number of hours of english, as well as the inclusion of a research component (rubiano, frodden, & cardona, 2000). later on, in 1994 the general education law was enacted which stated, very broadly, a necessity for the acquisition of conversation and reading elements in at least one foreign language (congreso de colombia, 1994). ten years later, the government—once again, under the super vision of the british council— launched the programa nacional de bilingüismo. colombia 2004-2019. inglés como lengua extranjera: una estrategia para la competitividad [short: national bilingualism programme, nbp hencefor th]: a national programme spanning 15 years to propel the learning of english in both schools and universities all across colombia. this programme was boosted in 2013 when the ley de bilingüismo [bilingualism law] (congreso de colombia, 2013) was enacted to modify 1994’s general education law (see discussion below). the programme however was not meeting its own standards and as a result, the government decided to stop and start afresh with a new budget (1.3 billion colombian pesos) for ten years in a flagship endeavour: colombia very well! programa nacional de inglés 2015-2025 (cvw). it seems, much to the surprise of teachers, researchers, students, and interested parties, that again cvw was not the right path, hence, after only five months from the implementation date (january, 2015), the ministry of education changed its mind and goals. the new programme is now called colombia bilingüe 2014-2018 (cb). figure 1 summarises the stages described up to present day. transitions: programa nacional de bilingüismo, colombia very well! and colombia bilingüe the nbp was the direct predecessor to cvw and cb. it remains a matter of debate whether nbp was a planned previous stage to cvw (as stated by its documentation: documento de socialización) or if it was an amendment to itself, with a larger budget and a new name deleting the word bilingualism in the face of prior harsh criticism by national scholars (correa & usma wilches, 2013; garcía león & garcía león, 2012; guerrero nieto, 2008; inter alia) for its deliberate focus on english, and ensuing contradiction for not addressing bilingualism in the academic sense (baker, 2006; romaine, 1995), let alone in its etymological root (the use of two languages). the common denominator of both nbp and cvw is the claim that language learning is a means to social development specifically because it brings forth more job opportunities (men, 2006). this seems to be the sole driving force behind all political agendas and election campaigns in terms of educational goals in colombia: the access to employment (men, 2015). on july 10th, 2014, colombian president juan manuel santos, and former minister of education maría fernanda campo, presented cvw. what stood out the most was not the fact that the official document was entirely designed by a consulting agency (mckinsey & co.) without apparent assistance from university departments of education, or experts in bilingualism, with the minor exception of some telephone interviews of a few chosen professors (as it is printed on the cvw document, p. 110). nor is it universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras188 bonilla carvajal & tejada-sánchez fi g u re 1 . ti m e li n e : b il in g u a l e d u ca ti o n a l p o li ci e s in c o lo m b ia 3 3 fo r a de sc ri pt io n co nc en tr at in g on th e ph as es fo r po lic ie s in b ili ng ua lis m s pa nn in g 20 01 th ro ug h 20 16 , s ee f an di ño -p ar ra ( 20 14 ); fo r ot he r de sc ri pt io ns a dd re ss in g th e st at us o f c olo m bi a’s is la nd er e ng lis h, s ee g on zá le z (2 01 0) . c o m p u ls o ry su b je ct s ac ro ss al l n at io n al p u b lic s ch o o ls sp an is h , l at in , g re ek , f re n ch , en g lis h a n d a n in d ig en o u s la n g u ag e, t h e o n e w it h m o st sp ea ke rs d ep en d in g o n th e re g io n w h er e th e sc h o o l w as lo ca te d . en d in g d ec ad e fo r la ti n a s a su b je ct in c o lo m b ia n sc h o o ls d ec is io n t o ad o p t fr en ch as a co m p u ls o ry su b je ct f o r se co n d ar y sc h o o l (g ra d es 1 0 an d 1 1) . a s u rv ey o f en g lis h la n g u ag e te ac h in g an d l ea rn in g in c o lo m b ia : a g u id e to th e m ar ke t. o p en p o lit ic al re co g n it io n o f al l i n d ig en o u s la n g u ag es , an d o f th e c o lo m b ia ’s m u lt ili n g u al an d c u ltu ra l ri ch n es s. le y 11 5 d e fe b re ro 8 d e 19 9 4 . p o r la cu al s e ex p id e la le y g en er al d e ed u ca ci ó n , b ro ad ly s ta te s th e ac q u is it io n o f co n ve rs at io n an d r ea d in g el em en ts a t le as t in a f o re ig n la n g u ag e as a d es ira b le g o al . li ce n ci at u ra s w er e m o d i� ed th an ks t o t h e in it ia ti ve b u t n o m aj o r ch an g es w er e p er ce iv ed in n at io n al st u d en ts ' p ro � ci en cy . v ar io u s ar tic le s fr o m t h e p re vi o u s g en er al ed u ca tio n l aw in 1 9 9 4 w er e m o d i� ed t o re � ec t th e h o riz o n o f en g lis h a s a te ch n ic al t o o l f o r em p lo ym en t. pr o g ra m a n ac io n al d e b ili n g ü is m o . c o lo m b ia 2 0 0 4 -2 01 9 . in g lé s co m o le n g u a ex tr an je ra : u n a es tr at eg ia p ar a la c o m p et it iv id ad . i n te n d ed to la st u p t o 2 01 9 . f ir st in cl u si o n o f th e c o m m o n eu ro p ea n fr am ew o rk . pr o g ra m a n ac io n al d e in g lé s c o lo m b ia v er y w el l 2 01 5 -2 0 25 . 1 .3 b ill io n c o lo m b ia n p es o s fo r te n ye ar s in a � ag sh ip en d ea vo u r. so m e tr ai ts o f c v w a re k ep t (t ex tb o o k m at er ia ls s u ch as e n g lis h pl ea se , a n d t h e c o m m o n eu ro p ea n fr am ew o rk ) b u t am p le a n d cl ea r in fo rm at io n o f it s o ve ra ll sc o p e an d s tr at eg ie s fo r im p le m en ta ti o n h av e n o t b ee n r el ea se d . o n ly t im e w ill t el l… 18 26 19 70 19 79 19 8 9 19 91 19 9 4 19 97 2 0 0 4 2 01 3 2 01 4 2 01 5 2 02 6 law m arch 1 6th extin ction of la tin in scho ols visit o f colo mbia 's pre siden t to f rance birtis h cou ncil's repor t colom bia's new p olitica l cons itutio n gene ral la w of educa tion endin g of c ofe p rojec t natio nal b ilingu alism prog ramm e biling ualism law colom bia v ery w ell colom bia b ilingü e ??? 189profile vol. 18, no.1, january-june 2016. issn 1657-0790 (printed) 2256-5760 (online). bogotá, colombia. pages 185-201 unanswered questions in colombia’s foreign language education policy the fact that the cvw presentation was precisely held at a technical institution for the training of a labour workforce (instituto técnico central la salle), or that the colours of the programme matched those of the uk, usa, or australian/new zealand flag;4 what is more salient is the unhesitating treatment of language learning as a response to the needs of the captains of industry to supply factories and businesses with a workforce in english (reyes, 2015). a literacy and proficiency measured by external, transcontinental, and de-contextualised criteria (ayala zárate & álvarez, 2005) in need of modifications to work effectively in the colombian context (de mejía, 2012a; fandiño-parra, bermúdez-jiménez, & lugo-vásquez, 2012), adopting (without adapting) textbooks and materials made abroad for the benefit and ease of expansion of major publishing houses (álvarez, 2008); a trend imported from abroad that conforms to the standards of an idealised english native speaker as the ultimate goal of learning (vélez-rendón, 2003) enshrining such as a symbol of prestige over the local english varieties (gonzález, 2010), and the reality of those who are already bilingual (and indisputably alienated): raizals and indigenous peoples (torres-martínez, 2009). in so doing, the only benefit goes for an institution intended to spread british cultural propaganda in the form of learning materials, teaching training, assessment, proficiency evaluation as well as books (gonzález, 2007), creating dependency upon an inner circle model via the 4 an additional thought emerges: should educators accept uncritically a governmental programme that spreads and consolidates the acceptance of a norm-providing inner circle of english (kachru, 2006) whose rhetoric only serves to perpetuate the exo-normative native speaker model? (kirkpatrick, 2006). careful consideration of santos’s (2014, pp. 48-51) public statement evidences such bias towards a colonial view of the language: “among other actions we will also create an incentive package [for teachers] to improve their teaching practice with language immersion trips to san andrés, and also abroad. and i want to thank the ambassador and his government in that regard, since they have shown so much interest in helping us with this programme, with that remarkable english that they speak in the united kingdom” (our translation). exclusive use of materials from inner circle countries (vélez-rendón, 2003). “the british council is clearly an institution supportive of british commercial and political interests. it has always had the goal of spreading the english language as far as possible and this has been for clear political and commercial reasons” (pennycook, 2013, p. 150). thus, what leads the programme is not the treatment of learning as a tool for social and personal empowerment, aiming to emancipate school and college graduates for social advancement, but to stock call centre franchises (santos, 2014). scholars’ reception to programa nacional de bilingüismo 2004-2019 out of the three modern governmental projects for bilingualism english-spanish (nbp, cvw, cb), the nbp has been the longest in duration (ten years, from 2004 through 2014). it has been likewise the one more fiercely criticised of all. a common trend across all references to the programme is that its foundations are rooted in the misconception that english is the only language that might open the doorway to success and economic empowerment (fandiño-parra et al., 2012). from the official documentation, the nbp states that english communicative competence is the road to opportunities for citizens, social mobility, and people’s development (programa nacional de bilingüismo, n.d.). in sheer opposition valencia (2013) criticises the willingness to introduce english as the foreign language of choice, as though it was a natural solution. colombia’s governmental decisions are therefore based on economic grounds, linked to concepts such as productivity and competitiveness, teachers’ voices are not taken into account and the government representatives’ attitude is managerial and authoritarian instead of participative (quintero polo, 2009). in the same vein, according to the nbp’s logic, the concept of bilingualism is tantamount to speaking universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras190 bonilla carvajal & tejada-sánchez english exclusively (bermúdez jiménez & fandiñoparra, 2012; de mejía, 2011). bilingualism is thus presented as a rigid conceptualisation fostered by myths (guerrero nieto, 2008), at the expense of the full recognition of all other indigenous languages and the multilingual nature of the country. it is a source of concern that the government refers to bilingualism in colombia as a concept that can be detached from spanish (vargas, tejada, & colmenares, 2008). plus, in the design, planning, and implementation, none of the voices from english teachers, scholars, principals, secretaries of education, or indigenous community representatives have been heard thus far (correa & usma wilches, 2013), all framed as a panacea against poverty, creating in this fashion the image of an apolitical, homogenous nation, without regions, or ethnic groups; neglecting the traditions of raizals and afro americans (torres-martínez, 2009). another criticism is that peculiar contextual features were outright disregarded when the nbp was put into effect. in this respect de zubiría samper (n.d.) highlights the major drawback of imposing a nationwide bilingual programme without first attending to the priorities in education: students’ deduction and induction skills, argumentation and critical reading; it is meaningless to aim at foreign language proficiency without spanish fluency in the first place. at the higher education level the nbp is not influential either. lópez (2009) argues that it does not shape any perceivable change in foreign language programmes because its implications are not clearly understood; he focuses on the nbp’s presence in the exámenes de la calidad de la educación superior [ecaes] whose english section is based on reading excerpts from the cambridge publishing house. his findings suggest that ecaes is a low-stakes test given that no influence is found in those programmes, which leads one to believe that the policydriven tests cannot have the consequences intended. in general, nbp does not consider the differences in context of application of assessment criteria which certainly obscures its scope, reliability, and validity, because these should be based on national, informed perspectives and methodologies (ayala zárate & álvarez, 2005). the extant conditions are unsuitable for the desired governmental purposes; likewise, there is an absolute absence of clear policies to attain the goals set in a bilingualism programme (cárdenas, 2006), bringing forth an undesirable mismatch between the government’s intentions and the actual social conditions (guerrero nieto, 2010). for instance, even though the nbp initially presented a baseline for intervention, as of june 2009, with only 10% of assessed teachers reaching a b2 level or above5, the objective was to train the remaining 90% to help them to better their proficiency. some years into the programme all evaluations were unfavourable, even from official statements (sánchez jabba, 2013). the following year, colombia’s minister of education, maría fernanda campo saavedra, publicly accepted the programme’s failure, precisely due to unawareness and a bad diagnosis of the real national proficiency levels (diario lr, 2014). the programme did not consider the external variables such as the huge social and economic differences among the various strata in colombia (valencia, 2006). the monolingual and monocultural dominant context in the country also hinders the opportunity to perform as expected; the goals were then unrealistic and envisaged an idyllic, nonexistent group of students (guerrero nieto, 2008). the ministry’s original assumption that only a scarce 10% of all language teachers were capable of reaching the imposed b2 level aids in building the perception of national underachievement, which called for immediate action in the form of adopting 5 the levels adopted by the ministry of education were those of the common european framework of reference (council of europe, 2001). the levels are comparable to the traditional distinction of basic, intermediate, and advanced proficiency, where the letters a, b, and c represent each level accordingly. 191profile vol. 18, no.1, january-june 2016. issn 1657-0790 (printed) 2256-5760 (online). bogotá, colombia. pages 185-201 unanswered questions in colombia’s foreign language education policy foreign standards with little attention to the actual conditions of teachers and students (cárdenas, 2006; sánchez solarte & obando guerrero, 2012; valencia, 2013). this adoption came in the form of externalisation of policy discourses, stratification of groups, and marketisation of language teaching (usma wilches, 2009), at the risk of embracing globalisation through an unthinking exploitation reducing foreign language teaching to sheer formal instruction (torresmartínez, 2009); this adoption was chiefly driven by the need to respond to the changes associated with economic globalisation (peña dix & de mejía, 2012) regarding the absence of national, all-encompassing assessment criteria for foreign language proficiency. the decision to integrate the common european framework of reference for languages (cefr) on account of the “soundness of its proposal, and applicability to the educative field” (programa nacional de bilingüismo, n.d., para. 6, our translation) forced scholars to insist that externalisation of language discourse in education is a mechanism through which foreign standards are adopted as an indisputable external authority (usma wilches, 2009), taking advantage of the absence of information in the local communities to impose a hegemonic discourse (cárdenas, 2010). as a consequence such adoption was soon met with a barrage of criticism: ayala zárate and álvarez (2005) confronted such de-contextualised implementation of overseas assessment standards, and called for the construction of context-based foreign language education principles while preparing students to be globally competent. vargas et al. (2008) also remarked on the out-of-context adoption in the basic competence standards (bcs) in foreign languages: english (estándares básicos de competencias en lenguas extranjeras: inglés, men, 2006), where the cefr is not adopted along with all its rich theoretical analyses but rather a mere usage of its competence grids and can-do statements overlooking colombia’s socio-economic, geographic, political, historical, and educative reality (see also sánchez solarte & obando guerrero, 2012; torres-martínez, 2009). for gonzález (2007) the nbp did not consider the previous cofe project carried out in the 1990’s where major local universities were brought together to foment action research and professional autonomy; as a result, álvarez (2008) stressed the importance of adopting a postcolonial approach to evaluate the standards, with a critical stance towards the deployment of merchandising coming from the publishing houses that are interested in the nbp. finally, de mejía (2011) forewarned that taking the european perspective without modification to the local setting may end up as a distortion of the intended aim. fina l ly, not on ly do es t he nbp cont radic t other colombian linguistic policies promoting bilingualism—on account of its limiting focus on english (de mejía, 2011)—but it is also the doorway to a market where only a few high-class, well-off citizens can afford the textbooks, materials, preparation courses, and international exams (garcía león & garcía león, 2012). in that regard, it is correa and usma wilches’ (2013) proposal to adopt a critical sociocultural model that can set out better actions. they provide a detailed account of the bureaucratic, traditional model of policy-making in order to assert that the nbp is indeed the embodiment of a topdown philosophy that dictates rules of teaching and assessment without previous consideration of the colombian context. likewise, for vargas et al. (2008) the standards’ assessment criteria are oblivious to the variety in regional features and local cultures. there is, then, a socio-cultural, economic, and political dimension in the teaching and learning practice that cannot be overlooked (ayala zárate & álvarez, 2005). the nbp either neglects it or openly accepts it but in the form of education as a subservient device for jobskill technical training, not integral education (vargas et al., 2008). goals were clear for the nbp in aiming at the same objective as india in training low-tier, blue-collar workers proficient in english (men, 2005). tools as the universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras192 bonilla carvajal & tejada-sánchez bcs are simply “a vehicle used to spread a hegemonic and ideological influence and to alienate teachers’ beliefs and practices within english language education” (guerrero nieto & quintero polo, 2009, p. 135). this unease with cb 2014-2018 lies in forgetting such previous faux pas (from both nbp 2004-2019 and cvw 2015-2025), and the continuation of a massive, billionaire, and pervasive project whose goal is opposite to that of a humanistic and social-empowering type of education. researchers, teachers, language instructors, professors, policy makers, pre-service teachers, and parents all agree on sharing the same objective; a conflicting point for discussion is whether we all are on the same page, with the same goals in mind and, with the same definition of education: training to provide international call centres franchises with a low cost workforce, or the humanistic, socialempowering, and liberating education that starts with a different philosophy of action to that promoted by this government, that is, complying with international standards (torres-martínez, 2009). the governmental standpoint towards education, however, should not come as a surprise for it has been perceived since mid-2013 when the ley de bilingüismo [bilingualism law] (congreso de colombia, 2013) was enacted to modify the general education law (congreso de colombia, 1994) to reflect the new frame of english as a means to employment. for instance, one of the articles states as one of its purposes the development of competences and skills to foster citizens’ access to higher education and opportunities in the corporative and labour fields (congreso de colombia, 2013). and law 1651, 2013, was appended so that english would be prioritised. the current policy: colombia bilingüe 2014-2018 shortly after the presentation of a strategic plan for cvw, the re-election of president juan manuel santos in late 2014 brought several changes in his administration and thus in the aforementioned p olic y, w hich re-emerge d under t he name of colombia bilingüe (men, 2014b). this denomination intends to recover the use of the term bilingual as a distinctive characteristic of the programme and erase the previous title and logo with no official justification. cb was officially introduced in early 2015 as part of a “relevance project”6 —no longer regarded as a quality issue—and as a compendium of more realistic and adapted strategies concerning three main lines of action: teacher education, use of materials, and pedagogical design. albeit this recent initiative has been seldom presented in public, and the official information in its website remains scarce, we can summarise some of its main aspects as of today. the most salient feature about cb is that it has reduced its geographic scope to a fewer number of target institutions, partially covering 36 cities.7 the reason why the government has chosen these focal cities and not others remains officially unclear. anot her imp or t ant yet controversial strateg y involves the arrival of more than 300 foreigners to the focal cities. this group, referred to as formadores nativos extranjeros (foreign native trainers), would provide opportunities to communicate in english authentically with the students outside regular class time. it includes professionals ranging across different disciplines who have some teaching experience, but not necessarily enough background in spanish, let alone in language teaching and didactics. moreover, cb intends to allocate most of its task-force to ensuring that 100% of the teachers are assessed and “diagnosed” so that they can be accompanied by the men in improving their language 6 information about cb, as well as the ministry’s lines of action can be found here: http://www.colombiaaprende.edu.co/html/ micrositios/1752/w3-article-315515.html, and on the ministry’s official website: http://www.mineducacion.gov.co/ 7 information about the focal regions: http://www.mineduca cion.gov.co/cvn/1665/w3-article-351513.html 193profile vol. 18, no.1, january-june 2016. issn 1657-0790 (printed) 2256-5760 (online). bogotá, colombia. pages 185-201 unanswered questions in colombia’s foreign language education policy level through training sessions and feedback, short local or international immersion programmes, as well as the provision of the materials they need for classes. interestingly enough, cb sets as one of its goals the creation of a national syllabus for the english language—as a step further ahead of the bcs—and yet it did not turn down the use of materials previously developed for cvw: the textbook english please! for secondary school, and bunny bonita for elementary. in this respect, studies such as cano-morante (2014) discuss the impact of these materials’ underlying dominant discourse. thought-provoking conclusions arise from cano-morante’s epistemic critical discourse analysis of the teacher training sessions of bunny bonita. following van dijk’s (2010) model which states the nbp is not a solution to the inequities stirring colombian society, it is instead a way to comply with the elites’ necessities in providing a long-term trained workforce. in the same way, the nbp’s discourse is designed in such a way that its direct users accept it and support its implementation. for the government, when it comes to english everything might change, that is, the method, teacher training, the regions to implement the programme, but never the materials, and thus the cefr and the british council. in sum, this reformed policy seems to perpetuate much of the former criticism and obser vations especially regarding the concept of bilingualism as an instrumental characteristic of the students, and not a skill which carries much more than the linguistic code. this assumption leaves again the foreign language as a separate component from the students’ native language (l1) dimension, their multi-literacies, and intercultural awareness. discussion and conclusions conclusions emerging from this reflection are manifold. for starters, english is anew presented as a neutral, nuance-less, apolitical system to codify reality detached from all ties to its real bases (guerrero nieto & quintero polo, 2009), a royal road to include the country in a global economy (garcía león & garcía león, 2012), since it is deemed as the language of the new world, the sole language worth promoting and the one that opens scientific and technological progress with the exclusion of indigenous languages (guerrero nieto, 2008). english is enthroned as the par excellence language of choice for all matters pertaining to development, progress, richness, and prosperity; its choice over other languages is embedded in a history of colonialism, economic and political unrest, freetrade agreements, and the urge to solve even deeper societal issues by means of training skilled workers. several countries aiming at their economic and scientific growth, like colombia, have chosen english as the official foreign language, standing as a subject alone with no evident linkage with the rest of the curriculum that is taught in the l1. in some other cases, english is set as the official second language and thus the medium of instruction at school, as it is the case of rwanda where, since 2008, english replaced french as the schools’ language (samuelson & freedman, 2010). in their thorough analysis of the inclusion of english as a post-conflict plan, these authors refer to the “drastic shifts” in language policy taking place in different parts of post-colonial africa, benefiting english over other languages. the rationale behind these changes is rooted in the social imaginary of what the english language has come to represent: power, along with the understatement of being powerless where it is not in the official agenda. in this way, rassool’s parallel with bourdieu’s “colonial habitus” proves to be particularly relevant to colombia’s case meaning that people “often make linguistic choices that reinforce existing social, political, and economic inequalities; and, in doing so, they collude in their own collective disempowerment and/or dispossession” (as cited in samuelson & freedman, 2010, p. 203). the question of language as a window to the human mind, as well as a means of codifying reality universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras194 bonilla carvajal & tejada-sánchez and exchanging existential experience amongst two or more speakers, needs to be differentiated from the codes stated in a forthcoming national syllabus, in this case spanish and english. in colombia’s particular case, it is intriguing that the government takes “language” as a subject that covers the mother tongue and english as an instrumental code then contend that together they mean bilingualism. reference to the implications of this notion call on the necessity to be revisited by the government, especially for it to consider two main aspects: (1) a bilingual programme, even at its preliminary stage, must entail biand multi-literacy as an educational mission; this has beenstated for decades as an iberoamerican priority in the sense of how essential reading and writing are; and (2) in such an endeavour, educators must promote students’ development of bics: basic interpersonal communication skills, and calp: cognitive academic language proficiency (cummins, 2008) so that these skills can permeate their linguistic repertoire.8 ma s t e r i n g a t a r g e t l a n g u a g e e nt it l e s t h e speaker to a membership to the economic, cultural, geographical, and socio political benefits held by the verbal community of native speakers. this goal however may ultimately become twofold: on the one hand, governments might make the best effort for providing their citizens with a linguistic passport to access the literary, scientific, sporting, academic, and commercial benefits of the cultural products from the target verbal community; whereas on the other, governments might simply make an effort to have their citizens become literate in the target language so as to sell them as a skilled labour force that can understand the orders of new foreign employers, namely: multinational corporations investing in the 8 the national reading plan “leer es mi cuento” encourages bi-literacy in regions where english is widely spoken such as the san andrés and providencia archipelago, but not as part of the overall bilingualism programme (men, 2013). country. this attitude has been dubbed as language “genocide,” particularly regarding dominant groups’ empowerment at the expense of diversity: through glorification, the non-material resources of the dominant groups, including the dominant languages and cultures, . . . specifically english, are presented as better adapted to meet the needs of “modern,” technologically developed, democratic post-industrial information-driven societies—and this is what a substantial part of esl ideology is about. . . . the “free-market” ideology, more a political dogma than an economic system, erodes democracy by shifting power from states and democratically elected bodies to transnational corporations and banks, while “demanding” homogenisation and killing diversity. (skutnabb-kangas, 2000, p. xi) it should b e a feasible alternative for any government to set forth a national, overarching bilingualism (or, b etter yet, multilingualism) programme, led by national, democratically appointed parties of scholars, teachers, and researchers that can propose a more suitable implementation of the ministry’s initiative without accepting overseas domination from institutions whose main goal is cultural display in the form of books, learning materials, teaching training and assessment, as well as proficiency evaluation (see pennycook, 2013). likewise, the goal needs to be set in the willingness to educate bilingual human beings, rather than to shap e bi-literate, low-t ier, minimum-wage workers. countries striving for giving its citizens the opportunities of accessing a better quality of life should also guarantee the means to hold linguistic membership to as many cultures and views of the world as possible. also, it is important to highlight the current administration’s intention in reformulating the cvw programme. it remains unclear though to what extent they acknowledge its flaws and implications. the document “colombia very well! documento de socialización julio 2014” outlined the general structure 195profile vol. 18, no.1, january-june 2016. issn 1657-0790 (printed) 2256-5760 (online). bogotá, colombia. pages 185-201 unanswered questions in colombia’s foreign language education policy of the plan nacional de inglés: colombia very well for the next 10 years. this plan, as a nation-wide initiative, with the united sources of other departments and ministries (ict and employment) clearly suggested an innate philosophy of employability and job-training as the sole drive for education. cvw was mainly crafted by a foreign company whose field of expertise is financial consulting and no signs of contribution by educators, researchers, or scholars in the field were given. we could establish a link with these two facts to the emerging concern of the graphics and rationale given by the ministry of education to boost the teaching of english. the pivotal reasons are based on the need to supply the business process outsourcing sector (bpo), tourism and technical-level employment vacancies, unlike other initiatives for bilingualism, where the focus is set on the preparation of graduate students to achieve academic mobility, internationally-competitive scientific production, or upgrade the ranking of universities. it has also been underscored that the name of the overall plan has changed several times: from programa nacional de bilingüismo (national bilingualism programme) to plan nacional de inglés (national english plan), where the latter excludes the co-existence of the l1 (not that it was present in the former), and cb. there are no clear distinctions between the nbp, cvw, and cb either. the latter holds itself accountable for only a portion of the country’s institutions. this brings up numerous issues for students and teachers who would not benefit from the same resources as the focal areas.9 by the same token, these transitions evoke unsteadiness in the deliverables as well as in the approaches to language in education. as a consequence, cb resumes the prescription of foreign standards that were fruitless for the nbp in the past (diario lr, 2014; radio santa fe, 2015). although 9 for a study regarding the constraints that yield the infrastructure and resources of private schools and the implementation of the nbp, see miranda & echeverry (2010). more modest in its aspirations than cvw, by setting goals only for 2018, cb goes on to measure quality in language teaching through the exo-normative illusion of the monolingual native speaker (see abouchaar, 2012; torres-martínez, 2009), and it is pre-supposed that only native or near-nativeness is a prerequisite to quality and success in teaching. furthermore, it keeps using the yardstick of alien models and discourses as it is intended by 2018 to diagnose the 100% of english teachers in their proficiency level according to the cefr, to upgrade english teachers’ cefr level one or two letters (i.e., a1 → a2), to include 1,400 foreign native speakers to teach english in a number of focus group schools. their role derives from a co-teaching and complementary strategy where the main outcome will be to help students communicate effectively in the l2.10 in higher education the overview is not less colonial: teachers nation-wide aiming at promotion or incentives ought to reach a minimum b2 level. english will be included as a compulsory requirement for all technical and professional university programmes striving for accreditation. alumni from bachelor programmes in education, major in english, will need to reach a b2+ in order for the programme to receive official accreditation. more worryingly, all bachelor programmes in english will also need to have native english speakers, as well as provide their students with internships abroad. c b ’s a s p i r a t i o n s a f f e c t t h e s t r u c t u r e o f undergraduate-level teacher training programmes and the general evaluation system. if this new layout comes from the previous cvw unaltered, then doubts and concerns should remain since cvw was obscure in much of its recommendations (when a web-based methodological support was announced, which method would be followed? [men, 2014a]). it is also clear that the intended goal is to place english amongst 10 the latest public information retrieved on this matter (july, 2015): http://www.eltiempo.com/estilo-de-vida/educacion/bilinguis mo-llegan-200-profesores-extranjeros-a-colegios-publicos/16033796 universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras196 bonilla carvajal & tejada-sánchez other technical skills to shape the incoming generations of blue-collar wage-earners in the lower steps of the bpo and tourism sectors, rather than amongst the productive, entrepreneurial freethinkers of tomorrow. until now, all previous colombian initiatives for bilingualism have been a cog in the gear of a utilitarian logic where the linguistic product is determined by all the tenets of an investment-profit mindset (language = product) (fandiño-parra, 2014; torres-martínez, 2009), in short, government linguistic planning resembles the pattern of the spanish colonisation to value the language of the powerful stretching the asymmetry of social strata (guerrero nieto, 2009). back in the 19th century, venezuelan diplomat, grammarian, legislator, philosopher, and educator, andrés b el lo, defende d wit h e qua l ver ve t he maintenance of the human sciences in secondary education. his legacy echoes from centuries ago— from the very days of the failed multilingual law of march 1826—and in the words of one of the experts in his life and works, aurelio espinosa pólit, these final thoughts remain in full force, now more than ever, to make sense of the present-day state of south american education: it is, on the one hand, the invading growth of pan-economist theories that reduce everything to the material concerns of existence; it is the narrow view of an immediate profit of those studies that are directly linked with earnings; it is the urgency of so many youngsters for earning a livelihood as soon as possible; it is, on the other hand, the real need for technical scientists and business people that every country carries out research for the exploitation of the national resources; it is the reduction of the advancement of science and its applications to the household needs which makes it essential for the modern man to be initiated in the experimental sciences... nobody denies the immediate necessity of technical workers at all production levels, and in the modern mechanised life; nonetheless nobody should deny either the need (as essential as that of the technicians) of men with a higher mental training—more agile and more universal— men capable of coordinating the partial and unbound tasks of these technicians, as well as the highly complex issues of general management and the rule of society, according to the main principles of the philosophy of life and political sciences. reducing the education of the young to the training of specialised technicians would be a suicidal objective for any country. there is no need to reach this state to assess the damage that some nations are doing to themselves through iconoclast reforms, as is attested almost everywhere on our continent. this is but a regrettable pedagogical naiveté on the part of its leaders when failing to realise the cultural decay that comes with the abandonment of the disciplines for the selfless education of the spirit. (espinosa pólit, 1981, pp. xvii-xviii, our translation) unanswered questions in keeping with the previous literature review, the actions undertaken by the ministry, and the current perspectives of cb, several questions emerge. we will attempt to briefly discuss them as a whole with the hopes of stirring conversation between the government officials, schools, universities, technical institutions, teachers, professors, scholars, administrative staff, parents, and, importantly, undergraduate students in licenciaturas. 1. why does the government continue replicating previous flaws that have already received criticism thereby plainly ignoring the extensive body of literature that stands against those flaws? 2. why was cb a clean slate after cvw was launched? 3. what is the notion of education that the government truly seeks, and especially of english teaching? training for minimum-wage workforce? english as a skill for technical literacy in an inner-circle dominated world? 4. why has colombia bilingüe 2014-2018 (until the revision of this paper) decided to implement this policy in what they called “focus areas” and not the rest of the country as stated before? what will it happen to the rest of the country? 5. why is an english-only policy tantamount to “bilingualism” for the government and why are 197profile vol. 18, no.1, january-june 2016. issn 1657-0790 (printed) 2256-5760 (online). bogotá, colombia. pages 185-201 unanswered questions in colombia’s foreign language education policy other types of bilingualism with other relevant or official languages such as spanish-mhuysqa, spanish-ticuna, or even multilingualism spanish, english, portuguese not part of the bilingual milieu? 6. will the forthcoming curriculum consider bi and multi-literacy dimensions as part of bilingual students’ language development? 7. how does colombia bilingüe plan to articulate itself with current pre-service and in-service english teachers’ agenda for all levels, especially with licenciatura programmes that others consider foreign languages in addition to english? the answers to questions 1-3 could be associated with several conversations and fields. therefore, it could be argued that cb and precedent policies defend a specific education paradigm. it is true that having a sound educational philosophy is a key component in curriculum development and therefore in governmental mandates; however, this policy does not necessarily mean it is beneficial for its users. in the current policy, it is apparent that foreign language learning is regarded as separate from other disciplines. even more disconcerting is that the policy predominantly configures itself around a linguistic fashion: the erroneous idea that language principally consists of grammar memorization and metalinguistic knowledge. as of yet, there is little evidence on how this policy would go beyond this basic conception of language learning to include current trans-disciplinary approaches that entail content-based methodologies in the english classroom such as clil (a phenomenon which has timidly emerged in the bogotá region in the past few years [mcdougald, 2015]), an intercultural dimension, and even a pragmatic competence. having said this, this paper argues that cb and precedent policies are evidently including english in the curriculum to attain a mechanical level of the language. the problem behind such a goal lies in a contradiction: nowadays a high competence in english is strongly needed as it is the language of problem-solving, technology, and global communication. it is counterintuitive to educate people to be automatised in an era where machines have taken over many of human beings’ traditional duties and where critical thinking has become essential to survive. this brings us to question 4 which addresses why the cb program plans to implement its strategies in several focus areas or institutions, excluding bogotá. it is worth noting that these areas are given an advantage regarding other institutions; however, the reasons behind this decision need to be clarified. it is likely that this justification could imply the recognition that the previous programs were too ambitious to ensure significant outcomes in the entire country or that cb intends to ensure a considerable percentage of significant outcomes (increased number of hours in english, incorporation of technological support, enhanced levels of the language, covered training sessions and immersions, observations by the men, etc.) over a selected population. whichever the case, it is necessary to have these justifications stated publicly since there are many cities, rural villages, and communities whose education agenda will not change as a result of the policy and this fact has many problematic implications. finally, questions 5-7 lead us to two of the most resonating topics in the recent literature on language teacher education: empowerment and multi-literacies pedagogy (cummins, 2009). a key element of today’s education goals is to be leadership-oriented. this means that students and teachers are enabled to make autonomous decisions, solve problems that affect their community, and put their strongest intuitions into practice in order to engender change for a better world. all of these skills can only be achieved through the critical literacy perspective that fosters understanding our role in society and that of the others around us. it also entails collaboration, mastering technologies as well as reading and thinking in multiple formats. universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras198 bonilla carvajal & tejada-sánchez it is our hope that colombia will rather pursue this educational paradigm through teacher training programs that should necessarily go beyond a linguistic understanding of language acquisition; it is our belief that a paradigm incorporating the aforementioned additional characteristics would provide the necessary ingredients to reach our most important goals as a country: eradication of poverty, the reduction of inequalities, and the termination of the war. references abouchaar, a. 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(2010). discourse, knowledge, power and politics: towards critical epistemic discourse analysis. in c. j. hart (ed.), critical discourse studies in context and cognition (pp. 27-64). amsterdam, nl: john benjamins. vargas, a., tejada, h., & colmenares, s. (2008). estándares básicos de competencias en lenguas extranjeras (inglés): una lectura crítica [basic competence standards in english as a foreign language (efl): a critical view]. revista lenguaje, 36(1), 241-275. vélez-rendón, g. (2003). english in colombia: a sociolinguistic profile. world englishes, 22(2), 185-198. http:// dx.doi.org/10.1111/1467-971x.00287. about the authors camilo andrés bonilla carvajal holds a phd in applied linguistics from universidad antonio nebrija. he is a researcher in experimental psycholinguistics, idiolect re-encoding, and non-invasive neuromodulation. fulbright scholar and researcher assistant at the university of delaware. he is currently a member of the research group educación para el bilingüismo y el multilingüismo. isabel tejada-sánchez holds a phd in language sciences and linguistic communication from université paris viii and universitat pompeu fabra. she is an assistant professor at universidad de los andes, colombia. her interests include second language acquisition and teachers’ training. she is a member of the research group educación para el bilingüismo y el multilingüismo. acknowledgments we are particularly indebted to nicole bruskewitz, who offered helpful commentaries to the final draft, anne-marie truscott de mejía, harvey tejada, germán triana santamaría, and alexandra lópez ruiz. we would also like to extend our gratitude to three anonymous reviewers for their helpful suggestions on improving an earlier draft. profile: issues teach. prof. dev., vol. 20 no. 1, jan-jun, 2018. issn 1657-0790 (printed) 2256-5760 (online). bogotá, colombia. pages 7-12 7 editorial https://doi.org/10.15446/profile.v20n1.68848 editorial1* bibliometric indicators and their accurate use in the ranking of colombian journals the service [google scholar metrics–gsm] can offer a better alternative than the traditional google scholar service to discover and judge the standing of journals through the prism of their citedness. gsm could become a potentially useful complementary resource primarily by virtue of its brand recognition, and the convenience of not requiring the installation of additional software, but currently its bibliometric indicators are often inappropriate for decision making in matters of tenure, promotion, grants and accreditation. (jacsó, 2012, p. 604) after a long period of debates and communications from academic groups involved in the production of journals in colombia, colciencias published its latest classification of academic journals based on the criteria established in its latest policies (colciencias, 2016a, 2016b). colciencias, the colombian research agency in charge of the classification of the scientific journals edited within the country, ran the model announced in such policies and the results produced different reactions. for some scholars, those results were not surprising for the main parameters are in tune with international trends, that is, the recognition of quality in scientific or academic journals according to measurements established by prestigious databases and indexing systems (the jcr–journal citation reports, led by thomson or the sjr–scimago journal ranking, managed by scopus). for others, and as pointed out in our latest edition (cárdenas & nieto cruz, 2017), there is a heavy reliance on number of citations made about or of articles as a means to quantify journals and researchers’ impact. as stated in the call for applicants, the criteria used by colciencias (2016a) to evaluate and rank the journals were applied in three phases. the first one embraced evaluation of editorial processing and punctuality in publication; the second had to do with the validation of the evaluation process as well as the journals’ international visibility; and the third one considered the impact of the journals. this last stage was given the highest prominence and * how to cite this article (apa, 6th ed.): cárdenas, m. l., & nieto cruz, m. c. (2018). editorial: bibliometric indicators and their accurate use in the ranking of colombian journals. profile: issues in teachers’ professional development, 20(1), 7-12. https://doi.org/10.15446/profile.v20n1.68848. this editorial was received on october 30, 2017, and accepted on november 10, 2017. this is an open access article distributed under the terms of the creative commons license attributionnoncommercial-noderivatives 4.0 international license. consultation is possible at https://creativecommons. org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/. universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras8 cárdenas & nieto cruz was based on the measurement of the journals’ impact, as evidenced in their positions in the four quartiles set out by the jcr or the sjr and the h-index (h5). they, in the end, seem to be the most determining factors in the classification of the journals in one of the four categories: a1 (the utmost), a2, b, or c (the lowest). concerning the impact, we can observe a clear discrimination in the value granted to the jcr and sjr reports in contrast to that assigned to the h5. whereas the former determine the inclusion of the journals in the highest categories (a1 and a2), the h5 determines the inclusion of the publications in categories b or c. another issue to be raised in connection to the disparity has to do with the fact that the jcr and sjr reports are derived from citations made of journals and articles that belong to their databases, whereas the h5 is intended to measure impact in a wider spectrum, that is to say, it covers journals and articles from different regions no matter if they are present in those two reports. let us remember that the h5 index scrutinises the number of citations made per article in a period of 5 years. it also measures researchers and journals impacts. h-index (h5): the h-index of a publication is the largest number h such that at least h articles in that publication were cited at least h times each. for example, a publication with five articles cited by, respectively, 17, 9, 6, 3, and 2, has the h-index of 3. . . . the h5-index . . . of a publication [is] . . . the h-index . . . of only those of its articles that were published in the last five complete calendar years. (google scholar metrics, n.d., par. 1-4) on september 15, 2017, colciencias issued the results of its most recent classification process. the profile journal was not classified in any of the categories because, according to colciencias, the h5 of the journal was 1, which is not enough to be included in the national bibliographical index. immediately, we wrote to colciencias asking for a revision of this item because what this would indicate was that, during the past 5 years, when profile has published around 120 articles, only one of them has received one citation. we analysed the citation exercise and found out that the h5 of the journal is 12, not 1, and with 12 the journal would be classified. finally, on october 6, we received from colciencias an answer to our request in which it acknowledges de validity of an h5 of 12 for the journal. therefore, the journal was officially classified in category b. the situation we went through to get the classification also raised questions about the preciseness of measurements used by colciencias. as a means to illustrate this, we contrasted the h5 of seven journals specialized in the area of education and elt (english language teaching), as shown in the table below. the table depicts the results obtained by using google scholar metrics. interestingly, five journals were classified in category b and the h5 of their printed version ranged between 3 and 12. with respect to this measurement, when comparing, for example, journal 1 (h5 = 3) and profile (h5 = 12), we cannot understand why they both got the same classification if there is a big difference in their h5. profile: issues teach. prof. dev., vol. 20 no. 1, jan-jun, 2018. issn 1657-0790 (printed) 2256-5760 (online). bogotá, colombia. pages 7-12 9 editorial journal h5 printed version of the journal h5 electronic version of the journal classification granted by colciencias 1 3 2 b 2 9 5 b 3 9 2 b 4 1 c 5 7 3 b 6 3 c profile 12 1 b regarding the use of the h5 in the latest classification by colciencias, we agree with jacsó (2012), who acknowledges the usefulness of google scholar metrics as a complementary source and warns us about the limitations of its bibliometric indicators. we wonder if more detailed information provided by colciencias with respect to the indicators borne in mind to endow the latest classification would help us ponder such limitations. nonetheless, we still feel that the recognition of evaluations by local initiatives for latin america, like scielo and redalyc, as well as of many other databases, would add to the examination of our publications. in the same line of thought, questions have been raised in connection to the convenience of indicators mainly based on jcr and sjr reports, which are very restrictive for journals like ours (cárdenas, 2016). all in all, the latest classification and colciencias’ determination to rule the evaluation of journals edited in colombia, with apparently no regard for scholars’ critiques and suggestions, show that there might be no chances to revise the implications of their policies for decision-making in regard to the journals’ accreditation and related matters—incentives for university professors and recognition of research groups’ products, among others. despite what has happened with our recent classification, we thank colciencias for having considered our arguments. the inclusion of profile in the national ranking system is vital for accreditation purposes of the colombian authors who have published in the journal. we also thank our reviewers, authors, and readers for their continuous support. we only hope that now that the results of this new classification model are out, colciencias would go over the limitations of such a model and listen to the suggestions proposed by editors and scholars so that the colombian research output, rather than being stifled, is properly recognised and shared. after all, that should be the main concern of a research agency like colciencias as it is for all academic publications and the staff behind them. universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras10 cárdenas & nieto cruz we have gathered twelve articles in this edition; five of them are authored by colombian scholars and the other seven come from international authors writing from argentina, australia, brazil, chile, mexico, and the united kingdom. one article is the result of joint efforts between chile and australia. the first section, issues from teacher researchers, includes eight articles concerning language action research, english language teacher education, and language learning and identity. we open this issue with an article by joint authors anne burns from the university of new south wales (australia) and anne westmacott from the universidad chileno-británica de cultura (chile) about the experiences of teachers who want to become researchers through the implementation of a new action research programme in the mentioned chilean university. the study describes the action research programme developed with five english as a foreign language teachers in 2016, and discusses some reflections on this first year of the programme. as a direct product of the programme described in the first article, the action research project developed by paul anthony dissington at the universidad chileno-británica de cultura (chile) addresses the problem of negative lexical transfer errors in chilean university students studying english as part of their degree programmes. the purpose of the action research cycle was to raise awareness of lexical transfer through focused attention on common transfer errors. students valued the experience as positive in order to achieve productive mastery. regarding the topic of language learning, carol anne ochoa alpala and william ricardo ortíz garcía from universidad santo tomás (colombia) present a study in the development of oral skills in colombian university students studying english as part of their degree programmes in collaborative environments through the use of different technological gadgets as are videos and 3d virtual worlds. the results showed how students worked collaboratively to achieve their goal of improving their oral presentation skills. in the fourth article, argentinian author darío luis banegas, on behalf of the university of warwick (united kingdom) and the ministerio de educación del chubut (argentina), examines the conceptions of research held by english as a foreign language teachers in this south american country. he found that teachers felt marginal as regards research and claim a lack of time for not engaging in/with research. however, the engagement in action research proved to be meaningful to them resulting in teacher development, agency, empowerment, and autonomy. edgar augusto aguirre garzón from the pontificia universidad javeriana (colombia) concentrated his efforts in a case study that dealt with the co-construction and transformation of the curriculum of a public school through the collaborative-reflective inquiry of four unlicensed efl teachers. findings suggest that collaborative-reflective inquiry encourages the language teachers to design teaching strategies and materials at the service of their public school. the teachers’ joint efforts resulted in curricular changes to adjust contents and goals of the area with the students’ contextual reality. next, we have an article on the topic of identity. roderick lander from the ucl institute of education (united kingdom), examines this topic in the colombian context. the author profile: issues teach. prof. dev., vol. 20 no. 1, jan-jun, 2018. issn 1657-0790 (printed) 2256-5760 (online). bogotá, colombia. pages 7-12 11 editorial invited three gay male teachers working in colombia to participate in a narrative research project framed within a post-structural perspective on identity. the study reveals that the three participants live their queer identity alongside their language teacher identity with ease although they have found instances of homophobia which have impacted their day-to-day lives and their careers. john jairo viáfara and josé david largo from the universidad pedagógica y tecnológica de colombia, analyze the context of tertiary education taking into consideration the perceptions of master’s program students regarding the influence these graduate courses exert on their professional development. the strongest effects are evident in their practice and in the research skills gained through innovation, reflection, and collaboration. their administrative and political stands seem to require further integration. in the argentinian context, maría gimena san martín from universidad nacional de córdoba, examines an english as a foreign language teacher education programme where a supervisor supports the student-teachers’ learning-to-teach process in the context of one-to-one tutoring sessions. this scaffold help should be understood in relation to the function it serves and how it accommodates the students’ level of understanding. in the second section, issues from novice teacher-researchers, we include a study by josé irineo omar serna-gutiérrez and irasema mora-pablo from the universidad de guanajuato (mexico). the study deals with the identity of transnational student-teachers in central mexico. it explores the reasons why these student-teachers pursued a career in english language teaching. these reasons, recognized as critical incidents, trace a path to the construction of their identity as english teachers. the last section, issues based on reflections and innovations, includes three articles this time. in first place, diego fernando macías from universidad surcolombiana, in colombia, reviews studies in the area of classroom management in foreign language education. the reflection deals with three areas of interest: the distinctive characteristics of foreign language instruction, a description of classroom management issues, and the different alternatives towards reducing the negative impact of classroom management on foreign language classes. in conclusion, the author suggests that there is a need for more research, particularly on the relationship between classroom management and aspects such as target language use and teaching methods. the second article is authored by débora izé balsemão oss who works at the caxias do sul municipality in brazil. she presents her views regarding the relevance of teachers’ practical knowledge in the development of teacher education programs. the author’s thesis is that teachers’ personal practical knowledge is likely to evolve into professional knowledge provided that it is analyzed, verified, and improved. in the third article, we find frank giraldo’s reflections from universidad tecnológica de pereira (colombia) with respect to language assessment literacy. this reflection article reviews assessment literacy, understood as the knowledge, skills, and principles needed for assessment, from general education experts and language education scholars and shows how the meaning of language assessment literacy has expanded. the article presents implications for language teachers and proposes a core list of assessment knowledge, skills, and principles for teachers and students. we would like to close this editorial by giving a warm welcome to professor jill burton (university of south australia) who has come back to the editorial review board of the journal after a recess when she was busy with other endeavours. as before, her contributions along with those of the other members will greatly help us carry on with this editorial enterprise whose ultimate goal is to contribute to fostering teacher research, better elt, and quality in education. melba libia cárdenas journal editor maría claudia nieto cruz journal director references cárdenas, m. l. (2016). challenges of the how journal in spreading teachers’ works in times of ranking pressures. how, 23(2), 35-57. https://doi.org/10.19183/how.23.2.333. cárdenas, m. l., & nieto cruz, m. c. (2017). editorial: resisting exclusion from core indexing systems. profile: issues in teachers’ professional development, 19(2), 7-11. https://doi.org/10.15446/profile. v19n2.64604. colciencias. (2016a). convocatoria no. 768 de 2016 para indexación de revistas científicas colombianas especializadas – publindex (términos de referencia firmados) [call no. 768, 2016 for the classification of colombian specialized scientific journals – publindex: approved document]. bogotá, co: author. retrieved from http://www.colciencias.gov.co/sites/default/files/upload/convocatoria/ terminosdereferencia-conv768-2016-firmados.pdf. colciencias. (2016b, mayo). documento no 1601: política para mejorar la calidad de las publicaciones científicas nacionales (versión para discusión) [document no. 1601: policies to improve the quality of the national scientific publications (for discussion)]. bogotá, co: author. google scholar metrics. (n.d.). https://scholar.google.com/intl/en/scholar/metrics.html#metrics. jacsó, p. (2012). google scholar metrics for publications: the software and content features of a new open access bibliometric service. online information review, 36(4), 604-619. https:// doi.org/10.1108/14684521211254121. 105profile vol. 17, no. 1, january-june 2015. issn 1657-0790 (printed) 2256-5760 (online). bogotá, colombia. pages 105-120 http://dx.doi.org/10.15446/profile.v17n1.44739 mexican secondary school students’ perception of learning the history of mexico in english* la percepción de alumnos mexicanos de secundaria cuando aprenden la historia de méxico en inglés romero lara herrera**1 universidad nacional autónoma de méxico, mexico city, mexico this article focuses on mexican students’ perceptions of learning the history of mexico in english through content-based instruction, which is one of many types of bilingual pedagogical approaches that are now considered established approaches in mexico and around the globe. a phenomenological approach was chosen in order to understand and examine participants’ lived experiences through semistructured interviews; this in turn led to the discovery of their acceptance or rejection towards learning the history of mexico in english. the data suggest that despite students’ initial rejection to learning a sensitive subject as is the history of mexico in english, most students found the content-based method as being meaningful, thus, they had a sense of pride in the end. key words: attitudes, belief, content-based instruction, emotions, learning strategies, perceptions. este artículo se centra en la percepción de los estudiantes mexicanos ante el aprendizaje de la historia de méxico en inglés a través de la enseñanza basada en contenidos, el cual es uno de los muchos modelos de métodos pedagógicos bilingües establecido en méxico y el mundo. se eligió un enfoque fenomenológico con el fin de conocer y analizar las experiencias vividas por los participantes a través de entrevistas semi-estructuradas; esto a su vez permitió descubrir su aceptación o rechazo hacia el aprendizaje de la historia de méxico en inglés. los datos demuestran que a pesar del rechazo inicial de los estudiantes hacia un tema tan delicado, al final la mayoría de los estudiantes encontraron el método significativo, despertando en ellos un sentimiento de orgullo. palabras clave: actitudes, creencias, emociones, enseñanza basada en contenidos, estrategias de aprendizaje, percepciones. * this article is based on the author’s monograph to opt for a ba in tesol degree. ** e-mail: romero23@enes.unam.mx how to cite this article (apa, 6th ed.): lara herrera, r. (2015). mexican secondary school students’ perception of learning the history of mexico in english. profile issues in teachers’ professional development, 17(1), 105-120. http://dx.doi.org/10.15446/profile.v17n1.44739. this article was received on august 3, 2014, and accepted on november 18, 2014. this is an open access article distributed under the terms of the creative commons license attribution-noncommercial-noderivatives 4.0 international license. consultation is possible at http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/. universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras106 lara herrera introduction the idea at the heart of content-based instruction (cbi) is the belief that students can learn content and language simultaneously (stoller, 2004). some cbi programs focus more on language, other types of cbi tend to lean more towards content, and still other cbi curriculums emphasize both language and the content equally (wesche & skehan, 2002). in all cases, however, cbi programs are premised on the idea that language proficiency and content knowledge can be developed at the same time (brinton, snow, & wesche, 2011). the challenge, of course, is how best to promote this kind of concomitant learning. in an effort to better understand the optimal conditions that encourage concurrent language and content acquisition, a six-month investigation was conducted focusing on student perceptions of learning the history of mexico through cbi. background the focus of my research is on mexican students’ perceptions of learning english through cbi. the data were collected from a secondary school in leon, guanajuato, mexico. the school consists of primary and secondary school education. this particular school’s english language program is currently undergoing a change. the school’s primary level students are taught english through a content language integrated learning (clil) approach.1 due to this change in primary, the school’s secondary program decided to pilot a cbi program in the following areas: (1) geography, (2) world history, and (3) the history of mexico. the reason why the school authorities chose these particular subjects was twofold: (1) students already have background knowledge in these content areas that are thoroughly covered in fourth, fifth, and sixth grade of primary school (secretaría de educación pública, n.d.) and 1 clil is a modern/derivative name for cbi (dickey, 2010). (2) to help develop analytical and critical thinking skills through a foreign language. the cbi courses are reinforced with five hours of english language teaching (elt) instruction per week which are mainly based on an elt book. however, the elt teacher aids students in content subjects when required (projects and oral presentations). this model, in which students study content in a foreign language (l2) and also study the l2 separately, is known as adjunct language instruction (brinton et al., 2011). the teachers required to teach the lessons were not expected to be content specialists, but were expected to have a c2 level of the english language according to the common european framework of reference (cefr). this is due to the fact that in leon, guanajuato, it is difficult to find a teacher that is both a content specialist and an elt specialist. nevertheless, in these particular posts teachers are expected to invest extra hours in order to gain deeper knowledge of content areas. the 11 students that participated in my research were all third graders (equivalent to us 8th graders) of secondary and chosen randomly. they were asked six main questions along with follow-up questions depending on their answers given. moreover, the participants had multi-levels of english proficiency, ranging from a2 to b2.2 the research participants have been in the school since primary and have had regular elt classes. this, however, was their first year in a cbi program. literature review this segment is divided into four sections: (1) a definition of cbi; (2) the evolution of cbi; (3) a brief overview of research in content-based pedagogy relevant to my research concerns and cognitive processes; and (4) a definition of perceptions, which is the focus of this current investigation. 2 levels are according to the cefr. 107profile vol. 17, no. 1, january-june 2015. issn 1657-0790 (printed) 2256-5760 (online). bogotá, colombia. pages 105-120 mexican secondary school students’ perception of learning the history of mexico in english definition of contentbased instruction cbi is a method to language curriculum design and pedagogy. it is primarily concerned with “the integration of content learning with language teaching aims” (brinton et al., 2011, p. ix). in one sense, of course, everything that is taught through the medium of a target language has content (jiang, 2000). however, cbi’s focus on teaching a specific body of knowledge through an l2 makes it different from regular elt classes (brinton et al., 2011). in short, cbi is the teaching of curriculum content through the medium of an l2. the content that is taught is normally outside the traditional course material of language programs. traditional elt course syllabi are usually designed around the topics in a given course book even if some cross-curricular aspects or topics are more and more commonly included in elt courses at schools; in a cbi course, however, most material is part of a curricular subject or designed and/or adapted from outside sources (brinton et al., 2011). development and evolution of cbi the origins of cbi are often erroneously placed in us and canadian immersion programs (cloud, genesee, & hamayan, 2000). however, cbi has existed in one form or another for centuries. indeed, the roots of cbi can be traced back at least as far as the fourth century ad, when st. augustine used cbi: he placed an emphasis on the necessity of learning meaningful content during the process of language acquisition (brinton et al., 2011). in mexico, cbi can be traced to before the conquest (foster, 2007). if we look back into the 16th century3 for instance, historical records show that 3 during the 16th century hernán cortes, leading 200 spanish troops and a phalanx of indigenous armies, conquered mexico and mesoamerica; culture, religion, and language were imposed by spain on the american natives. spanish missionaries taught the natives4 religion and different trades in spanish rather than in the local indigenous languages (arriaga, 1978). this method of language teaching and learning proved to be so effective that the “indians” were soon teaching content in spanish to other natives—and even to spaniards. schools such as the university for indian nobles were opened in which native mexicans taught religious doctrine to spanish settlers in both spanish and latin (foster, 2007). given cbi’s cultural heritage and historical grounding, perhaps it is not surprising that the teaching method has been reimagined and reintroduced to modern learners. research about content-based pedagogy and cognitive processes advocates of cbi argue that its effectiveness stems from how information is processed in the brain. cognitive research suggests that the brain stores information in networks (field, 2003). the greater and stronger the numbers of connections within and between these networks, the better the information is learned. research suggests that reinforcing and building links among ideas and understanding au g m e nt s l e ar n i ng an d re te nt i on ( mu g l e r & landbeck, 2000). learning content through language produces just these types of strong connections. this may explain why learning in a language as opposed to learning about a language allows second languages to be acquired more easily (brinton et al., 2011). language acquisition, of course, entails more than simply cognitive processing. it involves the “whole person.” to truly understand a language approach, it is necessary to know something about how it impacts students affectively, socially, and psychologically. it is 4 the natives that are being referred to are native mesoamerican tribes such as aztecs who lived in tenochtitlan (modern day mexico city), mayas who mainly lived in the south of mexico such as in the ancient city of palenque which is a mayan city in chiapas (foster, 2007). universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras108 lara herrera useful, then, to understand students’ perceptions of a new teaching methodology: looking at pedagogy from the point of view of one’s students enhances the possibility that learning will take place (cothran & hodges, 2006). as cullingford (1991) notes, students’ views “deserve to be taken into account because they know better than anyone which teaching styles are successful, which techniques of learning bring out the best of them” (p. 2). another important reason for students’ views to be taken into account in teaching is that learners and instructors often see the same lesson in entirely different ways. nunan (as cited in stewart, 2007) explains that: teachers tend to assume that the way we look at a task will be the way learners look at it. however, there is evidence that while we as teachers are focusing on one thing, learners are focusing on something else. (p. 20) this type of disconnection between teachers and students is illustrated in a study by violand-sanchez (1995). violand-sanchez investigated 20 hispanic secondar y english as a second language (esl) students who were missing class regularly due to “boring” content. the name of one of the participants was carlos. carlos responded in regard to missing esl classes regularly: señora, i am bored. i am repeating the intermediate esl level and i can’t take it anymore. i’m tired of studying the gerunds again! can’t we study things we use? why do we need two periods of grammar? why can’t we study science? (violand-sanchez, 1995, p. 48) because teachers and students perceive content and instruction differently, it is important to consider how students feel and to understand their reasons for accepting or rejecting a given method. in other research that was carried out, student motivation and meaningful content played a role in successful learning. in a study which aimed to investigate the ef fectiveness of cbi in oral communicative competence development of 16 colombian university students, corrales and maloof (2009) reported that after one semester of cbi, learners were able to “activate their prior knowledge, lessen anxiety, raise their self-confidence and become motivated towards language learning” (p. 15). moreover, lafayette and buscaglia (1985) carried out research using fourth semester french university students and compared the progress between students enrolled in an experimental cbi course versus students taking traditional french classes. at the end of this study not only were positive attitudes towards learning content discovered but also a substantial advancement in language proficiency took place comparison with those students of a similar level taking traditional french classes. lafayette and buscaglia state that: the study is important because it challenges the conventional assumptions regarding the way l2 skills are acquired and improved, and offers the student a valuable time and money saving option since he or she might be able to study a specific content while simultaneously improving l2 skills. (p. 323) deckerk (2004) also mentions the importance of content needing to be appealing to students and how when this occurs it facilitates learning language when carefully selecting content of exchange. because of the critical importance of understanding instruction through the eyes of students, i wanted to discover what my own students’ perceptions were about learning mexican history in english. i wanted to discover how a group of students who were learning the history of mexico in english perceived their experiences in learning language and content at the same time. defining perceptions perceptions are believed to first have been studied in philosophy by locke and hume at the beginning 109profile vol. 17, no. 1, january-june 2015. issn 1657-0790 (printed) 2256-5760 (online). bogotá, colombia. pages 105-120 mexican secondary school students’ perception of learning the history of mexico in english of the 18th century (despagne, 2010). since then, the concept has been employed in a wide range of fields: sociology, anthropology, socio linguistics, social psychology, and so on (moore, 2007). for this reason, there is no single, established definition of perceptions and each f ield of study has its own technical understanding of the word. depending on the field and the focus of research, perceptions may be related to feelings, beliefs, experiences, preferences, mental images, values, concepts, heuristics, stereotypes, and knowledge (amongst others). the previous definitions shed light on the meaning of perceptions; however, when deciding how best to describe perception for the purposes of my own research, i wanted a definition that was simple, clear, and direct enough to be useful. in other words, in science a theory should be—ceteris paribus—the simplest possible explanation that effectively addresses a given phenomenon (occam’s razor, n.d.). based on the previous assumptions— variants of the principle of parsimony (braithwaite, 2007)—i decided that for my research i would rely on da silva’s (2005) usefully “parsimonious” definition of perception: “a physical and intellectual ability used in mental processes to recognize, interpret, and understand events” (p. 10). method i decided to use a qualitative methodology, a phenomenological research design/method, and semi-structured inter views as my primar y data gathering tool. defining qualitative research qualitative research (qr) is a method which attempts to comprehend individuals, groups of people, and/or sets of research problems—in this case, student perceptions—from the point of view of the subject or subjects involved in the research (labuschangne, 2003). qr is particularly effective in attaining data concerning the values, opinions, behaviors, and social contexts of a particular social group (mack, woodsong, macqueen, guest, & namey, 2005). one of the challenges of qualitative research is that researchers must suppress their own experiences and beliefs so that personal bias does not contaminate the interpretation of data and research findings (wiersma, 1995). these views shed light on that situation for the type of research i was carrying out. qr would be the most suitable methodology to employ for my project. moreover, it drew my attention to the fact that my research also called for a phenomenological design/ approach due to its nature. phenomenology phenomenology dates back to kant and hegel (groenewald, 2004); in the 20th century, phenomenology was most closely associated with husserl (vandenberg, 1997). husserl argued that real life experiences are matters of personal interpretation, are necessarily subjective, and that anything coming from outside authentic personal experience is suspect. “husserl called this philosophical method phenomenology, the science of pure phenomena” ( e a g l e t on a s c it e d i n g ro e n e w a l d , 2 0 04 , p. 55). according to welman and kruger (1999), “phenomenologists are concerned with understanding social and psychological phenomena from the perspectives of the people involved” (p. 189). a researcher who applies phenomenological assumptions to his or her research design seeks to understand the “lived experiences” of the individuals participating in the research (groenewald, 2004). because the nature of my research involves under-standing a social reality as experienced and interpreted by others, i decided to place my design within the theoretical parameters set by the phenomenological tradition. research ethics research ethics exist to guarantee that people who are involved in a study as subjects are protected universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras110 lara herrera when carrying out field research. research ethics ensures the universal principles of justice, respect, and the avoidance of harm to be sustained (ulrich, 2003). in general terms, the researcher should be careful not to expose people to harm for their own good or for the good of science especially when doing research with children or adolescents (alderson & morrow, 2011; schenk & williamson, 2005). hence, i issued letters of consent to participants’ parents, as participants were all minors, and referred to them with the letter p followed by the number of the order in which they were interviewed in order to protect their identities. description of interviews according to king and horrocks (2010), “inter views are widely used in phenomenological research, though they are more dominant in some traditions than others” (p. 182). they describe interviews as the “exemplary” method for interpretive phenomenological analysis (ipa) “because of the emphasis in this approach on exploring how people interpret their experience” (p. 182). interviews in qualitative research refer to the one-on-one encounters between interviewer and interviewee aimed at understanding subjects’ lives and their personal experiences expressed in their own words (rubin & rubin, 1995). kvale (1996) states that an interview is “an interchange of views between two or more people on a topic of mutual interest” (p. 14). in other words, if both researcher and participant are interested in a theme, meaningful talk will occur. rubin and rubin (1995) claim that “at a basic level, people like to talk about themselves: they enjoy the sociability of a long discussion and are pleased that somebody is interested in them” (p. 103). semi-structured interviews hol loway (1997) cl aims t hat invest igators who use phenomenolog y avoid the use of “set” techniques. hycner (1999) similarly asserts that “there is an appropriate reluctance on the part of phenomenologists to focus too much on specific steps” (p. 143). hycner declares it is impossible to impose an approach on a phenomenon “since that would do a great injustice to the integrity of that phenomenon” (p. 144). flexibility, then, is at the heart of phenomenological research, and it is for this reason that i settled on a semi-structured interview protocol. semi-structured interviews are a type of nonstandardized interviews carried out in qualitative analysis. in this model, a researcher has a theme, issue, a question and/or phenomena that need to be understood; here, questions can be varied as required, depending on the response of the inter viewee (corbetta, 2003). these positive aspects highlighted by corbetta (2003) made it clear that semi-structure inter viewing was the most suitable kind for my research. therefore, i believe that semi-structured interviews enabled me to elicit extra data that helped me towards my end goal of understanding student perceptions. data analysis, findings and discussion after i analyzed the data i collected in my study, i discovered iterative patterns in the participant responses; i then look for indicators of students’ p ercept ion and cl assif ie d resp ons es into f ive categories: (1) positive, (2) negative, (3) neutral, (4) needs a follow-up question, or (5) not relevant. data from question 1 (what was your first impression when you learned that the history of mexico was going to be taught in english?) highlighted a negative stance which indicated that there was a certain sense of rejection towards participants’ initial perception of cbi. the actual percentages to participants’ answers are shown in table 1 whereas table 2 illustrates the categories and subcategories drawn from those answers. 111profile vol. 17, no. 1, january-june 2015. issn 1657-0790 (printed) 2256-5760 (online). bogotá, colombia. pages 105-120 mexican secondary school students’ perception of learning the history of mexico in english table 1. question 1 categories percentage number of participants negative 58% 7 positive 21% 2 neutral 0% 0 needs follow-up question 21% 2 table 2. categories and subcategories for question 1 categories subcategories pos. neg. neu. nf nr teacher 0 1 0 0 10 content 1 7 1 1 1 language 2 6 1 1 1 content and language 2 4 1 4 0 method 3 2 0 2 4 classmates 0 2 0 0 9 total 8 22 3 8 25 note. pos. = positive; neg. = negative; neu. = neutral, meaning that students’ responses were not positive, negative, or mixed; nf = needs follow-up question; nr = not relevant in reference to this category. analysis and findings of answers to question 1 seven participants expressed negative feelings towards the idea of learning english through content. four participants explained that they felt learning content through language would be “difficult” and therefore unpleasant. the following quote is an example of why one participant felt this way: my first impression was that the topic would be more difficult, because history is very theoretical and in english . . . [a language] that we are still studying. so combined we won’t understand anything. (p3) this comment shows why p3 thought that learning both content and language at the same time would lead to a lack of understanding of either. p3 feels that theoretical subjects are difficult and considers the history of mexico to be too theoretical; theoretical subjects may have a negative connotation for the student and could be something that the student rejects. moreover, it is possible that p3 feels that english should be learned before tr ying to use it to study content. this comment could be an indicator that p3 feels that there is a gap in regard to language, and that may be the reason he believes that learning would not take place. at the same time, there were other factors that affect the learners such as inappropriate content. p5 describes his perception of cbi as being “illogical”. p5 also pointed out that he felt learning the history of mexico would be dull: p5: illogical! if we are mexican students that talk in spanish how could they [school] teach us mexican history in english? history is not an interesting subject for many; furthermore if it’s taught in english. interlocutor: english? what do you mean? p5: if it’s in english its worse for me, because i don’t like english for this [history], i like english to listen to music…and stuff. p5 is unhappy with the decision taken by the school to have this particular content subject taught in a foreign language and believes that history is not a subject that many are keen on—including himself. this is clearly a problem. smyth (2006) states: when students feel that their lives, experiences, cultures, and aspirations are ignored, trivialized, or denigrated by school and the curriculum, they develop hostility to the institution of schooling. they feel that schooling is simply not worth the emotional and psychological investment necessary to warrant their serious involvement. (p. 279) universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras112 lara herrera moreover, silva (1997) comments on unsuitable topics of assignments in cbi and explains that if a subject is not appealing to learners it becomes more difficult for learners to cope with cbi lessons. silva (1997) warns against imposing themes that students may prefer not to explore. analysis and findings of answers to question 2 after analyzing the answers to question 2 (how did your impression change after one semester of cbi?), i found a pattern in students’ responses that provided evidence that student perceptions had shifted significantly from negative to positive. this change was due to two main reasons: (1) the students’ own personal strategies changed as a result of their learning experience, and (2) the classroom atmosphere described by students led to a more positive attitude. table 3 reveals reasons that influenced change in students’ perceptions. table 4 shows how i categorized key words or phrases in which students show positive attitudes due to their own strategies and the healthy learning environment described in their answers. table 3. categories and subcategories for question 2 categories subcategories pos. neg. neu. nf nr teacher 1 0 0 0 10 content 6 3 1 0 1 language 6 3 0 0 2 content and language 2 4 4 0 1 method 3 0 0 0 8 classmates 3 0 0 0 8 total 21 10 5 0 30 oxford (1990) explains “learning strategies are actions taken by the learner to make learning easier, faster, more enjoyable, more self-directed, more effective, and more transferable to new situation” (p. 8). p3 first viewed the history of mexico as difficult and theoretical. a possible reason for this student’s change of attitude towards cbi could be based on the strategy used by the participant. the participant mentions: (1) that one really has to pay more attention to some parts, and (2) that one has to read again for better understanding. based on p3’s answer, i concluded that the participant’s use of learning strategies resulted in a positive change of perception about cbi. in this particular experience, p3 did not mention anything about language and therefore it can be concluded that learning strategies used and new experiences might have benefited him both in terms of coping with content as well as with language.5 p7, on the other hand, believes that learning content through language was a good way to practice english. according to hernández (2003) for students learning in the language rather than about the language, effective communication is interactive, authentic, and meaningful, with ample opportunities to hear and respond in the target language [practice] and to get feedback from native speakers, the teacher, instructional assistants, volunteers, and other english language learners. (emphasis in the original, p. 126) p7 explains how learning language through content enabled her to practice and made the class more interesting. i believe that the participant experienced learning in the language instead of about the language; hence, english was better learned when language is practiced in a similar way in which a first language is acquired (brinton et al., 2011). 5 a follow-up question was needed for further data and more accurate assumption. 113profile vol. 17, no. 1, january-june 2015. issn 1657-0790 (printed) 2256-5760 (online). bogotá, colombia. pages 105-120 mexican secondary school students’ perception of learning the history of mexico in english analysis and findings of answers to questions 3 and 4 after analyzing question 3 (how did you feel about having performed el grito de independencia6 in english?) and question 4 (how would you compare having performed it in english in comparison with having performed it in spanish?), the findings suggest that in general, students mainly held a positive stance towards this experience. table 5 shows students’ feelings toward question 3. table 5. student’s feelings toward question 3 category of answers pos. neg. neu. nf nr number of answers 8 1 1 0 1 the data collected for this question suggests that students viewed this particular performance of el grito de independencia as an opportunity to do the following: (1) practice language, (2) experiment 6 el grito de independencia or el grito dolores “is the call that miguel hidalgo made for the people of mexico to rise up against the authorities of new spain on september 16, 1810, in the town of dolores, near guanajuato, initiating mexico’s war of independence. this event is commemorated every year in mexico on the night of september 15th” (barbezat, n.d., para. 1). with language, and (3) use language as a tool to share participants’ culture and traditions: i felt so excited but i think that we could have done better, maybe the time was too short…um i think that we needed more time to prepare but at least it worked. (p1) it’s a tradition to make it in spanish, but in english it was so different, it was really funny [fun]. i felt good because it was interesting to make to make our presentation of history of mexico in english. (p2) i think that if you want to do something you can do it in many languages, in this case, english, that we used it to interpret the independence of mexico and i feel good because we did something about our traditions and country in english. (p3) here, the participants clearly explain how they found this event to be an opportunity to use english as a tool to interpret something that is part of their identity and culture as well as its being fun and exciting. moreover, these answers suggest that the use of english was meaningful. here, the students were able to use english to both express something meaningful as well as use the content language in the target language. answers to question 4 took my understanding of students’ perception of cbi further as i discovered how meaningful learning had become for them. table 4. positive attitudes due to strategies and atmosphere strategies atmosphere p1: we worked and did our homework…so history was an easy subject. p2: there are things that i didn’t understand but we read two times. p3: the topic wasn’t very difficult . . . obviously like everything there are some parts that you had to pay more attention to for real or read it again for better understanding. p7: now i think that is a good idea because we learn more english and have more opportunities to practice it. p6: i don’t have scared, because the teacher is a comedy actor, and i think the history class was fun. [sic] p7: the classes were interested and funny. p8: it was very funny and we learn a lot. my view of the class changed a lot because i didn’t feel stressed or bored and i had fun with my friends because we could talk. universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras114 lara herrera p3 felt proud about being able to practice content language knowledge in a meaningful situation; the participants’ answers mirror violand-sanchez’s (1995) study, who also recorded a similar case. in my research meaningful content leads to acceptance of content whereas in her research lack of meaningful content led to students’ rejection of content. analysis and findings of answers to questions 5 and 6 in the next section, i shall discuss answers to question 5 (what do you find most difficult about learning the history of mexico in english?) and question 6 (what do you find more challenging—the subject or the language?) of my research. answers to question 5 showed what strategies students used to cope with difficulties; therefore, in order to categorize each participant’s answer i devised a table tallying the reasons why students found learning the history of mexico in english difficult and what each student did in order to cope with it (see table 6). here i found patterns in students’ answers that helped me understand why students were experiencing difficulties; nine participants described how language was a hindrance due to reasons such as proficiency. one clear example of why most participants felt this way was given by p5: “trying to express my ideas to the teacher, i don’t have the enough vocabulary to say what i actually want to say.” when students explained reasons for having difficulties, most participants mentioned that certain “words” or “vocabulary” hindered comprehension and communication. several researchers echo concerns in regard to the importance of vocabulary teaching in cbi classrooms (carlo et al., 2004; evans & green, table 6. difficulties and strategies found by students participant difficulties with cbi learner strategies p1 teaching method classroom dynamics p2 l2 (english) use l1 (code switch) p3 language and content (low vocabulary proficiency) free time reading practice p4 l2 (english) use l1(code switch) p5 communication (level of proficiency/lack of vocabulary) use of l1/l2 (code switch) p6 language (proficiency) teacher’s help p7 words in book (vocabulary) rereads p8 language (proficiency vocabulary) teacher’s help p9 unknown words (knowledge of content vocabulary) just try to understand p10 content language (language proficiency) peers’ help p11 language (proficiency level) teacher’s and peers’ help 115profile vol. 17, no. 1, january-june 2015. issn 1657-0790 (printed) 2256-5760 (online). bogotá, colombia. pages 105-120 mexican secondary school students’ perception of learning the history of mexico in english 2007; short, 2002). in my research participants openly expressed the same problems as the above researchers. finally, i present the analysis of the answers for question 6: what do you find more challenging—the subject or the language? (see table 7). question 6 revealed that after one semester, 82% of the participants perceived that language was still the most difficult aspect of learning the history of mexico in english. however, i discovered that some students felt that language was the most difficult aspect because they already had prior knowledge of the content area. p2: i think the language, because we know a lot about history but sometimes in english it’s more difficult. p3: i find more challenging the language because when we were kids, we already learned or listened to some history of our country. p5: the language, because i have been studying mexican history since i was in 3rd grade of primary and i know what happened. i believe that students’ background knowledge helped them cope with content and therefore language was perceived as the primary challenge. summary of findings there are three main findings that come to light based on this research: (1) despite most mexican students initially viewing cbi negatively, students changed their minds and cbi became a positive experience for them; (2) although mexican students changed their minds about cbi, they still found the pedagogical approach to be challenging; (3) the most important factors that influenced students’ negative perceptions of cbi were the students’ lack of language proficiency, unpopular content, and the imposition of language on content. in the following sections i shall discuss these three findings in turn. students’ change of perception most students initially viewed cbi as “boring” and “difficult.” over the course of the semester, however, most of them came to embrace cbi. the primary reason that students changed their minds about cbi was because they came to feel that learning language through content enabled them to practice language in a meaningful way. the shift to cbi in the teaching of the history of mexico made both language and content more interesting and meaningful; that is, students could see that the english language had an actual use and tangible benefits. challenges participants experienced at first cbi was referred to as being a difficult method; the word “difficult” was used by participants with a negative connotation. this was due to their lack of language proficiency. cbi is demanding; talking about subjects such as history in a foreign language requires a great deal of effort. at the end of my research, however, i discovered that the word “difficult” had changed its meaning for my students. students used it synonymously with the word “challenging.” this is because students realized that being forced to find ways to overcome language gaps ultimately resulted in a positive learning experience. in addition, after one semester, most students stated that cbi was not as hard as they had initially perceived table 7. results from question 6 themes category tallies percentages most challenging language 9 82% content 1 9% content and language 1 9% universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras116 lara herrera it would be; they mentioned how much fun they had had and how learning had become interesting. factors that influenced students’ perceptions of cbi when analyzing factors that influenced students’ perception towards cbi, the most important factor was the students’ lack of language proficiency. the second factor i discovered was that some students rejected cbi because they felt mexican history was an uninteresting subject; for instance, some students mentioned that history was “theoretical” and “boring”—and if the class was taught in english, the subject would be worse. one particular student predicted that the rest of their classmates would reject this specific content. the last factor was that students’ viewed mexican history in english as being “weird” and seemingly “illogical.” indeed, one group of students viewed english as an imposition because the foreign language “invaded” their culture and traditions. conclusion in regard to the methodology, i believe that cbi is “easier said than done.” besides the challenges presented above, there are a number of other difficulties that have to be addressed. (1) finding qualified teachers who are masters of both language and content is the most difficult part in my opinion. you cannot just put anybody who speaks english in a classroom; they also need the pedagogical skills that a professional possesses in order to deliver a sound class. in my 12 years of experience, the reality is that in mexico there are very few content teachers with a high command of english (c1/c2); in other words, cbi teachers are usually regular english as a foreign language teachers with little or no mastery of content subject or vice versa a content teacher with little knowledge of the target language. (2) you need to adapt and create appropriate material, such as textbooks or course books, visual aids, technology, and planned field trips that fulfill the mexican board of education’s requirements. (3) selecting a model of cbi which is appropriate to the particular teaching and learning context, is also very important and in my opinion it might take several years to fully adapt and readapt a program. (4) the majority of esl literature and common sense tells us that language teachers should always keep student needs foremost in their thoughts as they develop their courses (silva, 1997; smyth, 2006). it is important to remember, however, that students themselves are not always aware of what it is they need or even want. for this reason, it may be necessary to “force” new methods on reluctant students who might then change their perceptions. this, of course, poses further problems to cbi adoption. (5) the slow pace of english acquisition can be frustrating. there is an expectation that a new methodolog y such as cbi will deliver dramatic improvements in english learning. but when it comes to language acquisition, there are no short-cuts, no “magic bullet.” although the goal of cbi is to increase the level of language proficiency, “it is inappropriate to assume that desired levels of proficiency and accuracy will emerge miraculously from content lessons taught in a second or foreign language” (met, 1991, p. 285). recommendations for future research my research generated a number of interesting questions that i would like to pursue in future research. in my opinion, the following questions represent fertile ground for further studies. 1. what learning strategies do students use in cbi classrooms? i discovered that students developed a number of strategies in order to cope with the demands of learning about content in a foreign language. however, the small scope of my investigation did not allow me to investigate these strategies in any depth. further research into the 117profile vol. 17, no. 1, january-june 2015. issn 1657-0790 (printed) 2256-5760 (online). bogotá, colombia. pages 105-120 mexican secondary school students’ perception of learning the history of mexico in english role of learning strategies within the context of cbi would be useful. findings from such research could aid program designers, researchers, teachers, and students when making a transition from traditional language pedagogies to cbi. 2. are particular content areas more practical than others? the difficulties for students learning the history of mexico in english (i.e., cultural imposition, etc.) led me to wonder if other subjects would be easier or more difficult to teach in a foreign language. another research recommendation, then, would be to investigate whether some content areas are more suited to a cbi method than others. are the humanities easier to teach in a second language than, say, mathematics? or would the sciences, which are concrete and specific, be easier to learn than more subjective subjects like history or literature? 3. what is the correct balance between content and language instruction? researchers such as nunan (2001) and stoller (2002) have emphasized having the right balance between content and language when designing cbi courses. research that looked into finding an ideal balance in cbi would be very useful. the most important task would be finding a way to determine what students actually lack in terms of language needs in order to carefully design courses and find the equilibrium that in some occasions cbi courses lack. this may be achieved through diagnostic tests, proficiency tests, or even aptitude tests. 4. does a content-based instruction approach actually produce better language outcomes than regular elt classes? this would require a large scale study that compared other methods with cbi and that utilized pre-course and postcourse assessment activities and procedures. this kind of research is obviously outside what is practically possible for a single researcher, but of course would be tremendously important to modern language learning and teaching research (for an idea of how such research could be carried out see, for instance, the pennsylvania project7). closing statements my research was based on students’ perceptions; however, i also discovered in my research that cbi helped most students learn both content and language, which is the end goal of cbi. i discovered that most students came to terms with themselves during difficult times in regard to not always understanding the content and language when problems arose and instead found solutions to problems and difficulties. i learned that it was necessary for students to negotiate with other students and teachers when situations were beyond their control. personally, this experience helped me to better understand the lived experience of this microculture in my research as regards learning through cbi. it is my hope that this research raises awareness of cbi and makes a small contribution to the study of a method that is increasingly important in mexico as well as all over the globe. references alderson, p., & morrow, v. 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(1995). research methods in education: an introduction (6th ed.). boston, ma: allyn and bacon. about the author romero lara herrera holds a ba in tesol from the university of guanajuato (mexico). he is currently coursing an ma in tefl at the university of guadalajara. he is a part-time teacher at the universidad de guanajuato’s tesol program and an efl teacher at the universidad nacional autónoma de méxico. acknowledgements i dedicate this article to the loving memory of my father, rafael, who was always there for me and taught me to never give up. i would also like to thank professor kenneth geoffrey richter of the university of guanajuato in mexico for his unconditional support throughout my ba studies and monograph. 29profile: issues teach. prof. dev., vol. 21 no. 2, jul-dec, 2019. issn 1657-0790 (printed) 2256-5760 (online). bogotá, colombia. pages 29-44 https://doi.org/10.15446/profile.v21n2.71364 daily 6: an approach to foster oral fluency of english as a foreign language in adolescents daily 6: un enfoque para fomentar la fluidez oral en inglés como lengua extranjera en adolescentes 1roso freddy cadena aguilar* universidad de la sabana, chía, colombia 2javier hernando ortega cuellar** universidad nacional de colombia, bogotá, colombia 3albedro cadena aguilar*** universidad de la sabana, chía, colombia this action research study aimed to examine the possible impact of the daily 6 approach on the oral fluency in english of 13 adolescents. this approach (extension of the existing daily 5™ framework) introduced a sixth step, “speak to someone”, to respond to the lack of oral fluency limiting participants’ overall speaking performance in english as a foreign language. data were gathered through surveys, diagnostic and achievement tests, and recordings using voicethread™. the coding and a small sample hypothesis test for means analysis unveiled the significance of the daily 6 approach to enhance oral fluency through technology. results displayed gains in oral fluency (length of runs, silent pauses, length of pauses, filled pauses, and pace) and positive changes in attitudinal responses within a low-anxiety environment. key words: affective domain, daily 5, oral fluency, teaching adolescents, voicethread™. el presente estudio de investigación acción tuvo como objetivo examinar el posible impacto del enfoque the daily 6 en la fluidez en inglés de 13 estudiantes adolescentes. este enfoque (extensión del marco actual de daily 5™) introdujo un sexto paso, “¡habla con alguien!”, para dar respuesta a la falta de fluidez verbal que limitaba el rendimiento general de los participantes en expresión oral en inglés. los datos se recopilaron mediante encuestas, diagnósticos, pruebas de rendimiento y grabaciones utilizando voicethread™. el análisis de codificación y una prueba de hipótesis de muestra reveló la importancia del enfoque the daily 6 para aumentar la fluidez a través de la tecnología. los resultados mostraron mejoras en fluidez (duración de intervenciones, pausas silenciosas, duración de pausas, muletillas por minuto e intervalo de acentuación) y cambios positivos en las respuestas actitudinales dentro de un entorno de baja ansiedad. palabras clave: daily 5, dominio afectivo, enseñanza a adolescentes, fluidez, producción oral, voicethread™. * e-mail: rosocaag@unisabana.edu.co ** e-mail: jhortegac@unal.edu.co *** e-mail: albedro.cadena@unisabana.edu.co this research report is based on an unpublished thesis submitted in the second semester of 2017 in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of master in english language teaching awarded by universidad de la sabana, chía, colombia. how to cite this article (apa, 6th ed.): cadena-aguilar, r. f., ortega-cuellar, j. h., & cadena-aguilar, a. (2019). daily 6: an approach to foster oral fluency of english as a foreign language in adolescents. profile: issues in teachers’ professional development, 21(2), 29-44. https://doi.org/10.15446/profile.v21n2.71364. this article was received on may 7, 2018 and accepted on march 28, 2019. this is an open access article distributed under the terms of the creative commons license attribution-noncommercial-noderivatives 4.0 international license. consultation is possible at https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/. profile_21_2-taco_jul3.indd 29 5/07/19 12:18 p.m. universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras30 cadena-aguilar, ortega-cuellar, & cadena-aguilar introduction the daily 5 (boushey & moser, 2014) is a literacy framework that fosters lifelong habits of reading and writing and provides the foundation for students to build stamina for independent work. according to boushey and moser (2014), the starting point took place when the researchers wanted to give a structure to the learning environment, developing a new form to plan how students should spend their time in class working independently. then, they wanted to change the learning atmosphere and their roles as teachers by creating routines and systems that stimulate independent literacy behaviours, embedded to the point of becoming habits. accordingly, they had to put trust in the conviction that students had the skills and desire to accept the challenge of making attentive choices during independent periods. at one point, boushey and moser (2014) encountered a question from one teacher when they were studying the daily 5 with an expert from new zealand, margaret mooney. the teacher asked, “i have thirty students. what are my kids doing while i’m trying to teach this small group of children?” to which mooney responded, “they’re reading, reading to each other, revisiting books, writing, and trying something new” (p. 23). from this discussion evolved the following five steps defined by boushey and moser which marked their investigation: • read to self; the best way to become a better reader is to practice each day, with books you choose, at your suitable reading level. it soon becomes a habit. • read to someone; reading to someone allows more time to practice strategies, which help you to work on oral fluency and expression, to check for understanding, to hear your own voice, and to share in the learning community. • work on writing; like reading, the best way to become a better writer is to practice writing each day. • listen to reading; we hear examples of good literature and fluent reading. we learn more words, thus expanding our vocabulary and becoming better readers. • spelling/word work; correct spelling allows for more fluent writing, thus speeding up the ability to write and to get thinking down on paper. this is an essential foundation for writers. (pp. 11-12) the daily 5 has presented a complete literacy block for the reading and writing skills. however, this approach did not work with the speaking skill as it was envisioned and implemented in a native english-speaking environment. learning to produce a foreign language orally is not an easy task due to several affective factors that may have a negative impact on the learning process (brown, 2003). according to thornbury (2009), the lack of oral fluency in l2 may trigger frustration and embarrassment in learners of a foreign language, inhibiting face-to-face interaction. in our study, the introduction of the sixth step (the daily 6 hereafter) aimed to fit the colombian context and therefore focused on fluent, effective oral communication within a communicative framework. this is how the daily 6 was born with the purpose of giving response to a crying speaking need evinced in a private school in bogotá, colombia. to tackle the need, we decided to bring this novel approach to the english as a foreign language (efl) teaching and learning environment by integrating it as a oral-oriented task that involved an information and communications technology (ict) tool and autonomous work. the ultimate goal was to offer an enjoyable experience that combines reading, writing, and speaking while teaching students behaviours of independence and self-monitoring through motivational means. this is where the link between this study’s main goal and the objective of the daily 5 meet. background and previous research oral fluency brown (2003) states that oral fluency is a productive sub-skill that focuses on content rather than form. earlier profile_21_2-taco_jul3.indd 30 5/07/19 12:18 p.m. 31profile: issues teach. prof. dev., vol. 21 no. 2, jul-dec, 2019. issn 1657-0790 (printed) 2256-5760 (online). bogotá, colombia. pages 29-44 daily 6: an approach to foster oral fluency of english as a foreign language in adolescents accounts on fluency were based on fillmore’s (1979) four-way concept. according to him, fluency is the ability to talk at length with few pauses. secondly, fluency is the capacity of expressing messages in a coherent, reasoned, and “semantically dense” manner. thirdly, a fluent speaker should know what to say in different contexts, and finally, a fluent speaker should make use of creativity and imagination in his or her speech. other authors have expressed that there are abilities beyond smooth delivery of speech that are needed for a speaker to be fluent in a foreign language. richards, platt, and weber (as cited in brown, 2003) state that a fluent user is he or she who displays command of suprasegmental features or, that for a user of efl to achieve fluent speech, he/she must rely on abilities such as: coherence, reasoned talking, continuity, creativity, and context-sensitivity (fillmore & brumfit as cited in brown, 2003). we followed a more syncretic definition synthesized by lennon (2000): fluency is “the rapid, smooth, accurate, lucid and efficient translation of thought or communicative intention into language under temporal constraints of on-line processing” (p. 26). consequently, we concluded that one of fluency’s main characteristics is speed of production, called conversational speed or native-like speed. this validates the seven criteria (mean length of runs, silent pauses per minute, mean length of pauses, filled pauses per minute, disfluencies per minute, pace, and space) selected to assess students’ oral fluency before and after the implementation of the daily 6. an aspect that hinders oral fluency according to thornbury (2009) makes a very strong claim on the difficulty most learners face when dealing with the speaking skill. most learning methods prioritize speaking as a means to practice grammar rather than as a rightful skill. the closest speaking might come to being treated as a skill is when students work on pronunciation. most students feel that no matter how well they know grammar and vocabulary, they are not prepared to engage in speaking, and thornbury blames this mindset on the lack of practise with genuine speaking. in other words, this obstacle thwarts the normal process of developing oral structures. different approaches to foster oral fluency in efl, such as gutiérrez’s (2005), attempted to enhance communicative skills. gutiérrez implemented interactive tasks with ninth graders at a school in bogotá, colombia. the findings suggested that establishing some stages—as in the daily 6—such as exposure, interaction, feedback, and final oral production, created a motivating environment for students. thus, the students’ effort was directed towards the improvement of their oral fluency. gutiérrez’s work made room for group work (as in the daily 6) to relieve the pressure entailed by teacher-student interaction. the combination of these factors resulted in low anxiety levels, which have previously been presented as one of the aims of the daily 6. in the same vein, poster presentations were reported by lane (2001) and tanner and chapman (2012) to have conditions that provided potential advantages to language learners; such advantages are lessening anxiety and creating a supportive environment. moreover, mir (2006) expanded the concept of written journals to recorded oral journals. these journals were meant to help learners gain self-confidence rather than grammatical accuracy. as a result, learners engaged in more enjoyable speaking tasks that enabled them to see the development of their skills and become more confident when speaking. similarly, alam and uddin (2013) developed a study that sought enhancement of oral communication skills of sixth graders at a public school in pakistan. the study’s results showed that providing students with opportunities for practicing oral language and using teaching strategies combined with peer and self-correction, were key factors that fostered improvement in students’ oral communicative skills. the relationship between such a study and the present lies in the sub-skill in which both were focused, and on the fostering of learner autonomy. the latter is a major characteristic of the daily 6 and was a great indicator of success in alam and uddin’s profile_21_2-taco_jul3.indd 31 5/07/19 12:18 p.m. universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras32 cadena-aguilar, ortega-cuellar, & cadena-aguilar study. other studies (duque, 2014; suarez rodriguez, mena becerra, & chaparro escobar, 2015) attempted to determine the effect of self-assessment practices on young adults’ oral fluency and illustrated how collaborative learning raised participants’ awareness of their mastery of english. besides collaboration and self-assessment practices, interactional tasks have also been implemented to enhance oral fluency (usma, 2015). usma’s findings supported the idea that teachers should include more of these tasks into their teaching practice to develop skills related to oral fluency, connected speech, and the use of fillers. more recently, montilla, ospina, and pineda (2016) designed an approach with similar results to the daily 6; they confronted the negative anxiety experienced by adolescents when speaking in english. however, the tool used to lower anxiety was audio blogs recording, showing that new technologies in education to teach efl leads to a change in the participants’ attitude towards learning activities. accordingly, we chose voicethread™ as the tool to help the participants to speak fluently. blended learning the daily 6 is a blended approach that exploited the appealing characteristics of ict tools, the structure of the daily 5, and the sixth step—speaking to someone—added to the former approach to foster speaking fluency. icts are becoming so pervasive that professionals in education must explore the changes they trigger in learning processes. blended learning systems are defined by graham (2004, p. 5) as “the combination of instruction from two historically separate models”. these models are (a) traditional, on-site, face-to-face (f2f) systems and (b) computer-based technologies. however, sharma (2010) argues that this is “the classic definition” (p. 456) of blended learning and that the term continues to develop. singh (2003), indeed, continues to develop the concept stating that its aim is to complement distance learning with f2f classes. accordingly, oliver and trigwell (2005) have defined the term as a combination of a number of pedagogic approaches and any learning technology. in addition, mcdougald (2013) discusses the number of tasks that can be done in teaching when using ict and the advantageous availability of authentic material as well as web-based material, which foster the development of real-world skills among learners. this is where voicethread™ comes to light in the present research. the daily 6 is viable through voicethread™, for it is a webbased storytelling application designed to allow users to upload videos with audio, optionally accompanied by pictures or documents. this offers the student a smooth experience and the possibility to practice meaningfully once he or she has gathered enough data from the first five steps of the former approach—daily 5. bailey (2005) provides insights on the use of technology for teaching speaking. we highlight the use of chat rooms, which, as explained by these authors, are web tools that allow interaction between users. although these tools used to limit conversation to text typing, web 2.0 tools comprise new technology that allows for voiced chats. jepson (2005) studied the repair moves of l2 learners when engaging communication on voiced chat rooms. the results of his study showed that this web 2.0 tool provides learners with opportunities to negotiate meaning, and functions as an appealing strategy for students to enrich and improve the efficiency of their communicative skills. blended learning has proved to be successful in certain other efl learning processes, such as in bañados’ (2006) study in an english program carried out with chilean students. the results of his study demonstrate a “remarkable improvement in speaking skills” (p. 542). bañados and his blended approach to english as an l2 for chilean students (call programs, online monitoring, and on-site efl teacher-led classes) demonstrated how quickly the learning of efl and ict have become of global importance, leading to the necessity of understanding factors that may affect the learning processes of young efl students. profile_21_2-taco_jul3.indd 32 5/07/19 12:18 p.m. 33profile: issues teach. prof. dev., vol. 21 no. 2, jul-dec, 2019. issn 1657-0790 (printed) 2256-5760 (online). bogotá, colombia. pages 29-44 daily 6: an approach to foster oral fluency of english as a foreign language in adolescents need for the study a needs analysis performed on a group of 13 adolescent students at a private institution in bogotá, colombia, revealed affective and linguistic needs hindering students’ oral performance. the students participated in a diagnostic-achievement test that was video-recorded from three to four minutes. the recordings showed appropriate use of vocabulary to speak at a b1 level of the common european framework of reference (cefr, council of europe, 2001), yet, their oral discourse mostly showed a2 features, as it was rather unintelligible and presented frequent hesitation. although it is necessary for a learner to be knowledgeable of vocabulary and rules of the language, this is not sufficient to enhance learners’ speaking skill. research suggests that efl learners have limited opportunities to practice or use the language outside the classroom (jaramillo chérrez, 2007). thus, the context in which students are immersed is a restraint to practice their oral english, diminishing the opportunities to become fluent speakers. in addition, nearly half of the participants in the diagnostic stage required prompting and support to maintain simple exchanges. the cefr (council of europe, 2001) describes oral fluency from a global view, as the ability the speaker has “to make him/herself understood in very short utterances even though pauses, false starts and reformulation are very evident” (p. 29). additionally, de jong, groenhout, schoonen, and hulstijn (2015) describe oral fluency “in terms of speedy and smooth delivery of speech without (filled) pauses, repetitions, and repairs” (p. 235). all of these criteria were not evidenced when assessing the students’ oral fluency. although some studies have been found in the field of oral fluency in oral production of efl, there is no evidence that a study of the daily 5 has been used as a springboard to design a methodology to promote speaking among efl learners in colombia. the daily 5 was the subject of study for lashomb (2011), who argued that the components “are all proven strategies to support children’s reading and writing development” (p. 5) by offering a strong base for a rooted system in routine and structure. in lashomb’s study, the daily 5—along with specific instruction—provided learners with “an efficient, cohesive, management system for implementing reading and writing instruction” (p. 5). the result was an unquestionably strong response in terms of attitude from the students. even though the daily 5 is a novelty in the colombian english language teaching (elt) context, it was created for american schools where speaking is not a concern as english is the learner’s first language. to fill in the gap, we modelled the format of the five steps proposed by its structure, so that students not only gain more responsibility in what they have to do during each one of the sessions, but also speak with some degree of fluency. accordingly, this research aimed to determine the possible effect that the implementation of the daily 6 might have on the oral fluency of eighth graders at a private bilingual school in bogotá, and the corresponding research question is how does using the daily 6 (a modification of the daily 5) affect the oral fluency of students with a2 (cefr) english? method the study was based on qualitative action research. this type of educative research focuses on teaching and learning issues that could be improved, and whose improvement would benefit a certain population and their social situation by developing new ideas and alternatives (burns, 2010). this study was conducted with a group of students whose evidenced difficulty was a high or appropriate level of oral fluency, a goal not yet attained. data were gathered after running an open, selective, and axial coding process for subsequent organization in a matrix that facilitated its interpretation. this eased the management of data and their subsequent analysis based on the grounded theory principles (corbin & strauss, 2008; glaser & strauss, 1967). we determined that recording students and counting the words and the pauses they uttered would be an effective way to assess profile_21_2-taco_jul3.indd 33 5/07/19 12:18 p.m. universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras34 cadena-aguilar, ortega-cuellar, & cadena-aguilar their oral fluency level (understood as a result of continuous, natural, accurate, and effective speech). these observable temporal indicators of proceduralization were established as a major basis for oral fluency (de jong & perfetti, 2011; towell, hawkins, & bazergui, 1996). participants the population of this study consists of a group of 13 eighth graders, ages 13-14. they belong to uppermiddle socioeconomic levels. the group’s oral language performance comprises an a1 english level (council of europe, 2001); however, the standards set by the school syllabus state that eighth graders should be competent at an a2 level (council of europe, 2001). likewise, the group, when dealing with english, still works with lower order thinking skills such as recognizing and exemplifying (krathwohl, 2002), which means that the daily 6 represented a challenge for them, pushing them to synthesize old knowledge into pieces of oral discourse. data collection instruments data were collected through surveys, tests, a teacher’s journal, and video-recordings. three surveys (see appendix) were conducted to retrieve attitudinal data (burns, 2010), students’ on-going perceptions, and final perceptions on the daily 6. to determine the level of oral fluency, a preand a post-test allowed registering any gains. students’ oral interventions were video-recorded to measure fluency according to temporal indicators: mean length of runs, silent pauses per minute, mean length of pauses, filled pauses per minute, disfluencies per minute, pace, and space (kormos & dénes, 2004). lastly, teachers-researchers used a weekly journal to report on factors such as motivation, oral fluency, anxiety, discipline, and cooperation. for validity and reliability, we adhered to triangulation, peer-review, and piloting of the instruments as discussed in johnson (1997) and newman and benz (1998). likewise, researchers applied a trial of every single instrument in a classroom with similar conditions to the one implementing the daily 6, testing a small-scale trial as described by sapsford and jupp (2006). in addition, interviews were aligned to the speaking section, part 1, of the international test formats ket/pet (university of cambridge, 2010). procedure and data collection the implementation of the daily 6 comprised a total of 27 hours divided into three stages; each stage lasted seven hours and the students worked independently at home two hours per week. three different lesson plans were created to guide each stage. the first stage was named “foundation lessons”. foundation lessons are meant to introduce students to the daily 6 by creating and setting the rules for behaviors and the activities to be carried out. stage 2 was named “implementation lessons”. these lessons were devoted to developing the 6 steps of the daily 6 in short periods of time (3 to 9 minutes for each step). when arriving at the sixth step—speaking to someone—students should already be empowered with material, ideas, and information to start producing english orally through a voice recording posted on voicethread™. the implementation of voicethread™ sought to reduce the stress that speaking produces in students (thornbury, 2009) by enabling them to choose the topic of their preference. students spent longer on each step as they felt more confident and built-up more stamina for independent work. the implementation of the daily 6 requires teachers and students to go over the six steps four times, increasing their pace periodically. the first lessons were devoted to becoming familiar with the procedure of the daily 6. a useful strategy to achieve this was to have students fill a chart with the “most desirable” and “least desirable” behaviors expected during the lesson. then, we focused on the students’ performance across the six steps; especially on the sixth step: speak to someone. this newly introduced step aimed at having students record their oral ideas through voicethread™ on a voluntarily selected topic profile_21_2-taco_jul3.indd 34 5/07/19 12:18 p.m. 35profile: issues teach. prof. dev., vol. 21 no. 2, jul-dec, 2019. issn 1657-0790 (printed) 2256-5760 (online). bogotá, colombia. pages 29-44 daily 6: an approach to foster oral fluency of english as a foreign language in adolescents such as comics, videogames, or sports. the easy access to this online tool allowed students to practice their speech outside the classroom in order for them to decide when their performance is satisfactory and ready to be shared with their peers. the final stage was essentially the same as the previous ones, however, they had to post their voicethread™, as in stage 2, but this time they also had to leave voice comments on their friends’ posts. this stage came to an end with the achievement test. the development of such test followed an interview format that elicited meaningful communication by means of information gaps. the students’ oral interventions were video-recorded for subsequent transcription. these video-recordings enabled us to evince the attitudinal traits displayed among students when taking the test at both diagnostic and achievement. besides the attitudinal data retrieved, we measured fluency with temporal indicators after the transcription of the students’ responses. these two observable, temporal indicators of oral fluency can be used as indicators of proceduralization, a major source of improvements in oral fluency (de jong & perfetti, 2011; towell, hawkins, & bazergui, 1996). the classroom provided students with puff seats, books, a projector, speakers, and a computer so as to create a friendly and appealing learning environment. every session was recorded for the teacher-researchers to retrieve attitudinal information on the behaviour of learners regarding the resources provided, the instructions given, and the development of each of the steps of the daily 6. since the daily 6 is intended to foster motivation and to build up stamina for independent work, the videos were used to look for signs (like body language, facial gestures, and readiness to start the lessons). data analysis and results students performed two oral interviews, which correspond to the diagnostic (d) and achievement (a) test. in figure 1, the results show the average scores of the 13 students that were tested, and these averages are discriminated amongst the seven different criteria used to assess oral fluency: mean length of runs (mlr), silent pauses per minute (spm), mean length of pauses (mlp), filled pauses per minute (fpm), disfluencies per minute (dpm), pace (p), and space (s). 20 a v e g a r e p e r t e s t test m .l.r . (d ) m .l.r . (a ) s.p .m . (d ) s.p .m . (a ) m .l.p . (d ) m .l.p . (a ) f.p .m . (d ) f.p .m . (a ) d.p .m . (d ) d.p .m . (a ) pa ce (d ) pa ce (a ) sp ac e (d ) sp ac e (a ) 15 10 5 0 figure 1. comparison of the diagnostic and achievement tests results the dot shows the exact average among each group of thirteen scores, and the lines above and under the dot represent the highest and lowest score of each group. profile_21_2-taco_jul3.indd 35 5/07/19 12:18 p.m. universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras36 cadena-aguilar, ortega-cuellar, & cadena-aguilar figure 1 also shows the improvement reached by the participants with the upper line on each of the different criteria. the mlr, for instance, displays a huge improvement among the 13 participants, as opposed to s or the dpm in which amelioration was not as broad. two other criteria in which participants demonstrated enhancement were the p and the spm, which indicate less hesitation and more time filled within speech. most of these temporal criteria comrpised undeniable evidence of progress in proceduralization (de jong & perfetti, 2011; towell et al., 1996). table 1 shows the favorable outcomes (fo), the average (a), and the less favorable outcomes (lfo). these correspond to the seven different criteria and contrast the scores students obtained in both the diagnostic (d) and achievement (a) tests. the average scores show participants increased their scores in the mlr by more than 150%, and they also reduced their spm by more than 50%. the other scores revealed less than 50% of improvement. the scores of the mlp clearly depict a slight improvement of 0.5; however, the overall results show that there were 50% less pauses per minute and these pauses were slightly shorter than the scores of the diagnostic test. likewise, to calculate whether there is a significant difference between the diagnostic and achievement test scores, a small sample hypothesis test for means was applied. table 2 shows the scope of the implementation of the daily 6 on students’ oral fluency in regard to the seven criteria aforementioned. the results of the hypothesis test indicated that five of the criteria (t = *) did not lie within the interval (-2.06; 2.06). therefore, the participants’ performance on length of runs, silent pauses, length of pauses, filled pauses, and pace was affected significantly during the implementation of the present study. in contrast, the criteria disfluencies (t = 1.65) and space (t = -2.003) did not report gains as they did indeed lie within such interval. table 1. diagnostic and achievement tests’ results mlr (seconds) spm (amount) mlp (seconds) fpm (amount) dpm (amount) pace (seconds) space (seconds) d a d a d a d a d a d a d a fo 6.10 20.6 8.59 3.4 1.64 1.17 3.01 1.67 0.6 0.3 6.9 11.0 0.1 0.2 a 5.3 17.3 9.5 4.3 1.8 1.3 3.5 2.0 0.75 0.41 7.92 12.5 0.14 0.18 lfo 4.57 14.0 10.4 5.2 1.88 1.35 4.04 2.36 0.89 0.56 8.94 14.0 0.15 0.19 table 2. difference between diagnostic and achievement tests results 95% confidence interval initial variance final variance tnumber of participants = 13 diagnostic test average achievement test average mean length of runs 5.3 17.3 7.64 139.99 *-3.56 silent pauses per minute 9.5 4.3 10.97 11.16 *3.99 mean length of pauses 1.8 1.3 0.18 0.11 *3.27 filled pauses per minute 3.5 2 3.45 1.57 *2.43 disfluencies per minute 0.8 0.4 0.26 0.286 1.65 pace 7.9 12.5 13.40 31.449 *-2.485 space 0.147 0.192 0.0029 0.003 -2.003 profile_21_2-taco_jul3.indd 36 5/07/19 12:18 p.m. 37profile: issues teach. prof. dev., vol. 21 no. 2, jul-dec, 2019. issn 1657-0790 (printed) 2256-5760 (online). bogotá, colombia. pages 29-44 daily 6: an approach to foster oral fluency of english as a foreign language in adolescents as to the qualitative data, in first place emerged affective factors such as self-confidence and motivation, which were crucial for the amelioration of oral fluency among students through their enhanced participation in the daily 6. although the ultimate goal of the study did not focus on affective factors, it was inevitable to witness evidence of self-confidence and motivation among the participants. table 3 displays evidence retrieved from the surveys (see appendix). subsequently, the qualitative data collected from various sources (see table 4) resulted in three main categories: importance of technology for the speaking skill, daily 6 as a means of improving oral fluency, and effect of daily 6 on oral fluency. these categories emerged after a continuous contrast of information and after following creswell’s (2012) method of “generating and connecting categories by comparing incidents in the data to other incidents, incidents to categories, and categories to other categories” (p. 434). consequently, after a process of theoretical saturation-integration and the analysis of the interwoven themes and concepts, a core category emerged. table 5 shows how different codes interrelate and are present among the three categories depicted. table 3. impact of the daily 6 on affective factors motivation self-confidence survey item 4: how was your experience with the daily 6? “it’s been interesting as this is another way to learn from our regular classes”. (s1) “excellent, i like it so much because it’s a better learning method in relation to the common ones”. (s2) “just great because there are different activities and we switch, and it doesn’t turn boring”. (s3) “good, as i have developed interest in reading, i spend more time reading, writing, and speaking”. (s4) “great, because i feel more comfortable and secure whether i speak, because i can practice before using voicethread™”. (s1) “good, because i’m not afraid of speaking in public and now i feel comfortable when speaking”. (s2) “it was a good experience because i’ve gained an interest in reading, writing, and speaking in english.” (s3) table 4. data categories and data collection instruments categories importance of technology daily 6 as a means of improving oral fluency effect of the daily 6 on oral fluency instruments initial survey middle survey diagnostic test middle survey teacher’s journal teacher’s journal teacher’s journal final survey achievement test profile_21_2-taco_jul3.indd 37 5/07/19 12:18 p.m. universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras38 cadena-aguilar, ortega-cuellar, & cadena-aguilar table 5. data coding and emerging categories categories importance of technology daily 6 as a means of improving oral fluency effect of the daily 6 on oral fluency appealing alternative to traditional approaches initial survey, question 3 “technology is more attractive than books”. (s5) middle survey, question 4 “excellent, i loved it because it’s a better learning method that the one is usually used”. (s11) although students 6 and 10 evinced slight improvement in their oral fluency, students 3 and 4 evinced significant improvements. (achievement test) linguistic/ skills work initial survey, question 2 “we’ve done karaoke and some online tests about the basic structures of english”. (s5) middle survey, question 5 students report work on vocabulary and writing skills as the most difficult. students 1, 4, 5, 10, and 13 reported speaking the most difficult skill. slight improvement evident in students 6, 9, and 10. average improvement evident in students 7, 12, and 13. significant improvement in students 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 8, and 11. (achievement test) a motivating factor initial survey, question 3 “technology motivates me to learn english”. (s13) middle survey, question 6 students 4, 5, 8, and 13 reported feeling motivated when working with “speaking to someone”. question 1 students 1, 3, 6, 7, 8, 10, 11, and 13 reported feeling motivated by the option of deciding upon the material they read. students 1, 2, 3, 11, 12, and 13 evinced average or significant improvements in oral fluency. (achievement test) st 1, however, reported feeling motivated by “speaking to someone”, and evinced a slight improvement. students 9 and 10, who did not report feeling motivated by technology (though student 10 reported motivation for “speaking to someone”) had slight improvements. (initial, middle, and final survey) enhanced learning outcomes middle survey, question 4 “good, i’ve felt more like learning english and vocabulary than before in my regular classes”. (s3) “i love it so much because i learnt more english than in any other year”. (s5) students 3, 5, and 11 had significant improvement in their oral fluency. (achievement test) importance of technology as table 5 shows, learners reported having used technology in their english lessons prior to the implementation of the daily 6 in the initial survey. technology was also a matter of importance present within the data retrieved among other instruments; the middle survey and the teacher’s journal revealed a positive impact of the sixth step (speaking to someone), given its relation to voicethread™. although students struggled at first, they became familiar and accustomed to using this technology to enhance their oral fluency. in addition, students whose survey responses favored the use of technology, achieved significant improvements in the measurement of their oral fluency. profile_21_2-taco_jul3.indd 38 5/07/19 12:18 p.m. 39profile: issues teach. prof. dev., vol. 21 no. 2, jul-dec, 2019. issn 1657-0790 (printed) 2256-5760 (online). bogotá, colombia. pages 29-44 daily 6: an approach to foster oral fluency of english as a foreign language in adolescents daily 6 as a means of improving oral fluency through instruments like the middle survey and the teacher’s journal, we gathered enough evidence to support the daily 6 as an innovative and efficient approach to improve oral fluency. some students even reported greater success in the current english lessons compared to other school years. after data triangulation, it was evinced that greater improvement came to those students with a positive attitude towards technology use and active class participation with the daily 6. moreover, as seen in table 5, students who reported an increase in motivation to study english with the daily 6 succeeded with superior scores in the achievement test for speaking. effect of the daily 6 on oral fluency the third and last category was basically distilled from the results of the diagnostic and achievement tests. a positive effect was predominant among learners’ oral fluency, while a minority of the participants experienced only slight improvements. the daily 6 did not produce any negative impact on the participants’ oral fluency or learning process; there were no reports of unpleasant experiences. the absence of negative feedback from the participants and the scores led to a positive assembly of this category. additionally, the achievement test and its video recordings gathered the evidence to state that the participants’ oral fluency had improved. nevertheless, every learner achieved different degrees of improvement as previously evidenced in the achievement test scores. core category undoubtedly, the core category for this study is “the daily 6 as a means of improving oral fluency”. the data analysis process from coding stages, to category mapping and category integration, revealed a clear trait that led the population to identify the daily 6 as an approach created to enhance their learning outcomes. it also led to identify the daily 6 (category) as the widest sphere entailing literacy skills work, language skills work, the use of technology (category) in the english classroom, the perceptions and conclusions among the population as well as the evidenced (by means of the oral fluency measurements performed before and after implementing the daily 6) and reported (by means of the final survey) enhancement of the population’s oral fluency (displayed in the effect on oral fluency category). conclusion and discussion the daily 6 was implemented to determine the effect it might have on the participants’ oral fluency. the researchers found that the daily 6 had a positive impact on the participants’ oral fluency thanks to (a) the decrease of anxiety, (b) the fostering of motivation and self-directed behaviors, and (c) the speaking opportunities provided by the daily 6’s sixth step. these results answered the research question of this study by demonstrating that the daily 6 positively affected the participants’ oral fluency. the effectiveness of the daily 6 as an approach sheds light on the significance of this study’s results for the elt community by adding a novel approach to the field. this statement also invites fellow researchers to deepen their understanding of the relationship between the lowering of enhancement of oral fluency with the daily 6 and the assessment practices that should be implemented with this approach. the effect of the daily 6 on the participants’ oral fluency might be compared to the studies that have been published in recent years and in different places. the majority of these studies have reported enhancement of oral fluency; some of them have ameliorated affective factors such as anxiety to enhance oral fluency and some others have proposed repetition of tasks to make students aware of their own progress. there are two evident differences between those previous studies and the present one: population, and the approach with which oral fluency skills were developed. the latter is deemed more important and discussed in the following paragraphs. profile_21_2-taco_jul3.indd 39 5/07/19 12:18 p.m. universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras40 cadena-aguilar, ortega-cuellar, & cadena-aguilar gutiérrez (2005) and usma (2015) proposed interactional tasks among their participants to boost their oral fluency skills. their studies share one similarity with the daily 6 (and other studies hereby mentioned): decrease of anxiety among learners. it is safe to highlight that many studies have identified anxiety as an obstacle for would-be fluent speakers. another clear example of such a study is mir’s (2006). this article narrates how the author has implemented recorded oral journals in her lessons repeatedly, so her students would become accustomed to speaking english for several minutes, increasing their self-confidence and lowering their anxiety levels. the daily 6 has achieved a decrease in anxiety levels among learners thanks to the itinerary nature of its six steps, rather than by just repeating the same task several times. nevertheless, the recorded oral journals did not seek accuracy in grammatical terms but oral fluency of speech. the aforementioned article demonstrated that pushing the participants towards accuracy-oriented goals inherently increased their negative anxiety, instead of reducing it; this is a characteristic that is present in the daily 6 as well. another key strategy used by some authors to develop oral fluency skills in their participants consisted of self-assessment and self-correction (alam & uddin, 2013; duque, 2014). these authors intended to advise their participants with explicit knowledge on their progress. at mid-term, learners would start noticing a degree of enhancement that might encourage them by giving them a sense of accomplishment. the daily 6 also provides learners with self-reflection opportunities but it does not entail any self-assessment stages. this means that the results of progress depend exclusively on the teacher’s assessment of the learners’ performance. moreover, a different implemented strategy was collaborative learning (suarez rodriguez et al., 2015). these authors argue that, in their study, collaborative work resulted in learners gaining awareness of their strengths and weaknesses and making plans to overcome such weaknesses. in a parallel way, collaborative work also promoted class participation among the learners, which in turn is evidenced by lowered anxiety. the daily 6 entails collaboration in the steps read to someone, listen to someone, and speaking to someone. there are steps to be carried out individually, as well as steps that require collaborative work. in both, the present study and in suarez rodriguez et al.s’ study, collaborative work was reported as a cause for an observed decrease of anxiety among learners. the most recent study related to oral fluency in colombia (montilla et al., 2016) also achieved low degrees of anxiety among its participants. however, the researchers applied a very specific strategy: audio blogs. according to the authors, audio blogs meant a novel opportunity for learners, who took advantage of this opportunity and became interested in recording their voices and participating in the blogs. this repeated task helped learners become aware of their own learning processes and changes in their oral fluency. the daily 6’s sixth step “speaking to someone” was an equivalent of this study’s strategy. students were prompted to record their voices using a web tool. the use of technology was welcomed by the participants of the daily 6, and the recordings they made evidenced a slow but steady decrease in anxiety. these strategies led learners to experience positive changes in their oral fluency, which was ultimately displayed when learners were tested after the implementation of the daily 6. although a sample of 13 students may not mean a major piece of evidence for the research world, teacherresearchers need to bear in mind that the daily 6 entails an inventory of materials, resources, and strategies that required a high amount of data, preparation, and monitoring. to obtain a larger sample, the researchers would have needed a greater amount of records that might not have easy to control for transcription and qualitative analysis. this small sample may have helped us not only in the data collection process but also in the development of the different activities within a pleasant and lowanxiety environment. a group of participants comprising profile_21_2-taco_jul3.indd 40 5/07/19 12:18 p.m. 41profile: issues teach. prof. dev., vol. 21 no. 2, jul-dec, 2019. issn 1657-0790 (printed) 2256-5760 (online). bogotá, colombia. pages 29-44 daily 6: an approach to foster oral fluency of english as a foreign language in adolescents over 20 students would require more than 25 hours of implementation. therefore, teachers implementing the daily 6 need to bear in mind that it is mandatory to boast a wide variety of book materials for students to choose from. should a classroom have more than 20 students, the teacher may face logistic issues implementing the daily 6. in this light, it is necessary to take an inventory of the available resources in stock before starting the process. consequently, an option could be to have a teacher-assistant while introducing the daily 6, as once the methodology is introduced, the teacher-researcher’s role becomes that of an observer. lastly, this study is a call for pedagogical innovation towards current efforts to ameliorate the conditions under which oral production and communication are developed in the efl classroom. it encourages researchers to bring a foreign approach to english teaching and learning (daily 5), and then adapt it to become suitable upon its application in a local context with a specific need: the fostering of oral fluency in efl. the results showed a positive effect on the participants’ oral fluency after implementing the daily 6 using voicethread ™, displayed in the fostering of autonomous behaviors, development of higher order thinking skills through decision making and meaningful practice and interaction. the daily 6 is a new approach that needs to and may be enhanced to become a well-known method to heighten speaking in foreign languages. references alam, q., & uddin, a. b. (2013). improving oral communications skills of pakistani public schools’ students. international journal of english language teaching, 1(2), 17-32. bailey, k. m. (2005). practical english language teaching: speaking. new york, us: mcgraw-hill. bañados, e. (2006). a blended-learning pedagogical model for teaching and learning efl successfully through an online interactive multimedia environment. calico journal, 23(3), 533-550. https://doi.org/10.1558/cj.v23i3.533-550. boushey, g., & moser, j. (2014). the daily 5: fostering literacy in the elementary grades (2nd ed.). portland, us: stenhouse publishers. brown, j. d. (2003, may). promoting fluency in efl classrooms. paper presented at the 2nd annual jalt pan-sig conference, tokyo, japan. burns, a. c. (2010). doing action research in english language teaching: a guide for practitioners. new york, us: routledge. corbin, j., & strauss, a. 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(2009). how to teach speaking. london, uk: longman. towell, r., hawkins, r., & bazergui, n. (1996). the development of fluency in advanced learners of french. applied linguistics, 17, 84-119. https://doi.org/10.1093/applin/17.1.84. university of cambridge. (2010). cambridge preliminary english test 6 with answers: examination papers from university of cambridge esol examinations. cambridge, uk: cambridge university press. usma, d. a. (2015). l2 spoken fluency through interactional tasks (unpublished master’s thesis). universidad de la sabana, chía, colombia. profile_21_2-taco_jul3.indd 42 5/07/19 12:18 p.m. 43profile: issues teach. prof. dev., vol. 21 no. 2, jul-dec, 2019. issn 1657-0790 (printed) 2256-5760 (online). bogotá, colombia. pages 29-44 daily 6: an approach to foster oral fluency of english as a foreign language in adolescents about the authors roso freddy cadena aguilar is an english teacher at gimnasio los cerros in bogotá, colombia, and holds a master’s degree in english teaching for autonomous learning environments from universidad de la sabana in chía, colombia. his research interests lie within learning strategies, ict, and metacognition. javier hernando ortega cuellar holds a master’s degree in english teaching for autonomous learning environments from universidad de la sabana in chía, colombia. his research interests include pedagogical issues, ict tools applied in education, and innovative practices in the classroom. albedro cadena aguilar is a professor, lecturer, and researcher at universidad de la sabana, chía, colombia. his areas of research lie within self-directed learning, assessment, and teacher training. he also acts as an icelt tutor and a journal reviewer for frontier for education and laclil. profile_21_2-taco_jul3.indd 43 5/07/19 12:18 p.m. universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras44 profile: issues teach. prof. dev., vol. 21 no. 2, jul-dec, 2019. issn 1657-0790 (printed) 2256-5760 (online). bogotá, colombia. pages 45-61 cadena-aguilar, ortega-cuellar, & cadena-aguilar appendix: surveys initial survey middle survey final survey question 1 have you used technology in your english classes? do you enjoy choosing what you want to read (i-pick)? did you find the daily 6 to be an interesting way to learn english? question 2 how have you used technology in your english classes? do you consider the daily 6 to be an interesting way to learn english? which of the six steps of daily 6 did you enjoy the most? question 3 what is your opinion about using technology in the english classes? which of the six steps of daily 6 do you enjoy the most? do you have any comments about the daily 6? is there anything that we could improve? question 4 how often do you use technology in your english classes? how do you feel when working on speaking to someone? which of the six steps would you like to continue practicing to improve your english proficiency? question 5 do you consider important to use technology in your english classes? after using the daily 6, do you consider your english proficiency to have improved? why / why not? did you enjoy choosing what you wanted to read (i-pick)? question 6 would you like to use technology in your english classes? question 7 would you like to improve your speaking skills in english by using technology? question 8 what do you consider to be your greatest weakness in english? question 9 how often do you speak in english? question 10 do you use english to talk to your english teacher? question 11 do you like reading? question 12 how often do you read texts in english? question 13 do you like discussing the books you read with other people? question 14 would you like to speak better in english? profile_21_2-taco_jul3.indd 44 5/07/19 12:18 p.m. 87profile vol. 19, no. 2, july-december 2017. issn 1657-0790 (printed) 2256-5760 (online). bogotá, colombia. pages 87-100 http://dx.doi.org/10.15446/profile.v19n2.60231 rhetorical, metacognitive, and cognitive strategies in teacher candidates’ essay writing las estrategias retóricas, metacognitivas y cognitivas en ensayos escritos por futuros profesores claudio díaz larenas* universidad de concepción, concepción, chile lucía ramos leiva** universidad católica del norte, antofagasta, chile mabel ortiz navarrete*** universidad católica de la santísima concepción, concepción, chile this paper reports on a study about the rhetoric, metacognitive, and cognitive strategies pre-service teachers use before and after a process-based writing intervention when completing an argumentative essay. the data were collected through two think-aloud protocols while 21 chilean english as a foreign language pre-service teachers completed an essay task. the findings show that strategies such as summarizing, reaffirming, and selecting ideas were only evidenced during the post intervention essay, without the use of communication and socio-affective strategies in either of the two essays. all in all, a process-based writing intervention does not only influence the number of times a strategy is used, but also the number of students who employs strategies when writing an essay—two key considerations for the devising of any writing program. key words: argumentative essay, pre-service teachers, think-aloud protocol, writing strategies. este artículo informa sobre un estudio relacionado con la identificación de estrategias retóricas, metacognitivas y cognitivas utilizadas por profesores en formación antes y después de una intervención centrada en la escritura en proceso de realizar un ensayo argumentativo. los datos se recolectaron mediante dos protocolos en voz alta, mientras veintiún futuros profesores de inglés chilenos escribían un ensayo. los resultados muestran que estrategias como resumen, reafirmación y selección de ideas se evidenciaron solo durante el segundo ensayo, sin ejemplos de estrategias de comunicación y socio-afectivas en ninguno de los dos escritos. en suma, una intervención de escritura en proceso no solo influye en la cantidad de estrategias empleadas, sino también en el número de estudiantes que las usan cuando escriben un ensayo argumentativo; dos consideraciones clave para la creación de cualquier programa de escritura. palabras clave: ensayo argumentativo, estrategias de escritura, estudiantes de un programa de formación de profesores de inglés, protocolo de pensamiento en voz alta. * e-mail: claudiodiaz@udec.cl ** e-mail: luramos@ucn.cl *** e-mail: mortiz@ucsc.cl how to cite this article (apa, 6th ed.): díaz larenas, c., ramos leiva, l., & ortiz navarrete, m. (2017). rhetorical, metacognitive, and cognitive strategies in teacher candidates’ essay writing. profile issues in teachers’ professional development, 19(2), 87-100. http://dx.doi. org/10.15446/profile.v19n2.60231. this article was received on september 21, 2016, and accepted on march 20, 2017. this is an open access article distributed under the terms of the creative commons license attribution-noncommercial-noderivatives 4.0 international license. consultation is possible at http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/. universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras88 díaz larenas, ramos leiva & ortiz navarrete introduction the research focus of this paper is essay writing because over our years of teaching experience as teacher educators, we have seen, read, and heard that essay writing is one of the skills on which english as a foreign language (efl) pre-service teachers score the lowest. it is the skill they very often complain about not knowing how to approach. learning to write means making the appropriate choices to convey meaning, responding to a communicative purpose and considering the audience who will read the written piece. writing involves a different kind of mental process: thinking, reflecting, preparing, rehearsing, making mistakes, and finding alternative solutions. in this research project, the writing skill is approached from a process-oriented perspective, which involves different stages: prewriting, planning, drafting, reflection, feedback from peers or the tutor, proofreading, and editing (hedge, 2005; krashen, 1984; kroll, 2003; white & arndt, 1991). the process approach treats all writing as a creative act which requires time and positive feedback to be done well. in process writing, the teacher moves away from being someone who sets students a writing topic and receives the finished product for correction without any intervention in the writing process itself. (stanley, 2003, p. 1) writing is perceived as a recursive process because the writer needs to spend time revisiting and reflecting on his/her work (tarnopolsky, 2000). recursive writing allows the rethinking of all stages of one’s writing. coffin et al.’s (2003) model evidences that the sociocultural aspect is relevant during the writing process. under a sociocultural perspective, writing is not just a cognitive activity, but becomes a skill in which complex and interacting social, cultural, cognitive, and linguistic processes are involved. a process-based approach constitutes a paradigm shift that views writing as a procedure of developing organization, involving strategies, multiple drafts, and formative feedback. studies in process writing have shed light on different ways of teaching writing and developing methods and materials to help learners overcome the difficulties they experience when they write. these findings certainly change the teaching focus from what we write to how we write (bayat, 2014; johnson, 2008). investigating writing problems is therefore challenging and hard work that should be handled carefully. this paper aims at identifying university students’ writing strategies during an essay-like situation before and after being exposed to a pedagogical intervention that consisted of 16 sessions in which students practiced writing essays following a process-based approach. this paper will only focus on unpacking participants’ use of writing strategies through a think-aloud protocol conducted before and after the intervention. the study’s research aims are: • to identify teacher candidates’ use of writing strategies when completing an argumentative essay. • to determine the extent to which following a process approach to writing enhances the use of writing strategies by pre-service teachers. literature review writing strategies nowadays learning to write is conceived as a task that follows a process that contains different stages as figure 1 shows. figure 1. writing process planning a draft revising writing a textediting 89profile vol. 19, no. 2, july-december 2017. issn 1657-0790 (printed) 2256-5760 (online). bogotá, colombia. pages 87-100 rhetorical, metacognitive, and cognitive strategies in teacher candidates’ essay writing as figure 1 shows these stages usually involve planning a written draft and writing a text, besides revising and modifying this text (hyland, 2004). this process is recursive, which means there is always a shift back for revision and editing. according to mu (2005), in order to write successfully, learners articulate their prior knowledge concerning linguistic contents (conceptual knowledge) and the application of specific actions to solve writing problems (procedural knowledge). these two types of knowledge are transferred into the use of different writing strategies. another important aspect analyzed in this study is the use of writing strategies employed by students. a strategy is any tool, specific action, or behavior someone uses to solve a problem (coffin et al., 2003; shapira & hertz-lazarowitz, 2005); in other words, when writers write we assume they use strategies to accomplish their task. for mu (2005) effective writers use rhetorical, metacognitive, cognitive, communicative, and social-affective strategies when they write: (a) rhetorical strategies deal with types of texts and their structures; (b) metacognitive strategies are related to writers’ self-regulation concerning cognitive procedures when producing a text; (c) cognitive strategies allow users to process, store, and transform different types of knowledge; (d) communicative strategies focus on conveying a message effectively; and (e) social/ affective strategies are those which writers employ when interacting with other people. in this present study, students used communicative and social strategies neither before nor after the intervention so the analysis will be limited to the rhetorical, metacognitive, and cognitive strategies. rhetorical strategies rhetorical strategies are defined by mu (2005) as “the strategies the writer organizes to present his ideas in a way that is acceptable” (p. 3). according to the author, rhetorical strategies include: the organization of an essay, the use of the mother tongue to organize paragraphs and sentences, and the presentation of ideas in writing conventions acceptable to native speakers of that language. metacognitive strategies metacognitive strategies refer to students’ global skills and knowledge about cognition for helping them raise their self-awareness, direct their own learning, and monitor their own progress. schmidt (2001) considers them as a conscious process used by learners to control their language learning. according to wiles (1997), metacognition is defined in terms of “self-management . . . the ability . . . to plan, monitor and revise, or . . . control . . . learning” (p. 17). such strategies are classified by ehrman, leaver, and oxford (2003) as including planning on writing, goal setting, preparing for action, focusing, using schemata, activity monitoring, assessing its success, and looking for practice opportunities by writers to help them plan, generate, process, and present information. it also refers to the strategies that enable students to overcome writing difficulties and anxiety. (p. 317) some researchers attribute success in writing to metacognition (mata, 2005; oxford, 1996, 2011; parodi, 2003). authors like parodi (2003), for example, declare that “metacognitive ability is seen as an essential component in a good writer” (p. 119). this implies that the writer should be aware of his/her learning process in order to be an effective writer. cognitive strategies cognitive strategies, on the other hand, enable students to process, transform, and create information in order to assist them in performing complex tasks, using the language effectively and engaging actively “in the knowledge acquisition process” (mccrindle & christensen, 1995, p. 170). according to oxford (2011), cognitive strategies refer to organizing information, reading out loud, analyzing, and summarizing, and can also include the use of a dictionary (which can also universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras90 díaz larenas, ramos leiva & ortiz navarrete appear as a social strategy). according to díaz rodríguez (2014), “cognitive and metacognitive strategies work together” (p. 19). the difference between both strategies is that the former is used to support development in learning and the latter to monitor and control learning. in fact, cognitive and metacognitive strategies are not independent from one another; they work together while the subject is performing a task (cook, 2008; cook & singleton, 2014). method this is a qualitative and descriptive research study that focuses on eliciting participants’ writing strategies at two specific moments: before and after a processbased writing intervention. the focus of this study relies on identifying what strategies teacher candidates use when they are actually writing the essay through the think-aloud protocol. the research participants comprised 21 pre-service teachers in their third year of university training in an efl teacher education program. the average ages are 22 and 23 years old and their english proficiency is at level b2.1 the participants consisted of 16 women and 5 men. in chile, efl teacher training programs last about five years and the curriculum targets the development of english language skills, pedagogical knowledge, practicum, and general competencies that allow future teachers to become teachers in all school levels in a public, semi-public, or private school (the three educational realities in chile). this paper does not approach the impact of the intervention in participants’ essay writing skills as this is beyond the scope of this research project; on the contrary, the interest of this paper is on identifying teacher candidates’ strategy 1 b2 level, according to the common european framework of reference for languages (cef or cefr) and the council of europe. level b2-upper intermediate is defined as follows: a person who can understand the main ideas of complex texts and can produce clear detailed text. s/he can spontaneously enter into a conversation (https:// www.eur.nl/english/ltc/cefr_levels/). repertoire before and after an intervention consisting of developing writing as a process. research technique in order to study students’ writing strategies while writing an essay-like text, a think-aloud protocol was used. ericsson and simon (1993) proposed the thinkaloud protocol as a technique to record the cognitive processes experienced by subjects during the completion of a task. this technique (see appendix) requires the subjects to express their thoughts aloud during the production of a text without the researcher’s intervention. this technique has been used in the area of cognitive psychology in order to analyze problem-solving tasks and its use has been extended to analyze the processes that occur during text production. according to ericsson and simon (1993), this technique may be more effective than others, due to the fact that through verbalization during the completion of a task, important cognitive processes can be revealed. orality, as samway (2006) states, is an element that always comes out during text production as writers often talk while writing and arranging words to fit into sentences and sentences to fit into paragraphs and texts. procedure in the context of an academic writing course that is part of the efl teacher education curriculum, students were exposed to sixteen sessions, taking a processbased approach to essay writing in which they wrote four essays and multiple drafts. the topics covered in the essays were university life, technology, jobs, and sports. before session one, that is to say, before the intervention, students wrote an essay which was audiotaped through the think-aloud protocol. after session 16, immediately after the end of the intervention, students wrote another essay. the participants’ use of writing strategies was also analyzed through the use of the same think-aloud protocol. the two argumentative essays dealt with different topics, but they kept the traditional 91profile vol. 19, no. 2, july-december 2017. issn 1657-0790 (printed) 2256-5760 (online). bogotá, colombia. pages 87-100 rhetorical, metacognitive, and cognitive strategies in teacher candidates’ essay writing organization of such types of writing: introduction, body, and conclusion. researchers compared pre and post intervention think-aloud protocols in terms of the number of writing strategies that became evidenced. researchers instructed participants in both the purpose of the study and the think-aloud protocol procedure. the allocated time for writing each essay was 20 minutes. both think-aloud protocols were conducted at the lab, using microphones and headphones to record students’ thoughts and participants could use either english or spanish during the verbalization of their thoughts. the same procedure was followed before and after the intervention. table 1 exemplifies the sequence followed in the research procedure: table 1. research procedure sequence pre-think aloud procedure: academic argumentative essay: • a minimum of 300 words. • 30 minutes to write it. • assessment criteria: development of ideas, organization, quality, and language (see appendix for more details). 16 session process-based writing intervention post-think aloud procedure: academic argumentative essay: • a minimum of 300 words. • 30 minutes to write it. • assessment criteria: development of ideas, organization, quality, and language. from the two think aloud protocols, the participants’ writing strategies were extracted through the content analysis technique. data analysis the data collected from the pre and post think-aloud protocols were interpreted using the content analysis technique. mu’s (2005) categories of english as a second language (esl) writing strategies (see appendix) were used as a framework to identify and classify rhetorical, cognitive, and metacognitive strategies. there were no signs of communicative and socio-affective strategies in either of the think-aloud protocols administered to participants. the data analysis allowed identifying what strategies participants were using and the number of times they were using them when completing their essays. this means, for example, that one single student could have used the same strategy several times during the completion of his/her essay. in this sense, the research interest relies on, firstly, identifying the strategy type and, secondly, examining the number of times one strategy was used during the essay writing. table 2 shows the main rhetorical, metacognitive, and cognitive writing strategies used by the participants. it can be observed from table 2 that the participants used different types of writing during the completion of their essays. table 2. main writing strategies identified rhetorical metacognitive cognitive organizing code-switching translating identifying and correcting errors revising rereading reasoning elaborating ideas contrasting summarizing self-questioning identifying key ideas expressing opinions reaffirming connecting ideas selecting ideas rewriting looking for information table 3 shows fragments of participants’ thoughts while writing an argumentative essay. these fragments reveal the use of different types of writing strategies. figure 2 shows the number of times each writing strategy was used by participants before and after the intervention, that is, in their writing of the first and universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras92 díaz larenas, ramos leiva & ortiz navarrete table 3. writing strategies: participants’ fragments writing strategies strategies identified fragmentsa rhetorical strategies organizing ideas “and now i have to see the structure of the essay, i will talk about the student’s perspective first, then the teacher’s perspective and i will finish the essay with my own opinion” (pre-intervention think-aloud) codeswitching “sometimes students find more distractions in class than at home. claro, aquí estoy diciendo mi idea principal” (of course, here i am mentioning my main idea). (pre-intervention think-aloud) translating “como la mayoría de la gente sabe de las responsabilidades que uno tiene que tener cuando entra a la universidad. most people are aware of the responsibilities that come along with entering university” (post-intervention think-aloud) metacognitive strategies re-reading “estoy casi terminando el párrafo y creo que voy coherente con la introducción y la idea central… voy a leerlo una vez” (i am almost finished with this paragraph and i believe it is coherent with the introduction and main idea. i will reread it once more). (pre-intervention think-aloud) identifying errors “well i repeated three words in this paragraph and it sounds badly. (pause) i’ll replace them with synonyms” (pre-intervention think-aloud) revising “i think i will check the text in detail...mmmm...for example...i think i could improve this sentence here...it does not sound coherent...lol...i’d better write it again” (pre-intervention think-aloud) cognitive strategies reasoning “let’s see, it is important to take class attendance into account, however, it is the student’s responsibility to catch up with the entire content of a missed class” (pre-intervention think-aloud) selecting ideas “then i think that with those two or three ideas it is enough to start my essay” (pre-intervention think-aloud) expressing opinions “me gustaría referirme como a experiencias personales…para dar mi opinión” (i would like to refer to my personal experiences, to give my opinion). (post-intervention think-aloud) selfquestioning “ya voy a hacer una pregunta que esté más relacionada con los profesores, (i am going to ask a question more closely related to teachers) if you, mmm, no, if you were a teacher or if you were the teacher, no. if you were in my position, mmmmm. i’m going to change to student again, if you were…were, mmm porque (because) were es como más improbable (is more unlikely)”. (preintervention think-aloud) looking for information “ay, ¿cúal es la preposición? a ver, la voy a buscar” (hey, what is the preposition? let’s see, i am going to search for it). (post-intervention think-aloud) elaborating ideas “necesito otra razón…mmm…las clases están hechas por una razón…por lo tanto…faltar a las clases…faltar a las clases puede provocar que pierdas información importante para ser profesional… ¿cómo escribo eso?” (i need another argument…mmm…lessons are taught for a reason…therefore, skipping lessons can make you miss important information to become a professional…how do i write this?). (pre-intervention think-aloud) identifying key ideas “eh, bueno como razón principal está el adquirir la mayor cantidad de conocimientos. el estar en contacto con, con ay. con el entorno educativo, eh. ay, a ver, ¿qué más? pienso que…bueno en realidad estas son las razones” (ok, to acquire the greatest amount of knowledge is the main reason…to be in touch with…eh…the educational environment, ehhh, what else? well, in fact these are the arguments). (post-intervention think-aloud) a the english translation of the fragments in spanish is ours. 93profile vol. 19, no. 2, july-december 2017. issn 1657-0790 (printed) 2256-5760 (online). bogotá, colombia. pages 87-100 rhetorical, metacognitive, and cognitive strategies in teacher candidates’ essay writing second essay after the 16 process-based writing sessions had been completed. as can be seen in figure 2, the writing strategy reasoning appeared 44 times in the pre think-aloud protocol and 12 times in the post thinkaloud protocol. organizing ideas was used 54 times in the first essay and went down to 20 in the second essay. elaborating ideas was almost used 60 times before the intervention and participants only used it 21 times after the intervention. code-switching reached being used 50 times in the first essay to decrease to 17 occasions in the second essay. as for revising, this strategy almost reached 40 occurrences in the first think-aloud and decreased almost 50% in the second think-aloud. it might be that after the 16 sessions of a process-writing approach, participants internalized these strategies to the point that they did not need to verbalize them any longer during the writing of the post-intervention argumentative essay. interestingly, strategies such as summarizing, reaffirming, selecting ideas and translating did not appear in the first essay and started to be used just after the intervention. it might also be that participants’ background knowledge of the essay topic may trigger their use of certain strategies when completing the task considering that in both think-aloud protocols students had to write an academic argumentative essay. figure 2 shows the type of writing strategy students used before and after the intervention. it can be noticed that before the intervention the writing strategies most frequently used by most of the participants were: reasoning, organizing, elaborating ideas, revising, and code-switching. it can also be observed that the use of these strategies decreased in the writing of the essay in the post intervention phase because students widened their repertoire of strategies; in other words, other strategies started to be used after having been exposed to the process-based writing intervention, such as re-reading and rewriting. this is quite logical in the context of the multiple drafts they had to write during the intervention. strategies such as summarizing, reaffirming, selecting ideas, and translating were declared to be used by students as a result of all the editing they had to do in the process-based writing intervention. figure 2 also shows that other most frequently used strategies after the intervention were: contrasting, rereading, expressing opinion, connecting ideas, and rewriting. the writing of multiple drafts and the editing work conducted by participants during the process-based writing intervention might clearly have an influence on stimulating the use of different and varied writing strategies as students became more skillful at writing argumentative essays. figure 2. writing strategies used by participants before (indicated as black) and after (indicated as grey) the intervention re as on in g 0 10 20 30 40 50 60 70 universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras94 díaz larenas, ramos leiva & ortiz navarrete a further analysis can be done by looking at table 4, which details the number of students who used each strategy type before and after the intervention. interestingly, during the post-intervention essay more students started to use each one of the strategies. in 14 out of 17 strategies presented in table 4, there was an increase in the number of students who used them. the strategies of organizing and elaborating ideas, for example, remained equal in terms of the number of students who employed them before and after the intervention. only in the strategy of reasoning was there a decrease in the number of students using it after the intervention. both cognitive and metacognitive types of strategies had a meaningful increase in number during the post intervention essay. all in all, while some writing strategies appeared less frequently (explained above) during the post intervention essay, there was a clear increase in the number of students who started to employ each strategy in their essays after the intervention. discussion from the findings, it could be observed that the writing strategies most frequently used before the intervention were not the most frequently used after the intervention. in other words, while the use of some writing strategies decreased in frequency after the intervention, others increased. sadi and othman (2012) argue that good writers devote more time to planning, organizing, and revising their ideas. on the other hand, table 4. number of students who used each strategy before and after the intervention strategy before the intervention after the intervention rhetorical type organizing ideas 20 20 code-switching 16 17 translating 0 6 metacognitive type identifying and correcting errors 12 16 revising 16 19 rereading 13 17 cognitive type elaborating ideas 19 19 reasoning 21 12 contrasting 4 6 summarizing 0 10 self questioning 11 14 defining ideas 15 20 expressing opinion 4 17 reaffirming 0 6 connecting ideas 5 21 selecting ideas 0 18 rewriting 3 11 95profile vol. 19, no. 2, july-december 2017. issn 1657-0790 (printed) 2256-5760 (online). bogotá, colombia. pages 87-100 rhetorical, metacognitive, and cognitive strategies in teacher candidates’ essay writing less skillful writers spend less time on planning and revising. their revision is at a surface level. in this research study, pre-intervention writing strategies tended to focus on planning the argumentative essay; however, after participants had gone through the process writing oriented intervention, they focused on the writing of the argumentative essay itself; in other words, they connected ideas, reread and rewrote them while completing the essay. after the intervention on process writing, learners invested more time in the process of finishing their essay by making use of a more varied repertoire of strategies such as connecting and contrasting their ideas to produce a sound piece of writing. some participants used strategies that were not observed before the intervention such as: summarizing, translating, and reaffirming. this might show that students’ cognitive activity during the process of writing the essay became much more productive and oriented towards finishing a high quality piece of work. the use of these new strategies implies that students are probably more aware of the need of using those strategies when writing an essay or an academic text. besides, it can be inferred that the practice of writing four consecutive essays, taking a process-based approach, favored the use of other strategies which had not been used before the intervention. thus this 16-session intervention triggered the use of a more varied repertoire of writing strategies, as shown in the data analysis section above with the strategies of selecting ideas, summarizing, and reaffirming which only started to be used by participants in the post-intervention argumentative essay. this might have been due to the fact that participants had to work on multiple drafts and did a great deal of editing. it might be that drafting and editing are two stages in the writing process which require a number of strategies that activate the participants’ use of other strategies as a chain-like effect. one of these writing strategies, not used before the intervention, was selecting ideas. selecting ideas is a complex strategy because students need to learn how to ignore information that is irrelevant, no matter what language they use. indeed, selecting ideas can be challenging in both the mother tongue and in the second language. when students become proficient in the use of the selecting ideas strategy, they are able to integrate ideas that are meaningful for the text. therefore, teachers should devote time to teach this type of strategies explicitly in order to help students become effective strategy users and effective writers in the end whoever their audience may be. the strategy of translation from the mother tongue to the foreign language appeared to be used after the intervention. the use of this strategy has been a topic of discussion in efl training programs, since most teaching methods have not granted the mother tongue an important role. translating is supposed to be a characteristic of less skilled writers, who usually focus on single words (sadi & othman, 2012). therefore, many of the techniques and strategies used in the classroom do not involve the use of the mother tongue (martín, 2001). in this regard, it can be inferred that students, and especially those with advanced english proficiency, did not use this strategy, or at least not very often. this result is opposed to the studies that suggest that “mother tongue is the main resource when students write in l2” (alhaisoni, 2012, p. 152). for these research participants, the intervention did trigger their use of translating when they were completing their essays so this strategy became a tool learners turned to when being involved in l2 writing. on the other hand, the use or non-use of a strategy may have different explanations. first, when there is limited time to produce a piece of text, some strategies may appear more easily to be applied than others. this might explain, for example, the fact that only rhetorical, cognitive, and metacognitive strategies were found during the administration of the two think-aloud protocols. there were no signs of communication and socioaffective strategies because the time the participants had to complete the task (pre and post intervention) was brief universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras96 díaz larenas, ramos leiva & ortiz navarrete and this timing issue (30 minutes only) might have had an effect on the fact that participants did not use these two types of strategies. the participants’ use of some writing strategies might demand a higher cognitive load when being used on the part of students, which might finally result in students’ being reluctant to use some of them. for example, connecting ideas when writing an essay clearly demands a higher cognitive load than self-questioning about what is being written (novak, 1998). one important factor to take into consideration is that participants had to express their thoughts aloud, so they were exposed to a situation they were not used to. furthermore, the fact of having to verbalize what you are thinking about is a determining factor because not everyone can block out distractions to perform the task. students may make an effective use of writing strategies, but may not have the same ability to express their use of such strategies. the situation itself is not natural, not spontaneous, but imposed rather, which adds another variable. as warschauer (2010) declares, it is crucial to keep in mind those strategies students really need to write effectively whichever audience they may be addressing. in this sense, the participants’ use of strategies is a personal and subjective endeavour, which does not allow stating that students must be exposed to fixed didactic sequences of writing strategies. it is then the teacher’s role to design language activities that can contribute to enhance students’ metacognitive, cognitive, and socioaffective processes during writing and can promote the use of a wide variety of strategies to resort to when there are communication breakdowns. when learners develop a repertoire of writing strategies, they can try out different ones when they experience a communication breakdown so as to become strategic writers of english. conclusion this study is a contribution to research on writing strategies in an efl context at the university level. in this respect, it can be concluded that the think-aloud protocol allowed the observation of different processes that occur in the writer’s mind when writing a text in an exam situation. therefore, it can be stated that if these processes are more frequently observed, it can be possible to identify how our students face a writing task, especially when they feel under pressure. based on that knowledge, teachers should be able to support students’ writing process by using different techniques and teaching the appropriate strategies during the development of an academic text. besides, this study also enabled us to observe what types of writing strategies students use before and after an intervention. as a final thought, the findings from this research should be considered by efl teaching programs in chile and elsewhere. teaching efl requires a lot of practice, even more in pre-service teachers. thus, it is essential that future teachers of english can develop an understanding of how the teaching and learning of writing are developed and which are the cognitive, metacognitive, and socio-affective processes involved in it in order for teachers to come to see writing as a process involving different stages which lead to the use of varied writing strategies to become effective. references alhaisoni, e. (2012). a think-aloud protocols investigation of saudi english major students’ writing revision strategies in l1 (arabic) and l2 (english). english language teaching, 5(9), 144-154. http://dx.doi.org/10.5539/elt.v5n9p144. bayat, n. (2014). the effect of the process writing approach on writing success and anxiety. educational sciences: theory & practice, 14(3), 1133-1141. coffin, c., curry, m. j., goodman, s., hewings, a., lillis, t. m., & swann, j. (2003). teaching academic writing: a toolkit for higher education. london, uk: routledge: taylor & francis group. cook, v. (2008). second language learning and language teaching. newcastle, uk: hodger education. cook, v., & singleton, d. (2014). key topics in second language acquisition. ontario, ca: mm textbooks. 97profile vol. 19, no. 2, july-december 2017. issn 1657-0790 (printed) 2256-5760 (online). bogotá, colombia. pages 87-100 rhetorical, metacognitive, and cognitive strategies in teacher candidates’ essay writing díaz rodríguez, a. (2014). retórica de la escritura académica: pensamiento crítico y discursivo [academic writing rhetoric: critical and discursive thought]. medellín, co: universidad de antioquia. ehrman, m. e., leaver, b. l., & oxford, r. l. (2003). a brief overview of individual differences in second language learning. system, 31(3), 313-330. http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/ s0346-251x(03)00045-9. ericsson, k. a., & simon, h. a. (1993). protocol analysis verbal reports as data (rev. ed.). cambridge, us: mit press. hedge, t. (2005). writing. oxford, uk: oxford university press. hyland, k. (2004). genre and second language writing. ann arbor, us: university of michigan press. http://doi. org/10.3998/mpub.23927. johnson, a. p. (2008). teaching reading and writing: a guidebook for tutoring and remediating students. new york, us: rowman and littlefield education. krashen, s. d. (1984). writing: research, theory and applications. oxford, uk: pergamon institute of english. kroll, b. (2003). exploring the dynamics of second language writing. cambridge, uk: cambridge university press. http://doi.org/10.1017/cbo9781139524810. mackey, a., & gass, s. m. (2005). second language research: methodology and design. new jersey, us: lawrence erlbaum associates. martín, j. (2001). nuevas tendencias en el uso de la l1 [new trends in l1 usage]. estudios de lingüística inglesa aplicada, 2, 159-169. mata, f. s. (2005). procesos cognitivos en la expresión escrita: modelos teóricos e investigación empírica [cognitive processes in written expression: theoretical models and empirical research]. en f. s. mata (ed.), la expresión escrita de alumnos con necesidades especiales: procesos cognitivos (pp. 15-43). málaga, es: ediciones aljibe. mccrindle, a. r., & christensen, c. a. (1995). the impact of learning journals on metacognitive and cognitive processes and learning performances. learning and instruction, 5(2), 167-185. http://doi.org/10.1016/0959-4752(95)00010-z. mu, c. (2005). a taxonomy of esl writing strategies. in proceedings redesigning pedagogy: research, policy, practice (pp. 1-10). singapore, sg: quteprints. novak, j. d. (1998). conocimiento y aprendizaje: los mapas conceptuales como herramientas facilitadoras para escuelas y empresas [knowledge and learning: conceptual maps as facilitating tools for schools and companies]. madrid, es: alianza. nunan, d., & bailey, k. m. (2009). exploring second language classroom research: a comprehensive guide. boston, us: heinle cengage learning. oxford, r. l. (1996). language learning strategies around the world: cross-cultural perspectives. manoa, us: university of hawai’i press. oxford, r. l. (2011). teaching and researching language learning strategies. new jersey, us: longman. parodi, g. (2003). relaciones entre lectura y escritura: una perspectiva cognitiva-discursiva [relations between reading and writing: a cognitive-discursive perspective]. valparaíso, cl: euvsa. sadi, f. f., & othman, j. (2012). an investigation into writing strategies of iranian efl undergraduate learners. world applied sciences journal, 18(8), 1148-1157. samway, k. (2006). when english language learners write. portsmouth, us: heinemann. schmidt, r. (2001). attention. in p. robinson (ed.), cognition and second language instruction (pp. 3-32). cambridge, uk: cambridge university press. http://doi.org/10.1017/ cbo9781139524780.003. shapira, a., & hertz-lazarowitz, r. (2005). opening windows on arab and jewish children’s strategies as writers. language, culture, and curriculum, 18(1), 72-90. http:// doi.org/10.1080/07908310508668734. stanley, g. (2003). approaches to process writing. retrieved from https://learning-development.britishcouncil.org/ file.php/1880/sd_adult_english_process_writing.pdf. tarnopolsky, o. (2000). writing english as a second or foreign language: a report from ukraine. journal of second universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras98 díaz larenas, ramos leiva & ortiz navarrete language writing, 9(3), 209-226. http://doi.org/10.1016/ s1060-3743(00)00026-6. warschauer, m. (2010). invited commentary: new tools for teaching writing. language learning & technology, 14(1), 3-8. white, r., & arndt, v. (1991). process writing. essex, uk: addison wesley longman. wiles, w. (1997). metacognitive strategy programming for adult upgrading students (unpublished doctoral dissertation). university of alberta, edmonton, canada. about the authors claudio díaz larenas holds a phd in education and a master of arts in linguistics. he is an efl teacher at universidad de concepción, chile. his research interests are teacher cognition and beliefs. lucía ramos leiva holds a master of arts in higher education and is an efl teacher at universidad católica del norte. her research interest is teacher education. mabel ortiz navarrete holds a phd in linguistics, a master of arts in information and communications technology and is an efl teacher at universidad católica de la santísima concepción. her research interests are feedback, cooperative learning and ict tools. acknowledgements this paper is funded by the research projects: fondecyt no. 11150273 “use of focused corrective feedback in a wiki-based collaborative writing environment”, and fondecyt no. 1150889 “las dimensiones cognitivas, afectivas y sociales del proceso de planificación de aula y su relación con los desempeños pedagógicos en estudiantes de práctica profesional y profesores nóveles de pedagogía en inglés”. 99profile vol. 19, no. 2, july-december 2017. issn 1657-0790 (printed) 2256-5760 (online). bogotá, colombia. pages 87-100 rhetorical, metacognitive, and cognitive strategies in teacher candidates’ essay writing appendix: think-aloud protocol (mackey & gass, 2005; nunan & bailey, 2009) protocol to collect information about students’ cognitive process while developing a writing task through the use of the think aloud protocol instructions • directions: for this task, you will write an essay in response to a question that asks you to state, explain, and support your opinion on an issue. • the essay might contain a minimum of 300 words. your essay will be judged on the quality of your writing. this includes the development of your ideas, the organization of your essay, and the quality and accuracy of the language you use to express your ideas. • you have 30 minutes to plan and complete the essay. • write your essay in the space provided. • essay topic: some people believe that university students should be required to attend classes. others believe that going to classes should be optional for students. which point of view do you agree with? use specific reasons and examples to support your answer. 1. setting the researcher has to prepare the setting for students to feel relaxed and comfortable. 2. instruction the researcher has to give students the instructions clearly. • here is a task similar to the ones you have done in class. remember the steps you need to follow to write an argumentative essay and see if you can successfully complete this task. as you write the essay on google docs, try to speak your thoughts aloud into the microphone while you perform the task and not after the task. speak in a clear voice. • the essay is on the following topic: some people believe that university students should be required to attend classes. others believe that going to classes should be optional for students. which point of view do you agree with? use specific reasons and examples to support your answer. • you have 30 minutes to write this essay. when you are ready, tell the researcher to start the recording. 3. researcher intervention and prompting during the activity the researcher is not supposed to interfere in the process. maybe only when s/he realizes that the student(s) has(have) stopped speaking out loud can the researcher prompt the subject by telling him/her: “go on”, “keep on talking”. universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras100 díaz larenas, ramos leiva & ortiz navarrete avoid using phrases like “are you sure?” and “that’s good”. instead, use only phrases like “what makes you say that?” “what made you do that?” “what are you thinking about at this moment?”, and “please keep talking”. 4. recording the session will be videotaped by the researcher. it would be advisable to try any device you are using beforehand to make sure the recording will be fine. 5. transcription of the protocol once the recording session is finished, the researcher has to transcribe what the student/subject recorded. the transcription must be as accurate as possible to get the information needed for the research being carried out. 167profile vol. 18, no.1, january-june 2016. issn 1657-0790 (printed) 2256-5760 (online). bogotá, colombia. pages 167-181 http://dx.doi.org/10.15446/profile.v18n1.49943 adult efl reading selection: influence on literacy1* procesos de selección de lecturas en estudiantes adultos de inglés como lengua extranjera y su influencia en la habilidad lectora juan sebastián basallo gómez2** colegio fontan, bogotá, colombia this paper is about the impact of systematic reading selection used to promote english as foreign language learning in adult students. a qualitative action research methodology was used to carry out this project. ten class sessions were designed to provide students an opportunity to select texts according to criteria based upon their language levels and personal/professional interests. the findings align with three categories of influence: motivation, engagement, and contextualization/interpretation of readings. the main objective of this project was to see how the students’ text selection processes, guided by systematically designed criteria and elaborated strategies, influenced learning and acquisition in terms of motivation, perceptions, and opinions towards reading in english. key words: behavioral patterns, engagement, motivation, perceptions, reading habits, self-selection. este artículo aborda el impacto de la selección sistemática de lectura usada para promover el aprendizaje del inglés como lengua extranjera en estudiantes adultos. en este proyecto se utilizó la metodología de investigación-acción cualitativa. diez sesiones de clase fueron diseñadas proporcionando la oportunidad a los estudiantes para seleccionar textos de acuerdo a criterios basados en el nivel de idioma de los estudiantes y de los intereses personales/profesionales. los hallazgos son inherentes a tres categorías principales: la motivación, compromiso, contextualización e interpretación de lecturas. el objetivo principal de este proyecto era ver cómo los procesos de selección de textos de los alumnos guiados por criterios destinados y estrategias elaboradas influenciaban el aprendizaje y la adquisición en términos de motivación, percepción y opiniones hacia la lectura en inglés. palabras clave: autoselección, compromiso, hábitos de lectura, motivación, patrones de comportamiento, percepciones. * this article is a partial report of a group research project conducted in 2014 as a requirement to graduate from the bilingual education teaching credential program at universidad el bosque. the research was hosted by the english institute wall street english in bogota and the co-researchers for the project were cristian esteban mejia and jonny rodriguez ramirez. however, they had no participation in the writing of this article. ** e-mail: jbasallo@unbosque.edu.co how to cite this article (apa, 6th ed.): basallo gómez, j. s. (2016). adult efl reading selection: influence on literacy. profile issues in teachers’ professional development, 18(1), 167-181. http://dx.doi.org/10.15446/profile.v18n1.49943. this article was received on april 1, 2015, and accepted on july 10, 2015. this is an open access article distributed under the terms of the creative commons license attribution-noncommercial-noderivatives 4.0 international license. consultation is possible at http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/. universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras168 basallo gómez introduction many researchers such as bernhardt (1991), gunning (2011), kern (2000), nelson (2008), sprenger (2013), and tankersley (2003) have agreed that reading is one of the most important skills that an individual should develop in order to succeed in academic and social pursuits. in colombia and latin america, this perception of the importance of the reading skills has been also adopted. furthermore, carrillo (2007); lopera medina (2012); mahecha, urrego, and lozano (2011); and shaw and mcmillion (2011) have shown a huge interest in this topic and found that the lack of literacy practices in latin america represents a huge drawback in language learners’ comprehension and interpretation skills. their general findings regarding this phenomena can be summarized in these three main points: first, students do not comprehend what is given to be read during their courses of instruction; second, they do not feel motivated to read in the language; third, the failure in the achievement of the last two points results in the students’ frustration and negative opinions towards the reading practices in english as a foreign language (efl) learning. the main point of this research was to observe how including students in the text selection process for reading activities made it possible to actively involve them in their own learning processes as well as raise awareness about the importance of reading in efl class. the researchers intend to contribute to the understanding and practice of adult education in colombia in three different ways. first, this study intends to open a dialogue about literacy practices, above all, in reading. taking into account a student’s background should be expected to change the manner in which the student approaches literacy-building in a target language. second, this study intends to promote reading as a significant part of efl instruction. presently, this important practice is frequently set aside. this study intends to demonstrate how the practice of selfselection of texts makes reading more appealing and accessible to students and instructors. third, this study intends to show how, through adoption of the proposed principles, students can increase their comprehension, motivation, and reading habits—patterns of behavior that students do not presently demonstrate due to their discomfort as regards reading non self-selected materials in the efl. an objective was set at the beginning of this research project to observe how reading strategies and self-selection worked to change students’ negative perceptions of reading as well as how such reading strategies and self-selection could be used to promote engagement and motivation to enrich the literacybuilding experience. in order to achieve the stated objective, the following question guided our research: what do reading selection principles reveal about efl adult learners’ literacy practices? literature review numerous researchers have been interested in the creation of ideal literacy environments in which students can develop high-quality reading and writing processes. such research has often explored motivation strategies, comfort, and the achievement of durable results in language development (lesgold & welch-ross, 2012; mace, 1992; walker, 2003). in the following paragraphs, we describe and discuss the theory underlying literacy, reading selection, reading strategies and comprehension as well as reading engagement and motivation. this research highlights the importance of the self-selection principle as the main tool to achieve an ideal literacy environment in which an individual can develop all of his or her reading potential and show ways in which reading strategies were used to turn the “selected content” into meaningful learning experiences. hauser, edley, koening, and elliott (2005) pointed out the importance of making literacy practices 169profile vol. 18, no.1, january-june 2016. issn 1657-0790 (printed) 2256-5760 (online). bogotá, colombia. pages 167-181 adult efl reading selection: influence on literacy quotidian by highlighting all the great contributions that those practices make to an individual’s academic and social development. language literacy mace (1992) stated that individuals get involved in adult literacy education for two major reasons: first, they need to develop literacy skills because their occupations demand it; second, because they may have or develop a desire to improve their literacy skills for personal growth reasons. however, there are some gaps in this dualistic approach and some researchers have taken the concept further. kern (2000) for instance elucidates a new but broader view with his idea of multiple literacy, in which literacy is a series of “dynamic, culturally and historical situated practices of using and interpreting diverse written and spoken texts to fulfill particular social purposes” (p. 6). this definition helps us to have a clear and holistic view of what literacy really is, and how it goes beyond the ability to read. to explore these diverse and particular aspects, kern identifies seven principles of literacy: 1. interpretation: a sense of operation between readers and writers of a text by which writers make constructions taking into account their thoughts, beliefs, and experiences and readers make their own deductions about the writer’s ideas and the text. 2. collaboration: the reader contributes to the creation of meaning when engaging with a written text; the writer always needs readers and writes taking into account a pre-determined audience. this joint participation in the act of constructing meaning is, in a very real sense, collaboration. 3. conventions: the culturally charged words and styles that influence the writer’s ideas and the reader’s understanding. 4. cultural knowledge: a vital feature that makes the creation of meaning possible. a writer and reader need common awareness of culture in order to make both reading and writing meaningful and to avoid misunderstandings. 5. problem-solving: a less obvious aspect of literacy. as kern (2000) explains: “because words are always embedded in linguistic and situational contexts, reading and writing involve figuring out relationships between words, between large units of meaning, and between texts and real or imagined worlds” (p. 17). put differently, understanding the ways in which everything from the individual words to the structure of the work interrelates is a continuous act of problem solving. 6. reflection/self-reflection: this implies that reader and writer are constantly engaged in a process of interpreting and wondering about the speech and the humanity portrayed in a text. 7. language use: in kern’s (2000) view, literacy is not just about reading and writing but also about the different contexts and situations in which communication occurs. as might be evident to a discerning reader, these literacy principles are not unique to written language, but instead apply to language in all its domains. kern (2000) puts it more succinctly: “literacy involves communication” (p. 17). reading selection in order to make a text more comprehensible, it is necessary to offer readings that take into account readers’ preferences, contexts, and individual n e e d s . t h rou g h out t h i s h i g h l y p e r s on a l i z e d approach, students can approach the readings with more confidence which will help them to achieve comprehension goals and to enjoy what they read. collie and slater (2004) proposed that literature be a more emphasized part of language teaching programs and that it be used to further the learner’s mastery in the four skills: listening, speaking, reading, and writing. such content can be used to provide two types of enrichment: first, cultural enrichment which universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras170 basallo gómez increases insight into the culture whose language is being learnt; and second, language enrichment through the reading of substantial and contextualized bodies of text by which students may gain familiarity with many features of the written language. but what sort of literature is appropriate to use with language learners? to answer this question, it is important to take into account that each group of students is unique and has particular needs, interests, cultural backgrounds, and language levels. it is important, therefore, to choose texts that are relevant to the life experiences, emotions, and/or dreams of the learners. according to nuttall (1996), selecting texts involves three important components: suitability of content, exploitability, and readability. first, through choosing suitable texts, a teacher helps students to develop reading skills more easily, especially when subject matter or content attracts students to read outside the class. this scaffolds success in classwork because through the utilization of texts that are appealing to students (rather than texts that bore them), the process of language learning interests and delights the readers. second, exploitability means that a student will draw upon useful language for real life situations from a text. a teacher materially assists the development of efl competence by providing text options that stimulate production of useful language. third, texts should show readability which means that the teacher must assess a text for its level and range of vocabulary, unfamiliar or idiomatic usages, and other factors that may decide what portion of the text, if any, is appropriate for his or her students. on the other hand, mackey and johnston (1996) proposed 14 factors that motivate students to continue the foreign language reading process. these are, in descending order of effectiveness: (1) following an author; (2) browsing or talking to a friend; (3) following a genre; (4) seeing a book cover; (5) starting one book in a series; (6) seeing someone else reading; (7) following a topic; (8) talking with a teacher or librarian; (9) doing a novel study; (10) receiving a book as a present; (11) using a book club list; (12) working on a school-subject thematic unit, such as mythology, poetry, or mystery; (13) finding a text appealing; and, finally, (14) forced reading. reading strategies and comprehension in order to comprehend a text, each individual needs to utilize strategies to approach reading. in the last few decades, reading and literacy education has been a topic of great interest to many scholars in the united states and in colombia whose studies have been focused on enhancing efl learners’ reading comprehension (koenig, 2010; lopera medina, 2012; moreillon, 2007; snow, 2002). one thing that makes comprehension var y from one learner to the next is the content of the text itself. as walker (2003) stated, readers’ levels of understanding differ “because readers’ knowledge of various topics differs” (p. 10). according to walker, not achieving meaning while reading is not always related to a lack of reasoning capacity in the reader, but may have to do with other factors such as the strategies or background information they possess, the reading format, and their own personal goals (i.e., why they are reading). for instance, the meaning derived from a text by a student reading for pleasure may differ from the meaning derived from the same text when it is read as a school assignment. walker (2003) stated that in order to construct meaning, readers must be involved in a process that includes three strategies: first, predicting when a reader tries to infer meaning supported by his or her pre-existing knowledge of a subject, structure, or theme; second, comparing the subject matter presented by a text to the assumptions (predictions) made by the reader. of these two steps, walker says, “this internal dialogue enables readers to monitor 171profile vol. 18, no.1, january-june 2016. issn 1657-0790 (printed) 2256-5760 (online). bogotá, colombia. pages 167-181 adult efl reading selection: influence on literacy their understanding” (p. 11). third, elaborating, or making connections that link readers’ predictions to the actual text and thereby arriving at comprehension. reading engagement and motivation most works and studies addressing literacy in first and foreign languages cite engagement and motivation as key components for success. according to lesgold and welch-ross (2012), “developing readers need to confront texts that are challenging, meaningful, and engaging” (p. 4). what is important to stress here is that texts must foster engagement. mclaughlin (2012) highlights engagement as one of the principles underlying a successful reading experience. when the students have the opportunity to guide their own learning pace and have their own needs and expectations taken into account, they can access and achieve comprehension more easily. guthrie and wigfield (as cited in mclaughlin, 2012), observe that “engaged leaners achieve because they want to understand, they possess intrinsic motivations for interacting with text, they use cognitive skills to understand, and they share knowledge by talking with teachers and peers” (p. 19). with respect to motivation, mclaughlin (2012) asserts that because the majority of adult students carry on busy lives, teaching adults requires learning environments that promote motivation in order to have students persist in using literacy practices. education that develops motivation and engagement with reading pays significant dividends for adult students’ personal growth in areas such as autonomy, literacy awareness, interpersonal skills, and not least, access to new knowledge. adult literacy requires several key components, of which mclaughlin (2012) identifies one: purpose or motivation, as fundamental. if this component is present in sufficient quantity, a language learner will achieve significant results. method this project demonstrates how through the implementation of the self-selection principle a longside re ading st rateg ies dur ing ten cl ass sessions of adult literacy education, it was possible to foster incremental growth in language and create a comfortable literacy environment where students could develop their literacy potential as was demonstrated through perdurable, practical, and meaningful learning. the main objective of this qualitative research was the interpretation of students’ behavior. this study provided the opportunity to obser ve the implementation of reading self-selection and reading strategies, to collect data, and to qualitatively analyze outcomes. this project followed the action research (or ar) model expounded on by burns (2010) which is comprised of four steps: planning, action, observation, and reflection. burns states: ar involves taking a self-reflective, critical, and systematical approach to exploring your own teaching context. by critical i don’t mean being negative and derogative about the way you teach, but taking a question and problematizing stance toward your teaching. my term problematizing, doesn’t imply looking at your teaching as if it is ineffective and full of problems. rather, it means taking an area you feel could be done better, subjecting it to questioning and then developing new ideas on alternatives. (p. 2) the purpose of burns’s ar aligned with the research objective which was the improvement of teaching practices and classroom dynamics through critical reflection on a teaching practice (assigned reading), problematizing this practice and generating new alternatives to create more meaningful and perdurable learning. in the present case the reading self-selection is proposed as a pedagogical strategy consisting of two stages which were designed and implemented. the first stage consisted of a set of questions prior to the reading task with the objective of preparing the universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras172 basallo gómez learner for the task to come. likewise the second stage encompasses a set of questions this time aiming at checking the student’s comprehension always in concordance with the main research question “what do reading selection principles tell us about the literacy practices of efl adult students?” to such end ten reading lesson were designed. in order to create an effective and coherent plan given this time constraint, the research team had to carefully consider the students’ profiles, reading proficiency, interests, and professional and personal goals. in working with a learning institution, it was also necessary to take into account institutional resources, philosophy, and willingness to support this project. the research took place in a small, private language institution in bogotá, colombia. the school was chosen for its approach to discourse development, the characteristics of its population (adult learners), and the resources and support available to meet the needs of the project. in concert with this institution, the research team taught a pilot lesson in order to discover the perspectives and reactions of the population towards the project, and whether or not the students would be receptive to the implementation of this research. the first “action step” activity, planning, was carried out prior to a pilot class with five adult students. the institution allowed one hour to present our methods in this pilot class and the students consisted of two female doctors, one female lawyer, a business administration student, and a female financial advisor. all of them were between the ages of 20 and 40 years old. the pilot class started with an introductory activity (see appendix a). during this time, the project, the purposes for it, the expectations of students, and their role in the research, were all explained to the students. several reading options which took into account the students’ personal contexts were prepared by researchers before this class. from this first pilot class, students were given the opportunity to exercise reading selection from among these texts. each student chose an article that they preferred and carried out assigned activities with it. these helped to introduce vocabulary, and then, based on the strategies for reading, some before reading questions were given to assess students’ background knowledge. at the end, post-reading questions about student’s perspectives, opinions, and understanding of the articles they had read were asked. having read the articles, the students answered a survey which contained questions about their perspectives towards reading (see appendix b). the survey collected data which were used to guide the selection and preparation of material to be used in future sessions. the next step was the action step of carrying out the proposed experimental practices and changing the classroom approach to assigned reading. thanks to students’ positive perceptions of our work, the institution allowed us to implement our research project with all of the resources that we needed. we were given one hour each friday from 6:30 to 7:30 a.m. for 10 weeks within one semester. for the third step, observation, data were collected using different instruments: journals, video recordings, and photographs. according to burns (2010), these methods allow teachers to explore the realities of practical circumstances easily without the need to have a control group. finally, in reflection, all of the gathered information for this research was transcribed in order to make it easier to organize and analyze. all information with any relationship to the research questions was organized into “survey data” and “article answer data.” surveys were organized based upon the date the survey was administered, and article responses were organized depending on the topic of the chosen reading. all of the data were given a code. in order to protect the participants’ identities, participants were identified with the letter p followed by a number and the source from which data were taken (e.g., p1, survey). 173profile vol. 18, no.1, january-june 2016. issn 1657-0790 (printed) 2256-5760 (online). bogotá, colombia. pages 167-181 adult efl reading selection: influence on literacy data analysis the data gathered for analysis in this project included behavioral patterns, changes in the students’ perceptions, and outcomes generated after carrying out ten sessions where the self-selection principle and the strategies of reading were implemented. outcomes were measured, and then classified. as soon as this information was organized, analysis began and three patterns emerged from this data, each comprising a category for analysis. these three categories are: • self-selection and strategies for reading • engaging students to read through restructuring of teaching dynamics • reinforcement of habits in efl reading practice self-selection and strategies for reading this category includes how the strategies of reading and self-selection influenced the development of reading comprehension and interpretation skills. evidence gathered revealed students’ reactions, outcomes, and changes in behavior. two important changes to the efl learning were clearly observed during this project: the improvement of students’ productions skills (speaking and writing), and the improvement of their comprehension skills, as will be demonstrated along this section. according to one student, this experience was an opportunity to learn english in a more productive way. however other students, particularly those whose main purpose was to learn the language for academic or professional objectives, showed different interests which focused more on comprehension and interpretation. it was possible to perceive and measure these attitudes from the very first survey. what are your expectations about this course? p1: i have more expectations, i need learn write, read, interpretate articles, it’s very important for me. [sic] the self-selection principle allowed students to choose readings relevant to their careers, to prepare themselves for written content that they may face in the future. students were so motivated to participate by this approach that the teacher did not have to impose assignments, but rather, the student asked for more activities. giving students the freedom to select what they wanted to read seemed to promote student learning and engagement. students found the content not just useful for their efl learning; they also found it useful for their academic and professional lives. consider the following statement by a student: what is the thing you like the most [from the project]? p2: i like ‘cause i can learn something from real life. [sic] (survey) in this answer, the student expressed a positive outlook about the reading of something that could be useful and relevant to his interests, likes, and context. by reading this kind of material, the students felt motivated to continue reading in the efl. this suggests that as long as students find the material relevant to their personal needs, they will be willing to read. strategies for reading played an important role in the efl classroom. the self-selection of readings particularly improved students’ comprehension and aided in the contextualization of contents. the first strategy applied in the self-selection of readings served the purpose of contextualizing the students. in the text is a set of pre-reading questions, which allowed the assessment of prior knowledge of a subject in order to make the content more relevant to them. the second strategy, the post-reading questions, helped students to develop deeper answers, points of view and conclusions as shown below: what do you think about this article? p5: i think is a good way to know the information the test driver on young people how change the percent in the last years. do you think that this may happen in colombia? universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras174 basallo gómez p5: i don’t think that this in colombia, i mean about fuel prices is so expensive but is impossible that someone give you a premium. [sic] (survey) the first question checked what they understood about the reading by encouraging them to share their opinion. the second question required the students to contextualize the topic of the reading into their own reality by asking about the current national situation regarding the issue and asking the students to compare it with the article. the second question also asked the students to access background knowledge and to draw a conclusion based on understanding and contextualization of the issue. these kinds of questions required a high level of comprehension: it was not easy to translate certain phenomena from another countr y into their own—students were required to go beyond simple answers or opinions. in the answer shown above, the student responded that the phenomenon may not occur in colombia because of issues that went beyond the scope of the article, for example the “fuel prices” in colombia. this demonstrates the students’ ability to contextualize the new information and stretch their language to express their new knowledge. engaging students to read through restructuring of teaching dynamics this category deals with the motivational factors and interest in learning that reading selection brought about in the school life of students. it focuses on how, through the self-selection of readings, students became motivated in the language learning process. t h re e i mp or t ant f a c tors ha d to b e t a ke n into account when we were creating motivationstimulating activities: (1) keeping the reading selection principle in all of the lessons, (2) creating interesting activities based on the readings, and (3) adapting the readings to the students’ preferences with meaningful content. from the first class onward, everything was structured in order to integrate the opinions, interests, and backgrounds of the students into the design of the lessons. hard work in this regard produced important outcomes in student engagement and achievement. knowing the readers’ preferences in advance allowed researchers to prepare and adapt the readings offered, the questions asked, and the activities planned. this made it possible to make the content more accessible to students and give them real ownership of what they learned. in order to discover these readers’ preferences, it was necessary to ask some questions beforehand. an example is as follows: what kind of literary genre do you read the most? p1: family, children and god. p2: i like to read about horror. [sic] (survey) by taking students’ preferences into consideration, certain targeted materials were provided to those students; this strategy may work to encourage the students’ literacy development, the learning of certain vocabulary, or the practice of efl learning. in the case of these students: religion, family, and horror, respectively, were genres relevant to their interests. if any readings related to these topics or preferences could be provided, the students would cer tainly be more interested in reading them. this is the main function of strategies for reading: to guide students and make required readings more comfortable for them. as long as they feel comfortable with what they read and as long as they feel that the content is useful, they will be engaged with the literac y practices and will take ever y advantage from reading in the efl. when students realized the advantages that efl literacy practices bring to their lives, they demonstrated willingness to continue with these practices, even to the point of developing reading habits. the following conversation demonstrates student perceptions and feelings towards reading practices after the intervention: 175profile vol. 18, no.1, january-june 2016. issn 1657-0790 (printed) 2256-5760 (online). bogotá, colombia. pages 167-181 adult efl reading selection: influence on literacy how do you feel about reading in english? p2: yes, i like in english, because is very important for my profession. p6: i like read in english too but i need to learn perfect and i can understand all the context. [sic] (survey) the greatest motivating factors for learning the efl for these participants were professional and academic considerations. as evidenced, when the students found that what they read was important for their lives, their perceptions towards reading in efl changed. in the middle of the project, a second survey was implemented with the purpose of collecting feedback about how the students were reacting to the readings, articles, and activities so far. this survey made it possible to see that students were still highly motivated. it was also possible to see that the grammatical structures of their answers had improved in comparison to the answers they provided during the first survey. students used better vocabulary to express their opinions towards the project: what are your opinions about the project so far? p4: i like it a lot, we feel very funny. all the time we’re thinking and talking in english. p6: i think is a good project, where you can learn vocabulary and a good way to learn. [sic] (survey) the use of the efl all the time during the im plementations, the preparation of quality activities, and the sharing of control over choice of learning material were the main reasons for students’ ongoing high levels of motivation and improvement in their production and use of grammatical structures in english. observe the correct usage of the object pronoun “it” used in the former answer (a structure not present in the student’s first survey), the correct conjugation of the verb “to be,” the good use of the relative pronoun “where” and the proper conjugation after the modal verb “can” in the latter answer. as a general conclusion we can say that students need to be motivated in order to develop their full potential in any pursuit—including language learning. as long as the students feel comfortable with the content and they feel it is useful for their own lives, they will be willing to read, and to generate the habits that will support sustained reading practice. reinforcement of habits in efl reading practice this categor y deals with how self-selection contributes to generate engagement in the reading practices and how it creates and reinforces reading habits in efl instruction. failure in foreign languages reading—especially independent reading—is likely when the text cannot convey its meaning to a reader. this most often occurs when the text is extremely long or the content itself is not appealing to the reader. this is when the self-selection principle may contribute to improving reader success by turning this negative situation into a positive one. one of the main factors determining text selection was participants’ academic background knowledge: for example, doctors tended to read about medicine and health; administration professionals preferred to read business topics, and so on; however, it was evidenced by our group that when students had a variety of texts available, they also read in fields different from their own. what books do you read? p7: leadership. (survey) thanks to the strategies for reading it was possible to use the students’ interest to introduce the efl learning. as long as the students felt that what was being read was useful to what they needed, they demonstrated willingness to continue reading on their own. this gave students the opportunity to achieve goals and overcome professional barriers to use efl. however, other aspects beyond professional considerations motivated students as well: universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras176 basallo gómez what books do you read? p3: books relations with the family, children. [sic] (survey) on the other hand, students demonstrated an increasing desire to read in english in diverse topics and fields as the semester progressed. in fact, students asked for new materials in categories beyond those proposed at the beginning of the project. their confidence was increased and this allowed them to explore totally new areas. this may be the most significant discovery of this research project. what kind of readings would you like to read in the next sessions? p8: i would like to read about traveling and news in general of the current times. p10: i would like read about history, politics movies, action, stories of the bible, culture different countries and business. [sic] (survey) as it is possible to observe from answers to the survey taken in the middle of this project, students demonstrated confidence and self-efficacy. when t he students de velop e d more conf idence and comprehension in just one subject in efl, alternative genres and contents became easier to approach. through the simple implementation of two principles: strategies of reading and the self-selection principle, it was possible to engage students in reading and instill them with good reading habits in efl. this achieved mclaughlin’s (2012) ideal: turning learners into “good readers” who read well across different genres or subject areas. this result can be duplicated across content areas, and in different contexts, with a basic restructuring of teaching dynamics. the lesson for educators is this: in order to create more productive and meaningful learning experiences inside the classroom, and generate lasting improvements in student achieve ment, get to know your students and let that know ledge guide lesson design. conclusions the restructuring of teaching dynamics using the reading selection principle as a pedagogical strategy yields positive outcomes in terms of motivation and engagement; and the strategies for reading were key components for improving the participants’ understanding of the different texts they chose contributing to the students’ efl learning experience in many other ways. it was found that by allowing students to choose their own readings (self-selection principle) their learning experiences became more comprehensive and richer. furthermore, it was also observed that the manner in which the texts were adapted and prepared allowed the students to have a more meaningful learning experience. formulating questions before the reading task contribute to contextualize the content to the reader and prepare the learner for the task at hand. the questions after the reading allowed the teacher to check the students for understanding and allowed students to draw connections to the realities. by using these strategies at the beginning of all of the class sessions, teachers were able to gain a better understanding of the students’ interests, which were then used to guide lesson design. pre-lesson questions prepared students to contextualize the readings and prepare themselves for the ensuing reading. additionally, students’ reading comprehension increased as a result of this initial preparation, which led to meaningful learning and an increased ability to express, in english, relevant, contextually-appropriate opinions on the topics discussed within the readings. in summary, the self-selection principle and the reading strategies were the main focus of this research project, and the basis of the efl learning process in these 10 class sessions that gave students the freedom to choose what they wanted to read. this study examined a student-centered pedagogical strategy that allowed students to take control of their learning and to become engaged and motivated in 177profile vol. 18, no.1, january-june 2016. issn 1657-0790 (printed) 2256-5760 (online). bogotá, colombia. pages 167-181 adult efl reading selection: influence on literacy just 10 weeks. this demonstrates that through the selfselection principle and reading strategies students have the potential to overcome their negative perceptions towards reading, their lack of reading habits, and especially, their fears of reading in efl. we hope the lessons learned from this study might serve as a replicable model to support the importance of integrating the self-selection principle and strategies of reading in order to restructure the efl teaching dynamics in colombia, as well as anywhere else, so as to improve motivation, engagement, and positive opinions towards reading. references bernhardt, e. b. (1991). reading development in a second language: theoretical, empirical, and classroom perspectives. norwood, ma: ablex publishing corporation. burns, a. (2010). doing action research in english language teaching: a guide for practitioners. new york, ny: routledge. carrillo, g. (2007). realidad y simulación de la lectura universitaria: el caso de la uaem [reading and simulation of university-level reading: the uaem case]. educere, 11(36), 97-102. collie, j., & slater, s. (2004). literature in the language classroom: a resource book of ideas and activities (8th ed.). cambridge, uk: cambridge university press. gunning, t. g. (2011). reading success for all students: using formative assessment to guide instruction and intervention. hoboken, nj: jossey-bass. hauser, r. m., edley, c. f., koening j. a., & elliott, s. w. (eds.). (2005). measuring literacy: performance levels for adults. washington, dc: the national academies press. kern, r. (2000). literacy and language teaching. oxford, uk: oxford university. koenig, r. (2010). learning for keeps: teaching the strategies essential for creating independent learners. alexandria, va: association for supervision & curriculum development (ascd). lesgold, a. m., & welch-ross, m. (eds.). (2012). improving adult literacy instruction: developing reading and writing. washington, dc: the national academies press. lopera medina, s. (2012). effects of strategy instruction in an efl reading comprehension course: a case study. profile issues in teachers’ professional development, 14(1), 79-89. mace, j. (1992). talking about literacy: principles and practices of adult literacy education. florence, ky: routledge. mackey, m., & johnston, i. (1996). the book resisters: ways of approaching reluctant teenage readers. school libraries worldwide, 2(1), 25-38. mahecha, r., urrego, s., & lozano, e. (2011). improving eleventh graders’ reading comprehension through text coding and double entry organizer reading strategies. profile issues in teachers’ professional development, 13(2), 181-199. mclaughlin, m. (2012). guided comprehension for english learners. newark, de: international reading association. moreillon, j. (2007). collaborative strategies for teaching reading comprehension: maximizing your impact. chicago, il: ala editions. nelson, t. (2008). predictive factors in student gains in reading comprehension using a reading intervention program (doctoral dissertation). university of south dakota, usa. nuttall, c. (1996). teaching reading skills in a foreign language (1st ed.). london, uk: macmillan. shaw, p., & mcmillion, a. (2011). components of success in academic reading tasks for swedish students. ibérica, 22, 141-162. retrieved from http://www.redalyc.org/arti culo.oa?id=287023888008. snow, c. e. (2002). reading for understanding: toward a research and development program in reading comprehension. santa monica, ca: rand corporation. sprenger, m. (2013). wiring the brain for reading: brainbased strategies for teaching literacy. somerset, nj: wiley. universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras178 basallo gómez tankersley, k. (2003). the threads of reading: strategies for literacy development. alexandria, va: association for supervision & curriculum development (ascd). walker, b. j. (2003). supporting struggling readers. scarborough, ca: pippin publishing corporation. about the author juan sebastián basallo gómez holds a b.ed. in bilingual education with a special emphasis on teaching the english language. currently he is working as the head of the languages area in colegio fontan (colombia). his professional interests are in british literature and creative writing. acknowledgements it is important to mention the continuous support of our thesis advisor wilder escobar who helped us during the presentation of this work as a graduation requirement. then convinced, advised, and helped me along the publication process of this article. 179profile vol. 18, no.1, january-june 2016. issn 1657-0790 (printed) 2256-5760 (online). bogotá, colombia. pages 167-181 adult efl reading selection: influence on literacy appendix a: example of a lesson plan lesson plan 1 student’s name date 23/08/13 lesson number 1 class time 1 hour theme reading selection (let’s choose what you want to read about!) learning objective to learn vocabulary about different fields like health, finances, or food. to practice reading, speaking, and writing skills. materials and resources photocopies, paper, whiteboard markers, video beam warm up teacher will introduce to the students sheets of paper with some names of famous characters from the literature. they are going to play charades and, for this purpose, they will be separated into two groups. each of them has one minute to let his or her own team know what character is he or she trying to imitate. they cannot talk; they can use only their hands and/or faces or even draw to achieve the goal. some examples: dracula, frankenstein, moby dick, red riding hood… presentation the teacher will introduce and explain the most important information about the project and the purposes of it, including the student’s role. as soon as the project is explained, the teacher will show the students different articles that they can choose depending on their likes. based on that article they have to develop a workshop that is based on the article they choose. practice students will develop their workshops while they are monitored by the teacher. production students will answer a short survey about what they would like to read. evaluation their performance during the class. the answers given on the worksheets and participation in class are going to be the evaluation grade. universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras180 basallo gómez appendix b: first term survey what do reading selection principles tell us about the literacy practices of efl adult students? names: _____________________________________________________________ questionnaire do you read? _______________________________________________________________________________ what books do you read? _______________________________________________________________________________ _______________________________________________________________________________ when do you read? _______________________________________________________________________________ _______________________________________________________________________________ do you read in english? _______________________________________________________________________________ _______________________________________________________________________________ what books do you read in english? _______________________________________________________________________________ _______________________________________________________________________________ when do you read in english? _______________________________________________________________________________ _______________________________________________________________________________ do you like to read in your free time? _______________________________________________________________________________ _______________________________________________________________________________ what kind of literary genre do you read the most? _______________________________________________________________________________ _______________________________________________________________________________ how often do you read in english outside the classroom? often sometimes hardly ever never 181profile vol. 18, no.1, january-june 2016. issn 1657-0790 (printed) 2256-5760 (online). bogotá, colombia. pages 167-181 adult efl reading selection: influence on literacy which skill do you find the most difficult in class? _______________________________________________________________________________ _______________________________________________________________________________ which medium do you like to read with (books, internet)? why? _______________________________________________________________________________ _______________________________________________________________________________ in your language classes, which of the following aspects are given more attention? communication literacy practices learning grammar none how do you feel reading in spanish? _______________________________________________________________________________ _______________________________________________________________________________ how do you feel reading in english? _______________________________________________________________________________ _______________________________________________________________________________ how often do you visit libraries? often sometimes hardly ever never do you have literary books (english) at home? which ones? _______________________________________________________________________________ _______________________________________________________________________________ when do you think good reading skills in a foreign language will help you the most? _______________________________________________________________________________ _______________________________________________________________________________ what are your expectations about this course? _______________________________________________________________________________ _______________________________________________________________________________ 97profile: issues teach. prof. dev., vol. 21 no. 2, jul-dec, 2019. issn 1657-0790 (printed) 2256-5760 (online). bogotá, colombia. pages 97-112 https://doi.org/10.15446/profile.v21n2.73796 the role of systemic functional grammar in the expansion of nominal groups el papel de la gramática sistémica funcional en la expansión de sintagmas nominales 1maría claudia nieto cruz* universidad nacional de colombia, bogotá, colombia this study presents the expansion of nominal groups in a systemic functional grammar class of an english language teacher program in 2016 at a colombian public university. the participants were six student teachers. nominal groups were first considered in a document written by the students before being exposed to the principles of systemic functional grammar and then in a revised version after the exposure to it. the study shows initial improvements in the enlargement of nominal groups between the two written productions and provides insights into the enormous potential for structural and meaningful expansion and the complexity of nominal groups. the gained awareness may become a cognitive framework for students to produce complex nominal groups in academic productions demanded in their studies and in the exercise of their professional practice. key words: english language, nominal group, pre-service teacher education, systemic functional grammar. este estudio presenta el desarrollo de sintagmas nominales en una clase de gramática sistémica funcional en un programa de formación de docentes de inglés en 2016 en una universidad pública colombiana. los participantes fueron seis estudiantes. se revisaron los sintagmas nominales insertos en un documento escrito por los estudiantes antes de ser expuestos a los principios de la gramática sistémica funcional y en una versión revisada después de ser expuestos. el estudio muestra cambios iniciales en la expansión de los grupos nominales de los participantes y augura el potencial que la gramática sistémica funcional puede brindar en la expansión y complejización de la estructura y significado de los sintagmas nominales en los productos académicos solicitados en sus estudios y en el ejercicio de su práctica profesional. palabras clave: educación de profesores en formación, gramática sistémica funcional, lengua inglesa, sintagma nominal. * e-mail: mcnietoc@unal.edu.co how to cite this article (apa, 6th ed.): nieto-cruz, m. c. (2019). the role of systemic functional grammar in the expansion of nominal groups. profile: issues in teachers’ professional development, 21(2), 97-112. https://doi.org/10.15446/profile.v21n2.73796. this article was received on july 30, 2018 and accepted on may 27, 2019. this is an open access article distributed under the terms of the creative commons license attribution-noncommercial-noderivatives 4.0 international license. consultation is possible at https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/. universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras98 nieto-cruz introduction the incorporation of grammar in the study of a foreign language is a topic that deserves attention as it becomes important knowledge necessary to perform well in personal and professional scenarios. in the specific context of second/foreign language teacher education, svalberg (2015) points out: “grammar courses aim to equip student teachers with declarative knowledge about grammar (kag) they can subsequently draw on, explicitly or implicitly, in their own teaching” (p. 529). the declarative knowledge about grammar that student teachers need to handle can be taught and learned following different conceptions of language. there are structural grammars, functional grammars, and pedagogical grammars (tomlin, 1994). they differ in their orientation. structural syllabuses have traditionally emphasized the teaching of form over meaning. functional grammars “analyze grammatical structure, as structural grammar, but it also analyzes the entire communicative situation: the purpose of the speech event, its participants, its discourse context” (nichols, 1984, p. 97). pedagogical grammars are “explicit descriptions of grammatical structure and use in a simple and straightforward manner” (tomlin, 1994, p. 143) to improve the teaching instruction. the current study adopts a functional perspective on grammar based on the work of linguist michael halliday. for him, language is not simply “a collection of rules and labels for grammatical categories” but “a resource for making meaning through which we interactively shape and interpret our world and ourselves” (halliday as cited in derewianka, 2012, p. 129). the systemic functional grammar (sfg) model of language builds on the grammatical categories understood in traditional grammar but transcends its focus on form and places meaning and use “as central features of language” (bloor & bloor, 1995, p. 2). another important difference between sfg and traditional grammar is that the former operates at different levels or ranks, from the level of the discourse to the level of the morpheme while “the traditional view of language is a fixed body of knowledge at a sentence level” (svalberg, 2015, p. 529). the present research centers its focus of attention on the rank of group, a constituent below the clause level and above the word in the rank scale. the nominal group is of particular importance because it answers the question: what is the text about? dare (2010) defines the nominal group as that group of words built up around a key noun. examples of nominal groups can be single nouns as knowledge or grammar, a more complex combination like the knowledge or a grammar, or even more complex as “declarative knowledge about grammar (kag) they can subsequently draw on, explicitly or implicitly, in their own teaching (svalberg, 2015, p. 529). the nominal group in academic settings is usually a complex structure that carries a lot of information in a package. therefore, the nominal group takes a leading role in the creation of information that responds to the needs of participants in different contexts or areas of knowledge because of the possibilities it offers. the understanding and handling of the nominal group in sfg equips the writer with the facility to communicate for different purposes and contexts (aguirre-muñoz, chang, & sanders, 2015) as well as to deal with different interlocutors in different fields of knowledge effectively. this understanding will also ease the writing task of different types of texts considering that “writing is difficult for students who are learning english, as they often struggle to express what they really want to say (schleppegrell & go, 2007, p. 529). the research presented in this paper aims to respond the following research questions: • what are the characteristics of the nominal groups in students’ written productions before being exposed to the principles of systemic functional grammar? • how are the principles of systemic functional grammar evidenced in students’ nominal groups in written productions? 99profile: issues teach. prof. dev., vol. 21 no. 2, jul-dec, 2019. issn 1657-0790 (printed) 2256-5760 (online). bogotá, colombia. pages 97-112 the role of systemic functional grammar in the expansion of nominal groups theoretical tenets the theoretical bases for the understanding of this study are an overview of the traditional approach used to teach grammar, an introduction to the principles of sfg, and the theory behind the nominal group. traditional methods to teach grammar the tenets of the traditional grammar are the parts of speech: verb, noun, article, adverb, adjective, pronoun, preposition, conjunction, article, and interjection. their labelling and the learning of rules for their combination have been the main concerns for teachers who follow the traditional grammar orientation. traditional grammar teaches discrete grammatical structures in decontextualized contexts with mechanical practice. a grammar topic can possibly be developed this way: a presentation of a grammar structure, a provision of simple, concise explanations of the grammar structure under consideration, examples, and practice through exercises. the exercises are usually included in a textbook “at the level of individual sentences and often using unauthentic language” (derewianka, 2012, p. 143). how can language taught in a traditional way help in the improvement of writing? derewianka (2012) asserts: “the research evidence indicates that traditional grammar taught in traditional ways does not improve students’ writing” (p. 139). the words from hillocks (as cited in derewianka, 2012) are very powerful: if schools insist upon teaching the identification of parts of speech, the parsing or diagramming of sentences, or other concepts of traditional school grammar (as many still do), they cannot defend it as a means of improving the quality of writing. (p. 140) systemic functional grammar (sfg) in contrast to traditional grammar in which “there is an occasional nod towards meaning” (derewianka & jones, 2010, p. 6), as when it is said that a noun is a person, place, an animal, and so on, sfg takes into consideration the communicative situation including its intention, its context, and its participants (nichols, 1984). nichols’ purpose of the speech event can be connected to bloor and bloor’s (1995) concept of genre, “a type of text identified by its communicative purpose and its conventional form” (p. 224). martin (1986) places genre in the outermost layer of the sfg model of language (figure 1) and understands it as a situation of context. dare (2010) asserts that within this context “there are patterns in the way we produce meaning” (p. 19). genre is a categorization of texts that depends on external criteria dictated by the context, the users, and the use of a text typical of a discourse community (lee, 2001). in everyday contexts, people interact to achieve different social purposes like greeting, thanking, informing, inviting, discussing, and so on in different public and private spheres. in academic contexts, on the other hand, students have to use language to comply with academic purposes that include, among many, the provision of descriptions, narrations, comparisons, exemplifications, and explanations. figure 1. genre, register, and language (adapted from martin, 1997, p. 8) register is in the central layer of the model and is associated with the organization of situation or immediate context and defined by linguistic characteristics (the innermost layer). the sfg model of language understands the concept of register as the language produced based genre genre register language mode tenor textual metafunction interpersonal metafunction ideational metafunction field universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras100 nieto-cruz genre is a children’s story whose communicative function is to narrate an event. the happenings or goings-on are all the actions carried out by jasper on the bean in an animated animal context devised for children, the audience, who enjoy the story through the visual language of images that accompany the story. in conclusion, sfg as a model of language describes how a language works to make meaning (derewianka, 2011). sfg describes the relationship between grammatical forms and their functions (derewianka & jones, 2010). these two authors assert that sfg is located in the middle of a line between form and function. derewianka (2012) emphasizes that “the functional model includes most of the terms employed in traditional school grammars but differs from traditional grammar primarily in terms of the purpose for learning about language and the terminology needed to talk about the meanings being created” (p. 142). sfg views language as a resource within which there is “a complex web of systems or sets of choices according to functional purposes” (gardner, 2010, p. 37). the nominal group in sfg constituency is a very important tenet of the sfg model of language. it is concerned with the structural organization of the clause in various parts (bloor & bloor, 1995). the hierarchy of grammatical constituents is composed of sentence, clause, word, and morpheme. “each of these ranks refers to a unit of meaning” (bloor & bloor, 1995, p. 6). a sentence is made up of clauses, a clause is made up of groups, groups are made of words, and words consist of morphemes. an example of a sentence from jasper’s beanstalk is: on thursday, he (jasper) dug and raked and sprayed and hoed it (the bean). this sentence is composed of four clauses. let’s analyze the clause on thursday, he dug it. the existence of a clause determined by the presence of a verbal group. this clause can in turn be analyzed in terms of groups: on thursday is a prepositional phrase, he and it are nominal groups and dug is a verbal group. on the choices the language offers the users according to the situation. halliday and hasan (1985), christie and derewianka (2008), and derewianka and jones (2010) identify three key features in any context of situation: the field, the tenor, and the mode. the field refers to the subject-matter (derewianka, 2012), in other words, to what the text is about. bloor and bloor (2007, p. 183) inform us that the field can provide information about the “happenings” or “goings-on” represented by who does what, to whom, for whom, when, how, and why. it is the representation of real or imaginary worlds. field is connected to the ideational metafunction proposed by halliday. tenor refers to the users of a language who fulfill their intentions in a particular context sticking to socially stated forms. derewianka (2012) states that “such matters as how the status, level of expertise, age, ethnic background, and gender of the participants can have an impact on the language used” (p. 132). in english teaching, the tenor occurs under the concept of audience: the person or people to whom texts are addressed. halliday’s interpersonal metafunction is associated with the concept of tenor. the mode refers to the channel of communication used to transmit the message. it can be oral or written, a combination of the two, or visual and multimodal texts. the textual metafunction is closely connected to the mode as language organizes the text itself (bloor & bloor, 1995) for the formation of coherent and cohesive texts (christie & derewianka, 2008). “these metafunctions occur simultaneously in every sentence, providing different layers of meaning.” (derewianka & jones, 2010, p. 10) see figure 1 for a visual understanding of the relationships between genre, register, and language. let’s exemplify the concepts previously presented with a story called jasper’s beanstalk by butterworth and inkpen (1992). it is a book for children in which jasper, a lovely cat, found, planted, watered, dug, raked, and sprayed a bean and waited for the product of his effort: a beanstalk. in terms of the sfg model of language, the 101profile: issues teach. prof. dev., vol. 21 no. 2, jul-dec, 2019. issn 1657-0790 (printed) 2256-5760 (online). bogotá, colombia. pages 97-112 the role of systemic functional grammar in the expansion of nominal groups the present study centers its attention on the nominal group understood as a group of words built up around a key noun (dare, 2010). this key noun answers the question: what are you talking about? this is labelled as the head of the nominal group. in addition to its head, the nominal group may have premodifiers or postmodifiers or both. “building up information before and after the key noun within the same nominal group is a pattern typically seen in written language” (dare, 2010, p. 21). the nominal group can be analyzed at two levels within the ideational metafunction of the sfg model: the logical and the experiential functions (see table 1). “the dependent element in the logical function of the group is the modifier (the other—the dominant element— being the head). it is subclassified as premodifier or postmodifier, according to its position in relation to the head” (bloor & bloor, 2007, p. 284). the logical function is concerned with the relationships among ideas. table 1. the ideational metafunction in the nominal group logical function premodification head postmodification experiential function deictic function numerative function epithet function classifying function thing qualifying function language referrers exact and inexact quantifiers adjectives and participles nouns noun • prepositional phrase • finite clause • nonfinite clause the experiential function is largely connected with content or ideas (bloor & bloor, 1995, p. 9) and is realized by different functions in premodification: deictic (connected to the provision of references), numerative (linked to the identification of quantities), epithet (associated with factual or subjective characteristics) and classifier (related to a system of subclassification). the thing is the “key experiential item in a nominal group and typically conflates with the head. it is typically realized by a noun” (bloor & bloor, 2007, p. 289). the qualifier is another experiential function of the nominal group that is located in postmodification position. it is realized by finite clauses, nonfinite clauses, and prepositional phrases. the study of the nominal group has caught the attention of different academics. fang et al. (2006) illustrate “the ways nominal expressions expand the amount of information in a clause, establish and maintain reference, and enable information to be distilled and further expanded” (p. 247). schleppegrell and go (2007) explore the analysis of noun phrases in the identification of the topic of a text because they permit the writer to “use articles, modifiers, and other language resources to characterize and describe the grammatical participants in the text” (p. 532). understanding the nominal group can trigger the lexical competence of students, from “vocabulary in everyday contexts, to a growing number of school contexts (year 1)” (australian curriculum assessment and reporting authority [acara], 2012, p. 30) to “vocabulary typical of extended and more academic texts and the role of abstract nouns, classification, description and generalisation in building specialised knowledge through language (year 7)” (acara, 2012, p. 73). a previous classroom study carried out by whittaker (2010) in two secondary clil classrooms in spain shows the awareness sfl offers students regarding the handling of the nominal group. she found how the students started universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras102 nieto-cruz input in the written and oral communication courses (1, 2, and 3). when students take the grammar i class, they are simultaneously taking the written and oral communication courses (level 4). the present study centers its attention on the grammar i class, which concentrates on the ideational metafunction that studies aspects such as the happenings and goingson, the participants, and the inherent processes at clause level. the textbooks used had an sfg approach, namely bloor and bloor (1995) and lock (1996), and the materials include authentic pieces of language from different genres. participants the sample was composed of three women and three men from the grammar i class in the second academic period of 2016. two students were under 20, three students between 21 and 24, and one student was between 25 and 28. the six participants registered for grammar i were at the end of year 2 and were taking the written and oral communication courses level 4. they granted permission to use artifacts (1 and 2) and an analytical essay that accompanied artifact 2. data collection instruments the two basic data collection instruments were the artifacts and an analytical essay. artifact 1 (submitted by week 6 out of 16 weeks) was a selected composition from a period prior to the grammar i class. artifact 2 was the revised version of the selected compositions produced by week 14 out of 16 weeks. the analytical paper was an essay that accompanied artifact 2 and whose purpose was to have students reflect on the nominal groups in their data. artifact 1 students were asked to select one composition from previous semesters. five of the selected texts were written in 2016 (first semester) and one in 2015. presumably the majority of the texts were written for the written to use the nominal group to carry a lot of the meaning in a more condensed way by placing more emphasis on the causes and less on the causers by the inclusion of prepositional phrases with very rich nominal groups. they also wrote “heavily modified nominal groups which allow information to be placed in different positions in the clause” (whittaker, 2010, p. 35). dare (2010) reports a classroom study in which an english literature student at senior secondary school level had problems with the formulation of abstract ideas. “after some serious and systematic work around the nominal group among other linguistic work, the student built up her ability to operate in a more academic, written register required by this particular educational context” (p. 23). method the present research is framed within the case study methodology. a case study is defined as an inquiry that studies a phenomenon within its real-life context. the “unit of study or case may be a single individual, a small number of individuals, or a particular classroom or community” (hubbard & power, 1993, p. 153). case studies represent the study of the distinctiveness and complexity of a particular case in order to arrive at the understanding of its activity in important circumstances (stake, 2010). the phenomenon under investigation for the present study is the nominal group and is the result of the incorporation of the sfg language model in a real life context; that is, the grammar of an english language teacher education program. context the current research took place with students from the english language teacher education program at the universidad nacional de colombia (bogota campus). the grammar component is allocated six credits out of 140. it takes a regular student four years to complete the 140 credits. grammar courses (i and ii) are taught at the end of year two and the beginning of year three when students have been given important language 103profile: issues teach. prof. dev., vol. 21 no. 2, jul-dec, 2019. issn 1657-0790 (printed) 2256-5760 (online). bogotá, colombia. pages 97-112 the role of systemic functional grammar in the expansion of nominal groups communication class 3 and 4. the genre of 50% of the texts corresponds to essays and 50% to short stories. the texts were chosen and submitted by week 6 of the second academic semester of 2016 when the students had already been exposed to the concepts of the nominal group in sfg. students were guided in the selection of the text through a series of prompts and were asked to consider texts that were 500 words long. table 2 depicts the names of the submitted compositions. table 2. names of the compositions student # name of the composition 1 the way books are getting boring now 2 the sixth finger 3 cannabis legalization 4 rescued 5 is culture double-edged? a “colombia vs. japan” cultural insight 6 the black cat artifact 2 by the end of week 14 students were asked to submit the rewritten version of artifact 1 applying the logical and experiential functions of the nominal group. analytical paper the analytical paper was an essay that had to include a discussion about the general structure of nominal groups, the characteristics of premodifiers in the nominal group, the characteristics of postmodifiers in the nominal groups, and the use of reference in the nominal groups with their respective examples. procedure the compositions were identified with numbers from 1 to 6, corresponding to the six participants. then, the twelve compositions were first analyzed in terms of simple or complex nominal groups. later, they were examined in terms of their logical and experiential functions. analysis of the nominal groups the twelve compositions were examined as they were submitted, including spelling and grammatical mistakes. the twelve writings were analyzed with the matrix shown in table 3. table 3. general criteria for the analysis of entry and rewritten compositions total number of words content words lexical density index average number of nominal groups average simple nouns average complex nouns the total number of words is an initial technique used to measure the characteristics of texts and can be easily obtained by counting the words with the help of the counting of words tool available in the revision link of the program word by microsoft. the number of words is not necessarily an indicator of the complexity of a text though. the content words refer to lexical terms that have a “dictionary meaning, describable in terms of semantic features or its potential for referring to phenomena in realworld events, or imaginary ones” (bloor & bloor, 2007, p. 170) over the total running words. following fang et al. (2006), this research analyzed nominal groups as simple or complex. “simple noun groups are nouns without modification, including pronouns (e.g., we, it) and proper names (e.g., elvis presley). all other noun groups are complex, some having multiple modifications” (p. 253). content words were underlined. simple and complex nominal groups were color-coded and then counted. in a second moment, the complex nominal groups in both samples were analyzed taking into account the logical metafunction (see table 4). universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras104 nieto-cruz table 4. criteria to analyze complex nominal groups ng with premodification head only ng ng with postmodification ng with pre and postmodification note. ng = nominal group in a third moment, each of the logical possibilities was analyzed taking into account the experiential metafunction in the nominal group exhibited previously in table 1. results results are presented in the following way: artifacts will be described according to the sfg model of language in terms of genre and register. then, they will be contrasted in quantitative and qualitative terms under the title: language findings. genre if we consider the specific contexts of academic writing, we see that students write because they are required to do so. it is possible to say that the six original compositions and their versions correspond to student writing which is at the center of the teaching and learning processes in education. it fulfills different purposes such as assessment, learning, and entering a disciplinary community (coffin et al., 2003). three compositions are essays and the other three are short stories. an essay is a group of paragraphs about one subject. there are many different kinds of essays as the narrative, the descriptive, and the argumentative essays, among others (fawcett & sandberg, 2000). the essay the way books are getting boring now can be classed as an argumentative essay, specifically a problem-solution essay because the student presents the conflict between books and new ways of telling a story with advanced technology and a proposed solution. the cause-effect essay cannabis legalization unfolds the problematic situation of the recreational consumption of cannabis and its devastating effects. is culture double-edged? a “colombia vs. japan” cultural insight is a comparative essay drawing on similarities and differences between the colombian and the japanese cultures. the short story is defined is a piece of literature that can be read in one sitting. “because of its length, it has only a few characters and focuses on one problem or conflict” (sebranek, kemper, & meyer, 1999, p. 342) and can also be classified as creative writing. students write stories for entertainment and pleasure because they can use fields of personal, imagined, even fantastic experiences. they may retell a meaningful incident or a personal experience. one of the short stories recreates the story of a jar that contained two fingers in it left in a taxi. another tells the story of two men who were shipwrecked because of a storm. the third is a version of the short story the black cat written originally by edgar allan poe (1843). the texts selected by the students reflect the demands placed on them in the written communication courses. register taking into consideration the situation of context understood as the local conditions that surround the text (rojas-garcía, 2016), table 5 presents a summary of the six compositions in terms of “‘what’s going on?’ (the field or subject matter), who’s involved?’ (the tenor), and ‘what channel of communication?’ (the mode)” (derewianka & jones, 2010, p. 7). we can deduce what the compositions are all about by giving an answer to the following questions: who does what, to whom, for whom, when, how, and why? the information presented in table 5 provides a general answer to the question: what is the text about? bloor and bloor (2007) assert that in these answers students can represent “their real or imaginary worlds” (p. 107). 105profile: issues teach. prof. dev., vol. 21 no. 2, jul-dec, 2019. issn 1657-0790 (printed) 2256-5760 (online). bogotá, colombia. pages 97-112 the role of systemic functional grammar in the expansion of nominal groups table 5. description of the compositions based on the register title of the composition field tenor mode the way books are getting boring now the importance of books and reading participants the teacher: the expert the student: a scholar-intraining trying to achieve the right balance of assuredness, objectivity, and knowledge written texts is culture double-edged? a “colombia vs. japan” cultural insight social and communicative aspects of colombian and japanese cultures cannabis legalization the effects of the recreational consumption of cannabis rescued two shipwrecked men in a storm participants the teacher: the expert the student: a scholar-intraining trying to achieve the right balance of creativity and language the sixth finger a jar with two fingers in it left in a taxi the black cat a man who hurt a black cat in the essay the way books are getting boring now the participants are the books and new ways of telling a story with advanced technology these days. the circumstances that surround this situation are the way people react and their expectations. the comparative essay compares colombia with japan and focuses on social and communicative aspects of both cultures, specifically friendships, relationships, and literacy at the moment of delivering messages to emphasize that birthplaces are a remarkably strong influence for each person’s ways of thinking, acting, and saying things. the cause/effect essay cannabis legalization highlights the effects of the excessive consumption of cannabis for recreational purposes by adolescents. the effects are pulmonary disease, cognition and coordination and brain problems. in the short story rescued, two young men were sailing far from the shore when a storm destroyed their boat. they managed to arrive at a deserted island from which they were rescued some days later. the sixth finger (story) narrates the anecdote of arthur, a taxi driver, who found at the end of his turn on a cold wednesday night a jar in a paper bag. to his surprise, the jar contained two fingers floating in it. arthur plays with the idea of who the owner of the jar is to find him or her and give it back. the black cat (story) recreates poe’s story in which an intoxicated man cut out one of his pet’s eyes with a pocketknife. we could classify the short stories as part of everyday topics and the essays as part of specialized topics. tenor, understood as the nature of the interpersonal relationships of the interactants and their roles they take up (dare, 2010), is present in the students’ compositions in three aspects: the level of formality, the level of objectivity or subjectivity, and the expert or novice language used. the language tends to be formal in the essays and more informal in the short stories. students are more objective in the essays than in the short stories because essays require the combination of factual and personal information to make a point whereas short stories mostly reflect the subjective perceptions of the writers. students have to show the tone of an expert while developing the essays while the writers of the short stories have to be creative. as it is possible to verify, the mode of the compositions is the written one. it is possible to indicate that the medium employed corresponds to planned texts in which students had the chance to think and reflect what they were going to say and worked to produce texts that were coherent and cohesive. students showed control of the organizational features of english. universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras106 nieto-cruz language findings quantitative trends this section will present and discuss the quantitative tendencies present in the entry and rewritten compositions. table 6 presents a general comparison of both documents. the average number of words is higher in the rewritten data only by 59 words. the length of the compositions varied among the students. three compositions fulfilled the criteria originally given, that is to say, more or less 500 words. two surpassed the limits by two or three times, and one was inferior by 180 words. in the rewriting exercise, four compositions in general kept their original numbers but the longest one added 100 extra words. the second longest composition was dramatically reduced from 1047 words to only 145 words, which represents only 13.84% as compared to the original. the student expressed the reason for doing so in her analytical essay as follows: since it is a very long text, i decided to choose the paragraph that, in my opinion, needed more improvement in terms of the nominal groups. (student 6) for comparative and analytical purposes, only the original paragraph was compared to the rewritten version. table 6. comparison between the entry data and rewritten compositions general criteria entry data rewritten data total average number of words 672 731 total average content words 322 398 average lexical density 46 54 total average number of ngs 122 125 total average simple ngs 35 36 total average complex ngs 86 88 the average number of content words in the rewritten data is 19% higher. this number might not be very high but represents an initial effort on the part of the students to amplify the information presented in nominal groups as can be observed in the examples shown in table 7. table 7. examples of amplified nominal groups original ng modified ng s1 …the disappointing rate of people who prefer anything but a book… …the disappointing rate of people who prefer anything but a beautiful book… s2 …any kind of object forgotten by a passenger… …some crazy article forgotten by an absentminded passenger… the lexical density in the rewritten data increased by eight points, which demonstrated that students made an effort to make the text denser, a characteristic of written language. with respect to the nominal groups, it is evident that they did not increase significantly: on average only three additional nominal groups in the rewritten composition increased, with one additional simple nominal group and two complex nominal groups. numbers do not speak loud in the logical structure of the nominal groups. the average number of nominal groups with premodification, head-only nouns, and nominal groups with preand postmodification in the entry data is slightly higher than in the rewritten data. the rewriting exercise might have invited students to present information in a more condensed way. premodification. table 8 shows examples of students’ original and rewritten nominal groups. rewritten nominal groups are more precise than the original in premodification. 107profile: issues teach. prof. dev., vol. 21 no. 2, jul-dec, 2019. issn 1657-0790 (printed) 2256-5760 (online). bogotá, colombia. pages 97-112 the role of systemic functional grammar in the expansion of nominal groups table 8. examples of nominal groups that reflect more precision original ng modified ng s4 the small boat the sailing boat s2 the time the pass of time the numerical situation of nominal groups in regard to the experiential metafunction is not very different from the logical structure. the most recurrent structure written by students was: premodifier + head as stated by student 2 from the analytical essay: in general terms, the structure of the nominal groups written along the text is quite simple is [sic] most of the cases the structure is premodifier and head. there was however a slight decrease in the number of nominal groups with this structure in the revised versions. students managed to increase the complexity of the nominal groups by adding epithets and classifiers to the original groups as observable in the following examples. a characteristic of the premodification of nominal groups in the short stories was the addition of describers while the essays tended to include classifiers (see table 9). table 9. examples of original and modified nominal groups with added functions original ng modified ng s1 this personal space this small personal reading space s4 the island the small and deserted island s7 the cat the filthy black cat the students reflected on the quality and length of nominal groups in premodification as evidenced in the following quotes from the analytical essays: the premodifiers i wrote were not very long. in addition, the majority of my premodifiers were composed of a deictic and an epithet: for some reason, i did not choose to build my nominal groups with a classifier. perhaps i did not need them, but i believe the reason why they are not a constant in my text goes back to my lack of grammar knowledge and my poor variety of nominal groups. (student 1) i consider my general use of premodifiers to be good, in the sense of defining and making the “heads” of the nominal group more complex and unique, but they still need to be worked on and improved. (student 5) head-only nouns. the head-only nouns were classified as abstract or concrete nouns. the term abstract refer to intangible things. if concrete, the entities refer to material/physical substances and thus are animate (human or animal) or inanimate (solid or liquid) (morley, 2000). the essays contained a good number of abstract terms such as technology and reading from student 1, cognition and learning from student 3, and culture and love from student 5. the short stories included concrete and familiar terms for readers. it is possible to assert that both concrete and abstract nouns provide a frame of reference by including the cultural context where the texts occur and in this sense provide outward pointing generic references. postmodification. the impact of the sfg model in the grammar 1 class is more evidently perceived in the postmodification structure of the nominal group (see table 10). in terms of the logical metafunction there is an increase in the number of nominal groups exhibiting each of the three given possibilities: head + finite clause, head + nonfinite clause, and head + prepositional phrase. table 10. average number of nominal groups with head + postmodification, logical function total entry data total rewritten data head + finite clause 1.5 1.7 head + nonfinite clause 0.3 1.5 head + prepositional phrase 2.3 3.2 universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras108 nieto-cruz student 6 reinforces this idea with the following reflection: on the text, there can also be found more complex nominal groups which may have different structures in the position of the qualifier including cases of multiple embedding. these embedded structures occur in a later stage of the literacy process. “the use of embedded clauses is characteristic of the registers of advanced literacy” as stated by fang et al. (2006, p. 253). students in general find the construction of postmodification rather challenging. the postmodification with prepositional phrases is the option mostly employed by students. student 3 indicates so: i tend just to create prepositional phrases. it makes me think that those are easier to form than finite or non-finite clauses, in my case. premodification + head + postmodification. the complexity of a nominal group can be measured in the length it can reach by the inclusion and combination of premodification + head + postmodification. the structures that students made more use of in the two moments of the comparison were those that combined the deictic function with the thing and the qualifying element performed by the prepositional phrase. it is evident that postmodification realized by nonfinite clauses is uncommon. this is a topic that deserves more attention because it is a grammatical structure that is highly used in academic texts. the combination of the deictic function + the epithet function + the classifier function + thing + the qualifying function was scarcely used by students in the samples analyzed. this finding highlights the importance that must be given to the understanding and practice of these structures in search of tools that may surely contribute to the development of the academic language necessary to perform well in academic and professional settings. qualitative trends to illustrate how students developed their skills in representing experiential meanings, next the reader will be presented with two writing samples of student 1 and student 6. in the entry sample of student 6, the text lacked detail in the narration of participants and circumstances. in the rewritten version, the main participant, the cat, becomes the abhorrent animal and the brute beast. the nominal group my pocket knife takes a finite postmodification resulting in my pocket knife which was extremely sharp. the already complex nominal group with nonfinite postmodification the cat crying in pain was rewritten as the miserable black cat that was crying in what seemed to be unbearable pain. it is possible to observe here that an epithet and a classifier were added in premodification. the nonfinite postmodification became a complex finite clause. the effort student 6 made in the rewritten version to improve the nominal group by substitution, amplification, and paraphrasing is noticeable. excerpt 1: entry version, student 6 one evening (60), i (61) came back home (62) completely intoxicated after i (63) had been drinking and the cat (64) was the one who welcomed me (65). as usual, after seeing the cat (66) i (67) felt angry and tried to catch it (68), however, the cat (69) was faster than me (70) and bit my hand (71) before i (72) could do anything (73). blinded by my increasing anger (74) i (75) took my pocket knife (76) and in one swift movement (77) cut out the cat’s eye (78). i (79) could only see the brutality of my act (80) after i heard the cat crying in pain (81). i (82) felt horrible and, in the days that followed that dreadful event (83), i (84) kept drinking and pluto (85) started running away from me (86). excerpt 2: rewritten version, student 6 one dark evening of july (1), i (2) came back to my beloved home (3) completely intoxicated after i (4) had been drinking and the abhorrent animal (5) was the one who welcomed me (6). as usual, after seeing that filthy black cat (7), i (8) felt angry and tried to catch it (9), however, the brute beast (10) was faster than me (11) and bit the hand 109profile: issues teach. prof. dev., vol. 21 no. 2, jul-dec, 2019. issn 1657-0790 (printed) 2256-5760 (online). bogotá, colombia. pages 97-112 the role of systemic functional grammar in the expansion of nominal groups with which i intended to hold it (12) before i (13) could do anything (14). blinded by my increasing and boiling anger (15) i (16) took my pocket knife which was extremely sharp (17) and in one swift movement of the hand that the cat had not bitten (18) cut out the cat’s glowing green eye (19). i (20) could only see the great brutality of my unpremeditated act (21) after i (22) heard the miserable black cat that was crying in what seemed to be unbearable pain (23). i (24) felt horrible and, in the long and distressing days that followed that dreadful event (25), i (26) kept drinking and pluto (27) which now had only one eye (28) started running away from me (29). the analysis of the entry and rewritten data of student 1 indicates that the rewritten version contains five more nominal groups thanks to the expansion he made of the nominal group stories (11), into fairytales (12), detective narrations (13), and science fiction fragments (14), and of the nominal group the power that they are still sharing with us (29) with the apposition, the humanity (30). the student improved the description of an initial nominal group with the inclusion of a describer or classifier as in the following examples: this entertainment (13) became the aforementioned kind of entertainment (16) and a book (20) a simple book (24). the choices the student made included the selection of a different kind of lexis as is evident in the following examples: anyone who appreciate them (8) became anyone who is able to appreciate them (8), showing a nod towards the interpersonal function expressed by the semi modal verb and a simple movie (21) to a mainstream movie (25) giving a twist in meaning. the change of that affirmation (22) to this statement (26) shows a change due to the precision the student wants to achieve in an academic context. the expansion in the following examples occurs in postmodification showing the desire to make the nominal group more complete in meaning: almost every book (9) to almost every book written to this date (9) and an influential lesson (10) to an influential lesson to any single of you (10). excerpt 3: entry version, student 1 on the one hand, books (7) can be remarkably important for anyone who appreciate them (8). moreover, almost every book (9) can teach an influential lesson (10). stories (11) in general possess that great power of entertaining anyone who is interested in them (12). this entertainment (13) is not only a visual and audible one (14), but also an astonishing process that lets you experience millions of feelings (15) while reading some connected sentences (16). thus, as you are more committed with the reading process (17), you are able to experience the content in a better way (18). the majority of people in the world (19) agree that a book (20) is significantly more powerful and meaningful than a simple movie (21) and, perhaps, that affirmation (22) can explain the reason (23). furthermore, if books (24) have not completely been extinct it is thanks to the power they are still providing for us (25). excerpt 4: rewritten version, student 1 on the one hand, books (7) can be remarkably important for anyone who is able to appreciate them (8). moreover, almost every book written to this date (9) can teach an influential lesson to any single of you (10). generally, stories (11), whether they are fairy-tales (12), detective narrations (13), or even science fiction fragments (14), possess the great power of entertaining anyone who is interested in them (15). the aforementioned kind of entertainment (16) is not only a visual and audible one (17), but also a magnificent process in which you experience millions of diverse feelings (18) while you read a group of sentences that are magically connected (19). thus, as you are more committed with the whole reading process (20), you are able to experience the full content in a better, almost magical way (21) (22). the majority of people in the world (23) agree that a simple book (24) is significantly more powerful and meaningful than a mainstream movie (25) and, perhaps, this statement (26) can explain the reason. (27) furthermore, if books (28) have not completely gone extinct it is thanks to the power that they are still sharing with us (29), the humanity (30). conclusions the characteristics of the nominal groups in students’ written productions before being exposed to the principles of systemic functional grammar are very similar to those exhibited in the rewritten versions: the nominal groups were numerous and varied (mixture of universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras110 nieto-cruz simple and complex) with examples of all the possible logical structures of the nominal group. after being exposed to sfg, it is possible to indicate that students kept many of their original nominal groups without making significant changes. they did, however, make some changes, especially when modifying the thing in postmodification with 10% more than when modifying the thing in pre and postmodification. it is interesting to note that students wrote less than 10% of new nominal groups. the principles of systemic functional grammar are somehow evidenced in students’ writing of nominal groups. it is possible to say that in premodification students made additions and changes in the original nominal groups by inserting describers and classifiers. addition of postmodification occurred in a slightly higher degree, especially with prepositional phrases. the changes in postmodification occurred because of the addition of the referrer/describer/ classifier in the nominal group of a prepositional phrase, a change in the lexis of the original nominal group, a switch from finite clause to nonfinite clause and vice versa, a change of function as shown by dare (2010, p. 23), and the addition of embedding in this order of occurrence. with respect to the head-only nominal groups, it is possible to assert that they underwent modifications resulting in nominal groups that took preand postmodification in equal proportions together with a change of function within the clause. in some instances, students decided to include an explicit head to make information clearer. students made changes to their original nominal groups by incorporating or modifying lexis. in other instances, they chose to introduce changes in the deictic function by changing referrers; they also changed the function of the nominal group in the clause; that is to say, they moved nominal groups from subject position to complement position or the contrary. it is also important to mention that students also reduced information, showing their capacity to condense information and to give precision and detail to the goings-on or happenings, participants, and circumstances in their texts. the precision and detail of the nominal group contribute to the creation of meanings, including “specific, generic, abstract, and technical meanings” (fang et al., 2006, p. 252). apart from gaining understanding and handling of nominal groups in the rewritten texts, the reflections made also speak of the metalanguage students were able to use in their analyses. this realization comes in line with dare (2010) and schleppegrell (2013) who assert that the provision of a metalanguage (a language for talking about language) will equip students with a robust understanding of how language works. derewianka and jones (2010) emphasize that sfg “offers a means of making language explicit to learners in the form of an accessible and flexible metalanguage” (p. 6). dare (2010) indicates that metalanguage plays a critical role in understanding how texts work as it provides a “means for talking and reflecting on the language choices we make in any text” (p. 24). schleppegrell and go (2007) agree that the inclusion of sfg metalanguage facilitates the identification of meaningful chunks or whole grammatical constituents called processes, participants, and circumstances. in this way, it is possible to see in a more evident way the relationship between meaning and form. to conclude, the knowledge about grammar (svalberg, 2015) that students have gained with the incorporation of the sfg model of language will be of help at different levels. student-teachers are better equipped to deal with the different fields, genre, and modes of their academic contexts and, in addition, they are nourishing the grammatical knowledge they will surely show in the development of their professional lives. references aguirre-muñoz, z., chang, r., & sanders, j. 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(1999). write source 2000: a guide to writing, thinking, and learning. wilmington, us: houghton mifflin company. stake, r. e. (2010). investigación con estudio de casos (5ª ed.). madrid, es: ediciones morata. svalberg, a. m.-l. (2015). understanding the complex processes in developing student teachers’ knowledge about grammar. the modern language journal, 99(3), 529-545. https://doi.org/10.1111/modl.12241. tomlin, r. s. (1994). functional grammars, pedagogical grammars, and communicative language teaching. in t. odlin (ed.), perspectives on pedagogical grammar (pp. 140-178). new york, us: cambridge university press. https://doi.org/10.1017/cbo9781139524605.009. whittaker, r. (2010). using systemic-functional linguistics in content and language integrated learning [special issue]. naldic quarterly, 31-36. retrieved from www.isfla.org/ systemics/print/papers/naldicsfl.pdf. about the author maría claudia nieto cruz is an associate professor of the foreign languages department at universidad nacional de colombia, bogotá campus. she is a co-researcher in two groups of the same department: profile and lexi. she has taught the grammar component in the teacher education program for several academic periods. 63profile: issues teach. prof. dev., vol. 21 no. 2, jul-dec, 2019. issn 1657-0790 (printed) 2256-5760 (online). bogotá, colombia. pages 63-77 https://doi.org/10.15446/profile.v21n2.72879 beliefs of two culturally diverse groups of teachers about intercultural bilingual education creencias sobre la educación intercultural bilingüe en dos comunidades culturalmente diferentes 1fabián benavides jimenez* 2yenny lisbeth mora acosta** universidad el bosque, bogotá, colombia this article provides an overview of the ideas that two groups of bilingual teachers from different contexts, one indigenous and the other western, have about the concepts of education, bilingualism, and interculturality. their opinions were gathered through focus groups, semi-structured interviews, and videos, and reviewed under light of what the theoreticians have pointed out regarding the three mentioned concepts. one important outcome was the enrichment of perspectives of both groups of participants, and a remarkable conclusion that refers to the similar perceptions both groups have regarding the concept of education. further research should address how each community perceives its own educational model and how it can be complemented with the views of the other. key words: bilingualism, culture, education, minority groups. este artículo expone los puntos de vista de dos grupos de docentes de diferentes contextos, relacionados con los conceptos de educación, bilingüismo e interculturalidad. la información fue recogida a través de entrevistas semiestructuradas, grupos focales y videos, y revisada a la luz de algunas propuestas teóricas. parte de los hallazgos indican que las perspectivas de cada grupo se enriquecieron con este trabajo y una conclusión importante se refiere a las similitudes conceptuales de los participantes sobre educación. se sugiere para el futuro indagar sobre las ideas que cada comunidad tiene acerca de su modelo educativo y cómo éstas puedan complementarse con la visión del otro. palabras clave: bilingüismo, cultura, educación, minorías. * e-mail: fbenavides@unbosque.edu.co ** e-mail: morayenny@unbosque.edu.co how to cite this article (apa, 6th ed.): benavides-jimenez, f., & mora-acosta, y. l. (2019). beliefs of two culturally diverse groups of teachers about intercultural bilingual education. profile: issues in teachers’ professional development, 21(2), 63-77. https://doi.org/10.15446/ profile.v21n2.72879. this article was received on june 22, 2018 and accepted on may 13, 2019. this is an open access article distributed under the terms of the creative commons license attribution-noncommercial-noderivatives 4.0 international license. consultation is possible at https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/. universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras64 benavides-jimenez & mora-acosta introduction the constitution of colombia recognizes the diversity of its territory in terms of cultures and languages; however, most of the policies created to guarantee a better quality of life for minorities (e.g., african-colombian, indigenous, and romany people) seem not to be put into practice. in the educational field, for example, indigenous students are expected to receive a type of education in which their cultural and language needs are considered; however, they are required to fulfil the same tasks as the mainstream scholars in the language of the majority of the population (not in their mother tongue), as on the national standardized test saber. due to that reality, indigenous students will be more vulnerable and subject to discrimination as the skills they have developed in school will be useless in their specific contexts. considering the previous information, we feel it is important to promote discussion between the majority and minority voices regarding education, interculturality, and bilingualism, and to share knowledge that fosters educational processes being carried out in the minorities’ distant contexts. therefore, this document starts by presenting the theoretical framework based on the different educational and linguistic proposals surrounding indigenous and mainstream communities in colombia through the aforementioned concepts. later, it defines the methodological research design, and finally, it presents partial results of the study related to the analysis of data extracted from the information given by the participants. theoretical framework intercultural bilingual education (ibe) initially, the name of intercultural bilingual education (ibe) was given to an educational proposal designed by some south and central american ministries of education to incorporate indigenous communities into the hegemonic educational policies, and into the national lifestyle by teaching them the dominant language and culture. later, however, it became a way to legitimate and recognize the rights of the indigenous people, which had been denied for decades (internacional de la educación américa latina, 2011; lópez & sichra, 2008). in this new approach, the cultural practices and mother tongue of the indigenous groups were promoted and taught along with the requirements of the national educational policies. different studies in south and central america have made an approach to the goals and difficulties of ibe. for example, hevia and hirmas (2005) argue that even though cultural diversity is recognized in chile, the indigenous groups are still regulated by the dominant culture which promotes the use of spanish in the schools, denying the importance of native languages and the cultural practices of minorities. on the other hand, the “modelo educativo bilingüe e intercultural” (ministerio de educación de guatemala, 2009) outlines the most important elements for developing an ibe school, such as legal aspects, teacher training, the educational system quality, and the parameters of interculturality and bilingualism, among others. it is relevant to mention that within the colombian context, the educational model for minorities (especially the indigenous population) is not called ibe but ethnoeducation; therefore, studies and investigations about it can be considered as following the principles of ibe. particularly, the researcher and presidential adviser who has coordinated educational processes in ethnic groups (indigenous and afro colombian), luis alberto artunduaga (1997), for example, has worked towards the understanding of ethno-education as a way for indigenous peoples to enrich their educational model according to their cultural and linguistic needs; then, this proposal reflects a critical stance against minorities’ segregation and discrimination. likewise, castillo and caicedo (2008) analyze how interculturality is understood by sectors such as the ministry of educa65profile: issues teach. prof. dev., vol. 21 no. 2, jul-dec, 2019. issn 1657-0790 (printed) 2256-5760 (online). bogotá, colombia. pages 63-77 beliefs of two culturally diverse groups of teachers about intercultural bilingual education tion, universities, and afro colombian groups to verify how appropriate this concept is in the ethno-education programs. moreover, despite the fact that the ibe model tries to incorporate the minority groups by recognizing their language and practices, the reality shows another issue; therefore, when the model is critically analyzed there are many inconsistences in issues such as the subjects to be taught, the methodologies to be implemented in the indigenous school and the kind of tests which ignore specific knowledge obtained by experiences. due to the existence of 102 indigenous groups and 14 linguistic families (dane, 2007; ministerio de educación nacional, 2013), and the previous claims related to the lack of protection of the cultural and language needs of these groups within the educational field in their territories, the central government has established life plans (planes de vida) to be implemented within the schools. these life plans are projects created by these groups to consolidate the perspectives for their future as a community and are brought to life through the “proyectos educativos comunitarios, pecs” (community educational projects, ceps) that schools should have. this is how ethno-education—the name that ibe receives in colombia—is put into practice; nevertheless, a dominant approach is still part of the educational system for minority groups, disregarding their unique lifestyle and authentic knowledge. a brief overview on bilingualism and its application in colombia along the teaching and learning of languages, the concept of bilingualism has been in the center of discussions as it deals not only with the field of education, but also with business, politics, marketing, and mass media, among others. therefore, its definition has developed from establishing that a bilingual person is someone who has a native-like control of two languages (hamers & blanc as cited in alarcón, 2002), to seeing bilinguals as those who can use properly two or more languages, and that can reflect their linguistic competences in the communicative process (genesee & nicoladis, 2006). these two broad ideas led us to think that the idea of bilingualism has evolved from being perceived only in a linguistic way, to a more complete concept that includes paralinguistic and cultural elements. in colombia, bilingualism has been linked to the teaching and learning of a foreign language, especially english, french, and german (bonilla carvajal & tejada-sánchez, 2016; de mejía, 2006; robayo acuña, & cárdenas, 2017). currently, due to the tendencies of globalization, the english language has become the preferred language to use when communicating with people from other countries who do not speak the same language. this reason led the colombian government to place special attention on english as a foreign language (efl) teaching and learning processes, opening the opportunities for the creation of projects to develop and improve all educational levels (primary, secondary, university), framed within the 115 general law of education (congreso de la república de colombia, 1994). however, those initiatives haven’t been quite successful (bonilla carvajal & tejada-sánchez, 2016) and the disdain to recognize other types of bilingualism (e.g., indigenous languages) is evident during the implementation of these projects (guerrero nieto, 2009, 2010). despite the focus on bilingualism processes around efl in colombia, other proposals from minority groups have come up considering a spanish-minority language duet, since from colonial times this population has had that situation. therefore, in the local context and abroad (south and central america), ibe and ethnoeducation have arisen as a way for these communities to implement bilingualism programs using their mother tongue and spanish (or portuguese) as a means for their instruction in schools, and not the one imposed by the predominant sectors (english in the colombian case). only in this way it is possible to talk about inclusion and participation of all groups in political, economic or linguistic decisions of the country (castillo & caicedo, 2008; fajardo, 2011; lagos, 2015). universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras66 benavides-jimenez & mora-acosta interculturality in colombia, the government recognizes and protects the cultural and ethnic diversity of social groups that live in it, making the nation a multicultural context. also, many indigenous groups have resisted over time and insist on maintaining their cultures and languages; then, these social groups coexist with the dominant culture and relate to it for educational purposes, legal aspects, and commercial issues, among others. these encounters between two individuals from different cultures are framed under the term interculturality (trujillo, 2005, p. 33). this term has been widely discussed and is usually tied to the educational field and to social processes. according to rehaag (2006, p. 4): “interculturality is based on the argument that all cultures are equally valid, and in an attempt to understand the others, one comes to approach them and to face one’s own culture at the same time” (authors’ translation). for her part, walsh (2010, pp. 76-78) considers that the concept of interculturality can be seen from three different perspectives: a relational perspective, in which there is contact and interchange between cultures; a functional one, in which the diversity of cultures and the differences each one has are recognized in order to include them in the social structures already established; and a critical perspective that pretends to erase all differences so that new relationships among people can be created in order to transform the social structures that perpetuate the hegemonies of power. these cultural encounters allow people to show the others who they are and how they conceive the world around them by using their language. as pointed out before, language and culture have a tight relationship, as stated by delgado (2001) when arguing that a language can shape the culture where it is spoken, and that at the same time the culture gives the language particular elements to be understood. however, sometimes this relationship is not taken into account, especially in educational processes. in relation to this, walsh (2010) considers that: within ibe, the intercultural aspect has been understood mainly in linguistic terms and in one direction only: from the indigenous language to the national one. and this direction gives interculturality a transition sense: it shows how indigenous students should have a relationship with the dominant culture and not vice versa. (pp. 80-81, authors’ translation) given this situation, it is important then to think about how educational processes take place in ibe in order to evaluate what has been done so far and to implement the necessary adjustments. conceptions of education approaches to western education grasping the concept of education requires the understanding of many social and cultural relationships that contribute to the instruction of a person, as well as many other people involved in it. therefore, león (2007) considers that education is conceived to evolve, not to be static; then, it must be redefined and questioned based on a determined time and space in which different subjectivities may share and build up knowledge. with that view, the educational process must not be standardized because, beyond the homogenized practices, it has to satisfy particular necessities in specific contexts. according to freire (2005), traditional education focuses on a “banking process” in which “students are the depositories and the teacher is the depositor. instead of communicating, the teacher issues communiques and makes deposits which the students patiently receive, memorize, and repeat” (p. 70); thus, the most important role is exerted by the teacher who has the knowledge and transmits it to the student to be memorized. to counteract this situation, a dialogical education is offered with the sense of allowing students to become active participants in their learning processes; hence, one of the basic principles of critical pedagogy is the cooperation to construct knowledge without hierarchies; 67profile: issues teach. prof. dev., vol. 21 no. 2, jul-dec, 2019. issn 1657-0790 (printed) 2256-5760 (online). bogotá, colombia. pages 63-77 beliefs of two culturally diverse groups of teachers about intercultural bilingual education thus, “authentic education is not carried on by ‘a’ for ‘b’ or by ‘a’ about ‘b,’ but rather by ‘a’ with ‘b,’ mediated by the world” (p. 93). to conclude, the education process should involve essential issues such as the construction of knowledge in a dialogical dynamic, the democratic participation to benefit expression of different points of view and, the dynamic sense it has according to particular contexts with precise needs. indigenous self educational system for many years, the educational model to be implemented in the indigenous territories in colombia was western-like; as betancur (2012) argues, the only education given for indigenous communities was the western one through the imposition of the spanish language and evangelization; so, subjects in the indigenous schools were taught in spanish with teachers ignoring the mother tongue; western knowledge was imposed over the vernacular one and with this comes the imposition of catholicism. as a consequence, education was based on proper christian conduct rules to guarantee obedience, abstinence, and work. as the western proposals were inadequate for the indigenous lifestyle, the colombian native groups aimed to develop a “new educational” model in which their ancestral knowledge, meaningful practices, languages, and cultures were included in their programs; therefore, the “sistema educativo indígena propio, seip” (indigenous self educational model, iesm) was presented as a proposal to meet this end. thus, the comisión nacional de trabajo y concertación de la educación para los pueblos indígenas (contcepi) (national commission of labor and agreement of education for the indigenous peoples) was created through government decree 2406 of 2007 in order for indigenous groups to start working on this educational model. contcepi considers that it brings into practice the “law of origin, law of life, main right or proper right for every group, maintaining unity, the relationship with nature, with other cultures, with the hegemonic society and with each one keeping their own traditions” (contcepi, 2013, p. 19, authors’ translation). then, this proposal becomes a reality when “the wise men practice their knowledge in relation to their diverse surroundings, when we learn from our parents and the material and spiritual nature: the traditional medicine, rituals; the plowing of land . . . yamana or community work, etc.” (contcepi, 2013, pp. 20-21, authors’ translation) research design the current study followed a qualitative approach as it attempts to describe and contrast the ideas that both groups of participants have about education, bilingualism, and interculturality through their real experiences. consequently, the historic-hermeneutic paradigm was implemented since it pursues understanding the way in which the three concepts are assumed in different contexts. this understanding usually goes beyond the text (data) because it also includes context and pretext to find the inner sense of what was said as this has something inside (grondin, 1999). the participants were two groups of teachers, five from a ba program in bilingual education from a private university in bogotá, and four1 from an indigenous school located on a reservation in puerto gaitán, meta (colombia). all participants have been involved in the teaching of languages, either english-spanish or spanish-sikuani so, besides being teachers, they are bilingual. all teachers working in the university studied for and completed a ba in languages and a master’s degree related to education. they have worked for this institution for more than three years and have had the opportunity to travel abroad fostering contact with the foreign language and its culture. the teachers from the indigenous context studied basic education, and 1 three of these teachers belong to the sikuani ethnic group, specifically the wacoyo reservation located at puerto gaitán, meta, in the colombian eastern plains. they speak sikuani as their mother tongue. universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras68 benavides-jimenez & mora-acosta data analysis and results2 as the two groups of participants come from different realities in terms of their lifestyle and educational backgrounds, this research exercise attempts to identify the conceptions both groups have about three concepts: education, bilingualism, and interculturality, since these terms compose the ibe project or ethno-education, as it is called in colombia. that is why the instruments used for this research project addressed the concepts mentioned before with the participants in pursuance of understanding what the idea was of the teachers about these terms and how they gave meaning to them in their educational contexts. therefore, this part is divided into three main sections (education, bilingualism and bilingual education, and interculturality), which show the similarities and differences around the topics discussed for each group (see figure 1). figure 1. organization of data analysis and results education according to the collected data, it is possible to mention that the concept of education is usually linked, in both groups, as the teaching and learning processes a person is involved in, which in turn becomes a reproduction of the cultural structures and social models 2 the data for this research were collected in spanish; however, the quotes from the participants presented here are translated into english to fulfill the parameters of the journal. some have started a ba program in ethno-education. two of them have worked in the school for more than 10 years and the other two, about three years. they have been in contact with the second language (spanish) all their lives. the participants were chosen by convenience, which means, people who wanted to contribute and feel an affinity with the topic under study participated in this research exercise. to carry out the research process, three instruments were used: focal groups, semi-structured interviews, and videos (hernández, fernández, & baptista, 2006; pujadas, comas, & roca, 2010). the research process followed the proposal from taylor and bogdan (1990), who establish three moments: discover, codify, and revitalize. in the first phase, topics are sought based on data collected; after the completed data collection process is done, it must lead to the categories for the analysis; and in the revitalization stage, data are interpreted within the context where they were collected. with the purpose of handling the data easier, they were coded as follows: other codes given to data are: ew = entrevista (interview) wacoyo and eg = encuentro grupal (focal group). example: eub1.p01. #92-98 eub entrevista (interview) 1 number of the interview p 01 professor (teacher) number of the teacher #92-98 number of the lines of the comment in the transcription ub (stands for the name of the university) { { { { { university teachers sikuani teachers (secondary education) educationinterculturality bilingualismbilingual education ibe / ethno-education 69profile: issues teach. prof. dev., vol. 21 no. 2, jul-dec, 2019. issn 1657-0790 (printed) 2256-5760 (online). bogotá, colombia. pages 63-77 beliefs of two culturally diverse groups of teachers about intercultural bilingual education of the context. to this end, león (2007) argues that the educational process “cannot get rid of the culture and tradition (since) these show the values which give cohesion to the way of thinking and to the actions of the social systems” (p. 600, authors’ translation). then, the educational process goes beyond an interchange of knowledge because it is also a way for culture, ideologies, and values to be perpetuated. when talking about education, both groups consider it as a tool that bolsters and helps achieve some goals, which represent a social status such as economic capital and leadership. particularly, for the university teachers, education becomes a way to ascend socially, to be recognized in the context, and to get better financial resources. in terms of bourdieu (1986), people who have the opportunity to access education acquire a cultural capital (forms of knowledge or educational credentials) that later turns into economic capital such as money or properties; this capital is the stuff “of all other forms of capital and treats all others types of capital as transformed, disguised forms of economic capital” (p. 252). this idea of education as a way to access economic capital is referenced in the next excerpt: as a teacher, i have seen that education can actually change the reality of a person; if i hadn’t had the education i have now, my possibilities would be reduced. i think that education has had a positive impact in my family in an economic and social way. (eub1.p01. #92-98) then, for the university teachers, education offers the possibility to acquire better economic resources and social status, what in bourdieu’s theory is understood as economic capital or goods a person possesses. this capital derives from the education people received that guarantees access to well-paid jobs in society and, consequently, a better way of life and socioeconomic conditions. from the indigenous teachers’ perspective, education offers the possibility to become a leader. then, the participants affirm that education helps to learn from the surroundings and to internalize the principles of community thinking, both of which are basic features of a leader, even when making decisions. therefore, leadership is an ability to contribute to the development of the social group, so the leader should put the collective interests over the particular ones in benefit of the social development of the community. to this end, garcía hierro (2015) mentions that leadership, in indigenous communities, is linked to the idea of “asla laka”, a guatemalan indigenous word referring to the “unity law”, which is a way to highlight that community predominates over personal interests. to support this information a participant affirms: talking about education . . . education in our culture is not only to teach but for the kid to visualize what it is in his or her environment . . . in our community, leadership is a key point for the young people, so they understand they are part of a big community, not only of a small family. (eg1.pa. #430-440) hence, for this group of participants education is the way for a person to become a leader in their communities and in the nation; therefore, this is broader than learning about basic subjects established by the colombian ministry because it is a process in which the student learns personal abilities such as taking decisions, listening to the community, or negotiating with nonindigenous people, along with the required subjects. to sum up the previous ideas, it is possible to infer that for both contexts, education is a process to achieve certain goals; however, the ends are not the same. thus, for the university teachers’ group, education may grant them access to a better economic condition and thus a better quality of life which, under the interpretation of bourdieu (1986), represents the acquisition of economic capital, reflected in the monetary resources owned by a person. on the other hand, for indigenous teachers, education becomes a tool to develop leadership, which is characterized in elements such as the ability to listen and to take decisions that benefit the community as well as one which also acts as an intermediary between universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras70 benavides-jimenez & mora-acosta this indigenous group and the dominant sectors of the society (velasco, 2014). after analyzing the goals education has in each context, we see that a new relationship emerged; it was the connection between education and experience. then, for both groups this relation is direct because a learning process happens when people experience their surroundings in an interactive process. according to this concept, an indigenous teacher points out the idea that education is not only related to knowledge about science, math, language, and the like, but also to the experiences people have in their contexts, since they turn into situations for learning, as shown in the following excerpt: in my case, the school was a place to confirm the information we were taught at home. for example, if i know that this is the word for fish and how it is pronounced, i go to the school and confirm this with the teacher. (ew1.pa. #961-974) based on the above, the relationship between education and experience leads one to think that the learning processes occurs both at school and everywhere; as a result, it is an interactive and constant process with all elements that surround a person. contcepi (2013) considers that learning takes place with our parents and material and spiritual nature: traditional medicine; rituality; farming; history; how to care of the seeds based on the moon calendar . . . the relation with the territory, rivers and mountains . . . learning to read the time and space, songs, music. (p. 20, authors’ translation) therefore, for the indigenous teachers, people experience the world by interacting with others and with nature, so, in this particular dynamic the learning process happens to help people restructure their knowledge and cosmovision in a constant process that never ends. likewise, teachers from the university context consider that experience is part of education because people learn through every single process in which they socialize or interact with others. that is to say, the experiential issues go beyond a formal or informal institution, because it is part of the daily interaction humans have. it is evidenced in the next excerpt: education is not only mentioning the types of education, like formal or informal, but to all experiences or socializing processes we have, or the different opportunities of learning that we may have. (eub1.p02. #96-103) according to this line of thought, in human interactions people gain knowledge; and as this process is part of daily life, people learn constantly in every moment and in different spaces. moreover, education cannot be linked to only a particular place such as the school or the university, because it can happen in different places in which a person has the opportunity to interchange ideas with others (church, family, work, etc.). to conclude this category, it can be said that there are some similarities in the answers provided by the participants; however, there are particular ideas that must be considered. first, one common idea is that education acts as a way to obtain a type of benefit. in the case of the university teachers it is represented as the economic capital (bourdieu, 1986), which comprises the goods and money that derive from the education (cultural capital) a person has. for the indigenous teachers, education allows them to perform as leaders inside their territories and this is represented in issues such as listening to others, taking decisions, and developing community thinking. then, for the university teachers the role of education is to empower the individual development which, in turn, provides economic capital; therefore for the indigenous teachers, education becomes a way for a person to gain a sense of belonging to a social group, and in this way, to help in the development of his or her community. another similarity refers to the relationship between education and experience and how they complement one another; at that point, both groups consider education as the experience in which one learns by means of interaction. whereas university teachers consider 71profile: issues teach. prof. dev., vol. 21 no. 2, jul-dec, 2019. issn 1657-0790 (printed) 2256-5760 (online). bogotá, colombia. pages 63-77 beliefs of two culturally diverse groups of teachers about intercultural bilingual education that education is completely linked to the interaction among people, for the indigenous teachers this interaction is not only with people, but also with other elements such as nature and its components. in fact, even when both groups of teachers have similar ideas about education, when talking about its goals and its relationship with experience, the ideas become wider in issues such as individual (money) and community development (leadership) and experiential learning obtained from the interaction with humans and the components of nature. bilingualism and bilingual education the second category allowed us to identify the perspectives the participants have about the concept of bilingualism and its role in education. the first aspect where the participants’ ideas converge is in the definition, corresponding to skutnabb-kangas and mccarty’s proposal (2008) wherein these authors state that bilingualism is the possibility for an individual to use two languages proficiently, therefore, “the term does not always imply an equally high level of proficiency in all the relevant languages” (p. 4); this perception is evident when an indigenous participant affirmed: “bilingualism implies that you should talk in two languages” (eg2. pa.#107-108), so this comment refers to the closeness to what is proposed from the theory with regard to the use of two languages. evidently, we can emphasize the fact that, in the indigenous context, the mother tongue is sikuani and the subsequent language is spanish, as the following excerpt portrays: we always specify which is the mother tongue and the second language as spanish, they are always together, playing an important role. (ew2.pb. #57-59) when the indigenous peoples talk about spanish, they explain that their learning system of this language was depicted as an interactive process with mestizo people by means of work, education, and religion. as one of them stated: our grandparents did not talk spanish properly, they started to use it when they went to work in the farms, around 1970’s. then, education in meta department3 started and most of the families began to use spanish, to become bilinguals. also, catholic religion started to evangelize, and spanish was introduced in this way as well. (ew2.pb. #30-43) having shown the indigenous perception, we think here it is possible to mention the similar comprehension university teachers have about the concept; hence, one of them states that a bilingual person “is the one who has the communicative competence, not only in his or her mother tongue but in a foreign one” (eg2.p02. #21-23). it is also important to remark that the definition is supported with academic authorities as declared in the following statement: it comes to my mind a definition by grosjean about bilingualism as the regular use of two languages in the daily life of a person. in my case, i may say that i am a functional bilingual, because i can use both languages in different situations, in different contexts. (eub2.p03. #468-484) the previous information is linked with the ideas of different authors which support that being a bilingual refers to the perfect domain of the l1 and l2, (blanco, 1981; lam, 2001; romaine, 1999). however, according to bermúdez and fandiño (2016), recent studies suggest that more than categorizing bilingual people, it is imperative to describe and be precise as to “their psychological development, their cognitive organization, their communicative specificities or their relation with the cultural environment” (p. 45). another coincidence about bilingualism is related to its purpose because the participants understand the l2 as being a tool for communicating but each community uses it in a different way. for the indigenous participants, the second language allows them to defend themselves 3 according to the administrative division of colombia, the country is a unitary republic divided into 32 departments (administrative divisions) and the capital district (bogotá, d.c.) universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras72 benavides-jimenez & mora-acosta and to be recognized in the nation. it is clear that during indigenous meetings of diverse groups—known as mingas—spanish becomes the language to communicate among them. this enables them to participate actively and the spanish language becomes the lingua franca inside the colombian context. in this regard, a teacher mentioned: in my case, for example, when all indigenous communities in colombia gather together, the only way to communicate among all is by using spanish as i cannot use my mother tongue. in that moment i start using spanish because all people must understand me. spanish gives us an opportunity to communicate with each other. (eg2.pa. #141-148) in the same way, the indigenous teachers explain that spanish becomes a defense tool in a nation as expansive/broad/diverse as colombia. this is explained in the following extract: …and then, due to the need of interaction with the others, they had to learn spanish to demand their rights, so they were not robbed anymore; therefore, i see in bilingualism an opportunity for us not to be exploited anymore. (ew1.pc. #200-204) now then, from the university teachers’ perception, english is assumed as a language to reach certain progress because of the possibility the language gives us; regarding this point, it was affirmed that: i think that most of us perpetuate the idea that the english language opens many opportunities, and the ministry [of education] has a very clear discourse about this. (eub.p01. #1262-1265) and, the idea is reaffirmed when stated: i think that bilingualism is an interesting element, a factor that promotes the social and cultural growth, and it has to be linked to all social processes. (eub.p05. #231-235) the situation of bilingualism in colombia was the third convergent axis mentioned during the conversations. although most of the national context recognizes spanish-english bilingualism, for the sikuani community this feature is broadened because in their territories other indigenous languages coexist, turning this into a multilingual phenomenon. thus, the participants explain that in school, although sikuani is their mother tongue, piapoco, spanish, and english are also part of their realities: for us, spanish is our second language and as we will study english, we would have three languages; for example, there is a teacher who speaks sikuani, piapoco, and spanish, if he studied english, he would have more opportunities. (ew2.pa. #131-136) the group of university teachers recognizes that the bilingual policy implemented in colombia considers spanish-english, but other bilingual forms are forgotten, as explained: i think that the policies regarding bilingualism are focused only on the english-spanish duet, disregarding other foreign languages or indigenous languages as well. this has led us to consider bilingualism only from that english-spanish point of view. (eub1.p02. #344-356) although the ministry of education recognizes bilingualism, both groups of participants agree that there is no recognition of other languages different from english, even though there are other bilingualism processes, such as the ones among minority languages (indigenous, romani—from gypsy people—, palenquero, and others) and between them and spanish. this occurs because as regards the ministry of education, the policies related to ethno-education are distant from the bilingual programs because, as fandiño and bermúdez (2016) explain, there is a distance created in the educational system since the term “bilingual education is used to refer to educational programs involving the teaching of english, french, or german, and the concept of ethnoeducation is applied to education related to minority languages” (p. 146, authors’ translation). as a conclusion, it is evident that both parts agree in the conceptions they assume about bilingualism, especially regarding the managing of two 73profile: issues teach. prof. dev., vol. 21 no. 2, jul-dec, 2019. issn 1657-0790 (printed) 2256-5760 (online). bogotá, colombia. pages 63-77 beliefs of two culturally diverse groups of teachers about intercultural bilingual education languages. nevertheless, it would be relevant to think the bilingual phenomena raised by the ministry of education, which only bears in mind the relations of dominant languages, are to explore the national linguistic diversity of the country. then, in the colombian context it is relevant to recognize not only the bilingual duet english-spanish, but also other forms of bilingualism or multilingualism that constantly exist in indigenous reservations. interculturality in this category, it was also possible to observe that both groups of teachers shared a common definition of interculturality that is related to the knowledge and cultural practices, interaction, and exchange to find points in common, but they bring it to their realities in different ways. according to trujillo (2005), interculturality refers to “the encounters in which two people who perceive themselves as culturally different get in touch with each other” (p. 33, authors’ translation), a definition that comprises the ideas of the participants, especially for the indigenous teachers, for whom interculturality deals with the interchanging of knowledge in order to converge into common points of view, as the following teacher mentions: i can also share my knowledge that is not known by everyone of you, and it happens the same with a spanish speaker with his or her mother tongue and his or her culture. then, if he/she has a culture, it shows a different point of view; then when we start doing interculturalization, we contribute, you contribute, and we always look for a single conclusion. (eg2.pa. #166-174) the group of university teachers understands interculturality in a similar way to the indigenous one; therefore, they mention that in order to understand some cultural practices, interaction plays an important role, as mentioned below by a teacher: i would ideally think that interculturality is the interaction between two or more cultures, the interaction between different cultures. (eub2.p03#1148-1152) this interactive process has an important function in representing one’s culture without invalidating others’ cultural backgrounds. another important issue to consider is the relationship between interculturality, respect, and cohabitation of people in school. therefore, indigenous teachers consider this as a key element since they argue that their school integrates students with different experiences whose meaning are in constant negotiation. regarding this matter, it is commented: on the other hand, if a peasant, a gypsy, or a person from a specific group, comes to study at our school, we cannot segregate him/her because the idea of interculturality points towards integration. (eg1.pb. #260-267) consequently, when talking about integration and cultural interaction, the importance of respecting the language and culture of the participants in a communicative act must be recognized, so that all people involved get a sense of impartiality. that is to say, when interacting in a different context from which a person comes from, it is necessary to negotiate meanings respecting the cultural and linguistic rules to guarantee egalitarianism. this is one way to state it: interculturality tries to associate different social groups because in colombia there are more than 68 ethnic groups; but if i want to go to study the piraroba or piapoco languages or any other, i have to interact with that group, respecting their statutory rules; and when other group comes to study with us, it has to do the same, always respecting, not excelling, but respecting the language they handle. (ew2.pb. #276-287) also, participants from the university consider interculturality as an interactive process that takes place within a territory in which respect and tolerance for the other should be a must, because everyone has a particular background that makes him/her different from the others: but i think that if there is interculturality, there is respect for diversity, there is respect for difference, so, i think that it would universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras74 benavides-jimenez & mora-acosta be the key to interculturality; to understand that there is another culture that is different from mine, that has another language, other customs, another ethnicity maybe, another race, but for these reasons they are not more or less valuable, there should not be like those power dynamics between one culture and the other if there is interculturality. (eub2.p03#1152-1166) according to the above, an intercultural process recognizes the respect for diversities not only in terms of race, but also in the way of thinking, the language, and cultural practices, among others. for some researchers, interculturality takes place when one recognizes one’s own culture and the one of the others within a framework of acceptation, acknowledging the other in his/her differences. thus, rehaag (2006) mentions: the concept of interculturality is based on the fact that all cultures are equally valid, and in a process of mutual understanding an approach to the “other” or “stranger” is carried out, which at the same time involves a confrontation with one’s own culture. (p. 4) another aspect to look at is the way both groups bring this concept to their realities. even though all the participants consider interculturality as the interaction that takes place between two cultures, university teachers think about it from the theoretical or academic contexts, as a way of implementing a course or a space to teach what the concept means: in our system we do not have a class about worldview or interculturality; then, it is not thought as reflection towards our own culture, perhaps because it has been thought that the need does not exist, but that is debatable, i think. (eg1.p01. #282-287) likewise, another teacher expresses that even though language and culture have a close relationship, bilingual schools in colombia seem not to have a cultural component of the target language, so, the intercultural awareness is not reinforced because the predominant model is related to the linguistic skill. here [in the western context] it is thought that in bilingual school, you are taught english, you are taught only a language, but i have never heard, at least where i worked, or with my nephews and close children i know, that the school will teach them about culture; then, english is shown as a hook, as a plus. (eg1.p03. #413-418) for the indigenous teachers, in contrast, interculturality is a living concept that is not only promoted in school because it is part of the everyday nature; this could be revealed in the experiences when nonindigenous people go to the reservations to interact with the community, then the sharing knowledge process is mediated in the spanish language as a way to deeply recognize the others’ practices and cosmovision. also from the language, the food; many people go there (wacoyo) and they are not indigenous, then, how can we interact in our language if they are not going to understand us? then we have to use spanish. that is why we always learn and teach boys from the youngest and the oldest. (eg3.pd. #92-96) to conclude, it can be said that the concept of interculturality is understood by both groups of teachers as the interaction of two cultures in which respect for each one and their world visions must mediate to share knowledge. however, each group experiments this concept in a different way: indigenous teachers can have a lively and close experience with other cultures, but university teachers need to approach the concept from theoretical and school contexts. as regards this topic, trujillo (2005) explains that there are two visions of culture: culture with a capital letter and culture with a small c, because the former comprises all art elements as music or literature, history, customs, and the like, which can be learned and studied, as in the case of university teachers. the second way to approach a culture (with a small c) relies on experiencing the beliefs, values, religious views, moral aspects, linguistic and non-verbal elements of the language, and others, which the indigenous teachers have had the opportunity to live. 75profile: issues teach. prof. dev., vol. 21 no. 2, jul-dec, 2019. issn 1657-0790 (printed) 2256-5760 (online). bogotá, colombia. pages 63-77 beliefs of two culturally diverse groups of teachers about intercultural bilingual education conclusions the benefits of the interchange of knowledge between the participants in this research are relevant because not only they could recognize each other’s point of view but also because many commonalities were found along the discussion of the three categories: education, bilingualism and bilingual education, and interculturality. likewise, this sharing of points of view allowed the participants to enrich their perceptions about topics related to the concepts; therefore, different perspectives and perceptions about education and pedagogy were explored to promote the personal and academic practices in favour of inclusion, visibilization, and diversity. for the category of education, a common aspect among the participants is the idea that educating a person deals with the interaction he or she has with his or her context and how he or she makes sense of the world based on that; that education should transcend the classroom to every space and experience for the well-being of the person. also, the participants of this investigation consider education from different perspectives: for university teachers, education is conducive to acquiring economic capital whereas for the indigenous group it is a benefit represented in leadership. in relation to bilingualism, both communities agree that this concept is related to the use of two languages in a context, as seen in the participants’ comments. this idea is supported by different linguistic theories; however, for the indigenous teachers, spanish as their second language becomes a tool to defend their rights and be recognized in the hegemonic culture, as well as a channel to communicate with other indigenous communities. for the university participants, the use of the foreign language (english) allows them to access better academic and working possibilities within what has been called “a globalized world”. finally, interculturality is perceived in both groups as the contact of two cultures in equal terms for them; nonetheless, in the western culture working with it can be done through courses, seminars, and the like, and the access to the foreign culture can be done through books, movies, and songs, among others, since a move to english speaking countries is most of the time difficult. on the contrary, for the indigenous community interculturality is a living process due to the closeness to the second language culture which lets them interact and share their knowledge and cultural practices. references alarcón, l. j. 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(2006). reflexiones acerca de la interculturalidad. cpu-e, revista de investigación educativa, (2), 1-9. robayo acuña, l. m., & cárdenas, m. l. (2017). inclusive education and elt policies in colombia: views from some profile journal authors. profile: issues in teachers’ professional development, 19(1), 121-136. https://doi. org/10.15446/profile.v19n1.61075. 77profile: issues teach. prof. dev., vol. 21 no. 2, jul-dec, 2019. issn 1657-0790 (printed) 2256-5760 (online). bogotá, colombia. pages 63-77 beliefs of two culturally diverse groups of teachers about intercultural bilingual education romaine, s. (1999). bilingual language development. in m. barrett (ed.), the development of language (pp. 251-275). sussex, uk: psychology press. skutnabb-kangas, t., & mccarty, t. l. (2008). key concepts in bilingual education: ideological, historical, epistemical, and empirical foundations. in j. cummins & n. h. hornberger (eds.), encyclopedia of language and education (2nd ed., vol. 5, pp. 3-17). new york, us: springer. taylor, s. j., & bogdan, r. (1990). introducción a los métodos cualitativos de investigación. barcelona, es: paidós. trujillo, f. (2005). en torno a la interculturalidad: reflexiones sobre cultura y comunicación para la didáctica de la lengua. porta linguarum, (4), 23-39. velasco, l. (2014). organización y liderazgo de migrantes indígenas en méxico y estados unidos: el caso del fiob. migración y desarrollo, 12(23), 97-125. walsh, c. (2010). interculturalidad crítica y educación intercultural. in j. viaña, l. tapia, & c. walsh (eds.), construyendo interculturalidad crítica (pp. 75-96). la paz, bo: instituto internacional de integración del convenio andrés bello. about the authors fabián benavides jimenez holds an m.a. in literary studies from universidad santo tomás (colombia). he works as a full-time professor at universidad el bosque (colombia). his research interests are focused on intercultural bilingual education, interculturality, and power relationships. yenny lisbeth mora acosta works as a full-time associate professor at universidad el bosque (colombia). she holds an m.a. in applied linguistics to tefl from universidad distrital francisco josé de caldas (colombia) and is a doctoral student at universidad de murcia (spain). her research interests derive from the relationships between language, culture, and education. 49profile vol. 16, no. 2, october 2014. issn 1657-0790 (printed) 2256-5760 (online). bogotá, colombia. pages 49-65 learning to teach and professional identity: images of personal and professional recognition aprender a enseñar e identidad profesional: imágenes de reconocimiento personal y profesional j. alberto fajardo castañeda1* universidad pedagógica y tecnológica de colombia, tunja, colombia this study aims to investigate how pre-service teachers construct their professional identities from the interplay between participation in a teacher community and their systems of knowledge and beliefs. a group of six colombian pre-service teachers in the final stage of their five-year teacher education programme were the research participants. interviews, stimulated recall, and on-line blogs as methods of data collection, and content and conversation analyses as the analytical approaches, were used. the findings reveal that while the process of learning to teach is individually constructed and experienced, it is socially negotiated. key words: language teacher identity, personal and professional recognition, teacher education. este estudio tiene como objetivo investigar cómo los maestros en formación construyen su identidad profesional desde la relación de su experiencia cómo miembros de una comunidad educativa y sus sistemas de conocimiento pedagógico. los participantes fueron seis maestros de lenguas colombianos quienes se encuentran en la etapa final de formación de su programa de licenciatura en idiomas. los métodos de recolección de información fueron entrevistas, estimulación retrospectiva y blogs en línea, mientras que el análisis del contenido y de la conversación fueron los enfoques analíticos usados. los resultados señalan que mientras el proceso de aprender a enseñar se construye y se vive en forma individual, este se negocia socialmente. palabras clave: formación de maestros, identidad del maestro de lenguas, reconocimiento personal y profesional. * e-mail: albertofajardocas@hotmail.com how to cite this article (apa, 6th ed.): fajardo castañeda, j. a. (2014). learning to teach and professional identity: images of personal and professional recognition. profile issues in teachers’ professional development, 16(2), 49-65. http://dx.doi.org/10.15446/profile.v16n2.38075. this article was received on may 15, 2013, and accepted on january 22, 2014. this is an open access article distributed under the terms of the creative commons license attribution-noncommercial-noderivatives 4.0 international license. consultation is possible at http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/. universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras50 fajardo castañeda introduction the concept of teacher identity (ti) is approached in this paper from two interconnected dimensions: what teachers do and know. the former includes social recognition (community membership), while the latter involves beliefs, motivation, or emotions (cognition). social recognition is formed or transformed as they become members of a teacher community. conversely, cognition emerges as a result of their experience as learners (borg, 2004; lorti, 1975; malderez, hobson, tracey, & kerr, 2007). this learning involvement lays the foundations of experiential knowledge, which is later strengthened theoretically as a prospective teacher enrols in teaching education (johnson, 2009). it is argued in this study that teachers take on a new identity as a result of the experience gained in the process of learning to teach. this identity is formed, shaped or transformed as they participate in a teacher community and develop skills and teaching competence which, as argued in this paper, are fundamental in understanding professional identity. these two factors also represent the conceptual framework that underpins this study, and although treated separately for analytical reasons, they are interrelated. to substantiate this claim, this study answered two research questions. the first research question concerns how the act of belonging to a teacher community, while doing the final year practicum, forms, shapes, or transforms professional identity. it is argued in this study that a teacher’s role in an institution and the type of relationships that s/he builds inside and outside the teacher community contributes to shaping or transforming identity. we can see this interconnection in the following example. a teacher can hold a teaching qualification, but if s/he is not enrolled in an institution or is not teaching, her/his sense of professional identity could be very restricted. the second research question interrogated in what ways the systems of knowledge and beliefs of pre-service teachers were manifested in their teaching practices with young learners. it is claimed that beliefs significantly guide teachers’ classroom goals (blay & ireson, 2009; da silva, 2005; gonzález, 2008; phipps & borg, 2009). by moving into the second major focus of interest in this study, the research methods used allowed a connection to be established between what the research participants thought about teaching and learning—their stated beliefs—and what they did while teaching young learners—enacted beliefs. observations of classroom interaction followed by explanations by the student teachers about the pedagogical goals they hoped to achieve, allowed the researcher to substantiate the claim that an important step forward in understanding teachers’ beliefs is taken by establishing a comparison between beliefs as concepts and in action (li & walsh, 2011). at face value, identity is not a fixed property of a teacher but rather a process that evolves, changes, or is resisted as teachers negotiate forms of participation in a teacher community, and consolidate professional and experiential knowledge. this evolution is part of the process of learning to teach. tsui (2003) defines it as the development of expertise, “in which highly competent teachers constantly set new goals for themselves and accept new challenges” (p. 7). ti and belonging to a teacher community it has been argued in this study that teachers shape their professional identities by participating in and interacting with other members of a teacher community. although there are several modes of such participation and interaction, it is commonly found in the literature on teacher education that 51profile vol. 16, no. 2, october 2014. issn 1657-0790 (printed) 2256-5760 (online). bogotá, colombia. pages 49-65 learning to teach and professional identity: images of personal and professional recognition teachers join the profession after being in contact with other teachers and the teaching environment for several years (borg, 2004; lorti, 1975; malderez et al., 2007). it is also believed that this previous experience represents an early mode of participation. nevertheless, this first affiliation is truly confirmed when a student makes the decision to choose teaching. this early act of belonging is the beginning of a long journey of constructing, sustaining and transforming a professional identity. choosing teaching is argued in this study to be the first foundational act of belonging to a teacher community. although the meaning of being a teacher evolves as a trajectory that is shaped and transformed as teachers gain experience and professional recognition, the story of how teaching first attracted them is believed to provide some key notions about how professional identities are constructed. more importantly, it can be claimed that it is an early act of professional affiliation, as it signifies the beginning of a professional and personal development journey. clarke (2008) found that family connections, past teachers, and foreign language motivation are among the reasons for choosing teaching. his findings were the result of a two-year research study with 75 women student-teachers in the united arab emirates. families were also found to favour teaching by implicit or explicit encouragement, as well as the influence of relatives who are teachers or former teachers. it is also generally accepted that teachers’ practice is importantly guided by the teaching models of their own past teachers (lorti, 1975). the present author does not accept this argument, but rather conceives teaching as a permanent process of reflection and transformation in which theoretical knowledge, imagination, and sensitivity are fundamental. if teachers merely continue teaching the way they were taught, the possibilities to overcome outdated paradigms and to offer better alternatives for the education of new generations of learners will be considerably reduced. teacher education programmes and trainers have to assume responsibility in this area. fettes (2005) stated that: teachers need to perceive possibilities beyond the factual, literal, and mundane, and willingly embrace them as part of their professional identity. thus we see ourselves as embarking, in part, on a campaign to liberate our teacher candidates from their restricted sense of possibility—of themselves, of the curriculum, and of the children they teach. (p. 7) affiliation with teaching is not always a straightforward response, and teachers may experience tension with what family or teachers previously induced in them. this could indicate that some teachers may subscribe to the teaching profession without a strong sense of affiliation. this could also explain the increasing rate of early retirement reported in previous research (e.g. clandinin, downey, & huber, 2009; inman & marlow, 2004). put simply, there are different ways of being a member of a community and consequently of belonging to it. newcomers and teachers close to retirement may perceive community membership from very different perspectives. this is a challenge for future teacher education programmes. going beyond belonging to a community by default, and creating opportunities for teachers’ professional development and growth, is in the hands of teacher educators, trainers, and trainees. the next section explores the connection between beliefs and classroom practice. teachers’ knowledge and beliefs it has been argued in this study that it is crucial to explore teachers’ systems of knowledge and beliefs in order to understand their professional identities. although a consensual definition of beliefs is still elusive (pajares, 1992), this study conuniversidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras52 fajardo castañeda centrates on how the participating teachers used systems of knowledge and beliefs to construct their professional identities and whether or not their beliefs converged with teaching practice. “in summary, examining teachers’ systems of knowledge and beliefs fits the purpose of exploring the nature of becoming a teacher in this paper” (fajardo, 2012, p. 134). this paper adopts the theoretical construct of teacher cognition that refers “to the observable dimension of teaching—what teachers know, believe, and think” (borg, 2003, p. 81). despite the fact that there is a profound scholarly interest in the interpretation of teachers’ cognition, in this exploratory research student teachers’ beliefs are approached in terms of the way they are manifested in their classroom practice. fajardo (2013) states: the language classroom is a natural scenario for understanding pre-service teachers’ pedagogical beliefs. although theories, beliefs, or attitudes may seem to be rooted in a person’s mind, they are also inextricably connected to context. consequently, the meanings of teacher and teaching are significantly mediated by the institution or the particular classroom where the teacher works on a daily basis. put simply, one way to approach beliefs is by describing and explaining some of the actions undertaken in the language classroom. (p. 40) while studies in teacher cognition have proliferated in the last two decades (borg, 2006; peacock, 2001; santagata, 2005) the question of how classroom interaction contributes to studying beliefs remains unresolved. at face value, teachers’ pedagogical beliefs are closely connected to classroom experience. “put simply, the understanding of teachers’ beliefs necessarily entails looking at the interactional processes that lie at the centre of foreign language teaching and learning” (fajardo, 2013, p. 40). this interaction provides a good sign to understand the teacher’s role, which is understood as one side of personal identity. pre-service teachers’ systems of knowledge and beliefs are fundamentally oriented towards the role of culture, second language teaching and learning, second language pedagogy, among some others. although these core principles do not entirely match what is done in the classroom (blay & ireson, 2009; garton, 2008; gonzález, 2008; li & walsh, 2011; phipps & borg, 2009), it is important to note that it is beyond the scope of this study to judge the “truth” value of the relationship between stated and enacted beliefs, but rather to attempt to examine how beliefs are used to construct professional identities. since it is widely accepted that beliefs inform professional practices and that they are resistant to change (pajares, 2002; peacock, 2001), a source of disagreement arises concerning what teacher education can do in order to overcome misconceptions, for example, about teaching and learning. the debate around how inflexible beliefs are and what role education plays in changing them challenges many previous research findings about teachers’ beliefs. phipps and borg (2009) set a positive tone, proposing the need to look at teachers’ beliefs beyond merely understanding their levels of convergence with classroom practice. instead, they propose the need to “explore, acknowledge and understand the underlying reasons behind such tensions” (p. 338). this perspective opens new possibilities for future research in the field of teacher cognition. the study research questions the research questions that guided this exploratory research are: • how does the act of belonging to a teacher community, while in the final year practicum, form, sustain, or transform teacher identities? 53profile vol. 16, no. 2, october 2014. issn 1657-0790 (printed) 2256-5760 (online). bogotá, colombia. pages 49-65 learning to teach and professional identity: images of personal and professional recognition • in what ways do the systems of knowledge and beliefs of pre-service teachers manifested in their teaching practices with young learners reflect the teachers’ identities? context this study was implemented at universidad pedagógica y tecnológica de colombia (uptc). a group of six colombian pre-service teachers in the final stage of their five-year teacher education programme were research participants (three females and three males). their identities were protected using pseudonyms: christine (c), julie (j), sarah (s), andrew (a), jacob (j), and nicholas (n). they were prospective primary school teachers in their final training stage in the foreign language programme. the sampling process started by inviting them to answer a short questionnaire concerning their potential interest in taking part as research participants in the study. eighteen students out of twenty-two answered in the affirmative. the researcher wrote their names on strips of paper which were then placed in a bag, and randomly selected six who were chosen as research participants. they were informed in more detail about the aims, methodology, and expected outcomes of the study. a formal written consent form covering audio and video recording, transcription, translation, and publication was signed. method a qualitative approach was used. the data were collected over a four-month period during the final year of the participants’ five-year primary school level language teaching bachelor of education degree programme in colombia. concerning research methods, interviews, stimulated recall (sr), and on-line blogs were used. it was also believed that the convergence and corroboration of findings from a multi-method perspective could provide a more grounded evidence for discussion and conclusions. of the three methods used, two were in direct interaction with the researcher (interviews and sr), and one took place in a more personally-oriented process of reflection (on-line blogs). the data were gathered through a series of professional dialogues during the teaching practicum, as well as video-recordings of on-going lessons. data were transcribed verbatim and then categorised and coded through the identification of themes, which are cross-referenced using the three methods of data collection. the process of data analysis focused on themes that were manifested in the data. the analysis followed the principle of letting the text talk and not attributing meaning that was not reflected in the data. interpretation was then supported with textual evidence. excerpts were coded to fit into a set of categories identified. each excerpt is displayed in the next section of this paper, including the name of the research participant and the method used.1 findings and discussion this section of the paper is divided into two parts. firstly, findings with regard to the role of a teacher community in forming, sustaining, or transforming ti were analysed. secondly, the connection between pedagogical beliefs and classroom practice and the development of teacher identity were explored. this analysis begins with the interpretation of some of the reasons that underpinned the research participants’ decisions to choose teaching as their profession. although their senses of identity evolve later as complex constructs involving the interplay of several factors—teacher education, experience, and professional development, among others—this 1 labels include: i (interview), r (researcher), sr1 (stimulated recall 1), bge3 (blog entry 3), and vrl1 (video recorded lesson 1). universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras54 fajardo castañeda early act of belonging to the teacher community illuminates the way they conceived themselves as student teachers. why did the student teachers decide to choose the teaching of languages? who helped them make such a decision? to what extent did they align to teaching after some years of teacher education? the answers to these questions will be scrutinised in the following excerpts. andrew wished to study languages, although it was not his first choice. the researcher learnt that he started studying industrial design, something that had attracted his attention long before. he soon realised that it was not what he wanted. although he was not very motivated towards teaching children, his choice was especially guided by the fact that the foreign language programme provided him with the opportunity to study three languages: english, french, and german. his family played a significant role in his decision. in excerpt 1(a) below, andrew explained in the interview the reasons he had for choosing teaching. excerpt 1(a) 11. r: your mum is a teacher (pause). is she not? 12. a: yes, she is. 13. r: in what subject? 14. a: she is a psychologist. she teaches psychology. 15. r: the fact that your mum is a teacher (pause), 16. did it influence, to some extent, your decision 17. to become a teacher? 18. a: my mum loves pedagogy (pause). 19. she always said to me that it was a good career. 20. she warned me that teaching children was not an easy job 21. but, i do not regret having made the decision. (andrew, i) it is clear that his mother played an implicit encouraging role, although he later recognised that it was his “decision” and clarified that he had “no regrets” about it. the act of becoming a teacher began for andrew some time before his application for his undergraduate course (lines 18-19). that repeated explicit advice about the professional benefits of teaching might have influenced his choice. his mother not only encouraged him to choose teaching but warned him about the hard work that “teaching children” involves. thus, these data illustrate that andrew’s choice was not only directed towards teaching but to teaching young learners specifically. the decision to become a primary school level language teacher was also signalled as a “good career” by his family. in excerpt 1(b), andrew provided some more insights about his professional decision-making. excerpt 1(b) 176. r: ok. andrew if you had the chance to go back four or five years to the time you made the decision to become a language teacher, would you make the same decision again? 177. a: my decision to study languages was determined by financial issues (pause) my parents could afford neither the tuition fees nor accommodation for me in bogota, it would have been much more expensive. if i had a second chance i would opt for translation and interpretation. (andrew, i) choosing teaching was strongly determined by financial reasons and because his family was unable to support him, language teaching became a “good career.” apart from the explicit encouragement of his mother, the family budget also played an important role in his choice of teaching as his profession. however, after a five year teacher training process, he wondered if language teaching was ultimately what he wished to do (“if i had a second chance i would rather go for translation and interpretation”). in short, what andrew seemed to say here is that although he followed his mother’s advice and 55profile vol. 16, no. 2, october 2014. issn 1657-0790 (printed) 2256-5760 (online). bogotá, colombia. pages 49-65 learning to teach and professional identity: images of personal and professional recognition was aware of his family’s budget constraints, he also bore in mind that he might have preferred a profession in some other linguistic-related area. here, the data suggest a divergence between what andrew’s family advocated and the way he sustains this professional orientation. the stories reported by the student teachers revealed the influence of their former teachers in their decisions to choose teaching. the connection between experiences of being taught in the past and the wish to become a teacher seemed to be strong (see, for example, danielewicz, 2001; johnson, 1995). it is apparent from the data that teachers provided models to either imitate or surpass. what teachers did as result of their daily practice, behaviour, discourse, or subject knowledge, for example, seemed to have had an impact on the aspirations of all the participating teachers, either positively or negatively. christine made the decision to become a language teacher because she thought it was a great profession. her first contact with the english language was in her third year at primary school. her teacher taught her basic things such as numbers and children’s songs and she has loved english since then. she was aware that languages would give her a better chance of travelling abroad and of realising more of her personal and professional potential. excerpt 2(a) illustrates the role of past teachers for choosing teaching. excerpt 2(a) 38. r: ok, primary school. any special memory from that time? 39. c: uhm…primary school. there are surely things that had a huge impression on me. i would say the games and classmates. if i met them i would still remember a lot of things. 40. r: any special memory? i mean a teacher, somebody special because of her attributes or the way she treated students? 41. c: oh yeah. my second year teacher was an extraordinary and tender person. i would like to be like her. i loved the way she taught. she treated us with affection. some people think that it is counterproductive to treat kids with lot of affection but in my opinion that is not true. i loved her. so i decided to choose teaching because of her. (christine, i) christine explained in the interview how her enthusiasm for teaching had begun a long time ago, in her “second year” of primary school. she was also inspired by a teacher who had been able to awaken in her an early motivation to teach as well as her capacity to understand that teaching is also a matter of emotion (line 41). feelings of tenderness and affection resulted in an enduring image of this primary school teacher and established a model to follow. christine was also against opinions that indicated there were counterproductive effects from treating kids with affection was not true. christine directly explained that her decision to choose teaching was rooted in the impact that her primary school teacher had had on her. she not only included the emotional dimension of teaching but added another dimension that may clarify what she meant by an “extraordinary” teacher. pedagogy is then represented as an important constitutive feature of her happy learning experience. the data here show a clear congruent relationship between the model provided by her former primary school teacher and christine’s decision to choose teaching. in excerpt 2(b), christine reflected on teaching models that were not inspiring. excerpt 2(b) 357. r: ok. let’s talk about the university. how do you judge the quality of teaching at the uptc? universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras56 fajardo castañeda 358. c: uhm. (pause). right. i think my language teachers, i mean my teachers of english and french, were very good. but i also had a teacher who missed half of his teaching sessions. when he did turn up, he just gave us old silly activity. i asked myself if there was no supervision or if he was really committed to teaching or why he did not do something else instead. he only had a degree and since he had a job already, he did not care about planning a good lesson. (christine, i) from the data in this interview, christine highlighted important considerations about the role of teachers. their responsibilities and professional engagement became a matter of scrutiny for her. she also called attention to the people who should have been in charge of the school’s academic administration and, hence, wondered what the role of supervision was. christine also exercised her right to stake a claim for quality in education. it is apparent, therefore, that for christine being a teacher requires both pedagogical knowledge and professional development. christine introduced a contentious debate in education: the teacher’s commitment. although she did not provide further details about this particular teacher, she claimed to be responding to a fundamental critical sense of the social and ethical meaning of teaching. thus, her teachers provided her with models to imitate, on the one hand, and on the other, to surpass. the role of past teachers as inspiring models has been illustrated in this section. while affection and tenderness were directly understood as essential characteristics to be followed, a teacher’s lack of professional commitment was mentioned as a model to surpass. in short, the findings show here that teachers provide inspiring and non-inspiring models which seem to affect pre-service teachers’ decisions about choosing teaching. however, the way those models actually influence their teaching practices remains to be explored. the findings about the role played by family members in choosing teaching as a profession suggest that relatives and economic factors had a direct influence on the group of student teachers’ decisions to choose teaching. the next category of analysis explores the nature of belonging to a teacher community, which is fundamentally connected to the daily experience of teachers’ work and lives. this entails being in contact with other members of a community and establishing forms of interaction, cooperation, or recognition. moreover, this does not necessarily presuppose a harmonious environment, and could result in tension related to power or dependence (creese, 2005). as a consequence, each member of a community negotiates “ways of being a person in that context” (wenger, 1999, p. 149). learning to teach is characterised by continuous interaction, communication, and social participation within the school community, local educational authority, and broader contexts of professional connection. teachers’ institutional agendas (e.g., course planning, assessment, or professional development) can then be argued to play a significant role in the process of identity construction. in the context of this exploratory research, pre-service teachers’ practices implies a particular context of conflicting levels of professional recognition due to the fact that they are still under teaching supervision. being students and teachers at the same time may in itself become a source of tension. pre-service teachers’ experiences included significant events of professional inclusion or exclusion. an example of the latter is provided when senior teachers resisted giving them the status of true teachers. however, student teachers’ direct relationships with school-based mentors (sbm) or supervising university tutors (sut) provide impor57profile vol. 16, no. 2, october 2014. issn 1657-0790 (printed) 2256-5760 (online). bogotá, colombia. pages 49-65 learning to teach and professional identity: images of personal and professional recognition tant insights into explaining the way a teacher community forms, sustains, or transforms professional identity. excerpt 3(a) below examined these issues. excerpt 3(a) my three school-based mentors introduced me as the new teacher of english and french today. nobody used the word pre-service. a teacher even mentioned the stages i had gone through before becoming a teacher. i liked it. (julie, bge2) the social act of being recognised as an authentic teacher made a positive impression on julie. by being acknowledged as a teacher rather than a student teacher, julie adopted a professional demeanour, and this helped to shape her sense of professional affiliation. she went on to describe how the sbm explained to pupils what the process of becoming a teacher involved. this particular experience of professional inclusion may contribute to the formation of a sense of professional identity. however, julie also argued a case for all teachers, including pre-service teachers, to have full participation in all relevant school activities. in excerpt 3(b) below, julie mentioned an incident whereby the student teachers at her school were not invited to an institutional meeting. excerpt 3(b) 10. r: ok, julie and the opposite. what disappointed you? 11. j: uhm…for example, on tuesday parents came to school to collect the kids’ academic progress reports. we were not invited to the meeting. the school did not recognise us as teachers. we are also teachers and we have the right to interact with our kids’ parents. (julie, i) from the data in the interview, julie staked a claim for recognition as teachers of their status. she regretted that the institution neglected their right to be fully integrated into school life. julie wanted the voices of her pre-service teacher colleagues to be heard. this contextual meaning of identity formation suggests that far from being a harmonious process, belonging to a teacher community may also result in tensions of power and dependence. excerpt 4(a) below expands on this. excerpt 4(a) i was nervous. being observed by two supervisors is not the same as being on my own. there were four eyes looking at what i was doing. as i knew that my sut was also going to grade my teaching, it put me under a lot of pressure as well. (sarah, bge2) sarah revealed how insecure she felt by being observed by her two supervisors. she then went on to express her feelings of being exposed to judgment (assessment). she also raised some concern about the effects of the evaluation of her teaching by her sut and the pressure that it put on her. the data seem to confirm here that her professional status as a novice teacher i.e., her teaching effectiveness and achievement was under scrutiny and evaluation. excerpt 4(b) below sheds some more light on issues of the relationship between pre-service and school based mentors. excerpt 4(b) 34. r: how do you feel about capturing the attention of pupils, controlling discipline, and delivering the topic? are you happy with the results? 35: s: my experience here was not as good as i would have wished because i got into trouble when the teacher left me alone in the classroom, and they took advantage of it and started talking and playing. i was trying to figure out how to stop their games but i was totally invisible to them. (sarah, sr2) sarah regretted her sbm’s absence. she reported a lack of teaching achievement which seemed to be explained by the fact of being “alone” in the classuniversidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras58 fajardo castañeda room. her status as a pre-service teacher spurred pupils to take advantage of it. sarah experienced anger and uncertainty about how to rectify the situation. she also portrayed a sense of professional frustration. the data here clearly suggest that sarah needed support from more experienced colleagues—her sbm in this case. it is a type of thinking which is normal for beginning teachers. also, it is interesting to note that there is a degree of ambivalence in sarah’s narrative of affiliation with her sbm. while in excerpt 4(a) she is concerned because of her supervisor’s judgement and evaluation, sarah’s perception changed and she then claimed that her lack of pedagogic achievement was due to her sbm’s absence. although this issue is not explored further in this part of the analysis, it may be the subject of future research. the exploration of pre-service teachers’ sense of professional identity showed an appreciation of inclusion and recognition and, at the same time, there was also an energetic rejection of exclusion. sarah also reported a dual feeling in being judged and assessed by her teaching supervisors, and in explaining her poor classroom performance during her sbm’s absence. this finding may help to explain that gaining the status of teacher community membership is not always an easy or straightforward task. an increased awareness of the world emerges in the data as a foundational trajectory that contributes to explaining the act of becoming a language teacher. this is represented in the data in student teachers’ understanding of the role of culture associated with the target language as an empowering teaching skill. by being in direct contact with people, situations, and daily events, they assume that this understanding gives a real chance to improve their communicative competence and their professional profile. excerpt 5 below examines this issue. excerpt 5 118. r: right, nicholas. are there motivations to become a teacher? 119. n: oh, yes. after living in the usa for a while and improving my english. i know that i would not only have teaching opportunities here but also abroad. i am aware that this is a valuable profession (nicholas, i) nicholas highlighted how his trip abroad resulted in language improvement and better professional prospects. although the initial interest of this study is not related to second language proficiency, this is an important domain in the construction of language teachers’ identities. the data clearly suggest here that nicholas had developed a sense of intercultural awareness which contributed to facilitating his own sense of professional alignment. the emerging reality of second language proficiency is also referenced in the account given by another research participant. target language competence is represented in the data as pre-service teachers’ beliefs about subject matter knowledge and its pedagogy. the participating teachers argued that living in a target language community and learning from its people and culture, for example, is an enriching experience which also contributes to improving the language competence and consequently the teaching skills. in what ways do target language competence and its pedagogical knowledge correlate with classroom practices? the next excerpts explore this answer. excerpt 6(a) 520. r: so how to teach a foreign language then? 521. j: i think that teaching another language is a question of pushing students to understand it. if i had to stand on my head, draw a picture, or do some mime, i will do it. i will do whatever is needed 59profile vol. 16, no. 2, october 2014. issn 1657-0790 (printed) 2256-5760 (online). bogotá, colombia. pages 49-65 learning to teach and professional identity: images of personal and professional recognition in order that they learn the language. i do not want them to translate for example. i expect them to produce, to feel confident that they are making progress. (jacob, i) jacob exhibited a clear awareness of the use of available didactic resources with the intention of helping students understand rather than translate, for example. these core principles in jacob’s pedagogical knowledge of the subject matter offer a well-grounded conception of the role of teachers in the language classroom. he also built up a coherent rationale of expected learning outcomes. those images of teaching, pedagogical knowledge, and classroom interaction can then be compared with what jacob did while teaching english to young learners. how do pedagogical beliefs correspond to classroom practice? this answer is explored in excerpt 6(b) below (see appendix for a list of the transcription system). excerpt 6(b) the topic of the lesson is “parts of the house.” the teacher is delivering a two hour lesson to a mixed 4th year group. students are organised in six rows. he stands at the front of the classroom. students are following him attentively. 01. t: tenemos ((we have here)) 02. ↑kitchen (0.4) 03. a donde por lo general está la estufa (0.1) la nevera (0.4) ((where we generally have the stove the fridge)) 04. hasta el lavaplatos (4.0) # he draws on the board # ((even the sink)) 05. el lavaplatos (0.3) ((the sink)) 06. ↑kitchen (0.4) 07. ↑y tenemos( . ) ((and we have)) 08. ↑living room (0.8) 09. ésta es la casa de mi abuelita ↑no (0.2) ((this is my granny’s house, right)) 10. entonces mi abuelita (0.4) tiene ((so my granny has)) 11. in the living room 12. tiene (0.5) tiene # he draws on the board# ((she has she has)) 13. a↑picture # he draws on the board # 14. tiene un cuadro acá (1.5) ((she has a picture here)) 15. tiene ((she has)) 16. ↑a picture (2.0) she has a picture (jacob, vrl1, 00: 06’: 25”) jacob used an extended turn (from 01 to 16) to introduce vocabulary about the house, which was the topic of the lesson. he drew a picture of each new word on the board in an attempt to help students decode its meaning. although the teacher made creative use of drawing as a pedagogical resource, in terms of target language exposure and interaction, there was no interaction between the teacher and students or among the pupils, for example. the mother tongue almost entirely dominated communication in the classroom, with occasional code switching into the target language which was minimised by the teacher’s clarification in spanish (line 14)—language 1. although english was used meaningfully at the end of his turn (line 16), the lesson at that particular moment reflected that the mother tongue was the main means of instruction, which seems to contradict his belief about the use of the target language with interactional and learning purposes. what is the effect of retrospection to explain what happens between stated and enacted beliefs? excerpt 6(c) helps to unveil this issue. excerpt 6(c) 174. r: let’s talk about the use of spanish and english. has it gone according to what you planned? universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras60 fajardo castañeda 175. j: no, it has not. in fact, i planned to use many more commands, to speak more english and to use less and less spanish. 176. r: but it is not precisely what you are doing. what happened then? 177. j: you are right. now i am aware that there was too much spanish and little english. i have to use more english and progressively less and less spanish in the lesson. 178. r: so, your idea is to increase the use of language two and reduce spanish? 179. j: yes, you are right. (jacob, sr1) jacob also noted the restrictive use of the target language. jacob introduced an interesting topic of discussion regarding the relationship between the lesson plan and the implementation of it. the data show clearly that this belief did not align with his classroom practice while he was teaching english to young learners. despite the importance of using relevant didactic strategies in order to help students understand and interact in the target language, no congruent connection was observed between jacob’s pedagogical knowledge of the subject matter and his interactional directions adopted in the language classroom. this analysis raises some interesting questions concerning how the research participants’ beliefs about knowledge of the subject matter and its pedagogy correlated with classroom practice. although these findings are not conclusive, there is clearly a need for further research and exploration. student teachers’ discourse reflected beliefs about the role of primary school teachers. those beliefs are considered in this paper as a form of constructing the meaning of teaching which is grounded in personal experience. they are used to illustrate how the participating teachers understand educational principles, and how those principles could contribute to forming, sustaining, or transforming professional identity. excerpts 7(a), (b), and (c) add on the analysis of the connection between believing and doing. excerpt 7(a) i think that a teacher needs to be a multifaceted person. for instance, a clown, like in this situation when i am painting my face. i am also a counsellor when i advise them to behave properly or to be quiet. i become a kind of daddy or mummy at times when they ask me to take them to the toilet. i am also a nurse when they fall down. (nicholas, bge3) nicholas showed self-awareness of the role of a primary school teacher as a multifaceted professional whose responsibility goes beyond pedagogical duties. he mentioned distinct aspects of the relationship with pupils and alertness to their needs. these situations where a teacher has to go beyond the teaching domain seemed to cause a great impact on his own understanding of teaching and, consequently, in creating a notion of professional identity. the findings are not conclusive here, and further research would be needed, but the connection between nicholas’ belief and his classroom practice is explored in excerpts 7(b) and (c). excerpt 7(b) the teacher is kneeling down on the floor. he is teaching a lesson to a mixed nursery class. he is using some face-painting while he teaches some vocabulary with regard to “parts of the face.” students are sitting on the floor in a kind of semi-circle around the teacher. 01. t: i have ↑thi::s colour (0.6) # t shows a box of face-paints to ss # 02. s1: jis [colour] 03. s2: [ye::s] 04. t: re::d 05. ss: re::d 06. t: red yeah (0.2) i have red (0.3) and i have my (0.5) ↑e:::ars 61profile vol. 16, no. 2, october 2014. issn 1657-0790 (printed) 2256-5760 (online). bogotá, colombia. pages 49-65 learning to teach and professional identity: images of personal and professional recognition 07. ss: ears( . ) 08. t: ↑e::ars (0.2) # he takes another box of face-paints # 09. s3: e:::ars 10. t: and i’m gonna paint (0.2)↑my= 12. s1: =profe tengo chichi ((teacher, i have to go to the toilet)) (nicholas, vrl2, 00:18’: 27”) there is an image of a dynamic classroom with a teacher who was determined to engage learners in a creative process of language learning. nicholas created a relaxing atmosphere by facilitating a suitable classroom arrangement with students sitting on the floor. by painting his face as a clown, he appeared to be a resourceful language teacher who designed his lesson imaginatively. the flow of the lesson then suddenly changed because of an extra pedagogical demand. this particular requirement changed the direction and focus of the lesson at that moment. what is the teacher’s explanation for such a commitment? excerpt 7(c) explores this fact. excerpt 7 (c): 240. r: that double condition of being a daddy, and a teacher, especially at this nursery level. how do you assume this role? 241. n: well. i once read in a newspaper a story by quino about teachers. a boy asked a teacher “what do you do?” and he replied: i am a doctor, a solicitor, an explorer, a scientist, a judge, a daddy, a mummy, a nurse, a policeman, a fireman, a gardener, biologist, and so on. and that is truly what a teacher does. 242. r: how important is this for a teacher? 243. n: very, very important. i think a teacher needs to make thousands of faces, to have thousand personalities. it also involves assuming a dictatorial role at times. (nicholas , sr2) nicholas showed full awareness about the meaning of becoming a primary school language teacher. he paraphrased quino’s2 illustrative message about the meaning of being a teacher. this metaphor allowed him to explain what was going on during the lesson and the way he understood the role of primary teachers. the data here clearly show a strong congruent relationship between nicholas’ stated belief about the multifaceted roles played by teachers and what he did in the language classroom. the connection between student teachers’ systems of knowledge and beliefs and their classroom practice has been explored in this second category of analysis. while target language competence offers an interesting dimension, constructing the meaning of teaching then provides some insights into the role of primary school teachers. together they provided some of the foundations for understanding the process of learning to teach and consequently adopting a new identity as language teachers. in summary, this paper has explored two basic constructs in the process of becoming a primary school language teacher and consequently in the trajectory of identity construction. belonging to a teacher community was considered on the assumption that practice and participation have a direct connection with constructing professional identities. the types of connection found between teachers’ beliefs and their classroom practice showed two different realities. while there were significant cases of coherence between beliefs and classroom behaviour, there was also evidence of some incongruent relationships. conclusion it is argued in this paper that the consideration of two interconnected domains helps in under2 joaquín salvador lavado, better known as quino, is a spanish-argentine cartoonist. his comic strip “malfalda” is very popular en latin america and europe. universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras62 fajardo castañeda standing how teachers construct professional identities: participation in a teacher community and the relationship between beliefs and classroom practice. firstly, the study found that a teaching community plays a fundamental role in forming, sustaining, and transforming professional identities. choosing teaching appeared to be socially driven by family influences and past and present teachers as well as economic factors. although the participation of a new member within a teaching community was characterised by tension in relationships with senior teachers and supervisors or difficulties in terms of, for example, cooperation or team-work, the participating teachers generally adopted a sense of community membership. secondly, the findings suggested two different realities in the connection between beliefs and classroom practice. while there were significant cases of coherence between beliefs and classroom behaviour, there was also evidence of incongruent relationships. one of the limitations of this study is that the meaning of professional identity for pre-service teachers is still under construction. they are at a time when their identities as students overlaps with their identities as teachers. this may suggest that the identity with which the teachers begin their trajectory is quite strongly influenced by past experience. furthermore, they are permanently supervised and this might restrict the possibility of their acting more independently. nevertheless, the trajectory of constructing professional identity has just begun and there is still a long way to go. self-reflection and professional development are likely to determine a more stable identity in the future. the study explored how the participating teachers constructed the meaning of becoming a teacher during the last stage of teacher training—the practicum. this necessarily involved looking retrospectively at their biographical stories in order to gain a better understanding of their previous experience and motivations to follow a teaching career. future research should be conducted over a longer period of time in order to gain an in-depth understanding of this process. to do this research, data could be gathered at different stages of a teacher education programme in order to get more insights into the factors contributing to forming, shaping or transforming professional identities. additionally, data could be gathered from formal and informal events where the participating teachers have to participate and interact on daily basis. references blay, j. a., & ireson, j. (2009). pedagogical beliefs, activity, choice and structure, and adult-child interaction in nursery classrooms. teaching and teacher education, 25(8), 1105-1116. borg, m. (2004). the apprenticeship of observation. elt journal, 58(3), 274-276. borg, s. (2003). teacher cognition in language teaching: a review of research on what language teachers think, know, believe, and do. language teaching, 36(2), 81-109. borg, s. (2006). the distinctive characteristics of foreign language teachers. language teaching research, 10(1), 3-31. clandinin, d. j., downey, c. a., & huber, j. (2009). attending to changing landscapes: shaping the interwoven identities of teachers and teacher educators. asia-pacific journal of teacher education, 37(2), 141-154. clarke, m. (2008). language teacher identities: co-constructing discourse and community. clevedon, uk: multilingual matters. creese, a. (2005). mediating allegations of racism in a multiethnic london school: what speech communities and communities of practice can tell us about discourse and power. in d. barton & k. tusting (eds.), beyond communities of practice: language power and social context (pp. 55-76). cambridge, uk: cambridge university press. 63profile vol. 16, no. 2, october 2014. issn 1657-0790 (printed) 2256-5760 (online). bogotá, colombia. pages 49-65 learning to teach and professional identity: images of personal and professional recognition danielewicz, j. (2001). teaching selves: identity, pedagogy, and teacher education. albany, ny: university of new york press. da silva, m. (2005). constructing the teaching process from inside out: how pre-service teachers make sense of their perceptions of the teaching of the four kills. tesl-ej, 9(2), 1-19. fajardo, a. 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(2001). pre-service esl teachers’ beliefs about second language learning: a longitudinal study. system, 29(2), 177-195. phipps, s., & borg, s. (2009). exploring tensions between teachers’ grammar teaching beliefs and practices. system, 37(3), 380-390. santagata, r. (2005). practices and beliefs in mistake-handling activities: a video study of italian and us mathematics lessons. teaching and teacher education, 21(5), 491-508. tsui, a. b. m. (2003). understanding expertise in teaching: case studies of esl teachers. cambridge, uk: cambridge university press. van lier, l. (1988). what’s wrong with classroom talk? prospect, 3(3), 267-283. walsh, s. (2006). investigating classroom discourse. london, uk: routledge. wenger, e. (1999). communities of practice: learning, meaning, and identity. cambridge, uk: cambridge university press. universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras64 fajardo castañeda about the author j. alberto fajardo castañeda is a full time teacher at universidad pedagógica y tecnológica de colombia, where he coordinates the doctorate programme in language and culture. he holds a phd in education and applied linguistics from newcastle university, uk, and is a member of the enletawa (enriching language teaching awareness) research group. 65profile vol. 16, no. 2, october 2014. issn 1657-0790 (printed) 2256-5760 (online). bogotá, colombia. pages 49-65 learning to teach and professional identity: images of personal and professional recognition appendix: transcription system the transcription system is taken from walsh (2006) and adapted from van lier (1988) and johnson (1995). t: teacher l: learner (not identified) s1, s2, etc.: identified learner /ok/ok/ok/ overlapping or simultaneous utterances by more than one learner [do you understand?]} overlap between teacher and learner [i see] = turn continues, or one turn follows another without any pause … pause of one second or less marked by three periods (04) silence; length given in seconds ↑ rising intonation—question or other correct emphatic speech: falling intonation ((4)) unintelligible 4 seconds: a stretch of unintelligible speech with the length given in seconds andrew: capitals are only used for proper nouns 39profile vol. 18, no.1, january-june 2016. issn 1657-0790 (printed) 2256-5760 (online). bogotá, colombia. pages 39-54 http://dx.doi.org/10.15446/profile.v18n1.49148 the role of collaborative action research in teachers’ professional development el papel de la investigación acción colaborativa en el desarrollo profesional docente angela yicely castro garcés1* liliana martínez granada2** universidad del tolima, ibagué, colombia teachers’ professional development is a key factor to have more reflective educators capable of working on teams to find solutions to problems that arise in their classrooms. the objective of this study is to analyze the impact that the collaborative planning, implementation, and evaluation of classroom projects, developed through collaborative action research, have in the professional development of in-service and pre-service teachers in a ba in english program. this is a qualitative research study focused on collaborative action research. data were collected through journals, surveys, and meeting proceedings of collaborative sessions. as a result, it was possible to describe the processes and dynamics generated, as well as the changes perceived, which contributed to the professional development of the participants. key words: collaborative action research, professional development, reflection. el desarrollo profesional docente es vital para formar educadores más reflexivos, capaces de trabajar en equipo para encontrar soluciones a los problemas que surgen en sus aulas. el objetivo de este estudio es analizar el impacto que la planeación en equipo, la ejecución y la evaluación de proyectos de aula, desarrollados a través de la investigación acción colaborativa, tienen en el desarrollo profesional de los docentes en servicio y en formación en un programa de licenciatura en inglés. esta es una investigación cualitativa con un enfoque en investigación acción colaborativa. los instrumentos de recolección de datos incluyen diarios, encuestas y actas de sesiones colaborativas. como resultado, fue posible describir los procesos y dinámicas generadas, al igual que los cambios percibidos, lo cual contribuyó al desarrollo profesional de los participantes. palabras clave: desarrollo profesional, reflexión, trabajo colaborativo. * e-mail: aycastrog@ut.edu.co ** e-mail: lmartinezg@ut.edu.co how to cite this article (apa, 6th ed.): castro garcés, a. y., & martínez granada, l. (2016). the role of collaborative action research in teachers’ professional development. profile issues in teachers’ professional development, 18(1), 39-54. http://dx.doi.org/10.15446/profile. v18n1.49148. this article was received on february 12, 2015, and accepted on september 5, 2015. this is an open access article distributed under the terms of the creative commons license attribution-noncommercial-noderivatives 4.0 international license. consultation is possible at http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/. universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras40 castro garcés & martínez granada introduction ongoing teacher education is a need that many researchers have pointed out in the last few years. richards and farrell (2005) inquire how teachers can continue with their professional development (pd) and how supervisors and administrators can provide opportunities for such development to take place. they present a model that acknowledges the benefits of pd for the teacher, the students, and the institution. university professors in colombia, who are the ones in charge of training teachers, have written proposals and reflections that contribute to the professional development of pre-service and in-service teachers (aldana prieto & cárdenas, 2011; cadavid múnera, quinchía ortiz, & díaz mosquera, 2009; cárdenas, gonzález, & álvarez, 2010; gonzález, 2007, 2009; sierra piedrahita, 2007; among others). in this regard, the need for learning, sharing experiences, reflecting, and working together has also been contemplated at our university, so as to help our colleagues and ourselves to continue learning in order to be better prepared to face everyday challenges in the classroom. the experience from our context suggests that teacher training courses are usually regarded as the only solution for teachers’ pd; however, working collaboratively with peers is a resource and an opportunity that teachers do not always see as important, and that is, in fact, a good way to keep up to date in educational issues because study groups and collaborative work get participants more committed and active in their own learning. in the same line of thought, cárdenas et al. (2010) propose considering teachers’ development, not training, which would imply an ongoing process. through collaborative action research (car), pre-service and in-service teachers reflect critically, inquire into their own pedagogical practices and make changes that benefit themselves, their students, and their institutions. this qualitative study analyzes the impact that the collaborative planning, implementation, and evaluation of classroom projects, developed through car, have in the professional development of in service and pre-service teachers in the ba in english program at a colombian public university. it relates to burns’ (2005) idea of exploring a common problem in a specific context in order to gain understanding, create meaning, and improve educational practices. this study reports the challenges found when trying to implement strategies to get teachers to reflect together and take advantage of their shared knowledge to improve their pedagogical practices. sharing is necessary and rewarding. in fact, burns (1999) considers that when teachers investigate in the solitude of their classrooms it is counter to the original goals of action research (ar), which are “to bring about change in social situations as the result of group problem-solving and collaboration” (p. 12). in this way, this study allowed us to describe the processes and dynamics generated from car and to understand how these processes added to the professional development of the participants. theoretical framework the two constructs that support the theoretical framework are: teachers’ professional development and collaborative action research. relevant literature about each one will be presented in order to depict its relation to this work. teacher’s professional development teachers’ professional development is an ongoing process in which teachers engage to transform some of their conceptions and practices around pedagogy, methodology, and didactics in order to find new roads that allow them to meet the needs and interests of their own contexts. a variety of authors support the idea that pd is an everlasting task that teachers undergo freely (cárdenas et al., 2010; diazmaggioli, 2003; estrada, 2009; gonzález, 2007, 2009; montecinos, 2003). 41profile vol. 18, no.1, january-june 2016. issn 1657-0790 (printed) 2256-5760 (online). bogotá, colombia. pages 39-54 the role of collaborative action research in teachers’ professional development sparks and loucks-horsley (1990) affirm that teachers’ pd is closely related with the needs for gaining new knowledge, abilities, and attitudes of those who work in educational contexts. montecinos (2003) also invites teachers to renew, change, or adapt their pedagogical practices to their specific contexts. this is, in fact, the intention we have when we propose teachers to work collaboratively—to change for the better, to evaluate one’s own teaching practices, and to adapt them to the context. diaz-maggioli (2003) defines pd as an ongoing learning process in which teachers engage voluntarily to learn how best to adjust their teaching to the learning needs of their students . . . an evolving process of professional selfdisclosure, reflection, and growth that yields the best results when sustained over time in communities of practice and when focused on job-embedded responsibilities. (p. 1) additionally, gonzález (2007) mentions that teachers engage in pd programs after they have finished their undergraduate studies and are willing to enrich their pedagogical practices and propose changes that allow qualifying education. therefore, pd i s a c h a l l e nge t h at t e a c h e r s an d t e a c h e rresearchers who are interested in improving their teaching practices face. richards and farrell (2005) make a strong distinction between teacher training and teacher development. they state that “training refers to activities directly focused on a teacher’s present responsibilities and is typically aimed at short-term and immediate goals . . . understanding basic concepts and principles as a prerequisite for apply i ng t he m to te a ch i ng” ( p. 3 ) . wh i l e “development refers to general growth not focused on a specific job. it ser ves a long-term goal and seeks to facilitate growth of teachers’ understanding of teaching and of themselves as teachers” (p. 4). they propose a list of goals from a training and development perspective, in which the big difference relies on learning and using versus understanding. mann (2005) also considers teachers’ reflection as supportive in pd. he states that teachers develop by studying their own practice, collecting data and using reflective processes as the basis for evaluation and change. such processes have a reflexive relationship with the construction of teacher knowledge and beliefs. collaborative and co-operative processes can help sustain individual reflection and development. (p. 103) the gain in teachers’ professional development is that teachers give themselves the opportunity to go beyond a theory studied or a course taken, to analyze practices, reflect, and understand their own contexts. collaborative action research one of the trends regarding reflection and res earch in contemp orar y contexts related to professional development programs is ar. richards and lockhart (1996) state that ar “typically involves small-scale investigative projects in the teacher’s own classroom, and consists of a number of phases which often recur in cycles: planning, action, observation, and reflection” (p. 12). burns (2005) argues that the contemporar y focus given to ar is rooted in john dewey’s work whose questioning on the separation between theory and practice gave birth to the search of strategies to improve the pd of educators. researching one’s own classrooms and teaching contexts is an issue that can, and should, be considered for language teachers as a realistic extension of professional practice. kemmis and mctaggart (as cited in burns, 1999) suggest that “the approach is only action research when it is collaborative, though it is important to realize that the action research of the group is achieved through the critically examined action of individual group members” (p. 5). in this way, we decided to work collaboratively because when ar is linked to collaborative work, the teachers involved have many more opportunities for pd. burns (1999) also universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras42 castro garcés & martínez granada asserts that “collaborative action research processes strengthen the opportunities for the results of research on practice to be fed back into educational systems in a more substantial and critical way” (p. 13). lópez-pastor, monjas, and manrique (2011) suggest that collaborative work is the fruit of a research study done in different stages and is very useful for pd. thus, car is research that engages teachers in work teams and allows them to reflect upon their pedagogical practices. as an example, cano flores and garcía lópez (2010) affirm that car excels as framework, process, and form of knowledge construction. for these authors, such construction is conditioned by the necessary reflective exchange around theory and practice and by the continuous analysis of the educational reality. in fact, in the last de cades, aut hors such as c o chran-smit h (1991), darling-hammond and mclaughlin (1995), lieberman (1995), and sparks and hirsh (1997) have created a trend that makes it necessary to transcend ar in order to propose theoretical and practical developments that guarantee teachers’ pd under the basis of ongoing questioning, reflection, and joint and participatory experience. this trend gives the teacher a more active role as a researcher and member of a collaborative team. in regard to the relevance that car has on pd processes, some relevant research projects done in the area may be mentioned. feldman (1999) examines t he role of convers at ion on car to understand how teachers’ conversations can serve as a research methodology to contribute to the process of meaning construction. gonzález, montoya, and sierra (2002) study the needs reported by english as a foreign language (efl) teachers regarding professional development. sierra piedrahita (2007) studies the professional development of a group of foreign language teacher educators and pre-service teachers through the participation in a study group. cadavid múnera et al. (2009) develop an ar project with professors and students from universidad de antioquia (colombia) to determine the impact of a pd proposal for english teachers of primary school. gonzález (2009) analyzes, in a critical way, two international models of pd that have the role of alternative and additional certifications for the english teaching professionals in colombia. arias and restrepo (2009) carry out an ar study about the evaluation practices in foreign language acquisition as a way to propitiate knowledge, experience, social research, evaluative abilities, and attitudes toward evaluation and research. cano flores and garcía lópez (2010) present the results of a car project in the training of administration professionals and they evidence how teamwork, responsibility, and commitment help the team members’ professional development. cárdenas et al. (2010) reveal some key concepts in the analysis of in-service teachers’ pd an d prop o s e a c on c e ptu a l f r am e wor k for colombia. the present study gains relevance, as it gives account of how collaboration with peers, to pursue a common goal, may be a good model for pd. additionally, it sets a starting point for teachers at our institution and others to value their partners and themselves as reflective practitioners who have the capacity to find solutions to problems that arise in their classrooms by means of a study group and with the support of colleagues. method this is a qualitative study centered in ar to explore a common problem in a specific context in order to gain understanding, create meaning, and improve educational practices (burns, 2005). ethnographic tradition and qualitative methods constitute a decisive help for a better understanding of educational phenomena and, thus, for a more adequate and conscious intervention (goetz & lecompte, 1988). such understanding is mediated by a reflective process in which the participants analyze their roles while 43profile vol. 18, no.1, january-june 2016. issn 1657-0790 (printed) 2256-5760 (online). bogotá, colombia. pages 39-54 the role of collaborative action research in teachers’ professional development trying to discover and monitor potential changes in perceptions and educational practices. participants this study was conducted at a state university in colombia. there were four participants: two teacher trainers (and authors of this paper) who belong to the research group in language didactics, one homeroom teacher who teaches english 1 to freshmen, and one pre-service english teacher who is an eighth semester student for the ba in english. the four participants took different roles because of the different actions they had to take during the planning, implementation, and evaluation of classroom projects that were going to be developed by freshmen of the ba in english. we, as teacher trainers, participated in the planning and evaluation of classroom projects, were in charge of analyzing the interactions among the team members, and were non-participant observers during the implementation of the projects. the homeroom teacher, along with the pre-service teacher, participated in the planning, implementation, and evaluation of the projects. it is relevant to mention that the pre-service teacher did more in-depth research as he analyzed the impact that project-based learning had on the development of autonomy in freshmen. he used those data to write a research project as a graduation requirement. data collection process the data collection instruments included both an initial and a final survey, a journal with three entries, and the notes from three meetings. the research project was developed in three cycles. each cycle had three stages: planning, implementation and reflection, and evaluation of the results of classroom projects. we based our work on the eleven phases proposed by burns (1999): exploring, identifying, planning, collecting initial data, analyzing and reflecting, hypothesizing based on analysis and reflection, intervening, observing, reporting results, writing and presenting data. first, we administered the initial survey; second, we had three meetings— one for each cycle, which were audio-recorded and then narrowly transcribed in order to obtain the meeting proceedings—third, at the end of each meeting the four participants wrote one journal entry; fourth, we administered the final survey. the data obtained from these instruments were analyzed and triangulated to understand the dynamics of the four participants involved and to compare and contrast the information obtained. analysis and discussion of results the first idea for developing a research project which explores car as a way to the professional development of in-service and pre-service teachers came from the meeting of two colleagues who were concerned about the needs that we, as teacher trainers, had of working on te ams, ref lec ting together on everyday practices and finding strategies to continue our professional development. we also conceived the need to involve other colleagues in this research; then we extended an invitation to a homeroom teacher and to a pre-service teacher. inviting both teachers to work together would give more sense to the planning because we could work with real students—those taking english 1 with the homeroom teacher. also, the pre-service teacher could develop his potential as he actively participated in the research study. in the first meeting, we agreed on the potential topic of our study and assigned sections for each participant to work on. during the next meetings we put together the work everyone had done and negotiated the final version of the proposal. working together was challenging and rewarding at the same time. we had to make decisions, study, carry out research, and collect data together—that is how our collaborative work started. universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras44 castro garcés & martínez granada from the beginning of our work, we noticed that the benefits from working as a team were worth the time invested because of the learning that we derived from it. there were three meetings to plan the project in which the whole group met. during these meetings, we came to agree on how to collect the data, how to help the pre-service teacher collect his own data, and how to analyze the data collected. there were also three additional meetings; one during each cycle in order to plan the lessons and then analyze how the lessons had been implemented. during each meeting all the team members participated actively and collaboratively; in this way we had the opportunity to learn from each other. following is an analysis of the data collected from the meeting proceedings, the surveys, and the journals during each cycle. meeting notes first cycle during this meeting, the four participants met with the aim of analyzing a survey that freshmen had answered about autonomy which would help the team in the planning of the first lesson that the pre-ser vice and in-ser vice teachers would implement. the purpose was to help the pre-service teacher develop his project, then, the whole team helped him with ideas, allowing him to be the leader. in this way, the pre-service teacher presented the main objective of his research project, which was to identify the role that first semester students have when working with project-based learning regarding autonomy development, and to determine how proj e c t b as e d le ar ning promotes cr it ica l reflection and the development of communicative skills in english. the in-service teacher who was also the homeroom teacher described the group of freshmen in order to do a needs analysis of the group. he mentioned that his students were usually afraid of working in groups because they thought that not all of them were committed to their own duties and also because it was sometimes difficult to meet outside the classroom. after analyzing the first survey and helping in the planning of the lesson, the pre-service and in-service teachers gathered information to finish planning the lesson on their own and to implement it the week after. second cycle this meeting took place one week after the implementation of the f irst c ycle and had the objective of analyzing the implementation of the first cycle and planning for the second cycle. one of the teacher trainers who observed the implementation of the first lesson mentioned that the in-service teacher’s attitude during the implementation was so good that he influenced students in a positive way. students did not have the chance to be reluctant to work on teams because the teacher had them see the great side of it through his enthusiasm and camaraderie. moreover, the pre-ser vice teacher had an active role as he explained what students were expected to do during the lesson and worked col lab orat ively wit h t he in-s er vice te acher to address students in a good way. he learned from the experience of the team members and also proposed great ideas to get freshmen involved in the project work that he was implementing. during the planning of the second cycle the whole collaborative team gave ideas and came to agreements on what to suggest freshmen do next based on the analysis of the lesson that had been implemented. the more we met, the easier it was to reach agreements and negotiate among participants. as the research moved on, we continued to see benefits and to experience learning. we were little by little more open to suggestions and able to work collaboratively and to share ideas from our own lessons. we also analyzed that at the beginning of 45profile vol. 18, no.1, january-june 2016. issn 1657-0790 (printed) 2256-5760 (online). bogotá, colombia. pages 39-54 the role of collaborative action research in teachers’ professional development our research project each person did a piece and then we put the pieces together, like making a quilt; however, later on we learned that we needed to work together and think together because, although c h a l l e ng i ng , t h at prov i d e d a b e tt e r l e ar n i ng opportunity for all of us. as our perception on teamwork changed we were also able to analyze how to help freshmen work as teams. at the beginning, teamwork for them was having one person provide the ideas or write and the rest revise, but after the first lesson they started to gain awareness on the importance of doing real teamwork in order to share and learn from each other. their collaborative work also helped them gain autonomy and avoid relying on their homeroom teacher all the time as they were encouraged to be creative and independent. third cycle the purpose of this meeting was to analyze the second cycle and to plan for the third cycle. one of the teacher trainers mentioned that during the implementation of the lesson she could notice the ability that the in-service and pre-service teachers had for addressing the students and for encouraging them to work as a team. most f reshmen were involved in the development of their projects and there was always one student who took the lead; however, a few students were seen a bit absentminded and not focused on the project, which made the homeroom teacher call their attention and work with them more so that they could appropriate the work as their own. since autonomy development was fostered in students, they were learning to take responsibility for their own work and this was a reflection on the teachers trying not to control every single thing students did. the ideas generated for the implementation of the third cycle reflected more maturity on the collaborative team as we had furthered our understanding of teamwork. here we were able to help the pre-service and in-service teachers generate some general guidelines for their students while fostering the development of their autonomy. as a team we could grow professionally in terms of reading and reflecting together as well as sharing positive and negative issues lived in our own classes. while our meetings were productive and pleasurable, we were not as successful in the filling in of the surveys. it is common to talk about different ways to improve as professionals, but we do not always do as we say. it was rather easy to reach agreements during meetings and to work as a team, but rather difficult to do the “homework” for some us because not everyone was ready to lead their own professional development. as an example, there was a conference on foreign language research org an i z e d by t he e ng l ish d e p ar t me nt of ou r university and one of the four team members did not participate because he did not see this one as an opportunity for professional development. it was also difficult to have everyone turn in the surveys in a timely manner. initial and final surveys the initial sur vey was done with the aim of knowing what the main constructs that supported our research project meant to the participants involved (see appendix a). we also included the concept autonomy in order to know the level of commitment each participant had to their own professional development. the four participants answered the questions based on our own ideas and on what we had been able to build throughout the research study. after finishing the data collection, the same survey was administered to understand how these main concepts were the same or how they had changed. in tables 1, 2, and 3 we compare and contrast the answers provided by three of the four participants during the initial and final surveys. only the main aspects mentioned by the participants are included. universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras46 castro garcés & martínez granada table 1. perceptions of participants on professional development teacher trainer 1 teacher trainer 2 pre-service teacher initial survey • the opportunity that inservice teachers take to get involved in a process of ongoing learning. • attending academic events such as lectures, seminars, conferences, etc. • talking with colleagues and sharing the pedagogical practices. • reading to get updated on research and pedagogy. • action research. • reflecting on one’s own practice. • the continuous search for improvement. • the opportunities i have to learn and reflect upon my pedagogical practices so i can be a better teacher for my students. • the search for improving our teaching practice. • improving our pedagogical knowledge. final survey • the opportunity that teachers take to keep updated. • using the resources available to search for knowledge (the internet, the library, colleagues, students). • always finding opportunities to learn. • being creative. • seeing the library as a pedagogical laboratory. • i now see it as a permanent task that allows the teacher to reflect and improve every day. • improving our teaching practices. • developing new skills: icts and new educational trends. • being competent. • fostering meaningful learning. 47profile vol. 18, no.1, january-june 2016. issn 1657-0790 (printed) 2256-5760 (online). bogotá, colombia. pages 39-54 the role of collaborative action research in teachers’ professional development table 2. perceptions of participants on collaborative action research teacher trainer 1 teacher trainer 2 pre-service teacher initial survey • the opportunity of doing inquiry in the classroom. • working with colleagues to reevaluate and gain feedback for our classes. • enriching our professional development. • research in which all the participants work as a team and collaborate in the development of a project in order to reach the goals set. • is a tool that allows teachers to have a closer vision of the facts that surround students’ lives and learning processes. • is a tool that helps teachers work on teams to try to improve their practices. final survey • doing classroom research accompanied by peers. • working as teams with the implications derived from it. • participants collaborating, not everyone doing things on their own. • allows the participants to be at the same level and to share ideas that allow the development of a common project. • taking responsibility in the task assigned and building strong interpersonal relationships. • allows the sharing of experiences that enrich our work as teachers. • reflection, participation, and cooperation. • allows teachers to access a great amount of information related to students. • teachers can do research without affecting class performance. • it allows observing in an objective way any issue that might emerge in our classes and try to find solutions to it. • it helps teachers find better ways of offering meaningful learning to students. universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras48 castro garcés & martínez granada table 3. perceptions of participants on autonomy teacher trainer 1 teacher trainer 2 pre-service teacher initial survey • the capacity a person has to take responsibility for his or her own learning process. • an aspect that is not easy to gain autonomously where the teacher’s mediation becomes necessary. • the capacity a person has to make decisions about his or her own life. • the possibility to decide what are the best ways to have meaningful learning. • the ability to make decisions in our learning process. • gives students and teachers tools to face learning and teaching in a better way. • has to do with the responsibility, selfknowledge, and good use of free time. • not innate but developed. final survey • easy to be explained through theory as taking responsibility for one’s own learning, for one’s own personal and professional growth without having extrinsic motivation. • difficult to measure and reach if there is no selfcommitment. • capacity of knowing what is good and bad for our learning process to take place. • capacity to make intelligent decisions without the teachers’ help. • the ability to make decisions in our learning process. • such ability is to be developed, it is not natural. • the teacher is a guide ready to negotiate with her/his students and not a leader who imposes decisions on students. the initial and final sur veys complemented each other because teachers mentioned similar aspects in both. one of the gains obtained from this research was the refining of the constructs and the major commitment that teachers expressed having after being part of this project. teachers did not have specific knowledge of the three concepts at the beginning of the research, but they gained a better understanding as we read and discussed research articles together, collected and analyzed data, and talked about our own teaching practices. the more we understood the concepts, the more we could appropriate them and put them into practice in our professional lives. although the words used by the participants to define each term varied at times, there was a commonality in the definitions in general, which made us think that working together benefited all of us. the roles we had in the research study were different as well as the level of training; however, it was rewarding to notice that we could learn from each other no matter how much we thought we knew about a topic. 49profile vol. 18, no.1, january-june 2016. issn 1657-0790 (printed) 2256-5760 (online). bogotá, colombia. pages 39-54 the role of collaborative action research in teachers’ professional development journals writing a journal gave us the opportunity to reflect more deeply after the implementation of each cycle. all team members were asked to write some reflections taking into account the most relevant aspects of each cycle (see appendix b). here we present a summary of the journal entries. first cycle during this cycle the participants were asked to write about the refinement of the research project, their academic peers’ feedback, the advice given to the pre-service teacher for developing his micro project, and the collaborative planning of the team. the participants stated that it was necessary to reflect upon the main constructs that guided our research and to continue documenting ourselves in order to have a better understanding of these constr ucts. fur thermore, the teacher trainers considered aspects such as the importance of teamwork and reflection to improve upon our teaching practices. given the fact that our research proposal had been evaluated by academic peers, their feedback was seen as an opportunity to see our work through the eyes of others. the team took the comments in a positive way and improved what was suggested because it was part of our professional development based on what richards and farrell (2005) affirm: “strategies for teacher development often involve documenting different kinds of teaching practices, reflective analysis of teaching practices, examining beliefs, values and principles; conversations with peers on core issues, and collaborating with peers in classroom projects” (p. 4). teacher trainers mentioned that advising the preservice teacher was a valuable experience that allowed them to learn with him. it was also stated that it is not always easy to know how much to give to the advisee in order for him to increase his level of autonomy. the collaborative planning of the team gave the participants the possibility to propose ideas regarding what would be done in the classroom, the opportunity to learn from each other, to appreciate others’ thoughts and ideas, and the need to build communication strategies. second cycle during the second cycle, the participants were asked to express their feelings about the collaborative planning of the team, the communication among team members and the analysis of the implementation of the first cycle. the participants mentioned the following: the planning has improved as there is better communication among team members, which was a concern at the beginning of the project. the team members make agreements more easily and can get the best out of meeting time. everybody respects the ideas proposed and establishes a pleasant dialogue in case there is a disagreement. a good amount of learning has taken place as we learn from each other. the first cycle was the result of the joint planning of the team. in this way, the participants could see the relation between what was said or planned outside the classroom and what was done in the classroom. third cycle the topics suggested for this cycle were the collaborative planning of the team and the analysis of the implementation of the third cycle. all team members were pleased with the planning because everyone’s voice was heard during meetings. this project taught the participants that it is possible to work as a team and to be ready to start new projects together. the pre-service teacher mentioned being in a reflective process and feeling more empowered thanks to the work done with the team. he said he is planning to present his findings at a conference. it was also stated that it is easy to communicate with team members. it was rewarding to see students more focused on the activities assigned and to demonstrate a bigger sense of responsibility and commitment. universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras50 castro garcés & martínez granada the homeroom teacher’s job was well done, which was a motivation for students to give the best of themselves. figure 1 presents the most common words mentioned by the participants. the word “reflection” was commonplace throughout the study as teachers became more aware of the need to analyze their own teaching practices. responsibility, teamwork, opportunity, commitment, and negotiation are words that reflect the teachers’ involvement in the projects and their desire to grow professionally. the words collaborative work and sharing can be paired up with the words challenging and rewarding because working with others will always have its ups and downs. conclusions collaborating with peers to reach a common goal is imperative in the teaching field—a field where students are supposed to grasp the importance of sharing and negotiating, something that teachers often do not put into practice. the goal we set at the beginning of our project was to analyze the impact that the collaborative planning, implementation, and evaluation of classroom projects, developed through car, have in the professional development of in-service and pre-service teachers working on a ba in english. now we see that such impact was positive because of the following reasons: 1. we were able to study together in order to internalize and put into practice the main constructs that supported our research— professional development and car. 2. we gained a better understanding of basic concepts and theories related to the teaching of foreign languages as we read and discussed research articles together, met to plan lessons, collected and analyzed data, and talked about our own teaching practices. 3. writing the journal entries was an opportunity to reflect upon the research process and our attitudes as team members. 4. we could grow professionally in terms of reading and reflecting together as well as sharing positive and negative issues lived in our classes. figure 1. most common terms mentioned by participants initial and final surveys opportunities sharing re�ection team work responsibility journals commitment negotiation learning about collaborative work sharing re�ection meeting proceedings team work challenging and rewarding decision making re�ection 51profile vol. 18, no.1, january-june 2016. issn 1657-0790 (printed) 2256-5760 (online). bogotá, colombia. pages 39-54 the role of collaborative action research in teachers’ professional development 5. we moved from having each participant do a piece of work in isolation to planning and working together. 6. the roles we had in the research study were different as well as the level of training; however, it was rewarding to notice that we could learn from each other no matter how much we thought we knew about a topic. the literature we studied and our experience suggest that professional development needs to be considered as an everlasting task that cannot be limited to training courses or to occasional meetings with colleagues; it needs to be part of our teaching career. in this way, this study helped us uncover the benefits that working, studying, reflecting, and researching with colleagues have for our pd. although challenging at times, this is a process that we plan to continue doing, as it allowed us to understand that sharing our own classroom experiences and knowledge with peers is a good way to keep growing 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(1999). four questions about human social behavior. in j. adamopoulos & y. kashima (eds.), social psychology and cultural context: essays in honor universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras52 castro garcés & martínez granada of harry c. triandis (pp. 43-63). new york, ny: sage. http://dx.doi.org/10.4135/9781452220550.n4. goetz, j. p., & lecompte, m. d. (1988). etnografía y diseño cualitativo en investigación educativa [etnography and qualitative design in educational research]. madrid, es: morata. gonzález, a. (2007). professional development of efl teachers in colombia: between colonial discourses and local practices. íkala, revista de lenguaje y cultura, 12(18), 309-332. gonzález, a. (2009). certifications in english language teaching: the case of colombian efl teachers’ professional development. íkala, revista de lenguaje y cultura, 14(2), 183-209. gonzález, a., montoya, c., & sierra, n. (2002). what do efl teachers seek in professional development programs? voices from teachers. íkala, revista de lenguaje y cultura, 7(13), 29-50. lieberman, a. (1995). practices that support teacher development: transforming conceptions of professional learning. phi delta kappan, 76(8), 591-596. lópez‐pastor, v. m., monjas, r., & manrique, j. c. (2011). fifteen years of action research as professional development: seeking more collaborative, useful and democratic systems for teachers. educational action research, 19(2), 153-170. http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/09 650792.2011.569190. mann, s. (2005). the language teacher’s development. language teacher, 38, 103-118. http://dx.doi.org/10.1017/ s0261444805002867. montecinos, c. (2003). desarrollo profesional docente y aprendizaje colectivo [teachers’ professional development and collective learning]. psicoperspectivas, 2(1), 105-128. richards, j. c., & farrell, t. s. c. (2005). professional development for language teachers: strategies for teacher learning. cambridge, uk: cambridge university press. http://dx.doi.org/10.1017/cbo9780511667237. richards, j. c., & lockhart, c. (1996). reflective teaching in second language classrooms. new york, ny: cambridge university press. sierra piedrahita, a. m. (2007). the professional development of a facilitator through a study group. profile issues in teachers’ professional development, 8(1), 91-101. sparks, d., & hirsh, s. (1997). a new vision of staff development. alexandria, va: ascd. sparks, d., & loucks-horsley, s. (1990). models of staff development. in w. r. houston, m. habermand, & j. sikula (eds.), handbook of research and teacher education: a project of the association of teacher educators (pp. 234-250). new york, ny: macmillan publishing company. about the authors angela yicely castro garcés holds a ba in modern languages, a specialization in pedagogy of reading and writing from universidad del cauca (colombia), and an ma in tesol from ball state university (usa). she is an associate professor in the ba in english and ma in english didactics programs at universidad del tolima, colombia. liliana martínez granada holds a ba in modern languages and specialization studies in language teaching from universidad del tolima (colombia). she is a teacher at institución educativa miguel de cervantes saavedra and at universidad del tolima, colombia. 53profile vol. 18, no.1, january-june 2016. issn 1657-0790 (printed) 2256-5760 (online). bogotá, colombia. pages 39-54 the role of collaborative action research in teachers’ professional development appendix a: initial and final survey please define the following constructs 1. teachers’ professional development _______________________________________________________________________________ _______________________________________________________________________________ _______________________________________________________________________________ _______________________________________________________________________________ _______________________________________________________________________________ _______________________________________________________________________________ _______________________________________________________________________________ _______________________________________________________________________________ 2. collaborative action research _______________________________________________________________________________ _______________________________________________________________________________ _______________________________________________________________________________ _______________________________________________________________________________ _______________________________________________________________________________ _______________________________________________________________________________ _______________________________________________________________________________ _______________________________________________________________________________ 3. autonomy _______________________________________________________________________________ _______________________________________________________________________________ _______________________________________________________________________________ _______________________________________________________________________________ _______________________________________________________________________________ _______________________________________________________________________________ _______________________________________________________________________________ _______________________________________________________________________________ universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras54 castro garcés & martínez granada appendix b: journals first cycle please describe your reflection and learning about the following moments: 1. writing and refinement of the project 2. academic peers’ feedback 3. advice given to the pre-service teacher for developing his micro-project 4. collaborative planning of the first cycle second cycle please describe your reflection and learning about the following moments: 1. collaborative planning of the second cycle 2. communication among team members 3. analysis of the implementation of the first cycle third cycle please describe your reflection and learning about the following moments: 1. analysis of the implementation of the second cycle 2. collaborative planning of the third cycle 41profile vol. 19, no. 1, january-june 2017. issn 1657-0790 (printed) 2256-5760 (online). bogotá, colombia. pages 41-54 http://dx.doi.org/10.15446/profile.v19n1.53244 teacher socialization of efl teachers at public school levels in central mexico socialización de maestros de inglés a niveles públicos en el centro de méxico m. martha lengeling1* irasema mora pablo2** blanca lucía barrios gasca3*** universidad de guanajuato, guanajuato, mexico this study aimed at exploring the processes of teacher socialization and identity formation of nine english as a foreign language teachers at public schools in central mexico. these teachers began their careers in the national english program in basic education. qualitative research and narrative inquiry were used as a basis for this research. the data revealed that the teachers’ socialization was somewhat informal in that little was required from them to gain entrance into the program. once teaching, the participants dealt with challenges in their teaching contexts and the program. from these challenges, the teachers were able to make decisions concerning their future as teachers, forming and imagining their identity. key words: efl teachers, identity, imagined communities, teacher socialization. este estudio tuvo como objetivo explorar los procesos de socialización de profesores y la formación de identidad de nueve maestros de inglés en el sector público en el centro de méxico. los maestros comenzaron sus carreras de docencia en el programa nacional de inglés en educación básica. la investigación cualitativa y narrativa fue utilizada como una base para esta investigación. los datos revelaron que el proceso de socialización de estos maestros fue informal, en cuanto se requirió poco de ellos para entrar a la profesión. una vez enseñando, los participantes enfrentaron desafíos en sus contextos y el programa mismo y a partir de estos retos fueron capaces de tomar decisiones sobre su futuro como docentes; de este modo imaginaron y formaron su identidad. palabras clave: comunidades imaginarias, identidad, maestros de inglés como lengua extranjera, socialización de maestros. * e-mail: lengeling@ugto.mx ** e-mail: imora@ugto.mx *** e-mail: bl.barrios@ugto.mx how to cite this article (apa, 6th ed.): lengeling, m. m., mora pablo, i., & barrios gasca, b. l. (2017). teacher socialization of efl teachers at public school levels in central mexico. profile issues in teachers’ professional development, 19(1), 41-54. http://dx.doi.org/10.15446/ profile.v19n1.53244. this article was received on september 28, 2015, and accepted on october 23, 2016. this is an open access article distributed under the terms of the creative commons license attribution-noncommercial-noderivatives 4.0 international license. consultation is possible at http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/. universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras42 lengeling, mora pablo & barrios gasca introduction throughout the years, english as a foreign language (efl) has grown widely in south america in countries such as argentina, colombia, and uruguay, to name only a few. many of these countries have implemented bilingual programs in the private and public sectors (de mejía, 2008; scaramucci & boffi, 2014). in mexico the implementation of english programs at the primary level began in a few states in mexico in the 1990s and later expanded to more states in the early 2000s in the public sector (ramírez romero, 2015). the state of guanajuato began in 2009. nationwide, it was expected that these programs would eventually promote the learning of english to a bilingual stage at the end of high school. one program in mexico is the pnieb program (programa nacional de inglés en educación básica or the national english program in basic education). throughout mexico there is a growing area of research concerning this program (alcántar díaz, navarro téllez, & moreno villalbazo, 2014; domínguez aguilar, mayor turnbull, moreno gloggner, serrano vila, & chanona pérez, 2014; ramírez romero, 2015; ramírez romero, sayer, & pamplón irigoyen, 2014; sayer, 2015a, 2015b). a special issue of the mextesol journal was dedicated to the pnieb program (sayer & ramírez romero, 2013). the researchers of the present article have also carried out research in this area (lengeling et al., 2013, mora pablo, rubio zenil, crawford, & lengeling, 2014) and we as well continue our interest in this theme because many of our students in the ba tesol program at the university of guanajuato have been part of the pnieb. they begin their studies and early on become practicing teachers. this article explores the career entry of efl teachers in this national program in mexico at the preschool and primary school levels as well as the teachers’ identity formation during this teacher socialization stage. the research questions that guided our study were: (a) how did beginning teachers become socialized members of the pnieb program in the state of guanajuato? (b) what is the teachers’ identity formation within this career entry? pnieb (programa nacional de inglés en educación básica) the pnieb program was implemented as a federal program in mexico in 2009 with the intention of providing language teaching in basic education, from the third year of preschool to secondary school from the mexican ministry of education (secretaría de educación pública [sep]). the program’s name was changed in 2014 to pei (programa estatal de inglés [state program of english]). this change also shows how the state government is now being held accountable for the program, yet the national curriculum still continues with the same intention and principles. the goal is that students will have an a2 level based upon the common european framework of reference (cefr) at the end of primary school and hopefully a b1 level at the end of secondary school. this program focuses on the use of “social practices with spoken and oral language to interact with native and non-native english speakers by means of specific activities with the language” (sep, 2010, p. 21). the pnieb teaching approach consists of “communicative functions of language” as well as “cultural learning . . . for students to relate with each other, to progress and reconstruct the social world where they live” (sep, 2010, p. 25). literature review in this section we will look at three constructs: teacher socialization, identity, and imagined communities. these terms helped us to make sense of how the teachers were socialized into the english language teaching (elt) profession, and within the pnieb program, as well as to how this socialization shaped their identities. as part of identity we link the term imagined communities to the discussion. 43profile vol. 19, no. 1, january-june 2017. issn 1657-0790 (printed) 2256-5760 (online). bogotá, colombia. pages 41-54 teacher socialization of efl teachers at public school levels in central mexico teacher socialization in education and elt research in the area of teacher socialization has been extensive. we can trace early research concerning the influences on teacher learning that pre-date entry into a formal program of teacher education in the work of lortie (1975), sirotnik (1983), and cuban (1984). also, other studies have focused on how teacher socialization is affected by the quality of relationships teachers have as children with important adults (feiman-nemser, 1983; knowles, 1988; wright & tuska, 1967, 1968). another area of inquiry has been related to the influence of teachers in the lives of learners (crow, 1987; lortie, 1975; ross, 1987). in the area of education, killeavy and moloney (2010) explain that “teacher socialization refers to the influential processes of professional rules, teacher culture, and school environment on teachers in professional groups” (p. 190). other authors, such as zeichner and gore (1990) mention that “teacher socialization research is that field of scholarship which seeks to understand the process whereby the individual becomes a participating member of the society of teachers” (p. 329). this career entry is a complicated stage where teachers become members of the teaching profession and specifically of the efl profession. this multifaceted stage is when teachers learn and understand values, behaviors, expectations, traditions, regulations, and morals within a society of teachers. this membership is not an easy transition and does not happen overnight. in the field of elt, the term teacher socialization is often found in the literature of teacher practicum (farrell, 2001; merç, 2010; j. c. richards & crookes, 1988). farrell (2001) mentions that teacher socialization: includes learning how to teach and all the demands associated with teaching, such as coping with school rules inside and outside the classroom, following the school rules for lesson planning, following or developing curriculum learning the routines of the classroom, and learning how to interact with school authorities and colleagues. (pp. 49-50) thus, beginner teachers’ socialization involves learning “how to teach” which refers to the skills and techniques needed in class. also the teacher needs to know how to work with the school administration and coworkers. specifically, for the pnieb program, teachers need to deal with their school administrators, other teachers, and even the national program coordinators which are not part of the school. also related to teacher socialization is the notion of teacher stages. fuller and bown (1975) have identified three stages of teacher development which teachers can go through: the first one is known as the survival stage which is characterized by ideas from the teacher about class control, being liked by students, being observed by the supervisors, or being evaluated. a second stage involves the teaching situation concerns about the quantity of students in the class, time pressure, lack of materials, etc. a third stage can be described as the concerns about being recognized (socially and emotionally), the bad curriculum materials according to the student’s needs, being fair with students, etc. (pp. 37-38) in this article we look at the first stage of survival when teachers enter into the profession. exploring this initial stage will help us understand how these teachers develop as professional teachers and the challenges they may encounter. identity and imagined communities in elt because we are exploring beginning efl teachers’ career entry in mexico or how they become teachers, we will look at identity in elt. research on identity has grown in the last twenty years with the work of clarke (2008), cummins (2001), day (2002), norton (2000), and pavlenko and norton (2007), to name only a few. identity refers to group membership or affiliation to a group (norton, 2000). johnston, pawan, and mahantaylor (2005) define identity as: universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras44 lengeling, mora pablo & barrios gasca first, identity is complex and contradictory, comprising multiple, often conflicting allegiances and belongings. second, identity is crucially dependent on social, cultural, and political context. third, identity is to a significant extent established, negotiated, and developed through discourse. all of these qualities mean that identity is not stable or fixed but is rather dynamic and subject to change over time. (pp. 58-59) important aspects that make up identity are commitment, multiple contexts, language use in discourse, and negotiation. identity is ever changing through the use of language depending on the context. norton (2000) argues how language plays a part in identity formation: it is through language that a person negotiates a sense of self within and across different sites at different points in time, and it is through language that a person gains access to—or is denied access to—powerful social networks that give learners the opportunity to speak. (p. 5) based upon “different sites at different points in time”, a teacher may have the right of entry or not into a group or, more specifically, for a profession such as efl teachers within a national program. also, the language can be a person’s mother tongue or an additional language another construct related to identity is imagined communities (kanno & norton, 2003; pavlenko & norton, 2007) and the fact that issues such as language and group membership or communities of practice (wenger, 1998) are also linked. research in this area can be seen in the work of smith (2007), toohey (2000), tsui (2007), wenger (1998), and xu (2012). kanno and norton (2003) mention that “imagined communities refer to groups of people, not immediately tangible and accessible, with whom we connect through the power of imagination” (p. 241). individuals who want to be part of a group of similar people or in this case a group of english teachers use language as a means to identify themselves in different spaces and times. language could refer to their native language or english. in the case of the participants of this study, they may envision themselves as successful teachers in mexico or abroad. in their imagination, they are recognized members of the elt community. these identities are multiple and multifaceted with relations to a number of aspects, such as english, how they might imagine themselves as possible teachers and members within a community. both the personal and professional lives are entwined in these identities. method for this research, we relied on a qualitative approach following narrative inquiry. according to k. richards (2003) two features of qualitative research are “study human actors in natural settings, in the context of their ordinary, everyday world” and “seek to understand the meanings and significance of these actions from the perspective of those involved” (p. 10). we explored the voices of actors, in this case beginning teachers who were situated within the contexts of a national program and schools. we intended to investigate the process of their socialization, the problems they encountered and also the meanings they brought to this process regarding identity. narrative inquir y is a branch of qualitative research (trahar, 2009). clandinin and connelly (2000) mention that “narrative inquiry is a way of understanding experience. it is a collaboration between researcher and participants, over time, in a place or series of places, and in a social interaction with milieus” (p. 20). narrative inquiry helped us to obtain more detailed information about the process of teacher socialization and how teachers perceived themselves while working in the pnieb program. neisser and fivush (1994) make reference as to how narratives can be used: “particular events become important parts of our life because they provide some meaningful information about who we are, and the narrative forms for representing and recounting these events provide a 45profile vol. 19, no. 1, january-june 2017. issn 1657-0790 (printed) 2256-5760 (online). bogotá, colombia. pages 41-54 teacher socialization of efl teachers at public school levels in central mexico particular structure for understanding and convening this meaning” (p. 136). analyzing and making sense of the events of becoming a teacher in this national program in relationship to teacher identity were the basis for using narrative inquiry. participants the participants taking part in this project included nine students in our ba tesol at the universidad de guanajuato, all beginning teachers (one preschool and eight primary school educators). these nine participants were selected from a class of 15 students: all were taking the course of classroom observation in 2014. the nine were selected because they began their teaching careers in the pnieb program; this was their first job as efl teachers. the participants consisted of seven females and two males, all mexicans. they were between the ages of 19 and 21 and came from a variety of contexts: a rural community (1), a small city (5), and two large industrial cities (3). it should be mentioned that these beginning teachers had approximately 35 to 50 students in their classrooms. they went from one homeroom to another giving their classes with their materials. for the most part the homerooms were overcrowded. because of their different contexts throughout the state of guanajuato, they all had a different pnieb program coordinator and every teacher was in a different public school. the group of researchers was composed of a student teaching in the program and two other researchers who were not part of the pnieb program, yet teachers in the ba tesol program. data collection techniques the two techniques used for data collection were narratives and interviews. for the narratives, the participants wrote about their career entry. first, the students read narratives of how people became teachers in mexico (see lengeling, 2013), reflected on this process, and eventually were asked to write their own narratives. students explored the beginning events of becoming a teacher and how they felt. these narratives were edited a number of times with the teacher and even with the students’ classmates. after this initial stage, the nine participants were asked if they wanted to participate in the research project. also, they were all given a letter of informed consent where the project was explained and they agreed on participating in the study. the next stage was developing questions for semi-structured interviews. the researchers read the narratives a number of times to develop questions. many of these questions were asking for more elaboration of information found in the narratives (could you tell me more about how you felt at this point? what exactly happened here?). each participant was interviewed individually and audiorecorded based upon relevant narrative information. for these interviews, we decided that participants could speak freely and they could incorporate new elements that were probably not mentioned originally in their narratives. the interviews lasted from 20 to 30 minutes. both the narratives and the interviews were carried out in english. after transcribing the interviews, we coded and analyzed the data from both techniques. pseudonyms were given to participants in order to protect their privacy. data analysis for the data analysis, we worked with the transcriptions and made notes of the points where we considered something important was being mentioned, or where we could see a theme emerging, following miles and hubermans’ (1994) work on data analysis. after this preliminary work, we started a process of “meaning categorization” (kvale, 1996), trying to identify the thematic categories or subcategories. in the following sections, we present the data in three themes: (a) career entry, (b) challenges to overcome and positive support, and (c) looking to the future. universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras46 lengeling, mora pablo & barrios gasca findings career entry in this section, we show how the participants were offered their first jobs as teachers and the initial steps of becoming a teacher. the word friend came up many times as to how the participants learned about the opportunity to teach in the program. in the following excerpts the participants were told about the job openings from friends and they also mentioned why they felt they were hired to be teachers: i knew about the program from one of my friends. she introduced me and that’s when i knew about the program, so i went there and i got the interview and then i started working…i think they were desperate to hire people because i just went to ask for information and right away she interviewed me and said: i only have these groups. would you accept them? and i said yes! (adela) i knew about the job because of a friend…they hired me because i was able to speak english, i guess, because i only had high school and that was it. (nadia) when i was trying to get into this ba, a friend of mine told me that pnieb was hiring teachers and the only thing that i had to do was to speak english and i could be a teacher. so i went with the coordinator of the program and she asked me if i knew english and i said yes. “alright, you are hired. you’re a teacher!” (abel) in these excerpts the participants seemed to be at the right time and at the right place and a friend was an important contact to pass on information of job opportunities. adela just went for information and immediately she was given an interview and then offered hours. the excerpts show how the participants viewed their job entry as somewhat easy and even unexpected. however, it can be noticed that it was not only their perception. it seems that those who were in charge of hiring english teachers were not interested in either professional skills or specific qualifications, sending a message of how easy it was to gain access to the english teaching profession. therefore, the way they were socialized into the profession at the time of their entrance is somehow informal. concerning the participants’ command of english, nadia and abel mentioned that their use of english proved to be a valuable tool for career entry. the next two participants were told about job opportunities, also by friends, and the job interviews followed the same line as above concerning what was needed to get the job: it was very easy. a friend told me about someone who was looking for english teachers and at that moment i was still studying english. i went to the interview with the coordinator in león. he asked me a few questions, such as if i had any experience with kids and giving classes. i told him that i did not have any experience. he told me that he had some hours (6) but he explained to me that the payment was something difficult and i had to wait at least three complete months. i did not care because it was my first job and i was not an english teacher. (emilia) a friend of mine told me that the pnieb was looking for teachers and he introduced me to the coordinator. it was easy at first because the coordinator asked me three questions: do you have your high school certification? can you take the toefl? and what are you studying? i think they hired me because they needed teachers, because i was taking the ba in english language teaching and because i covered all the paper work as soon as i could. (beatriz) the word “easy” was used by both of the participants. there also seemed a preference for someone who could speak english. besides friends, the data showed how the role of mothers played an important part in how the participants learned about job possibilities in the pnieb program and the influence their mothers had upon their career entry. it is often the case that mothers want to help their children to eventually find their careers. adriana’s and micaela’s mothers were primary school teachers and had valuable knowledge of the school culture. these mothers played a significant role when the participants entered the profession. 47profile vol. 19, no. 1, january-june 2017. issn 1657-0790 (printed) 2256-5760 (online). bogotá, colombia. pages 41-54 teacher socialization of efl teachers at public school levels in central mexico well, i started because a teacher was pregnant and she needed someone to be there for the time she was going to be out…my mom is also a teacher, but she is a general teacher in that public school so the english teacher was giving classes to the groups of my mom. my mom told the teacher that i could be a replacement for the three months…they hired me because they needed someone to replace the teacher. it was not like a contract but after the three months passed i went with the coordinator and told him that i wanted to be in the program and i think they hired me because they needed teachers. now, that i know the program more i think that many teachers are leaving the program and many others are coming so i think it is normal for them to have teachers leaving so i think that the coordinator thought “well, one more” and i also think that it was because i was in the ba and i had the time to be prepared and all that. (adriana) well, i was studying in the ba and one of my classmates was working in the pnieb and she mentioned that the pnieb needed teachers. and my mother was a teacher at that moment and she told me that i should try it and i went to the office in pozuelos and they hired me…they knew i was studying the ba and i think that is why they hired me. (micaela) the two participants suggested that perhaps the reason they were hired was due to the fact they were studying in the ba program. in both excerpts the phrases “needed teachers” or “needed someone” was used which is similar to an above quote from adela who mentioned she felt the program was “desperate for teachers.” again, we see how the people in charge of hiring new teachers, or the gatekeepers rather, were sending the message that the entrance to this profession could be “easy” in spite of not having any specific teaching qualifications. this is an important element to observe, as these young novice teachers might start constructing their professional identity in terms of how “easy” is to become an english teacher, as this is the discourse they continue hearing from the authorities. in this venue, the theory of possible selves (markus & nurius, 1986) becomes relevant while trying to explain how these teachers can perceive themselves. this theory represents “individuals’ ideas of what they might become, what they would like to become, and what they are afraid of becoming, thus linking cognition, behavior, and motivation” (p. 954). the risk these experiences bring for the participants is that they might construct their possible selves as future teachers who do not need much but luck or someone else to help them get a job as english teachers. in the next excerpts, the participants’ mothers were again instrumental in motivating their children to try out for jobs as teachers: the principal of the school, where my mother used to work as a cook, wanted to talk to me about a serious matter. my mom told me to go. so i went to the school a day later to talk to the principal. the first thing she asked me was: do you want to be an english teacher right now? and my answer was yes. i got the job through a friend’s recommendation and i only had to present the toefl [test of english as a foreign language] exam to get the job. (adolfo) my mother had a coworker that was interested in the program and she, my mom, heard about the opportunity and my mom asked her if she could maybe give her information because she was interested in me having that job and she never came forward with any sort of information. so that’s when my mother went to another coworker and said: “would you mind getting me some information?” then we got all of the requirements, like toefl or “carta de no antecedentes penales” [letter of non-criminal antecedents] and i just collected them and went to guanajuato offices in celaya…i was hesitant because at the time i was unexperienced and the only thing that was to me worthy of attention was my toefl (613). i was relying on the fact that someone would look at my score and would be like: “oh, maybe she has to know something, because otherwise she wouldn’t have this result.” but other than that, i didn’t have any recommendations. no one was on my side like “you need to hire her.” i was just the one that went into the office pretending i knew what i was doing. (ada) what is noticed in the data provided is that their job hiring seemed somewhat casual and haphazard as career entry. it was not really planned, but a friend universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras48 lengeling, mora pablo & barrios gasca or a mother told them about the job opportunity and they became teachers quite easily. furthermore, the toefl score represents linguistic knowledge for the participants. it is through the use of another language, english, that these participants became teachers and identified themselves. their knowledge of the language seems to be a valuable commodity that they had to offer in exchange for a job. in the next section we present the challenges these beginning teachers encountered and also the positive support they were given as efl teachers. challenges to overcome and positive support once having accepted to become teachers in the program, the participants learned harsh realities concerning teaching and the program, showing them that teaching is not an “easy” profession as it seemed at the moment they were hired. in the data the teachers mentioned many times not having books at the beginning of the school year and often waiting for four months for the books to arrive. one teacher commented on how she felt bullied by an older content teacher. another teacher mentioned how she felt when entering the classroom for the first time in the following excerpt: the first time i stepped into a classroom, i felt really nervous because i was thinking about how to manage the class. i was a student of the language like one of them. (adela) at this stage adela felt quite vulnerable as a teacher and identified herself as still a student. it might be possible that when this participant was hired, she imagined her performance as an english teacher as a positive one. however, reality taught her that teaching was not only about standing in front of a class. she needed to know about classroom management, among other things, meaning that she had to start creating a professional identity. another challenge that the teachers encountered was the lack of their own classrooms. the majority of the participants did not have their own classrooms and had to travel from one classroom to another with their didactic material. participants also commented about the administrative matters and the academic side of the program. all nine participants pointed out that they did not receive their salary on time and had to wait three to four months for their wages. the salary is based on a contract given to the teachers and these pnieb teachers had very few benefits which did not include vacation pay at christmas, holiday or summer, or medical coverage. this contract begins and ends when they are teaching and can be canceled at any time. at times the participants did not know if they would have a job for the following school year or even at the same school. while the participants effortlessly got their first job teaching, the process of starting to teach was not as smooth as their entry. in the following excerpt the participant described how she saw the program and her school: i divided everything into two parts: the program in general and my work in my school. because in my school i feel very comfortable, the relationship with the teachers, with the director, and with every person in the school is very good, and also the relationship with the kids is good. they are very good kids. but in the program it is different because the salary payment is like they pay you one or two months after you start working. also the lesson plans are very strict. they need lesson plans and you plan everything and you are very excited about it, like writing down all the activities. when you deliver it to the coordinators, they don’t read it. they don’t read a lot of the papers and the reports that they ask us to write. . . . so i think that they don’t value us as teachers. i think that the coordinators should devote more time with the teachers, because we have meetings and we have workshops and everything but i don’t feel the coordinator gets involved with us. like, we do peer work and we do collaborate together with the teachers in the meetings but the coordinator is just being a boss. i don’t think the coordinator is giving us support. i think he is very apart from us. he is “ok, do the work together. support each other” but he is apart from us. (adriana) 49profile vol. 19, no. 1, january-june 2017. issn 1657-0790 (printed) 2256-5760 (online). bogotá, colombia. pages 41-54 teacher socialization of efl teachers at public school levels in central mexico many of the participants integrated themselves into the school and created positive relationships with the children, parents, other teachers, and the directors. they began to feel part of a school culture where they were members of a group, an aspect that showed their investment as part of a community, where there were people who could facilitate (or limit) access to their imagined communities. yet when they commented on the program, they criticized the program naming a number of aspects such as the lesson planning and their training with the program coordinators. adriana mentions how as a student and beginning teacher she learned valuable lessons of balancing these two roles as well as learning how to deal with large amounts of children and management issues. one challenge for me was to be more involved with the other teachers. another one was to balance my time with the ba, because i was studying the ba at the time and also working in the program. so i needed to plan my classes because i didn’t feel comfortable going there and didn’t know what to do, as well as the homework in the ba. so, it was like a mess for me. it was a challenge to balance my time. as well, with the number of kids, the first groups were over fifty kids per classroom so i didn’t know how to manage the discipline, behavior, problems with fights, the kids’ bullying so that was not part of teaching english but that was part of myself being prepared to manage those things that were related to teaching. (adriana) her socialization process might have seemed easy at the beginning, but the job required her to be more aware of different situations concerning the program and her own teaching performance. these aspects had more implications than she had thought they would in the communities that she imagined and desired for herself. the next participant states quite clearly his opinion on what the conflict is. he mentions how he felt positive within his teaching context and shows how he had integrated himself as a beginning teacher. yet according to him, the program had its difficulties as mentioned next: the problems are with the program: the administrative things with the coordinator. the coordination of this program is not as good as it should be. with my class and my groups i feel ok. (abel) a number of the participants provided data concerning positive support when they became teachers in the program. this support came from the institutions where they worked. the data showed how this positive support made them feel part of the institution or a community. i have received constant support from the institution because i have my own classroom. they give me the materials i need for the class and if not, the parents help me with the materials. the principal also makes me feel a part of the institution by caring about how i am doing with the kids or if i have any problems or need something. my colleagues have also supported me every day, since the first day of work with the kids. they help me when there are talkative students, when they are not behaving appropriately, or when working with the materials that require kids to be careful. (beatriz) beatriz seemed to be grateful as a beginning teacher where the institution supported her. she also identified herself as a group member of the institution. the institution refers to the school, children’s parents, and her colleagues at school. this support consisted of materials, moral backing, and advice given to beatriz. for beginning teachers this support was important to make them feel welcome to the profession and also it showed them role models. in terms of their imagined communities, these rewarding experiences certainly enhanced the positive image that they can have of themselves in their teaching profession. their professional identity might be constructed from positive aspects and help them value the institution’s efforts. the participants’ socialization process can be multilayered and the institution plays an important role in how they perceive themselves and how much they can commit to the program. this is a two-way road in which the more positive experiences they have, the more committed universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras50 lengeling, mora pablo & barrios gasca they feel to the profession. however, as mentioned before, not all of them had institutional support and this was when they started questioning their professional identity and their sense of belonging to the program. the participants also discovered important values, such as cooperation, responsibility, caring, and patience; they also became aware of school policies, which are engrained in the contexts and help the participants construct their beliefs of the efl profession. looking to the future having discussed how teachers entered into the efl profession and the problems they encountered in their first jobs, we turn now to how they see their jobs for the future, this is, how they see their possible selves. this could refer to how they imagined themselves as teachers beyond their career entry. the next two participants mentioned how they felt part of their schools and possible future actions. i care very much about the environment and right there i feel really part of it (of the institution) so i wouldn’t mind if i stayed there. in the program they say that they are going to hire teachers with all the regulations and not just contracts but i don’t believe them. (nadia) i would like to continue working in the school i am working because i have a very positive relationship with the teachers and the principal in the school and even with the parents and the kids. however, even when i do feel part of the institution where i work, i do not think that i will continue working for pnieb because they are not giving me the opportunity to grow more in my professional development. (beatriz) another participant explained how she felt positive about her school but she knew that she needed more experiences as a young teacher. i feel very comfortable in that primary school and i don’t wanna change from the school because i feel like i am growing there but i am conscious that i need to look for other opportunities within the pnieb so i think that i could change from the school to see another environment. also i see myself working on my own, applying what we do here in the ba but for me, not for the program, because i see that the program is not going anywhere. (adriana) for the above participants their processes of becoming teachers entailed more than an accumulation of skills and knowledge. they evaluated their process of participation in this particular community of practice which entailed negotiating their ways of being a person, not just someone learning how to become a teacher. the context played an important role in how they perceived themselves after having the opportunity to enter the elt community. adriana’s excerpt relates to imagined communities (kanno & norton, 2003; pavlenko & norton, 2007) because she envisioned herself in the future and projected her identity as more secure and established as a teacher. in essence, she could visualize herself in the future when she realized the program was not supporting her. besides imagining herself she wrote of her motivation to move on to another job which could be considered going beyond the career entry stage. she has also formed beliefs of what teacher development holds for her and she acted upon those beliefs. to conclude this section, we offer the excerpt of a young teacher who reflected on his future and was quite negative about the program. he appeared to have integrated quite well into his school and felt he had been accepted there. i don’t think there is future. i continue working in this program because i couldn’t work in another place because i was in the ba, but now that i’m about to finish it i think it is time to leave this program because of a lot of issues that i don’t like. i like teaching kids and what i do in the school but the program, in my opinion, is not as good as it should be. in the school they take me serious, and they ask me to go to different meetings of committee work. i count and in this program i don’t count. my opinion doesn’t count. (abel) abel no longer wanted to stay in the program. he was caught between two communities: the school and 51profile vol. 19, no. 1, january-june 2017. issn 1657-0790 (printed) 2256-5760 (online). bogotá, colombia. pages 41-54 teacher socialization of efl teachers at public school levels in central mexico the program. he identified himself as group member of the school but rejected being part of the pnieb.these two groups seemed to clash with each other and caused abel some conflict as what to do as a teacher. this situation represents the complexities of the socialization process and how the participant felt empowerment in the school and a lack of empowerment in the program. his demotivation with the program made him imagine what he needed to do in order to survive. these emotions also had a direct connection to his identity formation. the participants learned from their beginning experiences in this program, but after a period of time they felt they needed to move on to other teaching experiences to broaden their horizons. this is normal for teachers— to change jobs to get more experiences— but at the same time the schools, and specifically the program, are losing valuable teachers. conclusions and implications after conducting this research, we learned how important it is for teachers to acknowledge their socialization process and the influence this has on their identity formation. as well, teachers need to understand their profession and how they can envision themselves for the future in order to make decisions. in teacher education programs, exploring the themes of identity, experiences, beliefs, and values of beginning teachers should be discussed so that teachers can be aware of what they may encounter in the future and, hopefully, be more prepared for the teaching and learning processes. preparing students to critically think of these issues is needed and can be implemented through writing, discussion, and observation. this understanding and dialogue combination is also needed for the national program to help the teachers successfully incorporate themselves into the school, program, and profession. for the stakeholders, such as program coordinators or school directors, more importance should be given to how the english language is placed and viewed positively within the national curriculum and the school. it is our belief that it should be a graded class which would appear as a grade on the students’ grade card. changing the class status would then affect the position of efl teachers academically and administratively. efl teachers would be required to have a degree in the area and they would have more permanency and security as teachers. hopefully this would eliminate the easyaccess or casual entry into the job which was found in the data. we would also suggest that the program explore how it can support these teachers in order for a job entry to be successful and for the teaching and learning processes to be successful emotionally and pedagogically. many seemed to be situated in contexts, both in their schools and the national program, where they are often viewed as perhaps “second class teachers,” meaning they lacked the support they needed in order to be fully successful members within a variety of groups. this support refers to benefits, classrooms, didactic material, and acknowledgement. it is our hope that these teachers receive this support so that they will feel they are professional teachers within the efl profession in mexico and in the world. references alcántar díaz, c., navarro téllez, m. c., & moreno villalbazo, s. e. 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(1990). teacher socialization. in w. r. houston (ed.), handbook of research in teacher education: a project of the association of teacher educators (pp. 329-348). new york, ny: macmillan. about the authors m. martha lengeling holds a masters in tesol (west virginia university, usa) and a phd in language studies (kent university, uk). she teaches at the universidad de guanajuato and is a member of the national system of researchers (sistema nacional de investigadores) as well as the editor-in-chief of the mextesol journal. irasema mora pablo holds a phd in applied linguistics (university of kent, uk). she is the coordinator and teacher in the masters in applied linguistics of english language teaching program of universidad de guanajuato. she is a member of the national system of researchers (sistema nacional de investigadores). blanca lucía barrios gasca holds a ba in tesol (universidad de guanajuato). she works as an english teacher at universidad de guanajuato and bcenog. she has presented in different elt conferences (mextesol, fiid, jornadas de estudiantes de lenguas extranjeras, 3er coloquio lengua y sociedad, 1er congreso de lenguas extranjeras, ciile). 129profile: issues teach. prof. dev., vol. 21 no. 2, jul-dec, 2019. issn 1657-0790 (printed) 2256-5760 (online). bogotá, colombia. pages 129-141 https://doi.org/10.15446/profile.v21n2.77731 exploring students’ context representations by using songs in english with a social content exploración de las representaciones del contexto de los estudiantes por medio del uso de canciones en inglés con contenido social 1erika johana cortés rozo* 2daniela andrea suárez vergara** universidad distrital francisco josé de caldas, bogotá, colombia 3jairo enrique castañeda-trujillo*** universidad surcolombiana, neiva, colombia this paper presents the results of a research study based on a pedagogical experience of two pre-service english teachers with seventh graders. the main goal was to analyze the students’ context representations, after using some songs in english as a trigger for reflection. the pedagogical implementation of the songs was designed from a critical pedagogy perspective which allows students to have a more visible role within their english classes. the data were collected through students’ artifacts, classroom observations, closedended questionnaires, and dialogues. the results show that after analyzing the contents of some songs in english, students felt motivated to share their own representation about what they face as adolescents and to express their feelings about them. key words: english as a foreign language students, context representation, critical pedagogy, songs in english. este artículo presenta un estudio de caso basado en una experiencia pedagógica de dos profesoras de inglés en formación con estudiantes de séptimo grado. el objetivo principal fue analizar las representaciones que los estudiantes hacen sobre sus contextos, después de usar algunas canciones en inglés como excusa para la reflexión. la implementación pedagógica de las canciones fue pensada desde una perspectiva de pedagogía crítica que permitió a los estudiantes tener un papel más visible a lo largo de las clases de inglés. los datos se recopilaron a través de los artefactos de los estudiantes, observaciones en el aula, cuestionarios y diálogos con ellos. los resultados muestran que después de analizar el contenido de las canciones en inglés, los estudiantes se sintieron motivados a compartir sus propias representaciones de lo que ellos enfrentan como adolescentes y de expresar los sentimientos que surgen a partir de dichas situaciones. palabras clave: canciones en inglés, estudiantes de inglés como lengua extranjera, pedagogía crítica, representación del contexto. * e-mail: ejcortesr@correo.udistrital.edu.co ** e-mail: daasuarezv@correo.udistrital.edu.co *** e-mail: jairo.castaneda@usco.edu.co how to cite this article (apa, 6th ed.): cortés-rozo, e. j., suárez-vergara, d. a., & castañeda-trujillo, j. e. (2019). exploring students’ context representations by using songs in english with a social content. profile: issues in teachers’ professional development, 21(2), 129-141. https://doi.org/10.15446/profile.v21n2.77731. this article was received on february 7, 2019 and accepted on may 25, 2019. this is an open access article distributed under the terms of the creative commons license attribution-noncommercial-noderivatives 4.0 international license. consultation is possible at https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/. universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras130 cortés-rozo, suárez-vergara, & castañeda-trujillo introduction despite the advances in the educational field in terms of better coverage, inclusive classrooms, and standardization of processes, there is still an unbalance in the teaching-learning process in english language teaching (castañeda-trujillo, 2018) and in schools in general (guerrero-nieto & quintero-polo, 2016). it means that teachers usually have the main role in the classroom and they become the sole owners of knowledge and the ones who decide how and when this knowledge must be transmitted to their students. in this way, students tend to be seen as passive receivers of knowledge, with no agency over what they need to learn. they are like tabula rasa that must be filled (freire, 1970/2007), and they seem to be given few opportunities to express themselves, neglecting the knowledge, beliefs, and opinions which they bring to the classroom and which are valuable for the process of learning a foreign language. this study aims at analyzing how seventh graders represent their social context after working with and interpreting some songs in english with certain social contents in an english as a foreign language (efl) class. from our experience as pre-service english language teachers in the teaching practicum, working with seventh graders at a public school in bogotá, we could evidence the low participation of students in the english language classes. this fact is paradoxical since in a language class interaction and communication among all the participants are of paramount importance. moreover, this interaction should promote language learning and foster language use (lucero & scalante-morales, 2018). in the classes we observed, students commonly limited their participation to answering specific questions about grammar and vocabulary such as the literal meaning of words in spanish (church = iglesia) or choosing the best auxiliary, subject, or verb according to short sentences. in the same way, teachers tend just to give instructions about the activities to be done during the class, acting in this way as passive technicians who assume others’ methodologies and strategies to approach english teaching (kumaravadivelu, 2003). by doing this, teachers set aside the human aspect and how students feel during the learning process. therefore, it is necessary to start seeing students as human beings who have the right of being heard and taken into account in the teaching process, and also to see themselves as cognitive subjects, able to read and assume contexts and able to seek opportunities for transformation through education. (castañedatrujillo & aguirre-hernández, 2018, p. 169) thus, we propose to use a critical pedagogy (cp) perspective because it allows students to change their passive roles and become agents of their own learning (shor, 1993). as music creates a pleasant atmosphere, which influences people in different positive ways, we want to link cp to the use of music as a means of reflection in the english classes (rosová, 2007). thence, we created a proposal for using music in an english class to encourage students to be reflective and active participants in the class (palacios & chapetón, 2014). furthermore, we are not forgetting the teachers’ role, since this research could give them a useful perspective to take into account the social reality of the students and to transcend the classroom environment. theoretical framework since this research intends to rescue the efl students’ self-representations by means of a strategy based on cp through the use of songs in english, it is necessary to clarify how all these aspects relate to and connect each other throughout this research paper. context representation using critical pedagogy first of all, we will explain how the concept of context representation is understood. freire (1970/2007) states that context representation changes according to the moment and some circumstances. 131profile: issues teach. prof. dev., vol. 21 no. 2, jul-dec, 2019. issn 1657-0790 (printed) 2256-5760 (online). bogotá, colombia. pages 129-141 exploring students’ context representations by using songs in english with a social content [students] will tend to reflect on their own “situationality” to the extent that they are challenged by it to act upon it. human beings are because they are in a situation. and they will be more the more they not only critically reflect upon their existence but critically act upon it. (p. 109) similarly, mclaren and giroux (1990) refer to context representation through an expression of cp, focusing on the importance people should give to tell their own stories and how they individually see the environment surrounding them in a multicultural and global society. gruenewald (2003) mentions that students’ context representation is related to the kind of educative experiences they perceive in their partners and teachers, noticing the characteristics of the places in which they live and share with others, including family interaction at home. likewise, as stated by dehler, welsh, and lewis (2001), cp contributes to “students becom[ing] capable of a complicated understanding of the historical, social, political, and philosophical traditions underlying contemporary conceptions of organizations and management” (p. 493), that are maintained in their contemporary experiences and persist in the future. based on what freire (1970/2007), mclaren and giroux (1990), gruenewald (2003), and dehler et al. (2001) mentioned, we can say that context representations appear as a mixture of the immediate situations a person is living day by day, as familiar, academic, and professional surroundings. then, the important thing is to link reflection through cp and act to change the context to make it favorable, understanding historical and current events. in the present study, reflection is promoted by asking students some questions about themselves, and as a result we were able to notice the immediate environment in which they are involved in and how they see the world in general. in that way, students acquired an awareness of the situations they were facing, and they could propose some solutions for those. thus, we could observe how students appropriated their own realities and knowledge and expressed themselves freely to the whole class. songs in the efl classroom songs have been used as a resource in english classes to provide a relaxed and comfortable atmosphere, with the purpose of motivating students to be more receptive and participative during each class. additionally, songs tend to describe experiences, feelings, and these can tell stories (griffee, 1995). as jolly (1975) expressed, songs are a great material or tool, because music makes them enjoyable and motivational and they favor the communicative component of language. furthermore, as palacios and chapetón (2014) state, songs bring to people’s minds different memories, which become more meaningful for students when those are used in a classroom. this recalling of memories happens because songs are usually written from personal experiences that happen in determined socio-cultural environments. therefore, using songs in an efl classroom could foster students’ participation in a more enjoyable environment (phillips, 2003). taking the abovementioned into consideration, we used some songs with a social content. then, we expected students to become more confident while communicating their thoughts and feelings in the foreign language, as well as experiencing an improvement in their interactive skills: listening and speaking. besides this, using music in the classroom promotes students’ comfort and empathy about several topics, as well as helps them get close to the language and to their own lives inside or outside the classroom, as palacios and chapetón (2014) noticed in their research. these authors stated that the innovative use of songs fosters students’ reflection, and consequently, a more active and freer participation in the class. method the purpose of this study is to analyze a group of students’ self-representations by connecting their own universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras132 cortés-rozo, suárez-vergara, & castañeda-trujillo reality to the content of some songs in english used in a specific efl class. to fulfil this purpose, we decided to use case study as the main research methodology, since this research method focuses on particularity (students’ self-representations of their realities), contextualization (english language classes in seventh grade in a public school), and interpretation (researchers analyzing the phenomenon) (duff, 2008). the integration of these three components constitutes a “contemporary phenomenon within some real-life context” (yin, 2003, p. 1). furthermore, to analyze such self-representations of students’ realities, researchers just need to have “little control over events” during classes, activate students’ memory to evocate significant moments in their lives, and observe what happens within the classroom while the strategy is on (gomm, hammersley, & foster, 2000; yin, 2003, p. 1). as the scope of this research was to present a description of what happened within the context of students from their representations, this study is a descriptive case study (duff, 2008). we collected the data through students’ artifacts (drawings and short writings), classroom observations, closed-ended questionnaires, and dialogues with the students; all of these techniques and instruments served the purpose of getting information about their families, partners, and their relationships with teachers, and so on. during the process, other scenarios for sharing information emerged, so we could have spontaneous chats with students; these scenarios were more relaxed and for that reason, the information we got from them was very significant for our study. during the intervention, we assumed differentiated roles; one was that of the teacher (in charge of directing all the activities in the class), while the other was in charge of observing and collecting the most information possible. these two roles permitted us to interact in a closer way with the students and at the same time, analyze students’ outcomes deeply, influencing as little as possible students’ responses (merriam, 1998). the study was developed at a public school in bogota, located in the downtown area of the city. this institution1 let us work as pre-service teachers in the english class with one grade, one day of the week. therefore, our participants were eight seventh-grade students whose participation was voluntary and with prior permission from their parents or guardians. the participants were students ranging in age from 11 to 13 years old, who were experiencing a stage of changes in their lives during the intervention, the adolescence stage. at this age, students are still building their own identity; for them, all their experiences (positive or negative) become meaningful and relevant, even those experiences that an adult might consider as insignificant and irrelevant (jackson & goossens, 2006). they were in a constant struggle to know who they were in the path of becoming young and future adults, a struggle which could provoke not being understood by the world around them (jackson & goossens, 2006). we used three different songs in the pedagogical design of this study. we selected these songs after applying a closed-ended questionnaire to students where they wrote about their musical likes. the results of this questionnaire let us select which artists could be interesting to our population. then, we selected some songs that help our students explore their own contexts to express themselves later in the activities designed. the first song that we used was monster by imagine dragons. this song is about a person with a complicated past and how it is affecting his self-image. based on this song, students wrote short texts about their self-image and how they feel with people around them. the second song was in my blood by shawn mendes; it is about how sometimes the problems can overtake a person and how this person searches for solutions. finally, the last song used was by count on me by bruno mars, in which it is mentioned that we can count on someone to help us (a 1 the name of the school is kept confidential to protect the participants’ identities. 133profile: issues teach. prof. dev., vol. 21 no. 2, jul-dec, 2019. issn 1657-0790 (printed) 2256-5760 (online). bogotá, colombia. pages 129-141 exploring students’ context representations by using songs in english with a social content friend, a family member, a partner); also, this song is related to feelings of happiness. we analyzed students’ context representation by working on those aspects with them; they are better explained in the findings. our intention was to understand how students show their realities based on the songs’ topics worked during the english classes, and to observe the different representations that students created based on reallife issues by designing activities in which learners use the first and the foreign language to achieve a real outcome (willis, 1996). then, we worked with each song as follows: first, students listened to the song and understood the singer’s message, and second, students connected the songs’ contents with their lives in order to express themselves (written or orally). regarding the data collected, these students’ artifacts let us gather meaningful information related to their experiences and feelings in order to study how each student represented her or himself. moreover, we also used an observation technique in order to consign important aspects that happened in our classes for future analysis; these observations did not follow a specific rubric, however some aspects that we took into account were students’ attitudes at the moment of talking about their lives, english use, and students’ comments and reflections. findings after listening to the songs selected, students worked on the activities designed by the teacher, so they did some drawings, posters, short conversations, and short written sentences, among others. through these artifacts and the other data collection instruments, a series of representations linked to students’ closest context emerged. likewise, the analysis of what the songs represented to students after using and discussing the lyrics of the songs is described in the following categories. feelings of loneliness this category emerged when we found that the students’ answers and artefacts recurrently touched on the topic of feeling lonely. in one class, after listening to the song in my blood and understanding the lyrics, some students expressed that they had felt alone, just as the main character of the song feels. consequently, the students were asked to make a drawing in which they showed how they felt when they were alone and accompanied; throughout the analysis we noticed that the students perceived solitude as the absence of a relative (father, mother, siblings, friends, etc.) (figure 1); also, some students even associated solitude with the absence of an object, as evidenced in figure 2. figure 1. drawing by a student representing solitude and company (alex)2 figure 2. drawing by a student representing solitude and company (brandon) 2 names have been changed to protect students’ identities. universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras134 cortés-rozo, suárez-vergara, & castañeda-trujillo in the next class, we continued working with the song in my blood. this song has a strong message about being alone, and that we sometimes need somebody else. after doing the exercises oriented to understanding the song, a spontaneous conversation with the students took place. this conversation started in english, however, the lack of proficiency they had did not permit the use of the proper language to express what they wanted to say. for that reason, we allowed them to use their mother tongue in this stage. after talking about some problems that affect them, we noticed a repetitive feeling in students’ answers: solitude. therefore, we wanted to explore this feeling deeper. then, we asked the students if they felt alone, when they feel alone, and what they do when that occurs. they expressed themselves as follows: yo me siento sola cuando estoy en mi casa y mi mamá no viene rápido (i feel alone when i am at home and my mother does not come fast). (oral conversation, laura) yo voy a mi casa y me siento peor…porque uno se siente sólo, no hay nadie que lo acompañe, uno lo que hace es dormir y ya…porque no está mi papá, entonces le toca hacer a uno todo solo (i go to my house and i feel worse…because i feel alone, there is nobody to accompany me, i only sleep…because my father is not there, so i have to do everything by myself ). (oral conversation, david) a mí no me gusta llegar a la casa porque no hay nadie (i do not like to arrive home because there is nobody). (oral conversation, karla) cuando llego a la casa estoy solo, aburrido, no tengo con quien hablar (when i arrive home i am alone, bored, i do not have someone to talk with). (oral conversation, jhon) the previous utterances denote a pattern of repetition, linking being at home to feeling alone because the students recognize they do not find anything to do or anyone to talk with. in addition to what they said before, we evidenced other similar opinions about a dislike of being in their houses; they would rather be at school because there they can interact with people similar to them. in addition, they find classmates who understand them, different from what happens at their homes, as evident below: yo prefiero quedarme en el colegio estudiando que...que estar lavando los platos a mi papá (i prefer to be studying in the school that… that being doing dishes to my father). (oral conversation, john) yo a veces me siento solo en mi casa pues, aparte de que no hay nadie, nadie me entiende (i feel alone in my house sometimes, well, there is nobody and nobody understands me). (oral conversation, david) sí, es que en el colegio al menos uno tiene a alguien con quien estar acompañado (yes, in the school at least you have someone to be accompanied by). (oral conversation, laura) in contrast to their opinions, only one student expressed: cuando yo estoy en la calle no me siento bien, me siento como que este no es mi lugar, uno llega a la casa y se siente mejor, como más seguro (when i am in the street i do not feel good, i feel like this is not my place, i arrive at home and i feel better, like safer). (oral conversation, brandon) also indicated is how society influences the behavior of students’ parents, being a consequence of the accelerated rhythm of lives in which people live nowadays, then most of the parents have to work long hours per day in order to obtain a minimum salary. children associate this event with solitude (figure 3), resulting in students only having an “approximation” with their parents when they return home at night as one student mentions, or they find themselves not spending quality time “en famille”. figure 3. drawing by a student representing solitude due to parents’ work (david) 135profile: issues teach. prof. dev., vol. 21 no. 2, jul-dec, 2019. issn 1657-0790 (printed) 2256-5760 (online). bogotá, colombia. pages 129-141 exploring students’ context representations by using songs in english with a social content yo me he sentido sola porque no tengo una persona a quien contarle mis cosas porque con mi hermana no tengo a veces tanta relación y pues mi mamá trabaja todo el día así que la veo a veces por la noche (i have felt alone because i do not have a person to talk about my things, because with my sister sometimes i do not have much relation and my mother works all day, so i see her sometimes at night). (written representation of solitude, laura) in the same class, we identified, from students’ spoken opinions, that adults commonly ignore the situations children have to face at school or at home. additionally, parents do not give a place to important events for the children due to the lack of time for interaction between them. this lack of attention generates students’ looking for different alternatives in order to avoid loneliness (figure 4). then, most of the time the students prefer the use of electronic devices, social media, or video games; something that does not solve the problem in the long term because they begin to develop a feeling of dependency on those devices as one of the students expressed: me sentí demasiado solo cuando me quitaron mis teléfonos (i felt so alone when they took my telephones away.). (oral conversation, david) figure 4. drawing by a student representing solitude avoidance through the use of technology (jhon) it is also important to highlight that some of the students did not show any relation to solitude feeling; they put an “x” rather than making a drawing in the “alone” section (figure 5), or they expressed the following: yo nunca me he sentido sola (i have never felt alone). (oral conversation, sara) profe, no tengo nada que dibujar, yo no me he sentido sola (teacher, i have nothing to draw, i have never felt alone). (oral conversation, gabriella) figure 5. drawing by a student representing absence of solitude (sara) while interpreting students’ representations, we realized that solitude is not the only aspect they expressed. there is another element that deserved attention, as it is also an important part of students’ immediate environment: physical and verbal mistreatment. physical and verbal mistreatment throughout the pedagogical intervention, the students continued representing their realities based on the songs in my blood and monster, since those songs focus on the idea of feeling alone and different from the rest of people, feelings that result very familiar for the majority of adolescents. students described how they have felt mistreated by their loved ones on some occasions, mainly by the use of verbal violence. consequently, that mistreatment causes them a feeling of sadness that can be evidenced in their drawings universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras136 cortés-rozo, suárez-vergara, & castañeda-trujillo (figure 6). at the same time, this situation shows how tough the students’ family realities can be, since some of them do not have “traditional families” with a father or a mother. in fact, most of them do not live with their parents but live with another family member such as their grandparents, uncles or aunts, and even step parents. figure 6. representation of loneliness (karla) “tú eres el peor error que yo he conocido” [sic] (“you are the worst mistake that i have ever known”) likewise, another student talked about how sometimes his social situation affected him; because he belongs to a low stratum, he has suffered abuse by some people and we realized how he underestimated the way he feels when being treated like this. yo no me siento mal, o pues un poquito pues porque antes me trataban tan mal, decían que era muy pobre que no iba a poder pasar el año y ellos hacían cosas malas y me trataban mal (i do not feel bad, or well a little bit because before they used to treat me so bad, they said that i was very poor and that i would not be able to pass the year. they did bad things and treated me badly). (short writing, david) on the other hand, we also observed that the mistreatment that some students have suffered is not only inflicted by their relatives but also by their classmates. as in the following example, a student commented on a situation that happened with his classmates. this revealed how the situation made him feel rejected, having negative effects when students have to work in groups because they tend to reject each other; besides, situations like this can explain why some students feel comfortable in the school, but others isolate themselves and avoid talking to others about what they live. me siento solo cuando todos me abuchean…ay yo no sé, yo llego tarde y todos empiezan ah naa salgase…me tienen aburrido…yo me siento re feo (i feel lonely when everybody boos me…oh i do not know, i am late and they all start ah no get out…they have me bored…i feel very bad). (oral conversation, david) regarding the physical abuse, the students did not talk much about it. however, there was a student who mentioned a case in which one of her classmates was mistreated by her father. thus, this shows how students also represent the reality of others. yo tenía una compañera que...o sea…o sea hablaba mucho con la profesora, pero la profesora le daba mucho respaldo porque ella no tenía mucho apoyo ni de la mamá ni del papá, porque el papá siempre le pegaba y eso, por cualquier cosa, era maltratada re feo (i had a partner that…i mean…i mean she talked a lot with the teacher, but the teacher gave her backing because she did not have much support either from her mother or from her father, because her father always hit her and things like that, for anything, she was mistreated so ugly). (oral conversation, sara) even with the applied activities, some students did not feel comfortable talking about certain topics, making us think about the different ways in which they confront and manage their troubles. consequently, we decided to work on this issue with the students in order to understand them better. 137profile: issues teach. prof. dev., vol. 21 no. 2, jul-dec, 2019. issn 1657-0790 (printed) 2256-5760 (online). bogotá, colombia. pages 129-141 exploring students’ context representations by using songs in english with a social content problems management after having analyzed some concerns expressed by the students, we turned our attention to problems management. thus, we have learned how the students looked for solutions to their problems, what they proposed to do and how they dealt with them. for that reason, we based our classroom discussion on the song in my blood specifically on the part that mentions how people should not give up despite having many problems. then, we decided to focus on solving problems of loneliness since it was the issue worked with the students, to which they proposed being with friends or the family, listening to music, writing, and seeking refuge on tv or social media. in contrast, other students prefer to be alone when they have a problem or feel bad: cuando me siento sola o triste escribo cosas en un cuaderno que me sienta bien, o miro televisión o hablo con mis amigos, familiares (when i am feeling alone or sad i write things in a notebook that makes me feel good or watch tv). (solutions to loneliness, laura) cuando estoy triste no me gusta que me molesten y escucho música (when i am sad i do not like being disturbed and i listen to music). (short writing about solutions to loneliness, alex) continuing with this category and having some dialogues with students, we noticed again how they prefer talking with their classmates at school than talking about their problems at home. therefore, we can understand how important the school is for the students as we mentioned before, since there, apart from being their place to socialize, it is a place that allows them to surround themselves with people that make them feel more confident and comfortable. we can illustrate the above with the following example: profesora: cuando ustedes sienten que tienen problemas, ¿se sienten mejor hablándolo en el colegio o hablando en sus casas? estudiante: pues yo me siento mejor aquí hablando en el colegio porque en la casa nadie lo comprende, en cambio aquí uno puede conocer gente de la misma edad de uno o mayor y hablar de lo que uno tiene. teacher: when you feel you have problems, do you feel better talking about it at school or talking at home? student: well, i feel better here, talking at school because no one in the house understands me, but here you can meet people of the same age as one or older and talk about what you have. (dialogues between students and teacher) however, other students mentioned how they solve their own problems without requiring the help of others. they found out a way to cope with such difficulties by facing them instead of escaping from them. profesora: ¿ustedes expresan los problemas a sus profesores? estudiante: cuando yo tengo un problema no le cuento a nadie. profesora: ¿a nadie? estudiante: no, yo me pongo a pensar en cómo solucionarlo. teacher: do you express your problems to your teachers? student: when i have a problem, i do not tell anyone. teacher: to anyone? student: no, i set about thinking how to solve it. (dialogues between students and teachers) al estar ahí escuchando la canción (monster) me acuerda a lo que siempre hago, dejar y olvidar todo atrás (being there listening to the song (monster) reminds me of what i always do, leave and forget everything behind). (short writing, alex) i feel identified by the chorus, i want to escape the problems and be free, i did bad things and i want to fix it, i don’t want problems. [sic] (short writing, brandon) the categories so far have shown some aspects that are not that positive about students’ context. the last one, on the contrary, highlights positive representations from what students have lived. moments of happiness during the last class, we proposed the creation of a letter in which students could describe the best day of their lives to a close person they trust and count on, after listening to the last song count on me. this song is about having someone that supports you in your difficulties. hence, in this section we found two subcategories: happiness associated exclusively with universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras138 cortés-rozo, suárez-vergara, & castañeda-trujillo people, and happiness associated with people, objects, and places at the same time. happiness associated exclusively with people. in the case of some students, we distinguish that happiness for them is present in little things as spending a whole day with each one’s family, laughing with them, and realizing how fortunate they are. in this way, to talk and feel listened to by someone is something students appreciate and give a big value to; additionally, happiness for them has to do with self-esteem and accepting themselves as they are. we can evidence it thought the next letters students wrote: que vivo con mi familia y no me falta nada y tengo a mi madrecita viva y con ella disfruto lo positivo en mi vida. que tengo todo y soy feliz así como soy (i live with my family and do not lack anything. i have my mom alive and i enjoy with her the positive things in my life. i have everything, and i am happy as i am). (letter written by gabriella) the students demonstrated a feeling of gratitude with their relatives and friends just for being accompanied by them at any moment, regardless if such moments are good or bad. they described how they feel secure, helped, supported, and loved sharing with someone else and emphasizing on the special aspects they discover in others. gracias lely, me siento segura siempre en lo buenos momentos; a pesar de que peleamos, nosotras estamos en lo bueno y en lo malo. mis mejores momentos son contigo en cada momento (thanks lely, i always feel safe in good moments; although we fight, we are together in good and bad times. my best moments are with you every time). (letter written by sara) happiness associated with people, objects, and places at the same time. most of the students related those three aspects as a mixture to express happiness. they chose for consideration the celebration of special dates or holidays like birthdays, christmas, and halloween, in which they have a close interaction with their families, going to see/visit new exciting places, taking a trip, and receiving some gifts. they expressed a correlation between being with all their families and feeling union and affection: my day more happy is my brtday number 13 why was a the festival of horror the salitre mágico. too eat pastel and i receive much gift for my family. [sic] (letter in english written by john) moreover, they related happiness to the act of their meeting new people at school or in the neighborhood. that way, they share with people of their same age, establishing interpersonal relationships, which make up their personality from childhood to adulthood as we identify below: my best moment was to meet to my best friend and went with her to the amusement park. [sic] (letter in english written by isabella) it is important to add that through the classes we could notice some students did not have enough resources to eat well every day. for instance, one student kept his snacks for his sister’s lunch every day because it was difficult for his family to provide a daily meal for them both. in this sense, social strata or life conditions also intervene in the feeling of happiness. one student expressed happiness as receiving food from someone; we made an approximation and asked him directly what he was trying to say exactly and he answered: es la única vez que alguien me ha dado un postre en mi vida, lo disfruté, por eso es el mejor día de mi vida (it is the only time that someone has given me a dessert in my life, i enjoyed it, for that reason it is the best day of my life). (informal conversation, david) in other cases, some students represented happiness as contact with living beings as pets, which is a way to notice they may respect and live together with nature and animals, as well live without hurting them. on the other hand, some students expressed happiness towards an object or by talking to the teachers like this: el mejor día fue cuando me dieron mi celular (the best day was when they gave me my cell phone). (informal conversation, brandon) 139profile: issues teach. prof. dev., vol. 21 no. 2, jul-dec, 2019. issn 1657-0790 (printed) 2256-5760 (online). bogotá, colombia. pages 129-141 exploring students’ context representations by using songs in english with a social content my best day was when i touched a soccer ball. [sic] (letter in english written by brandon) mommy my happiest day is when they gave me my kitten, i felt so happy just the…[sic] (letter in english written by karla) as a piece of evidence that not all the students think the same, only one of the students declared that he has never had a “best” day in his life, he stressed in that idea, but also mentioning that he trusts his family and friends: i trust on my family and mine best friends. besta day…no i have. what no i have!!! [sic] (letter in english written by david) finally, we can close this category by saying that students do not need so many things to feel happy. they just need to feel accompanied, understood, having any member of their family who trusts them and support them to achieve their dreams as expressed below: my mother beautiful. mommy my happiest day it was when you took me to the cinema to watch intensely and we laughed together. we spent nice time, we ate and we had fun too. looked so beautiful, you look beautiful all day but that day was the best of my day. [sic] (letter in english written by karla) discussion the findings demonstrate how designing activities from a cp perspective can be beneficial for efl classes, since it allows students to take an active and dynamic role in the classroom. for instance, the students increased their interventions throughout the classes, something that promotes meaningful learning because they used their own knowledge to interact with others using the target language for talking about their realities. therefore, this type of experience allows them to understand their environment and to appropriate their learning, making them freer and more conscientious learners (shor, 1993), increasing their confidence and, equally, their participation in class. in the same way, students became more open to talk about their contexts, identifying themselves and recognizing themselves in others. even though there were similar realities in the students’ stories which they felt reflected themselves, they also learned to accept the different life experiences of others. thus, we realize the importance of each student telling their stories, highlighting their individuality, and demonstrating the diverse contexts representations (mclaren & giroux, 1990). moreover, we want to mention the importance that experiences play in students’ lives, especially during adolescence. “adolescents experience greater emotional variability than other age groups” (jackson & goossens, 2006); they really feel and act as they feel. for that reason, adolescents might face drastic emotional changes, and the perception of their context will depend on their mood. the previous is a call to pay attention to what students express with or without words inside the classroom. teachers might be able to understand these kinds of messages students send, since they are in charge not only of providing the content knowledge, but of guaranteeing a more integral education. apart from the aspects discussed before, we consider education should not be a technical process, but rather a critical space open to curiosity (shor, 1993) where students and teachers interact reciprocally and share experiences to create a conscientious environment. teachers need to remember they share that space with human beings and for that reason it is important to listen to students because although they are often underestimated, they have many things to contribute in the classroom dynamics. nevertheless, we experienced some limitations in our study. first, our limited population, since there were only eight students giving more specific results. second, as pre-service teachers, we had a time restriction for working with the students, owing to the school’s having a stipulated curriculum, which we had to articulate with our research, diminishing time for data collection. as a result, we could not measure whether there was a deep change or stability in the students’ answers by applying universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras140 cortés-rozo, suárez-vergara, & castañeda-trujillo the intervention for a longer time. lastly, as we held some open dialogues with all the students at the same time, everybody wanted to give their opinion and they did not respect the speaking turn of the others, which made it difficult to delve deeper into their answers. to the future researchers, we recommend choosing a dialogic interview as one of the instruments for gathering data, as it permits being closer to the students. this kind of dialogue also allows students to open up more and go deeper into their thoughts and feelings. conclusions the study showed that the adolescent students’ representations were varied. hence, the application of english songs helped us to encourage our students to explore and reflect on their contexts with topics closed to them. besides, the use of a cp perspective while developing the class stimulated students to talk about their contexts, which revealed some concerns about their relationships with their family members and friends, allowing different issues about the social contexts in which they are involved to become known. likewise, the students presented some alternatives for dealing with their worries. we centered our attention on listening to the students and learning what they had to say about their lives; as a result, we focused on four issues found in the students’ answers: in the first place, the students expressed a feeling of loneliness, mainly in their houses. they associated this emotional state with the absence of a person (parents, siblings, or friends) or an object (cell phones, game consoles). although they showed a desire for sharing with their families, most of them find refuge in technology. in the second place, some of them expressed being affected by verbal and physical abuse, both from their parents and classmates. this mistreatment represented by students allows us to interpret the difficult family conditions of the students since they are at home without the presence of a relative, which can become a negative factor for the students’ feelings. as a third aspect, we also worked with the students about problems management. in this case, some of them, having an independent attitude, prefer to solve those problems by themselves; however, other students expressed a need of being heard and advised by their families. finally, the last category focused on positive students’ representations of their contexts; students are able to find solutions to some of the problems they have to face daily, such as solitude, rejection, and mistreatment, among others, and they consider the school as the place where they can socialize and find people who share their likes and who can understand them. in terms of students’ participation during the language classes, throughout this research the students showed an improvement in communication, having better self-confidence at the moment of expressing their opinions and even proposing activities to develop during the classes. in addition, language improvement was not one of the goals of this study, but indirectly language use increased notably; then, students were motivated to speak more in the target language (english) and the increased use reinforced the writing skill. this study is also a wakeup call to students’ parents to devote more quality time to their kids, especially during the childhood stage when they need attention to become strong and need a guide to act correctly in society. references castañeda-trujillo, j. e. (2018). voices from the south: english language pre-service teachers contributions to elte. in doctorado interinstitucional en educación (ed.), elt local research agendas i (pp. 159-179). bogotá, co: universidad distrital francisco josé de caldas. castañeda-trujillo, j. e., & aguirre-hernández, a. j. (2018). pre-service english teachers’ voices about the teaching practicum. how, 25(1), 156-173. https://doi.org/10.19183/ how.25.1.420. dehler, g. e., welsh, m. a., & lewis, m. w. (2001). critical pedagogy in the “new paradigm”. management learning, 32(4), 493-511. https://doi.org/10.1177/1350507601324005. 141profile: issues teach. prof. dev., vol. 21 no. 2, jul-dec, 2019. issn 1657-0790 (printed) 2256-5760 (online). bogotá, colombia. pages 129-141 exploring students’ context representations by using songs in english with a social content duff, p. (2008). case study research in applied linguistics. new york, us: routledge. freire, p. (1970/2007). pedagogy of the oppressed (m. b. ramos, trans.). new york, us: continuum. gomm, r., hammersley, m., & foster, p. (eds.). (2000). case study method: key issues, key texts. los angeles, us: sage. griffee, d. t. (1995). songs in action. hertfordshire, uk: phoenix. gruenewald, d. a. (2003). the best of both worlds: a critical pedagogy of place. educational researcher, 32(4), 3-12. https://doi.org/10.3102/0013189x032004003. guerrero-nieto, c. h., & quintero-polo, á. h. (2016). las voces de los maestros frente a las políticas educativas: ¿la ilusión de la democracia? bogotá, co: universidad distrital francisco josé de caldas. jackson, s., & goossens, l. (eds.). (2006). handbook of adolescent development. new york, us: psychology press. jolly, y. s. (1975). the use of songs in teaching foreign languages. the modern language journal, 59(1/2), 11-14. https://doi. org/10.1111/j.1540-4781.1975.tb03618.x. kumaravadivelu, b. (2003). beyond methods: macrostrategies for language teaching. new haven, us: yale university press. lucero, e., & scalante-morales, j. (2018). english language teacher educator interactional styles: heterogeneity and homogeneity in the elte classroom. how, 25(1), 11-31. https://doi.org/10.19183/how.25.1.358. mclaren, p. l., & giroux, h. a (1990). critical pedagogy and rural education: a challenge from poland. peabody journal of education, 67(4), 154-165. https://doi. org/10.1080/01619569009538705. merriam, s. b. (1998). qualitative research and case study applications in education. san francisco, us: jossey-bass. palacios, n., & chapetón, c. m. (2014). the use of english songs with social content as a situated literacy practice: factors that influence student participation in the efl classroom. folios, (40), 125-138. https://doi.org/10.17227 /01234870.40folios125.138. phillips, s. (2003). young learners. oxford, uk: oxford university press. rosová, v. (2007). the use of music in teaching english (doctoral dissertation). masaryk university, brno, czech republic. shor, i. (1993). education is politics: paulo freire’s critical pedagogy. in p. leonard & p. mclaren (eds.), paulo freire: a critical encounter (pp. 25-35). london, uk: routledge. https://doi.org/10.4324/9780203420263_chapter_2. willis, j. (1996). a flexible framework for task-based learning. in j. willis & d. willis (eds.), challenge and change in language teaching (pp. 52-62). london, uk: macmillan education. yin, r. k. (2003). case study research: design and methods. thousand oaks, us: sage. about the authors erika johana cortés rozo is currently enrolled in the b.a. of basic education program with an english emphasis at universidad distrital francisco josé de caldas. she has taught in public schools in bogotá as a pre-service teacher. she has participated as an usher in the asocopi annual conference. daniela andrea suaréz vergara is currently enrolled in the b.a. of basic education program with an english emphasis at universidad distrital francisco josé de caldas. she has taught in public schools in bogotá as a pre-service teacher. she has participated as an usher in the asocopi annual conference. jairo enrique castañeda-trujillo is a full-time teacher and researcher at universidad surcolombiana. he holds an m.ed. with emphasis on english didactics, and a b.a. in spanish and english. currently, he is studying for the interinstitutional phd in education—elt emphasis—at universidad distrital francisco josé de caldas. 57profile: issues teach. prof. dev., vol. 22 no. 1, jan-jun, 2020. issn 1657-0790 (printed) 2256-5760 (online). bogotá, colombia. pages 57-73 https://doi.org/10.15446/profile.v22n1.75772 education professionals as facilitators of study abroad programs in spain: formal training needs profesionales de la educación como facilitadores de programas de study abroad en españa: necesidades formativas 1amalia herencia grillo* 2elena hernández de la torre** universidad de sevilla, sevilla, spain this paper investigates an aspect of study abroad programs that has rarely been studied before: the training needs of local education professionals in spain. through a mixed-method, using a questionnaire completed by 103 participants, and interviews with 15 of them, we focus on their previous formal specific training and their perspective on the group of students they work with. results show that most of them have rarely been trained on how to work as cultural facilitators for students from the us. this fact often creates a cultural gap and prevents the teachers from fulfilling their role as cultural bridges for students. specific action needs to be taken in order to solve this lack of preparation in this group of professionals. key words: academic teaching personnel, intercultural education, study abroad, teacher education. este artículo trata un aspecto de los programas de study abroad poco investigado hasta ahora: las necesidades formativas de los profesionales del sector en españa. utilizando una metodologia mixta, a través de un cuestionario completado por 103 participantes y entrevistas realizadas a 15 de ellos, nos fijamos en su formación formal específica previa y en su perspectiva sobre el colectivo de estudiantes con los que trabajan. los resultados demuestran que la mayoría de los docentes no han sido formados específicamente sobre cómo trabajar como facilitadores culturales con alumnos estadounidenses. esta falta de formación produce a menudo un vacío cultural y no les permite llevar a cabo su función de puentes culturales. se hace necesario establecer una actuación específica para solventar esa ausencia de preparación en este grupo de profesionales. palabras clave: educación del profesorado, educación intercultural, personal académico educador, study abroad. * e-mail: amalia@intercultural-school.org ** e-mail: eht@us.es how to cite this article (apa, 6th ed.): herencia grillo, a., & hernández de la torre, e. (2020). education professionals as facilitators of study abroad programs in spain: formal training needs. profile: issues in teachers’ professional development, 22(1), 57-73. https://doi. org/10.15446/profile.v22n1.75772. this article was received on october 24, 2018 and accepted on october 12, 2019. this is an open access article distributed under the terms of the creative commons license attribution-noncommercial-noderivatives 4.0 international license. consultation is possible at https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/. universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras58 herencia grillo & hernández de la torre introduction a study abroad program is a “pre-scheduled, temporary stay in a foreign country for educational purposes” (taguchi, 2015, p. 4). these programs have been functioning in the us for around 60 years now and consist of an educational initiative that aims to provide students with a better understanding of the world other than the one they know, and a set of personal and academic skills that help them better develop in a globalized world and improve their intercultural competence, which is the ultimate goal of any study abroad experience. in order to do this, these us programs provide students with a set of tools in the shape of classes, cultural activities, housing with locals, and a continuous guidance throughout the program duration. local professionals of study abroad (faculty and staff ) are the ones in charge of providing students with these tools, and are the ones who work and interact with them on a daily basis. our study has been developed in spain via interviewing professionals that work with us university students on study abroad programs. we will have a look at the work that these local spanish professionals need to do, at their previous formal training as facilitators, and at the necessary skills and tools they need to have, provided they play an essential role in these programs’ success, aspects about which they have rarely ever been asked or consulted. we will focus on two main research questions: (a) have local faculty and staff received previous formal academic training for their role of facilitators of study abroad? and (b) how does this preparation (or lack of ) translate in their daily work with students? according to these two questions, we assert the following hypotheses: (1) that local faculty and staff have not received previous formal academic training for their role as facilitators of study abroad as such and (2), that this lack of preparation translates into a culture gap between them and the students enrolled in their program, which is usually filled through experience. cultural understanding the ultimate goal of any study abroad experience is to enhance intercultural competence, understanding this as “a set of cognitive, affective and behavioral skills and characteristics that supports effective and appropriate interaction in a variety of cultural contexts” (bennett as cited in anderson, hubbard, & lawton, 2015, p. 39). the student must be capable not only of gaining knowledge, skills, and attitudes, but also of integrating them into his/ her own experience and becoming a culturally effective and appropriate individual, despite some limitations (baartman & de bruijn, 2011; li, olson, & frieze, 2013; long, 2013; williams, 2013; wong, 2015). if students are supposed to develop deeper cultural understanding and intercultural competence after a study abroad experience, what is it that students and professionals see as “culture”? what does it mean? historically, the definition of the term “culture” has been too complex and difficult for it to be assigned a single meaning. according to vallescar (2000), around 1920 the term became more defined as a result of strong critical reflection on the concept of culture, but still there is not a homogeneous meaning for the word “culture.” why? this is mainly due to the different disciplines (anthropology, sociology, philosophy, etc.) that provide different perspectives, but also due to the fast changes in society and the events that took place during the first half of the 20th century. culture can be understood as “a key element in the process of human development” (cole as cited in roth & lee, 2006, p. 31). it is also a “concrete world of beliefs and practices” (sewell as cited in roth & lee, 2006, p. 32). we also need to understand as culture the different aspects communicated by individuals from one generation to the other through oral or non-verbal language, meaning the history, values, traditions, and so on (sternberg as cited in stemler, imada, & sorkin, 2014, p. 26). it would also be “the shared philosophies, ideologies, values, assumptions, beliefs, expectations, attitudes and norms that knit a community together” (owens as cited in domville-roach, 2007, p. 19). students 59profile: issues teach. prof. dev., vol. 22 no. 1, jan-jun, 2020. issn 1657-0790 (printed) 2256-5760 (online). bogotá, colombia. pages 57-73 education professionals as facilitators of study abroad programs in spain: formal training needs undergo a transition from their home cultures to the target one, which in this case is the spanish culture. students need to learn about this target culture while in the host country and while living outside of their comfort zone for a period of time. this learning process requires a standard immersion period of time in which local staff and faculty give them the clues and guide them through the process, acting as a sort of cultural facilitators. however, students do not always share the same goals and do not always have the same background and interests. to give some perspective, and for the sake of this study, we should keep in mind the following: • the view of the target culture (spain) has been idealized by most students; each of them has his/ her own perspective according to what they have learned, studied, and understood. students investigate on their own through social networks, study abroad providers’ websites, family and friends, and so on. but also, they have received an image of a traditional western europe culture or country described by different writers and they may think they know much about europe even before getting on the plane (anderson et al., 2015; bash, 2012; beech, 2015; grey, cox, serafini, & sanz, 2015; heinzmann, künzle, schallhart, & müller, 2015; woolf, 2011). • when going from their home culture to the target culture, students need to go through a transition period where they “negotiate and combine ingredients from both cultures” (engeström, engerström, & kärkkäinen as cited in akkerman & bakker, 2011, p. 134). in doing so, they need to rely on and trust in what we can call “limit objects,” which can help them as a bridge between both cultures; these objects “can be adapted to both cultures according to the individual’s needs while keeping their own identity along the way” (star & griesemer as cited in akkermman & bakker, 2011, p. 134). the process of transferring from one culture to the other results in what we can call “third culture,” which creates a learning environment where students share aspects of the target culture in a lifestyle they had in their home culture (altweck & marshall, 2015; wolcott, 2010). what is more important, students need to keep an active role and a positive attitude (bennett, 2004; carini, kuh, & klein, 2006; carlson & widaman, 1988; engberg, jourian, & davidson, 2016; félix-brasdefer & haster-barker, 2015; trilokekar & rasmi, 2011). during this transition period from one culture to another, professionals have a crucial role as facilitators and guide throughout the whole process. students need to undergo a state of acculturation, classically defined as the “phenomena which result when groups of individuals having different cultures come into continuous first-hand contact, with subsequent changes in the original culture pattern of either or both groups” (redfield, linton, & herskovits as cited in altweck & marshall, 2015, p. 2). in order to achieve acculturation, students need to build their experiences with the skills they already have and combine them with who they are as individuals. this process is not the same for each student, since each of them will have his/her own personality, background, expectations, motivations, and goals. affect, behavior, and cognition are essential to this process (billet, 2013; bowman, 2011; brewer, 2011; gabelica, van den bossche, de maeyer, segers, & gijselaers, 2014; savicki, 2013). as we will see later, the accompanying professionals play a crucial role as facilitators in this process. study abroad programs in spain almost a century after the first institute of international education (iie) programs started in europe, the phenomenon of study abroad has spread throughout spain. most of the biggest us study abroad providers are established in spain: council for international educational exchange (ciee), international studies universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras60 herencia grillo & hernández de la torre abroad (isa), cultural experiences abroad (cea), academic programs international (api), arcadia, and more. students can participate in island programs, where they receive custom-made courses with all us students, as well as in programs that offer mixed or direct enrollment in local universities. the program offerings are large and stable. most programs conform to the national association for foreign student affairs (nafsa), created in 1964 in the us, and the forum on education abroad (forum) (dolby & rahman, 2008; forum, 2015). there is also a spanish association that includes most programs, called apune, association of north american university programs in spain (asociación de programas universitarios norteamericanos en españa). created in 1968, it offers seminars and workshops and holds regular meetings for its members. their mission reads: programs in the association represent accredited north american colleges and universities which offer undergraduate and graduate students the opportunity to study abroad for a summer, semester or full academic year. classes offered include spanish language and literature, as well as history, international relations, economics, business, art history, sociology, anthropology, latin american and european studies. (www.apune.org) even though this association exists and provides multiple tools for programs in spain, not all of the providers are members. thus, a great opportunity to work toward standardizing and coordinating the study abroad offerings in spain is lost. according to the “open doors” report for education abroad published by iie, a total of 332,727 us students studied abroad for the 2016/2017 academic year. out of these, 31,230 (that is, 9.4%) came to spain (https:// www.iie.org/en/research-and-insights/open-doors/ data/us-study-abroad/destinations). a large majority of study abroad students complete surveys on their experience, which are usually administered by their study abroad program provider. these surveys, in turn, are used by the provider to improve their services and features. since the surveys are usually private and anonymous, the results are generally not shared with other programs or institutions. to date there is no global database that summarizes students’ expectations and outcomes, a deficiency which does not allow international education professionals to see a broader view of the real outcomes and needs of students. students’ role in study abroad in order to better understand what study abroad professionals’ work is, we need to pay attention to the students they work with. as we mentioned previously, most programs measure their own students’ overall satisfaction with their study abroad experience. students usually complete surveys on safety, academics, extracurricular activities provided, and housing quality, just to name a few categories. some programs create their own questionnaires while others create them following already made surveys, including but not limited to the following: gap (global awareness profile), gpi (global perspective inventory), abos (attitudinal and behavioral openness scale), and more (stemler et al., 2014). the various surveys share the common measurement of student satisfaction with their program and different aspects of students’ development. although there is still no full agreement on the validity of these measuring tools (kealey, 2015), the six aspects of study abroad student development most preferred by the association of american colleges and universities (aac&u) are: cultural self-awareness, knowledge of cultural worldview frameworks, empathy, verbal and non-verbal communication, curiosity, and openness (williams, 2013, p. 153). developing these aspects above and gaining acculturation in the academic context is a process that must be led by the local faculty and staff as they are the ones providing students with the insights of the target culture. different authors have proved how students’ learning process is better when study abroad leaders intervene 61profile: issues teach. prof. dev., vol. 22 no. 1, jan-jun, 2020. issn 1657-0790 (printed) 2256-5760 (online). bogotá, colombia. pages 57-73 education professionals as facilitators of study abroad programs in spain: formal training needs as facilitators of the experience and promote students’ self-reflection (van dinther, dochy, & segers, 2011; wong, 2015). the role of local faculty and staff if we agree that local faculty and staff are paramount to a successful study abroad experience, we then need to pay attention to the formal training, background, and skills of these individuals when dealing with us students. these professionals should have experience with diversity, be familiar with the culture of the students they are teaching, be open, and facilitate reflection. they should encourage student participation and create an appropriate learning environment where students feel supported in order to get the most out of their experience. the professor or staff member, as a culture object themselves, would act as a cultural representative, facilitator, and mediator between the home and target cultures. although the immersion in the culture already gives students a good opportunity to learn, being “in” the culture is not enough. there needs to be a guide, a facilitator that helps students and who can, among other things, reduce anxiety on the part of the students, challenge them, and help them throughout the whole process (berardo & deardorff, 2012; geboers, geijsel, admiraal, & ten dam, 2012; keller, goetz, becker, morger, & hensley, 2014; kuhn, 2015; maruyama, moreno, gudeman, & marin, 2000; roorda, koomen, spilt, & oort, 2011; rotgans & schmidt, 2014; sánchez, 2014; schallenberg, 2015; stanulis, little, & wibbens, 2012). immersion should ideally be customized for each student, meeting their needs and providing adequate discipline and permanent advice (slimbach as cited in de graaf, slagter, larsen, & ditta, 2013). the limitations here are visible to us: students’ expectations need to be known and taken into consideration, but from what we have already seen, these are different for each individual student. local faculty and staff need to be able to fill in these gaps and provide students with the help they need and, what is most important, these professionals need to know where students come from, what their level of acceptance is, and what amount of challenge they can support; in order to do so, facilitators themselves should have a high degree of intercultural communication competence (berardo & deardorff, 2012). in doing so, the role that empathy plays is essential. empathy allows educators to adopt the students’ perspective and ease the learning process but it should go both ways, not only on the educators’ part but also on the students’ part (jang, kim, & reeve, 2016; mcallister & irvine, 2002; spalding, klecka, lin, wang, & odell, 2011). method this study adopts a mixed-method approach. through questionnaires and interviews, we gather qualitative data in the shape of open questions included in the questionnaires and interviews, in order to get information from professionals in the field of study abroad in spain. a quantitative methodology has also been used when analyzing the questionnaire’s liability using the data program statistical package for the social sciences (spss) 22. questionnaires have been administered and answered anonymously, and interviews have been conducted with participants who provided their contact information when answering the questionnaire. interviews have been recorded, transcribed, and organized using the qualitative program maxqda 12 (see appendix a for more details). selection criteria to gather information about study abroad professionals’ previous experience and needs, we contacted in september 2017 some of the existing programs in spain which offer programs in different cities: ciee, cc-cs, api, asa, cea, and isa. there was no filter applied in regard to the participants’ years of experience or specific roles in the programs, since all of their opinions are essential to this investigation. due to program policies, surveys could not be sent universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras62 herencia grillo & hernández de la torre directly to professionals, so we distributed them to the directors of us-based study abroad program providers in spain who then shared the survey with their faculty and staff. later, in june 2018, we distributed the questionnaire among other professionals of study abroad associated with sietar spain (society for intercultural education, training, and research). participants are professionals of study abroad that work as professors or administrators for the abovementioned programs in spain. they are the ones who organize all of the logistics aspects of a program abroad: housing, classes, cultural activities, emergencies, daily advising, and so forth. they keep in frequent contact with students in and outside of classrooms and are the key elements for a program’s success. when asked about their previous academic backgrounds, interviewees reflected a wide variety of responses, mainly psychology, english philology, secretary degree, communication, translation, economics, and computer science. four of them have a master’s degree; there is one respondent in the process of obtaining a phd, and two others who hold a phd in english or humanities. questionnaires and interviews the questionnaire was created using a google docs template and distributed by email to a total of 122 faculty and staff in spain. a total of 103 responses were received, which means a participation rate of 84.4%. participation was optional but highly encouraged through email and phone conversations. there was significant interest on the part of the participants, since most of them had never received any similar survey or had been asked about their previous training and the perspective of their students before and were eager to share their thoughts. the questionnaire we administered consisted of 12 yes/no questions. the questionnaire was designed according to our own previous experience in study abroad program administration and by gathering some professionals’ feedback on the accuracy of the questions; it also asks four open-ended questions that serve as an essential source of qualitative information for this research (appendix b). since some participants gave an n/a answer to some of the questions, we conducted personal interviews with 15 of them in order to collect data that would clarify the neutral answers to some of the questions. the 15 were those who had provided their contact data when filling in the questionnaire. interviews were recorded, transcribed, and organized using the qualitative program maxqda 12 (appendix a). the aim of these tools is to study the two research questions: (a) have local faculty and staff received previous formal academic training for their role as facilitators of study abroad? and (b), how does this preparation (or lack of ) translate in their daily work with students? to check the questionnaire’s liability index, we administered the program spss 22 obtaining a cronbach alfa of 0.747, as seen on tables 1 and 2. liability statistics need to be over 0.7 in order to prove that a questionnaire (in this case) has a good liability and is useful and accurate for scientific research of this kind. a hundred percent of cases (variables) were valid, and 12 elements (number of yes/no questions on the questionnaire) were taken into consideration. table 1. case processing summary n % cases valid 103 100 excluded 8 0 total 103 100 table 2. cronbach alfa liability statistics cronbach alfa # of elements .747 12 63profile: issues teach. prof. dev., vol. 22 no. 1, jan-jun, 2020. issn 1657-0790 (printed) 2256-5760 (online). bogotá, colombia. pages 57-73 education professionals as facilitators of study abroad programs in spain: formal training needs results results of questionnaires and interviews will be grouped together in order to provide better accuracy to the answers. these can be analyzed according to the two research questions: rq1: have local faculty and staff received previous formal academic training for their role as facilitators of study abroad? figures 1, 2, 3, and 4 show the professionals’ previous knowledge on study abroad and their answers to the first four questions in the questionnaire. figures 1 to 4 show, on one side, that about half of these professionals knew about the existence of study abroad programs and had previous experience with us citizens and at university level, but question 3 also proves the lack of specific training as facilitators of study abroad that most local faculty and staff share; only 35% of respondents say they had received formal training. these first four questions are linked with the open question: “what was your previous knowledge about study abroad programs?” which gives respondents the opportunity to expand their comments and provides interesting answers (all translations from spanish by the authors): i received training as i moved up in this organization. but when i arrived and started as program assistant i didn’t have any training in aspects such as “integration.” (prof.13) i had no previous knowledge about study abroad programs. (prof.87) i really had no idea about study abroad. (prof.45) figure 1. i knew what study abroad consisted of figure 2. i had experience with university students figure 3. i had received previous formal training on my tasks figure 4. i had worked with us citizens or students before none of respondents has had any specific academic course in intercultural affairs, intercultural communication, or similar, or had been formally trained in the role of facilitators, other than learning some logistics aspects. 0 20 40 60 45 39 19n/a no yes 0 20 40 60 40 52 11n/a no yes 0 20 40 60 35 40 28n/a no yes 0 20 40 60 51 45 7n/a no yes universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras64 herencia grillo & hernández de la torre as for the interviews,1 the following questions align with the first four questions in the questionnaire (appendix b):2 question 1: had you received specific formal training prior to working with us students? (forprv) not when i started. there is no specific training, at least that i know . . . i have learnt through experience (prof.6) this specific answer summarizes our second hypothesis on the lack of specific formal training and on how professionals learn through experience. all of the 15 interviewees answered “no” to this question. question 5: what would you have liked to know before working in this job? (infprv) many things. having some knowledge on laws would have helped me, knowing how usa universities work in terms of credits, their policies, safety issues, terrorist attacks protocols, etc. (prof.12) except for one of the interviewees who is fine with having learned from experience, the rest of them identify their lack of knowledge about the profile of the students they were going to work with, their needs, and goals as a negative aspect which means an obstacle for them. as we saw before, professionals believed they needed to have certain skills and a high degree of intercultural competence themselves in order to work as effective facilitators. question 2: what would you say is your job’s biggest difficulty? (prpdif) the main difficulty is how to set up a frontier with students, because you need to be available 24/7 and receiving messages from all sides of the field. the us is a very service-oriented culture and students are also outside of their comfort zone so they are always…out. and they are very demanding. (prof.7) along the line of the two hypotheses, one of the consequences of professionals not having received previous specific training as cultural facilitators is the 1 for the sake of this article’s length, we will provide just one example for each question. 2 codes between brackets have been obtained by using maxqda 12 tool and correspond to each question. lack of connection and the frequent misunderstandings that arise between professionals and students. as we can read in the former comment which summarizes the rest of answers to this question, cultural differences remain the main difficulty in these professionals’ daily activity. this being the case, it becomes hard for most of them to act as effective cultural facilitators and ease the students’ transition into the new culture (allen & hermann-wilmarth, 2004; dejaeghere & zhang, 2008; knight et al., 2015; marx & moss, 2011). all of these data would partially confirm our first hypothesis that most professionals do not often have specific formal training in their role as facilitators of study abroad. they have mostly learned through experience and, as a starting point, they only share the necessary ability to speak english. when developing the answers in open questions and interviews, respondents agree that they start in these programs from the bottom roles and learn through experience. according to their answers in open questions and interviews, respondents who said they had worked with us citizens before had done so as spanish teachers or as tourist guides. this leads to our conclusion that the majority of professionals involved in study abroad start working without any formal academic knowledge of their tasks, obligations, and duties, and without knowing much about working with us students on this kind of programs. as we saw before, this is an essential requirement for a cultural facilitator that is not fulfilled and which can bring a lot of misunderstanding and a big culture gap between them and their students. this last statement would also confirm our second research question. rq2: how does this preparation (or lack of) translate in their daily work with students? despite most of them not having received previous formal academic training for their role as facilitators, the perspective of these professionals is essential to the success of any kind of study abroad program, since they are the ones in direct and daily contact with students. figures 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, and 12 show the responses to how professionals prepare themselves and how they perceive students abroad. these answers are proof of the 65profile: issues teach. prof. dev., vol. 22 no. 1, jan-jun, 2020. issn 1657-0790 (printed) 2256-5760 (online). bogotá, colombia. pages 57-73 education professionals as facilitators of study abroad programs in spain: formal training needs different perspectives between students and professionals and support our hypothesis that professionals’ lack of preparation translates into a culture gap between them and the students enrolled in their program. figure 5. i have prepared myself specifically for these groups of students figure 6. they know about our culture figure 7. they show interest in learning in and outside the classroom figure 8. they show interest in integrating in the culture figure 9. they take active part in extracurricular activities figure 10. they keep frequent contact with local staff and faculty figure 11. they use spanish among themselves 0 20 40 60 55 31 29n/a no yes 0 20 40 60 9 48 46n/a no yes 0 20 40 60 39 14 50n/a no yes 0 20 40 60 28 18 57n/a no yes 0 20 40 60 48 18 37n/a no yes 0 20 40 60 51 15 37n/a no yes 0 20 40 8060 25 62 16n/a no yes universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras66 herencia grillo & hernández de la torre figure 12. they want to learn more about socio cultural aspects although respondents identify little previous knowledge on the part of the students about the target culture, high percentages point to the fact that faculty and staff see a genuine interest on the part of most students to learn more about the culture not only in classrooms but also in outside organized activities, which would align with the importance of the role of professionals as facilitators of the experience for students. however, most students do not use spanish as the main language of communication, which creates a barrier to integrating into the culture. this, together with the lack of formal academic training for professionals, brings up a cultural gap that is sometimes hard to fill, as our second hypothesis points out. questions 5 to 12 in the questionnaire are linked to the open question, “please describe what you perceive as the biggest difficulty in working with us study abroad students,” as a way to determine which areas of their role have been harder and which would need improvement. these testimonies about the biggest challenges also confirm the existing gap between professionals and students. in order to organize answers in a coherent way, they have been classified by thematic categories as reflected in table 3. 0 20 40 60 32 25 46n/a no yes table 3. biggest difficulties of working with us students abroad categories participants’ testimonies cultural differences facing situations where cultural aspects apply, such as what is politically correct, is still hard for me. (prof.36) the imposition of usa-style norms that put limits to the local way of doing things. this limits the students’ experience since they have a program that is in between their home culture and our own…a bad mixture. (prof.68) the idea that the meeting point for students and locals is “the culture”. the culture at the end of the day is another service we provide them, where everything takes place in a customized way according to the students’ expectations and final satisfaction. (prof.11) lack of interest on the part of students many times they don’t take interest in activities that would enrich their experience. (prof.90) many students are only interested in having fun, which makes later development in academic activities really difficult. (prof.3) the biggest issue is the lack of interest in the program and the culture. as our city is a touristic one some students (luckily not all) come like on paid holidays and that makes it difficult for us to focus on academic and cultural activities. (prof.77) unclear expectations sometimes the students’ expectations differ from our mission and goals. while we are focused on high quality academic programs, students seem to be more satisfied with classes/activities that require less work and mean more fun. (prof.33) we ask for honesty from them, but sometimes they are afraid of complaining and we don’t hear about problems until the end. it’s not like this for most of them, but it still happens. (prof.45) 67profile: issues teach. prof. dev., vol. 22 no. 1, jan-jun, 2020. issn 1657-0790 (printed) 2256-5760 (online). bogotá, colombia. pages 57-73 education professionals as facilitators of study abroad programs in spain: formal training needs as for the interviews, the following questions aim to provide a deeper look into the professionals’ perspective and how different it is from what students claim as their priorities, what would also confirm our second hypothesis. question 3: from your perspective, which are the students’ priorities? (prialu) the main priority is having fun and after (getting) the credits. (prof.2) according to the literature, students’ declared priorities when travelling abroad were: improving the language (spanish); making spanish friends; improving their independence and autonomy and learning more about different cultures (li et al., 2013). but when asking professionals about what they perceived to be the students’ priorities, results are very different, which is another signal of the lack of connection between them. most answers are unanimous in pointing to the experience itself as being the most important for students, together with gaining the necessary academic credits, an aspect seen in the revised literature (long, 2013). question 4: do you think students have clear expectations regarding their stay in our country? (expcla) i think that many of them are not prepared for the cultural shock and their expectations about spain do not match the reality. (prof.6) undefined expectations do not necessarily point to a negative aspect of the experience, since it can be considered that students come with an open mind and free of prejudice, and this seems to be a more proper state to enjoy the time abroad (stemler et al., 2014; williams, 2013). however, working with students that do not know exactly what they expect enlarges the cultural gap and makes the professionals’ work harder. question 6: how do you think the “cultural gap” between students and faculty/administrations can be saved? (mjrvcu) i think empathy is the main tool to break the culture gap between students and professionals (prof.7) when reviewing the literature, we noted the importance of empathy in intercultural education, more specifically in study abroad (jang et al., 2016; mcallister & irvine, 2002; spalding et al., 2011). and as we can read from interviewees’ answers, empathy, mutual knowledge, and detailed information on the “other” are essential to saving the cultural gap and building rapport. question 7: which would you say are an international educator’s necessary tools and/or skills? (skitoo) empathy and being able to look at the big picture (prof.11) we have seen before how empathy is placed as the number one competence that all educators should have; empathy allows educators to adopt the students’ perspective and ease the learning process. it helps us take a different perspective (bennett, 2004; jang et al., 2016; mcallister & irvine, 2002; spalding et al., 2011; stemler et al., 2014). we have found in this study a good example of the importance of empathy, since out of the 15 interviewees, 13 of them specifically declared empathy as the key element in any intercultural scenario. this study’s findings can be summarized by going back to our hypotheses about the lack of previous formal training for professionals of study abroad and how this translates into a culture gap with the students they are working with. conclusions and implications for further research this study focused on two main hypotheses: (1) local faculty and staff have not received previous formal academic training for their role as facilitators of study abroad as such and (2), this lack of preparation translates into a culture gap between them and the students enrolled in their program, which is usually filled through experience. hypothesis 1 proved to be correct for most of participants and hypothesis 2 has also been confirmed through data analysis and participants’ testimonies. study abroad programs present an opportunity for students to improve and enhance their intercultural universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras68 herencia grillo & hernández de la torre competence. in order to do so, they need to rely on the professionals that work in the field who, at the same time, must be inter-culturally competent in order to function as valid facilitators of the experience for students. findings in this article point to the fact that most study abroad professionals who participated in this study so far have not received formal academic training on how to play the role of facilitators and, in turn, learn through experience, which brings together a cultural gap that should be prevented. although some of the participants declare to have received some information on their tasks and have tried to prepare themselves, they still see a need to create and implement a formal training strategy that would benefit themselves and how they act as cultural bridges for students. as part of this strategy, empathy seems to be the crucial skill that would help knit a coherent and well-structured study abroad program that leads to an improvement of intercultural competence. according to this and looking closely at professionals’ feedback, we believe that a standard training period for professionals should be established; including aspects such as intercultural competence, culture specifics, culture differences, third culture, empathy, negotiation, and the role that personality plays in intercultural encounters, among others. the main conclusion we can reach after revising the existing literature and comparing it with this study’s results is that professionals should be, first, formally trained in intercultural competence and in intercultural tools in order to work as valid and strong bridges between both cultures and as the perfect guide for students to rely on. professionals, as objects of the target culture themselves, need to learn what is expected from them and need to be trained not only in the logistics and daily issues of these programs, but also in the needs of the students and their role as facilitators. this training strategy should include, among other aspects: national educational system specifics, intercultural competence, culture aspects like behavior in class, leisure, legal aspects, historical background, personal relationships, and labor specifics. would this cultural gap have been smaller if staff and faculty had received previous formal training? it is something we have not asked in this study but we think that answers provided by interviewees point to the fact that defining and implementing a formal training period for local faculty and staff would be a very interesting and essential task for the success of study abroad programs in spain. communication and interaction between professionals and students are, as we have already seen, key points of study abroad success and all components should be carefully investigated and attention needs to be paid to the other part of the cultural interaction, namely the student. study abroad programs evaluate the final satisfaction of students and pay attention to their needs during their stay abroad, but there is not a general rule about the amount of work that is required by students before they come to spain. implementing a survey where students could reflect on their personal experiences, achievements, and failures would provide programs with valuable information on how to better address students’ needs, and would consequently help programs improve their professionals’ set of tools. there are also other aspects that we have not included in this study but that should be taken into account when further investigating this issue: different generations, fields of study of students, languages of study, levels of foreign language, and disciplines taught. all of these would most likely throw a different light and perspective and would most likely enhance opportunities for both students and professionals. limitations of the study this current study is limited in size and scope. access to the opinions and feedback of professionals of study abroad in spain is reasonably easy and it is fair to say that we have found very good dispositions on 69profile: issues teach. prof. dev., vol. 22 no. 1, jan-jun, 2020. issn 1657-0790 (printed) 2256-5760 (online). bogotá, colombia. pages 57-73 education professionals as facilitators of study abroad programs in spain: formal training needs their part to collaborate with us, but the study abroad community is still small, so answers are small in number if we think about the big phenomenon of study abroad as a whole. despite professionals’ valuable feedback, we haven’t had access to programs’ internal policies, so we haven’t been able to investigate further on what strategies (if any) are being implemented towards faculty and staff formal training. the study applies to local faculty and staff in spain, so we cannot be sure if results could apply to other countries where study abroad is also an established and widespread phenomenon, but it is definitely an interesting investigation to be done. however, provided that most of the programs that currently operate in spain also have programs in other countries and follow the same guidelines (adapted to local cultures), we can imagine that answers would be similar if we asked faculty and staff in other countries. references akkerman, s. f., & bakker, a. 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(2013). examine your lens: a tool for interpreting cultural differences. frontiers: the interdisciplinary journal of study abroad, 22, 148-165. wolcott, t. p. (2010). americans in paris: a discourse analysis of student accounts of study abroad (doctoral dissertation). university of california, berkeley, usa. retrieved from proquest dissertations and thesis (umi number: 3444391). wong, e. d. (2015). beyond “it was great”? not so fast! frontiers: the interdisciplinary journal of study abroad, 26, 121-135. woolf, m. (2011). the baggage they carry: study abroad and the construction of “europe” in the american mind. frontiers: the interdisciplinary journal of study abroad, 21, 289-309. universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras72 herencia grillo & hernández de la torre about the authors amalia herencia grillo is a phd student and researcher on intercultural education and multiculturality at universidad de sevilla. she works as a university professor at the universidad isabel i de castilla and as an intercultural trainer. she has extensive experience in study abroad and her interests include intercultural communication and cross-cultural strategies. elena hernández de la torre is a tenured professor at universidad de sevilla, where she also earned her doctorate in education. she teaches undergraduate and postgraduate courses in language studies, linguistics, and teacher education. her research interests include learning needs, inclusive education, and multicultural classrooms. 73profile: issues teach. prof. dev., vol. 22 no. 1, jan-jun, 2020. issn 1657-0790 (printed) 2256-5760 (online). bogotá, colombia. pages 57-73 education professionals as facilitators of study abroad programs in spain: formal training needs appendix a: interview codes question codes have you received specific training prior to working with usa students? forprv what would you say is your job’s biggest difficulty? prpdif from your perspective, which are the students’ priorities? prialu do you think students have clear expectations regarding their stay in our country? expcla what would you like to have known before working in this job? infprv how do you think the “cultural gap” between students and faculty/administrations can be saved? mjrvcu do you think you are an object of your own (host) culture? why or why not? objcul which would you say are an international educator’s necessary tools and/or skills? skitoo (self-elaboration) appendix b: questionnaire before working in study abroad programs… yes no n/a 1 i knew what they consisted of. 2 i had experience with university students. 3 i had received previous training on my tasks. 4 i had worked with usa students or citizens. my experience in study abroad… 5 i have prepared myself specifically for this group of students. 6 they know about our culture. 7 they show interest in learning in and outside the classroom. 8 they show interest for integrating into the culture. 9 they take an active part in extra-curricular activities. 10 they keep frequent contact with local staff and faculty. 11 they use spanish among themselves. 12 they want to learn more about socio cultural activities. • what is your academic background? • what was your previous knowledge about study abroad programs? • what are your previous studies or certifications? • please describe what you perceive as the biggest difficulty in working with us study abroad students. 95 https://doi.org/10.15446/profile.v20n2.63845 language interaction among efl primary learners and their teacher through collaborative task-based learning interacción del lenguaje entre estudiantes y su docente en el contexto del aprendizaje de la lengua extranjera basado en tareas ingrid rocío suárez ramírez* sandra milena rodríguez** universidad santo tomás, bogotá, colombia this article focuses on research carried out in a private school in bogotá with a group of english as a foreign language fourth-graders. the study aimed to analyze interaction in the english classroom through action research, based on tasks that promoted collaborative work and involvement of the students and their teacher. the instruments to collect data were video recordings and artefacts from the students’ tasks in the classroom. the analysis of classroom interaction involved the steps of conversational analysis stated by seedhouse (2004). the study allowed the description of unexpected patterns of interactions among students and their teacher, which revealed changes in the classroom dynamic as a result of the action research plan. key words: collaborative learning, interaction, language interaction. este artículo presenta los hallazgos de una investigación llevada a cabo con estudiantes de cuarto grado de primaria en un colegio de bogotá. el objetivo principal fue analizar la interacción en las clases de inglés como lengua extranjera. el diseño investigativo responde a la investigación-acción y los instrumentos utilizados para obtener información fueron grabaciones audiovisuales y la producción de tareas, resultado de los talleres elaborados en clase por los estudiantes. los datos se analizaron a través del análisis conversacional de seedhouse (2004). el problema planteado permitió describir patrones inesperados en las interacciones entre los estudiantes y su docente, los cuales revelaron cambios en la dinámica del salón de clase. palabras clave: aprendizaje colaborativo, aprendizaje de la lengua extranjera, interacción de la lengua. * e-mail: ingridsuarez@ustadistancia.edu.co ** e-mail: sandramilenarodriguez@ustadistancia.edu.co how to cite this article (apa, 6th ed.): suárez ramírez, i. r., & rodríguez, s. m. (2018). language interaction among efl primary learners and their teacher through collaborative task-based learning. profile: issues in teachers’ professional development, 20(2), 95-109. https:// doi.org/10.15446/profile.v20n2.63845. this article was received on april 2, 2017 and accepted on february 9, 2018. this is an open access article distributed under the terms of the creative commons license attribution-noncommercial-noderivatives 4.0 international license. consultation is possible at https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/. profile: issues teach. prof. dev., vol. 20 no. 2, jul-dec, 2018. issn 1657-0790 (printed) 2256-5760 (online). bogotá, colombia. pages 95-109 universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras96 suárez ramírez & rodríguez introduction the research was carried out in a private school in bogotá during eight sessions in an english as a foreign language (efl) classroom with fourth graders. at the beginning of the study, learners were reluctant to participate in the english class and conflicts were part of their everyday classroom routines since they preferred to work alone. these situations affected negatively the learners’ interest and their response to working collaboratively. all this created a bad environment within the english classroom. the aforementioned tensions and the continuous observations done by the teacher in the classroom provided information related to the students’ lack of participation and interest. hence, the teacher expected to understand what occurred in class, but also to find ways to deal with difficulties in class. this research applied the stages proposed in an action research cycle (burns, 2010) which, on the one hand, aimed at fostering interaction among students and on the other hand, proposed to understand why students and the teacher behaved the way they did it. therefore, the research focused on social interaction in relation to the english learning process. as mentioned above, the challenge was also to create a scenario in the classroom that could respond to the students’ positions since they were bored and discouraged about their english classes. as the research aimed at understanding how students and the teacher interacted, eight tasks were implemented with the intention of changing the dynamics of the english classroom by promoting collaborative work to make evident how interactions occurred between the participants aforementioned. in this respect, it was necessary to record all classes to revise in detail what occurred during each implementation, bearing in mind verbal and nonverbal interactions. moreover, the students’ artefacts like posters, cards, worksheets, oral presentations, puppets, and models were collected and analyzed too. the conversation analysis approach allowed researchers to interpret the data collected (seedhouse, 2004). then, the results contributed to promote changes in the english classes. the research design included pedagogical interventions focused on identifying aspects related to language interaction through eight collaborative tasks to understand how to promote interaction in the classroom. furthermore, this provided elements to encourage students to make use of the target language in a different way. theoretical framework the main constructs that support the study correspond to interaction and its relationship with the foreign language, classroom interaction, collaborative learning and the definition of tasks, which were the basis of the pedagogical intervention in doing the action research plan. interaction nunan (2004) understands interaction as a social perspective of language because students can infer the meaning of what they say in class. sometimes, they make mistakes or modify linguistic forms of english, but they can convey meaning. this lets students construct different ways to communicate in verbal or nonverbal ways. in addition, students’ behavior is consciously reorganized and influenced by the participants in class in a continuous cycle while they interact. turner (1988) sustains that “behavior” is understood as the way students react when they communicate. likewise, seedhouse (2004) establishes interaction as a set of processes among two or more students participating to convey meaning while they sustain their own conversations following a common goal. holliday (1994) sustained that there is a strong connection between classroom dynamics and social interaction. furthermore, previous research done by 97 language interaction among efl primary learners and their teacher through collaborative... profile: issues teach. prof. dev., vol. 20 no. 2, jul-dec, 2018. issn 1657-0790 (printed) 2256-5760 (online). bogotá, colombia. pages 95-109 riascos (2014) and riveros (2012) agreed that it was difficult for the students to learn a foreign language because of the lack of interaction and appropriate environment that surrounds teachers and students in class. the classroom is, then, a scenario where the teacher and students react and assume roles and positions in their classroom. this perspective about interaction centered the classroom as a controlled micro-society understanding the classroom as a research scenario. language interaction language interaction is the way in which teachers and students are immersed in the classroom to construct their own reality ; hence, this highlights the different reactions that students and the teacher presented during the instructional process (nunan, 2004). it also implies going beyond communication to establish a set of pedagogical actions in order to provide opportunities to encourage students’ participation and to reduce anxiety. when participants in the class make use of the foreign language, different interaction patterns take place: student-student, teacher-student, studentteacher, and student-learning context. student-student interaction involves positions and roles evidenced among students in class. bronfman and martinez (1996) define relationships among classmates as horizontal interaction. although positions and roles were identified among students in the classroom, learners conveyed meaning through agreements to fulfill the collaborative tasks proposed during the classes. collaborative learning according to nunan (2004), task-based language teaching (tblt) considers learning as a process where learners have the opportunity to focus on a language learning target through real situations in the classroom. thus, the study followed the stages proposed by nunan (2004) to design and implement the pedagogical tasks aimed at providing more and new opportunities to accomplish the research objective and also to enrich the pedagogical plan. each one of the tasks of the pedagogical implementation followed the next three steps: in the first one, activation process, the eight tasks were designed based on language interaction and involved simultaneously a continuous reflection to determine the sequence of the tasks and their impact on the learning process. the second one, called enabling skills, focused on collaborative learning goals to enhance and provide more scenarios for the students to interact based on established pedagogical goals and the third one, called language outcome, implied that at the end of each task, the fourth graders shared and presented their oral or written productions resulting from the interaction and collaborative work done through steps 1 and 2. research design this research followed the qualitative paradigm described by hancock, ockleford, and windridge (2009), who characterized qualitative research as a manner to understand the way we are in our social world. hence, this reinforced the vision of this research process by considering the students’ interactions as a central role in the classroom. accordingly, the stages to reflect upon the aforementioned elements were followed by an action research methodology. this action research cycle took nine months. during this time a didactic unit was designed including topics based on students’ interests but also on the school’s syllabus. the sessions in the classroom were recorded and then transcribed. the implementation of the tblt approach stated the importance of collaborative learning providing students with new and vivid learning experiences in the english classes. universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras98 suárez ramírez & rodríguez figure 1. tasks implemented designed thinking about how to foster collaboration and describe interaction among learners and their teacher. putting the pedagogical plan into action at the beginning of the study, the first session had three intentions: (a) talking about learners’ last vacation trip, (b) collecting data about the learners’ previous knowledge, and (c) comparing data to list students’ interests and conflicts inside the classroom. once their interests and difficulties were clearly identified, seven tasks were designed to fulfill students’ necessities and interests, but also to promote interaction in the english classroom. observing the results of the plan this step implied for the researchers to revisit each implementation to determine the design of the next task. video-recordings were observed and transcribed with the purpose of identifying how the participants of the study interacted in the classroom, which means a continuous observation of the pedagogical intervention and the research process. figure 1 shows the eight pedagogical interventions. these sessions were initiated with the identification of the learners’ necessities in the english classroom and ended with the complete involvement of students with the proposed tasks for working collaboratively. each task followed the four stage cycle: planning, acting, observing, and reflecting (burns, 2010). as a result of the cycle proposed by burns, it was feasible to observe and analyze what occurred in the classroom in terms of interaction, but also to make better informed decisions to provide solutions to difficulties evidenced in the classroom. pedagogical actions in order to improve students’ active involvement in the classes, two teaching actions were included. the actions consisted of (a) defining one theme and a unit coherent with students’ interests, needs, and the school’s syllabus; and (b) implementing the tblt approach through the development of eight tasks to observe how interactions occurred in class. in this way, each implemented task had a research objective and a pedagogical one. this means that each class was how was the experience on pluto? my vacation experience planning a trip around colombia what do i need to travel? what can i do to go to space? sport contest: supporting my team work going to space: life on pluto helping aliens solve problems learning from aliens 99 language interaction among efl primary learners and their teacher through collaborative... profile: issues teach. prof. dev., vol. 20 no. 2, jul-dec, 2018. issn 1657-0790 (printed) 2256-5760 (online). bogotá, colombia. pages 95-109 reflecting for planning actions in the classroom as this research focused on interaction, all the different issues that were problematic or challenging were given special attention while implementing the tasks. this step implied understanding what happened in the classroom so data collection could allow researchers to identify common interaction patterns during the eight implementations and make decisions about the action research cycle. context and participants a group of 22 boys and 17 girls from 8 to 12 years old from a private school located in bogotá participated in this study. at the beginning of the research, students faced difficulties in terms of language learning and such problems had to do with their own social interaction and conflicts in their english classroom. the interest in identifying and solving social conflicts make up part of the aims established by the school. the institution receives students who cannot afford their fee thus they are supported with scholarships, which means that some of the research participants come from diverse social and cultural backgrounds. when conflicts and social differences make up part of the classroom, such as the context of this study, the institution focuses its attention on these situations and encourages teachers to mediate and address such conflicts among students. the authors of this article are the english teacher of 4th grade in a private school in bogotá who carried out the pedagogical intervention and the supervisor of the research, who guided and advised the different pedagogical strategies during the eight implementations, here presented as a co-author. data collection instruments the research question focused on the identification of language interaction and how it occurred in the group of 4th grade students when interacting collaboratively. it was necessary to record students’ attitudes and interactions during the development of collaborative tasks. therefore, the instruments to gather data were: (a) around 450 minutes of video recording and (b) students’ artefacts comprised of posters, written texts, cards, worksheets, and students’ oral presentations. video-recordings videos captured naturalistic interactions and verbatim utterances (burns, 2010). the instrument was used to identify verbal and nonverbal interaction to see what happened in class. burns (2010) also expresses that “recording the situation you want to observe has the advantage of capturing oral interactions exactly as they were said” (p. 70). as the author recommends, observations should focus on interactions during the development of the tasks. artefacts artefacts corresponded to the students’ productions (written, oral, visual, manual products), which also revealed how language interaction occurred during the implementation of tasks. evidences of classroom interaction were revised and analyzed under the methodology of conversational analysis. criteria and steps to analyze data as proposed by seedhouse (2004), conversational analysis allowed researchers to identify what happened and resulted in participants’ interactions being enhanced in class, because it enabled one to figure out verbal and nonverbal interactions. this methodology proposes five steps: 1. unmotivated looking. it requires discovering patterns of the phenomena. it means to transcribe all the information recorded because everything could be important. 2. inductive search. it involved the analysis of data to identify common situations that caught the researchers’ attention. 3. establish regularities and patterns which implied determining what emerged from interactions among participants. universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras100 suárez ramírez & rodríguez different forms of interaction among participants this first finding revealed three ways participants adopted in class through verbal, nonverbal, and hidden interaction. students’ verbal interaction learners used their mother tongue as a vehicle to construct paths of communication. excerpt 1 evidences this finding. this demonstrates how the use of the mother tongue is vital in the teacher and students’ utterances to maintain spoken interaction to convey meaning. excerpt 1 the teacher is brainstorming about concepts related to “exciting trips”. 1. t:1 what do you think it is exciting trips? [immediately, three or four students raised their hands to express their opinions] 2. t: ok. remember that you need to raise your hand to give your opinion. ok. [the teacher gave the turn to s10] 3. s10: exciting trips?!!!(..) 4. s9: (…….) 5. t: ok tell me. 6. s10: rules? 7. t: ok? rules. what else? 8. s10: expressions. 9. t: expressions (….). ok. if i add this keyword: vacations [in that moment the teacher wrote that word on the board] 10. s12: vacations ((vacaciones!!!!!))(……) according to yufrizal (2001) in an efl setting learning occurs mostly within the classroom while the target language is encouraged in class through tasks that play a very important role in determining the rate of language learners’ involvement in interaction and negotiation of meaning. the next subcategory depicts how the students and also the teacher in the fourth task decrease the use of their mother tongue to implement other ways to interact and convey meaning. 1 the codes for the excerpts are t = teacher. the students are coded with an s followed by a number (e.g., s1, s2, s3). 4. detailed analysis of single instances of the phenomenon. it allowed researchers to be observant and sensitive when studying language interaction. 5. a more generalized account, which corresponds to the study of actions behind interaction among the students and their teacher. it implied describing what happened in the context considering how interaction occurred. for the transcriptions, this analysis used the conventions proposed by seedhouse (see appendix). findings the exchanges presented by the teacher and learners in class were analyzed under the methodology of conversational analysis. the transcription of excerpts and the artefacts completed by the students in each implementation provided findings in terms of the participants’ behavior and the way they established relationships among each other. seedhouse (2005) explains how the participants’ behavior shows interactional principles that reveal how students understand each other and make sense of their own interactions in the classroom. table 1 shows the categories that emerged through the study in class. table 1. main categories and patterns of interaction main categorization subcategories of analysis emerging patterns of interaction different forms of interaction among participants • students’ verbal interaction • students’ non-verbal interaction • students’ hidden interaction interaction changes while doing collaborative tasks • students’ use of background knowledge • context interaction • collaborative tasks in the classroom • students’ self-confidence increases and strengthens the use of the target language 101 language interaction among efl primary learners and their teacher through collaborative... profile: issues teach. prof. dev., vol. 20 no. 2, jul-dec, 2018. issn 1657-0790 (printed) 2256-5760 (online). bogotá, colombia. pages 95-109 students’ non-verbal interaction the analysis of transcriptions demonstrated that the teacher and students used new forms to convey meaning through the use of non-verbal language as excerpt 2 shows. excerpt 2 (taken from session 4) students solving a task proposed by the teacher. 1. s26: what do you have? 2. s6: [showed the paper and s26 began to produce sounds] 3. s26: ow…aww excerpt 2 revealed how students used gestures and body movements to avoid the overuse of the mother tongue especially on the fourth task. according to pica (1996) interaction occurs when the flow of the learner’s message with the interlocutor is restructured and modified by requests and responses. it provides new ways to comprehend a message. furthermore, during the pedagogical intervention, it was noticed by the researchers that students avoided backchannels. as resources of interaction students used gestures, facial expressions, and body language. in this sense, non-verbal language emerged as a form of interaction in the classroom. it was also a source for the teacher to keep in touch with the students. students’ hidden interaction this finding uses the word “hidden” because it reflected an unexpected kind of interaction identified during the study. this hidden interaction only occurred among boys and girls without involving directly the teacher. at the beginning of the study, learners were reluctant to participate because they were not confident in using the target language and they found it difficult to work with each other, especially when they had to work in mixed (boys and girls) groups. however, the classroom scenario changed from working individually to working in groups as a consequence of the implementation of the proposed tasks. in fact, conflicts between boys and girls affected the way they reacted towards the collaborative tasks. in this sense, different positions and roles took place in the classroom. hollway (as cited in castañeda-peña, 2008) states how masculinities and femininities affect the exchanges students have in an english class in an efl setting: “first, there is an incontestable difference between males and females. second, there are differences that could be negotiated. third, ‘things’ performed by the other sex are important and valuable and could be taken up by the opposite sex” (p. 316). also, bronfman and martinez (1996) designed the metaphor “la cara oculta de la luna” (the hidden face of the moon) to explain the complexity about interactions among students. these interactions mediated by students’ intersubjectivities and their power relationships emerge in a different kind of interaction denominated horizontal interaction. it makes reference to the changes in the role of the students that depend on the level of authority conditioned, not essentially by the teacher in the classroom, but conditioned by the subgroups of students that position power as establishing relationships in a classroom. conflicts among boys and girls affected the classes negatively and guided the researchers to consider such tensions in the classroom in carrying out the pedagogical implementation. to illustrate this point, the fourth task called “helping aliens to solve problems” was crucial to reduce conflicts. this task had three objectives: (a) to make learners reflect on conflicts, (b) to identify how interactions occurred through its implementation, and (c) to promote the use of the target language through collaborative work. in this way the fourth task invited students to reflect upon these three questions: (a) how did you feel during the last task? (b) did you complete the task? (c) what can you do as a learner to collaborate and improve during the classroom work? after reflecting, students received instructions to work in groups of five people, but this time the groups were organized by the teacher with the intention to mix them and break down power relationships. then, they received a worksheet in which the teacher presented universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras102 suárez ramírez & rodríguez four problematic situations that aliens had to face in the school of planet pluto. the teacher recreated four aliens who had to face the following problems: alien 1 did not finish the activities proposed in class; alien 2 was a girl and male aliens did not play or share with her; alien 3 did not like to play football so his classmates separated him from their groups; alien 4 liked to play football, but since he wasn’t capable of playing well his classmates pushed him aside. once the students wrote different pieces of advice to help aliens to solve the problem, the teacher asked students if one of those situations occurred in the class. excerpts 3 and 4 illustrate some of the answers provided by the students in the aforementioned task during the class: excerpt 3 student’s reflection after the development of task 7 1. t: how was the activity? ((¿cómo les fue acá?)) 2. s24: we have already talked about it. ((ya dialogamos)) 3. t: what did you figure out? (¿y con qué se encontraron?)) 4. s24: we found that we have the same problems here in class. ((con que sí, todo eso pasa)) 5. s1-s20: yes, especially those boys refuse to share with us. ((sí, pasa lo del rechazo)) 6. s24: to them yes. it doesn’t happen to me. ((a ellas sí (1s) a mí no)) 7. s1-s20: that’s what you think. ((sí, como no) 8. s20: all the problems occur here. ((todos los problemas que tienen allá suceden acá)) 9. s20: some occur here but some of them occur especially in class. ((algunos pasan acá pero algunos en especial sí pasan en el salón)) 10. t: like which? ((¿cómo cuáles?)) 11. s1: that we don’t finish our activities. ((el de no terminar las tareas)) 12. s20: that some boys don’t accept us, for example when they play football. ((el de los hombres, algunos no nos aceptan a nosotras, cuando juegan por ejemplo. fútbol) (a) 13. t: but s24 is working with you and he is doing it greatly.(b) ((pero s24 está trabajando con ustedes y está trabajando espectacular)) 14. s20: well, s24 no but s27 and s31 yes.(a) ((ah, no pues s24 no)) ((pero sí lo decimos por ejemplo por, s27 ehh s31)) 15. s24: it’s true. (c) ((es verdad)) 16. s19: ((pero les damos un balonazo y salen por allá a la enfermería)) ((ah no)) (y ustedes hacen así) (the student began moving his body explaining that the girls could be hurt if they played soccer)) ((y las manda uno por allá al quinto chorizo)) (and we put you girls aside, far away from us) 17. s24: well, what do we have to do? ((¿bueno ahora sí que tenemos que escribir?)) excerpt 4 this is an answer written by a student (girl) in a workshop (artefact). the teacher asked the students if they liked to participate in class. s19: no, because there are some classmates who mock me. ((no, porque hay compañeros que se ríen cuando me equivoco)) these excerpts demonstrate how students had their own conflicts and differences in their interactions and how these affected the way they reacted in class. turner (1988) states that students’ reaction to the language learning process is deeply rooted in the personality and experience of each learner. furthermore, students’ interactions with the learning process arise out of complex attitudes, which are specific to each individual. excerpt 4 makes evident how their differences affected the way girls and boys participated in class. thus, excerpt 3 describes how language interaction made explicit masculinities and femininities defined by castañeda-peña (2008). a girl (s20) affirms that some boys do not accept girls for playing soccer and indeed one of the boys (s19) explains that he cannot play soccer with girls because such acceptance creates conflicts with the other boys in the english classes. also, students use a code mediated by their attitudes, rules, and values. holloway (as cited in castañeda-peña, 2008) states that “values attach to a person’s practices and provide the powers through which he or she can position him or herself in relation to others” (p. 317). interaction changes when doing collaborative tasks findings related to collaborative tasks show how students established a relationship with their prior knowledge when doing the tasks and interacting in the classroom. 103 language interaction among efl primary learners and their teacher through collaborative... profile: issues teach. prof. dev., vol. 20 no. 2, jul-dec, 2018. issn 1657-0790 (printed) 2256-5760 (online). bogotá, colombia. pages 95-109 students’ use of background knowledge this subcategory indicates the connection of the students with their background knowledge and the interaction with the target language in the classroom while completing the tasks proposed by the teacher. upon revisiting artefacts, the finding of figure 2 emerged which evidences the connections students made between the proposed task and their background knowledge. yule (2008) explains that the “ability to arrive automatically at interpretations of the unwritten and unsaid must be based on pre-existing knowledge structures called background knowledge” (p. 85). this pre-existing knowledge is connected with what the student did in the classroom. context interaction as turner (1988) proposes, the classroom is an event in which actions and interactions will be developed to implement the ideas proposed in a lesson. the artefacts in figures 3 and 4 illustrate how students completed the tasks according to the situation proposed by the teacher. figure 2. student’s artefact figure 3. student’s artefact universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras104 suárez ramírez & rodríguez figure 3 illustrates how students were involved in an activity that implied the creation of gadgets to take to space and help a group of aliens solve problems, which intentionally were presented by the teacher in the classroom with the purpose of having learners reflect upon their own situations and conflicts in class. in addition, figure 3 shows one of the posters designed by a group of students. the task aimed to foster group interaction. while doing the posters, students engaged collaboratively with the development of the task. after completing the task, students received the instruction to create puppets as seen in figure 4 to represent aliens. the puppets were useful for the learners to interact and express their own feelings about the themes presented within the class. the names of the tasks were: “helping aliens solve problems” and “life on pluto”. excerpt 5 depicts the context that recreated the connection between the aliens and the learners: excerpt 5 as aforementioned, through task 7 students were asked to advise aliens about some problems that they had to face in their class on pluto (those situations were similar to the situations that they presented in their english classes). as they only spoke english their advice had to be in english. in, task 6 the teacher presented the students the alien’s responses and this was the reaction of one of the groups. 1. s19: teacher is (0.2s) what? (0.1) the alien did not understand (the student pointed to the alien’s answer presented by alien 3) you see (0.2 s) he says that he didn’t understand our advice and we told him to talk. 2. t: alien says that he can’t talk. 3. ss: (0.2 s) (s19 nodded his head) oh! (student looked worried) excerpt 6 the teacher and students were giving feedback about an activity they had already done. 1. t: (the teacher read the material) oh. he doesn’t like soccer (a) 2. s30: (b) oh no! 3. t: but how? 4. s30: pss’ 5. t: but how? i don’t like mmm no advice 6. s35: poor curly! when reading excerpt 6, students demonstrated feeling affectively connected with the process since they expressed feeling worried about the difficulties that aliens had to face on the planet pluto. in this sense, holliday (1994) states: “the classroom is part of interrelated and overlapping cultures of different dimensions within the host educational environment” (p. 28). in such a manner, this author proposes that each class has its own characteristics. the study evidenced that figure 4. puppets artefact done by students 105 language interaction among efl primary learners and their teacher through collaborative... profile: issues teach. prof. dev., vol. 20 no. 2, jul-dec, 2018. issn 1657-0790 (printed) 2256-5760 (online). bogotá, colombia. pages 95-109 students engaged with the problem situations proposed by the researchers. collaborative tasks in the classroom changes describe what occurred during the implementation of tasks in the classroom on which collaborative learning constituted an important part of the study. the researchers established a link between the pedagogical aims and the proposed organization of collaborative work to increase the capacity of learners to negotiate agreements, to convey meaning and complete the tasks by working in groups. excerpt 7 is an example of how learners constructed support and meaning while working collaboratively. in this task students needed to make an oral presentation. for doing so, the teacher let them organize in groups. then, they made a poster and finally, they described the places that they liked the most on their last vacations. the aim was to foster interaction. excerpt 7 students’ agreements on an oral presentation 1. s27: i like to caño cristales. 2. s7: i like to parque san agustín. 3. s27: i need to the travel ahh (…) backpack, money, camera, mmm (….). 4. s19: i like to planetario 5. s39: i like to the amazonas. 6. t: please everybody. sit down and silence. 7. t: ok. sit down. 8. s27: i need to the travel bloqueador (sunblock)…. 9. s19: camera, money, and (….) and (….) bueno (well). 10. s39: i need to the travel como (how) … (xxx) like the bike to zipaquirá. 11. s7: what…do you need to travel? ehhh. bloqueador, ropa….(…..) ya. (sunblock, clothes...that’s it) i like to rio amazonas. i need bloqueador, repelente, (sunblock, repellent) ehh (….) ropa y (clothes and) family…. 12. t: y family. jejeje. [laughs] necesito mi familia muy bien. (i need my family)…very good! listo (ready). something else? 13. s7-27: no. 14. t: ok, sit down. excerpt 7 demonstrates how interaction agreements play an important role in determining negotiation of meaning. additionally, body language and students’ mother tongue supported their interaction: when one student did not know what to say, non-verbal interaction resulted effective to complete the tasks. pica (1996) affirms that tasks play an important role in determining the rate of language learning in interaction and negotiation of meaning. the implementation of collaborative tasks in the study aimed at enriching the students’ learning process through themes that were familiar and related to the students’ interests; for example, the tasks about vacations, aliens, and gadgets to travel. there was an intention in the study to include themes that could be close to the learners’ preferences to foster confidence while using english within the classroom. students’ self-confidence increases and strengthens the use of the target language through interaction, students showed more appropriation of target language while interchanging information with their teacher. excerpts 8, 9, and 10 illustrate how interaction occurred between the students and their teacher in relation to their oral presentation and description about planet pluto: excerpt 8 student asked the teacher about planet pluto: 1. s34: what is the color the pluto? 2. t: what is pluto’s color? (…) imagine [the teacher smiled] 3. s34: thank you. excerpt 9 during the students’ oral presentation. 1. s27: ahhh… t’s a little planet. [he touches s21 to tell him that it’s his turn] 2. s21: is…. is ….. is….. (4s) 3. s19: satélite (satellite) goes to the pluto. the pluto is more small. 4. s10: [he breathes before speaking] the xxxx tiene (has) five moons [then, he looks at s31] universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras106 suárez ramírez & rodríguez 5. s31: pluto is very smaller than the earth and tiene (has) moons. 6. s11: pluto is small….. (…..) five moons. 7. t: ok. something else? ok go sit down. excerpt 10 another group presenting an exposition. 1. s17: ehhh…this is pluto. this planet is very small than earth y…. [then, he looks other classmate to give the turn] 2. s26: the spaceship was more (xxxx) …. (xxx) this is pluto’s. 3. t: ok. 4. s7: pluto is a very very…very small planet. he has a (2s) five moons ah small moons and it’s very beautiful. 5. t: ok, finish. ok. put it on the floor (….) put it on the floor. put it on the floor. [the teacher points out with her finger] good! students gained understanding and self-confidence while using the foreign language as the excerpts above demonstrate. in excerpt 8, one of the students s34 proved to be more confident to using english while asking the teacher for information about the color of pluto. the purpose of excerpts 8, 9, and 10 was to illustrate explicit evidences of how learners showed their use of the foreign language while the implementation of tasks took place through the study. seedhouse (2004) claims that repair is also a mechanism of self-confidence when using the language. students learn to repair breakdowns in communication. this enriches the language learning process since gaining self-confidence give students the opportunity to support their own interaction and achieve the proposed tasks in the classroom. moreover, their capacities to reach goals standing and speaking in front oftheir partners, making decisions, or just expressing themselves among them is also another bit of evidence of how students strengthened interaction: excerpt 11 students interacting as participating in the puppet play. 1. t: ok. this is the final production. so, respect your partners ok? 2. t: one (c) 3. s24: two, three. 4. s17: hello. my name, my first name is mini kick. my father is sidesick and my mother is a minion! (5s) 5. s23: hello. how you are in pluto? 6. s27: (curly) i’m have a big problem. you can resolve this? (5s) 7. s31: (drakcraft) yes, i can. 8. s27: (deviant) i didn’t play with my alien’s friends and my problem is my parents don’t accept me. 9. s26: i’m very bad playing soccer. 10. s31: (drakcraft) ok, i can solve this. 11. s27: (deviant) and my problem you can resolve this. 12. s27: (deviant) what’s happen? 13. s27: (curly) nothing! 14. s31: ok, man. share with your parents. excerpt 11 demonstrates how students increased their participation, became more active, and had an important influence on changes in the students’ role and the classroom dynamics. at the end of the study, the teacher perceived that students were more independent and responsible while doing the tasks. learners were more supportive as upon hearing the teacher’s decisions they modified the way they interacted by having more collaborative attitudes in their classroom. conclusions as the main goal of this study was to describe how language interaction occurs through collaborative tblt among efl primary learners and their teacher; it was necessary to have in mind the concept of “interaction as a social act” (seedhouse, 2004). in other words, the exchanges presented by teacher and learners in class let them analyze through conversational analysis methodology the interactions that emerged among the teacher and the students. in this sense, findings and patterns of interaction described how learners are also social actors that transform and establish agreements to participate in and activate their learning process in the way the teacher 107 language interaction among efl primary learners and their teacher through collaborative... profile: issues teach. prof. dev., vol. 20 no. 2, jul-dec, 2018. issn 1657-0790 (printed) 2256-5760 (online). bogotá, colombia. pages 95-109 involves them. it meant that the action research plan also allowed researchers to determine the necessity to understand students’ interests to recreate the classroom as a scenario of interaction. as data analysis was based on conversation analysis proposed by seedhouse (2005), the recorded excerpts considered interaction as a social act, from which different forms of interaction emerged: verbal, non-verbal, use of their mother tongue. also, the code or the way students interacted is mediated by students’ attitudes, rules, and values. another element was the students’ reaction when the classroom scenario was changed. as researchers we found that learners’ social interaction in an efl setting improved the classroom scenario in two aspects: their confidence with the use of the language, but also the way they interacted with the context and among themselves. about students’ attitudes and reactions, they were reluctant at the beginning of the study to work in groups and this position was reshaped through the effect of the pedagogical intervention and the encouragement of collaborative learning. students realized that they needed to achieve the same goal; this fact changed the role of participants in the classroom including the role of the teacher. moreover, students became more participative at the end of the study. they showed more responsibility in making decisions and developing collaborative tasks. all the aspects mentioned throughout this research demonstrated how they interacted with more confidence and appropriation in using the foreign language. it was necessary to make precise and accurate decisions to promote collaborative work. it was the way to guide students to interact in a different way in the classroom. the research provided the researchers a different perception about classroom management. the first one, the exchanges among students in the classroom. the second one, as researchers we could evidence that tasks connected with the students’ daily situations made them more confident and engaged with their own language learning process. the way language interaction occurs through collaborative tblt among efl primary learners and their teacher revealed how learners use their mother tongue and nonverbal language to convey meaning. also, the encouragement of interaction and collaborative work changed the role and position that students had at the beginning of the study. another interesting point was the role of the research supervisor, since the study constituted a possibility to investigate collaboratively with the teacher of the students who participated in the research. in that way, the pedagogical intervention and the analysis of findings through conversational analysis made possible an academic collaboration that provided a new understanding about language interaction, the importance of focusing on power relationships and social conflicts in the classroom, which re-signified the role of being language teachers and researchers in educational contexts. references bronfman, a., & martinez, i. (1996). la socialización en la escuela: una perspectiva etnográfica. barcelona, es: paidós. burns, a. (2010). doing action research in english language teaching: a guide for practitioners. new york, us: taylor & francis. castañeda-peña, h. (2008). positioning masculinities and femininities in preschool efl education. signo y pensamiento, 27, 314-326. hancock, b., ockleford, e., & windridge, k. (2009). an introduction to qualitative research. retrieved from https:// www.rds-yh.nihr.ac.uk/wp-content/uploads/2013/05/5_ introduction-to-qualitative-research-2009.pdf. holliday, a. (1994). appropriate methodology and social context. cambridge, uk: cambridge university press. nunan, d. (2004). task-based language teaching. cambridge, uk: cambridge university press. https://doi.org/10.1017/ cbo9780511667336. universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras108 suárez ramírez & rodríguez pica, t. (1996). the essential role in negotiation in the communicative classroom. jalt journal, 18(2), 241-268. riascos, y. i. (2014). exploring tbl and teaching in light of recent developments in online internet tools (undergraduate monograph). universidad nacional de colombia, bogotá. riveros, f. q. (2012). cómo pueden los profesores de efl lograr un aprendizaje más efectivo a través de la implementación y evaluación de estrategias basadas en el aprendizaje cooperativo (undergraduate monograph). universidad nacional de colombia, bogotá. about the authors ingrid rocío suárez ramírez has been an english teacher for over seven years. she holds a bachelor in english as a foreign language from universidad santo tomás, bogotá (colombia) and is currently studying for an ma in the teaching of foreign languages with an emphasis in english at universidad pedagógica nacional (colombia). sandra milena rodríguez is a teacher at universidad santo tomás, bogotá (colombia). she holds a bachelor of philology and languages from universidad nacional de colombia and a master in education from universidad santo tomás. seedhouse, p. (2004). conversation analysis methodology. language learning, 54(s1), 1-54. https://doi. org/10.1111/j.1467-9922.2004.00268.x. seedhouse, p. (2005). conversational analysis and language learning. language teaching, 38, 165-187. https://doi. org/10.1017/s0261444805003010. turner, j. h. (1988). a theory of social interaction. stanford, us: stanford university press. yufrizal, h. (2001). negotiation of meaning and language acquisition by indonesia efl learners. teflin journal, 12(1), 60-87. yule, g. (1996). pragmatics. new york, us: oxford university press. 109 language interaction among efl primary learners and their teacher through collaborative... profile: issues teach. prof. dev., vol. 20 no. 2, jul-dec, 2018. issn 1657-0790 (printed) 2256-5760 (online). bogotá, colombia. pages 95-109 appendix: codes for the transcriptions (seedhouse, 2004) these are the symbols we implemented to transcribe the recorded classes: [ point of overlap onset. ] point of overlap termination. (b) if inserted at the end of one speaker’s turn and at the beginning of the next speaker’s adjacent turn, indicates that there is no gap at all between the two turns. (.) very short untimed pause. , low-rising intonation, suggesting continuation. . falling (final) intonation. < > talk surrounded by angle brackets is produced slowly and deliberately (typical of teachers modeling forms). ( ) a stretch of unclear or unintelligible speech. (guess) indicates the transcriber’s doubt about a word. 161 https://doi.org/10.15446/profile.v20n2.62938 promoting listening fluency in pre-intermediate efl learners through meaningful oral tasks desarrollo de la fluidez auditiva en estudiantes de inglés como lengua extranjera a través de tareas orales significativas eulices córdoba zúñiga* emerson rangel gutiérrez** universidad de la amazonia, florencia, colombia this article reports a study on the implementation of meaningful oral tasks to promote listening fluency in ten pre-intermediate english as a foreign language learners in the english language teaching program at a colombian public university. the tasks were implemented to overcome the weaknesses these students had to understand oral messages from audio materials and daily-life conversations in classes. a qualitative action-research study with observation field-notes and semi-structured interviews served as the basis for this research. results indicate that this methodology provided suitable opportunities to foster listening fluency through the development of meaningful oral tasks. participants developed dynamic assignments that included pre, while, and post intensive-extensive listening practices which allowed them to understand, to interpret oral messages, and to provide suitable responses to do the required tasks. key words: listening fluency, listening task, meaningful oral tasks, task-based language teaching. este artículo reporta una investigación examinó la implementación de tareas orales significativas para promover la fluidez auditiva en diez estudiantes de inglés como idioma extranjero del programa de licenciatura en inglés de una universidad pública colombiana. las tareas se implementaron para superar las debilidades que los alumnos tenían para comprender mensajes orales de materiales de audio y conversaciones cotidianas de clases. un estudio de investigación acción, notas de observaciones y entrevistas semi-estructuradas sirvieron como la base metodológica del estudio. los resultados indican que la metodología proporcionó oportunidades interesantes para fomentar la fluidez auditiva, a través del desarrollo de tareas orales significativas. los participantes desarrollaron tareas dinámicas que incluyeron prácticas auditivas intensivas-extensivas que les permitieron comprender, interpretar mensajes orales y proporcionar respuestas adecuadas a las tareas que les fueron encomendadas. palabras clave: enseñanza basada en tareas, fluidez auditiva, tareas de fluidez auditiva, tareas orales significativas. * e-mail: e.cordoba@udla.edu.co ** e-mail: e.rangel@udla.edu.co how to cite this article (apa, 6th ed.): córdoba zúñiga, e., & rangel gutiérrez, e. (2018). promoting listening fluency in pre-intermediate efl learners through meaningful oral tasks. profile: issues in teachers’ professional development, 20(2), 161-177. https://doi.org/10.15446/ profile.v20n2.62938. this article was received on february 26, 2017 and accepted on march 15, 2018. this is an open access article distributed under the terms of the creative commons license attribution-noncommercial-noderivatives 4.0 international license. consultation is possible at https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/. profile: issues teach. prof. dev., vol. 20 no. 2, jul-dec, 2018. issn 1657-0790 (printed) 2256-5760 (online). bogotá, colombia. pages 161-177 universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras162 córdoba zúñiga & rangel gutiérrez introduction listening fluency is a fundamental component to understand aural language and to become successful speakers, particularly, in english as a foreign language (efl) education where exposure and practice is limited to academic or self-study practice. in this regard, iwanaka (2014), chang and millett (2014), and andrade (2006) express that this ability encouraged students to acquire not only the language but also the opportunity to expand their thoughts, culture, and communicative competences. rost (1991) and kim and maeng (2012) suggest that listening fluency was a decisive competence to promote learners with capabilities such as becoming better listeners, improving oral interaction, and creating opportunities to be more analytical, synthetic, and keen on what other people say. according to richards (2008) “listening fluency has become a goal for speaking courses because learners attempt real communication despite limited proficiency in english” (p. 2). in practice, listening fluency helps efl students to effectively interact with the content and context of a spoken message, either face-two-face conversations or audio-visual recordings. however, most of the pre-intermediate efl learners who were taking an english course in an efl program of a public university in florencia (colombia) presented serious problems in this skill. the students misunderstood and misinterpreted oral messages from audio-visual materials such as radio podcasts, tv series, and daily-life conversations. they were unable to recognize the general content of the materials or the conversation, made incorrect guessing and analysis of the main points of the oral messages and ineffectively identified what the conversations were about. in addition, students encountered difficulties to refer to the aural materials or conversations orally because it was hard for them to remember the specific and main ideas of the conversations or to analyzed the speakers’ intentions and to connect those ideas to their life, interests, and previous knowledge. there were some reasons that affected these students. first, students’ previous efl education process was carried out following traditional teaching and learning methodologies to develop this ability. some of the strategies used to practice listening were: asking for specific details, discriminating linguistics features of the language such as grammar, recognizing stressed syllables or vocabulary without integrating those elements into meaningful oral tasks. second, in spite of the growing number of mobile apps, software, and internet websites in which the students could practice listening, the students suggest that they did not use them to rehearse or engage in home study. most of them have been educated by teacher-centered classes, which diminishes active student participation and interaction. based on the difficulties above described, we decided to conduct an action research study in which ten meaningful oral tasks were designed and implemented as a pedagogical intervention; the aim was: to systematically examine if these assignments may promote listening fluency in ten pre-intermediate efl learners of the elt program at the universidad de la amazonia in florencia (colombia). in addition, the implementation was carried out to try to draw some implications for using meaningful oral tasks to create opportunities to practice both listening and speaking. this research is also conducted to provide a systematic interpretation of the roles of real oral assignments to reinforce and increase learners’ performance in the listening assignments and to ascertain the effectiveness of this methodology to enhance english language learning in general. theoretical framework task-based language teaching (tblt) according to sarani, behtash, and arani (2014), tblt increases the mastery of any language skill by creating language assignments to focus on language use rather than its form. ellis (2003), nunan (2004), and richards and rodgers (2001) agree tblt is a teaching method that offers a framework in which students may improve 163 promoting listening fluency in pre-intermediate efl learners through meaningful oral tasks profile: issues teach. prof. dev., vol. 20 no. 2, jul-dec, 2018. issn 1657-0790 (printed) 2256-5760 (online). bogotá, colombia. pages 161-177 their language competence by designing, implementing, and evaluating a task. in this respect, willis and willis (2001) and izadpanah (2010) suggest that tblt consists of an integrated set of processes that involves designing a task that includes decision-making. córdoba zúñiga (2016) concludes that meaningful oral assignments may help students to integrate any language skill and to advance in language learning. day and bamford (1999) indicate that these tasks may enrich the efl learning process by providing students with productive activities that demand decision making. the second reason why students presented those difficulties was the types of activities they used to develop. the activities were uninteresting, decontextualized, and did not follow any process. according to peachey (2011) listening fluency should be taught as a process that includes pre, while, and post listening phases. in sum, tblt may be a significant teaching and learning methodology that could offer students opportunities to be engaged in meaningful and goal-oriented tasks to enhance fluency and accuracy at the same time. referring to task, nunan (2004) expresses that a task is a piece of classroom work that involves learners in comprehending, manipulating, producing or interacting in the target language while their attention was focused on mobilizing their grammatical knowledge in order to express meaning, and in which the intention is to convey meaning rather than to manipulate form. (p. 4) sánchez (2009) points out that tasks are activities that promote meaningful language learning experiences for the learners. on the other hand, ellis (2005) manifests that fluency is the capacity to communicate in real time and accuracy is the “ability to use the target language according to its norms” (p. 142). nunan (2006) states that “meaningful tasks provided opportunities for learners to experiment with and explore the language through learning activities which are designed to engage students in the authentic, practical and functional use of language for meaningful purposes” (p. 13). in the same respect, ganta (2015) explains that meaningful tasks aimed at “meaning-focused language use” so they gave the participants the chance to be “language users” rather than “language learners” (p. 2761). as can be seen, there are three main components to integrate tblt in the efl classes: the tasks, the real-life words assignments, and the meaningful use of the language. willis (1996) and ellis (2003) express that a lesson based on this methodology consists of three states: pre, during, and post task. the pre-task phase is about planning how the task will be developed by the students, the during task stage focuses on the development of the assignments, and the last stage, the post task, deals with recommendations or follow-up assignments based on the performance of the students. in this action study, we have decided to follow this model because this model offered a clear cycle in which students could have the opportunity to practice listening meaningfully. listening tasks renukadevi (2014) recognizes that “listening tasks were fundamental to improve language competence in an efl language” (p. 61). these assignments allow the students to expand their expertise in the language through developing activities. kim (2004), holden (2008), and jin (2002) say that listening tasks are vital to help students to become experts in understanding aural language. in addition, kim and maeng (2012) and benson and voller (1997) believe that fluency tasks expose students to different aural target language input until they successfully comprehend the message. this method provides comprehensible input that encourages learners to comprehend messages, expand their experience, and actively participate in conversations. sharma (2011) considers that listening tasks focus on three processes: comprehending, retaining, and responding. comprehending means analyzing, understanding, and connecting what the speakers are saying to synthesize the information; retaining refers to the ability to remember universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras164 córdoba zúñiga & rangel gutiérrez and connect the messages to their prior knowledge; and responding is the way in which the knowledge acquired from the listening will be presented. how to promote listening tasks peachey (2011) proposes three stages: pre-listening, while listening, and post listening to implement listening tasks and these stages are related to the tblt methodology. the pre-listening includes some activities such as setting up the activities, giving time to the students to review the instructions, and answering possible questions about the assignment. vandergrift and goh (2012) assume that “pre-listening engaged learners in preparatory activities that enabled them to use their background knowledge for the topic during listening” (p. 24). the while listening step is for students to listen and present the task. however, in this research, learners are asked to interact with their classmates by asking and answering questions and exchanging points of view. the final step serves to provide recommendations or to assign follow-up tasks that could solve the problems detected in the presentation of the assignments. from our perspective, the previous cycle may promote listening tasks for various reasons. first, the stages are a dynamic process in which students have the possibility to use their previous knowledge to understand the speakers’ intentions, content, and context. similarly, the students are exposed to a variety of listening activities that encourage practice and preparation to report their understanding. in this regard, harmer (2008) believes that “applying different listening stages helped students prepare to listen and encouraged them to respond to the content, not just to the language, and exploit listening texts to the full” (p. 135). we also consider the previous listening plan would be a good methodology to enhance listening fluency and oral communication at the same time. historically, listening has been taught using both bottom-up and top-down as the main approaches. vandergrift and goh (2012) specify that “top-down involved the application of context and prior knowledge to interpret the message. knowledge of the context of the listening event or the topic of a listening text to activate a conceptual framework is used to understand the message” (p. 36). however, s. brown (2006) argues that “students need both bottom-up and top-down in listening tasks” (p. 7). bottom-up processing helps students to connect and interpret what they listen to, and top-down allows students to use their background to understand the audios. in fact, we accept that both processes were important to encourage listening skills. in accordance with h. d. brown (2001), interactive listening assignments are authentic tasks that are prepared to be integrated in communicative interchange. the author states that “these activities are reactive, intensive, responsive, selective and extensive assignments” (p. 258). interactive listening tasks help to conduct real-life tasks where learners not only studied the linguistic part of the language or used the background to interpret a message, but also used their native language, the responses of their classmates, informal talks, oral interaction, or meaningful situations to make decisions to fully show that they have successfully comprehended the spoken language. on the other hand, lampert (1985) shows that “these techniques offer multiple opportunities to practice listening” (p. 183). that is why he proposes anticipating content, inferring, guessing, and recognizing and encouraging meaningful oral interaction as some techniques to foster listening fluency. the techniques that we used in the implementation were: predicting, asking and answering questions, connecting the listening to students’ prior knowledge, analyzing, discriminating the authentic materials to the full and applying what has been listened to in order to make decisions about talking and negotiating. meaningful listening tasks melanlioglu (2013) shows that “authentic learning tasks enhance experiences by enabling learners to encounter problematic situations which prepare them 165 promoting listening fluency in pre-intermediate efl learners through meaningful oral tasks profile: issues teach. prof. dev., vol. 20 no. 2, jul-dec, 2018. issn 1657-0790 (printed) 2256-5760 (online). bogotá, colombia. pages 161-177 for real life listening situations that increase their levels of listening comprehension” (p. 1185). day and bamford (1999) explain that listening tasks enrich the efl learning process. s. brown (2006) states that meaningful listening tasks encourage students to achieve fluent abilities in the aural and communicative parts of the target language through active involvement. listening practices include paying attention to what others are saying, avoiding distraction, listening attentively to what is being said, showing respect to the speakers, waiting for communication time, and participating in the conversation. types of authentic meaningful tasks involve dialogues, debates, oral production, discussion, oral reports, among others. referring to the criteria to select assignments, vandergrift and goh (2012) explain that they should include age, language proficiency, and genre of the authentic materials, the context, and learner’s interests. h. d. brown (2001) adds some characteristics to select the material: the material utilizes authentic language and context, the materials is intrinsically motivating, the material offers the possibility to include both bottom-up and top-down processes, the material is interactive and allows interaction. the author proposes four steps to select materials and tasks. first, the task and the material have to meet the goals of the assignment. second, the task and the material have to specify the structures and vocabulary items. next, they should reduce unfamiliar words to allow communicative activities, and finally, they should be interesting, up-to-date and relevant to learners’ level and interests. in order to select the listening tasks, we designed a rubric in which some of the criteria explained above were taken into account, as well as some other criteria (see appendix a). method this study was conducted following the methodology of action research. according to elliot (1991) this method is a type of research that consists of: planning, acting, observing, and reflecting. the cycle starts with creating a plan to observe and record classroom activities (planning). after the plan, an action is implemented to seek a solution to the difficulty that is presented in the class (acting); while this is happening, information is collected (observing) and analyzed. the final stage is to revise how effective the application of the action helps students to overcome the difficulties presented (reflecting). in this study, planning helped us find that students presented some difficulties in listening skills. in order to find a solution to those difficulties, ten meaningful oral tasks were implemented. while we were implementing these tasks, we observed and interviewed to collect information and to reflect on how the students responded to the use of meaningful tasks. context and participants the participants of this study were ten efl learners. six of them were male and four female. the age range was from 17 to 20 years old. they were all in the third semester, in which they had to take a pre-intermediate english course that was part of their education process in the efl program. these students faced different conditions and situations that affected them in their successful development of listening. first, the geographical context where the university is located impeded learners having contact with native english speakers. second, most students expressed that they did not practice listening at home and they also stated that the majority of english language teachers have taught them using listening activities in the class just to test them. some of the activities they used to do before the implementation of meaningful listening tasks were filling the gaps, finding the missing words of a text, recognizing the pronunciation of words, or understanding the intended message of a word. data sources and analysis two data collecting instruments were used in this study: observation field notes and semi-structured interviews. the observations helped to gather information on universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras166 córdoba zúñiga & rangel gutiérrez how the students responded to the implementation of the meaningful oral tasks and the performance shown by them. in this regard, general information about how the students reacted to the use of meaningful tasks, the skills they developed and their reactions to their classmates’ questions and answers were written in the field notes. specific information such as the role of the topics, materials, activities used to enhance listening fluency, and specific abilities students developed in the application were also collected. the semi-structured interviews served to know the perception of learners about the implementation and to confirm the interpretation of the field notes of the observations. a constant comparison approach (cca) was used to examine the data collected systematically. with respect to such method, fram (2013) declares that the purpose of cca is to maintain the opinions and perceptions of the participants by making constant comparisons. following the same matter, creswell (as cited in córdoba zúñiga, 2016), considered that “the constant comparison strategy is a series of procedures that help researchers to analyze and think about social realities” (p. 16). in our study, this process started with the description of the information. then, we organized, explored, coded, and segmented the data related to the students’ response to the implementation of meaningful oral tasks and how these tasks helped enhance listening fluency. after that process, the first codes appeared: (a) task-based teaching as a way to promote meaningful oral tasks, (b) listening tasks, (c) promoting meaningful oral tasks, and (d) listening fluency. next, we carefully read the transcribed information line by line and divided it into meaningful segments to corroborate and validate the data through triangulating and making comparisons to finally get the results. pedagogical intervention for the pedagogical intervention, ten meaningful listening oral tasks were designed and implemented (see appendix b). these assignments were based on students’ ages, interests, their english level and avoiding any controversial issue. the topics, context, and the materials (authentic videos, oral documentaries, interviews and recordings, and class oral conversations) varied to provide effective listening practice. these assignments lasted 40 hours and were developed within ten weeks during the second semester of 2016. each task took four hours to be developed (half an hour for pre-listening activities, three for the development of the task, and another half an hour for post-listening tasks). pre-listening phase in this phase, the participants were informed about the main purpose of the study and some recommendations were also provided for the students. the suggestions advised students to listen to the materials at home at least twice; to complete every task; to follow the recommendations and criteria of each task and to take notes, ask, and answer questions; and, ultimately, to be ready to perform the assignments successfully. additionally, we asked the participants to present their product of each task in the while-listening phase and to do the follow-up activities if needed. while-listening phase during the development of this phase, the students followed some steps: (a) they listened to the audio resources in the class; when the listening materials were played, they took notes and activated their prior knowledge about the topic (see appendix b); (b) during the while listening stage, the learners presented the product of the meaningful oral task; while they were doing that, their classmates paid close attention, took notes, asked and answered questions, exchanged points of view, and made comparisons between their interpretations of the content, context, and messages with the points of view of their classmates. meanwhile, we listened to them attentively, took notes and evaluated learners’ performances by using a flexible listening rubric created by us (see appendix c). 167 promoting listening fluency in pre-intermediate efl learners through meaningful oral tasks profile: issues teach. prof. dev., vol. 20 no. 2, jul-dec, 2018. issn 1657-0790 (printed) 2256-5760 (online). bogotá, colombia. pages 161-177 post-listening phase in this final phase, we first congratulated students for their performance and motivated them to continue doing the implementation. we also showed and gave the rubric and notes to the students with some recommendations on how to manage the time given for the activity, some guidance on choosing the appropriate vocabulary, how to use more supporting details, to connect oral messages to their context, and to express their ideas clearly. these recommendations were given mainly at the beginning of the study. after each assignment, new questions were asked as an illustration and to recycle the topics that had been previously studied. findings and discussion in this section, we present the findings and discussion of the information collected during the pedagogical intervention. task-based language teaching as a way to promote meaningful oral tasks the analysis of data suggests that tblt may be an effective methodology to promote listening fluency in efl learners. the participants developed significant oral tasks in which they were engaged in step-by-step assignments that offered opportunities to analyze, synthesize, evaluate, and apply their knowledge to participate in listening and speaking tasks at the same time. participants state that: tblt created a new atmosphere in the classroom to practice listening and speaking, i first listened to the materials at home, to make connections with the speaker and the message. then, when the audio was played in the class, i could understand, talk with my classmate, and report my thoughts about the materials. (interview 2, participant 1) the participants acknowledged the use of tblt because this approach offered a framework to practice listening to a process that let them construct meaning as well as to participate in oral communication activities that served to exchange thoughts in relation to the recordings. as can be seen, tblt offered a possibility to create a different classroom dynamic where the students went through some stages such as pre-, while-, and post-listening that facilitated the development of assignments and encouraged their participation in authentic conversations that increased listening and speaking practice. bearing in mind that the primary concerns of the intermediate efl learners were the lack of fluency for listening practice, meaningless methodology to teach this ability, and limited students’ background in this skill, the use of tblt provided significant opportunities to overcome those limitations. these tasks facilitated exploration and listening production and created opportunities to be fluent in the listening skill. they also offered a meaningful plan of action that included pre, while, and post stages in which the students became independent, reflective team-workers and creative and effective participators of their learning process. these findings are linked to córdoba zúñiga (2016), ellis (2003), and willis and willis (2001), who considered that tblt offered the possibility to enhance practice, class productivity, and learning. listening skill and listening tasks in this study, listening tasks refers to all assignments developed by students to understand, analyze, connect, and apply the content of spoken language to systematically increase their listening fluency. in this regard, data on how the students responded and reacted to the pedagogical intervention indicate that the assignments required pre, while, and post listening phases. the pre-listening task was necessary to activate students’ knowledge, encourage them to ask for any clarification, discuss the criteria of the task, and to provide the instructions to be followed. additionally, it served as a way to embark learners into the tasks and to increase their possibilities to complete the assignments. with respect to the pre-listening stage, participant 3 expresses that “pre-listening tasks helped [him] to have universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras168 córdoba zúñiga & rangel gutiérrez a general understanding of what to be done during the tasks” (interview). equally, we observed that pre-listening exercises were important for the students to clarify what, how, and when to do the tasks. also, they were important to introduce them to the world of the tasks by asking them to make inferences about the message and information of audio materials and conversations. (observation field note) the previous evidence suggests that the pre-listening task was very important to recognize, identify, and facilitate the development of the tasks. this stage provided support, clarified what the students were asked to do, and expanded information on how and when they were called to each task. in other words, this phase was the first journey into meaningful oral task travel, and as such, all the necessary information needed to do the tasks had to be provided. the most important feature of this phase was that students presented the product of the meaningful oral task with which they showed they had fully understood the content of the aural materials and had restated, reorganized, connected, and applied it to their lives to finally create their own interpretation of the information. at this stage, the students showed points of agreement and disagreement and when all had finished their presentations, more discussions and negotiation started to expand the comprehension of the materials. participant 9 says that “this stage increased her understanding of the material because she was involved in permanent discussions that illustrated her to perform her task” (interview). we found that students showed positive reactions when they participated in discussions and were performing the activities. the learners made decisions, negotiated, reached agreements, and actively participated in the conversation in which the aural material was described totally. (observation field note) a possible explanation for the aforementioned data would be the fact that active oral and listening practice such as analyzing, organizing, making predictions, and connecting the oral messages to students’ lives and speech provided students with more possibilities to evaluate the speaker’s point of view and intentions. discussions, exchanging points of view and the presentations evidenced that listening fluency may be achieved in a high percentage in this phase. another possible explanation is that constant listening tasks were helpful for learners to master the ability to interpret and connect speakers’ points of view with students’ real lives. based on these interpretations, it could be said that while-listening was a major stage of the intervention. at this step, students expanded their ability to discover, explain, discuss, and to report their points of view orally. furthermore, we should insist that it is important that, while students make their presentations, their partners should be paying close attention and taking notes to evaluate each student’s performance through a flexible listening rubric (see appendix c). this rubric was a form designed by us to evaluate how the students developed the assignments and how their development demonstrated progress in listening fluency or not. this had to be done with a formative purpose and not to punish students if they presented difficulties understanding the global message of the speech. this instrument should be given to the learners before and after their presentation, so that they can reflect upon the areas they might study and need to overcome after they have made their presentations. the final phase—the post-listening stage—served to recycle and to underline specific or general areas to work on identified in the while-listening stage. if there are any suggestions, they should be for the task itself such as time management, engagement or level of complexity or for the performance of the students during the development of the previous stage. participant 1 comments that “this phase helped [him] to realize that [he] pronounced some words wrongly” (interview). from our perspective, this final stage offered opportunities to reflect on students’ performances and to explore new alternatives to strengthen listening fluency. 169 promoting listening fluency in pre-intermediate efl learners through meaningful oral tasks profile: issues teach. prof. dev., vol. 20 no. 2, jul-dec, 2018. issn 1657-0790 (printed) 2256-5760 (online). bogotá, colombia. pages 161-177 promoting meaningful oral tasks as pointed out in the introduction of this paper, promoting meaningful oral tasks was the central pedagogical intervention proposed to enhance listening fluency in the participants. in this order of ideas, the information suggests that meaningful oral tasks worked as a possibility to broaden learners’ opportunities to master this skill by providing authentic oral tasks in which they were asked to pay attention to the spoken language, to think, react, ask and respond to questions, and participate in authentic oral conversations. tasks demanded rehearsal, interaction, oral discussions, presentations, debates and interviews, decision-making, and creativity to connect the oral messages of the materials to students’ real lives. participant 8 mentions that “meaningful oral tasks were not only related to the message of the conversation, but also gave the opportunity to interact with their classmates” (interview). participant 7 explains that “meaningful tasks offered a real possibility to improve listening by doing assignments that were related to [her] life, and as a consequence, listening was improved” (interview). we consider that there were several possible explanations for the previous results. first, meaningful oral tasks promoted authentic exposure, practice, and a suitable atmosphere in which the participants effectively refocused the spoken language according to their needs, intentions, and communicative goals of each assignment. second, the students developed the skill to connect their knowledge, to uncover the messages that spoken material and conversation conveyed. in other words, they learnt to predict, analyze, and make inferences to interpret verbal and nonverbal information presented in the oral material and conversations. another main point was that these assignments were a dynamic process that included the possibility to share viewpoints, discuss, and ask and answer open-ended questions which enhanced oral listening interaction. equally important, tasks included updated topics that matched students’ ages, interests, and english level and this may help to increase the possibilities to be engaged in the tasks development. additionally, the activities introduced learners to a cycle that encouraged them to practice listening fluency and oral interaction simultaneously. they had to concentrate to avoid misunderstanding and misinterpretation. so, the students’ abilities to recognize general content of spoken messages, to remember main ideas of conversation, to analyze the speaker’s intention, and to relate the oral messages to their lives increased significantly. participant 6 reveals that “after the intervention of meaningful oral tasks i can be more engaged and focused in the tasks” (interview). this perception is due to the lack of listening fluency exercises the students had before this study. as was studied in the introduction, one of the difficulties that students had was the types of meaningless listening exercises. yet, implementing these assignments encouraged them to recognize that listening demanded comprehension, attention, thinking, acting, applying, creating, and responding to the tasks committed to them meaningfully. the students went beyond recognizing simple words or understanding the meaning of a word to relate the aural message to their daily conversations, experiences, and lives; by doing that, learners became willing to seek opportunities to practice this skill at home. listening fluency as we pointed out in the introduction, listening fluency was the main weakness that the participants had before the study was conducted. then, a pedagogical intervention was proposed as a way to promote this skill. the information collected during the implementations indicate that this methodology provided exciting opportunities to foster listening fluency through the development of meaningful dynamic oral assignments that included pre, while, and post intensive-extensive listening practices which allowed learners to understand, interpret oral messages, and provide suitable responses to do the tasks committed to them. universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras170 córdoba zúñiga & rangel gutiérrez we observed that doing different listening tasks helped students to overcome the difficulties that they had before the study was conducted. they shared, talked, and demonstrated that they understood the topic and the content of the conversations. (observation field note) during the assignments, the participants demonstrated a significant advance to comprehend, analyze, interpret, and decode oral messages. the tasks provided students with helpful experience that had a positive impact on their pronunciation, intonation, rhythm, music, and sounds of english. the experience they gained from developing their exercises made them feel comfortable, confident, and self-sufficient english learners. additionally, meaningful oral tasks seemed to be a good way to make connections between the speech, what they knew and how they wanted to express themselves. students reacted, responded, and asked questions that increased their possibilities to restate, understand, and apply information from the material to express their ideas. this was achieved because listening tasks were seen as an integrated process in which the student did pre, while, and post listening activities which encouraged them to develop understanding. this process helped them to clarify and verify the content of the audio-materials and daily-life conversations by developing engaging activities where listening was examined beyond instructional or literal interpretation. participant 1 states that “spoken activities helped to improve listening because they helped to construct meaning and expanded listening comprehension” (interview). this participant had this perception about meaningful oral tasks because these assignments gave him the opportunity to be involved in active listening fluency activities, in which students had to apply all that they had gathered from the materials or classroom conversation to participate in the discussion or to report their interpretations to the group. likewise, they practiced the meaningful listening tasks that required engagement, oral classroom interactions, decisionmaking, and creativity. another reason was that meaningful oral tasks emphasized offering opportunities to practice listening fluency from a variety of activities and tasks which took into account students’ ages, culture, level, and interests. this ensured participation, the development of the task by students, and provided many possibilities to review their knowledge which may be a successful way to promote listening fluency. participant 2 suggests that the tasks were close to her real-world life and revolved around her interests and what she could do with the language (interview). in the same way, we find that “students showed interest in the tasks because they did not see them as something beyond their lives” (observation field note). from our perspective, the development of meaningful oral tasks was an effective way to enhance listening fluency for three main reasons: first, tasks were directly connected to students’ real life; they discussed, described, and made oral inferences to understand what the speakers tried to say. second, the tasks offered learners the opportunity to activate prior knowledge and to be familiar with the topics. additionally, tasks helped students to connect, recognize, interpret, and understand and to be involved in meaningful conversations such as negotiating, exchanging points of view, discussing, or reaching agreements about the message of the materials. conclusions and suggestions as pointed out in the introduction to this paper, most of the pre-intermediate efl learners presented serious problems in listening tasks. they misunderstood and misinterpreted oral messages and were unable to recognize the general content and encountered difficulties to refer to the aural materials or conversations orally. based on that, we decided to conduct an action research that involved 10 meaningful oral tasks, where the students practiced listening activities to develop the tasks committed to them. this process included three main stages: pre, while and post listening tasks. in each phase, the students practiced, negotiated, examined, and 171 promoting listening fluency in pre-intermediate efl learners through meaningful oral tasks profile: issues teach. prof. dev., vol. 20 no. 2, jul-dec, 2018. issn 1657-0790 (printed) 2256-5760 (online). bogotá, colombia. pages 161-177 performed a variety of oral and listening assignments that were planned following the principles of tblt and included diverse topics (see appendix b). the exercises were designed and applied considering students’ ages, culture, religion, and english level. it can be concluded that the implementation of meaningful oral tasks promoted listening fluency in ten pre-intermediate efl learners in the elt program at the universidad de la amazonia in florencia (colombia) for various reasons. first, listening tasks were meaningful learning activities that encouraged learners to practice this skill effectively through a systematic action plan that followed pre-, while-, and post-stages. the students developed real world assignments, in which they analyzed, related, applied, and constructed meaning from the materials to actively participate in oral discussions. apart from promoting listening fluency, this study showed how the efl teachers may involve students in interactive listening assignments that offer class interaction to help students to confront listening comprehension difficulties. meaningful tasks encouraged learners to seek and provide creative and innovative responses, solutions, or evidence of their learning process rather than merely recall or repeat the information that the speaker provides. these activities engaged students in challenging problem-solving and decision-making oriented classes, where the students needed more than one step to complete the task required. in addition, the assignment took into consideration students’ personal background to broaden the possibility for learners to actively participate in the development of the task. we also concluded that listening fluency can be promoted by contextualizing and personalizing listening activities. further analysis should be conducted to analyze how meaningful oral tasks enhance other communicative skills such as reading or speaking. it would be good to examine how reading comprehension could be enhanced through oral tasks. it would also be interesting to study if tblt could be applied to teach meaningful writing practices. references andrade, m. e. 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(2001). task-based language learning. in r. carter & d. nunan (eds.), the cambridge guide to teaching english to speakers of other languages (pp. 173-179). cambridge, uk: cambridge university press. https://doi.org/10.1017/cbo9780511667206.026. 173 promoting listening fluency in pre-intermediate efl learners through meaningful oral tasks profile: issues teach. prof. dev., vol. 20 no. 2, jul-dec, 2018. issn 1657-0790 (printed) 2256-5760 (online). bogotá, colombia. pages 161-177 about the authors eulices córdoba zúñiga is an efl teacher-researcher at universidad de la amazonia, colombia. he holds an ma in english didactics and is currently studying for a phd in education, communication, and culture at universidad tecnológica de pereira. his research interests include efl methodology, culture, communication, and general education. emerson rangel gutiérrez is an efl teacher-researcher at universidad de la amazonia, colombia. he holds a specialization in learning virtual environments design and is currently studying for an ma in education from universidad de la amazonia. his research interests include efl methodology, culture, communication, and general education. universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras174 córdoba zúñiga & rangel gutiérrez appendix a: criteria to select listening tasks and materials criteria evaluation yes no tasks and materials are appropriate to the students’ ages. tasks and materials are aligned with the students’ language proficiency. tasks and materials are authentic. tasks and materials catch students’ interests. tasks and materials allow language use instead of language form. tasks and materials utilize authentic language and context. tasks and materials are intrinsically motivating and offer the possibility to include both bottom-up and top-down processes. tasks and materials allow interaction. tasks and materials meet the goals of the task. tasks and materials reduce unfamiliar words to allow communicative activities. tasks and materials have interesting, up-to date content. tasks and materials are relevant to learners’ level and interests. tasks and materials enhance listening fluency practice. tasks and materials are not too long. observations: 175 promoting listening fluency in pre-intermediate efl learners through meaningful oral tasks profile: issues teach. prof. dev., vol. 20 no. 2, jul-dec, 2018. issn 1657-0790 (printed) 2256-5760 (online). bogotá, colombia. pages 161-177 appendix b: list of meaningful oral tasks used in each assignment procedure: pre-listening • tell students all the recommendations for the task (goal, product expected, and roles) • ask students to listen to the audio material carefully. • tell then to ask questions • play the audio (three times) while listening • give this time for the students to: present their products, ask and answer questions of each other, discuss and compare their answers. • the teacher should pay attention, take notes and evaluate students’ performances. post-listening • recycle the activity • provide feedback • give the rubric to students • tell what the leaners need to enhance task topics objective activities product type of material 1 famous people’s lifestyles interview friend/ classmates on famous people’s life-styles • identifying famous people’s lifestyles • talking about famous people’s life-styles • making comparisons between ordinary people’s and superstars’ life-styles oral interview short video of famous people 2 the positive and negative impacts of socialnetworking in teenagers’ life styles discuss the positive and negative impacts of socialnetworking in teenagers’ life styles • summarizing the listening materials • reacting to what has been said • discussing the positive and negative impacts of socialnetworking • oral class discussion group discussion a tenminute video of social networks 3 new ways of entertainment debate about new ways of entertainment • stating points of view • debate on the new ways of entertainment • listening to others carefully • replying to others’ points of view debate an audio of new ways of entertaining universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras176 córdoba zúñiga & rangel gutiérrez 4 teenagers’ love stories present teenagers’ love stories • presenting own interpretation • oral presentation about teenager’s love stories oral presentation an audio diary of an american teenager 5 cultural differences role-play about cultures differences • describing context, content and culture meaning and need. • role-playing about culture differences role-play 6 famous people vs ordinary people to know famous people through watching and listening to a documentary • sharing understanding of the material • making comparisons between ordinary and famous people’s lives • famous people’s lives questionnaire a short documentary of famous people’s lives 7 family and friends describe family and friends • asking and answering questions • stating the roles of people in their lives • making comparisons • stating points of view oral description of a family an audio of family and friends 8 inferences about the future make oral inferences about the future • understanding the natural speed of the listening materials • recording and sending information via a whatsapp group. • making oral inferences about the future oral inferences a short video predicting the future taken from youtube 9 fashion tendencies talk about fashion tendencies • making a summary about the new fashion tendencies • reporting important facts about fashion • telling friends about the new fashion tendencies oral summary a short interview of a north american designer 10 plans for holidays or vacation make plans for holidays or vacation • providing recommendations on places to go • giving travel advice • making plans for holidays or vacation • asking and answering questions about holidays or vacation travel advice and recommendations vacation plans short video about holidays 177 promoting listening fluency in pre-intermediate efl learners through meaningful oral tasks profile: issues teach. prof. dev., vol. 20 no. 2, jul-dec, 2018. issn 1657-0790 (printed) 2256-5760 (online). bogotá, colombia. pages 161-177 appendix c: flexible rubric to enhance listening fluency through meaningful oral tasks criteria evaluation yes no student showed a general understanding of the spoken language presented in the materials and by his/her classmates. student showed a good interpretation of the content and message of the conversation presented in the materials. student showed that he/she has made correct inferences. student highlighted relevant information from the audio materials and conversations. student referred to the material in the oral presentation. student got involved in the conversations. student participated in the discussions by asking and answering questions. student showed a complete understanding of the content, context, and all elements presented in the materials and conversations. student refocused the conversations presented in the audios. student related the content of the materials to his/her daily-lives. student negotiated with his/her classmates about the materials to reach points of agreement and disagreement. student reacted to questions or clarifications from his/her classmates. student explained his/her point of view toward the materials. student took notes, summarized, or used any other technique to synthetize the information. student paid attention to his/her classmates. student guessed what the conversation was about. student associated the spoken language with his/her previous knowledge. student discriminated the message presented in the aural materials. student connected the listening to his/her past or present life stories. student applied what had been listened to to make decisions to talk and negotiate. observations: 159profile: issues teach. prof. dev., vol. 22 no. 1, jan-jun, 2020. issn 1657-0790 (printed) 2256-5760 (online). bogotá, colombia. pages 159-173 https://doi.org/10.15446/profile.v22n1.78806 becoming language teacher-researchers in a research seedbed formación en investigación de docentes de lenguas en un semillero de investigación 1claudia patricia mesa villa* 2john s. gómez-giraldo** 3rodolfo arango montes*** universidad de antioquia, medellín, colombia in this paper, a teacher-educator and two students of a b.a. program in foreign language teaching (english and french) of a public university in colombia discuss our pedagogical experiences in a research seedbed. first, we present the conceptualizations underlying our analysis: research seedbeds, undergraduate research education, and curriculum as a process. second, we describe our contextual background. third, we analyze our experiences using three themes: creating and recreating curriculum, negotiating the official and non-official curriculum, and taking positions as teacher-researchers. we conclude that research seedbeds can broaden the pedagogical repertoire of undergraduate research education in foreign language programs and that it becomes necessary to conduct studies in this area in colombia. key words: foreign language teaching, language education, research seedbeds, teacher education, teacher education curriculum, teacher researchers, undergraduate research. en este artículo, una profesora y dos estudiantes de una licenciatura en lenguas extranjeras (inglés y francés) de una universidad pública en colombia discutimos nuestra experiencia pedagógica en un semillero de investigación. primero, presentamos las conceptualizaciones que subyacen nuestro análisis: semilleros de investigación, educación en investigación y currículo como proceso. en segundo lugar, describimos nuestro contexto. tercero, analizamos nuestra experiencia alrededor de tres temas: creando y recreando un currículo, negociando el currículo oficial y no oficial, y tomando posiciones como docentes-investigadores. concluimos que un semillero de investigación puede ampliar el repertorio pedagógico de la educación en investigación de docentes de lenguas extranjeras y que es necesario realizar investigaciones en esta área en colombia. palabras clave: currículum de formación de maestros, educación de maestros, enseñanza de lenguas extranjeras, investigación formativa, maestros investigadores, semilleros de investigación. * e-mail: cpatricia.mesa@udea.edu.co ** e-mail: steven.gomez@udea.edu.co *** e-mail: rodolfo.arangom@udea.edu.co how to cite this article (apa, 6th ed.): mesa villa, c. p., gómez-giraldo, j. s., & arango montes, r. (2020). becoming language teacherresearchers in a research seedbed. profile: issues in teachers’ professional development, 22(1), 159-173. https://doi.org/10.15446/profile. v22n1.78806. this article was received on april 1, 2019 and accepted on august 25, 2019. this is an open access article distributed under the terms of the creative commons license attribution-noncommercial-noderivatives 4.0 international license. consultation is possible at https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/. universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras160 mesa villa, gómez-giraldo, & arango montes introduction in this reflection paper, we discuss our pedagogical experiences in undergraduate research in language education as members of a research seedbed1 (rs) called “interacción”. we are a teacher-educator, claudia, and rodolfo and john, two undergraduate students of a b.a. program in foreign language teaching (english and french) based in a regional campus of a public university in colombia. we frame the discussion of our experiences in light of theories of curriculum as a process, and constructs about undergraduate research education and rs. on the one hand, according to traditional views, curriculum consists of static and prescriptive documents such as official syllabi, whereas theories of curriculum as a process conceive it as a phenomenon that occurs at different times and moments, and involves diverse agents (cuervo, 2015). thus, our understanding of research seedbeds (rss) is in alignment with the latter perspective since rss are learning communities that spontaneously emerge and are continuously shaped according to the research interests of their members, namely, students, professors, and/or researchers (saavedra-cantor, muñoz-sánchez, antolínez-figueroa, rubiano-mesa, & puerto-guerrero, 2015). on the other hand, the promotion of research in the field of education has a growing tradition and is nowadays conceived as a critical component of teacher education. its origins could be traced back to the early 20th century when prominent authors such as john dewey, maria montessori, and ovide decroly aimed at founding pedagogy as a new science and transforming the work of teachers from an artisan craft to a scientific endeavor (suárez, quintana, & ossa, 2013). this idea has gained greater acceptance in the academic community in the last decades. for example, in the 1970s, in a seminal work, lawrence stenhouse (1975) questions the traditional idea 1 semilleros de investigación is the original term in spanish and it was translated by the authors for publication purposes. that teaching practices should be regulated by experts, consigning teachers to the application of prescribed curricula. thus, he discusses the view of teachers as researchers and theorizes different forms of teacher research such as action research and reflective teaching. in the field of language teaching, borg (2013) examines different concepts associated with the research conducted by teachers, namely, practitioner research, collaborative inquiry, critical inquiry, self-study, and action research, among others. he states that teacher research consists of a systematic individual or collaborative inquiry that is made public, either qualitatively or quantitatively oriented, and conducted by teachers in their professional contexts. it aims to understand teachers’ work in individual classrooms and, above all, to increase the quality of education at local and broader levels. despite its potential transformative influence, teacher research is still a minor practice in the field of language teaching. in addition, borg highlights the necessity of exploring the role of teacher research into both undergraduate and in-service language education programs. to understand the nature of our experience in initial foreign language teacher programs in colombia, we explored several local studies related to undergraduate research education and found some recurrent elements. first, official syllabi contain a research component that promotes formative research. specifically, students are exposed both to theories about research and practical small-scale projects. second, theory-based research courses tend to focus on applied linguistics issues and privilege a qualitative paradigm. third, teachingoriented experiences are framed into action research projects and constitute the core of the professional practicum (blanco & linza, 2012; cárdenas, nieto, bellanger, cortés, & rüger, 2005; faustino & cárdenas, 2008; gallego, quintero, & zuluaga, 2001; garcía, 2013; granados-beltrán, 2018; hernández & vergara, 2004; latorre & palacio, 2015; lópez & zuluaga, 2005; martínez, 2016; mcnulty & usma, 2005; rubiano, frodden, & cardona, 2000; viáfara, 2008). in sum, research 161profile: issues teach. prof. dev., vol. 22 no. 1, jan-jun, 2020. issn 1657-0790 (printed) 2256-5760 (online). bogotá, colombia. pages 159-173 becoming language teacher-researchers in a research seedbed education in undergraduate foreign language programs tends to be circumscribed to a prescribed curricular strand in the official syllabus. the commonalities of the aforementioned curricular reforms can be explained to a considerable extent by top-down initiatives and policies that have regulated the inclusion of research in pre-service teacher education programs. for example, the academic project colombian framework for english (cofe)2 gave birth to the inclusion of research as an integral part of the curriculum in initial foreign language education programs; the decree 0272 of 1998 (ministerio de educación nacional, 1998) regulates research in teacher education; and the decree 2450 of 2015 (ministerio de educación nacional, 2015) promotes the inclusion of different undergraduate research strategies in initial teacher education programs. in terms of rs, we realized that these groups have a strong tradition at the universidad de antioquia, and they are being adopted progressively in other colombian universities. besides, rss have gained institutional recognition and official support. for instance, at a national level, the decree 2450 of 2015 regulates rss as one of the options for the accreditation of teacher education programs while, at an institutional level, our university recently designed a policy for rss. despite this growing recognition, rss have not been sufficiently explored in initial foreign language teacher education processes in colombia. we found only the case of abad and pineda (2018) in local journals. these authors discuss the experience of becoming a foreign language teacher researcher in a rs from the standpoint of a mentor and her mentee. they describe rs as a strategy of voluntary participation but under a prescriptive agenda that complements the official research education (abad & pineda, 2018). 2 cofe consisted of a bilateral project between the british council and the colombian ministry of education (1991-1997). it aimed to promote networking among universities in order to improve both initial and in-service training for teachers in colombia (rubiano et al., 2000). therefore, given the necessity of exploring undergraduate research in language education processes, we consider that the analysis of our experience might draw attention to the potential role of rs in the field of foreign languages. besides, while not claiming that our path is generalizable to other contexts, we contend that rs is a proposal, among others, that can pave the way for prospective students to become researchers and producers rather than mere consumers of knowledge (kumaravadivelu, 2016). in the following sections, we present first the theoretical constructs that guide our discussion, specifically the concept of rs, undergraduate research education, and curriculum as a process. after, we describe some institutional circumstances, and illustrate the nature of our learning journey. subsequently, we present our experience under three main themes (a) creating and recreating curriculum; (b) negotiating the official and non-official curriculum; and (c) taking positions as teacher-researchers. concomitantly, we provide samples that illustrate some relevant moments in our path. finally, we share our conclusions. theoretical background in this section, we integrate the constructs that underlie our reflection, namely, rs, undergraduate research education, and curriculum as a process. according to ossa and sierra (2001) and torres (2005), rs is a term that identifies a learning community. from our perspective, it has an organic nature in the sense that it emerges from the initiative of not only professors and researchers but also from students, and that all participants share common interests and shape their work according to their goals. they also intend to challenge the traditional ways of addressing research education in undergraduate programs (bolívar, lópez, gonzález, & cardona, 2015; ossa & sierra, 2001; saavedra-cantor et al., 2015; torres, 2005). specifically, students are guided by experienced members so that they can take ownership of their learning process (saavedrauniversidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras162 mesa villa, gómez-giraldo, & arango montes cantor et al., 2015; torres, 2005). furthermore, students assume participative roles in decision-making processes, and hierarchical relationships are transformed into democratic participation (bolívar, 2019; torres, 2005). in sum, contents and group work tend to be detached from the prescribed syllabus and such a participative nature favors individual and group autonomy, solidarity, democracy, and transformation (saavedra-cantor et al., 2015; torres, 2005). rss have consolidated as extracurricular groups that promote research culture (bolívar et al., 2015; oquendo, gonzáles, & castañeda, 2001; torres, 2005) not only in tertiary education but also in primary and secondary institutions. specifically, these groups intend to strengthen critical thinking and research skills (bolívar et al., 2015; oquendo et al., 2001; saavedra-cantor et al., 2015; torres, 2005). some of their underlying principles revolve around the idea of conceiving knowledge as a social public good, contextualizing practices that address local and regional issues, and guaranteeing generational renewal and institutional recognition (ossa & sierra, 2001; saavedra-cantor et al., 2015; torres, 2005; villalba & gonzález, 2017). moreover, different educational activities constitute the pedagogical repertoire of rs. among others, we highlight posing questions to enhance participants’ curiosity, debates to explore different viewpoints, attending academic conferences to be acquainted with the academic agenda, and conducting small-scale projects (bolívar et al., 2015; oquendo et al., 2001; saavedra-cantor et al., 2015; torres, 2005). in terms of undergraduate research education, healey and jenkins (2009) conceive it as students’ engagement in research alongside their learning process. specifically, they argue that college students should be exposed to models of research education so that they are systematically inducted into the world of research to eventually become producers of knowledge. these authors cite four main ways of engaging in research: discussions with a tutor on research procedures and theory; undertaking complete cycles of research; learning about current research in specific disciplines; and developing research and inquiry skills. in turn, in the colombian context, rss have consolidated as a relevant strategy to promote undergraduate research education since these groups conduct research that foster situated practices and tackle local problems (bolívar et al., 2015). thus, by drawing on those authors, we comprehend undergraduate research from two approaches, a theoretical and an experiential. the former refers to learning about research through explicit guidance on theoretical foundations and research procedures, whereas the later deals with students learning by conducting research in an informed manner. moreover, we conceive rs as a curricular process that fosters undergraduate research education. specifically, rss have been traditionally understood as an extracurricular strategy (bolívar et al., 2015; oquendo et al., 2001; saavedra-cantor et al., 2015; torres, 2005). however, from our perspective, this extracurricular notion unveils a traditional view of curriculum. in other words, curriculum is conceived as a compilation of prescribed parameters, methodologies, and contents that regulate the pedagogical practices of a course or an institution. in such a perspective, the concept of curriculum falls short to account for the complex realities of education and the regulation of pedagogical practices, as is the case of rs. for that reason, we consider rs as an extraclass yet curricular process that challenges top-down approaches and prescriptive documents. it is in that sense that gimeno (2010) affirms that curriculum could be understood only in its process of development, in which curricular prescription is just an element of the whole curricular process. in this view, the curriculum is constituted by various moments in which different actors make decisions. according to cuervo (2015), curriculum is initially prescribed in laws, regulation, and syllabi; secondly, presented by means of textbooks, videos, and other class materials. then, it is interpreted by teachers and curricular committees 163profile: issues teach. prof. dev., vol. 22 no. 1, jan-jun, 2020. issn 1657-0790 (printed) 2256-5760 (online). bogotá, colombia. pages 159-173 becoming language teacher-researchers in a research seedbed before its implementation. in addition, the curriculum has a real effect on the subjectivities of the learners, and just some of these effects could be evaluated (gimeno, 2010). hence, we can think of rss as a curricular process, given their pedagogical nature. that is to say, a process of selection, exclusion, and organization of cultural contents that pursues specific effects on its receivers and consists of various moments in which different decision agents intervene (cuervo, 2015; gimeno, 2010). these decisions are framed in different curricular determinations that comprise policies, resources, and regulations that either enable or limit the capacity of action of curricular decision makers (beltrán, 2010). furthermore, since the agents who make the curricular decisions defend different interests, the selection and exclusion of contents is not, by any means, neutral (apple, 2004). context: growing amid regional and centralized conditions to illustrate our experience, we describe the regional circumstances under which our work has been taking place, the characteristics of our teacher education program in a regional branch, and some generalities of our rs “interacción”. regional circumstances and research our rs is located in the east of antioquia, a strategic region that is currently facing profound social and economic changes (instituto de estudios regionales & facultad de educación universidad de antioquia [iner], 2013). specifically, we work within the academic community of the east campus of universidad de antioquia, a regional institution that started academic activities in 1997, as part of a strategy to decentralize tertiary education. however, its agenda tends to be circumscribed by the central branch decision-makers as is the case for research, as explained below. according to iner (2013), the role of higher education programs becomes of paramount importance given the current structural changes of the east region. nonetheless, the institutional efforts to consolidate research are still incipient (iner, 2013). that study revealed that the main obstacles for the development of research in the region comprise the decontextualized research policies, the absence of regional-based research groups, the scarce articulation with the researchers of the central campus, and the intermittent work of paid-by-the-hour professors. however, there exists a gradual consolidation of different rss in the regions. in terms of teacher education programs, gómezzuluaga (2017) states that the pedagogical practices and educational research initiatives offered by universities in the east of antioquia tend to be decontextualized. such is the case of the east campus, since many majors were designed according to the conditions of the central campus and were offered in the region without curricular adjustments, as in the case of our undergraduate program, described below. our teacher education program at a regional campus we are members of a regional b.a. program in foreign language teaching that currently has four cohorts of graduates and four undergraduate student groups. offering this major at the east campus responds to the expansion of the university in the region of antioquia and the growing demand for foreign language teacher education programs (iner, 2013). however, its syllabus stemmed from the evaluation of a former academic proposal based at the central campus, almost 20 years ago. no curricular adaptations have been incorporated since. the official syllabus comprises three components, language (english and french), pedagogical knowledge, and specific didactics and pedagogical research. the incorporation of the research strand was done as an intention to improve the quality of language education by exposing future teachers to learning experiences in universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras164 mesa villa, gómez-giraldo, & arango montes which theory and practice could be integrated through action-research (jiménez, luna, & marín, 1993). the origin of such a reform dates to the 1990s and explicitly emerged from the cofe project, an agreement between the government of colombia and great britain. the plan consisted of gradually improving foreign language teaching programs through curricular changes in different colombian universities (rubiano et al., 2000). in 1998, the statute 0272 regulated the inclusion of research in all pre-service teacher education programs. nowadays, the decree 2450 of 2015 stipulates research as a fundamental component of initial teacher education programs in colombia and demands the definition of policies and the implementation of strategies to guarantee effective research education processes. rss are listed as one possibility. in our program, the research component responds only to the statute 0272 and cofe project proposals. accordingly, undergraduate research education starts from the very first semester with seminar courses that encourage reflection on pedagogical issues as students develop research skills such as keeping a research diary, conducting documentary analysis, and designing interview protocols (mcnulty & usma, 2005). later, in the sixth semester, pedagogical projects along with theory-based research courses continue enhancing the development of research skills as well as addressing research paradigms and methodologies in the context of foreign language teaching. in ninth and tenth semesters, students conduct a one-year action research project in secondary or primary schools. additional to these courses, the language strand also aims to enhance research attitudes, specifically, through project work methodology (frodden & mesa, 2004). our research seedbed our rs emerged in 2015 and currently continues its work. at that time, claudia, who was the academic coordinator and instructor of the program, decided to invite students to work together, initially with the purpose of reinforcing their language learning. eventually, some of those students expressed their willingness to work as a study group and other students were invited; thus, john and rodolfo joined the group. accordingly, to organize our roles and plans, all the members decided to understand the concept of rss, given their relevance in our university.3 since rs matched our expectations, we analyzed molineros (2010), because his book compiles theoretical constructs and practical ideas about how rss are created and implemented. this approach prepared the groundwork for our experience and gave birth to our definition of rs: our research seedbed is a voluntary, dialogue-based, and extra-class activity whose dynamic revolves around the common interests of its members. it favors interpersonal relationships and is based on collaborative work. experiences, readings, and prior knowledge are shared so that the appropriation of new knowledge, research education, and human development are favored.4 as we were reflecting on the notion of rs, our interest in understanding foreign language research also emerged. therefore, the next step consisted of studying research reports. during our first year of work, every member proposed a topic, searched for an article in journals and research databases, and prepared a presentation. simultaneously, we defined group policies about individual and group work assessment, attendance, roles, and procedures to systematize information. shortly afterwards, thanks to the financial support of our academic unit, some of us could attend academic events that expanded our academic repertoire. a subsequent stage was characterized by a strong interest in connecting theory with our local realities. in our second year, new subgroups emerged as students refined their interests. particularly, from the very beginning of our rs, the three of us also focused on understanding rs as a strategy 3 universidad de antioquia has pioneered the consolidation of rs as a strategy to promote research education (bolívar et al., 2015). 4 translated from spanish by the authors for publication purposes. 165profile: issues teach. prof. dev., vol. 22 no. 1, jan-jun, 2020. issn 1657-0790 (printed) 2256-5760 (online). bogotá, colombia. pages 159-173 becoming language teacher-researchers in a research seedbed to promote undergraduate research education, which led to this paper. gradually, some students’ roles shifted from readers and attendees to presenters in different local, national, and international events related to foreign languages and education. in the third and fourth years, our participation in events focused on small-scale research proposals that we started to design as part of the official courses and that were eventually refined with the feedback of the members of our rs. additionally, john and rodolfo started to participate in different activities related to the institutionalization of rs at the universidad de antioquia, particularly, in the creation of an institutional policy for rs and in the consolidation of rs in the regional branches. reflection: our experience from a curricular perspective the origin of this reflection dates to our first year of work in 2015, when the whole group decided to keep a record of our meetings and activities through minutes, reports, and voice recordings. the three of us decided to study our experiences in undergraduate research in language education and socialize our preliminary reflections with other members of our rs and in different local and national academic events. to support our understandings, we have resorted to different theoretical constructs such as rs, curriculum as a process, undergraduate research education, and situated knowledge. nonetheless, for this paper, we drew on the three first concepts. specifically, the three of us wrote individual descriptions of our own experiences as members of rs “interacción” and carried out a process of group deliberation. then, we contrasted the conclusions of our deliberation with documents of our rs such as minutes and reports. since the connection of our experience with the official syllabus emerged as a key element in our analyses, we decided to frame it from a curricular perspective. in other words, we concluded that the capacity of curriculum to regulate pedagogical practices (gimeno, 2010) emerged as a crucial factor that guided the understanding of our experience. in this regard, our reflection has been illuminated by several questions, as follows: what contents are selected in the rs? what roles, activities, and goals are defined? how is time managed in the rs? who makes these decisions? how does the official syllabus and the rs relate? therefore, we organized our reflection around the following themes: (a) creating and recreating curriculum; (b) negotiating the official and non-official curriculum; and (c) taking positions as teacher-researchers. creating and recreating curriculum according to traditional perspectives, curriculum consists of technical prescriptions in which the participants of the educational process have scarce possibilities to make choices. in contrast, the view of curriculum as a process entails understanding the participation of diverse educational agents in its organization at different moments (cuervo, 2015). the latter view allowed us to recognize our own experience as a curricular process. specifically, we went through an organic and cyclical process in which curricular choices were continually created and recreated in terms of group organization and planning. at the very beginning of our rs “interacción”, we did not have a prescribed agenda, nor did we have to respond to a pre-established curriculum. for this reason, our willingness to learn became a fertile ground in the initial configuration of our academic work. besides, decisions about group organization and planning continuously emerged from an organic process of negotiation and dialogue as a group. in terms of organization, we held regular meetings to discuss academic and organizational issues. to regulate our group work and our individual participation, at the beginning of our rs, we created our own definition of rs, policies about individual and group work assessment, attendance, and roles, among other aspects. currently, universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras166 mesa villa, gómez-giraldo, & arango montes all members are working in subgroups that naturally emerged according to shared interests. in these groups, we organize our work and select contents autonomously, but our progress is regularly socialized with the whole group either to share knowledge or receive feedback and orientation. additionally, decisions in terms of time tend to be detached from pre-established institutional agendas, except when we decide to participate in academic events or to apply to institutional subventions to finance our work, as described in the next section. concerning planning, in addition to regular meetings, we have periodical special gatherings to evaluate and plan our individual and group work. they usually take place every semester. table 1 illustrates an example of this planning process. in particular, it corresponds to a group evaluation process carried out at the end of 2017. at that moment, our academic work was being neglected due to urgent administrative tasks. to find explanations and solutions to such situation, we designed a three-step group assessment activity that took place over three days. there, we reconstructed our past, present, and future work and designed new subgroups. that evaluation also helped us unveil several issues in terms of planning and relationships. table 1. group assessment 2017 stage description past in small groups, we analyzed the minutes of our meetings according to some preestablished categories that we had visualized as the possible roots of our current difficulties, namely, participation in events, group work, topics of interests, personal relationships, and the connections between rs interacción and our syllabus. we managed to compile a list of situations that illustrated each category and we eventually identified patterns and solutions with which to tackle our problems. present in this second moment, we carried out three activities: 1. writing a story: in groups, we were to create a story that illustrated our characteristics as an rs. this recount had to include reflections about one of the patterns that we had identified in the reconstruction of our past. 2. problem-tree analysis: in this activity, we formed the subgroups in which our rs was organized. the purpose of this activity consisted of evaluating the current work of those subgroups. our task comprised the design of a tree. the roots represented the topics and the dynamics; its trunk compiled their expectations, experiences, and difficulties; the branches and fruits depicted the achieved goals to date. 3. peer-assessment: we designed a poster with the name of each student. it included three columns: strengths, weaknesses, and a personal response. all members filled in the first two columns of other members’ posters. at the end, every student had to write a personal response on his or her poster. future the previous two stages permitted us to identify some issues in our rs that required attention: spaces for discussion, academic events, administrative affairs, leisure activities, financial resources, new members and alumni. thus, in pairs, we envisaged specific proposals, means, and limitations to tackle the previous issues. 167profile: issues teach. prof. dev., vol. 22 no. 1, jan-jun, 2020. issn 1657-0790 (printed) 2256-5760 (online). bogotá, colombia. pages 159-173 becoming language teacher-researchers in a research seedbed negotiating the official and non-official curriculum as previously discussed, the organic nature of rs “interacción” favored our agency when making curricular decisions. nevertheless, our agency was framed by some curricular considerations (beltrán, 2010) such as institutional conditions, resources, and the official syllabus. they shaped our decisions in relation to the selection of contents and some group work decisions, as described below. concerning contents, their selection initially emerged from our interests but was also influenced by external conditions at different points in our experience. in an early stage, all members chose the topics that we wanted to learn about. specifically, we explored postmethod pedagogy, critical discourse analysis, world englishes, language awareness, undergraduate research education, and bilingualism. thus, the selection of contents emerged as an autonomous search, but also became a guided practice. in this process of selection, claudia recommended authors or specific papers to some students. in addition, she guided them in the use of academic journals and research databases of the university. this activity somehow shaped our decisions, since we managed to have access to a specific academic repertoire in our field. in a subsequent stage, attending academic events expanded our horizon of contents. specifically, we became interested in teachers’ and learners’ identities, culture and language, language policies, and narrative as a research method. in other words, these new topics strengthened the academic foundations of our discussions and led us to realize that our initial interests were relevant and related to the current academic agenda in the area in colombia. thus, we concluded that our work could contribute to expand the knowledge in our field but from a regional viewpoint. thereafter, we became familiar with some regional conditions as we visited some schools and conducted fieldwork as part of the seminar courses of the official syllabus. those visits complemented the selection of contents in our rs and triggered our interest in issues related to our local realities. particularly, we started to explore theory and research about school and diversity, rural education in general, language policies in colombia in rural contexts, language and culture, decoloniality, and gender roles in fairy tales. thus, as in the case of abad and pineda (2018), the undergraduate syllabus and rs “interacción” became complementary paths in our education as teacher researchers. on the one hand, rs “interacción” has allowed us to deepen our knowledge about academic contents that are addressed in different official courses. on the other hand, the syllabus became an opportunity to integrate class work with our academic interests in rs “interacción”. this interrelation has been favored by the democratic nature of some courses of the official syllabus since students can make autonomous decisions when choosing the topics they want to address in their independent work. for instance, in language learning courses, students can select the particular themes they want to tackle in their project work. in seminar courses, students visit local institutions, observe classes, and plan and conduct micro-teaching sections. furthermore, in theory-based research courses students can select topics, theories and, in some cases, the methodologies to propose or conduct small-scale projects. as an example of the reciprocal relationship between syllabus and rs, in table 2 we describe a small-scale case study research project that initially started as part of a course of the official syllabus, but it was refined and developed as part of the work in rs “interacción”. it aimed at understanding how cultural diversities, such as gender, geographic origin, ethnicity, and sexual and religious orientations were recognized from the schooling experience of an indigenous student in an urban school in the region of antioquia, colombia. other institutional policies have also enabled the implementation of different strategies in our process. for instance, our academic department designed a policy that regulates the distribution of financial universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras168 mesa villa, gómez-giraldo, & arango montes resources to attend national and international academic events. as we already mentioned, our attendance at well-known national events in our field influenced our academic interests and research agenda. those experiences also helped us realize that our work met the academic expectations of these events, and that our work was worth sharing. similarly, since the policy allots higher resources to attend national and international events as presenters, many students decided to take a more active role. furthermore, the above-mentioned research project (table 2) was funded by our academic department in the context of a call for student-research proposals. this permitted the table 2. research project: recognition of diversities from the schooling experience of an indigenous student time: 2 years student researchers: john and another participant of rs “interacción” resources: funding from our academic department and a tutor (claudia). official semester in which the student researchers were registered activities in the context of rs “interacción” activities in the official syllabus fourth formulation of the project, participation in academic events, and calls for funding. the project stemmed from a mini-research project in the course sociology of education. fifth visits to the school, document analysis, interviews with the participant, her teachers, her classmates and her parents. in the course principles of language acquisition, we conducted a mini-project about the student’s acquisition of spanish as a second language. sixth data collection and thematic analysis of data. drawing on the concepts of the theoretical framework and the institutional context, in the contrastive grammar english-spanish course, we proposed a project on how to implement a critical intercultural approach in an english teaching class. seventh data analysis, writing a report, and participation in an international academic event. considering the preliminary results from the study, in the research i course, we elaborated an action research proposal to address issues of religious and sexual discrimination in the context of the school. implementation of the project and the assignment of tutoring sessions in claudia’s work schedule. finally, our involvement in some institutional events has also influenced our agenda. for example, we have attended events of the official program for rs at universidad de antioquia and the institutional network of rs (redsin). according to personal interests, some members decided to present research proposals in the official seminar for rs and attend workshops about research in education. overall, academic opportunities at the institutional level are constantly negotiated with our own work and group dynamics. 169profile: issues teach. prof. dev., vol. 22 no. 1, jan-jun, 2020. issn 1657-0790 (printed) 2256-5760 (online). bogotá, colombia. pages 159-173 becoming language teacher-researchers in a research seedbed taking positions as teacher-researchers in this section, we focus on our learning in terms of research education, the transformation of our subjectivities as teacher-researchers, and our roles in academic communities. as healey and jenkins (2009) and bolívar et al. (2015) state, undergraduate research in language education comprises both theoretical and experiential learning. we experience both approaches in our rs. from a theoretical viewpoint, we analyze and discuss literature related to research contents and procedures. for instance, john managed to understand research designs and paradigms before taking research courses. in rodolfo’s case, he studied language policies before taking the corresponding official course. from an experiential approach, we have been presenters in academic events, formulated research proposals, conducted different research procedures such as data collection and analysis, and obtained financial support to fund small-scale projects, as the case illustrated in table 2. gimeno (2010) states the curriculum may have effects on the subjectivities of students. in our case, the curricular nature of our rs led us to a transformation of our positionality as teacher-researchers. on the one hand, we learned that it is possible and necessary to shift from being consumers to producers of knowledge in colombia. for instance, john and rodolfo moved from attendees to presenters in academic events and from readers to researchers of their own projects. these new positions helped us comprehend that our knowledge is valuable and can further the local academic agenda. for instance, when discussing rural education, all members in our rs realized that such a topic should be addressed in the research work of the foreign language teaching field. on the other hand, our experiences in our rs “interacción” continuously change and inform our role as teachers and researchers. to illustrate this point, claudia states that she constantly confirms the importance of acknowledging students’ voices and holding higher expectations for them, whereas rodolfo and john have appropriated technical terms in their discourses that inform their teaching practices. additionally, our conceptions of research have been expanded, and, as granados-beltrán (2018) states, we have questioned how action research has become a hegemonic research method in initial teacher education in foreign language in colombia. currently, we consider that pre-service foreign language teachers should do research by drawing directly on different fields of education such as sociology or anthropology, and by following different research designs beyond action-research, such as ethnography, phenomenology, and narrative inquiry, among others. from our perspective, by widening the scope of research foundations, future teachers could address language education issues beyond the application of technical research formulas. since our rs is a learning community, we keep a constant dialogue and make decisions as a group that constantly changes our roles and responsibilities. however, some participants consistently play a leading role whereas others tend to remain as supporters. in other words, the level of investment of members varies according to their interests, time, and other individual characteristics. for instance, rodolfo and john consolidated their leadership not only inside our rs “interacción” but at an institutional level thanks to their participation in and organization of different events. particularly, rodolfo and john participated in the first research camping retreat of universidad de antioquia as co-authors of the institutional policy for rs. their participation in that retreat, together with their knowledge about the east region of antioquia, allowed them to conclude that establishing regional networks with other rs could foster the consolidation of a local academic community. in addition, they became leaders and referents at the east campus in terms of rs. thanks to this public recognition and their experience, they feel empowered to continue working universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras170 mesa villa, gómez-giraldo, & arango montes towards the consolidation of a research network with rs at the east campus. an example of this engagement with communities is illustrated in table 3. we describe a local academic event at the east campus of universidad de antioquia, whose organization was led by john, rodolfo, and some members of other rss. this event was held in 2017 aiming to promote the recognition of rs and study groups on our campus. the event consisted of three parts: (a) a panel of experts on rs, (b) a poster session to socialize the experiences of local rss, and (c) a co-creation workshop with rs and professors from our campus. conclusion after analyzing our experience as members of rs “interacción” from a non-traditional conception of curriculum, we conclude that our learning and transformation do not rely on prescriptive or static contents or methodologies. rather, we opt for a creative process of negotiation according to our interests and possibilities. although deliberations are time-consuming, we strongly believe that the organic nature of the process has triggered our interests and, above all, our desire to continue working. besides, our learning process has been mediated by a two-way interaction with the official syllabus, either as a complementary or independent path that has allowed us to expand and deepen our research perspectives. specifically, the project work methodology underlying some official courses and the practical nature of seminar courses became a fertile ground in such an interaction. in addition, this experience has favored not only the appropriation of specific research theories or techniques, but the transformation of our positions as teacher-researchers and our roles in academic communities. furthermore, despite being part of a decentralized campus of the university where there is not a strong research tradition, our work has been favored by the high status of rss and research in our institution. hence, given the scarce possibilities for institutional research at the regional programs, rs could be regarded as a strategic option to continue promoting undergraduate research in language education in these contexts. table 3. second meeting of rs and study groups at the east campus of universidad de antioquia role of our research seedbed interacción this event was proposed, organized, and led by students from different rss at the east campus. members of rs “interacción” participated in the organization committee of this event. such experience allowed us to have direct contact with rss from other fields of knowledge and define a common agenda. activity description our participation panel it consisted of a recount of the history of rss at universidad de antioquia. the socialization of proposals for rss. a presentation of different networks of rss. discussions about the needs and challenges of regional rss. john represented local rss. rodolfo moderated the panel. poster session rs socialized their experiences: lines of research interest and ongoing or finished projects. claudia and other members of our rs “interacción” participated in the socialization of our experience. co-creation workshop we gathered information about rs (activities, needs, perceptions about research) to set the bases for a local network at the east campus. along with other members of our rs “interacción”, claudia, john, and rodolfo recounted our experience. 171profile: issues teach. prof. dev., vol. 22 no. 1, jan-jun, 2020. issn 1657-0790 (printed) 2256-5760 (online). bogotá, colombia. pages 159-173 becoming language teacher-researchers in a research seedbed in terms of challenges, we conclude that rs comprises a strategy that fosters a community-based research education approach in which local and situated research practices are favored. this strategy is contrary to traditional educational methods in which research is taught from prescriptive agendas and conceived as an individual set of skills. therefore, we contend that embarking on this strategy entails assuming certain challenges. on the one hand, the theoretical foundations of rs tend to be circumscribed to cognitive views of learning, namely critical thinking and research skills. therefore, we argue for approaches that question the views of research as a set of theories to be memorized or as a process in which decontextualized skills are taught. specifically, it becomes necessary to constantly problematize the type of research education underlying rs. for instance, we contend that the nature of research contents should be questioned in terms of ethics, the impact of research on local communities, roles in research projects, or the feasibility of research in different contexts. on the other hand, we state that such problematization should also include questioning the extra-class nature of rs. specifically, working from a non-traditional perspective of curriculum entails challenging conventional classroom-based pedagogical practices such as hierarchical student-professor roles, prescriptive methodologies, or traditional perspectives of knowledge production. given the reflective nature of our analysis and the lack of studies on rs in the field of teacher education in foreign languages in our country, it is necessary to conduct research projects to expand the understanding of this pedagogical strategy and its impact on participants’ learning. hence, further research could focus on exploring innovative methodologies for research in language education at an undergraduate level beyond teaching research skills or theory. another area for future studies comprises the identities of pre-service teachers as researchers as well as teacher educators as research educators. finally, given the significant role of undergraduate research in language education in the legislation of initial teacher education programs in colombia, rs can broaden the spectrum of research learning strategies in the foreign language field. in addition, these communities may help consolidate democratic relationships among professors and students and enhance the appropriation and production of local research. moreover, students’ voices can refresh the research academic repertoire given their viewpoints as learners. references abad, j. v., & pineda, l. k. 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(2015). semilleros de investigación: desarrollos y desafíos para la formación en pregrado [seedbeds of research: developments and challenges in undergraduate training]. educación y educadores, 18(3), 391-407. https:// doi.org/10.5294/edu.2015.18.3.2. stenhouse, l. (1975). an introduction to curriculum research and development. london, uk: butler & turner. suárez, j., quintana, m., & ossa, a. (2013). discursividad sobre el maestro investigador [discursivity on the teacher-researcher]. in a. ossa & j. suárez (eds.), el maestro investigador en colombia (pp. 1-40). medellín, co: ghpp. torres, l. c. (2005). para qué los semilleros de investigación [investigation seedbeds: what for?]. revista memorias, 1-10. viáfara, j. j. (2008). pedagogical research in the practicum at universidad nacional: efl pre-service teachers’ conceptions and experiences. matices en lenguas extranjeras, (2). villalba, j. c., & gonzález, a. (2017). editorial: la importancia de los semilleros de investigación [editorial: the importance of semilleros de investigación]. revista prolegómenos, 20(39), 9-10. https://doi.org/10.18359/ prole.2719. about the authors claudia patricia mesa villa works as a foreign language instructor at the school of languages, universidad de antioquia. she is the tutor of “semillero de investigación interacción”. she holds an m.a. in foreign language teaching and learning from universidad de antioquia. she has been a teacher-educator, academic leader, and teacher in public and private institutions. john s. gómez-giraldo is an eighth-semester student of the b.a. program in foreign language teaching at the school of languages, eastern campus, universidad de antioquia. he is a member of the “semillero de investigación interacción”. rodolfo arango montes is a ninth-semester student of the b.a. program in foreign language teaching at the school of languages, eastern campus of universidad de antioquia. he is a member of the “semillero de investigación interacción”. 57profile: issues teach. prof. dev., vol. 20 no. 1, jan-jun, 2018. issn 1657-0790 (printed) 2256-5760 (online). bogotá, colombia. pages 57-72 https://doi.org/10.15446/profile.v20n1.61881 towards understanding efl teachers’ conceptions of research: findings from argentina hacia la comprensión de las concepciones de investigación de los docentes de inglés: resultados desde argentina darío luis banegas1* university of warwick, coventry, united kingdom & ministerio de educación del chubut, rawson, argentina this paper investigates the conceptions of research held by english as a foreign language teachers in argentina. quantitative data from 622 participants from an online questionnaire were followed by qualitative data from online interviews with 40 of those participants. results show that the teachers conceptualised research through conventional notions closer to a quantitative paradigm. they felt research was not part of their job, and a lack of time was the main reason for not engaging in/with research. teacher development, agency, empowerment, and autonomy could be sought by engaging teachers with forms of research which are meaningful to them, such as action research. key words: agency, research engagement, teacher development, teacher research. el presente artículo investiga las concepciones de investigación sostenidas por docentes de inglés como lengua extranjera en argentina. los datos cuantitativos de 622 participantes obtenidos a través de un cuestionario fueron seguidos por datos cualitativos de entrevistas en línea a 40 participantes. los resultados muestran que los docentes conceptualizaron a la investigación a través de nociones convencionales cercanas a un paradigma cuantitativo. los participantes reflejan una posición marginal para con la investigación. la falta de tiempo es la razón principal para no involucrarse en investigación docente. el desarrollo profesional, la agencia, el empoderamiento y la autonomía pueden ser explorados para involucrar a los docentes en formas de investigación, tales como la investigación-acción que les resulten significativas. palabras clave: agencia, desarrollo docente, investigación docente, participación en investigación. * e-mail: d.banegas@warwick.ac.uk how to cite this article (apa, 6th ed.): banegas, d. l. (2018). towards understanding efl teachers’ conceptions of research: findings from argentina. profile: issues in teachers’ professional development, 20(1), 57-72. https://doi.org/10.15446/profile.v20n1.61881. this article was received on january 10, 2017, and accepted on march 26, 2017. this is an open access article distributed under the terms of the creative commons license attribution-noncommercial-noderivatives 4.0 international license. consultation is possible at https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/. universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras58 banegas introduction according to yuan, sun, and teng (2016), “the past decades have witnessed a teacher research movement in teaching english to speakers of other languages (tesol)” (p. 220). concomitantly, language teacher research engagement has increased in the literature through empirical studies (e.g., anwaruddin & pervin, 2015; borg, 2013; borg & liu, 2013; dikilitaş & mumford, 2016), instances of practitioner research (parsaiyan, ghahremani ghajar, salahimoghaddam, & janahmadi, 2016), literature reviews (borg, 2010), and a collection of teachers’ research (borg & sanchez, 2015a; dikilitaş, smith, & trotman, 2015). understanding teacher research engagement may contribute to gaining deeper insights of teacherresearcher identity (edwards & burns, 2016a), teacher motivation (yuan et al., 2016), teachers’ practices, professional development and research (erlam, 2008; nassaji, 2012). mckay (2006) observed that “research contributes to more effective teaching, not by offering definitive answers to pedagogical questions, but rather by providing new insights into the teaching and learning process” (p. 1). nonetheless, richards (2003) has been critical of imposing research on teachers’ already pressurised schedules. with an international sample of 13 countries, borg (2009) published an article on english language teachers’ conceptions of research (also borg, 2013) to promote teacher research engagement. in my identity as a latin american teacher-researcher i noticed that the borg report did not include countries from the americas, and that most of his 505 respondents had less than 10 years of teaching experience. in contrast, in the present study 40% of the 622 participants had between 20-30 years of experience. a small percentage of the participants did not hold any teaching degree, and that unlike the borg (2009) study (see also nassaji, 2012), only a small proportion held ma degrees. this article aims at exploring the conceptions of research held by english as a foreign language (efl) teachers in argentina. this study is the first of its kind in argentina, and it may contribute to the visualisation of language teacher development from latin america as practices from this region do not feature strongly in international journals (but see journals such as ajal, belt journal, laclil journal, or profile, or edited volumes such as banegas (2017) and kamhi-stein, díaz maggioli, and de oliveira (2017). however, the sample of 622 participants and 40 interviews does not attempt to offer overgeneralisations. theoretical background the term “research” is not easy to define because a definition entails adopting one ideological position. despite different views on what research is, there is agreement among academics on the key characteristic of research. for example, recent definitions of research in tesol include: an investigation, examination or inquiry that requires planning, organising and ethical considerations as well as systematic and careful analysis of data, sound interpretations and conclusions on the basis of evidence and inferences being made. (paltridge & phakiti, 2015) to do good research we need to be systematic so that by the end we can stand by our results with confidence… or in short, research is disciplined inquiry. (dörnyei, 2007, p. 15) yet, how do teachers see research? understanding language teachers’ conceptions of research is necessary to empower teachers as teacher-researchers (edwards & burns, 2016b). it is critical to problematise teachers’ research perceptions through research engagement as a central construct to understand how they conceive research and how they think it should be done. research engagement, i.e., how teachers interact with research processes and outputs (see borg, 2016), can become observable through practices such as reading research, using research, and doing research. furthermore, research engagement is concomitant to the research culture observed and enacted in teachers’ professional settings. research engagement may be affected and 59profile: issues teach. prof. dev., vol. 20 no. 1, jan-jun, 2018. issn 1657-0790 (printed) 2256-5760 (online). bogotá, colombia. pages 57-72 towards understanding efl teachers' conceptions of research: findings from argentina dependent on institutional support, teacher preparation (see banegas, 2017), teacher motivation (see dörnyei & ushioda, 2011), and teacher-researcher identity (see xu, 2014) and power. for example, in a study conducted with four efl teacher-researchers in turkey, yayli (2012) concludes that the unequal distribution of power between researchers and teachers may have a negative impact on teacher research engagement. in this regard, studies on teacher research should examine teachers’ views of researchers. language teacher education programmes usually include modules on research in language teaching and applied linguistics, or experiences which help pre-service teachers understand research from the inside (nakata, 2015; phipps, 2015). furthermore, inservice teachers sometimes engage with research by reading and using research produced by professional organisations, such as tesol or iatefl, and to a lesser extent by universities and research bodies. it is expected that such outputs are used by teachers to inform and improve their practices (ball, 2012). teacher research can be minimally defined as “systematic self-study by teachers (individually or collaboratively) which seeks to achieve real-world impact of some kind and is made public” (borg & sanchez, 2015b, p. 1). teacher research can encompass action research (burns, 2010; dikilitaş & griffiths, 2017) and exploratory practice (allwright & hanks, 2009; hanks, 2017) and it is used as continuing professional development in latin american countries such as argentina (banegas, pavese, velázquez, & vélez, 2013), brazil (seixas vial & kurtz de souza welp, 2015), chile (burns, westmacott, & hidalgo ferrer, 2016; smith, connelly, & rebolledo, 2014), mexico (roux & mendoza valladares, 2014) and in other countries, for example australia (edwards & burns, 2016b), china (wang & zhang, 2014; yuan et al., 2016), or turkey (wyatt & dikilitaş, 2015). previous research reports how future teachers (villacañas de castro, 2014) and practising teachers engage in action research to bridge the so-called gap between theory and practice and produce context-responsive answers to their classroom concerns (edwards & burns, 2015). teacher research engagement has been the object of a few studies in tesol. for example, borg’s (2009) study, the pillar of this investigation, was based on data collected from 505 teachers from 13 countries. a high proportion of respondents showed limited engagement in and with research due to a lack of time and, secondly, little knowledge about research. in a similar study, nassaji (2012) investigated english language teachers’ perceptions of links and relevance of second language (l2) research in language teaching. the study was based on a written questionnaire completed by 119 efl teachers teaching in turkey and 82 english as a second language (esl) teachers teaching in canada. due to a lack of time, they rarely or never read research articles or conducted research themselves. results indicated that the teachers undervalued the relevance of academics’ research in language teaching from a practical classroom stance (xu, 2014). in a mixed-methods study about bangladeshi english language teachers’ research engagement, anwaruddin and pervin’s (2015, p. 29) results reveal no engagement with reading research. the most frequent reasons were: (1) “my institution does not encourage me to read research,” (2) “reading research is not necessary to keep my job or get a promotion,” (3) “i face difficulty in understanding research articles,” (4) “i don’t have enough time to read research.” based on the interviews, the authors add that poor teacher salary is another major obstacle for engaging with research. despite drawbacks, teachers do become involved in research undertakings and therefore it is necessary to investigate how such experiences have an impact on their perceptions of research, their teaching practices, motivations, and identities. teacher research in argentina research is central to initial english language teacher education (ielte) programmes based at argentinian universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras60 banegas universities. in the case of pre-service teacher education at the tertiary level, since the 1990s there has been a national interest in equipping future teachers with an awareness of educational research tools to examine their practices (dirección nacional de formación e investigación, 2013). according to banegas (2014), some programmes include research in the elt module with a special focus on action research and mixed methods as described in, for example, brown (2014). in-service opportunities to engage in and with research are often channelled through teacher associations (porto, montemayor-b orsinger, & lópez-barrios, 2016). for example, the argentine federation of associations of teachers of english (faapi in spanish) launched the argentinian journal of applied linguistics, an open access online journal, in 2013 with the aim of encouraging teachers, teacher educators, and researchers in the country and elsewhere to publish not only research reports, but also reflective pieces and informed classroom accounts and activities. furthermore, faapi organise a well-established annual conference for the dissemination of teachers’ and teacher educators’ concerns through the open access selected papers.1 against this background, the following questions guided this study: 1. what do efl teachers in argentina think of research? 2. how do they engage in and with research? method the design of this study, an extension of borg’s (2009), follows a sequential explanatory multi-method strategy (creswell, 2003). in the present study, large quantitative data collected through an online questionnaire were followed by qualitative data obtained through online interviews with a reduced teacher sample from those who completed the questionnaire. 1 faapi selected papers at http://www.faapi.org.ar/congresofaapi/publications/ in june 2015, an english-medium online questionnaire was uploaded at an ielte programme website2 and promoted through faapi and social networks such as facebook and twitter. the online questionnaire was completed by 622 efl teachers in argentina between june and october 2015. initially, 178 (28.6%) of those participants accepted being interviewed. due to participants’ personal and workload issues, only 40 (6.43%) were eventually interviewed through skype between november 2015 and march 2016. the use of skype was grounded on the fact that the main interviewer and assistants were located in a remote southern area in argentina and most of the interviewees were in the centre and the northern part of the country. for the interviews, it was ensured that the 40 participants represented a balanced sample of geographical distribution in the country, years of experience, and the educational level in which they worked. this distribution was achieved through selective sampling of those 40 interviewees. in this respect, the qualitative findings cannot be generalised over the total number of participants or those who were not interviewed. the online questionnaire mirrored borg’s (2009) survey, which consisted of: background information (e.g., degree, teaching experience), scenarios (through a likert scale participants had to decide whether each scenario represented research), characteristics of good quality research, research culture at their place of work, reading/ not reading research, doing/not doing research, and a final question to participate in the follow-up interview. modifications were made to respond to argentinian teachers’ professional settings: details on background information (e.g., type of teaching degree, type(s) of teaching experience, and nature of posts), localised scenarios and terminology (e.g., evaluating revised curricula in the participants’ province, referring to a licenciatura rather than an ma course, elt coordinator instead of head of the english department). 2 online survey at https://es.surveymonkey.com/r/eltarg 61profile: issues teach. prof. dev., vol. 20 no. 1, jan-jun, 2018. issn 1657-0790 (printed) 2256-5760 (online). bogotá, colombia. pages 57-72 towards understanding efl teachers' conceptions of research: findings from argentina the follow-up interview consisted of revisiting those answers provided by the participants for clarification and illustration purposes. unlike borg’s (2009) study, given the digital format of the present survey, respondents’ answers were tracked for comparative purposes (e.g., a participant’s view of what research is and his/her claimed experience with reading or doing research). interviews, carried out in spanish to encourage rapport, lasted between 30-60 minutes and were audio recorded and orthographically transcribed. through initial coding and thematic analysis (creswell, 2007) the interviews provided illustrative excerpts which could show alignment, dissonances, and contradictions with the survey results. findings the first section shows the findings obtained from the survey regarding the participants’ professional background and teaching experience. the second section presents percentages of answers over the total number of 622 respondents. the last section shows the qualitative data derived from the follow-up interviews following thematic analysis. participants’ background background information about participants was recovered from questions 1-6 in the survey (tables 1 and 2). table 1. respondents’ years of experience years of teaching experience n % 0-4 72 11.6 5-9 94 15.1 10-14 100 16.1 15-19 104 16.7 20-24 94 15.1 25+ 158 25.4 table 2. respondents’ highest relevant qualification highest relevant qualification n % none 8 1.3 language proficiency certificate (e.g., cambridge esol exams) 24 3.9 diploma (e.g., delta) 10 1.6 teacher of english degree from a tertiary institution 298 47.9 university degree (teaching or translating degree) 188 30.2 master’s 76 12.2 doctorate 18 2.9 respondents were asked the type of institution where they taught most often (state sector: 49.8%, private sector: 38.6 %, and subsidised: 11.6%), the age of the learners (11 or younger: 19.3%, 12-18: 51.1%, 19-23: 14.8%, and 24+: 14.8%), and the nature of their work. as regards this last background aspect, 54.7% of the respondents had teaching periods, while 30.9% of them held teaching periods and posts, possibly part-time. only 14.5% had full-time posts. it is worth mentioning that teachers who only held teaching periods (around 30 a week) were only paid for their teaching time. other activities such as marking or meetings are part of their posts but unacknowledged in the salary. survey findings: scenarios question 7 of the online questionnaire included 10 scenarios (e.g., a school head met elt teachers as a group and asked them to evaluate the “diseños curriculares” [jurisdictional curricula]. she made notes and used them to write a report which she submitted to the ministerio de educación). respondents were asked to determine the extent to which each was an example of research (table 3) through a four-point likert scale which ranged from “definitely not research” to “definitely research.” universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras62 banegas objectivity was found to be central to good research. participants also underlined the importance of hypotheses, variables, and a large amount of data. these features seem to signal that participants believed that good research equated a positivist paradigm in research. they also underlined the necessity of socialising findings, which should offer practical ideas for classroom situations. furthermore, participants had an optional question about other features that good quality research should have. their 198 answers were organised through selective coding. the most cited characteristics of good research included: practical implications for teachers in different and “real” settings (112 respondents), updated bibliography (45 respondents), a combination of qualitative and quantitative methods (32), a solid literature review (30), and clear aims (15). those who mentioned qualitative instruments observed that the items in the questionnaire were quantitative-oriented and felt they did not apply to elt research. overall, these results might indicate that teachers believed that good research must be carefully supported and offer in-depth analysis of classroom life with direct resonances with practice. in other words, there is pressure for research to offer direct applications in teachers’ there was a tendency (64.9%) to assess the scenarios as instances of research. the “probably research” option gathered 35.9% of responses, while “definitely research” represented 29%. scenarios 2 (89.6%), 4 (87.7%), and 6 (82.8%) were assessed the most as examples of research. scenario 2 stated: “a teacher read about a new approach to teaching writing and tried it out for two weeks. he videotaped some of his lessons and collected samples of learners’ work. he analysed this information and presented the results to his colleagues at a meeting.” conversely, scenario 8 was not considered research by 62%. scenario 8 read: “at the beginning of the second term, a teacher gave a class of 30 learners a feedback form. the next day, 5 returned their completed forms. the teacher read them and used that info to decide what to do in the second and third terms.” in general, research was identified as a systematic and academic practice. systematicity can be achieved, according to the responses, through the collection and analysis of large data and the dissemination of findings. characteristics of “good” research in question 8 participants rated different features of research according to their importance (table 4). table 3. what scenarios are research? scenario # definitely not research probably not research probably research definitely research 1 23.1 23.1 43.9 9.9 2 2.7 7.7 32.6 57 3 21.7 20.8 32.1 25.3 4 3.6 8.6 33 54.7 5 4.1 10.8 48.9 36.2 6 4.1 13.1 37.6 45.2 7 22.6 28.9 32.1 16.3 8 28.1 33.9 26.7 11.3 9 22.2 26.2 35.7 15.8 10 16.3 29.9 36.2 17.6 63profile: issues teach. prof. dev., vol. 20 no. 1, jan-jun, 2018. issn 1657-0790 (printed) 2256-5760 (online). bogotá, colombia. pages 57-72 towards understanding efl teachers' conceptions of research: findings from argentina professional contexts, a feature not usually included in academics’ definitions of research. research culture in relation to the research culture where they worked most often (question 10), respondents’ opinions pictured the landscape shown in table 5. table 5 shows a trend to disagree with the statements. this suggests that research attitudes and conditions are far from conducive in their contexts. however, relativised opinions were evidenced, judging by the percentages under the “do-not-know option,” meaning a lack of awareness of their colleagues’ attitudes towards research. such apparent lack of knowledge may respond to the high negative percentages given to items 6, 7, and 8. it can be advanced that the research culture perceived by participants did not encourage teacher research engagement as lack of awareness, access, support, and benefits operated against teachers researching their own professional contexts. reading research questions 12-13 explored participant’s engagement with research through reading and its impact in their practices. results revealed the following reading frequencies: 44.8% (often), 36.4% (sometimes), 17% (rarely), and 1.8% (never). those who said that they often or sometimes read research mentioned the following outputs: web-based sources of research (75.2%), books (72.6%), newsletters (64.3%), academic journals (58%), professional journals (58%), professional magazines (48.2%), and others (7%). other sources included: dissertations, academia.edu, conference proceedings, and blogs. according to these respondents, the influence of those who read research on their teaching was distributed as follows: strong (20.5%), fairly strong (40.4%), moderate influence (33.3%), slight influence (5.8%), and no influence (0%). interestingly, in the interviews, those who said that research influence was fairly strong or moderate usually referred to practiceoriented outputs such as newsletters, magazines for table 4. reported features of good research item unimportant moderately important unsure important very important 1. a large number of people are studied. 10.4 27.5 11.4 31.3 19.4 2. a large volume of information is collected. 6.6 21.8 9.9 40.3 21.3 3. experiments are used. 15.1 17.5 16.6 31.7 19.0 4. hypotheses are tested. 4.3 5.7 3.3 32.2 54.5 5. information is analysed statistically. 7.1 19.0 7.6 42.6 23.7 6. questionnaires are used. 15.6 24.6 15.1 33.6 10.9 7. the researcher is objective. 3.8 4.7 4.7 24.2 62.6 8. the results apply to many elt contexts. 10.9 19.9 18.5 25.6 25.1 9. the results are made public. 5.7 9.5 9.9 35.5 39.3 10. the results give teachers ideas they can use. 3.3 11.8 10.9 28.9 45 11. variables are controlled. 5.7 12.8 18 34.1 29.4 universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras64 banegas teachers, or blogs which display activities and worksheets. responses reveal a contrast between what these teachers deemed as good research and reading sources which are essentially practice-based and not necessarily contextresponsive. conversely, those who expressed that they rarely or never read research justified their behaviour as table 6 shows. table 6. reasons for not reading research reasons for not reading research % i am not interested in research 3.0 i don’t have time 60.6 i don’t have access to books and journals 30.3 i find published research hard to understand 12.1 published research does not give me practical advice for the classroom 30.3 research engagement through reading research was present in teachers’ lives. however, there seem to be a wide array of outputs which does not always base its publications on primary research. it should be stressed that even though lack of time is a powerful obstacle, teachers still engaged with reading research to answer their professional challenges. doing research participants indicated their engagement in doing research: often (30.4%), sometimes (35.1%), rarely (24.1%), and never (10.5%). the interpretation of such figures (table 7), however, depends on the respondents’ conceptions of research and their interpretation of such frequencies. conversely, those who said that they rarely or never did research selected the statements shown in table 8. table 5. research attitudes in the participants’ context research attitudes in your context disagree strongly disagree do not know agree agree strongly 1. teachers do research themselves. 12 27.1 26 27.6 7.3 2. the management encourages teachers to do research. 11.5 37 14.6 27.6 9.4 3. teachers feel that doing research is an important part of their job. 13.5 29.7 21.3 27.1 8.3 4. teachers have access to research books and journals. 12 19.3 22.4 35.4 10.9 5. teachers have opportunities to learn about current research. 9.4 19.8 17.2 40.6 13 6. teachers talk about research. 16.1 35.9 15.1 23.9 8.9 7. teachers are given support to attend elt conferences. 26 23.9 7.8 28.1 19.3 8. time for doing research is built into teachers’ workloads. 35.9 20.8 13.5 16.1 13.5 9. teachers read published research. 19.3 18.7 32.8 25.5 8.9 65profile: issues teach. prof. dev., vol. 20 no. 1, jan-jun, 2018. issn 1657-0790 (printed) 2256-5760 (online). bogotá, colombia. pages 57-72 towards understanding efl teachers' conceptions of research: findings from argentina table 7. reasons for doing research i often/sometimes do research... % as part of a course i am studying on. 52.6 because i enjoy it. 69 to gain recognition. 19 because it is good for my professional development. 87.1 because my employer expects me to. 13.8 because other teachers can benefit from my findings. 36.2 to secure my post. 15.5 to contribute to my school improvement. 44.0 to find better ways of teaching. 80.2 to solve a problem in my teaching. 66.4 to work from home. 6 to do less teaching. 0 to avoid the constraints of a teaching schedule. 5.2 other: to keep up with the pace of change because it’s part of my post to participate in academic events doing research then was still an activity present in the participants’ lives. reasons could be professional development and classroom practices (e.g., better teaching, solve a problem in teaching) together with personal motivations (e.g., because i enjoy it). conversely, reasons for not doing research were time constraints and lack of knowledge about research methods. interview findings from the 40 interviews conducted with teachers three main themes around teacher research engagement emerged: (1) research features (e.g., systematicity, practical implications), (2) research forms (e.g., action research or quasi-experiments), and (3) identities (teachers’ and researchers’). numbers of participants with similar views appear in brackets followed by representative quotes from the 40 interviews transcribed. in general, the 40 participants confirmed the results of table 4. research features such as generalisability, systematisation of data collection and analysis (30 participants), presence of hypotheses (12), and a need to make results public (12) through different outputs (e.g., conferences, informal teachers’ meetings) were considered important. the excerpts (e) below illustrate such views: good research has to be generalisable. you need a lot of data, numbers, figures, experiments. if i do something with my students, it’s very small. and besides it must be shared, call it a conference, a meeting, something more informal. (e1) you need to be objective to do research. i mean looking at results, at hard data that you compare against a hypothesis. an experiment in a classroom. we need information more than what people think because this is very subjective and limited. (e2) table 8. reasons for not doing research i rarely/never do research because… % i don’t know enough about research methods. 45.3 my job is to teach not to do research. 9.4 i’m not paid for that. 23.4 i don’t have time to do research. 81.3 my employer discourages it. 3.1 i’m not interested in research. 9.4 i need someone to advise me but no one is available. 25 most of my colleagues don’t do research. 26.6 i don’t have access to the books and journals i need. 1.6 the learners wouldn’t cooperate if i did research in class. 1.6 other teachers wouldn’t cooperate if i asked for their help. 9.4 i don’t know what i can investigate. 31.3 universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras66 banegas however, other features emerged. although practical research implications had been also endorsed in the survey (table 4, item 10), some participants (21) emphasised that research results had to lead to change, but such change could only be achieved through collaboration (15): you can do research through questionnaires, but the results are to make a change, i mean, to help you change something with your teaching. (e3) i come from action research as a teacher educator, so i see research as an instance to change and inform our changes. but i can’t do it alone. (e4) we don’t need results like 50% said this and 20% said that. we need help. we need guidance. i’ve got students who do drugs. i’ve got abused students. who can help us with these issues? research has to help us change that terrible problem. (e5) only six participants explained that experiences carried out by one teacher with their learners did not constitute research. two participants expressed that: if you’re a responsible teacher, then you will assess your own work and evaluate your own practice with your students. but that can’t be research. it’s just you and them. (e6) just what one teacher does is not research, i don’t know. one swallow doesn’t make a summer. (e7) although these two excerpts reinforce the need for a large number of participants, they will be compared below to other views expressed by the same participants. the results presented in table 3 show a heterogeneous vision of what counts as research. only one participant expressed that such amplitude of responses was the result of uncertainty about what research is by “those who do research”: i felt bad when completing this question. to me they were somehow all forms of research. the scenarios made me feel that i need to learn more about this from people who actually do research. i felt confused. (e8) similarly, different forms of research emerged from the interviews when they were asked about their experiences with doing research. the number of participants who had indicated doing research represented around 60% of the total number of respondents. however, in the interview, 30 participants claimed to have done research in different forms. in the interviews, the participants (12) from higher education institutions coincided in describing instances of doing research which involved a problem, data collection and analysis and sharing of results through, mostly, conference proceedings and paper presentations. they reportedly used quantitative and qualitative methods, action research, and critical discourse tools. their experiences were located in the areas of information technology and its influence on elt, english for academic/specific purposes, literature, phonetics and phonology, systemic functional linguistics, and cultural studies. some of them (5) even published their research in conference proceedings. in contrast, the participating teachers based at secondary schools (18) had other experiences which they regarded as research. these ranged from bibliographical search (9 participants, excerpt 9) to teachers’ practices evaluation (6, excerpt 10), and cases to change teaching practices (5, excerpt 11). it should be noted that two participants who expressed that small-case studies do not count as research voiced their opinions in excerpts 10 and 11. i sometimes start collecting information about a specific topic, like the state of the art. a couple of years ago, i wrote a paper about bullying. i used different sources. i wanted to condense the information for me to have a clear idea and think about how i could help at the schools where i work. (e9) last year i asked my learners to assess my work and their own work. then we compared our different perceptions. (e10) in 2014, i asked my trainees to complete an online questionnaire about strategies for listening comprehension. i repeated the questionnaire in 2015. i used those results with the trainees to compare groups and think about how to improve our practices for 2016. (e11) 67profile: issues teach. prof. dev., vol. 20 no. 1, jan-jun, 2018. issn 1657-0790 (printed) 2256-5760 (online). bogotá, colombia. pages 57-72 towards understanding efl teachers' conceptions of research: findings from argentina an interview recurrence was that of identity in relation to both teachers and researchers. while teachers, and even teacher educators, perceived themselves as practitioners only (13 participants), they perceived researchers as distant intellectuals (7): i’m only a teacher. i teach. who am i to say what is and what isn’t research? i’m not a researcher. i don’t want to tell people how they should do what they do. (e12) why should i do research? i teach and that’s quite enough. besides, you can’t expect everything from a teacher. research is important, i guess. to do research we need to know how to do it, and we need to be paid for research. otherwise, it’s very easy. i do the work but someone else will take the credit? (e13) research is useless. it’s very far from our realities. researchers from the uni don’t come to schools to work with us. they get their information and then bye bye. they have no idea of practice. (e14) i’m not interested in research because those up there who do research are not interested in us teachers. (e15) maybe it’s not real research what i do, but it’s what i can do as a teacher. (e16) discussion conceptions of research based on tables 3 and 4 and excerpts 1-7, the participants conceive research as an academic activity characterised by systematicity, objectivity, varied data collection instruments (e.g., questionnaires or surveys), analysis, and socialisation of findings which are expected to be generalisable and with classroom application. as regards systematisation and data analysis, their conceptions are similar to the definitions of research included above (dörnyei, 2007; paltridge & phakiti, 2015). however, they add an element of direct practicality to research. although the participants mentioned the combination of quantitative and qualitative methods, the collective view held was that of research under a psychometric tradition. to them, good research included hypotheses and tests. excerpts 1 and 2 illustrate that teachers believed that the nature of the data must be obtained through quantitative instruments and that people’s opinions do not count because they are not objective. this view shows that qualitative research may be assessed as anecdotal or context-bound and that makes it less useful to others (excerpts 6 and 7). however, some of the participants who held such quantitative and positivistic research views offered divergent practices (e.g., asking learners’ opinions about their teaching performance) when asked about their ways of doing research (excerpts 10 and 11). only those respondents who endorsed action research adhered to an ethnographic and qualitative tradition. thus, research is conceived as carried out by other professionals rather than teachers as if universitybased academics were the only authoritative figures to produce research (excerpts 12 and 15). research is not for all. this notion may explain participants’ self-marginalisation to research. they believe that they cannot be producers of research but are expected to be the consumers of the by-products of research. the value of research appeared as relative, decontextualised, and not part of a teacher’s job or professional development. there was a tendency (table 4, item 10) to rate it as important that research should offer practical suggestions for teachers, but this feature did not seem to be found by teachers in practice (table 6). the ambivalent view between research being important but useless to teachers was further supported by the participants’ perceptions of researchers (e.g., excerpt 15), who are usually seen at universities or in distant geographical locations. research, understood through orientation metaphors, is up there; out there. these results reveal the need that, as xu (2014) and edwards and burns (2016a) conclude, the identity of teachers as researchers should be explored and promoted so that other enacted forms of research are acknowledged without normativity judgements from academics. furthermore, examining these divergent universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras68 banegas research views as contradictory could be assessed as simplistic. results show different views between school efl teachers and higher education lecturers/tutors. the secondary school efl teachers in this study indicated that there were opportunities to learn about current research, yet research engagement was limited and not encouraged or supported institutionally. in the higher education context, there were differences between those from tertiary institutions and universities. even when this latter group was aware of research, their views were heterogeneous and did not show signs of research collaboration between institutions of different levels of education. the apparent fractures in the research culture as we move from one level of education to the following may explain why teachers in primary and secondary education felt that research was not for them (excerpt 16). given the heterogeneity of the participants’ background, their experiences and responses, it may be suggested that the participating teachers envisage research in a continuum. in this continuum, the two ends are: (1) research characterised by quantitative methods and large samples, and (2) research featuring qualitative methods and case studies with a direct impact on classroom practices as is the case of action research. in this continuum and following participants’ conceptions of research, researchers based at universities or settings different from schools lead the first end. from this end, research should be objective, generalisable, and based on hypotheses. the second end, in contrast, is led by teachers and teacher educators. from this end, research is conceived as context-bound to solve problems and enhance classroom practices. it can be added that while the first end may represent teachers’ declarative knowledge, that is, what research is expected to be, the second end represents their enactment of research activities, that is, what teachers can do in their immediate contexts. research engagement it has been posited that teachers’ conceptions of research may influence their research engagement through reading and doing research. while teachers reading research was not deemed as a systematic attitude in their contexts (table 5, 34.4%), 81.2% of the participants later indicated they read published research. those respondents, who clarified differences between survey questions, expressed that they had “other colleagues in mind” the first time they answered. published research included books and digitised materials, and research exerted a strong influence on their teaching practices. however, this influence was instrumental thus strengthening the view of teachers as receptors and consumers of research produced elsewhere. we should be cautious about this positive engagement with research as their “reading research” habits and reading sources depend on what each participating teacher deemed as research. this positive engagement may contradict the relatively low percentages obtained in relation to value of research, access to published research, and the research culture at the workplace (table 5). conversely, those who said that they did not read research found three restrictions: lack of time, lack of access to research outputs, and lack of practical advice. lack of time is consistent with the fact that research is not encouraged or part of a teacher’s post and, in order to engage with research, teachers need to invest part of their personal time. lack of access and lack of practical advice were mentioned by primary and secondary efl teachers. in relation to doing research, answers were heterogeneous possibly because they responded to the views of research the participants held. around 60% claimed to do research. table 7 shows the variety of motivations underpinning their engagement. following dörnyei and ushioda (2011), the motivations to do research were personal/intrinsic (i enjoy it), extrinsic 69profile: issues teach. prof. dev., vol. 20 no. 1, jan-jun, 2018. issn 1657-0790 (printed) 2256-5760 (online). bogotá, colombia. pages 57-72 towards understanding efl teachers' conceptions of research: findings from argentina (to secure my post), practice-oriented/teaching efficacy (to teach better, to solve problems), identity-driven (to gain recognition), and professional-focused (individual and collective professional development). those who engaged in research held a wide range of reasons, which stresses the complex relationship between teacher motivation and teacher research. such a relationship can be examined from a relational in-context working framework as many teachers do engage in research even when it is not part of their jobs or does not grant them any benefits (anwaruddin & pervin, 2015). lack of time and lack of knowledge of research were assessed as obstacles by both teachers in secondary and higher education settings. however, it may be true that their perceived lack of knowledge may derive from their engagement with research, research awareness, and professional trajectories. in other words, their limited opportunities to access reports and attend conferences, for example, have an impact on their experiences with research. therefore, they only know about what research should be in academic circles and do not know what research can be like in other professional settings. interestingly, the collaborative and social nature of research and knowledge generation emerges here as the participants felt the need of an expert or of colleagues to engage in research. such connections between research engagement and motivation resonate with yuan et al.’s (2016) study in relation to external encouragement, support, and incentives to do research. it seems that the argentinian efl teachers interviewed may need external support as novice researchers, but once they gain experience and recognition, they initiate a process where internal drives exceed external factors. thus, it can be concluded that teachers’ engagement with research strengthens the view of a continuum to organise teachers’ perceptions of research. in their view, there exists a difference between what researchers do and what teachers and teacher educators do. as indicated above, research is perceived as quantitative and led by researchers. at such an end, research seems to be less flexible. at the other end, in contrast, research is more flexible, classroom-driven, and carried out by teachers despite different constraints. conclusion albeit limited, this study reveals that argentinian efl teachers’ conceptions of research and research engagement do not differ from the results in borg (2009) and nassaji (2012). working conditions, nature of teaching posts (e.g., part-time vs. full-time teachers), and salary issues exert a particular influence on argentinian teachers. research is considered important but there exist difficulties to see its direct benefits. teachers may struggle with research given the workload generated by teaching, their general expectations on research, and their identity as “just teachers”. power, agency, identity, and monolithic notions of research constitute constant factors. understanding research conceptions through a continuum can help in the development of flexible and realistic forms of research conducted by teachers. it may be necessary to address the factors mentioned above from pre-service teacher education programmes where research should be embraced from a stance which integrates practice and theory and where trainees and also trainers engage with research from the start. in addition, collaborative research projects should be explored (wang & zhang, 2014), but these should become innovative as regards roles so that teachers do not feel as data gatherers or informants only. in this sense, paternalistic practices should be replaced by practices and critical ideologies which promote agency, autonomy, and empowerment. with the aim of promoting teacher research engagement drawing on teachers’ understandings of research, action-research projects can be devised with language teachers as suggested in the literature (edwards & burns, 2015; smith et al., 2014). action research may universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras70 banegas give teachers the opportunity to engage in research from a practical angle and help them theorise their practices so that the distance between theory and practice, as discussed in erlam (2008), is reduced. following the continuum introduced above, teachers can move from consumers of research produced elsewhere to producers of context-responsive action research. in line with richards’ (2003) warning, teachers’ engagement with research should be a bottom-up process rather than an imposed, over-demanding, and unrealistic task. if teacher research is the process of teachers examining their practices and pedagogical contexts to understand and improve teaching and learning processes, it follows that they should be in a position to determine, as borg and sanchez (2015b) indicate, the whats, hows, and whens of research. furthermore, research in all its forms should be more accessible and written in more friendly manners so that the impact of findings reaches a wider community. at the level of meta-research, this study shows that the use of an online questionnaire followed by a skype interview acted as an instance of reflection and sharing. however, it should be mentioned that 40 teachers cannot represent the opinions of the rest of the 622 participants involved. many respondents revealed that the time between the online questionnaire and the interview gave them the opportunity to examine their own beliefs and practices. others said that after they completed the questionnaire, they embarked on a journal search and found helpful open-access journals. these events may suggest that in-service teacher development opportunities should also seek to promote collaborative research and writing and help colleagues make their research outputs visible. factors such as accessibility and socialisation should become stronger and endorsed by educational institutions across contexts. certainly, more research is needed to find out the effect of research modules in initial teacher education during a course and after graduating, and how efl teacher-initiated research informs institutional and curriculum policies in a wider context. similarly, it would be worth exploring novice efl teachers’ views on research. references allwright, d., & hanks, j. 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(2015). the use of the textbook in the language without borders–english program. belt journal, 6, 34-49. smith, r., connelly, t., & rebolledo, p. (2014). teacher research as continuing professional development: a project with chilean secondary school teachers. in d. hayes (ed.), innovations in the continuing professional development of english language teachers. (pp. 111-129). london, uk: british council. villacañas de castro, l. s. (2014). meta-action research with pre-service teachers: a case study. educational action research, 22(4), 534-551. https://doi.org/10.1080/09650 792.2014.904237. wang, q., & zhang, h. (2014). promoting teacher autonomy through university-school collaborative action research. language teaching research, 18(2), 222-241. https://doi. org/10.1177/1362168813505942. wyatt, m., & dikilitaş, k. (2015). english language teachers becoming more efficacious through research engagement at their turkish university. educational action research, 24(4), 550-570. https://doi.org/10.1080/09650792.2015. 1076731. xu, y. (2014). becoming researchers: a narrative study of chinese university efl teachers’ research practice and their professional identity construction. language teaching research, 18(2), 242-259. https://doi. org/10.1177/1362168813505943. yayli, d. (2012). a hands-on experience of english language teachers as researchers. teacher development: an international journal of teachers’ professional development, 16(2), 255-271. https://doi.org/10.1080/13664530.2012.6 88680. yuan, r., sun, p., & teng, l. (2016). understanding language teachers’ motivations towards research. tesol quarterly, 50(1), 220-234. https://doi.org/10.1002/tesq.279. about the author darío luis banegas is a teacher educator and curriculum developer with the ministry of education in chubut (argentina), and an associate fellow with the university of warwick (uk). he leads action research and teacher research projects in elt. his main interests are clil, action research, and pre-service teacher education. 15profile vol. 19, no. 2, july-december 2017. issn 1657-0790 (printed) 2256-5760 (online). bogotá, colombia. pages 15-28 http://dx.doi.org/10.15446/profile.v19n2.65692 re-conceptualizing teachers’ narrative inquiry as professional development re-caracterización de la indagación narrativa de los docentes como desarrollo profesional paula r. golombek*1 university of florida, gainesville, usa karen e. johnson**2 the pennsylvania state university, state college, usa we offer a more nuanced characterization of teachers’ narrative inquiry as professional development (johnson & golombek, 2002) by grounding our definition of and empirical research on teachers’ narrative inquiry from a vygotskian sociocultural theoretical perspective. our goal is to reaffirm our belief in the educational value of teachers’ narrative inquiry as “systematic exploration that is conducted by teachers and for teachers through their own stories and language” (p. 6), while empirically documenting the crucial role of teacher educators in creating mediational spaces, dialogic interactions, and pedagogical tools for teachers’ narrative inquiry to flourish as professional development. it is also our goal to re-conceptualize teachers’ narrative inquiry as unbounded by time and place, and as a more fluid and emerging process. key words: language teacher professional development, teachers’ narrative inquiry, vygotskian sociocultural theory. ofrecemos una caracterización más detallada del uso de las indagaciones narrativas de los docentes para su desarrollo profesional (johnson y golombek, 2002), para lo cual basamos nuestra definición de y la investigación empírica sobre la investigación narrativa de los docentes en la teoría sociocultural de vygostky. nuestro propósito consiste en reafirmar nuestra convicción acerca del valor educativo de la investigación narrativa de los docentes como una “exploración sistemática que es conducida por y para los docentes por medio de sus propios relatos y lenguaje” (p. 6). asimismo, documentamos de manera empírica el papel crucial de los formadores de docentes para crear espacios mediacionales, las interacciones dialógicas y herramientas pedagógicas que promuevan la indagación narrativa de los docentes como forma de desarrollo profesional. también pretendemos re-conceptualizar la indagación narrativa de los docentes como un proceso sin limitantes de tiempo y espacio, y con una naturaleza fluida y emergente. palabras clave: desarrollo profesional de docentes de lenguas, indagación narrativa de los docentes, teoría sociocultural de vygotsky. * e-mail: pgolombek@ufl.edu ** e-mail: kej1@psu.edu how to cite this article (apa, 6th ed.): golombek, p. r., & johnson, k. e. (2017). re-conceptualizing teachers’ narrative inquiry as professional development. profile issues in teachers’ professional development, 19(2), 15-28. http://dx.doi.org/10.15446/profile.v19n2.65692. this article was received on january 30, 2017, and accepted on june 1, 2017. this is an open access article distributed under the terms of the creative commons license attribution-noncommercial-noderivatives 4.0 international license. consultation is possible at http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/. universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras16 golombek & johnson introduction profile has published language classroom research conducted by experienced and novice teachers, teacher educators, and teacher researchers over the last seventeen years. their advocacy of teacher inquiry and professional development parallels support within language teacher education (lte), in which teacher inquiry has been documented to be a resource through which language teachers can become cognizant of and develop their thinking about teaching, and how that thinking is materialized in instructional practices and interactions with students in specific settings (barkhuizen, 2013; barkhuizen, benson, & chik, 2014; freeman, 1998). similarly, it has been 15 years since we published our book arguing for and exemplifying language teacher research, what we called teachers’ narrative inquiry as professional development (johnson & golombek, 2002). we grounded our conceptualization of narrative inquiry in john dewey’s (1933) theory of experience. dewey argued that for experience to become educative rather than habit, students needed to engage in a reflective cycle—a process of active, persistent, and careful observation, consideration, and reflection; thus, to engage in that cycle, students needed to adopt a mind-set exhibiting open-mindedness (seeking alternatives), responsibility (recognizing consequences), and wholeheartedness (continual self-examination). using dewey’s theory and the examples of various language teachers’ narrative inquiry, we argued for teachers’ narrative inquiry as professional development because of the potential changes that self-examination can produce: inquiry into experience enables teachers to act with foresight. it gives them increasing control over their thoughts and actions; grants their experiences enriched, deepened meaning; and enables them to be more thoughtful and mindful of their work. (johnson & golombek, 2002, pp. 6-7) the (re)constructive process (self-study and narrating) and pro duc t (enhanced know ledge and written/spoken narrative) of self-inquiry can enable teachers to (re)interpret their experiences as teachers and to build local knowledge situated in their classrooms and contexts, and with their students and communities. knowledge generated as a result of teacher inquiry is characterized as constituent of located teacher education (johnson, 2006) because it is socially, culturally, historically, and institutionally situated in and responsive to teachers’ professional worlds and needs. at that time, questioning the predominance of researcher knowledge located outside the schools, teachers, and teaching that it was intended to shape, we argued that teacher research merited a place alongside researcher research. although we still advocate for this position, in this article we intend to call attention to the pivotal role that expert mediation, by skilled teacher educators acting intentionally and systematically, plays in teacher development through narrative inquiry. as an alternative to research done for teachers by researchers, we defined teachers’ narrative inquiry as “systematic exploration that is conducted by teachers and for teachers through their own stories and language” (johnson & golombek, 2002, p. 6).1 because we focused our lens on the agency of and value for teachers inquiring into their own teaching, we downplayed two important issues. first, the teacher narratives we have published by themselves (johnson & golombek, 2002) or as data analyzed in our research (for example, johnson & golombek, 2016) were typically initiated as part of an institutional requirement, including projects for courses, ma research projects or theses, and research for promotion. we recognize that many teachers continually seek to improve their teaching. however, we question whether teachers actually engage in systematic selfinquiry if they have not been socialized into the cultural 1 our initial concept of teachers’ narrative inquiry has typically been shorted to narrative inquiry. as a result, we are often grouped incorrectly with clandinin and connelly (2000) who describe narrative inquiry as a form of qualitative research that uses various tools that elicit and illustrate the storied lives of teachers and the way teachers use stories to make sense of their experiences. 17profile vol. 19, no. 2, july-december 2017. issn 1657-0790 (printed) 2256-5760 (online). bogotá, colombia. pages 15-28 re-conceptualizing teachers’ narrative inquiry as professional development practice of doing narrative inquiry, or initiate it on their own or with others due to factors such as lack of time, limited institutional resources, or no locally supportive communities. second, as part of an institutional requirement, teachers conducting narrative inquiry generally experience different forms of mediation, e.g., reading an academic book or article and interacting with a peer or teacher educator, throughout the endeavor. in focusing on the agency that teachers’ narrative inquiry energizes, we downplayed the instrumental role that expert mediation can play. our more recent work, grounded in a vygotskian sociocultural theoretical perspective on teacher learning (johnson, 2009; johnson & golombek, 2011a; johnson & golombek, 2016), has created a contradiction between our goal of having teachers take control over (and have the field recognize the legitimacy of ) their own professional development and the fact that by doing so, we may have excluded or not fully acknowledged the critical role of expert mediation that occurs within most professional development contexts where teachers engage in narrative inquiry. critiquing and re-conceptualizing these ideas through the lens of vygotskian sociocultural theory (vygotsky, 1978, 1986, 1987), we hope to extend our argument about the educational value of teachers’ narrative inquiry as professional development. we argue that teachers’ narrative inquiry—if conducted under the guise of discovery learning or even dewey’s experiential learning—runs the risk of reinforcing what vygotsky called everyday concepts, knowledge that is “unsystematic, empirical, not conscious, and often wrong” (karpov, 2014, p. 94). for teachers’ narrative inquiry to be professional development, that is for teachers to transform their thinking and doing of teaching through narrative inquiry, systematic and intentional mediation by teacher educators needs to be acknowledged and made explicit. by engaging, mediating, and socializing teachers in the cultural practice of narrative inquiry, they may gain understandings into the processes of professional development. in this way, we reiterate our conviction that lte matters (johnson, 2015; johnson & golombek, 2016). in t h i s ar t i c l e , w e of fe r a m ore nu an c e d characterization of the potential of teachers’ narrative inquiry as professional development by grounding our definition of and empirical research on teachers’ narrative inquiry from a vygotskian sociocultural theoretical perspective. our goal is to reaffirm our belief in the educational value of teachers’ narrative inquiry as “systematic exploration that is conducted by teachers and for teachers through their own stories and language” (johnson & golombek, 2002, p. 6), but also to empirically document the crucial role of teacher educators in creating mediational spaces, dialogic interactions, and pedagogical tools for teacher narrative inquiry as professional development to flourish. expert mediation is at the core of harnessing the transformative power of both written and oral narrative in ways that promote the development of teacher/teaching expertise. it is also our goal to re-conceptualize teachers’ narrative inquiry as unbounded by time and place, and as a more fluid and emerging process. the transformative power of narrative activity in our work characterizing the functional role of narrative, we argued that the transformative power of engagement in narrative activity lies in its ability to ignite cognitive processes that can foster second language (l2) teacher professional development (johnson & golombek, 2011b). we thus positioned narrative activity as a mediational means, arguing that: the act of narrating, as a cultural activity, influences how one comes to understand what one is narrating about. the telling or retelling (either oral or written) of an experience entails a complex combination of description, explanation, analysis, interpretation, and construal of one’s private reality as it is brought into the public sphere. (p. 490) we also argued that for narrative activity to function as a mediational means in fostering teacher professional universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras18 golombek & johnson development, it entails three interrelated and often overlapping functions: narrative as externalization, narrative as verbalization, and narrative as systematic examination. when narrative activity functions as externalization, it allows teachers to express their understandings and feelings by giving voice to their past, present, and even imagined future experiences. narrative as externalization fosters introspection, explanation, and sense-making, while simultaneously opening teachers’ thoughts and feelings to social influence. teachers developing awareness of what they are experiencing, thinking, and feeling may represent an initial step in cognitive development. however, if it is not connected to a change in teaching activity, self-awareness can be cognitively and emotionally detrimental in that teachers are aware that they need to change their teaching activity but are unable to do so. when engagement in narrative activity functions as verbalization, it assists teachers as they attempt to internalize the academic concepts that they are exposed to in their teacher education programs. narrative as verbalization allows teachers to use academic concepts deliberately and systematically to reexamine, rename, and reorient their everyday experiences. if internalized, academic concepts, “have the potential to function as psychological tools, which enable teachers to have greater awareness and control over their cognitive processes, and in turn, enable them to engage in more informed ways of teaching in varied instructional contexts and circumstances” (johnson & golombek, 2011b, p. 493). for narrative activity to function as verbalization, the academic concepts must be situated within the settings and circumstances of teachers’ professional worlds and realized through the concrete goal-directed activities of actual teaching. when engagement in narrative activity functions as verbalization, it becomes a potent mediational tool that supports teachers’ thinking in concepts (karpov, 2014) as they make sense of their teaching experiences and begin to regulate both their thinking and teaching practices. narrative as systematic examination represents the procedures, or parameters, for how teachers engage in narrative activity. in describing narrative as systematic examination, we highlighted that when teachers use narrative as a vehicle for inquiry, how they engage in narrative activity will fundamentally shape what they learn. therefore, different forms of narrative activity will entail different types of systematic examination, ultimately having different consequences for learning and development. for example, the parameters associated with writing a learning-to-teach history might focus the teacher’s attention more on the (re)construction of self as a teacher, whereas the parameters of an action research project might focus the teacher’s attention more on the specifics of classroom activity. these sorts of narrative activity and their parameters are cultural practices in language teacher education, so the process of inquiry is not something that teachers naturally do but are socialized into doing. if we carry out our logic about how what is learned is fundamentally shaped by how it is learned, then what teachers learn by being mediated solely by everyday concepts in the process of narrative inquiry is going to be markedly different than if mediated by academic concepts and expert mediation. and mediation by a teacher educator becomes paramount. two teacher narrative inquiry projects as concrete examples of how we have re conceptu a lize d te achers’ nar rat ive inquir y as professional development, we offer two distinct narrative inquiry projects that were recently completed by novice eng lish as a s econd language (esl) teachers enrolled in a masters in teaching english as a second language (ma tesl) program and an undergraduate teaching english as a second language (tesl) certificate program. we have selected these 19profile vol. 19, no. 2, july-december 2017. issn 1657-0790 (printed) 2256-5760 (online). bogotá, colombia. pages 15-28 re-conceptualizing teachers’ narrative inquiry as professional development two projects because they highlight the unbounded nature of narrative inquiry when it takes place over time and place, they identify the various mediational spaces, dialogic interactions (written and spoken), and pedagogical tools that teacher educators utilize with teachers as they engage in various sorts of narrative activity, and they document the crucial role of teacher educators in providing teachers with mediational means and tools to support the development of novice teachers’ teacher/teaching expertise. “teach off your students, not at them”: a teacher’s narrative inquiry into teacher questioning patterns as an example of narrative inquiry as an unbounded activity that can span over time and place, kong (2017) traced how her own teacher questioning patterns changed over the course of a two-year ma tesl program. the parameters of her narrative inquiry included three major teaching experiences that spanned the 1st, 2nd and 4th semesters of the program. the data sources she examined originated out of each of these teaching experiences: video recordings of her teaching, stimulated recall sessions about her teaching, written reflections, reflective teaching journal entries, lesson plans, and other field notes. the focus of her systematic examination was to trace how and why she shifted from simple knowledge-checking questions and clarification requests which elicited minimal student participation, to greater acknowledgment of student contributions and more genuine open-ended questions which fostered greater student engagement and increased opportunities for student language learning. in addition, her narrative inquiry highlights the various mediational spaces, dialogic interactions, and pedagogical tools that shaped the shifts that emerged in her questioning patterns over time. the final product of her narrative inquiry was a formal thesis (ma paper). it included an overview of a vygotskian sociocultural theoretical perspective on teacher learning, a literature review on how teacher questioning patterns have been conceptualized and empirically studied, methods of data collection and analysis, the overall findings, and implications for lte pedagogy. during the 1st semester of the program, kong, a chinese speaker of english, participated in an extended team teaching project that was embedded in a tesl methods course. the project requires teams of teachers to observe one session of an esl course they would eventually teach, collaboratively create a lesson plan to teach required course content, practice teaching their lesson in the methods course (video-recorded), teaching the actual lesson in the esl course (videorecorded), participate in a stimulated recall session with the methods course instructor (audio-recorded), and write an individual reflection paper about the entire project. in kong’s narrative inquiry, she examined how each of these mediational spaces offered different forms of mediation that shaped her emerging understanding of her questioning patterns. while analyzing transcripts of her actual teaching, kong found that she relied heavily on pre-planned teacher questions and responded to students with the traditional three-part initiation-response-evaluation (ire) interactional sequence (mehan, 1985). as just one example, in excerpt 1, the students are presenting oral summaries of a children’s story they had just read. their summaries were to include key elements of a summary: who, where, what, why, and when. excerpt 1 1. s1: (presenting summary of story 1) 2. t: so the question is where’s the, did the story take, take place? (1.8) is that included in the summary? is that? so (facing s1) do you know where is the story taken place? you can guess 3. s1: uh, (4.0) uhm…maybe in a farm? 4. t: yeah, yeah, yes, it’s fine, ok, let’s welcome the next presenter. (actual teach video 12:25 – 16:56) universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras20 golombek & johnson much to her dismay, her questioning patterns generated little or no response from the students. during the stimulated recall session, the teacher educator encouraged her to articulate her understanding of her own questioning patterns (“now how did you decide what question to ask, did you have that pre-prepared? or did you listen and then decide”). this interaction functions as a kind of narrative as externalization as the teacher educator encourages her to introspect and explain what happened, opening her up to social influence. after externalizing how her team had planned for this portion of the lesson (“we planned our questions based on what we thought they would say”) and recognizing that her interactions with her students did not go as planned (“yeah, but actually it turn out, uh, it not work well”), the teacher educator then asked kong to consider the pedagogical value of using more open-ended, genuine questions by encouraging her to take up and try out the teacher educator’s repeated use of the pedagogical tool, “teach off your students, not at them”. in her reflection paper, kong wrote: excerpt 2 after each student presented his or her summary, i asked questions to them, which are pre-designed and have a connection with the presentation part. however, the actual situation was that only two students managed the time limits and provided the whole idea of the story…i should give another creative question based on what they have provided in their summary rather than follow the pre-designed routine…to be able to interact effectively with students, [i need] to connect what students provide to the current topic and to “teach off students but not teach at them.” (extended team teaching project reflection paper 11/2015) the extended team teaching project, by design, created multiple mediational spaces for kong to externalize her understanding of her questioning patterns. during the stimulated recall session, as they watched the video recording of kong teaching, the teacher educator intentionally inserted the pedagogical tool, “teach off your students, not at them,” to assist kong in re-conceptualizing her epistemic stance as a teacher and develop a more conscious awareness of what constitutes interactive teaching. in kong’s reflection, we see the effect of narrative as verbalization, as she imagines what she could have done through the pedagogical tool “teach off your students, not at them.” kong’s developing awareness of the quality and character of her questioning patterns spilled over into the 2nd semester of the program, when she served as a volunteer teacher at a local non-profit adult literacy program. she collected 5 video-recorded lessons of her co-teaching a beginning-level oral communication skills course which became the basis of a research project she conducted for a graduate course (aplng 587) she was taking on theory and research in l2 teacher education. when analyzing those transcripts, she found that some remnants of the ire interactional sequence remained, however, she found herself becoming conscious of and was better able to engage in meaning-negotiations with these adult students. in fact, because the students had very limited english language proficiency she recalled feeling forced to ask for clarification, reformulate students’ responses, and co-construct ideas with her students. in the research project that she completed for her graduate course, she wrote: excerpt 3 this excerpt shows my awareness of students’ needs and my emerging competence in providing feedback based on students’ responses rather than follow a pre-prepared routine. i am better at able to “teach off students” …in short, i gained greater control over using questions to shape the overall learning environment. (course project for aplng 587 5/2016) interestingly, by analyzing transcripts of her interactions with her students she claimed that it was her students’ responses to her questions that pushed 21profile vol. 19, no. 2, july-december 2017. issn 1657-0790 (printed) 2256-5760 (online). bogotá, colombia. pages 15-28 re-conceptualizing teachers’ narrative inquiry as professional development her to use more interactive questioning patterns. thus, in this second teaching experience, it was engagement in the actual activity of teaching and analyzing transcripts of her own teaching that mediated both her thinking and her emerging ability to alter the quality and character of her own questioning patterns. during the 4th and final semester of the ma program she participated in a 15-week practicum with a mentor teacher in a freshman english composition course. she kept a weekly reflective teaching journal, observed and co-taught a range of pedagogical activities, and planned and taught three autonomous lessons. the practicum supervisor conducted three teaching observations, video recorded her teaching, and provided her with field notes. in addition, she discussed her teaching plans with her mentor teacher, wrote formal lesson plans, and reflected on her own teaching based on field notes. her analysis of transcripts of her questioning patterns throughout the practicum identified shifts in how she responded to student contributions. once again, she did find evidence that she continued to employ the ire interactional sequence at times during instruction. she described these instances as: excerpt 4 …initiating knowledge-checking questions in line 1-2 “so can you give me: an example that is (.) kind of a piece of writing that is more casual,” the students responded to the questions accordingly in line 3 “journal” and i evaluated their answers using repetition in line 4 “journal” and acknowledgements such as “uh…uhm” in line 4, and “ok” in line 8. (narrative inquiry 5/2017) however, later in this same lesson the turn taking pattern unfolds differently as her use of more genuine, open-ended questions created spaces for students to elaborate on their own and each other’s contributions. she verbalized this shift through the academic concepts of ire and irf (initiation-response-feedback) interactional sequences, re-naming her teaching activity and seeing its pedagogical value in supporting student understanding. as she reflected on this lesson she was able to articulate a sound pedagogical rationale for asking more openended questions and recognized that it was the students’ responses that were mediating how she thought about and began to enact her questioning patterns. excerpt 5 s3 comments by saying “it depends” in line 17 and then i follow up with another question to help students understand that a speech can be more casual or formal based on different audiences, in essence shifting the turn taking pattern from the ire to the irf sequence (wells, 1986). i am providing more explicit and specific questions in lines 20, 21, and 25 trying to support students’ understanding of the relationship between the audience and the writing/speech style and promote greater student participation. (narrative inquiry 5/2017) evidence of this was confirmed in an entry in her reflective teaching journal, where she had expressed her intention to teach in a more “interactive way” and had recognized an instance when she seized on an opportunity to encourage more student discussion. excerpt 6 this week i had my first practice teaching in the class…i wanted to practice the interactive way of teaching, encouraging more student-teacher interaction and students-students interaction…i designed guiding questions to encourage more students’ talk… while i was confirming their answer, i was also seeking a point to expand the classroom interaction. there was one student (s5) who gave me the answer of “a speech” when i asked for the example of formal writing. i made a quick decision that this could be a moment encouraging more discussion. (practicum reflective teaching journal, 2/2017) she went on to explain that an assignment she had completed in a graduate class had also mediated her understanding of the ire/irf interactional sequence as well as allowed her to project how she might use universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras22 golombek & johnson student contributions in the future to encourage more peer discussion. excerpt 7 coincidentally, i had done a transcription analysis using ire/ irf interactional sequence for aplng 482 this week…through the analysis of the interaction between the students and me…i realized that i handled well for students’ answers…although i provided the chance for other students to think of whether that example is good or not, it still became the interaction between that student (s3) who answered the question and me. now, i would think of using that as an opportunity to encourage peer discussion. for example, let s2 to explain why a speech may or may not be the formal writing, or let students to have a short discussion with their partners and then get back together. there are different ways to encourage more student-student interaction. that can guide the students to think independently instead of doing all the thinking work for them. (practicum reflective teaching journal, 2/2017) analyzing her own question patterns for a graduate course (aplng 482), engaging in actual teaching during the practicum, and writing a reflective teaching journal entry about both experiences worked in consort to mediate her emerging understandings of her questioning patterns. these mediational spaces, dialogic interactions, and reflective activities also allowed her to construct a rationale for her present and future teaching activities and consciously pay attention to how she might “teach off her students” in the future. overall, her narrative inquiry enabled her to trace how her conceptualization of interactive teaching emerged and to identify the mediational means that enabled her to enact questioning patterns that foster greater opportunities for student participation and engagement. in the conclusion of her narrative inquiry she wrote: excerpt 8 b esides my development in better controlling classroom interaction, my conceptualization of teaching became more complete and unique. similar to what vygotsky (1987) suggested that the internalization of academic concepts does not come easily or immediately but rather follows a “twisting path”, it took me over one year to gradually internalize the pedagogical tool “teach off your students, not at them” into a psychological tool that guided and regulated my conceptual thinking and teaching practices. initially, i was just aware of the tool but not able to perform accordingly during my first teaching practice. later, i became more consciously aware of this tool and gained a deeper understanding of interactive teaching which collectively formed my own conceptualization of teaching as using guiding questions to encourage students to think independently. (narrative inquiry, 5/2017) to echo kong’s point, vygotsky’s (1978) notion that the transformation from external forms of social interaction (interpsychological) to internalized psychological tools for thinking (intrapsychological) is not direct but mediated. as she became more consciously aware of this tool, she was not only able to use guiding questions to foster greater student engagement, she was also able to imagine her use of guiding questions in future instructional activities. kong’s narrative inquiry traces what this mediated process looks and feels like for a novice teacher. it also highlights the critical role that teacher educators and interactions with students play in mediating novice teacher thinking and doing. as she concludes, she appears highly aware of this developmental process: excerpt 9 i found that narrative activity such as writing down my thoughts in a reflection journal and verbalizing my ideas in a stimulated recall session, are mediational tools that function as externalization that allows me to connect the actual teaching practice with scientific concepts that i learned in other contexts; on the other hand, in-class interaction with students is another type of mediational means that promotes and facilitates the transformative process of internalization and the emergence of true concepts. (narrative inquiry, 5/2017) 23profile vol. 19, no. 2, july-december 2017. issn 1657-0790 (printed) 2256-5760 (online). bogotá, colombia. pages 15-28 re-conceptualizing teachers’ narrative inquiry as professional development from “telling students” to “allowing a better co-construction of language”: revising and annotating lesson plans as a form of narrative inquiry a second example of narrative inquiry as an unbounded activity that can span over time and place is herman’s revision of a lesson plan he had taught during his 16-week teaching internship in the undergraduate tesl certificate program. this was the final assignment of the internship in which interns were asked to “revise that lesson plan according to the range of mediational means (emphasis original) you experienced: what happened in class, what was discussed in your tiny talks, what my feedback was to your tiny talk, or any other feedback i gave you/interaction you had with me” (tsl 4940 final assignment). teaching interns were to document the changes made, reasons for changes, and the mediational means that fostered those changes. in herman’s case, his narrative inquiry takes on a very different form from the traditional final written chronicle that kong wrote. however, it still fits into our proposed re-conceptualization of narrative inquiry as professional development because in engaging in narrative activity and then reflecting on it in systematic and intentional ways while being mediated, herman traces his development. the final product of herman’s narrative inquiry is a series of interconnected narrative annotations he writes in the margins of his revised lesson plan, the final requirement of the internship. herman was in his last semester as an undergraduate, and co-taught an advanced listening and speaking class for international visiting scholars. though the lesson plan revision (future) centered on a previously taught lesson (past), the parameters of his narrative inquiry discussed in this section consist of three mediational spaces that were ongoing over the semester: “tiny talks” (zoshak, 2016), or post-teaching de-briefing sessions, audiotaped after each class with his co-teacher; interactions with the teacher educator; and his actual teaching of the lesson. in his systematic examination, he traced the revisions he made in his lesson plan as a result of teaching it and his pedagogical reasoning for doing so. he does this by re-voicing the pedagogical tool introduced by the teacher educator of “co-constructing student understandings through goal-oriented activities” as he attempts to move away from a teacher-fronted, transmission-style of teaching. his narrative inquiry highlights the various mediational spaces, dialogic interactions, and pedagogical tools that shaped how he systematically re-examined his original lesson plan. we present two of herman’s revisions, which are expressed as brief narrative annotations (margin comments) of re-storied pasts, his current pedagogical reasoning, and imagined futures. in the original version of the lesson plan, herman’s first activity was intended to orient students to the instructional focus of the day—word-level stress—by connecting it to an instructional focus from one of his previous lessons—american english allophones of /t/. though this seems as though it could be a constructive way to connect new with old information, the activity did not go well. he deleted this activity in his revised lesson plan and created a new one in its place: excerpt 10 conversation model • co-teacher and i have a conversation about a surprising experience one of us had, ask ss to listen for the words that we emphasize • ss will have a handout of the conversation, and will circle the words that they hear that are stressed • ask ss what kind of words were stressed *verb/ noun/adjective/preposition/content/function?* • discuss that this is called sentence level stress • ask ss where else stress occurs *where else is emphasis important besides in a sentence?* (revised lesson plan) universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras24 golombek & johnson in his narrative annotations (margin comments) below, herman re-stories how his actual teaching of the lesson (non-italicized) mediated his new understandings, his imagined activity (italicized), in a brief but pointed account. excerpt 11 for the warm up i did, i tried leading a discussion relating the previous lesson, which was the sounds of t, to word level stress. while it has some application because the different sounds of t are affected by word level stress, it just confused ss and made them think that we were still talking about sounds of t. i loosely tied it to stress, but i feel that they were not very responsive to this type of discussion where i was more or less telling them what was important. it completely lacked discovery and critical thinking on the ss part. this conversation modeling hopefully would get them thinking about stress at the sentence level or just in general, with the last part directing their attention to word level stress specifically, which is the main focus of the lesson. this is also a much more pointed warm-up, as it has a clear direction that the ss need to pay attention to and it allows them to form their own ideas of emphasis, and then going over it together allows for more co-construction. (revised lesson plan – margin comments) herman re-stories his lesson on word-level stress by describing how even though the allophones of /t/ (content of a previous lesson) are connected to word stress, his attempts to connect it to the new content left students “confused” and made them think the instructional focus was on the allophones of /t/. this narrative activity (margin comments on a revised lesson plan) acts as externalization, giving voice to his past, present, and imagined future, as he explains and makes sense of what happened in that lesson. herman articulates that it was problematic that he was “telling” students why the topic was important rather than engaging them in activities in which they could construct and/ or express what they understood about the topic (“it completely lacked discovery and critical thinking on the ss part”). herman appropriates the teacher educator’s pedagogical tool (“co-constructing understandings rather than telling”) thus, re-storying through this tool as narrative as verbalization. herman then narrates an imagined future by explaining the pedagogical reasoning behind the revisions (“much more pointed warm-up”, “it has a clear direction”). moreover, he articulates that the activity would allow “for more co-construction” of meaning by students of the content focus. herman’s re-storying of his past activity as “telling” and imaging his future activity as “co-construction” indicates his taking up the teacher educator’s mediation throughout the semester. in the second revision we present, herman introduces the tools he would use in an imagined future lesson: “word level stress guidelines” (wsg) and “word level stress pretest” (wsp). the wsg is a handout that conveyed information about some basic word-level stress patterns, for example, for two-syllable verbs and nouns; the second item, the wsp, is a brief diagnostic tool to ascertain students’ knowledge about word-level stress patterns. though he had lectured about the wsg and tried to gauge their understandings as a whole class by asking questions during his lecture, he had not formally assessed their individual understanding of word-level stress. in describing what happened in that class and what he could do differently, herman is again re-storying the past (non-italicized) while detailing an imagined future (italicized) in his narrative annotations. excerpt 12 i did these in class together, but should have done them much like my ed endings lp. going over them in class was an interactive way to lead and construct their ideas of stress, but did not allow for them to construct their ideas for themselves. for the pretest, instead of going over them in class together, a pretest activity would have allowed them to make the decisions on their own, showing me how they thought about word level stress, then i could have gone over their answers, allowing a better co-construction of language. for the guideline, i spent a lot of time telling them about these “rules” to follow, rather than just giving them a handout to look at later. if i 25profile vol. 19, no. 2, july-december 2017. issn 1657-0790 (printed) 2256-5760 (online). bogotá, colombia. pages 15-28 re-conceptualizing teachers’ narrative inquiry as professional development had done this, i could have spent more time honing in on the main focus of the lesson, which was word level stress on words that serve as both nouns and verbs. in all, both the pretest and the guidelines portion was just me leading the group, making them do listen and repeat and asking them if they understood or like having them guess what the stress pattern was. if i had spent more time just doing a diagnostic, i could have honed in more on the specific features i wanted them to pay attention to, rather than have them play this guessing game throughout class which was ultimately a waste and did not actually show any assessment of their comprehension. (revised lesson plan – margin comments) in his comments in the margin of his revised lesson plan, herman re-stories how he could have used the wsg differently and implemented the wsp as his first activity, describing what happened in that class (i did these in class together) juxtaposed with what he would do differently (but should have done them much like my ed endings lp). in reimaging this lesson, he references his use of a diagnostic tool that he had used in a previous lesson on the phonetic realization of -ed endings, which serves as a kind of model for what he could do in the future. the use of assessment (or diagnostic) tools was a requirement whose purpose was explained on the internship syllabus: “this [the assessment tool you devise] will guide you as you create lesson plans based on what you perceive student understandings/needs to be” (tsl 4940 syllabus, spring 2017). thus, from the beginning of the internship, the teacher educator had intentionally inserted the notion that interns should assess student understanding of instructional content before they taught it, so they could make their lesson content and activities more responsive to students. in excerpt 12, herman also describes what he and the students did in class, as well as evaluates it, which supports how he revises the lesson. while the going over of the guidelines as a whole-class activity was “interactive”, it did not enable students “to construct their ideas for themselves” because he was “telling them the ‘rules’ to follow”, doing listen and repeat drills, doing comprehension checks, and having students guess stress patterns. in re-storying this experience, he imagines what he could have done differently and identifies the pedagogical reasoning behind the changed activity. that is, giving them the pre-test activity ahead of time would have allowed herman to hone in on students’ understandings because it would show him how they thought about word level stress, and he could target their understandings: then i could have gone over their answers, allowing a better co-construction of language. herman’s successful use of an assessment tool in the previous -ed ending lesson and the teacher educator’s emphasis on assessing students’ pre-understandings mediate his understandings of what he did in the lesson, and what went awry, as well as what he could do and why in a future lesson to enhance his teaching of word-level stress. while herman mentions the pedagogical tool in his margin comments on his revised lesson plan, herman and his teaching partner (tp) often use the pedagogical tool in the post-teaching reflections of their “tiny talks” (zoshak, 2016). for example, in a lesson near the end of the semester, herman and his teaching partner evaluate his instructional activity as being more in line with students co-constructing their understandings, described as “letting them grapple with it [the material]” more and identifying why, at some points, he needed to “tell” students for instructional reasons: h: and there were some points where i like (2.0) just felt answering, (.5) the question, or telling them, (.5) in terms of time sake, t-to tp: hm h: try to keep the lesson going, tp: hm h: but i felt like i kinda like (1.) gave it to them more (tiny talk 13 00:23 00:34) herman’s revised lesson plan on word-level stress exemplifies teachers’ narrative inquiry as professional development of a different form. his revising of the universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras26 golombek & johnson lesson plan is a kind of systematic self-investigation in which he assesses his enactment of the lesson, evidencing different parameters of self-examination. he re-stories the past and imagines future activity through the various mediational spaces which the teacher educator had devised as part of the internship experience, expressing narrative as externalization and verbalization. overall, herman’s narrative inquiry enabled him to trace how he could have shifted from “telling students” to engaging them in activities in which they “co-construct their understandings in goal-oriented activities” that foster greater opportunities for student participation and engagement. summary though the final form of kong’s and herman’s narrative inquiries vary greatly, their narratives share the qualities of being emergent and unbounded by time and place. their narrative activity occurs over time: in kong’s case, over two years; in herman’s, over sixteen weeks. their narratives function as both externalization and verbalization as they try to make sense of what they experienced in their learning-to-teach experiences through engagement with the different pedagogical tools. their narratives connect these distinct activities and moments in time, or mediational spaces, re-storying the past and imagining the future in what was then their present time. nonetheless, their narrative activity entailed different types of systematic examination, ultimately having different consequences for learning and development. notably, expert mediation can be identified as harnessing the transformative power of both written and oral narrative activity in ways that promote the development of teacher/teaching expertise. kong begins “to teach off her students” as she uses questioning patterns that foster greater opportunities for student participation and engagement. herman imagines instruction in which students are actively co-constructing their understandings of content through activity, rather than having him tell them the answers. language teachers’ narrative activity versus narrative inquiry language teachers’ narrative inquiry as professional development takes time, envelops various people and places, takes place in particular institutional contexts and teacher education practices, and moves repeatedly between engagement in the activities of teaching and reflection on and expert-mediated reasoning about those activities. and this movement between activity and reflection/reasoning demarcates a critical feature of our re-conceptualization of teachers’ narrative inquiry as professional development. as these teachers’ narrative inquiry projects make clear, engagement in narrative activity, oral or written, with students or teacher educators, in graduate courses or reflective journals, influences how teachers come to understand themselves as teachers, their teaching, and their learning-to-teach experiences. the narrative activity that teachers engage in becomes the very entities they inquire into—for kong, what kinds of questions do i ask? for herman, how could i have taught this lesson differently? engagement in narrative activity has the potential to ignite certain cognitive processes that can, with expert mediation, transform teachers’ thinking and doing. on the other hand, engagement in narrative inquiry over time and place, enables teachers to trace their own development, as it is unfolding, and to highlight the mediational spaces, dialogic interactions, and pedagogical tools that foster it. as much as we still believe these narrative inquiry projects are done for teachers by teachers, our vygotskian sociocultural epistemological stance requires that we position them as deeply embedded in institutional contexts and teacher education practices that mold both what and how teachers learn to teach. and what happens inside these contexts and practices matters. as we saw with both kong’s and herman’s narrative inquiry projects, we, as teacher educators, played a critical role in creating mediational spaces for them to engage in narrative activity. practicing a 27profile vol. 19, no. 2, july-december 2017. issn 1657-0790 (printed) 2256-5760 (online). bogotá, colombia. pages 15-28 re-conceptualizing teachers’ narrative inquiry as professional development lesson, interacting during a stimulated recall session, re-envisioning a lesson plan, all constitute mediational spaces where we encouraged them to externalize their current understandings, to verbalize new ways of thinking and doing, to project what could be done in an imagined future, and to consider the consequences of their teaching practices on their students. teachers may engage in narrative activity without engaging in narrative inquiry. however, engaging in narrative inquiry requires narrative activity, and within those spaces, we offered our expertise as teacher educators to help teachers critically analyze their teaching practices, to re-envision their future teacher selves, and to articulate theoretically and pedagogical sound reasons for their teaching practices. as kong (2017) so aptly articulated: “it took me over one year to gradually internalize the pedagogical tool ‘teach off your students, not at them’ into a psychological tool that guided and regulated my conceptual thinking and teaching practices.” this process of gradual internalization is something that herman also notes when he provides feedback to his co-teacher: “i think it was still a little teacher fronted and i know it’s just like something we both (laughs) have to work on” (tiny talk #8 00:42-00:46). as novice teachers, could kong and herman have reached these new levels of understanding without our assistance? perhaps, but probably not. internalizing pedagogical tools such as “teaching off your students” or “co-constructing with, rather than telling students” not only requires repeated and sustained attempts to enact them in instructional activity but mediation, such as providing alternative activities, voicing expert ways of saying things, and providing validation. engaging with discovery learning can be a time consuming and misleading trial that reinforces a novice teacher’s feeling of incompetence; moreover, the consequences for student learning are too important. as teacher educators, we have a responsibility to push our teachers’ professional development within the brief time frame we have to work together to support the professional and emotional well-being of our teachers but also for their future students. we emphasize that narrative inquiry as professional development is a cultural practice, and as such, teachers need to be consciously aware of and immersed in the intentions, motives, and goals of this practice and the expert others’ (probably teacher educators’) mediation. and while we hope that experienced teachers continue to engage in narrative inquiry with expert others, including in collaboration with colleagues, we acutely recognize the conditions of the teaching profession that may be barriers. concluding remarks how then do we best support teachers’ narrative inquiry as professional development? by creating mediational spaces where teachers are supported by expert others as they engage in narrative activity. by providing systematic and intentional teacher educator mediation. by making explicit the intentions, motives, and goals of mediational spaces and offering mediation directed where individual teachers are at. by assisting teachers as they attempt to trace their own developing expertise in various ways. by recognizing that engagement in narrative inquiry is unbounded by time and place, is a fluid and emerging process, and shaped by expert mediation, the transformative power of narrative activity can help to promote teachers’ professional development over time. references barkhuizen, g. (ed.). (2013). narrative research in applied linguistics. new york, us: cambridge university press. barkhuizen, g., benson, p., & chik, a. (2014). narrative inquiry in language teaching and learning research. new york, us: routledge. clandinin, d. j., & connelly, f. m. (2000). narrative inquiry: experience and story in qualitative research. san francisco, us: jossey bass. universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras28 golombek & johnson dewey, j. (1933). how we think. chicago, us: henry regnery. freeman, d. (1998). doing teacher research: from inquiry to understanding. boston, us: heinle & heinle publishers. johnson, k. e. (2006). the sociocultural turn and its challenges for l2 teacher education. tesol quarterly, 40(1), 235-257. http://doi.org/10.2307/40264518. johnson, k. e. (2009). second language teacher education: a sociocultural perspective. new york, us: routledge. johnson, k. e. (2015). reclaiming the relevance of l2 teacher education. the modern language journal, 99(3), 515-528. http://doi.org/10.1111/modl.12242. johnson, k. e., & golombek, p. r. (eds.). (2002). narrative inquiry as professional development. new york, us: cambridge university press. johnson, k. e., & golombek, p. r. (eds.). (2011a). research on second language teacher education: a sociocultural perspective on professional development. new york, us: routledge. johnson, k. e., & golombek, p. r. (2011b). the transformative power of narrative in second language teacher education. tesol quarterly, 45(3), 486-509. johnson, k. e., & golombek, p. r. (2016). mindful l2 teacher education: a sociocultural perspective on cultivating teachers’ professional development. new york, us: routledge. karpov, y. v. (2014). vygotsky for educators. cambridge, uk: cambridge university press. http://doi.org/10.1017/ cbo9781107588318. kong, h. (2017). seeing teacher professional development: a classroom based analysis of questioning patterns (master’s thesis). the pennsylvania state university, usa. mehan, h. (1985). the structure of classroom discourse. handbook of discourse analysis: vol. 3. discourse and dialogue (pp. 119-131). malden, us: blackwell. vygotsky, l. s. (1978). mind in society. m. cole, v. johnsteiner, s. scribner, & e. souberman (eds.). cambridge, us: harvard university press. vygotsky, l. s. (1986). thought and language (a. kozulin, trans.). cambridge, us: mit press. vygotsky, l. s. (1987). thinking and speech (n. minick, trans.). in r. w. reiber (ed.), the collected works of l. s. vygotsky: vol. 3. problems of the theory and history of psychology (pp. 37-285). new york, us: plenum press. wells, g. (1986). the meaning makers: children learning language and using language to learn. portsmouth, us: heinemann. zoshak. r. (2016). ‘tiny talks’ between colleagues: brief narratives as mediation in teacher development. language teaching research, 20(2), 209-222. http://doi. org/10.1177/1362168815627659. about the authors paula r. golombek is clinical associate professor of linguistics at the university of florida, where she coordinates the undergraduate certificate in tesl. her research interests include narrative inquiry as professional development, teacher learning in second language teacher education, and sociocultural research and perspectives on teacher professional development. karen e. johnson is kirby professor of language learning and applied linguistics in the department of applied linguistics at the pennsylvania state university. her research interests include narrative inquiry as professional development, teacher learning in second language teacher education, and sociocultural research and perspectives on language teacher professional development. profiles of students in bilingual university degree programs using english as a medium of instruction in spain 79profile: issues teach. prof. dev., vol. 22 no. 2, jul-dec, 2020. issn 1657-0790 (printed) 2256-5760 (online). bogotá, colombia. pages 79-94 https://doi.org/10.15446/profile.v22n2.80735 profiles of students in bilingual university degree programs using english as a medium of instruction in spain perfiles de los estudiantes de las titulaciones universitarias bilingües en lengua inglesa en españa daniel madrid1 universidad de granada, granada, spain steven julius university of st. thomas, st. paul, usa this is an empirical study which aims to examine the profile of spanish university students in bilingual degree programs that employ english as a medium of instruction by utilizing the bilingual section of the teaching degree course at the university of granada as a sample. to this end, a questionnaire was applied to 216 students. while 75% of the students reported having problems when following a bilingual class, these difficulties were found to diminish or disappear after the first trimester. the majority of the students (70%) were satisfied with the program offered but they also detected some deficiencies, which provided a basis for various suggestions as to how university bilingual programs might be improved. keywords: bilingual degrees, bilingual education at the university level, content and language integrated learning, english as a medium of instruction este estudio empírico se propone analizar el perfil de los estudiantes universitarios que cursan titulaciones bilingües en españa, tomando como muestra la sección bilingüe del grado de maestro en lengua inglesa de la universidad de granada. con ese fin, se aplicó un breve cuestionario a 216 estudiantes de dicho grado para obtener los datos. aunque el 75 % de los estudiantes manifestaron que tenían problemas a la hora de seguir las clases en inglés, estas dificultades disminuían o desaparecían después de haber cursado el primer trimestre. la mayoría de los estudiantes (70 %) están satisfechos con el programa que se les ofrece, pero también detectan algunas deficiencias que hicieron constar con el fin de contribuir a mejorar la calidad de dicha titulación. palabras clave: aprendizaje integrado de contenidos y lenguas extranjeras, educación bilingüe en las universidades, inglés como lengua de instrucción, titulaciones bilingües daniel madrid  https://orcid.org/0000-0002-2198-7647 · email: dmadrid@ugr.es steven julius · email: steeez@gmx.com how to cite this article (apa, 7th ed.): madrid, d., & julius, s. (2020). profiles of students in bilingual university degree programs using english as a medium of instruction in spain. profile: issues in teachers’ professional development, 22(2), 79–94. https://doi.org/10.15446/ profile.v22n2.80735 this article was received on june 28, 2019 and accepted on january 28, 2020. this is an open access article distributed under the terms of the creative commons license attribution-noncommercial-noderivatives 4.0 international license. consultation is possible at https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/ https://orcid.org/0000-0002-2198-7647 https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/ universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras80 madrid & julius introduction since the beginning of the 21st century, the international dimension of university education has been expanding steadily due to various circumstances, among which it is important to highlight globalization (stewart, 1996), the internationalization of institutions of higher education, and migration patterns. although the terms internationalization and globalization are often used synonymously, there are important differences that are worth clarifying herein. additionally, the need for communication, which facilitates globalization, has converted the english language into a social necessity and priority as it is an indispensable tool for international communications and access to the global labor market. thus, globalization and membership in the european union have contributed to the introduction and promotion of language study by the various educational institutions at all levels of education with english being the most prevalent due to its status as a lingua franca (jenkins, 2014; seidlhofer, 2011). the establishment of the european higher education area (benito & cruz, 2005) has also facilitated the reciprocity of university degrees within the european union and the mobility of professors and students among member states. these developments have all served to foster the establishment of bilingual programs and curricula in european institutions. however, as sierra and lópez hernández (2015) stated, bilingual programs, which can be characterized as english as a medium of instruction (emi) or integrating content and language in higher education (iclhe), are often the result of the disjointed and experimental character of several initiatives which sometimes feature little quality control (smit & dafouz, 2012). emi and iclhe as a result of the globalization and internationalization of universities in the bilingual education modality, the following acronyms are frequently used: content-based instruction, content and language integrated learning (clil), emi, and iclhe. among these, emi is the one that best defines what actually occurs in university bilingual programs due to the fact that professors use a second language (l2, english in most cases) in order to impart subject matter but the attention dedicated to the explicit teaching of the l2 is practically nonexistent. however, in primary and secondary education the clil label would be more appropriate because linguistic concepts are integrated to a greater degree into the teaching of subject-specific curriculum. nevertheless, emi, clil, or more specifically iclhe are employed in studies on the topic indistinctly (dalton-puffer, 2011; fortanet-gómez, 2013). as we have seen, the development of bilingual curricula at international universities has been greatly favored by the ongoing processes of globalization and internationalization (de wit, 2011; knight & de wit, 2018). in the last twenty years, the momentum generated by the processes of globalization and internationalization in the modern world and the belief that they are beneficial have positively contributed to a gradual increase in the number of foreign students in universities (doiz et al., 2013; van der walt, 2013) and to the adoption of english as the international language of instruction in higher education. in contrast, dafouz and smit (2016) showed that in some cases bilingual initiatives have hindered the development of some minority languages (e.g., danish, dutch, finnish, norwegian, etc.). although the most popular acronyms employed to refer to university bilingual teaching initiatives are emi (doiz et al., 2013; schmidtunterberger, 2018) and iclhe (pérez vidal, 2015; wilkinson, 2004), dafouz and smit (2016) introduced the acronym ememus in reference to english-medium education in multilingual university settings as a synonym for iclhe even though they conceptualize the term differently. dafouz and smit (2016) situate ememus in the theoretical framework that they refer to as “road mapping,” which consists of the following six components: 81profile: issues teach. prof. dev., vol. 22 no. 2, jul-dec, 2020. issn 1657-0790 (printed) 2256-5760 (online). bogotá, colombia. pages 79-94 profiles of students in bilingual university degree programs using english as a medium of instruction... • english playing a leading role in lesson planning and implementation as a lingua franca (jenkins, 2014; seidlhofer, 2011); • academic disciplines with different types of discourse; • (language) management, which sometimes favors english to the detriment of a country’s official languages; • the roles that must be exercised by the individual agents (e.g., professors and students) and institutions (administration, etc.); • the teaching and learning activities created during classroom situations; and • internationalization and globalization. nevertheless, schmidt-unterberger (2018) utilizes emi as the most suitable acronym in reference to english language teaching in university contexts where there is hardly any attention paid to the linguistic features of the vehicular language. for this author, the combination of emi subjects which employ the methodologies of english for specific purposes and english for academic purposes would be the most realistic teaching model to follow. in this way, training for emi teachers must not only focus on linguistic competence, which is necessarily conveyed to have class, but also on the teaching of subject-specific content in such a way that professors are able to successfully integrate subject matter with language since all professors and teachers of nonlinguistic subjects are language teachers as well (bullock, 1975). according to coleman (2006), the commitment of universities to internationalization has led to commercialization, which has caused many educational institutions to become commercial brands in search of clients to make ends meet. due to this tendency, universities have increasingly sought to promote the establishment and development of bilingual and multilingual degree courses (ramos, 2013; sierra & lópez hernández, 2015). coleman identified seven factors that have been instrumental to the development of bilingual emi/clil programs in the context of european universities: • the use of clil allows for the integrated study of the language as a means of instruction and the subject matter (coyle et al., 2010); • internationalization as an appealing indicator of prestige; • increasing student exchanges by using english as the lingua franca without the need to learn the languages of each country; • the use of research and teaching materials in english; • labor mobility, involving professors traveling to foreign countries on temporary stays; • increasing career opportunities for graduates; and • attracting more international students by offering classes in english. knight (2011) identified various myths and misconceptions about internationalization that are usually defended by academic institutions, such as the erroneous view that the more international students are enrolled in an institution, the greater the extent to which an institution’s culture and curricula will adopt internationalization. knight further elaborated on false impressions such as the more international a university is, the better its reputation will be or the more the international agreements an institution is party to, the more prestigious it will become and, as a result, the more attractive it will be for students. furthermore, de wit (2011) added other commonly held false beliefs like the general idea that internationalization is similar to simply teaching english, studying abroad, and having many foreign students. additionally, it is generally thought that higher education is international by nature and that internationalization ought to be an objective in its own right. although they do exist, the aforementioned misconceptions are relative and in many cases fail to come about. as such, universities have committed themselves to internationalization and have vigorously endeavored to augment and promote internationalization. for that universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras82 madrid & julius reason, spain’s ministry of education, culture, and sports (mecd) emphasizes various strategic principles to facilitate internationalization through the following document: estrategias para la internacionalización de las universidades españolas 2015–2020 (strategies for the internationalization of spanish universities 2015–2020). for example, this document outlines such strategies as the consolidation of a highly internationalized system by increasing the number of bilingual undergraduate and master’s degree programs, boosting the international appeal of spanish universities, and promoting competitiveness and cooperation with other regions in the world (mecd, 2014). bilingual degrees at spanish universities in 2002, private spanish universities began offering bilingual degrees, preceding the public education system in doing so. dafouz and nuñez (2009) pointed out that private universities provide more flexibility in the implementation of new degrees and greater freedom when it comes to staff renewal according to a university’s teaching needs. in the last few years, european universities have been compelled by the need to strengthen their global reach with the objective of attaining higher levels of international competitiveness and attracting foreign students. additionally, european universities are increasingly showing interest in multilingual degree programs and many institutions of higher education are offering more courses in foreign languages. a full list of the courses and subjects based on emi at spanish universities can be consulted by viewing the document entitled degree programs in english language in the spanish university system (matilla vicente, 2013). the report found that the fields of economics, business administration, engineering, architecture, and education have the greatest number of undergraduate and postgraduate degrees in english (martín del pozo, 2013). within this broad panorama of bilingual degree programs, there is a great deal of diversity and heterogeneity in the courses being offered, the teaching requirements, and the admission criteria for students (fortanet-gómez, 2013; julius & madrid, 2017; martín del pozo, 2013). according to sierra and lópez hernández (2015), in 2013 there were 33 spanish universities offering different bilingual degree programs out of a total of 77. this fact serves to highlight just how important bilingual education has become in spain in recent years (escobar & arnau, 2018; ramos, 2013). precedents: research studies on emi and iclhe degree programs the majority of studies in bilingual programs have focused on clil students in primary and secondary school. even so, the last few years have experienced growth in emi programs at universities and consequently, research into such programs has increased. for instance, dafouz et al. (2007) studied the perceptions of 71 students and 67 professors in three science degree programs (chemistry, health sciences, and aeronautical engineering) with regard to the effects of the emi programs on student competence and attitude. this study demonstrated that the linguistic skills which benefited the most were vocabulary, pronunciation, and listening comprehension in the language used as a means of instruction (english). for 72% of the students, classes given in english were more motivating than those in their native language (spanish) and the use of a foreign language did not diminish student participation in class. professors and students alike expressed very positive attitudes towards the emi program and furthermore, the students did not simply acknowledge the benefit of learning by means of english but they also greatly valued the implications for their future career opportunities. toledo et al. (2012) studied the beliefs, academic performance, and the attitudes of university students beginning their bilingual degrees in the faculty of education at the university of huelva. their results demonstrated that the students positively evaluated 83profile: issues teach. prof. dev., vol. 22 no. 2, jul-dec, 2020. issn 1657-0790 (printed) 2256-5760 (online). bogotá, colombia. pages 79-94 profiles of students in bilingual university degree programs using english as a medium of instruction... their selection of the emi program and showed great satisfaction with their improvement in practically all language-related skills and their academic performance in general. despite the supposed increase in effort and dedication on the part of the students due to following a bilingual curriculum, they considered the course to have positively impacted their education. as regards the teachers and professors, it also became apparent that it is of fundamental importance to improve their training in emi/iclhe methodology, enhance their linguistic competence in english, and increase our understanding of their personal motivations, interests, and needs for professional development. johnson (2012) analyzed the attitudes of five university professors from the university of alcalá (spain) towards their bilingual project and found that although the professors participating in the study felt well-prepared to teach emi lessons in the university context, they did not have confidence in the extent to which students in teacher-education programs were prepared to teach in schools using an l2 in the future. nevertheless, the overall evaluation provided by these professors was very positive. maíz-arévalo and domínguez-romero (2013) studied the perceptions of students pursuing a bilingual degree in economics and business administration at the madrid complutense university as regards the effects of the emi program. their results showed that the students perceived considerable development in their english listening and speaking skills. similarly, 71% of the students recognized their progress in learning subject-specific vocabulary and 75.5% acknowledged they felt more motivated as a result of having classes in english. in relation to their participation in class, the students recognized that it was similar to their experiences in classes taught in spanish but indicated that it depended on the professor’s methodology and the subject matter of the lesson. yang and gosling (2013) explored the perceptions of 54 students taking part in an emi program in international tourism management at a national polytechnic university in taiwan. this study showed the beneficial effect these programs have on linguistic and communicative competence among students using a vehicular language, particularly from the end of the first trimester onwards. however, the students did observe slower progress in course-specific subject matter and they reported having difficulties with reading comprehension and writing texts in english. furthermore, the students were found to keep silent more frequently and participate less than in classes taught in mandarin chinese. when it came time to evaluate their experience, they preferred to complete the surveys in their mother tongue because they felt more competent than in their l2. apart from that, they also showed a preference for professors who were native english speakers since the nonnative professors experienced difficulties teaching subject matter in english. despite these challenges, they were motivated by classes taught in english and acknowledged their advantages over other professionals in competing for future employment. by contrast, 25% of the students did have a negative impression of the course due to the stress and anxiety that resulted from not being able to comprehend course contents in the english language. sierra and lópez hernández (2015) studied emi programs in professional development courses within the childhood education field and their findings illustrated the strengths and weaknesses of such programs from the point of view of both professors and students. on the one hand, the strengths included the high ratings given by students to all the subjects taught in english during their degree course, the importance of doing their student-teaching practicum in a bilingual clil school, and the completion of their final project in english. on the other hand, the weaknesses highlighted the inadequate training for professors related to nonlinguistic subjects using emi methodology. jover et al. (2016) studied the types of basic training courses found in schools of education for future primary universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras84 madrid & julius school emi teachers and their analysis explained the reasons why this training is deficient (de la maya & luengo, 2015; madrid manrique & madrid, 2014; pérez cañado, 2016a) in addition to the complaints from university students in emi programs in reference to the lack of training for the professors that teach these courses. in this study, they emphasized the precariousness of the emi programs in operation at zero cost, which is to say those programs set up with the readily available human resources and without establishing a staff recruitment process specifying the necessary qualifications for an emi professor: a degree in the academic subject to be taught, a c1 level in english, and adequate training in clil methodology. escobar and arnau (2018) carried out various emi studies at the university of barcelona with students from the primary school teacher education program. some very interesting conclusions were offered as to the sociolinguistic factors that influence students’ decisions to study for a degree in primary education (evnitskaya & torras-vila, 2018). furthermore, escobar (2018a) provided insights into the students’ opinions of their degree course. borràs-comes and escobar (2018) also analyzed the ability of students to develop discourse in an emi/ichle setting. moreover, arnau et al. (2018) studied student academic performance in the same context. finally, escobar (2018b) explored the preparation of professors that offer such bilingual courses. in light of the diversity and heterogeneity amongst emi/iclhe programs offered in the spanish and european contexts specifically, we believe that it is necessary to study the characteristics of these programs and the students that enroll in them, the impact on the student body at large, and the perceptions of students as to program strengths and weaknesses with the aim of implementing measures to consolidate and contribute to a more efficient and effective system. that is the general objective of the study that we shall now present. method the work that we are to present is a descriptive study of the personal characteristics of students in the bilingual degree course in primary school education (maestro en educación primaria) at the university of granada. we controlled for three quantitative and four qualitative variables, which were measured by means of an open-ended questionnaire. in this study, we intend to provide an answer to the research questions in the questionnaire included in the appendix. participants this research was carried out with the four bilingual groups of the bilingual degree course in primary school education at the faculty of education (university of granada) in 2017–2018: 52 first-year students, 54 second-year students, 57 third-year students, and 53 fourth-year students. data collection instruments and controlled variables in order to respond to the aforementioned research questions, the participants completed a brief questionnaire that is included in the appendix. we addressed the validity of the questionnaire’s content by ensuring that the research questions are a representative sample of all the aspects that we seek to measure in relation to the variables controlled for. for the purpose of improving validity and reliability and obtaining more exact insight into the responses to the research questions, we took into consideration the perspectives of the two authors of this research project and that of the coordinator of the bilingual degree course at the institution where this study took place. data and statistical analysis the analysis of the data and the statistical calculations that we carried out with the first three research questions, which are quantitative, was done using the statistics software program spss 20. we calculated the 85profile: issues teach. prof. dev., vol. 22 no. 2, jul-dec, 2020. issn 1657-0790 (printed) 2256-5760 (online). bogotá, colombia. pages 79-94 profiles of students in bilingual university degree programs using english as a medium of instruction... basic descriptive statistics (mean and standard deviation) and then we checked for statistically significant differences among the students. to this end, we applied student’s t-test or the mann-whitney u test according to the distributions of parametric and nonparametric student ratings with a significance level of p ≤ 0.05 (95%). institutional environment the bilingual section at the faculty of education (university of granada) teaches approximately half of the curriculum’s subjects in the english language, which is to say 116 of the total 240 credits required for the degree. the teaching of lessons, course assignments, seminar activities, and evaluations are all completed in english in addition to the student-teacher practicum, which takes place in bilingual schools in granada. this is an emi experience in which the professors teach the subject matter in english by putting more emphasis on the curricular content than on the linguistics of english, which is learnt implicitly as a result of the intensive and practical use of the language in class. the main objective of the faculty of education is to offer graduates of the primary school teaching degree course an education that responds to the social demand for foreign language knowledge. in turn, this provides graduates with more competitive advantages and greater mobility in an increasingly globalized world in which the knowledge of languages is an indispensable necessity. results and discussion once the questionnaires were applied and the opinions expressed by the students were analyzed, we obtained the following results in each of the areas investigated. english competence of students with regard to the students’ attainment of linguistic standards as measured in the first question of the questionnaire, 45% of first-year students began the bilingual degree course with a b1 and 24% started with a b2 of the cefr (council of europe, 2001). in the study by escobar (2018a) with students at the university of barcelona, 46% of the students enrolled in 2015 with a b1, 44% obtained a b2, and nobody earned a c1. however, as students advance in the degree program, they continue to develop their linguistic competence and this improvement coincides with more linguistic accreditations. in this study, second-year students with a b2 ascended to 35%, third-year students with the same accreditation increased to 40%, and a b2 was held by 63% of the fourth-year students. when considering all program participants, 10% of the students obtained a c1 and one student owned a c2 certification. based on the application of the mann-whitney u test, we analyzed the differences among students in the different years of their degree and found that these differences are statistically significant (p = .00 in every case) i.e. in favor of the subsequent year of the degree course (fourth-year over third-year, third-year over second-year, etc.). while in our study the final level of linguistic competence was situated around a b2, in other university contexts, like that at the university of barcelona (escobar & arnau, 2018) for example, a b2 is necessary for enrollment and it is expected that the majority of students will attain a c1 by the end of their degree. complementary language education in the context of complementing foreign language lessons at school, one quarter of all students (25.14%) did not have any supplementary private classes whereas all of the remaining students had enjoyed the privilege of additional language education: 13.77% of the students reported having as many as 108 classroom hours, 23.97% had up to 325 hours, 7.48% up to 540 hours, 4.79% up to 760 hours, and 24.85% of the students had surpassed 760 hours. besides private classes, students complete their university education by participating in the erasmus exchange program, whereby they study abroad in english at other european universities. according universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras86 madrid & julius to data from the faculty internationalization office (oficina de internacionalización de la facultad), of all the students who had studied abroad in academic year 2016–2017, a total of 20.6% were enrolled in a bilingual degree program whereas in 2017–2018 the proportion was 19.35%. as we shall see below, the majority of the students surveyed were of the opinion that a b1-certified level of linguistic competence was sufficient as a starting point to be able to follow lessons taught in english, which was a fact shared by sierra and lópez hernández (2015). stays abroad in englishspeaking countries stays abroad in english-speaking countries had a positive effect on students’ linguistic competence. although most students, when considered globally, did not enjoy a stay abroad in an english-speaking country (70.35%), 17.06% of the students reported having spent 4 to 12 weeks in a country where english was spoken, 6.28% had the chance to experience from 13 to 24 weeks, 4.19% had between 25 and 36 weeks, and 2.12% had the privilege of being in an english-speaking country for more than 37 weeks. reasons for choosing the emi program the students expressed a variety of reasons as to why they had chosen the bilingual degree course and those reasons are summarized in the following categories: finding a better job. a total of 61% of the students chose the bilingual section of the degree course because they believed the emi program would provide them with greater future career opportunities and help them to obtain a better job. in other words, the students were clearly motivated by the utility of bilingual competence in a competitive labor market. amongst all factors, the idea of having better job prospects in the future plainly stood out as the most important contributing factor for choosing the bilingual course as stated by the students: “in the near future most schools will be bilingual and will demand teachers with a bilingual degree.” “a degree in english gives you better opportunities in the job market.” “i think that taking the degree in the bilingual modality gives students more opportunities to find a better job.” “it opens more doors when finding a job.” love for languages. a total of 13.47% of the students acknowledged their passion for the study of languages. this motive was also frequently accompanied by the instrumental nature of foreign language competence in their future: “i’ve always liked english and i was very good at school.” social recognition. for 13.20% of the students, a university degree in english entails a certain social prestige and global importance, which is reflected in its subsequent demand in the labor market: “the social importance of english today is growing and it opens many doors.” complementary education. for 10.76% of the students, the appeal of earning a bilingual degree was seen as an excellent enhancement to their studies, especially as foreign language competence currently offers many advantages and provides better employment opportunities: “in addition to the social importance of english and its usefulness in finding a quality job, this degree gives me the opportunity to get a more complete education.” as was also shown in the studio by evnitskaya and torras-vila (2018), the imagined identities of each participant (norton, 2000) have the greatest influence when choosing a bilingual degree in terms of their personal motivation. additionally, students also decide to improve their english in bilingual programs because they believe english will enhance their future career opportunities and cultural awareness as the international 87profile: issues teach. prof. dev., vol. 22 no. 2, jul-dec, 2020. issn 1657-0790 (printed) 2256-5760 (online). bogotá, colombia. pages 79-94 profiles of students in bilingual university degree programs using english as a medium of instruction... language of science, technology, and communication among countries (norton & gao, 2008). to sum up, the two main reasons why students choose a bilingual degree are students’ imagined identities, which is to say the importance and meaning that english has in the personal life of each student (evnitskaya & torrasvila, 2018), and the role of english as it is currently considered to be the language of prestige (dafouz & smit, 2016). similarly, doiz et al. (2014) showed that although students recognized the fact that taking courses in english is difficult and requires additional effort to understand contents, they chose a bilingual degree and accepted the challenge believing that they would learn more in english and that it would be extremely useful in their professional future. problems in emi classes there are professors who think that a substantial number of students do not have the necessary linguistic preparation in order to follow a bilingual curriculum. in fact, 18% of the students had no linguistic accreditation and as such, would typically perform at a level oscillating between an a2 and b1 of the cefr (council of europe, 2001). however, 24.55% of the students admitted they generally had no problems following along in class. the remaining 75.45% did report having difficulties following lessons in english from time to time: “the biggest problem i have found is not being able to transfer into spanish the concepts learnt in english.” “sometimes i had problems with the vocabulary and oral expression activities.” “after three years having classes in english, it is the same for me receiving the information in english or spanish.” the most frequent problems occurred during listening comprehension activities as students reported having difficulties understanding professors’ explanations (37.72%), especially during the first weeks of class. similarly, the comprehension of subject-specific vocabulary was also reported as a frequent problem (17%). by comparison, toledo et al. (2012) found that 20.5% of the students had trouble when dealing with specific subject matter. regardless, from the first trimester onwards, students overcame their difficulties in comprehension and were able to follow classes normally. in spite of their improvements in comprehension, 12.38% of the students indicated they had some problems expressing themselves orally when it was time to participate and give presentations in class. doiz et al. (2014, p. 124) found that: (a) 30.8% of the students encountered problems with the difficulty of the emi program; (b) 13% reported not having sufficient english language competence to understand the professors’ explanations; and (c) 10.2% found fault in the program’s workload as it was deemed to be greater than that of the monolingual program. do emi students learn more effectively in their l1 or l2? there are professors who distrust the results of bilingual programs and believe that students learn less than if they take classes in their native language. indeed, in this study 51.49% of the students reported learning more in classes taught in their mother tongue (spanish) than those classes taught in english. this was offset by the opinion of 27% of the students, who thought that there was no difference between learning in spanish and english as they reported learning in the same way regardless of the language. a total of 12.27% of the students recognized the fact that the more or less effective learning of subject matter in english depended on the methodology used by professors, especially their ability to make contents intelligible and adapt to the students’ linguistic competence (krashen, 1985): “i learn more in spanish because classes in the mother language are easier and we express ourselves better and with more freedom.” universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras88 madrid & julius “complex concepts are clearer in the mother language.” “the quantity and quality of knowledge is even higher when i learn it in english because there are more sources and information in this language.” “i think there is no difference and i learn the same in both classes.” “i think it depends on the professor and the techniques used in class.” on this topic there was a sharp contrast between the results of this study and those of toledo et al. (2012), in which 52% of the students reported having learnt more effectively in english than if they had taken a course in their mother language (spanish). only 2.6% of the respondents showed having learnt less in english than in spanish and 44.7% asserted they learned in the same way regardless of the language used. these evaluations were also found to strengthen whenever the students chose the program voluntarily. despite the differences in student perceptions in this study, the number of students that successfully passed the courses taught in english is similar to those students who did the same courses in spanish, at around 80%. thus, the performance of both groups is similar despite the perceived difficulties of learning in an l2. overall assessment of the emi program in the survey’s last question, students were asked to give their opinion about the emi program in general (overall satisfaction, strengths, weaknesses, how to improve it, etc.). generally speaking, the students were satisfied with the emi degree program. this finding is confirmed by research from sierra and lópez hernández (2015), who found that 73% of the students did affirm their satisfaction with their educational experience in the bilingual modality. in toledo et al. (2012), the majority of the students was very satisfied with the program and even those students who had doubts about the program at the beginning expressed their satisfaction. this level of satisfaction correlates with one’s degree of linguistic competence, which is to say the greater language skills one possesses, the more satisfied they will be with the program. however, the determining factor in student satisfaction was not their linguistic competence but rather their attitude and motivation towards the bilingual program (madrid & roa, 2018). for example, there are students with only modest language skills who expressed tremendous satisfaction with the program (martín et al., 2018; toledo et al., 2012). amongst the reasons for satisfaction, most students mentioned their progress in learning the language. the specific skills that improved the most were listening and reading in addition to improvements in vocabulary. students also pointed out the effect of the program on their speaking skills, particularly in reference to their ability to maintain a conversation in english with their classmates in order to complete an activity or assignment (lasagabaster & ruiz de zarobe, 2010; marsh et al., 2015; pérez cañado, 2012; ruiz de zarobe & jimenez catalán, 2009). doiz et al. (2014) also demonstrated the high degree of student satisfaction with emi programs and the students highlighted their progress in the english language (45.7%), the advantages for their professional future (imagined identities; 42.9%), and the great competence developed for future international communication with peoples from other countries (26.1%). although a good deal of the students (36%) did not identify any areas for improvement and subscribed to the program as is, the majority (64%) suggested various ideas to improve the bilingual degree course. included in the most frequent comments and suggestions by order of frequency, students mentioned the need to (a) officially recognize the bilingual nature of the degree with further accreditation (mentioned 181 times; escobar, 2018a) and (b) to improve the linguistic competence of participating professors (159 times; see escobar, 2018b; johnson, 2012; martín et al., 2018; pérez cañado, 2016a, 2016b, 2016c). 89profile: issues teach. prof. dev., vol. 22 no. 2, jul-dec, 2020. issn 1657-0790 (printed) 2256-5760 (online). bogotá, colombia. pages 79-94 profiles of students in bilingual university degree programs using english as a medium of instruction... however less frequently, the students also established the need to (c) support students with scaffolding to help them overcome their difficulties in expressing their ideas in a foreign language (123 times), (d) increase the number of subjects taught in english in the curriculum (109 times), and (e) incorporate native english-speaking professors to teach as a part of the emi program (95 times; see lasagabaster & sierra, 2002; madrid & pérez cañado, 2004). at a much lower frequency, the students requested that (f ) classes be organized according to the linguistic demand placed on students and adapt content to the students’ linguistic competence (37 times), (g) professors not require any more additional effort than in the traditional monolingual program (25 times), and (h) professors place more emphasis on contents that are more difficult for students to understand (21 times). the students’ comments emphasized the following points: “some professors are not competent to lecture in english. many professors do not have enough command of the english language to lecture in a bilingual degree.” “the professors who teach in the bilingual degree are much more demanding with the students than those who teach in the monolingual program.” “we need more native professors to increase the quality of the program.” “it is urgent that the bilingual degree obtain official recognition and become a different degree than the monolingual one instead of being considered simply an accessory to the generic primary school degree.” conclusions in this study we explored the individual characteristics of the students enrolled in the bilingual degree course in primary school education (maestro en educación primaria) at the university of granada with the objective of identifying the linguistic profile of students at the beginning and end of their studies. furthermore, we examined the reasons why they chose the degree, the difficulties they encountered, their level of satisfaction, the educational benefits they experienced, the program’s strengths and weaknesses, and the areas of improvement identified by students in order to enhance the quality of the program. these results enable us to better understand the typical profile of a bilingual student in education, with special reference to the faculty of education of the university of granada, and to conclude that this degree is in high demand. the students’ linguistic proficiency, though it may be deficient and cause problems when following class discussions during the first trimester for some first-year students, is sufficient to attend classes with good results, especially if the students are highly motivated from the outset. a majority of students chose the bilingual degree course because they regarded the program as a way to enhance their future job prospects or due to their interest in learning foreign languages (imagined identity). while about one quarter of the students did not have any problems following classes and carrying out subject-specific activities in english, the majority did encounter some difficulties, which were usually observed during the first trimester, after which they declined considerably. it is also worth noting that final student achievement in the bilingual degree and monolingual degree sections was similar; in both cases, about 80% of the students passed their assessments. in general, most of the students were satisfied with the emi program that they had enrolled in. while this level of satisfaction did correlate with linguistic proficiency, the main determinant in student satisfaction was their motivation and commitment to the bilingual program. among the potential areas identified by students to improve program quality, they highlighted the need to officially recognize the bilingual section of the degree course for its merit beyond a normal teaching degree, provide more support for students who experience difficulties following the bilingual curriculum, increase the number of subjects taught in english in the syllabus, and incorporate native english-speaking professors into the program. universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras90 madrid & julius we hope this study contributes to a greater understanding of the main personal and individual characteristics of the students doing the bilingual degree course that we have analyzed in this case study. we believe this student profile extends to many other degrees in the humanities and education in other spanish universities. the strengths and weaknesses detected and the areas identified by students for future improvements are very useful to bear in mind in order to improve the quality of emi programs both at the university of granada and other institutions. references arnau, l., b orràs-comes, j., & escobar, c. 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(2012). creencias, rendimiento académico y actitudes de alumnos universitarios principiantes en un programa plurilingüe [beliefs, academic performance and attitudes of beginning university students in a multilingual program]. porta linguarum, (18), 213–229. https://doi.org/10.4995/redu.2013.5526 https://doi.org/10.4995/redu.2013.5526 https://doi.org/10.1075/japc.18.1.07nor https://doi.org/10.1075/japc.18.1.07nor https://doi.org/10.1080/13670050.2011.630064 https://doi.org/10.1080/13670050.2011.630064 https://doi.org/10.1080/02619768.2016.1138104 https://doi.org/10.1080/02619768.2016.1138104 https://doi.org/10.1080/13670050.2014.980778 https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-11496-5_3 https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-11496-5_3 https://doi.org/10.21832/9781847691675 https://doi.org/10.21832/9781847691675 https://doi.org/10.1080/13670050.2018.1491949 https://doi.org/10.1075/aila.25 https://doi.org/10.1016/s0738-0593(97)87232-x https://doi.org/10.1016/s0738-0593(97)87232-x 93profile: issues teach. prof. dev., vol. 22 no. 2, jul-dec, 2020. issn 1657-0790 (printed) 2256-5760 (online). bogotá, colombia. pages 79-94 profiles of students in bilingual university degree programs using english as a medium of instruction... about the authors daniel madrid is a full-time professor of tefl in the faculty of education of the university of granada (spain), giving efl methodology courses for primary and secondary school teachers. he has also produced a wide variety of teaching materials and has carried out several research projects on tefl and bilingual education. steven julius graduated from the university of st. thomas in minnesota (usa). later on, he earned a master’s degree in english linguistics. he currently works as an english teacher in a private school in granada. van der walt, c. (2013). multilingual higher education: beyond english-medium orientations. multilingual matters. https://doi.org/10.21832/9781847699206 wilkinson, r. (ed.). (2004). integrating content and language: meeting the challenge of a multilingual higher education. universitaire pers maastricht. yang, w., & gosling, m. (2013). national appraisal and stakeholder perceptions of a tertiary clil programme in taiwan. international clil research journal, 2(1), 1–17. https://doi.org/10.1080/136700 50.2013.808168 https://doi.org/10.21832/9781847699206 https://doi.org/10.1080/13670050.2013.808168 https://doi.org/10.1080/13670050.2013.808168 universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras94 madrid & julius appendix: questionnaire choose the corresponding options and answer the following questions about your degree program. 1. as of today, indicate your level of english language accreditation (circle one): a1, a2, b1, b2, c1, c2, none, only secondary school studies. 2. besides your english classes during secondary school, have you ever received private lessons? if so, how many hours per week have you had and for how many years? 3. have you ever lived in an english-speaking country? if so, for how many months? 4. what is the main reason why you chose the bilingual degree course? 5. which problems have you had in following a bilingual english curriculum in class? 6. do you think you learn more content and more effectively in the classes taught in spanish or in english? why? 7. please give your overall opinion of the bilingual program (the benefits you have experienced, program’s strengths, weaknesses, how to improve its quality, etc.). 65 https://doi.org/10.15446/profile.v20n2.67142 the wisdom of teachers’ personal theories: creative elt practices from colombian rural schools la importancia de las teorías personales de los profesores: prácticas creativas de la enseñanza del inglés en colegios rurales colombianos ferney cruz arcila*1 king’s college london, london, united kingdom stemming from a study of what it is like to teach english in rural colombia considering both english language teaching policy and social challenges of these contexts, this paper explores different locally grounded english language teaching practices. through the analysis of teachers’ narratives and field observations, four examples of such practices are discussed. these examples highlight how teachers intuitively tend to make the most of their expertise, the limited resources available, and the local lingua-cultural repertoires in an attempt to help students make sense of english. from the perspective of language teaching as a socially sensitive practice, findings suggest that teachers’ own experiential and situational knowledge constitutes a powerful platform from which valuable bottom-up practices are and can further be devised. key words: critical pedagogy, english language teaching practices, teacher knowledge, rural contexts. partiendo de un estudio sobre lo que conlleva enseñar inglés en colombia rural considerando la política de enseñanza de inglés y los desafíos sociales de estos contextos, este artículo explora prácticas de enseñanza de inglés localmente construidas. a partir del análisis de narrativas de profesores y observaciones de campo, se discuten cuatro ejemplos de dichas prácticas. éstos resaltan que intuitivamente los profesores tienden a sacar el máximo provecho de su experticia, los recursos limitados disponibles y los repertorios lingüísticos y culturales locales para ayudar a dar sentido al aprendizaje del inglés. desde la perspectiva de enseñanza de lenguas como una práctica socialmente sensible, estos resultados muestran que el conocimiento experiencial y situacional de los profesores constituye una plataforma fuerte sobre la cual se desarrollan prácticas valiosas. palabras clave: conocimiento docente, contextos rurales, pedagogía crítica, prácticas de enseñanza del inglés. * e-mail: ferney.cruz_arcila@kcl.ac.uk how to cite this article (apa, 6th ed.): cruz arcila, f. (2018). the wisdom of teachers’ personal theories: creative elt practices from colombian rural schools. profile: issues in teachers’ professional development, 20(2), 65-78. https://doi.org/10.15446/profile.v20n2.67142. this article was received on august 18, 2017 and accepted on february 7, 2018. this is an open access article distributed under the terms of the creative commons license attribution-noncommercial-noderivatives 4.0 international license. consultation is possible at https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/. profile: issues teach. prof. dev., vol. 20 no. 2, jul-dec, 2018. issn 1657-0790 (printed) 2256-5760 (online). bogotá, colombia. pages 65-78 universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras66 cruz arcila introduction this article is part of a series of papers reporting on a larger study exploring how english language teaching (elt) is dealt with in rural colombia, considering both active language policy promoting english in the school system on the one hand and the longstanding social issues rural communities endure, on the other. with regard to the latter, in fact, academics and rural development experts all agree that the colombian rural sector has been neglected for many years (e.g., grupo diálogo rural colombia, 2012; martínez-restrepo, pertuz, & ramírez, 2016; pnud, 2011). such neglect is expressed in terms of a huge social, political, and historical “debt” with this sector. it is generally agreed among this group of experts that such a debt refers to an increasingly widening ruralurban gap generated in great part by an urban-oriented development bias that has translated into a constant negligence to address socioeconomic issues of the rural sector that include poor education and health systems as well as economic marginalisation and deprivation. it has also been pointed out that governments have continually failed to devise long term solutions to these problems (grupo diálogo rural colombia, 2012; pnud, 2011). ironically, mindfulness of these issues, in a sense, has contributed to making matters worse as in addition to these social issues of economic redistribution, rurality has also come to experience some sort of “cultural misrecognition” (fraser, 1997). following fraser (1997), this is the case because these ideas have come to fuel a palpable “denigration” and subsidiary role given to rural lifestyles and peoples, who tend to be viewed as of lower status and backward (cruz arcila, 2017b). one way in which these issues have come to the fore in the field of elt has been the little awareness that there seems to be among policy makers and sometimes even academics of how rural teachers have dealt with elt programmes enforced by the national ministry of education (men), let alone of the possible value of their own practices. only recently there started to emerge a few studies exploring elt in rural contexts. some of these studies highlight the importance of tailoring locally-grounded pedagogical actions to enhance students sense of cultural belonging and intercultural understanding (ramos holguín, aguirre morales, & hernández, 2012) and to account for the cultural values and communicative practices of specific communities (jaraba ramírez & arrieta carrascal, 2012). others have focused on identifying critical sociocultural elements (e.g., social needs, economic situation, cultural and historical heritage) challenging elt in rural contexts (bonilla & cruz arcila, 2014). more recently, another study reports how, in a small town, the elt policy is perceived as abstract and detached from the social needs of the community (roldán & peláez, 2017). before these studies, allusions to rural elt practices were limited to highlighting how much more difficult it could be for rural teachers to comply with ambitious policy goals (e.g., cárdenas, 2006; guerrero, 2008). from the side of policy makers, another sign of the relegation of rural schools is the fact that currently the elt policy focuses its main efforts on 350 schools, which appear to be located almost exclusively in some of the principal urban centres and municipalities of the country (men, 2016). hence, this paper aims to contribute to combating such relegation and invisibility of rurality by bringing to the fore teachers’ voices. in this context, as observed in the larger study and given the current circumstances of lack of support and attention, insufficient resources, as well as an apparent lack of relevance of english in rural settings, students and teachers are indeed less likely to comply with policy makers’ idealisations. however, it has already become clear that teachers are not just passive deliverers or technicians who simply follow orders (kumaravadivelu, 2006). on the contrary, they are creative and active agents who negotiate with external pressures and are able to enact policies in creative ways (ball, maguire, & braun, 2012). following on from these ideas, this paper more specifically deals with how, despite the undeniable challenging circumstances in rural schools, teachers 67 the wisdom of teachers’ personal theories: creative elt practices from colombian rural schools profile: issues teach. prof. dev., vol. 20 no. 2, jul-dec, 2018. issn 1657-0790 (printed) 2256-5760 (online). bogotá, colombia. pages 65-78 are able to develop creative contextualised practices where they make the most of their localised expertise and resources available. the fact that such practices are contextualised means that teachers are able to connect their teaching practices with the social reality of the school. drawing on olsen (2016), another way to refer to this localised expertise is through the terms “wisdom of practice” and “personal theories”, which refer to the sorts of professional knowledge teachers construct throughout their experiences, to which i would also add, their social sensitivity. from this perspective, as this article suggests, it becomes of great value to unearth and potentiate teaching practices that draw from this form of professional knowledge. in order to set the ground for the analysis intended, the paper starts by briefly discussing how elt may be seen as necessarily connected with social context. this will be followed by a general description of the study and the discussion of four cases of contextualised practices. the paper ends with a discussion on what the findings of this study imply in terms of policy making and teacher development. elt and social context traditionally, language teaching and learning are presented as instrumental and positivistic oriented activities, as critiqued by pennycook (1990, 2001). in this view, language is seen as an objective system of communication that teachers should pass on to students, who in turn are supposed to passively receive the knowledge being offered to them (see canagarajah, 1999). this traditional perspective on language pedagogy fails to take account of the social reality of learners and teachers; that is, their problems, motivations, aspirations, and needs. the failure of traditional approaches to language pedagogy to cater for the social context stresses the importance of alternative critical approaches that engage with socially responsive practices (kumaravadivelu, 2003, 2006). it is here where views of education such as that of critical pedagogy can be highly illuminating. although critical pedagogy has “many faces and histories” (biesta, 1998), it has broadly developed as an approach to education that pursues ideals of social transformation and human development by promoting critical reflection, problem solving, and individual agency (freire, 2000; mclaren, 2013). theorists of critical pedagogy agree on considering education as a highly political activity through which power can be either exerted, perpetuated or challenged (corson, 1993; freire, 2000; mclaren, 1995). in consonance with this view, crookes (2013) explains that critical pedagogy is a perspective on teaching, learning and curriculum that doesn’t take for granted the status quo, but subjects it to critique, creates alternative forms of practice, and does so on the basis of radical theories of language, the individual and society that take seriously our hopes of improvement in the directions of goals such as liberty, equality and justice for all. (p. 1) in the field of elt, such a perspective offers a myriad of lines of critical work. in its broadest sense, a critical approach invites to analyse how broader economic, cultural, and political issues in society are reproduced, integrated, maintained, or resisted in the elt classroom. in this fashion, elt research informed by critical pedagogy interrogates, for instance, dominant discourses on the seemingly primary need to learn english in an era of globalisation, the relationship between local educational needs and global economic demands, and with it, the spread and relevance of mainstream methodologies. likewise, as is the emphasis in this paper, critical pedagogy allows us to exalt alternative and locally grounded attempts to make english teaching socially relevant, especially in communities such as colombian rural areas where english appears to be far removed from their everyday life. for almost three decades now, this critical view on language teaching has influenced a number of scholars whose work has contributed to pursuing the goal of making second language education a more empowering, meaningful, ethical, and democratic process. universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras68 cruz arcila pennycook’s (1990, 2001) call for a critical applied linguistics framework represents one of the earliest attempts to go beyond traditional, “instrumental and positivist orientations towards language and teaching” (pennycook, 1990, p. 304). pennycook (2001) proposes seeing language education as a socioculturally and politically engaged practice that is concerned with “questions of gender, class, sexuality, race, ethnicity, culture, identity, politics, ideology, and discourse” (p. 10). in this fashion, central in pennycook’s proposal is the idea that critical applied linguistics should be considered as being engaged not just with the application of theories of linguistics, but more importantly with questioning them vis-à-vis broader issues of power and social inequality. echoing some of pennycook’s concerns about the positivist orientations of language education, kumaravadivelu (2003, 2012) proposes “transformative” alternatives to existing models of language teaching and teacher education. based on the argument that a conventional approach to language teaching is inappropriate to cater for the great diversity of sociocultural contexts, educational needs, or teaching situations, kumaravadivelu (1994, 2003) argues that language teaching is in a “postmethod condition”. with this umbrella term he emphasises the idea that mainstream language teaching methods are top-down prescriptive models that are intended to work in ideal circumstances and may, therefore, be ineffective or irrelevant in less ideal situations. in tune with the main argument in this paper, the postmethod condition, thus, stresses that teachers, instead of being expected to follow preestablished methods, can be recognised as autonomous professionals who are able to devise and reflect upon their own bottom-up, locally sensitive, innovative, and meaningful strategies to support their practices (kumaravadivelu, 2003, 2012). on the basis of these views, it could be argued that language teaching can be socially relevant and empowering by redefining methodologies of language teaching and processes of teacher education in more pluralistic and locally grounded terms. that is, language teaching could endorse the heterogeneity of educational needs of individuals that, more often than not, are delimited by the broader historical, political, and social conditions. language teaching should be pluralistic and locally grounded inasmuch as both teachers and learners are enabled to make decisions about how best their educational experiences can be integrated to respond to these conditions and are not limited to just responding to technical training, as found in mainstream pedagogies. furthermore, these views offer an interesting point of comparison to analyse actual understandings and practices of elt in colombia. although current language policies and discourses in the country seem to privilege traditional and instrumentally-led educational practices (guerrero, 2010; usma wilches, 2009), critical perspectives like the ones discussed here emphasise the potential agency of teachers to deal with conflicts that are likely to emerge between current language policy and rural contexts. in this scenario, in line with the aims of this paper, it is relevant to explore how teachers have dealt with those emerging conflicts. as shall be seen below, teachers’ personal theories prove to be of great value to do so. the study this paper draws on a study of the current state of affairs of elt in rural colombia.1 the study aimed at providing a grounded account of how active elt policy operating in the country, on the one hand, and social issues affecting rural contexts (e.g., poverty, inequality, relegation and precarious conditions for schooling (perfetti, 2003; perry, 2010; pnud, 2011), on the other hand, could come to shape both teaching practices and teachers’ professional identities. the interest in carrying out this study arises from the need to bring to the fore the voices of teachers, who up to now are hardly heard in the national elt landscape. 1 this is a phd research project carried out from january 2014 to december 2017. 69 the wisdom of teachers’ personal theories: creative elt practices from colombian rural schools profile: issues teach. prof. dev., vol. 20 no. 2, jul-dec, 2018. issn 1657-0790 (printed) 2256-5760 (online). bogotá, colombia. pages 65-78 ten teachers participated in this study. they were located in seven different schools and municipalities of four different regions of the country (see table 1). as table 1 shows, teachers’ profiles were diverse in terms of their work settings, number of years in the teaching profession, and their own histories and backgrounds. such diversity allowed a rich theorization across the cases that each teacher represented. teaching biographies, two semi-structured interviews, and field observations (fo) were the sources of information. teaching biographies (tb) focused on teachers’ professional backgrounds and how they came to work in rural schools. interview 1 (int1), conducted before fo, focused on teachers’ work histories, future plans, and feelings towards the profession as well as their perceptions of their students and the community. interview 2 (int2), after fo, focused on further probing points teachers have made in int1, and aspects drawn from observations. fo were carried out during two-day visits to each school and at least three lessons per teacher, for a total of 32 field observations. although the study is mainly narrative in nature, it also uses observation as an “ethnographic tool” (green & bloome, 2004). that is, observation served to get a feel of what teaching and learning english in colombian rural schools were like. this enabled me to add my own impressions to the data gathered in interviews and teaching biographies, thus strengthening my understanding of the teachers’ lived experiences. findings presented here are the result of a process of thematic analysis (riessman, 2008). table 1. outline of participants region of work-setting teacher (pseudonym) years of experience origin context of work experience rural urban mostly rural extensive experience in both mostly urban boyacá maria 20 x x cundinamarca clara 16 x x casanare eva 6 x x casanare arturo 5 x x nariño hilda 10 x x jairo 9 x x ana 24 x x camilo 15 x x lily 20 x x dora 19 x x universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras70 cruz arcila (studycountry, n.d.). it is also believed that colombian rural communities show higher devotion to religious practices—which, apparently, is associated with their lower socioeconomic status (beltrán cely, 2013). in this context, as reported below, teachers have ingeniously used this cultural dynamics in their favour by successfully incorporating prayer in their teaching strategies, or in what maria describes as their classroom “routines”. such routines, as documented in the field work, involve starting their lessons with a prayer in english (the case of dora, arturo, hilda, maria, and lily); and making up their own prayers aligned with given contents of the lesson (the case of lily and dora). as dora and maria report, sometimes we thank god for example for our food. if we are learning food, i include prayers thanking god for our food. if we are learning family members, i also do so for the members of the family . . . that’s the way i incorporate all the vocabulary we study, in daily experiences they have . . . they like this and that helps them learn english. (dora, int2) i have always liked to pray in spanish, i am catholic, i like saying the rosary, i pray at home. and children like prayers a lot, they like learning things in english and among the things they like are the prayers and i have it as part of my routine and all learn the prayers very well. (maria, int2) interestingly, prayers are described as being motivating. as dora explains, they are easy ways to connect students’ daily practices with the use of english and to do so she even makes up prayers adapted in relation to the contents she is working on. in maria’s case, she explicitly explains that she uses prayers not just because students like them but also because she is a religious person too. this is important because both teachers’ and students’ cultural values become immersed in the meanings they construct about english. at the same time, all this indicates that the connection of language and culture is approached by teachers as a way to establish representational links with the values of the community. in other words, teachers’ use of personal theories informing teachers’ practices other papers drawing from the same study have shown how teaching english in rural colombia can be quite a challenging endeavour, especially in light of cultural and economic social arrangements existing in the country (cruz arcila, 2017b). they have also shown how classroom practices are negotiated with policy demands in creative and sometimes unexpected ways in an attempt to “make english fit”, that is, to negotiate between what is asked from them and what they deem feasible and important (cruz arcila, 2017a). in close connection with these findings, the remainder of this paper discusses four examples of socially relevant practices tailored by teachers, whereby they attempt to make the most of their expertise, the limited resources available, and the local lingua-cultural repertoires in an attempt to help their rural students make sense of english. infusing language teaching with cultural values thanks to the work of scholars interested in exploring the link between language and culture (e.g., byram, 1989; kramsch, 1993, 1995), it is now widely accepted that these factors are constitutive of each other. that is, “language is deeply implicated with culture and an important part of it” (nieto, 2010, p. 146). language is not simply a means to an end but an end or action in itself which contributes to constructing and interpreting social and cultural reality (pennycook, 2010). therefore, from these premises the idea that teaching a language implies cultural matters becomes irrefutable. in this study, such inseparable relationship of language and culture stood out in an interesting attempt on the part of teachers to show their learners that in english they could find a space for manifesting their own deep cultural values such as their religious beliefs. to illustrate this it is necessary to know that 90% of colombians are estimated to self-identify with christian religions, and the vast majority, 85%, are roman catholic 71 the wisdom of teachers’ personal theories: creative elt practices from colombian rural schools profile: issues teach. prof. dev., vol. 20 no. 2, jul-dec, 2018. issn 1657-0790 (printed) 2256-5760 (online). bogotá, colombia. pages 65-78 prayers seems to stem from the premise that valuing english in the cultural practices of students can be made easier if it is used in connection with their cultural values. from a critical pedagogy perspective, this practice can be critiqued for not inviting students to question such values; however, the emphasis here is on the importance of entrenched (and in this case hybridised) cultural practices to sort out contextual challenges for teaching english. furthermore, apart from triggering motivation and cultural familiarity towards english, prayers are also used to address specific language learning issues. at least that was the view of lily, who reports using this strategy particularly to develop oral skills in her students, which she considers a major challenge. researcher: what is the most frequent difficulty you have to deal with when teaching english? lily: speaking, to speak in english. we have implemented [strategies], we have classroom projects, we use prayers because they are very religious, here they always pray and [cultivate] values and all that. so, i always in the morning i tell them “today we are going to pray to ask the lord for the value of friendship, or the value of responsibility or for different values” and we say a prayer. then, in every term, i make up a prayer to pray to god, to the virgin mary, to the guardian angel and to baby jesus . . . i make up a prayer for verbal fluidity . . . they like that. all students learnt it, all. we also have the songs but with the songs they say “ah, the thing is that we have a bad voice”. (lily, int1) lily has discovered that on the basis of students’ religious views, memorising prayers in english has been an effective strategy to develop oral skills. the success of this practice is such that, as lily also explains, it proves to be more appealing to students than using songs, a mainstream strategy used in language teaching as a motivating factor. in lily’s view, this is the case primarily because that strategy is in line with their cultural values as well as their personality traits as they “feel less embarrassed to pray than to sing” (int1). valuing students’ linguacultural repertoires the previous example shows how teachers’ creative practices may be informed by their cultural sensitivity and intuitive ability to build from their students’ worldviews. in this study, another instance of teachers’ creativity following this line is the use of what garcía (2009) calls “translanguaging” (see also canagarajah, 2011; creese & blackledge, 2010 on this notion). this term underlies a dynamic view of bilingualism where languages are not considered as separate systems, but as elements within a whole linguistic repertoire people can use fluidly and in an integrative manner. in other words, a translanguaging perspective of bilingualism emphasises the practices people perform with all the linguistic resources at their disposal, rather than being limited to the linguistic resources of what traditionally is understood as one language only (garcía & wei, 2014). according to garcia and wei (2014) and creese and blackledge (2010), a translanguaging approach to education underlies a flexible pedagogy that opens up the possibility for teachers and students to use all their linguistic and cultural resources for facilitating learning. as hilda reports below, she intuitively endorses the use of translanguaging in her lessons as a sort of cultural bridge between students’ cultural background and new forms of representations of such backgrounds (i.e., english). particularly, she refers to the idea that words with cultural loads such as “cuy” (guinea pig, an iconic gastronomic product of the region) “cedazo,” (handmade strainer), “hornilla” (a wood burner, usually in the form of a hole with a metal support on the top) or colloquial expressions such as “qué chimba” (which, depending on the context, can be used to express either joy, irony, or disagreement) can make the use of english more meaningful as students see there is room for, as hilda says, what is “theirs.” researcher: have you identified any particularities of teaching english in rural zones? hilda: . . . maybe the knowledge they have of what is out of the rural context . . . there are expressions that astonish students, as they do universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras72 cruz arcila not really know the outside context, i mean they are framed within their own context. then, i try to locate myself in their context, what they have, for example, domestic animals, nature, what they have there, and cultural aspects. so, they come and ask me “teacher, how do you say cedazo?” so they ask me how to say terms that are from that region . . . the cuy for example . . . but [i say to them] “cuy is cuy” it is a name but it does not have to change because it is not going to be recognised anywhere else. researcher: yes. hilda: i think there is a clash with regards to certain terms, but the truth is that i apply what they have. so, from what they have . . . i make them take some terms they use, or their own expressions normally used when they are upset. for example, in a dialogue they say . . . the term “qué chimba!” so, we also use that term within english, i mean, we use what is theirs. researcher: those expressions are used in spanish? hilda: yes, they are their expressions and their words. not all, all pure english. researcher: how has this strategy worked for you? hilda: . . . it has worked well because they like it, they have fun, i mean it is a way in which students’ interest in another language can be triggered. the idea is not to make them get away from what is theirs, the idea is that little by little they start absorbing the english language. i mean, i think that the mix of the two is ideal because through half-joking learning english becomes more interesting and fun. (hilda, int1) hilda seems to understand the value of using resources from a bilingual repertoire as an effective pedagogic strategy, which is not reduced merely to coping with lack of proficiency. she sees it as strategy to build from students’ cultural and linguistic repertoires to make learning english meaningful for them. that is, she promotes the mix of what is theirs (their local cultural expressions in spanish) with what is new (english) in order to trigger their appreciation of english or at least to familiarise them with the l2, in an attempt to “develop the weaker language in relationship with the one that is more dominant” (garcía & wei, 2014, p. 64). from the point of view of new literacy studies (street, 2002, 2003), this sort of practice seems to also resemble the idea that literacy development is necessarily connected to cultures and histories of individuals as opposed to an autonomous and technical process. put differently, this practice can be seen as a resource rather than a problem to be fixed. the flexible approach hilda takes to teach english was also evident in classroom observations. in a lesson with eighth graders it was observed that, after the prayers, hilda started her lesson by showing students a sketch of a town in construction. in spanish she invited her students to imagine it as an ideal place to live in ten years’ time. she instructed them to work in pairs and come up with a description of this ideal place. after that, drawing on students’ descriptions in spanish, hilda started to explain how to express those ideas in english, and explained the use of the auxiliary verb will/won’t with examples: “the town won’t have rubbish” with its translation “no habrá basura en el pueblo”. following the examples, students started to express their own ideas but this time in english. while they attempted to do so, the use of spanish to negotiate meanings among the groups was not only evident but also welcome by the teacher. (fo21, hilda) in this observation it was evident that hilda uses an initial discussion in l1 as a platform to give ideas to students about what to write in english later on with a greater understanding of what they are doing. students and teachers’ l1 is clearly used as a resource for contextualising students, for offering enough clarity as to what the purposes of the lesson are, and for negotiating meanings among students in the pair work stage. hilda’s recognition, endorsement and promotion of a mix between students’ own linguistic and cultural backgrounds and their learning of english highlight the pedagogical use of translanguaging for building background knowledge in order to facilitate meaning making, and thus deepen understanding (garcía & wei, 2014). hilda’s reading of her circumstances has led her to adopt an approach that, in her view, is attractive to students and suitable for her school context. 73 the wisdom of teachers’ personal theories: creative elt practices from colombian rural schools profile: issues teach. prof. dev., vol. 20 no. 2, jul-dec, 2018. issn 1657-0790 (printed) 2256-5760 (online). bogotá, colombia. pages 65-78 incorporating multimodal literacies despite the evident lack of resources and internet access in schools, engagement with multimedia and digital texts in the classroom was not completely absent. in fact, in an attempt to still find other ways to draw students’ attention towards english, teachers have maximised the limited technology at their disposal and have found ways to incorporate its use. a case in point is arturo who has been able to integrate the use of smartphones to engage students in a number of learning and assessment activities. this is what he says about the purposes of this practice: the mobile . . . is for the acquisition of vocabulary and pronunciation, then as we did yesterday, i was teaching them regular verbs in past . . . so we do a little list of regular verbs, first i make groups each of them with one mobile phone, they record the verbs, then they [students] with those verbs . . . write sentences or texts where they have to use the vocabulary that we have recorded. so, what i do is to record and evaluate the contents we have studied, the vocabulary and the pronunciation of the new vocabulary or in 9th grade we are doing transcriptions. i read a long text . . . first, i give them the audio recording for them to assimilate the transcription, the reading with the audio, and then i come to each group and check if they are learning to write and listen . . . after listening to the recording, an oral evaluation takes place where i don’t say anything in english, i say in spanish the meaning and they say and write it in english . . . with 9th grade, that [strategy] is the one that has worked best as students just with the fact of sending files via whatsapp get motivated because we are using the mobile phone, students have affinity to that. students have come the following day saying “teacher, i already learnt it, i know all the text, i am ready for the dictation.” (arturo, int2) as he reports, the mobile phone serves as a tool to complement students’ traditional literacy activities (based on printed texts) with texts they are creating and disseminating through smartphones. in this case, the phone works mainly as a means to store and circulate teachers’ modelling of language use for students to engage with in subsequent oral and written activities. this practice echoes the idea that in the xxi century digital communication technology has led literacy practices to develop in multiple directions and forms, as argued by multimodal literacy scholars (e.g., jewitt & kress, 2003; kress, 2010; walsh, 2010). multimodal literacy is an umbrella term to describe the process of “meaning-making that occurs through the reading, viewing, understanding, responding to and producing and interacting with multimedia and digital texts” (walsh, 2010, p. 213). as observed in arturo’s case, despite the fact that the production of and interaction with multimedia texts are not as sophisticated as they can be in contexts with more access to a wider range of communication technologies, these processes still prove pedagogically significant in his context. vocabulary building and pronunciation training are the main purposes of using phones mentioned. however, it could be argued that autonomy, collaboration, and motivation are other important processes to underscore in this practice. autonomy is triggered as students are provided with the opportunity to use the teachers’ input as frequently as they wish. collaboration seems to play an important role because, as was apparent in fo, during group work students became a source of peer feedback and mutual support. similarly, as arturo argues, motivation is increased because students are usually eager to use their phones in classroom tasks. these are ways in which the mobile phone as a mode of meaning making in the classroom has “affected, changed, and shaped” (jewitt & kress, 2003) the process of learning english. however, some could critique arturo’s teaching practices for relying on memorisation, translation, and transcription of texts. these pedagogic strategies are often labelled as traditional, of little use, and ineffective in current communicative trends of language teaching. in contrast to these views, in this study these practices have emerged as being part of local pedagogies (canagarajah, 2005) that, although not aligned with current mainstream discourses on universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras74 cruz arcila elt methodology, can still prove valuable. as shown here, in a rural under-resourced school context with little contact with english, rote learning activities that include the limited technology available can be more effective than following teaching methodologies in vogue (cook, 1997). “squeezing” their expertise as has become apparent in the present discussion, teachers are not taking passive attitudes towards contextual challenges. on the contrary, to different degrees, they seem to agree with ana when she says that “a mistake would be to just complain and do nothing” (ana, int2). from this understanding, as observed above, they have tailored their teaching in a socioculturally sensitive manner and have maximised the resources at hand. in fact, the three practices just discussed are clear instances of the sort of expertise teachers have developed throughout their experience. this is a type of expertise that, bearing in mind the findings of this study, combine the academic training they may have had access to with, perhaps more importantly, their own capacity to read and act upon the circumstances mediating their teaching. although important, their expertise can be looked at not so much in terms of how much english teachers know or how familiarised they are with mainstream theories and methodologies, but in terms of how well they can relate to their contexts, as the above examples indicate. this sort of expertise some other times is also demonstrated in attempts to face challenges like the lack of teaching materials. in these cases, some teachers have come to design these materials by themselves. some of the most remarkable examples of this include full teaching guides as a substitute to textbooks (jairo) and initiatives to design and compile computer mediated pedagogic material that can be available even without internet access (dora). a striking observation from these examples is that in both cases, the process of developing material has been supported by research. that is, teachers are not simply relying on their hunches to address the aforementioned challenges. beyond that, these attempts appear to involve a systematic process of observation and reflection, which to some extent guarantee the relevance and applicability of the work done. this is how jairo describes his experience, researcher: can you tell me about how you came up with the idea of designing your own material? jairo: when i worked in [name of former school] we were aware of the problem of not having a textbook hm why the absence of a textbook? because parents did not have economic resources to buy it. then . . . with other english teachers, we decided to design a textbook adjusted to the standards of the ministry and to the syllabus at that time too. so we did some work and typed a textbook for each grade, a text for primary and another for high school. then, i saved it . . . and when i arrived here at [name of current school], i found that there was no textbook . . . so, i modified the textbook in order to adjust it to the syllabus of the school and the students’ needs. researcher: you told me it was the product of a research project? jairo: yes . . . it consisted of identifying appropriate activities for students according to their ages, so, depending on the age and the level. [the research also aimed to] analyse whether a given activity was useful to learn vocabulary or practice conversation. researcher: was that research your own initiative? jairo: the research as such emerged from the need, the particular need i also found here, teachers did not have a guiding textbook, a guiding text to follow processes. then, the textbook is organised for students to reach the level we required in order to succeed to the next grade, right? so, the intention of the text, at the beginning, was to tackle that need. (jairo, int1) by acting as a materials developer and by doing so in a systematic manner, it can be argued, jairo is “squeezing” his expertise in order to respond to a pressing contextual need. not being trained as a researcher did not prevent him from “acting at the edge of [his] competence” (tsui, 2003, p. 276)2 and endeavouring to provide solutions. 2 tsui (2003) borrows this term from bereiter and scardamalia (1993) to argue that expertise is developed mainly in circumstances where 75 the wisdom of teachers’ personal theories: creative elt practices from colombian rural schools profile: issues teach. prof. dev., vol. 20 no. 2, jul-dec, 2018. issn 1657-0790 (printed) 2256-5760 (online). bogotá, colombia. pages 65-78 another sign of the complex and systematic work done is the idea that he is aware of the standards for elt and, thus, used them as a point of reference for the materials designed. in other words, his attempt goes beyond mere strategies to cope. a similar case of squeezing their professional expertise to offer long term solutions is dora. the expertise she had gained throughout her 20 years of experience and through the masters course she was completing at the time of fieldwork appear to have empowered her not only to try to address the issue of lack of material in her benefit but also in benefit of her primary school colleagues, most of whom were not qualified in english teaching. she did this by designing and compiling a set of pedagogical computer-based materials and by offering informal professional development opportunities to her colleagues. as she reports, last year i provided training in teaching english in primary school to colleagues from my institution through the creation of materials i have compiled with hints to teach songs, poems, prayers, and i also provided a few links to do so. currently, as i have noticed the need to find innovative resources, which at the same time are attractive to children, i am doing a ma in educational technology. my goal is to motivate primary school children to learn english through the use of technological tools, and at the same time, share with my fellow teachers tools to facilitate their pedagogical practice. (dora, tb) as documented in fo, as part of her ma thesis dora has designed a blog where she has compiled a series of hints and pedagogic resources (mostly worksheets and interactive activities) to practice listening, vocabulary, reading, and writing (many of them designed or adapted by herself). as she explained, her challenge was to make available those resources without the need of internet access, which at that time was still unsolved. it is worth noting here that, like jairo, dora’s attempt is also informed by careful and systematic research procedures, which, people approach a given issue laboriously at the peak of their capacity and that in so doing growth opportunities for themselves are created. as argued here, serve as a good way to maximize the scope of their professional action. conclusion and implications drawing on the critical pedagogy principles underlying this analysis, we can say that teachers’ sociocultural sensitivity as well as their attempts to creatively make the most of both the resources at their disposal and their own expertise are indicators of valuable actions they are willing to undertake in an attempt to negotiate between external demands and situational challenges. these are also examples of the sorts of small steps crookes (2013) talks about when referring to the practicability of critical language pedagogy and of kumaravadivelu’s (2006) emphasis on the power of teachers as transformative practitioners who are able to devise their own effective practices. following canagarajah (2005), these localised initiatives can even be seen as relevant to be brought to the fore and put into negotiation with other more global and mainstream practices. a whole different dynamics might be in place if, for example, initiatives like the ones teachers in this study have undertaken are boosted and supported. teachers would not be seen simply as technicians who need to be given all the tools and instructions but as “intellectuals” able to construct their own tools, and from whom others could actually learn. from this perspective, in relation to the current colombian elt policy, a different nature of professional development aimed at building from what teachers already do may prove even more pertinent than the efforts to simply familiarise teachers with fashionable widespread teaching methodologies. this is precisely one of the strongest suggestions in an earlier study with rural teachers (bonilla medina & cruz-arcila, 2013). the study showed that in some contexts alternative localised teacher development programmes, which for example take teachers to understand and account for the contextual factors in their practice, can prove more useful than exclusively being instructed on language and methodology. professional development universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras76 cruz arcila programmes of this nature, as this paper also suggests, underscores the importance of empowering teachers’ situated expertise. by the same token, this study also suggests that there may be a wealth of unexplored teaching practices ensuring teachers’ agency and ingenuity. there could be numerous other interesting pedagogic practices, but these remain unknown. this paper stresses the importantance of bringing those practices to light as that can help to capture a better picture of how elt is being addressed in diverse contexts. on that basis, it would also be possible to build from teachers’ efforts by, for example, setting up professional development programmes that are underpinned on the premise that what teachers need to do is not necessarily completely different from what they already do. it could be argued that teachers need to learn how to better take advantage of what they already do and how to bring this into negotiation with other alternatives. in other words, following olsen (2016), teachers’ “wisdom of practice” and “personal theories” (usually the product of experiences) can be enriched with professional theories (the product of research). in this fashion, what teachers already do and know is potentiated instead of simply discarded and ignored. references ball, s. j., maguire, m., & braun, a. 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(2011). colombia rural: razones para la esperanza. bogotá, co: programa de las naciones unidas para el desarrollo. ramos holguín, b., aguirre morales, j., & hernández, c. m. (2012). a pedagogical experience to delve into students’ sense of cultural belonging and intercultural understanding in a rural school. how, 19(1), 123-145. riessman, c. k. (2008). narrative methods for the human sciences. thousand oaks, us: sage. roldán, á. m., & peláez, o. a. (2017). pertinencia de las políticas de inglés en zonas rurales colombianas: un estudio de caso en antioquia [english language policy relevance in a colombian rural área: a case study in antioquia]. íkala, revista de lenguaje y cultura, 22(1). https://doi.org/10.17533/udea.ikala.v22n01a08. street, b. v. (ed.). (2002). literacy and development: ethnographic perspectives. new york, us: routledge. street, b. v. (2003). the limits of the local: ‘autonomous’ or ‘disembedding’? international journal of learning, 10(1), 2825-2830. studycountry. (n.d.). religious beliefs and spirituality in colombia. retrieved from http://www.studycountry. com/guide/co-religion.htm. tsui, a. b. m. (2003). understanding expertise in teaching: case studies of second language teachers. new york, us: ernst klett sprachen. https://doi.org/10.1017/ cbo9781139524698. usma wilches, j. (2009). education and language policy in colombia: exploring processes of inclusion, exclusion, and stratification in times of global reform. profile: issues in teachers’ professional development, 11(1), 123-141. walsh, m. (2010). multimodal literacy: what does it mean for classroom practice? australian journal of language and literacy, 33(3), 211-239. about the author ferney cruz arcila holds a phd in language discourse and communication from king’s college london. his research interests centre on bilingual education, the implications of language policies, processes of construction of teacher identity, rural education, and the relations of all these elements with issues of social justice. 109 http://dx.doi.org/10.15446/profile.v19n_sup1.68532 language learning of gifted individuals: a content analysis study el aprendizaje de idiomas en estudiantes talentosos: un estudio de análisis de contenido beria gokaydin1* basak baglama2** university of kyrenia, kyrenia, cyprus huseyin uzunboylu3*** near east university, mersin, turkey this study aims to carry out a content analysis of the studies on language learning of gifted individuals and determine the trends in this field. articles on language learning of gifted individuals published in the scopus database were examined based on certain criteria including type of publication, year of publication, language, research discipline, countries of research, institutions of authors, key words, and resources. data were analyzed with the content analysis method. results showed that the number of studies on language learning of gifted individuals has increased throughout the years. recommendations for further research and practices are provided. key words: content analysis, giftedness, gifted education, language learning. este estudio tiene como objetivo realizar un análisis documental de artículos sobre la enseñanza de lenguas a individuos dotados y determinar las tendencias en este campo. los artículos sobre el aprendizaje de idiomas de individuos superdotados publicados en las bases de datos de scopus se examinaron sobre la base de ciertos tipos de publicaciones, año de publicación, idiomas, disciplinas de investigación, países de investigación, instituciones de autores, palabras clave y recursos. los resultados muestran que los estudios sobre enseñanza de idiomas a estudiantes dotados se han incrementado en los últimos años. al final, se ofrecen recomendaciones para futuras investigaciones y aplicaciones. palabras clave: análisis de contenido, aprendizaje de idiomas, dotes, educación para dotados. * e-mail: beria.gokaydin@neu.edu.tr ** e-mail: basak.baglama@neu.edu.tr *** e-mail: huseyin.uzunboylu@neu.edu.tr how to cite this article (apa, 6th ed.): gokaydin, b., baglama, b., & uzunboylu, h. (2017). language learning of gifted individuals: a content analysis study. profile: issues in teachers’ professional development, 19(suppl. 1), 109-118. http://dx.doi.org/10.15446/profile.v19n_sup1.68532. this article was received on september 10, 2017, and accepted on november 9, 2017. this is an open access article distributed under the terms of the creative commons license attribution-noncommercial-noderivatives 4.0 international license. consultation is possible at https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/. profile: issues teach. prof. dev., vol. 19, supplement 1, 2017. issn 1657-0790 (printed) 2256-5760 (online). bogotá, colombia. pages 109-118 universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras110 gokaydin, baglama & uzunboylu introduction individuals who show a significant difference from their peers in terms of developmental and individual characteristics and educational competencies need special education (ataman, 2003; baglama, yikmis, & demirok, 2017). gifted individuals also appear in the continuum of individuals with special needs (genc & ozcan, 2017). the national association of gifted children (2017) describes gifted individuals as those individuals who have high performance in one or more fields or who have a high level of potential in displaying this performance. it is widely accepted by many researchers and educators that regular school curriculums cannot afford to provide the educational needs of gifted children and that the education programs for gifted individuals need to have multi-dimensional and creative features. it is important for these features to support gifted individuals’ learning process in terms of improving individuals’ potential. gifted education leads gifted individuals to develop their potential intelligence to the highest level and motivates them to study independently. qualified and sufficient education, appropriate guidance, and motivation improve the potential of gifted individuals (demirok & ozcan, 2016; turalbayeva et al., 2017). gifted students show differences from their peers in terms of individual characteristics and needs (bruning & horn, 2000) and these differences include being more competent in terms of language development, focusing and long duration of attention, creativity, critical thinking and strong memory, high levels of interest, being active, perfectionism and idealism, being irrational, high level of confidence, sense of humor, sensitivity, and impulsivity (sak, 2016). gifted individuals should receive a different education from their peers since they show different developmental characteristics (karatas & saricam, 2016). language learning and giftedness communication with the environment is really important for humans as social beings (uzunboylu, hursen, ozuturk, & demirok, 2015; yavuz, 2017). therefore, it can be said that language teaching is an important component for gifted individuals as well. language and thinking development are regarded as the bases of interaction with the environment and learning among individuals. language is a tool for individuals to transfer their emotions, ideas, desires, and experiences to others and interpret the external world. language plays an important role in intellectual development and reflects thinking. therefore, language skills include receptive language, which enables individuals to listen and perform an action, and expressive language, which enables them to talk with others in an effective way and establish verbal communication. in addition, speaking, listening, reading, and writing as the four basic skills of languages are regarded as tools for achieving this competence (soubhi, 2016). gifted students have unique characteristics and have different ways of thinking and learning. in addition, they generally tend to have a higher linguistic ability and this ability leads them to use language in an effective way in receiving, understanding, and expressing information (yunus, sulaiman, & embi, 2013). al-khasawneh and al-omari (2015) stated that gifted individuals are highly motivated to learn english. it is revealed that gifted learners know the importance of learning english to succeed in all life fields since the importance of being competent in english language is accepted worldwide (harris, rapp, martínez, & plucker, 2007). gifted individuals acquire language competence earlier than their peers and the majority of gifted individuals have many characteristics based on their higher verbal competencies. these characteristics involve reading before time (before their education begins at school or just after starting school), extensive vocabulary, advanced level of comprehension skills, low amount of performing tasks for beginning the reading process or no need for doing any preparation task for reading, extensive interest in language skills 111profile: issues teach. prof. dev., vol. 19, supplement 1, 2017. issn 1657-0790 (printed) 2256-5760 (online). bogotá, colombia. pages 109-118 language learning of gifted individuals: a content analysis study and reading a wide range of subjects in an interesting and curious way (clark, 2009). in general, reading skills and high-level thinking abilities are more emphasized in teaching language skills (foster, 2017; osokina, 2016). in preparing a language sciences curriculum of gifted and talented students, differentiation is required since they acquire language skills earlier than their peers and they show progression in a more rapid way. when differentiating the curriculum, an advanced level of content is required for gifted and talented individuals and the teaching process must be prepared and expedited to be able to satisfy their needs (al-khasawneh & al-omari, 2015; ozcan & katlav, 2016). it is a widely known fact that gifted students need to be busy in terms of mental work when they are performing a task, studying a specific subject, or learning new skills (callahan, moon, oh, azano, & hailey, 2015; kitsantas, bland, & chirinos, 2017). in this regard, a curriculum which would make them think and force them through the introduction of new and different resources is constituted for gifted and talented students (altintas & ozdemir, 2015). using a high level of skills such as questioning, critical thinking, problem-based teaching, and creativity as well as motivating gifted students to perform open-ended activities is really important (kronborg & plunkett, 2015; zeidner & matthews, 2017). on the other hand, there are great differences between an ordinary language skills curriculum and a language curriculum for gifted individuals. a language curriculum for gifted individuals involves an advanced level of content and materials, open-ended activities, provides opportunities for gifted students to produce, advanced level of reading and vocabulary tasks, various writing and investigating opportunities, and multidisciplinary work. combining these components, a holistic structure is presented for gifted students who are more talented at verbal tasks in terms of language skills curriculum (horak & galluzzo, 2017). aim of the study this study aims to carry out a content analysis of the studies on language learning of gifted individuals and determine the trends in this field. in line with this general aim, answers to the following questions were sought in the study: 1. what is the distribution of studies based on type of publication? 2. what is the distribution of studies based on year of publication? 3. what is the distribution of studies based on the language of publication? 4. what is the distribution of studies based on the research discipline? 5. what is the distribution of studies based on the countries of authors? 6. what is the distribution of studies based on the institutions of authors? 7. what is the distribution of studies based on the authors? 8. what is the distribution of studies based on the key words? 9. what is the distribution of studies based on the resources used in the studies? method in this section, research model, data collection tool, and data analysis are explained in detail. research model the document analysis method as a quantitative research method was used in the study and the data were analyzed with content analysis. document analysis involves analysis of written materials about the targeted phenomenon or subjects. moreover, document analysis is described as an extensive analysis of a group of documents which were produced at a period of time about a research problem or produced by more than one resource about a specific subject (yildirim & simsek, 2008). universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras112 gokaydin, baglama & uzunboylu data collection in line with the aim of the study, scopus international network database was searched in order to determine the trends in the studies on language learning of gifted individuals. data for the study were collected through scanning the publications which revealed a total of 115 articles on language learning of gifted individuals. data analysis “language” and “gifted education” as key words were used in the study and articles were obtained in this way. the articles’ metadata were analyzed based on certain criteria involving type of publication, year of publication, language, research discipline, research countries, institutions of authors, keywords and resources. data were analyzed with content analysis and each article was reported based on certain criteria. the aim of content analysis is to reveal expressions and relationships to explain the collected data. in content analysis, similar data are brought together within the frame of certain themes and concepts and interpreted in a clear and effective way (uzunboylu & ozcinar, 2009; yildirim & simsek, 2008). in the study, 115 scientific research articles about language and gifted education are grouped based on type of publication, year of publication, language, research discipline, countries of authors, institutions of authors, authors, keywords, and resources. tables for numbers and percentages were created for the data. nevertheless, key words were handled and evaluated as language and gifted education. all of the articles analyzed in the study are written in the english language. results in this section, the results of the study are presented and discussed with relevant literature in line with the aim of the study. results on type of publication distribution of the studies based on type of publication is provided in table 1. as can be seen in table 1, 89.7% of the studies are articles, and 11.5% of them are published as articles. therefore, it can be said that researchers prefer publishing research articles more than reviews. table 1. distribution of the studies based on type of publication document type n % article 78 89.7 review 10 11.5 book chapter 9 10.35 conference paper 9 10.35 book 5 5.75 article in press 3 3.45 note 1 1.15 total 115 100 results on year of publication distribution of the studies based on year of publication is shown in the figure 1. figure 1. distribution of the studies based on year of publication 14 12 10 8 6 4 2 0 19 65 19 70 19 75 19 80 19 85 19 90 19 95 20 00 20 05 20 10 20 15 d o cu m e n ts as can be understood from figure 1, most of the studies were carried out in 2015. in addition, it can be seen that the number of articles in 2016 is higher than the number of articles in 2011, 2012, and 2014. 113profile: issues teach. prof. dev., vol. 19, supplement 1, 2017. issn 1657-0790 (printed) 2256-5760 (online). bogotá, colombia. pages 109-118 language learning of gifted individuals: a content analysis study results revealed that gifted education is not handled and examined in the studies, especially between the years of 1966 and 1973. on the other hand, trends in gifted education were increased after 2000. the number of studies in 2013 and 2016 was dramatically increased, improved, and became more prevalent. however, a decrease was observed in 2009 in terms of number of publications on language and gifted education when compared to 2005. results on language of studies distribution of the studies based on language of publications is shown in table 2. as can be seen in table 2, 108 articles were written in english, and three of them in german. results indicated that researchers tend to produce publications in english. it is also seen that a few researchers published their articles in german. results on research disciplines the distribution of the studies based on research discipline is shown in table 3. some articles are registered under more than one discipline. results showed that studies on language and gifted education are written in research disciplines including social sciences, psychology, medicine, and arts and humanities. therefore, it can be inferred that authors of the articles are more commonly from these research disciplines. table 2. distribution of the studies based on language of publication language n english 108 german 3 french 1 lithuanian 1 portuguese 1 turkish 1 total 115 table 3. distribution of the studies based on research disciplines research discipline n social sciences 82 psychology 33 medicine 20 arts and humanities 16 health professions 8 computer science 6 engineering 5 economics, econometrics, and finance 2 environmental science 2 neuroscience 2 biochemistry, genetics, and molecular biology 1 business, management, and accounting 1 chemical engineering 1 mathematics 1 multidisciplinary 1 table 4. distribution of the studies based on countries of research country n % united states 63 77.49 undefined 17 20.91 united kingdom 7 8.61 canada 5 6,15 australia 4 4.92 malaysia 3 3.69 south korea 3 3.69 others 21 25.83 total 123 100 results on countries of research table 4 shows the distribution of the studies based on countries of the research. universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras114 gokaydin, baglama & uzunboylu since some of the 115 articles were written by two or more authors, the total number of authors was found to be 123. as can be seen in table 4, 77.49% of the studies were conducted in the united states; 8.61% of the articles were conducted in the united kingdom; 6.15% in canada; 4.92% in australia; 3.69% in malaysia and south korea. in addition, 20.91% of the studies were shown as undefined since the countries were not mentioned. results revealed that most of the studies on language and gifted education were carried out in the united states. results on the institution of authors table 5 shows the distribution of the studies based on institution of authors. some authors exhibit more than one affiliation. as can be seen in table 5, 4.41% of the authors were from these institutions: universiti kebangsaan, malaysia, arizona state university, university of south florida, tampa, stanford university, university of virginia, university of iowa; 2.94% in florida state university, ohio state university, eastern new mexico university, university of southern mississippi, uc irvine, university of windsor, the college of william and mary, uc berkeley, university of new south wales unsw australia, university of california, santa barbara and kazan federal university. results on keywords distribution of the studies based on key words is shown in table 6. table 6. distribution of the studies based on key words key word n percentage education 24 68.4 human 21 59.64 child 17 48.28 article 15 42.6 gifted child 14 39.76 teaching 12 34.08 child, gifted 11 31.24 students 10 28.4 adolescent 9 25.56 humans 9 25.56 male 9 25.56 language 8 22.72 child, preschool 7 19.88 gifted students 7 19.88 cognition 6 17.04 female 6 17.04 gifted education 6 17.04 child, exceptional 5 14.2 curriculum 5 14.2 education, special 5 14.2 intelligence 5 14.2 learning disorder 5 14.2 priority journal 5 14.2 table 5. distribution of the studies based on institution of authors institution n % universiti kebangsaan malaysia 3 4.41 arizona state university 3 4.41 university of south florida tampa 3 4.41 stanford university 3 4.41 university of virginia 3 4.41 university of iowa 3 4.41 florida state university 2 2.94 ohio state university 2 2.94 eastern new mexico university 2 2.94 university of southern mississippi 2 2.94 uc irvine 2 2.94 university of windsor 2 2.94 the college of william and mary 2 2.94 uc berkeley 2 2.94 university of new south wales unsw australia 2 2.94 university of california, santa barbara 2 2.94 kazan federal university 2 2.94 others 107 41.2 115profile: issues teach. prof. dev., vol. 19, supplement 1, 2017. issn 1657-0790 (printed) 2256-5760 (online). bogotá, colombia. pages 109-118 language learning of gifted individuals: a content analysis study key word n percentage problem solving 5 14.2 psychological aspect 5 14.2 sign language 5 14.2 case report 4 11.36 child development 4 11.36 child language 4 11.36 gifted learners 4 11.36 giftedness 4 11.36 intelligence quotient 4 11.36 language development 4 11.36 achievement 3 8.52 adult 3 8.52 child behavior 3 8.52 child parent relation 3 8.52 computer aided ınstruction 3 8.52 curricula 3 8.52 esl 3 8.52 as can be seen in table 6, 68.4% of the key words were education; 59.64% were human; 48,28% were child; 42.6% were article; 39,76% were gifted child; 28.4% were students; 25.56% were adolescent, human, male; 22,72% were language; 19.88% were child, preschool, gifted students; 17.04% were cognition, female, and gifted education; 14.2% were child, exceptional, curriculum, education, special, intelligence, learning disorder, priority journal, problem solving, psychological aspect, sign language; 11.36% were case report, child development, child language, gifted learners, giftedness, intelligence quotient, language development; 8.52% were achievement, adult, child behavior, child parent relation, computer aided instruction, curricula, and esl. results on resources distribution of the studies based on resources is shown in table 7. as can be seen in table 7, 6.08% of the articles were published in journal for the education of the gifted; 4.34% were published in gifted child quarterly; 3.47% in roeper review; 2.6% in exceptional children and foreign language annals; 1.73% in american annals of the deaf, asian social science, journal of child psychology and psychiatry, journal of language and literature, perceptual and motor skills, proceedings frontiers in education conference and 70.43% of them were defined as the others. discussion and conclusion this study aimed to examine the studies on language learning of gifted individuals published in the scopus database and to determine the trends in the research on language learning of gifted individuals. results indicated that 78 of 115 studies were research articles and 10 of them were review. therefore, it can be inferred that researchers give more importance to research articles than review articles in terms of type of publication (hays, 1993). table 7. distribution of the studies based on resources resource n % journal for the education of the gifted 7 6.08 gifted child quarterly 5 4.34 roeper review 4 3.47 exceptional children 3 2.6 foreign language annals 3 2.6 american annals of the deaf 2 1.73 asian social science 2 1.73 journal of child psychology and psychiatry 2 1.73 journal of language and literature 2 1.73 perceptual and motor skills 2 1.73 proceedings frontiers in education conference 2 1.73 others 81 70.43 total 115 100 universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras116 gokaydin, baglama & uzunboylu furthermore, studies on language learning of gifted individuals showed a normal distribution until 2010; then later there was a steady increase after 2015. when compared to before 2000, the dramatic increase was observed to be in the related field. it can be interpreted that gifted studies gained popularity after 2000. it is also seen that the language of publication was mostly english. it can be said that the language of science is predominantly english. it is necessary for researchers in this field to have a good level of english knowledge. as such, they will be able to follow the trends in the literature on gifted education and language. similar to the results of the present study, demirok, besgul, and baglama (2016) revealed that the number of studies on special education and gifted education showed a steady increase throughout the years. according to the results of the study, the majority of the studies on language and gifted education were conducted in the discipline of social sciences. this might be because of the fact that the gifted education field is based on the social sciences discipline. in addition to this, collaboration with other disciplines plays an important role in terms of education of gifted individuals. it was also seen that most studies on language learning of gifted individuals were carried out in the united states. furthermore, the first four countries are among the categories of developed countries. it can be inferred that developed countries give necessary importance to this field and contribute to the development of this field. demirok, baglama, and besgul (2015) also found that studies on special education were mostly carried out in the united states. moreover, studies were mostly published in journals of gifted education and journals related to the field. however, it is seen that there is a limited number of journals dealing with gifted education and this leads to restrictions for the improvement of the field. existing journals for the gifted field need to be indexed in scopus and the web of science databases which are prestigious databases of scientific and academic publications dedicated to the improvement of the field. nevertheless, results also showed that the quantity of computer-aided instruction for gifted individuals to learn a language has also increased. this is an expected result since integrating technology in education of gifted individuals has become common and it is evident that technology enhances the performance of gifted learners (ozcan & bicen, 2016). in conclusion, this study provided a framework for the trends in the field of language learning of gifted individuals for researchers and practitioners in the related field. since there is a limited quantity of such studies in the literature, it is expected that this study would be a leading one for further research and practices. recommendations in light of the results obtained from the study, the following recommendations for further research and practices are provided: • educational policies and programs for gifted individuals and language need to be improved in order to enhance knowledge and understanding of educators and practices in this field. • number of courses in teacher training programs at the universities might be increased in order to train teachers who are aware of teaching language skills to gifted students. • similar studies might examine the trends in other databases in order to provide an extended framework. • seminars, conferences, or in-service training sessions for teachers of gifted learners might be organized in order to increase their knowledge in this field. • families might be informed about the importance of language skills for their gifted child and more cooperation might be enabled between teachers and families. 117profile: issues teach. prof. dev., vol. 19, supplement 1, 2017. issn 1657-0790 (printed) 2256-5760 (online). bogotá, colombia. pages 109-118 language learning of gifted individuals: a content analysis study references al-khasawneh, f. m., & al-omari, m. a. 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(2016). encountered problems by parents having children needing special education. global journal of guidance and counseling in schools: current perspectives, 6(2), 30-34. https://doi.org/10.18844/ gjgc.v6i2.646. sak, u. (2016). epts curriculum model in the education of gifted students. annals of psychology, 32(3), 683-694. https://doi.org/10.6018/analesps.32.3.259441. soubhi, f. z. (2016). learning difficulties and linguistics needs among moroccan university students. international journal of learning and teaching, 8(3), 197-203. https:// doi.org/10.18844/ijlt.v8i3.755. turalbayeva, a. t., sultanbek, m., utyupova, c. e., aidarov, b. z., uaidullakyzy, e, zhumash, z., & uzunboylu, h. (2017). the general preparation of the training of elementary school and the family and the education of gifted children school in cooperation principles. ponte, 73(4), 239-251. uzunboylu, h., hursen, c., ozuturk, g., & demirok, m. (2015). determination of turkish university students’ attitudes for mobile integrated efl classrooms in north cyprus and scale development: ellmtas. journal of universal computer science, 21(10), 1283-1296. uzunboylu, h., & ozcinar, z. (2009). research and trends in computer-assisted language learning during 19902008: results of a citation analysis. eurasian journal of educational research, 34, 133-150 yavuz, f. (2017). pre-service teachers’ perceptions on foreign language teaching issues. new trends and issues proceedings on humanities and social sciences, 4(1), 55-60. yildirim, a., & simsek, h. (2008). sosyal bilimlerde nitel arastirma yontemleri [qualitative research methods in social sciences] (7th ed.). ankara, tr: seckin yayincilik. yunus, m. m., sulaiman, n. a., & embi, m. a. (2013). malaysian gifted students’ use of english language learning strategies. english language teaching, 6(4), 97-109. https://doi. org/10.5539/elt.v6n4p97. zeidner, m., & matthews, g. (2017). emotional intelligence in gifted students. gifted education international, 33(2), 163-182. https://doi.org/10.1177/0261429417708879. about the authors beria gokaydin is a phd candidate and lecturer in the department of special education at the university of kyrenia, north cyprus. she teaches psychology, giftedness, individual differences in gifted education, and inclusion courses. her research interests include giftedness, gifted education, social and emotional problems of life with gifted individuals. basak baglama is a phd candidate and lecturer in the department of special education at the university of kyrenia, north cyprus. she teaches psychology, autism, individual differences in special education and inclusion courses. her research interests include autism, inclusive education, teaching mathematics to individuals with special needs, and use of technology in special education. huseyin uzunboylu holds a phd in education from ankara university (turkey). he is an assistant professor in the department of computer education and instructional technology at the near east university (north cyprus). 125profile: issues teach. prof. dev., vol. 22 no. 1, jan-jun, 2020. issn 1657-0790 (printed) 2256-5760 (online). bogotá, colombia. pages 125-139 https://doi.org/10.15446/profile.v22n1.82105 teaching english to young learners in mexico: teachers’ perceptions about their teaching contexts la enseñanza del inglés para jóvenes estudiantes en méxico: las percepciones de los profesores acerca de sus contextos de enseñanza 1tania millán librado* 2nora m. basurto santos** universidad veracruzana, veracruz, mexico this paper discusses the perceptions that six english language teachers, from public schools in the south region of the state of veracruz in mexico, have about their particular teaching contexts. a qualitative approach was adopted, and main data collection was through semi-structured interviews. the results show that all teachers have mostly negative perceptions about their teaching conditions. it was concluded that urgent action is needed on the part of the government to improve the english as a foreign language scenario, especially now when the introduction of english as a foreign language has been proposed at even earlier ages in all levels of education in the country. key words: english for young learners, english language teaching, mexico, working conditions. esta investigación describe las percepciones que tienen seis maestros de inglés de escuelas públicas de la región sur del estado de veracruz en méxico acerca de sus propios contextos de enseñanza. se decidió adoptar un enfoque cualitativo y entrevistas semi estructuradas para la recolección de los datos. los resultados muestran que la mayoría de las percepciones que los maestros tienen son negativas y se concluyó que las autoridades deben tomar medidas urgentes para mejorar el panorama de la enseñanza del inglés especialmente ahora que se ha propuesto que el inglés sea obligatorio en todos los niveles de educación básica en el país. palabras clave: condiciones laborales, enseñanza del inglés, inglés para jóvenes, méxico. this paper reports some of the findings of a bigger research project focused on “researching and creating opportunities for continuous professional development for english teachers working with young learners in mexico”. funded by conacyt as part of the programme “estancias postdoctorales en el extranjero vinculadas a la consolidación de grupos de investigación y fortalecimiento del posgrado nacional” (epe 2018-2019). * e-mail: thaniamillans@gmail.com ** corresponding author. e-mail: nbasurto@uv.mx how to cite this article (apa, 6th ed.): millán librado, t., & basurto santos, n. m. (2020). teaching english to young learners in mexico: teachers’ perceptions about their teaching contexts. profile: issues in teachers’ professional development, 22(1), 125-139. https://doi. org/10.15446/profile.v22n1.82105. this article was received on september 4, 2019 and accepted on october 18, 2019. this is an open access article distributed under the terms of the creative commons license attribution-noncommercial-noderivatives 4.0 international license. consultation is possible at https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/. universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras126 millán librado & basurto santos introduction the secretariat of public education in mexico (secretaría de educación pública en méxico, sep in spanish) launched a new educational reform in 2017. one of the main goals of this reform was to introduce the teaching and learning of english in all levels of compulsory education in mexico: from pre-school to preparatory education. the reason behind introducing english from very early stages is that: the secretariat of public education wants you [students] to be bilingual when you finish your preparatory education so that you can express yourself in spanish and english in a natural way. thanks to your knowledge of english you will be able to communicate with more people in the world and discover new cultures. (sep, 2017, translated from spanish) in order to reach this goal, many english teachers will be needed, especially english language teachers who will need to be prepared to effectively teach english to young learners in the mexican context. research conducted in public schools where english has been an official subject for decades has shown that there still exist problems in teaching and learning english in secondary and preparatory education (basurto santos, 2010; basurto santos & gregory weathers, 2016; ramírez-romero & sayer, 2016). moreover, research carried out to find out how other english programmes implemented before, such as the national english program in basic education (pniep in spanish) in primary schools in mexico, has shown that an effective change in the provision of english as a foreign language (efl) has not taken place as had been expected by all parties involved in the processes of teaching and learning english. this paper presents a small-scale research which is part of a larger project funded by the consejo nacional para la ciencia y la tecnología (conacyt). the main focus of this study was to examine the realities of the teaching and learning of efl in public schools in a context where teachers’ voices have to date been unheard. this study is expected to inform the stakeholders of public education in mexico about what efl teaching is like in an informed way so that they can be in a position to develop and propose a policy and the planning of english in education in the mexican context that respond to the needs of all our students and teachers accordingly. furthermore, this study is expected to contribute to the development and/or improvement of undergraduate and postgraduate programmes for english teachers in universities and escuelas normales in mexico, as the results could help them decide what can or cannot be done in their schools given the actual working conditions in mexican schools. therefore, the research question guiding the current study was: what are the teachers’ perceptions regarding their efl classes in their particular teaching contexts? in order to answer this question, we decided to adopt a qualitative approach where interviews were the main instrument of data collection. we will describe the relevant literature that informed the conceptual framework and then the research procedure in the method section below. finally, the findings and conclusions are provided. literature review efl in mexico we live in a globalised world where the exchange of information and communication are everyday necessities. in our modern world, when we find a group of people whose native languages are very different and they want to communicate with each other, we are likely to witness that these people will use the english language as the main means of communication. english has positioned itself as a hyper-central language according to calvet (as cited in moore, 2012). in fact, it is the only hyper-central language that exists in the world. taking this into consideration, one sees it is not surprising then that it is the foreign language most schools choose to include in their curricula (yano, 2009) in countries where english is not the official language. 127profile: issues teach. prof. dev., vol. 22 no. 1, jan-jun, 2020. issn 1657-0790 (printed) 2256-5760 (online). bogotá, colombia. pages 125-139 teaching english to young learners in mexico: teachers’ perceptions about their teaching contexts mexico, a country that shares one of the largest borders with the united states of america, is not the exception to this phenomenon. even though english has been present in the curricula of mexican schools since 1960 (british council, 2015), it has not received adequate attention to obtain better academic results. this lack of attention can also be noticed by examining how proficient mexican citizens are in english. according to education first’s1 (2018) english proficiency index, mexico currently ranks #57 out of 88 countries in english proficiency levels. this result might come as a shock considering that since 2009 there have been three different english programmes created specifically for the basic education level. the problem, according to reyes cruz, murrieta loyo, and hernández méndez (2012), is that they lack a clear course of action. even though they are consistent with international trends, the feasibility to have them fully functioning in a complex context such as mexico is not an easy task. in their research, basurto santos and gregory weathers (2016) discovered that teachers think that the people in charge of creating those programmes are out of touch with the reality of mexican public schools. therefore, the actions discussed in the programmes cannot be applied to every context. ramírez-romero and sayer (2016) claimed, discussing the national english program in basic education, that the government did not set “general or binding commitments or linguistic legislation or policy that sheltered the program” (p. 11). this statement could also be applied to the other programmes. furthermore, they also added that these programmes cannot thrive unless attention is paid to more complex issues such as state policies and teacher training. these two are more important in the long-term than “the form and props.”2 for this reason, even though students receive over 1,000 hours of efl instruction during all the years 1 a private company that teaches foreign languages across the world. 2 ramírez-romero and sayer (2016) refer to this as the administrative aspects of a program/reform/strategy. of basic education level (székely, o’donoghue, & pérez, 2015), they finish basic education without being able to use english efficiently. székely et al. (2015) argue that when it comes to english, “the education system does not fulfil its duty of promoting the right to have good quality education” (p. 94, translated from spanish). in every education system, teachers are key actors who should not be overlooked. in mexico, to become an english teacher, there are no strong regulations yet. according to calderón (2015), in some schools we can find english teachers who do not hold a bachelor’s degree. in many cases, they are people who were deported from the united states after living there for a period of time. on the other hand, there are many universities that offer a bachelor’s degree in efl across the country. ramírez-romero and sayer (2016) admit that there have been tremendous improvements in the quality of the ba programmes in efl offered in public and private universities in mexico. however, most of the teachers teaching in basic education schools in mexico have studied at escuelas normales where the main aim is teaching in general and they hardly ever prepare english teachers. some of these escuelas normales only offer a degree for the teaching of english at the lower secondary level. but for the ones who will teach at the primary school level, for example, the preparation seems to be insufficient. according to roux (2012) for in-service english teachers, the training consists of “the accumulation of hours in short isolated courses and the gathering of certificates and diplomas” (p. 191). she also adds that some of the practices taught in these courses are becoming obsolete and that authorities need to direct their attention to new developments in the efl field. quezada (2013) conducted research in five different mexican states with efl teachers. they complained about lack of materials, school support, and students’ and parents’ negative attitudes. this was not exclusive of rural areas given that the research was carried out in different environments. for banks (2017), authorities at the top are not familiar with what being universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras128 millán librado & basurto santos an english teacher entails: “foundational knowledge, skill set, and teaching contexts” (p. 18). finally, all these studies carried out in mexican schools have highlighted the need to carry out more research in real contexts to inform the stakeholders and all people interested in improving the quality of efl teaching and learning in mexican classrooms. method as the title of this paper suggests, the focus was on teachers’ perceptions of efl in mexican public education, more specifically on their own working environments. therefore, a qualitative research was deemed the most appropriate because it provides the adequate methods that enable researchers to discover and understand teachers’ perceptions. as kardorff and steimke (as cited in schmitt, 2001) state: “qualitative research claims to describe life-worlds from the inside out; from the point of view of the people who participate” (p. 3). the qualitative approach has many advantages, such as its focus on context, its use of an emergent design and the use of thick description (sallee & flood, 2012). furthermore, it appears that it “can transcend beyond the limitations of quantitative research” (rubel & atieno, 2017, p. 54). research site and participants this research took place in three different contexts in the south region of the state of veracruz, mexico: one is an important city and port with a population of over 230,000 inhabitants. the second is also a city although it is smaller than the first in terms of population. like the first place, violence is also incredibly common nowadays. the third place is semi-urban with a small population with not many schools and there is a large drop-out rate between lower and upper secondary schools. most families live in low-income housing. six efl teachers working in lower secondary and upper secondary public schools were the participants. three of them have a degree in english from the main public university in the state of veracruz, mexico. the other three studied in different institutions such as escuelas normales but have also taken courses in the state university. their ages range from 29 to 59 years old and they have between 2 and 25 years of teaching experience (see table 1). table 1. participants’ information participants’ pseudonyms alison karla daniela martha pedro raul age 42 41 29 59 39 52 years of efl teaching experience 20 19 2 20 7 25 institution attended to get a degree in english universidad veracruzana (uv) normal superior de tamaulipas uv celex (centro de lenguas extranjeras) politécnico and some courses at the uv in minatitlan delex (departamento de lenguas extranjeras) at the uv in xalapa uv english level does not know b2 b2 a2 does not know does not know work place lower secondary level lower secondary level lower secondary level upper secondary level upper secondary level lower and upper secondary level 129profile: issues teach. prof. dev., vol. 22 no. 1, jan-jun, 2020. issn 1657-0790 (printed) 2256-5760 (online). bogotá, colombia. pages 125-139 teaching english to young learners in mexico: teachers’ perceptions about their teaching contexts data collection methods given that this paper sought to learn teachers’ perceptions, it was decided that semi-structured interviews were the best option to obtain the data. according to gill, stewart, treasure, and chadwick (2008), semistructured interviews “consist of several key questions that help to define the areas to be explored, but also allow the interviewer or interviewee to diverge in order to pursue an idea or response in more detail” (p. 291). this type of interview also allows the discovery of information that is of particular relevance to the participants, but that might have been overlooked by the researcher (gill et al., 2008). however, it is worth noting that in order for interviews to accomplish their goal, the researchers should attempt to establish a good atmosphere or rapport. in order for this to be possible, tania, one of the researchers, learnt and made every effort to listen attentively to each of the interviewees without voicing her own views on the subject being researched (richards, 2003). for the interviews, a guide was designed (see appendix a) to remind the interviewer what topics to cover and, at the same time, provide some flexibility needed when the face to face interviews were conducted. following all the ethical considerations (de laine, 2000; delamont, 2002), participants gave their permission to audio-tape the interviews; they were also informed that a pseudonym would be employed. they were offered the choice to read the transcripts and were asked about the place, time, and language in which they preferred to be interviewed. all interviews were transcribed verbatim using a three-column template (richards, 2003) which proved to be very useful for doing the preliminary analysis (see appendix b). the process of the data analysis adopted was “thematic content analysis.” we focused on the content of the teachers’ experiences looking for similar themes, then we grouped them in categories and searched “for patterns of association between them” (barkhuizen, 2015, pp. 99-100). we present those categories that emerged from this process in the following section. findings after a thorough analysis of the participants’ responses, three categories emerged: (1) efl syllabi, (2) teaching conditions, and (3) students and parents’ attitudes according to the efl participants. it is worth noting that these findings seem to be consistent with the discoveries of the studies presented in the literature review chapter. however, as stated before, efl teachers in this region of mexico had not been given the opportunity to be heard. therefore, it is expected that their voices will be taken into consideration when new reforms to efl teaching and learning are launched in the future. efl syllabi syllabi are a fundamental part of the english language teaching (elt) field since they serve as a guide for teachers. they spare them the uncertainty of what contents to cover, how to cover them, what grammar structures, and so on. however, it is important that they match the needs of the teaching context in which they will be implemented. in mexico, according to what teachers expressed, the official efl syllabuses are not ideal because the goals established appear to be unfeasible and they also appear to neglect important learning skills. some of the problems teachers have faced regarding the language programmes they are asked to follow are presented and discussed below. mismatch with reality. teachers expressed that the syllabi they are asked to follow are out of touch with reality because they consider them to be too advanced for students. teachers blamed this situation on the fact that, for most of the students, the lower secondary level is their first contact with english. daniela expressed that: the contents of the program are good but students do not have the previous knowledge they should have acquired in primary school. this is what makes it hard to teach them the content. (02.03.19:027-029)3 3 the information provided in brackets in all interview extracts refers to the day, month, and year when the interview was carried out followed by the number of the turn lines where those particular extracts can be found in the transcripts. universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras130 millán librado & basurto santos the mismatch between the syllabus and the real efl students’ knowledge was highlighted by all the participants. they all expressed that even though the language programme may be well organised and be presented in an excellent way, the syllabi imposed upon them by the authorities do not work given the kind of students who attend public schools in their contexts. karla further explains that: students do not take english since kindergarten and primary school. so, when they enter lower secondary, they have no knowledge of the language. i start teaching them the abc’s and for example, if i want to teach them how to ask for the time in english, for example, i have to explain first how you say the time in spanish. if you want to teach them how to write sentences, you have to explain how to write them in spanish first. (03.03.19:013-020) the goals that the government expect from lower secondary school students is that they should be able to read literature and write different types of essays (sep, 2017) but teachers do not think this is possible in the mexican education system. this is the reason why they emphasized the importance of teaching english to kids from kindergarten or primary school so that when they reach lower secondary, they are more prepared. raul, for example, said kids need to start learning english in primary school: researcher 1: which level do you consider should receive more attention? raul: all levels, but most importantly, primary school because i think that it is at this level where students acquire certain habits that will help them in their lives as students. (04.03.19:062-066) in order to do this, they said the government should invest more in providing more resources to schools and hiring real efl teachers. it is hard to predict whether this will happen anytime soon given that austerity is one of the biggest policies of the current federal government. nonetheless, it is clear that the contents of the syllabi should be examined and perhaps adjusted should the goals be too ambitious given the reality of the students in public education in mexico. not enough grammar. teachers also showed their dissatisfaction with the contents of the syllabi because, apparently, they are too focused on a communicative approach and not enough on grammar. this result came as a shock given that most teachers in other research studies complain about programs being too grammaroriented (basurto santos, 2010; borijan, 2015). karla’s words show this: i think we’re wrong in that aspect, because when students do their exams to enter high school, they’re not going to do an oral exam, they have to write. so, we have to teach them how to write and a little bit of grammar. grammar is something that we should not skip. (03.03.19:028-033) a plausible reason for karla’s complaint is that the efl teachers may feel more comfortable with a very traditional way of teaching instead of other language approaches where oral and listening skills are required not only from the students but from teachers as well. teachers, not only in this study but in prior research publications, have acknowledged their lack of oral-aural and even written skills (see the participants’ level of efl in table 1). daniela added that “the 2017 program focuses more on a social aspect and leaves grammar aside. the program is not bad but as a teacher, i would not leave grammar aside because i think it is fundamental” (02.03.19:078-081). likewise, for raul, even though the new approaches seem to be better, he seems to feel more comfortable teaching english by using the grammar-translation method: researcher 1: do you think the elt scenario is better now? raul: in some aspects, it has improved but now it is more focused on everyday situations. more focused on a communicative approach, whereas in the past it was more focused on translation. in the past, the teaching was through translation. so, i think we learned better in the past. even though translation is not a modern method, i think we learned better. (04.03.19:022-029) 131profile: issues teach. prof. dev., vol. 22 no. 1, jan-jun, 2020. issn 1657-0790 (printed) 2256-5760 (online). bogotá, colombia. pages 125-139 teaching english to young learners in mexico: teachers’ perceptions about their teaching contexts as we can observe, three teachers expressed the same worry, even though all of them belong to different learning generations. these answers may come as a surprise to some; however, it is certainly important to discover what the root of the problem is. on the one hand, it is argued that efl instruction should not return to the grammar-translation method days because it makes students too dependent on translating everything (kong, 2011). on the other hand, grammar cannot be overlooked because, as chang (2011) pointed out: “without grammar, words hang together without any real meaning or sense” (p. 21). it appears that teachers would like to have access to a more integral syllabus, one that covers the four language skills equally and not one where the scale is tipped to focus on one in particular. however, if this is to be achieved, students must receive more efl instruction than they do. alison, for example, commented that her students get only three hours of english instruction per week. with this time constraint, it appears to be difficult to give students access to all four skills. nevertheless, another plausible explanation for this complaint about the lack of enough focus on grammar and translation in the new syllabuses might be owing to the fact that these teachers have been teaching efl by concentrating mainly on grammar rules and translation and for a long time. therefore, they might have a limited understanding of the communicative approach which focuses more on the spoken language rather than on explicit grammar rules and which does not include translating from the target language to the students’ mother tongue. the shift from a grammar-translation method to efl teaching to a communicative approach requires a long and well-organized teacher training period and it definitely cannot happen overnight as expected by the authorities. recent national programmes for efl. teachers were also asked to share their views on the latest programs launched by the government, the national english strategy4 (announced in 2017) and the one announced this year5 (2019) by the current secretary of education. regarding this topic, all of them rejected the second and favoured the first one. they think that a platform is not the most adequate teaching method and emphasized the need to hire specialized teachers or offer good training to in-service teachers. they expressed that the platform would not work unless it is accompanied by other features. they also mentioned that they suspected this strategy came from someone who was not familiar with the different efl contexts in mexico. pedro mentioned that: i don’t think anyone can teach something they don’t know, so i think this strategy comes from someone who doesn’t know about this field. (31.03.29:138-140) daniela, on the other hand, said she thought it was a good idea, but it would be difficult to implement it in mexico because it lacks the infrastructure: teachers should have the knowledge, so they are able to offer feedback to students. so, it’s better to train teachers than replace them with machines. (02.04.19:120-121; 130-131) the teachers’ views show that they are sceptical of the use of a platform to learn english. as a matter of fact, the government has already tried to use a platform, called enciclomedia,6 for the teaching of english in primary schools in the past. this program was piloted in 13 states and lasted only six years (2005-2011). it failed 4 strategy announced by the former secretary of education, aurelio nuño, where it is stipulated that aspiring teachers from the escuelas normales (schools where the majority of future teachers study) would be prepared in order to teach english to children at the basic education level. 5 this is not a strategy per se but more of a statement made by the current secretary of education, esteban moctezuma. he announced the creation of a platform that any primary school teacher could use to teach english to kids even if they do not know english. however, it appears to be at its early stages, and he did not disclose more details about it. 6 software containing the books, used by kids in the last two years of primary school, in their digitized version. teachers and students had access through an electronic blackboard. universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras132 millán librado & basurto santos because, according to ramírez-romero and sayer (2016), it was rooted on the mistaken assumption that both teachers and students could learn english at the same time without any guidance. they also pointed out that teachers were not able to offer feedback or clear any doubts, as daniela mentioned. in terms of the first strategy, the responses were slightly more positive, but most participants said it would only work in a few teaching contexts. alison, for example, expressed that she would support this only if teachers were properly trained and not just on the surface level. raul concurred that this strategy could only work if teachers received adequate training. however, according to his own experience, teachers are not trained well enough in the escuelas normales: according to some experiences of teachers who graduated from the escuelas normales, their english isn’t so good. . . . i know some teachers who graduated from there, they’re good teachers but their level is not as high, but if they prepared them better it would be great. (04.04.19:226-231) as observed, the common thread in these opinions is that most teachers agree that adequate teacher training is of paramount importance. in fact, this is needed more than anything else. it is evident that without training, an initiative will always stay at the surface level no matter how well-structured it might be on paper (ramírez-romero & sayer, 2016). it is hard to predict the fate of both of these programmes given the outcomes of the previous strategies. unfortunately, there is not enough research carried out about teachers’ perceptions concerning these two strategies given that they are very recent. therefore, the perceptions presented here cannot be compared. teaching conditions teaching conditions are also an important element in the education system. a good teaching and learning environment will always be beneficial to both teachers and students. the frequency of teacher training workshops, the amount of support teachers receive to improve their language abilities, the infrastructure of classrooms, amongst others, are all factors that have the power to make teachers feel they are well-equipped to help their students in the learning of english. lack of opportunities for teacher training/development. regarding the training aspect, most teachers said they do not receive regular training. they explained that the only training they are usually offered is concerning pedagogical facets, as banks (2017) pointed out. however, when it comes to english, the training is scarce or absent. three teachers expressed that they have not been supervised for a long time. karla and raul specifically said that they have not received any training in the last 15 years, which made them feel a strong dissatisfaction and frustration towards their teaching contexts. these feelings, they explain, are triggered by the realisation that they cannot improve their teaching because there is neither help nor support to make them aware of areas they might be failing at and that need improving. these are alison’s and martha’s voices on this issue: they have given us courses about how to improve our teaching and some of them are good, but the reality is way different. when you arrive to the classroom, we do not have the material and the groups they present [in the courses]. those courses have nothing to do with what we face in the classroom. (alison, 02.03.19:144-148; 140-141) i think university teachers are the ones who are properly trained but, in my case, it has been my own [every day teaching] experience. (martha, 01.03.19:080-081) for this reason, teachers have to look in different places to find their own resources. karla, for example, resorts to the internet to discover new trends in the teaching of english or new strategies. this lack of training appears to be best reflected precisely on the level of proficiency teachers have. regarding the participants of this study, most of them admit to having an a2 and b2 level of the common european framework reference for languages (cefr). this contradicts what calderón 133profile: issues teach. prof. dev., vol. 22 no. 1, jan-jun, 2020. issn 1657-0790 (printed) 2256-5760 (online). bogotá, colombia. pages 125-139 teaching english to young learners in mexico: teachers’ perceptions about their teaching contexts (2015) stated about the ideal level for an english teacher. he expressed that lower-secondary teachers should have a c1 level. however, three teachers in this research do not even know what their english language level is. in fact, two were not aware of the cefr. nevertheless, teachers are mindful of this fact and they actually shared their discontent with their level. karla, for example, pointed out that she has a b2 level, which she had to find out on her own because the school she works at never provided the resources for her to do so. the b2 level is the level students are supposed to reach when they leave the lower secondary level. therefore, she finds it difficult that students reach this level because teachers themselves appear to be “stuck” in this level. it is noteworthy to highlight the participants’ awareness of the aspects that they need in order to improve their level of english. in general, they agreed that teachers should find ways to continue their learning of english, especially their command of the spoken language. for example, martha said they should interact with native speakers to obtain real-life practice: most teachers have a basic level and it is only theoretical. they should interact with people who speak it and practice it. (01.03.19:066-067) raul said that teachers should show more commitment to obtain a more advanced level of english than they have because most of them do not have the level expected for them to be in front of a group. pedro also agreed with this statement. these opinions are consistent with what reyes cruz et al. (2012) criticized about the lack of expertise on the part of teachers. they explained that most of them did not necessarily study to become teachers. this scenario fosters an unhealthy environment for professional development. efl teachers, it seems, are not a priority for authorities in both the federal and state education sectors or at least it seems so in this part of the state of veracruz. this contradicts what is discussed in the different programs created by the sep where there are sections that cover the aspect of teachers’ training. as we have outlined here, this does not appear to happen in practice. teachers need to be trained, evaluated, and given feedback continuously. it is unrealistic to expect for students to reach a b2 level by third grade in lower secondary schools if teachers feel that their english level is not the necessary to help students to achieve what is stipulated in the official documents. nonetheless, despite this bleak scene, teachers—or at least the participants of this study—are tackling this problem by taking action themselves. karla and alison are two examples. they both took the initiative to find out their english level on their own. karla, through the cenni7 exam and alison commented that she will travel to canada to take one. such endeavours are to be applauded because they do it with their own economic resources, which is a clear sign of their passion for their profession. lack of adequate resources. besides the scarce training, efl teachers expressed that they also experience a lack of teaching materials and a deficient infrastructure in their classrooms. it is widely known that in order to teach english, many resources are needed such as books, computers, and recorders, among other elements. many teachers in this research do not have access to most of these objects. alison’s words represent all the participants’ experiences: the books we ask for are never available in the school. in just one classroom we have two or three different books. (02.05.19:104-105) for pedro and raul, the lack of resources is not only about books, but they would like to have special spaces to improve the teaching and learning of the foreign language: i can only speak for myself but in the school i work at, i do not have the resources that i would like to have. for example, i’d like to have an audio-visual room or an english laboratory. the students 7 certificación nacional de nivel de idioma (national certification of a language level) is an instrument that measures the level people have of a foreign language. it is the equivalent in mexico of the cefr. universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras134 millán librado & basurto santos do not have material, books, or a guide. we work with the material that we make. (pedro, 01.05.19:123-128) if the government really wanted to put emphasis on teaching english, they would support us with the materials. when we have listening activities, i have to take my own equipment. but if we had an english laboratory it would be better. (raul, 04.03.19:034-039) karla also sheds light on the differences between public schools and private schools, arguing that the latter have better teaching conditions. in the following extract she illustrates this scenario: the thing is . . . for starters, a private school teacher has around 13 or 20 students in their classroom. we get sent saturated groups of over 40 students. for example, in the other school, i have groups of 52 students. so, having to control 52 students is complicated. besides, a private school teacher has many advantages. since they are private schools, they have computers and they say they work with platforms, because i have talked to some of them. students upload their homework there. . . . here, in public schools we do not have that and the students we get come from low-income families. i see it as a win if a student brings to school a dictionary, their notebook, and some colour pencils because so many of them cannot even afford colour pencils. (03.03.19:088-106) all the issues that the participants pointed out above are a reflection of the lack of support from the government. two teachers even mentioned corruption as one of the reasons why their teaching conditions and efl instruction in general are not to be improved. it is hard to say whether this is true, although given mexico’s and veracruz state’s long-time corruption scandals, it would not be surprising. however, whatever the case may be, it is undeniable that strict measures should be taken in order to improve what has been failing for a long time. needless to say, efl teachers are not the only ones experiencing hardships. even so, given that learning english is extremely beneficial to mexico’s economy, it is definitely a sector worth prioritizing since it appears to be one of the most neglected in the public education system in our country. students’ and parents’ attitudes given that students and their parents also play a large role in the efl field in the public education sector, teachers also shared their perceptions on the attitudes that both students and parents show towards english. unfortunately, they complained that students show apathy most of the time. for martha, the problem is rooted in the fact that most of the students are not completely aware of the importance english has globally and how much they could benefit from learning it: students are unable to reach an advanced level because it requires a lot of effort and because they are not aware of how relevant it is and what learning english represents. (31.03.19:055-057) the students’ apathy is disheartening for teachers because it demotivates them to keep looking for strategies so that their students can learn better. paprock (as cited in madero, 2019) mentions that the students’ attitudes represent an intrinsic factor in the education system; thus representing a significant component when it comes to teachers’ dissatisfaction with their work. raul, for example, expressed that he has witnessed that most students are forced by their parents to attend school, which makes the teaching of english very difficult since, as martha pointed out, it is not a top priority for both students and parents alike: most students do not like the subject [english] and it does not matter how many strategies we look for, very few show real interest. we notice this because many students are forced by their parents to go to school . . . they do not really go because they want to learn. this makes the teaching and learning difficult. (04.03.19:076-081) karla explained that she has noticed that the students who show more enthusiasm are the ones who attended either private schools or took private lessons before entering the lower secondary level. according to her, this happens because as they have to take english from a young age, they feel more confident in their skills and thus, show more enthusiasm in the classroom: 135profile: issues teach. prof. dev., vol. 22 no. 1, jan-jun, 2020. issn 1657-0790 (printed) 2256-5760 (online). bogotá, colombia. pages 125-139 teaching english to young learners in mexico: teachers’ perceptions about their teaching contexts they feel more confident when they have taken courses . . . they also are more intelligent in other subjects. (03.03.19:151-154) in the same vein, raul commented that in his experience, parents from private schools are more involved in their children’s academic life than those in public schools. in this section, daniela was the only one who showed more enthusiasm regarding students’ attitudes saying that more than half of her students like learning english. but for the majority, this does not seem to be the case. as shown in this section, teachers deem students’ and parents’ attitudes as mostly negative. evidently, this is an issue that also affects students’ learning. perhaps what martha said about their not realising the tremendous importance english has is true. this problem may be owing to the fact that most of the students of our participants appear to come from lowincome families. these students probably do not have internet access, which is why they are not as informed. furthermore, their parents are not as concerned with english probably because of their economic situation. given that most people from the region where this paper is focused on struggle financially, the findings are not surprising. of course, there is also the case where students may just dislike english and their economic situation is not an obstacle to learning it. nevertheless, whatever the case may be, solutions are needed. even though this topic is not within the scope of this paper, it was significant to highlight this problem because, as previously mentioned, students also play a crucial role in the efl sphere in mexican public education. therefore, further research is needed to assess the solutions that could be applied to change students’ attitudes. conclusions as stated from the beginning of this paper, the main goal of this small-scale research was to describe and raise awareness about teachers’ perceptions on different aspects of their teaching contexts that are present in the efl field in mexico’s public education in the south region of the state of veracruz. the teachers’ voices highlighted several aspects that impinge on their work: the programmes, their teaching conditions, and the students’ attitudes. however, embedded within these categories are sub-categories which emerged that provide a more complete report on their perceptions. the perceptions that teachers have are, for the most part, negative. teachers expressed their discontent with the programmes they are asked to follow because they do not seem to match the real language level that their students have. furthermore, they complained that they focused on communicative skills, leaving the other skills relegated to a lesser status. when it comes to the more recent strategies that have been announced, they were hesitant as to whether they would work efficiently or that they were realistic given the teaching/leaning contexts in public education in mexico. naturally, they witness the failure of the current ones, which is why they are wary of them. their perceptions also uncovered the poor conditions they work in, such as the lack of training and the poor and inadequate infrastructure. this paper also included the perceptions teachers have on their students’ attitudes towards learning english because their role is vital in the efl field. most of them agreed that students are apathetic towards english, for the most part. these findings show that the efl field in mexico’s public education is still failing both students and teachers. the literature review chapter and these findings suggest that this problem is endemic among mexican classrooms. therefore, it is imperative that authorities, at the federal and state level, take action. if these problems are left unattended, they will keep growing and the implications for english language learning and teaching are that the expected outcomes as they have been stated in the official documents (sep, 2017) will not be achieved in many more years to come. universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras136 millán librado & basurto santos limitations of the current study at first, we intended to include the perceptions of english primary school teachers in this paper as well. however, all primary schools that were visited did not have an english teacher. the heads of all schools visited expressed that they did not have one because “parents did not longer want to pay for one” or because they simply had never had one. therefore, it was decided that only teachers at the lower and upper secondary levels were going to be included. this poses a limitation because their perceptions could have enriched the view presented here of the efl field. if english is to be introduced in primary schools, more and urgent research is needed to find out what the real current situation is in this level of education in the country and not only in the state of veracruz. recommendations for further research this paper focused on merely describing teachers’ perceptions. however, the issues presented should be further examined in order to obtain a more integral perspective on the topic at hand. it is also suggested that more research is needed on teachers and students in schools (both urban and rural) not only in the south region of the state of veracruz that appears to be overlooked in the existing efl bibliography, but in the whole country. this includes not only focusing on teachers’ perceptions, but also delving deeper into the myriad of problems present in the efl field in mexico’s public education and in other countries where these findings resonate. references banks, l. (2017). english teachers in mexico: initial preparation and the realities of practice (doctoral dissertation). university of california, san diego, usa. retrieved from https://csusm-dspace.calstate.edu/bitstream/ handle/10211.3/193053/banksleticia_spring2017. pdf ?sequence=1. barkhuizen, g. (2015). narrative knowledging in second language teaching and learning contexts. in a. de finna & a. georgakopoulou (eds.), the handbook of narrative analysis (pp. 97-115). oxford, uk: wiley blackwell. https:// doi.org/10.1002/9781118458204.ch5. basurto santos, n. m. (2010). transition in efl from secondary to preparatory in mexican state schools: participant perspectives. xalapa, mx: universidad veracruzana. basurto santos, n. m., & gregory weathers, j. r. (2016). efl in public schools in mexico: dancing around the ring? how journal, 23(1), 68-84. https://doi.org/10.19183/how.23.1.297. borijan, a. 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(2002). fieldwork in educational settings: methods, pitfalls and perspectives (2nd ed.). london, uk: routledge. https://doi.org/10.4324/9780203453513. education first. (2018). english proficiency index. retrieved from https://www.ef.com.mx/epi/regions/latin-america/ mexico/. gill, p., stewart, e., treasure, e., & chadwick, b. (2008). methods of data collection in qualitative research: interviews and focus groups. british dental journal, 204(6) 291-295. https://doi.org/10.1038/bdj.2008.192. 137profile: issues teach. prof. dev., vol. 22 no. 1, jan-jun, 2020. issn 1657-0790 (printed) 2256-5760 (online). bogotá, colombia. pages 125-139 teaching english to young learners in mexico: teachers’ perceptions about their teaching contexts kong, n. (2011). establishing a comprehensive english teaching pattern combining the communicative teaching method and the grammar translation method. english language teaching, 4(1), 76-78. https://doi.org/10.5539/ elt.v4n1p76. madero, c. (2019). secondary teacher’s dissatisfaction with the teaching profession in latin america: the case of brazil, chile, and mexico. teachers and teaching, 25(3), 358-378. https://doi.org/10.1080/13540602.2019.1587402. moore, p. (2012). mexican national and international policy on second languages (principally in english). lengua y voz, 3(1), 3-18. retrieved from https://bit.ly/2pmpwcg. quezada, r. l. (2013). transforming into a multilingual nation: a qualitative analysis of mexico’s initiative to develop language teachers. mextesol journal, 37(3), 1-17. ramírez-romero, j., & sayer, p. (2016). the teaching of english in public primary schools in mexico: more heat than light? education policy analysis archives, 24(84), 1-22. https://doi.org/10.14507/epaa.24.2502. reyes cruz, m., murrieta loyo, g., & hernández méndez, e. (2012). políticas lingüísticas nacionales e internacionales sobre la enseñanza del idioma inglés en escuelas primarias. revista pueblos y fronteras digital, 6(12), 167-197. https://doi.org/10.22201/cimsur.18704115e.2011.12.126. richards, k. (2003). qualitative inquiry in tesol. new york, us: palgrave macmillan. https://doi. org/10.1057/9780230505056. roux, r. (2012, june). english language education policy in colombia and mexico. paper presented at the annual meeting of the bulgarian comparative education society, kyustendil, bulgaria. retrieved from eric database (ed567063). rubel, d., & atieno, j. e. (2017). qualitative research in group work: status, synergies, and implementation. the journal specialists in group work, 42(1), 54-86. https://doi.org/1 0.1080/01933922.2016.1264522. sallee, m. w., & flood, j. t. (2012). using qualitative research to bridge research, policy, and practice. theory into practice, 51(2), 137-144. https://doi.org/10.1080/00405 841.2012.662873. schmitt, r. (2001). review of the book qualitative forschung: ein handbuch, edited by u. flick, e. von kardorff, & i. steinke. forum: qualitative social research, 2(1). https:// doi.org/10.17169/fqs-2.1.985. secretaría de educación pública en méxico, sep. (2017). estrategia nacional para el fortalecimiento de la enseñanza del inglés. retrieved from https://www.gob.mx/cms/ uploads/attachment/file/289658/mexico_en_ingle_s_ digital.pdf. székely, m., o’donoghue, j. l., & pérez, h. (2015). el estado del aprendizaje del inglés en méxico. in j. o’donoghue (ed.), sorry: el aprendizaje del inglés en méxico (pp. 83-97). méxico, df: mexicanos primero. retrieved from http://www.mexicanosprimero.org/images/stories/sorry/ sorry-digital-ok.pdf. yano, y. (2009). english as an international lingua franca: from societal to individual. world englishes, 28(2), 246-255. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1467-971x.2009.01587.x. about the authors tania millán librado has just completed her ba in english language. she graduated with distinction by presenting the written report and oral presentation on which this article is based. she is currently working as a “becaria” conacyt for dr. basurto santos and is planning to pursue an ma in tefl. nora m. basurto santos is a full-time researcher at the universidad veracruzana, mexico. she is currently engaged in a post-doctoral stay at the university of edinburgh, united kingdom, funded by conacyt. she is a member of the sistema nacional de investigadores-conacyt. universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras138 millán librado & basurto santos appendix a: interview guide (some possible questions) • age? • years of experience? • higher education institution attended? • english proficiency level? • personal general opinion about efl teaching and learning in mexico? • help/support that the government provides to efl teachers? • teaching/learning aspects that could be improved? if so, what are they? • students from private vs. public schools? • can students afford private courses? • tell me about students’ attitudes towards learning english. • problems/obstacles for students to reach advanced english levels? • what is needed to help students reach an advanced level in english? • situation of teachers in the south region of veracruz? • any formal teacher training programme(s) provided by the government? • kind of support needed for you to deliver your courses the way you would like to? • are teachers’ opinions taken into consideration in the design of efl programmes? • teacher training workshops taken implemented by the government? how often? how many? what about? • your opinion regarding the statement made by the current secretary of education about teaching english through a platform without having to know english? • what do you think about the strategy proposed by the former secretary of education about teachers from the escuelas normales being trained so they can teach english to kids? 139profile: issues teach. prof. dev., vol. 22 no. 1, jan-jun, 2020. issn 1657-0790 (printed) 2256-5760 (online). bogotá, colombia. pages 125-139 teaching english to young learners in mexico: teachers’ perceptions about their teaching contexts appendix b: transcript (extract)* name: mtro. _________, date: march 2, 2019, pseudonym: pedro (p), interviewer: researcher 1 (t) 032 033 034 035 036 037 038 039 040 041 042 043 044 045 046 047 048 049 050 051 052 053 054 055 056 057 058 059 060 061 062 063 p: the english subject, most of all, should be implemented in public schools from kindergarten, elementary, lower, and upper secondary schools so that when students enter university, they already know the basics of the language. also, train teachers; keep them updated because some are stuck in the past with old strategies. schools should also be provided with books, audios, videos, and everything that has to do with pedagogical material and, especially, in public schools because they are the ones that do not have this type of material. t: do you think that students who attend private schools learn english better than those who attend public schools? p: yes t: why? p: because in most private schools, they take english from kindergarten until the upper secondary level. this enables students to have access to a more integral education regarding the english language. t: a lot of people seem to think that private courses are the best option to learn english, but do you think most people can afford them? p: most of the people, at least in the south region of the state, do not have the necessary means to afford these types of courses. they’re really good... this type of courses to reinforce what has been already learned at school or simply when people want to learn because they have smaller groups and, in some cases, they are personalized. comments teacher perception regarding beginning of efl learning teachers’ needs: training and resources private vs. public schools socio-economic situation/working conditions * in spanish in the original. 167profile vol. 17, no. 2, july-december 2015. issn 1657-0790 (printed) 2256-5760 (online). bogotá, colombia. pages 167-187 http://dx.doi.org/10.15446/profile.v17n2.44272 the cultural content in efl textbooks and what teachers need to do about it el contenido cultural en los textos de inglés y qué necesitan hacer los profesores al respecto luis fernando gómez rodríguez*1 universidad pedagógica nacional, bogotá, colombia this article analyzes the cultural content in three communicative english as a foreign language textbooks that are used as main instructional resources in the english classroom. the study examined whether the textbooks include elements of surface or deep culture, and the findings indicate that the textbooks contain only static and congratulatory topics of surface culture and omit complex and transformative forms of culture. consequently, the second part of the article suggests how teachers can address deep-rooted aspects of culture that might help english as a foreign language learners build more substantive intercultural competence in the language classroom. key words: communicative textbooks, deep culture, efl learners, intercultural communicative competence, surface culture. en este artículo se analiza el contenido cultural en tres textos de inglés comunicativo utilizados como el principal recurso de enseñanza en la clase de inglés. se indagó si los textos incluyen elementos de la cultura superficial o de la cultura profunda. se observó que los textos sólo presentan temas “admirables” y representativos de la cultura superficial y no ofrecen temas complejos y trasformativos de la cultura profunda. en consecuencia, en la segunda parte del artículo se sugiere a los profesores de inglés cómo abordar aspectos complejos de la cultura profunda que podrían ayudarle a los estudiantes de inglés como lengua extranjera a construir una competencia intercultural más sólida. palabras clave: competencia comunicativa intercultural, estudiantes de inglés, cultura profunda, cultura superficial, textos comunicativos. * e-mail: lfgomez@pedagogica.edu.co how to cite this article (apa, 6th ed.): gómez rodríguez, l. f. (2015). the cultural content in efl textbooks and what teachers need to do about it. profile issues in teachers’ professional development, 17(2), 167-187. http://dx.doi.org/10.15446/profile.v17n2.44272. this article was received on july 3, 2014, and accepted on february 2, 2015. this is an open access article distributed under the terms of the creative commons license attribution-noncommercial-noderivatives 4.0 international license. consultation is possible at http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/. http://dx.doi.org/10.15446/profile.v17n2.44272 mailto:lfgomez%40pedagogica.edu.co?subject= http://dx.doi.org/10.15446/profile.v17n2.44272 http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/ universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras168 gómez rodríguez introduction communicative textbooks occupy a main place in teaching english as a foreign language (efl) because many teachers depend on them as the bases for helping learners develop communicative competence: the ability to use language, convey messages, and negotiate meaning with other speakers in social contexts of real life (bachman, 1999; savignon, 1997, 2001). to accomplish this task, textbooks include lists of communicative functions, grammar forms, and language skills to be practiced. additionally, they display communicative tasks that simulate or are genuine real-life situations. however, little attention has been given to considering whether textbooks incorporate sufficient material to help learners build intercultural communicative competence (icc). tudor (2001) indicates that the sociocultural dimensions of communication and the cultural contents intervene significantly in language use and that, therefore, culture cannot be ignored in program designs and teaching. in this sense, culture cannot be disregarded in the design of communicative textbooks. currently, the necessity to learn a foreign language goes far beyond learning grammar forms veiled in communicative functions. in consequence, the efl field cannot ignore that learners must develop intercultural awareness to fit into a globalized world in which people from different cultural backgrounds e st abl ish i nte r nat i ona l rel at i ons and b e c ome intercultural speakers (banks, 2004; byram, 1997). learners need to foster what kumaravadivelu (2008) has called global cultural consciousness, through which students learn to interact appropriately with new cultures that are oten very different from their own. then, if in many education settings the english language is taught through communicative textbooks, it is expected that they will provide the means to address the foreign culture. with this goal, textbooks should promote the enhancement of icc, which is defined as the ability to understand and interact with people of multiple social identities and with their own individuality (byram, gribkova, & starkey, 2002). in light of the previous assertions, this article analyzes the cultural content presented in three efl communicative textbooks that are known worldwide. the analysis explores whether these textbooks offer rich content about the target/foreign culture/s and to what extent they might prepare learners to become not only communicatively competent but also intercultural beings. the analysis was supported by theoretical views related to the distinction between surface culture and deep culture, which are explained below. theoretical views on culture culture involves deep culture, not only surface culture the efl field has generally focused on teaching elements of sur face culture, that is, the easily observable (hinkel, 2001) and static elements that represent a nation. efl materials often include holidays, tourist sites, famous people’s achievements, and food. however, these surface forms of culture are not sufficient for students to understand the target culture because they only entail the accumulation of general fixed information and do not provide opportunities to address the underlying sociocultural interactions that occur in different backgrounds. in contrast, deep culture embraces invisible meanings associated with a region, a group of people, or subcultures that reflect their own particular sociocultural norms, lifestyles, beliefs, and values. these deep cultural forms are very intricate, almost hidden, because they are personal, individual, possibly collective but multifaceted and because they do not necessarily fit the traditional social norms or the fixed cultural standards. for example, in past decades, latinos valued large families, living with their parents and grandparents in the same house. however, younger profile texto escrito a máquina 169profile vol. 17, no. 2, july-december 2015. issn 1657-0790 (printed) 2256-5760 (online). bogotá, colombia. pages 167-187 the cultural content in efl textbooks and what teachers need to do about it latino generations today value their independence and want to live on their own. shaules (2007) observes that “in many intercultural contexts, deep culture is not noticed or understood in any profound sense [because] it constitutes the most fundamental challenge of cultural learning” (p. 12). hence, deep culture often causes misunderstanding and confusion. culture is transformative, not only static traditionally, the efl field has considered culture to be a static entity that represents the main collective sociocultural norms, lifestyles, and values that are learned, shared, and transmitted by the people of a community (e.g., the british value punctuality, ame r i c ans are work a hol i c s ) . howe ve r, t he s e elemental visions not only tend to create stereotypes but are inaccurate in the current process of global communication given that culture is in constant transformation in multiples ways. it is dangerous to generalize that all of the people of a community “share” and follow the exact same established sociocultural norms with homogeneous compliance. similarly, it is a mistake to believe that each culture is unalterable and fixed with its own norms and traditions, given that history itself has shown that one nation can indirectly or directly influence and change another and cause cultural alterations. such are the cases of the british imperialism that exerted political power in india in the 18th century when england became the dominant culture and india the submissive culture, and the impact of the american dream in latin america through international mass media in our contemporary age. in this sense, culture is a relative concept, not an absolute one, because it transforms over time and among people (greenblatt, 1995; levy, 2007). in fact, human beings are inclined to impose or change culture as they face or question cultural realities related, for instance, to oppression, politics, social conflicts, and human rights. culture is contentious, not only congratulatory efl education has also focused on teaching culture in celebratory or neutral terms by emphasizing the most emblematic elements that define a cultural group and by spreading the idea that all cultures of the world happily coexist through mutual respect and tolerance. therefore, learners create safe, celebratory opinions of the target cultures because they are never taught that defects in and deviations from the models of the “correct” cultural behavior also exist. learners are taught to appreciate positive characteristics of other nations, such as that americans are well-organized, the british enjoy having tea every afternoon, and japanese people are humble. congratulatory views also underline the study of tourist sites, the lives of famous celebrities, the main human achievements of a country, and tips on how to survive as a tourist in a foreign country. c ont radic tor i ly, graf f (1992) and hamesgarcia (2003) state that teachers should avoid self-congratulatory approaches to culture, history, and identity in their pedagogy because celebratory dis cours es are one-side d in t hat t he y do not allow students to learn about the true conflictive sociocultural realities of a nation. instead, approaches to culture and identity should promote a more critical approach through “debates” and “models of controversy and conflict” (hames-garcia, 2003, p. 32) against oppression, injustice, and power. in this sense, culture should be taught in the efl classroom from a contentious and controversial perspective in such a way that it explores the deep, complex elements of culture. this approach helps students become more critical about the controversial cultural dynamics that exist in every nation. examples of possible debatable topics can be the hegemony of the us in the political affairs of many nations of the world, the tendency of some latin american presidents to be reelected and impose their power ad infinitum, and even the universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras170 gómez rodríguez marginalization of minority groups such as gays, the disabled, and elderly citizens in capitalistic societies, aspects that are classified as confrontational topics of deep culture. tudor (2001) affirms that teaching materials cannot be neutral because they have to reflect a “set of social and cultural values which are inherent in their make-up . . . and explain a value system, implicitly or explicitly” (p. 73). accordingly, learners should be encouraged to study those implicit meanings through critical approaches based on debate and contestation rather than just learning passively about the neutral and congratulatory aspects that characterize a given community. culture is heterogeneous, not only homogeneous similar to the previous features, culture is seen in the efl classroom as a homogeneous entity in which all of its components are studied in equal and generalized terms. atkinson (1999) refers to this form of culture as “geographically distinct” and “relatively unchanging” (p. 626) and as a set of rules that regulate all individuals’ behavior in a community uniformly as if they were identical. as a result, learners have a tendency to create standardized generalizations of the target culture because they are never given the chance to consider that there are exceptions to the cultural norm. consequently, it is important to recognize that there are also subgroups and subcultures within a particular society with their own values and ideologies that differ from those of the dominant group and that can help learners reflect on issues related to gender, ethnicity, identity, social class, and power, that is, to understand the heterogeneous and hybrid value that all cultures of the world encompass. the concept of heterogeneity is closely related to the transformation of culture. the fact that a given community changes because of the influences of other nations or transforms itself because of the range of internal practices and the diverse individual and collective ideologies of its people demonstrates that culture is not superficial and static; it is more complex than it appears to be at first sight. if culture is naturally transformative and heterogeneous, efl teachers should ponder whether what they teach in the language classroom, as tudor (2001) suggests, are the real, deep intricacies or the “stereotypical” and superficial forms of a culture. it is concluded then that culture goes beyond static, surface, congratulatory, and homogeneous principles that only constitute initial and limited s t a n d p o i nt s f o r u n d e r s t a n d i n g p e o p l e f ro m backgrounds different from our own. guest (2002) identifies a number of problems when teaching the target culture from these basic principles, naming the creation of stereotypes, the failure to reflect about complex realities, and the propagation of intercultural boundaries and misunderstanding. to avoid this limited approach to culture, teachers should study it from a more critical standpoint because learners are then able to understand that it is transformative, deep, contentious, and heterogeneous. in this way, learners will be able to develop critical icc. english textbooks analysis led by the previous insights, the analysis of the three efl communicative textbooks attempts to identify the levels of surface and deep cultural content that they incorporate in their units and how they can help learners build icc to make them aware of cultural differences in the current globalized society in which they live. the textbooks were analyzed guided by the following question: which surface or deep cultural topics do efl communicative textbooks contain? criteria for the selection of the textbooks the textbooks chosen for the analysis were designed by international british and american 171profile vol. 17, no. 2, july-december 2015. issn 1657-0790 (printed) 2256-5760 (online). bogotá, colombia. pages 167-187 the cultural content in efl textbooks and what teachers need to do about it publishing houses and correspond to three levels: basic, intermediate, and advanced english. they are used in many countries worldwide for various efl contexts. they have also been used in the language programs at three universities in bogotá, colombia, for a number of years. this was an important decision because the texts were implemented as a means to prepare efl pre-service teachers to become future teachers in the country. furthermore, it was important to analyze how these instructional materials included culture and helped pre-service teachers to develop icc. the names of the textbooks are not revealed because the idea is not to create prejudicial positions about their reputations but rather to offer efl teachers some critical bases of analysis for how to more appropriately address culture as it is presented in textbooks. this examination will also be an opportunity to envision alternative materials that could facilitate the teaching of deep cultural content in the classroom. analysis procedure to answer the question that led this analysis, every single page and unit of the textbooks was examined to detect those activities in which culture was incorporated. each topic was classified into two categories: surface or deep culture. all of the static aspects such as holidays, geographical sites, food, and important people were classified as surface culture, whereas all of the invisible aspects that appeared to be complex to approach were classified as deep culture. for instance, table 1 shows that for the aspect holidays/ celebrations, textbook 1 included a reading about festivals in spain, italy, and taiwan, and in the aspect important people, celebrities, and entertainment, the same book contained an interview with british actor ben silverstone. in addition, all of the cultural themes were examined according to the following features: • topics of surface culture: characterized as being static, congratulatory, neutral, and homogeneous. • topics of deep culture: characterized as being transformative, complex, contentious or congratulatory, and heterogeneous. these features are explained in detail in the analysis of each textbook. findings the cultural component in textbook 1 (basic level) the analysis of textbook 1 shows that all of the themes presented in each unit belong to the level of surface/visible culture. it contains six main neutral/ celebratory aspects: holidays, tourist places, food, celebrities, traditions, and historical facts (see table 1). there is no information related to deep culture, which means that the text is limited in promoting icc. the themes are celebratory because they honor the emblematic symbols and happenings of different nations. for instance, the article about festivals that appears in unit three describes the tomatina festival in spain, the carneval ed’elverea in italy, and the water festival in taiwan. it provides positive descriptions of the traditional activities people do during those celebrations. as an example, this is the description of the water festival in thailand: thailand has a water festival (songkran) every april to celebrate the new year. it starts on 13th april and lasts for two days. people throw water at each other all day and all night. (sample taken from textbook 1) though this textbook envisions an intercultural scope of countries such as spain, italy, taiwan, and brazil, it focuses primarily on congratulatory descriptions of the target main culture that the textbook represents: england. it includes information about top british tourist attractions in london such universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras172 gómez rodríguez as the london eye, the tower of london, and the buckingham palace and facts about british celebrities, arch ite c tu re, an d fo o d, w h i ch are pre s e nte d throughout the whole book. with these features, the textbook seems to proclaim a sense of ethnocentrism by presenting england’s most outstanding cultural symbols. additionally, the people from the different countries that appear in the textbook possess a neutral celebratory attitude. they are cheerful tourists going sightseeing, traveling all over the world, going shopping, and having nice, safe conversations, implying that although the peoples of the world are all different, they are able to live together because of their intercultural harmonious understanding. the following phone conversation between a travel agent and a british woman who is planning to visit new york city shows neutral/congratulatory content: lisa: hello? peter: hi! lisa? this is peter douglas from changing holidays. lisa: oh! hello! peter: what are your holiday plans for next week? lisa: er…i’m going to fly to new york with my boyfriend, jon. peter: great. and where are you going to stay? lisa: we’re going to stay in the hotel athena in manhattan. peter: what are you going to do in new york, lisa? lisa: we’re going to go shopping…we want to see the empire state building, the statue of liberty, central park… table 1. cultural themes found in textbook 1 aspect surface culture deep culture holidays/celebrations • reading: festivals in spain, italy, and taiwan. none tourist places/ geographical sites • the capital cities of the world. • mount rushmore, south dakota. • famous statues around the world. • traveling to rio de janeiro, beijing, and moscow. • visiting rome. • four top tourist attractions in london. • article: the london eye. • making plans to visit new york city. • the coldest, the highest, and the hottest places in the world. • making reservations at different hotels. • article: the atacama desert. none food • article: typical food in britain. • article: cooking in britain. none celebrities/ entertainment • celebrities’ nationalities. • celebrities’ families. • classic films and tv programs. • interview with actor ben silverstone. • british pop group pulp. none customs/ traditions • people who live abroad talk about the cities they live in now. none historical facts • biographies of leaders of the independence. • three american presidents. none 173profile vol. 17, no. 2, july-december 2015. issn 1657-0790 (printed) 2256-5760 (online). bogotá, colombia. pages 167-187 the cultural content in efl textbooks and what teachers need to do about it this conversation notes tourist places as a congratulatory paramount topic. new york city is described as an attractive holiday destination with tall buildings and interesting sites. it shows a superficial view of the american dream based on materialism (going shopping and going sightseeing) and pictures the united states as the land of freedom represented by the statue of liberty. these topics lead to fixed superficial stereotypes of geographical sites because, as hinkel (2001) asserts, this type of cultural information is unchanged and easily observable. therefore, the main goal of textbook 1 appears to be to provide relevant information about the emblematic aspect of culture/s. these elements confirm that culture is only considered static, neutral, and homogeneous in that learners are not encouraged to address any of the deeper elements of culture. the question that arises here is if this congratulatory/static view of culture is sufficient to prepare efl learners to become intercultural individuals in this globalized world. in fact, most topics displayed in textbook 1 appear not to foster interculturality but rather to provide learners with general information to be able to “survive” happily as tourists in a foreign countr y. we cannot say that this sur vival travel guidance enables icc development. icc embraces the understanding of more profound meanings and contents. the cultural component in textbook 2 (intermediate level) the analysis of textbook 2 found similar features to textbook 1 in regards to the six main neutral aspects of visible culture: holidays, tourist places, celebrities, traditions, literature, and general information. however, whereas textbook 1 included food and historical facts as part of its six topics, textbook 2 included two different ones, literature and general information (see table 2). additionally, textbook 1 is overloaded with topics related to tourist places and geographical sites, but textbook 2’s top cultural content is holidays and celebrations. in contrast to textbook 1, textbook 2 incorporates two tasks that require learners to address aspects of deep culture (see table 2, customs/traditions). one of the tasks is to listen to a radio show in which three guests from thailand, dubai, and nepal answer callers’ questions about table manners, greetings, clothing, male and female behavior, taboos, and offensive behaviors. interestingly, efl learners can learn the following information: • in thailand, tourists should not touch anyone’s head because thais believe that the mind is where each person’s soul lives and it is disrespectful to touch it; • thais greet each other by putting their palms together on the chest and bowing slightly while uttering an accepted greeting; • tourists in dubai should not take pictures of muslim women because that is offensive; • people in nepal eat with their right hand, never with silverware; • it is forbidden to eat beef in hindu and buddhist homes. this task provides learners with deep elements of culture that would be difficult to understand if one were not aware of those complex intricacies and would cause cultural misunderstanding. nevertheless, it is a significant problem that a book with ten units contains merely two tasks that address deep culture. this factor confirms that static views of the target culture dominate the language classroom, as observed in table 2. moreover, although the radio show includes issues of deep culture, it still highlights a congratulatory tourist version of understanding other nations’ traditions in harmonious and safe terms. in fact, the purpose of the radio show is that the three guests from thailand, dubai, and nepal answer the questions of three tourists who are planning to visit those countries universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras174 gómez rodríguez table 2. cultural themes found in textbook 2 aspect surface culture deep culture holidays/ celebrations • discussion on holidays and traditions: a mariachi band, a korean couple dressed in the traditional hanbok, thanksgiving in the us, new year celebration in hong kong, rio de janeiro’s carnival, feast of eidul-fitr in egypt. • giving information about holiday traditions in learners’ own countries. • listening: ways to celebrate holidays in different countries. • reading: holidays around the world (thailand’s wet water festival, ramadan [the month of fasting], and simon bolivar’s birthday). • reading: wedding traditions in english-speaking countries. • lecture: a traditional wedding in india. none tourist places/ geographical sites • tourist information about costa rica’s geography. • conversations: main geographical sites in australia and alaska. • listening: visiting yosemite national park in the us. none celebrities and entertainment • article: mahatma gandhi and albert schweitzer. • article: famous comics. none literature and the arts • recommended books. none general cultural information • article: the invention of printing. • discussing governments around the world: a democracy, a monarchy, and a dictatorship. • discussing controversial issues (censorship of books and movies, compulsory military service, lowering the driving age, raising the voting age). none customs/traditions • tourist information about places to shop (hong kong tailors). • radio program on table manners in nepal; greetings, taboos, and dress in thailand; male and female behavior and offensive behavior in saudi arabia. • medical treatments (conventional/ nonconventional medicine). 175profile vol. 17, no. 2, july-december 2015. issn 1657-0790 (printed) 2256-5760 (online). bogotá, colombia. pages 167-187 the cultural content in efl textbooks and what teachers need to do about it and want to behave correctly while they are there. this task puts into question the extent to which textbooks prepare efl learners with information that will allow them to live successfully as foreigners/tourists in strange lands or provide them with the actual icc to manage cultural differences wisely and critically. just because learners are given some useful travel tips does not ensure their development of firm icc. more to the p oint, the great emphasis on elements of surface culture in textbooks 1 and 2 leads us to conclude that they often promote a received view of culture (atkinson, 1999) that conceives of cultural manifestations as a list of unchanging and homogeneous rules that determine a countr y’s behaviors and there is no room for exceptions. the learners receive and store cultural information in their minds, but they are neither told about possible deviations from the rules nor asked about their critical opinions regarding the differences by comparing their own and the target cultures. for instance, in relation to the radio show, instead of assuming a received view of culture, it would be interesting to enrich the task by encouraging learners to research deeper aspects such as what would be the social consequences if a left-handed person could not eat with his/her right hand in nepal, what issues of masculine hegemony are behind the fact that muslim women cannot be photographed, and what religious, political, and economic implications are hidden under the ban on eating beef in nepal. it is a fact that in the present, nepal is no longer a country with one religion, hinduism, and therefore, not everyone in nepal strictly obeys the rule of not eating beef. equally, cows that have been sacred for most nepalese are eventually sold to india to be slaughtered by beef suppliers and are sold to muslims, christian communities, and many restaurants for tourists. that is to say, in the end, old sacred cows become part of an underground beef trade between nepal and india because they are considered merchandise rather than sacred religious symbols. these examples show that the study of culture should envision not only a received and congratulatory view but also a deeper and even contentious analysis of why those cultural norms exist and why there are deviations from them. discussing these complex cultural variations that define a country might empower efl learners become more critical intercultural learners, a task that efl communicative textbooks have still not achieved. the cultural component in textbook 3 (advanced level) te x t b o o k 3 e q u a l l y d i s p l ay s e l e m e nt s of surface culture. the most prominent topic that appeared throughout the textbook is celebrities and entertainment. it includes six main topics: tourist sites, famous people, traditions, legends, general information, and basic historical facts (see table 3). it also contains a series of short culture notes such as go, a popular game on a square board, the meaning of a piggy bank, and the meaning of the stork as associated with childbirth, as observed in these examples: culture note: a piggy bank is a container used mainly by children to store coins. piggy banks are used to encourage good saving and spending habits. the pig must be broken open for the money to be retrieved, forcing the child to justify his or her decision. (unit 3) culture note: the stork is a type of bird that has traditionally been associated with childbirth in western folk tales. in the tales, the stork delivers newborn babies to their mothers. (unit 8) the analysis of these culture notes suggests that they are more oriented to explaining the meaning of new vocabulary that appears in the readings than actually teaching salient cultural facts. the piggy bank and the stork, for instance, are common concepts shared in many nations that do not necessarily imply deep cultural understanding. moreover, these short culture notes do not appear in the textbook directly. they appear in the teacher’s guide and are optional universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras176 gómez rodríguez for the teachers to address during the study of each unit. indeed, textbook 3 is primarily concerned with neutral, universal topics about our contemporary daily lives, including pets, shopping, well-known mysteries, stressful situations, and unusual hobbies, among others. elements of deep culture are completely absent, so the textbook fails to promote critical icc. keeping in mind the question that guided this analysis, textbook 3, similar to the previous textbooks, adopted a received, congratulatory, neutral, and static view of the few cultural references that it contains, which are considerably scarcer than the contents of textbooks 1 and 2. certainly, the topics in the three textbooks do not provide efl learners with, at least, the basic skills to become critical intercultural citizens of the world, which is a disadvantage because they are influential textbooks designed by prestigious publishing houses to be studied by millions of learners worldwide. what teachers should do to address deep culture in the efl classroom in view of the fact that textbooks only approach static and congratulatory elements of surface culture, this section presents two examples in which deep, transformative, and heterogeneous views of the target table 3. cultural themes found in textbook 3 aspect surface culture deep culture tourist places/ geographical sites • the stone balls of costa rica. • article: stonehenge, the nazca lines, and atlantis. none celebrities/ entertainment • culture note: winston churchill. • reviews about singers’ famous songs. • culture note: gato barbieri, an argentinean saxophonist. • culture note: youssou n’dour, an african singer. • culture note: caetano veloza, a brazilian pop music star. • biography about beethoven. • article: paul newman, an actor and philanthropist. • culture note: go, a popular square board game. none customs/traditions • culture note: the meaning of a piggy bank. • concepts of ideal beauty at different times in different countries. • culture note: meaning of the stork as associated with childbirth. none legends • the legend of the loch ness monster in scotland. • the legend of bigfoot in the us. none general information • the chinese zodiac. • article: the uncertain future for china’s elderly. • the one-child policy in china. • article: the hitler diaries hoax. none history • russia’s royal family and czar nicholas ii. • the october revolution, russia. none 177profile vol. 17, no. 2, july-december 2015. issn 1657-0790 (printed) 2256-5760 (online). bogotá, colombia. pages 167-187 the cultural content in efl textbooks and what teachers need to do about it culture can be addressed in the classroom. they will give teachers a general idea of how to choose and design tasks that aim at developing learners’ critical icc, given that our analysis so far has shown that teachers should not depend completely on the received visions of culture that are presented in textbooks. with these examples, teachers are encouraged to discuss with their students culture-based material that includes not only celebrations, important cities, tourist places, and famous people, among others, but issues related to difference, power, ideology, identity, and even resistance, that is, elements of deep culture. the examples are designed for undergraduate efl learners at the university level in colombia. however, they can be adapted to suit the needs of other learners in other academic contexts. example one: native-americans, victims of exclusion and abusive power the first cultural topic relates to the nez perce tribe, one of the many native-american tribes that were attacked and displaced by the white men’s campaigns against american indians in the great plains (1874–1875) during the time of expansionism. students can work on the study guide (appendix a) that will help them approach this topic from a critical intercultural standpoint. as observed, the language in the reading and the questions are written at a basic level that would be readable in an elementary or intermediate-level english course. as the study guide suggests, the questions in activity i: “understanding the context,” help learners reflect on the situation of native americans, a minority group in the us that was a victim of exclusion and violence by the white men’s hegemony. it also helps learners compare possible situations of displacement and social exclusion between minority groups within their own countries and the situation of the nez perce. by establishing intercultural connections, learners are expected to address issues of deep and contentious cultural conflicts such as injustice, violence, abuse of power, and domination as well as transformative aspects of culture such as the influence of the white men on indigenous people, the nez perce’s resistance to oppression and displacement, and personal and collective ideas about honor. the readings in section ii, “discovering cultural facts,” which includes the original version of chief joseph’s speech “i will fight no more forever,” and section iii, “critical reactions to the conflict” encourage learners to reflect insightfully on complex topics of culture. some questions of main importance, for instance, 5, 6, and 7 in the last section, attempt to incite learners to express personal opinions about why the chief of the nez perce tribe surrendered and what realities of pain and suffering this native american minority group endured because of white men’s tyranny. as obser ved, the topic in the study guide intends to demonstrate that although the us has historically been a multicultural society, it has lacked any full understanding of intercultural awareness. from a contentious critical position rather than a congratulatory one, efl learners are encouraged to discuss at the level of their language proficiency that despite many people’s belief that the us is the “land of opportunity,” where diverse communities live happily together, it is a place where discrimination and inequity have been historically practiced, as was the case with the nez perce tribe. it is evident that native americans, african-americans, asian-americans, and latinos have been deprived of equal status in us society through history because white men have considered themselves a superior race. jay and jones (2005) observe that white men and western cultures have legitimized overriding power in america and in the rest of the world and that discrimination against other racial communities comes from the colonial imperialist thought that “white people possess supposedly unique characteristics, qualities purportedly making them both a ‘superior race’ and universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras178 gómez rodríguez the ‘norm’ by which others are judged” (p. 110). by helping learners become aware of the complicated, contentious, and non-celebratory elements of culture in the topic that is presented here and in many other similar topics and contexts, they might become progressively better able to develop critical icc. example two: single-parent families: a cultural decline? critical icc can also be developed with contemporary topics that are more closely related to learners’ own cultures. the study guide (appendix b) addresses a cultural phenomenon that has impacted and affected many nations in the world: the proliferation of single-parent families. this controversial topic is a great opportunity for students to discuss intricate and complicated issues that demonstrate that culture is not always static, congratulatory, and homogeneous. with this topic, upper intermediate and advanced efl learners are challenged to express their opinions about the traditional model of the family and to what extent that model is actually preserved or transformed in real life by the people of a culture. the questions in the first activity, “understanding the context,” invite learners to problematize the fact that not all families in many backgrounds necessarily follow the cultural construct that a family must consist of one father, one mother, and some children. during the discussion, learners might refer to social, economic, and religious standards that enact an ideal family model but that in real life are not always embraced and why increasing numbers of families are headed by single parents in our contemporary age. similarly, activity ii, “discovering cultural facts,” shows learners an article about single-parent families in the us so that students understand how this cultural phenomenon is also present in other countries. section iii, “critical reactions to the conflict,” similarly encourages students to observe deep cultural motifs that could cause the decline or improvement of their own communities (e.g., how young people’s views about marriage and patriarchal masculinity have caused the spread of single-parent families). similarly, learners are invited to do research about the value of the family in foreign countries—specifically, china, the zulu tribe in africa, and nepal—and even to consider the sociocultural implications of why never-married families and same-sex-parent families might transgress the cultural norm (appendix b, activity iii). final considerations this article has shown that the communicative textbooks used in undergraduate language programs at some universities and in other efl settings mostly lack elements of deep culture that might help learners to develop icc. most of their topics belong to surface culture and are based on static, congratulatory, and homogeneous notions, all emblematic elements of the foreign culture/s. it is concluded that teachers are called on to consider teaching alternatives by means of seeking, adapting, and, if possible, designing culture-based materials through which efl learners are encouraged to address deep culture in such a way that, instead of a received version of culture, they assume a critical position towards cultural realities as transformative and heterogeneous. this article has discussed that collective and p e rs on a l i ssu e s rel ate d to p owe r, he ge mony, exclusion, discrimination, and oppression as well as resistance, independence, inclusion, individuality, and justice are multidimensional expressions of deep culture that oppose the fixed and idealistic cultural constructs imposed by any given society. these issues and many other complicated cultural topics, for instance, collective and individual attitudes towards dating, honesty, religion, sex roles, independence, money, education, injustice, and globalization, can be discussed in the efl classroom. 179profile vol. 17, no. 2, july-december 2015. issn 1657-0790 (printed) 2256-5760 (online). bogotá, colombia. pages 167-187 the cultural content in efl textbooks and what teachers need to do about it teachers and material makers should take advantage of real-life resources such as newspapers, literature, documentaries, history, and movies to study topics related to race, discrimination, social class struggle, and human rights. equally, they can create awareness through debates about how cultural traditions can be transformed or affected by, for example, the influence of technology, cyberbullying, talk shows, reality shows, and television in general. learners can also be encouraged to do basic ethnographic research on minority groups, urban tribes, personal lifestyles, and marginalized groups. as olaya and gómez (2013) suggest, “not only celebrating cultures, but establishing critical views can empower [learners] to develop critical icc” (p. 62), even if they have to be exposed to deviant, noncelebratory, and questionable matters that might cause the reevaluation of preestablished and sometimes unjust cultural standards. references atkinson, d. (1999). tesol and culture. tesol quarterly, 33(4), 625-654. http://dx.doi.org/10.2307/3587880. babusci, r., & guy, d. (eds.) (1991). prentice hall literature: the american experience. new jersey, nj: pearson prentice hall. bachman, l. f. (1999). fundamental considerations in language testing. oxford, uk: oxford university press. banks, j. a. (2004). introduction: democratic citizenship education in multicultural societies. in j. a. banks (ed.), diversity and citizenship education: global perspectives (pp. 3-15). san francisco, ca: jossey-bass. byram, m. (1997). teaching and assessing intercultural communicative competence. clevedon, uk: multilingual matters. byram, m., gribkova, b., & starkey, h. (2002). developing the intercultural dimension in language teaching: a practical introduction for teachers. strasbourg, fr: council of europe. retrieved from http://www.lrc.cornell.edu/director/intercultural.pdf. graff, g. (1992). beyond the culture wars: how teaching the conflict can revitalize american education. new york, ny: norton. greenblatt, s. (1995). culture. in f. lentricchia & t. mclaughlin (eds.), critical terms for literature study (pp. 225-32). chicago, il: university of chicago press. guest, m. (2002). a critical “checkbook” for culture teaching and learning. elt journal, 56(2), 154-161. http://dx.doi. org/10.1093/elt/56.2.154. hames-garcia, m. r. (2003). which america is ours? marti’s “truth” and the foundations of “american literature.” mfs modern fiction studies, 49(1), 19-53. http://dx.doi. org/10.1353/mfs.2003.0006. hinkel, e. (2001). building awareness and practical skills to facilitate cross-cultural communication. in m. celcemurcia (ed.), teaching english as a second or foreign language (3rd ed., pp. 443-358). boston, ma: heinle cengage learning. jay, g., & jones, s. e. (2005). whiteness studies and the multicultural literature classroom. melus, 30(2), 99-121. http://dx.doi.org/10.1093/melus/30.2.99. kumaravadivelu, b. (2008). cultural globalization and language education. new haven, ct: yale university press. levy, m. (2007). culture, culture learning and technologies: towards a pedagogical framework. language learning and technology, 11(2), 104-127. olaya, a., & gómez, l. f. (2013). exploring efl pre-service teachers’ experience with cultural content and intercultural communicative competence at three colombian universities. profile issues in teachers’ professional development, 15(2), 49-67. savignon, s. j. (1997). communicative competence: theory and classroom practice (2nd ed.). new york, ny: mcgraw-hill. savignon, s. j. (2001). communicative language teaching for the twenty-first century. in m. celce-murcia (ed.), teaching english as a second or foreign language (3rd ed., pp. 31-45). boston, ma: heinle cengage learning. shaules, j. (2007). deep culture: the hidden challenges of global living. clevedon, uk: multilingual matters. universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras180 gómez rodríguez single-parent families. (n.d.). retrieved and adapted from encyclopedia of children’s health. http://www.healthofchildren.com/s/single-parent-families.html. tudor, i. (2001). the dynamics of the language classroom. cambridge, uk: cambridge university press. about the author luis fernando gómez rodríguez holds a phd in english studies from illinois state university (usa) and a ma in education from carthage college (usa). he is an associate teacher at universidad pedagógica nacional. his research interests are intercultural competence, literature, and critical issues in efl education. 181profile vol. 17, no. 2, july-december 2015. issn 1657-0790 (printed) 2256-5760 (online). bogotá, colombia. pages 167-187 the cultural content in efl textbooks and what teachers need to do about it appendix a: i will fight no more forever (1877) i. understanding the context 1. do you know any information about the native indians or a minority group in your country? in which conditions do they live? does the government help them? _______________________________________________________________________________ _______________________________________________________________________________ _______________________________________________________________________________ 2. do you know any native american tribes of the us? what information do you know about them? where do they live at present? where did they live in the past? _______________________________________________________________________________ _______________________________________________________________________________ _______________________________________________________________________________ 3. do some research into the history of the nez perce, a native american tribe. what are their traditions and problems? _______________________________________________________________________________ _______________________________________________________________________________ _______________________________________________________________________________ ii. discovering cultural facts 1. read the following passage about the nez perce, a native american tribe of the us, and their relationships with the american government in the 19th century. was it a good or bad relationship? the tribe of chief joseph (1840–1904), the nez perce, was known as peaceful and noble. in 1805, they met colonel nelson miles, who explored the west for president thomas jefferson. there were treaties between the white men and the native americans, in which the nez perce had to accept that the government was the owner of the land. chief joseph, the leader of the nez perce, refused to sign the treaties because they were unjust. in response, the american government and settlers invaded the nez perce’s land, the wallowa valley, and forced them to move to a reservation on the canadian border. because of this injustice, some nez perce disagreed and killed some settlers. the war started, and chief joseph and his tribe were defeated and captured in 1877 by colonel miles. there were terrible consequences for these native american people. universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras182 gómez rodríguez 2. read chief joseph’s surrender speech “i will fight no more forever” (1877) ater the white men attacked and killed many people from his indian tribe. what is the tone of the speech? i am tired of fighting. our chiefs are killed. looking glass is dead. toohulhulsote1 is dead. the old men are all dead. it is the young men who say no and yes. he who led the young men is dead. it is cold and we have no blankets. the little children are freezing to death. my people, some of them, have run away to the hills and have no blankets, no food. no one know where they are perhaps they are freezing to death. i want to have time to look for my children and see how many of them i can find. maybe i shall find them among the dead. hear me, my chiefs, i am tired. my heart is sad and sick. from where the sun now stands i will fight no more forever. (taken from babusci & guy, 1991, pp. 452-455) iii. critical reactions to the conflict 1. what started the war between the nez perce and the white men? who do you think was right? _______________________________________________________________________________ _______________________________________________________________________________ _______________________________________________________________________________ 2. what was the attitude of the white men toward native americans? _______________________________________________________________________________ _______________________________________________________________________________ _______________________________________________________________________________ 3. what aspects of injustice and oppression can you see between the native american and white cultures? _______________________________________________________________________________ _______________________________________________________________________________ _______________________________________________________________________________ 4. what does chief joseph want to have time for? _______________________________________________________________________________ _______________________________________________________________________________ _______________________________________________________________________________ 5. mention three reasons chief joseph has for deciding to “fight no more forever.” _______________________________________________________________________________ _______________________________________________________________________________ _______________________________________________________________________________ 1 looking glass and toohulhulsote were the names of the chiefs of the nez perce tribe. 183profile vol. 17, no. 2, july-december 2015. issn 1657-0790 (printed) 2256-5760 (online). bogotá, colombia. pages 167-187 the cultural content in efl textbooks and what teachers need to do about it 6. what do you think is the purpose of chief joseph’s speech? _______________________________________________________________________________ _______________________________________________________________________________ _______________________________________________________________________________ 7. is there or was there a similar situation between any minority group and the government in the history of your country? what was the conflict? what do you think about that conflict? _______________________________________________________________________________ _______________________________________________________________________________ _______________________________________________________________________________ universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras184 gómez rodríguez appendix b: single-parent families: a cultural decline? i. understanding the context 1. what is the traditional model of the family in your country? is it the same model in other cultures? who is the head of the family according to that model? why? who has created that model? _______________________________________________________________________________ _______________________________________________________________________________ _______________________________________________________________________________ 2. is the traditional model of the family followed by all the people in your country? are there any other possible family versions that break the two-parent family model? _______________________________________________________________________________ _______________________________________________________________________________ _______________________________________________________________________________ 3. why do you think the traditional ideal of a family is changing radically in your culture? _______________________________________________________________________________ _______________________________________________________________________________ _______________________________________________________________________________ ii. discovering cultural facts 1. read the following passage about the decline of two-parent families in the united states. then, answer the questions. single-parent families: a cultural decline? one out of every two children in the united states will live in a single-parent family before they reach age 18. according to the united states census bureau, in 2002, approximately 20 million children lived with only their mother or their father. this is more than one-fourth of all children in the united states. since 1950, the number of one-parent families has increased substantially. in 1970, approximately 11 percent of children lived in single-parent families. during the 1970s, divorce became much more common, and the number of families headed by one parent increased rapidly. by 1996, 31 percent of children lived in single-parent families. in 2002, the number was 28 percent. the reasons for single-parent families have also changed. in the mid-twentieth century, most singleparent families came about because of the death of a spouse. in the 1970s and 1980s, most single-parent families were the result of divorce. in the early 2000s, more and more single parents have never married. many of these single parents live with an adult partner, sometimes even their child’s other parent. these families are counted by the census bureau as single-parent families, although two adults are present. 185profile vol. 17, no. 2, july-december 2015. issn 1657-0790 (printed) 2256-5760 (online). bogotá, colombia. pages 167-187 the cultural content in efl textbooks and what teachers need to do about it the most common type of single-parent family is one that consists of a mother and her biological children. in 2002, 16.5 million or 23 percent of all children were living with their single mother. this group included 48 percent of all african-american children, 16 percent of all non-hispanic white children, 13 percent of asian/pacific islander children, and 25 percent of children of hispanic origin. single-parent families face special challenges, one of which is economic. in 2002, twice as many single-parent families earned less than $30,000 per year compared with families with two parents present. at the opposite end of the spectrum, 39 percent of two-parent families earned more than $75,000 compared with six percent of single-mother families and 11 percent of single-father families. social scientists have found that children growing up in single-parent families are disadvantaged in other ways compared with those in two-biological-parent families. many of these problems are directly related to the poor economic conditions of single-parent families. these children are at risk for the following: lower levels of educational achievement, greater likelihood of becoming teen parents, more conflict with their parent(s), less adult supervision, more frequent abuse of drugs and alcohol, more high-risk sexual behavior, greater likelihood of joining a gang, twice the likelihood of going to jail, greater likelihood of participating in violent crime, greater likelihood of suicide, and twice the likelihood of getting divorced in adulthood. how would these problems affect american society? would american culture decline? despite the fact that children from single-parent families oten face a tougher time economically and emotionally than do children from two-biological-parent families, children from single-parent families can grow up to do well in school and maintain healthy behaviors and relationships. (retrieved and adapted from encyclopedia of children’s health: http://www.healthofchildren.com/s/ single-parent-families.html) iii. understanding the facts 1. how many children lived in single-parent families in the us by 2002? _______________________________________________________________________________ _______________________________________________________________________________ 2. what reasons increased single-parent families in the early to mid-1920s, in the 1980s, and in 2002 in the us? can you infer what cultural changes marriage has suffered since the mid-1920s? _______________________________________________________________________________ _______________________________________________________________________________ _______________________________________________________________________________ 3. what is the most common type of single-parent family in the us? is the situation the same in your culture? _______________________________________________________________________________ _______________________________________________________________________________ _______________________________________________________________________________ universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras186 gómez rodríguez 4. in which way are children from single-parent families disadvantaged compared with two-biologicalparent families? what do those disadvantages suggest about the role of the family in a culture? _______________________________________________________________________________ _______________________________________________________________________________ _______________________________________________________________________________ 5. does the article suggest that children born in single-parents families can also be advantaged? in which ways? would you agree? _______________________________________________________________________________ _______________________________________________________________________________ _______________________________________________________________________________ iii. critical reactions to the conflict 1. what cultural views do people in your country have about single-parent families? in which ways are children advantaged or disadvantaged because of those views? _______________________________________________________________________________ _______________________________________________________________________________ _______________________________________________________________________________ 2. what cultural views do young people have about marriage? is the situation the same as it was 50 years ago? why do you think young families tend to divorce more oten now than in the past? _______________________________________________________________________________ _______________________________________________________________________________ _______________________________________________________________________________ 3. what are the reasons why many young women become single parents in your culture? _______________________________________________________________________________ _______________________________________________________________________________ _______________________________________________________________________________ 4. what part do men play in the cultural shit from two-parent to single-parent families? _______________________________________________________________________________ _______________________________________________________________________________ _______________________________________________________________________________ 5. would you agree that the increase in single-parent families could cause a cultural decline? why? _______________________________________________________________________________ _______________________________________________________________________________ _______________________________________________________________________________ 187profile vol. 17, no. 2, july-december 2015. issn 1657-0790 (printed) 2256-5760 (online). bogotá, colombia. pages 167-187 the cultural content in efl textbooks and what teachers need to do about it 6. research the family model in these cultures and determine whether that model is still being adopted at present or has suffered changes, as it has in the us, england, india, china, the zulu tribe in africa, and nepal. _______________________________________________________________________________ _______________________________________________________________________________ _______________________________________________________________________________ 7. in which ways do these types of families transgress the traditional family model: single-parent families, never-married families, same-sex-parent families? _______________________________________________________________________________ _______________________________________________________________________________ _______________________________________________________________________________ 8. what social and/or cultural implications might arise because of the transgressions of that cultural model? _______________________________________________________________________________ _______________________________________________________________________________ _______________________________________________________________________________ leadership, risk taking, and social gender roles among colombian female undergraduate language learners 33profile: issues teach. prof. dev., vol. 22 no. 2, jul-dec, 2020. issn 1657-0790 (printed) 2256-5760 (online). bogotá, colombia. pages 33-47 https://doi.org/10.15446/profile.v22n2.82535 leadership, risk taking, and social gender roles among colombian female undergraduate language learners liderazgo, toma de riesgos y roles sociales de género entre mujeres colombianas estudiantes de un pregrado de idiomas anna peñaloza1 universidad pedagógica y tecnológica de colombia, tunja, colombia this case study sought to understand how 17 undergraduate students in the humanities and science, technology, engineering, and mathematics majors positioned themselves in terms of gender in relation to their leadership and risk-taking skills. for this study, i used students’ artifacts, semistructured interviews, and focus group discussions, which tied into the objectives of the academic writing for professional development course that the participants signed up for at a public university in colombia. to analyze the data, i used aspects of the grounded theory method. the results revealed that the division of labor and social gender roles supersede the students’ initial positions. because of this, women’s leadership and risk-taking abilities are invisible, an assertion which continues to perpetuate social gender roles, gender stereotypes, and the patriarchy. keywords: academic writing, gender, leadership, patriarchy, positioning, risk-taking, social gender roles este estudio de caso exploró el modo como diecisiete estudiantes de pregrado en las humanidades y las ciencias, tecnología, ingeniería y matemáticas se posicionan en términos de género en relación con sus habilidades de liderazgo y la toma de riesgos. se utilizaron artefactos estudiantiles, entrevistas semiestructuradas y discusiones en grupo alineados con los objetivos del curso “escritura académica para fines profesionales”. el análisis de datos se basó en aspectos de la teoría fundamentada. los resultados revelaron que la división de labores y los roles socialmente asignados por género opacan las posiciones iniciales de las estudiantes. por esta razón, el liderazgo femenino y la toma de riesgos es invisibilizada, lo cual continúa perpetuando los roles socialmente asignados por género, los estereotipos y el patriarcado. palabras clave: escritura académica, género, liderazgo, patriarcado, posicionamiento, roles socialmente asignados por género, toma de riesgos anna peñaloza  https://orcid.org/0000-0002-6394-4346 · email: anna.penaloza@uptc.edu.co this article is based on the master’s thesis completed by peñaloza (2019). how to cite this article (apa, 7th ed.): peñaloza, a. (2020). leadership, risk taking, and social gender roles among colombian female undergraduate language learners. profile: issues in teachers’ professional development, 22(2), 33–47. https://doi.org/10.15446/profile.v22n2.82535 this article was received on september 29, 2019 and accepted on april 3, 2020. this is an open access article distributed under the terms of the creative commons license attribution-noncommercial-noderivatives 4.0 international license. consultation is possible at https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/ universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras34 peñaloza introduction around the world, women continue to be underrepresented in academia and the workplace. despite the fact that more women are finishing college and entering the workforce, their numbers in research, tenure roles, first and last name author positions, and grants fail to reach the 50/50 mark. this holds especially true for careers in stem areas (science, technology, engineering, and mathematics). as shown in figure 1, the decrease in female participation becomes even more apparent once in the workforce; thereby, contributing to the gender gap. though figure 1 is specific for the university of washington, it is not far from the realities we face in colombia. in 2016, the percentage of women researchers in colombia was below the 50/50 mark. though the percentage of women researchers increased from 34.38% in 2013 to 37.65% in 2016, the increase is not as steep as one would hope. in fact, 2014 and 2015 were years of stagnation with no increase in women researchers (see figure 2). figure 1. university of washington neuroscience phd program enrollment and participation by gender number of women in neuroscience women and men now receive neuroscience phds in about equal numbers. but in what’s been called the “leaky stem pipeline,” women haven’t advanced as far toward equity in academic careers. however female underrepresentation is even more extreme in high-profile journal publications. note. from “perish not publish? new study quantifies the lack of female authors,” by i. fine and a. shen, 2018, the conversation, “female scientists underrepresented,” para. 3 (https://bit.ly/2x3szu5). cc by nd. figure 2. full-time women researchers in science, technology, and innovation in colombia note. adapted from colombia: human resources in r&r, by unesco institute for statistics (uis), 2016 (https://bit.ly/39kckxh). women men phd students postdocs nih large grant recipient tenure-track faculty first author of research article in nature/science full professors last author of research article in nature/science 55% 43,5% 30% 29% 25% 24% 15% 45% 56,5% 70% 71% 75% 76% 85% % headcounts full-time equivalents 100% 80% 90% 70% 60% 50% 40% 30% 20% 10% 0% 2013 2014 2015 2016 2017 35profile: issues teach. prof. dev., vol. 22 no. 2, jul-dec, 2020. issn 1657-0790 (printed) 2256-5760 (online). bogotá, colombia. pages 33-47 leadership, risk taking, and social gender roles among colombian female undergraduate language... in 2018, colciencias, the administrative department of science, technology, and innovation of colombia, released their new initiative “mujeres ciencia” as a strategy to tackle female underrepresentation in stem. according to colciencias, women continue to be underrepresented in investigation and development. there are more women enrolling in college, but few choose a scientific career. numerous obstacles exist that are associated to the educational journey, from the stereotypes faced by girls to family responsibilities and the prejudices that women must face when choosing a career. (2018, “¿y en colombia?,” para. 1, translated by the author) many of the obstacles mentioned above are still misunderstood by the academic community. stem researchers and international organizations, like unesco, have invested a lot of time and money seeking to understand why female participation declines during and after college. part of the answer lies in social gender roles and gender stereotypes mediated by ideologies of the patriarchy, which dictate how men and women are expected to act in society. for this qualitative case study, i sought to understand how 17 undergraduate language learners in the humanities and stem positioned themselves in terms of gender in academic writing in regard to leadership and risk-taking skills. the participants were taking an academic writing course at a public university in colombia. i looked at their cover letters, résumés, job interviews, and focus group discussion to see how the students positioned themselves when seeking employment, scholarships, and internships. after analyzing the students’ work, i found that social gender roles predominate in the students’ discourses. the female participants often highlighted their supportive roles when talking about the work they do in research groups. unfortunately, literature shows that communal leaders with supportive characteristics come second to hegemonic masculine forms of leadership and risk taking when selecting a leader. as language teachers, it is essential to help our students express their unique strengths as communal leaders. by opening up spaces to rethink, question, and reflect on the current situation, we can also tackle gender inequalities within the classroom before undergraduates enter the workforce. literature review for this study, i asked the question: “how do female undergraduate language learners position themselves in terms of gender when it comes to leadership and risk-taking skills?” before answering the question, it was necessary to understand the concepts of gender, leadership, and risk taking. gender it is a common mistake to think of gender as a male and female binary. however, gender as a social construction takes on a different definition based on “the socially constructed characteristics of women and men—such as norms, roles and relationships of and between groups of women and men” (world health organization, 2018, “gender,” para. 1). butler (1990) defined gender “as a shifting and contextual phenomenon, gender does not denote a substantive being, but a relative point of convergence among culturally and historically specific sets of relations” (p. 16). similarly, coates (2004) mentioned that “gender is never static but is produced actively and in interaction with others every day of our lives. . . . every time we speak, we have to bring off being a woman or a man” (p. 217). because gender is socially constructed in interaction with others, we can also note that culture, lived experiences, history, and language are just a few factors that influence our construction of gender. perhaps one of the most cited explanations of gender comes from simone de beauvoir, who said “one is not born, but rather, becomes, a woman” (1949, p. 283). in other words, men and women take on the roles they are expected to perform in society based on universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras36 peñaloza the interactions they have from birth. based on the previous, gender cannot be studied as a static binary. rather, it is a multiplicity of positions understood as femininities and masculinities. femininities and masculinities the terms “femininities’ and “masculinities” appeared as a means to define positions of gender in social interaction. after simone de beauvoir pioneered the second wave of feminism in 1949 (the first wave was gaining women’s right to vote), other social groups became interested in studying how men and women interacted. in the late 1980s and early 1990s, sociologist raewyn connell led the research on masculinities to understand the different ways men positioned themselves based on gender as a social construct. particularly, masculinities became an exploration of male expression that challenged the hegemonic, or power, ideals associated with manhood. today, we understand that men and women can represent varying degrees of femininities and masculinities, of which some carry positions of power over others. an example of a power position is the “hegemonic male,” which was defined by connell as the “configuration of gender practice which embodies the currently accepted answer to the problem of the legitimization of patriarchy, which guarantees (or is taken to guarantee) the dominant position of men and the subordination of women” (2005, p. 77). as mentioned by connell, the idea of “hegemonic masculinity” takes dominance over other positions of masculinities, and in turn, femininities as well. this is because the “hegemonic male” is meant to embody and promote ideas of patriarchy. in this sense, we can see how positions of leadership, risk-taking, decision making, and strength have been historically associated with hegemonic masculinities. given the previous, society has continued to promote these ideals in the workplace, even when men are no longer the only breadwinners of the household. social role theory suggests that the patriarchy prevails despite the push toward gender equality and the recognition of femininities and nonhegemonic masculinities. social role theory (eagly & wood, 2012) relates the sex-roles, which have been determined by the physical differences between men and women, and the social roles we expect men and women to play according to gender stereotypes. one of the dangers of perpetuating social gender roles is that the “others” are excluded from sharing roles of power in social interaction. as a society, it is crucial to understand how social gender roles and stereotypes limit nonhegemonic groups from reaching their full potential at home, school, and the workplace. research on gender positioning and gender identity has shown that an individual’s performance can be limited depending on how they position themselves. for example, hruska (2004) found that local gender construction can affect participation in the classroom. castañeda-peña (2010) found that preschool girls only listened to their peers when the former assumed positions of power. in the united states, brutt-griffler and kim (2017) focused on a group of language learners in higher education. the students interacted based on the social gender roles they had in their home country. for example, a female student mentioned “so whenever i talk much in japanese, my mother said to me, . . . ‘speak courteously in a polite manner’, and my mom sometimes gave me a demonstration with a very high, feminine tone” (p. 112). these studies show that social gender roles are constructed at a young age and perpetuated into adulthood. as part of this case study, i wanted to understand how female undergraduate language learners positioned themselves in terms of gender when referring to their leadership and risk-taking skills. both of these abilities are crucial for employment, but they have been historically associated with masculine social gender roles. leadership female leadership is a main concern for many companies, and we continue to see gender inequality in the distribution (and appointment) of leadership 37profile: issues teach. prof. dev., vol. 22 no. 2, jul-dec, 2020. issn 1657-0790 (printed) 2256-5760 (online). bogotá, colombia. pages 33-47 leadership, risk taking, and social gender roles among colombian female undergraduate language... positions among women. for example, only 25 women were listed as company ceos in the fortune 500 list, which is equivalent to a 1:19 female to male ratio (abadi, 2018). in colombia, women continue to be underrepresented in leadership roles in companies, government, and academia. the 2018 colombian elections for congress revealed that only three political parties chose a female candidate as their head representative. additionally, only 56 of the 258 members of congress were women, without a single woman in the top ten elected candidates in the country (el tiempo, 2018). part of the problem is the way effective leadership is perceived by society. competitiveness and assertiveness are still seen as the “defining qualities of the leader role” by both men and women (vial & napier, 2018, p. 1). meanwhile, communal characteristics like being supportive are “nice ‘add-ons’ for leaders” (p. 1), but they are nonessential and mostly appreciated by women. in a meta-analysis conducted by badura et al. (2018), leadership among men and women was analyzed once again after 25 years (eagly & karau, 1991). initially, the authors understood that several variables were present when selecting a leader, such as group interaction time, communication skills, behavior, and stereotypes. the results of the meta-analysis, which looked at more than 19,000 participants over 136 studies, showed that men were more likely to be selected as leaders than women (badura et al., 2018, p. 348). another major finding was that communal traits, such as caring and supporting others, had a negative effect on selecting a leader (badura et al., 2018, p. 354). overall, the literature has shown that femininities come second when selecting a leader, and they can even have a detrimental effect on leadership selection. nevertheless, communal leadership can promote motivation, efficiency, and belonging in a group, as well as help women and nonhegemonic males outshine in these areas. communal leadership as mentioned before, leadership can have multiple facets, one of which is communal or community leadership. one of the key components of communal leadership is the community. according to mcmillan and chavis (1986, as cited in martiskainen, 2017), community leaders help reinforce the group’s needs, create a sense of belonging, provide emotional support, and promote change within the group. as a consequence, communal leadership diminishes hierarchies of power and more accurately voices the opinions of the whole group. education and its subfields, such as english language teaching (elt), have seen the emergence of communal leaders among students, teachers, and directors. stephenson (2018) mentioned that the intricacies of education have developed a need for shared leadership instead of the traditionally exalted individual. in her study, stephenson worked with five elt leaders in order to understand their successes and the events that influenced them as communal leaders. the findings showed that professional learning and leadership socialization were among the most important areas to develop leadership awareness. additionally, she added that “the increased complexity of leadership will continue to require greater individualized and contextualized support” (p. 198). the work being done on leadership in education serves as a model for other fields where leadership continues to be male dominated. furthermore, personalized leadership awareness is key in the professional development classroom. for this study, the objective was to understand how undergraduate students, especially women in the fields of stem, expressed their strengths and weaknesses in a foreign language. consequently, the participants could become aware of the type of leaders they were and highlight their unique qualities. as a language teacher, i could help learners in the future discover how to promote their personal skills instead of enforcing a hegemonic masculine leadership ideology. universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras38 peñaloza risk-taking like leadership, risk-taking has long been regarded as a characteristic of hegemonic masculinity. from a social perspective, women may be stereotyped as being “risk averse” or strong opposers of risk taking. taking risks may seem as “anti-female” and going against preestablished “norms.” however, maxfield et al. (2010) surveyed 661 female managers and found that women also take risks. factors like power, self-efficacy, and networks motivate risk taking (p. 593), although risk aversion stereotypes persist due to invisibility. according to the authors, the invisibility of risk taking is a product of society and the risk taker herself. maxfield et al. mentioned that, “regarding invisibility, society may not see women taking risks because american culture does not expect them to take risks” (p. 594). furthermore, women tend to be more modest about their risk-taking decisions, often times using the collective “we” to “refer to her own accomplishments, thus redirecting attribution for the risk taking elsewhere” (tannen, as cited in maxfield et al., 2010, p. 594). understanding risk taking in the workplace is a necessity in breaking gender stereotypes that diminish women’s efforts. research design this case study is part of a master’s thesis, which sought to understand undergraduates’ gender positioning in their academic writing. i followed a qualitative approach to discover how undergraduate students positioned themselves in terms of gender in relation to leadership and risk-taking skills. i conducted the study with a group of 17 undergraduate students (14 females, 3 males) at a public university in colombia. though the study focused on the female participants’ voices, i chose to include the male perspective in order to contrast the participants’ discourses. this study was situated, participant-oriented, holistic, and inductive (richards, 2009). for this case study, i asked the participants to write under real-world conditions, and their texts were analyzed for meaning. to engage in a holistic and critical perspective, i used multiple instruments that facilitated data collection based on the participant as the “frame of reference.” as data collection instruments, i used students’ artifacts, semistructured interviews, and focus group discussions. the instruments were connected to the objectives of the academic writing for professional development course, which helped students prepare for job interviews and english proficiency exams. as a final product, the participants had to submit a final draft of their documents and perform a mock job interview. the students’ artifacts were the cover letter brainstorm map (see appendix), cover letter rough draft, cover letter final copy, and résumé. the second instrument was two semistructured interviews. according to barriball and while (1994), semistructured interviews “are well suited for the exploration of the perceptions and opinions of respondents regarding complex and sometimes sensitive issues” (p. 330). i asked the participants questions about themselves, as well as behavioral-based questions meant to mimic a job interview. the final instrument was two focus group discussions, which were meant to support and understand the data gathered from the other data collection instruments. according to denscombe (2007, as cited in dilshad & latif, 2013, p. 192), “focus groups consist of a small group of people who are brought together by a trained moderator (the researcher) to explore attitudes and perceptions, feelings and ideas about a topic.” the idea was to understand the group’s points of view, the terminology they used in their work, and their experiences in college. context the study took place at a public university in colombia. this university is among the top ten in the country when it comes to investigation. it has about 134 investigation groups, with national and international students and researchers. students are encouraged to participate in internships, apply for scholarships abroad, and publish in english. all of these activities are beneficial 39profile: issues teach. prof. dev., vol. 22 no. 2, jul-dec, 2020. issn 1657-0790 (printed) 2256-5760 (online). bogotá, colombia. pages 33-47 leadership, risk taking, and social gender roles among colombian female undergraduate language... for the students’ future employment. cover letters and résumés are required for internship applications and employment abroad, while writing articles in english makes local research visible worldwide. because of the community’s needs to learn english, i decided to create the academic writing for professional development course. the students elaborated narratives, essays, cover letters, résumés, articles, and correspondence. additionally, i would help them prepare for job interviews and international english proficiency exams. after opening the course with the university language institute, about 120 students and staff signed up. of the total population, i selected 17 students who had an intermediate to advanced level of english, participated in research groups, and were at least halfway through their majors. the students were studying different majors in the humanities and stem areas, such as modern languages, foreign languages, biology, transportation engineering, environmental engineering, and math education. each student signed a consent form and chose a pseudonym to appear in the study. in addition to meeting the university’s academic needs, this study sought to contribute to social equality in a public, higher education setting. data analysis and findings since i used multiple instruments to collect the data, i decided to use aspects of the grounded theory method (gtm) to organize and analyze the information. gtm was initially proposed by glaser and strauss (1967). the method got its name from the fact that theories came from the data collected, hence being “grounded.” the authors believed that theory needed to “fit” and “work” with the data and not the other way around. i started with open coding. open coding is the procedure of looking at the data with an “open mind.” to do so, i had to read each line of the data and assign it a code (urquhart, 2013, p. 10). as i coded the data, i created a matrix that proved to be useful for constant comparison among the participants, data, and theory. once i had separated the data, i moved to the selective coding stage. selective coding is the process by which the data are placed together once again as a whole. it “requires decisions about which initial codes make the most analytical sense to categorize your data incisively and completely” (charmaz, 2006, p. 57). in practice, this meant looking at the data once more for commonalities, which would become themes and then categories. the last procedure i used was theoretical coding, which compares the common themes found during the selective coding process. the idea was to join all of the statements, codes, and themes to arrive at a complete picture of the data. in addition to comparing themes, i also reviewed the theory to add depth to the analysis. categories of analysis as mentioned before, the categories presented here are the result of the data analysis. it is worth mentioning that other categories emerged from the master’s thesis, but the following categories were selected based on the current research question. they also represent commonalities found with the data and instruments among the participants (see table 1). table 1. categories from the data research question category how do female undergraduate students position themselves in terms of gender when it comes to leadership and risk-taking skills? i support others: the roles women are expected to play i am a risk taker: invisibility of risktaking skills i support others: the roles women are expected to play being supportive and caring for others have traditionally been associated with female gender roles. this comes from a history of taking care of children, supporting husbands, and being the moral keepers of society. so, universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras40 peñaloza this category was named after the femininity of supporting other people. among the participants, supporting others was a femininity most exemplified among the undergraduate modern and foreign languages female students. the connection was that these students are preparing to become language teachers. since teaching is an occupation associated with the care and support of children, femininities are preferred. on the other hand, stem undergraduates rarely mentioned femininities in their résumés and cover letters. however, female students in both fields tended to position themselves as supporters in the job interview and focus group discussions. the first excerpt comes from alejandra, a foreign language student. one of her key attributes in her brainstorm map was her leadership skills. she wrote, “i’m leader in any activity, which i develop because i like that everything is good made” [sic]. in the classroom, it was evident that alejandra was the leader. she often took command and led group activities in the classroom. below, i have included an excerpt from alejandra’s cover letter, where she described her abilities, i consider i am the best candidate because i can transfer several appropriate skills, such as my creative work, the proposition of dynamic activities, which will encourage the students, and my persistence to achieve my goals. additionally, i can promote indispensable moral values in the classroom like the respect, the solidarity, the friendship and so far. [sic] one thing that i found interesting in alejandra’s cover letter was that she failed to mention her strong sense of leadership. instead, she opted for pointing out how her creative work and dynamic activities will encourage her students. additionally, she said she would promote moral values, solidarity, and friendship. here, we have a case of a student making decisions on how to position herself based on the roles she is expected to play in her future job. if being a teacher is closely connected to supporting others, then it seemed pertinent to highlight these femininities. among other female students in the humanities, i noticed that support, teamwork, and responsibility were preferred over leadership, persuasiveness, or individuality regardless of how they positioned themselves in interaction with others. for the participants in stem areas, teamwork was mentioned but not expanded on in their cover letters and résumés. in most cases, leadership, innovation, and creativity were preferred over supporting others. the next example came from dani, a female electronic engineering student. she has been working as a tutor since 2012. despite being involved in pedagogical practices with younger children, she decided to apply for a position as a manufacturing process engineer. in her cover letter she wrote, i would like to give my ideas and capacity to develop innovative technologies, in order to contribute to the company and to the world. capacities such as leadership, creative, communication, willingness to search for new knowledge and always with a positive attitude. [sic] dani positioned herself based on the skills she assumed the job required. the undergraduate students were aware of the skills they needed to promote. they picked which ones would likely get them hired, even when those skills failed to represent their previous experience or how they positioned themselves in interaction with others. another aspect that i looked at was how students positioned themselves in relation to their research groups. the female undergraduates, regardless of their major, used a collective “we” to describe their roles. in the following excerpts, i contrasted two interviews, one from caim and the other from max power. caim is a female undergraduate majoring in biology. she has been part of her research group since 2017. max power is a male undergraduate majoring in transportation engineering and has worked as a consultant engineer in his group since 2018. i asked both students to describe a previous work experience based on their résumés. caim and max power’s interviews are as follows: 41profile: issues teach. prof. dev., vol. 22 no. 2, jul-dec, 2020. issn 1657-0790 (printed) 2256-5760 (online). bogotá, colombia. pages 33-47 leadership, risk taking, and social gender roles among colombian female undergraduate language... nosotros1 analizamos transectos, nosotros analizamos dos en arcabuco, dos en santa maría. eh, evaluamos todos las familias en lo que en el transecto se recogió todo lo que se identificó, o sea, todo lo nuevo, digamos. eh, lo que hicimos después es identificar todas las familias a géneros, algunas especies, no todas, por eso solo lo dejamos en géneros. [we analyzed transects. we analyzed two in arcabuco and two in santa maria. we evaluated all of the families, whose identities we collected from the transect. in other words, we identified all of the new transects. what we did afterwards was identify some of the species in families of genres]. (caim, interview 1) yes, well, eh, when i started working with transportation, they also needed a special banner for a bus for publicity. they don’t, they didn’t have the resources to hire a graphic designer. so, they needed someone who could take care of that situation, i offered myself. i showed them some of my work, and they told me it was real, really good. and i did the final banner, and it’s the one they are currently using at the bus. [sic] (max power, job interview) i chose to contrast these two interviews because it was apparent how one student took on the individual credit, while the other preferred to credit her team. as i mentioned before, the collective “we” came up every time i asked a female student to explain what they did on a project or as part of their research group. to provide another example, juana, a female biology student, described her participation as, my role in my research group, i work many things at the same time like clean specimens, going field to collect data, also i used to make data analysis. we have to show our work in congresses, symposiums, things like that. [sic] (job interview) even though juana started off by using the personal pronoun “i,” i could see that everything she did as an 1 in spanish, the pronoun “we” is gendered. “nosotros” refers to a group of men, while “nosotras” is used for a group of women. however, if there is at least one man in the group, “nosotros” is used. “i” eventually led to the support of her team. when she concluded her statement with a positive outcome, she used the pronoun “we” to credit her research group. despite the fact that all three participants had to utilize similar skills, the female undergraduates always gave credit to their team, even if teamwork was not explicitly mentioned in their cover letters and résumés. to explain this phenomenon, i turned again to social role theory. ridgeway (2001) said that, even in situations where gender stereotypes do not control behavior, however, men and women may still act slightly differently due to their gender differentiated skills. . . . the theory predicts that women will generally act more communally and less instrumentally than men in the same context, that these differences will be greatest when gender is highly salient in the situation, and that gender differences will be weak or absent when people enact formal, institutional roles. (p. 14186) based on the data and social role theory, i analyzed that even when the job skills needed are similar, men and women will act differently based on the femininities and masculinities they and others have positioned them in. the idea of supporting others is deep-rooted in the roles society expects women to play. for alejandra, positioning herself as a supporter was a must for future employment. for caim and juana, playing a supporting role equated to the success of their team, and ultimately, their research. however, for max power and dani, supporting others was never mentioned in their cover letter as an essential skill, despite having worked as volunteers and tutors. in speaking about their work, individuality was preferred over the community in order to highlight leadership from a masculine perspective. i am a risk taker: invisibility of risk-taking skills “i am a risk taker” was a specific phrase used by several participants to describe their strengths. for the participants, risk taking embodied making a decision without knowing the outcome. the result could be universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras42 peñaloza favorable or not, but it required taking the initiative. in the following excerpts, i contrasted two students who had initially positioned themselves as risk takers. for them, being a risk taker meant trying new things and making decisions even when they did not know the outcome. the first excerpt comes from juana, a female biology student, who described her top skills as: dynamic, creative, willingness to search for new knowledge, risk taker, and resilient. she went on to write, i am creative because i desing my choreographies, i am a risk taker because i like to try new things, i am person who likes to search for new knowledge, i easily make friends i am resistent because i don’t give up so easy. [sic] (brainstorm map) later on, she restated “risk taker” and “willingness to learn” as adjectives that identified her. she wrote that, i am loyal with my family and friends, i like to take risks in my life. i am a very passionate person when i find something that i love to do, like my profession or hobbies. communication is definitely a part of my life, because i like to present my ideas. [sic] (brainstorm map) in describing her top skills, i noticed that she mostly used masculinities to define herself. words like knowledge, risk taker, and resistance have been associated with a traditional view of hegemonic masculinity. in terms of what identifies her, juana positioned herself as having both femininities and masculinities. for example, she mentioned that she was loyal to her family and friends. nonetheless, she continued to be a risk taker and knowledge seeker. juana’s descriptions of herself embodied a mixture of femininities and masculinities, in which she has the ability to choose and challenge positions based on the context. in order to follow up on juana’s use of the word “risk taking,” i looked at her cover letter, résumé, and interview transcript. what i found was that juana failed to explicitly mention the word again. for me, this was particularly interesting because she had mentioned it twice in her brainstorm map. though the position she was applying for (laboratory curator) would have required risk taking, she decided to focus on her “relevant academics, campus involvement, and volunteer work” (juana, cover letter). in describing her transferable skills, she wrote, i am excited for the chance to contribute to your organization and i am prepared to engage in the continuous learning. i enjoy sharing my passion for biology. and i would be thrilled to lead educational mountain walks, manage the snakes program, and coordinate visits of the museum. [sic] (cover letter rough draft) as her cover letter showed, juana positioned herself as a person who can contribute to the institution where she is applying. throughout her letter, she made it clear that she had the educational and managerial requirements to fulfill the position as a laboratory curator. in the excerpt above, she also positioned herself as someone who does not know all the answers but is willing to learn. this statement was one of the top skills that appeared in her brainstorm map as “willingness to search for new knowledge.” in addition, she decided to highlight her ability to “lead” and “coordinate,” which are terms associated with leadership. all in all, juana has positioned herself once again as having hegemonic masculinities, though she manages a nonassertive tone and uses modifiers such as “i would be.” however, the term “risk taker” did not appear in her cover letter. juana’s résumé also failed to mention the word “risk taker.” she mentioned four skills, which were: laboratory, interpersonal, leadership, and communication. for the first three skills, she wrote: laboratory skills: identification of herpetological keys, handle [sic] of snakes, data collection and interpretation. interpersonal skills: ability to collaborate and suggest solutions, team player with the capability to work in fast-paced environment. leadership skills: strong analytical, problem-solving and decision-making capabilities. [sic] (résumé) 43profile: issues teach. prof. dev., vol. 22 no. 2, jul-dec, 2020. issn 1657-0790 (printed) 2256-5760 (online). bogotá, colombia. pages 33-47 leadership, risk taking, and social gender roles among colombian female undergraduate language... though the term “risk taker” was not explicitly mentioned, i noticed that decision making, problem solving, and suggesting solutions were. these terms were brought up during the focus group discussion as words associated with risk taking. for the job interview, i asked juana what her strengths were, and she mentioned the following, my strengths. i’m a good team worker. i like to have a good ambient in my group now. like good relationships with my coworkers, my teachers, you know, things like that. and we also have, i like to learn languages. so, i think it’s, apart from biology, a strength. [sic] (job interview) even though juana was applying for the same position as a laboratory curator, she failed to mention any of her initial top skills. she did not use the words that appeared in her brainstorm map, which were dynamic, creative, willingness to search for new knowledge, risk taker, and resilient. instead, she took on a different position of “team worker.” she discussed her relationship with her coworkers and teachers, as well as her ability to create a good working environment. however, her discourse more closely resembled the femininities seen in the previous category. i decided to look at the trajectory of another participant, max power, a male transportation engineering undergraduate, who had mentioned “risk taker” in his brainstorm map. under his top skills, he wrote: leadership, communication, computer, risk taker, creative, quick learner, respectful, and dynamic. he mentioned the following, leadership: always ready to guide and help creative: it’s easy for me to think and share ideas risk taker: i think the first failure is not trying communicative: it’s easy for me to share ideas quick learner: i tend to understand career thematics quite easy and fast [sic] (brainstorm map) max power positioned himself as a risk taker, a term which he defined as involving decision making that could lead to a great success. his statement strongly affirmed that failure comes from not trying, so taking a risk is already a success. his definitions of leadership, creativity, communication, and quick learning also reflected strong personal statements associated with masculinities, such as guiding others and understanding things easily. later on, i compared max power’s initial brainstorm map with his cover letter, résumé, and interview. like juana, max power did not explicitly mention the term “risk taker” in any of his later work. however, he was more consistent with positioning himself as taking initiatives, making decisions, and solving problems that always led to positive outcomes. max power wrote the following about himself in his cover letter, i am highly qualified, full of initiatives and new ideas…i have the creativity and management skills in order to give the company a new perspective. i can lead my workmates to new paths and ideas. [sic] (cover letter) though the term “risk taker” was not mentioned, he used the action word “initiative.” in this case, taking an initiative could also mean making an individual decision without knowing the outcome. he used the term “new,” which related to the definition of risk taking provided by juana as “trying new things.” max power also tied in other concepts of leadership, such as “lead” and “management skills,” to his creativity. in his résumé, max power utilized action verbs to describe his experience in road and transportation engineering. once again, he failed to mention the word “risk taker,” but his actions consistently demonstrated a connection to decision making and leadership associated with taking risks. max power stated in his résumé that he has done the following things: • designed a public transportation route of 26.7 km to cover the whole urban area. • obtained the information about the demand of transport for 300 people with disabilities, 100 users of the service, and 50 drivers. • analyzed the data in order to calculate the demand for a total population of 45,000 users of public transportation in the city. universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras44 peñaloza • modelled an intersection with high volume (over 3,000 vehicles/hour) to find the optimal timings for traffic lights. • proposed an alternative for unsignalized intersections, avoiding the use of traffic lights, and reducing energy consumption. [sic] the action verbs designed, obtained, analyzed, modelled, and proposed are closely connected to max power’s association to creativity, leadership, and risk taking. in using this terminology, max power positioned himself as someone who looks for a solution on his own. individual decisions to take action have led to favorable outcomes that ended up benefiting the entire city. in his job interview, max power also stated examples that showed how he made a decision that resulted in a positive outcome. in a previous excerpt, max power mentioned how he designed a banner that is used by the city today. he stated a problem: the company did not have the money to hire a graphic designer. later, he introduced the initiative: he volunteered to design the publicity. finally, he described the result: his publicity was praised, and is currently being used around town. from the example, we see a clear connection between problem solving and taking the initiative. moreover, his decision to volunteer himself to design the ad led to a great success for everyone involved. though the participants positioned themselves as being risk takers, they do not necessarily mention the term when applying for employment. rather, the participants tend to explain risk taking through the actions they take. depending on how examples are presented, employers could perceive candidates as being risk takers or not. in the case of juana, the description of herself varied from being a leader to supporting others. she stated that she was qualified in handling specimens, leading walks, and coordinating visits to the museum. she also mentioned that she had problem solving and leadership skills in her résumé. meanwhile, she focused her strengths on her ability to cooperate with others in her job interview. max power also positioned himself as a risk taker. like juana, he failed to mention the term again in his cover letter, résumé, or job interview. nonetheless, he focused on positioning himself not only as a leader, but as someone who takes initiative. this was apparent throughout his work. he used the words proposed, new ideas, and full of initiative to show his risk-taking skills. additionally, he took on an approach to mention a problem, initiative, and positive outcome that helped many people. conclusions to answer the research question, the female undergraduate language learners positioned themselves with an array of femininities and masculinities in relation to leadership and risk-taking. however, social gender roles and their relation to the division of labor marked the students’ work when they talked about themselves for employment and scholarship opportunities. initially, the modern language and foreign language students highlighted their supportive roles, while the students in stem areas talked about their leadership and problem-solving skills. however, despite studying different careers, the female participants tended to refer to their supportive roles in research groups and teams, even when they had mentioned masculinities in their initial work. because of this, female leadership and risk-taking skills were invisible, especially when the female participants used the collective “we” to credit their groups for the work they had done. the way we position ourselves in terms of gender for employment and scholarship opportunities has wide implications on how employers see us. as the participants get ready for graduation, it is clear that how they position themselves will either open or close opportunities for them as future leaders. even when we are leaders and risk takers in our daily lives, failing to mention these terms could lead to the invisibility of women as leaders and risk takers. additionally, we continue to see that social gender roles, oftentimes based on a history of women as caretakers and men as breadwinners, supersede more progressive positions of female leaders and supportive males. from this study, i also found that undergraduate 45profile: issues teach. prof. dev., vol. 22 no. 2, jul-dec, 2020. issn 1657-0790 (printed) 2256-5760 (online). bogotá, colombia. pages 33-47 leadership, risk taking, and social gender roles among colombian female undergraduate language... students modified their speech to accommodate the employers’ expectations, which could lead to the perpetuation of social gender roles within their careers. several things can be done to tackle the gender gap in female leadership within colombia and worldwide. the first would be to question the employment system itself. job interviews already have a predetermined hegemonic relationship established, where the employer is in a position of power while the candidate must please the employer. by having more relaxed and communal problem-solving groups, employers can select candidates based on their actions rather than what they have written in a cover letter or résumé. additionally, employers can pick communal leaders that are willing to help others, as this will also lead to the team’s success. a second thing we can do is decolonize social gender roles in the classroom. as teachers, we can ask female students to lead groups or male students to express their feelings through creative writing. we can adapt english language material, which oftentimes shows gender and culture in a superficial way. for example, we can provide our students with supplementary material on female scientists and male teachers to promote other perspectives left out of language learning books. more importantly, we can open up spaces for students to talk and express themselves. these spaces of reflection go hand in hand with critical literacy and critical thinking skills. in a recent activity, i exposed my students to media ads, which often overexploit social gender roles. the undergraduate students had the opportunity to talk about chauvinism and feminism in their context. one student remarked, i think that this class is strange for english, but it is important because its a space that we don’t have in any other class. this spaces are important for trying to change the minds people who thinks that these topics are not important, and that is what i think this class do, try to open our minds. [sic] (ark, focus group) as language teachers, we sometimes get caught up in teaching the language structures, and we forget that language is also part of culture and society. yet, i have come to find that the english class will be the only contact with the humanities that most stem majors will have during their college years. therefore, we have the opportunity to bring the social and cultural aspects of language back into the language classroom. finally, defeating gender inequality would be incomplete without our educational communities. as we start to open up spaces of dialogue in our classrooms, we begin to see how students also start to question the images, stereotypes, and roles they have deemed as norms and realities. as teachers, we can encourage our students to use the language as a means of expressing their unique characteristics as strengths rather than weaknesses. by appreciating diversity in our educational community, we may see a new wave of leaders willing to challenge the current employment system. references abadi, m. 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(2010). “the next teacher is going to be…tereza rico”: exploring gender positioning in an all-girl school preschool classroom. magis, revista internacional de investigación en educación, 3(5), 107–124. https://www.businessinsider.com/fortune-500-companies-women-ceos-2018-8 https://www.businessinsider.com/fortune-500-companies-women-ceos-2018-8 https://doi.org/10.1111/peps.12266 https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1365-2648.1994.tb01088.x https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1365-2648.1994.tb01088.x https://doi.org/10.1111/ijal.12186 universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras46 peñaloza charmaz, k. (2006). constructing grounded theory: a practical guide through qualitative analysis (2nd ed.). sage publications. coates, j. (2004). women, men and language. pearson longman. colciencias. (2018, octubre 25). mujeres ciencia. http://www. todoesciencia.gov.co/mujeres-ciencia connell, r. w. (2005). masculinities (2nd ed.). university of california press. de beauvoir, s. (1949). le deuxième sexe. éditions gallimard. dilshad, r. m., & latif, m. i. (2013). focus group interview as a tool for qualitative research: an analysis. pakistan journal of social science (pjss), 33(1), 191–198. eagly, a. h., & karau, s. j. (1991). gender and the emergence of leaders: a meta-analysis. journal of personality and social psychology, 60(5), 685–710. https://doi. org/10.1037/0022-3514.60.5.685 eagly, a. h., & wood, w. (2012). social role theory. in p. a. m. van lange, a. w. kruglanski, & e. t. higgins (eds.), handbook of theories of social psychology (vol. 2, pp. 458–476). sage publications. https://doi.org/10.4135/9781446249222.n49 el tiempo. (2018, abril 20). #degeneradas: ¿callan a las mujeres en el congreso? https://bit.ly/3dul0hv fine, i., & shen, a. (2018). perish not publish? new study quantifies the lack of female authors in scientific journals. the conversation. https://bit.ly/2x3szu5 glaser, b. g., & strauss, a. l. (1967). the discovery of grounded theory: strategies for qualitative research. aldine transaction. hruska, b. l. (2004). constructing gender in an english dominant kindergarten: implications for second language learners. tesol quarterly, 38(3), 459–485. https://doi. org/10.2307/3588349 martiskainen, m. (2017). the role of community leaders in the development of grassroots innovations. environmental innovation and societal transitions, 22, 78–89. https:// doi.org/10.1016/j.eist.2016.05.002 maxfield, s., shapiro, m., gupta, v., & hass, s. (2010). gender and risk: women, risk taking and risk aversion. gender in management, 25(7), 586–604. https://doi. org/10.1108/17542411011081383 peñaloza, a. (2019). gender and academic writing [unpublished master’s thesis]. universidad pedagógica y tecnológica de colombia. richards, k. (2009). trends in qualitative research in language teaching since 2000. language teaching, 42(2), 147–180. https://doi.org/10.1017/s0261444808005612 ridgeway, c. l. (2001). small-group interaction and gender. in n. j. smelser & p. b. baltes (eds.), international encyclopedia of the social & behavioral sciences (pp. 14185–14189). elsevier science. https://doi.org/10.1016/b0-08-043076-7/03999-1 stephenson, l. (2018). developing leadership capacity through leadership learning opportunities. in a. elsheikh, c. coombe, & o. effiong (eds.), the role of language teacher associations in professional development (pp. 187–200). springer. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-00967-0_14 unesco institute of statistics. (2016). colombia: human resources in r&d. https://bit.ly/39kckxh urquhart, c. (2013). grounded theory for qualitative research: a practical guide. sage publications. https://doi. org/10.4135/9781526402196 vial, a. c., & napier, j. l. (2018). unnecessary frills: communality as a nice (but expendable) trait in leaders. frontiers in psychology, 9, 1–15. https://doi.org/10.3389/ fpsyg.2018.01866 world health organization. (2018). gender. in gender, equity and human rights: glossary of terms and tools. https://www. who.int/gender-equity-rights/knowledge/glossary/en/ about the author anna peñaloza is the editorial assistant for enletawa journal and an academic writing teacher at universidad pedagógica y tecnológica de colombia (uptc). she is a university of arizona graduate and holds a master’s in language teaching from the uptc. anna belongs to the research group tongue and is involved in community and social work. http://www.todoesciencia.gov.co/mujeres-ciencia http://www.todoesciencia.gov.co/mujeres-ciencia https://doi.org/10.1037/0022-3514.60.5.685 https://doi.org/10.1037/0022-3514.60.5.685 https://doi.org/10.4135/9781446249222.n49 https://bit.ly/3dul0hv https://bit.ly/2x3szu5 https://doi.org/10.2307/3588349 https://doi.org/10.2307/3588349 https://doi.org/10.1016/j.eist.2016.05.002 https://doi.org/10.1016/j.eist.2016.05.002 https://doi.org/10.1108/17542411011081383 https://doi.org/10.1108/17542411011081383 https://doi.org/10.1017/s0261444808005612 https://doi.org/10.1016/b0-08-043076-7/03999-1 https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-00967-0_14 https://bit.ly/39kckxh https://doi.org/10.4135/9781526402196 https://doi.org/10.4135/9781526402196 https://doi.org/10.3389/fpsyg.2018.01866 https://doi.org/10.3389/fpsyg.2018.01866 https://www.who.int/gender-equity-rights/knowledge/glossary/en/ https://www.who.int/gender-equity-rights/knowledge/glossary/en/ 47profile: issues teach. prof. dev., vol. 22 no. 2, jul-dec, 2020. issn 1657-0790 (printed) 2256-5760 (online). bogotá, colombia. pages 33-47 leadership, risk taking, and social gender roles among colombian female undergraduate language... appendix: sample of a participant’s brainstorm cover letter profile: issues teach. prof. dev., vol. 21 no. 2, jul-dec, 2019. issn 1657-0790 (printed) 2256-5760 (online). bogotá, colombia. pages 7-10 editorial 7 https://doi.org/10.15446/profile.v21n2.80843 1editorial* giving voice to novice teacher-researchers profile was created as a forum to bring to the forefront the attempts of practitioners in doing action research. this was also an initiative promoted by scholars from different anglo speaking contexts, in some cases, with different names and definitions—teacher research, exploratory action research, and exploratory practice, among others. all of them, in one way or another, highlight the fact that teacher education and educational policies confer importance to integrate research to the teaching profession. in order to make that goal somehow possible, initial teacher education, professional development, and postgraduate programmes need to prepare the grounds and provide spaces for teachers to explore such dual roles: being both a teacher and a researcher. in the first case, introductory courses to research, together with first teaching experiences that connect prospective teachers to the research activity have been widely used and shown interesting results. in the case of professional development programmes, practitioners are expected to be accompanied along the process of exploring ways to solve teaching problems. this way, they feel motivated to share with peers common concerns and foresee ways to ensure continuous learning in their professional career. postgraduate programmes, on the other hand, often place the research component as one of the tenets of the curriculum, with the idea of fostering attitude change and leadership. nonetheless, critiques also claim that all of the above sounds fine on paper. and although there might be reasons to agree with them, we cannot deny advances in familiarising teachers with research and in making their work known to others. profile is aware of the difficulties non-experienced teacher-researchers have to get published in scholarly journals. hence, in 2003, it started including research in its issues from teacher researchers section articles by teachers who had recently completed their bed programmes and who had conducted classroom research as part of the requirements to opt for their degrees. in its following edition, in 2004, profile officially named its second section issues from novice teacher researchers. since then, the journal has maintained this section for novice teacher-researchers’ contributions. additionally, and in order to enhance * how to cite this article (apa, 6th ed.): cárdenas, m. l., & nieto-cruz, m. c. (2019). editorial: giving voice to novice teacher-researchers. profile: issues in teachers’ professional development, 21(2), 7-10. https://doi. org/10.15446/profile.v21n2.80843. this editorial was received on june 5, 2019 and accepted on june 14, 2019. this is an open access article distributed under the terms of the creative commons license attributionnoncommercial-noderivatives 4.0 international license. consultation is possible at https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/. profile_21_2-taco_jul3.indd 7 5/07/19 12:18 p.m. profile: issues teach. prof. dev., vol. 21 no. 2, jul-dec, 2019. issn 1657-0790 (printed) 2256-5760 (online). bogotá, colombia. pages 7-10universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras cárdenas & nieto cruz 8 collaborative writing and to ensure confidence in less-experienced writers, we have welcome manuscripts authored by novice teacher-researchers and their mentors. so far, forty (40) articles have been published in the issues from novice teacher-researchers section (including the one in this edition—volume 21, no. 2). according to the methodological approach used, these articles can be classified as follows: twelve (12) are action-research studies, eight (8) describe pedagogical innovations or implementations, eight (8) are report case studies, five (5) are exploratory in nature, three (3) have incorporated the principles of narrative inquiry, three (3) revolve around discourse analysis, and one (1) follows a phenomenological approach. sixty-one (61) authors have been featured in the section; twenty-one (21) of which submitted their articles as single authors. three (3) of these novice authors have published again in the journal and six articles have been coauthored by the thesis advisor(s). the institutions represented in the articles are mostly colombian, to wit: universidad nacional de colombia (19 articles), universidad distrital francisco josé de caldas (6 articles), universidad el bosque, universidad de antioquia, universidad de pamplona, universidad de guanajuato mexico (2 articles each), universidad de la salle, institución universitaria colombo americana, universidad del valle, universidad del quindío, universidad de la amazonia, universidad veracruzana mexico, and universidad nacional autónoma de méxico (one article each). we are very pleased with the active participation of the colombian community in this particular section, as well as in the journal, in general. we are also glad we have become a point of reference for other initiatives that have emerged in the past few years in different parts of the world, inspired by the idea of recognising practitioners’ and teacher-researchers’ efforts in systematising their inquiries and, most importantly, in getting published. therefore, and bearing in mind that for many ma students the publication of a manuscript is of great importance to their academic experience, we wish to remind them about the options they can find in our journal. we hope that they take advantage of the detailed guidelines and of the mentoring strategies we use to accompany novice teacherresearchers along such journey. we have gathered ten articles in this edition. four of them are authored by colombian scholars; three are from chilean researchers, one from a turkish researcher, and two from north america: one from canada produced by a colombian researcher and one from the united states of america by a fulbright scholar at a university language center in quito. the first section, issues from teacher researchers, includes seven articles concerning teacher education, efl practices with an emphasis on young learners, and efl employment from the perspective of school administrators. in the second section, issues from novice teacher researchers, we include a paper by two young researchers and their tutor regarding a pedagogical experience. the last section, issues based on reflections and innovations, contains two articles that also discuss teacher education in specific contexts. we open this issue with an article by miguel farías and leonardo véliz from universidad de santiago de chile and deakin university (australia). in it, the authors explore the profile_21_2-taco_jul3.indd 8 5/07/19 12:18 p.m. profile: issues teach. prof. dev., vol. 21 no. 2, jul-dec, 2019. issn 1657-0790 (printed) 2256-5760 (online). bogotá, colombia. pages 7-10 editorial 9 communication and semiotic competences of english language pre-service teachers and educators’ approaches in the use of multimodal texts. the second article is a joint effort between roso freddy cadena aguilar and albedro cadena aguilar from universidad de la sabana (colombia) and javier hernando ortega cuellar from universidad nacional de colombia. these authors discuss the impact of daily 6, an approach to enhance oral fluency in secondary education with significant gains in oral fluency and positive attitudinal changes. next, the research coming from turkey in the words of sibel tatar, from the boğaziçi university in istanbul, illustrates the employment criteria used by school administrators and their views on the strengths and weaknesses of local teachers and expatriate teachers. we continue with a study by fabián benavides jimenez and yenny lisbeth mora acosta from the universidad el bosque (colombia) in which there is a discussion of the ideas bilingual teachers from different contexts hold regarding the concepts of education, bilingualism, and interculturality. the article written by pamela andrea saavedra jeldres and mónica campos espinoza from the universidad católica de temuco (chile) explores the perceptions of preservice teachers at the pre-intermediate level in the development of writing skills in english as a foreign language through the implementation of a portfolio. this is followed by the article authored by maría claudia nieto cruz from universidad nacional de colombia, which depicts the development of the writing competence of pre-service intermediate students through the expansion of nominal groups. we close the first section with chilean author ramón antonio ortiz neira from universidad católica de temuco (chile). in his article, ortiz neira displays an improvement in oral fluency through information gap activities on young english as a foreign language learners and a positive perception of the technique used during the intervention. the section issues from teachers researchers features an article which is the product of a joint effort between two pre-service research students from universidad distrital francisco josé de caldas (colombia), erika johana cortés rozo and daniela andrea suárez vergara, and their research tutor, jairo enrique castañeda-trujillo, from the universidad surcolombiana (colombia). these three authors develop their paper based on a pedagogical practice and how this could trigger reflection of their students with material used in class, namely songs in english, to understand the students’ context representations. the final section, issues based on reflections and innovations, starts with the contribution of a fulbright scholar at a university language center in quito (ecuador), joan rubin from joan rubin associates (usa). rubin reports the experience of helping language teachers improve the language learning skills of their students based on the concept of learner selfmanagement (lsm) or self-regulation. rubin consider the roles of the teachers and learners as well as critical teaching issues. finally, we have the article by yecid ortega, representing the university of toronto (canada), which offers a description of how a colombian teacher attempts to use a social-justice approach to teaching english by valuing her students’ linguistic and cultural repertoires. profile_21_2-taco_jul3.indd 9 5/07/19 12:18 p.m. universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras cárdenas & nieto cruz 10 as always, we hope you enjoy the articles gathered in our publication. we also hope its contents contribute to our readers’ professional knowledge and inspire them to put into practice the lessons learned from the authors participating in this edition. melba libia cárdenas journal editor maría claudia nieto cruz journal director profile_21_2-taco_jul3.indd 10 5/07/19 12:18 p.m. 89profile vol. 19, no. 1, january-june 2017. issn 1657-0790 (printed) 2256-5760 (online). bogotá, colombia. pages 89-104 http://dx.doi.org/10.15446/profile.v19n1.56763 the impact of authentic materials and tasks on students’ communicative competence at a colombian language school el impacto de materiales y tareas auténticas en el desarrollo de la competencia comunicativa de estudiantes en un instituto colombiano de idiomas césar augusto castillo losada1* edgar alirio insuasty2** maría fernanda jaime osorio3*** universidad surcolombiana, neiva, colombia this article reports on a study carried out in a foreign language school at a colombian public university. its main purpose was to analyze the extent to which the use of authentic materials and tasks contributes to the enhancement of the communicative competence on an a2 level english course. a mixed study composed of a quasi-experimental and a descriptive-qualitative research design was implemented by means of a pre-test, a post-test, observations, semi-structured interviews, surveys, and diaries. the findings showed that the use of authentic materials and tasks, within the framework of a pedagogical project, had an impact on students’ communicative competence progress and on the teaching practices of the experimental group teacher. key words: authenticity, authentic materials, authentic tasks, communicative competence, pedagogical project. este artículo da cuenta de un estudio llevado a cabo en un instituto de lengua extranjera de una universidad pública en colombia. su propósito principal fue analizar el impacto del uso de materiales y tareas auténticas en el desarrollo de la competencia comunicativa de los estudiantes de un curso de inglés con nivel a2. se implementó un estudio mixto compuesto de un diseño investigativo cuasi-experimental y descriptivo-cualitativo mediante pre y pos test, observaciones, entrevistas semiestructuradas, encuestas y diarios. se encontró que la implementación de materiales auténticos y tareas auténticas, en el contexto de un proyecto pedagógico, incidió en el mejoramiento de la competencia comunicativa de los estudiantes y de la práctica pedagógica del docente encargado del grupo experimental. palabras clave: autenticidad, competencia comunicativa, materiales auténticos, proyecto pedagógico, tareas auténticas. * e-mail: cesar.castillo@usco.edu.co ** e-mail: edalin@usco.edu.co *** e-mail: mariafernanda.jaime@usco.edu.co how to cite this article (apa, 6th ed.): castillo losada, c. a., insuasty, e. a., & jaime osorio, m. f. (2017). the impact of authentic materials and tasks on students’ communicative competence at a colombian language school. profile issues in teachers’ professional development, 19(1), 89-104. http://dx.doi.org/10.15446/profile.v19n1.56763. this article was received on april 1, 2016, and accepted on october 23, 2016. this is an open access article distributed under the terms of the creative commons license attribution-noncommercial-noderivatives 4.0 international license. consultation is possible at http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/. universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras90 castillo losada, insuasty & jaime osorio introduction materials play a fundamental role in the language classroom since they are the means used by the teacher to facilitate learning that occurs both inside and outside the classroom. authentic materials, that is, materials which have not been designed for teaching purposes, are potential learning tools due to the authenticity of the language and their intimate relation with the communicative language teaching approach (hall, 1995; tomlinson, 1998). despite the existence of opposing perspectives among scholars with regard to the potential usefulness of authentic materials in the language classroom, what proved to be more appropriate for our research team was to explore this issue so as to assure the use of communicative english lessons at a colombian foreign language school. therefore, this article is the account of a small-scale research carried out in response to the prevalence of pre-communicative teaching practices in the same educational context (jaime osorio & insuasty, 2015) and the lack of classroom-based strategies which could address this problem in colombia. thus, this study sought to assess the effectiveness of using authentic materials and tasks to enhance students’ development of the communicative competence and to provide the english language teaching (elt) community with further insights into communicative english language learning experiences in foreign contexts. this report starts by presenting a review of the literature so as to highlight key tenets such as communicative competence, authenticity, and authentic materials and tasks in the english language teaching and learning process. in a subsequent section, the methodology, the research methods, and the step-by-step process implemented are also presented. then, a quantitative presentation and qualitative description of the results are made in order to proceed to the discussion and conclusion section. finally, some final remarks are provided to encourage further studies that can lead to the improvement of the teaching quality in the elt field in general. theoretical framework in this section, general concepts about communicative competence will be first introduced. next, constructs surrounding the terms authenticity, authentic materials, and authentic tasks are examined in order to depict the role of authentic materials in the language classroom. communicative competence in this study, bachman’s (1990) definition of communicative competence is adopted. it is described as the knowledge of language components and as the acquisition or performance of two types of abilities, that is, organizational competence and pragmatic competence. the organizational competence is concerned with the ability to control the structure of language (grammatical competence) along with the knowledge of the conventions for joining utterances to form a text, according to rules of cohesion and rhetorical organization (textual competence). pragmatic competence refers to the ability to control the functional features of language (illocutionary competence) and the sensitivity to the conventions of language use in context (sociolinguistic competence). figure 1 illustrates the comp onents of the organizational and pragmatic competence as proposed by bachman (1990). bachman’s model does not only include the different components posited by canale and swain (1980), but also expands his framework of communicative language ability to include the strategic competence. the strategic competence refers to the ability to compensate in performance for incomplete linguistic resources in a second language. from the perspective of classroom communicative competence, we agree with johnson’s (1995) view which advocates that students should be provided with ample opportunities to use the language for both meaning and form focused instruction. also, students should have opportunities for language use in formal and informal conversations within a context that is meaningful and realistic whilst both linguistic (phonology, grammar, 91profile vol. 19, no. 1, january-june 2017. issn 1657-0790 (printed) 2256-5760 (online). bogotá, colombia. pages 89-104 the impact of authentic materials and tasks on students’ communicative competence... vocabulary, and discourse) and pragmatic (functions, variations, interactional skills, and cultural framework) aspects are focused. we agree that the above competencies should be developed in the classroom in an integrated way. if a teacher decides to have students just practice, for instance, the structural or the lexical systems of the target language regardless of the other components of classroom communicative competence, the learners will seriously be limited in their interactional possibilities to understand and use the target language in a purposeful way. authenticity and authentic materials according to morrow (1977), it has been difficult for scholars to agree on a definition of the terms authenticity, authentic materials, and authentic language use in language teaching terms. the complexity of this inconsistency lies in the multiple areas in which the term authenticity falls, and the participants involved. according to mishan (2005), the concept of authenticity in language learning throughout history has fallen into three different groups: communicative approaches, materials focused approaches, and humanistic approaches. the communicative approach has highlighted authenticity as the need to communicate, which presupposes an emphasis on meaning rather than on form. contrary to this, the materials focused approach allowed the implementation of other approaches such as the scholastic approach, which consisted in breaking down words into their constituent parts, and the inductive approach, whereby readers infer grammar rules out of authentic texts. finally, the humanistic approach sees the learner as a whole where all the sensory repertoire of the brain is required (mishan, 2005). it is therefore evident how the term authenticity has been understood and applied in the search of achieving that ultimate goal which is communication. figure 1. components of language competence (bachman, 1990, p. 87) language competence organizational competence pragmatic competence syntax vocabulary phonetics morphology cohesion rhetorical organization grammatical competence textual competence illocutionary competence sociolinguistic competence ideational function manipulative function heuristic function imaginative function sensitive to dialects sensitive to register sensitive to nature imaginative function cultural references & �gures of speech universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras92 castillo losada, insuasty & jaime osorio as to the role of authentic materials in the language classroom, both nunan (1988) and hedge (2000) agree that they are not produced for language teaching purposes and do not have “contrived or simplified language.” thus, newspapers, magazines, videos, or maps are clear examples of authentic materials. nonetheless, morrow (1977) goes further and claims that “an authentic text is a stretch of real language, produced by a real speaker or writer for a real audience and designed to convey a real message of some sort” (p. 13). this latter definition certainly complements the concept that language authenticity and authentic materials should be understood within the foreign/second language learning context as any kind of spoken or written act which does not contain any traces or signs of language teaching intervention, and emerges from the producer’s own first language, culture, and needs for communication. given the understanding and characteristics of authentic materials, different scholars have valued and criticized their use in the foreign/second language classroom. on the one hand, hedge (2000) claims that authentic materials are appropriate means for students to cope with the authentic language of the real world. also, peacock (1997) remarks that authentic materials “may increase learners’ levels of on-task behavior, concentration, and involvement in the target activity more than artificial materials” (p. 152). moreover, harmer (1994) claims that learners can greatly benefit from authentic materials as these types of input help students improve their language production, acquire the language in an easier manner, and increase their confidence when using the language in real life situations. on the other hand, shoomossi and ketabi (2007) argue that “non-authentic materials are as valuable as authentic materials. indeed, there are some situations in which authentic materials are useless—especially when the learners’ receptive proficiency is low” (p. 152). this view is shared by kienbaum et al. (as cited in al azri & al-rashdi, 2014) since they assert that there are no significant differences in learners’ performance e.g., between learners using authentic materials and others who use traditional materials. also, kilickaya (as cited in al azri & al-rashdi, 2014) believes that using authentic materials with weak learners frustrate and demotivate them because they lack the required skills and vocabulary to deal successfully with the presented text. in order to overcome these difficulties, hwang (2005) suggests that when learners are challenged by the complexity of some authentic language features, it is necessary to provide pedagogical support by calling students’ attention to equivalent expressions that are different in syntax or wording/phrasing in the languages that are learned. hence, since authenticity does not necessarily mean “good,” just as contrivance does not mean “bad” (clarke, 1989; cook, 2003; widdowson, 1979, 2003), this study placed the use of authentic materials as a strategy to complement the use of non-authentic materials, and with the goal of fulfilling the learners’ communicative needs. authentic tasks scholars such as brown and menasche (as cited in shoomossi & ketabi, 2007, p. 152) provide a rather controversial view by noting that “there is probably no such thing as ‘real task authenticity’ since classrooms are, by nature, artificial.” however, widdowson (as cited in mishan, 2005, p. 70) claims that “it is the relationship between the learner and the input text, and the learner’s response to it, that should be characterised as authentic, rather than the input text itself.” thus, in foreign language learning contexts where exposure to the language being learned is scarce, there is an imperative need to implement materials and design tasks which will enable learners to meaningfully and purposefully use the language. according to nunan (2001), “a communicative task [is] a piece of classroom work which involves learners in comprehending, manipulating, producing, and interacting in the target language while their attention is principally focused on meaning rather than form” (p. 10). this definition is then refined by 93profile vol. 19, no. 1, january-june 2017. issn 1657-0790 (printed) 2256-5760 (online). bogotá, colombia. pages 89-104 the impact of authentic materials and tasks on students’ communicative competence... bygate, skehan, and swain (as cited in mishan, 2005, p. 68) as they argue that a task is “an activity in which: meaning is primary; there is some sort of relationship to the real-world; task completion has some priority; and the assessment of task performance is in terms of task outcome.” as both definitions refer to in-class work with the added values of interaction and real-life simulation, it is then worth looking at the distinction made by nunan (2001) between what he terms “realworld” tasks and the more traditional “pedagogic tasks.” nunan (2001) states that “real-world tasks require learners to approximate, in class, the sorts of behavior required of them in the world beyond the classroom . . . pedagogic tasks, engage learners in tasks they are unlikely to perform outside the classroom” (p. 40). furthermore, mcgrath (2002) highlights the use of authentic tasks in the classroom as they help learners replicate or rehearse the communicative behaviors which will be required of them in the real world. hence, in order to design authentic tasks which involve learners in situations that emulate natural authentic language use, it is vital to consider the six guidelines proposed by mishan (2005) with regard to task authenticity: 1. reflect the original communicative purpose of the text on which they are based. 2. be appropriate to the text on which they are based. 3. elicit response to/engagement with the text on which they are based. 4. approximate real-life tasks. 5. activate learners’ existing knowledge of the target language and culture. 6. involve purposeful communication between learners. research design the res e arch met ho dolog y was de velop ed from a mixed study perspective that integrated a quasi-experimental and a descriptive-qualitative research design. according to hernández sampieri, fernández-collado, and baptista lucio (2006), the quasi-experimental research design deliberately manipulates, at least, one independent variable in order to observe its effect and relationship with one or two dependent variables. in this particular design, subjects are not assigned to the groups randomly because those groups are already formed before the treatment. this research study intended to analyze the extent to which the implementation of authentic materials and tasks contribute to the enhancement of the communicative competence in an a2 level english course in a school of foreign languages at a colombian university. accordingly, two a2 level english courses (henceforth: course a and course b) were chosen. course a was considered as the control group whereas course b was treated as the experimental group. different teachers oriented these courses, and due to the nature of this quasi-experimental research project, the treatment was only applied to course b. a pre-test and a post-test were administered to both the control and the experimental groups so as to compare the degree of effectiveness of the treatment. this quasi-experimental research project was conducted by following four stages. in the first stage, the research group started with the selection of groups and the pre-test implementation. course a was composed of nine students from 18 to 45 years of age whereas course b had fourteen students whose ages varied from 16 to 40. students from both groups came from different socioeconomic backgrounds. after the selection of the groups, a pretest was conducted in both courses. the second stage of the project began with a diagnosis which consisted of an analysis of the pre-test results to establish the strengths and the weaknesses of students’ communicative competence, plus an analysis of the syllabus which was the departure point for designing the pedagogical intervention in course b. as it was vital to apply a treatment that was congruent with both the research and course aims, the pedagogical intervention was devised following a methodological universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras94 castillo losada, insuasty & jaime osorio framework which highlighted the systematic use and implementation of authentic materials and tasks. upon completion of the treatment and implementation of the research methods, the research team, professors (three full-time and one part-time) at universidad surcolombiana proceeded to conduct the post-test on both groups so as to measure the impact of the treatment applied. this process was called stage three. the analysis of the gathered data was performed in stage 4 after obtaining the results of the post-test implementation to course a and b. all data collected from the pre-test and the research methods in stages 1 and 2 respectively were also considered in the analysis in order to come up with the final conclusions. pedagogical intervention this particular framework was made of two complementary parts: the first one was shaped by a series of enabling pedagogical tasks dealing with issues such as advertisements, video viewing of city tours in melbourne (australia), map reading activities, readings about cristiano ronaldo and roger federer and one about a city tour in neiva (without audio, just subtitles). the second part was concerned with the development of two pedagogical projects (tourism in neiva and penpals) which entailed actions in which learners actively participated in the creation of contents and interacted with their peers, visitors and native english speakers. authentic materials were chosen from different cultural products from several english speaking countries, and in accordance with the contents and topics established in the course syllabus. table 1 shows the implementation process, which consisted of the design of two authentic projects (tourism in neiva and pen-pals). then, a series of authentic tasks was outlined in order to fulfill the objectives of the project. data collection instruments lesson obser vation: five classes were taperecorded for further study. similarly, participation table 1. pedagogical project: description of the intervention project product authentic materials tasks tourism in neiva: (5 lessons, 1 display session, 4 conversation club sessions) touristic stands to provide information of the city tour to native speakers, and professors and students from universidad surcolombiana and sena. maps, brochures, photographs, advertisements, official city tour videos, magazine and newspaper articles, and interviews. reading maps and conventions from touristic cities around the world. selecting the route for a city tour in neiva. creating a touristic map of the city. designing a poster inviting tourists to visit neiva. designing brochures with information of the city. delivering the brochures and providing information to tourists. joining a conversation club led by a native english speaker. talking about touristic topics: food, places to visit, history. pen-pals: (9 weeks) letters letters from penpals writing and exchanging at least three letters with students who belong to the english teaching program. note. length of the intervention = 9 weeks 95profile vol. 19, no. 1, january-june 2017. issn 1657-0790 (printed) 2256-5760 (online). bogotá, colombia. pages 89-104 the impact of authentic materials and tasks on students’ communicative competence... in the english club was taped in order to analyze the students’ motivation and the authentic materials impact on the development of the students’ communicative competence. a group of three observers—all of them professors who participated as researchers—used skills checklists and rubrics so as to organize the information. the taped-recorded lessons were distributed evenly among the observers for analysis, followed by a group session to exchange viewpoints and draw conclusions from the data collected with this instrument. survey: two surveys were administered to course b. survey a, which was conducted after each implementation in class, collected information about aspects related to the authentic materials impact on students’ overall communicative performance. survey b, which was conducted at the end of the term, aimed to collect information about the authentic project, the conversation club, and the overall impact of authentic materials. teacher’s diary: the course b teacher was asked to reflect and write about certain aspects related to authentic materials use and the students’ attitudes towards authentic materials (e.g., newspaper and magazine articles, videos), authentic tasks (e.g., brochure design), and the pedagogical projects (e.g., tourism in neiva), and their communicative competence progress. interview: three interviews were carried out. both teachers were asked about their teaching practices in courses a and b. similarly, the native speaker in charge of the conversation club was interviewed in order to obtain information on his appraisal of students’ progress with regard to their speaking performance. results in this section, the results of the different data gathering instruments are shown in the following order: pre-test and post-test administered to students of both the experimental and control groups, lesson observations, the ongoing assessment, the surveys administered to the experimental group students, the experimental group teacher’s diary, and the interviews of the teachers. pre-test and post-test participants in the study took a key english test (ket) at the beginning and at the end of the course. the ket commercial sample assesses language performance through three papers: reading and writing (r&w), which weighs 50 points; listening (list), which carries 25 points; and speaking (speak), which carries 25 points. the test is designed to last two hours approximately and during its implementation, candidates are expected to understand simple written information, produce simple written texts, and understand announcements and other spoken material when people speak reasonably slowly. results of the pre-test can be observed in table 2. by observing the average total scores it can be concluded that both the experimental and the control groups started with a similar skill level. although their marks were expected to be higher due to the complexity of the test and the assessment scale, there was a visibly low performance in their listening and speaking skills. table 2. pre-test results in control and experimental groups course r&w possible points list possible points speak possible points total a 41 50 18 25 9 25 68 b 41 50 18 25 10 25 69 note. group a sample = 9 students, group b sample = 14 students. universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras96 castillo losada, insuasty & jaime osorio table 3. post-test results in control and experimental groups course r&w possible points list possible points speak possible points total a 44 50 19 25 11 25 74 b 46 50 21 25 12 25 79 note. group a sample = 9 students, group b sample = 14 students. on the other hand, table 3 shows the post-test results. although students in both groups show progress in their communicative competence, course b evidences a slightly higher level of progress in their overall performance. according to the test results, the abilities which improved the most were reading and writing, which rose five points. lesson observations five lessons were tape-recorded to analyze the students’ motivation, authentic materials, tasks, and project’s impact on the development of the students’ communicative competence. the lesson observation form consisted of three columns that permitted a better organization of the data by grouping categories (authentic materials, authentic tasks, communicative competence, and teaching practices) that brought together the viewpoints of the three observers. among the results found, materials were perceived as appropriate and useful in all the classes by students and observers. they also provided students with opportunities to use their speaking skills, helped students use the target language in a communicative manner, and provided the teacher with the opportunity to develop communicative activities. another important finding from the observation process regarding the students’ communicative competence was that in four out of five interventions the authentic tasks and authentic materials contributed positively to the development of the grammatical, textual, and illocutionary competences, evident in their written products and their oral speech (see ongoing assessment section). there was also evidence of a contribution to the development of the sociolinguistic competence since in three of the five interventions students were prompted to use their listening skills to understand and become more sensitive to dialects, register, nature, cultural references, and figures of speech. ongoing assessment the four interventions in the conversation club with a native speaker and the project’s product were also tape-recorded in order to assess the students’ communicative competence progress by means of the assessing speaking performance: level a2 (examiners and speaking assessment in the cambridge english: key exam) rubric. results from the observation in the conversation club showed that students seemed to understand the native speaker but could not maintain a simple, basic conversation. the native english speaker did most of the talking as students’ answers were limited. the students’ main problems were related to pronunciation and a low range of vocabulary which were represented in the continuous asking for clarifications to understand utterances in their conversations with the native speaker. the project’s product took the form of oral presentations in a display session open to the academic community members at the end of the course. several students and proficient english-language speakers were invited to the display session. during the students’ presentation, oral interactions with the attendees to the event were tape-recorded. as in the conversation club, the assessing speaking performance: level a2 rubric was used 97profile vol. 19, no. 1, january-june 2017. issn 1657-0790 (printed) 2256-5760 (online). bogotá, colombia. pages 89-104 the impact of authentic materials and tasks on students’ communicative competence... to assess the students’ speaking performance. results of the observation showed that students were able to exchange information and react appropriately to questions, but sometimes needed some prompts or support to do so. they misunderstood some questions, especially due to unfamiliar pronunciation or intonation patterns. moreover, students showed a high degree of simple grammatical forms that were easy to understand. although most of the time they used appropriate vocabulary and intonation when answering questions, they sometimes tended to pronounce some words incorrectly. finally, the pen-pals project was aimed at measuring the students’ written competence progress with the exchange of at least three letters per participant. a total of forty-two letters were expected; however, only thirteen were submitted by seven participants. despite the low number of letters collected, the following features were identified based on a rubric which assessed the grammatical, sociolinguistic, and textual competences. the students used basic grammar structures (simple present, past, future) and vocabulary (adjectives) to build phrases and sentences with connectors like and, but, and because. most of them communicated their messages and provided information to their pen-pal properly, and only one of the students showed problems in introducing and developing ideas. in terms of text organization, the texts were outlined easily by the reader. they all began with a greeting and tried to answer the questions posed by their pen-pals; they also attempted an appropriate introduction and ending and there was evidence of logical sequencing. there were some nonimpeding errors in spelling and grammar. surveys survey a after each implementation, survey a collected information about aspects related to the authentic materials impact on students’ overall communicative performance. figure 2. students’ perception on authentic materials 0 10 20 30 40 50 60 70 80 interest 71% 66% 70% 69% understanding motivationusefulness in general, students had a positive perception of the authentic materials used in class. in terms of interest, understanding, usefulness, and motivation, most students found that the authentic materials were interesting (71%) and useful (70%). in a slightly lower proportion, but not less important, students believe that authentic materials are motivating, although 34% (about 5/14) of the students found them difficult to understand (see figure 2). survey b survey b was conducted at the end of the term. it collected information about the pedagogical project, the conversation club, and the overall impact of authentic materials. figure 3. tourism project impact medium high medium high 57% 22% 21% figure 3 describes the percentages and scales with which students located the impact of the tourism in universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras98 castillo losada, insuasty & jaime osorio neiva project during the course. when being asked about the impact that the tourism project had in their english language learning process, 79% of the students stated that the project had a high and medium high impact. among the reasons to justify their answer was the finding that all students admitted that their participation in the different tasks and the use of the materials provided to achieve the tasks objectives facilitated learning english as a foreign language. for instance, students who actively engaged in the conversation club (43%) thought that this task gave them more opportunities to practice the language for real purposes outside the classroom. despite this high percentage, 21% of the students placed the impact on a medium scale. in relation to the english conversation club experience, 86% of the students described the experience to be compelling, interesting, enriching, and appealing. whilst 7% of them found the vocabulary acquisition as relevant when attending the conversation club, another 7% found the native speaker difficult to understand. results can be observed in figure 4. the survey also gathered information on the students’ perception of their communicative competence enhancement as a result of their participation in the project and task. the skills they recognized to have had more improvement were reading, listening, and grammar and vocabulary, as can be assessed in table 4. figure 4. the english conversation club experience 86% 7% 7% dif�cult to understand vocabulary acquisition compelling, interesting, enriching, appealing teacher’s diary the course b teacher wrote on a teacher’s diary form about certain aspects related to authentic materials use, students’ attitudes towards authentic materials, authentic tasks and the authentic project, and students’ communicative competence progress. according to the teacher the authentic materials used were entertaining and interesting, appropriate for the development of the class and helped the students use the target language in a communicative way. moreover, the teacher thinks the materials were in accordance with the students’ target language level of competence and helped them to use their productive skills with different language purposes such as giving explanations, persuading, asking questions, negotiating factual and cultural meanings of words, phrases, sentences, and messages in the target languages. table 4. perceptions of communicative competence enhancement criteria/skill excellent good acceptable insufficient listening 4 6 4 0 reading 3 11 0 0 speaking 2 9 2 1 writing 2 8 4 0 grammar/vocabulary 4 7 2 1 total percentage 21% 59% 17% 3% note. the total sample for this survey was 14 students. 99profile vol. 19, no. 1, january-june 2017. issn 1657-0790 (printed) 2256-5760 (online). bogotá, colombia. pages 89-104 the impact of authentic materials and tasks on students’ communicative competence... all the materials were appropriate for the development of the class. they were carefully chosen and analyzed before presenting them to the students. the materials were part of an organized plan to teach them not only new vocabulary or grammar patterns, but to recognize strategies used by the authors and to critically respond to those intentions. [students] also created contents based on the materials used. moreover, when analyzing the impact of tasks and authentic materials in the language skills, the teacher believes that students were given more chances to read and speak in the foreign language because most of the authentic materials were printed papers or videos. the tasks that made part of the intervention plan gave students opportunities to communicate in an oral way and to develop different micro-skills for speaking, reading, and listening, for instance, asking and answering questions, skimming and scanning, or listening for details. the teacher believes that even though writing was the less used ability, students did have the chance to create short texts according to the conventions given by the expected level (a2 from the common european framework). students were asked to communicate orally in order to check their understanding of the authentic materials content. they were asked to describe, analyze, summarize, and criticize not only the information received but the author’s intentions when creating the material. they were also able to create contents (questions for an interview, information about touristic places in neiva, summaries of songs, etc.). by working in groups they collaborated to create those contents negotiating a final product in an oral way. a final reflection made by the teacher regarding the students’ communicative competence was that there was a need to analyze students’ productive skills so as to obtain an overall view of students’ performance, as well as pupils’ further exposure to authentic materials to promote the enhancement of their competences. i think they were exposed to different dialects and registers, but i am not sure if they can recognize cultural references or figures of speech by listening to different audios with no image provided. i think that they recognize basic differences among dialects and registers but they need more exposure and awareness to be able to identify them in different settings and communicate with other people accordingly. interviews three interviews were carried out. both course a’s and b’s teachers were interviewed about the teaching practices employed in their respective courses. similarly, the native speaker in charge of the conversation club was interviewed in order to obtain information on his appraisal of the students’ progress regarding their speaking performance. control group teacher course a teacher mentioned that he implemented different strategies, activities, and authentic materials such as debates, videos, or games with the control group. some of these activities took place in the classroom and others were developed by students in a virtual learning environment that was used as a repository of materials (authentic and non-authentic). also, the teacher believes it is quite difficult to take in extra activities due to the brief class time/period provided by the institution. according to the teacher, if you want to do any extra activity aside from what you have planned based on the course book, it becomes really difficult. you’d better do nothing, otherwise you can’t catch up, or you may need not to cover every unit page. thus, despite the control group teacher’s having used strategies, activities, and authentic materials which complemented the course program established by the institution, he did not use the authentic materials within the development of authentic tasks that promoted a meaningful and purposeful use of the language in the real world. the authentic input was then limited to the implementation of isolated activities. universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras100 castillo losada, insuasty & jaime osorio experimental group teacher course b teacher was asked about the advantages and disadvantages of using authentic materials in the institution courses. among other strategies, she mentioned that students can have first-hand contact with the foreign language, learn a wide range of vocabulary, and get cultural awareness. also, she believes that by watching authentic videos, reading authentic written materials, or listening to a native speaker from an english speaking country, not only students but teachers also can benefit. she mentioned having learnt new vocabulary and expressions while selecting the materials and preparing her classes. on the other hand, the teacher mentioned that it is fairly difficult to identify disadvantages when using authentic materials, and added that: when working with authentic materials, what is required by any teacher is a high sense of commitment with what you are doing, and a carefully planned set of actions. you also need to be alert to any changes because they need to be done on time. this may require more preparation time from the teacher, but i am sure that any teacher who loves his/her job purpose will do it without too many regrets. according to the teacher, authentic materials (such as comics, videos, and articles) are beneficial for students. nevertheless, they will not generate any major changes in the teaching practices or students’ communicative competence by themselves. it is in a planned articulation of materials and tasks within a project framework where authentic materials will make a difference. in other words, in her perception, it is tasks (what students do with the materials) and not the authentic materials per se that provokes learning. conversation club teacher the native speaker in charge of the conversation club perceived that the planned activities (e.g., games, contests) allowed students to slightly develop their oral ability as he thinks that “with intermediate level students, progress is always gradual and much slower than that of beginners or elementary level students.” nonetheless, when asked about the students’ speaking performance in the conversation club and on the day of the display session, the teacher commented: “i noted that students were speaking with much more confidence the day of the fair. most of them interacted and communicated their ideas about tourism with ease. in class, i did much of the talking.” hence, since the activities planned and implemented by the teacher in charge of the conversation club were not designed in alignment with the objectives of the pedagogical project, this perception confirms the experimental group teacher’s assertion that authentic input itself is not sufficient, and highlights the need to integrate the use of those authentic materials and tasks within a broader pedagogical action. discussion based on the aims stated in this study and the data gathered using varied research methods, this final section is structured in three broad categories, explained next. the role of authentic materials and tasks in the a2 english course to start with, all the materials selected to complement the course syllabus, that is, magazines, videos, advertisements, newspapers, city maps, brochures, postcards, and entry tickets, were culturally and linguistically rich. the classroom observations and the insights from the experimental group teacher confirmed that the cultural content inherent in the materials impacted positively on the students’ motivation, curiosity, and attention as there was a constant natural desire of enquiry from students to their teacher and peers with regard to the characters, places, and activities described in all materials. this reflects tomlinson’s (1998) view of authentic materials as tools to expose and help students to acquire authentic language use by providing learners with opportunities to use the language while the learners’ curiosity and attention is maintained. 101profile vol. 19, no. 1, january-june 2017. issn 1657-0790 (printed) 2256-5760 (online). bogotá, colombia. pages 89-104 the impact of authentic materials and tasks on students’ communicative competence... furthermore, this improved classroom environment motivated the teacher not to focus solely on the due completion of the school curriculum, but to enrich their teaching practices with communicative activities. there was evidence that the materials implemented in class helped students use the target language in a communicative manner because they read and exchanged real life information. both the materials and proposed activities encouraged students to find information about their own culture and use the target language to answer questions and talk about foreign and national places, customs, and traditions. however, a few of the students seemed to be confused and overwhelmed about the input they received and the tasks they were asked to complete. this last fact seems to suggest that the linguistic richness of authentic materials resulted in higher degrees of language complexity for learners, which is one of the controversial issues brought up by the supporters and critics of the role of authentic materials in language learning. based on experiences throughout the course, the experimental group teacher recognized that authentic materials played an important role in the enrichment of the students’ vocabulary range, and in increasing their cultural awareness and level of attention. however, the teacher also highlighted the need for teachers in general to develop expertise in the implementation of authentic materials as there are possible “drawbacks” such as inefficient time management, overlapping of learning objectives, and wrong selection of materials whilst using them in class. in order to facilitate this process, it is suggested one follow a very well-structured plan or framework which prevents teachers from using authentic materials in an isolated way or just as “fillers.” within this framework, each lesson is to be planned in a detailed way by taking into account the selection of materials and the transitions between the pre-activity, the actual activity, and the post-activity. in general terms, a high sense of commitment from the teacher as well as an in-service training or follow-up plan are strongly required if beneficial effects are to be sought in an english course based on the use of authentic materials and tasks. impact of using authentic materials and tasks in general terms, two types of impact from using authentic materials and tasks were evidenced in this research. the first one is concerned with the headway students made in the development of their communicative competence in the target language. the second one deals with the enhancement of the teaching practices of the experimental group teacher. learners’ communicative competence on a scale from 0.0 to 5.0, the pre-test results were somewhat similar in the experimental group (average score: 3.5) and the control group (average score: 3.4). the post-test results show that both groups made progress in terms of their proficiency enrichment. whereas the experimental group achieved an average score of 3.9, the control group’s final average score was 3.7. as can be seen, the progress of the experimental group can be rated at 0.4 and the control group at 0.3. the low number of interventions in the experimental group and the fact that the control group’s teacher also implemented some authentic materials can be argued as a possible explanation for the minimal difference between the two groups. another possible reason for this situation can be found in kienbaum et al. (as cited in al azri & al-rashdi, 2014, p. 252) who stated “that there are no significant differences in learners’ performance: between learners using authentic materials and others who use traditional materials.” however, it is worth assessing the effects of the authentic materials with other lenses. the experimental group instructor contends that materials on their own can help students develop their listening and reading skills. nonetheless, it is the merge of the materials with a set of authentic tasks what leads to a successful development universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras102 castillo losada, insuasty & jaime osorio of the four language skills and the targeted competences for this chosen level. it could be argued then that the complexity of the language learning process goes beyond the use of a single method or variable, and requires teachers to carefully design lessons which highlight and integrate the learner’s context, needs, and learning objectives. teaching practices in addition to their impact on the development of the students’ communicative competence, authentic materials are also believed to enhance the teacher’s professional performance. contrary to miller’s (2005) position that authentic materials are “too difficult and time consuming to select, edit, and prepare” (p. 5), in the teacher’s diary, the experimental group teacher admitted the positive impact these types of materials had on her teaching practices. she stated that authentic materials enabled her to enrich her teaching practices as the wide variety of authentic input allowed her to plan authentic tasks and activities that promoted the use of the language for communicative purposes. what is more, the experimental group teacher also claimed that these materials foster less controlled interaction between students as they can participate in functional activities such as oral reports, oral presentations, information exchange, mingling activities, and social activities such as projects, creative writing, group discussions, interviews, and debates (jaime osorio & insuasty, 2015). this clearly confirms peacock’s (1997) suggestion that “teachers should try authentic materials in their classrooms, as they may increase their learners’ levels of on-task behavior, concentration, and involvement in the target activity more than artificial materials” (p. 9). on the other hand, despite the control group teacher having pointed out in the interview that it is difficult to do any extra activity in class due to the brief class time provided; the experimental group teacher denied this to a great extent. she supported the feasibility of using authentic materials and encouraged their use as an alternative to the prevailing pre-communicative activities which have been used by most of the institution’s faculty. building a methodological framework to explore authentic materials and tasks in the english language classroom planning to use authentic materials in an a2 level english classroom in a foreign language learning context proved to be a well-thought-out task. as suggested above, authentic materials need to be explored within a thorough methodological framework. this activity will enable learners to acquire both receptive and productive skills, and will provide them the opportunity to put into practice what they learn whilst developing pedagogical communicative projects. a good example of a methodological framework is the above mentioned pedagogical intervention that was designed and executed in course b. within this methodological framework, both tasks and all the language skills were integrated as a way to develop the learners’ communicative competence which, according to lomas, osoro, and tusón (1993), is concerned with “the acquisition of skills to understand and produce not only grammatical, but also appropriate statements.” it was also confirmed that the use of varied types of authentic materials, within a systematic pedagogical and methodological framework, enabled the teacher to create more opportunities for communicative practice based on the students’ interests and needs. in this sense, it is also worth mentioning that the implementation of authentic materials in an isolated manner may fall short in the exploitation of the linguistic and cultural richness of the input, and in the development of the students’ communicative competence, because it could be seen merely as a temporary solution to the delivery of pre-communicative teaching practices. 103profile vol. 19, no. 1, january-june 2017. issn 1657-0790 (printed) 2256-5760 (online). bogotá, colombia. pages 89-104 the impact of authentic materials and tasks on students’ communicative competence... finally, despite the need for a well-defined plan, it is important to note that this plan should not be rigid and that it can be modified or adjusted according to the teacher’s perception and learners’ response. this flexibility of the methodological framework provides teachers with a tool to demystify the belief that authentic materials can only be used with learners whose language level competence is high enough to cope with the language complexity of the materials. conclusions given the linguistic and cultural nature of the authentic input and the learners’ level of competence, it can be concluded that an appropriate and effective implementation of authentic materials in foreign language learning contexts greatly depends not only on the relationship between the materials and the school’s educational context but also on the teacher’s experience dealing with this type of materials and the pedagogical support offered to learners when using them. similarly, authentic materials lead the teacher to a continuous reflection process in which he/she is free to intervene in his/her own teaching practice. therefore, the use of authentic materials in the language classroom must be strongly encouraged as they have a positive impact on the students’ linguistic and affective domains. nonetheless, it is still required that further studies are conducted so as to shed more light on the best uses of authentic materials in language learning and the cultural issues encountered whilst implementing them. references al azri, r. h., & al-rashdi, m. h. 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(2000). teaching and learning in the language classroom. oxford, uk: oxford university press. hernández sampieri, r., fernández-collado, c., & baptista lucio, p. (2006). metodología de la investigación [research methodology]. mexico city, mx: mcgraw-hill. hwang, c. c. (2005). effective efl education through popular authentic materials. asian efl journal, 7(1), 1-12. jaime osorio, m. f., & insuasty, e. a. (2015). analysis of the teaching practices at a colombian foreign language institute and their effects on students’ communicative competence. how, 22(1), 45-64. http://dx.doi.org/10.19183/how.22.1.133. johnson, k. e. (1995). understanding communication in second language classrooms. cambridge, uk: cambridge university press. lomas, c., osoro, a., & tusón, a. (1993). ciencias del lenguaje, competencia comunicativa y enseñanza de la lengua [language sciences, communicative competence, and language teaching]. barcelona, es: paidós ibérica. mcgrath, i. (2002). materials evaluation and design for language teaching. edinburgh, uk: edinburgh university press. miller, m. (2005). improving aural comprehension skills in efl, using authentic materials: an experiment with university students in nigata, japan (unpublished master’s thesis). university of surrey, australia. mishan, f. (2005). designing authenticity into language learning materials. bristol, uk: intellect. morrow, k. (1977). authentic texts in esp. in s. holden (ed.), english for specific purposes (pp. 13-15). london, uk: modern english publications. universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras104 castillo losada, insuasty & jaime osorio nunan, d. (1988). the learner-centred curriculum. cambridge, uk: cambridge university press. http:// dx.doi.org/10.1017/cbo9781139524506. nunan, d. (2001). designing tasks for the communicative classroom. cambridge, uk: cambridge university press. peacock, m. (1997). the effect of authentic material on the motivation of efl learners. elt journal, 51(2), 144-156. http://dx.doi.org/10.1093/elt/51.2.144. shoomossi, n., & ketabi, s. (2007). a critical look at the concept of authenticity. electronic journal of foreign language teaching, 4(1), 149-155. tomlinson, b. (1998). materials development in language teaching. cambridge, uk: cambridge university press. widdowson, h. g. (1979). explorations in applied linguistics. oxford, uk: oxford university press. widdowson, h. g. (2003). defining issues in english language teaching. oxford, uk: oxford university press. about the authors césar augusto castillo losada worked until 2016 as an assistante profesor in the english language teaching program at universidad surcolombiana. he holds an ma in translation studies from the university of newcastle (uk), and a ba in english language teaching from universidad surcolombiana. edgar alirio insuasty holds a phd in education from universidad interamericana de educación a distancia (panamá). he is currently working as an associate professor for the efl teacher education program at universidad surcolombiana. he is co-author of several books and articles in the efl professional field. maría fernanda jaime osorio is a full-time professor in the efl teacher education program at universidad surcolombiana. she holds an ma in teaching english as a foreign language from universidad internacional iberoamericana. she is the director of the research group ilesearch. level of english in colombian higher education: a decade of stagnation 57profile: issues teach. prof. dev., vol. 23 no. 1, jan-jun, 2021. issn 1657-0790 (printed) 2256-5760 (online). bogotá, colombia. pages 57-73 https://doi.org/10.15446/profile.v23n1.83135 level of english in colombian higher education: a decade of stagnation nivel de inglés en la educación superior colombiana: una década de estancamiento jorge eliecer benavides1 universidad de nariño, pasto, colombia this article analyzes the results of the saber pro, the state exam for students completing higher education, during 2007–2017 concerning the english language section. this analysis uses the reports and databases from the instituto colombiano para la evaluación de la educación (icfes) repository and explains the policy in its historical context. the results warn of a quite worrying picture between the goals established by the ministry of education and the final achievements. the level of english of future colombian professionals is not only very low but also without improvement from its beginnings in 2007 to 2017. as a conclusion, it would be necessary to review, from the universities’ perspective, the language educational policy and propose bottom-up structural alternatives that allow a sustained impulse in teacher training, methodology, and curricular and pedagogical organization. keywords: achievement gains, educational policy, colombian university students, language tests, proficiency tests en este artículo se analizan los resultados de la prueba saber pro, el examen de estado para estudiantes que terminan la educación superior, en el módulo de inglés del periodo 2007-2017. este análisis utiliza los informes y bases de datos del instituto colombiano para la evaluación de la educación (icfes) y proporciona un breve contexto histórico de la política educativa. los resultados advierten un panorama preocupante entre las metas establecidas por el ministerio de educación nacional desde el inicio de la prueba de inglés y los logros obtenidos. el nivel de inglés de los futuros profesionales en colombia no solo sigue siendo muy bajo, sino que además no se observa mejoramiento importante. como conclusión, se propone revisar desde las universidades la política educativa con alternativas estructurales que permitan un impulso a la capacitación docente, la metodología y la organización curricular y pedagógica. palabras clave: estudiantes universitarios colombianos, mejoramiento educativo, política educativa, pruebas de inglés, pruebas de eficiencia jorge eliecer benavides  https://orcid.org/0000-0003-0333-2759 · email: jbenavides@udenar.edu.co this article is part of the institutional project funded by the sistema de investigaciones at universidad de nariño (colombia) that seeks to identify the level of english in all its faculties, programs, students, and teachers for the design of an improvement plan and a policy of use of the foreign language. how to cite this article (apa, 7th ed.): benavides, j. e. (2021). level of english in colombian higher education: a decade of stagnation. profile: issues in teachers’ professional development, 23(1), 57–73. https://doi.org/10.15446/profile.v23n1.83135 this article was received on october 24, 2019 and accepted on october 8, 2020. this is an open access article distributed under the terms of the creative commons license attribution-noncommercial-noderivatives 4.0 international license. consultation is possible at https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/ https://orcid.org/0000-0003-0333-2759 https://doi.org/10.15446/profile.v23n1.83135 https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/ universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras58 benavides introduction the importance of not only knowing but also mastering english as a foreign language (efl) is undeniable in our era of the “global village” where information in the scientific, technological, political, and economic fields at the spoken and written levels are mostly found in this language. hence, we speak of a global language such as a “lingua franca” that allows different peoples, nations, and races of different languages to communicate through a common code (cromer, 1992; ku & zussman, 2010; ministerio de educación nacional [men], 2006a). this characteristic growth of the importance of english has also produced the phenomenon of the native speaker displacement as a standard. at the level of native english speakers in countries such as the united states, the united kingdom, and australia, it has been found that there would be almost five times more speakers of efl than natives throughout the world (jenkins, 2003). in the educational field, the importance of english, especially in developing countries, has been growing due, for the most part, to frequent opportunities for educational mobility offered worldwide to students of higher education (british council, 2015; pennycook, 2012; sánchez-jabba, 2013). therefore, the inevitable requirement of mastery or proficiency of efl has been on the increase. this reality has recently been boosted by the so-called “internationalization” factor that has been taken into account by the universities in colombia to improve the mobility rates for the accreditation of programs and eventually of the institution. the national and international visibility of the universities required by the consejo nacional de acreditación1 (cna) as one of the factors for accreditation (agreement 03 of 2014) and the internationalization dimension by the men for the modelo de indicadores de desempeño de la educación superior (mide, higher education performance 1 the entity in charge of ensuring high-quality standards of educational institutions and programs in colombia. indicator model) university rankings has very recently included the results of english from the saber pro tests2 at university level as one of its indicators, among others such as student and teacher mobility, and international co-authorship of articles (men, 2014; resolution 18583 of 2017). according to recent reports in colombia, the level of english has been identified as low, when considering the common european framework of reference for languages (cefr) adopted by the colombian government since 2006 (men, 2006a). this drawback has had direct implications for public education policies aimed at counteracting low language proficiency results for university students at both national (ecaes,3 saber pro) and international level (english proficiency index, epi) exams for young professionals. on the other hand, taking into account the results of standardized tests, student performance, especially in higher education, has not changed significantly (consejo privado de la competitividad, 2007; sánchez-jabba, 2013). in this study, the reports from ecaes, saber pro exams, and the databases from the repository of the instituto colombiano para la evaluación de la educación (icfes) are used for the analysis of the results in two moments along ten years (2007–2017). after a brief historical contextualization of the policy and the exam, the results that determine the different levels of english are compared with reference to the goals established by the men for that period of time. finally, the implications for the future development of the linguistic and communicative competencies of english in the colombian education system are examined in the discussion and conclusions parts. 2 saber pro is the name of the colombian state exam used by the government to test five different competencies, english among them, in students finishing higher education (icfes, 2018a). 3 the ecaes exam was the original version of saber pro and went on from 2003 to 2009. saber pro was established by law 1324 of 2009 and started to be administered in 2010. 59profile: issues teach. prof. dev., vol. 23 no. 1, jan-jun, 2021. issn 1657-0790 (printed) 2256-5760 (online). bogotá, colombia. pages 57-73 level of english in colombian higher education: a decade of stagnation international context in the early 1990s, with the disintegration of the soviet bloc, the iron curtain, the berlin wall, the cold war, and other political, economic, and cultural barriers between east and west, there was an increase in student mobility in european countries, after more than 50 years of strong restrictions on entry to the countries of the eastern bloc. the same happened with the countries of the american continent that saw greater possibilities of international mobility with europe. both government agencies, industrial and commercial companies as well as institutions of higher education launched their different policies of rapprochement and cooperation with european countries and vice versa. efl thus gained greater momentum as a means of global communication for education (council of europe, 2001; gilpin, 2011; lasanowski, 2011; mcburnie, 1999). this resulted in the resurgence of interest in learning and teaching the different languages involved, especially english, from fields such as science, economics, industry, technological development, and the growing impulse of global culture (nault, 2006). also, the qualification of people in various languages was particularly important, as was the implementation of evaluation and measurement mechanisms. in addition, it was necessary that actors interested in cooperation and interaction in the new context could show mastery of the target language, making certain forms of institutional certification of their competence in the different languages at stake necessary (coleman, 2006). this resulted in the need for the standardization of assessment and measurement instruments of internationally validated exams or tests (benavides, 2015; council of europe, 2001; willems, 2002). in this way, the option of a standard for the different global certification needs of efl was born, as well as for the other languages at stake (french, spanish, german, etc.). since the 1960s, there have existed language certifications from institutions such as ets (educational testing service) in america and universities such as cambridge and oxford in europe that used various tests to measure linguistic and communicative skills. many test developers at that time realized the need for a standard that could serve as a reference for the various certifications of the mastery or proficiency of a foreign language in the new world context. in the mid-1990s, the council of europe proposed a series of guidelines—to be recognized throughout europe—for learning, teaching, and evaluating qualifications in foreign languages. (schneider & lenz, 2001). the resulting effort was the development of the standard called common european framework of reference for languages (cefr) that would eventually become a reference manual for aligning tests for the different language competencies: linguistic, communicative, sociolinguistic, and pragmatic (willems, 2002). the common european framework of reference for languages the cefr was published as a revised version of a council of europe manual in 2001. it aimed at helping european countries in their search for standards, criteria, and points of reference to assess and evaluate different levels of language in order to guarantee and promote interaction among peoples, especially in the field of education. one of its main objectives was: to encourage practitioners of all kinds in the language field, including language learners themselves, to reflect on such questions as: what do we actually do when we speak (or write) to each other? . . . how do we set our objectives and mark our progress along the path from total ignorance to effective mastery? . . . what can we do to help ourselves and other people to learn a language better? (council of europe, 2001, p. iii) the main advantage of the cefr from its conceptions has been, as the name implies, to serve as a common reference for language teachers, researchers, and policyuniversidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras60 benavides makers in establishing their objectives and challenges, taking into account their needs, interests, and contexts (council of europe, 2001). however, in recent years and from the pressure of a global economy and the need for policymakers for language choices, most of the attention placed on the cefr has been focused on the achievement of the different levels built around descriptors and rubrics. in other words, the emphasis has been put on the adequacy and application of tests and achievement exams in the areas of international relations and business and commerce (neeley, 2012, 2013; spolsky, 2009). despite the more pragmatical orientations and applications from its original aim by the council of europe, it can be of particular interest to policy designers, agencies and government institutions, curriculum designers, teachers, and institutions to implement curricula around these new standards to eventually have programs developed around descriptors of the international level (little, 2007; westhoff, 2007). the programa nacional de bilingüismo (national bilingualism program) colombia has prepared the path towards commercial, scientific, and educational openness using the programa nacional de bilingüismo (pnb) since 2004 as an ambitious driving mechanism for the country’s development. several reforms designed for efl in the colombian educational system preceded this program. in its design and implementation, however, structural obstacles were found that prevented its realization. among them was the large number of students per classroom that became a great pedagogical obstacle to learning objectives. also, these reforms revealed the wide gaps between national initiatives issued by the ministry of education for the policy implementation of english and the development of communicative competence of colombians. these policies have been carried out amid the lack of continuity in their implementation due to (a) misconceptions of the term “bilingualism” (gómez-sará, 2017); (b) not enough available resources, the necessary contextual conditions, and the scarce hourly intensity and content (jimenez et al., 2017; sánchez-solarte & obando-guerrero, 2008); (c) the lack of a culture of evaluation (british council, 2015); (d) disregard of language educators in policy decision making and inservice teacher training and preparation (cárdenas, 2006); and (e) impoverished opportunities of degree qualification for primary school teachers by the ministry of education (bastidas et al., 2015). it is noteworthy that during the periods 1991–1996 and 2011–2015, and in the context of decentralization promulgated by the new colombian constitution of 1991, the men, supported by several private and official universities and with the logistics of the british council, promoted teacher training in the different participating english programs. this led to a mobilization of english teachers from several universities to enforce internal curricular reforms that would ultimately leverage english learning processes based on new approaches, methodologies, and pedagogical paradigms (aparicio et al., 1995). the mobilization mentioned above nurtured the development in 1999 of the curricular guidelines for foreign languages as pedagogical orientations for teachers who could appropriate conceptual elements and make university autonomy effective in guiding the pedagogical processes for curricular needs (men, 1999). only until 2006, and in the context of the “educational revolution,” did the men publish the basic standards of competence in foreign languages: english, a product created by university teachers with experience in the field and with the support of the british council. these standards implied the adoption, selection, and application of the descriptors and rubrics of the cefr, which were accepted as criteria to identify the development of english language linguistic and communicative competencies in the country (men, 2006a). 61profile: issues teach. prof. dev., vol. 23 no. 1, jan-jun, 2021. issn 1657-0790 (printed) 2256-5760 (online). bogotá, colombia. pages 57-73 level of english in colombian higher education: a decade of stagnation the pnb aimed at “achieving citizens capable of communicating in english, so that they can insert the country into the processes of universal communication, in the global economy and that of cultural openness, with internationally comparable standards” (men, 2006a, p. 6). the purpose, made explicit by the ministry of education, was intended to achieve levels of mastery or proficiency of english in colombia for 2019. however, it could also have represented the adherence of the country to globalization as a mass phenomenon, synonymous with the “commercialization” of higher education, as seen by some critics of this process (brandenburg & de wit, 2011; pennycook, 2012; robertson, 2010). conversely, piekkari and tietze (2011) have reminded us of the difficulty, if not the impossibility, to dictate general policies for language use and rather recommended a sensibilization process before setting any policy implementation. it seemed that this process was made to appear somewhat easy to achieve or it was intended to be perceived as too simplistic, without having considered the complexity of contextual aspects: needs, interests, motivations, the programs (form, duration, and orientation), coverage, participants, institutions, students, and teachers at the regional and national levels. therefore, the introduction of language policy should have been for the most part an integration of the many factors, actors, and conditions of the process in the country as a precondition to its successful implementation, without neglecting any of the complexities while considering most issues at stake. analysis of the goals projected for the development of the level of english in colombia through the pnb as a policy for the development of efl in colombia until 2019, the men aimed to develop communication skills in english for educators and students to favor the insertion of human capital in the knowledge economy and in the globalized labor market. for this reason, it considered the achievement of the goals as mastery of english (men, 2005, 2006a, 2006b). all accomplishments and achievements would have to be referenced to the standard adopted by men since 2006, that is, the cefr and the consequent use of the new terminology: cefr levels, performance descriptors, rubrics, scales, ranges and sub-ranges for the different language and communication skills that had to be guaranteed. a scale of three ranks, for the six levels of the cefr (a1, a2, b1, b2, c1, c2) was a more simplified manner addressing the levels: basic user (a1, a2), independent user (b1, b2), and efficient user (c1, c2). however, the latter two levels, according to the cefr descriptors, refer more to the optimal levels of achievement of an ideal user who would resemble that of a native speaker of the target language. the basic user and independent user ranks were further divided as: beginner a1, elementary a2, intermediate b1, high intermediate b+. these were the levels obtained after the piloting of the test between 2005 and 2006 and the first results appeared in 2007 (see table 1). with the pnb as a base policy, the men considered that the specific goals for students who completed basic and middle education would be the achievement of levels a2 and b1, respectively, and b2 for teachers. for students who finished higher education levels, b2 and also b2+ would be expected, and c1 for graduates from english bachelor’s degree programs at university level (see table 2). however, since the results at baseline (2005–2006) were lower than expected, projected goals were established in percentage figures for middle and higher education levels (see table 3). universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras62 benavides table 1. cefr descriptors for english: basic and independent users independent users b+ • exceeds level b1 b1 • are able to understand the main points of clear and standard language texts that deal with everyday issues • know how to cope with most situations that may arise during a trip • are able to produce simple and coherent texts on topics that are familiar to them or in which they have a personal interest • can describe experiences, events, desires, and aspirations, as well as briefly justify their opinions or explain their plans basic users a2 • are able to understand frequently used phrases and expressions related to areas of experience that are especially relevant (basic information about themselves and their families, shopping, places of interest, occupations, etc.) • know how to communicate when carrying out simple and daily tasks that do not require more than simple and direct exchanges of information • know how to describe in simple terms aspects of their past and their surroundings, as well as issues related to their immediate needs a1 • are able to understand and use everyday and frequent expressions, as well as simple phrases designed to meet immediate needs. • can introduce themselves, ask for and give basic personal information about their address, belongings, and the people they know. • can relate to others in a simple way as long as their interlocutor speaks slowly and clearly low level a• does not reach level a1 note. from the icfes (2010), saber pro database. dirección de evaluación. table 2. achievement goals for english: basic, middle, and higher education basic and middle education grade 11 students: intermediate level (b1) english teachers: high intermediate level (b2) higher education future english teachers: upper intermediate level (b2+, c1) university students from other careers: intermediate level (b2) note. from programa nacional de bilingüismo: colombia 2004–2019, by ministerio de educación nacional, 2009, (https://bit.ly/3h1bnif). table 3. percentage indicators, baseline, and goals (2011–2014) indicators baseline 2011 goal 2014 goal 1. % of 11th grade students proficient in english at the pre-intermediate b1 level 11% 15% 40% 2. % of english teachers with an intermediate b2 english proficiency 15% 19% 100% 3. % of english ba degree students who reach the intermediate level b2 31% 45% 80% 4. % of university students from other careers other than ba degrees in english that reach the intermediate level b2 4% 6% 20% note. from plan nacional de desarrollo 2010–2014: prosperidad para todos, by departamento nacional de planeación, 2011 (https://bit.ly/2zso0nu). https://bit.ly/3h1bnif https://bit.ly/2zso0nu 63profile: issues teach. prof. dev., vol. 23 no. 1, jan-jun, 2021. issn 1657-0790 (printed) 2256-5760 (online). bogotá, colombia. pages 57-73 level of english in colombian higher education: a decade of stagnation given the baseline, an increase of four percentage points as a goal for 2011 (see case 1) could be understood as moderate. however, an increase of more than 100% in the following three years (2014) appeared very ambitious. in case 2, the goal pointed to more than 500%, an increase in the same three-year period for teachers of english in basic and secondary education, something very difficult or impossible to achieve without having some kind of special intervention plan. in the context of a globalized world, pressure for a foreign language policy has been exerted internally and externally. first, by governmental agencies such as men and the icfes and the consejo privado de la competitividad that would allow colombia to be a competitive country with its insertion into the global economy and with better preparation for the academic and labor global world. second, by international organizations like the oecd as a demand for the country to be in a better position in the education field by performance indicators on standardized tests. one of these indicators has been english as a primary means of communication in all fields ensuring the educational policies from international organizations dealing with market participation and adherence to a global and neoliberal context of higher education (apple, 1999; olssen & peters, 2005; phillipson, 2008; price, 2014). within this state of affairs of providing the expected results satisfying both sides, the men would have adopted two positions. first, a minimalist position for basic, middle, and higher education cycles, in the first three years of the english test for 2011, and second, a maximalist approach for the next three (2014) in the development of foreign language competencies according to the projected goals. results of saber 11 exam the results of the level of english for primary and secondary education in this study are taken only as a reference for comparison and the subsequent analysis of higher education. for consistency purposes, the following nomenclature is used as terms of the scale: low levels (aand a1), intermediate levels (a2 and b1), and high level (b+) or higher. the following results of the saber 11 exams carried out between 2014 and 2017 could be used to compare the scope of the goals projected by the men around the levels established according to the cefr criteria and the real situation of english in basic and secondary education in colombia (see figure 1). 100% 80% 90% 70% 60% 50% 40% 30% 20% 10% 0% 2014-ii 2015-ii aa1 a2 b1 b+ 2016-ii 2017-ii 52 45 41 49 35 40 31 28 7 8 17 14 4 5 9 7 2 2 2 2 figure 1. percentage results of saber 11 national exams (2014–2017) note. from the icfes (2018b). universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras64 benavides in these four years (2014–2017), the level of english in basic and secondary education appears practically as a1, a2, and b1 of the cefr with their respective achievement descriptors (see table 3). in 2014 (year of the first goal of the men), 87% of the students of 11th grade who took the test were in the low levels (aand a1), and only 4% reached b1 which, according to the men, for that year should have been 40%. three years later, the results are nothing better since the goal for 2017 should have been much higher. however, 7% was obtained, 3% higher than (2014), that is a 1% increase per year. in these four years (2014–2017), there is no significant change to talk about language “mastery” as was proposed in the goals for 2014, with 40% for b1 finishing secondary education (men, 2006a, 2006b). it is worrying to see that practically half of the population of students finishing grade 11 in 2017 is at level aaccording to the cefr, that is, the student “does not overcome the questions of less complexity” (see table 1). if these were the results obtained at the end of the secondary education for 2017, these would be the levels of entry of students to higher education. seventy-seven percent of the population with low levels (aand a1) are even lower than what should be achieved, according to the men, at the end of primary school. without obtaining level b1 for secondary education, the projected goals for higher education would suffer in that same proportion affecting the overall level of english in the colombian education system. results from the ecaes exam for english (2007–2008) with the issuance of law 1324 of 2009, the regulatory framework of the system of quality assessment of higher education was introduced and new criteria for the english exam were defined. decree 3963 of 2009 regulated the application of the exam, and decree 4216 of that same year made its completion an additional degree requirement for students at the end of this level of studies. since 2010, with the review of the exam, it was called the saber pro exam, and its results served as a source of information for the construction of indicators for evaluating the quality of higher education in colombia. the following results (2007–2008) are the benchmark for subsequent comparison with the period 2016–2017 and they refer to professional programs at the university level in higher education. it can be noted that about 60% of the population that took the english exam in that first period is at low levels (aand a1), 35% in the intermediate levels (a2 and b1), and only 7% in the high level (b+; see figure 2). figure 2. percentage results of ecaes national exam, university programs (2007–2008) note. from icfes (2010, 2011), results (2007–2008). for the same period (2007–2008) the differences among the reference groups are notable between the extremes of the distribution. mathematics and natural sciences with 25% of low levels (aand a1), 58% in intermediate levels (a2 and b1), and 18% in the high level (b+). they are followed, in descending order, by engineering, architecture, urban planning, and health sciences. at the lower end are education sciences and social and human sciences. the education sciences group has 70% of the students in the low levels (aand a1), 23% in the intermediate levels (a2 and b1), and only 7% in the high level (b+; see figure 3). 100% 80% 90% 70% 60% 50% 40% 30% 20% 10% 0% 2007-2008 aa1 a2 b1 b+ 25 34 17 18 7 65profile: issues teach. prof. dev., vol. 23 no. 1, jan-jun, 2021. issn 1657-0790 (printed) 2256-5760 (online). bogotá, colombia. pages 57-73 level of english in colombian higher education: a decade of stagnation for a better comparison within the reference groups, some of the programs within them at the extremes of the distribution have been taken for comparison: mathematics and natural sciences contrasted with those of education sciences (see figure 4). 100%80% 7 18 21 37 18 1126212814 21 32 18 21 7 615163627 25 30 34 16 15 5 711123634 37 18 17 4 90%70%60%50%40%30%20%10%0% mathematics and natural sciences engineering, architecture, town planning health sciences economics, administration, accounting agronomy and veterinary sciences social and human sciences education sciences aa1 a2 b1 b+ figure 3. percentage results of ecaes national exam, groups of reference (2007–2008) note. from icfes (2010), results (2007–2008). 100% 80% 38 20 19 16 23 28 35 35 35 44 8 29 25 12 2316 2013 14 48 13 77 6 90% 70% 60% 50% 40% 30% 20% 10% 0% biology chemistry physics mathematics geology aa1 a2 b1 b+ figure 4. percentage results of ecaes national exam: mathematics and natural sciences (2007–2008) note. from icfes (2010), results (2007–2008). universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras66 benavides these programs stand out due to the low percentages at the low levels (aand a1) and high percentages at the high level (b+). it is important to note that the low levels are between 20% and 29%, while the high between 35% and 44%, which significantly differentiates them from the results of the population. for the second case, in the bachelor’s degree programs from the education sciences group, high percentages in the low levels (aand a1) reaching about 80% in one of them are observed, and the absence of the high level (b+) in the others (see figure 5). figure 5. percentage results of ecaes national exam: education sciences (2007–2008) note. from icfes (2010), results (2007–2008). 100% 80% 7 13 37 42 28 41 11 12 7 10 20 37 15 22 43 2629 90% 70% 60% 50% 40% 30% 20% 10% 0% ba in natural sciences ba in social sciences ba in humanities and spanish ba in preschool pedagogy aa1 a2 b1 b+ unlike the programs in the area of mathematics and natural sciences (figure 5), these would be those with the lowest performance of the population: the highest percentages at the lowest levels (aand a1) and the lowest at the high level (b+). however, within the education sciences, the differences considerably increase when it comes to programs whose emphasis is foreign languages and particularly bachelor’s degrees in english (figure 6) even 2% of low levels (aand a1), 49% intermediate levels (a2 and b1), and 49% at high level (b+) in programs with an emphasis in english, would not be sufficient for the goals established by the men in 2006. these programs, given their subject matter characteristics, would be the exception to the rule of what happens with the other university programs of higher education. therefore, it would have been necessary to consider them separately. figure 6. percentage results of ecaes national exam: bachelor’s degree in foreign languages (2007–2008) note. from icfes (2010), results (2007–2008). 100% 80% 49 44 29 49 5 1 5 2 16 90% 70% 60% 50% 40% 30% 20% 10% 0% ba in english ba in french aa1 a2 b1 b+ 67profile: issues teach. prof. dev., vol. 23 no. 1, jan-jun, 2021. issn 1657-0790 (printed) 2256-5760 (online). bogotá, colombia. pages 57-73 level of english in colombian higher education: a decade of stagnation results of saber pro for english (2016–2017) after ten years of the first application of the english exam, and with the modification of level b+ as b2 after a revision of the test, roughly half of the population (51%) of those who took the test are still at low levels (aand a1), 43% in the intermediate levels (a2 and b1), and only 8% in the high level (b2; see figure 7). figure 7. percentage results of saber pro national exam (2016–2017) note. from icfes (2018c), database results (2016–2017). the results are similar to those obtained in 2007– 2008, ten years previously. there is a decrease of eight percentage points (5% for aand 3% for a1) in the low levels, that is, less than 1% annual improvement for 2016–2017. there is an increase of eight percentage points in the intermediate level (a2 and b1), less than 1% annual improvement, and practically no difference in the high level (b2) concerning the results of 2007–2008. these do not represent any significant improvement in english for higher education over a period of 10 years, considering the magnitude of the goals established by the men in 2006. concerning the reference groups, it is worth noting a marked difference in the extremes, like in the period 2007–2008. mathematics and natural sciences with 23% at low levels (aand a1) are far better than education sciences at those same low levels: 64% in a one-to-three ratio. in the high level (b2), 21% for the first case and 6% for the second, in a three-to-one ratio. however, there is a small improvement due to the reduction of the low levels of the two extreme groups, but more for the second, 0.2% and 0.6% annual improvement, respectively. the rest remains relatively the same (see figure 8). 100% 80% 20 24 31 8 19 90% 70% 60% 50% 40% 30% 20% 10% 0% 2016-2017 aa1 a2 b1 b+ 100%80% 6 17 25 32 21 1126292411 19 32 25 17 7 514243522 21 20 28 24 20 9 611193430 32 26 17 4 90%70%60%50%40%30%20%10%0% mathematics and natural sciences engineering, architecture, town planning health sciences economics, administration, accounting agronomy and veterinary sciences social and human sciences education sciences aa1 a2 b1 b+ figure 8. percentage results of saber pro national exam: groups of reference (2017) note. from icfes (2018c), database results (2016–2017). universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras68 benavides when these results are compared with those of 2007–2008, there is consistency at both ends of the two groups. the only difference is from social and human sciences that now rank third in the reference group scale in 2017. the rest remains relatively invariable. it can be determined that in ten years, no major changes are observed. therefore, a relative stagnation is evident in the development of the level of english as a generic core from the results of the ecaes, saber pro exams for higher education. discussion the results of the english module of the ecaes, saber pro exams show that in colombia, there is a significant percentage of university-level students who are still below the a1 level of the cefr (25% in 2007 and 20% in 2017) at the end of their careers. in ten years, level aonly shows a reduction of five percentage points, which represents an average of 0.5% annual improvement. the next level (a1) has a reduction as an improvement trend of three percentage points, for a 0.3% annual improvement. the best gain is at level a2 with an increase of seven percentage points, for a 0.7% annual improvement. the intermediate and high levels (b1 and b+), which are the focus of the goals for english projected by the men, remain virtually unchanged with a slight gain of one percentage point in ten years, from 18% to 19% and from 7% to 8% from 2007 to 2017, respectively, that is, a 0.1% annual improvement in each case. the improvement trend seems to move towards level a2, which shows the best gain. however, the overall improvement is too small to be considered important for the “mastery” of the foreign language. therefore, it could be said that the results show a process of stagnation of the development of english competencies in ten years. for example, the improvement of levels b1 and b+ is a clear indicator of stagnation, because they are the focus levels by the men in setting the goals. if these goals were applied to 2017 as a requirement for graduation (as seems to be the case in the near future with resolution 18583 of 2017), only about 8% of higher education students at the university level will be able to graduate. taking the goals established by the men as a point of reference, and the results obtained, it can be determined that the level of english in higher education is still very low, confirming previous analyses (consejo privado de la competitividad, 2007; sánchez-jabba, 2013). in other words, it is not only the level of students who finish their university level that is very low but also there is not enough improvement during a ten-year period (2007–2017), as this study shows. in addition, the above findings are confirmed by the level of english of young professionals in the results of international exams where colombia appears 68th among 100 countries in the 2019 world rankings. as for latin american countries, colombia is hardly above ecuador and bolivia, according to the 2019 results of the epi (education first, 2019). the differences in terms of the results obtained in the period of this study for english communicative competence and the goals set by the men are so broad that a considerable gap has been created between them, and it is safe to say that the state is in debt with the language education system for the stagnation of the process of foreign language development. consequently, this area would probably take a considerable amount of time, effort, and investment in order to catch up. this gap started with the results of the saber 11 exam, as seen in 2014, with more than 50% of the population at level a-. then the same debt must have been transferred to higher education in the professional careers at university level in those ten years and could be still happening. university programs would have been carrying that burden without any possibilities of medium and long-term solutions given the low level and minimum progress seen in a ten-year period for the development of english language competencies in the colombian educational system. it is also important to highlight the results of the reference groups that relate to a greater or lesser degree with the areas of knowledge. the large differences shown 69profile: issues teach. prof. dev., vol. 23 no. 1, jan-jun, 2021. issn 1657-0790 (printed) 2256-5760 (online). bogotá, colombia. pages 57-73 level of english in colombian higher education: a decade of stagnation are consistent in the upper and lower end groups, with no major change in ten years, apart from a small decrease in the lower levels, 0.2% and 0.6% per year in the two extreme groups, respectively. however, it is important to consider the most likely reason for these differences in favor of mathematics, natural sciences, and engineering in contrast to education sciences. these differences are most probably due to the fact that in the programs of the first group, the students have to be reading bibliographic sources directly in english, which mostly cover up-to-date information on science, research, and technology. this would imply the use of bibliography and subscriptions to specialized journals in english and access to databases of specialized journals in science and technology over the internet. the fact that students have to read directly from these sources in english would be guaranteeing them the learning through language use and consequently obtaining significantly better levels of english than those of the other programs. finally, it is contradictory that resolution 18583 of 2017 demands that by 2019: “higher education institutions must guarantee that graduates of all bachelor’s degree programs in teaching have a b1 or higher level in a foreign language, according to the cefr.” equally unlikely, would be to obtain a b2 level as a requirement for students of the other professional careers in the country in the long term. even the goals required for programs with an emphasis on english expected to be at level c1 for 2020, according to the above-mentioned resolution, would be currently very difficult, if not impossible to obtain if the results of this study are taken into consideration. conclusions the very low level of english communicative competence shown in the period 2007–2017 from the ecaes, and saber pro exams for university professional programs concerning the english module reveals a relative stagnation of the development of the linguistic and communicative competencies showing the real difficult situation of english in the colombian educational system. despite the overestimated goals of the men that insisted on a “mastery” of english in colombia for 2019, the evidence shown by the results in this study is more than alarming. with the overall importance attributed to the knowledge and mastery of english as a lingua franca for the purpose of internationalization, student and teacher mobility, research and openness to other cultures, there would be no major change and development in the future without the redesigning of an effective foreign language educational policy and innovations and suggestions for teachers’ professional development at local and national levels as those proposed from research and implementation by alvarez et al. (2015), cadavid et al. (2015), and cárdenas et al. (2015). the absence of an effective state educational policy that fosters the development and use of the foreign language in all its competencies seems to have severely affected higher education and particularly the university programs. if there ever was a foreign language policy or the same with different denominations, these have not worked properly due to several reasons, but mainly for lack of continuity. the pnb, the programa para el fortalecimiento y el desarrollo de competencias en lengua extranjera, the programa nacional de inglés, and colombia bilingüe, however, according to the results in this study, seem to have stayed on paper, or in theory, or only in their initial stages in the heat of the enthusiasm of the participants for the expected goals. moreover, it should be taken into account that the results of the saber pro exam are increasingly being considered by the cna in order to grant colombian universities program and institutional accreditation. one of the purposes of this exam is to serve as a source of information for the construction of indicators for evaluating the quality of higher education programs and institutions. by evaluating the level of efl in the internationalization factor, the cna assigns a weight of 2% from the new men-mide 2.0 ranking of colombian universities. universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras70 benavides therefore, it would be necessary to undertake a drastic revision of foreign language policy as a joint research effort by the different english language departments, language schools, or language centers in charge of the administrative and academic organization of english courses and curricula to delve into the analysis of the foreign language policies of each higher education institution. the end result of this effort would be a more consensual view of foreign language policy and thereby a shared view of language education in general. this joint effort by universities would promote the effective development of english and its linguistic, communicative, and pragmatic competencies starting at primary and secondary education as an initial working platform. foreign language educational policy should be revised and implemented, and a series of structural alternatives that would allow a sustained development in terms of teacher training, methodology, curricular organization, and use of the language in the programs should strongly be considered. finally, a macro research project by the universities in the country is needed. one starting in every institution that encourages awareness of the need for analysis of the situational context using the information available from the icfes databases. this effort would launch a joint improvement proposal for a medium and longterm intervention strategy as an active and permanent mechanism for a foreign language education policy of development and the use of english in higher education. this course of action should eventually involve and impact the basic and secondary education cycles through the municipal and departmental secretariats of education. references acuerdo 03 de 2014 [agreement 03 of 2014], consejo nacional de acreditación (2014). https://www.cna.gov.co/1741/ articles-186370_acuerdo_03_2014.pdf álvarez, j. a., cárdenas, m. l., & gonzález, a. 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(2010). corporatisation, competitiveness, commercialisation: new logics in the globalising of uk https://doi.org/10.19183/how.24.2.335 https://doi.org/10.19183/how.24.2.335 https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jebo.2010.03.013 https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jebo.2010.03.013 https://doi.org/10.1057/9780230117143_10 http://www.suin-juriscol.gov.co/viewdocument.asp?id=1677369 http://www.suin-juriscol.gov.co/viewdocument.asp?id=1677369 https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1540-4781.2007.00627_2.x https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1540-4781.2007.00627_2.x https://doi.org/10.1787/9789264173361-en https://doi.org/10.1787/9789264173361-en https://www.mineducacion.gov.co/1621/articles-339975_recurso_7.pdf https://www.mineducacion.gov.co/1621/articles-339975_recurso_7.pdf https://www.mineducacion.gov.co/1621/article-97498.html https://www.mineducacion.gov.co/1621/article-97498.html https://bit.ly/3085bjk https://bit.ly/2cz4nfe https://bit.ly/3h1bnif https://bit.ly/3h1bnif https://www.cna.gov.co/1741/articles-186502_reflexiones2014.pdf https://www.cna.gov.co/1741/articles-186502_reflexiones2014.pdf https://www.cna.gov.co/1741/articles-186502_reflexiones2014.pdf https://doi.org/10.1080/07908310608668770 https://doi.org/10.1287/orsc.1120.0739 https://doi.org/10.1287/orsc.1120.0739 https://doi.org/10.21832/9781847697653 https://doi.org/10.21832/9781847697653 https://doi.org/10.1080/15427580701696886 https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jwb.2010.07.001 https://doi.org/10.1017/s0047404514000566 https://bit.ly/3fzu411 73profile: issues teach. prof. dev., vol. 23 no. 1, jan-jun, 2021. issn 1657-0790 (printed) 2256-5760 (online). bogotá, colombia. pages 57-73 level of english in colombian higher education: a decade of stagnation higher education. globalisation, societies and education, 8(2), 191–203. https://doi.org/10.1080/14767721003776320 sánchez-jabba, a. (2013). bilingüismo en colombia: documento de trabajo sobre economía regional [bilingualism in colombia: working document on regional economy]. banco de la república. https://www.banrep.gov.co/ docum/lectura_finanzas/pdf/dtser_191.pdf sánchez-solarte, a. c., & obando-guerrero, g. v. (2008). is colombia ready for “bilingualism”? profile: issues in teachers’ professional development, 9, 181–195. schneider, g., & lenz, p. (2001). european language portfolio: guide for developers. university of fribourg press. https:// rm.coe.int/1680459fa3 spolsky, b. (2009). language management. cambridge university press. https://doi.org/10.1017/cbo9780511626470 westhoff, g. (2007). challenges and opportunities of the cefr for reimagining foreign language pedagogy. the modern language journal, 91(4), 676–679. https://doi. org/10.1111/j.1540-4781.2007.00627_9.x willems, g. m. (2002). language teacher education policy promoting linguistic diversity and intercultural communication. in j.-c. beacco & m. byram (eds.), guide for the development of language education policies in europe: from linguistic diversity to plurilingual education. council of europe. https://bit.ly/3h3qrkc about the author jorge eliecer benavides is a full-time professor and researcher at universidad de nariño, departamento de lingüística e idiomas where he graduated in 1983. he got an ma in applied linguistics from ohio university and a phd in education from universidad de nariño. he does research in language learning and testing, and discourse analysis. https://doi.org/10.1080/14767721003776320 https://www.banrep.gov.co/docum/lectura_finanzas/pdf/dtser_191.pdf https://www.banrep.gov.co/docum/lectura_finanzas/pdf/dtser_191.pdf https://rm.coe.int/1680459fa3 https://rm.coe.int/1680459fa3 https://doi.org/10.1017/cbo9780511626470 https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1540-4781.2007.00627_9.x https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1540-4781.2007.00627_9.x https://bit.ly/3h3qrkc 167profile vol. 19, no. 2, july-december 2017. issn 1657-0790 (printed) 2256-5760 (online). bogotá, colombia. pages 167-184 http://dx.doi.org/10.15446/profile.v19n2.59675 identifying pre-service teachers’ beliefs about teaching efl and their potential changes identificación de creencias de docentes en formación sobre la enseñanza de inglés como lengua extranjera y sus posibles cambios sergio andrés suárez flórez* edwin arley basto basto** universidad de pamplona, pamplona, colombia this study aims at identifying pre-service teachers’ beliefs about teaching english as a foreign language and tracking their potential changes throughout the teaching practicum. participants were two pre-service teachers in their fifth year of their bachelor of arts in foreign languages program in a public university in colombia. data were gathered through a modified version of beliefs about language learning inventory before the practicum, eight weekly journal entries administered during ten weeks, and two semi-structured interviews at the end of the teaching practicum. the findings revealed that most of the pre-service teachers’ beliefs changed once they faced the reality of the classroom. key words: beliefs, english as a foreign language, pre-service teachers, teaching practicum. este estudio tiene como objetivo identificar las creencias de los practicantes sobre la enseñanza del inglés como lengua extranjera y hacer un seguimiento a sus posibles cambios durante la práctica docente. los participantes se encontraban en quinto año del programa de licenciatura en lenguas extranjeras en una universidad pública en colombia. los datos fueron recolectados a través de una versión modificada del cuestionario sobre las creencias en el aprendizaje de una lengua antes de la práctica, ocho diarios de reflexión durante diez semanas y dos entrevistas semiestructuradas al final de la práctica docente. los hallazgos revelaron que la mayoría de las creencias de los participantes cambiaron una vez enfrentaron la realidad del salón de clases. palabras clave: creencias, docentes en formación, inglés como lengua extranjera, práctica docente. * e-mail: sergiom_1447@hotmail.com ** e-mail: edwin.basto@unipamplona.edu.co how to cite this article (apa, 6th ed.): suárez flórez, s. a., & basto basto, e. a. (2017). identifying pre-service teachers’ beliefs about teaching efl and their potential changes. profile issues in teachers’ professional development, 19(2), 167-184. http://dx.doi.org/10.15446/profile. v19n2.59675. this article was received on august 19, 2016, and accepted on march 6, 2017. this is an open access article distributed under the terms of the creative commons license attribution-noncommercial-noderivatives 4.0 international license. consultation is possible at http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/. universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras168 suárez flórez & basto basto introduction in colombia, foreign language (fl) pre-service teachers’ education encompasses five main components: the linguistic, pedagogic, didactic, research, and humanistic elements. the general law of education (law 115, congreso de la república de colombia, 1994) recognizes the professionalism of teachers and recommends that they should be committed to their field of study and to their students. bearing in mind the educational context teachers should decide how and what to teach so that students can reach a proper understanding. in this sense, the education of pre-service teachers does not include only the five components mentioned above but also the teaching formation, aimed at equipping the teachers-to-be with the professional skills needed to put into practice the recommendations given by language polices. accordingly, the school of education at universidad de pamplona (colombia) where this research was conducted has as its mission to educate high-academic level teachers to be agents of change in order to contribute to the education of the new colombian generation. the bachelor of arts program in foreign languages, english and french, “enables pre-service teachers to master the essential skills and competences that [will] allow them to tackle the challenges they are likely to face” (cote, 2012, p. 26) throughout the practicum.1 additionally, the fl program includes a four-stage preparation in order to provide pre-service teachers with pedagogic competences and teaching formation before entering the teaching practicum. these stages are: (1) peer tutor, in which students from sixth semester assist freshman students in grammar and expose them to university life; (2) teacher assistant, a seventh semester student supports basic teacher tasks within any of the previous six language courses either in english or french; (3) foreign languages course for the community 1 in this article, teaching practice, teaching practicum, and practicum are used interchangeably. (teacher trainee), an eighth semester student starts the first teaching experience in a real context guiding a course either in english or french; and (4) social work community (service teacher), where the undergraduates put into practice their acquired knowledge, proficiency, and expertise. after completing the first four teaching stages, we became interested in studying pre-service teachers’ beliefs predicting that they would influence the teaching practicum, and would be valuable for informing teacher educators and shaping teacher preparation programs. consequently, the current project attempts to make pre-service teachers more aware of the importance of identifying and reflecting on their beliefs. the purpose of this study was to identify pre-service teachers’ beliefs on teaching english as a foreign language (efl) and their potential changes during the practicum through a reflective process. two questions guided this study: (1) what are pre-service teachers’ beliefs regarding teaching english to high school students prior to the teaching practicum? (2) do pre-service teachers’ beliefs on teaching change during their practicum, and if so, how do they change? this paper is organized as follows: first it presents the theoretical framework and literature on pre-service teachers’ beliefs. second, the method and main features of this research are explained. finally, the findings are presented followed by a conclusion. literature review this section shows the notions of pre-service teachers’ beliefs and a general overview of studies in the field of reflection and pre-service teachers’ beliefs. it is divided into three categories: changes in pre-service teachers’ beliefs, the reflective approach, and research on pre-service teachers’ beliefs in colombia. richards and lockhart (1996) stated that “teachers’ belief systems are founded on the goals, values, and beliefs teachers hold in relation to the content and process of teaching as well as their understanding of the systems 169profile vol. 19, no. 2, july-december 2017. issn 1657-0790 (printed) 2256-5760 (online). bogotá, colombia. pages 167-184 identifying pre-service teachers’ beliefs about teaching efl and their potential changes in which they work” (p. 42). they also defined beliefs as “the psychologically held understandings, premises, or propositions about the world that are felt to be true” (p. 103). kagan (1992) defined teachers’ beliefs as “tacit, often unconsciously held assumptions about the students, the classroom, and the academic material to be taught” (p. 65). however, this investigation followed m. borg’s (2001) definition that complemented kagan’s by adding that beliefs have also a conscious nature. having selected this framework allowed us to have a bigger source of beliefs to be identified on the two pre-service teachers in the current investigation. changes in pre-service teachers’ beliefs although a change in beliefs has been defined differently (m. borg, 2001; calderhead & robson, 1991; kagan, 1992), this research adopted the following definition of change which is aligned with this study: “movement or development in beliefs” (cabaroglu & roberts as cited in clark-goff, 2008, p. 7). mattheoudakis (2007) conducted a longitudinal study to investigate 66 pre-service efl teachers’ beliefs about learning and teaching in greece during a threeyear teacher education program. the author found that through the practicum, the pre-service teachers realized that the classroom reality helped them test their knowledge and become more aware of their personal beliefs about learning and teaching. moreover, the researcher identified changes in pre-service teachers’ beliefs once they had been exposed to teaching in real contexts. she suggested that pre-service teachers need opportunities for reflection during the teaching practice. similarly, debreli (2012) investigated three preservice teachers as they changed their beliefs about teaching and learning efl through a nine-month preservice teachers’ preparation program. according to the author, the participants’ beliefs changed incrementally once they taught in a real classroom setting. the researcher concluded that “participants’ beliefs changed as a result of the personal teaching experiences they had during the program” (p. 372). additionally, yuan and lee (2014) investigated the process of beliefs’ change among three pre-service language teachers during the teaching practicum at a university in china. the researchers found that preservice teachers’ beliefs experienced different processes of change during the practicum, which included confirmation, realization, disagreement, elaboration, integration, and modification. this could be attributed to their situated learning in the school field with the professional culture and expert support. the authors suggested that “opportunities should be provided for pre-service teachers to take part in professional activities in the teaching practicum such as reflective journal writing” (p. 10). furthermore, seymen (2012) explored the relevance of six female pre-service teachers’ beliefs about self and teaching roles to their own teaching practice in schools in turkey. the findings showed that there were considerable changes regarding pre-service teachers’ perceptions. for example, when starting the investigation, pre-service teachers saw themselves as a guide, someone who helped students in their learning process. however, this belief changed once they started the practicum as the preservice teachers saw themselves instead as controllers and managers of the classroom. the previous research studies support the idea that pre-service teachers’ beliefs might be influenced and changed throughout the teaching practice because of several factors such as: being exposed to a real classroom context, facing personal experiences, and changing selfimage. moreover, these studies confirmed the importance of reflecting in the practicum. the reflective approach reflection has been defined regarding the im provement of the professional skills in the teaching field. in fact, schön (as cited in ahmed & al-khalili, 2013) defined reflective teaching as “looking at what teachers universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras170 suárez flórez & basto basto do in the classroom, thinking about why they do it and thinking about if it works, a process of self-observation and self-evaluation” (p. 59). besides, richards and lockhart (1996) stated that a reflective approach to teaching is one in which “teachers and student-teachers collect data about teaching, examine their attitudes, beliefs, assumptions, and teaching practices and use the information obtained as a basis for critical reflection about teaching” (p. 1). moreover, dewey (1933) defined reflection as a “state of doubt, hesitation, perplexity, mental difficulty in which thinking originates an act of searching, hunting, and inquiring to find material that will resolve the doubt and dispose of the perplexity” (p. 12). however, our study followed mclean’s (2007) definition from a teacher perspective in which reflection “involves thinking about and critically analyzing our experiences and actions, and those of our students, with the goal of improving our professional practice” (p. 5.9). this definition allowed us to understand the intersection of reflection and teaching. reflection has been used to identify the sources of teachers’ beliefs and their benefits in the teaching practice. abdullah and majid (2012) conducted a study to investigate teachers’ beliefs in malaysia. the researchers found that there were four potential sources of beliefs identified throughout a reflection process: experience as learners, perception towards students, institutional environment or practice, and personal views on current practice. likewise, some scholars have found benefits from the reflection process in the teaching practicum. for instance, sikka and timoštšuk (2008) investigated 45 students in estonia to identify the changes and transformations from student to teacher at their practicum. they found that the reflection process allowed pre-service teachers to learn to see their weaknesses and be able to work on them and establish goals for further development. additionally, ahmed and al-khalili (2013) conducted a case study at a public university in egypt with 25 primary science pre-service teachers. the researchers found that reflective teaching helped participants to identify strengths and weaknesses in teaching. this process enabled them “to analyze, discuss, evaluate, and change their own practice as well as to adopt a systematic analytical approach towards teaching” (p. 63). similarly, farrell (1999) conducted a study in order to understand five pre-service teachers’ beliefs when teaching grammar in singapore. he found that the reflective process allowed participants to be more aware of their past influences, as they considered themselves to be learners as well. he stated that the experiences as learners and the current one of teaching might be a powerful method of shaping their own development as teachers. recently, reflection has been implemented as a process to explore critical incidents when teaching. for example, lengeling and mora pablo (2016) conducted a study with eight beginner teachers at a public university in mexico. findings revealed that critical incidents helped teachers to “shape their attitudes and perceptions at a given time in their lives” (p. 86). according to the authors, incidents provoke reflection of common events but in reality they are more powerful because of what is learnt. finally, the authors stated that these reflections might allow teachers to analyze their values, beliefs, and perceptions. at the university where this study took place, two investigations have been conducted regarding the preservice teachers’ reflective process during the practicum. camacho et al. (2012) attempted to understand how a process of reflection helped five foreign language pre-service teachers throughout the practicum. the researchers found that reflection gave participants the opportunity to analyze their actions and how they might have thought of changing their way of teaching. additionally, they found that the act of reflecting is directly linked to the circumstances or events during the classroom practicum. likewise, cote (2012) conducted an exploratory case study with four pre-service teachers at two public high schools, one private school, and one public university 171profile vol. 19, no. 2, july-december 2017. issn 1657-0790 (printed) 2256-5760 (online). bogotá, colombia. pages 167-184 identifying pre-service teachers’ beliefs about teaching efl and their potential changes in colombia. the researcher found that the reflection process allowed the pre-service teachers to improve their practice teaching and helped them to implement necessary changes with the aim of improving their teaching. these findings confirmed the applicability of reflection as a process to identify pre-service teachers’ changes in beliefs. besides, this instrument might allow student-teachers to learn from their personal experiences in order to improve their teaching practice. research on pre-service teachers’ beliefs in colombia in colombia, there has been a growing interest in studying pre-service teachers’ beliefs based on their self-image, perceptions, and past experiences as learners in the teaching practice. castellanos (as cited in castellanos, 2013) focused her study on pre-service english teachers’ construction of self-image as teachers. her findings showed that there were three crucial factors that constructed preservice teachers’ self-image: the identification of past teachers, the interaction and collaboration with other teachers, and their systems of beliefs about learning and teaching. the author also found that “change in preservice teachers’ perception of themselves as language teachers was fostered by making connections between their knowledge base, practice and by being faced with difficult situations that posed challenges to their belief system” (pp. 201-202). likewise, samacá (as cited in castellanos, 2013) conducted a study with the purpose of understanding the influence of 13 pre-service teachers’ perceptions regarding their future image as teachers while teaching in a university in colombia. findings revealed that “there were three important aspects for the construction of student-teachers’ image as future teachers: a dialogical relationship between students and teachers, the instructional roles they are to develop in their classroom settings, and models to be or not to be followed” (p. 202). the professional identity of student teachers’ beliefs has been also studied. for example, fajardo (2014) studied the transformation of pre-service teachers’ professional identity. the author explored how six pre-service teachers constructed the meaning of becoming a teacher during the last stage of the teacher preparation at a public university in colombia. the researcher found that the relationship between beliefs and classroom practice constructed, formed, and transformed pre-ser vice teachers’ identity. however, this construction might have been limited since they were permanently supervised during the teaching practice, which might have restricted their free development in the classroom. furthermore, gutiérrez (2015) investigated the influence of beliefs throughout the teaching practice. the author investigated three pre-service teachers from a language program preparation in medellín, colombia. the purpose of this study was to understand “how preservice teachers responded to the exploration of critical literacy theories, beliefs, and reflections while designing and implementing critical-literacy based lessons” (p. 191). the researcher found that “participants’ beliefs, attitudes, and reflections were transformed throughout the study” (p. 191). additionally, the author found that participants believed that changing the education system in colombia would be difficult because there are certain challenges: the ages of the learners since they believed that the students were not prepared to be part of critical discussions and, the acknowledgment of learners’ parents in terms of discussing specific topics like politics and sexuality. it is important to highlight that although there is a growing interest to investigate pre-service teachers’ beliefs in colombia, it is still limited. method this investigation adopted an intrinsic case study which allowed us to reach a comprehensive understanding of a particular case using a variety of data gathering techniques and methods of analysis. creswell (2007) universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras172 suárez flórez & basto basto stated that “we conduct qualitative research because we need a complex and detailed understanding of the issue” (p. 40). this investigation was framed under a naturalistic approach in order to study participants in their natural settings. the sampling process started by inviting eight potential participants who were about to start the practicum to take part in a lecture in which we explained this study in detail. once they were informed about the main features of the study, four pre-service teachers decided to take part in the project. however, due to different circumstances, only two pre-service teachers consented to take part in it. they were two female undergraduate pre-service teachers in the fl program at universidad de pamplona in colombia. they did their practicum in two public high schools, and their language proficiency ranged between b1 and b2. although they were in charge of two seventh-grade courses, they were asked to keep a reflective journal in only one of the courses. each course had from 30 to 35 students where in each class they were organized into different rows. their ages ranged from 11 to 13 years old. the teachers’ practicum involved 12 weekly hours of teaching for the duration of ten weeks. the pre-service teachers also signed a letter of consent that fully explained their responsibilities and rights as participants. this study was divided into three phases. in the first phase, before starting the teaching practice, we provided a questionnaire to identify pre-service teachers’ beliefs. the questionnaire was adapted from the beliefs about language learning inventory (balli) developed by horwitz (1987). the balli is a quantitative selfreport questionnaire designed to investigate 34 learners’ beliefs. it is organized into five categories: the difficulty of language learning, foreign language aptitude, the nature of language learning, learning communication strategies, and motivation and expectations. however, we organized the balli2 into 21 items (see appendix a) about teaching. for each item participants were required to indicate whether they (1) strongly disagree, (2) disagree, (3) agree, or (4) strongly agree. we also administered two open ended questions: what are your limitations at present when teaching? and do you consider that eliminating obstacles can help you in the teaching process? this questionnaire was provided to participants in english. during the second phase, the pre-service teachers were asked to answer a weekly reflective journal during 10 weeks of their practicum. the journal was adapted from the reflective questions3 (see appendix b) to guide journal entries developed by richards and lockhart (1996).4 these questions were sent via e-mail in spanish in order to allow participants to express and describe their experiences in their mother tongue. as we attempted to track changes in pre-service teachers’ beliefs, asking participants about the difficulties, changes, and challenges they dealt with throughout their practicum was vital for the purpose of the study. in the final phase, two semi-structured interviews (see appendix c)5 were carried out with the purpose of complementing the data gathered once the pre-service teachers concluded their practicum. the questions were based on the assessment of the information participants provided through the journals. participants were interviewed separately for 20 minutes. the interview was conducted in spanish and the data were recorded and transcribed. the data collected from each participant were analyzed separately following hatch’s (2002) inductive and interpretive models of qualitative data analysis, which suggested that “using interpretive technique will 2 horwitz granted the permission to modify the balli. 3 however, the researchers sent different questions based on the participants' answers. 4 we obtained the permission to modify it in accordance with the purpose of the study. 5 original questions in spanish. 173profile vol. 19, no. 2, july-december 2017. issn 1657-0790 (printed) 2256-5760 (online). bogotá, colombia. pages 167-184 identifying pre-service teachers’ beliefs about teaching efl and their potential changes make studies richer and findings more convincing when interpretive analytic processes are used along with or in addition to inductive analyses” (p. 181). first, all the recorded interviews and journals were transcribed and translated into english before being organized into a matrix to better visualize the participants’ responses. additionally, we used the maxqda software in order to organize, code, and analyze the data of each participant as part of the procedures established by the models. once data from each participant were analyzed separately, we did a cross-case analysis that allowed us to identify similarities and differences in preservice teachers’ beliefs about teaching and their changes. findings this section describes findings and places them into two broad categories: pre-service teachers’ beliefs and changes in pre-service teachers’ beliefs about teaching. pre-service teachers’ beliefs the instruments used before and during the teaching practice indicated that the pre-service teachers held common beliefs (see table 1) about teaching. participants believed that teachers always have to correct students’ productions. the source of this belief might have been their past learning experiences. in fact, one of the participants stated in the journals that when she started studying foreign languages at the universidad de pamplona, one of her english teachers did not correct her mispronunciation of some words. consequently, she pronounced these words incorrectly for several years. more importantly, she started to believe that errors should be corrected immediately. similarly, the pre-service teachers expressed their inability to teach english if they were not motivated. although the participants did not express what motivated them, they often highlighted that their own feelings were an important aspect when teaching english. among the ways to teach english, as demonstrated by the balli, the pre-service teachers believed that neither translation nor memorization was the best method for teaching english. in addition to the teaching method, the pre-service teachers expressed their beliefs regarding the potential difficulties of teaching a second language. they believed table 1. identifying pre-service-teachers’ beliefs item belief agree strongly agree disagree strongly disagree 1 teachers might always correct students. p1, p2 2 you can teach english even if you are not motivated. p2 p1 3 translation is not the best mechanism for teaching english. p1, p2 4 pronunciation is the most difficult part of teaching english. p1, p2 5 you should not say anything in english until you can say it correctly. p1 p2 6 the best way to teach a foreign language is by making students memorize lessons. p1, p2 7 grammar is the most difficult part of teaching english. p1 p2 8 the most difficult part of teaching is the management of the class. p1, p2 universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras174 suárez flórez & basto basto that while grammar was the least difficult part of teaching english, pronunciation was the most difficult. the pre-service teachers also held strong beliefs with regard to the development of the class. before the practicum, they believed their only difficulties would be regarding the management of the class. according to them, this belief is result of the lack of a specific course in the teaching preparation program to address this challenge. changes in pre-service teachers’ beliefs about teaching in order to shed light on potential changes of the participants’ five most salient beliefs, we provide an analysis and a thorough description of what the preservice teachers’ beliefs were like before the teaching practicum and how they changed. they include beliefs about: error correction, teaching mechanism, teaching pronunciation, teaching grammar, and motivation. the findings revealed that 84% of pre-service teachers’ beliefs changed and 16% remained unchanged (see table 2). beliefs about error correction consistent with their beliefs, the pre-service teachers always sought a suitable error correction technique: they believed that teachers must always correct students’ mistakes. this belief remained unchanged during the practicum. their conviction was evidenced while they implemented three different correction techniques as the students completed writing and speaking tasks. first, when the students started working on written exercises, the pre-service teachers walked around the classroom to monitor what they were doing. when they found a mistake on the students’ part, they corrected it immediately. they not only highlighted the wrong word but also explained the reasons behind the mistake in order to develop students’ ability to self-correct their mistakes; as participant 2 stated: regarding the written corrections, i not only marked the mistake with an x but also highlighted it. for example, if it was a verb, i highlighted it and wrote why it was wrong so as to allow the student to learn the correct form of it. (interview 1) second, participant 1, when doing written activities in pairs, started to find mistakes in the students’ production. however, she asked them to assess their own elaboration asking them immediately: “are you sure? is this the correct word?” according to her, this technique allowed the learners to check their production by identifying their own mistakes. however, she realized that this technique was time consuming: at the beginning of the practicum, i conducted written productions in pairs. while they were working, i tried to read what they were writing. once i identified a mistake, i asked the students if they should write a [particular] word instead of another one. but, i spent too much time correcting in this way. (interview 1) consequently, participant 1 changed the type of correction because of the lack of time. she realized that immediately giving the students the correct word was not as time consuming as letting them review their work. third, participant 1 asked the learners to work individually because she had no time to identify their mistakes. then, she went on trying out another error correction strategy, as she explained: i realized that the best way to work on written productions was individually because when [they were] working in pairs, i was not able to determine or to identify which student was making the mistake, if it was student a or student b. then, since the fourth or fifth week, i decided to conduct writing activities on an individual basis. (interview 2) using different error correction strategies helped them to realize a twofold purpose: the pre-service teachers developed the best strategies to correct students’ written productions and the learners became aware of their own mistakes. 175profile vol. 19, no. 2, july-december 2017. issn 1657-0790 (printed) 2256-5760 (online). bogotá, colombia. pages 167-184 identifying pre-service teachers’ beliefs about teaching efl and their potential changes beliefs about the teaching mechanisms before the teaching practice, the pre-service teachers affirmed that neither memorization nor translation was the best method to teach a foreign language. however, the pre-service-teachers included these two techniques in the teaching practice with different purposes. this belief changed because it was easier to teach english using the learners’ mother tongue since the students understood the topic more easily. they also affirmed that teaching vocabulary was easier when the learners memorized the words. during the teaching practicum, the pre-service teachers used translation to facilitate the students to learn a new topic. they stated that it was easier to help the students understand the explanation by translating the unknown words. according to participant 2, translating some words or phrases was a way to motivate the students to learn english since they were able to understand the explanation: when i was explaining the past tense of the verb to be in english, i noticed that the students did not understand. consequently, i decided to write some key words in english with their meaning in spanish related to the explanation. however, most of the time i had to translate long sentences. (journal 4) participants explained the reasons for including translation to facilitate students’ understanding. for example, participant 2 pointed out that including translation as a teaching tool during the teaching practice allowed her to realize that when working with beginner students, it was sometimes necessary to translate phrases to explain a topic. when working with students that begin from cero, i wanted to help them reaching at least an a1 english proficiency level. for that reason, it was necessary to use sometimes the mother tongue and translation to explain grammar and answer doubts. (journal 4) additionally, participants taught vocabulary through repetition and memorization. participant 1 used repetition to facilitate the students’ learning by heart the vocabulary of the lesson, as she stated: the next class i decided to use flashcards to teach the animals’ vocabulary. some flashcards had their names on it and other ones did not. i showed the flashcard and the students had to repeat three times the word. then, i showed the flashcard without the word and the students had to say the name of the animal. at the end, i showed all the flashcards and the students had to pronounce them one by one. (interview 2) participant 2 used memorization to help students grasp grammatical structures more efficiently as shown below: however, depending on the topic you are explaining, sometimes it is necessary to implement memorization in class. for example, when explaining grammar aspects with students that are starting to learn a foreign language, they have to learn by heart those structures that are the base of what they will use daily. (journal 4) in short, translation, memorization, and repetition were used simultaneously to facilitate students’ understanding and internalization of new words and unknown structures. beliefs about teaching pronunciation the pre-service teachers used to believe that teaching pronunciation was the most difficult part of teaching a foreign language. however, this belief changed when they used a three-step sequence to teach pronunciation during the practicum. throughout the practicum, the pre-service teachers structured the teaching pronunciation process into three steps. first, they showed the writing of the word to be taught with its meaning in the native language and the learners had to repeat it. second, they pointed at a flashcard and the students had to pronounce the word in english. third, participants used the flashcards in different activities where the students had to guess the missing word and the word order, as participant 1 affirmed: the pronunciation process was divided into two parts: in the first one, i pointed at the writing of an animal’s word with its meaning in spanish and i pronounced it twice. in the second part, i pointed universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras176 suárez flórez & basto basto [at] the flashcard and its writing and the students had to pronounce it. (interview 2) in several cases, while participant 1 was working on pronunciation, she asked each row of students to pronounce a word in unison until they said it correctly. when the pre-service teacher heard that one student mispronounced a word, she immediately asked him to repeat after her and to pronounce it several times from his seat until he could say it correctly. in several instances, the pre-service teachers modeled the tongue positioning to show their students how to pronounce a word correctly, as participant 2 explained: i divided the pronunciation process by rows of eight students and worked with them until i heard they pronounced the word correctly, and if i identified that one of them mispronounced the word, i asked only that student to pronounce the word until he was able to. (interview 2) on the other hand, participant 2 was concerned about some difficulties when teaching pronunciation. she realized that the students’ past learning experiences affected their pronunciation learning process. besides, she stated that this process was more difficult because they mispronounced basic words that were necessary for developing an oral production as she reported: when i was going to work on pronunciation, i faced some difficulties because in many cases all the students pronounced a word incorrectly and i noted that it was because of their past teachers. (journal 5) consequently, she had to take some minutes of the lesson to teach students the correct pronunciation because according to her, she wanted to avoid students’ fossilization. beliefs about teaching grammar the pre-service teachers used to believe that teaching grammar was not the most difficult part when teaching. however, this belief changed during the teaching practicum. teachers experienced some difficulties that made them have second thoughts about teaching grammar. before their teaching practice, the pre-serviceteachers observed a class conducted by the cooperating teacher. once they started the teaching practice, they experienced some difficulties regarding the previous grammar explanations. participant 1 noticed that it was easier to explain a new grammar structure for those students who had previously mastered the topic. however, most of the students did not remember much of what they had been taught. the main difficulty was that many students did not remember the verb to be in the present tense. consequently, i had to give a brief explanation of it. after that, i was able to explain the new grammar structure, the verb to be in past tense. (journal 7) consequently, she had to take some minutes of the class to explain the previous topic again in order to facilitate the students’ current learning process. another factor that made the teaching of grammar more challenging was the students’ misbehavior. once, when participant 2 was teaching grammar, she decided to use a video to explain a grammar topic. however, she noticed that the students did not take advantage of the technological tool. in this class, i showed the students a video to allow them understand the grammar topic better, but most of them did not pay attention. (journal 3) on the contrary, participant 1 noticed that most of her students favored visual learning; then, she used visual material as a tool to introduce a new grammar topic. as a result of this practice, she raised the students’ interest in learning a foreign language. in this lesson, i used a powerpoint presentation to explain grammar. that was something i changed since i usually use this material just to introduce the vocabulary and only explain grammar on the board. however, i think it was successful because the students wrote several examples using there is/are in their notebooks and participated in class. (journal 3) 177profile vol. 19, no. 2, july-december 2017. issn 1657-0790 (printed) 2256-5760 (online). bogotá, colombia. pages 167-184 identifying pre-service teachers’ beliefs about teaching efl and their potential changes beliefs about motivation before the teaching practice, the pre-service teachers believed that they would not be able to teach english if they were not motivated. throughout the practicum, they faced different experiences that made them feel demotivated while teaching. this belief changed because of the dedication they showed when teaching. during the teaching practice, participants faced some challenges dealing with the students’ attitudes in class. they realized that some students did not value the work and the material they brought every class. according to participant 1, she felt upset due to the students’ disinterest in taking part in the class activities. she explained, that: it was a little bit frustrating to see that some students started to break things, stand up every time, or throw the guides away. and, seeing that they come to the school only to play and not to learn was also frustrating. (journal 2) nevertheless, as she once reflected in her journal, she was able to continue the lesson because of the passion she felt when teaching english. additionally, participant 2 felt demotivation when explaining a topic because of the students’ interruptions and their lack of interest. however, she was able to continue the lesson because of the cooperating teachers’ mediation. as i did not know what to do to continue with the lesson, my supervisor advised me to give the students a low grade for their work in class, and i did. when the students knew that i gave them no grade (0), they started to behave. (interview 1) in sum, there were notable changes in the participants’ beliefs when entering a real classroom setting. the changes in beliefs originated partly due to the participants’ previous experiences as learners; and the difficulties and emotions the pre-service teachers faced during the practicum. discussion and conclusion this study sets out to identify pre-service teachers’ beliefs before the teaching practice with the aim of finding out how they change during this final step of the preparation program. it is difficult to establish whether the beliefs that the pre-service teachers held when starting this study existed before starting the teaching program or, perhaps, the teachers were influenced and shaped throughout the years of preparation. however, this study found that the pre-service teachers started the practicum with several common beliefs about teaching english. for example, the relevance of correcting students’ mistakes, the importance of grammar and pronunciation teaching, the use of translation and memorization, and the influence of motivation during their practicum. the participants’ past experiences as foreignlanguage learners influenced their beliefs prior to starting their teaching practicum. the relationship between preservice teaching expectations and teaching programs has already been documented in the literature. most pre-service teachers start the teaching practice with expectations as a direct result of the beliefs developed in the pre-service teacher formation program (coles & knowles, 1993). this idea is in line with horwitz’s (1985) study, in which she found that most pre-service teachers’ beliefs are developed while teaching in real classroom settings. in doing so, the pre-service teachers had the chance to test their expectations and shape their beliefs before the practicum. on the other hand, the findings revealed that most of pre-service teachers’ beliefs changed; a few of them remained unchanged. table 2 shows a significant difference between the beginning and the end of the practicum. pre-service teachers’ beliefs were open to change during the practicum; this aligns with s. borg’s (2006) argument indicating that changes in pre-service teachers’ beliefs take place during this period. in other words, practices lead to belief changes due to the fact that pre-service teachers have not developed teaching universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras178 suárez flórez & basto basto routines. however, some scholars argued that the teaching practice is not influential in pre-service teachers’ beliefs (gutiérrez, 2015; peacock, 2001). gutiérrez’s study contrasts our finding indicating that pre-service teachers’ beliefs are stable because they “acquired some teaching experience prior to their practicum” (p. 190), which allowed them to sustain their beliefs on teaching from the beginning to the end. table 2. changes in pre-service teachers’ beliefs belief changed unchanged translation is not the best mechanism for teaching english. ✓ the best way to teach a foreign language is by making students memorize lessons. ✓ pronunciation is the most difficult part of teaching english. ✓ grammar is the most difficult part of teaching english. ✓ teachers might always correct students. ✓ you can teach english even if you are not motivated. ✓ before starting the practicum, participants believed that memorization was not the best mechanism; this belief changed when the pre-service teachers included this strategy to facilitate students’ pronunciation, grammar, and vocabulary learning. it was customary for the pre-service teachers to use flashcards to facilitate the memorization of the right pronunciation of several words. similar findings are found in alqahtani (2015), who argued that introducing a new word by showing an object helped students to memorize the word. with regard to translation, the participants changed their belief that translation was not the best mechanism for teaching english. while facing the reality of the classroom, they introduced translation to facilitate students’ understanding of grammar and vocabulary. another sign of belief change included challenges participants experienced, which were discovered through the reflection journal. before starting the teaching practice, they believed that pronunciation was not the most difficult part of teaching english. however, along their practicum, they identified that their students’ past learning and misbehavior made them change this belief. similarly, gilakjani and ahmadi (2011) also found that pronunciation is the most difficult part for teachers to address in the classroom. their study corroborates our finding which indicates that teaching pronunciation is more than simply correcting single sounds or isolated words. finally, it is also important to note that the belief about error correction did not change during the practicum. although the pre-service teachers changed the correction techniques from peer-correction to selfcorrection as a strategy to develop students’ autonomy, this belief remained unchanged. participants still assigned a high priority to error correction in class. the teachers realized that they should continue correcting students’ mistakes; however, they also discovered the peer-correction technique to be inadequate. this study suggests that pre-service teachers should gain teaching experience prior to the practicum so that they will be better prepared once they face the reality of a classroom. hopefully, the superior foreign language programs should provide pre-service teachers with more classroom teaching experiences and, in turn, they will be better equipped to handle the classroom and become more effective teachers. we also suggest that 179profile vol. 19, no. 2, july-december 2017. issn 1657-0790 (printed) 2256-5760 (online). bogotá, colombia. pages 167-184 identifying pre-service teachers’ beliefs about teaching efl and their potential changes more growth opportunities, such as assisted reflection, will allow pre-service teachers to improve their teaching abilities and overcome the potential difficulties they experience in this process. further research can analyze in greater depth the differences and similarities in pre-service teachers’ and in-service teachers’ beliefs about teaching english and see how they influence their decision making process. references abdullah, s., & majid, f. a. 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(2002). doing qualitative research in education settings. albany, us: state university of new york press. universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras180 suárez flórez & basto basto horwitz, e. k. (1985). using student beliefs about language learning and teaching in the foreign language methods course. foreign language annals, 18(4), 333-340. http:// doi.org/10.1111/j.1944-9720.1985.tb01811.x. horwitz, e. k. (1987). surveying student beliefs about language learning. in a. l. wenden & j. rubin (eds.), learner strategies in language learning (pp. 119-129). london, uk: prentice-hall. kagan, d. m. (1992). implications of research on teacher belief. educational psychologist, 27(1), 65-90. http://doi. org/10.1207/s15326985ep2701_6. lengeling, m. m., & mora pablo, i. 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(2012). beliefs and expectations of student teachers about their self and role as teacher during teaching practice course. procedia: social and behavioral sciences, 46, 1042-1046. http://doi.org/10.1016/j.sbspro.2012.05.245. sikka, h., & timoštšuk, i. (2008). the role of reflection in understanding teaching practice. problems of education in the 21st century, 7, 147-152. yuan, r., & lee, i. (2014). pre-service teachers’ changing beliefs in the teaching practicum: three cases in an efl context. system, 44, 1-12. http://doi.org/10.1016/j. system.2014.02.002. about the authors sergio andrés suárez flórez is an undergraduate student in the bachelor of arts program in foreign languages at universidad de pamplona, colombia. he has participated in three congresses in the efl educational field in colombia as speaker and participant. edwin arley basto basto is an undergraduate student in the bachelor of arts program in foreign languages at universidad de pamplona, colombia. his research interests focus on pre-service teachers’ development during the practicum. 181profile vol. 19, no. 2, july-december 2017. issn 1657-0790 (printed) 2256-5760 (online). bogotá, colombia. pages 167-184 identifying pre-service teachers’ beliefs about teaching efl and their potential changes appendix a: beliefs about language learning inventory (balli) statements strongly disagree disagree agree strongly agree 1. you consider teachers might always correct students. 2. teaching grammar to older students is a waste of time. 3. the most important part of teaching english is social language. 4. you can teach a foreign language even if you are not motivated. 5. some languages are easier to teach than others. 6. the best way to teach a foreign language is by making students memorize lessons. 7. the best mechanism for teaching a second language is by making students translate. 8. teachers have to include something different every class. 9. it is easier to teach another language for someone who already speaks a foreign one. 10. once students can carry on a conversation fluently, they do not need any special language instruction. 11. pronunciation is the most difficult part of learning a foreign language. 12. people who speak more than one language are very intelligent. 13. it is very important to help students eliminate their native accent. 14. you should not say anything in a foreign language until you can say it correctly. 15. if beginning students are permitted to make errors in english, it will be difficult for them to speak correctly. 16. idioms are the most difficult part of teaching a foreign language. 17. grammar is the most difficult part of teaching a foreign language. 18. the most difficult part of reading in english is its comprehension. universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras182 suárez flórez & basto basto statements strongly disagree disagree agree strongly agree 19. can anyone achieve native level proficiency in a second language at any age? 20. do you consider you have limitations when teaching? 21. english is: a very difficult language a difficult language a language of medium difficulty an easy language a very easy language 183profile vol. 19, no. 2, july-december 2017. issn 1657-0790 (printed) 2256-5760 (online). bogotá, colombia. pages 167-184 identifying pre-service teachers’ beliefs about teaching efl and their potential changes appendix b: sample of reflective questions 1. what are your limitations at present as a teacher? 2. what problems did you have with the lesson? 3. what changes do you think you should make in your teaching? 4. what do you think students really learned from the lesson? 5. which parts of the lesson were most successful? explain. 6. which parts of the lesson were least successful? explain. 7. did you do anything differently than usual? 8. what skills did you favor when teaching? 9. what is the most important aspect when teaching? adapted from richards and lockhart (1996) universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras184 suárez flórez & basto basto appendix c: semi-structured interview sample error correction which skill did you correct the most during the practicum? what is the role of correction? how did you correct the students’ mistakes? when did you correct the students’ mistakes? teaching material what type of material did you use during the practicum? did you change the materials used, if so, how/why? what were the students’ reactions towards the new material? other questions asked how did you use the mother tongue in class? why? generally speaking, how many times did you explain grammatical structures? how did you explain grammar? what was the most difficult part of teaching grammar? what was the most important change while teaching? 75profile: issues teach. prof. dev., vol. 21 no. 1, jan-jun, 2019. issn 1657-0790 (printed) 2256-5760 (online). bogotá, colombia. pages 75-89 https://doi.org/10.15446/profile.v21n1.68246 learning strategies used by high and low achievers in the first level of english el uso de estrategias de aprendizaje por parte de estudiantes de alto y bajo nivel en el primer nivel de inglés nahum samperio1* universidad autónoma de baja california, tijuana, mexico this study tries to identify the possible differences in the types of strategies and their frequency of use in low and high achievers of english in a language centre in a university in tijuana, baja california, mexico. data were collected using a mixed-methods research methodology. the sample consists of 27 students with a high score and 30 with a low score on the achievement test. the results show that students in both categories use similar strategies; the difference lies in the frequency of use and how they use the strategies. finally, from the qualitative data emerges a list of strategies used by high achievers. key words: high achievers, language achievement, learning strategies, low achievers. este estudio trata de identificar las posibles diferencias en los tipos de estrategias y su frecuencia de uso en alumnos principiantes de inglés con bajo y alto rendimiento en un centro de idiomas en una universidad en tijuana, baja california, méxico. se recabaron datos mediante una metodología de investigación de métodos mixtos. la muestra consta de 27 alumnos con una puntuación alta y 30 con una puntuación baja en el examen de conocimientos de inglés. los resultados muestran que los estudiantes en ambas categorías utilizan estrategias similares; la diferencia radica en la frecuencia de uso y cómo utilizan las estrategias. finalmente, de los datos cualitativos emerge una lista de estrategias que usan los alumnos de alto rendimiento. palabras clave: aprendizaje del inglés, estrategias de aprendizaje, estudiantes de alto nivel, estudiantes de bajo nivel. * e-mail: nahum@uabc.edu.mx this work partly derives from my thesis to obtain the phd degree in english language teaching at southampton university, uk. see samperio (2016). how to cite this article (apa, 6th ed.): samperio, n. (2019). learning strategies used by high and low achievers in the first level of english. profile: issues in teachers’ professional development, 21(1), 75-89. https://doi.org/10.15446/profile.v21n1.68246. this article was received on october 11, 2017 and accepted on july 31, 2018. this is an open access article distributed under the terms of the creative commons license attribution-noncommercial-noderivatives 4.0 international license. consultation is possible at https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/. universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras76 samperio introduction many factors influence language learning, and learning strategies play a significant role in this process. researchers in the area of learning strategies have posited that there is a close relationship between high strategy use and high achievement or success in language learning (griffiths, 2003; oxford, 1990). on the one hand, successful language learners, who have been referred to as effective, efficient, good learners, or high achieving learners, are the learners who reach the ultimate goal, which is language learning; according to rubin (1975), good language learners take advantage of all practice opportunities; they have a strong desire to communicate, they are not inhibited, they practice, they monitor their own and the speech of others and they attend to meaning. rubin also noted that such characteristics depend on a number of variables that vary with every individual. on the other hand, poor, ineffective, unsuccessful, or low achieving learners are the learners who fail to learn or move relatively slowly through an english program (vann & abraham, 1990). the use of learning strategies can aid the learner in being successful, and it is a factor that differentiates high from low achievement. researchers have explained that high achievers and low achievers use different types of strategies and at different frequency rates (chamot, barnhardt, el-dinary, & robbins, 1999; rubin, 1987). chamot et al. (1999) indicated that “differences between more effective learners and less effective learners were found in the number and range of strategies used, in how the strategies were applied to the task; and in whether they were appropriate for the task” (p. 166). nonetheless, there are learning strategies that both high achievers and low achievers use in a similar way. learners bring to language learning such strategies from their previous learning experience. pressley and woloshyn (1995) identified strategies which are used for different tasks and across disciplines of knowledge and called them general learning strategies. learners engage in english lessons with a wide repertoire of learning strategies that they use across different learning contexts or across different language levels. such strategies have been proved effective, and they are fixated on the learners’ repertoire. learners use them as the core strategies of their learning; however, low achievers might be using these strategies incorrectly. it is possible that although both types of learners use the same strategies, they both use different processes. thus, a learner might be using an adequate type and a significant number of strategies, even at a high-frequency rate; however, they might not be using the strategies efficiently. the ultimate goals of this study are to identify the strategies that high and low achievers use; additionally, to identify the strategies that both types of learners use in common and the strategies that they use differently. literature review research on language learning strategies has been active for decades, and rubin (1975) was a pioneer in the research of the methods or strategies that good language learners used to become successful. since then, much research has been conducted in identifying the strategies that good, successful, effective, advanced learners use (gan, humphreys, & hamp-lyons, 2004; griffiths, 2003, 2013; wong & nunan, 2011). researchers in the field of language learning strategies have provided varied definitions of a learning strategy; however, griffiths (2013), in an exhaustive review of previous literature, defined strategies as “activities consciously chosen by learners for the purpose of regulating their language learning” (p. 36). although her definition accurately defines a learning strategy, a learning strategy can be not only an activity but also a behaviour that learners acquire, maintain, or change in language learning. when behaviour becomes conscious, it will probably work in a similar way as those activities that are deliberately selected; for instance, being persistent, or responsible during learning. thus, for 77profile: issues teach. prof. dev., vol. 21 no. 1, jan-jun, 2019. issn 1657-0790 (printed) 2256-5760 (online). bogotá, colombia. pages 75-89 learning strategies used by high and low achievers in the first level of english the purpose of this study, a language learning strategy is an individual action or behaviour consciously and deliberately chosen by a learner in order to understand, retain, retrieve, and use information in language learning. additionally, oxford (1990) states that learning strategies make language learning: “easier, faster, more enjoyable, more self-directed, more effective, and more transferable to new situations” (p. 8). that is, learners choose procedures to learn based on the easiness to perform the activity and the enjoyment they find in the activity, which eventually will aid their motivation and endurance in language learning. many learners’ individual differences must be taken into account the use and acquisition of strategies. learners choose strategies according to their preference, learning styles, motivations, goals, and so on; however, it is not sufficiently clear on what basis learners choose and use certain strategies, and why they prefer them instead of others (gu, 2005). perhaps research should be conducted on the reasons learners choose strategies and identify the purpose learners have in mind when using a strategy; thus, the effort can be applied to the intended learning goals. rubin (1975) stated that the characteristics of good language learners very much depend on variables such as target language proficiency, age, situation, cultural differences, and learning style. poor or good performance in language learning can also depend on factors such as motivation, learning style, attitude towards language learning, personality type, and learning strategies, among others. the use of learning strategies has helped in identifying successful and unsuccessful learners. for instance, chamot et al. (1999) indicated that “differences between more effective learners and less effective learners were found in the number and range of strategies used, in how the strategies were applied to the task; and in whether they were appropriate for the task” (p. 166). chamot et al. observed that different types of learners apply the strategy differently to the task and that learners might not be accurately applying strategies to the task. choosing the correct strategy to reach their intended goal is a differentiating factor between high and low achievers. however, learners are not always aware of this choice, and the effect a strategy has on their learning. learners use strategies based on what they perceive as useful, enjoyable, or practical for their learning and hardly ever is it an informed choice. that is, they do not know the beneficial effect a strategy has, or does not have, in their learning goals. low achievers there is not a single factor that accounts for low performance but an accumulation of variables over time that hinders achievement. many factors cause learners to be low or high achievers; such factors can be physiological or psychological, which might be multidimensional in nature (chakrabarty & saha, 2014). low achievers are commonly seen as less proficient, less effective, or unsuccessful learners; they are usually categorized as learners who obtain a low grade on an exam or a course. vann and abraham (1990) defined unsuccessful learners as learners who move relatively slowly through an intensive english program. similarly, wen and johnson (1997) defined low achievers as learners who spend more time learning english and with lower scores. the slow motion through a course that van, abraham, and wen explain in their definitions of low achievers can lead the learner to quit before reaching their learning goal. that is, they are less likely to complete a language course. however, slow progress in a language course does not define a low achiever. a learner can have slow progress, yet he or she can still be learning. normazidah, koo, and hazita (2012) outlined the characteristics of low achievers. they state that low achievers see english as a difficult subject to learn. they depend on the teacher as an authority; they lack support to use english in an environment outside the classroom; they lack exposure to the target language; they have a limitation of vocabulary, and they lack the motivation to learn english, which causes a negative universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras78 samperio attitude towards the learning of english. the view of normazidah et al. regarding low achievers seems to comprehend, mostly, individual attitudes and motivation towards language learning. that is, with the correct spur of motivation, learners can look for ways to expose themselves to language, ways to increase their vocabulary, and take a proactive attitude towards learning. alderman (2008) points out that poor performance comes from a lack of motivation, effort, and effective learning strategies. learners’ attitudes and behaviours towards language learning can have a great impact on their performance. chang (2010) offered a more simplistic factor to low achievement; she explained that some of the weaknesses in language learning come from learners’ attitudes to learning such as laziness. although it cannot be generalized, laziness can be derived from a poor motivation to invest effort in activities, and it can be caused by the perception learners have of their learning experience; for instance, boredom, unwillingness to work, or unattractiveness to what they are doing. thus, high achievement does not only come from high strategy use but from attitude, motivation, and perceptions or behaviours in learning. additional to the great importance of motivation, several factors can be accounted for success in language learning. samperio (2013) suggests that for a learner to achieve success in language learning, three factors need to be present and interact with each other. in the first instance, a learner must be motivated to learn and to adopt adequate behaviours in learning. the power of using their own will to change behaviours in benefit of learning can change the course of learning. duckworth and seligman (2006) call this power volition and they describe it as the capability to inhibit distracting behaviors in order to attain a higher goal. samperio also states that language learners need time to engage in a proactive behaviour outside the language classroom to practice the language and to expose themselves to language learning. finally, he states that a learner must have a repertoire of strategies to choose from to solve language tasks. taking the initiative to pursue goals rather than remain passive and expecting teachers to provide all learning is necessary for language learning. early research conducted by rubin (1975) explained that good language learners take responsibility for their own learning. that is, they take the initiative in terms of what they want to learn which is decisive in being successful. macaro (2001) states that “one thing that seems to be increasingly clear is that, across learning contexts, those learners who are proactive in their pursuit of language learning appear to learn best” (p. 264). being in control of what learners want to learn can give them the chance to take advantage of the opportunities readily available, therefore, deploy more and varied learning strategies to reach their goals. learners’ proactive behaviour can help them become self-regulated, autonomous, and motivated learners, which, in turn, will lead them to use different methods and adopt different behaviours in language learning. work conducted on high and low achievers much research has aimed at discovering what successful learners do (chamot et al., 1999; griffiths, 2003, 2015; rubin, 1975) so that the strategies they use can be taught to low achievers. however, there is also research conducted on the strategies that low achievers use and ways to help them improve strategy use. findings have postulated that high and low achievers use different types of strategies and at different frequency rates. for example, zewdie (2015) compared the language learning strategy use among high and low achievers. he discovered that both high and low achievers use similar types of strategies. the difference he found was in the time they invest for studying. he stated that high achievers spend time more wisely; that is, they invest and manage their time in a strategic way. for example, they distributed their 79profile: issues teach. prof. dev., vol. 21 no. 1, jan-jun, 2019. issn 1657-0790 (printed) 2256-5760 (online). bogotá, colombia. pages 75-89 learning strategies used by high and low achievers in the first level of english practice over multiple times while they monitored their performance. similarly, rajak (2004) investigated the learning strategies of low achieving learners of english as a second language (esl). although his findings indicated that low achievers reported an interest in learning english, which is an important factor in both learning and strategy use, their overall results demonstrated that the low achieving learners used learning strategies with a moderate frequency. the average of the frequency of strategy use was not higher than 3.5. oxford (1990) defined an average above 3.5 as a high frequency of strategy use; this suggests that low achievers do not use strategies frequently enough to boost them to a high achieving category. boggu and sundarsingh (2014) investigated the language learning strategies among the less proficient learners by means of the strategy inventory for language learning (sill). their findings indicated that the less proficient learners used compensation and memory strategies more frequently than cognitive, metacognitive, social, and affective strategies. in a similar way, tang (2015) discovered that high and low achievers vary considerably in metacognitive strategy use. high achievers have a more proactive and metacognitive behaviour, and they are able to use more often strategies such as selfmonitoring, planning, setting goals, seeking practice, and overviewing in reading; self-evaluating, paying attention, and identifying information. tang concluded that a metacognitive strategy-training program for language low achievers would greatly improve low achievers in language learning. teaching learners how to use learning strategies can motivate learners to not give up and endure in language learning (see dougherty & kienzl, 2006; jadal, 2012; luo, 2009; yang, 2010). low and high achievers differ in many aspects; however, both types of learners need to respond to their current learning situation and manage their learning in the most accurate way. high and low achievers can be similar in other ways; for example, the fact that they use learning strategies. whether they are strategies from their strategy repertoire or strategies that they can deploy at the moment of facing a new task, both types of learners use mechanisms to help them in the language learning process. method the study followed a mixed-methods approach methodology in which quantitative data were gathered from a questionnaire, and qualitative data gathered from individual interviews. participants the participants were university learners and people from the general community; that is, a variety of different types of learners, from homemakers and high school learners to already professionals such as doctors, engineers, or lawyers. their ages ranged from seventeen to sixty years old. they all belonged to the first level (out of six) of the english language course. the sample consisted of 27 learners with a high score and 30 with a low score on the achievement test score. the english achievement test consisted of 151 items, therefore, percentiles and quartiles of the achievement test scores defined categories of learners. high achievers (ha) were classified as learners who obtained 118 correct answers or above on the achievement test; in contrast, low achievers (la) were learners who obtained 89 correct answers or below on the achievement test. the strategy questionnaire numerical data were collected through the questionnaire developed by martinez-guerrero (2004) which comprises a selection of activities and tactics in learning from different methodological-theoretical approaches in learning strategies and self-regulation. the questionnaire explored the strategies learners, who are about to start studying university, had in order to predict academic success in learning. the questionnaire included four theoretical dimensions. the first dimension is called behaviour and organizational universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras80 samperio strategies, and it is composed of study (stu) and study organization strategies (sto). the second dimension is called cognitive and metacognitive strategies and included the concentration (con) and the cognitive (cog) strategies of the questionnaire. the third dimension named motivational and affective strategies included achievement motivation strategies (am) and affective strategies (aff) and the fourth dimension is called cooperative and interactive strategies, which comprise cooperative learning strategies (coo) and interaction in class strategies (iic). the questionnaire, in spanish, was adapted to the specificity of the language learning context by adding the particles: english, in the english class, or when studying english. for example, original item 1: “when i read, i can identify main information of the text.” the item was adapted to language learning in the following form: “when i read english, i can identify main information of the text.” this procedure allowed contextualizing general learning strategies in language learning. interviews adding a qualitative element in the form of individual opinions, attitudes, reactions, or beliefs complements and extends the quantitative findings of the questionnaire data. interviews had as the main purpose knowing the learners’ real use of strategies in english learning from the perspective of their genuine experiences. the questions were mainly designed to figure out how learners deal with learning tasks such as daily studying, studying for exams, strategies they use to overcome difficulties, and strategies they use out of the classroom in order to improve their language learning. another objective was to find out the perception of difficult areas in language learning and the strategies they use to improve in such areas. it was also intended to seek learners’ strategies they use to improve in reading, speaking, listening, writing, and memorization, and the activities they use to improve language learning outside the classroom. the achievement test the english achievement test consisted of 151 items, and the publisher of the textbook in use provided it. the number of correct answers was considered for statistical analysis. the achievement test included sections that tested listening, social language, reading, writing, and sub-skills such as vocabulary and grammar. items included true and false, multiple choice, and cloze sentences with word banks from which learners could choose. it also included items that required more thought and more productive responses than just choosing, for example, answering questions, completing conversations, or cloze sentences in which students would not benefit from a bank of answers. the test also included items that required critical thinking such as inferential understanding of language and ideas in context from reading passages. results and discussion the learning strategies that high and low achievers use the ha group was associated with a more frequent use of strategies (average = 4.33). in the same way, the la group was associated with a less frequent strategy use (average = 3.86). when strategies were computed into categories, it was possible to observe that ha show a higher average score than la in all categories of strategies. table 1 shows averages of strategies computed into categories of ha and la. table 1. low and high achievers strategy average scores la (n = 30) ha (n = 27) cog 4.25 cog 4.76 con 4.04 con 4.69 am 3.99 am 4.51 iic 3.70 aff 4.48 coo 3.66 stu 4.09 81profile: issues teach. prof. dev., vol. 21 no. 1, jan-jun, 2019. issn 1657-0790 (printed) 2256-5760 (online). bogotá, colombia. pages 75-89 learning strategies used by high and low achievers in the first level of english stu 3.61 iic 4.54 sto 3.45 coo 3.66 aff 3.17 sto 3.47 to the naked eye, averages of ha on table 1 suggest that they use strategies at a higher frequency than low achievers; nonetheless, in order to know if the difference in strategy use between low and high achievers is statistically significant, a t-test for independent samples was applied to data. results indicated that study (stu), concentration (con), cognitive (cog), achievement motivation (am), affective (aff), and interaction in class (iic) strategies showed a statistically significant difference in strategy use between high and low achievers. that is, high achievers, indeed, use such strategies at a higher frequency rate. nonetheless, study organization (sto) and cooperative (coo) learning strategies do not show significant differences. this result suggests that low achievers and high achievers use sto and coo strategies at a similar frequency rate. in other words, ha and la use these strategies at low-frequency use. strategies used by high achievers figures in table 1 show that has use cog, con, and am strategies at a higher frequency rate and, to a lesser extent, stu, iic, coo, and sto strategies. on the contrary, in data gathered from interviews, it was found that ha reported using a number of sto and stu strategies, which are not measured in the questionnaire. interviewees reported strategies such as asking teachers for examples to understand information, identifying phrases from listening, learning from being corrected, looking for opportunities to practice speaking and writing with friends, making notes from listening, paying attention to others’ mistakes to learn, trying to construct sentences that are more complex. they also mentioned trying to make sentences using new words to learn them, watching movies, and observing grammar and pronunciation. the stu and sto strategies gathered from interviews counter the low-frequency rate of the stu and sto strategies included in the questionnaire. that is, interviewers choose from their repertoire of varied strategies the one that best suits their needs and is the most adequate to reach their learning goals. it was observed that the study strategies that ha use in language learning principally help learners in reviewing and revising information. for example, learners review by reading and rereading in an attempt to recall information so that they can understand and retain it better. pozo (1990) defines reviewing and revising as recirculation strategies; particularly, strategies that help learners recall, and eventually, acquire information; and which learners use across learning contexts. pozo’s interpretation contrasts with that of himsel (2012) who sees reviewing (as reading) as a rote learning strategy; namely, the memorization of information based on repetition. he argues that such strategy does not have a beneficial effect on learning. for himsel, rote methods involve shallow processing because such methods result in very limited brain change: methods that do not generate enough raw materials to construct an accurate memory. instead, he suggests cognitive processes used to learn such as encoding information; however, he warns that not all of the encoding processes are equally helpful. interestingly, evelyn, a 17-year-old high school interviewee, implied that reviewing is a characteristic of good learners. when she was asked what she did to study; she stated, “since i am a student, what i do is i take my book and review.” evelyn’s perception of students represents learners’ procedures to store information. furthermore, language learners hold a positive view on reviewing and use it as an effective strategy. high achievers also reported using strategies that aid them to understand and practice the language, for instance, looking for unknown information, which they use to clarify meaning with someone more knowledgeable such as teachers or more experienced learners. apparently, learners are aware of their knowledge and are able to evaluate what they know and where they universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras82 samperio need to improve. when learners come to recognize that they need to improve, they move their attention to a different path and look for strategies that suit their needs. high achievers mentioned looking for opportunities to practice speaking with native speakers, family, or friends or even by themselves and attending conversation classes in the self-access center, and so on. looking for opportunities to practice or looking for unknown information suggests a degree of metacognitive and self-regulated behaviour since they are able to monitor their understanding. this finding suggests that language learners make use of metacognitive strategies. the use of metacognitive strategies incorporates the ability to predict, plan, evaluate, and monitor knowledge efficiently and accurately; and they can facilitate and accelerate the whole process of transfer of strategies from one language (l1, l2) to the other (wenden, 1999); additionally, it enables learners to achieve knowledge. griffiths (2003) implies that metacognitive strategies are correlated with proficiency and high frequency strategy use. learners are able to retrieve their metacognitive knowledge from their previous learning experience, which is stored in the long-term memory (phakiti, 2006). possibly, achievement motivation strategies are supported by a metacognitive behaviour which is the spark for the use of more and different strategies, and which learners have transferred from previous learning experiences. in a similar way, ha reported strategies to practise pronunciation such as reading in silence to memorize or repeat aloud many times. this result concurs with cohen’s (2011) categorization of language use strategies. cohen makes a differentiation between language learning strategies and language use strategies. he explains that language use strategies allow learners to use the language that they have in their current interlanguage. in a deeper categorization, cohen divides language use strategies into retrieval, rehearsal, cover, and communication strategies. the main intention for learners in using rehearsal strategies is to practice new material to learn it, to store it in memory for a later retrieval. interviews provided a great number of strategies that extends and complements quantitative data. the strategies used by ha show that they are able to evaluate their needs and deficiencies in language learning and take action in improving them. ha can be metacognitive in their learning, and they are aware of their strengths and weaknesses. they understand that success depends on the effort they make and the strategies they implement. strategies used by low achievers quantitative analysis indicates that la, similar to ha, use cognitive (average = 4.25), concentration (average = 4.04), and achievement motivation (average = 3.99) strategies at a more frequent rate and study (average = 3.61), study organization (average = 3.45), and affective strategies (average = 3.17) at a less frequent rate. a difference between ha and la is found in the frequency of use of strategies. contrastively to quantitative data, qualitative data suggest that la interviewed mostly reported using stu, sto, and cog strategies; and to a lesser extent, con strategies. language learning at an adult age demands consistency and effort to master the language, and study and study organization strategies represent the effort learners make. la interviewees use sto strategies such as deliberately allotting time to studying, and within this time they reported attending the self-access centre and looking for opportunities to practise, mostly speaking with friends, native speakers of the language, and classmates; listening to music, radio, or the news; and watching tv or movies. la also reported looking for clarification when the information was not clear. la look for approaches that deepen their understanding of the language, and they use strategies that could actually make a 83profile: issues teach. prof. dev., vol. 21 no. 1, jan-jun, 2019. issn 1657-0790 (printed) 2256-5760 (online). bogotá, colombia. pages 75-89 learning strategies used by high and low achievers in the first level of english big difference for learners; for example, attending the self-access centre which provides learners with varied materials and opportunities to practice their language skills. similar to ha, la frequently reported using stu strategies such as reviewing and reading or rereading strategies as a way to study, making lists to memorize, repeating to memorize. the use of these study strategies seems to be a common process they use to approach learning in any context. however, the activities around the strategy of reviewing might be the differential factor between ha and la, for example, reviewing and then trying to restate what was read in your own words or trying to explain the material to someone else, or even make notes, or mind maps. oxford (2011) calls these series of strategies “chain” strategies. strategies stored in the learners’ repertoire do not work in isolation; oxford stated that strategies work in “chains” and macaro and wingate (2004) in “clusters”; for instance, listening to songs in the target language. this strategy involves a series of activities or tactics and behaviours that a learner would need to implement in order to have an actual benefit from the strategy. for example, the learner will likely pay close attention to the song; she will identify unknown vocabulary, and she will look for the meaning of the words. then, she will listen to the song again and pay attention to the new vocabulary. she will identify the pronunciation and try to imitate the pronunciation of the singer. in these activities, she will adopt a tolerant and patient behaviour. perhaps many other activities will take place when listening to songs. additionally, strategies seen as chains of activities transform along the process of using it every time the learner approaches a skill or uses a strategy consciously and purposefully. thus, when learners purposefully listen to songs the next time, strategies will likely be different. the choice for different strategies can change according to the results learners obtain, and their interest to invest effort in learning. the use of strategies to reach a goal represents the effort and interest learners have in their own proactive attitude towards language learning. la seem to invest time in stu strategies that help them rehearse information they see in language classes. high achievers and low achievers findings in the research of language learning strategies have established that a difference between ha and la is the frequency of strategy use (e.g., green & oxford, 1995; griffiths, 2003; şimşek & balaban, 2010). findings indicate that ha make use of a great number of strategies at a high-frequency rate. ha use 29 strategies included in the questionnaire at a high-frequency rate. in contrast, they use nine strategies at a low-frequency rate. as expected, la only use five strategies included in the questionnaire at a high-frequency rate whereas they use 25 strategies at a low-frequency rate. these results appear to support the belief that, in general, high achiever learners report using a higher number of language learning strategies and at a more frequent rate than low achievers or less proficient learners. however, ha and la concur in the use of some strategies. t-test for independent samples results show that there is no significant difference on strategy number 9 (“when i solve problems in english, first i try to understand what it is about, and later i solve it”); strategy number 2 (“when i study english, i try to relate new things that i am learning with the ones i already knew”); 34 (“when i study english in a team with my classmates, we make sure that everybody in the team learns the topics well”), and 19 (“when i study english, i organize the material by topics to analyse them one by one”). according to green and oxford (1995), these strategies, reportedly used at similar rates of frequency across all levels, are called “bedrock strategies.” as stated by green and oxford, these strategies “contribute significantly to the learning process of the more successful students although not being in themselves sufficient to move the less successful students to higher proficiency levels” universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras84 samperio (p. 289). a list of strategies that both ha and la use emerges from qualitative data. table 2 shows a list of strategies used similarly by ha and la. table 2. strategies that both high achievers and low achievers use type strategy sto deliberately attending the self-access centre cog creating own examples stu doing exercises on the book’s website stu doing exercises in the textbooks stu doing homework sto listening to music at all times sto listening to the radio in english sto looking for unknown information to clarify sto looking for vocabulary to understand reading stu making lists of vocabulary con paying attention to listening sto practising speaking stu repeating many times to memorize stu repeating out loud stu reviewing books, note for exams sto taking an extra online course sto watching movies although high and low achievers use some strategies equally, as previously discussed, a difference in strategy use resides in the chain of activities around the strategy used as well as the purposes for using it; consequently, learners get different outcomes. for example, in watching tv, what learners do much depends on the purpose; that is, if the learner wants to improve pronunciation, the activities that the learner will participate in will be different than if the purpose in watching tv is learning vocabulary or improving grammar. high and low achievers can spend different levels of effort, and the number and the type of activities will consequently be different. an example of this is jacobo, who is a high achiever. he reported watching tv in order to observe grammar and pronunciation; that is to say, jacobo clearly stated the purpose of the strategy (observe grammar and pronunciation). in contrast, susana, a low strategy user, watches tv with subtitles in order to understand; however, she does not state if her goal is understanding reading or listening; however, activities performed will likely change for any case. another example is lilia, a high achiever. lilia reported watching tv without subtitles to force herself to understand, and she tries to identify phrases or vocabulary when listening. lilia’s purpose of using the watching tv strategy (identifying phrases or vocabulary) can contribute to developing her listening skill. in contrast, most of the la who reported listening to music did not state the purpose of using it. the discovery that ha and la use similar strategies raises questions regarding pedagogical practice. do learners purposefully use strategies, or do they mechanically use strategies without a purpose in mind? further research needs to be conducted to clarify the extent to which learners use strategies with a purpose in mind. ideally, a learning strategy is purpose oriented; however, at times, learners are unaware of the purpose they have in mind while they use a strategy; an example of this is watching tv with the purpose of learning vocabulary. if the learner strays in listening comprehension, pronunciation, and the enjoyment of the tv show, the learner will unlikely improve vocabulary. perhaps knowing the purpose for using a strategy could greatly improve the efficiency of a strategy since effort would be directly applied to the learning goal. thus, watching tv to improve pronunciation, to identify grammar, to learn vocabulary, to practice listening comprehension, or to assess comprehension would considerably help the learner reach the learning goal. it would be, then, necessary not only to encourage la to include strategies that 85profile: issues teach. prof. dev., vol. 21 no. 1, jan-jun, 2019. issn 1657-0790 (printed) 2256-5760 (online). bogotá, colombia. pages 75-89 learning strategies used by high and low achievers in the first level of english ha use but to make sure that la use them correctly. however, future research needs to be conducted in order to observe whether these strategies will expand with practice and will be part of a repertoire of strategies more typical of a high achiever. just as there are strategies that both groups use, there are strategies that ha use as opposed to la. perhaps these strategies contribute to greater learning in ha. table 3 shows the strategies that ha reported and which la did not. table 3. strategies which high achievers use, but low achievers do not type strategy cog identifying phrases from listening cog learning from correction cog relating new information with old information to memorize and recall easier cog translating spanish to english cog trying to construct more complex sentences cog trying to make sentences using new words to learn them con paying attention con trying to concentrate to recall con paying attention to teachers’ examples, copying and searching for more information sto asking someone who knows about vocabulary and phrases sto asking teachers for examples to understand information sto asking teachers about vocabulary when reading sto looking at examples in textbooks sto looking for opportunities to practice (speaking, writing, etc.) sto looking for opportunities to read subtitles sto practise speaking saying small phrases to practise sto taking conversation class in the sac stu answering questions from reading stu confirming answers with teacher stu focusing on keynotes for studying stu making notes from listening stu pronouncing to recognise sounds and memorise stu reading for learning stu reading for the gist stu reading and rereading to understand stu recalling information by listening stu reviewing new topics stu reviewing textbooks and notes to clarify stu thinking of possible answers to a question and choosing the best one it should be noted that ha use a higher number of cognitive and concentration strategies, which belong to the cognitive and metacognitive dimension of the strategy questionnaire. these frequently used strategies appear to set the ha apart from la. the inclusion of an important number of strategies found on the cognitive and metacognitive dimension support the idea that metacognition is essential in language learning proficiency. learners who are able to manage their performance on a task can perform better, and their learning can be more meaningful. metacognition is developed in learners in the context of their current goals and can enhance their learning. additionally to the variation between using a strategy purposefully, or not, by ha and la, above described, a number of strategies that ha use differently from la arises. among the strategies gathered from interviews, ha use study, study organization, and cognitive strategies more frequently (see table 3). considering the varied possible factors that contribute to language learning, one can see it is possible to hypothesise that the strategies that ha used, above listed, seem to contribute to the learners’ universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras86 samperio process of learning and higher language achievement. the inclusion of these strategies as a means of managing learning indicates that ha use strategies to process new information, rehearse and retain new information as well as strategies that allow them to manage studying habits such as looking for opportunities to practice or manage their study time. it is possible that at beginning stages of language learning, learners have not fully developed language learning strategies, and possibly they use strategies they have in their repertoire which might not be appropriate for language learning; for instance, reviewing while they need to develop oral skills. with the development of language knowledge and the complexity of language tasks, learners will require using a greater number of strategies and more focused strategies in language learning instead of the general learning strategies that they bring from their general learning contexts; for example, strategies for pronunciation, speaking, or listening. possibly, beginner learners transfer the strategies from their repertoire because language tasks have not required learners to deal with different strategies that more advanced language tasks require. the finding that ha use strategies which la do not, suggests that such strategies contribute to their proficiency, achievement, or success; however, it is not feasible to generalize this finding. the purpose of using the strategy towards a goal is a differentiating factor in the effectiveness and ineffectiveness of strategies. for example, if watching tv to improve listening comprehension were the case for lsu, the subtitles might be of much help in understanding. however, much of the information understood in the tv program comes from reading subtitles and not from listening. therefore, if learners assess the use of the strategy based on the obtained results, they will be misdirecting effort in a skill (reading) with the intention of improving another (listening). a high number of strategies do not always imply a benefit in learning. an example of this is ofelia, aleli, milagros, and karla, who were not able to reach high achievement scores despite their high strategy use in language learning. it is important to acknowledge the reasons why (and how) a strategy can be useful. although different types of learners use the same type of strategies, they work differently on every learner; consequently, they obtain different results. the relationship of high strategy use-high achievement appears to have exceptions, and it can only be speculated that learners are using strategies that are not having any beneficial effect on their achievement and that they might be wasting effort in using them. what makes learning strategies contribute to the learner’s language learning processes lies in the strategic adaptation to tasks directed by their goals, and the frequent use of strategies; the larger the variety of strategies is the higher the possibility to direct effort accurately to learning. conclusion learners use strategies from their repertoire of strategies in their early stages of language learning, and it expands and revolves around the practice into strategies that help learners to become less dependent as they reach higher levels of language learning. the inclusion of study strategies intended for the practice of the language may well reflect the reality that many learners are in need to rehearse and evaluate their learning; however, learners would need more than practice to be proficient language users; they need strategies appropriately directed to their needs and lacks. thus, it is necessary to acknowledge that learners learn differently depending on different factors; consequently, they choose various learning strategies. then, we need to encourage learners to identify the purpose of doing what they are doing and assessing their methods for learning to address effort accurately. several factors, internal and external, come together and cause learners to use strategies. research has shown that motivation, metacognition, and self-regulation 87profile: issues teach. prof. dev., vol. 21 no. 1, jan-jun, 2019. issn 1657-0790 (printed) 2256-5760 (online). bogotá, colombia. pages 75-89 learning strategies used by high and low achievers in the first level of english are important characteristics in differentiating low from high achievers. however, motivation has been found responsible for self-regulatory decision-making (corno, 2001). in consequence, numerous studies have revealed a significant relationship between motivation and language learning strategy use (oxford, 1996). the lack of adequate motivation can interfere with an effective adoption and orchestration of strategies and behaviours necessary for successful language learning. findings of this study support the idea that low achievers might be incorrectly addressing effort to unneeded areas without having a positive or significant effect on their learning. green and oxford (1995) suggest that strategies that poor learners use are not necessarily unproductive but that they may not work adequately in their learning process. the strategies used by la do not necessarily suggest that the strategies are bad or wrong. instead, it possibly reflects la would need to include more, and more frequently, strategies used by ha to improve their success without the necessity to change their repertoire or discard the strategies they use. references alderman, m. k. 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[do you have what it takes to learn a language?]. plurilinkgua, 9(2). retrieved from http://idiomas.ens.uabc. mx/plurilinkgua/docs/v9/2/samperio.pdf. samperio, n. (2016). general learning strategies: identification, transfer to language learning and effect on language achievement (unpublished doctoral dissertation). southampton university. southampton, uk. şimşek, a., & balaban, j. (2010). learning strategies of successful and unsuccessful university students. contemporary educational technology, 1(1), 36-45. tang, l. (2015). a study of metacognitive strategy training for college language low achievers. studies in literature and language, 10(6), 96-101. vann, r. j., & abraham, r. g. (1990). strategies of unsuccessful language learners. tesol quarterly, 24(2) 177-198. https:// doi.org/10.2307/3586898. wen, q., & johnson, r. k. (1997). l2 learner variables and english achievement: a study of tertiary-level english majors in china. applied linguistics, 18(1), 27-48. https:// doi.org/10.1093/applin/18.1.27. wenden, a. l. (1999). an introduction to metacognitive knowledge and beliefs in language learning: beyond the basics. system, 27(4), 435-441. https://doi.org/10.1016/ s0346-251x(99)00043-3. wong, l. l. c., & nunan, d. (2011). the learning styles and strategies of effective language learners. system, 39(2), 144-163. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.system.2011.05.004. yang, y.-f. (2010). developing a reciprocal teaching/learning system for college remedial reading instruction. computers & education, 55(3), 1193-1201. https://doi.org/10.1016/j. compedu.2010.05.016. zewdie, a. (2015). an investigation of language learning strategy use in an esp context: hotel management students in focus. english for specific purposes world, 47, 1-17. 89profile: issues teach. prof. dev., vol. 21 no. 1, jan-jun, 2019. issn 1657-0790 (printed) 2256-5760 (online). bogotá, colombia. pages 75-89 learning strategies used by high and low achievers in the first level of english about the author nahum samperio holds a phd in elt from the university of southampton (uk) where he obtained his masters in elt as well. he is currently a full-time teacher at the universidad autónoma de baja california, méxico. his areas of research are teaching strategies, classroom activities, and learning strategies. 153profile vol. 18, no. 2, july-december 2016. issn 1657-0790 (printed) 2256-5760 (online). bogotá, colombia. pages 153-165 http://dx.doi.org/10.15446/profile.v18n2.52593 how to use cooperative learning for assessing students’ emotional competences: a practical example at the tertiary level cómo usar el aprendizaje cooperativo para evaluar las competencias emocionales del alumnado: un ejemplo práctico de la enseñanza superior maría martínez lirola* universidad de alicante, san vicente del raspeig, spain & university of south africa, pretoria, south africa cooperative learning allows students acquisition of competences that are essential for the labour market such as leadership, critical thinking, communication, and so on. for this reason, different cooperative activities were designed in a language subject in english studies so that students could work in groups and acquire those competences. this article describes some such activities and the emotional competences that students acquire with them. moreover, a survey was conducted in order to establish students’ opinions about the main competences they acquired with the activities designed and their opinion about a cooperative methodology. students’ answers were positive and they were aware of what they had learned. key words: cooperative learning, debate, emotional competences, english studies, oral presentation. el aprendizaje cooperativo permite que el alumnado adquiera competencias fundamentales para el mercado laboral como el liderazgo, la capacidad crítica, la comunicación, etc. por esta razón se diseñaron diferentes actividades cooperativas en una asignatura de lengua de filología inglesa para que los estudiantes pudieran trabajar en grupos y desarrollar las competencias mencionadas. este artículo describe algunas actividades cooperativas y las competencias emocionales que el alumnado adquiere con ellas. además, se preparó una encuesta para conocer las opiniones de los estudiantes sobre las principales competencias que adquieren con las actividades diseñadas y sus opiniones sobre una metodología cooperativa. las respuestas del alumnado son positivas y los estudiantes son conscientes de lo que aprenden. palabras clave: aprendizaje cooperativo, competencias emocionales, debate, filología inglesa, presentación oral. * e-mail: maria.lirola@ua.es how to cite this article (apa, 6th ed.): martínez lirola, m. (2016). how to use cooperative learning for assessing students’ emotional competences: a practical example at the tertiary level. profile issues in teachers’ professional development, 18(2), 153-165. http://dx.doi. org/10.15446/profile.v18n2.52593. this article was received on august 21, 2015, and accepted on march 28, 2016. this is an open access article distributed under the terms of the creative commons license attribution-noncommercial-noderivatives 4.0 international license. consultation is possible at http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/. universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras154 martínez lirola introduction the creation and development of the european higher education area (ehea) has required changes in universidad de alicante (spain): it implies a shift from a university of teaching to a university of learning; similarly, there is a change from emphasizing the importance of input to highlighting the importance of output. moreover, the latter must create competent, responsible, and critical professionals who are able to be adaptable in the labour market. the application of new methodologies in the teaching-learning process is one of the main changes requested. in this sense, it is important to promote cooperation in the classroom so that teachers and students share responsibilities. in the last years, there has been a shift from traditional teacher-centred teaching (martínez lirola, 2007; morales vallejo, 2008) towards student-centred teaching approaches (cavazotte, moreno, & hickmann, 2012; maccann, lipnevich, & roberts, 2012), which allow students to be active in the teaching-learning process and to construct new knowledge. teachers’ roles have changed from being deliverers-of-information to becoming mentors or tutors. consequently, students assume that they are the protagonists of their learning and that cooperative learning (cl) allows them to learn actively and progressively because they work with meaningful activities. in wilhelm’s words (2006): cooperative learning activities provide meaningful, realistic practice combined with useful developmental feedback. students are encouraged to view learning as a dynamic process over which they have individual responsibility and group control. the skills developed in using cooperative learning are also important for life-long learning. (p. 154) cl is one of the most commonly used forms of active pedagogy. it highlights the fact that students learn by working together in groups (adams & hamm, 1994; d. w. johnson, r. t. johnson, & smith, 2007; shimazoe & aldrich, 2010). following slavin (as cited in ahmar & mahmood, 2010) the two main differences between cooperative learning and the traditional group work are the following: two components of cl (cooperative learning) distinguish it from traditional group work: (a) positive interdependence i.e. the feelings that they cannot achieve their group goal without the joint efforts of team members (b) individual accountability i.e. each member of the group feels accountable for their performance. (p. 152) in general, studies make clear that students achieve better grades when using active methodologies; in this sense cooperative learning also contributes to a productive classroom climate due to the fact that it promotes the exchange of ideas (barkley, cross, & major, 2005; d. w. johnson & f. p. johnson, 2009; d. w. johnson & r. t. johnson, 1989, 2004; d. w. johnson et al., 2007; ghaith, 2002; slavin, 1989; t.-p. wang, 2009; tsay & brady, 2010). in fact, this type of learning involves the acquisition of different skills and the accomplishment of different tasks that reinforce feeling productive and active (garner, 2010; n. wang, young, wilhite, & marczyk, 2011). this article is organized in the following sections: section two offers the theoretical background of the article, paying attention to the relationship between emotional competences and cooperative learning; section three presents the methodology and data and refers to the participants and context used for the study. section four concentrates on the objectives and research questions of this research. section five presents ways of implementing cooperative learning through group oral presentations and debates. this section is followed by a discussion of the results of the survey. finally, the article ends with some conclusions based on the study. objectives and research questions the main objective of this research is to point out that the use of a cooperative methodology in a foreign language subject is appropriate for the acquisition of competences that students will need in the labour market such as effective communication, leadership, and critical 155profile vol. 18, no. 2, july-december 2016. issn 1657-0790 (printed) 2256-5760 (online). bogotá, colombia. pages 149-165 how to use cooperative learning for assessing students᾽ emotional competences... thinking. in order to accomplish this objective, different activities were designed (see procedure) so that students could acquire different emotional competences such as the ones already mentioned. consequently, another objective is that students do not only learn contents but emotional competences that make them grow as human beings. these objectives imply that it is necessary to de sign the appropriate cooperative tasks based on the competences intended to be acquired and to involve students to be active in the teaching-learning process. consequently, all participants in the group must be active in working together in order to accomplish the tasks. our main research questions are the following: do cooperative activities such as oral presentations and debates contribute to the acquisition of emotional competences in students at the university? what do students think about the cooperative methodology that was used in the subject english language iv? theoretical background the main principles of cl following d. w. johnson and f. p. johnson (1994), and d. w. johnson and r. t. johnson (2004) are the following: positive interdependence, face-to-face interaction, individual and group accountability, interpersonal and smallgroup skills, and group processing. the positive interdependence between the different group members creates feelings of responsibility towards the final product and also towards the group relationships (d. w. johnson & r. t. johnson, 2009a; matsui, kakuyama, & onglatco, 1987). said interdependence promotes interaction and possible discussion about how to perform the task, what steps need to be taken, how to solve a conflict, and so on. cooperative methodologies allow working on emotional competences (bernard, 2006; cherniss, extein, goleman, & weissberg, 2006; mikolajczak, brasseur, & fantini-hauwel, 2014; sheehan, mcdonald, & spence, 2009; troth, jordan, & lawrence, 2012), which can be considered essential for the integral development of students and for the development of academic skills, as maccann et al. (2012) make clear: emotions and emotion-related skills are important in education for two reasons: (a) as facilitators of traditionally valued outcomes such as academic skills, higher test scores, and better grades; and (b) as a valued outcome in and of themselves. while academic skills are certainly important, it is a worthy goal to have happy students with strong emotional skills, and who are resilient to negative emotions, irrespective of their grades. (p. 315) emotional competence (ec) has to do with how people deal with their emotions, as nelis et al. (2011) make clear: “more specifically, ec refers to individual differences in identifying, expressing, understanding, regulating, and using emotions” (p. 354). following jennings and greenberg (2009), i will refer to the broadly accepted definition of social and emotional competence developed by the collaborative for academic, social, and emotional learning (2008). this definition involves five major emotional, cognitive, and behavioral competencies: self-awareness, social awareness, responsible decision making, self-management, and relationship management (zins, weissberg, wang, & walberg, 2004). (p. 494) considering emotional competences implies talking about emotional intelligence. boyatzis, goleman, & rhee (2000) defined emotional intelligence as the type “observed when a person demonstrates the competencies that constitute self-awareness, self-management, social awareness, and social skills at appropriate times and ways in sufficient frequency to be effective in the situation” (p. 3). in this sense, we agree with divaharan and atputhasamy (2002) in the type of emotional competences that students can acquire with cooperative learning: cooperative learning helps students to develop interpersonal skills (slavin, 1987) such as: getting to know and trust team members; communicating effectively and clearly; providing support and challenging fellow team members; and engaging in constructive conflict resolution (johnson & johnson, 1994). in addition, universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras156 martínez lirola these social skills may help students to acquire a sense of social responsibility (vermette, 1988). (p. 73) it is necessary that students use, understand, and manage their emotions in order to develop their emotional intelligence and to conduct good social relationships with other human beings. for this reason, in the last few years there have been different studies that point out the importance of emotional competences in higher education (ciarrochi & scott, 2006; kingston, 2008; tsay & brady, 2010). in general, these studies coincide in emphasizing that ec, such as the ability to identify emotions, is correlated with different indices of wellbeing such as anxiety or depression (ciarrochi & scott, 2006; ciarrochi, scott, deane, & heaven, 2003; cicchetti, rappaport, sandler, & weissberg, 2000; elias, gara, schuyler, branden-muller, & sayette, 1991). however, assessing social and emotional competence is not an easy task and has not been given priority in higher education (barblett & maloney, 2010). method participants and data the subject english language iv was a core subject taught in the last year of the degree in english studies at universidad de alicante; its main aim was that students acquire some competences in the use of english that allow the integration of the different skills. for this reason, it is necessary to work together with the five skills of a language, the productive (speaking, interacting, and writing) and the receptive (reading and listening), through both oral and written cooperative activities such as the ones proposed in this article. the academic year 2013-2014 was the last year in which there was teaching in this subject because that year was the last year of the degree in english studies (licenciatura en filología inglesa), which has now become the “grade” (bachelor degree) in english studies (grado en estudios ingleses) following the guidelines proposed by the ehea. taking into consideration that the teacher has taught this subject before, i decided to follow a cooperative methodology in order to help students develop their emotional competences. the majority of the students are 22 years old. most of them intend to sit a competitive exam in order to work as high school teachers when they finish the degree; there are also students who would like to work as interpreters or translators. some students just want to complete a master’s program that allows them to be better qualified. during the academic year 2013-2014 there were 105 enrolled in the subject; 75 studied the subject in alicante and there were 30 students who studied abroad with the erasmus program. the subject english language iv was taught four hours per week distributed in the following way: the first hour was devoted to academic writing; the second hour was used for students to prepare an oral presentation on a topic of their choice following the pieces of advice given during the first week; the third hour was utilized to work on grammar; finally, the last hour was used by the same students who had prepared the oral presentation in order to organize a debate in which the whole classroom could discuss the topic. in addition, students were required to prepare some listening activities in the language laboratory and give them to the teacher at the end of the semester. this organization allows students to work on the five skills that were evaluated through a portfolio with the following structure: written essay (20% each semester), group oral presentation (15% each semester), written grammar exam (10% each semester) and listening (5% each semester). the teacher designed some cooperative activities (see procedure) that helped students to work in groups, be active throughout the teaching-learning process, be aware of the emotional competences present in the activities suggested and develop their emotional competences. moreover, a survey was prepared in order to determine students’ opinions about the main 157 how to use cooperative learning for assessing students᾽ emotional competences... emotional aspects of the methodology used (see discussion). all students were sampled after they had given informed consent because they were given the option to participate or not. they were assured of anonymity and confidentiality. procedure: implementing cooperative learning through group oral presentations and debates cl involves students working in small groups in order to achieve a common goal; in this sense, the fact that the groups are heterogeneous entails that all students benefit from the work and knowledge of the different group members (d. w. johnson & f. p. johnson, 1994, 2009; d. w. johnson, r. t. johnson, & holubec, 1994). different studies (ahmar & mahmood, 2010; d. w. johnson & f. p. johnson, 1997, 2009; d. w. johnson & r. t. johnson, 1999, 2007, 2009b; d. w. johnson, r. t. johnson, & smith, 1998, 2007; among others) point out the main advantages of cooperative learning and its importance in the acquisition and development of social and emotional competences, which are considered essential not only in the educational system but also in life. cooperative activities were designed by the teacher throughout the whole academic year in order to develop the different skills. due to the limitations of space in this paper, we are just going to concentrate on oral presentations and debates as examples of cooperative activities that allow the integration of written and oral competences. these activities are very useful for students because they can apply what they learn and put into practice for the job interviews they will start experiencing as soon as they finish the degree and start applying for a job. the teacher asked students to organize themselves in groups of four or five people and to prepare an oral presentation on a topic of their choice in order to evaluate their oral skills. each group member had to talk for a maximum of five minutes. students had to organize themselves since they had to choose the people they wanted to work with, select the topic of the oral presentation, and divide it so that all group members work in order to obtain a common goal. this promotes positive interdependence, which following d. w. johnson et al. (1998) is one of the defining characteristics of cooperative learning. the fact that each group member assumed an individual responsibility that made her/him responsible not only for her/his work but for the success or failure of the group results is also essential in cl. moreover, throughout the whole process, students communicate face to face in order to choose the topic and organize the different materials used to prepare and develop the presentation; in this way, they develop interpersonal and communicative skills because they learn to solve problems together, take decisions, prevent possible conflicts among group members and make common agreements to benefit group work, apart from the different criteria that could appear during the learning process. in addition, oral presentations had other advantages that are worth mentioning. the fact that it is a semiautonomous activity was positive in the sense that it allowed students to choose the topic freely. in this sense, cooperative learning is an excellent way of promoting autonomy, interdependency, and taking decisions.1 i also intended that students would use some bibliographical references on the topic chosen; moreover, they were also required to use certain multimodal resources to prepare the oral presentation, and this activity was also useful in order to integrate written and oral skills when preparing the powerpoint presentation that was going to be used when students had to give their oral 1 in fact, the study done at the university of cantabria by gonzález fernández and garcía ruiz (2007) gathers students’ opinions: their capacity to find solutions without external support, that is., without the constant support of teachers, is developed through cooperative learning for 79,4% of students, whereas 35,5% consider that it can also be achieved through traditional teaching-learning methods. profile vol. 18, no. 2, july-december 2016. issn 1657-0790 (printed) 2256-5760 (online). bogotá, colombia. pages 153-165 universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras158 martínez lirola presentation in the classroom. in fact, the process of teaching and learning had to be based on the practice of integrating the receptive and productive skills. before presenting the oral presentation in the classroom, students had to take part in a group tutorial with the teacher in order to share the way in which the presentation was to be organized, the materials found, possible difficulties, and so forth. besides, after the oral presentation, students also participated in another group tutorial in order to receive some feedback on the main positive and negative aspects of the oral presentation already given in the classroom. in this sense, tutorials are essential for cooperative learning because they support students and guide them through interaction, that is, this would be one example of formative evaluation. furthermore, once the oral presentation had been made in the classroom, each group sent it to the teacher through the virtual campus so that it could be shared with all the students registered in the subject english language iv. consequently, the act of sharing the work done by each small group with the whole classroom promotes solidarity and generosity. this involves the application of another principle of cooperative learning proposed by d. w. johnson et al. (1998), the reflection on the work done, because students deliberate and meditate on the degree of effectiveness of the achievements in the task carried out, during the tutorials with the teacher before sharing the final piece of work. after what has been said in the previous lines, it is deduced that this activity shows unequivocally the defining characteristics that any activity called cooperative should possess. these characteristics also appear in the activities defined in the following paragraphs. another activity consisted of organizing and participating in a debate on a topic chosen by students that would take place in the classroom and through facebook.2 in this sense, two students that were part of 2 we believe that the active participation in social networks is an effective way of motivating students since those networks are very a project on innovation in teaching created a facebook page called “english language iv.” students were free to choose their classmates to prepare the debate (we are aware that choosing one’s classmates is not always the best option for work based on cl). each group was to organize the internal work inside the group and the roles that each group member had to assume in order to prepare the debate, which affected the individual responsibility of each student and the development of the positive interdependence among all of them, since students were obliged to give thought to accomplishing some common objectives through cooperation right from the beginning of the activity. every week, five days before the debate took place in the classroom, the group took part in a compulsory tutorial with the teacher in order to discuss the questions that were going to appear on facebook on the topic chosen and, in this way, reflect on the most effective way to prepare work, which contributed decisively to highlighting critical thinking and to developing social skills of communication and of integration in a work group. at the same time, the teacher supervised the written english that was to appear in facebook. from then on, the group members were given five days to express their opinion on the topic of debate proposed in which they had to proceed in such a way as to use interpersonal skills, take decisions, and combine individual responsibility to accomplish some common objectives such as elaborating some solid arguments to defend, orally, a determined point of view in english related to a particular topic. consequently, in the preparation of the debate, what each student adds to it influences the final result and determines if the final work is satisfactory or not. popular. for example, it is important to mention the debates conducted through facebook, twitter, myspace, twenty, etc. within forums and virtual communities in which the interaction of questions and answers creates knowledge with a practical value that, of course, can be applied to teaching. see for example martínez sánchez (2003) and gonzález and esteves (2006). 159 how to use cooperative learning for assessing students᾽ emotional competences... another purpose of the said activity was that students could write complete paragraphs in english in a virtual environment. it was thought that using a virtual environment for this cooperative activity would exercise a positive influence on students; this was the case because more than half of the students participated in the debates that were proposed every week on different topics, such as capitalism, the concept of beauty, fears, the anti-smoking law, etc., which favored the development of writing skills. the fact that students knew the topic that was going to be discussed in the classroom through facebook before the debate took place was very positive because students had time to reflect on the topic chosen; they could organize their ideas and express them in writing through facebook or in the classroom debate. in this way, i attained another purpose of this activity, which was the integration of oral and written skills, which is essential in order to develop communicative skills in the foreign language. once the debate had taken place in the classroom, the group was required to meet the teacher in a group tutorial in order to comment on how the debate and its organization had gone, assess students’ participation, and analyze the form and function of the comments received through facebook, etc. in fact, students could reflect in groups on the development of their work, which is a fundamental principle of cl as already stated in the previous paragraphs. in addition, they were accorded the opportunity of practicing their english again in a group tutorial. in practice, the space devoted to tutorials also gained prominence in the teaching-learning process because these methods are an integral part of it.3 in a nutshell, choosing cooperative activities has the purpose of integrating students in the assigned task, having them work with a common objective, and causing them to enjoy the phase of production of ideas 3 as regards the potential of the spaces devoted to academic tutorials in the ehea, see garcía nieto (2008). with their teammates. observing the teaching-learning process allowed the teacher to make sure that students were comfortable with the methodology used and that the acquisition of emotional competences was taking place. in this sense, a survey was designed in order to establish students’ opinions. discussion although cl has many advantages there are also some disadvantages. for this reason, a survey was administered so that students could offer their anonymous opinions about working with cooperative learning and emotional competences (see appendix). following authors such as herrera torres and enrique mirón (2008), i consider that the survey is an appropriate method to obtain information from students because it facilitates academic and personal information of university students in this case and points out their worries, needs or deficiencies that they observe in their learning. the majority of the students think that the university should be a place to contribute to their integral development as human beings (92%) whereas 8% consider that the university is a place to acquire knowledge. the second question identifies students’ perceptions about the importance given to content in the degree. more than half of the students (60%) consider that teaching content is the main role of the university and therefore that 70% of the time is devoted to this task and the other 30% to teaching competences. twenty students (26.26%) consider that content is given even more importance, that is, 80%, so that only 20% of the time is used for the acquisition of competences. finally, 13.33% consider that the time devoted to teaching contents and competences is equal, that is, 50% for each. if we ask the same question but related to the subject english language iv in which cooperative learning and the acquisition of competences were made explicit throughout the whole teaching-learning process (question 3), we observe that more than half profile vol. 18, no. 2, july-december 2016. issn 1657-0790 (printed) 2256-5760 (online). bogotá, colombia. pages 153-165 universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras160 martínez lirola of the students (52%) consider that the time given to teaching contents and competences is equal. 26.26% have different opinions: they consider that there was more emphasis on the teaching of competences (60% of the time) than on teaching content (40%). the rest of the students, 18.66%, consider that the previous percentages are the other way round, that is, content occupies 60% while 40% was devoted to competences. the opinion of students about taking into consideration emotional competences at the different edu cational levels (primary and secondary education and university) is very clear: the great majority, 96%, answer positively. only two students (2.66%) give a negative answer and only one person answers “sometimes” (1.33%). similarly, 70.66% think that emotional competences are very important in a language classroom, while 2.66% consider that their importance is average and only one person (1.33%) points out that their importance is minimal. students express different opinions about the main emotional competences associated with cooperative learning. seventeen students (22.66%) consider that all of them are present. apart from that, the competences regarded as most important are communication (62.66%) and cooperation (61.33%), followed by empathy (50.66%), taking the initiative (49.33%), understanding (46.66%), and solving conflicts (28%). finally, the following four competences were accorded less importance: solidarity (25.33%), optimism (24%), leadership (16%), and security (14.66%). question 7 asked students which of the already mentioned emotional competences they had acquired in the subject english language iv. in this case 10 students (13.33%) chose all. the rest offered different opinions: 65.33% identify cooperation, followed by communication (52%), security (38.66%), and understanding (33.33%). 30.66% of the students who answered the survey consider that leadership and taking the initiative were also developed. thereafter, 28% select empathy and conflict solving and, finally, optimism and solidarity are the two least frequently mentioned competences (18.66%). as already explained in this article, the main cooperative activity in english language iv was the oral presentation. for this reason, students were asked about the main difficulties experienced in order to prepare them. the main answers were the following: being nervous (44%), difficulties in meeting with all the group members (34.66%), insecurity (22.66%), and being scared of failure (17.33%). other difficulties pointed out just by a few students were the following: choosing the topic, controlling time (2.6%), organizing the presentation (5.33%), and solving conflicts (4%). it is interesting that two students (2.6%) answered that they did not encounter any difficulty in preparing their presentation. additionally, students were asked about the main emotional competences that helped them to overcome the difficulties already mentioned in the previous paragraph. in this sense, most students mentioned the support and cooperation between the different group members (60%), while about half pointed to being optimistic and self-confident (46,66%), and about a third to being patient and empathetic (33.33%). in question 10 students were asked if they considered the emotional competences that they had acquired useful for their future as professionals. the great majority of students answered yes (81.33%), 17.33% replied that this was true to a certain extent whereas only one person said no (1.33%). the ideas presented in this section devoted to the discussion of the survey point out that students were quite comfortable with the chosen methodology and that they were aware of the main emotional competences they had acquired. consequently, we were able to establish students’ opinions about the main aspects related to cl and the acquisition of emotional competences. therefore, it was useful to conduct a survey so that students could share their 161 how to use cooperative learning for assessing students᾽ emotional competences... opinions once a cooperative methodology had been used during the academic year 2013-2014. conclusions when students work in a cooperative way in a foreign language subject, they do not only learn contents because cooperative activities request that students become active in the teaching-learning process and that they acquire competences that they will need in the labour market. consequently, in order to accomplish the cooperative activities prepared for the subject english language iv, such as oral presentations and debates, students need to negotiate, to communicate, to be critical with the tasks, to cooperate, and to solve possible problems in the groups, among other emotional competences. the different cooperative activities designed for the subject english language iv and the analysis of the survey point out that students accord importance to this type of learning and that, in general, the different tasks have been completed positively. cl allows the unity of theory and practice and the acquisition of different competences considered essential for the labour market such as critical thinking, the capacity to take decisions, leadership, and task division. this type of learning demands time for preparation outside the classroom for teachers and students but its advantages outweigh its disadvantages because it promotes the sharing of responsibilities by teachers and students. this involves that, on the one hand, students assume an active role that allows them to be active and organize their learning progressively. on the other hand, teachers stop being 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(2010). a case study of cooperative learning and communication pedagogy: does working in teams make a difference? journal of the scholarship of teaching and learning, 10(2), 78 – 89. wang, n., young, t., wilhite, s. c., & marczyk, g. (2011). assessing students’ emotional competence in higher education: development and validation of the widener emotional profile vol. 18, no. 2, july-december 2016. issn 1657-0790 (printed) 2256-5760 (online). bogotá, colombia. pages 153-165 universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras164 martínez lirola learning scale. journal of psychoeducational assessment, 29(1), 47-62. http://dx.doi.org/10.1177/0734282909359394. wang, t.-p. (2009). applying slavin’s cooperative learning techniques to a college efl conversation class. the journal of human resource and adult learning, 5(1), 112-120. wilhelm, k. h. (2006). teaching, practicing, and celebrating a cooperative learning model. in s. g. mccafferty, g. m. jacobs, & a. c. dasilva iddings, (eds.), cooperative learning and second language teaching. (pp. 153-176). cambridge, uk: cambridge language education. about the author maría martínez lirola holds a phd in english studies and is a professor at universidad de alicante (spain) and is a research fellow at the department of linguistics and modern languages, university of south africa (unisa). her main areas of research are: critical discourse analysis, systemic functional linguistics and multimodality. dr. lirola has published more than 100 papers, given lectures, and attended congresses all over the world. 165 how to use cooperative learning for assessing students᾽ emotional competences... appendix: survey on emotional competences 1. should the university be a place to obtain knowledge contribute to your integral development as a human being (combination of knowledge and competences)? 2. in the degree, what percentage (out of 100%) has been given to: obtaining knowledge contributing to your integral development as a human being (combination of knowledge and competences)? 3. in the subject english language iv what percentage (over 100%) has been given to: obtaining knowledge contributing to your integral development as a human being (combination of knowledge and competences)? 4. do you think that emotional competences should be considered at all educational levels (primary and secondary education and university)? yes no sometimes 5. how important are emotional competences in a language classroom? very important middle importance little importance 6. what are the emotional competences that are most connected with cooperative learning (choose five)? leadership initiative empathy optimism solidarity communication understanding conflict solving cooperation security 7. which of the following emotional competences have you developed more in the subject english language iv (choose five)? leadership initiative empathy optimism solidarity communication understanding conflict solving cooperation security 8. enumerate the main difficulties found while preparing for the oral presentations. 9. enumerate the main emotional competences that have helped you to overcome the already mentioned difficulties. 10. do you think that the emotional competences that you have developed would be useful for the future as professionals in the labour market? yes no up to a certain extent profile vol. 18, no. 2, july-december 2016. issn 1657-0790 (printed) 2256-5760 (online). bogotá, colombia. pages 153-165 13profile vol. 19, no. 1, january-june 2017. issn 1657-0790 (printed) 2256-5760 (online). bogotá, colombia. pages 13-27 http://dx.doi.org/10.15446/profile.v19n1.55110 the tensions between efl teacher identities and inset in the turkish context tensiones entre las identidades de los profesores de inglés y los programas de desarrollo profesional en turquía fatih güngör1* afyon kocatepe university, afyonkarahisar, turkey due to the insufficiency of current in-service training courses which are far from the collaboration and the reflection of teachers, the current study scrutinizes the incongruities between teacher identities and in-service training programs offered by the ministry of national education in turkey based upon the use of the activity theory. in this narrative study, two english as a foreign language teachers reflected on their environment, behaviors, beliefs, competencies, and missions under the heading of teacher identity concept. the results suggest that teachers need a supportive community of practice and a well-tailored mentoring system to be able to reflect on themselves and the context in which they are teaching. key words: activity theory, ınset, teacher identity, the onion model, turkey. debido a la poca oferta de programas de desarrollo profesional donde los profesores puedan reflexionar o colaborar, el presente estudio analiza, con base en la teoría de la actividad, las incongruencias entre las identidades de los docentes y los programas de formación permanente ofrecidos por el ministerio de educación de turquía. en este estudio narrativo, dos profesores de inglés reflexionaron sobre su entorno, comportamiento, creencias, habilidades y misión bajo la noción de identidad docente. los resultados apuntan a que los profesores necesitan el apoyo de una comunidad de práctica y un sistema de mentoría bien diseñado que les permita reflexionar sobre sí mismos y sobre el contexto en el que enseñan. palabras clave: el modelo cebolla, identidad docente, programas de desarrollo profesional, teoría de la actividad, turquía. * e-mail: fgungor@aku.edu.tr how to cite this article (apa, 6th ed.): güngör, f. (2017). the tensions between efl teacher identities and inset in the turkish context. profile issues in teachers’ professional development, 19(1), 13-27. http://dx.doi.org/10.15446/profile.v19n1.55110. this article was received on january 12, 2016, and accepted on july 19, 2016. this is an open access article distributed under the terms of the creative commons license attribution-noncommercial-noderivatives 4.0 international license. consultation is possible at http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/. universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras14 güngör introduction recently, a growing body of research has been investigating the significance of teacher identity in the teacher education field (see the reviews of beijaard, meijer, & verloop, 2004; izadinia, 2013). this activity has aroused the hope that the stakeholders would find a remedy to the problems of in-service teachers for traditional in-service training (inset). the preceding theories have shifted to new ones to understand teacher identity better from different perspectives; however, the sociocultural standpoints of vygotsky (1978, 1986) prevail to interpret how individuals become aware of “self ” and, at the same time, feel the need to belong to a society (kozulin, gindis, ageyev, & miller, 2003). from the sociocultural viewpoint, a combination of personal and professional social contexts of a teacher clearly affects the development of the teacher identity as a part of social learning (law, meijers, & wijers, 2002), and researchers have attempted to figure out this effect through the onion model. clearly, many factors including competencies and personal characteristics were involved in the identity formation of teachers (korthagen, 2004), and these factors were connected with the six layers of the onion model considering “the assumption that professional behavior becomes more effective and also more fulfilling if connected with the deeper layers within a person” (meijer, korthagen, & vasalos, 2009, p. 78). although the onion model seems to be helpful for teachers to reflect on their own teacher identity, theoretically at least, little work has taken a holistic stance by following this model as criticized in the two seminal review studies of beijaard et al. (2004), and izadinia (2013). furthermore, most teacher identity studies have been carried out in the usa, the uk, and australia (atay & ece, 2009; izadinia, 2013), and this inspired me to study the teacher identity concept in a developing country such as turkey. in turkey, english as a foreign language (efl) teachers often face an identity conflict as a result of the incongruities between ideals and realities (cakiroglu & cakiroglu, 2003). after getting the bachelor’s degree, they are exposed to never-ending high-stakes tests to become a teacher (basturk, 2007; sağiroğlu, 2013); however, they do not have any well-planned explicit mentor or advisor support in their teaching career (akcan, 2016). therefore, it is of importance to shed light on their teacher identities, and to be familiar with their ideas concerning ınset. literature review big picture: the onion model based on dewey’s (1933) ideas about reflection, schön (1983, 1987) developed a reflective model for the professions, and korthagen (2004) suggested the onion model to demonstrate how teacher learning takes place (for a review, see korthagen, 2004; meijer et al., 2009). in contrast to the traditional views which narrow teacher identity into cognitive issues, competencies, and personal skills (korthagen, 2004), there was an emerging need for a critical language teacher engaged in education to raise the awareness of teachers, to encourage them to self-reflect on their identities, and to review the classroom activities as learning opportunities (burns & richards, 2009), so korthagen (2004) adapted “the onion model” or “a model of levels of change”. the basic philosophy behind the onion model is the assumption that the professionals, being aware of their identity, missions, and core qualities, do their jobs by considering risks, chances, and exigencies in a situation (meijer et al., 2009). the model consists of six levels (environment, behavior, competencies, beliefs, identity, and mission), and there is a symbiotic relationship between the levels. while the outer levels affect the inner levels, the reverse effect can also be seen. environment is the outmost layer in the onion model. teachers shape their identity through the engagement with class, students, school (beijaard et al., 2004; korthagen, 2004), colleagues and administrators (beauchamp & thomas, 2009). for instance, flores and 15profile vol. 19, no. 1, january-june 2017. issn 1657-0790 (printed) 2256-5760 (online). bogotá, colombia. pages 13-27 the tensions between efl teacher identities and inset in the turkish context day (2006) found that classroom practice and school culture reconstructed teachers’ professional identities, and had both incentive and disincentive effects on their motivation to continue the professional development. in another study (smagorinsky, cook, moore, jackson, & fry, 2004), how the interactions of a teacher with others at the school were effective as regards the emergence of the identity were emphasized. the second layer of the onion is behavior. in the current study, teachers are expected to reflect on themselves in line with the layers so the behavior layer is the one which provides the harmony between the inner layers and the outer layers (meijer et al., 2009). considering that the beliefs teachers have about themselves have an effect on their decisions, choices, and behaviors (borg, 2001; pajares, 1992), they are expected to guide teachers’ practices, namely competencies (korthagen, 2004), in the classroom or vice versa (kuzborska, 2011). considering the resistance of beliefs to change (richardson, 1996), özmen (2012) carried out a four-year longitudinal study to examine the effect of pre-service education concerning the change of beliefs, and found a significant difference concerning beliefs between the first year and the last year of the student teachers. grasping that it takes a long time to change beliefs based on this study, second/foreign language teacher education programs and ınset should help student teachers and experienced teachers to develop their skills for making meanings and decisions, in other words, exploring their teaching and forming their teacher identities through reflecting on their personal biographies (bullough, 1997). the change of trends from the competencybased models of behaviorist teacher education to the humanistic-based one which focuses on individuals has given rise to the studies on teacher identity, and this study will also try to help the participants unearth their values, beliefs, and attitudes by bearing in mind that identity is a concept which develops throughout one’s life (beijaard et al., 2004). in-service training programs and turkish context in the changing world of teaching, inset programs are among the core solutions to heighten and sustain the quality levels of teachers, schools, and student learning (day, 1999; guskey, 2002). to be successful, teachers are expected to update their knowledge and skills (sachs, 2007), reflect on their teaching practices (calderhead & gates, 1993), and collaborate with colleagues (grossman, wineburg, & woolworth, 2001). although the western cultures have succeeded relatively better in employing reflective practices in inset since the middle of the 1980s (hatton & smith, 1995), the researchers in developing countries have started to address this concern recently (o’sullivan, 2002). for instance, teachers should renew their teaching license at certain periods in the usa, and, according to the web site of the us department of education, the government planned to invest around 10 billion dollars for the professional development of teachers in the fiscal year 2015. the professional development policies in europe differ in some aspects. while some countries such as germany and the united kingdom compel teachers to participate in inset, the support given to professional development stands out with the promotions and salary enhancements in poland and spain. there are also some countries where teachers are not obliged to attend programs of inset; for example, teachers are responsible for their own professional development in france, iceland, the netherlands, and sweden as participation is not compulsory (european commission, 2009). in turkey, following the nation-wide educational reform in 2013, english started to be taught starting with 2nd graders and this abrupt change and the goals of the new curriculum were introduced to english teachers through a webinar. although turkish efl teachers have already been equipped with the necessary skills and knowledge owing to the integration of a course named teaching english to young learners into the curriculum of education faculties after the 1997 universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras16 güngör curriculum innovation (kırkgöz, 2008), to what extent this new curriculum can be implemented in schools is still questionable due to the concerns about “one-shot” (daloğlu, 2004), top-down, and transmission-based inset courses (uysal, 2012). underestimating the significant role of mentoring might be one of the reasons behind these traditional inset methods because mentoring applied within the turkish context means doing teaching practice with the help of an experienced teacher. however, this basic definition does not match with the following well-grounded definitions: mentoring as supervision, which means “assisting newly qualified teachers to pass through the formal juridical requirements for probation” (kemmis, heikkinen, fransson, aspfors, & edwardsgroves, 2014, p. 155) or mentoring as support, which means “supporting new teachers in the development of their professional practices” (kemmis et al., 2014, p. 155). unfortunately, although the latter seems better than the first one, none of the answers would be satisfying because inset of the 21st century should provide a collaborative environment for teachers to develop their teacher identities collectively and sustain their ongoing self-development with the help of mentoring. for this very reason, the present study attempts to present the current situation of inset courses in turkey. implementation of the activity theory activity theory, initiated by vygotsky (1978)in the early 1920s and developed by leontyev (1978), is “a broad approach that takes a newperspective on and develops novel conceptualtools for tackling many of the theoreticaland methodological questions” (engeström & miettinen, 1999, p. 8) in social sciences and aims to overcome the dichotomies between micro-level processes and macro-structures (engeström, 2000). as a powerful analytical tool, activity theory has five principles (engeström, 2001). first, “object oriented, collective, and culturally mediated human activity, or activity system” (engeström & miettinen, 1999, p. 9) is the main focus of analysis. secondly, an activity system incorporates different viewpoints, interests, and conventions of a community (engeström, 2001). the third principle is the historicity which refers to the formation of activity systems over time. the fourth principle is the role of contradictions in an activity system or between the activity systems, and the fifth principle is the expansive transformations through “a collective journey” (engeström, 2001, p. 137)due to the contradictions. considering these principles in the current case study of two eflteachers, i will examine the link between teacher identities and inset based on the pillars of the activity system which consists of subject, community, rules, division of labor, and mediational means and object (engeström, 1987). in this context, the subjects of the activity system are two efl teachers who work in the community of the ministry of national education (mone) in a macro-context and the community of their school in a micro-context. according to the division of labor, they prepare annual and hourly lesson plans and teach english. in addition to these, teachers are responsible for all kinds of educational and instructional tasks at the schools. the subjects and the community are mediated by the rules promulgated by the mone. the subjects aim to achieve the objectives (basically to teach english) of the activity system through the mediating artifacts, namely inset. given the theoretical framework and the analysis guidelines, the current study aimed to scrutinize the tension between teacher identities and ınset offerings based on the reflections of the participants. method setting in turkey, there are two ways of becoming an english teacher: to graduate from education faculties or to attend a one-year pedagogical formation program 17profile vol. 19, no. 1, january-june 2017. issn 1657-0790 (printed) 2256-5760 (online). bogotá, colombia. pages 13-27 the tensions between efl teacher identities and inset in the turkish context along with graduation from an english-related field. at the education faculties, student teachers are required to take courses such as english skill courses, second language acquisition, teaching methods, testing, material design, and pedagogy throughout four years. at the start of the fourth year of the undergraduate program, they observe the classroom atmosphere in the first semester, and start to teach in the second semester. otherwise, for the second option, they have to attend a pedagogical formation program including participation in a practicum if they study in the related programs. after these programs, to be appointed to state schools, they have to take an examination which is comprised of a general culture and skills test battery, educational sciences test battery, and a subject matter knowledge test battery for english language teaching. starting from 2016, teachers are exposed to a six-month induction program including a 300-hour training program as assistant teachers. officially, the administrators have the right to approve the success or failure of the teacher candidates in the induction program. after this induction, they start to work and sit one more exam at the end of the academic year to be officially a teacher. in other words, it takes one and a half year to become a teacher at the state schools of turkey. on a voluntary basis, they can also participate in the ınset courses which are announced yearly and offered by mone on more general issues related to teaching. participants to get more detailed information about participants and learn about the veritable experiences in their career for in-depth analysis, i chose one male and one female with whom i had the opportunity to contact frequently. in other words, these two participants were conveniently selected. although the participants followed distinct paths to become efl teachers, both were exposed to the conventionalized nation-wide inset programs. to ensure confidentiality of the participants, i used the pseudonyms, ali and ela (a male and a female). ali was 22 years of age, and in the first year of teaching practice. ela was 25 with two years of teaching practice. although both graduated from two highly competitive universities of turkey in teacher education, the participants were quite different from each other. ali was born in a little town near the capital as the second son of a nuclear family. he graduated from a boarding teacher training high school. a personal problem with his mathematics teacher caused him to take a quick decision to go to the foreign language department. although ali could not become a fluent english speaker, he developed his pedagogical knowledge substantially at the college of education. ela also graduated from a teacher training high school. however, ela always aimed to become a teacher from the beginning, and decided to major in english thanks to the personal and professional attitudes and behaviors of her english teachers in high school. she maintained her success at the university and during teaching practices, and became persevering english teacher. research design and data collection the current study adopted a narrative research design to address and analyze the research questions. although narrative research is able to capture the professional setting of teachers (anderson, 1997), the relationship between teachers’ personal and professional lives (clandinin et al., 2006), and contextual and social aspects of classrooms (gudmundsdottir, 1997), has mostly been neglected in identity research (vásquez, 2011). considering this gap, i scrutinized in the current study the identities of foreign language teachers through their autobiographies because personal experience stories have an inextricable effect on the personal and professional identities of teachers (coldron & smith, 1999; goodson, 1992). the participants were asked to write autobiographies and were then interviewed based on their autobiographies. in these semi-structured interviews, ali and ela were universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras18 güngör asked five to seven questions in order to elaborate upon their autobiographies. after intertwining the autobiographies and the interviews, a second interview was conducted for the participants to reflect on their teaching. the data were collected through their native language, turkish, to make the participants feel secure. the multiple instruments helped to triangulate and validate the data (fraenkel, wallen, & hyun, 2011). also, the participants were asked to make sure that their autobiographies (re-written by the researcher) and the translated excerpts from their interviews reflected their experiences (creswell, 2012). for ethical considerations, the participants signed a consent form to state that they read the terms and conditions and participated in the study voluntarily. data analysis for the data analysis, the flow model of miles and huberman (1994), consisting of the steps of data collection, data reduction, data displays, and conclusion drawing/verification, was utilized. the data were analyzed relating the five layers of the onion model under the teacher identity concept with the mediating artifact, ınset. knowing the nature of narrative studies, i closely collaborated with the participants to check the development of the autobiographies and to examine their final form (creswell, 2012). the quotes of the participants were translated into english as much as possible; however, some words were given in parentheses to make the quotes more comprehensible. after evaluating the data from a holistic perspective, codes were also provided, and these codes were verified by another researcher to avoid researcher bias (fraenkel et al., 2011). results and discussion data were first presented according to how teachers reflected in their autobiographies with the five layers of the onion model: environment, behavior, competencies, beliefs , and mission. after reviewing how the participants reflected their identities, their views about ınset were portrayed. teacher identity based upon the layers of the onion model, teacher identity can be defined as an integration of personal and professional selves of the teachers (beijard et al., 2004; flores & day, 2006; korthagen, 2004). reflecting on their environment, behaviors, competencies, beliefs, and missions, teachers amalgamate their personal identity with the professional one (friesen & besley, 2013). the current study also aims to recognize teacher identities through the help of the related reflections. influence of environment past experiences as a student. early role model teachers seemed to play a negative or positive pivotal role in the identity formation of teachers (clarke, 2008; flores & day, 2006; knowles, 1992; nettle, 1998; samuel & stephens, 2000). when the participants looked back on their school days, ela referred to the teachers she admired, and ali denoted the negative influence of his mathematics teacher. dedication, attitudes toward students, and pedagogical applications were the noteworthy features of the teachers pointed out in the autobiographies. the reason behind choosing to become a language teacher is my english teachers who i admired because of their personalities and the behaviors as educators because they performed better than i expected of a teacher. i guess i learned from my teachers… that teaching is a great dedication. (ela, autobiography) due to the personal problems i had with some teachers at the school, it became difficult to major in the field that i wanted. . . . i realized the relationship between the sympathy to a teacher and (motivation towards) a course. (ali, autobiography) to sum up, the participants highlighted how their previous experiences serve as a de facto guideline for their teaching philosophies and practices as in the study by 19profile vol. 19, no. 1, january-june 2017. issn 1657-0790 (printed) 2256-5760 (online). bogotá, colombia. pages 13-27 the tensions between efl teacher identities and inset in the turkish context bailey et al. (1996). in another study, johnson (1994) also mentions that how pre-service teachers teach might be related to their language learning experiences as pupils. teachers are likely to be affected by their past experiences as students (eisenstein-ebsworth & schweers, 1997; woods, 1996) owing to the approximately 17,000-hour observation and exposure activities including the initial teacher training. in other words, teachers’ learning is a developmental process by which they construct based upon their previous experiences from the constructivist viewpoint of piaget (kaufman, 2004). pre-service teacher training and working environ ment. the participants had different reasons for becoming teachers. while ela entered the teaching profession with a strong commitment, ali avowed that he became a teacher by a last-minute decision. obviously, there were other factors such as the encouragement of ela’s family, and the influence of ali’s elder brother, an english teacher. a common characteristic of the participants was their graduation from teacher training high schools. although ali and ela mentioned how the pre-service teacher training contributed to their teaching, ela also referred to the tensions between theory and practice, which are repeated frequently in the literature (see day, 2000; flores & day, 2006; hauge, 2000; mcculloch, 2000). my pre-service education contributed to develop myself in terms of professional and personal aspects. although i couldn’t improve my english to speak fluently, i think i am better…in terms of pedagogical knowledge. (ali, autobiography) the undergraduate education contributed to me so much that i applied them in the lessons . . . however, it is not possible to apply these now due to the current student profile and the lack of technological equipment. i wish we had taught at the schools where the settings and student levels were better. (ela, autobiography) reflecting on their experiences, the participants referred to the disparity between theory learned throughout pre-ser vice training and the highly demanding atmosphere of classrooms, and this disparity frustrates teachers as confirmed by earlier studies (findlay, 2006; sabar, 2004). teacher behaviors as an observable level of the onion model, teacher behaviors reflect the teachers’ beliefs and competencies. in this study, as a drawback, i did not have a chance to observe the participants so the comments will be based on the data collection instruments. contrary to common belief, teachers do not always learn from good teaching experiences when they are students (hammerness et al., 2005). in addition to their positive experiences mentioned previously, the participants took advantage of moving from “apprenticeship of observation” (lortie, 1975) to the position of expert teachers as suggested by golombek (2011). to make students feel motivated towards the course, i always tried to be…positive. although i do not feel good, i haven’t revealed this to my students. (ali, autobiography) i will love my students without any discrimination. . . . now, i… give (free supplementary) courses (for high-stake exams), and this is happiness for me. (ela, autobiography) in the first year of their teaching experience, both teachers were disappointed due to the physical conditions of the schools and the students’ motivation problems. the school settings and their personal conditions affected their in-class behaviors. furthermore, the shift from being a student to being a teacher multiplied the effect. my lack of experience resulted in discipline problems in the classroom…i think students were so unmotivated that other teachers and i lost our motivation. (ali, autobiography) my attributes as a patient and understanding person reflect in my teaching. they have both positive and negative effects. . . . they know that i will forgive them (students) because i love them. . . . as i forgive their negative behaviors, they insist on showing negative behaviors. (ela, autobiography) universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras20 güngör classroom management is one of the main concerns for novice teachers (akcan, 2016), but teachers who are aware of their behaviors move one step forward to make their teaching better (hamachek, 1999). ali and ela seemed to understand their behaviors and the reasons behind them and were on the way to developing their own teacher identity. teacher competencies although some other concerns in the assessment of teachers such as personal characteristics emerged with humanistic-based education after the 1980s, competencies, which hold the potential for interpret ing teacher behaviors (korthagen, 2004), are still significant in teacher education. giving great significance to competencies shows the preeminence of performancebased education in developing countries such as turkey. based on interviews with the participants, how the country’s policy affects teachers is apparent. in our schools (turkish context), focusing on grammar and underestimating the objectives can be classified as the deficiencies of the system (policy). (ali, interview-ii) in the lessons of 8th graders, unfortunately, we prepare (students) for the (high-stake) exams. (ela, interview-ii) the two participants confirmed the tension between university education and the teaching settings at state schools, which pushed them to give grammar-based instruction at schools because students are evaluated based on their marks on high-stakes exams. even the mone evaluates schools and teachers with the average marks of the schools and the students at these schools. on the other hand, addressing just the negative aspects would be unfair to the education system and the efl teachers. for instance, kırkgöz (2007) indicates the great effort of turkish efl teachers to follow the trends in the constructivist approach, the sociocultural theory, and the communicative language teaching due to the turkey’s candidate status for the eu and further innovations. in spite of many educational and curricular reforms with the european union accession process since 1997, continuous support is necessary for the stakeholders to sustain this success by balancing theory and practice, and the real and the ideal (aksit, 2007). teacher beliefs as beliefs affect the decisions, choices, and behaviors of teachers (borg, 2001; pajares, 1992), i tried to find out how the participants reflected on their beliefs in their autobiographies and interviews. apart from their reflections, which were reported on the positive effect of their pre-service training in the previous parts, they expressed how they are hopeful for the coming years. i hope that the conditions (physical settings of the schools) will become better (day by day). (ali, autobiography) eighth graders have prejudices (about learning english) and it is difficult to overcome them. my aim is to motivate lower grades (such as 2nd, 3rd, 4th graders) for learning english. (ela, interview-ii) based on the effect of their teachers from the school years, the participants also believe good teachers will help students learn better, and they define the qualities of good teachers as solid, tactful, and open-minded. although there were not too many data on the beliefs of the participants, the match between the behavior and beliefs of the participants could be noticed from their statements. they try to behave the way they think, and how they think has an impact on their behaviors. teacher missions identity focuses on the layers of the onion model such as environment, behavior, competencies, and beliefs; however, the mission of teachers is interwoven with the personal factors and all the other individuals around them (korthagen, 2004). while adopting missions, teachers consider their students, school, country, and even the world, and they know that the change starts with just one student. the participants in the current study agree with this idea. 21profile vol. 19, no. 1, january-june 2017. issn 1657-0790 (printed) 2256-5760 (online). bogotá, colombia. pages 13-27 the tensions between efl teacher identities and inset in the turkish context i will be pleased individually if i become a person whom students value as a sophisticated and equipped individual to give advice. professionally, it is enough to be proud of my numerous successful students. (ali, interview-ii) i regard myself successful when i realize that i develop myself continuously and i am beneficial (for my students) from both instructional and educational perspective. (ela, interview-ii) they told me that it is enough to see the shining eyes of even one student. if i broaden the horizon of one (student), this happiness is enough for me. (ela, autobiography) contributing to the classroom environment, the teachers begin to be a symbol of good teacher relationships with the other members of the community such as students, parents, and administrators because teacher identities with the mission they have adopted have a noteworthy effect on their jobs, the city where they live, and the people they interact with (wenger, 1998). views of the teachers on inset being used interchangeably with the concept of “communities of practice,” professional learning communities emerged as one of the main blocks of the social learning system. while wenger (1998) summarized the communities of practice in three key notions: enterprise (the level of learning energy), mutuality (the depth of social capital), and repertoire (the degree of self-awareness); louis, marks, and kruse (1996) focus on the five elements of professional learning communities: shared norms and values, collective focus on student learning, collaboration, de-privatized practice, and reflective dialogue. this approach for in-service or pre-service education (e.g., lee, zhang, & yin, 2011; rigelman & ruben, 2012) was implied by the participants in the current study. the timing of in-service trainings should be arranged well.it should be on a voluntary basis rather than an obligation… i think the seminars through the distance education (programs) do not work… the trainings should be based on the specific problems of each school. at least, one week (of the 2-week inset) can be tailored to (the needs of ) the schools. (ela-interview-i) as there is not a single truth or a single method, we have to adapt ourselves for the (conditions of ) the developing world. therefore, the significance of in-service trainings is apparent. however, this shouldn’t consist of just paper work which bore the teachers. instead of giving theoretical information, the training which helps teachers gain experiences through a range of activities and learning by doing should be provided for teachers. (ali, interview-i) having attended many inset sessions in her twoyear teaching experience, ela draws attention to the fact that professional learning cannot be realized through traditional methods as hogan and gopinathan (2008) emphasized. in my 2-year teaching career, i attended (some) seminars at the beginning and at the end of the semesters such as the fatih project seminars (which aim to enhance opportunities and to improve technology) and e-twinning seminars. excluding the e-twinning seminars, others were not beneficial…we got the training for the smart boards which will be provided (for the schools in rural areas) years later. (ela, autobiography) the limited scope of these seminars hinders participants’ engaging in professional learning and collaborating with the other members of the professional learning community (elmore, 2004). as a way out, the participants suggest school principals should encourage the collaboration of teachers and, in turn, the establishment of professional learning communities. furthermore, atay (2008) highlights the role of academics in teacher education in establishing such professional learning communities due to the lack of expertise of school administrators in turkey on the current teacher education approaches. my friends and i can work harder. this is just possible with such great commitment that this (movement) should be started by the directors. (ela, autobiography) first, there should be the idealist directors who commit themselves to the education, and they should encourage teachers without universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras22 güngör forcing (them). in a school which most (of the teachers) endeavor, the other teachers will participate in this process. (ela, interview-i) i think that the collaboration among teachers is weak. . . . encouraging them to participate in the social activities will help them to work in their schools more happily. (ali, interview-ii) the views of the participants indicate that the current inset in turkey has not been arranged considering the layers of the onion model, and the lack of suitable training hinders the identity formation of teachers. clearly, there is tension between the objects and mediating artifacts of activity theory. in other words, the subjects of the activity system, efl teachers, have difficulty in achieving the objectives (basically teaching english) through the mediating artifacts, namely inset. conclusions what is concluded regarding the disparity between ınset and the highly demanding nature of the classrooms the participants of our study highlighted is that teaching and learning are context-specific and dynamic issues which reported the active involvement of teachers in the specific planning, teaching, and evaluation processes of inset for each context (kırkgöz, 2009; sandholtz, 2002; uysal, 2012). therefore, inset should play a substantial role for nations to establish harmony between macropolicies and its micro-level practices as the mediating artifacts of the activity theory (kırkgöz, 2009). in a highly populous country like turkey, the government is spending substantial amounts for the integration of technology into the inset considering the fact that the teachers who have an idealistic view of teaching are shaped by the identity assigned to them by the stakeholders and the market (abednia, 2012). however, traditional methods such as “one-shot” (daloğlu, 2004), top-down, and transmission-based inset courses (uysal, 2012), or allegedly modern methods such as video conferences do not seem to help over 50,000 efl teachers from different backgrounds and geographical regions. the considerable differences between the rural and urban parts of turkey are another factor (cakiroglu & cakiroglu, 2003). also, studies on efl teacher education (e.g., akcan, 2016; daloğlu, 2004; kırkgöz, 2009; uysal, 2012) indicate the lack of a thorough needs analysis in the preparation and implementation processes of inset. considering the fact that the existing centralized system being responsible for the administration of inset falls short of providing training courses regarding the specific local needs of teachers (kırkgöz, 2009), there is an urgent need to establish professional learning communities instead of giving one-off or distance inset to teachers because that kind of training cannot be as successful as the ones given in situ. therefore, the focus should be on developing teacher identities (thomas & beauchamp, 2011) because teachers can be active members of and contribute to “communities of practice” owing to their attributes such as critical reflection, selfawareness, collaboration with stakeholders, and their aspirations to further professional development (flores & day, 2006; kostogriz & peeler, 2007). establishing an effective rapport without the support of school managers, mentors, experienced teachers (akcan, 2016; langdon, alexander, ryde, & baggetta, 2014; norton & toohey, 2011), and higher education institutions or universities (akcan, 2016; flores & day, 2006) may not be the reality for many countries. the concept of communities of practice becomes even more important for these countries because the participation in communities of practice culminates in socialization through the help of mentoring and highlights continuing support and empathy. the positive effect of continuous support has already been emphasized in many other studies (e.g., brannan & bleistein, 2012; villani, 2002). vygotsky’s concept of the zone of proximal development (zpd) also considers collaboration a mediating tool (kuusisaari, 2014), and asserts that collaboration with peers or mentors leads to the construction of new knowledge. this seems possible with a supportive community of 23profile vol. 19, no. 1, january-june 2017. issn 1657-0790 (printed) 2256-5760 (online). bogotá, colombia. pages 13-27 the tensions between efl teacher identities and inset in the turkish context practice or study groups (see cárdenas, 2002) and a well-tailored mentoring system for teachers to reflect on themselves and the context they are teaching. given that teachers are able to shape the identities of future generations, teacher training policy should be the first priority for developing countries like turkey. references abednia, a. 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(1996). teacher cognition in language teaching: beliefs, decision-making and classroom practice. cambridge, uk: cambridge university press. about the author fatih güngör is a research assistant in the department of foreign language education at afyon kocatepe university (turkey). he holds an ma in english language teaching (pamukkale university, turkey) and a phd in the same field (gazi university, turkey). his research focuses on teacher education and corpus methods in language education. 79 http://dx.doi.org/10.15446/profile.v18n2.53397 the impact of oral and written feedback on efl writers with the use of screencasts el impacto de la retroalimentación oral y escrita sobre los escritos de estudiantes de inglés como lengua extranjera con el uso de videos en pantalla roberto alvira* universidad de la sabana, chía, colombia this article, based on an action research study performed at a colombian middle-sized private university, proposes specific strategies to provide feedback to english as a foreign language learners and uses a web 2.0 tool called screencasting. the findings of the study suggest that the use of coded, written, and oral feedback is widely accepted by students and yields positive results in the improvement of their writing skills at the paragraph level, and that the use of screencasting is a promising strategy that is motivational to students and increases the quality of their uptake. key words: feedback, screencasts, screencasting, writing skills. este artículo, basado en un estudio de investigación-acción realizado en una universidad colombiana privada de tamaño medio, propone estrategias de retroalimentación con el uso de screencasting, una herramienta web 2.0. los resultados muestran que la retroalimentación directa, oral y escrita, acompañada de códigos, es aceptada por los estudiantes y ayuda a desarrollar habilidades de escritura, y que el screencasting es una estrategia promisoria, motivante, que ayuda a mejorar su nivel de escritura. palabras clave: habilidades de escritura, retroalimentación, videos en pantalla. * e-mail: roberto.alvira@unisabana.edu.co how to cite this article (apa, 6th ed.): alvira, r. (2016). the impact of oral and written feedback on efl writers with the use of screencasts. profile issues in teachers’ professional development, 18(2), 79-92. http://dx.doi.org/10.15446/profile.v18n2.53397. this article was received on october 1, 2015, and accepted on march 30, 2016. this is an open access article distributed under the terms of the creative commons license attribution-noncommercial-noderivatives 4.0 international license. consultation is possible at http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/. profile vol. 18, no. 2, july-december 2016. issn 1657-0790 (printed) 2256-5760 (online). bogotá, colombia. pages 79-92 universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras80 alvira introduction this study attempts to establish the impact of coded, oral, and written feedback with the use of screencasts, within the context of process writing, using approximately 150-word paragraphs on the improvement of paragraph writing of b1 level english as a foreign language (efl) students at university level. the subjects of the study were students enrolled in different academic programs at a private colombian university. the increasing importance that writing has for university studies, for the development of higher thinking skills, and for language development (graham & herbert, 2011) makes it necessary to develop strategies to give feedback appropriately and in such a way that it helps students to consistently improve their writing skills. a growing body of research has found a relationship between poor writing skills and university dropout in colombia. olave-arias, rojas-garcía, and cisnerosestupiñán (2013) address this problem and relate it to the level of development in reading and writing, and focus on reading and writing practices that generate learning difficulties. on the other hand, córdoba, grinstajn, and suárez (2009) refer to the lack of student literacy as the cause of student dropout. feedback on writing plays an important role in the teaching of writing skills as it does in all educational fields. feedback is vital in just about all learning contexts (race, 2001). the web 2.0 tool used in this study permits the teacher to provide feedback by using a video of the students’ writings and to make a voice recording to help in the provision of feedback. the use of this strategy is the main contribution of this study to the discipline and it offers promising possibilities for teachers in all efl and english as a second language (esl) contexts for significantly improving the quality of their teaching practice in terms of the provision of feedback on writing. the question that guided this study was: what is the impact of coded written feedback, within the context of process writing and with researcher-student short oral feedback using screencasts, on the improvement of writing narrative and descriptive paragraphs? literature review the theoretical constructs of this research study are as follows: writing skills, the teaching of writing, feedback on writing, and screencasts. writing skills writing can be defined as the use of graphic marks to represent specific linguistic utterances (rogers, 2005). the need for writing goes far beyond the need for immediate communication, for it is a keystone of intellectual development. the value of being able to write effectively increases as students progress through compulsory education on to higher education. at the university level in particular writing is seen not just as a standardized system of communication but also as an essential tool for learning. . . . writing and critical thinking are seen as closely linked, and expertise in writing is seen as an indication that students have mastered the cognitive skills required for university work. (weigle, 2002, p. 5) in the academic world, the need for honed writing skills is felt even before being immersed and engaged in an english speaking environment, when efl students have to present international examinations that require a certain level of writing skills such as the toefl test. once in an academic context, the students find that their actual needs in terms of writing go way beyond the minimum entrance requirements. at this point, the student has enough information about the needs in terms of writing in order to establish his or her own goals. cumming (2006) conducted a research study about the goals for academic writings of efl students. his findings were related to different aspects; initially about language (the vocabulary and grammar of english, ranging from clauses to morphemes or punctuation), where the components of the writing process are depicted. another aspect was related to rhetoric or genres (including conventional 81 the impact of oral and written feedback on efl writers with the use of screencasts discourse or text structures along with their elements). this includes paragraph and essay structure. the next aspect had to do with composing processes (planning, drafting, editing, and revising a text). here are the steps of the writing process. next are ideas and knowledge (concepts and information for written texts). this is related to the background knowledge of each writer and the preparation activities as well. the emphasis given in the efl and the esl classrooms was primarily focused on the teaching of vocabulary, grammar, and reading comprehension. as reid (1993) points out, “writing was regarded as a tool to learn the other skills” (p. 22). this was justified since the goal of language learning was “to learn a language in order to read its literature or in order to benefit from the mental discipline and intellectual development” (richards & rodgers, 2001, p. 5). for this reason, j. williams (2012) still insists that “writing is often seen as having a minor role in second language learning” (p. 21). the situation seems to be changing. the role of writing in second language development has been gaining ground. cumming (1990) hypothesized that “composition writing elicits attention to form-meaning relations that may prompt learners to refine their linguistic expression—and hence their control over their linguistic knowledge—so that it is a more accurate representative of their thoughts and of standards usage” (p. 483). leki (2009) also claimed that using writing to develop second language may be a central objective in second language learning. this new perspective has been called “writing-to-learn-language (wll)” and emphasizes the role of writing as a medium for language development as has been supported by studies as recent as that of adams, alwi, and newton (2015). there are several traits of writing that have led prominent authors to argue that writing plays an important role in language learning. one is the problem-solving characteristic of writing. the other is the availability of time at the moment of writing, which is usually lengthy at the moment of speaking. also, as j. williams (2012) states, (1) [writing’s] slower pace, and (2) the enduring record that it leaves, both of which can encourage cognitive processes and interactive moves thought to promote language acquisition, and (3) the need for along with the opportunity for greater precision in language use, which may encourage learners to consult their explicit knowledge as they plan, monitor, or review their production. (p. 321) adams (2006) points out the facilitative role of writing to memorize recently learned syntactic structures and ravid and tolchhinsky (2002) highlight that writing leads learners to pay attention to linguistic forms and puts higher demands on writers for more precise linguistic forms and usage both during the production of their texts and after they have finished writing. its cyclical nature facilitates focusing on linguistic elements (kim, 2011) while writers engage in the iterative process to make meaning in which feedback plays a crucial role (swain, 2006). the teaching of writing the study of writing has been done from various perspectives. probably the best-known are the product approach, the genre approach, and the process approach. given the nature of this study, which intends to measure the impact of feedback on the development of writing skills, the approach that best fits our need is the process approach. the first influential model of the process approach was proposed by flower and hayes (1980) and later revised by hayes (2012). this model has helped to identify writing sub-skills and to understand composition teaching holistically and it also includes motivation, which is a topic that did not play an important role in the original model, but that stands out in hayes’ last revision of the model. as explained by hayes (2012), “because motivation appears to be intimately involved in many aspects of writing, i included it as a major component of my revision of the 1980 model (hayes, 1996) and in the current model” (p. 373). profile vol. 18, no. 2, july-december 2016. issn 1657-0790 (printed) 2256-5760 (online). bogotá, colombia. pages 79-92 universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras82 alvira melgarejo (2010) considers that this approach focuses on the process of writing which aims at the final product of writing. it helps student writers to understand their own composing process, to build repertoires of strategies for prewriting, drafting, and rewriting; it also gives students time to write and rewrite, highlights the process of revision and allows them to discover what they want to say as they write. it also provides them with timely feedback as they attempt to bring their expression closer and closer to intention, encouraging feedback from both the instructor and their peers. the process writing approach contains traits of the product-based approach since the learner has to bear in mind where he or she is heading. in fact, nunan (1999) argues that there is no reason why a writing program could only focus on one approach overlooking the advantages of the other. this is the context we are going to consider in the subsequent identifiable stages that compose the process as stated by meriwether (1997): 1. prewriting (selecting a topic and planning what to say) 2. writing (putting a draught version on paper) 3. revising (making changes to improve the writing) 4. evaluation (assessment of the written work) in this research study feedback is embedded in the revision stage, and includes the feedback given on one or two of the writings, depending on the level of quality the writing of each student has. feedback on writing feedback can be defined as the information gi ven to the students as to how their writing skills can be improved. teacher feedback is probably the most common way to support students during the critical period of application of their recently acquired knowledge, a moment when they lack enough understanding to know if they are executing it correctly (borup, west, & thomas, 2015). after years of an intense debate—initially sparked by truscott (1996) about the possible harmfulness of feedback on form, and contested mainly by ferris (1999)—the importance of feedback in esl/efl writing is generally accepted, although the way of providing it remains under discussion (nelson & schunn, 2007). the situation with feedback on content has also been problematic, maybe even more than the feedback on form. research has demonstrated that teacher comments on feedback on content are usually vague, contradictory and sometimes provide no guidance to the student (cohen & cavalcanti, 1990; fregeau, 1999; leki, 1990). the outcome of this situation is that students often become frustrated and discouraged and consequently ignore the comments, a situation which reduces the possibility of students improving their writing skills (j. g. williams, 2003). for feedback to be effective, it has to comply with some features. these features were depicted by hartshorn (2008) as manageability, meaningfulness, timeliness, and constancy. as for manageability, this is a key point because if teachers are burdened with too much work, this practice would be abandoned. therefore, how much time the teacher spends on giving feedback becomes a key factor of good feedback on writing. in terms of meaningfulness, according to mcgarrell and verbeem (2007), feedback on writing should prioritize content over form in order to have students focus on the communicative purpose of writing. the third trait, timeliness, refers to the promptness of feedback, for instance, the sooner a text is commented on and corrected, the better. the fourth trait, constancy, takes an educational keystone into consideration; if not practiced, knowledge can be forgotten, hence improvement in writing could not be attained (leki 1990). it is also important that feedback should be focused in order to avoid overwhelming the students with too much information (alghazo, bani abdelrahman, & abu qbeitah, 2009). we also favor a blend between direct and indirect feedback (hedgcock & lefkowitz, 1996), beginning with direct outright feedback on mistakes and 83 the impact of oral and written feedback on efl writers with the use of screencasts moving on to indirect feedback as soon as the learners are familiar with the names and the nature of mistakes. a useful strategy of a good feedback methodology is that of a short teacher-student conference (bitchener, young, & cameron, 2005). having a person-to-person conference might sound ideal but given the constraints addressed above, it is not always possible; most of the time it will not be. for this reason, this study relies on screencasts, which allow for asynchronous feedback with the support of video images and voice. screencasts screencasts are digital recordings of the activity on a computer screen, accompanied by voiceover narration. the use of screencasts to provide feedback on writing is in its starting stage, with still few studies reporting on its use. screencasting can be used by teachers to respond to any assignment that is submitted in an electronic format (thompson & lee, 2012). séror (2012) performed a study with esl learners in canada intended to raise awareness of screencasting as a readily available tool. a study with efl students was conducted by mcgarrell and alvira (2013) and concluded that students overwhelmingly preferred the use of screencasts over conventional feedback. another study was performed by harper, green, and fernandez-toro (2015). the findings indicated that both students and tutors liked the tool because hearing the tutor’s voice engaged the students affectively and the explanations were considered clear and easy to retain. these four previous studies take the topic to a point where they could demonstrate that it is worth using screencasts, but do not get deeper into how to use them intertwined with sound pedagogical strategies about feedback on writing. the present study intends to take a step forward and propose a more comprehensive approach on this matter. other studies address the use of screencast in contexts different from esl/efl settings. thompson and lee (2012) found in their study developed in a first language context, in an online learning environment, that student reaction to feedback with screencasts was highly positive and students preferred this form to traditional written comments. vincelette and bostic (2013) researched writings of language students and analyzed their feedback preference and improvement in performance. again, the conclusions are positive in favor of screencasts. a common characteristic found in the literature review was that the research subjects expressed their preference for the use of screencasts over traditional feedback, and this motivational predilection was also found in this study where students overwhelmingly favor its use. another factor is the multisensory aspect of screencasts that students prefer due to its multimodality, where the instructor relies on various types of media to give feedback (crews & wilkinson, 2010; greivenkamp, stoll, & johnston, 2009; ice, swan, diaz, kupczynski, & swan-dagen, 2010; oomen-early, bold, wiginton, gallien, & anderson, 2008; simonson, smaldino, albright, & zvacek, 2011; vincelette, 2013). outside of the field of feedback on writing, there is a growing body of research that supports the use of screencasts in education. an example of that is the study of soto and ambrose (2015), in which they highlight how screencasting can be used as a formative assessment tool in the teaching of mathematics in elementary school. nonetheless, highlighting the importance of instructional methods over the media that deliver them is of paramount importance, as stated by clark (1983, 1991). this author claims that the choice of feedback methods—not media—impacts learning, without downplaying the importance of the media used, which play an important role in the process. in the case of this study, the benefit of the use of screencasts lies in their capacity to strengthen the methodological traits of the feedback process. method the characteristics and purposes of the study fall within the realm of qualitative action research which is profile vol. 18, no. 2, july-december 2016. issn 1657-0790 (printed) 2256-5760 (online). bogotá, colombia. pages 79-92 universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras84 alvira a form of investigation designed for the use of teachers in order to attempt to solve problems and improve professional practices in their own classrooms (parsons & brown, 2002). as kemmis and mctaggart (1992) state, “action research is an approach to improving education by changing it and learning from the consequences of changes. it is participatory: it is research through which people work towards the improvement of their own practices” (p. 22). this was exactly the case of this study that was aimed at improving the way feedback on writing was being given to the subjects of the research study to help them improve their writing skills but it also relied on the participation of the research subjects. at the same time, this research project can be useful to other practitioners interested in feedback on writing. also, the way the study was performed, where there was a cyclical repetition of the steps of process writing (see the steps in the procedure section) in every new writing, matches a key characteristic of action research, which, according to kemmis and mctaggart (1992), “develops through the self-reflective spiral: a spiral of cycles of planning, acting (implementing plans), observing (systematically), reflecting, and then re-planning, further implementation, observing and reflecting” (p. 22). every time a needs analysis was carried out it led to reflection, then implementation, data collection, and then again back to analysis and the implementation of changes throughout the process. all this research work is in line with the state of the art theory about feedback on writing such as that proposed by ferris (2003) and mcgarrell and verbeem (2007). procedure three forms were designed to be used as instruments: a pre-study and a post-study questionnaire, and the students’ writings. the research subjects comprised a group of 18 university students who were majoring in different academic programs and who had a b1 level of english. the study was performed throughout 16 weeks. the students wrote a diagnostic paragraph about their childhood at the beginning of the semester and a post-test paragraph about the same topic at the end of the semester. the screencasts used in the study are called jing® and are made by techsmith (www.techsmith.com). the use of these screencasts has been free and the producer asserts in its website that it will continue being free. to use this tool, it has to be installed on the teacher’s computer but it is not necessary that the students do the same, and the time limit for each screencast is five minutes. besides the teacher-researcher, another teacher also participated in the project as a second and independent evaluator. the feedback provided by the teacher-researcher to each student followed ferris (2003) and took these steps into consideration: a. the students would send the teacher-researcher their writings by e-mail. the teacher would read the whole writing in order to assess understanding. if the conveyance of ideas needed little work, then the teacher would write error conventions next to each mistake and would write brief observations at the end of the paper. otherwise, the teacher would focus the comments exclusively on content. b. the teacher would start the oral feedback with the screencasts by giving general and encouraging remarks such as “you’re improving your level of writing.” c. continuing with screencasts, the teacher would comment orally on the weaknesses of the writing and would give recommendations to improve those aspects. d. in many cases, the teacher would recommend, in writing or orally, that students develop some exercises intended to help them improve their writing within a time limit. e. finally, the teacher-researcher would upload the audiovisual file into the software’s platform using the screencasts in order to extract the link to the 85 the impact of oral and written feedback on efl writers with the use of screencasts video of the writing and would send it to the student by e-mail along with the file of the writing in order to have the students develop their second version of the text. it was useful for them to continue their work on the file containing the teacher’s comments. because the teacher’s feedback was also written, there were some remarks in each student’s file. f. once the students had submitted their final version, both the teacher-researcher and the other participating teacher graded the writings independently, based on the following criteria: (1) students had to be able to write coherent and cohesive paragraphs, including all their components: a clear topic sentence, supporting ideas, and a closing sentence. (2) the grammar and the vocabulary had to be applied in accordance with the course objectives. the types of paragraphs students wrote were narrative and descriptive. every time the students engaged in writing, various pre-writing activities were performed with the idea of preparing the students. both the pre-writing and writing activities were accomplished in a two-hour, face-to-face session. students wrote their first draft in this session and the teacher sent the feedback to them after the session and then had the students do their final writings by themselves. finally, the teacher gave feedback on the final writing. the same process was repeated up to four cycles addressing the features described in table 1. the grammar points, the types of paragraphs, and the topics students worked on in the four cycles are described below. students filled out the pre-study questionnaire and provided the draft and revised version of the three writing tasks. also, they had to hand in a final version of their writings based on the teacher’s feedback and, finally, they had to fill out the post-study questionnaire. the students did all the writings in class sessions and the teacher was always present. to maintain participants’ anonymity, each participant was assigned a number. table 1. topics, types of paragraphs, and grammar points in each cycle cycle grammar points type of paragraph topic first passive voice and ed/ing adjectives narrative technology second using modal verbs to make predictions narrative trip to the desert third second and third conditionals descriptive colombian culture data analysis a blend of content analysis and grounded theory was used in order to reduce the amount of written data to make it more manageable and understandable (cohen, manion, & morrison, 2007) and to facilitate the building of a valid theory from the data analyzed. findings the way in which autonomy was fostered is shown through a number of reasons given by students in the instruments used. as a result, concepts such as motivation, independent work, writing improvement, awareness of mistakes, motivation, usefulness of feedback, and personalization of feedback were en countered. these are only ways of how and why autonomy was fostered. for this reason, the analysis made does not delve deeply into each one of them but they are only treated up to the extent where they serve the purpose of highlighting the way in which autonomy was fostered. there are ways in which the guidance provided to students left room for their own initiative after being trained in choosing additional sources of information to further consolidate the feedback given by the teacher. here is an example of how the teacher left room for students’ own initiative to search for additional feedback sources: profile vol. 18, no. 2, july-december 2016. issn 1657-0790 (printed) 2256-5760 (online). bogotá, colombia. pages 79-92 universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras86 alvira table 2. diagnostic and final writing of student 1 diagnostic writing: february 20th, 2012 final writing: june 7th, 2012 in 2007 i travelled to germany 1 year as exchange student, i chose this country because my grandmother was german and in my childhood she talking every time in german. from this moment i was interest for this language, them when i had the opportunity to made a travel i chosen germany. the first mount was very difficult because i don’t speaking very gut german in this moment and the communication betting my german’s family and me was difficult because they don’t spoken english but in school was more simply because the all people in the school speak english, after the 3 mount i canned a little german spoken the necessary for a basic communication. when i was five years i hated go to the doctor. one day my mom had taken an appointment for the dentist. while my mom was talking with the secretary, i started to cry, because i was very scared. in that moment the doctor called me and my mom took my hand we entered into the doctor’s office. the doctor helped me to sit in the reclining chair; my mom was signing some documents and the face of the doctor made me feel more nervous, he had realized that so he went out of the office and talked with other patients. as no one was watching me, i started to run out of the office and my mom and the doctor ran after me, i did not want go back to that office so i ordered the elevator but my mom had arrived in first place. she was really angry and stated to yelled at me. in the end the dentist examined me and gave me a candy. at the bottom of the ms word file in which student 9 had written her draft of the writing about a trip to the desert, the teacher wrote: interesting story! do some sentence structure exercises. make your own vocabulary list as for students’ perceptions about the usefulness of the feedback provided, the largest number of students perceived that it was very helpful to improve their writings. when triangulating students’ opinions (see table 3) with the grades they achieved on the writings (see table 4), the conclusion is that the two pieces of information show coherence and this is supported by the quality of students’ writings, as seen in table 2, where samples of a student’s diagnostic and final writings are presented. the aspects of grammar and mechanics that students received feedback on were spelling, word order, missing words, missing subjects, sentence structure, use of definite and indefinite articles, use of plural and singular, use of prepositions, use of countable and uncountable nouns, use of comparatives/superlatives, use of the passive voice, use of ing/ed adjectives, and lastly, use of zero, first, second, and third conditionals. the improvement on paragraph structure is evidenced in the average grade of students. in the diagnostic writing, students had an average grade of 3.22/5.0 for paragraph structure, and in the final writing the grade for the same aspect was 4.44/5.0. an example of this can be seen in table 2 where it can be observed that the student’s development of his writing skills improved in different aspects. to begin with, in the first writing, he wrote a list of facts or events without paragraph structure; there was not really a concluding sentence and the whole writing lacked coherence devices to make the story flow. in addition, there are several grammatical mistakes and the student tended to mostly use basic structures. on the other hand, in the final writing, improvement on the paragraph structure, coherence and cohesion can be seen. for instance, with regard to the paragraph structure, the student improved 87 the impact of oral and written feedback on efl writers with the use of screencasts in the use of topic sentences, supporting ideas (and there were many ideas exemplifying his description), and the concluding sentence. as for the coherence and cohesion the reader can see how the story flows in such a way that it is easy to follow the description. finally, as far as grammar is concerned, the basic structures are better used and the student is also using more sophisticated grammatical structures. in this case, the improvement was in all the topics mentioned above. however, the majority of the improvement can be seen in the grammatical aspect. in the first writing, it can be seen that the student made many mistakes of different types: subject-verb agreement, wrong conjugation of verbs in the past tense, wrong use of basic structures, and wrong use of adverbs. however, in the final writing, the student corrected many of these mistakes and even used more complex grammatical structures. also, his story has more details that make it easier to read. the aspects taken into consideration in order to analyze students’ progress in coherence and cohesion were: use of connectors and punctuation problems that interfered with the flow of the story (run-on sentences). the final conclusion was that feedback on writing is a tool to enhance writing because it increases motivation and also leads to scaffolding and this improvement can be evidenced in grammar, coherence, and cohesion. the finding related to the surprising motivational effectiveness of screencasts as tools to provide oral feedback was an important spin-off of this research work which makes further research on this point worth carrying out. table 3 is a summary of the students’ opinions about the feedback received. the percentage indicates the level of acceptance. discussion the main finding after the implementation of this study was that students’ autonomy increased. it was made evident by the high level of motivation shown by the students in their comments in the post-study questionnaire and confirmed with the grades awarded in their writings. in the case of this study, where students were supposed to perform activities not necessarily on a whim, but for their own selves, we saw the logic behind little (2007), who said they need to be highly motivated in order to act autonomously. when students made the decision of undertaking the writing of a text and to develop the revision of the same writing based on the teacher’s feedback, it was because they were fired by the motivational mood of the teacher’s commentary. the feedback was based on the assumption that writers can create their own communicative purpose beyond the purpose of the assignment and this option needs to be taken advantage of in order to motivate revision and then table 3. answers from the post-study questionnaire written and oral commentary is easier to understand than only written commentary. 70% overall, the oral commentary received was helpful. 84% the feedback received on my texts: helped me improve my writing. 80% increased my motivation to revise my texts. 77% made it easy for me to revise my texts. 74% was helpful for the way i like to learn english. 77% profile vol. 18, no. 2, july-december 2016. issn 1657-0790 (printed) 2256-5760 (online). bogotá, colombia. pages 79-92 universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras88 alvira improvement (mcgarrell & verbeem, 2007). also, the content of the teacher’s comments, which could be understood by the learners, also played the role of scaffolding as stated earlier. these instructions from the teacher were understood by the learners and helped them to develop the writing tasks and confirm farahani’s (2014) assertion that “autonomy is materialized through the cooperation of both the teacher and learner” (p. 109); also, the students seemed to be within vygotsky’s (1978) zone of proximal development1 as can be inferred in students’ comments which acknowledged their having been helped by teacher commentary to improve their writings. it is necessary to highlight the fact that the writings were graded by a trained and experienced teacher different from the researcher and also double checked by the researcher. about paragraph structure, it can be said that the written and oral feedback provided for the students helped them to improve their paragraph writing skills. as mentioned above, the aspects analyzed in paragraph structure were the following: inclusion of a topic sentence, supporting ideas, and a concluding sentence. also, number of words was considered. paragraph structure was an aspect on which the teacher-researcher insisted on when dealing with the students in order to have them improve their writings and this effort yielded good results as shown in table 4. table 4. average of grades of students in the diagnostic and final writing diagnostic final paragraph structure 3.22 4.44 coherence and cohesion 3.55 3.77 grammar 1.11 2.88 final grade 2.62 3.7 note. maximum grade = 5.0 1 the distance between what the learner can do on her/his own and what he or she can do under adult guidance (vygotsky, 1978). some students referred to paragraph structure in the post-study questionnaire expressing their awareness of the improvement they had experienced. it is clear that the use of connectors was increased and improved upon as seen in the students’ writings and reflected in their grades; the mistakes in punctuation decreased and the presence of run-on sentences almost disappeared. regarding grammar, this was the aspect most frequently mentioned by the students and the one in which they showed significant progress. there were cases where improvement in the writing performance was remarkable. there was a student that received a grade of 1 of a possible 5 (highest) in the diagnostic writing and a grade of 4 in the final composition. in the case of this student, the feedback from the teacher was detailed and abundant. the student understood it and was able to use it for his benefit as his outcome at the end of the course shows. no doubt that many factors could be involved in the students’ progress, such as help from other people, but the purpose of feedback provided was precisely aimed at having the students work with all their resources available in order to improve their writings. what is interesting to note is that it was the specific guiding remarks provided by the teacher in the feedback that sparked the students’ interest to improve and also to search for help when necessary, inside or outside the classroom. in the case of student 3, he seemed to ignore what a topic sentence was, at the beginning of the course. when he handed in the third and the final writings he had polished his writing skill on a point on which he had received feedback from the teacher. conclusion in conclusion, coded, written, and oral feedback with the use of screencasts helped students to improve their paragraph writing skills. consequently, it is coherent with the research results to say that the research objective was accomplished satisfactorily to the extent of having improved students’ 89 the impact of oral and written feedback on efl writers with the use of screencasts performance. at the same time, these outcomes open doors for further applications and research on this topic. in summary, we can say that feedback on writing is a tool to enhance writing because it increases autonomy and also leads to scaffolding and this improvement can be evidenced in improved motivation and grammar, paragraph structure, coherence, and cohesion. first of all, second language teachers should consider giving students coded written and oral feedback on their writings, with the use of screencasts, as it has been demonstrated that if applied judiciously, it can yield significant benefits for the students’ learning process. the use of screencasts to provide feedback on writing is highly recommended due to the benefits for the students. an aspect that should be considered in the training of teachers to use this tool is that of the benefits in terms of quality and time. teachers who work in the colombian context, where time constraints are a problem, could avoid the use of this tool due to the idea that it can be too time consuming. therefore, it should be a priority to train them in the efficient use of the tool. whatever the tools teachers decide to work with, as lakarnchua and wasanasomsithi (2014) recommend in the case of microblogging, it is advisable that students get trained before they start to develop their writing process. it is important to consider that the writing skill should be given more importance in the efl classroom due to its potential as a tool to benefit students’ academic performance and to the growing awareness of the beneficial impact of writing skills on language learning as a whole (graham & herbert, 2011). finally, since feedback must be manageable, ti mely, and meaningful (hartshorn, 2008), it demands a continuous effort from the teacher, and also the student, in terms of number of papers to be done and corrected and in terms of organization that permits the teacher to keep track of students’ progress and to make meaningful remarks that suit the needs of every student. on the other hand, the need to be focused on priorities (zamel, 1985) poses a continuing challenge for teachers as students’ drafts contain numerous types of errors that force the teacher to make continuous decisions about which points to work on and which to ignore, at least momentarily. in the implementation of this research project it was easy to be focused on the program objectives, but it was not as easy to focus on students’ needs since they can be varied and differ significantly from one student to another and they can also vary over time. one of the limitations of this study was that some of the students were absent from some of the sessions and it caused the writings of nine students to be collected partially. nonetheless, all of them responded to the post-study questionnaire and could express their feelings about the process. on the other hand, no similar studies in the latin american context have been found. previous studies would have helped to understand ways in which screencasts could be used in different settings of the colombian and latin american contexts. a valuable research possibility lies in the development of adequate blended feedback (i.e., written and oral) when using screencasts. what is best to be said through writing? what through oral comments? what in both ways? the effectiveness of each solution should be demonstrated through research in order to improve the quality of the teaching of writing. finally, research on the relationship between the level of writing of the students in two languages, their native language and in english, is needed for both the teaching of writing and for the purpose of improving feedback on writing strategies. one of the many benefits a study of this type could yield is that it would help to establish a clear distinction between surface errors and deep-level errors and to shed light on efficient ways to treat them. it would be interesting if more studies of this type were undertaken in order to assess the impact of the use of screencasts at different levels of english and where the number of students is bigger. profile vol. 18, no. 2, july-december 2016. issn 1657-0790 (printed) 2256-5760 (online). bogotá, colombia. pages 79-92 universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras90 alvira references adams, r. 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(1985). responding to student writing. tesol quarterly, 19(1), 79-101. http://dx.doi.org/10.2307/3586773. about the author roberto alvira is an efl teacher and researcher at universidad de la sabana (colombia). he has extensive experience as a teacher on all educational levels, from kindergarten to university. his main research interests are writing, feedback on writing and clil. he holds a master’s degree in english as a foreign language autonomous learning environments and is currently a doctoral candidate in education with a thesis on bilingualism. 135profile vol. 19, no. 2, july-december 2017. issn 1657-0790 (printed) 2256-5760 (online). bogotá, colombia. pages 135-149 http://dx.doi.org/10.15446/profile.v19n2.57811 transforming efl classroom practices and promoting students’ empowerment: collaborative learning from a dialogical approach transformando prácticas y promoviendo empoderamiento en los estudiantes de inglés como lengua extranjera: aprendizaje colaborativo desde un enfoque dialógico janeth juliana contreras león* colegio bravo páez ied, bogotá, colombia claudia marcela chapetón castro** universidad pedagógica nacional, bogotá, colombia this study investigates the impact of implementing collaborative learning from a social and dialogical perspective on seventh graders’ interaction in an english as a foreign language classroom at a public school in bogotá, colombia. thirty students participated in this action research where field notes, questionnaires, semi-structured interviews, and artifacts of students’ work were used to collect data during a complete academic year. results show that taking a critical approach to language education and understanding collaborative learning as a social construction of knowledge can ignite opportunities for changing traditional teaching and learning practices where both the teacher and students take different roles, thus balancing classroom relations and interaction among participants and also promoting students’ empowerment. key words: collaborative learning, dialogical approach, english as a foreign language, public schools. este estudio analiza el impacto del aprendizaje colaborativo entendido desde una perspectiva social y dialógica en la interacción de estudiantes de séptimo grado, en clase de inglés, en un colegio público de bogotá, colombia. treinta estudiantes participaron en esta investigación-acción en la cual se recolectaron datos a través de notas de campo, cuestionarios, entrevistas y artefactos producidos por los estudiantes. los resultados indican que adoptar un enfoque crítico en la enseñanza del lenguaje y entender el aprendizaje colaborativo como una construcción social del conocimiento puede propiciar oportunidades de transformación en las prácticas tradicionales de enseñanza-aprendizaje donde el docente y los estudiantes asumen roles diferentes balanceando las relaciones y la interacción en el aula y promoviendo empoderamiento en los estudiantes. palabras clave: aprendizaje colaborativo, enfoque dialógico, inglés como lengua extranjera, educación pública. * e-mail: jcontre7@gmail.com ** e-mail: cchapeton@pedagogica.edu.co how to cite this article (apa, 6th ed.): contreras león, j. j., & chapetón castro, c. m. (2017). transforming efl classroom practices and promoting students’ empowerment: collaborative learning from a dialogical approach. profile issues in teachers’ professional development, 19(2), 135-149. http://dx.doi.org/10.15446/profile.v19n2.57811. this article was received on june 2, 2016, and accepted on october 25, 2016. this is an open access article distributed under the terms of the creative commons license attribution-noncommercial-noderivatives 4.0 international license. consultation is possible at http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/. universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras136 contreras león & chapetón castro introduction humans are social beings by nature and through social interaction they learn how to live and participate within a group and how to get along with others (kagan, 1992). however, in traditional education, teacher-centered practices are usually favored and the students are habitually sitting in fixed rows having little opportunities for interaction and collaborative work. this type of school setting, which is typical in colombian public schools, is also characterized by large groups, lack of motivation, unsafe environments, and social inequities (guzmán, 2006; parga herrera, 2011). additionally, in many english as a foreign language (efl) classrooms in public schools, students’ interaction is often disregarded or neglected because there is a strong focus on the teaching of the linguistic components of the language and a palpable lack of interest from the students to learn the foreign language since it is not used “for authentic communicative purposes in their social surroundings” (palacios & chapetón, 2014, p. 11). systematic preliminary observation of the efl class at the public school where this study took place showed two additional key issues that prompted this research. first, it was noticeable that the students tended to be disrespectful and rude to each other and sometimes to the teacher. second, students found it difficult to work in groups, to listen to each other, to help each other to accomplish a goal, or to commit and engage in the activities proposed by the teacher, that is, group work problems—which have been widely acknowledged (see for example ruiz-esparza, medrano, & zepeda, 2016)—were also evident. as an alternative to overcome these particular situations that are affecting not only our classrooms and public schools but also our society, this study aimed at describing the impact of implementing collaborative learning from a dialogical perspective on seventh graders’ interaction in an efl classroom. thus, the purpose of this action research project was to transform the traditional teaching and learning efl practices at this school—that seem to focus chiefly on linguistic aspects of the foreign language—and to consider the students’ social context and a more humane and dialogical vision of teaching. this goal bears particular relevance in a society where education plays a fundamental role in preparing students to be active citizens able to interact effectively with others in and beyond the classroom boundaries. theoretical considerations the theoretical approach that frames this study is centered on a critical and dialogical pedagogy (freire, 2002; freire & shor, 1987) understood as an alternative for educational and social transformation and collaborative learning, also a teaching perspective which focuses on group work and fosters social skills. these two theoretical perspectives and the way they were articulated in this study are discussed as follows. dialogical education: an alternative for social transformation a critical and dialogical approach to learning implies a transformation in education. going against the idea of education as a pure transference of knowledge that merely describes reality, dialogue, critical reflection, and praxis are essential elements to critical pedagogy (freire, 2002; freire & shor, 1987). freire (2002) proposes the notion of praxis as dialectic of action and reflection in the learning process; that is, confronting reality critically and acting upon that reality through a process of communication where there exists a co-participation of the teacher and the students in the act of learning. in his view, “the particular language in which dialogue takes place is not necessarily what is important. what is fundamental is that individuals, in relationship to others, find languages in which to communicate, dialogue, and create and recreate the world” (lh, 2008, para. 10). freire (2002) argues that “without dialogue there is no communication, and without communication there can be no true education” (p. 92). he also highlights that knowing is a social event e.g. “i am knowing something 137profile vol. 19, no. 2, july-december 2017. issn 1657-0790 (printed) 2256-5760 (online). bogotá, colombia. pages 135-149 transforming efl classroom practices and promoting students’ empowerment... in reality, with others, in communication with others” (freire & shor, 1987, p. 82). barlett (2005) claims that for freire, all learning is relational and knowledge is produced in interaction; thus, “dialogue refers to the active participation of student and teacher in discussion and analysis” (dueñas, 2013, p. 88), going beyond the traditional culture of the teacher possessing and transferring knowledge statically. from a critical and dialogical perspective of education, the teacher is placing knowledge as a problem for mutual inquiry. in this process students gain a sense of empowerment when interaction is directed toward a critical examination of students’ experiences and contexts (shor, 1992). this study is situated within the framework of a dialogical education because this approach enables the humanization of teachers and students. in a humanizing pedagogy, both teachers and students are subjects who engage in critical readings of their reality through reflection, action, and committed involvement. in such dialogic process, there is a social construction of knowledge and mutual learning that encourage students to understand and re-create their reality. in that sense, education becomes the means to social transformation. collaborative learning: a social construction of knowledge and mutual learning according to smith and macgregor (1992), “collaborative learning is an umbrella term for a variety of educational approaches involving joint intellectual efforts by students, or students and teachers together” (p. 11). the basis for these approaches is constructivism meaning that knowledge is constructed and transformed by students. gerlach (1994) claims that collaborative learning is based on the idea that learning is a naturally social act. through group work, students are supposed to talk with each other, and it is in this talking that much of the learning occurs. collaborative learning is based on these premises: (1) “learning is an active, constructive process” (smith & macgregor, 1992, p. 11); (2) “learners benefit from others’ knowledge and viewpoints; (3) dialogue and active involvement promote learning; and (4) learning takes place when learners critically reflect on their knowledge” (zygouris-coe, 2012, p. 333). this type of learning encompasses three main aspects. first, there is social and intellectual involvement where students are more active and build closer connections to other students, their courses, and their learning. second, there is cooperation and teamwork when students build their capacities for tolerating, resolving differences, for making agreements that take into account all the voices in a group, and for caring how others are doing. and third, there is civic responsibility since collaborative learning encourages students to acquire an active voice through dialogue, deliberation, and the consensus to foster participation and a sense of responsibility to the community. it is our belief that taking a collaborative learning approach in this study may serve as a stepping stone to foster involvement, teamwork, and responsibility in dialogic bases, where active participation is ensured and students are engaged in discussion while taking responsibility for their learning. in sum, the two key constructs are seen as interrelated because both consider learning as a social act where students are encouraged to reflect, talk, solve problems, and make decisions. critical pedagogy as a dialogical education approach frames the teaching practice where the teacher and the students are engaged in examining social issues of their reality to mutually construct knowledge while collaborative learning provides opportunities to discover ways to maintain dialogue, negotiate meaning, work together, accomplish academic goals, and take actions which may contribute to the development of a more equal and tolerant classroom environment. research design this action research takes a critical perspective in order to identify and investigate problems within a specific situation; it is cyclical, evaluative, reflective, universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras138 contreras león & chapetón castro and participatory, where changes and improvement in practice are based on qualitative data (burns, 2003). thus, action research centers teachers’ reflections on their educational context leading to the interpretation and improvement of their context-situated practices (cárdenas, 2006) where the understanding of students’ needs and particularities is at the core. this study was conducted at a public school located in the southeast of bogotá with an average size of 1,200 students whose ages ranged from three to twenty years old. a seventh grade group of 30 students, 19 males and 11 females, whose ages ranged from twelve to fifteen participated in the study. according to the school english level classification, these students are in the basic/lowest level. preliminary systematic observation at a diagnosis stage of this study showed that these students have serious behavioral and academic difficulties. rude and usually disruptive behaviors reflect students’ social context, which is affected by a lack of opportunities for social promotion, economic crisis, danger, and violence. data were collected through the use of an initial questionnaire, field notes (supported by video-recordings of class sessions), students’ journals, semi-structured interviews, and artifacts. the systematic data collection process was developed in four cycles during sixteen weeks throughout the academic year. pedagogical intervention with a critical and dialogical perspective in mind, the cycles of this pedagogical intervention were organized around topics and purposes that fostered collaborative learning and group work. these topics and purposes were articulated to the efl contents included in the course syllabus and were connected to the most immediate surroundings and realities of the students. in the initial exploratory cycle students introduced themselves and introduced classmates by exchanging personal information. in cycle 1, students built up teams, decided on each member’s role according to his/ her qualities, and established agreements to facilitate group work in the team and in the classroom. in cycle 2, students took the initiative to move out of the classroom to get to know the school community. they interviewed school members and reflected upon roles, rights, and responsibilities at school. in cycle 3, students focused on the family as a community. they reflected upon the roles of family members, identified rights and responsibilities within the household, and reflected upon the qualities a family should have. this final cycle closed with a socialization session where students shared the experience and outcomes of the process. importantly, cycles one to three were developed in a way that allowed students to read their realities, learn about roles, rights and responsibilities within each community, and reflect upon those realities to later propose actions that would eventually lead to transformations in those context-situated scenarios.1 findings using a grounded approach (corbin & strauss, 2008), data were compared and analyzed through a process of triangulation that involved line-by-line analysis and color-coding techniques to name, group, and find relationships among emergent themes or patterns that resulted in the categories and subcategories shown in table 1. the discussion of the findings is as follows. transforming practices in the efl classroom setting this category refers to the changes in the efl classroom practices that emerged during the pedagogical intervention which, on taking a critical perspective (freire, 2002; freire & macedo, 1987; freire & shor, 1987), focused on a humanistic approach that required adopting reflexive pedagogical practices that emerged through dialogue. dialogue refers to the active participation of students and teacher in discussion and reflection, 1 for a comprehensive account of the pedagogical intervention please see contreras león and chapetón castro (2016). 139profile vol. 19, no. 2, july-december 2017. issn 1657-0790 (printed) 2256-5760 (online). bogotá, colombia. pages 135-149 transforming efl classroom practices and promoting students’ empowerment... establishing a democratic setting where students’ voices are taken into account, giving them the opportunity to be involved in class decisions. as dueñas (2013) points out, “dialogue seeks not only to increase active student participation in the classroom but also to develop a critical social consciousness among students” (p. 88) and a sense of responsibility in their learning process. the analysis of data showed that the activities developed in this study broke with the traditional banking model of education (freire, 2002; freire & shor, 1987) where knowledge was transmitted by the teacher and the classes were focused on linguistic components of the language. by means of dialogue, a meaningful learning environment was developed. this new perspective enhanced students’ capacities to change their passive roles and take it upon themselves to be agents of their own learning. this critical perspective also stimulated collaboration, decision making, participation, and social responsibility. the three most important changes identified in the different instruments gave rise to three subcategories which are discussed as follows. balancing classroom relations among participants interaction is understood in this study as a dynamic process where the participants, both students and teacher, express their own ideas or comment on those of others in a dialogical co-construction of knowledge. it implies a movement away from traditional practices that are centered on the teacher to a more student-centered classroom where students have the opportunity to use their l1 (spanish) or the foreign language when possible—given their low english level—to express their ideas, reflect, and play an active role in the learning process. the changes in the teacher’s and students’ roles and the relations of power were essential for a balanced classroom relationship. regarding the change in the teacher’s role, the following excerpts illustrate how the teacher assumed a role that values students’ voices and invites them to reflect on their group work, and propose ways to improve it. another important aspect is that the students were encouraged to challenge and criticize their social reality and at the same time take part in the construction of knowledge. in this sense, and following freire’s (2002) view, the teacher’s role was as problem poser; asking questions, and proposing activities that would help students reflect on aspects of their lives: before we started with this session, i, the teacher, discussed with students about their work and attitudes during the implementation of the first cycle. i also considered the comments of the students in their journals as well as the group reflections. i asked each group about their difficulties and how they would deal with them. (field notes, cycle 2, session 1) s.dg:2 this is the only class, i had never seen a teacher who cares about the students . . . who likes that we make comments, that we make decisions, organize and think.3 (student’s journal, cycle 1, session 4) when working on the guidelines to interview the school community, i asked students to suggest how we would approach the school community. i asked them: “what would you do first?” one student said “preguntar” (ask a question). i said: “and before that?” one 2 abbreviations are used to protect students’ identities. 3 the students’ original voices were in their l1, spanish. translation was made for publication purposes. table 1. emergent categories categories sub-categories transforming practices in the efl classroom setting balancing classroom relations among participants changing traditional teaching and learning practices experiencing a new group work vision and practice promoting students’ empowerment encouraging personal growth building social awareness and citizenship universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras140 contreras león & chapetón castro student said “saludar” (greet). i said “right, very good!” and i wrote on the board what the students suggested. i said “greeting is very important.” then, i asked them “what would you do next?” s.mf said: “presentarse” (introduce oneself ). i said: “very good! introduce yourselves and your group.” then i asked them: “what else would you do? s.wa said “las preguntas” (ask the questions). i said: “excellent.” (field notes, cycle 2, session 1) these excerpts show that the teacher guided and provided spaces where the students could participate, express their opinions, and reflect; promoting a dialogical process where all participants contribute to make decisions and develop a mutual learning process that transforms the classroom into a place of social construction and equal participation. thus, the teacher is not a person that transfers knowledge, but a person that perceives together with the students, and actually is a facilitator of knowledge construction (mccowan, 2006). in freirean words, a “liberating teacher,” that is, a teacher who never imposes his or her own notions about how to deal with a specific situation, but listens to students and poses questions to help them think critically about the situation and make decisions about what action to take. this is illustrated in the following sample where students made decisions about the agreements to be established to benefit group work: i walked around the classroom listening to the groups. s.jpe told her that two teammates were listening to music. i told him: “that could be a problem to your group. so, what could be the agreement of your group?” and s.jpe said: “don’t listen to music at school”. i asked him: “at school or in class?” s.jpe answered: “in class.” (field notes, cycle 1, session 3) in a real dialogical relation among participants, there is equal opportunity for all members to speak, decide, and propose (freire, 2002). this means that students play also an active role that encourages them to participate in a democratic educative process where all, teacher and students, are considered equal, and have the opportunity to choose and make decisions: s.mo: we elected to choose the group members, then, my classmates and i started to interview each other, asking what we had in common. the teacher allowed us to choose freely. (student’s journal, cycle 1, session 1) s.bg: we shared ideas to define “community” and also we gave some examples identifying the communities we all belong to, we organized and selected the school staff we wanted to interview. (student’s journal, cycle 2, session 1) s.xp: i felt good sharing and listening to my classmates’ ideas without looking at the textbook. with our own ideas and knowledge we defined those words [rights and responsibilities]. (student’s journal, cycle 2, session 3) the previous excerpts describe the way students contributed to the decisions of the class. the first excerpt describes how they could choose freely because it was a democratic election. in the second the student describes how students could give ideas and listen to their classmates to construct knowledge and take actions to know the school community. these samples demonstrate that the students became active agents in the classroom, breaking down their traditional passive roles, and contributing to decision-making processes. the students’ interest, participation, and engagement in the different activities were more evident because their voices, knowledge, and experiences were recognized and taken into account in the english class. the new teacher’s and students’ roles implied a new power relationship in the english classroom, where power was negotiated and shared among participants through dialogical interaction. but it did not mean that the teacher no longer taught or set aside her responsibilities; it meant, rather, to create possibilities for students to contribute and to be responsible for their learning process: s.lo: the teacher is the guide. she guides us and lets us rule. she lets us rule, too. t: rule? what do you mean? s.lo: i mean, we, each one of us has a role to play, for example, i’m the coordinator, thus, i have to guide my classmates, my group, and be attentive guiding them. (first interview) 141profile vol. 19, no. 2, july-december 2017. issn 1657-0790 (printed) 2256-5760 (online). bogotá, colombia. pages 135-149 transforming efl classroom practices and promoting students’ empowerment... t: said that today, considering the difficulties that they have seen, each group would choose agreements to work on and have a better relationship with their teammates. (field notes, cycle 1, session 3) giving students the possibility of establishing their own rules, taking responsibility for their own behavior and their learning process, and participating in classroom decision making enabled a balanced classroom interaction among participants through a new vision of the teacher’s and students’ roles. in consequence, a democratic environment was promoted where students’ voices were valued with greater opportunities for equal participation and socialization. changing traditional teaching and learning practices the analysis of data showed evident changes in the english classroom practices. the first change is related to the new class arrangement that includes a new distribution of the students’ desks, and the use of different spaces at the school besides the classroom. in traditional classrooms, the students are seated facing the board, in rows, where the teacher takes a front position. as the purpose of this study was to promote interaction through collaborative learning, the classroom distribution was more flexible; the students sat next to their groups’ members and had opportunities to work together: s.ea: since we chose the groups, we never sat in rows again; instead, we sit in groups, close to our teammates. i liked that because we are close, together. (student’s journal, cycle 1, session 1) seating the students in groups was important because they felt they could get closer, they could see each other and establish a connection that let them interact and get engaged in class activities. this new seating arrangement fostered students’ participation, confidence, interaction, and mutual learning and helped them focus on the activities. besides, the students had the opportunity to go outside the classroom and learn in a more meaningful way because they connected what they were learning with meaningful experiences. as mentioned before, students visited the different school places and interviewed the school community at work: s.dg: going out the classroom was cool, we had never been outside, we are always enclosed, here we went out to see the school and meet people. (second interview) s.xp: in this class we share ideas, we share a lot in groups and we develop activities outside de classroom and that’s interesting and fun. (student’s journal, cycle 2, session 3) this was a new experience for students because they are usually inside the classroom. taking students outside the classroom helped them to develop interest in knowing the school staff, which students found fun and interesting. it made learning more engaging, meaningful, and relevant because they could interact with others and explore the school context. a second change is related to the topics developed in the english classes. these topics were not only related to the traditional content of a seventh grade english class syllabus at this public school, which includes knowledge of vocabulary and grammar, but they were also related to social and personal issues. topics such as personal information, the school places, professions, likes and dislikes, the family, were more challenging and interesting for the students because they were connected to their own realities by exploring rights and responsibilities at their most immediate surroundings. s.dv: i had never worked in an english class like in this one because we talk about different things like our rights and responsibilities. the great difference in this class is that we learn about different things, here we learn things to be better in class and in life. (student’s journal, cycle 2, session 4) s.sq: here we talk about our families and, i mean, more things about ourselves, more personal things. (third interview) it is important to highlight that the topics were presented to the students as situations of their reality that were known by them, so that they could share their universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras142 contreras león & chapetón castro own experiences and ideas on the topics. activating students’ prior knowledge not only helps students to make connections between what they know and what they are about to learn, but also learning becomes meaningful because the topics are relevant to the students. the activities developed in the english classes also changed because they enabled students to make connections with their reality and provided opportunities for interaction, reflection, participation, and cooperation. the students were interacting with different people, not only with the teacher and their classmates, but with the school community and their relatives. the interactions and activities also involved different spaces that were related to learners’ social contexts, like the classroom, the school, and home: s.rg: we inter viewed our families, also the school staff. i think that’s interesting because we had never done that. (third interview) students were also encouraged to reflect not only on what they had learned about group work, but on their reality, and their roles in the different communities (group, school, and family). this developed in them a sense of belonging and membership that was encouraged through reflection. the freirean pedagogy states that critical reflection is also an essential element in dialogical education. reflection is a mental process that goes beyond thinking or recalling information; it is a process of questioning. this reflective process was developed in this study through reflective activities according to the topics developed, through the use of individual journals, and through group reflection: s.nd: here we reflect; we don’t do it in other subjects. i think it’s important not to throw the garbage on the floor, to have better vocabulary, to attend the class sessions, to be responsible, not to yell at teachers, etc. (student’s journal, cycle 2, session 4) s.dv: i think it was very good that we could write in the journals because it was not only about answering yes/no questions, but we could write what we think and feel. (third interview) reflection is necessary to understand reality and be aware of the part we play as members of the different communities. this change in traditional classroom activities allowed students to explore ideas within their immediate contexts and, in doing so; they realized that actions can be performed to contribute to building a better world for themselves and others. experiencing a new group work vision and practice learning is seen in this study as a social process that not only involves the acquisition of knowledge but, as oxford (1990) claims, involves some social strategies that support and regulate that learning through interaction and communication. it was found that collaborative learning was an option to promote this social learning through group work, because it was a strategy to foster interaction and actively involve students in the learning process. unfortunately, at school many teachers and students are reluctant to do group work because they have had unpleasant experiences: s.lo: [teachers] don’t like group work simply because we don’t take it seriously, we do other things different from what we should do. (second interview) s.xp: in the groups i had been, communication is not good, there are no ideas, people don’t take it seriously, there’s no good communication. (student’s journal, cycle 1, session 2) as shown above, some students and teachers share a negative perception of group work because they have seen that only some students do the work, the time is wasted, and there are conflicts and indiscipline. as this problem was one of the reasons that originated this study, we decided to follow the strategies suggested by experts in collaborative learning (gillies, 2007; gresham & elliott, 1990; johnson, johnson, & holubec, 1994; kagan, 1992), bearing in mind a critical perspective that fostered a new vision and an effective use of group work. placing students in groups and giving them work to do does not mean that they are working together. for 143profile vol. 19, no. 2, july-december 2017. issn 1657-0790 (printed) 2256-5760 (online). bogotá, colombia. pages 135-149 transforming efl classroom practices and promoting students’ empowerment... an effective group work, the participants of this study were involved in the teambuilding process; they had an active participation because they chose the members of the groups, they gave a name to the group, and chose an emblem that identified them as a group. this contributed to the development of a sense of belonging since all members were recognized by their roles and worked together in base groups, where students stayed together for a long period of time, with stable membership. students made a name tag that included the name of the group, the emblem, the students’ roles, and then students’ names (see figure 1). each student wore the tags thus being identified by their classmates and by the school community during the interviews. figure 1. the artist’s name tag but setting up groups is not enough; students also need to know how to function as a group. it is our belief that group work fails because we, as teachers, do not show our students how they should work in groups. for effective group work, both the teacher and students play important roles. teachers facilitate group work and students are actively participating and taking responsibility for monitoring, planning, adjusting, and assessing their individual and group work. group work requires that all students become involved; it was achieved in this study by implementing some of the strategies suggested by the experts. the first strategy was that each student had a role; it helped to distribute responsibility among group members and ensured students’ participation. the roles were chosen by the students from a list of options given by the teacher, a clear description of each role was given, and each group member decided which role to take. this allowed students to engage in dialogical interaction where they identified their qualities and the groups made decisions thinking about the group benefit: s.lt: my roles are speaker, time keeper, and recorder. we decided on the qualities of each group member: their abilities, their behavior, their way to be organized, and other qualities. and we selected each member so that each could benefit the group. (student’s journal, cycle 1, session 2) s.lg: since each one of us had a role, each one focused on his own work: writing, reading, drawing, speaking, that’s it, playing the role that each had. (third interview) the samples presented above show how roles promoted equal participation, facilitated group work, and ensured that all members of the group contributed. additionally, students felt more confident and comfortable and accepted their responsibilities because they could decide the roles themselves; also, their peers recognized their qualities. students also established group agreements that helped them to create a better environment to work, interact, develop good behavior, and function better in groups. having the whole class choose some agreements made for the english classroom resulted in constructing better relationships among classmates and a better learning environment: s.ec: having chosen group agreements was good because there are some classmates that didn’t pay attention, they were joking or bothering others and i think it’s good to have agreements so that we all can help each other and can do things better. (first interview) universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras144 contreras león & chapetón castro s.sq: we established agreements to work better in the english class, to listen to each other, to understand what the teacher said, not to bother other groups, and be tolerant. t: and how did you establish those agreements? s.sq: each one, each group member gave his idea, and we reach agreement to be able to work better in the english class, to behave better, to work, to do the homework: the guidelines. (third interview) as shown above, students identified key aspects that fostered effective group work. they became aware that they needed each other and that it was important to help each other, to listen, and respect each other in order to have a better environment in which to interact, communicate, and learn. each group made a poster of the group agreements (see figure 2) then, the artists of each group got together to make a poster of the whole class agreements which was posted on a classroom wall. figure 2. sample of agreements poster posting the groups and class agreements in a visible place helped students to remember and monitor their accomplishment. students had time to analyze how they were working and find out what they needed to improve upon. they had time for group reflection at the end of each session. team reflection or group processing is a very important principle of collaborative learning (gillies, 2007; johnson et al., 1994; nunan, 1992), since groups need time to reflect on their experiences in working with each other as it contributes to the success of group work and to the maintenance of good group relationships. through group work, students shared common goals, a physical place, materials, information, and resources; they distributed responsibilities and established a group identity that let them interact and develop a sense of belonging, cooperation, and unity. promoting students’ empowerment this category refers to the character traits discovered and developed by students in the dialogical studentcentered environment promoted in the english classes. the analysis of data showed that the new teaching and learning practices implemented in this study helped students to become aware of their potentials as a person and as a student, and how they could contribute to their group, class, school, and family. these potentials were developed by working together, experiencing democratic practices in the classroom, and having the opportunity to be responsible for their own class work. in the critical pedagogy view taken in this study, the process where the students gain self-development is called empowerment. it is understood as the process that gives students the capacity to be in charge of their individual and group work and improve their own and group performances. findings show that students’ empowerment was an ongoing process that involved both personal development and social awareness. these were fostered by students’ active participation in the classroom, team members’ support, constant reflection, and dialogical interactions. as shor (1992) claims, “individual growth is an active, cooperative and social process, because the self and the society create each other” (p. 15). this process implied 145profile vol. 19, no. 2, july-december 2017. issn 1657-0790 (printed) 2256-5760 (online). bogotá, colombia. pages 135-149 transforming efl classroom practices and promoting students’ empowerment... self and social changes that are going to be presented and explained as follows through the two subcategories that emerged from the data analysis. encouraging personal growth this sub-category refers to the personal development observed in the students by working in groups and having an active role in the english class. students became aware of their personal qualities that encouraged and helped them to assume responsibility for themselves and their group work. the data analysis revealed that the support and social interaction with their teams as well as their active role in the development of the different activities provided students opportunities to discover and foster their autonomy, self-control, and leadership. autonomy refers to the capacity to take responsibility for our own learning (benson, 2000). this author argues that it is a social construction that implies interdependence. data showed that when students engaged in group work, they were less reliant on the teacher because they were in charge of their work and became more responsible: s.hv: to me, it’s cool to work in groups because one has to be a lot more responsible, one respects more, and all the classmates change. (student’s journal, cycle 1, session 2) s.wa: we learnt what a group is and how to work in groups, we didn’t need to have the teacher telling us what to do, but we worked. . . . we organized ourselves and we didn’t need that she gave us commands; we organized the activities because we knew our roles. (student’s journal, cycle 3, session 4) in the previous excerpts students expressed that through group work, they could be more responsible because they decided how to work and they made group choices and decisions. it was evident that with the collaborative work discussed in the first category, students organized the groups and assumed their responsibilities according to the roles that they had chosen. it helped them to be more independent and interdependent because they were working together without the teacher’s control. this point is highlighted by nunan (1992), who claims that being autonomous means to be independent of external authority, but it does not mean individualism. through dialogical collaborative learning, students learned that all the decisions and choices were made by the group members, and it implies the notion of interdependence, being able to cooperate with others. along with the development of autonomy students also developed self-control. according to gailliot and baumeister (2007), it is a conscious capacity to control one’s impulses and unconscious or habitual responses. before the implementation of this study, some students used to behave in rude and disrespectful ways, or react physically or verbally rude if someone bothered them, and only some students did the work. engaging students in reflective group activities that demand their responsibility and commitment helped them to realize that it was necessary to transform their attitudes to benefit themselves and their groups, and to facilitate collaboration and group work among group members: i have seen that students who were rude are now more respectful and focused on the activities. after they chose roles and selected the group and class agreements, they have changed their behavior, for example s.je was always bothering the students that were next to him, and mocked their classmates for their answers or physical appearance, now he works and he is focused on the activity. (field notes, cycle 2, session 1) s.js: for the first time my behavior was good because i was focused all the time on the work. s.fh was working all the time, too. (student’s journal, cycle 1, session 2) these samples show that when students have an active role and more responsibility in the group and class work, they transform their attitudes and habitual responses and behaviors. this is because they are focused on the activities, on their classmates’ contributions, and on their own roles. it is important to highlight that roles and group and class agreements were essential elements of this change because they assumed them universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras146 contreras león & chapetón castro as part of their responsibility and tried to be bound by them to work better. another finding is that through dialogical collaborative learning it was possible to identify leadership skills in some students: “leadership is defined as the ability to motivate and enable others to contribute towards the success of the group which they are members of ” (lyne de ver, 2009, p. 8). it was found that some students were in charge of their group, they organized and distributed the activities, provided support, and checked to ensure that all the group members were working: s.js: i noticed that s.je makes all the group members work; this is something that is not visible in other classes. (student’s journal, cycle 2, session 2) s.lt: by working in groups i realized that i’m a good leader, that i’m a very smart person, and i controlled that all the members were fulfilling their roles, i made sure that they understood and that we all did things well, always having their opinions in mind, and respecting my teammates’ opinions. (student’s journal, cycle 3, session 3) (s.bb), (s.je), (s.lt) are leading the group work now and helping their teammates; they talk for their groups when they present the group work to the whole class, they are the ones who explain, ask, and help the others to answer according to the key samples in each activity. (field notes, cycle 1, session 4) by working in collaborative groups, leaders emerged; these students identified and demonstrated their qualities which, in some cases, they themselves did not know of. these leaders were recognized by their groups as good guides, they could engage others in the group work, helped their teammates to understand and develop the different activities, provided support, and held the team together. importantly, as s.lt mentioned, the relation between the leader and the group members was not of authority or imposition, but instead was a balanced relationship where the entire group decided and worked, and all the opinions were taken into account. in this respect, rothstein-fisch and trumbull (2008) highlight that “leadership appears to come from the desire to contribute to the group rather than to gain individual recognition” (p. 42). building social awareness and citizenship this subcategory refers to the social awareness that was built from the activities developed in group work, which were focused on dialogue and reflection upon the students’ reality. for freire (2002), an education for liberation is developed through an education based on dialogue, critical reflection, and praxis which are the three basic elements of conscientization. “conscientization refers to the process in which men, not as recipients, but as knowing subjects, achieve a deepening awareness both of their reality that shapes their lives and of their capacity to transform that reality” (freire, 1970, p. 27). mccowan (2006) highlights that conscientization is not an individual process; it must take place in a collective context. in this study, the students developed different group activities that let them identify, reflect, and act upon their reality in order to transform it. discussing and reflecting on the rights and responsibilities students have in their different contexts opened a new path towards conscientization that allowed them to see their own realities, develop a sense of belonging and thus, think of actions they could take to transform those realities: s.gc: this helped me to learn about my rights and responsibilities because we can learn about the rights people have, to be a better person, not to humiliate others, and to be able to defend oneself. (student’s journal, cycle 2, session 4) s.ldg: it’s important to think and reflect about these topics [rights and responsibilities]; i learnt that they are part of our lives, of our future, they’re important to get conscious that we are part of the school . . . part of a community; we should take care of the classroom and desks, keep them clean. (student’s journal, cycle 2, session 4) the students considered that the activities of reflection developed in class helped them to learn, go beyond the topics, and be aware of their reality. as the process of conscientization involves reflection and action upon reality, the students reflected and recognized 147profile vol. 19, no. 2, july-december 2017. issn 1657-0790 (printed) 2256-5760 (online). bogotá, colombia. pages 135-149 transforming efl classroom practices and promoting students’ empowerment... themselves as valuable people and as part of a group and part of a community. by empowering students to reflect on their reality, to become conscious of their roles in that reality, and to take collective actions to transform it, a social awareness grows that leads students to develop a sense of responsibility to the community. this sense of responsibility or civic responsibility is understood in this study as citizenship. to mockus (2004) becoming a citizen means to develop collective processes to undertake actions considering the well-being of all, the common good, and establishing good relationships based on tolerance, solidarity, and respect. since 2003 the colombian ministry of education has included a citizenship education program in schools. this program attempts to develop citizenship competences that can make a contribution to overcome the current violence and the social problems of our country and enable citizens to become active and responsible participants in society. this goes along with freire’s (2002) idea about critical pedagogy that promotes social awareness. this study is focused on an active pedagogy; the students become active members not only in the classroom but in the different contexts where they have interacted during the implementation of this project. in this process, students gained experience to know about and claim their rights and understand their responsibilities, take responsibility for themselves, and act and participate constructively. it is a lifelong process that prepares students for the challenges and opportunities beyond the school context and makes them reflect on their future lives. conclusions this study indicates that implementing collaborative learning from a critical perspective can foster changes in the efl classroom. although there were challenges to face mainly due to the big group size and to the students’ lack of interest in committed group work— mostly at the initial stages of the process, evidence showed transformation in the teaching and learning practices. first, changes in the teacher’s and students’ roles, where the teacher was a facilitator who questioned and promoted dialog to guide students toward knowledge construction while students were active agents who participated, chose, and made decisions. here both the teacher and students had equal opportunities to speak, decide, and propose actions to be implemented, thus balancing classroom relations among participants. second, linking the syllabus topics to students’ realities was also relevant. a critical approach to education relates class topics to social and personal issues, thus making learning interesting and meaningful for the students because topics are connected to students’ world and they can share their own experiences and knowledge (palacios & chapetón, 2014). students transformed their view of working in groups into a meaningful experience because they worked on collaborative teams being motivated to organize, sustain, and reflect upon group work. learners established group identity that developed a sense of belonging; they learned how to function as a group through specific roles and responsibilities and also established group agreements that helped them to develop better behavior, interactions, and the ability to work better as they reflected upon their individual and group work. thus, students realized that they needed each other and that each member and their contributions were necessary for group success. with responsibilities shared, team members were heard, taken into account, and respected. this leads to one of the most striking findings which relate to students’ empowerment. through the implementation of a dialogical perspective to language education, personal development in the students was observed. qualities such as autonomy, self-control, and leadership were fostered thus encouraging learners to be more responsible for themselves and their group work. it was also identified that students built social awareness and a sense of citizenship was ignited. students were engaged in activities that promoted reflection, universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras148 contreras león & chapetón castro analysis, and dialogue upon their reality enabling them to become aware of their capacity to transform that reality. it led students to develop a sense of responsibility to the community or toward citizenship because they became active members not only in the classroom but in the different contexts where they interacted. it made students reflect on their future lives and prepared them to be active citizens who could take part in society. references barlett, l. (2005). dialogue, knowledge, and teacher-student relations: freirean pedagogy in theory and practice. comparative education review, 49(3), 344-364. benson, p. (2000). learner autonomy in the classroom. in d. nunan (ed.), practical english language teaching (pp. 289-308). new york, us: mcgraw hill. burns, a. (2003). collaborative action research for english language teachers. cambridge, uk: cambridge university press. cárdenas, m. l. (2006). orientaciones metodológicas para la investigación-acción en el aula [methodological orientations for action research in the classroom]. lenguaje, 34, 187-216. contreras león, j., & chapetón castro, c. m. (2016). cooperative learning with a focus on the social: a pedagogical proposal for the efl classroom. how, 23(2), 125-147. http://doi.org/10.19183/how.23.2.321. corbin, j., & strauss, a. (2008). basics of qualitative research: techniques and procedures for developing grounded theory. thousand oaks, us: sage. http://doi. org/10.4135/9781452230153. dueñas, f. a. (2013). incorporating critical pedagogy in the efl classroom. enletawa journal, 6, 83-94. freire, p. (1970). cultural action for freedom. cambridge, ma: harvard educational review and center for the study of development and social change. freire, p. (2002). pedagogy of the oppressed (30th anniversary edition). new york, us: continuum. freire, p., & macedo, d. (1987). literacy: reading the word & the world. south hadley, us: bergin & garvey. freire, p., & shor, i. (1987). a pedagogy for liberation: dialogues on transforming education. westport, us: bergin & garvey. gailliot, m. t., & baumeister, r. f. (2007). the physiology of willpower: linking blood glucose to self-control. personality and social psychology review, 11(4), 303-327. http://doi.org/10.1177/1088868307303030. gerlach, j. m. (1994). is this collaboration? in k. bosworth & s. j. hamilton (eds.), collaborative learning: underlying processes and effective techniques (pp. 12-19). san francisco, us: jossey-bass. http://doi.org/10.1002/tl.37219945903. gillies, r. m. (2007). cooperative learning: integrating theory and practice. thousand oaks, us: sage. http:// doi.org/10.4135/9781483329598. gresham, f. m., & elliott, s. n. (1990). social skills rating system. circle pines, us: american guidance service. guzmán, e. (2006, march 18). indiferencia hacia la bogotá joven: la situación en usme, ciudad bolívar y san cristóbal [indifference towards the young in bogotá: the situation in usme, ciudad bolívar, and san cristóbal]. desde abajo, 110. johnson, d., johnson, r., & holubec, e. (1994). the new circles of learning: cooperation in the classroom and school. alexandria, us: association for supervision and curriculum development. kagan, s. (1992). cooperative learning. tucson, us: kagan cooperative learning publishing. lh. (2008, july 27). rethinking dialogue: critical pedagogy and special needs populations [web log post]. retrieved from http://unlockingtheclassroom.blogspot.com.co/2008/07/ rethinking-dialogue-critical-pedagogy.html. lyne de ver, h. (2009). conceptions of leadership (background paper 04). the developmental leadership program. mccowan, t. (2006). approaching the political in citizenship education: the perspectives of paulo freire and bernard crick. educate, 6(1), 57-70. mockus, a. (2004) ¿por qué competencias ciudadanas en colombia? [why citizenship competences in colombia?]. altablero, 27(1), 11-12. nunan, d. (1992). collaborative language learning. cambridge, uk: cambridge university press. 149profile vol. 19, no. 2, july-december 2017. issn 1657-0790 (printed) 2256-5760 (online). bogotá, colombia. pages 135-149 transforming efl classroom practices and promoting students’ empowerment... oxford, r. l. (1990). language learning strategies: what every teacher should know. new york, us: newbury house. palacios, n., & chapetón, c. m. (2014). students’ responses to the use of songs in the efl classroom at a public school in bogotá: a critical approach. gist, education and learning research journal, 9, 9-30. parga herrera, f. (2011). cooperative structures of interaction in a public school efl classroom in bogotá. colombian applied linguistics journal, 13(1), 20-34. rothstein-fisch, c., & trumbull, e. (2008). managing diverse classrooms: how to build on students’ cultural strengths. alexandria, us: association for supervision and curriculum development. ruiz-esparza, e., medrano, c. a., & zepeda, j. h. k. (2016). exploring university teacher perceptions about out-ofclass teamwork. profile issues in teachers’ professional development, 18(2), 29-45. http://dx.doi.org/10.15446/ profile.v18n2.53364. shor, i. (1992). empowering education: critical teaching for social change. chicago, us: university of chicago press. smith, b. l., & mcgregor, j. (1992). what is collaborative learning? in a. goodsell, m. maher, & v. tinto (eds.), collaborative learning: a sourcebook for higher education (pp. 10-30). university park, us: pennsylvania state university. zygouris-coe, v. (2012). collaborative learning in an online teacher education course: lessons learned. proceedings of the 2012 icicte. retrieved from http://www.icicte. org/proceedings2012/papers/08-4-zygouris-coe.pdf. about the authors janeth juliana contreras león holds an ma in foreign language teaching from universidad pedagógica nacional de colombia and a ba in modern languages (spanish and english) from universidad distrital francisco josé de caldas, colombia. she is an efl teacher for the secretary of education in bogotá at colegio bravo páez ied. claudia marcela chapetón castro holds a phd in applied linguistics (university of barcelona) and an ma in applied linguistics (universidad distrital). she is an associate professor at universidad pedagógica nacional, bogotá. she has published research articles, efl textbooks, and teaching materials. her research interests are critical pedagogy, critical literacies, efl teaching, and metaphor. 27profile: issues teach. prof. dev., vol. 21 no. 1, jan-jun, 2019. issn 1657-0790 (printed) 2256-5760 (online). bogotá, colombia. pages 27-42 https://doi.org/10.15446/profile.v21n1.70921 from utopia to reality: trans-formation of pedagogical knowledge in english language teacher education de la utopía a la realidad: transformación del conocimiento pedagógico en la formación del profesorado de lengua inglesa álvaro hernán quintero polo*1 universidad distrital francisco josé de caldas, bogotá, colombia in this article the author reports on a study of some english language student-teachers’ trans-formations of knowledge about language education. the question that guided the study was: how are english language student-teachers’ formative pedagogical and research experiences portrayed in a transformative and critical outlook for initial teacher education? reflections, perceptions, and conceptions served as data and were collected by means of diaries, interviews, and degree projects or monographs. from the analysis of data, two main themes emerged: “going back and forth from utopia to reality” and “efl student-teachers as novice critical researchers”. a conclusion was that the participants’ trans-formations mediated by pedagogical and research agendas represented alternatives with high levels of sensitivity towards socially associated issues in language education. key words: formative research, initial language teacher education, language education innovation, language pedagogical knowledge, language pedagogy. este artículo reporta acerca de la transformación de conocimiento de la enseñanza de idiomas de unas futuras docentes de lengua inglesa. la pregunta de investigación fue ¿qué caracteriza las experiencias pedagógicas e investigativas de futuros docentes de inglés desde una perspectiva transformadora y crítica para la formación de profesores? los datos fueron reflexiones, percepciones y concepciones. los instrumentos fueron diarios, entrevistas y trabajos de grado o monografías. dos temas surgieron del análisis: “ir y venir de la utopía a la realidad” y “futuros docentes de la lengua inglesa como investigadores novatos críticos”. como conclusión está que las transformaciones de los participantes, mediadas por agendas pedagógicas e investigativas, representaron alternativas con sensibilidad hacia temas socialmente asociados con la enseñanza de idiomas. palabras clave: conocimiento pedagógico del lenguaje, formación inicial docentes de idiomas, innovación en la enseñanza de idiomas, investigación formativa, pedagogía del lenguaje. * e-mail: aquintero@udistrital.edu.co this study was institutionalized and financed by centro de investigaciones y desarrollo científico of universidad distrital francisco josé de caldas (contrato no. 055. convocatoria no. 005, 2005, innovación en el aula). how to cite this article (apa, 6th ed.): quintero polo, a. h. (2019). from utopia to reality: trans-formation of pedagogical knowledge in english language teacher education. profile: issues in teachers’ professional development, 21(1), 27-42. https://doi.org/10.15446/profile.v21n1.70921. this article was received on march 9, 2018 and accepted on october 3, 2018. this is an open access article distributed under the terms of the creative commons license attribution-noncommercial-noderivatives 4.0 international license. consultation is possible at https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/. universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras28 quintero polo introduction the perception that has to do with a heavy emphasis on theory about pedagogy and research implicit in the contents and activities of english language teacher education programs conveys an idealistic or utopian aspect of language education. said perception leads teacher educators to overlook the realities of their studentteachers and what they do in and out of the programs they attend. in response to that, the study shared via this article had as a purpose to foster, through a pedagogical intervention, some sensitivity towards the social and critical dimensions of language education in contexts that were immediate to its participants. this aim called for an inquiring attitude about some trans-formations concerning views and practices of language education and learning, and the way those transforming views and practices, in turn, shaped a group of student-teachers’ formative research projects. the question that guided the study: how are english as a foreign language (efl) student-teachers’ formative pedagogical and research experiences portrayed in a transformative and critical outlook for initial teacher education? the rationale for the study, within a pedagogical innovation framework, relates to the belief that implementing transformations in the traditional educational practices in teacher education programs becomes essential. such is the intention of this article: to encourage members of the local and global english language teaching community to not remain as mere viewers of the educational scene, but to take an active part, that is, to give themselves voice and give voice to other teachers through research agendas. the statements and discussions about the intersection of pedagogy, research, and innovation in language teacher education are proposed here under a humanistic, inquiring, and critical approach to language teaching and learning (see figure 1). thus, the mere linguistic and instructional dimensions of language education should be overpassed (quintero, 2011), and one way to achieve that is by inquiring about what lies within such intersection. figure 1. the intersection at pedagogy, research, and innovation pedagogy innovationresearch theoretical considerations the theoretical considerations of this article propose a discussion of three main topics: the freirean philosophy of education, teacher knowledge, and trans-formation of pedagogical knowledge. the freirean philosophy the intersection of pedagogy, research, and innovation in language teacher education can be discussed from a critical perspective, which in this work is provided by the freirean philosophy, better known as critical pedagogy (mclaren, 2003; norton & toohey, 2004; wink, 2005). such philosophy, conversely to traditional ways of teaching, sets some principles for educators and learners to make sense of the world where they live (table 1). table 1. traditional teaching vs. critical pedagogy traditional teaching practices critical pedagogy emphasis on instruction: classroom management, discipline, “how to”, skill development emphasis on human beings: their needs, contexts, histories focus on the instrumental dimension of education focus on the holistic function of education neutral political unidimensional multidimensional ? 29profile: issues teach. prof. dev., vol. 21 no. 1, jan-jun, 2019. issn 1657-0790 (printed) 2256-5760 (online). bogotá, colombia. pages 27-42 from utopia to reality: trans-formation of pedagogical knowledge in english language teacher education critical pedagogy is not a method, but it is rather a way of life (mclaren, 2003). if, from a social perspective, focus is placed on the visible and hidden human interactions between a teacher and a learner in an educational institution or beyond it, then critical pedagogy will have to do more than just concerning itself with what and how students learn and what and how teachers teach (norton & toohey, 2004). from this perspective, wink (2005) maintains that critical pedagogy allows educators to look at political, ideological, social, cultural, economic, and historical issues “to name, to reflect critically, and to act” (p. 3). in the same line of thought, the tenet that subsumes the principles for the practice of language teaching and learning is the understanding of the world as a multidimensional entity which entails a multiplicity of views on school life. schools are places where language, literacy, and culture meet; schools are contexts within which different practices are carried out by people (nieto, 2010). in this sense, teaching and learning are both cause and consequence of the social, cultural, political, economic, and historical practices (guerrero & quintero, 2004). the above referred practices take place through an empowering dialogical interaction between teachers and learners mediated by language (mclaren, 2003; shor & freire, 1987). language is viewed as a vehicle that not only reveals dialogical relationships between teachers and learners, but that also constructs them (pennycook, 2001). this dialogical construction relates to the social dimension of education (vigotsky, 1989) and implies that teachers learn with and from learners (shor & freire, 1987). teachers also play the role of learners, not merely the role of transmitters of ready-made knowledge; that is, an external packet of information for teachers to impart in an acritical manner (freire, 1992). teacher knowledge in line with some tenets of critical pedagogy, in the theoretical considerations for this article, appears the topic of knowledge in general and teacher knowledge in particular. the latter is the focus of attention in this section. the areas that need to be covered in a research agenda that intends to explore how pre-service and in-service teachers think and work are conceptions of teaching, dimensions of knowledge, and teachers’ lives and careers (golombek, 1994; k. richards, 1994). the dimensions of knowledge comprise an area that relates to this paper most directly. a view of knowledge as an external body of information for people is likely to lead to a focus on imparting that information, a focus on content; conversely, if the knower is not separated from the known, the focus is more likely to be on engagement and exploration. such area is considered to influence a characterization of pedagogy and pedagogical knowledge. this relates to one of the main goals of research, namely, to transform already existing knowledge or to produce new knowledge. this conception applies as much to the investigation of teacher knowledge as to knowledge itself. shulman (1987) offers a formula to conduct research in distinct areas of teacher knowledge (table 2). table 2. shulman’s categories of teacher knowledge (shulman, 1987, p. 8) general pedagogical knowledge, with special reference to those broad principles and strategies of classroom management and organization that appear to transcend subject matter knowledge of learners and their characteristics knowledge of educational contexts, ranging from workings of the group or classroom, the governance and financing of school districts, to the character of communities and cultures knowledge of educational ends, purposes, and values, and their philosophical and historical grounds content knowledge universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras30 quintero polo curriculum knowledge, with particular grasp of the materials and programs that serve as “tools of the trade” for teachers pedagogical content knowledge, that special amalgam of content and pedagogy that is uniquely the province of teachers, their own special form of professional understanding the types of teacher knowledge, which are objects of discussion in this work, are: (a) general pedagogical knowledge and (b) pedagogical content knowledge. the former can be understood as the general set of methodologies and strategies for teachers to deliver their teaching. the latter can be related to the capacities and understanding of how to teach the subject matter in a variety of ways to allow teachers to attain their objectives. these dimensions of knowledge then are the ones that are intended to be linked to the idea of transformation informed by critical pedagogy for developing an epistemology of language pedagogy. trans-formation of pedagogical knowledge in relation to what has been mentioned, an interest in the conceptualization on trans (change) formation (creation) of language pedagogical knowledge arises. figure 2 gives one a look at how the terms innovation and change become relevant here. brief definitions of the two terms are proposed by quintero (2011): “innovation is related to the individual and collective intentions to implement new alternatives in educational practices. as for change, it relates to the perspectives from which educators see their own implementation and duration of their innovations” (p. 1). the account for this situation by the protagonists of educational practices constitutes what can be called trans-formation (piñeros & quintero, 2006). trans-formation should be a teacher-initiated activity based on teachers’ knowledge of and identification with their students, awareness of their strengths, and disclosure of their privileges and biases in the schools where they teach (piñeros & quintero, 2006). in addition, searching for educational alternatives and abandoning the “comfort zone”, recipes and prescriptions to teach are features of teachers that can be called transformative professionals of language education (nieto, 2003). figure 2. trans-formation of pedagogical knowledge trans (change) transformation formation (creation) p e d a g o g ic a l k n o w le d g e regarding pedagogical knowledge, reference needs to be made to a humanistic dimension of knowledge. in that sense, brown and duguid (as cited in fullan, 2001a) make a distinction between the notions of information associated with machines, and knowledge associated with people. fullan proposes the idea that knowledge is not information, or that the accumulation of information can be converted into knowledge. such conversion calls for the intervention of the individual and collective dimensions of people, that is, the emotions, aspirations, hopes, and intentions of individuals as well as social groups. knowledge is also discussed by piñeros and quintero (2006) as a compound of theory and practice that is activated and created through contextualization and sharing. the theoretical part of such compound relates to the basic concepts of teacher education, and the practical part refers to the learning and teaching experiences in school settings. such compound, in turn, has both an individual and collective dimension. the former entails attitude formation towards the world as the cause and consequence of knowledge construction; the 31profile: issues teach. prof. dev., vol. 21 no. 1, jan-jun, 2019. issn 1657-0790 (printed) 2256-5760 (online). bogotá, colombia. pages 27-42 from utopia to reality: trans-formation of pedagogical knowledge in english language teacher education latter denotes the social factor that takes place through sharing and debating. in regard to the individual and collective dimensions above, fullan (2001b) maintains that personal and group experiences of knowledge construction lead to change. change can result in a “sense of mastery, accomplishment, and professional growth” (p. 32). the individual and collective elements of the roles played by actors in exchanging knowledge are key factors in transforming tacit knowledge into shared knowledge. the pedagogical intervention the pedagogical intervention implemented in this study took place at the english language teacher education undergraduate program of universidad distrital francisco josé de caldas, colombia, (universidad distrital hereafter). in a vertical view of the curriculum of that program, three cycles are seen: one of foundation (first four semesters), one of deepening (from fifth to eighth semester), and one of innovation (ninth and tenth semesters). on the other hand, the curriculum, seen horizontally, has some training fields where several subjects are aligned. the fields of formation of the program are disciplinary, pedagogical, investigative, and ethical and political. in particular, the intervention of this study was initially implemented in the academic spaces or subjects of interdisciplinary seminar viii and pedagogical project i in 2005. the structure of the intervention was replicated with small refinements in new cohorts in further years. the interdisciplinary seminar belonged to the research field and the subject of pedagogical project i was part of the pedagogical field. both subjects belonged to the deepening cycle of the curriculum of the program, in its eighth semester. the interdisciplinary seminar viii was designed to discuss alternatives and serve as the basis for the articulation of research proposals of future english language teachers. the academic space of pedagogical project i, in close connection with the interdisciplinary seminar viii, sought to help future english language teachers to consciously look at the implications of being a novice teacher researcher. the future english language teachers were involved in the elaboration of a research, pedagogical, and innovative proposal. both subjects included, as shared features, modeling and exemplifying new approaches and procedures, such as the ones contained in table 3 and described after it. this constituted an innovation in the english language teacher education program where this study took place. as part of the intersection of pedagogy, research, and innovation, there was a collective understanding that it was teacher educators’ responsibility to create spaces of reflection and discussion about what the sociocultural reality of schools is, and how all the educational community made different interpretations of such reality within a pedagogical innovation framework. such common understanding was, in turn, linked to the need of some transformations in the traditional educational practices in the efl teacher education undergraduate program of universidad distrital (table 3). table 3. pedagogical procedures and approaches procedures approaches collaborative teaching critical pedagogy outlook reflective discussion workshops critical stance of participants collaborative teaching allowed professors to identify needs, share experiences and knowledge, plan content and courses of actions in the class, and establish a solid methodology that ensured reflection, discussion, and action (pineda, 2002). collaborative teaching, in this study, was established between two professors of the interdisciplinary seminar and two professors of the subject of pedagogical project i in the same semester, but two groups, one in the morning shift and another one in the afternoon shift. universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras32 quintero polo the reflective discussion workshops, from an autonomous learning perspective, were given a turn from the traditional lectures of the teachers to become spaces for discussion about the teaching and learning of efl; the view of language, literacy, and learning; and the student-teachers’ research process: before, during, and after. the critical pedagogy outlook had as a main characteristic the fact that the student-teachers’ reflections and research experiences were grounded on the tenets of critical pedagogy. the selection of the readings or the contents for the courses had in common a socio-critical perspective of education and, as a complement, were based on specialized literature on qualitative research and innovative pedagogical interventions in the language classroom. the critical stance of the participants included a view of language research as a means, not an end, for the exploration of social, cultural, and political issues that were part of the realities of their language educational contexts. that stance also facilitated an environment for reflection, discussion, and feedback on the studentteachers’ research proposals. the procedures and approaches above were also intended to bring about an appeal for the theme of knowledge trans-formation in the participating studentteachers. figure 3 summarizes such appeal. the student-teachers started to self-position themselves as both authors and actors of research projects since they started to observe the need to find alternatives to view language as a means rather than a purpose. furthermore, they discovered new ways of being educators in contrast to being only language instructors (i.e., the dialectical dimension of pedagogy mentioned above). they also started to name situations, which they did not know beforehand. this happened because of the interaction with the literature that shaped their discussions. this also led them to analyze the reflective component in their academic daily practices in the efl teacher education program and subsequently analyze some actions that in turn became research projects, at a formative level, for their monographs. figure 3. appeal for knowledge trans-formation new ways of being educators and researchers in contrast to being only instructors alternatives to view language as a means rather than a purpose naming situations through interaction with specialized literature student-teachers as both authors and actors of formative research projects the research experience the systematic and formal experience that substantiated some efl student-teachers’ development of formative research projects resulted from the intervention described above. with an implicit intention to challenge the traditional conception of research as something that is done on teaching, the study was proposed following the idea of research as something that can also be done by teachers to inquire into studentteachers’ alternatives to establish connections between the theoretical components of the subjects in a plan of studies and their educational experiences observing sensitivity towards the social and critical dimensions of language education in their contexts. the research problem the problem addressed through the study was conceived after an observation carried out in the efl teacher education program at universidad distrital, which ser ved the purpose of documenting both language and teaching as the objective of instructional techniques that were geared towards language skill development and the confirmation of the effectiveness of those techniques. reflection had not occurred so frequently. little or no inquiry into social and cultural phenomena had been practiced except for some isolated efforts. this situation can be associated with the replication of positivistic approaches (kuhn, 1970) 33profile: issues teach. prof. dev., vol. 21 no. 1, jan-jun, 2019. issn 1657-0790 (printed) 2256-5760 (online). bogotá, colombia. pages 27-42 from utopia to reality: trans-formation of pedagogical knowledge in english language teacher education to education, which usually leads to overlooking the realities of the students. a positivistic emphasis on language teaching and learning resembles the model of “training” that woodward (1991) characterizes with an emphasis on the instructional practices, that is, the “how to” of teaching (giroux, 1988); for instance, discipline management, group management, motivation techniques, development of language skills, time management, adequate and proficient use of english, and other products of the same nature. one reason for that model to be problematic is given by fandiño (2013). he reviews literature about how colombian efl teacher education programs are addressing teacher knowledge and draws the conclusion that learning the basic skills required for teaching, mastering a subject matter, and using pedagogical skills is never enough to build a knowledge base. for fandiño, it is also necessary to keep a balance between theory and practice by reflecting on what colombian language teachers feel, think, and do to inform their learning and teaching practices. another model described by woodward (1991), called “educational,” has a more holistic and focused approach to teacher reflection. it focuses on forming an efficient instructor; however, the same as the “training” model, it ignores critical factors of teaching, such as getting to know students, what needs they have, and in what context education is developed. in relation to that, cárdenas (2009) states that though socially-oriented paradigms are starting to be observed, transmissionist and skill-based models continue to be a tendency in many colombian language teacher education programs. she considers that a sort of eclecticism of behaviorist, humanist, constructivist, and reflective perspectives are being taken for granted with unclear conceptualizations and unawareness about the need to see teacher education as a multidimensional practice. j. c. richards and lockhart’s (1994) “reflective model” values teachers’ reflective practice as the origin of trans-formations, conversely to training models in which others are who decide what should be done and known (gonzález, montoya, & sierra, 2002). nevertheless, that “reflective model” also emphasizes the instructional, in being what is called “a good teacher”, mainly from the technical point of view. linked to that, álvarez (2009) states that the technical aspects of language teaching may very well represent some value, but the humanistic dimension of education needs to be paid attention to as well by teachers through research agendas. with the research problem in mind, a question that guided the development of the study emerged: how are efl student-teachers’ formative pedagogical and research experiences portrayed in a transformative and critical outlook for initial teacher education? the objectives of the project were: to characterize student-teachers’ formative pedagogical and research experiences, and to analyze the innovations that student-teachers show, as such, from their own perspective. participants the efl teacher education program of universidad distrital receives students, men and women, who are mainly young adults (students of 18 to 21 years of age). the students mainly come from low-income families who live in southern bogotá, colombia. the five participants in this study were taken from a group of fourteen future english teachers who participated in the academic courses interdisciplinary seminar and pedagogical project, which were described in the pedagogical intervention above. the participants authorized the use of written information in their diaries and an audio recording of their oral interventions in interviews by signing a consent note. the participants were selected from those who had completed a number of eight reflections about the readings discussed in class and were completing their pedagogical and research proposals. the names of the five participants have been replaced by the initials of the words student and teacher in order to maintain their confidentiality, as follows: st1, st2, st3, st4, and st5. universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras34 quintero polo method the study was a descriptive and interpretive qualitative one (creswell, 2012). the overall purpose of this research approach is to make sense of naturalistic data, and the reasons for choosing them in this study are twofold: one being ontological and another one being epistemological. the former is related to the view that social reality is not static, singular, or objective, but is rather shaped by human experiences and social contexts. the latter has to do with the fact that social reality calls for subjective characterizations and interpretations of its various participants. a process of data management and analysis was developed within a reflective and critical atmosphere fostered through the pedagogical intervention. table 4 summarizes the way data were guaranteed in this study. data collection was done in two points in time: (a) reflections and perceptions through diaries and interviews during the intervention, and (b) conceptions through monographs, after the intervention took place. the participants wrote reflective diary entries as one activity following discussions about reading materials on the subjects of interdisciplinary seminar and pedagogical project. the interviews were conducted soon after the courses ended (see appendix). the monographs—degree works that reported on pedagogical and small-scale research studies—listed in this article were selected based on two criteria: (1) relevance to the concept of innovation and coherence with the idea of practical realization of alternative views about language, pedagogy, and (2) learning previously identified in diaries and interviews. findings after analyzing data, the main emerging themes were “going back and forth from utopia to reality” and “efl student-teachers as novice critical researchers”. going back and forth from utopia to reality the participation of the efl student-teachers became a stroll between utopia and reality: in pedagogy, they undertook negotiations with themselves, with their academic formation and with their pupils; in research, they engaged in applications of the qualitative paradigm to projects oriented to knowing their students and projects that involved parents. going back and forth between the dialogical and dialectical dimensions of pedagogy (kincheloe, 2004) during the teaching practicum was reflected in the internal and external negotiations of the student-teachers. the former were understood as the questioning of their own beliefs as compared with theory and practice; the latter were related to decision-making and innovations within the classroom, negotiations between the knowledge derived from experiences and the knowledge received table 4. data types and sources stage type of data & unit of analysis source theme during pedagogical intervention reflections about connections among language, pedagogy, and learning contained in materials of courses diaries going back and forth from utopia to reality perceptions about the relation between theory and practice interviews after pedagogical intervention conceptions of pedagogical and research alternatives or trans-formations to language teaching and learning in research reports monographs efl student-teachers as novice critical researchers 35profile: issues teach. prof. dev., vol. 21 no. 1, jan-jun, 2019. issn 1657-0790 (printed) 2256-5760 (online). bogotá, colombia. pages 27-42 from utopia to reality: trans-formation of pedagogical knowledge in english language teacher education during the academic formation. the following excerpts illustrate this: pedagogy. this is the first thing we should be clear about. most of the time i feel that pedagogy only refers to reflection on teaching. however, it is fully connected with learning and with learners, so that whenever we say pedagogy, we always look at the relationship between teaching and learning and all that this implies in terms of people, contexts, and practices. (st1, diary) it was first the two components, the practical and the theoretical part . . . the theoretical part because it greatly influenced us and made us interpret the critical pedagogy as something humanistic and social, not only as a concept, it was negotiation and dialogue as something that occurred within the classroom. then when we were talking about negotiation in academic and social settings, we saw that the community and the school should be interconnected. (st3, interview) in these excerpts, an attempt is made to relate an idea about pedagogical knowledge to real and contextualized situations. in this sense, pedagogy becomes experiential and socially situated, and knowledge turns into something real and tangible (shor & freire, 1987). being in contact with literature on critical pedagogy led the student teachers to identify controversial aspects of educational practices inside and outside the language classroom. they reported on a dynamic, in contrast to a static, feature of education by referring to pedagogical practices as tasks that involved naming educational phenomena, reflecting, and acting on them critically (wink, 2005). regarding this, st2 reflected: i know that language and learning are not static and that we can learn from anyone, but i am not aware of who, however it is. (diary) focusing on the dialectical dimension of critical pedagogy, the student-teachers faced challenges and dilemmas that led them to search for a bridge between theory and practice of language pedagogy as a situated activity. in other words, language pedagogy became a set of alternatives to establish connections between language and their real-life issues. st1 and st2 manifested that there are many possibilities, and in any case, you will always have certain limitations where you work because you have to comply with things, things that the institution demands, be it a school, an institute, a university; however, i think that one learns to establish a balance between what one has to do, what one has to do in terms of an instructional part, and what one can actually accomplish with the students there. (st1, interview) it was a rejection first, but then the opportunity to negotiate was given. all kinds of negotiation, with myself, with the theory, with my students, etc. i did negotiation through dialogue. it became a lifestyle, i began to be critical in all aspects, it was no longer only in pedagogy, it was as i acted, as i thought that everything transcended as a way of life. (st2, interview) it can be noted that the emergence of tensions was mediated through negotiation. negotiation became a change in the lifestyle of the participants. the dialogical dimension relates to the attitude of the teachers towards knowing the students, establishing a dialogue through strategies and instruments that facilitate a direct interaction between the people involved in educational events. this is what in critical pedagogy is called “dialogue as a human phenomenon” (freire, 2002, p. 87). this constitutes an innovation for the participants of this study since their conceptions about language undergo a transition from seeing it as a system of linguistic forms and abilities to see it as revealing, constructing, and transforming relationships between people (pennycook, 1994). at first it was difficult because i did not understand well [what] critical pedagogy meant through the readings i was doing. later, i realized that the role of a teacher described in the readings of critical pedagogy had a realization when i did not stand in front of my students as if i wanted to fill them with the little or much i knew and thought could serve them. i also realized that being an instructor was totally different from being an educator. it was a very different thing. (st4, interview) in this extract st4 showed a dialectical dimension between the roles of instructor and educator. the universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras36 quintero polo dialectical view of pedagogy refers to the fact that what is taught does not necessarily correspond to what the students need or to what the students themselves end up learning according to their own needs and interests. st5 declared this about it: i work in a school where students are required to have a high grammatical knowledge so that they develop speaking. knowing that i have to teach the structures that are a requirement of the school is a shock since i do not want to do such thing, but i know i must do it. there is a fight that one has inside. i have to cover the topics that have to be covered but at the same time i try to take my students’ needs and wants into account. (interview) implicitly, st5 gave hints about two things: (a) the fact that there was a gap between the school (official) curriculum and a real-life curriculum and (b) language went from being a purpose to being a medium for exploring the human dimension of people. it implies that st5 also showed a struggle between what she had to do and what she wanted to do as a language teacher. this represents how the dialectical dimension critical pedagogy took place. efl student-teachers as novice critical researchers a description of some features of formative pedagogical and research projects contained in degree works (i.e., monographs) completed by the studentteachers serve the purpose to illustrate the shape that innovation took in the efl teacher education program of universidad distrital, and that led them to position themselves as critical authors and actors of their projects (table 5). the degree works that were considered here can be characterized as instances of qualitative research studies that focused on going beyond the implementation and evaluation of the effectiveness of efl instructional strategies. overall, the student-teachers’ proposals emerged from their personal interest in exploring and understanding the causes and consequences of pedagogical practices that they had either experienced or observed in their classrooms during their teaching practicum. table 5. characteristics of efl student-teachers’ critical research monographs qualitative and educational dimensions of research situated teaching practices novice teacher-researchers as observers researchable rather than teachable questions (freeman, 1998) theoretical constructs: self-interpretation and conceptualization research and pedagogical intervention design: means, not purpose data management & analysis in order to define the issues to work on, the novice teacher researchers went through a process of observation and reflection inside and outside their classrooms. such observation and reflective practice led them to think about aspects that transcended instructional matters and were related to social issues of their educational communities, the needs of their learners, and their own queries and interests as educators. from that point, they started to document, both practically and theoretically, the existence of genuine research problems, which in turn led the student-teachers to pose some research questions that could guide them along the process and that condensed their concerns. in general, they addressed researchable rather than teachable questions, which means that they were open-ended and redefined in the face of the data or with the insights resulting from retrospection (freeman, 1998). the problem and questions demanded from the student-teachers some conceptualization of related theoretical constructs. for this, they engaged in a process of reviewing specialized literature, both theory-based and research-based. it is possible to say that the literature review of the projects revealed the 37profile: issues teach. prof. dev., vol. 21 no. 1, jan-jun, 2019. issn 1657-0790 (printed) 2256-5760 (online). bogotá, colombia. pages 27-42 from utopia to reality: trans-formation of pedagogical knowledge in english language teacher education relationship that the authors established between the theoretical information and their own understanding of the phenomena under study. having the foundations of their studies, the studentteachers went through the research design of their projects. at this stage, they needed to decide on the type of data and units of analysis required for their research questions and the methods to gather such data. one aspect to highlight here is the fact that the research projects considered the voices of participants, such as introspections, testimonies, declarative statements, and so on, as data. some data collection methods included observations, interviews, journals, and artifacts, among others. the student-teachers considered different strategies for validity and reliability of the data management and analysis. in relation to the pedagogical component of the novice teacher researchers’ projects, it can be said that most of them had a pedagogical intervention design. it was closely related to the role of participant observers in their teaching settings. they acted as assistant english teachers at some public schools with learners from different grades, but they were allowed to design a syllabus and lessons that considered a set of instructional objectives and a variety of activities that helped to create an environment that served a dual purpose: language development and data collection. once the student-teachers had collected data, they moved to the next stage which was the analysis of such data. in doing so, the student-teachers identified and defined some categories intended to answer their research questions. such categories resulted from a detailed and systematic interpretation of the data in which they had previously spotted some relevant themes, established patterns, and found the commonalities among the information obtained by means of the different methods they had chosen. more than a mere description of findings, the analysis of the data in each degree work revealed the researchers’ interpretation and discussion of the relationships among themes with relevant support from an array of authors and research projects. in addition, it was perceived that in this section of the reports there was a constant acknowledgement of the participants’ voices, placing them, their life experiences, and their views regarding different topics at the core of the studies. in fact, some of the researchers did use literal phrases to name the categories of analysis and to show their participants’ perceptions more accurately. another outstanding issue in this exploration of the novice teacher researchers’ formative research studies is the connotation that language had. in their works, it was a common feature that language was not viewed as the end, but as the means for learners to convey meaning, establish social relations, share their views of the world, and make sense of what surrounded them. in addition, the student-teachers perceived language as a means for reaching their goals as educators and as a local practice, a social activity rather than a structure, a part of social and cultural life rather than an abstract entity, and the possession of a social group (pennycook, 2010). in relation to that, the english language was viewed as part of the responsibility of the student-teachers as efl teachers since it was related to the development of the language and literacy of their learners; nevertheless, they emphasized that the english language was only a code, a practical realization of their conception of language. either in their reflections, in the literature review, or in the design of the pedagogical content of their projects, the student-teachers mentioned learning through language, rather than learning about the language; to move from mechanical transactions to real communication, and to reach a higher level of interaction, discussion, and analysis inside their classrooms. in connection to the views of language, the studentteachers displayed some critical considerations about the roles of teachers and learners. they reflected upon the possibility of transforming their teaching practices by considering language as a means for social construction, for the empowerment of learners to take active part universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras38 quintero polo both inside and outside the classroom, and for taking into consideration the social context in which they and their learners were immersed. thus, it was found that they saw themselves and their pupils as social transformers willing to construct knowledge, rather than as passive people who were there to reproduce sanctioned patterns and ideas. the list of monographs in table 6 constitutes a non-exhaustive sample of the type of research experiences thought of, designed, and implemented within a transformative and critical framework. the complete manuscripts corresponding to each title can be consulted in the library of universidad distrital. concluding remarks as a way to answer the question posed for the study, it can be said that the implementation of transformations mediated by pedagogical and research agendas, such as the ones shown herein, were alternatives with high levels of sensitivity towards the socially associated issues in language education. they were alternatives that led the participants to perform as teachers without using infallible recipes, typical of traditional models (whitmore & goodman, 1996). the concept of language education was transformed by adopting a reflective-critical approach, where the student-teachers took an active, participatory, and critical position (kincheloe, 2004). they evaluated their beliefs about language, teaching, and learning. piñeros and quintero (2006) suggest introspection as a way to link abstraction and meaning making about different types of knowledge. while the student-teachers were constructing their knowledge about language, teaching, and learning, they felt the need to take a stand either for or against educational theories. the student-teachers’ positions served the table 6. degree works that account for trans-formation in an efl teacher education program authors title sanín, hurtado, & rojas (2015) an exploration of students’ demystification of stereotypes of north american culture celis & lópez (2014) tales that are not tales: promoting children’s rights through story-related tasks parra & bautista (2014) students’ artistic appreciation of society in the efl classroom alvarez & cortés (2013) students’ construction of identities through narratives rojas (2013) students at risk: building resiliency through reflective insights huertas & gordillo (2013) ecological awareness through literacy development cabezas, camacho, & flórez (2012) analyzing gender positioning in efl debates lópez & martínez (2012) mothers and children building up knowledge when doing english language homework: a conversation analysis huepa, rico, & perdomo (2011) the role that socio affective practices play in third graders’ autonomous learning álvarez & bello (2006) exploring efl student-teachers’ critical reflections through critical reflective practices montaño & valero (2006) an approach to sensitizing students’ positions about the social issues of bogotá through the use of el and audiovisual aids moreno & jimenez (2006) the generation of power relationships through the students’ oral interaction under the use of a task-based syllabus 39profile: issues teach. prof. dev., vol. 21 no. 1, jan-jun, 2019. issn 1657-0790 (printed) 2256-5760 (online). bogotá, colombia. pages 27-42 from utopia to reality: trans-formation of pedagogical knowledge in english language teacher education purpose of informing their decision-making for the benefit of their learners. “problem posing”, then, became more important than “problem solving” in the study. posing problems, which was driven by the search for alternatives to the “banking” system of education (freire, 2002), became illuminated by a view of education that sees curriculum as a life experience and not only as an array of academic spaces (quintero, 2003). another remark that can be made here is that the trans-formations mediated by pedagogical and research agendas took the shape of articles written by the student-teachers during and after the teaching practicum. table 7 shows some examples of those articles. to conclude this article, the study reported here served the purpose to add understanding about the participants’ pedagogical and research experiences as forms of intellectual activism and high levels of sensitivity towards the socially associated issues in language education. references 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(2005). critical pedagogy: notes from the real world. new york, us: pearson education. woodward, t. (1991). models and metaphors in language teacher training: loop input and other strategies. cambridge, uk: cambridge university press. about the author álvaro hernán quintero polo holds an ma in applied linguistics, universidad distrital francisco josé de caldas, and is currently culminating his doctorate in education at universidad santo tomás (colombia). he is a full-time professor of universidad distrital. he has taught in both undergraduate and graduate tefl programs of different colombian universities. he is co-director of the research group estudios críticos de políticas educativas colombianas. universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras42 quintero polo appendix: interview questions1 how did you mediate between theory and practice after knowing and discussing the reading materials in your classes of interdisciplinary seminar and pedagogical project? what have you done to achieve the objectives of negotiation and dialogue? one of the principles of critical pedagogy seeks autonomy for the student and for her/him to have a voice and participate. do you feel that you have achieved this with your students? yes or no? how? what does it mean for you being an instructor, as opposed to being an educator, in light of the content of the interdisciplinary seminar and pedagogical project courses? how did you handle the difference between the emphasis on the instructional dimension of teaching you received in the teaching practicum and the tenets of critical pedagogy with which you became acquainted in the subject of pedagogical project i? how did you manage the “official curriculum” to touch on critical issues? inside, how did you feel about the relationship between your beliefs about teaching and learning and what you should have done in school? how do you see the possibility of implementing the tenets of critical pedagogy in your current context? 1 the interview protocol was originally written in spanish. it was translated only for the purposes of this article. the interview was carried out in spanish, but the interviewees had the liberty to respond either in english or spanish. 43profile: issues teach. prof. dev., vol. 21 no. 1, jan-jun, 2019. issn 1657-0790 (printed) 2256-5760 (online). bogotá, colombia. pages 43-57 https://doi.org/10.15446/profile.v21n1.69239 efl teachers’ perspectives on the role of english in two mexican private universities perspectivas de docentes de inglés como lengua extranjera sobre el papel del inglés en dos universidades privadas mexicanas colette despagne1* benemérita universidad autónoma de puebla, puebla, mexico in mexican higher education, the spread of english has become a tool in the internationalization process of universities. however, language has been sidelined in the discourses of globalization and internationalization. hence, this ethnographic case study aims to look at the spread of english in mexican higher education through two private universities. it focuses on the universities’ internationalization process, and how english as a foreign language teachers perceive the role of english in this process. findings show that while english as a foreign language teachers support linguistic ideologies that promote the spread of english as a natural and apolitical phenomenon, at the same time they also warn of ideological implications such as language hierarchies, cultural homogenization, and english linguistic discrimination. key words: english as a foreign language, english language dominance, internationalization, linguistic ideologies, teaching english in mexico. la difusión del inglés en la educación superior mexicana se ha desarrollado como una herramienta para la internacionalización de las universidades. este estudio de caso etnográfico busca analizar la difusión de esta lengua en dos universidades privadas. el estudio se enfoca, por una parte, en el proceso de internacionalización de ambas universidades, y por otra, en cómo los maestros de inglés de dichas instituciones perciben el papel que juega el inglés en este proceso. los resultados muestran que, aunque los maestros apoyan ideologías lingüísticas que defienden la difusión del inglés como un fenómeno natural y apolítico, también advierten sobre las implicaciones ideológicas tales como las jerarquías lingüísticas, la homogenización cultural y la discriminación lingüística. palabras clave: dominación lingüística, enseñanza del inglés en méxico, ideologías lingüísticas, inglés como lengua extranjera, internacionalización. * e-mail: colette.despagne@gmail.com conacyt, the mexican research council, funded this research project during 2014-2015. how to cite this article (apa, 6th ed.): despagne, c. (2019). efl teachers’ perspectives on the role of english in two mexican private universities. profile: issues in teachers’ professional development, 21(1), 43-57. https://doi.org/10.15446/profile.v21n1.69239. this article was received on december 5, 2017 and accepted on september 24, 2018. this is an open access article distributed under the terms of the creative commons license attribution-noncommercial-noderivatives 4.0 international license. consultation is possible at https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/. universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras44 despagne introduction internationalization has become a buzzword for globalization in higher education (he) worldwide. in this context, the spread of english as the language of global communication has also become a tool in the internationalization process of universities, as it is a tool for world business and commerce. discussions about internationalization in he worldwide generally focus on the political, economic, socio-cultural, and academic dimensions. however, very few researchers focus on the linguistic aspects of internationalization (pratt, 2010). this is also the case of mexico. to this point in time, there has been no attempt to focus on the linguistic aspects of language teaching linked to processes of internationalization. hence, this work aims to illustrate the large and complex role that english plays in the process of internationalization in mexican universities. this paper specifically looks at the spread of english in mexican he through an ethnographic case study of two private universities which will be called universidad autónoma (ua) and universidad benemérita (ub) for the purpose of this paper. the research focuses on the universities’ internationalization process, and how english as a foreign language (efl) teachers perceive the role of english in this process. the paper intends to analyze the complexity of efl teachers’ perspectives towards english. in other words, where they situate themselves on the ideological continuum towards the spread of english. in sum, this work asks the following main research question: “how do efl teachers perceive the role of english in the internationalization process of their universities?” to answer this question, the paper first draws on understanding internationalization in he and how it relates to existing linguistic ideologies towards english. second, the role of english in mexico’s macro context, and its role in both micro contexts of the study, is analyzed. third, methodology is described, and finally, findings are presented and discussed. literature review globalization, internationalization, and language teaching globalization focuses on homogenization processes of social, cultural, technological, political, and ideological aspects of life facilitated by global communication industries, mostly controlled by american free-market interests and on global economic interdependence (maringe & foskett, 2010). after wwii, “a new mantra” had emerged in the united states and in the uk which would modernize former colonies: “western values, western institutions, western capital and western technology. only by westernizing could former colonies hope to achieve a modern future” (robertson, 2003, p. 182). english would be an important tool in this homogenization and modernization mission. and for universities, to modernize is to internationalize. internationalization refers to the strategy used by universities to respond to the influence of globalization in their educational areas. the process of internationalization of mexican he mainly aims to prepare global citizens, “a type of graduate required in the global world” (maringe & foskett, 2010, p. 27), who meet the requirements of the “new work order” developed in the 90’s, that is, deregulated, hyper-competitive, post-industrial, and globalized new economy (gee, hull, & lankshear, 1996). one of the key requirements for global citizens is to bring with them transferable “key” skills, “among which oral communication skills are ranked as particularly important” (cameron, 2002, p. 73). central to the internationalization processes of he, specifically in mexico, is student mobility which focuses on the creation of double degrees and exchange programs, mainly with the western world, and on increasing foreign language learning, mainly english. as a result, the teaching of english as an international language for all mexican universities who aim to prepare “global citizens” for the global world becomes the norm. as most international programs now offer content teaching in 45profile: issues teach. prof. dev., vol. 21 no. 1, jan-jun, 2019. issn 1657-0790 (printed) 2256-5760 (online). bogotá, colombia. pages 43-57 efl teachers' perspectives on the role of english in two mexican private universities english, even in non-anglophone universities, such as programs in france, turkey, or mexico (jenkins, 2014), mexican students need to acquire a high competency level in english to be able to participate in international student mobility programs, or even to attend classes in their home institutions. according to le ha (2013), this is also the case in japanese universities where the over-promotion of english “has been driven by the nation building agenda that tends to undermine local languages” (p. 160). learning languages other than english does not seem so important anymore. because of the internationalization of mexican he and the increasing influence of english in mexico, language departments in mexican universities seem to grow into mostly english language departments where english is becoming the only important language to be taught. it is therefore specifically important to understand efl teachers’ ideologies towards english, first, because ideologies represent cultural systems of ideas about social and linguistic relationships linked to moral and political interests (irvine, 2012), and second, because teachers’ ideologies may influence students’ perceptions. english language ideologies language ideologies are generally defined as sets of beliefs about languages. they help to explain why certain languages play the role they do “in the production and reproduction of the social order and of the moral order that legitimates it” (heller, 2010, p. 102). hence, these beliefs can be perceived as neutral or as critical, depending on the authors’ affiliation. beliefs about the spread of english vary in the academic realm, moving on a continuum from (1) the adoption of english as a natural phenomenon driven by economic, political, and cultural forces outside the control of a single group to (2) “a critical and political analysis” of its effects (pennycook, 2000, p. 108). (3) a third in-between position is expressed by scholars who analyze the spread of english in relation with other languages. (1) researchers who adhere to the first ideology generally view the spread of english as inherently good for the world, and that both nature and function of the language lead english to be superior to other languages. this liberalistic approach perceives english as a medium of international communication which is due to the number of non-native speakers, and is the result of two periods of world domination by english speaking nations, that is, british imperialism and the economic influence of the united states. de swaan (2002) and van parijs (2011) may best endorse this liberal ideology. they perceive english as a lingua franca and as an instrument for fostering democracy and progress. de swaan argues that it is only rational and natural that people want to learn english because it allows small linguistic communities to communicate with the rest of the world and to increase labor opportunities. van parijs regards english as a tool for the european integration. it allows everybody to communicate in a fair and egalitarian way. it is a lingua franca which lies over and above existing national and regional languages. both de swan and van parijs reject the existence of a link between language and culture. according to them, culture can be expressed through any language. adopting english as an intercultural communication language does not mean adopting the values and world perspectives originally expressed through this language. (2) the second ideology emphasizes the risks of adopting a single language, specifically english, by focusing on its political implications in relation to linguistic ecology, linguistic imperialism, language rights, and the role of english in postcolonial contexts. grin (2005), ives (2006) and phillipson (2009) may best endorse the critical end of the continuum. grin analyzes the negative economic repercussions of the global adoption of english on non-english speakers whereas ives highlights the need to take into consideration the cultural and symbolic values conveyed through languages, and specifically through english. all three, grin, ives, and phillipson think that the adoption of english is not a universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras46 despagne free choice based exclusively on rational considerations. it is, according to them, the consequence of a political and military power of the people who speak it as a first language. this critical approach shows “the importance of language as an essential component of the culture using it, and that culture and language are inextricably intertwined” (european commission, 2011, p. 40). they advocate for multilingualism as the only viable way to prevent anglo-american values and culture from being imposed together with the use of english. hence, they call for the development of multilingual competence, english being desirable for specific purposes. (3) an in-between ideology in relation to the spread of english is supported by crystal (1997, 2000) and graddol (1997, 2006). their approach is diametrically opposed to de swaan’s as they also develop an ecological approach of languages. this in-between ideology is in keeping with the second ideology because both favor multilingualism and believe that languages define a specific world view and a unique system of knowledge that should be maintained. the disappearance of a language is an irremediable loss for humanity because with it, a whole culture and a whole system of values are lost. however, in opposition to the third ideology, the second ideology is rooted in critical theories which analyze the power relationships and cultural and symbolic effects of language. crystal and graddol recognize that the supremacy of english is the consequence of power and prestige enjoyed by the nations speaking it, even though crystal (1997) thinks that it is an “evident reality” (p. 28) which is now independent from any social control. this perspective also believes that english does not only “belong” to western powers anymore. many other nations express their cultural identities through english which can be observed in the writings of postcolonial and refugee narratives (shemak, 2013). the voices in these narratives express their own specific worldview through the use of the english language. english has therefore to be accepted and language diversity has to be safeguarded. in sum, the spread of english has been positioned on a continuum from a conservative perspective on one side, to a critical perspective on the other. those who favor the spread of english as a lingua franca and detach it from any cultural aspects warn against the risks of multilingualism. on the contrary, those who analyze its spread from a critical perspective call attention of the homogenization of the world through the use of a single language, and therefore favor multilingualism. it is important to mention at this point that people’s beliefs and ideologies are fluid. depending on the context and the circumstances, they can easily move in-between the continuum. language ideologies, like any other kind of ideologies, are social beliefs shaped in cultural settings which can change in time and space (irvine, 2012). hence, to understand efl teachers’ beliefs about the role of english, we also need to understand the role of english in mexico’s macro context and its role in both university settings as shown next. context english in mexico officially, mexico is a pluricultural country with approximately 68 indigenous languages spoken by 7.1% of the population (inegi, 2000), even though 27% of the indigenous languages are endangered (flores, 2008). spanish is the nation’s de facto language used in all official domains. mexico is also home to several european languages, mainly because of european immigration. however, english is the main foreign language which has been inserted in mexico’s linguistic ecology with great success. it is very difficult to find private institutions that offer indigenous language classes whereas english language classes are found on nearly every street corner (despagne, 2010). only a few public institutions offer the teaching of mexican indigenous languages as a second language such as the universidad autónoma de méxico, the universidad politécnica nacional, the universidad auntónoma de querétaro, or the univer47profile: issues teach. prof. dev., vol. 21 no. 1, jan-jun, 2019. issn 1657-0790 (printed) 2256-5760 (online). bogotá, colombia. pages 43-57 efl teachers' perspectives on the role of english in two mexican private universities sidad autónoma benito juárez de oaxaca. the research and the teaching of indigenous languages in mexico are mainly focused on indigenous people, through the creation of bilingual intercultural education programs, and are totally disassociated from the research and teaching of foreign languages. this may be due to the power relations between languages and cultures in the mexican context (despagne, 2015). in mexico, english is the language of commodity because through english, mexicans hope to get better paying jobs, a higher social status, and the chance to travel, study, or live abroad. english has been inserting itself in the mexican sociolinguistic context with an increasing potency since december 1994 when the government signed nafta, the north american free trade agreement (pellicer, 1995). even though the nafta agreement is being renegotiated at this time, one of the aims of the ministry of education is to make mexico bilingual in spanish and english in 10 years (secretaría de educación pública, 2017). hence, every day english becomes more powerful in mexico, specifically in the system of education. in mexican education, priority is given to english, both in the private as well as in the public sector. no other foreign language is imposed as mandatory. on a university level, english is mainly associated with the internationalization of higher education which became a key catchphrase and strategy in universities’ marketing strategies. such is the case in the two universities analyzed in this work. english in both universities the ua is a private university with about 16,000 students. it offers 43 different undergraduate programs and more than 50 graduate programs. as for today, the internationalization department of the university offers many different exchange programs to 16 different countries, 21 faculty led programs, one double degree at the ba level, and six double degrees at the postgraduate level, most of them in anglophone countries. since the creation of the university in 1970, english is mandatory, and today, all students must obtain 550 toefl points in order to graduate. english is taught as a foreign language from a1 to b2 levels according to the common european framework of reference (cefr) scales. the language department uses course books edited in the united states by mcgraw hill such as interactions (hartmann & kirn, 2007) and adopts the american council on the teaching of foreign languages (actfl) as a reference framework, which does follow a clear monolingual perspective. since 1996, students can also study french, german, italian, portuguese, or chinese as a second choice. no indigenous language is offered. moreover, since 2011, to increase students’ efl levels to attract foreign students and therefore to support the internationalization process of the university, several content classes are also given through the medium of english. ua professors who give their class in english instead of spanish obtain a pay raise and other related benefits. however, the university does not support them to give scaffolded instruction through the medium of english, that is, a variety of instructional techniques which move students progressively towards learning in spanish to learning in english. in 2014, 56 content courses were given in english. according to the study abroad coordinator, the university reached a peak in 2013 with 73 courses given in english, but the process seems to increase very slowly as content teachers are not prepared to teach their courses in english, and students are not prepared to learn academic content in english instead of spanish. the second university in this research is ub, specifically the campus ub-puebla, which is accredited by sacs (southern association of colleges and schools), a u.s. association which supports international recognition of graduate studies. ub’s vision is to form human leaders who are internationally competitive. it is one of mexico’s biggest private and most expensive universities with 31 campuses in mexico, 13 headquarters and nine additional offices worldwide. english is taught from a1 to b2 levels as well. ub uses course books which are generally edited universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras48 despagne in the uk such as the book series global (clandfield & benne, 2011). all students at ub must obtain a b2 level in the bulats (business language testing service) exam developed by cambridge, a business english exam which aims to prepare students to use english language skills for success in business and industry. students at ub can study only french, german, or italian if they can prove having obtained a b2 level in english. studying any other foreign language at ub is a right a student has to acquire through a high english proficiency level, and not a human right to universal knowledge, or a right to multilingual competence. to support processes of internationalization, ub also offers content teaching in english, instead of spanish. like at ua, the linguistic shift at ub from spanish to english as a medium of instruction is not clearly guided by scaffolded instruction. both universities, ua and ub-puebla, follow the guidelines of internationalization by favoring student mobility, content classes in english, and a high level of english competency, generally at the expenses of other languages. english teachers and students at ua and ubpuebla largely outweigh teachers and students in other international languages. language departments at both universities are mainly english language departments which seek to develop global citizens with global english communication skills as referred to in the theoretical part of the paper. method like culture, language is an open, dynamic system closely connected to human social life (hymes, 1980). as a result, ethnographic studies of language in education, like this one, must “be deeply contextualized and conducted in situ over an expanded period of time” (mccarty, 2014, p. 24). i therefore used an ethnographic case study as the preferred strategy because the case focuses on a particular situation, represented by efl teachers’ perspectives towards english which is then linked to a wider contemporary event, that is, the internationalization phenomenon of he. in addition, the approach is ethnographic because i not only observed efl teachers, but also engaged actively in both settings by observing everyday social life (reeves, peller, goldman, & kitto, 2013). at the ua, i worked as the director of the language department from 2004 to 2010, and at the ub as an efl teacher from 2014 to 2017. ethnographic methods are often described as experiencing (participant observation), enquiring (interviewing), and examining (analyzing documents and artifacts) (wolcott, 2008, pp. 48-50). participant observation allowed me to learn through the involvement in the day-to-day activities of participants in the research settings which is, according to mccarty (2014), the starting point of ethnographic research. through participant observation, i also engaged in the social situation, observed the activities, people, and physical aspects of the situation, and recorded these observations in field notes from 2004 to 2017. as a result, i used multiple data collection tools to triangulate data which included the examination and analysis of universities’ linguistic policies, the experiencing of the context and the enquiring and formal and informal interviewing of university efl teachers and administrators. the formal interviews with efl teachers at both universities were based on a prepared theoretical structured framework and lasted one month in 2014. interviews with administrators, and additional teachers, were informal and occurred between 2004 and 2017, which i recorded as field notes. both sets of interviews allowed me to focus on the participants’ points of view (mccarty, 2014). working in both universities gave me the opportunity to experience the context and observe it from the inside. hence, my analysis is based on both emic and etic perspectives which are essential in ethnographic accounts (patton, 2002). the emic perspective allowed me to understand the language policies and how efl teachers and administrators perceive and categorize the world in both contexts. the etic perspective allowed me to shift the 49profile: issues teach. prof. dev., vol. 21 no. 1, jan-jun, 2019. issn 1657-0790 (printed) 2256-5760 (online). bogotá, colombia. pages 43-57 efl teachers' perspectives on the role of english in two mexican private universities focus from local observations and interpretations to theoretical ones referred to in the literature review. i selected formal interview participants based on their willingness to participate. therefore, three teachers in each university (five women and one man) participated in semi-structured interviews which took place in november 2014 and lasted approximately two hours (see interview guide in appendix). female language teachers outweigh men language teachers in both university settings. all of them have worked as efl teachers in these institutions for more than ten years. the names used in this paper are all pseudonyms. to analyze the interviews, i used a two steps inductive approach (patton, 2002). first, i did “in vivo coding” and looked for typologies, themes, or categories defined by the participants themselves, such as access, richness, or hierarchies. inductive constructed knowledge is fundamental in ethnographic approaches because it allows working from empirical evidence to theory (blommaert & jie, 2010). second, i introduced analystconstructed typologies (patton, 2002), that is, i tried to make explicit patterns that appear to exist but which are not perceived by the participants themselves by linking their themes and categories with the ideologies surrounding the spread of english. however, findings of this work cannot be generalized. to do so, multiple case studies should be organized in private and public universities all over the country. the above mentioned design led to the following findings. findings findings show that efl teachers’ beliefs in relation to the role of english in the internationalization process of their universities are convoluted. their beliefs are involved on different levels of the english language ideology continuum at the same time. on one side, they develop a liberal approach which advocates that english is a rational choice, and at the same time, they question some negative consequences of the spread of english in their context. teachers’ liberal approach: english as a rational choice the easiness of english according to victoria, it is rational to learn english because it is easy to learn.1 yes, i love the language, i love teaching it because i feel that it is a necessity and we are offering students a tool with which they can develop themselves . . . i got totally immersed in it. i feel that it is an easy language, it is very easy to learn it. her statement is confirmed by luisa who added: so, a lot of people here in mexico want to learn english, and in other countries, to be able to work in the us. they feel it offers some more opportunities, and a better future. and it is a relatively easy language to learn compared to spanish, to french, to other languages, i think english is pretty easy. ruth also confirmed the idea of english being an easy language: i think [english] is an easy language. the grammar is very easy. it’s easier than the spanish or french grammar. it’s less complicated than the spanish one where there are many different tenses. in addition, english is a very clear language. it’s not like in spanish where we dress everything up. in english, you go straight to the point. this feature is further confirmed by natalia who stated that “i feel that the structure [of english] is perfect. it’s like everything fits perfectly together”. english is seen as an easy and a perfect language which reflects the discourse of global communication based on western norms, and a western system which is perceived as logical, good, and effective (cameron, 2002). as a result, it seems that for efl teachers english is superior compared to other languages because of its linguistic norms. in addition, for some efl teachers like irwin, english represents almost everything. according 1 all quotes are originally in spanish, except luisa’s and jorge’s, and were translated into english for publication purposes. universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras50 despagne to him, english is “extremely basic now. it’s like to know how to use a computer”. those who do not speak english are deprived of something important in their lives. it’s a “requisite for life” as expressed by lupita who states that those who do not manage to use computers and do not speak english are “global illiterates”: they can be global illiterates even though they can read in their home language. if you can’t read in english and can’t use new technologies, globally, you are illiterate because you will not be able to communicate with the world. consequently, since the language is easy to learn, perfect, clear, direct, and basic, interviewed efl teachers perceive english as “an official language, an international language, or a lingua franca” as stated by victoria who focuses on the fact that english is the language of global unity (cameron, 2002). in other words, english is the language that unifies international diversity because, as expressed by lupita, “it is the language that all foreigners have in common”. english is viewed as a unifying force. the superiority of english efl teachers also claimed the superiority of english by referring to what the language consists of compared to other languages. the six teachers interviewed mainly point out knowledge, pedagogical resources, technology, research in language teaching, and internationally recognized editors in relation to efl textbooks. irwin said “tons of information has [sic] been written in english. many books our students have to read are written in english”. victoria added that “the most important papers, technological, research papers are mostly written in english”. hence, english represents knowledge and technology. this “having power” (phillipson, 2009) is translated by better teaching methodologies, more pedagogical resources, and experienced editors who guarantee efl teaching materials. victoria mentioned that: “efl teaching needs experienced people with teaching methodology. they need the cambridge teachers’ certificate”. she also mentioned that “here [in mexico], we are new in this, and cambridge works on this since many, many years [sic] and is well experienced. we need to acquire their knowledge”. ruth added that “all the big universities [like cambridge] who are creating teaching materials can help the entire world to speak english. they specialized in this”. according to ruth, efl teaching, in opposition to the teaching of other languages, is much more organized. in language departments, english faculties are generally much more organized; their processes are clearer because teaching english as a second language is bigger than french for example. i am not sure if there is research in teaching french or german. based on this quote, ruth shows the superiority of english teaching over any other language. according to her, only the field of efl carries out research on teaching methodologies; no other language possesses this knowledge. for lupita, mexican schools and universities import teaching material from english speaking core countries because they are the ones who know the language better and because they have more publishing houses. by the same token, as reported by natalia, big publishing houses like cambridge “are recognized in the united kingdom, in the united states, and internationally”. as a result, efl teachers pointed out the superiority of the english language compared to other languages, even international languages, based on better teaching methodologies, more and better research, and internationally recognized publishing houses who publish high qualitative resources. the richness of english efl teachers also identify english as a rich language because it is the language of access. first, it gives access to higher standards of living, mainly through more and better job opportunities; second, access to knowledge and its dissemination on an international level, and third, access to globalization and internationalization as mentioned in the following quotes. 51profile: issues teach. prof. dev., vol. 21 no. 1, jan-jun, 2019. issn 1657-0790 (printed) 2256-5760 (online). bogotá, colombia. pages 43-57 efl teachers' perspectives on the role of english in two mexican private universities first, according to irwin, “english opens a lot of doors and jobs. they hire people just because of english” and “the biggest motivation to learn english is the immediate future of the person”. for irwin, english gives access to the united states and offers families a better quality of life. in the same vein, lupita added the higher the english level, the better job opportunities students will get: “if there are two candidates for the same position, companies will choose the candidate with a better english knowledge”. as a result, not only the language itself is important, but also the level of competency. second, english gives access to, and dissemination of, knowledge. as reported by natalia, english gives access “to be able to study other materials written in english. most of the bibliography students have to study is written in english. the class may not be in english, but the bibliography is”. consequently, if students do not understand english, they will have a more limited access to knowledge. in addition, ruth explains that knowledge in english is also related to dissemination “because as we said, all the information comes in english. so, if i want to publish my work on a global level, it has to be in english; there is no other way”. as a result, english not only seems to give access to knowledge, but also to the dissemination of mexican knowledge on the international stage. the third and last feature, english gives access to, according to the efl teachers interviewed, is globalization and internationalization. for efl teachers, english is the language of commodity which makes it a language of access to the new world economy (heller, 2010). to access the “new world”, students have to get international mainly through student mobility and by attending content classes in english in mexico and abroad. according to lupita, english is neither a second nor a foreign language in mexico. she created her own community of practice by calling it “a professional language”. it is utilitarian in nature (baker, 2001) because it allows students to become global citizens who meet the requirements of the new work order (maringe & foskett, 2010). lupita also added that english is the basic requirement for participating in exchange programs: the language students require for any exchange program is english. based on their level of english, they get access (or not) to universities in other countries . . . they first ask them to have a certain english level because, once there, they will be able to socialize with others, and then they can learn french [or any other language]. natalia confirms by stating: the only foreign language students are required to master is english, even if they do not go to english speaking countries. they need to speak english because they will take their classes in english. if they go to germany, they will attend classes in english, not in german. as a result, english represents a crucial instrumental tool; in other words, a rational choice which allows students to become global citizens who communicate in a fair and egalitarian way. this rational choice seems to be based on liberal arguments which may partly follow de swaan’s (2002) and van parij’s (2011) approach. however, in opposition to this liberal approach, it is interesting to observe that interviewed efl teachers also perceive that the use of english leads to different power relationships, and that it may not be a neutral language at all, as analyzed next. teachers’ critical approach efl teachers’ critiques against the spread of english in mexico revolve around the hierarchy of languages at universities, feelings of imposition of english, and finally discriminative practices in english content teaching classes. language hierarchies efl teachers perceive a clear hierarchy of languages, not only in mexico in general, but also at the university. referring to indigenous languages, ruth mentioned that: languages are not equal because people do not perceive indigenous people as equal. if we would see them as equal, their languages universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras52 despagne would be more important. we don’t even speak them. we perceive them as less valuable . . . and english, because it is global, people perceive it as more valuable. to speak a foreign language is more important than speaking an indigenous language. the division seems clear. indigenous languages are devalued because of the internal discrimination towards indigenous people while foreign languages are highly valued because of their cultural capital, that is, a cultural knowledge that confers power and status (bourdieu, 1982). at the university, the hierarchy of languages seems even clearer. ub-puebla and ua offer german, french, and italian in addition to english. no indigenous language is offered. irwin expressed that: other languages than english are important as we offer them, but the amount of students is different. we do have german and french students, but they would never reach the amount of english students we have. and this is historical. ir win’s feeling is confirmed by the numbers mentioned in the contextual part. the drastic disproportion between english and other languages is intensified through the already quoted internal rules at ub. hence, the possibility of studying other languages is a privilege that has had to be acquired since 2012. this rule decreased enrollments in french, german, and italian which is confirmed by natalia who stated that: yes, we had more groups of french, german, and italian. not much more, but they were clearly affected by the mandatory b2 level in english required to enroll in these languages. many students do not reach that level and must study more english. languages are clearly hierarchized at both universities. english linguistic dominance is fueled by the requirements of high competency in order to study any other language. language is not a choice anymore, but an imposition of the university. this imposition also follows other patterns as shown next. imposition efl teachers perceive two different kinds of imposition. first, they feel that english is imposed socially, and second culturally. efl teachers like luisa feel that english is imposed on students because it is mandatory; however, she feels that: students are definitively interested in what the united states has, the knowledge and the techniques they have and bring it back here. the university and different coordinators are really pushing the students to learn english, to get high scores so they can go [to the united states]. it looks that the end game is that, go to work a couple of years, learn the techniques, learn the technology, and bring it back. according to luisa, this social imposition of english seems to lead to ongoing colonial relationships where knowledge is imported from central countries and is used and copied in periphery countries like mexico. in this way, the imposition of english in universities maintains the continuous reconstitution of structural inequalities between the us and mexico (phillipson, 2009). efl teachers also perceive the imposition of english on a cultural level which leads to a homogenization of the world. for ruth, the spread of english may: not always be good because it not only aims everyone to learn english, but it also intends everyone to have the same ideas. i truly think it is good to get to know different points of view through the learning of languages, but i do not accept when they want us all to think in the same way, like in a globalized world. in other words, what ruth regrets is the cultural homogenization of the world through the learning of english which is confirmed by natalia when she states that: “the negative part of english is that it invades too many cultures . . . we adopt too many models from other countries, festivities like halloween for example”. as a result, luisa, ruth, and natalia criticize the imposition of english on a social and cultural level which not only maintains unequal relations between center and periphery countries, but also pervades the culture of 53profile: issues teach. prof. dev., vol. 21 no. 1, jan-jun, 2019. issn 1657-0790 (printed) 2256-5760 (online). bogotá, colombia. pages 43-57 efl teachers' perspectives on the role of english in two mexican private universities these periphery countries. as shown in the following lines, these unequal relations are also expressed through linguistic discrimination practices at the university. linguistic discrimination internationalization in mexican universities, as mentioned above, specifically aims to create global citizens ready to interact in the “new work order” defined by gee et al. (1996) earlier. to develop universities’ internationalization and, as a result, the required communication skills for this new order, on the one hand, mexican universities increasingly require their students to read academic papers in english, and on the other, develop content classes through the use of english. in other words, ub and ua teach part of their courses in english, as mentioned by natalia and lupita. in addition, both universities also use theoretical references written in english. however, teachers who require their students to read papers in english and who teach their classes in english, generally do so without any specific pedagogical preparation to scaffold their students’ learning in the new language which leads to discriminative practices as the one expressed by ruth: at the campus, some teachers ask students to read papers in english. that’s ok, but the problem is that it is not structured in any way. a student of mine, for example, who studies efl on a basic level has to read very long papers in english . . . it shouldn’t be like that. it should be step by step. they should link english content classes to our language department. we should work together to scaffold learning. in addition, students who attend content classes in english have different efl levels. some are advanced, and others have very basic levels of english and do not understand anything. there’s one specific student i remember who failed a class because she had to answer the final exam in english. she was in her second semester! this is a very emblematic case because she failed just because of english. this is not fair! ruth also added that “the university requires teachers to become international, and they try to do so, but they do not know how to do it”. these excerpts show that the lack of teacher training to prepare universities’ teachers to teach in english may lead to discriminative practices based on students’ efl competency levels. in this case, students with high competency levels of english have more possibilities of understanding the lecture and passing the exam of a specific content class than those with lower levels. in both universities, content classes in english are not organized. teachers who feel confident give classes in english, but the competency level of students in the foreign language is not taken into account, nor is the scaffolding of their learning. in summary, even though interviewed efl teachers believe in the superiority of english based on liberal arguments, they do critique aspects of the language and of its use which shows the complexity of their linguistic ideologies. efl teachers—and administrators—at both universities are aware of linguistic hierarchies which favor the rise of english and decrease other languages in university language departments. teachers critique the social and cultural imposition of the language and perceive practices of discrimination in the process of english content teaching supporting internationalization. as a result, even though efl teachers seem to believe that english is a rational choice, they also consider the cultural and symbolic values conveyed through the language. discussion and conclusion as shown in the findings, efl teachers’ ideologies at both universities are indeed complex and intricated. efl teachers possess liberal linguistic ideologies that support the idea that the spread of english is an evident reality, a position that perceives english as a functional tool for pragmatic purposes. at both universities, efl teachers trumpet the benefits of english over other languages. they argue its superiority through arguments related to the nature of the english language (easy, clear, and straight); to better teaching methodologies, better research and internationally recognized publishing houses; and to arguments which show that english gives access to higher universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras54 despagne standards of living, access to and dissemination of knowledge, and access to a globalized world. this shows that for efl teachers interviewed, english is a language of commodity, a feature of late capitalism where language is characterized as an exchangeable material good which provides symbolic added-value (heller, 2010). english, in this context, may be the major value-added symbol which gives access to global citizenship. it seems that it has become an almost invisible discourse of symbolic domination (blackledge & pavlenko, 2001). by giving access to global citizenship, mexican universities also seem to indirectly support linguistic imperialism (phillipson, 2009) by maintaining and promoting the dominance of english through a system of material and institutional structures, such as processes of internationalization, and through ideological positions, such as the ones shown in the findings of this research. in other words, ua and ub-puebla universities believe in “english as a lingua franca”. however, teachers’ ideologies seem to be far more complicated than that because findings show that efl teachers voice the critical side of the ideological continuum as well. they indeed perceive a link between language and culture which leads to political implications in the spread of english. they do not criticize internationalization as such, but rather warn about some of its negative effects, such as linguistic hierarchies, cultural homogenization, and linguistic discrimination based on english competency. in addition, they perceive that due to universities’ linguistic policies, and their internationalization processes, the hierarchy of languages causes some “international” languages to become increasingly less important in mexican he. indigenous languages are non-existent mainly because of internal racism. the linguistic ecology at ua and ub-puebla is dominated by english. this imposition of english in content classes may lead, according to efl teachers, to linguistic discrimination. students who do not reach high standards of english are failed because they do not understand the class in english. to conclude, findings show that internationalization of both universities seem to favor english linguistic dominance and that its use in content classes needs to be better prepared. content teachers who teach their topic in english need to receive specific teacher training on how to teach in a foreign language. in addition, universities should take advantage of the complexity of teachers’ ideologies whose beliefs travel all along the ideological continuum. even though they support english as a global language, they also seem to be critically aware of some of the negative effects english and internationalization might have. hence, mexican he should take advantage of efl teachers’ critical awareness to beware of an “only english” internationalization process of he and to support multilingual competence in universities. efl teachers are the ones who can promote what fairclough (2014) calls “critical language awareness”, that is, the understanding of social, political, and ideological aspects of language. it is insufficient to teach students to use “appropriate” language, in this case english, without considering why that language is preferred and who defines this decision. mexican he should foster teachers’ responsibility to analyze and make visible the hierarchy of values in which english enjoys superiority within mexican he, and look for alternative practices that may enhance linguistic ecology in mexico. references baker, c. (2001). foundations of bilingual education and bilingualism. bristol, uk: multilingual matters. blackledge, a., & pavlenko, a. (2001). negotiation of identities in multilingual contexts. international journal of bilingualism, 5(3), 243-257. https://doi.org/10.1177/1367 0069010050030101. blommaert, j., & jie, d. (2010). ethnographic fieldwork: a beginner’s guide. bristol, uk: multilingual matters. https:// doi.org/10.21832/9781847692962. bourdieu, p. (1982). ce que parler veut dire : l’économie des échanges linguistiques. paris, fr : éditions fayard. 55profile: issues teach. prof. dev., vol. 21 no. 1, jan-jun, 2019. issn 1657-0790 (printed) 2256-5760 (online). bogotá, colombia. pages 43-57 efl teachers' perspectives on the role of english in two mexican private universities cameron, d. (2002). globalization and the teaching of ‘communication skills’. in d. block & d. cameron (eds), globalization and language teaching (pp. 67-82). london, uk: routledge. clandfield, l., & benne, r. r. 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(2017). los fines de la educación en el siglo xxi. méxico: autor. shemak, a. (2013). postcolonial refugee narratives. in i. ness (ed.), the encyclopedia of global human migration. hoboken, us: john wiley & sons. https:// doi.org/10.1002/9781444351071.wbeghm422. van parijs, p. (2011). linguistic justice for europe and for the world. new york, us: oxford universit y press. https://doi.org/10.1093/ac prof:o sobl/9780199208876.001.0001. wolcott, h. f. (2008). ethnography: a way of seeing. lanham, us: rowman & littlefield. about the author colette despagne is professor and researcher at the benemérita universidad autónoma de puebla (mexico). she is plurilingual, french, and has lived in mexico for many years. she completed her phd in canada and has published in several international journals. her research interests focus around topics related to language, identity, and power in mexico. acknowledgments i would like to acknowledge dr. josé jorge gómez izquierdo for his insightful and critical view which significantly contributed to the final result of this paper. 57profile: issues teach. prof. dev., vol. 21 no. 1, jan-jun, 2019. issn 1657-0790 (printed) 2256-5760 (online). bogotá, colombia. pages 43-57 efl teachers' perspectives on the role of english in two mexican private universities appendix: semi-guided interview teacher’s name: institution: date: 1. what is english for you? 2. what do you feel when we talk about english? 3. why do you teach english? what do you like about teaching english? 4. what do you think about the spread of english worldwide, and specifically in mexico? 5. why do you think english got so popular? 6. what available resources do you have to teach with? a. what teaching materials do you use? where does the material come from? b. would you use material edited in mexico? why and why not? c. do you get teacher training? where does it come from? 7. to what does english give one access to? 8. do you perceive english as a neutral language? 9. do you allow other languages in your classroom to better understand english? 151profile vol. 19, no. 2, july-december 2017. issn 1657-0790 (printed) 2256-5760 (online). bogotá, colombia. pages 151-163 http://dx.doi.org/10.15446/profile.v19n2.60652 motivating and demotivating factors for students with low emotional intelligence to participate in speaking activities factores motivantes y desmotivantes identificados en estudiantes con inteligencia emocional baja a participar en actividades orales mariza g. méndez lópez* moisés bautista tun** universidad de quintana roo, chetumal, mexico the study aims to understand what factors may motivate and demotivate students with low emotional intelligence to participate in speaking activities during english class. participants wrote an emotions journal to identify factors affecting student participation and were then interviewed at the end of the study period in order to elaborate on their experiences. results showed that male participants experienced a wide range of negative emotions while females experienced a reduced number. however, in comparison, women experienced negative emotions frequently while men experienced them occasionally. results also showed that males and females differed in the way that they perceived and faced situations, and in how they regulated the emotions generated by these situations. key words: emotional intelligence, foreign language learning, motivation, speaking skills. este estudio tiene como objetivo entender los factores que pueden motivar y desmotivar a estudiantes con inteligencia emocional baja a participar en actividades orales en sus clases de inglés. los participantes escribieron un diario para identificar los factores que afectaron su participación y fueron entrevistados al final del estudio con el propósito de profundizar en sus experiencias de aprendizaje. los resultados mostraron que los hombres sienten una amplia gama de emociones negativas mientras que las mujeres experimentaron un número reducido de estas, aunque con mayor frecuencia que los hombres. los hombres y las mujeres se diferencian en la forma en que perciben y enfrentan situaciones, y en cómo regulan las emociones originadas por estas. palabras clave: aprendizaje de lenguas extranjeras, habilidad oral, inteligencia emocional, motivación. * e-mail: marizam@uqroo.edu.mx ** e-mail: 0809303@uqroo.edu.mx how to cite this article (apa, 6th ed.): méndez lópez, m. g., & bautista tun, m. (2017). motivating and demotivating factors for students with low emotional intelligence to participate in speaking activities. profile issues in teachers’ professional development, 19(2), 151-163. http://dx.doi.org/10.15446/profile.v19n2.60652. this article was received on october 22, 2016, and accepted on april 28, 2017. this is an open access article distributed under the terms of the creative commons license attribution-noncommercial-noderivatives 4.0 international license. consultation is possible at http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/. universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras152 méndez lópez & bautista tun introduction learning a foreign language requires investment in the practice of linguistic skills. the skill of speaking in the target language has been revealed as being the most challenging for language learners due to its interactive nature (harumi, 2011; méndez, 2011; woodrow, 2006; zhang & head, 2010). students learning english as a foreign language (efl) in a non-english speaking country have limited opportunities to practice their speaking skills compared to those doing so in an englishspeaking country (zhang, 2009). although language learners recognise the importance of oral practice to achieve communicative competence, linguistic problems (harumi, 2011) and the reactions they trigger (méndez & fabela, 2014) often cause students to avoid oral participation or remain passive when they are asked to express their ideas or opinions in language class. some studies have reported that most language learners are concerned about making pronunciation or grammar mistakes when participating in classes because they fear teachers’ negative judgement or their peers’ mockery (kitano, 2001; méndez & peña, 2013; yan & horwitz, 2008). xie (2010) and zhang and head (2010) carried out two studies in china and found that “the reticence to speak or participate in classroom activities, usually attributed to the cultural and educational environment in which learners have developed, is positively affected by the controlling teaching practices imposed on students and not by culture” (méndez, 2011, p. 54). this is supported by motivation theories that suggest that teachers who exercise authority and control in the classroom affect students’ motivation negatively whereas if teachers are flexible and comprehensive can positively improve it (deci & ryan, 1985; littlewood, 2000). thus, the negative attitudes and behaviours manifested by students may cause frustration and feelings of failure in teachers when their students seem unwilling to cooperate and participate in english speaking activities. tsiplakides and keramida (2009) suggest that teachers fail to recognise that these attitudes are a result of student anxiety, instead attributing them to a lack of motivation or poor attitude. thus, it is important for teachers to recognise learners’ real emotions and how they affect their motivation to speak in foreign language class. in order to contribute to the literature on speaking ability in foreign language learning, this study aimed to understand what factors may motivate or demotivate students with low emotional intelligence (ei) to participate in speaking activities during english class. emotional intelligence and speaking in a foreign language emotional intelligence is the capacity to control and regulate one’s own feelings and those of others, and use them as a guide for thought and action (barchard & hakstian, 2004). people who have developed ei skills can comprehend and express their own emotions, identify emotions in others, regulate affect, and utilize moods and emotions to impel adaptive behaviours (mayer & salovey, 1997). according to salovey, mayer, caruso, and lopes (2003), ei is composed of four related abilities. they state that if people possess a high level of ei, they are able to accurately perceive how both they and others feel, use those feelings to help with the task at hand, comprehend both the way those feelings have arisen and how they will change, and then manage those feelings effectively to achieve a positive result. people who have developed a high ei are creative performers compared to those with a lower ei (wolfradt, felfe, & köster, 2002). the development of ei is said to reduce stress not only for individuals but also for organisations, because it “enables employees to achieve work/life balance” and “enhance leadership capability and potential” (chapman, 2014, p. 93). in the same vein, zaremba (as cited in boonkit, 2010, p. 1306) points out that speaking skills are “usually placed ahead of work experience, motivation, and academic credentials as recruitment criteria by employers”. boonkit (2010) considers speaking as “one 153profile vol. 19, no. 2, july-december 2017. issn 1657-0790 (printed) 2256-5760 (online). bogotá, colombia. pages 151-163 motivating and demotivating factors for students with low emotional intelligence... of the macro skills that should be developed as a means of effective communication” (p. 1036), not only in first but also in second language learning contexts. in the field of second language learning, different studies have been undertaken on the influence of ei on speaking ability. soodmand afshar and rahimi (2014) found that ei significantly correlated with the predicted speaking ability of iranian efl learners. according to their results, students who are more assertive and who tend to have higher social responsibility and self-appraisal abilities are good speakers. in the same vein, lopes et al. (2004) found that people with effective emotional abilities are able to use these to their advantage and enrich their interactions with friends. the results of the study conducted by bora (2012) support this, revealing that students with a high level of ei who participated in the study were more willing to participate in speaking activities due to their high levels of self-esteem and social skills. the speaking performance of foreign language students can be affected by diverse factors generated by performance conditions, such as pressure, planning, and the amount of support provided. furthermore, affective factors such as motivation, confidence, and anxiety can affect learners’ willingness to participate in class (méndez & fabela, 2014; shumin, 2002). as stated by mohammadi and mousalou (2012), foreign language students try to avoid situations in which they have to speak. although some studies refer to this reticence as resulting from controlling teaching practices (xie, 2010; zhang & head, 2010), it is necessary to examine the role of low ei on speaking in a second or foreign language. however, most studies undertaken on ei and speaking have focused on the positive relationship between these two variables. thus, it is necessary to ascertain how students with a low ei deal with speaking in a foreign language and what factors motivate or demotivate them during this activity in foreign language class. this article reports on a qualitative study carried out to identify the factors that motivate or demotivate the oral participation of students with a low ei enrolled in an english language teaching (elt) programme at a state university in southern mexico. method this study followed a qualitative approach given that its objective was to gain a deeper understanding of the factors that encourage or discourage oral participation during foreign language classroom instruction. the purpose of the study was to explore students’ perceptions regarding classroom participation and discover the factors affecting their oral participation, using the following research question: what factors influence the participation of male and female students with a low ei in classroom oral activities? participants the participants of this study were ten men and ten women enrolled in the elt program at a public university in the south east of mexico during the 2013 spring semester. the participants selected scored the lowest ei on the trait meta-mood scale 24 (tmms-24) questionnaire. participants consisted of four beginners, four intermediate, and two advanced level students from ages 18 to 25. instruments three instruments were used for the purpose of this study. first, the tmms-24 (salovey, mayer, goldman, turvey, & palfai, 1995) was used to measure the students’ ei. the tmms-24 measures three key dimensions of ei: emotional perception, emotional comprehension, and emotional regulation. the version of this instrument that was adapted to spanish by fernández-berrocal et al. (1998) was used in order to ensure that participants understood it. after the participants had been selected, they were asked to write an entry in an emotions journal once a week for a period of seven weeks. the participants used this instrument to report their experiences of universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras154 méndez lópez & bautista tun their participation in oral production activities in language class. the emotions journal entries enabled the identification of factors influencing students’ oral participation. semi-structured interviews were carried out at the end of the study. the interview guide was designed to allow participants to express their motivations for speaking or refraining from speaking during classroom activities (see appendix). interviews were recorded and transcribed, and the transcripts then checked against the original audio recording for accuracy. the purpose of this third instrument was to deepen understanding of the participants’ experiences and confirm what these students with a low ei had reported in their journal entries. the interviews were carried out in spanish to prevent any kind of misunderstanding. data analysis data were analysed using thematic analysis (braun & clarke, 2006), which offers an accessible and theoretically flexible approach to analysing qualitative data. once the data had been coded and collated, the codes were classified into potential themes and the data extracts collated within the themes identified. the relationship between codes, themes, and the different levels within the themes was analysed by both researchers in order to validate the final themes selected. although a set of possible themes was developed, it was necessary to refine them, leading to the realization that there may not have been enough data to support some themes, which were then discarded. data were classified into the themes, taking into account the fact that the classification was meaningfully coherent and that there was a clear distinction between themes. the collected extracts for each theme were read again to consider whether they could form a coherent pattern. when the themes did not form a coherent pattern, they were reworked to find a suitable theme for the extracts that did not fit within any of the themes already developed. the final themes were assigned concise names. results the research question aimed to reveal factors that influence students’ oral participation during english language class and to identify factors affecting male and female students (see table 1). even though male participants described having felt a greater variety of negative feelings, by the end of the study, these had been transformed into more positive ones. although female participants showed fewer negative feelings, they felt them more frequently (see table 2). table 1. motivating factors for male and female participants motivating factors for male participants motivating factors for female participants goal oriented performance interacting with native speakers neutral corrective feedback supportive classroom communitysupportive classroom community motivating factors for male participants goal oriented performance during the activities, the participants, when speaking, compared their fluency with that of their classmates, realizing that their progress was slower. considering themselves incompetent in terms of their linguistic skills gave them a feeling of desperation and motivated them to practice harder for oral exams and learn more vocabulary in order to perform better in oral activities. as one of the participants reported:1 this week i was fine…happy because of the grade i got in my basic english course, but that day i was also given the result i got in my english language course and i didn’t get the grade i expected, that 1 participants’ excerpts have been translated from spanish. 155profile vol. 19, no. 2, july-december 2017. issn 1657-0790 (printed) 2256-5760 (online). bogotá, colombia. pages 151-163 motivating and demotivating factors for students with low emotional intelligence... made me feel powerless, even more because i knew that on my speaking exam i didn’t perform as good as on the writing exam. i started and finished this week with the desire of participating with more frequency, i started feeling more confident to speak english in class, to ask questions or to talk with classmates. although sometimes i didn’t produce the sentences correctly, i made an effort and took notes about the corrections in order to avoid making the same mistakes again. days later, while i was doing my english homework, i felt nostalgia again when i realized i have a great lack of vocabulary, but at the same time i felt motivated to learn because my goal of being the best won’t be reached by itself. (journal, week 3, christian2) it is clear that students have performance goals in order for their linguistic competence to be judged positively (dweck, 1986). performance goals force students to direct all their efforts into outperforming their classmates in order to maintain their language ability and avoid negative judgments (ames, 1992; elliot & dweck, 1988; nicholls, 1984). neutral corrective feedback the participants felt motivated to speak during the english class once they had realized that the teachers were providing feedback in a neutral way. some participants revealed that they participated more in classes where the teachers corrected the errors by writing them on the whiteboard or by showing slide projections of errors and explaining them to the whole class without pointing out the student who had made the mistake. during the study period, participants from the intermediate semesters felt good when they realized that teachers provided corrective feedback to all students who had made mistakes. they stated that they felt that teachers had no preference for some students over others in the classroom, making it a place where they felt a sense of equity. as one participant states: 2 pseudonyms are used throughout this article to protect participants’ identity. many (of the students) made pronunciation mistakes and the teacher gave them feedback but not me, she usually corrects me whenever i make a mistake in all the activities, this makes me feel that the teacher is aware of the mistakes of everyone and not only mine. thinking in that way, makes possible that i do not feel afraid to speak. (journal, week 4, andrew) supportive classroom community participants reported being encouraged to participate actively in class. intermediate participants felt confident when interacting with classmates, as, in the absence of any competence, there was a strong sense of cooperation and support in the group. no one was mocked when they made a mistake during oral presentations. participants also reported no impolite attitudes in their classmates, which could have affected the performance of the speaker. participants did not demonstrate annoyance when receiving feedback from classmates. this is supported by mall-amiri and hesami (2013) who stated that “peer feedback equips students with socially affective strategies such as listening carefully, speaking at the right moment, expressing clearly, and appreciating others” (p. 15). as one participant explains: i am not afraid of speaking english all the time…sometimes i feel like participating…because in general…the actions and attitudes of my classmates, towards me are positive…they also want to speak and express their ideas. i feel that we all win. (interview, karl) motivating factors for female participants interacting with native speakers rozina (2001) states that native speakers can speak at a relatively fast speed thanks to the language stored in their mental lexicon. participants felt disadvantaged due to their limited vocabulary compared with that of native speakers. thus, they took every opportunity to speak with native english speakers, which gave them a feeling of great confidence. they not only wanted to universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras156 méndez lópez & bautista tun keep practicing with native speakers in order to learn from them, but also wanted to use different strategies to improve their speaking ability (e.g., learning vocabulary or practicing with friends or classmates with whom they felt comfortable). thus, they felt less of the anxiety or fear that had prevented them from speaking during oral activities. as one participant states: i feel happy because i realize i am able to keep a conversation with a native (english speaker) and that she is able to understand what i say. as a result, i am not afraid anymore to participate in the classroom. (journal, week 6, camrin) supportive classroom community the participants felt comfortable with the classroom environment that had been developed, a factor that was essential for their improvement. they described having felt satisfied with both their performance during speaking activities and the grades they obtained, realizing that they were improving constantly and that, also, they were more resilient to making errors in front of their peers. shaffer and anundsen (1993) emphasise that being able to interact in a supportive classroom community helps students achieve their goals. it seems that the environment developed in the classroom featured in this study helped students to feel confident, thus helping them to develop their linguistic abilities. as one participant states: due to the fact that in the classroom we are in a comfortable and reliable environment, i don’t feel nervous or anxious. (interview, week 5, anahí) demotivating factors for male participants peer comparison male participants described feeling nervous before oral participation and worried that their classmates who had a higher level of english were going to mock them. as a result, it took some time for students to participate in oral activities and answer questions. when they finally dared to speak, they spoke quickly and incoherently. prejudice in schools is especially troubling because schools are public places in which students learn to negotiate and construct knowledge of differences. when prejudicial beliefs go unexamined in schools, students are not given the opportunity to deconstruct prejudicial knowledge. the impact of prejudicial attitudes on students is wide ranging, spanning from lower school performance to poor physical and mental health. (camicia, 2007, p. 219) as one participant commented: many of them know [referring to her classmates] dominate more the language, and because of that reason, sometimes i feel that the lack of knowledge…make me…as if they were going to talk bad things about me, or i don’t know. (interview, fer) group competence as usually happens inside classrooms, a division into small groups of friends tends to emerge, which generates an implicit sense of competition. this action created a non-productive competition in which each group did everything they could to sabotage the performance of their rivals. with the participants seeing every opportunity to speak as a threat that would make their lack of speaking mastery evident, they did not want to take part. this highlights the importance for teachers of establishing a positive or supportive table 2. demotivating factors for male and female participants demotivating factors for male participants demotivating factors for female participants peer comparison anxiety about public speaking group competence peer evaluation negative self-talk text anxiety corrective feedback lack of classroom community 157profile vol. 19, no. 2, july-december 2017. issn 1657-0790 (printed) 2256-5760 (online). bogotá, colombia. pages 151-163 motivating and demotivating factors for students with low emotional intelligence... classroom environment if they want to encourage student participation and motivate them in the classroom. as hannah (2013) states: “if not approached correctly, a classroom can be set up in a way that stifles creativity or does not promote a positive learning environment” (p. 1). as one participant in this study remarks: what occurs…is that when i participate, some of my classmates make fun of me, they make impolite gestures with their faces and show bad attitudes…sometimes it seems they grumble, they laugh while they look at me during my participations…the class is too divided, the only ones that don’t make fun of you are the ones that are in your own group…they do whatever it takes to sabotage others with the purpose of being the best or the most recognised…i try to stand aside i don’t make fun of anybody. however, i get angry that they always want to sabotage other classmates and when they participate i don’t act in the same way, i don’t even have the desire of speaking. (interview, brandon) negative self-talk negative self-talk is a kind of cognitive anxiety (nolting, 1997). the participants generated negative thoughts about themselves, which affected their performance during oral participation. although some students revealed that they were confident in their linguistic competence, negative statements about them interfered with their oral production. a participant revealed: due to it was a cae [cambridge english: advanced] test that made my nervous be on top…when i am speaking in front of the teacher i usually get nervous, and as i know that cae is a difficult exam…i thought, i will do it wrong for sure…i don’t have the vocabulary nor the enough knowledge, nor i can’t speak without getting lost for words or choke, nor i understand the british accent. (interview, henry) corrective feedback corrective feedback refers to the teacher’s response to learners’ errors in oral or written expression (sheen & ellis, 2011). participants in the study revealed their fear of making mistakes due to the possible opinions and reactions of their classmates. their motivation to speak lessened further because of the way teachers provided corrective feedback when they made mistakes. aida (1994) suggested that “language teachers can make it possible for anxious students to maximize their language learning by building a nonthreatening and positive learning environment” (p. 164). some participants stated that their teachers’ attitudes when providing corrective feedback made them feel as if its purpose was for their teachers and classmates to mock them. there were occasions in which they felt corrective feedback was a personal judgment (arnold, 2007), where it did not matter whether other classmates made more mistakes, as the impolite corrective feedback was focused on them most of the time during which they were constantly teased and laughed at. as one participant describes: sometimes it seems that the teacher has something personal against me…when he corrects me…it seems he makes fun of me and my classmates seem to follow him…i try to avoid participating because i don’t like them mocking me. (interview, pavel) demotivating factors for female participants public speaking anxiety the anxiety over one’s speaking in public “can negatively affect students’ academic and interpersonal relationships as it provokes a tendency to withdraw from communication situations” (swenson, 2011, p. 1). results from different studies in academic settings have reported that students fear teacher and peer evaluations so they avoid participating in class (méndez, 2011). bourhis, allen, and bauman (2006) suggest that the stress of trying to “protect one’s grade and not to appear to the teacher or other students as stupid” (p. 212) would lead to these reactions. participants described not wanting to be mocked because of the mistakes they had made, and being constantly in fear of making mistakes, as universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras158 méndez lópez & bautista tun their teacher and classmates would think that they were not good enough at english. according to swenson (2011), “fear of negative evaluation and sensitivity to punishment are both widely accepted reasons for these anxious reactions to public speaking” (p. 3). participants presented a strong fear of getting a low grade on future exams due to their performance in class, making their oral participation very poor. with students going to great efforts to produce correct utterances, it took too long for them to answer the teacher’s questions. as a result, participants did not speak unless asked. during participation, the students spoke at a low volume, sometimes stuttering and feeling dissatisfied about their performance in speaking activities. one participant reported: every time i have to speak in public…as if by magic i forget the words…i don’t like it because i feel that when this happens my classmates and the teacher consider me a bad student…that affects me a lot…i feel frustrated because i can’t speak as fluent as my classmates. (interview, carolina) peer evaluation horwitz, horwitz, and cope (1986) suggest that most students “find foreign language learning, especially in classrooms situations, particularly stressful” (p. 125) because students “fear being less competent than other students or being negatively evaluated by them” (p. 130). participants compared themselves with classmates when speaking and felt uncomfortable because they thought their classmates were always criticizing their performance when they spoke. young’s (1990) research on language anxiety revealed that “speaking activities which require ‘on the spot’ and ‘in front of the class’ performance produce the most anxiety from the students’ perspective” (p. 551). similarly, the participants in this study were anxious at the thought that it was easier for classmates to perceive their mistakes during oral presentations or class participation. students described feeling comfortable when going unnoticed during class, avoiding as much as possible activities or situations that would bring them to center stage. as one participant explains: the teacher asked for examples of sentences in simple present and present continuous in order to learn how to differentiate them. however, i don’t know what happened, since i know the difference but i answered incorrectly. i started feeling anxious when the teacher asked me directly and in addition, everyone was looking at me (journal, week 1, camrin) test anxiety test anxiety refers to a “special case of general anxiety consisting of phenomenological, physiological, and behavioral responses” related to a fear of failure (sieber, 1980, p. 17) and to the “experience of evaluation or testing” (sieber, 1980, p. 18). test anxiety is considered beneficial for students because it helps them to be “alert and focused on the task” (weir, 2008, p. 47). however, high levels of anxiety are negative because they can make students do wrong when answering a test. participants presented more intense test anxiety in the speaking section, feeling anxious because they did not know how to start the conversation required by the exercise. they stated that they had practiced and studied vocabulary before the exam; however, when teachers assigned the topic they had to talk about, they forgot what they had learned. participants described feeling frustrated because anxiety affected their oral performance. one participant says: this week we presented an exam. honestly, i am not worried about the writing part of the exam, but the oral part causes me a lot of anxiety. i don’t like to fail, and i feel anguish when my grade not only depends on my performance, but also on my partner’s. for example, this time, my partner made mistakes and i realize about them. i got nervous because i didn’t want to make the same error and i blocked myself. whenever i make a mistake and i see that the teacher takes notes in the evaluation sheet, i don’t want to speak anymore because i know that my grade will be not a good one (journal, week 5, christina) 159profile vol. 19, no. 2, july-december 2017. issn 1657-0790 (printed) 2256-5760 (online). bogotá, colombia. pages 151-163 motivating and demotivating factors for students with low emotional intelligence... lack of classroom community some participants took english classes not only as part of their english language major, but also at the self-study centre, where they studied with students from different majors offered by the elt programme and also external students. thus, these students either knew fellow students or they knew no one at all. participants described not feeling close to their new classmates or feeling uncomfortable around them. they did not feel motivated to participate due to not having previously interacted with these new classmates. as a result, their participation was very limited. one participant reveals: i tried to participate as little as possible…i don’t feel in confidence in the classroom since i don’t know any of my classmates…as they are from other majors…i don’t know how they are. (interview, paty) conclusions elt students’ motivation and performance while learning a foreign language are influenced by diverse factors. male participants demonstrated that they were influenced by more factors than female participants when speaking english. even though female participants were affected by fewer factors, they experienced them more frequently. being in a supportive classroom environment is a motivating factor for both male and female students, whereas peer evaluation it is a demotivating one. male participants tended to compare their oral performance with that of their classmates, which inhibited their participation or caused them to make mistakes while speaking or producing illogical utterances. consequently, their participation was not what they expected, which demotivated them. additionally, female participants reported being afraid of speaking in front of their peers because they felt scrutinized by them. thus, although the experiences of both male and female participants are comparable with those of their peers, male participants were afraid of being mocked due to their mistakes while women were afraid of being criticized and scrutinized by their peers. this finding is similar to those of previous studies in the field (horwitz et al., 1986; young, 1990). it is important, then, that teachers take action to prevent any mockery in the classroom and make students aware that errors are positive as they highlight the areas students need to work on in order to master the foreign language. male participants also described themselves as practicing goal-oriented performances, which pushed them to practice their oral skills and master the content assigned for future participation. male students seem to be more competitive, based on the descriptions made by participants in this study, in which they state how they felt motivated when able to outperform their peers and thus avoid negative judgment. on the other hand, female participants preferred to practice their oral skills with native speakers when given the opportunity. while female participants tended to use a variety of strategies for practicing their speaking skills, they reported that their confidence increased when interacting with native speakers. gender identity is directly related to the differential socialization of men and women, whereby women identify themselves using expressive features more than men, while men use instrumentality features more than women (bem, 1974). both male and female participants stated that being in a supportive classroom community was a motivating factor for participating in language class. thus, it is important that teachers encourage a positive classroom atmosphere in order that students are able to interact with one another and learn from the experience. given that classroom interactions enable “learners to receive comprehensible input and provide opportunities to negotiate for meaning and produce modified output” (rassaei & moinzadeh, 2011, p. 97), the more students interact with one another, the more they will practice and improve their speaking skills. the feedback provided by teachers can motivate or demotivate students to participate in the classroom. male and female participants reported that they felt demotivated when given feedback individually in front universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras160 méndez lópez & bautista tun of their classmates. it seems that participants fear the mockery or criticism an explicit and direct correction can cause, with similar results also found in previous studies (kitano, 2001; yan & horwitz, 2008). thus, teachers should be sensitive when providing feedback to students with a low ei, as the strategy they decide to use may either encourage or discourage students’ future participation in oral activities. male and females differ in the way that they perceive and face situations, and how they regulate their emotions. emotions have been found to affect students’ motivation, interest, and effort (meyer & turner, 2006). anxiety can make students feel unable to perform well during class or as learners. anxiety can interfere with students’ motivation and performance because it makes them feel incompetent and lacking in self-confidence, meaning that they “are likely to take more time double-checking their answers or questioning their work before turning it in to their teachers” (kumavat, 2016, p. 196). the findings reported in this study highlight the reality that students with a low ei constantly compare themselves with their peers and fear the mockery or criticism to which they can be subject because of mistakes they may make while speaking. thus, it is paramount that teachers try to create a secure environment in which students feel confident, prevent any mockery immediately, and use classroom activities to reduce students’ anxiety and increase their self-confidence. references aida, y. 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(2001). the language of business: some pitfalls of non-native / native speaker interaction. studies about languages, 1, 100-104. salovey, p., mayer, j. d., caruso, d., & lopes, p. n. (2003). measuring emotional intelligence as a set of abilities with the mayer-salovey-caruso emotional intelligence test. in s. j. lopez & c. r. snyder (eds.), positive psychological universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras162 méndez lópez & bautista tun assessment: a handbook of models and measures (pp. 251-265). washington, dc: american psychological association. http://doi.org/10.1037/10612-016. salovey, p., mayer, j. d., goldman, s. l., turvey, c., & palfai, t. p. 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(1980). defining test anxiety: problems and approaches. in i. g. sarason (ed.), test anxiety: theory, research and applications (pp. 15-42). hillsdale, us: lawrence erlbaum associates. soodmand afshar, h., & rahimi, m. (2014). the relationship among emotional intelligence, critical thinking, and speaking ability of iranian efl learners. procedia: social and behavioral sciences, 9, 75-79. http://dx.doi. org/10.1016/j.sbspro.2014.05.291. swenson, a. (2011). you make my heart beat faster: a quantitative study of the relationship between instructor immediacy, classroom community, and public speaking anxiety. journal of undergraduate research, 14, 1-12. tsiplakides, i., & keramida, a. (2009). helping students overcome foreign language speaking anxiety in the english classroom: theoretical issues and practical recommendations. international education studies, 2(4), 39-44. http://dx.doi.org/10.5539/ies.v2n4p39. weir, b. s. (2008). transitions: a guide for the transfer student. boston, us: thomson higher education. wolfradt, u., felfe, j., & köster, t. (2002). self-perceived emotional intelligence and creative personality. imagination, cognition and personality, 21(4), 293-310. http://doi.org/10.2190/b3hk-9hcc-fjbx-x2g8. woodrow, l. (2006). anxiety and speaking english as a second language. relc journal, 37(3), 308-328. http:// doi.org/10.1177/0033688206071315. xie, x. (2010). why are students quiet? looking at the chinese context and below. elt journal, 64(1), 10-20. http://doi. org/10.1093/elt/ccp060. yan, j. x., & horwitz, e. k. (2008). learners’ perceptions of how anxiety interacts with personal and instructional factors to influence their achievement in english: a qualitative analysis of efl learners in china. language learning, 58(1), 151-183. http://doi.org/10.1111/j.1467-9922.2007.00437.x. young, d. j. (1990). an investigation of students’ perspectives on anxiety and speaking. foreign language annals, 23(6), 539-553. http://doi.org/10.1111/j.1944-9720.1990.tb00424.x. zhang, y. (2009). reading to speak: integrating oral communication skills. english teaching forum, 47(1), 32-34. zhang, x., & head, k. (2010). dealing with learner reticence in the speaking class. elt journal, 64(1), 1-9. http://doi. org/10.1093/elt/ccp018. about the authors mariza g. méndez lópez holds a phd in education (university of nottingham, uk). she is a member of the mexican national research system and coordinator of the research group cadicc. her areas of research are affective factors in foreign language learning and teacher professional development. moisés bautista tun holds a bachelor’s degree in elt (universidad de quintana roo). he currently works in a mexican high school as an english teacher. 163profile vol. 19, no. 2, july-december 2017. issn 1657-0790 (printed) 2256-5760 (online). bogotá, colombia. pages 151-163 motivating and demotivating factors for students with low emotional intelligence... appendix: semi-structured interview guide (adapted from méndez & peña, 2013) 1. how would you describe your english language learning experience during this first year of the english language major at universidad de quintana roo? 2. has your original motivation changed due to your experience of this first year? how? why? 3. can you recall some emotional reactions that you experienced during this first year when speaking english? 4. which factors originated those emotional reactions? 5. how do you behave when experiencing an emotional reaction? 6. do these emotional reactions interfere with your english classes? how? 7. have some of your emotional reactions influenced your motivation? how? 8. why do you believe this happened? 9. who or what was the responsible for the way you reacted? 10. what did you do about those reactions? how did/do you manage them? 11. do you consider that the management of your emotional reactions was important in your motivation to participate in the oral production activities? 12. how do you think that your motivation to participate in the oral production activities could have improved? 13. who do you think was responsible for keeping the original motivation with which you began your english language major studies? 14. what have you gotten from your participation in this research study? 47 http://dx.doi.org/10.15446/profile.v18n2.49591 unveiling pre-service teachers’ attitudes toward teaching: the role of pedagogical practicums develando las actitudes de los profesores en formación hacia la enseñanza: el papel de las prácticas pedagógicas yimer andrés morales cortés* universidad pedagógica y tecnológica de colombia, tunja, colombia this article reports a research developed at universidad pedagógica y tecnológica de colombia with a group of pre-service teachers that was immersed in an english teaching practicum. the main purpose of this inquiry was to find out the role that practicum exerted on novice teachers’ attitudes towards teaching. data were collected through interviews, questionnaires, verbal reports, and artifacts. the results evidenced the english practicum provided the teachers being trained opportunities to consider what teaching entails. thus, the participants were able to reflect, develop awareness, positive attitudes, and satisfaction towards their teaching practice. key words: english language teaching, pedagogical practicum, pre-service teachers’ attitudes. este artículo reporta una investigación desarrollada en la universidad pedagógica y tecnológica de colombia, con un grupo de profesores en formación, quienes estuvieron inmersos en una práctica pedagógica de inglés. el propósito principal fue averiguar el papel que esa práctica tuvo en la actitud de los profesores en formación hacia la enseñanza. los datos fueron recogidos por medio de entrevistas, cuestionarios, reportes orales y manuscritos. los resultados evidencian que la práctica de enseñanza de inglés ofreció a los profesores en formación oportunidades de considerar lo que conlleva enseñar. así, los participantes pudieron reflexionar, desarrollar conciencia, buenas actitudes y satisfacción hacia la enseñanza. palabras clave: actitudes de los profesores en formación, enseñanza de la lengua inglesa, práctica pedagógica. * e-mail: y.amc90@hotmail.com how to cite this article (apa, 6th ed.): morales cortés, y. a. (2016). unveiling pre-service teachers’ attitudes toward teaching: the role of pedagogical practicums. profile issues in teachers’ professional development, 18(2), 47-61. http://dx.doi.org/10.15446/profile.v18n2.49591. this article was received on march 12, 2015, and accepted on february 5, 2016. this is an open access article distributed under the terms of the creative commons license attribution-noncommercial-noderivatives 4.0 international license. consultation is possible at http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/. profile vol. 18, no. 2, july-december 2016. issn 1657-0790 (printed) 2256-5760 (online). bogotá, colombia. pages 47-61 universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras48 morales cortés introduction this article reports a study developed with a group of novice teachers that was immersed in a pedagogical practicum. the research describes the role this space of practice had on the students-teachers’ attitudes towards teaching. as found along the inquiry, the teachers in formation had several opportunities to consider what teaching involves. thus, the research question which led this inquiry was: what is the role of the english pedagogical practicum carried out at universidad pedagógica y tecnológica de colombia (uptc) on a group of ninth semester pre-service teachers’ attitudes toward teaching? the desire for developing this investigation was based on the need to have a better understanding of the process of teachers’ development throughout the teaching practicum and of the different factors that were involved in this practice. one important feature to take into consideration in pre-service teachers’ training is the fact of facing real teaching environments and all the implications this act brings to novice teachers’ progress. when they are exposed to classroom environment they start to consider teaching as a difficult practice. the issue is that on some occasions student-teachers are not aware of the origin of those thoughts and they are affected by assumptions which emerge from lack of reflection. consequently, it is important that teachers in training evaluate their work in real teaching spaces in order to reflect on and understand what teaching implies. in this spirit, it is necessary to question the opportunities of practice that are provided to teachers in their tertiary studies. it is relevant in order to validate the meaningfulness of those practicums and their articulation to novice teachers’ professional development. literature review nowadays, teaching is perceived as a professional practice rather than a technical one. some time ago teaching was conceived as “a craft profession, built on a conscience of craft, rather than a more conventional ideal of professionalism” (pratte & rury, 1991, p. 62). teaching has another focus today, as britzman (2003) states: “teaching is the process of becoming: a time of formation and transformation, of scrutiny into what one is doing and what one can become” (p. 31). teaching is professed as an opportunity to grow intellectually as well as humanly. moreover, hattie (2015) claims “the art of teaching is to balance the need for surface knowledge with deep processing of this knowledge.” (p. 25). it means, teaching goes beyond presenting data but, it relates to transforming content itself according to what is needed. consequently, there are factors that take place in the formation of teachers, factors such as prior experiences, knowledge trajectory, and practical input. in this spirit, the practicum experience is a very important component of teachers’ preparation. barton, hartwig, and cain (2015) state that the practicum is a key component of teacher education. also, darlinghammond (2010) asserts that “learning to practice in practice, with expert guidance, is essential to becoming a great teacher of students with a wide range of needs” (p. 40). therefore, pedagogical practicum within this study is referred to as those determining spaces provided to novice teachers in order for them to reflect, learn, and develop professionally. richards (2002) states that the teaching practicum enables and enriches student teachers’ knowledge, skills, and experiences and, more importantly, is an opportunity to continue academic and professional growth. in relation to the term “pre-service teacher” there is a close conception of what it means according to schön: “it is the stage where beginning teachers obtain substantial on-campus coursework that they expect to transfer directly to the in-school practical setting where they begin to act as a teacher” (as cited in wallace, 1991, p. 13). being a pre-service teacher has to do with the act of acquiring content and practical knowledge. content knowledge has to do with the different theories about teaching and practical knowledge relates to teaching experiences teachers in training have. another view is 49 unveiling pre-service teachers᾽ attitudes toward teaching: the role of pedagogical practicums posed by borg (2006) who states that pre-service teachers are those who start a teaching education program at the undergraduate level. a pre-service teacher is the person who is studying to be a teacher and also someone who starts sharing knowledge with others. referring to attitudes, brown (2001) points out that “they are characterized by a large proportion of emotional involvement such as feelings, self, relationships in community” (p. 61). thus, establishing a connection between attitudes and teaching allows considering relevant issues such as identity, feelings, and classroom setting, among others. pre-service teachers develop or reaffirm attitudes toward their future profession based on the situations they go through in pedagogical practicums. also, there are several authors who have discussed novice teachers’ perceptions of teaching and their origin. in that sense, taylor and littleton (2006) claim: “as student-teachers are learning to teach, they continually reconstruct their perceptions and beliefs of the teaching profession as well as their understanding of the tasks of teaching” (p. 22). in that sense, the spaces in which student-teachers face real teaching events determine their approach to this profession. then, it is normal to find that after novice teachers are involved in pedagogical practicums, they construct a set of attitudes towards teaching based on what they experience. related to this issue, danielewicz (2001) declares that “becoming a teacher involves the construction of a person identity” (p. 9). it implies developing a selfimage connected to teaching. this author evidences the relevance that identity, which is close to attitudes, has on student-teachers’ professional growth. another important aspect has to do with what pedagogical practicums imply within the studentteachers’ formation process and the results that the act of connecting theory and practice has. then, sharkey (2009) provides relevant information related to integrating theory and practice in second language teachers’ education. this author asserts that “when teachers reflect on a lesson or their practice, they must go beyond description of what happened or ‘how did it go?’ and consider questions such as ‘from this lesson, what did i learn about myself as a teacher?’” (p. 129). this view of reflection upon practice is what allows teachers to become qualified professionals. connecting the previous information to this research, pedagogical practicums were conceived as spaces that allowed student-teachers to reflect upon their main work (teaching). wallace (1991) offers another view about the results of joining theory and practice. this author proposes some models in relation to language teachers’ training such as the reflective model. in order to build up this model, wallace starts introducing some terms in relation to teachers training and the origin of their knowledge. he introduces the term “received knowledge” to refer to the information that is based on data, facts, and theories, among others. he also presents the term “experiential knowledge” that refers to the knowledge product of practice, that is, “the trainee will have developed knowledge-in-action by practice of the profession, and will have, moreover, the opportunity to reflect on that knowledge-in-action” (wallace, 1991, p. 15). the fact of being involved in a practicum allows the pre-service teachers to reflect upon what they do and the results their work has. that practice brings chances to evaluate and take actions on the teaching act and thus generate new understandings of it. method this study was carried out within the qualitative paradigm since, as stated by merriam (2002), the accomplishment of qualitative research involves the understanding of some circumstances in a specific context. furthermore, due to the nature and scope of this inquiry it was framed under the applied type of research (seliger & shohamy, 1989). it is applied because it established the role that some pedagogical experiences had within a specific population’s beliefs about teaching. furthermore, it focused on understanding a phenomenon or a reality. profile vol. 18, no. 2, july-december 2016. issn 1657-0790 (printed) 2256-5760 (online). bogotá, colombia. pages 47-61 universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras50 morales cortés setting this research was carried out at uptc, a public university located in tunja, colombia. the participants were finishing their undergraduate program of modern languages (spanish-english). this program is focused on training spanish-english language teachers for the high school level. the pedagogical component of the program is centered on the articulation of theory and practice. the methodology of the program centers on an english component constructed under the principles of the communicative approach. participants this research was carried out with a group of 10 ninth semester pre-service teachers, four men and six women. the participants’ age range was from 21 to 27 years old. the participants were involved in activities of observation, assistantship, and practice at high schools from the first semester of the program. those experiences were considered while working on the role the english pedagogical practicum i (which is the practicum corresponding to the ninth semester of the program) had on student-teachers’ attitudes toward teaching. the participants agreed voluntarily to be part and contribute to the investigation. data collection instruments the techniques used for collecting data were elicitation and think aloud. in the case of elicitation, the instruments employed were interviews (group and individual) and questionnaires. according to wallace (1998) “they both involve eliciting something from informants: usually information about themselves and their teaching situation, or attitudes/opinions on some issue” (p. 47). in relation to the “think aloud technique,” the instrument used was verbal reports. as stated by ericsson and simon (1993) verbal report is the way in which people verbalize the thoughts that come up in their mind as they are completing a task or immediately after a task has been completed. two questionnaires were used; they were piloted, examined, and adapted for being applied to the population involved in this inquiry1 (appendixes a and b). they were centered on examining the attitudes preservice teachers developed along the interaction with the teaching experiences. then, the questionnaires helped to corroborate the information obtained through the interviews, oral reports, and the student-teachers’ artifacts. additionally, two semi-structured interviews were applied2 (appendixes c and d). as stated by david and sutton (2004) “semi-structured interviews are nonstandardized and are frequently used in qualitative analysis” (p. 87). this kind of interview allows the researcher to examine views and opinions from the interviewee. the interviews used in this research were focused on a protocol designed beforehand. also, they were opened to explore the data that emerged during their application. in this mode, the information obtained was contrasted to explore the perceptions the preservice teachers had about teaching when they started the practicum and the ones they developed during it. another instrument used was verbal report.3 it was used two times, taking advantage of the discussions that the pre-service teachers had in the tutoring class with the teacher of the english practicum (i). verbal reports were recorded and analyzed in order to gather data regarding the novice teacher’s conceptions about their work at schools. the last instrument employed was students’ artifacts.4 goetz and lecompte (1984) define artifacts as things that people make and do. examples of artifacts that may help to illuminate research questions include letters, e-mails, and personal logs, among others. in this research the student-teachers’ artifact was a 1 the questionnaires were originally in spanish, taking into account the participants’ mother tongue. 2 the interviews were conducted in spanish taking into account the participants’ native language. 3 the verbal reports were developed in english due to the fact they were done during english classes. 4 the students’ artifacts were done in english as part of the english practicum process. 51 unveiling pre-service teachers᾽ attitudes toward teaching: the role of pedagogical practicums reflective essay that they delivered to the teacher who directed the english practicum (i) subject. then, these texts were explored in detail so that the data found in them revealed and confirmed some of the data that the other three instruments showed. findings after gathering all the information, the methodology employed for data analysis was grounded theory (strauss & corbin, 1990). moreover, triangulation was done in order to find the general patterns among the different instruments employed within this research. triangulation as stated by janesick (1998) is related to “the processes of using different data collection methods, data sources, analysis, or theories to check the validity of the findings” (p. 13). in this research two types of triangulation techniques were used: first, triangulation by instruments and second, the researcher’s triangulation. thus, this dynamic guaranteed a reliable and valid process of data analysis. the data analysis produced a core category, three main categories, and five subcategories represented in figure 1. also, some abbreviations of the instruments for data collection were used in order to guide the reader.5 these abbreviations point out the source of each piece of evidence presented. the abbreviations are coded as follow: qs stands for questionnaires, in stands for interviews, sa stands for students-teacher’s artifacts, and vr stands for verbal reports. 5 part of the evidence was translated into english to make it comprehensible for non-spanish speaking readers. figure 1. core category, categories and subcategories created by the researcher pre-service teachers through the practicum work: the lifecycle of a bird practicum english i: a nest to warm pre-service teachers᾽ lives as professionals a bird getting ready to be part of nature: learning how to be from reflection it is time to fly and be an adult bird: becoming qualified preservice teachers pre-service teachers᾽ first encounters with the profession: a wide array of attitudes pre-service teachers characterizing teaching reflective component of what teaching entails integrating theory and practice pre-service teachers᾽ professional development profile vol. 18, no. 2, july-december 2016. issn 1657-0790 (printed) 2256-5760 (online). bogotá, colombia. pages 47-61 universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras52 morales cortés pre-service teachers through the practicum work: the lifecycle of a bird this core category makes an analogy of the way in which a bird is hatched, raised, and prepared for being an adult. as a bird is hatched, the pre-service teachers were born in a range of attitudes toward their profession. the novice teachers were settled in a nest (the english pedagogical practicum i) that was the birthplace for good and bad feelings regarding the teaching profession. these attitudes were rooted in the varied circumstances they experienced. this aspect was considered by zimbardo and lieppe (1991) who argue that attitudes are formed by experience as well as by implicit learning. participants experienced what might be called a dichotomy of feelings. practicum english i: a nest to warm pre-service teachers’ lives as professionals the name of this category is a metaphor in which the english practicum i was considered as a nest. as happens in the life of birds, the nest is the space where they can live and start interacting with the outside world. the pre-service teachers as little birds could experience a range of feelings. these emotions and perceptions were a product of their involvement in this space of practice. recognized scholars in the area have mentioned that the fact of being involved in a pedagogical practice has implications in its participants’ way of thinking. taylor and littleton (2006) assert that “as student-teachers are learning to teach, they continually reconstruct their perceptions and beliefs of the teaching profession as well as their understanding of the tasks of teaching” (p. 22). thus, the spaces in which student-teachers face real teaching events define their approach to their profession. this situation is evidenced in the following excerpt from the pre-service teachers’ considerations: i think that this practicum offers a more realistic view, since what one always has in mind is an ideal classroom and when you face it in reality there is a shock between what you think and what it really is. then, this allows a change in the way we think making us consider teaching as a difficult but at the same time gratifying practice. (qs, participant 1) due to the interaction with teaching, the pre-service teachers started to characterize teaching itself. there were times in which the novice teachers argued that teaching was hard work, but there were also moments in which they expressed teaching was a meaningful job for societal construction. pre-service teachers’ first encounters with the profession: a wide array of attitudes. one of the aspects the pre-service teachers faced relates to high school students’ response to learning the english language. sometimes learners did not have the best behavior or commitment in classes. on the other hand, there were times in which high school students participated and were interested in learning. these issues rebounded in the novice teachers’ feelings about their work and their attitudes toward teaching. the following evidence accounts for participants’ response to a question which focused on knowing about those aspects that made the novice teachers feel bad during classes: a circumstance that made me feel bad was students’ low progress. in occasions they evidenced a lack of interest and motivation and they did not get involved in classes (qs, participant 4) even though there were circumstances that made the pre-service teachers feel not so good while teaching a class, they showed understanding of those situations. the following evidence accounts for participants’ verbal reports about their teaching experiences at schools and their comprehension of that labor: i get demotivated when i spend time developing a lesson plan, looking for the best activities for students to learn and have fun; at the same time however, students do not value that and they do not work in class…anyway i understand that situation and the most important thing is to continue working in order to achieve students get interested to learn. (vr, participant 7) 53 unveiling pre-service teachers᾽ attitudes toward teaching: the role of pedagogical practicums in this part, the awareness the pre-service teachers developed towards their teaching practice is clear. on the other hand, the novice teachers showed an attitude of satisfaction toward teaching when students revealed a commitment and interest in classes. this fact is manifested in the following excerpt: i felt really happy when students were motivated and interested in class. i mean, when they asked me questions or when they gave opinions suggesting something related to the topics. (qs, participant 2) according to the previous information, the preservice teachers started to consider teaching as a pleasant practice. this way of perceiving teaching was based on what they lived in their encounters with teaching itself. moreover, pre-service teachers faced circumstances regarding the relationship they had with in-service teachers at schools. the novice teachers manifested that on occasions they felt supported by in-service teachers. this aspect is revealed in the following excerpt from a pre-service teachers’ verbal report: the teacher helps me a lot with the activities i do. she supports me in the sense that she makes students work and respect me, for her it is important that learners respect me as teacher. (vr, participant 2) the other part of this interaction among studentteachers and in-service teachers is related to the negative interference in-service teachers had in classes, according to the pre-service teachers’ points of view: the teacher sometimes takes one hour of class, but not to make good suggestions to students but rather to say to them she is going to be tough. the teacher says to students she will send them to the coordinator…so it has been difficult for me to manage. (vr, participant 6) the previous aspects had an important impact on the way the pre-service teachers conceived learning. in the coming subcategory the pre-service teachers’ visions of teaching as a product of these encounters with their profession are discussed. pre-service teachers characterizing teaching. this subcategory is focused on presenting the conceptions the participants showed about teaching due to their involvement in the pedagogical practicum. simmons et al. (1990) claim that novice teachers translate the experiential world of their classroom into unique views of teaching. in that sense, the teachers in training developed conceptions of teaching due to their participation in teaching itself. as a product of this interaction, they expressed positive views about this job. this situation is proved in the following excerpt from the pre-service teachers’ opinions: teaching is a way of interaction with others. i can interact with other people sharing my knowledge but at the same time i can acquire knowledge from others, in this case from students. (in, participant 5) teaching is a reciprocal act, always that i offer any knowledge to students they also offer me something i can learn. (in, participant 3) in this respect, the novice teachers characterized teaching to be a process of knowledge co-construction. also, teaching was considered as an opportunity to accomplish students’ growth and a key component of culture and civilization. furthermore, the pre-service teachers characterized their work as a challenging and difficult practice. for them, teaching was a challenge due to aspects such as society evolution, amount of students, learners’ behavior, and time, among other issues. this situation is revealed in the following excerpt that accounts for the participant’s response to a question which focused on grasping the novice teachers’ conceptions about teaching: i think teaching is a labor that implies a lot responsibility and it requires from us to be primarily human beings. this is a profession in which it is needed to know about many knowledge fields and also it requires teachers to be ready to meet students’ needs. (qs, participant 2) as seen above, in the same way the pre-service teachers encountered teaching they developed an attitude of awareness as to what that practice entailed profile vol. 18, no. 2, july-december 2016. issn 1657-0790 (printed) 2256-5760 (online). bogotá, colombia. pages 47-61 universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras54 morales cortés for them. in the following lines, the second category is described. some pieces of information were included in order to explain, illustrate, and characterize in depth the issues presented in it. a bird getting ready to be part of nature: learning how to be from reflection the name given to this category is a metaphor in which the pre-service teachers are viewed as birds that interact with their environment and learn the dynamics of their professional life. thus, this category focused on describing the aspects that embodied the teaching practicum and the way they allowed the pre-service teachers to reflect upon their performance in teaching. english practicum i has been the opportunity for me to realize the true reality in schools in a deep way. (sa, participant 2) furthermore, within this category the novice teachers’ perceptions about the fact of linking theory and practice inside the teaching process are presented. that circumstance is visible in the following excerpt from a participant’s answer given on one of the questionnaires: i could realize that theory is away from practice and the other way around, since theories are not always adapted to the context by teachers. (qs, participant 3) it is noteworthy how the student-teachers were continuously questioning the different issues that are behind teaching. related to the previous data, we should remember sharkey’s (2009) recommendation regarding the way teachers must reflect so that they can achieve a proper sense of their identity as teachers. this view of reflection is an example of how the teachers in formation need to approach the understanding of what teaching means. reflective component of what teaching entails. this subcategory corresponds to the reflective part the english practicum i had on the pre-service teachers. the novice teachers manifested that it was necessary to try new ways of teaching english. this aspect was revealed in some of the student-teachers’ artifacts as presented in the following excerpt: taking into account this practicum, we need to have new ideas in english teaching. some students reject this subject due to the lack of motivation that in most of times teachers do not take into consideration. (sa, participant 7) on the other hand, they showed the good results that taking into account students’ likes brings: last class was very good because the students liked the activities; most of them told me that they liked the classes when i used songs at the beginning of the class. (vr, participant 2) furthermore, the participants reflected on the classroom setting and its role in students’ leaning process. even when the student-teachers considered those bad situations that sometimes take place in classrooms, they understood that as teachers their work should be to search alternative options in order to improve those circumstances. integrating theory and practice. this subcategory is related to the considerations the pre-service teachers had in terms of joining theory and practice. the teachers in formation referred to aspects such as the usefulness of linking theory and practice. also, they considered that sometimes it is difficult to integrate these two components because they do not always match due to the unique characteristics of contexts. that is why the pre-service teachers said one needed to transform or adapt theories according to the learning specific needs of a setting. sometimes theory given in the university does not form you as a teacher if you do not put all that knowledge into practice. (qs, participant 5) every semester in the university it is given us a theorist conception of teaching…but it is in practice when you get involved with students and with all those social situations and issues that make you realize what teaching is about. (in, participant 3) 55 unveiling pre-service teachers᾽ attitudes toward teaching: the role of pedagogical practicums the pre-service teachers argued about the need of having opportunities in which all that they learned in their training years at the university could be put into practice within real teaching spaces. as introduced beforehand, integrating theory and practice allows preservice teachers to improve their work. this can be said due to the opportunities of reflection that the novice teachers have while being involved in real teaching situations which include “received and experiential knowledge” (wallace, 1991). it is time to fly and be an adult bird: becoming qualified pre-service teachers the name of this category is an illustration of the final stage the pre-service teachers reached in the english pedagogical practicum i. this category relates to the time in which birds are ready to go out of the nest and become adults. this space of practice had a great impact on the student-teachers in terms of their professional development. the pre-service teachers showed the contributions this pedagogical practicum brought them not just in terms of formal knowledge, but also in terms of values and humanistic aspects. they revealed that this experience allowed them to grow intellectually as well as humanly. this experience helped me to improve different aspects that as teacher i must evaluate. in general, i can say that this was an experience that contributed to my life. (sa, participant 6) pre-service teachers’ professional development. the student-teachers expressed that this practicum was an opportunity to grow as teachers as well as human beings. the novice teachers affirmed that this practicum contributed to their professional profile. they declared that after being immersed in this space of practice, they could learn about different features behind teaching that they did not know. along this experience, it was possible to reflect about my role and behavior, in order to improve my profile as teacher. (qs, participant 5) a contribution from this practicum has to do with my professional growth since thanks to the experiences lived i reflected about my characteristics as a teacher. i learned to know myself and now i am aware about what i need to improve. (qs, participant 2) the teachers in training recognized their strengths and weaknesses when teaching but, at the same time, showed their desire for working in order to improve. they took as reference their work and reflected upon the ways to make it more meaningful. conclusions and pedagogical implications through this study it was found that this practicum allowed teachers in training to consider what teaching entails and develop attitudes towards that job. additionally, the novice teachers were involved in different circumstances at schools which permitted them to construct a professional identity. based on the findings of this research, the participants took attitudes of awareness, reflection, work, and satisfaction towards their teaching. participants developed an attitude of awareness towards teaching due to the considerations they had about that practice. the novice teachers comprehended and expressed that teaching was meaningful work for society construction. they declared teaching takes place when teachers and students interact in order to build up new understandings of contents. on the other hand, the participants conceived teaching as a challenging practice. for them teaching was a demanding act due to aspects such as the evolution of our society, the number of students in classes, and students’ behavior, among others. consequently, a reflective attitude toward teaching was evidenced. the teachers in training analyzed the possible reasons why their high school students did not like learning english. they reflected upon the causes of indiscipline, reasons of good and bad students’ responses to the activities developed in class, and school profile vol. 18, no. 2, july-december 2016. issn 1657-0790 (printed) 2256-5760 (online). bogotá, colombia. pages 47-61 universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras56 morales cortés settings. also, an attitude of work based on reflection emerged. after the teachers in training considered the relationship between theory and practice, they thought about the need for adapting and making theories feasible according to contexts. finally, an attitude of satisfaction toward teaching took place. one important feature which made the novice teachers feel pleased with their profession was the good results they could obtain with their pupils. the teachers in training were satisfied due to the contributions this pedagogical practicum brought them not only in terms of formal knowledge, but also in relation to values. the development of this study gave origin to relevant pedagogical implications in the field of english as a foreign language teaching, and pre-service teacher’s development. those implications are meaningful to understand the reality of becoming a teacher. this research made evident the role and importance teaching practicums have when someone is studying for being a teacher. along this research it was found that novice teachers need to be in contact with real teaching contexts in order for them to build up a realistic view of what this job entails. from that realistic view, pre-service teachers are allowed to understand, reflect, and work in order to improve their teaching practice. also, throughout this inquiry it was verified that teacher training programs are asked to provide teachers in training with spaces in which they can articulate their content and practical knowledge. that is why the opportunities students-teachers have to practice must be a core part of their development. undergraduate teaching programs should include and strengthen pedagogical practicums in which the processes of reflection and action take place as fundamental components of teaching. on the other hand, this study provided the possibility for teachers to think about the emotional component teaching implies for them. as showed along this paper, teaching rebounds on teachers’ feelings and the way they see themselves, that is, the self-image they construct along these practical experiences. teachers go through different circumstances in their daily work and in the same way they are influenced by those situations. consequently, this research work offered the possibility to delve further in the field of teachers’ emotions, thoughts, and conceptions rooted in their work as educators. teaching education programs need to reinforce those spaces in which student-teachers can share their experiences lived at schools, their feelings in relation to their performance, and their concerns about classroom management, among others. in this way, teacher educators can provide novice teachers with advice and guidance when they have difficulties at schools for instance or when they are not sure about how to manage certain situations while teaching. furthermore, the results of this inquiry are valuable in terms of pre-service teachers’ professional development. with the accomplishment of this investigation, how pedagogical practicums are directly connected to teachers’ growth was perceived. this study allowed considering different aspects that are relevant in the achievement of positive changes in teachers’ training and teaching. those aspects are connected to the relevance of pedagogical practicums, reflection, and action processes when teaching, novice teachers’ considerations about their work, among other issues. finally, it is relevant to recommend further studies based on the outcomes of this research. there are important issues that need to be understood such as the in-service teachers’ role on pre-service teachers’ development. also, it might be significant to identify the relationship between student-teachers work and classroom settings. moreover, the quality and nature of teaching practicums are issues worth researching. references barton, g. m., hartwig, k. a., & cain, m. (2015). interna tional students’ experience of practicum in teacher education: an exploration through internationalisation and professional socialisation. australian journal of teacher 57 unveiling pre-service teachers᾽ attitudes toward teaching: the role of pedagogical practicums education, 40(8), 149-163. http://dx.doi.org/10.14221/ ajte.2015v40n8.9. borg, s. (2006). teacher cognition and language education: research and practice. london, uk: continuum. britzman, d. p. (2003). practice makes practice: a critical study of learning to teach. albany, ny: state university of new york press. brown, h. (2001). teaching by principles: an interactive approach to language pedagogy (2nd ed.). harlow, uk: longman. danielewicz, j. (2001). teaching selves: identity, pedagogy, and teacher education. albany, ny: state university of new york press. darling-hammond, l. (2010). teacher education and the american future. journal of teacher education, 61(1-2), 35-47. http://dx.doi.org/10.1177/0022487109348024. david, m., & sutton, c. (2004). social research: the basics. london, uk: sage. ericsson, k. a., & simon, h. a. (1993). protocol analysis: verbal reports as data (2nd ed.). cambridge, ma: the mit press. goetz, j., & lecompte, m. (1984). ethnography and qualitative design in educational research. orlando, fl: academic press. hattie, j. (2015). what doesn’t work in education: the politics of distraction. london, uk: pearson. janesick, v. j. (1998). the dance of qualitative metaphor, methodolatry and meaning. in, n. k. denzin & y. s. lincoln (eds.), strategies of qualitative inquiry (pp. 35-85). thousand oaks, ca: sage. merriam, s. b. (2002). introduction to qualitative research. san francisco, ca: jossey bass. pratte, r., & rury, j. l. (1991). teachers, professionalism, and craft. teachers college record, 93(1), 59-72. richards, j. c. (2002). 30 years of tefl/tesl: a personal reflection. relc journal, 33(2), 1-35. http://dx.doi. org/10.1177/003368820203300201. seliger, h. w., & shohamy, e. (1989). second language research methods. oxford, uk: oxford university press. sharkey, j. (2009). can we praxize second language teacher education? an invitation to join a collective, collaborative challenge. íkala, revista de lenguaje y cultura, 14(22), 125-150. simmons, p. e., emory, a., carter, t., coker, t., finnegan, b., crockett, d., . . . labuda, k. (1990). beginning teachers: beliefs and classroom actions. journal of research in science teaching, 36(8), 930-954. http://dx.doi.org/10.1002/ (sici)1098-2736(199910)36:8<930::aid-tea3>3.0.co;2-n. strauss, a., & corbin, j. (1990). basics of qualitative research: grounded theory procedures and techniques. london, uk: sage publications. taylor, s., & littleton, k. (2006). biographies in talk: a narrative-discursive research approach. qualitative sociology review, 2(1), 22-38. retrieved from http://oro. open.ac.uk/4643/1/qsr_2_1_taylor_littleton.pdf. wallace, m. j. (1991). training foreign language teachers: a reflective approach. cambridge, uk: cambridge university press. wallace, m. j. (1998). action research for language teachers. cambridge, uk: cambridge university press. zimbardo, p. g., & leippe, m. r. (1991). the psychology of attitude change and social influence. new york, ny: mcgraw hall. about the author yimer andrés morales cortés holds a bachelor degree in modern languages, spanish english from universidad pedagógica y tecnológica de colombia. he has been involved in different pedagogical practicums carried out in educational institutions. he is currently working as an english teacher at escuela normal superior antonia santos, a public school in santander (colombia). profile vol. 18, no. 2, july-december 2016. issn 1657-0790 (printed) 2256-5760 (online). bogotá, colombia. pages 47-61 universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras58 morales cortés appendix a: first questionnaire name: ___________________________________________ age: ____ date: __________ this questionnaire aims at gathering information about student-teachers’ attitudes toward teaching and their origin taking into account the beginning of the english practicum i. read the questions and provide clear and complete answers. 1. why did you decide to study in the modern languages program? 2. is teaching important in your life? yes___ no___ why? ___________________________ 3. which place does teaching have in your life on a scale from 1 to 5 (1 = inferior, 5 = superior)? 1___ 2___ 3___ 4___ 5___ why? ________________________________ 4. in your pedagogical practicums, how do you feel emotionally when you teach students? explain please. 5. what attitudes toward teaching does the fact of becoming a teacher generate in you? explain please. 6. taking into account this pedagogical practicum, which would be a reason why you like and a reason why you dislike teaching? 7. do you consider that pedagogical practicums have contributed to the development of your professional skills? yes___ no___ how? ______________________________________ 8. have you changed your attitude in relation to your future profession along your undergraduate studies? yes___ no___ explain in detail__________________________ 59 unveiling pre-service teachers᾽ attitudes toward teaching: the role of pedagogical practicums appendix b: second questionnaire name: __________________________________________ age: ____ date: __________ this questionnaire aims at gathering information about student-teachers’ attitudes toward teaching using as a starting point the english practicum i. 1. one of the purposes of the subject english practicum i is to achieve for pre-service teachers to be aware of their personal, social, and professional commitment as future teachers. do you believe this goal was achieved in your case or not? why? 2. explain the circumstances that made you feel good along the classes you took within this english practicum. 3. explain the circumstances that made you feel bad along the classes you took within this english practicum. 4. what are those experiences you had in this english practicum that motivated you to continue in the teaching profession? why? 5. based on the english practicum i what are the circumstances you experienced along it which made you hesitate to continue in the teaching profession? why? 6. what are the most meaningful contributions this practicum contributed to your development as future teacher? explain in detail. 7. in which way do you consider this practicum relates to your conception about teaching? explain in detail. profile vol. 18, no. 2, july-december 2016. issn 1657-0790 (printed) 2256-5760 (online). bogotá, colombia. pages 47-61 universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras60 morales cortés appendix c: group interview this interview aims at gathering information about a group of student-teachers’ attitudes toward teaching. what is teaching for you? what are the social implications of the teaching profession? taking into account the english practicum i, what can you say in relation to teaching? what feelings does teaching cause inside you? taking into account your experiences within this practicum, what are the contributions of teaching to your personal development? 61 unveiling pre-service teachers᾽ attitudes toward teaching: the role of pedagogical practicums appendix d: individual interview this interview aims at gathering information about a group of student-teachers’ attitudes toward teaching after finishing an english practicum. how do you feel about teaching after finishing the english practicum i? in which way did your conception about teaching change based on you experiences within this practicum? consequently, what conception about teaching did you confirm with this practicum? taking into consideration that you will be an in-service teacher soon, what can you say in relation to teaching based on the english practicum i? after being involved in this practicum which was an opportunity to be in a real teaching context, do you think this is the profession you will continue pursuing in the future? why? profile vol. 18, no. 2, july-december 2016. issn 1657-0790 (printed) 2256-5760 (online). bogotá, colombia. pages 47-61 the impact of assessment training on efl writing classroom assessment: voices of mexican university teachers 107profile: issues teach. prof. dev., vol. 23 no. 1, jan-jun, 2021. issn 1657-0790 (printed) 2256-5760 (online). bogotá, colombia. pages 107-124 https://doi.org/10.15446/profile.v23n1.85019 the impact of assessment training on efl writing classroom assessment: voices of mexican university teachers el impacto de la capacitación en evaluación de la escritura en el aula de inglés como lengua extranjera: voces de profesores mexicanos universitarios elsa fernanda gonzález1 universidad autónoma de tamaulipas, ciudad victoria, mexico the extent to which writing assessment training (wat) impacts writing scores has been widely explored in l2 testing contexts. however, little is known of the benefits of wat to classroom assessment of writing. this paper analyzes the impact of two wat sessions on the classroom assessment of writing of eleven efl mexican university teachers. twenty-two interview transcripts suggested an impact in three main areas: classroom teaching of writing, classroom assessment of writing, and teacher self-awareness. the category of teacher self-awareness displayed the most impact. the paper proposes a categorization of impact on writing assessment. keywords: efl writing assessment, language assessment literacy, writing assessment training el impacto de la capacitación en evaluación de la escritura sobre los puntajes que los estudiantes obtienen en dicha habilidad se ha explorado ampliamente en contextos de exámenes a gran escala en l2. sin embargo, se sabe poco de los beneficios de dicha capacitación en el aula. este artículo analiza el impacto de dos sesiones de capacitación en la evaluación de la escritura en el salón de once profesores universitarios mexicanos de inglés como lengua extranjera. veintidós transcripciones de entrevistas sugirieron impacto en tres áreas principales: enseñanza de la escritura en el aula, evaluación de la escritura en el aula y autoconciencia del profesor. la categoría de autoconciencia del profesor mostró el mayor impacto. el artículo propone una categorización del impacto en la evaluación de la escritura. palabras clave: alfabetización en evaluación de idiomas, capacitación en evaluación de escritura, evaluación de escritura en inglés como lengua extranjera elsa fernanda gonzález  https://orcid.org/0000-0002-3990-0239 · email: efgonzalez@docentes.uat.edu.mx this article is based on the dissertation completed by gonzález (2018). this article draws upon a research project funded by the british council and carried out under the arags 2015 program. any opinions, findings, conclusions, or recommendations expressed in this material are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of the british council, its related bodies, or its partners. how to cite this article (apa, 7th ed.): gonzález, e. f. (2021). the impact of assessment training on efl writing classroom assessment: voices of mexican university teachers. profile: issues in teachers’ professional development, 23(1), 107–124. https://doi.org/10.15446/profile.v23n1.85019 this article was received on december 9, 2019 and accepted on october 5, 2020. this is an open access article distributed under the terms of the creative commons license attribution-noncommercial-noderivatives 4.0 international license. consultation is possible at https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/ https://orcid.org/0000-0002-3990-0239 https://doi.org/10.15446/profile.v23n1.85019 https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/ universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras108 gonzález introduction in many english as a foreign language (efl) contexts, the process of language assessment is part of an instructor’s daily job (lam, 2014; lópez-mendoza & bernal-arandia, 2009), including the assessment of writing. teachers’ language assessment literacy (lal), then, becomes of vital importance to ensure the quality of the process. assessment training, a common lal tool, has benefited from extensive research of its impact on rater scoring. however, little is known of how training may benefit the classroom assessment of writing (caw). this paper analyzes the impact that two sessions of writing assessment training (wat) had on the assessment practices of eleven mexican efl university teachers. literature review the assessment of efl students’ writing is crucial for its development. it is through assessment, in its different modalities, that a text may be improved (crusan, 2010). it is a reflective process for which teachers need to know how to create fair assessments that provide information about their students’ writing ability (crusan et al., 2016, p. 43). assessment literate teachers are aware of the potential consequences of inaccurate assessment (stiggins, 1999) to the quality of texts and the development of writing skills. teachers may also need to be aware of their involvement in a process that is influenced by contextual factors such as economy, social bonds, and the cultural practices of the institution (chen et al., 2013; yan et al., 2017). managing the interaction with these factors in benefit of caw becomes a necessary ability of those assessing students. therefore, conducting writing assessment requires stakeholders to be assessment literate (crusan, 2010, crusan et al., 2016; fulcher, 2012; taylor, 2009; weigle, 2007), that is, to have assessment knowledge to be capable of choosing how and when to use this knowledge (coombe et al., 2012; malone, 2013). lal has gained importance due to three factors: the worldwide use of large-scale test results (inbar-lourie, 2008), the role of tests in the globalization of languages, and the need for teachers to implement assessment (fulcher, 2012). it is a social practice (inbar-lourie, 2008) in which stakeholders’ sociocultural perspectives (scarino, 2013) are embedded in their interpretations and preconceptions of students’ language performance. lal goes beyond the knowledge of assessment, its practice in the classroom, and the involvement of social and contextual factors. it may also involve teachers’ reflection processes of their assessment practices in the classroom as a means to reconceptualize their assessment knowledge and practice. xu and brown (2016), for instance, proposed the teacher assessment literacy in practice (talip) pyramid which had the purpose of portraying the interrelationship among theoretical knowledge of assessment, sociocultural perspectives, and the development of preservice and in-service teachers. they argued that the ultimate level of lal is “teacher assessor (re)construction” since it is through professors’ constant metacognitive activity combined with classroom experience that may lead to the improvement of assessment processes (p. 162). depending on stakeholders’ roles and contextual factors, researchers have pointed out the need to expand the concept of lal by grouping the degree of knowledge and skills required into three different levels (taylor, 2013): (a) core lal (researchers, test developers), (b) intermediary (language teachers, course instructors), and (c) peripheral levels (policy makers) which are constantly related to stakeholders’ sociocultural values (baker & riches, 2018). these levels may face difficulties that hinder the development of lal and writing assessment literacy (wal) including stakeholder’s lack of time, perceived anxiousness, fear, and a lack of wal opportunities (falvey & cheng, 1995 [as cited in coombe et al., 2012]; gonzález & vega-lópez, 2018; lam, 2014; lópez-mendoza & bernal-arandia, 2009). language assessment perceptions crusan et al. (2016) identified l2 tertiary teachers’ (n = 702) perspectives of writing assessment with a 54-item electronic survey. most of the respondents (80%) had received 109profile: issues teach. prof. dev., vol. 23 no. 1, jan-jun, 2021. issn 1657-0790 (printed) 2256-5760 (online). bogotá, colombia. pages 107-124 the impact of assessment training on efl writing classroom assessment: voices of mexican university... wat throughout their postgraduate courses or as part of their teaching certification courses while others reported no previous assessment training experience (n = 130). teachers had contradicting views of the nature of assessment and negative perceptions of training: 66% considered writing assessment always inaccurate, 60% considered it a subjective process while 80% considered rater training did not encourage them to improve their assessment. teachers have different views of assessment training courses and their contribution to assessment practice (gonzález & vega-lópez, 2018; jeong, 2013; koh et al., 2017; lam, 2014; malone, 2013; nier et al., 2013). for instance, nier et al. (2013) analyzed the perceptions of eighty efl teachers to an online assessment course concluding that most of them considered it useful for their future assessment practice but more samples were needed to further understand the process of assessment. similarly, in mexico, gonzález and vega-lópez (2018) found that elementary school teachers held positive views of an online productive skill assessment course, but more time was needed to analyze it contents. teachers also have diverse perceptions of lal needs (fulcher, 2012; lam, 2014; vogt & tsagari, 2014; volante & fazio, 2007). vogt and tsagari (2014) found that 42.4% of the surveyed teachers in primary, secondary, and tertiary levels in europe claimed to have not received assessment training. most of the teachers preferred receiving training to improve assessment of productive, receptive, and integrated skills as well as statistical analysis for language assessment. training has become a widely used strategy to enhance lal. however, knowledge of its impact varies. assessment training impact on writing assessment weigle (1994, 1998), shohamy et al. (1992), and elder et al. (2005, 2007) focused on the effects that rater training had on assessors and the scores provided in l2 assessment contexts. elder et al. (2005) found that after eight experienced raters participated in an online training course, scored diagnostic writing papers, and received group and individual feedback of their scoring performance, they viewed training as useful. this allowed raters to become aware of their own rating behavior and more consistent in their scoring; therefore, suggesting that feedback may have an impact on assessment procedures. much of the research has focused on the teachers’ assessment knowledge, their experiences in assessment training, their lal needs, their views of assessment, and the viewed impact of online assessment courses. additionally, raters’ views of assessment and the impact that training has on their rating in large scale tests has been widely explored. research has yet to understand the relationship among lal, classroom assessment, and latin american assessors in foreign language contexts. exploring the level of impact that training, as a mode of lal, may produce in efl instructors’ caw, may contribute to closing this gap. considering that studies which focus on language assessment training have been conducted in asia (koh et al., 2017), north america (malone, 2013, nier et al., 2013; weigle, 1998, 2007), europe (fulcher, 2012; vogt & tasagari, 2014), and australia (knoch, 2011), the latin american context has remained underexplored. therefore, this paper seeks to explore the impact that wat had on teachers’ caw in the mexican university efl setting by answering the research question, to what extent does wat impact efl teachers’ reported classroom assessment of students’ writing skills? method the study intended to provide the researcher’s interpretation of a phenomenon in a particular research context at a specific period of time (paltridge & phakiti, 2010), without seeking generalization. thus, a qualitative, interpretative-constructivist perspective (creswell, 2015; johnson et al., 2007) was adopted. research context the eleven efl university teachers were in service at one of three public universities (institution a, b, and c) or a language institute (institution d) in the north-eastern universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras110 gonzález (22–52 years) and four men (24–45 years old). the least experienced was olivia with one year whereas the most experienced was maria with more than 20 years of experience (table 1). two men and three women tps had a ba (applied linguistics, english language, or human resources) combined with a teaching certification (icelt); two female participants and one male participant had an ma (applied linguistics, tesol, bilingual education) and one male teacher was an applied linguistics undergraduate student. in an interest to maintain the anonymity of participants, pseudonyms were used to refer to each tp. region of mexico. teachers among institutions a, b, and c assess their students following distinct procedures and criteria, without considering writing. at institute d, teachers are required to assess the four language skills. teachers are provided with the writing prompts and the analytic rubric to assess writing. therefore, three of the participants (institution d) assessed writing regularly at their institutions. participants following a convenience sampling method (dörnyei, 2007), eleven teachers (tps) were recruited: seven women table 1. background characteristics of participating teachers tp gen age months te academic background institution of work teach/ assess writing? use rubrics? assessment training rubric use training martin m 28 84 ba applied linguistics tkt/icelt pu always always yes yes elena f 26 96 ba administration pu often often yes yes julio m 41 84 ba human resources tkt/ icelt li often always yes yes olivia f 24 4 ba international affairs pu often rarely no no alberto m 40 108 ma bilingual education pu sometimes never no no karina f 26 48 ma applied linguistics pu sometimes always yes no jessica f 22 48 ba applied linguistics tkt/icelt li always always yes yes maria f 52 240 ma tesol pu often sometimes no yes antonia f 35 144 ba english language tkt/ icelt pu sometimes hardly ever yes yes silvia f 44 120 ba english language tkt/ icelt pu often sometimes no no octavio m 23 24 ba applied linguistics student li always often yes yes note. li= language institute; pu = public university; te = teaching experience. 111profile: issues teach. prof. dev., vol. 23 no. 1, jan-jun, 2021. issn 1657-0790 (printed) 2256-5760 (online). bogotá, colombia. pages 107-124 the impact of assessment training on efl writing classroom assessment: voices of mexican university... tps had in common the desire to improve their assessment practice, the type of students they worked with, and they were all required by their language institutions to assess language skills. teachers who had these characteristics and agreed to participate were considered. four participants had never experienced assessment training while the rest had minimal experience with training. data collection instruments semistructured interviews two semistructured interviews were conducted with the intention of identifying possible changes in instructors’ caw. interview protocols were followed (creswell, 2013) while conducting the 22 interviews. interview 1 (see appendix a) focused on tps’ assessment prior to wat. it included 13 questions in spanish or english providing interviewees with a comfortable environment in their natural language (cohen et al., 2011). both languages were used to avoid transcript translation diminish data objectivity (pavlenko, 2007). tps were given the option of choosing the language of their preference. interview 2 (see appendix b) explored the changes that training had encouraged. additionally, it intended to obtain data to compare with the information obtained from inter view 1. inter view 2 was also available in spanish or english for participants to choose. writing assessment training (wat) two sessions of wat were provided to tps by the researcher, one prior training (wat1) and the second (wat2) from six to eight months after session one. wat1 focused on the analysis of the nature of efl writing, its assessment and writing assessment practice using holistic and analytic rubrics. wat2 gave priority to the importance of using a rubric as a classroom tool for assessment and to provide formative feedback to students to enhance “assessing for learning” (stiggins, 1999). it included opportunities for teachers to reflect on the role of assessment in their classrooms, and their current assessment processes to analyze their improvement. the contents of sessions were adapted by the researcher from the cefr manual for language examinations (council of europe, 2009a, 2009b), the alte manual for language test development and examining (council of europe, 2011) and the principles suggested by bachman and palmer (2010). data collection procedures stage 1. the 11 participants signed an informed consent. the researcher individually contacted teachers via email, telephone, or social media to schedule each interview and the first wat. then, the pretraining inter view was conducted and audiotaped with participants’ consent. stage 2. wat1 was led by the researcher. for approximately two hours and a half, participants interacted and provided their previous experiences assessing writing as well as their views of writing, and the importance of its assessment in their classrooms. wat1 was provided at one of the participating institutions. stage 3. wat2 was delivered by the researcher. during three and half hours teachers were encouraged to share their reflections of the changes they noticed in their assessment of writing since they experienced wat1. participants were encouraged to participate freely and to share experiences in a group-led discussion. then, in accordance with the researcher, participants were scheduled to participate in the post-training interview. stage 4. interview 2 was conducted two to three months’ post wat2 session with the purpose of providing teacher time to reflect on information discussed and to implement possible changes in their assessment processes. as in interview 1, consent for its recording was obtained from participants. universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras112 gonzález data analysis interview transcript analysis followed a grounded theory approach (strauss & corbin, 1994). theory was generated with the researcher’s interpretations of the voice of the participant to understand their individual actions (strauss & corbin, 1994, p. 274), and the underlying reasoning grounded in participants’ rationale for their actions and practice (taber, 2000). data analysis relied on themes and categories as they emerged in data. emerging themes were identified in data and grouped in main themes then clustered into subthemes. finally, categories were signaled with the purpose of noting relationships among variables and the context in which participants were immersed. each category was coded (creswell, 2015). emerging themes, subthemes, and categories were compared among participants to find similarities and differences. finally, these were compared within the pre-training and post-training data to obtain the impact of wat. certain researcher bias should be considered since the main researcher of the study conducted the two wat sessions, the two semistructured interviews, and was responsible for data analysis. to diminish this, the results were shared with an expert researcher in the field of applied linguistics. this external researcher reviewed the data and came up with her own analysis. finally, results of both analyses were discussed and agreed upon. results data suggested that assessment training had an impact (table 2) on (a) the teaching of writing in the efl classroom, (b) the teachers’ regular classroom assessment procedures, and (c) their self-awareness as an efl teacher or as a classroom assessor. table 2. impact of assessment training main theme subtheme teacher participant impact on classroom teaching writing activities silvia, antonia, olivia, maria feedback techniques silvia, alberto, antonia, maria impact on classroom assessment assessment procedures martin, karina, octavio scoring tools martin, karina, elena, octavio, olivia impact on teacher self-awareness the nature of writing olivia, maria the teaching writing silvia, antonia, octavio, olivia, maria assessment procedures martin, silvia, alberto, karina, maria writer stance silvia, alberto, antonia, olivia student stance olivia, maria no impact was experienced julio, jessica 113profile: issues teach. prof. dev., vol. 23 no. 1, jan-jun, 2021. issn 1657-0790 (printed) 2256-5760 (online). bogotá, colombia. pages 107-124 the impact of assessment training on efl writing classroom assessment: voices of mexican university... the teaching of writing in the efl classroom two subthemes emerged within this main theme: (a) writing activities and (b) feedback techniques. writing activities silvia reported she continued giving importance to the assessment of other skills mainly because of time issues and efl program demands. after training she reflected on the importance that writing has for language students and their need of it in their future professional lives. during interview 2, she explained that she now includes more writing activities in her lessons and provides more feedback to students’ texts as pointed out in the following excerpt: i implemented more writing exercises and i am using a correction code to provide students the feedback. i used to use a code, but i only used two or three symbols and did not really give extended feedback...i am trying to focus more and use it more. (silvia) maria reported receiving the most impact after experiencing assessment training. during interview 2, she reported to have more interest in writing and its treatment in her classroom. she now saw its importance in students’ language development resulting in her attempt to have her students write at least to a minimum level in the classroom or for homework. she explained: “there is more interest from me in the sense not to leave it out...i started to put a little more emphasis on writing by writing at least a little or for homework based on my students’ needs.” it may be argued from this evidence that three categories emerged from this subtheme that reflect teachers’ changes in their classroom post training: (a) implementation of writing techniques, (b) increase of writing activities such as the case of silvia, and (c) focus of activities on students’ needs carried out by maria as portrayed in the previous interview excerpt. feedback techniques three categories were identified from teachers’ feedback activities after training: (a) implementation of varied feedback techniques, (b) increase of feedback provision, and (c) improvement of feedback provision. for instance, alberto explained his feedback had changed post-training. he was more careful and precise in the comments he provided to his students. he became aware of the importance of feedback in students’ development of skills and in their assessment. he pointed out: i only read the text and provided comments...i believe that in the new methods, to assess students’ feedback is very important because if i tell the student you failed, but i don’t say in what he failed or how he can improve, then assessment would be useless, we would only be giving a score. (interview 2) maria, in addition to increasing the number of writing activities done in the classroom, modified her feedback focus by paying attention to the genre and the structure of the text: “i started to give more feedback in the sense of how they were basic level obviously and had much errors in their writing and how i needed to give more suggestions in their writing and use of grammatical structures.” maria paid more attention to the type of feedback she gave to her students specifically on language accuracy. classroom assessment of writing two subthemes were identified in this second emerging main theme: (a) classroom procedures to assess writing and (b) pts’ use of scoring tools to assess writing. classroom procedures to assess writing martin suggested he had (a) reoriented his assessment purpose; karina reported she had (b), increased her provision of assessment feedback while octavio explained (c), an increase of the use of assessment techniques. universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras114 gonzález martin reported that he modified his leniency in his assessment of students’ texts in addition to his use of holistic rubrics to manage his time. he used to expect more from his students than they could actually produce by stating: at some point, i had been too strict with my students, and sometimes i would look at them and then interpret the text without looking at their writing...especially when i am expecting something from them i was perhaps demanding a higher proficiency.…the sessions helped me notice that. (interview 2) karina reported that prior to wat she would directly provide the corrections to the text and score it according to her personal judgment without feedback. she pointed out that post wat she had been able to implement change to her regular procedure by explaining to students prior to assessment the scoring tool used. she explained that, at first it was merely my judgment: i read it, corrected it. i would not let them do so but now...i looked for a tool that fits their level and gave it to them before i applied the writing task...i actually read their work again and never gave them feedback. i corrected them, crossed it out, and did not give them the opportunity to reflect on what they thought they were doing. (interview 2) octavio explained, during interview 2, that he did not consider encouraging students’ self-assessment of writing. post-training, he had managed to encourage it with the help of a self-correction code. he considered that this implementation had resulted in an increase in students’ awareness of the importance of self-assessment. he pointed out: with that group, i was able to notice that, before, students did not have a clue of how to evaluate their own work and they relied completely on the teacher. after the training, i was able to implement techniques of how to evaluate each other, and they were able to understand the use of a different evaluation...they began paying more attention to things they did not know and to their self and teacher evaluation. after octavio’s implementation, his students had learned to pay more attention to their work while also being interested in figuring out the meaning of the symbols of the correction code. use of scoring tools from this second subtheme of the emerging theme classroom assessment procedures, four categories emerged: (a) innovation of current scoring tool (exemplified with martin), (b) implementation of scoring tool (portrayed by karina), (c) adaptation of current scoring tool (pointed out by elena) and (d) a combination of scoring tools (reported by octavio). martin reported to have changed his scoring tool post wat. he had always used an analytical scoring tool with all his students regardless of their interests, abilities, or needs. he now considers their proficiency (the lower the proficiency the more general the scoring tool) and his purpose when assessing students’ written work. therefore, this participant shifted to a holistic approach to assessment to provide a more global score to students’ work and for managing his time more wisely. karina explained that, prior to training, she used an analytic scoring tool that she later found did not suit the capabilities of her students. she described how she adapted a rubric to suit her students’ proficiency and her own assessment purposes in the classroom. she also sought to implement a correction code as a tool to encourage students’ reflection and self-assessment of their texts: i looked for a rubric to fit their level and gave it to them before i applied the writing task. i also gave them a code and now i don’t correct their work; i use the codes so they can self-evaluate their work. they improve their text and then i give them the score...now i am asking them the original with their corrections and the final version 115profile: issues teach. prof. dev., vol. 23 no. 1, jan-jun, 2021. issn 1657-0790 (printed) 2256-5760 (online). bogotá, colombia. pages 107-124 the impact of assessment training on efl writing classroom assessment: voices of mexican university... of their text. it has had an impact because they ask me things like “what does this code mean?” (interview 2) during interview 2, elena explained she did not change her assessment methods, but she considered wat had allowed her to adapt a different tool to her classroom needs. she considered that this cannot be done in every class because writing assessment, assessment tools, and assessment purposes depend on the institutional efl program’s goals and students’ proficiency. in relation to analytic and holistic scoring tools, octavio combined the use of both types of rubrics not just to assess students’ written work but also as a tool to provide feedback. this change in conceptualization of rubric and its use allowed this participant to improve his assessment procedures in his classroom, which resulted in students’ understanding of the task and a smoother assessment of writing skills. finally, he added that wat had also allowed him to feel more confident in his assessment procedures and to have an objective explanation to a specific grade given to students’ texts, therefore setting aside his personal views. teacher self-awareness five subthemes were identified that corresponded to this main theme: (a) the nature of writing, (b) teaching of writing, (c) assessment practices, (d) writer stance, and (e) students’ stances. the nature of writing data revealed two categories in regard to teachers’ reflection in this subtheme: (a) importance of writing for a language student (maria, antonia) and (b) the social role of learning to write (octavio). maria experienced a change in her view of writing and its importance in students’ language development. she commented that she tried to help her students change their view of writing as a difficult and unachievable skill by changing her own view. she pointed out in interview 2: and yet i have now started having them see an easy way of writing and...if i change my mentality that is something i need to do in the classroom, i need to give time to [writing] and find a way to do it and give it a little time for feedback. antonia added that wat had allowed her to recall the importance of writing for students’ future professional life. octavio explained he had reflected on how writing is an activity that is best learnt as a social activity: “i was able to see how writing works better when shared with someone.” teaching of writing this subtheme aimed to explain teachers’ reflections about the process of writing instruction. it reflected emerging categories such as (a) improvement of teaching skills, (b) future inclusion of writing, (c) future inclusion of feedback, and (d) future inclusion of process writing. these categories were reported by silvia, antonia, octavio, olivia, and maria. silvia was now aware that assessment could be standardized with the use of an assessment tool. but she needed to give more importance first to its teaching then move on to its assessment. she found her lack of organizational skills affected her lack of change in the classroom. antonia explained that her assessment process in the classroom was not changed but she was still seeking to increase the assessment of writing in the classroom. she added that she increased her writing activities in the classroom even though it required large amounts of time. writing assessment procedures data suggested that wat allowed teachers to reflect on the procedures they followed to assess their students’ work. tps reported to have analyzed how to: (a) update their assessment techniques (julio), (b) update their assessment procedure (martin and elena), (c) begin planning future assessment (karina and alberto), (d) universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras116 gonzález make teaching/assessment purposes agree (maria), and (e) consider students’ needs (antonia). alberto explained he had noticed the need to implement tools to assess his students’ writing. he specified he did not change his caw post assessment training. however, the sessions allowed him to reflect on his present assessment procedure. karina explained that training had helped her reflect on her classroom procedures, how she conducted them, and therefore plan how she could improve her assessment to make it an easier task for her and more reflective for her students. she explained: i even had someone ask me: “why did i get this score?” and i answered: “check the scoring scale and comments i gave you. check what you got and analyze it and if you still have questions come and tell me.” i plan to continue... like this because it is easier for me even if i have a lot of students. (interview 2) julio continued assessing students’ written work with their portfolio work and a monthly exam that included a writing component. however, he reflected on how his actual assessment methods could be improved, on how assessment tools were being combined, and how he considered the use of the portfolio could allow students’ development and reflection, as he states in the following excerpt: i’m thinking a little bit more on changing the way we evaluate students; i consider of course the portfolio…and umm in the exam for example, you have four exams…you fail one exam, you cannot, you can do nothing about the grade, you cannot say “ok if you do it next time better i will give you a better grade”…it is not possible, the grade is there, and it is not possible. with portfolio work you are having products, and you are making them better, it is a better way to evaluate because you are learning from your mistakes for example. (interview 2) olivia explained she felt more confident and secure of scores provided when students, parents, or the administration required further explanations. she manifested she had found a way of combining the institutional requirements with her own assessment beliefs. writer stance this fourth subtheme describes participants’ conceptualization of themselves as writers and how it changed post wat. tps analyzed and reflected on their performance as writers emphasizing their (a) weaknesses as a writer (silvia and antonia), (b) improvement of teacher writing to improve student writing (antonia), and (c) strengths as a writer (alberto and olivia). in this sense, silvia reflected on the need for her to write to therefore transmit to students the skills needed to develop a text. she became aware of her weaknesses and her needs as a novice writer and explained: i’ve become more conscious that it is a skill we need to teach and evaluate. but, as an english teacher, writing is a skill i am deficient [in], i’m not good at writing, so to be able to teach you need to know how to do it. (interview 2) antonia explained that, after the sessions, she had been able to analyze herself and conclude that she had weaknesses that needed to be improved upon, and if improved upon, there would be a possibility of providing more quality feedback and writing assessment in the classroom. silvia and antonia, during interview 2, stated that their reflection on their writing weaknesses led them to visualize their needs of further training and began planning to seek for other courses or workshops to attend. student stance this fifth subtheme identified was tps’ views from the perspective of a student writer. tps reported to have reflected on themselves as writers who are constantly being evaluated in their programs of study and in their working environment. participants olivia and maria 117profile: issues teach. prof. dev., vol. 23 no. 1, jan-jun, 2021. issn 1657-0790 (printed) 2256-5760 (online). bogotá, colombia. pages 107-124 the impact of assessment training on efl writing classroom assessment: voices of mexican university... were impacted in their (a) stance as a student in their understanding of assessment knowledge and became aware of (b) their performance as a student while being a ba or master’s student. for instance, olivia explained that wat had helped her understand the considerations when producing a text and when being assessed by her ba professors. secondly, it allowed her to better understand the use of scoring tools, and/or to adapt them to her and her students’ needs. olivia explained she had changed her perspective as a student and as a teacher about assessment. before taking the wat, she did not consider what her students were being taught in the classroom, but instead only focused on the quality of a product. she pointed out: but also, i advanced personally; as a teacher and student i’ve realized that you cannot isolate writing, then i found a way to balance…i cannot evaluate only what you are giving me, so i mean that i’m giving you input that i have to take into account...so i think my professors did not only evaluate what i wrote...but what i understood of what they taught. (interview 2) with this excerpt, it may be inferred that, as a student, olivia felt more at ease with her professors’ assessment, and as an in-service teacher, she grew as a professional by gaining a deeper understanding of the use of scoring tools. corresponding to this view, maria explained that, as an ma student, she had a difficult time understanding her professors’ assessment procedures by explaining: “it seemed my professors’ were against me, but after the training, i remembered some of their explanations as to why i had gotten a specific grade...now i get what they tried to explain.” it may be argued that this tp gained a deeper understanding of her writing performance and her professors’ assessment. discussion and conclusions this study analyzed the extent to which wat impacted efl teachers’ reported caw. nine of the eleven tps described changes in their regular assessment procedures (table 2). those that reported so (martin, karina, octavio, and olivia) explained that minor changes conducted included a redefinition of assessment purposes, student participation in assessment process (leung & mohan, 2004), and an improvement of the assessment process. time was found a constraint: tps needed more time to process information and implement assessment change. wat was found to strongly impact tps metacognitive skills, reflecting on themselves as writers, as teachers, and assessors who take an active part in their institution’s assessment procedures. change was found in the self-awareness of the nature of writing, the importance of teaching writing, the importance of writing assessment, and teachers’ stances as a writer and as an efl teacher (koh et al., 2017; lam, 2014; scarino, 2013). data suggested that while experiencing wat with a group of peers that faced the same contextual difficulties, tps became aware of the importance of the socialization of assessment (koh et al., 2017; lam, 2014; scarino, 2013, 2017), encouraged the understanding of their own knowledge of assessment, and made way for the understanding of new knowledge (scarino, 2013, 2017) thus triggering their self-awareness skills. wat and impact on teachers’ assessment behaviors and perceptions results of this study emphasized that the impact of wat may be minor in teachers’ classroom assessment (koh et al., 2017), but beneficial for other aspects of teachers’ lal such as their conceptualizations and interpretations of assessment, as suggested by scarino (2013, 2017). this finding may suggest that training impacted positively participants’ awareness of the importance of assessment rather than on the improvement of assessment procedures. positive impact on classroom assessment as an effect of training may be hard to obtain and is rarely measured (jin & universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras118 gonzález jie, 2017). however, the analysis of this impact may enlighten the understanding of the benefits of wat. these may have important implications for the efl teacher. for instance, training as a tool leading to the socialization of assessment procedures among relevant stakeholders may help improve teachers’ confidence in their knowledge and therefore lead to improved classroom assessment. since time is an issue that impacts the assessment process, it is crucial for teachers to consider writing assessment as an ongoing process that seeks improvement constantly with the support of decision makers to improve the caw. finally, tps’ perceptions may suggest that training may also be beneficial when accounted for as an ongoing process instead of a one-time opportunity. this study may correspond to the study led by koh et al. (2017) in which the implementation of follow-up measures, such as permanent training or reflective sessions, supported by educational institution authorities, may provide teachers with the opportunities to improve their practice. according to alberto and antonia, if training were more constant, their assessment in the classroom may change. results of this paper may support crusan et al.’s (2016) results where participants (80%) considered rater training did not encourage them to improve their assessment. in this study, nine of eleven tps confirmed that innovation in their assessment post wat did not occur, confirming that impact on assessment is quite complex. wat and impact on teachers’ future academic development results suggested that wat may trigger future training sessions. silvia, antonia, and maria described their intention of seeking other writing assessment courses. experiencing wat triggered their reflection regarding their strengths and weaknesses as teachers and as assessors. therefore, it can be argued that training may be an initial step that may trigger further assessment literacy and/or professional development. the writing assessment training impact categorization data led to the initial construction of the writing assessment training impact categorization (watic; figure 1), which categorizes wat impact in this specific mexican efl context. it acknowledges the importance of contextual factors (crusan, 2010; yan et al., 2017) such as institutional policies or the nature of the efl program being taught. the watic is a multi-level assessment impact construct compiled from the themes, subthemes, and categories that emerged from the data. the first level includes the three major areas of impact: writing in the efl classroom, classroom assessment of efl writing, and teacher self-awareness (level 1). each subtheme represents the actions that tps reported and that represented, in the tps’ perception and my own, the effect of training in their writing assessment practice. each subtheme portrays from two to five categories (level 3). the watic may exemplify the conceptual framework of the talip proposed by xu and brown (2016), specifically at the top level of the construct “assessor identity (re)construction” during which teachers reconstruct their identity and stances as assessor teachers. this may be portrayed in the third level of the watic where teacher self-awareness is projected as the level that enhanced teacher metacognition. 119profile: issues teach. prof. dev., vol. 23 no. 1, jan-jun, 2021. issn 1657-0790 (printed) 2256-5760 (online). bogotá, colombia. pages 107-124 the impact of assessment training on efl writing classroom assessment: voices of mexican university... limitations the construction of the watic included the qualitative views of 11 active efl teachers. although qualitative insight may not pursue the generalization of knowledge (cohen et al., 2011; dörnyei, 2007), data from more participants could provide a wider perspective of tps experiences allowing for categories to be added or deleted. additionally, the construction of the watic is an initial attempt to portray impact, so further research could be conducted for its validation. validating the specific categories that attempt to describe the effects of wat are crucial since this would allow the exploration of different assessment contexts to obtain a more objective categorization. an important limitation of the study was that the researcher was the trainer and the interviewer of the study. thus, data could be influenced by the tps’ desire of performing how they believe the researcher expects them to (dörnyei, 2007, p. 53). to diminish this, future research could consider the triangulation of data with different qualitative instruments such as assessment observation and document analysis. figure 1. writing assessment training impact categorization (watic) impact of writing assessment training teaching writing in the efl classroom writing activities a) implementation of writing techniques b) increase of writing activities c) focus of assessment on students’ needs a) implementation of feedback techniques b) increase of feedback provision c) improvement of feedback provision a) reorientation of assessment purpose b) increase provision of assessment feedback c) increase use of assessment techniques a) innovation of current scoring tool b) adaptation of current scoring tool c) adaptation of current scoring tool d) combination of scoring tools a) imporntance of writing for student b) social role of learning to write a) improvement of teaching skills b) future inclusion of feedback c) future inclusion of feedback d) future inclusion of process writing a) update of assessment techniques b) update of assessment procedure c) plani�cation of future assessment d) correspondance of teaching and assessment purpose e) consideration of students’ needs and pro�ciency a) weaknesses as a writer b) improvement of writing to improve students’ writing c) strengths as a writer a) comprehension of assesment knowledge b) comprehension of performance as a student feedback techniques assessment procedures scoring tool use nature of writing teaching of writing writing assessment procedures writer stance student stance teaching assessment in the efl classroom efl teachers’ self awareness universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras120 gonzález implications tps’ perceptions may portray the difficulty of reaching positive impact on classroom assessment as a result of wat. they suggest that teacher self-reflection is a complex process that takes time, thus efl teachers would benefit from multiple sessions that can encourage the reflection of assessment procedures. additionally, the watic may guide teachers in the identification of their assessment strengths and the decision making to improve their weaknesses. the watic may raise awareness among teacher trainers, language managers, and heads of educational/language institutions of the staff needs for lal. it may also aid the identification of the potential benefits of providing teachers with wat that could lead to training sessions that are cost and time feasible. references bachman, l. f., & palmer, a. s. 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(1994). grounded theory methodology: an overview. in n. denzin & y. lincoln (eds.), handbook of qualitative research (1st ed., pp. 273–285). sage publications. taber, k. s. (2000). case studies and generalizability: grounded theory and research in science education. international journal of science education, 22(5), 469–487. https://doi.org/10.1080/095006900289732 taylor, l. (2009). developing assessment literacy. annual review of applied linguistics, 29, 21–36. https://doi. org/10.1017/s0267190509090035 https://doi.org/10.1177/0265532208090158 https://doi.org/10.1177/0265532208090158 https://doi.org/10.1177/0265532213480334 https://doi.org/10.1177/0265532213480334 https://doi.org/10.1177/1558689806298224 https://doi.org/10.1177/1558689806298224 https://doi.org/10.1177/0265532210384252 https://doi.org/10.1177/0265532210384252 https://doi.org/10.1177/1362168816684366 https://doi.org/10.1191/0265532204lt287oa https://doi.org/10.1177/0265532213480129 https://doi.org/10.1177/0265532213480129 https://doi.org/10.1177/0265532213480128 https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1745-3992.1999.tb00004.x https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1745-3992.1999.tb00004.x https://doi.org/10.1080/095006900289732 https://doi.org/10.1017/s0267190509090035 https://doi.org/10.1017/s0267190509090035 universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras122 gonzález about the author elsa fernanda gonzález holds a phd in applied linguistics from the university of southampton. she is a recipient of the 2015 research assessment award from the british council and the 2019 latin american research grant awarded by michigan language assessment. she currently coordinates the ba in applied linguistics program at universidad autónoma de tamaulipas. taylor, l. (2013). communicating the theory, practice and principles of language testing to test stakeholders: some reflections. language testing, 30(3), 403–412. https://doi. org/10.1177/0265532213480338 vogt, k., & tsagari, d. (2014). assessment literacy for foreign language teachers: findings of a european university. language assessment quarterly, 11(4), 374–402. https:// doi.org/10.1080/15434303.2014.960046 volante, l., & fazio, x. (2007). exploring teacher candidates’ assessment literacy: implications for teacher education reform and professional development. canadian journal of education, 30(3), 749–770. https://doi. org/10.2307/20466661 weigle, s. c. (1994). effects of training on raters of esl compositions. language testing, 11(2), 197–223. https:// doi.org/10.1177/026553229401100206 weigle, s. c. (1998). using facets to model rater training effects. language testing, 15(2), 263–287. https://doi. org/10.1177/026553229801500205 weigle, s. c. (2007). teaching writing teachers about assessment. journal of second language writing, 16(3), 194–209. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jslw.2007.07.004 xu, y., & brown, g. t. l. (2016). teacher assessment literacy in practice: a reconceptualization. teaching and teacher education, 58, 149–162. https://doi.org/10.1016/j. tate.2016.05.010 yan, x., fan, j., & zhang, c. (2017, july 17–21). understanding language assessment literacy profiles of different stakeholder groups in china: the importance of contextual and experiential factors [paper presentation]. 39th language testing research colloquium, bogotá, colombia. https://doi.org/10.1177/0265532213480338 https://doi.org/10.1177/0265532213480338 https://doi.org/10.1080/15434303.2014.960046 https://doi.org/10.1080/15434303.2014.960046 https://doi.org/10.2307/20466661 https://doi.org/10.2307/20466661 https://doi.org/10.1177/026553229401100206 https://doi.org/10.1177/026553229401100206 https://doi.org/10.1177/026553229801500205 https://doi.org/10.1177/026553229801500205 https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jslw.2007.07.004 https://doi.org/10.1016/j.tate.2016.05.010 https://doi.org/10.1016/j.tate.2016.05.010 123profile: issues teach. prof. dev., vol. 23 no. 1, jan-jun, 2021. issn 1657-0790 (printed) 2256-5760 (online). bogotá, colombia. pages 107-124 the impact of assessment training on efl writing classroom assessment: voices of mexican university... appendix a: outline of teacher interview 1 teaching and assessment of writing. 1. do you consider writing an important skill to develop in a language student? why? 2. do you teach writing in your classroom? how regularly? do you consider it as a part of students’ bimonthly or semesterly assessment and evaluation? why or why not? 3. is writing considered an important part of the language program of the school you work at? why or why not? participants’ use of rubrics. 4. do you consider that using rubrics in the assessment of efl writing is important? why? 5. do you use rubrics to give a score to your students? what type of rubric? why? 6. which rubric do you prefer to use: holistic or analytic? why? 7. do you consider that the rubric provided improved your scoring of the writing samples? the training session. 8. do you consider that training is necessary to score writing? why? 9. do you consider the training provided may improve your future assessment? why? 10. do you consider it necessary to take training to assess students’ written work? why? why not? 11. what aspects do you consider can be improved of the training session? participants’ experience scoring the sample papers. 12. how did you feel while scoring the papers before taking the training session? what difficulties did you have? did training help you solve these issues? 13. do you consider that your scoring of the 10 written samples improved after taking the training? why or why not? how did it help? universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras124 gonzález appendix b: outline of teacher interview 2 (post-training sessions) 1. do you continue assessing writing in your efl classroom? 2. if so, how do you do it? 3. what changes, if applicable, have you implemented in your assessment of writing after the training session? why or why not? 4. what changes do you intend to implement in your future lessons? why? 5. do you now use rubrics to assess your students’ writing? which? why? 6. do you use rubrics to give feedback to your students’ writing? why? 7. has your use of rubrics changed after taking the assessment training? why or why not? 8. how has the training session helped you in your writing assessment practice? why or why not? 9. what changes would you make in the training sessions? 10. how do you feel about writing after taking the training sessions? 11. how do you feel about writing assessment after taking the training session? 12. do you have any additional comments? 91profile: issues teach. prof. dev., vol. 21 no. 1, jan-jun, 2019. issn 1657-0790 (printed) 2256-5760 (online). bogotá, colombia. pages 91-105 https://doi.org/10.15446/profile.v21n1.71378 engaging english as a foreign language students in critical literacy practices: the case of a teacher at a private university involucrar a estudiantes de inglés como lengua extranjera en el desarrollo de literacidades críticas: el caso de una docente en una universidad privada maría catalina gómez jiménez1* universidad pontificia bolivariana, medellín, colombia claudia patricia gutiérrez2** universidad de antioquia, medellín, colombia this paper describes the process english as a foreign language university students and their teacher underwent when engaging in critical literacy practices. interviews, focus groups, questionnaires, students’ artifacts, and the teacher’s journal were used to collect data in this study. findings suggest that when students engage in critical literacy practices, they are prone to reflect on the power they have as agents of social change, while developing language skills. however, teachers should be ready to encounter some resistance from students and to struggle with the incorporation of critical perspectives in their lessons, which is understandable considering the emphasis grammar mastering has traditionally had on language teaching and learning. key words: critical literacies, english language teaching, language skills. este artículo describe el proceso que atravesaron estudiantes universitarios y su profesora, al involucrarse en prácticas de literacidades críticas en la clase de inglés. entrevistas, grupos focales, cuestionarios, trabajos de los estudiantes y el diario de campo de la docente fueron usados para recoger datos en este estudio. los hallazgos sugieren que cuando los estudiantes se involucran en prácticas de literacidades críticas adquieren una mayor disposición para reflexionar sobre el poder que tienen como agentes de cambio social, mientras desarrollan habilidades lingüísticas en inglés. sin embargo, los docentes deben estar preparados para encontrar resistencia por parte de los estudiantes, así como para enfrentar la incorporación de una perspectiva crítica en sus clases. dichas dificultades son comprensibles, considerando el énfasis que tradicionalmente se ha dado a la enseñanza y aprendizaje de estructuras gramaticales. palabras clave: enseñanza de inglés, habilidades lingüísticas, literacidades críticas. * e-mail: mariac.gomezj@upb.edu.co ** e-mail: cpatricia.gutierrez@udea.edu.co how to cite this article (apa, 6th ed.): gómez jiménez, m. c., & gutiérrez, c. p. (2019). engaging english as a foreign language students in critical literacy practices: the case of a teacher at a private university. profile: issues in teachers’ professional development, 21(1), 91-105. https://doi.org/10.15446/profile.v21n1.71378. this article was received on april 1, 2018 and accepted on october 22, 2018. this is an open access article distributed under the terms of the creative commons license attribution-noncommercial-noderivatives 4.0 international license. consultation is possible at https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/. universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras92 gómez jiménez & gutiérrez introduction throughout the 20th and 21st centuries, english has gained increasing importance worldwide, and as the international language that it is claimed to be, it is expected to promote economic, social, and individual benefits. some of those benefits include: the insertion of the national economy into the global market as a result of people’s enhanced communication skills that allow carrying on business with foreign companies, as well as access to better job opportunities. consequently, educational institutions in colombia, language programs, as well as teachers, have put forth an effort to innovate english language teaching (elt) by actively adopting teaching trends that help respond to the mandates of the ministry of education (men). among these trends, communicative language teaching (clt) is a dominant approach, which is regarded as an option that contributes to the achievement of the main goal set in programa nacional de bilingüismo (pnb, national bilingualism plan). this goal refers to the development of communicative competence (speaking, writing, listening, and reading skills) in the english language in all educational contexts, from pre-school to higher education (men, 2004). however, these assumptions about english have been challenged by critical scholars (janks 2014; luke, 2012; mora, 2014) as they consider them dominant discourses that promote english as the only language of success. in addition, other aspects such as the development of learners’ criticality, reflexivity, and their exercise of social agency using the target language have been scarcely encouraged, simply because learners are just taught to communicate in the target language (l2) without questioning the underlying messages and power ideologies conveyed through the l2. in this regard, pennycook (2001) warns that english in a global context would generate unequal power as well as wealth distribution unless english teachers and learners address social issues and, in this way, go beyond the walls of the classroom or, in other words, extrapolate social agency to the world outside the classroom. teaching and learning english from this perspective requires a number of transformations, though. on the one hand, the way language teaching has been conceived, as a list of grammar items to be taught (ko & wang, 2013) would need to be changed for critical literacies, which advocate for the incorporation of students’ realities as part of the texts to be addressed and reflected upon in the english class (duncan andrade & morrell, 2008; mora, 2014; rincón & clavijo, 2016). thus, students’ involvement in class discussions and in the creation of counter texts, for instance, calls for a view of language as a whole, in which myriad structures and vocabulary would be demanded by students to fully engage in class. in this same vein, the materials traditionally used in english as a foreign language (efl) teaching are called to attention from this perspective as they usually fail to represent students’ realities and continue to address issues alien to students’ culture. theoretical background critical literacy critical literacies are not new among scholars and researchers in literacy education. however, due to different theoretical bases, there is no unique definition of “critical literacy” (green, 2001). in their broadest sense, critical literacies refer to the ability to read texts going beyond their superficial meaning. that is, it implies approaching texts in a reflective way to understand working ideologies (luke, 2012) such as power (janks, 2010), inequality, and injustice (comber, 2015). in the realm of critical literacy, text is understood as a “vehicle through which individuals communicate with one another using the codes and conventions of society” (robinson & robinson, 2003, p. 3). texts, in this sense, can be either songs, novels, poems, conversations, pictures, movies, and so on. 93profile: issues teach. prof. dev., vol. 21 no. 1, jan-jun, 2019. issn 1657-0790 (printed) 2256-5760 (online). bogotá, colombia. pages 91-105 engaging english as a foreign language students in critical literacy practices... to develop a thorough understanding of the tenets of critical literacy, mclaughlin and devoogd (2004, p. 54) elaborated four principles which are: (1) critical literacy challenges common assumptions and values; (2) critical literacy explores multiple perspectives, and imagines those that are absent or silenced; (3) techniques that promote critical literacy are dynamic and adapt to the contexts in which they are used; and (4) critical literacy reflects on and uses literacy practices to take action for social justice. hence, the critical literacies approach is generally contrasted with “functional literacy”. the former views literacy as a social practice (gee, 1999), while the latter views literacy as the mastery of linguistic skills. in addition, manning (1999) developed a framework to distinguish critical literacies from functional literacy by establishing the difference between their respective ideology purpose, literacy curriculum, and instruction. on the one hand, the main objective of functional literacy is to produce skilled workers for the marketplace. consequently, the curriculum is restrictive and the instruction is individualistic and competitive. on the other hand, for critical literacies, texts are not neutral but marked by power messages, dominating interests, and hidden agendas (janks, 2010, 2014). in order to deconstruct these texts and unveil their ideological messages and power relationships, the curriculum is to employ materials from the everyday world as text and analytic tools. critical literacies in action critical scholars have overtly supported the idea that there is not a single procedure for incorporating critical literacies into the classroom (luke, 2012), given that the particularities of the context where the foreign language is taught differ from one another. thus, an approach to critical literacies “needs to be continually redefined in practice” (comber, 2001, p. 274). in this realm, behrman (2006) identified six classroom applications of critical literacies instruction in order give a snapshot of the many possible ways of doing critical literacies in different educational settings. these practices are: 1. giving students the opportunity to read texts that supplement the traditional classroom texts such as works of fiction, nonfiction, and texts derived from the popular culture so that they can explore and interrogate social issues. 2. exposing learners to the reading of multiple texts written by different authors on the same topic, allowing students to recognize that there is not a unique meaning or interpretation of a text, but rather multiple perspectives that are inherent to the authors. 3. encouraging students to read from a resistant perspective. that is, a reader may have different perspectives of a text depending on the lens from which it is approached, namely gender, language, sexuality, class, or religion. 4. allowing students to write counter narratives as personal reflections on the topic that is being learned. through those counter texts, they can express their thoughts, perceptions, and feelings. 5. promoting student-choice research projects in order to link the topics mandated by the curriculum with those of learners’ personal interest. in this way, students will be more in charge of their own learning while bringing to this process their everyday lives. 6. moving students to take social action and take their everyday issues to the world outside the classroom. hence, they can start recognizing literacy as a powerful tool for social change. some of these classroom practices have been identified in the colombian context ranging from elementary school to university level. for instance, arias (2017) implemented a critical media literacy (cml) approach into the curriculum with the purpose of promoting young english students’ critical reading of media, specifically related to food. as a result, students were aware that the media can present a distorted version of universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras94 gómez jiménez & gutiérrez they become aware of the social issues around them as well as be empowered to act on these issues. second, and aligned to vasquez’s (2017) ideas, the topics presented in these materials should be related to student’s daily lives and experiences as well as their interests. in this way, both students and teachers may be able to engage in considerable analysis and discussion of these topics (rashidi & safari, 2011). in addition, the topics addressed in those materials should also be related to students’ native language (l1) culture since to get a deeper understanding of the world and globalization, it is first necessary to take “greater account of the local and respecting its value and validity” (canagarajah, 2005, p. xiv). lastly, in order to address issues tied to the l1 culture compared to the target culture, the use of different sources of information, such as authentic materials (burnett & merchant, 2011; kellner & share, 2007; saunders et al., 2016) should be considered. this includes commercials, cartoons, and social media in which reading, writing, listening, or speaking can be combined and applied in specific activities. thus, these sources help learners acquire the information in l2 as well as demonstrate how they identify themselves and differ from others (reagan & osborn, 2002). in sum, the inclusion of students’ culture and interests in the classroom, as well as the utilization of a wide range of materials, seem to encourage learners to go beyond the superficial meanings of texts while at the same time foster their language development. context of the study this research project was carried out in an english class of the language center housed at a private university in medellin, colombia. the english program is offered as a requirement for undergraduate learners from different majors to obtain their professional degree. it has been established that students ought to take and pass ten academic levels of english in order to get their diploma. reality and therefore, they expressed deception (feeling “tricked”) towards familiar food ads. similarly, rincon and clavijo (2016) incorporated the tenets of critical literacies through a multimodal approach with a focus on the model of communitybased pedagogies with the intention of providing high school students with the opportunity to explore social and cultural issues in their neighborhood. results of this study suggest that through the use of multimodality, students reflected on the issues that permeated their own lives and on local cultural practices. at the university level, alarcón (2017) implemented a critical intercultural approach in an english outreach program to promote intercultural communicative competence among english learners. in this study, students were exposed to materials that presented world realities, which helped them develop critical consciousness, social and language skills as well as engage in a process of reflection and action. the use of elt materials in the critical lessons even though there is a vast array of publications in the field of critical elt, little has been done regarding material development in this area. therefore, to respond to this need, rashidi and safari (2011) expounded a model for critical elt materials. some of those principles are explained next. first, whereas traditional elt materials only focus on developing learners’ communicative competence through the discussion and understanding of superficial topics, resources developed in a critical language teaching aim at helping learners to move “beyond the superficial to a more complex understanding of the realities” (rashidi & safari, 2011, p. 254). therefore, rashidi and safari (2011) recommend that language materials in the critical language class should aim at fostering learners’ communicative abilities while, on the other hand, these resources offer learners the opportunity to apply these communicative abilities in context so that 95profile: issues teach. prof. dev., vol. 21 no. 1, jan-jun, 2019. issn 1657-0790 (printed) 2256-5760 (online). bogotá, colombia. pages 91-105 engaging english as a foreign language students in critical literacy practices... five important principles define the methodology and the learning and teaching processes of the language center. these include social constructivism, differentiated pedagogy, the competency-based approach focused on learners’ action, autonomy, and the ict (information and communication technology) appropriation. there were 18 students in the class where this research project took place (although only 14 were present during data collection), nine women and nine men from 19 to 40 years old. all of them were undergraduate students, pursuing different majors, including visual design, fashion design, architecture, theology, social communication, chemical engineering, mechanical engineering, and business administration, among others. most of them had already finished their studies, and some had even finished their trainee internship. additionally, some students from this course came from different regions of the country. along with the participants were the two authors of this paper: catalina, the english teacher and researcher and claudia, the research advisor. both researchers were responsible for planning lessons intended to foster learners’ language skills and helped them use english to interrogate and observe multiple perspectives regarding social issues such as gender violence and discrimination. in the classroom, catalina worked as a guide and a monitor of students’ reflections and discussions about the topics that they addressed. as researchers, it was in our interest to understand what would happen if undergraduate students also had the opportunity to learn english from a critical stance and addressed social issues that would enable them to exercise their critical reflexivity while learning the target language. we also were interested in understanding what was entailed for a language teacher to teach from a critical perspective. method this study is inscribed in a critical paradigm, in which “reality is socially constructed” (richards, 2003, p. 38) and as such, learners bring their own life experiences and world perspectives which help with meaning negotiation through interaction with others. in this way, they have the opportunity to engage in a dialogical relationship that may facilitate them to unveil power messages and raise awareness in such a way that they are empowered to question and disrupt oppressive structures, which was one of the purposes of this study. moreover, critical research focuses on the impact of various educational approaches that privilege “attention to critique and to social justice as much as it does the development of sanctioned academic skills” (morrell, 2009, p. 99). thus, an instrumental case study design was followed, since it allowed us to “investigate a contemporary phenomenon within its real-life context” (yin, 2003, p. 13). in addition, this case study used different sources of information to collect “detailed, in-depth data” (baxter & jack, 2008). data collection data collection protocols included interviews, focus groups, teacher’s field journal, questionnaires, and students’ artifacts. these protocols provided sufficient information to understand how students’ participation in critical lessons impacted their language learning, what they and their teacher gained from this experience, their struggles, and overall, the implications of incorporating critical literacy principles in this particular context. as follows, an overview of each protocol used is described. interviews. two students who represented opposing reactions towards the pedagogical intervention were interviewed at the end of the implementation. these interviews aimed at understanding where these reactions could stem from. focus groups. a focus group was held at the end of each phase, whose primary purpose was to provide information about students’ ideas, analyses, and reflections during the implementation of this pedagogical intervention. additionally, they helped us find out whether students found this critical approach relevant for language learning. universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras96 gómez jiménez & gutiérrez to design the second unit to explore the concept of diversity and the different forms of discrimination that we may encounter in our social reality. for the first part of this pedagogical intervention, catalina explored how gender and domestic violence were presented in different texts (visual and written) as well as to identify and problematize factors that contributed to violence against women around the world. thus, after analyzing comics, news stories, a disney video segment, and a music video portraying visual and text messages concerning gender and domestic violence, learners were given the opportunity to express their ideas and opinions about such images. additionally, strategies such as group work, debating, switching perspectives, creation of counter texts, creating campaigns, and giving presentations were used to allow students to show and negotiate their understanding of these issues in the target language. some of the critical objectives established for the second part included visualizing and reflecting on multiple perspectives of people involved in issues related to discrimination (victims and perpetrators); as well as to become aware of the importance of appreciating people’s differences and the need to disrupt stereotypes in order to stop discrimination. therefore, to align these objectives to the language content of the course, students used different grammar structures to explore and analyze a poem, a song, a video containing hollywood representations of latin people, and to identify and deconstruct their own stereotypes. for this unit, role playing, group work, class discussions, storytelling, writing of a reaction paper, the creation of a blog, and “stand and deliver” activities were carried out. at the end phase, a focus group and students’ selfassessment procedures were conducted. in this part, students reflected on both their perception toward their linguistic development and the topics covered during the lessons. moreover, assessment strategies were applied throughout the implementation of the units to check students’ learning and use of the grammar teaching journal. keeping a journal was useful for different reasons: firstly, it provided information about students, the way they were interacting, their performance in class and level of engagement which, together with the analysis of other sources, helped to select the participants to be interviewed. secondly, the journal helped us to modify some aspects of lesson planning. finally, it also supported the teacher’s continual self-reflection not only as a researcher, but also as a teacher moving towards teaching english from a critical stance. questionnaires. two questionnaires were administered during this intervention which also served as self-assessment tools with which learners could judge their performance and reflect on the critical and linguistic components of the lessons. students’ artifacts. two samples of learners’ work were collected which allowed us to further analyze learners’ reflexivity as well as their language development. unit design and implementation to carry out this project, we designed a pedagogical intervention for which some of the activities were prepared and adapted following different online sources like the gender, language, & sexual (in)equality research group (http://gentext.blogs.uv.es/), and the center for media literacy (2009). similarly, in order to achieve the critical objectives set for each of the units, some of the questions proposed by janks (2014) and mclaughlin and devoogd (2004) were used. for instance, whose viewpoint is expressed? what does the author want us to think of? how might alternative perspectives be presented? what action might you take on the basis of what you have read/viewed? the topics for this implementation were selected based on the fact that at the time of the implementation, trending social issues related to gender violence were of major interest in the national media. in addition, as most learners came from different regions of the country, catalina considered that it was appropriate 97profile: issues teach. prof. dev., vol. 21 no. 1, jan-jun, 2019. issn 1657-0790 (printed) 2256-5760 (online). bogotá, colombia. pages 91-105 engaging english as a foreign language students in critical literacy practices... concepts covered. to do so, catalina created two rubrics for assessing final assignments. among the criteria established for assessing those tasks there were content, sentence structure, and vocabulary. data analysis to analyze the data collected, we took into account different steps, as proposed by thomas (2006). first, information from the two questionnaires and journal entries was gathered and information from the two audio recordings of focus groups and interviews was transcribed. then, the data were read and analyzed inductively by assigning short names/codes to chunks of information containing similar ideas from the different sources. from these codes, some themes were established based on recurrences and were contrasted against the research question (what does it take for a teacher and efl university students to engage in critical literacy practices?) constant comparison of the information collected from different sources, grouping, coding, triangulating, tabulating, and categorizing were the steps taken to identify categories. findings data collected revealed that students and the teacher experienced a variety of challenges and gains related to students’ language use, their perceptions of critical content, and the teacher researcher’s journey. perception of language use one of the most recurrent struggles students experienced during the implementation of this pedagogical intervention corresponded to language use. this was due to the fact that, traditionally, students are presented with specific language points and vocabulary to be learned and practiced throughout the lessons, as though communication involved the use of only one language structure and limited vocabulary. therefore, when trying to convey their ideas in english, in a class discussion, students felt inhibited as they needed a combination of grammar structures and vocabulary they did not feel confident about, which hindered their participation. evidence of this was provided in the following quote: “i couldn’t express myself in different ways. i mean, grammar” (rafael, questionnaire). to illustrate this idea, in one of the interviews, one student commented: my idea was not to respond in spanish but in english. this is perhaps the reason of my inhibition. as speaking english is somewhat hard for me, i sometimes felt limited to participate. i mean, i had the idea in my mind but i didn’t know how to express it.1 (juan camilo) consequently, during the discussions, catalina assisted learners with the vocabulary they needed and translated the ideas they expressed in spanish into english. moreover, for the discussions held in the second part, she allowed some time for learners to work in small groups and think, organize, and express their opinions about the topics, beforehand, which helped students to cope with class discussions in an effective way. conversely, even though the use of the target language was a constraint for students, they were also aware that, in fact, they learned and used new vocabulary and grammar during the implementation of the critical intervention. in this respect, one of the participants noted: the topic itself is appropriate for using all we have learned in terms of grammar. so, i think i can now do that after having learned english this way during these days. (carlos, focus group) similarly, students’ language development was also seen in their class outcomes (see figure 1) in which they used a variety of vocabulary and grammar structures to express their viewpoints about different topics, moving away from the traditional grammar drills usually promoted in the language class. 1 excerpts from students have been translated from spanish. excerpts from the teacher’s journal were originally written in english. universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras98 gómez jiménez & gutiérrez figure 1. campaign to stop gender and domestic violence (student’s artifact) furthermore, students valued the fact that they participated in these activities in contrast to the lessons they had traditionally been exposed to, which is reflected in the following excerpt: teacher, i think that the approach you have used this week has helped us a lot because the best way to learn english is by needing it and using it. that is, using the traditional approach is like repeating the structure. so, we don’t learn much if we compare this to the times when we use the language to express our own ideas and develop certain topics. (andrés, focus group) data also revealed that students were able to use not only the language they had already learned and were learning in the course, but also they could go beyond the mere utilization of language for conveying superficial meanings. in other words, they valued the importance of both learning the target language in context, and addressing issues that were socially and culturally relevant. at the beginning i thought i was going to learn english similar to the traditional way, such as “the house is green”. but at the end we did something much bigger because we didn’t learn just the phrase “the house is green”. on the contrary, we could express our viewpoint regarding issues such as gender violence and discrimination. we learned how to put that phrase in context and then we could talk about diverse issues without following the repetition exercise. this helps one take a different perspective towards the world. (juan camilo, interview) all in all, during the implementation of this intervention, language was used for different purposes. this proves that even though students and even the teacher were anxious about meeting the communicative and linguistic goals of the course while engaging in critical conversations, these goals were achieved throughout the different activities. perceptions of critical content data collected suggest that the topics addressed in class were not only of the interest of many learners but also related to their realities. thus, in the questionnaires, 8 out of 14 students stated feeling identification with the topics: i really liked the topic. i felt completely identified. but it was sometimes hard to remember or think about issues that are still hurting for me. (laura) i have been a victim of discrimination due to my skin color and my coastal roots. so, i think it is really nice to address this [topic] in the course since it is a problem i have to deal with every day. (andrés) moreover, this personal identification with the content was also evident in the mixed feelings some learners experienced while developing the activities. for instance, after carrying out the activity “stand and deliver”, one of the students who was later interviewed stated: with the question i identified the most was when you asked “have you been in a situation in which a person is being discriminated or being mistreated and you haven’t done anything about it?” i stood up because i had been in that situation. but the reason i felt 99profile: issues teach. prof. dev., vol. 21 no. 1, jan-jun, 2019. issn 1657-0790 (printed) 2256-5760 (online). bogotá, colombia. pages 91-105 engaging english as a foreign language students in critical literacy practices... identified with that question was not because i didn’t want to help that person, but because i couldn’t. the idea of not being able to do anything to help that person is still hurting. (rafael, interview) this evidence reveals that topics addressed in class were not alien to learners but related to their l1 culture, which made them relevant to them. additionally, data indicated that 9 out of 14 learners felt moved to propose alternatives to combat problems such as gender violence and discrimination: “due to my life experience, i have always wanted to help women who are or have suffered like i did. i would love to do something more for them” (laura, questionnaire). she explained that as she had been a victim of violence, she felt reluctant to remain silent or to ignore this issue. moreover, motivation to take social action was not confined to the walls of the classroom as noted in the teacher’s field journal: one of the students, who has an active participation in social media, made a post about violence towards women. we had previously addressed this issue in class. in his post, the student let male followers know about the importance of breaking stereotypes . . . later that week, he kept posting messages reflecting against femicide. even though andrés’ post was not in the target language (see figure 2), his reflection in the social media proves that he decided to take actions beyond the walls of the classroom and as such, exercise his role as an active member of the society, committed to social transformation. subsequently, data also showed that students were also aware of the role that education plays in fighting against these issues: “through these dynamics i could learn to promote education as the main tool to fight these issues” (andrés, questionnaire). in a similar vein, learners perceived that the discussion of these problems in class helped them become aware of their role as active agents in their society: teacher, i consider that by tackling issues such as discrimination an d diversity, we can make other people aware of the importance of respecting and treating those around us in a better way. (felipe, focus group) figure 2. post by andrés who takes social action in the media (student’s artifact) nonetheless, some other participants in this study demonstrated opposing reactions towards the critical component of these units. i felt somewhat inhibited due to the fact that the topic is alien to me. so, it was hard for me to put myself in other people’s shoes. this is why i couldn’t contribute much to the discussions. (ricardo, questionnaire) here, ricardo shows that as a result of not perceiving himself as having identified with the topics, he felt inhibited to participate in the critical conversations held. moreover, one of the students felt annoyed and reluctant to participate in the conversations: “i didn’t feel identified with the topic because even though i would like this problem to stop, it is an issue that makes me feel uncomfortable” (luisa, self-assessment). learners’ struggles were also evident when they were asked to contradict stereotypes that exist in our culture. this was not only perceived by me, as a teacher researcher, but also by other participants of the study, as exemplified in the following excerpt: teacher: what was that issue that you observed in your classmates? rafael: the thing is that there are some who had like a narrow mind while there are some others who have an open mind. like, “whatever happens, it is normal”. for example, one of my classmates said like universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras100 gómez jiménez & gutiérrez “one can’t fight against stereotypes because they are something that is fixed and seen as normal.” however, through the activities we carried out i could realize that it was possible to change that perspective. in fact, if i contribute . . . maybe i will make a difference. (rafael, interview) reasons why participants found it difficult to contradict stereotypes might be due to the fact that these are rooted and tied to their cultural identities, as they have been infused since childhood. furthermore, data also indicate that students’ resistance to the critical component of the lessons came from the fact that some of them are still used to adopting a passive role in the learning process. therefore, some students experienced difficulty in moving to a more participatory role: teacher, i think that the teacher’s contribution is necessary. i say this because during that week, the contribution was mostly made by us, right? and it is really nice. however, the part of the teacher or the contribution by an expert as knowledgeable about the topic was missing. (juan camilo, interview) in sum, data revealed that being involved in these critical lessons had a variety of effects on students, from identifying with the issues discussed in class and becoming active citizens, to even resisting the content of the lessons. teacher’s journey: challenges and struggles difficulties experienced by catalina took place when planning and implementing the lessons. firstly, planning was very challenging: i have the big challenge to move from the traditional role of an english teacher who instructs and promotes communicative competence among learners, to a more critical position, in which a wide range of social issues are questioned and analyzed. (journal entry) in fact, catalina did not know where to start, what questions to ask, what resources to use, and even what topics to address. this, considering that important social problems, for instance, are rarely present in textbooks. secondly, it took catalina a while to value sources such as news, videos, cartoons, and media related to students’ own culture as sources teachers can use and adapt to prepare and hold critical conversations. hence, when planning she had to be cautions not only in selecting the material, but also in designing activities that attracted students’ attention and helped them reflect critically on those issues. moreover, catalina was concerned about keeping a balance between the communicative and the critical content of my lessons: i have had a tough time finding the material and resources to support my classes. i fear that in the process of applying these lessons, the linguistic content that i have to teach (based on the curriculum) might be disregarded. (journal entry) furthermore, designing tasks to assess the critical and communicative content of the units was also puzzling; catalina had to carefully plan assessment tasks that helped learners reflect and express their stance about the issues addressed in class while considering the criteria to assess the linguistic content. this concern was also present during class development: it seemed that [students] felt more willing to talk about something they knew and was of national interest. the conversation was very engaging. nonetheless, the same as yesterday, language use was a constraint for learners to freely express their thoughts. i had to guide them and rephrase what they wanted to say. i personally think that for future lessons, a little more class time to analyze language use should be devoted. (journal entry) this quote reveals that during the implementation of the units, catalina experienced certain insecurity concerning the way she had planned the lessons, especially when considering the linguistic and communicative content. in addition, catalina also experienced an internal battle regarding the way she managed the critical com101profile: issues teach. prof. dev., vol. 21 no. 1, jan-jun, 2019. issn 1657-0790 (printed) 2256-5760 (online). bogotá, colombia. pages 91-105 engaging english as a foreign language students in critical literacy practices... ponent of the units with students in the class. that is, even if learners found it hard to contradict stereotypes and propose alternatives to fight stereotypical categorizations against different minority groups, she experienced the same difficulty: when we discussed stereotypes about people from other regions of the country, students and i found it difficult to refute them and offer a different perspective . . . it was frustrating for me to be unable to help them refute most of the stereotypes we have created. (journal entry) according to thoman (1978), disrupting a fixed stereotype is not easy because “people perceive selectively through the screen of their own particular attitudes, values, beliefs, and especially personal experience” (para. 4). perhaps if catalina had anticipated some arguments to help learners break out these stereotypes, this struggle would have been overcome more easily. in fifth place, during the class discussions and the activities carried out with the group, catalina struggled not to be neutral. thus, she felt a certain lack of confidence when learners asked her to share her personal experiences. this insecurity is exemplified in the following journal entry: i have been thinking about what i am going to tell my students or the position i will adopt in class when i discuss this topic with the group. . . . my intuition tells me that if one aims to become a critical teacher, it is first necessary to heal one’s wounds first and stop keeping a neutral stance, as if nothing touched you. however, i find it hard to let them know about all i have been through. (journal entry) the uncertainty was then lived inside the classroom, particularly during the “stand and deliver” activity. soon after this activity concluded one of the students asked “teacher, do you feel identified with any of those sentences?” catalina felt somewhat uneasy with this question because she thought that if she had let them know about her experiences with issues of discrimination it would have been like a teacher showing her weaknesses to the students. catalina just answered, “yes, i felt identified with some of the sentences” and she quickly moved on to another activity to avoid more questions. finally, it bears mentioning that catalina also felt challenged and somewhat frustrated by some learners’ resistance towards the critical components of the units. that is, there were moments during the implementation when she felt some internal anger, especially when some students expressed not feeling attracted to the topics addressed because they found it more as an ethics seminar than an english class. this frustration is evidenced in the following journal entry: there was one student (who had earlier in the units expressed his unconformity with the critical topics) that when working with the teams asked me “teacher when will we finish with the ética and valores class?” at that moment, i couldn’t feel more disappointed and ashamed. (journal entry) it is important to point out that the activities proposed in a critical language class do not have to please everyone. however, catalina could not stop herself from feeling frustrated with students’ resistance which might be due to the fact that she had not anticipated this. therefore, it is imperative for teachers, particularly novice teachers, to understand that being critically literate does not consist of shifting or rejecting particular viewpoints, but of considering and examining multiple perspectives, social identities, and discourses (janks & morgan as cited in alford, 2001). perhaps if catalina had been fully aware of this idea, she would not have experienced the feelings of discouragement and frustration when encountering this issue in some of her classes. personal and professional growth not everything in this process was challenging and puzzling. professional and personal gains occurred all throughout this process. as a teacher researcher, the first gain refers to motivation and commitment to accomplish the challenging endeavor of undertaking critical literacies in the language class. despite all the challenges and struggles catalina underwent, they universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras102 gómez jiménez & gutiérrez did not discourage her. in fact, she became aware that teaching is a political and social act (nieto, 2013). thus, it was her responsibility to learn to work from a critical stance and be an agent of change. therefore, as a teacher at the university level, she felt and still feels that she has the responsibility to educate citizens able to transform our society and ultimately, help them disrupt and interrogate multiple messages that have been presented to us as universally true. in addition, there were moments of discovery and surprise during this planning stage which led catalina to question the mainstream values people are exposed to since childhood. the following notes exemplify this idea: i have been a fan of disney’s films since i was a child. however, i never stopped to think critically on the way this type of media portrays the role of women in our society. . . . what shocked me the most was the fact that i always ignored the messages behind these “beautiful films”. (journal entry) moreover, surprise and personal identification occurred through interaction with learners; listening to their contributions, catalina could see a different perspective of the topics discussed: “it was amazing to see how they interpreted the messages they observed in the comics i presented. in fact, some of them saw different and deeper messages that i had failed to perceive” (journal entry). thus, catalina confirmed that in critical literacy, learning is bidirectional; she understood that in critical literacy teachers are called to downplay their authoritative role (giroux, 1987), and as such they must be sensitive and attentive to different aspects, which can be identified through interaction, observation, and dialogue with learners (nieto, 1977). conclusions the development of the communicative competence for efl learners is not left aside by critical scholars. that is to say, critical literacy does not disregard linguistic and communicative components of the curriculum, as has been contended (bacon, 2017; huang, 2011; kuo, 2014). instead, a critical approach to english language teaching focuses on helping learners becoming aware of the connection between language and their social, cultural, and political lives. hence, it is key to give students the opportunity to explore, interrogate, and discuss texts, materials, and topics that are related to their l1 culture. nevertheless, it is paramount for teachers to assist and help learners convey their ideas in the target language allowing them to feel more confident to participate in class discussions. in this regard, many of the strategies traditionally used in the communicative competencebased curriculum might prove convenient. considering that some learners might be resistant to the critical components of the lessons, one sees they may find it hard to change their long-held beliefs, and ultimately exercise their social action. thus, it is advisable for teachers not to expect total success from the first task of implementing critical literacies in their classrooms and to understand that this is a process that takes time and effort. although this research study focused on an isolated attempt to bring critical literacy to the efl classroom, these findings agree with those of other colombian educators interested in teaching languages from a more critical perspective and interested in moving from a role of “passive technicians” to that of “transformative intellectuals” (kumaravadivelu, 2003), thus contributing to educational progress and social transformation. this endeavor, however, should not be relegated to teachers as individuals; to commit to such enterprise, teachers should try to work together as a teaching community and consider different teachers’ views (renner, 1991). as a result, they will collaborate and devote to “the creation and implementation of forms of knowledge that are relevant to their specific contexts and to construct curricula and syllabi around their own and their students’ needs, wants, and situations” (kumaravadivelu, 2003, p. 14). joining efforts in these attempts to bring 103profile: issues teach. prof. dev., vol. 21 no. 1, jan-jun, 2019. issn 1657-0790 (printed) 2256-5760 (online). bogotá, colombia. pages 91-105 engaging english as a foreign language students in critical literacy practices... critical literacies to the classroom might come as a first step to impact curricula at large and begin the social transformation that is so needed in colombia. finally, if higher education institutions and policy makers aim at educating citizens who are social and change agents, then the curriculum should reconsider and transform the roles that teachers and learners have traditionally adopted in the classroom. if such transformation occurs, more opportunities for students to construct knowledge from their experiences as well as unveil and question power messages infused in our society are provided. to achieve this, language teachers should be given the time and support to explore and incorporate critical perspectives into language teaching. as a result, teachers will be more empowered and more aware that they too have the right and the responsibility to make decisions in curriculum construction. references alarcón, n. 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(1978). how to break stereotypes [website]. retrieved from http://w w w.medialit.org/ reading-room/how-break-stereotype. thomas, d. r. (2006). a general inductive approach for analyzing qualitative evaluation data. american journal of evaluation, 27(2), 237-246. https://doi. org/10.1177/1098214005283748. vasquez, v. m. (2017). critical literacy across the k-6 curriculum. new york, us: routledge. yin, r. k. (2003). case study research: design and methods. thousand oaks, us: sage publications. about the authors maría catalina gómez jiménez holds a master’s degree in learning and teaching processes in second languages from universidad pontificia bolivariana (colombia). she has taught english to children, teenagers, and adults and is currently enrolled in the teacher education program at the same university. her teaching and research interests include critical literacies and curriculum. claudia patricia gutiérrez is a teacher educator and researcher at the school of languages, universidad de antioquia (colombia). she holds a master’s degree in foreign language teaching and learning. her research interest is oriented toward the field of critical literacies in foreign language education, critical interculturality, and decolonial theories, especially in teacher preparation programs. profile: issues teach. prof. dev., vol. 22 no. 1, jan-jun, 2020. issn 1657-0790 (printed) 2256-5760 (online). bogotá, colombia. pages 7-11 editorial 7 https://doi.org/10.15446/profile.v22n1.83884 1editorial* 20 years’ journey of the profile journal in elt research in 2019, we completed 20 years of continuous publication of the profile: issues in teachers’ professional development journal. with this first edition we feel more committed and happier to continue this publication effort. to carry on in this endeavor, we have reflected on the journey we have traveled and thus, wish to share with you what it has meant to us. from its modest (although not unworthy) beginnings, the journal has gone through a series of transformations that are part and parcel of those long-term academic projects which, to adopt an ecological standpoint, are expected to evolve constantly; especially when their main activity is the construction of new knowledge. the journal was born out of a concern to make visible the research endeavors of a group of colombian practitioners who taught english as a foreign language in primary and secondary schools and who participated in a teacher’s development program carried out at universidad nacional de colombia in the latter part of the 20th century. the program focused on consolidating the identity of the teacher-researcher via the implementation of action-research as a way to question and transform particular problems that emerged in the english language classroom. the idea was to develop a sense of agency in teachers and thus make them aware of their capabilities to cause a “real impact” on their teaching practices to ultimately favor language learning in their students. a further consideration to achieve such aim was the creation of a venue for the practitioners to share their findings and to add to their teacher-researcher identity one fundamental dimension: academic publication. since then, other cohorts of the teachers’ development program have emerged and the profile journal established itself as the outlet for practitioners’ practices, knowledge, and professional development. eventually, the profile journal’s somewhat localized focus grew, and we began to accept manuscripts from other teacher-researchers in and outside colombia. accordingly, the journal started to observe international standards for scientific publications and to take advantage of the technological tools available to reach a wider audience and accept a higher number of contributions. thus, in 2008 the frequency of publication went from annual to semiannual and the electronic version of the journal was launched, making the adherence to the open access movement possible. at the same time, the journal was being submitted * how to cite this article (apa, 6th ed.): cárdenas, m. l., nieto cruz, m. c., & martínez, e. (2020). editorial: 20 years’ journey of the profile journal in elt research. profile: issues in teachers’ professional development, 22(1), 7-11. https://doi.org/10.15446/profile.v22n1.83884. this editorial was received on october 21, 2019 and accepted on november 5, 2019. this is an open access article distributed under the terms of the creative commons license attributionnoncommercial-noderivatives 4.0 international license. consultation is possible at https://creativecommons. org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/. universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras cárdenas, nieto cruz, & martínez 8 to and accepted by the most important databases and bibliographical indexes, something that attested the growing quality of the journal (the latest achievement in this regard was the inclusion in the scopus database in 2018 [see figure 1]). figure 1. main achievements of the profile journal in terms of visibility • accepted in scielo • annual to semiannual accepted in eric included in publindex accepted in doaj accepted in redalyc accepted in emerging sources citation index 2006 2007 2008 2010 2015 2016 2018 accepted in scopus the contents of the journal have also been diversified and we now accept, besides actionresearch, other research approaches and, basically, three types of documents: research articles, articles of revision, and reflections. these three kinds of articles characterize the sections of our publication. the current issue marks the 34th edition of the profile journal with a historical total of 406 articles published (an average of 11 articles per issue). if we continue this brief quantitative overview, we can see that we have 526 authors (some of whom have published more than once) who come from different countries and educational backgrounds (see table 1). table 1. distribution of authors by country of origin and educational context country of origina colombia 354 mexico 49 chile 32 brazil and usa 14 each spain 13 turkey 11 iran 10 india 6 argentina and united kingdom 5 each italy and cyprus 3 each australia and slovakia 2 each china, portugal, and ukraine 1 each profile: issues teach. prof. dev., vol. 22 no. 1, jan-jun, 2020. issn 1657-0790 (printed) 2256-5760 (online). bogotá, colombia. pages 7-11 editorial 9 educational contexts university 408 public schools 93 private schools 14 language institutes 8 offices of education 3 an = 526 finally, we can look at the percentages of types of articles published and their research approach. they are shown in figure 2. figure 2. percentage of articles published by type of research (n = 406) along the road we have also faced challenges dealing with sustainability, recognition in national and international indexing systems, and authors’ preparations to comply with publication standards. the first one was overcome thanks to institutional policies established at our institution to ensure necessary sources to publish periodically. as far as indexation, in different editorials we have examined the tensions generated by policies that do not always recognize the efforts and nature of journals like ours. although requirements to be accepted in well-known indexing systems and databases have not been modified and the colombian national indexing system has ignored the claims of local communities, profile has maintained its vision and mission as well as its strategies to ensure quality and inclusion of different teachers’ voices. despite the expected changes that come with the growth of our publication, one aspect remains constant: our aim of enriching the professional knowledge of our authors and discourse analysis 2% other 7% mixed-method 3% revision 3% quantative 5% narrative inquiry 5% case study 8% pedagogical innovations 11% experimental/ exploratory 14% reflection 15% action research 27% universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras cárdenas, nieto cruz, & martínez 10 readers and thus, create and strengthen an international academic community around the teaching and learning of english as a foreign/second language. as we have done so far, we will continue trying to keep abreast not only of the latest developments in english language research but also of the current guidelines and tools that will help to ensure the edition and publication of a top-quality journal. we certainly hope that, for the next 20 years, we will continue to be joined by our longtime readers and by new ones who will find the profile journal a source of relevant information. we have gathered twelve articles in this edition; five of them are authored by colombian scholars, three are from chilean researchers, two are from the mexican context, one from portugal and one from spain. the first section, issues from teacher researchers, includes seven articles; six concerning teacher education with two populations in mind: preand in-service teachers, and one related to efl university students. in the second section, issues from novice teacher researchers, we include a paper by two researchers, a novice and an expert in an exploration about teaching contexts. the last section, issues based on reflections and innovations, contains four articles that discuss teacher education in specific contexts and areas of knowledge. we open this issue with an article written by mariza g. méndez lópez from the universidad veracruzana, veracruz, mexico, which explores the emotions experienced by pre-service english language teachers during their teaching practicum and their effects on instructional teaching. the second article, authored by mauricio arcaya from pontificia universidad católica de chile, santiago, chile, deals with the topic of assessment of pronunciation evaluation. in it, the author explores the way in which native english teachers and their non-native chilean counterparts assess pronunciation. the third article is a joint effort of two chilean researchers, eric gómez burgos and soledad sandoval molina from universidad san sebastián, puerto montt, chile, and universidad de los lagos, osorno, chile, respectively. the researchers identified the attitudes towards english as a foreign language of 131 university students from different educational institutions in chile. in fourth place, the spanish researchers amalia herencia grillo and elena hernández de la torre from universidad de sevilla, sevilla, spain, discuss the training needs of local education professionals in spain as agents of cultual facilitation. we continue with the article submitted by luis fernando cuartas álvarez from universidad de antioquia, medellin, colombia. in it, the researcher explores the creation of a route for teachers to collaboratively construct their understanding of intercultural communicative competence through their involvement in a study group. this is followed by a study presented by eladio donoso from universidad católica del norte, antofagasta, chile. the purpose of this paper is to explore the perceptions of chilean future teachers of english as a foreign language regarding the usage of spanish in english lessons. the last article in this section comes from researchers wilson hernández varona and daniel felipe gutiérrez álvarez representing universidad surcolombiana, neiva, colombia. the authors present a narrative inquiry on agency development in student-teachers of an english language teacher program. profile: issues teach. prof. dev., vol. 22 no. 1, jan-jun, 2020. issn 1657-0790 (printed) 2256-5760 (online). bogotá, colombia. pages 7-11 editorial 11 the section issues from teachers researchers features an article written in a joint effort by tania millán librado and nora m. basurto santos from universidad veracruzana, veracruz, mexico. the novice and the expert researchers investigated the perceptions of six english language teachers regarding their specific contexts. the final section, issues based on reflections and innovations, starts with an article written by flávia vieira from the university of minho, braga, portugal. the author examines how language teacher education programs can promote autonomy-oriented change when they are based on a transformative rationale regarding learner and teacher development. this is followed by the reflection presented by claudia patricia mesa villa, john s. gómez-giraldo, and rodolfo arango montes from universidad de antioquia, medellín, colombia. the authors concentrate their efforts on discussing a pedagogical experience in a research seedbed. next, we find the paper authored by ana muñoz-restrepo, marta ramirez, and sandra gaviria from universidad eafit, medellín, colombia. the three researchers arrive to formulate a series of strategies for teachers to gradually lead students from an extrinsic motivation to a more internal and autonomous motivation. we finish our issue with the article written by frank giraldo from universidad de caldas, manizales, colombia, who discusses the language assessment literacy of the english language in the field of language testing. to end, we wish to highlight the valuable contributions of the editorial committees, authors, readers, assistants to the editor, and universidad nacional de colombia. all of them have provided their support in different moments and in different ways. this has proven worthy and encourages us to carry on. melba libia cárdenas journal editor maría claudia nieto cruz journal director edwin martínez assistant to the editor profile: issues teach. prof. dev., vol. 19, supplement 1, 2017. issn 1657-0790 (printed) 2256-5760 (online). bogotá, colombia. pages 7-8 7 editorial http://dx.doi.org/10.15446/profile.v19n_sup1.68446 editorial supplemental issue: language teaching worldwide1* journals tend to be regional in the sense that their readership usually focuses on its own personal scope. for instance, it is hard to find a truly international journal with papers from many different countries. however, this time profile: issues in teachers’ professional development journal has made a major effort to obtain valuable contributions from beyond the south american continent. in fact, this special issue brings together a number of very appealing topics which reflect on a common tendency. there is a clear orientation towards technology-based language teaching which can be seen in many parts of the world. this is the case of coskun’s paper on a novel approach to complementing classroom presentations through the pecha kucha style (http://www.pechakucha.org/), which makes long presentations accessible and controllable in the classroom. the paper is especially appealing because it also addresses collaborative and online language learning with which to prepare presentations as a group. thus, the focus of the learning process is given to the students. this is precisely the case of amengual-pizarro and garcía-laborda and of valencia robles, who address the impact of a relatively new exam (aptis) on students’ perceptions of its usability. valencia robles concludes that in computer-assisted language testing it is equally important to be familiar with the test delivery system as it is to be familiar with the tasks themselves. familiarity is also a key matter for nuket gunduz and deniz ozcan in the optimal use of moodle for learning. next, esen sucuoğlu examines the perceptions of english language teachers regarding contemporary language teaching techniques. another quite appealing article is one by hmidani on teaching the english temporal system to arab english learners. two other interesting articles close this monograph, one with a revision of the bibliography in scopus regarding mobile language learning and the other on foreign languages and gifted children. all in all, these articles make up a valuable volume on realities that are somewhat different from those usually attributed to the profile journal readership. as the editor of this volume i think the articles will surely be of great interest to a very large audience. note: these articles are enlarged, unpublished versions of papers delivered at the following conferences: 4th global conference on linguistics and foreign language teaching (linelt-2017; antalya, turkey); 9th world conference on educational sciences * how to cite this article (apa, 6th ed.): garcía-laborda, j., & madarova, s. (2017). editorial: supplemental issue: language teaching worldwide. profile: issues in teachers’ professional development, 19(suppl. 1), 7-8. http://dx.doi.org/10.15446/profile.v19n_sup1.68446. this is an open access article distributed under the terms of the creative commons license attributionnoncommercial-noderivatives 4.0 international license. consultation is possible at http://creativecommons. org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/. universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras8 garcía-laborda & madarova (wces-2017, nice-france); and 7th world conference on learning, teaching, and educational leadership (wclta 2017, budapest-hungary). the organizers would like to express their gratitude to the editors of profile journal for the opportunity to share this knowledge and work with its readership. all of these papers have been subjected to triple peer review and scanned with turnitin. jesús garcía-laborda slavka madarova guest editors classifying written corrective feedback for research and educational purposes: a typology proposal 211profile: issues teach. prof. dev., vol. 22 no. 2, jul-dec, 2020. issn 1657-0790 (printed) 2256-5760 (online). bogotá, colombia. pages 211-222 https://doi.org/10.15446/profile.v22n2.79924 classifying written corrective feedback for research and educational purposes: a typology proposal clasificación de la retroalimentación correctiva escrita para propósitos investigativos y educativos: una propuesta de tipología benjamín cárcamo1 universidad de las américas, viña del mar, chile although several investigations have been carried out in recent years on written corrective feedback (wcf), there is a lack of agreement about its definition and the effect on students’ writings of different types of feedback. this may be due to the lack of systematicity regarding the characterization of wcf used in those studies. this article seeks to review the concept of wcf in studies in the field and to systematize the various aspects considered in a typology, which includes specification, focus, scope, source, mode of delivery, and notes. the resulting typology should help improve the effectiveness in the comparison of wcf studies and serve as a reference for teachers interested in expanding their practices. keywords: assessment, second language acquisition, typology, written corrective feedback a pesar de la variedad de estudios recientes sobre la retroalimentación correctiva escrita (rce), no existe un acuerdo respecto a su definición ni al efecto que distintos tipos de retroalimentación tienen en la escritura de los estudiantes. esto puede deberse a la falta de sistematicidad en dichos estudios para caracterizar la rce. así, en este artículo se hace una revisión de su noción y de los diversos aspectos considerados en los estudios, a fin de sintetizarlos en una tipología que incluya especificación, enfoque, alcance, fuente, modo de entrega y notas. se espera que la tipología propuesta sea eficaz en la comparación de estudios sobre la rce y sirva de consulta a docentes interesados en expandir sus prácticas. palabras clave: adquisición de una segunda lengua, evaluación, retroalimentación correctiva escrita (rce), tipología benjamín cárcamo  https://orcid.org/0000-0001-7330-9007 ∙ instituto de idiomas, universidad de las américas, viña del mar, chile. email: bcarcam1@edu.udla.cl how to cite this article (apa, 7th ed.): cárcamo, b. (2020). classifying written corrective feedback for research and educational purposes: a typology proposal. profile: issues in teachers’ professional development, 22(2), 211–222. https://doi.org/10.15446/profile.v22n2.79924 this article was received on may 27, 2019 and accepted on january 27, 2020. this is an open access article distributed under the terms of the creative commons license attribution-noncommercial-noderivatives 4.0 international license. consultation is possible at https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/ https://orcid.org/0000-0001-7330-9007 https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/ universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras212 cárcamo introduction the importance of feedback in education has gained attention in recent years due to a paradigm shift in the understanding of evaluation. indeed, the notion of assessment of learning has lost popularity among educators in favor of assessment for learning (black & william, 1998; laveault & allal, 2016). whereas the former highlights the relevance of external standards, the latter seeks to promote that the student is informed during his or her learning process based on clear goals and evaluative instances, both formal and informal (everhard, 2015). in order to implement effectively assessment for learning, one of the fundamental resources is the timely delivery of feedback. in the education field feedback is usually understood as information that is given by an agent to a person regarding a particular performance in order to guide students’ learning from what is understood to what should be (hattie & timperley, 2007). in the area of second language writing in particular, a key research line has focused on the concept of written corrective feedback (wcf). wcf is usually defined as a strategy through which teachers inform students of a linguistic error with the aim of supporting its correction and subsequent elimination in future linguistic production (uptake; ferreira-cabrera, 2017). today there is a high interest to analyze the effects of the different styles of wcf that can be delivered. for example, tang and liu (2018) sought to establish whether or not indirect feedback with affective comments was more effective than without comments. researchers in this study found that both improve writing; however, affective comments also reinforce a positive mindset and increase motivation for writing. comparative studies in a similar line have explored different dimensions of wcf, such as whether wcf should include metalinguistic comments (bitchener & knoch, 2008, lillo & sáez, 2017), the impact of focusing on specific errors (diab, 2015; muñoz & ferreira, 2017; salami & raouf-moini, 2013), the effect of automated feedback (dikli & bleyle, 2014; milton, 2006) and the differences in perception and impact with respect to the feedback given by teachers, peers, or computers (chong, 2017; han & hyland, 2019; lai, 2009; miao et al., 2006; yu & hu, 2017), among others. the multiple studies on the effects of wcf have given rise to two issues. the effectiveness of wcf has been questioned (fazio, 2001; truscott, 1996) and its classification has been explored inconsistently (al-jarrah, 2016; ellis, 2009a). a possible cause of the first problem is the definition of wcf which has had different nuances. the most common have prioritized grammar (ferreira-cabrera, 2017, lillo & sáez, 2017, truscott, 1996). however, in other cases, it has been linked with the improvement of global aspects of communication (al-jarrah, 2016). this issue of definition has had a negative impact on the typologies developed for classifying wcf, which, although multidimensional, has usually ignored certain aspects that are involved in writing. in this sense, a comprehensive and detailed consideration of the factors that make it possible to describe wcf may be one of the ways in which the impact of this strategy on learning can become clearer considering it could provide various criteria for comparing studies in the area. to contribute to this discussion, the objective of this article is to review and systematize the criteria that allow the determination of types of wcf. the result of this review is the proposal of a typology, which can help researchers as well as educators to explore more deeply the way in which wcf is provided. in the first section, the origins and history of wcf is examined. subsequently, ideas are presented regarding how to classify the wcf. then, a synthesis of the various dimensions involved in the deliver y of wcf is presented in the form of a typology. finally, the conclusions are shared. 213profile: issues teach. prof. dev., vol. 22 no. 2, jul-dec, 2020. issn 1657-0790 (printed) 2256-5760 (online). bogotá, colombia. pages 211-222 classifying written corrective feedback for research and educational purposes: a typology proposal the role of written corrective feedback in second language acquisition there are two main perspectives of wcf: a classic, mainstream grammatical vision and a holistic one. from the first point of view, wcf has sometimes even been equated with grammatical correctness (truscott, 1996). this narrowed understanding of wcf can be attributed to the history of the study of the acquisition of second languages. on the other hand, al-jarrah (2016) points out a broader vision, which does not give as much importance to errors at the local level but prefers to comment on global problems such as the organization of the writing and its content. this global vision would be more in tune with approaches such as writing through the curriculum and teaching methodologies of foreign languages that integrate skills, such as task-based language teaching. from the perspective of second language acquisition (sla), the priority given to wcf in the coverage of local errors can be traced in the development of the concept of “error.” in the 1950s and 1960s, errors were perceived as negative, and the aim was to prevent them from becoming an impossible habit to correct (fossilization; selinker, 1972). the behaviorism of the time channeled its efforts to the immediate correction of errors, the constant practice of correct forms, and initiatives such as contrastive analysis (ca), which would reduce the interference of the student’s mother tongue (brooks, 1960). with the advent of chomskian cognitivism, studies of this nature focused on the analysis of errors (ae). this approach consisted of the systematic analysis of the errors of the learners, which revealed that these were not necessarily dependent on the mother tongue. selinker (1972) proposed that each apprentice forms his own “interlanguage,” consisting of his own rules and whose nature would evolve as time goes by. both the ca and the ae tend to focus on the analysis of sentences, leaving aside the pragmatic–discursive plane. in line with this perception of errors, the 1980s gave rise to articulated proposals for acquisition, which are still very influential. krashen (1982), for example, proposed five hypotheses for the acquisition of a second language: the acquisition/learning hypothesis, the monitor hypothesis, the natural order hypothesis, the input hypothesis, and the affective filter hypothesis. it is beyond the scope of this article to explain each of these, but it is worth noting that, from this perspective, wcf is not important in the case of acquisition (e.g., immersion) since the learner’s l2 would follow a natural order. in other words: independent of the feedback received by the student, the student will learn the grammatical structures in a predetermined order. nonetheless, in the case of learning (e.g., classrooms) feedback could have a more relevant role. in addition, when conceiving the acquisition and learning of language as dichotomous, the wcf could not play an important role in the naturalization of linguistic patterns, being these products of an artificial environment different from the acquisition. krashen (as cited in ellis, 2009b) noted that making corrections could be one of the serious errors that the teacher might make. this has been later emphasized by other researchers who have highlighted the importance of using the right strategies for providing feedback depending on students’ profiles (kim & emeliyanova, 2019; shang, 2019). on the other hand, mclaughlin’s model (1987) offered the possibility to accommodate the wcf. mclaughlin (1987) proposes that the learning of a second language is a cognitive process, whose axes are automation and restructuring. learning, therefore, is nothing more than a step from controlled processing to automatic processing through practice. wcf is considered a key component in this transition process. bitchener and ferris (2012) propose that this role would also be in line with other cognitive models such as the adaptive control of anderson’s thought (1996) and pienemann’s teachability hypothesis (1984), universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras214 cárcamo and even with other sociocognitive models such as long’s interactionist perspective (1996), in its contemplation of the negative evidences during the negotiation of meanings as instances that promote learning. with the rise of sociocognitive studies, the development of oral production has received more attention than written production, which has made most researchers interested in the topic work on oral corrective feedback (ocf). this has generated extensive bibliography on precise aspects of oral feedback such as recast studies (han, 2002, iwashita, 2003, long et al., 1998; lyster, 1998) and classifications (lyster & ranta, 1997; lyster et al., 2013). both the systematization and the deepening in areas of wcf have not reached the same level of growth. certainly, the research on writing in an l2 from the sociocognitive perspective seems to be in a stage of childhood (nishino & atkinson, 2015). studies focused on the development of writing rather than the acquisition of a language have broadened the role of the wcf (al-jarrah, 2016). from this perspective, the feedback becomes less limited to lexico-grammatical structures in favor of comments regarding the overall structure of the text. this dichotomy is explored by cumming (2001) through the labels of micro and macro visions of writing, which the author recognizes as axes of three views of writing: the text, the composing, and the context. table 1 shows the two perspectives of writing (micro and macro) as well as three dimensions with respect to which writing has been investigated: the text, the composing, and the context. thus, one could examine a piece of writing at the micro level while focusing on the context. for example, exploring linguistic marks that account for the voice of the writer. on the other hand, at the same level from a macro perspective, it would correspond to study the way in which the writer shows allegiance to a particular discourse community. table 1. what is learned when writing in a second language (cumming, 2001) micro macro text syntax and morphology lexis cohesive devices text structures composing searches for words and syntax attention to ideas and language concurrently planning revising context individual development self-image or identity participate in a discourse community social change despite the effort of cumming (2001), this classification lacks precision in not making explicit the cognitive dimension of writing. in the way that the table is presented, it seems that the act of writing is not understood as a mental process, but only as the tangible result. this weakness becomes evident when cognitive models of writing such as flower and hayes’s (1981) are associated with this classification. in flower and hayes’s model, for example, actions such as planning and editing are viewed as recursive cognitive sub-processes which take place repeatedly while writing occurs. in addition, proposals from text linguists de beaugrande and dressler (1997) could not be properly classified in this proposal. these authors put forward the idea that seven standards of textuality must be met when producing texts. some of these standards clearly go beyond the scope of the category text proposed by cumming (2001). for instance, the standard of situationality would be better suited in both micro and macro aspects of writing. similarly, the standards of coherence and cohesion cannot be linked to any of the specific categories provided in the taxonomy. moreover, these authors emphasize that writing is a dynamic textualization dominated by cognitive processes. these characteristics of the proposal would then make it difficult to use cumming’s categories (2001). 215profile: issues teach. prof. dev., vol. 22 no. 2, jul-dec, 2020. issn 1657-0790 (printed) 2256-5760 (online). bogotá, colombia. pages 211-222 classifying written corrective feedback for research and educational purposes: a typology proposal if one considers the previously discussed understandings of wcf, it can be noted that both would be associated with the micro and macro levels respectively. in particular, the classic view of wcf as the correction of mainly grammatical and vocabulary errors would be restricted to the micro textual level; on the other hand, the global view of wcf could be associated with both textual and contextual macro levels. this second view can be traced back to works by emig (1977) and britton (1970), who emphasized the role of writing not only as an instrument of communication and expression but also of reflection and learning. as a summary, it can be pointed out that the predominant view of wcf at the lexical–syntactic level can be attributed to the importance of structural and cognitive linguistics in studies of sla. the units of analysis of these paradigms rarely go or have gone beyond the sentence level. on the other hand, studies from the subdiscipline of writing in an l2 have had broader research interests, which focus on writing as a communicative skill. this has brought with it an interest in macro aspects of the text. one weakness that has been noted in this journey is the lack of attention to the cognitive components of writing at the time of studying wcf. classifications of written corrective feedback there are several variables that can be taken into account when classifying the different types of feedback that can be delivered. performing this task is a key challenge in helping increase the degree of comparability of the studies carried out in the investigation of the effects of wcf since one could label the type of wcf offered in a particular study before assuming it can be compared to the type used in another one. one of the most significant efforts in this line is that of ellis (2009a), who offers the types of wcf shown in table 2. these were identified by the author based on material delivered by teachers and empirical studies. table 2. typology of written corrective feedback by ellis (2009a) strategy description 1. direct the teacher points out the mistake and correction for the student. 2. indirect the teacher only points out the mistake. the teacher does not offer the correction. 3. metalinguistic a. error code b. brief explanations the teacher gives a metalinguistic cue about the nature of the mistake either by using an error code or by writing an explanation. 4. focus a. unfocused b. focused it refers to whether the teacher corrects all types of linguistic mistakes or if the teacher focuses on particular ones. 5. electronic feedback the teacher indicates the error and offers a hyperlink where the students will find more information about it. 6. reformulation a native speaker or teacher rewrites the part of the text in order to make it read more natural. it is up to the student to accept the suggestions offered. in addition to the distinction in table 2, ellis (2009a) points out two types of responses to feedback. on the one hand, the teacher can request that students correct the errors shown through the wcf. on the other hand, the teacher can offer wcf without asking students to correct the mistakes. instead, the teacher can just ask the students to look at the mistakes and the feedback offered. however, although ellis (2009a) expects this typology to be useful for describing wcf, it does not seem to be systematic enough, since not all feedback strategies seem to be mutually exclusive, which is not clarified by the investigator. for example, there does not seem to be anything that prevents describing a feedback universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras216 cárcamo strategy as indirect, metalinguistic, and focused. clearly, a teacher could focus on a grammatical structure such as the use of past forms, mark errors by noting the amount made at the end of a line, and then deliver grammatical comments about the mistakes made. therefore, it is important to note the lack of emphasis given to the possibility of overlap between different categories of those mentioned in the typology. tang and liu (2018), on the other hand, use the term iccf to refer to indirect coded corrective feedback and iucf for indirect uncoded corrective feedback. this choice of terminology can be interpreted as another symptom of the lack of scope of ellis’s typology (2009a), since this type of feedback would blur the border between indirect and metalinguistic feedback. similarly, al-jarrah (2016) has criticized the distinction between direct and indirect corrective feedback and focused and nonfocused. the first distinction would lose validity because only indirect corrective feedback would deliver feedback that motivates the student to review his or her error while the direct one would be a mere correction, not actually feedback. regarding the distinction by focus, the author distinguishes types of focused feedback. on the one hand, a researcher could study one structure such as the use of the present simple in a comprehensive manner, that is, including all its possible uses. on the other hand, the researcher could investigate feedback specific to a particular use of the structure. in the case of the present simple, wcf could be delivered only when there are simple present errors when expressing routines. another weakness of the typology is that it does not make explicit the possibility that other people apart from the teacher give feedback, as would be the case of a classmate or a researcher outside the classroom. in effect, several studies have explored how this variable can affect dimensions as important as the quality of the writing according to the level of the correctors (chong, 2017) and the differentiation of the impact of a feedback given by a partner with that of the same student, a teacher, or a computer (diab, 2011; lai, 2009; miao et al., 2006), among others. even ellis (2009a) recognizes that it is not only the teacher who can provide feedback, which increases the need to make this factor explicit in a typology that allows a more complete description of the wcf. finally, electronic wcf, noted by ellis (2009a), is clearly linked to studies in call (computer assisted language learning), however, its definition does not seem to be sufficiently comprehensive. research under this view goes beyond the delivery of a hyperlink with information on the nature of the error as suggested by ellis (2009a). in fact, one can identify three parallel visions of the role played by technology in the acquisition of a second language through feedback. the first conceives the use of technologies as a replacement or complement to the teacher, through tutorials or intelligent tutor systems (dai et al., 2011). a second research line highlights the mediating role of technology in the delivery of feedback (milton, 2006). the third line would be represented by those studies that seek to develop and implement technologies that allow the evaluation of writing automatically (kyle & crossley, 2017; warschauer & ware, 2006). a proposal for describing types of written corrective feedback three questions have been used to systematize the types of wcf: (a) who delivers the feedback? (b) how is the feedback delivered? and (c) what kind of feedback is given? (bitchener & ferris, 2012, kang & han, 2015). in view of the present analysis and the guiding questions, a comprehensive typology is presented regarding the classification of the different types of feedback. table 3 shows this typology, including examples for those categories that may be more difficult to distinguish. in addition, under each criterion it is specified if this emerges from the who, the how, or the what guiding questions. 217profile: issues teach. prof. dev., vol. 22 no. 2, jul-dec, 2020. issn 1657-0790 (printed) 2256-5760 (online). bogotá, colombia. pages 211-222 classifying written corrective feedback for research and educational purposes: a typology proposal table 3. a comprehensive written corrective feedback typology criteria categories specification (what) direct (correction) example: he was try to write a good essay. (was trying) localized indirect example: i seen her trying to talk to her friend about her situation. unlocalized indirect example: peter and mark was looking for the bests cars. (2 mistakes) focus (what) focused on form and function example: they was not trying har overcome challenge, so peter were very angry. “you were trying?”, asked peter. comprehensive focused (one structure, multiple uses) example: they was not trying har overcome challenge, so peter were very angry. “you were trying?”, asked peter. unfocused (holistic) example: they was not trying har (x) overcome (x) challenge, so peter were very angry. “you were trying?”, asked peter. scope (what) micro (lexical–syntactic) macro (structure, content) general (micro and macro) source (who) teacher classmate student (self-assessment) external (native speaker, external examiner, computer, researcher) mode of delivery (how) mediated by computer mediated by writing notes (how) metalinguistic (explanations or symbols) example: people is(1) starting to realize the importance of voting. (1) people is a collective noun, so you should pay special attention to subject–verb agreement. affective example: although all the members work hard, it was not possible to convince congress. (1) (1) there is a problem with grammar, but i believe you’ll be able to correct it quite easily. excellent use of a concessive clause. you are doing a great job so far! no comments universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras218 cárcamo table 3 presents a synthesis of the interests of different researchers when studying the wcf. for example, the specification criterion includes the classic distinction between direct and indirect wcf proposed and used by various authors (bitchener & knoch, 2008, ellis, 2009a, muñoz & ferreira, 2017, tang & liu, 2018). this distinction is the most widely recognized in this type of studies. similarly, the focus of wcf has been taken into account in multiple studies (farrokhi & sattarpour, 2011, muñoz & ferreira, 2017, salami & raouf-moini, 2013), which have sought to contrast the way in which the correction of specific errors differs from the correction that does not distinguish between the nature of the errors and delivers as much information as possible to the student. the third criterion is the scope of the wcf that has been taken from the distinction made by cumming (2001), which has recently been considered by al-jarrah (2016). the criterion of source condenses the concerns of those researchers interested in determining the ways in which the effect of wcf varies, depending on who is the agent that delivers it (diab, 2011; miao et al., 2006; yu & hu, 2017). these studies may try to establish if the feedback given by a classmate is equally effective to that delivered by a teacher, for example. the fifth criterion identified for a comprehensive typology is the mode of delivery. this criterion has been proposed based on studies focused on the effect of the wcf delivered by means of a computer in contrast to the more usual written method (ghazi & zamanian, 2016; kluger & adler, 1993; stevenson & phakiti, 2014). finally, with respect to the criterion of notes, it considers the inclusion as a variable of metalinguistic comments in the corrections (bitchener & knoch, 2008; diab, 2015; ellis, 2009a) and, from more recent studies, the affectivity involved and transmitted in these comments, which also has significant effects on student writing (tang & liu, 2018). this classification allows describing in detail the choices of a teacher or researcher regarding the feedback that will be given to the students. for example, a teacher could begin by opting for indirect localized holistic feedback at the micro level. then, this teacher can decide that this feedback should be given among students who will correct their writings using word processing software. finally, the teacher could request that the students receive comments of a metalinguistic nature. clearly, it is not possible to reach this level of specificity with typologies such as ellis’s (2009a). with the proposed typology of the present article, a researcher who has previously identified a type of feedback as peer feedback could now specify it better as to increase the comparability of their study with others as well as the replicability. in order to show in more detail the different dimensions that have been included in the proposal, each of the criteria incorporated in the typology is explained in the following paragraphs. (a) specification: this criterion refers to the classic way in which the student is informed of an error. the proposed typology offers three categories: direct, indirect localized, and indirect unlocalized. the direct specification refers to the delivery of the correct form to the student where the error occurred or another nearby position. the indirect localized notes the occurrence of an error, without offering the correction. (b) focus: regarding the focus, the presented typology distinguishes among three options. the first is feedback focused on form and function. this implies focusing on a structure, for example, the use of the indefinite or definite article and on only one of its uses. on the other hand, comprehensive wcf involves providing feedback on all the functions of a particular form. finally, a holistic focus would mean that the teacher gives feedback on all kinds of errors. it is worth mentioning that this distinction has been of interest for much research. (c) scope: the scope of the feedback is linked to the definition given of the wcf, whether understood as primarily lexical–syntactic or communicative. the micro scope refers to paying special attention to those grammatical or vocabulary errors that may appear at a 219profile: issues teach. prof. dev., vol. 22 no. 2, jul-dec, 2020. issn 1657-0790 (printed) 2256-5760 (online). bogotá, colombia. pages 211-222 classifying written corrective feedback for research and educational purposes: a typology proposal local level. on the other hand, the macro scope points to the feedback that seeks to prioritize the delivery of information regarding linguistic errors associated with the global coherence of the writing, such as the rhetorical organization. the general scope refers in this typology to the balanced combination of both scopes. (d) source: the feedback is usually assumed to be provided by the teacher, who may or may not be acting as the researcher. however, this can come from other agents within the classroom as the same student that writes, who can reflect after a while about their own writing or that of their classmates. in a similar fashion, wcf can be delivered by external agents such as the researcher or a native speaker who works as an assistant. within this last category, the feedback generated by the computer can also be included. this may be delivered through techniques that implement natural language processing (nlp). (e) mode of delivery: the proposed typology includes two options. the first is the possibility of using the computer as a mediator. in its simplest materialization, a teacher could correct a text written on the computer in microsoft word and make comments through the option available in the software; these could include hyperlinks to videos or web pages with more error information. the other mode is the most common: the use of the same piece of writing to communicate the student’s mistakes. (f ) notes: along with the direct or indirect wcf, more elaborate comments can be submitted. the three possibilities offered in the typology are metalinguistic comments, affective comments, and the absence of comments. in the case of metalinguistic comments these vary from the use of elaborated explanations that refer to particular moments of a class to the use of small descriptions that allude to a key rule. these comments can also allude to a grammatical structure by means of symbols such as wo = word order or inf = mistake with the infinitive. on the other hand, affective comments seek, among other positive effects, to increase the motivation of the students, their interest in reviewing the feedback, and their confidence in writing in the l2. finally, the category of no comments takes into account those studies in which the feedback does not include additional information for students. conclusion through the review of different proposals and empirical studies it has been possible to generate a synthesis of the dimensions involved in the precise characterization of wcf. the proposal generated in this article seems to be a clear advance towards a more comprehensive outlook of the phenomenon. this proposal contributes to the study area in three significant ways. in the first place, it offers a clarifying resource regarding the factors involved in the in–depth characterization of the types of wcf that can be delivered. this leads to broadening the view of the potential combinations between dimensions. in addition, the typology is useful for teachers who want to expand and deepen their understanding of wcf, which can result in varied formative assessment practices related to writing. finally, one of the great advantages of a typology of this type is to be able to thoroughly review previous and future studies in order to characterize well the feedback studied and thus improve the comparability of the results. however, this typology also has limitations. in the first place, this synthesis does not include the impact that each type of feedback can have on some type of particular error that students commit. along with this, it should be noted that aspects associated with the cognitive spectrum of writing are mainly ignored in favor of a view of writing as a materialized composition created in a specific context. in theory, it is feasible to offer feedback on cognitive processes instead of focusing on the result already materialized, but it should be noted that this limitation seems to be shared by the general view and use of wcf. universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras220 cárcamo the provision of wcf is a technique that supports assessment for learning. therefore, understanding both the factors considered for its delivery and its consequences should be one of the short-term goals for researchers in the area. it is to be hoped that the proposal in this article helps systematize wcf studies, so that the field continues progressing. in this way, teachers will have better tools to nourish the learning process of writing in l2. references al-jarrah, r. 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(2013). the impact of focused and unfocused corrective feedback on written accuracy. international journal of foreign language teaching and research, 2(4), 32–41. about the author benjamín cárcamo is an efl teacher. he holds a master’s degree in applied linguistics from pontificia universidad católica de chile and a master’s degree in evaluation from universidad de playa ancha. he is currently pursuing his phd in linguistics. his research examines efl assessment techniques, the connection of comprehension and prior knowledge, and the effects of corrective feedback. https://doi.org/10.1515/iral.1972.10.1-4.209 https://doi.org/10.1080/10494820.2019.1629601 https://doi.org/10.1080/10494820.2019.1629601 https://doi.org/10.1016/j.asw.2013.11.007 https://doi.org/10.1016/j.asw.2017.12.002 https://doi.org/10.1016/j.asw.2017.12.002 https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1467-1770.1996.tb01238.x https://doi.org/10.1191/1362168806lr190oa https://doi.org/10.1191/1362168806lr190oa https://doi.org/10.1016/j.asw.2017.03.004 https://doi.org/10.1016/j.asw.2017.03.004 https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jslw.2006.09.004 https://doi.org/10.1017/cbo9781139524742.009 https://doi.org/10.1017/cbo9781139524742.009 https://doi.org/10.15443/rl2706 https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jslw.2014.11.002 https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jslw.2014.11.002 https://doi.org/10.1017/s0272263100005015 https://doi.org/10.1017/s0272263100005015 63 http://dx.doi.org/10.15446/profile.v18n2.53302 aligning english language testing with curriculum alineación de exámenes de un programa de inglés con su currículo marcela palacio* sandra gaviria** universidad eafit, medellín, colombia james dean brown*** university of hawai’i at mānoa, honolulu, usa frustrations with traditional testing led a group of teachers at the english for adults program at universidad eafit (colombia) to design tests aligned with the institutional teaching philosophy and classroom practices. this article reports on a study of an item-by-item evaluation of a series of english exams for validity and reliability in an effort to guarantee the quality of the process of test design. the study included descriptive statistics, item analysis, correlational analyses, reliability estimates, and validity analyses. the results show that the new tests are an excellent addition to the program and an improvement over traditional tests. implications are discussed and recommendations given for the development of any institutional testing program. key words: classroom tests, integrated language skills, reliability, validity. las frustraciones con la evaluación tradicional llevaron a un grupo de profesores del programa de inglés para adultos de la universidad eafit (colombia) a diseñar pruebas alineadas con la filosofía de enseñanza institucional y las prácticas de clase. este artículo describe un estudio de validez y confiabilidad de exámenes de inglés, ítem por ítem, para garantizar la calidad del diseño de pruebas. el estudio incluyó estadística descriptiva, análisis de ítems, análisis de correlación, confiabilidad de las estimaciones y análisis de validez. los resultados muestran que las pruebas son una excelente adición al programa con respecto a exámenes tradicionales. igualmente se discuten las implicaciones y se hacen recomendaciones para el desarrollo de cualquier programa institucional de pruebas. palabras clave: confiabilidad, habilidades lingüísticas integradas, pruebas, validez. * e-mail: opalacio@eafit.edu.co ** e-mail: sgaviria@eafit.edu.co *** e-mail: brownj@hawaii.edu how to cite this article (apa, 6th ed.): palacio, m., gaviria, s., & brown, j. d. (2016). aligning english language testing with curriculum. profile issues in teachers’ professional development, 18(2), 63-77. http://dx.doi.org/10.15446/profile.v18n2.53302. this article was received on october 1, 2015, and accepted on march 28, 2016. this is an open access article distributed under the terms of the creative commons license attribution-noncommercial-noderivatives 4.0 international license. consultation is possible at http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/. profile vol. 18, no. 2, july-december 2016. issn 1657-0790 (printed) 2256-5760 (online). bogotá, colombia. pages 63-77 universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras64 palacio, gaviria, & brown background universidad eafit is situated in medellín, colombia. adult courses are offered for university employees and students, and employees sent from large companies in the city. idiomas-eafit (languages-eafit) is a division of universidad eafit that offers language instruction for university students and students from the city of medellín. idiomas-eafit was created 23 years ago and is currently made up of three main units: the language center, sislenguas, and business english. the language center offers english language instruction through three main programs: adult, children and adolescent, and languages other than english. sislenguas offers english language instruction to schools in the city. the business english program offers english language instruction for executives, managers, and scholars from the public and private sectors. all three units use the common european framework of reference for languages (cef) as the basis for aligning their curricula and teaching methodologies, and the main goals are to develop students’ communicative competence by providing student-centered classes, encouraging interaction, and presenting a variety of opportunities to produce spoken and written language. to develop communicative competence, the idiomas-eafit methodology is based on the following principles (flaitz, 2000): • encourage interactions among the students and with the teacher. • make materials and practice activities as authentic as possible. • focus on meaning as well as on form. • provide ample comprehensible input (language addressed to the learner in such a way that, despite the fact that it may contain structures to which the learner has not yet been exposed or which he or she cannot produce, it is still understandable). • afford students sufficient time to practice and process information. • use a variety of tasks, teaching techniques, and language forms. • recognize learner differences. assessment and evaluation at idiomas-eafit each of the teaching units described above follows both summative and formative principles of assessment. the adult program has 17 courses and a series of advanced courses. each course lasts 38 hours. the courses are aligned with the cef as shown in table 1. table 1. alignment of courses with cef cef idiomas-eafit courses a1 1, 2, 3, 4 a2 5, 6, 7, 8 b1 9, 10, 11, 12 b2 13, 14, 15, 16, 17 b2+ advanced grammar; vocabulary in context; listening and speaking; reading and writing in the english program for adults, assessment is divided into two components: oral and written. to assess oral and written performance, teachers use systems that include rubrics, standards, suggested assessment tasks, and writing conventions. in addition to the assessment tasks, the program proposes two tests to be applied during each course: mid-term and final tests. both the mid-term and final tests are worth 30% each. the remaining 40% is made up of a follow-up grade obtained from different assessment activities that teachers are free to conduct. standardized versus classroom assessment the tests described in this project are all classroom assessments, which is to say that they are primarily designed to test the degree to which students have learned the material taught in the courses they are taking. brown (2012a) distinguished between two families of 65 aligning english language testing with curriculum testing: standardized assessment (which is also known as norm-referenced testing) and classroom assessment (which is also known as criterion-referenced testing). standardized assessment (sa) is very general in nature because the abilities of examinees vary considerably on such assessments. sa is primarily interesting to decision makers like administrators because sas are designed to help make decisions about things like who will be admitted into a program or school or who should be grouped into which level in a program. sas are usually organized around a few large subtests, and the scores are always interpreted in terms of each examinee’s position in the distribution of scores relative to all the other examinees (brown, 2012). as a result, sas are used for language aptitude testing (to help decide which examinees are the best investment for learning a language), proficiency testing (to help decide who has enough knowledge and skills in the language to be admitted to a particular program or school), and placement testing (to help decide which level in a language program is appropriate for each examinee). in contrast, classroom assessment (ca) is very specific in nature because the assessment is focused only on the material that is taught in a particular course. ca is primarily of interest to teachers because they need to use cas to determine what percentage of the material the students know or can do in relation to the material in a specific course. since cas are usually designed to measure specific course objectives or teaching points, they are often made up of a relatively large number of short, discrete subtests, each of which measures a different objective. in addition, cas produce scores that teachers usually interpret as percentages of course material the students know or can do (brown, 2012). as a result, cas are used for diagnostic assessments (to help determine students’ strengths and weaknesses at the beginning of a course relative to the objectives or language points taught in a particular course), progress assessments (to help determine how much progress students have made at some midpoint in a course relative to the objectives or language points taught), and achievement assessments (to help determine how much of the objectives or learning points being taught the students have learned at the end of a course). one reason that the distinction between these two families of tests is important is that the statistical analyses appropriate for sa and ca are different. thus most of the analyses presented in this report are appropriate for cas. in the two cases where that is not true, we will mention and discuss that fact. purpose the purposes of this paper are to examine how well the midterm and final examinations for courses 5-8 in the idiomas-eafit english language assessment program for adults1 are functioning and suggest ways to improve individual items as well as the tests as a whole. in the process, we will demonstrate ways to accomplish those tasks for classroom assessments. to those ends, the following research questions were posed: 1. what are the distributions of scores for each of the discrete-point tests in this project in terms of descriptive statistics (including the mean, median, mode, high, low, range, and standard deviation)? 2. what can item analysis statistics (including item facility, item discrimination, and b index) tell us about each of the items on the discrete-point tests in this project? and how can that information help in improving the tests by revising them? 3. to what degree are the discrete-point tests reliable as shown by the k-r21 estimate? 4. to what degree are the weighted and unweighted scores correlated? are the extra steps necessary in the weighting schemes worth the effort? 5. to what degree are the final examination subscale scores intercorrelated? 1 for reasons of length, courses 9-15 are not included here. to see the complete results including those courses, please see palacio et al. (2015). profile vol. 18, no. 2, july-december 2016. issn 1657-0790 (printed) 2256-5760 (online). bogotá, colombia. pages 63-77 universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras66 palacio, gaviria, & brown 6. what arguments can be made for the validity of the scores on the tests in the eafit english language assessment program for adults and the decisions based on them? method participants two groups of people participated in this study test development project: the students at idiomas-eafit and the teachers/test-developers. students at idiomas-eafit students in courses 5 to 8 are in the process of consolidating an a2 level of the cef. at this level, they should be able to comprehend basic and familiar sentences and to understand the main idea in short, simple aural messages. they should identify specific details in short, everyday texts and write short messages. in terms of oral communication skills, a2 students should be able to perform tasks that require simple information on familiar topics and participate in short social exchanges. teachers/test-developers the teachers/test-developers were 11 of the teachers who also served as test developers (i.e., teachers additionally responsible for putting together, analyzing, improving, and coordinating the tests in the program), academic coordinators, and academic assistants, who all agreed to regularly attend the workshop described below (see procedures). materials test development stages the tests in this project were developed in the following stages: stage 1: curriculum renewal. adoption of a new elt textbook; revision of course syllabi. stage 2: call for participation in test design. participants were six volunteer teachers, the adult program coordinator, and two academic assistants. stage 3: training course. course on language assessment by agreement with west virginia university (usa) covered fundamental concepts and principles of language testing. stage 4: item specification. specifications were developed for use by test editors and writers based on general suggestions for writing test items and assessment tasks (linn & miller, 2005). stage 5: test development. development of the midterm and final examinations began with: four groups of two were set up to design the new tests; a group of editors met twice a week to proofread and edit final versions; regular team meetings were also held to discuss commitments, update the work plan as needed, and propose new revisions. stage 6: validation of examinations. calculate, interpret, understand, and use techniques for validating and improving tests. general description of current tests midterm and final examinations in the english for adults program at idiomas-eafit are criterion referenced, achievement tests for which item writers follow a set of specifications to design tasks that are connected to performance indicators. there is a variety of item types related to social, academic, or professional situations, and the items are usually linked with a common theme. in terms of the overall administration, instructions are written in english and the writing skill is only measured in the final exam. both tests have set time limits of 1 hour and 30 minutes. in each case, a marking scheme is suggested in the answer key, and grading specifications are included for the more subjective items. as prescribed in the course syllabus, midterm and final examinations are designed to measure the ability to describe, compare, and contrast people, places, and things. 67 aligning english language testing with curriculum discrete-point tests the english for adults program administers two achievement tests to students during their courses: a midterm and a final exam. the midterm comes in the middle of a four-week intensive course when students have completed one and a half units of the textbook that includes practice in all the language skills. nonetheless, this test only accounts for listening, reading, and use of language. the writing ability is assessed in the final examination together with listening, reading, and use of language. both tests cover the course performance indicators and include a variety of items (including open-ended, multiple choice, and true/false statements) that are contextualized to elicit the expected language forms. the items are weighted differently depending on the level of difficulty and are reported by the teacher on a scale of 0 to 5.0 using a standardized answer key. the results are returned to the students the following day for feedback purposes. these examinations impact the teachers in that the tests inform teachers of the areas that need to be reinforced, and the examinations impact the students by informing them of areas they need to revise and catch up on with further practice. the overall grade for both examinations plus the follow-up final examination determine whether or not a student graduates to the next course. raw and weighted scoring items on the descrete-point tests were scored right or wrong, and the total for the raw scores varied from test to test. however, before using the scores to make decisions they were weighted for two reasons. first, we wanted to give more importance to some items than others. thus, some items might get 1 point and others 2 or more points. second, in all cases, in order to make the tests comparable, the weightings were arranged such that the maximum possible total weighted score was 50 points on all tests, which is converted to a perfect grade of 5.0 (100% of test correct) and a minimum possible total of 0 weighted points for a minimum grade of 0.0 (0% of test correct). the passing grade was set at 3.0 (equal to 30 points correct or 60% of the test correct). procedures step 1: data gathering and entry. the tests in this study were administered by the students’ classroom teachers. the data were then gathered and assembled by idiomas-eafit staff. step 2: testing analysis, improvement, and vali dation workshop. during august, september, and october of 2014, considerable back-and-forth communication was needed to plan and organize the workshop at idiomas-eafit that finally took place and led directly to this article. the testing analysis, improvement, and validation workshop that resulted was conducted by one of the co-authors of this paper (brown) and took place over a one week period. the workshop had two purposes. first, the workshop was tailored and adapted to the specific needs of these test developers. thus, the primary goal was to provide comprehensible, hands-on, practical training in the skills necessary to calculate, interpret, understand, and use the techniques described in this report for improving the tests in idiomas-eafit. second, the workshop was designed to have participants acually do hands-on analysis of the 22 midterm and final tests for courses 5-8 and 9-15. hence, in addition to being trained at a theoretical level, the idiomas-eafit test developers were actually using well-established item analyses techniques to select and improve discrete-point test items including norm-referenced techniques like item facility (if) and item discrimination (id) analyses and criterion-referenced techniques like the difference index (di) and b-index (bi). they were also calculating and interpreting descriptive statistics (including the mean, median, mode, high, low, and standard devitiation) and reliability estimates (including internal consistency estimates for the discretepoint items and inter-subscale reliability estimates for the composition tests). profile vol. 18, no. 2, july-december 2016. issn 1657-0790 (printed) 2256-5760 (online). bogotá, colombia. pages 63-77 universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras68 palacio, gaviria, & brown results this section will report on the various analyses that were conducted during this project including descriptive statisics, item analysis, correlationional analyses, reliabilility estimates, and validity analyses. each of those topics will serve as a heading in this section. note that these analyses are arranged in more-or-less the same order as the research questions listed above and that direct answers to those reseach questions will be provided in the discussion section. descriptive statistics the descriptive statistics in this study include two that are very simple: the number of people who took the test (n) and the number of items (k). however, we will also be presenting three estimates of the central tendency of the scores on a test (the mean, median, and mode) and four statistics that helped us understand the dispersion of the scores (high, low, range, and standard deviation). central tendency the mean is essentially the same as the arithmetic average. the median is that score point that separates the scores 50/50, with half of the scores above it and half below it. the mode is the score that had the most people on it. these three statistics are useful for interpreting the central tendency of an individual test, but also for comparing the central tendency of two or more tests. to see how central tendency might be used for interpreting a single test, consider a 50-item final examination called test x for which the mean, median, and mode turned out to be 24.98, 25, and 25, respectively. such results would tell us that the examinees had answered about half of the questions correctly. hence, test x would seem to be fairly difficult. we could use this information in several ways: we could decide to make test x easier so that students would not have such a devastating experience; we could decide that we need to teach the material better so that students will score higher next time; we could eliminate material students seem unable to learn; and so forth. to see how central tendency might be used for comparing tests, consider a 50-point test, which was administered diagnostically at the beginning of a course (called pre) and also for achievement at the end (called posttest), for which the means turned out to be 14.17 at the beginning of a course, and 43.77 at the end. since the pre and post tests were the same test, comparing the means at the beginning and end of a 15 week course tells us that the group of students being tested scored much higher at the end than at the beginning. perhaps the difference in means indicates that the students learned a great deal over the 15 weeks and so scored higher. however, it is also possible that the students (a) remembered the pre test and the items that they missed on it, (b) looked up the items they missed, and (c) studied those specific test items the night before the post test. thus mean differences between sets of test scores can be very revealing, but those differences must be interpreted very carefully indeed. dispersion in addition to the central tendency of the group as a whole, we are also interested in looking at how the individuals varied away from (or dispersed around) the central tendency. the high and low values tell us what the boundaries were for the scores. to find these values, we need only look at the scores and note which was the highest and which was the lowest. for example, let’s say that on test x (with its mean of 24.98) the low score was 12 and the high score was 37. the range indicates the distance between the high and low scores. it is calculated by subtracting the low score from the high score and adding one2 as follows: high – low + 1. so for test x that would be 37 – 12 + 1 = 26. 2 note that we need to add 1 so that both the highest and lowest scores will be included. in a simple example with the scores 1, 2, 2, 3, 3, 3, 3, 4, 5, that would mean the range is 5 – 1 + 1 = 5, which includes both the 1 and the 5. if we did not add 1, the range would be 4, thus either the 1 or the 5 would be left out. 69 aligning english language testing with curriculum the standard deviation (or simply sd) is considerably more difficult to understand mathematically, but suffice it to say that the sd is “a sort of average of differences of the scores from the mean” (brown, 2005, p. 102). let’s say for the sake of argument that test x has a standard deviation of 4.01. taken together, the range and sd can indicate how the scores have varied away from the mean on a single test, or how much relative variation has occurred on different tests. for interpreting a single test, consider test x again with its range of 26 (out of 50) and sd of 4.01. that tells us that there is a fair amount of variation around the mean of 24.98, but also that there are probably a number of items that everyone answered correctly (below the low of 12) and others that everyone answered wrong (above the high of 37). in terms of comparing tests, if two tests have 50 items and are used to test the same 37 people, and test x has a range of 26 and sd of 4.01, while test y has a range of 34 and sd of 5.67, it is clear that the scores on test y are more widely dispersed. that could mean that the items on test y are discriminating (i.e., spreading the students out) better, or that the group of examinees managed to somehow change between the two testing sessions to become more widely dispersed in their abilities. thus, differences in dispersion can be very revealing, but those differences (like mean differences) must be interpreted carefully. now let’s turn to the descriptive statistics for the idiomas-eafit tests being analyzed here. tables 2 and 3 show the descriptive statistics for the discrete-point items (i.e., those items that test individual, focused language points in true-false, multiple-choice, fill-in, and short-answer format). table 2 includes analyses of raw scores (i.e., scored right or wrong with one point per item) at the top of the table and analyses of weighted scores (i.e., scored with different weightings like one point each for certain items, 1.5 points for others, or even 2 points each depending on the relative importance of the items or to balance the weight of different subtests) at the bottom. notice that the courses are labeled across the top for each set, each of which is shown separately for the midterm (mid) and final examinations. to the left in the first column we labeled the different statistics that were applied, including the number of people taking each test (n), the number of items (k), and then the mean, median, mode, high, low, range, and standard deviation (sd). notice that between 31 and 46 students took each of the tests (n) and that the tests varied in length from 24 items to 47 items (k). the means and medians for each of the raw score tests were fairly similar, though the modes varied away from them considerably in some cases. this illustrates how weak and idiosyncratic the mode can be as an indicator of central tendency. as a result we relied more heavily on the mean and median in interpreting these descriptive statistics, especially the means. notice in tables 2 and 3 that the ranges and sds also vary considerably in magnitude from test to test. this variation may result from differences in the effectiveness of various tests to spread students out on a continuum of abilities, or from simple differences in the ranges of abilities in students enrolled in the various courses. the bottom line is that these descriptive statistics serve as a baseline for understanding how the tests functioned and as the basis for interpreting the other statistics reported below. item analyses item analysis is a process used to analyze individual test items and thereby better understand how each one is functioning (especially relative to the functioning of other items) and rewrite or replace those items that are not functioning well for some reason. in this project, we used three item analysis techniques on each test: item facility, item discrimination, and the b-index. item facility (if) is a statistic that describes how easy an item is. if can range from 0.00 (if everyone answered incorrectly) to 1.00 (if everyone answered correctly) and can be interpreted as the proportion of profile vol. 18, no. 2, july-december 2016. issn 1657-0790 (printed) 2256-5760 (online). bogotá, colombia. pages 63-77 universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras70 palacio, gaviria, & brown table 2. descriptive statistics for discrete-point items raw statistic course 5 course 6 course7 course 8 mid final mid final mid final mid final n 31 41 40 45 40 46 38 43 k 41 30 47 24 28 40 37 32 mean 33.34 20.44 32.93 17.58 19.55 26.48 19.37 18.56 median 34.00 22.00 33.00 17.50 19.75 26.25 19.00 19.00 mode 37.00 22.00 41.00 17.50 23.00 30.00 23.00 17.00 high 41.00 28.50 44.50 23.50 26.50 40.00 34.00 27.00 low 22.00 11.00 20.00 10.50 11.50 10.50 3.00 8.00 range 20.00 18.50 25.50 14.00 16.00 30.50 32.00 20.00 sd 4.30 4.41 6.31 2.87 3.64 7.06 5.51 4.72 table 3. descriptive statistics for discrete-point items weighted statistic course 5 course 6 course 7 course 8 mid final mid final mid final mid final n 31 41 40 45 40 46 38 43 mean 38.21 26.18 36.63 28.99 34.56 33.55 28.97 20.09 median 38.75 27.00 35.75 29.00 35.75 34.50 28.00 20.01 mode 44.50 16.00 32.00 33.00 38.50 38.50 27.00 18.34 high 47.50 37.50 47.50 39.50 48.50 47.50 49.00 30.02 low 27.00 16.00 24.50 18.00 15.50 15.50 5.00 8.67 range 21.50 22.50 24.00 22.50 34.00 33.00 45.00 22.35 sd 5.17 5.85 6.08 5.01 7.26 7.26 7.90 5.20 students who answered correctly. items that are difficult to very difficult tend to have ifs below .29, indicating that 29% or fewer of the students answered correctly, while items that are easy to very easy tend to have ifs above .71, indicating that 71% or more of the students answered correctly. items that spread students out effectively according to knowledge or ability differences tend to range between .30 and .70. item discrimination (id) focuses on the issue of spreading examinees out. id can range from 0.00 to 1.00 and 0.00 to -1.00. id can be interpreted as the degree to which each item is spreading students out in the same manner as the total scores on the test. a high positive id value, like +0.97, indicates that an item is effectively spreading examinees out in a manner similar to the total scores on the test. a low id value, like 0.13, indicates that an item is not effectively spreading students out like the total scores on the test. a negative id value indicates that the item is spreading students out in a manner opposite from the total scores on the test: such values can also be high (e.g., -0.97) or low (e.g., -0.13) indicating the degree to which they are spreading students out in a manner opposite from the total scores. in this study, we calculated the id as an item-total correlation using 71 aligning english language testing with curriculum point-biserial correlation coefficients. note that id is typically applied in standardized (or norm-referenced) assessment. we are using it here as one indicator of how the items are performing. however, the b-index discussed next, which was developed for classroom (criterion-referenced) assessments like those in this project, will be considered more important than the id throughout the item analyses. the b-index (bi) is similar to id but it tells us the degree to which each item is helping in making the decision at the pass-fail cut-point on the test. thus the bi is based on how well the item is contributing to descision at the cut-point for passing or failing the test. in all cases, we used 70% correct as the cut-point for a student to pass a given test. a high positive bi value, like +0.89, indicates that an item is effectively helping us to make the pass-fail decision in a manner similar to the total scores on the test. a low bi value, like 0.10, indicates that an item is not effectively helping us to make the pass-fail decision in a manner similar to the total scores. a negative bi value indicates that the item is working the opposite from the total test scores because it is favoring students who fail the test as a whole. such items are not helpful at all in making pass-fail decisions. table 4 presents an example of how we analyzed the items for all the tests. this table shows the analysis for the course 5 midterm. notice that table 4 labels the items in the first column (lvsa1 to rvsc10)3 and then provides columns that display the if, id, and bi values for each item. in each case, two teachers were looking at the item analysis and the actual items at the same time. notice that, in the comments column, they interpreted the item statistics for each item and recorded various observations. for example, for item lvsa1, the test analysts felt that the item was “ok”. it is an easy item (if = 0.90), but that is probably okay for the first item on a test because that can 3 lvsa1 = listening + vocabulary + structure item a1. rvsc10 = reading + vocabulary + structure item c10. help the students get started and feel positive about the test. in addition, item lvsa1 also discriminates a bit (id = 0.12), but more importantly, it is helping considerably more with the pass-fail decision (bi = 0.43) compared to the other items on the test. consider another example, item lvsa2. in this case, the test analysts noted that this item is also easy and does not discriminate, but they also provide an idea for how to fix the item during the revision process, when they write “consider vocabulary,” which probably means that adjusting the vocabulary level might improve this item’s performance. in the rest of table 4, you can see that the test analysts went right through the whole test and analyzed the items in a similar manner. such analyses and observations will prove very useful when the test development team sits down to revise and improve the test. reliability reliability is one important characteristic of a test that indicates the degree to which the test is measuring consistently. reliability can be examined for consistency across time, over multiple forms, or among the items on the test (these three are technically known as test-retest, equivalent forms, and internal consistency reliabilities, respectively). most reliability estimates have been developed for use with standardized or norm-referenced tests. however, in this study, we applied the k-r21 internal consistency reliability, which is appropriate as a reliability estimate for classroom assessments like those in this project (as argued in brown, 2005). these k-r21 values are shown in table 5. notice in table 5 that the values range from 0.45 to 0.84 with the majority of the tests above 0.65. these values can be interpreted directly as proportions or percentages. so it is correct to say that these tests range from 45% to 84% reliable, which further means that they have low to moderately high reliability. values above .65 are probably acceptable in this context because decisions, especially grades, are not based solely on single sets of test scores. more than one test is profile vol. 18, no. 2, july-december 2016. issn 1657-0790 (printed) 2256-5760 (online). bogotá, colombia. pages 63-77 universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras72 palacio, gaviria, & brown table 4. example item analysis for course 5 midterm items course 5 mid items if id bi comments lvsa1 0.90 0.12 0.43 ok lvsa2 0.94 0.01 -0.07 easy. doesn’t discriminate [see esp. the b-index]. consider vocabulary lvsa3 0.97 0.08 -0.03 easy. doesn’t discriminate. consider vocabulary lvsa4 1.00 0.00 0.00 easy. doesn’t discriminate. consider vocabulary lvsa5 0.94 0.19 0.47 ok lvsb1 0.65 0.48 -0.11 consider score criteria lvsb2 0.63 0.53 0.14 ok. consider score criteria lvsb3 0.73 0.40 -0.03 consider score criteria lvsb4 0.76 0.29 0.01 ok. consider score criteria lvsb5 0.77 0.43 0.29 ok. consider score criteria lvsc1 0.94 0.37 0.47 easy lvsc2 0.97 0.16 -0.03 easy. should extra prepositions be given? lvsc3 0.58 0.34 0.62 ok lvsc4 0.81 0.20 0.33 ok lvsc5 0.61 0.54 0.66 ok lvsc6 0.74 0.27 0.26 ok lvsc7 0.81 0.49 0.86 ok lvsc8 0.68 0.40 0.72 ok lvsc9 0.77 0.42 0.29 ok lvsc10 0.87 0.25 -0.14 easy. perhaps add extra prepositions to the whole exercise lvsd1 0.69 0.58 0.74 ok. edit directions lvsd2 0.77 0.70 0.83 ok. edit directions lvsd3 0.81 0.29 0.33 ok. edit directions lvsd4 0.85 0.56 0.65 ok. edit directions lvsd5 0.84 0.46 0.36 ok. edit directions rvsa1 0.97 0.02 -0.03 easy. change vocabulary options rvsa2 0.97 -0.20 -0.03 easy. change vocabulary options rvsb1 0.79 0.41 0.31 ok rvsb2 0.93 0.06 -0.07 easy. change vocabulary options rvsb3 0.94 0.15 0.20 easy. consider wording of the question rvsb4 0.82 0.37 0.08 ok. consider question and score criteria rvsc1 1.00 0.00 0.00 easy but ok rvsc2 1.00 0.00 0.00 easy but ok rvsc3 0.65 0.46 0.69 ok rvsc4 0.61 0.09 0.12 ok 73 aligning english language testing with curriculum rvsc5 0.55 0.11 0.05 ok rvsc6 1.00 0.00 0.00 easy but ok rvsc7 1.00 0.00 0.00 easy but ok rvsc8 0.90 -0.08 -0.10 easy but consider omitting the preposition of rvsc9 0.84 0.22 0.36 ok rvsc10 0.39 0.26 0.41 ambiguous. does the statement sound natural? course 5 mid items if id bi comments used (e.g., both midterms and finals), along with additional types of information. however, the relatively low values for the course 6 final and course 7 mid indicate that these two tests may be ones that might most benefit from attention and revision in the item analysis and revision processes. correlations of raw scores with weighted scores the pearson product-moment correlation coefficients (rxy), shown in the second row of numbers in table 5, were calculated to address the fourth research question about the degree to which weighting was different from not weighting the scores. for the purpose of understanding these results, it is important to know that correlation coefficients for relationships like these can range from 0.00 to 1.00. for situations where there is absolutely no relationship between the numbers, the correlation coefficient will be 0.00; in situations where the two sets of numbers are perfectly related in terms of ranking and distances between the scores, the correlation coefficient will be 1.00; and of course, values anywhere between 0.00 and 1.00 can occur as well. notice that correlation coefficients reported in table 5 (for the relationship between raw scores and the weighted scores) range from 0.93 to 0.98. these correlation coefficients are all very high, indicating that the weighted scores are very similar to the raw scores in terms of how they rank the students as well as the relative distances between students’ scores. in order to examine how much overlap there is in the variation of raw and weighted scores, we have reported the squared values of the correlation coefficients (rxy 2) called coefficients of determination. these values indicate the proportion of overlapping variation between the weighted and raw scores, and they can be interpreted as proportions or percentages. notice that the coefficients table 5. reliability estimates and correlation coefficients (weighted & raw scores) course 5 course 6 course 7 course 8 statistic mid final mid final mid final mid final k-r21 (for unweighted scores) 0.68 0.69 0.77 0.45 0.57 0.84 0.72 0.67 rxy (raw with weighted scores) 0.93 0.98 0.94 0.98 0.98 0.95 0.98 0.98 rxy2 (proportion overlap) 0.86 0.97 0.89 0.96 0.95 0.90 0.97 0.97 profile vol. 18, no. 2, july-december 2016. issn 1657-0790 (printed) 2256-5760 (online). bogotá, colombia. pages 63-77 universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras74 palacio, gaviria, & brown of determination reported in table 5 go from 0.86 to 0.96, meaning that the amount of overlapping variation between weighted and raw scores ranges from 86% to 96% with all of the tests above 86%. all of this information suggests that it may not be worth the effort involved in deciding on weights, scoring different parts of the test with different points per item, and then deriving the total scores from those different weighted subparts. all that complexity may just be confusing to the students, may be introducing scoring errors by the teachers, and is adding nothing to the way the tests are functioning. however, there may be sound pedagogical reasons for maintaining this weighting system, which is of course a decision that must be made by the faculty at idiomas-eafit. discussion discussion of research questions 1 to 5 we addressed research questions (rqs) 1-5 in a technical sense in the results section above. however in lay terms, we showed (rq1) the distributions of scores for each of the discrete-point tests and composition tests in this project in terms of descriptive statistics (including the mean, median, mode, high, low, range, and standard deviation). we also explored (rq2) what item analysis statistics (including item facility, item discrimination, and the b-index) could tell us about each of the items on the discrete-point tests in this project, as well as how that information can be used to help revise and improve the tests. in addition, we investigated (rq3) the degree to which the discretepoint tests were reliable as estimated using k-r21, and studied (rq4) the degree to which weighted and unweighted scores were correlated and the fact that these extra steps in the weighting schemes may not be worth the effort. in addition, we examined (rq5) the degree to which the final examination writing subscale scores were intercorrelated. discussion of research question 6 the sixth research question was what arguments can be made for the validity of the scores on the tests in the eafit english language testing program and the decisions based on those scores? generally, the notion of validity is defined as the degree to which the scores on a test are measuring what they were intended to measure. for standardized assessments, content, criterion-related, construct, consequential, and values implications validities are often examined, improved, and/or verified. for classroom assessments, like those in this project, content, consequential, and values implications validities are most appropriate. content validity at the idiomas-eafit, item writers, test editors, and teachers are accountable for the content validity of tests. the first group designs the test tasks relying on the test specifications, which include general guidelines that will help test construction. likewise, test editors meet to consider each item in light of the guidelines, carefully matching items to course standards, possible level of difficulty, ambiguities in the wording of instructions or items, unforeseen audio problems, and layout. finally, for proofreading purposes, teachers—the ones teaching the courses each test was designed for—get a copy of the test and respond to a questionnaire patterned after the test specifications. test editors collect this feedback, make the necessary amendments, and revise the test. having this moderating committee has allowed for the ongoing revision of test items and course standards in a cyclical process including standards, curriculum, instruction, and assessment. consequential validity most of the students involved here enrolled in english classes as a requirement for graduation as stipulated by the university’s bilingualism policy. when students fail a specific course in the program, they are not allowed to register any of the credits for that academic 75 aligning english language testing with curriculum semester. the consequence of getting behind in their studies also affects their expected graduation date. we must also point out that we are using the b-index in our item analyses to select those items most closely related to the pass-fail decision on each test. during the test revision process, we intend to improve or replace those items that are least helpful in making these decisions. in other words, we are making every effort to improve the degree to which the items are contributing to our pass-fail decisions. hence, we are systematically increasing the degree to which our pass-fail decisions are valid in the consequential sense of that term. values implications validity4 the academic coordinators at idiomas-eafit be lie ve that assessment and evaluation are powerful agents for introducing positive changes in education. we have been partially successful in designing and implementing an oral assessment system; however, we felt our institutional tests were not causing sufficient positive effects on teaching and learning, mostly because they were traditional in nature using item formats such as fill-in-the-blanks, multiple choice, and matching. it is widely known that traditional tests are oft en incongruent with current language classroom practices because such tests are not useful for collecting information about the students’ cognitive abilities, attitudes, motivation, interests, and learning strategies (herman & winters, 1994; madaus, 1988; resnick & resnick, 1992; wiggins, 1989, 1994). more precisely, the authors just cited claim that conventional tests do not provide helpful information about the process of learning and the measurement of student progress needed for formative decision-making and for planning instructional strategies. furthermore, such tests do not require students to create and perform communicative and functional tasks. consequently, information obtained from standardized tests do 4 this section was adapted from muñoz (2013). not inform the stakeholders (e.g., learners, teachers, parents, program coordinators, administrators) as to whether or not the students will be able to perform authentic tasks in the real world. (adair-hauck, glisan, koda, swender, & sandrock, 2006, p. 363) frustrations with such traditional testing led the academic coordinators at idiomas-eafit to envision a new assessment system, one in which testing is better integrated with learning and classroom practice and in which tests follow communicative principles of language teaching and learning. in other words, we aimed to have tests that better reflected our teaching values by integrating skills performance in more authentic ways and that allowed teachers to be confident about the decisions they make. recommendations considering the discussion of validity in the previous section and the other analyses presented in this report, it appears that the examinations under investigation are an excellent addition to the program and a vast improvement over previous assessment practices. none theless, any testing program can be updated and improved. to that end, we suggest the following nextsteps in the process: 1. use the item analyses and other information generated by this project to delete, replace, and improve any items that need to be improved in all discretepoint tests. 2. consider the analyses presented here that focused on comparing the weighted items versus raw (i.e., unweighted) scoring of items on the discrete-point tests and decide whether the pedagogical and other arguments that favor continuing to use the weighted items scheme are worth the extra effort involved. 3. continue investigating the effectiveness, efficiency, and quality of the items (using item analysis), the reliability of the discrete-point tests (using k-r21) and of the writing assessment scoring (using the profile vol. 18, no. 2, july-december 2016. issn 1657-0790 (printed) 2256-5760 (online). bogotá, colombia. pages 63-77 universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras76 palacio, gaviria, & brown inter-category correlation strategy demonstrated in this report), and the validity of all the tests (content, consequential, and values implications perspectives on validity). conclusions while developing, administering, analyzing, vali dating, and improving the tests in this project we encountered a number of challenges. the most prominent of these are the following: • we often found a general lack of teacher consensus on test scoring, which may have led to subjective marking of open-ended items because of rater inconsistencies. • there was also a general lack of training on how to design follow-up activities that resemble the ones on tests. • we also found it difficult to design listening items using authentic audio materials that were appropriate to each level of proficiency, that matched the unit themes, and that assessed the different sub-skills contemplated in the course standards. • as is often the case, budgetary support from the administration was sometimes a challenge. implications nonetheless, having a team of item writers allowed for collaborative design and ongoing revision of items and course standards in a cyclical process where standards, curriculum, instruction, and assessment were interwoven in the learning process, and each informed the others. if there is only a single item writer, or only a few item writers working closely together, it may prove more efficient to create items directly from course objectives. such a process can lead not only to clear and consistent item creation, but also beneficial revision of the objectives as flaws are spotted in the process of trying to measure those objectives. (brown, 2005, p. 78) in addition, designing curriculum-related items has started to have an impact on some teachers’ instructional and assessment practices. we expect all teachers will gradually improve their abilities to determine how to best improve their classroom practices. teachers need to produce contextualized, criterion-based assignments and assessments that elicit grammatical responses appropriate to a given context. naturally, improvement of student learning may require a longer period of development and observation. we need to continuously examine student performance on tests and monitor progress to be able to establish the degree to which course standards are being attained. overall, changes like those proposed in this project demand a new set of skills from both students and teachers. for example, based on this project, the assessment program has the information needed to conduct calibration sessions in which teachers can discuss problem items and discrepancies in scoring that will hopefully lead to their reaching a consensus about the best ways for the program to move forward. one goal of any such discussions should be ways to provide better training for teachers in how to use the rubrics more reliably. breaking the traditional paradigm represents a long term endeavor in that teachers find it a daunting task to switch from traditional testing formats, which offer more control for teachers, to more open-ended, and perhaps of greatest significance is that many teachers fear that performance-based or authentic assessment requires too much class time. (adair-hauck et al., 2006, p. 363). references adair-hauck, b., glisan, e. w., koda, k., swender, e. b., & sandrock, p. (2006). the integrated performance assessment (ipa): connecting assessment to instruction and learning. foreign language annals, 39(3), 359-382. http:// dx.doi.org/10.1111/j.1944-9720.2006.tb02894.x. 77 aligning english language testing with curriculum brown, j. d. (2005). testing in language programs: a comprehensive guide to english language assessment. new york, ny: mcgraw-hill. brown, j. d. (2012). choosing the right type of assessment. in c. coombe, s. j. stoynoff, p. davidson, & b. o’sullivan (eds.), the cambridge guide to language assessment (pp. 133-139). cambridge, uk: cambridge university press. flaitz, j. (2000). teaching commnicatively. unpublished manuscript, centro de idiomas, universidad eafit, medellín, colombia. herman, j. l., & winters, l. (1994). portfolio research: a slim collection. educational leadership, 52(2), 48-55. linn, r. l., & miller, m. d. (2005). measurement and assessment in teaching (9th ed.). upper saddle river, nj: prentice hall. madaus, g. f. (1988). the influence of testing on the curriculum. in l. n. tanner (ed.), critical issues in curriculum: eighty-seventh yearbook of the national society for the study of education part 1 (pp. 83-121). chicago, il: university of chicago. muñoz, a. (2013). beyond testing. unpublished manuscript, centro de idiomas, universidad eafit, medellín, co lombia. palacio, m., kashani, s., gaviria, s., salazar, r., estrada, a., botero, a. m.,... brown, j. d. (2015). report on the 20142015 idiomas-eafit english testing program. medellín, co: universidad eafit. resnick, l. b., & resnick, d. p. (1992). assessing the thinking curriculum: new tools for educational reform. in b. r. gifford & m. c. o’connor (eds.), changing assessments: alternative views of aptitude, achievement, and instruction (pp. 37-75). boston, ma: kluwer. http://dx.doi. org/10.1007/978-94-011-2968-8_3. wiggins, g. (1989). a true test: toward more authentic and equitable assessment. phi delta kappan, 70(9), 703-713. wiggins, g. (1994). toward better report cards. educational leadership, 52(2), 28-37. profile vol. 18, no. 2, july-december 2016. issn 1657-0790 (printed) 2256-5760 (online). bogotá, colombia. pages 63-77 about the authors marcela palacio holds an ma in interdisciplinary studies from state university of new york and a ba in languages from the university of antioquia (colombia). she is the academic assistant of the english for adults program at universidad eafit, medellín. her current research interests cover assessment and motivation. sandra gaviria holds a master’s degree in tesol from west virginia university and a master’s in education from maharishi university of management. she has been the english for adults program coordinator at universidad eafit since 2000. her main interests include assessment and curriculum design. james dean brown is currently professor of second language studies on the graduate faculty of the department of sls at the university of hawai’i at manoa (usa). his areas of specialization include language testing, curriculum design, program evaluation, and research methods. acknowledgements we would like to thank ana patricia muñoz restrepo for her great help in organizing, supporting, and overseeing the workshop at eafit that led to this report. we would also like to thank shayan kashani, jose rodrigo salazar jaramillo, alejandro estrada, ana maría botero, catalina jaramillo, yasmín lópez, juan pablo mora alzate, jaime a. naranjo, and claudia gil arboleda, all of whom participated in the workshop and did their share of the analyses. finally, we would like to recognize the important contribution of luis fernando builes, who put in many hours transferring the data for this project from paper tests into excel spreadsheet files. english for academic purposes related to dentistry: analyzing the reading comprehension process 51profile: issues teach. prof. dev., vol. 23 no. 2, jul-dec, 2021. issn 1657-0790 (printed) 2256-5760 (online). bogotá, colombia. pages 51-66 https://doi.org/10.15446/profile.v23n2.86965 english for academic purposes related to dentistry: analyzing the reading comprehension process inglés con fines académicos vinculado a la odontología: análisis del proceso de comprensión lectora patricia carabelli1 universidad de la república, montevideo, uruguay the universidad de la república, in uruguay, offers reading comprehension in english courses within the career of dentistry for students to access information in this language. the study sought to analyze the fulfilment of the course’s aims and to test the hypothesis that the greater the vocabulary that dentistry students possess, the better they will be able to understand written dentistry texts. a mixed approach, based on interviews and a class survey, was used. data showed that the course’s objectives were achieved. participants stated that the course is highly meaningful, and they believed that the previously mentioned correlation exists. however, this could not be statistically verified, which indicates that multiple reading comprehension skills are involved when trying to understand academic texts. keywords: dentistry, english for academic purposes, lexical acquisition, reading comprehension la universidad de la república, en uruguay, brinda cursos de comprensión lectora en inglés durante la carrera de odontología para que sus estudiantes accedan a información en esta lengua. en la investigación se analizó el cumplimiento de los objetivos del curso y la hipótesis de que entre más vocabulario poseen los estudiantes de odontología, mejor comprenden los textos académicos sobre odontología. se utilizó una metodología mixta basada en entrevistas y una encuesta. con la información recabada se verificó el cumplimiento de los objetivos del curso. los participantes manifestaron que el curso es muy significativo y que existe la correlación analizada. sin embargo, esto no pudo ser verificado estadísticamente, lo que indica que para comprender textos académicos son necesarias múltiples habilidades. palabras clave: adquisición de léxico, comprensión lectora, inglés con fines académicos, odontología patricia carabelli  https://orcid.org/0000-0003-4702-8257 · email: pcarabelli@fhuce.edu.uy this article is based on the master’s thesis completed by carabelli (2018). how to cite this article (apa, 7th ed.): carabelli, p. (2021). english for academic purposes related to dentistry: analyzing the reading comprehension process. profile: issues in teachers’ professional development, 23(2), 51–66. https://doi.org/10.15446/profile.v23n2.86965 this article was received on may 5, 2020 and accepted on march 12, 2021. this is an open access article distributed under the terms of the creative commons license attribution-noncommercial-noderivatives 4.0 international license. consultation is possible at https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/ https://doi.org/10.15446/profile.v23n2.86965 https://orcid.org/0000-0003-4702-8257 mailto:pcarabelli@fhuce.edu.uy https://doi.org/10.15446/profile.v23n2.86965 https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/ universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras52 carabelli introduction the international growth of english in academic areas has increased the number of english for academic purposes (eap) courses at universities worldwide (de chazal, 2014; mccarter & jakes, 2009). following this trend, different universities in uruguay provide eap courses as students will need english to access information in their field, carry out research, and participate in different academic events. the present research was carried out in 2017–2018 within the ma in english language teaching program at southampton university (uk); and it took place at the dental school of the universidad de la república, in uruguay, where a reading comprehension in english course was developed for students in the career of dentistry. this course had two main aims: (a) developing academic reading comprehension strategies that allowed students with basic levels of english to read academic books and research papers within their field; and (b) promoting acquisition of both general academic lexis and specific vocabulary related to the field of dentistry. i analyzed whether these two aims had been accomplished and the extent to which dentistry students with a basic or pre-intermediate level of english could understand academic articles while they started acquiring basic lexis from the field of dentistry. i also tried to fill a knowledge gap regarding the teaching of english as a foreign language (efl) within the specific academic field of dentistry as, although there are studies in this field (basturkmen, 2012), these are not focused on the understanding of academic texts in relation to the acquisition of dental terminology. by using a combination of qualitative and quantitative research tools, data were collected and triangulated to determine what may help students understand academic texts in such a short period of time. apart from this, i also analyzed existing knowledge regarding the teaching of reading comprehension of academic texts in esl/efl courses. literature review relations among word knowledge, reading comprehension and second language acquisition according to uccelli et al. (2015), reading comprehension is “the product of two main clusters of skills: word recognition and language comprehension skills” (p. 338). given the elementary levels of english of the dental school university students who take the course, teaching reading comprehension strategies in english to them is highly challenging. to fully understand the aims of the reading comprehension course and this research, some key concepts must be defined. according to richards (1976, as cited in meara, 1996) knowing a word in depth means: a) knowing the degree of probability of encountering the word in speech or print; b) knowing the limitations imposed on the use of the word according to function and situation; c) knowing the syntactic behaviour associated with the word; d) knowing the underlying form of a word and the derivations that can be made of it; e) knowing the associations between the word and other words in the language; f ) knowing the semantic value of the word; and g) knowing many of the different meanings associated with the word. (p. 46) based on this, discourse analysis strategies (mccarthy, 2011) also become fundamental as meaning must be derived from the context in which words appear. narrow reading (kang, 2015), which focuses on one topic or author, is a key concept in this study. thus, all written texts were thematically related to the field of dentistry, which helped fulfill the course objectives and reduced the amount of new vocabulary the students had to learn. regarding research in lexical acquisition, it has been established that there is a relation between the amount of vocabulary known and the understanding of a language (nation & waring, 1997). concerning 53profile: issues teach. prof. dev., vol. 23 no. 2, jul-dec, 2021. issn 1657-0790 (printed) 2256-5760 (online). bogotá, colombia. pages 51-66 english for academic purposes related to dentistry: analyzing the reading comprehension process vocabulary size in second language learners, nation and waring (1997) state that, for adult learners of efl, the gap between their vocabulary size and that of native speakers’ is usually very large, with many adult foreign learners of english having a vocabulary size of much less than 5,000 word families despite having studied english for several years. (p. 8) there are two different yet interconnected perspectives regarding vocabulary acquisition in second language learners and, as schmitt and mccarthy (1997) point out, both positions must be considered during lessons as they complement each other to maximize language learning. one of the positions states that vocabulary is widened through incidental exposure to written texts (krashen, 1989) and promotes “reading as one route to acquiring a nativelike vocabulary in a target l2” (reynolds, 2014, p. 112), especially when there are time constraints. however, this perspective is questioned by researchers as meara (1997) who states that “experimental evidence in support of this claim is weak [and] learners in these experiments typically acquire very few words” (p. 112). this has given place to the other perspective that proclaims that vocabulary must be explicitly taught. according to laufer (1992), nation (1990), wallace (2007), and harkio and pietilä (2016), there is a relationship between the comprehension of a written text and the percentage of known words. in this sense, schmitt et al. (2011) state that second language learners should learn about 8,000 to 9,000 word families to comprehend texts as they need to know around 98% of the vocabulary in a text to understand it. however, laufer (1992) and nation and waring (1997) suggest that second language learners need around 3,000 high frequency word families to understand a written text. this shows that results differ widely among researchers and that a continuum with different degrees of understanding exists for learners who have a range between 3,000 and 9,000 words. laufer carried out a study which compared vocabulary size in l2, general academic ability, and l2 reading, and discovered that: 1) with vocabulary size of fewer than 3,000 word families (5,000 lexical items), no amount of general ability will make the learner read well; 2) with vocabulary size of 5,000 word families (8,000 lexical items), reading in l2 will be satisfactory whatever the general ability; 3) with vocabulary size of 3,000–4,000 word families (about 5,000–6,500 lexical items), l2 reading may or may not be influenced by general ability. (p. 95) based on these findings, students with an a1/ a2/b1 level of english are likely to have difficulties understanding written academic texts. despite this, students can learn vocabulary fast, as reynolds (2014) argues that “only three encounters with unknown words may be needed to encourage acquisition if the reading of a target text is enjoyable or of importance to the reader” (p. 111). therefore, successful teaching of lexis in a reading comprehension course seems possible and necessary. regarding the teaching of lexis, lewis (2000), meara (2002), and mccarter and jakes (2009) criticize the fact that, despite the importance lexical knowledge has, explicit vocabulary teaching approaches are generally neglected during language lessons preventing further improvements regarding language acquisition. this leads to what caro and rosado-mendinueta (2017) highlight in the sense that “limited lexical knowledge can lead efl learners to frustration and demotivation” (p. 205) as they feel they cannot understand texts. nevertheless, at present, complex approaches to language teaching, focused on meaning and lexical development, are considered effective and recommended during lessons (nation, 1990; read & chapelle, 2001). thornbury’s (2001) “grammaring” approach to language, lewis’ (2002b) lexical approach, or carter and mccarthy’s (2006) promotion of the use of corpora, highlight the importance of using authentic texts and of analyzing different lexical aspects in them during universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras54 carabelli teaching. as carter and mccarthy suggest, apart from teaching specific vocabulary, teachers should regularly highlight word clusters and collocations which appear in authentic texts. expanding lexicon through narrow reading krashen (1985) elaborated the “input hypothesis” that states that language learners acquire language when they receive what he calls “comprehensible input.” he highlighted that students learn best when the linguistic input they receive is a little beyond their comprehension. for him, when students face both comprehensible and new input, they learn following a “natural order” that allows them to understand structures beyond their level by using and deriving information from context. he maintains that by providing adequate input, teachers can scaffold and challenge students towards learning; what students already know helps them understand and incorporate new knowledge. based on this, krashen (1989) suggests that english language learners acquire vocabulary and spelling through input received during reading, something other researchers corroborated (horst, 2005; laufer, 1992; reynolds, 2014). regarding input, horst (2005) states that it is much richer, more complex, and more varied in written texts than in spoken ones. based on this, english language learners who want to move to the next language level may move faster by reading and receiving a complex input. according to horst there are two different perspectives concerning the type of written texts learners must be exposed to during reading courses: (a) the “free voluntary reading,” position which krashen (1985) promotes, where there are no prescribed texts and input is based on the reading of authentic texts; and (b) the extensive reading perspective which suggests that reading courses must be designed to expose students “to large quantities of material within their linguistic competence” (grabe & stoller, 2002, as cited in horst, 2005, p. 357). whatever the approach to written texts one may prefer (which may be a combination of both), küçükoğlu (2013) mentions that students understand written texts better when they are taught how to predict, visualize, make connections, infer, question, and summarize. lexical inferencing, related to ways of deriving meaning and learning words in context, is also considered a crucial skill for learners to understand the meaning of a text and develop language (de la garza & harris, 2017). in addition, kang (2015), following krashen’s (1989) advocacy for narrow reading, provided evidence that l2 vocabulary learning can be maximized through readings concerning a specific topic. together with nation (1997, as cited in kang, 2015), he maintains that as repetition must occur for vocabulary to be acquired, by reading about a specific topic—such as dentistry—the likelihood of reencountering a word or word cluster is increased and, therefore, the possibilities of acquiring vocabulary are increased. sutarsyah et al. (1994, as cited in kang, 2015) compared the corpus of randomly selected academic texts with the corpus of texts within a specific subject, and found that the number of words and word families of the latter was much smaller than the ones in the former (which included around 300,000 words). therefore, according to kang, “the findings led the researchers to conclude that it would be useful to narrow the theme of reading materials by using texts on related topics rather than making use of a group of unrelated texts” (p. 168). eap courses are designed based on this principle as they organize knowledge according to specific topics. acquisition of academic registers while developing reading comprehension skills uccelli et al. (2015) point out that eap is largely “academic language as academic vocabulary” (p. 338) and that it is based on the fact that academic language registers differ from other registers. in addition, different studies (cruz & d’alessandro, 2015; marshall & gilmour, 1993) mention that previous knowledge regarding texts’ 55profile: issues teach. prof. dev., vol. 23 no. 2, jul-dec, 2021. issn 1657-0790 (printed) 2256-5760 (online). bogotá, colombia. pages 51-66 english for academic purposes related to dentistry: analyzing the reading comprehension process topics enhances comprehension. these facts show the importance of designing disciplinary-oriented courses where students feel motivated as they have successful experiences. in these courses narrow reading is carried out while vocabulary recognition strategies are taught (williams, 1985) and techniques, such as the ones that mccarter and jakes (2009, p. 126) suggest efficient readers use, are discussed and put into practice: reading for gist/skimming; scanning; the ability to predict the content of a reading passage; identifying the main thesis; identifying the author’s point of view and tone; distinguishing what information is central; using known vocabulary; establishing relationships between words; understanding grammar; recognizing the organization, functions, and development of a text; analyzing a text by questioning the content, assumption, and inferences. method both qualitative and quantitative data were collected during the research. regarding quantitative data, language tests and a survey were carried out and data were statistically analyzed (brown & rodgers, 2002; mckay, 2006). apart from two regular course tests, which helped identify whether or not students fulfilled institutional and course requirements, four tests were designed to measure reading skills related to lexical acquisition (read & chapelle, 2001). descriptive and correlational research (brown & rodgers, 2002) were used to try to isolate and examine in depth the two variables under investigation: reading comprehension and lexical growth. regarding descriptive research, the situation and learning outcomes were described by analyzing survey answers and test responses in numerical terms (descriptive statistical analysis). and as for correlational analysis, possible significant correlations between reading comprehension and lexical growth were established by statistically comparing preand post-test results using pearson’s r (correlational statistical analysis). furthermore, i applied a class questionnaire with open-ended questions and carried out interviews to collect qualitative data (dörnyei, 2007; mason, 1996). i designed research tools to collect information concerning students’ perceptions regarding the course’s aims and approaches, and to triangulate information regarding the students’ learning experiences with data collected from the tests. regarding ethical aspects, participants signed consent forms which informed them about issues such as the aims of the study, data handling, anonymity, and confidentiality. research questions 1. are students able to understand the main ideas in academic articles in english related to the field of dentistry after taking a 60-hour course on reading comprehension strategies? 2. is there a correlation between lexical knowledge related to dentistry and the understanding of academic texts in the field of dentistry? 3. what approaches and strategies are perceived as effective by participants during the reading comprehension in english course within the field of dentistry? reading comprehension course: understanding academic articles related to dentistry as students of dentistry need english to study throughout their career, reading comprehension courses were implemented at the school of dentistry of the universidad de la república in uruguay. students from diverse socioeconomic backgrounds and with different levels of english regularly attend these courses. the course has been mainly designed for students with a basic or pre-intermediate level of english (a1, a2, or b1 level according to the common european framework of reference for languages, cefrl) who generally cannot understand academic written texts in english. despite this, students with more advanced levels sometimes take the course as they want to learn specific lexis related to universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras56 carabelli dentistry while practicing their english. this research was carried out during a semester in one of these reading comprehension courses. regarding the course, twice a week, during a fivemonth period, students attended two-hour face-to-face classes (60 hours total) focused on fostering successful reading comprehension strategies in english. the reading comprehension course is based on a communicative language teaching approach, and both language and reading strategies are analyzed and put into practice while different topics related to dentistry are discussed. during lessons, abstracts and written academic articles from the field of dentistry are read and debated while discourse, grammatical, or lexical issues are examined in contextualized ways (carter, 2006; cullen, 2008; lewis, 2002a; mccarthy, 2011). from a learner-centered perspective, issues discussed in class may be presented either by students or by the professor to develop students’ awareness. bottomup and top-down reading comprehension strategies (hudson, 2007), word analysis, sentence analysis, and global text meaning (grabe & stoller, 2014) are also discussed while reading. to promote lexical acquisition, plenty of visual aids are used throughout the course: presentations, diagrams, word webs, flashcards, videos, pictures and drawings. university students need to understand academic texts in english from their field of study and english courses are being implemented within specific careers; therefore, it is highly relevant to analyze successful ways of teaching academic english in specific knowledge areas. several studies have focused on academic english in general (benesch, 2001; bhatia, 2002; johns, 1997), and a lot or research has been done in the past 40 years in the field of english for specific purposes (dudley-evans & st. john, 1998; hyland, 2011) concerning how to teach english while teaching different subjects. this study focused on ways of teaching and acquiring reading comprehension skills to understand academic texts in english within the field of dentistry. the purpose of the research was to find out if undergraduate dentistry students with a basic or pre-intermediate level of english, who could not read academic texts prior to the reading comprehension course, could start understanding complex academic articles related to dentistry after taking a 60-hour face-to-face-course; and, if so, whether this happened due to the acquisition of basic lexis related to their field of study. some language researchers state that there is a relationship between the amount of vocabulary known and the understanding of written texts (harkio & pietilä, 2016; harwood, 2002; laufer, 1992; meara, 1996; qian, 2002); therefore, the bigger the students’ lexicon, the more they will probably understand texts, making appropriate connections, and the less they will have to rely on dictionaries and glossaries, a situation which allows them to focus on meaning. based on this fact, the hypothesis that the bigger the lexis related to dentistry students possess, the better they will understand written texts related to dentistry, was one of the focuses of this study. both quantitative and qualitative data were collected trying to verify them while trying to give light to other effective pedagogic approaches related to reading comprehension strategies. participants random and non-random sampling was used to select participants: undergraduate and postgraduate university students, and a dental school professor. all participants were uruguayan spanish (l1) speakers. undergraduate students of dentistry twenty-one undergraduate students of dentistry (19 women, 2 men; m = 22.2 years old; sd = 6.7 years; mdn = 31.0 years; m = 19.0 years) comprised the main research subjects as they took the reading comprehension in english course. participants were students in the first, second, and third year of their career of dentistry, with a basic or pre-intermediate level of english (a1, a2, or b1 according to the cefrl). all students who took 57profile: issues teach. prof. dev., vol. 23 no. 2, jul-dec, 2021. issn 1657-0790 (printed) 2256-5760 (online). bogotá, colombia. pages 51-66 english for academic purposes related to dentistry: analyzing the reading comprehension process the course participated in the research completing the required tests and class survey. apart from this, four of them were interviewed by using stratified random sampling as two women and two men were chosen. postgraduate students of dentistry two postgraduate students (doctors in dentistry completing postgraduate courses), a woman (42 years old) and a man (34 years old), who took a reading comprehension course like the one the undergraduate students took, were also invited to participate in the research in order to share their opinions and to pilot the tests and course’s contents related to dentistry. university postgraduate professor and doctor in dentistry a postgraduate professor of the dental school (a 55-year-old woman), who had published at least one article in english in an academic journal related to dentistry, was also interviewed. she was a key informant as she provided the perspective of an expert in the field concerning needs related to the acquisition of eap. defining the research approach: identifying variables that affect the problem bearing in mind mcnamara’s (1996) suggestions concerning the elaboration of models to organize theories and ideas, a model was designed to identify the different variables that affect the understanding of written academic texts in english from the field of dentistry (figure 1). data collection instruments tests lexical knowledge and reading comprehension skills, prior to and after the course, were assessed by using different tests. according to read (2000, p. 9), there are three dimensions concerning vocabulary assessment. the first dimension concerns the format of the exercises that are used to measure vocabulary knowledge. the exercises may be designed to assess terms that are embedded in a larger text (for example, when terms have to be placed in a text) or they may be built to measure vocabulary in isolated ways through exercises that focus solely on vocabulary (as in the completion of vocabulary lists). the second dimension considers which vocabulary is being measured, whether it is specific vocabulary related to a particular field (for example, terms associated with the field of dentistry) or the assessment of wider knowledge by adopting a more comprehensive approach that considers all the vocabulary that appears in a text (for example by analyzing comprehension in general). and finally, the third dimension is related to the way in which the examinee can produce the expected terms; figure 1. model identifying variables that affect understanding of written academic texts in the field of dentistry language skill: understanding written academic texts in english from the �eld of dentristry knowledge of lexis related to dentistry in english knowledge of english lexis understanding of discourse and english grammar content knowledge related to dentristry reading comprehension skills universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras58 carabelli it considers whether the vocabulary can be produced independently, without relying on contextual cues, or if the presence of context is necessary for the test-taker to come up with the vocabulary being assessed. these dimensions were considered when designing tests related to the field of dentistry and regarding english use in general. overall, undergraduate students completed ten tests during the course: eight designed for research purposes and two to fulfill the course’s requirements. four tests were completed both before and after the course totaling eight tests; these four pre-course and post-course tests were identical. the set of tests included: (a) a test where participants had to complete a vocabulary list of 100 words related to dentistry (pre-test 1 and post-test 1, vocabulary list related to dentistry); (b) a test where participants filled a vocabulary list of 100 words concerning general use of english (pre-test 3 and post-test 3, general english vocabulary list); (c) a reading comprehension test based on a research article from the field of dentistry (pre-test 2 and post-test 2, reading comprehension related to dentistry); and (d) a reading comprehension test not related to dentistry (pre-test 4 and post-test 4, lexis and reading comprehension exercises not related to dentistry). interviews primary data were collected by interviewing four students (chosen by using stratified random sampling), two postgraduate students (selected by using stratified random sampling), and a professor who had published at least one academic paper (selected by using random sampling according to the criteria previously established). although interviews were semistructured they were based on the following four questions: 1. which specific aims do you think a reading comprehension course in english should have? 2. do you think it is important for students to know specific vocabulary related to the field of dentistry? why? 3. when do you use, or expect to use, english during your professional career? 4. what is your experience when reading books or articles in english? surveys to triangulate data and provide more reliable research results, a class-written questionnaire was designed (mckay, 2006) and piloted by the postgraduate students to collect information concerning students’ awareness, opinions, and points of view regarding reading comprehension strategies and lexical acquisition in english in the field of dentistry after the course had ended. the survey was carried out in an anonymous way and included four close-ended questions (alternative yes/no questions): 1. do you think you have learnt vocabulary related to the area of dentistry during the course? 2. now that the course is over, do you think you can read academic articles in english? 3. considering your experience in the course, do you think that the more vocabulary related to the career of dentistry you know, the more you understand research abstracts from your career? 4. do you think you would understand research abstracts related to dentistry if the course was not focused on dentistry? results and discussion information collected during interviews participants expressed the importance of learning english during their professional career. they stated that they need it not only to read research articles but also to access different internet sites, attend congresses, study or live in other countries, learn about the latest discoveries in their field, talk with colleagues from around the world, and treat patients from different countries. the university professor mentioned the following: 59profile: issues teach. prof. dev., vol. 23 no. 2, jul-dec, 2021. issn 1657-0790 (printed) 2256-5760 (online). bogotá, colombia. pages 51-66 english for academic purposes related to dentistry: analyzing the reading comprehension process basic literature, to look for evidences, today, is mainly in english . . . [by] publishing in english international visualization is achieved. publications that are not written in english are rarely seen by the community; with the exception of the neighboring country or countries. but if one wants to make one’s work known, or if one wants one’s work to become part of systematic literature reviews, or to be part of groups that produce knowledge, it has to be in english. concerning the specific aims of the course, undergraduate students agreed with the objectives and the course’s approach and highlighted the relevance of having an english course focused on the career of dentistry within their faculty. student 1 mentioned that the english course at the university was very different from the ones she had had during secondary school as there she had learnt things concerning “life in general;” and, in this sense, student 2 pointed out that he was “more interested because it is related to what we do.” furthermore, student 3 stated: dentistry is a career in constant renovation, and new things are constantly being created, new methods and things to be used to improve people’s health; and as english is a language widely used by people to be understood worldwide…then, if we know english we can become more developed with the use of technology; learn faster about new things that people do not know. when interviewees were asked about the importance of learning specific vocabulary related to dentistry in english, they all stated that it is fundamental for dentists to know as much dental terminology as possible because dental catalogs, materials, technological instruments, instructions, and academic articles are mainly in english. several students stated that the strategies used in class concerning vocabulary learning and understanding (i.e., use of visual aids; morphological analysis of words; associating words; looking for cognates, synonyms, and antonyms; analyzing lexical items present in texts such as idioms and collocations) were necessary. they also mentioned that the reading strategies put into practice and discussed during lessons, such as analyzing the use of cohesive devices, looking for main ideas, inferring, associating, and summarizing, helped them understand texts. in conclusion, all the interviewees understood that they need english to move onwards in their professional careers and the professor highlighted that she keeps herself updated by reading articles in english, and mentioned that one way of being academically recognized by the international dental academic community is by publishing in english. data gathered with tests the acquisition of lexis and the development of reading comprehension skills were analyzed by comparing the results of tests taken before attending the course (pre-course tests) and after completing it (post-course tests). as data were normally distributed, descriptive statistics was used to examine tests’ results of the group in general. the group’s mean, median, standard deviation, and minimum and maximum score were calculated (table 1). as table 1 shows, all test scores’ mean values rose significantly throughout the course. regarding dental terminology, there was an 88% increment in pre-test 1’s mean as it rose from 35.74 to 67.12 in post-test 1; which means that students learnt a lot of new vocabulary related to dentistry during the course as figures 2 and 3 also show. figure 2 evidences that scores were very low before the course because the mean score was 35.74 out of a maximum of 100.00. most students scored between 26.50 and 41.50, less than 50.00, and nobody scored more than 60. this confirms that most students were not familiarized with dental terminology in english when the course started. universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras60 carabelli when comparing figures 2 and 3, it can be seen that test scores were much higher when the course ended (figure 3) as the mean rose from 35.74 to 67.12, showing acquisition of dental terms. this 88% increment, together with the fact that all students passed the course’s regular tests averaging around 60% of the total test marks between course test 1 and course test 2, evidenced general improvement regarding vocabulary acquisition. in addition to this, as figures 4 and 5 show, students were also able to improve their reading comprehension skills as pre-test 2’s mean was doubled, going from 2.52 in pre-test 1 to 5.38 in post-test 2. also, figure 4 shows the problem students faced before starting the course as six students (out of 21) scored zero out of eight, and seven got a very low score, which meant that 62% of the students could not fully comprehend a research article before taking the course. only four students scored more than 60%. figure 5 reveals that when the course ended there were no zero scores and that 85.7% of the students obtained more than 50% of the answers correct. after the course (figure 5), 95% of the students got better marks than at the beginning (figure 4), although three students scored less than 50% of the test’s mark when taking the post-course test. all in all, the test marks show acquisition of vocabulary related to dentistry and improvement of reading comprehension skills in general. concerning tests that dealt with aspects not related to dentistry (general vocabulary and general lexis), as data in table 1 show, a slight improvement in students’ performance could be verified because the test’s results mean rose (from 60.62 to 67.07 on one test, and from 5.67 to 8.62 on the other one). this probably occurred because, although the course was focused on dentistry, english was always being used, promoting improvement in all areas. apart from this, one of the main aims of this research was to explore the hypothesis that the more vocabulary related to dentistry students know/learn, the more a text from this area may be understood. this was studied by analyzing the correlation of the two variables—how much one depends on the other—after the course. for this purpose, the correlation of different variables was analyzed by standardizing data and using pearson’s r to measure the relationship between the different test scores with ibm spss statistics processor (table 2). table 1. students’ pre-course and post-course test results test mean median standard deviation minimum score maximum score pre-test 1. vocabulary dentistry 35.74 33.75 11.78 11.50 56.00 post-test 1. vocabulary dentistry 67.12 57.0 15.44 28.00 87.00 pre-test 2. reading comprehension dentistry 2.52 3.50 2.40 .00 7.00 post-test 2. reading comprehension dentistry 5.38 5.00 1.31 3.00 7.00 pre-test 3. general vocabulary 60.62 51.00 20.27 12.00 90.00 post-test 3. general vocabulary 67.07 58.5 17.35 26.00 91.00 pre-test 4. general lexis 5.67 6.00 3.31 .00 12.00 post-test 4. general lexis 8.62 3.25 9.00 4.00 14.00 course test 1 (oct.) 16.05 15.50 1.50 13.00 18.00 course test 2 (dec.) 19.31 17.00 3.89 10.00 24.00 61profile: issues teach. prof. dev., vol. 23 no. 2, jul-dec, 2021. issn 1657-0790 (printed) 2256-5760 (online). bogotá, colombia. pages 51-66 english for academic purposes related to dentistry: analyzing the reading comprehension process figure 2. pre-test 1 results: dental terminology 0 [11.50, 26.50] [26.50, 41.50] [41.50, 56.50] 2 4 6 8 10 12 fr e q u e n cy maximum test score: 100.00 mean: 35.74 figure 3. post-test 1 results: dental terminology fr e q u e n cy maximum test score: 100.00 mean: 67.12 0 2 4 6 8 10 [28.00, 48.00] [48.00, 68.00] [68.00, 88.00] figure 4. pre-test 2 results: scores of reading comprehension related to dentistry fr e q u e n cy maximum score: 8.00 mean: 2.52 [0.00, 3.00] [3.00, 6.00] [6.00, 9.00] 0 3 6 9 12 15 figure 5. post-test 2 results: reading comprehension related to dentistry scores fr e q u e n cy maximum score: 8.00 mean: 5.38 [3.00, 4.70] [4.70, 6.40] [6.40, 8.10] 0 2 4 6 8 10 table 2. pearson’s r correlation analysis variables pearson’s correlation p value pre-test 1. voc. dent./pre-test 2 r.c. dent. 0.555* 0.009 pre-test 2 r.c. dent./pre-test 3 gral. voc. 0.608* 0.003 pre-test 3 gral. voc./pre-test 4 gral. lexis 0.796* 0.000 pre-test 3 gral. voc./pre-test 1 voc. dent. 0.710* 0.000 pre-test 1 voc. dent./pre-test 4 gral. lexis 0.811* 0.000 pre-test 1 voc. dent./post-test 1 voc. dent. 0.624* 0.003 pre-test 1 voc. dent./post-test 2 r.c. dent. 0.104 0.654 pre-test 2 r.c. dent./post-test 1 voc. dent. 0.484* 0.0260 pre-test 2 r.c. dent./post-test 2 r.c. dent. 0.212 0.357 post-test 1 voc. dent./post-test 2 r.c. dent. -0.216 0.348 pre-test 3 gral. voc./post-test 3 gral. voc. 0.825* 0.000 pre-test 4 gral. lexis/pre-test 4 gral. lexis 0.742* 0.000 note. voc. dent. = vocabulary dentistry, r.c. dent. = reading comprehension dentistry, gral. voc. = general vocabulary, gral. lexis = general lexis. *correlation is significant at the 0.05 level (p < 0.05) universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras62 carabelli as table 2 shows, correlation between most test results exists. showing, for example, that the more general vocabulary the student possessed when starting the course (pre-test 3), the better he or she performed on the lexis test (pre-test 4); that the wider the general vocabulary of the student (pre-test 3), the better he or she performed when assessed regarding dental terminology (pre-test 1); or that the more dental terminology the student possessed (pre-test 1), the better he or she performed on the lexis test (pre-test 4). these correlations seem logical as the wider the vocabulary of students, the better one expects students to perform on tests that involve english. however, these correlations correspond to pre-tests, and students’ scores were very low on pre-tests in general, so the correlation among low scores mainly certifies low levels of english in general. nevertheless, correlation between identical pre-tests and post-tests exists, therefore, the effectiveness of the course concerning acquisition of lexis and understanding of texts could be verified. however, regarding the hypothesis in particular, correlation between post-test 1 (which tested vocabulary related to dentistry) and post-test 2 (that assessed reading comprehension related to dentistry), could not be established as p is 0.348 and therefore the difference in p value between these two is bigger than 0.05, showing no correlation or relationship between the variables. this means that the hypothesis could not be statistically verified, and it may mean that reading comprehension involves many complex skills. to continue studying a possible statistical relationship between vocabulary and narrow reading comprehension, the number of students in the study could be increased. quantitative data collected with surveys as mentioned, all students completed surveys. the data collected can be found in table 3. answers provided in the class survey were similar to answers given by undergraduate and postgraduate students in the interviews as students understand that the course’s aims were achieved as they learnt vocabulary (100%) and reading strategies (95.2%) during the course. regarding the research hypothesis, after taking the reading comprehension course focused on dentistry, the students assumed that the more vocabulary related to dentistry they knew, the more they could understand articles from this field in english. additionally, when asked if they would be able to understand these articles if the course was not focused on dentistry, 57.1% of the students stated that they would not. hence, most students consider that the course has enabled them to understand texts from the field of dentistry because of the approach used. table 3. quantitative data collected from surveys questions main answers do you think you have learnt vocabulary related to the area of dentistry during the course? yes (21 students, 100%) now that the course is over, do you think you can read academic articles in english? yes (20 students, 95.2%) not sure (1 student, 4.8%) considering your experience in the course, do you think that the more vocabulary related to the career of dentistry you know, the more you understand research abstracts from your career? yes (21 students, 100%) do you think you would understand research abstracts related to dentistry if the course was not focused on dentistry? yes (8 students, 38.1%) no (12 students, 57.1%) no answer (1 student, 4.8%) not sure (1 student, 4.8 %) validity and limitations of the study as ethical research procedures were closely followed during the study (the research procedure, context, and participants were clearly described, and data collected 63profile: issues teach. prof. dev., vol. 23 no. 2, jul-dec, 2021. issn 1657-0790 (printed) 2256-5760 (online). bogotá, colombia. pages 51-66 english for academic purposes related to dentistry: analyzing the reading comprehension process were consistent and triangulated), it can be said that the research process complies with agreed standards regarding validity and reliability. however, as only 21 undergraduate students participated in the research, the sample was considered too small and may not represent the universe of undergraduate students of dentistry. nevertheless, this result may also highlight the fact that understanding academic texts is highly complex and that it involves several reading comprehension skills, not just knowing specific terms. hence, this research may add complexity to the matter as all participants believed that the most important factor regarding comprehension of texts was knowing the key terminology; yet, as this could not be statistically verified, we may assume that comprehension of texts does not rely solely on lexical knowledge, but involves multiple abilities such as knowledge concerning the content of the text; being able to predict, infer, and summarize main ideas; understanding grammar; and analyzing discourse effectively. these aspects were also discussed during the course, helping students to acquire the necessary skills to understand academic texts. conclusions academic english language courses are increasingly being taught in universities worldwide and english language teachers must become aware of effective ways of teaching during these specific courses. in uruguay, the dental school of the universidad de la república implemented reading comprehension courses in english for its undergraduate dentistry students more than 12 years ago. these courses are short (60 face-to-face hours), focused on authentic academic bibliography related to dentistry, and are designed for students with a basic to pre-intermediate level of english. the objective of this research was to establish if the course’s aim was being accomplished (based on institutional and students’ needs), and if so, if it was mainly because students were taught specific dental terminology which enabled them to comprehend academic texts from their field. the first thing that was determined was that the course’s aims were being accomplished. not only did interviews and surveys show students’ satisfaction concerning the course, as they stated that it was relevant and that its aims were being achieved (100%), test scores also evidenced that students were not able to read academic texts when they entered the course (pre-test 2, m = 2.52/8), but could successfully do so by the end of the course (post-test 2, m = 5.38/8). in addition, test scores showed that students possessed a very narrow vocabulary when they entered the course (pre-test 3, m = 60.62/100), hardly knowing specific dental terminology (pre-test 1, m = 35.74/100). these scores improved by the end of the course as the means rose to 67.07/100 (post-test 3) and 67.12/100 (post-test 1), respectively, showing an average vocabulary increase related to dental terminology of 88%; much bigger that the increment of 10.64% regarding general english vocabulary. this shows that context-specific words may be learnt faster than general ones as students may be more motivated towards learning terminology related to their career and encounter words more frequently, enabling memorization, during specific courses. secondly, although all the participants believed that the research hypothesis was valid and provided reasons supporting this, no statistical correlation between vocabulary tests and reading comprehension tests could be made. although correlation could be established among tests of the same kind, showing that students widened their vocabulary and acquired reading comprehension skills, the statistical analysis (pearson’s r) of post-course test scores regarding knowledge of lexis related to dentistry in english (post-test 1) and understanding of written academic texts from the field of dentistry (post-test 2), did not show correlation among variables (p = 0.348). this suggests that the sample may be too small and that other variables such as content knowledge related to dentistry, knowledge of english lexis in general, reading comprehension skills, and understanding of discourse and english grammar, universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras64 carabelli are also affecting the understanding of written texts. in this sense, although students believed the hypothesis was correct and the professor who was interviewed mentioned that knowing dental terminology eased comprehension, they also mentioned that other reading approaches and strategies discussed were necessary and effective as well. regarding the course’s approach, all participants highlighted that the course was highly meaningful because it was focused on the career of dentistry. this shows that both the course’s program and interactions during class were focused on learners’ interests and needs. therefore, language and knowledge were constructed in a dialogical way during lessons where students discussed and put into practice different reading comprehension skills while analyzing the structure and language used in academic texts. in conclusion, as results show, the reading comprehension in english course being taught at the dental school is highly meaningful as it allows students with basic and pre-intermediate levels of english to acquire the necessary skills to read and understand different texts from their technical field. future courses may also incorporate genre analysis and study the rhetorical patterns that appear in academic texts. references basturkmen, h. 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(1997). vocabulary: description, acquisition and pedagogy. cambridge university press. thornbury, s. (2001). uncovering grammar. prentice hall. uccelli, p., galloway, e. p., barr, c. d., meneses, a., & dobbs, c. l. (2015). beyond vocabulary: exploring cross-disciplinary academic-language proficiency and its association with reading comprehension. reading research quarterly, 50(3), 337–356. https://doi.org/10.1002/rrq.104 wallace, c. (2007). vocabulary: the key to teaching english language learners to read. reading improvement, 44(4), 189–193. williams, r. (1985). teaching vocabulary recognition strategies in esp reading. the esp journal, 4(2), 121–131. https://doi. org/10.1016/0272-2380(85)90015-0 about the author patricia carabelli is a graduate in education sciences (universidad de la república, uruguay) and holds two master’s degrees: one in human sciences (universidad de la república) and another one in english language teaching (southampton university, uk). currently, she is an english teacher trainer pursuing a doctorate in linguistics (universidad de la república). https://doi.org/10.1002/rrq.88 https://doi.org/10.1002/rrq.88 https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1540-4781.2011.01146.x https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1540-4781.2011.01146.x https://doi.org/10.1016/0272-2380(85)90015-0 https://doi.org/10.1016/0272-2380(85)90015-0 155profile: issues teach. prof. dev., vol. 21 no. 2, jul-dec, 2019. issn 1657-0790 (printed) 2256-5760 (online). bogotá, colombia. pages 155-170 https://doi.org/10.15446/profile.v21n2.74091 “teacher, ¿puedo hablar en español?” a reflection on plurilingualism and translanguaging practices in efl “profe, ¿puedo hablar en español?” una reflexión sobre plurilingüismo y translinguación en la enseñanza del inglés como lengua extranjera 1yecid ortega* university of toronto, toronto, canada this article uses a classroom experience to exemplify ways in which students as social beings learn english as a foreign language in colombia and how the teacher uses trans[cultura]linguación. this is a process of making meaning during english-learning tasks while comparing specific linguistic variations as students learn about both their own culture and other people’s cultures. borrowing from plurilingualism and translanguaging, i describe how a teacher attempts to use a social-justice approach to teaching english by valuing her students’ linguistic and cultural repertoires. i conclude by outlining the implications this has for proposing a paradigm shift from monolithic frameworks of learning language(s) to more dynamic ones in which students’ cultural and linguistic backgrounds are deployed as a platform for addressing issues that are relevant to their communities. key words: colombia, english as a foreign language, plurilingualism, social justice, translanguaging. este artículo es parte de una experiencia de aula para ejemplificar cómo unos estudiantes, a manera de seres sociales, aprenden inglés como lengua extranjera en colombia y también cómo la profesora usa trans[cultura]linguación, un proceso por el cual se construye significado durante una actividad de inglés mientras se comparan variaciones lingüísticas y los estudiantes aprenden más acerca de su cultura y la de otros. usando conceptos de plurilingüismo y translinguación, este artículo describe cómo la profesora intenta usar un enfoque de justicia social para la enseñanza del inglés al valorar los repertorios lingüísticos y culturales de sus estudiantes. como conclusión propongo implicaciones para un cambio de paradigma lingüístico desde un marco monolítico de enseñanza de lengua(s) a uno más dinámico en el cual los antecedentes lingüísticos y culturales de los estudiantes sean usados como plataforma para tratar temas relevantes y relacionados con sus comunidades. palabras clave: colombia, inglés como lengua extranjera, justicia social, plurilingüismo, translinguación. * e-mail: yecid.ortega@mail.utoronto.ca how to cite this article (apa, 6th ed.): ortega, y. (2019). “teacher, ¿puedo hablar en español?” a reflection on plurilingualism and translanguaging practices in efl. profile: issues in teachers’ professional development, 21(2), 155-170. https://doi.org/10.15446/profile.v21n2.74091. this article was received on august 7, 2018 and accepted on may 25, 2019. this is an open access article distributed under the terms of the creative commons license attribution-noncommercial-noderivatives 4.0 international license. consultation is possible at https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/. universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras156 ortega introduction english as a foreign language (efl) is taught across the globe with the aim of encouraging students to become more socio-economically competitive and, ultimately, to achieve better academic success (dang, nguyen, & le, 2013; guo, 2012; usma, 2009a; wilkinson, 2015). although research strongly suggests that the use of multiple languages support second language learning (c. baker, 2001; cummins, 1996, 2001; hornberger, 1995, 2002), in colombian classrooms the standard practice remains one of banning the use of languages other than english, including indigenous languages (miranda-nieves, 2018; peláez & usma, 2017; usma, 2009a, 2015; usma & peláez, 2017), and many teachers and policymakers still believe that in order to learn english effectively, students must use english exclusively. in this article, i will employ plurilingualism and translanguaging as concepts to argue for the validation and recognition of students’ native language (which in this case is spanish or may be an indigenous language), as well as their personal backgrounds and identities. i will present a classroom scenario in which students are encouraged to use their first language to make meaning as they learn english. here, the teacher promotes the use of spanish during the learning of english in order to consolidate the teaching of english, while using social-justice themes collaboratively. these classroom experiences exemplify how literacy and the validation of first languages can successfully be implemented as ways to remove barriers to learning. it also showcases how, by allowing students to engage in their first language, serious issues regarding social interactions (such as bullying and aggression) can be discussed in the class, while simultaneously and effectively achieving english literacy skills. further, using these english-classroom experiences as examples, i propose that plurilingualism and translanguaging converge in the classroom as an approach to teaching; which i refer to in spanish as trans[cultura]linguación (i.e., the synergy of languages interacting with cultures in a pedagogical task). in this process, students use their knowledge of spanish and english to make meaning as they experience the merging cultures or subcultures. although i will focus here on non-english speaking countries in latin america (specifically colombia), this approach can also be applied to other international contexts. finally, i advocate for a paradigm shift in teacher education programs and language research in which plurilingualism and translanguaging are adopted as approaches to efl learning in contexts where english is not the official language of instruction. i argue that these approaches provide an equitable avenue for all students to successfully learn english, regardless of their socioeconomic status. i ultimately posit that this paradigm shift in efl pedagogies may foster an inclusive learning environment in which students make meaning while collaborating with and supporting each other. conceptual considerations this article is framed within two main concepts that co-habit and are juxtaposed concomitantly. first, plurilingualism as a concept values and acknowledges the cultural and linguistic backgrounds that students bring to the classroom. second, translanguaging is an approach that allows students to use their first language to make meaning in specific pedagogical learning tasks. plurilingualism first of all, it is important to highlight that the idea of using languages for the purpose of meaning making is not a new concept since indigenous communities around the world have been doing it for millennia. certain indigenous communities in the americas, australia, central asia, and africa have always been using and mixing different languages as a symbolic behaviour that have allowed them to communicate for the purposes of trade, self-determination, human connection and cultural identity affirmation (henderson & nash, 1997; hornberger, 2009; skutnabb-kangas, 2012; united nations, 2012, 2016; walsh & yallop, 1993). however, 157profile: issues teach. prof. dev., vol. 21 no. 2, jul-dec, 2019. issn 1657-0790 (printed) 2256-5760 (online). bogotá, colombia. pages 155-170 “teacher, ¿puedo hablar en español?” a reflection on plurilingualism and translanguaging practices in efl in broad terms, plurilingualism refers to the number of languages or even variations of the same languages that coexist in the same society (council of europe, 2001). the concept behind plurilingualism implies that the languages we use for communication are not siloed or homogenous monolithic systems, but are elements of a dynamic multi-system that overlaps with other languages (wandruszka as cited in piccardo, 2013). whether located in north america or europe, multilingualism and plurilingualism are sometimes interchangeable and can be confusing (galante, 2018). for the purposes of this article, i would like to make a subtle distinction. for example, some scholars recognize multilingualism as languages interacting at a societal level (toronto, new york, or london are examples of today’s multilingual cities), whereas plurilingualism looks at the languages that an individual possesses at any given time in life (cavalli, coste, crişan, & van de ven, 2009). in other words, a person who speaks or knows various languages or variations of the same language is a plurilingual person, and a city in which there are many languages and cultures interacting is considered a multicultural city (see figure 1). a good example of a plurilingual individual would be someone who was born in brazil, then travelled to ecuador, where he learned spanish, and later visited the usa for educational purposes, and then subsequently married an italian woman. in addition to having acquired at least four languages— to various degrees of fluency—this person also has some knowledge of the indigenous languages that his grandparents used to speak. some may claim that since most of the people on the planet know more than one language or variations of the same languages (including indigenous languages), we can say that we are all, in some degree, plurilingual (piccardo, 2013). plurilingualism does not work in isolation; it works in tandem with both concepts of plurilingual and pluricultural competence, recognizing the ability a person has to use various languages in a communicative intercultural interaction. this person is seen as a social agent who has various degrees of linguistic proficiency and who has experiences across several cultures (council of europe, 2001). one of the highlights of plurilingualism is that it has assumed a subtle yet profound shift in perspective towards the use of multiple languages, in a manner that benefits individuals by negating the notion that it is essential to achieve linguistic perfection; this removes the stress of trying to achieve the fluency of a native speaker (coste, moore, & zarate, 2009). plurilingualism multilingualism chinese korean portuguese italian greek portuguese italian english figure 1. a visualization of plurilingualism and multilingualism universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras158 ortega further, plurilingual and pluricultural concepts can become the point of departure for equitable education, especially in the area of language teaching. piccardo (2013) offers a synergic vision that proposes a change from a monolingual paradigm of language teaching to a plurilingual one; this allows for a pedagogy whose goal is to move away from the hierarchies of languages. piccardo proposes key principles that can be applicable to any classrooms or language policies: 1. the teaching and learning of languages should strive for promoting languages and linguistic diversity, 2. cross-curricular approaches in which languages interact synergistically should be fostered; 3. transferable language skills should be cost-efficient, leading to awareness and self-esteem in learners that potentially optimize learning. these principles validate and empower students and their cultures, making language-learning more relevant to their lived experiences, and consequently more equitable. thus, it makes sense that a plurilingual approach to education can encourage a more robust socially just pedagogy. for piccardo (2013, 2016) shifting towards a plurilingual approach to language education constitutes a pivotal social-justice issue, because it minimizes the barrier between languages and their different varieties, making education more holistic, synergic, and inclusive. she posits that “once such a conceptual shift towards plurality occurs, the door is open for people not only to accept plurilingualism but to take pride in it and to capitalize on it” (piccardo, 2016, p. 12). in other words, a plurilingual approach—one in which students’ linguistic and cultural backgrounds are being asserted—provides a means to reduce their fear of language production. translanguaging when a person has a document in english and writes the content in spanish for a spanish-language audience to understand it, that is translation (m. baker, 1998). when two bilingual people are having an informal conversation and they switch languages as a strategy because they cannot find the phrase/word meaning in one of the languages, that is code-switching (gumperz, 1982). if i read an article in english and then i discuss the content in spanish with my peers, that is translanguaging (garcía & wei, 2014). in order to understand what translanguaging encompasses, the concept of languaging needs to be clearly defined. languaging as a concept is not new; maturana (1978) had already proposed the term lenguajear in spanish; this refers to how language is incorporated in our lives as a mode of living and as a continuing and ever-changing process of our interactions with other human beings. here, he helps us to understand languaging as an approach to express our thoughts, emotions, and feelings as processes to make meaning. in the field of language learning, the work of swain (2008) on the conceptualization of languaging has been fundamental. for her, languaging means producing language in an attempt to understand and solve problems, as well as the process of making meaning in a specific language-learning situation. it conveys an action that is both dynamic and a neverending process. in languaging, language is used to mediate cognition, or to act as a vehicle through which thinking is articulated and transformed into written or spoken form. empirical data demonstrate how language students set about solving problems, using language as a tool to mediate their thinking, and thereby help and support each other in making meaning. for example, tocalli-beller (2005) highlights a lesson about idiomatic expressions in which students were able to support each other in order to understand given idiomatic expressions in an english class, and this exchange allowed students to reflect on their own learning, making them perform better on subsequent tasks. garcía and sylvan (2011) state: “languaging is different from language conceived simply as a system 159profile: issues teach. prof. dev., vol. 21 no. 2, jul-dec, 2019. issn 1657-0790 (printed) 2256-5760 (online). bogotá, colombia. pages 155-170 “teacher, ¿puedo hablar en español?” a reflection on plurilingualism and translanguaging practices in efl of rules or structures; languaging is a product of social action and refers to discursive practices of people” (p. 389). in multilingual contexts, languaging transcends the barriers of meaning-making and becomes a process in which bilingual/multilingual teachers and students engage in complex discursive practices in order to “make sense” and communicate—this process is called “translanguaging”. this term was first coined by cen williams (as cited in lewis, jones, & baker, 2012) for the systematic planning and use of two languages in the same lesson. also, garcía (2009) and garcía and wei (2014) describe translanguaging as the communicative norm of multilingual communities and the different discursive practices as seen from the speakers of these communities; they are not only a duality of separated languages but one linguistic repertoire that is used to make meaning. the authors also argue that translanguaging may include translation and codeswitching practices, not necessarily as a shuttle between two languages, but as elaborated bilingual linguistic practices to make sense by doing various production and comprehension tasks. one of the many advantages of translanguaging is that it facilitates finding a balance in the power relations among languages in the classroom. canagarajah (2011) notes that multilingual language students feel free to use the languages with which they are more comfortable in using to make meaning, thus countering school impositions of monolinguistic ideologies. consequently, the main advantage of a translanguageinfused classroom is that it inspires and transforms pedagogies that acknowledge the students’ linguistic and cultural backgrounds. c. baker (2001) describes four main pedagogical advantages of translanguaging: 1. it promotes a better, deeper, and fuller understanding of the subject matter. 2. it helps students to strengthen their weaker language. 3. it supports students with home-school links and cooperation. 4. it integrates fluent learners with beginner students. furthermore, translanguaging explains the constant adaptation, movement, and fluidity of languages in contemporary multilingual societies. english language learners are constantly using their linguistic repertoires to make meaning. as a pedagogy, translanguaging allows flexibility in language teaching and takes away the stress that efl teachers may experience when thinking rigidly about the exclusive use of english in the classroom. for all these reasons, i posit that translanguaging can be enacted in the classroom as a means of encouraging social justice. kleyn (2016) underlies this notion when he argues that translanguaging is an equitable approach to education in which students’ linguistic and cultural resources are brought to class. teacher-educators and teacher candidates must ask themselves what the sociopolitical and economic reasons are and why they are promoting english-only policies, and why racialized ideologies are given free rein to silence language practices which, otherwise, would allow the coexistence of other languages and their variations inside the english language classroom. to this end, kleyn recommends a discussion of the following questions with students and future teachers: voice: what is the role of translanguaging in providing voice to emergent bilinguals? if students are denied the use of their home language, what are the implications educationally, emotionally, and politically? freedom: to what extent is linguistic freedom provided to students who speak a home language that differs from the national language? are the human and linguistic rights of these students being met? if not, what changes need to occur at the national, local, and school levels? access: how is access to learning content and a new language facilitated or limited to emergent bilinguals, and why? and what role can translanguaging play in making learning more accessible? answering these questions will allow us to better comprehend the need to create a space to educate children equitably within a socially just environment. universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras160 ortega this will be a space in which students are encouraged to build on their translanguaging practices and discourses, as teachers build on those flexible practices in order to challenge the concept of the ideal “standard language” (garcía & leiva, 2014) that many policies and classroom teachers have strived to achieve for so many years. finally, i have argued that plurilingualism and translanguaging as concepts support spaces that allow students to use their language repertoires. nevertheless, this does not happen in a vacuum, but is created through the everyday practices of the speakers, which are sociohistorical in nature (heller, 2007). these practices are not fixed or straightforward from the beliefs or attitudes of individuals who interact in multilingual contexts who have an array of lived experiences. thus, this plurilingual and translanguaging ideological approach to language equips and empowers bilingual or multilingual speakers to challenge the monolingual dominant paradigm and to resist the tendency some researchers have to study languages as existing in isolated silos. heller (2007) further asserts that this approach presents a more flexible idea of bilingualism and represents a view of envisioning languages as a societal resource, stressing the individuals’ agency and ability to perform in different social situations. additionally, creese and blackledge (2011) suggest that “flexible bilingualism can be viewed as heteroglossia rather than code-switching, allowing the speaker rather than the language to be placed at the heart of the interaction, and linguistic practices to be situated in their social, political and historical conditions” (p. 1206). in other words, language and learning are no longer seen as separate entities, but rather as a process in which the speakers and their interaction become the sum of their experiences, their histories, and their lives. although it has been demonstrated that a monolingual efl classroom may present power relations that can create conflict among students (forero-rocha & gómez-rodríguez, 2016), adopting a plurilingual and translanguaging approach to education may position the school as a site for transformation and production of social equality. this may be reflected in the way in which students and teachers work as mediators for problemsolving during the learning process, thereby fostering a more equitable learning environment. ultimately, the concepts described in this section do not act in isolation but interact with each other much like a linguistic ecosystem (see figure 2) in which language-learning is situated in very specific spaces, places, and times. figure 2. an ecological framework for efl education classroom experience: teaching about/for social justice in general, plurilingual pedagogies and translanguaging approaches to teaching efl in latin america have been minimally explored in the academic literature (escobar-fallas & dillard-paltrineri, 2015), and may not have been explored explicitly at all in colombia. here, i present a classroom experience in which a colombian high school teacher uses a social-justice approach to teaching english by (a) discussing issues related to problematic situations in the school and (b) allowing students to use their linguistic repertoires to make meaning as they discussed these issues. in my relationship with the teacher i acted as a critical friend (costa plurilingualism translanguaging 161profile: issues teach. prof. dev., vol. 21 no. 2, jul-dec, 2019. issn 1657-0790 (printed) 2256-5760 (online). bogotá, colombia. pages 155-170 “teacher, ¿puedo hablar en español?” a reflection on plurilingualism and translanguaging practices in efl & kallick, 1993) where my role was to understand the teacher’s concerns with regard to her class. i heard her teaching stories; i gave feedback and i offered emotional support whenever she felt it was needed. with over 20 years of english teaching experience, laura1 teaches efl in a high school in the south of bogota, colombia. the neighbourhood in which she works is located in a poor area of the city where displaced people from the war,2 african colombians and campesinos3 live. most of her students have experienced violence at home, in school, and on the street, at the hands of parents, relatives, and street-gang members. additionally, students do not have much exposure to english outside the school and do not have opportunities to practice english, thus making laura’s teaching job more demanding. despite this challenge, while reflecting on her work with her class, laura expressed that her personal goal was to use her grade nine class as a space to foster a welcoming environment for learning english, as well as using english language learning as an opportunity to empower her students to become agents of social change. the classroom experience presented in this article serves as an example of how laura uses a dynamic plurilingual pedagogy as a dialogical action (garcía & sylvan, 2011) to draw on the knowledge of students’ own culture and other “internal” cultures of colombia to make connections between their spanish-language repertoire (which includes knowledge of other variations of spanish) and english. by using this approach, laura’s unintentional expectation is to teach about social justice, so her class becomes one that works for social justice. laura’s experiences in high school enabled her to witness the inequalities that her students have faced over the years. many students come to class having no 1 this is a pseudonym. 2 a more than 50-year war between the colombian government and revolutionary armed forces (farc). 3 a spanish word for land workers or farmers. the word “peasants” is not used in this translation since it is derogatory and does not reflect the hard labour of workers of the land. breakfast, others have problems with their families, and some suffer bullying and victimization from local ruthless and violent groups. in many of our conversations, laura would ask herself: “how can my english class address these issues? and how can i create a more peaceful learning environment in my classes?” she teaches english for around three hours a week in a grade nine class; her students are in level a1 of the common european framework of reference (cefr) scale. according to laura, since her students are not proficient enough in english, everyone uses spanish for meaning-making. most of the time, she writes on the board in english to explain a concept after which she would translate it into spanish. as much as the students try hard to speak in english, they seem to struggle, so she continually asks herself how her class can be more engaging, meaningful, and motivating, so that her students are encouraged to use more english. in order to address this issue, laura thought that it was a sound idea to discuss social problems through the lens of peace education. laura and her students collaboratively developed a social justice-oriented project. first, she asked her students what the meaning of peace was to them. laura spent a few classes discussing the concept of peace, her students responded mainly in spanish and laura scaffolded some of the language they used into english. she realized that their answers were vague and unclear, so she encouraged them to expand their ideas by drawing and writing some sentences in english with her help (see figure 3). after a few weeks, laura decided that merely drawing was not enough and that talking about peace needed a more active component. students felt engaged with the first task and they then proposed to laura to do skits to talk about peace. laura suggested a more concrete action and motivated students to discuss and propose how they could prepare skits about how to stop school bullying. the students and the teacher used spanish to discuss different types and characteristics of bullying. they discussed who the bullies, accomplices, universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras162 ortega bystanders, and victims were in their own context. after that, they had conversations about possible ways to prevent and respond to bullying. as a final activity to wrap up these discussions, students drafted skit scripts in spanish, and laura helped them to translate and edit them in english. after several weeks of language support and feedback provided by laura and performative skills supervised by the drama teacher who helped students to rehearse and be ready for presentations, the final project was presented before the class, and a few weeks later, before the entire school in the form of a drama performance. figure 3. students’ drawings and phrases about peace laura argues that this project could not have been possible if she had not allowed the students to use spanish to carry out the activities. her students expressed the view that the whole project was easier to carry out because of that and asserted that they had learned more english than before. they indeed felt more empowered and motivated to learn more english after that experience. laura confirmed that this group continued using spanish to scaffold english-learning while simultaneously creating a campaign against bullying by using drama and other art forms such as painting, graffiti, dancing, and hip-hop. discussion: trans[cultura]linguación the concept of translanguaging (garcía & wei, 2014) has been used as the communicative norm of multilingual communities in north america and sometimes elsewhere. for example, when used as a pedagogical strategy, lewis et al. (2012) and garcía (2011) have proposed the use of languages alternatively for input and output activities in the english language classroom. this allows multilingual speakers to engage in discursive practices as a way of making sense of their bilingual worlds. translanguaging has been demonstrated to be 163profile: issues teach. prof. dev., vol. 21 no. 2, jul-dec, 2019. issn 1657-0790 (printed) 2256-5760 (online). bogotá, colombia. pages 155-170 “teacher, ¿puedo hablar en español?” a reflection on plurilingualism and translanguaging practices in efl a powerful tool that can challenge monolingual and colonial tendencies of the english language by giving space for students to draw on their fluid linguistic and cultural resources (de los ríos & seltzer, 2017). for example, garcía and sylvan (2011) described translanguaging as a dynamic plurilingual pedagogy in which students were allowed to use their home languages at an international high school in new york as a way of making sense of a learning moment. similarly, laura challenged the traditional approaches to teaching despite the unspoken colombian linguistic-policy expectation to speak english during the entire time in class. by challenging static models of teaching and allowing dynamic approaches in the classroom, laura’s class has become a good example of how to further social justice, and how to change power relations, promote equal access, and encourage the generation of knowledge (goldfarb & grinberg, 2002). due to the ethnic and geographical diversity of the students in laura’s class, she argues that it is important to respect all variations of spanish and to allow students to use those variations to interact with each other during english activities. laura’s class exemplifies translanguaging practices in which languages are not only being used to make meaning, but also to learn about the students’ own culture. laura tapped into her students’ colombian cultural and linguistic capital in order to make meaning, build upon, and understand vocabulary in english. students not only became more aware of the different variations of their own colombian spanish from various regions of the country, but were also able to make connections to the same phenomenon in english. in other words, spanish has been used to learn english, and culture has been placed at the centre of learning to draw meanings. in order to exemplify this, in one of laura’s classes, while rehearsing the skits, she discussed how american english is different from that spoken in england, and she brought up an example from colombian culture. the word bolsa (bag in spanish) has different meanings in different regions of colombia. students were prompted to give examples of how they say the same word in the different cities from where they came. for example, for one student from el valle (a province in colombia) chuspa is the word for bag, whereas for another student from cundinamarca (another province) talego is the word they use. she encouraged her students to appreciate the different variations of the spanish language in colombia as they learned different variations of english. giving respect to and understanding variations of colombian spanish allowed laura’s students to recognize that english is not the powerful utilitarian language it is made out to be, but just another language in which to communicate. laura believes that her class has become a hub for social justice in the sense that the relation of power has been challenged, and students become active participants in the curriculum decision-making. further, her students are not only empowered to use spanish and other vernacular variations fearlessly in class, but are also engaged and motivated to learn about other cultures and languages while learning english. the phenomenon mentioned above is best described by a concept that i have named trans[cultura]linguación, where there is a transaction between languages (and/ or variations of the same language) while students learn about their own culture and about other cultures. for mclaren (2003), this central aspect of culture is a particular way in which a group lives and makes sense of its given circumstances and conditions of life, as expressed by their symbols and social practices, such as those found in music, dress, food, religion, dance, and education. therefore, culture becomes as much an individual/ psychological construct as well as a social construct (matsumoto & juang, 2012), one which laura and her students certainly use to create meaning in a spanish/english learning environment. to expand on this idea further, i borrow from translanguaging (garcía & wei, 2014) and transculturización (ortiz, 1983, p. 86), which describe how complex phenomena occur when multiple cultures trans-mutate in universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras164 ortega various directions within a specific context and among various individuals.4 with this in mind, i will define trans[cultura]linguación as the dynamic process in which the spanish and english languages are juxtaposed with the merging and converging of cultures. although this phenomenon may also occur in other contexts in which one or more languages (including indigenous languages) are used to explain specific aspects about culture to make meaning in a specific learning task, in this article, i exemplify it by referring to the acknowledgment and learning of language variations and cultures from different regions of colombia, and the learning of variations of the english language and its connected cultures within a pedagogical task. additionally, i can give another example that explains this phenomenon. when i was an ele (español como lengua extranjera / spanish as a foreign language) teacher, i used to compare the different geo-cultural variations of english in the usa, in canada, and the world, with the different variations of spanish in latin america. in this example, i used to compare vernacular english with standard english, and then contrast it with vernacular variations of spanish in various regions in latin america. in other words, the concept of trans[cultura]linguación5 refers to two things: (a) the level of knowledge a person has of both variations of spanish and english to make meaning and navigate their social lives, depending on the cultural location; and (b) the approach of teaching culture and linguistic variations of both english and spanish based on different contexts, which requires the teacher to be knowledgeable of the two (or more) languages and two (or more) cultures. i acknowledge that teachers may not be knowledgeable about all the cultural and linguistic repertoires of the two cultures, however, trans[cultura]linguación refers mainly to how 4 for ortiz, his context was cuba and all the different cultures that were mixed there at the time. 5 this is a work-in-progress concept and only refers to situations of spanish/english. although this may happen in other multilingual contexts, this phenomenon needs to be explored further. teachers and students engage the cultural knowledges they possess and the possibilities they have to learn more about other cultures and subcultures in a pedagogical task. in other words, how the class can be sparked into a curiosity that propels them to learn more about the local cultures of other students in the classroom, as well as other global cultures. unlike some efl teachers who believe that students will best learn english by conducting class exclusively in english, laura believes that she has challenged that notion by allowing her students to use their first language, spanish. by adopting a trans[cultura]linguación approach, laura has demonstrated that she could help to remove barriers to learning by creating an enabling, inclusive environment that validates first language identities and allows students to use spanish to make meaning. finally, i posit that trans[cultura]linguación may become one more approach available to challenge static models of language teaching and learning, not only in multilingual locales of the global north, such as new york, toronto, london, and so on, but also in other locations of the global south in latin america, such as bogota, mexico city, and buenos aires. students will not only learn the subject matter, but also learn more about their own culture and that of others from their own local country. they will thus be provided with opportunities to reflect on linguistic variations from different urban, rural, and regional locations. a quote from garcía and sylvan (2011) provides an apt conclusion to this section: teaching in today’s multilingual/multicultural classrooms should focus on communicating with all students and enabling them all to negotiate challenging academic content by building on their different language practices, rather than simply promoting the teaching of one or more standard languages. (p. 386) to this end, i invite teachers and researchers to reflect on the different cultures and individuals interacting in the language classroom. as demonstrated in laura’s classroom experience presented in this article, 165profile: issues teach. prof. dev., vol. 21 no. 2, jul-dec, 2019. issn 1657-0790 (printed) 2256-5760 (online). bogotá, colombia. pages 155-170 “teacher, ¿puedo hablar en español?” a reflection on plurilingualism and translanguaging practices in efl colombian students from different departamentos (provinces/states), who speak different variations of spanish, had the potential to learn about themselves and their own regional cultures while simultaneously learning english. final reflection and implications in this contemporary globalized world, we are more connected than ever before, and languages and cultures no longer exist in hard-to-reach, isolated silos. students pursue english language learning for economic and social mobility, and in the process are losing or beginning to devalue their own home languages; they are failing to recognize that bi/multilingual learning is a valuable asset (cummins, 2001). for instance, research clearly shows that students with strong reading skills in their home language will also have strong reading skills in their second language (august & shanahan, 2006; riches & genesee, 2006). although, according to laura, some english teachers still believe that colombia has been portrayed as a monolingual/monocultural country, her pedagogical approach challenges this image. as de mejía (2006) points out, colombia has a rich diversity of cultures and languages, and this needs to be clearly acknowledged, recognized, and factored into english language teaching. within this context, i contend that now is the time to value and embrace different variations of the spanish language, as well as to value the country’s own indigenous languages represented in many colombian classrooms and schools. laura’s classroom experience may serve as an example to inspire other teachers to explore how pedagogical tasks can be used to make linguistic connections while also learning english. the fact that her students possess knowledge of spanish variations from the different regions of colombia helps to demonstrate that students are not monolingual in the strict sense of the word; as piccardo (2013) said, “we are all plurilingual”, and thus attention must be paid to students’ linguistic and cultural repertoires, so as to ensure a more holistic education in english language teaching. with this in mind, cenoz (2013) focuses on three dimensions of holistic views on multilingualism: multilingual speakers, their entire linguistic repertoire, and their social context. considering this, i think the teaching of language(s) in colombia may be inspired by a holistic approach [that] aims at integrating the curricula of the different languages to activate the resources of multilingual speakers. in this way, multilingual students could use their resources crosslinguistically and become more efficient language learners than when languages are taught separately. (cenoz, 2013, p. 13) what this means for bilingual (spanish/english and other indigenous languages) teachers is that they could develop activities in which different variations of spanish expressions from various colombian regions are integrated within english language learning tasks. ultimately, a more holistic curriculum which allows flexibility and fluidity in language teaching and learning, one which fosters “flexible bilingual pedagogy” (creese & blackledge, 2010, 2011), can be developed. based on the above, i propose three implications for a framework towards achieving a flexible and fluid holistic curriculum for english language teaching in colombia and elsewhere: (a) equal education, (b) teacher education, and (c) language research. equal education in a country where in most elite schools, the curriculum is offered in english as the medium of instruction (de mejía, 2011), translanguaging could potentially offer an instructional space for public school students to make meaning while discussing issues that are relevant to their communities. thus, a curriculum that integrates plurilingual and translanguaging ideas has the potential to create equal opportunities for public school students to use their home language as a support and scaffolding for learning english in a less stressful manner. this suggests a paradigm shift in which the universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras166 ortega english. both professional-development programs and bilingual-education programs will benefit from including theoretical, practical, and research courses on these topics, and language-education programs can integrate courses that teach the importance of students’ home languages and their linguistic variations, especially as students gain awareness of other cultures and languages. it is important in today’s globalized world that as students are exposed to languages and cultures across the planet through the internet and social media, they acquire the relevant codes and skills. accordingly, in order for teachers to not lag behind the rapidly evolving zeitgeist, teacher-education programs need to equip students in their charge with the needed skills. laura’s classroom practices may present a sound example as to how teachers can incorporate simple activities to activate students’ curiosity for learning about other cultures and languages, and as a means of fostering more sustaining pedagogies (paris & alim, 2017) that favour marginalized communities in colombia. laura’s classroom experience is a miniscule example of how teachers have already begun to push back at the established linguistic hierarchy from the bottom up, so that they can bring about meaningful pedagogical changes. language research colombian researchers may find interesting connections in exploring the relationship between spanish and learning efl and the role colombian indigenous languages can play in the learning of other languages (english included). although there is emerging research in colombia investigating current teaching practices, and further social research among undergraduate students and in-service teachers (see escobar, 2013), more attention can be paid to the system of semilleros de investigación (research incubators), very popular among teaching education programs across colombia. these research groups at undergraduate and graduate levels can potentially use the resources they already have to advance research on plurilingualism, translinguistic repertoires and language variations (in this case, of spanish and english) and indigenous languages are recognized, respected, and valued in the schools by keeping in mind what trans[cultura]linguación is. in this way, language education gains the power to dismantle monolithic narratives of the ideal english native speaker, and dispel the assumptions, beliefs, and practices that fuel the monolingual bias (escobar-fallas & dillard-paltrineri, 2015). within such a framework, students would not worry about attaining higher levels of oral proficiency by trying to imitate the native english speaker but will rather learn english while affirming their own identities (cummins, 1996) as colombians, thus balancing the cultural and linguistic forces to make learning more equitable, especially for students in public and underfunded schools. hurst and mona (2017) have suggested that translanguaging pedagogies may best benefit students who are disempowered by englishonly language ideologies. furthermore, according to laura, her class certainly became a hub to challenge such ideologies and it encouraged students to respond to issues of violence and aggression in the school in a context where colombia is attempting to transition to being a more peaceful society. teacher education programs most teacher education programs in colombia continue to advocate for communicative language teaching approaches that favour english-only policies, given that this is what is expected by government and institutional authorities. this negatively affects marginalized communities in the country (usma, 2009a, 2009b; usma, ortiz, & gutierrez, 2018). this points to a need for change in how teachers envision a classroom where more socially-just oriented pedagogies are more inclusive of cultural and linguistic practices (sierra-piedrahita, 2016). in-service and pre-service teachers in colombian public schools need to gain a deeper knowledge of plurilingualism and translanguaging, what these concepts mean, and how they can contribute to the effective teaching of 167profile: issues teach. prof. dev., vol. 21 no. 2, jul-dec, 2019. issn 1657-0790 (printed) 2256-5760 (online). bogotá, colombia. pages 155-170 “teacher, ¿puedo hablar en español?” a reflection on plurilingualism and translanguaging practices in efl languaging, and their relationship with colombian cultures (ethnic cultures, subcultures, urban cultures, etc.). additionally, now that colombia is in a postpeace accord era, this presents an opportune time for teachers and researchers to potentially explore the connections between social justice and peace education in efl. these themes are no strangers to the goals of plurilingualism, which are “to perceive the language teacher (who teaches the mother tongue, the language of the school or foreign languages) as an individual who has social responsibilities, including responsibilities towards oneself as a plurilingual and intercultural speaker, and towards others” (bernaus & european centre for modern languages, 2007, p. 16). for oliveira and ançã (2009), the realization of these goals calls for training language teachers and teacher researchers who can help their students to become more aware of the context in which their communication and learning experiences take place, and to become agents who represent an evolving plurilingual competence. to this end, research methods such as collaborative action research (car) and youth participatory action research (ypar) have the potential to engage both teachers and students in (re)discovering languages and cultures, and the role these play in the current sociopolitical environment in colombia. ultimately, there is an urgent need to see students’ cultural and linguistic diversity not as impediments to learning languages, but as cultural-capital resources that they bring from home to school. once this is clearly understood, the intellectual capital of our societies will grow dramatically (cummins, 2001), fostering a new generation of students who can become agents of social change. i concur with alexander and busch (2007), who agree that the maintenance and promotion of multilingualism is essential in the modern world because of its implications for diversity, development, democracy, didactics and (human) dignity [and] depriving a person of the free and spontaneous use of his or her mother tongue constitutes a violation of a fundamental human right. (p. 15) throughout this article, i have suggested that plurilingualism and translanguaging are key concepts for the teaching and learning of efl in colombia (and, for that matter, in any number of other countries). i have also argued for change from a monolithic framework of learning language(s) to a more dynamic and fluid one that uses trans[cultura]linguación as a point of departure for a paradigm shift in language pedagogy. this, i strongly believe, will ensure equitable pathways for all students, regardless of socioeconomic and class status, or their geopolitical location, to successfully learn and value their own languages as they learn english, and to do so while addressing issues that are relevant to their communities. so, when a student, like one in laura’s english class, asks: “teacher, ¿puedo hablar en español?” the answer is a convincing “¡sí! yes, of course!” references alexander, n., & busch, b. 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(2009b). globalization and language and education reform in colombia: a critical outlook. íkala, revista de lenguaje y cultura, 14(22), 19-42. usma, j. (2015). from transnational language policy transfer to local appropriation: the case of the national bilingual program in medellin, colombia. deep university press. usma, j., ortiz, j., & gutierrez, c. (2018). indigenous students learning english in higher education: challenges and hopes. íkala, revista de lenguaje y cultura, 23(2), 229254. https://doi.org/10.17533/udea.ikala.v23n02a03. usma, j., & peláez, o. (2017). teacher autonomy: from the conventional promotion of independent learning to the critical appropriation of language policies. in c. nicolaides & w. magno (eds.), innovations and challenges in applied linguistics and learner autonomy. campinas, br: pontes editores. walsh, m., & yallop, c. (eds.). (1993). language and culture in aboriginal australia. canberra, au: aboriginal studies press. wilkinson, d. (2015). educational reforms and development in japan: language and culture education for global competitiveness. international journal of higher education management, 1(2). retrieved from http:// search.proquest.com/openview/b7ff375ef6cfcbbecdb 04caf42f904c5/1?pq-origsite=gscholar&cbl=2043069. about the author yecid ortega is a doctoral candidate in the combined languages and literacies education & comparative, international, and development education programs at the university of toronto/oise. his research focuses on using a critical ethnographic case study approach to examine social justice and peace-building in language education with urban and rural youth. acknowledgements i would like to thank laura and the students in her class for their ongoing work in challenging the way english has been taught as they co-create curriculum together by recognizing the colombian linguistic and cultural diversity. 71profile vol. 18, no.1, january-june 2016. issn 1657-0790 (printed) 2256-5760 (online). bogotá, colombia. pages 71-96 http://dx.doi.org/10.15446/profile.v18n1.49946 an eclectic professional development proposal for english language teachers una propuesta ecléctica de formación docente para profesores de inglés orlando chaves1* maria eugenia guapacha2** universidad del valle, cali, colombia this article reports a mixed-method research project aimed at improving the practices of public sector english teachers in cali (colombia) through a professional development program. at the diagnostic stage surveys, documentary analysis, and a focus group yielded the teachers’ profile and professional needs. the action phase measured the program’s impact via surveys, evaluation formats, a focus group, researchers’ journal, and documentary analysis. findings revealed that an eclectic approach tailored to the participants’ needs and interests and a practice-reflection-theory cycle improved the teachers’ quality. key words: english teachers’ profile, professional development, teacher quality. este artículo versa sobre una investigación mixta que buscaba mejorar la enseñanza de un grupo de profesores de inglés del sector público en cali (colombia) a través de un programa de desarrollo profesional. en el diagnóstico, encuestas, análisis documental y un grupo focal arrojaron el perfil y las necesidades profesionales de los docentes. la implementación evaluó el impacto del programa a través de encuestas, formatos de evaluación, grupo focal, diario de investigación y análisis documental. los resultados revelaron que un enfoque ecléctico ajustado a las necesidades e intereses de los participantes y un ciclo de práctica-reflexión-teoría fortalecieron la calidad de los profesores. palabras clave: calidad de los profesores, desarrollo profesional, perfil de docentes de inglés. * e-mail: orlando.chavez@correounivalle.edu.co ** e-mail: maria.guapacha@correounivalle.edu.co how to cite this article (apa, 6th ed.): chaves, o., & guapacha, m. e. (2016). an eclectic professional development proposal for english language teachers. profile issues in teachers’ professional development, 18(1), 71-96. http://dx.doi.org/10.15446/profile.v18n1.49946. this article was received on april 1, 2015, and accepted on july 28, 2015. this is an open access article distributed under the terms of the creative commons license attribution-noncommercial-noderivatives 4.0 international license. consultation is possible at http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/. universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras72 chaves & guapacha introduction recent language education policies in colombia have ignited interest about the english teacher quality. although policies are necessary to support coordinated teachers’ professional development actions, studies about teachers’ needs and quality are still scarce in our scholastic milieu and most of them refer to primary schools (bastidas & muñoz ibarra, 2011; cadavid múnera, mcnulty, & quinchía ortiz, 2004; mcnulty & quinchía ortiz, 2007) or are based on only language test results (sánchez jabba, 2013). this article reports a quantitative-qualitative (quan-qual) sequential explanatory study about the impact of a professional development program (pdp) for english teachers in public schools in cali, colombia. the diagnostic stage was a survey study that allowed identifying the teachers’ profile and professional needs on the bases of which a pdp was further designed, implemented, and evaluated in a qualitative action stage. literature review teacher quality teacher quality (tq) is a common concern in daily life, education policies, and academic literature. the literature review about tq in english teaching involves qualifications, experience, methodology/ teaching practice, knowledge, beliefs, and attitudes. some external factors are also linked to tq like students’ attitudes, available resources, adequate time-on-task, class size, and teacher work assignment (darling-hammond & bradsford, 2005; hanushek & rivkin, 2007; johnson, 2006; wright, 2012). in education discourse, tq often has different definitions. kennedy (2008) points out that tq has become a ubiquitous term without clear meaning and mentions five different connotations: (a) tested ability, test scores used as an indicator of tq for recruitment; (b) credentials, in the form of licenses and certificates that prove knowledge and experience; (c) quality of classroom practices, referring to the work teachers do inside their classrooms; (d) teachers’ effectiveness in raising the level of student achievement; and (e) beliefs and values. likewise, there are three different but widespread terms associated with a quality teacher: good teacher, effective teacher, and highly qualified teacher (paone, whitcomb, rose, & reichardt, 2008). the first term is germane to daily school discourse and refers to teachers who “teach well.” however, the concept of good teacher is not limited to what he/she does in the classroom. the second term—teacher effectiveness— is common in education researchers and authorities referring to students’ achievement on tests resulting from teaching (clotfelter, ladd, & vigdor, 2006; coggshall, 2007; darling-hammond, 1999; harris & ó duibhir, 2011; rivkin, hanushek, & kain, 2005; valentine, rakes, & canada, 2010). this is a very narrow conception of effectiveness (kennedy, 2008) and there is still lack of agreement on how best to identify and measure effective teaching (kane, taylor, tyler, & wooten, 2011). this widespread view linking tq to students’ and teachers’ results on language tests, especially in the public sector, is prominent in the current colombian bilingualism policies (cely, 2009; sánchez jabba, 2013). the third term—highly qualified teacher—is also usual in educational legislation and stakeholders’ discourse. this teacher “possesses the sophisticated content knowledge and familiarity with appropriate pedagogical and assessment strategies” (national council of teachers of english [ncte], 2004, p. 1). in our scholastic system tq is associated with qualifications. according to the ncte (2004), the teacher’s skills and expertise fall in the areas of pedagogical content knowledge, planning instruction, and skills and strategies to engage students. these skills are developed through time and are usually called experience. ncte’s definition illustrates how tq amalgamates the features quality teachers have or must have (skills, knowledge, 73profile vol. 18, no.1, january-june 2016. issn 1657-0790 (printed) 2256-5760 (online). bogotá, colombia. pages 71-96 an eclectic professional development proposal for english language teachers expertise, and the like), the qualities of what they do or should do (e.g., assessment), and the results they obtain in their students. a step ahead in the comprehension of tq is given by kunter et al. (2013) who propose the concept of professional competence as “the skills, knowledge, attitudes, and motivational variables that form the basis for mastery of specific situations” (p. 3). locally, this notion has been studied by kostina and hernández (2007). in general, tq refers to the various teacher-related characteristics associated with positive educational results. figure 1 summarizes the diverse perspectives of tq. nonetheless, it is necessary to keep in mind kennedy’s (2008) assertion about this complex matter of tq: true understanding of teacher quality requires us to recognize that these many facets are distinct, not always overlapping, and not always related to one another. moreover, we aren’t even sure how they influence and interact with one another when they do. (p. 60) figure 1. literature review mind map quali�cations studies level type professional development teachers', students', parents', stakeholders'. levellanguage approaches, planning, materials methodology classroom practice planning views time, population, geographic area, education level, grades. experience efl teacher quality whitcomb & rose, 2008; zumwalt & craigh, 2005; hanushek & rivkin, 2007; darling-hammond, 2006; cochran-smith, feiman-nemser, mcintyre, & demers, 2008 knowledge practice image universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras74 chaves & guapacha in this study, tq components were summarized in four categories: qualif ications, know ledge, practices (methodology), and image (personal traits and professional attitudes, values, and beliefs). tq components were analyzed in depth in order to support a sound characterization of the teachers to whom the pdp was addressed. the bottom line was that professional development is a good means to assure tq. professional development of language teachers professional development (pd) on the whole is the development of a person in his/her professional role (villegas-reimers, 2003). according to villegasreimers, the notion of pd is linked to two similar but narrower concepts: career development, as the maturity teachers attain through their professional career, and staff development, as the in-service programs aimed at promoting the growth of teachers. for richards and farrell (2005), pd is one of the two views derived from two general objectives in teacher education: training and development. training encompasses the initial or pre-teaching teacher education, in a ba program, for instance; development refers to the in-ser vice and longterm development of teachers. for the authors, teacher training usually establishes short-term goals linked to the teachers’ present or immediate n e e d s . te a c h e r t r a i n i n g t y p i c a l l y i n v o l v e s comprehending theor y, and then applying it to teaching until skills in demonstrating the principles and pr a c t i c e are d e vel op e d and ob s e r ve d. in turn, teacher development is designed for longterm periods whose goal is to facilitate teachers’ self-understanding and to include a ref lective component as a basis of the program. pd improves the performance of teachers, students, and the school itself which richards and farrell consider a bottom-up process. f u r t h e r m o r e , r e g a r d i n g t h e d i s t i n c t i o n between teacher training or education and teacher development, edge (as cited in wallace, 1991), asserts that: “the distinction is that training or education is something that can be presented or managed by others; whereas development is something that can be done only by and for oneself ” (p. 3). wallace (1991) discusses two previous models of professional education: craft and applied science, and proposes his own, ref lective. the craft model is based on experiential pd; in it, expertise is demonstrated by a master practitioner and imitated or practiced by the young trainee. this imitative practice is supposed to lead to professional competence. wallace criticized this model as simple, static, imitative, and disregarding the growth of relevant scientific knowledge. schön’s (1987) applied science model analyzed teaching problems using scientific knowledge to achieve clear objectives, underscoring theory and seeing practice as instrumental. wallace disapproved this model because it separates theory (research) and practice. in opposition to those models, wallace (1991) proposed the reflective model that balances both experience and scientific bases of teaching carrying out professional development through a combination of “received” and “experiential” knowledge; the first one includes the disciplinary theory that supports language, teaching, and learning, while the second one is related to the teachers’ ongoing experience and expertise. figure 2 summarizes this model. in general, pd has moved from an initial focus on training to modern views that include the teachers’ personal and professional dimensions, knowledge, exp er ience, working condit ions, and agendas (cárdenas beltrán & nieto cruz, 2010). the training perspective has been considered a “deficit model,” opposite to the second one, seen as a cooperativeprocess view (richardson & anders as cited in cárdenas beltrán & nieto cruz, 2010). the former 75profile vol. 18, no.1, january-june 2016. issn 1657-0790 (printed) 2256-5760 (online). bogotá, colombia. pages 71-96 an eclectic professional development proposal for english language teachers aims at fixing teaching practice deemed outdated or somehow defective; it is focused on the academic knowledge to be transmitted by the teachers and its methodology seeks that the teachers apply in their settings the knowledge learned in the training courses. the cooperative-process perspective pursues the relationship between theory and practice, giving importance to reflection and building teachers’ analytical and critical awareness. specifically, teachers’ pd is “the professional growth a teacher achieves as a result of gaining increased experience and examining his or her teaching systematically” (villegas-reimers, 2003, p. 11), comprises formal (e.g., attendance of workshops) and informal experiences (e.g., reading professional publications), and it is necessary to consider the experiences, processes, and the contexts in which teachers’ pd takes place. recent trends in pd are based on constructivism rat her t han on transmission-or iented mo dels (villegas-reimers, 2003). it means that, in pdps, teachers are active learners. likewise, for darlinghammond (1998) a pdp is related to the daily activities of teachers and learners and it should be based on schools. to summarize, we consider that professional development of language teachers should involve permanent reflection, theory and practice, knowledge and skill, learning and re-learning, science and craft in any combination as proposed in the various abovementioned perspectives. method a mixed-method research design (creswell, 2 0 0 9 ) w as a d opte d, sp e c i f i c a l ly, a s eque ntial explanatory quan-qual design (creswell, 2012; figure 2. the reflective model of professional development (wallace, 1991, p. 49) trainee’s existing conceptual schemata or mental constructs received knowledge previous experimenta l knowledge practice re�ection profesional competence stage 1 (pre-training) stage 2 (professional education/development) goal universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras76 chaves & guapacha creswell & plano clark, 2007). in the diagnostic stage, a quantitative survey research (creswell, 2012) led to an in-depth description of the english teachers in cali in order to analyze and understand their background and present status. free association e xe rc i s e, l ite r atu re re v i e w, fo c u s g roup, an d documentary analysis contributed to get the profile and professional needs of the subjects. in the action stage, a qualitative action-research (carr & kemmis, 1986; cohen, manion, & morrison, 2007) was carried out to evaluate the impact of the pdp by means of a research journal, focus groups, evaluation formats, and documentary analysis. thus, the following cycle was pursued: (1) planning: design of workshops tailored to the teachers’ needs (whole program: 150 hours). (2) acting: a pilot pdp course of 45 hours (nine workshops, 5 hours each) was carried out; twelve teachers participated (see appendix for a workshop sample). (3) observing: recorded observations in researchers’ journals and format evaluations. (4) ref lecting: examination of positive aspects and aspects to improve upon. this cycle was repeated throughout the intervention. figure 3 recapitulates the research design process. participants diagnostic stage: 63 out of 301 public sector english teachers in cali, 57 students from eighth and eleventh grades, five parents, and nine school administrators belonging to a total of 40 out of 92 public schools in cali. action stage: 12 out of 30 public sector english teachers attended the pd pilot program. data collection and instruments table 1 shows the instruments used to collect data in diagnostic, action, and evaluation stages. figure 3. sequential explanatory quan-qual design (adapted from creswell & plano clark, 2007) integrate interpretations on quan and qual results quan qual qual data analysis colour coding categories qual data collection journal, evaluation formats, focus groups, open-ended surveys, documentary analysis quan data collection online survey, literature review, documentary analysis quan data analysis descriptive/ interferential statistics 77profile vol. 18, no.1, january-june 2016. issn 1657-0790 (printed) 2256-5760 (online). bogotá, colombia. pages 71-96 an eclectic professional development proposal for english language teachers table 1. data collection instruments for diagnostic, action, and evaluation stages diagnostic stage technique instrument source purpose 1. literature review mind mapping authors consulted to find out the categories of tq 2. free association informal questionnaire six english teachers, 42 eighth graders, three administrators to find out about the participants’ view of tq 3. paper-based diagnostic survey survey format six more teachers, 15 eleventh graders, six administrators and five parents to find out about studies, english level, methodology, experience, professional development, and image 4. online survey survey format 45 english teachers to find out wider information about tq: studies, english level, methodology, experience, professional development, image, and professional needs 5. documentary analysis checklist sem cali (diagnostic tests), men (pdfcle), national newspapers to find out about tq and professional needs 6. focus group focus group protocol and transcription six teachers of different public schools to find out about the strengths and weaknesses of efl teachers universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras78 chaves & guapacha action and evaluation stages technique instrument source purpose 1. journaling two column diary format researchers to monitor and evaluate the ongoing process and interventions of the researchers in the pdp 2. surveying three survey formats (initial, mid, and final) the 12 english teachers initial survey to find out the teachers’ interest and expectations about the pdp (needs analysis) mid-term survey to evaluate the ongoing process to make improvements final survey to evaluate the impact of the pdp 3. surveying evaluation questionnaire the 12 english teachers to evaluate the ongoing process and permanent impact of the pdp 4. focus group focus group protocol and transcription the 12 english teachers to evaluate the impact of the pdp 5. documentary analysis checklist lesson plans, recordings, needs analysis, and blogs of the 12 english teachers to evaluate the impact of the pdp pilot course on the teachers’ practices note. sem = municipal secretary of education, men = national ministry of education, pfpcle = program for the strengthening of foreign language competences. findings four main categories were derived from the research questions: (1) teachers’ main quality features, (2) teachers’ professional needs, (3) pdp components, and (4) impact of pdp on teachers’ practices. the diagnostic stage addressed the first three categories, while the action and evaluation stages yielded the impact of the pdp. figure 4 shows the triangulation at the diagnostic stage. the outer hexagon shows the participants while the inner one presents the six instruments and their findings. the commonalities are included in the circle. 79profile vol. 18, no.1, january-june 2016. issn 1657-0790 (printed) 2256-5760 (online). bogotá, colombia. pages 71-96 an eclectic professional development proposal for english language teachers figure 4. literature review mind map teachers’ main quality features a data base, paper and online surveys, a focus group, and do c umentar y analysis yielded the information. most english teachers in the public schools in cali are a mature population with long experience teaching english in high school; they abide by traditional approaches; research is either absent or is not central in their curriculum; they are not fully acquainted with the use of information and communication technologies (ict), and they resort to traditional resources. table 2 shows features regarding teachers’ methodology, evaluation, and resources. literature review te a ch e rs ’ v ie w s sta ke h o ld e rs’ a n d m e d ia’s view s teachers’ views te a ch e rs ’, st u d e n ts ’, a n d a d m in is tr a to rs ’ vi ew s te a ch e rs’, stu d e n ts’, a n d a d m in istra to rs’ view s literature review: categories: quali�cations, knowledge, practice, and image free association: knowledge and image tq main features focus group pdp components strengths: awareness, knowledge (language level), practice (classroom management), rapport, image government’s actions. weaknesses: constraints documentary analysis strengths: government’s actions weakness: lack of tq de�nition strengths: quali�cations (studies and experience) weaknesses: knowledge (lack of methodology and language pro�ciency) practice (more evaluation strategies, use of resources and icts knowledge) constraints (more programs for teachers, students’ motivation, large classes, poor infrastructure, lack of resources. online survey strengths: knowledge (language pro�ciency, methodology), awareness, practice (classroom management), image. weaknesses: awareness about research paper survey strengths: knowledge (language pro�ciency, methodology), image, awareness weakness: image. universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras80 chaves & guapacha table 2. online survey: summary of teachers’ answers more frecuent less frecuent activities oral/written questions, grammar exercises, reading texts, role plays, and textbooksa. translation, audios, presentations, videos, songs, rhymes, poems, dramatizations, ludic activities, board games, writing exercises, projects, culture (literature and celebrations), role plays and textbooks. evaluation techniques oral/written questions, grammar exercises, reading comprehension, quizzes, exams, homework, class participation, attitudes, and notebook. translation, listening comprehension, presentations, role plays, textbook, songs, rhymes, poems, writing exercises, projects, and culture. resources notebook and photocopies flashcards, video beam, smart boards, videos, cameras, dvd, cd player, tv set, games, internet, readers, audio books, english lab, and textbook. afifty percent of participants answered that role plays and textbooks were among the less frequent activities they used and the remaining 50% asserted that those were their more frequent activities. a lack of graduate studies in the city related to english teaching has made teachers resort to pdps, methodology, and language courses. on the other hand, the predominant teachers’ language level according to their answers, b1 (council of europe, 2001), was confirmed with the results of the language tests administered by the ministry of education. this fact reflects the teachers’ awareness about their level. this level corresponds to the reality of a monolingual spanish speaking society. another interesting finding was related to the teachers’ vocation; they permanently pursue the improvement of their students. teachers’ professional needs this second categor y was divided into five elements: knowledge, practice, image, awareness, and situational constraints. a. knowledge: teachers needed to improve language proficiency, methodology (knowledge of modern approaches), and views of language and language learning. b. practice: teachers needed to strengthen lesson planning, students’ motivation, classroom management, use of resources, implementation of modern methods and approaches, and assessment. c. image: teachers needed to enhance their motivation, attitudes, values, and rapport with students, colleagues, parents, and school stakeholders. the teachers’ level of qualification, experience, language proficiency, and methodology also required improvement as perceived by themselves and by others. d. awareness: although the teachers were aware of their strengths and weaknesses, they lacked 81profile vol. 18, no.1, january-june 2016. issn 1657-0790 (printed) 2256-5760 (online). bogotá, colombia. pages 71-96 an eclectic professional development proposal for english language teachers systematic reflection and research about their context, which is necessary to introduce changes in their settings. e. situational constraints: lack of resources, insufficient time on task, large class size, students’ demotivation, lack of parents’, principals’, co ordinators’, and stakeholders’ support, few pdps that address their professional needs, and scarce time availability. all these constraints impede undertaking research, reading and writing on professional experience, and undermine both the teachers’ internal and external image. the paper and online surveys were the instruments that yielded more information about the areas that the teachers needed to improve upon (see figure 5 and table 3). pdp components the components emerged from the sur veys, focus group (see table 3), and needs analysis survey figure 5. participants’ answers about areas to be improved upon by teachers (paper survey) (see table 4). they included current methods, icts, and rapport with students. it was surprising to learn about the teachers’ low curiosity on classroom research and standards. nevertheless, classroom research, in the form of reflection and needs analysis, was incorporated as a cross component of the pdp, while standards were integrated in lesson planning and evaluation. the pdp contents and objectives were negotiated with the teachers; the eclectic approach followed a practice-reflection-theory cycle that allowed the teachers to learn, apply, and reflect on the contents and the theory. the materials and resources were up-to-date, affordable, available, and handy; finally, the instructors and teachers’ attitudes contributed to a good learning environment. the pdp design responded to the teachers’ needs and interests opposing the common parameters of previous pdps taken by the teachers, not separating theory from practice and proceeding in a non-linear sequence. 31% 21% 27% 25% 38% 37% 37% 50% 31% 42% 36% 25% 0% 10% 20% 30% 40% 50% 60% teachers students administrators parents quali�cations knowledge image universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras82 chaves & guapacha table 3. summary of the answers provided by the focus group components of a pdp a good pdp should integrate practical and theoretical foundations (from practice to theory), let teachers learn by doing, provide practical and successful ideas, activities and demonstrations, foster reflection, research and teaching-sharing, include icts, be conducted in english, be long, and follow up the teachers’ advances. table 4. initial needs analysis survey results teachers’ personal and professional strengths • high rated strengths: teamwork, innovation, storytelling, methodology, planning, and creation of materials. • low rated strengths: course management, use of icts, evaluation, and rapport or connection with students. teachers’ areas of interest knowledge about methods • they want to learn: tasks, cbi, and pbi knowledge about icts • they want to learn: educational games and videogames, blogs, wikis, avatars, video makers, puzzle makers, tests makers, online surveys, and online teaching and learning resources. interests • more interest in: icts, new methods, planning, needs analysis, materials and resources, evaluation, classroom management, and cultural aspects. • less interest in: teachers’ values, standards, reflection, research, and autonomous learning. teachers’ needs or areas to improve upon • teachers’ professional needs: methodology, to improve students’ motivation, use of icts, materials design, classroom management, curriculum planning, evaluation of skills, knowledge about methods, grouping techniques. • they mentioned that they need less about use of standards. characteristics of the pdp methodology and evaluation • more activities based on: group work, class participation, icts based-activities, and demonstrations. • fewer activities based on: oral and written tests, portfolios, individual work, written reflections and journals. note. cbi = content-based instruction, pbi = project-based instruction. 83profile vol. 18, no.1, january-june 2016. issn 1657-0790 (printed) 2256-5760 (online). bogotá, colombia. pages 71-96 an eclectic professional development proposal for english language teachers based on the data gathered, we can now briefly summarize the components of the designed pdp: 1. knowledge regarding met ho dolog y and language proficiency: current methodologies (content and language integrated learning [clil] and task based learning [tbl]) and motivation strategies (rhymes, games, tongue twisters). the program was conducted in english to increase the teachers’ language level. 2. practice involving planning, evaluation, use of resources, classroom management: needs analysis, use of standards, planning, use and creation of resources (board games and electronic materials), use of icts, and evaluation strategies. 3. awareness: reflection and classroom research. 4. image: rapport, values, and professional attitudes. impact of pdp on teachers’ practices this s ec tion includes t he four t h categor y subdivided into knowledge, practice, image, and awareness. a. knowledge of current methods (tbl and clil) was evident in the teachers’ class performance, lesson plans and class recordings. b. language level progress was noticed as teachers started using more english and incorporating terminology related to tasks and clil; their accuracy in pronunciation and vocabular y increased c. practice of new methods and strategies and use of new materials and resources were also observed through the documents teachers provided and through the design of new digital materials, such as powerpoint games, the use of icts, and the introduction of warm-up activities in their lessons. d. rapport with students and self-image as persons and professionals were noticed in teachers’ higher motivation, autonomous learning, commitment, eagerness to implement and report the new strategies they applied, and in the acquisition of new resources for the english class like video beams, tv set, and a classroom for this subject. the motivation arose from the teachers’ fulfillment of their expectations and the development of their abilities. e. awareness to evaluate their practices and their effectiveness on students’ learning by implementing needs and interests analysis with their students. the teachers highlighted the importance of collecting data with this tool, which allowed them to evaluate their students’ and their own needs, interests, and performance. the ac t ion and e va lu at ion st ages a ls o let u s i d e nt i f y t h e s u c c e s s f u l f e at u re s a n d d i f f iculties of the pdp piloting. its most f r uitful components were the needs analysis, contents, objectives, methodology, materials, evaluation, the instructors, and the participants’ attitudes. t h e s e f i n d i n g s w e re d r aw n f rom t h e w or k s h op s e v a lu at i on f or m at s , f o c u s g roup, a n d documentary analysis. evaluation formats’ results the format consisted of two sections. section 1 evaluated five aspects of the pdp with a 1 (low) to 5 (high) scale: fulfillment of objectives, teaching awareness, theoretical bases, practical knowledge, and impact of the workshops on the teachers’ practices. in section 2, open indirect questions detected the particular views of teachers regarding their learning, the positive aspects, and the aspects to improve upon in the program. a section of comments let them express other opinions. figures 6 to 10 show t he p ercent ages of t he te achers’ answers to each of the five aspects evaluated in section 1. universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras84 chaves & guapacha figure 6. fulfillment of objectives figure 7. the session allowed me to reflect on my teaching percentage of teachers who evaluated the workshops 25% 23% 40% 63% 10% 23% 13% 75% 77% 60% 37% 90% 77% 100% 87% 100% 0% 20% 40% 60% 80% 100% workshop 1 workshop 2 workshop 3 workshop 4 workshop 5 workshop 6 workshop 7 workshop 8 workshop 9 1 (low) 2 3 4 5 (high) percentage of teachers who evaluated the workshops 23% 10% 37% 22% 77% 100% 90% 63% 100% 88% 100% 100% 100% 0% 20% 40% 60% 80% 100% workshop 1 workshop 2 workshop 3 workshop 4 workshop 5 workshop 6 workshop 7 workshop 8 workshop 9 1 (low) 2 3 4 5 (high) 85profile vol. 18, no.1, january-june 2016. issn 1657-0790 (printed) 2256-5760 (online). bogotá, colombia. pages 71-96 an eclectic professional development proposal for english language teachers figure 8. i learnt theory useful for my teaching figure 9. i learnt practical knowledge useful for my teaching percentage of teachers who evaluated the workshops 12% 10% 11% 25% 22% 20% 46% 19% 11% 27% 23% 75% 66% 70% 54% 81% 78% 83% 87% 100% 0% 20% 40% 60% 80% 100% workshop 1 workshop 2 workshop 3 workshop 4 workshop 5 workshop 6 workshop 7 workshop 8 workshop 9 1 (low) 2 3 4 5 (high) percentage of teachers who evaluated the workshops 13% 23% 20% 46% 23% 17% 87% 77% 80% 54% 100% 77% 83% 100% 100% 0% 20% 40% 60% 80% 100% workshop 1 workshop 2 workshop 3 workshop 5 workshop 4 workshop 6 workshop 7 workshop 8 workshop 9 1 (low) 2 3 4 5 (high) universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras86 chaves & guapacha the fact that most teachers gave a score of 5 and 4 showed that the pdp braced the teachers’ needs and expectations. the teachers reported in section 2 what they learned: a. about icts: creation of blogs, voki avatars, the use of computer and programs in general. b. teaching strategies: design and use of resources, be creative, apply games, needs analysis survey design, rhymes, tell stories, explore a commercial program, and rubrics design. c. theoretical and practical background on methods: theory on methods, tasks, clil, tbl, lesson plans, how to integrate clil, tbl and icts. d. teachers’ awareness, motivation and learning: the workshops let the teachers reflect on and share their teaching practices and learning strategies, learn from their mistakes, enjoy the classes, motivate the students, think of the necessity of being a creative teacher, integrate topics to teach, learn, and improve their lessons, plan better lessons, and have a different view of language as a communication tool. e. features of the course and instructors: the course was dynamic and creative; the instructors were patient and clear. the final survey (table 5) also evaluated the impact of the pdp. table 5. online final survey fulfillment of the teachers’ expectations 91% of the teachers reported that their expectations were fulfilled. figure 10. impact on my teaching percentage of teachers who evaluated the workshops 23% 22% 10% 37% 10% 22% 17% 13% 77% 88% 90% 63% 90% 88% 83% 87% 100% 0% 20% 40% 60% 80% 100% workshop 1 workshop 2 workshop 3 workshop 4 workshop 5 workshop 6 workshop 7 workshop 8 workshop 9 1 (low) 2 3 4 5 (high) 87profile vol. 18, no.1, january-june 2016. issn 1657-0790 (printed) 2256-5760 (online). bogotá, colombia. pages 71-96 an eclectic professional development proposal for english language teachers evaluation of the pdp’s components • impact of the pdp: they all affirmed that the program impacted their formation. • positive aspects: the methodology; strategies; the topics (clil, tbl, icts, lesson planning, etc.); the materials; the instructors’ willingness, values, and attitudes; the pdp encourages teachers to improve their lessons, their views, to be motivated and to motivate the students, and to reflect on their views. • aspects to improve upon: more time for the pdp and more focus on icts and methods, to manage the time better, and to give strategies to teach songs. • objectives: all the participants said that the objectives were relevant, realistic, practical, and clear. • contents: the course contents were useful and the time devoted to them was adequate. the teachers highlighted the special usefulness of icts, tbl, and the reflective practice, followed by clil, materials design, needs analysis, planning, rhymes, and evaluation strategies. • contents suggested by teachers: autonomous learning, tpr, daily life topics, pre-school materials. • methodology: the methodology promoted participation, discussion, reflection, class work, and homework; it provided and connected theory and practice about methods, included varied activities, was studentcentered and innovative; it promoted challenging tasks, let teachers scaffold gradually, considered learning styles, and it had an adequate rhythm. • materials: the teachers considered that all the materials implemented (photocopies, readings, videos, digital resources, etc.) were adequate and relevant for achieving the objectives. • evaluation and assessment: the teachers agreed that the evaluation process was fair, assessed the learning styles, provided proper and timely feedback, let teachers scaffold gradually; it was varied, and demanding. assessment of teachers and instructors • instructors’ performance: the teachers evaluated positively the instructors’ didactics, dedication, rapport, instructions, motivation, content mastery, responsibility, creativity, and the fostering of reflection. they did not give any suggestion to improve. • teachers’ performance: their performance improved in terms of attendance, responsibility, punctuality, participation, commitment, and critical thinking. • aspects that teachers need to improve: they said that they still need to improve their methodology, their language skills, knowledge about clil and tbl, lesson planning, use of icts, to be creative, and to dedicate more time to study. • how much they learned: the teachers reported that they learned about blogs, vokis, theory and practice of tbl and clil, motivation strategies, reflective practice, planning, evaluation, and improved their language skills. however, they need to learn more about designing surveys and the creation of handmade and digital materials. teachers’ implementation implementation so far the main learning they applied consisted of the motivation strategies such as rhymes, stories, tongue twisters and songs. then the planning integrating clil, tbl involving all language skills, and then, the use of board games and digital resources. what will you implement? the teachers said that they would implement everything they learned. what you won’t implement: one teacher said that it was difficult to apply the online survey with kids, and another teacher said that he would not teach english focused on grammar anymore. universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras88 chaves & guapacha results of the focus group the teachers’ answers were paraphrased. 1. why did you decide to come and stay in this program? they came because: • they were interested in learning. • they wanted to improve their teaching practices and language skills. • they had good recommendations about the instructors. • the group had a good atmosphere and created good relationships. they stayed because: • they enjoyed and learned throughout the course. • they achieved their expectations. • the program offered practical ideas, strategies, and real life situations to implement in the classroom. • they were getting more practice. • they wanted to improve for the students. • they were open-minded to new changes. 2. could you tell us what you have implemented so far and the results? teacher 1: she has used more english in her classroom; she has changed her views about grammar; she has noticed the effects of tongue twisters on students’ motivation, and she showed her blog to her students. teacher 2: he has implemented the tongue twisters; he bought his own video beam; he asked for and got a room for the english class; he has changed his mind, he said: “the teacher who talks the more in class, is a bad teacher.” teacher 3: she has implemented the needs analysis survey; she shared her new knowledge with other colleagues. teacher 4: she has implemented tbl; she has involved more communication in her classes. teacher 5: she has implemented warm up activities; she has changed her attitudes; she has implemented games, and she was teaching content. teacher 6: she has fostered new changes in the school; the teachers talked to the principal to a get a tv set, an english classroom, air conditioning, a sound system, and a pc. 3. what did you improve in this program? they said that they improved their english level and the way of teaching in a communicative way; they also improved their methodology and lesson planning. documentary analysis results three random samples of each document, except for the class recordings, were taken to follow up on the teachers’ implementation of the new learning. table 6 shows this implementation as seen in the documentary analysis. table 7 presents the aspects to improve from the evaluation formats, focus group, and researchers’ journal. table 6. documentary analysis needs analysis surveys lesson plans implementation of blogs class recording 1 2 3 1 2 3 1 2 3 1 2 1 considers students’ needs and interests ✓ ✓ ✓ ✓ ✓ ✓ ✓ ✓ ✓ ✓ ✓ 2 promotes communication and real life situations ✓ ✓ ✓ ✓ ✓ ✓ ✓ ✓ ✓ ✓ ✓ documents aspects 89profile vol. 18, no.1, january-june 2016. issn 1657-0790 (printed) 2256-5760 (online). bogotá, colombia. pages 71-96 an eclectic professional development proposal for english language teachers 3 integrates language skills ✓ ✓ ✓ ✓ ✓ ✓ ✓ ✓ ✓ ✓ ✓ 4 integrates content ✓ ✓ ✓ ✓ ✓ ✓ ✓ ✓ ✓ ✓ ✓ 5 integrates icts ✓ ✓ ✓ ✓ ✓ ✓ ✓ ✓ ✓ x x 6 integrates motivational strategies (rhymes, tongue twisters, warm up, etc.) x x x ✓ x ✓ ✓ ✓ ✓ ✓ ✓ 7 provides different ways of assessment ✓ ✓ x ✓ ✓ ✓ ✓ ✓ ✓ ✓ ✓ table 7. aspects to improve for the pdp evaluation formats focus group researchers’ journal • more time for theory and demonstrations on clil and tbl. • to provide teachers with more webpages, games, poems, videos, and icts. to assign more time to clil, tbl, and evaluation. they also proposed to include autonomous learning as a topic, and continue to foster the teachers’ values and reflection. lack of teachers’ digital literacy: • no teacher knew the definition of blog and its purposes, so we explained them the uses of this technological tool. • it was surprising to know that many of these teachers are not familiarized with the basic knowledge of computers’ use. • they were not familiar with the technical vocabulary about computers like tabs, account, open a tab, close a tab, etc. teachers’ outdated views of language: • they are still thinking of grammar and traditional views for teaching language. • it’s difficult for them to relate grammar with real situations. lack of resources at teachers’ schools: • it’s sad to know that most of the schools where these teachers work don’t offer the necessary conditions and resources to teach english. • they also express the necessity of implementing the icts, but they regret that their schools lack devices such as a video beam, a tv set, audio, etc. lack of time for the pdp universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras90 chaves & guapacha conclusions and pedagogical implications this study allowed the researchers to understand that a pdp should impact the teachers’ teaching prac tices and vie ws, rais e t heir p ers onal and professional awareness, increase their motivation and attitudes toward their own learning and teaching processes, and improve their language proficiency. to do so, the pdp should be constructed from the teachers’ needs, interests, learning styles, and learning pace combining the experts’ guidance, the sharing among participant teachers, and autonomous exploration. conditions of time, group size and availability of resources are crucial for the effectiveness of pdps. a key result of this study is that practical and theoretical usefulness (applicability) is a powerful motivational source for teachers since their chief wish is to learn strategies and tools they can try in their classrooms. in-depth knowledge on current trends instead of historical overviews of methods is well received by the teachers. rhymes, stories, games and tongue twisters result to be motivational and effective teaching strategies that represent a different view to teach vocabular y, structures, pronunciation, and fluency. t he i nte g r at i on of topi c s , re s ou rc e s , and methodology in every session is a good alternative to the linear sequence of separate courses for language, methodology, culture, and research that usual pdps adopt. furthermore, practical applicability is directly related to the impact of pdp. if theoretical or practical knowledge is considered useful by the teachers, it will probably be incorporated by them in their teaching. the practice-reflection-theory cycle means an inductive approach to theory allowing teachers to infer the principles behind practice. starting sessions with practical demonstrations followed by reflection and ending with theory prove to be effective in promoting teachers’ critical analysis and comprehension of their practices and in allowing them to connect them with underlying principles. this sequence is more coherent with the tbl communicative approach adopted. modern pdps should aim at catering the 21st centur y challenges for teachers. blending clil, tbl, and icts represents an effective way to help teachers improve their students’ motivation and learning of english. icts, being both content and tools, are necessary for conducting a pdp. moreover, the teachers’ digital literacy should be tested first since most of them are challenged by the advanced technology changes. then, an introductory basic workshop on computer management is required. additionally, a pdp requires enough time to let instructors and teachers fulfill their expectations and let both participants work on a number of practical demonstrations and microteachings. furthermore, the key to success of a pdp lies not only in its contents and methodolog y, but also in the participants’ attitudes and factors such as motivation, commitment, punctuality, attendance, willingness to change, and open-mindedness to try new things. in a nutshell, the effectiveness and impact of a pdp should be reflected on, first, the instructors’ and teachers’ achievement of goals; second, the impact of this new learning on students’ performance, and third, the support by parents and school administrators. all in all, the close connections between teacher quality and professional development programs were proved and it was established that they are complex and depend on internal and external factors. more research on these topics is needed in colombia; it is necessary to open the discussion not only about the significance and development of tq, pd, pdp, but also about teacher hiring in the public sector for establishing a coherent pd policy for language teachers and finding the best teachers based on their merits. also, the colombian bilingualism policies require adequate theoretical support about tq and pd and proper conditions for securing the quality of teachers. 91profile vol. 18, no.1, january-june 2016. issn 1657-0790 (printed) 2256-5760 (online). bogotá, colombia. pages 71-96 an eclectic professional development proposal for english language teachers it should be noted, however, that the findings, implications, and recommendations in this research refer to a particular setting, that of a small group of teachers who were especially motivated towards their professional growth. further studies about pdp in other settings like bigger groups of teachers, or teachers in only the public or only the private sector, or teachers with a different proficiency level, or with a different level of literacy might reach different outcomes. likewise, longer pdps, or ones with less resources, or taught by a single instructor or by teams of instructors can obtain other results. generalizations are hardly to be extracted from these findings, although some of them are of great value like the eclectic and inductive theoretical and methodological approach to pdp. instructors’ direct observations are also required to follow the teachers’ implementation in order to support them. references bastidas, j. a., & muñoz ibarra, g. 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(2012). a literature review on the determinants of teacher performance. santa barbara, ca: university of california. zumwalt, k., & craig, e. (2005). teachers’ characteristics: research on the indicators of quality. in m. cochransmith & k. m. zeichner (eds.), studying teacher education: the report of the aera panel on research and teacher education (pp. 157-260). mahwah, nj: laurence erlbaum associates. 93profile vol. 18, no.1, january-june 2016. issn 1657-0790 (printed) 2256-5760 (online). bogotá, colombia. pages 71-96 an eclectic professional development proposal for english language teachers about the authors orlando chaves holds a ba in philology and languages (universidad nacional de colombia), an ma in spanish and linguistics (universidad del valle, colombia) and an ma in english teaching (universidad de caldas, colombia). his professional interests are applied linguistics, efl didactics and td. he is a member of eila research group and asocopi. maria eugenia guapacha holds a ba in foreign languages (universidad del valle, colombia) and an ma in english teaching (universidad de caldas, colombia). her professional interests are applied linguistics, esp, efl didactics, pedagogy; icts and td. she has taught at all educational levels in both the private and public sectors. universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras94 chaves & guapacha appendix: sample of a pdp workshop workshop 5 two new best friends in my lessons: clil and tbl time: 5 hours topics: clil and tbl objectives: ȟ to provide teachers with clear illustrations and concepts on the way clil and tbl work in class. ȟ to have teachers contrast traditional and current methodologies. ȟ to encourage teachers to incorporate clil and tbl in their teaching. ȟ to improve the teachers’ teaching and learning of the four skills. activities: activity 1: warm up reviewing theory about clil and tbl the session will start with review questions about clil and tbl ȟ what do clil and tbl stand for? ȟ what are the principles of clil? ȟ what is a task? ȟ what is the structure of a task? activity 2: going deeper into tasks concept the teachers will watch a video about tbl to complement the theory about this method. they will receive a handout following a pre-, whileand postsequence to support their comprehension (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d-yewo8ftqk). at the end of the video, the teachers will share their answers. instructions: follow a pre-, whileand postsequence to support the teachers’ comprehension of the video. pause appropriately to let the teachers complete the handout. activity 3: going deeper into the concept of clil the teachers will watch two more videos about clil to complement the theory about this method. they will answer these questions: video 1: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uirzwn7-x2y ȟ when implementing clil, what is more important: language or content? or, do they both have the same status? ȟ which authors support clil? ȟ what is the difference between clil and immersion? ȟ mention the key concepts of clil 95profile vol. 18, no.1, january-june 2016. issn 1657-0790 (printed) 2256-5760 (online). bogotá, colombia. pages 71-96 an eclectic professional development proposal for english language teachers video 2: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xiqrbb9_1zs say true or false: ȟ clil involves experiential learning ȟ students learn more than language explain the example given in the video about the carrot diagram. activity 4: illustrating the use of tasks and clil first, the instructors will illustrate how to integrate tasks, language, and content through an example: topic: the circulatory system content: function of the circulatory system and illnesses language: vocabulary related to the topic such as veins, blood, system, arteries, etc. expressions like it is composed of, verbs like run, circulate, etc. tasks: doing diagrams, posters, presentations on other body systems. then, the instructors will provide a list of topics for teachers to form groups of three and design a poster following the pattern given (topic, content, language, task). ȟ group 1: creating shopping lists for (a) a birthday party, (b) breakfast, and (c) lunch ȟ group 2: healthy food ȟ group 3: creating a mini-brochure about cali: where to go for cultural activities, where to go for fun, where to practice sports, where to eat typical food, etc. ȟ group 4: presenting animal species in danger of extinction after having designed the lessons, the group of teachers will present the poster to the whole class. they will receive feedback from the instructors and classmates as well. activity 5: closing, reflection and evaluation: clil and tasks in our efl teaching in pairs (teachers a and b) will talk about the advantages and disadvantages of both clil and tbl, as well as their application in our schools. teacher a will report advantages and teacher b disadvantages. the instructors will wrap up the teachers’ comments, and will conclude by (a) remarking on the need of changing current predominant emphasis on grammar-centered views, and (b) on the possibility of integrating tasks and clil. instructions: mention that tbl requires careful planning of the tasks; the final product of each task must be clear for the students. note the usefulness of teamwork required by tasks for large classes. regarding clil, highlight the option of working collaboratively with teachers from other subject areas or of taking topics from those areas to “recycle” them in english, profiting from the fact that the topic is already known to the students. refer the teachers to read the following authors: jane willis, david nunan, and jack richards to complement their background on their own. resources: a computer room, video beam or tv set, copies (evaluation formats) and handouts, board, markers, and online videos. evaluation: teachers’ participation will be used to assess their general comprehension of the concepts of tasks and clil. the handout will be checked in class. universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras96 chaves & guapacha the instructors will evaluate the teacher’s knowledge and comprehension on clil and tbl principles and procedures when planning tasks and clil in groups. as usual, the teachers will also self-evaluate their progress and achievements through their reflections in the workshop evaluation format. homework: the teachers will bring a lesson plan and syllabi for session 7. they will work in groups integrating tasks and clil in those lessons and syllabi after having a practical demonstration. reminder: explore the digital games for workshop 6 and develop the blog for session 8. finally, the teachers will evaluate workshop 5. 75profile: issues teach. prof. dev., vol. 22 no. 1, jan-jun, 2020. issn 1657-0790 (printed) 2256-5760 (online). bogotá, colombia. pages 75-92 https://doi.org/10.15446/profile.v22n1.76796 intercultural communicative competence: in-service efl teachers building understanding through study groups competencia comunicativa intercultural: profesores de inglés como lengua extranjera en servicio construyendo entendimiento a través de grupos de estudio 1luis fernando cuartas álvarez* universidad de antioquia, medellin, colombia this paper reports on an exploratory collective case study on three in-service english language teachers in medellin, colombia. the study aimed at creating a route for teachers to collaboratively construct their understanding of intercultural communicative competence through their involvement in a study group. data were collected through recordings, interviews, and reflective logs, which followed a bottomup analysis. results evidenced changes in the participants’ views of culture, cross-cultural knowledge, intercultural stance, and understanding of intercultural communicative competence. as a conclusion, study groups materialized as an applicable tool for teachers’ professional development, which allowed participants to redraw their own initial beliefs and assumptions, fostering them to change professionally and in their praxis. key words: culture, english as foreign language, inservice teacher education, intercultural communicative competence, study groups. este documento reporta un estudio de caso colectivo exploratorio en tres maestros de inglés en medellín, colombia. el estudio apuntó a crear una ruta para que los maestros construyeran colaborativamente su comprensión de la competencia comunicativa intercultural a través de un grupo de estudio. los datos recopilados incluyen grabaciones, entrevistas y registros reflexivos, que siguieron un análisis de datos ascendente. los resultados evidenciaron cambios en las visiones de los participantes sobre la cultura, su conocimiento y postura intercultural, y su entendimiento de la competencia comunicativa intercultural. como conclusión, el grupo de estudio se materializó como una herramienta aplicable para el desarrollo profesional docente, permitiendo a los participantes redibujar sus propias creencias y suposiciones, fomentándolos a cambiar profesionalmente y en su praxis. palabras clave: competencia comunicativa intercultural, cultura, formación del profesorado en servicio, grupos de estudio, inglés como lengua extranjera. * e-mail: luisfdocuartas@gmail.com how to cite this article (apa, 6th ed.): cuartas álvarez, l. f. (2020). intercultural communicative competence: in-service efl teachers building understanding through study groups. profile: issues in teachers’ professional development, 22(1), 75-92. https://doi.org/10.15446/ profile.v22n1.76796. this article was received on december 12, 2018 and accepted on august 12, 2019. this is an open access article distributed under the terms of the creative commons license attribution-noncommercial-noderivatives 4.0 international license. consultation is possible at https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/. universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras76 cuartas álvarez introduction day after day, language teachers are shifting towards the recognition of the role of culture and its close relationship with language as “an inseparable part of the way in which we live our lives and the way we use language” (liddicoat, 2002, p. 47). from an intercultural perspective, this shift has turned foreign language classrooms into places of cultural juncture, where the focus does not merely lie on developing linguistic ability in the target language, but “on the impact cultural values, beliefs, perceptions, and social relationship patterns have on the relational experience that results from interaction between people as it occurs within a cultural context” (smith, paige, & steglitz, 2003, p. 90). consequently, as a response to this existing relationship, as well as the social and cultural implications of such intercultural encounters in language teaching and learning, the concept of intercultural communicative competence (henceforth icc) emerged. this competence is defined as the attitudes, knowledge, understanding, and skills, which enable people to understand and respect people who are perceived to have different cultural affiliations from oneself; respond appropriately, effectively and respectfully when interacting and communicating with such people; establish positive and constructive relationships with such people; and understand oneself and one’s own multiple cultural affiliations through encounters with cultural “difference”. (huber & reynolds, 2014, pp. 16-17) icc represents a shift that has reinforced the assumption that culture is rooted and embedded in language (kramsch, 2009; liddicoat, 2002). moreover, it represents opening new possibilities for learners towards cultural values, beliefs, perceptions, attitudes, and behaviors of those who represent other cultural milieus, aimed at fostering effective interactions among cultures, based on respect for individuals’ dignity and equality as the democratic basis for social interaction in a globalized world (byram, gribkova, & starkey, 2002). finally, it encompasses more than just developing linguistic competences or grasping notional aspects of foreign cultures. in fact, being able to cope with intercultural experiences relates to certain specific competencies and characteristics, namely, the willingness to engage with the foreign culture, self-awareness and the ability to look upon oneself from the outside, the ability to see the world through the others’ eyes, the ability to cope with uncertainty, the ability to act as a cultural mediator, the ability to evaluate others’ points of view, the ability to consciously use culture learning skills and to read the cultural context, and the understanding that individuals cannot be reduced to their collective identities (gupta as cited in sercu, 2005, p. 2). given the aforementioned, the emergence of this approach has led ministers of education, policy makers, language scholars, and publishing houses to initiate actions. thus, top-down perspectives on icc have provided frameworks that emphasize the cultural dimension in language curriculum which, in turn, has reverberated into thousands of new teaching materials and textbooks portraying high amounts of cultural contents within them. however, from a bottom-up perspective (emerging from the classroom itself ), “the impact of this [intercultural] shift on the micro-level of planning, materials, and assessment design, as well as on classroom practices, remains unclear” (díaz, 2013, p. 14). these new educational perspectives lead in-service language teachers to face important epistemological and methodological questions, which inevitably affect teachers in different ways based on the specific needs and purposes of the students they are teaching, as well as the inner characteristics of the context in which their teaching takes place (kramsch, 2009). therefore, fostering icc from a bottom-up perspective requires special support and scaffolding for in-service language teachers. however, teachers’ professional development programs seem to weaken, as opportunities for further training are scarce. 77profile: issues teach. prof. dev., vol. 22 no. 1, jan-jun, 2020. issn 1657-0790 (printed) 2256-5760 (online). bogotá, colombia. pages 75-92 intercultural communicative competence: in-service efl teachers building understanding... efl teachers’ professional development and the colombian elt context english language teaching (elt) is experiencing massive changes in the way language teaching is carried out in an increasingly multicultural world, as well as the role teachers play within it. particularly in colombia, teachers need to cope with changing teaching contexts and settings, employ new methodologies and approaches, make more effective use of technology applied to the classroom, and find new ways to enhance students’ learning. these constant demands imply a need for teachers to continuously undergo professional development processes to face the challenges of the 21st century. however, when seeking opportunities for professional growth, in-service teachers often observe a disconcerting scenario. gonzález (as cited in gonzález, 2007) states that “the professional development of efl [english as a foreign language] teachers through in-service programs in colombia was, until recently, restricted to limited options” (p. 321). according to her, efl teachers had to rely on a threesome of options including undergraduate course, elt conferences, and publisher sessions which, although available, did not offer a complete alternative for teachers’ professional growth (gonzález, 2007). moreover, concerning the intercultural dimension in language teaching, in-service teachers have to face even more setbacks. for instance, teachers have scarce opportunities for interchanges or stays abroad to get experiential knowledge in the target culture (barletta, 2009). in addition, center-based international agencies, which provide language institutions with textbooks and materials for language teaching, often provide teachers with workshops as an option for professional development. however, they implicitly follow an instrumental approach that makes “the teacher [become] a technician who applies best practices created by foreign experts, which are supposed to yield results when following a determined sequence of steps in a defined period” (granados-beltrán, 2016, p. 177). finally, given the teacher’s lack of familiarity concerning culture in language teaching, teachers are required to gain knowledge and perspectives from other disciplines like anthropology, sociology, history, and so on, to be able to discuss culture (barletta, 2009). these informed perspectives are especially relevant when aiming for intercultural understanding; however, opportunities to access this kind of knowledge are scarce, which makes teachers mistakenly rely on their own crafted and often biased perspectives, views, and assumptions about culture and language; as well as on textbooks or personal experiences as their only point of reference. considering the multiple difficulties in-service teachers have to face, there is a call for teachers to explore alternative ways to continue their professional development, and at the same time, to seek ways to make icc become an integral part of their own language teaching experience. study group as a professional development tool this study implied the necessity to integrate both the collaborative effort of participants to rethink their perceptions and beliefs, as well as to integrate reflection through dialogue towards the development of an understanding of icc in elt. therefore, study groups emerged as an appropriate approach to create this dialectical mise en place. birchak et al. (1998) define a study group as an assembly in which teachers could share their insights about particular needs and discuss their own agendas, independently from the imposed agendas of experts and institutional professional development programs. moreover, it provides teachers with a shared space that fosters the recognition of collaborative dialogue as a way to reflect upon, plan, and act on particular issues and concerns. finally, it represents a tool that empowers teachers to become experts and coordinators of their own professional growth as they thoughtfully analyze their universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras78 cuartas álvarez own beliefs and practices, explore alternative possibilities, and take over their own professional journeys. concerning its validity for this study, study groups have been used at an international level to build communities through dialogue and action with in-service english teachers towards fostering intercultural understanding (see corapi & short, 2015). however, at a national level, the analysis of literature did not yield studies in which study groups had been used regarding icc with in-service language teachers, which just extends the already existing research gap. in fact, most of the studies carried out in the colombian efl context tend to either explore perceptions and attitudes towards culture and icc, or to analyze how icc is developed after implementing specific intercultural components; predominantly in pre-service teachers and students (see gómez, 2015; olaya & gómez, 2013; ramos-holguín, 2013). method the scarce quantity of studies found evidences a gap regarding how in-service teachers explore and make sense of icc in elt. therefore, this exploratory collective case study examines how in-service english teachers create a route to collaboratively construct their understanding of icc through their involvement in a study group. research design collective case study, which is defined as an instrumental study extended to several cases that might lead to better understanding, and perhaps better theorizing of further cases (stake, 2005), seemed to be a suitable research methodology for this study because it allows one to collect in-depth views of participants’ experiences. this might materialize the underpinning processes of in-service teachers as they construct their understanding of icc in their teaching context, emerging from their own crafted collaborative endeavors e.g. knowledge that stands over the mainstream and often labor-oriented knowledge transmitted by institutions. participants this study involved three colombian in-service efl teachers working at a binational language center. selection of the participants followed a convenience sampling without inclusion criteria identified prior to the selection of subjects. pseudonyms were used in order to preserve the participants’ anonymity. table 1 illustrates participants’ biodata including ages, level of education and degrees obtained, years of experience as efl teachers, and intercultural experiences abroad. table 1. demographic information of participants name fer edna paula age 39 years old 45 years old 31 years old educational background b.ed. in teaching foreign languages, tefl certification b.ed. in teaching foreign languages, bachelor’s degree in communications b.ed. in teaching foreign languages teaching experience 18 years working in high schools and language institutes 15 years working in private elementary and high schools, and language institutes 5 years working in private/ public high schools and language institutes experiences abroad two years in czech republic finishing a tefl certification and working as a teacher of english and spanish none vacations in non-english speaking countries 79profile: issues teach. prof. dev., vol. 22 no. 1, jan-jun, 2020. issn 1657-0790 (printed) 2256-5760 (online). bogotá, colombia. pages 75-92 intercultural communicative competence: in-service efl teachers building understanding... moreover, participants’ educational backgrounds converged as they graduated from the same university, which allowed teachers to contrast different practices and experiences, as well as the kind of processes they went through in search of common grounds that could explain their beliefs and assumptions about culture and icc, and how these are reflected in their praxes. methodological route the development of the study group involved six two-hour sessions between the participants and the researcher. these sessions were organized into specific topics, each one with its objectives and a guiding question to lead the discussions. the whole design of the study group can be seen in figure 1. 1. understanding culture 4. intercultural comunicative competence (icc) 5. creating pedagogical connections 6. developing icc within the curriculum 3. developing intercultural dimension in elt what do we understand by culture? explore definitions and reflect on participants views of culture define and explore icc and some of the skills needed to become interculturally and communicatively competent explore how we teach about culture and some pedagogical principles to develop icc in the praxis explore models of intercultural communicative competence in elt identify skills and abilities needed for developing an intercultural stance 2. intercultural dimension in elt how are culture and language interrelated? analyse the interrelationship between culture and language how can we develop an intercultural stance in our students and ourselves? how can we create the conditions to communicate efficiently and develop intercultural awareness? how could we adapt our teaching style, lessons, and planning to focus on icc? how can we promote icc within a set curriculum? the sessions were designed to cover a theoretical, practical, and reflective part each. initially, participants studied and analyzed concepts, notions, approaches, and perspectives taken from theory for the development of their constructed views of icc. for instance, to name a few, byram et al. (2002) and scarino and liddicoat (2009) were used to elucidate initial assumptions, concerns, and doubts when developing an intercultural stance, and to reflect on language education and their role as teachers when considering the development of a professional stance towards icc in elt. secondly, teachers critically analyzed practices and materials used in classes to elucidate existent cultural assumptions and stereotypes. this exploration allowed teachers to perceive how these stereotypes were perpetuated in the materials and textbooks used, and eventually in the class plans based on them, as well as possible ways in which these materials could be figure 1. methodological route of the study group universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras80 cuartas álvarez used to problematize such stereotypes and to address different perspectives. lastly, leading questions were used to create a reflective dialectical space for discussions around the basis of icc in elt. these discussions allowed participants to share, discuss, and reflect on their own experiences when teaching culture, the kind of approaches used, their encounters with difficult situations when teaching them, and the connection between both language and culture in their classes. research instruments for this study, the following data collection instruments were selected: (a) an initial face-to-face semi-structured interview (see appendix a) to explore participants’ initial assumptions on culture and icc in elt; (b) recordings of six two-hour study group sessions held once a week, to analyze how participants collaboratively constructed their understanding of icc; (c) reflective logs (see appendix b) collected after each session with participants’ insights and reflections to explore over time the inner changes in their understanding of icc; and (d) a subsequent semi-structured face-to-face interview (see appendix c) to explore later changes in the participants’ understanding of icc once all study group sessions were finished. all data collection instruments, except the reflective logs, were audiotaped, transcribed verbatim, and saved in files. interviews were conducted in english or spanish according to the participants’ preferences. study group sessions were conducted in spanish to encourage a trusting environment that enhanced dialogue. reflective logs were written in english most of the time. data analysis data analysis followed a bottom-up approach that involved organizing and preparing data for analysis, reading through all data to get a general sense of the information, coding, creating categories for analysis, interrelating them, and finally interpreting the meaning of those categories (creswell, 2014). the whole data analysis process was undertaken using atlas.ti (ver. 8). concerning validity in the data analysis, data collection instruments were piloted by two colleagues who kindly provided thoughtful feedback on the response consistency and reliability. moreover, recordings of the interviews and study group sessions, plus the reflective logs helped to achieve trustworthiness through triangulation, as it made possible the finding of patterns among the data collected. in addition, data analysis was revised by an external advisor who acknowledged the relationships established among the data as coherent. finally, findings were validated through member checking to give participants an opportunity to provide their insights on the results. results and discussion data analysis showed that the study group provided an opportunity for participants to foster their professional development by scaffolding and supporting each other in the construction of a more informed view of icc. due to this fostering, teachers could acknowledge the importance of moving beyond unfounded views of culture, increasing their cross-cultural knowledge, building bridges between such knowledge and their students, developing an intercultural stance in their students and selves, and understanding icc as a whole rather than as an isolated curricular element. in the following paragraphs, these realizations are explained further. quotes are presented using the following codes: initial interview (in1), study group (sg) plus the session number, reflective log (rlog), and final interview (in2). all quotes were translated into english. teachers moving beyond unfounded views of culture throughout the study group, one of the issues that fostered more discussions was teachers’ views of culture and their ways of connecting them with their praxis. 81profile: issues teach. prof. dev., vol. 22 no. 1, jan-jun, 2020. issn 1657-0790 (printed) 2256-5760 (online). bogotá, colombia. pages 75-92 intercultural communicative competence: in-service efl teachers building understanding... recognizing these views is paramount considering that teachers can think about culture in many ways; however, the way in which they think about it in their classes affects the way they teach culture and the way students learn it (liddicoat, 2002). considering participants’ initial views of culture all conceded the fact that teachers possess a factualbased tourist-inspired view of culture, which constitutes information to transmit to learners about one’s country, the particular ways in which its people act and behave, and its distinctive elements. i see culture as something very innate of every people, of every country, like customs or food, something that they [students] can learn if they want to travel for example, they could know about what possible problems they can face there. (paula, in1) moreover, when exploring the way teachers connected their views of culture with their praxis, they often used cultural concepts with which to start classes (as a warm-up), to elucidate prior knowledge, and entertainingly to enhance class atmosphere or to contrast different behaviors from other cultures and ours. however, this goes far from the seriousness of the topic and puts other cultures in a hilarious light, a view of the difference that does not motivate acceptance, but discrimination, mockery, and lack of appreciation. furthermore, teachers agreed that they mainly focused their classes towards developing communicative competence in their students as culture becomes just the starting point to go to a more linguistic objective. notwithstanding, whatever the way culture might be used inside the classroom, it accords with both teachers’ former experiences and lack of consensus on how to address culture: we teach culture in the way we teach it because it was the way we implicitly learned to teach it. (fer, sg2) this lack of specificity and connection on how to address culture was evident in the participants, as we could perceive that they followed an empirical and uninformed factual-based view of culture. thus, there is no way to expect teachers to implicitly know how to address culture differently as they have not been shown other ways to address it. this evidences a recurrent teachers’ lack of knowledge about culture and the techniques needed to teach it (lafayette, 2003). moreover, the value of addressing culture in classes is not clearly seen by teachers who sometimes are concerned about the underlying reason. this concern appeared throughout the study group related to the way teachers connected culture with language teaching and their institutional duties. for instance, one teacher made this point clear by expressing his concerns on why they have to address culture: what about that [culture]? is that really there? our institution has never told us to put an emphasis on this; however, you know you have to develop the communicative skills in the students. do it no matter how, if you want to do it with this culture, that’s ok, so culture in our context is really secondary, it is not an objective to teach about this or that other culture. (fer, sg2) this extract evidences an inner conflict experienced by the teachers who, permeated by mainstream communicative-oriented views they have traditionally followed, face the demand of including their own unfounded views of culture in their classes. concerning this conflict, lange and paige (2003) acknowledge culture as complex and varying, with underlying elements such as attitudes, beliefs, perceptions, ways of acting and behaving, thoughts, and values that “cannot be included in language programs in the linear and objective instructional formats that have traditionally been used” (p. 11). therefore, teachers find themselves faced with a dichotomy, facing culture as an element that demands a more significant role in their classes, but at the same time unable to connect this demand methodologically. additionally, teachers recognized that putting culture in a more central role takes learning not just far beyond their own experience, knowledge, and interest, but also takes the class away from the demanded focus universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras82 cuartas álvarez on linguistic/communicative objectives, which might entail concerns in terms of their teaching duties: “you lose the focus they pay you for” (fer, sg1). teachers considered that having an interculturaloriented perspective in classes actually diverts them from achieving the required linguistic-oriented objectives. in this sense, teachers are worried about doing something different from what they have been hired for. this posture occurs mainly because they are constantly under pressure due to their labor conditions (in order to keep their jobs, they need to comply with what institutions demand), and their own beliefs about their teaching practices (teachers consider they are doing well when achieving the goals set in the way they have traditionally achieved them). finally, on a personal level, teachers experienced an additional inner conflict when reflecting on the actual benefit of learning about culture: the fact that you know all those concepts of other cultures doesn’t touch you, you don’t change, you don’t feel affected, you don’t feel responsible for anything...in greece, making this gesture is an insult...ahh well, that is, it doesn’t transform us, it doesn’t convert us, it doesn’t do anything to us. (fer, sg2) this defiant reaction towards learning about culture has its root in the participants’ own views of it, as teachers perceived cultural knowledge as a set of knowledgeable items to keep and transmit to their students. culture as mere concepts just leads teachers to keep a vast amount of factual information without any subsequent connection or outcome; thus, not representing a significant change in themselves either as individuals or as teachers. however, as the sessions went on, teachers acknowledged that culture, from an intercultural perspective, implies a transformation of views, attitudes, values, and perspectives on the teacher’s behalf towards a total redrawing of their view of culture and its role in language teaching. thus, moving from a factual, unspecific, entertaining, subordinated to linguistic goals, and unfounded understanding of culture, to then acknowledge it as the context and content of communication in any form, the link to any discipline, the opportunity to contrast and compare cultures and cultural contexts, and the most authentic way to connect the individual language learner to the broader target language community. (lange & paige, 2003, p. xi) these realizations guided teachers to overcome ethnocentric stages in their development of intercultural sensitivity and to rethink the way they have traditionally conceived language teaching and culture. we do not teach culture so that students are evaluated regarding what they know about a specific culture, but so that an understanding arises within the relation between that culture and ours, in a more personal visualization. (paula, rlog) the intentionality behind this is to reach the point where there is a transformation in the students; that students understand things are not like that just because, or that they are not objects of ridicule, or cliché objects, or stereotypes against others. there is something beyond, and there are many positive things that can be rescued, many relationships that can be made. (edna, rlog) teachers increasing their cross-cultural knowledge another main setback teachers expressed in the study group was their lack of knowledge concerning culture and culture teaching, as illustrated in the following extract: that is the vision we have of culture, very broad things...so broad that it is very difficult to handle it, we are not able to have a broad knowledge of that because it is impossible, we are not from there, we do not live there, we have never been there, and we pretend to teach that...and we do not only pretend it, we are also forced to! (fer, sg1) this lack of cross-cultural knowledge does not only make teachers feel unprepared when dealing with the concept of culture, as they consider themselves not very well acquainted with the target culture they have to teach about, but also overwhelmed, as they feel they are forced to cope with the institutional demands concerning 83profile: issues teach. prof. dev., vol. 22 no. 1, jan-jun, 2020. issn 1657-0790 (printed) 2256-5760 (online). bogotá, colombia. pages 75-92 intercultural communicative competence: in-service efl teachers building understanding... culture teaching. these feelings usually make teachers see themselves “frequently overcome by the enormity of the task they have undertaken” (damen, 2003, p. 73). moreover, far from being an unpleasant situation that affects teachers’ confidence in their teaching, this lack of cross-cultural knowledge is strengthened as teachers recognized that the sources of information they have to learn about culture are neither reliable nor complete. we find support in documentaries, magazines, books, and those things, but the sources that we have to teach culture do not show us everything. (paula, sg1) we don’t often have access to deep cultural knowledge, just what we find online. (edna, sg1) concerning the sources, the participants agreed that movies were the main repository of cross-cultural information regarding other cultures. as an example, one teacher described a scene of a movie in which a person was alone in a hospital after suffering an accident. she contrasted it with the way families are supportive in colombia, given that in a similar situation the hospital room would be full of people accompanying the victim. although this might work as an anecdote or a cultural curiosity, this reflects the way teachers, in their haste to contextualize class topics, resort to sources that might not be very reliable. the fact that movies portray such situations does not guarantee that they are real for every case, or that they reflect deeper cultural values of families and medical staff attitudes towards patients. relying on biased sources of cross-cultural knowledge leads teachers to misunderstand and often assume that what they see is actually what happens, which leads them to perpetuate and transmit stereotypes and wrong assumptions. however, concerning this lack of knowledge, byram et al. (2002) are clear when clarifying that teachers do not necessarily need to know everything about the target culture. according to them, this is in any case impossible and in fact there are many cultures associated with a particular language, for example many countries where french is spoken as the first language, and within those countries many variations on beliefs, values and behaviours which people share, in other words many cultures. (p. 14) one of the conclusions teachers drew about their lack of cross-cultural knowledge is the necessity of getting more informed about the target culture. thus, rather than feeling overwhelmed or frustrated due to their lack of cross-cultural knowledge, teachers need to become aware of the importance of being acquainted with further knowledge which will allow them to take informed decisions about the topics to explore and to increase the scope of such exploration in class. i definitely need to be more informed about other cultures…i need to read more, so i can have nice arguments or knowledge to help my students to tremble stereotypes. (fer, in2) finally, in the case of constructing a view of icc in elt, further cross-cultural knowledge needs to go alongside reflection, analysis, and self-assessment of teachers’ own practices, aiming at a reinterpretation of our role of teachers from being knowledge givers to becoming cultural mentors and figures of guidance and support in the students’ cultural exploration. the teacher’s role as a cultural mentor must not be as the purveyor of the good, the true, and the believable, but rather as a trainer in the development of sensitivity to cross-cultural differences, of social skills in communicating across cultural patterns and appropriate behavior as lifetime pursuits. (damen, 2003, p. 84). teachers building bridges linking icc, students, and praxis a further concern among teachers had to do with the way teachers should address icc in their classes with their students, particularly less proficient ones, as illustrated in the following extract: we teachers are not willing to deal with deep cultural concepts due to the level of the course. apparently, we think beginner students might not be ready to deal with a cultural approach in class. (edna, rlog) universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras84 cuartas álvarez this extract portrays a common assumption concerning the required proficiency to develop icc, which assumes that students might not have the necessary level of proficiency for cultural analysis. however, this assumption is a reductionist view of the students’ capacities that many teachers accept, mainly because of the implicit connection they make between linguistic and communicative implications, and the cross-cultural knowledge required to do it properly. to discuss those things [cultural concepts] you have to be with advanced courses. (edna, sg1) because suddenly you think they [the students] are not capable. (paula, sg2) the assumption that students are not capable of understanding cultural concepts led teachers to avoid certain cultural issues in their classes until their students were ready to address them. however, this also evidenced the lack of methodological strategies teachers had when dealing with culture teaching, the heavy influence of language proficiency and standardization cannons that those learning about culture still suffer, and the difficulty to incorporate cultural topics that might be quite vast in class regardless their students’ level. this assumption was discussed thoroughly in an effort to bring clarity to the way icc can be addressed regardless of the students’ level. one conclusion teachers drew was that more than waiting for students to reach the necessary level, teachers must find the adequate strategies to build bridges between what students can understand and produce, and the complexity of the topics they are working on. thus, based on those discussions, participants acknowledged that an intercultural and critical approach to the themes available in the curriculum could help to build such bridges. according to byram et al. (2002), “the key principle is to get learners to compare the theme in a familiar situation with examples from an unfamiliar context” (p. 21). in this sense, themes such as sports, which is usually worked in beginner courses, can serve to build bridges by taking a different approach towards more critical issues, for instance: gender – are there sports that are . . . predominantly played by men or by women? are things changing? . . . age – are there sports for younger people and older people? region – are there local sports? do people . . . identify with local teams? . . . religion – are there religious objections to playing sport . . . racism – . . . are the players of foreign teams, or foreign players in local teams always treated with respect? (byram et al., 2002, p. 21) an example of these suggestions can be seen in the following extract, in which one teacher shared how she developed icc in one of her classes: as part of my class [level a2 of cefr], i developed an activity in which my students watched two video clips. the first told the story of a maasai girl in africa. this video narrated her lifestyle, where she lives, the conditions in which she lives, her daily activities, etc., giving a sample of her daily life. then, i used a similar video but about an american teenager. in the beginning, a discussion was held aiming at seeing different prior knowledge about both cultures and to discern some stereotypes students bring up with them. the idea was to compare both lives and look at that dialogue between them, their opinions on the subject, and what they know about those cultures. students made a comparative chart in pairs, then shared the information orally with other groups. (edna, sg5) in her class, she used these two videos to create a comparison between the daily routines in two different countries, which portrayed different ways of living. these examples represented a dynamic view of culture (liddicoat, 2002) as it represents non-set patterns and kinds of activities performed by people in particular cultural milieus. thus, far from just making students contrast different daily routines to present it orally in class (linguistic/communicative outcome), she used the videos to raise awareness as to the different conditions in which people live—their lives, possessions, feelings, reactions, and so on—to eventually reflect on the students’ own ways of living their daily lives. 85profile: issues teach. prof. dev., vol. 22 no. 1, jan-jun, 2020. issn 1657-0790 (printed) 2256-5760 (online). bogotá, colombia. pages 75-92 intercultural communicative competence: in-service efl teachers building understanding... moreover, the fact that those students were low proficient ones did not delimit the prior knowledge, experiences, and learnings they possessed, which actually strengthened the discussions within the classes: many students come to class with many significant experiences and knowledge that one does not possess, and this takes classes to places that one had not explored before. (paula, sg5) teachers realized the importance of using students’ prior knowledge as a source of discussion and analysis, which might include general knowledge (formal and informal), experiences, and understandings that can complement the class. by drawing on the students’ backgrounds, teachers can promote cooperative learning and group work with inquiry-oriented purposes, moving from teacher-centered to student-centered learning, as should concern the classroom (lafayette, 2003). teachers developing an intercultural stance on their students and selves teachers were also worried about the way they can deal with different students’ susceptibilities and their negative reactions towards cultural issues and controversial topics in the classes. the following extracts illustrate this point: sometimes there is one or some students that, depending on the person, feel a bit awkward in classes, so one says: “well, if i touch this topic maybe it can be hot and it can hurt the person, or the person may not feel comfortable”. (edna, in1) specifically, when you have to teach on which people have certain opinion or conceptions about other cultures, for example, people say that asian people like to eat dogs. so, let’s suppose i am in class dealing with food around the world, so they would immediately say: “hey, i don’t like this class because they kill dogs and eat them!” and stuff like that, so that is more or less what i have to deal with. (fer, sg3) this fear appears to stem from the teachers’ unwillingness to find themselves in the spotlight, having a negative image among their students as the inciters of uncomfortable conversations in class; an image that might represent problems in case they need to face or deal with complaints from susceptible students. moreover, in terms of praxis, this fear usually leads teachers to make decisions on how to deal with certain cultural topics in their classes. on the one hand, they can very well teach different cultural topics in a shallow manner to avoid susceptibilities but presenting students with reductionist views of such cultural topics. on the other hand, they could take the risk of going deeper and exploring underlying controversial issues, but possibly affecting students’ susceptibilities. when faced with this dichotomy, teachers tend to prefer avoiding controversial issues because they judge this will prevent uncomfortable situations or the students’ negative attitudes towards the lessons. however, bearing in mind that students are constantly exposed to biased mainstream views, the teachers, by not addressing controversial issues appropriately, can predict students’ susceptibilities may be accentuated. sometimes the disposition of students is not inviting, because sometimes some students seem not to pay much attention or are only focused on seeing what happens in the rich countries, but what happens in poor countries, for example, like that ill-fated lifestyle, obviously not. we have the idea of comparing and taking a neutral position, but that seems to me that it depends on the disposition, because there are some who are not used to that kind of topics, they are only accustomed to grammar or to see the topics in a very shallow way, but not to see beyond. (edna, in1) in this extract, we can see that teachers perceive students as unwilling to explore other cultural views because they have been permeated by touristy visions of cosmopolitan cities and rich countries. according to the teachers, these visions have made students grow up with a view of the north-american culture as a symbol of prestige (enthronization of culture), whereas the culture of developing countries and minority communities are viewed as inferior or undeveloped. this reflects a serious issue that might lead students to emphasize negative universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras86 cuartas álvarez aspects about other cultures, rather than emphasizing the values and facts that might enrich the student’s learning process. this pejorative way of contrasting is what perpetuates stereotypes of other cultures. it seems that dealing with students’ perceptions and reactions towards cultural issues that might be difficult to understand is a challenging task, as certain students might find it hard to perceive different perspectives and points of view, evidencing a difficulty to move from an ethnocentric stage to an ethnorelative one in the development of an intercultural stance (bennett, bennett, & allen, 2003). this particular issue led the study group to explore how different worldviews have permeated students’ beliefs and understanding of cultural concepts seen in classes. from such exploration, one of the conclusions is the fact that students’ stereotypes and prejudices are based mostly on feelings rather than thoughts (byram et al., 2002). concerning this realization, one teacher shared an experience connected to her veganism, which illustrates how avoiding generalizations opens the gate for further understanding and possibilities in interaction. she told us that once she was buying some groceries, including some nuts and other products. apparently, some people asked her about such products and she mentioned she was vegan. she was shocked when the people asked, “what illness do you have?” they judged her veganism as if she were sick, rather than understanding that her veganism made up part of her eating habits. this example took us to reflect on how understanding becomes key in the process of developing an intercultural stance. it is not just a matter of understanding that the person is vegan, her reasons, decisions, experiences, and beliefs which have made her follow veganism, but also understanding why i am not vegan, what were my own reasons, decisions, experiences, and beliefs which have made me not to be vegan and to interpret vegans as sick people. this realization might lead students to savoir comprendre that there are different ways of acting, living, and expressing as they vary from culture to culture (byram & zarate, 1994). thus, and more importantly in terms of teaching practice, this realization represents a unique opportunity to broaden the horizons of our students, to help them better understand themselves, and in so doing help them understand others. or maybe it should be the other way around, help them understand others and in so doing help them better understand themselves. (lafayette, 2003, p. 61) teachers’ understanding of icc from a part to a whole a last concern teachers expressed dealt with the way they connect the aims of icc with the curriculum. in this regard, they mentioned the necessity of achieving the requirements expressed in the institution’s curriculum as the core of their practice. however, when asked about how to develop icc in their classes within such curriculum, they were hesitant about the time required: you lose time because you need to develop what is there, not those other elements. that is not an objective but a tool. if one is left to analyze all these things, there is no time left to develop what one is told to teach. and the most terrible thing is that students say, “here is this teacher, we talk very nicely with him, but you don’t learn anything”. the thing is that for many students, the “i did not learn any english” is to get into things of the language, for example, a lot of vocabulary, structures, and things like that, more punctual things of the language. (fer, sg5) teachers acknowledged that developing icc in their classes entails time to analyze and reflect upon decisions to be taken in terms of knowledge, materials, and ways of addressing them alongside the curriculum they must follow. however, when counting the time necessary for doing so in comparison with other requirements teacher need to fulfill in their courses, it seemed that developing icc outnumbers the time needed to cover the linguistic and communicative goals set within the curriculum, which are seen as the main objective to achieve. as a result, teachers considered culture not 87profile: issues teach. prof. dev., vol. 22 no. 1, jan-jun, 2020. issn 1657-0790 (printed) 2256-5760 (online). bogotá, colombia. pages 75-92 intercultural communicative competence: in-service efl teachers building understanding... as an objective to be achieved: “it is not our focus, our focus is more communicative” (edna, sg2). in addition, teachers reflected a certain fear about what their students might think concerning their teaching practices, as they might not consider them as effective or pertinent as they must be. teachers expressed their concerns with the complaints and comments students might make if they devoted more class time to discussing cultural issues rather than providing linguistic elements to develop the communicative competence. in this order of ideas, teachers did not perceive the relationship between culture and language, and also, certain perpetuated beliefs from the communicative competence conceive a view of culture as an instrument with which to achieve objectives rather than the objective itself. moreover, there is a generalized assumption concerning the development of icc in class. apparently, icc was not seen in its entirety but rather as sections to be covered in particular moments, illustrated as follows: we were discussing in the course how the gun regulations here and in other countries allowed easy access to weapons, and as in some countries, violent situations like gunfights and attacks were commonly seen. we analyzed concepts and possible reasons behind it, for example, mental disorders, government, etc. however, as for the objective, i do not know if it was developed from a final product [writing task], i do not know if we developed what we have seen [icc]. (paula, sg5) teachers needed to dissociate the goals of the class in terms of linguistic goals and intercultural goals. apparently, teachers thought that when the goal to be achieved was merely linguistics, the intercultural aspects were put aside and vice-versa. teachers also considered that the development of an intercultural goal is not achieved as it is just explored during particular sections of the class rather than during the whole class as a linguistic goal. in this sense, teachers needed to change their view of the development process from a segmented view to a holistic one, where developing the intercultural dimension seems a whole rather than a part. it should be considered how the development of intercultural communicative competence is not a part but a whole. therefore, we still have to work on a more global and articulated vision of what the intercultural dimension represents for the classes. (paula, rlog) conclusions as a result of the teachers’ involvement in the study group, the insights and experiences shared, the concepts studied, and the different analyses and reflections made, in-service teachers redrew their own initial views, beliefs, and assumptions in order to collaboratively build a self-crafted understanding of icc in elt, which fostered their change both professionally and in their praxis. moreover, their involvement in the study group encouraged teachers to defy their unfounded views of culture, ascribed in mainstream communicative-oriented views they have traditionally followed, and to move to a more intercultural communicative-oriented perception that leads them to meet the current educative, social, and cultural demands of an increasingly intertwined world. in addition, it helped teachers to raise awareness on the importance of increasing their cross-cultural knowledge in order to move from a factual, stereotyped set of knowledgeable items, to a more dynamic view of culture (liddicoat, 2002). besides, it changed teachers’ unfunded assumptions in regard to their own students’ development of icc, raising awareness on the importance of finding the necessary methodological strategies to build bridges that foster such development. furthermore, it helped teachers to recognize the importance of moving from an ethnocentric stance to a more ethno-relative one, aiming at generating greater intercultural sensitivity and the potential for further intercultural competence (bennett, 2004). finally, it empowered teachers to adopt a more informed stance towards icc and the curriculum that considers culture as the core of language learning (lange & paige, 2003). considering the results obtained, one can say this paper calls for a reconsideration of the role study groups universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras88 cuartas álvarez can play as an applicable tool for teachers’ professional development that might contribute to future endeavors in the realm of elt and teacher training. the inclusion of study groups into formal training programs might contribute to filling the existing gap in light of the scarce approaches towards the development of icc in efl teachers. this reconsideration could help to propose tailored strategies and programs aimed at both preservice and in-service teachers as well. in this order of ideas, study groups might become a suitable way to contribute in accordance with the current needs of our elt context, which demands a more inclusive and holistic approach for the development of icc in all english language teachers. references barletta, n. 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(2005). qualitative case studies. in n. k. denzin & y. s. lincoln (ed.), the sage handbook of qualitative research (3rd ed., pp. 443-466). thousand oaks, us: sage publications. about the author luis fernando cuartas álvarez holds a b.ed. degree in foreign language teaching (english and french) from universidad de antioquia, colombia, and an m.a. in teaching english as a foreign language from unini, puerto rico. his research interests are tefl and teachers’ professional development. he currently works as a full-time english teacher. universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras90 cuartas álvarez appendix a: initial teachers’ interviews teacher's profile teacher's insights on culture in language teaching teacher's insights on icc in language teaching · personal information questions (age, nationality, educational background) · how long have you been teaching english as a foreign language? · how would you describe your teaching style? · have you ever had experiences abroad? · can you tell me what your understanding of culture is in language teaching? · what kinds of cultural learning do you think is going on in your classroom? · what do you like to teach when you teach culture? can you think of any examples? · do you encounter any difficulties when it comes to teaching culture? · what do you think the purpose of teaching culture is? · can you tell me what your understanding of icc is? · to what extent does icc, as you understand the concept, make up part of your daily lesson planning? can you give me some example of what do you do in your classroom practice? · have you met any difficulties when it comes to developing icc? · when you carried out your undergraduate studies, did you have any courses that addressed the concept of teaching culture and/or icc? · how familiar are you in regard to the foreign language curriculum used and the concept of icc? 91profile: issues teach. prof. dev., vol. 22 no. 1, jan-jun, 2020. issn 1657-0790 (printed) 2256-5760 (online). bogotá, colombia. pages 75-92 intercultural communicative competence: in-service efl teachers building understanding... appendix b: reflective log name: date: reflective log – study group description: what issues about theory were raised in this session? analysis: what sense can you make of the activities or discussions in today’s group session? reflection: what have you learnt and what would you do differently in the future? evaluation: is there anything you would like to work on/do differently next session? universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras92 cuartas álvarez appendix c: final teachers’ interviews teacher's insights on culture in language teaching teacher's insights on icc in language teaching teacher’s experiences in the study group · after your participation in the study group, what do you currently understand by culture? · have your views on culture in language teaching changed? how have they changed? · have you experienced something new when it comes to teaching culture? · after your participation in the study group, what do you currently understand about the icc? · what has changed about you as a language teacher in your classes? (e.g., students’ attitudes, kind of topics) · how are you currently developing the icc in your classes? what kind of activities/tasks/materials are you currently using? · have you met any difficulties when it comes to developing icc? · to what extent do you think it is important to develop this competence in your classes? why? · what is in store for you as a teacher after working on the icc? · what was your experience in the study group? · how did the study group contribute to your professional development? · what difficulties/challenges/changes did you experience? · what would you do differently concerning the study group? 211 https://doi.org/10.15446/profile.v20n2.63969 theater for language teaching and learning: the e theater, a holistic methodology teatro para la enseñanza y el aprendizaje de lenguas: “the e theater”, una metodología holística evelyn gualdron* edna castillo** universidad nacional de colombia – sede bogotá, colombia this article reports the findings of a qualitative study based on a long-term application of a theater contentbased methodology for l2 learning, supported by professionals in theater and in foreign languages, in the e theater: an english as a foreign language theater interdisciplinary group at universidad nacional de colombia that has been active since 2008. the data were collected through a longitudinal semi-structured survey, interviews of the participants of the event, and a focus group. as a result, participants stated lowering their affective filter and benefits in their production and comprehension of l2 skills, their intercultural competence, and their cognitive processing of the language derived from the methodology carried out. key words: content-based instruction, krashen’s language hypotheses, theater for l2 teaching and learning. este artículo reporta los hallazgos de un estudio cualitativo a largo plazo, basado en la aplicación de una metodología de contenido desde el teatro, y apoyada por profesionales en teatro y en lenguas extranjeras, en the e theater, un grupo interdisciplinario de teatro en inglés que opera en la universidad nacional de colombia desde 2008. los datos se recolectaron mediante una encuesta semiestructurada longitudinal, entrevistas a los participantes y un grupo focal. como resultado, los participantes señalaron una reducción del filtro afectivo, además de beneficios en sus habilidades de comprensión y producción en l2, su competencia intercultural y su procesamiento cognitivo de la lengua. palabras clave: hipótesis de adquisición de una segunda lengua de krashen, instrucción basada en contenido, teatro para la enseñanza y el aprendizaje de una segunda lengua. * e-mail: evelyn.gualdron_aguilar@greensboro.edu.co ** e-mail: epcastillom@unal.edu.co how to cite this article (apa, 6th ed.): gualdron, e., & castillo, e. (2018). theater for language teaching and learning: the e theater, a holistic methodology. profile: issues in teachers’ professional development, 20(2), 211-227. https://doi.org/10.15446/profile.v20n2.63969. this article was received on april 2, 2017 and accepted on january 31, 2018. this is an open access article distributed under the terms of the creative commons license attribution-noncommercial-noderivatives 4.0 international license. consultation is possible at https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/. profile: issues teach. prof. dev., vol. 20 no. 2, jul-dec, 2018. issn 1657-0790 (printed) 2256-5760 (online). bogotá, colombia. pages 211-227 universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras212 gualdron & castillo introduction learning english as a foreign language (efl) in colombia has become a priority for the colombian government in the last decades. programs like “colombia bilingüe” and “bogotá bilingüe” (bilingual colombia and bilingual bogota) have been launched to improve the proficiency level of students (alcaldía mayor de bogotá, 2005; ministerio de educación nacional, 2005). accordingly, students entering higher education in colombia must complete a b1 level of proficiency in accordance with the common european framework of reference (council of europe, 2001) as a requirement for graduation. at universidad nacional de colombia, students need to achieve this level focused on the reading comprehension of academic texts (consejo superior universitario, 2008), and fulfilling this requirement is the main reason why students access the formal study of english when they reach the university level. two thirds of the population moving into higher education were found to have an a1 basic user english proficiency level by 2012 (british council, 2015; icfes, 2016). the student welfare division at universidad nacional de colombia in bogota encourages the creation of spaces to enhance the academic, interpersonal, and artistic skills of its students, who mostly belonged to the lowest three socioeconomic strata of the city, at the time of the study (oficina nacional de planeación de la universidad nacional de colombia, 2014). students have access to efl classes and specialized materials in universities (council of europe, 2001); nonetheless, there are not many authentic grade free settings for the practice of the language. it is in this context that the e theater was conceived. this paper presents the effects on the l2 skills and competences of the participants in the e theater: an efl theater group at universidad nacional de colombia. the project was created in march of 2008 by a group of students majoring in english philology and language. it aims to promote the learning of the english language through a literary and cultural approach by means of performing primarily literary pieces from english speaking authors. the e theater is supported by the project management unit, a section of the welfare division of the university that grants funds for the development of students’ initiatives, projects, and research conducting to students’ well-being. every semester the approval by the university is renewed, and every year or semester a new piece is chosen and staged. the group combines the advisory on theater provided by its director with the linguistic and pedagogical expertise of the language professionals that are in the head of its coordination and that guide the group’s l2 development (castillo & gualdron, 2008). it is also the oldest theater for l2 learning group in the city, as documented by suárez (2012). theoretical framework theater and language learning share some of their foundational constructs. through the findings presented in this study, we expect to tie the experiences lived by the participants of the e theater’s workshops and methodology to the major existing literature constructs that support the idea of theater as a holistic strategy to teach and learn l2. likewise, since the group’s methodology has been open and experimental, emergent categories of analysis are expected to appear. major second language acquisition and theater constructs are explored henceforth. ties between theater and l2 learning diverse connections between the disciplines of theater and language learning have been described. theater is a highly experiential art, not only for the audience, but also for the actors intervening and interacting during the set-up of the play. hence, theater is a constructivist art in nature (barris, 2013). acting training is appropriate to provide learners with the simulation of real, authentic, and meaningful language interaction environments necessary for the acquisition 213 theater for language teaching and learning: the e theater, a holistic methodology profile: issues teach. prof. dev., vol. 20 no. 2, jul-dec, 2018. issn 1657-0790 (printed) 2256-5760 (online). bogotá, colombia. pages 211-227 of l2 (herrera & murry, 2016; long, 1981). both theater and l2 learning share communication elements and aim for effective communication (busà, 2015; gross, 1977; ryan-scheutz & colangelo, 2004). in addition, l2 and theater get processed similarly in cognition, and theatrical audiovisual elements assist the audience when making sense of a theatrical piece (dancygier, 2016; fennessey, 2006; morrison & chilcoat, 1998; radulescu, 2011; sofia, spadacenta, falletti, & mirabella, 2016). in the same fashion, l2 and theater teaching and learning are said to involve different kinds of intelligences (bernal, 2007; gardner, 1983). both practices enhance cultural understanding (essif, 2011; sobral, 2011) and facilitate cooperative and collaborative learning too (perone, 2011). drama has been used as a tool to empower individuals (leisse, 2008; skeiker, 2015), and it has been previously found to motivate learners to study a foreign language (tindall, 2012). moreover, theater has been shown to incorporate productive and receptive language skills (gill, 2013; morrison & chilcoat, 1998). most previous research based on the subject has focused on theater as a way to improve the reading fluency and comprehension of texts (casey & chamberlain, 2006; chou, 2013; clark, morrison, & wilcox, 2009; lin, 2015; peregoy, boyle, & cadiero-kaplan, 2008; ratliff, 2000; tindall, 2012). diverse theater techniques like improvisation have been applied for the practice and development of l2 skills (dinapoli & algarra, 2001; kurtz, 2011; perone, 2011). on this subject, this study results interesting for addressing a longer application of the theater methodology, as well as an exploration of the benefits, other than linguistic, that this practice facilitates. second language acquisition constructs through theater motivation motivation influences the execution of conducts that produce learning (logan, 1976). it is related to aspects such as personality, attitudes, beliefs, and personal needs, which make participants feel attracted to performing certain activities, roles, and tasks (wright, 1987). acting training and performance in l2 in a theatrical ensemble offer their participants the 4 cs of intrinsic motivation: challenge, curiosity, control, and context (lepper & henderlong, 2000). effective foreign language teaching and learning contemplates the phenomenon of intrinsic motivation as the will that comes from the wishes and needs of the individual to carry out a learning task (brown, 1994). l2 learning through acting allows meaningful, motivational, and inspirational learning (lin, 2015; suárez, 2012; tindall, 2012). language hypotheses krashen (1982) presented five key determining hypotheses in second language acquisition; two of the most important are “the input hypothesis” and “the affective filter hypothesis.” the author proposed a causative relationship for acquisition to take place where there are two key factors, an input just a little more complex than what the learner is able to understand and a low affective filter. for radulescu (2011), theater allows non-native speakers to be part of a non-threatening environment. it lets students have a voice when there is not an autocratic director that imposes his or her viewpoint. in the e theater, the role of the director is the one of a facilitator and guide of the process. constructivism according to herrera and murry (2016), language learners acquire the l2 more quickly when they are immersed in a communicative language learning environment. they learn more effectively when they can extract meaning from context and communication, and have a linguistic and social interaction focused on learning (herrera & murry, 2016). social constructivism places its focus on the social interactions with others (piaget, 1974). according to pritchard (2013), it gives a great importance to language since it is the vehicle universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras214 gualdron & castillo upon which knowledge is built. suárez (2012) stated that applications like the e theater involve active learning and vygotsky’s (1962) zone of proximal development due to the heterogeneous nature of theater. acting as a discipline not only implies an introspective study done by the actors and actresses where they build a character from the inside nourished by their own experiences (stanislavski, 1949/2013), but also it is the interactive art par excellence, in which there is a tangible social and environmental exchange in verbal and non-verbal communication both with the audience and amongst actors during the setting-up process of a play. theater can constitute a platform for real situation simulations for second language acquisition, and theater training in l2 represents an engaging social and building community interaction where l2 acquisition can take place (chesler & chesler, 2005; ortuzar, 2014; shosh & wescoe, 2007). authentic environment dinapoli and algarra (2001) proposed theater as a way to involve learners in the use of real discourse. improvisation as part of theater allows individuals to learn from an experience that involves them intellectually, physically, and intuitively (spolin, 1963). in this way, improvisation has the potential to be meaningful, engaging, and authentic; it represents an experiential technique to promote language learning (hodgson & richards, 1966; perone, 2011). similarly, kurtz (2011) explained that improvisation allows students to exercise problem solving involving their past experiences to produce a response in a given situational context. moreover, improvisation fosters creativity, playfulness, and willingness to speak (kurtz, 2011). theater and the e theater theater in education theater in education (tie) started in britain in the 1960s (prendergast & saxton, 2009). tie has historically spread around the world and has opened the space for the creation of participatory programs that have been effective in approaching young audiences and producing an active engagement in their own learning process (jackson, 2013). the e theater has engaged its participants in language learning through performing arts. theater for language learning can be mainly seen in two forms. one in which a theater company presents plays in a foreign language to enrich its context and promote language learning (vienna’s english theater, 2017), and another one that is related to the implementation of applied theater as a way to develop the participants’ communicative competence. the e theater encompasses both perspectives (castillo & gualdron, 2008). group theater kubicki (1974) used the terms ensemble theater or group theater for a theater troupe made of nonprofessional actors that get involved in the setting-up of a play. the author identified four different ways to carry out the process of ensemble: a group guided by its director can get involved in the production of an existing creation; it can adapt a literary work to ensemble style; it can create an original script through improvisation; or it can engage in the making of an originally literary collective creation. the e theater has mainly worked on the adaptation of previously written pieces. nevertheless, the group has also made of improvisation a major device for the creation of short original performances. pammenter (2013) presented participatory theater as a form of tie that meets the needs and wants of young people and that allows them to exercise their values, experiences, opinions, and communicate these to the world. reader’s theater the reader’s theater is one of the most researched and well-known theater strategies for l2 learning; it has been shown to improve different aspects of the reading domain like the fluency and comprehension of texts. the reader’s theater can be defined as an expressive and 215 theater for language teaching and learning: the e theater, a holistic methodology profile: issues teach. prof. dev., vol. 20 no. 2, jul-dec, 2018. issn 1657-0790 (printed) 2256-5760 (online). bogotá, colombia. pages 211-227 dramatic reading of a script that may or may not include the following: props, staging, and costumes (casey & chamberlain, 2006; chou, 2013; clark et al., 2009; lin, 2015; peregoy et al., 2008; ratliff, 2000; tindall, 2012). teaching as performing not only can language learners benefit from theater, but the teacher as a stage figure can get much from it, too. sarason (1999) presented several arguments about why teaching should be seen as a performing profession, and why this view should be included in teaching programs. teachers need to effectively deliver the curriculum to their audience: their students. he concluded that entering the traditional performing arts has huge implications for the teaching of a person (burgess, 2012; sarason, 1999). the e theater the e theater’s methodology follows four main phases: the first one is theater training, where the members have the opportunity to explore different theater workshops; the second one is where the members present, discuss, and choose the play they want to perform; the third one is where the literary piece is adapted by the members; and the fourth, in which the performance is put together, rehearsed, and finally presented to an audience. the whole process can last a semester or a year. method the present study is of a qualitative nature. a longitudinal semi-structured survey based on pre-existing literature on the subject was applied at different points in time (fraenkel & wallen, 2006). the data to be reported correspond to an interpretative-descriptive exercise in which the case studied was observed through the eyes of participants involved in the event (bonilla-castro & rodríguez sehk, 1997). subcategories were obtained inductively from open questions, and individual and group interviews. participants were purposefully chosen due to their relation to language learning or to theater, the duration of their participation in the group, or their country of origin. research questions the following are the research questions that guided this investigation. main question what are the effects on the l2 skills and competences of the participants in a theater content-based efl interdisciplinary and multilevel group of young adults, as perceived and described by their experience? related questions what are the characteristics of a theater content-based efl interdisciplinary and multilevel group of young adults? what are the linguistic and non-linguistic effects for the participants, from the methodology applied in the e theater? participants the e theater has had five theater directors from its foundation until 2017. we were its two founders (researchers), and have been its coordinators since its very beginnings. they all were participants of this study, along with 52 of the students who took part in the process in the e theater, in one or several of its cycles, reaching a total of 59 participants. all the theater directors had majored in theater and one of them had an ma from a university in the uk. the students mostly belonged to undergraduate programs at universidad nacional de colombia, four were studying german, three of them had master degrees, and one was in a phd program. data collection instruments longitudinal semi-structured surveys, in-depth semi-structured interviews, and a semi-structured focus group were held with members of the pool of participants. table 1 shows the relation between participants and data collection instruments. universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras216 gualdron & castillo table 1. participants and data collection instruments instrument number of participants students’ only individual interview 7 only survey 37 only focus group, coordinators 2 only focus group, student 1 focus group, survey 2 focus group, interview 2 interview, survey 3 total number of students 54 director interviews 5 total number of participants 59 the first phase of data collection for this study was carried out during the second academic semester of 2013, and the first of 2014. a second phase of data collection took place during the first academic semester of 2017. the first phase relates to the existence of the e theater from its origins in 2008 until the year 2014 and the second phase gives account of the processes carried out in the second semester of 2015 and during 2016. within the study, students were designated a number, and the teacher-directors the letter p and a number to keep their anonymity. the coordinators acted as researchers and were not considered. findings through the process of categorization, we expected to find out how the methodology had contributed to develop or improve the participants’ l2 skills and competences compared to how they perceived them at the beginning of the process. the major categories were initially the productive and receptive l2 skills as well as the intercultural competence. nevertheless, the responses of the participants led to the establishment of two other categories: the affective and the cognitive dimension of learners. the additional benefits and challenges of the methodology as well as the impact of the group in its context were also identified. in the study, 15 students (28%) were majoring in or had already graduated from a modern language program, another 15 had studied english at a school with a low intensity, 13 (25%) had studied at a bilingual or high intensity language training school, and the rest had studied english at the university or language institutes. when asked about their productive and receptive l2 skills, students in the surveys rated their own proficiency at the beginning of the process with the e theater from one to four. forty-eight percent of the students on average graded themselves level 3, considering all of the aspects they were asked about in l2 (speaking, writing, reading, fluency, pronunciation, vocabulary, grammar, confidence, and listening), followed by 32% who rated their skills at level 2. forty percent identified themselves with a high level of reading comprehension, and only 9% considered themselves to be at a low command level of the language on average in all the skills. however, 20% rated the area of confidence at a low level. with this analysis, we can see that most students considered themselves within the range of intermediate proficiency at the time of participation in the group. when asked about the progress they had made through the group, 75% of the students on average rated themselves at level 3 or 4 out of 4 regarding their advancement in all the language skills except for grammar and writing. forty-six percent and 40% of the students rated grammar and writing at level 2 or lower, respectively, showing that these skills were not addressed in the process as much as the others. participants stated that the process in the group had helped and addressed their l2 skills and competences enhancement (gill, 2013). the sub-categories shown in table 2 were pointed out in the open questions within the instruments. table 3 reports the specific exercises or activities that participants remembered helped them improve in the different aspects of l2 learning. improvisation exercises were mentioned as enhancers of most l2 skill categories (hodgson & richards, 1966; kurtz, 2011; perone, 2011; spolin, 1963). 217 theater for language teaching and learning: the e theater, a holistic methodology profile: issues teach. prof. dev., vol. 20 no. 2, jul-dec, 2018. issn 1657-0790 (printed) 2256-5760 (online). bogotá, colombia. pages 211-227 table 2. subcategories of skills worked l2 skills subcategories speaking authentic interaction (dinapoli & algarra, 2001; herrera & murry, 2016) creating speech fluency when talking pronunciation (clark et al., 2009; lin, 2015; tindall, 2012) attempt to meet the communicative goal expressivity (lin, 2015; tindall, 2012) taking the risk to talk vocalization musicality (intonation) accent listening comprehension discrimination of sounds reading reading context comprehension (both in: casey & chamberlain, 2006; chou, 2013; clark et al., 2009; lin, 2015; peregoy et al., 2008; ratliff, 2000; tindall, 2012). writing thinking about the impact of writing on the audience affective-filter gaining confidence when using the language (leisse, 2008; skeiker, 2015) cognitive thinking in the language exercising multiple intelligences and learning styles (bernal, 2007; gardner, 1983) attention training memory training metacognitive strategies note. subcategories and activities in the tables are ordered from the most mentioned to the least mentioned in the instruments. authors cited had already identified the specified subcategories in their research. table 3. skills and related actions or activities l2 skills: categories activities speaking group exercises of conversation or improvisation support given by persons specialized in language rehearsals shows monologues repeating the script several times discussions within the group auditions or castings adapting and recording the script creating sketches and presenting them in front of the classmates pronunciation exercises saying all the text at the same time reading aloud voice and vocal exercises clown games universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras218 gualdron & castillo writing writing your own text taking a text and adapting it to theater script revisions and corrections keeping a journal elaboration of the advertisement and hand program of the play writing a funny memory from childhood writing a script for an audience writing about the characters reading reading the scripts comprehending the texts reading related texts reading a text to adapt it reading the scripts in group reading more than just one play listening exercises directed in english interaction with other characters of the play rehearsals in general following instructions in english listening actively to others sessions directed in english improvisation exercises in group castings presentations listening to others say their text the need to act the right way makes you make an effort for listening and comprehending paying attention to others all the oral exercises of repetition listening to your classmates vocabulary reading of the different plays or literary works and bibliographical materials study and deep understanding of the scripts vocabulary improvisation exercises improvisation exercises tasks where you can use the vocabulary group exercises of conversation and improvisation need to understand the words we listen to, to make sense of them group preparation of scripts of unfamiliar contexts clarifications about the situations and the context studying the register of the language in the play games to connect synonyms and antonyms rehearsals activities in the workshops looking for the meaning of words in the dictionary writing of the scripts 219 theater for language teaching and learning: the e theater, a holistic methodology profile: issues teach. prof. dev., vol. 20 no. 2, jul-dec, 2018. issn 1657-0790 (printed) 2256-5760 (online). bogotá, colombia. pages 211-227 affective filter having to expose yourself in front of an audience rehearsals and script practice improvisation exercises speaking in public rehearsals and corrections the exercises of space and roles theater exercises to favor the participants’ expressions interaction and interacting exercises setting-up of the play saying a discourse while having to look at the audience conversation exercises theater exercises of agility and corporal expression exercises to get to know your classmates better cognitive remembering the script with corporal expressions all the exercises of space and movement exercises of concentration to act, to explore their artistic creativity, and to share it with other people, to learn about theater techniques, to improve their performing skills, to act in front of the public, to explore a new theatrical paradigm, to find good actors, to act on a more professional level, and to improve their corporal expression, voice, and communication skills in general (busà, 2015; gross, 1977; ryan-scheutz & colangelo, 2004). analogously, 92.5% of the students stated that they met their expectations of the process. participants in the group had different english proficiency levels. in the survey, 53% of the students stated it was an advantage, 19% stated that it was a disadvantage, and 38% stated they had a neutral position. most students who saw it as an advantage stated that students with a higher level helped the others to better their english. some students stated they enjoyed helping others to improve, and that they learned by teaching, strengthened their solidarity ties, and that the experience was also useful for their life. some of them pointed out that having a variety of english proficiency levels in the group strengthened the formative value of the group, meaning it was not only a space in which to learn english (perone, 2011). on the surveys, one student noted: when determining if students had met their goals within the group, we asked them what their initial objectives were and if they had accomplished them. they could choose several options or add their own. seventy percent said they approached the group with the objective of exploring or practicing theater, 59.5% wanted to get involved in an extracurricular activity, 74.4% wanted to practice english, 57.4% wanted to improve their english, 12.7% wanted to know more about the language, and 36% wanted to extend their social circle. ninety-three percent of the students stated they accomplished their objectives within the group. similarly, in regard to the language, students indicated some of the expectations they had for the work developed within the group. among them were: finding high level english speakers to be able to practice with, improving their listening, improving their speaking, learning more english in general, increasing their vocabulary (clark et al., 2009), and being in contact with the language (herrera & murry, 2016). also, they expected it to be a nice space to learn english where they were able to lose their shyness or fear of speaking the language (leisse, 2008; skeiker, 2015). as a theater exercise, students expected to develop their capacity universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras220 gualdron & castillo the more advanced people correct without being tough or offensive, and it is easy for them to explain some aspects of the language that beginners do not know. learning happens in both directions, because the beginners learn and the others reinforce their knowledge. (s42) some of the students who chose the neutral position stated that a minimum level of english was required to be part of the workshops. they also mentioned that the participants with a high level did not advance in their english proficiency as much as the ones with a low level, and that if the difference in the levels is considerable, this could limit the acting and theatrical process. the students who thought having different proficiency levels was a disadvantage pointed out that by including low level students in the group lowered the quality of the plays to be presented. students also gave their opinions about including participants with experience and without previous experience in theater in the group: 95% of the students in the surveys stated that it was either an advantage or they had a neutral position in regard to it. some of them mentioned that actors could learn from other actors, and that the idea of a star did not align with the pedagogical purpose of the group (perone, 2011). in the study, 62.5% of the students reported to have had previous theater experience at the moment of joining the group but even though some students did not have previous theater experience, they were engaged in the process. p5 stated in her interview that theater is not discriminatory in terms of skills and everybody can do it. intercultural and literary competence the group had as one of its main objectives to work with literary pieces to let participants be able to have contact with the language culture (essif, 2011; sobral, 2011). sixty-six percent of the students in the surveys said the group met that objective. the intercultural competence inside the group was mentioned as one of the strengths of the project’s methodology. table 4 shows the activities that according to the participants helped them work on their intercultural and literary competence. table 4. actions or activities to approach the l2 culture l2 skill: culture activities • studying the historical and social context of the plays. • having contact with plays from english speaking countries. • having contact with aspects of culture present in the play. • social exchange with people with a broad cultural experience in the group. • scenes and performances based on literary plays and cinematography. • analyzing the literary style of the texts. • getting to know the author and the context in which the play was written. • plays written originally in the target language. • observing the characters historically. one student commented on the interviews: “you just do not interpret a nurse; you interpret a nurse from that time, from that moment, and from that historical condition” (16). provided the evidence, we can affirm that a literary analytical approach to performing a play enhances the intercultural competence in l2 of the students involved. interest for l2 learning sixty-four percent (31) of the participants responded that their interest in english had changed after their experience in the group. eight students explained that the group had reaffirmed their interest in the language (lin, 2015; suárez, 2012; tindall, 2012); another six said that the group made them realize they needed to 221 theater for language teaching and learning: the e theater, a holistic methodology profile: issues teach. prof. dev., vol. 20 no. 2, jul-dec, 2018. issn 1657-0790 (printed) 2256-5760 (online). bogotá, colombia. pages 211-227 improve their english, and five more stated it helped them approach the language more easily because of the need to use it. for instance, one student commented: “my participation in the group reaffirmed my inclination for the language and evidenced my weaknesses” (s18). moreover, 68% (33 participants) stated they felt more inclined toward theater than before (lepper & henderlong, 2000). additional benefits throughout the years, students have repeatedly mentioned to us that the group has brought benefits in many other different areas of their lives. when participants were asked to say an adjective that described their experience within the group, 96% used positive adjectives. some of the mostly used were: interesting, enriching, creative, excellent, learning, challenging, exciting, motivational, positive, dynamic, interactive, and intense. ninety-eight percent (48 participants) established they greatly appreciated the social ties and environment created inside the group (chesler & chesler, 2005; ortuzar, 2014; shosh & wescoe, 2007). sixty-nine percent (34 participants) reported they found an emotional benefit in the group; many of them stated they felt appreciated, respected, and accepted in the group, and the space provided emotional relief for them. they also mentioned that it was an inspirational experience, and the group generated a sense of belonging and trust (pammenter, 2013). fifty-one percent (25 participants) said they felt more confident personally and 14% (7 participants) said they improved their communication skills (busà, 2015; gross, 1977; ryan-scheutz & colangelo, 2004). nevertheless, the second aspect with the largest participation was the professional. seventy-five percent (37 participants) pointed out the benefits of theater as a pedagogical tool for teachers (sarason, 1999). the students and professionals in foreign languages and philology reported great benefits from theater that could be implemented in their teaching of a second language. one student commented in relation to this: the fact that you get into the classroom and it is not to see a video beam and a teacher who is far away, but instead you get to a classroom that does not have chairs, and we come here to play with each other, to connect as human beings, and to generate a collective project. from that point, it is already changing even my subject as a student. (s16) another student mentioned: “using theater for bilingualism gave to me tools for my job in the us; i put together plays in english” (s15). other aspects of the group’s methodology identified as assets by the participants in the interviews were: cooperative and collaborative work (perone, 2011), the values proper to the group like respect, love, friendship, a spirit of growing together, and the good treatment of others regardless of their english skills or proficiency. many students talked about the creation of tight and meaningful social interactions and relations with others (piaget, 1974; pritchard, 2013). they also highlighted that it had a strong coordination and administration. impact on the context nine participants stated that the impact of the group inside the university community was related to fostering the motivation and inclination for the language. five students mentioned it represented a different way for learning english, 13 participants noted that the major impact was the group’s interdisciplinary nature that joined students from different fields around a learning experience; additionally, four students mentioned it increased the cultural panorama of the university. suárez (2012) reported the creation of similar applications in other languages inside the university by former members of the group. other students mentioned as an important aspect that it was free of charge, and the need for it to stay sponsored by the university as part of the benefits offered to the students. universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras222 gualdron & castillo one student, majoring in psychology and anthropology in two universities commented: i think it is nice as a formative space that can make you lose your fear for english. if you see the level of english at the university, personally, i think it is very low, compared to other universities that demand a toefl. universidad nacional de colombia takes you to a fourth intermediate level and people accomplish their graduation requirement but you do not see them confident about their english. then, this is something we can do as students to contribute in this aspect. (s16) another student stated: “it helps us see that english is ours, not only something that belongs to developed countries” (s50). while another one pointed out: “university groups are important because everybody gives from their own careers and their experience is vital” (p2). with the intention of observing the impact of the shows in l2 for the university community, participants were asked if they thought the shows benefited the audience: 72% agreed with the statement. they expressed in the interviews that the shows made the audience realize the pertinence of english. one of the directors (p5) stated that in the forums after the shows the comments were generally positive. the director stated that the exercise was very beneficial for the actors and for the audience who were all exposed to different pronunciations, made the effort to understand, and were doing the exercise of correcting what they were hearing at the same time. another director stated that it was an exercise of public interest (p3), and it was successful because, “we had full house, and nobody stood up and left the auditorium” (p3). challenges many students described their experience as challenging. nevertheless, at the end they felt rewarded by having accomplished their goal. the challenges identified are shown in table 5. table 5. challenges of the methodology • facing an audience • acting and talking in l2 at the same time • learning or memorizing the texts • theater related challenges: creating the character using your body adequately • acting in a language i did not know well • improvising in english • the pronunciation • adapting the proposed stories for the audience • getting out of your comfort zone more specifically, a student wrote, you have to think how you have to say it, or you have to think, how you need to be standing, or the expression you need to have…to me, i liked it, it was the challenge of fusioning everything. (s7) another student added, memorizing the script in a foreign language, to be able to understand the jokes proper of the culture that we were representing and correcting the pronunciation. (s57) discussion and concluding remarks the following discussion seeks to present a definition of the the e theater’s methodology and to summarize the linguistic and nonlinguistic effects for its participants. defining the methodology the relevance of the application of the e theater as a language-theater laboratory for english language learners is related to the benefits shown in the multiple language acquisition areas involved. since the methodology of the group is cyclical, it allows for the interaction of new elements every time the process starts, and the trial of many different theater techniques. additionally, the methodology used consists not only of theater training and workshops, but also the traditional reader’s theater approach. the time upon which the product is built is usually longer 223 theater for language teaching and learning: the e theater, a holistic methodology profile: issues teach. prof. dev., vol. 20 no. 2, jul-dec, 2018. issn 1657-0790 (printed) 2256-5760 (online). bogotá, colombia. pages 211-227 than in most other studies done and based on drama methodologies. the e theater application allows the students majoring in modern languages to grasp theater elements and incorporate them into their own future teaching practices. at the same time, english language students are supporting the language learning process of their peers majoring in other fields. the traditional teacher figure and class is decentralized, and a more interactive approach takes place. the group lets participants help one another in the tasks proposed. students majoring in languages have in the group a possibility to experience theater for language learning with real subjects, enriching in this way their pedagogical and professional perspectives. figure 1 shows the synthesis of the most important elements of the group’s methodology. figure 1. the e theater’s methodology cooperative and collaborative work in language learning and theater, students share knowledge and functions. phase 1 acting training exploration of diverse theater techniques. building community implicit and rotating elements ensemble methodology of theater. bilingual theater director supported by students and/or professionals of modern languages phase 2 exploring proposals to perform. choosing, adapting and contextualizing the play. casting and assignation of ensemble roles and roles within the play. cbi model, theater taught for language learning (herrera & murry, 2006). addressing language skills holistically. understanding target culture and pragmatics of the language. phase 3 set up and rehersals of the play. speci�c language study. phase 4 performance and personal, acting and linguistic re�ection upon the process. effects and benefits for the participants the present study supports the affirmation that theater and acting techniques can be used to exercise an interactional, experiential learning and acquisition of different l2 skills and competences. the theoretical framework presented is reinforced by the findings of this study by which reading, writing, listening, speaking, vocabulary, fluency, the intercultural competence of language, and the affective dimension of learners as well as the comprehension process of the language can be addressed. theater’s major contribution seems to be that it lowers learners’ affective filter through understandable input since it provides scaffolding for their understanding, and a personal challenge within a cooperative and collaborative environment. universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras224 gualdron & castillo individual and group improvisation exercises constitute an important resource for learners to experience the vivid use of the language, and hence theater techniques are valuable resources that teachers of languages can exploit in their own classes. furthermore, participants derived professional, emotional, and social benefits from their experience in the group. the study also showed evidence that team work, cooperative, and collaborative methodologies are engaging and rewarding for students; the theater ensemble promotes community building and the creation of strong personal connections. in summary, the e theater’s methodology is an application that reinforces the idea of theater as a holistic discipline to address through different exercises and group dynamics, important aspects of language learning. validity and further research the population of this study was quantitatively representative. between 70 and 83% of the students who participated in the longest processes carried out by the group made part of the study. they experienced the methodology for at least two semesters, four hours a week, plus extra rehearsals to polish the final products. all teacher-directors participated in the study. conclusive descriptive statistical data were found in most categories explored, at different points in time, and it was accompanied by voluntary participants’ descriptions or voices that allowed the understanding in detail of the phenomenon of language learning through theater. similarly, the categories of analysis were found simultaneously at different points of the data collection and in more than one of the instruments used allowing their triangulation. the value of this study relies on its pertinent and highly critical context, and in the length of the phenomenon studied. further quantitative research can be done in regard to specific categories and subcategories presented in this study. references alcaldía mayor de bogotá. 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(1987). roles of teachers and learners. london, uk: oxford university press. 143profile: issues teach. prof. dev., vol. 22 no. 1, jan-jun, 2020. issn 1657-0790 (printed) 2256-5760 (online). bogotá, colombia. pages 143-158 https://doi.org/10.15446/profile.v22n1.78079 pedagogy of experience in teacher education for learner and teacher autonomy pedagogía de la experiencia en la formación del profesorado para la autonomía del estudiante y el docente 1flávia vieira* university of minho, braga, portugal language teacher education programmes can promote autonomy-oriented change when they are based on a transformative rationale regarding learner and teacher development. this involves adopting an experience-based approach whereby dominant ideas and practices are problematized and opportunities are provided for teachers to learn about, experience, and inquire into autonomy-oriented language teaching practices. a proposal based on the analysis and construction of cases in post-graduate teacher education is presented, in which teachers analyse and design autonomy-oriented action research experiences and produce narratives of inquiry. six teacher narratives are analysed, showing that experience-based teacher education may enhance teachers’ agency to challenge mainstream practices and explore learner-centred teaching, thus developing professional autonomy in seeking to promote learner autonomy. key words: autonomy, cases, experience, language teacher education, narratives. los programas de formación de profesores de idiomas pueden promover un cambio orientado a la autonomía cuando se basan en una lógica transformadora con respecto al desarrollo del alumno y del profesor. esto implica adoptar un enfoque basado en la experiencia en el que se problematizan las ideas y prácticas dominantes y se brindan oportunidades para que los maestros aprendan, experimenten e indaguen sobre las prácticas de enseñanza de idiomas orientadas a la autonomía. se presenta una propuesta basada en el análisis y la construcción de casos en la formación docente de posgrado, en la que los docentes analizan y diseñan experiencias de investigación de acción orientadas a la autonomía y producen narrativas de investigación. se analizan seis narrativas de docentes, lo que demuestra que la formación docente basada en la experiencia puede mejorar la agencia docente para desafiar las prácticas generales y explorar la enseñanza centrada en el alumno, desarrollando así una autonomía profesional en la búsqueda de promover la autonomía del alumno. palabras clave: autonomía, casos, experiencia, formación de profesores de idiomas, narrativas. * e-mail: flaviav@ie.uminho.pt how to cite this article (apa, 6th ed.): vieira, f. (2020). pedagogy of experience in teacher education for learner and teacher autonomy. profile: issues in teachers’ professional development, 22(1), 143-158. https://doi.org/10.15446/profile.v22n1.78079. this article was received on february 25, 2019 and accepted on august 23, 2019. this is an open access article distributed under the terms of the creative commons license attribution-noncommercial-noderivatives 4.0 international license. consultation is possible at https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/. universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras144 vieira experience and autonomy in teacher education although the importance of experience for professional learning has long been acknowledged (see dewey, 1963; schön, 1987; smyth, 1987; zeichner, 1983), many teacher education (te) practices are still influenced by a long-standing tradition where a theory-to-practice rationale prevails, that is, teachers are seen as recipients of theoretical knowledge and expected to apply it to practice. however, as carr (2006) points out, the legitimacy of theory to determine practice must be questioned since educational theory is a form of social practice that is historically embedded and transitional, and there are no epistemological foundations that guarantee the truth of theoretical knowledge. moreover, even though theories should inspire and support change, they can hardly translate directly into practice given the complex nature of teaching contexts and professional decision making processes. surpassing a theory-to-practice rationale in te entails acknowledging the centrality of teachers’ experience in professional learning and promoting a constructivist epistemology whereby teachers become critical inquirers and agents of change (giroux, 2014; kincheloe, 2003). kincheloe (2003) points out that “deskilling of teachers and dumbing-down of the curriculum take place when teachers are seen as receivers not producers of knowledge” (p. 19), and teacher empowerment can only result from a view of teachers “as researchers and knowledge workers who reflect on their profession needs and current understandings” (p. 18). this requires, first of all, realising that experience is the core of professional development as it shapes and is shaped by the teacher’s inner self: experience is what one gains from operating in the real world, in practice (in our case the real world of teaching in schools), and encompasses both the environment (e.g., the classroom) and one’s own inner reality while relating to this environment. this inner reality is multi-layered, as it encompasses, for example, good or wrong ways of doing things (know-how), beliefs about practice, as well as a sense of professional identity developed through internal encounters with the ‘i’ that goes through the experiences. (lunenberg & korthagen, 2009, p. 228) in accounting for teachers’ experience, te programmes can develop practices that build on teachers’ concerns and agendas, enhance their awareness of what goes wrong in educational practices and why, and foster their willingness and ability to explore alternative practices based on humanistic and democratic values. what i propose here is a pedagogy of experience in te (vieira, 2010), which may be described as an approach that locates the nucleus of teacher development in the terrain of professional action through pedagogical inquiry, with the purpose of enhancing teachers’ willingness and ability to challenge reproduction-oriented teaching and explore pedagogies that may contribute to an education for democracy. what schostak (2000) pointed out almost two decades ago regarding the need to reshape education in this direction still rings true in many school settings today: millions of children leave school all over the world each day no better able to engage in democratic action and make changes in their communities to meet their needs than when they entered. rather than a curriculum that constructs subjectivities around failure, around “knowing one’s place”, around complacent disregard of the misfortunes and experiences of others, around an apathetic acceptance that “things can’t change”, around a meritocracy that disowns its underclass, the chance always exists for education to construct curricula for challenge, for change, for the development of people and not the engineering of employees. (p. 50) from this perspective, teacher and learner autonomy become central purposes of te programmes. research on autonomy in language education has often tended to underrate issues of teacher autonomy, which has reinforced a de-politicized view of pedagogy for autonomy (see benson, 1997, 2006). however, an understanding of autonomy as a collective interest and a democratic ideal implies that in the expression “pedagogy for autonomy”, 145profile: issues teach. prof. dev., vol. 22 no. 1, jan-jun, 2020. issn 1657-0790 (printed) 2256-5760 (online). bogotá, colombia. pages 143-158 pedagogy of experience in teacher education for learner and teacher autonomy autonomy refers to the learner and the teacher, and it can be defined as “the competence to develop as a selfdetermined, socially responsible and critically aware participant in (and beyond) educational environments, within a vision of education as (inter)personal empowerment and social transformation” (jiménez raya, lamb, & vieira, 2017, p. 1). in a recent exploratory review of published research on 20 initiatives developed mainly in europe for preservice and in-service language te for autonomy, manzano vázquez (2018) concludes that critical reflection and inquiry are key elements for promoting teacher autonomy, understood not only as an integral aspect of teacher development, but also as a means to promote learner autonomy. however, three different interpretations of teacher autonomy emerge from his study: (1) professional freedom or control over professional activity; (2) the capacity for taking control over learning how to teach and professional development; and (3) teacher and learner autonomy as interconnected phenomena developing simultaneously within co-constructed, democratic pedagogies. even though these views can be seen as complementary, only eight of the 20 initiatives were categorized under the third interpretation, which is the main view adopted here. understanding teacher and learner autonomy as interconnected phenomena means that professional autonomy grows from teachers’ efforts to face constraints and find ways to meet learners’ needs and interests in the service of more democratic education. therefore, te programmes need “to envisage pedagogy for autonomy as a cultural and political project where resistance, critique and subversion become crucial components of teachers’ professional competence” (jiménez raya et al., 2017, p. 68). professional learning and educational change can thus be seen as journeys between reality and ideals: pedagogical hope and professional autonomy go hand in hand in our struggle for a better education: education that is empowering for teachers and learners and ultimately contributes to the transformation of society at large. if this sounds like a utopia, then it sounds right. only ideals can push reality forwards, and not being able to fully accomplish them is just one more reason to keep on trying. from this perspective, dealing with complexity and uncertainty is integral to “re[ide]alistic” professional lifelong learning and “re[ide] alistic” pedagogies. (jiménez raya et al., 2017, p. 78) in this paper i propose an experience-based te approach that draws on the assumptions presented so far and involves the use of cases—case analysis and case construction. studies regarding the use of cases in language te have suggested that it fosters reflective teacher development, helps surpass the bridge between theory and practice, and enhances innovation (jiménez raya, 2011, 2017; jiménez raya & vieira, 2015; sachs & ho, 2011). shulman (2004a) argues that analysing narratives of teaching helps teachers connect the narratives to personal/other experiences, that is, to other cases, and also to “categories of experience, to theoretical classifications through which they organise and make sense of their world” (p. 474). therefore, case analysis requires the use of multiple frames of reference, both experiential and theoretical, so as to explore possible answers to the question “what is this a case of ?” (p. 474). case-based te practices may also integrate case construction through teacher-led pedagogical inquiry and teacher-authored narratives. research on narrative writing as a teacher development strategy has accounted for its transformative value as regards teachers’ identity, professional knowledge, and predisposition for change (see attard, 2012; dutra & mello, 2008; golombek & johnson, 2004, 2017; huber, li, murphy, nelson, & young, 2014; johnson & golombek, 2002; moreira, 2015). teacher-authored narratives foster the intersection between experiential and “expert” knowledge, and account for teachers’ cognitive and emotional dissonance as their struggle to reconceptualize understanding and reshape practices (golombek & johnson, 2004, p. 324). as a form of self-study and self-inquiry, narratives “can enable teachers to (re)interpret their experiences as teachers and to build local knowledge situated in universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras146 vieira their classrooms and contexts, and with their students and communities” (golombek & johnson, 2017, p. 16). the approach described below was developed in a post-graduate course and integrates case analysis and case construction for promoting learner and teacher autonomy. its value will be discussed later on the basis of six autonomy-oriented experiences conducted and narrated by english teachers. pedagogy of experience in action: a case-based approach when i first started to explore a pedagogy of experience in post-graduate te, i had already been a teacher educator for a long time and one of my biggest concerns had always been to make the courses i teach relevant for professional learning. although i tried to link course contents to teachers’ experience as much as possible, i still felt the need for a more radical change, namely by making experience the core of te practices through the analysis and construction of cases. over the years i have evaluated, refined, and consolidated this approach, mostly within a post-graduate course on language education and pedagogical supervision (15 weeks, 45 teaching hours) that i teach in the first semester of a two-year master degree programme for in-service language teachers at my institution. the course aims at promoting autonomy-oriented pedagogical inquiry in schools, involving teachers in experience-based learning through case analysis and case construction. theoretical input focuses on language education, pedagogy for autonomy, pedagogical supervision, and classroom-based inquiry, but not as a body of knowledge to be applied to practice. recommended readings and theoretical discussions are always related to case analysis, either to support it or as an extension of it, and also to case construction as teachers select readings on their topics of inquiry, that is, on what they want to learn about. therefore, a theory-to-practice rationale is rejected in favour of a praxis-oriented epistemology where the role of public theories is to support personal understandings, the theorisation of practice, and a more informed approach to self-directed inquiry. nevertheless, it is important to note that the theoretical rationale of the course itself determines its content and directs the teachers’ attention to particular views of teaching, learning, and professional development. case analysis in our course, teachers are invited to analyse at least two narratives of autonomy-oriented classroom experiences carried out by language teachers from previous editions of the programme, produced within case construction as described below.1 the first stage of analysis is rather unstructured, focusing on what teachers find most relevant in the experience they read about and how it resonates with their own teaching. the second stage is based on theoretical input related to pedagogy for autonomy, involving re-interpretations of the narrative or parts of it. one or more inputs can be provided and used sequentially for each narrative, depending on the time available (e.g., full texts, excerpts of texts, and reflective tools). in seeking to relate a particular theoretical framework with the narrative at hand, teachers discuss their own understandings of the framework and its connection with practice, and opportunities for clarifying and expanding theoretical concepts arise. figure 1 illustrates a task for case analysis. teachers are asked to analyse the narrative of an experience where a group of english teachers tried to make homework activities more learner-centred.2 in focusing on learner and teacher roles, teachers should answer the question: to what extent can you say that the narrative illustrates a case of pedagogy for autonomy? these tasks are complemented by recommended readings that may be done before or after task completion. 1 narratives published in english on the promotion of autonomy can also be found in language teaching journals and in books like those edited by kalaja, menezes, and barcelos (2008), and barfield and alvarado (2013). 2 this narrative is one of the six cases i will consider in my analysis of the potential value of this approach. 147profile: issues teach. prof. dev., vol. 22 no. 1, jan-jun, 2020. issn 1657-0790 (printed) 2256-5760 (online). bogotá, colombia. pages 143-158 pedagogy of experience in teacher education for learner and teacher autonomy figure 1. example of task for case analysis pedagogy for autonomy: learner and teacher roles read the teachers’ narrative. to what extent can you say that it illustrates a case of pedagogy for autonomy? in order to answer this question, analyse the learners’ and teachers’ roles in the teachers’ experience, using the framework below. learner roles √ teacher roles √ reflecting about language (linguistic, pragmatic, and cultural aspects) analysing contexts of practice (identifying problems, designing alternatives) reflecting about language learning (e.g., attitudes, beliefs, strategies...) centring teaching on learning (promoting reflection, experimentation, regulation, and negotiation) experimenting with learning strategies (in and outside class ) articulating personal and social dimensions of learning (attending to individual and collective interests, needs, ideas, and experiences) regulating learning (planning, monitoring, evaluating learning) inquiring into teaching and learning (collecting and analysing evidence to understand and reshape practice) negotiating meanings and decisions (interacting, collaborating, taking initiatives, making choices and decisions) sharing ideas and practices with peers (promoting the collaborative construction of knowledge in the professional community) during case analysis, creating a conversational, nonjudgemental atmosphere is of the utmost importance so that teachers feel free to present and confront points of view. my main role as teacher educator is to facilitate collaborative reflection. rather than seeking consensus, i try to promote divergent thinking and the confrontation of perspectives. narratives used for case analysis illustrate autonomy-oriented inquiry and prepare teachers for case construction, whereby they become authors of their own autonomy stories. this means that those narratives must be inspiring examples of how teachers might engage in classroom inquiry to enhance and evaluate learner-centred teaching. case construction case construction is the major component of the course and takes place after at least one narrative has been analysed. it combines the development of small-scale action research projects in schools with the production of narratives of classroom-based inquiry, where teachers document and interpret their efforts to enact pedagogical change. action research plans are ideally designed in small groups to enhance collaborative reflection, and even though all teachers in the group are free to carry out the plan, adapting it to their own teaching contexts, only one of the experiences is considered for in-depth analysis and narrative writing. this means that each group decides who the universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras148 vieira “experimenter teacher” is, and his/her experience is accompanied by the other group members through lesson observation whenever possible and in group meetings. the group is responsible for designing, analysing, and narrating their case, which prevents bias through the negotiation of perspectives. teachers start by reflecting on pedagogical problems they would like to surpass so as to identify a topic of inquiry. a planning grid is provided where they register decisions regarding the issue they want to tackle and why, the context and objectives of the intervention, the classroom procedures and materials, and the data collection strategies to evaluate the experience (e.g., learner questionnaires and self-evaluation checklists, learning and teaching journals, lesson obser vation, analysis of learner performance). i accompany the planning stage and help teachers design teaching and data collection materials. each experience is then conducted in three to four language lessons. finally, they write a narrative to describe and interpret the experience. in order to support narrative writing, some guiding questions are provided: • does the narrative have an appealing title? • is it divided into sections that make its presentation clear? • does it present the topic, the objectives, and the context of the experience? • are the innovative features of the experience pointed out? • is the relation between the experience and learner autonomy clear? • are the stages of the experience described? • are the materials used presented? • are the data collected presented? • is the experience interpreted in light of data and theoretical input? • are learner and teacher gains pointed out? • are future practices suggested on the basis of evaluation? teachers are encouraged to develop a “language of experience” (larrosa bondía, 2010), a hybrid language that combines creativity with rigour, personal insights and interpretations with a critical standpoint based on data collection and theoretical input. as golombek and johnson (2017) suggest, narrative writing should help teachers “externalize” their understandings and feelings regarding their experience, but also “verbalize” academic concepts that they use “to re-examine, rename, and reorient their everyday experiences” (p. 18). therefore, writing becomes a form of talking from the self rather than about the self (contreras & pérez de lara, 2010), which prevents excessive subjectivity and makes narratives potentially useful for other teachers to build on. writing should enhance critical thinking through the integration of experience, theory, and practical wisdom (lunenberg & korthagen, 2009). during the process of writing, i choose not to give feedback on the teachers’ provisional texts. i explain that writing should be experienced as a (self)discovery process of inquiry (van manen, 1990), that they need to struggle with so as to make sense of practice and find an appropriate language as authors of autonomy stories. therefore, i provide feedback only on the final version of the narratives, which are used for course assessment. narrative assessment is based on four general criteria discussed at the beginning of the course: ability to innovate by reshaping previous teaching practices and using strategies to promote learner autonomy; articulating theory and practice by using theoretical knowledge to justify choices and analyse the experience; articulating teaching and research by using data collection strategies and analysing the experience on the basis of data and theoretical input; and formal correction at the level of language, textual organization, and bibliographic references. i provide constructive feedback on the teachers’ narratives, and i ask groups to revise them as an optional task so that i can use them with other teachers for case analysis. over the years, i have gathered a bank of cases, and in 2014 i edited a book with six narratives (vieira, 149profile: issues teach. prof. dev., vol. 22 no. 1, jan-jun, 2020. issn 1657-0790 (printed) 2256-5760 (online). bogotá, colombia. pages 143-158 pedagogy of experience in teacher education for learner and teacher autonomy 2014). i will draw upon them in the following section so as to illustrate how autonomy-oriented pedagogical inquiry is developed by teachers.3 teachers’ narratives of autonomy-oriented inquiry the potential value of the approach proposed above can be understood by looking at teachers’ narratives. as johnson and golombek (2002) point out, “teachers’ stories of inquiry are not only about professional development; they are professional development. narrative inquiry becomes a means through which teachers actualize their ways of knowing and growing that nourish and sustain their professional development throughout their careers” (p. 6). the six narratives were written by 21 experienced english teachers, all female, who worked in groups to design small-scale action research projects carried out by one teacher in each group, in one of her classes, in three to four lessons. the projects were developed in portuguese regular state schools, in classes with 11 to 27 students from grades 9 (five cases) and 10 (one case). table 1 summarises the didactic topics, perceived problems, purposes, and strategies of inquiry. all the projects account for the adoption of learner-centred teaching as a central feature of pedagogy for autonomy, emerging from concerns with learning and reshaping teaching so as to enhance learning. the teachers designed tasks and materials that fostered both language and learning competences. questionnaires and self/ peer assessment checklists were built to raise students’ awareness of and participation in the teaching-learning process, and allowed teachers to collect invaluable data to interpret, readjust, and evaluate their approach. although class time used in these projects is short, pedagogical tasks and roles are significantly reshaped. for example, the teachers who explored homework 3 the narratives were originally published in the teachers’ mother tongue and all excerpts were translated here into english. (brandão, monteiro, & costa, 2014) realised “the need to question its goals and nature, and fight back feelings of dissatisfaction from students and teachers” (p. 52). they were concerned that their homework assignments were mostly aimed at reinforcing language learned in class and students were not motivated to do them. in a questionnaire to students, they found that many associated homework with the ideas of obligation, routine, and boredom. in order to change this situation, they decided to make homework more learner-centred by enhancing learner creativity and self-direction. the teacher who implemented the project had been teaching her students how to write a summary, and the students were invited to imagine a story for a book or a film, write a summary of the story, and produce the front and back covers of the book or the movie cd-rom, where they had to include the summary, metadata, and an illustration. they were also involved in self/peer-assessment of this task on the basis of criteria regarding the adequacy of the summary and the verbal and visual information provided. this approach led to a new understanding of homework as an activity that can be engaging and promote both language and learning competences. moving towards learner-centred pedagogies entailed the enactment of principles of pedagogy for autonomy. this is illustrated here in the case of improving oral presentations in class (s. ferreira, ribeiro, & pereira, 2014). the teachers felt that students often failed to prepare and present their assignments properly, and they decided to reinforce teacher support and independent work. in their narrative, they present a table comparing previous routines to the new approach. pedagogical changes indicated in italics in the right-hand column of table 2 (adapted from s. ferreira et al., 2014, p. 116) show how previous practices were reshaped through integrating the principles of autonomy support, responsibility and choice, self-regulation, and assessment for learning. according to jiménez raya et al. (2017), “autonomy support” entails helping learners develop their ability to learn and make informed choices, which in this case universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras150 vieira consisted of indicating learning resources they might consult, clarifying criteria for assessing oral performance, and supporting them during the preparation for oral presentations; promoting “responsibility and choice” means allowing students to make decisions regarding what and how they learn, in this case by letting them choose a topic and thus enhance peer negotiation through cooperative learning; fostering “self-regulation” implies creating opportunities for students to plan, monitor, and evaluate learning, which was accomplished by giving them some freedom regarding topics and how they were to be approached, and by promoting self/peer-assessment of oral performance based on the criteria set, through direct observation and listening to audiotapes of oral presentations; as regards “assessment for learning”, that is, formative assessment that contributes to enhancing learning, assessment procedures involved the students’ reflection on what oral presentations require and how they could assess and improve their own performance according to the criteria used. table 1. teacher inquiry: topics, problems, purposes, and strategies topics perceived problems purposes of inquiry main strategies homework poor learner engagement in homework assignments making homework more self-directed and creative learner questionnaire about homework; innovative homework tasks; analysis of learner performance in homework tasks; self/ peer-assessment of homework tasks; learner questionnaire to evaluate the project. reading comprehension poor learner engagement and effectiveness in reading assignments understanding reading difficulties and changing reading strategies learner questionnaire about reading; innovative reading tasks; analysis of learner performance in reading tasks; self-assessment of reading tasks; learner questionnaire to evaluate the project. oral interaction learner difficulties in coping with oral interaction enhancing the preparation of interaction and the use of communication strategies negotiation of role-play situation; role-play task prepared by learners; self-assessment of performance and strategies (pre/post-task); teacher observation of learner performance; learner questionnaire to evaluate the project. oral presentations learner difficulties in coping with oral presentations of research-based work enhancing the preparation of oral presentations and learner involvement in assessing oral performance learner questionnaire about oral presentations; raising awareness of preparation strategies and assessment criteria; collaborative preparation of oral presentations; self-assessment of oral performance; comparison of learner and teacher assessments; learner questionnaire to evaluate the project. oral reading low learner confidence and engagement in oral reading enhancing expressive reading and learner self-confidence in oral reading raising awareness of quality criteria in oral reading; collaborative preparation of oral reading task (a play); oral reading and selfassessment of reading performance (pre/posttask); dialogue about the project. cooperative learning lack of teachers’ confidence and experience in promoting group work promoting cooperative learning learner questionnaire about collaborative work; cooperative learning tasks; learner self-assessment of cooperative learning tasks; teachers’ collaborative journal along the project. 151profile: issues teach. prof. dev., vol. 22 no. 1, jan-jun, 2020. issn 1657-0790 (printed) 2256-5760 (online). bogotá, colombia. pages 143-158 pedagogy of experience in teacher education for learner and teacher autonomy table 2. reshaping pedagogical practice: oral presentations previous teacher’s routine new approach t indicates a topic for the whole class, proposes an outline for oral presentations, highlights useful language items (with ss’ collaboration), and presents criteria to assess oral presentations. t indicates three topics for ss to choose one, proposes an outline for oral presentations, highlights useful language items (with ss’ collaboration), indicates websites for research, and presents criteria to assess oral presentations and simplified descriptors to clarify each criterion. ss prepare individual presentations outside class by researching topics, writing texts, and training outside class. ss prepare collaborative presentations (in pairs) by researching topics, writing texts, and training outside and inside class, with direct t support. ss present their work individually and t assesses presentations. ss present their work in pairs and presentations are taperecorded; t assesses presentations and pairs self-assess presentations, using a common assessment tool with criteria discussed before; ss listen to audiotaped performances and self-assess again; t and ss compare assessments. note. t = teacher, ss = students. adapted from s. ferreira et al. (2014), p. 116. a central aspect of learner-centred pedagogies is learners’ engagement in reflections on learning for developing metacognitive knowledge about themselves as learners (person knowledge), about the nature of specific learning tasks (task knowledge), and about learning strategies (strategy knowledge). although metacognitive knowledge may be acquired consciously or unconsciously, bringing it to consciousness and talking about it will enhance its development and support autonomy (wenden, 1999). this is well expressed by the teachers who explored oral interaction in class (costa & barreiro, 2014) when they write that learning to talk for communicative purposes is important, yet not enough: “talking to learn is also necessary, because it is necessary to talk about what one learns and how one learns, to talk to learn to negotiate and make decisions” (p. 90). these teachers devised a role play activity to be performed in pairs—“an appointment with the doctor”. the students had to prepare for the interaction and selfassess their communicative ability before and after the role play as regards language functions they needed to fulfil (e.g., ask/tell about a health problem). they were also taught a number of communication strategies they might use in case of communication breakdowns (e.g., rephrasing, asking for clarification), and they reflected on the strategies used during the role play. therefore, they not only developed interaction skills but also skills to reflect and talk about interaction itself. as illustrated by the previous cases, learning how to learn through metacognitive awareness-raising was always connected with the enhancement of language competences. another example is the narrative on oral reading (teixeira, neves, serdoura, & monteiro, 2014), which shows how learning about and assessing oral reading was successfully linked to developing oral reading skills. the teachers devised a plan that started with the oral reading of a short play with no previous preparation, intentionally reproducing a mainstream classroom procedure that often results in poor, meaningless readings. students were then led to brainstorm the difficulties they felt and why, which was the basis for agreeing on what oral reading entails (performance criteria) and how it can be improved (learning strategies). they were subsequently asked to prepare for the universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras152 vieira oral reading of the same play in groups, and they could tape-record their readings for analysing and solving problems. after enacting the play before the class, they self-assessed their performance in a questionnaire where they compared the first and final oral readings, that is, reading without and with preparation. table 3 (teixeira et al., 2014, p. 142) presents data from students’ selfassessment and their perceptions of progress regarding the performance criteria discussed before: intonation and expressive reading, rhythm and punctuation, pronunciation, fluency, and comprehension. for each of these aspects, the questionnaire indicated the problems that were initially brainstormed with the teacher’s support, which shows how self-assessment instruments can be built from students’ ideas, potentially enhancing their understanding of and involvement in metacognitive development processes. table 3. students’ self-assessment: oral reading (n = 11) problems initial reading final reading √ ? x √ ? x intonation and expressive reading i was not expressive i read in a very low voice 3 2 8 7 0 2 0 1 1 0 10 10 rhythm and punctuation i did not follow the punctuation 4 3 4 0 3 8 pronunciation i did not say the words well i felt difficulties in pronouncing the words 5 5 6 6 0 0 1 0 2 5 8 6 fluency i did not read continuously i hesitated with or at some words 3 5 4 4 4 2 0 0 4 8 7 3 comprehension i did not understand the meaning of words i had no reading instructions 4 7 7 3 0 1 0 0 1 1 10 10 note. √ = i felt this problem a lot, ? = i felt this problem a little, x = i did not feel this problem at all. table 4 presents a summary of metacognitive knowledge developed across the six experiences through various kinds of strategies: initial and final questionnaires, pre/post-task self-assessment checklists, and conversations and input about learning. initial questionnaires were aimed at getting to know the students’ opinions and experiences regarding language learning and the project topics, which was the starting point for raising learning awareness and for devising tasks that were appropriate for the class; self-assessment checklists allowed the students to monitor their performance in specific language tasks and evaluate their educational value, which raised their awareness of progress and difficulties, and also of task rationales; classroom conversations, namely when clarifying task demands and purposes, or when discussing results from questionnaires and checklists, were an opportunity to negotiate understandings on how students might better improve learning. table 4. developing students’ metacognitive knowledge person knowledge: knowledge about… task knowledge: knowledge about… strategy knowledge: knowledge about… previous/ current learning experiences and approaches. competence/ performance (strengths and weaknesses) in specific learning areas or tasks. factors that constrain/ favour learning. nature of and requirements for specific learning tasks. value of teaching and learning approaches. meta/cognitive, affective, and communicative strategies for specific learning areas or tasks. strategies to improve learning. 153profile: issues teach. prof. dev., vol. 22 no. 1, jan-jun, 2020. issn 1657-0790 (printed) 2256-5760 (online). bogotá, colombia. pages 143-158 pedagogy of experience in teacher education for learner and teacher autonomy in developing their projects, teachers created new learning environments where students could expand their voice, take some control over their learning, and influence the course of teaching. in the case on reading comprehension (p. ferreira, precioso, vilela, barros, & azevedo, 2014), the teachers write about how school cultures are often built “towards silencing the students’ voice”, and how students “appear to be moulded to act according to that condition as their self is conditioned so as to not seeing beyond what they usually do” (p. 88). their experience involved making students more active readers by engaging them in exploring and reflecting on reading strategies. their intention is well expressed in their narrative title, which is also a summary of their answer to the question “what is this a case of ?”: breaking routines – reading with seeing eyes? seeing with reading eyes! helping students “see with reading eyes” involved: promoting awareness of reading strategies, creating conditions for meaningful reading, and fostering collaborative reflection on reading processes in class. in order to accomplish this, they devised two reading comprehension tasks with similar texts and a set of similar reading questions to be answered in writing, but in one of the tasks both the questions and the students’ replies were written in their mother tongue, which was a completely unfamiliar approach. the students were asked to reflect on their performance in both tasks, namely on whether the use of the mother tongue had helped them to better understand and reply to the questions, rather than copying chunks from the text as they often did when they did not understand the questions well or when they had problems in writing. the teachers and the students realised that this experiment allowed them to disclose reading problems and strategies, opening up new paths for exploring and assessing reading comprehension skills. the teachers felt that in seeking “to navigate towards the democratisation of the construction of knowledge, searching for a pedagogy for autonomy, the students’ voices broke the silence” (p. ferreira et al., 2014, p. 83). the metaphor of the journey is often found in teachers’ narratives to express the exploratory nature of their experiences. this metaphor is extensively used in the case on cooperative learning (vasconcelos, costa, & gonçalves, 2014), described by the teachers as “a journey through seas never navigated before” (p. 145). these teachers had given up using group work in their teaching mostly due to negative experiences related to students’ inefficiency and their own inability to monitor students’ work. they saw this as a limitation of their practice and decided to learn about cooperative learning. they devised cooperative tasks that promoted the students’ interdependence, social skills, and self-assessment of group work. moreover, they also decided to engage in collaborative journal writing among themselves, which was also a new experience for them. when referring to the motto “swim or sink together” used by johnson and johnson (1994) regarding cooperative learning, they state that “together in the boat of knowledge, teachers and students can surpass the small shipwrecks” (p. 165), thus stressing the educational value of co-constructed pedagogies where teacher and learner autonomy develop in tandem. in their narratives, teachers refer to the limited scope and impact of their innovations given the short duration of the experiences, but they also acknowledge significant changes in how pedagogical encounters were designed and carried out, with positive implications for students and for themselves as professionals. as benson (1996) points out, steps towards learner autonomy necessarily reshape roles and power relations in the classroom: because steps towards autonomy invariably problematize roles and power-relations, autonomization is necessarily a transformation of the learner as a social individual. in other words, autonomy not only transforms individuals, it also transforms the social situations and structures in which they are participants. (p. 34) in their journeys across the interspace between reality and ideals, teachers developed their professional autonomy by challenging established routines and carrying out practices that were more in tune with universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras154 vieira democratic values and with their own aspirations as educators. as expressed by the group that explored reading comprehension, inquiry played “a crucial role for understanding the oppressive forces that mould our mind, which, from a critical constructivist perspective, is essential to make informed decisions about who we want to be” (p. ferreira et al., 2014, p. 82). concluding remarks this paper presents a form of self-study whereby i analyse and disseminate my experience as a teacher educator, hopefully producing knowledge and insights that may be built upon by other teacher educators (see loughran, 2002; lunenberg & hamilton, 2008; zeichner, 2007). i have argued for a pedagogy of experience that creates opportunities for teachers to analyse and experience autonomy-oriented pedagogical inquiry, and even though my proposal refers to a particular te setting, it will hopefully resonate with other initiatives within in-service te where concerns with learner and teacher autonomy arise. one of the strengths of the approach is the combination of case analysis and case construction, but it is the latter that promotes more significant changes. the fact that i extracted ideas from six narratives limited the possibility of illustrating how each experience accounts for the promotion of autonomy, and this is a shortcoming of the analysis. nevertheless, it shows how teacher and learner autonomy can be explored as interconnected phenomena developing simultaneously within coconstructed, more democratic pedagogies. teachers developed their willingness to challenge ingrained practices, their ability to centre teaching on learning, and their belief in professional agency. as pointed out by jiménez raya et al. (2017), case construction “benefits teacher empowerment because it emerges directly from teachers’ concerns and aspirations, requires them to undertake a critical analysis of teaching, engages them in explorations of autonomy, and promotes reflective experiential writing” (p. 118). based on my experience, i would strongly recommend teacher educators to experiment with and inquire into experience-based approaches that combine case analysis and case construction. apart from the benefits pointed out before, case construction generates a bank of teacher narratives that can be subsequently used for case analysis, which is greatly appreciated by teachers as they can easily relate to the situations described by their colleagues. case construction is, however, a time-consuming task that needs to be adapted to te circumstances as regards the type and frequency of support, the complexity and duration of classroom experiences, the length of final narratives, and the quality of expected outcomes. it is also quite demanding as it involves the articulation between teaching and research, theory and practice, experience and writing, which means that case analysis and on-going support from the teacher educator are of paramount importance. as stressed by golombek and johnson (2017), “for teachers’ narrative inquiry to be professional development, that is for teachers to transform their thinking and doing of teaching through narrative inquiry, systematic and intentional mediation by teacher educators needs to be acknowledged and made explicit” (p. 17). over the years, i have observed a number of difficulties in case construction, particularly in the design of autonomy-oriented action research projects and in narrative writing, especially because these are new learning experiences for most teachers. this led me to introduce improvements to the approach, namely by making its rationale and purposes more explicit, enhancing dialogue and collaboration in class, providing written guidelines, and offering constructive feedback. it has certainly been a learning experience for me as well, with implications on the teachers’ learning processes and outcomes. nevertheless, variations on the quality of projects and narratives also result from differences regarding teachers’ previous background training and experience. collaboration among teachers may attenuate 155profile: issues teach. prof. dev., vol. 22 no. 1, jan-jun, 2020. issn 1657-0790 (printed) 2256-5760 (online). bogotá, colombia. pages 143-158 pedagogy of experience in teacher education for learner and teacher autonomy these differences, but we need to accept that professional learning is always dependent on factors that cannot be acted upon, and what really matters is that all teachers gain from the experience. i have never encountered situations where teachers were disengaged or ended up frustrated with their learning, which has greatly motivated me to go on exploring this approach. regarding the use of narratives as a vehicle for teacher inquiry, golombek and johnson (2017) stress that how teachers engage in narrative activity will shape what they learn (p. 18). in this case, the way teachers engage in narrative writing and what they can learn from it is directly influenced by the development of action research projects aimed at enhancing both learner and teacher autonomy. these projects are at the heart of case construction and determine the direction of innovation and professional growth. however, it is important to note that the ultimate goal of inquiry is not to turn teachers into researchers, but rather to empower them as language educators by fostering their belief in the value of experience for professional development, and increasing their ability to carry out and evaluate innovations that are locally relevant and personally meaningful. we need further accounts on the use of experiencebased, autonomy-oriented practices in language te contexts. local cases, like the one presented here, cannot aspire to produce generalizable knowledge. however, they can inspire other teacher educators and contribute to a more collective understanding of how te for autonomy might be developed. in order to inquire into the value of a pedagogy of experience, teacher-educatorsas-researchers may resort to a number of strategies, like teacher feedback questionnaires, narrative analysis, observation of autonomy-oriented practices developed in schools, and follow-up interviews or case studies to ascertain post-course impact of training. supporting the dissemination of teacher-authored narratives is also important, as they represent an invaluable legacy for other teachers and can be used in te settings. as shulman (2004b) suggests, cases “may well become, for teacher education, the lingua franca of teacher learning communities” (p. 544). despite all its benefits, a pedagogy of experience may find resistance in te cultures where teaching practice and teacher agency are undervalued. at my institution, especially in post-graduate programmes, i can find traces of a theory-to-practice rationale based on a taken-forgranted supremacy of academic knowledge as the only legitimate source for teacher development, along with a generalized view of post-graduate te as an introduction to academic research traditions. in our role as teacher educators we often need, like the teachers we work with, to challenge mainstream practices and become critical inquirers and agents of change. like teachers, we need to become authors of autonomy stories. references attard, k. 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(1994). learning together and alone: cooperative, competitive, and individualistic learning. massachusetts: allyn and bacon. kalaja, p., menezes, v., & barcelos, a. m. f. (eds.) (2008). narratives of learning and teaching efl. new york, us: palgrave macmillan. kincheloe, j. l. (2003). teachers as researchers: qualitative inquiry as a path to empowerment. london, uk: routledge falmer. https://doi.org/10.4324/9780203497319. 157profile: issues teach. prof. dev., vol. 22 no. 1, jan-jun, 2020. issn 1657-0790 (printed) 2256-5760 (online). bogotá, colombia. pages 143-158 pedagogy of experience in teacher education for learner and teacher autonomy larrosa bondía, j. (2010). herido de realidad y en busca de realidad. notas sobre los lenguajes de la experiencia. in j. contreras & n. pérez de lara (eds.), investigar la experiencia educativa (pp. 87-116). madrid, es: morata. loughran, j. 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(2015). a supervisão pedagógica como prática de transformação: o lugar das narrativas profissionais. revista eletrônica de educação, 9(3), 48-63. https://doi. org/10.14244/198271991380. sachs, g. m. t., & ho, b. (2011). using cases in efl/esl teacher education. innovation in language learning and teaching, 5(3), 273-289. https://doi.org/10.1080/17 501229.2010.537755. schön, d. a. (1987). educating the reflective practitioner. san francisco, us: jossey-bass publishers. schostak, j. (2000). developing under developing circumstances: the personal and social development of students and the process of schooling. in h. altrichter, & j. elliott (eds.), images of educational change (pp. 37-52). buckingham, uk: open university press. shulman, l. (2004a). just in case: reflections on learning from experience. in s. m. wilson (ed.), the wisdom of practice: essays on teaching, learning, and learning to teach (pp. 463-482). san francisco, us: jossey bass. shulman, l. (2004b). theory, practice, and the education of professionals. in s. m. wilson (ed.), the wisdom of practice: essays on teaching, learning, and learning to teach (pp. 521-544). san francisco, us: jossey bass. smyth, j. (ed.) (1987). educating teachers: changing the nature of pedagogical knowledge. london, uk: the falmer press. teixeira, a. c., neves, a. i., serdoura, h., & monteiro, i. (2014). leitura oral… qual é o drama afinal? in f. vieira (ed.), re-conhecendo e transformando a pedagogia: histórias de supervisão (pp. 130-144). santo tirso, pt: de facto editores. vasconcelos, a., costa, i., & gonçalves, p. (2014). todos a bordo – uma experiência de trabalho colaborativo. in f. vieira (ed.), re-conhecendo e transformando a pedagogia: histórias de supervisão (pp. 145-168). santo tirso, pt: de facto editores. van manen, m. (1990). researching lived experience: human science for an action sensitive pedagogy. new york, us: the state university of new york. vieira, f. (2010). towards teacher and learner autonomy: exploring a pedagogy of experience in teacher education. revista canaria de estudios ingleses, 61, 3-28. vieira, f. (ed.). (2014). re-conhecendo e transformando a pedagogia: histórias de supervisão. santo tirso, pt: de facto editores. wenden, a. l. (1999). metacognitive knowledge and language learning. applied linguistics, 19(4), 515-537. https://doi. org/10.1093/applin/19.4.515. zeichner, k. m. (1983). alternative paradigms of teacher education. journal of teacher education, 34(3), 3-9. https://doi.org/10.1177/002248718303400302. zeichner, k. (2007). accumulating knowledge across selfstudies in teacher education. journal of teacher education, 58(1), 36-46. https://doi.org/10.1177/0022487106296219. universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras158 vieira about the author flávia vieira is full professor at university of minho (portugal). her fields of study are language education, teacher education, pedagogical supervision, and the scholarship of teaching and learning in higher education. acknowledgments this work is funded by cied – research centre on education, project uid/ced/01661/2019, institute of education, university of minho, through national funds of fct/mctes-pt. 121profile: issues teach. prof. dev., vol. 20 no. 1, jan-jun, 2018. issn 1657-0790 (printed) 2256-5760 (online). bogotá, colombia. pages 121-134 https://doi.org/10.15446/profile.v20n1.63032 scaffolding the learning-to-teach process: a study in an efl teacher education programme in argentina1 el andamiaje del proceso de aprender a enseñar: un estudio en un programa de formación de profesores de inglés como lengua extranjera en argentina maría gimena san martín2* universidad nacional de córdoba, córdoba, argentina this study seeks to examine how a supervisor scaffolds the student-teachers’ learning-to-teach process in the context of one-to-one tutoring sessions in an english as a foreign language teacher education programme in argentina. the findings indicate that scaffolding implies two main phases: a diagnostic and an intervention phase. moreover, the supervisor was found to provide contingent help, which suited the student-teachers’ perceived needs and/or difficulties. in conclusion, scaffolded help should be understood in relation to the function it serves and how it accommodates the students’ level of understanding. key words: learning-to-teach, scaffolding, student-teachers, supervisor, teacher education. este estudio tiene el propósito de examinar como una supervisora orienta a los profesores en formación durante su proceso de aprender a enseñar en el contexto de tutorías uno-a-uno de un profesorado de lengua extranjera–inglés en argentina. los resultados muestran que el andamiaje consiste en dos fases principales: una de diagnóstico y otra de intervención. además, se determinó que la supervisora proveía ayuda contingente, la cual se adaptaba a las necesidades y/o dificultades de los futuros profesores. en conclusión, el andamiaje debe ser entendido en relación con la función que cumple y cómo se adapta al nivel de comprensión de los profesores en formación. palabras clave: andamiaje, aprender a enseñar, formación de profesores, profesores en formación, supervisora. 1 this paper was written as part of the author’s thesis, submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the ma degree in english (applied linguistics), at facultad de lenguas, universidad nacional de córdoba, argentina. * e-mail: mariagimenasanmartin@gmail.com how to cite this article (apa, 6th ed.): san martín, m. g. (2018). scaffolding the learning-to-teach process: a study in an efl teacher education programme in argentina. profile: issues in teachers’ professional development, 20(1), 121-134. https://doi.org/10.15446/profile. v20n1.63032. this article was received on march 1, 2017, and accepted on september 10, 2017. this is an open access article distributed under the terms of the creative commons license attribution-noncommercial-noderivatives 4.0 international license. consultation is possible at https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/. universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras122 san martín introduction second language teacher education (slte) can be described as an evolving field. wright (2010) contends that in the 1980’s slte mainly focused on teaching methods and techniques whereas towards the end of the century, it became more concerned with learning to teach. freeman and johnson (1998) argue in favour of a reconceptualised knowledge base of slte, which encompasses three domains: “(a) the nature of the teacher-learner, (b) the nature of schools and schooling, and (c) the nature of language teaching” (p. 406). in a similar vein, sociocultural theory (sct) (vygotsky, 1978) has influenced slte as teacher education programmes have come to conceive of student-teachers as “a community of learners engaged in social practices and the collaborative construction of meanings” and have advocated teaching modes which involve “dialogue and collaborative inquiry” (richards, 2008, pp. 164-165). activities that foster this form of joint participation help the student-teachers engage in conversation with teacher educators, school-based tutors, peers, and school authorities and learn from these formative meetings. teaching practice offers a multiplicity of opportunities to work with others; however, most of the research carried out has tended to focus on post-observation conferences and the feedback that the student-teachers are given after teaching a lesson (brandt, 2008; copland, 2010; tang & chow, 2007). much less is known about other instructional practices such as tutoring sessions which involve dialogue and collaborative inquiry. from the perspective of sct, teacher educators play a crucial part since they need to effectively address each student-teacher’s individual zones of proximal development in order to enhance their potential for learning and focus not only on what they can already do on their own but also on what they can attain with the help of others. therefore, one of the key skills that they need to develop is to scaffold the studentteachers’ learning-to-teach process. how and to what extent scaffolding unfolds in these tutoring sessions is the main concern of the present investigation. literature review the last decades have witnessed a steady growth in research on teacher education and development from the perspective of sct. adequate guidance or scaffolding is an essential process to assist and guide the prospective teachers to complete a task successfully or achieve a goal (wood, bruner, & ross, 1976). in a case study involving a university supervisor (us), a cooperating teacher (ct), and a pre-service teacher (pt) in physical education during the field placement, cartaut and bertone (2009) explored the specific and complementary scaffolding modalities used by the two teacher educators as well as their effects on the pt’s professional activity development. the researchers reported that the us supported the pt by suggesting directions for finding solutions and by raising new concerns about the requirements of the teaching profession in general and of the training institute in particular. it was further found that the ct’s scaffolding activity comprised the provision of alternative actions both in terms of goals and concrete operations. in addition, the pt revealed that his views and actions in the classroom changed as a result of the us’s and ct’s joint and complementary scaffolding processes in the advisory visit and the ct’s follow-up in the field training interactions. these results provided evidence of the scaffolds the two teacher educators deployed and the role that the support or scaffolding modalities played to help the pt develop professionally. scaffolding can also be used as a strategy to prompt student-teachers to self-analyse and question their past experiences and current beliefs. van zoest and stockero (2008) conducted research to examine the role of synergistic scaffolds (tabak, 2004) in supporting knowledge of self-as-teacher. the researchers designed and implemented six scaffolds in a secondary school mathematics teacher preparation program. they concluded that the student-teachers had developed a sense of self-as-teacher and that the scaffolds had served the purpose of prompting changes. to 123profile: issues teach. prof. dev., vol. 20 no. 1, jan-jun, 2018. issn 1657-0790 (printed) 2256-5760 (online). bogotá, colombia. pages 121-134 scaffolding the learning-to-teach process: a study in an efl teacher education programme in argentina a lesser extent, some changes not prompted by the instructor were introduced; an action which points at influences other than the specific six scaffolds. they also explored the pre-service teachers’ perceptions of the usefulness of the six scaffolds in supporting their thinking. all participants reported that the scaffolds had encouraged them to think more thoroughly than they would have otherwise, and alluded to their synergistic use. the researchers claim to have addressed the student-teachers’ learning needs when designing and implementing the scaffolds; nevertheless, when stating the limitations of the study, van zoest and stockero call for the systematic diagnosis of pre-service teachers’ learning needs, which represent another dimension of scaffolding that was not analysed in this study. in order to research trainer talk from a linguistic point of view in the context of an ma class of turkish pre-service english teachers, engin (2013) analysed the trainer’s intervention strategies deployed in the post observation conferences as a means to scaffold the trainees’ reflections and classify them according to different levels of intervention. afterward, the author found five different levels of trainer scaffolding in the interactions studied, ranging from least to direct intervention. cartaut and bertone’s (2009), engin’s (2013), and van zoest and stockero’s (2008) research studies examine scaffolding provided to either pre-service or in-service teachers as an aid to support different activities. nevertheless, these studies only analyse the scaffolding process from the perspective of support, thus focusing solely on scaffolded help in terms of intervention strategies. van de pol (2012) points out that not all forms of support can be equated with scaffolding since the assistance provided needs to be contingent upon the learners’ current level of understanding and faded over time. some studies have analysed scaffolding from the perspective of contingent support. for example, chin (2007) carried out research to explore how teachers use questions to scaffold student thinking and knowledge construction. lessons taught by six secondary school science teachers were audiotaped and videotaped. the different questioning techniques used by the teachers were identified. it was also found that the teachers’ questions built on a preceding student contribution and served as “rungs of a ‘cognitive ladder’ enabling students to gradually ascend to higher levels of knowledge and understanding” (p. 837). therefore, the teachers’ questions were contingent in that they adjusted to the knowledge base of the students. researchers van de pol, volman, and beishuizen (2011) conducted research to investigate the one-toone and small-group teacher-student interactions in order to describe the process of scaffolding. the study involved three social studies teachers working at secondary education innovative schools of lower prevocational education in the netherlands. these innovative schools, contrary to more traditional schools, were expected to show more instances of contingent teaching and autonomous student learning, which are key features of scaffolding. the researchers observed that in two thirds of the non-contingent interactions, the teachers did not use diagnostic strategies. lack of diagnostic strategies was found to occur along with miscommunication in many cases. that teachers resort to different strategies and skills to support and scaffold student learning is generally accepted notion. the studies that examine scaffolding and equate it with teacher help or support have identified numerous ways in which this scaffolded help can be realized. in addition, since these studies are mainly descriptive, the number of skills and strategies identified is quite comprehensive depending on their context of study. the review of the literature also emphasizes the fact that teachers need to diagnose and identify their learners’ needs before actually giving support. therefore, they scaffold their students’ learning by making use of diagnostic strategies and providing contingent support. universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras124 san martín theoretical framework this research study is theoretically anchored on sct (vygotsky, 1978), which provides a detailed account of the interrelationship between learning and development. vygotsky (1978) contended that psychometric tests only reflected the learners’ current developmental level and disregarded their potential abilities. sct distinguishes two developmental levels. the actual developmental level refers to the individual’s mental functions that are already completed or matured, which enable the individuals to perform activities on their own without any help. however, an individual’s mental development is also indicated by those abilities that are under the process of maturation and that enable individuals to achieve different learning goals with the assistance of others. this stage is called the potential developmental level. the child is conceived of as an integrated whole of relationships that comprise developed and developing higher mental functions acquired through collaboration (chaiklin, 2003). vygotsky introduced the core concept of the zone of proximal development (zpd) and defined it as “the distance between the actual developmental level as determined by independent problem solving and the level of potential development as determined through problem solving under adult guidance or in collaboration with more capable peers” (p. 86). this key construct helps explain how learning can foster qualitative developmental changes (lantolf & thorne, 2006). therefore, from a vygotskian perspective learning is in advance of development as the former triggers different developmental processes when the individuals interact with experts or more capable peers in their environment. co-constructed knowledge and abilities become internalized and new zpds emerge. chaiklin (2003) states that the zpd is not a fixed feature as it evolves across age periods and constitutes a potential for learning (wells, 1999). the zpd has significant implications for teaching and learning. vygotsky (1978) calls for diagnostic procedures to ground the teachers’ pedagogical interventions and assess the learners’ zpd by determining maturing functions. in classroom settings, teachers can play a key role in guiding the learners’ course of learning and, thus, development by drawing on their existing capabilities and creating the appropriate conditions for learning (lantolf & thorne, 2006). therefore, scaffolding (wood et al., 1976) can be a useful strategy to help learners move across different zpds since it involves the support a teacher gives to a learner when carrying out a task which he/she would not be able to accomplish on his/her own (van de pol, volman, & beishuizen, 2010). method bearing in mind the numerous characteristics of qualitative research identified by different scholars (creswell, 2003; dörnyei, 2007; hatch, 2002; mackey & gass, 2005) one can see the present study is mainly framed within a qualitative methodology. to start with, the transcriptions of the on-going interactions between the participants enabled me as a researcher to have access to rich and complex details which, in turn, catered for a rich description of the scaffolding process in the setting investigated. secondly, the research setting itself involved a naturalistic kind of inquiry (lincoln & guba as cited in hatch, 2002) since scaffolding was studied in its naturally-occurring situation without manipulating any variables. thirdly, studying the phenomenon in its natural context also contributed to understanding scaffolding from an “insider perspective” (dörnyei, 2007, p. 38). finally, although the study comprised a thick description of the scaffolding process, i sought to go further into an interpretative stage by making personal meanings while taking into account my role as researcher and my own personal biases and value stance as a practicum supervisor. the research also involves a case study design. the interactions in which a student-teacher’s learning is scaffolded by a practicum supervisor during tutoring 125profile: issues teach. prof. dev., vol. 20 no. 1, jan-jun, 2018. issn 1657-0790 (printed) 2256-5760 (online). bogotá, colombia. pages 121-134 scaffolding the learning-to-teach process: a study in an efl teacher education programme in argentina sessions in the context of an english as a foreign language (efl) teacher education programme is, therefore, the case or unit of analysis of the present work. context this study took place in the context of the last practicum student-teachers had to undertake in an efl teacher education programme at a tertiary level teacher education college in córdoba, argentina. the practicum comprises both observing lessons taught by a graduate teacher and taking a total of about ten practica. the practicum supervisor and the studentteachers met regularly during one-to-one tutoring sessions and post-observation conferences. this study was particularly concerned with the one-to-one tutoring-sessions that the practicum supervisor held with student-teachers weekly as a course requirement. they met in order to discuss lesson plans, require assistance, comment on previously taught lessons, and exchange views on changes made to the lesson plans after being suggested by the supervisor by email, among other issues. participants one practicum supervisor and ten student-teachers participated in the study. the supervisor was an efl teacher who had 23 years of teaching experience and 20 years of in-service supervisory experience. furthermore, she had worked as a practicum supervisor and a methods teacher for nine years. at the time of data collection, the practicum supervisor had already supervised and assessed all of the ten studentteachers during the first and second practicums. the student-teachers were all 4th year students, who were undertaking the last practicum before majoring in the teaching of efl. their ages ranged from 21 to 55. while three of the pre-service teachers had considerable previous teaching experience, most of them lacked experience teaching english. data collection all the one-to-one tutoring sessions between the supervisor and each student-teacher were audiorecorded. the supervisor was asked to hold them as usual and record the full interactions no matter what subject matter was being discussed. the use of the audio-recordings allowed me to capture the scaffolding process in a naturally occurring situation, in which i was interested as a practicum supervisor and researcher. furthermore, since the focus of the study was on the on-going interactions between the participants, especially the ways in which they discussed different aspects of teaching practice and responded to each other’s words and/or comments, the audio recordings provided me with accurate and detailed data about the complexities and subtleties of the phenomena studied. they also enabled me to get a verbatim account of everything that was said, listen to the conversations countless times, and carry out macroand micro-level analyses. a word must also be said about the limitations of using audio recordings. in this particular case, although it was agreed with the supervisor that the full interactions would be recorded, some parts might have been omitted since it was the supervisor who decided when to turn on the recorder and when to turn it off; therefore, the recordings might not provide a fully accurate picture of the interactions. moreover, the impact that recording the conversations might have had on the participants’ behaviour should not be overlooked and, therefore, claims should be carefully made. data analysis data analysis comprised different steps. firstly, the data from the audio recordings were transcribed without deleting any parts in order not to make any judgments in advance and to get to know about all of the information collected thoroughly (dörnyei, 2007). following dörnyei (2007), a “pick and mix procedure” (p. 248) was adopted to transcribe the data in order to fit my own research concerns (mackey & gass, 2005). universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras126 san martín the rationale for choosing certain conventions was: a focus on content and function as well as accessibility to readers. next, the data were read several times and then several criteria were established for selecting fragments for analysis. since the results of some of the research carried out earlier in the field of scaffolding and measuring instruments are already available, i opted for a tighter or deductive design (miles & huberman, 1994) with a pre-established set of analytic categories to describe and measure scaffolding. the teacher-students’ on-going interactions in the one-to-one tutoring sessions were analysed by resorting to the data-analysis instruments devised by van de pol (2012). in particular, the model of contingent teaching (mct) was deployed to carry out the analysis. nevertheless, i followed an open-ended dataled procedure and allowed newly conceived categories to emerge and be included in the analysis. the mct (see table 1) devised by van de pol (2012) serves as an instrument to describe the process of scaffolding in qualitative terms. the mct consists of four steps: 1. diagnostic strategies 2. checking the diagnosis 3. intervention strategies 4. checking student’s learning these steps uphold the interactive nature of scaffolding since each teacher’s turn is followed and thus determined by a student’s turn. the analysis focused on a qualitative examination of the scaffolding process. drawing on the mct, for each fragment, all teacher turns were coded as step 1, 2, 3, or 4, bearing in mind the function they served in relation to the student-teachers’ turns. the following step consisted of identifying the combinations of steps in each interaction fragment, that is to say, cycles of contingent teaching. to round off the analysis, all interaction fragments were coded for contingency. a fragment was considered contingent, and consequently, a scaffolding example if the supervisor first made use of a diagnostic strategy and then provided assistance which was tailored to meet the student-teacher’s needs or level of understanding. a fragment was coded as non-contingent, and consequently, a non-scaffolding example if no diagnostic strategy was employed and immediate support was provided by the supervisor. results the data analysed consisted of 24 tutoring sessions which were recorded by the practicum supervisor. the sessions varied in length, ranging from six to nineteen minutes. most of the sessions, however, lasted about 11 minutes. the sessions were further divided into 102 interaction fragments. all the student-teachers’ turns were analysed as a unit, so i did not distinguish among the different student-teachers. the results section examines how the scaffolding process unfolded in the one-to-one interactions between the practicum supervisor and the student-teachers. table 1. steps of the model of contingent teaching (adapted from van de pol, 2012, p. 85) step 1 diagnostic strategies step 2 checking the diagnosis step 3 intervention strategies step 4 checking student’s learning aim gain insights into the student’s level of understanding check whether the teacher understood the student in the correct way give actual support or help to the student find out the student’s new understandings after offering support 127profile: issues teach. prof. dev., vol. 20 no. 1, jan-jun, 2018. issn 1657-0790 (printed) 2256-5760 (online). bogotá, colombia. pages 121-134 scaffolding the learning-to-teach process: a study in an efl teacher education programme in argentina i provide a descriptive account of the steps taken by the supervisor by drawing on the analytic categories provided by van de pol (2012). it must be noted that the steps identified in the supervisor’s speech reflect the function they served in relation to the student-teachers’ reactions and/or responses, thus depicting the interactive nature of scaffolding. steps followed by the supervisor the practicum supervisor was observed to start the one-to-one tutoring sessions in three different ways after greeting the student-teachers and engaging in small talk. in two of these ways, the supervisor initiated the interaction herself. she either started to read the studentteachers’ lesson plan and made follow-up questions and/ or comments or encouraged the student-teachers to explain how they had planned their lessons, describe the activities, materials or procedures chosen, comment on and evaluate a previously-taught lesson, among others. the latter technique involved an explicit prompt on the part of the supervisor as the following examples illustrate: t: (asking the student-teacher to start explaining her lesson plan at the beginning of the tutoring session) what about you m——-? (session 2) t: (prompting the student-teacher to start explaining her lesson plan at the beginning of the tutoring session) tell me about your latest lesson.12 (session 4) the third way of starting a tutoring session was characterized by the student-teachers themselves initiating the interaction. in these interaction fragments, the student-teachers began to talk about any aspect of the teaching practice of their choice. they were found to start describing their lesson plan right away or raise an issue or difficulty they had had regarding, for example, lesson planning or class management during the previous lesson. the following examples illustrate this: 2 the original quote was in spanish. the translation was made for publication purposes. s1: (before explaining a lesson plan) this would be my third tuesday for the 6th class. (session 14) s2: (contextualizing the lesson planned) the thing is i have 120 minutes next thursday, so it’s a lot. some of the kids actually got the meaning of can, can’t and the question, but some of them, they didn’t, so i think…and a——[the cooperating teacher] told they need to cover can and then food. (session 8) the patterns of initiating interaction found in the data suggest an implicit agreement between the participants, in which each of them is equally entitled to put forth a topic for discussion. regarding the ways in which a tutoring session ended, the supervisor mainly provided feedback and/or told the student-teacher what to do next. the following excerpt illustrates how the supervisor ended a session. s2: (after discussing the activities and their sequencing) that would be it, i mean, for the last period. t: and a good transfer. it’s well-organized because you would be having the transfer part at the end. s2: yes, and i left this at the end because it’s actually production, not just completing. t: you’ve done a lot of practice, so i think this is fine. s2: yes. (session 8) bearing in mind the mct (van de pol, 2012), one can classify the supervisor’s steps as cycles, consisting of four steps (see table 1). after identifying the steps, all the interaction fragments were analysed for cycles of contingent teaching. no instances of step 4 were found in the whole data. the supervisor was found to use only incomplete cycles. 1-3 cycles (n = 59, 58%), which consisted of step 1 and step 3 turns were the most frequent ones. 1-2-3 cycles (n = 39, 38%) in which the supervisor made use of steps 1, 2, and 3 were also found but their frequency of occurrence was lower than that of 1-3 cycles. only four instances of 3 cycles were found (4%), which consisted of only a step 3 turn were observed. universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras128 san martín contingency in order to provide tailored assistance, a teacher needs to adjust his/her support to the student’s current level of understanding. from the perspective of the mct (van del pol, 2012) this can be achieved by means of diagnostic strategies which enable the teacher to gather information and decide on the most appropriate kind and amount of help to provide the students with. all interaction fragments were coded for contingency, taking into account whether the supervisor helped the student-teachers after having diagnosed their understanding through at least one diagnostic strategy. contingent cycles, in which the supervisor resorted to a diagnostic strategy before offering help, occurred most often (n = 98, 96%). due to the fact that the supervisor resorted to different diagnostic strategies in almost all the interactions analysed, very few non-contingent cycles, in which the supervisor gave immediate support, were found (n = 4, 4%). in most of the contingent interactions, the supervisor first diagnosed the student-teachers’ level of understanding by means of four different strategies, namely posing a diagnostic question, reading the student-teachers’ work, listening to the student-teachers’ explanations/choices, and/or diagnostic prompts. therefore, the support provided to aid their learning and understanding aimed to address the specific needs and difficulties the supervisor observed and/or the student-teacher expressed. in these cases, the teaching cycles were 1-3. on other occasions, the supervisor gathered some information about the student-teachers’ understanding and further inquired of the student-teacher in order to make sure that the assumptions she was making were accurate. in other words, the supervisor checked whether and/or to what extent her diagnosis was correct and/or reflected the student-teachers’ true level of understanding. in these cases, the teaching cycles were 1-2-3. resorting to a step 2 turn (checking diagnosis) enhanced the diagnostic phase and provided the supervisor with more precise information and, consequently, tools to give contingent support. the following example illustrates a contingent interaction fragment, which consisted of a 1-2-3 cycle (session 13). the turns in the fragment have been numbered and each step has been identified at the end of the corresponding turn to help the analysis. (1) t: ok, tell me. (step 1) (2) s3: [the students] are studying have got, so i thought that as earlier this morning they were reviewing it, they have already studied it, they are reviewing it. (3) t: then you don’t need to present it as a new topic. right? (step 2) (4) s3: i don’t have to present anything new. (5) (t is reading) (step 1) (6) s3: so, this is the exercise. they have to complete with the negative form or the other way around (?). i have problems with the timing. (7) t: what about a warming-up? you haven’t included anything in, you just, it’s like you get into the classroom and say “ok, hello, open the books.” have you thought of anything like that? (step 3) (8) s3: to be honest i did it so quickly. (9) t: because i think you… (10) s3: i’m going to come tomorrow, so that’s why i wanted you to correct some things. (11) t: i’d suggest you include a warming-up, especially because they don’t know you, you don’t know them, so something to break the ice that might be related to the topic or not, but it’s like a lead-in for practice in this case because you are not going to introduce anything, it would be interesting, it would be the best actually, so leave that. ok, let’s move on to the next part but please for tomorrow think about something through which they can actually remember, recycle, whatever in connection to in this case have and has got, so first this exercise, then, you have the warming-up and after that, you move to this exercise. (step 3) (12) s3: right as a way to start… (13) t: besides, you won’t’ be sure whether they remember the topic or not, the warming-up activity can help you to check that, how much they remember, because if you start with an exercise like this one without having checked if they remember, then maybe they cannot do it and the activity is spoiled and… (step 3) (14) s3: right, so that they know this topic well and can move into the following exercise smoothly. 129profile: issues teach. prof. dev., vol. 20 no. 1, jan-jun, 2018. issn 1657-0790 (printed) 2256-5760 (online). bogotá, colombia. pages 121-134 scaffolding the learning-to-teach process: a study in an efl teacher education programme in argentina (15) t: that’s right, the warming-up activity can also consist in rearranging the elements into a sentence, something fast. (step 3) (16) s3: now i remember [the cooperating teacher] told me that she had asked the students to bring pictures of monsters inc. to describe them, but they didn’t have enough time to do it, so i was thinking of doing it next monday. (17) t: ok, let’s hope they bring them again to class. (step 3) (18) s3: all of them brought the pictures this morning and asked her: “can we work with the pics?” they were really interested, so maybe i could work with the two leading characters during the warming-up so as to… (19) t: that would be fine. (step 3) (20) s3: maybe i could ask them a few questions or… (21) t: because they already know the interrogative form. (step 2) (22) s3: yes. (23) t: it’d be great then; you engage the students, check if they can do the activity and see if they remember el topic or not. (step 3) (24) s3: so, i’d do this activity to practice hasn’t and… (25) t: great.23 this fragment appeared at the beginning of tutoring session 13, so it depicts the exchanges that took place between the supervisor and one student-teacher regarding the starting point of a lesson plan. in this example, the supervisor prompted the student-teacher to explain the choices she had made for the upcoming lesson (step 1) and learnt in turn 2 that the studentteacher had to work with the structure have got. the information “earlier this morning they were reviewing it, they have already studied it, they are reviewing it” helped the supervisor assume that the student-teacher had planned a revision lesson. the supervisor’s statement in turn 3:“then you don’t need to present it as a new topic. right?” integrated this information and served to check whether her assumptions were correct (step 2). she restated the student-teacher’s explanation by referring to the idea of revision as not presenting a new 3 the original quote was in spanish. the translation was made for publication purposes. topic. the supervisor went on reading the lesson plan (step 1) to gain further insights into the student-teacher’s decisions and this diagnostic activity was enhanced when the student-teacher showed and briefly explained to the supervisor the first activity she had chosen. the fact that the student-teacher had chosen a transformation exercise to start the lesson (turn 6) helped the supervisor identify the first weakness that the lesson plan had since it lacked a warming-up activity as the following supervisor’s own words show: “you haven’t included anything in, you just, it’s like you get into the classroom and say ok, hello, open the books.” the different instances of support (step 3) which follow in the interaction (turns 7, 11, 13, 15, 17, 19, 23, and 25) stemmed from this perceived weakness and aimed to address it. turns 7, 11, 13, and 15 helped the student-teacher first think about including a warming-up activity and then consider the underlying reasons and a possible alternative. in turns 16, 18, and 20, the student-teacher came up with her own activity to start the lesson: describing the film monsters inc. and/or asking students questions about it. then, the supervisor specifically helped the student-teacher as regards this activity as can be seen in turns 17, 19, 23, and 25. this interaction fragment can be considered contingent since the help and support the supervisor gave was intrinsically linked to a particular weakness she had spotted. the interaction fragment that follows also illustrates the concept of contingency as it shows how the supervisor collected diagnostic information she could rely on to provide support. the fragment presents a 1-3 contingent cycle (session 1). (26) t: (t is listening) (step 1) (27) s4: well so the first activity, i was planning to do a very short warm-up, asking questions going back to do you like…? in english, just to make them feel comfortable, so i’m going to say: “good morning”, a bit of spanish and then come back “do you like cleaning your room?”, so “do you like cleaning your room? do you like washing the dishes?” yes, just to warm them. (28) t: ok, you may need visuals for that. (step 3) universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras130 san martín (29) s4: visual aids, yes pictures. (30) t: visual support, in case, there are too many so if the last person there in the room, you know, doesn’t hear… (step 3) (31) s4: or wears glasses… (32) t: oh that’s a detail. (33) s4: yes, i know how it feels (34) t: so you’ll need big pictures. (step 3) this fragment appeared at the beginning of session 1 after the participants had talked about the aim of the lesson and the number of students in the class. the supervisor got to know how the student-teacher had planned to start her lesson by listening to the student-teacher’s explanations/choices (step 1) as the sole diagnostic strategy. drawing on the information provided in turn 27, the supervisor assisted the studentteacher (step 3) by calling her attention to the usefulness of resorting to visual aids (turns 28 and 30). in turn 31, the student-teacher introduces the issue that some students may wear glasses, which triggered another piece of advice on the part of the supervisor (turn 34). all in all, the fragment was contingent since the help the supervisor provided was based on the information already gathered. non-contingent interactions occurred four times in the whole data set. drawing on the mct, they consisted of only a step 3 turn (intervention strategy). in these interactions, the supervisor provided help immediately without first gathering diagnostic information. these interactions were all initiated by the student-teachers and shared one feature: they raised an issue or concern the student-teachers had. that is to say, they did not involve explanations regarding the lesson plan. a noncontingent interaction is illustrated by the example that follows (session 2). the turns in the fragment have been numbered and each step has been identified at the end of the corresponding turn to help the analysis. (35) s3: and then exercise number 7 is rearrange, the same thing, i mean, the first time in class, i’m just revising, i cannot show things maybe i want to. (36) t: no problem. (step 3) (37) s3: maybe for later. (38) t: but you’ve been asked by the teacher. (step 3) (39) s3: right i have to continue. (40) t: if it was a substitution class. (41) s3: that would be my chance. (42) t: that would be your chance, so it’s just fine, the thing is how you would go through this. (step 3) (43) s3: in english and in spanish. (44) t: right, with your own style, that’s the important thing here. don’t worry about a bit of revision, don’t worry, you might have to introduce a topic or not in these training classes. (step 3) (45) s3: she told me later, the difference between will and going to and i’ll try to do it inductively. (46) t: so, we’ll see then. in this example, the student-teacher was concerned about not having the freedom to choose and/or design her own activities as seen in turn 35: “the first time in class, i’m just revising, i cannot show things maybe i want to.” the supervisor addressed this concern immediately in turn 36 till the end of the interaction (turns 38, 42, and 44), which rendered the fragment non-contingent as the supervisor did not make use of any diagnostic strategy to have a clearer picture of the student-teacher’s understanding. the findings described in the section above focused on the steps taken by the supervisor and the contingency of her help. all in all, contingent interaction fragments, which comprised 1-3 and 1-2-3 cycles, had the most occurrences. they were characterized by a key feature: diagnostic strategies informed the supervisor’s decisions as to how much and what kind of help the student-teachers required. these interaction fragments were thus found to be contingent. non-contingent interactions had the least number of occurrences. they were characterized by being initiated by the studentteachers’ concerns, which were immediately addressed by the supervisor. 131profile: issues teach. prof. dev., vol. 20 no. 1, jan-jun, 2018. issn 1657-0790 (printed) 2256-5760 (online). bogotá, colombia. pages 121-134 scaffolding the learning-to-teach process: a study in an efl teacher education programme in argentina discussion and conclusion this study has captured the interactive nature of scaffolding as the ways and the extent to which the supervisor’s actions and utterances served to scaffold the student-teachers’ learning-to-teach process in the context of the one-to-one tutoring sessions could only be understood by analysing them in relation to the student-teachers’ actions and utterances. in other words, the role of dialogue in the on-going interactions between the participants is a crucial component of scaffolding as several researchers contend (puntambekar & kolodner, 2005; stone, 1998a, 1998b; tharp & gallimore, 1991; wertsch, 1979). from a qualitative perspective, the findings of this study suggest that the scaffolding process in the tutoring sessions comprises two main steps or phases: a diagnostic phase and an intervention phase. the mct distinguishes step 1 turns (diagnostic strategies) from step 2 turns (checking the diagnosis). resorting to only step 1 turns or both step 1 and step 2 turns together reveals the supervisor’s need to gather essential information in which to ground her decisions as to what type of and how much help or assistance to give the student-teachers. in the tutoring sessions, the use of step 2 turns seems to reinforce the diagnostic phase since it serves to round-off the supervisor’s assumptions and/or get a more focused idea of the student-teachers’ level of understanding. therefore, step 2 turns may be subsumed under the diagnostic phase since their purpose resembles and complements that of step 1 turns. the intervention phase is manifested by the use of multiple and simultaneous ways of offering help, which lends support to the use of synergistic scaffolds proposed by tabak (2004). in the study described here, teaching cycles, which consisted of 1-3 or 1-2-3 steps of the mct, were the most recurrent ones. consequently, the findings indicate that a diagnostic phase made up of either step 1 or of both steps 1-2 is common practice in the tutoring sessions. however, other studies have found the use of diagnostic strategies to be scarce (van de pol et al., 2011). this difference may be motivated by the expected or defined structure of the one-to-one tutoring sessions in the context researched here. one of the teachers in van de pol et al.’s (2011) study was found to base his help on his beliefs about what is difficult for students, and it was found that another teacher rarely resorted to diagnostic strategies due to time-constraints. in the tutoring sessions, the student-teachers were expected to explain their choices and the decisions behind lesson planning. in other cases, the supervisor read their lesson plans. there seemed to be a negotiated agreement between the participants as to how the tutoring sessions should proceed. both activities provided the supervisor with clear insights into the student-teachers’ level of understanding as well as their learning needs. this pre-defined structure of the tutoring sessions gives the supervisor plenty of information on which to draw in order to provide the most adequate amount and type of help or assistance required. the supervisor hardly ever provided support without first gathering information about the student-teachers’ level of understanding. this was only found to occur in cases in which the studentteachers initiated the interaction by raising a difficulty or concern they had, which was immediately addressed by the supervisor. to sum-up, the structure and the overall purpose of the tutoring sessions imply an initial stage of diagnosis which pre-determines the function of both the supervisor’s and the student-teachers’ actions and utterances. the fact that complete teaching cycles consisting of steps 1-2-3-4 were not identified in the one-to-one tutoring sessions analysed here is noteworthy. the supervisor was found to take great effort to diagnose the student-teachers’ current level of understanding and, thus, provide tailored support but she did not check the student-teachers’ new learning afterwards. it appears as if the supervisor assumed that teaching necessarily amounted to learning. in other words, the supervisor seemed to take for granted that all the support she provided the student-teachers with by different means universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras132 san martín led to new understandings and learning. of all the steps of the mct, the supervisor focused mainly on steps 1 and 3, but the lack of step 4 should make us wonder to what extent true scaffolding occurred. this finding requires further research. the qualitative analysis also sought to reveal the patterns of contingent and non-contingent teaching cycles. the present research has found the practicum supervisor to act contingently upon the student-teachers’ level most of the time because she usually resorted to diagnostic strategies before providing actual support. in keeping with the findings reported here, chin (2007) found the teachers to provide their students with contingent support because they showed evidence of offering situated help and thus adjusting to the knowledge base of the students. in the context of the tutoring sessions, contingency can be best understood by resorting to chin’s metaphor, which describes contingent support in student-teacher interactions as “rungs of a cognitive ladder” (p. 837) since the teacher’s help builds on the students’ prior knowledge and, at the same time, it helps them achieve higher levels of competence. from the perspective of sct, the use of diagnostic strategies helps teachers determine the students’ maturing functions and, therefore, their zpds. the situated support they provide them with helps them to become self-regulated and to internalize knowledge and skills and reach higher levels of cognitive development since their zpds gradually evolve (chaiklin, 2003). in conclusion, diagnostic strategies seem to be a crucial dimension of scaffolding and a stepping stone for fostering learning and development in the context researched here because they appear to be a necessary condition for providing contingent support, enhancing the student-teachers’ potential for learning (wells, 1999) and gradually handing over the responsibility for teaching to the student-teachers themselves. scaffolding is a complex and dynamic phenomenon which is gradually shaped by the participants’ intervention modalities and, at the same time, influences the participants’ on-going interactions. what 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(2010). second language teacher education: review of recent research on practice. language teaching, 43(3), 259-296. https://doi.org/10.1017/s0261444810000030. about the author maría gimena san martín holds an ma degree in english (applied linguistics). she is a practicum teacher in the efl teacher education programme and coordinator of the postgraduate foreign languages didactics programme at facultad de lenguas, universidad nacional de córdoba, argentina. her research interests include teacher education and second language acquisition. 179profile: issues teach. prof. dev., vol. 20 no. 1, jan-jun, 2018. issn 1657-0790 (printed) 2256-5760 (online). bogotá, colombia. pages 179-195 https://doi.org/10.15446/profile.v20n1.62089 language assessment literacy: implications for language teachers literacidad en evaluación de lenguas: implicaciones para docentes frank giraldo*1 universidad tecnológica de pereira, pereira, colombia recently, the applied linguistics field has examined the knowledge, skills, and principles needed for assessment, defined as language assessment literacy. two major issues in language assessment literacy have been addressed but not fully resolved—what exactly language assessment literacy is and how it differs among stakeholders (e.g., students and teachers). this reflective article reviews assessment literacy from general education experts and language education scholars and shows how the meaning of language assessment literacy has expanded. to add to the discussion of this construct, the article focuses on the specific language assessment literacy for language teachers and proposes a core list of assessment knowledge, skills, and principles for these stakeholders. key words: assessment, language assessment literacy, language teacher education, language testing. recientemente, el campo de la lingüística aplicada ha evaluado el conocimiento, habilidades y principios necesarios para la evaluación, definidos como la literacidad en evaluación de lenguas. dos temas centrales han sido discutidos, pero no resueltos —exactamente qué es literacidad en evaluación de lenguas y cómo se diferencia entre poblaciones interesadas (p. ej. estudiantes y profesores)—. este artículo de reflexión hace una revisión de la literacidad en evaluación vista por expertos en educación y enseñanza de lenguas, y muestra una expansión del significado de literacidad en evaluación de lenguas. como adición a la discusión de este constructo, el artículo se enfoca en la literacidad en evaluación de lenguas específica para docentes de lenguas y propone una lista central sobre el conocimiento, las habilidades y los principios de evaluación para este grupo. palabras clave: educación de profesores de lenguas, evaluación, evaluación de lenguas, literacidad en evaluación de lenguas. * e-mail: icaros@utp.edu.co how to cite this article (apa, 6th ed.): giraldo, f. (2018). language assessment literacy: implications for language teachers. profile: issues in teachers’ professional development, 20(1), 179-195. https://doi.org/10.15446/profile.v20n1.62089. this article was received on january 19, 2017, and accepted on may 22, 2017. this is an open access article distributed under the terms of the creative commons license attribution-noncommercial-noderivatives 4.0 international license. consultation is possible at https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/. universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras180 giraldo introduction the “39th language testing research colloquium: language assessment literacy across stakeholder boundaries”1 held in bogotá (colombia) in july, 2017, explored the issue of language assessment literacy (lal) for various stakeholders. the colloquium was guided by the consensus that lal is a competency engaging different parties, from teachers to school administrators. the fact that such colloquium was mostly devoted to this topic speaks of the relevance that lal has gained in language education and language testing. the purpose of this reflective paper is to contribute to ongoing discussions in lal and seeks to illustrate what this construct implies for language teachers. in general terms, lal refers to knowledge, skills, and principles in language testing (davies, 2008; fulcher, 2012; malone, 2008). these three components have in fact remained constant in theoretical and research discussions about lal. however, its scope and boundaries have been questioned (inbar-lourie, 2013a; taylor, 2013). specifically, scholars are wondering what specific knowledge, skills, and principles are needed to define the term. what is clear is that knowledge of language, language use, and language pedagogy differentiate lal from assessment literacy, the generic term in general education (brookhart, 2001; popham, 2009). another crucial discussion, the core of the aforementioned colloquium, refers to the people involved in lal. taylor (2009) argues that not only should language teachers be involved in knowledge of language assessment; other stakeholders such as school principals, parents, and politicians should know about language assessment and its implications (i.e., decisions based on scores). based on the available research, taylor (2013) identifies four stakeholder profiles in lal: test writers, classroom teachers, university administrators, and professional language testers (more on these profiles in 1 organized by the international language testing association, ilta and universidad de los andes, bogotá. the literature review section). since several stakeholders should be engaged in language assessment, the picture of what exactly lal means becomes even more complex (inbar-lourie, 2013a; taylor, 2013). thus, a general consensus in lal is that research needs to be ongoing and welcomed (fulcher, 2012; coombe, troudi, & alhamly; 2012; taylor, 2013). notwithstanding the need to involve others in lal, language teachers remain central stakeholders whose teaching contexts should be considered to further define lal (scarino, 2013). lópez and bernal (2009) and more recently herrera and macías (2015) have made the call that (colombian) language teachers should improve their lal. the authors have argued that lal is needed among in-service language teachers, and that pre-service language teaching programs should raise the bar to provide quality lal opportunities for teacher development. this is justified not only in language education but education in general, where scholars have argued for assessment literacy among teachers (brookhart, 2011; popham, 2009; schafer, 1993). while the call for better lal among language teachers is indeed necessary, the field must ask what it is exactly that lal entails. a careful reconsideration of lal is therefore the central theme of this paper. the paper consists of a literature review that starts with a discussion of lópez and bernal’s (2009) and herrera and macías’ (2015) argumentation; later, it overviews general assessment literacy and its change over time in education. then, the bulk of the paper explores lal from two themes: its meaning and scope, and stakeholder profiles. this theoretical exploration will serve as a basis to present a core list of lal for language teachers. such list is derived from conceptual discussions and research insights into knowledge, skills, and principles related to language assessment for teachers. thus, the list is meant to fuel discussion in lal, particularly for language teachers, and suggest what the implications of lal for these stakeholders can be. 181profile: issues teach. prof. dev., vol. 20 no. 1, jan-jun, 2018. issn 1657-0790 (printed) 2256-5760 (online). bogotá, colombia. pages 179-195 language assessment literacy: implications for language teachers literature review background the research by lópez and bernal (2009) indicates that there are different practices of assessment among language teachers. those with language assessment training used assessment to improve teaching and learning, whereas those with no training used it as a way to solely obtain grades. thus, lópez and bernal report that teachers without training placed grades and assessment on the same level, which the researchers perceive as a limited approach to language assessment. additionally, the teachers in this research implemented more summative than formative methods. in terms of professional development, lópez and bernal inform that while graduate programs do have language assessment courses, few in-service language teachers gain access to ma degrees in colombia. because of this situation, the researchers argue that pre-service language teaching programs should offer more language assessment training. a majority (20 out of 27) of the undergraduate programs the researchers analyzed did not have any language assessment courses; the picture becomes more complicated when the authors explain that out of 27 programs, only two public universities offered assessment courses, as opposed to five courses offered by private universities. similar concerning results of language assessment practices can also be found in arias and maturana (2005); frodden, restrepo, and maturana, (2004); and muñoz, palacio, and escobar (2012), all studies conducted in colombia. what is more, such findings have also been present in other parts of the world such as chile (díaz, alarcón, & ortiz, 2012), china (cheng, rogers, & hu, 2004), and canada (volante & fazio, 2007). in their conclusions, lópez and bernal (2009) urge teachers to improve the validity, reliability, and fairness of their language assessment practices, and to implement assessment that is conducive to enhancing teaching and learning. addressing language teaching programs, the researchers find it central that all prospective teachers take at least a course in language testing before they start teaching, and should strive to better themselves through in-service training, conferences, workshops and so forth to create a language assessment culture for improvement in language education. (lópez & bernal, 2009, p. 66) herrera and macías (2015) start their article by stating that “teachers are . . . expected to have a working knowledge of all aspects of assessment to support their instruction and to effectively respond to the needs and expectations of students, parents, and the school community (p. 303, my emphasis). teachers with an appropriate level of lal, according to herrera and macías, connect instruction and assessment, criticize large-scale tests, and design and choose from an available repertoire of assessments. echoing lópez and bernal, herrera and macías urge language education programs to provide more and better opportunities for lal so that language teachers can focus on the spectrum that language assessment really entails—and not only focus on tests as instruments to measure learning. the authors then propose that for lal experiences, questionnaires can be used to tap into teachers’ knowledge and skills in language assessment. however, as the researchers clarify, such instrument alone is not sufficient to describe and/or offer information to improve lal among teachers. both articles claim that lal is needed among preand in-service teachers. if language teachers are effectively trained in lal, as these authors suggest, assessment for formative purposes—that is to enhance teaching and learning (davison & leung, 2009)—can become essential in language education. while the call of these four authors is one with which i agree i believe we need to take a deeper, more critical look towards what assessment literacy and specifically lal involve. with this in mind, the next section of this article reviews the generalities of assessment literacy and specifics of lal. universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras182 giraldo assessment literacy: generalities in education the literature in assessment literacy reports on an expansion of the knowledge and skills that teachers and other stakeholders are expected to have—although the focus has been on assessment literacy for teachers. historically, assessment literacy has expanded teachers’ toolbox to monitor, record, improve, and report on student learning. there has also been increasing attention as to how assessment has consequences on teaching, learning, and school curricula (brookhart, 2011; popham, 2009, 2011); this attention has led to a belief that teachers should have a critical stance towards how assessment impacts stakeholders (popham, 2009). the first allusion to assessment literacy in education was proposed by the american federation of teachers, national council on measurement in education, and national education association (1990) in their standards for teacher competence in educational assessment of students. they believed these guidelines were needed to help teachers become aware of assessment in and out of classroom contexts. the guidelines can be categorized into two strands. the first deals with instruction; teachers should be able to choose, design, and evaluate valid assessments for positive effects on learning, teaching, and schools. the second strand has to do with uses of tests and test results; teachers are expected to know when assessments are being used inappropriately, and to know how to communicate results well to various stakeholders. later, stiggins (1995) used the term assessment literacy to include knowledge and skills that stakeholders such as teachers and school administrators should have about assessment. in addition to the standards above, popham (2009) explains that assessment literacy includes knowledge of reliability and threats to it, tests’ content validity, fairness, design of closed-ended and open-ended test tasks, use of alternative assessments such as portfolios, formative assessment, student test preparation, and assessment of english language learners. popham argues that assessment literacy is needed so teachers become aware of the power that tests, especially external, can have on education. furthermore, brookhart (2011), who argues that the standards above are not comprehensive enough for classroom teachers, believes assessment literacy has to do with knowledge of how students learn in a specific subject; connection between assessment, curriculum, and instruction; design of scoring schemes that are clear for stakeholders; administration of externally-produced tests; and use of feedback to improve learning. other areas that have received attention in assessment literacy involve the use of basic statistics for educational measurement (popham, 2011; white, 2009), student motivation (white, 2009), and the use of multiple methods in assessment (rudner & schafer, 2002). similarly, the use of technology has been proposed as part of teachers’ assessment literacy (rudner & schafer, 2002). the previous section has shown a steady historical increase in the knowledge, skills, and principles related to the assessment literacy that teachers are expected to have. while the meaning of lal shares similarities with assessment literacy, lal is unique in specific ways. the next section of the paper pinpoints what has been carried over from general assessment literacy, and what has made lal a construct on its own. for this purpose, this paper addresses two related, ongoing debates in lal: the need to pursue a knowledge base in the field and the realization that lal means different things to different people. after these two debates, the section will focus on a recent addition to the meaning of lal by scarino (2013), who argues that lal should also involve teachers’ contexts of teaching. 183profile: issues teach. prof. dev., vol. 20 no. 1, jan-jun, 2018. issn 1657-0790 (printed) 2256-5760 (online). bogotá, colombia. pages 179-195 language assessment literacy: implications for language teachers language assessment literacy: generalities and specifics overall, conceptual discussions and research findings in lal have provided insights for a concept that is far from being defined in limited terms. in a review of language testing textbooks, davies (2008) places the field within three components: knowledge, skills, and principles related to the assessment of language ability. while emphasis has been given to the first two components, there is an increase in the need to instill language testing with principles such as fairness (non-discriminatory testing practices) and ethics (appropriate use of assessment data) (kunnan, 2003). in fact, research has indicated that this trend is stable because language testing textbooks focus on knowledge and skills (bailey & brown, 1996; brown & bailey, 2008) more than they do on principles. in fact, the trend is also evident in language testing courses (jeong, 2013; jin, 2010), which include some but not sufficient attention to principles as well as to consequences of assessment. thus, davies’s global view of lal is generally accepted by authors (inbarlourie, 2008; fulcher, 2012; taylor, 2009). fulcher (2012) used a questionnaire to find out the lal needs among language teachers from around the world (n = 278). based on the survey results, his definition emphasizes the interplay among davies’s three major components of lal, as they impact practice and society at large. fulcher also argues that teachers need to view language assessment from its historical development. fulcher’s (2010) book, practical language testing, is an operationalization of this definition of lal. what is particularly interesting about the author’s definition is that it refers to both large-scale and classroom tests, which suggest lal for language teachers is not limited to classroom assessment. besides, fulcher strongly suggests that lal require that teachers be critical toward language assessment practices, and there exists a general consensus in the field regarding that suggestion (coombe et al., 2012; inbar-lourie, 2012; taylor, 2009). the previous section shows that lal shares components with assessment literacy. however, language as a construct for assessment is what differentiates lal from its generic term. thus, in davies (2008), lal includes knowledge of language and language methodologies such as communicative language teaching. inbar-lourie (2008, 2012) calls language the what in lal (after brindley, 2001). additionally, inbar-lourie (2008) argues that lal includes knowledge of multilingual learners and content-based language teaching. skills and principles in lal are therefore directly related to assessing language. specifically, skills needed for test design (e.g., item-writing), use and interpretation of statistics, and test evaluation are part of lal because they are used to assess language ability (davies, 2008; fulcher, 2012; inbar-lourie, 2013a). concerning principles, they are viewed the same in lal as in assessment literacy; that is, principles refer to codes of practice for ethics, fairness, and consequences of assessment. one way to picture the wide scope of lal is by looking at inbar-lourie’s (2013b) ingredients of lal for language teachers. she argues that lal is “a unique complex entity”, similar yet different from general assessment literacy for teachers. according to the author, the ingredients of lal for language teachers are: 1. understanding of the social role of assessment and the responsibility of the language tester. understanding of the political [and] social forces involved, test power and consequences. (p. 27) 2. knowledge on how to write, administer and analyze tests; report test results and ensure test quality. (p. 32) 3. understanding of large scale test data. (p. 33) 4. proficiency in language classroom assessment. (p. 36) 5. mastering language acquisition and learning theories and relating to them in the assessment process. (p. 39) universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras184 giraldo 6. matching assessment with language teaching approaches. knowledge about current language teaching approaches and pedagogies. (p. 41) 7. awareness of the dilemmas that underlie assessment: formative vs. summative; internal external; validity and reliability issues particularly with reference to authentic language use. (p. 45) 8. lal is individualized, the product of the knowledge, experience, perceptions, and beliefs that language teachers bring to the teaching and assessment process (based on scarino, 2013). (p. 46) given the array of elements in lal, it is not surprising that scholars in language testing are still debating the boundaries of the concept (fulcher, 2012; jeong, 2013; malone, 2013; scarino, 2013; taylor, 2013). inbar-lourie (2013a) wonders what the essentials for lal actually are, and invites discussions and research to expand and clarify lal and its uniqueness. what further fuels the debate around the meaning and scope of lal is how it relates to different stakeholders. lal and different stakeholders taylor (2009) contends that given the impact assessment can have other people besides teachers should possess knowledge of language assessment. pill and harding’s (2013) study testifies the need to have others involved in lal. their study found that there were misconceptions and a lack of language assessment knowledge at the australian house of representatives standing committee on health and ageing. this political body was responsible for determining which doctors could be granted entrance to australia, based on the results of two tests: the international english language testing service (ielts) and the occupational english test (oet). additionally, the study by o’loughlin (2013) reports the lal needs (e.g., score interpretation) of the administrative staff at an australian university using ielts for admission of international students. finally, the study by malone (2013) reports that language instructors and language testers had differing views and needs as regards the contents of an online language testing tutorial. while the former group expected the tutorial to be clear and include practical matters, the latter expected comprehensiveness of concepts. these three studies certainly provide convincing evidence that several stakeholders—and not only teachers—should be recipients of lal. to define the level of lal among different stakeholders, taylor (2013) proposes a figure that places them at different levels. thus, researchers and test makers are at the core of the figure, language teachers and course instructors are placed at an intermediary level, and policy makers and the general public are on a peripheral level of lal. additionally, this author outlines the profiles for four different stakeholder groups; namely, test writers, classroom teachers, university administrators, and professional language testers. these four profiles are described against eight dimensions: “knowledge of theory, technical skills, principles and concepts, language pedagogy, sociocultural values, local practices, personal beliefs and attitudes, and scores and decision making” (taylor, 2013, p. 410). taylor (2013) presents her proposal as open to debate and invites the field to inspection and operationalization of the suggested levels and profiles of lal. in conclusion, as commented elsewhere, scholarly discussions and research in lal have indicated that this concept has come to have different shades of meaning for various people directly or indirectly involved in language assessment. while it is certain that others should be engaged in lal, language teachers remain central in the efforts to deliver professional development opportunities in lal (boyles, 2006; brindley, 2001; fulcher, 2012; nier, donovan, & malone, 2009; taylor, 2009). accordingly, i now move on to exploring lal for language teachers and the implications that this construct may have for them. 185profile: issues teach. prof. dev., vol. 20 no. 1, jan-jun, 2018. issn 1657-0790 (printed) 2256-5760 (online). bogotá, colombia. pages 179-195 language assessment literacy: implications for language teachers lal for language teachers scarino (2013) argues that in addition to knowledge, skills, and principles in lal, it is pertinent to include teachers’ interpretive frameworks. that is, discussions in lal need to acknowledge that language teachers have particular teaching contexts, practices, beliefs, attitudes, and theories, all of which shape their own lal. recognition of language teachers’ interpretive frameworks is particularly important in fostering professional development, as scarino suggests. knowledge, skills, and principles in language assessment coexist with teachers’ ways of thinking and acting upon the act of assessment. thus, scarino explains that, in the case of language teachers, the components of their lal influence each other, a notion briefly addressed by other authors (fulcher, 2012; taylor, 2009). lal discussions and research, even for language teachers, have provided a top-down perspective. thus, the knowledge-base of lal has been described from language testing textbooks (davies, 2008), language testing courses (bailey & brown, 1996; brown & bailey, 2008; jeong, 2013; jin, 2010), and even pre-determined by language testing scholars themselves. for example, fulcher (2012) and vogt and tsagari (2014) use questionnaires with pre-determined categories to find out needs among language teachers. however, what has not been clearly addressed in the literature is how language teachers engage in or display lal. in tandem with scarino’s (2013) proposal, i believe there are particularities to lal that should come from the bottom up, or language teachers’ assessment practices. rea-dickins’ (2001) and mcnamara and hill’s (2011) research studies do not overtly refer to teachers’ lal. however, their research scope certainly deals with areas that, according to the literature, are part of a language teacher’s knowledge, skills, and principles for assessment viewed from a formative lens. based on a purely qualitative approach using observations and interviews, these two studies provide descriptions of language assessment stages. in rea-dickins (2001), there are four stages to language assessment in the classroom: planning, implementation, monitoring, and recording and dissemination. in the first stage, language teachers select the purposes and tools to assess and prepare students for assessments. in stage two, teachers introduce the why, what, and how of assessment, and also provide scaffold while assessment unfolds, ask learners to monitor themselves and others, and provide immediate feedback to students. during stage three, teachers bring together their observations and analyze them with peers, with the hope to provide delayed feedback to improve learning and teaching. in the last stage, teachers formally report their analyses to whomever they need to. in mcnamara and hill (2011), the stages are called planning, framing, conducting, and using assessment data. they are, essentially, the same as those in rea-dickins (2001) as the stages refer to the same assessment activities. from these last two studies, i believe we can add more layers to what lal can entail—lal includes the ability to effectively plan, execute, evaluate, and report assessment processes and data. lastly, other studies report findings of skills that should be part of teachers’ lal. in walters’ (2010) study, english as a second language (esl) teachers became aware of a process for test and item analysis called standards reversed engineering (after davidson & lynch, 2001), through which they could derive test specifications and critique state-mandated standards for esl. the study by vogt and tsagari (2014) with european language teachers identified that participants mostly needed skills to critique external tests. the researchers report that “the lack of ability to critically evaluate tests represents a risk for the teachers to take over tests unquestioningly without considering their quality” (p. 391). lastly, even though not explicitly using the term lal, the study by arias, maturana, universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras186 giraldo and restrepo (2012) helped language teachers instill transparency and democracy in their practices. the researchers conceptualized transparency as making students aware of testing modes, rubrics, grades, and others; and democracy in language assessment as negotiation and the use of multiple methods and moments to assess learners. in summary, the knowledge and use of reversed engineering and test specifications, skills for critiquing existing tests and esl standards, and transparency and democracy as assessment principles should all be part of language teachers’ lal. given all these possible additions to the construct under examination, lal is still not clearly delimited for language teachers, and in fact appears to be far-reaching. for instance, if located on a spectrum, inbar-lourie’s (2013b) ingredients of lal can range from specific skills (e.g., item-writing) to complex issues such as the relationship between second language acquisition theories, language teaching approaches, and language assessment. amidst all these ingredients and components, i believe we need to have a way to reconcile and streamline the implications of lal for language teachers. to this end, in the next section i propose a core list of lal that brings together thinking and research around lal. a core list of lal for language teachers the proposed list is based upon three central components, introduced by davies (2008), each with corresponding dimensions. knowledge (three dimensions) reflects theoretical considerations such as the meaning of validity and reliability, two classical discussions in language testing. this component ranks high in the list as it deals with language and language use, the uniqueness of lal (inbar-lourie, 2013a). following this, within knowledge i include davies’ (2008) and inbar-lourie’s (2008) suggestion that knowledge of major issues in applied linguistics should be part of language teachers’ lal; for example, communicative approaches to language testing. finally, this component includes teachers’ knowledge of their own contexts for language assessment, an inclusion that i derive from scarino’s (2013) proposal. following in the list are skills (five dimensions), which first and foremost include instructional skills. i base this addition to lal largely on the studies by mcnamara and hill (2011) and rea-dickins (2001) into assessment practices. following, design refers to test and item construction for the four language skills and their integration in assessments (fulcher, 2012; taylor, 2009). germane to educational assessment are measurement skills, which i include based on davies (2008) and fulcher (2010, 2012). in the case of language teachers, i agree with popham (2011) that while advanced statistical expertise is not needed, teachers should know quantitative methods that can illuminate their assessment practice. lastly, technological skills come from davies (2008) and inbar-lourie (2012). the last component of the list refers to language assessment principles. i derive this part from various authors (arias et al., 2012; coombe et al., 2012; malone, 2013; taylor, 2009; etc.). it has been discussed that large-scale tests are consequential and powerful (shohamy, 2001), so ethics and fairness should be present in language assessment. in taylor’s (2013) proposed profile for language teachers, the author argues that this group may not be as concerned about ethics and fairness as language testing professionals must. however, i believe language teachers need to realize that these two principles are in fact codes for the professional practice of those involved in language assessment (ilta, 2000). most importantly, scholars in lal argue that teachers need to become critical towards assessment practices (fulcher, 2012; scarino, 2013). thus, transparency and democracy appear in 187profile: issues teach. prof. dev., vol. 20 no. 1, jan-jun, 2018. issn 1657-0790 (printed) 2256-5760 (online). bogotá, colombia. pages 179-195 language assessment literacy: implications for language teachers this last component thanks to the research by arias et al. (2012). figure 1 summarizes the core list while table 1 shows the complete list with an illustrative descriptor for each dimension. some similarities between this list and the work by newfields (2006) are possible. the author proposes a series of statements for items that i also include in my list. for example, the “ability to interpret statistical raw data in terms of common measures of centrality (mean, mode, median) and deviation (sd, quartiles)” (p. 51) is similar to the following skill in the present list: the ability to interpret data from large-scale tests, awareness of applied linguistics awareness of theory and concepts awareness of own language assessment context instructional skills design skills for language assessments skills in educational measurement (advanced skills not always needed) technological skills awareness of and actions towards critical issues in language assessment language assessment literacy skills knowledge principles figure 1. a core list of language assessment literacy dimensions: knowledge, skills, and principles namely means, modes, medians, bell curves, sems, reliability and correlation coefficients, and so on. newfields’ inventory, however, is not presented hierarchically (i.e., by ranking high core components such as language and language teaching) and is based on content validity perceptions from college students, high school language teachers, and test developers. the present list is based on conceptual reviews of the literature in lal and personal experience in language assessment courses through information from wellknown language testing textbooks such as bachman (2004), fulcher (2010), and others. universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras188 giraldo table 1. descriptors for knowledge, skills, and principles in eight dimensions of lal for language teachers knowledge awareness of applied linguistics 1 compares approaches for language teaching and assessment; e.g., communicative language testing; taskbased assessment. 2 explains major issues in applied linguistics; e.g., bilingualism, language policy and planning, pragmatics, sociolinguistics, etc. 3 analyzes trends in second language acquisition and their impact on language assessment; e.g., motivation, cross-linguistic influence, learner strategies. 4 integrates theories related to language and language use; e.g., models of language ability, discourse analysis, and grammar teaching. awareness of theory and concepts 5 illustrates history of language testing and assessment, and its impact on current practices and society. 6 interprets reliability in language assessment and its implications: dependability, classical test theory, item analysis, threats, calculating reliability of tests and items, interand intra-rater reliability, etc. 7 interprets validity in assessment and its implications: construct, content, and criterion validities, construct validity as unitary, messick’s (1989) consequential validity; validity as argument. 8 calculates statistics procedures for investigating validity such as pearson product moment correlation (ppmc). 9 interprets major qualities for language assessment practices (apart from reliability and validity), and their implications for language assessment: authenticity, practicality, interactiveness, fairness, ethics, and impact (including washback). 10 computes basic statistical analyses: mean, mode, median, range, standard deviation, score distribution, etc. 11 differentiates concepts related to assessment paradigms: traditional versus alternative; norm-referenced and criterion-referenced testing. 12 differentiates major purposes and related decision-making for language testing: placement, achievement, proficiency, etc. 13 explains major steps in developing tests: test purpose, construct definition, content specifications, test specifications, etc. 14 examines the meaning and implications of critical language testing: power, ethics, and fairness. 15 judges the consequences (intended or unintended) stemming from assessments in his/her context. 16 evaluates the kind of washback that assessments can have on learning, teaching, curricula, and institutions. 17 contrasts assessment methods, with their advantages and disadvantages; tests, portfolios, performance assessment, selfand peer-assessment, role-plays, among others. 18 articulates the nature, purpose, and design of scoring rubrics; for example, holistic and analytic. 19 recognizes what feedback implies within a formative assessment paradigm. 189profile: issues teach. prof. dev., vol. 20 no. 1, jan-jun, 2018. issn 1657-0790 (printed) 2256-5760 (online). bogotá, colombia. pages 179-195 language assessment literacy: implications for language teachers awareness of own language assessment context 20 explains own beliefs, attitudes, context, and needs for assessment. 21 evaluates the test and assessment policies that influence his/her teaching. 22 assesses the existing tensions that influence language assessment in his/her school. 23 illustrates the general guidelines and policies that drive language learning and assessment in his/her context; for example, type of language curriculum. 24 criticizes the kind of washback assessments usually have on his/her teaching context. skills instructional skills has the ability to: 25 align curriculum objectives, instruction, and assessment. 26 plan, implement, monitor, record, and report student language development. 27 provide feedback on students’ assessment performance (normand criterion-referenced). 28 collect formal data (e.g., through tests) and informal data (while observing in class) of students’ language development. 29 improve instruction based on assessment results and feedback. 30 utilize alternative means for assessment; for example, portfolios. 31 use language assessment methods appropriately: to monitor language learning and nothing else. 32 provide motivating assessment experiences, giving encouraging feedback, or setting up self-assessment scenarios. 33 communicate normand criterion-referenced test results to a variety of audiences: students, parents, school directors, etc. 34 use multiple methods of assessment to make decisions based on substantive information. 35 incorporate technologies in assessing students. design skills for language assessments has the ability to: 36 clearly identify and state the purpose for language assessment. 37 clearly define the language construct(s) a test will give information about. 38 design assessments that are valid not only in terms of course contents but also course tasks. 39 construct test specifications (or blueprints) to design parallel forms of a test. 40 write test syllabuses to inform test users of test formats, where applicable. 41 design assessments that are reliable, authentic, fair, ethical, practical, and interactive. 42 write selected-response items such as multiple-choice, true-false, and matching. 43 improve test items after item analysis, focusing on items that are either too difficult, too easy, or unclear. 44 design constructed-response items (for speaking and writing), along with rubrics for assessment. 45 design rubrics for alternative assessments such as portfolios and peer-assessment. 46 provide security to ensure that unwanted access to tests is deterred. 47 design training workshops for raters, whenever necessary. universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras190 giraldo skills in educational measurement (advanced skills not always needed) has the ability to: 48 interpret data from large-scale tests, namely descriptive statistics such as means, modes, medians, bell curves, etc.; has the ability to calculate descriptive statistics. 49 infer students’ strengths and weaknesses based on data. 50 criticize external tests and their qualities based on their psychometric characteristics. 51 interpret data related to test design, such as item difficulty and item discrimination. 52 calculate reliability and validity indices by using appropriate methods such as kappa, ppmc, and others. 53 investigate facility and discrimination indices statistically. technological skills has the ability to: 54 use software such as statistical package for the social sciences. 55 run operations on excel; for example, descriptive statistics and reliability correlations. 56 use internet resources such as online tutorials and adapt contents for his/her particular language assessment needs. principles awareness of and actions towards critical issues in language assessment 57 clearly informs the inferences and decisions that derive from scores in assessments. 58 uses assessment results for feedback to influence language learning, not other construct-irrelevant sources (e.g., personal bias towards a student). 59 treats all students, or users of language assessment, with respect. 60 uses tests, test processes, and test scores ethically. 61 provides assessment practices that are fair and non-discriminatory. 62 critiques the impact and power standardized tests can have and has a stance towards them. 63 observes guidelines for ethics used at the institution in regard to language assessment. 64 criticizes external tests based on their quality and impact. 65 implements transparent language assessment practices; informs students of the what, how, and why of assessment. 66 implements democratic language assessment practices, by giving students opportunities to share their voices about assessment. recommendations the proposed list can be used by language teachers in five ways. first, they can utilize the descriptors as a yes/no checklist to evaluate their own language assessment contexts, paying attention to what they do well and what they need to strengthen. second, they can use the descriptors to observe each other’s lal and provide feedback on knowledge, skills, and principles. for example, applicable abilities in the 25 to 35 range can be turned into an observation protocol for stages in classroom language assessment. third, teachers can identify topics to know more about what is in lal and seek for training opportunities such as professional development teams or study groups; in such groups, 191profile: issues teach. prof. dev., vol. 20 no. 1, jan-jun, 2018. issn 1657-0790 (printed) 2256-5760 (online). bogotá, colombia. pages 179-195 language assessment literacy: implications for language teachers teachers may want to understand large-scale tests, so they would need to read about educational measurement and develop corresponding data interpretation skills (e.g., what does a mode tell me about test results?). fourth, if teachers design tests, they may need to see what skills in this list are appropriate for their enterprise. lastly, teachers can use this list for an overview of language assessment literacy: a large and still developing construct in applied linguistics. overall, teachers are encouraged to use this list however they feel useful for their purposes. besides language teachers, this list may prove useful for teacher educators in both preand in-service programs. for pre-service teachers, educators can use it to introduce future language teachers to the field of language assessment; the list may be used as a pre-test and post-test to language testing courses and provide the pre-service teachers with the chance to observe how much they have learned in a language testing course. regarding in-service teacher education, tutors can turn the list into a needs assessment or a diagnostic test in order to plan programs in language assessment; the pre-test/post-test treatment can be used in in-service teacher development. a caution that i feel necessary to address is that the list includes parts of a greater whole. the dimensions in the list should not be seen separately but have been separated here for the sake of clarity and organization. rather, they should be envisioned as complementary, first and foremost, depending on teachers’ contexts. for example, teachers who are required to design language tests with considerable impact may need strong design skills, some knowledge of educational measurement, and awareness of theory and concepts. the combination of these skills and this knowledge should help them bring about quality products. limitations there are four limitations in this core lal list that deserve discussion. to start, this list is not meant to be an authoritative account of what lal actually is for language teachers; it does, however, bring together thinking from scholars and researchers in assessment literacy and most specifically in lal. what is more, the list has a personal bias. i have developed it based on my understanding of the literature and my own experience as a test writer and student of language testing. additionally, the 66 descriptors may not do justice to the width and depth of lal but only comprise a fraction of what the construct implies in theory and practice for language teachers; i may have overlooked key skills, knowledge, or principles that are indeed part of teachers’ lal. in this same vein, there are descriptors that can include other more detailed skills. for example, in descriptor one, one sub-component is knowledge of issues within task-based assessment, namely the discussion of taskcentered and construct-centered assessment in test design (bachman, 2002). lastly, this list includes statistical procedures (e.g., descriptor 55) teachers need not concern themselves with, according to some authors (brookhart, 2003; popham, 2009). however, the idea that teachers do not need knowledge of statistics (at least at a basic level) may underestimate their potential. in the study by palacio, gaviria, and brown (2016), the participating english language teachers used statistical procedures such as correlations and reliability analyses to improve the quality of the tests they designed. notwithstanding these limitations, i invite readers to examine the arguments and proposal i present to advance the knowledge base necessary to operationalize the meaning and implications of lal for language teachers. conclusions language teachers throughout the world make decisions based on assessment data. in turn, such decisions impact teaching and learning. given this scenario, there is a need for language teachers to have solid assessment literacy. likewise, language teaching programs should universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras192 giraldo be more profoundly engaged in providing quality lal— and not do so through elective courses which may not do much (siegel & wissehr, 2011) or merely mention assessment in passing. more importantly, programs and opportunities for in-service teachers are also central to improving the state of lal. while the call is indeed necessary, the field of language education should carefully reflect upon the nature and scope of lal, as it is indeed an expanding notion. historically, the meaning of assessment literacy has extended to include issues such as technology and even student motivation. while the meaning of lal has been rather stable, the actual scope of each component (knowledge, skills, and principles) is still expanding. this expansion has become all the more prominent due to the call that several stakeholders (e.g., university administrators and politicians) must be included in the lal equation. while the contents of and people involved in lal are still the focus of scholarly work and commentary, this paper has presented a comprehensive list to operationalize lal for language teachers, an essential stakeholder group. such list is proposed as a way to highlight the knowledge, skills, and principles that, according to the literature and research, language teachers should have when assessing language. the paper has discussed five ways in which language teachers can use the list; besides, the paper has discussed its limitations, ending with a call to further discussion. even though it cannot be prescribed that all language teachers have such a repertoire, as taylor (2013) explains, the overarching categories—that is knowledge, skills, and principles—still apply, whether we discuss assessment in the language classroom or out of it (fulcher, 2012). while assessment literacy may be far-reaching, the importance of such literacy for the language teacher cannot be underestimated, and it should be complemented by what their contexts have to offer so that such construct is better operationalized. the effect of what lal truly means should be language teachers who display knowledge, skills, and principles that are consonant with language teaching and language learning. high quality assessment is done by language teachers who plan, design, implement, monitor, record, evaluate, provide, and improve opportunities for the overarching goal in the language classroom and beyond; that is, the development of students’ language ability. lastly, because it is an expanding controversy in language education, the meaning and implications of lal are still in fruitful development. references american federation of teachers, national council on measurement in education, & national education association. 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(2009). are you assessment literate? some fundamental questions regarding effective classroom-based assessment. oncue journal, 3(1), 3-25. about the author frank giraldo has an ma in the teaching of english as a second language from university of illinois at urbana-champaign (usa). he also holds an ma in english didactics from universidad de caldas, colombia. he is an academic consultant at the instituto de lenguas extranjeras (ilex) at universidad tecnológica de pereira, colombia. his interests are language testing and assessment, curriculum development, and professional development of language teachers. 231 https://doi.org/10.15446/profile.v20n2.72992 pedagogical and research approaches in inclusive education in elt in colombia: perspectives from some profile journal authors educación inclusiva, enfoques pedagógicos e investigativos en la enseñanza del inglés: perspectivas de algunos autores de la revista profile óscar andrés mosquera* melba libia cárdenas** maría claudia nieto*** universidad nacional de colombia, bogotá, colombia this article reports on a descriptive study carried out in articles published in the profile: issues in teachers’ professional development journal that deal with inclusive education in english language teaching in colombia. the study embraced documentary research and critical discourse analysis which helped us identify trends in pedagogical approaches in foreign language instruction and research approaches employed by the journal’s authors. it also allowed us to examine how such approaches show the presence or absence of inclusive education both in public policies and pedagogical interventions by institutions and individuals. we hope that the outcomes derived from this study nurture further discussion, encourage research, and motivate pedagogical practices that foster inclusive education in foreign language teaching and teacher education. key words: english language teaching, inclusive education, pedagogical approaches, public language policies, research approaches. reportamos un estudio descriptivo sobre la inclusión educativa en la enseñanza del inglés, en artículos de la revista profile: issues in teachers’ profesional development. a través del análisis documental y del análisis crítico del discurso identificamos tendencias en enfoques pedagógicos en la enseñanza del inglés y en enfoques investigativos usados por los autores. también examinamos cómo dichos enfoques evidencian la presencia o ausencia de la inclusión educativa tanto en políticas públicas como en intervenciones pedagógicas realizadas por instituciones e individuos. esperamos que los resultados promuevan la discusión, la investigación y prácticas pedagógicas que fomenten la inclusión educativa en la enseñanza de lenguas extranjeras y en la formación de docentes. palabras clave: educación inclusiva, enfoques investigativos, enfoques pedagógicos, enseñanza del inglés, políticas lingüísticas públicas. * e-mail: oamosqueran@unal.edu.co ** e-mail: mlcardenasb@unal.edu.co *** e-mail: mcnietoc@unal.edu.co this article is based on the undergraduate monograph of óscar andrés mosquera to obtain his b.ed. in philology and languages: english at universidad nacional de colombia. his study was conducted as part of a macro-project led by his tutors, melba libia cárdenas and maria claudia nieto. they are co-writers/co-authors of the present article. code 20175, sistema de información hermes, universidad nacional de colombia. how to cite this article (apa, 6th ed.): mosquera, o. a., cárdenas, m. l., & nieto, m. c. (2018). pedagogical and research approaches in inclusive education in elt in colombia: perspectives from some profile journal authors. profile: issues in teachers’ professional development, 20(2), 231-246. https://doi.org/10.15446/profile.v20n2.72992. this article was received on october 1, 2017 and accepted on april 9, 2018. this is an open access article distributed under the terms of the creative commons license attribution-noncommercial-noderivatives 4.0 international license. consultation is possible at https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/. profile: issues teach. prof. dev., vol. 20 no. 2, jul-dec, 2018. issn 1657-0790 (printed) 2256-5760 (online). bogotá, colombia. pages 231-246 universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras232 mosquera, cárdenas & nieto profile: issues teach. prof. dev., vol. 20 no. 2, jul-dec, 2018. issn 1657-0790 (printed) 2256-5760 (online). bogotá, colombia. pages 231-246 introduction the term inclusive education (ie) has become an important component in political discourses at different levels. ie comprises a set of processes with the goal of eliminating or reducing the obstacles that limit the learning and participation of all the students. it presupposes that all the students are in equal conditions in terms of educative opportunities. following this trend, governments have issued and implemented policies, programs, and projects with diverse grades of efficiency, directed to tackle the problem of ie. in the colombian context, the congress of the republic of colombia (1994) provided the initial regulations for students with “limitations” in its articles 46, 47, and 48. profile: issues in teachers’ professional development (profile henceforth) is a biannual publication concerned with sharing the results of classroom research projects, reflections, and innovations undertaken by teachers of english as a second or foreign language as well as by teacher educators and novice teacher-researchers. profile deals with topics regarding the learning and teaching of english as a second or foreign language and teacher education. it is addressed to an international readership of preand in-service teachers. the authors of profile have faced, explicitly or implicitly, the topic of inclusion in foreign languages teaching in colombia via research, reflexive articles, or reports of pedagogical interventions. within that framework, cárdenas (2013) discussed the topic and evidenced language, teaching, pedagogical, and research practices in ie in the journal and robayo and cárdenas (2017) examined the inclusive policies in the teaching of english as a foreign language (efl). this study reports on pedagogical and research approaches employed by profile authors in connection with the study of inclusion in english instruction and public policies in colombia. the main source of information is the articles that deal with those issues, published from 2000 to 2016. theoretical framework four central constructs guide this study. they are: inclusive education, public policies in education in colombia, research approaches in education, and pedagogy in english language instruction. inclusive education ie means that students with special needs or conditions participate and are recognized as individuals who belong to the community and who have the same rights and opportunities of every single person (montaño & vera, 2012). ie fortifies the capability of education systems to cover all kinds of learners. under this perspective, ie is presented “as an overall principle, it should guide all education policies and practices, starting from the fact that education is a basic human right and the foundation for a more just and equal society” (unesco, 2009, p. 8). consequently, ie entails the conception and the implementation of several learning strategies to face the diversity of students (aguerrondo, 2008). ie is a framework based on international guidelines. its success is only possible in contexts within a culture of collaboration and problem support. the education system becomes inclusive when the promotion of its principles is featured in key policies, when senior staff provides leadership, when leaders at all levels articulate consistent policy aspirations to develop inclusive practices in schools, and when leaders at all levels challenge non-inclusive practices in schools (ainscow & miles, 2009). the importance of providing education to people with special needs is highlighted in international agreements. the convention on the rights of persons with disabilities (crpd) and its optional protocol (op) were adopted on 13 december 2006, as the first comprehensive human rights treaty of the 21st century (united nations, 2016). the purpose of the convention is to promote, protect, and ensure the full and equal enjoyment of all human rights and fundamental freedoms by all persons 233 pedagogical and research approaches in inclusive education in elt in colombia... profile: issues teach. prof. dev., vol. 20 no. 2, jul-dec, 2018. issn 1657-0790 (printed) 2256-5760 (online). bogotá, colombia. pages 231-246 with disabilities, and to promote respect for their inherent dignity (united nations, 2006). the general law of education (congreso de colombia, 1994) included a complete section dedicated to the education for people with limitations or with exceptional aptitudes or talents. the government clearly recognizes the need to include these populations within the educational system and provide them with the necessary support to enter and remain within the educational system. in 2009, the congress of colombia approved the crpd, adopted by the general assembly of the united nations in 2006 and enacted law 1346 of july 31st, 2009. later, the statutory law 1618 enacted by the congress of colombia (2013a) pursues the dispositions to guarantee the full exercise of rights of people in condition of disability. in terms of education, the law intends to foster the establishment of pedagogical and promotion strategies for children with disabilities and the design of programs that ensure the initial inclusive education of children with disabilities in the educational system. the norms that dictate the right to education of people with disability are in process of being shaped. the colombian government, montaño and vera (2012), unesco (2009), and ainscow and miles (2009) stress that inclusion goes farther than the mere assistance to students with special needs or those of a marginalized population. for the colombian ministry of education (men), inclusion is “a group of processes oriented to eliminate or minimize the barriers that limit learning and participation of all the students. inclusion aims for all students to be under the same conditions in terms of educational opportunities, and get appropriate instruction taking into consideration their needs and personal characteristics”1 (men, 2008b, p. 158). inclusion means, then, to take care of the needs of the population with special educational requirements with quality, pertinence, and equity (men, 2007). 1 all extracts taken from documents in spanish have been translated for the purpose of this publication. nonetheless the administrative department of statistics (dane) provides worrisome numbers about the education of handicapped people in colombia (pandi agencia de comunicación, 2013): seven percent of the colombian population is handicapped; 33% of this population from 5-7 years old, and 58.3% from 15 to 19 years old do not attend school. surprisingly, only 5% of handicapped people finish secondary. as we can see, although there is clarity regarding what ie means, the processes, public policies, programs, and their impact on the colombian context are either far away from the above definition or not efficient. regarding the basic competence standards, institutions must generate strategies and methodologies as well as adjustments to respond to students with special needs (men, 2007). these demands may not be fulfilled as most schools may have neither the training nor the backing to provide these students with the necessary instruction. schools, though, have to establish guidelines for ie in the institutional education project (pei: proyecto educativo institucional), plans of studies, schools’ rulebooks, and so on, to be implemented (men, 2008a). public policies in education in english instruction in colombia public policies exist only if the state institutions assume in partial or sufficient degrees the attainment of necessary or desirable objectives to change the state of affairs (castaño posada, 2016). public policies are volatile and complex scenarios of discursive contention where different agents aim to impose their logics and ideas. in colombia, policies in education are not the outcome of harmonic guidelines from discussions, but the results of symbolic struggles to enforce determined guidance in terms of politics and legislation (arias, 2014). the 1994 general education law (congreso de colombia, 1994), granted foreign languages a relevant status amid globalization. thus, in 2004, the men established the national bilingualism program 20042015 (programa nacional de bilingüismo, pnb). its universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras234 mosquera, cárdenas & nieto profile: issues teach. prof. dev., vol. 20 no. 2, jul-dec, 2018. issn 1657-0790 (printed) 2256-5760 (online). bogotá, colombia. pages 231-246 main goal was to educate more competitive citizens able to interact in the global society via three axes: standards, evaluation, and improvement of efl for preschool, elementary, secondary, tertiary education, and non-formal instruction as well as english as a second language for bilingual schools. further changes have been introduced in the bilingualism plans between 2004 and 2016 and in the ley de bilingüismo [bilingualism law] (congreso de colombia, 2013b) (bonilla carvajal & tejada-sánchez, 2016; gómez sará, 2017). even though several changes have been made to the so-called “bilingual” policies, our literature search did not show any information regarding guidelines for students with special needs. apart from the justification to provide opportunities for colombian citizens to have access to foreign language learning, no guidelines, teaching resources, or teacher education schemes have been made in terms of ie. research approaches in education cohen, manion, and morrison (2011) suggest several research approaches in education. we gather the main features or definitions of the ones found in the articles we analyzed in this study. ethnography: its goal is to develop a representation of the reality of the people involved. the world’s view of the participant is essential to setting up the participant’s position through a set of empirical data, observational techniques, description and interpretation of the total data to create inferences, explanations, suggestions, and eventually, theory generation (cohen et al., 2011). it may be performed on both a large and small scale. in very detailed and specific contexts with few actors (two or three people), studies of the abovementioned features may be considered micro-ethnographic. case studies: they examine a class of events in a bounded system in action that is used to depict a more general principle (cohen et al., 2011; george & bennet, 2004). case studies seek to unveil the insights of the participants and their realities to fix them with abstract principles and theorizing. to do so, it is necessary to set up guiding initial questions (george & bennet, 2004), but those questions evolve as we have more contact with the context. the interpretation of the whole is more than the mere addition of its parts (cohen et al., 2011). in our case the events are the articles published in profile related to pedagogical practices and research methods used to study inclusion in bilingual policies in colombia. action research: it is a tool to understand and make improvements at local settings. it combines both action and research through disciplined inquiry to find solutions or improvements, and consequently, reform educational practices. it may be used in places involving people, tasks, and procedures in a variety of areas and may be carried out by institutions, stakeholders, or individual teachers (cohen et al., 2011). pedagogical approaches in english language teaching in this section we summarize the main features or definitions of the general and overall standpoints of the pedagogical approaches contained in the articles we analyzed in this study. we examined collaborative learning, autonomous learning, tutoring, blended learning, task-based learning, and grammar translation pedagogical approaches. below we summarise their main features. collaborative learning claims that knowledge is a social construct that might occur on a peer-to-peer or in larger group basis. its objective is “to achieve shared learning goals” (barkley, cross, & major, 2005, p. 4). for benson (2006), autonomous learning is the capacity to take control or responsibility for one’s learning process which, in turn, requires a certain degree of freedom. in this scenario, the learner needs to set up a plan, select materials, monitor him or herself, and self-assess. tutoring, on the other hand, seeks to provide, guide, and assist students to achieve integral learning. academic tutoring is one of the strategies for the development of the communicative competence in the learning of a 235 pedagogical and research approaches in inclusive education in elt in colombia... profile: issues teach. prof. dev., vol. 20 no. 2, jul-dec, 2018. issn 1657-0790 (printed) 2256-5760 (online). bogotá, colombia. pages 231-246 foreign language because it triggers the interaction of the students with their tutor and among peer students (nieto, cortés, & cárdenas, 2013). blended learning is the convergence of two “archetypal learning environments” (bonk & graham, 2006, p. 5). it combines traditional face-to-face learning environments with new technologies that have expanded the possibilities for communication and interaction. on the other hand, task-based language learning is an approach that involves the completion of meaningful pedagogical tasks to fulfill the learning objectives. in this approach, error correction plays a minor role (richards & rodgers, 2001). finally, grammar-translation aims at the practice of translation from the target language to the native language and vice versa via specimen sentences in texts. this method is used with deaf learners, whose input and output is restricted to written codes and images. they also have to rely on their mother tongue to construct meaning, establish strategies and, in the end, communicate and comprehend ideas in the target language. research framework method this is a qualitative case study guided by the constructs of documentary research and critical discourse analysis. the foundations of qualitative research rely on the idea that “meaning is socially constructed by individuals in interaction with their world” (merriam, 1998, p. 3); hence, “the individual’s own frame of reference is important for understanding the human behavior” (nunan, 1992, p. 4). to attain this goal, the researcher’s job is to capture the data “from the inside” through a process of deep attentiveness and of emphatic understanding about the topics under discussion (miles & huberman, 1994, p. 6). a case is a phenomenon of some sort occurring in a bounded context (miles & huberman, 1994). the case study is not a methodological choice but an election on what to study (stake, 2005). case studies offer the opportunity to study in depth an aspect of a problem within three limitations: the relationships, the micro political topics, and the models of influence in a given context (bell, 1999). to accomplish the objectives of this study, documentary research and critical discourse analysis were used as the tools for the analysis. the former embraces the use of sources such as documents, which allow the researcher to provide insights on a given problem (cohen et al., 2011; prior, 2003; scott, 2006). to this end, we engaged in a lesser or higher degree in three key requirements: conceptualizing, using, and assessing documents. we focused on a set of articles published in the profile journal, assessed their authors’ viewpoints and processes regarding ie, and made connections with the research methods and pedagogical approaches they used. critical discourse analysis (cda) is one form of a justifiably reflective and suspicious inspection of how discourses shape and frame us (toolan, 1997). the interpretation of the discourses present in the units of analysis of this study (the articles from profile) made it possible to grasp the discourses of power, dominance, and inequality and the ways they are reproduced (van dick, 1995) in the colombian context of ie. cda follows a critical approach to problems, as there is need to make explicit power relationships that are hidden. cda is also hermeneutic in the sense that it grasps and produces meaning relationships. consequently, this process would produce results that are of practical use (wodak & mayer, 2001). for wodak and mayer (2001), a relevant characteristic of cda is the incorporation of linguistic devices which some scholars use frequently as a means of focusing on pronouns, attributes, and the verbal mode, time, and tense. all those lead to text analysis. for fairclough (2003) text (written and spoken) analysis is not only linguistic analysis; it also includes interdiscursive analysis. it is the process of reading texts in terms of the different discourses, genres, and styles they draw upon and examining how they articulate together. universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras236 mosquera, cárdenas & nieto profile: issues teach. prof. dev., vol. 20 no. 2, jul-dec, 2018. issn 1657-0790 (printed) 2256-5760 (online). bogotá, colombia. pages 231-246 data collection the main sources of information (units of analysis) were the articles that deal with both public policies regarding english language instruction and inclusive pedagogical practices published in profile from 2000 to 2016. a systematic review of the articles published within this time frame helped us filter the initial corpus. we focused on seven articles that reported research, reflections, and pedagogical innovations dealing with ie (see table 1). along the process, checklists and notes were kept to trace the research process, select the corpus, examine their contents, and categorize the findings. articles 2, 3, 4, and 7 examine public policies concerning english language instruction in colombia and articles 1, 5, and 6 are related to inclusive pedagogical interventions carried out by colombian pre-service or in-service teachers. the authors’ background information is noted in the articles. table 1. units of analysis no. article section in profile 1 velandia, d. (2007). tutorial plan to support the english speaking skill of an inga student of an initial teacher education program. intr 2 sánchez, a., & obando, g. (2008). is colombia ready for bilingualism? ibri 3 guerrero, c. (2010). the portrayal of efl teachers in official discourse: the perpetuation of disdain. itr 4 usma wilches, j. (2009). education and language policy in colombia: exploring processes of inclusion, exclusion, and stratification in times of global reform. ibri 5 cuasialpud canchalá, r. (2010). indigenous students’ attitudes towards learning english through a virtual program: a study in a colombian public university. intr 6 ávila caica, o. (2011). teacher: can you see what i’m saying? a research experience with deaf learners. itr 7 bonilla carvajal, c. & tejada-sánchez, i. (2016). unanswered questions in colombia’s foreign language education policy. ibri note. itr = issues from teacher-researchers, intr = issues from novice teacher-researchers, ibri = issues based on reflections and innovations. results and discussion constant analysis let us interpret: 1. the manifestation and description of the research and pedagogical approaches present in the profile articles. 2. if the inclusion component is present or not in the research and pedagogical approaches previously recognized. trends in pedagogical approaches in foreign language instruction three articles report pedagogical interventions with indigenous (cuasialpud canchalá, 2010; velandia, 2007) and deaf students (ávila caica, 2011) in different contexts. inclusion is seen in these articles as the need to solve a problematic situation faced by a marginalized population. velandia’s study is about the problem of improving the speaking skills of an inga student through tutoring sessions and cuasialpud canchalá’s research is about the insights of indigenous students towards the online tutoring sessions (ots). on the other hand, ávila caica’s focuses on teaching english to deaf students. we identified six inclusive pedagogical practices in their articles: tutoring, autonomous learning, task-based 237 pedagogical and research approaches in inclusive education in elt in colombia... profile: issues teach. prof. dev., vol. 20 no. 2, jul-dec, 2018. issn 1657-0790 (printed) 2256-5760 (online). bogotá, colombia. pages 231-246 learning, blended learning, collaborative learning, and grammar-translation. vel and i a ( 2 0 07 ) us e d tutor i ng to help an indigenous student overcome difficulties in english learning. along the pedagogical intervention, tutoring interweaves with autonomous learning and with the task-based approaches. through the personalized process followed, the teacher provides the students with the required tools to reach the learning objectives. thus, tutoring becomes a space where the interaction between the teacher and learner goes beyond solving tutee’s doubts. 1. tutoring also helped andrés to take responsibility for his learning process. the learner progressively discovered a great deal of “magic wands” for language learning. among the most important are self-reflection, self-evaluation, learning strategies, setting of goals and action plans. in the end, these tools became essential for the learner as he realized they enhanced his ability to learn the language. (velandia, 2007, p. 129) the adverbial phrase progressively discovered implies that the tutee had to go through a process in which he had to find out what his strengths and weaknesses in his learning process were. this shows that awareness in language features and self-monitoring are required to set up the foundations for speaking skills improvement (thornbury, 2005). moreover, tutoring has humanistic implications as expressed by velandia: “the tutor is to increase the confidence of the tutees” (p. 123). the tutees’ confidence towards themselves, their background and conditions (cultural heritage, disability, etc.), their learning abilities, and their skills can be strengthened if their needs are taken into consideration. whatever the scenario, it is indispensable to raise the students’ awareness towards learning so that they can enhance their autonomy. velandia (2007) illustrates this: 2. the discussions of the learning process taking place in the second part of the (tutoring) sessions revealed big advantages: the student increased his autonomy and self-reflection. (p. 127) the verb revealed conveys that in velandia’s (2007) study autonomous learning is a fulfilled outcome from the tutoring sessions. the tutor probably did not ask the student to become autonomous; he may have had to discover that if he wanted to improve his oral skills, an extra effort was required. the rapport between the indigenous tutee and the tutor helped the former to be more in charge of reflecting on his learning process. in this sense, a switch in the learner’s attitude towards the content and methodology allowed him to appropriate his process to establish a clear learning pace. that seems to be the reason why the author used the adjective phrase big advantages. thanks to the reflections fostered in the tutorials, the learner gained self-awareness. in consequence, his attitude and disposition to perform activities to improve his speaking abilities increased. we also find in this study that task completion fosters language acquisition since it focuses on the achievement of clear outcomes (willis, 1995). the inga student had to perform tasks in different stages with a final goal, to reflect on the language produced and to establish improvement plans. 3. the completion of the tasks was done in three stages or cycles: pre-task, when the topic and instructions were given. the task cycle, when the student planned, developed and reported the task. and finally, the language analysis cycle, that included a reflection and practice of the language used and its features. (velandia, 2007, p. 126) the noun phrases reflection and practice tell us that the mere completion of the tasks in the tutoring is not enough. the tutee had to see himself as an english user, taking into consideration his cultural and english language background. he also had to monitor his errors; some of them derived from the mingling of his l1 (inga) and l2 (spanish). 4. firstly, the way in which he was meant to acquire the english language was artificial as opposed to the way he had learnt spanish and inga. (velandia, 2007, p. 129) universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras238 mosquera, cárdenas & nieto profile: issues teach. prof. dev., vol. 20 no. 2, jul-dec, 2018. issn 1657-0790 (printed) 2256-5760 (online). bogotá, colombia. pages 231-246 the inclusive aspect is present in how the author used the adjective artificial to qualify her tutee’s progression in the acquisition of the english language. the student compared those learning experiences to the ones he faced when learning the inga and spanish languages. this crossing reflective exercise may have raised his awareness about the facts that surround the language of his indigenous group and his culture too. nevertheless, the looked-for goal of learning english is restricted when there is no inclusive learning setting for in-need students. the analysis of cuasialpud canchalá (2010) on the attitudes of indigenous students towards ots is a sample of a non-inclusive milieu. one of the main goals of the ots was to promote autonomy in english language acquisition. however, the lack of planning to provide the necessary assets for students who belonged to marginalized populations, for example indigenous students, was a serious mishap that the students had to face to be actual english language autonomous learners. 5. students showed frustration once again because being in front of a computer for more than one hour was stressful and tiring. the participants manifested during the interviews that they were not used to studying with a computer all the time. here they expressed that in their communities, having a computer is not a dire necessity and so they just had to worry about working. (cuasialpud canchalá, 2010, p. 143) as demonstrated in excerpt 5, the students lacked access to computers and their autonomous learning was not optimal as they did not have enough contact with the required resources. the verb phrase to become aware refers to what the learners are expected to perform to reach autonomy; however, no explicit or implicit reference is given to the institutional effort to guarantee access to the tools. performing any language task in these conditions was a hard challenge for the learners. the access to ict tools to take the ots was reduced because of the lack of both assets and required computation literacy. the students felt frustrated because of this situation. in excerpt 5, the verb phrase were not used to shows that the course did not take into consideration the students’ context. there was no adaptation of the course to the learners’ needs and conditions. therefore, it was not possible for the indigenous students to take advantage of the course. in contrast to cuasialpud canchalá, ávila caica (2011) reports on the benefits of ict tools and blended learning in her inclusive pedagogical intervention with deaf students. in her study, the internet is a requirement to allow the deaf learner to comprehend the language through a strong visual component. 6. given that deaf students do not “hear” the linguistic information and have to “see the language” expressed by images, gestures, body movements and sign language, they found the use of visual aids for vocabulary to be the most effective teaching strategy during the course. the final interview also reinforced the use of internet resources as a useful source of iconic language that responds to the visual and written necessities of deaf learners. (p. 143) the verbs “hear” and “see” refer to the adaption of the deaf learners to the course, as well as to blended learning, which was conceived to respond to the learners’ needs. the adaption resides in the fact that the deaf students developed competences in english by “seeing the language”, and the teacher-researcher (the author) had to come up with innovations about other usages of blended learning strategies. eventually they had to explore the plasticity of this approach. inclusion is evidenced in the fact that the deaf-students community and the teachers “moulded” the blended learning pedagogical approach to tackle the specific learning needs. ávila caica (2011) states that the blended learning strategies included face-to-face sessions. a close learning community was created derived from such meetings. the integration of collaborative learning in her inclusive pedagogical intervention with deaf learners was possible within the deaf learners group, as evidenced in the following excerpt. 239 pedagogical and research approaches in inclusive education in elt in colombia... profile: issues teach. prof. dev., vol. 20 no. 2, jul-dec, 2018. issn 1657-0790 (printed) 2256-5760 (online). bogotá, colombia. pages 231-246 7. the familiarity and casual atmosphere fostered students’ participation making them feel included, valued, and respected. students enjoyed the activities and they showed highly collaborative work. they helped each other by explaining or giving examples of new concepts. i noticed that each student is explicitly conscious of self and others and all have a common objective: learning english. (p. 144) the identification of features related to the senses of closeness and belongingness is key to determine how close a learning community is. one of the salient features is that learning is assisted when classmates are engaged to support each other (johnson & johnson, 1999). the noun phrase familiarity and casual atmosphere demonstrates that the students were the subject of such senses. success attributed by ávila caica (2011) in working with deaf students was possible because values, as in the adjective group included, valued, and respected, were part of the core of the learning community. in consequence, it is quite predictable that plenty of collaborative work occurred. the collaborative features in ávila caica’s (2011) article show interesting solutions for the problem of deaf students learning english. the inclusion of a colombian sign language (csl) interpreter made the path smoother. the following excerpt displays this idea: 8. it is easier working among deaf students because for working in a mixed group with hearing people i must agree with them and it is really necessary to have a sign language interpreter. however, if i am only with deaf partners, the class goes faster and i save time. (excerpt 6, video interview 1, students 1, 4, and 8) (p. 144) the incorporation of a csl interpreter is neither accessorial nor symbolic. the collocation really necessary implies the dependency on the human resource that the interpreter meant. the interpreter became fundamental, as he was directly involved with the learning community; he did collaborative work as well. the inclusive factor is present at the time of creating a learning community with specific disabilities and needs, specifically with the adoption and innovation of pedagogical strategies. one of such innovations is evidenced in excerpt 7 as the deaf learners had to “see the language”. to do so, ávila caica (2011) employed grammar-translation strategies: 9. during the face-to-face sessions some strategies from the grammar translation method such as using grammar charts to explain the language structure, doing written exercises for completing the gaps and translating sentences from english into spanish were useful to reinforce the topic or grammar structure studied. (p. 137) the adjective phrase useful to reinforce and the gerund translating imply that the grammar explanation and the use of spanish played a fundamental role to understand, internalize, and practice the target language. the input was assisted by strong written and visual elements to identify grammar, an important feature because of the auditory-based nature of english (ávila caica, 2011). spanish (l2) was a bridge between the l1 (csl) and the l3 (english). all these salient elements serve to identify that thanks to the combination and adaptation of blended and collaborative learning approaches plus the grammar-translation, the deaf learners were included to receive english language instruction regardless of their disability. trends in research approaches in inclusive pedagogical interventions as regards the research approaches, velandia (2007), cualsialpud canchalá (2010), and ávila caica (2011) followed action research, case study, and the microethnographic approaches. as previously stated, velandia’s study is about the problem of improving the speaking skills of an inga student through tutoring sessions. she explains that 10. this study shared principles with action research since it aimed to take part in this problematic situation by identifying the problem, reflecting, making decisions and taking actions (kogan, 2004). universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras240 mosquera, cárdenas & nieto profile: issues teach. prof. dev., vol. 20 no. 2, jul-dec, 2018. issn 1657-0790 (printed) 2256-5760 (online). bogotá, colombia. pages 231-246 in this study, i, as the researcher, played a mixed role: one as an observer-researcher and one as a tutor. (p. 124) the clause this study shared principles with action research implies that she undertook a judicious tutoring process with the student. she had no initial idea about the scope of the problem, since she had first to identify the problem, as an observer-researcher. based on that, she acted along the process as a tutee-researcher. ávila caica’s (2011) inclusive pedagogical intervention deals with one clear objective: to make the deaf students comprehend and communicate ideas in english. she identified the problem, and then adopted and adapted pedagogical strategies and methods to that population. she also followed the principles of action research: 11. the [action research] methodology applied in the project enabled a hearing teacher to conduct a classroom based study to explore issues related to the learning process of her deaf students in order to refine or adopt effective teaching strategies to fulfil their english language needs. (p. 136) the noun phrase action research methodology applied in the project reveals that as mentioned above, the researcher was in charge of identifying the problem and the context to adapt the research methodologies. in this sense, the problem is intrinsic to the students, and the problem, the processes, and expected progress had to go around the disability of the learners. velandia’s (2007) research also exemplifies a case study methodology as her sample: one student is described in depth in a bounded system of action that is used to depict a more general principle (cohen et al., 2011; george & bennet, 2004). the researcher is present in all the stages of the process of improving the oral competences of an inga student at university level, as described below: 12. andrés presented some pronunciation problems, especially with the following phonemes: /ð/ /æ/ /ә/ /e/ and in the final position of the words the phonemes: /θ/ /p/ /v/ /z/. the reason for this, almost certainly, was the lack of these phonemes in spanish or inga. in order to get the student to pronounce better, we decided to start practicing isolated phonemes, phonetic patterns, linking, assimilation, etc. (velandia, 2007, p. 127) this excerpt shows interesting elements in terms of inclusion. the description of the problems with phonemes shows that the researcher depicted rigorously the phenomenon with metalinguistic descriptions. this led to the identification of the obstacles at the time of speaking. the clause: the reason for this, almost certainly, was the lack of these phonemes in spanish and inga is powerful in this sense. the researcher was able to recognize the interference due to the learner’s l1 and l2, set up a plan, and act upon it. following the trend of placing the researcher as an observer and describer, cuasialpud canchalá’s (2010) micro-ethnographic study deals with the attitudes of indigenous students related to ots at a public university in bogotá. 13. in regard to the ots (online tutoring sessions), students confessed they gave little use to this tool, mainly because of accessibility limitations: student 1: i never used the online tutoring sessions, i don’t have access to internet at home, and i don’t afford to pay outside, sometimes i go to the university’s computers rooms but they do not have the tools i need, e.g. headphones, microphone and webcam. i don’t feel comfortable going to the resource center. student 2: it was difficult to access to the internet resources as my friend states, and also because i could not understand how it worked. (p. 144) in this micro-ethnographic study, the researcher provides real thoughts from the indigenous students. the voices of the indigenous students who took part in the project reveal serious problems in terms of inclusion. the first one has to do with economic exclusion, the sentences i don’t have access to internet at home, and i don’t afford to pay outside reveal two serious problems. the lack of connectivity, and the resources derived from 241 pedagogical and research approaches in inclusive education in elt in colombia... profile: issues teach. prof. dev., vol. 20 no. 2, jul-dec, 2018. issn 1657-0790 (printed) 2256-5760 (online). bogotá, colombia. pages 231-246 being connected, held up the student’s progress. this problem was even worse at the time since the institutional capacity to provide the students with the required assets to go through their studies was really limited, as demonstrated in the compound sentence i go to the university’s computers rooms but they do not have the tools i need, e.g. headphones, microphone and webcam. another factor of exclusion is poor computational literacy. the literacy of one of the participants seemed to be poor; a fact that is probably worsened by his english level that delays his comprehension of the instructions and commands. the verb understand plus the collocation how it worked demonstrate that the ots were not designed for students whose background and resources were tremendously short. the program in theory was available for all the participants, but in practice was just for some of them. trends in research approaches employed by the journal’s authors about linguistic policies as already mentioned, four articles deal with public policies concerning english language instruction in colombia (bonilla carvajal & tejada-sánchez, 2016; guerrero, 2010; sánchez & obando, 2008; usma wilches, 2009). usma wilches (2009) examines the national bilingual program in connection with other education and language reforms in colombia and some of the processes of inclusion, exclusion, and stratification that accompany current school reforms. the exclusion of local knowledge is evident due to the borrowing of foreign discourses while making and implementing foreign language policies. bonilla carvajal and tejada-sánchez (2016) provide a critical account of the transitions of the linguistic policies that have shaped the concept of bilingualism and remark that the specific education paradigm in elt has led to exclusion of the local knowledge. guerrero (2010) presents an interpretation of the images of colombian english teachers constructed in official discourse, particularly in the document “estándares básicos de competencias en lenguas extranjeras: inglés. formar en lenguas extranjeras, el reto”: (basic competency standards of foreign languages: english: shaping the challenge in foreign languages). in her discussion, exclusion is evident through the invisibility of colombian teachers in policy making. finally, sánchez and obando (2008) examine the academic needs that must be met to achieve governmental goals in foreign language programmes. they deal with exclusion, remarking on the invisibility of colombian teachers in policy making as well. the research approaches employed by these authors are documentary research and cda. the rationale of the colombian government to make and implement the language polices has to do with the longstanding servile and uncritical attitude of the colombian government with the ideas that come from the global powers. usma wilches (2009) employs the documentary research tool to reveal that the government’s rationale has fostered the mentality that the foreign is better just because it is foreign. this is evident in the language policies discussed by quintero (2007) and taken by usma wilches in his documentary study. quintero makes explicit that due to the externalization and internalization of discourses, local knowledge is deliberately ignored, and foreign actors are given a sound relevance, regardless of their sometimes scarce knowledge of the local contexts. usma wilches (2009) leads us to analyze the historic thought that has been replicated program after program. the imposition of the foreign ideas does not consider the local context because it is mainly the replication of a model that may work well in the contexts of origin but not necessarily in the context of application. this situation has placed the actors, government, and foreign implementers on one side and the local teachers on the other, to collide in the realization of their ideas in language policies. the joint venture between the government and foreign agents resembles a naturalization of ideologies (fairclough, 2003) since the government accepts what comes from abroad without further discussion and ignores the expertise owned by the local teachers. universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras242 mosquera, cárdenas & nieto profile: issues teach. prof. dev., vol. 20 no. 2, jul-dec, 2018. issn 1657-0790 (printed) 2256-5760 (online). bogotá, colombia. pages 231-246 another research tool that the profile authors employed to deal with the issue of inclusive education is cda. bonilla carvajal and tejada-sánchez’s (2016) study leads one to examine the exclusion of local knowledge in the linguistic public policies. 14. in their thorough analysis of the inclusion of english as a post-conflict plan, these authors refer to the “drastic shifts” in language policy taking place in different parts of post-colonial africa, benefiting english over other languages. the rationale behind these changes is rooted in the social imaginary of what the english language has come to represent: power, along with the understatement of being powerless where it is not in the official agenda. in this way, rassool’s parallel with bourdieu’s “colonial habitus” proves to be particularly relevant to colombia’s case. (p. 193) the authors identify the struggles for the imposition of ideas. in the excerpt above, the adjective powerless is influential in weighing the unequal situation of the actors, government, and foreign implementers on the one hand, and the local teachers on the other. bourdieu’s concept of “colonial habitus” is perfect to state that views from abroad are considered from the “metropole”; they are trendy and the model to follow. however, the ideas of the locals are considered from the “colony”. they may be depicted as childish, naïve, and amateur. the historical circumstances and the dominance of the foreign over the local have embodied and shaped the rationale, discourses, and practices. notwithstanding, we gained our political independence more than 200 years ago, but the cultural and intellectual one, we probably have not yet (guerrero, 2010). thus, it is not surprising that the rationale of the government is to implement the foreign views on language policies excluding deliberately the local actors (the local teachers) in the process. in this respect, in her detailed cda, guerrero (2010) states that the teachers are virtually invisible for the ministry of education at making the linguistic policies, and just depicted as clerks (p. 41) who are to follow their addresses uncritically. 15. the asymmetrical power relationship that exists between the two (men/teachers) given by their roles in society. by announcing that the standards are to be found on the following pages, the men is saying more than that; it is stating that the men has established certain standards and teachers have to implement them. (p. 44) guerrero (2010) states power struggles that consequently lead to an old-fashioned mentality of the government. the noun phrase asymmetrical power relationship underscores the position of the actors (government and foreign implementers above, and teachers below). implicitly, she states that there is a lack of communication among the actors resulting in a lack of symbiosis. in this circumstance, the relation between the actors is vertical, and the position of the government is eminently absolutist. as in any absolutist regime, the ruler is advised by his “entourage”. the “entourage” is comprised of the foreign implementers who pursue their own economic interests (usma wilches, 2009). another trace of such absolutist rationale is present in the clause the men is saying more than that . . . the men has established certain standards and teachers have to implement them. here, the author underpins her analysis with an implication. guerrero makes inferences based on the power struggles she identifies in the standards’ document. as in any absolutist regime, the rulers are the ones who enact, dictate, and regulate and the subordinates have to implement or obey with neither hesitation nor participation in the making of public policies. the invisibility of the colombian teachers is also explicit in the analysis by sánchez and obando (2008). albeit they do not mention overtly the use of cda, their article has some of its characteristics. they analyse the discourse at the macro level as a reaction against the authoritarian and absolutist practices of the colombian state. 16. this seems to be the case in colombia where policies are created in a top-down approach where only a few people (not 243 pedagogical and research approaches in inclusive education in elt in colombia... profile: issues teach. prof. dev., vol. 20 no. 2, jul-dec, 2018. issn 1657-0790 (printed) 2256-5760 (online). bogotá, colombia. pages 231-246 necessarily teachers) know what “should be done and why” and the participation of schoolteachers in the creation of standards is virtually invisible. the first step in ensuring effective foreign language programs in colombia should be to inform everyone about not only the goals but also the rationale behind the goals for l2 teaching in this context. (p. 184) the inclusion of the noun phrase top-down rationale is a clear critique of the effects of the domination of the foreign discourse of elt towards society (fairclough, 2003; van dijk, 1995). for sánchez and obando (2008), the rationale of the government is not neutral but seeks to maintain and reproduce unequal relations of power. such relation aims to impose the government and foreign implementers’ logics, agendas, and interests at the expense of the local teachers and students who, at the end of the day, have to suffer the poor planning in which they are deemed practically invisible and with no voice. conclusions this study reported on pedagogical and research approaches employed by profile authors in connection with the study of inclusion in english instruction and public policies in colombia. in this sense, we conducted the above analysis in three main parts: pedagogical approaches in pedagogical interventions, research approaches in pedagogical interventions, and research approaches in linguistic policies. pedagogical approaches in pedagogical interventions: in velandia’s study (2007), inclusion is possible as tutoring, autonomous learning, and task-based approach techniques helped an inga student to reflect upon his learning process with the consequence of raising his awareness to improve his speaking skills and increase his confidence towards his own cultural heritage. in ávila caica’s report (2011), inclusion is supported by the fact that the deaf students created a collaborative learning community, and the teacher adapted both the blended learning and grammar-translation approaches to tackle students’ specific learning needs. in cuasialpud canchalá (2010) it was not possible for the indigenous students to follow the autonomous methodology; they were the subject of exclusion due to their poor access to resources to perform the ots activities. research approaches in pedagogical interventions: in velandia (2007) and ávila caica’s (2011) studies, inclusion is achievable through action research as the processes and expected progress had to emerge while taking into consideration the cultural background and disability of the learners. in velandia’s study, inclusion is identified as the study depicts an inga student’s learning problems with accurate metalinguistic descriptions. from such descriptions, the researcher is able to come up with an inclusive pedagogical intervention to improve his speaking skills. in cuasialpud canchalá’s (2010) micro-ethnographic study, the voices of the indigenous students revealed economic exclusion, poor institutional capacity to provide the students with the required assets, low computational literacy, and poor english background as well. research approaches in linguistic policies: usma wilches (2009), bonilla carvajal and tejada-sánchez (2016), guerrero (2010), and sánchez and obando (2008) used documentary research and cda. while usma wilches discusses that the exclusion of local knowledge is evident due to the borrowing of foreign discourses while making and implementing foreign language policies, bonilla carvajal and tejada-sánchez deal with the specific educational paradigm in elt that has led to exclusion of local knowledge. on the other hand, in guerrero and sánchez and obando, exclusion is evident through the invisibility of colombian teachers in policy making. this study is an initial glance at the relationship between research and pedagogical approaches regarding inclusion or exclusion in elt and language policies. further research related to the outcomes of this study universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras244 mosquera, cárdenas & nieto profile: issues teach. prof. dev., vol. 20 no. 2, jul-dec, 2018. issn 1657-0790 (printed) 2256-5760 (online). bogotá, colombia. pages 231-246 could include proposals of inclusive pedagogical interventions carried out by institutions and individuals, the development of projects to diminish the factors of exclusion in marginalized populations derived from the lack of resources, and analysis in terms of the methodology to carry out inclusive pedagogical practices. besides, research to foster the adoption of the local expertise at the time of planning public policies is very much needed so that inclusive education becomes a reality in elt practices. references aguerrondo, i. 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(2008). is colombia ready for bilingualism? profile: issues in teachers’ professional development, 9(1), 181-195. scott, j. (2006). documentary research. london, uk: sage. https://doi.org/10.4135/9781446261422. stake, r. e. (2005). qualitative case studies. in n. denzin & y. lincoln (eds.), the sage handbook of qualitative research (3rd ed., pp. 443-466). thousand oaks, us: sage publications. thornbury, s. (2005). how to teach speaking. saffron walden, uk: longman. toolan, m. (1997). what is critical discourse analysis and why are people saying such terrible things about it? language and literature, 6(2). https://doi. org/10.1177/096394709700600201. unesco. (2009). policy guidelines on inclusion in education (1st ed.). paris, fr: author. united nations. (2006). convention on the rights of persons with disabilities and optional protocol. retrieved from http://www.un.org/disabilities/documents/convention/ convoptprot-e.pdf. universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras246 mosquera, cárdenas & nieto united nations. (2016). infographic on the crdp and the cosp [pdf file]. retrieved from http://www.un.org/ disabilities/documents/cop/cosp9_infographic.pdf. usma wilches, j. (2009). education and language policy in colombia: exploring processes of inclusion, exclusion, and stratification in times of global reform. profile: issues in teachers’ professional development, 11(1), 123-141. van dijk, t. a. (1995). aims of critical discourse analysis. japanese discourse, 1(1), 17-27. velandia, d. (2007). tutorial plan to support the english speaking skill of an inga student of an initial teacher education program. profile: issues in teachers’ professional development, 8(1), 121-130. willis, j. (1995). a framework for task-based learning. essex, uk: longman. wodak, r., & meyer, m. (2001). methods of critical discourse analysis. london, uk: sage. https://doi. org/10.4135/9780857028020. about the authors óscar andrés mosquera holds a b.ed. in philology and languages: english, from universidad nacional de colombia. he is currently an english teacher. his research interests are foreign language didactics, ict in english language teaching, autonomous learning, and sociocultural studies. melba libia cárdenas is an associate professor of the foreign languages department at universidad nacional de colombia, bogotá campus. she is currently studying for a phd in education at universidad de zaragoza, spain, thanks to a scholarship granted by fundación carolina. she is the editor of the profile and how journals, edited in colombia. maría claudia nieto is an associate professor of the foreign languages department at universidad nacional de colombia, bogotá campus. she is a co-researcher in two groups of the same department: profile and lexi. at the moment, she is the national coordinator of the spanish as a foreign language network in colombia. profile vol. 19, no. 1, january-june 2017. issn 1657-0790 (printed) 2256-5760 (online). bogotá, colombia. pages 7-10 7 editorial http://dx.doi.org/10.15446/profile.v19n1.61055 editorial1* publishing in english-medium journals often involves becoming familiar with new practices, thus layering on additional demands for scholars who are already successful in local and regional contexts and presenting challenges to those relatively new to writing for publication. (p. 2)… we consider that many of the practices of writing for academic publishing are hidden or opaque and involve ideologies that discriminate against some scholars more than others. we are committed to contributing to ways of working toward greater and more equal access to academic publishing by scholars around the world. (p. 5)12 to start, the exercise of writing is a difficult task. nothing more challenging than the whiteness of an empty page. whether the writing outcome is a personal product or a piece to be socialized in the academic world, the writing task demands a lot from the ones that succumb by pleasure or obligation to the writing assignment. apart from the skill of writing, authors of articles published in academic journals are obliged to stick to the specific publication’s parameters. strict datelines, number of words and specific sections to be included will shape the writer’s production. the resulting texts in most of the circumstances will fit the publications’ guidelines but may, in turn, restrict the writer’s flow and line of thought. authors may be restricted by limitations but if they want to publish they should stick to the parameters of the target publication. in other words, stick and publish or ignore and be ignored. once an academic paper is received by a publication, it goes through different filters. these have the purpose of assuring the quality of the submitted information. the struggle of being accepted takes place. the publication rules and modulates the choice of its substratum. the writers’ products are at the mercy of the different filters along which we find evaluators and policies. once the demanding exercise of revision is finished, the author’s production is given the red, yellow or green light to be published. in the first instance, authors are invited to rethink their papers; in the second case they are expected to resubmit with big or small changes and in the third case to observe minor or no commentaries at all. regardless of the result, contributors and readers can and should expect fairness, clarity and respect for their time from a publication. profile, as an example of an english-medium journal, has worked hard not only in the construction of a niche that fulfills the standards of national and international norms, * how to cite this article (apa, 6th ed.): nieto cruz, m. c., & cárdenas, m. l. (2017). editorial. profile issues in teachers’ professional development, 19(1), 7-10. http://dx.doi.org/10.15446/profile.v19n1.61055. 1 curry, m. j., & lillis, t. (2013). a scholar’s guide to getting published in english: critical choices and practical strategies. bristol, uk: multilingual matters. this is an open access article distributed under the terms of the creative commons license attributionnoncommercial-noderivatives 4.0 international license. consultation is possible at http://creativecommons. org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/. universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras8 nieto cruz & cárdenas but in its interest to reach different audiences and to spread ideas of novel writers and scholars alike. the ideology that has moved the publication is connected to the belief that discrimination is not a premise we hold. empowerment is the spark that ignites our engines. in order to reach a wider readership, academic journals look for their inclusion in indexing systems and databases. although we have been accepted in several of them, we constantly submit our journal to other entities. this time we are pleased to let you know that profile has just been indexed in iresie (índice de revistas de educación superior e investigación educativa), a bibliographical database that specializes in education in latin america, spain, and portugal and that is led by the universidad nacional autónoma de méxico (unam). additionally, the journal has been included in the european reference index for the humanities and the social sciences (erih plus). the journals that are selected for inclusion in iresie and erih plus comply with international standards of editorial quality. this is our case, and we hope we can sustain it thanks to the cooperation of our sponsors and editorial committees. to this end, we gladly welcome the new scholars who have accepted our invitation to take part in the reviewing processes of namely: janice bland (university of muenster, germany); alice chik (macquarie university, australia); mário cruz (politécnico do porto, portugal); greta gorsuch (texas tech university, usa); john s. hedgcock (middlebury institute of international studies at monterey, usa); anthony j. liddicoat (university of warwick, uk); faezeh mehrang (massey university, new zealand); jackie nenchin (molloy college, division of education, usa); melina porto (universidad nacional de la plata and conicet, argentina); and muhammad rahimi (university of auckland, new zealand). we very much appreciate their positive response to our invitation to be part of our board of reviewers. their collaboration, as well as the support received from scholars who have accompanied us for several years, is very much appreciated and encourages us to uphold the academic rigor of our publication. this edition contains eleven papers. the first section, issues from teacher researchers, begins with four articles about english language teacher education. fatih güngör starts by sharing with us the tensions between english as a foreign language (efl) teacher identities and in-service teacher education in the turkish context. in his narrative study the author examines the incongruities between teacher identities and in-service training programs offered by the ministry of national education in turkey, based upon the use of the activity theory. to do so, he focuses on the reflections of two efl teachers concerning their environment, behaviors, beliefs, competencies, and missions. then, chilean author diego muñoz campos invites us to get acquainted with the processes and results of an exploratory, descriptive study that sought to identify the perceptions of pre-service teachers about the impact of a problem-based learning activity on the development of key competencies, including higher order thinking skills and reflective, research, knowledge transfer/integration, social, and self-management skills. profile vol. 19, no. 1, january-june 2017. issn 1657-0790 (printed) 2256-5760 (online). bogotá, colombia. pages 7-10 9 editorial after that, m. martha lengeling, irasema mora pablo, and blanca lucía barrios gasca’s article reports the findings of a study carried out with public school teachers of english as a foreign language in central mexico with the purpose of exploring the processes of their socialization and identity formation. we can learn about the features of such socialization and how the teachers dealt with challenges in their teaching contexts and the program. we can also learn about how they made decisions vis-à-vis their future as teachers, forming and imagining their identity. next we can find the article by turkish teachers mehmet firat and harun serpil, who compare the internet usage of distance and on-campus pre-service teachers of language and other disciplines through a survey study. we can read about the average level of internet usage frequency, adequacy, and technology ownership in the two preservice teacher groups. the following three articles address issues of english language teaching in mexico, colombia, and new zealand. in first place, luz edith herrera díaz and darlene gonzález miy, from universidad veracruzana (mexico), provide an advance of a study in progress regarding the development of the oral skill in a basic english online course. the authors aim at uncovering the relation between the community of inquiry framework’s presence and some indicators of the oral skill. interestingly, the results indicate that the teaching presence nurtures grammar, accuracy, and vocabulary. then, the article entitled “the impact of authentic materials and tasks on students’ communicative competence at a colombian language school” refers to an investigation conducted at a public university, in a basic english course, by césar augusto castillo losada, edgar alirio insuasty, and maría fernanda jaime osorio. findings show that the use of authentic materials and tasks, within the framework of a pedagogical project, had an impact on students’ communicative competence progress and on the teaching practices. we close this first section with the article authored by constanza tolosa, claudia lucía ordóñez, and diana carolina guevara, who present an account of a study aimed at examining the potential of an online tandem program to enhance the foreign language learning of two groups of school-aged beginner learners, one learning english in colombia and the other learning spanish in new zealand. results comprise significant gains in foreign language writing and positive attitudinal changes toward foreign and native language learning. in the second section, issues from novice teacher researchers, we include a study dealing with the presence of political educative issues in our journal. the article, written by lina maría robayo acuña and the profile editor, reports on a study aimed at exploring the topic of inclusive policies in the teaching of efl in colombia. the authors chose some articles by colombian authors published in the profile journal to conduct a documentary and critical discourse analysis. results are illustrated with extracts form the selected articles to demonstrate that some policies—mainly the national program of bilingualism and the basic standards for competences in english as universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras10 nieto cruz & cárdenas a foreign language—evidence discriminatory and segregation attitudes in english language teaching. the last section, issues based on reflections and innovations, features this time three articles containing issues of gender, citizenship, and teacher empowerment. first of all, claudia patricia mojica and harold castañeda-peña describe the design, implementation, and learning that took place in a course with an emphasis on gender and foreign language teaching in a master’s program in colombia. this teaching and learning experience evidences the relevance of the gender category in english language teacher education and in fostering a broader social and educational perspective in teachers’ practices with a gender perspective. next we can read a contribution by colombian author luzkarime calle díaz who analyses the potential opportunities for the development of global citizenship education in the english as a foreign language classroom. to attain that goal, the author carried out a documentary analysis of the colombian national standards and its connection to the national citizenship competences standards and the unesco global citizenship education topics and learning objectives. the last article of this edition comes from spain. soraya garcía-sánchez and jose miguel santos-espino inform us about the upshots resulting from the production of foreign language educational videos by pre-service instructors enrolled in a master’s degree in secondary education program with the purpose of linking digital technology with pedagogy by means of producing flipped classroom units adapted to the younger generation’s needs. the contributions made by the above mentioned authors tell us how profile as an academic publication is always looking forward to covering a wide range of scenarios in the hopes of providing a myriad of possibilities for practitioners of english. countless accounts of world research in efl are possible due to our clear, fair, and timely policies. the increasing number of submissions to our journal has made it possible to carefully select the manuscripts to be gathered in a new edition from a healthy or considerable range of topics and origins. we should highlight the authors’ perseverance to offer our readership articles of high quality, based on our policies and the demands of our reviewers. besides that, we are fully committed, as curry and lillis pointed out at the beginning of this editorial, to work toward greater and more equal opportunities for scholars to get published. maría claudia nieto cruz journal director melba libia cárdenas journal editor 51 http://dx.doi.org/10.15446/profile.v19n_sup1.68571 implementation of the moodle system into efl classes implementación del sistema moodle en las clases de inglés como lengua extranjera nuket gunduz1* deniz ozcan2** near east university, mersin, turkey this study aims to examine students’ perception on using the moodle system in secondary school in english as a foreign language lessons. a mixed method approach was used in this study with qualitative and quantitative research models. the study group consisted of 333 students and 12 english language teachers. the quantitative data were collected by a survey and qualitative data were collected by five open-ended questions. the results showed that students in general perceive themselves as sufficient in terms of the moodle system and teachers thought that the system was contemporary and beneficial in the long run but at the time of the study it was not functioning well. key words: learning management systems, moodle, perception. este estudio busca explorar las percepciones de estudiantes sobre el uso de la plataforma moodle en una clase de inglés como lengua extranjera. se recurrió a un enfoque mixto que combinó los modelos cualitativo y cuantitativo. el grupo de estudio estuvo compuesto por 333 estudiantes y 12 profesores de inglés. los datos cuantitativos se recogieron con una encuesta y los cualitativos con cinco preguntas abiertas. los resultados muestran que, en general, los estudiantes se sienten cómodos con el uso de la plataforma moodle y los docentes piensan que la plataforma es contemporánea y ofrece beneficios a largo plazo, aunque al momento de realizar el estudio la plataforma no estaba funcionando bien. palabras clave: percepción, plataforma moodle, sistemas de administración de aprendizaje. * e-mail: nuket.gunduz@neu.edu.tr ** e-mail: deniz.ozcan@neu.edu.tr how to cite this article (apa, 6th ed.): gunduz, n., & ozcan, d. (2017). implementation of the moodle system into efl classes. profile: issues in teachers’ professional development, 19(suppl. 1), 51-64. http://dx.doi.org/10.15446/profile.v19n_sup1.68571. this article was received on september 1, 2017, and accepted on october 30, 2017. this is an open access article distributed under the terms of the creative commons license attribution-noncommercial-noderivatives 4.0 international license. consultation is possible at https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/. profile: issues teach. prof. dev., vol. 19, supplement 1, 2017. issn 1657-0790 (printed) 2256-5760 (online). bogotá, colombia. pages 51-64 universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras52 gunduz & ozcan introduction the latest education developments in the world have made traditional notions of education out-dated and have given way to new, more innovative trends in teaching. these trends have been designed to meet student expectations and also to back up evolving pedagogical approaches (ali & jaafar, 2010; garcía laborda & litzler, 2011; garcía laborda & navarro lavoulais, 2008; vanova & kazelleova, 2012; yaman, 2010). thus, more learner-centred approaches were sought in teaching any subject, including languages. blended learning, which is an approach that can combine face-to-face teaching with e-learning programs like moodle, has emerged to facilitate student-centred learning. this has in turn led to face-to-face classroom teaching to be supplemented by technologically driven educational environments, which are more learner-centred, more collaborative, and more innovative. some studies pinpoint that language learners appreciate blended learning programs due to flexibility and autonomy (goertler, bollen, & gaff, 2012; larsen, 2012). contemporary technologies, especially the internet, have given a chance to teachers to use many interesting tools to improve the quality of the teaching-learning process. usefulness of these tools makes it important for teachers to have more information about the advantages and possibilities of using technology in the classroom (kaminski, 2005). many studies have been conducted on this issue and some studies revealed that learners’ attitudes towards the internet may be influential in their engagement in internet-based learning tasks (coffin & macintyre, 1999; tsai, 2004). new technologies advancing each day have attracted education societies in using these tools for knowledge acquisition. there are various learning management systems (lms) available in the market and modular object oriented dynamic learning environment (moodle) is a free and open source e-learning software platform. hence, in the relevant literature some studies refer to this system as course management system (cms), or virtual learning environment (vle). however, moodle will be referred to as lms in this present study. these e-learning tools allow students to continue learning outside the school environment. hence, a teacher is still necessary to facilitate the planning and preparation processes. moodle is one of the preferred types as a method of learning based on electronic media which is designed using sound pedagogical principles, helping educators create effective online learning communities (cuadrado-garcía & ruiz-molina, 2009). moodle helps educators to blend traditional classroom pedagogies with various web-based technologies in a single application (lamb, 2004). moodle is acknowledged as a self-directed, out of classroom practice which fosters learner autonomy. as indicated by lamb (2004), learners generally welcome internet applications as they can learn at their own pace. moreover, the moodle environment aims to enhance students’ experience in learning and is designed with a constructivist pedagogical framework. from all the above mentioned factors, the major factor that has a role for moodle to be preferred as a method of learning is that teachers can easily access this software on the program’s web page and design a page for their own course free of charge. new learning approaches are aiming to enhance and extend learning opportunities for our twenty-first century learners. the rapid change and developments of the technologies have provided new possibilities for designing different kind of courses for language teaching and learning. web-based courses are one type of these designs where they can stand alone for teaching/learning or be combined into the current education process. moreover, when computers entered the education environments, e-learning came on the scene, offering educational web sites for learning scenarios, the creation of worksheets, interactive exercises, and many other tools for the learners. this trend was and still is approved for giving an advantage to learners to learn at their own pace as well as shifting power from teacher to student for 53profile: issues teach. prof. dev., vol. 19, supplement 1, 2017. issn 1657-0790 (printed) 2256-5760 (online). bogotá, colombia. pages 51-64 implementation of the moodle system into efl classes acquiring knowledge, an opportunity that a classroom may not always offer (barr & tagg, 1995). language courses which combine face-to-face classroom teaching with the appropriate use of technology are a way to practice the blended learning approach. sharma and barret (2007), argue that the implementation of such technologies and their practices needs to be planned in a way that they can serve as an integral part of the teaching and learning process and not in isolation from the rest of the learning. therefore, for the sake of integration, preand post-implementation stages of such systems are in need in order to consider the challenges and opportunities the language teachers and learners are likely to face. this study focuses on the students’ perceptions and the teachers’ opinions on the moodle system, which was implemented as a supplement to face-to-face teaching to practise the blended learning approach in english college, a high school in north cyprus. leaders of tomorrow are the students of today; considering the changes and demands of this age, there is a need to change and re-structure the educational environments to fulfil the requirements of future leaders. new technologies in the classrooms are a way for teachers to alter and change ways of instruction to meet the ever-changing needs of their students. moodle has a significant international user base; english college has identified the need to extend the learning environment outside the physical location and hours of operation for the long-term success of the students and has implemented the moodle system into their education process. english college’s objective with a grant from the european commission for schools’ initiative for innovation and change was to facilitate studentcentred learning by setting up the necessary hardware and software to strengthen the current networking infrastructure and train teachers and other staff (f. tokay, personal communication, september 29, 2016). more specifically, the aim was to develop and deliver innovative, student-centred teaching methodologies. even though the target group of this project initially was english college’s students, teachers, and school management, it is believed it will pave the way for other schools in developing countries. aim of the study the aim of the study was to examine the students’ perception on using the moodle system in english college in english language lessons. more specifically, the study seeks to examine and explore students’ and english as a foreign language (efl) teachers’ opinions on using the moodle in their english classes. 1. what is the general perception of the students toward the moodle system in efl classes? 2. are there any differences between perception of the students toward the moodle system in efl classes according to their a. age? b. gender? c. year of study? d. system access? 3. what are the teachers’ opinions regarding using moodle in english lessons? research design the present study was undertaken to address students’ perceptions and teachers’ opinions of the moodle system in english classes in english college in north cyprus where it is currently being used as part of instruction. the study was designed using a mixed methods approach where quantitative data collection methods were used for collecting and analysing data about students’ perceptions and qualitative data collection methods used to collect data about teacher opinions on various aspects of the system. participants the participants of the research consisted of 333 secondary school students studying in english college. randomly selected students were categorized into two universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras54 gunduz & ozcan age groups where 131 (39%) of the students were in the age group of 13-15 (middle school level) and 202 (61%) were in the 16-18 (high school level) age group. year six students were excluded from the survey because the academic year in which the study was carried out comprised their first experience with the moodle system. therefore, they did not have the necessary knowledge and experience to respond to the items in the questionnaire. in addition to the student survey, 10 randomly selected english language teachers who were teaching in english college at the time of the study were asked to participate in the focus group discussions. each group was accompanied by their department chiefs and there were 12 teachers who participated in the discussions. focus group one consisted of six secondary school teachers and the second group of six teachers teaching in high school sections. the focus groups were balanced with six english teachers who were interviewed for the collection of qualitative data of teacher opinions about the moodle system. survey discussion questions attempted to collect data of responses giving insights about teachers’ opinions. two focus group members consisted of eight female and four male teachers while six of them were teaching in the secondary level and the other six teaching in the high school level. five teachers were in the age group 31-38, six were in 39-46, and only one in 47-54. although each teacher had different years of teaching experience they all had been teaching over ten years. five of the teachers had been teaching between 10 and 14, six teachers between 15 and 19, and one between 22 and 24. teacher participants were all turkish cypriots and english language was not their native language. data collecting tools for the first part of the study, which consisted of collecting data about the perceptions of students of the moodle system, a researcher-made questionnaire adapted from “learning management systems coherence with technology” was used. the questionnaire consisted of two parts. the first part was developed by the researcher to consist of five items for collecting information about students’ age, gender, class, and problems about accessing moodle at home. the second part of the questionnaire contained 23 items, which were grouped under five dimensions for the analysis purpose. these dimensions were (a) self-efficacy (.965), (b) perceived ease of use (.890), (c) attitude (.972), (d) system usage (.911), and (e) personal innovativeness in the domain of information technology (.832). the items for the five dimensions were measured on a five level likert scale ranging from 1 (strongly disagree) to 5 (strongly agree). the second part of the questionnaire, where students’ perceptions were measured, was adapted from similar studies (arteaga sánchez & duarte hueros, 2010; van raaij & schepers, 2008). the questionnaire by arteaga sánchez and duarte hueros (2010) was adopted and structured with 28 items grouped under six dimensions: (a) technical support, (b) perceived usefulness, (c) computer self-efficacy, (d) perceived ease of use, (e) attitude, and (f) system usage. the questionnaire of van raaij and schepers (2008) consisted of 21 items grouped under six dimensions: (a) computer anxiety, (b) personal innovativeness in the domain of information technology, (c) perceived ease of use, (d) perceived usefulness, (e) subjective norm, and (f) intensity to use. the questionnaire of this research was restructured by eliminating the first dimension (technical support) in van raaij and schepers’ questionnaire because it was not valid for this study. moreover, items about academic performance, effectiveness, and learning in university were eliminated from the “perceived usefulness” dimension that resulted in not being relevant in the reliability test. furthermore, the first item of “perceived ease of use” (learning is easy for me) was eliminated and the remaining items of perceived usefulness and perceived ease of use were grouped under (b) perceived ease of use and a new item (item 7) was added (using moodle increases my creativity). this item was added as creativity was considered to be a factor affecting achievement and also influencing innovation. the “personal innovativeness in the domain 55profile: issues teach. prof. dev., vol. 19, supplement 1, 2017. issn 1657-0790 (printed) 2256-5760 (online). bogotá, colombia. pages 51-64 implementation of the moodle system into efl classes of informational technology” dimension was adopted from van raaij and schepers (2008) because it was considered to be important for the use of the moodle system. it was considered that this variable could indicate the participants’ openness about experimenting new technologies. the original questionnaire was developed with seven-likert scale and it was modified to five-likert scale for this specific study. the reason for the reduction of the scales was due to the participants of this study being younger than the participants of the two studies that the questionnaires were adopted from. the adopted questionnaire was structured in english and then translated into turkish. these questionnaires were translated according to hancer’s (2003) model of the serial approach which consists of six steps. in the first step, the questionnaire was translated by a committee of five lecturers working in the field of english language. each member translated and edited the questionnaire individually. then, for the second step, the questionnaire was given to four different individuals whose ages ranged from 13-16 years of age and these people were asked to evaluate the questionnaire for clarity of meaning and ease of understanding. furthermore, the questionnaire was approved by academics in the english and turkish language fields. third, in order to identify and omit the problematic words, the questionnaire was translated back into english, that is, another translation. fourth, the rephrased questionnaire was again given to a group of young people (n = 30) to carry out the field test. in order to measure the reliability (fifth step), in this part the results indicated that one dimension (perceived usefulness) had to be eliminated as mentioned in the materials part and some items of this dimension combined with another dimension (perceived ease of use); again, the questionnaire was given to 30 students for the second pilot survey and this time the cronbach alfa was measured at .950. finally, the questionnaire was evaluated and edited for the final time before application. in the end, the questionnaire used in this study consisted of 23 items, focusing on different dimensions of students’ perceptions. for reliability and internal consistency, the researchers calculated the cronbach alpha of the questionnaire for each dimension identified earlier. the results were .965 for first dimension (self-efficacy), .890 for the second dimension (perceived ease of use), .972 for the third dimension (attitude), .911 for the fourth dimension (system usage), and finally, .832 for the last dimension (personal innovativeness in the domain of information technology). the questionnaire used for data collection was therefore considered to be reliable. for content validity, the researcher used resources of previous studies about the moodle system and the implementation of such systems into the education processes. qualitative data were also collected from two focus groups formed by english teachers. five open-ended questions were prepared to be used in semi-structured discussions. these questions were: 1. what are the benefits of using moodle in your english courses? 2. in what sense has moodle made your students successful? 3. what are the needed requirements for a teacher who is using moodle to teach english? 4. do you believe that school facilities are adequate for the moodle system to function? 5. what are the attitudes of the students about the implementation of the moodle system? as the focus groups were designed to place the participants’ views on the table, additional questions were also directed to clarify responses and gather richer data during the discussions. the two focus groups were recorded, using a mobile phone and then each was transcribed for analysis. data analysis the quantitative analysis was conducted by using spss 22.0 and qualitative analysis was content based. while analysing the quantitative data collected through the questionnaires, descriptive statistics were used to find out the percentages and frequencies of the demographic universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras56 gunduz & ozcan features of the students. the variables of the perception on moodle were explained with the lowest and the highest scores of mean and standard deviations. then, t-tests were carried out based on a comparison of different groups and variables such as different grade levels and private lesson attendance. in addition, one way anova and lsd (least significant degree) were conducted to analyse and compare the significant differences in perceptions within and between groups that had different degrees of problems in accessing the moodle system. qualitative data were analysed using the open coding method. responses from each participant were analysed in detail and in isolation from those of other participants. sentences, phrases, and words were studied separately in line with relation to the topic and analysed according to their relevance. through repeated comparisons, similar ideas were integrated until major themes were established for each study question. there were multiple passes in the analysis process of these responses and the key words were identified accordingly. then, the key words were classified into broader categories that might be refined and challenged until the key words were then classified reasonably to provide insights for the study. the researcher and a colleague analysed, coded, and categorized the data for the reliability of coding. moreover, another coder independently coded all the responses of the participants. through this process, two sets of themes were generated for each question and the coders compared the responses. however, when discrepancies were taken into consideration and coders were not able to reach an agreement on the meaning, the theme was coded again. findings and discussion the general perception of the students toward the moodle system in efl classes the data collected from the questionnaires on students’ perceptions of the moodle system were analysed in five different dimensions: (a) computer self-efficacy, (b) perceived ease of use, (c) attitude, (d) system usage, and (e) personal innovativeness in the domain of information technology. out of the 23 items, six were in the first dimension (items 1-6), seven were in the second dimension (items 7-13), four in the third dimension (items 14-17), two in the fourth dimension (items 18-19), and finally four in the fifth dimension (items 20-23). table 1 shows the results of the questionnaire based on these five dimensions. table 1. the general perception of the students toward the moodle system in efl classes (n = 333) dimensions `x s computer self-efficacy 3.74 .765 perceived ease of use 3.28 .951 attitude 3.11 1.206 system usage 2.78 1.315 personal innovativeness in the domain of information technology 3.45 .818 general score 3.35 .737 according to table 1, students believe that they are confident in using computers in general because the mean score of their responses to dimension one (computer self-efficacy) are`x = 3.74 (s = .765). students’ also found the system easy to use as their mean score for dimension two (perceived ease of use) was`x = 3.28 (s = .951). as for dimension three (attitude), respondents’ attitudes towards the system are positive with the mean score of`x = 3.11 (s = 1.206). the mean score for students’ responses to dimension four (system usage) is`x = 2.78 (s = 1.315), showing that students’ frequency in using the system is moderate. the mean score for the participants’ responses for dimension five (personal innovativeness in the domain of information technology) is`x =3.45 (s = .818), indicating that students are innovative. generally, the reluctance of students in using technological systems like moodle can be considered to be their lack of technology skills, problems about 57profile: issues teach. prof. dev., vol. 19, supplement 1, 2017. issn 1657-0790 (printed) 2256-5760 (online). bogotá, colombia. pages 51-64 implementation of the moodle system into efl classes the usage, attitudes, or students not being innovative. the findings in this study revealed that even though students were selfefficient with computers, found the system easy to use, had positive attitudes, and were also innovative, they did not use the system frequently for some reason. therefore, it might be argued that the traditional teaching-learning concepts are kind of habitually formed and are embedded in teaching practices while the adaptation of new technologies needs some time to be truly functional. perceptions of the students toward the moodle system in efl classes according to their ages in the t-test for the comparison of mean scores of different age groups for different dimensions, there are statistically significant differences between the groups in three dimensions while there is no significant difference in two of the dimensions. students ranging in age from 13 to 15 have a mean score of`x = 3.78, (s = .739) in terms of computer selfefficacy while the mean score of students whose ages range from 16 to 18 is`x = 3.71 (s = .783). in terms of computer self-efficacy, the calculated t-scores did not indicate any significant differences (t = .745). moreover, the 13 to 15 age group’s perceived ease of use mean score is`x = 3.52 (s = .929) and the score of students group from 16 to 18 is`x = 3.12 (s = .933), indicating that there is a significant difference (t = 3.815) between the two groups. perceptions of the students of the 13 to 15 age group of the system are more positive than the students in the 16 to 18 age group. there is a significant difference in terms of attitude (t = 5.283), showing that younger students show more interest in the system. the mean score for students aged 13 to 15 is`x = 3.53 (s = 1.073), while the score of students aged 16 to 18 is`x = 2.84 (s = 1.212). in terms of system usage, the mean scores of the 13 to 15-year-olds is`x = 3.31 (s = 1.248) and the mean score of the 16 to 18-year-olds is`x = 2.44 (s = 1.245). there is a significant difference (t = 6.221), indicating that students in the 13 to 15 age group use the system more frequently than the 16 to 18 age group. furthermore, the mean score of personal innovativeness in the domain of information technology for students aged 13 to 15 is`x = 3.47 (s = .839) and the mean score for the same dimension for students in the 16 to 18 age group is`x = 3.43 (s = .806), which indicates that there is no significant difference (t = .390) and both groups are equally innovative. participants’ age variation in the present study seems to have affected their perceptions of the moodle system in three aspects. firstly, younger students (13-15) seem to find the system easier to use than the older students (16-18). secondly, students in the 13 to 15 age group showed more positive attitudes than the 16 to 19 group. thirdly, younger students used the system much more than the older ones. in contrast, both age groups were self-efficient in computer skills and seemed to be equally innovative; generally, this would be expected to affect their technology usage whereas this is seen as not valid for this study. perceptions of the students toward the moodle system in efl classes according to their gender the mean scores of male and female students in terms of computer self-efficacy are very close. the mean score for females is`x = 3.72 (s = .734) and for males it is`x = 3.76 (s = .800). moreover, the mean scores of the two groups in terms of perceived ease of use do not show a big difference. mean score for females is`x = 3.34 (s = .914) and males’ is`x = 3.21 (s = .987), which again show no statistically significant difference. female students’ mean score in terms of attitude is`x = 3.16 (s = 1.182) and male students’ mean score is`x = 3.05 (s = 1.232), indicating no significant difference. however, in terms of personal innovativeness in the domain of information technology, the mean score of female students is`x = 3.35 (s = .710) while the mean score for males is`x = 3.55 (s = .912). this finding suggests that there is a statistically significant difference between the two groups (t = -2.164), universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras58 gunduz & ozcan indicating that male students are more innovative than female students in terms of technology. gender issues related to using technology have been debated in various academic studies and some of them revealed that there are some differences while others argue the opposite. in this study, the findings indicate that both female and male students are self-efficient in computer skills as well as both finding the system easy to use. both genders have positive attitudes towards the system and they use the system nearly at the same level. however, the only difference that this study reveals in terms of gender is that male students seem to be more open to new technologies than females, as the findings of the study show that they are more innovative. perceptions of the students’ toward the moodle system in efl classes according to their year of study t-tests for the comparison of mean scores of different grade levels for five dimensions are presented in table 2. t-tests analysis for the comparison of mean scores of students’ year of study towards the moodle system reveals that for computer self-efficacy, the mean score of students in grades 7, 8, and 9 (secondary level) is`x = 3.74 (s = .756) and the mean score for students in classes 10, 11, and 12 (high school level) is`x = 3.73 (s = .773). there is statistically no significant difference in terms of computer self-efficacy. in terms of perceived ease of use the mean scores of students in grades 7, 8, and 9 is`x = 3.45 (s = .756) and the mean score of grades 10, 11, and 12 is`x = 3.16 (s = .929). there is a significant difference (t = 2.768) for perceived ease of use, indicating that secondary school students find the system easier to use than the high school students. mean score of the attitude of students enrolled in grades 7, 8, and 9 is`x = 3.43 (s = 1.141) and the mean score of students in grades 10, 11, and 12 is`x = 2.90 (s = 1.203). there is a significant difference (t = 4.012) showing that secondary school students’ attitudes towards the moodle system are more positive than the high school students’. in terms of system usage, the mean score of students in grades 7, 8, and 9 is`x = 3.28 (s = 1.274) and students in 10, 11, and 12 have a mean score of`x = 2.46 (s = 1.241), representing a statistically significant difference (t = 5.834). this shows that secondary school students are using the system more frequently than the high school students. table 2. perceptions of the students toward the moodle system in efl classes according to their year of study class n `x s df t p significance computer self-efficacy 7-9 131 3.74 .756 33 .148 .882 p > 0.05 10-12 202 3.73 .773 1 perceived ease of use 7-9 131 3.45 .959 33 2.768 .006 p < 0.05 10-12 202 3.16 .929 1 attitude 7-9 131 3.43 1.141 33 4.012 .000 p < 0.05 10-12 202 2.90 1.203 1 system usage 7-9 131 3.28 1.274 33 5.834 .000 p < 0.05 10-12 202 2.46 1.241 1 personal innovativeness in the domain of information technology 7-9 131 3.47 .831 33 .430 .667 p > 0.05 10-12 202 3.43 .810 1 general score 7-9 131 3.51 .746 331 3.221 .001 p < 0.05 59profile: issues teach. prof. dev., vol. 19, supplement 1, 2017. issn 1657-0790 (printed) 2256-5760 (online). bogotá, colombia. pages 51-64 implementation of the moodle system into efl classes students’ mean score for personal innovativeness in the domain of information technology is`x = 3.47 (s = .831) for grades 7, 8, and 9 and for grades 10, 11, and 12 the mean score is`x = 3.43 (s = .810), indicating that there is statistically no significant difference between the two groups in this dimension. perceptions of the students toward the moodle system in efl classes according to system access anova analysis shows that there are statistically significant differences between students’ perceptions of computer self-efficacy (f = 4.336, p < 0.05), students’ ease of use (f = 6.085, p < 0.05), students’ attitudes (f = 3.228, p < 0.05), and students’ system usage (f = 2.708, p < 0.05), and general score of students’ perception towards the moodle system (f = 5.188, p < 0.05) in terms of their moodle system access. however, the only dimension that indicates no significant difference (f = .987, p > 0.05) is between students’ perception of personal innovativeness in the domain of information technology. a least significant difference (lsd) test has been carried out to identify the differences within the groups. the results of the lsd test shows that there is a statistically significant difference between the students who “never”, “seldom”, and “sometimes” have moodle access problems and those who “often” have moodle access problems according to students’ computer self-efficacy perceptions. these findings can be interpreted as students’ access to the moodle system outside of school and affects their perception of their self-efficacy while using the moodle system. results show that perceptions of the students “never” having problems scores are higher than the others. this can be explained as these students having the opportunity to practice on the moodle system and experience the benefits of the system better than others even during out of school hours. moreover, there is a statistically significant difference between the students “never” having moodle access problems, students “seldom”, and “sometimes” having moodle access problems in terms of the perceptions of ease of use. students “never” having moodle access problems seem to have higher scores with positive perceptions of the systems ease of use. the perceptions of the students who “never” have moodle access problems are more positive than those students who experience having different degrees of problems. since these students can find more opportunities than the students who are having problems for accessing the system outside school, they naturally seem to find the moodle system easy to use. there is a significant difference between the students “never” having moodle access problems, and the students “sometimes” having moodle access problems in terms of students’ attitudes. there is also a statistically significant difference between the students “seldom” having moodle access problems, and the students “sometimes” having moodle access problems in terms of students’ attitudes. students who are not facing problems in accessing the moodle system seem to have positive attitudes towards the moodle system. besides these, system usage findings reveal that there is a statistically significant difference between the students “never” having moodle access problems and the students “sometimes” having moodle access problems. the comparison of “never” and “seldom” shows that perceptions of the students “never” having moodle access problems seem to have higher scores in terms of students’ system usage. there is also a statistically significant difference between the students “seldom” and “sometimes” having moodle access problems, and the students “often” having moodle access problems, as students “often” having moodle access problems have higher scores in terms of ease of system usage. the system usage perceptions of the students “often” having moodle access problems seem to be more positive than the others, a finding which is interesting because it would be expected that when students have problems accessing the system they wouldn’t be able to develop positive attitudes. finally, there is no statistically significant difference between the universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras60 gunduz & ozcan findings of the students’ personal innovativeness in the domain of information technology in relation to their degrees of problems in accessing the systems. teachers’ opinions towards the moodle system the data on teachers’ perceptions and opinions about the moodle system were collected through five guiding interview questions and as the discussion unfolded in the focus groups, further questions were added to facilitate the collection of rich data. the emerging themes from the analysis of the qualitative data were organized under four headings: (a) the frequency of use and the reasons, (b) type of use, (c) system structure, and (d) general opinions about the system. the frequency of use and the reasons the majority of the teachers mentioned that they did not use the system frequently because some students were still facing problems with the system, like password, administration, and access issues. moreover, from two focus groups only three teachers seemed to feel confident in using the system as frequently as possible. “the system is perfectly helpful during the revision week as well as for presentations and practices”, quoted one of teachers. the other teachers’ responses indicated that the reason for ignoring the system was the lack of technological knowledge. one striking response came from a teacher who had been teaching english in english college for eleven years but had been in the profession for twenty years: “i forced myself to connect to moodle with english courses and understand the philosophy of this system, but could not find any connection or reason to use it”. this teacher also stated: “if i do not use the board to write and have my students write down what i dictate to them, i do not believe they will learn”. another teacher supported her colleague by adding: “absolutely true, i have been teaching for the last twelve years and i know that academics support the new trends but these trends are theoretical not practical. i cannot teach without my marker and the board.” these teachers underlined that traditional teaching was the best way to teach and supported their views as quoted, especially pinpointing that they did not believe that the system was beneficial. type of use despite the fact that the frequency of use was not high among this group of teachers who participated in the discussions, it was clear that teachers used the system for various reasons. the majority of teachers (n = 8) pointed out that they used the system for teaching grammar. one of the teachers commented that: “i know that this is traditional teaching but i always used the system for teaching grammar because i believed that this is more suitable for my students”. two teachers responded they used the system for lecturing in the class, as projecting the prepared course material onto the whiteboard saved time for more practice. they also added that the material to be practised was uploaded before the course began and the students printed the material out and stuck it in their notebooks before the lesson, which again saved them quite a lot of valuable in-class teaching time. another preferred type of use seemed to be uploading revision materials to the system for students to access, which most teachers (n = 10) said they used right before the exams. in addition, the system was used for collecting assignments; a teacher stated: “students uploaded assignments and i gave feedback.” five of the teachers said they used the system for this purpose. however, one teacher stated: “i announced the deadline for the assignments to be uploaded; it ended up as a big disaster [because] the system crushed”. some teachers (n = 7) also stated that they gave up using the system for collecting assignments due to the same reason. moreover, “nobody taught us how to grade”, “i have no time for struggling with the marking”, “we lack the technological knowledge”, and “time consuming” were the statements of some teachers (n = 6) for not using the system. one teacher claimed that she was using the system for giving 61profile: issues teach. prof. dev., vol. 19, supplement 1, 2017. issn 1657-0790 (printed) 2256-5760 (online). bogotá, colombia. pages 51-64 implementation of the moodle system into efl classes information about the international english language testing system (ielts) examination which saved time for her other class work. furthermore, teachers responded they used the system for mini quizzes, comprehension texts, presentations, and web sites like esl cafe and also for extra composition tasks. however, each teacher used one or two of these ways of using the system and there was no one teacher who used the system in more than two different ways. the analysis of the data for types of use revealed that teachers seemed to use various types of the available options in the moodle system but their uses were limited to a certain degree. system structure in addition, in terms of frequency and type of use, the majority (n = 9) of the teachers stated that the school’s internet provision was not reliable and the system crashed at some stages. lack of confidence in the system and the internet seemed to affect teachers and de-motivate them considering that 10 of them stated they felt sorry for the effort they spent because at times they could not finalize their work. to illustrate; “internet is a must”, “internet let me down for several times”, and “i have to bring my 3g”, were some phrases from the discussions. besides these, some teachers (n = 4) stated in the discussion that they could not access the system from home, which is an internal issue in relation to how the system works, and this inability hindered their work. general opinions about the system in general, participants thought the system was contemporary and beneficial in the long run but at the time of the study it was not functioning well. another common opinion of the teachers that emerged from the collected data was that teachers believed the system was more suitable for younger students (secondary level) than high school students as the secondary group had more time to devote for understanding and comprehending the system. the reason for this opinion was that the high school students were studying hard to sit for international exams like ielts and the general certificate of secondary education (gcse). one teacher said: “system can be used for grades nine and ten for basic english”, and also added that “students who are entering ielts and gcse exams have to work on past papers and sit for mock exams, no time and need for moodle.” generally, it seemed that the teachers who disliked the system did not like it because they lacked the necessary knowledge and skills to carry out electronic feedback and grading. more enthusiastic teachers, however, seemed to find their own solutions for the non-reliable internet facilities of the school, such as 3g connections. interestingly, one teacher commented on the piloting period of the system which might be an answer to dislikes of the system. the comment was that the pilot students suffered a lot during that stage and had low marks due to the grading method which lacked the traditional written feedbacks. he also added that those students rumoured about the system and had created barriers towards it. finally, the general and common view of the collected data shows that teacher participants are not against the moodle system but are in need of more knowledge, time to adopt, and feel the system needs to be more structured. discussion and conclusion technology driven learning is argued to be one of the necessities for the digital born generation of this century. regarding this issue, moodle was implemented to serve the on-going practices in english college high school by providing a variety of supplemental tools to be used in english language learning. some studies also have shown moodle to be effective in foreign language education (cuadrado-garcía & ruiz-molina, 2009; ming & bidmeshki, 2004; su, 2006; yates & delgado, 2008). the culture in developing countries like north cyprus is in need of shifting their education environments from mindless memorization to innovative studentcentred teaching. digital technology integration in teaching and learning environments empowers access universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras62 gunduz & ozcan without borders to a variety of subject and topic contents (bakia, shear, toyama, & lasseter, 2012), whereas formal education is seen to have rising expectations regarding the practices and nature of methodology (griffin, mcgaw, & care, 2012; unesco, 2011; voogt & knezek, 2008). regarding the students’ perceptions towards the moodle system, the results of the present study showed that they were digitally literate and able to cope with newly implemented systems. the results of the survey also indicated students’ low frequency in using the system. taking into account this result, the lack of teachers’ technology skills might be an important issue to consider for the students’ low usage of the system. some national education systems in the developed countries are seen to implement information and communications technologies (ict) into teaching and learning over a period of 25 or more years (tatnall & davey, 2014). however, the important issue is that this implementation has neither been accepted for teaching or learning on a wide scale, nor has it brought about the variety of benefits expected from the investment (oecd, 2015). the results also indicated that the younger the students, the higher the positive perceptions towards the moodle system. the school survey indicated that seventh grade especially was very enthusiastic and had the highest degree of using and benefiting from the system. class distribution results also supported the results of the age variable, pinpointing that the secondary grades as years eight and nine had more positive attitudes and were using the system more than the high school participants. many young people use digital devices, applications, and social networking sites on a daily basis (greenhow & lewin, 2016). teachers’ lack of the necessary knowledge and skills in using the moodle system was also seen in the results; teachers need to develop new skills and knowledge of technologies (duncan-howell, 2010). the mismatch of the students’ and teachers’ digital literacy levels caused the teachers to prepare similar sets of exercises, as practised in the classroom, on a computer to deliver to students via moodle. similarly, snyder (2009) argues that teachers are in need to rethink their pedagogies and move beyond using technology as a “fancy typewriter” and a presentation tool. discussion remarks reveal that some enthusiastic teachers are trying hard to find ways to use the system like assignment delivery and extra links to support students’ learning but none of them seems to use all the facilities that are available in the moodle system. some researchers argue about this issue even though professional seminars or conferences are being delivered by experts (duncan-howell, 2010). the effect of long-lasting pedagogy, continuity, and coherence is considered insufficient (anderson & henderson, 2004; curwood, 2011). teachers’ results pinpointed that some of the facilities that could make students more autonomous and successful in using the language were not utilized. facilities as the asynchronous “chat” sessions and on-line quizzes with instant feedbacks were not practised at the time of this research. however, the good will of some enthusiastic teachers’ and younger students’ positive attitudes towards the system have shown that they seem to be empowered to be autonomous in using the language. recommendations the general conclusion of the research reveals that the perceptions of english college students towards the moodle system in efl classes are rather positive. however, the need of the system’s structure to be upgraded and the teachers’ knowledge and skills in using the system to be improved emerged as the most important areas to be attended. the system’s structure of the implemented moodle system in english college needs to be more structured and the internet access to be more reliable. teachers’ awareness of the functions provided by moodle and its possible areas for use should be raised with the help of training sessions. in addition to improvements in the teachers’ use of moodle, students’ strengths in 63profile: issues teach. prof. dev., vol. 19, supplement 1, 2017. issn 1657-0790 (printed) 2256-5760 (online). bogotá, colombia. pages 51-64 implementation of the moodle system into efl classes using the technical tools should be utilized in using the moodle’s functions to help students become more autonomous in language learning. the role of the teacher and the role of technology should be balanced in a way that students will benefit from both at the highest degree. references ali, m. n., & jaafar, m. j. 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(1995). from teaching to learning: a new paradigm for undergraduate education. change: the magazine of higher learning, 27(6), 12-26. https:// doi.org/10.1080/00091383.1995.10544672. coffin, r. j., & macintyre, p. d. (1999). motivational influences on computer-related affective states. computers in human behavior, 15(5), 549-569. https://doi.org/10.1016/ s0747-5632(99)00036-9. cuadrado-garcía, m., & ruiz-molina, m. e. (2009). the use of moodle in higher education for improving english skills in non-language courses. paper presented at the 2nd edition of the international conference: ict for language learning. retrieved from https://conference.pixel-online. net/ict4ll2009/common/download/abstract_pdf/pdf/ ilt12_cuadrado-garcia,ruiz-molina.pdf. curwood, j. s. (2011). teachers as learners: what makes technology-focused professional development effective? english in australia, 46(3), 68-75. duncan‐howell, j. 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(2007). blended learning: using technology in and beyond the language classroom. oxford, uk: macmillan. snyder, i. (2009). shuffling towards the future: the enduring dominance of book culture in literacy education. in m. baynham & m. prinsloo (eds.), the future of literacy studies (pp. 141-159). new york, us: palgrave macmillan. https://doi.org/10.1057/9780230245693_8. su, c.-c. (2006). moodle for english teachers. proceedings of the 2006 international conference and workshop on tefl & applied linguistics, min chuan university, 321-330. tatnall, a., & davey, b. (eds.). (2014). reflections on the history of computers in education: early use of computers and teaching about computing in schools. heidelberg, de: springer. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-642-55119-2. tsai, c.-c. (2004). adolescents’ perceptions toward the internet: a 4-t framework. cyber psychology and behavior, 7(4), 458-463. https://doi.org/10.1089/ cpb.2004.7.458. unesco. (2011). unesco ict competency framework for teachers. retrieved from http://iite.unesco.org/pics/ publications/en/files/3214694.pdf. van raaij, e. m., & schepers, j. j. l. (2008). the acceptance and use of a virtual learning environment in china. computers & education, 50(3), 838-852. https://doi. org/10.1016/j.compedu.2006.09.001. vanova, t., & kazelleova, j. (2012). using moodle in the clil into schools project. paper presented at the 5th edition of the international conference: ict for language learning. retrieved from https://conference. pixel-online.net/ict4ll2012/common/download/ paper_pdf/132-cli01-fp-vanova-ict2012.pdf. voogt, j., & knezek, g. (eds.). (2008). international handbook of information technology in primary and secondary education. new york, us: springer. https:// doi.org/10.1007/978-0-387-73315-9. yaman, s. (2010). technology supported learning platform: moodle integrated academic course. turkish online journal of distance education, 11(2), 146-160. yates, n., & delgado, r. (2008). a study concerning the use of moodle at kanda university of international studies. the journal of kanda university of international studies, 20, 405-426. about the authors nuket gunduz holds both a master’s and an undergraduate english language teaching degree from the near east university, turkey. she is currently pursuing a phd degree at the same university. deniz ozcan holds a phd degree in curriculum and teaching from the near east university, turkey. she serves as an associate professor in the department of special education at the same university. 35 https://doi.org/10.15446/profile.v20n2.66008 foreign language faculty research-related beliefs, perceptions, and research motivation at three mexican universities motivación, creencias y percepciones hacia la investigación de profesores de lenguas extranjeras en tres universidades mexicanas maría del rosario reyes-cruz* griselda murrieta-loyo** moisés damián perales-escudero*** universidad de quintana roo, chetumal, mexico this paper examines the research self-efficacy beliefs, research motivation, and perceptions of research importance and research obstacles of 100 professors and lecturers of foreign languages at three mexican universities. survey results show that faculty hold moderate to high research self-efficacy beliefs, are highly motivated to conduct research, think research in the area is very important, and perceive that lack of time is the main obstacle to conducting research. the lack of fit between most participants’ relatively high self-efficacy and limited research engagement suggests the possibility that faculty overestimate their research abilities. the implications of these findings are also discussed. key words: foreign language faculty, research conditions, research motivation, research self-efficacy. este artículo examina las creencias de autoeficacia para la investigación, la motivación, las percepciones sobre la importancia de esta actividad y los obstáculos que enfrentan 100 profesores de lenguas extranjeras de tres universidades mexicanas para realizarla. los resultados de una encuesta mostraron que los profesores albergan creencias sobre su eficacia en investigación que van de moderadas a altas. igualmente, éstos se dicen muy motivados para realizar investigación y la consideran una actividad importante para el área. el obstáculo más recurrentemente mencionado fue la falta de tiempo. la poca consistencia entre el sentido alto de autoeficacia de la mayoría de los participantes y su limitado compromiso para la investigación sugieren la posibilidad de que los profesores hayan sobrevalorado sus habilidades investigativas. finalmente, se discuten las implicaciones de estos hallazgos. palabras clave: condiciones para la investigación, creencias de autoeficacia para la investigación, motivación para investigar, profesores de lenguas extranjeras. * e-mail: rosreyes@uqroo.edu.mx ** e-mail: grises@uqroo.edu.mx *** e-mail: mdperales@uqroo.edu.mx how to cite this article (apa, 6th ed.): reyes-cruz, m. r., murrieta-loyo, g., & perales-escudero, m. d. (2018). foreign language faculty research-related beliefs, perceptions, and research motivation at three mexican universities. profile: issues in teachers’ professional development, 20(2), 35-49. https://doi.org/10.15446/profile.v20n2.66008. this article was received on june 30, 2017 and accepted on february 1, 2018. this is an open access article distributed under the terms of the creative commons license attribution-noncommercial-noderivatives 4.0 international license. consultation is possible at https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/. profile: issues teach. prof. dev., vol. 20 no. 2, jul-dec, 2018. issn 1657-0790 (printed) 2256-5760 (online). bogotá, colombia. pages 35-49 universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras36 reyes-cruz, murrieta-loyo & perales-escudero introduction in many contexts, foreign-language (fl) education as a field has traditionally been construed exclusively in teaching-oriented terms by both university authorities and faculty1 (borg, 2013). in some periphery countries, like mexico, it is only in the past two decades that serious policy efforts to professionalize fl teachers (primarily university teachers but also others) have been undertaken. these efforts have involved opening undergraduate and graduate programs in english as a foreign language (efl) (lengeling, 2010), and, to a lesser extent, french and other european languages. these fl-focused initiatives have coincided with nation-wide policies aimed at improving the research abilities and productivity of all university professors. mexican educational policies explicitly pursue the goal of turning university professors into internationally competitive researchers who are part of solid research groups and develop national and international collaboration networks. the implementation of these policies has involved massive training and credentialization programs because, at the turn of the century, most university professors in most disciplines did not hold doctorates (secretaría de educación pública, 2006). the latter is especially true for fl faculty (reyes-cruz & perales-escudero, 2016). as a result, fl faculty members in mexico face new and incremental pressures to become researchers despite their often insufficient training in research methods. therefore, the process of adaptation to this new demand to conduct research has been challenging and slow (ramírez, gilbón, & moreno, 2010). several dimensions of fl university faculty research have been investigated, such as their general perspectives about research (allison & carey, 2007), engagement in and with research and research motivation (borg & 1 “faculty” is used to refer to both full-time professors at all rank levels and hourly lecturers. the sample for this study includes both types of faculty, with a large majority of them being full-time professors. all the participants, including the professors, are active classroom teachers of foreign languages, chiefly english but also french in some cases. liu, 2013), identity processes (xu, 2013), and research self-efficacy (wyatt & dikilitaş, 2016). a common theme emerging from this literature is the perception of research as a difficult endeavor due to insufficient training and lack of confidence, expertise, and motivation. these findings suggest that the construct of self-efficacy may provide a fruitful theoretical framework to shed further light on the development of fl teachers’ research abilities. self-efficacy is a central construct in social cognitive theory (sct). bandura (1997) defines self-efficacy as “the belief in one’s ability to organize and execute the actions needed to achieve one’s desired goals” (p. 3). beliefs about self-efficacy are thought to be the foremost mediators of behavior and behavioral change. for the last 25 years, bandura (1995, 1997) has developed and supported the idea that beliefs about one’s abilities affect one’s behavior, motivation, success, and failure. self-efficacy beliefs can be good predictors of behavior (bandura, 1997; kim & cho, 2014; vasil, 1992; wyatt & dikilitaş, 2016). educational research has found positive correlations between self-efficacy, academic performance, and self-regulated learning (hackett, 1995; pajares, 1996; schunk, 1982; zimmerman, 1995). for the purposes of this study, research self-efficacy is defined as a personal estimate of how good one can be at executing research-related tasks (hemmings & kay, 2010, p. 563). from an sct perspective, self-efficacy beliefs and motivation are related, and motivation tends to be understood and investigated in terms of goals, goalsetting, and willingness to perform tasks. according to bandura (1997), goal-assessment is one way that self-efficacy influences motivation. if goals are perceived to be too simple or too difficult for one’s self-efficacy, those perceptions may dampen motivation. similarly, achievable, short-term gradual goals may contribute to the development of self-efficacy in ways that ambitious, long-term goals may not. bandura (1997) also suggests that intrinsic motivation is likely to correlate with a high 37 foreign language faculty research-related beliefs, perceptions, and research motivation... profile: issues teach. prof. dev., vol. 20 no. 2, jul-dec, 2018. issn 1657-0790 (printed) 2256-5760 (online). bogotá, colombia. pages 35-49 sense of self-efficacy, while extrinsic motivation may exert a more mixed influence on self-efficacy. from an extensive review of the literature, wyatt and dikilitaş (2016) conclude that teachers’ research self-efficacy is likely to be low in many countries due to poor training, teachers’ non-functional attitudes or perceptions of research, and unsupportive environments. yet, as stated above, educational policy in some contexts is such that university teachers have little choice but to turn themselves into researchers, with varying levels of training and support. it seems, then, that identifying faculty research-related beliefs, including self-efficacy beliefs, and research motivation is a necessary step in facilitating their development as researchers and in finding ways to improve the quality and quantity of fl teacher research. we focus on foreign language faculty (university professors who teach in foreign language departments) in mexico because they offer the interesting case of a group of faculty and a profession that were not required or trained to conduct research until recently in this specific country. our study also has the potential to add insights to the existing literature because it includes two distinct groups of fl faculty: well-trained, experienced researchers with strong publication records, and less experienced researchers with less-than-optimal training and minimal publication records. what these two groups have in common is that they are all classroom fl teachers, and they are all subject to the same institutional policy pressures to publish and engage in research. the results presented here could therefore be of use to guide research self-efficacy studies with similar populations in other contexts. then, the overall goal of this study is to describe the research self-efficacy beliefs, research motivation, importance attributed to research, and perceptions of research obstacles held by the foreign language faculty at three mexican public universities: northeastern university (nu), central university (cu), and southeastern university (su). we also compare the self-efficacy beliefs of faculty with strong research engagement with those of faculty that are less engaged in research. our results suggest that the latter tend to overestimate their research capacities, which has implications for policy-making and for further research. literature review studies of fl teachers’ research started in the 1980s (borg, 2013) out of an interest to improve fl teaching through action research. as a result, most studies of this subject have followed an action research perspective (atay, 2008; borg & liu, 2013; burns, 2010; wyatt & dikilitaş, 2016). other studies have focused on teachers’ commitment to research (borg & alshumaimeri, 2012; gao, barkhuizen, & chow, 2011), their perceptions of research (allison & carey, 2007), teachers’ motivation and attitude toward research (bai & hudson, 2011; borg, 2009), and the development of teachers’ research identities in connection with contextual influences (xu, 2013). in general, the studies indicate that teachers find research difficult and even alien to their identities, but can engage with it meaningfully with adequate support. various factors such as intrinsic pay incentives and institutional support, or lack thereof, play a role in both teachers’ motivation to conduct research and actual research engagement. to the best of our knowledge, only two studies have focused on fl university teachers’ research selfefficacy. one is by wyatt and dikilitaş (2016). working from a qualitative action research perspective, they found that engaging teachers in a continuing professional development program helped them to become more self-efficacious by providing enactive mastery experiences that led to the development of practical knowledge about various aspects of research. these positive outcomes occurred despite the teachers’ initially low self-efficacy beliefs. the second study is by reyes-cruz and peralesescudero (2016), who used qualitative methods to identify variation in mexican fl faculty research self-efficacy levels and motivation in connection with universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras38 reyes-cruz, murrieta-loyo & perales-escudero academic degree, motivation types, and strategic behaviors. professors with doctorates, intrinsic motivation, and strategic behaviors showed the highest self-efficacy. professors with master’s degrees and low motivation showed the lowest self-efficacy. previous experience and mentoring were influential sources of self-efficacy. with regard to obstacles to conduct research, insufficient time and training have been reported as the most prevalent ones by fl faculty, both in mexico (busseniers, nuñez, & rodríguez; 2010; reyes-cruz & hernándezméndez, 2014; reyes-cruz & higuera-bonfil, 2015) and internationally (bai & hudson, 2011; borg, 2009; xu, 2013). as for research motivation, the literature paints a complex picture with some studies showing that teachers are intrinsically motivated to conduct research and others indicating that teachers’ research motivation, if it exists, is mostly extrinsic. for example, mehrani (2015) investigated the research involvement and research motivation of 24 iranian efl teachers. the findings showed that the teachers were motivated by an intrinsic interest in professional development, by the thought that research could help with pedagogical concerns, and by extrinsic factors such as institutional requirements and incentives. by contrast, the chinese efl teachers in yuan, sun, and teng (2016) had little to no motivation to conduct research before their participation in an action research program. their motivation during this program was heavily influenced by identity factors such as (mis) matches between different selves that the participating teachers constructed during their engagement in action research. some were demotivated because they thought their research self would compete negatively with their teaching-centered self. others were able to resolve this conflict and develop research-oriented selves. also in china, and somewhat similarly, xu (2013) found that the chinese efl teachers in his sample were motivated to conduct research by extrinsic factors such as promotion opportunities and pay incentives. in mexico, reyes-cruz and perales-escudero (2016) found variation in the levels and types of fl faculty motivation related basically to the academic degree. fl professors with doctorates were intrinsically and extrinsically motivated to conduct research, whereas fl professors with master’s degrees tended to be motivated only extrinsically, but some of them were beginning to develop intrinsic forms of motivation thanks to mentoring and active engagement in research. it seems, then, that the context-embedded situations and identities of teachers exert powerful influences on their research motivation. this study was different from previous ones because it used a qualitative design and focused simultaneously on research motivation and research self-efficacy. its design also incorporated an explicit focus on the differences in the degrees held by the participants (ma vs. phd). this proved to be a relevant factor to reveal some underlying causes of the differences in participants’ research self-efficacy and motivation. the present study builds on our previous ones in two ways. first, it continues to probe possible mismatches between perceived and actual efficacy by incorporating membership in mexico’s national research system (sistema nacional de investigadores, sni in spanish, hereafter nrs) as a factor under consideration. second, it features a much larger sample that spans three different universities in three distinct and distant regions of mexico. it thus overcomes one of the key limitations of previous studies, namely, their small sample sizes and their focus on only one university. the results are thus more robust and representative of the national situation. method participants the participants were 100 out of a total of 106 fl faculty members (94% of the total population of tenured and tenure-track professors and hourly 39 foreign language faculty research-related beliefs, perceptions, and research motivation... profile: issues teach. prof. dev., vol. 20 no. 2, jul-dec, 2018. issn 1657-0790 (printed) 2256-5760 (online). bogotá, colombia. pages 35-49 lecturers) in three different mexican public universities located in different regions of the country. pseudonyms are used in this research to name the three settings: northeastern university (nu), central university (cu), and southeastern university (su). we aimed at a census of the total sample of 106 faculty members with at least one publication issuing from a research project regardless of their type of appointment. at the time, nu had 35 such faculty members, cu had 36, and su had 35. a census sample was impossible to achieve, however, due to the fact that six professors were on leave and others could not be reached. in the end, our sample included 32 nu faculty members, 33 cu faculty members, and 35 su faculty members. eighty-nine of the participants are full-time, tenured or tenure-track professors, four are hourly lecturers, and four are tenured, half-time professors. under the mexican system, some professors have half-time appointments and are thus not expected to put in as many hours of teaching, service, and research as fulltime professors. three participants did not provide information on their type of appointment. as stated in the introduction, one important variable in our study was the quality of research engagement in terms of training, experience, and productivity. we operationalized this variable by determining which participants are members of the nrs. the nrs was created by the mexican government in the 1980s as a way to provide supplementary income to researchers and scholars in order to prevent brain drain. mexican professors and other researchers can be appointed to the nrs if they meet a set of requirements such as holding a doctorate, publishing two papers per year in high-quality journals, leading funded projects, and directing undergraduate and/or graduate theses and dissertations. there are four levels of membership as determined by research productivity and impact, and researchers must reapply for membership every so many years depending on their level. membership is highly coveted because of the financial rewards and status it confers. fourteen of our participants were nrs members at the time we conducted this study, 74 were not and 12 did not answer. we also gathered other information related to the research engagement variable that was not used for statistical tests but provided a backdrop for discussing self-efficacy findings, such as years of research experience and weekly hours devoted to research. instruments the questionnaire’s design was informed by bandura’s (1997) sct and his advice on item design. it consisted of three sections: research engagement (nrs membership, years of research experience, weekly hours devoted to research, highest degree held; four multiple-choice items), perception of research obstacles (one open question), and research beliefs and perceptions. the latter was an 18-item, lykert-type questionnaire consisting of the following variables: importance of research (six items), research self-efficacy (six items), and research motivation (operationalized as research goals and willingness to engage with and in research, six items). the instrument was validated by three experts. they were given the definitions of each variable and were asked to relate the items to the definition that better fit each of them. they were also asked to rank the relevance of all the items on a scale from one to three (levy & varela, 2005). their ranking and comments were used as criteria to remove or modify items. the reliability of the instrument was estimated by using cronbach’s alpha test. the instrument obtained an alpha reliability of .853. alpha reliabilities for the three sub-scales of research self-efficacy, research importance, and research motivation were .95, .86, and .80, respectively. to determine the questionnaire’s validity, three factor analysis tests were performed with varimax kaiser rotation. as predicted by the theory, the results yielded three components. rotation punctuations can be seen in table 1. universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras40 reyes-cruz, murrieta-loyo & perales-escudero table 1. principal axis factoring with varimax rotation for all items i am able to/i believe that component 1 2 3 choose a research design in order to answer a series of questions or test a series of hypotheses about a research topic of my interest. .884 .144 .265 articulate a clear research question or testable hypothesis. .878 .180 .140 survey a specific topic in the area of foreign languages and write a balanced, critical, and comprehensive literature review. .865 .149 .175 implement the data analysis strategy that best matches my study. .856 .217 design and implement the sampling strategy that best matches my research study. .836 .194 .213 effectively communicate in writing the results of my study and its implications. .829 .228 .132 research provides solid grounding for professional practice. .151 .825 evidence-based practice promotes uptake of research results in the area of foreign language teaching. .801 .207 participating in a study allows the language teacher to explore and reflect on her own practice. .305 .796 -.110 a strong research base underpinning practice can increase substantially the credibility and profile of foreign language faculty. .323 .713 researching their own work is useful for foreign language faculty. .281 .705 -.132 it is necessary to conduct research in the field of foreign languages. .420 .700 i try to become a member of networks or research groups that work on my line of inquiry. .168 .800 i try to network with more experienced researchers in order to learn from them. .752 since i became a faculty member, i’ve taken advantage of/actively sought any opportunity to get training as a researcher. .250 .737 i keep up to date with the publications on my line of inquiry. .318 -.103 .671 every year, i have a well-defined research plan. .154 .619 i like participating in seminars, conferences, and lectures. .212 .113 .433 extraction method: main component analysis. rotation method: varimax with kaiser. a. rotation has converged for 6 iterations. procedure members of the research team, including the authors, contacted the participants selected using the criteria above (having published at least one paper as a result of involvement in a research project), elicited informed consent, gave the questionnaires to the participants and collected the completed questionnaires from them after a few days. the resulting data were entered into and processed with spss v.20. visual inspection and the kolmogorov-smirnov test were used to determine the normality of the data as a whole and in different sub-scales: all the data showed normal distributions. 41 foreign language faculty research-related beliefs, perceptions, and research motivation... profile: issues teach. prof. dev., vol. 20 no. 2, jul-dec, 2018. issn 1657-0790 (printed) 2256-5760 (online). bogotá, colombia. pages 35-49 results research self-efficacy faculty answers about their ability to carry out activities pertaining to the different stages of research studies were mostly at the very able and able levels. question 4 had the highest proportion of participants choosing these two levels (82%), followed by question 6 (80%). the level of average ability got the highest proportion for question 1 (22%), followed by question 5 (20%). the level of low ability got the highest proportion for question 4 (10%), followed by question 3 (7%). the choices “unable” and “i don’t know” did not get significant numbers (see table 2). having a high sense of self-efficacy is, in principle, a promising sign. however, if self-efficacy beliefs are not founded on realistic self-assessments of one’s capacities, individuals may never undertake actions to breach the gap between actual and perceived efficacy (bandura, 1997), which is inimical to reflection and improvement (wheatley, 2002). research engagement information suggests a lack of fit between participants’ research self-efficacy and actual efficacy. for example, 54 reported less than four years of research experience, 74 only hold master’s degrees, and 66 reported dedicating less than 10 hours a week to research. all of this means they have had few chances to engage in enactive mastery experiences that would build actual research efficacy. although one could also gain expertise by participation in research projects that afford enactive mastery and vicarious experiences, this possibility is unlikely for our participants. up to about 10 years ago, the main activity of fl university faculty in mexico was teacher training, with no research of any kind (lengeling, 2010). from this fact it can be inferred that with few exceptions, faculty did not have early research socialization experiences and only a handful might have learned how to do research before getting their doctorates. further evidence for this lack of fit comes from a comparison of the means of the six self-efficacy items for the two groups: nrs members and non-members. we ran a chi-square test that showed no significant differences across the means and groups (pearson χ2 = 12.758, p > .5), with both groups showing moderately high self-efficacy for the six items. this lack of difference in self-efficacy is inconsistent with the expectation that nrs members would have a higher sense of selfefficacy because of their demonstrably higher actual research efficacy. table 2. research self-efficacy i am able to… 1 2 3 4 5 6 1. choose a research design in order to answer a series of questions or test a series of hypotheses about a research topic of my interest. 29 43 22 5 0 1 2. articulate clear research questions or a testable hypothesis. 33 43 19 4 0 1 3. survey a specific topic in the area of foreign languages and write a balanced, critical, and comprehensive literature review. 31 42 18 7 1 1 4. implement the data analysis strategy that best matches my study. 23 50 16 10 0 1 5. design and implement the sampling strategy that best matches my research study. 21 49 20 6 4 0 6. effectively communicate in writing the results of my study and its implications. 32 48 17 2 0 1 note. 1 = very capable, 2 = capable, 3 = average capability, 4 = not very capable, 5 = incapable, 6 = i don’t know. numbers are percentages. universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras42 reyes-cruz, murrieta-loyo & perales-escudero according to bandura (1997), the relationship between perceived self-efficacy and actual performance depends on the conditions and context where people are located. he suggests that individuals may overestimate their capabilities in situations where there are no reference criteria, or the existing ones are not adequate. this may be the case in mexico, a country where the field of foreign language teaching is still very young when it comes to research; therefore, a critical mass of research activity is still developing. that is, few national venues—conferences or journals— feature high standards of scientific assessment; contacts with international peers are still inchoate. therefore, mexican fl faculty may lack adequate reference criteria to judge their actual research efficacy, leading to inflated self-efficacy. as suggested by other studies (e.g., wyatt, 2015), social desirability bias may also play a role in this lack of fit between actual research efficacy and self-efficacy beliefs. bandura (1997) suggests that it is important for the adequate development of self-efficacy to avoid placing individuals in situations where they are likely to fail early in the process. fl faculty in mexico have been increasingly pushed to conduct research because of national and institutional policy pressures. most faculty, however, do not have the necessary training (reyes-cruz & hernández méndez, 2014). then, it is possible that they tend to overestimate their capabilities because of a desire to gain a better social image (dörnyei, 2003) or to be accepted and valued (brown & levinson, 1987). research motivation the analysis of our goal-oriented items shows that faculty are strongly motivated to conduct research. as shown in table 3, the question that got the highest proportion of positive answers, as determined by putting together the “completely agree” and “agree” answers, was number 4 (97%), which asked about participants’ engagement with research seminars, conferences, and lectures. the item with the lowest proportion of these positive answers was item 1 (54%), related to the establishment of an annual research plan. this item also got the highest proportion of answers indicating ambivalence or disagreement (46%). readers should note that some of the participants did not answer all the questions in this and other sections, so the numbers do not always add to 100. the fact that most of the faculty favors researchoriented goals is very positive. at the same time, the fact that item 4 (which pertains to participation in research seminars, conferences, and lectures) got the highest numbers suggests that this motivation has an extrinsic component. this is because institutional policies across the three universities under study compel faculty to get involved in these activities and reward them financially for doing so. table 3. motivation to conduct research 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 1. every year, i have a well-defined research plan. 15 39 16 16 8 5 1 2. i keep up to date with the publications on my line of inquiry. 26 48 11 13 1 0 1 3. since i became a faculty member, i’ve taken advantage of/ actively sought any opportunity to get training as a researcher. 33 37 9 17 1 3 0 4. i like participating in seminars, conferences, and lectures. 66 31 2 1 0 0 0 5. i try to network with more experienced researchers in order to learn from them. 48 36 6 8 0 1 1 6. i try to become a member of networks or research groups that work on my line of inquiry. 36 36 13 11 1 2 1 note. 1 = strongly agree, 2 = agree, 3 = i can’t decide, 4 = disagree, 5 = strongly disagree, 6 = i don’t know, 7 = did not answer. numbers are percentages. 43 foreign language faculty research-related beliefs, perceptions, and research motivation... profile: issues teach. prof. dev., vol. 20 no. 2, jul-dec, 2018. issn 1657-0790 (printed) 2256-5760 (online). bogotá, colombia. pages 35-49 with regard to item 1 (establishing an annual research plan), an implication of bandura’s (1997) goal theory is that establishing an annual research plan is an important step in the development of self-efficacy. the low figures for this item then suggest that faculty would benefit from setting realistic, short term goals in this regard. if professors effectively pursue goals to keep up to date, publish more, and associate with other colleagues to learn, surely trying to reach those goals will produce good results. however, such goals must be clear, realistic, and temporally close if they are to contribute to motivation and self-efficacy. faculty thus needs the support of their institutions and recognition for their short-term achievements, even if they are not extraordinary. recognition would allow them to slowly build their sense of research self-efficacy and persevere in the face of the drawbacks they will surely experience along the way. the results reported above are comparable to the high motivation of fl faculty found by reyes-cruz and higuera-bonfil (2015). the participants in that study and this one reported high levels of motivation, probably because the context and research design (quantitative) are similar. nevertheless, the qualitative research by reyes-cruz and perales-escudero (2016), which was conducted in the same context, found that professors with doctorates are the ones who show more motivation, particularly intrinsic motivation, whereas professors with master’s degrees tend to be motivated extrinsically. this difference may be due to the research design itself. other studies have investigated motivation in connection with promotion or tenure; our instrument did not address that variable. future studies should incorporate questions about these dimensions of extrinsic motivation. importance of research the overwhelming majority of faculty fully agreed that it is important to conduct research in foreign languages for a variety of reasons. the lowest proportion was for item 6 about the necessity to conduct research in fl, with 85%; the highest was for item 1 stating that research provides solid ground for professional practice, with 96% (see table 4). table 4. importance of research   1 2 3 4 5 6 7 1. research provides solid ground for professional practice. 74 20 3 1 0 2 0 2. evidence-based practice promotes uptake of research results in the area of foreign language teaching. 42 43 6 0 3 5 1 3. participating in a study allows the language teacher to explore and reflect on her own practice. 83 15 0 1 0 1 0 4. a strong research base underpinning practice can increase substantially the credibility and profile of foreign language faculty. 73 22 3 0 0 2 0 5. researching their own work is useful for foreign language faculty. 68 25 5 1 0 1 0 6. it is necessary to conduct research in the field of foreign languages. 42 43 6 3 0 5 1 note. 1 = strongly agree, 2 = agree, 3 = can’t decide, 4 = disagree, 5 = strongly disagree, 6 = i don’t know, 7 = did not answer. numbers are percentages. universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras44 reyes-cruz, murrieta-loyo & perales-escudero this positive stance towards research aligns with current trends that see research as a tool to make informed pedagogical decisions (hargreaves, 2001), promote professional development (kirkwood & christie, 2006), understand theoretical findings, and take a more innovative role toward the curriculum (gurney, 1989). bandura (1997) states that the goals most persistently pursued are those of the highest personal value and standing in one’s hierarchy. in this case, all faculty appear to agree that research is very important; it follows that they are likely to engage in this activity. nonetheless, these answers could be motivated by a desire to gain acceptance. as stated above, research is highly valued in current university contexts, even in those academic fields that have not traditionally trained researchers. therefore, it would be inappropriate to say that research is not important. bandura (1997) also states that imposed goals are resisted when they do not bring about personal reward or fulfillment and only aim at improving productivity. in other words, ideally, faculty should develop intrinsic motivation rather than do research to comply with institutional policy. institutions should assess the field’s research maturity and design policies that allow for a gradual development of research self-efficacy. if policy only sets standards but does not address development, results are likely to be inconsistent and less than optimal. obstacles to conduct research obstacles in the questionnaire can be classified into two types: institutional and personal. the first kind is more prevalent since a large majority reported not having time for research (89%). this result matches previous findings by busseniers et al. (2010), borg (2009), bai and hudson (2011), and xu (2013). teachers also report insufficient flexibility on the part of administrators to apportion service and teaching duties variably in accordance with the different stages of research (67%) and insufficient funding (49%). these obstacles were also found by reyes-cruz and hernández méndez (2014). insufficient institutional recognition of research (43%) and not having a mentor (36%) also got high numbers, which coincides with hernández, gómez, and murrieta (2011). similarly, landino and owen (1988) also found that an absence of institutional commitment contributes to low self-efficacy. this result evinces the absence of changes in institutional culture that may contribute to the success of research-focused policies. culture does not change by command (elmore, 2004) but through the replacement of existing norms, structures, and processes by others that contribute to the changes being sought. that is, cultural change processes (in this case a change from just teaching to doing both research and teaching as equally important activities) depend mostly on modeling the new values and behaviors that are to replace existing ones. feeling guided and included in research activities organized by the department contributes to research self-efficacy (landino & owen, 1988). regarding personal obstacles, some of them are insufficient training (31%), insufficient article writing skills (29%), and insufficient ability to write research proposals (25%). it is interesting that 11 participants referred to fear of peer review as an obstacle to conduct research. all these participants hold only mas rather than doctorates. none is a member of the nrs. the majority of them does not belong to an ac and indicated that they have little or no training and skills to conduct and/or write up research. our previous work (reyes-cruz & perales-escudero, 2016) suggests that their fear may stem from having received scathing reviews in the past and from attributing their failure to low ability rather than low effort. the absence of fear of peer review in the remaining 89 participants may be due to several factors. in the case of faculty with doctorates and nrs membership, this factor may be welldeveloped actual efficacy and high self-efficacy. in the case of some of the faculty with mas and doctorates but no nrs appointment, it is possible that they have never experienced rigorous peer review and thus have not been exposed to failure. other faculty with mas who are 45 foreign language faculty research-related beliefs, perceptions, and research motivation... profile: issues teach. prof. dev., vol. 20 no. 2, jul-dec, 2018. issn 1657-0790 (printed) 2256-5760 (online). bogotá, colombia. pages 35-49 actively involved in research and publication may have developed resilience to negative peer reviews as a result of their enactive mastery experiences. more research is needed to explore these possibilities. as pointed out by xu (2013), the most important influences on research output pertain to the individual and the work environment. these results show a combination of both factors. according to hardré et al. (2007) the importance accorded to research by academics is predicted by the support they get from their departments, and this importance in turn predicts productivity (see table 5 for further information). table 5. obstacles to conducting research obstacle % insufficient time. 89 insufficient flexibility to manage service duties or teaching load according to the needs of different research stages. 67 insufficient funding. 49 insufficient institutional recognition of research. 43 absence of a mentor (a helping, more experienced researcher). 36 little interest of funding agencies in the field of foreign languages. 33 insufficient research training. 31 insufficient ability to write research articles or reports. 29 insufficient recognition of the value of research on the part of other faculty. 26 insufficient ability to write research proposals. 25 insufficient research skills. 24 poor research environment in the field of foreign languages. 22 insufficient opportunities for the circulation of research results. 21 insufficient publication venues in the area of foreign languages. 15 fear of peer-review. 11 bandura (1986) states that, under certain conditions, self-efficacy beliefs do not exert any influential, predictive, mediating role on humans’ functioning. in poorly-structured systems, teachers may find that, no matter how much effort they invest in research, results are not as desired. that is, if institutions do not provide the necessary support (equipment, resources, infrastructure, practices, and an institutional culture that supports research and understands its nature), faculty are not likely to develop genuine, positive selfefficacy beliefs. such a situation does not lead faculty to commit to raise their production and achieve higher standards. this is not to say that faculty are not capable of performing adequately as researchers; rather, this is to say that institutions appear to be hindering the development of faculty self-efficacy. in these cases, feelings of inability to cope can lead faculty to burnout (chwalisz, altmaier, & russell, 1992). conclusions the goal of this study was to determine the selfefficacy perceived by faculty in three institutions at three distant locations in mexico, their motivation to conduct research, and the importance they assign to this activity. contrary to the prediction of wyatt and dikilitaş (2016) that language teachers in many countries would have low self-efficacy, we found that most faculty rated themselves as capable or very capable in all the items pertaining to self-efficacy. this discrepancy may be due to sampling differences as our group of participants includes fulltime professors with doctorates and appointments to mexico’s national research system. these teachers are then highly trained to conduct research and actually do so. nevertheless, as pointed out above, the high selfefficacy of many other participants is not consistent with their years of research experience, academic degrees, and time devoted to research. it seems then that this group of fl faculty would benefit from estimating their efficacy more accurately so they can undertake concrete actions that may lead them to close the gap universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras46 reyes-cruz, murrieta-loyo & perales-escudero that appears to exist between their self-efficacy beliefs and their actual efficacy. our results show that the fl faculty in our sample are highly motivated to conduct research and consider it a very important activity. at the same time, the research-related activity that faculty are most interested in (attending seminars, conferences, and lectures) is one that is subject to external impositions and rewards. this fact suggests that extrinsic motivation plays an important role in our participants’ research activities, which is consistent with the findings in xu (2013). the imbalance between the high figures in the three variables (self-efficacy, motivation, and importance of research) and the little time devoted to research and little actual research experience might be the result of a need to save face and conform to prevalent views in a context where research is highly valued. the subculture of the foreign language teaching community may also be a factor. because research is such a new activity and because mexican fl faculty tend to publish in safe, local venues rather than stricter international journals (ramírez et al., 2010), it is possible that they lack adequate performance standards to measure their own efficacy. in this regard, future studies should examine the impact of specific types of publication practices on fl faculty research self-efficacy. we found that faculty face several obstacles that are difficult to overcome, both institutional and personal. because universities benefit if their faculty are highly productive, they should provide faculty with the right conditions to develop an adequate self-efficacy that would benefit all stakeholders. such conditions include adequate infrastructure, a balance between teaching and research duties, training and mentoring for those without doctorates, and constant updating for those with doctorates. likewise, support for research stays in other countries or in collaboration with more experienced colleagues is essential to achieve appropriate quality criteria against which faculty can assess their own selfefficacy. faculty need to feel that institutional demands and their efforts are matched by institutional support. this paper adds to our prior work by comparing the sense of self-efficacy of faculty with nrs appointments to the self-efficacy of faculty without such appointments. this comparison has provided further evidence of many professors’ tendency to overestimate their research self-efficacy in questionnaire studies. this finding points to a difference between our target context of foreign language faculty in mexico and studies of other disciplines in anglo-saxon countries; studies performed in the second type of context reveal a more congruent calibration between self-efficacy and actual efficacy. these differences may be due to the recent shift of the field of foreign languages in mexico from an exclusive focus on teaching to a new orientation that includes research. such recency may cause some faculty to have had insufficient vicarious and actual experiences with rigorous research processes. future studies can continue to explore this possibility using qualitative designs. another contribution of this study to our previous ones lies in the geographical spread of our sample. our previous papers had focused on only one university in a specific region of mexico. the sample of this paper is larger and spans three very different and distant regions of mexico (north, center, and south). despite this diversity, the results are overall consistent with those of previous studies, which highlight the national nature of the challenges facing foreign language faculty with regard to their research self-efficacy. this study contributes empirical data on a topic that is scarcely addressed in the area of foreign languages. however, it includes limitations that should be overcome in future studies. for example, with regard to the instrument, the answer choices must be revised as the differences between some of them (such as “capable” vs. “average capability”) are not very clear. furthermore, future studies should investigate whether faculty perceive their shortcomings and do nothing about it or take actions to improve their research abilities; or whether they do not realize that such shortcomings exist. further, 47 foreign language faculty research-related beliefs, perceptions, and research motivation... profile: issues teach. prof. dev., vol. 20 no. 2, jul-dec, 2018. issn 1657-0790 (printed) 2256-5760 (online). bogotá, colombia. pages 35-49 the possibility that individuals might have performed the activities in the questionnaire once or twice might have eschewed the results. limited experience with specific tasks could have hindered some participants’ ability to grasp the complexity of those activities and led them to think that they could perform well as professional researchers. therefore, future studies would benefit from matching self-perception measures to objective measures of actual research efficacy in various dimensions of the research process. references allison, d., & carey, j. 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(2007). what motivates university faculty universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras48 reyes-cruz, murrieta-loyo & perales-escudero members to do research? tenure-track faculty in researchextensive universities. journal of the professoriate, 2(1), 75-99. hargreaves, a. (2001). aprender a cambiar: la enseñanza más allá de las materias y los niveles [learning to change: teaching beyond courses and levels]. barcelona, es: octaedro. hemmings, b., & kay, r. (2010). research self-efficacy, publication output, and early career development. international journal of educational management, 24(7), 562-574. https://doi.org/10.1108/09513541011079978. hernández, e., gómez, l., & murrieta, g. (2011). la investigación en el área de lenguas en la universidad de quintana roo: logros, retos y expectativas [research on languages at the university of quintana roo: achievements, challenges, and expectations]. in m. r. reyes. (ed.), 20 años de lenguas extranjeras en la universidad de quintana roo (pp. 19-42). chetumal, mx: uqroo-planea. kim, h., & cho, y. (2014). pre service teachers’ motivation, teacher efficacy, and expectation of reality shock. asiapacific journal of teacher education, 42(1), 67-81. https:// doi.org/10.1080/1359866x.2013.855999. kirkwood, m., & christie, d. (2006). the role of teacher research in continuing professional development. british journal of educational studies, 54(4), 429-448. https:// doi.org/10.1111/j.1467-8527.2006.00355.x. landino, r. a., & owen, s. v. (1988). self-efficacy in university faculty. journal of vocational behavior, 33(1), 1-14. https:// doi.org/10.1016/0001-8791(88)90030-9. lengeling, m. (2010). becoming an english teacher: participants’ voices and identities in an in-service training course in central mexico, guanajuato. guanajuato, mx: universidad de guanajuato. levi, j. p., & varela, j. (coord.). (2005). análisis multivariable para las ciencias sociales [multivariate analysis for social science]. spain: pearson. mehrani, m. b. (2015). english teachers’ research engagement: level of engagement and motivation. iranian journal of language teaching research, 3(1), 83-97. retrieved from http://www.urmia.ac.ir/sites/www.urmia.ac.ir/ files/article5.pdf. pajares, f. (1996). self-efficacy beliefs in academic settings. review of educational research, 66, 543-578. https://doi. org/10.3102/00346543066004543. ramírez, j., gilbón, d., & moreno, e. (2010). las investigaciones sobre la enseñanza de lenguas extranjeras en méxico: ¿dónde estamos y qué nos falta por recorrer? [research on teaching foreign languages in mexico: where are we and what are we missing?] imaginales, revista de investigación social, (8), 33-39. reyes-cruz, m. r., & hernández-méndez, e. (2014). productividad y condiciones para la investigación: el caso de los profesores de lenguas extranjeras. sinéctica, 42, 1-17. reyes-cruz, m. r., & higuera-bonfil, a. (2015). cómo se materializa la política pública sobre la investigación en tres universidades mexicanas. revista congreso universidad, 4(3), 175-188. reyes-cruz, m. r., & perales-escudero, m. d. (2016). research self-efficacy and its sources in foreign language university faculty in mexico: implications for educational policy. higher education research and development, 35(4), 800-814. https://doi.org/10.1080/ 07294360.2015.1137884. secretaría de educación pública. (2006). programa de mejoramiento del profesorado: un primer análisis de su operación e impactos en el proceso de fortalecimiento académico de las universidades públicas [program for the improvement of the teaching staff: a first analysis of its operation and impacts in the process of academic strengthening of the public universities]. méxico d.f.: author. schunk, d. h. (1982). progress self-monitoring: effects on children’s self-efficacy and achievement. journal of experimental education, 51(2), 89-93. https://doi.org/1 0.1080/00220973.1982.11011845. vasil, l. (1992). self-efficacy expectations and causal attributions for achievement among male and female university faculty. journal of vocational behavior, 41(3), 259-69. https://doi.org/10.1016/0001-8791(92)90028-x. 49 foreign language faculty research-related beliefs, perceptions, and research motivation... profile: issues teach. prof. dev., vol. 20 no. 2, jul-dec, 2018. issn 1657-0790 (printed) 2256-5760 (online). bogotá, colombia. pages 35-49 wheatley, k. f. (2002). the potential benefit of teacher selfefficacy doubts for educational reform. teaching and teacher education, 18(1), 5-22. https://doi.org/10.1016/ s0742-051x(01)00047-6. wyatt, m. (2015). using qualitative research methods to assess the degree of fit between teachers’ reported self-efficacy beliefs and their practical knowledge during teacher education. australian journal of teacher education, 40(1), 117-145. https://doi.org/10.14221/ajte.2015v40n1.7. wyatt, m., & dikilitaş, k. (2016). english language teachers becoming more efficacious through research engagement at their turkish university. educational action research, 24(4), 550-570. https://doi.org/10.1080/09650792.2015.1076731. xu, y. (2013). becoming researchers: a narrative study of chinese university efl teachers’ research practice and their professional identity construction. language teaching research, 18(2), 1-18. https://doi. org/10.1177/1362168813505943. yuan, r., sun, p., & teng, l. (2016). understanding language teachers’ motivations towards research. tesol quarterly, 50(1), 220-234. https://doi.org/10.1002/tesq.279. zimmerman, b. j. (1995). self-efficacy and educational development. in a. bandura (ed.), self-efficacy in changing societies (pp. 202-231). cambridge, uk: cambridge university press. https://doi.org/10.1017/ cbo9780511527692.009. about the authors maría del rosario reyes-cruz holds a phd in international education from the universidad autónoma de tamaulipas. she is a professor of language and education at the universidad de quintana roo (mexico), and a member of mexico’s national research system. she has published several articles in the field of informational technology, self-efficacy teaching beliefs, learning beliefs, and foreign language research. griselda murrieta-loyo holds a phd in education from the universidad autónoma de morelos. she is an associate professor of language and education at universidad de quintana roo (mexico), and a member of mexico’s national research system. she has published articles in the field of learning beliefs, english teaching program in public schools, and foreign language research. moisés damián perales-escudero holds a phd in english and education from the university of michigan. he is an associate professor of language and education at universidad de quintana roo (mexico), and a member of mexico’s national research system and of the editorial boards of jeap, calj, and the wac clearinghouse. he has published extensively in the field of l1 and l2 academic and disciplinary literacies. 73profile vol. 19, no. 2, july-december 2017. issn 1657-0790 (printed) 2256-5760 (online). bogotá, colombia. pages 73-85 http://dx.doi.org/10.15446/profile.v19n2.57178 making sense of alternative assessment in a qualitative evaluation system entendiendo los procedimientos alternativos de valoración de desempeño en un sistema de evaluación cualitativo javier rojas serrano* centro colombo americano, bogotá, colombia in a colombian private english institution, a qualitative evaluation system has been incorporated. this type of evaluation poses challenges to students who have never been evaluated through a system that eliminates exams or quizzes and, as a consequence, these students have to start making sense of it. this study explores the way students face the new qualitative evaluation system and their views on alternative assessment as a way to help them make headway with their english learning process. key words: alternative assessment, qualitative evaluation, quantitative evaluation. en una institución educativa privada dedicada a la lengua y la cultura inglesas en colombia, se incorporó un sistema de evaluación cualitativo para ayudar al estudiante a alcanzar sus metas de aprendizaje. este sistema plantea desafíos a los estudiantes que nunca han sido evaluados con un modelo sin exámenes escritos y, como consecuencia, tienen que desarrollar una serie de habilidades para entenderlo. este estudio explora la manera como los estudiantes se enfrentan al nuevo sistema de evaluación y su opinión sobre este respecto a su proceso de aprendizaje. palabras clave: evaluación cualitativa, evaluación cuantitativa, métodos alternativos de valoración. * e-mail: jrojas@colombobogota.edu.co how to cite this article (apa, 6th ed.): rojas serrano, j. (2017). making sense of alternative assessment in a qualitative evaluation system. profile issues in teachers’ professional development, 19(2), 73-85. http://dx.doi.org/10.15446/profile.v19n2.57178. this article was received on april 4, 2016, and accepted on october 20, 2016. this is an open access article distributed under the terms of the creative commons license attribution-noncommercial-noderivatives 4.0 international license. consultation is possible at http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/. universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras74 rojas serrano introduction one of the main difficulties of a qualitative evaluation system, like the one adopted by the adult english program in the centro colombo americano – bogota, is facing a student who fails a course or who passes with some difficulties and still does not totally accept that he or she needs to keep improving. convincing a failing student as to why he or she must repeat a course is a hard task because in a qualitative approach to evaluation, sometimes clear evidence is not recorded, stored, or managed, and evaluation ends up looking like just the teacher’s gut feelings on paper. the same happens with students who pass with the minimum performance required and, as they pass, do not feel they need to keep working hard in certain areas. on many occasions, they might even feel that they did not deserve to pass, contrary to what his/her teacher decided. most of these concerns usually come from students who have always been evaluated by specific numbers or through products like final outcomes, exams, or quizzes and would rather see this type of evaluation in the colombo as well. however, this end-of-the-cycle dilemma need not be a nightmare provided that students who are not familiar with the qualitative evaluation system understand how it works and what practices are behind the teacher’s decision to fail or pass a student. this research project intends to understand how students make sense of and try to adapt to a qualitative evaluation system, which would eventually avoid traumatic experiences on the side of the teacher as well as of students themselves in light of the different assessment tools offered by the program. even though this type of dilemmas may not apply to most english teaching departments and institutions, in the sense that most places continue approaching evaluation from a quantitative system which offers less controversy and more practicality at the moment of grading students, at the centro colombo americano – bogota, the qualitative system of evaluation is being constantly revisited and discussed in order to help the faculty and the students get a grip on it. the fact that most students and teachers in the program come from quantitative backgrounds—from our schools and majors to our latest work experience—poses specific challenges and threats that make this type evaluation difficult to follow because it regards attitude, culture, task accomplishment, and the whole process and does not consider quizzes and exams. after having undergone several feedback sessions with students, the same questions keep on popping up. as a matter of fact, these questions have eventually become the research questions leading this study: • how do students coming from a quantitative evaluation background respond to a qualitative evaluation system? • how do students make sense of the alternative assessment activities that teachers plan in order to draw conclusions about their own performance? at first glance, these objectives lead us to think that possible research constructs are the quantitative evaluation system most students are familiar with, the new qualitative evaluation system used by the colombo, and the students’ reflection, analysis, and final reaction towards the new system. literature review quantitative and qualitative approaches to evaluation in spite of the fact that this issue may seem new or even restricted to the centro colombo americano scenario, a lot of related literature and theory have been spread and dealt with for some years now in the education field. teachers at the centro colombo americano have gradually become more and more confident evaluating students through a qualitative system, but it is also true that for many of us at the beginning, it was a real challenge to get used to it. in fact, it is still hard in some 75profile vol. 19, no. 2, july-december 2017. issn 1657-0790 (printed) 2256-5760 (online). bogotá, colombia. pages 73-85 making sense of alternative assessment in a qualitative evaluation system cases to make up one’s mind as to who is passing or failing a course, given the fact that there is still an inner struggle between the teacher’s quantitative background and the current qualitative practice. this inner struggle may come from the benefits we see in both systems that are summarized by brown (2004), who points out that while traditional-quantitative evaluation provides higher practicality and reliability, alternative-qualitative systems provide better washback and authenticity. nevertheless, an aspect that may add up to the difficulties in implementing a qualitative approach to evaluation is explained by cohen (1994), who suggests that “people have reached a spoken or unspoken agreement that traditional methods look like the right way to assess. in fact, teachers may choose methods that reflect the way they were assessed as students (p. 29).” this situation, however, has not only been faced by the centro colombo americano. brown (2004) argues that approaches to evaluation in different institutions worldwide have shifted focus onto a more alternative view of evaluation and have become distanced from traditional evaluation systems because alternative ways of evaluation foster assessment tools that can be extended to real life, are more meaningful, and regard the products as well as the process. in addition, nontraditional assessment that might not look like testing (with all the stress and anxiety that it carries), provides space for students to develop their creativity, increases critical thinking skills, and enables more multicultural connections (brown, 2004). this view is evident when we regard the products, tasks, and projects that students carry out in our institution. however, the same author insists that non-traditional and qualitative assessment requires considerable time and effort on the part of teachers and might look less convincing to students. another aspect to consider when defining traditional-quantitative and alternative-qualitative approaches to evaluation has to do with what is done with the information obtained. the discussion, then, as proposed by areiza restrepo (2013), focuses on formative as opposed to summative assessment if we consider the purpose of it. traditional evaluation tends to render summative assessment in the sense that the information collected is used to decide who passes or fails and based on the quizzes or exam results, the student should draw conclusions about what language aspect to review and reinforce. a qualitative assessment system, on the other hand, goes beyond and, additionally, produces feedback that will help students identify strengths or weaknesses through a conference with the teacher in which all aspects of the learning process are discussed; apart from the use of language, these aspects also include the areas that cannot be covered in an exam and are connected to the ability to implement learning strategies throughout the process, team work abilities, use of resources, punctuality, and so on. this type of assessment is therefore more realistic and authentic in the sense that to be successful in real life the mere knowledge of a language is not enough, but that a wider set of social and organizational skills is needed along with it. table 1, taken from brown (2001), summarizes the most important characteristics of the quantitative and qualitative approaches. students’ awareness and reflection on alternative assessment i have mentioned that the formative and summative assessment discussion is at the core of the analysis of quantitative and qualitative evaluation approaches. areiza restrepo (2013) points out that whereas summative assessment is designed to determine whether students have achieved the goals of the program by the end of a cycle or the course, formative assessment is, conversely, designed to be diagnostic, remedial, regulatory, and ongoing. therefore, at a first glance, we may infer that summative assessment provides a kind of reflection in which students, instead of planning actions to improve, may end up just showing regrets about the things they did wrong or did not do at all, whereas formative assessment gives students the opportunity to come up universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras76 rojas serrano with action plans to keep their strengths and to tackle their weaknesses timely. this conclusion was actually drawn from his study in which participants, after being exposed to formative assessment actions, showed their abilities to identify and understand their strengths and weaknesses. this situation eventually led students to enhance their learning and have a sense of success. similarly, a study carried out by baleghizadeh and zarghami (2012), in which iranian students were introduced to conferencing as a formative assessment tool, showed how these students got better results on a grammar test than the ones who were not exposed to teacher-student conferences during their process. it is explained by the researchers that the differing results between the two groups of students have to do with the fact that the students who were involved in conferencing as an alternative way of assessment were encouraged to take more responsibility for their process by selfassessing, reflecting, monitoring, and setting goals to improve their learning. however, in spite of the deep understanding of formative assessment and practices shown by the aforementioned authors, the programs in which their studies are framed still evaluate students through final exams that are the ultimate tools that teachers use to let students pass a course, no matter how much reflection, awareness, and action planning the formative practices that they implemented rendered. when eliminating exams and quizzes, as is the case of the program in which the present study takes place, teachers and students have to rely entirely on formative assessment tools, and this is what makes this paper singular and novel and what gives relevance to the research questions that this study proposes. research context the program in which this study was carried out is made up of 18 levels from basic to advanced english. each level lasts one month approximately and covers between three and four content units. at the end of each unit, students develop a task in which they show their understanding and mastery of the vocabulary, grammar, and strategies learned throughout the unit; they are designed to establish connections between what has been learned and students’ reality. these tasks are usually filed in a portfolio or uploaded to an online group together with reflections, peer-assessment, and self-assessment notes. every unit or two, teachers table 1. contrast between traditional/quantitative evaluation and alternative/qualitative evaluation (adapted from brown, 2001) traditional/quantitative assessment alternative/qualitative assessment one-shot standardized exams timed, multiple choice format decontextualized test items scores suffice for feedback focus on the right answer summative oriented to product non-interactive performance fosters extrinsic motivation continuous long-term assessment untimed free-response contextualized communicative tasks formative interactive feedback open-ended creative answers formative oriented to process interactive performance fosters intrinsic motivation 77profile vol. 19, no. 2, july-december 2017. issn 1657-0790 (printed) 2256-5760 (online). bogotá, colombia. pages 73-85 making sense of alternative assessment in a qualitative evaluation system usually have conferences with students to brief them about their progress in the course in aspects as varied as communication, teamwork, punctuality, use of strategies, class performance, and homework development. at the end of each cycle, a final student-teacher conference takes place in which the student’s progress is discussed. with this evaluation system, more often than not, students know if they are passing or failing before this final conference and this moment becomes a way to offer students suggestions and advice on what to focus on and how to keep improving. however, sometimes, students also object to the teacher’s decisions because, from their viewpoint, they made good progress and deserve to pass, and a quantitative evaluation tool has not been used to end such controversy with a clear number or letter and mistakes highlighted on an exam or quiz. research framework this research project may be connected to what scholars have called case study. even though it would have been desirable to have carried out changes and innovations in pedagogical activities, which is the ultimate goal of action research, in our particular case it was also important to understand the problem in depth before moving on to an intervention. case study, as defined by stake (1999), allows the study of the “peculiarity and complexity of a singular case in order to figure out its activity in important circumstances” (p. 15). this way, the peculiarity and complexity of a restricted group of students from a restricted number of courses may provide us with important data to understand how a bigger number of students from a wider range of course would react in the face of a different evaluation system from the one they are used to. methodological design for the sake of this research study, seven people were selected as participants and were asked to fill out the corresponding consent form. this selection was made taking into consideration the level of students, and their being newcomers to the colombo. it was considered that students in intermediate and high intermediate levels could offer more elaborated insights since they may have more academic experience than others and some of them may have even studied abroad. most participants were studying in either undergraduate or graduate programs by the time of this research and just a few had already graduated. thus, participants had enough experience with quantitative evaluation that may contrast with the type of evaluation carried out at the centro colombo americanobogota. on the other hand, participants needed to be newcomers in the institution, since the study intended to find out how these students, coming from a quantitative evaluation tradition, adapt to and assimilate a qualitative evaluation system. participants were coded as follows: two intermediate students = sk1 and sk2. five high intermediate students = ch1, ch2, ch3, ch4, and ch5. to avoid confusion, readers just need to know that a code with sk belongs to an intermediate level (between a2 and b1 in the common european framework [cef]) and a code with ch belongs to a high intermediate level (about to get a b2 in the cef). data gathering techniques the matrix in table 2 represents the different data gathering techniques and the areas and questions of this research that were addressed with each of them. in order to account for these research variables and to eventually tackle the research questions, four different data gathering techniques were implemented in three different groups and applied to the aforementioned population. data gathering technique 1: the survey. the survey1 intended to explore students’ beliefs and opinions about 1 survey and interview questions and answers have been translated from spanish for publication purposes. universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras78 rojas serrano quantitative and qualitative types of evaluation and with which ones students were more comfortable, taking into consideration their academic life experience. these are the survey questions that were answered by two low intermediate and five high intermediate english students: • taking into consideration your academic process during your life (high school, college), what type of evaluation are you more familiar with? • do you think that having a specific grade (letter or number) reflects clearly the knowledge you have acquired in any course? • apart from having a specific grade (number of letter), what other type of evidence of your progress can be shown? • would you feel more comfortable if the colombo evaluated all levels with a final exam, or if homework, activities, and projects were assessed every single class? • for your own academic progress, which type of evaluation would you consider the most beneficial one? • after having finished a level in the colombo, do you consider that you understand the evaluation system in this institution? data gathering technique 2: teacher’s journal. a journal in which assessment and evaluation moments were recorded for every class was kept. from day 1 to day 19 (the length of a level in the colombo), assessment moments that were planned in every single lesson were recorded daily in this journal in order to compare these notes with the assessment moments that students identified and recorded in the self-reflection form that was given to the participating students for them to keep track of these classroom activities. data gathering technique 3: artifact (selfreflection form). the participating students were asked to complete a format in which, on a daily basis, they had to write down moments of evaluation that they were able to identify. at the end of the class, students stayed for five more minutes in class to complete the entry of the day, in which they had to identify the nature of the assessment moment, the type of assessment tool, and the skills or areas of english that were assessed through that activity. table 3 is an example of what students had to do with the format. data gathering technique 4: the interview. the final data gathering technique implemented in this study was a questionnaire. at the end of the second level with each group, participants were asked to answer a questionnaire in which they expanded on their opinion about the evaluation process and its results on their learning process. the questions posed were: • you have already finished two courses of english in the colombo. have you been able to identify table 2. data gathering techniques matrix research questions areas survey teacher’s journal selfreflections format interviews student’s attitude and beliefs: quantitative and qualitative evaluation x x teacher’s implementation of assessment in class x x x student’s understanding of assessment moments x x x 79profile vol. 19, no. 2, july-december 2017. issn 1657-0790 (printed) 2256-5760 (online). bogotá, colombia. pages 73-85 making sense of alternative assessment in a qualitative evaluation system evaluation moments during the class that were guided by the teacher? what moments, in which you have been encouraged to reflect upon your own performance, can you mention? • which of these activities have helped you understand your performance in class? • have you missed the numbers or letters to have an idea of what you need to improve and what you are doing ok? why? • without taking into consideration the establishment of partial or final exams, what kind of evidence could be used to improve the type of evaluation in the colombo? validity and reliability the validity and reliability of the study are assured by the synergy among the different data gathering techniques. they account for both the participants and the teacher-researcher’s views, and were also designed in such a way that one technique is backed up by another when considering the different variables or constructs of the study, as shown in the data gathering techniques matrix (table 2). this provides this study with reliability. in addition, validity is also present because the techniques that were selected and designed tackled the concerns that arose from the questions and variables of the study. data analysis and results after the analysis of the information collected through the different gathering techniques used, three salient aspects emerged. these categories are directly connected to the research variables that were identified at the beginning of this study: qualitative evaluation, quantitative evaluation, and the students’ reflections on alternative assessment. category 1: generalities in the colombian context, it is thought that the quantitative approach is the one by which most academic table 3. format for students’ reflection on alternative evaluation moments in class date topic type of reflection or evaluation h w p la tf . li st e n . r e a d . p ro n u n . v o c/ g r w rt . s p e a k . another aspect july 16th course info. teacher erased the info on the board and asked different people to check how much they remember x evaluation areas/tools july 16th challenge. 4 previous course review we did some grammar and vocabulary activities on a worksheet and then we exchanged it with a partner to evaluate our partner’s answers (peer assessment) x universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras80 rojas serrano institutions are driven when evaluating students, and this view is actually supported by areiza restrepo (2013). in his study, he found research that unveiled the lack of knowledge and instruction on formative assessment of colombian teachers who did not regard assessment as a way to enhance learning but just as a way to decide who passes or fails a course. among other reasons, he found out that it might be happening because, in general, only a few universities actually offered instruction in this type of evaluation to language teachers. this perception was confirmed through the answers the participants in this study gave in the survey. it was noticed in the survey that all participants were given grades, be it with numbers or letters, that provided a concept of a final product, and that just a few of them recognized that their process was also taken into consideration in previous academic experiences. also, in students’ previous experience, important learning aspects such as attitude, punctuality, commitment, leadership skills, and group work abilities were more often than not disregarded or not seen as important as a final product, even though getting to a product involves a good performance in the areas mentioned above. it is mentioned by one student who wrote on the survey that in his previous learning experiences, before getting to the centro colombo americano, “many things are left aside such as participation, the learning process, and the attitude in class” (ch3). in some other cases, students recalled having received feedback about their commitment in the activities, but it was not as specific as they found it in their colombo course: in the school, our commitment was evaluated, but it was not as specific as it is here…i mean, here, we are reminded of how many times we came to class, how many absences, how our performance in class was, if i could handle the grammar, if i got the listening, and many other things that add up to a more comprehensive evaluation…at school, we were evaluated mostly through exams. (ch3) figure 1 is a summary of the generalities that were identified through the analysis of the data collected during the research process. figure 1. category 1: generalities university and school programs keep relying only on traditional assessment and evaluation colombian students are noy yet familiar with qualitative/alternative evaluation generalities category 2: positive views on alternative assessment after being exposed to the qualitative evaluation carried out at the institution through the use of alternative assessment procedures, most students could identify some benefits and positive aspects that this type of evaluation has on students’ performance. for example, ch3 said in the survey that she had not missed exams in the colombo because “instead of a number, a cold, dry number,” she is getting feedback about what aspects to improve in a more specific and meaningful way. the new evaluation system places new students in a new setting that they had to make sense of. despite this, students seem to adapt and get alternative assessment in a good way. at the end of the day, students liked the fact that they could identify their strengths and weaknesses without having to take an exam, and that actually, they could identify issues that go beyond grammar and vocabulary. in this sense, the tasks and presentations 81profile vol. 19, no. 2, july-december 2017. issn 1657-0790 (printed) 2256-5760 (online). bogotá, colombia. pages 73-85 making sense of alternative assessment in a qualitative evaluation system were regarded as the most important activities to help students with their assessment. in the interview, ch3 says, for instance, that: i feel that the activities that made me understand the most, or the ones that helped me the most were the presentations because they were the most complete way to have look at everything, the grammar, the vocabulary, as well as the expressions, using everyday language, and seeing every single thing…also, the feedback from our partners was really nice. ch4 and sk1 had a similar impression in the interview: the presentations…for me, it was really difficult to stand in front of different people to present a specific topic, especially in english, but it helped me know how much i really learned. (ch4) something that was very important for my evaluation, was the presentation because it was ok and i got important feedback about it from my teacher and classmates. (sk1) in the survey, some students acknowledged some of the strategies they have gradually developed in order to look for ways to improve. to come to this point, class routines and assessment-based activities played an important role. when asked what evidence of progress they had, most participants highlighted the fact that they paid special attention to their teachers’ feedback, carried out self-assessment and self-monitoring, and compared themselves to other members of the class without being necessarily given direct information about their performance from the teacher but also from other students and from self-reflection. students also thought that qualitative assessment frees students from anxiety and pressure and that is why traditional exams do not provide them with real information about their performance, as sk1 put it: i think that exams generate pressure in the student and, actually, they do not render good evidence about the real class performance. (sk1) one of the most common benefits students acknowledge as regards the qualitative approach to evaluation is the opportunity to reflect upon one’s own process; this reflection was encouraged by the practices and routines that teachers following a qualitative approach have. through the interview, students identified some of those practices and activities that helped them self-reflect: well, during the class we would always do some periodic reviews as the units and lessons went by…also, the tasks we had to do, the presentations…all in all, it helped me reflect upon my own performance. (ch3) for instance, activities were as simple as a couple of questions; however, in those two questions, one—not even the teacher—knew how much one learned, how well one could handle the grammar, and express it naturally. (ch4) i think that in all activities we did, we assessed ourselves and did not simply went on with the next activity, but we shared results, evaluated the results, and each student was perfectly capable to identify which his/her mistakes had been and how to improve them. (ch1) finally, most of the participating students (5 out of 7 in the survey) agreed that they would prefer a type of evaluation in which everything they do is taken into consideration rather than having only exams and quizzes. figure 2 puts together the positive views students showed through the data gathered in this study. category 3: negative views on alternative assessment a disadvantage some students mentioned about a qualitative approach to evaluation is that in some cases students with mixed language levels may end up in the same class. it might be due to the fact that when you assess the process and the product, as a teacher following a qualitative approach, you have to consider the effort students put into it, the commitment they showed, and the time they devoted, and not only the quality of the product. on the other hand, if a student who did not follow any process or show evidence of ongoing work displays a great product, he might eventually fail the universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras82 rojas serrano task because of not following the steps to complete the activity, even if the final product is really good. this situation was perceived by a student who said in the interview: i think that the students that have had very good teachers have learned a lot, and if they had to take an exam from which their passing or failing depended on they would have passed anyways and it would be a waste of time. but also, there are people that, in spite of being very responsible, have some language flaws and for them it would have been good to repeat at least one course for them to identify those flaws and work on them, since those gaps in their knowledge may make them confused for the rest of the process (ch1) through the analysis of the information obtained, there seems to be an agreement that numbers or letters do not quite represent accurately how much and how well a student is learning. however, some of them still miss having exams and quizzes to have a more “accurate” report on their performance. some students brought up in the survey that a qualitative approach to evaluation may be too flexible and lenient and it might not offer concrete evidence to students. some of the participants thought that giving exams may expose students to more academic challenges, as this student put it in the survey: i feel that something clearer is necessary to get my process assessed in a more concrete way and to put students in front of a more academic challenge. (ch2) in the interview, ch1 also acknowledged that: i’m not a friend of exams, being a teacher myself, and i’m not a friend of giving exams all the time as well to determine if a student is passing o[r] failing, but i think that every now and then it is necessary to give an exam from which evidence is taken to decide whether a student is passing or not…in the two levels i’ve studied in the colombo, people have different levels of english. this situation, of course, makes some students feel suspicious about some other alternative assessment practices such as peer-assessment, in which students have to assess other students’ performance, because, in their view, it makes no sense to get feedback from a student who may have even more language difficulties than the ones they have. figure 3 shows a summary of the negative views on alternative assessment that some of the students involved in this study identified. figure 2. category 2: positive views on alternative assessment encourages awareness and re�ection evaluation is not teachercentered integrates different areas of learning provides prompt and meaningful feedback frees students from test anxiety positive views on alternative assessment 83profile vol. 19, no. 2, july-december 2017. issn 1657-0790 (printed) 2256-5760 (online). bogotá, colombia. pages 73-85 making sense of alternative assessment in a qualitative evaluation system pedagogical implications every time a new course starts, students are explained what the evaluation is going to be like. they are told that there will not be exams or quizzes and that all they do day by day will be taken into consideration in order to decide whether they are passing the course or not. some of them show a big smile when they hear about the exams policies and think that the course is going to be a piece of cake. however, when they realize that they not only have to demonstrate understanding of grammar and vocabulary every now and then on a piece of paper but in every single activity, every single day, and that they also have to show communication skills, punctuality, acquisition of daily learning habits, and social and teamwork skills, some of those smiles start to fade away. some students adapt to the new system easily and naturally, but others have some trouble assimilating it. as tedick and klee (1998) put it, students need extensive training and preparation to adapt to alternative assessment. lots of guidance is required for students to start reflecting upon their own process from a critical standpoint, to be able to think of a clear action plan, and to offer feedback to others as well. however, when students are constantly trained, they are capable of identifying moments of assessment and making the most of them, as was evident in the forms they had to fill out after each class to identify moments of evaluation throughout the lesson. in this study, we intended to explore these students’ beliefs and feelings towards the qualitative approach to evaluation and to understand how well they adapt to it. from the analysis of the data collected in this research study, these ideas can be drawn: students appreciate being given specific feedback about their performance in different areas of the learning process in an ongoing fashion. some students do not miss the quantitative grades they used to get in other academic programs. a few of them, however, believe that sometimes a traditional way to assess students’ performance is still necessary, particularly to bridge the gaps of grammar and vocabulary among students who are in the same course but show some differences in their english proficiency. after proper and ongoing training, students are able to identify and use assessment moments to spot their own strengths and weaknesses. sometimes students’ assimilation of alternative assessment depends on their cognitive style. students who have an analytical learning type, who are more independent, autonomous, and logical may feel more comfortable with the new system because they can use their classmates’ and teacher’s feedback to create action plans and strategies to solve problems as they go through the learning process. on the contrary, students with an authority-oriented learning type tend to be more structured and traditional. therefore, they may feel more comfortable being assessed through more formal tools and being told exactly what to do to increase their numbers. on the teacher’s side, a qualitative approach to assessment and evaluation poses more challenges than a quantitative one. according to brown (2001), quantitative approaches are meant to be highly practical and timesaving, offering standardized kinds of assessment to figure 3. category 3: negative views on alternative assessment may render mixed-ability classes in terms of language use may be regarded as “not very academic”, weak, lenient, and not concrete negative views on alternative assessment peer-assessment might not be considered to be very accurate universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras84 rojas serrano every student in a class or a school at the end of each term. on the other hand, the same author explains that qualitative assessment and evaluation demand a continuous effort from teachers to assess, evaluate, and give feedback to students on a more regular basis, which is time-consuming and not practical at all, although it turns out to be more beneficial to students, who can take actions to tackle learning issues on the go and not when there is not much to do. moreover, teachers need to learn to be more organized and responsible in order to be able to give prompt and comprehensive feedback, especially to those students who are struggling to meet the course goals. as teachers—not grades—have to talk to students, they are to be assertive and straightforward, but, at the same time, supportive and polite. the adaptation to a qualitative system is then not only a student but a teacher matter as well. figure 4 summarizes the pedagogical implications that emerged out of the data gathered throughout the research process. further research this study has focused on understanding students’ beliefs and adaptation processes to the qualitative approach to evaluation and has not considered the actions taken in order to make such an adaptation easier. given this fact, it would be interesting to explore some of those actions and the artifacts teachers create in order to facilitate the assimilation of this approach by newcomers. this way, we could have a closer view on qualitative assessment tools and their effectiveness, the actions taken by teachers before, during, and after the feedback conferences with students in order to make sure they help students improve troublesome areas, or the use of self and peer assessment moments and how to make them more effective. in other words, it is hoped that this reflection and descriptive paper can render a number of action research projects in which senior and junior teachers facilitate the transition of new students from a traditional to an alternative system of evaluation and assessment. figure 4. pedagogical implications pedagogical implications of the implementation of qualitative evaluation students need to be trained in alternative ways of evaluation. it demands time and energy from teachers (plan, create, implement, train students, give feedback) but students do appreciate it it fosters autonomy, re�ection, and motivation students’ learning styles need to be considered 85profile vol. 19, no. 2, july-december 2017. issn 1657-0790 (printed) 2256-5760 (online). bogotá, colombia. pages 73-85 making sense of alternative assessment in a qualitative evaluation system conclusion no educational endeavor can be understood without the evaluation process that measures its results. in fact, the evaluation approach has to mirror the curriculum in which it is used. language learning has undergone great changes throughout the years (from the grammartranslation method to the more communicative approaches) but, apparently, evaluation and testing still rely on exams and quizzes to get an idea of students’ progress. nowadays, language learning demands a wider range of skills that surpass grammar, vocabulary, and communication, and also cover the ability to learn autonomously, to use technology, to select and apply learning strategies, to collaborate with others, and to establish social and cultural bonds, which are areas that cannot be measured and observed by means of traditional evaluation tools. it is hoped that this paper reached its goal to show what students think and how they react when confronting an alternative evaluation system that is entirely different from what they heretofore had known in their academic life but that is thought to be more coherent with the areas that new language teachers need to observe and assess. references areiza restrepo, h. n. (2013). role of systematic formative assessment on students’ views of their learning. profile issues in teachers’ development, 15(2), 165-183. baleghizadeh, s., & zarghami, z. (2012). the impact of conferencing assessment on efl students’ grammar learning. profile issues in teachers’ development, 14(2), 131-144. brown, d. h. (2001). teaching by principles: an interactive approach to language pedagogy (2nd ed.). new york, us: pearson longman. brown, d. h. (2004). language assessment: principles and practices. new york, us: pearson. cohen, a. d. (1994). assessing language ability in the classroom. boston, us: heinle. stake, r. e. (1999). investigación con estudio de casos [case study research]. madrid, es: morata. tedick, d. j., & klee, c. a. (1998). alternative assessment in the language classroom. washington d.c.: center for international education. about the author javier rojas serrano holds a ba in philology and languages from universidad nacional de colombia. he has been an english teacher, a supervisor, and an assistant coordinator at centro colombo americano, bogotá. he has also published articles related to technology, teacher collaboration, and citizenship in the english classroom. efl learners’ perceptions about language learning and culture when using telecollaboration 95profile: issues teach. prof. dev., vol. 22 no. 2, jul-dec, 2020. issn 1657-0790 (printed) 2256-5760 (online). bogotá, colombia. pages 95-113 https://doi.org/10.15446/profile.v22n2.82213 efl learners’ perceptions about language learning and culture when using telecollaboration percepciones de estudiantes de inglés como lengua extranjera acerca del aprendizaje del lenguaje y la cultura mediante la telecolaboración en el aula natalia ramírez-lizcano1 maría alejandra cabrera-tovar universidad surcolombiana, neiva, colombia this phenomenological study explores students’ perceptions about the relationship between foreign language learning and culture when using telecollaboration. three main concerns underlie this work: the lack of studies that explore how students perceive the relationship between foreign language learning and culture in the local context, the need to explore the incidence of culture in language learning, and the role of telecollaboration in cultural exchange. data were collected through questionnaires, focus groups, video recordings, field notes, and students’ artifacts. the findings show students’ understanding of the nature of language situated within functional and humanistic perspectives. furthermore, participants alluded to the importance of language learning as a means to understand the scope of culture and cultural identity. keywords: cultural awareness, english as a foreign language, language learning, telecollaboration este estudio fenomenológico explora las percepciones de unos estudiantes sobre la relación entre el aprendizaje de un idioma extranjero y la cultura, mediante la telecolaboración. tres problemáticas guiaron este trabajo: la falta de investigaciones sobre cómo perciben los estudiantes la relación entre el aprendizaje de idiomas y la cultura dentro del contexto local; la necesidad de explorar la incidencia de la cultura en el aprendizaje de idiomas; y el papel de la telecolaboración en intercambios culturales. los datos se recogieron de cuestionarios, grupos focales, videos, diarios de campo y trabajos de estudiantes. los hallazgos muestran que los estudiantes comprenden la naturaleza del lenguaje en perspectivas funcionales y humanistas. además, los participantes reconocen la importancia del aprendizaje de idiomas como medio para entender el alcance de la cultura y la identidad cultural. palabras clave: aprendizaje de una lengua, conciencia cultural, inglés como lengua extranjera, telecolaboración natalia ramírez-lizcano · email: natalia.ramirez@usco.edu.co maría alejandra cabrera-tovar · email: malejacato@gmail.com this paper is based on an unpublished master’s dissertation to obtain the degree as magister in english didactics at universidad surcolombiana. how to cite this article (apa, 7th ed.): ramírez-lizcano, n., & cabrera-tovar, m. a. (2020). efl learners’ perceptions about language learning and culture when using telecollaboration. profile: issues in teachers’ professional development, 22(2), 95–113. https://doi.org/10.15446/ profile.v22n2.82213 this article was received on september 11, 2019 and accepted on february 25, 2020. this is an open access article distributed under the terms of the creative commons license attribution-noncommercial-noderivatives 4.0 international license. consultation is possible at https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/ https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/ universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras96 ramírez-lizcano & cabrera-tovar introduction one theoretical issue that has dominated the study of human social interaction concerns the relevance of language and communication as key aspects of cultural development and awareness. the debate about how language acquisition may influence cultural changes and development is still taking place in the field of language education. on account of this increased interest in the role of cultural identity and awareness, the acknowledgment of learners’ perceptions regarding the relationship between language learning and culture has contributed to the understanding of foreign cultures and the recognition of local ideologies (álvarez & bonilla, 2009). the emerging role of culture in language learning nowadays acknowledges that communication implies the recognition of cultural aspects and diversity (mcconachy, 2018). in colombia, authors like turizo and gómez (2006) suggest that the relationship between language learning and culture in the english as a foreign language (efl) context has been overlooked and barely observed. in addition, as stated by álvarez and bonilla (2009), one of the most frequent problems in foreign language teaching is that students’ engagement in english learning seems to be far from the recognition of otherness and the development of their cultural identity. statement of the problem the lack of opportunities to learn the foreign language together with culture was the case of the private school we chose as the setting of this research. although it is not a bilingual school, it places an emphasis on english and students are exposed to this foreign language ten hours per week. based on our observations and the analysis of the main principles established in the bilingual scheme of the school’s educational project, we perceived that school policies were more concerned about developing communicative competence rather than about giving students opportunities to engage in cultural understanding. the problem is supported, understandably, by the school’s particular interest in preparing students and requiring teachers to invest a lot of class time in national and international examinations. besides, the school policies favor methodological approaches like total physical response, the natural approach, and the communicative approach, which barely help students and teachers to explore the critical role of culture as a component in the construction of learners’ cultural identity. due to the lack of opportunities to use language for intercultural purposes, students seemed to be more interested in learning the language to obtain economic benefits, develop professional potentials, or build international relationships. this qualitative research attempted to look into students’ perceptions about the relationship between language learning and culture in the efl context, and to enrich the recognition of the local culture in the learning setting. understanding the methodological approach of our study, and the basis of its development, we set the following research question: how do sixth graders at a colombian private school perceive the relationship between language learning and culture when using telecollaboration in an efl context? we also established the following objectives: (a) to identify and describe students’ perceptions about language learning, (b) to identify and describe students’ perceptions about culture, and (c) to describe the relationship that students make between language learning and culture. theoretical framework theoretical considerations related to the notion of language learning historically, the assumptions for teaching and learning have directly influenced and expanded the 97profile: issues teach. prof. dev., vol. 22 no. 2, jul-dec, 2020. issn 1657-0790 (printed) 2256-5760 (online). bogotá, colombia. pages 95-113 efl learners’ perceptions about language learning and culture when using telecollaboration scope and nature of language learning and language itself. theorists have associated the notion of language learning with different areas of discussion, and widely varying perceptions of the concept have emerged. this attempt to define how languages are learned, assessed, and promoted has its roots in theories such as behaviorism (skinner, 1957) and the universal grammar (chomsky, 1959). the initial perspectives on language learning were understood as the mastering of linguistic components such as grammar, phonology, or vocabulary. although this linguistic view of language is still outstanding within the theories of language, more recently, other factors influencing language learning have addressed a myriad of perspectives on the nature of language. tudor (2001), for example, examines the scope of the notion of language not only constituted as a linguistic system but also as grounded in functional, humanistic, and cultural perspectives. according to tudor, the variety of beliefs, attitudes, and experiences that students bring to the classroom are paramount in their understanding of the nature of language itself and how language learning is perceived. recently, the language learning view has shifted from a grammatical system to a notion that addresses the learners’ interaction in diverse cultural contexts and how communication is shaped in response to the phenomenon of globalization (scarino, 2014). scarino states that the nature of using and learning languages nowadays recognizes the students’ diversity, the diverse languages they speak, and the variety of contexts where the learning goals are meant to be achieved. this assumption relates to tudor’s (2001) point of view about the importance of taking into account what students bring to the classroom, and also resonates in vygotsky’s (1978) interpretation of language as a social construction which emphasizes the exchange, interpretation, and creation of meaning embedded to the recognition of cultural phenomena and practices of the individual. from this perspective, the conception of language learning is not reduced to the production of words or sentences in the target language but focuses on the process of interpretation (scarino, 2014). however, scarino also highlights the importance of expanding the views of learning, language, and culture as different but correlated notions in language learning. while learning refers to the acquisition and interpretation of knowledge itself, language addresses the understanding of linguistic codes and systems. however, the notion of culture stands as the basis for the creation and exchange of meaning within language learning. culture as the review of the literature shows, the construct of culture has been studied from different perspectives. for the presentation of our results, the conceptualization of culture is informed by the understanding of how it is acquired, what aspects it is composed of, and why is it important to know about it. the first one describes that culture is directly or indirectly transmitted and individually or cooperatively transferred from one generation to another. the second one relates to the cultural aspects that individuals recognize from the geographical position, the national or local attributes, and some characteristics like beliefs, values, and behaviors. finally, the third aspect conceives the importance of understanding individuals’ emic and etic perspectives about one’s and others’ cultural ideologies. culture is not homogeneous and established; it constantly changes, and it is important to understand its transformation (trujillo, 2002). however, only in the past two decades have studies of language acquisition directly addressed the critical role of culture through language teaching and learning (baker, 2009; barletta, 2009; liddicoat & scarino, 2013; kramsch, 2013). the importance of learners’ language performance in relation to their understanding of the target language culture and their own is an increasingly important area of concern for language learning nowadays. universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras98 ramírez-lizcano & cabrera-tovar telecollaboration the phenomenon of the internet has increased the need to understand and explore virtual experiences such as intercultural interactions where people from different countries get closer (liaw & bunn-le master, 2010). authors like guth and helm (2010) and o’dowd (2007) describe telecollaboration as a virtual exchange between two groups from distant locations. however, a virtual exchange is an umbrella term that includes telecollaborative exchanges within its scope. not all virtual exchanges are telecollaborative, the latter term often involves mutual reflection settings within learning environments. o’dowd and waire (2009) place telecollaboration exchanges in the foreign language setting through projects or the development of tasks that involve the exchange and comparison. likewise, the purposes of telecollaboration emerge from the lens of the study or researcher. from a psycholinguistic perspective, telecollaboration can be a medium to understand linguistic features and language functions, yet, from the sociocultural theory, the virtual interactions are not merely linguistic but pragmatic, dialogic, and intercultural. telecollaboration in this study is linked to the exploration of language learning and culture correlation to understand commonalities and differences of both concepts among different interlocutors. method considering elicitation data collection methods as useful for identifying and characterizing the participants’ perspectives, we note that this study relied on a qualitative research approach. creswell (2007) claims that one of the reasons for conducting qualitative research is to empower participants to share their stories and make their voices heard, as well as to understand the setting in which individuals experience the phenomenon under study. since qualitative research relies on the importance of protecting participants’ identities, in this study we asked the participants to choose a nickname that was culture in language learning as noted by kramsch (1998), the historical and social layers of culture have combined to address the sociocultural context of language study, and so, culture plays a crucial role in language learning and teaching. in gulbinskienė and lasauskienė’s (2014) words, when studying foreign languages, learners convey the internalization of both linguistic and cultural systems. moran (2001) situates the cultural dimension by means of products, practices, perspectives, communities, and persons, which correlate to the use of language as depending on those scenarios. since it has been positioned within the understanding of individuals’ social interaction, the conceptualization of culture is of interest in language education. in this study, we aim to explore and understand participants’ perspectives on language learning and culture as a result of their own experiences as learners and the development of cultural reflections in the process. culture in the foreign language classroom in colombia of particular concern in our study is to explore how culture has been approached in the foreign language classroom, as well as the inclusion of cultural goals into the curriculum of language teaching in colombia. since language has been acknowledged to be a social process, the essence of the study of culture in language learning and teaching is related to cultural products framed within geography, celebrations, or history. nonetheless, a variety of definitions of culture has currently addressed and recognized social and humanistic perspectives. the recognition of individuals’ experiences, their ways of thinking and beliefs are now remarkable in defining culture (ariza, 2007). the notion of culture in language learning then has shifted to a new perspective in which learning is not only understood from the perspective of individuals’ internalization of linguistic systems but also from their acknowledgment of others’ and their own cultural values in the process of learning. 99profile: issues teach. prof. dev., vol. 22 no. 2, jul-dec, 2020. issn 1657-0790 (printed) 2256-5760 (online). bogotá, colombia. pages 95-113 efl learners’ perceptions about language learning and culture when using telecollaboration used to label the instruments and to represent their voices in the data analysis process. since we found a qualitative research approach as particularly useful in understanding students’ perspectives, we decided to undertake a phenomenological study as the type of qualitative research aligned to the idea of describing and exploring individuals’ connotations of those experiences (creswell, 2007). this view of research related to our study since the understanding of the context through interaction gave us insights into the participants’ perception of language learning and their conceptions of culture. participants the participants in this study were six 6th-grade students from a private school in rivera (colombia), and two international partners from france and sweden who participated in the telecollaboration stage. based on the principles of phenomenological research study, and to analyze a phenomenon from the perspective of a homogeneous group of individuals, the selection of this population was guided by the acknowledgment of international and colombian students’ similarities as language learners. the group of colombian participants consisted of four boys and two girls, whose ages ranged from 10 to 12 years old. a group of 19 students took part in the needs analysis stage and in the telecollaborative sessions. however, only six students were chosen as a “purposeful (or purposive) sampling” (heigham & croker, 2009, p. 268) in data analysis, and as the participants in the last focus group. through questionnaires and focus groups our participants in colombia manifested having had access to private education and the possibility of attending private schools since they started their academic life. moreover, they expressed having had the opportunity to live valuable traveling experiences or the possibility of taking extra english lessons to reinforce their english level. additionally, to understand our colombian participants’ co-creation of experiences as language learners, a 12-year-old boy from france and a 12-year-old girl from sweden took part in this study too. these international students volunteered to participate and shared similarities with the ones in colombia like age range and the condition of being language learners who have had similar learning experiences. procedure we undertook this study from three instructional stages: direct instruction, telecollaborative interaction, and reflection (see figure 1). these stages were conducted within two cycles, each cycle as follows: the first stage (direct instruction) was implemented in two sessions, and the second and third stages (telecollaborative interaction and reflection) were developed in one session each. figure 1. intervention cycle direct instruction stage during this stage, we took advantage of the regular english classes with the participants in colombia where the teacher adjusted the topics and grammar from the lessons and gave the students the possibility to contextualize these learning experiences within their local setting. however, as we wanted to picture our learners’ insights of culture and learning from a global perception as well, we decided to include participants from abroad who shared similarities with the ones in colombia and who were willing to discuss those concepts with them. thus, some topics were chosen direct instruction re�ection telecollaboration universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras100 ramírez-lizcano & cabrera-tovar data collection instruments we used instruments such as questionnaires, focus groups, video recordings, students’ artifacts, and field notes to collect data. during the direct instruction stage, we chose 10 from a group of 19 sixth-grade students as a representative sample of the colombian participants to pilot the questionnaires regarding culture and language learning perceptions. accordingly, the corresponding improvements were made and two large questionnaires were applied to a purposive sampling of six students (see appendices c and d). the first one was a likert scale that consisted of scaling questions related to cultural notions and the second was an unstructured questionnaire that involved open and close-ended questions related to students’ language learning experiences. field notes were taken during the telecollaborative interaction and the reflection stages of the intervention to register our observations and descriptions of the events in the context (burns, 1999). during these same stages, we collected students’ artifacts (goetz & lecompte, 1984) which helped us understand their reflections and thoughts about the concepts of language learning and culture. these products resulted from thinking routines workshops (project zero, 2016) where the participants represented the concept of culture through pictures and symbols, formulated questions, and wrote about their experiences through the telecollaborative interaction (see appendix b). finally, during the reflection stage and at the end of the telecollaborative sessions, we conducted focus groups to explore participants’ views, beliefs, and perceptions through the interaction (richards, 2003). respectively, we used video recordings to back up the notes taken during the telecollaborative interaction and the reflection stages and to transcribe students’ voices in the focus groups (heigham & croker, 2009). these video recordings allowed us to capture the students’ expressions and reactions when commenting on their language learning experiences and their perceptions of culture during the reflection stage. during this stage to offer the students information to exchange during the telecollaborative sessions with the international participants. telecollaborative interaction to find telecollaborative partners was not an easy task. however, we managed to find a professor who helped us to contact two students (and their parents) of different nationalities (french and swedish) who were also learners of efl, and who had similar ages as the colombian participants. we invited them to voluntarily participate in video calls with our students and sustain conversations with them. the participation of the french and swedish students only took place during this stage. in contrast, the colombian participants’ task during the interaction consisted of collecting information from their international partners while identifying commonalities and differences about their cultures. students shared and discussed ideas concerning cultural differences and compared the international and the local setting by asking questions related to daily routine, traveling experiences, celebrations, food, and leisure activities. although some topics had already been set in the teachers’ lesson plans, our participants could lead the conversation towards topics of their interest, especially if those fostered an intercultural interaction. reflection during this stage, the colombian participants had the possibility to reflect on the encounters and complement their insights when participating in the focus groups (see appendix a) and thinking routine activities (see appendix b). we guided the discussions and thinking routines workshops and inquired about the cultural aspects that students identified during the encounters, which helped us to answer the research question. these sessions were developed after the first and second telecollaborative encounters. 101profile: issues teach. prof. dev., vol. 22 no. 2, jul-dec, 2020. issn 1657-0790 (printed) 2256-5760 (online). bogotá, colombia. pages 95-113 efl learners’ perceptions about language learning and culture when using telecollaboration data analysis to triangulate data, we used instruments such as questionnaires (q1 and q2), the transcript from the telecollaborative (t1 and t2) and reflective stages (fg1, fg2, and fg3), teachers’ field notes (tfn), and students’ artifacts (thinking routines: ar1 and ar2). we started the data analysis by systematizing, exploring, reading, and getting familiar with the instruments. afterward, we followed an inductive-interpretative process (creswell, 2012) to create codes and groups from the gathered information. the categories were positioned within three rounds as a strategy to label the perceptions that better answer our research question in connection with theory (corbin & strauss, 2008). we used the color-coding technique (stottok et al., 2011) and designed a color scale to represent and organize the information in an inductive reasoning process where we analyzed learners’ personal experiences and finally encoded the group of general perspectives. subsequently, three categories with their corresponding subcategories emerged (see table 1). table 1. final coding categories subcategories learners’ understandings of language language learning as a tool for worldwide communication language learning as a means for self-expression language learning understood from a functional perspective learners’ cultural understandings culture as products culture as practices language learning through telecollaboration as a means to promote culture and ideology language learning through telecollaboration to identify and compare others’ and individuals’ own cultures telecollaboration as a means to reflect upon culture and language language learning through telecollaboration as a gateway for experiencing the scope of culture findings and discussion learners’ understandings of language the colombian participants in this study have mostly experienced the process of language learning through the lens of english instruction. correspondingly, we drew on the following subcategories while considering our participants’ perceptions about language learning in regard to their experiences as english learners. language learning as a tool for worldwide communication to consolidate this subcategory, we started by acknowledging that the status of english as one of the world’s most dominant languages has influenced students’ perceptions about language learning experiences and perpetuated the idea of this language as useful and important. during the reflection stage, our participants’ insights supported this assumption when they worked on the thinking routine “color, symbol, image” and related the language learning notion to a symbol, color, and image. the following is an example from participant crack: my experience learning english has been good because i had the opportunity to learn this language as the world language. the language that most people speak. (fg1) since their experiences as language learners is connected to a language that is recognized and valued worldwide, students perceived language learning as an enriching instrument to broad worldwide communication. with respect to the reasons for learning a language, nana referenced: there are some languages (like english) that help us having economic development, getting job opportunities and that stuff. (fg3) this postulation also implies the advantages participants manifested as part of the foreign language universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras102 ramírez-lizcano & cabrera-tovar learning experience. in these examples, positioning the language learning experience as a facilitator of financial and employment opportunities also shows a direct correlation between the acquisition of language skills and the economic and professional development of the country where it is spoken. in this case, for example, although english is the official language of more than 50 countries, only three (the usa, canada, and england) were recognized by our participants as tied to the notion of learning english. these associations were partly explained by the relationship participants established between english and colors such as blue and red, or images like countries’ flags (e.g. the usa flag; see figure 2). figure 2. artifact from participant: symbol and image (ar1) correspondingly, participants’ explanations helped us understand this comparison; nick and crack stated: my color is blue, when i think about english i think in blue because of the flag. (nick, fg1) i chose the colors red, blue, and golden because english is like a light in my life, red and blue because of england’s and the u.s.’s flags. (crack, fg1) the learners’ drawings and insights situated the concept of language learning not only as a worldwide communication instrument but also as an essential means for economic and professional development. this assumption may allude to how english is viewed as the language of the most powerful and economically developed nations whose language needs to be learned to understand the reasons they succeed (mahboob, 2011). language learning as a means for self-expression since the nature of language is a broadly explored notion, we wanted to inquire about a more humanistic perception of language learning too. from this perspective, including feelings, personal emotions, and social reactions to the learning process, emerges a strategy to allow students’ expression of their context, and as a possible factor affecting communicative goals (tudor, 2001). some of the questionnaire statements (see appendix d) related to the students’ affective variables (clément & gardner, 2001) influencing language learning. all participants agreed with the postulation that learning english was relevant for their lives. additionally, our observation field notes gave us insights to report the students’ high motivation towards the foreign language due to their positive experiences as english learners. participants expressed their interest in learning english because they felt happy or motivated when using this language in other settings rather than the school: students feel motivated towards english. when asked about that motivation, they associated it with past learning experiences at school: “it has been interesting how we were taught, and very useful too.” traveling, work, and school are some of the reasons, however, having opportunities to use the language when they travel abroad, or that they parents congratulate them for using english is better than getting good grades in the subject. (tfn) throughout the focus groups, some propositions also characterized the correlation learners established between language learning and self-expression. some participants expressed that learning english evokes happiness in their lives, while others considered that learning this language relates to different things they like or enjoy: 103profile: issues teach. prof. dev., vol. 22 no. 2, jul-dec, 2020. issn 1657-0790 (printed) 2256-5760 (online). bogotá, colombia. pages 95-113 efl learners’ perceptions about language learning and culture when using telecollaboration i feel happy when i speak english and i think is like a funny language. (nick, fg1) i think the same as [student] because when i speak, i can express my feelings and i feel happy. (dry, fg1) these results provided further support for understanding that students’ perspectives on language learning are built by means of what they can express when using it. in general, students defined language learning as something they liked or enjoyed since the experience of learning a new language was interesting no matter what advantages it could offer. language learning understood from a functional perspective the emerging insights of participants throughout the focus group discussions showed a position in which students indicated that language operates within the purposes of the situation where it is used. responses that illustrate this perception included lala’s: it’s the ability to speak in a different language and to be able to communicate with other people who speak that language too. (fg3) this perception is defined by tudor (2001) as the functional perspective which emphasizes the development of skills that learners conceive as useful at some point in their learning process. that is, learning a language can generally be expressed in terms of the functions learners need to achieve academic, professional, or personal aspirations. in this regard, dry expressed: learning a language is knowing how to write or speak if you want to travel or study in that country; or, for example, read a book that you like but it is in english. (fg3) as described by dry, students established connections among language learning, language functions, and skills development. although this relationship was not particularly prominent, we could infer that the idea of language learning is still assumed as strictly related to learners’ internalization of grammatical structures, and the ability to use them in specific situations. in this case, language learning was perceived as the process of internalizing aspects of the target language that learners can use whenever it is necessary: “it is about expressing, writing, buying things. i mean, use the language in context” (nana, fg3). from this functional perspective, language advocates the mastering of certain pragmatic goals (tudor, 2001). the understanding of language develops from the specific skill or function that learners perceive as useful in the learning context. learners’ cultural understandings as a result of the data analysis about the concept of culture, participants demonstrated their perception of culture from the visible and invisible aspects informed by cultural components and dimensions. culture as products this subcategory represents the participants’ perceptions of what is visible in a community (history, celebrations, dances, places, and food). with respect to these aspects, participants like gandal thought that: “culture is the group of history, arts, typical food, dances, and representative things of a country” (fg1). t h e s e c l a i m s e m e r g e d d u r i n g f g 1 w h e n commenting about the understanding of concepts such as cultural awareness and culture. the answer represented 70% (4) of the colombian participants’ replies to the questions related to cultural perceptions. after the two telecollaborative and reflective sessions we observed that some participants conceived culture as products. similarly, artifacts from the thinking routine “color, symbol, and image” pictured the idea of culture as represented by colors such as brown, golden, and green which, for them, resemble the history and some representative places. learners supported this idea by drawing symbols and images such as flags, soldiers, universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras104 ramírez-lizcano & cabrera-tovar shields, restaurants, or monuments that exemplified their perceptions about culture. these examples demonstrated that part of the students’ perceptions about culture was based on national and regional artifacts, which are created and promoted by the country or region as a national patrimony that represents them (kramsch, 2013). the permanence of these elements in individuals’ lives through time prompt the perception of culture as a visible or intangible product. in this sense, culture is conceived only through its superficial components and it may frame the desire of nations to expand its “legacy” and sell it as a product that other nations can possibly consume. culture as practices although 70% (4) of the colombian participants expressed that culture was the historical, typical, and visible products of a country or nation, 30% (2) of them claimed that culture also implies aspects such as understanding of what is natural (common) and respecting differences. additionally, the teacher’s field notes during the telecollaborative encounters registered participants’ signs of respect when expressing their opinions about the different topics addressed while interacting. accordingly, nana and nickname highlighted that culture relates to the respect and recognition of the different ways of thinking, acting, and all the aspects that some countries do not have in common: cultural awareness is when you know the things that they do and you respect those things. (nana, fg1) it is the characteristic of every community, things different from the typical (food or music) such as beliefs…beliefs in a superior being or atheism. (nickname, fg2) from these segments, we suggest that participants’ perceptions are not only built upon the products of culture (kramsch, 2013; seelye, 1984) but also perceived from symbolic and invisible aspects, which involve ways of behaving, customs, beliefs, and values (kramsch, 2013). likewise, by drawing on the relationship between language and the culture’s dimensions, our participants’ insights relate to moran’s (2001) claims in which this correlation corresponds to products, practices, and perspectives of culture where language is used as a means to define cultural products, to get involved in cultural practices, and to recognize and explore cultural ideologies. language learning through telecollaboration as a means to promote culture and ideology sercu et al. (2004), remark upon the importance of exploring the transcendence of language learning when prompting meaningful communication through the internalization of cultural realities of the target and foreign language, and the acknowledgment of its significance. one of the goals for foreign language teaching and learning should also encompass the understanding of learners as characters of culture, and whose learning expectations are highly determined by the dimension of cultural backgrounds. the participants in this study contributed to this assumption by observing language learning and culture as interrelating concepts and noted that the fact of being aware of cultural issues is necessary to enhance the language learning process. in reference to the previous statement, participants commented: language itself is part of culture. as culture is everything that represents a country, language also represents a country. (gandal, fg3) learning a foreign language not only helps us understand that language but also how people behave in a different country. (crack, fg3) our participants’ insights evidenced the extent to which language and culture can interact in language learning. the representation of culture in the classroom, therefore, may provide a means for students to understand how language learning convey cultural insights. 105profile: issues teach. prof. dev., vol. 22 no. 2, jul-dec, 2020. issn 1657-0790 (printed) 2256-5760 (online). bogotá, colombia. pages 95-113 efl learners’ perceptions about language learning and culture when using telecollaboration language learning through telecollaboration to identify and compare others’ and individuals’ own culture this subcategory involves participants’ perceptions about elements beyond the surface of culture that refer to diversity and singularity recognition as important when using the language within different settings. participants’ perceptions highlighted that people from foreign countries are different, but sometimes, there could be commonalities among those variances. however, regardless of this fact, the respect and the recognition of the other must prevail. as evidence of this, lala expressed: it is what we have in our minds and what we know about another country. the respect for the differences because not all the countries are similar, they do have differences. (fg2) we could identify that this particular interest to find commonalities represents colombian participants’ intention to negotiate meanings with their telecollaborative partner by using the language to express their ideas and thoughts. besides, the fact that our respondents previously emphasized the importance of recognizing individuals’ particularities indicates the act of perceiving how others and their own identities are constructed. what the participants expressed led us to recognize the relevance of two concepts: otherness and myness. the former refers to the recognition of diversity and the importance of showing respect towards the differences, and the latter explores the understanding of an individual’s own culture (álvarez & bonilla, 2009). through álvarez and bonilla’s concepts, we highlight that culture is learned and built through the individual’s interaction with others in their closest contexts (family, friends, and teachers). in this subcategory we identified how the participants started to recognize singularity and diversity when confronting another culture. telecollaboration as a means to reflect upon culture and language telecollaboration became a valuable tool that facilitated interaction between our students and their international partners, thomas and anika. students had the opportunity to engage in conversations and expand their thoughts about their own and other cultures. the telecollaborative experience allowed spontaneous reflection when colombian participants compared themselves with anika and thomas, or when researchers asked thought-provoking questions. as a result, some initial perceptions were complemented and expanded during this process. during and after the telecollaborative exchange, participants’ perceptions did not change substantially but in some cases, changes occurred. participants migue and gandal showed a shift in their perceptions about culture and language through their speeches (see table 2). table 2. shift perceptions in two colombian participants participant before telecollaboration after telecollaboration migue culture is the typical food, the sports, the most popular places and the food. we use the language to communicate that. (fg1) let’s say i am at the united states and i mention something about the twin tower’s attack; it would be sad if they experienced that event. (fg3) gandal culture can be typical food of the country, typical dances, arts and with the language i can communicate with other people. (fg1) at first, i was not interested in culture, but then i started to do it because it is our history, i searched about it and i discovered that it is not just our history but all that we are. language itself is part of the culture. (fg3) universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras106 ramírez-lizcano & cabrera-tovar these speeches showed that the telecollaborative experiences stimulated curiosity and reflective thinking by helping participants recognize that culture does not only refer to a product, but to the understanding that other cultural dimensions include singularities, commonalities, ways of thinking, empathy, and historical backgrounds. finally, migue and gandal reflected upon their conversations to the point of expressing that language is naturally and politically part of a culture and acknowledged that language has to be properly used to understand cultural singularities and diversity (see table 2). this study focused on exploring participants’ understanding of language learning and culture from a sociocultural perspective in telecollaboration where participants were part of a dialogic process, and the foreign language became a tool to exchange and discuss ideas (o’dowd, 2007). telecollaboration then triggered meaningful group and individual reflections that provoked a shift in some of our students’ understandings of the relationship between language learning and culture. language learning through telecollaboration as a gateway for experiencing the scope of culture as noted above, the extent to which students conceive the process of language learning indicated a common view amongst interviewees which highlighted the importance of learning a broadly spoken language as an instrument to communicate with other people around the world: by speaking english we can deeply know about the culture and explore a new world, not only here…now you can say there are more things to explore. (gandal, fg3) from their experiences as english learners, we could draw on the relationship participants established between language learning and culture since it was reported as a tool that favors global interaction and crosscultural communication in different settings. during the reflection stage colombian participants acknowledged that it was possible to identify and compare some cultural aspects with their international partners because they could both speak english: before knowing thomas, i wanted to ask some questions to him like: how is the culture of france…he said their culture was different because they celebrated different things during the year. he has french accent, we have colombian accent. (migue, ar2) this evidence may suggest that “language learning is one of the essential gateways to cultural understanding and a necessary means for experiencing culture” (godwin-jones, 2013, p. 8). as expressed by some of our participants, learning a foreign language like english represents an opportunity to share their own culture as well. when asked about the importance of learning a foreign language, nana stated: “it’s about sharing our history around the world, not only in colombia but also in different countries and other continents” (fg3). the relationship that our students perceived between language learning and culture was framed within the use they give to a foreign language as a tool to raise understanding of global settings, and also, as a means to strengthen local, national, and regional identity. as noted by godwin-jones (2013), this claim is undoubtedly relevant since language learning may encourage learners’ self-reflection upon their own and the target culture. yet, current approaches on cultural learning in foreign language learning disregard students’ own culture. according to sercu et al. (2004), “low importance is given to help students reflect on their own cultural identity and on how it relates to foreign cultures” (p. 99). correspondingly, understanding the socio-cultural component of language may provide alternatives for creating significant language learning environments where learners experience the real dynamics of language and where cultural objectives are as important as the linguistic ones. 107profile: issues teach. prof. dev., vol. 22 no. 2, jul-dec, 2020. issn 1657-0790 (printed) 2256-5760 (online). bogotá, colombia. pages 95-113 efl learners’ perceptions about language learning and culture when using telecollaboration sercu et al.’s (2004) claim that the recognition of otherness as well as the acquisition of skills in the target language can be determined by learners’ identification of cultural aspects and connections. for these authors, getting to know oneself and one’s own culture is as important as the attainment of linguistic objectives. likewise, these claims bring to the discussion particular considerations about the gap between the vision of language and the cultural goals that must be set in responding to the learners’ context when learning a language. the objectives of foreign language education nowadays should encourage learners’ reflection upon the target language culture as well as promote learners’ own cultural identity. conclusions the main goal of this study was to understand the relationship that learners established between language learning and culture. considering that individuals’ perceptions are influenced by many factors, culture and language learning can be described regarding the specific language students have been learning as well. the analysis we presented relied on students’ shared experiences as english learners. the data collected indicated that students perceived language learning (a) as a tool for worldwide communication, (b) as a means for self-expression, and (c) understood it from a functional perspective. these participants’ interpretations and own experiences as language learners lead us to conclude that they related language learning to the influence and perpetuation of a global language like english, and to the importance of learning a foreign language to facilitate economic and employment accessibility. on the other hand, from a humanistic view of language, students’ understandings of the phenomenon of language learning were imbedded to positive experiences that allowed them to express their emotions, feelings, and reactions in the context of learning. however, the perception of language as a system of linguistic skills was evidenced in our participants’ insights too. for this study, we implemented telecollaborative sessions with international french and swedish partners who shared similar characteristics with the colombian participants such as ages, academic grade, and experiences as language learners. the telecollaborative sessions aimed to trigger students’ interpretation of intercultural experiences when learning languages. here, we explored the notion of culture which was described by the students as shaped through their learning experiences in the school, the relationship with their family, and the opportunities they had to directly and indirectly interact with others. participants acknowledged culture (a) as products and (b) as practices which involve visible and invisible aspects of cultures and constitute the way a community or an individual behaves, and the distinct aspects of human beings’ essence. accordingly, the recognition of otherness and myness in the process of language learning illustrates our participants’ effort to understand the complexity of human beings and the recognition of individuals’ and community’s diversity and singularity. thus, from the findings of this study we identified the importance of language learning as a means to promote culture and ideology where students understood (a) telecollaboration as a means to reflect upon culture and language, (b) language learning through telecollaboration as a means to identify and compare others’ and individuals’ own culture, and (c) as a gateway for experiencing the scope of culture. the study provided spaces for cultural understanding by giving individuals the possibility to access experiences in a globalized world and to promote the local culture. since cultural factors have been found to be influencing foreign language acquisition and learners’ performance of the language itself, the articulation of students’ own culture needs to be strengthened as a valuable process in which learners also shape their identity by understanding and fostering cultural awareness. finally, we acknowledged that more than exploring our participants’ perspectives on the role of universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras108 ramírez-lizcano & cabrera-tovar culture in language learning and its relationship, it is 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(1978). mind in society: the development of higher psychological processes. harvard university press. about the authors natalia ramírez-lizcano holds a ba in english language teaching and an ma in english didactics from universidad surcolombiana (colombia). her research interests are teachers’ professional development and interculturality in the efl context. maría alejandra cabrera-tovar holds a ba in english language teaching and an ma in english didactics from universidad surcolombiana (colombia). her research interests are teachers’ professional development, interculturality, and ict trends in the efl context. https://doi.org/10.1057/9780230505056 https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1540-4781.2014.12068.x https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1540-4781.2014.12068.x https://doi.org/10.1037/11256-000 https://doi.org/10.1037/11256-000 https://bit.ly/3806int universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras110 ramírez-lizcano & cabrera-tovar appendix a: focus group 2 note. the original language was spanish. translation was made for publication purposes. after the telecollaborative encounter no. 1 • what did you find most interesting during the encounter? • what previous knowledge did you have about your telecollaborative partner’s culture or country? how and where did you learn it? • did your previous conceptions about your telecollaborative partner culture change during or after the telecollaboration? explain. • how did you feel when your telecollaborative partner highlighted some colombian culture aspects? • what common aspects or differences did you find between both cultures? • how learning a foreign language like english can help you to share aspects of your own culture? 111profile: issues teach. prof. dev., vol. 22 no. 2, jul-dec, 2020. issn 1657-0790 (printed) 2256-5760 (online). bogotá, colombia. pages 95-113 efl learners’ perceptions about language learning and culture when using telecollaboration appendix b: picture of thinking routine 2 complete the thinking routine using three ideas or facts that you think were more relevant during the skype encounter (thomas– france). you can include information about any aspect you think was important or interesting for you. follow your teacher’s instructions. universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras112 ramírez-lizcano & cabrera-tovar appendix c: likert scale questionnaire– culture choose the option that better expresses your opinion about the following statements: statement strongly disagree disagree neither agree or disagree agree strongly agree learning about culture is important in my language learning process. culture is related to past experiences. culture is learning about who i am. culture is learning about dates, celebrations, people, and important places of a country. learning about my local culture is more important than learning about other cultures. in the language learning process, it is more important to learn about foreign language culture than my own. during the english classes i have learned about other cultures and the local one. i speak/write english to talk about my country’s culture. ¿what is your motivation to learn a foreign language? choose only one option. ☐ travel and meet people ☐ communicate with native speakers of the target language ☐ know about the target culture ☐ talk about my culture ☐ have job opportunities ☐ have academic opportunities other: ____________________________ 113profile: issues teach. prof. dev., vol. 22 no. 2, jul-dec, 2020. issn 1657-0790 (printed) 2256-5760 (online). bogotá, colombia. pages 95-113 efl learners’ perceptions about language learning and culture when using telecollaboration appendix d: questionnaire– language learning note. the original language of the likert scale and the questionnaire was spanish, but translation was made for publication purposes. answer these questions taking into account your experiences, attitudes, feelings, and opinions about language learning. motivation 1. learning english is: ☐ very important ☐ important ☐ not important 2. choose one option for the following statements: statement yes no sometimes i feel motivated to learn english. i think learning a foreign language is difficult. i know about the culture of the language i am learning. 3. choose one option to indicate the frequency you do the following activities: frequently sometimes never travel to a country where english is spoken watch tv in english read the newspaper or magazines in english read books in english use internet to practice english use english in social networks or online games listen to music in english 4. how has the experience of learning english influenced your life? 51 https://doi.org/10.15446/profile.v20n2.67720 non-native english speaking teachers’ subjectivities and colombian language policies: a narrative study subjetividades de profesores de inglés no nativos y políticas lingüísticas colombinas: un estudio narrativo leidy yisel gómez-vásquez* universidad de la sabana, chía, colombia carmen helena guerrero nieto** universidad distrital francisco josé de caldas, bogotá this article reports the results of a study whose purpose was to trace the configuration of professional subjectivities by analyzing the narratives of four colombian non-native english speaking teachers in the framework of language policies. in this qualitative-narrative study we used written narratives and narrative interviews as instruments to collect data from the participants who work in different universities and schools in colombia. their stories were analyzed using short story analysis, and the results allowed us to identify a core category: re-creating the self: an entangled, changeable and endless process which shows that the subjectivities are influenced by others, teachers go through processes of acceptance or rejection when configuring them, and knowledge and reflection play an important role. key words: dichotomy, language policies, narratives, native english speaker teachers, non-native english speaking teachers, subjectivities. en este artículo se reportan los resultados de una investigación cuyo propósito fue trazar la configuración de subjetividades profesionales analizando las narrativas de cuatro profesores colombianos no nativos de habla inglesa en el marco de las políticas lingüísticas. este estudio cualitativo-narrativo utilizó narrativas escritas y entrevistas narrativas como instrumentos para recopilar datos de los participantes que pertenecen a diferentes universidades y colegios de colombia. sus historias se analizaron utilizando el análisis de historias cortas; los resultados permitieron identificar una categoría central: re-crear el yo: un proceso complejo, cambiante y continuo que muestra que las subjetividades son influenciadas por otros, que se dan a través de procesos de aceptación o rechazo y que el conocimiento y la reflexión son procesos cruciales en las mismas. palabras clave: dicotomía, narrativas, profesores nativos, profesores no nativos, subjetividades. * e-mail: leidy.gomez1@unisabana.edu.co ** e-mail: chguerreron@udistrital.edu.co how to cite this article (apa, 6th ed.): gómez-vásquez, l. y., & guerrero nieto, c. h. (2018). non-native english speaking teachers’ subjectivities and colombian language policies: a narrative study. profile: issues in teachers’ professional development, 20(2), 51-64. https:// doi.org/10.15446/profile.v20n2.67720. this article was received on september 14, 2017 and accepted on april 22, 2018. this is an open access article distributed under the terms of the creative commons license attribution-noncommercial-noderivatives 4.0 international license. consultation is possible at https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/. profile: issues teach. prof. dev., vol. 20 no. 2, jul-dec, 2018. issn 1657-0790 (printed) 2256-5760 (online). bogotá, colombia. pages 51-64 universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras52 gómez-vásquez & guerrero nieto introduction historically, language policies in colombia have not been designed to consider the needs, desires, and experiences of the people directly involved in their application, especially teachers (cárdenas, 2006; de mejía, 2012; gonzález, 2007; guerrero nieto, 2008, 2009, 2010; usma, 2009). one of these policies is the national bilingualism program (pnb)1 launched in 2004 by the ministry of education. as one of the strategies towards the implementation of this bilingual policy, the ministry of education has hired foreigners to serve as english assistants in public schools. this particular strategy has provoked resistance among colombian english teachers because these foreigners are not english teachers and are not native speakers of english—for the most part—although they are called “native speakers” in official discourse (see correa & gonzález, 2017). we contend that language policies—overt and covert (shohamy, 2006)—operate as subjectivity devices (foucault, 1977; jiménez-becerra, 2011). according to foucault (1996) subjectivity is configured externally and internally and is mediated by the relationship of the subject with knowledge and power. for example, institutions impose language policies and teachers have to implement them. teachers’ subjectivity is externally constructed when, in official discourses, they are fashioned as less capable of teaching english because they are not native speakers of the language. internally, using the “technologies of the self ”, teachers transform themselves into their desirable “self ”. as such, we find colombian english teachers that participated in exchange programs in the united states to improve their command of the language; others enrolled in master’s programs in order to obtain better qualifications as english teachers; and others paid for private lessons with native speakers to improve their vocabulary and pronunciation. 1 the program has changed names several times but it is basically the same. for the purpose of this paper we will keep the original one, in spanish: plan nacional de bilinguismo. a critical aspect in language policy in colombia has to do with the discourses and practices around the privilege of native english speaking instructors (nesis)2 over non-native english speaking teachers (nnests). de mejía (2002) in her early research on bilingualism in colombia revealed the unequal working conditions between native english speakers who serve as english teachers and nnests, where the first were better paid and had less work load than the latter. adding to this unequal situation, for too long media and official/dominant discourses have portrayed teachers as eternally unprepared (gonzález, 2007); as technicians and clerks (guerrero nieto, 2010); as soldiers (phillipson, 1992); and as inferior (correa & gonzález, 2017). as researchers and teacher educators, we think it is of paramount importance to undertake a study to examine how teachers configure their professional subjectivities as a way to acknowledge them as complex subjects who participate actively in their own professional being (méndez-rivera, 2017). this study might serve as a way to counter these other discourses and to enlighten language policy makers. with this in mind, the research question that guided this study was: how do nnests configure their professional subjectivities in the frame of colombian language policies? theoretical framework this research is grounded in the post-structuralist paradigm which rejects the conception of order, deconstructs the universal idea of truth, understands the complexities and multilayered construction of life, and gives account about one of the many stories that could be told (baxter, 2008; hatch, 2002). this 2 we are aware that the acronym widely accepted is nest (native english speaking teacher) but in colombia it has been a common practice to hire native speakers of english as teachers regardless of their qualifications. the only requirement is to speak english as their l1. for that reason we will be referring to them as native english speaking instructors to indicate that they are not certified teachers. 53 non-native english speaking teachers’ subjectivities and colombian language policies: a narrative study profile: issues teach. prof. dev., vol. 20 no. 2, jul-dec, 2018. issn 1657-0790 (printed) 2256-5760 (online). bogotá, colombia. pages 51-64 epistemological stance gives us the ground to conduct a narrative study about teachers’ professional subjectivities. narrative, because this study reports the personal stories of english language teachers located in a specific moment and context, and, in reference to a particular situation, which is the role of language policies in the construction of their subjectivities. subjectivities, as a poststructuralist construction, allow us to give account of the complexities and multilayered nature of being and existing in the world.3 a theoretical approximation to subjectivities the subject configures their4 subjectivities in diverse ways and taking into account different factors from their social, cultural, and historical context; muñoz (2007) claims that “the subject is not a flat and constant surface, but variable and polyhedral, which implies an awareness of the heterogeneous processes configured in there” (p. 69). according to muñoz, the subject is at the same time conscience, practice, and language: conscience because the subject “thinks” about the self; practice because their subjectivities transcend the body and in their relationship with others and with the context they co-construct their subjectivities; and language because subjects are constituted through language (foucault, 1999b). additionally, muñoz explains that subjectivities are inner but they have a public manifestation, which takes place in spaces such as the family, the school, the neighborhood, at either local or national levels. so, there is co-relation between the factors that influence the configuration of subjectivities and the manifestation of such configuration which allows the subject to transform their context and to be transformed by it. 3 we are aware that “identity” is another possibility, but from our own epistemological understanding, “identity” as a concept has been constructed from a modern perspective where the individual is seen as more stable and permanent. 4 we will use “their” and “them” whenever possible to adopt a gender perspective. for foucault (1999a) the configuration of the subject is determined in three dimensions: knowledge, power, and subjectivity, being the latter a reflection of the way the subject understands and expresses itself depending on the context. therefore, subjectivities are multiple, fluid, and have several manifestations (greenwalk, 2008; kelly, 2013; wright, cranny-francis, & winser, 1992). weedon (as cited in calhoun, 2012) defines subjectivities as “the conscious and unconscious thoughts and emotions of the individual, her sense of herself, and her ways of understanding her relation to the world” (p. 32). consequently subjectivities are configured both consciously and unconsciously; the environment plays a role that the subject cannot avoid. subjectivity is both thinking and performing so it comes to life in the actions of the subject; activity changes the external and inner nature of the self (huergo, 2004; meguins & carneiro, 2015). in sum, subjectivities are the particular ways the self senses, sees, and experiences the world when interacting with others and the contexts they are immersed in. by effect of interactions with the self, others, and the context, subjectivities are multiple, dynamic, complex, and continuously reconfigured. the controversial issue of nests and nnests dichotomy to start, the concept of “nativeness” itself is controversial. for instance kachru (1998) made a distinction between two concepts that he named “genetic nativeness” and “functional nativeness”. people are “genetic natives” if they were born in australia, canada, the usa, or the uk, what he calls the inner circle countries. in contrast, people could be “functional natives” if they were born in an outer circle country where english is the second language, for example india or singapore. people born in other countries, like colombia, would be non-native. in a different take, paikeday (1985) states that this term cannot be precisely defined while davies (1991) argues that a native or non-native category is universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras54 gómez-vásquez & guerrero nieto an issue of self-recognition, that is, the subjects identify themselves as native or non-native based on the knowledge they have of the language and whether or not they are recognized as one by the native community. regarding the dichotomy which involves nests and nnests, it could be defined as the preference given to nests since they are “considered to be the best model and type of language teacher for non-native speakers to follow” (shibata, 2010, p. 125), and “the model speaker and the ideal teacher” (clark & paran, 2007, p. 407). this preference has its foundation in the belief that nests overpass their non-native counterparts in terms of oral skills, namely vocabulary, pronunciation, and cultural knowledge (árva & medgyes, 2000; clark & paran, 2007). neverthelesss, the advantages of nnests have been referred to by the same and other researchers. for instance, hayes (2009) emphasizes the method and the commitment showed by nnests in their classrooms. árva and medgyes (2000) and çakir and demir (2013) highlight the knowledge of the local language and the grammatical and pedagogical knowledge as characteristics that most of the nnests have. this dichotomy has been in conflict for many years. ma (2012) claims that the idealization of the nests as “fully competent users of their language” (p. 2) is problematic. she asserts that “native speakers of a language may not possess all the knowledge about the language they speak.” (p. 2). in the same sense, phillipson (1992) used the term “native speaker fallacy” to refer to this idealization. the author said that the advantages that are usually assigned to nests can be taught to nnests which will eliminate the supposed superiority. it is clear that for many scholars and teachers the nests and nnests dichotomy is a conception in conflict, but from the results of different studies, including the present, the superiority given to nests is still in effect in the imaginary and practices of both teachers and students, and reinforced by policies and by educational models (correa & gonzález, 2017). finally, it is important to highlight that in the literature nest refers to certified teachers who are “genetic natives” (kachru, 1998); but in the colombian context this category is used to refer to any foreign english speaker who serves as english teacher. in order to distance ourselves from this categorization we will use the label native english speaking instructors (nesis). language policies in colombia: from theory to reality theories about the implementation of language policies agree on the fact that all stakeholders should take active part in their design and implementation (corder, 1973; medgyes & nikolov, 2005). contrary to what is stated in literature, in colombia language policies are designed unilaterally, following a top down and bureaucratic model (correa & usma, 2013) where the voices of teachers and students have been silenced (cárdenas, chaves, & hernández, 2015; de mejía, 2006; gonzález, 2007; miranda & echeverry, 2011; sánchez & obando, 2008; usma, 2009). the pnb is no exception as has been documented by guerrero nieto (2009). in the same line of thought, one of its latest initiatives (as mentioned in the introduction) has been the recruiting of foreigners to serve as english teaching assistants, in a program called “formadores nativos extranjeros” in spanish and “fellowship teaching programme” in english (ministerio de educación nacional [men], 2016) these so called “formadores nativos extranjeros”5 come from different parts of the world: 63% from the americas, 21% from europe, 4% from asia, 6% from africa, and 6% from oceania (men, 2016). as stated by correa and gonzález (2017) the requirements to become a fellow are to have a c1 english level and a professional degree; teaching experience was desirable but not mandatory. by and large, language policies in colombia have followed a top down approach, which has excluded 5 we will not offer any translation because it would sound awkward. 55 non-native english speaking teachers’ subjectivities and colombian language policies: a narrative study profile: issues teach. prof. dev., vol. 20 no. 2, jul-dec, 2018. issn 1657-0790 (printed) 2256-5760 (online). bogotá, colombia. pages 51-64 linguistic minorities and important stakeholders like teachers. as such, there is a huge gap between theory and practice in this context. method according to creswell (2007) narratives can be both a phenomenon to be studied and a method to collect and analyze data; this study focuses on the vision of narrative as a method or what is called narrative inquiry. barkhuizen and wette (2008) assert that narrative inquiry helps us to “understand the experiences of teachers in the particular contexts in which they teach” (p. 372). narratives are stories told by the participants’ own voices in which they make sense of their experiences and become a window for the researcher to get a glimpse of participants’ subjectivities (barkhuizen & wette, 2008; creswell, 2007; elliott, 2005). in addition, connelly and clandinin (2006) state that if we are interested in using narrative inquiry to study teachers we have to learn how to think narratively. according to the authors, narratives are developed in an ongoing life space with three main dimensions: 1. temporal: narratives go back into the past and span into the future. 2. personal-social: narratives happen because individuals interact with society and with the environment. 3. place: people change their subjectivities as they move from one place to another. context and participants four nnests participated in this study, one male and three female young adults. the participants were selected following three main criteria. first, they had to be professional english language teachers; second, they had to be enrolled in a master’s program; and third, they had to be in-service teachers. this study followed ethical considerations (participants were informed about the specificities of the study; their anonymity was ensured by using nicknames and no reference was made to the particularities of their contexts). instruments data were collected through written narratives and narrative interviews. these narratives were produced in spanish. participants had the possibility to use english or spanish but they preferred spanish because they felt more comfortable. the researchers translated only the excerpts included in this document for publication purposes. for the written narratives, participants were prompted to recall any experiences in reference to nesis that had an impact on their learning process or that influenced their pedagogical practice. the reflection covered from the moment they started their undergraduate studies, including the present time and projected into the future. after reading each narrative several times, we identified specific issues that puzzled us as researchers and in order to avoid any misinterpretation, we prepared and applied individual protocols for a narrative interview (transcribed for data management). both the written and oral narratives were analyzed following the short story analysis (ssa) model, which is an eclectic perspective in narrative studies analysis (barkhuizen, 2007, 2008, 2009, 2011; behar-horenstein & morgan, 1995; gimenez, 2010; hayes, 2007; norton & early, 2011; trejo & mora, 2014; xu & connelly, 2009), and follows an inductive process. that is, the narratives were classified in a matrix and the categories emerged after reducing the information from themes to patterns, and to categories. in this method, the unit of analysis is a complete short story (it includes a who, meaningful people; a where, setting and meaningful practices; and a when, one or more of these elements: past, present, and future). findings and discussion to answer the research question (see figure 1) we found a core category we named recreating the self: an entangled, changeable and endless process, which is universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras56 gómez-vásquez & guerrero nieto consistent with the existing literature about subjectivities and was discussed in the theoretical framework of this paper (greenwalk, 2008; kelly, 2013; muñoz, 2007; wright et al., 1992). this core category is actualized through three main dimensions: (a) the significance of others in the configuration of my subjectivities; (b) modeling my subjectivities between acceptance and rejection; and (c) shaping my subjectivities through knowledge and reflection. in what follows we unpack and discuss these findings. figure 1. main category and its dimensions from the data analysis (source: own) recreating the self: an entangled, changeable and endless process subjectivities are the result of different elements, circumstances, and people, which give them the entangled, changeable, and enduring nature that names our core category. we will use the following two short stories by natalia to exemplify and develop this category. later i started working in an english consulting firm and several of my colleagues were native speakers. at first it was an enriching experience because i knew it was an opportunity to improve my proficiency. although i was teaching english to colombian students, i still felt like a student when i run into them in the office. however, things changed when these stopped being random encounters and i was asked to train them. that stopped being fun. being in charge of training the foreign teachers (who, in fact, were not teachers but professionals in different fields or simply tourists) i felt a great responsibility. i had to do a good job and i was worried about the image these strangers would make of my proficiency and therefore of my professionalism. at first, i remember my hands getting sweat and trying to speak strictly what i needed, i even rehearsed at home everything related to pronunciation. it was more than five years doing that exercise and in that time my vision for the native teacher began to disfigure. that fear of being judged was transformed into disbelief when, for example, i asked them questions of their native language and they did not know how to respond. little by little, i began to realize that i was a teacher, a professional who knew better than them how english worked. i started to gain self-confidence and to lose respect towards them. (written narrative, natalia) as stated in the theoretical framework, subjectivities are conscious and unconscious (weedon as cited by calhoun, 2012). throughout this short story, natalia buys the discourse of the native speaker. consciously or unconsciously, as a nnest, she positions herself as inferior and says that she “felt like a student” (which plays well with the mentality of the colonized (pennycook, 1998; phillipson, 1992) in which the colonizer is assumed to be superior). in the nests nnests dichotomy, the former is constructed as the model only because of their command of the spoken language (gonzález & llurda, 2016), which neglects a holistic view of teaching where the english teacher needs to know/have a whole lot of other skills (teaching methodology, evaluation and testing, materials design, classroom management, awareness of the context, etc.) (árva & medgyes, 2000; clark & paran, 2007). her subjectivities at that moment were performed by fear, sweaty hands, and insecurity. it took her five years to change her thoughts and behavior; she started valuing her professional experience and felt empowered when she demystified her nesis counterparts. although in the previous short story we see that natalia comes to terms in regard to nesis, in the following the significance of others in the configuration of my subjetivities molding my subjetivities between acceptance and rejection shaping my subjetivities throught knowlegde and reflection recreating the self: an entangled, changeable, and endless process how do nnests con�gure their professional subjectivities in the frame of colombian language policies? 57 non-native english speaking teachers’ subjectivities and colombian language policies: a narrative study profile: issues teach. prof. dev., vol. 20 no. 2, jul-dec, 2018. issn 1657-0790 (printed) 2256-5760 (online). bogotá, colombia. pages 51-64 one, she shows that her subjectivities are still challenged and molded by other factors: i remember that a colombian company hired the services of the company i worked for and we were very excited about it. however, i was disappointed when i learned that one of the requirements was that all of its teachers should be native speakers or foreigners. the coordinator in charge complied with the claim but one of the teachers resigned so she sent me to teach the class. i will never forget the face of disappointment of those students when they saw me enter and the challenge in which that class became to me. although i did not have perfect pronunciation and did not know all the idiomatic expressions of my predecessor, i knew that i was a teacher and that i could respond to their concerns. suddenly my disrespect turned into rage towards them and into a personal challenge with myself. (written narrative, natalia) by the time of this short story, natalia had demystified the nesis but the people in the context in which she worked had not. her security and empowerment was weakened and again she buys into the belief that being a good english teacher is limited to “pronunciation” and “know[ing] idiomatic expressions”. the request from the company and the attitudes of her students are linked to some widespread misconceptions about nesis and nnests and fed by language policies and programs like the pnb, which has as one of its objectives hiring nesis in all colombian universities (men, 2014); there is not a rationale for this policy nor are there any other requirements beyond being a native speaker of english. as can be seen, subjectivities do not remain stable, simple or fixed, but are continually re-created and contingent on the context. in what follows, we will offer an analysis of three dimensions that unfold from the main category. the significance of others in the configuration of my subjectivities there is an undeniable role played by others in the configuration of subjectivities; by “others” we mean institutions (schools and government agencies), colleagues (nnests or nesis), friends, family, and so on. it is the interaction with others which allows the subject to reflect on their experiences, to express their feelings, to evaluate their beliefs, and to act accordingly (calderón, 2011). we will use two narratives to illustrate the role of institutions, of nesis, and of fellow classmates. in the short story below we can see how an institutional policy (inspired by national policies) influences the configuration of the subjectivities of our participant. margie was telling that her school decided to hire nesis for its bilingual program; we asked if she and her colleagues knew about that policy. no, an explanation per se was not given, the administration mentioned that briefly. the school was certified with a quality system, which is another issue. one of the strategic goals of the school is to become bilingual in a given period of time, then they simply told us they were going to hire “teachers” who were english speakers but they did not give us any further explanation, and the teachers who did not speak english had to study because the idea was to get them into the goal of becoming a bilingual school. (narrative interview, margie) although our participant is a competent bilingual, the school does not acknowledge her competences (or the competences or her colombian colleagues) but assumes (wrongly) that being bilingual equals speaking english (guerrero nieto, 2008) and that having nesis is enough to achieve their goal (gonzález & llurda, 2016). furthermore, it seems that speaking english is the only requirement to teach content subjects; it is not necessary to have a degree in teaching biology, chemistry, math, and the like. in terms of subjectivities, our participant and her co-workers are left silenced and disempowered by the school because they were not taken into account when making decisions on this policy. institutions mirror government practices of overlooking teachers. however, in a subsequent interview margie told the researchers that only one of the nesis hired under this schema remained working in the school; the rest could universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras58 gómez-vásquez & guerrero nieto not cope with the disciplinary and pedagogical demands of being a teacher. in the short story below, amarok let us know how his interactions with nesis and with fellow classmates formed and transformed his subjectivities. on the one hand, the pressure of interacting with a nesi made him to self-monitor his english performance at all times. in terms of his subjectivities, he enacts the role of a foreign language speaker who seeks the approval and validation from the owner of the language (higgins, 2003); in this case, he performs the role of the colonized who wants to emulate his master and to please him6 (freire, 2005; pennycook, 1994). during my undergraduate studies i didn’t have a lot of interaction with native speakers, except for some assistants that came to some of the classes as a contribution to the alliances established by the university with different entities. to speak with these natives in english meant a sense of scrutiny, i always worked hard trying to maintain a self-monitoring to verify what and how i was saying something, even more than in front of my teachers. during that time i noticed that many of my partners who traveled to the united states returned with much better communicative skills, however they didn’t show any significant improvement in the subjects that were taught in english. so, i came to the conclusion that travelling to and living in an english speaking country can enhance english proficiency (at least spoken) but not necessarily the academic skills, it doesn’t mean that this person is a good teacher or good at teaching. (written narrative, amarok) on the other hand, amarok’s subjectivities are transformed due to his relationship with his fellow classmates, some of whom traveled to the usa in order to achieve better linguistic skills. our participant acknowledges that an improvement in english proficiency does not necessarily imply an improvement in teaching skills; then his subjectivities as a professional teacher are not determined by traveling to an english speaking 6 here we use “him” to be consistent with the colonial construction of the colonizer as masculine. country or by having a native-like proficiency. he, as did natalia, also demystifies the nesi and brings to the fore a broader understanding of the complexities of teaching (pennycook, 2004). molding my subjectivities between acceptance and rejection as we stated above, subjectivities are entangled; teachers live in a constant tension between the acceptance and rejection of the imaginary superiority of the nests (clark & paran, 2007; shibata, 2010), reinforced by some national and institutional language policies like the “fellowship teaching programme” mentioned earlier. in the following extract from amelia, she displays a conflicting subjectivity when explaining why one of her teacher’s (nesi) praise was so meaningful for her; on the one hand, she acknowledges that it was valuable because it came from a foreigner; yet on the other hand she gives importance to her teacher’s academic qualifications. for several things. the cultural part because i think colombians are a little “down on their knees” when interacting with foreigners, obviously, as he was a foreign teacher telling me that i spoke good english, that i had potential and that i was smart…before, i was not buying it, but when he told me so, i was filled with motivation, with joy and it was significant because he was this kind of teacher that students feared, it was a kind of “much-respect-for-you-feeling” because he knew his stuff and his subject was difficult, that’s why it was significant. (narrative interview, amelia) another short story told by margie helps to exemplify her differing subjectivities that move between acceptance and rejection; she starts by complaining about the unequal working conditions (salaries vs. workload and responsibilities) between nesis and nnests; conversely, she finishes her story stating: “that is why one has to improve every day”. her attitude relates to what foucault (1977) calls normalization, which is a repeated situation that becomes “normal” to the point that it is no longer questioned. the preponderance of folk beliefs about nesis and nnests is so strong that 59 non-native english speaking teachers’ subjectivities and colombian language policies: a narrative study profile: issues teach. prof. dev., vol. 20 no. 2, jul-dec, 2018. issn 1657-0790 (printed) 2256-5760 (online). bogotá, colombia. pages 51-64 participants end up accepting and integrating them into their discourses and practices. leidy: when you worked with native speaking, practitioners, were there any differences in the working conditions or salary? margie: those teachers earned two million [colombian] pesos more than us, and they had to teach only 45-minute classes, they did not grade papers, check attendance or had to file paperwork, nothing. the heavy work, apart from the classes, was done by us, they did not do it. but, some of them were good, because i shared with three of them, they prepared their sessions very well, their lessons [had] lots of materials, slides…yet, they earned two or two and a half million [colombian pesos] more than us. that is why one has to improve every day. (narrative interview, margie) the fact that the nesis are not assigned administrative work is an example of a policy established in a private institution that follows the same practices used in the national plan “fellowship teaching programme”, which is an initiative for public schools. this situation is not new, and despite having been reported by de mejía in 2005, working conditions are still very unequal for nesis and nnests. it seems our participant is not aware that earning significantly more salary is a good motivation for nesis to do their job, and still she thinks she needs to be better, to improve. shaping my subjectivities through knowledge and reflection this dimension accounts for the self-reported practices that reveal the configuration of the nnests’ subjectivities as they reflected on their own learning, which can be traced from the past through the present to the future (connelly & clandinin, 2006). in the first story, our participant configures her subjectivities as a competent user of english. natalia was summarizing her professional experiences starting from the first stage as a student, the second stage as an english language teacher, and in the excerpt below, she refers to what she calls the third stage. her reflections on what speaking english means allows us to see that she regarded it as a mere instrument to “teach others” but through time she adds a new dimension: “a communication vehicle”. further, when having the opportunity to use language with a different purpose she understands that there are socio-cultural aspects attached to it. when i accepted the position of academic coordinator, for the first time in my life i felt that i was already using english as a communication vehicle and not just to teach others. from the interview to the induction week and the day-to-day instruction both face-to-face and over the phone helped me greatly to improve my level of understanding, speech and the perception of their culture. talking with them made me extremely pragmatic, both in written communications and on the telephone. one day, my best friend who is colombian, was surprised at the way i finished a conversation on the phone and reminded me who she was and that i was not talking to a native teacher. at that moment, i understood how the contact with native speakers had changed my way of communicating and i had to learn again to separate situations and people so as not to make anyone feel bad. (written narrative, natalia) having a more holistic perspective about what language is for (as a result of her reflection) configures natalia’s subjectivities, in the sense that she acknowledges not only her linguistic competence but also her pragmatic one of feeling as (and being) a competent user of english. amarok, another participant, configures a subjectivity as a doer; after telling the story of a student who rejected him for being a nnest, he stated that the situation occurred due to the “colonial mentality” that is widespread in colombia and which benefits nesis over colombian teachers. when asked if he believed that situation could be changed and if he had done anything to change it, he answered: i do believe it can be changed, in fact me and a colleague published an article on tools of decolonization in the last issue of the peer reviewed journal of my department. i think it is possible to focus on the problematic aspects of other societies, not only the good aspects because that bias makes people believe that other countries have no problems . . . in that article we talked about checking textbooks; textbooks always have certain things that are standardized and universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras60 gómez-vásquez & guerrero nieto only cover positive aspects of culture, to analyze the textbook with students and other teachers is a good way to raise awareness about it . . . to talk, for example, about the implications of the policy that is immersed in any discourse, discourse analysis, those are tools we have at our disposal to change this ideology. (narrative interview, amarok) the participant displays a full knowledge of the situation he is describing, which is rooted in his ma studies and in his participation in collaborative research. his view on how colonized thought can be changed is based on the actions that he has actually taken like publishing a scholarly article in which he offers some practical teaching tools to decolonize the classroom; amarok moves from reflection to action, giving way to different subjectivities. calderón (2011) asserts that reflection is the articulator between practices and subjectivity. we would like to highlight that reflection has to be enriched from knowledge, which is the fuel that boosts thinking. a third participant, margie, projects what she thinks will happen to nnests and nesis in the years to come, and through her reflection, her subjectivity is configured as a receiver of knowledge. in the future, i think that more and more native speakers of englishspeaking countries will come to our country and position themselves in different fields, but mainly in the field of education, and even more in higher education. the question here would be, are they good at what they do or are they just there while they find something better? do they love to teach and know how to teach their language? of course there must be some for whom teaching is a task that they strive to do in the best way, regardless of whether they have careers and studies related to education or pedagogy. our job as colombian teachers of english is to become more and more professional, improve our level in the language, update and learn from those native teachers who give the profession a high status. (written narrative, margie) margie bases her reflection on the knowledge that she has about being a teacher. she understands that more nesis will arrive in the country and beyond their nativespeakerism, she is concerned with their professionalism and devotion to teach. it is important to mention that in the frame of the pnb, 600 foreigners from australia, kenya, india, jamaica, united states, canada, and italy, among others, who are labeled “native speakers” by the national ministry of education arrived in colombia in 2016, and another 180 arrived on january 2017 from a group of 520 that were expected to come that year. in her reflection, although she implies that most nesis are not certified teachers or that they teach as a temporary job that helps them to survive, she later states that some nesis are diligent and responsible and that nnests should learn from them. margie has configured a subjectivity in which she positions herself as a constant receiver of knowledge, putting the nesis as the role model. conclusions the current study answers the research question about the way nnests configure their professional subjectivities in the frame of colombian language policies by stating that such configuration is entangled, changeable, and enduring, which is consistent with the theories about subjectivities and the role of institutions (in this case overt and covert policies) as subjectivity devices. entangled means that there are several aspects that influence the construction of teachers’ professional self and that those do not have a particular pattern but are intertwined. for instance, teachers, partners, colleagues, and the environment play a role at different times in the participants’ lives. changeable, because when telling their experiences, teachers revealed the waving character of the process of configuring their subjectivities; it means there is a noticeable change from what they believed in the past, what they do now, and what they expect in the future. for example, natalia showed how her subjectivities moved from admiration and respect to nests to disrespect, rage, and acknowledgement of her superiority in terms of pedagogical knowledge. finally, it was identified that constructing and re-constructing 61 non-native english speaking teachers’ subjectivities and colombian language policies: a narrative study profile: issues teach. prof. dev., vol. 20 no. 2, jul-dec, 2018. issn 1657-0790 (printed) 2256-5760 (online). bogotá, colombia. pages 51-64 the self is a never ending process. this was evident in the narratives of all the participants who were opened to the changes that the future might bring for them. teachers will permanently interact with others and their subjectivities will continue being re-configured over and over, which confirms the theory that supported this study. in terms of subjectivities, this study contributes to the elt and policy making fields because it shows that nnests as subjects are not passive and steady actors but, on the contrary, they are in constant change looking to shape their being as teachers. that is the reason why colombian policy makers should recognize such effort and allow the teachers to be part of the making of policies. in addition, policy makers should consider the nnests subjectivities before creating policies that, as shown in this study, tend to deepen the inequalities and foster an antagonism between nnests and nesis. this finding of course is not new; researchers in other parts of the world have pointed out what is mentioned here (de mejía, 2005; gonzález & llurda, 2016; kubota, 2012; liu, 1999, london, 2001; mckay, 2003), which leads us to acknowledge the pervasiveness of dominant discourses in regard to who are “legitimate users” of the language and who are not. besides, these levels are misleading since they perpetuate the idea that to be an english teacher (instructor), being a native speaker is the only requirement (regardless of the variety and register spoken; that is, many colombian teachers report that their fellow nesi were bartenders in great britain, or doormen in aruba, or plumbers somewhere else). regarding the literature on nests, there is a general conception that it refers to certified teachers who are also genetic native speakers of english (kachru, 1998). but in the colombian context—and policies—this label is used to describe any foreigner who performs as an english teacher and who does not need to be certified as such. colombians, on the other hand, who want to become english teachers, need to obtain a professional degree after studying at a university for five years. part of their preparation includes up to five academic semesters of teaching practicum, and as a graduation requirement they should conduct, write, and defend a research project (all this in english). consequently, we have proposed the term nesis in order to counter the perpetuation of the nests and nnests dichotomy which represents the former as superior (as has been previously stated by de mejía, 2005; 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(2009). narrative inquiry for teacher education and development: focus on english as a foreign language in china. teaching and teacher education 25(2), 219-227. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.tate.2008.10.006. about the authors leidy yisel gómez-vásquez holds an ma in applied linguistics. currently, she works as a university professor in the department of foreign languages at universidad de la sabana in colombia. her research interests are teachers’ development and educational policies which she works on in the research group “estudios críticos de políticas colombianas, estupoli”. carmen helena guerrero nieto holds an ma and phd from the university of arizona, is a full professor at universidad distrital. her publications include critical discourse analysis, bilingualism, and teacher education. she is the main researcher of the group critical studies on educational policies, and serves as the vice-president of asocopi. critical reading with undergraduate efl students in colombia: gains and challenges 35profile: issues teach. prof. dev., vol. 23 no. 2, jul-dec, 2021. issn 1657-0790 (printed) 2256-5760 (online). bogotá, colombia. pages 35-50 https://doi.org/10.15446/profile.v23n2.89034 critical reading with undergraduate efl students in colombia: gains and challenges lectura crítica con estudiantes del pregrado de inglés como lengua extranjera en colombia: logros y desafíos juan david castaño-roldán1 universidad nacional de colombia, medellín, colombia doris correa universidad de antioquia, medellín, colombia this qualitative study explored the gains and challenges experienced by an interdisciplinary group of english as a foreign language students who participated in the implementation of a critical reading unit taught within a reading comprehension course at a university in medellín, colombia. to do this, videorecordings of all lessons, samples of students’ work, and students’ reflections were collected. results show that students experienced several gains but also had some challenges related to aligning with the author’s position, seeing positionality in factual texts, and taking middle positions. these results suggest that even though it is not only possible but beneficial to do critical reading with undergraduate english as a foreign language students, there are some specific areas in which these students need additional support. keywords: critical reading, english as a foreign language, english instruction, reading comprehension, undergraduate students este estudio cualitativo exploró los aprendizajes y los retos experimentados por un grupo interdisciplinar de estudiantes de inglés como lengua extranjera que participaron en la implementación de una unidad de lectura crítica en un curso de comprensión lectora en una universidad colombiana. para hacer esto, se recogieron las grabaciones de las sesiones de clase, así como las muestras de los trabajos y las reflexiones de los estudiantes. los resultados muestran que los estudiantes tuvieron varias ganancias, pero también experimentaron ciertos retos relacionados con su alineamiento con la posición del autor, y el no poder ver la posicionalidad en los textos fácticos, o tomar posiciones intermedias. estos resultados sugieren que, aunque es posible y beneficioso hacer este tipo de lectura con estos estudiantes de este pregrado, existen áreas específicas en las que éstos necesitan un apoyo adicional. palabras clave: comprensión lectora, enseñanza del inglés, inglés como lengua extranjera, estudiantes de pregrado, lectura crítica juan david castaño-roldán  https://orcid.org/0000-0002-4060-5149 · email: david.castano@udea.edu.co doris correa  https://orcid.org/0000-0002-2714-2493 · email: doris.correa@udea.edu.co this article is based on the master’s thesis completed by castaño-roldán (2019). how to cite this article (apa, 7th ed.): castaño-roldán, j. d., & correa, d. (2021). critical reading with undergraduate efl students in colombia: gains and challenges. profile: issues in teachers’ professional development, 23(2), 35–50. https://doi.org/10.15446/profile.v23n2.89034 this article was received on july 10, 2020 and accepted on march 12, 2021. this is an open access article distributed under the terms of the creative commons license attribution-noncommercial-noderivatives 4.0 international license. consultation is possible at https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/ https://orcid.org/0000-0002-4060-5149 mailto:david.castano@udea.edu.co https://orcid.org/0000-0002-2714-2493 mailto:doris.correa@udea.edu.co https://doi.org/10.15446/profile.v23n2.89034 https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/ universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras36 castaño-roldán & correa introduction in the last few years, the number of texts available in different languages, especially english, has increased considerably as a result of the development of technology around the world (grabe & stoller, 2002). to critical literacy scholars, even though these texts can increase and expand our knowledge of the world, they also have the power to deceive, delude (haromi, 2014; mclaughlin & devoogd, 2004) and misrepresent reality (luke et al., 1994; wallace, 2003). moreover, they can contribute to the reproduction of stereotypes, unequal social structures and power relations (janks, 2010; wallace, 2003), discriminatory race relations, restrictive versions of gender identities, and one-dimensional versions of culture (luke et al., 1994). but how do texts do this? critical literacy scholars believe they do it through the use of different lexical (e.g., choice of certain words), grammatical (e.g., choice of active instead of passive voice), and textual choices (e.g., fronting some information and putting the other at the end; butt et al., 2000). these choices are situated in the authors’ worlds and reflect their ideological biases (wallace, 2003). for example, if authors privilege a certain way of seeing the world, they will represent it in a positive way by using positively charged words, putting it in the theme position (or at the beginning of the clause), supporting it with other views, and so on. on the other hand, if authors despise this way of seeing the world, they will use negatively charged words, put it in the rheme position (or at the end of the clause), and silence those voices that represent it in a positive way. to be able to unravel all these mechanisms used by authors, students need to be taught to read critically. reading critically means “questioning, exploring, and challenging the power relationships that exist between authors and readers in terms of gender, race, and social class, among others” (mclaughlin & devoogd, 2008, p. 54). it also means “understanding why the author wrote about a particular topic from a particular perspective, or why they chose to leave some ideas in and others out of the text, among other things” (mclaughlin & devoogd, 2004, p. 12). students who can read this way have a broader understanding of what is happening in texts (janks, 2010). besides, they are better equipped to do the following: (a) reflect on issues they face from different angles and develop a more accurate image of what these issues might be (iyer, 2007), (b) avoid the passive reproduction of the ideas found in the texts they read (comber, 2001), (c) question normalized, unfair representations of certain groups of people in texts (mclaughlin & devoogd, 2008), and (d) create countertexts that represent these groups of people in a more just way and “to seek out the voices of those who have been silenced or marginalized” (janks, 2010, p. 383). on the other hand, students who are not able to do this type of critical reading (cr) can more easily fall prey to authors’ manipulation and may inadvertently end up perpetuating unequal power relationships related to social issues such as race, class, and gender both in texts and society (luke, 2000). they may also find themselves normalizing and reproducing stereotypes and ideologies embedded in these texts (luke, 2012). aware of the importance of having students do a cr of texts, many universities across the globe have started to offer english as a foreign language (efl) reading comprehension courses in which students are taught cr as described above (giraldo, 2018; gómez-jiménez & gutierrez, 2019; haromi, 2014). unfortunately, a review of studies published in the five main efl colombian journals reveals that, in the country, these courses have focused on the development of reading strategies such as skimming, scanning, and exploiting transparent words, among others (aguirre-morales & ramos-holguín, 2009; bautista-barón, 2013; camargo & orbegozonavarro, 2010; gómez-torres & ávila-constain, 2009; lopera-medina, 2012; lópez-medina, 2001; perdomo, 2001; posada-ortiz, 2004; rodríguez-sánchez, 2017; ruiz & arias-rodríguez, 2009), not on the development of cr. 37profile: issues teach. prof. dev., vol. 23 no. 2, jul-dec, 2021. issn 1657-0790 (printed) 2256-5760 (online). bogotá, colombia. pages 35-50 critical reading with undergraduate efl students in colombia: gains and challenges given this gap, scholars from a university in medellín, colombia, designed and taught a cr unit to students taking a reading comprehension course at this university. as they did this, they conducted a qualitative study guided by the following research question: what are the gains and challenges experienced by undergraduate students during the implementation of this unit? theoretical framework the study described here drew on critical literacy theories, particularly those focused on cr, and used mclaughlin and devoogd’s (2004) strategy instructional framework to help students read community texts critically. these texts, as defined by luke et al. (1994), are those that circulate in everyday life and are important in the wider cultural climate. examples of these are newspaper reports, comic strips, memes, and magazine articles. although they seem to be neutral, these texts document and shape social life and impose ideological agendas (luke et al., 1994; wallace, 2003). critical reading cr is a complex phenomenon that comprises at least four main principles, all of which were used in the cr unit presented here: 1. cr allows readers to identify the author’s position in texts and how it influences readers: this involves recognizing how the linguistic and textual choices made by authors are helping them both establish their position and influence the readers’ position (cervetti et al., 2001; janks, 2010; luke, 2000). 2. cr helps readers think about texts from different perspectives: this means acknowledging that other representations of the world, apart from those of the author, are possible and valid (iyer, 2007; lewison et al., 2002; mclaughlin & devoogd, 2004). 3. cr permits readers to uncover hidden messages in texts: this implies identifying other messages in texts, beyond the obvious, and the ideologies behind these messages (begoray et al., 2013; kellner & share, 2007; luke, 2000; molden, 2007). 4. cr facilitates the recognition of silenced and marginalized voices in texts: this refers to being able to pinpoint whose voices are being left out of the conversation by authors and the intentions that authors have with this (luke, 2000; mcdaniel, 2004; mclaughlin & devoogd, 2004). although there are many definitions of cr, there are few studies showing how it can be done at the undergraduate level. these studies focus mainly on the following: (a) the results of teaching cr in english reading comprehension courses for undergraduate students with varied proficiency levels (giraldo, 2018; haromi, 2014; huang, 2011; liu, 2017), (b) undergraduate students’ responses to cr instruction in english courses (esteban-nuñez, 2014; gómez-jiménez & gutierrez, 2019; kuo, 2014), and (c) efl teachers’ perceptions and difficulties when implementing cr (belet & dal, 2010; gómez-jiménez & gutierrez, 2019; rahimi & askari-bigdeli, 2015). they do not focus on the gains and challenges experienced by students with this pedagogy. the few studies that have focused on these two issues have reported four main challenges: (a) inability to see authors’ bias when stereotypes in texts apply to more than one social group (giraldo, 2018), (b) problems to see textual organization as a tool for authors to position readers (haromi, 2014), (c) difficulties to see stereotypes when these are rooted and tied to students’ cultural identities (gómez-jiménez & gutierrez, 2019), and (d) trouble to discuss political issues and challenge the status quo (rahimi & askari-bigdeli, 2015). as for gains, the studies have identified at least another four: (a) students’ realization that all texts reflect authors’ positions and, therefore, they always try to influence readers (huang, 2011); (b) improvement of students’ language proficiency level by increasing their motivation (liu, 2017); (c) broadening of students’ understanding universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras38 castaño-roldán & correa of issues such as racism (esteban-nuñez, 2014); and (d) students’ development of multiple perspectives on issues (belet & dal, 2010). the strategy instructional framework this framework, as described by mclaughlin and devoogd (2004), involves five stages: explaining, demonstrating, guiding, practicing, and reflecting. in the first stage, the instructor “explains what a critical literacy strategy is and how it works” (p. 38). two strategies proposed by these authors are “mind and alternative mind portraits” and “theme switch” (p. 47). however, instructors can use others such as analysis of appraisal devices used in the text (e.g., nouns, adjectives, adverbs; butt et al., 2000, p. 120). in “mind and alternative mind portraits,” students examine a text from two points of view which may or may not be present in the text (mclaughlin & devoogd, 2004, p. 51). in “theme switch,” after students read a text, they respond to selected questions, such as “what gender is represented in the text?” or “what race is represented in the text.” then, they imagine how the message would change after switching the race or gender of characters in certain texts (p. 48). in the analysis of appraisal devices, students examine linguistics elements, chosen by authors to represent reality (butt et al., 2000, p. 120). in the second stage, demonstrating, the instructor “demonstrates the strategy by using a think-aloud, a read-aloud, and an overhead projector or chalkboard” (mclaughlin & devoogd, 2004, p. 38). in the third stage, guiding, the instructor “guides students to work in small groups or with partners to create responses” (p. 38). in the fourth stage, practicing, the instructor has students “practice by having students work with partners or independently to apply the critical literacy strategy” (p. 38). finally, in the last stage, reflecting, the instructor encourages students to “reflect on how the strategy helps read critically” (p. 38). method this is a qualitative study as it takes “an interpretive, naturalistic approach to the world, . . . studying things in their natural setting, attempting to make sense of or to interpret phenomena in terms of the meanings people bring to them” (denzin & lincoln, 2008, p. 5). data collection and analysis data collection resources included video-recordings of all classes, samples of students’ work, and students’ written reflection tasks. to collect these data, consent forms were procured from both the program coordinator and the students, and pseudonyms were assigned to all participants. samples of students’ work were collected at two different moments: (a) in the guiding stage and (b) in the practice stage of each cycle, which included text analyses done by students. reflections took place at the reflection stage of each cycle and were carried out in spanish so that students would feel more comfortable expressing themselves. in them, students reported what they had learned about the principle and if the strategies provided had helped them read more critically. table 1 shows a summary of all data collected. data were analyzed using a deductive-inductive approach (richards, 2003). that is, researchers used some preestablished categories (the four cr principles) and subcategories (gains and challenges). however, new categories (e.g., lack of cultural background, understanding the role of language in positionality, lack of grammatical knowledge) were allowed to emerge. context and participants the setting for this study was an english reading comprehension level ii course taught to undergraduate students in a public university in medellín, colombia. the original program sought to develop students’ reading comprehension skills in english through the teaching of morpho-syntactic structures, vocabulary, general terminology as well as reading strategies (english reading comprehension program, i & ii). 39profile: issues teach. prof. dev., vol. 23 no. 2, jul-dec, 2021. issn 1657-0790 (printed) 2256-5760 (online). bogotá, colombia. pages 35-50 critical reading with undergraduate efl students in colombia: gains and challenges nonetheless, the authors obtained permission from the program coordination to reconfigure the course syllabus and make it more in line with these theories. the students taking this course were a group of 21 undergraduates, 10 male and 11 female, coming mostly from low socio-economic backgrounds whose ages ranged from 17 to 24. they were pursuing different professional programs and class observations suggest their english proficiency level ranged from a2 to b1. in regard to their reading comprehension, students claimed not to have any experience with cr, as their previous reading comprehension course had mainly focused on grammar aspects, how to use dictionaries, and how to identify main ideas. the pedagogical unit the pedagogical unit comprised 16 classes, taught in the course of four weeks. to organize the unit, mclaughlin and devoogd’s (2004) strategy instructional framework was used in a cyclic manner (one cycle per cr principle) until all four cr principles were covered. since students belonged to different fields of knowledge, we decided to use community instead of disciplinary texts. as for topics, we decided to include those that seemed appealing to a wide range of colombians: pablo escobar, alcohol, use of guns, the ceasefire. we also used memes that displayed gender and race issues due to their currency in colombian whatsapp messages, and an article on vegetarianism, due to the explosion of vegetarian restaurants in the city. table 2 shows both the strategies and the texts that were selected to teach each principle. for example, to familiarize students with the first principle, during the first class, the instructor explained how identifying authors’ positions in texts could help them read critically (explanation stage). then, the news report “press hails uribe’s victory” retrieved from the bbc site was used to demonstrate the analysis of appraisal devices strategy, which consisted of looking at the adjectives and nouns used by the author to represent the characters and situations in this text (demonstration stage). next, during the second class, students were guided, in pairs to analyze another news report “drug boss pablo escobar still divides colombia” retrieved from the bbc site. they wrote down the analysis they made using the strategy and presented it to the rest of the class orally for their feedback (guiding stage). then, in the same pairs, and as homework for the third class, students were asked to find a similar text to practice the modeled strategy and to show their understanding of the cr principle that was being discussed. once in class, they shared their analysis with the whole class and received feedback from both the instructor and their classmates (practice stage). finally, during the fourth class, students answered some questions posed by the instructor to help them reflect on the gains and challenges they experienced while working with the principle (reflection stage). once this cycle was over, a new cycle with a new principle would begin. each cycle lasted about four classes. table 1. data collected instrument principle 1 principle 2 principle 3 principle 4 total per instrument video recordings 4 4 4 4 16 samples of students’ work 17 17 15 15 64 reflection tasks 21 21 19 20 81 total per principle 42 42 38 39 universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras40 castaño-roldán & correa findings findings suggest that during the cr unit, students experienced both gains and challenges. the following paragraphs describe what these were and present evidence from the unit. gains in regard to gains, the analysis suggests students were not only able to understand the four cr principles but also went beyond them by understanding the following: (a) the role of knowledge and language in positionality, (b) the importance of multiple perspectives in unveiling both authors’ positionality and hidden messages, and (c) the reasons why authors give voice to certain characters and silence others. understanding the role of knowledge and language in positionality this gain refers to students’ realization that readers are less easily influenced by authors when they have knowledge about the topic, character, or situation being presented and when they are aware of the language being used. nine students showed understanding of the first part. an example of these students is valeria. as practice for the first principle—cr is about identifying the author’s position in texts and how it influences readers—students had been asked to look for a text and analyze it using the appraisal strategy taught in class. valeria brought a text about crash diets. when discussing this and other texts that students had brought, valeria said,1 since i did not know about the topic, it was hard for me, to a certain extent, to identify the author’s position because i did not have a reference point to know if i could believe what i was reading or not. so, i assumed it was true in a way. as can be seen, valeria realizes that when readers do not have knowledge about the topic, it is not only hard to identify the author’s position but also to adopt one themselves, which makes them more easily assume that what the author says is true. valeria’s realization was confirmed in the reflection task for the first principle where, in response to question 1 (“what did you learn about the author’s position and how it influences readers?”), she wrote, 1 excerpts have been translated from spanish. table 2. principles, strategies and texts used to develop critical reading (cr) cr principles: cr is being able to: 1. identify the author’s position in texts and how it influences readers. 2. think about texts from different perspectives. 3. uncover hidden messages in texts. 4. recognize silenced and marginalized voices in texts. cr strategies appraisal strategy mind and alternative mind portraits strategy theme switch strategy mind and alternative mind portraits strategy texts used “press hails uribe’s victory” (bbc)a “drug boss pablo escobar still divides colombia” (bbc)b “can alcohol help you live longer?” (time magazine)c “how a vegetarian diet could help save the planet” (time magazine)d memes and comic strips from the internet dealing with gender and race issues “father challenges marco rubio on guns” (cnn news)e “colombia and farc sign historic ceasefire deal” (al jazeera english news channel)f a (http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/americas/5026808.stm). b (https://bbc.in/38ylrce). c (https://bit.ly/3vfkpli). d (https://bit.ly/38w0zc0). e (https://bit.ly/3bfwduj). f (https://bit.ly/3lighje). http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/americas/5026808.stm https://bbc.in/38ylrce https://bit.ly/3vfkpli https://bit.ly/38w0zc0 https://bit.ly/3bfwduj https://bit.ly/3lighje 41profile: issues teach. prof. dev., vol. 23 no. 2, jul-dec, 2021. issn 1657-0790 (printed) 2256-5760 (online). bogotá, colombia. pages 35-50 critical reading with undergraduate efl students in colombia: gains and challenges authors use certain linguistic elements to give readers clues about their position on the topic of the text. however, if the reader does not know much about the topic, the author can make them change their opinion or interest in the topic in a negative or positive way. in this reflection, valeria expands on what she had stated in class by explaining that knowing little about the topic is also dangerous as the author can make readers change their position very easily. as for the role of language in positionality, 16 students showed understanding of this aspect. an example of these students is tomás. for the guiding stage of the same principle, the instructor provided students with the article about escobar from bbc news. in this article, the author takes a negative position against escobar by describing him as “infamous drug lord,” “drug boss,” and “crime boss.” he also takes a negative position against the fact that some people still affectionately refer to pablo as “pablito.” to show students how authors influence readers positively or negatively through the linguistic choices they make, the instructor asked students to read the article and complete a table with questions about how the author was positioning escobar. table 3 shows how tomás responded. tomás’s answers show that he was able to understand how the author was using specific linguistic resources, such as adverbs, adjectives, and nouns to “persuade readers to believe that pablo was a bad person.” during the reflection stage for the first principle, tomás commented on this new understanding. he said, teacher, when i was…looking at the example that you gave us about pablo and the one that i did, i realized that the language that the author uses either adjectives or whatever makes you believe because it causes emotions in you that make you agree or disagree and mainly when you read in a hurry which is like you read the news. [sic] as is evident from this intervention, tomás did not only understand the role of language in positioning readers but also how it achieved this positioning. besides, he was also able to identify that readers are more susceptible to this positioning when they do not read carefully. realizing the importance of multiple perspectives in identifying author’s position and unveiling hidden messages as the lessons progressed, students were able to not only adopt multiple perspectives but also realize how these could help them both understand what is going on in a text and unveil hidden messages. one of the nine students who was able to use multiple perspectives to identify the author’s position was anibal. in one of the activities carried out to help students understand the second principle—cr is about analyzing texts table 3. tomás’s analysis of a news article article: “drug boss pablo escobar still divides colombia.” principle 1 how is the author positioning escobar? what linguistic elements is he using to do that? what image of escobar is he trying to imprint on readers? the author positions escobar as someone for whom he feels disdain. he also positions him as a cruel and ruthless criminal. adverbs: sadly, shockingly adjectives: infamous, criminal, richest nouns: greatest outlaw, ruthlessness, crime boss verbs: terrorised, bribed, attacked, killed the author tries to persuade readers to believe that pablo was a bad person who does not deserve to be admired in the colombian culture. i can say that because of the way that he describes everything related to pablo. universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras42 castaño-roldán & correa from different perspectives—the instructor asked students to read the article about vegetarianism from time magazine. in this article, the author takes a position in favor of vegetarianism by portraying it as the possible solution to environmental and health problems. students had to select one of the author’s statements related to the topic and then apply the “mind and alternative mind portraits” strategy, which meant analyzing the statement based on what people like scientists, housewives, and activists would think. by the end of the exercise, anibal was able to think about the topic of the text from several perspectives that were both in favor and against the author’s position. table 4 shows his responses. table 4. anibal’s response to a magazine article article: “how a vegetarian diet could help save the planet.” principle 2 alternative perspective author’s statement reducing meat consumption improves human health. what would other people say about this statement? in favor: nutritionist: reducing meat consumption helps avoid a lot of heart problems. i can help you design a diet plan to reduce meat consumption. scientist: this is scientifically proven. with more studies, we can tell you more information about it. against: mother: meat cannot be reduced. it has a good amount of protein and it is easy to prepare. butcher: humans have always eaten meat and if we stop eating it, it will affect many people’s economy. as can be gathered from table 4, anibal was able to think about the arguments other people would provide against or in favor of this statement and the interests that these arguments would support. in the reflection stage for the second principle, he confirmed that he saw how important being able to identify these positions was in identifying the author’s positionality: teacher, you generally think that the information that you have is the truth just because, and that it is not an opinion like everyone else’s. when you start considering what different people can think about a certain topic in a text, you can even realize the way that the author believes things should be concerning the topic in the text. this statement shows anibal’s realization that it was easier for readers to identify the author’s position when they considered other perspectives about the topic of the text. as for being able to use multiple perspectives to unveil hidden messages, one of the six students who presented this gain was catalina. to help students understand the third principle—uncovering hidden messages in texts—the instructor explained the “theme switch” strategy, which basically asked students to look at the issue from the perspective of a person from a different gender or race. to practice this strategy, students were asked to bring random memes or comic strips to be analyzed in class. once these were gathered, each student was assigned two. catalina got the ones shown in figures 1 and 2. once assigned, students were instructed to apply the switching strategy taught in class and then answer a question about stereotypes (table 5). table 5. catalina’s analysis of memes and comic strips (principle 3) what is the stereotype? men are unfaithful and irresponsible. black people are thieves. table 5 shows how by using “gender switch,” or putting herself in the position of a man, catalina was able to unveil the stereotype about men being portrayed in figure 1. similarly, by using race switch, she was able to clearly see the stereotype about black people shown 43profile: issues teach. prof. dev., vol. 23 no. 2, jul-dec, 2021. issn 1657-0790 (printed) 2256-5760 (online). bogotá, colombia. pages 35-50 critical reading with undergraduate efl students in colombia: gains and challenges in figure 2. during the reflection stage for the third principle, when asked, “have your views of memes changed after analyzing them with these strategies, how?” catalina said, now, i am more aware of the fact that many memes reproduce stereotypes and when we laugh because of them, we are not aware of that and this can be due to the fact that we are used to looking at everything from a single perspective. to unveil the hidden messages, it was necessary to think like other people and adopt other perspectives that had different beliefs concerning men and black people. figure 1. comic strip on gender stereotypes note. from me.me (https://me.me/) figure 2. comic strip on racial prejudice as can be seen, catalina sees how dangerous it is “to look at things from a single perspective” and the need “to think like other people and [take] other perspectives” to unveil hidden messages. discerning why authors give voice to certain characters and silence others one of the most notable gains, shown by 14 students, was the realization that authors give voice to certain characters and silence others based on their intentions. one of these students was juliana. during one of the activities prepared to explain the fourth principle—cr is about identifying silenced and marginalized voices in texts—the instructor asked students to read the news report about the peace agreement in colombia from al jazeera english news channel. in this news report, the author takes a position in favor of the peace agreement and tries to align readers with his position by giving voice to those who agree and marginalizing those who disagree. to analyze the voices in this text, students were asked to complete a table with questions about them. table 6 shows the answers juliana provided. table 6 shows how juliana was not only able to identify marginalized voices in the news report (ex-president uribe’s followers and the victims of the conflict) but to see the intentions behind the omission of those voices (“not to change the objective of the text” and “to keep his argument valid”). juliana’s realization that authors give voice to certain characters and silence others based on their intentions was captured again in the reflection task for the fourth principle where, in response to question 1 (“what did you learn about marginalized voices in texts?”), she wrote, universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras44 castaño-roldán & correa i learned that according to the author’s intentions and what you want to transmit, voices are marginalized because the author wants to transmit a specific image of the topic and some voices would not favor this image. i also learned that the author includes or excludes voices based on his/ her intentions. in this excerpt, juliana realizes that authors do not just leave voices out for a purpose, they also include them for a purpose. challenges data analysis suggests that during the course of the unit students experienced three main challenges: (a) aligning with the author’s position, (b) seeing positionality in factual texts, and (c) taking middle positions. aligning with the author’s position this challenge refers to the fact that some students were not able to see positionality on the part of the author or themselves (three students) or to identify marginalized voices in texts (six students) due to their alignment with the author’s position. one of the three students who presented this challenge was ana. in the activity referred to before, which intended to raise students’ awareness about the first principle—cr is about identifying the author’s position in texts and how it influences readers—and had students analyze escobar’s news article during the guide stage, ana showed that she was able to identify the linguistic elements that the author used to position escobar as a drug lord and a violent person. however, she had problems recognizing that these elements positioned both the author and herself. when she was asked, “what image of escobar is he trying to imprint on readers?” she answered, a commercial image as one of the biggest drug-traffickers, murderers, and terrorists. . . however, i already knew this and therefore, this text doesn’t influence me that much because what it says is not an opinion but the truth. since it is written in english, it is possibly for foreign people that could be influenced. [sic] as is obvious from this excerpt, the fact that ana coincided with the author in his representations of pablo escobar, stopped her from seeing that: (a) it was an opinion and therefore a position, and (b) regardless of her response, the author was still trying to position her. as time progressed, ana remained in the same position that she expressed before, as the reflection task for the first principle confirms. indeed, when she was asked, “what did you learn about author’s position and how it influences readers?” ana answered, table 6. juliana’s analysis of a news report news report: “colombia and farc sign historic ceasefire deal.” principle 4 who is included and excluded? what would these marginalized voices say? why did the author decide to exclude these voices? included: colombians who agree with the peace agreement. excluded: victims of the conflict, farc rebels, people who disagree with the peace agreement. ex-president uribe’s followers: it is not possible that these people can reach the congress after harming this society so much. victims of the conflict: there are no guarantees. they must tell us where our beloved ones are to bury them. it is not fair that they are being. rewarded after all they did. he omitted them not to change the objective of the text. the author saw the sign [sic] of the peace agreement as something positive and omitted those disagreeing voices in order to keep his argument valid. 45profile: issues teach. prof. dev., vol. 23 no. 2, jul-dec, 2021. issn 1657-0790 (printed) 2256-5760 (online). bogotá, colombia. pages 35-50 critical reading with undergraduate efl students in colombia: gains and challenges i believe that authors do not always influence readers, it does not matter if they use praising or aggressive language. things are as they are, and authors cannot express their opinions there. for example, in the case of scientific articles and pablo’s text, i did not feel i was being positioned because i know that all they say there is true. [sic] as is evident in this answer, ana continued to maintain that what is “true” cannot be seen as a position and that regardless of whether or not they accomplish it, authors do not try to position readers. one of the six students who struggled to recognize marginalized voices due to their alignment with the author’s position was tatiana. during the guide stage for the fourth principle—cr is about identifying silenced and marginalized voices in texts—while doing the analysis of the news report from al jazeera english news channel, tatiana was able to identify marginalized voices in the news report. however, she did not recognize them as such due to her alignment with the author’s position. table 7 shows the analysis she provided for the news report. even though tatiana can identify that the voices of uribe and his followers have been marginalized and exactly what those voices would say when it comes to explaining why the author marginalized these voices, she responds in a way which shows that her alignment with the author’s position is preventing her from recognizing the fact that the author did purposefully exclude some voices. as time progressed, tatiana remained in the same position. this is confirmed in the reflection task for the fourth principle, where, in response to question 3 (“have your views of voices in texts changed after performing this analysis, how?”), she wrote, in a way, they have, because i know that in some controversial topics, authors can marginalize and silence voices because these voices would tell a truth that they [the authors] are trying to hide. but in some other cases, authors do not include someone’s voice because they have nothing that is true to contribute to the topic that authors are trying to develop. i mean, certain voices are unnecessary. as in the case of the news report about the peace agreement, uribe’s followers would tell lies to try to convince people. in this excerpt, tatiana is still struggling with what voices to consider as marginalized. she seems to have developed a theory that if the voices are “telling the truth,” that is, they are aligning with her position, they are marginalized. contrarily, if they are “telling lies,” they are not marginalized, they are just “unnecessary.” seeing positionality in factual texts another interesting challenge that, although not very prevalent, was still very salient was that concerning students’ difficulty to see positionality when texts appear to be factual. one of the two students who presented this challenge was andrea. during table 7. tatiana’s analysis of a news report news report: “colombia and farc sign historic ceasefire deal.” principle 4 who is included and excluded? what would these marginalized voices say? why did the author decide to exclude these voices? included: colombians who agree with the peace process. excluded: followers of uribe and álvaro uribe. álvaro uribe: there are too many concessions for these murderers. they must pay and we must declare war on them. uribe’s followers: uribe is right. farc rebels do not deserve to be forgiven. they are terrorists. the author did not marginalize them, he already knew what those voices thought, and he knew that uribe and his followers would say or do anything to stop the peace agreement because all they want is war. universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras46 castaño-roldán & correa lesson 4, when students were sharing their answers to the reflection task for the first principle, andrea said the following about authors of scientific texts taking a position: “teacher, but in certain texts, i think it is hard to do this kind of analysis. for example, i would not question scientific texts, i do not think authors can take a position in them.” andrea’s intervention shows she thinks positionality is only present in other kinds of texts, not in scientific ones, which are supposed to be objective, and to present unquestionable truths. as time progressed, andrea stayed in the same position and the reflection task for the first principle confirms this. indeed, when she was asked, “have your views of authors’ and readers’ positionality changed after analyzing them with these strategies? how?” she answered: “in certain texts such as scientific texts, i do not think that [an] author’s position can be identified because authors are describing something objectively and there is no room for describing it subjectively.” her statement demonstrates that, by the end of the cycle, she still equated positionality with opinion and had not realized that even factual scientific texts position readers and include biases. taking middle positions another main challenge that, even though not too prevalent, was still very salient was that of students’ difficulty in taking middle positions. that is, six students could only think of either pros or cons, or of agreement or disagreement with the author’s position. an example of these students was pedro. during the guide stage for the second principle—thinking about texts from different perspectives—when students were asked to take a statement from time magazine about vegetarianism and try to take other perspectives, pedro could only take perspectives that were either in favor or against the statement. table 8 shows the perspectives that he provided and how he classified them. table 8. pedro’s response to a magazine article article: “how a vegetarian diet could help save the planet.” principle 2 alternative perspective author’s statement reducing meat consumption improves human health. what would other people say? in favor: vegetarian person: since i have stopped eating meat, i feel healthier and energetic. hinduist: meat is disgusting and is not natural to eat it. why would we eat it? against: carnivorous person: meat is delicious and life is to be enjoyed. we will end up dying anyway. butcher: human beings have always eaten meat. people can do many other things that are also healthy. they do not have to quit eating meat. in this exercise, pedro could think about the author’s statement from different perspectives. however, these perspectives reflected extreme positions: either completely agree or disagree. he did not provide any middle positions such as ovo-lactovegetarians or lacto-vegetarians. then, when presenting his perspectives to the class, he expressed, i believe there are topics without middle points. for example, in vegetarianism, there are always those saying that you must always eat meat because of the proteins. or, there are those saying that you must not eat meat because animals suffer or because it is bad for your health. the statements show that pedro had problems thinking about middle positions or positions that consider arguments both in favor and against the author’s position. to him, “there are topics in which there are not middle points.” [sic] as time progressed, pedro continued to show the same difficulty. the reflection task for the second principle confirms this. in response to question 2 47profile: issues teach. prof. dev., vol. 23 no. 2, jul-dec, 2021. issn 1657-0790 (printed) 2256-5760 (online). bogotá, colombia. pages 35-50 critical reading with undergraduate efl students in colombia: gains and challenges (“to what extent did the strategy help you understand the topic of the text from different perspectives?”) he answered, this strategy has helped me put myself in the shoes of others. however, there are topics that can only be seen from one or two positions and not from so many. for example, the text about vegetarianism that we analyzed, i could not think about perspectives that were different to those that agreed or disagreed. his assertion that certain topics “can only be seen from one or two positions and not from so many” demonstrates that he remained unable to see middle positions. nonetheless, as he himself suggests in the quote, the question remains whether or not he would have had this difficulty had he been confronted with another topic for which he had more background knowledge or interest. discussion and conclusions the results above show that efl students in this reading comprehension course experienced various gains and challenges during the cr unit. these findings are important for several reasons: first, they demonstrate that it is possible to do cr with undergraduate efl students who are not very proficient in the language if instructors provide students with proper instruction and scaffolding before they approach texts (mclaughlin & devoogd, 2004; wallace, 2003). in a country where many efl reading comprehension instructors focus on grammar rules and reading comprehension strategies (aguirre-morales & ramos-holguín, 2009; bautistabarón, 2013; gómez-torres & ávila-constain, 2009; lopera-medina, 2012), it is important to show how reading instruction can be done differently and that efl students have the potential to become active users of the information they read in english texts, to avoid being passive reproducers of the ideas in them (luke, 2000; mclaughlin & devoogd, 2004), and to even go further in their analyses than expected. second, the results of this study complement or expand on those reported by other efl scholars (e.g., esteban-nuñez, 2014; giraldo, 2018; gómez-jiménez & gutierrez, 2019; haromi, 2014; huang, 2011; & liu, 2017) in the sense that they provide information on other possible gains and challenges of cr. for example, the studies by huang (2011), liu (2017), and estebannuñez (2014) found that undergraduate efl students taking reading comprehension courses experienced some gains, such as realizing different types of discrimination, using multiple perspectives to gain a wider perspective of what is going on in texts, and improving their language proficiency thanks to an increase in their motivation. however, they did not find gains such as those reported here. similarly, the studies by giraldo (2018), haromi (2014), and gómez-jiménez and gutierrez (2019) showed that efl students can experience some challenges while reading, such as failing to see authors’ biases when stereotypes apply for more than one social group, being unable to contradict stereotypes when they are deeply tied to their cultural identities, and difficulty in reading critically due to the lack of identification with the topic in texts. nonetheless, they did not find the challenges observed in this study. third, these findings point to specific aspects of cr which might be easy or troublesome for efl students. this is important because, once alerted about these aspects, efl instructors can prepare more effective units and activities. for example, to help their students see positionality when texts appear to be factual, instructors may consider providing them with scaffolding on how they could identify the author’s position in different types of texts other than news reports. similarly, to assist students with the identification of marginalized voices in texts, when these align with the author’s position, efl instructors can bring more texts that have different positions towards the same topic in order to show students that there are indeed many positions about the topic and many voices that are excluded from each universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras48 castaño-roldán & correa text. finally, to support students with the challenge of taking middle positions, efl instructors may consider bringing texts based on topics that are more related to students’ ages, backgrounds, and so on, or allowing students to bring their own texts based on their interests. this way, they will not have to analyze texts chosen based on the instructors’ opinions of what could be engaging to students, as was the case with this study. finally, the study opens new possibilities for further research. such research could explore, for example, how 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(2003). critical reading in language education. palgrave macmillan. https://doi.org/10.1057/9780230514447 https://doi.org/10.1016/j.sbspro.2014.03.398 https://doi.org/10.1016/j.sbspro.2014.03.398 https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1467-9345.2007.00451.x https://doi.org/10.4324/9780203869956 https://doi.org/10.4324/9780203869956 https://doi.org/10.1007/s11519-007-0004-2 https://doi.org/10.1007/s11519-007-0004-2 https://doi.org/10.5539/elt.v10n5p133 https://doi.org/10.1080/00405841.2012.636324 https://doi.org/10.1080/00405841.2012.636324 https://doi.org/10.1598/jaal.48.1.5 https://doi.org/10.1598/jaal.48.1.5 https://doi.org/10.14483/22487085.109 https://doi.org/10.14483/udistrital.jour.calj.2015.1.a04 https://doi.org/10.14483/udistrital.jour.calj.2015.1.a04 https://doi.org/10.1057/9780230505056 https://doi.org/10.19183/how.24.2.331 https://doi.org/10.19183/how.24.2.331 https://doi.org/10.1057/9780230514447 universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras50 castaño-roldán & correa about the authors juan david castaño-roldán holds a master’s degree in foreign language teaching and learning from universidad de antioquia, medellín, colombia. he works as an english instructor at universidad nacional de colombia, medellín, and at the school of languages, universidad de antioquia. his research interests include the use and application of critical literacy theories in english language classrooms. doris correa holds a doctorate in language, literacy, and culture from university of massachusetts, amherst, usa. she works as a full-time professor at the school of languages, universidad de antioquia, medellín. her research interests include the use of systemic functional linguistics, genre-based, multimodal, and multimedia theories to promote efl teachers and students’ critical literacy development. 7profile: issues teach. prof. dev., vol. 22 no. 2, jul-dec, 2020. issn 1657-0790 (printed) 2256-5760 (online). bogotá, colombia. pages 7-10 https://doi.org/10.15446/profile.v22n2.87603 editorial1 looking back and thinking ahead for strengthening the profile journal last february we held the xv profile symposium, an annual local event aimed at inviting teachers of english from different backgrounds to reflect on our profession, to share research results and innovations, and to highlight the importance of doing research. we also took the opportunity to encourage the participants to share their findings through publishing. during the event, we presented the first edition of 2020 of the profile journal and celebrated its twentieth anniversary. we gathered four groups of authors who have published in different moments of their professional careers. they were: • authors who first published in the section issues from novice teacher-researchers of the profile journal • authors who have participated in a teachers’ professional development program • experienced authors, that is, teachers who have published extensively • members of the advisory review board of the journal. pedro chala (universidad javeriana), deissy angélica velandia (elt consultant), mireya peña (universidad libre), rocío mahecha (secretaría de educación distrital), carmen helena guerrero (universidad distrital francisco josé de caldas), ferney cruz (instituto caro y cuervo), liliana cuesta (universidad de la sabana), and álvaro quintero (universidad distrital francisco josé de caldas) kindly accepted our invitation to take part in the symposium, and to speak their minds around the following topics: first, novice teacherresearchers exchanged ideas regarding the worries, interests, and challenges as teachers of english that have emerged since they published their articles, soon after they completed their bed. they also talked about new perspectives in the teaching profession as a result of their engagement in doing research and writing to get published. they agreed on the demands research and writing pose, the need to engage in further studies, and the steering force they acknowledge in the first publication experience they had with profile. on the other hand, school teachers who produced their articles within the framework of a teacher development program that guided them to do research in their classrooms focused how to cite this article (apa, 7th ed.): cárdenas, m. l., & nieto-cruz, m. c. (2020). editorial: looking back and thinking ahead for strengthening the profile journal. profile: issues in teachers’ professional development, 22(2), 7–10. https://doi.org/10.15446/profile.v22n2.87603 this editorial was received on april 15, 2020 and accepted on april 30, 2020. this is an open access article distributed under the terms of the creative commons license attribution noncommercial-noderivatives 4.0 international license. consultation is possible at https://creativecommons. org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/. universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras cárdenas & nieto-cruz 8 on the impact of their experiences publishing in profile for the first time. they reflected on the formation of their authorial identity and how our journal has contributed to the emergence of an academic writing culture. they stressed the need to have a community of practice that looks at teaching, classroom research, and publication as connected entities. the dialogue present in that community, the willingness to share and support each other, and the common interest in granting a protagonist role to teachers were aspects of the teachers’ professional development program that enriched their professional practice. in their opinion, all those elements were vital to getting published and have also contributed to upgrading teachers’ self-esteem, an aspect very much needed nowadays. experienced authors, who have published with us as well as in other journals, talked about the role research plays in the professional development of teachers. they also mentioned additional knowledge teacher-researchers should acquire in order to be able to carry out research and make it visible through academic publication. in their opinion, besides pedagogical and content knowledge, it is necessary to position ourselves as agents of change, as critical professionals whose research agendas are based on local realities and on the commitment to look for better quality and equal opportunities in education. to close the symposium, two members of the advisory review board of the journal reflected upon new possible paths they consider research in english language teaching/ learning will take in the near future. some challenges that the era of digitalization poses to a scientific publication like profile were mentioned too. lastly, and based on their experience as manuscript reviewers, they shared some recommendations to future authors. in their opinion, it is expected that we can have epistemological emancipation, enhance our understanding of reality, and bring our subjectivities to the classroom (teachers’ and students’). overall, the event was an opportunity for the participants to reflect on the importance of research (and the subsequent publication of findings) to positively impact teachers’ professional lives and to avoid reproducing practices that have proven ineffective or hegemonic. this sort of reflection is at the base of educational changes that ultimately favor more inclusive learning processes. in this issue, we are very pleased to share with you 13 articles. ten correspond to the section issues from teacher researchers, one to the section issues from novice teacher-researchers, and two to the section issues based on reflections and innovations. the contributions come from seven countries: colombia with five articles, chile with three, mexico with two, argentina with one as well as iran, and one written in co-authorship by researchers from spain and the united states of america. the topics discussed by researchers in the current issue concern english language teaching and learning as regards preand in-service teachers, school teachers, and higher education students. the articles also reveal an interest in exploring issues such as collaborative learning, content and language integrated learning (clil), and oral and written correction feedback, among others. profile: issues teach. prof. dev., vol. 22 no. 2, jul-dec, 2020. issn 1657-0790 (printed) 2256-5760 (online). bogotá, colombia. pages 7-10 editorial 9 the section issues from teacher researchers begins with an article that examines the quality of a tutoring program for future teachers in the bed program in philology and languages (english and french programs) at universidad nacional de colombia, bogota. the study by deissy angélica velandia (instituto tecnológico y de estudios superiores de monterrey, mexico) revealed that a comprehensive, personalized tutoring plan was needed. this article is followed by one that discusses gender in relation to leadership and risk-taking skills tied to an academic writing professional development course. the writing course helped the researcher, anna peñaloza (universidad pedagógica y tecnológica de colombia), to understand that there is a perpetuation of social gender roles, gender stereotypes, and the patriarchy. the third paper is authored by erika de la barra and soffía carbone (universidad mayor, chile). these authors explore the use of cooperative learning through literature in two vulnerable english as a foreign language (efl) classrooms in chile. the cooperative learning together with literature resulted in a suitable combination to improve learners’ learning strategies and personal growth. in fourth place, edgar alirio insuasty and maría fernanda jaime osorio (universidad surcolombiana, colombia) developed a collaborative action research study whose main objective was to transform the pedagogical practices of teachers of a colombian school of foreign languages. the study evidenced favorable perceptions about the impact of collaborative action research on the transformation of the participating english language teachers’ pedagogical practices. next, we have a joint effort between daniel madrid (universidad de granada, spain) and steven julius (university of st. thomas, usa). the researchers examined the profile of students in the bilingual university degree programs that employ english as the medium of instruction. the researchers concluded that the input provided by their study might result in the improvement of the university bilingual programs. natalia ramírez-lizcano and maría alejandra cabrera-tovar (universidad surcolombiana, colombia) dealt with telecollaboration to connect efl learners’ perceptions about language learning with culture. telecollaboration facilitated the understanding of the nature of language situated within functional and humanistic perspectives and the understanding of the scope of culture and cultural identity. english language teaching in the context of high school is presented by marco cancino and gabriela díaz (universidad andres bello, chile). in their article, the authors explore the code-switching practices between english and spanish used by school teachers to accomplish a number of functions in two classroom modes via the teacher talk scheme. the eighth article explores the possible forms of professional yet personal–local knowledge two language student teachers encounter and produce when they plan language lessons. the authors are diego f. ubaque-casallas (universidad distrital francisco josé de caldas, colombia) and edgar aguirre-garzón (pontificia universidad javeriana, colombia). findings suggest that through lesson planning, language student teachers manage to re-signify certain methodological constructions of teaching and learning. the higher education context is discussed by edgar emmanuell garcia-ponce (universidad de guanajuato, mexico) in a study that examines the perceptions of employers, university authorities, english teachers, and students concerning needs to promote english achievement in a mexican university. we universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras cárdenas & nieto-cruz 10 close this section with an article by authors from three different iranian universities. the authors are sajjad sepehrinia (university of tehran), nahid fallah (university of kharazmi), and soad torfi (islamic azad university). the three researchers worked on how teachers provide oral corrections for their students. their research focus was about the role of students’ proficiency level in five english language teachers’ corrective behavior with special attention to affective and practical dimensions. the findings carry important implications for teacher education programs. the section issues from novice teacher researchers contains an article by yesika aristizábaljiménez (universidad de antioquia, colombia). in her article, the researcher makes a connection between critical analysis and youtube contents. the results showed that the implementation of critical media literacy helped students become aware of the content they were consuming and improve their english oral performance by means of specific oral activities. the final section, issues based on reflections and innovations, features two articles. the first is a joint venture between darío luis banegas (university of strathclyde, uk, & ministerio de educación del chubut, argentina) and cristina lauze (escuela no. 713, argentina). the argentinian researchers connected clil with comprehensive sexual education in their study. after one month of instruction, students were able to deliver presentations on comprehensive sexual education topics. we end this section and the current issue with a study by benjamín cárcamo (universidad de las américas, chile). this article presents a typology on written corrective feedback (wcf) that aims to close the gap between an agreement on the definition of this type of feedback and the effects of different types of feedback on students’ writing. the author expects that the resulting typology will help to improve the effectiveness in the comparison of wcf studies and serve as a reference for teachers interested in expanding their practices. while closing this issue, we learned that the profile journal has been included for the first time in the scimago journal rank and that it is positioned in quartile 2 in the “linguistics and language” category. we see this as an indication of the growing international impact of our publication and it motivates us to keep publishing high-quality contents for the benefit of our expanding readership. we thank the members of our editorial, scientific, and review committees as well as our authors for the interest they have bestowed upon our publication. we acknowledge their professionalism and commitment. as always, we hope our readers find the contents of this issue relevant for their professional practice. you are invited to share and discuss the topics raised in this issue with your colleagues and/or students. melba libia cárdenas journal editor maría claudia nieto cruz journal director profile: issues teach. prof. dev., vol. 21 no. 1, jan-jun, 2019. issn 1657-0790 (printed) 2256-5760 (online). bogotá, colombia. pages 7-9 editorial 7 https://doi.org/10.15446/profile.v21n1.76887 editorial1* profile: issues in teachers’ professional development... now in scopus! we are pleased to open this edition with this good news: starting this year, the contents of the journal will be indexed in scopus database. let us remember that scopus is the largest abstract and citation database of peer-reviewed literature in the world. it includes scientific journals, books, and conference proceedings. in the colombian context, scopus is considered a key database, which has a great impact on the evaluation of the quality and visibility of the journals. being part of it becomes a requirement for the classification of academic journals in the national indexing system. this achievement represents another opportunity to augment the international visibility of profile and the spread of our authors’ articles. this recognition comes after several years of constant monitoring of the editorial processes. along this journey, we have counted on the cooperation of several people. that is why we express our gratitude for all the actors involved in the production and issuance of the journal, especially to our authors and evaluators. we also acknowledge the support of universidad nacional de colombia, the centro editorial of the facultad de ciencias humanas, and the members of the profile research group at the same university. the formal process of evaluation in scopus started in 2010 and two years later we were informed that our journal would not be included. we regretted that decision and did not give up in our attempts to maintain a publication characterized by its conviction of including manuscripts by teachers from different teaching backgrounds. this inclusive vision has been recognised by different academic communities and databases. however, we kept scopus in mind as one of the targets. finally, in june 2018, the content selection and advisory board (csab) of scopus notified us that we had been accepted for inclusion. as expressed in the evaluation, their decision was based on the fact that the journal consistently includes articles that are scientifically sound and relevant to an international academic or professional audience in this field. they also considered that the abstracts are in keeping with scopus english language requirements and that, in general, the content of the articles is consistent with the scope and aims of the journal. scopus also acknowledges that our publication addresses a * how to cite this article (apa, 6th ed.): cárdenas, m. l., & nieto cruz, m. c. (2019). editorial: profile: issues in teachers’ professional development... now in scopus! profile: issues in teachers’ professional development, 21(1), 7-9. https://doi.org/10.15446/profile.v21n1.76887. this editorial was received on november 3, 2018 and accepted on december 8, 2018. this is an open access article distributed under the terms of the creative commons license attribution noncommercial-noderivatives 4.0 international license. consultation is possible at https://creativecommons. org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/. universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras cárdenas & nieto cruz 8 subject area not properly covered by an existing journal and that, although the scope of our journal is narrow, it addresses the need of an important audience niche. in contrast, the remarks stating that articles in profile have attracted few citations by readers of other publications currently covered by scopus make us think to what extent we should make efforts to comply with that. as argued in previous editions, rather than getting citations, we believe emphasis should be placed on maintaining a forum for pre-service, grassroots teachers, teacher educators, and established researchers. we are aware of differences in expertise among our authors, as can be evidenced in their approach and tone to report their studies. nonetheless, we maintain our commitment to supporting less experienced authors to comply with the journals’ guidelines and to meet the expectations of a varied readership. this achievement, which brings pride to our editorial team, reaffirms our mission and vision. we want to be a point of reference for communities in peripheral contexts like the ones we have in colombia and many other countries most of our authors are based in. we have gathered eleven articles in this edition; six of them are authored by colombian scholars and of the other five, three come from mexico, one from brazil, and one from spain. the first section, issues from teacher researchers, includes eight articles concerning the identity of students and teachers, pedagogical knowledge of pre-service and in-service teachers, teaching and learning strategies, and technology based learning. the first article, written by pedro augusto de lima bastos and rosane rocha pessoa from the universidade federal de goiás (brazil), examines the identities of adolescent students in brazil regarding their body image and how through a critical approach to language teaching, the topics of beauty standards and fatness were problematized in a teaching material designed to give an answer to oppressive stories of fatness and beauty standards lived by adolescents. next, álvaro hernán quintero polo from the universidad distrital francisco josé de caldas (colombia) discusses how a transformative and critical attitude shapes formative pedagogical and research experiences that resulted in high levels of sensitivity towards socially associated issues in language education. the third study presents how english teachers in mexican higher education face linguistic ideologies, supposedly natural and apolitical, of the foreign language resulting in language hierarchies, cultural homogenization, and english linguistic discrimination; elements that shape the perceptions and in the end the identity of the english teachers. this article was written by colette despagne from the benemérita universidad autónoma de puebla (mexico). then, colombian researcher alejandro fernández benavides from universidad santiago de cali (colombia) presents a study in which livemocha, a language learning website, was used to understand the inserted intercultural elements. the platform fosters the description of festivals and food and some intercultural skills. the fifth article, written by nahum samperio sánchez from universidad autónoma de baja california (mexico) revolves around the learning strategies used by high and low achievers in the first level of english. both achievers use different strategies, but their success lies in the frequency of use of the selected alternatives. the paper developed by maría catalina gómez jiménez from universidad pontificia bolivariana (colombia) and claudia patricia gutiérrez from universidad de antioquia (colombia) comes next and reveals profile: issues teach. prof. dev., vol. 21 no. 1, jan-jun, 2019. issn 1657-0790 (printed) 2256-5760 (online). bogotá, colombia. pages 7-9 editorial 9 the commitment of a teacher and her students in a private institution when engaging in critical literacy practices. the results of this study showed that english students were sensible towards the power they have as agents of social change, while developing language skills. on their part, lizbeth gómez argüelles, edith hernández méndez, and moisés d. perales escudero from universidad de quintana roo (mexico) discuss teachers’ attitudes towards oral corrective feedback as a teaching strategy. teachers favored implicit corrective feedback strategies over explicit ones as a result of the unawareness of corrective feedback strategies and a need for more theory-based corrective feedback training and practice. the first section closes with the paper produced by claudia gómez palacio, deisa enid gómez vargas, and hadaluz pulgarín taborda from universidad de antioquia (colombia), where the authors depict the development of pedagogical knowledge as a result of coaching. coaching offers possibilities for building trust, interest, and self-leadership in the development of the professional profile. in the second section, issues from novice teacher researchers, we include a study by derly yuleith guzmán gámez and johana andrea moreno cuellar from universidad de la amazonia (colombia). these novel researchers investigated plotagon, an interactive and attractive interphase for creating digital stories, to motivate the development of the writing skills in secondary school teachers. the results speak of an increase in vocabulary, writing, and other language skills. the last section, issues based on reflections and innovations, includes two articles: the first one, submitted by daniel pascual from the universidad de zaragoza (spain), relates as well to the inclusion of technology in the form of travel blogs to develop students’ communicative and digital competences. the paper offers a proposal for implementing the travel blogs in the teaching of english in secondary education in spain. the proposal includes a corpus and a series of lesson plans that take into account the principles of communicative language teaching and task-based learning, together with the corpus-based results. the study aims to equip students with knowledge of digital genres to enable them to interact digitally in travel blogs. the last article was written by colombian academics edgar lucero and katherin roncanciocastellanos from universidad de la salle (colombia). in it, they examine the experiences of pre-service teachers in their practicum in a private setting through the writing of journals and group talks. the results reveal the importance of mentors in the teaching practices as a starting point in the construction of identities as language teachers. we hope you enjoy this edition and help us spread the word about its contents. we will continue working to safeguard the prestige the journal has thus far acquired thanks to the commitment of authors in sharing relevant contents for the teachers and researchers in the english language area. melba libia cárdenas journal editor maría claudia nieto cruz journal director analysis of ma students’ writing in english language teaching: a systemic functional linguistic approach 75profile: issues teach. prof. dev., vol. 23 no. 1, jan-jun, 2021. issn 1657-0790 (printed) 2256-5760 (online). bogotá, colombia. pages 75-88 https://doi.org/10.15446/profile.v23n1.82598 analysis of ma students’ writing in english language teaching: a systemic functional linguistic approach análisis de la escritura de estudiantes de maestría en la enseñanza del inglés: un enfoque lingüístico sistémico funcional vicky ariza-pinzón1 benemérita universidad autónoma de puebla, puebla, mexico this study explores the ways in which master thesis writers position their research in the field of english language teaching in a context where academic literacies are still a developing field. from a social semiotic perspective, this paper aims to identify the resources writers use to represent their object of study and provide a context and justification for research. the analysis focuses on the ideational and textual metafunctions to account for patterns of meanings in seven introductory chapters of master theses in english teacher education. the results reveal a set of interconnected genres—descriptions of the object of study, definitions, and personal exemplum—that build a shared experience with the reader as well as the persuasive purpose of the text. keywords: academic writing, genre, research strategies, systemic functional linguistics, thesis writing este estudio explora las formas en que los escritores de maestría posicionan su investigación en el área de la enseñanza del inglés, en un contexto en el que la literacidad académica sigue siendo un campo en desarrollo. desde una perspectiva semiótica social, este documento tiene como objetivo identificar los recursos que los escritores usan para representar el objeto de estudio y proporcionar un contexto y una justificación para su investigación. el análisis se centra en las metafunciones ideacional y textual para dar cuenta de los patrones de significado en siete capítulos introductorios de tesis de maestría en la enseñanza de lenguas. los resultados revelan un conjunto de géneros interconectados —descripciones del objeto de estudio, definiciones y ejemplos personales— que conforman una experiencia compartida con el lector, así como el propósito persuasivo del texto. palabras clave: escritura académica, escritura de tesis, estrategias en la investigación, género, lingüística sistémico funcional vicky ariza-pinzón  https://orcid.org/0000-0003-4544-4708 · email: vicky.ariza@correo.buap.mx this article is based on the dissertation completed by ariza-pinzón (2019). how to cite this article (apa, 7th ed.): ariza-pinzón, v. (2021). analysis of ma students’ writing in english language teaching: a systemic functional linguistic approach. profile: issues in teachers’ professional development, 23(1), 75–88. https://doi.org/10.15446/profile.v23n1.82598 this article was received on october 1, 2019 and accepted on august 4, 2020. this is an open access article distributed under the terms of the creative commons license attribution-noncommercial-noderivatives 4.0 international license. consultation is possible at https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/ https://orcid.org/0000-0003-4544-4708 https://doi.org/10.15446/profile.v23n1.82598 https://orcid.org/0000-0003-2702-0071 universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras76 ariza-pinzón introduction writing a master dissertation constitutes a big challenge at the end of any educational program when students engage independently in their first research project. in this stage, students are expected not only to draw from their personal and professional experience to find a topic for research but also, they are expected to “negotiate some of their prior literacy experiences associated with academic and non-academic domains and the academic writing requirements of their current degree program” (kaufhold, 2017, p. 84). in addition to the academic and institutional requirements, students are expected to know the disciplinary conventions of the genre (autrey & carter, 2015). these considerations— the relationship between the institution, the literacy practices, and the disciplinary conventions—define master thesis writing as a critical social space in which students have to develop a purposeful academic text on their way towards becoming part of a professional community. however, more often than not, students fail to recognize the social nature of master thesis writing—in terms of the organization of knowledge and the organization of intellectual and educational practices within a context (christie & maton, 2011). the difficulties to recognize thesis writing as a social practice seem to derive from at least three aspects identified in the context of latin america, particularly in mexico. first, there is a generalized view that considers writing as a set of skills students are supposed to come equipped with to deal with the reading and writing tasks at the university. students who struggle with writing assignments are labeled as having a deficit that needs to be “fixed” (lea & street, 1998). it goes without saying that this view disregards the broader social context of writing practices. focusing only on technicalities makes thesis writers lose sight of the institutional context, the conventions of the written text, and the relationships with their immediate readers. this may create scenarios of inequality and disadvantage when negotiating legitimate participation in a professional community. second, there is a wide variety of theoretical trends, influences, and emerging epistemologies for literacy studies in latin america that make it difficult to nominalize what writing entails (ávila-reyes, 2017). given a context in which the study of writing is a developing field, the predominance of “heterogeneous” theoretical trends causes contradictory uses of epistemological concepts (navarro, 2019). as a result, the random use of epistemological trends creates a tension among educators’ differing perspectives of literacy. for example, some educators regard writing as a complex social interaction influenced by cultural, social, political, and economic factors; others still see writing as an orderly skill which is set unvarying and transferable across contexts (de silva joyce & feez, 2016). finally, it is likely that having differing views on writing has an effect on how writing pedagogy is enacted within the classroom. preconceived ideas about literacy and the lack of explicit instruction of writing in higher education programs obscures the particularities of the thesis genre and the subtleties of disciplinary discourse for students to write more effectively. i argue that in order to understand master thesis writing as a social practice, it is necessary to address issues of epistemology, identity, and power relations within a broader social context. the purpose of this paper is to address that gap. first, i intend to identify the linguistic resources that novice writers use to open a legitimate space for their research in the area of english language teaching (elt) from a systemic functional linguistics (sfl) perspective. second, i aim to explore the semiotic potential for meaning making in a critical social space where english is used as an academic language for disciplinary writing. master thesis writing as a social practice writing as a social practice is defined as an interplay of practices, literacy events, and texts. according 77profile: issues teach. prof. dev., vol. 23 no. 1, jan-jun, 2021. issn 1657-0790 (printed) 2256-5760 (online). bogotá, colombia. pages 75-88 analysis of ma students’ writing in english language teaching: a systemic functional linguistic approach to barton and hamilton (2010) literacy practices are related to different domains of life, as they are shaped by social institutions and power relations as well as by epistemology (lea & street, 1998). the literacy events are situations that reveal particular forms of written language that are used to represent values, attitudes, and feelings in a text. practices, events, and texts are essential to comprehending writing practices as a holistic social phenomenon for they are built and shaped in a community and in relation to other people that go beyond individual acts. following, i discuss some social practices that illustrate master thesis writing as a social phenomenon. the first aspect that defines thesis writing as a social practice is the use of disciplinary knowledge. the fact that writing occurs in socially situated practices (lave & wenger, 1991; wenger, 1998) demands particular ways to build knowledge in disciplinary spaces such as elt. in other words, writers generally write for someone and what they write is shaped by a set of rules and conventions that are taken for granted. in this way, what is possible to say and how it must be said is determined by the discursive conventions of the discipline and its members (ivaniĉ, 1998). these conventions, represented in oral and written discourse, give an account of the social tensions that the participants face in order to have a sense of habitual permanence in a given community (fairclough, 1989). however, this “common sense”— the way of acting and thinking of a community in disciplinary spaces—is not evident for thesis writers, which places them at disadvantage. the second aspect for considering writing as a social practice is related to the interpersonal or power relationships that underlie thesis writing in a second language. typically, in the context of elt, undergraduate or masters’ students write their theses for a very small audience and under the guidance of a supervisor. however, the practices that occur around the genre development are occluded (autrey & carter, 2015; swales, 1996); and it is difficult to know exactly how this genre is learned and taught (paré et al., 2009). however, it is to be expected, as coffin et al. (2003) point out, that the relationship between the supervisor and supervisees exerts some influence on the way writing takes place in higher education, particularly in a crucial document such as the thesis. it is likely that under these circumstances, readers feel they have the authority, as established members of a community, to serve as gatekeepers (lillis & curry, 2010), and to determine what constitutes “appropriate academic writing” according to the conventions of the disciplines or academic communities. it is precisely the unawareness of these academic conventions that puts membership into a professional community at risk. finally, the third aspect to consider writing as a social practice involves issues of identity shaping. those may occur in the process of becoming part of a professional community. in addition to learning to communicate in particular ways, thesis writers also have to learn to “be” particular types of people, and forge an identity as academics, professors, or as researchers (coffin et al., 2003). thesis writing, then, is a legitimate form of incursion into a disciplinary community but the path for insertion into that community is not explicit. in sum, master thesis writing as a social practice—as suggested in this paper—involves the understanding of the complex interplay of disciplinary knowledge, interpersonal relationships, and identity shaping. however, its study has received little attention in the context of latin america, particularly in mexico. academic literacies and sfl offer a framework to address that gap because of their focus on practices in context and texts in context (coffin & donohue, 2012). these contrasting perspectives complement each other to explore the social and linguistic practices entailed in the introductory chapter of the master thesis in the area of elt, which is the objective of this paper. in addition to that, it seeks to explore the semiotic potential for thesis writing development in a context where english is used as an academic language. the following research universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras78 ariza-pinzón questions orientate the objectives of this study: (1) what are the linguistic resources instantiated in the introductory chapter of master theses in the area of elt? and (2) what practices are common for thesis writers to create a legitimate space for research? the rest of the article presents the theoretical underpinnings of both frameworks and how they support the methodological proposal of this study. academic literacies as has already been mentioned, the concept of literacy means different things to different people. lea and street (1998) have conceptualized a range of theoretical trends in three writing models: the skills model, the socialization model, and the academic literacies model (lea & street, 1998, 2006; street, 1984). the skills model is related to structural views of language as well as cognitive learning views. in this model, writing is considered as an instrumental ability and as a transposition from oral language to written language. the inability to transfer writing skills from one context to another is considered a deficit as concerns students. the second model is that of academic socialization, where students are exposed to specific genres of the community to which they must integrate. according to lea and street (2006), it is through an acculturation process where “students acquire the ways of talking, writing, thinking, and using literacy” from the members of a professional community (p. 369). in this vision, it is assumed that the genres possess certain stability and that students will acquire those genres from simple exposition. even though this model considers contextual factors for the development of writing, the superficial vision of language as a form of transparent representation “fails to address the depth of language, literacy and discourse issues involved in the institutional production and representation of meaning” (lea & street, 1998, p. 158). finally, the academic literacy model considers literacy as socially constructed under situations of power relations, epistemology, and identity (lea & street, 1998). this implies looking at academic practices in higher education as events shaped by the configuration of the social space in which they occur and by power relations. in this way, each space “is concerned with meaning making, identity, power, and authority, and foregrounds the institutional nature of what counts as knowledge in any particular academic context” (lea & street, 2006, p. 369). clearly, there is a critical stance in the academic literacies paradigm; one that focuses on practices to enhance transformation of social inequalities (coffin & donohue, 2012). that view is shared with sfl where writing is considered as a social and goal-oriented practice with a specific purpose in a broad social context (martin, 1997). this text-based perspective aims to “teach the students about whole texts as the main unit of purposeful language use and about varieties of language to use in different contexts” (de silva joyce & feez, 2016, p. 24). emphasis is given to the types of genres involved in the master thesis writing as well as its development for which a theory of language that considers social and contextual factors is necessary. a functional model of language sfl offers an explanatory model beyond the descriptive nature of language. this model allows decoding the meaning systems that regulate human behavior (hasan, 2001; martin, 2001). in other words, when we use the language, we are able to choose from a variety of linguistic resources that make it possible to explore the relationships among the text, context, register, and genre to reveal the meaning of social practices. this linguistic framework deconstructs these relationships in such a way that it allows to capture semiotic systems that are not perceptible to the naked eye and allows one to critically evaluate the ideologies that emerge in the text. in order to know more about the social context in which a particular text is used, sfl provides a multilayer description of the clause in light of three metafunctions. the ideational, which represents the experience of the 79profile: issues teach. prof. dev., vol. 23 no. 1, jan-jun, 2021. issn 1657-0790 (printed) 2256-5760 (online). bogotá, colombia. pages 75-88 analysis of ma students’ writing in english language teaching: a systemic functional linguistic approach world (field); the interpersonal, which expresses the relationship between the participants in a communicative event and how language organizes social interaction (tenor); and the textual, which gives value to the text and its components to achieve a coherent discourse (mode). together, field, tenor and mode represent the register of the text (martin & rose, 2007). in this sense, we can say that the metafunctional nature of language allows semiotic activity and the choice of meanings; and the creation of meaning is a semiotic act (halliday & matthiessen, 2014). master thesis writing in elt is a case in point of a semiotic act. when we write the introductory chapters, these metafunctions are expressed simultaneously in the text and each contains three layers of meaning namely phonology and graphology, lexico-grammar and discourse semantics (martin, 1992; martin & rose, 2007). these layers of meaning—also known as strata— display realizations of language at the level of sounds and letters, at the level of the clause and at the level of the whole text. phonology and graphology are used to represent an oral or written expression (martin, 1992). the lexico-grammar layer focuses on the meaning of clauses, while the discursive semantics focuses on the holistic meaning of the text. essentially, the integration of the discourse semantics and the lexico-grammar strata as an analytical framework offer the means for the study of the generic structure of the introductory chapters of a master thesis. summing up, the analytical tools of sfl bring to the surface the subtleties of written language. it also distinguishes the subtleties of the academic language used in the disciplines; most importantly, it shows how these are shaped according to the context in which they occur. as martin (2008) points out: “a model of this kind provides a social semiotic perspective on knowledge structure; and, knowledge is by and large realized through, construed by, and over time reconstrued through ideational meaning via the modalities of language and image” (p. 34). a functional perspective of a micro genre: thesis introduction this study focuses on the micro genre of the introduction which belongs to a larger genre—the whole thesis. traditionally, swales’ (1990) cars model (creating a research space) is widely used for article introductions. the model has three moves to perform various rhetorical functions whose purpose is to establish the research topic and justify the need for more research. when writing the introductory chapter of the master thesis, the writer is asked to follow those moves in order to persuade the reader that his or her research is significant, that there is room for new knowledge, and that a contribution can be made to it. although moves in the writing of research articles are a useful pedagogical tool, it lacks a functional explanation of language which limits the potential to distinguish subtle differences between disciplines, discourses, or genres (hood, 2010). swales himself recognizes the need of a model that provides frameworks for the study of social action (swales, 2009). a second limitation is that there is no consensus in the interpretation of the moves because there are no explicit lexico-grammar patterns that indicate what move it is. the validation of the arguments in the cars model is based more on the experience and intuition of the experienced reader rather than on a theory of language. this causes the particularities of the genre to be occluded before the eyes of the inexperienced writer. from a more functional vision, hood (2010) proposes a more transparent model, capable of revealing the ways in which knowledge and academic arguments are socially constructed in discourse, through discourse, and through dialogue with other knowledge and other knowers. in other words, a functional model is intended to achieve an understanding of what it means to create meaning in the academic sense and to recognize what literacy practices are privileged in a context in which new knowledge is being built. those patterns of meaning can be viewed from three perspectives: “the relationships that are enacted by language, the experiences universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras80 ariza-pinzón that are construed by it and the role language plays in the context” (rose & martin, 2012, p. 22). hood (2010) formulates the notion of research warrant as a discursive context where writers not only state their claims but are able to support them before the objectivity and criticism of their readers. the social purpose of the research warrant is to justify the need of the research in a given area of study. in this particular case, identifying the distinctive structure of introductions of master theses allows certain purposes to be achieved such as legitimizing research in the area of elt. in this view, chapter one is typically composed of a series of genres, each playing a role in the process of legitimizing a contribution to knowledge by establishing a research warrant (hood, 2011). the author mentions that writing an introduction involves building an evaluative representation of one or more fields of knowledge, with the purpose of persuading a community of readers of the legitimacy of the research project. this represents a double challenge for novice writers in the area of elt because, in addition to mastering aspects of genre and register, they have to negotiate knowledge construction in a second language. this becomes relevant since writing constitutes a social field where experience is constructed in a dynamic way that goes from everyday knowledge to the synthetic and elaborated way of written grammar (halliday, 1993). the following sections describe the methodological design to address these issues. method in order to investigate the complexity of literacy practices from a social perspective this qualitative research follows a textual and ethnographic orientation (de silva joyce & feez, 2016). in that regard, sfl and academic literacies explore the social and linguistic practices entailed in the introduction chapter of a master thesis. as an analytical method, sfl would be able to bring to the surface the regulatory principles that underlie the invisible practices of reading and writing in higher education that unconsciously regulate our behavior (martin, 2001). it is expected that a linguistic analysis of thesis writing shows the social positioning of the speaker, the visible features of the text, and the discourse that links certain texts in different ways (hasan, 2001). on their part, academic literacies allow the interpretation of those features to identify what practices are more evident in the process of thesis writing. this, in order to find answers to my two research questions (see section master thesis writing as a social practice). context this study was carried out in the school of languages of a public university in central mexico. the school offers an ma program in elt. master students are generally in-service teachers from different contexts and backgrounds. towards the end of the program, they have to write their thesis in english as part of the graduation requirements. during the two-year program students write different types of academic papers; however, the program does not offer any explicit instruction nor writing courses in the curricula. as an immersed participant in the field (edwards, 2002), i am well aware of the practices of the community, their legitimate participants and newcomers, such as the thesis writers. however, awareness about the text is another basic principle for literacy research (eggins, 1994); one that allows establishing a distance from the research field and separate any interpersonal relationship between the writer and the researcher and maintain confidentiality, ethics, and objectivity (creswell, 2012). corpus selection the corpus of this research consists of seven introductory chapters of master theses in the program of elt, one per year during the period of 2010 to 2016. its selection considered three main criteria. the first one had to do with the identification of the five most prolific supervisors as thesis directors in five cohorts of the program. the purpose was not only to identify consistency in the patterns of the thesis genre, but also 81profile: issues teach. prof. dev., vol. 23 no. 1, jan-jun, 2021. issn 1657-0790 (printed) 2256-5760 (online). bogotá, colombia. pages 75-88 analysis of ma students’ writing in english language teaching: a systemic functional linguistic approach to analyze the writing conventions of this community by analyzing its members’ supervision practices. the second was related to the institutional validation of the thesis and the degree completion process. in other words, those theses had been legitimized and validated through an oral and written examination process. the intention was not to judge whether a thesis was “good” or “bad.” rather, the objective was to identify the writing conventions widely accepted by the community. finally, the last criteria focused on the whole text and its subtle variations in response to social contexts in terms of function and meaning (eggins, 1994). quantitatively, the corpus represented 9% of the total sample, which may not be statistically representative. however, from a qualitative standpoint, a small corpus gives meaning to the analysis and it is relevant as the analysis focuses on the instance and not on the language system, as referred to in the following quote: “instantiation involves the way we observe metastability in social semiotic systems” (martin & rose, 2007, p. 310). in other words, there is an inertia between instantiation and the semiotic system. table 1 shows the title of the theses of the corpus, the graduation year, and the code assigned to each introductory chapter. table 1. titles of master theses in the period 2010–2016 which constitutes the analyzed corpus number year title 1 intro_2010 teachers reflections on teaching english to children through content-based instruction 2 intro_2011 supervision in higher education research contexts: understanding expert research supervision 3 intro_2012 exploring the effects of an elt ma program on teachers’ professional development 4 intro_2013 promoting project-based learning in higher education learners to enhance their performance in learning a foreign language 5 intro_2014 experiential grammatical metaphor in english and spanish linguistic research articles: a comparative study 6 intro_2015 english teachers’ journals: from description to reflection and development in mexican public basic education 7 intro_2016 dyslexia and children’s english language learning in a mexican elementary school: a crowdsourced intervention study data analysis after corpus selection, the sample chapters were transcribed for analysis. in order to find the recurrent linguistic patterns in the texts, i used codes to differentiate between simple and complex clauses following the procedure suggested by butt et al. (2003). after the texts were annotated, all verbal groups were underlined to identify the number of clauses. in total, the texts yielded 491 clauses and 94 clause complexes, as shown in table 2. table 2. clause analysis by introductory chapter chapter 1 no. of clauses no. of clause complexes sample 2010 63 10 sample 2011 80 14 sample 2012 46 12 sample 2013 97 15 sample 2014 51 10 sample 2015 76 17 sample 2016 78 16 total 491 94 universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras82 ariza-pinzón this analysis generated a characterization of the structural elements of the master thesis genre at a lexicogrammar level. it was possible to identify the subtleties of discourse through a search for linguistic evidence that supports the tenor that the text establishes with its readers, its function, and the language in use to fulfill certain social purposes (eggins, 1994). establishing the text as the focus of analysis allowed lexical-grammatical patterns to reflect by themselves different constructions of novice writers. in order to grasp those constructions, it was necessary to extend focus to the discourse semantic strata (martin & rose, 2007), and look for the patterns of meaning that unfold in the text to establish halfway points between grammar and genre (hood, 2011). those results are described in the following section. results this section reports the findings that shed light on the social practices around master thesis writing in the area of elt. by explaining how this genre is linguistically constituted and what its social function is, i attempt to respond to the research questions of the study. first, the orientation to the topic section addresses the linguistic resources and the patterns of meaning used in the introductory chapters of master theses. second, the writer’s experiences and the portrayal of identity represent two common social practices—or rhetorical strategies—that justify research in the area of elt, create empathy with the reader, and legitimize research. orientation of the topic in the master thesis introduction thesis writing at a master level requires students to draw from their literacy experiences, both academic and non-academic to engage in a research topic (kaufhold, 2017). one of the findings reflects a flow of events built throughout the text that helped to characterize the introduction genre as a whole (martin & rose, 2007). in the corpus analyzed, there was evidence of some genres used within the introduction to open a space for research. the object of study—or its definition—, the description of the local context, and the report of studies are recurrent practices that orientate the research topic of the writers. those events do not occur in a particular order along the introduction, but they are present in the chapters analyzed. the following example illustrates how the writer constructs the object of study by means of patterns of lexical choice (martin & rose, 2007). it also provides a description of the local context in relation to the object of study and supports it with a report of studies. in the first paragraph of intro_2010, the representation of the field centers on the teaching and learning process of english as a second language. the field is construed using the word chain: content-based instruction, language learning, second language acquisition, and educational and cognitive psychology. intro_2010 as grabe and stoller (1997) report, content based instruction (cbi) contributes enormously to successful language learning. they present research evidence that range from studies in second language acquisition, controlled training studies to research in educational and cognitive psychology (p. 5) . . . thus, the purpose of this study is to present my own research in this area as well as the framework used to carry it on. the current research presents a case study which addresses the issue of content based instruction (cbi) . . . a number of significant studies have been done based on cbi. early versions of cbi were used in english for specific purposes (esp) . . . there are a considerable number of studies that have focused their attention on the implementation of the approach (cbi) rationale, curriculum design, materials, learning outcomes, etc.) (see met, 1999, brooks & sandkamp, 2000, richards & rodgers, 2001, brown, 2005). however, to my knowledge, cbl teachers’ impressions have not yet been deeply explored. 83profile: issues teach. prof. dev., vol. 23 no. 1, jan-jun, 2021. issn 1657-0790 (printed) 2256-5760 (online). bogotá, colombia. pages 75-88 analysis of ma students’ writing in english language teaching: a systemic functional linguistic approach this lexical pattern represents only a first orientation to the research topic from an ideational perspective. in other words, readers can get an overview of what the research topic is about. from a textual perspective, the themes used in the introduction display how other meanings are construed throughout the text (hood, 2011). as we can see in intro_2010, the theme “grabe and stoller (1997)” assists the writer in introducing the topic of the thesis: the use of content-based instruction in the teaching and learning process of english as a second language. alignment with these authors aids in qualifying their research as important. after alignment, the writer shifts themes in order to introduce her own research. the theme “thus, the purpose of this study” sets the basis for a case study in a very local context. finally, the themes “a number of significant studies” and “there are a considerable number of studies” introduce a list of reports that support the writer’s own study. these thematic changes contributed to building a shared experience with the reader and the persuasive purpose of the text. the theme “however, to my knowledge,” indicates that further research is necessary. the second example, intro_2014, follows a similar pattern as the previous one. the field is construed using the following word chain: academic writing, skill, high literacy, academic and professional disciplines, rhetorical moves, schematic structure. this lexical pattern identifies “academic writing” as the object of study. the expressions “although these studies have been very significant” and “this study” emphasize not only the importance of current studies, but also a possible contribution to knowledge from the writer’s research. intro_2014 academic writing is seen as a skill and as a crucial concept in the high literacy. students and scholars are expected to show expertise and mastery in their writing tasks as they get immersed in their academic and professional disciplines. the characterization of academic writing in research articles has placed special interest on rhetorical moves and schematic structure like that by swales (1990) for instance. although these studies have been very significant, it is also crucial to concentrate not just on the rhetorical perspective, but also on the lexical and grammar angle in research articles. halliday (1994), in relation to this, considers grammar as a key element in discourse analysis . . . this study was done since academic writing plays a crucial role in research articles publishing. researchers need to cope with academic writing skills, and i believe that the exploration of grammatical metaphor is a way of succeeding in writing. from the examples above, we can see that the orientation to the object of study plays an important role to establish the importance of the research in the introduction. this finding is consistent in four out of the seven theses analyzed. thesis writers in the area of elt make use of definitions and reports of studies to create a need for research in their local contexts. the experience as a rhetorical strategy to justify research the analysis of the introductions brought to light another practice used to create a “research warrant” (hood, 2010). that is the inclusion of the writer’s voice from within the field of study. in other words, master thesis writers legitimize their research based on the experiences they have in their local settings. by means of the anecdote or the exemplum, thesis writers create empathy with the readers. in addition to that, the experiences they display in the text highlight the struggles they undergo in the process of writing a thesis as we will see farther on. intro_2012 provides a representation of the field which focuses on teachers’ professional development. the word chain: teachers’ professional development, reflective teaching, language diaries and collaborative practice universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras84 ariza-pinzón contextualize the topic. that lexical chain specifies an orientation to the study by presenting a list of studies related to the writer’s object of study, followed by an indication of the lack of research in his local context. intro_2012 teachers’ professional development has been studied from different perspectives, including reflective teaching (bartlett, 1990; richards & lockhard, 1996; wallace, 1991; zeichner & liston, 1996), teachers’ use of language diaries (bailey, 1990; jarvis, 1996), and teachers’ collaborative practice (bailey, curtis & nunan, 1998; edge, 1992; johnston, 2009) . . . however, there are very few studies focusing on teachers’ development during and after an ma level. for instance, maaranen & krokfors’s (2007) study investigated reflective processes in primary school teacher education when conducting research for a master’s thesis. i got interested in this topic because what i learned in the master’s program has helped me to develop professionally in my teaching context, especially when i teach research classes. thus, i wanted to investigate how other english teachers have developed personally and professionally during and after their ma programs and how they perceived this development has changed and shaped their teaching in their working contexts. however, in intro_2012, the writer opened a space for his research differently. in this example the writer made use of a personal exemplum as a rhetorical strategy to build empathy with the reader. in the third paragraph, the writer introduces a personal experience to justify the relevance of the investigation. in this case, the thesis writer expressed that the master’s degree program had an impact on his professional development as a teacher. for that reason, he explicitly mentioned that he wanted to investigate this topic to see if other teachers shared his experience. the themes in the sample above introduced the topic of the thesis “teachers’ professional development,” but the shift in themes did not address the object of study. instead, it addressed the writer himself in the use of “i.” the use of the personal exemplum was evident in six out of seven samples analyzed where the use of “i” indicates an account of the experience of the writer. in intro_2011, the writer indicates “academic writing, research and supervision” as the objects of study. she also makes reference to “a number of studies” to validate the importance of supervision. however, in the introduction there is not any report of such studies. instead, the writer linked the notion of supervision with her personal experience. intro_2011 academic writing, research and thesis supervision are related terms that play a crucial role in all levels of tertiary education. supporting this idea, a number of studies have identified the importance of supervision in the overall success [of a] student (phillips & pugh, 2000). the overall purpose of this study, thus, is to attempt to understand the processes of thesis supervisors when engaged in thesis supervision. the particular focus is to try to understand the processes of ‘expert’ thesis supervisors to understand what they do . . . i am particularly interested in this thesis supervision topic because before getting involved in it i [underwent] a difficult situation when trying to get a dissertation supervisor for my graduate thesis project. i was looking for a supervisor when i got an offer from one of them. this person agreed to help me with my project as the thesis supervisor but later rejected me and my project and i found myself without a supervisor. this led me to think further about the processes of supervising. was this treatment customary? . . . so, i thought that it might be an important study. in the fourth paragraph, the use of “i” introduces a critical incident she had while finding a thesis supervisor. after telling her story, she packs her experience in the theme “this,” indicating that her experience led to thesis supervision as a research topic. 85profile: issues teach. prof. dev., vol. 23 no. 1, jan-jun, 2021. issn 1657-0790 (printed) 2256-5760 (online). bogotá, colombia. pages 75-88 analysis of ma students’ writing in english language teaching: a systemic functional linguistic approach the writer’s identity this section describes how the writer’s identity reflected in the texts helps thesis writers to build the field of experience. from a social perspective it sheds light on how thesis writers position themselves as members of the community where they carry out research. based on the results of the previous analyses that build a representation of the writing in the teaching of languages, this section focuses on the writer from a discourse-semantic perspective since “the clause construes an activity involving people and things” (martin & rose, 2007, p. 74). in order to have a broader view of all the aspects involved in writing as a social practice, i also focused on the writer’s identity that is portrayed in the text. in the next paragraph, in intro_2016, the writer identified herself as an english in-service teacher, as a mother of a child with dyslexia, and as a person with dyslexia herself. the processes underlined in the sample text represent her experience in the words being and feeling. from this position, she is aware of the problems encountered in the educational system for language teaching, and of a reality that limits access to knowledge of english to students in conditions of dyslexia. addressing this problem in her research project highlights the fact that the subject is very close to her experience. in her introduction, she encourages reflection of the english teaching practice, and urges the establishment of a course of action both at the personal practice and professional levels. by describing herself and sharing her experience she engages with her readers and with other english language teachers that might have a similar experience. intro_2016 i have been an english teacher for over 30 years. i have seen the lack of resources and strategies in regard to dyslexia as well as little understanding from my colleagues, parents and students themselves. being dyslexic myself and having a son with dyslexia led me to consider this topic as my research and find out some of the current trend in education and language . . . in the last example, intro_2013, the writer identified himself as an english teacher in middle-school education who, despite his experience and efforts in the classroom, found a problem related to the teachinglearning process. he finds that his teenager students do not engage either with the material or his classes. the student’s response to what he considers a “traditional pedagogical practice” motivates him to carry out their research using an alternative methodology. intro_2013 for more than eight years, i have been a teacher who has based my teaching in tasks performed in the classroom or were prepared in advanced by students. i have also been the teacher who explained the topic to students and helped them to answer the exercises and activities in the book and workbook. . . . however, i saw my classes were not encouraging the students to learn a foreign language. additionally, the use of a textbook in every class was boring for the students and we both did not see the results that we expected. what these examples illustrate, in addition to revealing the identity of the writers and their personal experience, is the problem facing the teaching of english in various educational contexts. this problematic instigates an interest in teachers to solve them through research. it is due to their experience in the field of research that they gain a legitimate space to create a space for their research. conclusion the purpose of this paper is to characterize master thesis writing as a critical and social space in which students commonly struggle to become members of a professional community (lea & street, 1998). while in the process of writing the thesis, issues of identity, epistemology, and power relations are imminent. however, it becomes difficult to recognize them as inherent to the writing process. this paper sheds light on some of the writing conventions in the area of elt. universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras86 ariza-pinzón findings suggest that thesis writers rely on their experience as a rhetorical strategy to build empathy with the reader by means of anecdotes or personal stories. this means that they include story genres to represent their experiential knowledge, gaining legitimacy “from being an insider” in the field of research (hood, 2012). from an epistemological standpoint, it is the writer’s knowledge which is valued when it comes to thesis writing and research. however, there seems to be some constraints to develop other epistemologies from the elt field such as genres, registers, and types of texts that move beyond writing as a technical skill or language as a set of structural issues. the dominant pattern found in theses’ introductions corresponds to genres in which writers introduce, only superficially, the object of study supported by rough descriptions of studies—mostly lists of key studies—as well as bare definitions. although it is recognized that the experience is relevant in a field such as teaching, it is also crucial to explore other forms to create meaning and move towards “a more detailed account of research design” (hood, 2012, p. 57). from a discourse semantics perspective, the combination of the three metafunctions for analyzing the representation of the experience portrays the identity of the thesis writers. once again, writers rely on their experience to identify themselves as members of a community in the field of elt. being aware of the problems encountered in the educational system in general, and in elt in particular, gives them a sense of belongingness which allows them to negotiate the validity of their research. however, this is not enough to meet the academic, social and institutional conventions of thesis writing (lea & street, 1998). even though the thesis writing process occurs within a social context, the patterns identified in the introductory chapters tend to still reproduce fixed categories such as the ones found in the traditional model of the thesis (paltridge & starfield, 2007). this study of master thesis writing brought to the surface the regulatory principles that underlie writing in higher education in a context where english is used as a second language. this implies looking at academic practices in higher education as events shaped by the configuration of the social space in which they occur and by power relations. the interrelationship of the forms of written discourse in the area of elt as well as the interpersonal strategies to position research in this field allows an understanding of the resources thesis writers employ to write academically. making explicit the aspects that constitute writing as a social practice opens the possibility for thesis writers to explore other ways to build knowledge and legitimate research to become members of a 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(2007). thesis and dissertation writing in a second language: a handbook for supervisors. routledge. https://doi.org/10.4324/9780203960813 paré, a., starke-meyerring, d., & mcalpine, l. (2009). the dissertation as multi-genre: many readers, many readings. in c. bazerman, a. bonini, & d. figueiredo (eds.), genre in a changing world (pp. 179–193). parlor press. https:// doi.org/10.37514/per-b.2009.2324.2.09 rose, d., & martin, j. r. (2012). learning to write, reading to learn: genre, knowledge and pedagogy in the sydney school. equinox publishing. street, b. v. (1984). literacy in theory and practice. cambridge university press. swales, j. m. (1990). genre analysis: english in academic and research settings. cambridge university press. swales, j. m. (1996). occluded genres in the academy: the case of the submission letter. in e. ventola & a. mauranen (eds.), academic writing: intercultural and textual issues (pp. 45–58). john benjamins. https://doi.org/10.1075/pbns.41.06swa swales, j. m. (2009). world of genre—metaphors of genre. in c. bazerman, a. bonini, & d. figueiredo (eds.), genre in a changing world (pp. 1–16). parlor press. https://doi. org/10.37514/per-b.2009.2324.2.01 wenger, e. (1998). communities of practice: learning, meaning and identity. cambridge university press. https://doi. org/10.1017/cbo9780511803932 about the author vicky ariza-pinzón holds an ma in elt and a phd in language sciences from benemérita universidad autónoma de puebla, méxico, where she works as a teacher-researcher. she is a postgraduate associate member of the lct centre for knowledge-building in the university of sydney. her research interests include academic literacies and knowledge-building. https://doi.org/10.4324/9780203960813 https://doi.org/10.37514/per-b.2009.2324.2.09 https://doi.org/10.37514/per-b.2009.2324.2.09 https://doi.org/10.1075/pbns.41.06swa https://doi.org/10.37514/per-b.2009.2324.2.01 https://doi.org/10.37514/per-b.2009.2324.2.01 https://doi.org/10.1017/cbo9780511803932 https://doi.org/10.1017/cbo9780511803932 155profile vol. 19, no. 1, january-june 2017. issn 1657-0790 (printed) 2256-5760 (online). bogotá, colombia. pages 155-168 http://dx.doi.org/10.15446/profile.v19n1.55676 citizenship education and the efl standards: a critical reflection la educación ciudadana y los estándares básicos de competencias en el inglés como lengua extranjera: una reflexión crítica luzkarime calle díaz1* universidad del norte, barranquilla, colombia the reconfiguration of geographical and cultural boundaries has caused a growing concern among countries in regard to raising awareness of the importance of educating people to become “citizens of the world.” the language classroom seems to be the ideal place to incorporate the teaching and learning of global citizenship education, given its cross-cultural nature. this article intends to analyze the potential opportunities for the development of global citizenship education in the english as a foreign language classroom through a documentary analysis of the national standards and its connection to the national citizenship competences standards and the unesco global citizenship education topics and learning objectives. finally, important recommendations are given to foster global citizenship in the english language classroom. key words: citizenship, competences, english as a foreign language, global citizenship education, globalization. la reconfiguración de fronteras geográficas y culturales ha causado una creciente preocupación entre los países sobre la importancia de educar a “ciudadanos del mundo”. el aula de lenguas parece ser el lugar ideal para incorporar la educación para la ciudadanía global debido a su naturaleza intercultural. este artículo busca evidenciar las oportunidades potenciales para el desarrollo de la educación para la ciudadanía global que pueden darse en el aula de inglés, a través de una revisión documental de los estándares básicos de esta lengua y su conexión con los estándares de competencias ciudadanas y los temas y objetivos de aprendizaje de la educación para la ciudadanía global de la unesco. finalmente, se brindan recomendaciones importantes para potencializar la ciudadanía global en el aula de inglés. palabras clave: ciudadanía, competencias, educación para la ciudadanía global, inglés como lengua extranjera, globalización. * e-mail: luzkarimec@uninorte.edu.co how to cite this article (apa, 6th ed.): calle díaz, l. (2017). citizenship education and the efl standards: a critical reflection. profile issues in teachers’ professional development, 19(1), 155-168. http://dx.doi.org/10.15446/profile.v19n1.55676. this article was received on february 10, 2016, and accepted on october 19, 2016. this is an open access article distributed under the terms of the creative commons license attribution-noncommercial-noderivatives 4.0 international license. consultation is possible at http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/. universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras156 calle díaz introduction living in the 21st century poses a series of challenges for societies. the world is now more connected than ever before, allowing the possibility for socio-cultural exchanges amongst people from different countries and backgrounds. societies have become more aware of the variety of cultures that exist around the world, and individuals are being encouraged to embrace diversity at many new different levels. the reconfiguration of geographical and cultural boundaries has led to the redefinition of the notion of citizenship and the increased need to raise awareness about the importance of educating people as “citizens of the world” (evans, 2016). education stakeholders, especially teachers, have the responsibility to contribute to students’ development of global citizenship skills and values, but in order to do that; they need to be global citizens themselves prepared to integrate global citizenship knowledge, skills, and attitudes in their lessons. on the global scale, unesco has recently published a document that provides guidance on how to implement global citizenship education (gce) in the classroom (unesco, 2015). in colombia, important efforts have been made to incorporate citizenship education in the school curricula. for instance, the ministry of education (ministerio de educación nacional [men], 2004) issued the standards for citizenship competences. some schools have introduced a new subject called competencias ciudadanas (citizenship competences) or ciudadanía (citizenship), and others have tried to incorporate the standards in all subject areas transversally. nevertheless, traditionally, the connection between english language teaching (elt) and gce has not been a point of concern, even though the foreign language classroom seems to be the ideal space to develop global citizenship (birch, 2009; guilherme, 2002), and to create opportunities to strengthen local identity and foster understanding, tolerance, and acceptance of diversity at local, regional, national, and international levels. this is especially relevant for colombia at a time when the country is struggling to become an increasingly active participant in the world scenario, and also to reach a peaceful resolution to years of violence and confrontation. in this article, i will present an analysis of the relationship between gce knowledge, skills, and attitudes, and the colombian english as a foreign language (efl) standards. thus, i will first give a brief overview of the notion of citizenship throughout history. then, i will describe the concept of citizenship education and how gce has developed up to the present. after that, i will concentrate on analyzing citizenship education opportunities in the efl curriculum, more specifically as prompted by the efl colombian standards. finally, i will present conclusions and some recommendations regarding the potential of the english classroom as the central scenario for the development of gce. literature review notions of citizenship the concept of citizenship is not univocal. it has evolved throughout history, taking a plethora of meanings across societies. the history of citizenship goes back to very ancient people such as the athenians, spartans, and romans (horrach, 2009; preuss, 2003). then, the french revolution marked another important milestone in the history of citizenship. civil mobilization by the middle class, who requested the right to participate in political decisions, caused a change of perspective about who was considered a citizen both within and beyond french borders (horrach, 2009). nowadays, citizenship has permeated not only historical but also political and educational discourse acknowledging the importance of citizenship for the development of healthy societies. however, what is understood by the term citizenship? many different definitions can be found in the literature (dagnino, 2005; horrach, 2009; pérez, 2002; preuss, 2003). a superficial definition of citizenship, synonymous to nationality (horrach, 2009; kerber, 1997) can be found 157profile vol. 19, no. 1, january-june 2017. issn 1657-0790 (printed) 2256-5760 (online). bogotá, colombia. pages 155-168 citizenship education and the efl standards: a critical reflection in the dictionary: “someone who legally belongs to a particular country and has rights and responsibilities there, whether they are living there or not” (pearson, 2008, p. 305). nevertheless, being a citizen in the post-modern world has come to include many other dimensions that include legal, political, social, cultural, and identity-related ones (preuss, 2003). furthermore, a spectrum of different views on citizenship can be found in dagnino (2005), where a superficial notion of citizenship, that is, citizens as the population of a state, inhabitants, or bearers of rights can be found on one end; the notion of “citizenship participation,” namely the right that people have to participate in public affairs could be placed in the middle; and radical conception of citizenship is put at the other end of the spectrum, which advocates for citizen involvement in decision-making about, for example, public policies, or even distribution of the national budget. dagnino points out that the notion of citizenship is highly permeated by particular configurations of society, power, state, and history. more recently, the role of citizens has been redefined to fit neoliberal or capitalist agendas (dagnino, 2005), positioning them either as producers or consumers. there is evidence, then, that the term citizenship has become more and more ambiguous as different political, economic, and private interests use it for their own purposes. in sum, the notion of citizenship has evolved with the development of societies throughout history. nowadays, citizenship is in the center of international debates about human development, education, and the future of humankind. schools are entitled to work towards the education of good citizens, able to critically participate in the democratic construction of societies, with a sense of identity, able to work with others and to make responsible decisions about themselves and the environment (delors, 1996; kymlicka, 2001; unesco, 1990). this responds to the principles emanating from the universal declaration of human rights, which calls for “understanding, tolerance and friendship among all nations, racial or religious groups” (article 26). in accordance with this, delors (1996) pointed out that the role of education is to help to build “a more solidary world…in a way education should contribute to the birth of a new humanism, with an essential ethical component and ample space for knowledge and respect of cultures and values of different civilizations” (p. 53). the education for citizenship debate has been illuminated by a series of multinational statements such as the unesco declaration and integrated framework of action on education for peace, human rights and democracy (unesco, 1995), and with a series of aims related to the development of informed and critical citizens. this fact has led to the development of national policies and projects aiming at peaceful conflict resolution, recognition and acceptance of diversity, and protection of the environment, among others. all in all, the centrality of citizenship education in today’s society is widely recognized. however, policies are sometimes not enough to materialize the development of citizenship skills and attitudes at school or in daily life scenarios. global citizenship education in recent years, the issue of citizenship education has been expanded to that of gce, also known as cosmopolitan, multicultural, universal, planetary, and/or virtual citizenship (evans, ingram, macdonald, & weber, 2009). unesco has played a pivotal role in defining and highlighting the importance of gce, especially after the adoption of the global education first initiative (united nations, 2012), in which “fostering global citizenship” is one of the three educational priorities. besides, gce plays an important role in the unesco education strategy 2014-2021 (unesco, 2014a), in which the second objective is “empowering learners to be creative and responsible global citizens” (p. 31). gce has been taken as an umbrella term that comprises earlier developments on education as the basis universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras158 calle díaz to achieve sustainable development, peace, values, civics, human rights, global education, intercultural awareness education, environmental education, education for social justice and equity, among others (evans et al., 2009; tawil, 2013). the first attempt to consolidate a definition of gce and the need for its implementation was made public in the synthesis global citizenship education: an emerging perspective, a document elaborated by unesco and the republic of korea (unesco, 2013). this states that the main aim of gce is “to empower learners to engage and assume active roles both locally and globally to face and resolve global challenges and ultimately to become proactive contributors to a more just, peaceful, tolerant, inclusive, secure and sustainable world” (p. 3). in 2014, unesco published the first official document on gce titled global citizenship education: preparing learners for the challenges of the 21st century (unesco, 2014b). this is a more comprehensive document that provides useful information on what gce is and how it can be put into practice. in order to provide guidance to implement and assess gce in the classroom, unesco launched the topics and learning objectives for global citizenship education in 2015. it explains how gce involves three core conceptual dimensions: cognitive, socioemotional, and behavioral. these are defined as follows: 1. cognitive: to acquire knowledge, understanding, and critical thinking about global, regional, national, and local issues and the interconnectedness and interdependency of different countries and populations. 2. socio-emotional: to have a sense of belonging to a common humanity, sharing values and responsibilities, empathy, solidarity, and respect for differences and diversity. 3. behavioral: to act effectively and responsibly at local, national, and global levels for a more peaceful and sustainable world. (p. 15) the unesco initiative on gce has been built, as suggested before, upon previous developments in this respect (peace building, civics, and sustainable development, among others) (see evans et. al., 2009; oxfam, 2006). what started out as an initiative of individual countries has now become a multinational organizations agenda. however, practicing gce poses a series of challenges. one of them, perhaps the most important one, is precisely how to take gce from paper to reality. that is, how to teach it and how to verify that students are actually internalizing it. undoubtedly, the guidelines provided by unesco provide useful ideas for the implementation and monitoring of gce. however, more studies on how they are applied and used in the classrooms need to be done, and results shared with the different stakeholders to value their actual impact. citizenship education in colombia colombia is located in the northwest region of south america. with over 48 million people, colombia has the third largest population in latin america. the country has a social and democratic political structure, with a presidential form of government. education in colombia officially consists of three levels: transición (pre-school) and básica primaria (elementary school), which covers six years, and to which students access at the age of 5 and exit at the age of 11; básica secundaria (secondary school), which goes from 6th to 9th grades; and media vocacional (high school), which covers 10th and 11th grades. students finish high school at the average age of 16. colombian public education system is free and is usually accessed or utilized by students in the lower social classes. middleand high-class children regularly go to private schools, some of which offer bilingual education in english and spanish. all schools in colombia are monitored and measured through the same standard test that is called saber. this test is applied at different times in the school system (3rd, 5th, 7th, 9th, and 11th grades), and results and rankings are analyzed and shared with the community. students are tested in mathematics, critical reading, social studies and citizenship, science, and english. with this test, 159profile vol. 19, no. 1, january-june 2017. issn 1657-0790 (printed) 2256-5760 (online). bogotá, colombia. pages 155-168 citizenship education and the efl standards: a critical reflection results are also reported in two sub-sections: citizenship competences and quantitative reasoning (icfes, 2015). colombia has been cited as an example of integration of citizenship education in the school curriculum, together with countries such as canada, england, australia, the united states, the philippines, brazil, and costa rica, among others (organización de estados iberoamericanos para la educación, la ciencia y la cultura, 2014; unesco, 2015). it is undeniable that efforts have been placed on promoting the development of citizenship knowledge, skills, and values in the country, first with the publication of the basic standards for citizenship competences (men, 2004), and more recently with the law enforcing the creation of a peace chair (cátedra de la paz) in 2014 and the corresponding regulating resolution in 2015. the standards for citizenship competences aim at developing the necessary knowledge and skills (cognitive, emotional, and communicative) to participate democratically in society, value pluralism, and build peaceful living together (men, 2004). according to jaramillo (2008), the citizenship competences program is not based exclusively on the acquisition of knowledge of democracy and citizenship. beyond that, the emphasis is placed especially on “the development of skills, attitudes, actions, and reflections that foster peace and living together, promote democratic participation and responsibility, and strengthen cultural, social, genre differences, among others” (p. 66). ruiz and chaux (2005) had supported these ideas when they stated that “citizenship competences are evidenced through practice, in the exercise of citizenship” (p. 32). that is, citizenship education seeks to promote autonomous citizenship action. they define citizenship competences as the “set of cognitive, emotional, and communicative-integrated capacities and abilities related to basic knowledge (contents, procedures, mechanisms) that morally and politically orient our citizenship action” (p. 32). this governmental initiative encourages a crosscurricular approach to the implementation of citizenship education. that is, the responsibility of putting into practice the standards and competences established is shared among all the subjects of the curriculum, as well as by the different stakeholders (administrators, teachers, students, family, etc.). the citizenship competences proposed have been classified into three macro-groups: peace and living together; democratic participation and responsibility; and plurality, identity, and valuing of the differences. “each of these groups represents a fundamental dimension for the exercise of citizenship and contributes to the promotion, respect, and defense of human rights, present in our constitution” (men, 2004, p. 12). at the same time, the competences have been categorized into five types: knowledge, cognitive, emotional, communicative, and integrative. considering this categorization, the document presents teachers, students, and families with a list of standards that go from 1st to 11th grades of the colombian school system. based on the decentralization of the colombian education system and the autonomy schools have to build their curricula to fit their context, implementation of the standards varies from school to school. some of them have decided to incorporate a separate class called competencias ciudadanas (citizenship competences) or ciudadanía (citizenship) that is usually placed within the social sciences area or department. some others have incorporated them, as the document suggests, as a cross-curricular endeavor. as for the peace chair, it was created by law 1732 of 2014 and later regulated through a corresponding decree, which stipulates that schools should develop at least two of the following topics in this class: (a) justice and human rights; (b) sustainable use of natural resources; (c) protection of cultural and natural wealth of the nation; (d) peaceful resolution of conflict; (e) bullying prevention; (f ) diversity and plurality; (g) participation in politics; (h) historical memory; (i) moral dilemmas; (j) social impact projects; (k) history of national and international peace agreements; (l) life projects and risk prevention. universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras160 calle díaz with respect to the evaluation of the peace chair, the decree announces that the objectives related to this class will be included in the national saber test as part of the citizenship competences section, starting in 2016. the two regulations mentioned above might be regarded as complementary; however, the standards were intended to be implemented through a crosscurricular approach, while the peace chair is clearly proposed as a separate subject. in its efforts to foster civic and citizenship education, colombia has also taken part in different international studies since 1999. more recently, between 2008 and 2009, the international association for the evaluation of educational achievement conducted the international civic and citizenship education study (iccs) across 38 countries in the world. the study ranks students in levels 1 to 3 according to their performance on the civics and citizenship component of the test. the results of this study show that there is still a long way ahead for colombian people to achieve international standards for citizenship education. for example, in the area of civic knowledge, colombia ranked 29 out of the 38 participating countries, with an average score of 462 (38 points below the iccs average) (schulz, ainley, fraillon, kerr, & losito, 2010). on the other hand, most of the students who participated in the test scored at level 1 (36%) and below level 1 (21%). level 1 is the most basic level in the study. students at this level are familiar with the democratic principles of equity, social cohesion, and freedom, and they relate those principles to everyday situations. only 11% of the colombian students tested obtained results equivalent to the highest level of performance (level 3). at this level, students should be able to make connections between processes of political and social organization, and the legal and institutional mechanisms used to control them. they should also generate precise hypotheses about citizen motivations, and evaluate political stances based on their underlying principles (icfes, 2011). citizenship education in english as a foreign language as has been stated throughout this article, school plays a major role in educating world citizens. this includes all subjects in the curriculum, and especially english as a foreign language. foreign language classrooms seem to be the ideal place to foster the development of global citizenship, due to their crosscultural nature. guilherme (2002) supports this idea by affirming that, the political, economic, and social contexts our future citizens will have to come to terms with demand a notion of citizenship education that is more flexible but, at the same time, more empowering and, for this purpose, it is foreign language/culture education that helps facilitate intercultural communication among citizens in multicultural societies and in a global world (p. 166). in her view, the language classroom should be a place where “the self,” “the other,” and “the world” are in constant interaction through a critical view, allowing cross cultural and social boundaries to expand and hopefully encouraging students and teachers to become more participative in democratic and political societies. oxfam (2015), in its guide for teaching english and global citizenship, states that a global citizenship approach [to english teaching] provides the meaningful wider contexts necessary for language and literature to be fully understood. it enables learners to appreciate a range of perspectives, exploring how texts from different social, historical, and cultural contexts influence values, assumptions, and a sense of identity (p. 1). teaching english through a gce perspective, at the same time, will allow students to become more critical about their role in the world, and about how to 161profile vol. 19, no. 1, january-june 2017. issn 1657-0790 (printed) 2256-5760 (online). bogotá, colombia. pages 155-168 citizenship education and the efl standards: a critical reflection build empathy and positive relationships with others, which should be one of the ultimate goals of foreign language education. in order to contribute to the education of world active citizens, foreign language education in colombia should be articulated to the gce international goals and objectives, and to the national citizenship competences standards. the following analysis will try to show potential gaps and opportunities for their integration and some recommendations will be provided for the promotion of gce development in the english classroom. analysis of the national standards the colombian standards for foreign languages: english, is a document that was published by the ministry of education in 2006, with the objective of “contributing to the education of citizens capable of communicating in english, with internationally comparable standards” (men, 2006). just as in other subjects, the efl standards constitute “clear and public criteria that allow the establishment of the basic quality levels that children in all regions in colombia have the right to achieve” (men, 2006). the standards were established by a group of teachers from around the country. they are based on the common european framework for reference (cefr) and they present “can do” type statements for elementary, secondary, and high school education in five skills (listening, reading, writing, monologues, and conversation). the aim is to take students from an a1 to a b1 level throughout the education system. although this document has received some criticism from the colombian academic community (see ayala & álvarez, 2004; barletta, 2009; de mejía, 2011; guerrero, 2010; guerrero & quintero, 2009; sánchez & obando, 2008; vargas, tejada, & colmenares, 2008; among others), in this article i intend to move beyond criticism in order to provide some conclusions about the opportunities to incorporate gce in light of the current language policy and suggest some course of action for the actual fostering of gce in the efl classroom. the analysis of the standards was data-driven and done in three steps: first, i carried out a meticulous reading of the standards to identify any explicit opportunities for the teaching of citizenship education. the standards found were classified on a table. then, i analyzed the national citizenship competences standards (ccs) and found some that could be associated with each of the efl standards in the table, specifying the grade in which it is supposed to be developed. finally, i went through the gce dimensions (as explained in the global citizenship education section) and also found connections between them and the efl standards. the result of the analysis is divided into three sections: general findings, the role of reading in the colombian efl standards, and standards that can potentially help develop gce depending on how teachers approach them. general findings there is very little evidence of the possibility of developing gce if practice adheres strictly to the standards. here are some of the most interesting findings of the analysis: • the efl colombian standards do not explicitly refer to the development of global citizenship competences. furthermore, most of the intercultural and critical aspects of learning a language are not considered in the standards. as mentioned before, attention and fulfillment of the standards alone may not contribute to fostering gce in the english classroom. • when standards do promote some traits of citizenship, they refer to some themes of the socioemotional domain of learning (unesco, 2015). some examples of this are shown in table 1. universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras162 calle díaz on the other hand, very few themes from the cognitive domain and none from the behavioral were found. this could be considered as a limitation of the colombian standards, neglecting knowledge and action, which are vital for educating real active global citizens. • the standards that foster some traits of citizenship development are those associated with the sociolinguistic competence.1 however, they reflect a superficial notion of global citizenship. in gogolin’s (2011) words, these standards address the first skill level of intercultural education, key to gce, namely, “knowledge on phenomena in which cultural, linguistic, and social diversity 1 the colombian efl standards are classified in three subcompetences to match the cefr: linguistic, pragmatic, and sociolinguistic competences. the sociolinguistic competence “refers to the knowledge of the social and cultural conditions that are implicit in language use. for example, it is used to manage courtesy formulas and other norms that rule relationships between generations, gender, classes and social groups” (men, 2006, p. 12). is expressed (e.g., clothing, food, daily routines, names, ways of talking, rituals or other religion expressions, festivals, holidays, etc.)” (p. 3). table 2 shows examples of this. as can be noticed from the examples in table 2, although there is a connection between the standards and the theme, this connection is superficial and will not ensure the achievement of the learning objective related to the different levels of identity. most traits of global citizenship development present in the colombian efl standards target the pre-primary and lower primary learning objectives (unesco, 2015) and primary citizenship standards for (early) primary grades (colombian citizenship standards). table 3 shows some examples of this. as can be observed, the standards related to gce for the upper secondary grades reflect very basic skills in terms of global citizenship. this may be related to the fact that students’ language level in english is not very high and the assumption that more sophisticated table 1. examples of connection between efl colombian standards and the unesco gce topics and learning objectives standarda connection to socio-emotional domain of learning (unesco gce topics and learning objectives) i recognize that, there are other people, like me, who communicate in english. topic: difference and respect for diversity learning objective: distinguish between sameness and difference. theme: what makes us similar and what makes us different from other people in the community (language, age, culture, ways of living, traditions, and characteristics). i greet courteously/politely according to the age and status of the interlocutor. topic: different levels of identity learning objective: recognize how we fit into and interact with the world around us and develop intrapersonal and interpersonal skills. theme: approaching others and building positive relationships. i show a respectful and tolerant attitude when i listen to others. topic: difference and respect for diversity learning objective: distinguish between sameness and difference. themes: importance of respect and good relationships for our well-being. learning to listen, understand, agree and disagree, accept different views and perspectives. astandards have been translated from spanish for publication purposes. 163profile vol. 19, no. 1, january-june 2017. issn 1657-0790 (printed) 2256-5760 (online). bogotá, colombia. pages 155-168 citizenship education and the efl standards: a critical reflection table 2. examples of efl colombian standards that exhibit a superficial level of gce development, and its connection to the unesco gce topics and learning objectives standarda connection to unesco gce topics and learning objectives i identify cultural elements, such as customs and celebrations in simple texts. i identify cultural elements, such as proper names and places, in simple texts. domain: socio-emotional topic: different levels of identity learning objective: examine different levels of identity and their implications for managing relationships with others. theme: how we are connected to the wider world beyond our immediate community and through different modalities (media, travel, music, sports, culture) astandards have been translated from spanish for publication purposes. table 3. examples of efl colombian standards per grade groups, and their correspondence to the unesco gce topics and learning objectives and the colombian citizenship standards efl standarda connection to unesco gce topics and learning objectives connection to colombian citizenship standards grades 8 and 9 i monitor turn-taking among participants in discussions prepared in advance. _ _ _ grades 1 to 3 i know and respect the basic rules for dialogue, such as the use of the floor and respect for the other person’s floor. grades 8 to 11 i show a respectful and tolerant attitude when listening to others. preand lower primary topic: learning objective: distinguish between sameness and difference and recognize that everyone has rights and responsibilities. theme: importance of respect and good relationships for our well-being. learning to listen, understand, agree and disagree, accept different views and perspectives. grade 1 to 3 i know and respect the basic rules for dialogue, such as the use of the floor and respect for the other person’s floor. aefl standards have been translated from spanish for publication purposes. citizenship standards can be achieved with better command of the language. however, it is important to ensure that the tasks performed by students are also at their appropriate cognitive level. the analysis suggests that students are not likely to reach a critical and profound development of gce in their english lessons. the colombian efl standards seem to be more connected to the unesco gce topics and learning objectives than to the colombian citizenship competences. if the purpose of establishing the colombian citizenship competences in 2004 was to permeate all areas of the curriculum, then the connection between these and the specific areas standards should be more visible or explicit. universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras164 calle díaz the role of reading in the colombian efl standards there is a tendency to use reading as the starting point to expose students to texts that will awaken their interest in global issues (jordão & fogaça, 2008; nakamura, 2002; porto, 2014; tarasheva, 2008). departing from there, teachers can of course enhance the development of all the necessary language skills. the analysis of the standards showed that they are not stated in a way that will favor the development of gce. in other words, reading is considered to be something students should enjoy (1st-3rd grades); a habit for students’ personal and academic enrichment (6th-7th grades); an important activity in students’ life areas (8th-9th grades); a means for acquiring information about different disciplines (10th-11th grades). however, there is no reference to reading as an opportunity to discover other worldviews, subjectivity, global problems; or to understand conflicting or complex messages, or equality or discrimination concepts, among others. standards that can potentially help develop gce some standards are not clearly stated to develop citizenship education but could be used to do so depending on how the teacher uses them or on the topics s/he chooses to work on. some of these are shown in table 4. the standards in table 4, and other similar ones, might help to develop gce if the teachers decide to include topics, materials, and tasks that promote students’ involvement in and response to global issues related to intercultural, environmental, identity, and social problems, among others. it is important to emphasize here that it does not only depend on the content but also, and perhaps more importantly, on the tasks that students are called to perform. let us not forget that gce is suggested to be tackled not only from the cognitive, but also from the socio-emotional, and more profoundly, from the behavioral domain of learning; that is, from the actions that students can actually take to transform their reality, and hence, the world. conclusions gce is regarded as a vital goal in all educational settings nowadays. this notion has evolved throughout history and has been established as an umbrella concept to embrace intentions to educate people to be able to interact with dynamic global issues related to environmental care and sustainable development, intercultural relationships, identity, and peace building, among others. this article presented an overview of the evolution of the notion of citizenship and citizenship education in colombia up to the present with the purpose of analyzing the possibilities of gce in a specific subject area, such as efl teaching. an analysis of the integration of gce table 4. examples of efl colombian standards that could potentially help to develop gce efl standarda i write short texts in which i express contrast, addition, cause and effect between ideas. i establish comparisons between characters, places, and objects. i identify different roles that speakers take in conversations related to topics of my interest. i give examples of my viewpoints about topics that i write about. aefl standards have been translated from spanish for publication purposes. 165profile vol. 19, no. 1, january-june 2017. issn 1657-0790 (printed) 2256-5760 (online). bogotá, colombia. pages 155-168 citizenship education and the efl standards: a critical reflection goals and objectives in the colombian efl standards was made in order to reflect on the possibilities for colombian english education to take a central and innovative role in the development of gce as part of an area of the curriculum that is not necessarily linked to social studies. the analysis done of the efl standards revealed some discrepancies between the objective of educating competent citizens throughout the school curriculum in colombia and the prevalence of the objectives of efl teaching mostly targeting goals. the analysis revealed three main findings: firstly, the official documents could have a more explicit approach towards the incorporation of gce in a subject like foreign language, where selfidentity and acceptance of others play such a crucial role. secondly, the opportunities for citizenship education in efl are targeted to the lower-level skills proposed in the national ccs. finally, reading seems to be the skill through which gce is usually suggested to be developed. this is coherent with a worldwide tendency of planning and implementing gce programs through critical literacy. after completing the analysis mentioned, the following conclusions could be drawn: • basic competences standards in colombia have been published as guiding documents for schools’ curricular organization in the most important subject areas, including english. that being stated, if citizenship education is to become a core goal of the school system, and developed throughout all areas of the curriculum, then all subject standards should clearly reflect a connection between citizenship education and subject areas goals and objectives. in this train of thought, there should be some considerations for reviewing the standards with the purpose of making citizenship education visible and feasible in the classroom. • the efl classroom should be an important place for the development of gce due to its possibility of allowing students to explore diverse identities and cultures. then, an appropriate content and methodology of the english lessons should be chosen in order to make gce an everyday issue in the classroom. undertaking citizenship education means departing from the traditional teaching of grammar patterns and vocabulary. the interaction patterns inside the language classroom should also be a rehearsal of democratic and respectful relations that can later be replicated outside the school. • in order for gce to become a reality in the english classroom, teachers should be educated to become global citizens, as well as to be able to promote gce in the classroom. teachers should be provided theoretical and methodological tools with which to teach english and promote gce at the same time. this includes dealing with contents and concepts related to citizenship values, attitudes, and actions to introduce positive changes and relations with others. the need to include gce topics and learning objectives in the pre-service teacher education programs is imminent. • human relations are built around language, and foreign language education is mainly about using language that enables relations with others that are distant and different from us. therefore, foreign language education should provide opportunities to reflect on the language we use and the effect it has on others. helping students to become aware of their linguistic choices (language to empower oneself and others, to avoid disempowering others, to establish healthy and fair relationships, etc.) in order to interact with others is also key for gce development. • finally, it is important to encourage or support research on how to teach and evaluate gce in the efl classroom, and on the impact of pedagogical proposals for the development of citizenship skills and attitudes. one last optimistic claim can be made about the integration of gce in efl, and it is the fact that, in 2015, the national government started the design, universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras166 calle díaz piloting, and implementation of a suggested national english curriculum. the first part of this curriculum, corresponding to secondary education, was released in january 2016 and its most important principles are based on diversity, equity, and citizenship. this is definitely one initiative that could impact the development of gce if a process of teacher education and follow-up is carried out. of course, research on this issue will have to be done to analyze how the curriculum works in the reality of the colombian efl classrooms. references ayala, j., & álvarez, j. a. (2004). a perspective of the implications of the common european framework implementation in the colombian socio-cultural context. colombian applied linguistics journal, 7, 7-26. barletta, n. (2009). intercultural competence: another challenge. profile issues in teachers’ professional development, 11(1), 143-158. birch, b. m. (2009). the english language teacher and global civil society. new york, ny: routledge. dagnino, e. (2005). meanings of citizenship in latin america [ids working papers, 258]. brighton, uk: institute of development studies. retrieved from http:// www.drc-citizenship.org/system/assets/1052734448/ original/1052734448-dagnino.2005-meanings.pdf. delors, j. (chair). (1996). learning: the treasure within [report to unesco of the international commission on education for the twenty-first century]. paris, fr: unesco. de mejía, a.-m. 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(2010). the portrayal of efl teachers in official discourse: the perpetuation of disdain. profile issues in teachers’ professional development, 12(2), 33-49. guerrero, c. h., & quintero, a. h. (2009). english as a neutral language in the colombian national standards: a constituent of dominance in english language education. profile issues in teachers’ professional development, 11(2), 135-150. guilherme, m. (2002). critical citizens for an intercultural world: foreign language education as cultural politics. clevedon, uk: multilingual matters. horrach, j. a. (2009). sobre el concepto de ciudadanía: historia y modelos [about the concept of citizenship: history and models]. revista de filosofía factótum, 6, 1-22. icfes. (2011). estudio internacional de educación cívica y ciudadana – iccs 2009: informe de resultados de colombia [international civic and citizenship education study – iccs 2009: report of results for colombia]. bogotá, co: men. icfes. (2015, september). información de la prueba saber 11 [information for the saber 11 test]. retrieved from http:// www.icfes.gov.co/index.php/instituciones-educativas/ saber-11/informacion-de-la-prueba-saber11. jaramillo, r. (2008). educación cívica y ciudadana como respuesta a la violencia en colombia [civic and citizenship education as a response to violence in colombia]. transatlántica de educación, 4, 65-76. jordão, c., & fogaça, f. c. (2008). efl teaching, critical literacy and citizenship: a happy love triangle? in t. gimenez & s. sheehan (eds.), global citizenship in the english language classroom (pp. 20-28). london, uk: british council. kerber, l. k. (1997). the meanings of citizenship. the journal of american history, 84(3), 833-854. https:/doi. org/10.2307/2953082. 167profile vol. 19, no. 1, january-june 2017. issn 1657-0790 (printed) 2256-5760 (online). bogotá, colombia. pages 155-168 citizenship education and the efl standards: a critical reflection kymlicka, w. 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(2014). miradas sobre la educación en iberoamérica: avances en las metas educativas 2021 [a glance at education in ibero-america: advances in educational goals 2021]. madrid, es: author. retrieved from http://oei.es/xxivcie/miradas2014web.pdf. oxfam. (2006). education for global citizenship: a guide for schools. retrieved from http://www.oxfam.org.uk/ education/global-citizenship/global-citizenship-guides. oxfam. (2015). education for global citizenship: a guide for schools. retrieved from http://www.oxfam.org.uk/~/ media/files/education/global%20citizenship/global_ citizenship_schools_web.ashx?la=en. pearson. (2008). longman dictionary of contemporary english (6th ed.). london, uk: author. pérez, a. e. (2002). ciudadanía y definiciones [citizenship and definitions]. doxa: cuadernos de filosofía del derecho, 25, 177-211. https:/doi.org/10.14198/doxa2002.25.05. preuss, u. k. (2003). the ambiguous meanings of citizenship. retrieved from http://ccc.uchicago.edu/docs/preuss.pdf. porto, m. (2014). intercultural citizenship education in an efl online project in argentina. language and intercultural communication, 14(2), 245-261. http:// dx.doi.org/10.1080/14708477.2014.890625. ruiz, a., & chaux, e. (2005). la formación de competencias ciudadanas [education in citizenship competences]. bogotá, co: ascofade. sánchez, a. c., & obando, g. v. (2008). is colombia ready for “bilingualism”? profile issues in teachers’ professional development, 9(1), 181-195. schulz, w., ainley, j., fraillon, j., kerr, d., & losito, b. (2010). iccs 2009 international report: civic knowledge, attitudes, and engagement among lower secondary school students in 38 countries. amsterdam, nl: international association for the evaluation of educational achievement (iea). tarasheva, e. (2008). integrating citizen education into english language courses for university students. in t. gimenez & s. sheehan (eds.), global citizenship in the english language classroom (6-12). london, uk: british council. tawil, s. (2013). education for ‘global citizenship’: a framework for discussion. erf working papers series, 7, 1-8. unesco. (1990). world declaration on education for all and framework for action to meet basic learning needs. new york, ny: author. unesco. (1995). declaration and integrated framework of action on education for peace, human rights and democracy. paris, fr: author. unesco. (2013). global citizenship education: an emerging perspective. paris, fr: author. unesco. (2014a). education strategy 2014-2021. paris, fr: author. unesco. (2014b). global citizenship education: preparing learners for the challenges of the 21st century. paris, fr: author. unesco. (2015). global citizenship education: topics and learning objectives. paris, fr: author. united nations. (2012). global education first initiative (gefi) [website]. http://www.globaleducationfirst.org/. vargas, a., tejada, h., & colmenares, s. (2008). estándares básicos de competencias en lenguas extranjeras (inglés): una lectura crítica [basic competence standards in english as a foreign language (efl): a critical view]. revista lenguaje, 36(1), 241-275. universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras168 calle díaz about the author luzkarime calle díaz holds an ma in english language teaching (universidad del norte, colombia). she has been a teacher of english for over ten years at different educational levels. she has also been a program coordinator, writer of learning material, and academic consultant for english language curriculum projects with local and national impact. profile vol. 19, no. 2, july-december 2017. issn 1657-0790 (printed) 2256-5760 (online). bogotá, colombia. pages 7-11 7 editorial http://dx.doi.org/10.15446/profile.v19n2.64604 editorial* resisting exclusion from core indexing systems for discursive and material reasons, third world scholars experience exclusion from academic publishing and communication; therefore, the knowledge of third world communities is marginalized or appropriated by the west, while the knowledge of western communities is legitimated and reproduced; and as part of this process, academic writing/publishing plays a role in the material and ideological hegemony of the west. (canagarajah, 2002, p. 6) the quote from canagarajah shows the situation most academic journals have recently been going through in developing countries. in the colombian scenario, academic publications like profile are being demanded to comply more and more with regulations emanating from colciencias, the colombian research agency in charge of the classification of the scientific journals edited within the country (colciencias, 2010, 2016). its latest rules have relied heavily on jcr (journal citation reports, led by thomson) and sjr (scientific journal ranking, managed by scopus) and, to a lesser extent, on the h5 index (h5). the changes introduced in the national policies are based on the need to measure the impact of the national scientific production and to increase its acknowledgment in the international picture. the h5 index examines the number of citations made per article in a period of 5 years using google scholar and measures researchers and journals impact. to our surprise, two local initiatives, redalyc (red de revistas científicas de america latina y el caribe, españa y portugal) and scielo (scientific electronic library online), created and led in the latin american region, have not been given the same role in defining the classification of journals. colciencias is more inclined to accept the standards born in the heart of the west, which is to say within the americo-european boundaries. colciencias (2016) has eagerly tried to align the measurement of colombian research and journal impact to international standards. in the words of colciencias, the idea is to gain robustness, reliability, and the appropriation of the production of knowledge in the many different disciplines. however, we do not understand why the peculiarities of journals from humanities and social sciences are not taken into consideration when deciding upon the databases and indexing systems that serve as reliable and appropriate for evaluation purposes. another expected by-product of this intended measurement is the editorial self-management. according to colciencias, this measurement would allow colombia to strengthen and * how to cite this article (apa, 6 th ed.): cárdenas, m. l., & nieto cruz, m. c. (2017). editorial: resisting exclusion from core indexing systems. profile issues in teachers’ professional development, 19(2), 7-11. http://dx. doi.org/10.15446/profile.v19n2.64604. this editorial was received on june 5, 2017, and accepted on june 12, 2017. this is an open access article distributed under the terms of the creative commons license attributionnoncommercial-noderivatives 4.0 international license. consultation is possible at http://creativecommons. org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/. universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras8 cárdenas & nieto cruz acknowledge academic communities, promote the generation of new knowledge products, and the creation of national and international networks. nice as it may sound, colciencias’ statement has led academic journals into a frenetic run which has stimulated an urgent need to compete for citations. this may, in the long term, have an influence on the disposal of academicians who do not fulfil “the standards”. apart from yielding authority from the locals to the hegemony of the west, the expected short-term results hinder a reflection that must be carried out by the national actors who are in charge of creating and spreading knowledge. the assurance of quality in research publications is of course a desirable goal of any research agency in search of benefits for the country, the issuing institution, the publication and the authors themselves. this is by no means an undesirable ambition. what is neglected is the way in which the process has been carried out by imposition. although editors have raised their voices in different forums and via working documents, and warning colciencias about the inconveniences of the new policies, the modifications have been superficial and the alignment with jcr and sjr indexing systems remains as the main factor in the classification of the journals. to this end, cárdenas (2016), claims that the ranking systems and the pressures they place on today’s academic or scientific journals and scholars cannot be the only reason to evaluate the relevance and quality of knowledge produced as a result of the examination of issues chosen by academic circles based in periphery countries like colombia. (p. 52) at the other end of the spectrum, as articles from authors of developing countries start to get citations, they become an interesting target for international agencies. the so-called bibliographic databases as scopus and thomson are of great importance for the academic world but their financial interests may hinder the spread of knowledge because of the fees they charge for access to articles written by authors including those from the developing countries. money moves the world. its most representative financial institutions, among which is the editorial industry, are no exception to this popular sentence. open access systems emerged as an action that defends the right to know without economic restrictions. if it were not by the open journal systems that enable academic publications to be posted for free in benefit of many national and international readers, the international publishing tentacles would have made it almost impossible to increase readership on a free basis. sharing, on the other hand, promotes the exchange of information for free and sharing moves communities. sharing is a challenge faced by profile. despite the necessary alignment to standards, profile has fought back these international standards by the promotion of the spread of knowledge, by motivating potential writers to contribute, as their knowledge is of incalculable value, even if the contribution is not perfect. the battle against marginalization is present in the philosophy of our publication, in the actions taken along our history and in the belief we hold of public benefit over all. we may even be gaining some ground in our attempts at international recognition when the journal has been included since june 2016 in the emerging sources citation index, produced by thomson reuters, precisely. profile vol. 19, no. 2, july-december 2017. issn 1657-0790 (printed) 2256-5760 (online). bogotá, colombia. pages 7-11 9 editorial luckily, we count on the support of the scholars who make up part of our committees, and whose participation is decisive to ensure the rigor of our publication. this time, we are pleased to welcome to our editorial review board the following professors: miguel farías (universidad de santiago de chile), paula rebolledo cortés (ricelt, chile), maritza rosas maldonado (universidad andrés bello, chile), constanza tolosa (the university of auckland, new zealand), and anne westmacott (universidad chileno-británica de cultura). we have gathered thirteen articles in this edition; two of them come from mexico, one from chile, one from the united states, and nine of them are authored by colombian scholars. the first section, issues from teacher researchers, includes ten articles concerning teachers’ narrative inquiry, language learning, english language teacher education and language policies. we open with an article by professors paula r. golombek and karen e. johnson who return to their concept of teachers’ narrative inquiry as professional development to complement it by resorting to vygostky’s sociocultural theory and a couple of instances of empirical research. professors golombek and johnson stress the importance of regarding language teaching as a situated phenomenon prone to contextual influences, a condition that teachers can be made aware of through the dynamics of narrative inquiry. the figure of the “expert mediator”—the teacher educator—emerges as a facilitator who encourages teachers to gain agency and to conduct inquiry to make sense of their past, present, and future teaching practices, while engaging in narrative. next, we have gerrard mugford from mexican universidad de guadalajara, who starts by sharing with us an analysis of formulaic language and efl (english as a foreign language) requests and highlights how formulaic language can enhance learners’ ability to come across in acceptable and appropriate ways and thus become more pragmatically competent in the target language. then, colombian teacher julio césar torres-rocha adds a contribution to the field of language policies in the country. his research report focuses on the influence of the national bilingual programme on the reconstruction of teacher identity. among the interesting aspects we find we can highlight in his manuscript is his study on how teachers feel about language requirements associated with a language policy, their familiarity with the policy, as well as their views and feelings on the language policy and language requirements for english teachers. the fourth article of this section, authored by colombian authors ady marcela vaca torres and luis fernando gómez rodríguez, tells us how a group of ninth graders enhanced the speaking skill in an english as a foreign language classroom through project-based learning. the results show how and why project-based learning encouraged students to increase oral production through lexical competence development, helped to overcome fears of speaking in the learning process, and increased their interest in learning about their school life and community. next, we present an account of a qualitative evaluation system that has been incorporated into a colombian private english institution. javier rojas serrano describes the way students face the new qualitative evaluation system and their views on alternative assessment as a way to help them make progress in their english learning process. universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras10 cárdenas & nieto cruz then we can read a couple of research reports dealing with the use of learning strategies. the first one, by chilean teachers claudio díaz larenas, lucía ramos leiva and mabel ortiz navarrete, concentrates on rhetoric, metacognitive, and cognitive strategies pre-service teachers use before and after a process-based writing intervention when completing an argumentative essay. we can learn about the strategies used by the prospective teachers and the implications that can be drawn from them in order to decide upon the contents and development of writing programmes. the second article, authored by colombian teachers maria eugenia guapacha chamorro and luis humberto benavidez paz, is a report on an action-research study aimed at improving the english language performance and language learning strategies use of a group of pre-service language teachers by combining elements from the cognitive academic language learning approach and task-based language teaching. afterward we include an article on the role of educational stakeholders in the appropriation of foreign language education policies written by oscar peláez and jaime usma. the study depicts how different educational stakeholders in a rural region of colombia perceive foreign language education policies, and how these perceptions shape the way they recreate these reforms at the ground level. we believe this investigation can illuminate other inquiries in those contexts where attempts are being made to enhance foreign language competences mainly by issuing policies to be implemented in fixed periods of time. the following article contains a report by janeth juliana contreras león and claudia marcela chapetón castro on the impact of implementing collaborative learning from a social and dialogical perspective on seventh graders’ interaction, in an english as a foreign language classroom at a public school in colombia. as we can read in their manuscript, they followed the action research approach which let them conclude that taking a critical approach to language education and understanding collaborative learning as a social construction of knowledge can boost opportunities for changing ways of teaching and learning practices, encourage the teacher and the students to take different roles, have an impact on the classroom relations and interaction, and also promote students’ empowerment. we close this first section with an investigation by mariza g. méndez lópez and moisés bautista tun, from universidad de quintana roo (mexico). the investigation’s main aim was to understand the factors that may motivate and demotivate students with low emotional intelligence to participate in speaking activities during english class. we should point out that results not only account for those issues but help us get acquainted with differences between male and female students in given educational circumstances. in the second section, issues from novice teacher researchers, we include a study dealing with pre-service teacher education. colombian novice teacher researchers sergio andrés suárez flórez and edwin arley basto basto share with us the findings of a study that sought to identify pre-service teachers’ beliefs about teaching english as a foreign language and their potential changes throughout the teaching practicum. the last section, issues based on reflections and innovations, brings readers this time two articles. in first place, juan david gómez gonzález, from colombia, describes an approach profile vol. 19, no. 2, july-december 2017. issn 1657-0790 (printed) 2256-5760 (online). bogotá, colombia. pages 7-11 11 editorial to developing intermediate level reading proficiency through a strategic and iterative use of a discreet set of tasks that combine some of the more common metacognitive theories and strategies that have been published in the past thirty years. he explains its benefits and its three main components (textual indicators, strategy instruction, and content learning) and suggests a model for their implementation. then, and to close this edition, we present an article by colombian scholar mónica rodríguez-bonces. in it, she depicts the foundations to design a curriculum that integrates music and drama as strategies for the teaching of english as a foreign language to children. as the author argues, the interdisciplinary curriculum not only innovates the offer of english courses for children but also promotes meaningful learning and creates a positive attitude towards learning a foreign language. the articles present in our current issue depict the voices of academicians from colombia, mexico, chile, and the united states. they reflect and act upon their realities and findings in specific contexts. their very presence in our publication is a demonstration that we, as language teacher-researchers, have our own vision that merits the acknowledgment as active actors in the creation of local understanding that can be shared with and compared to the material and ideological experience of the west. melba libia cárdenas journal editor maría claudia nieto cruz journal director references canagarajah, a. s. (2002). a geopolitics of academic writing. pittsburgh, us: university of pittsburgh press. cárdenas, m. l. (2016). challenges of the how journal in spreading teachers’ works in times of ranking pressures. how, 23(2), 3557. http://dx.doi.org/10.19183/how.23.2.333. colciencias. (2010, february). documento guía: servicio permanente de indexación de revistas de ciencia, tecnología e innovación colombianas. bogotá, co: author. retrieved from http://publindex. colciencias.gov.co:8084/publindex/docs/informacioncompleta.pdf. colciencias. (2016, may). documento no 1601: política para mejorar la calidad de las publicaciones científicas nacionales (versión para discusión). bogotá, co: author. retrieved from http://www. colciencias.gov.co/sites/default/files/upload/paginas/politica-publindex-colciencias.pdf. http://publindex.colciencias.gov.co:8084/publindex/docs/informacioncompleta.pdf http://publindex.colciencias.gov.co:8084/publindex/docs/informacioncompleta.pdf http://www.colciencias.gov.co/sites/default/files/upload/paginas/politica-publindex-colciencias.pdf http://www.colciencias.gov.co/sites/default/files/upload/paginas/politica-publindex-colciencias.pdf exploring the code-switching behaviours of chilean efl high school teachers: a function-focused approach 115profile: issues teach. prof. dev., vol. 22 no. 2, jul-dec, 2020. issn 1657-0790 (printed) 2256-5760 (online). bogotá, colombia. pages 115-130 https://doi.org/10.15446/profile.v22n2.81152 exploring the code-switching behaviours of chilean efl high school teachers: a function-focused approach exploración de las conductas de cambio de código lingüístico en profesores de lengua extranjera de secundaria: una perspectiva enfocada en las funciones marco cancino1 gabriela díaz universidad andres bello, santiago, chile the present study sought to assess and characterise the amount of first language use that two english as a foreign language teachers used to accomplish a number of functions in two classroom modes. an adapted version of the functional language alternation analysis of teacher talk scheme was used to analyse teacher talk in six english as a foreign language classes at a public high school. results showed that the first language holds a hegemonic presence in these classrooms across a wide range of pedagogical functions. it is argued that initiatives that present prescriptive approaches to foreign language use need to take into account linguistic, contextual, and idiosyncratic factors in the english as a foreign language classroom. keywords: code-switching, english as a foreign language teaching, functional analysis, l1 use el presente estudio buscó evaluar y caracterizar la cantidad de lengua materna que dos profesoras de inglés como lengua extranjera utilizaron para completar una serie de funciones en dos modos de clase. se usó una versión adaptada del instrumento “análisis funcional de la alternancia del lenguaje del profesor” para analizar el discurso de las profesoras en seis clases de inglés, en una institución de educación secundaria. los resultados mostraron que la lengua materna tiene una presencia hegemónica en el aula de inglés, con una amplia gama de funciones pedagógicas. se argumenta que las iniciativas que presenten aproximaciones prescriptivas sobre el uso de la lengua extranjera necesitan tener en cuenta los factores lingüísticos, contextuales e idiosincrásicos del aula de inglés. palabras clave: análisis funcional, cambio de código lingüístico, enseñanza del inglés, uso de l1 marco cancino  https://orcid.org/0000-0002-2450-8197 · email: marco.cancino@unab.cl gabriela díaz · email: g.diazgonzalez@uandresbello.edu how to cite this article (apa, 7th ed.): cancino, m., & díaz, g. (2020). exploring the code-switching behaviours of chilean efl high school teachers: a function-focused approach. profile: issues in teachers’ professional development, 22(2), 115–130. https://doi.org/10.15446/profile. v22n2.81152 this article was received on july 18, 2019 and accepted on march 30, 2020. this is an open access article distributed under the terms of the creative commons license attribution-noncommercial-noderivatives 4.0 international license. consultation is possible at https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/ https://orcid.org/0000-0002-2450-8197 https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/ universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras116 cancino & díaz introduction one of the most relevant decisions that english as a foreign language (efl) teachers must make is whether to restrict the use of the mother tongue (l1) in the foreign language (l2) classroom. this controversial issue has usually been approached from a prescriptive perspective, which focuses on what teachers should do rather than providing a description of what teachers actually do in their classrooms (üstünel & seedhouse, 2005). in line with this, many teachers avoid using the l1 in the l2 classroom, as they believe they should not prevent learners from accessing l2 input. however, many efl teachers do use their l1 to teach l2 for a number of reasons such as providing the l1 equivalent to new vocabulary and giving key instructions in order to avoid misunderstandings. even though the literature advocating for code-switching—generally defined as the use of l1 in the l2 classroom—over the last decades has increased, there are questions that have not been resolved regarding the amount and quality of l2 needed, and any decision on the matter is eventually left to the teacher’s judgment and intuition. therefore, the present study aimed at analysing the functions that efl nonnative speaker teachers accomplish with their talk and characterising the existing relationship between those functions and the language choices they make. background of the study the relevance of english as a lingua franca, that is, a language that is widely used by speakers of other languages to ensure successful communication, has prompted countries to introduce educational policies that include english as a second or foreign language in their national curricula. in the chilean case, the national curriculum requires that english be the compulsory foreign language to be taught at school (114 hours per year) starting from 5th grade in primary education until 12th grade when students complete their secondary education. the compulsory nature of english is a reflection of the discourse that in the last 30 years has been introduced in governmental agendas, which have sought for their countries to become bilingual and thus be a competitive actor in a globalised market (glas, 2008). the first educational reform in the 1990s regarding the english curriculum focused on developing receptive skills; that is, 80% of the curriculum was devoted to listening and reading (ministerio de educación [mineduc], 2009). in recent years, the ministry of education has emphasised the need for english to be taught without using l1 (mineduc, 2019). however, specific guidelines in the national curriculum prompt teachers to focus on providing a great deal of information to be read and listened to by learners, which reduces their opportunities to produce language. in addition, national and international proficiency test results show that chilean learners are lagging behind their latin american counterparts (gómez & pérez, 2015). in 2018, education first reported that chile ranked 46 out of 88 countries/ regions in the world in a language test, a ranking which belongs to the “low level” proficiency band. although the reasons for this outcome may be related to some extent to curricular factors such as the insufficient number of hours allocated to learning english, particularly in municipal schools (barahona, 2016), language-related factors such as the code-switching behaviours of efl high school teachers may illuminate the decisions that those teachers make in the language classroom. code-switching code-switching is a linguistic phenomenon that has been studied over decades and for which different definitions have been proposed. the broader definitions have used the term code-switching and code-mixing interchangeably, making them synonymous with “bilingual speech” (schendl & wright, 2011). more specific definitions have referred to code-switching as the use of two or more languages at the inter-clause/sentential level, and to code-mixing as the mixing of two languages at the intra-sentential/clause level (lin, 2013; üstünel, 2016). a 117profile: issues teach. prof. dev., vol. 22 no. 2, jul-dec, 2020. issn 1657-0790 (printed) 2256-5760 (online). bogotá, colombia. pages 115-130 exploring the code-switching behaviours of chilean efl high school teachers... more holistic definition is provided by poplack (2010), who defines code-switching in the following terms: “[code-switching] refers to the mixing, by bilinguals (or multilinguals), of two or more languages in discourse, often with no change of interlocutor or topic. such mixing may take place at any level of linguistic structure” (p. 15). this is in line with schendl and wright’s (2011) definition, which states: “if a person uses elements from both languages in a single discourse, be it insertion of single words or alternation of larger segments, this is referred to as code-switching” (p. 23). regarding the efl classroom, holistic perspectives on code-switching involve “the alternating use of more than one linguistic code by any of the classroom participants . . . and this can include both code-mixing (intra-clausal/sentential alternation) and code-switching (alternation at the inter-clausal/sentential level)” (lin, 2013, p. 195). approaches to code-switching in the language classroom context the use of teachers’ l1 to teach l2 has been a matter of controversy in the literature as there are rather polarising perspectives in this respect. the position that supports the l2-only classroom environment contends that learners need to be exposed to a considerable amount of l2 input in order to learn the language and that the teacher represents the main source of target language (tl) input for those learners. therefore, the main role of the teacher is to expose learners to the tl at all times, as this will contribute to increasing their tl proficiency (turnbull, 2001). although this prescriptive view represents an ideal scenario that is in line with the chilean national curriculum (mineduc, 2019), studies on code-switching in second language classrooms have reported that teachers differ in the amount of l2 use across language settings. for example, de la campa and nassaji (2009) assessed the amount of l1 used by teachers with different experience levels in two german-as-a-foreign-language classes. they found that the average amount of l1 use was 11.3% in both classes and concluded that l1 use “is dependent on the class circumstances and can be different from the average amount of l1 an instructor uses in all his or her classes” (p. 756). similarly, grant and nguyen (2017) reported strong differences between the frequency of language switches produced by vietnamese efl teachers, ranging from 439 to 10 code-switching instances. although no studies assessing the amount of code-switching have been conducted in chilean efl contexts, these findings suggest that the teachers’ selection of one language over the other may be determined by contextual and pedagogical factors, and that these differing pedagogical behaviours may take place in the same educational institutions and can be found in the same teacher. the contextual factors impinging upon the amount and quality of code-switching can be related to the students’ l2 proficiency level. teachers in low-level classes tend to resort to the learners’ l1 significantly more than teachers who teach more advanced learners, and teachers’ use of the learners’ l1 has been found to be more frequent in state institutions/schools than in private schools, with teachers in the former group significantly encouraging more l1 activities in class (grant & nguyen, 2017). however, switching to the l1 has been found to be time consuming, discourages talented students, offers no tl environment, and prompts no effort towards using the tl (promnath & tayjasanant, 2016). another factor that has an impact on teacher’s language choice is the lack of competence on the part of non-native teachers (üstünel, 2016). as cook (2001) points out, “teachers resort to the l1 despite their best intentions and often feeling guilty for straying from the l2 path” (p. 405). this statement implies that educational institutions where a rhetoric adoption of communicative approaches such as communicative language teaching is carried out may still fail at achieving the l2-only approach (wang & mansouri, 2017). furthermore, copland and neokleous (2010) argue that teachers are not always aware of either the quantity of l1 used in their classes or the purposes for which code-switching is used, universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras118 cancino & díaz interaction between one teacher and 31 learners as they code-switched in the classroom. the authors found that the use of code-switching by the teacher in the classroom accomplished a range of discourse functions such as affective, topic switch, interjection, and repetition. these functions sought to create a comfortable environment in the classroom where information could be clarified. interestingly, the affective function was the most common function in the teacher’s discourse. this suggests that clarification may not be the main reason why teachers code-switch, and that the type of code-switching may be related to teacher personality. similarly, kim (2001) applied a descriptive approach to analyse the code-switching behaviour of eight beginnerlevel teachers who taught several languages: two asian languages (korean and japanese) and two european languages (german and french). kim designed the functional language alternation analysis of teacher talk (flaatt) to analyse teacher talk in terms of a range of pedagogical functions. results showed that l1 was used by teachers for substantial segments of the lesson and that the frequency of teaching acts for each teacher was different, though the function of marker (used to indicate the beginning or end of a topic) was the most frequent. thus, although the “optimal” position (macaro, 2014)—a stance where the teacher is aware of the advantages and disadvantages present in using the l1 that may promote or hinder learning—would seem adequate for efl learners, the literature has not reached consensus in terms of the frequency and the type of code-switching that should be provided in classes with homogeneous l1s (liu et al., 2004). these findings highlight the importance of exploring the pedagogical functions that are accomplished by efl teachers as they code-switch in their classrooms. method this section will describe the process through which the data for the study were gathered and which makes them underreport their code-switching practices. the ensuing contradiction between a stated belief and classroom behaviour regarding the use of code-switching may cause feelings of guilt as teachers struggle to reconcile pedagogic ideals with contextual realities. an approach that nurtures code-switching awareness is proposed by cook (2001), who argues for a judicious use of l2, “maximizing” l2 in the classroom and emphasizing the “the usefulness of the l2 rather than the harm of the first” (p. 404). studies addressing the impact of code-switching in the efl classroom studies assessing the impact of code-switching in efl learning have focused on linguistic skills in adults. in a chinese context, tian and macaro (2012) assessed the acquisition of vocabulary in a group where the l1-equivalents of words was used, and another group where l2-only-explanations were provided. results showed that all the l1-equivalent group scored better than the english-only explanation group, regardless of their proficiency levels. these findings were mirrored by zhao and macaro (2014), who argued that even though the l2-only instruction approach may be useful for the learning of some linguistic features and structures by adult learners, this may not be the case with vocabulary learning, as “the concepts that l2 represents have been established through the l1” (p. 77). in contrast, acquiring other abilities such as oral production skills may not benefit from l1-based instruction, as learners are not given the chance to decode and process oral l2 input (haryanto et al., 2016). other studies have reported prominent pedagogical functions behind the use of code-switching by teachers, such as explaining new vocabulary, illustrating grammatical rules, managing the classroom, eliciting learner talk, and providing task instruction. for example, muñoz and mora (2006) found positive outcomes in the use of l1 for communicative purposes in the efl classroom. they video-recorded and qualitatively examined the 119profile: issues teach. prof. dev., vol. 22 no. 2, jul-dec, 2020. issn 1657-0790 (printed) 2256-5760 (online). bogotá, colombia. pages 115-130 exploring the code-switching behaviours of chilean efl high school teachers... analysed. the study attempted to answer the following research questions: research question 1: what language is the most frequently used by efl teachers in a chilean high school context in two classroom modes? research question 2: what types of functions are performed and how often by these efl teachers? the present study is descriptive in nature and is informed by kim and elder’s (2005) focus on functions performed by teachers with their code-switching. the present study employed nonparticipant observation procedures, as audio-recordings were made by the participant teachers. the main aim was to describe and explore the amount of l1 (spanish) used in relation to the pedagogic functions performed by two efl teachers. another goal was to establish whether there is any systematicity in the preference of one language over the other when accomplishing pedagogical functions. context and participants the data for this study were taken from two female efl teachers—whose names have been changed— working at a high school in santiago, chile. clara is in her twenties and is less experienced than ester, who is in her forties. ester has been teaching in public and semi-private high schools for 14 years, whilst clara has been working in high schools and language institutes for six years. both teachers are native speakers of spanish. the students in their classrooms are 14–15-year-old learners who are taught a 35-minute efl lesson four times a week, and who belong to the “real beginner” common european framework of reference level, according to a placement test taken at the institution. in the chilean public high school context, teachers tend to deliver their l2 lessons by using l1, particularly with those learners who seem to lack commitment. indeed, research in the chilean high school context has suggested that whilst students appreciate the value of english as a global language, they do not show commitment towards learning the language at school (gómez & pérez, 2015). data collection procedures each teacher audio-recorded two of their own groups in three different lessons (35 minutes each). the two teachers started recording their lessons over a period of three weeks in order to ensure that they taught the same content and had similar class objectives. in total, there were 12 sessions recorded and transcribed (420 minutes). analysis of transcriptions focused on two specific classroom modes put forward by walsh (2006), namely, the managerial mode and the materials mode as they contained specific pedagogical goals that were more relevant for the context in which the data were collected. the managerial mode is in place when the teacher seeks to organise the physical environment and introduce or conclude an activity, and it is characterised by extended teacher turns and the presence of transitional markers (e.g., “okay,” “now”). the materials mode seeks to provide language practice around a piece of material, and it features display questions, error correction, and modelling. other modes in walsh’s taxonomy (skills and systems mode and classroom context mode) were not included in the analysis as the nature of the lessons did not warrant their inclusion (i.e., these modes were not represented in these teachers’ talk). ten minutes of each mode, for each teacher, were extracted from the data. pauses longer than three seconds were not considered in the total time to be included for analysis. only wholeclass teacher talk was included in the analysis, as the study aimed at characterising teachers’ code-switching behaviour in relation to their pedagogical functions. when the ten minutes of data for a particular mode were completed with a teacher, the researchers stopped including data for that mode. thus, 40 minutes of data (ten minutes for each mode, for each teacher) were extracted from the lessons. method of data analysis the flaatt instrument. the flaatt scheme was adapted from kim (2001) to analyse the data gathered. the categories in the instrument were mainly drawn universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras120 cancino & díaz from duff and polio (1990) and sinclair and coulthard (1975). the “language used” category contains five types of “language code,” which provide information on the nature of the utterance in terms of the amount of l1 and l2 used by the teacher (see table 1). table 1. “language used” category in the flaatt scheme (kim, 2001) category language code definition language used l1 (spanish) the unit entirely consists of spanish l1c the unit mainly consists of spanish with one word of morpheme in english l2 (english) the unit entirely consists of english l2c the unit mainly consists of english with one word of morpheme in spanish mix the unit is a mixture of spanish and english, to which the above categories of l1c and l2c cannot be applied. in order to identify language codes, teacher utterances were separated by means of the basic unit of analysis in the flaatt, which is the “analysis of speech unit” (as-unit). these units are defined as a single speaker’s utterance consisting of an independent clause, or sub-clausal unit (a segment that cannot stand alone, although can be expanded into a full clause by reconstructing the omitted elements) together with any subordinate clause(s) associated with either. (foster et al., 2000, p. 365) the as-unit is more suitable for this type of analysis than other types of units such as the t-unit and the c-unit, because it was created especially for analysing oral discourse and, therefore, it can account not only for sentences and phrases but also for utterances even when they seem to be fragmentary on the surface. there are a number of rules for the segmentation of the data into as-units. for example, the independent clause in the as-unit must minimally include a finite verb. there are also rules for considering minor utterances (e.g., “yes” and “now”) as as-units, as long as they perform a full function. space constraints prevent the researchers from including the set of rules, which may be found in foster et al. (2000). once the as-units were identified, a language code for each was determined. this was done by following a set of guidelines adapted from kim (2001), and included procedures for treating proper nouns, interjections, and word fragments, as well as rules for classifying the as-unit as one of the five language codes existing in the flaatt instrument. the original flaatt scheme included three goals of classroom interaction proposed by ellis (2012). these are core goals (teaching the language itself ), framework goals (related to classroom management), and social goals (maintaining social relationship between interlocutors). they were replaced by walsh’s two classroom modes in order to characterise the pedagogical moments of the lessons before the functional analysis was carried out and to provide information regarding the interrelatedness of the pedagogic goals of the teacher and the language used. teaching acts. the flaatt instrument provides a number of columns where the teaching acts (i.e., functions) created by sinclair and coulthard (1975) may be used to identify the as-units. new pedagogical functions can be created depending on the range of functions performed by teachers. two examples of the most common functions found in the data are provided below (kim, 2001). 121profile: issues teach. prof. dev., vol. 22 no. 2, jul-dec, 2020. issn 1657-0790 (printed) 2256-5760 (online). bogotá, colombia. pages 115-130 exploring the code-switching behaviours of chilean efl high school teachers... • marker (mar) “well,” “okay,” “now,” “good,” “right,” “all right,” and a close class of items represent this category that marks the beginning or end of a topic or move boundary. 3 → ya [well] 4 students 5 so, here are your worksheets about physical description • comment (com) realized by a statement, a tag question, or a phrase. its function is to expand, justify, exemplify, or provide additional information to the response given by a student. 2183 ah ya 2184 → pero eso is not “look like” porque estamos hablando de appearances [but that’s not “look like” because we are talking about appearances] results this section will present results regarding the type and the nature of the functions performed by the two teachers as part of the managerial and materials mode, which allowed for establishing similarities and comparisons between the teachers regarding their language choices. l1 and l2 as-units: managerial mode as shown in table 2, most of the as-units produced by ester and clara belonged to the opposite categories in the classification (l1-only and l2-only). the categories of l1c, mix, and l2c accounted for only 2% of the total amount of as-units (21 instances out of 1,084). both ester’s groups (g1 and g2) and clara’s groups (g3 and g4) produced more as-units in l1 than in l2 in this particular mode. ester produced l1-only units in 319 instances, compared to 217 l2-only units, whilst clara produced 396 l1-only units, compared to 131 l2-only units. ester’s percentage of l2-only units reached 40%, and clara’s l2-only output only reached 24%. ester tended to produce more l2-only units than clara; however, the percentage of occurrence of l2-only as-units for both teachers is less than 40%, in all groups, with one of clara’s groups (g4) reaching the lowest percentage (15%). overall, the two teachers produced 32% of l2-only as-units in this mode. finally, l1-only units were produced 715 times in all groups, which represents 66% of the units in this mode. these findings suggest that these teachers do not use l2 in their classrooms 66% of the time in this mode. there is a clear difference in the number of as-units produced in l2 in each of ester’s and clara’s groups, although this difference is more marked in the latter. table 2. language codes by groups: managerial mode l1 l1c mix l2c l2 total as-unitsas-units as-units as-units as-units as-units teacher n % n % n % n % n % n ester g1 178 54 3 0.9 1 0.3 3 0.9 140 43 325 ester g2 141 64 0 0 3 1 1 0.5 77 35 222 total 319 58 3 0.5 4 0.7 4 0.7 217 40 547 clara g3 166 64 1 0.3 3 1 0 0 90 35 260 clara g4 230 83 2 0.7 0 0 4 1 41 15 277 total 396 74 3 0.6 3 0.6 4 0.7 131 24 537 universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras122 cancino & díaz l1 and l2 as-units: materials mode table 3 shows that, unlike the findings in the managerial mode, clara was the teacher who produced more l2-only units in the materials mode (305 as-units amounting to 54%) in her two groups, compared to ester who produced 254 (36%) in her two groups. the teacher who produced more l1c, mix, and l2c units was ester (89 units) in comparison to clara (32 units). more language mixing is seen in this mode (9%) than in the managerial mode (2%), which can be explained in terms of the language that is needed to follow textbook activities (i.e., translation of specific words). this might also explain to some extent the lower number of l1-only units in this mode (47%, with 606 units out of 1,285). the groups displayed similar numbers within each teacher’s group, which did not occur in the managerial mode. the different classroom management approaches taken by teachers may have influenced the amount of l2 use in that mode. the number of l2-only units that both teachers produced in the materials mode was higher than in the managerial mode (559 instances in the former, and 348 in the latter). table 3. language codes by groups: materials mode l1 l1c mix l2c l2 total as-unitsas-units as-units as-units as-units as-units teacher n % n % n % n % n % n ester g1 184 49 25 7 21 6 5 1 141 38 376 ester g2 188 55 10 3 20 6 8 2 113 33 339 total 372 52 35 5 41 6 13 2 254 36 715 clara g3 121 41 4 1 2 1 7 2 164 55 298 clara g4 113 41 6 2 4 2 8 3 141 52 272 total 234 41 10 2 6 1 15 3 305 54 570 to sum up, the overall number of l1-only units in the two classroom modes (56%) represents a substantial amount of l1 produced by these two teachers. l1 was the most used language by ester (691 out of 1,262 units, with 55%) and clara (630 out of 1,107 units, with 57%). these numbers show that even when there were differences between the two teachers across modes, both produced a very similar number of l1-only units. across teachers and modes, the most frequently used language by these teachers was l1-only (56%), followed by l2-only (39%), mix (2.3%), l1c (2.2%), and l2c (0.5%). functional analysis: managerial mode due to space constraints, analysis of the functions performed by these two teachers are presented in terms of the five most frequent teaching acts performed in their classrooms, as well as their dominant type (l1 or l2) in the managerial and materials mode. table 4 presents this information for the managerial mode. regarding ester’s data, the most frequent function in her two classes was marker, and her most dominant language was l1 in one group and l2 in the 123profile: issues teach. prof. dev., vol. 22 no. 2, jul-dec, 2020. issn 1657-0790 (printed) 2256-5760 (online). bogotá, colombia. pages 115-130 exploring the code-switching behaviours of chilean efl high school teachers... other. however, the number of instances in which the function is performed in both groups (37 out of 65 for the l1-dominant group and 29 out of 56 for the l2-dominant group) suggests a similar number of codeswitching instances. in contrast, clara’s data show that the most common function was not the same in her two classes: the most common functions for groups 3 and 4 were directive and comment, respectively, and were mostly performed in the l1. ester produced three of her most common functions with l2 as a dominant language (marker, directive, nominate), with nominate reaching the highest percentage of l2 dominance (65%). thus, she used the l2 profusely when disciplining students and giving instructions (some of which were reinforced by an l1 translation). clara did not have l2 as a dominant language in the most frequent functions performed by her. table 5 displays the most frequent functions in the managerial mode, by teacher. the functions of marker and comment were the most frequent for ester and clara, respectively, and were performed mainly in the l1. table 4. most frequent functions performed and their dominant language type: managerial mode teacher overall l2 percentage 1 2 3 4 5 n n n n n ester g1 43 mar (l1) 37/65 dir (l2) 34/52 met (l1) 19/37 che (l1) 30/36 nom (l2) 20/34 ester g2 35 mar (l2) 29/56 met (l1) 29/39 dir (l2) 15/27 che (l1) 19/21 com (l1) 16/18 clara g3 35 dir (l1) 28/53 mar (l1) 18/31 dis (l1) 26/28 com (l1) 23/26 gqu (l1) 14/19 clara g4 15 com (l1) 47/48 mar (l1) 28/42 dis (l1) 27/28 gqu (l1) 22/22 che (l1/ l2) 12/24 note. mar = marker, dir = directive, com = comment, met = meta-statement, dis = discipline, che = check, gqu = genuine question, nom = nominate, n = number of instances in which the function is performed in the dominant language in relation to the total number of asunits. categories where the l2 is the most dominant language are displayed in bold typeface. table 5. most frequent functions performed and their dominant language type per teacher: managerial mode teacher overall l2 percentage 1 2 3 4 5 n n n n n ester 39 mar (l1) 66/121 dir (l2) 49/79 met (l1) 48/76 che (l1) 49/57 nom (l2) 27/47 clara 25 com (l1) 70/74 mar (l1) 46/73 dir (l1) 45/72 dis (l1) 53/56 gqu (l1) 36/41 universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras124 cancino & díaz the number of marker functions in ester’s discourse (121 in total) is higher than clara’s, and most of them are realized in the l1 (55%). directives were very frequent in ester and clara’s data; however, the predominant language for this function was l2 and l1, respectively. directive is the only function with an overall higher percentage of l2 units (50.33%) in the managerial mode. clara’s most frequent was comment, which was delivered in l1 95% of the time, mainly to organise the classroom and the attendance. functional analysis: materials mode as can be seen in table 6, the most frequent function in one of each teacher’s groups was model correct scaffolding (mcs), which had l2 as the dominant language. in line with the findings presented for the managerial mode, ester’s use of the marker function permeated her data in this mode. however, this function ranked fourth in one of clara’s groups (group 3) and was not present in the other (group 4). in clara’s data, the number of most frequent functions with l2 as the dominant language increased from one in the managerial mode to five in the materials mode. in contrast, ester’s output in this respect decreased from four in the managerial mode to one in the materials mode. regarding other salient functions, in this case, as a total of the two classes, ester’s overall number of check functions in this mode were 44, 42 of which were produced in the l1. interestingly, out of the 42 as-units, 40 were produced by means of “ya” (with a rising intonation). table 7 presents the most frequent functions and their dominant language by teacher. although the msc function is more frequent in the materials mode (walsh, 2006), ester’s most frequent function is marker, which confirms the pervasiveness of marker functions in her talk in both modes. both teachers performed their most frequent function in the l2. table 6. most frequent functions performed and their dominant language type: materials mode teacher overall l2 percentage 1 2 3 4 5 n n n n n ester g1 38 mar (l1) 30/42 gtr (l1) 18/42 eva (l1/ l2) 17/34 com (l1) 14/23 dir (l1) 11/21 ester g2 33 mcs (l2) 39/49 mar (l1) 31/43 dqu (l1) 18/32 com (l1) 22/30 che (l1) 22/24 clara g3 55 dir (l2) 18/36 com (l1) 25/32 mcs (l2) 28/29 mar (l1) 14/27 eva (l1) 20/26 clara g4 52 mcs (l2) 34/41 dqu (l2) 24/33 dir (l1) 19/27 com (l1) 17/22 che (l2) 15/18 note. gtr = genuine translation, dqu = display question, eva = evaluate. table 7. most frequent functions performed and their dominant language type per teacher: materials mode teacher overall l2 percentage 1 2 3 4 5 n n n n n ester 35 mar (l2) 61/85 mcs (l2) 48/67 gtr (l1) 29/67 com (l1) 36/53 dqu (l2) 26/44 clara 57 mcs (l2) 62/70 dir (l1) 43/63 com (l1) 45/72 mar (l2) 26/47 dqu (l1) 27/47 125profile: issues teach. prof. dev., vol. 22 no. 2, jul-dec, 2020. issn 1657-0790 (printed) 2256-5760 (online). bogotá, colombia. pages 115-130 exploring the code-switching behaviours of chilean efl high school teachers... discussion overall, there were particular differences between these two teachers in terms of the type of language used and the functions that were performed in the two modes analysed. discussion will be presented in relation to the research questions posited in the study. rq1: what language is the most frequently used by efl teachers in a chilean high school context in two classroom modes? results show that l1-only was used in the majority of the as units present for both teachers, in the managerial mode and the materials mode. in line with hosoda (2000), the use of l1 not only accomplishes a number of social functions, but also fulfils an important interactional role. in efl classes where levels of proficiency and motivation are low, teachers tend to code-switch to l1 in order to support understanding. for example, although ester produced the highest number of l2-only directives in the managerial mode, analysis of particular extracts suggests that in order to reinforce such directives and make them understandable for all the students, she included immediate translations of their utterances, both from l2 to l1, and vice versa, as can be seen in extract 1. extract 1. ester 126 sx, di una descripción de s1 [give a description of s1] (…) 127 → describe s1 128 pero [but] look the vocabulary 129 → mira tu vocabulario [look at your vocabulary] as pointed out by kim (2001), these “translation” episodes occur before or after the l2 unit was produced, and were frequent in the data for both modes. they may prompt learners to resort to the teacher’s translation rather than to their ability to decode the l2 message. in the present study, these instances were labelled restate instruction (rein), in order to address the frequent restatement of instructions, whether it be from l1 to l2, or vice versa. this represents a strong pedagogical argument against using l1 when teaching l2 (ford, 2009). many teachers hold the belief that transmitting messages in l1 is faster in order to cover all the contents needed, and that since students are beginners, their talk must be “sheltered” in order to avoid frustration and demotivation in learners (promnath & tayjasanant, 2016). although butzkamm (2003) states that clarifications in the mother tongue can help leaners increase their confidence in using foreign language expressions, when too much time is spent prompting students to focus on single l2 words or phrases and then providing the translation, opportunities for more meaningful output may be lost. as can be seen in extract 2, ester code-switches to l1 by translating the phrase “next class,” and in doing so, she code-switches to l1 on five occasions, all of which focus on the translated phrase. this linguistic behaviour may prevent learners from formulating and testing hypotheses about the tl, as they are given the translation and do not benefit from the code-switching provided by the teacher (kim & elder, 2008). extract 2. ester 556 next class we are going to continue to work in the worksheet 557 → ¿qué dije? [what did i say?] sx: que escribiéramos los… [that we should write the…] 558 (next class) next class we are going to continue working in the worksheet 560 → ya [okay] 561 → pero [but] “next class” 562 → ¿qué es [what is] “next class”? 563 → “next class” es la próxima clase [means next class] 564 we are going to continue working in this worksheet 565 → ¿ya? [right?] results also highlight the high number of as-units produced in l1 in the managerial mode. in this study, universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras126 cancino & díaz this represent 66% of all units in that mode, confirming that regarding managerial issues such as controlling students’ behaviour, the l1 is a “heavyweight ally” (lee, 2007). the high number of l2-only directives produced by ester in the managerial mode is explained by the frequent repetition of the same directive in the l2 to tackle disruptive classroom behaviour. rq2: what types of functions are performed and how often by these efl teachers? teaching acts in the managerial mode. an l2 approach to instructions involves training students in various listening strategies and becoming acquainted with instructional and formulaic expressions, along with the “modelling, reiteration, conscious recycling of key phrases and vocabulary, effective use of handouts and board, as well as the need for patience as opposed to using the l1 when students do not understand something the first time” (ford, 2009, p. 71). in contrast, an approach that includes code-switching advocates for using l1 when providing complex instructions to beginners (forman, 2012). in the present study, the data seem to represent the latter approach, as a significant presence of l1 marker and directive functions in the managerial mode was found. the functions were produced mostly in l1, particularly in clara’s data. clara used l1 to convey rather simple directive functions, which suggests that an inclusion of l2 in those instructions should be considered in order to provide learners with more instances of l2 input. as has been shown, the rein function was present in these teachers’ data, which suggests that these efl teachers could promote more active learner behaviour if they did not provide immediate l1 translations to their utterances, as learners would then focus on decoding the l2 message and retrieving meaning. this comment function was also frequent when the teacher introduced the class and gave more detail on the steps that had to be followed with a certain assessment or task, as a complement of the metastatement function. the reason why clara had the lowest number of l2-only units in group 4 in this mode may be explained by the abundant presence of comment functions produced in l1, as extract 3 shows. extract 3. clara. 900 revisé todas las pruebas y no, (en este curso no) en este curso no hay muchas malas notas [i’ve checked the tests and no, (not in this class) there aren’t a lot of bad marks in this class] 901 ¿recuerdan el trabajo de contestar las 10 preguntas que ya hicimos? [do you remember the task we did where you had to answer 10 questions?] 902 yo ése no tenía intención de ponerle décimas ni nada por el estilo pero lo voy a hacer considerando que fue un trabajo de revisión que lo hicimos post prueba y que en realidad está increíblemente relacionado con lo que ya hicimos [i didn’t have the intention of giving you extra points or anything like that but i will do it considering that it was a review task we completed after the test and it’s highly related to what we already did] teaching acts in the materials mode. a higher number of as-units were produced in this mode due to the nature of functions such as the mcs function. these functions had the l2 as a dominant language, which is explained by the error correction and modelling that takes place when scaffolding learner utterances. ester produced a high number of marker functions in the l2, contrasting this use with the marker functions in the managerial mode, where she performed them mainly in l1. although she kept performing marker functions in the materials mode (unlike clara), she may not have needed to repeat them in this mode in l1, as learners were focused on a piece of material and knew what to do with it as she nominated students. regarding the evaluation function, it is typically composed of formulaic chunks (lee, 2007). they represent “low cost” language, in the sense that they are easier to understand and it is common to find them in the teacher talk, so the majority 127profile: issues teach. prof. dev., vol. 22 no. 2, jul-dec, 2020. issn 1657-0790 (printed) 2256-5760 (online). bogotá, colombia. pages 115-130 exploring the code-switching behaviours of chilean efl high school teachers... of the evaluation as-units should be conveyed in l2. the data from ester and clara show that evaluation was performed mostly in l2 by means of a discrete group of short expressions that are easily understood (e.g., “yes,” “no”). however, the accept function, which is very similar to the evaluation function (e.g. “okay,” “yes,” “no”), was usually performed in l1. this suggests that occurrence of these functions in either language may not be a conscious choice, and the decision is not made in a systematic fashion by these teachers. noteworthy is the fact that the comment function was important in this mode and its dominant language was l1, similar to results in the managerial mode. finally, the data shed light on the idea that the type and frequency of certain as-units and functions are influenced by idiosyncratic speech. for example, out of the 44 check functions performed by ester, 42 of them correspond to the lexical token “ya,” behaviour that was not present in clara’s data. this linguistic behaviour may be part of ester’s repertoire of l1 “pet words” that permeate her discourse, which is influenced by affective and idiosyncratic factors (muñoz & mora, 2006). conclusion the present study aimed at identifying and portraying the code-switching behaviours of two teachers and the types of functions performed across two classroom modes. results indicate that there is no consistency in the choice of one language over the other while conveying certain pedagogical functions. both teachers used functions that had either l1 or l2 as dominant languages when conveying exactly the same function, in the same classroom mode. this inconsistency suggests that the decision on whether to code-switch and the manner in which it is done is made rather subconsciously and without previously thinking about the impact those decisions might have. in addition, the finding that l2 use was more prominent in one teacher in comparison to the other does not imply that the former teacher was better prepared, or that her output was understood. teachers can produce a great number of l2 units, but their discourse may mainly consist of repetitions and markers, as the data have shown. in many efl contexts such as the chilean one, the impact of delivering an l2-only class is still a matter of controversy, since learners in these settings are not adequately exposed to the target language (barahona, 2016) and teachers face linguistically heterogeneous classrooms (muñoz & mora, 2006). in order for efl teachers to make informed decisions regarding the use of l1 in the classroom, guidelines should be provided for teachers regarding ways in which to incorporate l2 when performing a number of pedagogical functions, and also in relation to how teachers can increase their language awareness as they code-switch in the classroom (grant & nguyen, 2017). the overall 56% of l1-only units produced by these two teachers is worrying, as efl teachers must take advantage of the limited time they have in their classrooms by providing more instances for students to be exposed to the tl. teachers may benefit from being aware of the way in which certain linguistic structures such as formulaic expressions can be used to increase l2 exposure, and that certain instructions can be delivered by means of modelling and exemplifying a task (ford, 2009). indeed, there are functions that could be performed most of the time in the l2, such as marker, directive, modelling, and checking, and a principled delivery of such structures can be beneficial for learners (promnath & tayjasanant, 2016). however, a teacher’s l2 output should not be made up solely of repetitions of functions such as markers, as this prevents learners from making an effort to decode more complex l2 messages. this finding has implications regarding the work that is being done by the english open doors programme, and initiatives such as “english in english.” this initiative was recently put forward by the ministry of education and seeks to improve the linguistic abilities of 5th and 6th grade teachers and learners by means of workshops and universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras128 cancino & díaz activities implemented by bilingual teachers (mineduc, 2019). whilst this is a step in the right direction towards making teachers more cognisant regarding the use of the l2, municipal or subsidised school teachers may have more difficulties differentiating an “l2-only” approach from an approach that takes into account the quality of the output produced by these teachers. indeed, prescriptive perspectives to codeswitching—such as the english in english initiative, and strong versions towards native-speakerism (lowe & kiczkowiak, 2016)—may lead teachers to avoid l1 use without a principled approach that encourages reflection on the language used to achieve learning objectives. thus, it becomes crucial to consider linguistic, contextual, and idiosyncratic factors in the discussion on l2 use. recent guidelines that seek to improve general english language proficiency and stress the relevance of taking an l2-only approach should encourage reflective processes regarding the functions that are accomplished by teachers as they 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(2010). code-switching (linguistic). in l. wei (ed.), bilingualism and multilingualism: critical concepts in linguistics (vol. 1). routledge. promnath, k., & tayjasanant, c. (2016). english-thai codeswitching in esp classes. pasaa: journal of language teaching and learning in thailand, 51, 97–126. schendl, h., & wright, l. (eds.). (2011). code-switching in early english. de gruyter mouton. https://doi. org/10.1515/9783110253368 sinclair, j., & coulthard, m. (1975). towards an analysis of discourse: the english used by teachers and pupils. oxford university press. tian, l., & macaro, e. (2012). comparing the effect of teacher codeswitching with english-only explanations on the vocabulary acquisition of chinese university students: a lexical focus-on-form study. language teaching research, 16(3), 367–391. https://doi. org/10.1177/1362168812436909 turnbull, m. (2001). there is a role for the l1 in second and foreign language teaching, but… canadian modern language review, 57(4), 531–540. https://doi.org/10.3138/ cmlr.57.4.531 üstünel, e (2016). efl classroom codeswitching. palgrave macmillan. üstünel, e., & seedhouse, p. (2005). why that, in that language, right now? code-switching and pedagogical focus. international journal of applied linguistics, 15(3), 302– 325. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1473-4192.2005.00093.x walsh, s. (2006). investigating classroom discourse. routledge. https://doi.org/10.4324/9780203015711 wang, h., & mansouri, b. (2017). revisiting code-switching practice in tesol: a critical perspective. the asiapacific education researcher, 26(6), 407–415. https:// doi.org/10.1007/s40299-017-0359-9 zhao, t., & macaro, e. (2014). what works better for the learning of concrete and abstract words: teachers’ l1 use or l2-only explanations? international journal of applied linguistics, 26(1), 75–98. https://doi.org/10.1111/ijal.12080 https://doi.org/10.1191/1362168805lr173oa https://doi.org/10.1191/1362168805lr173oa https://doi.org/10.1080/07908310802287574 https://doi.org/10.1080/07908310802287574 https://doi.org/10.15858/engtea.62.4.200712.335 https://doi.org/10.15858/engtea.62.4.200712.335 https://doi.org/10.1515/applirev-2013-0009 https://doi.org/10.1515/applirev-2013-0009 https://doi.org/10.2307/3588282 https://doi.org/10.1080/2331186x.2016.1264171 https://doi.org/10.1080/2331186x.2016.1264171 https://doi.org/10.21832/9781783090914-004 https://www.mineduc.cl/2019/06/11/plan-english-in-english/ https://www.mineduc.cl/2019/06/11/plan-english-in-english/ https://doi.org/10.1515/9783110253368 https://doi.org/10.1515/9783110253368 https://doi.org/10.1177/1362168812436909 https://doi.org/10.1177/1362168812436909 https://doi.org/10.3138/cmlr.57.4.531 https://doi.org/10.3138/cmlr.57.4.531 https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1473-4192.2005.00093.x https://doi.org/10.4324/9780203015711 https://doi.org/10.1007/s40299-017-0359-9 https://doi.org/10.1007/s40299-017-0359-9 https://doi.org/10.1111/ijal.12080 universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras130 cancino & díaz about the authors marco cancino is an academic researcher at universidad andrés bello in santiago, chile. he graduated with an msc in applied linguistics and sla from the university of oxford, uk, where he did work on vocabulary acquisition. he holds a doctoral degree in applied linguistics and education at university of bristol, uk. gabriela díaz obtained a ba in english literature and language from universidad de chile. she graduated with an ma in teaching english as a foreign language from universidad andrés bello. her research interests are related to teacher code-switching in the efl classroom. 57profile vol. 19, no. 2, july-december 2017. issn 1657-0790 (printed) 2256-5760 (online). bogotá, colombia. pages 57-71 http://dx.doi.org/10.15446/profile.v19n2.59889 increasing efl learners’ oral production at a public school through project-based learning incremento de la producción oral de aprendices de inglés como lengua extranjera en una escuela pública mediante el aprendizaje basado en proyectos ady marcela vaca torres* colegio virginia gutiérrez de pineda, bogotá, colombia luis fernando gómez rodríguez** universidad pedagógica nacional de colombia, bogotá, colombia this research study examined how a group of ninth graders enhanced the speaking skill in an english as a foreign language classroom through project-based learning. data about the experience were collected through field notes, transcripts of learners’ oral performance, and one interview. grounded theory was implemented for data analysis, out of which three main findings emerged: (1) project-based learning encouraged students to increase oral production through lexical competence development, (2) helped them to overcome fears of speaking in l2, and (3), increased their interest in learning about their school life and community. key words: communicative competence, english as a foreign language learning, project-based learning, speaking skill. esta investigación analizó cómo un grupo de grado noveno afianzó su producción oral en inglés mediante el aprendizaje basado en proyectos. se recogieron datos sobre la experiencia en notas de campo, trascripciones de las producciones orales de los estudiantes y una entrevista. el análisis de los datos generó tres hallazgos principales: el aprendizaje basado en proyectos motivó a los estudiantes a aumentar su producción oral mediante el desarrollo de la competencia léxica, les ayudó a superar el temor de hablar en la lengua extranjera e incrementó su interés por aprender sobre su vida escolar y su comunidad. palabras clave: aprendizaje del inglés, aprendizaje basado en proyectos, competencia comunicativa, habilidad de habla. * e-mail: adymarcela@hotmail.com ** e-mail: lfgomez@pedagogica.edu.co how to cite this article (apa, 6th ed.): vaca torres, a. m., & gómez rodríguez, l. f. (2017). increasing efl learners’ oral production at a public school through project-based learning. profile issues in teachers’ professional development, 19(2), 57-71. http://dx.doi.org/10.15446/ profile.v19n2.59889. this article was received on september 2, 2016, and accepted on january 6, 2017. this is an open access article distributed under the terms of the creative commons license attribution-noncommercial-noderivatives 4.0 international license. consultation is possible at http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/. universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras58 vaca torres & gómez rodríguez introduction one of the major limitations that english as a foreign language (efl) learners encounter in their language learning process is that they do not have many opportunities to practice speaking other than in the classroom. as they live in countries where the first language is not english (e.g., china, spain, and latin american countries), opportunities to improve their oral communicative skills are reduced. efl learners can find ways to practice reading, listening, and writing as they have easier access to aural and written materials outside the classroom with the support of textbooks, short stories, and the internet (news, songs, movies, digital books, magazines, and online courses). however, aside from the teacher, they can hardly find conversation partners to practice speaking their l2. moreover, in efl classrooms, where large groups of students exceed the ideal number to practice speaking and the hours allotted per week to study english are reduced (urrutia león & vega cely, 2010), learners’ speaking production is scarce and problematic. therefore, many times learners confront negative feelings about speaking english due to the fact that they are not often stimulated to adopt active speech roles, and have few contexts in which to speak it for communicative purposes (khan, 2010; savaşçi, 2014). that is why this action research study looked into how a group of colombian efl learners at a public school could have more opportunities to develop their speaking skills through project-based learning (pbl). the emphasis on speaking skills represented an initial attempt for the learners to improve their communicative ability, as they were encouraged to complete class projects related to real life situations in which speaking became a communicative need. it is important to clarify that the four communicative skills (reading, listening, speaking, and writing) should be equally practiced in the communicative classroom. however, because of the particular needs of the learners involved in this study, the research focus was to solve their speaking limitations. statement of the problem in a 2015 diagnostic survey, a group of thirty students from a public school in bogotá reported that in their english courses speaking was limited to practicing pronunciation and answering the teachers’ questions to verify reading and listening comprehension. during classes, it was also observed that while students were more receptive to grammar activities, reading, listening, and writing, speaking was the least practiced language skill as learners recognized that they were shy and afraid of participating orally in class because they did not master enough structures and fluency to express basic ideas. another problem detected in the classroom was that learners were reluctant to speak in english and did not invest much in fostering it. since they preferred to complete the language tasks with their closest friends, they ended up speaking in spanish as they were used to doing it in other subjects and in their daily lives. moreover, they often mocked each other when they made pronunciation and grammar mistakes the few times they participated in class. therefore, learners were scared of being ridiculed by their classmates. this unpleasant environment increased students’ negative attitudes towards learning, since they neither helped each other nor liked speaking tasks. efl students’ sense of individuality and fears of speaking english were also increased by the language teaching methods adopted by some teachers at this school. it was found in the diagnostic survey that teaching in previous english courses was mainly based on grammar activities in which drilling and filling in blanks were the main purpose. all these trials obviously reduced learners’ interest in speaking english. thus, there was a need to find other ways to promote more communicative activities to enhance speaking and the negotiation of meaning. therefore, we considered that one possible way that could foster these learners’ speaking skill was pbl. 59profile vol. 19, no. 2, july-december 2017. issn 1657-0790 (printed) 2256-5760 (online). bogotá, colombia. pages 57-71 increasing efl learners’ oral production at a public school through project-based learning theoretical framework project-based learning pbl is a constructivist instructional method that supports students’ learning process through group work and social interaction in order to solve problems. students are not only encouraged to complete the steps of class projects related to their personal interests and needs, but also to develop the ability to think critically and use content knowledge (kapp, 2009; tamin & grant, 2013). pbl also generates collaboration as students help and learn from each other and feel responsible for completing projects that involve the classroom, the school, the community in which they live, and wider real-world problems (kolodner et al., 2003; markham, 2011). in this sense, pbl implies learning by doing through which students act as problem solvers and have to develop collaborative skills to tackle challenges and conduct research on significant issues for them (s. bell, 2010; blumenfeld et al., 2011). pbl is a broad instructional model adjustable to all areas of knowledge and different types of learners (s. bell, 2010; habók & nagy, 2016). although there is a fair amount of publication on the use of pbl in many areas of knowledge such as science, social studies, and math, published research on its implementation in efl education is still scarce (beckett, 2005; 2006) as is the case in colombia. some of the main influential colombian researchers who have implemented pbl are bello vargas (2012), pinzón castañeda (2014), and díaz ramirez (2014), among others. however, more research needs to be conducted. that is why this research study argues that pbl should be considered as a possible motivating factor to help efl learners enhance foreign language competence, including speaking skills, in particular. pinzón castañeda (2014) states that efl learners do not only construct knowledge, but also use the foreign language when they engage in solving real-world problems. similarly, dooly (2013) and dooly and sadler (2016) affirm that, since pbl requires teamwork, learners inevitably have to produce oral communicative forms in the target language. learners have to make decisions, negotiate, and arrive at a consensus as they complete the steps that projects demand. this collaborative learning process is inherent in pbl and can help language learners reach better levels of language proficiency. according to tamin and grant (2013), when using pbl in any school subject, several challenges need to be overcome: first, the classroom is no longer dominated by a teacher-centered approach. thus, in the case of the efl classroom, the teacher cannot totally control the production of language forms/functions in a sequential and orderly fashion. language rather stems from the communication needs and the topics addressed during the development of the projects. learning is constructed from a student-centered pedagogy in which learners’ needs to negotiate meaning are more authentic but less predictable. second, the teacher needs to be tolerant and flexible as to the dynamics of the classroom. third, classes are based on content or subject matter that might not be familiar to teachers’ area of knowledge or expertise (grant, 2011; tamin & grant, 2013). in this regard, this research study points out that efl teachers need to be careful with the selection of topics so that they are neither difficult for learners nor unmanageable for teachers. despite these challenges, pbl can lead efl students to learn the foreign language by focusing more on content than on form, as they have a communicative purpose to construct knowledge, rather than just directing their full attention on grammar use. the teacher can introduce new topics that can “motivate, focus, and initiate student learning,” breaking traditional models of education (duch as cited in larsson, 2001, p. 2). speaking skill development in efl the vision of speaking in this study was framed within communicative language teaching (clt), an approach that aims at helping learners develop communicative competence: the ability of “classroom language learners to participate in the negotiation of meaning” and “the need universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras60 vaca torres & gómez rodríguez for learners to have the experience of communication . . . as distinct from their ability to recite dialogs or perform on discreet-point tests of grammatical knowledge” (savignon, 2001, p. 16). that is to say, instead of studying grammar structures, as happens in many efl settings, learners are encouraged to negotiate meaning orally through communicative language regardless their proficiency level. consequently, clt highlights language learning under certain conditions: learners use language for authentic and meaningful communication as classroom tasks have a communicative purpose, oral and written fluency is an important aspect of communication, and learning is a process of construction involving trial and error (littlewood, 1981; richards & rodgers, 2014; savignon, 2001). in other words, learners have the right to make pronunciation and grammar mistakes during social interaction in the target language as it is a normal part of the learning process. speaking in efl should aim to achieve communicative goals. it requires understanding how the language works, its components and functions; and how and when to speak adequately according to circumstances of real life. for bygate (1987) speaking involves “making decisions rapidly, implementing them smoothly, and adjusting our conversation as unexpected problems appear in our path” during communicative experiences (p. 3). thus, adjusting oral production implies facilitation and compensation processes. facilitation entails features that learners use to make their oral productions clearer according to their language level, including simplification (connecting sentences with conjunctions and, but, or avoiding using complex sentences) and time creating devices (strategies that give the speaker more time in order to form sentences such as fillers, hesitation, repetitions, e.g., erm, you see, i mean, kind of, etc.) (bygate, 1987; díaz larenas, 2011). by contrast, compensation is related to the ability of repairing failures in oral communication by modifying what the speaker has already said in order to clarify misunderstanding or restate an idea that has been difficult to express. compensation devices include “conversational adjustments” such as self-correction, substitution, rephrasing, and repetition, making sure that the other has understood (bygate, 1987; díaz-larenas, 2001; lázaro-ibarrola & azpilicueta-martínez, 2014). these two features were important for the researchers who knew that the student participants of this study were going to struggle to communicate and construct meaning, since this was the first time that they were going to be involved in oral communicative activities through solving projects. additionally, bygate (1987) explains that learners need to develop skills of interaction and skills of negotiation. interaction skills involve the social norms of when and how to speak with appropriate words, correct grammar, and organized discourse during a conversation, while negotiation of meaning refers to the skills of reaching a full level of clear understanding. it involves repeating, rephrasing, and restructuring phrases between two or more learners to understand the meaning of the messages they are communicating (rees, 1998). these insights about speaking development in efl constituted the key elements to help learners improve oral production and communicative competence through pbl. research design research question the research question leading this study was: how could project-based learning influence a group of ninth efl graders’ speaking skill development? research type this was an action research study. action research embraces the actions needed to solve a given problem in the classroom (j. bell, 2005). it consists of several selfreflective cycles in which teacher-researchers complete four steps: plan to initiate a change, act and observe the process of implementation, and reflect on possible results (kemmis, mctaggart, & nixon, 2014). in particular, the researchers of this study (1) planned three cycles to solve 61profile vol. 19, no. 2, july-december 2017. issn 1657-0790 (printed) 2256-5760 (online). bogotá, colombia. pages 57-71 increasing efl learners’ oral production at a public school through project-based learning the problem by encouraging efl learners to develop speaking skills, (2) acted by designing and implementing a pedagogical intervention supported by one project for each cycle (see table 1), (3) observed through data collection instruments how learners responded to the projects’ development and completion, and (4) reflected on the experience by analyzing the data collected in order to make decisions and generate more effective classroom strategies (parsons & brown, 2002). setting and participants this research study was conducted at a public school in a northwest neighborhood of bogotá, colombia. students came from families whose parents made a great effort to raise them properly. in this context, where spanish is the official language, learners did not have any contact with the english language and much less any practice speaking other than in the english class which was scheduled three hours a week only. thirty efl ninth graders were involved in the study, 19 girls and 11 boys, whose ages ranged from 13 to 15 years old. they had a basic english language level and, as explained in the statement of the problem, they were shy and did not feel confident when they had to do speaking activities. most of them were afraid of oral production in english. pedagogical intervention table 1 shows that students developed three projects through which they were encouraged to speak english to achieve communicative needs. the projects were related to their personal lives and environment in such a way that they had the opportunity to speak about meaningful information from their own reality. from a constructivist perspective, the projects aimed at generating collaboration as students were expected (1) to help and learn from each other, (2) work at their own pace, and (3) feel responsible for completing projects that involved the classroom, the school, the community in which they lived, and wider real-world problems. in the first project, “discovering who my classmates are: sharing common ideals and respecting differences,” students had the opportunity to interview a classmate they did not hang around with that much, or never spoke to. the purpose was to help learners create friendly bonds since, as explained in the statement of the problem, there were attitudes of selfishness and learners ridiculed each other’s pronunciation. also, the purpose of this project was to recognize the human side of their partners, despite the possible differences that could exist among them. the second project, “is everything fine at school? making proposals to improve our school problems,” encouraged learners to investigate through a survey the perceptions of the school community in regard to serious problems at this institution. so, they conducted a survey involving students from other courses, teachers, and school administrators. the third project, “getting involved in my neighborhood,” attempted to make students become aware of their neighborhood’s needs and problems and to become friendlier with the community, since part of the community sometimes complained about the impolite behavior of several students that bothered some neighbors after the school day. so, authorization from the school board of directors was needed to take the children out of the school and visit their neighborhood to complete the project. it is important to clarify that the people in their community did not speak english at all. one interesting strategy that students proposed to overcome this difficulty was that they shared responsibilities. so, it was observed that in each group one student interviewed the neighbors in english, another student translated the questions into spanish, the neighbors answered the questions in spanish, and all the students in the group took notes by translating into english the neighbors’ answers. translation was only accepted on this rare occasion because learners were encouraged to use the foreign language all the time during the completion of the projects. so, this communicative interaction resulted in a fun, interesting, and safe activity as students were trying to overcome barriers in communication when actually doing the field work. universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras62 vaca torres & gómez rodríguez table 1. cycles and projects for the pedagogical intervention name of the project description speaking format steps to complete the project cycle 1 (may 11-25) discovering who my classmates are: sharing common ideals and respecting differences students shared the same space (the classroom), but they did not know each other very much. the purpose of this project was to establish friendlier relationships among students as they started to recognize their own qualities and personality. therefore, students prepared an interview to get personal information about one of their classmate’s family, personality, lifestyle, goals in life, and ways of seeing life. an interview an oral presentation 1. paying attention to the teacher giving examples of how to conduct an interview. 2. creating 7/8 questions to conduct the interview. 3. rehearsing the questions orally. 4. conducting the interview. 5. writing a report about the interviewee’s answers. 6. presenting a two-minute oral report about the interview. cycle 2 (may 29-june 19) is everything fine at school? making proposals to improve our school problems this project requested students to do fieldwork on one problem they had at school (e.g., young pregnancy, drugs consumption and sale, failed subjects, violence, robberies, bullying). according to the topics assigned, students made a survey (5/6 questions maximum) and found 10 survey respondents in the school community, outside the classroom, to collect perceptions/ opinions about the problems. a survey oral report 1. watching videos related to school problems. 2. identifying school problems. 3. designing the survey. 4. conducting the survey with the school community. 5. writing a report about the fieldwork completed. 6. giving a three-minute oral report about the survey. 7. class discussion on school problems. 63profile vol. 19, no. 2, july-december 2017. issn 1657-0790 (printed) 2256-5760 (online). bogotá, colombia. pages 57-71 increasing efl learners’ oral production at a public school through project-based learning name of the project description speaking format steps to complete the project cycle 3 (july 13-aug. 3) getting involved in my neighborhood students did fieldwork on employment sources and problems at different places (e.g., gas station, drugstore, groceries, hardware store, internet café, etc.) in the neighborhood around the school. they prepared an interview (five questions maximum). the purpose was to become more concerned about the needs of the community where the school was located. an interview oral report 1. warming up (memory game about places in the neighborhood). 2. choosing a store in the area to visit. 3. organizing groups to prepare the interview. 4. interviewing people in the neighborhood. 5. writing a report about the field work. 6. giving a five-minute oral report about the field work done. the completion of the projects was difficult and time-consuming because it was not easy for learners to use the english language right away. it was a slow process, especially because these learners had never practiced speaking that often and because they had never done projects in the target language before. speaking production was emphasized in all the projects since oral communication was needed when the groups had to work together to prepare the questions for the interviews and surveys, to conduct the actual interviews or do field work, and when they planned and organized the ideas and findings for the oral presentations and oral reports (see table 1). thus, speaking became the central means to communicate most of the time, and it was supported by writing when students took notes related to the information collected during the interviews and surveys. data collection instruments three instruments were implemented to collect data about the conditions, the language level, and the way class projects influenced students’ oral production. following johnson and christensen’s (2012) advice, field notes were taken in every single session and right after class with the support of video recordings while participants interacted during each project completion. extended notes were also written right after each class session by paraphrasing or entering verbatim transcripts of students’ conversations. these field notes were accompanied by the teacher-researchers’ analytical comments about the experience. the second instrument was the transcription of students’ oral productions during the development of the projects which represented verbatim oral language in written form (bailey, 2008). transcripts allowed the researchers to analyze learners’ oral production during the communicative situations. they showed the speaking act in a real time (yin, 2011). although transcribing oral language was a time-consuming technique, specific aspects of students’ oral production to complete the tasks were more effectively detected such as the vocabulary and language level they had, the difficulties with language production, and the interactions and roles established during the projects development. universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras64 vaca torres & gómez rodríguez interviews constituted the third instrument that helped the researchers obtain relevant information from participants’ personal opinions about the experience. they were useful to collect further data that were not palpable or visible (patton, 2002; seidman, 2006) such as participants’ thoughts, feelings, and perceptions of the topic under investigation. the interviews were held in spanish and conducted in small groups at the end of the experience. the information gathered through transcripts of students’ oral productions, field notes, and interviews were saved in folders, and systematized by using atlasti 6.2 software. data analysis field notes were analyzed by following the grounded approach method which embraces an in-depth inductive discovery of patterns in the collected data, aiming at answering the research question (charmaz, 2012). patterns lead to establishing logical relationships in the data that, once being grouped, are given a name (initial categories or themes) representing all the patterns. in this experience, data analysis involved the identification of initial patterns related to how learners produced oral language through project development. then, through a process of triangulation (freeman, 1998), patterns identified in the field notes were compared to the transcripts of students’ oral performance and their comments in the interviews to set initial precategories that represented all the data collected in the instruments. finally, definitive categories were stated as a result of the whole triangulation analysis and these are presented as findings later on. for example, field notes showed that students always needed to learn vocabulary in order to form sentences orally. this pattern was also found in the transcripts and in the interviews because learners said that they needed to learn vocabulary all the time to complete the steps of the projects. therefore, this pattern was classified under the initial category: “vocabulary learning.” at the end, this category became a formal statement/finding called: “pbl incited learners to increase oral production through vocabulary learning”, representing the importance of vocabulary learning to construct meaning when completing the projects. these findings in the form of statements will be analyzed later in detail. findings pbl incited learners to increase oral production through vocabulary learning data revealed that pbl played an important role in inciting learners to increase their language competence as they had a strong need to learn and use vocabulary in order to express ideas and to complete the tasks required in the projects (see table 1). from the beginning of the experience, students started to change their negative perceptions on speaking english despite their basic english language level. learners’ oral language competence was determined by their urgent need to improve their vocabulary through two social strategies: the first strategy was peer support by asking for and providing vocabulary and expressions, which was used during the development of the three projects, including, for instance, (1) the preparations of the questions to interview other people, (2) the rehearsal to practice the questions appropriately during the different projects, (3) the actual interviews and field work, and (4) the oral reports in front of the class once students had completed the field work. peer support by asking for and providing vocabulary during the communication process can be recognized as a constructivist feature, since pbl allowed students to share their knowledge about the foreign language and about the discussion topics when more advanced language learners offered support to those learners having difficulty with communication and with the tasks. peer support was observed, for instance, when learners worked on project 1 and needed to prepare the questions to interview one of their classmates: 65profile vol. 19, no. 2, july-december 2017. issn 1657-0790 (printed) 2256-5760 (online). bogotá, colombia. pages 57-71 increasing efl learners’ oral production at a public school through project-based learning karen: how do you ask si tiene mascotas? (if you have any pets?) tatiana: no sé, sólo sé que mascotas es pet. (i don’t know; i only know that mascotas are pets) karen: entonces debe ser como “you have pet?” (then, you might ask something like “you have pet?) tatiana: pues sí. (i think so) karen: la última pregunta podría ser sobre el tiempo libre. (we could ask a last question about free time activities). “what you…” how do you say hacer? tatiana: (the student looked up the word in the dictionary) mire la palabra “hacer” es make. (look, the meaning of “hacer” is “make.”) karen: sería “what you make…” ¿qué seguiría? (then it would be “what you make…what is the next word?) tatiana: tiempo libre es free time. karen: ah ya sé, (wait, i know) “what you make free time?” (transcript, 11-05-2015) this example indicates that students had serious limitations with vocabulary and grammar to ask orally basic personal information questions. for instance, tatiana helped her classmate with a word she knew, “pet.” then, she looked up the word “hacer” in her bilingual dictionary to complete the question “what do you do in your free time?” although she picked up the wrong verb, make instead of do, and although both learners mostly used l1 to communicate in the first project, it was observed that they not only made a great effort to produce english language to the best of their abilities, but were mutually supportive through scaffolding. they progressively learned the foreign language in their urgent need for vocabulary and sentence formation due to the fact that there was a communicative purpose to be accomplished, an important aspect for building communicative competence. peer support for vocabulary building was a constant factor among all participants during the development of the three projects despite the many grammar mistakes they made and the use of l1. that is to say, learners struggled to negotiate meaning orally through communicative language regardless of their limited language level, a fact that resonates with savignon’s (2001) view of communicative language learning in that learners are challenged to use the foreign language through a process of trial and error, a strategic investment for their language progress. thus, since the projects requested learners to conduct interviews of different people, they slowly enhanced their lexical competence and language oral skill, an aspect found in all the field notes because speaking was practiced to achieve communicative goals as suggested by bygate (1987). the second social strategy that students implemented to satisfy their urgent need to communicate orally was asking the teacher for unknown vocabulary and expressions. in many traditional english classrooms, the teacher is the one that mostly asks questions to verify students’ language knowledge or comprehension. by contrast, through pbl it was observed that learners continuously took the initiative to ask the teachers questions as they were conscious of their lack of vocabulary, a limitation that restrained them from building complete questions and sentences orally. in fact, at the beginning of the experience they ended up using l1 most of the time because their competence was limited. therefore, they started to get direct support from the teachers to enhance their oral production. in this example, a group of students prepared the questions for an opinion survey on bullying, one topic of the second project about school problems. sara: teacher, how do you ask, “you know any student bullying other?” teacher: you should say “do you know any student bullying another.” it is “another.” miguel: ok. vamos con la question number five. how do you say “si busca ayuda?” teacher: “seek any help” (miguel was trying to ask the question: “do you seek any help from teachers to report bullying?). (transcript, 25-05-2015) this piece of data reveals that even though students were motivated to work together to provide each other with vocabulary, they also confirmed with the teacher if the words where actually correct, as happened with universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras66 vaca torres & gómez rodríguez one of the teacher’s explanations about the correct use of “another” and “other” and “seek for help.” as students had limitations making complete sentences and they knew isolated words, they expected the teachers’ approval and support because they were worried about asking the questions in correct english when conducting the survey of the school community. data analysis also indicated that speaking productions, inherited within pbl, led learners to assume the role of problem solvers as they participated actively to complete the steps of each project rather than waiting for the teacher to tell them exactly what to do. in fact, it was confirmed by grant’s (2011) statement that projectbased learning is an ideal teaching approach through which learners collaborate with others and with the teacher through scaffolding, problem resolutions, and opportunities for reflection on the topic worked and on the language needed to communicate. also, pbl involved these students in real life situations (getting ready with questions to interview other people), as they started to develop the need for meaning construction through social support and interactional functions of oral discourse. pbl helped learners to overcome fears of speaking in l2 throughout the whole experience learners were afraid of speaking in l2, and they were never able to leave their fears behind. for instance, when working on the first project (see table 1), it was observed that learners did not produce complete sentences in english, did not pronounce correctly, and mostly spoke in spanish. they were not only embarrassed and hesitant to use l2, but were afraid of being mocked by classmates and concerned about what the teacher could think of their oral production. learners said that they were nervous every class, a situation detected in all the field notes, and later corroborated in the interview at the end of the pedagogical experience, as evidenced in this example: teacher: darcy, ¿cómo te sentiste durante el primer proyecto? (how did you feel doing the first project?). darcy: en mi cabeza pasó que iba a hacer “el oso” (i thought i was going to look ridiculous). teacher: ¿por qué? (why?) darcy: porque es que la pronunciación es muy fea, es muy rara, es difícil (because pronunciation is ugly, odd, and difficult). teacher: ¿lograbas entender las preguntas que se te hacían? (did you understand your classmates’ questions?). darcy: sí, más o menos (yes, more or less). (interview, 13-08-2015) when darcy said: “hacer el oso,” which is a colloquial spanish expression in colombia that stands for “to look ridiculous,” she was nervous about speaking english because she thought she did not have good english pronunciation. thus, she self-criticized severely because she thought that her classmates would make fun of the way she spoke english. in fact, feelings of fear and anxiety were detected when students smiled nervously, covered their mouths with their hands, and spoke in whispers because they did not want to be heard and felt embarrassed in front of their classmates. however, through pbl students found peer support strategies to help each other with the construction of meaning in the target language, and this support stimulated them to overcome fears of speaking by adopting two strategies. the first strategy was preparing/rehearsing their oral productions. although learners showed that they were nervous and insecure, they found it useful to prepare/rehearse their oral productions with the possible language they expected to use during the interviews and surveys that the three class projects demanded. sometimes they practiced the questions that they had prepared for the surveys/interviews before actually doing field work. other times, they rehearsed the interviews with their closest friend before actually interviewing the school community or the people in the neighborhood. moreover, writing was used as part of the rehearsals of the oral productions because students wrote and reviewed the questions they were planning to ask in 67profile vol. 19, no. 2, july-december 2017. issn 1657-0790 (printed) 2256-5760 (online). bogotá, colombia. pages 57-71 increasing efl learners’ oral production at a public school through project-based learning the interviews and rehearsed target answers that they predicted interviewed people would answer. this practice gave them more security to practice speaking and reduce negative feelings. the teacher-researchers were always there helping them with the language being rehearsed. one interesting example to point out as regards how learners overcame their fear of speaking was that they not only wrote the questions to do the field work, but also had the initiative to design powerpoint presentations for the oral reports, containing the information they had collected during the survey. such was the case of the learners who reported on students’ perceptions of fights at school, a problem they researched to complete project 2. for example, one student started the presentation by saying, “our survey was about school fights.” then he said, “it seemed to us an important issue.” one of his co-workers added “all persons see one.1” then, they reported that many students had seen or participated in a fight at school, implying that violence and intolerance among learners were “a big problem in general” (field notes, 19-06-2015). when giving this report, learners supported their speaking production with the use of powerpoint presentations to remember and produce orally key ideas related to that topic. prior to this formal report, they rehearsed their oral production, and this preliminary preparation reduced significantly their fears and negative attitudes towards speaking in english in front of the classroom. the important achievement with this preparation/rehearsal and these oral presentations is that learners were actually producing oral language in the foreign language despite their language limitations and fears. these communicative constructions involved trial and error as explained by littlewood (1981) and savignon (2001), since learners made pronunciation and grammar mistakes during social interaction, but struggled to negotiate meaning orally in order to meet communicative purposes thanks to the demands of pbl. 1 the student meant “all people at school have seen one (one fight).” the second strategy that diminished fears of speaking in l2 was code-switching and translation. it was observed that due to their low english level, students constantly moved back and forth between english and spanish when doing the steps of the projects because it not only helped them control their feelings of anxiety, but provided them with security to put up with the speaking projects as can be seen in this example when one learner was conducting the actual interview of a classmate to complete project 1: nazly: what’s your personality? ana: shy and…friend…friendly. nazly: what are your goals in life? ana: study in the university, (laughing) ¿así?, ¿esa es la respuesta? nazly: sí. vamos bien . . . what are your plans para el futuro? ana: to travel, viajar, ¿cierto? nazly: pero diga dónde ¿cuál país? ana: paris. nazly: (laughing) paris no es un país. ana: ¡ahhh!! (transcript, 20-05-2015) this sample shows that students moved back and forth between english and spanish because they tried to compensate for failures in communication and deal with fluency problems. nazly’s sentences in spanish such as “vamos bien” and “pero diga dónde ¿cuál país?” indicate that she, as has happened to other learners, felt the necessity to use their native language in order to verify if they were doing the activity correctly and were being understood in the foreign language. this verification diminished their fears of communication failure in oral production. indeed, code-switching seemed to occur due to the fact that these learners were using simultaneously the native and the foreign language grammars, trying to figure out how to speak appropriately in the communicative process. one reason why these participants had the tendency to code-switch was to reduce their feelings of frustration in regard to issues of facilitation and compensation in oral production, a phenomenon that took place during the whole pedagogical intervention. universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras68 vaca torres & gómez rodríguez in the previous example, we can observe that while nazly was more fluent and more confident to speak l2; ana’s answers were simple, brief, and almost monosyllabic as she did not want to put herself at risk. “shy and friendly,” “to travel,” and “paris” indicate that ana used facilitation strategies to make her oral performance easier, avoiding the use of complex sentences according to her language level. similarly, ana used translation as a compensation strategy for making sure she did not fail in oral communication such as when she translated all her answers into spanish to be ready for possible corrections and make sure that her partner understood, these being key strategies discussed by bygate (1987) and lázaro-ibarrola and azpilicueta-martínez (2014). therefore, code-switching and translation, accompanied by compensation and facilitation strategies were implemented by all the participants in this experience in order to achieve the communicative purposes in l2 that the projects requested. the important contribution of pbl in this efl setting was that learners were exposed to speaking english regardless of their accuracy and fluency levels. hence, more authentic communication took place through the development of the three projects. pbl raised students’ interest in talking about their own experiences and the community with pbl, learners necessarily did investigative work in their real-world context. in doing so, they not only used the foreign language more often and with a communicative purpose, but raised interest in talking about their classmates’ personal lives, their school problems, and their community. therefore, their inquiry contained a social and humanitarian emphasis, since the goal of the projects was to help students show concern for their own individuality and human qualities as well as to value and respect other human beings around them such as other students, teachers, and neighbors. during the first project students learned to see their classmates with different eyes because through their investigations, they discovered a different side of their classmates’ personal and family levels, and had the opportunity to interact with a classmate they did not speak much to. this close interaction created feelings of empathy and respect for their partners. the following is a sample of the oral reports students gave in front of the class once they had finished the investigative work on one of their classmate’s life. laura: santiago has 15 years old. he is a student in vgp school. he likes hamburger and pasta. he has a sister and another sister, she is in seventh grade. he live with mother, his father is in cali. he [santiago’s father] not lives with the family. he [santiago] loves the mother and . . . he like to cuidar his sisters [sic]. (field notes, 25-05-2015) although the oral production in this sample may seem basic, it actually represented a great speaking achievement for the learners during the experience, taking into account that they were totally reluctant to speak in l2 before. the projects motivated students to actually use l2 orally despite grammar mistakes and limitations because they were interested in their partners’ life experiences. moreover, this sample evidenced how learners were able to report new knowledge about one person they rarely talked to in class, and learned to see their classmates as human beings similar to them, having other roles and life stories apart from their academic life. in this case, for example, laura discovered that santiago’s parents were divorced and lived in different cities, and that he was very caring with his sisters and mother, providing emotional support for his family as he had become the man of the house. thus, learners developed sympathy, respect, and admiration for their classmates’ life stories and sometimes difficult experiences as noticed through the tone of voice in their oral reports. this can be corroborated with students’ opinions in the interview: teacher: i’d like to know how you felt doing the third project. 69profile vol. 19, no. 2, july-december 2017. issn 1657-0790 (printed) 2256-5760 (online). bogotá, colombia. pages 57-71 increasing efl learners’ oral production at a public school through project-based learning salcedo: es bueno porque uno conoce más a los compañeros, sobre su familia, sus gustos, lo que quiere hacer en la vida. tambien se aprende de nuestro propio colegio (it’s good because one can learn about our partners, about their families, likes, and plans for the future lives. we can also learn about our own school.) (interview, 13-08-2015) a similar case happened when learners did the third project and discovered that the people living in their neighborhood suffered from delinquency and injustice as there were many thieves that threatened and robbed people walking in the street or vendors in their own shops. in this sense, learners recognized how the projects not only facilitated language knowledge, but content knowledge as they became aware of personal and collective issues in their own context, empowering themselves with a more humanistic, tolerant, and friendly attitude towards valuing others’ individuality, personal life, and social conflicts at school and in the community. conclusions based on this research experience, it can be concluded that the incorporation of pbl in efl learning incited learners to enhance their communicative competence with a major emphasis on the speaking skill. learners needed to negotiate meaning orally in order to meet communicative purposes, a learning process which was mainly determined by their need to build up their lexical and grammar competences. data showed that they were concerned about learning language to communicate messages related to their personal interests and academic needs, rather than just learning words in isolation as traditionally done in many efl classes. moreover, despite their language limitations, such as grammar mistakes, incorrect pronunciation, and poor fluency and accuracy, learners made a great effort to speak english and get involved in conversations in order to communicate and negotiate meaning. one of the salient conclusions of this research project was that through pbl students gradually, although not that easily and totally, left their fears of speaking aside. they reduced significantly high levels of insecurity, anxiety, and tension through peer support as they asked for and provided each other with vocabulary and expressions, and asked the teacher to help them construct sentences in oral form. other strategies that diminished their fears of speaking were code-switching and translating, as they felt better when they confirmed in the native language that their oral productions were right and understood. it is important to emphasize that these participants never stopped speaking spanish, their native language, during the completion of the projects, precisely because this was the first time they were working with projects, and sometimes they found it difficult to express orally their thoughts and ideas. however, they started to use the target language more often and freely in comparison to their unwillingness and inhibition to speak it in previous english courses. when working with projects, learners became more responsible and autonomous, and assumed the roles of investigators and problem solvers because they had to make decisions, negotiate meaning, and reach agreements related to the steps that projects requested. although it was time-consuming and demanded meticulous preparation on the part of the students and the teachers, students were more motivated to learn because they were both busy and learning by doing. this study also concludes that pbl should be implemented in different efl settings, more specifically, in public schools in colombia where students have limited hours to practice english and where speaking is the least practiced skill. with pbl, learners can be involved in speaking activities through which they use the language as a communication means and for acquiring information and knowledge, rather than just focusing on grammar practice. references bailey, j. 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(2013). definitions and uses: case study of teachers implementing project-based learning. interdisciplinary journal of problem-based learning, 7(2). http://dx.doi.org/10.7771/1541-5015.1323. urrutia león, w., & vega cely, e. (2010). encouraging teenagers to improve speaking skills through games in a colombian public school. profile issues in teachers’ professional development, 12(1), 11-31. yin, r. (2011). qualitative research from start to finish. new york, us: the guilford press. about the authors ady marcela vaca torres holds an ma in applied linguistics in efl from universidad distrital francisco josé de caldas (colombia) and a ba degree in languages from universidad nacional de colombia. she works as an english educator for the secretaría de educación del distrito. her research interest is project development in language teaching. luis fernando gómez rodríguez holds a phd in english studies from illinois state university, usa, and an ma in education from carthage college, usa. he is an associate teacher at universidad pedagógica nacional. his research interests are critical pedagogy in the teaching of english, culture, and literature in the efl context. 187profile vol. 19, no. 2, july-december 2017. issn 1657-0790 (printed) 2256-5760 (online). bogotá, colombia. pages 187-201 http://dx.doi.org/10.15446/profile.v19n2.58826 a model for the strategic use of metacognitive reading comprehension strategies uso estratégico de metodologías meta-cognitivas de compresión lectora juan david gómez gonzález* universidad de antioquia, medellín, colombia this paper describes an approach to developing intermediate level reading proficiency through a strategic and iterative use of a discreet set of tasks that combine some of the more common metacognitive theories and strategies that have been published in the past thirty years. the case for incorporating this composite approach into reading comprehension classes begins with an explanation of its benefits and the context in which it came to be; its relationship to theoretical discourse in the field; a description of its three main components: textual indicators, strategy instruction, and content learning; and concludes by presenting a model for implementing the approach that integrates these three components. key words: english as a foreign language, metacognition, reading comprehension, reading strategies. la propuesta que se presenta apunta al desarrollo de la comprensión lectora en un nivel intermedio mediante el uso estratégico e iterativo de tareas específicas. la argumentación a favor de incorporar este acercamiento compuesto en clases de comprensión lectora empieza con una explicación de sus ventajas, el contexto en el cual llegó a ser y la relación que luego se estableció con el discurso teórico del campo. posteriormente, se detallan sus tres elementos principales: indicadores textuales, enseñanza de estrategias y aprendizaje de contenido. se concluye con un modelo pedagógico para la implementación del acercamiento que hace uso de los tres elementos constitutivos de la propuesta. palabras clave: comprensión de lectura, estrategias de lectura, inglés como lengua extranjera, metacognición. * e-mail: juan.gomez31@udea.edu.co this article represents the final results of the research project, “metacognitive strategies and second language reading comprehension” (code number: 2015-2922), which is sponsored by the coordinación de proyectos de investigación, instituto de filosofía and the universidad de antioquia. how to cite this article (apa, 6th ed.): gómez gonzález, j. d. (2017). a model for the strategic use of metacognitive reading comprehension strategies. profile issues in teachers’ professional development, 19(2), 187-201. http://dx.doi.org/10.15446/profile.v19n2.58826. this article was received on july 2, 2016, and accepted on january 14, 2017. this is an open access article distributed under the terms of the creative commons license attribution-noncommercial-noderivatives 4.0 international license. consultation is possible at http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/. universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras188 gómez gonzález introduction preparing university students in non-english speaking countries to use english language texts has been a pressing concern for policy makers, administrators, and professors for the past twenty years (crystal, 1999; seargeant & erling, 2011). for most of the past decade, the colombian ministry of education has addressed this issue by taking steps toward the implementation of a national bilingual program (programa nacional de bilingüismo 2004-2019). the ministry justifies this policy by stating that it considers bilingualism to be essential in a globalized world and an important element in enriching the lives of its citizens, increasing their competitiveness and contributing to the overall development of the country (ministerio de educación nacional, 2005). the proposal presented here came to be as a response to the particular needs of students at universidad de antioquia (udea), one of the largest public universities in colombia. these were english as foreign language (efl) students with limited english proficiency (lep) that needed access to english language texts, primarily in their field of study, but also for their overall development as professionals. this article makes the case for an approach that addressed their reading comprehension needs because those needs are common enough that the proposals found here may be of value to a great many. rationale in 2015, 2,063 undergraduates at universidad de antioquia (udea), one of the largest public universities in colombia, took an english reading competency exam. fifty-six percent of them failed the exam. students from the engineering department, the largest on a campus of 30 thousand-plus students and the beneficiaries of six levels of mandatory efl courses fared no better than the greater population. in the first semester of that same year, 57% of those students who took the exam failed (informe de gestión, 2016, see appendix a). these statistics were representative of what i observed when i began to teach reading comprehension at this same university. the numbers also make clear the need that public institutions such as udea have for practical, userfriendly tools that can be used readily by the underpaid and often underprepared adjunct instructors who in most departments are responsible for more than 60% of the undergraduate teaching load. upon being hired to teach three levels of reading comprehension to philosophy students enrolled in a teacher preparation program, i was asked to mitigate the student’s aversion when faced with academic texts in english, as they often experienced when complementary bibliography was called for in their content courses. i addressed this challenge first by performing a detailed needs assessment survey of all three levels and found the following: of the 72 students surveyed, 59 interacted with texts in english (academic or otherwise) less than three times per month, eight students less than five times per month and five students more than five times per month. most, (54 students) thought it important to increase the frequency with which they read in english. the primary reason given by this group of 54 students as to why they did not read more often in english consisted of a low opinion of their ability to make use of the texts that they encountered. this low opinion of their proficiency in reading was manifested in comments such as “there are a lot of words that i still don’t know” and “i have a lot of trouble translating the important sentences in the text.”1 my field notes showed that when faced with short expository texts (averaging 190 words) that were accompanied by multiple choice questions, nearly all students read intensively, word for word from left to right until they encountered an unknown word, at which point they reached for the dictionary apps on their smart phones. when i suggested skipping some of the unknown words and attacking the text in an asymmetrical fashion, some acquiesced, albeit reluctantly. once i moved on to 1 my translation. 189profile vol. 19, no. 2, july-december 2017. issn 1657-0790 (printed) 2256-5760 (online). bogotá, colombia. pages 187-201 a model for the strategic use of metacognitive reading comprehension strategies assist other students however, they quickly returned to scrutinizing the text one phoneme at a time. i proceeded to identify the available tools offered in articles and textbooks and culled a selected group of those that through trial and error showed themselves to be the most promising. my plan was to use them as rhetorical tools that would help me to persuade my classes that they would be able to achieve much more than they believed that they could if they were willing to rethink the manner in which they interacted with english language texts. the result of this three-anda-half-year endeavor is the strategic iterative reading comprehension approach (sirca).2 the term reading comprehension has a very limited scope in our classes, one that i believe to be shared by a broad spectrum of efl students. this limited scope means that we focus on improving our ability to make use of academic texts for our professional and personal needs. the process that allows us to achieve this is founded on and guided exclusively by the purpose, the goal to be achieved and not by the tools that we use (or other language learning goals). it is a process designed to give students clear and explicit orientation as to when and how to use strategies. in this sense, this article takes a different tack from those that evaluate and classify strategies but stops short of engaging explicit prescriptive ends. in response to the abundance of descriptive models found in the field, sirca encourages a move from a transmission model of teaching toward an active transactional model that is based on explicit student-centered learning goals. the explicit goals that concern us can be located within the dimensions of task knowledge, task purpose, and task demands (rubin, 1994). sirca works to achieve those goals by answering the call for explicit and integrated strategy instruction (graham & harris, 2 i hesitate to call this a method because although there are specified objectives and selected activities in this instructional design, teacher and student roles are flexible and implementation can be recursive or adaptable to classroom conditions and objectives. 2000; shen, 2003) and by emphasizing awareness development through teacher modeling, practice, and self-evaluation (chamot, barnhardt, el-dinary, & robbins, 1999; harris, 2003). sirca integrates theories of learning processes, instructional procedures, and content instruction but is not a method for english language instruction. what it does is promote student motivation by creating a greater sense of autonomy and a clear sense of purpose; a sense of where the reader is headed, why, and how to arrive there. it is targeted at a specific but growing section within the efl community; students for whom achieving an intermediate or advanced level of reading comprehension proficiency is a valuable objective but who do not have the resources to do so. the use of traditional methods like esp (english for specific purposes) and eap (english for academic purposes) can provide students with a basic level of competency in the four language skills but, the limited time available for these courses often results in a level of reading proficiency that falls short of the demands found in a globalized academic environment. sirca focuses on two of these demands: (1) the ability to perform successfully in timed multiple choice reading comprehension exams and (2) the ability to write an “abstract” or summary based on a structural/semantic map (s-map) of an academic text in english. both of these are indispensable skills for an undergraduate in any major to have. the need for exam skills is self-explanatory. by being able to represent the purpose and structure of a text in a conceptual map and then in prose, the student will have an understanding of what the text does and how it does it. this, in turn, will allow the student to use the text for the purposes of research presentations, answering questions, and critical review. additionally, the skills acquired are directly transferable to the student’s native language (l1). this means that along with having access to english language texts in their field, the student will improve the speed universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras190 gómez gonzález and efficacy with which he or she reads overall, thus the impact of using this approach can be said to extend beyond the efl class and beyond the academic sphere into the personal and professional interests of the students who use it. they achieve this in part by employing those practices that define effective readers, namely, knowledge of syntax and structure, use of contextual clues, identifying key words, identifying the main idea, predicting, and confirming. theoretical framework sources integrated into sirca sirca is an integrative effort that recycles many of the theoretical models and findings in the area of metacognitive reading strategies already available and organizes them into a systematic and strategic approach to reading comprehension. in a field long affected by entropic tendencies that often make cross study comparisons nearly impossible (chamot, 2004), novelty is not what is most needed. it may be more beneficial to offer synthesis and prescriptive proposals that make practical use of the wealth of available theoretical models and tools. sirca borrows from a variety of existing approaches such as eap because students are initially engaged in using english texts to serve their academic needs. it can be thought of as a genre based approach, because genre analysis (in general) focuses on the structural organization of texts; an identification of lexicogrammatical features, moves, and strategies with a mind to understanding how these are organized to accomplish the communicative (or rhetorical) purpose of the text (osman, 2004). through sirca, students are able to focus on the patterns and organizational structure of expository and persuasive texts as well as to become familiar with the textual regularities of these genres. it also adapts some of the central tenets of task based strategies (tbs) because all activities are guided by one clearly defined task; to extract the central purpose and the general structure of the academic text either as a platform from which to answer multiple choice questions on standardized proficiency exams or as a means toward filtering through primary and secondary source texts in the practice of research. the benefits of incorporating explicit reading goals result from the fact that reading strategies are influenced by the specific goals that readers seek to achieve and it is only by defining, committing, and returning to these goals throughout the reading activity that strategies become useful and powerful tools for students rather than cumbersome and taxing obligations placed on an already busy cognitive system. this is important to what is proposed here because the learning theory behind sirca is the understanding that strategic readers are more effective readers and that these can be defined as individuals who understand the goals of the reading activity, have a broad range of strategies to choose from, are adept at using them in combination, and employ comprehension monitoring (grabe & stoller, 2001). good readers are selectively attentive, attempt to integrate across the text, and identify categories; they are able to appropriate and coordinate strategies opportunistically (pressley & afflerbach, 1995). in the last three decades, studies on reading comprehension strategy instruction have concluded that the combination of explicit goals and strategy use help readers to be more effective and efficient. (koda, 2004; lenski & nierstheimer, 2002; palincsar & brown, 1984; rosenshine & meister, 1994; song, 1998). the strategy instruction component presented here follows anderson’s (language theory) model of language acquisition (1981, 1985) insofar as it is a cognitive model that helps us to understand reading comprehension as a complex cognitive skill that can be broken down into a cognitive stage, during which there is conscious, rule-based learning, an associative stage, in which errors diminish and the reading strategies are executed more fluently, as well as an autonomous stage during which parts of the learned strategies become 191profile vol. 19, no. 2, july-december 2017. issn 1657-0790 (printed) 2256-5760 (online). bogotá, colombia. pages 187-201 a model for the strategic use of metacognitive reading comprehension strategies unconsciously performed skills that are incorporated into the reader’s automatic skill set (see appendix b).3 the explicit instruction model promoted by graham and harris (2000) and pressley (2000) has also been adapted into the sirca model in that the content, rhetorical, lexical, and syntactical knowledge specific to expository and persuasive texts is the “declarative knowledge” component. these are taught in tandem with the reading strategy component or “procedural knowledge”, which consists of a recursive task-based model that is repeated with a broad variety of texts until these strategies have been assimilated and become skills. metacognitive reading strategies: metacognitive reading strategies (mcrs) are central components of this approach because the evidence we have about their effectiveness is considerable. years of extensive research have shown us that they enable lep students to improve their reading proficiency (ikeda & takeuchi, 2003; kazemi, hosseini, & kohandani, 2013; wilson & bai, 2010; zhou & zhao, 2014). the use of mcrs here is based on four main propositions: (1) students who can establish cognitive links that relate newly acquired information with previous knowledge are more effective readers than those who are not mentally active and resort to rote memorization (barnett, 1988; waxman & padron, 1987). (2) strategies can be learned. those who are taught mcrs and provided with ample time to practice them will be more effective readers than those who have no experience with them or have not had explicit instruction as to their nature and use (cotterall, 1990; paris, lipson, & wixon, 1983). (3) mcrs transfer between l2 and l1 (rhoder, 2002; salataci & akyel, 2002). (4) improved reading comprehension in lep students is 3 i present this to students as a gradual evolution from unconscious incompetence to conscious incompetence to conscious competence and lastly to unconscious competence while highlighting that this can be a recursive process and, also, that completely abandoning the earlier strategies is not necessarily the goal but rather visiting them less often or only when new challenges merit it. more effective through direct instruction of mcrs than with traditional language processing methods of reading instruction (carrell, 1998). the process of explicit reading strategy implementation begins by making learners conscious of covert processes, knowledge, and skills that they can learn to control so that they can evolve into more effective readers (cambourne, 1999). components to the proposed approach textual indicators the language development component used in our classes includes a core list of linguistic or discourse markers, prefixes, suffixes, roots, and those verbs and nouns that are more likely to appear in academic texts (in the social sciences). nouns like researchers, findings, studies, and verbs like argue, concede, imply are more useful to us than wander, revel, and mingle because they appear more often in the kinds of texts that concern us.4 the discourse markers and their functions: enumerative, additive, conclusive, resultative, and contrastive, etc., are presented so that the individual terms are understood as performing a specific function in a text; words like but, conversely, instead are not learned as independent meaning units but as part of a category. in this case, a category of words that contrasts what is to follow with what preceded them. the purpose behind teaching the roots, prefixes, and suffixes is akin to why we learn about discourse markers. both provide students with an alternative means to decipher meaning where their vocabulary and syntactical knowledge may be insufficient. research has demonstrated high levels of correlations between discourse marker knowledge and improved reading comprehension proficiency (khatib & safari, 2011). 4 the core lexis is taught early in the course and expanded throughout. universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras192 gómez gonzález strategy instruction the acquisition of specialized vocabulary and syntax is important to the course only insofar as the manner in which these complement our use of strategies and allow us to improve our proficiency in working with academic texts in english. when using these strategies, the expression “working with texts” has a meaning for us that is slightly different from what is understood as decoding or deciphering texts, wholly or partially. what “working with texts” means to us is that we work to identify what the text does, whether it is expository or persuasive and how it does what it does. these are the goals of the class and of the strategies that we use. the strategy instruction component is expressed in the sirca guide map (g-map, see appendix c). the g-map is composed of questions that the reader uses to direct his or her reading. each question is considered separately and if no answer is found, the reader then moves to the following question in that section. some of these sections require that the reader return to certain sections of the text, each time with a different question in hand; herein lies one of the iterative characteristics of this approach. the recursive task based model relies heavily on the well-established practice of “scanning” and limits the use of the “skimming” component. by using the g-map, the student will always have specific questions in mind; he or she will always be scanning; looking for the answers to a question. the logic behind this is that skimming, or looking for the general idea, the main points, and the general structure is a task for which leps are seldom equipped. by providing a clear and achievable goal, finding answers to questions and using the answers to develop the s-map, the g-map limits the sense of impotence that students feel when we ask them to “decode the important parts of the text” or “identify the relevant information in it”. instructions of this sort can cause confusion and a consequent lack of motivation because leps often do not know how to distinguish relevant from irrelevant information. one exception to this is lep students who have been trained in basic test taking techniques. these students will, for the most part, be more effective at assimilating the g-map format because they have learned a reading approach that is goal oriented. sirca’s g-map consists of a set of questions tailored to guiding students in their approach to academic texts. initially, students are asked to follow the steps presented in the g-map in sequential fashion. as they progress through the steps they find tips and complementary questions that help them to answer the two primary questions: what and how (here we find a second iterative characteristic of the approach). once they have addressed one of the tips presented in the “how” section of the g-map, scanning for keywords that will help them to determine if “small to large” is the organizing principle behind the structure of the text, for example (and if the search is unsuccessful), they return and tackle the next tip/question, that is, scan for clues such as dates and other temporal indicators to see if the text is organized sequentially. at first the going is slow, but only while students assimilate the types of clues that they must look for to answer the “what and how” questions and are better able to resist the urge to give every word equal importance. developing these abilities requires the use of metacognitive strategies like planning, selective attention, and self-monitoring. once students become accustomed to attacking the text; to actively searching through it with the sole purpose of answering the questions in the g-map, measurable progress in their reading proficiency will follow. there is a significant time investment to be made at the initial levels because students will be asked to see the familiar (a text) in an unfamiliar way; as a compound that needs to be broken down into its elements. effective implementation of strategy instruction will reduce the length of time invested but the application of mcrs as suggested here, or elsewhere, is not a quick fix. it is a difficult, time consuming, though effective way towards creating better readers (farell, 2001). 193profile vol. 19, no. 2, july-december 2017. issn 1657-0790 (printed) 2256-5760 (online). bogotá, colombia. pages 187-201 a model for the strategic use of metacognitive reading comprehension strategies the activities spelled out by the g-map take on form in the s-map. the semantic/structural map (carrell, 1998) is a graphic display of information within categories that have explicit relationships to a central concept (johnson, in the foreword to heimlich & pittelman, 1986). the s-map is both semantic and structural in that it illustrates what the text is trying to achieve, present in the title given to the s-map, and the sections that explain how it tries to do so. let us say that our what question, what the text does, leads us to conclude that the text informs us that our earliest ancestors were hunter gatherers; this then becomes the provisional title of our s-map, abbreviated as “ancestors were h.g.” the following question, how the text manages to carry this out, will guide us toward dividing the text into sections. we would carry this out by placing a descriptive heading above each section and then using these headings to develop the s-map. finding the answer to the questions in the g-map, and creating an s-map with them will require cognitive skills such as grouping, note taking, summarizing, induction, and inferencing. in the process of integrating the section headings (the how the text tries to achieve its goal) with the provisional heading of the s-map (the what the text tries to achieve), one sees that the metacognitive strategies of self-monitoring and elaboration are key. the former, because it ensures active engagement with the defined reading goals and the latter, because it is the primary means through which the reader may recall prior knowledge, consciously relate it with what he or she is presently learning and then integrate this to the semantic structure that is their s-map. in the classroom, these strategies are taught, modeled, and practiced by way of social affective strategies such as cooperation and self-talk. the final version of the s-map is a structural and semantic rendering of the text. it shows what the author intends to accomplish and how the parts of the text are organized so as to achieve this goal. because of the great variety of rhetorical conventions, mastering the development of an s-map with persuasive texts will require more practice than with informative or expository texts. the s-map gives students the information that they need to achieve four of the most common academic reading goals for university students, among them “reading to research, answer questions, summarize, and reading for critical review” (o’hara, 1996, p. 7). the last goal is made possible because the s-map gives the student information about whether the parts do in fact accomplish the purpose that the author set out to achieve, whether they may do so if organized in a different manner, or to what extent some of them fail to do so altogether. for example, if a student is given an academic article that promotes the use of folktales in teaching philosophy to children, and said student is then asked to prepare for a discussion on ethics, she can quickly identify this section of the text (her s-map would contain a section titled ethics/moral issues) and delve further into the section of said essay that discusses the moral and ethical situations that folktales present. this is one of the ways in which this approach is strategic. it gives the reader the means to find and explore that section of the text that is of use to them and to do so quickly and effectively. in other words, it provides the student with access to a text in english without him or her having to translate it or attempting to read it in the conventional sense. similarly, if the essay includes a section on the history of folktales that is not of any rhetorical value to the author’s stated thesis, the student can identify this and thus begin a critical evaluation of the source text. content learning the level of difficulty of the texts should increase as students become more proficient in the use of strategies and develop a greater store of discourse markers. after the first 4 weeks the texts that we work with promote the development of specialized vocabulary and conceptual knowledge required by the philosophy major. universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras194 gómez gonzález the logic behind how texts are chosen and sequenced is guided by cummins’ (1992, p. 19) two dimensional model of contextual cues and complexity of task that define the language demands faced by lep students. the two dimensions can be visualized as a four quadrant chart where the horizontal x is the context (with “embedded” on the left and “induced” on the right) and the vertical y represents “high” and “low” cognitive demand. the four quadrants formed are: (1) contextualized (embedded) and low cognitive demand, (2) low (induced) context and low cognitive demand, (3) high cognitive demand and contextualized (embedded), and (4) low (induced) context and high cognitive demand. texts for the three levels of the class were selected so that they progressed from quadrant 1 to quadrant 4 (see appendix d). the kind of texts used evolved from general topics with a low level of cognitive demand and a high degree of embedded context to philosophy-specific topics where the level of explicit context is low and the cognitive demand is high. the hunting practices of owls is an example of a topic for an informative text that would be presented in the first weeks of the initial semester and an article on the foundations and differences between understanding a message or concept and believing it, published in american psychologist, an example of what students in the final weeks of the third and final level would be asked to map and summarize. incorporating suggestions into lesson plans the following is a suggested method for integrating the explicit instruction of discourse markers, strategy instruction, and content learning into lesson plans. learning strategies should be presented as the means toward achieving reading goals. initially these will require separate mini lessons to explain how they are related to what the student may already do when reading in l1 (awareness), what the nature and function of each strategy is, and how to more effectively pair each strategy with the presented text and the desired reading goals. beyond this initial introduction however, the mcrs and their strategic use should be considered secondary. they should be seen as the means toward developing an s-map of the texts in question. the motivation behind this is that the strategies should become assimilated into the reading skill sets that the students bring to the classroom and that autonomous and independent use of them should ensue. i will briefly cover here the manner in which we allocated tasks to time as a point of reference. twenty percent of our class time was given over to the learning of content, vocabulary, linguistic markers, etc., and 80 percent to strategy instruction and practice. the initial emphasis was on quantity over quality on repeated encounters with new texts so that students worked for 30 or 40 minutes with each text and advanced toward assimilation. each text served as an opportunity to move closer to a more strategic attitude toward reading; to looking through the text (iteration) with a clear (clearer) purpose in mind, one guided by the search for an answer and not by the left to right and top to bottom movement that extensive or traditional reading promotes. this high paced work emphasizes that the text in and of itself was of little importance; what mattered, instead, was mastering the practice of extracting the structural and semantic information from it as fast as possible and thus promoting reader control, autonomy, and confidence over the text. this had two important benefits: in standardized reading comprehension, exams time is a crucial factor and being able to attack the text while guided by specific questions will reward the test taker and second, as undergraduates advance through their semesters, the volume and complexity of the readings assigned to them will grow. if they are able to quickly analyze the purpose and structure of a text, they can make decisions as to their usefulness or as to the sections that will serve their specific needs: oral presentations, class discussions, term papers, and critical discussions. in class, activities were carried out by adapting some of the 195profile vol. 19, no. 2, july-december 2017. issn 1657-0790 (printed) 2256-5760 (online). bogotá, colombia. pages 187-201 a model for the strategic use of metacognitive reading comprehension strategies premises of the philosophy of cognitive apprenticeship (collings, brown, & newman, 1989), namely, modeling, diagnosing, fading, and scaffolding. scaffolding includes providing hints, feedback, reminding, questioning, encouraging, and praising. the lessons are divided into five stages. stages 1-3 occupy most of our class time during the initial two weeks. practice and follow up should be fully incorporated by the fourth to sixth week. during the first stage, students are introduced to the mcrs involved in selective attention, self-monitoring, inferencing, and summarizing. these are to be learned and the sequence of steps needed to implement them. the second stage introduces the s-map as a way to graphically represent, keep track of, and express the relationships between the purpose of the text and the various methods that are used to achieve it. this stage is also used to highlight how many of the tasks students perform while reading in l1 are in fact strategies i.e. strategies that can also be applied to l2 reading. the third stage models the manner and sequence in which the steps in the g-map can be used to respond to multiple choice questions and create an s-map. stage 4 is the first practice stage in which the instructor can perform a needs analysis and proceed with complementary instruction to guarantee assimilation of what was covered in stages 1-3. stage 5 is the first true autonomous practice stage where the student, in groups or individually, can begin to evaluate his or her own unsuccessful practices and plan accordingly. in summary then, stages 1 and 2 provide declarative knowledge verbally and graphically, stage 3 models use, and stages 4 and 5 serve as practice stages. for the first four to six weeks, the practice stage should be carried out in cooperative (model) sessions where small groups can develop member confidence in the use of organizational planning, induction, questioning, and grouping strategies called for by the g-map and necessary so that each small group can develop semantic/structural representations of the source text. classes beyond the sixth week can incorporate more individual or paired work with whole class reviews in the follow-up stage. in the follow-up stage the groups come together as a class to compare the various s-maps and decide where inaccuracies may lie. conclusions generalization in this field is always a delicate matter; however, there is a strong argument to be made for stating that practitioners may find what this approach offers to be useful in advancing their reading goals with their students. the main characteristics of sirca are that it brings together some of the more effective tools available for language teaching and reading comprehension proficiency. these tools include, but are not limited to, the use of metacognitive reading strategies, genre analysis, and task based strategies. from this synthesis come the advantages of adopting this method and the benefits that come from the compounded effectiveness where the whole is greater than the sum of its parts. it is also attractive in that its simple structure makes it accessible to a variety of contexts and modifications and that because its skills are transferable from l2 to l1 it can be practiced and perfected outside the english classroom. it empowers students by allowing them quick (albeit limited at first) access to the academic, cultural, and social conversations that take place on the internet and this serves as a powerful motivator for them in achieving their overall language learning and professional goals. in medicine, the line between research, whose goal is to advance scientific knowledge, and medical practice, which is concerned with a patient’s well-being, is often blurred. on the one hand are physicians who are interested in testing if a drug or procedure works, and on the other, those who rate the same drug or procedure based on whether it helps their patients. the anticoagulant drug amicar was once routinely prescribed to patients after aneurysm surgery to prevent “re-bleeds”. it worked. few patients died from “re-bleeds”. they died universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras196 gómez gonzález instead from strokes caused by the interrupted blood flow caused by excessive clotting. the drug did not help. the impetus behind this proposal, if we were to continue the medical metaphor, would fall under innovative treatment rather than research; we are interested in promoting an approach that has helped and may very well continue to do so for other instructors. references anderson, j. r. (ed.). (1981). cognitive skills and their acquisition. hillsdale, us: erlbaum. anderson, j. r. (1985). cognitive psychology and its implications (2nd ed.). new york, us: w. h. freeman. barnett, m. a. (1988). reading through context: how real and perceived strategy use affects l2 comprehension. the modern language journal, 72(2), 150-162. http://doi. org/10.1111/j.1540-4781.1988.tb04177.x. cambourne, b. (1999). explicit and systematic teaching of reading: a new slogan? the reading teacher, 53(2), 126-127. carrell, p. l. (1998). can reading strategies be successfully taught? australian review of applied linguistics, 21(1), 1-20. http://doi.org/10.1075/aral.21.1.01car. chamot, a. u. (2004). issues in language learning strategy research and teaching. electronic journal of foreign language teaching, 1(1), 14-26. chamot, a. u., barnhardt, s., el-dinary, p. b., & robbins, j. (1999). the learning strategies handbook. white plains, us: addison wesley longman. collings, a., brown, j. s., & newman, s. e. (1989). cognitive apprenticeship: teaching the crafts of reading, writing, and mathematics. in l. resnick (ed.), knowing, learning and instruction: essays in honor of robert glaser (pp. 453-494). new york, ny: cambridge university press. cotterall, s. (1990). developing reading strategies through small-group interaction. relc journal, 21(2), 55-69. http:// doi.org/10.1177/003368829002100205. crystal, d. (1999). english as a global language. cambridge, uk: cambridge university press. cummins, j. (1992). language proficiency, bilingualism, and academic achievement. in p. a. richard-amato & m. a. snow (eds.), the multicultural classroom: readings for content-area teachers (pp. 16-26). new york, us: longman. farell, t. s. c. (2001). teaching reading strategies: ‘it takes time!’ reading in a foreign language, 13(2), 631-646. grabe, w., & stoller, f. l. 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(2016). programa de inglés para ingenieros facultad de ingeniería. universidad de antioquia, medellín, colombia. kazemi, m., hosseini, m., & kohandani, m. (2013). strategic reading instruction in efl contexts. theory and practice in language studies, 3(12), 2333-2342. http://doi.org/10.4304/ tpls.3.12.2333-2342. khatib, m., & safari, m. (2011). comprehension of discourse markers and reading comprehension. english language teaching, 4(3), 1-8. http://dx.doi.org/10.5539/elt.v4n3p243. koda, k. (2004). insights into second language reading: a cross-linguistic approach. cambridge, uk: cambridge university press. lenski, s. d., & nierstheimer, s. l. (2002). strategy instruction from a sociocognitive perspective. reading psychology, 23(2), 127-143. http://doi.org/10.1080/027027102760351034. http://dx.doi.org/10.5539/elt.v4n3p243 197profile vol. 19, no. 2, july-december 2017. issn 1657-0790 (printed) 2256-5760 (online). bogotá, colombia. pages 187-201 a model for the strategic use of metacognitive reading comprehension strategies ministerio de educación nacional, men. (2005, december). bases para una nación bilingüe y competitiva. altablero, 37. retrieved from http://www.mineducacion.gov.co/1621/ article-97498.html. o’hara, k. (1996). towards a typology of reading goals (report epc-1996-107). cambridge, uk: rank xerox research centre. osman, h. (2004). genre-based instruction for esp. the english teacher, 33, 13-29. palincsar, a. s., & brown, a. l. (1984). reciprocal teaching of comprehension-fostering and comprehension-monitoring activities. cognition and instruction, 1(2), 117-175. http:// doi.org/10.1207/s1532690xci0102_1. paris, s. g., lipson, m. y., & wixon, k. k. (1983). becoming a strategic reader. contemporary educational psychology, 8, 293-316. http://doi.org/10.1016/0361-476x(83)90018-8. pressley, m. (2000). what should comprehension instruction be the instruction of? in m. l. kamil, p. b. mosenthal, p. d. pearson, & r. barr (eds.), handbook of reading research (vol. 3, pp. 545-561). mahwah, us: lawrence erlbaum associates inc. pressley, m., & afflerbach, p. (1995). verbal protocols of reading: the nature of constructively responsive reading. hillsdale, us: lawrence erlbaum associates. rhoder, c., (2002). mindful reading: strategy training that facilitates transfer. journal of adolescent & adult literacy, 45(6), 498-513. rosenshine, b., & meister, c. (1994). reciprocal teaching: a review of the research. review of educational research, 64(4), 479-530. http://doi.org/10.3102/00346543064004479. rubin, j. (1994, march). components of a teaching education curriculum for learner strategies. transcript of a colloquium held at the annual meeting of the teachers of english to speakers of other languages, baltimore, us. retrieved from http://eric.ed.gov/?id=ed376701. salataci, r., & akyel, a. (2002). possible effects of strategy instruction on l1 and l2 reading. reading in a foreign language, 14(1), 1-16. seargeant, p., & erling, e. j. (2011). the discourse of ‘english as a language for international development’: policy assumptions and practical challenges. in h. coleman (ed.), dreams and realities: developing countries and the english language (pp. 2-21). london, uk: british council. shen, h.-j. (2003). the role of explicit instruction in esl/efl reading. foreign language annals, 36(3), 424-433. http:// doi.org/10.1111/j.1944-9720.2003.tb02124.x. song, m.-j. (1998). teaching reading strategies in an ongoing efl university reading classroom. asian journal of english language teaching, 8, 41-54. waxman, h. c., & padron, y. n. (1987). the effect of students’ perceptions of cognitive strategies on reading achievement. paper presented at the annual meeting of the southwest educational research association, dallas, us. wilson, n. s., & bai, h. (2010). the relationships and impact of teachers’ metacognitive knowledge and pedagogical understandings of metacognition. metacognition learning, 5(3), 269-189. http://doi.org/10.1007/s11409-010-9062-4. zhou, x., & zhao, y. (2014). a comparative study of reading strategies used by chinese english majors. english language teaching, 7(3), 13-18. http://doi.org/10.5539/ elt.v7n3p13. about the author juan david gómez gonzález teaches reading, literature, and rhetoric at universidad de antioquia (colombia). he holds a phd in english from the state university of new york at stony brook (usa). universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras198 gómez gonzález appendix a: reading comprehension results exam results 2015 undergraduates who took the exam passed failed 2,062 898 1,164 graduate students who took the exam passed failed 1,468 923 545 engineering department, undergraduates 2014-2 2015-2 took the exam 398 526 passed 264 227 failed 134 299 199profile vol. 19, no. 2, july-december 2017. issn 1657-0790 (printed) 2256-5760 (online). bogotá, colombia. pages 187-201 a model for the strategic use of metacognitive reading comprehension strategies appendix b: strategies employed in sirca cognitive • relating new information to prior knowledge or relating different parts of new information to each other. • classifying words and terminology according to their attributes (grouping). • writing down key words and concepts in abbreviated verbal or graphic form while reading (note taking). • using textual information to predict outcomes or guess meanings (inferencing). • making a written summary of information gained through reading (summarizing). • using previous knowledge or skills to assist comprehension (induction). mcs • planning selective attention • self-monitoring elaboration • processing/regulation of knowledge processing social-affective • self-talk • using mental techniques that make one feel competent to do the learning task • cooperation • working together with peers to solve a problem • pooling information • checking a learning task • elicit feedback on interpretation of form or content of a text universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras200 gómez gonzález appendix c: the guide map the map below aims at identifying the organizing principle of the text by scanning for key words, concepts, and linguistic markers and most importantly, by answering the questions provided here. the cognitive strategies upon which this is based include: classifying concepts and words, abbreviating concepts in written and graphic form, creating a written summary of the information gathered, and relating newly acquired information with established information so as to create a conceptual map of what the text does and how it does so. 1. what is the author trying to do? 2. how does the author try to do so? 2. how does the author try to do so? then inform persuadetranslate title and abstract what does the author want to teach/inform us of? what does the author want to persuade us of? scan �rst and last paragraphs in search of �rst person pronouns, opinions, and declarative sentences. does it need to be proven? can it be refuted? provide an explicitly descriptive provisional title. divide into sections by answering. which of the following are answered: who/what/when/where/how/why? how is the text organized? who speaks in the text? what kinds of questions are asked? who dis/agrees with the author? look for: chronological order, repeated names, keywords that signal transition, numbers, and %. does the text begin with background information, history of the debate, de�nitions of terms? provide a descriptive heading for each section that you identify. it should be in spanish and it must be useful to you. organize these headings to create a map/outline of how the article persuades/informs. what terms or ideas are repeated? who is quoted? why? who is quoted? why? what terms or ideas are repeated? are there de�nitions, examples? is there chronological development? how is the text organized? small to large, step by step, cause and effect, comparison, contrast, parts of the whole? divide into sections by answering. would it be helpful for the intended reader to know this? why? provide an explicitly descriptive provisional title. is it something that is unknown to the reader? look for topics that promote debate: religion, ethics, the texts/ideas of others, disputed terminology. words such as: argue, refute, prove, claim, �ndings, show, evidence and �ndings. 201profile vol. 19, no. 2, july-december 2017. issn 1657-0790 (printed) 2256-5760 (online). bogotá, colombia. pages 187-201 a model for the strategic use of metacognitive reading comprehension strategies appendix d: cummins’ (1992) 2 dimensional model 3 context embedded high cognitive demand 4 1 low cognitive demand context reduced 2 triggering factors that reinforce or change efl preservice teachers’ beliefs during the practicum 15profile: issues teach. prof. dev., vol. 24 no. 1, jan-jun, 2022. issn 1657-0790 (printed) 2256-5760 (online). bogotá, colombia. pages 15-28 https://doi.org/10.15446/profile.v24n1.90342 triggering factors that reinforce or change efl preservice teachers’ beliefs during the practicum factores que refuerzan o cambian creencias en futuros maestros practicantes de inglés abel andrés periñán-morales1 institución educativa juan bautista la salle, florencia, colombia john jairo viáfara-gonzález universidad pedagógica y tecnológica de colombia, tunja, colombia josé alexander arcila-valencia institución educativa sagrados corazones, florencia, colombia this exploratory case study seeks to examine the role that specific factors exert on the evolution of beliefs in preservice english teachers during their final teaching practicum. data were collected through reflections, interviews, focus groups, and observations. the findings revealed that three groups of factors affect belief evolution during the practicum: participant subjectivity, contextual circumstances, and university support community. subjectivities encompassed preservice teachers’ fears, reactions to reallife teaching challenges, and enthusiasm to become teachers. contextual circumstances incorporated classroom circumstances and cooperating teachers. the university support community concerned their peers and the university tutor. implications discuss the relevance of curricular and reflective agendas that enrich the education of future teachers through beliefs exploration. keywords: english teaching, preservice teachers, teachers’ beliefs, teaching practicum este estudio exploratorio examina el papel de factores específicos en la evolución de las creencias de futuros maestros de inglés sobre su práctica pedagógica. los datos se recolectaron mediante observaciones, entrevistas, grupos focales y reflexiones. los hallazgos develaron tres grupos de factores que afectaron la evolución de las creencias: la subjetividad involucró el temor de los estudiantes para desarrollar su práctica, reacciones a los retos y entusiasmo por convertirse en profesores. los aspectos contextuales implicaron las circunstancias en las aulas y relaciones con profesores titulares. la comunidad de apoyo en la universidad incluyó a compañeros y tutor. las implicaciones discuten la relevancia de agendas curriculares, reflexivas y colaborativas que enriquezcan la educación de futuros maestros a partir de la exploración de sus creencias en la práctica pedagógica. palabras clave: creencias de maestros, docentes en formación, enseñanza de inglés, práctica docente 1 abel andrés periñán-morales  https://orcid.org/0000-0002-9434-9849 · email: aperinan@juaanblasalle.edu.co john jairo viáfara-gonzález  https://orcid.org/0000-0002-8409-6016 · email: john.viafara@uptc.edu.co josé alexander arcila-valencia  https://orcid.org/0000-0002-8473-599x · email: jarcila@udla.edu.co how to cite this article (apa, 7th ed.): periñán-morales, a. a., viáfara-gonzález, j. j., & arcila-valencia, j. a. (2022). triggering factors that reinforce or change efl preservice teachers’ beliefs during the practicum. profile: issues in teachers’ professional development, 24(1), 15–28. https://doi.org/10.15446/profile.v24n1.90342 this article was received on september 3, 2020 and accepted on september 7, 2021. this is an open access article distributed under the terms of the creative commons license attribution-noncommercial-noderivatives 4.0 international license. consultation is possible at https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/ https://doi.org/10.15446/profile.v24n1.90342 https://orcid.org/0000-0002-9434-9849 mailto:aperinan@juaanblasalle.edu.co https://orcid.org/0000-0002-8409-6016 mailto:john.viafara@uptc.edu.co https://orcid.org/0000-0002-8473-599x mailto:jarcila@udla.edu.co https://doi.org/10.15446/profile.v24n1.90342 https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/ universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras16 periñán-morales, viáfara-gonzález, & arcila-valencia introduction this study examined what factors, if any, tended to shape the beliefs five english preservice teachers (hereafter pst) exhibited while engaging in their final teaching practicum (hereafter tp) and how those factors influenced those conceptions. the study took place during the participants’ second tp at public schools in southern colombia. there is disagreement in english as a foreign/second language (efl/esl) and other education areas regarding the effect of tp experiences on psts’ beliefs, with contending findings being yielded. various studies have determined that practicum experiences cause little or no transformation in prospective teachers’1 beliefs (e.g., çapan, 2014; mattheoudakis, 2007). however, the results of other research in the area indicates that tp does, in fact, influence psts’ pedagogical conceptions (barahona, 2014; debreli, 2016a; durán-narváez et al., 2017; özmen, 2012; sheridan, 2016; suárez-flórez & basto-basto, 2017). indeed, the amount of research with findings that indicate tp experiences have an impact upon psts’ beliefs is progressively increasing. some of these studies have also indicated that the nature of teacher education programs (hereafter tep) may affect the initial beliefs and resultant evolution of psts’ beliefs during the practical phase of their education (debreli, 2016b; mattheoudakis, 2007). as a result, it is perhaps unsurprising that teps are giving increasing importance to the consideration of teacher candidates’ pedagogical beliefs. thus, whilst there may be competing results in the literature, there is a forming consensus that the tp is an ideal scenario within which prospective teachers’ beliefs may be explored. this would allow for a substantial amount of information to be collected which can contribute to the improvement of pedagogical dynamics in teps. there is recognition among scholars about the need for further studies in the field that are focused on 1 the terms prospective teachers, preservice teachers, and future teachers will be used interchangeably in this article. psts’ beliefs in a variety of different contexts, cultures, and countries (biesta et al., 2015; özmen, 2012). the multiple contextual variables that affect the evolution of teachers’ beliefs may mean that teps’ curricular plans, which are based upon the findings from local research. could be more effective. as such, it is noteworthy that despite the history of continuous governmental foreign language education reforms in colombia in the last few decades, coupled with the diversity of the regions and the sociocultural particularities of individuals, there are just a handful of published studies that have tackled the issue of changes in the pedagogical conceptions of psts (durán-narváez et al., 2013, 2017; gutiérrez, 2015; suárez-flórez & basto-basto, 2017). similar to international studies, where local studies have been carried out, national scholars have concentrated on identifying the beliefs that participants hold before and after their practicum experience (aguirre-sánchez, 2014; suárez-flórez & basto-basto, 2017), describing specific belief transformation (durán-narváez et al., 2013; suárezflórez & basto-basto, 2017), delving into the connection between pedagogical approaches or reflective strategies and their pedagogical convictions (castellanos-jaimes, 2013; gutiérrez, 2015), and understanding how stated beliefs were not coherent with pedagogical actions (fajardo, 2013). given this, we believe that there is a gap in the literature concerning the factors that drive the transformation of beliefs in psts and consider the issue to be worthy of further examination. due to the complexity and breadth of circumstances and elements that shape psts’ beliefs, studies often fail to explore the nuanced nature of these factors, which, in addition, are context-bound. literature review the nature and power of beliefs in preservice teachers’ pedagogical practice teacher cognition incorporates the body of research related to what teachers know, think, and 17profile: issues teach. prof. dev., vol. 24 no. 1, jan-jun, 2022. issn 1657-0790 (printed) 2256-5760 (online). bogotá, colombia. pages 15-28 triggering factors that reinforce or change efl preservice teachers’ beliefs during the practicum believe and how these are related to what they do in practice (s. borg, 2003). within this field and under the umbrella term of “teacher cognition,” we have seen an extensive body of literature emerge in the area of teachers’ beliefs. beliefs are intrinsically woven with other cognitive dimensions such as knowledge, perceptions, and decisions; thus, it can be hard to distinguish between these dimensions. pajares’s (1992) long list of terms associated with beliefs: “attitudes, values, judgments . . . opinions, ideolog y, perceptions, conceptions, conceptual systems, preconceptions, dispositions . . . personal theories” (p. 309) connotes how tricky it can be to identify the difference between beliefs and these other mental categories. m. borg’s (2001) definition of beliefs seems to capture the essence of the concept and may aid us with the challenge of differentiating beliefs from other cognitive dimensions: “proposition which may be consciously or unconsciously held, that is evaluative because it is accepted as true by the individual, it has emotive commitment, it guides thought and behavior” (p. 186). as a working definition for this study, this concept embraces a holistic view of beliefs as it intersects epistemological, cognitive, and affective perspectives of teachers’ thinking as they become involved in the sociocultural aspects of their jobs. the powerful influence of beliefs on teachers’ thinking and actions makes them resistant to change and persistent in the minds of teachers, despite the efforts of teps to change them (richardson, 2003). scholars have described various elements that explain the tenacity of beliefs. kumaravadivelu (2012) and pajares (1992) argue that these convictions are strong because oftentimes they form early in teachers’ careers and their composition can integrate the ideological, cultural, and societal conceptions that educators have embraced throughout their lives. in addition, beliefs usually group together into systems or clusters which engage a vast array of episodic material and maintain internal coherence by supporting each other (abelson, 1979; green, 1971). finally, barcelos and ruohotie-lyhty (2018) claim that the emotional and affective atmosphere that envelopes the teaching exercise can reinforce educators’ beliefs, which explains why these convictions might be more useful than theory for teachers when they face challenges at work (nespor, 1987). research on factors influencing prospective teachers’ belief change the practicum experience may serve as an opportunity for psts to begin to understand the complexity of teaching and it may also challenge both their preconceptions and the beliefs they have developed in their tep. zeichner (1996) posits that “many of the ideas that student teachers bring to the practicum . . . are problematic (calderhead & robson, 1991), and unless re-examined, will interfere with teachers learning things during the practicum that will contribute to the accomplishment of the central purposes of schooling” (p. 124). thus, the practicum experience may reveal valuable information for both psts and teps as they gauge the success of their pedagogical objectives. in addition, the practicum experience affords teps the opportunity to evaluate not only psts’ performance and the role of teps in teacher education processes, but also future teachers’ beliefs (özmen, 2012; zheng, 2009). the evolution of psts’ beliefs during their practicum has been examined in the literature on both a national and international level. few articles have concluded that the practical experience in teps results in little to no change in psts’ beliefs (çapan, 2014; gutiérrez, 2015; mattheoudakis, 2007). the first two researchers suggest that the key factors for this lack of evolution in psts’ beliefs can be related to the rigid mandatory curricula in teaching practicum institutions. this lack of flexibility may have discouraged participants from exploring a variety of different options and generating new ideas. moreover, çapan universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras18 periñán-morales, viáfara-gonzález, & arcila-valencia (2014) conjectures that the alignment between psts’ well-rooted belief systems and their tutors’ beliefs may also explain the inflexibility of psts’ personal pedagogical conceptions. mattheoudakis (2007) also concluded that “stability in [participants’] beliefs might not indicate lack of change but a teachers’ attempts to balance beliefs and reality” (p. 1282). in contrast to these studies, additional research has established that teaching experiences do indeed influence psts’ beliefs (barahona, 2014; debreli, 2016a; durán-narváez et al., 2017; özmen, 2012; sheridan, 2016; suárez-flórez, & basto-basto, 2017). as a result, the achievements and failures of prospective teachers during their tp lead them to adapt, reinforce, and transform their beliefs (debreli, 2016a; sheridan, 2016). yet more research has investigated the underlying factors that may trigger changes in psts’ beliefs. firstly, the evolution of psts’ beliefs may be triggered by the challenges of real teaching circumstances (barahona, 2014; debreli, 2016a; durán-narváez et al., 2017; sheridan, 2016), especially when the beliefs that psts hold upon starting their practicum are based on theory (cota-grijalva & ruiz-esparzabarajas, 2013; debreli, 2016a; durán-narváez et al., 2017). secondly, the lack of teaching experience that psts possess may cause the specific viewpoints they adopt as a result of their university education to have an increased impact on their beliefs (gutiérrez, 2015). thirdly, the learning process and attitudes of their students can influence the beliefs of psts when their students exhibit learning limitations or misbehavior (debreli, 2016a) and when students react positively to innovative teaching (gutiérrez, 2015). fourthly, the type of tep is identified as a factor in the evolution of psts’ beliefs, particularly in cases where reflective approaches are employed (debreli, 2016b; durán-narváez et al., 2017; gutiérrez, 2015). reflection helps psts to “make sense of their teaching experience and build up their own style of teaching a foreign language” (özmen, 2012, p. 10) and to gain awareness of their own conceptions (cota-grijalva & ruiz-esparza-barajas, 2013). finally, the interaction that psts have with their learning support network may also affect the evolution of their beliefs. duránnarváez et al. (2017) determined that the teaching style, strategies, and character of psts’ cooperating teachers (cts) may influence their beliefs. moreover, özmen (2012) highlights the importance of teacher educators’ humanism, encouragement, and the nature of their feedback as influences in how psts’ beliefs are shaped. research design this qualitative study was conceived as an exploratory case study (merriam, 2009). qualitative studies make use of natural environments to understand the way people make sense of their actions (hatch, 2002). this case study explored the experiences lived by five psts during their second practicum course and intended to discover how those experiences impacted their beliefs about teaching. participants and setting the participants were four women and one man, all in their twenties and in their 8th semester of the program where this study took place. they were taking a secondary education practicum course, after having already participated in the first elementary education practicum course. they were placed in four different mixed-sex, urban, public educational institutions, located in florencia (southern colombia). these institutions had an average of 800 secondary school teenage students from diverse religions, ethnic groups, and social classes, predominantly from lowincome families. purposive sampling (kumar, 2011) was employed to select participants who also signed a consent form to be part of the study. details regarding participants’ profiles and their school contexts can be found in table 1. 19profile: issues teach. prof. dev., vol. 24 no. 1, jan-jun, 2022. issn 1657-0790 (printed) 2256-5760 (online). bogotá, colombia. pages 15-28 triggering factors that reinforce or change efl preservice teachers’ beliefs during the practicum table 1. participants’ personal information participant age grade teaching # of students in classroom school population #1 22 9th 32 approx. 1,450 primary and secondary school students from lowand middle-income families #2 25 9th 33 same as participant 1 #3 22 7th 38 approx. 1,530 primary and secondary school students from lowand middle-income families #4 24 8th 35 approx. 1,400 primary and secondary school students from low-income families #5 22 9th 34 approx. 1,200 primary and secondary school students from low-income families data collection instruments two personal, semi-structured, one-hour interviews were conducted at the beginning and middle of the practicum with each participant. open-ended questions were employed to identify psts’ teaching beliefs and their evolution in the tp. upon completion of the tp, four psts participated in a one-hour focus group in order to explore their beliefs, belief changes, and the reason behind leading to belief evolution. travel issues prevented the participation of the final participant in the focus group. all interviews and the focus group were conducted by two researchers and were both audio and video recorded for reliability purposes and to allow for body language analysis and transcription. classroom observations were conducted to identify whether the actions that participants took in practice were in accordance with the beliefs they expressed. they consisted of two one-hour lessons per participant, one at the beginning and one at the end of the tp. participants were directly observed and video recorded by a researcher, who also took field notes. class reflections and teaching reports were utilized as a fourth data source, with psts reflecting upon each lesson and completing a final question-guided reflection report. this report explored the particularities of their teaching contexts, the stakeholders involved, the challenges their teaching experience brought, and how their preparation and counselling contributed towards facing those challenges and developing professionally as teachers. these documents allowed us to triangulate our data and contrast, confirm, and analyze the observation and interview data. this helped to shed light onto participants’ beliefs and their evolution during the tp. data analysis and findings our data analysis used a grounded theory approach (creswell, 2012). data were analyzed through the codification of relevant information aided by the software atlas ti. extensive examination and refining of codes allowed categories and subcategories to emerge from the data. these categories facilitated our comprehension of the factors that contributed towards the ratification and evolution of psts’ beliefs during their tp. the validity of our findings was ensured through investigator triangulation (merriam, 2009) to support the veracity of our claims and methodological triangulation (creswell, 2012) to corroborate evidence through different types of data. as a result, the codification of commonalities among different participants’ statements found in the data helped establish the three categories we shall discuss below. findings will be illustrated with excerpts from observation, interviews, and focus groups. universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras20 periñán-morales, viáfara-gonzález, & arcila-valencia participants’ embodied subjectivities acting upon their beliefs the first factor that was identified as an influence on psts’ beliefs was participants’ subjectivities. the subjectivity of a person regards the unique personal characteristics that allow an individual to make sense of reality in their own particular way, informing their judgements and decision making. thus, the same event can be experienced in different ways as the individual attitudes, dispositions, and other psychological traits influence each individual’s interaction with reality. teachers experience this subjectivity as a result of their “family patterns, educational histories, personal character traits, national and regional affiliations, social class background, and a lifetime of social encounters” (danielewicz, 2001, p. 36). consequently, psts begin their tp with subjectivities that have been constructed throughout their life, mediated by feelings, emotions, memories, and desires that are immersed in social interactions (kramsch, 2012). these experiences include high school and college education (lortie, 1975) and life events such as motherhood, as is the case for one of the participants. the first subjectivity trait that emerged from the data was participants’ desire to become a teacher. despite all participating in a tep, by the onset of the tp, two of the participants expressed their intention not to work as a teacher upon graduation. i used to tell my mother: “i will graduate, and i will join the police,” because i’ve always liked what has to do with the army and all that. but my aunt mary told me, “maría, you cannot do that. you already have a child and you will not be accepted. you have to focus on your degree” ...and i said, “no! i do not like that.” (p1, int. 1, august 2018)2 2 excerpts from the participants’ interviews and documents presented in this paper were translated into english by the researchers, trying to keep the most accurate representation of the participants’ meanings. participants will be identified as p1, p2, and so on, as they appear in their personal information chart. int. = interview, obn. = observation notes, fg = focus group. the second subjectivity trait to emerge concerned fear of the tp itself. one of the participants manifested a negative perception regarding the experience of teaching that had stemmed from interactions with previous student-teachers. there are many myths about the practicum: that it is very hard, that the university teaching advisor will not help you with anything, that you cannot use the whiteboard, that teachers will leave you on your own...i used to say one of my most terrible fears was how i could put together a lesson, i mean, the rules to put together my lesson, the topics i have to cover, the subjects i have to teach, to contextualize. preparing a lesson was a terrible fear for me. (p2, int. 1, august 2018) finally, participants’ attitudes towards the challenges of their specific teaching contexts and the collaborative work with their university teacher advisors (uta) and cts emerged as a subjectivity trait. i consider myself to be well prepared. obviously, there are going to be hard days, and there are going to be students that, honestly, make you wonder what’s wrong with them, but that is not difficult, and you have to read because more students and large courses will come, and sometimes you might crash. (p2, int. 1, august 2018) each of the participating psts arrived with their own particular set of subjectivities that would collide with the teaching reality they faced in their specific school. we acknowledge that other factors may have affected them, however, we postulate that their subjectivity had a significant influence on the development of certain beliefs. to exemplify this, we shall consider the case of p5. prior to the tp, p5 expressed the belief that classroom management is more difficult for short teachers. she worried that students in public schools were hard to deal with and that being short was a weakness. those are bad schools, where there are children who know more about life than you, who know about vices, like marijuana, who know about everything. i knew that 21profile: issues teach. prof. dev., vol. 24 no. 1, jan-jun, 2022. issn 1657-0790 (printed) 2256-5760 (online). bogotá, colombia. pages 15-28 triggering factors that reinforce or change efl preservice teachers’ beliefs during the practicum there was going to be a time when i would have a large class, and it would be hard for me because i am very short and those children are very tall. (p5, int. 1, august 2018) macías and sánchez (2015) indicate that classroom management is a constant challenge for psts in their initial lessons, whilst pst classroom management beliefs focus on student behavior (wolff et al., 2015, as cited in kwok, 2020). through the practical experience the tp provided, we evidenced a change in p5’s classroom management beliefs. i can be very short but they cannot mess with my class, or, well, unless you let them do it...you change your mind. there are thugs, in all schools there are thugs; you always have to be good with them, but also put on your big girl pants and be strong. (p5, int. 2, october 2018) later in the interview, when asked about her drive to change, she made reference to herself. she reasoned: one becomes fearful due to previous psts. being short, i ask myself, and “what if they don’t have the respect i want?” but you face that and everything [previous psts] say is a lie. you just have to face that and know the context in which they are and that’s it, adapt to that context. (p5, int. 2, october 2018) the second observation allowed us to observe the evolution of p5’s beliefs in practice as her classroom management resulted in the emergence of a stricter and demanding teaching behavior. one of the field notes reads: during the class, the students show misbehavior. therefore, the teacher raises her voice and tries to get the attention of a group of students who are in the back of the room. the teacher says again, “pay attention.” she raises her voice and students seem to calm down...the teacher is constantly monitoring the students. finally, the teacher gets angry and tells them that if they don’t keep quiet, she will register their names in the misbehavior book. after this warning, the room remains silent, working on the activity. (obn., october 2018) p5’s initial fear about how to handle student misbehavior was a strong influence on her beliefs, however, after several months of practical experience in the tp, she seemed to embrace new beliefs and actions, allowing her personal self-determination to guide her classroom management. the results shown in this section align with those in kalaja et al. (2015). the findings discussed above are closely related to these authors’ discussion about how the individual processes of interaction between novice teachers and the context, as well as the challenges of their first teaching experiences, facilitate the modification or continuance of their beliefs surrounding what constitutes good and innovative teaching. similarly, these findings connect with barcelos and ruohotie-lyhty’s (2018) as the connection between emotions, affect, and beliefs have a strong influence on how these relate to psts’ cognition and can be subject to change or not. therefore, the influence exerted by psts’ subjectivity can become a determinant factor in the development of certain beliefs. the potential of the practicum context to affect beliefs the second factor to come out of the data that demonstrate that the tp exerts an effect on psts’ beliefs relates to the multiple intertwined features of the teaching context. two types of contextual factors arose: physical and human. physical contextual factors concerned the facilities, resources, commodities, and environmental conditions. human contextual factors referred to the relationships psts established with people within the context of the practicum, for instance, cts and students. classroom observation provided us with the primary data necessary to appreciate the context that each pst faced in their tp, along with its nuances. one such observation note reads: the room has three fans, but it’s small and hot. there are some posters on the wall. there is a video projector and speakers . . . students work in a photocopy activity among the noise of students speaking, misbehavior, universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras22 periñán-morales, viáfara-gonzález, & arcila-valencia bullying, and heat. . . . the pst ignores some of the noise and students’ behaviors in the classroom. some students’ lack of attention persists, and some throw objects at classmates. (obn., october 2018) the physical features of a classroom merge with the heterogeneous nature of its students in every lesson and create a scenario which demands teacher action. in this study, classroom events caused psts to confront and, indeed, challenge their own teaching perceptions. this was the case with lesson planning. within their tep, participants received methodology courses and a teaching seminar prior to the initiation of the tp, which resulted in some psts’ fixed conceptions about how a lesson should be planned and developed. even before i knew there were teaching practices, i already knew how to design a lesson plan, which should have a start, a middle, and an end...in the previous courses we studied the pre, while, and post...it was when the teacher [his uta] said, “next week you have to send me your first lesson plan. plan the pre, the while, and the post.” (p4, int. 1, august 2018) the number of variables that may affect a lesson means that the lived reality of teaching efl in colombian public schools is complex in nature. as sánchez-solarte and obando-guerrero (2008) describe, the number of students, language instruction time, and mix of students’ ages and language proficiency result in a challenging efl teaching environment. moreover, john (2006) affirms that lesson planning models do not consider the contingencies of teaching, nor the uncertainties of the lesson such as “time-pressures, organization issues, attitudes, moods, emotions and serendipity” (p. 487). p4 experienced a variety of the natural circumstances that can arise inside the classroom during the development of his tp. these circumstances caused him to challenge his beliefs concerning lesson plans and created conflict in his practice as these evolving beliefs clashed with the requirements of his uta to plan each class and fully develop this plan. i think the lesson plan is important because it helps you better structure the class and everything, but it should not become like a regime that you have to reach the “post” in all classes, because the class varies a lot, the pace of the class and the students, and many times you only have time to get to the “while”... one has to carry out a plan b and change many ideas, and turn the class around because the boat is sinking. i cannot let myself sink for the sake of the lesson plan. (p4, fg, february 2019) the above excerpt demonstrates how the participant’s lesson planning beliefs evolved as a result of classroom particularities. this developing comprehension of lesson planning concurs with john’s (2006) argument that lesson planning is affected by endogenous and exogenous forces, where both contextual and personal teaching factors, such as spontaneity and improvisation, converge in the course of the development of the lesson. having explored some of the physical factors that affect beliefs, our discussion shall now turn to the human factors. the beliefs of psts were affected by the relationship they had with their cts, which was also closely linked to the teaching context and resulted in significant experiences. cts, as psts and students, possess their own individual qualities and beliefs, which underlie their decisions and actions. thus, the various aspects of teaching, and indeed education itself, can be perceived by cts in different ways. their level of participation in the psts’ preparation process can vary depending on their conception of cooperation (clarke et al., 2014) and this generates an “uneven quality of practicum supervision or mentoring” (zeichner, 1996, p. 132). as a result, cts provided differing levels of support to psts, with some cts controlling all aspects of the teaching process, such as evaluation and grading, whilst others would delegate control of these elements to psts. along with ct beliefs and actions, the relationships psts established with their cts were varied. some of these relationships were based on respect and cooperation, whilst others reflected distrust and miscommunication. 23profile: issues teach. prof. dev., vol. 24 no. 1, jan-jun, 2022. issn 1657-0790 (printed) 2256-5760 (online). bogotá, colombia. pages 15-28 triggering factors that reinforce or change efl preservice teachers’ beliefs during the practicum p2 experienced difficulties regarding contradiction and underestimation from her ct. one observation note read: the pst set a time to complete the activity. the students were working well, but the pst noted time was running out, so she began rushing the students to finish the activity to start concluding the lesson. at that moment, the cooperating teacher interrupted the pst and said out loud, “can you wait for the students to finish that activity first?” (p2, obn. 2, october 2018) when questioned about the event during an interview, p2 stated: the attitude of the ct can benefit or affect both the development of the practices and the disposition of the students before the pst. in my particular case, my ct initially saw me as an assistant and not as the teacher in charge. on many occasions she disavowed me in front of my students and underestimated my methods. (p2, int. 2, october 2018) this negative experience is balanced by the case of p3, who experienced a more positive learning environment, looking up to her ct: the teacher has a lot of experience, a lot, in everything about teaching; and i probably adapted to her. she already had many forms of teaching that were more advanced... she gave me suggestions, and she lent me a book. she taught me how to do it and we worked together...we both planned. (int. 2, october 2018) the ct’s perception of her, coupled with the cooperative relationship they established was a significant factor in the construction and reinforcement of her beliefs. in this case, this manifested itself regarding the use of worksheets. in her first and second interview she revealed that she believed worksheets to be useful teaching materials. first, she said, “i always search the internet...you find a lot of material, worksheets, but you adapt them…i work my own adapted worksheets” (p3, int. 1, august 2018). later, when describing one of her lessons, she added, “i had a worksheet and in it there were many places they had to look for. after, we reviewed their answers; some were wrong, others were not” (p3, int. 2, october 2018). the admiration and respect that p3 had for her ct meant that the validation of her work by this mentor seemed to strengthen the collaborative relationship between the two of them and help to reinforce her belief in the use of worksheets. in the final group interview she commented: the material that i prepared helped me a lot, because she [referring to her ct] implemented it with almost all the sixth grades. . . . i sent her everything i did. if i made slides, if i played a song, a video, she implemented all that with sixth a and sixth c. this means that during the whole practicum she worked with almost all my worksheets for the sixth grades. (p3, fg, february 2019) the positive regard in which p3 held her ct, coupled with the implicit validation of her work that stemmed from its continued usage by the ct, resulted in a positive reinforcement in p3’s belief about the use of worksheets as classroom material. therefore, a positive or a negative relationship between psts and cts can affect the psts’ teaching conceptions. we have thus established the influence of contextual particularities on psts’ beliefs, predominately in relation to lesson planning and development, and the use of teaching material. these findings align with those of barahona (2014), debreli, (2016a) and durán-narváez et al. (2017) in regard to the transformative potential that the real circumstances of teaching have on prospective teachers’ beliefs. they also align with the notion that psts’ beliefs can evolve as a result of the interactions with people who support their learning (sheridan, 2016; yuan & lee, 2014). advisor’s and peers’ encouragement influence psts’ beliefs though the prior section discussed the role of the ct as part of the practicum school context, the following lines delve into the impact the uta and participants’ universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras24 periñán-morales, viáfara-gonzález, & arcila-valencia peers exerted, as a university learning community, on the psts’ beliefs. the uta provided mentoring which afforded the psts the emotional support they needed to transform their beliefs reflecting uncertainty and doubt about teaching into empowering personal pedagogical conceptions. as well as contributing towards participants’ consolidation of their knowledge, skills, and attitudes, the uta also cultivated an enriching bond with the psts. based on a reflective standpoint (farrell, 2017; yalcin-arslan, 2019), the uta continually guided the psts through the teaching planning and implementation process. weekly encounters on the university campus provided spaces where encouragement and group reflection could take place and raise awareness of the methodological decisions made before, during, and after the classes oriented by psts. the uta served as the initial guiding voice in group discussions, providing tips and recommendations and fostering a family-like environment, allowing the psts to feel secure and motivated. learning was scaffolded through the employment of a variety of reflective activities that potentiated participation and analytical skills as psts assessed their own and their peers’ claims. he [the uta] made an overall reflection about everybody’s performance, and sometimes maría [another pst] would intervene to talk, and she would share her experiences. then, he was always like, “come one guys! let’s continue, you can do it! you are good!” i mean, things that encourage us to carry on. then, another partner talked. there was always a reflection at the end. (p5, int. 2, october 2018) the uta’s approach to guiding the psts’ education had a profound impact on producing a change in p1’s initial beliefs concerning her previously expressed disregard for the teaching profession, allowing her to believe in her ability to become a teacher. teachers are more than guides, they become mentors... therefore, seeing that a teacher can achieve that, i realized “well, i can do it too.” having that teacher who is there giving you feedback, who really cares and takes time for you to be a good teacher is very important. so, listening to the uta, and his interest and willingness to look for activities motivated me to continue researching to do a good job. (p1, fg, february 2019) thus, the work of the university advisor guided the transformation of the beliefs of the teacher candidate. p1 emphasized the role of her uta as a provider of socioemotional support, resources, and assistance. this finding concurs with conclusions in other studies that highlight the impact utas can have on psts’ personal beliefs when employing reflective approaches (debreli, 2016b; gutiérrez, 2015; durán-narváez et al., 2017). in general, the quality of teps, the humanistic and encouraging approaches of mentors, and the nature of feedback may be influential factors on the evolution of psts’ beliefs (özmen, 2012; sheridan, 2016). peers also provided a valuable source of support for psts in their weekly encounters. cooperation and collaboration within the group fostered a comfortable and trustworthy environment. this, in turn, encouraged the development of new attitudes and behaviors towards the tp in general by participants. several psts’ beliefs about the challenges of classroom management and lesson planning appeared to be favorably modified through interaction with their peers. it helped a lot in my case, for example, i was very scared because i was going to face a large class…and some children were already adults...so, when i had to face that challenge, i listened to what happened to my peers in their reflections, and took some ideas from the group. it was very helpful since their experiences enriched me…i think the meetings and your guidance [referring to her uta] were great and contributed to our tp...we got the strength to continue…especially because i did not want to be a teacher. (p5, int. 2, october 2018) this can be further exemplified by the case of p2, who stated in her first interview: “one of my most terrible fears was my not being able to put together a plan, how 25profile: issues teach. prof. dev., vol. 24 no. 1, jan-jun, 2022. issn 1657-0790 (printed) 2256-5760 (online). bogotá, colombia. pages 15-28 triggering factors that reinforce or change efl preservice teachers’ beliefs during the practicum to put together a class, i mean, what laws or procedures are there for me to put together my class?” (p2, int. 1, august 2018). the evolution of her lesson planning beliefs as a result of peer discussion and uta mentoring was then evidenced in her final interview, as she affirmed: for me, the academic meetings were very good…even if i had time in my house, i waited for them to be held, to sit down with my partners and listen to our advisor’s suggestions to put together my lesson plan. obviously, i brought my draft, but in the end i thought, “i prefer to put it together there because i know it will look good, because it will be something concise where my peers or the uta can contribute with their ideas or i can contribute with my ideas to another peer’s plan.” therefore, i think the idea i had regarding how to teach changed a lot. (p2, fg, february 2019) therefore, we postulate that participants’ pedagogical conceptions can be favorably altered through peer collaboration during weekly encounters. the participants were able to enhance their professional preparation as interaction with their peers contributed towards the confrontation and transformation of unfounded beliefs. in addition, they became more accountable and committed to both their own and their peers’ education, echoing anderson et al. (2005) and vacilotto and cummings (2007). thus, psts evidenced feelings of increased relaxation, comfort, and confidence when they shared their emotional dimension, becoming more aware of the transforming value that seeking peer support entailed. conclusions and implications the aim of this study was to examine what factors, if any, tended to shape the beliefs that english psts exhibited while engaging in their final tp and how those factors exerted an influence on those conceptions. this section summarizes the evidence-based interpretation of findings previously discussed and foregrounds recommendations for practice and further research. the first of three groups of factors we detected related to psts’ subjectivity. this encompassed their personal characteristics, which are rooted in the sociocultural traits and personal history they have experienced in their lives, causing each to have unique reactions to different situations. these subjectivities were most evident as participants’ beliefs evolved according to their varying aspirations to become teachers, their peer-instigated fear of the tp, and how they responded to the teaching challenges they encountered. this finding agrees with barcelos and ruohotie-lyhty’s (2018) considerations that connect emotions and beliefs. the second group of factors that shape psts’ beliefs are the interrelated contextual circumstances found in the schools of the tp. this finding coincides with studies conducted by barahona (2014), debreli (2016a), and durán-narváez et al. (2017) and suggests that these contextual circumstances may favor the alteration or reinforcement of beliefs. these factors incorporated both physical resources and conditions as well as the interactions participants had with members of the school communities. specifically, our findings uncovered how real classroom circumstances may challenge beliefs developed in university; furthermore, cts’ assessment of psts’ pedagogical work could shape participants’ conceptions. the third group of factors concerns the mediation and interactions of utas and fellow psts. a collaborative environment grounded in reflective dialogue seemed to be the precursor of participants’ transition from uncertainty to confidence in their understandings, having consolidated or confronted their beliefs. psts developed this confidence in areas encompassing classroom management, lesson planning, significance, and motivation to become teachers. the role of reflection and practicum advisors was also highlighted in studies conducted by debreli (2016b), durán-narváez et al. (2017), gutiérrez (2015), and özmen (2012). as scholars have insisted for many years, our findings demonstrate the need to strengthen the initial curricular structure and pedagogical plans of teps. prospective teachers require specialized guidance to help them universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras26 periñán-morales, viáfara-gonzález, & arcila-valencia inquire into their beliefs during the practicum (yuan & lee, 2014; zheng, 2015). a focus on psts’ beliefs may allow teps to foster awareness; facilitating psts’ realization of the benefits and inconveniences their personal notions may have in their teaching practices, and allowing unfavorable beliefs to begin to be transformed. reflective approaches consistently emerge from this study and others (debreli, 2016b; prilop et al., 2019; shooshtari et al., 2017), along with critical perspectives to teacher education, as suitable options with which to approach the subjective and deeply rooted nature of beliefs. the decontextualized information studied in university is often integrated as a fundamental component of psts’ beliefs. orienting prospective teachers with regard to their understanding of how and why their personal conceptions are the product of university instruction, and thus may be lacking context-sensitivity, may mitigate any potential dismay psts’ face when reality forces them to confront such beliefs. this may also empower them to shape their personal teaching beliefs according to the relevance and needs of their particular teaching contexts. a limitation of this inquiry is the small number of psts in just one tp. although a reduced number of participants does facilitate a deeper exploration of their teaching beliefs, a wider sample size, including more range and diversity of both participants and universities, could provide valuable data. similarly, as this study focused on a single academic term, further longitudinal studies are needed in order to monitor belief evolution over a more prolonged period. further research could explore the evolution of participants’ beliefs in both university’s stipulated practicums: elementary and secondary. references abelson, r. p. 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(2015). teacher beliefs as a complex system: english language teachers in china. springer international publishing. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-23009-2 about the authors abel andrés periñán-morales holds a bed in english language teaching, a specialization in pedagogy from universidad de la amazonia (colombia) and an ma in english didactics from universidad surcolombiana (colombia). currently, he is an english teacher in the public sector. john jairo viáfara-gonzález holds a phd in second language acquisition and teaching (university of arizona, usa), an ma in applied linguistics (universidad distrital francisco josé de caldas, colombia) and a bed in english (universidad nacional de colombia). he is an associate professor at universidad pedagógica y tecnológica de colombia and a co-researcher in the group retele. josé alexander arcila-valencia holds a ba in english language teaching from universidad de la amazonia (colombia) and an ma in english didactics from universidad surcolombiana (colombia). he is a high-school efl teacher. https://cie.asu.edu/ojs/index.php/cieatasu/article/view/819 https://cie.asu.edu/ojs/index.php/cieatasu/article/view/819 https://doi.org/10.3102/00346543062003307 https://doi.org/10.3102/00346543062003307 https://doi.org/10.1016/j.stueduc.2019.06.005 https://doi.org/10.1016/j.stueduc.2019.06.005 https://revistas.unal.edu.co/index.php/profile/article/view/10715 https://revistas.unal.edu.co/index.php/profile/article/view/10715 https://doi.org/10.14221/ajte.2016v41n3.1 https://doi.org/10.14221/ajte.2016v41n3.1 https://doi.org/10.29252/ijal.20.1.185 https://doi.org/10.15446/profile.v19n2.59675 https://doi.org/10.15446/profile.v19n2.59675 https://doi.org/10.1093/elt/ccm008 https://doi.org/10.1093/elt/ccm008 https://doi.org/10.1080/14623943.2018.1564652 https://doi.org/10.1016/j.system.2014.02.002 https://doi.org/10.1016/j.system.2014.02.002 https://doi.org/10.17863/cam.1579 https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-23009-2 107profile: issues teach. prof. dev., vol. 21 no. 1, jan-jun, 2019. issn 1657-0790 (printed) 2256-5760 (online). bogotá, colombia. pages 107-120 https://doi.org/10.15446/profile.v21n1.69508 efl teachers’ attitudes towards oral corrective feedback: a case study actitudes de los profesores de inglés como lengua extranjera hacia la retroalimentación oral correctiva: un estudio de caso lizbeth gómez argüelles1* edith hernández méndez2** moisés d. perales escudero3*** universidad de quintana roo, chetumal, mexico this paper reports a qualitative case study of college-level english as a foreign language teachers’ attitudes towards oral corrective feedback. our goal is to characterize such attitudes considering a model which integrates cognitive, affective and conative components as well as different aspects of oral corrective feedback. six english instructors working in english language teaching at a university in southern mexico were interviewed. directed qualitative content analysis shows that (1) participants prefer implicit corrective feedback strategies, and (2) considerations of students’ feelings guide their overall attitudes toward corrective feedback. the participants seem unaware of most corrective feedback strategies and consideration of students’ cognition is absent in the composition of their corrective feedback attitudes. this finding suggests a need for more theory-based corrective feedback training and practice. key words: corrective feedback, english as a foreign language, mexico, oral communication, teachers’ attitudes. reportamos los resultados de un estudio de caso acerca de las actitudes de los profesores universitarios hacia la retroalimentación oral correctiva en un contexto de inglés como lengua extranjera. perseguimos describir tales actitudes usando un modelo de actitudes que integra los componentes cognitivo, afectivo y conativo, así como diferentes aspectos de la retroalimentación correctiva oral. un análisis cualitativo dirigido de contenido muestra que los participantes prefieren estrategias implícitas y sus conductas acerca de la retroalimentación correctiva son guiadas por preocupaciones por los sentimientos de los estudiantes. los participantes no conocen varias estrategias de retroalimentación correctiva y no toman en cuenta aspectos cognitivos de los estudiantes. esto sugiere la necesidad de mayor fundamentación teórica en la capacitación y práctica de la retroalimentación correctiva. palabras clave: actitudes de profesores, comunicación oral, inglés como lengua extranjera, méxico, retroalimentación correctiva. * e-mail: lizgomez@uqroo.edu.mx ** e-mail: edith@uqroo.edu.mx *** e-mail: mdperales@uqroo.edu.mx how to cite this article (apa, 6th ed.): gómez argüelles, l., hernández méndez, e., & perales escudero, m. d. (2019). efl teachers’ attitudes towards oral corrective feedback: a case study. profile: issues in teachers’ professional development, 21(1), 107-120. https://doi.org/10.15446/ profile.v21n1.69508. this article was received on december 18, 2017 and accepted on october 23, 2018. this is an open access article distributed under the terms of the creative commons license attribution-noncommercial-noderivatives 4.0 international license. consultation is possible at https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/. universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras108 gómez argüelles, hernández méndez & perales escudero introduction oral corrective feedback (ocf) is an area of second language acquisition (sla) of particular relevance for teachers, but also one with a clear disparity between research findings and teachers’ beliefs (sheen, 2011; vásquez & harvey, 2010). the provision of ocf has been very controversial, and no doubt attitudes have played an important role in this controversy. no matter how effective a strategy has proven to be, if the teachers’ attitudes are not positive towards ocf in general or towards that specific strategy, they may not use it at all in the language classroom. the literature on attitudes towards corrective feedback is nonetheless incipient in english as a foreign language (efl) contexts and, to a large extent, terms such as beliefs, perceptions, and attitudes are used interchangeably. therefore, more research and terminological clarification is needed in such settings. this study is aimed at analyzing the instructors’ attitudes towards ocf in an efl teaching program by means of a qualitative approach. our study was based on jain’s (2014) tridimensional version of schiffman and kanuk’s (2004) attitude model, and lyster and ranta’s (1997) model of error treatment. the question guiding this research was: what is the composition of instructors’ attitudes toward different aspects of ocf? based on recent research, which has reported a disparity between learners’ and teachers’ attitudes towards ocf, this qualitative study intends to shed some light on the discussion of attitudes towards oral corrective feedback and their role in foreign language education. literature review recent studies have focused on instructors’ and learners’ perceptions and attitudes towards ocf as they seem to play a determining role in the use of ocf strategies and even in the use of ocf in the language classroom. faqeih (2015) suggests that the learners’ attitudes towards ocf can affect their learning outcomes; this also applies to the teachers’ attitudes and their teaching. attitudes have become of greater concern among scholars due to their assumed influence on individuals’ behavior. previous studies on ocf have found divergent attitudes towards ocf in instructors and learners, mainly towards the type of strategies and their effectiveness (learners show a preference for explicit strategies whereas teachers favor implicit ones). some factors influencing these teachers’ attitudes are their concern about learners’ self-confidence, self-esteem, motivation, and feelings, as teachers seem to assume that ocf might negatively affect their students (firwana, 2010; hernández méndez & reyes cruz, 2012; jean & simard, 2011; kaivanpanah, alavi, & sepehrinia, 2012; kavaliauskienė & anusienė, 2012; e. j. lee, 2013; miranda-calderón, 2013; oladejo, 1993; schulz, 1996, 2001; yoshida, 2008, 2010). other factors affecting teachers’ attitudes towards students’ oral errors are the instructors’ formal training, teaching experience, and place of employment (byrnes, kiger, & manning, 1997). schiffman and kanuk’s attitudes model bagozzi (1994a, 1994b) highlights the fact that attitudes is an umbrella term for diverse concepts such as preferences, feelings, emotions, beliefs, judgments, appraisals, values, principles, opinions, and intentions. hogg and vaughan (2005) define attitude as “a relatively enduring organization of beliefs, feelings, and behavioral tendencies towards socially significant objects, groups, events or symbols” (p. 150), and this is the way we understand the term attitudes in the present study. schiffman and kanuk (2004) proposed that attitudes are made up of three components: (a) cognitive (beliefs), (b) affective (feelings and emotions), and (c) conative (behavior). jain (2014) describes them as follows: the cognitive component. these are the thoughts and beliefs of a person about an attitude object; it is a judgment which conforms the person’s opinion (belief or not) about an object. 109profile: issues teach. prof. dev., vol. 21 no. 1, jan-jun, 2019. issn 1657-0790 (printed) 2256-5760 (online). bogotá, colombia. pages 107-120 efl teachers' attitudes towards oral corrective feedback: a case study the affective component. this is the emotional response (like or dislike) towards an object of attitude. attitudes cannot be determined by the mere identification of beliefs as emotions work simultaneously with the cognitive processes related to an attitude object. the conative component. this is a verbal or nonverbal behavior of an individual consisting of actions or observable responses which are the outcome of an attitude object. this component involves the person’s response (favorable or unfavorable) to doing something with the attitude object. attitudinal responses are assumed to be consistent to some extent; a series of responses show some degree of organizational structure or predictability (defleur & westie as cited in jain, 2014). proposal of a tridimensional analysis of attitudes from schiffman and kanuk’s model, jain (2014) proposes a tridimensional analysis of attitudes based on the different possible combinations of the cognitive, the affective, and the conative components. by the interaction of these three components, an attitude is developed toward an object. given that each component can be positive or negative, the possible combinations are eight. table 1 presents this triode distribution. table 1. possible triodes that arise from the combination of the three attitudinal components (jain, 2014) triode affective conative cognitive ppp positive positive positive ppn positive positive negative pnp positive negative positive pnn positive negative negative npp negative positive positive npn negative positive negative nnp negative negative positive nnn negative negative negative this tridimensional model has been recently used in a couple of efl studies (aydoğan, 2016; bristi, 2015), and scholars of other disciplines have also started to include it as their method of analysis (castro, 2016; h. lee, 2016; sholihah & hanafi, 2017). an error treatment model lyster and ranta (1997) proposed an error treatment model that includes a classification of strategies, types of errors, and the different possible types of learner uptake. for our analysis, we have added the following components: ocf timing, ocf provider (student or teacher), and ocf effectiveness. figure 1 shows our adaptation of lyster and ranta’s model. method setting and participants this study was conducted at the university of southern mexico (usm, a pseudonym), which offers a five-year ba program in english language teaching (elt). the students are required to take eight english courses whose aim is for learners to develop the four language skills: listening, speaking, reading, and writing. as a graduation requirement, students need to pass the cambridge certificate in advanced english or an equivalent examination. the six instructors interviewed in this study were teaching english i, iii, v, and vi, the english levels offered by the program during the term when data were collected. the participants’ ages ranged from 29 to 49 years old. they are hourly lecturers; all of them hold an english language bachelor’s degree, and a master’s degree. they all have at least five years’ experience teaching efl at the college level. these teachers were selected because of their schedule and availability. pseudonyms were used to ensure confidentiality: raven (30 years, female), erik (49 years, male), jean (37 years, female), scott (31 years, male), logan (29 years, male), and xavier (36 years, male). universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras110 gómez argüelles, hernández méndez & perales escudero research design and data collection this is a qualitative case study and its unit of analysis is the faculty teaching english courses at usm’s ba in elt program. a case study is “an investigation where, through quantitative, qualitative, or mixed processes, an integral unit is analyzed deeply in order to answer a problem, prove a hypothesis, and develop a theory” (hernández sampieri, fernández collado & baptista lucio, 2006, p. 224, own translation). the participants were interviewed face-to-face using a recorder and a protocol previously designed by the researchers. the data were collected in spanish, the instructors’ l1, to avoid misunderstandings or anxiety issues. for ethical considerations, participants were asked to sign a consent form. data analysis our qualitative content analysis was guided by jain’s (2014) tridimensional version of schiffman and kanuk’s (2004) attitude model and by lyster and ranta’s figure 1. error treatment sequence (adapted from lyster & ranta, 1997) learner error phonological grammatical syntactic lexical other strategy providers peer correction self-correction topic continuation teacher student needs repair acknowledge different error same error hesitation off-target partial error repair repetition incorporation self-repair peer repair teacher strategies implicit: recast, body language, clarification explicit: explicit correction, explicit correction with metalinguistic explanation, elicitation, metalinguistic clue, repetition learner uptake time at the moment | delayed reinforcement 111profile: issues teach. prof. dev., vol. 21 no. 1, jan-jun, 2019. issn 1657-0790 (printed) 2256-5760 (online). bogotá, colombia. pages 107-120 efl teachers' attitudes towards oral corrective feedback: a case study (1997) error treatment model. after transcribing the interviews, we identified attitudes toward ocf verbalized by the participants and examined them considering the cognitive, affective, and behavioral components. we also examined the ways these components intertwined with the error treatment dimensions verbalized by the teachers that we assumed would be the objects of attitude: (a) error types, (b) ocf strategies, (c) ocf provider, (d) ocf timing (immediate or delayed), (e) perceived ocf effectiveness, and (f) learner uptake. the analysis remained open to identifying additional objects of attitude not initially considered in the theory. the data were analyzed by all the researchers involved in the study to avoid researcher bias, and their interpretation was validated by two external colleagues. results and discussion the results and analysis of research data gathered during face-to-face interviews are presented next. this section is organized per object of attitude. recall that we assumed that different elements of our version of lyster and ranta’s (1997) model would be objects of attitude. at the same time, our analysis remained open to any new categories that emerged from the data. we found one such category that intertwined with all other objects of attitude: students’ feelings. at the same time, learner uptake, as defined by lyster and ranta, was not present in our data, but other types of learner reactions to ocf were, and therefore they were also a new category. attitudes towards different ocf strategies as previously mentioned, ocf strategies are divided into two types according to lyster and ranta (1997): implicit and explicit (see figure 1). in the present study, instructors showed more positive attitudes towards the use of some implicit strategies over explicit ones. for instance, recast and body language, two implicit strategies, were favored. the following extracts are evidence of this: for example, when they are pronouncing a word incorrectly, i don’t tell them about their error or the correct pronunciation explicitly. i try to say the word in a new sentence instead, so they can hear the word again. (jean, english vii) (recast implicit strategy) well...i use the strategy of...i don’t know what to call it, but it’s like staring at them and gesturing, something like “excuse me? what did you say?” so, they pronounce the word correctly or identify what they said incorrectly, and they repeat it right. (raven, english i) (body language implicit strategy) the results obtained in the present research are similar to previous studies in this regard. for instance, recast was also favored over other explicit strategies in lyster and ranta (1997), tsang (2004), and surakka (2007). a consideration of students’ feelings seemed to have a strong influence on the instructors’ practice. they reported a tendency to consider perceived aspects of learners’ personality (shy vs. outgoing, rapport) and the possibility of hurting or not hurting the students’ feelings accordingly when deciding whether to use a specific type of ocf strategy. i remember that, as a student, i was an introvert and i think it made me feel a little bit bad when someone put me on the spot, so now that i’m a professor…i try to avoid it. (erik, english i) (avoidance of explicit strategies) the repetition strategy makes me feel uncomfortable, so i do recast instead, just using a different tone to encourage them to think and correct themselves; i think i dislike it. i feel a little uncomfortable when i use it because i feel i’m putting them on the spot. (raven, english i) (repetition, explicit strategy, recast implicit strategy) there are some students who…i don’t know the word…they are sensitive, they do not participate most of the time, maybe they feel their level isn’t the same as their classmates’. the only strategy i used with them is that i recast with what they said wrong right away, then i talk to them one-on-one, but never in front of the group. (jean, english vii) yes, i make some students with a low proficiency level repeat what they just said. i walk to where they are seated and tell them, “look you have to say this”…some of them can be corrected directly if universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras112 gómez argüelles, hernández méndez & perales escudero you know the student’s personality is easygoing or if he is one of those who likes to joke around and you have a friendly rapport with, then you can tell him directly: “what you said is pronounced like this”, so he obeys and improves. (scott, english v) all of these comments show a prevalent cognitive component in teachers’ attitudes toward ocf strategies: they take into consideration the strategies’ potential to hurt students’ feelings. some faculty members, like jean and scott, tend to provide explicit ocf one-onone to students who are perceived as shy and might be hurt by feedback, and explicit feedback in the context of the whole class to students who are perceived as outgoing and not likely to be hurt by feedback. jean and scott, however, did not see ocf strategies as a trigger of negative emotions in themselves. by contrast, erik and raven did report that using explicit feedback strategies (raven’s case) or any kind of ocf strategy (erik’s case) triggered emotional discomfort. in terms of schiffman and kanuk’s (2004) model, some participants believe that different types of feedback are situationally in/appropriate (cognitive component). for all participants, their thoughtfulness about the learners’ feelings (cognitive component) or their negative emotions triggered by ocf (affective component) guides the decision to use a certain type of ocf strategy or to avoid ocf altogether (conative component). this finding parallels vásquez and harvey’s (2010), where most of the educators expressed uncertainty about the best type of feedback and its frequency so as not to affect students’ self-esteem or motivation. similar results are also found in yoshida’s (2008) research, where teachers favored recasts “as their social strategy for the maintenance of a supportive classroom atmosphere in order to sustain learners’ motivation” (p. 89). accordingly, participants showed mostly negative attitudes toward those ocf strategies that, in their opinion, would affect students’ feelings or emotions. teachers said they tend to use the strategies they have read about as part of their graduate studies; they also reported reproducing their former teachers’ practices and also those that worked best for them as learners. however, their actual practices are carried out without a real conscious knowledge of ocf strategies. for instance, they are unaware of most strategy types except recast, body language, and repetition. in those instances where they are said to use one or two of them, there was no evidence that they had reflected on their effectiveness. this seems to be a random way of teaching based on reproducing previous practices without full awareness of their implications for the learning process. the possible triode combinations for most instructors’ attitudes towards ocf strategies were as follows: 1. ppp when strategies are implicit and provided to either shy or outgoing students in the context of the whole class. 2. ppp when explicit strategies are used with shy students one-on-one and when explicit strategies are used with outgoing students in the context of the whole class. 3. nnn when strategies are explicit with shy students in the context of the whole class. the one exception to this is erik, who had nnn attitudes regardless of the situation. in general, their attitudes toward ocf strategies are strongly influenced by their perception of an affective orientation towards students’ feelings. they enact ocf strategies differently in accordance to such perceptions: one-on-one with shy students, whole-class with outgoing ones. from our data, the participants do not seem to take into account the learners’ cognition as a factor when deciding what type of ocf strategy to use. they also seem unaware of the existence of other strategies. attitudes towards types of errors pronunciation and grammar errors were focused on by the participants when providing ocf. they said these are the error types they need to attend to the most 113profile: issues teach. prof. dev., vol. 21 no. 1, jan-jun, 2019. issn 1657-0790 (printed) 2256-5760 (online). bogotá, colombia. pages 107-120 efl teachers' attitudes towards oral corrective feedback: a case study because more practice in these subskills is required or because these types of errors were easier to correct. this is evidenced by the following comments. well, i focus a lot...well, it depends on the subject, for example, now that we are learning a new topic i focus on pronunciation a lot because we have studied it before...i gave them a cd, we repeat it, we do the drills and everything that is required. (raven, english i) pronunciation, that’s what we need to practice more, mmm... so they start familiarizing themselves [with the words]. (scott, english v) for example, when correcting grammar, they see it faster, i mean, they even ask for it...when they notice progress and they do not make the error anymore, everything is ok. it’s more difficult to correct perception or meaning issues. (logan, english v) raven’s and scott’s comments show evidence of a positive conative disposition toward pronunciationfocused ocf. logan’s comment shows both a positive conative and a positive cognitive orientation toward grammar-focused ocf. he believes this type of correction is effective for students (“they see it faster…they even ask for it…they do not make the error anymore”). by contrast, logan shows negative beliefs about ocf focused on semantic or perceptual errors (“it’s more difficult…”). four instructors stated that ocf was not provided unless the error in question impeded communication. this is similar to jean and simard’s (2011) main findings where teachers preferred to correct only those grammar or pronunciation mistakes that impeded communication so as not to interrupt the flow of language and not to affect students’ confidence. this finding also coincides with those by schulz (1996) on teachers’ perceptions of grammar instruction and ocf, as the teachers in that study assumed that “[ocf] may activate the ‘affective filter’ by raising the students’ level of anxiety which, in turn, prevents the learner from actually acquiring communicative ability” (p. 344). as with their attitudes toward ocf strategies, participants’ practices and beliefs about pronunciationfocused ocf are based on how they assume students may feel when ocf takes place. they do not have a reaction mmm, because i don’t correct them, i don’t emphasize the correction, right? for example, if they are mispronouncing something, i repeat the word with the correct pronunciation in a sentence…and i try to repeat it myself so i don’t make the fact that i’m correcting obvious. i feel i have to do [error correction], but i feel i don’t want to…mmm…make them feel bad, right? (jean, english vii) no, they don’t have the same reaction. for example, when writing is corrected, they don’t feel attacked, but in oral presentations i feel they do. (raven, english i) considerations of students’ cognition were absent from our participants’ statements and thus do not appear to support their teaching practice. similar results were found in jean and simard (2011) and schulz (1996). a consideration of students’ feelings and experiencederived beliefs (cognitive components) was self-reported to guide practice (conative component). absent are serious self-reflection or theoretical considerations. therefore, ocf appears to be provided in a suboptimal manner since the participants do not seem to take stock of matters such as students’ age, cognitive development, or the specific nature of the language features in focus and their interplay with acquisition processes. instructor’s attitudes towards the types of errors could not be fully described despite the fact that they reported correcting two types of errors: pronunciation and grammar. except for logan, the other instructors did not verbalize any clear attitudinal dispositions—either positive or negative—in the affective and cognitive components for these two types of errors. what they did report was a clear conative disposition (i.e., actually performing ocf or not) that varied with the error’s perceived obstruction of communication. other types of errors like lexical or syntactic ones were not even mentioned by instructors. therefore, the overall attitudes toward error types we identified are two: conative n when pronunciation or grammar errors impede communicauniversidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras114 gómez argüelles, hernández méndez & perales escudero the overall triodes resulting from jain’s (2014) model were nnn for immediate correction and ppp for delayed correction. most instructors except xavier (whose model would be ppp for immediate correction) do not provide immediate correction, with such a conative attitude driven by the cognitive and affective factors stated above. the ppp triode for delayed correction comes from its being considered to be less intrusive, even in the absence of research-based knowledge to support this belief and the resulting practice. it seems that the instructors have not reflected on or read about the benefits of immediate ocf provision. attitudes towards the provider of ocf in the present study, the teacher was the principal agent who provided ocf. only two instructors promoted the use of peer and self-correction; the others emphasized that learners were the ones who initiated peer or self-correction without explicit or implicit promotion on the part of the teachers. peer correction, according to the instructors, was used mostly in advanced levels and with outgoing students; however, some shy students also used peer correction when they themselves had a proficient level or when classmates were friendly. they also believe peer correction is useful only when there is a good rapport and a sense of fellowship among the students in the class. otherwise, peer correction is considered to be a source of conflict and discord in the classroom. teachers’ attitudes towards the provider of ocf seem to be mainly grounded on their beliefs (cognitive component) about affect-oriented objects of attitude since they considered the students’ personality and class rapport to make decisions on who provided the ocf in the classroom, and which provider was most effective. this is suggested by the following comments. most of the times, i am the one who provides corrective feedback… but some learners do correct their classmates spontaneously… tion and conative p when the error does not impede it. logan’s personal attitudes would also include cognitive p for grammar errors. attitudes towards ocf timing the timing of ocf provision in the present study was classified as either immediate or delayed. most of the participants favored delayed ocf provision when they were asked about the moment they usually correct. only one out of six teachers referred to the use of immediate ocf; the rest reported that they did not interrupt students and used delayed correction instead, mostly at the end of the class (conative component of attitude). professors commented that they experienced discomfort at the idea of interrupting students (affective component) because they believed this could cause intimidation and inhibition (cognitive component). this belief seems to be based on their common sense and their preoccupation with hurting their students’ feelings, which again are salient objects of attitude. at the moment or at the end of the activity and they are direct, this usually happens when they are working in teams. i am usually walking around, if i listen to any pronunciation problem, i correct it immediately. if i see the problem is the structure, the phrase, or the question, i also correct them. (xavier, english iii) i wait till the end of the activity, then i correct them, yes. (erik, english i) well, i think that the oral skill is where they feel more intimidated when they are corrected because once they start talking, i believe it isn’t right to interrupt to correct them. (raven, english i) counter to the participants’ opinions, recent research suggests that correcting learners immediately after they have made a mistake might have a positive cognitive effect on their l2 learning process (sheen, 2011). our participants did not report any awareness of this finding, which is in line with their general lack of consideration of cognitive factors. 115profile: issues teach. prof. dev., vol. 21 no. 1, jan-jun, 2019. issn 1657-0790 (printed) 2256-5760 (online). bogotá, colombia. pages 107-120 efl teachers' attitudes towards oral corrective feedback: a case study students react to correction in a positive way, it doesn’t matter who provides it [professor or classmates]. (xavier, english iii) i think peer correction doesn’t work…in the morning shift if you ask students to correct their classmates…it will sow discord. (jean, english vii) i guess i am usually the one who provides the correction…in fact, i like it when they correct themselves…and it pleases me because i feel they are thinking, studying, and noticing mistakes. (raven, english i) raven’s attitudes toward peer correction show a clear positive affective component (“i like it”). a positive affective component seems to be implicit in xavier’s comment that students react positively to correction regardless of the provider. jean, by contrast, thinks that peer correction doesn’t work (cognitive component) because it leads to discord among students, which suggests a negative affective component in her attitudes toward peer correction. because all participants foreground teacher correction (even if some express positive thoughts or feelings about peer or self-correction), they match hernández méndez and reyes cruz’ (2012) findings, where professors considered themselves the authority for providing ocf in the classroom. while some teachers accept peer or self-correction, others, like jean, do not because it could be harmful for the relationships among students. previous studies have reported that professors seemed to favor teacher ocf more, followed by self-cf and then by peer ocf. self-cf, however, was not mentioned by most of our participants (except for raven). this is despite advice in the literature to encourage self-correction first, and if this does not work, to promote peer correction (hedge, 2000). in a study conducted by doughty and varela (1998), they adopted the approach of the two-stage process to promote self-correction: first, encourage self-correction and then, if that fails, provide the correction. even when self-correction might be time-consuming, there is evidence to suggest that stimulating self-correction can lead to the promotion of acquisition (ferris, 2006; lyster, 2004). in the present study, the participants reported that some students initiated peer or self-correction, but only raven seems to be aware of its benefits. except jean, most participants did not express negative attitudes toward peer or self-correction, but no one reported using it proactively. most reported believing that students react positively and seem comfortable towards different correction agents (teacher, peer, self). what needs to be considered here is that, despite the fact that promoting self-correction may be time-consuming at the beginning, it might be more beneficial for students not only for the sake of acquisition, but because it helps to develop a new conception of themselves as autonomous learners that will benefit their learning. with one exception, we were not able to identify common triodes for the participants in our samples. the exception is that all of them clearly show a positive conative disposition toward teacher-initiated feedback as they all report being the primary ocf providers. they do not say whether they like or dislike this fact, nor do they report any beliefs about it. raven shows positive affect toward self-correction, but she was the only one to do so and to even bring it up. jean shows negative affect and beliefs toward peer-correction. the rest accept peer correction passively but do not manifest any enthusiasm or beliefs about it. another common trend is that, once more, professors tend to focus on students’ feelings. for example, xavier says that students react positively regardless of the source of correction, and jean reports avoiding peer correction because it would “sow discord” among her students. attitudes towards ocf effectiveness whereas there is research regarding the effectiveness of ocf and explicit instruction on l2 training (lyster & saito, 2010; norris & ortega, 2000; valezy & spada, 2006), some instructors have been found to believe that ocf is beneficial for students only if it does not affect universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras116 gómez argüelles, hernández méndez & perales escudero their affective filter (schulz, 1996). we found this belief in one of our participants. in alignment with truscott’s (1999) view that students’ feelings must not be hurt for ocf to be effective, jean believes that ocf effectiveness depends on whether the students felt embarrassed or not. well, i think it is effective when you notice they corrected their errors…but i think it is effective if the student continues talking and he doesn’t make the same errors because if he only corrects the error, but you as teacher make him feel ashamed, then it is not that effective. (jean, english vii) raven considered ocf effective when students did not repeat the error anymore or when students said “yes” after she corrected body language. when students correct themselves, i feel they have learned it and due to the fact that you correct them over and over again, they know what they’re saying and the error they’re making and correct themselves in that moment there i feel it is working…when they say yes… [after using body language ocf] i think correction has happened because i see they understand what i’m telling them. (raven, english i) the other participants didn’t report having thought about ocf effectiveness; hence, we could not identify clear triodes for this aspect of ocf. the two participants that had indeed thought about it (jean and raven) were at variance. both believed that ocf effectiveness hinges on students’ ability to self-correct (a cognitive attitude). however, jean added that, for feedback to be considered effective the student must stop making the error altogether (a belief, or cognitive component of attitude) and ocf must not involve feelings of shame. once again, students’ feelings become an object of attitude that mediates different components of participants’ attitudes toward ocf. attitudes towards learners’ ocf-triggered reactions we had initially considered learner uptake of ocf as a category, but it did not emerge in the interviews. instead, the participants reported different learner reactions (different from uptake) triggered by ocf and how they feel about them. the students’ reactions were acceptance (xavier’s comments below), indifference (raven’s comment), and defiance of ocf (erik’s comment). although students in the morning shift are more competitive, correction is accepted more easily by the learners in the evening class. (xavier, english iii) many times, if you correct them, they act as if they don’t care about it or as if they already know what you just told them and go on speaking. i think this happens because they are in front of everybody. (raven, english i) at the beginning of the term, i used to provide more feedback, but the students (in the morning shift) challenged my corrections, and they came up saying “i will ask other teachers or i’ll find out later”…so i stopped correcting them. (erik, english i) like erik, most participants appear to adjust their ocf practices in response to such learner reactions: they provide feedback if the learners accept it, and they stop providing it if the learners are indifferent to it or challenge it. only xavier reported trying to change students’ attitudes to his practices instead of the other way around. i feel it has a lot to do with how you manage your group…i try for them to adapt to me and not the other way around. i try to create comradeship. (xavier, english iii) in terms of jain’s (2014) attitudinal model, we identified a clear conative component in terms of performing ocf if students are perceived to accept it and abandoning ocf if students challenge it. again, students’ feelings come up as an object of attitude that mediates the teachers’ attitudes toward ocf. in terms of the affective component, the participants might experience negative emotions when their feedback is ignored or challenged, but if they did, they failed to report it. in terms of the cognitive component, most of them reported believing that students in the morning shift are more likely to be indifferent or to challenge feedback. they did not 117profile: issues teach. prof. dev., vol. 21 no. 1, jan-jun, 2019. issn 1657-0790 (printed) 2256-5760 (online). bogotá, colombia. pages 107-120 efl teachers' attitudes towards oral corrective feedback: a case study show any awareness of the different uptake categories in lyster and ranta’s (1997) model or the range of ways they could react to those as teachers. the reason for this might be that there is indeed little learner uptake due to the scant provision of explicit ocf. conclusions the theoretical models by lyster and ranta (1997) with regard to error treatment, and the attitudes model developed by schiffman and kanuk (2004), with a tridimensional model proposed by jain (2014), turned out to be very useful for the analysis of attitudes towards ocf. it became evident that both the cognitive and affective components play a very important role in instructors’ decisions whether to use ocf in the classroom. the findings suggest that instructors hold beliefs (the cognitive component of attitude) based on their experience as learners and common sense as teachers. often, these beliefs have students’ feeling as the object of attitude. beliefs about aspects of students’ personalities (i.e., whether they are outgoing or shy) and students’ likely reactions to feedback guide the instructors’ behavior (the conative component of attitude) when deciding whether or how to implement ocf. similarly, the affective component of attitude plays an important role. some instructors such as jean and erik experience negative emotions toward explicit feedback or all feedback because the thought of making the students uncomfortable makes them uncomfortable in turn. they report that this is due to their past experiences as learners. although they did not say this explicitly, their negative thoughts, emotions, and actions regarding ocf may also stem from their students’ indifference toward and rejection of ocf. only one instructor, xavier, reports overall positive attitudes toward ocf, with the remaining three (logan, raven, and scott) being more ambivalent, with some positive dispositions toward some types of ocf in some situations, chiefly when performed implicitly by the teacher without obstructing communication, one-on-one, and in a delayed manner. conversely, ocf attitudes tend to be negative when it is performed explicitly, immediately, obstructively, and in the context of the whole class. peer-correction is viewed negatively by some instructors because of the perceived nature of students’ feelings and relationship in some settings; self-correction is scarcely thought about. then, our findings show that emotions, whether those experienced by the teacher or those that the teacher assumes students will experience, impact the instructors’ attitudes towards ocf the most and tend to override the other components. our findings suggest, therefore, that the attitudes towards ocf in this case of analysis are mediated by the participants’ perceptions and beliefs about students’ feelings or assumed student attitudes toward ocf. it is interesting that considerations of students’ non-emotional cognitive or acquisition processes, or the interplay between specific linguistic features and ocf, were largely absent from our participants’ reported beliefs. this may be due to insufficient knowledge of such processes. our participants were generally unaware of the different types of strategies they can use to provide ocf or evidence-based practices regarding ocf. similarly, they are not aware of the role of ocf in language acquisition in general or the benefits of promoting self-correction. most of them are unaware of the effectiveness of ocf, learner uptake, and ways of following up on learner uptake. this general lack of awareness was one of the reasons why it was impossible to identify cognitive components for some of the objects of attitude. perhaps this lack of theory-based or literature-based knowledge is the reason some our participants seem not to consider ocf as an important or necessary activity in the process of language teaching and learning. in their study, vázquez and harvey (2010) found that the differences between research findings and teachers’ own opinions cause confusion and insecurity, especially in novice teachers. this was not reported in the present study: the more experienced teachers did not seem to hold different attitudes toward ocf universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras118 gómez argüelles, hernández méndez & perales escudero or more evidence-based knowledge about it than the novice teachers did. in fact, the more experienced instructors were the ones who said they preferred delayed correction over an immediate one, which runs counter to empirical findings in the literature. further, their attitude when correcting students was similar to truscott’s (1999), who states that teachers should be extremely cautious with the use of corrective feedback as it might produce “embarrassment, anger, inhibition, feeling of inferiority, and a generally negative attitude toward the class.” (p. 441) a pervasive belief among these instructors regarding the teaching and learning of efl in general, and which affects their attitudes, can be summarized in the popular phrase “it is what it is”: an idea of hopelessness. with the exception of xavier, the remaining participants conceived of students’ attitudes as static, monolithic, and unchangeable. they seem to believe that teachers cannot do anything about their own or their students’ attitudes. overall, the findings suggest a pressing need for more theory-based and evidence-based training regarding ocf for this group of efl college teachers. we hope these findings are food for thought for language teachers, teacher educators, and decision makers in efl teaching. we suggest that further research about attitudes toward ocf should incorporate a quantitative or experimental component with wider samples in order to arrive at generalizable results. references aydoğan, h. 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(2006). the effectiveness of corrective feedback for second language acquisition: a meta-analysis of the research. in j. m. norris & l. ortega (eds.), synthesizing research on language learning and teaching (pp. 133-164). amsterdam, nl: benjamins. https://doi.org/10.1075/lllt.13.09val. universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras120 gómez argüelles, hernández méndez & perales escudero vásquez, c., & harvey, j. (2010). raising teachers’ awareness about corrective feedback through research replication. language teaching research, 14(4), 421443. https://doi. org/10.1177/1362168810375365. about the authors lizbeth gómez argüelles holds an ma in education from universidad interamericana para el desarrollo, méxico. her research interests include language acquisition and language learning and teaching. edith hernández méndez holds a phd in hispanic linguistics from ohio state university, usa. she is associate professor of english at universidad quintana roo, mexico. she is a member of mexico’s national research system. she has participated in language acquisition projects and linguistic contact. moisés d. perales escudero holds a phd in english and education from the university of michigan (usa) and is associate professor of language and education at universidad de quintana roo. he is a member of mexico’s national research system. his research focuses on literacy and discourse analysis applied to language education. yoshida, r. (2008). teachers’ choice and learners’ preference of corrective-feedback types. language awareness, 17(1), 78-93. https://doi.org/10.2167/la429.0. yoshida, r. (2010). how do teachers and learners perceive corrective feedback in the japanese language classroom? the modern language journal, 94(2), 293-314. https:// doi.org/10.1111/j.1540-4781.2010.01022.x. 169profile vol. 19, no. 1, january-june 2017. issn 1657-0790 (printed) 2256-5760 (online). bogotá, colombia. pages 169-185 http://dx.doi.org/10.15446/profile.v19n1.53857 empowering pre-service teachers to produce ubiquitous flipped classes la producción de clases inversas ubicuas en la formación de profesores soraya garcía-sánchez1* jose miguel santos-espino** universidad de las palmas de gran canaria, las palmas de gran canaria, spain this work focuses on technological and educational outcomes that resulted from the production of foreign language educational videos by 90 pre-service instructors enrolled in an official master’s degree in secondary education programme. this teaching practice, conducted during two consecutive years, was set in a ubiquitous learning environment with the intention of effectively linking digital technology with pedagogy by means of producing flipped classroom units. the findings reveal that these pre-service teachers successfully combined instructional dynamics with digital skills to produce flipped classes adapted to the young generation’s needs. the classroom becomes, therefore, a more participatory learner-centred scenario with a variety of interactive and collaborative activities performed by foreign language students. key words: flipped class, language learning, pedagogy, teacher education, u-learning. este trabajo analiza los resultados alcanzados tras la producción de 90 videos educativos de lenguas extranjeras por los estudiantes matriculados en un máster oficial formativo de educación secundaria. esta práctica docente, realizada durante dos años consecutivos, se implementó en un ambiente de aprendizaje ubicuo con la intención de combinar tecnología y pedagogía de manera eficaz, por medio de la realización de clases inversas (flipped classroom units). los resultados revelan que estos futuros docentes adoptaron una dinámica instructiva con las habilidades digitales para producir clases inversas ajustadas a las necesidades de los jóvenes del siglo xxi. en consecuencia, el salón de clases se transforma en un escenario más participativo, centrado en el estudiante que realiza una variedad de actividades interactivas en lengua extranjera. palabras clave: aprendizaje de lenguas, aprendizaje ubicuo, clase inversa, formación docente, pedagogía. * e-mail: soraya.garcia@ulpgc.es ** e-mail: josemiguel.santos@ulpgc.es how to cite this article (apa, 6th ed.): garcía-sánchez, s., & santos-espino, j. m. (2017). empowering pre-service teachers to produce ubiquitous flipped classes. profile issues in teachers’ professional development, 19(1), 169-185. http://dx.doi.org/10.15446/profile.v19n1.53857. this article was received on october 29, 2015, and accepted on july 13, 2016. this is an open access article distributed under the terms of the creative commons license attribution-noncommercial-noderivatives 4.0 international license. consultation is possible at http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/. universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras170 garcía-sánchez & santos-espino introduction engaging in learning implies effective content, platforms, tasks, and assessment for students to access information and to build knowledge both independently and collaboratively. flipping the classroom has to do with the production of educational videos that can help to differentiate learning styles and therefore contribute to the growth of different types of learners (davies, dean, & ball, 2013; tomlinson & imbeau, 2010). the flipped class offers students the opportunity to watch the content as many times as needed before attending the face-to-face session. the time and space of the classroom are used for supportive discussions or interactive activities that promote critical thinking, collaboration, personal learning, and communicative content awareness. initially, flipped classes used to have the form of a lecture, but nowadays they can also be presented as some task instructions, a case-study proposal, or a question/problem that learners must solve individually or as teams. multimedia video cases that have replaced paper with digital tools can better address the complexity of a diverse classroom when dealing with the appropriate technology (han, eom, & shin, 2013). the flipped classroom is a method that allows students to be more responsible for their learning process since they must spend some time (between 10-20 minutes) watching a video presentation (and also other multiparty activities such as listening to a podcast or reading a text, for instance) at the best time and place that suits them outside of the classroom (j. anderson, young, & franklin, 2014; herreid & schiller, 2013). the practice of flipping the classroom could be part of ubiquitous learning (u-learning) environments (ule): learning takes place anywhere and at any time, often digitally and outside the institutional spaces and hours. the u-learning flipped session must require consequent individual tasks, but also collaborative or cooperative exercises or projects can be applied. based on a flipped class methodology, which is combined with a communicative u-learning environment, this teaching practice has proposed to successfully connect information technology with pedagogy in order to adapt learning to specific context and learners’ needs (huang, chiu, liu, & chen, 2011). furthermore, another context-aware bond between high school students and teachers is paramount in this study, since the participants who created these different flipped sessions are some of the future foreign language (fl) teachers at spanish high schools. these potential instructors have enrolled in the accredited teacher education master’s degree programme which trains preservice teachers to successfully perform their practice in the delivery of public secondary education programmes in the autonomous community of the canary islands (comunidad autónoma de canarias). this degree is a required qualification to access a job position in the public education system offered by national and regional governments. these participants applied a variety of narratives and formats for video contents to attract learners’ participation in the fl classroom. contributors not only used different approaches for their video formats but these future teaching applicants also created interactive exercises that were addressed to enhance independent and collaborative learning based on the previously flipped class content created. this study aims to explore the following question: how can pre-service fl teachers be effectively trained to produce flipped classes for an audience of higher education students? with this purpose in mind, we have designed and applied a training procedure to be embedded in a teacher education master’s degree curriculum. this five-week procedure includes basic training in video editing tools and best practices in video production, the creation of a sample flipped class unit, and the usage of a ubiquitous collaborative environment where the trainees share knowledge and reflections about their learning process. 171profile vol. 19, no. 1, january-june 2017. issn 1657-0790 (printed) 2256-5760 (online). bogotá, colombia. pages 169-185 empowering pre-service teachers to produce ubiquitous flipped classes emerging technologies in a pedagogical revolution pedagogy is being transformed due to the benefits of information and communications technology (ict) for living in society in the 21st century (beetham & sharpe, 2013; kalantzis & cope, 2012; martinovic & zhang, 2012). since pedagogy implies revisiting and, therefore, launching teaching and learning strategies that can be adapted to current learners’ needs, the ingredients of pedagogy and digital tools are positively inspiring when applied to active learning (bikowski, 2015; machado, 2015; petty, heafner, farinde, & plaisance, 2015). these learning environments have therefore become ubiquitous (u-learning) and accessible from any location and at any time (burbules, 2014; chen & li, 2010; garcía-sánchez, 2012; ogata, matsuka, el-bishouty, & yano, 2009). though the flipped class concept is not necessarily bound to a particular kind of instructional asset, in practice, flipped class courses rely on digital online videos as the main source of out-of-class contents. digital videos for ubiquitous learning and flipped classes, in particular, can have a variety of purposes: instructional, situational, interactive, real-context roleplay, and feedback suggestions, for instance (see the review by bishop & verleger, 2013). technology has boosted production and availability of digital video in recent years. three major actors involved in this video explosion are: free video streaming platforms such as youtube and vimeo; affordable and powerful mobile and handheld devices (laptops, smartphones, and tablets) that provide ways to record video in a great variety of environments; and, finally, a plethora of new software tools that simplify the process of video editing and publishing (dykman & davis, 2008). thanks to the combination of these technologies, it is now easier than ever for anyone to produce and deliver video contents. another remarkable recent phenomenon is the emergence of certain video styles or “genres” that are now dominant in the online instructional videos found in ubiquitous learning implementations (santos-espino, afonso-suárez, guerra-artal, & garcía-sánchez, 2013b). the screencast has been one of the earliest and most distinguished examples of these new genres. other popular styles are the khan-style drawing screencasts and “enhanced slideshows”, built on a combination of powerpoint-like slides plus some added video or audio, together with more conventional approaches such as lecture recording and talking head video casts (hansch et al., 2015). a typical process for personal video cast production consists of a combination of screen recorder software, such as camtasia or screenf low, plus a standard application for generating action on screen. although this is already a simple practice compared with classical video editing packages, the industry is pushing for even more simplification in the edition process. several specific-purpose tools such as present.me and my.brainshark for slideshow videos or educrations and picasst for whiteboard and khan-style screencasts have recently appeared in order to focus on use cases for video production, oriented to a particular video style. by using these tools, the cost of editing and publishing videos has plummeted while keeping a moderate quality in the final product. the potential drawback of these single-use-case tools is the lack of flexibility and features, but it may get compensated by the productivity gains. multiple-oriented video making experiments have had several readings when positively tested by researchers who have found a constructive coordination among technology, pedagogy, and content by means of providing learners with the right tasks and tools to create their own videos (garcía-sánchez, 2014, 2016; hofer & owings-swan, 2005; yerrick, ross, & molebash, 2003). some other scholars have pronounced themselves in favour of self-directed methodologies when dealing with mobile devices and u-learning environments in tertiary education (el-bishouty, ogata, ayala, & yano, universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras172 garcía-sánchez & santos-espino 2010; el-hussein & cronje, 2010). several academics have considered the use of video lectures or flipped classes a method that can enhance both independent and collaborative learning skills (bishop & verleger, 2013; herreid & schiller, 2013; hung, 2014; tucker, 2012). today’s students demand to be more engaged in constructive student-centred approaches that allow them to build their knowledge (neo & neo, 2009). when designing educational programmes, cooperative and collaborative understanding that enhances social and communicative skills in the fl should be encouraged among high school teachers. this consequently implies having in mind a communicative language teaching (clt) approach that can be originated in the classroom and expanded upon in supplementary situations (physical or digital) happening outside the classroom by means of interaction. training teachers to produce flipped classes when facing the challenge of training a person to be competent as a flipped classroom teacher, one crucial aspect is to enable him/her to provide adequate video contents for the out-of-class stage. with that purpose in mind, there are two key competences that teachers should develop: a basic skill to search efficiently for video materials on the internet; and a more advanced ability linked to producing useful video contents by themselves. the first skill sees the teacher as a “content discoverer”, while the second one treats him/her as a “content producer”. in terms of the revised bloom’s taxonomy (l. w. anderson et al., 2001), these two competences, “analysing” and “creating”, respectively, are higher-order skills in the cognitive domain. in this case study, we focus on the creative competence at the highest level so that these fl pre-service teachers can self-produce video lessons adapted for their students. we consider that developing this skill in teachers is foremost in applying the flipped classroom model successfully. if one compares a flipped design based on self-produced videos with another flipped session that is built using a selection of quality third-party material, several benefits can be identified in the first option: a. teachers have more freedom for course design and implementation. b. teachers can adapt material design to their actual students and to their social/cultural environment and special needs. students will interact with the same person they have had in their face-toface sessions. this may favour engagement and motivation and improve learning, as suggested by the recent findings of cognitive-affective theory of learning with media (park, plass, & brünken, 2014). c. moreover, we consider that in several real-life teaching scenarios those benefits may compensate for the lower technical quality of the self-made items compared to excellent third-party videos. this is the base that has led us to include this competence in the secondary education curriculum, and to assess how these pre-service instructors perform at learning these technological and pedagogical tasks. the study the case description this case study was conveyed as part of the compulsory subject entitled “innovation and research in the foreign language classroom” of the official master’s degree in secondary education programme at the universidad de las palmas de gran canaria. this analysis especially dealt with the part devoted to “innovation in the foreign language classroom” (“innovation” from now on), which took place during four hours a week in a five-week period of the second semester, just before students initiated their teaching practicum. a mixed methodology approach of qualitative and quantitative data was used to observe, collect, and analyse the elaboration process of the videos, the anonymous blog contributions of the participants, and the online anonymous survey, which had a total of six 173profile vol. 19, no. 1, january-june 2017. issn 1657-0790 (printed) 2256-5760 (online). bogotá, colombia. pages 169-185 empowering pre-service teachers to produce ubiquitous flipped classes multiple choice questions (1, 2, 4, 6, 8, and 10) and four open questions (3, 5, 7, and 9) as seen in the appendix. this teaching innovation took place in two consecutive academic years during 2013-2015 with a total number of 90 participants: 46 in the first year and 44 in the second year. the participant age range was 23-50 years old, with 90 per cent of them being under 30 years old. they were all postgraduate students who had previously completed a fl degree in the humanities area. the preponderance of participants (59/90) was specialised in english as a foreign language (efl), followed by 17 dedicated to french as a foreign language (ffl) and 14 out of 90 were the postgraduate practitioners dedicated to german as a foreign language (gfl). a few (27%) had already had some working experience in teaching foreign languages at private high schools but the majority (73%) were about to start this profession once they ended their master’s degree studies. the percentage of adult men was 22% while 78% were women according to the data collected from question 1 in the survey. the instructional design the instructional design for “innovation” had two components: the structural learning scenarios and the activities. the former, based on a u-learning environment, was supported by the course virtual platform, the discussion forums, and the blog. the latter had a variety of forms: in-class discussions, selfstudy activities, collaborative learning tasks and online discussions by means of the contributions posted on the blog, and the discussion forums of the moodle platform. these would-be fl teachers were aimed at dealing with u-learning environments as students first and as preservice teachers later. they had to face both positions in order to complete the “innovation” course goals, and therefore, the final product of their contextualised flipped classes. on the one hand, the individual activities these participants completed were the discussion forum and the blog contributions. the conversations were delivered in the language the three fl specialities (english, french, and german) had in common: spanish. the former was signed with their using their true identities while the latter was anonymous when they registered on the blog. the forum participation implied constructive feedback of other classmates’ video recordings posted on moodle. the blog entailed extending the discussion to external spheres and in an anonymous scenario. learners responded to two different topics on the blog by using an unidentified alias and their institutional email addresses so that the “innovation” instructor would be able to mark their participation records. their active involvement with the blog contributed to 10% of the final mark. both the blog cooperation and the democratic feedback shared on the moodle forum resulted in 100% of participation and although individually opinionated, they especially addressed group arguments that promoted advantageous interactions. on the other hand, the collaborative learning tasks completed the assessment criteria for “innovation”. these pre-service teachers worked on teams of 3-5 members in order to build a flipped class together with its subsequent interactive exercises (by means of exe learning1) in the fl they were specialised in. both creative tasks would play a part in the instructional design of their secondary education u-learning scenarios. once their learning units were created, they had to post the link of their flipped classes on the course forum and provide some constructive feedback on other videos, following the same rubric designed for their self-study reflections. this implied that participants watched all the videos outside the classroom (in a ule) so that the interactive activities, which were created to extend the content of the flipped class, were presented in class to promote constructive discussions and the exchange of ideas among the educational community. the design of these exercises addressed at least two different language skills and was based on a communicative approach. 1 see the software website on http://exelearning.net/ universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras174 garcía-sánchez & santos-espino these potential high school instructors were given the learning goals and the competences they needed to achieve on the first day of the “innovation” course. the equivalent assessment criteria for each assignment (the individual blog participation, the group activity of the flipped class and its posting on the course forum, and the explanation of the interactive exercises using the exe learning programme), which followed a continuous summative assessment, were also presented on the first day of the course of “innovation” as illustrated in table 1. a twofold setting as students and teachers this innovation practice pursued a double teachinglearning understanding since the participants behaved as postgraduate students and as future teachers e.g. creating their own instructional content. inclusive learning strategies that promoted training and action research were implemented. first, learners were provided with a learning design adapted to their needs as students attending the “innovation” course. secondly, they had to face the teaching role by creating and presenting fl digital content for their secondary education sessions. the videos, tools, and techniques during the instructional sessions, a selection of video editing and publishing platforms was described and put into practice with present.me, my.brainshark, youtube, and picasst.com. examples of flipped classes were shown, and the use of present.me, my.brainshark, and picasst.com was illustrated in class while students were simultaneously using their laptops to follow the training. regarding youtube, the “innovation” instructor posted a third-party video, which clearly explained how to register, edit, and post videos in this free video streaming platform. each team, organised according to their language specialty, designed and edited a video unit paying attention to different fl skills and ules. teams were free to choose the preferred tools but they were asked to consider some necessary content (situational, storytelling, grammatical, lexical, role-play, instructional) they wanted to improve in their future learners. interactive activities, which were based on the exelearning software, were planned in correspondence with the flipped classes. a total of 30 videos (16 in 2013-2014; 14 in 2014-2015) were created using, camtasia, imovie, my.brainshark, youtube, and present.me. results and discussion videos for flipped classes a comprehensive list of the 30 videos created by these instructive participants during this teaching practice is presented in table 2. the videos have been table 1. innovation in the fl classroom: tasks and assessment a. online activity 1 (10%) a. online activity 2 (25%) b. in class activity (15%) • blog discussions on two topics. (individual work) anonymous + alias + institutional e-mail • design of an innovative project following a u-learning approach and a flipped class methodology. a video session of 3-5 minutes (youtube, brainshark, screencast) + creation of three interactive exercises with scorms (sharable content object reference model) by means of using exe-learning. (group work 3-5 students) • focus on, at least, two foreign language skills. • posting of the video link on the course forum and provide positive constructive feedback to all groups. • presentation of their scorm exercises (independent learning). • presentation of complementary exercises to promote cooperative and/or collaborative learning using exe-learning. (group work 3-5 students) 175profile vol. 19, no. 1, january-june 2017. issn 1657-0790 (printed) 2256-5760 (online). bogotá, colombia. pages 169-185 empowering pre-service teachers to produce ubiquitous flipped classes classified into two dimensions: didactic and audiovisual. the didactic dimension involves the use of the narrative or discursive approaches to generate learning: instructional (lecture) and storytelling, for instance, as shown in column “didactic style”. on the other hand, the audio-visual dimension deals with techniques and tools to display contents on the screen. column “audio-visual style” shows the kind of style or genre that is used in each video (slideshow, movie, etc.). the term slideshow is used to mark videos where a powerpoint-like presentation is being displayed, in combination with some other elements like a small picture of the narrator. this particular style (slides combined with narrator picture) is named “h&s” in table 2, which stands for “heads and slides”. another slideshow variant is the slidecast (full-screen slides with voiceover). finally, the column “production tool” shows the software tool used for editing and publishing the video. blank fields mean that the usual recording and editing video software has been used. table 2. classification of the videos produced in the study video title didactic style audio-visual style production tool begrüßungen roleplay movie fernando & anika storytelling slideshow (cartoons) mybrainshark lieblingsdinge lecture slideshow (h&s) present.me adjectifs lecture slideshow (h&s) present.me au café role play, lecture movie, video cast les faux amis lecture slideshow (h&s) present.me où se trouve la bibliothèque? role play movie présent du verbs “groupe –ir” lecture slideshow (h&s) present.me british vs. american english lecture slideshow (slide cast) mybrainshark bullying lecture slideshow (h&s) present.me christmas & the simpsons lecture slideshow (h&s) present.me going to vs. will role play movie going to & will lecture slideshow (h&s) present.me greetings role play movie (voiceless) present simple & present continuous role play video cast (puppets) mybrainshark pumpkin soup recipe how-to slideshow (h&s) present.me storytelling storytelling slideshow (cartoons) mybrainshark tricky words lecture slideshow (h&s) present.me vowel sounds: an introduction lecture slideshow (h&s) present.me false friends lecture slideshow (slide cast) mybrainshark adjective comparison lecture video cast (chalk & talk) bullying lecture slideshow (slide cast) mybrainshark brd-berlin rockt die deutschland documentary slideshow (slide cast) modal verb can lecture cartoon show (voiceless) goanimate presentation australia documentary slideshow (slide cast) mybrainshark herr und frau maier storytelling slideshow (puppets) mybrainshark callejeros viajeros interview tv show pet monkey role play movie jane eyre storytelling cartoon show powtoon hamlet’s today monologue theatrical video blog universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras176 garcía-sánchez & santos-espino the data show that the most frequent didactic approach chosen by these pre-service teachers is instructional (14 videos are lectures), followed by stories based on role-plays (six videos) and storytelling (four videos). one video uses a hybrid approach, showing an initial role-play segment followed by a lecture segment. five other courses make use of various narratives such as how-to, documentary, interviews, and theatrical performances. as regards the audio-visual style, the slideshow is the most prevalent model (18 videos), with the “heads & slides” as the preferred variant (10), followed by slide casts (5), and others (3). six other videos are shot as conventional movies, all of them recording role play stories. a few teams have explored alternatives such as “how-to” videos or mimicking mass media formats like documentaries (3). some teams (4) used puppets and cartoons as characters, which demonstrate that teachers’ narratives can be combined with several visual aids, beyond simply adding the face and voice of the instructors. as far as software tools are concerned, present. me has been the first preferred tool to make videos by the majority of the participants in 2014 (14 out of 16 videos) and my.brainshark during 2015 (eight out of 14 videos). some students also added other resources such as goanimate, imovie, and camtasia (five videos) for the elaboration and edition of their video sessions. youtube was the platform chosen to post their fl flipped classes by seven teams. from these outcomes, two conclusions arise: (a) the preferred video style is a lecture displayed as some variant of slideshow, mostly combined with narrator’s face and voice; and (b) simple record-and-publish software tools are favoured over more sophisticated settings, which seems a reasonable justification since the goals of the flipped class can be achieved with an uncomplicated design process and some short preparation time. equally, there has been room for creativity in the didactic and audio-visual styles and also in the selection of tools. as a final remark, the observed average quality of audio is low: eight videos show poor quality and only nine of them deserve a satisfactory level. audio quality is influenced mostly by local arrangements in the recording infrastructure, such as narrator location, ambient noise isolation, and microphone type. voice quality is an important feature of learning units for language learning: therefore, this substandard audio is a concern to be addressed in teacher training (murray, koziniek, & mcgill, 2015). technology-based pedagogies for today’s learners the videos used to produce flipped sessions for the fl classroom have addressed a variety of educational purposes but under the same goal of responding to current adolescents’ needs. these flipped classes have also shared some common technological characteristics that would be described in this section. regarding the educational purposes, adapted personalised u-learning has been one of the outcomes reported from these videos. the creation of selfproductive flipped classes has allowed these pre-service teachers to assume some needs their young students may demand (bergmann & sams, 2012). although strayer (2012) has already pointed out that the inverted classroom can positively improve cooperation and task orientation, the results also propose that independent u-learning is another common attribute these videos have pursued since the viewers are guided to follow some specific content and activities in an inclusive learning environment (lage, platt, & treglia, 2000). two examples of personalised u-learning flipped classes are shown below. the first recording (figure 1), for instance, combines the form of a traditional lecture of content with visuals and the presenter’s body language, which helps to understand such a well-designed session on the vowel sounds in english. the second video (figure 2) illustrates a quite innovative session that combines personal u-learning with collaborative learning, task 177profile vol. 19, no. 1, january-june 2017. issn 1657-0790 (printed) 2256-5760 (online). bogotá, colombia. pages 169-185 empowering pre-service teachers to produce ubiquitous flipped classes instructions, and the communicative skills assessed to speak efl. it is significant to highlight the importance of selecting an interesting topic such as “bullying” that needs to be addressed in secondary education, and it has been designed in this creative flipped session to proceed with the instructions of the group task. from the above organisation, it can be interpreted that this case-study has provided positive, practical results that would improve important skills in secondary education learners when independently learning and when communicating messages in the foreign languages. according to the participants’ observations, the learning design of these fl flipped classes can be categorised as excellent (40%), satisfactory (50%), and unsatisfactory (10%) for secondary education students, in view of the adequate application of ict tools, the appropriate pedagogical strategies (collaboration, personalised learning, u-learning), and the creation of multimedia material for the fl classroom. the unsatisfactory flipped sessions are those described figure 1. video-lecture on the pronunciation of vowels with visuals and sounds figure 2. flipped session on “bullying” used to explain a group task and instructions universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras178 garcía-sánchez & santos-espino as traditionally authoritarian and repetitive in the grammatical lecturing format. they do not provide either engaging participation from the learners or add a contextualised situation that may attract students’ attention. these sessions could be improved by presenting attractive grammatical content applied to real life situations, which would invite adolescents to easily connect with the language in use. these flipped sessions could also have an additional value if reduced in time, if the same repetitive structure is avoided, and if used as a combined language with motivating cultural events and with communicative skills that would engage students in the flipped sessions with questions, tasks, and interesting facts. excellent and satisfactory flipped classes, on the contrary, are the successful video models that have especially combined independent learning skills with collaborative learning abilities in a communicative approach and ule. the flipped classes have also blended the instructional session with role-play and the resulting interactive activities (with exe learning) for the fl learners. accordingly, there is a fusion between engaging information, real-life situations (at the coffee shop, travelling abroad, false friends, bullying), and students’ active participation in their learning process, both individually and collaboratively. finally, it is significant to report that 88% of these pre-service teachers have considered the communicative competence a necessary skill to be improved in secondary education. the remaining percentage (12%) was committed to more limited grammatical situations. furthermore, these self-directed and groupdirected learners managed to produce, share, and present their u-learning environments. the process of empowering pre-service teachers to create personalised flipped classes in a u-learning environment has implied a variety of abilities such as engagement, discussion, interaction, and digital guidance in order to finally design their fl flipped classes and their corresponding interactive exercises in a u-learning scenario. students’ satisfaction student’s satisfaction concerning the “innovation” course, content, and results was measured by analysing the data collected from questions 2 to 8 in the online anonymous survey. the responses to question 2 have provided this study with remarkable facts that suggest participants were pleased with their creative abilities and appropriate use of ict during the production of their videos (97%). the respondents also reported that the characteristics and learning approaches that they enjoyed most in this course (question 3) were the use of various digital tools to deal with flipped classes and interactive exe learning exercises (49%), the concept and implications of creating ules (30%), the techniques applied to collaborative learning (14%), and the importance of dealing with multiple intelligences (7%). the qualitative data also propose that 99% of these pre-service teachers felt their learning achievements, together with the evaluation criteria designed for “innovation”, were positive as shown in question 4. this is read by understanding that 30.95% chose “excellent” as the condition that described their learning achievements, followed by 40.48% who felt it was “very good”. “good” was the third option selected by the remaining 26.19% contestants while 2.38% felt their learning outcomes were “poor” as shown in table 3. this introspective satisfaction would imply not only having motivated pre-service teachers but well-trained professionals ready for the challenges of starting a new career in secondary education. similarly, this testimony supports o’flaherty and phillips’s (2015) recent analysis of the appropriate learning design of flipped classroom preparation, online activities, and face-to-face synchronous tasks to enhance both specific content and communicative language skills. these pre-service teachers seem to have positively valued the learning outcomes resulting from the videobased learning courses to promote independent and collaborative learning in their future students. 179profile vol. 19, no. 1, january-june 2017. issn 1657-0790 (printed) 2256-5760 (online). bogotá, colombia. pages 169-185 empowering pre-service teachers to produce ubiquitous flipped classes as to possible suggestions these students could add to the “innovation” sessions and its evaluation (question 5), the answers varied but it seems that the most common responses underline that the course was well-structured since the evaluation combined content with competences (94%). a significant number of respondents (68%) affirmatively proposed to have this subject at the beginning of the master’s degree programme with more sessions in which they could explore these innovative practices. question 6 enquired as to whether or not these pre-service teachers felt ready to start teaching and motivate their students. positively, 74% of contestants felt prepared to face the fl class, while the remaining 26% chose a dubitative answer to this question by selecting “i don’t know”. question 7 dealt with the course evaluation and the correspondence between course content and competences. most of the participants (89%) considered the assessment not only satisfactory but fair. the remaining respondents mentioned other adjectives such as “varied” and “motivating” to describe the evaluation (9%), and 2% reported that time was too short and did not correspond with the tasks preparation. finally, question 8 was especially relevant in this study because it compiled data on the dynamics of the “innovation” sessions, the tasks and the discussions offered inside and outside the classroom. “excellent” and “good” were the options equally chosen by 49% of respondents followed by 2% who chose they “did not know” as illustrated in table 4. digital and communicative creativity digital and communicative creativity are defined here as the abilities to design tasks or sessions that can respond to innovative practices, which pursue the performance of the digital competence together with the communicative skills in the fl. the quantitative and qualitative data suggest that this constructive fl educational community has been engaged in both digital and communicative participation when producing instructional videos and the subsequent participatory tasks. the varied flipped classes prove that these participants have focused on designing their own content in order to tackle secondary learners that would work independently and collaboratively. this self-production can be inexpensive but, without any doubt, encompasses a reflective dedication to producing useful flipped classes for successful learning results (santos-espino et al., 2013a). table 3. respondents’ evaluation of their learning progress in “innovation” question 4 poor good don’t know very good excellent if you had to assess your learning in these “innovation” sessions for the fl classroom, you would consider it______________ 2.38% 26.19% 0% 40.48% 30.95% table 4. contestants’ responses about the “innovation” u-learning design question 8 excellent good don’t know poor in general terms, you believe the sessions, the tasks and the discussions offered (inside and outside the classroom) have been _________________ 48.78% 48.78% 2.44% 0% universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras180 garcía-sánchez & santos-espino the two examples of videos shown in figures 3 and 4 reveal this important concept of digital communicative creativity. these pre-service teachers have not only created real-life situations that can be useful for their learners but have also drawn pictures and made up stories to shape dialogues that pursue connecting language with context and communicative skills. the first video (figure 3) shows a role-play situation at school in which one french student is looking for the library and then the conversation goes on with a selection of target goals. the second video (figure 4) is creative not only for the story-telling approach these future german teachers have established, but also for the emphasis on language forms, the drawing of the main characters, and the animated voices performed by the team members in order to address the cartoons’ emotions. all in all, the outcome is an amusing and engaging video-story that could attract the attention of young learners. ubiquitous group reflection: the blog the blog has served as both a digital platform for external anonymous discussions among the learners and as an open access repository of their flipped classes and interactive exercises. the two topics posted on the blog corresponded with some individual and group reflections suggested at the beginning and at the end of the courses.2 the first blog topic anticipated a debate about the concept of innovation for the fl classroom. although it was first started in the face-to-face session, the vast majority of participants connected their personal experiences with learning so that the emotional 2 the blog discussions can be accessed on https://sorayagarciasanchez.wordpress.com/. the dates of these cooperative learning discussions are february 2014 and february 2015. figure 3. video role-play using youtube figure 4. flipped class based on storytelling 181profile vol. 19, no. 1, january-june 2017. issn 1657-0790 (printed) 2256-5760 (online). bogotá, colombia. pages 169-185 empowering pre-service teachers to produce ubiquitous flipped classes intelligence and the motivational attitudes towards the acquisition of an fl were highlighted through their memories. almost all these pre-service teachers rejected the magisterial session, which was often combined with a hesitant sensibility which dominated the walls of their teenage classroom. they praised, on the contrary, those moments in which they felt positively emotional about one activity or piece of work. these future secondary education teachers connected current and past situations at the time of considering the concept of “innovation”, and when starting to plan their instructional environments. the frequent debate favoured the use of ict tools in the classroom, the design of tasks that promoted interaction, the use of ules, the importance of engaging students and keeping their motivation up, the value of considering the multiple intelligences (gardner, 1999), group activities, and the use of the fl in the classroom from day one, for example. although an important number of participants mentioned that “innovation” is not the equivalent of ict tools, they agreed in using them quite often in their sessions so that they could be closer to their young students. the second and concluding blog discussion invited these pre-service teachers to reflect on their learning process in this course. they were also asked to think about the tools, strategies, tasks, or learning methods that they would use in their future sessions to improve communicative skills, motivation, and results in secondary education programmes. among their reflections, they first mentioned ules as important learning scenarios that connected ict with personalised and contextualised learning. at the same time, they shared opinionated arguments about the importance of adapting learning to students. the appropriate creation of flipped classes that aimed to present, instruct, challenge, or enhance a content outside the classroom in order to make use of the interactive, physical space of the room with more communicative and group activities, (instead of instructional lectures) was a valuable feature of these online voices. according to question 9 in the anonymous survey, 92% of participants considered positive the anonymous blog contributions in order to first express their views and also to learn from their peers. moreover, the surveyors also used the blog as a tool to exchange not only viewpoints but further links and resources that improved the quality of the online debate, as shown in table 5. the blog was used as a platform that aimed at connecting their thoughts as pre-service teachers of secondary education and their insights as current postgraduate learners in this master’s degree programme. equally, they were quite critical of the methods used in their past and the great variety of possibilities they can offer today’s youngsters when learning an fl. table 5. pre-service teachers’ views on the anonymous blog discussions blog purpose comments: examples to express views, exchange resources and learn from peers. “yes, especially reading others’ opinions. it’s very rich to have various viewpoints on the same issue.” (22/03/2015, 13:20) “yes, because i’ve read different viewpoints that we may not feel like saying in class.” (07/03/2014, 17:32) to connect their perceptions as learners and their roles as pre-service teachers. “yes, it’s been quite positive since we have been able to discuss interesting topics.” (10/03/2015, 16:10) “i like that idea of not getting to know who is writing.” (11/03/2015, 23:28) universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras182 garcía-sánchez & santos-espino conclusions and future reflections this article has aimed to shed some light on the application and effectiveness of flipped classes for fl pre-service teachers of secondary education with various tasks and approaches that can help to adapt their learning design to the right context their young learners may need. this teaching innovation has dealt with ict and pedagogical strategies that could successfully respond to the youngest generations. these two key objectives have meant using digital competences, on the one hand, and educational competences on the other. for digital competences, these future teachers have learnt to produce specifically flipped classes that are created to deal with explicit needs to promote independent learning skills, fl interaction, collaboration, and knowledge building. when managing educational abilities, these prospective secondary education instructors have been initiated in the design of ubiquitous learning environments by means of producing videos that have shown a satisfactory capability to accomplish students’ learning goals. first, this innovative teaching experience has especially focused on exploring the flipped class methodology, the instructional video production, and interactive tasks that these fl participants have created in order to adapt content to their imminent learners. the thirty flipped classes reveal a variety of successful responses to “innovation” from these future teachers, who are especially devoted to attracting learners’ attention by providing u-learning scenarios that promote interaction and communication in the fl. secondly, this teaching practice has provided preservice teachers with highly-practical strategies as postgraduate students first and as innovative teachers later. they have been offered a collaborative learning environment (video production tasks, interactive activities, forum, and blog) in order to gain the digital and technological competences that would allow them to plan u-learning environments. they have discovered and applied appropriate designs for u-learning scenarios that respond to communicative and linguistic competences in the fl class. it is remarkable to point out that these potential secondary education instructors have been able to produce their own videos instead of searching for third party contents. the self-production of flipped classes can particularly address the variety of learning intelligences so that learning can be not only ubiquitous but personalised depending on the design, language skills, and competences of the video unit. finally, it is valuable to add that the flipped class method has been confidently designed for fl learners. additionally, the bases around flipped sessions should be measured in the official curriculum for secondary education teachers. we believe additional inclusive pedagogy strategies that could connect these pre-service experiences with real in-service teaching actions and 21st century students’ results would be complementary in future research. it would also be potentially advantageous to monitor if these pre-service instructors continued self-producing their own flipped classes, and to analyse learning results from the spanish young learners, once these u-learning strategies were implemented in their courses. references anderson, j., young, w., & franklin, t. 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(2013b). measuring the quality of instructional videos for higher education. iceri2013 proceedings, 1053-1060. strayer, j. f. (2012). how learning in an inverted classroom influences cooperation, innovation and task orientation. learning environments research, 15(2), 171-193. http:// dx.doi.org/10.1007/s10984-012-9108-4. tomlinson, c. a., & imbeau, m. b. (2010). leading and managing a differentiated classroom. alexandria, va: ascd. tucker, b. (2012). the flipped classroom: online instruction at home frees class time for learning. education next, 12(1), 82-83. yerrick, r., ross, d., & molebash, p. (2003). promoting equity with digital video. learning and leading with technology, 31(4), 16-19. about the authors soraya garcía-sánchez is an english as a foreign language (efl) associate professor in the department of modern languages at the universidad de las palmas de gran canaria. some of her more recent articles are focused on call, motivation, cultural and language input and u-learning for efl university students. jose miguel santos-espino is an associate professor at the universidad de las palmas de gran canaria. he is teaching courses on computer science and software engineering, and has been involved in the management of it services in organizations. his current research interest is the learning effectiveness of educational videos. 185profile vol. 19, no. 1, january-june 2017. issn 1657-0790 (printed) 2256-5760 (online). bogotá, colombia. pages 169-185 empowering pre-service teachers to produce ubiquitous flipped classes appendix: online anonymous survey your feedback for innovation in the fl classroom: 1. you are… (a) man (b) woman 2. in general terms, are you satisfied with this course? (a) yes (b) no 3. mention 2-3 characteristics, learning strategies, or tools that you have enjoyed in this “innovation” course. (open answer) 4. if you had to assess your learning during these fl “innovation” sessions, you would consider it… a. poor b. good c. don’t know d. very good e. excellent 5. do you have any comment or suggestion regarding the “innovation” lessons, activities, and evaluation? (open answer) 6. do you think you are ready to face a fl classroom and motivate your students? a. yes b. don’t know c. no 7. what is your opinion about the assessment of this course? have the competences corresponded with the course content? (open answer) 8. in general terms, i believe the teaching/learning dynamics together with the tasks and the debates offered inside and outside the classroom have been... a. excellent b. good c. don’t know d. poor 9. express your views about the anonymous reflections posted on the blog. has this experience been positive? (open answer) 10. what device are you using to answer this survey? a. pc b. laptop c. tablet d. mobile phone 29profile vol. 19, no. 1, january-june 2017. issn 1657-0790 (printed) 2256-5760 (online). bogotá, colombia. pages 29-40 http://dx.doi.org/10.15446/profile.v19n1.53310 problem-based learning: an experiential strategy for english language teacher education in chile aprendizaje basado en problemas: una estrategia experiencial para la formación de profesores de inglés en chile diego muñoz campos1* universidad católica del maule, talca, chile the chilean education system requires english language teachers to be equipped with non-conventional teaching strategies that can foster meaningful learning and assure successful learners’ performances in diverse and complex settings. this exploratory, descriptive, research study aimed at discovering the perceptions of 54 pre-service teachers about the impact of a problem-based learning activity in the development of key competencies, including higher order thinking skills and reflective, research, knowledge transfer/integration, social, and self-management skills. groups of participants chose a madeup, ill-structured problem which combined language teaching and socio-cultural issues, and devised holistic solutions. findings suggest a comprehensive impact on the first four skills, but a limited impact on social and self-management skills. key words: english teacher education, learning strategies, problem-based learning. el sistema educacional chileno requiere docentes de inglés capaces de aplicar estrategias didácticas noconvencionales que promuevan aprendizajes significativos y aseguren desempeños exitosos en contextos diversos y complejos. el objetivo de este estudio exploratorio-descriptivo fue conocer las percepciones de 54 docentes en formación acerca del impacto de una actividad de aprendizaje basado en problemas sobre el desarrollo de competencias fundamentales, como habilidades de pensamiento superior y la capacidad para reflexionar, investigar, transferir e integrar saberes, interactuar socialmente y ejercer auto-control. grupos de participantes seleccionaron un problema complejo, inventado, que integraba aspectos lingüístico-didácticos y socio-culturales, y plantearon soluciones holísticas. los resultados sugieren un impacto mayor sobre las primeras cuatro habilidades, pero revelan un impacto limitado sobre las habilidades sociales y de auto-control. palabras clave: aprendizaje basado en problemas, estrategias de aprendizaje, formación de profesores de inglés. * e-mail: diegom@ucm.cl how to cite this article (apa, 6th ed.): muñoz campos, d. (2017). problem-based learning: an experiential strategy for english language teacher education in chile. profile issues in teachers’ professional development, 19(1), 29-40. http://dx.doi.org/10.15446/profile.v19n1.53310. this article was received on october 1, 2015, and accepted on october 18, 201 6. this is an open access article distributed under the terms of the creative commons license attribution-noncommercial-noderivatives 4.0 international license. consultation is possible at http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/. universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras30 muñoz campos introduction the current educational context within which initial english teacher education occurs in chile poses curricular demands aimed at four major areas and their corresponding goals. two major issues in many teacher training programs are the development of advanced linguistic and communications competencies in english (c1 level in the common european framework of reference for languages), and the acquisition and development of teaching knowledge and skills; in both cases, third-party certification is involved. the third area in the training of prospective teachers of english (which is explicitly stated in many graduate profiles) is the capacity to reflect and think critically about their teaching practices. actually, most graduate profiles fit within the notion of “reflective practitioner” as characterized by kumaravadivelu (2003). the fourth area of training is directly related to the previous one and points to the ability to design and carry out english as a foreign language (efl) classroom/action research projects, as well as broader-scope educational research work. based on practicum classes observations carried out by teacher trainers/supervisors over a three-year period, pre-service english language teachers from a regional university have evidenced weaknesses in their capacity to integrate theoretical teaching knowledge into their teaching practices. they have also shown a limited capacity to reflect upon them critically and systematically, in such a way that this could help them to cope with the complexities of diverse school settings. practicum observation notes taken over time reveal that both pre-service and in-service english language teachers feel overwhelmed by public schools’ challenging contexts in which learners’ violence, misbehavior, demotivation, lack of interest in schooling, poor academic performance, and dropping out of school are not uncommon (cid, díaz, pérez, torruella, & valderrama, 2008; román, 2009). dealing with school sexual, religious, and ethnic and cultural diversity issues for which they are not necessarily prepared adds an additional burden to their teaching responsibilities (personal communication with in-service teachers), which also impacts on the level of achievement of english language learning in both primary and secondary school children. in a much broader context, although the chilean government set a pathway to make chile a bilingual country by the year 2030 (gobierno de chile, 2014), the actual school learners’ performance on english language standardized tests has not been very promising; according to the 2014 simce12results for 3rd year high school students (agencia de calidad de la educación, 2014), only 25% reached the “certified” category in english, which means that they are able to understand short simple texts and daily life conversations. also, according to the 2015 english proficiency index, out of 70 countries surveyed with regard to english language skills, chile ranks 36, still at a low proficiency level (english first, 2015). all of this has occurred for over four decades within the context of neoliberal socioeconomic policies and a consumer-driven education system implemented in the country (donoso díaz, 2005). the focus on content-based learning and delivery of globalized, standardized knowledge and testing has translated neither into more disciplined and motivated learners, nor into more critical-reflective educational practitioners, which might contribute to assuring effective teaching and learning. the question then becomes: what learning strategies can best contribute to achieving the curricular goals of pre-service teachers, as well as prepare them to better manage current challenging and demanding school settings. problem-based learning (pbl), an experiential learning strategy (kolb, 1984) which fosters problem-solving skills, reflecting and thinking critically, controlling and directing learners’ own learning, 1 sistema de medición de la calidad de la educación (education quality measurement system). 31profile vol. 19, no. 1, january-june 2017. issn 1657-0790 (printed) 2256-5760 (online). bogotá, colombia. pages 29-40 problem-based learning: an experiential strategy for english language teacher education in chile working collaboratively, creating learner-based learning strategies, and strengthening their cognitive processes seems to be an adequate alternative to assess their accomplishments. in this context, the purpose of this exploratory pilot study was to discover the perceptions of a particular group of pre-service teachers about pbl’s contributions to their preparation as english language teachers, and identify evidence of the impact this learning strategy has on their reflective learning processes. the research questions posed were: (a) how do pre-service teachers experience pbl? (b) how does pbl enable reflective learning processes in pre-service teachers? a questionnaire and a rubric were used respectively to try to find answers to these questions. this exploratory pbl study was carried out in the initial english language teacher education (elte) program at a regional university in chile during the first semesters of 2010 and 2012. the contingent situation generated as a result of the 2011 national students’ demonstrations against market-driven education and in favor of free education, prevented the implementation of the pbl activity during that particular academic year. many universities, including the one where this study was carried out, were taken over by the students which translated into a prolonged period of no-classes and a delay and shortening of the academic year. both teaching and assessment procedures had to be modified and accommodated to suit the new reality and be able to finish the academic work properly within the new time frame, which extended till summer in many cases. in short, the 2011 academic year was extremely erratic due to the student-led social unrest. at a macro level, this efl teacher training program has been in place since 2007 and was designed in accordance with the main tenets of competency-based education, in line with institutional curricular decisions. so far, a little over one hundred teachers have graduated from the program. literature review experiential learning in second/ foreign language teacher education second or foreign language teacher education has not been alien to the experiential learning approach. fleming and walter (2004) link learner autonomy through experiential learning and task design to foster professionalism. knutson (2003) examines the implications of this learning approach for second language acquisition, and points out some problems of the experiential curriculum and proposes some solutions. walter (1998) discusses a tesol program in thailand and suggests three strategies for english language teaching to speakers of other languages: (a) learners should discard textbooks and be allowed to contribute contents for the second language learning, (b) learning should abandon the classroom and move to the general community, (c) teacher’s role should be reduced and learners should be encouraged to learn how to learn on their own and for the purposes they deem appropriate. problem-based learning pbl, an experiential learning strategy, has long been recognized as a useful tool to foster the development of a variety of skills in various academic fields and programs (eyler, 2009; kohonen, 1992, 2001; major & palmer, 2001; wharton & parry, 2003). originally applied to the medical sciences, the characteristics of the approach are, as suggested by walton and mathews (1989), tackling realistic problems in chosen fields, applying prior knowledge, practice of logical, analytical, and scientific approaches to problems, application of knowledge in a mixed, interrelated way, and knowledge construction as a result of sharing and exchanging information. norman and schmidt (1992) state that pbl can be characterized as “a collection of carefully constructed problems [which is] presented to small groups of universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras32 muñoz campos students,” whose task is to “discuss these problems and produce tentative explanations for the phenomena” being described (p. 557). they identify some pbl objectives as including fostering problem-solving skills, enhancing self-directed learning and intrinsic interest in subject matter, as well as advantages such as memory improvement through the activation of prior knowledge, knowledge retention and transfer. major and palmer (2001) have characterized pbl as an educational approach in which complex problems serve as the context and the stimulus for learning in pbl classes, students work in teams to solve one or more complex and compelling “real world” problems. they develop skills in collecting, evaluating, and synthesizing resources as they first define and then propose a solution to a multifaceted problem. (p. 5) in a more recent study, temel (2014) reports pbl increasing perceptions of problem-solving ability, but a “relative lack of effectiveness in increasing critical thinking dispositions of pre-service teachers” (p. 15). with regard to the use of this learning approach in teacher education, barron, preston-sabin, and kennedy (2013) report a pilot pbl experience with pre-service teachers which was highly rated (out of 40 student-teachers, on a 1-5 scale with 5 being excellent, 11 pre-service teachers (27.5%) rated it 5, and 24 (60%) rated it 4). paineán bustamante, aliaga prieto, and torres torres (2012) report on a decade long pbl curriculum implementation and assessment experience in initial teacher training at universidad de atacama (uda) in chile, and found that pre-service teachers identified the following four major skills developed by performing pbl activities throughout their training period: (a) research skills based on the scientific method, (b) team work skills, (c) critical thinking skills, and (d) skills to practice tolerance. labra et al. (2011), on the other hand, in a study also carried out at uda, give an account of the positive reception of two pbl modules of the new curriculum by prospective teachers when they dealt with ill-structured, discipline-based problems. the main objectives of the new curriculum, which began to be implemented in the year 2000, aimed at developing skills related to autonomous learning, critical thinking, interpersonal communication, and information processing. overall, the literature reviewed highlights pbl as an effective learning tool in the context of teacher education, in general, and for second language acquisition in particular; however, it should be pointed out that studies on pbl in the context of english language teacher preparation in latin america are limited. nevertheless, the problem-based approach to learning is not free of contradictions and tensions. hung, harpole bailey, and jonassen (2003) have discussed some of the tensions involving pbl including the depth versus the breadth of the curriculum, higher-order thinking versus factual knowledge acquisition, long-term effects versus immediate learning outcomes, and students’ initial discomfort versus their positive attitudes. naturally, some of these tensions became evident throughout this pbl pilot experience carried out in an english teacher training program in chile. method context of the study during a regular class of the module called teorías de la adquisición de una lengua extranjera (theories of second/foreign language acquisition)—one of the modules in the curriculum of the elte program at a regional university in chile—pre-service teachers were instructed about the pbl approach during two 90-minute sessions; threeand four-member groups were formed based on their kinship and previous group work experience. sixteen groups were formed in 2010 and the participants were distributed as follows: 9 four-member groups, 6 three-member groups, and 1 two-member group. in 2012, 15 groups were formed, and participant distribution was as follows: 4 four-member groups, 8 three-member groups, and 3 two-member groups. they were presented with a list of 16 made-up problems which 33profile vol. 19, no. 1, january-june 2017. issn 1657-0790 (printed) 2256-5760 (online). bogotá, colombia. pages 29-40 problem-based learning: an experiential strategy for english language teacher education in chile integrated socio-cultural and english language teachinglearning issues within a school context which was also fictitious. although the problems were not real, they were made up in such a way as to make them look real. each group chose a problem to be solved. general instructions provided by the teacher responsible for the module (the mediator) included aspects which had to do with group work and group organization, tasks distribution, group discussions, and progress reports. the work procedure included group discussions in and outside class, with and without a mediator, in order to provide timely and contingent support based on the “scaffolding notion” (hammond & gibbons, 2001); on average the various groups met three times outside class without the mediator (wilkerson & feletti, 1989), and provided minutes of their meetings as evidence of their work during group oral presentations at the end of the semester. according to the problematics involved in the problem chosen by each group, resources used by the prospective teachers included bibliographic searches and interviews of key informants including experts (psychologists), parents, guardians, school teachers, school children, and teenagers, who provided relevant information for the problem to be solved. participants two third-year cohorts of students in the elte program were exposed to the same pbl experience during 2010 and 2012. all of the participants were formally registered as regular students in the theories of second/ foreign language acquisition module, which is part of the english pedagogy curriculum and is taught during the fifth semester of the program. in both cases, the weight this pbl activity carried was 20% of the final mark in the module. the number of subjects who were surveyed was 29 in 2010 and 25 in 2012. participants were exposed to made-up, ill-structured problems (those that do not yield a particular solution or answer) which somehow replicated real local school contexts and involved various socio-cultural, educational, and pedagogical issues prospective teachers might face once they join the job market. particular issues included racial, religious, and sexual discrimination; socioeconomic background; types of school administration (public, subsidized); disruptive behavior; lack of motivation/interest in second language acquisition; meaningful learning; critical thinking skills; use of teaching materials, and teacher’s role. sample problems actually used in the study are included in the appendix. sixteen and fifteen groups (2010 and 2012 cohorts respectively) of pre-service teachers chose a made-up problem from a 16-problem list and worked on finding solutions to each issue of the problem during a 5-week period. they searched for relevant literature, interviewed pertinent informants, had discussion meetings, met with the mediator, and presented an oral report on their work and proposed solutions. data collection the data collection for this study was carried out utilizing two instruments. the first was a selfadministered, likert scale, 12-statement questionnaire aimed at obtaining pre-service teachers’ perceptions on the contribution of this pbl experience to the development of their cognitive skills, and to their capacity to reflect and think critically, integrate diverse types of knowledge, develop personality and social skills, control their learning, search for and process information, devise solutions to a made-up school problem, and assess the overall contribution of the experience to initial teacher education and personal growth. the questionnaire included the following assessment criteria: (a) totally agree, (b) agree, (c) neither agree/nor disagree, (d) disagree, (e) totally disagree. the second instrument was observations of group performances in order to obtain evidence of the level of achievement of the skills outlined above; the various groups accounted for their work in a group presentation given to their classmates, organized according to previously socialized rubric criteria. each group member presented one or two universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras34 muñoz campos subareas of the problem selected earlier by addressing fundamental aspects of it. evidence of group organization and internal procedures implemented throughout the experience was provided through minutes of group meetings, key informants’ interview transcripts, and relevant literature consulted. table 1 shows the pbl rubric used to assess group work of both cohorts (2010 and 2012), which included five criteria, namely, (a) organizational evidence (minutes of group meetings and interview transcripts), (b) technical literature/information utilized, (c) context information (sources consulted), (d) problem solutions, (e) quality of the arguments and use of theoretical and context information to support proposed problem solutions. it also contains the corresponding descriptors for the criteria on a 4-point scale. the criteria included in the rubric were decided based on skills pbl initiatives are supposed to develop/ strengthen, such as collaborative work, autonomous learning, higher order thinking skills (analyzing, synthesizing/evaluating, creating), and capacity to integrate background, theoretical and practical knowledge to back up arguments and problem solutions. procedure and data analysis the individual perception questionnaire was administered to participants by the course mediator who informed them about the objectives of the study. they were also informed about the voluntary, anonymous, and confidential nature of the study and they all agreed to be part of it. thirty minutes was the allotted time to answer the questionnaire. descriptive statistics (descriptors, frequencies, and percentages) was utilized for data analysis, supported by the spss 18.0 statistics software. results pre-service teachers’ perception of the pbl experience after this experiential learning experience, preservice teachers answered the perception survey which included 12 statements about this pbl pilot experience. table 1. problem-based learning rubric criteria 1 2 3 4 organizational evidence poor (only 1 or no meeting, minutes) fairly good (at least 2 meetings, minutes) good (more than 2 meetings, minutes) very good (more than 3 meetings, minutes) technical literature/ information limited, poor and/ or irrelevant somewhat limited, fairly good/relevant sufficient, good and relevant abundant, significant, very good and relevant context information (sources consulted) poor and/or irrelevant fairly good and somewhat relevant good and relevant very good and relevant problem solutions inappropriate; address only one aspect of problem somewhat appropriate; address some aspects of problem appropriate; address most aspects of problem appropriate; address all aspects of problem arguments and use of theoretical/context information shallow and poor arguments; theoretical and context info poorly related/applied relatively good arguments; theoretical and context info relatively well related/applied good arguments; theoretical and context info well related/applied very good, in-depth and solid arguments; theoretical and context info very well related/applied 35profile vol. 19, no. 1, january-june 2017. issn 1657-0790 (printed) 2256-5760 (online). bogotá, colombia. pages 29-40 problem-based learning: an experiential strategy for english language teacher education in chile table 2. criteria and percentages about learners’ pbl experience perceptions ta/a na/nd d/td cohort cohort cohort item 2010 % 2012 % 2010 % 2012 % 2010 % 2012 % 1. this pbl experience contributed to my cognitive development. 90 88 10 12 0 0 2. this pbl experience contributed to the development of my reflective capacity. 93 96 4 4 4 0 3. this pbl experience contributed to the development of my capacity to reflect critically. 93 92 7 8 0 0 4. this pbl experience contributed to the development of my research skills. 79 88 17 12 4 0 5. this pbl experience contributed to my capacity to integrate various types of knowledge. 62 84 31 16 7 0 6. this pbl experience contributed to the development of my social skills (interaction with other people, team work, etc.). 69 76 28 24 4 0 7. this pbl experience fostered control of my own learning. 66 80 21 16 14 4 8. this pbl experience contributed to the development of my personality. 31 48 48 32 21 20 9. this pbl experience contributed to the development of my skills to search for, analyze, and synthesize information. 79 92 10 8 10 0 10. although the problems were fictitious, they were very similar to “real problems”. 97 84 4 16 0 0 11. pbl is a learning strategy that contributes to the strengthening of initial teacher education. 90 100 10 0 0 0 12. this pbl experience fostered my personal growth. 86 84 10 12 4 4 note. ta/a = totally agree/agree; na/a = neither agree nor disagree; d/td = disagree/totally disagree. they had to judge the experience based on the following perception criteria: (a) totally agree, (b) agree, (c) neither agree/nor disagree, (d) disagree, (e) totally disagree. table 2 shows the criteria and percentages corresponding to learners’ perception levels of both 2010 and 2012 cohorts. for tabulation purposes, the five criteria were grouped together in only three criteria: (a) and (b) together, (c), and (d) and (e) together. the percentages were rounded up and were calculated through the use of the spss data analysis software. overall, there was a favorable perception of the preservice teachers who participated in this pbl experience with regard to most of the criteria; most of the items universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras36 muñoz campos to the development of participants’ personality (item 8) is relatively low, at 31% in cohort 2010 and 48% in cohort 2012. solutions to the problems in general, solutions to the specific problem dealt with by each pbl group were characterized by the following: (a) all sub-areas integrated to the corresponding problem (psychology, sociology, second language acquisition, culture studies associated with recognition of diversity in schools, and others) were addressed during the group presentations; (b) the efforts made to combine both theoretical and experiential knowledge acquired through interactions with key informants; (c) sub-areas associated with socio-cultural issues were highlighted by most groups in the proposed solutions to the problem; (d) the theoretical/practical knowledge related to second language acquisition was highlighted only by some groups. marks the previously publicized rubric (table 1) among group members was utilized to figure out the group mark assigned by the only assessor involved in the pbl activity, the course mediator. as a way to complement previous information, the pbl exploratory study marks obtained by the students are presented here. the average group mark for this learning activity was 5.5 and 5.7 for the 2010 and 2012 cohorts respectively, which indicates an increase in the skills that were assessed, such as research skills and the capacity to generate holistic and feasible solutions to the problems (the chilean education assessment system is based on a 1-7 decimal points scale, four (4.0) being the minimum passing mark). discussion when examining the responses to the survey in light of the research question “how do pre-service teachers experience problem-based learning?” they reveal a highly positive perception of this learning strategy. more than two thirds of participants estimated that pbl contributes to developing academic work related skills. for the first three items (pbl contribution to cognitive development, reflective capacity, and critical reflection) percentages are 90%, 93%, and 93% for the 2010 cohort; and 88%, 96%, and 92% for the 2012 cohort. items 9, 11, and 12 also rank very high. for item 9 (pbl contribution to the development of skills to search for, analyze and with which to synthesize information), 79% for the 2010 cohort and 92% for the 2012 cohort respectively agree with the corresponding statement. on the other hand, most participants agree with the statement for item 11, (pbl contribution to strengthening initial teacher education), 90% for the 2010 cohort and 100% for the 2012 cohort; and for item 12 (pbl contribution to personal growth), 86% for the 2010 cohort and 84% for the 2012 cohort agree with the corresponding statement, which contradicts results for item 8 (pbl contribution to personality development) with a low 31% and 48% respectively. it is worth noting here the significant difference between both cohorts in the perception of items 4 and 9 which have to do with developing general and specific research skills; even included in the criteria have percentages that range from 80% to 97% in the totally agree/agree category in both cohorts, with item 11 getting 100% in this category in the 2012 cohort, as table 2 shows. perceptions regarding pbl contribution to the development of their cognitive skills (item 1) rated very high with both cohorts, 90% and 88% respectively. other items also rated very high; for example, their reflective capacity (item 2), at 93% in cohort 2010 and 96% in cohort 2012; their critical reflective capacity (item 3), at 93% in cohort 2010 and 92% in cohort 2012; their information searching, analytical, and synthesizing skills (item 9) at 79% in cohort 2010 and 92% in cohort 2012, as well as the contribution to the strengthening of their initial teacher education program (item 11) at 90% in cohort 2010 and 100% in cohort 2012, should be highlighted. on the other hand, the percentage regarding perceptions of the pbl experience contribution 37profile vol. 19, no. 1, january-june 2017. issn 1657-0790 (printed) 2256-5760 (online). bogotá, colombia. pages 29-40 problem-based learning: an experiential strategy for english language teacher education in chile though more than two thirds of participants from both cohorts agree with the corresponding statements, there is a 9-point difference between cohorts for item 4 (79% and 88% respectively) and a 12-point difference for item 9 (79% and 92% respectively). the 22-point difference between both cohorts in item 5 (pbl contribution to the integration of various types of knowledge), 62% and 84% respectively, also stands out. the reason for it might be that the 2010 cohort experienced less learning opportunities in which they were required to relate and integrate knowledge from various sources before they experienced pbl. the made-up problems did include a diversity of sub-areas and required that the pre-service teachers interview key informants having different experiences and knowledge, such as in-service teachers, school students, parents, psychologists, school counselors, and teacher trainers. they were also required to consult bibliographical sources relevant to the sub-areas covered in the problem dealt with. the 14-point difference between both cohorts regarding item 7 (pbl contribution to controlling one’s learning), 66% and 80% respectively, is also relevant. this might have to do with the fact that as the teacher training program grew older, more emphasis was put on self-study and use of available resources. in item 8 (pbl contribution to developing personality) perceptions show the widest spread, with one fifth of the participants, 21% and 20% respectively, declaring disagreement with the statement. agreement with the statement reached less than 50% in both cohorts, 31% and 48% respectively. regarding similarity of the made-up problems with real school problems (item 10), more than two thirds of participants from both cohorts estimated that they were very similar to “real problems” (97% and 84% respectively), which probably reflects the pbl potential to confront school complexities issues albeit in an academic and rather than an artificial setting such as an initial teacher education program. with regard to the research question, “how does pbl enable reflective learning processes?”, evidence gathered throughout the assessment of group oral presentations by means of a 5-criteria rubric (table 1) show that this learning strategy does contribute significantly to developing analytical and reflective skills; this was mainly demonstrated through both the relation and integration of knowledge when presenting arguments and solutions to the problem. the average group marks obtained by both cohorts (on a 1-7 scale, 5.5 for the 2010 cohort, and 5.7 for the 2012 cohort) attest to the perceived reflective learning through the implementation of pbl in teacher education. conclusions the implementation of the experiential learning strategy known as pbl as a pilot experience in one of the curricular modules of the english pedagogy program at a regional university in chile, during two academic years and with two different cohorts, had a positive impact on several development areas of this initial teacher preparation program. findings of this pilot study coincide with what relevant literature claims with regard to pbl experiences fostering various skills in a number of areas. overall, pbl was perceived very positively by participants from both cohorts; close to or more than two thirds of them agree that pbl contributes to their cognitive development, reflective/ critical and knowledge integration capacity, learning self-control, and to their research and social skills development. nevertheless, less than half of the participants estimated that pbl contributed to the development of their personality, even though most of them considered that it does foster personal growth and highly contributes to initial teacher education. findings also reveal that reflective learning processes are enabled and strengthened by implementing pbl activities in english language teacher education as they challenge pre-service teachers to search for, sort out, analyze, and synthesize information, as well as relate various types of knowledge to complex school settings. universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras38 muñoz campos application of what is learned (pfeiffer & jones’s model, 1983) and dissemination or knowledge transfer (koernderman’s model, 2000) became evident in the proposed solutions to each problem during each group’s oral presentation, which revealed integration of both theoretical and practical knowledge acquired from various sources consulted. in this particular case, even though language skills were not formally assessed, reading technical literature, watching video clips in english, and preparing audiovisuals did have an impact on language skills development, as observed during oral presentations. some limitations of this study should be pointed out, though. first of all, time constraints prevented more reflection and in depth discussions of problem solutions, relevant related issues, as well as teaching implications of the experience. secondly, the need to structure the processing of information in a more systematic way became evident; this might favor knowledge integration aiming at working out generalizable solutions linked to “what tends to occur” in the real world. thirdly, the importance of participants becoming aware of a number of issues, including (a) that this learning strategy (pbl) does transfer the control of their learning to themselves, (b) that this learning strategy fosters their overall professional development by linking classroom acquired knowledge with problems in real school contexts, (c) that this learning experience is another opportunity to improve and demonstrate their communicative language skills in english in formal training contexts, and (d) that eventually they might want to consider implementing pbl activities in their schools. finally, it should be pointed out that any initial english teacher training program may greatly benefit from including experiential learning strategies such as problem-based learning in their class planning. findings suggest that the benefits should increase where pbl is systematically integrated into the curriculum. naturally, more experiences, probably on a larger scale, are required, aiming to adequately meet the wide diversity of demands in current educational contexts. references agencia de calidad de la educación. 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(2012). aprendizaje basado en problemas: evaluación de una propuesta curricular para la formación inicial docente [problem based learning: assessment of a pbl curricular proposal for pre-service teacher training]. estudios pedagógicos, 38(1), 161-180. http://dx.doi.org/10.4067/ s0718-07052012000100010. pfeiffer, j. w., & jones, j. e. (1983). reference guide to handbooks and annuals. san diego, ca: university associates. román, m. (2009). el fracaso escolar de los jóvenes en la enseñanza media: ¿quiénes y por qué abandonan definitivamente el liceo en chile? [school failure of students at middle school: who and why do they drop out of school in chile?]. reice, 7(4), 95-119. retrieved from https:// dialnet.unirioja.es/servlet/articulo?codigo=3190852. temel, s. (2014). the effects of problem-based learning on pre-service teachers’ critical thinking dispositions and perceptions of problem-solving ability. south african journal of education, 34(1), 1-20. http://dx.doi. org/10.15700/201412120936. walter, p. (1998). experiential learning in language education: suggestions for tesol practice. prospect: an australian journal of teaching, 13(1), 53-67. walton, h. j., & mathews, m. b. (1989). essentials of problembased learning. medical education, 23(6), 542-558. http:// dx.doi.org/10.1111/j.1365-2923.1989.tb01581.x. wharton, r., & parry, l. e. (2003). the good, the bad, and the ugly: using experiential learning in the classroom. journal of scholarship of teaching and learning, 3(3), 56-68. wilkerson, l., & feletti, g. (1989). problem-based learning: one approach to increasing student participation. new directions for teaching and learning, 37, 51-60. http:// dx.doi.org/10.1002/tl.37219893707. about the author diego muñoz campos holds a phd from the university of minnesota (usa). he has been a teacher of english for over 10 years and has presented at various events in chile. his research interests include second language acquisition, alternative approaches and methodologies, and discourse analysis. universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras40 muñoz campos appendix: sample problems problem 1 two 16 year old high school students with an ethnic background have strong feelings about their ethnic identity and seriously question the fact that they have to study english at school. in fact, they have disruptive behavior, and challenge their teacher’s authority. you want them to become interested in learning english but you cannot avoid dealing with their negative attitude and disruptive behavior. besides, you want the whole class to develop their cultural awareness through your english language teaching. what can you do? problem 2 fifteen year old students from a co-ed public school come from different social backgrounds and are keen on studying english using traditional textbooks. they enjoy celebrating english culture festivities such as halloween. you want them to develop their speaking skills as well as their critical thinking skills, but they think the material is too difficult; they are unable to talk in english because they get anxious and are afraid of making mistakes. some of the students have questioned the adoption of such festivities in chile. what can you do? problem 3 four non-catholic 3rd year high school students attend public school. they are usually isolated from the rest of the class and some students make fun of them. their english teacher has also exhibited some discriminatory language and attitudes towards them. they have asked the school authorities to allow them to get together and talk about their religious beliefs while in school, but their request has been ignored. you want your teaching to be meaningful to your students and the goals you have set for the class include developing their listening/speaking skills, as well as their critical thinking skills. what can you do? problem 4 senior students (4th year high school students) in a large class come from middle class families and attend a middle class subsidized school. some of them have shown sexist attitudes and used sexist language towards two male students who have shown gay/lesbian behavior. their english teacher has also exhibited discriminatory language and behavior. you would like your students to deal with this issue while developing their english speaking skills. what can you do? problem 5 you teach english to 8th graders in a rural school run by the local municipality. in general, students are not really motivated to learn english. they get mineduc (ministry of education) english textbooks but their english teacher does not use them because “they are too difficult for the children.” the students make fun of a classmate with a physical disability but who likes to speak english. you want to use those textbooks and make your students think critically about their learning and discriminatory attitudes. what can you do? transforming pedagogical practices through collaborative work 65profile: issues teach. prof. dev., vol. 22 no. 2, jul-dec, 2020. issn 1657-0790 (printed) 2256-5760 (online). bogotá, colombia. pages 65-78 https://doi.org/10.15446/profile.v22n2.80289 transforming pedagogical practices through collaborative work transformar las prácticas pedagógicas mediante el trabajo colaborativo edgar alirio insuasty1 maría fernanda jaime osorio universidad surcolombiana, neiva, colombia this article reports on the first three phases (exploration, identification, and planning) of a collaborative action research study whose main objective was to transform the pedagogical practices of teachers of a colombian school of foreign languages. a methodology of collaborative action research and techniques, such as direct observation, completion of a reflection journal, and surveys and interviews with teachers and students was employed. findings showed that the participants managed to identify some of the major problems they faced within their pedagogical practices and to design and implement courses of action to overcome them. upon completion, favorable perceptions about the impact of collaborative action research on the transformation of the participating english language teachers’ pedagogical practices could be evidenced. keywords: classroom techniques, educational development, educational research, english language teaching, teaching methods, team teaching este artículo describe las tres primeras fases (exploración, identificación y planeación) de un estudio de investigación-acción colaborativa, cuyo principal objetivo fue transformar las prácticas pedagógicas de los docentes de un instituto colombiano de enseñanza de lenguas extranjeras. junto con una metodología de investigación-acción colaborativa se emplearon técnicas como la observación directa, la escritura de un diario de reflexión, encuestas y entrevistas con profesores y estudiantes. los resultados mostraron que los docentes participantes lograron identificar los principales problemas que afrontan en sus prácticas pedagógicas, así como diseñar e implementar algunas acciones para resolverlos. al final se evidenciaron las percepciones favorables de los participantes acerca del impacto del modelo de investigación-acción colaborativa en la transformación de sus prácticas pedagógicas. palabras clave: desarrollo educativo, enseñanza en equipo, investigación en educación, métodos de enseñanza del inglés, técnicas didácticas edgar alirio insuasty • email: edalin@usco.edu.co maría fernanda jaime osorio  https://orcid.org/0000-0001-8938-8248 • email: mariafernanda.jaime@usco.edu.co how to cite this article (apa, 7th ed.): insuasty, e. a., & jaime osorio, m. f. (2020). transforming pedagogical practices through collaborative work. profile: issues in teachers’ professional development, 22(2), 65–78. https://doi.org/10.15446/profile.v22n2.80289 this article was received on june 11, 2019 and accepted on february 3, 2020. this is an open access article distributed under the terms of the creative commons license attribution-noncommercial-noderivatives 4.0 international license. consultation is possible at https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/ universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras66 insuasty & jaime osorio introduction in a research report, jaime osorio and insuasty (2015) give an account of a small-scale study which was carried out in the institute of foreign languages of universidad surcolombiana (ileusco for its acronym in spanish) with the purpose of analyzing the pedagogical practices of the participating teachers and evaluating their effects on the development of communicative competence of students in the english language. precommunicative practices were found to be more frequent than communicative ones. that is, although the curriculum and the materials adopted in the institute have a communicative orientation, the classes were primarily focused on the activities of a structural and quasi-communicative nature. likewise, this report highlights certain aspects of the organizational and pragmatic skills that the students managed to acquire and demonstrate. in an attempt to further look into this, the institute’s faculty was administered a new survey which revealed the occurrence of the following aggravating circumstances: lack of interactive activities that are motivated by a real communicative need; the fact that most of the teachers do not use internet tools, online communication systems, or websites as a means of encouraging and engaging students in the formal or functional practice of the target language; the reluctance on the part of many students to use the foreign language as a means of communication among themselves, especially when they have to develop work in pairs or groups. as a consequence, a number of teachers showed interest in participating in academic and investigative actions that could lead to the strengthening of their pedagogical practices. faced with this state of affairs, and with the hope that the participating teachers would assume a more leading role in the exploration and transformation of their pedagogical practices, the research team organized three collaborative groups, each one having three members: a novice teacher researcher, a facilitator, and a research assistant. as a point of departure, these groups agreed on following a collaborative methodology to answer the following research questions: • what are the main problems that the teachers identify in their pedagogical practices? • what intervention projects can be designed and implemented to solve these problems? • what is the impact of the collaborative action research methodology in the exploration and transformation of the pedagogical practices of ileusco teachers? theoretical framework in this section we will present the main theoretical principles underlying the development of this research study. first, we will define the concept of pedagogical practices from a general standpoint and from the specific perspective of communicative language teaching. second, we will also describe reflective teaching as an inquiry approach to explore the conceptual and praxis dimensions of the pedagogical practices. finally, the nature and implications of so-called collaborative groups will also be examined. some general notions of pedagogical practices pedagogic practices are defined by fierro et al. (1999) as follows: a social, objective and intentional praxis in which the meanings, perceptions and actions undertaken by the stakeholders (teachers, students, school authorities and parents) as well as the political, institutional, management and regulatory aspects shaping the teacher’s role are involved, according to the educational project of each country. (p. 21) moreover, huberman (1999) conceptualizes the pedagogic practice with these words: a conscious, deliberate and participatory process implemented by an educational system or an organization in an attempt to enhance performances and results, 67profile: issues teach. prof. dev., vol. 22 no. 2, jul-dec, 2020. issn 1657-0790 (printed) 2256-5760 (online). bogotá, colombia. pages 65-78 transforming pedagogical practices through collaborative work encourage the development for the renewal in academic, professional and labor fields and to cultivate the spirit of commitment of each person with society, especially with the community in which he or she is immersed. (p. 25) thus, for the purposes of this study, pedagogical practices can be conceptualized as a dialectic interaction between the english language teacher and the sociocultural and educational setting which permeates the role he or she is expected to play in the language classroom. pedagogical practices that promote the development of communicative competence based on the prior considerations, the importance of pedagogical practices can be enhanced in the english teaching and learning process since they serve as a source of information or inspiration to define the type of goals and objectives, and the type of procedures used to achieve them. in general terms, those goals can be form-oriented or meaning-oriented, which can be seen as a continuum from the so-called precommunicative activities to proper communication activities. according to littlewood (1998, as cited in jaime osorio & insuasty, 2015), “the first are based on accuracy and present structures, functions, and vocabulary; the latter focus on fluency and involve information sharing and exchange” (p. 50). jaime osorio and insuasty (2015) contend that “the precommunicative activities are classified into structural activities and quasi-communicative activities” (p. 50). whereas the structural ones are described as matching and practicing structures, the quasi-communicative ones are based on practicing communication and the structure of the language. jaime osorio and insuasty also point out that “communicative activities are subdivided into functional activities and social interaction activities” (p. 51). in the functional communication tasks, learners’ interaction turns out to be less controlled and predictable. social interaction activities, such as simulation and role play, go beyond the functional ones by adding a more clearly defined social context. within these activities, the classroom itself is presented as another social context where learners and teachers engage in authentic discussions about different issues. reflective teaching becoming a reflective teacher is a must for educators who want to improve the quality of the education they promote; it is also a challenge since teachers usually fall short in organizing their agenda to respond to the multiple tasks they face every day. murphy (2001) points out that teachers may grow professionally in different ways which let them “look inward, both within themselves and within the courses they offer, to access information about what happens in their language classrooms” (p. 334). moreover, gebhard and oprandy (1999) assert that one of the central reasons for being interested in reflective teaching is to “gain awareness of our teaching beliefs and practices” and to learn “to see teaching differently” (p. 4); in doing so, teachers would learn to take actions that allow them to enhance the quality of learning opportunities teachers promote in their classrooms. murphy also claims that we should spend time and energy to develop understandings if we consider our continuing needs as teachers and the needs of the language learners we serve. murphy poses three main purposes of reflective teaching: “(1) to expand one’s understanding of the teaching learning process, (2) to expand one’s repertoire of strategic options as a language teacher, and (3) to enhance the quality of learning opportunities one is able to provide in language classrooms” (p. 335). there are several benefits a teacher can obtain when becoming a reflective practitioner. farrell (2003), for example, mentions four: (1) reflective teaching helps free the teachers from impulse and routine behavior. (2) reflective teaching allows teachers to act in a deliberate, intentional manner and avoid the “i don’t know what i will do today” syndrome. (3) reflective teaching distinguishes teachers as educated universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras68 insuasty & jaime osorio human beings since it is one of the signs of intelligent action. (4) as teachers gain experience in a community of professional educators, they feel the need to grow beyond the initial stages of survival in the classroom to reconstructing their own particular theory from their practice. (p. 20) in the same sense, richards (2018) suggests that for teacher development to take place throughout the critical reflection process, which is what actually happens when teaching reflectively, the teachers should rely not only on their experience but on the powerful mixture that is experience plus reflection. however, it is our understanding that the teacher’s reflection should not be seen as an isolated and individualistic adventure, but as a collaborative and professional commitment. interplay between reflection and collaboration in this respect, loughran (2010) cites the contributions of several scholars such as barnett and o’mahony (2006), baird (1992), passman (2002), and wallace (1998), among others, whose studies place a great deal of emphasis on reflection as a collaborative task which initially enables teachers to recognize, frame, and reframe the sort of problems they have in their particular professional setting and which also implies the use of an inquiry approach to building a learning community, strengthening their professional growth, and enhancing their practice. moreover, gore (1987, as cited in insuasty & zambrano castillo, 2010) refers to “collegiality as one of the outcomes of reflective teaching, since working in small groups to question and examine teaching behavior and provide honest feedback, student teachers may develop trust and respect for each other as teachers and professionals” (p. 89). richards and farrell (2005) propose the organization of teacher support groups as one of the ways to enhance teacher professional development, and they add that: a teacher support group can be defined as two or more teachers collaborating to achieve either their individual or shared goals or both, on the assumption that working with a group is usually more effective than working on one’s own. typically, a support group will involve a group of teachers who get together to discuss goals, concerns, problems, and experience . . . or to carry out more inquiring activities such as peer coaching, team teaching, action research, and classroom observation. (p. 51) richards and farrell (2005) also claim that in “a support group, teachers get to know their colleagues better and begin to function as a community of professionals rather than as individuals working in isolation from each other” (p. 51). method the present study has a qualitative nature seeking to evaluate the impact of collaborative action research in the exploration and transformation of the pedagogical practices of teachers at ileusco. the investigative action was developed through two complementary processes: the first one involved an awareness-raising session of the participating teachers (novice researchers, from now on) in order for them to integrate reflection and research within their pedagogical work. this reflective practice took place by means of informal talks in which they were explained the collaborative action research methodology, the roles of the participants (facilitators, novice researchers, and research assistants), the research instruments to collect data and, most importantly, the nature of the reflective process to explore their own teaching practices. this was intended as a source of teachers’ self-recognition and inspiration to transform their teaching practices and, consequently, the effect of such practices on their learners. the main outcome of the first process was a collaborative diagnosis of the recurrent pedagogical practices problems identified by the novice researchers themselves and the research team. 69profile: issues teach. prof. dev., vol. 22 no. 2, jul-dec, 2020. issn 1657-0790 (printed) 2256-5760 (online). bogotá, colombia. pages 65-78 transforming pedagogical practices through collaborative work in the second process, novice researchers assumed a leading role as researchers of their own practices to solve particular problem situations in their classroom with the collaboration of professors (facilitators from now on) and students (research assistants from now on) of the foreign language teacher education program, following the parameters and procedures of the collaborative action research model. the collection of information in the first process was done through the first three phases (exploration, identification, and planning) of the collaborative action research design. burns (1999) addresses the teacher’s vision as a researcher and mentions the following advantages when participating in a study under the methodology of collaborative action research: • it strengthens opportunities to obtain research results that provide relevant feedback to education systems. • it encourages teachers to share common problems and to work collaboratively with a research community to examine their beliefs and values within the sociopolitical culture of the institutions for which they work. • it allows for changes in policies and practices in the organizations. • it empowers more than action-research per se because it offers a solid framework for institutional change. (p. 13) participants each one of the three collaborative groups with which this research project was conducted was comprised of three members: a novice teacher researcher, a facilitator, and a research assistant. the novice researchers were three female and two male members of ileusco faculty. one of them held an ma in translation, two of them held a ba in english language teaching and two were pursuing ma studies in english language teaching (elt) methodology. as to the facilitators, they are active members of the research group “ilesearch”; three of them hold master’s degrees in foreign language teaching and the last one has a doctoral degree in education. the five research assistants are students of the foreign language program. instruments for data collection this study required the implementation of the following instruments: semi-structured interview. as part of the diagnosis process, the novice researchers were asked to answer questions in a semi-structured interview. the main purpose was to provide a self-reflection moment for novice researchers to describe their pedagogical practices and analyze their beliefs so as to find the recurrent problems they had to face. moreover, novice researchers’ impressions on collaborative work, project work, the development of communicative competence, and the transformation of their pedagogical practices were also inquired (see appendix a). class observation. it was used to collect information about the pedagogical practices applied by ileusco teachers in their english classes. four classes were observed so as to diagnose the possible issues related to their pedagogical practices and then, six more classes were observed while implementing the pedagogical interventions proposed by the novice researchers. each session was videotaped and analyzed by a research assistant. to this effect, a log of the most important activities of each videotaped lesson was kept and used as a corpus for the identification of recurrent patterns in their teaching practices. teacher’s diary. novice researchers were asked to fill out a diary where they recorded their reflections about their pedagogical practices before and while carrying out the intervention process. each one of them wrote or recorded five journal entries in response to prompts (see figure 1). the analysis of the novice researchers’ journal entries helped the collaborative team identify the novice teacher researchers’ views on what happened before and during the implementation of the courses of action. universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras70 insuasty & jaime osorio procedure the procedure of the research process was carried out through the implementation of the 11 steps of collaborative action research proposed by burns (1999): exploration, identification, planning, data collection, analysis/reflection, formulation of hypothesis/speculation, intervention, observation, report, writing, and presentation. nevertheless, we hereby report what was achieved in the first three steps, in keeping with the three research questions this particular study is concerned with. according to burns, in the exploration step “a general problem is identified and the teachers agree on a general procedure” (p. 36). thus, based on the previous research by jaime osorio and insuasty (2015), a group of 20 teachers was given a survey aimed at identifying some of the factors which would explain, in general terms, jaime osorio and insuasty’s finding of the “the prevalence of the precommunicative teaching practices in comparison to the communicative or autonomous learning based ones” (p. 59). the survey confirmed the problem and provided some reasoning as to its causes. after having checked with the teachers as to their willingness to participate in investigative initiatives which would eventually help them explore their teaching practices, the researchers formed three collaborative groups. a first meeting allowed the group members to agree on the methodology and steps to be followed. in order to carry out the identification stage which “involves a fact finding process which enables the researchers to refine their ideas about the general focus area and to prepare for systematic investigation” (burns, 1999, p. 37), the group participants undertook the task of identifying the precise area to work on in each english language class. to this effect, they designed some data gathering instruments such as lesson observation, journal keeping, field notes, students’ surveys or questionnaires, and semistructured interviews. the main problematic areas identified in figure 1. sample of a prompt for a journal entry online forum. the novice researchers, facilitators, and research assistants were invited to participate in an online forum whose main purpose was to exchange information, perceptions, questions, and answers about the problems identified during the diagnosis phase and the possible action or intervention plans that could be designed, implemented, and evaluated to tackle them. to this effect, the following protocol was followed: initially the participants (novice researchers, facilitators, and research assistants) of the three groups were invited to hold an online forum by means of facebook. they were asked to use the previously assigned codes to identify their roles, for example, t1, f1, and a1 standing for novice researcher, facilitator, and research assistant, respectively. during the forum itself, the following key questions were posed: based on the information gathered via the interview, lesson observation and diaries, what seems to be the most frequent problem of the novice researcher’s teaching practices? what possible courses of action can be proposed to try to solve the identified problem? and once again, a question about the collaborative methodology implementation was included to reflect on its impact on teachers’ pedagogical reflections and decision-making processes. survey. it was used as the last instrument to gather information on the perceptions of the facilitators, novice teachers, and research assistants regarding the impact of the action-collaborative research methodology in the exploration and transformation of the pedagogical practices of the ileusco teachers (see appendix b). please record a personal re�ection about the lesson you planned, the lesson you taught, and the actions you would do differently if you were to teach the same lesson one more time. justify/elaborate on your answer by providing examples and vivid/relevant descriptions of the events that took place on today’s lesson. 71profile: issues teach. prof. dev., vol. 22 no. 2, jul-dec, 2020. issn 1657-0790 (printed) 2256-5760 (online). bogotá, colombia. pages 65-78 transforming pedagogical practices through collaborative work this stage were as follows: prevalence of structural or quasi-communicative exercises over the functional or social ones, lack of anticipating a backup plan to cope with unexpected results in the planned activities, and shortage of students’ motivation and participation. finally, the planning stage which, according to burns (1999), is “aimed at trialing a particular course of action and collecting data on the outcomes of this action” (p. 37) was satisfactorily completed by three groups. the concrete and viable courses of action undertaken by the “enduring” groups were concerned with the exploration the textbook’s communicative activities, the implementation of communicative strategies such as improvisations, oral presentations, and discussions, and the exploration of a differentiated instruction proposal based on the students’ visual kinesthetic learning styles. results a look into novice researchers’ own problems from the implementation of the strategies, techniques, and instruments for data collection, it was determined that the problems that occurred most frequently in the pedagogical practices of participant teachers were as follows: prevalence of precommunicative pedagogical practices. (both in the basic activities proposed by the guide book and in the complementary activities brought by the teachers). so, it is evidenced in the following excerpt of t1’s journal entry: for today, february 27th, i had planned unit 5c. actually, this unit was planned for two days, for today and for tomorrow. this unit, ehmm…as to grammar, with this unit we see the simple past tense with irregular verbs. concerning vocabulary, we study three very important verbs such as go, have, and get. likewise, we focused on learning the pronunciation of…or the accent in some sentences. (translated from spanish) absence of planning (backup plan) and/or anticipation of undesired results before the implementation of the planned activities. this is an issue which is revealed by t1’s second diary entry: after tonight’s lesson i’ve realized that what i have planned didn’t work that very much cause [sic] i was thinking about making students realized [sic] how a topic like reported speech was about. but as soon as i started checking their knowledge about this, i could notice that they were kind of confused, especially in the reported questions, so i started to explain it but as i didn’t plan like a plan b hmm it was kind of confusing when i started making the sentences [sic] and trying to explain to them using daily life examples because the idea was to do something, i would say better organized. that is why i think the lesson didn’t go as well as i was expecting. time limitation for the development of other activities different from the textbook. in one of t1’s journal entries, it is possible to notice this aspect: for the reading, the first paragraph was read to the whole class and then the students read the rest of the article alone themselves [sic]. the highlighted vocabulary was discussed as a class but there wasn’t enough time to complete the final task as proposed in the plan. one of the main reasons was the lack of time and the fact that more time was required to complete the previous exercises. students who interrupt the development of the classes either by their late arrivals or by their constant use of the l1. in one of t1’s lessons, this could be perceived: 8:10 the class starts 8:10 students arrive to the classroom 8:14 students gave the meaning in spanish 8:16 another student arrives 8:48 another student arrives, quietly takes sit. [sic] (taken from the research assistant’s log) unmotivated students who do not participate in the classes. in the interview, t3 admitted that: universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras72 insuasty & jaime osorio the main problems that i have faced during my professional experience have been the lack of interest and motivation from the students. use of l1 by the teachers and students to make themselves understood. in one of her journal entries, t3 states that: the presentation of the new topic took place as planned and it was necessary to explain [sic] in spanish to make sure they understood the different ways of telling the time. based on the observation of five lessons, a major emphasis is perceived on quasi-communicative and structural activities, rather than on functional ones. most of these activities are book-centered since ileusco instructors have to cover a fixed number of units and lessons throughout the academic term. due to the large number of issues and activities demanded by the curriculum of the school of foreign languages, novice researchers think that there is a shortage of time to fully cover them adequately. in the interview, t2 implied this when she contends that: one of the problems that i have faced is the lack of time to sometimes finalize the topics to be studied. it is like i sometimes spend too much time on certain activities and then i have to rush to complete the units that have to be taught. this kind of routinized dynamic is perceived as boring by students. it is also believed that these reported problems have a transversal nature; that is, they occur at different levels. the current prevalence of precommunicative pedagogical practices corroborated the findings of a previous study conducted by jaime osorio and insuasty (2015). courses of action in response to the previously identified problem situations, three small-scale research projects were designed with individual pedagogical proposals. this was done through the collaboration of the members of the ilesearch research group and novice researchers. these proposals were presented at the poster session of the xii symposium on research and the second encounter of the language and pedagogy network that was held at universidad surcolombiana on november 2 and 3, 2017. the first proposal was an investigative experience in a sixth-level english course at ileusco whose syllabus was based on the textbook american english file 2. this research proposal was aimed at exploring the communicative activities of this book, particularly those found in units seven, eight, and nine of the sixth level. the major achievements of this study were as follows: the identification of the main features of those communicative activities, the assessment of their effectiveness from the perceptions of the novice researcher and the students of this course, as well as the pedagogical perceptions derived from the novice researcher’s reflection. the second proposal consisted of the implementation of three communicative strategies (improvisation, oral presentation, and discussion) to improve the pedagogical practices of the novice researcher and the oral competence of the students. the activities were implemented in third-level and sixth-level english courses at ileusco, the third level with three interventions, and the sixth level with six interventions. these activities were designed according to the themes that were handled in the book of each level, where speaking activities were replaced by the proposed activities. data collection instruments such as class observation, general reflection of the interventions by the teacher, and a survey of students were used to obtain their perception of the activities, their oral competence, and the teacher’s performance. finally, the third proposal was framed in group pedagogical strategies based on differentiated instruction, taking into account the learning styles of the second level students of ileusco. the implemented 73profile: issues teach. prof. dev., vol. 22 no. 2, jul-dec, 2020. issn 1657-0790 (printed) 2256-5760 (online). bogotá, colombia. pages 65-78 transforming pedagogical practices through collaborative work activities were designed according to the characteristics of the most dominant learning styles within the classroom (visual, kinesthetic). accordingly, the students were grouped for the development of the same. the purpose of the mentioned pedagogical interventions was to contribute to the improvement of the pedagogical practices of the novice researcher and to motivate the students in their foreign language learning process. the instruments used for the collection of the information were the observations, an interview, a survey, the teacher’s diary, and questionnaires of learning styles directed to the students. the impact of collaborative action-research on the transformation of ileusco faculty’s pedagogical practices according to the proceedings of the forum held by participants of the three groups as well as the final survey they were administered, favorable perceptions about the impact of collaborative action-research on the transformation of ileusco faculty’s pedagogical practices could be perceived. it was argued, for example, that this methodology “is an ideal way to discuss and deal with situations that are sometimes not visible to us teachers” (t3). however, it is a methodology that needs to be complemented with a good interaction between the members of the team to discuss some things that are not totally visible in the process. based on the application of the final survey of perceptions about the collaborative action research methodology, it was found that both the facilitators and the research assistants offered the novice teacher-researcher support in making, executing, and evaluating the pedagogical decisions through which the problems identified in each group were overcome. now, regarding the scope and impact of such accompaniment, the group members argued that the fact of working in a collaborative group was an enriching and fruitful experience for all the members of the team, especially for the novice teacher researchers, since they gained greater degree of awareness about the characteristics of their pedagogical practices, their strengths, and their weaknesses. similarly, they contend that in a collaborative group the novice teacher researcher can find the contribution of an external perspective or point of view and feedback that allow him/her to carry out the identification of the problems, the design, and the implementation of intervention activities and the reflection on the effectiveness of their decisions. discussion based on the gathered results, we will present the discussion under the following findings: raising awareness about existing problems one of the first outcomes in this study is the identification of the most frequent critical incidents or difficulties the participating teachers were facing in their english lessons, one of them being the prevalence of precommunicative tasks. littlewood (1998) characterizes these activities as those which are more focused on the knowledge and practice of grammatical structures and on a kind of quasi-communicative practice of the target language. the precommunicative activities constitute one of the sides of the continuum towards more communicative ones with a functional or social scope. the fact that the english teachers have been willing enough to focus their initial attention on what was not working very well in their pedagogical practices can be taken as evidence of their reflectivity. it is in this respect that murphy (2001) states that one of the purposes of reflective teaching is “to take steps to deepen awareness of teaching and learning behaviors” (p. 500). and this self-examination makes it possible to transcend the common teacher’s inconsistencies between what universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras74 insuasty & jaime osorio they preach and what they do, and to search for better alternatives of making their teaching more meaningful. informed decision making once the participating teachers became better acquainted with the complexities of their own pedagogical practices, they decided to discuss, adopt, and explore some courses of action to solve some particular problems in each one of their english classes. it is not enough just to reflect on the occurrence of teaching and learning problems as long as some intervention plans are further decided and explored. what there should be is an interplay between teacher’s reflection and teacher’s action. otherwise, freire’s assertion (as cited in bartlett, 1994) that “reflection without action is verbalism and action without reflection is activism” (p. 213) would become true. as murphy (2001) suggests, it is through reflective teaching that teachers “can learn to see teaching differently, and to learn to take action in order to enhance the quality of learning opportunities we are able to provide in our classroom” (p. 500). he also says that reflective teaching enables language teachers to expand their repertoire of strategic options. and the ones who can benefit the most from the exploration of new teaching learnercentered strategies in the classroom are the students. two heads are better than one the quintessential worth of the collaborative work in each of three groups can be summarized with t1’s comment in the forum: the collaborative methodology is excellent since it is a useful way of learning. as the saying goes, “two heads are better than one.” one can achieve a more enriching result when exploring diverse opinions, thoughts, and experiences, rather than working on an individual basis. this finding is conceptually supported by what some scholars have contended about the usefulness of peer observation and formative feedback. as a matter of fact, observing a peer provides an opportunity to obtain information about how another teacher deals with common problems, reflects on their own pedagogical practices, and shares ideas and experiences about similar situations or issues that take place in the classroom. in richards and farrell’s (2005) words: “in teaching, observation provides an opportunity for novice teachers to see what more experienced teachers do when they teach a lesson and how they do it” (p. 86). on the other hand, peer observation can be a valuable source of formative feedback in order for teachers to “gain deeper understanding and awareness of the teaching-learning process” (murphy, 2001, p. 506). it was through observations, diary keeping, and peer discussions based on the data collected that the participating novice teacher-researchers started the cycle of reflective teaching suggested by bartlett (1994), and that will provide them with a framework to critical reflection and teacher development. conclusions despite the education and experience many english language teachers have accumulated in their professional lives, it seems that their primary pedagogical practices are continually precommunicative without assuring more functional or social learning experiences for their students. it is a very common problem worth being dealt with in different educational settings, and this implies the decided and decisive commitment of a reflective practitioner who is very willing to work with others in the search of alternative solutions. as a matter of fact, it is much easier for the english language teachers to first identify the problems affecting their pedagogical practices and the learning process of their students if they receive feedback from their students and other colleagues. once they are clear about the problem to be resolved, an intervention or a course of action needs to be planned, explored, and assessed with the help of someone else. 75profile: issues teach. prof. dev., vol. 22 no. 2, jul-dec, 2020. issn 1657-0790 (printed) 2256-5760 (online). bogotá, colombia. pages 65-78 transforming pedagogical practices through collaborative work the particular courses of action which were explored at ileusco in this project were concerned with the assessment of the textbook’s communicative activities, three communicative strategies (improvisation, oral presentation, and discussion) to enhance the oral competence of the students, and differentiated instruction taking into account the learning styles of the second-level students. in general terms, all of these three experiences brought about some positive effects in the novice researchers’ pedagogical practices. by means of the data collection instruments administered in each collaborative group, it was possible to establish that they became more aware of the main problems they were faced with. but they also proved to be capable of going beyond the worthy reflections as far as making informed decisions to overcome those problems. all of this by virtue of weaving three key strands for the professional development of english teachers: reflection, collaboration, and action. finally, it is hoped that an increasing number of teachers become interested in the transformation of their pedagogical practices for the sake of their students’ learning process. one of the ways to make these efforts more systematic and accountable is through the exploration of a collaborative action research methodology. references baird, j. r. (1992). collaborative reflection, systematic enquiry, better teaching. in t. russell & h. munby (eds.), teachers and teaching: from classroom to reflection (pp. 32–47). falmer press. barnett, b. g., & o’mahony, g. r. (2006). developing a culture of reflection: implications for school improvement. reflective practice, 7(4), 499–523. https://doi. org/10.1080/14623940600987130 bartlett, l. (1994). teacher development through reflective teaching. in j. c. richards & d. nunan (eds.), second language teacher education (pp. 202–214). cambridge university press. burns, a. (1999). collaborative action research for english language teachers. cambridge university press. farrell, t. (2003). reflective teaching: the principles and practices. english teaching forum, 41(4), 14–21. fierro, c., fortoul, b., & rosas, l. (1999). transformando la práctica docente: una propuesta basada en la investigaciónacción [transforming teaching practice: a proposal based on action research]. paidós mexicana. gebhard, j. g., & oprandy, r. (1999). language teaching awareness: a guide to exploring beliefs and practices. cambridge university press. huberman, s. (1999). cómo se forman los capacitadores: arte y saberes de su profesión [how trainers are trained: art and knowledge of their profession]. editorial paidós. insuasty, e. a., & zambrano castillo, l. c. (2010). exploring reflective teaching through informed journal keeping and blog group discussion in the teaching practicum. profile: issues in teachers’ professional development, 12(2), 87–105. jaime osorio, m. f., & insuasty, e. a. (2015). analysis of the teaching practices at a colombian foreign language institute and their effects on students’ communicative competence. how, 22(1), 45–64. https://doi.org/10.19183/ how.22.1.133 littlewood, w. (1998). communicative language teaching. cambridge university press. loughran, j. (2010). reflection through collaborative action research and inquiry. in n. lyons (ed.), handbook of reflection and reflective inquiry: mapping a way of knowing for professional reflective inquiry (pp. 401–416). springer. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-0-387-85744-2_20 murphy j. m. (2001). reflective teaching in elt. in m. celcemurcia (ed.), teaching english as a second or foreign language (3rd ed., pp. 499–514). heinle & heinle. passman, r. (2002). going public: middle-level teachers build a learning community through reflective discussions (ed466454). eric. https://files.eric.ed.gov/fulltext/ ed466454.pdf richards, j. c. (2018). towards reflective teaching. the teacher trainer, (5). https://bit.ly/36wxcyk https://doi.org/10.1080/14623940600987130 https://doi.org/10.1080/14623940600987130 https://doi.org/10.19183/how.22.1.133 https://doi.org/10.19183/how.22.1.133 https://doi.org/10.1007/978-0-387-85744-2_20 https://files.eric.ed.gov/fulltext/ed466454.pdf https://files.eric.ed.gov/fulltext/ed466454.pdf https://bit.ly/36wxcyk universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras76 insuasty & jaime osorio about the authors edgar alirio insuasty currently works as an associate professor for the foreign language program at universidad surcolombiana. he is a co-researcher in two groups of the same program: comuniquémonos and ilesearch. he has co-authored several books and articles in the efl professional field. maría fernanda jaime osorio is a full-time professor of the efl program at universidad surcolombiana. she holds a master’s degree in teaching english as a foreign language from universidad internacional iberoamericana. she is the director of the research group ilesearch. richards, j. c., & farrell, t. s. c. (2005). professional development for language teachers: strategies for teacher learning. cambridge university press. https://doi.org/10.1017/ cbo9780511667237 wallace, j. (1998). collegiality and teachers’ work in the context of peer supervision. the elementary school journal, 99(1), 81–98. https://doi. org/10.1086/461917 https://doi.org/10.1017/cbo9780511667237 https://doi.org/10.1017/cbo9780511667237 https://doi.org/10.1086/461917 https://doi.org/10.1086/461917 77profile: issues teach. prof. dev., vol. 22 no. 2, jul-dec, 2020. issn 1657-0790 (printed) 2256-5760 (online). bogotá, colombia. pages 65-78 transforming pedagogical practices through collaborative work appendix a: semistructured interview sample 1. what characteristics do you recognize in your pedagogical practices at ileusco? 2. do you systematize reflections related to your pedagogical practices? 3. based on the self-assessment of your professional experience, what recurrent problems have you faced during your teaching performance? 4. what are your main concerns regarding the effectiveness of your pedagogical practices in students’ motivation and communicative learning of a foreign language? 5. what are the most effective strategies or action plans to tackle the problems or concerns you have identified? 6. have you ever been part of a collaborative research project? 7. how would you assess your background knowledge about collaborative action research methodology? universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras78 insuasty & jaime osorio appendix b: survey 1. which research project did you participate in? 2. what role did you play in this project? 3. describe briefly how you contributed to the development of the research project conducted by your collaborative group. 4. to what extent do you think that the accompaniment of a collaborative group enables the ileusco teacher to explore and transform his or her teaching practices? 5. what is the impact of a collaborative action research methodology on the exploration and transformation of ileusco faculty’s teaching practices? 157profile: issues teach. prof. dev., vol. 21 no. 1, jan-jun, 2019. issn 1657-0790 (printed) 2256-5760 (online). bogotá, colombia. pages 157-172 https://doi.org/10.15446/profile.v21n1.71253 learning english with travel blogs: a genre-based process-writing teaching proposal aprendiendo inglés con blogs de viajes: una propuesta basada en el análisis del género y la escritura como proceso daniel pascual1* universidad de zaragoza, zaragoza, spain current communication is increasingly computer-mediated, dynamic, dialogic, and global, so students should master new information, communication technologies, and digital genres, as well as acknowledge the global role of the english language. thus, this paper aims to offer a teaching proposal, to be ideally implemented in the secondary education english as a foreign language classroom, on how to develop students’ communicative and digital competences based on a digital genre like the travel blog. first, a corpus of travel blogs was compiled, and the blogs’ communicative purposes and prominent linguistic and discursive features were identified. next, different lesson plans were designed on the principles of communicative language teaching and task-based learning, together with the corpus-based results. overall, students are expected to follow a process-writing approach that enables them to interact digitally in travel blogs. key words: communicative language teaching, digital competence, genre analysis, task-based learning, travel blogs, writing as a process. la comunicación actual es cada vez más informática, dinámica, dialógica e internacional, por lo que los estudiantes deberían dominar nuevas tecnologías de información y comunicación y géneros digitales, así como reconocer el papel global del inglés. este artículo pretende ofrecer una propuesta didáctica, idealmente para la clase de inglés como lengua extranjera en educación secundaria, sobre cómo desarrollar la competencia comunicativa y digital de los estudiantes basándose en un género digital como el blog de viajes. para ello, se ha compilado un corpus de blogs de viajes, se han identificado sus propósitos comunicativos y sus características lingüísticas y discursivas más relevantes, y después se ha planificado una secuencia didáctica tomando los principios del enfoque comunicativo y el aprendizaje por tareas y los resultados obtenidos del análisis del corpus. se espera que los estudiantes sigan un enfoque de la escritura como proceso que les permita interactuar digitalmente en los blogs de viajes. palabras clave: análisis del género, aprendizaje por tareas, blogs de viajes, competencia digital, enfoque comunicativo, enfoque de la escritura como proceso. * e-mail: dpascual@unizar.es how to cite this article (apa, 6th ed.): pascual, d. (2019). learning english with travel blogs: a genre-based process-writing teaching proposal. profile: issues in teachers’ professional development, 21(1), 157-172. https://doi.org/10.15446/profile.v21n1.71253. this article was received on march 26, 2018 and accepted on october 3, 2018. this is an open access article distributed under the terms of the creative commons license attribution-noncommercial-noderivatives 4.0 international license. consultation is possible at https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/. universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras158 pascual introduction nowadays students are normally regarded as digital natives dealing with technological advancements easily and effectively. nonetheless, some specific tools and strategies regarding information and communications technologies (icts) and digital media should be targeted in class to contribute to improving students’ digital competence. in the english as a foreign language (efl) classroom, these icts and digital genres can be exploited to develop students’ communication skills, too. yet, it appears that they are not being dealt with enough in many educational contexts, and students are required to learn about the conventions of other already oldfashioned or not so useful genres. this paper hopes to address this gap by introducing a teaching proposal that revolves around the travel blog as one of the potential digital genres students may be familiar with and learn from. particularly, it is advocated that teachers should follow a genre-based analysis to raise awareness about a particular genre before working on it with the students in the efl classroom. even when the travel blog has been chosen as the cornerstone for this proposal, the process illustrated here can be replicated to examine and understand any other genre wanted. actually, this is favourable not only for teachers, since better tasks can be designed and more help can be provided, but more importantly for students, who can develop their communicative and digital competences and have a more meaningful learning experience. moreover, learners should get as prepared as possible for the globalised 21st century that we live in, and that involves acquiring certain competences, including the 4cs of 21st-century learning: critical thinking, communication, collaboration, and creativity (partnership for 21st-century skills [p21], 2017). besides fostering the learning of english, the travel blog can be perfectly employed to help students enhance those competences, as the teaching proposal will try to show. learners can develop their management of icts while they critically realise that the internet is a medium with which to communicate in english with an international audience or to collaborate with people from across the world. the rest of the paper is organised as follows. first, the theoretical background on which the proposal rests is described, explaining the advantages of working with (travel) blogs in the english class, and including communicative language teaching (clt), task-based learning (tbl) and the writing-as-a-process approach. next, the proposal will be described, analysed, and justified in the light of the theoretical principles discussed, and samples of the activities and tasks designed will be presented. finally, some conclusions will be drawn on how this intends to foster innovation in the efl secondary education classroom highlighting its main strengths. theoretical framework educational benefits of working with blogs in the efl classroom (travel) blogs constitute a source of authentic materials influencing the modes and uses of current communication, inviting interaction among english native and non-native speakers. introducing blogs written in english by “international speakers” in class may expose students to authentic contexts involving varied cultures and values. this will make them aware of english being used as a vehicle for global communication—with an international status as a lingua franca (elf) (baker, 2015; jenkins, 2007; mauranen, 2012; seidlhofer, 2011). this is especially relevant, as achieving successful communication in international encounters with other bloggers and users where english is functionally used is advantageous for students’ communicative competence in english. by interacting with similar or other kinds of english speakers, learners participate in interesting group discussions while being able to express individual preferences and tastes. overall, this computer-mediated scenario assists them in building a greater sense of autonomy and empowerment (yang, 2009). 159profile: issues teach. prof. dev., vol. 21 no. 1, jan-jun, 2019. issn 1657-0790 (printed) 2256-5760 (online). bogotá, colombia. pages 157-172 learning english with travel blogs: a genre-based process-writing teaching proposal regarding the promotion of learners’ digital competence, pérez-tornero (2004) pinpoints four main uses students should control in the digital sphere, which can be dealt with when introducing (travel) blogs in the efl classroom: (a) operative, when students learn to exploit the maximal possibilities of something in the web, in this case, the travel blog (for instance, reading for specific or general information); (b) semiotic, when they interpret different codes mixing language, image, video, or sound, and understand how these may complement the textual information in a blog; (c) civic, by effecting a responsible and self-critical use, being aware of the pragmatic and ethical aspects of publishing online, and accepting accountability for their performance; and (d) cultural, as they need to show respect and openmindedness towards different cultural practices and points of view within the virtual discourse community of the blogosphere. by working on this genre, students’ digital competence can be overall enhanced. furthermore, blogs can be fruitful to propose innovative efl methodologies. learners should become protagonists of their learning by exploring, making hypotheses, and drawing conclusions regarding language and content as they go along. (travel) blogs can likely match their interests and personal experiences, both in their current context and for the future. many students are reluctant to start writing on a blank page, far more in english, so to fight this, they will be offered through blogs a clear context and a purpose clarifying what their written outcome should be like—be it a comment or a post. in so doing, students can work on synthesis processes due to the timely and spatial characteristics of the web where the blog is hosted, and for the creation of their texts and the subsequent publication, a whole array of previous or further projects or tasks can be created (rojas álvarez, 2011), as will be shown in this paper. blogs also present a motivational role in the classroom for being applicable to real-life situations. students may be really willing to use them, especially since not many digital genres tend to be included in the efl classroom in some educational contexts (pascual, 2017). students may want to set up blogs and give them shape and accept publishing new content periodically. writing comments or posting for an authentic potentially global audience is considered not only to boost students’ motivation and participation when learning english, but also to promote their analytical and critical thinking (murray & hourigan, 2008). this helps them to show their progressive achievements and increase their sense of self-efficacy (azmi, 2017). in that respect, a genre like the blog enables students to learn by doing and to practise the macroand microskills of reading and writing. as for the latter, both individual and collaborative writing can be worked on thanks to blogs, and the fact that students’ texts are to be eventually published creates a certain degree of commitment, carefulness, and revision. engaging students to sense that pressure has positive effects at other levels, including content quality, organizational skills, and grammar use (hegelheimer & lee, 2012). communicative language teaching and task-based learning the main principles of clt underpin “an approach to language teaching methodology that emphasizes authenticity, interaction, student-centered learning, task-based activities, and communication for the real world, [with] meaningful purposes” (brown, 2007, p. 378). these many advantages can be profited to prepare students for a future where the english language (and digital genres/media) is playing a crucial role. wesche and skehan (2002) also highlight, among other clt principles, learner interaction, contextual links to the world, and room for creativity from learners’ profiles. as the efl classroom is moving away from a traditional method to adopt a more active approach, inherent changes both in teachers’ and students’ roles need to be brought about. currently, teachers are not supposed to be models correcting mistakes and ensuring flawless oral universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras160 pascual and written discourse (richards, 2006), but to perform as learning strategy coaches and guides (facilitators and monitors). this implies encouraging students to perceive errors as natural, helping them in their specific needs for language learning, and providing them with the tools, skills, and assistance, in this case to discover a new digital genre. on their part, learners should take a higher degree of responsibility for their own learning and will be driven towards cooperative rather than individualistic tasks often incorporating pair/group work. collaborative learning and interaction skills should be promoted as successful ways of developing students’ communicative competence and learning by doing—trying out and making mistakes. task-based approaches (ellis, 2003; willis & willis, 2007) place the primary focus on meaning and entail a gap (information, reasoning, etc.) for students to fill. so, they should share ideas in different groupings, solving challenging problems, or facing real-life situations (center for teaching excellence [cte], 2017). to complete these tasks, students will go through different cognitive processes: low-order ones—selecting, classifying, ordering—or high-order ones, like creating or synthesizing (bloom, 1956). different thinking routines and challenging tasks revolving around travel blogs will be designed to apply tbl to the genre and lead students to work more collaboratively and autonomously. the writing skill: a processoriented approach given the nature of the travel blog, the core focus will be placed on written-based skills: reading and writing. a beneficial and innovative approach to combine both and greatly develop students’ writing is the processoriented approach, where the process of going through the completion of a text is overtly emphasized over the value of the final product (hedge, 2005; kroll, 2001; sokolik, 2002; tribble, 1996). this approach drives learners to write (either printed or digital genres) in a realistic way, acquiring skills to do so with specific purposes and audiences. if learners are conscious of the stages to produce a text and exercise them in class, they can become more critical writers. thus, learners should realize that writing is a tough but necessary road that needs reflection and effort, but that if they tackle those, they can develop their self-efficacy. the first stage in this process is generating ideas. encouraging brainstorming and gathering information will assist students in overcoming potential motivational problems towards writing or “imaginative blocks” (tribble, 1996, p. 107). enough time should be devoted to this stage, understanding that self-evident ideas and clichés appear earlier than more complex and original ones (sokolik, 2002). second, some focusing tasks help learners select the most outstanding ideas from that brainstorming, and narrow the scope of their writing (hedge, 2005). third, the organisation of those key aspects takes place, and students frame their ideas through activities to start structuring their messages effectively. once students begin to draft, they should pay attention to textual development and structure over accuracy of linguistic aspects (sokolik, 2002). this is even more relevant in informal digital genres like the travel blog, characterised by a high degree of flexibility regarding these aspects. before the final draft turns into the final product to be evaluated, a revising and editing stage allows learners to check whether the writing task has been successfully completed. they can revise the content, structure, and pragmatic use of the language in their output, and may then seek for specific mistakes involving spelling, grammar, or punctuation. these revisions can be tackled via peer-assessment and evaluative tools, such as checklists or rubrics, for one group of students to comment constructively on other groups’ output. indeed, kroll (2001) recommends that “the evaluation criteria should be identified [before] so that students will know in advance how their output will be judged” (p. 226). that way, they can be more confident about what to emphasise or revise, and 161profile: issues teach. prof. dev., vol. 21 no. 1, jan-jun, 2019. issn 1657-0790 (printed) 2256-5760 (online). bogotá, colombia. pages 157-172 learning english with travel blogs: a genre-based process-writing teaching proposal consider the appropriateness of their discourse for the potential audience. in the following section, the process followed to get to know in depth the genre of the travel blog is outlined, with an explanation of the results obtained from the generic and linguistic analysis. the teaching proposal: blog in! steps taken in the design of the proposal to design this teaching proposal on travel blogs, first a representative corpus was compiled to highlight their most important generic and discursive features concerning structure, lexis, grammar, orthotypography, or pragmatics. this analysis enabled me to gain a better understanding of the (sub) genre of the post, and its register and relationship with the comment and the potential responses to the comment, as well as to have a database to design activities and tasks for future implementation in the efl classroom. the (travel) blog can be reckoned to be a genre, as it is “a class of communicative events, the members of which share some set of communicative purposes” (swales, 1990, p. 58). this notion has changed alongside time and, from a fixed entity with some purposes and constraints, a genre is viewed now as quite a flexible dynamic entity that shapes itself according to its audience and impact (bhatia, 2004; swales, 2004). this is especially the case with digital genres that tend to change, adjust to the users’ needs, and adapt to new contexts. in relation to that, travel blogs aim to reach a heterogeneous audience interested in discovering new places and learning first-hand anecdotes and curiosities about them. so, the communicative purpose of the travel post is to offer a description of a place, along with the atmosphere or the experiences that someone has encountered for others to relive and adapt these trips, or enjoy themselves by reading about issues of their interest. the members participating in the travel blog through the different genres (posts, comments, replies to comments) implicitly contribute to its dynamicity and dialogicity. as for the generic relations affecting the travel blog, the post and the comment form a genre chain, since there is a key sequential dependence with “chronological ordering, especially when one genre is a necessary antecedent for another” (swales, 2004, p. 18). this way, bloggers frequently address the readership along their posts, and readers tend to give feedback and express their emotions by commenting on posts they have read. this bidirectional and conversational discourse allows for a fairly informal and oral-like style when interacting in the blogosphere. all these elements have been borne in mind to design the teaching proposal, so that students can understand the communicative purposes of the different genres and the relationships among them, and effectively employ them to communicate beyond the efl classroom. for the compilation of the mentioned corpus, six travel blogs were selected from a sample of online international bloggers belonging to different linguacultural backgrounds. i considered kachru’s circles (bolton & kachru, 2006; crystal, 2003) when selecting this sample to proportionally incorporate blogs by english natives (inner circle), by people who do not speak english as their l1 but frequently use it in their countries for official or institutional purposes (outer circle), and by english non-native speakers who use english as a foreign language (expanding circle). these texts could be representative and could be analysed, first, and used in class, next, to work on the role of english as a vehicular tool for global communication (elf). three entries from each of those blogs were chosen, making up a small-scale corpus of a total of 18 entries (30,410 words, see table 1). each entry comprises the post written by the author of the blog; the comments made on it within the range of one year; and the author’s response to them, to obtain a precise panorama of their genre relations (swales, 2004) as explained above. universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras162 pascual the corpus, despite its size limitations, captures and represents the tendencies of the practices travel bloggers and readers follow individually and share as members of the same global virtual community. once the corpus was compiled and the genre understood, travel blog posts and comments were manually analysed in terms of their main lexico-grammatical, discursive, and pragmatic features. thus, the following step was to create a taxonomy (see table 2). this was aimed to be the basis for the teaching proposal, together with clt and tbl principles. hence, tasks and activities were designed to guide students to the creation of an original comment and post, after raising awareness of the two genres and the participation of bloggers from different backgrounds. differences were traced as to the frequency and use of these features in travel blog posts as opposed to comments.1 this may stem from two reasons: first, the communicative purposes of each sub-genre invite certain features to recur more than others—for example, recommending sentences usually abound in posts, while praising or criticizing sentences rather fit in comments. second, the users’ language level of proficiency depends on their background concerning english and is reflected in the (non) existence of certain features that imply 1 see pascual (2018) for quantitative results showing different frequency of features from an intergeneric perspective. a higher degree of language deployment (acronyms, onomatopoeias, or abbreviations). from the beginning, these findings were considered for the design of the teaching proposal. finally, the content of the travel posts was also analysed, and some repeated patterns or stages discerned. these are the “moves” of a text or a genre (swales, 1990, 2004). based on the observations from the corpus, it is recurrent to include a situational move setting the post spatio-temporally, plus a descriptive move offering anecdotes about the trip. then, the post presents some closure with conclusions, and an invitation move introducing the sub-genre of the comment. this structure, widespread among the virtual community using travel blogs, should serve to teach students how to compose their own travel posts and comments. critical analysis and strengths of the proposal in this section, the teaching proposal will be analysed and commented on, paying attention to the principles introduced in the theoretical framework and displaying some sample materials and resources to show students’ ideal process from receptive skills to productive skills in the use of travel blogs. that way, how to improve learners’ communicative and digital competences will be illustrated. table 1. relation of blogs compiled for the corpus blog name origin circles of english nº of posts nº of words nº of comments nº of words helen in wonderlust england inner circle 3 8762 44 4632 nomadic matt united states 3 4498 78 5341 the shooting star india outer circle 3 2976 59 2805 zee goes nigeria 3 3363 0 0 girl astray slovak republic expanding circle 3 3487 80 6060 lili’s travel plans belgium 3 7324 49 8868 18 30410 310 27706 163profile: issues teach. prof. dev., vol. 21 no. 1, jan-jun, 2019. issn 1657-0790 (printed) 2256-5760 (online). bogotá, colombia. pages 157-172 learning english with travel blogs: a genre-based process-writing teaching proposal blog in! is based on authentic materials, published in actual travel blogs, to offer students a source of meaningful input, with authentic rich contexts and real purposes for communication (brandl, 2008). it is also a potential model for learners’ own production of posts and comments in an elf context of communication. the lessons aim to make students aware that they are not supposed to reach a native-like level, but to use the l2 in an intelligible way. instead of deficit communicators constantly making mistakes, they are active language users with a potentially similar audience to them (baker, 2015). so, different tasks and activities in the lesson plans are intended to promote communication, push students to employ the language actively, and guide them through the writing process until the intended outcomes are reached—writing and publishing, first of a travel blog comment and, ultimately, of an original post. process-oriented writing to start generating ideas (hedge, 2005; sokolik, 2002), students’ schemata and previous knowledge about the topics of travelling and blogs are raised with tasks including guiding questions and the brainstorming technique. students can start discussing the travel blog and its communicative purpose and contrast this digital genre with other typical ones used on the net (e.g., a faq page, a forum, a wikipedia entry, or a downloadable brochure). this way, students begin to raise awareness, and teachers may find students’ starting point so as to cater for different learning profiles/rhythms. in the second stage—focusing ideas—, learners are offered tools and materials to organise their hypotheses and ideas, and decide which ones of these are worth considering for the draft of the travel blog post or comment. at this point, key 21st-century skills like critical thinking and creativity (p21, 2017) are promoted in search of the selection of the best ideas and structure for their texts. to do so, students are asked to examine a model post of their choice and identify the salient parts of that text and their distinguishing functions—leading them to unconsciously connect it with the researched move structure of the travel blog post. table 2. data-driven taxonomy including the most prominent linguistics and discursive features in the corpus linguistic and discursive levels of analysis specific features linguistic and discursive levels of analysis specific features lexicogrammatical personal i semiotic onomatopeias inclusive we orthotypographic non-standard capitalization attitude markers lack of capitalisation acronyms abbreviations vague language pragmatic (speech acts) engaging directive you interjections questions exclamations commands syntactic unfinished sentences criticising question tags thanking c-units auxiliary praising subject omission stressing/adding emphasis non-clausal units recommending/giving advice universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras164 pascual for the learners’ draft of their initial versions google docs is employed. this collaborative tool is fruitful as it allows students to work in pairs or groups simultaneously, despite not sharing physical space (easily adding, modifying, and organizing ideas). the teacher can check individual work, keep track of the progressive versions, and give personal/ specific feedback to students. finally, steps of revision and edition of their texts are encouraged mainly by the use of a two-fold checklist (see appendix), with which learners—and teachers—can evaluate their process and final product. firstly, students can look at it when writing the comment and the post to carry out these tasks successfully and evaluate their proper performance and process (as a guide to meet their expectations and the teacher’s). secondly, students are also expected to evaluate their partners’ comments and posts and give them feedback, helping each other to develop more meaningful learning. in their checklists, students should mark from 1) not yet to 4) excellent different evaluation criteria about content (meaning), structure (moves followed), appropriate language use (pragmatically speaking); and linguistic choices (blog features presented in table 2). moreover, online revising and editing tools such as monolingual and bilingual dictionaries, thesaurus, spell and grammar checkers should also be used. that way, students will help each other to proofread and edit their work, ideally with the support of these tools and in an ongoing way through the process. however, assessment criteria will not focus so much on accuracy and error correction as on comprehensibility and content issues, for being considered of greater relevance, as mentioned before. evaluation before finishing blog in!, some exit tickets will be employed to make students reflect and draw some final conclusions. these concern not only their learning, interest, and effort, but also the activities and teacher’s help. instances of the questions they should respond to include completing statements or multiple choices (see example 1). first, this may be useful for learners to critically underline strengths and weaknesses and to promote their autonomy and intrapersonal skills. next, from this activity teachers can gather students’ information and feedback to introduce improvements. icts such as padlet or socrative or rather traditional handouts can be used as exit tickets. to collect feedback from both printed and digital sources, in the proposal padlet is used for the comment exit ticket and a designed handout for the post one. example 1. sample questions of the printed exit ticket after writing the post. three things i learnt about blogs… 1. ______________________________ 2. ______________________________ 3. ______________________________ my effort these days in class was: ☐great!! ☐good enough ☐not so good integrating skills and language content although the final outcome of blog in! is to produce some digital texts, macro-skills are integrated and language functions and features practiced to enable learners to accomplish the final task. students might need first to explore the topic of travelling, read information about trips, and share their experiences. once interest and motivation have been generated, students should start going through the commented genre-based approach (bhatia, 2004; swales, 2004) to know what a blog is like, and which texts are written there. that way, they will be able to replicate them thinking of their potential audience and being communicatively efficient. if students see the advantages of using a (travel) blog, they can improve their language skills and learn about other cultures and values. 165profile: issues teach. prof. dev., vol. 21 no. 1, jan-jun, 2019. issn 1657-0790 (printed) 2256-5760 (online). bogotá, colombia. pages 157-172 learning english with travel blogs: a genre-based process-writing teaching proposal therefore, learners move from a receptive use of the language, focusing on reading skills, towards a productive use by the completion of writing a comment and a post on a travel blog. first, students practice reading sub-skills such as skimming to understand the post’s general information, by answering questions such as what’s the author’s opinion about the food? or what was accommodation like? they continue by practising reading strategies such as inferring and guessing the meaning of words from context about recurrent travel blog topics (e.g., transport, sights, etc.). moreover, activities focus on blog features and form, so that students can concentrate on the language content they are supposed to learn and produce. in table 3, students can practise their scanning skills (grabe, 2009) by identifying instances of different features of the genre contained in posts they have previously read. table 3. organiser to classify examples of travel blog features from posts 1. subject ‘i’ (personal expression) 2. subject ‘you’ (engaging the reader) 3. subject omission (more informal) 4. unfinished sentences (...) 5. exclamative sentences 6. questions to the reader 7. imperatives (commands and mustdos) 8. words showing personal positive or negative attitude 9. abbreviations (tv, fav) or acronyms (gps, onu) 10. emoticons  simultaneously, activities intend to promote learners’ oral skills and subsequent development of their interacting skills (e.g., negotiation of meaning, turntaking, etc.). this should foster students’ communicative competence while increasing their learning opportunities and help them to take up the challenge of writing. as they are “doing”, and interacting, and trying to accomplish a task where they are the main focus of instruction, collaborative learning is also being enhanced (cte, 2017) in different groupings. figure 1 shows one of the many examples that combine the use of oral skills with the focus on language form. students are expected to distinguish and employ the different uses of personal pronouns, as they are one of the salient features in travel blog posts and fulfill different purposes. in this adaptation from the “circle of viewpoints” (harvard graduate school of education, 2018), learners take turns assuming the role of one pronoun each time and contributing to the group discussion from that perspective. scaffolding and examples are also provided to guide the reflection on the functions of these lexico-grammatical features, as well as on their own travelling experiences. later, they will see how and when to employ the different combinations of pronouns in their texts. figure 1. speaking activity where students play roles and exchange opinions about travelling issues in a graphic organiser i (personal) we (exclusive) we (inclusive) you (directive) universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras166 pascual engaging students as some activities proposed may entail a deep conceptual or linguistic difficulty and cognitivelydemanding participation from students, interactive tasks are interspersed throughout the lessons. some of them bet on the gamifying part of learning to make it more appealing and motivating for the student. in the activity shown in figure 2, students simulate the tv contest the wheel of fortune to work on speech acts recurrently traced in blog posts and comments. learners are rewarded for their effective performance in the task with catchy idiomatic phrases to be used in their posts. figure 2. game-based activity to work on different speech acts furthermore, varied intelligences (gardner, 1993) can be matched in the rationale of the travel blog, as students are prompted to interact with other people (interpersonal intelligence), find out about the environment and habitats of places (naturalistic intelligence), receive information from pictures or videos (visual intelligence), and discuss their thoughts and stories (linguistic intelligence). this inherent combination plus specifically-designed tasks can greatly cater both for diversity and differentiation in the efl classroom, aiding students to become more proficient at their areas of strength and to improve some areas of struggle. differentiating strategies and activities in connection with engaging students along the teaching proposal, learners needing differentiated instruction should be guided and helped. for them to reach the aims of writing a comment and a post, various strategies and resources are displayed. input enhancement (nassaji & fotos, 2010) is included in students’ handouts as a strategy for the ones struggling through the tasks. this implies using different fonts and sizes and striking formats (bold, italics) to highlight relevant information in the headings and task explanations. another way to deal with students’ potential blocks or worries, depending on their learning profiles and rhythms, is scaffolding (see figure 3). by offering them structures to start their messages, they learn new linguistics items which they may adapt or complicate if they are high achievers, and which may make them feel more comfortable if they are low achievers. figure 3. controlled-practice activity with scaffolding to learn new useful structures moreover, colour codes, greatly connected with students’ visual intelligence, are reckoned to be effective in that learners may find common points within the task to reach meaningful solutions. for example, in a formfocused activity one colour can be associated with each category of features under practice (subject omission, emoticons, exclamative sentences, discourse markers, etc.). students should deal with a type of communication beyond the paper-based one—characterised by more flexible informal oral features—, so this visual support can be helpful. likewise, cheat sheets—aiding materials hinting at possible answers, exemplifying concepts and easing the completion of tasks through scaffolding—are employed to support students and solve some of their concerns and problems, also bearing in mind diversity in class. they can be made with hints, partial solutions, or fully worked-out solutions to the activities proposed. 167profile: issues teach. prof. dev., vol. 21 no. 1, jan-jun, 2019. issn 1657-0790 (printed) 2256-5760 (online). bogotá, colombia. pages 157-172 learning english with travel blogs: a genre-based process-writing teaching proposal added to those differentiation strategies, learners can reach the expected goals through a multiplicity of answers at many points in the lessons. they can choose the post they would like to read among a wide array of possibilities from the corpus; or decide which comprehension questions on the post they prefer to answer, as long as they reach a minimum to ensure the targeted practice of specific reading micro-skills. so, the idea that students need to be given responsibility and decision-making power is very much underlined for being beneficial in their learning process. teachers should assist students in finding the most advantageous situation for them in this learning process. this emphasis on differentiation and negotiation also derives from my awareness, as a teacher, that working with authentic materials and at this level implies high linguistic demand. therefore, students often have a voice in their learning about what to do and how to do it. all these differentiated techniques seek to slightly adjust the conceptual level of the tasks and help students develop their self-efficacy and sense of comfort and safety, creating a low-affective filter (krashen, 1982), which in turn brings positive effects to their learning. making learning visible thinking routines in the form of charts let students gradually structure the input they receive and summarise the main information in the output they produce. for example, in one activity students are asked to fill three columns: what i expect before actually reading the post, what i read! to confirm or refute their guesses, and what i think now! to go beyond and raise implications about both the content of the post, the author’s stance, and the form of the blog. the exit tickets employed at the end of the sessions also contribute to making students’ learning more noticeable (see example 1) and invite further questioning and reflection. apart from that, when students are focusing and structuring their ideas, they count on some organisers (see table 4) that help them test their ideas and place them in order, therefore rendering their learning visible (clark, 2009). table 4. thinking organiser to select ideas after the generating stage topic what? ideas and important information so, what? why do i want to tell this about my trip? now what? where do i include this? connection with other ideas? food tasty, little variety part of the culture. i think it is important to try new food. anecdote. having lunch with friends. we ate at restaurant and takeaway. 1. 2. 3. universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras168 pascual promoting curricular competences the design of the teaching proposal clearly has competence-based goals and points at the learning of other cross-curricular values by introducing a digital genre in the secondary education efl classroom. as working with travel blogs contribute to improving students’ reading and writing skills, the communicative and digital competences turn out as the most necessary ones. within the former, grammatical, discursive, and pragmatic elements are worked on, whereas the latter highlights skills to successfully employ icts and digital genres. a process-oriented writing approach will support a better learning to learn competence for students, who will become more conscious, responsible, and autonomous in using the language in different learning situations. the use of checklists and exit tickets, as previously shown, is also beneficial to foster this competence. moreover, devoting time to other values like critical thinking, creativity, and entrepreneurship in the secondary education efl classroom can also contribute to it. the pragmatic competence is also worked throughout the lessons planned, as (travel) blogs enable students to meet real language users from the worldwide virtual discourse community. to be pragmatically efficient, students are led to get practice in addressing a likely unknown audience in polite ways, not being disrespectful or particularly assertive, and showing a positive face (brown & levinson, 1987). so, the social and civic competence is reinforced through the lessons to promote a more critical thinking and well-behaved manners when expressing their ideas. to do so, structures via scaffolding and activities are practised to be appropriate and demonstrate friendliness. in table 5, students learn to make a compliment through different expressions fulfilling the functions of thanking or praising, as part of a writing task. linked to pragmatics, using travel blogs can promote students’ further-reaching intercultural awareness competence, as engaging in online conversations may imply connecting with people from distinct backgrounds or talking about totally different places (e.g., sri lanka table 5. scaffolding of an activity to help students produce their output (a blog comment) you can make a compliment about... the general post you have read. specific aspects you have particularly liked or found useful (e.g., information on sights, anecdotes, photos, etc.). examples: “i really liked your post, because...” “i found your story really interesting when...” “i am so glad that you told us about...” “thanks for sharing...” you can make a question to ask for... more information you want to know (places, customs, prices...) clarification of something you didn’t understand very well. details about one specific part of the post. examples: “what else did you discover about...?” “was it difficult to...?” “how did you feel when...?” “could you explain a little bit more about...?” 169profile: issues teach. prof. dev., vol. 21 no. 1, jan-jun, 2019. issn 1657-0790 (printed) 2256-5760 (online). bogotá, colombia. pages 157-172 learning english with travel blogs: a genre-based process-writing teaching proposal in helen in wonderlust or china in lili’s travel plans). the teaching proposal raises expectations for students to show open-mindedness and empathy when reading and writing about other people’s beliefs, customs, and cultural practices (religion, food, music). these aspects are promoted similarly to the pragmatic ones and have their weight in the checklist for evaluation (see appendix). moreover, the checklist is a beneficial resource to encourage students’ development of the learning to learn competence, as selfand peer-assessment enable them to gradually become more autonomous and critical in creating and evaluating their output and others’. they can bear this process in mind when using travel blogs beyond the lessons to continue learning to read and write them. conclusion in the 21st-century efl classroom, the new modes of global communication brought about by the technological advances of the internet and the role of elf need to be explored. digital genres have gained a fundamental role in this respect, blurring time and space constraints and widening the audience. students can and should enhance their digital literacy and competence in the efl classroom. in this context, a teaching proposal around the travel blog has been offered to promote learners’ communicative and digital competences. blog in! is aimed to be implemented in an efl secondary education classroom of 13-14 year-old learners in the span of about two/three weeks, and intermingles teaching methodologies (genre theory together with clt and tbl), approaches (writing-as-a-process), and concrete techniques (to promote gamification, attention to diversity, visible thinking and learning) to offer an innovative exploitation of a digital genre. this combination serves to link the whole process of reflection, analysis, design, and potential implementation that teachers should ideally go through when introducing specific text types in the classroom. this paper has attempted to show the many benefits for students that can be achieved when teachers previously explore the genre they like to deal with in class and bet on more genre-informed writing instruction. on the one hand, allowing students to work following clt and tbl approaches, and fostering collaborative learning in which students have to make decisions and solve actual problems along the process may set off benefits for them. they need to make choices through the learning process and are expected to work with different group patterns to foster meaningful knowledge. in this proposal, the teacher ideally is just a support for students not to get lost. in the end, they should be aided to be more autonomous in the process of learning a foreign language. on the other hand, gaining insights into the function, structure, and discourse of a digital genre enables students to better comprehend what they read and be conscious of what they are expected to ultimately produce. (travel) blogs are sites of informal, dialogical, and immediate communication students may encounter in their future, and can be highly relevant for students, since blogs invite them to face real opportunities for computer-mediated communication with native and non-native english speakers alike. the type of interaction in travel blogs is different from other genres, as drawn from the discursive and linguistic analysis, and should make students raise awareness of the increasing role of global computermediated interaction and communication. they are constantly searching for information on the internet, and they are or will be virtual users of a digital genre like this, so learners must become more critical and responsible when using icts or digital genres at the same time that they become more proficient in their language skills in english. moreover, travel blogs can be employed to work on both key competences and cross-curricular aspects, involving cultural and social values, as exemplified in the analysis of the teaching proposal. students’ communicative competence may improve further by universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras170 pascual engaging in the real encounters within the blogosphere and producing the typical discourse in this medium. this functional use of students’ l2 has implied in this case using an informal and dialogical register and specific lexico-grammatical and pragmatic features practised throughout the lessons. simultaneously, students are expected to encounter and regard other cultural practices and non-linguistic codes with a more critical eye. to do so, tasks focus on accomplishing a greater degree of self-reflection and self-efficacy. in brief, the procedure taken has led me to gain insights into the genre that allows me, then, to bring it into the classroom and exploit its characteristics focusing on the different skills and competences students are expected to develop and improve and contributing to a more integral learning. this teaching proposal has concentrated on the travel blog to do so, but further proposals on different (digital) genres can be designed following a similar procedure and similar principles. references azmi, n. 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(2012). exploring elf: academic english shaped by non-native speakers. cambridge, uk: cambridge university press. 171profile: issues teach. prof. dev., vol. 21 no. 1, jan-jun, 2019. issn 1657-0790 (printed) 2256-5760 (online). bogotá, colombia. pages 157-172 learning english with travel blogs: a genre-based process-writing teaching proposal murray, l., & hourigan, t. (2008). blogs for specific purposes: expressivist or socio-cognitivist approach? recall, 20(1), 82-97. https://doi.org/10.1017/s0958344008000719. nassaji, h., & fotos, s. (2010). teaching grammar in second language classrooms: integrating form-focused instruction in communicative context. london, uk: routledge. partnership for 21st-century skills, p21. (2017). the 4cs research series. retrieved from http://www.p21.org/ our-work/4cs-research-series. pascual, d. (2017). students’ attitude, competence and motivation in the use of the travel blog for the efl classroom. encuentro, 26, 3-21. pascual, d. 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(2009). using blogs to enhance critical reflection and community of practice. educational technology & society, 12(2), 11-21. about the author daniel pascual is a phd grantholder in the department of english and german studies at universidad de zaragoza (spain) and a member of the intergedi research group (ffi-2017-84205-p). his current research revolves around virtual communication and digital genres, specially focusing on the rhetorical, intercultural, and discoursal features in the personal and academic sphere. universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras172 pascual appendix: checklist for the post (4) excellent (3) good (2) almost (1) not yet category (4) (3) (2) (1) task completion i (15%) the student is able to write a travel blog post with enough information regarding their trip including topics such as weather, food, transport, accommodation, customs, sights, etc., as well as pieces of advice, anecdotes, or examples. structure (15%) the student is able to write an original post, in which paragraphs have been organized and whose structure can be clearly divided into an introduction, a body, and a conclusion. audience-awareness (15%) the student bears in mind an audience that is not known, making the post reader-friendly and showing an attitude of respect, empathy, and friendliness towards that audience as well as possible cultural practices they write about. blog features (20%) the student efficiently includes in the post, at least, 15 prominent features of travel blogs, among the ones worked on in class (lexico-grammatical, syntactic, pragmatic…). identify them and write them down in the comment section. attractiveness (15%) the student makes their post attractive by including catchy titles for its sections, by including images or videos, or by exploiting semiotic features such as onomatopoeia, interjections, and emoticons. language accuracy (20%) the student can write an original post and revise it so that it is intelligible enough and there are no serious errors in grammar, punctuation, or spelling, according to the genre they are dealing with. 145profile: issues teach. prof. dev., vol. 21 no. 2, jul-dec, 2019. issn 1657-0790 (printed) 2256-5760 (online). bogotá, colombia. pages 145-153 https://doi.org/10.15446/profile.v21n2.75121 helping teachers promote self-directed language learning: report of a fulbright scholar in ecuador ayudando a docentes de lenguas a promover el autoaprendizaje en el estudiante: reporte de una becaria de fulbright en ecuador 1joan rubin* joan rubin associates, silver spring, usa since ecuador has determined that it wants to be fully bilingual in ten years, this paper describes the experience of a fulbright scholar at a university language center in quito; one helping language teachers improve the language learning skills of their students. the theoretical framework for this work comes from learner self-management (lsm) or self-regulation. the scholar details her experience teaching lsm concepts such as smart goal setting, task analysis, cognitive and affective strategies. she provides descriptions of what these language teachers consider the roles of the teacher and that of the learner to be and also what their most critical teaching issues were. she also briefly elaborates the history of the development of learner strategies and the value of metacognitive strategies and knowledge. key words: goal setting, learner self-management, learning strategies, task analysis. ecuador se ha propuesto ser completamente bilingüe en diez años y, en este marco, este artículo describe la experiencia de una becaria de la comisión fulbright en un centro de lenguas de una universidad ecuatoriana. en su trabajo, la becaria aplicó teoría derivada de lo que se conoce como la autogestión o autorregulación del aprendiz y hace una descripción de la enseñanza por medio de conceptos relacionados como el establecimiento de metas smart, el análisis de tareas, y las estrategias cognitivas y afectivas. además, la autora delinea las creencias de los maestros del centro en cuanto al papel del maestro y del estudiante, así como los problemas más urgentes para la enseñanza de la lengua que se detectaron. la autora también presenta una historia breve del desarrollo de las estrategias de los aprendices y la importancia de las estrategias y conocimientos metacognitivos. palabras clave: análisis de tareas, autogestión del aprendiz, establecimiento de metas, estrategias de aprendizaje. * e-mail: joan1234@gmail.com how to cite this article (apa, 6th ed.): rubin, j. (2019). helping teachers promote self-directed language learning: report of a fulbright scholar in ecuador. profile: issues in teachers’ professional development, 21(2), 145-153. https://doi.org/10.15446/profile.v21n2.75121. this article was received on september 25, 2018 and accepted on may 7, 2019. this is an open access article distributed under the terms of the creative commons license attribution-noncommercial-noderivatives 4.0 international license. consultation is possible at https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/. universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras146 rubin introduction given my experience helping teachers learn how to promote self-directed language learning in many countries around the world, i applied for and was granted a fulbright scholar award in ecuador. i was assigned to the language center at the universidad central del ecuador in quito, from september, 2016 to january, 2017. my objective was to make a meaningful contribution to teacher education that could result in the language teachers of the language center becoming more comfortable promoting more efficient and effective language learning. my approach, promoting learner self-management (lsm),1 involved introducing some 43 teachers to strategies that would help their students become more independent life-long language learners who know how to learn on their own. i had already facilitated the use of several of these concepts in quite a few masters’ action research projects that i directed at the universidad de la sabana, bogota, colombia. there, the teachers found that when they helped their learners develop the skills of lsm, as part of teaching the target language, the result was that class time not only promoted faster and more satisfying language learning but also provided a stronger basis for independent language learning. growing recognition of importance of english language proficiency in latin america during the present decade, several latin american countries (ecuador and colombia among others) have identified a need for a higher level of citizen proficiency in english (cronquist & fiszbein, 2017). as a result, each country has set a goal of becoming bilingual in 1 the definition of lsm used here is: “the ability to deploy procedures and to access knowledge and beliefs in order to accomplish learning goals in a dynamically changing environment” (rubin, 2001, p. 25). rubin (2001) details how procedures, knowledge, and beliefs work together to enable language learners to become more self-directed and autonomous. spanish and english within a decade. in ecuador, the current government has determined that promoting better and more advanced english language proficiency can address several goals: first, as a means of enhancing the country’s profile on the international stage and, second, providing citizen access to better employment opportunities resulting from more advanced english skills (british council education intelligence, 2015). to accomplish these goals the ecuadorian ministry of education (moe) made english a mandatory language starting in grade 8 with the eventual goal that students achieve the common european framework reference (cefr) for languages at the “b1” level upon graduation from high school. the moe also set the cefr b2 level as a requirement for graduation from university. and in 2016, the moe required primary level students to study english three hours a week (educacion.gob.ec). in order to achieve these goals, the moe recognized the critical importance of improving teacher skills in both the english language and in language teaching. the moe has been considering what the implications of these demands are. in particular, the british council report (british council education intelligence, 2015) noted that two of the biggest barriers for the moe toward the achievement of this level of english language competence by high school graduation were cost and time. a large portion of the cost involved bringing the english language skills of so many teachers up to and beyond the required student levels given that english had not been mandatory up to the time of the regulation. another cost would involve training in effective language teaching skills, especially for those teachers in the more remote parts of the country. in addition, the moe recognized that it has an extensive shortage of english language teachers (education.gob.ec). it would probably be helpful for the moe to consider the amount of time it can take a student (and in some cases language teachers) to achieve these levels of proficiency at the high school and university levels. 147profile: issues teach. prof. dev., vol. 21 no. 2, jul-dec, 2019. issn 1657-0790 (printed) 2256-5760 (online). bogotá, colombia. pages 145-153 helping teachers promote self-directed language learning: report of a fulbright scholar in ecuador the curriculum of the united states foreign service institute (fsi), based on many years of extensive training, may provide a useful basis for comparison. fsi provides intensive language training to united states diplomats and has determined the amount of time it takes to achieve working proficiency (cefr c1) in different languages. in order to achieve working proficiency in spanish, one of the easiest for native english speakers, it takes between 600 and 750 hours (u.s. department of state, n.d.). it should be noted that the conditions at fsi are quite different from that of public education in ecuador: fsi students are very motivated since they are professional diplomats who need to work hard and pass the exam to take up their overseas assignments; their students are not distracted by other courses—they spend the entire day studying the target language; teachers are native speakers who have permanent positions with the government; students have access to counseling on a regular basis, and the curriculum is routinely revised. this experience could provide some basis for the moe in determining the appropriate number of hours needed to achieve b2. the moe may want to take into consideration issues related to student and teacher motivation and how to increase it as well as quality of the curriculum and the preparation of their teachers, paying special attention to honing their skills in english since they are not native speakers. learner self-management as an effective language learning tool the development of the concepts of “learning to learn languages” reaches back quite a few years and started with the identification of the strategies of good language learners (rubin, 1975; stern, 1975) and evolved into an impressive list of cognitive and affective strategies used by both expert and novice learners (see cohen & macaro, 2007; o’malley & chamot, 1990; oxford, 1990, for three of many summaries of findings). prior to these beginnings, teacher education focused mainly on how to be a good teacher and on the teaching process without considering the role of the learner and the process of learning (see cohen, 2008, p. 7). following the recognition that effective language learners use strategies, scholars conducted a number of intervention studies to determine the effect of teaching these strategies to learners with the goal of improving their language skills. hassan et al. (2005) have conducted the most scientific and extensive evaluation of strategy intervention studies to date. their research focused on studies that considered the effect of teaching language learning strategies on the four skills, grammar, and pronunciation. hassan et al. used strict evaluation criteria to evaluate methodology, populations, and results. the report concluded that instruction in learner strategies did improve some language skills but that the methodology of many studies was often not comparable. in a more recent review, plonsky (2019) also notes the difficulty inherent in evaluating language learning strategy instruction (llsi) due to methodological differences but also observes issues in comparing outcomes due to the multifaceted nature of effects in llsi based on several variables. nonetheless, he concludes “the results for subgroups are mixed but mostly very much in favor of llsi” (p. 14). another step in understanding the “learning to learn” paradigm was that researchers began differentiating strategies into two major categories: cognitive/ affective strategies and metacognitive strategies. this led to the recognition of the critical contribution of metacognitive strategies and knowledge, that is, “thinking about one’s learning” to better the language learning process (wenden, 1998, 1999). by now, the critical importance of metacognitive strategies in promoting effective language learning has been well-documented in both educational psychology and second language acquisition research (anderson, 2002; pintrich, 2000; vandergrift & goh, 2012). it should be noted that the role metacognition plays in managing learning is often described as “selfregulation” or learner self-management (oxford, 2017; rubin, 2001). universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras148 rubin success in promoting lsm appears not to be tied to culture, language proficiency, task, or class. examples of the range of situations include successful transmission of lsm strategies in a wide range of contexts. one example involved the introduction of lsm to “entitled” university students who paid little or no attention while attending any of their classes. from the lsm strategies gained in my graduate course in second language acquisition at the universidad de las americas, cholula, mexico, their teacher (a student in my course) introduced both the concepts and strategies for raising awareness of language learning. the gratifying result was that his students’ attitude, motivation, and involvement completely changed because they knew what to do and how to do it. they were able to work on their own. this example illustrates that university level, highly educated students when provided with the tools to succeed experience clear changes occurring in their motivation to learn english. a different example comes from students living in a working class area of bogota, colombia. here the teacher introduced lsm to high school english language students (jaramillo, castrillón, & lópez, 2013). before learning about goal setting and task analysis (part of lsm), lópez’s students never spoke english in class. but once he introduced them to how to conduct a conversation (instead of just memorizing it) and facilitated the planning strategies of goal setting and task analysis, his students began to use english, not only in class but also with each other outside of class. upon seeing this kind of interaction, other teachers reported to lópez that they were amazed by his success. this example illustrates the potential for lsm with high school students where their context did not provide examples of the value of english in improving their employment situation. lately, some teacher educators have come to understand the critical importance of introducing this new paradigm, “promoting learning to learn skills” to teachers as well as to their students. the outcome of empowering teachers to promote lsm helps students coming from a wide variety of socio-economic backgrounds, with proficiency levels at a variety of school grade levels, and years at university become better language learners. for an example of how teacher educators can use lsm to promote teacher skills in promoting student use of lsm strategies see rubin and acero (2019). english language teaching at the language center during my fulbright sojourn in ecuador, i was attached to the language center at the universidad central del ecuador. this university was founded in 1826 and is the oldest and largest university in ecuador and one of the oldest in the americas. it has an enrollment of approximately 35,000 students. as a public higher education institution, only students who qualify for admission do not pay any tuition. students study english at the language center in their third and fourth years.2 the task of the english teachers at the language center is to teach these students sufficient english so that they can pass the required english exam at the cefr b1/b2 level in all four skills in order to graduate. each semester, 43 english teachers, whose own knowledge of english was not always that strong, worked with 3,400 students. the language center administration divided the students into separate classes according to their proficiency level and appropriate class size. generally, each class has about 30 students and meets with teachers about 7.5 hours per week. each teacher works with a total of 120 students in several different classes. some of the teachers are full-time tenured teachers who teach 22 hours a week. other teachers are contract employees and not tenured; some teach 30 hours a week; still others teach a few classes at the center but also have teaching assignments at other institutions. 2 students need to wait until their third year because the demand is so great the center cannot accommodate students from earlier years. 149profile: issues teach. prof. dev., vol. 21 no. 2, jul-dec, 2019. issn 1657-0790 (printed) 2256-5760 (online). bogotá, colombia. pages 145-153 helping teachers promote self-directed language learning: report of a fulbright scholar in ecuador working with language teachers at the language center, universidad central del ecuador before going to ecuador, i asked all 43 language teachers to respond to a questionnaire in order to facilitate my assessment of their understanding of the learning process. the answers to these questions especially helped in ascertaining their background knowledge about lsm and helped determine my teaching foci. their responses to two questions were particularly helpful: (1) what their language teaching challenges, issues, and concerns were and (2) what the appropriate roles for the teachers and for the students were. among the language teaching concerns were the following: students did not see the utility of learning english and expressed some anger that although there was no credit given for the english courses, they were required to pass an english exam to meet graduation requirements. the language teachers also noted that given the graduation requirement, the number of class hours was insufficient to enable students to pass the exam. teachers added that some students began their english studies at the university with little or no knowledge of english and that some students had little knowledge of how to learn a language. the second section of the questionnaire dealt with these teachers’ views of what the roles of the teacher and the learner were. their responses describing the role of the teacher elaborated two different approaches to teaching. some focused mainly on the task of teaching the “language” while others also dealt with facilitating “learning to learn.” during the first week, i conducted workshops every day for all 43 teachers, all of whom were on break from classes. we first discussed their responses to the question of a teacher’s role in presenting the language. we considered how to include the learning process as well as the language. for example, some answers included “making lessons more relevant by creating appropriate situations and providing meaningful tasks.” given this answer, we further talked about how the teachers could determine what was appropriate and meaningful. one approach suggested was to allow the learner to learn to make their own choices as to materials, approach, and tasks; ones that were relevant to their lives and appropriate for their interests and learning styles. another issue involved what the teacher’s role in helping students with their difficulties was. in order to clarify their responses, i asked questions to help them consider how to do more than teach the language. i invited them to think about the learning process and the teacher’s role in facilitating it. if “helping students with difficulties” only meant that the teacher provided answers to address learner’s difficulties, then that would constitute focusing only on the language. i proposed that students also needed to learn how to identify and solve problems by themselves. if teachers provided strategies and activities to help students practice identifying their difficulties and possible solutions, their students would then acquire critical tools to work on their own (thus increasing their skills to manage their own learning). some teachers noted that, in addition to helping students with the language, they also saw the teacher’s role as someone who would guide or facilitate the learning process and help students become more independent learners. given these responses, it was noted that my presentations over the next three months would help them consider some teaching lsm strategies to guide understanding and skill in developing student ability to examine their own learning process. other teachers suggested that their role included motivating and encouraging students. a consideration of how to do this highlighted the importance of helping students recognize and use what they already knew and determine how what they wanted to learn would be relevant to their education and future professions. some noted that they did bring up the importance of english and some of the domains in which it might be helpful in their first classes. i advised that to further emphasize how english might be useful in their lives, they universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras150 rubin ask students to specify why a particular task or exercise might be useful for their future use of the language (see rubin & mccoy, 2008 for an example of how to set purpose3 and smart goals). another teacher suggested that it was important to respect learner differences. in order to do this, i suggested that offering choices as to materials, topics, speed of work, and collaborative style would be one way to begin to do this (see chamot & genovese, 2009 for some positive and creative ways to offer choices and the positive outcomes of so doing). answers to the question about the role of the learner revealed two distinct views: some described the learner as a recipient of knowledge while others saw the learner’s role as one of active participants in the learning process. examples of learners as recipients of knowledge included the following teacher statements: learners should get involved with the language, do their best, work hard, be on time, want to learn, and demonstrate their knowledge and understanding through exercises, tests, and exams. teacher responses that viewed the learner as an active participant included: the learner constructs his/ her own knowledge and the role of the learner is to be discovering, building, creating, analyzing, questioning, and challenging. i noted that learners can become more actively involved if teachers facilitate this by providing appropriate exercises or information. i indicated that it can also be very useful to remind learners of their own background knowledge and provide opportunities and exercises that demonstrate how useful background knowledge can be. concurrent with the concept of the learner as a constructor of knowledge was the recognition that active learners are aware of their responsibility for their 3 it is critical to differentiate goal from purpose. goal refers to what the user wants to learn, whereas purpose refers to why the user wants to learn something. that is, how will accomplishing this goal add to the user’s future use of the language? rubin and mccoy (2008) found this to be most useful in helping learners consider issues of relevance. by considering purpose, the task (or the what) becomes much more meaningful. own learning. in order to increase the process of learner awareness, it was suggested that teachers discuss with their students what the learning process consisted of and provide suggestions as to how to use this information to improve their learning (other teaching strategies to raise awareness of the learning process can be found in clemente & rubin, 2008). finally, one of the teachers noted that learners needed to be open to making mistakes and learning from them. it is clear that some students may need help with how to do this. i provided the teachers with some exercises they could use to help learners recognize their mistakes and consider how to address them. one helpful awareness-raising activity is to ask students to write journals to reflect on anything they do not understand or problems they might have with a class, an exercise or material presented (for suggestions on how to write a diary see rubin, 2003). once students notice their problems, they can be asked to identify solutions to these problems on their own. in addition, students can be invited to share their journals with their peers for suggestions of other solutions. smart goal setting is an acronym which stands for the following: s = specific, m = measurable, a = achievable, r = relevant, t = time-based. for something to be specific, the user must identify his/her specific goal; to be measurable, it must be something that the user can observe or measure by themselves, not by using outside measures like tests or grades; to be achievable, the goal must be one that the user believes he/she has the time, knowledge, and resources to accomplish; to be relevant, the goal must be important to some real life goal, beyond a pedagogical one; and to be time-based, the user needs to set a realistic time frame. each of these elements interacts with and serves to balance each other. so, if the user cannot come up with a measure, it may be that the goal is not specific enough. or, if the user determines that his/her goal requires too much time or requires too much unknown knowledge, then the user may choose to reduce or restate his/her goal. 151profile: issues teach. prof. dev., vol. 21 no. 2, jul-dec, 2019. issn 1657-0790 (printed) 2256-5760 (online). bogotá, colombia. pages 145-153 helping teachers promote self-directed language learning: report of a fulbright scholar in ecuador if the user cannot accomplish his/her goal within the time frame then the user either needs to change his/ her goal or the strategies used to accomplish the goal. the values of facilitating the use of smart goal setting are that learners set goals that are relevant to their own circumstances, come to recognize their strengths and weaknesses, and learn to recognize their successes as well as where more time and effort are needed. since language learning usually takes much more time than what can be learned in a classroom, smart goal setting prepares learners for learning on their own. once the learner has clearly established smart goals, considering the nature of the task and what its characteristics are can facilitate consideration of appropriate learning strategies (i.e., task analysis). task analysis requires the student to consider what kind of task he/she is asked to work on, that is, what kind of skill the task requires, what kind of task it is, what kind of language the user could expect, and what purpose the task could address. this kind of analysis helps learners anticipate what they can expect and recognize what they know and do not know. once learners have anticipated many aspects of the text, they are then asked to consider what learning strategies they could use given these characteristics of the text. one important aspect of motivation is the concept of relevance. the adult education literature points to the critical importance of relevance and its effect on learning. they suggest it is basic to the learning process. adult education (dembo & seli, 2016; rutgers online degrees, n.d.; shorlin, n.d.) repeatedly observed a more positive impact when learners understand why or for what purpose they are asked to do a task. shorlin (n.d.) noted that learners learn best when they are given an opportunity to direct what they need to know, that is, when they might expect to use any aspect of the subject being taught. rutgers online degrees (n.d.) observed that “to thrive in most learning environments, they [the learner] must be clear on how each lesson fits into their goals for self-advancement” (“the principles of adult learning theory”, para. 3). the more closely related to the learner’s specific purposes, the more motivating the task can be. the same task could serve several different purposes. thompson and rubin (1996) identified four major purposes: pedagogical, professional, social, and personal. thus, for any task each learner may assign a different purpose to it. i also encouraged teachers to practice what they preach. if they are to understand how to promote their students’ skills in lsm, it can be helpful for teachers to start using lsm to plan their own lessons. rubin and acero (2019) provide examples of how to apply lsm in lesson planning. other activities in quito in addition to the classes at universidad central del ecuador, the municipality of quito school district asked me to give a few workshops in lsm for high school students in the international baccalaureate degree program at the unidad educativa bicentenario to help improve their writing in english. students were in two classes at two levels (cefr a1 and a2). my focus was to introduce smart goal setting for writing. the students began practicing smart goal setting by writing what their career goals were. initially, they were not very specific, so i asked them to consider how to make their goals more specific and appropriate (i.e., ones that they had the knowledge, time, and resources to accomplish). a lively discussion about how to do this ensued in english. here are a couple of examples of goals that were not very specific and which would have taken a great deal of effort to accomplish. i do not think the students took these factors into account when they first wrote these goals. for example, one student wanted to study medicine in poland but did not know a word of polish. another wanted to study in korea because he knew someone from korea despite the fact that he did not know any korean! for those who had more appropriate goals we came to recognize that some of the goals were long term and needed to be broken down into smaller more achievable goals. we then went universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras152 rubin on to practice ways the smart goal setting strategy could be used to improve their english writing assignments. conclusions teachers at the language center who attended my workshops tried out many of the activities and teaching strategies that i presented to promote self-management: smart goal setting, journal writing, and memory strategies in their classrooms. these teachers reported that using lsm teaching strategies allowed them to promote using a “learning how to learn” approach in their teaching and found that introducing them resulted in their students paying more attention to the learning process. nonetheless, my major conclusion from this 4-month experience was that in order for teachers to take class time to include attention to the process of learning, activities that promote learner self-management/self-regulation need to be incorporated into student textbooks, the curriculum, and teacher manuals. my impression is that very few of these currently do so and those that do introduce terms like learning strategies focus on cognitive strategies rather than on metacognitive ones. if language teachers are to understand the importance of and the techniques to promote autonomy, self-regulation, and learner self-management, teachers will need more experience in applying lsm to their lesson planning (rubin & acero, 2019) and opportunities to use action research to solve their teaching concerns to determine the most effective teaching strategies for their students. although several ministries of education state their goals as learner autonomy, they will need to understand how much time and teacher education it will take to accomplish this important goal. references anderson, n. j. 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(2013). teaching learners to set smart goals to increase their self-efficacy (master’s thesis). universidad de la sabana, chía, colombia. o’malley, m., & chamot, a. u. (1990). learner strategies in second language acquisition. cambridge, uk: cambridge university press. https://doi.org/10.1017/ cbo9781139524490. oxford, r. l. (1990). language learning strategies: what every teacher should know. new york, us: newbury house publishers. 153profile: issues teach. prof. dev., vol. 21 no. 2, jul-dec, 2019. issn 1657-0790 (printed) 2256-5760 (online). bogotá, colombia. pages 145-153 helping teachers promote self-directed language learning: report of a fulbright scholar in ecuador oxford, r. l. (2017). teaching and researching language learning strategies: self-regulation in context (2nd ed.). new york, us: routledge. pintrich, p. r. 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(1996). can strategy instruction improve listening comprehension? foreign language annals, 29(3), 331-342. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1944-9720.1996.tb01246.x. u.s. department of state. (n.d.). fsi’s experience with language learning. retrieved from https://www.state.gov/m/fsi/ sls/c78549.htm. vandergrift, l., & goh, c. c. m. (2012). teaching and learning second language listening: metacognition in action. new york, us: routledge. https://doi.org/10.4324/9780203843376. wenden, a. l. (1998). metacognitive knowledge and language learning. applied linguistics, 19(4), 515-537. https://doi. org/10.1093/applin/19.4.515. wenden, a. l. (1999). an introduction to metacognitive knowledge and beliefs in language learning: beyond the basics. system, 27(4), 435-600. https://doi.org/10.1016/ s0346-251x(99)00043-3. about the author joan rubin, a pioneer in research on “good language learners”, has given teacher workshops and classes around the world in learner self-management, listening comprehension and self-access advising. two of dr. rubin’s books focus on learner self-management: how to be a more successful language learner (with i. thompson) and learner strategies in language learning (with a. wenden). acknowledgments many thanks to professor claudia acero, universidad de la sabana, bogota, colombia, and ellen comis, u.s. peace corps, quito, ecuador, for outstanding editing contributions to this article. 139profile: issues teach. prof. dev., vol. 21 no. 1, jan-jun, 2019. issn 1657-0790 (printed) 2256-5760 (online). bogotá, colombia. pages 139-153 https://doi.org/10.15446/profile.v21n1.71721 the use of plotagon to enhance the english writing skill in secondary school students el uso de plotagon para mejorar la habilidad de escritura en inglés en estudiantes de secundaria derly yuleith guzmán gámez1* johana andrea moreno cuellar2** universidad de la amazonia, florencia, colombia this paper reports on an action research study aimed at implementing plotagon to enhance english writing skill. the study involved 18 students from 10th grade of a public secondary school in colombia. the findings showed that the use of plotagon promoted students’ motivation to write through an interactive and attractive interphase to create digital stories. consequently, students created their own digital story working in pairs and as a result increased their vocabulary, improved their english writing skill and other language skills. the data collection tools (surveys, tests, journals, observations, and dialogs as students’ production) showed that plotagon is a pedagogical tool that promotes students’ english writing in a fun and meaningful way. key words: digital story, english language learning, information and communications technologies, plotagon, teenage learners, writing skill. este artículo versa sobre investigación acción orientada a la implementación de plotagon para mejorar la habilidad de escritura en inglés. el estudio involucra 18 estudiantes de grado 10 de una escuela pública de secundaria en colombia. los hallazgos mostraron que el uso de plotagon promovió la motivación de los estudiantes para escribir a través de una interfaz interactiva y atractiva para crear historias digitales. en consecuencia, los estudiantes crearon su propia historia digital trabajando en parejas y como resultado ellos incrementaron su vocabulario, mejoraron su habilidad de escritura en inglés y demás habilidades del lenguaje. los instrumentos de recolección de datos (encuestas, pruebas, diarios, observaciones y diálogos como producción de los estudiantes) mostraron que plotagon es una herramienta pedagógica que promueve la escritura en inglés de los estudiantes de una manera divertida y significativa. palabras clave: aprendices adolescentes, aprendizaje del inglés, habilidad de escritura, historias digitales, plotagon, tecnologías de la información y comunicación. * e-mail: de.guzman@udla.edu.co ** e-mail: jo.moreno@udla.edu.co how to cite this article (apa, 6th ed.): guzmán gámez, d. y., & moreno cuellar, j. a. (2019). the use of plotagon to enhance the english writing skill in secondary school students. profile: issues in teachers’ professional development, 21(1), 139-153. https://doi.org/10.15446/ profile.v21n1.71721. this article was received on april 15, 2018 and accepted on october 23, 2018. this is an open access article distributed under the terms of the creative commons license attribution-noncommercial-noderivatives 4.0 international license. consultation is possible at https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/. universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras140 guzmán gámez & moreno cuellar introduction with the advancement of technology, teachers have unlimited access to resources and tools to facilitate students’ language learning. hence, the use of information and communications technologies (icts) in language education has increased in the classrooms and many teachers use them as a supporting tool in language learning or as a means to motivate students. according to yunus (2007), icts can be regarded as an important tool to enhance, for instance, the teaching of writing. therefore, teachers need to be prepared to face the challenge to use ict tools in schools. this project intends to enhance students’ english writing skill at a public secondary school in a rural area in colombia. the main tool to achieve this objective is plotagon, a software that allows students to create interactive digital stories collaboratively, based on the topics recommended in the estándares básicos de competencias en lenguas extranjeras: inglés1 (ministerio de educación nacional [men], 2006). the study’s leading research question is: to what extent does the use of plotagon as a pedagogical tool help enhance the english writing skills of tenth-grade students? in that sense, we hope to show the advantages of plotagon as an effective tool to facilitate the teaching of writing and give evidence of its positive effect on students’ motivation and interaction. thus, we expect that teachers may see this as an alternative ict tool to explore and incorporate into their curricula. literature review writing as one of the four core language skills, writing is considered as a communication tool that involves such subskills as spelling, punctuation, and grammar (harris, mckenzie, fitzsimmons, & turbill, 2003). 1 guidelines for teaching english as foreign language given by the ministry of education in colombia. moreover, writing is a complex process that requires many skills: additionally, students also have to learn some concepts such as the rules to build a paragraph (joko saputro, 2013). brown (2001) says that “writing needs a process of thinking, drafting and revising that requires specialized skills” (p. 335). on the other hand, al-jumaily (2015) states that: writing is the process of using symbols to communicate ideas. it is a system/method of representing language in visual or tactile form. writing is the 4th language skill that learners need to work hard on to master. it’s the mirror that reflects/shows one’s knowledge about a language. (p. 29) similarly, joko saputro (2013) considers writing as a way to deliver what is in our minds. however, before doing that, we need to be aware of the proper text or genre to clearly convey our meaning. teaching writing according to indriani (2015), in teaching writing it is necessary that the teacher explain in a clear way what kind of text students are going to write. in addition, teachers need to develop different materials and decide what media or tool to use to facilitate teaching/learning activities. gillespie and graham (2011), in their article about evidence-based practices for teaching writing, explain some techniques that seem to work when teaching students to write. the authors note the complexity of the writing process in the sense that it demands a series of higher order cognitive skills. for that reason, teachers struggle to find effective methods to teach writing and, due to its complexities, most students would find writing both challenging and frustrating. in this respect, gillespie and graham (2011) propose a series of recommendations based on different scientific studies in grades 4-12, in order to identify effective methods for teaching writing, some of those strategies relevant for our study are: 141profile: issues teach. prof. dev., vol. 21 no. 1, jan-jun, 2019. issn 1657-0790 (printed) 2256-5760 (online). bogotá, colombia. pages 139-153 the use of plotagon to enhance the english writing skill in secondary school students • writing strategies: this consists of teaching students some strategies for improving their writing products which involve teaching general processes such as planning, revising, and editing. • collaborative writing: this strategy allows students to work together to write applying the steps for the writing process. teachers here are expected to provide students with a well-defined cooperative writing framework where both individual and group work are properly assessed. • word processing: promotes students to use a computer for completing written tasks. students can access different tools to enhance their written compositions. in this case, teachers should ensure that students are familiar with the computer and the required software so as not to hinder autonomous work. collaborative writing this kind of writing involves two or more people working together to produce a written document (nordquist, 2017). similarly, storch (2011) states that collaborative writing is “the joint production or the co-authoring of a text by more than two writers” (p. 275). furthermore, according to fernández dobao (2012), the benefits of collaborative writing include the production by students of more grammatically accurate pieces. in the same way, koay (2017) points out that vygostky’s “sociocultural theory of learning suggests that collaborative writing allows group members to provide and receive peer support” (a holistic view, para. 2). research on icts as tools to improve english writing zakaria, yunus, nazri, and shah (2016) identified students’ experiences using the tool storybird in writing english as a second language (esl) narrative text. the population chosen for this research consisted of 15 students from a private university in malaysia. the findings showed that most of the students had positive experiences using storybird in writing a narrative text in english, evidenced by the fact that most of them were aware of the tendency to improve their vocabulary and the growing ability to write more complex structures. gregori-signes (2014) collected and analyzed 50 samples of digital stories produced by l2 students at a secondary school in valencia, spain. the study showed that digital storytelling allows students to include and use ict tools effectively; moreover, students can develop full awareness of the issue chosen for their story. in addition, digital storytelling can encourage critical thinking and selfand group-reflection. the evaluation of the tool was “positive since it allows the use of the social environment as an educational medium in and from which students learn” (p. 247). joko saputro (2013) carried out an experimental study with eighth-graders at a high school in indonesia. the participants were divided into two groups: experimental and control. the experimental group was taught using digital storytelling and the control group was taught using conventional techniques. writing was measured by using an analytical method suggested by brown and bailey (as cited in brown, 2000). the results showed that the mean of the experimental group was higher than that of the control group, that is, there was a meaningful difference in students’ achievements between the two groups, in favor of the experimental one. as a conclusion of this research, the use of digital storytelling as a visual aid can improve students’ mastery in writing narrative. it also showed how digital storytelling provided good support to the teaching-learning process. reyes torres, pich ponce, and garcía pastor (2012) analyzed the usefulness “of including digital storytelling within a didactic sequence in order to work on linguistic routines” (p. 3), for instance, greetings and leave-takings in efl. the participants in this research were first-year students from the school of education at universidad de valencia (spain), divided into two groups of 30 students each. in order “to improve their universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras142 guzmán gámez & moreno cuellar ability to adapt their language skill to specific situations within common daily interaction” (p. 5), the researchers designed a didactic sequence based on several workshops that were developed in class using the tool photo story 3. the results of this study showed in the final artefacts a clear improvement related to the use of linguistic routines, such as varied range of expressions and more complex structures used to start and end a conversation. furthermore, students were able to create coherent stories that included a narrative and a dialogue. in addition, students were asked to send in their scripts before creating the videos in order to check out their progress as well as their use of grammar (reyes torres et al., 2012). quiroga and toro nieto (2015) carried out a collaborative action research which analyzed how the use of goanimate in cooperative work activities assisted participants in the development of their writing skill. in this study, 74 students from fourth and sixth grade with an a1 level at a public school in bogotá, colombia, participated. the findings revealed that cooperative work enhanced participants’ writing skills as they increased their ability to work in groups while incorporating peer-assessment strategies. as a result, their writing productions showed improvements in terms of content, grammar, and vocabulary because goanimate, together with the cooperative work, helped students enhance their dialogic text by helping them increase their writing awareness. the study by herrera ramirez (2013) showed how the use of collaborative writing through the tool storybird promotes the creation of stories collaboratively; the research led two groups of learners to improve certain specific aspects of their writing skill. the first group had 15 students and the second one 10 students from the general english course at a language institute in bogotá, colombia. the findings showed that collaborative writing supported by storybird encouraged students to create narrative texts; also, their positive attitude towards the production of stories increased. furthermore, learners’ vocabulary knowledge improved and attempts to use complex language forms to write their stories also increased. it is important to clarify that in the local context where our study took place, no studies were found about the use of ict tools to enhance the writing skill due to the limited access students have to technological appliances in this part of the country. for that reason, this research project is relevant in order to know how to apply or implement ict tools to help students in a public institution to enhance their writing skill, in this case, by using the tool plotagon. digital story this term emerged as a method used by community theatre workers to allow the recording, production, and dissemination of stories at the center for digital storytelling in california in the late 1980s (lambert, 2009). according to normann (2011), a digital story is a short story, only 2-3 minutes long, where the personal element is highlighted, where the storyteller uses his own voice to tell his own story. the personal element is emphasised, and can be linked to other people, a place, an interest or to anything that will give the story a personal touch. (p. 125) even though there are different definitions of digital storytelling, most of them focus on the use of multimedia tools such as graphics, audio, video, and animation to tell a story (smeda, dakich, & sharda, 2014). according to benmayor (2008), digital storytelling is “a short multimedia story that combines voice, image, and music” (p. 202). digital story is considered an effective pedagogical tool that increases students’ motivation and provides students “a learning environment conducive for story construction through collaboration, reflection and interpersonal communication. students can use multimedia software tools as well as other technology skills to create digital stories based on given educational issues” (smeda et al., 2014, introduction section, para. 2). 143profile: issues teach. prof. dev., vol. 21 no. 1, jan-jun, 2019. issn 1657-0790 (printed) 2256-5760 (online). bogotá, colombia. pages 139-153 the use of plotagon to enhance the english writing skill in secondary school students plotagon plotagon is a very intuitive content creation software (https://plotagon.com/) that can be used in education due to its text-based movie creation interface, as a storytelling tool for creating short or longer films. plotagon has been an educational app that allows students to create instant animated videos. students can create their own characters, choose scenes, write dialogs, and add emotions, sound effects, and actions. this software offers a free trial option for individual storytellers, a licensed version for students and educators, and another one for designers and professional users (plotagon education, n.d.). according to love (2013), plotagon can produce animated movies from text dialogues. its use in the classroom is practically endless; students can use it to write short scripts that can become movies as can be seen in figure 1. also, it can be used in different ways: for creative writing, report back situations (feedback), and to provide creative ways of adding to presentations. besides, love states that plotagon is quite valuable pedagogically because it produces graphic output from a text-based input, which is useful for a foreign language classroom. method this is an action research study, described by lewis (as cited in collins & spiegel, 1995) “as a spiral of circles of research that each begin with a description of what is occurring in the ‘field of action’ followed by an action plan” (a definition of action research, para. 1). hopkins (1993) defined four cycles in an action research, which involves an action plan, action, evaluation, and reflection. on the other hand, tripp (2005) states that action research is mainly a strategy—for the development of teachers as researchers—used to improve their teaching and students’ learning. according to richardson (1994), action research is a practical inquiry, which is conducted by practitioners or teachers in order to help them understand their students and their contexts. teachers can observe the situations in the classroom, identify different problems, think about what and how to change, make changes, evaluate the impact of the changes on the situation, and start again. context and participants this research project was carried out at a public school located in a rural area in colombia over 5 weeks figure 1. digital story created by students using plotagon universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras144 guzmán gámez & moreno cuellar in 2017. the school offers three education levels: preschool, primary, and secondary. the participants were 18 students (9 women, 9 men) who were in tenth grade with an age range from 15 to 17. the participants’ english level is low mainly due to the lack of exposure to this language. most of them come from remote schools that only offer up to the 9th grade and where there is usually just one teacher in charge of all subjects (which are taught in spanish). with regard to their socioeconomic situation, most students’ families have suffered displacement by different armed groups and most families receive help from the government through programs such as familias en acción (families in action).2 despite the situation, the majority of them have the basic things or the materials they need such as school supplies and uniform. the school provides students breakfast and lunch. data gathering instruments in order to gather the data for this study, the following instruments were used: surveys survey research is “the collection of information from a sample of individuals through their responses to questions” (check & schutt, 2012, p. 160). in this study, we designed and applied two surveys; the first one at the beginning, which had the purpose of understanding students’ perception and expectations of the implementation of plotagon to improve their writing skill. the second one performed at the end, in order to find out the students’ progress and the effectiveness of the implementation of the tool. test tests are useful tools of research in the educational field. marwat (2010) points out that tests are designed 2 government program for families with low economic resources in order to subsidize children’s education. to describe and measure samples of aspects of human behavior. this study applied a pre-test at the beginning in order to know the students’ initial english language proficiency and a post-test at the end to know the impact of the interventions. the tests consisted of a 67-item questionnaire divided into five skills: grammar, reading, listening, speaking, and writing. the final score was obtained by using a comparative chart. direct observation according to tamayo y tamayo (2011), this is a technique applied by the researcher to collect the data through observation; it involves selecting, watching, and recording the behavior and characteristics of the object under study. this process requires the use of different tools in order to gather data, such as recording, taking photographs, videotaping, and so on. students’ personal journal this instrument was used by all students involved in this research in order to reflect on their behavior, attitude, and the task itself during the classes by answering three simple questions related to their conclusion after performing each activity. similarly, mcdonough (1994) points out that journals are used to record mainly in a written way what is observed, perceived, felt, experienced, interpreted, and so on, after each class. students’ artefacts in the research project, the scripts and digital stories developed by students during the interventions were treated as objects of investigation in this study. data analysis the data collected were analyzed, compared, and systematized in order to provide information on the students’ production and opinions regarding the use of plotagon. the purpose of this research was to use a pedagogical intervention to analyze the 145profile: issues teach. prof. dev., vol. 21 no. 1, jan-jun, 2019. issn 1657-0790 (printed) 2256-5760 (online). bogotá, colombia. pages 139-153 the use of plotagon to enhance the english writing skill in secondary school students results obtained from the students’ written production through the creation of digital stories with plotagon. the research project, which lasted three months and three weeks, was carried out through the stages described next. stage 1: introduction, diagnostic, and expectations in this stage, we shared with the students some information about the research project, that is, objectives, expectations, and the commitment required by the students. also, during this stage, we designed and applied a pre-test that included 67 questions classified by skill: grammar, listening, speaking, writing, and reading (it also involved some micro skills such as grammar and vocabulary) in order to know the participants’ writing skill level. similarly, we arranged and applied a survey in order to know students’ perception and expectations about the implementation of plotagon in their english classes. stage 2: execution of the classes during this stage, we considered the participants’ needs, interests, and expectations before implementing plotagon. a workshop was developed in order to teach students how to use the tool. after that, students wrote the scripts of the dialogs based on the following topics: sports and hobbies, environmental problems, social problems, and love and friendship. students arranged in pairs to write their scripts (approximately 500 words). at the end of the interventions, they used plotagon to type their scripts in order to convert them into digital stories. in total, students wrote 38 dialogs and implemented them in plotagon during five interventions for five weeks. students spent four hours per week writing the scripts in accordance with the given instructions and creating their dialogs using plotagon. next, we will describe the interventions conducted in this study. first intervention in the first intervention, the purpose of the project was introduced to students. after that, the tool plotagon was presented with the intention of familiarizing students with it. this intervention helped students understand the impact of the tool at first sight and got their attention, as well as encouraging them to improve their writing skill. after the explanation of the tool and its uses, an example of a dialog made in plotagon was shown; then, students practiced on their computers working in pairs. they created two characters and a short dialog according to the given instructions. this intervention had a positive impact, because students evidenced in their dairies that they felt motivated, they liked the tool, and they enjoyed using it. second intervention in the second intervention, students were provided with the topic related to hobbies and sports. the vocabulary was introduced through a video; then, the structure of a dialog was explained. students worked in pairs for 25 minutes writing the script of the dialog using the dictionary to look up unknown words. students chose their classmates for this task. some of the mistakes found in the students’ writing were: word order, structure of questions, ing form, and lack of vocabulary. the interaction among students was good, although two pairs showed lack of interest at the beginning. after receiving feedback on the scripts, the students worked in plotagon; they created the characters, chose the scenes, and typed the corrected script. the interaction with the tool was satisfactory because they learnt to use it quite fast with minimal difficulties. when they played their dialogs, students felt excited and motivated with their creations and practiced their listening skill at the same time. third intervention in this intervention, the vocabulary on environmental problems was introduced and students were shown a universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras146 guzmán gámez & moreno cuellar set of slides in powerpoint with different problems that are affecting the environment. students identified with the topic because the school is agro-ecological and promotes environmental care and protection. in order to improve their writing, it was necessary to teach students how to punctuate a dialog through a sample video. to increase their vocabulary and background knowledge about the topic, students were given a reading about environmental problems in colombia. in this intervention, students worked in pairs for 75 minutes; most of them focused their scripts on the environmental problem in the school, and in their dairies, the participants registered their interest in the topic and the importance of pondering on this kind of issues. the common mistakes in their writings were: use of auxiliary verbs and structure of questions. due to the time given, students experienced more writing production and increased the amount of written words. on the other hand, students showed their social skills working in pairs and supporting each other when they needed it. after their scripts were corrected, they created their digital stories using plotagon. students had fun during the creation of their characters, choice of scenes and actions to make the dialog more interesting. most students registered in their dairies how comfortable they felt when using the tool and they were more satisfied with their writing process because they were improving. fourth intervention during the fourth intervention, students wrote their scripts about social problems. this vocabulary was introduced through pictures related to the topic and students had to guess what social problems were presented; then, students were shown a short description of the problem and instructed to correct and actively guess the words. afterward, they read a dialog about poverty as an example of a social problem. in this intervention most students worked in pairs and had 60 minutes to write the script. in this process, most of them made fewer mistakes and increased their written productions; however, some pairs’ performance went down because the given topic had many unknown words for them, and this made their ideas not flow as in the previous topics. it is important to highlight that students learnt to use the tool easily; when they typed the scripts, they could play and see their character and listen to the pronunciation. they concentrated on their dialogs and added actions to their characters and, in some cases, added music according to the scene, showing expertise in the use of the tool. fifth intervention in the last intervention, the topic was provided by students in the first survey; they wanted to write about love and friendship. the vocabulary was presented through the song “count on me” by bruno mars. students felt motivated singing the song and they learnt the chorus easily. then, a list of expressions and words related to the topic was given to students to use in their scripts. during this intervention, students had 75 minutes to write their dialogs, taking into account all the tips and resources given in the previous interventions. the scripts had few mistakes, evidencing a great advance in their writing production, but some students showed more progress than others. students wrote more words in the second than first script. they enjoyed writing about this topic because, as they registered in their diaries, they identified with their daily life relationships. one of the students wrote: “i liked to be able to have fun with the program as it provides a great variety of actions so we can interact in a funny way”. after having their scripts corrected, they typed it in plotagon; they showed mastery in the use of the tool facilitating the implementation of this project. every time students worked with the tool, they registered in their diaries they felt as if they were playing and at the same time learning. they liked the classes because they enjoyed using the tool and playing. it allowed them to develop their creativity. in addition, most students were engaged with the development of the project and they checked 147profile: issues teach. prof. dev., vol. 21 no. 1, jan-jun, 2019. issn 1657-0790 (printed) 2256-5760 (online). bogotá, colombia. pages 139-153 the use of plotagon to enhance the english writing skill in secondary school students their progress every class, which encouraged them to improve in each intervention. stage 3: analysis and report in the last stage, we analyzed the data collected during the plotagon interventions. the data were gathered in a journal, in which we wrote down what we perceived during the classes as well as observations. in addition, the students’ artefacts were collected to analyze their progress and at the end of the interventions, we applied a post-test to compare the results with the pre-test. additionally, we applied a survey at the end of the process in order to evaluate the effectiveness of the tool and to improve students’ writing skill. finally, we analyzed the results and wrote the final report. findings and discussion in the first place, the findings showed a significant progress in students’ written production, which was evident in their scripts (see table 1), and in the way they communicated their ideas at the beginning and end of the interventions, involving other skills to write a dialog, such as grammar, vocabulary, punctuation, and spelling. in addition, the post-test corroborated that the whole group improved in the writing skill. likewise, with each written production, students table 1. number of written words per dialog first script second script third script fourth script hobbies and sports environmental problems social problems love and friendship student 1 84 257 380 430 student 2 143 375 484 527 student 3 84 96 105 166 student 4 60 107 178 117 student 5 65 145 123 181 student 6 92 96 103 155 student 7 21 120 114 150 student 8 45 88 101 150 student 9 60 100 123 117 student 10 92 152 170 217 student 11 23 100 111 120 student 12 21 152 105 217 student 13 69 96 111 130 student 14 23 77 111 181 student 15 65 120 111 166 student 16 143 120 114 130 student 17 45 88 170 107 student 18 23 77 103 181 written words 1158 2805 2817 3741 time 25 min 75 min 60 min 75 min universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras148 guzmán gámez & moreno cuellar increased their vocabulary using the new words and expressions given in each class. bello (1997) argues that writing helps to increase language acquisition when a student puts across their ideas with words, sentences, and paragraphs in an assertive way, improving their vocabulary and grammar. in general, table 1 shows that the whole group started writing 1158 words and finished with 3741 words, showing about a 67% improvement in their written production. detailed data show an increasing trend along the whole process that could be evidenced in a progressive rise of 1647 words from the first to the second paper and a slight growth of 12 words from the second to the third paper. in the last paper the number of words had a substantial increase of 924 words. on the other hand, at the end of the process one student achieved the goal of 500 words proposed at the beginning of the interventions. however, it is important to highlight that the whole group increased the length of their scripts thus improving their writing skill. the students’ written production reflected their context: most students wrote about their experiences related to the topics in each dialog. for instance, they mentioned some environmental problems in the school such as water pollution in the lake and some social problems, such as bullying and poverty in their municipality. in addition, some students based their scripts on their daily life, reflecting also their vocabulary knowledge in english. as mentioned above, writing allows us to express our way of thinking (joko saputro, 2013) and to demonstrate our language proficiency (al-jumaily, 2015). the findings identified in the interventions, the students’ and teachers’ journal, and the final survey show that teaching writing in a foreign language is a complex process that requires teachers to find new ways to motivate and direct students’ attention. for this reason, different strategies like brainstorming, model dialogs, and vocabulary flashcards were used during the interventions to teach writing and help students to enhance their written production. from those strategies, the ones that proved to be the most effective were the model dialogs and vocabulary flashcards because students felt more confident and had a higher written production in terms of words. here, it is worth remembering those strategies that gillespie and graham (2011) propose to improve students’ writing and which include general processes such as planning, revising, and editing. the outcomes of the dialogs (students’ final product), students’ diaries, and final survey suggests that writing in pairs facilitated the writing process, and students shared their ideas and opinions to write their dialogs while learning from each other. as an example, one of the students said that he had learnt to work in a group, to do dialogs, use the program, and create new scenes; whereas another student stated that he had learnt to do a dialog using new vocabulary to express environmental problems with the modal verb should. in accordance with gillespie and graham (2011), collaborative writing is an effective technique that allows learners to work together to write, putting into practice the steps and instructions given for the writing process. this writing strategy helped students to provide peer feedback when one of the students did not know something or had doubts about vocabulary or grammar. storch (2005) found that collaborative writing was a positive experience for most students and provided them the opportunity to gather their ideas and supply each other with feedback. the use of ict tools motivated and engaged students to write and learn english. students also said that they had enjoyed themselves while performing the tasks suggested in plotagon. in addition, they expressed that the use of technology in the english class promoted their interest in language learning. similarly, the national council for curriculum and assessment (https://www. ncca.ie/en) points out that the use of ict in educational contexts increases the effectiveness of learning and is a motivational factor in students’ learning. these findings are aligned with yunus, nordin, salehi, embi, 149profile: issues teach. prof. dev., vol. 21 no. 1, jan-jun, 2019. issn 1657-0790 (printed) 2256-5760 (online). bogotá, colombia. pages 139-153 the use of plotagon to enhance the english writing skill in secondary school students and salehi (2013) about the advantage of using ict in teaching esl writing skill, through focusing “students’ attention, facilitating students’ learning process, helping to improve students’ vocabulary, and promoting meaningful learning” (p. 4). as a result of this project, students created 38 digital stories using plotagon. the findings showed that students were able to use the tool in a short time, which they said in the final survey and was observed in each class. they felt excited about the final product since they were free to personalize their dialogs making them more creative because they could see their written production becoming a digital story. they could express their ideas and communicate their thoughts included in the created dialogs to which they added actions, sounds, and scenes in agreement with the concept of the digital story as a short multimedia story that combines different elements such as voice, image, and music (benmayor, 2008). moreover, students mentioned in their final survey that by creating the dialogs with the tool they could learn and improve their english through writing. as smeda et al. (2014) said, students have the ability to use ict tools aside from other technology skills to create digital stories taking into account the educational context. the findings showed that plotagon is an effective pedagogical tool that helps to improve students’ writing skill which was evidenced in the post-test (see table 2). during the interventions, the written productions (scripts), the product created in plotagon (digital stories), and final survey, the whole group increased the length of their written production as well as their vocabulary, table 2. results: pre-test vs post-test grammar 20 questions reading 20 questions listening 14 questions writing 12 points speaking 15 points pre post pre post pre post pre post pre post student 1 8 8 13 15 5 5 5 11 7 9 student 2 11 13 10 11 9 10 9 11 10 13 student 3 7 6 6 5 6 7 4 7 4 5 student 4 4 7 8 6 4 6 0 7 4 7 student 5 5 7 8 4 5 5 7 11 5 8 student 6 6 7 8 2 6 6 0 9 0 5 student 7 4 4 11 5 5 6 1 7 1 6 student 8 7 8 11 11 4 8 1 7 5 5 student 9 3 7 7 8 5 9 0 4 0 3 student 10 4 4 4 7 2 7 9 11 6 10 student 11 4 6 7 5 7 4 1 5 0 5 student 12 4 5 4 3 6 6 0 6 0 4 student 13 2 7 2 10 3 7 0 4 0 2 student 14 7 7 8 9 7 5 0 6 4 5 student 15 6 7 7 9 7 6 1 8 0 3 student 16 6 5 8 8 5 6 5 7 5 8 student 17 7 4 8 11 3 4 1 5 1 4 student 18 1 6 1 8 3 3 0 4 0 4 universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras150 guzmán gámez & moreno cuellar grammar, and spelling. besides, when students typed the dialogs in plotagon, they could see how they become short animated movies, which engaged students and caught their attention while learning and having fun. according to love (2013), plotagon can be used as a very helpful pedagogical tool for second or foreign language classrooms because it can produce animated movies from text dialogs. likewise, the findings in this research project could be compared with the study by herrera ramírez (2013) using storybird, which is a tool with similar functions as plotagon, where significant progress in learners’ vocabulary was found along with the use of complex language to write stories; it also encouraged students to write and have a positive attitude towards writing. according to the results shown in table 2, students showed a slight growth in the tests scores. at the beginning, the average of right answers was 23, which showed 28% of the total amount of questions. after the post-test, the overall scores were a bit higher with an average of 33 right answers out of 81. it showed an increase of 0.7% compared to the first results. therefore, after the implementation of the tool plotagon the whole group showed some progress in their writing production. nevertheless, it is notable that four students advanced more than others. on the other hand, the findings showed that the use of plotagon not only helped to enhance students’ writing skill but also the students’ ability to improve their listening and reading skill indirectly. when students played their dialogs, they could practice listening and reading the subtitles, providing opportunities for students to develop these skills as well. findings showed that plotagon is a valuable tool to promote writing and other foreign language skills through a learning environment supported by ict. similarly, viatonu and kayode (2012) state that the use of ict enhances english language competence and using it in class can motivate bored students now provided with new ways to learn. limitations the implementation of this action research project had three main limitations. the first one had to do with the students’ english language difficulties such as lack of vocabulary, grammar, and punctuation problems. however, most of the students faced these difficulties in each class in order to reduce these language problems. the second limitation was related to technical problems with some students’ computers where plotagon could not run, but this inconvenience was solved through the lending of some computers from the school. the final limitation was that a few students did not like english, let alone writing in this language; nevertheless, students changed their minds, and felt motivated due to the activities developed in class, and the use of the tool awoke their interest in learning english. conclusions the findings of this action research show the effectiveness of using plotagon to improve students’ writing skill through the creation of digital stories. in this study, the students’ interest and likes were relevant, as well as their perception towards english. those aspects were crucial in choosing appropriate activities to encourage them to achieve a better understanding during the interventions and make the most of the tool. on the other hand, identifying the students’ english level allowed us to understand their language difficulties, and helped us to prepare and select specific teaching activities to improve english learning. the implementation of plotagon had a positive impact on students’ english learning; the use of this kind of ict tool increased students’ motivation and helped to improve students’ language skills, not only writing but also listening and reading. with regard to students’ written production, most of them reflected their own experiences, what they live in their daily life at school, home, and with friends. linked to this, english teaching must involve everyday life to be meaningful and “hook” students to the learning process. during 151profile: issues teach. prof. dev., vol. 21 no. 1, jan-jun, 2019. issn 1657-0790 (printed) 2256-5760 (online). bogotá, colombia. pages 139-153 the use of plotagon to enhance the english writing skill in secondary school students the implementation, the participants learned quickly how to use plotagon and worked in pairs to write their scripts; it promoted social skills and provided each other feedback. despite not everyone having computers at home; the use of ict tools at school can scale down the technological gap between the city and rural areas. finally, we conclude that the use of plotagon encourages students to write and helps to increase students’ written production; this is a helpful tool to facilitate english learning and each one of the language skills. hence, we hope this research project will serve as base for future studies to provide teachers with a new tool to explore and implement the promotion of english language teaching. references al-jumaily, s. 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(2007). malaysian esl teachers’ use of ict in their classrooms: expectations and realities. recall, 19(1), 79-95. https://doi.org/10.1017/s0958344007000614. yunus, m. m., nordin, n., salehi, h., embi, m. a., & salehi, z. (2013). the use of information and communication technology (ict) in teaching esl writing skills. english language teaching, 6, 1-8. https://doi.org/10.5539/elt. v6n7p1. zakaria, s. m., yunus, m. m., nazri, n. m., & shah, p. m. (2016). students’ experience of using storybird in writing esl narrative text. creative education, 7(15), 2107-2120. https://doi.org/10.4236/ce.2016.715210. 153profile: issues teach. prof. dev., vol. 21 no. 1, jan-jun, 2019. issn 1657-0790 (printed) 2256-5760 (online). bogotá, colombia. pages 139-153 the use of plotagon to enhance the english writing skill in secondary school students about the authors derly yuleith guzmán gámez holds a b.ed. in english teaching from universidad de la amazonía (colombia). johana andrea moreno cuellar holds a b.ed. in english teaching from universidad de la amazonía (colombia) and an ma in educational technology and innovative media for education from universidad autónoma de bucaramanga and instituto tecnológico de estudios superiores de monterrey (colombia and méxico). she teaches at institución educativa agroecológico amazónico (colombia). 2323 http://dx.doi.org/10.15446/profile.v19n_sup1.68447 analysing test-takers’ views on a computer-based speaking test análisis de las opiniones de los candidatos sobre un examen oral a través de ordenador marian amengual-pizarro1* universidad de las islas baleares, palma de mallorca, spain jesús garcía-laborda2** universidad de alcalá, alcalá de henares, spain this study examines test-takers’ views on a computer-delivered speaking test in order to investigate the aspects they consider most relevant in technology-based oral assessment, and to explore the main advantages and disadvantages computer-based tests may offer as compared to face-to-face speaking tests. a small-scale open questionnaire was administered to 80 test-takers who took the aptis speaking test at the universidad de alcalá in april 2016. results reveal that examinees believe computer-based tests provide a valid measure of oral competence in english and are considered to be an adequate method for the assessment of speaking. interestingly, the data suggest that personal characteristics of test-takers seem to play a key role in deciding upon the most suitable and reliable delivery mode. key words: computer-based language testing, oral assessment, second language testing. este estudio analiza la opinión de los candidatos sobre un examen oral con ordenador para averiguar los aspectos que consideran más relevantes en la evaluación oral a través de las nuevas tecnologías y explorar las principales ventajas y desventajas de este tipo de pruebas comparadas con pruebas orales con evaluadores humanos. se distribuyó un pequeño cuestionario a 80 candidatos que realizaron el examen oral aptis en la universidad de alcalá en abril de 2016. los resultados revelan que los candidatos consideran que las pruebas orales con ordenador son válidas y adecuadas para la evaluación de la competencia oral. curiosamente, los datos demuestran que las características personales de los candidatos juegan un papel primordial en la elección del método de evaluación más idóneo. palabras clave: evaluación de lenguas a través del ordenador, evaluación de la destreza oral, evaluación de segundas lenguas. * e-mail: marian.amengual@uib.es ** e-mail: jesus.garcialaborda@uah.es how to cite this article (apa, 6th ed.): amengual-pizarro, m., & garcía-laborda, j. (2017). analysing test-takers’ views on a computer-based speaking test. profile: issues in teachers’ professional development, 19(suppl. 1), 23-38. http://dx.doi.org/10.15446/profile.v19n_sup1.68447. this article was received on september 14, 2017, and accepted on november 10, 2017. this is an open access article distributed under the terms of the creative commons license attribution-noncommercial-noderivatives 4.0 international license. consultation is possible at https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/. profile: issues teach. prof. dev., vol. 19, supplement 1, 2017. issn 1657-0790 (printed) 2256-5760 (online). bogotá, colombia. pages 23-38 universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras24 amengual-pizarro & garcía-laborda introduction the status of english as a global language and the new demands brought about by the bologna declaration (the european higher education area, 1999) have led many students to take different standard english tests in order to evidence their mastery of the english language and their ability to communicate in english. within this context, the assessment of oral skills and the development of oral language tests have received renewed interest. at the same time, over the past two decades, the use of information and communications technology (ict) has become increasingly predominant, revolutionising the way languages are learnt, transforming educational settings, and creating new learning scenarios (chapelle & voss, 2016; garcía-laborda, 2007; harb, abu bakar, & krish, 2014; a. c. k. lee, 2003) and ways of learning (garcía-laborda, magal royo, & bakieva, 2016). computer technology has been especially productive in the area of language testing. as davidson and coombe (2012) point out, in this new era of communications technology computerised testing cannot be ignored. in fact, communications technology can provide a promising approach to test administration and delivery (garcía-laborda & martín-monje, 2013; zechner & xi, 2008; zhou, 2015). this is particularly true with regard to the assessment of students’ oral production since speaking skills are commonly believed to be the most difficult and complex language abilities to test, mainly due to their specific nature (luoma, 2004; underhill, 1987) but also to other practicality issues such as the long time required for their evaluation, especially in high-stakes contexts (garcía-laborda, 2007; kenyon & malone, 2010; malabonga, kenyon, & carpenter, 2005; roca-varela & palacios, 2013). thus, although many language learners regard speaking as the most essential skill to be mastered (nazara, 2011), its assessment has often been neglected in many l2 teaching and testing contexts (amengual-pizarro, 2009; lewis, 2011). as demand for oral language tests continue to grow, the integration of computer technology in the context of l2 oral assessment is gradually gaining global recognition and attention among researchers (bulut & kan, 2012; zechner & xi, 2008; zhan & wan, 2016). according to galaczi (2010), the growing use of computer-based oral assessment “is largely influenced by the increased need for oral proficiency testing and the necessity to provide speaking tests that can be delivered quickly and efficiently whilst maintaining high-quality” (p. 29). the potential advantages of computer-based assessment include: higher reliability due to standardisation of test prompts and delivery, increased practicality (i.e., cost and time effective tests), faster reporting of scores, and provision of immediate feedback, among others (araújo, 2010; garcíalaborda, 2007). however, numerous concerns have also been raised over the validity of such tests (chapelle & douglas, 2006; jeong et al., 2011; zhou, 2015). thus, computer-mediated tests are thought to limit the range of task types elicited as well as to narrow down the test construct due to the lack of an interactional component (i.e., absence of interlocutor). indeed, the more individual view of competence highlighted in computer-delivered tests of oral proficiency seems to contradict the social oriented view of communicative performance as a jointly constructed event involving interaction between individuals (bachman & palmer, 1996; chalhoub-deville, 2003; kramsch, 1986; mcnamara, 1997). as douglas and hegelheimer (2007) explain, computer-based tests cannot currently capture the complexity of natural language use. furthermore, this focus on individual competence rather than on interactional competence (kramsch, 1986; may, 2009) may have a negative influence or washback effect on current communicative language teaching practices (amengual-pizarro, 2009; green, 2013; may, 2009). nevertheless, some authors strongly advocate for the need to integrate computer technology in educational settings. furthermore, chapelle and douglas (2006) claim that “communicative language ability needs to be conceived in view of the joint role that language and technology play in the process of communication” (p. 108). in this regard, numerous 25profile: issues teach. prof. dev., vol. 19, supplement 1, 2017. issn 1657-0790 (printed) 2256-5760 (online). bogotá, colombia. pages 23-38 analysing test-takers' views on a computer-based speaking test researchers point out that the advantages of using computer-based technology can outweigh some of its limitations (garcía-laborda, 2007; garcía-laborda, magal royo, litzler, & giménez lópez, 2014) as well as the positive attitude of many test takers (litzler & garcía-laborda, 2016). under this perspective, computer language testing is presented as a feasible alternative to other traditional methods of testing oral skills such as face-to-face assessment since it clearly facilitates test administration and delivery by reducing testing time and costs (araújo, 2010; bulut & kan, 2012; garcía-laborda, 2007; qian, 2009). furthermore, various research studies provide evidence of score equivalence between the two types of delivery modes (computer-based tests vs. face-to-face tests) on the testing of oral skills (shohamy, 1994; zhou, 2015). thus, numerous examination boards have started to develop computer-based oral assessment: the computerised oral proficiency instrument (copi), the pearson test of english (pte) (pearson, 2009a), the versant tests (pearson, 2009b), the toefl ibt speaking test (zechner, higgins, & williamson, 2009), the aptis speaking test (o’sullivan & weir, 2011), and so on. bernstein, van moere, and cheng (2010) also support the validity of some fully automated spoken language tests by establishing a construct definition for these types of tests (see lamy, 2004) and providing concurrent data relating automated test scores to communicative tests. these latter authors suggest that automated test scores can be used in a complementary way with other forms of assessment in decision making. in the same vein, galaczi (2010) explains that computer-based tests can effectively be used to supplement other more traditional speaking language tests. taking these findings as a basis, the main aim of this paper is to examine candidates’ views on a computerbased speaking test (the aptis speaking test) in order to gain a better insight about the advantages and disadvantages computer-mediated tests may offer as compared to more traditional face-to-face speaking tests (i.e., oral interviews), and to explore the aspects test-takers consider most relevant in technologically enhanced oral language tests. the aptis test this paper examines test-takers’ opinions on the implementation of aptis, a computer-based test of general english proficiency developed by the british council (see o’sullivan, 2012; o’sullivan & weir, 2011). aptis intends to offer an alternative to high-stakes certificated tests designed for a population over age 15 and it comprises five main components: core (grammar and vocabulary), listening, reading, writing, and speaking. although aptis can be administered in more traditional ways such as pen-and-paper, it is usually taken via computer. in order to report aptis test results, a numerical scale (0-50) is used following the common european framework of reference for languages (cefr) to test language abilities across the a1-b2 range. test results are usually reported within 48 hours. the aptis speaking test takes around 12 minutes to complete and is divided into four sections (see table 1). responses are recorded and marked holistically on a six-point (tasks 1 to 3) and a seven-point scale (task 4) by a certified human examiner. table 1. components of the aptis speaking test (descriptive statistics) section technique no. of items & time 1 personal information three questions, 30 seconds each question 2 photograph description and comparison different number of questions, 45 seconds for each question 3 picture comparison two questions, 45 seconds for each question 4 questions based on an image (single topic) three questions, 2 minutes (1-minute preparation time) universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras26 amengual-pizarro & garcía-laborda as can be seen, part 1 of the examination involves three questions on various personal topics in order to relax students and get them used to talking on a computer. candidates are given 30 seconds to answer each question (three questions). part 2 requires testtakers to describe and compare different pictures (i.e., picture description). questions in this section may range in difficulty. candidates are allowed 45 seconds to answer each question. part 3 consists of the comparison of two pictures (i.e., describe, compare, and speculate). candidates are asked two questions. the last question usually involves imaginary situations or speculation. again 45 seconds are allowed for each question in this section. finally, part 4 consists of three questions on a single topic (e.g., personal abstract ideas). test-takers are given one minute to prepare their response and are allowed to make brief notes to structure their answers. they are expected to talk for two minutes. research questions as previously noted, the main purpose of this paper is to study test-takers’ views on the use of a computer delivery oral test (the aptis speaking test), and to explore the main differences between computerdelivery vs. face-to-face mode on the assessment of speaking. more specifically, the following aspects were addressed: 1. use of preparation material for the computerbased speaking test. 2. assessment of oral skills via computer. 3. usefulness of note-taking and exam simulation prior to the official computer-based test of speaking. 4. degree of complexity of the computer programme. 5. usefulness of self-evaluation sessions prior to the actual computer-based test. 6. main differences between the computer-based test (i.e., aptis speaking test) and the face-to-face test (i.e., interview with an examiner) method participants a total of 80 students at the universdad de alcalá (madrid, spain) took part in this study. as regards gender distribution, the majority of participants were females (85%, n = 68), and 15% (n = 12) males. most of the participants ranged in age from 18 to 22 years (65.2%); 17% were from 23 to 25 years of age, and 9.4% were over 25 years old. the remaining 8.4% of the participants did not provide an answer to this question. data collection instrument a small-scale open questionnaire (see appendix) was distributed to the participants by computer delivery mode in mid-april 2016 in order to capture their opinion on the aptis speaking test, and to examine the main differences between computer-assisted vs. face-to-face speaking assessment. participants were given two days to enter their answers on a computer and send them back to the researchers after having taken the official aptis speaking test. all participants had been previously interviewed by the researchers in early february 2016 to determine their levels of spoken english. the tasks included in the personal interviews were similar to the ones featured in the aptis speaking test, namely: some warm-up questions on a personal topic, a photograph description, a comparison of two photographs, and a discussion of concrete and more abstract topics. the questionnaire contained 17 questions related to the main following aspects: (a) use of material to prepare for the computer-based speaking test (items 1 and 2); (b) assessment of oral skills via computer (items 3 and 4); (c) usefulness of note-taking and exam simulation prior to the official computer-administered oral test (items 5 to 10); (d) degree of complexity of the computer programme (items 11 and 12); (e) usefulness of self-evaluation sessions prior the actual computer-based test (items 13 to 15), and (f) main differences between the computer-based test and the face-to-face test (items 16 and 17). 27profile: issues teach. prof. dev., vol. 19, supplement 1, 2017. issn 1657-0790 (printed) 2256-5760 (online). bogotá, colombia. pages 23-38 analysing test-takers' views on a computer-based speaking test participants were asked to rate the first five main aspects (items 1 to 15) on a 1-4 likert scale ranging from 1 (totally disagree) to 4 (totally agree). additional qualitative comments could also be provided by respondents in order to elaborate their answers on some questions and help researchers to get a better insight of the data provided. the remaining two questions of the questionnaire (items 16 and 17) were explored by means of two openended questions. the questionnaire was administered in spanish since this is the communication language of the participants. the reliability of the questionnaire had a cronbach’s alpha of 0.769, which indicates a relatively high level of internal consistency. quantitative results were analysed using the statistical package for the social sciences (spss) 21.0 programme. results descriptive statistics are presented first followed by the qualitative analyses of the examinees’ comments to the two open-ended questions included in the questionnaire (items 16 and 17). quantitative results use of material to prepare for the computer-based speaking test the first section of the questionnaire (items 1 and 2) attempted to examine tests-takers’ opinion on the examrelated materials for the aptis speaking test provided by researchers. the mean scores and standard deviations were calculated for each item (table 2). as can be seen, the mean scores of the two items in table 2 are above 2.5 on a 4-point scale which indicates that both aspects were regarded as relevant in order to obtain good test results. thus, respondents admitted making a great use of the support material provided by researchers (item 1;`x = 2.89) and considered this guidance material to be helpful (item 2; ̀ x = 2.61) since it assisted them in becoming familiar with the format of the test and its level of difficulty. overall, the data suggest that all the candidates made use of test-related material to do their best on the test and succeed in the examination. assessment of oral skills via computer items 3 and 4 in the questionnaire intended to determine participants’ opinion on the validity and suitability of computer-based tests to assess speaking. the results presented in table 3 indicate that par ticipants b elie ve computeris ed testing can adequately measure their oral skills and, therefore, it is considered to be both a valid (i.e., face validity) (item 4: “computerised testing measures my spoken ability in english effectively”;`x = 2.29), as well as a suitable method for the assessment of speaking ability in english (item 3): “the computer is an appropriate method for table 2. use of preparation material (descriptive statistics) n minimum maximum mean sd 1. use of support material 76* 1 4 2.89 0.930 2. usefulness of support material 76* 1 4 2.61 0.943 *4 missing cases. table 3. use material (descriptive statistics) n minimum maximum mean sd 4. computer-test validity 78* 1 4 2.29 0.870 3. computer-test suitability 80 1 4 2.28 1.031 *2 missing cases. universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras28 amengual-pizarro & garcía-laborda the aptis speaking test”,`x = 2.28). indeed, results also show a reasonable significant correlation (r = 0.526) at p = 0.01 between these two variables. however, the higher standard deviation on item 4 (sd = 1.031) indicates a major dispersion or variation of the data around the mean. that is, there seems to be a higher consensus among participants on the validity of the test (i.e., face validity, item 4) rather than on the adequacy of using a computer-administered test to assess oral skills (item 3). the optional qualitative comments provided by respondents point to possible reasons that could help us understand the main discrepancies regarding this issue. thus, respondents who favoured computerised testing highlighted the potential advantage of having their performances recorded since this was thought to help examiners to listen to the test recordings as many times as necessary before they decided on their final score. some other examinees also reported performing better before a computer since they felt less nervous than in more traditional face-to-face speaking test situations. on the contrary, many test-takers consider the absence of an interlocutor to interact with, and receive some feed-back from, as a negative aspect which may hinder their performance and affect their test scores in a detrimental way. in any event, the mean values of items 4 and 3 are above two points on a 4-point scale which indicate participants’ overall positive views on both aspects. usefulness of note-taking and exam simulation prior to the official computer-based test of speaking as far as the usefulness of note-taking and exam simulation prior to the official aptis speaking test is concerned, the data (table 4) reveal that both aspects, along with the training sessions provided by researchers, were highly regarded by participants. results in table 4 have been arranged in descending order of importance so as to facilitate comprehension. among the most useful tasks, examinees ranked the following in order of importance: taking notes prior to the recorded simulation (item 6;`x = 3.34), taking a mock test before sitting for the actual test itself (item 5;`x = 3.23), and having a training session prior to the official examination in order to familiarise them with the testing procedure and help them obtain better test results (item 10;`x = 2.95). as shown in table 4, taking notes during the official test (item 7;`x = 2.90) was felt to favour exam results to a lesser extent than taking notes during the mock test (item 6;`x = 3.34). the qualitative comments provided by participants in this regard point to the tight time frame set for taking notes during the official computer-based test. this is an important aspect to bear in mind since research suggests that test-takers may experience a negative affect due to inadequate or insufficient planning time (malabonga et al., 2005). table 4. use of notes and practice exam (descriptive statistics) n minimum maximum mean sd 6. usefulness of note-taking prior to mock test 80 1 4 3.34 0.973 5. usefulness of mock test 77* 1 4 3.23 0.887 10. usefulness of training sessions 77* 1 4 2.95 0.759 7. usefulness of notetaking during aptis test 80 1 4 2.90 1.051 8. reading notes during mock test 79* 1 4 2.26 0.999 9. reading notes during aptis test 79* 1 4 2.11 0.920 *items containing missing cases. 29profile: issues teach. prof. dev., vol. 19, supplement 1, 2017. issn 1657-0790 (printed) 2256-5760 (online). bogotá, colombia. pages 23-38 analysing test-takers' views on a computer-based speaking test clearly, the pressure associated with each testing situation (mock test vs. official test) may play a key role in interpreting examinees’ answers to that question. interestingly, scores for the aptis speaking test were found to be higher than the scores for the mock test, although no statistically significant differences were found between both examinations. on the whole, testtakers agreed that note-taking was useful to help them structure their ideas, recall some useful expressions, and avoid improvisations. as can be observed, the lowest two ranking items are related to the use of participants’ test notes both during the mock exam (item 8;`x = 2.26) and the actual aptis test (item 9;`x = 2.11). thus, participants admitted not speaking fluently and reading from their notes mainly during the practice test. this might be due to personal factors such as nervousness or a lack of previous experience in computerised assessment before the official test took place. however, it is believed that some attention should be paid to this aspect in order to prevent test-takers from writing out their complete answers and memorising words and expressions that might affect natural target language use. degree of complexity of the computer programme in order to examine the degree of complexity of the test computer programme, examinees were asked to rank two items (items 11 and 12). the findings are presented in table 5. as can be observed, participants clearly favour the logistical advantages provided by the computerised format of the test. in fact, these are the two highest ranking items of the questionnaire. furthermore, none of the answers provided by respondents registered an extreme negative value (minimum value = 1). test-takers considered that the application presented no operational difficulties and felt the software was very intuitive (item 12;`x = 3.53) and reasonable to handle (item 11;`x = 3.49). the technological simplicity of the aptis test may seem to be an advantage for most test-takers (see kenyon & malabonga, 2001) who appeared to feel comfortable with the management of the new software. this is an important aspect to be taken into account since various research findings suggest that computer familiarity and other features of the computerised context (e.g., computer anxiety) may affect candidates’ performance (chapelle, 2001; clariana & wallace, 2002; colwell, 2013; j. a. lee, 1986; norris, 2001; taylor, kirsch, jamieson, & eignor, 1999). as litzler and garcía-laborda (2016) point out: “students need to understand how the software works in addition to knowing the content of the exam, which can be difficult without previous training” (p. 107). otherwise, the technological mediation of the testing process can prevent test-takers from demonstrating their real proficiency level in spoken english. usefulness of self-evaluation sessions prior to the actual computer-based test participants were also required to assess the suitability of the self-assessment sessions carried out by researchers to help them determine their actual level of spoken english. these sessions also aimed at encouraging self-reflection and promoting the effective implementation of different test strategies to ensure the achievement of the best results on the computer-based test. as shown in table 6, the data reveal that test-takers seem to hold very positive views on the self-evaluation table 5. evaluation of computer programme (descriptive statistics) n minimum maximum mean sd 12. intuitive software application 80 2 4 3.53 0.596 11. user-friendly software application 80 2 4 3.49 0.638 universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras30 amengual-pizarro & garcía-laborda sessions conducted by researchers, especially as far as the acquisition of learning strategies (item 15;`x = 3.19) is concerned. this stresses the importance of developing metacognitive strategies to raise examinees’ awareness of their strengths and weaknesses so as to be able to improve their test behaviour and do their best on the test. qualitative results differences between the computer-based test (aptis test) and the face-to-face test a comparison of the test-takers’ comments was made to address research question number 6 (items 16 and 17). question 16 queried students about the main differences between the aptis speaking test and the face-to-face speaking test. responses to this openended question reveal advantages and disadvantages of both types of delivery modes. here is a sampling of the more negative aspects related to the aptis speaking test: i prefer to talk to a human person rather to a computer since a person can inspire confidence. computers are cold and they do not give you any feedback (they do not look or smile at you…). computers cannot help you either. if you do not know what to say, they are not going to try to help you. (s7) the main difference between the two delivery modes is that there seems to be a stricter control of time in the implementation of the computer-based test which turns out to be very stressing. (s37) in computer-based testing there is no interaction. i prefer human-delivered speaking tests because examiners can offer you some help in case you get stuck or can give you some clues on how to interpret certain words or images on certain occasions. (s50) however, other test-takers favoured the computerised format of the test over the face-to-face speaking test: the computer-based test is more dynamic. you can organise yourself better and i think it is much more efficient. (s2) computer-based testing is much more comfortable and less stressful than face-to-face speaking tests. i am an introvert person and talking to a computer makes me feel less embarrassed because nobody can laugh at me. (s28) in human-delivered speaking tests there is more tension, you can see the examiner looking at you all the time as well as his/ her expressions, which can be very distracting and stressful. (s48) to sum up, the main advantages of face-toface assessment appear to be related to interaction, authenticity (i.e., real communication), and provision of helpful feedback which seems to be lacking in computerised testing. this is in line with research findings that suggest that this latter kind of delivery mode may be found “de-humanizing” by examinees (kenyon & malabonga, 2001). in computer-based assessment, the strict control of time also seems to be of concern to some test-takers. in fact, numerous participants found the timer on the screen very stressful. on the contrary, some other examinees believed computer-delivered tests were very convenient, dynamic, and effective. the absence of a human examiner looking at candidates and taking notes was also considered a positive aspect by these latter participants. finally, the last item of the questionnaire (item 17) asked test-takers to express their opinions on the form of assessment (computer-assisted testing vs. face-to-face assessment) they believed was more efficient to evaluate their oral skills. similar to previous research findings table 6. self-evaluation sessions (descriptive statistics) n minimum maximum mean sd 15. use of strategies after self-assessment session 76* 1 4 3.19 0.824 13. suitability of self-assessment session 77* 1 4 2.85 0.780 14. self-assessment of competence in tl 74* 1 4 2.61 0.784 *items containing missing cases. 31profile: issues teach. prof. dev., vol. 19, supplement 1, 2017. issn 1657-0790 (printed) 2256-5760 (online). bogotá, colombia. pages 23-38 analysing test-takers' views on a computer-based speaking test (qian, 2009; shohamy, 1994), face-to-face speaking tests drew the most positive results on this aspect. thus, 75% of test-takers favoured face-to-face speaking tests over technology-mediated speaking tests since, as previously anticipated, oral communication is mainly regarded as a human phenomenon (kenyon & malabonga, 2001). the main reasons provided by candidates in this respect were mostly related to the interactional nature of conversation (i.e., use of real or “authentic” language, importance of gestures and body language, and provision of feedback), which could not be appropriately captured in technologymediated assessment (douglas & hegelheimer, 2007; kenyon & malabonga, 2001). these findings point to the importance attached by candidates to interpersonal cues and to the negotiation of meaning between interlocutors to interact and reach communicative goals (ockey, 2009; qian, 2009). a minority of test-takers also commented that they felt disadvantaged by talking into a computer since computer-based tests could present some logistical or technical problems such as sound or audio problems. other examinees seemed to believe that the traditional testing format is just more reliable and efficient (see colwell, 2013). some of the test-takers’ comments regarding this issue are the following: i think face-to-face speaking tests can better assess spoken competence because examiners can see the way you talk or the body language you use which is a key element in real communication, and cannot be captured by a computer. (s17) i think the presence of an examiner is very helpful because they can see your gestures, the way you talk and they can help you by asking some questions in case you do not know what to say. a computer, however, cuts you off abruptly after 45 seconds and you are not given the opportunity to show your true oral skills. (s27) i think face-to-face speaking tests are more effective because there are always some problems with the microphones and the recordings sometimes cannot be heard appropriately. (s6) interestingly, the main reason put forward by those candidates who favoured computer-administered tests (16.3% of the respondents) was clearly related to personal characteristics of test-takers such as introversion or embarrassment. thus, many testtakers described themselves as shy or introverted and pointed out they felt more relaxed before a computer without the presence of an examiner. this finding is consistent with previous research which suggests that candidates’ personal characteristics such as level of extroversion or introversion can affect their test scores in oral assessments (kang, 2008; nakatsuhara, 2010; o’sullivan, 2000; ockey, 2009; underhill, 1987). other test-takers were also positive about the use of computerised tests since this type of assessment was thought to increase rater reliability. in fact, some respondents pointed out that the use of computers could help prevent raters from being influenced by candidates’ personal characteristics, as was often believed to be the case in human-scored tests (see also lumley & mcnamara, 1995; stemler, 2004). some illustrative comments related to the potential benefits of computer-based testing are as follow: i think computer-based speaking tests are more effective because i reckon i am a very shy person and i express myself worse before an examiner rather than in front of a computer. therefore, i get worse results in face-to-face assessment. (s31) i feel more comfortable doing computer-based tests because i do not have the feeling of being constantly observed by an examiner. (s34) i think computerised testing is more reliable. examiners cannot see our faces and they can therefore be more objective. (s79) according to various research findings, the introduction of new technology may be seen to add further difficulties to the test causing unnecessary stress and uncertainty to candidates (bartram, 2006; litzler & garcía-laborda, 2016; saadé & kira, 2007). interestingly, some test-takers commented that apprehension toward computer-based testing was greatly reduced after having taken the aptis speaking test on the computer (see bernstein et al., 2010; zhou, 2015). the following comment is an illustrative example: universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras32 amengual-pizarro & garcía-laborda i used to prefer face to-face tests but, surprisingly, after sitting for the aptis test i think i feel now quite comfortable taking computerbased tests. (s78) finally, a small number of participants (8.8%) stressed the advantages of both delivery modes, highlighting the potential applicability of computeradministered assessment in different testing contexts: i think both types of assessment are effective. i believe there are factors other than the type of test delivery mode that may have a greater influence on scores, such as the selection of questions used to demonstrate your speaking abilities. (s29) in my view, it depends on the context. if the purpose of the test is to assess the real spoken competence of the student in a physical context (i.e., conversation in the street, at the office, etc.) then, i think it is better the face-to-face test. but if you want to assess oral skills on an audio-visual context (i.e., skype, etc.) then, i believe it is better to use technology-based tests. (s17) indeed, this latter comment (s17) points to the importance of construct definition for computeradministered oral proficiency tests. as some authors suggest, test validity is an aspect necessarily linked to the use of scores. likewise, bernstein et al. (2010) explain: “validity can only be established with reference to test score use and decisions made on the basis of test scores, and not merely on the basis of consistently measuring test-takers according to a defined construct” (p. 372). in short, the major advantage of face-to-face tests seems to be related to the possibility of human interaction which enhances authenticity and reflects the communicative nature of language use. participants also appreciate the possibility of having some feedback from the examiners which might encourage some candidates to feel at ease and to get to talk in case they do not know what to say. these are the main reasons why the majority of test-takers believe face-to-face speaking tests allow a more effective evaluation of their actual oral competence in english. however, the presence of an interlocutor can also negatively affect tests-takers’ behaviour and add further pressure, especially to more introverted candidates. furthermore, for those latter participants, computerised testing is felt to produce more reliable results since examiners cannot be influenced by candidates’ personal characteristics. conclusion the findings of this study reveal that, despite the difficulty of capturing human oral language interaction (douglas & hegelheimer, 2007; kenyon & malabonga, 2001), computer-administered tests are thought to provide a valid measure of oral competence in english (i.e., face validity) and to be an appropriate method for the assessment of oral skills. more specifically, the results show that on the whole participants hold positive views on the aptis speaking test and consider the test application to be very convenient, intuitive, and userfriendly. the data also reveal that candidates have very favourable opinions of the support material used by researchers to familiarise them with the test format, content, and level of difficulty of the examination. furthermore, they believe that the training sessions for self-reflection and development of learning strategies proved to be very useful to obtain good results on the test. these are important aspects to bear in mind in order to reduce the potential negative influence related to the technological mediation of the testing process (bartram, 2006; chapelle, 2001; norris, 2001; saade & kira, 2007). admittedly, test-takers clearly favour face-to-face tests over computer-administered tests for the assessment of oral ability due to the intrinsically social and interactional nature of speaking skills (mcnamara, 1997), which do not appear to be effectively elicited in computerised formats (araújo, 2010; kenyon & malabonga, 2001). interestingly, the findings suggest that personal characteristics of test-takers such as introversion may play a key role in deciding upon the most suitable delivery mode for the assessment of oral language skills since introverted candidates reported feeling less anxious and much more comfortable without the presence of an interlocutor. 33profile: issues teach. prof. dev., vol. 19, supplement 1, 2017. issn 1657-0790 (printed) 2256-5760 (online). bogotá, colombia. pages 23-38 analysing test-takers' views on a computer-based speaking test the majority of these latter participants also believe computerised-test scores tend to be more reliable due to the fact that examiners cannot be influenced by test-takers’ personal characteristics. on the whole, these are encouraging results since they seem to confirm that technology-based tests can be used as an efficient complement to face-to-face assessment in order to evaluate speech production. as galaczi (2010) reminds us, a key concept in language testing is “fitness for purpose”: “tests are not just valid, they are valid for a specific purpose, and as such, different test formats have different applicability for different contexts, age groups, proficiency levels, and score-user requirements” (p. 26). in the same vein, numerous researchers highlight the importance of establishing construct validity with reference to the inferences and decisions made on the basis of test scores (bernstein et al., 2010; galaczi, 2010; xi, 2010). as bernstein et al. 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(2009). comparing direct and semi-direct modes for speaking assessment: affective effects on test takers. language assessment quarterly, 6(2), 113-125. https://doi. org/10.1080/15434300902800059. roca-varela, m. l., & palacios, i. m. (2013). how are spoken skills assessed in proficiency tests of general english as a foreign language? a preliminary survey. international journal of english studies, 13(2), 53-68. http://dx.doi. org/10.6018/ijes.13.2.185901. saadé, r. g., & kira, d. (2007). mediating the impact of technology usage on perceived ease of use by anxiety. computers & education, 49(4), 1189-1204. https://doi. org/10.1016/j.compedu.2006.01.009. shohamy, e. (1994). the validity of direct versus semi-direct oral tests. language testing, 11(2), 99-123. https://doi. org/10.1177/026553229401100202. stemler, s. e. (2004). a comparison of consensus, consistency, and measurement approaches to estimating inter-rater reliability. practical assessment, research & evaluation, 9(4). retrieved from http://pareonline.net/getvn. asp?v=9&n=4. taylor, c., kirsch, i., jamieson, j., & eignor, d. (1999). examining the relationship between computer familiarity and performance on computer-based language tasks. a journal of research in language studies, 49(2), 219-274. https://doi.org/10.1111/0023-8333.00088. universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras36 amengual-pizarro & garcía-laborda underhill, n. (1987). testing spoken language: a handbook of oral testing techniques. cambridge, uk: cambridge university press. xi, x. (2010). automated scoring and feedback systems: where are we and where are we heading? language testing, 27(3), 291-300. https://doi.org/10.1177/0265532210364643. zechner, k., & xi, x. (2008, june). towards automatic scoring of a test of spoken language with heterogeneous task types. in proceedings of the third acl workshop on innovative use of npl for building educational applications (pp. 98-106). stroudsburg, us: association for computational linguistics. https://doi.org/10.3115/1631836.1631848. zechner, k., higgins, d., xi, x., & williamson, d. m. (2009). automatic scoring of non-native spontaneous speech in tests of spoken english. speech communication, 51(10), 883-895. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.specom.2009.04.009. zhan y., & wan, z. h. (2016). test takers’ beliefs and experiences of a high-stakes computer-based english listening and speaking test. relc journal, 47(3), 363-376. https://doi.org/10.1177/0033688216631174. zhou, y. (2015). computer-delivered or face-to-face: effects of delivery-mode on the testing of second language speaking. language testing in asia, 5(2). https://doi. org/10.1186/s40468-014-0012-y. about the authors marian amengual-pizarro holds a phd in english linguistics and is an associate professor at universidad de las islas baleares, spain. she has contributed numerous articles on testing and education to various specialized refereed international journals. she is currently the editor of the journal revista electrónica de lingüística aplicada (rael). jesús garcía-laborda is an associate professor at universidad de alcalá, spain. he has a doctorate in english and another in language education. his research focuses on computer-based language testing, english for specific purposes, and teacher education. he has published numerous articles in these fields in specialized refereed international journals. 37profile: issues teach. prof. dev., vol. 19, supplement 1, 2017. issn 1657-0790 (printed) 2256-5760 (online). bogotá, colombia. pages 23-38 analysing test-takers' views on a computer-based speaking test appendix: aptis questionnaire please say to what extent you agree with the following statements by circling a number from 1 (completely disagree) to 4 (completely agree). please do not leave out any of the items. name: age: sex: male ☐ female ☐ a. preparation for the aptis speaking test 1. i used the support material provided by researchers. 1 2 3 4 2. now that i have taken the official aptis exam, i can definitely say that the material provided by researchers really helped me. 1 2 3 4 b. computer delivery mode 3. the computer is an appropriate method for the aptis speaking test. justify your answer: 1 2 3 4 4. computerised testing measures my spoken ability in english effectively. justify your answer: 1 2 3 4 c. use of notes and exam simulation prior to speaking test 5. the mock exam i took prior to sitting for the official aptis test has helped me to do well on the examination. 1 2 3 4 6. taking notes before recording the examination during the training session helped me to perform better during the mock test. in what way did taking notes help you? 1 2 3 4 7. taking notes during the official aptis speaking test helped me to perform better during the actual test. in what way did taking notes help you? 1 2 3 4 8. i read my notes during the mock test (that is, i did not speak fluently during the test). 1 2 3 4 9. i read my notes during the official aptis test when performing the oral tasks. 1 2 3 4 10. the training sessions for the aptis speaking test helped me to obtain a good test result. 1 2 3 4 11. the aptis speaking software application is user-friendly. 1 2 3 4 12. the aptis speaking software application is intuitive. 1 2 3 4 universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras38 amengual-pizarro & garcía-laborda d. self-evaluation sessions 13. the setup of the self-assessment session was adequate. 1 2 3 4 14. the self-assessment session helped me to determine my actual level of spoken english. 1 2 3 4 15. the self-assessment session helped me to develop strategies to improve my performance during the test. 1 2 3 4 now, please answer the two following questions as honestly as possible: 16. what are the main differences between the computer-administered test and the face-to-face test (i.e., interview with an examiner)? 17. what type of assessment (computer-based test vs. face-to-face test) do you think is better to evaluate your real ability in spoken english? thanks for your collaboration!! language assessment literacy and teachers’ professional development: a review of the literature 265profile: issues teach. prof. dev., vol. 23 no. 2, jul-dec, 2021. issn 1657-0790 (printed) 2256-5760 (online). bogotá, colombia. pages 265-279 https://doi.org/10.15446/profile.v23n2.90533 language assessment literacy and teachers’ professional development: a review of the literature la literacidad en evaluación de lenguas y el desarrollo profesional docente: una revisión de la literatura frank giraldo1 universidad de caldas, manizales, colombia in this literature review, i analyze the features and impacts of 14 programs which promoted teachers’ language assessment literacy. i used content analysis to build a coding scheme with data-driven and concept-driven categories to synthesize and then analyze trends in the 14 research studies. regarding core features, findings suggest that the programs were geared towards practical tasks in which teachers used theory critically. also, the studies show that teachers expanded their conception of language assessment, became aware of how to design professional instruments, and considered wider constructs for assessment. based on these findings, i include implications for the construct of language assessment literacy and recommendations for those who educate language teachers. keywords: language assessment, language assessment literacy, language testing, professional development programs, teacher professional development en esta revisión literaria, analizo las características e impactos de catorce programas para literacidad en evaluación de lenguas de docentes de idiomas. a través del análisis de contenidos, diseñé un esquema de códigos con categorías basadas en datos y conceptos para examinar tendencias en los catorce estudios. los hallazgos sugieren que los programas se basaron mayormente en actividades prácticas para que los docentes usasen la teoría de manera crítica. los estudios indican que los docentes ampliaron su concepción sobre evaluación de lenguas, se hicieron conscientes de cómo diseñar instrumentos de manera profesional y expandieron los constructos de evaluación. desde estos hallazgos, discuto unas implicaciones sobre la literacidad en evaluación de lenguas y unas recomendaciones para la formación de docentes. palabras claves: desarrollo profesional docente, evaluación de lenguas, literacidad en evaluación de lenguas, programas de desarrollo profesional frank giraldo  https://orcid.org/0000-0001-5221-8245 · email: frank.giraldo@ucaldas.edu.co this literature review is part of the research study called “literacidad en evaluación de lenguas extranjeras y desarrollo profesional docente” (language assessment literacy and teachers’ professional development). the study is sponsored by the vicerrectoría de investigación y posgrados of universidad de caldas in manizales, colombia. the code for this research study is 0509020. how to cite this article (apa, 7th ed.): giraldo, f. (2021). language assessment literacy and teachers’ professional development: a review of the literature. profile: issues in teachers’ professional development, 23(2), 265–279. https://doi.org/10.15446/profile.v23n2.90533 this article was received on september 14, 2020 and accepted on march 24, 2021. this is an open access article distributed under the terms of the creative commons license attribution-noncommercial-noderivatives 4.0 international license. consultation is possible at https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/ https://doi.org/10.15446/profile.v23n2.90533 https://orcid.org/0000-0001-5221-8245 mailto:frank.giraldo@ucaldas.edu.co https://doi.org/10.15446/profile.v23n2.90533 https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/ universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras266 giraldo introduction in the field of language testing, much is discussed about language assessment literacy (lal) for different stakeholders (kremmel & harding, 2020; o’loughlin, 2013; pill & harding, 2013; taylor, 2013). for discussions on this matter, authors have focused on the conceptual dimension of lal, that is, drawing the construct (see for example davies, 2008; inbar-lourie, 2008, 2012, 2017; taylor, 2013). thus, lal is now generally known as the combination and use of knowledge, skills, and principles for conducting language assessment in the various educational contexts where it is needed. another focus of scholarly work in lal is empirical research. this research has predominantly focused on teachers’ lal, although work has been done with other stakeholders (for example, o’loughlin, 2013, with staff members at a university; pill & harding, 2013, with policymakers). regarding teachers, there has been an emphasis on practices, beliefs, and needs around language assessment and the contexts where teachers conduct it (berry et al., 2019; crusan et al., 2016; hill, 2017; hill & mcnamara, 2011; lópezmendoza & bernal-arandia, 2009). the research has been robust and provided descriptions of what lal means for these stakeholders, and specifically what they need to improve in their lal—the research has suggested teachers want special attention to practical matters, for instance, design of assessment instruments (fulcher, 2012; vogt & tsagari, 2014; yastıbaş & takkaç, 2018). finally, other scholars have focused on reviewing resources for advancing teachers’ lal (davies, 2008; giraldo, 2021; inbar-lourie, 2017; malone, 2017). they have explained that textbooks have been a fundamental element to foster lal, but other initiatives exist as, for instance, open online resources (giraldo, 2021; malone, 2017). additionally, the authors have explained that these materials remark theoretical and practical aspects and, more recently, the social and ethical dimensions of language testing (e.g., davies, 2008). even though resources and initiatives for helping teachers to improve their lal exist, there is, as of now, no synthesis on their characteristics and impact on teachers’ professional development. therefore, in this literature review, i provide a critical account of programs for advancing teachers’ lal. to make the review useful, i focused my analysis on courses and workshops in which language teachers specifically studied issues related to language assessment. reviewing existing programs for teachers’ lal is necessary given that initiatives for teacher education in this area should be encouraged at both the preservice and in-service levels. thus, a critical account of these programs may shed light on what seems effective to advance teachers’ professional development through lal. i start this paper with what lal means for language teachers and a review of trends in teachers’ lal research. then, i report findings related to the methodology used in fourteen lal courses and workshops, their contents, and the impact they have had on teachers’ professional development. based on these findings, i then discuss some implications and recommendations for the nature and implementation of professional development programs in lal. what is language assessment literacy for language teachers? lal is the theoretical framework underlying the present research study, and i use this construct to present the findings and corresponding discussion. hence, a definition of lal is warranted. through a review of language testing textbooks, davies (2008) explained that lal consists of knowledge of theories and models of language proficiency, skills for design and educational measurement, and principles ethics and the impact of language testing. davies’s is a characterization that is generally accepted in the field. i use davies’s proposed components for lal as a theoretical framework because it has been steadily used to discuss and problematize lal either as a concept 267profile: issues teach. prof. dev., vol. 23 no. 2, jul-dec, 2021. issn 1657-0790 (printed) 2256-5760 (online). bogotá, colombia. pages 265-279 language assessment literacy and teachers' professional development: a review of the literature or set of competencies (fulcher, 2012; giraldo, 2018; inbar-lourie, 2013b; 2017; kremmel & harding, 2020; stabler-havener, 2018). additionally, lal as a theoretical framework is appropriate enough to analyze professional development initiatives for teachers’ lal, because these programs can target and/or impact teachers’ knowledge, skills, or principles for language assessment. a specific type of positive impact on teachers can be traced to one of lal’s components; for example, if teachers improve their design of peer assessment instruments, this can primarily mean a positive impact on the skills side of lal. finally, i choose lal’s three components for this paper because they are amenable to qualitative content analysis as a research method—the framework is flexible but can be used for systematic data reduction that leads to major trends in the literature. it is important to note that, although lal’s three overarching components have been constant in the literature, they are still going through refinement (giraldo, 2020; inbar-lourie, 2013a). in the case of language teachers, the lal construct is intricate and still gaining research attention (for examples, see coombe et al., 2020; vogt et al., 2020). notwithstanding the growing discussions, trends in lal for language teachers are clear. table 1 groups examples of elements within each component of lal for teachers: knowledge, skills, and principles. table 1 also gathers ideas from various authors in a 19-year span (boyles, 2005; brindley, 2001; davies, 2008; fulcher, 2012; giraldo, 2018; inbar-lourie, 2008, 2013a, 2013b; kremmel & harding, 2020; scarino, 2013; stabler-havener, 2018; taylor, 2013; vogt et al., 2020). the elements in table 1 represent core aspects with which scholars have contributed to the meaning of lal for language teachers. as can be seen from the list, expectations of teachers’ practice in language assessment are high and, consequently, position lal as a highimpact dimension of their professional development. empirical evidence from descriptive research studies, on the other hand, has shown that many, but not all, of the issues in table 1 can be traced as needs that language teachers report. the next section, then, focuses on studies researching the intricacies of teachers’ lal. what has the research on teachers’ lal suggested? research studies delving into teachers’ lal have provided thick descriptions of, particularly, practices, beliefs, and needs. in terms of practices, the research table 1. examples of knowledge, skills, and principles in language assessment for teachers knowledge skills principles • models describing language ability • frameworks for doing language assessment, e.g., criterionreferenced • purposes and theoretical concepts • relevant theories in second language acquisition and language teaching pedagogy • personal assessment contexts, which include practices and beliefs • critical issues such as ethics, fairness, and impact design of assessment instruments: • assessment specifications • items and tasks • rubrics with criteria • alternative assessment instruments, e.g., peer-assessment protocols • statistics and score interpretation test critique: • identification of poorly designed items • evaluation of assessment instruments against qualities such as validity and reliability • ethical use of assessment data • fair treatment of students • democratic practices in which students can share their voice • transparent practices to inform the nature of assessment systems and their consequences • critical stance towards unfair or unethical uses of language assessment • awareness of consequences (both intended and unintended) of assessment systems universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras268 giraldo has shown that language teachers tend to emphasize linguistic competence over others; tend to use and rely mostly on traditional assessment procedures (e.g., a final test); and avoid the use of alternative assessments such as peer-assessment (babaii & asadnia, 2019; lópez-mendoza & bernal-arandia, 2009; sultana, 2019). however, these stakeholders believe that assessment should serve formative purposes and be meaningful to impact teaching and learning (díazlarenas et al., 2012; lópez-mendoza & bernal-arandia, 2009). as for the needs in lal that teachers report, studies show that they feel underprepared and, therefore, want training in all areas, that is, knowledge, skills, and secondary attention to principles (giraldo & murcia, 2018; vogt & tsagari, 2014). fulcher (2012) reports that teachers want special training in the design of assessment instruments, what the author calls the practice of language testing. as the author discusses, when it comes to theory and statistics, teachers seem to want clarity and practical examples rather than abstract notions. this sentiment is echoed in jeong (2013), who states that teachers tend to see language assessment from a practice-based perspective. an interesting finding that has emerged in this lal research is that teachers learn from more experienced peers to compensate for their lack of preservice or in-service training in lal (babaii & asadnia, 2019; tsagari & vogt, 2017; vogt & tsagari, 2014). overall, research regarding teachers’ lal has made it clear that professional development in this area is expected and encouraged. as i mentioned earlier, lal can be fostered through textbooks and online resources; however, it is not easy to track the impact of these materials on teachers’ professional development if relevant research reports are not published. thus, the purpose in the present study was to synthesize and analyze features and findings from 14 published research studies which describe professional development initiatives to support teachers’ lal. method this literature review is grounded in a qualitative approach to research as it sought to interpret robust descriptive information from research studies on professional development through lal. particularly, i relied on a method called content analysis (schreier, 2012) to read through, categorize, synthesize, and analyze codes that were data(e.g., purposes of the programs) and concept-driven, that is, lal’s knowledge, skills, and principles. such information was gathered from research reports on workshops and courses for language assessment. i reviewed the studies guided by these two questions: • what are the characteristics of professional development programs for teachers’ lal? • what impact do these programs have on teachers’ professional development? to find relevant studies, i searched major specialized journals in language testing and assessment (language testing or language assessment quarterly) and also major journals in language teaching (e.g., tesol quarterly). my search included latin american, north american, european, and asian journals. finally, i used the directory of open access journals to search for more papers. in all of these websites, i typed keywords such as language assessment literacy or language testing program. the literature corpus the corpus for this review consisted of 14 research studies in which various language teachers (preservice, in-service, student teachers) were engaged in learning about theories and practices in language testing and assessment. to choose studies fit-for-purpose in the review, i used three selection criteria: • the study had to exclusively describe a course or workshop about language assessment rather than one in general applied linguistics or language teaching. this criterion was necessary because 269profile: issues teach. prof. dev., vol. 23 no. 2, jul-dec, 2021. issn 1657-0790 (printed) 2256-5760 (online). bogotá, colombia. pages 265-279 language assessment literacy and teachers' professional development: a review of the literature several scholars have questioned the usefulness of courses which touch upon assessment in passing rather than giving extensive attention to it (babaii & asadnia, 2019; vogt & tsagari, 2014). • the participants in the course or workshop had to be language teachers. in this case, language teachers include those who are preservice, in-service, and those student teachers in graduate programs (see o’loughlin, 2006, for example). this criterion was necessary to collect more studies and, therefore, provide aggregated evidence for the findings in this report. • the study describes, either explicitly or implicitly, the contents, methodology, and impact of the course/workshop on teachers’ lal. this was the key criterion for the research questions in this review. data analysis to arrive at the findings for this review, i first iteratively analyzed data inside each study independently, and then across studies, to form what schreier (2012) calls a “coding frame.” for this, i employed a matrix through which i collected the following information: purpose, context, and participants; methodology for teaching language assessment; contents of the workshop or course; findings (impact on teachers); and other insights, for example, recommendations emerging from each study. with these codes, or categories as schreier (2012) calls them, i then proceeded to group information across all 14 studies and observe instances of data to illustrate each category. for example, language assessment contents such as item analysis and task analysis were data-driven categories for which i associated examples from all studies. i then grouped these categories into one called assessment design, and then this and other grouped categories (e.g., task development) formed a synthesized category, that is, a finding—rigorous design of assessments. i explain and discuss this and other findings next. findings and discussion in line with the research questions for this review, i will first present the findings regarding the nature of the professional development programs. then, i will explain findings which highlight major impacts the programs had on the participating teachers. after each finding, i provide a discussion based on lal as the theoretical framework and empirical research reported elsewhere in this paper. on the context, purpose, and methodology of these language assessment programs the first finding relates to the contexts, objectives, and professional development approaches in the 14 programs. although these elements varied in their focus, naturally the programs had a common goal, which was to help teachers improve different aspects of their lal. table 2 lists down basic features about the context of these programs, their purpose, and methodologies. based on the corpus of 14 studies, four trends are evident. the initiatives reported in the literature are aimed at helping language teachers in general, with most emphasis placed on those who teach the english language. however, the presence of teachers from different languages suggests that training in this area is necessary regardless of the language taught (for example, montee et al., 2013 and koh et al., 2018). also, there is an emphasis on in-service language teachers, but studies with preservice teachers are starting to appear, with giraldo and murcia (2019), jaramillo-delgado and gil-bedoya (2019) and restrepo-bolívar (2020) being examples of this trend. this is positive, given that authors have emphasized the burning need for preservice teacher training in language testing and assessment (hill, 2017; lam, 2015; lópez-mendoza & bernal-arandia, 2009; vogt & tsagari, 2014). the fact that most studies included in-service teachers attests to the need for providing these teachers with continuous universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras270 giraldo professional development in lal; however, the number of lal initiatives for preservice teachers should be higher, so that they are more professionally prepared for the inevitable task of in-service language assessment. another trend in the corpus regards the purposes for training in lal. naturally, all studies were meant to help teachers improve their lal. the clear tendency, however, is that improving assessment design is a key objective of these programs. twelve out of 14 studies explicitly aimed at helping teachers improve their lal either through analysis or design of assessment instruments; kleinsasser (2005) and restrepo-bolívar (2020) do mention design in their studies but not as the approach to teaching lal. the trend of design as a main purpose in these programs reflects one expectation that teachers have about language assessment: they want practical, hands-on training (fulcher, 2012; giraldo & murcia, 2018). this finding emphasizes teachers’ need of a focus on the skills side of lal. the implication seems to be that if teachers study knowledge and principles in lal, they should do so within a practice-based framework. the approaches to teaching language assessment in these programs were variegated. however, and as just commented, design-based learning is fundamental in these studies. the programs, whether face-to-face or online, use hands-on design and critique of assessments table 2. context, purposes, and methodologies of lal programs context graduate in-service preservice 2 studies: kleinsasser (2005); o’loughlin (2006) 9 studies: arias et al. (2012); baker & riches (2017); boyd & donnarumma (2018); koh et al. (2018); kremmel et al. (2018); levi & inbar-lourie (2019); montee et al. (2013); nier et al. (2009); walters (2010) 4 studies: giraldo & murcia (2019); jaramillo-delgado & gil-bedoya (2019); restrepo-bolívar (2020); walters (2010) purposes critique or design of assessments development of lal at large 9 studies: arias et al. (2012); kleinsasser (2005); koh et al. (2018); kremmel et al. (2018); levi & inbar-lourie (2019); montee et al. (2013); nier et al. (2009); o’loughlin (2006); walters (2010) 5 studies: baker & riches (2017); boyd & donnarumma (2018); jaramillodelgado & gil-bedoya (2019); giraldo & murcia (2019); restrepobolívar (2020) methodologies critiquing and designing assessments: face to face critiquing and designing assessments: blended 11 studies: arias et al. (2012); baker & riches (2017); boyd & donnarumma (2018); giraldo & murcia (2019); jaramillo-delgado & gil-bedoya (2019); kleinsasser (2005); koh et al. (2018); kremmel et al. (2018); levi & inbarlourie (2019); restrepo-bolívar (2020); walters (2010) 3 studies: montee et al. (2013); nier et al. (2009); o’loughlin (2006) 271profile: issues teach. prof. dev., vol. 23 no. 2, jul-dec, 2021. issn 1657-0790 (printed) 2256-5760 (online). bogotá, colombia. pages 265-279 language assessment literacy and teachers' professional development: a review of the literature for helping teachers improve the skills component of lal but knowledge emerges in these tasks, as i will explain later. this is in line with what authors have discussed about lal for teachers, that is, that the practical side of assessment is pivotal (fulcher, 2012; giraldo, 2018; inbar-lourie, 2008). as boyd and donnarumma (2018) argue, “teachers need a proper course in assessment design to allow them the time to absorb what is, after all, an expert subject” (p. 120). as the data corroborate, the skills side of lal, and particularly design, seem to be pivotal to help teachers further their lal. clearly, the studies indicate that engaging teachers in designing assessment instruments impacts them positively at the technical and theoretical levels. lastly, one issue that may merit attention in these studies is the time devoted for training. the range is wide, from one-off workshops lasting three hours (boyd & donnarumma, 2018), week-long or semester-long programs (baker & riches, 2017; o’loughlin, 2006, respectively), to sustained training for two or three years (koh et al., 2018; kremmel et al., 2018). as the authors in these programs suggest, initiatives with longer times should be encouraged for teachers’ lal (baker & riches, 2017; boyd & donnarumma, 2018; kremmel et al., 2018). since lal is so much needed, as language testing experts and language teachers agree, the long-term impact of short professional development programs, if such exist, should be questioned or researched. programs like the ones in arias et al. (2012) and koh et al. (2018) attest to the need for sustainable initiatives that, in addition to training in language assessment, accompany teachers in the implementation and scrutiny of the assessments they design. while short programs seem to raise teachers’ awareness of what language assessment implies, actual impact on teaching and student learning seem to come with sustained programs (months and even years, such as koh et al., 2018) that connect assessment to the contexts where teachers work. clearly, the longer the lal program, the more beneficial it might be for all stakeholders involved. on the contents of these language assessment programs whereas the contents found in all 14 programs naturally varied, the data suggest clear tendencies at a theoretical and a practical level of language assessment. the data also show that there are contents which are not addressed in the majority of the studies, and there may be reasons for this. the information in table 3 corroborates the finding explained above: in this review, language assessment programs for teachers’ lal prioritize the critique and, most importantly, the design of language assessments. there is evidence in all 14 studies that teachers are engaged in studying and creating instruments with either items (e.g., multiple-choice questions) or tasks (a rubric for a speaking assessment) for traditional or alternative assessment. thus, it can be suggested that these programs have responded to the need that teachers have expressed (see the relevant section on teachers’ lal research). in line with this finding and with a focus on preservice teachers, giraldo and murcia (2019) state that “language assessment courses for pre-service teachers should emphasise highly structured design tasks because they trigger conscientious decisions fueled by seasoned theoretical frameworks” (p. 255). based on the data from the corpus, the programs seemed to have understood language assessment as design-driven rather than merely conceptual, which should have implications for language teacher education in various contexts, for instance, preand in-service: the design of assessment instruments should be a top priority for teachers’ lal. qualities for language assessment is another type of content that is common across most studies (11 out of 14). of these, validity and reliability are the qualities that occur most in the studies, with authenticity and practicality coming second in the data. in scholarly discussions, these qualities are included in the knowledge dimension of lal, which underscores them as an essential part of the fundamental knowledge base universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras272 giraldo that is needed for language assessment (inbar-lourie, 2008, 2012). besides, as various authors in these studies report (giraldo & murcia, 2019; kleinsasser, 2005), the participating teachers used these qualities to critique and design instruments for language assessment, which suggests that theory, apparently, was not studied in isolation but through the analysis assessments. a major implication from these data may be that theory should connect to design so teachers can make sense of it in the assessments they critique or analyze. finally, three studies did not explicitly address key qualities such as reliability and validity (levi & inbar-lourie, 2019; restrepo-bolívar, 2020; walters, 2010), which are staple in language testing and assessment given their overarching impact. thus, these two qualities should be central topics in lal programs and studied accordingly given the specific nature of each initiative. another common content that stands out in table 3 is, perhaps naturally, the assessment of language skills: listening, speaking, reading, and writing. the studies that do not mention skills assessment (jaramillodelgado & gil-bedoya, 2019; levi & inbar-lourie, 2019; restrepo-bolívar, 2020; walters, 2010) perhaps did cover these topics, but they are not explicitly or implicitly reported in the articles. in the case of walters’ study, the program focused on a rather particular set of strategies for analyzing items: specifications writing and reverse specifications. overall, the focus on assessing skills aligns with studies which report that teachers want to learn or improve how they assess language table 3. language assessment (la) contents in the programs study knowledge skills principles meaning of la purposes in la qualities of la: validity, reliability, etc. la methods: critique and/or design assessing language skills ethics, fairness, impact, etc. kleinsasser (2005) ✓ ✓ ✓ ✓ ✓ o’loughlin (2006) ✓ ✓ ✓ ✓ nier et al. (2009) ✓ ✓ ✓ ✓ walters (2010) ✓ arias et al. (2012) ✓ ✓ ✓ ✓ ✓ montee et al. (2013) ✓ ✓ ✓ ✓ ✓ baker & riches (2017) ✓ ✓ ✓ boyd & donnarumma (2018) ✓ ✓ ✓ ✓ ✓ ✓ kremmel et al. (2018) ✓ ✓ ✓ koh et al. (2018) ✓ ✓ ✓ jaramillo-delgado & gil-bedoya (2019) ✓ ✓ giraldo & murcia (2019) ✓ ✓ ✓ ✓ levi & inbar-lourie (2019) ✓ ✓ ✓ ✓ restrepo-bolívar (2020) ✓ ✓ ✓ ✓ 273profile: issues teach. prof. dev., vol. 23 no. 2, jul-dec, 2021. issn 1657-0790 (printed) 2256-5760 (online). bogotá, colombia. pages 265-279 language assessment literacy and teachers' professional development: a review of the literature skills (for example, see giraldo & murcia, 2018; vogt & tsagari, 2014). in all 14 studies there is an absence of construct-based discussions which are prominent in language testing, namely the assessment of multilingual competence. this may happen given that teachers work in contexts where there is a majority target language to be assessed. as for the absence, in some cases, of the meaning of and purposes for language assessment, it may be the case that these topics were in fact studied in the programs. however, these topics are not reported in all studies because they may be taken for granted or because the nature of the study did not need to address them at length. for example, kremmel et al. (2018) state that their study was not meant for classroom assessment, in which case instructional purposes for assessment may be irrelevant. however, language testing is predominantly done from a purpose-based angle: assessments respond to purposes for them to be useful. thus, purposes should be explicitly studied so that knowledge, skills, and principles in language assessment correspond to them. lastly, only six out of 14 programs included or addressed, at least explicitly, principles for language assessment. the principles included in the studies were ethics, fairness, democracy, and transparency, with a major focus in arias et al. (2012) and, to a lesser extent, levi and inbar-lourie (2019). the other studies (boyd & donnarumma, 2018; kleinsasser, 2005; montee et al., 2013; restrepo-bolívar, 2020) merely mention these contents. this finding contrasts with overall discussions of lal, which state that principles such as ethics and fairness are a fundamental piece of this puzzle, for all stakeholders, teachers included (davies, 2008; inbarlourie, 2017; kremmel & harding, 2020). interestingly, the finding does seem to align with teacher-reported needs. descriptive studies such as fulcher (2012) and giraldo and murcia (2018) show that teachers rank principles as a low priority for lal. in one of the studies in this review—kremmel et al. (2018)—teachers reported that they learned little about principles such as ethicality, but as the authors comment, this was not the focus of their lal study. however, in the study by arias et al. (2012), teachers implemented fair, transparent, and democratic practices in their assessment approach. thus, it seems that principles for lal should be further studied in these programs, and their impact on teachers elucidated, especially because such principles have become central regarding the role and impact of language assessment in society (fulcher, 2012; giraldo, 2018; inbar-lourie, 2017). on the impact of these programs on teachers’ professional development in this section, i will provide evidence to answer the second research question that guided this review. the impact that these programs had on teachers’ lal can be explained in three aspects: heightened conception of language assessment, rigorous design of assessments, and broader constructs for assessment. next, i will explain and discuss these impacts. heightened conception of language assessment most studies in this review (12 out of 14) report that teachers’ conception of language assessment went beyond merely using tests and reporting grades to using assessment to improve learning and teaching. according to the reports, the teachers in the studies explained that they viewed language assessment as a powerful tool to impact student learning. montee et al. (2013), for example, state that the teachers in their program developed “an increased awareness of and appreciation for assessment as a tool for guiding and improving language instruction” (p. 23). similarly, in restrepo-bolívar’s (2020) study, one of the preservice teachers viewed assessment as “a process in which the teacher gathers relevant information about the student’s weaknesses and strengths in the learning process to make decisions about the instruction and students’ learning” (p. 45). universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras274 giraldo kremmel et al. (2018) and walters (2010) do not report teachers’ change regarding their conception of language assessment as a whole but do mention they became aware of issues in test development and design. arguably, these areas may cause a change in perspective. in conclusion, the studies suggest that, even with short workshops (e.g., boyd & donnarumma, 2018), language assessment programs seem to exercise a positive impact on teachers’ perspective towards what language assessment represents in instructional contexts. some studies have shown that teachers have a limited view of language assessment and equate it with testing only (e.g., díaz-larenas et al., 2012), and this may be attributed to lack of training in lal, especially in preservice teacher education (lam, 2015; lópezmendoza & bernal-arandia, 2009; vogt & tsagari, 2014). studies such as lópez-mendoza and bernal-arandia (2009) have indicated that teachers with limited training in language assessment tend to see this area negatively and equate it with grading only. thus, the call to provide early and continuous education in lal is necessary so that teachers can use assessment for positive impact on teaching and learning. rigorous design of assessments the design of language instruments is another prominent positive impact the programs had on the participating teachers. as shown in previous findings, workshops for language assessment prioritize a designbased course. particularly, the studies report that teachers become aware of the necessary procedures to create highquality assessments and, as they do so, they intertwine knowledge of theory to either critique or improve their design. in other words, design is not a procedural task but one in which theory and practice converge. arias et al. (2012) explain this trend: “inter-rater reliability was possible thanks to the existence of instruments and formats that included a complete rubric, with explicit instructions, criteria and construct” (p. 118, translated from spanish). similarly, kremmel et al. (2018, p. 187) report the following based on the answers from the 56 participating teachers: “the item writing stage appears to have been particularly beneficial for their learning about validity (89%), item writing (88%), reliability (86%), selecting tests for their classroom use (79%) and authenticity (77%).” the answers in both studies suggest that, as teachers are trained in designing assessments, the task itself triggers theoretical constructs from their lal. this is perhaps why fulcher (2012) places the practical aspect of language assessment as fundamental for teachers; the studies in this review seem to align well with this idea and, perhaps most importantly, the needs teachers report in diagnostic studies for lal (for instance, vogt & tsagari, 2014, and others). in conclusion, lal programs that prioritize design benefit not only the skills side of assessment but also knowledge, and more importantly, the needs that teachers have reported consistently. what remains open for further investigation is how principles in lal intertwine with skills and knowledge. broader constructs for language assessment a last outstanding positive impact these programs had on teachers regards the what of language assessment: constructs. the studies report that, through these initiatives, teachers moved from assessing minor linguistic skills such as grammar and vocabulary to assessing language ability more holistically. the trend in the studies is that teachers become more aware of assessing listening, speaking, reading, and writing, and this may be attributed to the programs’ emphasis on these skills. as baker and riches (2017) report, there was “a broadening of the teachers’ understanding of the construct of language ability relative to what they had previously held” (p. 566). in this study, teachers thought assessing only grammar and vocabulary was enough but understood the need to assess reading skills as well. restrepo-bolívar (2020) also reports how her students understood language ability more intricately. as the author explains, a participant in her 275profile: issues teach. prof. dev., vol. 23 no. 2, jul-dec, 2021. issn 1657-0790 (printed) 2256-5760 (online). bogotá, colombia. pages 265-279 language assessment literacy and teachers' professional development: a review of the literature study: “moved from considering mere development of knowledge and skills to focus on language use as the language to be assessed, which is consistent with what current views state about the ultimate goal of teaching and learning a language” (p. 46). this impact on teachers reflects a need to which scholars have referred in lal: that of understanding language ability as an intricate construct (inbar-lourie, 2008; stabler-havener, 2018). thus, these lal programs may contribute to assessment practices that are more on par with current understandings of language ability models, which is a crucial component of lal (brindley, 2001; davies, 2008). however, as i stated in the findings regarding content, teacher educators and the teachers themselves do not seem to bring up multilingual assessment as an issue in these courses, despite the growing consensus in language testing that this phenomenon is a crucial discussion. like principles in lal, professional development programs for teachers’ lal may lead to interesting findings when they explore the construct of multilingualism and the design of multilingual assessments. conclusions my purpose with this literature review was to elucidate the nature of language assessment programs and their impact on language teachers’ lal. data from all 14 studies suggest that training is conducted with language teachers in various educational settings and languages. particularly, the studies remark the need to advance teachers’ lal through methodologies that use the critique and design of assessments as central tasks, that is, the skills component of lal; such tasks lead to careful design of instruments, as the studies show. besides, it appears that, with such a practice-based methodology, teachers learn more about conceptual aspects and expand the language ability constructs they assess, two aspects which are part of the knowledge side in lal. lastly, the principles component in lal and core issues in language testing (e.g., multilingual assessment) were not prominent in these studies, so further research may be needed to fully explicate the pertinence of these topics in teachers’ lal. taken together, the studies are in line with the needs that teachers have reported in the available lal literature. further, they exercised a highly positive impact on teachers, even in cases in which training was limited due to time constraints. a final call is that professional development programs for teachers’ lal should become more prominent in the literature so we can learn from others’ experiences and then provide high-quality teacher education, which in turn should lead to positive consequences for those involved in language learning. implications and recommendations based on my review of the literature, professional development programs for teachers’ lal started to become commonplace in the late 2010s. this is why, out of 14 studies, eight come from 2017 or later. thus, the small corpus in this review may be considered a limitation. however, despite the limited number of papers and range of years among studies, the trends are clear and point to areas of consensus regarding programs in lal for teachers. a related limitation is that each program had a particular impact on teachers, which made it difficult to synthesize and confirm other trends. as studies for teachers’ professional development in lal appear, more generalities and specificities might surface in the literature. finally, the analysis of the data in the corpus for this review depended on my view entirely. other analyses and conclusions may be possible given different research orientations and purposes. the studies in this review suggest that as teachers engage in the development of assessments, they also use their theoretical knowledge in their lal. this is what davies (2008) conceptualized as a knowledge + skills angle on language testing. thus, programs designed to foster teachers’ lal should definitely place major universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras276 giraldo emphasis on the analysis and design of assessments; theory-only courses may not be as successful to impact teachers’ lal or even be based on their actual needs for training. another issue that requires attention is the role of principles in teachers’ lal education. few studies in this review explicitly addressed them extensively. thus, professional development programs should include principles such as ethics, fairness, and transparency as contents for teachers’ lal and careful observation as to how these principles can be meaningful for teachers’ educational contexts. the feedback from research may be useful in lal discussions to confirm the need for principles such as ethics and fairness, as authors have argued, or to challenge their presence in these discussions. based on the studies in this literature review, and the related conceptual review, lal should become a core dimension of language teacher education. it may be a disservice not to include courses for language assessment in language teaching curricula, especially because learning about language assessment may lead teachers to become aware of its critical role on three fronts: current understandings of what it means to know and use a language; 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(2010). cultivating assessment literacy: standards evaluation through language-test specification reverse engineering. language assessment quarterly, 7(4), 317–342. https://doi.org/10.1080/15434303.2010.516042 yastıbaş, a., & takkaç, m. (2018). understanding language assessment literacy: developing language assessments. journal of language and linguistic studies, 14(1), 178–193. https://doi.org/10.1177/0265532214554321 https://doi.org/10.1177/0265532214554321 https://doi.org/10.1080/15434303.2019.1692347 https://doi.org/10.1080/15434303.2019.1692347 https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-02261-1_16 https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-02261-1_16 https://doi.org/10.1177/0265532213480336 https://doi.org/10.1177/0265532213480337 https://doi.org/10.1177/0265532213480337 https://doi.org/10.1177/0265532213480128 https://doi.org/10.1186/s40468-019-0077-8 https://doi.org/10.1186/s40468-019-0077-8 https://doi.org/10.1177/0265532213480338 https://doi.org/10.1177/0265532213480338 https://doi.org/10.1080/15434303.2014.960046 https://doi.org/10.1080/15434303.2014.960046 https://doi.org/10.1080/15434303.2020.1781128 https://doi.org/10.1080/15434303.2020.1781128 https://doi.org/10.1080/15434303.2010.516042 279profile: issues teach. prof. dev., vol. 23 no. 2, jul-dec, 2021. issn 1657-0790 (printed) 2256-5760 (online). bogotá, colombia. pages 265-279 language assessment literacy and teachers' professional development: a review of the literature about the author frank giraldo holds an ma in english didactics from universidad de caldas (colombia), and an ma in tesol from university of illinois at urbana-champaign (the usa). he works as a teacher educator in the modern languages program and in the ma in english didactics at universidad de caldas, colombia. 15profile: issues teach. prof. dev., vol. 20 no. 1, jan-jun, 2018. issn 1657-0790 (printed) 2256-5760 (online). bogotá, colombia. pages 15-23 https://doi.org/10.15446/profile.v20n1.66236 teacher to researcher: reflections on a new action research program for university efl teachers docente a investigador: reflexiones sobre un nuevo programa de investigaciónacción para profesores universitarios anne burns1* university of new south wales, sydney, australia anne westmacott2** universidad chileno-británica de cultura, santiago, chile one of the current challenges facing many universities is how to support teachers in becoming researchers. this article discusses the experiences at a small private chilean university of a new action research programme that was developed as a vehicle for helping teachers to become involved in research and write a research publication for peer-reviewed journals. we present findings from research into similar programmes about relevant factors for their success, describe the programme developed at the university with five english as a foreign language teachers in 2016, and discuss some reflections on this first year of the programme. key words: action research programme, university teachers. uno de los desafíos que deben enfrentar muchas universidades actualmente es cómo brindar apoyo a sus docentes para formarlos como investigadores. este artículo analiza las experiencias en una pequeña universidad privada en chile de un nuevo programa de investigación-acción que desarrollaron como medio para ayudar a sus docentes a realizar investigaciones y redactar publicaciones para una revista revisada por pares. en el presente se abordan evaluaciones de otros programas parecidos, especialmente sobre los factores relevantes para su éxito. también se detalla el programa desarrollado en la universidad en el 2016 con cinco profesores de inglés como lengua extranjera, y se presentan algunas reflexiones sobre este primer año del programa. palabras clave: docentes universitarios, programa de investigación-acción. * e-mail: anne.burns@unsw.edu.au ** e-mail: awestmacott@ubritanica.cl how to cite this article (apa, 6th ed.): burns, a., & westmacott, a. (2018). teacher to researcher: reflections on a new action research program for university efl teachers. profile: issues in teachers’ professional development, 20(1), 15-23. https://doi.org/10.15446/profile. v20n1.66236. this article was received on july 10, 2017, and accepted on october 5, 2017. this is an open access article distributed under the terms of the creative commons license attribution-noncommercial-noderivatives 4.0 international license. consultation is possible at https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/. universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras16 burns & westmacott introduction across the world, there is increasing pressure on university teachers to become research active. in order to rise to the challenge, teachers may opt to earn a master’s, or even doctorate. in order to drive up publications, universities may establish requirements and incentives for training (diplomas in research skills, master’s degrees, and doctorates) and publications, and also try to foster a culture favourable to research, including presentations of research carried out, discussion groups, and so forth. nonetheless, it is often still difficult to cross the bridge from university teacher to become a confident, motivated, publishing researcher (archer, 2008; bai & hudson, 2011; tran, burns, & ollerhead, 2017). one of the reasons for which research activity from university teachers is being encouraged is the belief that it will lead to better undergraduate teaching, but evidence supporting this claim is scarce (prince, felder, & brent, 2007). classroom-based research, however, can lead to the improvement of practices at the undergraduate level. several studies (e.g., atay, 2008; banegas, pavese, velázquez, & vélez, 2013; burns, 2014; çelik & dikilitaş, 2014) have shown that one type of classroom-based research, action research, can also help teachers to develop professionally in different ways, such as enhancing knowledge of their teaching practices, deepening their understanding of their students’ needs, and improving their autonomy and motivation. in 2015 at universidad chileno-británica de cultura (ucbc) in santiago, very little research was being carried out. as a result of external policy pressures, and internal beliefs that more research would be beneficial to us as an institution, we resolved to develop a critical mass of researcher-teachers capable of producing research that would nourish our undergraduate teaching and would stand up to the scrutiny of peer review. several of our teachers had professed interest in carrying out research, but, despite many holding master’s degrees, they believed their skills for carrying it out and publishing the outcomes were inadequate. as part of our multi-faceted plan to increase research activity, we developed a yearlong teachers action research programme (tarp), piloted in 2016. we have previously reported on the first four months of implementing this programme (burns, westmacott, & hidalgo, 2016); in this article, we reflect on the experiences of the whole first year in the hope that it may be of use for other higher education institutions considering how to develop teachers’ research skills or implementing similar programmes. background action research offers a form of systematic inquiry that is usually appealing to teachers as it enables a focus on areas of their own practice that they consider worth investigating. this kind of research aims to make an impact on students’ learning and to deepen teachers’ understanding of issues in their classrooms that may be puzzling, problematic, or intriguing (burns, 2010). teachers may want to address classroom topics or questions that have perplexed them for some time, or understand more comprehensively what they need to change in their thinking and practices as they develop a new curriculum or course, or adopt new forms of assessment. alternatively, they may wish to evaluate the outcomes of introducing new materials, resources, or technology to their students, or to experiment with different kinds of tasks to discover which lead to more effective learning. action research, with its iterative cycles of planning, acting, observing, and reflecting (burns, 2010; kemmis & mctaggart, 1988) offers an empirical process, whereby teachers not only operate in the classroom but also observe systematically the practical effects of their actions and behaviours. despite the growing popularity and spread of action research in recent years, for teachers who have been used to considering themselves first and foremost as classroom practitioners, embarking on any kind of research is a challenging undertaking. this situation is all the more daunting if the institutional feasibility conditions for supporting teacher research are not 17profile: issues teach. prof. dev., vol. 20 no. 1, jan-jun, 2018. issn 1657-0790 (printed) 2256-5760 (online). bogotá, colombia. pages 15-23 teacher to researcher: reflections on a new action research program for university efl teachers available to them. borg and sanchez (2014, p. 3) note 14 conditions, in the form of questions that could be used for auditing, to gauge the feasibility of teacher research. among these conditions are questions such as: will teachers have access to appropriate advice or mentoring?; is the time required for teacher research available?; will the teacher’s school support their efforts to do teacher research?; will the teachers have access to a community of teacher researchers?; will they have opportunities to share their work?; will they have access to appropriate resources?; can teacher research be integrated into the teacher’s routine practices? they also argue that since research requires additional commitments of time, intellect, and emotion, teacher research is likely to be more feasible “when teachers are able to use skills, knowledge and opportunities which already exist” (p. 2). some of the early “how-to” literature on language teacher classroom action research appeared to assume, rather unproblematically, that if teachers were introduced to concepts, processes, and methods of doing research (e.g., allwright & bailey, 1991; nunan, 1989) they would be able to conduct it. work with teachers in australia (by burton, 1992, on the languages inservice program for teachers (lipt), and burns, 2000, on the australian adult migrant english program), and in oman (by borg, 2006, with teacher researchers) has shown that input about action research is undoubtedly important. however, analyses of different programmes have emphasised the importance of additional factors for effectively supporting teacher research. burns (2000) and borg (2006) have observed the positive impact of ensuring teachers’ participation is voluntary and that they are able to select research areas they consider relevant to their own practices. having institutional support and buy-in, as well as time allocated to carry out the research, have also been noted by these authors (borg, 2006; burns, 2000; burton, 1992) and by facilitators of programmes in turkey and chile (dikilitaş, 2014; smith, connelly, & rebolledo, 2014). on-going support, from working collaboratively with a partner; being part of a peer discussion group and experiencing individual mentoring, can also be key (borg 2006; burns, 2000; burton 1992, dikilitaş, 2014; smith et al., 2014). burns (2010) and burton (2009) argue, too, that providing opportunities to present and publish work can be valuable for encouraging teacher research. burns (2000) noted that flexible timeframes and processes were helpful. more recently, reflecting on a national action research program conducted with teachers in the australian elicos (english language intensive courses for overseas students) sector, burns (2015) has outlined additional supportive factors that may need to be considered as teachers pursue their research: allowing sufficient time for teachers’ reflection on and absorption of the initial information they receive about research; extending periods of time to complete the research; encouraging teachers to conduct research with partners for further support; considering research “themes” where teachers work on an “overarching” research area within which they select their own focus, which allows for comparing and contrasting outcomes; and using social media and technology to maintain opportunities for ongoing contact. against this overall background of the kinds of support required by teacher researchers, some recent studies have also started to look at teachers’ sense of capacity or efficacy to carry out research and what contributes to how these attributes develop (or not) over time. yuan and lee (2014), noting the impact of facilitative teacher-university researcher partnerships in this process, found that the teachers they worked with in hong kong gradually changed their preconceptions about research as they learned more about action research and learned to cope with challenging contextual constraints, which led to professional learning and development. wyatt and dikilitaş (2015) found that the three teacher-researchers they studied in turkey, who all began with low self-beliefs about their universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras18 burns & westmacott abilities to do research, became more efficacious as they engaged in continuing professional development that involved doing research. mentoring, encouraging, and supporting their autonomy, and providing opportunities for them to present their research all contributed to their development as researchers. edwards and burns (2016a) have observed that the development of a teacher researcher identity is or has been related to teachers’ sense of agency to learn more about research, make choices, take control, and pursue their goals, all of which contributed to their development and self-identification as researchers. in achieving agency as researchers, however, teachers also needed to negotiate relationships within their workplaces with colleagues and managers, part of which was the extent to which they were given recognition as researchers within the workplace context. more recently, tran et al. (2017) document the tensions and challenges felt by language teachers working at a vietnamese university as they responded, without any structured institutional support and mentoring, to new demands from their institution to become teachers as well as researchers. while some teachers welcomed the institutional requirements that they become researchers as well as teachers and believed they had the capacity and interest to develop good research skills, others felt overwhelmed, pressured, and increasingly disheartened about their capacity to achieve these goals. the authors point out that for teachers to make the transition to researchers successfully it is important that their institutions provide clear guidelines about expectations, offer mentoring support, and provide teachers with expertise, time, and collaborative opportunities to learn from each other. in short, they reinforce the findings of other studies already mentioned in which institutional support for language teacher research is essential if teachers are to make the successful transition to research. the ucbc teacher action research programme pilot1 the ucbc is a small, niche university that has existed for just over 10 years with the main purpose of training competent bilingual (spanish-english) teachers and translators who can contribute to chilean society. the second author of this article (hereafter the local mentor), who works at the ucbc, invited the first author (hereafter the facilitator), who has considerable experience in action research but lives in a different country, to develop and facilitate the action research programme collaboratively. it was agreed that the facilitator would provide an initial three-day workshop at ucbc for the teachers and would then, from her home country, liaise with the local mentor as the project proceeded across the year. the facilitator would also be in contact as required with the teachers to guide the focus and progress of their research and the design of data tools, and to make suggestions about data analysis and resources from the literature. the local mentor would maintain close local contact with the teachers through regular meetings and discussions at ucbc. in short, one of the main aims of the programme was to provide teachers with on-going support from both the facilitator and the local mentor to help them to develop and implement their projects, and to write them up for publication over a year. at the end of 2015, ucbc english language teachers were invited to participate in tarp, investigating a topic related to their teaching which was of interest to them. for the pilot, five ucbc teachers volunteered to participate. they comprised four female chilean teachers and one male british teacher and had all taught english in chilean schools and universities for at least ten years. their academic backgrounds varied considerably: three had master’s degrees in related areas, one had a phd in literature, and one had not studied at the postgraduate level. none had previously carried out an action research 1 for a fuller account of the context and participants, please see burns et al. (2016). 19profile: issues teach. prof. dev., vol. 20 no. 1, jan-jun, 2018. issn 1657-0790 (printed) 2256-5760 (online). bogotá, colombia. pages 15-23 teacher to researcher: reflections on a new action research program for university efl teachers project, and only one had previously published a research article. three of the teachers opted to work together as a group, while the other two decided to pursue individual projects. thus, three projects were conducted during the tarp pilot. the initial three-day workshop was held in january 2016. its aims were to develop teachers’ understanding of what action research involves (illustrated by case studies) and help teachers to define their research questions and plans. the implementation (“acting” and “observing” stages) of the projects was scheduled for march to july (first academic semester), followed by data analysis and reflection between august and september, and the participants presented their projects and findings in a general teachers meeting at the university at the end of september. the writing up of the research was scheduled to take place between october and december, but for different reasons (see reflections below), this process continued until may 2017. following the workshop, the support provided to the teachers by the local mentor and facilitator across the year included: • monthly group meetings during the first semester with the local mentor. • a skype conversation (and others as required) and email contact during the first semester with the facilitator. • individual meetings on a needs-basis with the local mentor throughout the year. • a group rehearsal of the september presentations by the teachers and local mentor. • feedback, in one case, on the presentation from the local mentor. • feedback on conference abstract submissions from the facilitator and local mentor. • revision of drafts of teachers’ articles via email by the facilitator and local mentor. • a personal feedback session on the projects and the articles with the facilitator and the local mentor before the january three-day workshop for the 2017 programme. for logistical reasons, the teachers were paid for six hours per week from march to december for their participation, rather than being given systematic release time from their schedules. table 1 summarises the projects that were carried out and the outcomes in terms of presentations and publications to date. table 1. projects and outcomes of ucbc teachers action research programme 2016 project no. of teachers involved outcomes impact of integrated assessment on the linguistic competences of second year students 3 • presentation at 2nd ricelt biannual conference, santiago • submission of an article to a peerreviewed journal targeting and improving students’ awareness of l1 transfer issues 1 • publication of article in profile: issues in teachers’ professional development using verbal scaffolding to enhance oral production in a small group of low proficiency students 1 • poster presentation at 2nd ricelt biannual conference, santiago as can be seen, two of the projects have already resulted in presentations at a conference (the third project was not submitted, and will hopefully be presented at a different conference in 2017), and one is published universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras20 burns & westmacott in this issue of profile: issues in teachers’ professional development (dissington, 2018) and one has led to the generation of an article which is still under peer review in an academic journal. in order to evaluate and reflect on the first year of the programme, we have collected data in a variety of ways, including observation notes, questionnaires, a reflective account, and recorded focus groups. whilst we are yet to analyse some of this data in depth, we comment below on our reflections so far. reflections on the tarp pilot we are aware that the following comments are early impressions, and moreover, taken only from a pilot programme in a single institution. nonetheless, we hope they may add to a wider variety of accounts of similar programmes that aim to develop teacher research in order to contribute to a more complex understanding of how such programmes can be developed effectively (borg, 2013). a number of positive aspects about the programme overall have emerged from this first year, reflecting findings from previous studies. as noted in burns et al. (2016), the initial workshop, during which participants were given information about action research and discussed some case studies of teacher research, was valued by all the attendees and considered to be an important part of developing the necessary research skills to complete the project (see also borg, 2006; burns, 2000; burton, 1992). as we mentioned, previous authors have pointed out the benefits of working with others, whether through collaborating with a partner, a peer discussion group, or mentoring (borg 2006; burns, 2000; burton 1992, dikilitaş, 2014; smith et al., 2014). on the tarp, we found that the teachers who opted to work as a group of three began with a clearer idea of their project design, partly because they could discuss their ideas amongst themselves. these three did observe at the end, however, that working as a group had been difficult logistically due to their different timetables. for the two teachers who worked alone focusing the research seemed to be more challenging in the early stages. these teachers found that both the monthly group meetings during the first semester, when participants had shared progress and answer queries collaboratively, and on-going individual meetings with the research coordinator, were important. some of the tarp participants recognised that being paid during their participation was both a critical factor in motivating them to start and enabling them to give the research the necessary time as it freed them up to take fewer classes; other teachers felt it was difficult to complete the project and write up the findings in the time allotted. both views point to the value of providing teachers with sufficient time to carry out their research, as has been underlined by other researchers (e.g., borg 2006; burton, 1992; dikilitaş, 2014; smith et al., 2014). nonetheless, teachers made positive comments throughout the programme about how their participation gave them the time and impetus to reflect on their teaching, an experience which they all found enriching. for example: [you] have the opportunity to look at the things you do in order to improve them, but also to realise…that sometimes, you could do better…things that you do not consider, you can include in your practice. (teacher e, focus group, january 2017) i was more conscious [about my teaching]. in the past, i would just teach. it’s not like we had to always have a meeting, informally i was thinking about it. this project has made me more aware . . . i was tuned. (teacher c, focus group, january 2017) the participants’ first presentations of their projects to the university community in september 2016 was a valuable experience for some of them: having the opportunity to reflect on their data as part of developing their presentations was helpful for the writing stage, and it was encouraging to hear other teachers comment on the importance of their topics. other authors have also noted that in-house presentations can contribute to teacher researchers’ sense of identity as researchers 21profile: issues teach. prof. dev., vol. 20 no. 1, jan-jun, 2018. issn 1657-0790 (printed) 2256-5760 (online). bogotá, colombia. pages 15-23 teacher to researcher: reflections on a new action research program for university efl teachers (e.g., edwards & burns, 2016b; wyatt & dikilitaş, 2015). however, the feedback received by one of the participants from her colleagues was rather negative, and she felt that, despite the relatively underdeveloped research culture at the university, her colleagues would have given more credit to more academic, formal presentations. the biggest challenges that emerged were connected to writing up the research, both for the participants who were new (or relatively new) to writing articles, and for us as facilitators in terms of how to support participants in this context. the writing process took considerably longer than anticipated, and the drafting and redrafting processes caused frustration. completion required determination from the participants and encouragement from us; in fact, one teacher decided not to submit an article. a related challenge, as we noted in burns et al. (2016), was the accessing and use of the academic literature. as work by smith et al. (2014) suggests, these challenges may be less significant in programmes that have focused on supporting research by school teachers where there may be more emphasis on teachers having opportunities to explore good practices, and less on publishing their research in journals. indeed, for these contexts it may be more important to find ways to share findings that do not place an unnecessary burden on the teacher, and that are easily accessible for the teacher’s peers. it does seem therefore that there needs to be more research on how university teachers can best be supported to write up research for academic review. although we were working with university teachers, most of whom had at least a master’s degree, these challenges reminded us of cárdenas’ (2003) observations that school teachers writing up research papers also particularly need support in these writing and reading processes. due to the issues we experienced, we have implemented changes to the programme in 2017: for example, for the initial workshop in january, we requested that teachers find and bring two or three articles relevant to their area of interest and discuss them so as to introduce reflection on the academic literature from the beginning. this year, we have asked teachers to submit partial drafts of articles during the first semester so as to provide them with feedback at earlier stages and to reduce the writing load at the busy end-of-year period. we have also included a mid-programme two-day writing workshop in july run by the local mentor during which the participants read examples of action research studies from fields similar to their own, analysed how they had been written, and had time to modify their own drafts and ask questions. given that we had already revised early drafts from the participants, we were able to focus these genre-analysis activities on issues that seemed to cause particular difficulties, such as structuring the introduction, the importance of topic sentences and coherent, focused paragraphs in the literature review, and the style and type of information to include in the methodology section of an action-research article. we have emphasised from the start of the programme that the writing and revising can be challenging, but that ultimately, it can be a rewarding process that develops skills and understanding. in the words of one of the 2016 teachers: “if you write it, then you know where you are really going” (teacher c, focus group, january 2017). finally, as a university community, in 2017 we have become increasingly aware of how this programme has the potential to become a significant engine for the improvement of the undergraduate teaching in general, beyond those who participated in the programme. we have now a requirement that relevant subject coordinators create spaces in work meetings to discuss the findings of the researcher(s) and consider appropriate responses for curriculum development and teaching practices. conclusion in this paper, we have offered some reflections on our experiences of initiating and sustaining a new professional development programme to support university efl teachers in their transition to becoming teacher researchers. while not claiming that our own experiences are generalisable to other contexts, we believe universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras22 burns & westmacott they might offer some suggestions and considerations for other institutions facing similar external and internal pressures for changes in the roles of teachers who have not traditionally been expected to produce research. we would argue that the form of research we selected— action research—has the potential to engage university teachers in projects that they consider to be relevant and worthwhile and can be a supportive introduction to developing as a researcher in the future. references allwright, d., & bailey, k. m. 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(2015). english language teachers becoming more efficacious through research engagement at their turkish university. educational action research, 24(4), 550-570. https://doi.org/10.1080/09650792.2015 .1076731. yuan, r., & lee, i. (2015). action research facilitated by university-school collaboration. elt journal, 69(1), 1-10. https://doi.org/10.1093/elt/ccu031. about the authors anne burns is a professor of tesol in the school of education at the university of new south wales, australia, and professor emerita at aston university, birmingham, uk. in 2016, she was recognised by tesol international as one of the “50 at 50” who have made a significant contribution to the tesol profession over the last 50 years. anne westmacott holds a bsc in psychology (edinburgh university), post-graduate certificate in education (cambridge university) and ma in tesol (institute of education). she is an efl teacher and the research coordinator at universidad chileno-británica de cultura in santiago. fostering efl preservice teachers’ academic writing skills through reflective learning 89profile: issues teach. prof. dev., vol. 23 no. 1, jan-jun, 2021. issn 1657-0790 (printed) 2256-5760 (online). bogotá, colombia. pages 89-106 https://doi.org/10.15446/profile.v23n1.85145 fostering efl preservice teachers’ academic writing skills through reflective learning escritura académica de profesores de inglés en formación mediante el aprendizaje reflexivo angélica meza instituto caro y cuervo, bogotá, colombia ingrid rodríguez lorena caviedes universidad el bosque, bogotá, colombia1 this article focuses on the impact reflective learning has on a group of efl preservice teachers’ academic writing skills through formative feedback and self-assessment at a university in bogotá (colombia). the goal was to determine how the participants’ academic writing skills were developed when writing essays for international examinations, and how their reflections upon feedback and their self-assessment process impacted their learning. this study followed a qualitative approach and an action-research design to foster students’ academic writing skills as part of their professional development. the data-collection instruments were essays and teacher’s feedback, students’ journals, and rubrics. the results evidenced learners’ writing skills improvement while implementing reflecting learning, which led to self-regulation and metacognition. keywords: academic writing, feedback, learning, self-assessment, thinking este artículo describe el impacto del aprendizaje reflexivo en el desarrollo de habilidades escritas de un grupo de profesores en formación, mediante la retroalimentación formativa y la autoevaluación en una universidad en bogotá (colombia). se buscó desarrollar las habilidades escriturales de los estudiantes por medio de ensayos para exámenes internacionales y determinar cómo sus reflexiones sobre la retroalimentación y autoevaluación impactaron su aprendizaje. se siguió un enfoque cualitativo con un diseño de investigaciónacción, promoviendo la escritura académica como parte de su desarrollo profesional. se analizaron ensayos y las respectivas retroalimentaciones docentes, diarios de estudiantes y rúbricas. los resultados muestran el avance de las habilidades escritas mediante la reflexión, generando autorregulación y metacognición. palabras clave: aprendizaje, autoevaluación, escritura académica, pensamiento, retroalimentación angélica meza  https://orcid.org/0000-0002-5446-9731 · email: maria.meza@caroycuervo.gov.co ingrid rodríguez  https://orcid.org/0000-0001-8121-4008 · email: rodriguezingrid@unbosque.edu.co lorena caviedes  https://orcid.org/0000-0001-6459-5275 · email: caviedeslorena@unbosque.edu.co how to cite this article (apa, 7th ed.): meza, a., rodríguez, i., & caviedes, l. (2021). fostering efl preservice teachers’ academic writing skills through reflective learning. profile: issues in teachers’ professional development, 23(1), 89–106. https://doi.org/10.15446/profile.v23n1.85145 this article was received on february 14, 2020 and accepted on august 9, 2020. this is an open access article distributed under the terms of the creative commons license attribution-noncommercial-noderivatives 4.0 international license. consultation is possible at https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/ https://orcid.org/0000-0003-2702-0071 https://orcid.org/0000-0003-2702-0071 https://orcid.org/0000-0003-2702-0071 https://doi.org/10.15446/profile.v23n1.84020 https://orcid.org/0000-0003-2702-0071 universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras90 meza, rodríguez, & caviedes introduction reflection in english as a foreign language (efl) in classrooms around the world has taken a relevant role among students and teachers, since it enables the analysis of actions taken during the teaching and learning processes (manouchehri, 2002; schön, 1983; sockman & sharma, 2008). reflection entails a deep critical analysis and the questioning of all that surrounds us by taking a closer look into our reality (schmitt, 1973); then, learners have the opportunity to start identifying their own strengths and weaknesses before any situation they face in life, in this case learning a foreign language. therefore, efl learners who continuously reflect upon their performance seem to achieve better academic results. likewise, self-assessment enhances students’ reflection on their weak and strong points (rodríguez ochoa, 2007); it affects learners’ performance since it fosters the decision-making ability to face problems and suggests ways to solve them (caicedo pereira et al., 2018). moreover, formative feedback activates students’ reflection regarding their learning goals (alvarez et al., 2014); when used properly, it directly relates to the parameters of assessment and to its timely, customized, and encouraging approach (hatziapostolou & paraskakis, 2010). accordingly, we examine the reflective process carried out by a group of efl preservice teachers regarding their academic writing and the effect that self-assessment and formative indirect feedback has on the construction of their texts. consequently, our research question is: what is the impact of reflective learning on a group of preservice teachers’ academic writing skills through formative feedback and selfassessment processes? statement of the problem this study derived from a needs-analysis performed with sixth semester students (of the ba in bilingual education program of a private university in bogotá, colombia) who were training to write academic essays for an international exam. at the beginning of the semester, the teacher did a series of observations that led to identifying students’ lack of skills at the moment of writing essays. she also found that students’ writing practice in their english classes was limited exclusively to narrative texts, which made it difficult for them to meet the academic standards for writing sections on international tests. the lack of practice and training in this area unveiled a lack of proper argumentation, weak cohesion and coherence, improper paragraph formats, spanish-like structures, and inaccurate conclusions, among other aspects. in order to target these issues, the teacher collected students’ initial reflections about their academic writing needs, which allowed us to have a clearer insight in terms of the students’ perceptions regarding their writing processes. such insights included the need for a more critical role by deeply analyzing the challenges the students faced during the steps of the pedagogical implementation and their own performance through formative feedback and self-assessment. we used students’ reflective journals, teachers’ feedback, and students’ self-assessment regarding the process of writing an academic text. we encouraged students to work on reflective learning as they wrote journals after each of the stages they developed, and to include thoughts about their planning, learning, and self-regulated actions to foster metacognition through monitoring and control (nelson & narens, as cited in dunlosky et al., 2016). we considered the relevance of learners’ constant self-assessment since it helps teachers and students identify to what extent they have achieved their learning goals. furthermore, it helps teachers evaluate their own practices to support the learners’ process (palomba & banta, 2001). likewise, formative feedback plays a meaningful role as it provides students with the opportunity to analyze their performance and put this analysis into work when improving their skills. 91profile: issues teach. prof. dev., vol. 23 no. 1, jan-jun, 2021. issn 1657-0790 (printed) 2256-5760 (online). bogotá, colombia. pages 89-106 fostering efl preservice teachers’ academic writing skills through reflective learning literature review in order to carry out this study, we reviewed literature concerning the main constructs that supported our pedagogical implementation. in this sense, we focused on reflective learning, academic writing skills, indirect and formative feedback, self-assessment, and metacognition, which are described in the following paragraphs. reflective learning reflective learning is defined by rickards et al. (2008) as the “intentional use of reflection on performance and experience as a means to learning” (p. 33). accordingly, there are three stages to effectively implement reflective learning (scanlon & chernomas, 1997, as cited in thorpe, 2004). first, there is awareness, which refers to the acknowledgement of the discomfort, lack of information, situation, or event that fosters students’ inquiry during the learning process; second, the given phenomenon that is the center of the reflection requires a critical analysis, which at the same time needs skills such as selfawareness, description, synthesis, and evaluation for it to be properly developed; and finally, a new perspective, which emerges after the phenomenon has been critically analyzed. in short, these stages allow both teachers and students to include systematic and meaningful reflective practices inside the teaching and learning processes. because the purpose of reflection as a pedagogical tool is to establish connections among cognitive and experience-related elements (jordi, 2011), reflective learning offers teachers and students two relevant tools that encourage proper reflective practices. first, xie et al. (2008) establish that journaling offers the space for students to externalize their reasoning and reflections on experiences they consider relevant for their learning process. second, moon (2013) states that collaborative work facilitates reflection since it offers an external perspective towards the analyzed situation. once reflection is part of both students’ and educators’ practice, it lays out possible solutions to learning and teaching issues, leading to the transformation and integration of new understanding within the classrooms (rogers, 2001). academic writing skills learning to write academically is one of the many issues efl and english as a second language learners face. this field conveys specific challenges given the rigor that this practice poses, along with the fact that foreign language learners are faced with linguistic characteristics distant from the linguistic traits their first language has. in this sense, we will refer to particular skills we consider relevant for our students’ process, since they enable them to find their own voice and increase their english proficiency not only when writing, but throughout all the skills and the literacy-driven processes. in order to address academic writing tasks effectively, we focus on style and correctness. sword (2012) proposes style as the writers’ capacity to tell a compelling story while keeping the reader’s attention with information that is both engaging and scientifically supported. developing style depends on how writers approach the language and the different linguistic components they are able to successfully implement in their texts. most of these components are part of the structural and lexical skills, which combined give the text a sense of “correctness” or the ability to involve grammar, punctuation, spelling, and referencing to structure proper texts (bailey, 2015; elander et al., 2006). accuracy is also necessary when writing any sort of text (ivanič, 2004). the previous skills will enable efl learners to develop their academic literacy while understanding its components (warren, 2003). in effect, being academically literate implies learning “the specialized practices of academic reading, writing, and speaking that characterize college-level communication” (curry, 2004, p. 51). indirect and formative feedback feedback is a way to assess how well pupils’ performance was (harmer, 2007). it can be classified as direct, with a correct version provided to students, or universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras92 meza, rodríguez, & caviedes goal of this kind of assessment is to boost learning by giving timely feedback on pupils’ comprehension and performance (andrade & cizek, 2010). self-assessment involves three steps: the first one is articulating expectations for the task or performance; this is done by teachers and students separately or together when checking examples of an assignment or creating a rubric. the second stage is the critique of work based on expectations, so learners draft and monitor their progress by comparing their performance to the expectations. the last step implies revising; thus, students use the feedback from their self-assessments to guide a revision. this is fundamental because students self-assess thoughtfully if they know that their work drives them to improve (andrade & cizek, 2010). metacognition metacognition refers to “knowledge and cognition about cognitive phenomena” (flavel, 1979, as cited in dunlosky & metcalfe, 2009, p. 32), whereas scholars such as martinez (2006) have referred to it as “thinking about thinking.” as a cognitive process, it is composed of several components and skills, which we will briefly address from two different perspectives: from the main metacognitive categories and from a metacognitive framework standpoint. regarding metacognitive categories, martinez (2006) establishes three: metamemory and metacomprehension, problem solving, and critical thinking. metamemor y refers to how well you recall your knowledge, whether you remember a fact or not, while metacomprehension refers to the reflective process you go through regarding your knowledge, whether you know or understand something or not. as for problem solving, it is understood as the pursuit of a goal when the path to it is uncertain: being able to understand a phenomenon, identifying the necessary procedures to address it, and developing and implementing different strategies to overcome the given situation. this category in itself requires other activities such as generating and indirect, when errors are indicated, but not corrected by teachers (westmacott, 2017). hendrickson (1980) used indirect correction—coded and uncoded—by indicating the location and types of errors when he assumed learners could correct them on their own. research has shown that indirect error feedback is more beneficial since it increases students’ engagement and attention to problems and forms found in their written production (ferris, 2003), and it helps learners achieve more accuracy than those who received direct corrections (chandler, 2003). westmacott (2017) found that motivated learners who valued metacognitive knowledge of grammar favored indirect coded feedback as they became active actors in their writing process by strengthening their grammar knowledge and developing autonomous learning patterns. moreover, the main aim of formative feedback is to transform thinking and behavior to increase students’ knowledge and understanding of some content area or general skill (shute, 2008), based on specific standards (bollag, 2006; leahy et al., 2005). according to narciss and huth (2004), effective formative feedback should take into account the instructional context and the learners’ features; when designed systematically, factors that must be considered are the instruction (objectives, tasks, and errors), the learners’ information (goals, prior knowledge, skills and abilities, and motivation), and finally, the feedback itself (content, function, and presentation). the usefulness of this type of feedback relies on the fact that it should be needed, timely, feasible, and desired. likewise, it must attempt to revise different aspects, such as learners’ outcomes, the process involved, and the level of improvement (shute, 2008). self-assessment self-assessment implies pupils reflecting on the quality of their work so that they can judge whether they have achieved their goals and revise their performance accordingly. this is possible through the elaboration of drafts that can be revised and improved. the main 93profile: issues teach. prof. dev., vol. 23 no. 1, jan-jun, 2021. issn 1657-0790 (printed) 2256-5760 (online). bogotá, colombia. pages 89-106 fostering efl preservice teachers’ academic writing skills through reflective learning weighing possibilities, exploring subsets of options, and evaluating the results. finally, critical thinking is defined as “evaluating ideas for their quality, especially judging whether they make sense or not” (martínez, 2006, p. 697). from a metacognitive framework point of view, authors such as nelson and narens (as cited in dunlosky et al., 2016), and serra and metcalfe (as cited in negretti, 2012) established three perspectives from which metacognition is developed: awareness, monitoring, and control. in the first instance, dunlosky and metcalfe, and serra and metcalfe (as cited in negretti, 2012), establish awareness, in terms of metacognitive processes, referring to three main aspects: (1) declarative knowledge, or awareness of what strategies and concepts are important in relation to a specific task, (2) procedural knowledge, or awareness of how to apply concepts and strategies (how to perform the task), and (3) conditional knowledge, or awareness of when and why to apply certain knowledge and strategies (p. 145). monitoring, on the other hand, refers to all the activities we do when we are evaluating our own learning. in this regard, judgements on the things one learns and how well or easily one learns them are paramount in order to feel confident, which will lead the process towards self-regulating actions taken after the monitoring stage, known as control. moreover, monitoring poses a great challenge for learners’ metacognitive processes, since it is the first sense of “feeling-of-knowing” (hart, as cited in perfect & schwartz, 2002) they have. this “feeling” entails learning to judge whether one is learning or not, and what actually helps one do so. method research design this research follows a qualitative approach, which allows one to explore a phenomenon by interpreting the participants’ behaviors, values, and beliefs, among others, inside their context; thus, enabling different ways of “seeing the world” (atkins & wallace, 2012; bryman, 2012; packer, 2011). likewise, we followed an action-research design because it addresses and attempts to solve a real-life problem (creswell, 2012). setting and participants our research took place in a private university in bogotá. the participants were 15 efl preservice teachers of a bachelor program who were studying the 6th level of english. they had to be prepared to take english standardized tests and so, they needed to develop academic writing skills to compose an opinion essay. pedagogical implementation this study took place during an academic semester in which students had to work on all their efl skills, therefore, fostering writing skills for taking a standardized test was part of it. the semester was divided into three terms, so we replicated the pedagogical implementation cycle (see figure 1) the same number of times. figure 1. cycle of pedagogical implementation to foster students’ academic writing 3. self-assessment (rubrics) 2. feedback 1. individual essay 10. whole class feedback and explanation 9. individual reflective journals 8. self-assessment (rubrics) 7. feedback 6. correction in pairs 5. whole class feedback and explanation 4. individual reflective journals universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras94 meza, rodríguez, & caviedes rubric they used for self-assessment revealed to what extent they considered they had reached their learning goals comparing them to the standards required. students’ reflection journals allowed us to have a clearer idea in terms of what they perceived about their performance, their main goal, the feedback they had received, the discussions they carried out among peers, the difficulties they had faced, and the changes they considered necessary as well as the possible strategies they wanted to apply for improvement. in order to systematize the data, we used the following codification: the participants were codified assigning the letter s and a number from 1 to 15 and the three cycles are represented as c and the corresponding number (see figure 2). as students worked on a topic essay per term, every paper was coded as et and numbers 1, 2, and 3. besides, the students wrote two versions of every essay; so these drafts were coded with letter d and numbers 1 and 2. participants’ rubrics and journals were coded as r1 and r2 and j1 and j2 since they worked on a rubric and journal per draft. figure 2. codification of data collected data analysis and discussion the data collected were analyzed through the methodological triangulation of sources (bryman, 2012). the analysis followed the processes of the grounded theory approach, which follows an inductive process through a systematic analysis of data in order to characterize what is happening in a specific context and generate theory (bryant & charmaz, 2007). after examining the information gathered, we started to categorize the data according to the research question. subsequently, two categories and four subcategories emerged based on the research inquiry (see table 1). first, students wrote a draft of their opinion essays, then we provided them with indirect feedback and set some class time to discuss their performance. then, the students received a rubric (from educational testing service, 2019) corresponding to the standardized test for them to self-assess their documents. afterwards, we asked students to write a reflective journal entr y and guided them with some questions that pointed to their performance, learning, flaws, and actions to be taken. once they finished, the teacher read the reflections and prepared a session of feedback and explanation for the whole class, addressing the points they had marked as relevant to be clarified. thereupon, the students worked in pairs to correct the essays each member had written at the beginning of the cycle. once more, they received indirect feedback in class and assessed their performance based on the rubrics given. then they wrote another individual reflective journal entr y which provided the teacher with topics to work on during a second whole class feedback and explanation session. this cycle was repeated three times and provided several insights regarding the learners’ academic writing skills. data collection instruments in order to collect data, we used mainly nonobservational data collection techniques, particularly students’ essays, which included the teacher’s indirect feedback, a rubric suggested for independent writing tasks (educational testing service, 2019) that students used to self-assess their productions, and their reflective journals. eventually, such instruments allowed us to have a closer insight in terms of students’ academic writing in our classes. through the teachers’ feedback on essays, we could see the characteristics of students’ manuscripts, the strengths and weaknesses the students exhibited in terms of style, accuracy, and correctness as well as how their writing skills were being shaped. the draft 1 = d1 rubric 1 = r1 journal 1 = j1 draft 2 = d2 rubric 2 = r2 journal 2 = j2 essay topic 1 = et 1 95profile: issues teach. prof. dev., vol. 23 no. 1, jan-jun, 2021. issn 1657-0790 (printed) 2256-5760 (online). bogotá, colombia. pages 89-106 fostering efl preservice teachers’ academic writing skills through reflective learning linguistic resources the implementation of the pedagogical cycle in this study required students’ essay drafting to foster their academic writing. there were two drafts per each of the three cycles that were carried out. once students submitted their drafts, the teacher provided indirect feedback by using proofreading marks (see appendix) that were established and socialized at the beginning of the semester. based on the correction of these texts and the systematization of proofreading marks from the final drafts, it was possible to identify the types of mistakes that were frequent in terms of language mechanics and essay particularities. language mechanics the term language mechanics refers to elements that help a text reach a level of organization and style according to academic standards. it includes aspects such as spelling, vocabulary, grammar, and syntax, among others, which, if used properly, characterize skillful writers by showing better control over the language (crossley & mcnamara, 2016). for this study, it was important to identify to what extent these elements, from the students’ written drafts, reached the standards required for an academic text, specifically, an opinion essay. in this regard, we aimed at supporting students’ grammatical development by means of teacher’s feedback. in order to describe the process of improvement that students evidenced regarding this aspect, we focused on the teacher’s indirect written feedback provided for the final drafts of every cycle, which allowed us to identify mistakes and report them with the use of proofreading marks. as found by kang and han (2015), written corrective feedback tends to have a positive impact on grammar accuracy. therefore, by providing formative and indirect feedback, we found some changes along the learning process. additionally, the different learners’ reflections regarding elements of language mechanics demonstrated their awareness concerning the types of mistakes they made, which confirmed the weaknesses we had identified. at the beginning of the process, several elements related to language mechanics mistakes were evidenced. regarding the production from the first cycle of the implementation (a draft and final paper) through indirect written feedback, we noticed a high frequency of mistakes in terms of punctuation, wrong word, spelling, spanish-like forms and wordiness, and a not so frequent display of mistakes related to verb forms and missing word (see figure 3). table 1. question, categories, and subcategories research question categories subcategories what is the impact reflective learning has on a group of preservice teachers’ academic writing skills through formative feedback and selfassessment processes? linguistic resources • language mechanics • essay particularities metacognitive processes in academic writing • metacognitive awareness • monitoring universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras96 meza, rodríguez, & caviedes the rubrics students used to assess their papers and our systematization of the text proofreading marks also showed students’ awareness regarding these elements. after counting the different kinds of mistakes students made, we identified many of them as being related to word choice and structures. sixty percent of the students marked their papers as 2 out of 5, a score that corresponds to a clear difficulty to choose words and forms and a large collection of mistakes regarding elements of language mechanics. likewise, students’ journals included reflections upon their fears concerning this type of written tasks and the mistakes they considered were affecting their texts the most. excerpt 1. i feel a little bit nervous because i don’t have the security to write. (s5, j1, c1)1 during the second cycle, the students’ productions unveiled a radical improvement in most of these aspects, demonstrating a very low frequency of mistakes related 1 the excerpts were transcribed verbatim. to spelling and spanish-like forms and wordiness, followed by a relatively low frequency of flaws regarding verb form and missing word. however, there was a very high occurrence of mistakes related to wrong words and punctuation, which was confirmed by the students’ reflections in which they identified the necessity to work on punctuation and vocabulary, mainly academic, and look for synonyms; their self-assessment also changed as their marks improved. the lowest score was 3 out of 5, which was the one two groups chose to assess their papers. four groups marked their paper as 4 out of 5, and a group decided they had reached all the standards and self-evaluated as 5. excerpt 2. vocabulary, because sometimes i made a translation of the sentences. and the english is different to spanish language. (s1, j2, c2) excerpt 3. i need to learn more words and adjectives and adverbs mainly of degree. (s4, j1, c2) excerpt 4. i need to work grammar connectors, punctuation, synonyms. (s6, j2, c2) figure 3. sample of students’ initial drafts and assessment (et 1, s9, d1, c1) 97profile: issues teach. prof. dev., vol. 23 no. 1, jan-jun, 2021. issn 1657-0790 (printed) 2256-5760 (online). bogotá, colombia. pages 89-106 fostering efl preservice teachers’ academic writing skills through reflective learning however, for the final cycle, elements of language mechanics evidenced another change. some aspects that in the second cycle had improved, suffered an involution. the students’ texts presented problems, mainly, in terms of wrong word choice, followed by punctuation, spelling, verbal forms, wordiness, spanish-like constructions, and missing words. something to highlight is that the students’ reflections were not focused on elements of language mechanics, although a few of them mentioned their necessity to work on grammar, punctuation, and vocabulary; it seemed that they were more focused on aspects concerning the academic text structure. likewise, their self-assessment process resulted in lower scores, as four groups graded their papers as 4 out of 5, two as 3 out of 5 and a group got 2 as the lowest score. thus, this final report evidenced that students had lost focus on linguistic resources; although they seemed to consider the relevance of accurate texts, their efforts were not enough to meet the standards in these aspects. nevertheless, comparing the results from the first and the last cycle (see figure 4), it was possible to identify an improvement in most of the aspects related to language mechanics, as the number of mistakes decreased, except for the use of wrong words, which constituted an important aspect to keep working on. 20 18 16 14 12 10 8 6 4 2 0 spelling verb forms wrong word missing word spanish-like puntuation wordiness final draft 1st cycle final draft 2nd cyde final draft 3rd cycle figure 4. number of mistakes in the final drafts of each cycle overall, language mechanics represented a relevant aspect at the moment of writing academically. through the implementation of this research, we could see an improvement comparing the final drafts of the first and the last stage. the learners’ academic writing evidenced a much higher text quality in terms of spelling, spanish-like structures, and punctuation, followed by a moderate improvement in verb forms, missing words, and wordiness. conversely, the use of wrong words did not present a clear reduction, which shows that learners need to continue working on vocabulary. this was supported not only by the statistics, but also in the reflections the students wrote in their journals. universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras98 meza, rodríguez, & caviedes essay particularities the students had to write a personal experience essay in accordance with the independent task of an international exam with particular characteristics regarding topic development, organization, and clarity. in relation to topic development, raters will be looking for an introduction that clearly expresses whether the author agrees or not with the statement provided, which is the topic that must be developed in the essay, and explanations of key points through examples and details. the raters will assess the essay organization and clarity based on the structure developed; thus, responses should include an introduction, body paragraphs that introduce clear key points, a conclusion and transitions that contribute to the unity, progression and coherence of texts (practice test pack for the toefl test [harpercollins uk, 2014]). for this study, we focused on the main structural aspects that would help students to write this kind of academic compositions; so we checked that every essay included background information; a thesis statement; body paragraphs made up of topic sentences, supporting ideas, and concluding sentences; and a main conclusion at the end of the essay. at the beginning of the semester, the above mentioned aspects were in need of improvement. in the first essay students wrote, only 14% of them included topic sentences in the body paragraphs and only 28% wrote supporting ideas and paragraph conclusions. seventy-two percent of the participants failed to include thesis statements and 47% omitted proper background information in the introductions. however, 71% of the students were able to conclude the essay despite the missing elements mentioned above. we understood these first challenges as the beginning of an ongoing process, since writing practice is a procedure that involves continual and constructive feedback on written work (bitchener, 2008). at the end of the academic semester, there was a significant change in the learners’ written production based on their performance in the last essay submission (see figure 5). all the participants managed to include thesis statements and main conclusions. additionally, the most remarkable improvement was evidenced in 85% of the students, who consistently wrote topic sentences and the corresponding supporting ideas in their papers. background writing also improved since 78% of the essays had these sentences to catch the reader’s attention. nevertheless, participants kept omitting concluding sentences, so 65% of them failed to wrap up the ideas of body paragraphs. the students’ performance confirms that providing feedback may help students recognize and avoid errors when they submit corrected versions of their compositions based on the comments they received (ashwell, 2000). likewise, we could observe how self-assessment resulted in observable improvements in the quality of essays (fung & mei, 2015). figure 5. percentage of essay particularities in the final versions of the first and third cycles 120% 100% 90% 60% 40% 20% 0% background information thesis thesis sentences supporting ideas concluding sentences main conclusion first paper final paper 99profile: issues teach. prof. dev., vol. 23 no. 1, jan-jun, 2021. issn 1657-0790 (printed) 2256-5760 (online). bogotá, colombia. pages 89-106 fostering efl preservice teachers’ academic writing skills through reflective learning these results unveil how the sequence we proposed with different steps of feedback, reflection, self-assessment, and multiple drafting had an impact on the students’ performance and contributed to their awareness of the essay structure for an international exam. although most of the essay particularities were enhanced through this cycle, writing is quite a demanding process that requires more time in order for the writer to accomplish the standards required for this type of text. metacognitive processes in academic writing when students have the possibility to learn reflectively, they understand the importance of developing strategies and learning processes that allow them to achieve their learning goals properly. in this case, the data showed our students’ different metacognitive features as they started to improve their academic writing. such traits relate specifically to the initial awareness they began to display regarding the actions needed to enhance their writing skills and the monitoring actions they started to implement. metacognitive awareness during the observations of our students’ writing processes, we could notice they showed “awareness,” concerned with their weaknesses and, consequently, proposing possible strategies to improve them. in this stage, students’ reflection showed the fact that they had indeed identified some aspects to improve their academic writing, thus evidencing their declarative knowledge (dunlosky & metcalfe, and serra & metcalfe as cited in negretti, 2012). in this regard, some of their comments are: excerpt 5. i feel afraid because i have spelling problems and also, i have to think a lot in order to understand something coherent. (s7, j1, c1) excerpt 6. i need to find more resources to support my future essays. besides, i need to increase my vocabulary. (s11, j2, c1) as evidenced in the excerpts above, students had the opportunity to reflect upon their process, particularly during the first stage once they received the teacher’s feedback and were asked to edit their manuscripts. some of the aspects most students felt they needed to work on were related to vocabulary, grammar, and punctuation. indeed, their reflections about the areas they felt they needed to improve upon represent their declarative knowledge, since these reflections are related to their understanding of writing academically. therefore, once students started to identify the aspects they needed to work on, thanks to the self-editing stage they went through, they started to come up with possible actions and strategies that they could put into practice (negretti, 2012). this process is closely related to the concept of procedural knowledge, in which learners are expected to identify strategies and procedures that will allow them to achieve their cognitive goals. as such, our students expressed their procedural knowledge by proposing the following strategies: excerpt 7. i need to write more about educative things. i have to practice on my writing and punctuation. (s4, j1, c1) excerpt 8. correct the mistakes in this essay to understand things that i didn’t know before. (s2, j2, c2) excerpt 9. i will give my essay to other person, in that way he or she is able to give her or him feedback and i will have a second opinion. (s10, j1, c2) excerpt 10. i want to practice and write more frequently. also, i need to review the teacher’s presentation. (s11, j2, c2) excerpt 11. i am going to read some academic essays. (s5, j1, c3) excerpt 12. self-correction, after having pointed out the mistakes, it’s a great way of learning how to write properly. (s12, j2, c3) universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras100 meza, rodríguez, & caviedes as can be observed, most of the strategies proposed by the participants were directly related to self-editing (excerpts 14 and 18), peer editing (excerpt 15), practice (excerpts 13 and 16), and modelling (excerpt 17). from murray and moore’s (2006) and murray’s (2013) perspectives, drafting and revising the draft (actions considered under the category of self-editing) are key strategies when it comes to having a fresh, more elaborated perspective about what is being written, which constitutes the first feedback we receive. once this self-editing process is done, writers can move on to the next stage, which is asking for external feedback or peer editing; this enables dialogue and creation of academic community (murray, 2013). as for practice and modelling, students themselves considered that writing more often and reading other academic texts enabled them to understand grammar structures better in order to reproduce them in their own texts. as such, practices such as the previously mentioned evidence the close relationship between modelling and reflective learning (loughran, 2002). consequently, thanks to the reflective learning activities carried out by the students, their awareness regarding their writing process was observed. as such, being able to identify the aspects they considered needed improvement encouraged them to propose actions and strategies to face said areas in need. monitoring once students’ metacognitive awareness was fostered through reflective learning, we had the opportunity to identify the strategies they considered were necessary to improve their academic writing. through this, it was important to foster said strategies and assess whether they were working or not. this process is called “monitoring,” which nelson and narens (as cited in rhodes, 2019) relate to assessing and evaluating one’s learning. in figure 6, we can observe the process through which students managed to assess or monitor their writing process. figure 6. students’ extract with their teacher’s correction (essay 3, s11, draft 1, cycle 2) 101profile: issues teach. prof. dev., vol. 23 no. 1, jan-jun, 2021. issn 1657-0790 (printed) 2256-5760 (online). bogotá, colombia. pages 89-106 fostering efl preservice teachers’ academic writing skills through reflective learning first, students developed individual initial drafts of their essays, and then they received indirect written feedback from the teacher. in figure 6 we can observe mechanics and content areas that the students addressed for improvement. this information constituted the source for them to self-assess their performance. since students were polishing their academic writing skills in order to present international exams, we used a specific rubric in order to self-assess their papers (from educational testing service, 2019). this tool enabled both teacher and students to have clear criteria regarding the writing process. once students carried out their selfevaluation, they reflected on four aspects: the planning of the essay, the new learning they had reached after the feedback received, their reactions towards feedback, and the actions that would be taken in order to improve their writing skills, which represented the strategies they manage to propose. as the classes moved on and we established the strategies students offered, learners started to monitor their self-editing and peer-editing actions, which were the most common strategies that they proposed during their awareness stage. after that, the teacher offered the learners feedback and general explanations regarding the writing process. eventually, after revising and editing in pairs, we could observe the improvement of their writing performance: excerpt 13. a class is successful when you have a good relationship with students. therefore, i agree with the idea of giving importance to the teachers’ ability to relate well to the students more than the knowledge of the subject that is being taught. i believe this for two reasons that will be explained in the following essay. first, knowledge has no value if the teacher does not know how to transmit it, and second, students will enjoy the class much more if they have a great relationship with their teacher. thus, once they received the teacher’s new feedback, and analyzed the level of their performance, a new process of self-assessment took place, which consequently helped them increase the score obtained in the previous version of their text. therefore, students’ reflections during the process led them to implement monitoring strategies as part of their metacognitive strategies. when they applied the actions they saw as necessary in order to improve their academic writing skills, they were able to carry out a more in-depth editing process. all in all, through metacognitive awareness and monitoring, students had the opportunity to take control of their own learning process. in this sense, learning and understanding the areas they needed to work on, and establishing strategies they considered relevant for their improvement, empowered them to enhance their writing skills. conclusions this study focused on the impact of reflective learning on a group of efl preservice teachers’ academic writing skills through formative feedback and self-assessment. we could identify two main areas in which the impact was visible: linguistic resources and metacognition. regarding linguistic resources, we could identify that this implementation favored the learners’ writing skills by means of indirect, formative, written feedback, multiple drafting, working in pairs, and reflecting upon their performance. first, the learners identified their language mechanics weaknesses; this provided opportunities to review grammatical aspects, punctuation rules, and assertive vocabulary, among other relevant items of working on any writing task. at the end of this implementation, the learners wrote more accurate texts, which evidenced a more conscious use of language mechanics and, in turn, helped them develop editing skills. second, they were able to identify the particularities that build up an academic text such as an essay. being aware of the essay structure allowed the learners to incorporate gradually all aspects they did not include at the beginning of the implementation. their understanding of most of the essay components nurtured the quality of their essays in order to meet the requirements for international exams. universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras102 meza, rodríguez, & caviedes nonetheless, there was an unexpected phenomenon during the implementation. aspects that seemed to have improved after the second cycle tended to appear again during the last one, although we could still appreciate clear improvement between the first and the final papers. thus, we could notice that when students centered more on the structure of the papers, they lost focus on the language mechanics. likewise, we acknowledged that there was an evident gradual incorporation of the essay structure, which, supported by the students’ reflections, let us conclude that they were more concerned about the structure of an international exam that was new for them. as for metacognitive features, we had the opportunity to evidence two outstanding characteristics. on the one hand, we identified students’ awareness when it comes to the needs and gaps they presented in regard to their writing skills; which included actions such as peer and self-editing, practice, and modelling. on the other hand, there were monitoring procedures carried out by both the teacher and the participants in order to assess students’ actions that let them improve their manuscripts; the procedures that students commonly used were peer and self-editing. on this basis, reflections made by our students allowed us to observe and evidence the process students went through and, consequently, the improvements they portrayed in their papers. overall, improvement of linguistic resources and development of metacognitive features constituted the main impact of this pedagogical implementation. however, time seems to be an issue as it is necessary to devote more lessons to give continuity to this process and be able to achieve better results. limitations and pedagogical implications there were some limitations we could identify. firstly, time was an issue since the target group had six academic hours a week; it would be necessary to devote more lessons with a higher frequency to give continuity to this process and achieve better results since, as mentioned by karim and nassaji (2019), the effect of feedback should be studied over a long period of time. secondly, students seemed to be very focused on the structure of a standardized essay as they were going to finish their cycle of english levels proposed by the curriculum and also as their future classes implied the use of this type of text. therefore, whenever they received feedback, they centered their attention on essay particularities, and overlooked language mechanics aspects. this affected the expected results on the final versions as feedback does not guarantee learners’ final decision-making; this is one of the aspects that may interplay when correcting their written production. likewise, we agree with karim and nassaji since we consider language accuracy is one of the many aspects that learners must focus on to become successful writers; they also need to communicate and present ideas appropriately according to academic standards. thus, one direction for further research is to analyze which factors may affect preservice teachers’ effective response to feedback. regarding implications, we highlight the necessity to write academic texts as a learning goal along the curriculum and feedback as a potential 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(2008). the effect of peer feedback for blogging on college students’ reflective learning processes. the internet and higher education, 11(1), 18–25. https://doi.org/10.1016/j. iheduc.2007.11.001 about the authors angélica meza is a teacher at instituto caro y cuervo, colombia. her current research interests include collaborative work, students’ beliefs, reflections, and identities. ingrid rodríguez is a teacher at universidad el bosque, colombia. her research interests include collaborative work and teachers’ and students’ beliefs and reflections. lorena caviedes is a teacher at universidad el bosque, colombia. her research interests include discourses, identities, and collaborative work in efl classrooms. https://doi.org/10.1080/1462394042000270655 https://doi.org/10.17533/udea.ikala.v22n01a02 https://doi.org/10.17533/udea.ikala.v22n01a02 https://doi.org/10.1016/j.iheduc.2007.11.001 https://doi.org/10.1016/j.iheduc.2007.11.001 universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras106 meza, rodríguez, & caviedes appendix: proofreading marks λ missing word ic insert connector cl set in capital letter lc set in lower case sp spelling ww wrong word wt wrong tense wp wrong preposition punc punctuation ? unclear idea 189profile: issues teach. prof. dev., vol. 22 no. 1, jan-jun, 2020. issn 1657-0790 (printed) 2256-5760 (online). bogotá, colombia. pages 189-200 https://doi.org/10.15446/profile.v22n1.78188 a post-positivist and interpretive approach to researching teachers’ language assessment literacy un enfoque post-positivista e interpretativo para investigar la literacidad en evaluación de lenguas de docentes 1frank giraldo* universidad de caldas, manizales, colombia the language assessment literacy of english language teachers has been one of the topics of discussion in the language testing field. in this article, i focus on the need to expand research constructs and methodologies to understand, in depth, the language assessment literacy for these key players in language assessment. i first explain the need to focus on language teachers and examine current challenges in researching language assessment literacy. then, i reflect on how post-positivist, interpretive research constructs and methodologies can expand and why they should. if this happens, research might yield more valid, useful data to unveil the complexities of language assessment literacy for language teachers. that data can provide valuable feedback to advance teachers’ professional development through language assessment literacy. key words: language assessment, language assessment literacy, language testing, language testing research, teacher professional development. la literacidad en evaluación de los docentes de idiomas ha sido un tema de discusión en el campo de la evaluación de lenguas. en este artículo, discuto la necesidad de expandir los constructos y metodologías de investigación para así entender la literacidad en evaluación de estos actores centrales en la evaluación de lenguas. para ello, primero explico la necesidad del enfoque en estos docentes y analizo retos recientes en la investigación sobre literacidad en evaluación. seguidamente, hago una reflexión sobre cómo los constructos y metodologías post-positivistas e interpretativas se pueden expandir y por qué lo deberían hacer. si esto sucede, las investigaciones podrían arrojar datos más válidos y útiles para revelar la complejidad de la literacidad en evaluación para docentes de lengua; a su vez, esta retroalimentación puede ser valiosa para avanzar en el desarrollo profesional docente a través de la literacidad en evaluación. palabras clave: desarrollo profesional docente, evaluación de lenguas, investigación en la evaluación de lenguas, literacidad en la evaluación de lenguas. * e-mail: frank.giraldo@ucaldas.edu.co how to cite this article (apa, 6th ed.): giraldo, f. (2020). a post-positivist and interpretive approach to researching teachers’ language assessment literacy. profile: issues in teachers’ professional development, 22(1), 189-200. https://doi.org/10.15446/profile.v22n1.78188. this article was received on march 1, 2019 and accepted on august 20, 2019. this is an open access article distributed under the terms of the creative commons license attribution-noncommercial-noderivatives 4.0 international license. consultation is possible at https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/. universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras190 giraldo introduction language assessment literacy (henceforth lal) is an area of ongoing debate in the field of language testing. the research on this topic has focused on the components of lal (davies, 2008; inbar-lourie, 2013b), models for describing lal (giraldo, 2018b; malone, 2017), definitions (fulcher, 2012), and the shape of this construct across different stakeholders (pill & harding, 2013; taylor, 2013). in essence, lal represents the different levels of knowledge, skills, and principles required to engage in language assessment, either from a development perspective (i.e., designing and evaluating language assessments) or from a knowledge perspective, that is, understanding and using scores from assessments to make decisions about people’s language ability. much research, especially when it comes to language teachers, has not used the term lal explicitly but has clearly studied areas that deal with language assessment in practice. for example, various research studies have examined what teachers do in the classroom for language assessment (hill & mcnamara, 2011; rea-dickins, 2001), what they think about language assessment, that is, their beliefs (díaz, alarcón, & ortiz, 2012; lópez & bernal, 2009), and the instruments they use for collecting information about students’ language ability (cheng, rogers, & hu, 2004; frodden, restrepo, & maturana, 2004; tsagari & vogt, 2017). thus, it can be argued now that lal has solidified as a general research and conceptual framework to scrutinize the meaning, scope, and depth of this construct in language testing in its three overarching components (davies, 2008): knowledge, skills, and principles for language assessment. a clear trend in the research has been the prominent use of psychometric measures to research lal. specifically, scholars have used questionnaires to study lal as it reflects content from language testing courses (j. d. brown & bailey, 2008; jin, 2010; lam, 2015) and, in the case of language teachers, their training in lal, current level of lal, and needs to further their understanding of language assessment (see specifically fulcher, 2012; vogt & tsagari, 2014). given statistical interpretations, data from questionnaires can be used to sensibly derive generalizations about populations (i.e., language teachers), as the data can describe extensive aspects of lal, including terminology and technicalities of test design. on the other hand, few studies have used a mixed-methods approach (tsagari & vogt, 2017) to further understand, now in depth, what lal means for language teachers. although quantitative and mixedmethods studies have indeed yielded useful results to conceptualize lal, further research is needed to capture other areas of language teachers’ lal and, therefore, provide a more valid account of what this construct means for this population. my purpose with this article, then, is to reflect on the need to have a broader perspective towards researching the lal of language teachers. to do so, i first explain why the focus on language teachers’ lal is necessary and then review current research challenges surrounding lal. lastly, i put forward two major proposals within a post-positivist research paradigm: the need to expand lal constructs and a related need to expand research methodologies. why a focus on language teachers’ lal? taylor (2013) explained four differential profiles of stakeholders in language assessment: test writers, classroom teachers, university administrators, and professional language testers. the author argues that these people should have different levels of knowledge, skills, and principles for doing language assessment. such levels refer to aspects including knowledge of theory, technical skills, principles and concepts, language pedagogy, sociocultural aspects, and others. in general, the call that taylor makes is to conduct research to examine her proposal so that the field can increase its awareness of lal among these stakeholders. while research for these different profiles is welcomed, language teachers have remained a central stakeholder group, arguably because they are the ones 191profile: issues teach. prof. dev., vol. 22 no. 1, jan-jun, 2020. issn 1657-0790 (printed) 2256-5760 (online). bogotá, colombia. pages 189-200 a post-positivist and interpretive approach to researching teachers’ language assessment literacy more directly engaged in doing language assessment (giraldo, 2018b; tsagari & vogt, 2017). the research and discussions about language teachers’ lal has given two central trends. on the one hand, teachers are expected to possess quite a wide array of knowledge, skills, and principles, as several authors have emphasized (fulcher, 2012; giraldo, 2018b; inbar-lourie, 2013a; stabler-havener, 2018). on the other hand, research has consistently shown that preand in-service language teachers need and want training across the board (fulcher, 2012; giraldo & murcia, 2018; vogt & tsagari, 2014). additionally, current studies have started to shed light on the complexity of lal in its sociocultural milieu, that is, language teachers’ institutional contexts of assessment (hill, 2017; scarino, 2013; sultana, 2019). for example, in sultana (2019) one of the language teachers stated the following when asked about a public examination: does it matter? public examination is a public examination. it does not matter what i think, my duty is to prepare the students for the examination. (p. 10) the excerpt above attests to the fact that the sociocultural context of language teachers shapes and even constrains their lal (inbar-lourie, 2012, 2017a). thus, the research arena in lal, and this includes language teachers of course, is going through a process of exploration and refinement (inbar-lourie, 2017b). in regard to language teachers, it can be argued that their lal involves three moments for scrutiny: the before, the now, and the after. the before in lal refers to teachers’ prior training (or lack thereof ) in language assessment. the now refers to language teachers’ current practice in language assessment and what this process implies. finally, the after includes the level of lal growth once teachers have finished professional development experiences in lal; this focus includes their perceived improvement in lal and how they put new learning into practice. in synthesis, the lal of language teachers should be carefully studied for the following four reasons: • they are the ones most directly engaged in planning, implementing, and interpreting language assessments, with the corresponding responsibility to gauge students’ level of language ability. • the consensus in the field of language testing is that, for the previous point to be well done, language teachers need adequate levels of lal. • a related point is that language teachers have reported the need to improve their lal in general, for which an understanding of their life-worlds is a central condition (hill, 2017; scarino, 2013). • discussions of lal need to center on teachers’ lal development (baker & riches, 2017) and how this development occurs through time. challenges in researching teachers’ lal: from constructs to instruments although numerous articles exist defining what lal is, the field of language testing has not ultimately reached a consensus as to what the construct means at the granularity level. thus, a first challenge in researching lal is trying to operationalize what it means (inbar-lourie, 2013a): there is no solidified, agreed upon knowledge base. however, this is not necessarily a negative aspect of lal—in reality, it invites further research. the complexity lies in how to operationalize the construct for research purposes. another related challenge is to identify who the authorities are for establishing the aforementioned knowledge base. stabler-havener (2018) argues that a group of scholars should come forward and formulate ways to define what lal means and implies, specifically, for language teachers. efforts to provide broad guidelines in language testing exist; for instance, the guidelines for practice and code of ethics by the international language testing association (2000, 2007). this association was formed by scholars in language testing, and their documentation is generally taken as sound. in the case of defining lal, however, there still is not an established body of thinkers willing to define it. universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras192 giraldo as briefly commented on earlier, language teachers’ lal is complex, so another challenge in researching this construct is to manageably state where the concept stands for this stakeholder group. to illustrate, the works by davison and leung (2009) and hill and mcnamara (2011) have provided thick descriptions of what teachers do and why they do so in classroom language assessment. in davison and leung (2009), the authors describe what they call “key steps in teacher-based assessment” (p. 396), some examples of which are shown in table 1. table 1. key steps and sample related actions for assessment (davison & leung, 2009) key step: plan assessments sample related action: select appropriate assessment methods/schedule. key step: collect information about students’ learning sample related action: ensure multiple methods of information. key step: make professional judgements sample related action: check trustworthiness the actions in table 1 can be conceptualized against the overarching components of lal, that is, knowledge, skills, and principles. selecting appropriate methods, for example, requires knowledge of assessment instruments so they are fit-for-purpose; the use of varied methods for assessment may require skills in design, administration, and evaluation. finally, checking whether an assessment can be trusted reflects back on principles for doing sound assessment; specifically, an instrument whose information cannot be trusted may lead to unfair practices. in conclusion, the lal of language teachers embodies what is a potentially large set of knowledge, skills, and principles. for example, in giraldo (2018b), readers can find 66 descriptors that seek to explain part of the lal for language teachers in eight dimensions: awareness of applied linguistics, awareness of theory and concepts, awareness of one’s own language assessment context; instructional skills; design skills for language assessments; skills in educational measurement; technological skills; and awareness of and actions towards critical issues in language assessment. additionally, as it has come to be accepted, language teachers’ contexts of assessment are one more ingredient in the lal puzzle. scarino (2013, 2017) has been emphatic in explaining that efforts to cultivate lal among teachers should include acknowledgement of their life-worlds, or interpretive frameworks, where their beliefs, values, experiences, and contextual knowledge play a role in lal. a last challenge in this review refers to the use of questionnaires for researching lal. as stated elsewhere, questionnaires can compile large amounts of data on varied topics of lal, which can then be used to interpret trends in the construct. however, these instruments come with their own limitations when researching teachers’ lal, some of which are internal to the field and others which relate to the use of questionnaires in general, as i discuss next. fulcher (2012) explained that the use of a survey in his study led to two problematic issues, namely, low variation in responses and the idea that teachers need to improve lal across the board. the answers in this survey suggested that they thought “all topics within language testing are important” (fulcher, 2012, p. 127) and needed for training. as fulcher states, the fact that the respondents were self-selected may account for this result. this sentiment is also observed in the studies by vogt and tsagari (2014) and yan, fan, and zhang (2017) with in-service teachers in europe and china respectively; and giraldo and murcia (2018) with preservice teachers in colombia. the results then beg the question of whether these teachers do indeed think all of the items they see in questionnaires are truly important for their lal. further, giraldo and murcia warn that the use of pre-determined questionnaires needs to be examined carefully. in their study, the researchers used the survey developed by fulcher and then realized it 193profile: issues teach. prof. dev., vol. 22 no. 1, jan-jun, 2020. issn 1657-0790 (printed) 2256-5760 (online). bogotá, colombia. pages 189-200 a post-positivist and interpretive approach to researching teachers’ language assessment literacy lacked a more fine-grained definition of classroombased assessment, where issues such as portfolio use were not included. one last internal limitation that i see in the use of questionnaires to tap into language teachers’ lal is the use of technical jargon. to illustrate, validity in language testing and in other fields (e.g., psychology) traditionally has represented the degree to which an assessment instrument measures what it is supposed to measure and nothing else (h. d. brown & abeywickrama, 2010). however, it can be ascertained with confidence that this is no longer an accurate definition in language testing, which has embraced messick’s (1989) view on the matter. so, in a survey where language teachers select validity as a concept (in fact quite a far-reaching and ongoing debate) to learn about in language assessment, some may not be aware of what the term actually implies. in other words, how can i know that something is important (or that i need training in it) if i am not sure what that something really is? or perhaps my definition may be inappropriate or incomplete. table 2 includes sample items from two different questionnaires for researching the lal of language teachers. the items refer to long-standing debates in language testing and require, to my belief, a good deal of knowledge to understand them. i have highlighted them in bold and made minor modifications to the format of the original questionnaires. lastly, dörnyei and taguchi (2010) warn practitioners of the possible disadvantages of using questionnaires, among which they explain the superficiality of answers, unreliable answers, and low levels of literacy, which the authors define as reading and writing; as the present paper implies, low levels of lal may affect respondents’ answers and their validity. additionally, the authors comment on social desirability (wanting to choose answers to please the researcher), self-deception (respondents deviating from what is true about them), and acquiescence bias, or what they call “yeasayers” (p. 9) who would agree with items that look right at face value. finally, dörnyei and taguchi warn of fatigue effects, which can have a negative impact on the last items in a questionnaire. table 2. complex concepts in language testing as elicited in questionnaires on lal from fulcher (2012, p. 130) please look at each of the following topics in language testing. for each one, please decide whether you think this is a topic that should be included in a course on language testing. k. validation u. ethical considerations in testing w. principles of educational measurement from vogt and tsagari (2014, p. 395): please specify if you need training in the following domains. establishing reliability of tests/assessment establishing validity of tests/assessment using statistics to study the quality of tests/ assessment to reiterate, questionnaires have been useful in researching lal as they have allowed the field to operationalize this construct across different stakeholders. however, given the complexity of language teachers’ lal, complementary approaches to research should be welcomed so that the field delves into the intricacies of the matter. to such end, i now move on to suggesting possible expansions of lal research. a post-positivist and interpretive philosophy for studying teachers’ lal the reflection i am proposing is grounded on a general research philosophy. positivist approaches to research see nature as measurable, easily observable, and quantifiable (cohen, manion, & morrison, 2007). universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras194 giraldo conversely, a post-positivist approach sees reality as amenable to varied interpretations where probabilities, rather than absolute truths, are sought and understood (guest, namey, & mitchell, 2013). particularly in lal, a post-positivist view to research embraces teachers’ lal as situated practice. hill (2017), for example, argues that a precondition for teachers’ lal is a close examination of the contexts where they do assessment, what scarino (2013) calls their interpretive frameworks or life-worlds. the implication for post-positivist research is that lal research must look at language teachers’ reality in naturalistic contexts (cohen et al., 2007). such research philosophy can have the advantage of listening to teachers’ voices regarding their lal. as inbar-lourie (2017a) argues, their voices need “to be heard loud and clear” (p. 268), as this attitude can help to unveil the complexities of lal for these stakeholders. a positivist view would not be fit for such purpose—it is not its intention, really—but a post-positivist view can be. in test-based teaching countries such as those reported in sultana (2019) and baker and riches (2017), a post-positivist and interpretive lens helped these researchers to realize that lal is shaped by teachers’ cultures. specifically, teachers can at times accept largescale tests unquestioningly (sultana, 2019), an issue vogt and tsagari (2014) see as problematic. thanks to a post-positivist philosophy to lal research, these problematic areas arise. expanding research constructs of teachers’ lal as indicated, studies using questionnaires have provided insights into language teachers’ reported knowledge of and needs in lal. data from these studies tap into the before (i.e., prior training in lal) and the now (their current needs). one expansion of the lal construct that emerged as unexpected in giraldo and murcia (2018) was to elicit information about local policies for general assessment. in these authors’ study, the open-ended items in the survey made it clear that the different stakeholders who responded wanted to know about general policies for assessment in colombia, or what is known as the “decreto 1290” (decree 1290) (ministerio de educación nacional de colombia, 2009). this decree explains in depth how assessment both of and for learning is to be done in the general curriculum in elementary and high schools in this country. therefore, this might be an area of language teachers’ lal that needs to be further examined, especially because teachers are expected to balance these general policies as well as the internal technicalities of language testing. authors have indeed highlighted that this coexistence can entail tensions teachers face in doing language assessment (firoozi, razavipour, & ahmadi, 2019; inbar-lourie, 2008; scarino, 2013, 2017). another expansion of the construct, and one that is slowly but steadily gaining momentum in lal research, is language teachers’ interpretive frameworks for assessment (hill, 2017; scarino, 2013, 2017). specifically, qualitative research has studied language teachers’ lal as operationalized in their practices and beliefs, or what i call the now in lal. these studies have consistently suggested an overreliance on the use of traditional methods such as tests and quizzes that reflect external examinations (cheng et al., 2004; frodden et al., 2004; lópez & bernal, 2009; sultana, 2019; tsagari & vogt, 2017). in terms of beliefs, the more trained in lal teachers are, as suggested by the research, the more they believe language assessment should be used for formative purposes (lópez & bernal, 2009). contrarily, when training in lal is lacking, teachers believe assessment is an artefact of power and control, a criticized misuse of tests (fulcher, 2010; shohamy, 2001). in order to further comprehend these two aspects of the lal construct (practices and beliefs), qualitative research should be conducted on the relationship between language assessment and policies for general assessment. for instance, in colombia, it might be enlightening to know how language teachers in schools use the decree 1290 for their particular assessment 195profile: issues teach. prof. dev., vol. 22 no. 1, jan-jun, 2020. issn 1657-0790 (printed) 2256-5760 (online). bogotá, colombia. pages 189-200 a post-positivist and interpretive approach to researching teachers’ language assessment literacy practices and what they think about it. in a related manner, research can ask teachers about how they design an assessment in its general universe. to illustrate, an assessment can align with a school curriculum and modality (e.g., tourism), students’ ages and interests, a school’s general philosophy of language learning (e.g., communicative), standards for language learning, and can follow national guidelines (e.g., be mostly formative, as decree 1290 suggests). in other words, research can be conducted on what institutional and social forces shape language teachers’ design of assessment instruments and whether or not there is harmony or tension in this relationship. lastly, and as lópez and bernal (2009) warn, the validity of teacher-designed assessments and the consequences that unfold from these instruments need to be studied. the authors connect these two issues to ethics. thus, if at all possible, uses and misuses (e.g., using assessments to control misbehavior) of assessments, and the reasons for them to happen, should be elicited in qualitative research on lal. although this may indeed pose ethical issues for the teachers themselves, unpeeling the opinion of language assessment at the grassroots level (i.e., the classroom) can be informative to foster our understanding of lal. of course, ethical considerations for this research, namely confidentiality, need to be crystal clear so participants can disclose the information they think is pertinent (avineri, 2017). an under-researched area in lal is the impact that professional development initiatives have on language teachers’ lal. few studies have addressed how teacher learning increases thanks to programs that educate teachers in lal. for example, walters’ (2010) study helped esl teachers in new york to become more critical towards the nature of standards for learning english, which the author argues is a part of having lal. in the study by nier, donovan, and malone (2009), teachers of less commonly taught languages became more aware of concepts and design in language assessment. in arias, maturana, and restrepo (2012), the participating teachers made their assessments more comprehensive and valid; they also embedded democracy and fairness in their practice by making students active participants in assessment. finally, in a recent article, baker and riches (2017) reported that haitian language teachers— engaged in a one-week lal program—learned how to create questions for reading comprehension, embed vocabulary in teaching and assessment tasks, and in general integrate language skills in assessments, make connections between teaching and assessment, and consider assessment as essentially studentand learning-centered. asking language teachers about professional development in lal, as the studies above did, refers to what i call the now. the proposed expansion is to ask participants in these scenarios to express their perceptions of what works and what does not for increasing their lal and how their lal is changing thanks to these professional development programs. additionally, research can be conducted to see whether lal programs do in fact exercise change in teachers’ language assessment practices, what i call the after in the lal construct; specifically, research could also evaluate the effectiveness of language testing courses for pre-service teachers, once they are doing their professional practice as inservice teachers. a clear research gap concerns the lack of information as regards the education of pre-service teachers’ lal, as giraldo and murcia (2018) pointed out. the authors invite teacher educators to share their experiences so other practitioners can benefit from the way lal is taught at the pre-service education level, where professional education in lal is expected (herrera & macías, 2015; lópez & bernal, 2009). every experience can be considered a case study, and as moss (2005) argues, case studies should be done in the service of others. to conclude, the idea of researching language testing courses in language education programs reflects the need to empower training in lal at the pre-service level, as herrera and macías (2015) argued. universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras196 giraldo additionally, studying the characteristics of programs to foster language teachers’ lal—both pre-service and in-service—can help the field to understand how teacher educators and teacher learners operationalize lal. classroom contexts are sociocultural in nature, due to the roles instructors and students have. therefore, observational schemes may help to see how instructors actually teach the construct of lal, what components they teach, what questions and discussions can emerge during lessons, what teacher learners bring to lessons (i.e., their interpretive frameworks), and how in the end teacher learners are familiarized with lal at large. taken together, data from case studies of this kind can help devise lal initiatives elsewhere, by helping us to learn from other teacher educators’ successes and limitations. in table 3, i summarize the proposed expansions in the construct of teachers’ lal for research purposes. table 3. proposed expansions in the construct of teachers’ lal • eliciting information on local assessment policies of and for learning. • teachers’ interpretive frameworks for language assessment, specifically how language testing and general assessment policies coexist. • how teachers design assessments within their social and institutional universe. • uses and misuses of language assessments and reasons why they happen. • information on language testing courses as professional development scenarios: perceptions towards course; change or evolution of lal. • characteristics of language testing courses in preand in-service language education programs, specifically how the construct of lal is taught and conceptualized; effect of these courses once preservice teachers become in-service ones. • effectiveness of language testing courses in prompting change and improvement in in-service teachers’ practice. expanding methodologies for researching teachers’ lal expanding the research constructs for researching lal necessitates the implementation of qualitative methodologies for data collection. they permit researchers to unearth the gist of language teachers’ lal as qualitative research seeks the hows and whys to project them through thick descriptions of participants’ natural milieu (mackey & gass, 2005). this is something that quantitative methods are not meant to do. among the available methodological tools for qualitative studies on lal, researchers can use interviews. they can help to deeply examine language assessment in practice in participants’ institutional contexts (cheng & wang 2007; tsagari & vogt, 2017). in particular, tsagari and vogt’s (2017) study helped them to confirm what they had identified in their previous quantitative study (vogt & tsagari, 2014): teachers report low levels of lal and need improvement in this area of their profession. furthermore, interviews can unearth the overall power that tests can have on teachers and the way they teach (shohamy, 2017), as the findings in sultana (2019) show. since interviews seek to elicit answers rather than give predetermined choices, teachers can provide insightful feedback for conceptualizing lal. for example, in giraldo’s (2019) case study, the teachers reported affective skills (e.g., giving feedback tactfully and “humanly”) as being part of their approach to assessment. such a skill is not, to my knowledge, generally reported in discussions about lal. another qualitative methodology for researching lal is document analysis. researchers can study the form and content of assessment instruments, as frodden et al. (2004) and giraldo (2018a) did; as stated elsewhere, these instruments can be compared and contrasted vis-à-vis the language learning documents existing in schools (e.g., language curricula); therefore, this comparative analysis can substantiate findings regarding to what degree language teachers integrate the assessment instruments they use or design with the forces that shape assessment. 197profile: issues teach. prof. dev., vol. 22 no. 1, jan-jun, 2020. issn 1657-0790 (printed) 2256-5760 (online). bogotá, colombia. pages 189-200 a post-positivist and interpretive approach to researching teachers’ language assessment literacy finally, observations can be used to describe and interpret how language assessment is done in language teachers’ classrooms, as hill and mcnamara (2011) reported. however, not only should observations be used to describe teachers’ practices but also characterize how professional development programs have affected teachers’ lal. for example, observations can be done to see how teachers newly educated in the paradigm of alternative assessment actually put this knowledge in practice, a much-expected approach to language assessment (lópez & bernal, 2009; tsagari & vogt, 2017). additionally, observations can help to elucidate what happens in contexts where preand inservice teachers are being educated in lal. although research has reported successful outcomes of professional development initiatives (for example, baker & riches, 2017; nier et al., 2009), the process of getting to such outcomes is not reported, therefore limiting the usefulness of these case studies to provide instructional insights for practice in other contexts. herrera and macías (2015) propose a questionnaire to research the level of satisfaction that language teachers have regarding their lal. however, the authors make it clear that qualitative methodologies are needed because “they will contribute to provide a portrayal of efl teachers’ language assessment competences and needs” (p. 308). in synthesis, for researching lal, qualitative approaches complement quantitative ones, and perhaps more importantly, have the potential to generate comprehensive data to increase the construct validity of researching the lal of language teachers. in turn, this information can ignite follow-up discussions of lal in the field of language testing. conclusions the ongoing research on language teachers’ lal has provided valuable insights into what they lack, need, do, and believe. because this research has done so, the field of language testing is expanding its boundaries to invite new research paradigms to raise awareness of the construct, which may lead to what inbar-lourie (2017b) calls an era of language assessment literacies. my purpose in this paper was to propose ways in which the field’s invitation can be answered. language teachers are constantly making decisions about student learning based on data generated by assessments. thus, they are a crucial stakeholder group for conducting comprehensive research on lal, especially because research studies have suggested burning needs in teachers’ lal. to have a more fine-grained picture of lal for this group, i propose the use of a post-positivist and interpretive research philosophy to operationalize research constructs through qualitative methodologies. specifically, the field can benefit from research studies on language teachers’ use of local policies for assessment, design of assessment instruments vis-à-vis these policies; uses and misuses of assessments; teacher perceptions towards professional development opportunities in lal and their impact on teacher learning; the shape and impact of language testing courses on preand in-service teachers; and, overall, the impact of these programs once teachers are implementing new ideas and approaches to language assessment. to tap into the aforementioned constructs, i suggest qualitative methods for data collection, including interviews, document analysis, and observations. such research will not only listen to teachers’ situated lal voices and their messages—loud and clear—but also use such data to further conceptualize lal. the methods will also allow for a more complete, informative picture of the expanded research construct on lal and, in turn, unveil the intricacies of the matter. collectively, this information will be useful for practitioners (e.g., professional language testers, language teacher educators) to engineer approaches to support language teachers to improve their lal, which will hopefully have a positive impact on student learning. that should be the ultimate goal of researching language teachers’ lal. universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras198 giraldo references arias, c., maturana, l., & restrepo, m. 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(2017, july). understanding language assessment literacy profiles of different stakeholder groups in china: the importance of contextual and experiential factors. paper presented at the language testing research colloquium, bogotá, colombia. about the author frank giraldo holds a b.a. in english language teaching from universidad tecnológica de pereira, colombia. he also holds an m.a. in english didactics from universidad de caldas, colombia; and an m.a. in teaching english as a second language from the university of illinois at urbana-champaign, usa. his interests include language assessment, language assessment literacy, curriculum development, and teachers’ professional development. cross-disciplinary lessons in an elementary public institution 87profile: issues teach. prof. dev., vol. 23 no. 2, jul-dec, 2021. issn 1657-0790 (printed) 2256-5760 (online). bogotá, colombia. pages 87-102 https://doi.org/10.15446/profile.v23n2.83889 cross-disciplinary lessons in an elementary public institution lecciones interdisciplinarias en una institución pública de básica primaria josefina quintero1 diana yurany álvarez universidad de caldas, manizales, colombia andrea arcila centro colombo americano, manizales, colombia this article reports the results of an action-research study, carried out in the fourth grade of a colombian public elementary school, which sought the integration of the teaching of english and the natural sciences through cross-disciplinary lessons that followed the principles of content-based instruction. observation, action plan, and evaluation were the ongoing research stages. interviews, workshops, and the students’ portfolio were the main instruments used to collect data. results revealed that the cross-disciplinary lessons were appropriate and useful to connect the foreign language learning with other school subjects. beginner students of english demonstrated an enhancement in the communicative skills and developed contextualized learning strategies, which proved the importance of integrating english with scientific contents as a contribution to curriculum innovations. keywords: content-based instruction, cross-disciplinary lessons, foreign language teaching and learning, public school, sciences curriculum este artículo reporta los resultados de una investigación en el aula, realizada con un grupo de cuarto grado en una institución educativa pública colombiana, cuyo propósito consistió en integrar la enseñanza del inglés con el currículum de ciencias naturales mediante un conjunto de lecciones interdisciplinarias siguiendo el enfoque basado en contenidos. la investigación se desarrolló en tres etapas: observación, plan de acción y evaluación. la recolección de datos se realizó mediante entrevistas, talleres y portafolios. los resultados indican que las lecciones fueron apropiadas y útiles para establecer una relación interdisciplinaria entre los temas de enseñanza. los estudiantes demostraron habilidades comunicativas y estrategias contextualizadas, mediante las cuales se constató la importancia de integrar el inglés con contenidos científicos como una contribución a las innovaciones curriculares. palabras clave: aprendizaje basado en contenidos, enseñanza aprendizaje de una lengua extranjera, escuela pública, currículum de ciencias naturales, lecciones interdisciplinarias josefina quintero  https://orcid.org/0000-0002-9451-113x · email: josefina.quintero@ucaldas.edu.co diana yurany álvarez  https://orcid.org/0000-0002-0792-755x · email: dianayurany.alvarez@ucaldas.edu.co andrea arcila  https://orcid.org/0000-0002-1677-4890 · email: andrea.arcila@colombomanizales.com this paper presents final results of the research project titled transformación de las prácticas pedagógicas universitarias mediante la investigación-acción en el aula (transforming higher educational practices through classroom action research), sponsored by vicerrectoría de investigaciones, universidad de caldas. code number vip 0934815. how to cite this article (apa, 7th ed.): quintero, j., álvarez, d. y., & arcila, a. (2021). cross-disciplinary lessons in an elementary public institution. profile: issues in teachers’ professional development, 23(2), 87–102. https://doi.org/10.15446/profile.v23n2.83889 this article was received on december 3, 2019 and accepted on march 29, 2021. this is an open access article distributed under the terms of the creative commons license attribution-noncommercial-noderivatives 4.0 international license. consultation is possible at https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/ https://doi.org/10.15446/profile.v23n2.83889 https://orcid.org/0000-0002-9451-113x mailto:josefina.quintero@ucaldas.edu.co https://orcid.org/0000-0002-0792-755x mailto:dianayurany.alvarez@ucaldas.edu.co https://orcid.org/0000-0002-1677-4890 mailto:andrea.arcila@colombomanizales.com https://doi.org/10.15446/profile.v23n2.83889 https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/ universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras88 quintero, álvarez, & arcila introduction cross-curricular practices can be of great importance in educational settings provided there is a smooth integration among the different fields of study. such integration has to do with pushing the boundaries of disciplines to have access to a broader meaning and understanding of scientific knowledge. furthermore, integration offers relevant learning opportunities that facilitate less fragmented experiences by making meaningful links between content subjects and other related fields of knowledge. integration has provided many public and private institutions with a viable alternative to attain innovative changes in the classroom, covering the overarching disciplines, including those that will help the new generations of professionals to face a new society characterized by emergent issues such as collective intelligences, collaborative work, the crises of the planet, robotics, networks, communicative competences, and so on. for this reason, in the field of education, new interdisciplinary methodologies are required to meet the complex and dynamic profiles that arise as time progresses. in the two initial decades of the 21st century, in response to the changing academic reforms, colombian universities are also considering cross-disciplinary competences that would give preand in-service teachers a better pedagogical background than traditional professional careers (ministerio de educación nacional [men], 2016; unesco, 2014). teachers are challenged to solve practical pedagogical problems by using and integrating knowledge generated from root disciplines and different academic subjects in order to reach curriculum goals. already during their undergraduate stage, students should acquire more cross-disciplinary knowledge which they could later apply to their professional development. nonetheless, according to national policies, some subjects are integrated more often than others and the typical separation between different areas of study, which are unconnected, fragmented, and disjointed, is frequently discussed. a call for the transferability of cross-disciplinary trends in response to the ongoing curriculum reforms is a national policy established by the men as an indicator of improvement and high-quality accreditation both in basic and higher education. all of this and more underpins the idea to do a careful analysis of the integrative approaches to delve deeper into the renewal of teaching and learning methodologies. according to current national languages policies (men, 2016; usmawilches, 2009; zwisler, 2018), educators, institutions, policy makers, stakeholders, and bilingual programs are expected to examine why, how, and to what extent different curriculum subjects can be integrated. concerning the ongoing colombian bilingual programs, since the 1980s, english has become the most prominent foreign language thanks, in part, to governmental policies that regard this language as fundamental to have access to the competitive worldwide markets (bonilla-carvajal & tejada-sánchez, 2016; gómez-sará, 2017; zwisler, 2018), as well as an instrument to construct and disseminate scientific knowledge. following the recommendations from the common european framework of reference for languages (council of europe, 2001), it is expected that, by the end of their secondary education, all students should have acquired the necessary skills to be proficient in, at least, one foreign language (especially english). as a consequence, the most recent curriculum reforms (mcdougald, 2016; usma-wilches, 2009) in all the territory at all educational levels provide specific methodologies, assessment, and evaluation guidelines that teachers should apply in their classes, considering that traditionally, the foreign language has been taught as a separate component in a decontextualized way. among different strategies for the teaching of the foreign language in elementary education, the men (2016) clearly recommends all types of integrative methodological routes, such as content language integrated 89profile: issues teach. prof. dev., vol. 23 no. 2, jul-dec, 2021. issn 1657-0790 (printed) 2256-5760 (online). bogotá, colombia. pages 87-102 cross-disciplinary lessons in an elementary public institution learning (clil), content-based instruction (cbi), total physical response (tpr), action research, case studies, task-based learning, and so on. moreover, the national curriculum proposal embraces transversal themes for each elementary grade with goals, objectives, contents, and functions of the language. taking into account the specific cultural contexts, the teachers of english can adapt a variety of cross-curricular topics: healthy life, coexistence and peace, environment and society, global village, among others. based on the previous considerations, we wanted to explore how cbi may facilitate the teaching of a foreign language (in our case, english) through crossdisciplinary lessons, with the natural sciences as the core curriculum. the following question guided our study: how can the principles and method of cbi be integrated into the foreign language classroom by taking the natural sciences as the core curriculum content to design cross-disciplinary lessons in a public colombian institution? consequently, the following objectives were posed: • to establish the relationship between the teaching of english as a foreign language with the natural sciences as the core curriculum by applying the cbi approach. • to design cross-disciplinary lessons as an innovative strategy in order to link the real context of the students with their language learning. • to promote different english language skills through the implementation of research processes as a learning strategy inside the language classroom. literature review the most recent trends look in more detail at the concept of cross-disciplinary endeavors, so that the new generations can meet the challenges of the third millennium (unesco, 2014). in the colombian educational system—elementary, secondary, middle, and higher education—there is increasing alignment with the pur poses of playing a pivotal role in understanding curriculum development as a holistic arrangement. integrating different curriculum areas into the foreign language topics is one of the most innovative strategies to improve the quality of teaching because it is a great opportunity to increase subject knowledge simultaneously. some educational institutions are starting to design cross-disciplinary lessons as a means of working different subjects (i.e., social sciences, math, environmental education, technology, art, tourism, etc.) through english (leal, 2016; mcdougald, 2016; vega & moscoso, 2019). the content based instruction approach authors like grabe and stoller (1997), heidarishahreza (2014), mcdougald (2016), and stoller (2002), amongst others, have argued that the cbi approach, through cross-disciplinary strategies based on real content, favors communicative language teaching inside the classroom. thus, language performance is so heavily influenced by the purposes for which both teachers and students are working in class. the abovementioned authors list the following main premises behind the cbi trend which can help design cross-disciplinary lessons: • the cbi approach is considered as an innovative tool for teachers to integrate the linguistic aspects with meaningful content knowledge. • cbi is a context-driven approach and is very much centered on what the content can offer to students and how it is developed through the language; that is, the language is taught in a contextualized way. • teaching by using cbi can develop the critical and reflective thinking of students because they are aware of the kind of topics on which they are working. students play an active role and keep motivated to learn the foreign language. universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras90 quintero, álvarez, & arcila • the teacher can easily provide information on the specific matter being taught in the language being learned. • generally, the topics are contextualized and interesting, and the students learn them in an innovative, interactive, and communicative form. • students acquire different language skills through several kinds of strategies which go beyond the morphological and syntactic aspects of the language. • cross-disciplinary lessons integrate the students’ previous knowledge and experiences as relevant background to begin each lesson. • the cbi approach offers relevant implications for incorporating assessment alternatives in the language classroom such as introducing meaningful content in the student’s foreign language learning. • in cbi, learning and teaching are centered on the students’ interests and needs. for this reason, the existing pedagogical methodologies, thematically organized materials, and didactic strategies are to be periodically updated and adjusted in order to create a more learner-centered classroom. • by working together, both content and language teachers interact in selecting, planning, implementing, and evaluating the most suitable kinds of successful tasks for their learners. the natural sciences curriculum education in natural sciences and the environment is one of the main curriculum subjects taught in all public and private colombian schools, according to the national policies of the men. biology is integrated more often than other school subjects (tokar & koch, 2012); sciences present a high number of scheduled hours during the year and is the second most popular subject in colombian bilingual schools, especially in private ones, which are increasingly doing the most with english and content (mcdougald, 2016). these subjects make it possible for students to get familiar with phenomena in the natural world and with the physical, chemical, and biological processes that affect the environment. furthermore, to develop environmental awareness in students, it is important that they are given the opportunity to gather some basic knowledge related to the mechanisms of all living creatures, including humans. currently, teaching natural sciences in the school curriculum is a demanding task due to the new strategies proposed for the entire educational community. there is a worldwide concern for the environment and global warming (unesco, 2014) and, therefore, some educational institutions, especially at primary and secondary levels, are implementing environmental projects in order to motivate the students to help take care of the planet. health risks, poverty, pollution, climate change, endangerment of species due to exploitation of fauna and flora, and even the socio-environmental conflicts of the communities are critical phenomena having a negative impact on ecosystems (c. a. munévar-quintero et al., 2017). thus, integrating english and sciences simultaneously is considered as an innovative curriculum experience to enrich the educational literature review concerning foreign languages acquisition (tokar & koch, 2012; zirilli, 2019). it is important to highlight the importance of english as an effective vehicle for students to have access to more information on the natural sciences, demonstrating how public institutions can link the gap between topics that go hand-in-hand: language, natural sciences curriculum content, education, and policy. nowadays, english is gaining prestige as a vehicle for knowledge transmission, which, arguably, can make the learning of this language appealing to students. english within the natural sciences curriculum becomes convenient for students to understand and for them to talk about scientific concepts in a contextualized way, including a variety of engaging scientific aspects (such as states of matter, physical and chemical properties of matter, etc.). it is evident that foreign languages curriculum programs need to leave behind some traditional methods, providing teachers with a real91profile: issues teach. prof. dev., vol. 23 no. 2, jul-dec, 2021. issn 1657-0790 (printed) 2256-5760 (online). bogotá, colombia. pages 87-102 cross-disciplinary lessons in an elementary public institution time answer that is context driven because they have to be competent for implementing the most innovative teaching strategies. previous studies tokar and koch (2012) examined influencing factors concerning the use of integration as a teaching method into an undergraduate program. they previously compiled numerous contributions of integrating root disciplines such as natural sciences, physical sciences, social sciences, and humanities, among others. the most dominant obstacles hindering integration seems to be: • lack of textbooks and handbooks, • lack of time for scheduling integrated activities, and • poor preparation during undergraduate studies, since teachers are not competent enough in combining different school subjects. the results revealed that classrooms offer plentiful conditions for integrating social sciences, natural sciences, and humanities. for instance, to apprehend basic concepts of natural phenomena, students and teachers would be able to explain some root knowledge concerning the laws of physics, chemistry, biology, as well as mathematics. the ability to integrate school disciplines is in positive correlation with teachers’ interest and background and demands strong cooperation between them. along the same lines, chou et al. (2019) carried out an experimental cross-curriculum reform whose main purpose was to design a self-adjusting learning strategy for preservice teachers. these authors consider that it is urgent to introduce self-adjustment mechanisms of inter-disciplinary teaching professionalism to provide a clear definition of the graduate skills according to specific characteristics of the regional areas and the job markets. in this commitment, teachers play an increasingly important role in curriculum reforms due to their know-how in organizing and integrating the required academic subjects to cater to the local and regional needs. in a most recent study, chuku (2020) identified resultant benefits after applying numerous skill strategies for developing environmental topics while teaching english through cbi, considering that the global environmental degradation is a grave situation affecting populations. thus, today’s warming, deforestation, natural disasters, and water pollution were selected as “green” content integrated learning with english. she stated that environmental issues stimulate the improvement of both discrete and integrated skills in processand product-oriented curriculum projects. for this author, countless issues around the world, which can be incorporated into language classrooms, especially by using cbi, are sparking the interests of both learners and teachers. chuku (2020) designed classroom integrated environmental lessons taking into account the students’ previous knowledge, age, and language skills. students were able to increase pertinent vocabulary, oral responses, reading and speaking activities, paragraph patterns, paragraph-writing tasks, skimming, scanning, note-taking practice, and other linguistic abilities. these exercises provided meaningful language use and facilitated authentic communication. according to chuku, teachers understand the value of cbi for improving students’ meaningful language and content instruction while debating environmental topics. zirilli (2019) conducted a bilingual case study applying clil to teach a non-linguistic topic focused on natural sciences. the participants were a small group of sixth graders from immigrant families. despite certain curriculum limitations, the science teachers observed a high level of participation and motivation when students developed cooperative and experimental classroom activities favoring the acquisition of skills and abilities during the process of using the foreign language (english) as a vehicle for content learning. universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras92 quintero, álvarez, & arcila leal (2016) selected a natural science class with third grade bilingual students to conduct a smallscale study using the clil approach, bearing in mind that it was urgent to provide information on specific aspects concerning the effectiveness of the program. the researcher adjusted an assessment grid aimed at reporting students’ achievement in terms of content and language demands of test items validity. through the assessment grid, clil teachers would be able to observe and understand distinctly students’ difficulties and strengths as well as to attend to their needs. method this study is based on the principles of the classroom action-research approach which helps teachers develop their scientific skills while they improve their teaching contexts through reflection and inquiry (kemmis & mctaggart, 1995; kunlasomboon et al., 2015; wallace, 1998). it is a cyclical process involving observation, planning, experimentation, and identification of critical points to improve real situations inside the classroom or other social environments by participants themselves. for this study, action research seemed an appropriate choice because we wanted to encourage both teachers and students to participate in some version of that process of reflection and inquiry that is often reserved for the researchers. in this case, a sequence of four natural science lessons was planned using the foreign language (english). context and participants according to the institutional educational project, the school was created by a catholic community and, for this reason, it is deeply rooted in spiritual and religious values. it is located in a little town near manizales (colombia), a medium-size city in the center of the country. students come from lowor middleincome families and are involved in different social, charitable, and inclusive celebrations or activities. likewise, the institution has several concerns as it cares for the environment and the students’ health and lifestyle. for these reasons, the importance of teaching natural sciences contents, including environmental education, is paramount. as a result, the institution organizes this subject in curriculum units of learning, each one with a different main theme. there are four units for each of the two academic periods in the school year. the first main teachable contents and topics are: living environment, physical environment, physical processes, chemical processes and science, technology and society. furthermore, the environment school project and the healthy lifestyles project are the two most influencing projects at the institution that permit students to transfer the knowledge acquired in the classroom. students learn about the importance of water as a nonrenewable resource, the role animals and plants play for maintaining balanced ecosystems, as well as the human practices that have a positive environmental impact such as recycling, reducing and reusing waste. additionally, students learn about the maintenance of a daily diet and the need for eating healthy food. a vegetable garden is located on the premises at the back of the school where the students, with the help of their teachers, sow different kinds of plants. the participants of this study were 38 fourth-grade girls with ages 9 and 10 years. the following team of experts was in charge of the creation of the cross-disciplinary lessons by applying the core principles of the cbi approach in the english class: • a preservice teacher from the modern languages program playing the role of research assistant during her practicum stage. she is one of the authors of this paper. • a practicum advisor to the preservice teacher who guided the whole research process, including the fieldwork, observations, evaluations, and the final report. she is one of the authors of this paper. • a natural sciences teacher who facilitated the theoretical contents and the didactic materials for the researchers. 93profile: issues teach. prof. dev., vol. 23 no. 2, jul-dec, 2021. issn 1657-0790 (printed) 2256-5760 (online). bogotá, colombia. pages 87-102 cross-disciplinary lessons in an elementary public institution • an english head teacher who expressed strong concerns about the official curriculum guidelines. he observed the effect of the cross-disciplinary lessons and helped the preservice teacher to understand the school life during her practicum stage. • a phd student in the process of developing her doctoral thesis. she holds a ba in biology and chemistry, and was able to provide theoretical, scientific, didactic, and methodological guidelines concerning the natural sciences curriculum. she is also one of the authors of this paper. stages of the research first stage: observation we carried out a series of observations during the first month of the academic semester to collect information on the institutional context and the methodologies, didactic resources, bibliography, and classroom environment in the english and natural sciences lessons. semistructured interviews in spanish were useful to collect participants’ impressions before and after the action stage and then, the answers were translated into english. additionally, we reviewed the school’s constitutional principles, the english and natural sciences curriculum, and other educational documents to help us find the most suitable approach to teach english, and more importantly, to give shape to the cross-disciplinary implementation. we found that integrating natural sciences with the teaching of english seemed to be a motivating alternative to get students involved in different activities through classroom projects. the preliminary results, taken from the observed classes, helped us to justify the design of cbi and to select the appropriate didactic materials for the forthcoming lessons. checking some students’ notebooks and the existing english curriculum, we confirmed that: (a) lessons were 99% in spanish, and thus, the use of english was very limited, inside and outside the classroom; (b) vocabulary and grammar aspects were memorized through sentences or in short dialogues without a specific context; (c) students translated every word into spanish; (d) although teachers used flashcards, videos, and gestures to help students understand, this was not done regularly; (e) most english content was isolated and did not deal with real situations related to the students’ context. during this preliminary stage, teachers were inter viewed about the frequency, reasons, rank, and type of disciplines they integrate into school courses. the respondents considered that academic subjects are rarely integrated. there are areas that the institution often ignores when considering how to integrate learning tasks whether totally, partly, or even nothing at all. nonetheless, a few given options were mentioned concerning natural, physical, and environmental sciences: when a teacher explains the interconnection between cause and effect for a certain phenomenon. (teacher 1) when teachers conduct practical tasks and demonstrations in the classroom or in the lab. (teacher 2) when students carry out physical experiments inside or outside the classroom. (teacher 3) when the academic community organizes institutional events which requires mutual cooperation, for example, the science fair, technology expositions, drug consumption. (teacher 4) my colleagues normally combine mathematics with biology, chemistry, and physics. on the other hand, philosophy, geometry, geography, spanish, literature, mathematics, and language topics are less frequent. (teacher 5) one of the interviewees also pointed out that meeting cross-curriculum teaching goals is a very difficult task which implies a huge effort and sacrifice as well: “my opinion does not mean to dismiss the reputation of the construction of complex knowledge, but rather to recognize that we are used to working in isolation” (participant 2). bearing in mind that integration of universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras94 quintero, álvarez, & arcila academic subjects is not easy to put into practice, participant 6 added: it is safe to say that teachers at the school currently overcome serious obstacles when undertaking transversal projects or they do not receive the necessary attention. this concern is often repeated by colleagues in our own, day-to-day schooling practices. second stage: action plan and implementation four cross-disciplinary lessons were designed by the team of experts (the english teacher, the science teacher, the preservice teacher, the practicum advisor, and the doctoral student) applying cbi, for the school period, during one semester. the lessons were based on the same topics arranged in the natural sciences curriculum. some of them were: forms of energy; states of matter; pure substances and mixtures; mass, shape, and volume; chemical changes; and lab experiments such as measuring, weighing, combining, heating, cooling, and so on. the classes were carried out by the preservice teacher, but the science teacher was present helping to develop the experiments and clarifying scientific concepts in spanish when students asked for explanations. each of the cross-disciplinary lessons included a structure divided into eight sections, as shown in table 1: (a) topic, (b) linguistic objective, (c) communicative objective, (d) warm up, (e) presentation of the topic, (f ) practice, (g) production, and (h) evaluation. the lesson shown in the appendix is a sample selected from the total set of the four classes. third stage: evaluation the whole team was able to assess and evaluate the effectiveness of each of the four implemented lessons and made suggestions, comments, and annotations. also, the research group interviewed the english teachers, the natural sciences teacher, and the academic coordinator. they described and valued in detail the advantages and disadvantages concerning the implementation of the cbi methodology, taking the natural science curriculum as the core content. also, the preservice teacher made self-evaluations related to her classes through descriptions, interpretations, proposals, and reflections of issues on the most relevant aspects found. the english head teacher observed the class and provided feedback with recommendations to improve the lesson plans. workshops, worksheets, drawings, photos, illustrations, videos, original tasks, and portfolios were the main instruments and techniques used in the data collection procedure. one of the alternative assessment practices used in cbi is portfolio assessment (delett et al., 2001), since students are able to observe, recognize, reflect, and be aware of their mistakes and achievements, as well as their weaknesses and strengths. portfolio assessment can develop both critical thinking and communicative abilities in the language acquisition process. by lesson 2, students were starting to become familiarized with the dynamics of the lessons. they were expected to draw a characteristic of each season. students sang the song “sun little sun.” the preservice teacher asked about the north pole. the students saw a video about the states of matter. she asked questions about the video: what the three states of the matter are, how the particles act in each one, and what a particle is. she explained what an atom is and how it is transformed in each state. the students named which state of matter can be found in each period and how these show up in each season. for example, in winter the ice is solid, and people wear hats, gloves, and coats. in spring there are flowers and the ice melts, so it becomes liquid. in the fall season the leaves fall down from the trees. in summer the sun, the sea, and so on. the students pasted images in the correct season. divided into small groups, they did word-search puzzles using the vocabulary. four images related to the topic season were drawn and the students had to paste any kind of grain, candies, or another element to represent 95profile: issues teach. prof. dev., vol. 23 no. 2, jul-dec, 2021. issn 1657-0790 (printed) 2256-5760 (online). bogotá, colombia. pages 87-102 cross-disciplinary lessons in an elementary public institution table 1. topics, objectives, and resources of the integrated lessons topic linguistic and communicative objectives scientific vocabulary and grammar structures lesson 1: going to the science museum to identify the vocabulary about forms of energy. to recognize the demonstrative adjectives. to talk about a science museum. • this is a magnet • that is the sun • those are manmade objects • classify these objects: candies, beans, rice, oil, sugar, cereals or grains, a powered juice, a bottle of water • paint a science museum • what are the forms of energy? • don’t waste energy • the guitar produces sounds • the sun produces light and energy lesson 2: the states of matter to identify the vocabulary about the states of matter. to talk about the north pole. • how many seasons are there? • describe a characteristic of each season • draw the states of matter • what is a particle? • is ice solid? is water liquid? • are there flowers in spring? • paste images in the correct season • this is the water cycle lesson 3: let’s cook a chocolate cake to identify the vocabulary about the mixture. to talk about cooking a chocolate cake. • put the candies in the glass • stir in sugar and butter • observe the mixture • can you separate sugar and butter? • the juice of the lemon dissolves in water. can you separate it? • write the recipe of the chocolate cake • count the minutes of oven use • i do not like chocolate, i prefer fruits lesson 4: let’s go to a shopping center to select the vocabulary about the specific properties of matter. to talk about going shopping. • do you eat fruits? i eat fruits every day • do you like soda? yes, i do. • describe the chemical properties of matter (air, acid, base, water) • describe the physical properties of matter • metals are solid. water is liquid. carbon is black • is volume a physical property? is combustion a chemical property? is gas a physical change? is temperature a physical change? • what is an atom? the nucleus contains protons and neutrons • physical properties include: texture, color, odor, volume, temperature, density, mass, volume, length, and shape • how many pounds of sugar do you need? universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras96 quintero, álvarez, & arcila each state of matter. finally, students created an atom with play-doh and labelled all the parts in english. some students presented their work in front of the class. they really enjoyed the activity and designed some creative works within the planned time. in the interview, students expressed opinions like “it is fun,” “it was too easy, teacher,” “i love making drawings,” “i understood the science class.” in lesson 3, where students worked on cooking a chocolate cake, they were enthusiastic about the topic because it clearly responded to their likes and their family context; some students expressed that they usually did this activity at home with their mothers. the students brought the material asked for by the preservice teacher in the previous class (candies, beans, rice, water, oil, sugar, etc.), to teach them how to prepare a snack. students started by putting these ingredients in a glass and they stirred them. in this way, students experimented that this mixture could be easily separated. later, students took a glass with water, squeezed a lemon in it, mixed a spoon with sugar and stirred it. immediately students noticed that the sugar and the lemon juice dissolved in the water and could not be separated. the preservice teacher introduced a video in which different types of mixtures were explained. using a clock, each student wrote the recipe of the chocolate cake with its different ingredients as well as the time it took to bake the cake. each student classified the recipe into homogeneous mixtures and heterogeneous mixtures. students were very happy and some of them said that they enjoyed cooking at home with their mothers. some students uttered short sentences in english such as: “i love chocolate cake,” “it is delicious,” “i love cooking.” long sentences were uttered in spanish and translated by the head teacher or by the preservice teacher: “the activity was different and funny,” “i am able to explain my mother how to make a chocolate cake.” [sic] in lesson 4, students played a game called “apple lemon.” the girl who has the lemon when one classmate says “lemon” has to create a phrase using vocabulary related to matter and time. the students saw different objects on the desk, simulating a shopping center. after that, they drew and colored each object and described their specific properties. the girls created a short dialogue about the physical and chemical properties of matter. students really enjoyed the activity and acted as if they really were at a shopping center. at the end of the lesson, they uttered emotional expressions such as: “thank you, teacher!” “the exercise was fun,” “it was a great class.” three english teachers, the science teacher, and the academic coordinator were interviewed after this stage. they recognized the value of integration. the head english teacher said that “through cbi it is possible to elicit interesting ideas about the experiments. i observed that the preservice teacher prepared error correction exercises. the most common mistakes were focused on grammar, spelling, pronunciation, and sentence structure.” the science teacher argued that it is imperative to update the obsolete textbooks and handbooks “which undoubtedly do not include plentiful guidelines for cross-curricular lessons.” in addition, interviewees made some comments which are highly relevant for both science and language teachers’ education in the future. they mentioned three other factors which hinder integration: student age (too young), limited hours of school courses, and lack of know-how among teachers. another opinion, a negative one, was that teachers feel that they are not prepared enough in these cross-curriculum competences: “most teachers at elementary institutions do not speak english and they do not know how to integrate some relevant subjects” (academic coordinator). lastly, the interviewees pointed out that novice foreign language teachers are more frequently engaged in cross-curricular practices while the more experienced ones usually lose interest in this sort of approach. finally, the academic coordinator commented the following: many of today’s teachers in my school understand the importance of integrating curricula subjects; nonetheless, this essential task depends predominantly on their 97profile: issues teach. prof. dev., vol. 23 no. 2, jul-dec, 2021. issn 1657-0790 (printed) 2256-5760 (online). bogotá, colombia. pages 87-102 cross-disciplinary lessons in an elementary public institution professional preparation, personal interest, and work experience. [for this reason] it is necessary that the university reinforces the ability to integrate disciplines as the one that we observed through this interesting cbi project. results we identified some useful information after evaluating the effects of the implementation of the crossdisciplinary lessons. for instance, the advantages and disadvantages of using the morphological and syntactic structures of english to facilitate the learning of natural science topics. during the development of the lessons, the students demonstrated basic communicative skills by using the foreign language with the cbi approach. we observed how the students started to use basic utterances in the foreign language to interact with their classmates and to somehow frame their comments and thoughts around the specific topics pertaining to their science class. students were able to put into practice some grammar structures, technical vocabulary, and scientific concepts, which were used to integrate communicative skills. motivation was evident, as a result of implementing contextualized activities. participants showed interest in the content classes and demonstrated more engagement in the evaluation sessions which allowed them to become more involved in the activities performed during the whole process. meaningful, integrated, and contextualized activities generated in the students an evident higher participation during the classes. this participation was supported by the use of the language through science contents and integrated strategies. it was imperative to take into account that the idea of learning and teaching was centered on the students’ interests, needs, and previous knowledge. to reach such a goal, the team of experts was in charge of updating, adjusting, and evaluating the existing pedagogical methodologies and didactic materials. the natural sciences topics, such as states of matter, properties of matter, mixtures, and so on, and the didactic materials served to improve quite effectively the students’ language learning and acquisition. through contextualized and family activities such as visiting a supermarket, observing the climate (a rainy and cloudy day), ice cubes in the refrigerator, and cooking a chocolate cake at home, participants demonstrated a high level of interaction at the moment of doing natural sciences activities through workshops inside and outside the english class. students were also able to help their partners when they participated in class so that they felt comfortable, which created an adequate learning environment for all. discussion although previous research studies carried out in colombian educational settings (fandiño-parra, 2013; mcdougald, 2016; usma-wilches, 2009) confirm that students, especially in public institutions, perceive the learning of a foreign language as a difficult and complex matter, it is possible to design cross-disciplinary language classes centered on students’ interests and needs, and putting into practice meaningful and contextualized learning. cross-disciplinary lessons become convenient for students to understand and use the foreign language in a communicative way as well as talk about issues related to other disciplines, even in some basic way. in line with the research carried out by chuku (2020), as a matter of fact, the cbi approach through cross-disciplinary lessons can help students to connect their previous knowledge (in natural sciences, in this case) with new subject matters. students acquired the capacity to express their previous and new information by using english grammar structures and specific terminology for scientific curriculum contents. it is noticeable that colombian education requires new perspectives towards the teaching-learning of the english process moving away from the traditional classroom methods centered on memorizing isolated universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras98 quintero, álvarez, & arcila vocabulary and mechanic repetition which are not put into practice immediately. those practices seem to have been used in most public schools until now. in this sense, the interdisciplinary content-based lessons, proved in this study, became an effective proposal to contribute to addressing crucial necessities identified by the men (2016): the need to train qualified english teachers, especially for elementary levels; lack of didactic and contextualized resources; few number of hours scheduled in public institutions; lack of collaborative teaching groups able to integrate isolated disciplines inside the school curricula; among others. as mcdougald (2016) suggests, both teachers and students need to recognize how content and language go together. bearing in mind that in colombia there are many families with limited financial resources, we took advantage, using our experience, of affordable didactic materials that could be adapted and used in other similar school contexts. with these relevant curriculum contents, participants in public low-budget schools may be able to create their own worksheets, workshops, and other interesting activities in a meaningful and pleasant way as long as the english teacher presents relevant and contextualized topics. it is true that latin america, as all other regions in the world, is facing the worldwide impact of globalization and technology (f. i. munévar-quintero, 2014). among other things, this is the reason why english is turning into the most powerful and privileged language integrated inside the curriculum reforms according to the most recent educational policies enacted by the men (2016). nonetheless, leal (2016) argues that little research is done on the use of integrated learning inside the classrooms. as a result, the methods and strategies to learn and teach english have to be updated to different and more complex aspects enriching the educational literature review. cbi becomes a pertinent methodology to train new teachers at university, providing them with a realtime answer that is context driven because they have to be competent for implementing the most innovative teaching strategies, where young generations face the challenge of cross-disciplinary work integrating updated issues such as the crisis of the planet, technology, digital intelligences, and global warming, among others (c. a. munévar-quintero et al, 2017; unesco, 2014). at the same time, graduates would be able to provide practical solutions to the urgent requirements concerning the colombian english classrooms, particularly in elementary and basic public institutions. as current teaching formation programs have to prepare new teachers in innovative strategies inserted in the latest tendencies (chou et al., 2019; men, 2016; unesco, 2014; zwisler, 2018), this classroom action-research project may be seen as one of these. it is necessary for the english teachers to be more creative not only in implementing methodologies but also in the ways of evaluating and looking for students’ progress. thus, we are left with the following question: can cbi help new teachers to transform traditional methodologies used in the english classes? of course, it is possible to qualify education programs by linking the gap between teaching methods and cross-disciplinar y content-based approaches. in short, this action-research project presents a crossdisciplinary proposal aimed at innovative educators (not only english teachers) who are open to new challenges and are prone to work towards integrative perspectives that the academic community repeatedly attempts to achieve. conclusions as a response to the research question, the cbi approach was successfully integrated into the foreign language classroom by taking the natural sciences as the core curriculum content through a set of crossdisciplinary lessons which were designed and adjusted in a public colombian institution. there is a direct and strong relationship involved in the teaching of english as a foreign language with the natural sciences. the 99profile: issues teach. prof. dev., vol. 23 no. 2, jul-dec, 2021. issn 1657-0790 (printed) 2256-5760 (online). bogotá, colombia. pages 87-102 cross-disciplinary lessons in an elementary public institution starting point of this action-research project was the identification of the problem area demonstrating the necessity of the english curriculum in a colombian setting, in this case, the fourth-grade class of an elementary public school. next, it was necessary to modify several didactic and pedagogical aspects through the design of some interdisciplinary lessons based on cbi, in order to lay aside the traditional methodologies implemented in the language classroom. after analyzing the results emerging from this classroom action-research project, it is important to conclude that the cbi approach offers effective pathways to integrate a meaningful context with the learning of a foreign language in public low-budget schools. it is evident that english teachers can include different strategies, methodologies, and techniques to improve their classes and leave behind some current and real issues of the traditional educational institutions, and thus help students work in a didactic and integrative way by using scientific contents. designing and creating new strategies and methodologies make the learning of english easier. for this reason, cross-disciplinary lessons in the natural sciences curriculum include a variety of engaging and captivating topics suitable for learning different unknown scientific aspects about students’ science, environment, and academic tasks. students seem more motivated and engaged in their foreign language acquisition and they are able to produce (even in a basic way) sentences and dialogues that link english with a specific and significant content about the natural sciences. finally, this research invites both researchers and foreign language teachers to appreciate the benefits of cbi in pedagogical practices. the main contribution of this study was the design of cross-disciplinary lessons based on the natural science curriculum which was introduced into the english syllabus to improve the institutional methodologies and innovative classroom projects. references bonilla-carvajal, c. a., & tejada-sánchez, i. 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(2019). il clil nelle scienze naturali: un caso di studio in una scuola secondaria di milazzo, sicilia, italia [clil in the natural science classroom: a case study in secondary education in milazzo, sicily, italy; doctoral dissertation, universidad de córdoba, spain]. retrieved from http://hdl.handle.net/10396/19623 zwisler, j. j. (2018). language policy and the construction of national identity in colombia. revista encuentros, 16(1), 133–146. https://doi.org/10.18052/www.scipress.com/ilshs.31.14 https://doi.org/10.18052/www.scipress.com/ilshs.31.14 https://doi.org/10.1016/j.sbspro.2015.01.248 https://doi.org/10.1016/j.sbspro.2015.01.248 https://doi.org/10.5294/laclil.2016.9.2.3 https://doi.org/10.5294/laclil.2016.9.2.1 https://bit.ly/2lopmlv http://carla.umn.edu/cobaltt/modules/strategies/stoller2002/stoller.pdf http://carla.umn.edu/cobaltt/modules/strategies/stoller2002/stoller.pdf http://oaji.net/articles/2014/987-1419168132.pdf http://oaji.net/articles/2014/987-1419168132.pdf http://unesdoc.unesco.org/images/0023/002327/232701e.pdf http://unesdoc.unesco.org/images/0023/002327/232701e.pdf https://doi.org/10.5294/laclil.2019.12.1.7 http://hdl.handle.net/10396/19623 101profile: issues teach. prof. dev., vol. 23 no. 2, jul-dec, 2021. issn 1657-0790 (printed) 2256-5760 (online). bogotá, colombia. pages 87-102 cross-disciplinary lessons in an elementary public institution about the authors josefina quintero is a head professor at universidad de caldas, colombia. she holds a phd in education from universidad de antioquia. her academic interests embrace the fields of curriculum, pedagogy, and educational research. she is a peer evaluator of conaces and coordinator of a research group classified by minciencias. diana yurany álvarez is a head professor at universidad de caldas, colombia. she holds an med and a ba in biology and chemistry. her academic interests include curriculum, pedagogy and learning environments. she is an active member of research groups classified by minciencias. andrea arcila has a ba in modern languages (universidad de caldas). she is a foreign language teacher in public and private institutions. she has developed educational classroom research during her teaching practicum. her academic interests include the design of didactic materials, teacher professional development, esp, and english for children. acknowledgements the authors wish to acknowledge the innov-acción educativa research group from the universidad de caldas in manizales, colombia, which supports the development of high-quality projects; the educational institution which served as the research setting; and our colleagues, advisors, and researchers from the teaching preparation programs who put in practice the pedagogical principles. the authors also would like to express their heartfelt thanks to all of the head teachers and young researcher students who took part in this classroom project. universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras102 quintero, álvarez, & arcila appendix: sample of a cross-disciplinary lesson lesson 1. topic. going to the science museum linguistic objectives. by the end of the class the students will be able to: (a) identify the vocabulary about forms of energy, (b) recognize the demonstrative adjectives (this/that/these/those). communicative objective. to talk about the elements found in a visit to the science museum. warm up. the preservice teacher played short videos about energy, light, sound, and magnetism. some questions and answers were posed. presentation. the girls wrote (in spanish, with the science teacher’s help) some previous knowledge about energy, how we can get it and the objects that produce it. later, the students and the english preservice teacher started taking about the basic concepts and objects related to energy, light, sound, and magnetism. then, the preservice teacher introduced some examples and queried the students such as: does a flashlight produce artificial light? does the sun produce natural light? after that, she explained the use of the demonstrative adjectives in english. practice. students made drawings and created a word-search puzzle related to forms of energy. production. with each of the word-search puzzles, students wrote examples by using the demonstrative adjectives. evaluation. the students drew, colored, and classified manmade and natural light on a worksheet. they identified the objects that create attraction with a magnet and the ones that do not. with the help of a guitar, they organized the objects that produce loud and soft sounds. finally, they created examples by using the vocabulary from the worksheet and the demonstrative adjectives. as a result, students proved each object found in the classroom by putting a magnet near in order to demonstrate that it creates magnetism. at the end of the class, they said: “it was too easy, teacher.” the productions were collected in the students’ portfolios. 149profile vol. 18, no.1, january-june 2016. issn 1657-0790 (printed) 2256-5760 (online). bogotá, colombia. pages 149-163 http://dx.doi.org/10.15446/profile.v18n1.49948 the co-construction of participation through oral mediation in the efl classroom la co-construcción de la participación a través de la mediación en el aula de lengua extranjera jose david herazo rivera1* anamaría sagre barboza2** universidad de córdoba, montería, colombia sociocultural theory argues that an individual’s mental, social, and material activity is mediated by cultural tools. one such tool is the language or discourse teachers use during whole class interaction in the second language classroom. the purpose of this study was to examine how a colombian second language teacher mediated her ninth-grade students’ participation during classroom interaction. we videotaped and transcribed five lessons and interviewed the teacher after each lesson. findings revealed that the teacher mainly used questions, elaborations, recasts, and continuatives in patterned combinations to help learners co-construct relevant content and sustained participation. such mediation provided learners with frequent affordances to engage in meaning-making, a necessary condition for developing a new language. key words: discourse moves, interaction, oral participation, mediation. la teoría sociocultural argumenta que las herramientas culturales median la actividad mental, social y material de una persona. una de estas herramientas es el habla o discurso del profesor(a) en interacción con sus estudiantes durante la clase. esta investigación analizó la forma como una profesora de segunda lengua medió la participación de sus estudiantes y las implicaciones de dicha mediación. se realizaron cinco observaciones de clase seguidas de entrevistas a la profesora. los resultados muestran que la profesora utilizó principalmente preguntas, elaboración, reformulación correctora y continuativos para la co-construcción de contenido y participación de los estudiantes. dicha mediación ayudó a los estudiantes a construir significado, condición necesaria para aprender una nueva lengua. palabras clave: herramientas discursivas, interacción, mediación, participación oral. * e-mail: jherazo@correo.unicordoba.edu.co ** e-mail: asagre@correo.unicordoba.edu.co how to cite this article (apa, 6th ed.): herazo rivera, j. d., & sagre barboza, a. (2016). the co-construction of participation through oral mediation in the efl classroom. profile issues in teachers’ professional development, 18(1), 149-163. http://dx.doi.org/10.15446/profile. v18n1.49948. this article was received on april 1, 2015, and accepted on july 28, 2015. this is an open access article distributed under the terms of the creative commons license attribution-noncommercial-noderivatives 4.0 international license. consultation is possible at http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/. universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras150 herazo rivera & sagre barboza introduction in sociocultural theory, a more capable other such as the teacher is often called to play a major role in promoting a novice’s learning and development by providing mediation or help (vygotsky, 1978). although in the field of second language acquisition (sla) this concept has been explored by a variety of research (hall & verplaetse, 2000; l antolf, 2000; lantolf & thorne, 2006), several crucial topics appear to be still underrepresented. notable omissions include the semiotic to ols through which mediation occurs (ohta, 2000a) and the way the second language (l2) mediation is shaped by cultural-historical, sociocultural, ontological, and microgenetic influences. in this paper, we shed light on these two crucial topics by investigating (a) the focus of the mediation provided by the teacher, (b) the time at which such mediation was provided, and (c) the specific discourse tools that the teacher used to mediate learners’ english as a foreign language (efl) oral participation during whole class interaction. in the first section of the paper, we discuss the concept of mediation and review some of the research on mediated l2 learning during teacher-student interaction. next, we describe the methodology for data collection and analysis and present the findings. in the last section, we present the implications of these findings for professional development. conceptual framework the concept of mediation derives from vygotsky’s view that an individual’s activity, whether mental, social, or material, is shaped by cultural tools and signs that have been historically created (vygotsky, 197 8, 1986; wer tsch, 2007). that is to say, an individual’s relationship with the world and others is not direct, but rather mediated through various types of signs that have been inherited from others, learned, and often transformed through recurring cycles of specific cultural and social practices. based on this orientation, mediation is understood in this paper as a self-directed or other-directed process resulting in voluntary control over one’s social and mental activity thanks to the use of cultural artifacts, concepts, and signs (lantolf & thorne, 2006). most notably, mediation often occurs through linguistic means and takes the form of linguistic guidance of participation (e.g., providing verbal cues or using assisting questions of various kinds). in this paper, our focus is on verbal mediation provided by the teacher to assist learners as they interact in the efl during whole-class activities. since learners’ use of english in colombia occurs almost exclusively in the classroom, focusing on teacher mediation is crucial for understanding the dynamics of efl learning in the colombian context. l2 teacher-student interaction as a mediated activity sociocultural research in sla has focused on a variety of topics including private speech (appel & lantolf, 1994; ohta, 2000a, 2000b), other-regulation (antón, 1999; donato, 2000; mccormick & donato, 2000), the zone of proximal development (zpd) and scaffolding (aljaafreh & lantolf, 1994; donato, 1994; guk & kellog, 2007), and dynamic assessment (l antolf & thorne, 2006; po ehner & l antolf, 2010). one of the most compelling findings of such research is that sla can be conceived as social in origin, semiotic in nature, and instantiated in mediated interactions with others. in addition, this research also shows that teachers’ discourse (what they say, how they say it, how they respond, etc.) is consequential to language learning and development. for example, aljaafreh and lantolf (1994) and ohta (2000b) investigated the verbal moves used by a teacher or tutor to provide corrective feedback and the way those moves mediated l2 development. the first study looked closely at the cognitive functions of the mediator’s utterances, whereas the second studied the extent to which learners repeated teacher recasts 151profile vol. 18, no.1, january-june 2016. issn 1657-0790 (printed) 2256-5760 (online). bogotá, colombia. pages 149-163 the co-construction of participation through oral mediation in the efl classroom softly to themselves (i.e., private speech) after the teacher gave feedback to other students. aljaafreh and lantolf ’s (1994) findings show that mediation needs to be provided as learners show signs that they need help (i.e., it needs to be contingent) and that mediation must start at the most implicit forms of support, becoming more explicit if learners continue to require help (i.e., it should be graduated). ohta (2000b) extended this discussion and demonstrated that a learner’s private speech can be an important indicator of the effectiveness and saliency of teacher mediation. her research suggests that private speech during whole class interaction may be one indicator of effective mediation that promotes learner assimilation and expansion of new language elements. research on dynamic assessment in the context of l2 learning is also fundamentally grounded in this basic assumption of vygotskyan theory (lantolf & thorne, 2006). other studies have demonstrated that mediation has a positive effect on students’ l2 learning. these studies have shown that teachers’ utterances are more than ways to provide input or elicit output, that well managed discursive forms of teacher mediation support cognition and linguistic development in the context of tasks and instructional goals (gibbons, 2003; toth, 2011), that this mediation can potentially create whole class and small group zpds (antón, 1999; guk & kellog, 2007), and that it may serve as scaffolding and dynamic assistance (mccormick & donato, 2000). the specific tools of mediation reported in the sla literature are diverse, confirming kozulin’s (2003) and vygotsky’s (1978) claims that the forms of adult mediation vary greatly. in addition to questions (mccormick & donato, 2000) that teachers deploy are included functional recasts (mohan & beckett, 2003), negotiation of meaning requests (gibbons, 2003), repetition, demonstrations, translation, metalinguistic comments, and the initiation of a solution that learners must complete (guk & kellog, 2007). although many of the previous studies argue that l2 learning in the classroom can be mediated by teachers’ discourse, this research has focused primarily on studying the development of learners’ linguistic system rather than on examining how teacher mediation sustains learners’ participation in meaningful interactions. for example, previous studies have focused on article use, tense and aspect, use of prepositions, and modal verbs (aljaafreh & lantolf, 1994), verb meanings (ohta, 2000b), and vocabulary (guk & kellog, 2007). two exceptions to this observation seem to be mohan and beckett’s (2003) and gibbons’ (2003) studies that described how learners’ meaning-making capacity expanded from congruent (non-academic) to non-congruent (academic) discourse realizations (halliday & matthiessen, 2004), and how content, meaning, and form in the english as a second language (esl) content-based science classroom were functionally related. the goals of previous research seem to have been, then, to study how more capable others mediate learners’ development of the language system, rather than how this mediation helps learners to participate in whole class interactions. thus, this study assumes a broader perspective on mediation that focuses on the discursive ways in which the teacher attempts to support student participation and the production of relevant content during teacher-student interaction. this study addressed three complementary questions: (1) what discourse tools did kelly1 use to mediate learners’ oral participation in the l2? (2) what was the focus of those discourse tools? (3) at what time during the interaction did kelly provide mediation through those tools? method this study followed a naturalistic line of inquiry (richards, 2003) to analyze how a colombian teacher 1 pseudonym for the participating teacher. universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras152 herazo rivera & sagre barboza named kelly mediated her learners’ l2 participation during whole class discussions through various discursive tools. unlike experimental research that seeks to discover cause-effect relationships by controlling variables, this case study (duff, 2008) can be considered naturalistic because it took place in the natural context of kelly’s ninth-grade classroom and did not require any change in how kelly usually taught her lessons. participants and context kelly, the participant of this case study, is an english teacher at a low-income state school in an urban area of sincelejo, colombia. kelly volunteered to be part of the study after an open email call that was sent to teachers who had not been trained by the colombian national bilingualism program. before the study, kelly was informed that the study would focus on how she and her students talked during lessons and that the study would not alter the way she taught her lessons. both kelly and the students’ parents agreed to participate in the study and provided signed informed documents of consent. at the time of the study, kelly had taught english for about ten years and held a degree in second language teaching and a specialization in translation. she also had a c2 proficienc y level in english according to oxford’s quick placement test (oxford and cambridge esol, 2002),2 which allowed her to engage in fluent conversation in english about a wide variety of topics. kelly taught two english lessons per week to her 42 ninth-grade students, one hour on one lesson and two hours on the other lesson. kelly and her students do not have a textbook that they use for their lessons; rather, they use selected sections from 2 the quick placement test or qpt is computer-based, takes 20 minutes to complete, and examines listening, reading, vocabulary, and grammar. it rates proficiency along six levels, from elementary to advanced, using the common european framework of reference scales (a1 to c2) (council of europe, 2009). a textbook that kelly chose, which they photocopy before lessons start. as is common practice in her school, kelly was the one responsible for choosing this textbook and for deciding which sections from the book to use. at the moment of this research, kelly had not been part of any course or seminar offered by the ministerio de educación nacional (men, ministry of education) within the programa nacional de bilinguismo (pnb, national bilingualism program) (men, 2005). although kelly had become familiar with the goals of the pnb as part of her school work, she had not been exposed to the l2 teaching methodology promoted by the pnb, which sought to enable efl teachers to interact meaningfully with learners, mediating their oral participation through appropriate discourse strategies such as content-oriented questions. however, such orientation to communication was common in the l2 courses kelly taught at night at a private university. for this study, we focused on kelly’s interactions with her ninth grade students, a group of 42 mixedgender learners whose ages ranged from 13 to 16 years. as is common in colombian classrooms (herazo & donato, 2012), kelly’s ninth graders had a low beginners’ oral l2 ability, which allowed them to express only basic functions such as greetings, introductions, and simple descriptions provided they had sufficient help from the teacher. all students in kelly’s ninth-grade class belong to low-income households, most of them located around the school. data sources we observed kelly for six hours during five lessons in may 2011. kelly’s purpose for these lessons was to promote student participation during classroom interaction about teenagers’ issues and their consequences. we kept field-notes during lessons, collected artifacts, and videotaped and audio-recorded all lessons. we did three lesson observations before data 153profile vol. 18, no.1, january-june 2016. issn 1657-0790 (printed) 2256-5760 (online). bogotá, colombia. pages 149-163 the co-construction of participation through oral mediation in the efl classroom collection to get learners familiar with being recorded and thus ensure that recording procedures did not significantly alter usual teacher-student interaction patterns. for the audio recording, we used a digital recorder with a clip microphone on kelly’s collar that she carried at all times during the lessons. after each lesson, we identified and transcribed for future analysis a corpus of 25 episodes from whole-class teacherstudent interaction (transcription conventions appear in appendix a). in all cases, the purpose of the teacher during those interactions was to promote students’ oral participation in the l2 to talk about various topics, such as student problems or vacations. the interactions usually followed reading or listening activities in which those topics had been introduced. we also used the transcribed episodes for stimulated recall protocols (srps) (gass & mackey, 2000) that took place in spanish, kelly’s l1, within two days after each lesson. the stimulated recall sessions consisted of an interview based on the video of each lesson and focused on kelly’s rationale for the various discourse tools she used. the srps were conducted posing questions3 such as: what was your purpose with that question? do you often ask “why” of your students after they provide an opinion? in this part of the video you said “uh huh” after a student’s response, what led you to use that expression? data analysis talk is one of the major tools we possess to create relationships of various kinds, be they social, professional, or instructional. for this reason, conversations between teacher and learners and learners with each other constitute an opportunity to observe how classroom talk promotes or mediates learning (ohta, 2000a; van lier, 1996). our focus in this study is on kelly’s discourse moves, their 3 questions were originally asked in spanish, the teacher’s first language. intentions during whole class interaction, and how these moves served to facilitate or limit students’ meaningful participation in the l2. we used the software nvivo 10 (qsr international) to organize and code 228 of kelly’s discourse moves as well as data coming from the srp. analysis was based on the categories defined by herazo and donato (2012) to address the focus, time, and tools of mediation kelly used in her l2 interactions with learners. inter-rater reliability checks for these codes yielded a kappa agreement of 0.82, 0.83, and 0.90 for the categories of focus, time, and tools, respectively. following herazo and donato (2012), we used three categories for coding the focus of kelly’s mediational moves, namely focus on meaning (i.e., mediational moves addressed to the content of learners’ utterances), focus on affect (i.e., mediational moves that encouraged learners’ to say more or aimed at reducing their speaking anxiety), and focus on language (i.e., mediational moves that focused on learners’ production of accurate lexis and grammar). concerning the time of mediation, we used the categories proactive mediation, for those discourse moves that oriented learners’ attention to their forthcoming participation, pushed them to say more, or set up expectancies (van lier, 1996) for the content or form of what they would say. we used the category ongoing mediation or “procedural assistance” (toth, 2008) for those discourse moves that occurred midway between learners’ attempts to formulate an utterance. finally, we used reactive mediation for teacher’s supportive moves that oriented learners’ attention to what they had just said, either to the formal aspects of their utterances or to their meaning. to analyze the tools of mediation (i.e., the types of discourse move kelly used), we used eleven categories, such as recasts, follow-up questions, forced-choice questions, provision of example options, elaborations, and continuatives. most of these categories have been reported in the existing sociocultural and sla literature, universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras154 herazo rivera & sagre barboza thus they will not be explained here (see appendix b). the srp provided self-reported reasons for kelly’s discourse moves. the srp data were analyzed through constant comparison (strauss, 1987) to allow for the identification, confirmation, or disconfirmation of recurrent patterns of mediation in the data. findings we present findings in terms of the tools, focus, and time dimensions of mediation. we will use only two interaction episodes given the fine-grained level of detail that was required for the analysis. by no means does that mean that our findings are solely based on those two episodes. rather, our intention is to illustrate the complex patters that were found for all the 25 episodes of the corpus, which will be presented in more quantitative terms at the end. rather than seeking quantitative representativeness with our analysis, our goal is to show the variability and patterns of mediation that were present in kelly’s discourse. kelly as mediator kelly’s mediation throughout the 25 interaction episodes of our data was mainly proactive and focused on meaning. that is to say, kelly’s mediating utterances were primarily aimed at promoting learners’ continued participation, and were oriented toward the content of what learners said rather than to its form. as we illustrate below, albeit with only two episodes, kelly used various discursive tools that she skillfully combined to mediate learners’ participation in the l2. episode a occurred after kelly and her students had been discussing the problem of adolescent drug addiction, using the example of a learner who left school due to this problem. however, learners shifted the topic from drug addiction to reasons why learners dropped out of school, a topic shift that kelly realized only until turns 14 and 15 came up. episode a 1. kelly: so, tell me why, is only about problems? is only about companies? or is about my decision 2. rene: money 3. kelly: is about money? 4. pedro: is my decision 5. kelly: money is another factor? 6. luis: no 7. kelly: money is another factor? 8. ss: yes, yes 9. kelly: why? why? 10. nico: yo creo que si ((i think so)) 11. kelly: why? why? is it important? 12. nico: la necesitan en el colegio para trabajar ((they need it in school, to work)) 13. kelly: if you work you get drugs? 14. alex: no teacher, quieren estudiar y no tienen la posibilidad de negociar ((they want to study and don’t have the chance to do business)) 15. kelly: uh hu? they don’t have the? 16. s?: possibility 17. kelly: possibility they don’t have the possibility 18. luis: teacher 19. luis: in the work don’t affect 20. kelly: uh huh? 21. luis: osea porque::: ((i mean because::)) 22. kelly: why::? 23. ss: ((giggles)) 24. luis: is, two jornal ((jornal: one section of the day, morning or afternoon)) 25. kelly: yeah? 26. luis: in ... in a one jornal work, in the otin the other jornal::: study 27. kelly: uh huh? 28. kelly: oh:: so:: they can study?, so according to luis, money is not a factor because…in the morning they can study? and in the afternoon? in the afternoon? 29. luis: work 155profile vol. 18, no.1, january-june 2016. issn 1657-0790 (printed) 2256-5760 (online). bogotá, colombia. pages 149-163 the co-construction of participation through oral mediation in the efl classroom 30. kelly: they can? work... in the afternoon? they can work, okay in episode a, kelly used proactive mediation to promote learners’ participation that focused on meaning rather than form. to that end, she provided interactional support in advance of the learners’ responses followed by meaning-focused questions that sustained learner participation. for example, in turn 1, she gave learners contrasting options from which to choose, which resulted in an answer from rene (turn 2) consisting only of the last part of the clause or residue (money),4 and another response from pedro in turn 4. kelly reacted to rene’s response with a follow-up question requesting confirmation (turn 3, 5, and 7), focusing on the meaning of rene’s statement rather than on the fact that it consisted of a single-word reply. once the entire class confirmed rene’s answer (turn 8), she asked a follow-up question demanding justification (turn 9: why? why?). because nico answered in spanish, she asked the same question again (turn 11) and then made it more specific by using a yes/no interrogative instead of a whquestion (turn 11: is it important?). kelly’s mediation allowed nico to continue his answer, still in spanish (turn 12), and kelly responded with another verification request (turn 13). as kelly reported during the srp, she purposely intended to make learners “feel they could participate in conversations in the l2, even if their participation had language errors or occurred in spanish sometimes.” her goal for meaningful participation explains why she reacted to the content of nico’s answers in turn 10 and 12 with a justification request (turn 11) and a confirmation request (turn 13), even though the learner’s utterances were in spanish. in this way, she implicitly accepted these contributions as valid for the ongoing conversation and mediated student participation for meaning over form. 4 the clause residue corresponds to the part of the clause that follows the subject and finite verbal element. in addition to meaning, kelly also focused on form on several occasions (turns 14 to 17 and turns 28 to 30). interestingly, kelly’s focus on form occurred through reactive mediation, only after learners had conveyed their meaningful contribution to the topic of interaction. for example, kelly provided an incomplete translation (turn 15: they don’t have the/) to alex’s response in l1 (turn 14), which she ended with rising intonation to cue students to complete it. this cue was taken up by one learner who provided the missing word in turn 16 (possibility), allowing kelly to incorporate the word into a full clause (turn 17: they don’t have the possibility). as the srp revealed, kelly’s intention was to send the subtle message that participation in l2 was required and to model, without explicit correction, the form-meaning mapping needed. this same formfocused, reactive pattern was repeated from turns 28 to 30, where kelly’s mediation ser ved to edit learners discourse, illustrating acceptable forms for expressing particular l2 meanings. the third recurring pattern of mediation is kelly’s attention to learner affect. this occurred from turns 15 to 27 and was mainly realized by the continuative uh hu (turns 15, 22, 25, and 27), with rising intonation as a way to show interest and encourage elaboration. this form of mediation appeared to have prompted luis to engage in sustained participation over several turns, while attempting the complex formulation: “in the work don’t affect [because] is two jornal, in one jornal [students can] work in the other jornal [they can] study.” kelly confirmed this interpretation of her use of continuatives in the srp, where she said she used uh hu to mean “go on, i’m listening” and encourage learners to continue talking. the previous patterns of mediation can also be observed in episode b below. however, in this new episode kelly used additional mediational tools. episode b was taken from the first lesson in the unit, after the easter vacation period. kelly welcomed universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras156 herazo rivera & sagre barboza students and started talking to them to find out how students had liked easter vacation. episode b 1. kelly: ahjust tell me one thing (.2) how did you, spend your vacations, how were your vacations, tell me about your vacations (.2) did you have a good time on vacations? 2. s?: ye:::s? 3. kelly: how many weeks did you have? how many weeks? i had two ((shows two fingers)) vacations, two weeks 4. rene: three 5. ana: three 6. kelly: how many weeks did you have? 7. rene: three 8. ana: three 9. kelly: three weeks, did you have fun? ((thumbs up with both hands, as saying okay)) did you have fun on vacation? 10. ss: ye:::s 11. luis: más o menos 12. alex: so so 13. kelly: so so why? tell me why tell me why why you say yes andtell me why you say no:: 14. ss: ((no reply…a silent period of about 5 seconds)) 15. kelly: why? give me the reason (.3) someone said no teacher, why? alex why, you said no::: so so ((imitates student’s voice)) why? 16. alex: [because], don’t, travel 17. kelly: uhuh kelly’s focus on meaning and affect through proactive or ongoing mediation was maintained in this episode. indeed, kelly continued to attend to the content of students’ utterances proactively (e.g., turn 9) and also encouraged learners participation with expressions such as uhuh, to show that she is paying attention to what learners are saying (turn 17). however, she used additional discourse tools to achieve those mediational purposes. for instance, in turn 1 she asked two open questions in succession (how did you spend your vacations? and how were your vacations?) which she then turned into an imperative (tell me about your vacations) and then into a yes/no question (did you have a good time on vacations?) to facilitate student participation (see also turns 13 and 15). in addition, she provided models of how students should respond to her follow-up, meaningoriented questions. for example, she answered her own question with a model response (i had two vacations, two weeks, turn 3). this encouraged students to respond (turns 4 and 5), albeit using only the final part of the clause or clause residue (i.e., three), which kelly recast to mediate form (three weeks, turn 6). then, kelly continued with the conversation by focusing on meaning through a follow-up question (did you have fun?), a form of proactive mediation focusing on meaning. kelly’s focus on meaning in this episode can also be seen in that she emphasized the meaning of key words in her utterances using gestures that added to students’ comprehension (e.g., turn 3 and turn 9). the results of our analysis for all of kelly’s episodes appear in table 1. table 1. analysis of kelly’s discourse moves focus of mediation meaning 57% language 29% affect 14% time of mediation proactive 60% reactive 30% ongoing 10% 157profile vol. 18, no.1, january-june 2016. issn 1657-0790 (printed) 2256-5760 (online). bogotá, colombia. pages 149-163 the co-construction of participation through oral mediation in the efl classroom tools of mediation questions 33% elaboration 12.7% recasts 11% continuatives 11% translation 8.8% incomplete sentence ending in rising intonation 8.3% example options 7% repetition 4.4% metalinguistic comments or requests 1.8% forced choice questions 0.4% modeling 0.4% table 1 as well as episodes a and b show the patterns of kelly’s mediation throughout the corpus data. kelly’s mediation focused primarily on meaning (57%) and occurred proactively through her use of follow-up questions that advanced the topic, elaborations of her own questions, and questions that provided options for students to respond to. her focus on students producing accurate language represented approximately one-third of her mediation (29%) and occurred reactively, that is, after students attempted to say something. to that end, kelly purposely used recasts and incomplete sentences ending in rising intonation. her focus on language addressed morphosyntax and lexis in similar proportions, and targeted whole phrases or clauses to construct specific meanings. kelly’s mediation of affect was her least common form of mediation (14%), which she realized with continuatives to support ongoing participation. in sum, kelly’s mediation took various forms, though it was primarily focused on meaning, proactive, and driven by her belief that students should first produce meaning before addressing language forms. discussion kelly’s continued use of various discourse tools that advance topic development oriented learners’ attention to meaning and sustained participation since she used them as “dynamic discursive tools [used] to build collaboration and to scaffold comprehension and comprehensibility” (mccormick & donato, 2000, p. 197). for instance, rather than asking for information she already knew, kelly’s questions aimed at engaging students in the co-construction of meaning. kelly’s correction of learners’ mistakes was mostly implicit, focusing on the meaning of learners’ utterances continually, and recognizing learners as valid interactive participants despite their frequent use of l1. in our view, this type of interactional activity not only matches current colombian goals, but seems to provide learners with frequent affordances to engage in meaningful participation during lessons, a necessary condition for l2 development (van lier, 2004). the various dis c ursive to ols of mediation that we found in kelly’s talk confirm kozulin’s (2003) position that mediation is not a unitar y, undifferentiated activity. rather, our findings for kelly indicated that teachers may deploy a variety of discourse tools in patterned combinations as they interact to construct meaning with their students. although a variety of studies have demonstrated the value of individual forms of teacher discursive mediation for student l2 learning (gibbons, 2003; guk & kellog, 2007; mccormick & donato, 2000; mohan & beckett, 2003), it is our contention that such value may be better understood when those forms of mediation are studied as part of a system universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras158 herazo rivera & sagre barboza and deployed by the teachers at different times to suit their instructional goals. l2 classroom discourse has historically been dominated by triadic interaction patterns such as the initiation-response-evaluation sequence (mehan, 1985). one of the criticisms leveled at such sequence is that it gives teachers the most talking opportunities in the interaction and constitutes a closed format in which students contribute little and hence learn little (thoms, 2012). contrary to this, kelly’s use of various mediation tools allowed her to realize a pattern of discourse that was interactive and dialogic (davin, 2013; van lier, 1996) and in which students’ contributions were valued for their content without necessarily neglecting their linguistic features. in our view, such result was due to kelly’s patterned combination of various forms of discursive mediation with an orientation to helping students produce meaning before focusing on the linguistic form of what they said. one lesson to be learned from this is that teachers’ attempts at making their interactions with learners more dialogic and participatory need to start with the awareness that their discourse plays a major role in mediating students’ learning, especially when different forms of teacher discursive mediation are combined purposefully and meaningfully. another intriguing insight that can be derived from this study refers to the way in which kelly handled students’ use of the l1 during their interactions in the l2. indeed, instead of restricting students’ l1 use, kelly took their l1 responses to engage them in using the new language. in our view, such decision legitimated students as valid participants that provided relevant content to the unfolding interaction, which was then mediated by kelly through translation to encourage l2 production. unlike input-based approaches to l2 learning that preclude l1 talk in the classroom (vanpatten & leeser, 2006), kelly’s acceptance of students’ l1 use aligns with current sociocultural approaches that see l1 and l2 as both cognitive and communicative resources to promote l2 learning in classrooms (creese & blackledge, 2010; donato & lantolf, 1990; swain & lapkin, 2000). conclusions and recommendations the purpose of this investigation was to explore the ways in which a teacher mediated her ninthgraders’ oral participation during whole-class interaction in an english as a foreign language classroom. to this end, the study adopted the concept of mediation from sociocultural theory to describe the focus, time, and tools used by the teacher to provide mediation. findings from this investigation revealed that the teacher used a variety of discourse tools mainly addressed towards helping learners participate meaningfully in the l2. most importantly, the teacher used a combination of discourse tools to first encourage l2 participation and production of meaning and then promote linguistic accuracy. this suggests that the use of discourse tools by the teacher is as important as its purposeful combination in order to promote meaningful participation in l2 classrooms which have been traditionally dominated by non-interactive and monologic discourse patterns (thoms, 2012). understanding mediation as consisting of three complementar y and interdependent dimensions (time, focus, and tools) seems to be a clear and accessible way to improve how teachers are taught to interact with their learners during professional development. accordingly, rather than simply suggesting ways in which teachers can react to students’ utterances (e.g., men, 2009), programs can help teachers b ecome aware of their own discourse by involving them in analyzing interaction episodes from their own classrooms using the three dimensions of mediations as a lens. despite the apparent value of these lenses, more research may be needed to explore in detail the nature of how the three dimensions of mediation interrelate and 159profile vol. 18, no.1, january-june 2016. issn 1657-0790 (printed) 2256-5760 (online). bogotá, colombia. pages 149-163 the co-construction of participation through oral mediation in the efl classroom how this interrelation can be properly configured in teacher education activities and programs. references aljaafreh, a., & lantolf, j. p. 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(2008). teacherand learner-led discourse in task-based grammar instruction: providing procedural assistance for l2 morphosyntactic development. language learning, 58(2), 237-283. http://dx.doi. org/10.1111/j.1467-9922.2008.00441.x. toth, p. d. (2011). social and cognitive factors in making teacher-led classroom discourse relevant for second language development. the modern language journal, 95(1), 1-25. http://dx.doi. org/10.1111/j.1540-4781.2010.01144.x. van lier, l. (1996). interaction in the language curriculum: awareness, autonomy, and authenticity. london, uk: longman. van lier, l. (2004). the ecology and semiotics of language learning: a sociocultural perspective. norwell, ma: kluwer academic press. http://dx.doi. org/10.1007/1-4020-7912-5. vanpatten, b., & leeser, m. (2006). theoretical and research considerations underlying classroom practice: the fundamental role of input. in r. salaberry & b. a. lafford (eds.), the art of teaching spanish: second language acquisition from research to praxis (pp. 55-78). washington dc: georgetown university press. vygotsky, l. s. (1978). mind in society: the development of higher psychological processes. cambridge, ma: harvard university press. 161profile vol. 18, no.1, january-june 2016. issn 1657-0790 (printed) 2256-5760 (online). bogotá, colombia. pages 149-163 the co-construction of participation through oral mediation in the efl classroom vygotsky, l. s. (1986). thought and language. cambridge, ma: the mit press. wertsch, j. v. (2007). mediation. in h. daniels, m. cole, & j. wertsch (eds.), the cambridge companion to vygotsky (pp. 178-192). new york, ny: cambridge universtity press. http://dx.doi.org/10.1017/ccol0521831040.008. about the authors jose david herazo rivera is an assistant professor at universidad de córdoba (montería, colombia), where he works as a teacher trainer in the department of foreign languages. he holds a master’s degree in education (universidad del norte, colombia) and phd in language, literacy and culture (university of pittsburgh, usa). anamaría sagre barboza is a full time teacher at universidad de córdoba (montería, colombia), where she works as a pre-service teacher trainer in the foreign language department of this institution. she holds a master’s degree in education (universidad del norte, colombia). universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras162 herazo rivera & sagre barboza appendix a: transcription conventions transcription conventions are as follows: underlining concurrent talk with underlined segment in turn below question mark (?) question intonation ellipsis (…) one-second pause (.2) pause whose length is indicated by the number within the parentheses a hyphen (-) abrupt cut-off colons (:::) lengthening of preceding sound italics talk in l1 capitals capitalized word was pronounced with emphasis [ ] mispronounced words (( )) comments or translation appear(s) in double parentheses ( ) unclear or probable items appear in single parentheses 163profile vol. 18, no.1, january-june 2016. issn 1657-0790 (printed) 2256-5760 (online). bogotá, colombia. pages 149-163 the co-construction of participation through oral mediation in the efl classroom appendix b: discourse tools in kelly’s mediation discourse tool description example example options teacher provides options for students to choose from and use in their answers. these options usually present contrasting alternatives from which only one is the accurate one. “so, tell me why, is only about problems? is only about companies? or is about my decision?” questions or requests this consists of a follow up question or request that the teacher uses to push students’ production and participation. usually why? modeling the teacher explicitly provides a model for students to use in their production. mediates the use of a particular language form. introduced by “say it like this…”, or “use this sentence as an example...” forced choice questions the teacher helps students participate by presenting them two choices that could be used for answering the question. “where did you go on vacation, was it cartagena or tolú?” (the correct answer would be tolú) recasts the recast retakes a chunk of a learner’s production and reformulates it using the accurate form. the purpose of the recast is that students see the contrast between their inaccurate answer and the teacher’s reformulation. s1: i go to tolú last week t: you went to tolú? elaboration teacher rephrases her own utterances or questions, perhaps to make them understandable to learners; or provides a more specific question so that they can answer and the conversation can continue. “how did you spend your vacations?... how were your vacations?... tell me about your vacations” continuatives this move shows that the teacher is paying attention to a student’s contribution. at the same time it is like saying “go on, go on, i’m listening.” aha (uhuh), oh!, sure, mmh, yes translation translation of language that students have produced or that the teacher has produced. s1: quieren estudiar y no tienen la posibilidad de negociar t: they don’t have the possibility repetition the teacher repeats what students have just said in order to advance the discussion in some way. as kelly explained, this was to show she was paying attention, and for the rest of the class to notice or pay attention also. s1: money t: money? incomplete rising intonation these are incomplete repetitions by the teacher of what a student has said or of what she says in order to implicitly invite students to complete them. t: look at this, this is a…? s1: a car metalinguistic comment or request these are comments or questions by the teacher that uses metalanguage. “say it in a whole sentence” or “you forgot to use the verb” 39 http://dx.doi.org/10.15446/profile.v19n_sup1.68575 anxiety in language testing: the aptis case1* ansiedad en la evaluación de las lenguas: el caso aptis jeannette de fátima valencia robles2** universidad de alcalá, alcalá de henares, spain the requirement of holding a diploma which certifies proficiency level in a foreign language is constantly increasing in academic and working environments. computer-based testing has become a prevailing tendency for these and other educational purposes. each year large numbers of students take online language tests everywhere in the world. in fact, there is a tendency to use these tests more and more. however, many students might not feel comfortable when taking this type of exams. this paper describes a study regarding the fairly new aptis test (british council). thirty-one students took the test and responded to a structured online questionnaire on their feelings while taking it. results indicate that the test brings a considerable amount of anxiety along with it. key words: anxiety, computers, foreign language, testing. el requisito de tener un diploma que certifique el nivel de competencia en una lengua extranjera está aumentando en entornos académicos y laborables. la evaluación por ordenadores se ha convertido en una tendencia que facilita la recolección y procesamiento de las respuestas. cada año, un considerable grupo de estudiantes toma los exámenes online para evaluarse en un idioma. sin embargo, muchos de ellos pueden no sentirse cómodos con este formato de evaluación. este artículo describe un estudio con el relativamente nuevo aptis test del consejo británico. 31 estudiantes realizaron la prueba y respondieron un cuestionario online con preguntas abiertas sobre los sentimientos que tuvieron mientras se examinaban. los resultados indican que la versión online provoca un considerable nivel de ansiedad. palabras clave: ansiedad, ordenadores, evaluación de lenguas extranjeras, habilidad oral * a previous abstract version of this paper was presented at the wces and linelt conferences in 2016 and 2017 by the same author. ** e-mail: jeannette.valencia@edu.uah.es how to cite this article (apa, 6th ed.): valencia robles, j. (2017). anxiety in language testing: the aptis case. profile: issues in teachers’ professional development, 19(suppl. 1), 39-50. http://dx.doi.org/10.15446/profile.v19n_sup1.68575. this article was received on september 11, 2017, and accepted on november 3, 2017. this is an open access article distributed under the terms of the creative commons license attribution-noncommercial-noderivatives 4.0 international license. consultation is possible at https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/. profile: issues teach. prof. dev., vol. 19, supplement 1, 2017. issn 1657-0790 (printed) 2256-5760 (online). bogotá, colombia. pages 39-50 universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras40 valencia introduction online computer testing has become very common in recent times (chapelle & voss, 2016; garcía-laborda, 2007; nash, 2015; sapriati & zuhairi, 2010; shuey, 2002). educational boards and administrations see in online testing a flexible (boyles, 2011), fast, and efficient tool for educational measurement (chang & lu, 2010; chapelle & voss, 2016). likewise, language tests have become a trending tendency in education due to the need to certify the candidates’ knowledge of a foreign language for jobs, immigration, and other purposes. although these factors have led to the appearance of several exam formats and suites from the beginning of the 21st century, the use of online tests to evaluate the four language skills according to the common european framework of reference for languages (cefr) or the american council of the teaching of foreign languages (actfl), is still in a relatively recent development. over the past few years, many online tests have been developed for such purposes such as the ib toefl, bulats, the cambridge suite (with their “for school” versions), gre, and more (chapelle & voss, 2016; garcía-laborda, 2007, 2009a; roever, 2001; stoynoff & chapelle, 2005). besides, there is a growing concern about the influence of computer-based tests (cbt) on students’ test performance (dohl, 2012). researchers need to know whether this not so innovative type of assessment reduces the common challenges candidates face when taking a language exam. although there are many studies devoted to describing what test designers have to do to implement good computer tests (fulcher, 2003; garcía-laborda, 2007), limited attention has been devoted/channelled to discovering candidates’ test experiences and their opinions about how their speaking and written performance are affected in computer tests. cbt can deal with the large amounts of test-takers’ answers to present reliable results in a brief time. according to bartram and hambleton (2005) and smith and caputi (2007), the advantages of using cbt have influenced their popularity. for example, exams elaboration costs and test reporting times are reduced while test security is increased (garcía-laborda, 2007). in addition, cbt store responses for automatic and precise analysis and measurement (garcía-laborda, 2007). as a result, cbt are innovating the testing and language learning field. despite their being digital natives, many students, however, do not feel at ease when taking online tests. the kind of tasks candidates face during the exam might be one of the reasons to feel uncomfortable during online tests (fritts & marszalek, 2010). language tests usually include reading, writing, listening, speaking, and grammar tasks. nakatani (2006) highlights four constraints related to the speaking skill that are summarized in the following list: 1. speaking is a negotiated activity. it requires two or more interlocutors. 2. speaking is dynamic. real life conversations are not structured and do not follow a pre-fixed order or pattern. 3. speaking usually requires the election of the interlocutor even when it is forced by outside impositions (such as undesired working interviews). 4. most conversations require common cultural and situational grounds and most times previous mutual knowledge. unfortunately, these conditions are hardly ever met in a face-to-face speaking task and they are totally absent in a computer test. thus, strong feelings are likely to appear in students who take a computer-based oral exam. this lack of real communication which is forced by the testing situation usually leads to rejection and inconvenience. the primary focus of this research was to determine the causes of students’ poor results in aptis speaking tests by analysing participants’ thoughts about the test and their opinions about its influence on their oral performance. even though it was believed students had experienced test anxiety, a self-created survey was used to establish anxiety levels. it consisted of an 41profile: issues teach. prof. dev., vol. 19, supplement 1, 2017. issn 1657-0790 (printed) 2256-5760 (online). bogotá, colombia. pages 39-50 anxiety in language testing: the aptis case online forum with seven open-ended questions to allow test-takers to express their feelings in this regard. the results of this investigation provided more insight into the cbt experience and the need of test training and metalinguistic strategies development. literature review the main goal of english language tests is to assess whether test-takers are able to apply different skills to show communicative competence, which involves more than only the knowledge of grammar structures and lexical words, but also the use of strategies to face the unforeseen events of communication (tuan & mai, 2015). it has been reported that the speaking skill is the most challenging section of the language exams (sayin, 2015). previous research has demonstrated that it produces test anxiety (çağatay, 2015; gerwing, rash, allen gerwing, bramble, & landine, 2015; tóth, 2012; tuan & mai, 2015). as reported by sayin (2015), test anxiety occurs when cognitive and emotional processes interfere with “competent performance in academic and assessment situations” (p. 113). therefore, in order to guide english as a foreign language (efl) learners to develop their oral skills and face a testing context, it is essential to identify the main challenges examinees usually deal with when taking oral exams (çağatay, 2015; tuan & mai, 2015) and the effects on test-takers’ performances. first of all, anxiety is not a new issue in the language learning field. horwitz, horwitz, and cope (1986) recognized that efl learners experience foreign language anxiety (fla) as part of the complexity and “uniqueness of the learning process”. they explained that fla is a type of specific anxiety reaction because some students only experience it in the learning and testing environment. furthermore, anxiety is not always negative. actually, there are two different types of anxiety that lead learners to perform well or not; the beneficial or facilitative anxiety that positively alerts and contributes to learners’ motivation, and the “inhibiting or debilitative anxiety” that frustrates students’ opportunities to show off their abilities (dörnyei as cited in çağatay, 2015; sayin, 2015). it is in the later scenario where fla indeed represents a problem because it makes efl learners feel anxiety components such as fear of a negative evaluation, comprehension apprehension or shyness to interact, and test anxiety (horwitz et al., 1986). the same feelings are part of oral english test anxiety (han as cited in shi, 2012). the aforementioned fla components are related to tuan and mai’s (2015) list of challenging aspects of the speaking skill during classes and examinations. these aspects can be classified into two categories. on the one hand, there are external factors or performance conditions that might provoke anxiety. these conditions are time pressure, planning time, standard of performance, and amount of support (tuan & mai, 2015). anxiety levels vary depending on the task requirement and the available time students have to prepare their answers (o’sullivan, 2008), as well as the assistance, feedback, and interactions they receive during the exercise (tuan & mai, 2015). on the other hand, text anxiety can also arise due to three internal factors present in test-takers: the listening ability, speaking-related problems, and affective factors (tuan & mai, 2015; ur, 1996). the listening ability plays an important role in communicative tasks as participants need to understand the spoken message in order to react to it (o’sullivan, 2008). thus, being able to interact in speaking tasks depends on the speakers’ skills to perceive, hear, and decode inputs from conversations (ur, 1996). another challenging factor concerns speaking-related problems. ur (1996) mentions that inhibition to talk, lack of ideas, and practice usually cause students not to speak during classes and exams. finally, there are affective factors like motivation, self-concept, and anxiety itself that lead students to have a helpless attitude towards the speaking skill. bearing in mind these challenges facilitates understanding of what efl learners undergo while facing speaking tasks during exams. o’sullivan (2008) highlights the different considerations test-developers think universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras42 valencia of when designing reliable tests. for instance, they try to address the common characteristics of test-takers to create fair examinations. although anxiety does not appear among the psychological features, motivation, affective schemata, and emotional state do. another element considered by test designers is the cognitive process and cognitive resources examinees are supposed to follow and use to succeed provided that anxiety does not cause cognitive interference during the development of their responses (sarason, 1984). these aspects facilitate the elaboration of reliable tests. cbts aim to improve the testing experience so candidates can perform better. in speaking tests with this format, examinees interact with the test software by wearing headsets and speaking into a microphone (shi, 2012). the role of the computer is to present instructions and tasks, control the preparation and response time, and store candidates’ responses (shi, 2012). in spite of these facilities, several publications have appeared in recent years documenting that cbts are also creating test anxiety and computer anxiety among test-takers (grubb, 2013; sayin, 2015; shi, 2012). shi (2012) found that there are some subjective and objective factors that cause test anxiety in computerbased oral english tests. the questionnaires’ results showed that the subjective causes were discomfort when talking to a computer, lack of time management skills, and previous negative testing experiences. on the other hand, more objective causes were the noise in the multimedia lab, the lack of interaction, and the difficulty and complexity of the topics (shi, 2012). in a different study grubb (2013) sought to determine if there was a variation in anxiety levels between cbt and traditional paper and pencil assessments. although students were solving math problems, this case addressed the effect of cbt on anxiety levels. test performance considerably varied between both groups; revealing that cbt did not lessen the anxiety levels in students. actually, students who were assessed with a computer performed worse. grubb concludes that students might need to get familiarized with the new test modality in order to see significant differences. finally, sayin (2015) conducted a study to learn about students’ attitudes towards cbt after a five-week test training period. moreover, he wanted to determine the reasons of test anxiety in the exam participants took during the study. the results demonstrated that timing was the main cause of test anxiety. working with cbt is becoming a dominant element in the language testing field of the 21st century. several research projects are being carried out to establish parameters for reliable interfaces that enable learners to interact appropriately during the testing experience (chen, 2014; dina & ciornei, 2013; garcía-laborda, 2009a; garcía-laborda, magal-royo, de siqueira rocha, & fernández álvarez, 2010). that is why this study aims to contribute to the development of the state of the art in relation to the influence of computer-based oral english tests on test-takers’ speaking performance. method this qualitative study followed an exploratoryinterpretive paradigm to understand participants’ perceptions of the aptis speaking test and to explore their awareness of what caused their poor performance in that examination. furthermore, this pilot study sought to identify students’ readiness to present suggestions of improvement. participants thirty-one students, 23 females and 8 males, with an age range of 17-21 years old of the teaching career in universidad de alcalá (guadalajara, spain) in 2014-2015 took the aptis test. they were the first group of students taking the test in guadalajara, spain. hence, they were not familiarized with its format nor had they received any test-training. however, the group managed to get good results in the reading, writing, and listening sections. it was the speaking section that represented a problem. during the analysis of data, the word “candidate” plus 43profile: issues teach. prof. dev., vol. 19, supplement 1, 2017. issn 1657-0790 (printed) 2256-5760 (online). bogotá, colombia. pages 39-50 anxiety in language testing: the aptis case the number of response appearing was used to protect participants’ identity. instrument of data collection an online forum in the blackboard platform was designed as a self-developed instrument to collect information related to participants’ feelings and thoughts towards the computer-based oral test they took. the seven open-ended questions were based on three main themes: familiarity with, ergonomics of, and feelings towards the aptis speaking test. the questions were designed in english and then translated into participants’ mother tongue, spanish. the questions are included in the appendix section, and are presented in english for publication purposes. this online forum aimed to provide data to establish any correlation between the different factors that made participants feel uncomfortable during the exam with the results of previous studies. ethical considerations students were told to participate in the academic forum as part of the course. although students’ names remain confidential, the questions were visible in the forum of the blackboard of the university and participants were allowed to see each other’s entries as they belonged to the same course. data collection and analysis procedures after having received the test results, the 31 participants were required to submit their answers to find out the causes that prevented them from performing well in the speaking section. thirty-one entries to the academic forum were collected and printed for analysis. as usually happens in forums discussions, almost all participants decided to provide their opinion without including the questions or following their order, though all the answers are related to the themes of the open-ended questions. only one entry was discarded as its author had not taken the aptis speaking exam. on the basis of the literature review, data were organized and coded by identifying the different anxiety factors based on students’ descriptions of their opinions about and experiences with the aptis speaking test. for the purpose of this study some general descriptions were assigned particular labels to facilitate the coding and further analysis. for instance, explanations of problems with the test software, program distracting sounds, internet connections, screens turning black, headphones, and microphone were given the code technical issues. furthermore, participants’ comments on how difficult it was to understand and use the program itself were named as interface experience. similar responses were classified in the same category or anxiety factor in order to establish the number of participants who reported the same test anxiety cause. those factors were grouped by themes for further analysis. the information was then tabulated using different spread sheets and formulas of microsoft excel for the development of the figures related to each research question. the research questions five questions were considered during the process: 1. what were participants’ opinions towards the aptis test? 2. what were the causes of students’ poor performance in the aptis speaking test? 3. are those causes similar to the ones reported in previous studies? 4. did any participant establish a relationship between their main sources of anxiety and their poor test performances? 5. did any participant make suggestions to improve the aptis speaking test? results the results are organized according to the research questions and the main themes identified during the analysis. figures were generated after arranging and tabulating data. universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras44 valencia figure 1 shows participants’ opinions about the aptis test. although they gave comments on the whole test, only the opinions related to the speaking section were included in the figure. figure 1. test-takers’ opinions of the aptis speaking test 28% 17% 11% 11% 8% 8% 5% 6% 3% 3% stressful no comments unreliable difficult cold chaotic/ problematic/ negative/ terrible uncomfortable/ unpractical unusual/impersonal long and tiring as can be seen in figure 1, only 17% of the test-takers did not give any comments on the exam while the other 83% of the candidates used several adjectives to describe the test. for example, some students argued the exam was “inaccessible” (3%), “long and tiring” (3%). another 6% of the participants pointed out that, in general, talking to a computer was an “unusual and impersonal experience”. furthermore, 11% of the students claimed the speaking section was “a chaotic and terrible situation” because they faced some problems that made them get negative results. actually, 28% of the participants clearly labelled the aptis test as “a stressing exam”, which is related to previous studies conclusions. the causes that provoke these opinions are depicted in figure 2. figure 2 illustrates the anxiety factors mentioned by the participants during the academic online forum. time constraints and background noise caused by simultaneous talk were the most common causes of distress and anxiety (19% and 18%, respectively) while outside pressure like depending on the test results to study a university career was the least common cause of anxiety (2%). however, in order to interpret the results in the framework of the literature review, four factors will be considered: the subjective and objective factors (shi, 2012) and the external and internal factors (tuan & mai, 2015) of test anxiety in computer-based oral exams. regarding the subjective reasons of test anxiety identified by shi (2012), it was also found that external factors contributed to the increase of anxiety. for example, talking to a computer and unfamiliarity with the test format are external factors that received 10% and 9%, respectively. a few participants claimed that they became “stressed” and “uncomfortable” when they realised they would have to talk to a “machine”. in addition, responses revealed students got “nervous” because they were not familiarized with the format and procedure of the cbt. this reveals that the digital competence is an important issue that needs to be highlighted (shi, 2012) since it seems that it has not been totally achieved by test-takers. similar results were obtained with time constraint because it was the main isolated cause of anxiety, with 19%, as in shi’s (2012) and sayin’s (2015) studies. participants described the available time to observe pictures, reflect, organize, and deliver ideas as “insufficient”. moreover, inaccessible 18 16 14 12 10 8 6 4 2 0 in te rf ac e ex pe rie nc e ti m er te ch ni ca l i ss ue s un fa m ili ar ity w ith te st ta lk in g to a co m pu te r no in te ra ct io n si m ul ta ne ou s t al k o ut sid e pr es su re to pi cs d iffi cu lty ti m e co ns tr ai nt figure 2. causes of poor performance in the aptis speaking test 45profile: issues teach. prof. dev., vol. 19, supplement 1, 2017. issn 1657-0790 (printed) 2256-5760 (online). bogotá, colombia. pages 39-50 anxiety in language testing: the aptis case students reported that the visual timer increased their nervousness. some complained the countdown timer made them feel “really nervous” and “anxious” and they even became “obsessive about looking at it” with distress. as a result, these data reveal that test-takers need to work on metacognitive and time management skills to organize and prepare responses. these skills can help students deal with time pressure and the planning time, which are conditions that affect the speaking performance (tuan & mai, 2015). although there was no answer related to previous negative experiences, some participants (2%) reported worries about how the results could affect their future professional development. for instance, they claimed they needed to pass or score well on the aptis test in order to “pursue a career” (candidate 3) or to “be admitted in the english mention” of their careers (candidate 5). regarding the objective reasons to experience test anxiety, students described external and internal factors that influenced their performance negatively (tuan & mai, 2015). once again, the study reflects what shi (2012) has mentioned about the number of reports related to noise in the multimedia lab. participants identified the logistics problem of taking a test in a room where “15 people were doing speaking exercises at the same time” (candidate 3). in their opinion, “it was really difficult to concentrate” because they could “hear each other conversations” (candidates 1, 3, 4, 8, 10, 11, 12, 14, 16, 18, 20, 22, 23, 24, 27, 30). as a result, 19% of the participants claimed those simultaneous talks caused anxiety in them since they found it hard to express themselves “clearly” in an exam that some identified as “chaotic”. according to the descriptions provided, this external factor could have diminished test-takers’ listening abilities to understand what they were required to do in the speaking section, which might have directly affected their speaking skills. additionally, 11% of the test-takers assured that the lack of interaction, feedback, and support made it difficult to perform well during the task. students expressed they were not confident to talk to a computer because they needed to rely on “human gestures”, “non-verbal communication”, and “body language”. eight per cent of the examinees also argued that the topics difficulty did not allow them to develop their ideas and “show off [their] knowledge and skills” (candidate 23). in their views, topics were so “unknown”, “complex”, and “unusual” that they would not even be able to discuss them in their “mother tongue”, spanish. this result is similar to shi’s (2012) findings about topic complexity. young (as cited in shi, 2012) discovered that learners’ anxiety levels increased in relation to the ambiguity and difficulty of the test exercises and formats. participants also addressed other causes that had not been mentioned in previous studies such as technical issues and interface navigability. eight per cent of the participants reported concrete cases where they experienced test anxiety due to inconsistencies with internet connection, software, or hardware. for example, some participants had to move to another computer if they had lost internet connection or if “the speaking test program did not worked properly on theirs” (candidate 3). they also complained about the efficiency of their headphones, but it is necessary to establish if this is related to the simultaneous talk in the room. in addition, only 6% of the examinees said the interface of the program was a leading-factor of anxiety since they had to “take some time to really understand how to use it” (candidate 27) or they tended to get distracted by a “sound” that indicated the start and end of each activity. these descriptions of candidates’ perceptions of the test experience were used to answer the third question that aimed to explore how many participants were able to relate those factors to test anxiety. figure 3 shows that 50% of the participants recognized they were anxious during the test while 23% did not mention anything about the causes of their low performance. surprisingly, 27% claimed not to have experienced anxiety at all, but these data are not consistent with their descriptions. the different adjectives universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras46 valencia they used to describe their feelings towards the test, and the test itself, can be observed in figure 1. figure 3. test-takers’ awareness of test anxiety 27% 50% 23% did not experience anxiety recognized they were anxious made no comments on anxiety the results of the fourth question show the number of participants who were able to relate their test anxiety to their poor test performance. seventy-seven per cent of the students focused more on describing their experience than referring to their test performance as the issue had not been explicitly included in the questions of the forum. nevertheless, the students who did make connections between these two variables highlighted that their sources of anxiety, such as simultaneous talk, talking to a computer, unfamiliarity with the test, and interface navigability, caused their poor results. for example, they concluded that the simultaneous talk affected their oral skills and did not allow them to “demonstrate what [they] really know” (candidate 23). others claimed that “talking to the computer could negatively influence on the results” (candidate 6). it was also addressed that if they had known the speaking test procedure, they “would have got a better result”. furthermore, students argued that the presentation of the different exercises was “distracting” and “not wellstructured” (candidate 25). these ideas made them think the test was not “reliable”. the last research question was concerned with participants’ initiative to propose suggestions to improve the aptis test. despite not having being explicitly asked, participants could have taken advantage of the forum to share their opinions in this regard; especially in the first, fourth, fifth, and sixth questions. nonetheless, only 27% of the examinees mentioned suggestions so that future test-takers could perform better in “a calmer” and more real-life environment. in their opinions, the test program should allow more time to “reflect and organize ideas” before requiring participants to give an answer, and a “pause button” or a “recording interface” could be implemented. in addition, some candidates think, in the future, the simultaneous talk factor could be avoided by not including 15 people in the same room, but “taking the test in pairs” (candidate 22) or by “speaking to another candidate through webcams” (candidate 14). conclusions the present study focused on exploring the causes of test-takers’ low oral performance in the speaking section of the aptis test. it also analysed candidates’ opinions about the speaking exam and their thoughts of whether it caused them anxiety or not. from the research that has been carried out it is possible to conclude these participants experienced test anxiety during the examination of their oral skills. the results give insights for the development of more concrete questions to be used as part of a larger formal test anxiety inventory (currently in development). a secondary issue could be the relevance for teacher and teacher training where the knowledge of testing applications is extremely relevant for the washback effect (garcía-laborda & magalroyo, 2009), especially through alternative computer applications (garcía-laborda, 2009b). in addition, further investigations could be conducted to determine concrete test anxiety levels in test-takers of computerbased oral english tests and the extent to which that test anxiety influences test performance. paying attention to 47profile: issues teach. prof. dev., vol. 19, supplement 1, 2017. issn 1657-0790 (printed) 2256-5760 (online). bogotá, colombia. pages 39-50 anxiety in language testing: the aptis case the main causes of test anxiety reported in the studies will improve the basis of computer-based performance. the study presents useful information for teachertrainers and people in charge of providing the cbt service as there are aspects to consider for improving both students’ exam preparation lessons and the testing experience. in light of the results, teachers need to create opportunities to allow students to get familiarized with the test format and the test requirements. future test-takers will need this to get used to the aptis test, and any other cbt, and to be prepared to face a wide range of topics. it is also of great importance that test-training courses offer practice in order to develop time management skills and metalinguistic skills so that examinees can organize ideas and evaluate the appropriateness of using them as responses in the given time. regarding the improvement of the testing experience, it has been a major find that there are technical and logistic issues that might need consideration for further research. for example, it is essential to guarantee test-takers that the centre or computer lab will have high-quality internet connection and software and hardware facilities. furthermore, researchers need to bear in mind to what extent noise in the multimedia lab, without room for repetition, clarification, and rephrasing, resembles real-life communication. finally, it is essential to identify whether these conditions provoke cognitive interference or the diminishment of effective cognitive and communicative process. by and large, the findings of this pilot study would enable the researchers to design further investigations on how to improve computer-based oral english tests so that test-takers can be capable of managing anxiety and demonstrating their communicative skills in a more valid and reliable testing environment. references bartram, d., & hambleton, r. k. 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(2012). foreign language anxiety and oral performance: differences between highvs. low-anxious efl students. us-china foreign language, 10(5), 1166-1178. tuan, n. h., & mai, t. n. (2015). factors affecting students’ performance at le thanh hien high school. asian journal of educational research, 3(2), 8-23. ur, p. (1996). a course in language teaching: practice and theory. cambridge, uk: cambridge university press. 49profile: issues teach. prof. dev., vol. 19, supplement 1, 2017. issn 1657-0790 (printed) 2256-5760 (online). bogotá, colombia. pages 39-50 anxiety in language testing: the aptis case about the author jeannette de fátima valencia robles is a second-year doctoral student of modern languages at universidad de alcalá, spain. she received a bachelor’s degree in english language from universidad católica de santiago de guayaquil, in ecuador, and a master’s degree in teaching english as a foreign language from universidad de alcalá. she is interested in efl and esl education, adolescent development, and technology. universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras50 valencia appendix: academic forum questions 1. what is your general opinion about the exam? 2. in your opinion, does it reflect your knowledge of the english language accurately? 3. if you already have a level test, do test results correspond? 4. does talking to a computer give you anxiety? do you prefer to talk to a person? is a minute enough time to prepare the answer for the longer topic? 5. did you find it easy to use the test software? was it user-friendly and intuitive? 6. what were the main difficulties you found? 7. what advantages does this exam have? 79profile: issues teach. prof. dev., vol. 21 no. 2, jul-dec, 2019. issn 1657-0790 (printed) 2256-5760 (online). bogotá, colombia. pages 79-96 https://doi.org/10.15446/profile.v21n2.73116 chilean pre-service teachers’ perceptions towards benefits and challenges of efl writing portfolios percepciones de estudiantes chilenos de pedagogía en inglés en relación a los beneficios y desafíos de los portafolios de escritura en inglés como lengua extranjera 1pamela andrea saavedra jeldres* 2mónica campos espinoza** universidad católica de temuco, temuco, chile although keeping writing portfolios has proved to be a successful strategy in developing writing skills in english as a foreign language, few studies have focused on pre-service teachers at the pre-intermediate level. this study aims to describe pre-service teachers’ perceptions towards portfolio keeping. the sample consisted of 51 first-year students from an initial english language teacher education programme at a university in southern chile. a writing portfolio-based class was implemented over a seventeen-week period. data were collected through an adapted questionnaire and a focus group conducted at the end of term. results show that pre-service teachers value the strategy; they perceive they have improved their writing and reflection skills. they also draw attention to some challenges to be considered in the planning and implementation phases of the strategy. key words: assessment strategy, english as a foreign language writing, english language teacher education, pre-service teachers’ perceptions, writing portfolios. aun cuando el uso de portafolios de escritura ha emergido como una estrategia valiosa para desarrollar la habilidad de producción de textos escritos en inglés como lengua extranjera, existe un número limitado de estudios con profesores en formación a nivel pre-intermedio. este estudio describe las percepciones en cuanto al uso de portafolios por parte de 51 estudiantes de una carrera de pedagogía en inglés en una universidad al sur de chile. se implementó una clase de escritura basada en el uso de portafolios durante 17 semanas. los datos se recolectaron a través de un cuestionario y un grupo focal al final del semestre. los resultados muestran que los profesores en formación valoran la estrategia y consideran haber mejorado sus habilidades de producción de textos escritos y su proceso de reflexión. a su vez indican algunos desafíos que deben ser considerados en las fases de planificación e implementación de la estrategia. palabras clave: estrategia de valoración, pedagogía en inglés, percepciones de estudiantes de pedagogía, portafolios de escritura, producción escrita en inglés como lengua extranjera. * e-mail: psaavedra@uct.cl ** e-mail: mcampos@uct.cl how to cite this article (apa, 6th ed.): saavedra-jeldres, p. a., & campos-espinoza, m. (2019). chilean pre-service teachers’ perceptions towards benefits and challenges of efl writing portfolios. profile: issues in teachers’ professional development, 21(2), 79-96. https://doi. org/10.15446/profile.v21n2.73116. this article was received on june 27, 2018 and accepted on march 27, 2019. this is an open access article distributed under the terms of the creative commons license attribution-noncommercial-noderivatives 4.0 international license. consultation is possible at https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/. universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras80 saavedra-jeldres & campos-espinoza introduction the development of advanced writing skills in english as a foreign language (efl) is a key factor in professional development in general; writing is a major tool for transmitting and disseminating knowledge in a globalised world where english is considered the universal language. thus, mastering this skill is compulsory for students of the initial english language teacher education (ielte) programmes in chile. nevertheless, “standardised tests of students and teachers have consistently demonstrated relatively low achievement” (barahona, 2015, p. 7). in 2014, the chilean ministry of education created the guiding standards for english ielte programmes in chile (ministerio de educación, 2014), which outline the linguistic and pedagogical competences that future teachers of english need to develop during their undergraduate programmes. one of them is the competence of oral and written skills as well as an advanced level of english at the time of graduation: c1 according to the common european framework of reference for languages (cefrl). during the 1990’s, the curriculum of english language at schools placed stress on the “development of listening and reading comprehension skills, giving speaking and writing a subsidiary role” (ormeño, 2009, p. 7). students from this system are then enrolled in the ielte programmes, which means they learn how to write in english at university level. therefore, the pressure is on teacher educators who need to develop academic writing with beginner students (level a1 from cefrl) who are not familiar with writing in efl at all. writing portfolios uses the process approach to develop writing skills through multiple drafting, authentic and meaningful tasks, and systematic feedback. however, most studies that use portfolios to develop writing skills focus on learners of efl but do not specifically consider pre-service teachers and their perceptions (aydin, 2010b; lam, 2013; song & august, 2002). pre-service teachers’ perceptions are important since perception refers to the process of attaining understanding and awareness of the process of portfolio keeping (aygün & aydin, 2016). this study aims to investigate the perceptions of students towards portfolio keeping in an ielte programme in terms of its benefits and challenges for pre-service teachers. this study aims to answer the following research questions: 1. what are pre-service teachers’ perceptions towards the benefits of keeping a writing portfolio in the development of writing skills? 2. what are pre-service teachers’ perceptions towards the challenges of keeping a writing portfolio in the development of writing skills? literature review writing portfolios in efl and english language teacher education portfolios are widely used in education, and since the 1990’s they have also been introduced in the teaching of english as a second language (esl), mainly in the united states of america (pollari, 2000). as a result, in latin america and specifically in chile, there is not a robust body of research on this topic. in the particular case of english language teacher education programmes, portfolio keeping not only constitutes a strategy for learning, but a future strategy to be considered in pre-service teachers’ own pedagogical practice as future teachers of english. regardless of the importance of portfolios, a limited number of studies have been conducted in latin america (delmaestro, 2005; lunar, 2007; perdomo, 2010; saavedra & campos, 2018) and little research seems to have been published in chile. according to richards and renandya (2002) a typical portfolio contains the student’s total writing output 81profile: issues teach. prof. dev., vol. 21 no. 2, jul-dec, 2019. issn 1657-0790 (printed) 2256-5760 (online). bogotá, colombia. pages 79-96 chilean pre-service teachers’ perceptions towards benefits and challenges of efl writing portfolios to represent their overall performance. furthermore, portfolios constitute a learning and assessment strategy which provide deeper insights into students’ own learning processes and their academic improvement because they cover an extensive period of time, usually one term or a whole year. contributions of writing portfolio keeping portfolio keeping has a number of benefits, as underlined by brown and hudson (1998), who state that “portfolio assessment strengthens learning by increasing learners’ attention, motivation, and involvement in their learning processes, promoting student-teacher and student-student collaboration and encouraging students to learn the metalanguage necessary for students and teachers to talk about language growth” (p. 664).one practical perspective is whether writing portfolios contribute to students’ learning. students taking responsibility to plan, evaluate, and monitor their own language and self-regulated learning to become autonomous are examples of the practical benefits of writing portfolios (barootchi & keshavarz as cited in burner, 2014). besides, hamplyons and condon (2000) claim that “portfolios are particularly beneficial for foreign language learners because portfolios provide a broader measure of what learners can do, and they replace timed writing evaluations” (p. 61). another important issue for learners of english, and specifically for teacher trainees, is that students have the constant possibility to become active participants of their learning process and monitor their own progress. as hirvela and pierson (2000) discuss in their study, through self-reflection and self-assessment, students can attain an awareness of their own learning processes, thus fostering motivation and engagement in such processes. similarly, the opportunities for feedback are greatly expanded in teaching with portfolios. first, there is the opportunity for several drafts of each piece of writing— the process writing approach that is so fruitful for feedback—enhanced by the possibility of revisiting and revising the piece of writing further during the semester (hamp-lyons & condon, 2000). finally, as barret (2000) states, portfolios promote collaboration between students and teachers, and among peers. the portfolio allows a visualisation of the progress of students throughout the learning process according to the complexity and progression of their educational performance. it also promotes collaboration among peers through feedback and teacher support for the construction of the final product (barret, 2000). learners and pre-service teachers’ perceptions of writing portfolios it is important to know pre-service teachers’ perceptions of writing portfolios since the way these specific learners perceive the strategy might determine their success or failure. consequently, if pre-service teachers have a negative perception of the strategy to develop writing, the less likely they are going to use it in their future teaching practices. this section will present both positive and negative appraisals of the benefits and challenges of portfolio keeping. nunes (2004) conducted a case study for a year with high school students in portugal, which aimed to shed light on students’ reflections and involvement in the teaching-learning process. nunes states that “portfolios help efl learners monitor their own learning and become more autonomous”. she also claims that “portfolios can be used as pedagogical tools to facilitate the use of learner-centred practice” (p. 334). in addition, the study carried out by paesani (2006) presents a writing portfolio project which reported that portfolio keeping helps students “to integrate the development of proficiency skills, content knowledge, and grammatical competence” (p. 618). a different study based on pre-service teachers’ and teachers’ percepuniversidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras82 saavedra-jeldres & campos-espinoza tions on portfolio keeping (aydin, 2010a) revealed that pre-service teachers particularly improve vocabulary knowledge, grammar and reading skills, organisation of paragraphs, and composition. lunar (2007), in her case study of 20 students from an english for specific purposes (esp) course in a university in venezuela, examined the impact of the portfolio in writing production in efl. the findings indicated that students were reluctant at the beginning of term, but later, most of them valued their portfolios and declared that they had improved their vocabulary knowledge because of the use of vocabulary lists, their writing of formal letters, and their overall attitude towards the course. in a study conducted in hong kong with first year students at university level, lam (2013) examined the impact of two portfolio systems in writing, namely showcase and working portfolio. the findings evidenced varied students’ reactions to the portfolio experience. some students had a positive appraisal indicating that it helped them in discourse-related concerns. however, there was little agreement on the perceived effectiveness of peer feedback and self-assessment; some learners described it as a cognitively challenging activity while others indicated that peer feedback did not help them to improve grammar accuracy and that self-assessment was not efficient since they were not able to locate their own errors and did not understand why they had made them in the first place. aydin (2010b), in his study examining the perceptions of portfolio keeping of 204 efl learners at university level, showed that students found the process tiring, boring, and time consuming. in addition, some students had difficulties providing peer feedback and carrying out pre-writing activities. likewise, lam (2013) concluded that students were not convinced of the benefits of self-assessment and peer feedback as part of the writing portfolio. to conclude, in order to use portfolios effectively in english language teaching (elt), potential challenges of portfolios should be taken into consideration. brown and hudson (1998) itemised the challenges of using portfolios under five categories that can influence portfolio implementation: design decision, logistics, interpretation, reliability, and validity. method design a mixed methods approach (creswell, 2009) was employed in order to gain insights into the perceptions of students about keeping writing portfolios. as miles and huberman (as cited in dörnyei, 2007, p. 42) indicate, “quantitative and qualitative inquiry can support and inform each other. narratives and variabledriven analyses need to interpenetrate and inform each other”. thus, the results from the questionnaires can be strengthened by students’ opinions and analysis in the focus group. setting the study was conducted at a university located in southern chile. in general, students only have direct contact with english-speakers at university with language assistants from different english-speaking countries. students are enrolled in an ielte programme where they study for five or six years to get a bachelor’s degree with which they are certified to teach at high school level. pre-service teachers’ syllabus includes: english language, phonetics, literature, grammar, linguistics, didactics and curriculum planning, as well as a research project and a semester-long internship at a high school (from grades 9-12). each course lasts one semester, which is seventeen weeks long. participants the participants (n = 51) were students in the second semester of the ielte programme and were assigned 83profile: issues teach. prof. dev., vol. 21 no. 2, jul-dec, 2019. issn 1657-0790 (printed) 2256-5760 (online). bogotá, colombia. pages 79-96 chilean pre-service teachers’ perceptions towards benefits and challenges of efl writing portfolios randomly to three intact groups at the beginning of the second semester of 2016. this distribution was organised by the university and does not correspond to their level of proficiency or any other variable. students were in the age range of 18-30 with an average age of 20.6, whilst 58.8% (30) were women and 41.2% (21) were men. results from the quick placement test (qpt) given to all entering students showed that most of them had a pre-intermediate level of english (b1 according to the cefrl) and were enrolled in their second english language course out of eleven—all compulsory. students have to prepare throughout the programme to sit for the official cae from cambridge university in semester 9—as previously mentioned, and this proficiency level is a graduation requirement of the chilean ministry of education. this was a ten-hour per week course, where the four skills of the language were integrated. however, a two-hour writing session was established within the course for the purposes of this study. the participants were given a written consent form indicating that completing the questionnaires and participating in the focus group to collect data were purely voluntary acts and their answers would have no positive or negative impact on their mark for the course. all students agreed to the terms and signed the form. implementation and procedure the implementation phase was carried out by three teacher educators, of which two were also the researchers. one teacher had previous experience using e-portfolios for professional development and trained the team. the participants were students who had just entered the university, so they had not had previous experience with this type of methodology. thus, they had explicit training sessions to understand the whole procedure. the efl writing portfolio is a physical folder that contains all the writing tasks students do in class, including first drafts and improved versions. the aim of this methodology is that students can keep a visualisation of their progress throughout the learning process according to the complexity and progression of their performance (barret, 2000). besides, it is important to mention that the researchers made the decision to use a pen and paper portfolio since they had diagnosed several shortcomings concerning basics of good writing among which are paragraphing, handwriting, punctuation, and spelling. the writing portfolio innovation is made up of the following steps which are explicit in the general guidelines, which were developed for this study and validated through expert judgment (see appendix a): 1. writing texts: all the written work done in class during the semester which includes three drafts of each writing text. 2. format: (a) an introduction and a list of contents, (b) each entry (writing text) must be separated using a divider or a bookmark. 3. analysis and reflection: at the end of each term, students need to analyse their writing performance, improvement, and attitude throughout the writing class. some specific questions are given to guide students’ reflection. 4. self-assessment: at the end of the semester, students need to evaluate their writing skills process regarding language development, vocabulary usage, and time organisation, among other specific criteria. the writing portfolio procedure is summarised in figure 1. however, a detailed description of the whole procedure is found in table 1. the procedure of the writing portfolio is repeated three or four times during the semester, with different text types. the process presented in this study included four text types: (a) a film review, (b) a biography, (c) a short story, and (d) an application letter. universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras84 saavedra-jeldres & campos-espinoza figure 1. summary of the efl writing portfolio procedure planning and drafting planning a genre is presented and analysed (e.g., an application letter) a task is assigned time and word limit set pre-writing activities (outline, clustering) are developed first draft students get feedback on organisation second draft corrective feedback is given only on language use students check teacher's feedback and write and improved version drafting editing phase feedback is analysed editing third draft at the end of term a self-assessment rubric is applied for students an analysis and re�ection is written following guiding questions appropriate for the level final draft is submitted for grading editing and re�ection editing re�ection 85profile: issues teach. prof. dev., vol. 21 no. 2, jul-dec, 2019. issn 1657-0790 (printed) 2256-5760 (online). bogotá, colombia. pages 79-96 chilean pre-service teachers’ perceptions towards benefits and challenges of efl writing portfolios table 1. efl writing portfolio procedure step 1 presentation and analysis of a genre sample teacher explains when and how to use a specific genre: what the purpose and target audience are. then, students and teacher analyse a sample of each genre. step 2 the teacher assigns a writing task and sets a time and word limit for every draft. the average length is 150 words as stated by level b1 from cefr. after students have seen a model and analysed the different components of a specific text, they are assigned a task. since they are preparing themselves for standardised tests, it is important that they are aware that they need to write within a certain number of words and within a specified time. step 3 pre-writing activities (e.g., outlining, brainstorming) before students start writing they need to put their ideas together. in this stage they organise their ideas logically and decide which ideas to include and which are unnecessary. the teacher checks the outline and encourages students to start writing the first draft. step 4 writing first draft following the outline, students write the first draft. step 5 peer feedback (not always) after students have written their first draft, they are asked to share it with a classmate to get peer feedback, both on organisation and accuracy. step 6 teacher’s feedback on organisation the teacher retrieves all writing texts and gives feedback only on organisation. students receive their texts the following class (seven days later). step 7 writing second draft after they have received the teacher’s feedback on organisation, students write the second draft. they are aware they have a second chance to check grammar accuracy. the teacher retrieves the text at the end of the class. step 8 teacher’s feedback on language usage in the following class (seven days later), the teacher brings texts with corrective feedback on accuracy using coding. not all errors were targeted; five error categories were selected for first year students (subject omission, subject verb agreement, capital letters, spelling, and indefinite article). these categories were chosen based on an error analysis study carried out the previous year. additionally, teachers considered these categories rulebased and therefore treatable in the short term (ferris, 2006). step 9 final draft students read their texts carefully and try to correct errors. the teacher monitors their work and answers any possible queries from students. they are encouraged to use dictionaries, grammar and textbooks to edit their texts and hand in a final draft at the end of the class. step 10 final analysis and reflection at the end of the semester, students write a final overall reflection of the process they experienced as a writer. step 11 final self-assessment at the end of the semester, students evaluate their writing skills, grammar, vocabulary, and so on, following specific criteria (a rubric). step 12 collection and submission following the general portfolio guidelines (see appendix a), students collect all the writing texts for the semester and organise them in their personalised writing portfolio. each final draft was given a mark following a rubric known by students. note. steps 1-9 are repeated three or four times, depending on the amount of writing texts included in the term. universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras86 saavedra-jeldres & campos-espinoza data collection data were collected post-portfolio implementation, after the seventeen-week intervention had finished. firstly, the quantitative approach comprised a likert scale questionnaire to get pre-service teachers’ perception on how much they improved their linguistics knowledge, writing, and reflection skills (see appendix b). as dörnyei (2007) establishes, these tools have proved to be simple, versatile, and reliable. besides, reaching a wider audience is one major benefit of using this tool. this questionnaire was adapted from aydin (2010b). this instrument met the requirements of this research since it included the focal aspects of the study (grammar, vocabulary, text type knowledge, and feedback). the adapted questionnaire for this study had a cronbach alpha of .897, which indicates a high reliability coefficient for the likert-type scale used in this study. the instrument has 22 statements and five categories. some statements referring to grammar structures which had not been covered in the course because of students’ proficiency level were eliminated as well as statements relating to reading skills. students needed to evaluate the statements using five options: never, rarely, sometimes, usually, and always. the survey items cover these areas: vocabulary knowledge, grammar knowledge, paragraph organisation, mechanics, feedback and correction, textual types knowledge, and reflection skills. the questionnaire was administered to a six-student sample from a different cohort to check coherency and understanding, but no changes were made. afterwards, it was given to all 51 students who were asked to write their names and year of enrolment. thirty minutes were assigned to answer the questionnaire and students were encouraged to write comments on their experience. on the other hand, the qualitative approach gave more insights into the quantitative data and was conducted through a focus group. in applied linguistics, qualitative research opens the door for a situated in-depth analysis of the factors affecting language acquisition. (dörnyei, 2007). a random sample of ten students participated in a focus group. it was conducted in english by one of the teachers from the programme who was not part of the project. it was a semi-structured interview which was recorded and later transcribed. data analysis first, the questionnaire data were analysed using descriptive statistics since, as dörnyei (2007, p. 213) discusses, descriptive statistics help us summarise “findings by describing general tendencies in the data and the overall spread of the scores, and such statistics are indispensable when we share our results”. the data were processed using the programme spss 15.0 where the following values were assigned: never (0), rarely (1), sometimes (2), usually (3), and always (4). descriptive statistics tests were applied: frequency, media, and standard deviation were calculated as to show the general tendencies of data. the focus group was recorded, transcribed into a word document, and analysed using content analysis. the analysis was carried out step by step through the formulation of inductive categories of the data which were later split into subcategories (mayring as cited in cáceres, 2003). some usable quotes were selected in order to contribute to answering both research questions. results the findings from the study will be presented in two sections so as to answer the two research questions set out for this study. benefits of portfolio keeping in the development of writing skills questionnaire results first of all, in order to consider that the portfolio was beneficial for a specific item, the sum of the categories usually and always had to have a frequency higher than 75%. a lower frequency (≤ 75%) was considered a challenge for the purposes of this study. 87profile: issues teach. prof. dev., vol. 21 no. 2, jul-dec, 2019. issn 1657-0790 (printed) 2256-5760 (online). bogotá, colombia. pages 79-96 chilean pre-service teachers’ perceptions towards benefits and challenges of efl writing portfolios the main quantitative findings are summarised in table 2; it can be observed that 15 out of 22 items (68.1%) had a highly positive appraisal by learners. participants reported that keeping a writing portfolio in an ielte programme contributes considerably to vocabulary knowledge in 44 out of 51 students (m = 3.23, sd = 0.78), especially learning new vocabulary, where 46 students out of 51 indicated they had acquired new words (m = 3.33, sd = 0.71) and using it in context. additionally, learners indicated they improved their grammar knowledge in general, they learned to use linking words to combine sentences; 42 students indicated they usually or always learned how to do this (m = 3.09, sd = 0.85), to use simple and compound sentences (37 students chose usually or always), and to use grammar in context (39 students had positive perceptions). moreover, learners considered this pedagogical strategy had an impact on their writing skills; namely, how to organise a paragraph in a composition (m = 3.29, sd = 0.87) and to a lesser extent, to develop pre-writing activities, mainly outlining with 37 students appraising this writing stage (m = 3.07, sd = 0.97). table 2. descriptive analysis of the benefits of writing portfolios of pre-service teachers statements frequency (n = 51) overall means score never rarely sometimes usually always mean sd i improved my vocabulary knowledge. 0 2 5 23 21 3.23 0.78 i learned new vocabulary. 0 1 4 23 23 3.33 0.71 i learned to use words in context. 0 1 8 21 21 3.21 0.78 i learned to use a variety of words. 0 1 9 30 11 3.00 0.69 i improved my grammar knowledge. 0 2 10 24 15 3.01 0.81 i learned to use simple and compound sentences. 1 0 13 24 13 2.94 0.83 i learned to use linking words when i combine sentences. 1 1 7 25 17 3.09 0.85 i learned to write more coherent sentences. 0 2 4 26 19 3.21 0.75 i learned how to organise a paragraph and composition. 1 0 8 16 26 3.29 0.87 i learned to prepare an outline before starting to write. 0 4 10 15 22 3.07 0.97 peer and teacher feedback helped me to notice and correct my mistakes. 0 2 1 13 35 3.58 0.72 peer and teacher feedback helped me to revise my writing. 0 2 3 11 35 3.54 0.78 i learned the characteristics of different narrative and descriptive texts. 1 1 9 21 29 3.09 0.90 i began to write in english without translating from spanish. 1 2 15 21 12 3.05 0.96 i learned to reflect on my ideas, feelings, and thoughts. 0 0 11 26 14 3.05 0.70 universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras88 saavedra-jeldres & campos-espinoza an important aspect of the writing portfolio strategy is giving and receiving feedback. pre-service teachers perceived that feedback from the teacher had contributed positively in revising their written texts; 48 out of 51 students perceived it as positive (m = 3.54, sd = 0.78). the categories regarding teacher feedback had the highest means of the questionnaire. moreover, 40 students stated that using the portfolio contributed to the knowledge of different descriptive and narrative texts (m = 3.09, sd = 0.90) and the same number considered it helped them to write in english without translating into spanish as well (m = 3.05, sd = 0.96). in sum, students perceived the writing portfolio as a teaching and learning strategy that allowed enhancing their vocabulary and grammar knowledge, as well as text organisation, text type knowledge, and reflection. focus group results two broad themes emerged from the analysis: writing skills and other skills (see figure 2). each theme has subthemes which will be presented and some examples from the interviews provided. writing skills language use grammar, capitalization, vocabulary building, and spelling textual type knowledge; pre-writing; layout for specific genre, purpose, and audience handwriting, word count, indentation, margins, neatness teacher-student, student-teacher, and peer to peer awareness of strengths and weaknesses, monitoring progress writting process formal aspects relationships reflections skills other skills figure 2. benefits of writing portfolio (focus group) first, pre-service teachers mentioned they improved grammatical aspects, use of capital letters as well as expanded their vocabulary and spelling—they learned spelling rules. the portfolio has helped me to improve my ideas, vocabulary, and more things. since the first writing that i did, i’ve improved a lot, but i still have the same mistakes like: spelling or missing word but i had more before and they’ve disappeared. i didn’t have problems with capital letters anymore. similarly, they furthered their knowledge of text types—namely, descriptive and narrative and the different genres associated with them. in addition, they valued pre-writing activities and establishing the target audience and the purpose of the text before starting the writing process. [the outline] gives you an idea of the general structure, so you don’t have to think too much while writing. it helps me not to waste time thinking what to write while in the process of writing. 89profile: issues teach. prof. dev., vol. 21 no. 2, jul-dec, 2019. issn 1657-0790 (printed) 2256-5760 (online). bogotá, colombia. pages 79-96 chilean pre-service teachers’ perceptions towards benefits and challenges of efl writing portfolios surprisingly, pre-service teachers valued other aspects related to the writing process. to begin with, they drew special attention to the improvement of formal aspects of writing, such as handwriting, margins, use of indentation, word count, and overall neatness in their work. the process was interesting, i really liked it, it wasn’t easy though, there’s much more to be improved. i enjoyed the fact that i improved my handwriting a little, and that little is going to escalate into something bigger in the next year. furthermore, learners showed a positive appraisal of class environment and relationships among all the participants of the process who helped each other, which was not expected at university level, and finally and extremely important, peer to peer. according to them, these relationships grew closer because of the constant and systematic feedback they received from teachers and peers. i think that it is a good strategy, i mean, we don’t do that a lot. but i think that it is good because with a partner you feel more confident, and feedback will be easier like when we go to the teacher we are always afraid about the things that she could say, like “no! this is past, it’s continuous”, i don’t know...but with a partner there is more freedom…i don’t know, more confidence. the feedback given by the teacher and peers is very important, we could see in what we failed and the things that were missing. a final aspect emphasised in the interviews was reflection. learners said they had gained awareness of their own progress, thus being able to identify their strengths and weaknesses as they monitored their work. i think the best thing about the portfolio was the...eh...i can read my older tasks and realise my mistakes, so i can improve or evade these mistakes in the future task. well, besides learning different structures, emmm...see the improvements that i have, like go 3 pages back, and then forward and see the improvement; i think it’s the best thing for me of the portfolio, to...to analyze my process, to have it all. ultimately, the writing portfolio methodology contributed not only to enhancing writing skills in pre-intermediate pre-service teachers, but also to complementing other aspects of learning which are as valuable to the whole process of writing in english. challenges of portfolio keeping in developing writing skills questionnaire results from the questionnaire, seven items (21.8%) were considered beneficial under the categories sometimes, rarely, or never (see table 3). therefore, these categories became a challenge for both teacher educators and students in the implementation of the class innovation strategy. surprisingly, using a dictionary to find appropriate words was perceived by pre-service teachers as a skill which was not highly enhanced by portfolio keeping and needs further training, and 17 students perceived they used it sometimes to rarely (m = 3.03, sd = 1,07). additionally, 16 students indicated that sometimes or rarely they improved the use of capital letters and proper punctuation (m = 3.05, sd = 0.80) during the portfolio-based writing class. besides, 24 learners believed they sometimes or rarely learned how to give feedback to their peers, and 21 students chose rarely or sometimes (m = 2.50, sd = 0.85); consequently, they could not find mistakes in the written texts from their peers (m = 2.68, sd = 0.81). finally, a borderline category refers to learning how to reflect on the writing process where 11 students indicated that they rarely learned how to reflect (m = 2.88, sd = 0.76). students believed they were not able to do it properly without the help of the teacher. universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras90 saavedra-jeldres & campos-espinoza focus group results a number of challenges were identified from the use of a writing portfolio (see figure 3); these categories will be analysed and some examples provided. first, students referred to organisational aspects like time and word number limitations; they highlighted being under pressure trying to fulfil the external demands when writing. i think that i don’t like the pressure of that, of doing...i like to write but the pressure of doing a specific topic is kind of hurrying me a little and i can like collapse and don’t like that. the length, because i always say it...because i said i really...i wrote...i write more than the teacher asks me, so i don’t know how to reduce on that and do a short story of 200 words. secondly, learners noted that some of the topics they had to write about were not interesting or motivating for them. thus, they felt their needs were not taken into consideration when planning instruction and they requested more freedom to choose topics on their own. i would like to write about something that is interesting for me, because sometimes the topics are very boring. thirdly, even though they considered peer feedback as a helpful and positive activity for learning, they admitted they needed to be more skilled and experienced so as to have an impact on their peers’ revision process. they expressed they would like to have extended practice so as to advance on the matter. figure 3. challenges of the writing portfolio (focus group) table 3. descriptive analysis of the challenges of writing portfolios for pre-service teachers statements frequency (n = 51) overall mean scores never rarely sometimes usually always mean sd i learned how to use a dictionary to find appropriate words. 1 3 13 10 24 3.03 1.07 i learned to use grammatical subjects in contexts. 1 1 11 29 9 2.86 0.80 i learned how to use punctuation and capitalisation. 0 1 15 15 20 3.05 0.88 i learned how to give feedback. 1 4 19 22 5 2.50 0.85 i learned to find the mistakes in a written text. 0 3 18 22 8 2.68 0.81 i began to write creatively. 0 2 16 21 12 2.84 0.83 i learned to reflect on the process of writing. 0 1 15 24 11 2.88 0.76 organisational aspects students’ needs peer feedback strategies to handle time and word number restrictions with first-year students; learners felt overwhelmed. consider students' interests when selecting topic to write about; some tasks are boring. include more motivating texts. strategies to improve peer feedback. extended practice needed since sometimes it did not contribute to text improvement. 91profile: issues teach. prof. dev., vol. 21 no. 2, jul-dec, 2019. issn 1657-0790 (printed) 2256-5760 (online). bogotá, colombia. pages 79-96 chilean pre-service teachers’ perceptions towards benefits and challenges of efl writing portfolios discussion this study focuses on pre-service teachers’ perceptions towards the benefits and challenges of writing portfolio keeping in efl in chile. this article presents an innovation practice: its design and implementation throughout a 17-week semester at university level and a collection of the learners’ work during this period so as to monitor their progress, which is in agreement with previous studies on the use of portfolios (burnaz, 2011; hamp-lyons & condon, 2000; richards & renandya, 2002). the main results to emerge from both quantitative and qualitative data were related to benefits and challenges of the portfolio as a strategy. the benefits can be broadly categorised into two areas: (a) development of writing skills, namely vocabulary and grammar knowledge, text organisation, and composition and secondly; (b) enhancing other skills like formal aspects of writing, collaborative relationships among teacher-learners and from peer to peer, and to some extent, reflection skills. on the other hand, the challenges identified by pre-service teachers are related to specific grammatical issues, particularly punctuation and capitalisation; organisational aspects and students’ needs; and finally, the process of peer feedback. the results of this study contribute to the existent literature in regard to pre-service teachers’ perceptions of keeping a writing portfolio to enhance writing and reflection skills. most importantly, these learners can reflect on the potential contributions of this strategy as future teachers of english with their own students. benefits of writing portfolio keeping with pre-service teachers the main benefits revealed were related to the improvement of writing skills, more precisely grammar and vocabulary knowledge. students perceived they had enlarged their vocabulary and were able to use the new words in context. these results are similar to aydin (2010a), lunar (2007), and paesani (2006). however, lunar (2007) incorporated the use of vocabulary lists on different contents as a strategy of the portfolio, which was not done in this study, and students learned new vocabulary using different personal learning strategies without keeping a record. grammar competence also seemed enhanced by pre-service teachers, particularly the use of linking words and their knowledge of simple and compound sentences. the use of connectors is highly valued in this writing course and students are encouraged to use them as much as necessary; there is specific training considering this aspect of cohesion which, in turn, contributes to the use of compound sentences at the pre-intermediate level (b1). aydin (2010a) also reported a perceived increase in students’ grammatical competence and proficiency skills in his study. another important finding is students’ positive perception on their improvement in paragraph organisation, which is similar to aydin’s (2010a) reported results. a considerable emphasis is placed on pre-writing activities by teacher educators so as to help students organise their paragraphs around one central idea. the pre-writing stage is time-consuming and sometimes neglected in the writing process; however, students now realise how crucial it is. one unanticipated finding was that students valued equally other aspects related to their writing process as writers of efl. as first year students, they faced new requirements in academic writing regarding formal aspects (neatness, formatting, and word limit), which they found difficult to adapt to at first, and eventually the writing portfolio as a learning strategy helped them to deal with it. furthermore, relationships in the process played an important role for them (teacherstudent, student-teacher, student-student), primarily on a personal and affective level. finally, as prior studies have noted (hirvela & pierson, 2000; nunes, 2004; saavedra & campos, 2018), writing portfolios in efl contribute to the development of reflection skills. a regular practice of reflection can encourage renewing students’ commitment with their universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras92 saavedra-jeldres & campos-espinoza own process of learning for the sake of identifying, assessing, and planning next directions (huber & hutchings as cited in zubizarreta, 2009). for pre-service teachers it is a crucial skill and advisable to start working by reinforcing critical reflection at early stages. at this level of proficiency (level b1), efl learners in the study showed to have a lower descriptive level of reflection, gaining awareness of strengths and weaknesses as writers, and at most, being able to monitor their progress and come up with an additional plan of action. however, these results differ from nunes’ (2004) findings since her students’ reflection revealed a different level of complexity from a more elementary level of thought to a higher level of metacognition, but they are broadly consistent with another of her findings regarding pre-service teachers’ reflections focused on the students’ learning styles, needs, and difficulties. challenges of writing portfolio keeping with pre-service teachers as dellet, barnhardt, and kevorkian (2001) and aydin (2010b) claimed in their studies, portfolios are used due to teachers’ intentions to actively involve students in their learning process. results from this study match those observed by these previous studies regarding students’ needs. learners identified it as a challenge in the portfolio planning phase, highlighting that writing texts should be related to their own interests to promote both engagement and meaning. nunes (2004) found similar results in her students’ reflection process. besides, the findings of the current study are consistent with those of lam (2013), barret (2000), and aydin (2010a) who reported that efl learners do not seem to be convinced by the contribution of peer feedback as a strategy to develop writing. however, an overall positive appraisal on peer feedback was elicited from pre-service teachers; they reported not possessing the necessary skills and practice to give feedback properly. this finding has implications in redefining the portfolio process with first year teachers’ trainees; either excluding peer feedback in the first levels of proficiency or explicitly training them to do a satisfactory task. peer feedback practice can help “to examine student feedback experiences in classrooms particularly in a pre-service context”, as pointed out by gan, nang, and mu (2018, p. 506). on a final note, we agreed with zhao (2010) who outlined a critical role of peer feedback as being “that esl/efl learners could potentially facilitate the development of their peers’ esl/efl proficiency” (p. 4), which is the role they will fulfil in the future. an important aspect of the portfolio strategy is giving and receiving feedback; it is especially significant since these learners will become teachers. overall, the findings observed in this study mirror those of the previous studies that have examined the perception towards the contribution of efl writing portfolios. conclusions and implications since the efl writing portfolio is perceived as an effective learning strategy to improve writing skills by pre-service teachers in an ielte programme, researchers do believe this strategy has to be implemented along the programme. besides, the study has shown that keeping the writing portfolio enhances the learning of vocabulary, grammar knowledge, text organisation and composition, teacher feedback, and reflection. additionally, pre-service teachers highly appraise constant teacher feedback and consider that it has an effect on their skills to revise and correct their errors in writing. regarding peer feedback, it is a challenge for pre-service teachers; they value the strategy but do feel they need much more training and experience. from this point of view, students’ needs should be at the core of planning the strategy in order to fulfil their needs and engage them in active and meaningful learning. this study has proved to be effective for pre-service teachers of the university where it was conducted, however this study only focuses on a single context with 93profile: issues teach. prof. dev., vol. 21 no. 2, jul-dec, 2019. issn 1657-0790 (printed) 2256-5760 (online). bogotá, colombia. pages 79-96 chilean pre-service teachers’ perceptions towards benefits and challenges of efl writing portfolios pre-service teachers; it is also necessary to include teacher educators’ perceptions and beliefs both in the implementation and development of the writing portfolio as a tool for learning and teaching. as to limitations, this study should include more varied sources of information through time, not only one snapshot of the reality as the study did with the questionnaires and focus group. references aydin, s. 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(eds.). (2002). methodology in language teaching: an anthology of current practice. cambridge, uk: cambridge university press. https:// doi.org/10.1017/cbo9780511667190. saavedra, p., & campos, m. (2018). combining the strategies of using focused written corrective feedback and keeping a writing portfolio. colombian applied linguistics journal, 20(1), 79-90. https://doi.org/10.14483/22487085.12332. song, b., & august, b. (2002) using portfolios to assess the writing of esl students: a powerful alternative? journal of second language writing, 11(1), 49-72. https://doi. org/10.1016/s1060-3743(02)00053-x. zhao, h. (2010). investigating learners’ use and understanding of peer and teacher feedback on writing: a comparative study in a chinese english writing classroom. assessing writing, 15(1), 3-17. https://doi.org/10.1016/j. asw.2010.01.002. zubizarreta, j. (2009). the learning portfolio: reflective practice for improving student learning. san francisco, us: jossey bass. about the authors pamela andrea saavedra jeldres holds a master’s degree in technology education from universidad de la frontera, chile. she has taught different language courses for the english teaching and translation programmes at universidad católica de temucho; as well as esp. her areas of interest are academic writing and teaching english as a foreign language. mónica campos espinoza holds a master’s degree in curriculum and assessment from universidad mayor, chile. she has teaching experience in the educational system at different levels. at present, she is working at universidad católica de temuco. she is responsible for courses in language and methodology for the english teaching programme. 95profile: issues teach. prof. dev., vol. 21 no. 2, jul-dec, 2019. issn 1657-0790 (printed) 2256-5760 (online). bogotá, colombia. pages 79-96 chilean pre-service teachers’ perceptions towards benefits and challenges of efl writing portfolios appendix a: portfolio guidelines process (50%) it’s the compilation of written work you have done in the course “competencia lingüística inicial ii”. each piece of writing will be referred to as an “entry”. first draft the first piece of writing referring to a specific topic. improved versions the improved versions have been edited regarding your teachers’ or peers’ comments. product (50%) table of contents include all the products with numbered pages. each entry must be separated by a divider or bookmark. 10% introduction you need to introduce your work: describe what it consists of, what the purpose is, and so on. analysis & reflection in order to write your reflection, you need to look back at all your writings: first and improved versions and check your progress over time. you are supposed to give examples and refer to different entries. consider the following questions: • what is the role of the teacher and the students in the portfolio-based writing process? • what is your perception regarding peer feedback on your writing? • apart from writing, have you improved other skills as a consequence of this work? • what is the biggest impact of written corrective feedback on your own performance? • overall, how do you evaluate this methodology? 30% self-assessment evaluate your own work following specific criteria. 10% universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras96 saavedra-jeldres & campos-espinoza appendix b: portfolio contribution questionnaire name: _________________________________ age: _________ year enrollment: _______ please, answer this questionnaire regarding your experience with keeping a writing portfolio during your first year at university. you must read each item carefully and select the best option (x), ranging from never to always. statement never rarely sometimes usually always 1. i improved my vocabulary knowledge. 2. i learned new vocabulary. 3. i learned to use words in context. 4. i learned how to use a dictionary to find appropriate words. 5. i learned to use a variety of words. 6. i improved my grammar knowledge. 7. i learned to use simple and compound sentences. 8. i learned to use linking words when i combine sentences. 9. i learned to write more fluent sentences. 10. i learned to use grammatical subjects in contexts. 11. i learned how to organise a paragraph and composition. 12. i learned to prepare an outline before starting to write. 13. i learned how to use punctuation and capitalisation. 14. i learned how to give feedback. 15. i learned to find the mistakes in a written text. 16. peer and teacher feedback helped me to notice and correct my mistakes. 17. peer and teacher feedback helped me to revise my writings. 18. i learned the characteristics of different narrative and descriptive texts. 19. i began to write creatively. 20. i began to write in english without translating from spanish. 21. i learned to reflect my ideas, feelings, and thoughts. 22. i learned to reflect on the process of writing. 103profile: issues teach. prof. dev., vol. 20 no. 1, jan-jun, 2018. issn 1657-0790 (printed) 2256-5760 (online). bogotá, colombia. pages 103-119 https://doi.org/10.15446/profile.v20n1.63323 colombian english teachers’ professional development: the case of master programs1 el desarrollo profesional de profesores colombianos de inglés: programas de maestría john jairo viáfara* josé david largo** universidad pedagógica y tecnológica de colombia, tunja, colombia master degree programs have rapidly increased in colombia to the point where they are one of the most favored options for english teachers seeking to bolster their professional development. this survey study characterizes eighty participants, their five master programs, and their perceptions concerning the influence these graduate courses exerted on their teaching. while participants’ pedagogical and research work seemed to have benefited the most from their studies, their practices involving language policy and administration were regarded as distant from what they learnt. findings suggest that innovation, reflection, and collaboration permeated participants’ overarching categories of development. challenges to respondents’ integration of their newly acquired education with their teaching included competing ideologies and agendas exhibited by stakeholders in school communities. key words: colombian english teacher education, english as a foreign language master programs, english teachers’ graduate education, english teachers’ professional development. los programas de maestría en colombia han aumentado rápidamente convirtiéndose en opciones preferidas para el desarrollo profesional de profesores de inglés. empleando encuestas, se caracterizaron cinco programas de maestría, ochenta participantes y la influencia de sus estudios de maestría en su enseñanza. mientras la pedagogía y la investigación fueron aparentemente los aspectos que más se beneficiaron de sus estudios, sus prácticas en política lingüística y administración fueron las menos favorecidas. los hallazgos sugieren que la innovación, reflexión y colaboración permearon en general el desarrollo profesional de los participantes. los retos que enfrentaron los participantes al integrar la educación posgraduada con su enseñanza incluyeron ideologías y agendas opuestas de los varios actores educativos en las escuelas. palabras clave: desarrollo profesional de profesores de inglés, educación de profesores de inglés colombianos, educación posgraduada de profesores de inglés, maestría en enseñanza de inglés. 1 this article is based on a research study presented in a plenary session at “6° seminario internacional de desarrollo profesional de los docentes de lenguas extranjeras,” medellín, colombia, 2016 (viáfara, 2016). * e-mail: john.viafara@uptc.edu.co ** e-mail: josedavid.largo@uptc.edu.co how to cite this article (apa, 6th ed.): viáfara, j. j., & largo, j. d. (2018). colombian english teachers’ professional development: the case of master programs. profile: issues in teachers’ professional development, 20(1), 103-119. https://doi.org/10.15446/profile.v20n1.63323. this article was received on march 14, 2017, and accepted on september 19, 2017. this is an open access article distributed under the terms of the creative commons license attribution-noncommercial-noderivatives 4.0 international license. consultation is possible at https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/. universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras104 viáfara & largo introduction teachers can develop professionally by resourcing a vast array of formal and informal options. though there are many options available to teachers, most choose to deepen and expand their knowledge base by enrolling in courses, seminars, and workshops. colombian english teachers are not the exception to this trend as gonzález, montoya, and sierra (2002) and gonzález (2003) reveal. in their studies, educators in public and private schools expressed that teacher development programs and postgraduate courses offered by universities were their number one choice for continuing their education. from the time the aforementioned studies were published to date, university postgraduate programs, namely, master programs, have grown dramatically. as figure 1 shows, from two programs in english language teaching (elt) before the year 2000, the number of programs increased to almost twenty in 2016. these programs are offered mostly in regional capital cities, among them bogotá, medellín, and cali. figure 1. growth of elt master programs in colombia12 16 14 12 10 8 6 4 2 0 1990-2000 2000-2010 2010-2016 this tendency in elt masters programs aligns with the general trend in all the disciplines in the country as figure 2 illustrates. by the year 2000, approximately 2 the information used to design figures 1 and 2 was taken from sistema nacional de información de la educación superior (snies) and from the document “situacion de la formación de programas de postgrado en colombia” published online by the ministry of education (ministerio de educación nacional [men], 2006b). one hundred masters’ programs had been opened and in 2015 that number soared to 400. figure 2. general growth of master programs in colombia 2007-2015 2003-2006 1949-2002 0 50 100 150 200 250 300 350 400 450 the rapid increase in the number of master programs in elt calls for research to update and deepen the field’s knowledge of teachers’ perceptions regarding their participation in these programs. albeit gonzález’s (2003) and gonzález et al.’s (2002) studies, conducted more than ten years ago, established key issues regarding colombian teachers’ views on their options for professional development, the questions they posed did not specifically tackle postgraduate studies. consequently, they do not provide substantial discussion concerning master programs. in this vein, this article seeks to characterize not only a group of master’s programs in colombia, but also the participants in these courses. in addition, by examining teachers’ perceptions concerning their master’s level studies, the manuscript delves into the impact that they understand the programs might have had on their performance within their teaching contexts. literature review after their initial education in undergraduate programs, teachers nearly always need to continue their learning. as richards and farrell (2005) posit, the issue is not that their prior education experience might have not been a productive one, but that there are limits to what teachers can learn in each cycle of their education. moreover, educators live in a changing world which requires them to constantly develop new knowledge and 105profile: issues teach. prof. dev., vol. 20 no. 1, jan-jun, 2018. issn 1657-0790 (printed) 2256-5760 (online). bogotá, colombia. pages 103-119 colombian english teachers' professional development: the case of master programs skills necessary to cope with new challenges faced when attempting to contribute to their students’ learning. in this vein, freeman (2001) explains that after five years of teaching, in-service teachers make their learning goals the core of their instruction. at this point in their career trajectories, teacher education, especially education rooted in inquiry-oriented and reflective paradigms, provides an essential guide for their efforts to meet their career objectives. though in-service teachers’ education can involve educators’ training or development, current tendencies in the field align with a developmental perspective. richards and farrell (2005) make a distinction between teacher development and teacher training. teacher training is “focused on teacher’s present responsibilities and typically aimed at short-term and immediate goals” (p. 3) whereas teacher development “serves long-term goals and seeks to facilitate growth of teachers’ understanding of teaching and of themselves as teachers” (p. 4). consequently, it behooves teachers to focus on development rather than training as they make educational progress, not only because of the technical conception associated with training but also due to the reflective, long-term, and teacher self-driven agenda behind seeking teachers’ development. in this vein, cárdenas, gonzález, and álvarez (2010) underscore the need to adopt a general framework founded on a developmental perspective for colombian english teachers’ education. in-service teacher options for development encompass a vast array of modalities. the level of formality, length of engagement, type of certification, association with others, and objectives being pursued constitute some of the variables shaping teacher education alternatives. higher education courses, for example, master courses are included in what roberts (2016) and johnstone (2004) characterized as formal situations for teachers’ learning. these programs will grant university certification to teachers and in colombia they required teachers to take courses for at least two years. the colombian ministry of education has provided guidelines for master programs in decreto 1001 (men, 2006a). in this vein, master programs are expected to contribute to the production, apprehension, and use of knowledge guiding participants to innovate and to update their knowledge base, not only at the methodological level but also regarding the scientific developments in their discipline. nationally and internationally the consistency of master programs has also been aligned with overarching principles founded on adult education (cárdenas et al., 2010; díaz-maggioli, 2003). based on research areas on adult education, brookfield (1995) posits that self-directed learning and learning how to learn, critical reflection, and experiential learning are major foundations considered in the education of this population. in addition to the previous principles, díaz-maggioli (2003) discusses how teachers, as adults, should be motivated and respected by taking into account their needs and decisions when they enroll in education programs. likewise, encouraging them to collaborate with peers and providing suitable institutional conditions are of paramount importance in their learning. the following lines summarize studies published in colombian journals targeting elt master programs. pineda and clavijo (2003) examined participants’ beliefs about research and their development of research skills and determined that they were able to bridge reflective and research practices. through their exploration of the innovation processes carried out in schools by teachers enrolled in a master’s program, clavijo, guerrero, torres, ramírez, and torres (2004) found that “teachers planned and carried out curricular innovations thinking critically about students’ needs and interests” (p. 11). álvarez’s (2009) examination of teachers’ reflections regarding their knowledge base concluded that these participants’ various knowledge categories were built from the interaction of what they learnt in their formal education and what they accumulated through life experiences. mcdougald (2015) established that by using new technologies in their practices, m.a. candidates universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras106 viáfara & largo increased their instructional abilities to use these new technologies, their comfort when assessing them, and the encouragement of their pupils’ learner autonomy development. quintero polo (2003) concludes that participants’ involvement in a human approach to evaluation led them to comprehend the relevance of evaluation and of decision making as a staged process in their pedagogical practices. lópez mendoza and bernal arandia (2009) posit that m.a. programs with assessment and evaluation components can support teachers to become agents of change in their institutions by contributing to the transformation of ideas and practices concerning assessment. finally, núñez and téllez (2015) examined a material development seminar’s role in m.a. candidates’ personal and professional growth. participants evidenced knowledge gains about the field, renewed pedagogical practices, and refined research projects. though the following two studies do not exclusively focus on master programs, they yield valuable information concerning colombian teachers’ perceptions about these formal professional development opportunities. targeting public and private school english teachers, gonzález et al. (2002) established that graduate studies were a major expectation of participants. nonetheless, teachers viewed colombian graduate programs as theory-based, without options to guide them in employing that theoretical knowledge in tackling their real needs at schools. these conclusions were corroborated by gonzález’s (2003) study which determined that graduate degrees offered by colombian universities were regarded as valuable but enrollment was deemed as problematic because they were “theory-oriented, distant from real classrooms and unaffordable for many teachers” (p. 163). the study this survey study attempted to explore elt master programs in colombia. according to ary, jacobs, sorensen, and razavieh (2010), such types of studies allow scholars “to summarize the characteristics of different groups or to measure their attitudes and opinions towards some issue” (p. 28). a mix-method approach guided researchers in the collection and analysis of both quantitative and qualitative data. by using descriptive statistics, the first type of approach guided the analysis of information in order to highlight the salient events and perceptions’ tendencies. meanwhile, a qualitative paradigm expanded on participants’ perspectives concerning their master studies and their impact on their teaching practices. participants and data collection instruments this study was conducted with a group of 80 master’s graduates and candidates from five different programs at different public (4) and private (1) universities in colombia. as figure 3 describes, participants exhibited diverse degree accomplishments, years of experience and positions in their teaching institutions. fifty-two participants were master candidates and among them 41% were in the first year, 3% in the second year, 53% were writing their thesis, and 3% had already defended their project. twenty-eight participants already had their master’s degree and 35% of them had graduated during the last year, 3% graduated two years ago, and 37.5% finished their studies more than three years ago. participants held a position in different public (62%) and private (37%) institutions. their working contexts varied from primary (10%), secondary (66%), university (16%), and other institutions (1%) in rural (18%) and urban (82%) areas. the functions that respondents carried out at their institutions ranged from teaching (92%), administration tasks (1%), management (6%), and others (1%). instrument and procedures for data collection. according to the study’s aim, a survey was administered by means of an internet application. this survey was divided into several sections concerning participants’ 107profile: issues teach. prof. dev., vol. 20 no. 1, jan-jun, 2018. issn 1657-0790 (printed) 2256-5760 (online). bogotá, colombia. pages 103-119 colombian english teachers' professional development: the case of master programs profiles, general and specific perceptions about the connections between their master programs and their teaching practices, the challenges they faced when trying to employ what they learnt in their pedagogical exercise, and, finally, a consent form section as a response to ethical issues. the survey contained different closed and opened ended questions which provided both qualitative and quantitative data (see appendix). this survey was piloted with 10 students from one of the universities and then some adjustments were made. the researchers invited participants by contacting the master programs directors. the information was collected for about two months and 80 participants were willing to complete the questionnaire. ma candidates ma graduates 1 year ago 2 years ago more than 3 years ago first year second year thesis already defended public private other primary secondary university other urban rural teacher administrative coordinator others 0 10% 20% 30% 40% 50% 60% 70% 80% 90% 100% 65% 35% 35% 28% 37,5% 41% 3% 3% 53% 62% 37% 1% 10% 66% 16% 8% 82% 18% 92% 1% 1% 6% d eg re e ac co m p lis h m en t ti m e si n ce g ra d u at io n fr o m t h e m a m a c an d id at es ' st ag e in t h ei r ca re er ty p e o f in st it u ti o n ty p e o f w o rk ed u ca ti o n al co n te xt po si ti o n h el d in th e in st it u ti o n c h a ra ct e ri st ic s figure 3. participants’ studies and career profile universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras108 viáfara & largo program description five master programs were studied. these programs were located in four main colombian cities: two in the capital city of the country and the remaining ones in capital cities of other departments. four programs completely focused on elt and one of them was a master in education with an emphasis on elt. two were “advancement” programs and two research masters.23 two programs started before the year 2000, the other two during the decade beginning with 2000, and one of them in the decade beginning with 2010. table 1 shows that all the master programs sought to encourage participants to cultivate a reflective attitude, research skills, abilities to design and use curricular elements, and pedagogical strategies based on their students’ and contexts’ characteristics. another common tendency 3 based on the colombian ministry of education, there are two “lines” for master’s programs in colombia. while the first one, profundización [advancement], is an in-depth study of a discipline in order to acquire abilities and knowledge to solve problems in the target field, the second one, research programs, seeks to encourage the development of abilities in order to enable participants to work in research processes and generate new knowledge (men, 2006a). was to guide participants’ learning towards the comprehension and construction of theories. table 2 reports that three curricular areas appear as commonalities among all the programs: research, pedagogy, and curriculum design. in these areas, in several cases, universities offer specific courses. most universities also required candidates to take seminars on second language acquisition and disciplinary courses either to support their development of language ability or to increase their theoretical knowledge of language structure and functions. finally, all the programs offered a diverse range of optional courses. data analysis and findings researchers analyzed the data taking into consideration four pre-established areas in regard to teachers’ learning, namely, pedagogical practices, research, language education policies, and administration. information collected for each area was categorized by following grounded theory principles (glasser & strausss, 1967). in addition, descriptive statistics were used to supplement qualitative data. researcher triangulation (patton, 2001) table 1. objectives and expected graduate students’ profiles objectives and expected graduate students’ profiles ua ub uc ud ue understanding and developing related theories x x x x improving communicative abilities and increasing proficiency in english x analyzing language education policies x being a reflective teacher x x x x x designing and using context-based pedagogical strategies x x x x x developing curricular components x x x x x developing collaboration skills x developing abilities to conduct research and solve problems x x x x x develop abilities to lead and manage programs x x x note. the targeted universities have been coded with a “u” followed by another letter. 109profile: issues teach. prof. dev., vol. 20 no. 1, jan-jun, 2018. issn 1657-0790 (printed) 2256-5760 (online). bogotá, colombia. pages 103-119 colombian english teachers' professional development: the case of master programs was useful to corroborate findings. this section starts by sharing findings concerning participants’ overall understanding of how their postgraduate studies had shaped their performance in their teaching contexts. as figure 4 reveals, the highest number of participants (53%) and the second highest number (26%) acknowledged that their master’s level studies had highly or very highly contributed to their teaching practices at schools. similarly, figure 5 shows that 61% of participants regarded their master’s program studies as facilitators of connections between schools and universities at a high or very high degree, and 32% at a medium degree. the previous findings contradict gonzález’ (2003) and gonzález et al.’s (2002) studies in which their participants did not acknowledge master studies as substantial avenues to support them in connecting what they learnt in such programs with their classroom practices. an table 2. programs’ curricular areas and seminars areas of study & courses ua ub uc ud ue research foundations (ue) (ub) (ud), qualitative research (ua), action research, classroom research, applied linguistics research (ub), project design (ua) (ue) (ub), statistics (uc) x x x x x pedagogy: elt, efl, esl, general models (ub) x x x x x discipline (english use abilities and language structure): academic reading & writing (ua), text production (uc), linguistics, sociolinguistics (ud) x x x curricular design: testing and assessment (ua) (ue) (ud), material design (ue) (ub) (uc) (ud), program design (ub) x x x x x language acquisition x x x x language teacher education x x others courses: language policy (ua) (uc), ict in language teaching (ua) (ue) (ud), teaching english to children (ue), english as an international language (ue), reflective teaching (ue), bilingual education (ue), applied linguistics (ub), communication and education (uc), education for peace (uc), learning strategies (ud), pedagogy and culture (ud), literature (ud) x x x x x note. efl = english as a foreign language, esl = english as a second language, ict = information and communications technologies. 40 35 30 25 20 15 10 5 0 very low low highmedium very high 45 40 35 30 25 20 15 10 5 0 very low low highmedium very high figure 4. overall perceived impact of master programs in teaching practices figure 5. perceived connection between university and school through m.a. education universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras110 viáfara & largo and their competence in intertwining theoretical frameworks with their teaching (álvarez, 2009). likewise, the study’s findings support scholars’ deliberations in regard to the relevance of promoting critical reflection in adult education (brookfield, 1995; cárdenas et al., 2010; diaz-maggioli, 2003). master programs and participants’ pedagogical practices when participants were asked to grade the level of impact that their master studies might have had in their pedagogical work, most of their answers place this category at the top of their perceived gains (see figure 6). various aspects of participants’ pedagogical abilities and knowledge were perceived as being shaped by their m.a. education: critical and reflective thinking (all universities), innovation in the classroom (all universities), material design (uc, ud), classroom research (uc, ud), and coaching colleagues (ud). in particular, m.a. graduates and candidates asserted that increasing their understanding of conceptual frameworks supported different features of their practices as they gained clarity about the teaching and learning processes, and re-shaped their pedagogical actions. i think that when i enlighten my practice with theory, my job changes, to become not only a teaching practice but a space for analyzing, critiquing, and building awareness in regard to the explanation for the contrast between findings in the two studies might be that m.a. programs have evolved from the time gonzález et al.’s and gonzález’ studies were conducted and currently, these courses’ methodology, curriculum, focus, and approaches are more geared towards participants’ needs which lead to a greater impact of their education on their contexts. the nuances of participants’ perceptions regarding these contributions highlight the following aspects: encouragement for reflection processes (all universities), innovating views and knowledge (universities a and e), support to conduct research processes (b, c, d, e), teaching practice improvement (b, c, d, e), the use of theory in their practices (a, d, e), the encouragement of their students to pursue higher education degrees (b, c, d). other contributions encompass material design (e), changes in their institutions (d), and changes on a personal level (a). conversely, three participants reported they did not perceive any impact from their studies on their teaching. the aforementioned findings align with studies’ results in pineda and clavijo (2003) who determined that by participating in master programs teachers increased their reflection and critical reflection. other investigations concluded that participants’ reflection as a result of their graduate studies was associated with their development of inquiring skills, namely, their abilities to bring changes into their school settings (clavijo et al., 2004) 40 35 30 25 20 15 10 5 0 research very low low highmedium very high administration pedagogical practices education policies figure 6. m.a. perceived impact on teachers’ professional development 111profile: issues teach. prof. dev., vol. 20 no. 1, jan-jun, 2018. issn 1657-0790 (printed) 2256-5760 (online). bogotá, colombia. pages 103-119 colombian english teachers' professional development: the case of master programs relevance to learn another language understanding and valuing its context. (ud-p2)34 while the previous excerpt illustrates how a participant perceived the program as a valuable avenue for establishing connections between theory and practice, it also evidences the close relationship between that connection and reflective and critical thinking. moreover, teachers seemed to be more aware of the decisions they made and the reasons for those decisions in the classroom: “before enrolling in the program, i [prepared activities based on students’ preferences], it’s just that now i am more aware of what i do and the reason why i do it.” (ud-p5) furthermore, the impact did not merely concern reflection “on action”, but it apparently transcended the setting and contexts where they became involved in concrete processes of classroom innovation. thus, it furthered/furthers change in traditional methods, provided students with activities they liked, created new events and opportunities to learn the language, and encouraged participants to lead projects aimed at improving pedagogical processes. i could confirm that the methodology applied in my current practices and learned during my masters’ studies, is remarkable in contrast to other colleagues’. likewise, i can refer to the positive opinion, love, and preference that my students show for my class. (ud-p3) in addition, some participants from uc and ud believe that their master programs have had an influence on designing material which relates to their adjustments of curriculum and syllabi in their institutions: i have contributed on the elaboration of printed and multimedia material focused on the students’ characteristics. furthermore, i have proposed different strategies to tackle the teaching of english and to overcome the difficulties students may have. (uc-p25) 4 excerpts from participants’ answers in the survey were translated into english by the authors of this article being faithful to the original statements. excerpts have been codified using some abbreviations: ua, ub, uc, ud, ue, and refer to the programs targeted for this study. p followed by a number represents the participant. for uc and ud master candidates and students who graduated with their master’s, their studies encouraged them to conduct research and to carry out projects in their institutions. in fact, the following comment discusses participants’ willingness to implement their master thesis and projects in their settings to obtain better results in the classroom: my proposal, and research was conducted with eighth graders and i used tbl [task based learning], that helped students significatively to obtain better academic results. (ud-p67) however, as the comment above expresses, not only did participant students seem to benefit from their knowledge, but colleagues apparently also benefited from the coaching and support provided to them: teachers from primary ask me for advice, masters’ candidates from different universities look for counseling, all these shows that the master’s program opens a different way to teach and to learn english. (ud-p74) master programs and participants’ research work analysis of the data gathered shows that this area stands as the second highest in participants’ development being impacted by their master studies (see figure 6). the different topics branching out from this impact encompassed: the influence in reflective processes (ua, ub, ud, ue), the development of research projects in the classroom to change realities (ua, uc, ud, ue), the diagnosis of contexts (uc, ud), and the increasing awareness on the relevance of research (ue); nevertheless, as shown in figure 6, a few participants considered this impact as low, very low, or nonexistent (ua, ud). to begin with, participants acknowledged the master programs’ emphasis on research which aligns with the emerging characterization of targeted programs in tables 1 and 2. this focus was acknowledged as an avenue for their involvement in reflective processes. participants stated that they became able to elucidate and analyze universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras112 viáfara & largo problematic situations in their classrooms, students, and institutions which may turn into potential research projects: “the master’s program has guided me to focus on diverse realities and it has triggered on me the need to observe closely these situations to carry out possible research studies” (ub-p38). master studies seemed to give respondents the opportunity to learn about the process of conducting a formal research study leading them to feel more confident and prepared to carry out such processes. indeed, some of the surveyed master’s graduates or candidates had developed or were developing their research thesis or monograph within their own classrooms and settings. participants believed that developing research in the classroom as part of their m.a. education allowed them to explore new and better ways of teaching and learning, and to change realities in their contexts: “it’s important to consider my role as a researcher in order to change my pedagogical perspective regarding methodology and teaching strategies” (uc-p7). other participants employed research in their teaching contexts as a means to conduct diagnostic processes of pedagogical issues. they claimed that they advanced in skills to explore, compare, identify, and recognize not only their and their students’ strengths or weaknesses, but also their classrooms, institutions, and practices’ possibilities and characteristics. there was a lot of work in the masters’ program about research approaches, this has helped me as a teacher because i can use diagnosis instruments to get to know how my students are doing in relation to previous terms and how i can guide them in the new one. (ud-p21) finally, respondents (ue) believe that another type of impact has to do with theirs and their colleagues’ thus increasing awareness of the relevance of research. due to the fact that participants develop research inside their own contexts, they believed that their peers seemed to become more aware of the importance of inquiry in their practices: by conducting a research study in the school and sharing it with all the educational community, and raising awareness about how important research is among other colleagues in the institution. (ue-p5) a few respondents from ua and ue did not perceive a major impact from their studies on their performance as researchers. although other participants acknowledged their acquisition of research knowledge and skills, there were reports of various limitations constraining their exercising those competences. while some participants mentioned that within their master programs there was no consensus about how to conduct research, meaning that each one of their tutors had a different conception about it, other master’s graduates and candidates affirmed that there was a lack of time to conduct research due to the substantial amount of work they were required to accomplish in other areas and the lack of resources to sustain their projects: in a private institution, the available time to conduct research is not always enough to put into practice what was learned. i also think that there was not only one research approach in the masters’ program, on the contrary, each tutor follows a different path and this becomes a “limitation” or “disadvantage” for us as students. (ud-p2) master programs and participants’ administrative roles in contrast to participants’ highly perceived impact regarding master studies on pedagogical and research practices, as figure 6 informs us, when analyzing gains in administrative roles, how respondents ranked this category as the one with the least impact. for some master’s graduates and candidates their programs did not focus on or embrace education in program administration or the like. in this regard, though developing abilities to lead and manage programs was part of the objectives and expected graduate students’ profile in three of the targeted programs (see table 1), there were no concrete courses or educational strategies available to potentiate these competences (see table 2). 113profile: issues teach. prof. dev., vol. 20 no. 1, jan-jun, 2018. issn 1657-0790 (printed) 2256-5760 (online). bogotá, colombia. pages 103-119 colombian english teachers' professional development: the case of master programs based on data gathered, another explanation for this low perception concerning impact on administrative roles could be that the majority of participants exclusively held teaching positions in their contexts (92%); nonetheless, a few participants affirmed that different from teaching, they developed functions concerning the coordination of academic units (6%) and administrative tasks (1%) (see figure 3). in this vein, chances to become involved in managerial tasks were scant: regarding the administrative labor, it is scarce the work that i have done, not because masters’ issues, but because of administrative matters in the institution, where i have worked, and where there are few opportunities for [developing administrative tasks]. (ue-p54) digging into the impact of master programs on their work at the administrative level, some of the respondents highlighted the sporadic nature of their endeavors. due to the variety of contexts in which participants worked and to the different and particular situations in which they developed administrative tasks, a variety of impacts were found. to begin with, participants from ub and ue regarded themselves as more able to carry out different projects at their institutions. indeed, p37 from ub affirms: “i have worked as head of department during four years, leading institutional projects in the area”; and p61 from ue states that: “i have strongly supported the elaboration and strengthening of educational projects for my institution in the english area and others.” furthermore, whereas teachers from uc remarked on the existence of an impact when they became involved in educational-policy, teacher-training tasks, teachers from both uc and ue emphasized management functions: “i have been asked to develop lectures for my colleagues within the institution” (uc-p10); “one can support managerial activities at the institution through the pedagogical knowledge we acquired” (ue-p55). participants from ub, uc, ud, and ue seemed to view leadership as related to administrative roles. specifically, they made this connection when discussing their involvement with educational policy in relation to curricular adjustments in their institutions. an educational policy, as the one embodied in the pei,45 is discussed below: the impact [regarding the m.a. program] has been that much that, for example, in the institution where i work, i have always been taken into account to tackle topics related to pedagogical strategies, and i have been a leader in updating the pei. (ud-p5) apparently master studies contributed to participants’ expertise leading to their construction and consolidation of positive images as leaders in their school communities where they felt empowered by the high regard others’ exhibited of their input: due to the knowledge about concepts and strategies, the value of a teacher’s word acquires credibility, which, to a certain extent allows opinions to be taken into consideration. (ud-p2) master programs and participants’ work with language policies survey answers showed that the programs’ impact on respondents’ learning regarding language educational policy was ranked similarly in comparison with administrative work. both of those categories received the lowest scores (see figure 6). in this regard, it is worth mentioning that only one program, out of five, (ub), emphasized policy analysis as part of its objectives and graduated students’ profile, and only two other programs (ua) (uc), offered courses in this area (see tables 1 and 2). another explanation for this low perceived impact might be that, as in the case of administration endeavors, participants manifested their lack of opportunities to become involved in tasks concerning the analysis, construction, and reconstruction of language education policies. finally, some participants indicated that their voices were not heard in their institutions because the policies were pre-established by the government so the institutions could not allow any changes: 5 pei = proyecto educativo institucional (an institution’s educational project). universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras114 viáfara & largo as teachers we are informed about institutional policies but i am not allowed to influence on these policies. they listen to my opinions, but because sometimes i am too critical i am ignored. (ue-p6) among those participants who did regard an impact of master programs on their education as teachers, ue-p61 expressed: i have been able to comprehend more easily the changes in educational policies from a critical and constructive perspective. although i cannot change the ones i consider harmful, i know that if i organize my pedagogical practice, i can reduce the impact of harmful policies on my students. now, i know how to keep balance between my ideals, my institution’s, and national educational policies. this is difficult because of frequent changes and lack of coherence, however, what i have learned has been useful and i have stopped feeling frustrated in my job. as shown in the excerpt above, graduate studies allowed participants to be keener at reflecting critically upon the official policies from the government. apparently, processes of thinking and reflecting allowed participants to study and analyze such policies from different angles, and to establish a connection between them and real contexts. consequently, participants seem to be more likely to make changes and contribute to the analysis of policies at their institutions. some respondents from ub, ud, and ue affirm that now they participate in trying to revise policies in their institutions, which evidences the influence of their masters’ studies at this level. others acknowledged the contribution of their master studies when they were able to promote the analysis of these policies as they implemented those policies in their classrooms. challenges to integrate their m.a. education into school work teaching before elaborating on respondents who claimed they had faced challenges when attempting to employ the knowledge and abilities acquired as a result of their master’s level studies in their teaching practices (72%), it is worth noting that the remaining 28%, those who apparently did not encounter any barriers, pointed out the following factors as mitigators of those limitations: the pertinence and realistic nature of their proposals, the preparation they had achieved through their program, and their flexibility coupled with the support from their colleagues and administrators which buttressed participant’s autonomy: i’ve got help from colleagues and administrators when i want to conduct a project, and schools in the public sector allow a bit more of curricular autonomy inside the classroom. (uc-p14) an unfavorable side of most of the aforementioned factors affected those participants who acknowledge the existence of challenges. these limitations tended to undermine the impact that their education could have on their overall professional development because the existence of adverse conditions to exercise what is learnt might not sustain teachers’ expertise. challenges in connection with their students, their institutions, and their colleagues, among others, are discussed in subsequent lines. participants in all the universities claimed that their institutions’ policies did not contribute toward their efforts to incorporate their newly acquired knowledge into their pedagogical practices. firstly, they hinted at the lack of support in their schools concerning enough time, space, and resources as a problem. secondly, conforming to institutional policies mounted by school authorities became an exhausting process which often times discouraged them. the following testimonies illustrate these circumstances: well, in the m.a. there is always talk about the use of strategies based on resources like tv sets, video beams, and in public schools there is not full access to them; being honest, that issue sometimes makes it hard to use what you learnt. (ue-p66) another level of limitations was associated with participants’ colleagues. in all the universities, there 115profile: issues teach. prof. dev., vol. 20 no. 1, jan-jun, 2018. issn 1657-0790 (printed) 2256-5760 (online). bogotá, colombia. pages 103-119 colombian english teachers' professional development: the case of master programs were master’s graduates or candidates who listed reasons related either to their coworkers’ attitudes, qualifications, or job conditions as obstacles to integrate what they had learnt into their context. the following respondent shared his experience trying to implement a writing project: some teachers are not that committed and dedicated to teaching such a complex skill as writing, so they end up working in a general and not very meaningful way. on top of this, not all of them are willing to explore new technologies and methodologies. (uc-p25) in addition to their peers’ lack of commitment and resistance to adopt new ideas, other participants indicated that trying to develop projects was a challenge when their colleagues’ knowledge and skills regarding the language and methodology were poor or at least conflicted with the expertise they had attained through their graduate studies. these types of issues coupled with the unfavorable job conditions some participants reported, especially in the public sector, did not seem to generate an encouraging environment in which they could establish collaborations among teachers: evaluation is an issue which takes time to be understood. being part of a team has been hard when trying to make all members follow the same direction. i have not found the right frame of mind in all team, so that they are ready to invest more time to check evaluation practices. (ud-p47) regarding learners in their schools, for respondents in universities b, c, d, and e; their students’ language ideologies in connection with their learning habits made difficult, on occasions, their attempts to innovate using ideas from their master studies: students are accustomed to traditional work, dictation, copying, transcribing and sometimes when i use new strategies, they don’t take them seriously or they’re lazy. they are reluctant to be involved in activities that would challenge their brains. (ud-p58) in addition to the sort of learners’ beliefs and practices described by the respondent in the previous comment, large classes, students’ low english level, and lack of experience at working with certain types of students complicated their use of innovative ideas originating from their graduate studies. participant 52 from ue explained: “once i had to teach english to a visually impaired student. that was a challenge because not even administrators answered to me about how to work with him.” other challenges were grouped into a miscellaneous category. they include, among others, parents’ expectations rooted in traditional beliefs, for instance, the use of spanish as a means for instruction in the english class or of textbooks for learners to complete exercises. parents’ attitudes created challenges because of their lack of commitment and preparation to support their children’s learning. what respondents’ colleagues exhibited as ideologies about the high prestige or certain curricular areas (e.g., biology and math) vs. others (e.g., english), emerged as another constraint faced in their schools; in this vein, resources and opportunities were not frequently a priority in order to allow actions to be taken for the improvement of foreign language pedagogy. finally, competing agendas between m.a. candidates or graduate students and teacher training agencies (e.g., secretarías de educación, british council) regarding the introduction of teaching methodologies turned into struggles which participants were not usually able to overcome because they faced institutional powers. one of the participants exemplifies the latter point: there is conflict with other pedagogical views from peers, administrators, students, parents, and teacher trainers from the secretary of public education. usually there is lack of coherence between what is sought and what is offered, what is said and what is done, what is potentiated and what is evaluated. (ud-p64) participants were also asked about their attitudes towards the challenges they had encountered when attempting to employ their m.a. knowledge in their teaching at schools. while in all universities a group of respondents persevered in their efforts by being more universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras116 viáfara & largo creative, trying to persuade colleagues to join them in their projects, or working on obtaining funding from other sources, other participants abandoned their innovation plans believing barriers were unsurmountable. on the positive side of the reactions, there were participants who saw the challenges as opportunities for change (universities c, d, e): my attitude was one of perseverance, willingness to create, innovate, participate, to explore academic and research topics, to modify what is not done well or one does just to stand out without considering others’ benefit. (ud-p3) finally, in university e, some participants referred to their reflection coupled with research as their way to confront challenges. conclusions and pedagogical implications for most participants their enrollment in master degree programs impacted positively their development as teachers. in all of the four pre-established categories discussed, three recurrent topics can help to summarize findings. to begin with, participants perceived that their graduate education made them more reflective, which allowed them to deepen their analysis of educational policies and to carry out curricular adjustments. regarding research, reflection seemed to be of paramount importance in order for participants not only to configure and conduct informed and coherent inquiry and pedagogical activities, but also to understand the relevance of research itself. innovation at various levels of their teaching-related endeavors emerged as a second topic intersecting the categories of perceived impact in association with respondents’ master studies. for master degree graduates and candidates, inasmuch as their education favored their reflection and research abilities, they were more prompt in transforming their pedagogical practices. likewise, some participants felt empowered to examine and possibly adjust or change institutional educational policies. findings also showed that collaboration within the school community was a topic permeating participants and their colleagues’ views when the former reported on their growth as teachers who were pursuing or holding master’s degrees. by conducting research projects that involved several members of the community, their peers’ engagement resulted in a growing awareness about the relevance of research. furthermore, their newly acquired knowledge and abilities put them in a more privileged position so that their peers, administrative staff, and other stakeholders accepted offers to engage in projects with them. for instance, in some cases, their colleagues seemed to welcome their coaching on how to implement better teaching plans. putting into practice what teachers had studied in their graduate programs was the cornerstone to fueling their professional development; however, these opportunities were sometimes jeopardized by the ideologies, stakeholders’ profiles, agendas, and policies that existed in their school communities. not only students’ and colleagues’ but even parents’ traditional beliefs would occasionally oppose participants’ innovation plans. institutional guidelines also appeared to constrain where, when, and how they could implement their proposals; resources at various levels did not always seem to be available and in some cases, motivation appeared to be low due to job conditions coupled with perceived lack of opportunities to assume new roles in schools. likewise, when their colleagues and students did not exhibit critical knowledge and abilities to team up in carrying out projects, they felt discouraged. albeit a group of participants reacted to these challenges by abandoning their plans, apparently most of them understood challenges as fresh starts to reshape their plans and to probe for new options. the aforementioned constraints have led us to suggest that m.a. programs need to create and strengthen alliances with participants’ working institutions. these associations can become avenues to bridge gaps between traditional and innovative plans and practices in both 117profile: issues teach. prof. dev., vol. 20 no. 1, jan-jun, 2018. issn 1657-0790 (printed) 2256-5760 (online). bogotá, colombia. pages 103-119 colombian english teachers' professional development: the case of master programs scenarios. in addition, those holding master’s degrees, candidates, and faculty can function as conduits sharing their knowledge and illustrating positive attitudes when implementing common agendas between university m.a. programs and schools. specifically, the promotion of professional growth networks involving people from master programs and stakeholders in schools could result in the development of communities which allow teachers’ constant communication. this may represent an opportunity to tackle issues concerning the lack of cooperative work among colleagues in the institutions and the reluctance to incorporate new ideas. the characterization of the targeted programs using their objectives, expected graduate students’ profiles, and their curriculum contents seems to hint at a correlation between programs and participants’ perceived enhancement of their development as efl teachers. in the case of research and pedagogical strategies where the highest levels of impact were reported, it was observed that all five universities clearly sought to buttress these dimensions of participants’ education. despite this positive view, it is relevant to highlight that for some, the diversity in research approaches in master’s graduates’ and candidates’ programs emerged as a limitation. language education policy and administration did not seem to be emphasized through most programs’ curricular goals and contents and these two areas were the least favored by participants. in order to ameliorate the perceived gap between m.a. programs’ curricula and participants’ advancement in some aspects of their development, these types of graduate programs should, firstly, consider expanding their emphasis beyond teaching strategies and related research to include more issues regarding language education policy and program administration. secondly, these courses can guide teachers towards an understanding of diverse perspectives on conducting research less focused on prescribed paradigms and more on employing inquiring methods according to contextual needs. finally, due to participants’ concerns about master programs not tracking their work in their teaching setting, it is suggested they integrate practicum experiences in curricula favoring the tutoring and feedback that more expert faculty can provide in situ. references álvarez, j. a., (2009). an exploration of colombian efl teachers’ knowledge base through teachers’ reflection. linguagem & ensino, pelotas, 12(1), 73-108. ary, d., jacobs, l. c., sorensen, c., & razavieh, a. (2010). introduction to research in education. wadsworth, us: cengage learning. brookfield, s. (1995). adult learning: an overview. in a. tuinjman (ed.), international encyclopedia of education (vol. 10, pp. 375-380). oxford, uk. pergamon press. cárdenas, m. l., gonzález, a., & álvarez, j. a. (2010). in service english teachers’ professional development: some conceptual considerations for colombia. folios, (31), 49-67. https://doi.org/10.17227/01234870.31folios49.67. clavijo, a., guerrero, c. h., torres, c., ramírez, l. m., & torres, n. e. (2004). teachers acting critically upon the curriculum: innovations that transform teaching. íkala, revista de lenguaje y cultura, 9(15), 11-41. díaz-maggioli, g. h. (2003). options for teacher professional development. english teaching forum, 41(2), 2-13. freeman, d. (2001). second language teacher education. in r. carter & d. nunan (eds), the cambridge guide to teaching english to speakers of other languages (pp. 72-79). cambridge, uk: cambridge university press. https://doi. org/10.1017/cbo9780511667206.011. glaser, b., & strauss, a. (1967). the discovery of grounded theory: strategies for qualitative research. chicago, us: aldine. gonzález, a. (2003). who is educating efl teachers: a qualitative study of in-service in colombia. íkala, revista de lenguaje y cultura, 8(1), 153-172. gonzález, a., montoya, c., & sierra, n. (2002). what do efl teachers seek in professional development programs? voices from teachers. íkala, revista de lenguaje y cultura, 7(1), 29-50. universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras118 viáfara & largo johnstone, r. (2004). language teacher education. in a. davies & c. elder (eds.), the handbook of applied linguistics (pp. 649-671). malden, us: blackwell publishing. https://doi. org/10.1002/9780470757000.ch26. lópez mendoza, a. a., & bernal arandia, r. (2009). language testing in colombia: a call for more teacher education and teacher training in language assessment. profile: issues in teachers’ professional development, 11(2), 55-70. mcdougald, j. s. (2015). teachers’ attitudes, perceptions and experiences in clil: a look at content and language. colombian applied linguistics journal, 17(1), 25-41. https:// doi.org/10.14483/udistrital.jour.calj.2015.1.a02. ministerio de educación nacional, men. (2006a). decreto 1001 del 3 de abril de 2006: por el cual se organiza la oferta de programas de posgrado y se dictan otras disposiciones [postgraduate programs organization guidelines] retrieved from http://www.mineducacion.gov.co/1621/ articles-96961_archivo_pdf.pdf. ministerio de educación nacional, men. (2006b). situación de la formación de programas de postgrado en colombia [the situation of postgraduate programs in colombia] [powerpoint presentation]. retrieved from www.mineducacion. gov.co/1621/articles-96066_archivo_ppt.ppt. núñez, a., & téllez, m. f. (2015). reflection on teachers’ personal and professional growth through a materials development seminar. how, 22(2), 54-74. https://doi. org/10.19183/how.22.2.151. patton, m. q. (2001). qualitative evaluation and research methods (2nd ed.). thousand oaks, us: sage publications. pineda, c., & clavijo, a. (2003). growing together as teacher researchers. colombian applied linguistics journal, (5), 65-85. quintero polo, á. h. (2003). teachers’ informed decisionmaking in evaluation: corollary of elt curriculum as a human lived experience. colombian applied linguistics journal, (5), 122-138. richards, j. c., & farrell, t. s. c. (2005). professional development for language teachers: strategies for teacher learning. cambridge, uk: cambridge university press. https://doi. org/10.1017/cbo9780511667237. roberts, j. (2016). language teacher education. new york, us: routledge. viáfara, j. j. (2016, august). conexión entre universidad y escuela: los programas de maestría en enseñanza de inglés en colombia [connection between university and school: the english language teaching master’s programs in colombia]. paper presented at 6° seminario internacional de desarrollo profesional de los docentes de lenguas extranjeras, medellín, colombia. about the authors john jairo viáfara is a professor at universidad pedagógica y tecnológica de colombia (uptc). he holds a b.ed. in education (english) from universidad nacional de colombia, a master in applied linguistics (universidad distrital francisco josé de caldas, colombia), and a phd from the university of arizona, usa. he specializes in pre-service teacher education and is a main researcher in the group retele at uptc. josé david largo holds a b.ed. in modern languages from uptc. currently, he belongs to the research group retele where he works on face-to-face and online peer-tutoring. his research interests include culture and identity issues, english language teaching, and virtual learning. 119profile: issues teach. prof. dev., vol. 20 no. 1, jan-jun, 2018. issn 1657-0790 (printed) 2256-5760 (online). bogotá, colombia. pages 103-119 colombian english teachers' professional development: the case of master programs appendix: survey sample connection between master studies and professional development professional and employment profile (choose the option that is true for you) 1. a) master’s graduate b) master’s candidate 2. when did you graduate? a) last year b) 2 years ago c) more than 3 years ago 3. in the case you have not graduated yet, how much have you advanced? a)1 year b) 2 years c) working on thesis d) already defended thesis 4. current job institution a) primary b) secondary c) university d) other 5. current job location a) rural b) urban 6. position a) teacher b) administrative staff c) coordination d) other. which? perception of master studies 1. master studies impact on your practices as a teacher. (explain answer) a) very highly b) highly c) medium d) low e) very low 2. master studies impact in your teaching practices. rank each one of the following items provide a number from 0 (lowest) to 5 (highest). a. research b. administration c. pedagogical strategies d. language education policies 3. explain how your m.a. education might have influenced your pedagogical strategies. 4. explain how your m.a. education might have influenced your performance in administration work. 5. explain how your m.a. education may have influenced your work concerning research. 6. explain how your m.a. education may have influenced your work about educational policies analysis and implementation. 7. have you faced any challenges when trying to implement what you learnt in your m.a. programs at your school? a) yes b) no 8. if your answer for the previous question was “yes”, explain. 9. what attitude have you taken regarding these challenges? 10. in case you have not faced any challenge, why do you think that occurred? 11. how do you think the master programs may strengthen the connection between what is learnt in the program and your work at schools? 73profile: issues teach. prof. dev., vol. 20 no. 1, jan-jun, 2018. issn 1657-0790 (printed) 2256-5760 (online). bogotá, colombia. pages 73-87 https://doi.org/10.15446/profile.v20n1.62323 unlicensed efl teachers co-constructing knowledge and transforming curriculum through collaborative-reflective inquiry profesores de inglés no licenciados construyendo conocimiento colectivo y transformando el currículo a través de la investigación colaborativa edgar augusto aguirre garzón1* pontificia universidad javeriana, bogotá, colombia this paper describes a case study research project carried out in a public school in bogotá, colombia, with four unlicensed teachers of english as a foreign language. although the institutional guidelines in the school suggest that teachers should collectively propose changes to shape pedagogical realities, there is evidence of little communication among them. this study emphasizes collaborative, reflective inquiry as a means to educative transformation. findings suggest that collaborative inquiry prompts the language teachers to conjointly design teaching strategies and materials that articulate with students’ contexts. furthermore, along the way, the teachers were empowered to propose curricular changes to adjust contents and goals of the area with the students’ contextual reality. key words: collaborative inquiry, reflective teaching, teachers’ professional development, unlicensed teachers of english as a foreign language. este artículo describe un estudio de caso realizado en un colegio público de bogotá, colombia con cuatro profesores de inglés no licenciados en lenguas. aunque los lineamientos institucionales del colegio sugieren que los docentes deberían proponer cambios a nivel colectivo para transformar realidades pedagógicas, no hay evidencia de que existan escenarios de comunicación entre ellos. este estudio se enfoca en la investigación colaborativa y reflexiva de prácticas de enseñanza como medio para la transformación educativa. los resultados sugieren que la investigación colaborativa impulsa a los profesores a diseñar conjuntamente estrategias y materiales para la enseñanza del inglés que se articulan con los contextos de los estudiantes. adicionalmente, durante el proceso, los profesores se empoderaron para proponer cambios curriculares con el fin de ajustar los objetivos y contenidos del área a las realidades contextuales de los estudiantes. palabras clave: desarrollo profesional de docentes, enseñanza reflexiva, investigación colaborativa, profesores de inglés no licenciados. * e-mail: edgar_aguirre@javeriana.edu.co how to cite this article (apa, 6th ed.): aguirre garzón, e. a. (2018). unlicensed efl teachers co-constructing knowledge and transforming curriculum through collaborative-reflective inquiry. profile: issues in teachers’ professional development, 20(1), 73-87. https://doi. org/10.15446/profile.v20n1.62323. this article was received on january 31, 2017, and accepted on august 11, 2017. this is an open access article distributed under the terms of the creative commons license attribution-noncommercial-noderivatives 4.0 international license. consultation is possible at https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/. universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras74 aguirre garzón introduction research on teachers’ professional development over the past two decades has centered consistently on the potential educational benefit of collegial work in professional communities of learning (little, 2002). researchers converge on the idea that improving teaching and learning is plausible when teachers “collectively question ineffective teaching routines, examine new conceptions of teaching and learning, find generative means to acknowledge and respond to difference and conflict, and engage actively in supporting professional growth” (p. 917). in this sense, richards and farrell (2005) explain that when teachers work together, they have more chances to construct knowledge, shape their knowledge base and thus, their teaching practices. further, an emphasis is often given to the benefits of collaboration within a community of inquiry for supporting teachers’ learning (cochran-smith & lytle, 2004). this is believed to promote growth collectively as professionals (richards & farrell, 2005). the body of work on collaboration as a legitimate source of development has increasingly demonstrated what communities of learning look like and the conditions for the construction of knowledge in different settings. notwithstanding, there is relatively limited evidence on the type of knowledge that is constructed by teachers and what happens when they assume the necessary role of decision-makers as a result of interaction and participation in the core of teacher learning communities (butler & schnellert, 2012). regarding the attention given to teachers as agents of change in schools, stakeholders and administrators call for teachers’ professional development programs to hone institutional and academic improvement (butler & schnellert, 2012). albeit these administrators’ interest is to promote teachers’ development through imposed agendas, there exist conflictive assumptions about where to locate legitimate causes of classroom phenomena. tierney (2006) argues that the consequence of these topdown initiatives, which lack sensitivity to local contexts, is that they fail to capitalize on the local knowledge constructed within and by professional communities. some authors consider that schools need to make a special effort to develop teamwork among teachers, since teaching is mistakenly seen as an individual activity. jerez (2008) agrees with this claim which portrays the local case of colombia. she asserts that although some institutions in colombia have models to foster professional development such as teacher collaboration, teachers seldom engage or are motivated to collaborate. the problem, according to jerez, is not the lack of situated models or guidelines, but rather the lack of a collaborative culture in institutions. in this sense, i believe such a culture depends on the importance to work with collaborative, situated, and flexible agendas, sensitive to teachers’ needs which, according to aldana and cárdenas (2011), are promoted by networking between teachers. in this fertile ground for research, this study presents the results of providing a group of four unlicensed in-service language teachers with the power to explore teaching aspects so they can find reasons to work together. in this article, i describe the type of knowledge about language teaching aspects that the teachers constructed together when engaging in collaborative work. consequently, i explore the influence of such collaboration in their language teaching practices in a learning community constituted in a public school. furthermore, in a context where the threshold for the language teaching field is becoming more accessible for different professionals other than licensed language teachers, it is necessary to avoid adjourning the discussion of how unlicensed language teachers develop professionally in schools, instead of backlashing the phenomenon. in general, empowering language teachers to be proponents of change in schools by working together goes a long way toward transforming the figure of teachers from simple instructors and knowledge consumers to knowledge builders and theorists in their contexts (kumaravadivelu, 2003). 75profile: issues teach. prof. dev., vol. 20 no. 1, jan-jun, 2018. issn 1657-0790 (printed) 2256-5760 (online). bogotá, colombia. pages 73-87 unilcensed efl teachers co-constructing knowledge and transforming curriculum... this research demonstrates that when teachers are given the scenarios and tools to engage in collaboration, it is more plausible for them to encounter legitimate motives to unwind, share experiences and knowledge with peers and, ultimately, take action. a collaborative orientation in language teaching not only affects positively language teaching practices but can also transcend to institutional levels in the form of curricular transformation. theoretical background the role of collaboration in teachers’ professional growth collaboration can be defined as a continuous process of supporting one another’s efforts to sort out problems in the classrooms and to enhance the quality of teaching in schools (little, 1982); or simply, a practice of learning and working together to achieve common goals and tasks (butler, lauscher, jarvis-selinger, & beckingham, 2004; griebling, harte, dyke, & bauer, 2011). in so doing, teachers learn and teach abilities and reinforce existing skills (butler et al., 2004), and awaken to a more conscious stance of approaching teaching based on respect and appreciation for peers (griebling et al., 2011). ultimately, according to griebling et al. (2011) and butler et al. (2004), collaboration can be an essential element to bring about reforms at different levels, starting from teachers’ own practice. these theoretical contributions focusing on “the importance of collaboration in changing teacher practice have led to its widespread acceptance as an essential component of any effort aimed at (re)shaping teaching practices” (brownell, adams, sindelar, waldron, & vanhover, 2006, p. 170). interestingly, research has not sufficiently demonstrated in what way the teaching aspects that motivate english teachers to work with peers might vary amongst contexts and cultures. also noteworthy is to find out how constructed knowledge in populations of teachers, who are professionals in other areas other than language teaching, differs from knowledge constructed in conventional groups of english teachers. i find it worthwhile knowing about the aspects that motivate teachers who are not modern language bachelors by profession, to collaborate in their particular context; that constitutes the main inquiry of this investigation. collaborative-reflective teaching glenn (2011) defined reflection as an act of thinking that follows a series of steps such as doubting, inquiring, and searching for information that would solve the doubt. that doubt is formulated on the basis of an action performed by someone and how it is performed. on the other hand, hagevik, aydeniz, and rowell (2012) gave the following definition of reflection: “it is the deliberate and purposeful act of thinking which centers on ways of responding to problem situations” (p. 660). thus, reflection is associated with thinking about what a teacher does in the classroom and has to do with involving the cognitive processes of both problem finding and problem solving (leitch & day, 2000). the articulation between finding a problem and solving it was adopted in teaching under the concept of reflective teaching or reflective practice. reflective teaching then is understood by farrell (2007) as the process of teachers consciously subjecting their beliefs about teaching and learning to critical analysis, assuming their responsibility in the classroom, and engaging in a process of improving teaching practices. similarly, for milheim (2010) reflective teaching is any type of critical reflection upon teaching practices which leads to career development. collaborative reflective teaching is defined in the same way, yet this indicates that reflection is occurring with others. this process leads to the construction of shared knowledge that might benefit the students’ learning and ultimately a community of practice (onks, 2009). leitch and day (2000) contend that “reflective teaching in these terms entails making conscious and universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras76 aguirre garzón explicit the dynamic interplay between thinking” (p. 181), learning, and making decisions together. most of the studies draw on reflection as an initial step toward interaction with others as members of learning communities (chou, 2010; halim, buang, & mohd meerah, 2011; wong, 2011). other scholars complement this notion by arguing that it constitutes a central mainstay of a research-oriented conception of teaching (fichtman dana & yendol-hoppey, 2003) and as such, is regarded as an important characteristic of newfangled outlooks in teacher education and professional development (conway & clark, 2003; zeichner, 1996). language teachers’ professional development according to richards and farrell (2005) development facilitates the growth of “teachers’ understanding of teaching and of themselves as teachers” (p. 3). professional development involves the analysis of different dimensions of teachers’ practice which is the basis of reflection. for this reason, it can be seen as a “bottomup” process. the strategies that foster development in teachers are: “documenting different kinds of teaching practices; reflective analysis of teaching practices; examining beliefs, values, and principles; collaborating with peers on classrooms projects and conversation with peers on core issues” (richards & farrell, 2005, p. 4). most of the aforementioned constitute the cornerstones of the teacher education model in this study. one of the aspects to consider when adopting a model of professional development is to clarify that such process should not be seen as the result of a lack of teaching abilities or bad performance. richards and farrell (2005) argue that the need for a progressive renewal of professional skills and knowledge is not necessarily the response to inadequate training but the response to the notion that what a teacher needs to know does not only come from their pre-service period. it also comes from the fact that, in my opinion, one’s knowledge-base for teaching needs to change as much as contexts, populations, and methods do. from another perspective, jerez (2008) contends that professional development programs (pdp) are not only the responsibility of universities where pre-service teachers prepare for the craft of teaching. schools and institutions have also the responsibility to pursue the education and development of teachers in the inservice phase by establishing development programs as part of their work. although not many schools advocate for these programs in colombia, jerez claims that important contributions to in-service programs have been made in the country during the last few years. some examples are the studies conducted by clavijo, guerrero, torres, ramírez, and torres (2004) and mcnulty and quinchía (2007), which “show the relevance of giving teachers the opportunity to pursue further professional development so that their practices can be enhanced” (jerez, 2008, p. 93). another relevant contribution to the local context is the work by cárdenas and nieto (2010), who explored how professional development can be strengthened through the formation of academic networks of english teachers in the form of study groups. cárdenas, gonzález, and álvarez (2010) converge with jerez (2008) on the growing attention given to permanent teachers’ education in colombia. according to cárdenas et al. (2010), this interest increased in the years after the colombian framework for english— cofe—project (aparicio et al. as cited in cárdenas et al., 2010). this project highlighted the necessity to not only attend to teachers’ initial education but also aimed at achieving pdp for primary and high school in-service teachers. these programs were based on international models and local experiences in the field (cárdenas et al., 2010). nevertheless, the field should be more influenced by local research than by foreign pre-conceived models that inform pdp for in-service teachers in schools. in this sense, gonzález and quinchía (2003) assert that in colombia the efforts to establish standards and directions 77profile: issues teach. prof. dev., vol. 20 no. 1, jan-jun, 2018. issn 1657-0790 (printed) 2256-5760 (online). bogotá, colombia. pages 73-87 unilcensed efl teachers co-constructing knowledge and transforming curriculum... for teacher education programs have been made by individual institutions. the authors suggest the necessity of establishing “a joint effort to administer the teacher education programs using approaches discussed between teachers and teacher educators” (p. 88). the colombian advances in the field of professional development of in-service teachers open the door to continue looking into the nuances that promote teachers’ learning collectively. this paper contributes to exploring the inside of a learning community to ascertain the language teaching aspects that motivate four unlicensed english teachers to collaborate in a public school. this collaborative endeavor eventually prompted the teachers to act upon the curriculum based on informed criteria gained in the learning community over time. in order to respond to the inquiry of investigation, i designed a methodological path that will serve the purpose of collecting data for further analysis. to start off, the main aspects of the context are depicted in the following section. context of the study the study took place in south star school (name changed by researcher), a state institution located in south bogota, colombia. the school offers grades from 1st to 11th. the curriculum has a constructivist pedagogical focus that fosters the collective construction of knowledge. additionally, the institutional educational project (iep) of the school has an orientation for teachers to be agents of change in the educative process. the four participating english teachers, three females and one male, have a proficiency in the foreign language ranging from a2 to b1. they hold degrees in areas different from english teaching such as spanish, early childhood education, and psychology. nevertheless, they were required by the administrator to teach english so as to cope with the demand of english classes, especially in primary courses. their experience teaching english in the school ranges from 2 to 7 years. my role as a researcher was of peripheral observer. this peripheral membership, according to adler and adler (as cited in merriam, 2009), allows researchers to observe and interact so closely enough with the participants that an insider’s identity is established without participating directly in their activities. in this regard, patton (2001) claims that qualitative methodologists can avoid affecting what is observed, specially when they are outsiders, by practicing long-term observations with people in the setting. the participants partook of an academic year process of collaborative sessions in the school. those sessions, along with semi-structured interviews, provided information regarding the sort of knowledge they managed to construct together and what they could do with it. diagnosis during an initial phase of analysis in the school carried out by administering surveys and interviews, it could be evidenced that each language teacher had a quite different perception of what the reasons for students’ low achievement in the english class were. for example, a 7th grade teacher said it was because the instructional basis in 5th and 6th grade was poor. opposite, a 6th grade teacher said in an interview that the lack of linguistic basis occurred in elementary courses. another 7th grade english teacher mentioned the reason was the students’ lack of interest in the foreign language and failure to see the usefulness of it in their lives. the following comment by a teacher exemplifies the former statement: it is really difficult to find activities to keep [the students] involved, because some of them just seem not to be interested at all… i sometimes feel that i have tried it all. (interview 1, t2)1 after surveys and interviews were administered, i proceeded to collate the information obtained with 1 participants are identified with a letter t followed by a number. universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras78 aguirre garzón institutional documents so as to find coincidences or discrepancies. thus, the teachers’ profile, included in the school’s official documents, has an orientation for teachers to be agents of change in the educative process. this means that pedagogical changes in the school should not be imposed by administrators but promoted rather by the teachers. in the document, it is also stated that: the process of pedagogical practice will have as a fundamental axis the interpretation and the construction of knowledge. in education, it is not possible to detach the pedagogical practices from reflection. (iep, p. 49) notwithstanding, there was no evidence of mechanisms or scenarios for language teachers to reflect and collaborate to propose joint solutions in the school, as established in guidelines. these samples collected from an interview demonstrated that even though those mechanisms are inexistent, there is willingness on the part of teachers to professionally work and learn from their peers: the meetings are only to talk about information that we are supposed to know, like informative, but we do not have other type of meetings like to share opinions about what to do with the classes. we don’t have much time for that. (interview 2, t1) a 5th grade teacher stated: it would be interesting to learn from others since we lack many things. some [teachers] are even afraid to talk in english. i am not, though. besides, there are colleagues that have more expertise, i guess. (interview 2, t3) all in all, it was observed that there is not a collective consensus to pin down the causes that hamper students’ achievement of curricular goals in the foreign language. this entails a distance in terms of teachers’ communication along the courses, yet institutional guidelines in the school suggest that teachers should propose changes in their pedagogical reality by reflecting and working collectively. a possible way to bridge that communication gap among teachers is by fostering scenarios and opportunities for english teachers to socialize and eventually work together. therefore, this study aimed to investigate: what possible language teaching aspects drive a collaborative-reflective work among a group of four unlicensed language teachers? method the study used a qualitative descriptive and interpretive case study. since i wanted to describe a phenomenon occurring in a natural setting, this design is the one that fits the investigation. the phenomenon to describe is the language teaching aspects that moved a collaborative inquiry process among four language teachers. according to merriam (2009) a qualitative case study is intended to describe, give insights, and interpret rather than to test hypotheses. qualitative studies focus on the phenomena that take place in a natural setting. merriam (2009) also presents a descriptive case study as a detailed account of the phenomenon under investigation. in this article, i want to present a thorough description of the phenomenon of collaboration, more specifically, the language teaching aspects that motivate the collaboration among the teachers. moreover, i aim to describe the way in which knowledge constructed collectively is interwoven with language teaching practices. the instruments employed to collect the data were audio recordings of the collaborative meetings, teaching journals, and semi-structured interviews. these provided sufficient information to describe the language teaching aspects that move the four teachers to share and co-construct knowledge. the collaborative-reflective inquiry process the intervention carried out in south star school with four non-licensed language teachers consisted 79profile: issues teach. prof. dev., vol. 20 no. 1, jan-jun, 2018. issn 1657-0790 (printed) 2256-5760 (online). bogotá, colombia. pages 73-87 unilcensed efl teachers co-constructing knowledge and transforming curriculum... of an inquiry process based fundamentally upon a reflective-collaborative work. according to some authors, inquiry can be associated with activities ranging from reflective teaching (cochran-smith & lytle, 1990), to “teachers’ recursive engagement in planning, enacting, monitoring, and revising practices in order to achieve valued goals for students” (butler & schnellert, 2012, p. 1208). the reflective-collaborative model took on sociocultural principles that encompass knowledge construction as mediated by social interactions (vygotsky, 1986/2000). those interactions can be conceived within a collaborative environment. moreover, the model is grounded on properties regarded by cárdenas et al. (2010) as a basis for teachers’ pdp: • support systems for teachers’ collaboration and reflection. • collaboration among the participants of the pedagogical process. • knowledge constructed collectively from teachers’ experience. • new ideas are flexible and situated. • teachers’ empowerment and agency. during the inquiry process the teacher participants were given the opportunity to think and socialize their experiences and reflections about teaching the foreign language in the school. throughout this process, the teachers gained knowledge on what it takes to become a collaborative-reflective practitioner by looking into their practices and analyzing information from them. as time went by, the teachers started to interact using the information they gathered from their language classes. collective reflections endowed the teachers with tools and knowledge to begin collective tasks. some meetings also constituted the opportunity for the teachers to assess the achievements of the tasks they carried out together. the collaborative meetings were sustained during an academic year (9 months approximately). data collection data collected were coded using atlas.ti software. the coding was open and axial. “open coding is the part of the analysis concerned with identifying, naming, categorizing, and describing phenomena found in the text” (strauss & corbin, 2003, p. 78). essentially, each line, sentence, paragraph, and so on, is read in search of possible relations with the language teaching aspects that moved a collaborative inquiry process among four language teachers. according to strauss (1987), axial coding “consists of intense analysis done around one category at time in terms of paradigm items.” (p. 32) this could indicate that some elements allied with the grounded approach theory, like the type of coding (strauss & corbin, 2003), were employed to analyze the data in the study. at the beginning, the transcriptions of the collaborative-reflective meetings and interviews were read in search of aspects related to collaboration that aimed at answering the main inquiry of the investigation. then, as the analysis progressed by reading the teachers’ journals, commonalities were sought in the data that helped to strengthen the presence of codes. findings as a result of the analysis, the data revealed five language teaching-related aspects that drove the reflective-collaborative process between the unlicensed language teachers. figure 1 illustrates how those results interweave. awareness of self-performance during moments of shared reflection, there was evidence of the participants’ recognition of strengths and weaknesses when reflecting upon the connection between the aspects related to their performance as language teachers and students’ outcomes. as brookfield (1995) states, the fact of understanding and reflecting on the impact that teachers have on their students is important for their development. likewise, eslami and universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras80 aguirre garzón fatahi (2008) posit that studies that focus “on teachers’ perceptions and beliefs [of their own performance] indicate that these perceptions and beliefs not only have considerable influence on their instructional practices and classroom behavior, but also are related to their students’ achievement” (p. 1). the following excerpt taken from a reflectivecollaborative meeting is a salient example of this aspect: my problem is since i don’t...i am not fluent when it comes to talking [in english] for example; i look for mechanisms for them [students] to learn listening because i find that important. so, i take a lot of…like songs, so they can listen to and watch them . . . because sometimes they end up enunciating like me, that’s why i use a lot of videos. (collaborative reflective meeting, t4)2 interestingly, this comment evidences a critical response to a problematic situation known as teacher agency (priestly, biesta, & robinson, 2013), since the teacher implements and adapts audio materials for her students to have a proper exposure to english pronunciation as she is aware of her own limitations in this 2 the teacher participants communicated in spanish for the sake of obtaining deeper reflections. i translated the excerpts into english, trying to keep their responses as verbatim as possible. sense. as priestly et al. (2013) argue, agency in this case is not a capacity that resides in individuals but rather is an action that is done through engagement with very specific contextual conditions, in this case, the conditions required for the teacher to provide a proper teaching model despite her lack of skills in pronouncing english words properly. articulation of l2 learning with students’ context the teachers expressed conceptions about establishing connections between what the students learn and the context associated with their reality, so as to make learning more meaningful. the following excerpt, extracted from a teacher’s journal and written after one language session, can show those connections: they learn when they relate what they see with their lives. when they are able to incorporate the new knowledge to their lives, to their individual and social life. (t4’s journal) based on the linguistic outlook that the teachers have about teaching, they use their theories to find the source of the problem they evidence in class. they agree that whenever they as teachers find ways to language teaching aspects that drive collaboration collective reflections awareness of selfperformance articulation of l2 learning with students' context cross-cultural asociation techniques language teaching didactic resources audio-visual aidsreforming curricular content and language teaching goals collective work figure 1. results of the inquiry process 81profile: issues teach. prof. dev., vol. 20 no. 1, jan-jun, 2018. issn 1657-0790 (printed) 2256-5760 (online). bogotá, colombia. pages 73-87 unilcensed efl teachers co-constructing knowledge and transforming curriculum... incorporate new knowledge in the students’ lives, learning is promoted since learners find legitimate ways to apply it to their reality. according to the data obtained from journals and meetings, it is contended that, in spite of having different professional backgrounds, the teachers managed to theorize about language teaching and learning. hagevik et al. (2012) suggest that nothing matters more in language teaching than teachers being able to generate theories about the craft as the ultimate purpose of their practice. this process of theorizing in a situated context could be informed, inter alia, by teachers’ experiences, knowledge-base, and by putting knowledge co-constructed collectively into practice in language classrooms. those dimensions of knowledge socially constructed by the unlicensed teachers of english as a foreign language (efl), took particular forms in this context, which were categorized as language teaching strategies and resources. initially, the language teaching strategies that the teachers designed as a result of collaboration aimed at helping students to assimilate knowledge through crosscultural association techniques which are explained as follows. cross-cultural association techniques these techniques relate to the teachers’ use of students’ l1 cultural backgrounds to teach english contents. the participants’ challenge was to know the aspects that were interesting to the students or at least that could connect to their socio-cultural context. due to the students’ social conditions, the teachers knew they did not have access to certain socio-cultural practices that some children in other contexts have, such as going to amusement parks or traveling on vacations. an example of this aspect is evidenced in the following segment of interaction during a collaborative meeting. t1: i got something. for example, what you said about sports. t2: but i need to cover the vocabulary of sports to be able to… t1: i have an idea. there are sports that people can practice here [in colombia], which children happen to know, and others that they don’t, right? can people play soccer here? yes, they can play soccer. can people ride on a sleigh? no, they can’t. t2: so, are you proposing to do a sort of song? t1: no, no, no. t3: that is for the association purpose. (collaborative reflective meeting) in this example, t1 was suggesting the utilization of social-practice-oriented associations to teach abilities with the verb “can”. he presented the option to teach it with soccer since it is a sport the children know about. in general, the language teachers were concerned about creating a bond between teaching contents and students’ knowledge of the world that spurs learning. in so doing, they shared teaching strategies based on cultural aspects to create associations that they implemented in their lesson plans. along with them, the four teachers also designed teaching resources which are described in the following section. language teaching didactic resources these resources refer to the different activities and materials that the teachers jointly proposed and designed for their classes as a result of the collective work. audio visual aids the teachers agreed to utilize audio visual tools to support the teaching of the foreign language using multimedia resources, something that, despite their having technological aids at their disposal in the school, they had not used in their classes before. these materials were used as a means to engage students during the classes with entertaining footage and expose them to a standard pronunciation of the language. in the next excerpt, one teacher proposes the use of videos: universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras82 aguirre garzón t4: why don’t you start with a video? do that, a video that treats the topic of “the clock”. you could find something on youtube™. (collaborative reflective meeting) youtube™ and blogs with audio visual material were the main sources of videos suggested by teachers for their classes. this material became the major resource for topic presentation. this excerpt from a journal that reported a class experience shows an example of how t4 introduced her class: the children watched a video about “parts of the body” and they repeated the pronunciation and touched the part of the body accordingly. then, they wrote the words they were learning in their notebooks in one page each, so they could draw the body part afterwards. finally, we listened to the song “head and shoulders” (from the source: http://keivanemediosaudiovisuales.blogspot. com/). (t4’s journal) audio materials were another main resource that the teachers proposed to work out as regards the curricular contents and resorting to the technological resources they had at hand. in the following segment of a conversation during a collaborative-reflective meeting, one teacher proposes the use of a pop song to teach the modal verb “can/can’t”: t2: yes, have [students] recall those verbs. t4: so, first i will have them revise the verbs. t1: there is this song by phil collins i think…i’m not sure if it’s phil collins’ or genesis, i don’t remember. that goes like “cuz i can’t dance, i can’t jump, i can’t do whatever i want.” and the song is pretty much the same chorus. t3: oh yes, that’s cool! t1: that one can work. t3: and it has some of these verbs. t1: at least to work on the chorus. (collaborative reflective meeting) songs were the basis for most of the lessons planned by the teachers during the meetings. additionally, they also gauged their functionality after their application, which calls for collegial accountability and further inquiry for improvement. in their journals, some teachers reflected after their sessions on the impact of the audiobased materials. afterwards the students listened to the song in english about the parts of the body for the kids to keep touching the corresponding parts of the body as the song was playing. (t3’s journal) in this other excerpt, the teacher explains the procedure to use a song in class, previously shared in a collaborative meeting: first, the students will listen to the song “hello, how are you?” then the students will try to write as many words they remember as possible from the song. after that, they will write the song with the help of the teacher and they will draw the moods depicted in the song. (t2’s journal) the aforementioned results can shed light on the correlation that exists among collaboration, reflection, and action (mena, sánchez, & tillema, 2008) and professional learning (diaz maggioli, 2012). all four constitute building blocks of teachers’ professional development (cochran-smith & lytle, 2004; schnellert, 2011). the collaborative endeavor at south star public school was then driven by the teachers’ willingness to design language teaching strategies based on sociocultural associations, as well as teaching materials based on audio-visual alternatives. both strategies and materials, designed with the intention to help to enhance students’ learning, constitute the language teaching aspects that answer the research question of the investigation reported in this paper. beyond the boundaries of the collective work, but propelled by it, the four unlicensed teachers felt the necessity to engage in an ongoing process of curriculum transformation. that is how they came to re-dimension objectives and contents in their english courses, which constituted another motivation to continue collegiality across time. 83profile: issues teach. prof. dev., vol. 20 no. 1, jan-jun, 2018. issn 1657-0790 (printed) 2256-5760 (online). bogotá, colombia. pages 73-87 unilcensed efl teachers co-constructing knowledge and transforming curriculum... reforming curricular contents and learning goals this last category describes the teachers’ evaluations of guidelines related to curricular contents and objectives of the english area in the school. moran (2007) argues that one avenue for teachers’ willingness to intervene in curricular reform originates in their awareness of the importance to collaborate with colleagues to transform the school reality at institutional levels. the following statement illustrates the teachers’ intention to reform curricular guidelines as regards the english area during sessions of collaboration: t1: but then the next year we need to make up a team…i mean, we already have it; we need to try reforming those competencies, those objectives in english especially for elementary courses. t3: we are going to restructure the english area next year. t2: yes, let’s start restructuring the syllabus. (collaborative reflective meeting) apparently, the possibility that institutions allow teachers to adjust curricular aspects in schools could be a far-fetched one in practice. notwithstanding, in the case presented in this paper, the precedent set by these four unlicensed efl teachers has obtained support from the administrators in the school that could make this intention feasible. in any event, this finding shows the degree of teacher involvement in the process and the trustworthiness that their work has attained in the institution. the influence of the collaborative inquiry process in the development of a collective sensitivity when working together and the initial traces of consolidating a culture of collaboration in this particular setting are conclusive outcomes of this investigation. the school academic committee holds yearly encounters to discuss curricular aspects and possible adjustments to academic processes in the english area. the year following the study reported in this paper, the four unlicensed english teachers participating in this investigation were invited to take part as a result of the process of shifting practices through collaboration. they could propose changes as far as topic and lexical contents of the english courses per level, as well as adjustment of the objectives. the results of the entire process are summarized in figure 2. overall, what was evidenced is a multi-layered sequence of changes in the school. first, at the classroom level, teachers achieved an influence in students’ learning processes, as well as in their own professional learning. four unlicensed efl teachers sharing knowledge: "we enriched our pedagogical practices" and "confronted ourselves with what we do in the classroom. the conclusions and results obtained during the process were conceived in the curricular adjustment work that is carried out in the different areas of the institution yearly. vocabulary corresponding to every english level was modified to be more contextualized. beyond the contribution to the four teachers' development, what was achieved transcended in the institution. the community in the school talks about improving educative practices and started pursuing an institutional unity in the english area. the topics of the english courses were organized so they could be adjusted in length with the terms (minimum 3 per term). the purpose was to make the objectives more attainable. the core topics and objectives of every level of the english area were adjusted, as it was evidenced that there was a mismatch between them. figure 2. results of curricular reform as a result of collaboration universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras84 aguirre garzón at the institutional level, teachers were empowered to provoke changes in curriculum as part of the motivation to collaborate; and ultimately, not only did the teachers invest in the practices of the community, transforming it, but also in their own professional development through becoming generators of knowledge and agents of change. conclusions in this article, i reported the findings from a case study of a group of four unlicensed efl teachers in a state school in bogotá, colombia. to address the main inquiry of the investigation, i described the language teaching aspects that drove a collaboration process among the research-participant teachers. in this concluding section, i comment on the most salient aspects suggested by the findings. the collaborative work among the four teachers was initially informed by two aspects that emerged from their reflections on teaching practices. the first one is the awareness of how the teachers see themselves and perform as teachers. the second one is the awareness of articulating language contents with the students’ contexts and needs. taking into account the initial participant teachers’ awareness, the collaborative-reflective work was driven by the teachers’ willingness to design language teaching strategies based on socio-cultural associations that benefited students’ learning, as well as teaching materials based on audio and visual alternatives that hone students’ assimilation of contents in the foreign language. in the same vein, the collaborative-reflective work was also triggered by the participants’ interest and intention to suggest curricular changes that fit the contextual reality of the students in this particular setting. the teachers invested in performing an in-depth analysis of curricular contents and goals to better fulfill students’ learning outcomes. this initiative needed a higher effort and commitment that empowered the teachers to make their voices heard in other institutional power structures. what is discussed here reaffirms benesh’s (1996) critical analysis of schools as sites for possible reform where the people at the bottom of the hierarchy in institutions are entitled to more power than they have. although the results reported in this article cannot be generalized, in-service teachers in general can benefit from this study as they can take an active role in their respective communities with their voice and knowledge when they are shared and nurtured with colleagues’ experiences. collaboration is an important source for unlicensed language teachers to find avenues to master their craft, break down isolation barriers, theorize about teaching, co-construct knowledge, and propose informed initiatives that impact the learning community. this reality exists regardless of the circumstances that put them in the not less demanding position of teaching english. however, i consider that collaboration should not be another external imposition of what others think is good for teachers. this study is about creating opportunities for practitioners who are not professional language teachers, for them to share their knowledge and find a motivation to collaborate with other professionals. finally, it is argued in this paper that an authentic culture of collaboration emerges in a learning community when two factors interplay. one, when there is a relevant problem-solving necessity, and two, when a problem-solving necessity arises from the teachers’ own initiative and willingness to collaborate, since imposed, vertical agendas might hinder sustained collaboration endeavors. these conditions meet to position teachers as knowledge generators in local communities, empowering them to provoke change at higher levels in educative institutions. references aldana, g. n., & cárdenas, m. l. 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(2001). qualitative research and evaluation methods. thousand oaks, us: sage publications. priestly, m., biesta, g., & robinson, s. (2013). teachers as agents of change: teacher agency and emerging models of curriculum. in m. priestly & g. biesta (eds.), reinventing the curriculum: new trends in curriculum policy and practice (pp. 187-206). london, uk: bloomsbury. richards, j. c., & farrell, t. s. c. (2005). professional development for language teachers: strategies for teacher learning. new york, us: cambridge university press. https://doi.org/10.1017/cbo9780511667237. schnellert, l. m. (2011). collaborative inquiry: teacher professional development as situated, responsive co-construction of practice and learning (doctoral dissertation). the university of british columbia, c anada. retrie ved f rom https://circle.ub c.ca/ handle/2429/38245. strauss, a. (1987). qualitative analysis for social scientists. cambridge, uk: cambridge university press. https:// doi.org/10.1017/cbo9780511557842. strauss, a., & corbin, j. (2003). basics of qualitative research: techniques and procedures for developing grounded theory. london, uk: sage publications. tierney, r. j. (2006). teacher and student as assessors: the changing position, expectations and roles for the literacy educator, students and parents. paper presented at the annual meeting of the international reading association, chicago, usa. vygotsky, l. s. (1986/2000). thought and language. cambridge, us: mit press. 87profile: issues teach. prof. dev., vol. 20 no. 1, jan-jun, 2018. issn 1657-0790 (printed) 2256-5760 (online). bogotá, colombia. pages 73-87 unilcensed efl teachers co-constructing knowledge and transforming curriculum... wong, r. m. h. (2011). developing teacher awareness of language use and language knowledge in english classrooms: four longitudinal cases. electronic journal of foreign language teaching, 8(1), 19-38. zeichner, k. (1996). designing educative practicum experiences for prospective teachers. in k. zeichner, s. melnick, & m. l. gomez (eds.), currents of reform in preservice teacher education (pp. 215-234). new york, us: teachers college press. about the author edgar augusto aguirre garzón holds an ma in applied linguistics in tefl from universidad distrital francisco josé de caldas (colombia). he works as a teacher in the school of communication and language at pontificia universidad javeriana (bogotá-colombia). his interests are narrative studies, teachers’ education, and teachers’ professional development. approaching teaching as a complex emotional experience: the teacher professional development stages revisited 231profile: issues teach. prof. dev., vol. 23 no. 2, jul-dec, 2021. issn 1657-0790 (printed) 2256-5760 (online). bogotá, colombia. pages 231-242 https://doi.org/10.15446/profile.v23n2.89181 approaching teaching as a complex emotional experience: the teacher professional development stages revisited abordando la enseñanza como una experiencia emocional compleja: las etapas de desarrollo profesional del maestro revisitadas perla villegas-torres1 m. martha lengeling universidad de guanajuato, guanajuato, mexico along the evolving teaching journey, teachers experience a series of events that allow them to transition from novice to expert. throughout the years, such transition has been the object of theories and debates about how this process is carried out, and when it is that teachers move from one stage to the other. this article presents a study of a mexican teacher of english and examines the professional-developmental stages based on huberman’s (1993) career cycle model. its aim is to understand the challenges and decisions a teacher may encounter in her or his career. the article shows the realities a teacher faces by exploring the concepts of emotions, identity, socialization, and agency. moreover, it questions the belief that teachers achieve expertise through accumulating years of practice. keywords: agency, emotions, identity, socialization, teacher professional development durante su carrera, los docentes experimentan eventos que les permiten pasar de principiantes a expertos. a través de los años dicha transición ha sido objeto de debates sobre cómo se lleva a cabo y cuándo se efectúa el cambio. este artículo presenta un estudio de una maestra de inglés mexicana y examina las etapas de su desarrollo profesional basado en el modelo de huberman (1993). el objetivo del artículo es comprender las dificultades y decisiones que un docente encuentra durante su carrera. el artículo ilustra las realidades enfrentadas por una docente mediante la exploración de los conceptos de socialización, identidad, emociones y agencia. adicionalmente, desafía la creencia de que los docentes adquieren experiencia mediante la acumulación de años de enseñanza. palabras clave: agencia, desarrollo profesional docente, emociones, identidad, socialización perla villegas-torres  https://orcid.org/0000-0003-3153-0920 · email: p.villegastorres@ugto.mx m. martha lengeling  https://orcid.org/0000-0002-2570-5002 · email: lengelin@ugto.mx how to cite this article (apa, 7th ed.): villegas-torres, p., & lengeling, m. m. (2021). approaching teaching as a complex emotional experience: the teacher professional development stages revisited. profile: issues in teachers’ professional development, 23(2), 231–242. https:// doi.org/10.15446/profile.v23n2.89181 this article was received on july 15, 2020 and accepted on march 5, 2021. this is an open access article distributed under the terms of the creative commons license attribution-noncommercial-noderivatives 4.0 international license. consultation is possible at https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/ https://doi.org/10.15446/profile.v23n2.89181 https://orcid.org/0000-0003-3153-0920 mailto:p.villegastorres@ugto.mx https://orcid.org/0000-0002-2570-5002 mailto:lengelin@ugto.mx https://doi.org/10.15446/profile.v23n2.89181 https://doi.org/10.15446/profile.v23n2.89181 https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/ universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras232 villegas-torres & lengeling introduction teachers are part of a continuously changing career with a series of events and incidents which allow them to equip themselves with the knowledge and experiences necessary to move towards expertise. in most cases, it is a complex process characterized by continuous highs and lows because of the tremendous struggles that teachers undertake while handling their numerous responsibilities. teachers face situations that challenge their stability and they are also given opportunities to change and grow while dealing with students, collaborating with colleagues at work, or exploring professional ventures in their careers. throughout the years, this process of transitions has been the object of several theories and debates (berliner, 2004; bullough, 1989; burden, 1982; dreyfus, 2004; katz, 1972; to name a few) regarding the different stages that teachers go through. we introduce the participant, violet, by providing a description of who she is and how she became an english as a foreign language (efl) teacher in mexico. next a literature review is provided regarding teacher professional development (often known as teacher development), and huberman’s (1993) teacher career cycle model: agency, emotions, identity, and teacher socialization. then, the methodology section shows how this research was carried out using a qualitative paradigm, a narrative approach, and a semistructured interview to gather data. the section of the data analysis shows the different stages that violet goes through based upon huberman’s (1993) teacher career cycle model. lastly, we offer conclusions of this research. description of the participant’s background: violet we present a description of the participant whose pseudonym is violet. she teaches efl at a public university in the northern region of the state of guanajuato, in central mexico. currently, she is in her early thirties and has worked as an efl teacher for seven years. she feels she was fortunate enough to be hired in the first place where she asked for a job. as most efl teachers in mexico, violet is a non-native english speaker. teaching english was not the job that violet had originally imagined devoting her life to. her first idea was to work in an international business job, and consequently, she studied for and completed a ba in business degree at a large public university. during her studies she felt it was pertinent to simultaneously learn english in the university language department for four years. after graduating, violet decided to travel to the united states as a tourist for a short period of time, but her trip extended to a stay of three years in which violet enrolled in more english classes to strengthen her english level. this stay in the united states was meaningful for her and can perhaps be a consolidation of her english. she narrates the events once that she came back to mexico in the following excerpt: when i came back since i studied international business, i wanted to work at the puerto interior [an interior logistics center near leon, guanajuato], but the salary there was too low and i wanted to continue studying. so, my mom told me: “why don’t you apply at this university [near her home] as an english teacher?” i went and i applied for it. i didn’t want to be a teacher, and they gave me the job and i started to teach. this decision marked the beginning of her journey as an english teacher. she did not plan to be an english teacher, but was offered a job and took it. this represents career entry for violet which is often the case for efl teachers in mexico due to the teachers’ proficiency of english. the next section provides a review of the literature and several concepts in relation to violet’s study. literature review for the purposes of this article, it is fundamental to clarify the concept of teacher professional development, also known as teacher development. as defined by 233profile: issues teach. prof. dev., vol. 23 no. 2, jul-dec, 2021. issn 1657-0790 (printed) 2256-5760 (online). bogotá, colombia. pages 231-242 approaching teaching as a complex emotional experience: the teacher professional development... bell and gilbert (1994) “teacher development can be viewed as teachers’ learning, rather than as others getting teachers to change. in learning, the teachers [construct] their beliefs and ideas, developing their classroom practice, and attending to their feelings associated with changing” (p. 493). this implies that teacher development cannot occur as top-down or imposed knowledge but instead, it is linked to an internal and personal determination to improve as a professional. given the importance that teacher professional development entails in the field of education, this phenomenon has been constantly studied by several authors. in her article, avalos (2011) presents a review of publications spanning a complete decade from 2000 to 2010 regarding the main factors influencing teacher development, such as teacher learning, facilitation, collaboration, reflection processes, cognition, beliefs, and practice. avalos’s conclusion focuses on the fact that more recent research has attained an acknowledgment of the fact that teachers should be “both the subjects and objects of learning and development” (p. 17). in other words, previous literature concerning this area focused on providing teacher training, presenting teachers only as passive knowledge-receptors. conversely, the more recent change consists of showing awareness of the fact that teachers’ internal reflection and cognitive processes are decisive factors which influence teacher professional development. this same idea is reflected in the assertion that teacher professional development is based on constructivism and thus, teachers should be considered at the same time as learners involved in practices of observation, teaching, evaluation, and reflection (dadds, 2001; king & newmann, 2000; lieberman, 1994; mclaughlin & zarrow, 2001; villegas-reimers, 2003). such a constructivist approach implies that teacher development does not occur in a linear way, but rather represents a multi-angular progression in which the already-mentioned cognitive processes are carried out. likewise, yoon et al. (2007) conducted a quantitative study to examine the existing evidence on teacher professional development and to determine whether it can be directly reflected in students’ achievement. after reviewing 1,300 studies that addressed this issue, they found that teachers who receive substantial professional development (meaning an average of 49-hours) can enhance students’ achievement with an indicator of 21 percentile points. this information sheds light on the importance of creating more strategies to boost teacher learning and teacher development. moreover, dede et al. (2009) sustain that most research in this field is limited in presenting anecdotal work, “without providing full details of the participants, setting, research questions, methods of data collection, or analytic strategies” (p. 8). in this sense, the authors urge researchers in the area to carry out more rigorous studies, with the aim of informing and providing stakeholders (practitioners, students, educational institutions, policy-makers, government, funders, etc.) with the necessary knowledge to make decisions and take actions to promote teachers’ learning and development. an objective of this article is to examine in-depth the lived experiences of an efl teacher providing details on the issues that she faces through her labor to inform readers about the particularities related to teacher professional development. previously, a vast amount of literature on models that discuss the various stages of teacher professional development had been published (berliner, 2004; bullough, 1989; burden, 1982; dreyfus, 2004; and katz, 1972; to name a few). all have contributed with different perspectives to shed light on this matter; however, in many cases they promote the common belief that teachers achieve expertise through accumulating years of practice. nevertheless, this idea might not reflect what happens in the actual practice, being that every teacher is unique in their teacher development. the analysis presented in this article is guided by huberman’s (1993) teacher career cycle model of professional development. this model is used with the aim of exploring the stages of a teacher’s career. universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras234 villegas-torres & lengeling such a model is organized in seven stages. huberman uses these seven stages to describe the teacher’s career cycle of professional development. the first one is the “career entry: survival and discovery”, and according to the author it might occur during the first three years of teaching. the second stage is “stabilization,” which might go along four to six years of teaching. around the seventh to the 25th year of teaching, two stages might intermittently take place: “experimentation/ diversification” and “reassessment/interrogation.” these two stages are interrelated, and teachers might go back and forward between them. similarly, any of these teachers may advance towards the following stages of “serenity” or “conservatism” approximately occurring in the space from 26 to 33 years of teaching. teachers can also continuously interchange positions between these two stages or move forward to the final stage known as “disengagement,” which is often described with adjectives such as serene or bitter. there are several reasons for which this model was selected among the others. one of them is that as opposed to other models, it acknowledges that teacher development is not necessarily carried out in a linear or sequential process. huberman explains this with the following: “it represents the development of a profession rather than a successive series of punctual events. not always are the cycles experienced in the same order, nor do all the members of a profession traverse each sequence” (p. 3). in a similar manner, huberman points out that all teachers do not necessarily follow the same fixed pattern in their development by stating that “the sequences characterize the majority of the cases, but never a whole population” (p. 3). another feature acknowledged in this model is that every teacher represents a unique situation with its own special characteristics. therefore, it allows certain flexibility in the study of professional development. huberman (1993) points out: for some, this process may appear linear, for others there are stages, regressions, dead-ends, and unpredictable changes. there are some people who never stop exploring, who never stabilize or who destabilize for psychological reasons. there are people who stabilize early, some later, and some never, some stabilize only to be destabilized. (p. 5) this excerpt also offers the notion that psychological and emotional factors may be involved in the process of professional development. similarly, in their study, malderez et al. (2007) suggest that the process of becoming a teacher involves an experience filled with both positive and negative emotions. this situation becomes especially evident during the first teaching experiences in which teachers tend to overemphasize their difficulties within the classroom. in many cases, teachers might develop a feeling of frustration and defeat that generates the idea of abandoning the profession. this phenomenon is known as teacher burnout which maslach and jackson (1981) define as a set of symptoms that include “depersonalization” (meaning a loss of sense of their own reality), “reduced personal accomplishment,” as well as “emotional exhaustion” (p. 104). such symptoms can make teachers feel overwhelmed with negative emotions (maslach et al., 1996) and thus, they become unable to assertively handle a class. also related to these ideas is teacher identity which, according to norton (2000), has a complex composition since it is fluidly constructed through social interaction. throughout their careers, teachers’ identity tends to evolve and strengthen due to the accumulation of challenges, as well as the positive and negative experiences throughout the teaching practice. likewise, another concept relevant to the study of professional development is the term of teacher socialization, defined by grusec and hastings (2007) as “the way in which individuals are assisted in becoming members of one or more social groups” (p. 1). when starting their careers, teachers also learn from their peers in both formal and informal situations while 235profile: issues teach. prof. dev., vol. 23 no. 2, jul-dec, 2021. issn 1657-0790 (printed) 2256-5760 (online). bogotá, colombia. pages 231-242 approaching teaching as a complex emotional experience: the teacher professional development... they socialize, observe, reflect, and imitate their peers’ practices. moreover, participation in different social settings allows cognitive development (lantolf, 2000). in this sense, teachers learn while functioning in different social roles. knowledge is acquired not only from training programs and peer support, but also from different personal, professional, and social experiences. the guidance and support from a more experienced teacher are fundamental in helping teachers to advance in their learning. method in this section we describe the research methodology and the techniques used to carry out this study. qualitative research according to denzin and lincoln (2005) qualitative research attempts to “interpret phenomena in terms of the meanings people bring to them” (p. 3). for this study, this paradigm supports the researchers to establish direct contact with the participants to collect narratives. it also helps to reconstruct the participants’ stories and lived experiences in order to maintain the essence of their accounts. correspondingly, qualitative research results appropriate when it comes to studying social and human sciences, because “it allows to capture a more human, emotional, and cultural side of the investigation” (creswell, 2012, p. 40). for the analysis of the efl teacher’s professional development, emotions play an important role in violet’s career. mack et al. (2005) state that “the strength of qualitative research is its ability to provide complex textual descriptions about the ‘human’ side of an issue. it is effective in identifying behaviors, beliefs, opinions, emotions, and relationships of individuals” (p. 1). in this study, the participant’s narratives were collected in order to have a broad overview of her experiences and identify the elements involved in her teacher professional development. narratives narrative inquiry represents a pathway to understand experience. under this frame, the researcher is able to collect the life experiences from participants to tailor stories that capture their fundamental nature, and finally interprets them in narratives of their experience (hatch & wisniewski, 2002). this method allows the empowerment of the participants by means of telling their stories. empowering relationships involve “feelings of connectedness that are developed in situations of equality, caring and mutual purpose, and intention” (connelly & clandinin, 1990, p. 4). this study presents and interprets the participant’s story to understand its connection with teacher professional development. data collection: semi-structured interviews lapan et al. (2011) point out that “semi-structured interviews use a detailed guide to focus on life-chapters, critical life episodes, or specific self-defining memories” (p. 60). taking this as a guideline, after signing a previous consent form the participant was interviewed, examining events that shaped the participant’s career entry and the different stages she went through as a professional. the interview was recorded and transcribed to subsequently proceed to the data analysis. to carry out this study, the teacher’s accounts were first collected, in order to learn about her own experience as an efl teacher. from these stories, her personal ideologies and beliefs were identified, as well as her self-perception. data analysis and discussion before approaching the phases, a point worth mentioning that bullough (1989) brings to this discussion is that most preservice teachers construct a fantasy in which they picture their future class as an ideal one. nonetheless, after becoming novice teachers and having their first teaching experiences, they face difficulties in diverse aspects, such as lacking strategies and techniques universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras236 villegas-torres & lengeling for classroom management, administrative pressures, and language proficiency, among others. due to all these job-related complexities, they soon reach the extreme opposite and develop feelings of insecurity. regarding violet’s case, she did not have a certain time to idealize how her classes would be. instead of imaging herself as an efl teacher, she used to visualize her future as a businesswoman. nevertheless, while seeking a job with a higher income, she decided to try teaching. in this section, we relate violet’s narrative to four stages of huberman’s (1993) teacher career cycle model of teacher professional development: (a) career entry, (b) stabilization, (c) experimentation/diversification, and (d) reassessment. career entry huberman’s (1993) model designates the first stage of teacher professional development as career entry. at the same time, he establishes two sub concepts to define this stage: survival and discovery. this first step represents for teachers the hardships of attempting a new career, along with the opportunity to explore the diverse possibilities to solve those hardships. the participant shares her experience as follows: i had no clue; i just started to teach. i remember like a month after [starting my teaching job] i did not want to be a teacher. i wanted to quit but then my ego was like: “ok, i have to finish this quarter and that’s it, then you can go on.” the participant’s description of her first days teaching coincides with the description that huberman (1993) gives about the period of career entry. the author describes it as a period of both survival and discovery. what is more, he adds the survival aspect has to do with the reality shock, in which most teachers experience strong feelings of insecurity. in violet’s words, these first negative emotions constitute the first red flag that might take the teacher towards an accelerated burnout. maslach and jackson (1981) sustain that one of the symptoms burnout includes is a feeling of depersonalization, which violet shows when not considering herself a teacher. another feeling associated with burnout is poor personal achievement, which is reflected in violet’s idea of only finishing the semester. her statement also shows a certain level of frustration since she was not trained to teach, so that during this period she considered leaving the profession. insecurity becomes the most representative emotion of novice teachers, as shown in the following excerpt: i didn’t feel comfortable speaking in front of people, being observed and questioned. i’m very…how can i say it… insecure. i tend to blush very often, which i hate and as a teacher it is awful. i was so nervous, and then students would ask many questions. so, i had to learn to control myself in order to answer those questions and to help my students to understand. it was a big problem for me. in effect, huberman (1993) sustains that during the survival stage of career entry teachers tend to feel uncomfortable working in front of the group, suffering from “the vacillation of hostility and intimacy towards one’s pupils and uncertainty about the classroom environment” (p. 5). the feeling of preoccupation with the teacher self seems to increase when dealing “with unruly or intimidating students” (p. 5). probably this comes as a product of the teacher’s inexperience and lack of strategies to deal with defiant students, as violet’s account confirms: i remember once that i got into the classroom and a male student was like “oh, it’s a lady.” i’m very insecure and i was like “oh, my god, i’m in trouble.” i started to doubt my knowledge, to feel that my english knowledge was not enough, and i started to hesitate and that does not help in my development. . . . sometimes there are some students who feel they know everything and that makes me feel like that. this excerpt gives evidence of the creation of a vicious circle: the more a teacher vacillates, the more 237profile: issues teach. prof. dev., vol. 23 no. 2, jul-dec, 2021. issn 1657-0790 (printed) 2256-5760 (online). bogotá, colombia. pages 231-242 approaching teaching as a complex emotional experience: the teacher professional development... the students challenge her or his authority. nevertheless, this is a commonly occurring situation during this beginning stage. related to this problem is the teachers’ “difficulty of combining instruction and classroom management” (huberman, 1993, p. 5). the novice teacher’s lack of knowledge and experience manifests itself through a frantic search for strategies and activities to compensate for this problem, as shown in the following comment: my main challenge at that time was how to plan my lessons, i didn’t know how to organize my classes and the materials. many of the classes that i was teaching at the university were a copy of what my teachers did in the states. so, if i wanted to introduce an activity, i just remembered my teachers from the states. according to the above, violet felt she had a lack of knowledge to plan a lesson at the beginning of her teaching practice. this fact drew her to imitate the way in which her former teachers worked. regarding this issue, lortie (1975) proposes the concept of apprenticeship of observation which considers that teachers start learning from their former teachers who act as models. consequently, this influence can be seen when novice teachers decide to imitate the way in which they were taught. among her teachers, violet chose a specific teacher who served as a role model. in the next excerpt she further explains the reasons for her choice: i don’t like to speak in front of people . . . when i was studying in the states, i had a teacher who spoke five different languages, including spanish. once i did not understand something and he said “ok, don’t worry,” and he explained it to me in spanish. he never said anything like “hey guys! she doesn’t understand” and he was like “ok, don’t worry. i will explain it to you in your own language” and that affected in my life; that’s what i want to do when a student is shy. [sic] in reference to the participant’s comment, numrich (1996) explains that normally novice teachers decide to promote or to avoid specific instructional strategies based on their previous positive or negative experiences. to transition to the stabilization stage, teachers require support from more experienced peers, experience and knowledge that will allow them to develop their own teaching identity as well as to develop and improve their pedagogical strategies. in the following excerpt, violet narrates the way in which one of her coworkers supported her: “i didn’t know how to plan my lessons, or how to organize them, so juan helped me to have an idea of how to organize my classes.” this teaching peer helped her with practical knowledge of the profession, which increased her self-confidence as a teacher. this in turn made her consider teaching as a serious profession. violet elaborates more on this matter: i started to enjoy teaching and yes that’s how it happened. it was weird because i did not want it at first, but then i liked it. that was why i started to study the ba [in english language teaching] because i liked to teach after two–three months teaching, and then i started the ba. huberman (1993) sustains that in addition to surviving, the stage of career entry also involves an element of discovery. regarding this, he mentions that the teacher has “the enthusiasm of the beginner, the headiness of finally being in a position of responsibility” (huberman, 1993, p. 5). the author explains that even when the survival and discovery phases are experienced in parallel, usually one is more dominant than the other. violet’s accounts place her more often on the survival side. nonetheless, entering the ba program in english language teaching (elt) marked a starting point to her developmental process. when i entered the ba, i changed a lot. i learned how to organize my lessons. i did not pay attention to the lessons or approaches. i started to play with everything: “i learned this, ok i’m gonna apply it. i learned that and i’m gonna apply it.” so, i started to play with the universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras238 villegas-torres & lengeling methodologies, approaches, or whatever thing they taught us in the ba. the eclectic methodology that violet used during this time coincides with huberman’s claim that the entry stage includes a sort of exploration. as he comments “exploration consists of making provisional choices, of investigating the contours of the new profession and with experimenting with one or several roles” (huberman, 1993, p. 5). however, this continuous trial and error period should not be interpreted by teachers as falling into erratic behavior. conversely, this exploration will allow them to understand better the particularities of the profession and eventually to find their own teaching style. from here teachers will move to the next stage as in the case of violet. stabilization at some point in the teaching journey, after solving the initial intricacies that entering a new career entails and getting a more advanced level of socialization, teachers are able to gain a certain level of confidence in their practice. such confidence is jointly reflected with the development of agency, which may trigger a desire for growing professionally, that is, teachers find themselves at the door of starting their professional development. the next excerpt illustrates violet’s passage through a transitional period in which she moved from the career entry to the stabilization stage: when i entered the ba, i changed a lot. i learned how to organize my lessons. i started to feel more comfortable because i felt i have the roots, or i have some knowledge about teaching. so, i thought: “ok, now i can say that i’m a teacher because i’m learning so maybe i’m doing everything wrong but i’m learning so i can experiment with everything.” as violet explains, starting the ba program in elt brought her a feeling of confidence. it was then that she felt validated as a teacher within her educational institution with the knowledge she had obtained in the degree program. in this period, she tries to put into practice what she sees in the ba and she is more confident as a teacher. for huberman (1993) this behavior is a sign that the teacher has entered the stabilization stage, which is characterized by “an increased confidence, comfort, and a shift away from self-absorption. one is less preoccupied with oneself, and more concerned with instructional matters” (p. 6). after crossing the turmoil, the teachers’ pressures are lessened. the new feeling of comfort can be noticed in the following excerpt: in my personal life, i’m just shy. for me it is very difficult to go and to talk. if i am like that in the classroom, students do not like it. they expect to see somebody more active. i have to be more extroverted, to look happier, like the opposite that i am. it seems that this conscious decision-making adds to violet’s professional identity and indicates the transition to the stabilization stage. norton (2000) affirms that identity is a fluid process, and here we can see how violet accommodates herself to the new environment and assumes her role as a teacher. she takes on characteristics that she considers are expected and needed for this role. huberman (1993) states that “the choice of a professional identity constitutes a decisive stage in ego development and reflects a stronger affirmation of the self ” (p. 6). according to huberman, these factors might put the continuity of teacher professional development at risk. in the next excerpt, violet details the consequences of falling into a comfort zone. i think that for a period i got stuck. i think that it is because i was confident, and i started using the same strategy. i was not even preparing the class or material to engage my students. apparently, reflecting upon and acknowledging her own conformative attitude led violet to consider new 239profile: issues teach. prof. dev., vol. 23 no. 2, jul-dec, 2021. issn 1657-0790 (printed) 2256-5760 (online). bogotá, colombia. pages 231-242 approaching teaching as a complex emotional experience: the teacher professional development... venues for her teaching career. thus, how long a teacher remains in the stabilization stage depends mostly on his or her introspection and reflection ability. only in this manner will the person be able to move on in the developmental process. considering violet’s case, she took agency of her decisions and moved to the stage of experimentation or diversification. experimentation/diversification according to huberman’s (1993) teacher career cycle model, once being at the stabilization stage, the teachers’ journey can take two possible directions: opening their way to reach the stage of experimentation and diversification or going to the stage of reassessment, depending on the teacher’s decisions and attitudes. violet’s account shows that in her case she opted for experimenting. then i started to change again and i decided like “ok, let’s go back to the basis, and try to explore again” and i tried to experiment again because i think that’s the way we can improve. as violet manifests, being in a state of stability led her to feel dissatisfied and to look for new challenges. this shows how a reflective teacher can make decisions. huberman (1993) expands on this situation sustaining that “pedagogical consolidation leads to increase one’s impact in the classroom. teachers embark on a series of personal experiments by diversifying their instructional materials, their methods of evaluation, or their instructional sequences” (p. 8). this perhaps refers to how the teachers have gained control over initial concerns that they faced at career entry, such as classroom management, planning and presenting a class, as well as handling the diverse procedures imposed by the administration. violet elaborates more on this issue in the following comment: i’m still learning, because sometimes i was working with some ideas that i liked, but then i noticed they didn’t work with my students. i’m still developing my profile as a teacher: “ok, this can work here; this cannot work here.” so, i cannot say that i have one way of teaching. in the above excerpt violet shows concern not only about delivering a class, but also, she wants to excel in the use of effective strategies to improve her students’ learning. this coincides with huberman’s (1993) argument that: teachers’ desires to heighten their impact in the classroom leads to an awareness of instructional factors blocking that objective and, from there, to press for more consequential reforms. teachers in this phase could be the most highly motivated and dynamic. (p. 8) this willingness of advancing towards expertise leads teachers to search for diverse opportunities that foster professional development. despite this continuous search for improving her teaching practice, violet still finds herself insecure at times. she has learned to explore in her teaching and reflect, but she is not entirely secure of her choice of teaching methodology. this attitude might be interpreted as evidence that violet is moving to the stage of reassessment. reassessment as denominated in huberman’s (1993) model, this stage’s name suggests that teachers take a step back to allow reflection on their own teaching practice. during this period, they might look at the journey they have taken so far and ponder on the need to make some adjustments to their beliefs, attitudes, or pedagogical practices. in violet’s experience, it is possible to identify the reassessment stage in the following: sometimes i feel like in the beginning, very insecure. i don’t know why. i don’t know if it’s a process, or it’s because i haven’t finished my thesis. i think that has affected my development as a teacher and i feel insecure. i’m like: “i cannot tell them [my students] something because i haven’t even finished.” universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras240 villegas-torres & lengeling huberman (1993) states that this feeling is part of the stage of reassessment, which is described as “a stage of self-doubt” or “period of uncertainty” in which the teacher “examines what one has made of one’s life,” and compares it “against one’s initial ideas and objectives. one may then decide whether continuing in the same path or striking out but with more uncertainty and insecurity on a new path” (p. 8). this episode in the professional teaching journey can be taken as a growing opportunity when the teacher is able to acknowledge the weak points in order to strengthen them. once again, socialization plays an important role here, since more experienced peers might guide the teacher to find alternatives to pursue his or her objectives. despite the negative emotions associated with the fact of not having formally obtained her degree, violet continues searching for options to continue fostering her professional development. in the following excerpt she expresses this idea: now i think i am stuck, but i am willing to learn; that is why i’m trying to go in these free online courses, even though i don’t do them as i would like. i would like to have more time, but i think that they are helping me in some way; i can continue learning even though i haven’t finished my thesis. as shown in the data describing her professional journey, violet has frequently faced several highs and lows which, when interpreting huberman’s (1993) teacher career cycle model, promote the transition from one stage to the other. remarkably, violet seems to be aware of this idea in her practice, since she summarized her teaching career as follows: “it’s been a roller coaster! so, sometimes i feel good or bad. i think that i’m doing well because whatever thing i learned, it is helping me. but then i realize that no, i must do some changes” [sic]. regarding huberman’s (1993) career cycle model, violet’s case illustrates the way in which teachers’ careers evolve. as in most of cases, her journey has been full of complexities including emotions, challenging situations, achievements, opportunities of socialization, weaknesses, and strengths that have shaped her identity, as well as her agency to pursue her own professional development. the search for professional development pushes her upwards and allows her to overcome the difficulties that emerge daily. conclusion this study has revisited huberman’s (1993) teacher career cycle model of teacher professional development. the findings obtained challenge the common belief that expertise goes hand in hand with the number of years teaching. the analysis shows that the level of expertise that a teacher develops does not depend on the number of years working in this profession. in their developmental process, teachers can sometimes move from one stage to another because of certain events or circumstances in their teaching practice. in some instances, such events trigger positive emotions and attitudes, and in other instances negative ones. these emotions and attitudes modify teachers’ behavior and thus, they end up having an impact on professional development. even though huberman’s teacher career cycle model provides an estimation of the years a teacher may take to transition from one stage to the other, it also recognizes that each instance is different. people with whom teachers socialize become an important influence in their professional careers; either when a relative or friend influences their career choice, when remembering and applying the techniques of a role-model teacher from the past, or during the peer-socialization process. all these shareholders, in combination with the varied experiences faced in the teaching practice, contribute to shaping teachers’ identity and love for the profession. in no case should teaching be considered a solitary activity, and even when there may be cases in which teachers’ personality prompts an isolated practice, since they might not be advancing in their level of knowledge and quality of teaching. 241profile: issues teach. prof. dev., vol. 23 no. 2, jul-dec, 2021. issn 1657-0790 (printed) 2256-5760 (online). bogotá, colombia. pages 231-242 approaching teaching as a complex emotional experience: the teacher professional development... it is fundamental to increase the production of scientific research in this field, with the aim of documenting and informing practitioners on the developmental process that teachers go through during their careers. furthermore, it is essential to examine this knowledge especially for preservice and novice teachers who are at a greater risk of experiencing burnout or even of leaving the profession. nevertheless, it is important to change teachers’ notion of failure within the classroom to the notion of the appreciation of an opportunity to learn and improve. novice teachers should know that not everything that goes wrong within the classroom is their fault, and that eventually, with adequate guidance and increased knowledge, they will be able to reach expertise. finally, an important aspect to remark on is that taking agency of one’s own emotions is a long process. as has been observed in this study, even though violet has developed the ability to take on a professional identity when being in front of the classroom, she still finds herself overwhelmed with emotions, such as insecurity. nevertheless, this challenge makes teachers transform their own identity in a positive way. the positive attitude towards professional development boosts teachers upwards in the path towards professional development. violet seems to have a genuine interest in creating a positive impact on her students’ learning. to sum this up, at the end of the semistructured interview, violet was asked to define her teaching philosophy to which she answered: “i want to inspire my students.” this shows how violet sees herself as a teacher and the role that she takes on. her students are important for her, and this authentic concern for overcoming her own weaknesses in teaching constitutes the motivation to make decisions that will bring her closer to reaching expertise. references avalos, b. (2011). teacher professional development in teaching and teacher education over ten years. teaching and teacher education, 27(1), 10–20. https:// doi.org/10.1016/j.tate.2010.08.007 bell, b., & gilbert, j. (1994). teacher development as professional, personal, and social development. teaching and teacher education, 10(5), 483–497. https://doi. org/10.1016/0742-051x(94)90002-7 berliner, d. c. (2004). describing the behavior and documenting the accomplishments of expert teachers. bulletin of science, technology & society, 24(3), 200–212. https://doi.org/10.1177/0270467604265535 bullough, r. v. (1989). first-year teacher: a case study. teachers college press. burden, p. r. (1982). implications of teacher career development: new roles for teachers, administrators, and professors. action in teacher education, 4(3–4), 21–26. https://doi.org/10.1080/01626620.1982.10519117 connelly, f. m., & clandinin, d. j. (1990). stories of experience and narrative inquiry. educational researcher, 19(5), 2–14. https://doi.org/10.3102/0013189x019005002 creswell, j. w. (2012). qualitative inquiry and research design: choosing among five approaches (3rd ed.). sage. dadds, m. (2001). continuing development: nurturing the expert within. in j. soler, a. craft, & h. burgess (eds.), teacher development: exploring our own practice (pp. 50–56). paul chapman publishing and the open university. dede, c., jass ketelhut, d., whitehouse, p., breit, l., & mccloskey, e. m. (2009). a research agenda for online teacher professional development. journal of teacher education, 60(1), 8–19. https://doi. org/10.1177/0022487108327554 denzin, n. k., & lincoln, y. s. (eds.). (2005). the sage handbook of qualitative research (3rd ed.). sage. d re y f us , s . e . ( 2 0 04 ) . t he f ive st age mo d el of a du lt s k i l l a c qu i s it i on . bu l l e t in of s c i e n c e , technology & society, 24(3), 177–181. https://doi. org/10.1177/0270467604264992 grusec, j. e., & hastings, p. d. (2007). handbook of socialization: theory and research. the guilford press. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.tate.2010.08.007 https://doi.org/10.1016/j.tate.2010.08.007 https://doi.org/10.1016/0742-051x(94)90002-7 https://doi.org/10.1016/0742-051x(94)90002-7 https://doi.org/10.1177/0270467604265535 https://doi.org/10.1080/01626620.1982.10519117 https://doi.org/10.3102/0013189x019005002 https://doi.org/10.1177/0022487108327554 https://doi.org/10.1177/0022487108327554 https://doi.org/10.1177/0270467604264992 https://doi.org/10.1177/0270467604264992 universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras242 villegas-torres & lengeling hatch, j. a., & wisniewski, r. (eds.). (2002). life history and narrative. routledge. https://doi.org/10.4324/ 9780203486344 huberman, a. m. (1993). the lives of teachers. cassell. katz, l. g. (1972). developmental stages of preschool teachers. the elementary school journal, 73(1), 50–54. https://doi. org/10.1086/460731 king, m. b., & newmann, f. m. (2000). will teacher learning advance school goals? phi delta kappan, 81(8), 576–580. lantolf, j. p. (2000). sociocultural theory and second language learning. oxford university press. lapan, s. d., quartaroli, m. t., & riemer, f. j. (eds.). (2011). qualitative research: an introduction to methods and designs. john wiley & sons. lieberman, a. (1994). teacher development: commitment and challenge. in p. p. grimmet & j. neufeld (ed.), teacher development and the struggle for authenticity: professional growth and restructuring in the context of change. teachers college press. lortie, d. c. (1975). schoolteacher: a sociological study (1st ed.). the university of chicago. mack, n., woodsong, c., macqueen, k. m., guest, g., & namey, e. (2005). qualitative research methods: a data collectors’ field guide. family health international. malderez, a., hobson, a. j., tracey, l., & kerr, k. (2007). becoming a student teacher: core features of the experience. european journal of teacher education, 30(3), 225–248. https://doi.org/10.1080/02619760701486068 maslach, c., & jackson, s. e. (1981). the measurement of experienced burnout. journal of organizational behavior, 2(2), 99–113. https://doi.org/10.1002/job.4030020205 maslach, c., jackson, s. e., & leiter, m. p. (1996). maslach burnout inventory manual (3rd ed.). consulting psychologists press. mclaughlin, m. w., & zarrow, j. (2001). teachers engaged in evidence-based reform: trajectories of teachers’ inquiry, analysis, and action. in a. lieberman & l. miller (eds.), teachers caught in the action: professional development that matters (pp. 79–101). teachers college press. norton, b. (2000). identity and language learning: gender, ethnicity and educational change. dunken. numrich, c. (1996). on becoming a language teacher: insights from diary studies. tesol quarterly, 30(1), 131–153. https:// doi.org/10.2307/3587610 villegas-reimers, e. (2003). teacher professional development: an international review of the literature. international institute for educational planning. yoon, k. s., duncan, t., lee, s. w.-y., scarloss, b., & spapley, k. l. (2007). reviewing the evidence on how teacher professional development affects student achievement. institute for education sciences. about the authors perla villegas-torres holds a master’s degree in applied linguistics in elt (universidad de guanajuato, mexico), and a bachelor’s degree in elt (universidad de guanajuato, mexico). currently, she teaches at the universidad de guanajuato. she has published several articles and presented in national and international conferences. m. martha lengeling holds a master’s degree in tesol (west virginia university, usa) and a phd in language studies (kent university, uk). she teaches at the universidad de guanajuato and is a member of the national system of researchers (sistema nacional de investigadores). https://doi.org/10.4324/9780203486344 https://doi.org/10.4324/9780203486344 https://doi.org/10.1086/460731 https://doi.org/10.1086/460731 https://doi.org/10.1080/02619760701486068 https://doi.org/10.1002/job.4030020205 https://doi.org/10.2307/3587610 https://doi.org/10.2307/3587610 profile: issues teach. prof. dev., vol. 20 no. 2, jul-dec, 2018. issn 1657-0790 (printed) 2256-5760 (online). bogotá, colombia. pages 9-14 editorial 9 https://doi.org/10.15446/profile.v20n2.71948 editorial1* challenges in sustaining a peripheral journal the role of high-quality peripheral journals, which all face huge challenges a decade into the 21st century, is fundamental in the development of science. (salager-meyer, 2014, p. 81) scientific knowledge reaches its audience mainly through consultation of scientific textbooks and scientific journals. the first provide established knowledge while the second aim at presenting state of the art topics of recent delivery and that need to be socialized within a scientific community. furthermore, journals, in turn, are of a different nature. those originating in first world countries are classed as “mainstream” journals, whereas those originating in developing countries are known as small/peripheral periodicals (salagermeyer, 2014). notice here the distinction between the two. for many scholars and people involved in the editorial industry, developed countries produce journals while developing countries produce periodicals. “mainstream” journals are the publishing goal for many researchers worldwide. these very competitive milieus demand the fulfilment of a series of high standards from researchers but also offer them great visibility. this visibility is, nowadays perhaps more than before, mainly ensured through the incorporation of the journals’ contents into powerful, worldwide managers of information and knowledge such as thomson reuters (2018), a leading company concerned with spreading “intelligence, technology, and human expertise” and which is present in more than 100 countries. among its most salient traits, we find that thomson reuters offers a comprehensive series of indexes that cover a wide range of scientific knowledge (e.g., the science citation index, the social science citation index, or the arts and humanities citation index). most of the indexed articles are in english, and users generally pay a fee to access or download contents. small/peripheral periodicals are in general the target for researchers in local contexts. local journals publish articles in the local language of the country or region of the researchers, * how to cite this article (apa, 6th ed.): cárdenas, m. l., & nieto cruz, m. c. (2018). editorial: challenges in sustaining a peripheral journal. profile: issues in teachers’ professional development, 20(2), 9-14. https://doi. org/10.15446/profile.v20n2.71948. this editorial was received on april 30, 2018, and accepted on may 8, 2018. this is an open access article distributed under the terms of the creative commons license attributionnoncommercial-noderivatives 4.0 international license. consultation is possible at https://creativecommons. org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/. universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras cárdenas & nieto cruz 10 occasionally in english and under some circumstances in bilingual issues. the command of english seems to be an issue for local researchers, a fact that may hinder their participation in mainstream publications. the publishing houses are usually academic agents as universities and associations that assure their presence basically because of their academic interest and commitment of the editorial boards that have to struggle for budgets and infrastructure. with this in mind, we may review the characteristics of profile to try and decide whether it is a mainstream or a peripheral journal. if the language of publication is the first consideration, profile publishes in english and has done that from the very first issue. now, with respect to indexes, the articles published by profile have gained presence in the following indexing systems and databases: the emerging sources citation index latindex dialnet scielo colombia iresie (índice de revistas de educación superior e investigación educativa) doaj the directory of open access journals the european reference index for the humanities and the social sciences (erih plus) redalyc red de revistas científicas de américa latina y el caribe, españa y portugal red iberoamericana de innovación y conocimiento científico redib publindex(category b) some databases provide a classification of locally produced scientific journals like, in colombia, publindex; others feed latin american or ibero-american sources like scielo and redib and even others open the path in europe via databases like erihplus and dialnet. profile is part of local and international citation indexes and adheres to the demands of international guidelines: provision of instructions for writers, the use of descriptors and metadata in english, internationally acknowledged peer review, and a strong academic committee. furthermore, the official website of the journal operates under the open journal system (ojs) which allows readers free access to consult and download all published articles. profile: issues teach. prof. dev., vol. 20 no. 2, jul-dec, 2018. issn 1657-0790 (printed) 2256-5760 (online). bogotá, colombia. pages 9-14 editorial 11 the fact that the profile journal is having an international impact (despite starting its history as a local endeavor) can be attested by the growing number of articles by authors outside colombia, including not just latin american countries, such as chile, mexico, and argentina, but countries from other continents as well (e.g., india, iran, and turkey in asia or spain and the uk in europe). in 2017, there was a supplement entirely dedicated to articles from spain and turkey (see, vol. 19, suppl. 1). therefore, our challenges are to continue being an important referent as regards colombian, latin american, european, and why not, worldwide researchers working in the same area of knowledge and to sustain a journal in a developing country with limited resources. our academic field goes beyond international boundaries and unites us as teachers and researchers interested in the spread of knowledge created in one context but possibly applicable in another. another instance of the increasing perception of the journal as an international publication is the interest from scholars around the world to serve as members of its scientific or review committees. currently, 58 of the 70 members of both committees are from outside colombia. this undoubtedly has an impact on the evaluation and selection processes as the diversity in points of view of the journal’s reviewers helps us produce content that is more in tune with current global discussions. in that sense, we value the work of our reviewers not just for their willingness to participate, but also for their assistance in making the contents of the journal relevant for a wider audience. precisely, brazilian professor maria helena vieira, one of those dedicated scholars, has reached her retirement and has decided to leave the review board of the journal. we do not want to let this opportunity pass without acknowledging professor viera’s contribution to the journal for over a decade. we wish her the best in her upcoming projects. we have reviewed the characteristics of profile to try and decide whether it is a mainstream or a peripheral journal. we have analysed the parameters under which it operates and we can say that these correspond to a high-quality journal, a journal from the periphery that is putting forth its best effort to produce science that is validated by local and international communities. this edition contains fifteen articles. in the first section, issues from teacher researchers, we have gathered thirteen articles. we start with chris banister’s study from the united kingdom. in his article, the author depicts a teacher-researcher’s experience of scaffolding his business english learners in identifying, formulating, and exploring language learning puzzles using the principles of exploratory practice. learners’ enthusiasm for puzzles and the tensions that emerge, along with practical recommendations for teacher-researchers in similar contexts, invite us to inquire into the distinctions between puzzles and problems. we continue with four studies concerning teacher education. first, maría del rosario reyes-cruz, griselda murrieta-loyo, and moisés damián perales-escudero report on research self-efficacy beliefs, research motivation, and perceptions of research importance and research obstacles of a group of professors and lecturers of foreign languages at three universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras cárdenas & nieto cruz 12 mexican universities. we believe their findings will contribute to our understanding of the possibilities educators have to engage in research and the goals that can be achieved in light of researchers’ perceptions and teaching realities. next, leidy yisel gómezvásquez and carmen helena guerrero nieto tell us about a study carried out to trace the configuration of professional subjectivities by analyzing the narratives of four colombian non-native english speaking teachers (nnests) who work in different universities and schools in colombia. the framework of language policies allowed them to uncover the role knowledge and reflection play in teachers’ processes of acceptance or rejection and to what extent subjectivities are influenced by others. after that, ferney cruz arcila, from king’s college london, united kingdom, addresses the issue of teaching english in rural colombia through the analysis of teachers’ narratives and field observations. bearing in mind the perspective of language teaching as a socially sensitive practice, we discover that the examination of four examples of such practices inform us about teachers’ resourcefulness to make the most of their expertise despite having to contend with limited resources and their attempts to help students make sense of english. on the other hand, mexican authors virna velázquez and edgar emmanuell garcía present an investigation on the effectiveness of strategies and decisions formulated in foreign language planning to ensure learners’ language achievement in a higher education context which trains learners to become english or french teachers or translators. this theme, which has not been explored much in scientific publications, sheds light on shortcomings in foreign language planning that need the educational community’s consideration. the following eight articles focus on english language teaching (elt) issues at different levels. in the first one, colombian teachers ingrid rocío suárez ramírez and sandra milena rodríguez report on language interaction among english as a foreign language (efl) primary learners and their teacher through collaborative task-based learning. as can be read in their article, the examination of classroom interaction involved conversational analysis and showed interesting and unexpected patterns of interactions among students and their teacher as well as changes in the classroom dynamics informed by the monitoring of the authors’ research process. the subsequent four articles address aspects of oral communication. chilean authors erika de la barra, sylvia veloso, and lorena maluenda share with us their study on the integration of assessment while working on helping university students develop oral competences. based on the principles of content and language integrated learning (clil), and through the design and pedagogical implementation of two rubrics, the authors could raise students’ language awareness in oral production and unveil their perceptions of such assessment alternatives. on the other hand, colombian teachers martin javier caicedo pereira, jhonny alexander lozano bermúdez, and luis alfonso vanegas medina present a study conducted with both university and pre-university students. the authors’ account lets us know how they explored alternatives to encourage students to improve english oral accuracy and grammatical range through self-assessment of video speech drafts. profile: issues teach. prof. dev., vol. 20 no. 2, jul-dec, 2018. issn 1657-0790 (printed) 2256-5760 (online). bogotá, colombia. pages 9-14 editorial 13 afterwards, we can read the article authored by fabiola arévalo balboa and mark briesmaster, from chile. they gather the results of an action research study about the effect of a thinking routine in the development of coherence in speaking interactions on university students, an aspect that often intrigues teachers in their attempts to make learners competent in oral communication. finally, we have colombian teachers eulices córdoba zúñiga and emerson rangel gutiérrez’s contribution. in their article we can find the description and results of a study on the implementation of meaningful oral tasks to promote listening fluency in ten pre-intermediate efl learners in the elt program of a colombian public university. next come two articles concerning writing and grammar. self and peer correction to improve college students’ writing skills is the theme addressed by mexican authors irais ramírez balderas and patricia maría guillén cuamatzi. they describe college students’ writing development process via the use of self and peer correction and the promotion of error awareness along with the use of an error code and error log. a salient point in this article has to do with the importance of assigning class time to allow students to systematize their writing practices. then we can read a report on an action research study authored by colombian teacher anderson marcell cárdenas, who aimed at helping english language intermediate students tackle grammatical errors in their speech. although the fossilization concept is debatable, we can find how students developed awareness and attentiveness towards their mistakes and learning process. we close this section with the contribution from evelyn gualdron and edna castillo on an extra-curricular initiative. the authors share with us experiences with a theater content-based methodology for l2 learning, supported by professionals in theater and in foreign languages, in an efl theater interdisciplinary group at universidad nacional de colombia. we are pleased to include their study in this edition because our readership can learn how commitment by student-teachers and graduates from a language programme has made it possible to sustain a theater group that has been active since 2008 and contributes to the development of language proficiency among actors of such initiative. we are sure the recommendations derived from the study can contribute to fostering similar innovations in elt. in the second section, issues from novice teacher researchers, we include another study regarding our publication. this time, we are pleased to report on a joint venture in which a novice teacher-researcher, óscar andrés mosquera, the director, and the editor of profile participated. we report on a descriptive study carried out in some articles published in the journal with the purpose of identifying trends in pedagogical approaches in foreign language instruction and research approaches employed by the journal’s authors and their connection with inclusive education. our last section, issues based on reflections and innovations, contains an article coming from a colombian university. erica ferrer ariza and paige m. poole present a teacher development program linked to curriculum renewal. interestingly, the description of key aspects of diverse existing models of teacher and professional development also invite readers to ponder options to meet contextual needs and boost positive change among faculty and students. universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras cárdenas & nieto cruz 14 the preview of the contents of the present issue together with the defining characteristics of profile may invite you to continue participating in our readership and authorship. our visibility depends not only on citation indexes but also on the appropriation we make of the contents, contexts and problems and solutions proposed by our contributors. melba libia cárdenas journal editor maría claudia nieto cruz journal director references salager-meyer, f. (2014). writing and publishing in peripheral scholarly journals: how to enhance the global influence of multilingual scholars? journal of english for academic purposes, 13, 78-82. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jeap.2013.11.003. thomson reuters. (2018). we are the answer company. retrieved from https://www.thomsonreuters. com/en/about-us.html. needs analysis to enhance english language proficiency at a mexican university 145profile: issues teach. prof. dev., vol. 22 no. 2, jul-dec, 2020. issn 1657-0790 (printed) 2256-5760 (online). bogotá, colombia. pages 145-162 https://doi.org/10.15446/profile.v22n2.82247 needs analysis to enhance english language proficiency at a mexican university análisis de necesidades para mejorar el dominio del inglés en una universidad mexicana edgar emmanuell garcia-ponce1 universidad de guanajuato, guanajuato, mexico this study examines the perceptions of employers, university authorities, english teachers and students concerning needs to promote english achievement in a mexican university. by drawing on data collected from focus groups and questionnaires, the evidence suggests that there are several needs which hinder the attainment of english objectives in this higher education context. to address this, the participants’ perceptions are reformulated into a set of recommendations which might be beneficial for this context and other higher education institutions which seek to develop english language competencies in university students. the relevance of this study is that it shows how needs analysis can be used in higher education as a tool to identify needs and formulate context-sensitive solutions for enhancing english achievement. keywords: english language, globalisation, higher education, labour market, needs analysis este estudio explora las percepciones de cuatro grupos de actores sobre las necesidades para promover el rendimiento en inglés dentro de una universidad mexicana. tras recolectar datos de grupos focales y cuestionarios, los resultados sugieren que existen varias necesidades que limitan el logro de los objetivos en el aprendizaje del inglés. para atender estas necesidades, las percepciones de los participantes fueron reformuladas en una serie de recomendaciones que pudieran ser de beneficio para este contexto y otras universidades públicas interesadas en desarrollar el dominio del inglés en estudiantes de diferentes programas. la relevancia del presente estudio se debe a que muestra cómo el análisis de necesidades puede utilizarse en universidades con el fin de identificar carencias y formular soluciones para promover el rendimiento en inglés. palabras clave: análisis de necesidades, enseñanza del inglés, globalización, lengua inglesa, educación superior, mercado laboral edgar emmanuell garcia-ponce  https://orcid.org/0000-0002-5414-3862 · email: ee.garcia@ugto.mx how to cite this article (apa, 7th ed.): garcia-ponce, e. e. (2020). needs analysis to enhance english language proficiency at a mexican university. profile: issues in teachers’ professional development, 22(2), 145–162. https://doi.org/10.15446/profile.v22n2.82247 this article was received on september 13, 2019 and accepted on april 7, 2020. this is an open access article distributed under the terms of the creative commons license attribution-noncommercial-noderivatives 4.0 international license. consultation is possible at https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/ https://orcid.org/0000-0002-5414-3862 https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/ universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras146 garcia-ponce introduction living in a globalised world where there is a flux of people, economy, and knowledge, the need to carry out social, academic, and work-related activities has become apparent. this social phenomenon has significantly impacted on higher education institutions (heis) where practices, such as academic mobility, research, and the insertion to the labour market, are now required to be carried out and strengthened in order to meet international standards (knight, 2010). to achieve this, the english language has played a key role in the internalisation of higher education because it is a tool which is used worldwide for communication and social relations (romo lópez et al., 2005). particularly, english is considered to be the means that promotes opportunities for university students to get jobs in the highly competitive labour market in political, economic, scientific, or academic fields. currently, mexico is increasingly dependent on the growth of its manufacturing sector which has recently been challenged by external competition and gaps in the labour market. in response to these challenges, the mexican government has undertaken massive investment in infrastructure and substantial reforms in education, including plans to increase the english proficiency of the mexican population. previously, having proficiency in the english language was not compulsory for graduates and professionals to get a job in the mexican labour market. however, given the importance of english as an international language and the active role it plays in enabling mexico to become a prominent contributor to the globalised world, english proficiency requirements have changed. currently, having a strong academic background and high proficiency in english are key to finding jobs in the competitive mexican labour market. the new graduates and professionals are now required to show evidence of at least a b2 or c1 proficiency level (according to the common european framework for languages [cefr]) to be considered for many jobs. despite the importance attributed to english as an international language, the general director of the mexican institute for competitiveness confirmed that only 5% of the mexican population speaks and/or understands the language (becerril, 2015). this limited english proficiency constitutes a particular threat to the manufacturing industry in mexico because low english proficiency results in limited opportunities in the labour market for recent graduates (navarro, 2006). the context of the present study, the university of guanajuato, has seen limitations in the linguistic competence of students who graduate from the different ba programmes across the university. this is known by local employers from important industries who claim that they have noted limited english skills of recent graduates from this university, and that this frequently results in not hiring them because most of the vacant positions require high abilities to both produce and comprehend english. in response to the above perceived limitations, two needs analysis (na) cycles were conducted with four groups of stakeholders (i.e., heads of human resources in locally-based multinational companies, university of guanajuato’s authorities and faculty members, language programme directors and teachers, and students from different ba programmes and disciplines) who took part in a series of focus groups and answered questionnaires between january 2018 and february 2019. the present study was guided by two research questions: 1. what are the stakeholders’ expectations, needs, challenges, and recommendations regarding english language achievement at the university of guanajuato? 2. how can these perceptual data be reformulated into a proposal which aims to enhance the english proficiency of students at this university? background in recent years, heis in latin america have felt the need to promote english because it is an instrument 147profile: issues teach. prof. dev., vol. 22 no. 2, jul-dec, 2020. issn 1657-0790 (printed) 2256-5760 (online). bogotá, colombia. pages 145-162 needs analysis to enhance english language proficiency at a mexican university which allows international communication, social and international relations, and the key to the local and international labour market. therefore, these institutions have redirected their efforts towards preparing future professionals with not only disciplinary knowledge, but also skills in the foreign language. however, these efforts have been nuanced by limited flexibility, internationalisation, and technology platforms (romo lópez et al., 2005); and old-fashioned teaching methods, low socioeconomic status of students, and large class sizes (mora vasquez et al., 2013) which have hindered effective english learning and thus expected language achievement in heis. in mexico, only a low percentage of the population speaks english (navarro, 2006). in the university of guanajuato, these limitations have been reformulated into challenges to promote english language education which is (a) of quality, (b) centred on the learner, and (c) based on institutional values with a view to strengthening the interplay between the english language and the liaison with the society. however, as previously mentioned, this university has seen limitations in the english competence of students who graduate from the different ba and bsc programmes. in this case, na plays an important role in understanding the specific learning needs of students and the real expectations of the labour market regarding english language proficiency. however, this process has been greatly overlooked in this university, and has thus ignored ways through which english language achievement can significantly be enhanced. needs analysis: an overview at this stage, it is important to define na. in language education, na can be defined as the process of identifying “what learners will be required to do with the foreign language in the target situation, and how learners might best master the target language during the period of training” (west, 1994, p. 1). in general, it is claimed that na can be used for a wide range of purposes (pushpanathan, 2013). for example, na is believed to be useful for evaluating english programmes and, if necessary, changes can be implemented to match learners’ needs and language achievement. richards (1990) alleges that na is key to the planning of language courses and programmes. some other benefits of conducting na in language education is that it provides insights into learners’ and teachers’ perspectives, beliefs, and perceptions. this perceptual information can be used to adapt language programmes to the needs of learners, or to promote the acceptance of pedagogical changes or innovations among teachers (pushpanathan, 2013). according to pushpanathan (2013), the relevance of this process is that learners’ motivation and language achievement are enhanced when teaching and learning practices match their perceived and actual needs. in line with these benefits, graves (1999) suggests that na should be considered as a component in teacher training. in general, na is considered to be a fundamental component of english for specific purposes (esp) (robinson, 1991; west, 1994), because efforts are directed to connecting learners’ needs to communicative situations in function of what they are expected to perform in their discipline areas (tudor, 1996). in this regard, it is commonly believed that na is unnecessary for general english teaching and learning because learners’ needs in general english courses and programmes are hard to identify (pushpanathan, 2013). however, there is a considerable number of scholars who advocate the use of na for esp or general english course design (brown, 1995, 2009; graves, 1999; long, 2005; richards, 2001; west, 1994; among others), because there is always a perceptible need of some kind which needs to be attended to (hutchinson & waters, 1987). in the same vein, tudor (1996) argues that na is necessary in general english courses and programmes because their content should be formulated and evaluated following an analysis of the communicative situations during which learners are expected to use the target language. this thus suggests that na is an important set of tools which can be used for different teaching and learning purposes with universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras148 garcia-ponce a view to making language programmes more relevant to the real-life needs of learners (pushpanathan, 2013). in literature, several na approaches have been suggested, depending on the language goals (for a detailed review of this frameworks, please refer to hutchinson & waters, 1987; jordan, 1997; robinson, 1991; among others). for the purpose of this study, a target situation analysis (tsa) model was used. for west (1994), this is the oldest approach to na. it is widely known that this model was initially used by munby (1978), when he introduced the processor which investigated learners’ needs, the so-called “communicative needs processor.” tsa can best be understood as an approach which explores needs which are further divided as “necessities,” “lacks,” and “wants” (hutchinson & waters, 1987). elsaid mohammed and nur (2018) define necessities as “what students have to experience to perform in the target situation” (p. 53), lacks as “the gap between what students already know and what is needed in the target situation” (p. 53), and wants as “what students feel they need” (p. 53). the tsa model works to identify priorities regarding the target language, the preferred language skills, the functions to be developed, the activities, and the situation. in general, six questions are posed in this model: (a) the purposes of the target language, (b) how it is used, (c) its content, (d) who takes a role in the process, (e) the context, and (f ) the time when the language will be used (hutchinson & waters, 1987). as we have seen, na may be useful for gathering information regarding attitudes, beliefs, and opinions. however, in order to ensure its effectiveness, it is necessary to examine and consider the contextual factors that play a role in processes of teaching and learning the target language. for this, all the stakeholders should participate in exploring the needs, and formulating the suggestions to address those needs. as we will see, this was the approach adopted in the na cycles and the formulation of recommendations in the present study. the needs analysis at the university of guanajuato the university of guanajuato was the context of the present study. this state university is located in the mexican state of guanajuato and offers 153 programmes of different disciplines (from high school to the doctorate level) on four campuses. this hei has departments in 14 cities throughout the state of guanajuato. depending on the discipline area, each ba and bsc programme requires students to take from four to eight semesters of general english courses. however, despite this requirement, the university of guanajuato has seen limitations in the linguistic competence of students who graduate from the different ba programmes. thus, following the claim that na is an activity in which “the cycle of decision, data gathering, and data analysis repeats until further cycles are judged unnecessary” (mckillip, 1987, pp. 9–10), two na cycles were conducted; the first one in january and february 2018, and the second one in february 2019. for the purpose of this study, the tsa approach followed mckillip’s (1987) suggestions to conduct na, as follows: step 1. identification and description of users and purpose of na. for this first step, the stakeholders in the processes of english teaching and language achievement at the university of guanajuato were identified. taking into consideration the perceived limitations concerning english proficiency at this university, the researcher formulated and then described the purpose of the na cycles. step 2. identification of needs. in this step, the language problems, needs, and challenges were explored and described. to do this, language teaching and learning discrepancies, that is, “problems . . . revealed by comparison of expectations with outcomes” (mckillip, 1987, p. 11), were mostly considered. step 3. assessment of the importance of the needs. once problems and their solutions were identified, the needs were then evaluated to promote the effectiveness 149profile: issues teach. prof. dev., vol. 22 no. 2, jul-dec, 2020. issn 1657-0790 (printed) 2256-5760 (online). bogotá, colombia. pages 145-162 needs analysis to enhance english language proficiency at a mexican university of the prevailing general english programmes vis-à-vis future and present needs of students. to do this, three dimensions suggested by mckillip (1987) for evaluating solutions were considered: • cost analysis • impact • feasibility step 4. communication of results. finally, the results of the identification of needs and solutions were communicated to decisions makers, users, and other relevant stakeholders. the participants according to mckillip (1987), stakeholders may have different perspectives on needs and solutions. therefore, the two na cycles were conducted with four groups of stakeholders (see table 1). this decision enabled me to move away from outsiders’ to insiders’ views. (long, 2005; pushpanathan, 2013). different means of communication (posters, facebook posts, emails, formal letters, and radio spots) were used to call for participation. information about the participants is detailed below. table 1. participants of the needs analysis stages sessions participants cycle 1 cycle 2 1 employers from transnational companies 5 4 2 university authorities and decision-making entities 36 17 3 english language teachers 31 25 4 university students 53 83 na with employers. as a first step, two na cycles were conducted with nine employers from several local transnational companies. in general, these first sessions with the employers were useful to understand their perspectives, needs, challenges, and expectations, and then communicate this information to the university community that attended the other rounds of sessions. na with university authorities. the second sessions were conducted with 36 university authorities in the first cycle, and 17 in the second cycle. the university authorities were the academic secretariat of the guanajuato campus, heads of divisions and departments, undergraduate and postgraduate programme coordinators, and other authorities involved in english teaching and learning in our university. the first part of this second round of sessions was conducted as a series of presentations in order to communicate the employers’ perspectives to the university authorities regarding expected language abilities of university students and graduates. moreover, discussions were then initiated to understand the university authorities’ perspectives, needs, challenges, and expectations concerning english language achievement at the university of guanajuato. na with english language teachers. the third sessions were conducted with 31 teachers in the first cycle of the na process, and 25 teachers in the second cycle. these professionals teach english as a foreign language (efl) to students from various disciplines at this university. as with the university authorities, the sessions with the efl teachers started with presentations to communicate the results of the two previous sessions with employers and university authorities. after the presentations, group discussions with the efl teachers were initiated to explore their perspectives regarding the learning and teaching of english at the university of guanajuato, and to better understand their challenges in order to help them develop more effective language teaching and learning practices. na with university students. the last round of sessions was conducted with 53 university students in the universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras150 garcia-ponce first cycle, and 83 students in the second cycle from different ba programmes across the university. one of the primary objectives of these sessions was to communicate the results of the three previous rounds of sessions. moreover, this session was intended to create a space where the students could communicate their perspectives and challenges regarding the learning of english at the university of guanajuato with the purpose of understanding the limitations in their contexts and programmes to learn english. it also aimed at exploring their perspectives concerning more effective language learning practices which may improve their language proficiency. the instruments in order to carry out na, it is suggested that researchers use multiple instruments (mckillip, 1987). scholars, such as brown (1995, 2009), long (2005), richards (2001), graves (1999), and west (1994), agree that questionnaires, observations, and (individual or focus group) interviews are instruments which can be used to explore needs. the benefit of combining multiple techniques is that it allows triangulation to produce credible and relevant results and solutions for the target population (long, 2005). as the main instrument during the na cycles, focus groups were conducted with each group of stakeholders (see table 1). in accordance with gibbs (1997), focus groups enable participants to engage in group interactions during which individual as well as group views, attitudes, feelings, and beliefs are revealed. for this study, focus groups were necessary in order to explore the participants’ perspectives on expectations, needs, challenges, and suggestions regarding english language teaching and learning at the university with a view to formulating and informing solutions. in order to guide the discussions, questions and relevant topics concerning linguistic expectations and needs were used. the sessions in the two na cycles were audio recorded. as a way to obtain more detailed information from the participants, paper-based questionnaires were designed and administered (please refer to appendices a, b, c, and d). all the participants were informed of the objective of the project and their participation in it. they all expressed their consent to participate and formally provided it at the end of the questionnaires. the data obtained from the recorded focus groups and questionnaires were transcribed completely. once transcribed, the data were analysed using a thematic analysis which firstly involved identifying and demarcating extracts in which the participants voiced their expectations, needs, challenges, and suggestions regarding english achievement at the university of guanajuato. then, these perspectives were listed for the analysis. for the employers’ data, the extracts were selected and then categorised. for the university authorities’, english teachers’, and university students’ data, the extracts were identified and, based on their frequency, percentages of how many participants suggested the same idea were calculated to understand the importance attached to it. the results in order to answer the first research questions (i.e., what are the stakeholders’ expectations, needs, challenges, and recommendations regarding english language achievement at the university of guanajuato?), this section outlines the results of the focus groups and questionnaires that were used to explore the perspectives of the stakeholders from local companies and the university community. this section begins by presenting and discussing the results of the local employers’ perspectives concerning the challenges and needs that they face in their companies in terms of the english proficiency of the university of guanajuato graduates and their suggested actions to enhance it. the section “university authorities, english as a foreign language teachers, and university students” then presents and summarises the results of the discussions held during the sessions with university authorities, language teachers 151profile: issues teach. prof. dev., vol. 22 no. 2, jul-dec, 2020. issn 1657-0790 (printed) 2256-5760 (online). bogotá, colombia. pages 145-162 needs analysis to enhance english language proficiency at a mexican university and students, as well as the questionnaires administered during these sessions. the employers during the focus groups, all the employers agreed that their potential employees must demonstrate high english abilities to perform a range of activities in their companies, for example: extract 1. employer 2’s quotes we are a global company. therefore, we have to be in contact with people around the world using english. candidates have to demonstrate advanced proficiency skills in writing, speaking, listening, and reading. extract 2. employer 5’s quote i would like for my employees to have proficient oral skills for efficient communication to be able to talk to clients and receive training. however, listening, writing, and reading are also relevant. as can be seen in the above extracts, the employers emphasised the need for candidates or employees who have abilities to communicate and comprehend using english with high proficiency. when asked about the activities that need high english skills, the employers stated that from 80%–100% of the activities in their companies require english communication and/or comprehension. some of the activities that they mentioned during the focus groups were: • oral and written communication (all the employers) • participation in problem-based business meetings (employers 2 and 8) • persuasive writing (employers 3, 5, and 9) • composition of business reports (employers 1 and 5) • email composition (all the employers) • oral presentations (all the employers) • group discussions regarding projects and activities (all the employers) • interactions on the telephone (all the employers) • networking and negotiations in english with other companies/affiliates (all the employers) • problem-solving interactions in oral and written forms (all the employers) • in the case of the areas of accountancy and engineering, knowledge of principles, terms, and technical procedures and presentations (employers 2, 3, and 7) again, this list shows that much of the communication that is expected from employees and candidates is in english for different purposes and activities. for example, as mentioned by employer 4 (“for japanese corporations, it is necessary to make reports to headquarters in japan and usa”), interactions in some companies are held with japanese people. as japanese is not considered a global language, english becomes the lingua franca to establish communication among different executives. this in turn gives the knowledge of english a high value in those potential employees that they can hire. however, when the employers were asked about whether graduates from the university are able to carry out those activities using english, they all expressed concerns about communication skills during workrelated situations, for example: extract 3. employer 1’s quote they [ug graduates] do not normally have a good command of spoken english. extract 4. employer 3’s quote they [ug graduates] have an “acceptable” level of english, mainly in reading and writing, but not spoken. they are too shy because of their low confidence to speak it. extract 5. employer 9’s quote there are not enough candidates who can satisfy the demands of the company. as suggested in these extracts, the employers generally claim that graduates from the university of guanajuato have an english proficiency level which does not satisfy the requirements to perform the different activities. they explained that during hiring processes, candidates who universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras152 garcia-ponce have graduated from the university de guanajuato can demonstrate abilities that meet the requirements of the work positions, but they do not have the basic skills to communicate in english. this is suggested in extract 6. extract 6. employer 8’s quote sometimes i have found good candidates, with experience in the field that i am looking for, but their english level is not good enough for the position. as suggested in extract 6, the employers maintained that candidates that have graduated from the university of guanajuato have the academic backgrounds desired for the posts, but they have shown evidence of low english proficiency. for them, when these graduates are hired, this results in problems to maintain communication with clients or directors from other countries. this is suggested in the extracts (7–9) below. extract 7. employer 5’s quotes they [ug graduates] maintain ineffective communication with employers from different countries. there is sometimes misunderstanding with employers from other countries. extract 8. employer 3’s quote our clients face difficulties to send them [ug graduates] abroad because of the language. extract 9. employer 9’s quote the growth of the company is limited when people do not speak english because we need to report to directors in other countries. the employers explained that when graduates from the university of guanajuato are hired, they are unable to communicate with other people in their companies due to their low level of english proficiency. in general, the employers’ suggestions reveal the need to train students to face different situations in english so that they will be prepared to start a job in the areas in which they studied. as we will see in the remainder of this paper, the participants that attended the other sessions were able to verbalise the same needs, pointing to a recurrent discourse which reveals the necessity to enhance teaching and learning practices in the different fields and departments across the university of guanajuato. university authorities, english as a foreign language teachers, and university students during the focus group sessions and in the questionnaires, the university authorities, language teachers, and university students were asked to generate their own ideas concerning their expectations regarding the english abilities of students at the university of guanajuato. table 2 summarises their responses. table 2. expectations from participants concerning students’ english abilities/skills from university authorities % (n) 1. high speaking and writing skills 79.2 (42) 2. abilities to perform activities in english related to their disciplines 67.9 (36) 3. high reading and listening skills 35.8 (19) 4. high language skills prior to starting the ba and bsc programmes 22.6 (12) 5. high importance of the english language 13.2 (7) from english language teachers 1. high speaking and writing skills 82.1 (46) 2. high reading and listening skills 67.8 (38) 3. english for specific purposes 55.3 (31) 4. high oral accuracy 23.2 (13) 5. high oral fluency 14.2 (8) 6. a toefl certificate 14.2 (8) from university students 1. high speaking skills 88.3 (121) 2. high reading skills 61.3 (84) 3. high writing skills 48.9 (67) 4. high listening skills 45.2 (62) 5. knowledge of technical vocabulary 31.3 (43) 6. abilities concerning english for specific purposes 30.6 (42) 153profile: issues teach. prof. dev., vol. 22 no. 2, jul-dec, 2020. issn 1657-0790 (printed) 2256-5760 (online). bogotá, colombia. pages 145-162 needs analysis to enhance english language proficiency at a mexican university in table 2, it can generally be seen that the university authorities, english language teachers, and university students (a range between 35.8% to 88.3%) expect that teaching and learning provided by the university of guanajuato develop the four english language skills. moreover, 22.6% of the university authorities state that a certain level of english proficiency should be expected and measured during admissions with the intention of ensuring student candidates’ english abilities prior to commencing the ba and bsc programmes. moreover, the students’ responses show that teaching and learning practices at the university are expected to develop the knowledge of technical vocabulary (31.3%) and english for specific purposes (30.6%). the participants were also asked about the challenges that they have perceived regarding english teaching and learning at the university of guanajuato. table 3 outlines these challenges. table 3 shows that the participants perceived a wide range of challenges concerning english teaching and learning at the university of guanajuato. in the three groups, it can be seen that they all perceived that students tend to have low motivation to learn english. in the case of the university authorities (75.4%), they felt that some ba programmes do not take into consideration the english proficiency of students in both the admissions and their teaching. moreover, as expressed by 45.2% of the university authorities, students at the university of guanajuato have limited exposure to the english language. it is interesting that 32.1% of the english teachers claimed that there are no standard language programmes within the university to teach english. as we will see, it seems that having english language programmes which are sensitive to the requirements of the different departments in the university is necessary in order to address the needs of these stakeholders concerning language proficiency. this suggestion is supported in some of the actions which were suggested by the university authorities, english teachers and university students who attended the workshops. table 4 summarises their suggested actions. table 3. challenges perceived by participants regarding the teaching and learning of english university authorities % (n) 1. absence of english as a requirement in some ba and bsc programmes 75.4 (40) 2. students’ limited practice and exposure to the language 45.2 (24) 3. students’ low motivation 33.9 (18) 4. fixed schedules to teach english 16.9 (9) 5. students’ low speaking and writing skills 16.9 (9) 6. teachers’ low motivation 16.9 (9) 7. class time constraints to teach english 11.3 (6) 8. limited funding for improving english teaching and learning practices 11.3 (6) 9. lack of training for increasing teachers’ english proficiency 7.5 (4) english language teachers 1. low and late salaries 50.0 (28) 2. lack of support from administrators to have optimal conditions to teach the language 50.0 (28) 3. students’ low motivation to learn english 46.4 (26) 4. no standard language programme within the university 32.1 (18) 5. teachers’ low motivation to teach english 30.3 (17) 6. limited number of hours to teach english 21.4 (12) 7. unstable teaching contracts 14.2 (8) 8. limited economic support for training courses 10.7 (6) university students 1. no motivation from students to learn english 37.2 (51) 2. complicated schedules to take english classes 35.0 (48) 3. students’ low motivation to learn the language 11.6 (16) 4. limited time to practise english inside and outside the classroom 11.6 (16) universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras154 garcia-ponce table 4. actions suggested by participants to ensure language achievement university authorities % (n) 1. teaching and learning practices centred on english for specific purposes 45.2 (24) 2. english as part of the requirements in the ba and bsc curricula 45.2 (24) 3. general language policies for the university 39.6 (21) 4. a general english coordination which regulates and operates teaching and learning across the university 35.8 (19) 5. training programmes to increase teachers’ english proficiency 33.9 (18) 6. conversation workshops in english 32.0 (17) 7. general english exams for all students before entering and during the ba and bsc programmes 32.0 (17) english language teachers 1. general language policies for the university 51.7 (29) 2. classes focused on english for specific purposes 33.9 (19) 3. collaborative work within programmes and across the university 28.5 (16) 4. economic investment in teaching and learning english 26.7 (15) 5. taskor content-based teaching 25.0 (14) university students 1. autonomous practices for learning the language 54.0 (74) 2. spaces to practise the language 42.3 (58) 3. recent teaching practices 27.0 (37) 4. students’ confidence in speaking 17.5 (24) 5. flexible schedules for english classes 17.5 (24) as expected, table 4 shows a wide range of actions suggested by the participants. as evident in the university authorities’ and english teachers’ responses, esp seems to be an option which might enhance english teaching and learning practices in relation to employers’ needs (45.2% and 33.9%, respectively). more importantly, a considerable number of university authorities (39.6%) and english teachers (51.7%) believe that language policies for the university need to be implemented and formulated. these policies then need to be general for all the university but sensitive to the requirements of each department. it seems that an english coordination and language programmes which regulate and operate english language teaching and learning across the university might be beneficial for addressing the needs expressed by the participants and increasing the students’ english language proficiency to meet the demands of local companies in the state of guanajuato. these ideas are integrated in a proposal for english language teaching and learning at the university of guanajuato. this proposal is relevant to both the university community and local industries in the state of guanajuato because challenges and plans of action have been suggested by the stakeholders in order to increase the english proficiency of future professionals from the university of guanajuato and thus ensure that they join the local labour market. the proposal for an english coordination and english programmes in order to address the second research question (how can these perceptual data be reformulated into a proposal which aims to enhance the english proficiency of students at this university?), i recommend that this hei creates an english coordination which regulates and oversees the teaching and learning of english across the different departments, as illustrated in figure 1. 155profile: issues teach. prof. dev., vol. 22 no. 2, jul-dec, 2020. issn 1657-0790 (printed) 2256-5760 (online). bogotá, colombia. pages 145-162 needs analysis to enhance english language proficiency at a mexican university the english coordination would also be responsible for updating the academic content of the english programmes across the divisions, giving teacher training in line with the programmes and pedagogic and administrative recommendations for meeting language objectives. it would also be responsible for designing and administering exams of different kinds. the function of the coordination to regulate english examination is of high importance because of the language standardisation which is necessary at the university. for this, it would be necessary to have an examination committee with english teachers and profession-related (discipline) teachers. this work is central to the success of both english programmes (see figure 1) because it would create a cycle of collaboration among teachers which has a direct impact on the students’ english proficiency and thus the success of the programmes. the english coordination, in collaboration with trained english teachers, would design and implement the “general english programmes” and the “career path english programmes.” as shown in figure 1, i suggest that the english coordination not only continues implementing the general english programmes, but also designs and operates career path english programmes which are sensitive to the characteristics of each ba and bsc programme, and thus ensure that the english skills of students are developed as expected by the labour market. this suggestion is in line with the participants’ responses which revealed the needs to create language curricula which are sensitive to the nature of the different ba programmes in the university (see tables 2 and 4). in this proposal, the career path english programmes would be designed as curricula which are sensitive to developing students’ english skills as expected by the labour market which they plan to enter. the impact of these programmes would be: • a short to medium-term effect on graduates’ employment resulting from new opportunities for them to develop english skills for occupational purposes; and • medium-term effects on social cohesion and economic development with more graduates in jobs establishing a collaborative relationship between businesses and the university of guanajuato. as suggested in the focus groups, it would be important that the general english programmes and the career path english programmes incorporate ideas and principles of content-based task teaching because its focus is to use language as a vehicle for authentic and real-world needs as in the labour market. in other words, it provides students with opportunities to experiment with spoken and written language through tasks which are designed to engage students in the authentic and functional use of language for meaningful purposes. some of the benefits of this approach are the following: • active student involvement, empowerment, and autonomy • real life, authentic context of content • higher level of thinking skills divisions departments departments departments career path english programmes general english programmes english coordinator ba programmes figure 1. structure of the proposal: the english coordination universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras156 garcia-ponce • cooperative learning, collaboration, and problem solving • strategic reading and content vocabulary in general, the general english programmes and the career path english programmes would aim at developing writing and speaking skills and vocabulary for work-related activities in national and transnational companies. however, i also highlight the importance of developing listening and reading skills so as to promote integral english language proficiency. in this proposal, i am thus suggesting that content-based english programmes (in the career path english programmes) be offered in connection with general english programmes (general english programmes). these programmes need to be: • realistic in terms of the language goals expected before, during, and after the ba studies; • context-sensitive regarding the nature of the ba programmes; and • integrative concerning the voices, perspectives, and experiences of the individuals who are immersed in the teaching, learning, and decision-making in the labour market. i believe that by having these english programmes which have the objective of developing skills as expected by the labour market, the needs and actions suggested by the participants would then be addressed progressively. conclusions the university of guanajuato has designed and implemented several strategies to promote students’ development of english skills which allow them to enter the labour market. however, this institution has seen several limitations concerning the teaching and learning of english. in response to these perceived limitations, two na cycles were conducted with four groups of stakeholders, that is, the heads of human resources in locally-based multinational companies, university of guanajuato’s authorities and faculty members, language teachers, and students from different disciplines. this na study involved a series of focus groups and questionnaires which took place between january 2018 and february 2019. the objectives of this na study were to explore the stakeholders’ expectations, needs, challenges, and suggestions regarding english language teaching and learning at the university of guanajuato; and to understand how this evidence can be reformulated into a proposal which enhances the english proficiency of students at this university. the data collected in the focus groups and questionnaires yielded valuable insights into how the teaching and learning of english at the university of guanajuato can be improved in order to increase the number of graduates who successfully enter the labour market. the voices and perceptions that were included in this proposal generally revealed that more agentive practices should be carried out to ensure that (a) english language goals are attained, and (b) the students of this university have better opportunities to enter the competitive labour market after their ba studies. in order to attain this, it was suggested that the university of guanajuato creates an english coordination which regulates and oversees general english programmes and career path english programmes across the different departments. this would thus address the needs and suggested by the participants and promote the attainment of goals concerning english proficiency at this university. to ensure its effectiveness, it would be important that more na cycles are conducted to better understand how to implement the general proposal and set of recommendations with a view to obtaining positive attitudes and acceptance by the university community concerning this change. i believe, however, the present study attained the objectives of exploring the stakeholders’ needs regarding language achievement and understanding context-sensitive solutions which may be beneficial for enhancing english proficiency 157profile: issues teach. prof. dev., vol. 22 no. 2, jul-dec, 2020. issn 1657-0790 (printed) 2256-5760 (online). bogotá, colombia. pages 145-162 needs analysis to enhance english language proficiency at a mexican university in this hei. i hope that this study, its results and general proposal are useful for other heis which are currently facing challenges concerning students’ english proficiency. references becerril, i. (2015, april 27). en méxico sólo 5% de la población habla inglés: imco [in mexico only 5% of the population speaks english: imco]. el financiero. https://bit. ly/2jrjku0 brown, j. d. (1995). the elements of language curriculum: a systematic approach to program development. heinle & heinle. brown, j. d. (2009). foreign and second language needs analysis. in m. h. long & c. j. doughty (eds.), the handbook of language teaching (pp. 269–293). wileyblackwell. https://doi.org/10.1002/9781444315783.ch16 elsaid mohammed, a. s., & nur, h. s. m. (2018). needs analysis in english for academic purposes: the case of teaching assistants at the university of khartoum. how journal, 25(2), 49–68. https://doi.org/10.19183/how.25.2.409 gibbs, a. (1997). focus groups. social research update, 19. retrieved march 30, 2020 from http://sru.soc.surrey. ac.uk/sru19.html graves, c. (1999). designing language courses: a guide for teachers. heinle & heinle. hutchinson, t., & waters, a. (1987). english for specific purposes: a learning-centred approach. cambridge university press. https://doi.org/10.1017/cbo9780511733031 jordan, r. r. (1997). english for academic purposes: a guide and resource book for teachers. cambridge university press. https://doi.org/10.1017/cbo9780511733062 knight, j. (2010). internacionalización de la educación superior: nuevos desarrollos y consecuencias no intencionadas. boletín iesalc informa, (211). long, m. h. (2005). methodological issues in learner needs analysis. in m. h. long (ed.), second language needs analysis (pp. 19–76). cambridge university press. https:// doi.org/10.1017/cbo9780511667299.002 mckillip, j. (1987). need analysis: tools for the human services and education. sage publications. https://doi. org/10.4135/9781412985260 mora vasquez, a., trejo guzmán, n. p., & roux, r. (2013). can elt in higher education be successful? the current status of elt in mexico. tesl-ej, 17(1), 1–26. http://www. tesl-ej.org/wordpress/issues/volume17/ej65/ej65a2/ munby, j. (1978). communicative syllabus design. cambridge university press. navarro, r. f. (2006). enseñanza del inglés en nivel medio superior: el inglés en el contexto escolar (tesis de pregrado). universidad pedagógica nacional, ciudad de méxico. pushpanathan, t. (2013). a need for needs analysis. international journal of applied research & studies, 2(1), 1–7. richards, j. c. (1990). the language teaching matrix. cambridge university press. https://doi.org/10.1017/ cbo9780511667152 richards, j. c. (2001). curriculum development in language teaching. cambridge university press. https://doi. org/10.1017/cbo9780511667220 robinson, p. c. (1991). esp today: a practitioner’s guide. prentice hall. romo lópez, a. m., romero herrera, a., & guzmán hernández, l. l. (2005). visión de la anuies frente a las actuales necesidades de formación de profesionales. anuies. tudor, i. (1996). learner-centredness as language education. cambridge university press. west, r. (1994). needs analysis in language teaching. language teaching, 27(1), 1–19. https://doi.org/10.1017/ s0261444800007527 https://bit.ly/2jrjku0 https://bit.ly/2jrjku0 https://doi.org/10.1002/9781444315783.ch16 https://doi.org/10.19183/how.25.2.409 http://sru.soc.surrey.ac.uk/sru19.html http://sru.soc.surrey.ac.uk/sru19.html https://doi.org/10.1017/cbo9780511733031 https://doi.org/10.1017/cbo9780511733062 https://doi.org/10.1017/cbo9780511667299.002 https://doi.org/10.1017/cbo9780511667299.002 https://doi.org/10.4135/9781412985260 https://doi.org/10.4135/9781412985260 http://www.tesl-ej.org/wordpress/issues/volume17/ej65/ej65a2/ http://www.tesl-ej.org/wordpress/issues/volume17/ej65/ej65a2/ https://doi.org/10.1017/cbo9780511667152 https://doi.org/10.1017/cbo9780511667152 https://doi.org/10.1017/cbo9780511667220 https://doi.org/10.1017/cbo9780511667220 https://doi.org/10.1017/s0261444800007527 https://doi.org/10.1017/s0261444800007527 universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras158 garcia-ponce about the author edgar emmanuell garcia-ponce holds an ma in applied linguistics (uaemex) and a phd in elt and applied linguistics (university of birmingham, uk). his research interests are classroom interactions and teacher cognitions. he has recently worked on projects funded by the british council. he is a member the sistema nacional de investigadores and coordinates the ba in elt at the universidad de guanajuato. acknowledgements i would like to express my deepest gratitude to the british council for believing in my project and funding it twice. specifically, i would like to thank the head of higher education at the british council, rodrigo bueno, for always giving me his support. thank you very much abel dorantes and jorge mayorga for your guidance and help. 159profile: issues teach. prof. dev., vol. 22 no. 2, jul-dec, 2020. issn 1657-0790 (printed) 2256-5760 (online). bogotá, colombia. pages 145-162 needs analysis to enhance english language proficiency at a mexican university appendix a: questionnaire for employers we would like to know your views on the english language proficiency of your employees. please respond to the following questions by providing as much information as you can. feel free to provide your responses in english or spanish. 1. how do you assess potential employees’ english proficiency in your recruitment procedure? 2. what can a successful candidate do in english in your company? 3. what kind of english proficiency abilities and/or skills do you expect from your employees? • reading • listening • speaking • writing 4. describe the activities your employees need to do in each of the above skills. 5. what kinds of challenges do you face, in relation to english proficiency, when… • recruiting new staff ? • training staff ? • dealing with english language use in your workplace? • others? 6. what steps have been taken or need to be taken to overcome these challenges? • recruiting new staff ? • training staff ? • dealing with english language use in your workplace? • others? 7. how do you see the university of guanajuato providing english language support in these areas? 8. what percentage of your staff needs to have english proficiency to complete their jobs? 9. is there any kind of additional support in your company to continue promoting language learning? name of your company: position held: by signing this section, you are giving us permission to use your answers for research purposes. signature: universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras160 garcia-ponce appendix b: questionnaire for university authorities we would like to know your views on the english language proficiency of your employees. please respond to the following questions by providing as much information as you can. feel free to provide your responses in english or spanish. 1. what kind of english proficiency abilities and/or skills do you think your university students need to have? 2. what kind of english proficiency abilities and/or skills do you think your university teachers need to have? 3. what kinds of challenges do you face, in relation to the teaching english provision at the university with regard to… • students? • recruiting new staff ? • training existing staff ? • others? 4. what steps have been taken or need to be taken to overcome these challenges? name: position held at the university: by signing this section, you are giving us permission to use your answers for research purposes. signature: 161profile: issues teach. prof. dev., vol. 22 no. 2, jul-dec, 2020. issn 1657-0790 (printed) 2256-5760 (online). bogotá, colombia. pages 145-162 needs analysis to enhance english language proficiency at a mexican university appendix c: questionnaire for english teachers we would like to know your views on the english language proficiency of your students. please respond to the following questions by providing as much information as you can. feel free to provide your responses in english or spanish. 1. what kind of english proficiency abilities and/or skills do you think your students are expected to have on completion of their degree? 2. what kind of english proficiency abilities and/or skills do you think you will need to have to respond to the students’ needs? 3. what kinds of challenges do you face at the university with regard to… • students? • your job? • your training? • others? 4. what steps have been taken or need to be taken to overcome these challenges? 5. what level(s) do you teach? how many hours do you teach per week? 6. how many students do you have per group? by signing this section, you are giving us permission to use your answers for research purposes. signature: universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras162 garcia-ponce appendix d: questionnaire for university students we would like to know your views on your english language proficiency. please respond to the following questions by providing as much information as you can. feel free to provide your responses in english or spanish. 1. what kind of english proficiency abilities and/or skills do you think you will need to have by the end of your degree? 2. what kind of english proficiency abilities and/or skills do you think your future employer(s) expect you to have? 3. what kinds of challenges do you face in achieving these skills and abilities? 4. what steps have you taken or have to be taken to overcome these challenges? 5. what degree are you studying for? 6. what is your english proficiency level? by signing this section, you are giving us permission to use your answers for research purposes. signature: 121profile vol. 19, no. 1, january-june 2017. issn 1657-0790 (printed) 2256-5760 (online). bogotá, colombia. pages 121-136 http://dx.doi.org/10.15446/profile.v19n1.61075 inclusive education and elt policies in colombia: views from some profile journal authors educación inclusiva y políticas para la enseñanza del inglés en colombia: perspectivas de algunos autores de la revista profile lina maría robayo acuña1* melba libia cárdenas** universidad nacional de colombia, bogotá, colombia this article reports on a study aimed at exploring inclusive policies in the teaching of english as a foreign language in colombia, as evidenced in the articles published in the profile journal by colombian authors. the use of the documentary research method and critical discourse analysis showed that some policies—mainly the national program of bilingualism and the basic standards for competences in english as a foreign language—contain issues closely related to the logic of discriminatory and segregation attitudes in english language teaching. we hope that the results of our analysis will generate more interest in scholars to examine language policies and work further to eradicate inequalities in education. key words: bilingualism, foreign language teaching, inclusion, inclusive education, language policies. este artículo presenta un estudio que exploró las políticas de inclusión en la enseñanza del inglés como lengua extranjera en colombia desde el punto de vista de algunos autores colombianos que han publicado en la revista profile. el uso del método de investigación documental y el análisis crítico del discurso mostró que algunas políticas —principalmente el programa nacional de bilingüismo y los estándares básicos de competencias en inglés como lengua extranjera— contienen elementos estrechamente relacionados con la lógica de actitudes discriminatorias y segregativas en la enseñanza del inglés. esperamos que los resultados de nuestro análisis generen mayor interés en los académicos por estudiar las políticas lingüísticas y trabajar aún más para erradicar las desigualdades en la educación. palabras clave: bilingüismo, enseñanza de lenguas extranjeras, educación inclusiva, inclusión, políticas lingüísticas. * e-mail: lmrobayoa@unal.edu.co ** e-mail: mlcardenasb@unal.edu.co code 20175, sistema de información hermes, universidad nacional de colombia. how to cite this article (apa, 6th ed.): robayo acuña, l. m., & cárdenas, m. l. (2017). inclusive education and elt policies in colombia: views from some profile journal authors. profile issues in teachers’ professional development, 19(1), 121-136. http://dx.doi.org/10.15446/ profile.v19n1.61075. this article was received on february 19, 2016, and accepted on september 26, 2016. this is an open access article distributed under the terms of the creative commons license attribution-noncommercial-noderivatives 4.0 international license. consultation is possible at http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/. universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras122 robayo acuña & cárdenas introduction in 1994, the representatives of ninety-two governments and twenty-five international organizations met in spain, for the world conference on special needs education to reaffirm their commitment to education for all, to provide quality basic education for everybody and urge a changeover from exclusion in which a person’s disability was a synonym of personal tragedy. they argued in favor of a move from integrated to inclusive education, the model of education that encompasses such diversity. it is policies that can either facilitate or prevent the development of inclusive educative systems and practices (ainscow & miles, 2009). according to ainscow (2003), the achievement of better and more inclusive policies and practices must be grounded in research. in colombia, inclusive education (ie) faces challenges such as the poor financial resources of schools and the ideology socialization, that is, the in-favor-of and against postures (parra dussan, 2011). in the field of foreign languages in colombia and ie, de mejía (2006) refers to the national program of bilingualism (npb) and points to a need for implementing language policies which allow the inclusion of all the languages and cultures present in the country. conversely, medina salazar and huertas sánchez (2008) give an account of english as a foreign language (efl) teaching experiences with blind students and rondón cárdenas (2012) analyzes “some significant moments which evidence the way lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender (lgbt) . . . efl students draw on different discourses to adapt, negotiate, resist, emancipate, and reproduce heteronormativity” (p. 77). cárdenas (2013) started an investigation to portray the viewpoints, research, teaching practices, and policies concerning ie in colombia, evidenced in the articles published in the profile issues in teachers’ professional development journal (profile henceforth). we report on the study conducted by the research-assistant (lina) and her mentor (melba), regarding the policies that guided the authors. first, we present the theoretical and the research frameworks; then, we gather the results and report the conclusions of the study. theoretical framework three core concepts guided this study: inclusion, inclusive education, and inclusive education in colombia. inclusion in order to define inclusion, we should look at four key elements (ainscow, 2003). first, inclusion is a process; a never-ending search for adequate forms to respond to diversity, to learn to live with differences, to take advantage of them and to comprehend them to achieve sustainable changes. second, it is centered in the identification and elimination of barriers, which embrace the personal, social, and cultural conditions of determined students or groups of students, policies, and educative resources that produce exclusion. third, inclusion means assistance and good school performances. in this regard, inclusion looks for the presence (appropriate places), the participation (necessity of listening to the learners to achieve a better quality of their scholar experiences), and the success of all students (in respect not only to the exams results, but also to the curriculum itself) (echeita sarrionandia & ainscow, 2011). nevertheless, for these authors the definition of inclusion and therefore of inclusive education is still confusing. in some countries, ie is seen as a way to integrate children with disabilities in the general education system while in others it is perceived as a transformation of the education systems to respond to the students’ diversity. in either case, the concept of “inclusion” seems utopian and idealistic in comparison to what really happens in the classrooms. valcarce fernández (2011) differentiates between integration and inclusion. while the former aims at the normalization of students’ lives and their integration into regular schools, the second has no specific goal; it is a human right. integration promotes adaptation processes 123profile vol. 19, no. 1, january-june 2017. issn 1657-0790 (printed) 2256-5760 (online). bogotá, colombia. pages 121-136 inclusive education and elt policies in colombia: views from some profile journal authors in curriculums, while inclusion pursues the creation of curriculums as an opportunity to learn in several ways. inclusion is both a human right and a process. as a human right, it advocates the development, maintenance, and reproduction of the sense of brother and sisterhood through diversity, whose purpose is to go beyond beliefs about whether or not education is for all and the assistance of people according to their necessities and characteristics. as a process, inclusion involves the cessation of putting minority groups in the midst of those educative systems that claimed themselves as regular educative centers. it also restores the dignity of social, political, and cultural practices in the academic environment as well as in the core of families, communities, and, as a result, in societies. inclusive education parra dussan (2011) distinguishes among the terms education, inclusion, and inclusive education. education embraces the construction of individual knowledge from the incorporation and internalization of cultural patterns, while inclusion entails making effective human rights. consequently, ie encloses the transformations of education in general and the educative institutions, so that they can provide equitable and high quality responses to diversity. in this respect, arnaiz sánchez (2012) defends the civil and political rights of all citizens and the equality of opportunities and participation in our society, which implies the reduction of cultural, curricular, and community exclusion. for arnaiz sánchez (2012), the construction of ie demands reforms on the conception of education, its curricular organization and methodology, among others. thus, she proposes that centers of education must, firstly, recognize the educative practices and the existent knowledge on the dynamics of the school. then, they must adopt an attentive attitude of analysis of the elements that obstruct student participation. this involves a reflective point of view of the school’s own educative practices, the organization of the school and the classroom. furthermore, educative centers have to make effective use of their support assets, especially human resources. this is a call to work with the students’ and teachers’ bodies, administrative and political authorities, and society in general. inclusive schools should be: (1) flexible, (2) informal, (3) horizontal, (4) participative, and (5) competent (valcarce fernández, 2011). this can help tailor education to the diversity of the students and promote their participation in the further development of their identity so it can be reflected in, firstly, their schools, then in their community, and finally, in their society. based on the international research on the characteristics of successful inclusive educative systems, echeita sarrionandia and ainscow (2011) postulate a framework to evaluate them. three variables of ie (presence, learning, and participation) interact with the constituents shown in figure 1. figure 1. reference framework for the evaluation of inclusive educative systems (echeita sarrionandia & ainscow, 2011, p. 37) inclusive education: presence, learning, and participation 1. concepts 4. practice 3. structures and systems 2. policy we can note that ie is determined by the context and calls for processes which guarantee the learning and participation of those who may be facing any type of segregation. an education of this type allows the participation and learning of people with disabilities or “additional abilities”, indigenous communities, afro-descendants, the terminally ill, pregnant girls and universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras124 robayo acuña & cárdenas women, and more recently, young people demobilized from subversive groups and displaced. inclusive education in colombia the general law of education (men, 1994) established that the right to education and equality must be guaranteed to all colombian citizens and that the state has the obligation to prevent their being victims of discrimination of any kind. the ministry of education in colombia (men, n.d.) states that it is required to develop organizational strategies that offer effective responses to address diversity, to develop ethical considerations of inclusion as a matter of rights and values, and to implement flexible and innovative teaching practices that allow a personalized education. the men established policies to regulate pedagogical support for students with disabilities and exceptional aptitudes or talent (decree 366) (secretaría general de la alcaldía mayor de bogotá, 2009) and guidelines for higher ie (men, 2013). these are based on six principles: participation (having a voice in the educative center), diversity (an innate characteristic of human beings), interculturality (the recognition of and dialogue with other cultures), equity (to generate accessibility conditions), quality (optimal conditions), and appropriateness (concrete responses to particular environments). however, colombia faces several challenges in the achievement of true ie systems (parra dussan, 2011). for instance, according to the national department of statistics (departamento administrativo nacional de estadística [dane], 2010), 43.2% of a total of 146,247 people from 5 to 20 years of age with disabilities did not study at any educational level. the dane projections indicate that there are currently 2.9 million people with disabilities, who represent 6.4% of the population. however, the national demographic and health survey (ends)1mentions that this 1 ends stands for encuesta nacional de demografía y salud [national survey of demografic health]. figure actually approaches 7%, that is to say, more than three million colombians live in this condition. at least 33% of these people from 5 to 14 years old and 58.3% from 15 to 19 years old do not attend school, and only 5.4% of those studying graduated from high school. (par. 1-2) these figures exemplify what may be similar to other minorities regarding access to education in colombia. they also show that education policies differ greatly from reality. research framework method we used the documentar y research method (cohen, manion, & morrison, 2011) and the critical discourse analysis (cda) (fairclough, 2003). in documentary research the main source of data is a written document and, in this study, the unit of analysis (articles dealing with ie and published in the profile journal). those articles are documents, that is, compilations of meanings given to events, phenomena, and so on, by authors. as noted by the same authors, documentary research is useful when there is little or no reactivity on the part of the writer because the document has not been written to address the research intentions, as in this study. although that can be a shortcoming, documents themselves (articles, in our case), may be interpretations of events (ie, in our study). we now explain what is meant by critical, discourse, and analysis. critical is primarily applied to reveal the hidden relations of power, discrimination, control, and so on, constructed through language. cda investigates “critically social inequality as it is expressed, signaled, constituted, legitimized . . . by language use (or in discourse). most critical discourse analysts would thus endorse habermas’s claim that ‘language is also a medium of domination and social force’” (wodak, 2001, p. 2). 125profile vol. 19, no. 1, january-june 2017. issn 1657-0790 (printed) 2256-5760 (online). bogotá, colombia. pages 121-136 inclusive education and elt policies in colombia: views from some profile journal authors discourse, with a small d, signals language in use or the way language is used to “enact” activities and identities (gee, 1990). discourses (with a big d) are ways of talking and writing about, as well as acting with and toward, people and things (ways that are circulated and sustained within various texts, artifacts, images, social practices, and institutions, as well as in moment-to-moment social interactions) such that certain perspectives and states of affairs come to be taken as “normal” or “natural” and others come to be taken as “deviant” or “marginal”. (gee, 2000, p. 197) fairclough (2003) explains discourse in three ways: firstly, as “part of the action”. we can distinguish different genres as different ways of (inter) acting discursively. . . . secondly, discourse figures in the representation of the material world, of other social practices, reflexive self-representations of the practice in question. . . . thirdly and finally, discourse figures alongside bodily behavior in constituting particular ways of being, particular or social or personal identities. (p. 27) discourse is referred to as any form of human expression that accounts for the cultural, ideological, historical identities of humans constructed through social practices and communicative events in a particular time and space. now, we should define analysis and cda. analysis focuses on the text or discourse as a unit base that has to be considered in terms of what it includes and what it omits (rogers, 2004). likewise, cda embraces a critical perspective “on doing scholarship… ‘with an attitude’” (van dijk, 2001, p. 96) that must focus on pressing social issues for a better understanding of them and to exert social action. we followed fairclough’s (2003) levels of text analysis: internal and external relations of texts. the first level includes the analysis of relationships (1) between the elements of clauses and meaning (semantic relations); (2) between the lexical elements of the text and its syntactic disposition (paratactic or hypotatic grammatical relations); (3) between items of vocabulary, words or expressions, that is, collocation patterns (vocabulary relations), and (4) phonological relations (not present in this study). the external level analyzes “relations of texts to other elements of social events, and more abstractly, social practices and social structures” (fairclough, 2003, p. 36). thus, we can study the connections between texts and other voices or texts that have been incorporated into the text. that can happen through quoting, reported speech, and assumptions, which are core aspects for our study. cda and text analysis were useful in revealing themes, concepts, categories, and/or patterns. nevertheless, there is no such thing as a complete discourse analysis. a text can be analyzed in any or in several of its discourse structures. in this regard, van dijk (2001) suggests selecting for closer analysis those structures that are relevant for the study of a social issue within them: the semantic macrostructures (topics); the local meanings (explicit, implicit, and senses attributed to texts or discourses); the “subtle” forms structures (e.g., propositional structures, rhetorical figures); the context models; and the event models. instrument and unit of analysis the core source of information was the articles related to inclusion in english language teaching (elt) published in the profile journal from 2000 to 2015.2 profile stands for profesores de inglés como lengua extranjera (teachers of english as a foreign language). this biannual publication disseminates research findings, innovations, and reflections in elt by teachers, teacher educators, and pre-service teachers. to date twenty-three issues have been published. they have gathered 282 articles by 445 worldwide authors. we first considered the whole range of articles. then, through systematic review, we filtered the initial corpus to six articles as units of analysis (see table 1). 2 for 2015, only issue 1 was selected. universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras126 robayo acuña & cárdenas table 1. units of analysis section of the journal articlea issues from teacher researchers 1. guerrero (2008). bilingual colombia: what does it mean to be bilingual within the framework of the national plan of bilingualism? 2. ávila caica (2011). teacher: can you see what i’m saying? a research experience with deaf learners issues from novice teacher researchers 3. ávila daza and garavito (2009). parental involvement in english homework tasks: bridging the gap between school and home 4. cuasialpud canchala. (2010). indigenous students’ attitudes towards learning english through a virtual program: a study in a colombian public university issues based on reflections and innovations 5. usma wilches (2009). education and language policy in colombia: exploring processes of inclusion, exclusion, and stratification in times of global reform 6. escobar alméciga and gómez lobatón (2010). silenced fighters: identity, language and thought of the nasa people in bilingual contexts of colombia asee complete information in the references section. the articles were written by colombian authors in a period of time between 2008 and 2011. articles 1 and 2 report in-progress and final investigations. the authors of articles 3 and 4 were at the time new researchers who conducted projects as a requirement to get their bed degrees. lastly, articles 5 and 6 gather reflections on bilingual contexts and educative and linguistic policies. the authors’ backgrounds can be read in their corresponding articles. research process we conducted a meta-analysis (see table 2) which “is, simply, the analysis of other analyses. it involves aggregating and combining the results of comparable studies into coherent accounts to discover main effects” (cohen et al., 2011, p. 336). results and discussion we constantly compared the individual analyses to reach a global interpretation of data. then, we defined a metaphor as core category (challenging the “molds” in elt), two categories and three sub-categories (see table 3). challenging the “molds” in elt a mold is defined as a hollow container for giving shape to molten or hot liquid material. when a liquid hardens or sets inside the mold, it adopts its shape. molds are designed in an infinite range of shapes; however, each mold is a unique shape. from this perspective, the logic behind molds is the moldability of a liquid into an immutable solid which is consistent with its specific shape. the mold: linguistic policies the linguistic policies in colombia that the authors are concerned with the most—the npb and the basic standards for competences in foreign languages: english (men, 2006) (standards hereafter)—correlate closely with the logic of molds. the shape is established by the mold these linguistic policies offer for regulating elt and defining bilingualism in colombia. however, 127profile vol. 19, no. 1, january-june 2017. issn 1657-0790 (printed) 2256-5760 (online). bogotá, colombia. pages 121-136 inclusive education and elt policies in colombia: views from some profile journal authors table 2. research process stage description 1 exploration of data skimming and scanning the 282 articles in order to find relevant materials. reading the titles, abstracts, and keywords of the articles. registering the relevant material. further filtering of data by coding: areas of interest, justification of the works, designs used in the studies, context, population and samples, statistics employed, analyses made, and results. evaluating the quality of the studies: examining the presence of the topic of inclusion as well as the policies and inclusion practices at the level of analysis of policies or the analysis and/or report of pedagogical practices. gathering of the studies. 2 analysis of the content phase 1: inter-textual analysis the context model analysis the structural analysis: the order of discourse the communication content analysis: focus on the processes of coding and decoding of messages (denotation and connotation) throughout the explicit and implicit contents, as well as the senses attached to messages. establishing categories and concepts. phase 2: intra-textual analysis contrasting the voices of the unit of analysis with other units. recognizing repetition of patterns to challenge or complement our assumptions. 3 building of interpretations making sense of the meanings of the data gathered. 4 reporting the findings building our interpretations to give light on the objective of this study. table 3. categories and subcategories from data analysis challenging the “molds” in elt categories subcategories properties 1. the mold: linguistic policies the mold’s brand: advertising bilingualism the instrumentalization of english language learning the standardization of english language learning exclusion of national knowledge, expertise, and minority groups 2. reshaping the mold: coping with teaching realities empowering students to overcome barriers collaboration the classroom as a “meeting place” acting based on guiding principles elimination of barriers creating the inclusion brand universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras128 robayo acuña & cárdenas policies do not conceive, construct, implement, and regulate on their own; the mold’s manufacturers in charge of this are the national government through the men and local educational authorities. these molds have a noteworthy brand: advertising bilingualism. we know that a brand distinguishes one product from others; for the authors, the inst r ument a lizat ion of l angu age le ar ning , its standardization, and the exclusion of national knowledge, expertise, and minority groups make the product unique. nevertheless, they consider that these features may be advantageous for a few parties—the british council (bc), instituto colombiano para el fomento de la educación superior (icfes), and english language institutes—while representing drawbacks for the rest of the clients— parents, teachers, students with minor resources, students from rural areas, children and adolescents displaced from their hometowns, and students from minority groups—because their teaching realities do not fit the mold. next, we discuss and illustrate each subcategory. the mold’s brand: advertising bilingualism. every mold has a brand and slogan. for the npb and standards, the brand seems to be advertising bilingualism. this brand has three main features: the instrumentalization of english language learning (elle), its standardization, and the exclusion of national knowledge, expertise, and minority groups. the instrumentalization of english language learning. instrumentalization has become an outstanding point of view to set the purposes of elle and elt in the npb and standards, even above other purposes such as intellectual, cultural, and language development. from this perspective, elle and elt carry with them positive meanings related to economic advancement, as emphasized in these excerpts: 1. finally, from a utilitarian point of view, a foreign language becomes a tool that serves economic, practical, industrial, and military purposes. . . . learning a foreign language . . . loses most of its cultural and cognitive development motivations, and becomes another strategy to build a better resume, get better employment, be more competitive in the knowledge economy . . . or participate in wars taking place overseas. (usma wilches, 2009, p. 133) 2. the author/s [of the npb] are equating bilingualism with globalization, playing with the assumption that being a speaker of english carries with it the positive meanings ascribed to globalization like broader communication, economic power, capitalism, multinational companies, foreign investors, better jobs, better living conditions, no geographical boundaries and so forth (tollefson, 2000; valencia, n/d). (guerrero, 2008, p. 32) in excerpt 1, the verb becomes is a relational process of the type intensive of time, that is, “a process of attribution [that] unfolds through time” (halliday, 2004, p. 222). the process of attribution is made by something which carries the attribute. in this case, the carrier is foreign language and the attribute a tool that serves economic, practical, industrial, and military purposes. the nominal group: “functioning as attribute construes a class of thing” (halliday, 2004, p. 219). in excerpt 2, foreign language (the thing) is grouped into the class of tools to the service of capitalism and globalization. excerpt 2 also reveals that speaking english integrates you in globalization, that is, students learn english to be admitted into the “modern” world and achieve the so-called economic benefits it offers. this indicates that elle and elt, as conceived in the npb and standards, are still moving towards integrated education rather than inclusive education to promote dynamics of merchandizing that corresponds to globalization. globalization “does not simply mean the creation of a world-embracing economic system paving the way for cultural homogenization on a world-wide basis, and it is not just a new variant of the so-called cultural imperialism” (turner & khondker, 2010, p. 19). this conceptualization of globalization may not be the one considered by the manufacturers of the npb and standards as discussed in the next section. the standardization of english language learning. as long as the formulation of elt and elle purposes 129profile vol. 19, no. 1, january-june 2017. issn 1657-0790 (printed) 2256-5760 (online). bogotá, colombia. pages 121-136 inclusive education and elt policies in colombia: views from some profile journal authors come from a utilitarian view of the language, the mold’s manufacturers follow the logic of standardization to homogenize, control, measure, and evaluate. usma wilches (2009) asserts: 3. this standardization is based on the introduction of international models of quality and a move towards certification, accreditation, and credentials that may “prove” individual and institutional ability and capability to teach future teachers, be a “competent” educator, or speak english according to the imported models. (p. 136) t h e a u t h o r h i g h l i g h t s h o w t h e l o g i c o f standardization works: importation of international products into the local context. the lexical choice for the verb prove takes one to the mental image that manufacturers of these models have: the assumption that there may be a single, more accurate, appropriate and acceptable way for elt teachers to be, to know, and to know how to do. additionally, prove nourishes the idea that there are at least two actors involved in the material process to prove: those who prove (students and teachers) and those to whom the achievements of standards have to be proven. these are some glimpses of to/for whom standards work. 4. english education is required to be taught, measured, and evaluated according to methods and procedures that were designed for other contexts such as the common european framework of reference (cefr) and the employment of standardized testing techniques such as the toefl and other standardized language examinations. (escobar alméciga & gómez lobatón, 2010, p. 136) these authors agree with usma wilches (2009) and emphasize that manufacturers assume that foreign and external discourses and models to define and evaluate elt in colombia are represented as universals, as “meanings which are shared and can be taken as given” (fairclough, 2003, p. 55). this way, standards are being proved to an international community, which controls and shapes the molds in elt and educative policies. when usma wilches (2009) states that cefr and toefl were designed for other contexts, he has an “assumption about what is good or desirable” (fairclough, 2003, p. 55). the fact that linguistic policies are adopted is seen as undesirable, while adaptation and creation of policies according to the national contexts are seen as desirable. thus, the adoption of foreign and external models to evaluate elt and elle in colombia depicts a problem: 5. colombia has standardized testing practices . . . that do not take into account the specific context, the historical background, or the resources of the students and that have a reference point in foreign and unfamiliar contexts. (escobar alméciga & gómez lobatón, 2010, p. 134) for the above-mentioned authors, standardization has as reliable and faithful allies elt tests and certifications. they maintain the mold in accordance with its brand “advertising bilingualism” as well as with the instrumental approach to elt. 6. these products include the tkt [teaching knowledge test] and icelts [in-service certificate in english language teaching] for current and future teachers, the icfes for school students, or the ielts [international english language testing system], toefl [test of english as a foreign language] or melicet/met [michigan english language institute college english test] for the general public. this [having several “products”] is how language teaching and learning in colombia become a matter of meeting a standard, paying for and taking a language and teaching knowledge test, being certified, and advertising yourself as another available product in the “free” market. (usma wilches, 2009, p. 136) in excerpt 6, these products constitute a cataphorical reference of tests and certifications, which illustrate the conception of examinations as goods available for sale to the public. with the exception of the icfes national examination, the other international products charge hefty fees between 350,000 and 500,000 colombian pesos—approximately 160-250 us dollars. accordingly, the notion of tests and examinations in the service of standardization, and therefore, for the instrumental view of elt and policies, has sparked more universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras130 robayo acuña & cárdenas questions: do they actually contribute to the intellectual, cultural, or language development of their clients? or do they only amplify the notions of competitiveness, human capital, and knowledge economy? exclusion of national knowledge, expertise, and minority groups. we have discussed that the mold has an instrumental view of language learning and its standardization. this, in turn, has shaped the npb and standards mold and favored the importation of discourses, models, and practices to regulate elt in colombia at the expense of national knowledge, expertise, and minority groups. the externalization and standardization processes have become the lid of the mold. it keeps the raw material within it, permits inserting the country into the economic trends in times of globalization and internationalization, and restrains the entrance of other elements. for instance, the exclusion of teachers and their knowledge is questioned below: 7. even when there are human resources available and when there is a high unemployment rate, it is sometimes preferred to go the extra mile to hire foreign teachers. (escobar alméciga & gómez lobatón, 2010, p. 136) 8. undeniably, this standardization of language teaching and learning depicts a lack of trust in teachers, universities, and schools, and a move towards uniformity through stringent normalization and control. (usma wilches, 2009, p. 136) in excerpt 7, the authors disclose a conflict: there is a marked preference to hire foreign native-speaker teachers, ignoring the experience, qualifications, and even a critical unemployment rate. this suggests a pre-established image of the teachers of english and the assumption that the foreigner speaks english better; thus s/he can teach it better, while the national teacher is underestimated and considered to have fewer capabilities. in excerpt 8, usma wilches (2009) sums up the logic behind standardization. it reflects a lack of trust in the knowledge and expertise of teachers, which the government tries to diminish through homogenization. teachers are not the only absentees in the mold of the npb and standards. ávila daza and garavito (2009) claim that parents and their children do not know each other and explore the possibility of involving parents in english homework tasks. they pinpoint: 9. it is evident the lack of seemingly simple knowledge that parents and children have about one another. (p. 111) 10. all schools should make an effort to work collaboratively with parents to ultimately improve student achievement (keane, 2007). following this line of thought, this research emerged from the need to integrate parents in children’s school life. (p. 106) 11. the current world offers us many distractions to make family interaction less frequent every day. (p. 111) excerpt 10 shows that the problem does not only emerge from the lack of interaction between parents and children, but also between parents and schools. hence, collaborative work is desirable because it brings about improvement in students’ performances. for the authors, “the current world”, in excerpt 11, may be regarded as a euphemism of the word globalization, which, in turn, may be a euphemistic word of westernization. thereby, globalization has a negative connotation because it draws the family members’ attention away from the family itself, which boosts more fragmented interactions. further absentees in the mold are minority groups, for instance, deaf people, indigenous communities, and students with minor resources. ávila caica (2011) expresses: 12. this . . . study . . . was carried out as an attempt to diminish the disadvantage of some deaf students who were immersed in a spoken-language environment that uses english as a means to cope with a growing amount of information useful for personal and professional purposes. (p. 132) 13. deaf students manifested their necessity to learn the target language to cope with an increasing amount of written information in english and to communicate. (p. 140) in excerpt 12, the author claims that her goal to conduct the investigation is influenced by an existential 131profile vol. 19, no. 1, january-june 2017. issn 1657-0790 (printed) 2256-5760 (online). bogotá, colombia. pages 121-136 inclusive education and elt policies in colombia: views from some profile journal authors assumption3 about the condition of deaf students in regard to elle. for her, deaf people are often at a disadvantage in elle compared with their hearing peers. this is due to the english language having been conceived in recent years with an instrumental lens, which, at the same time, would ascribe them to globalization, as manifested in excerpt 13. thus, the author sees this gap between deaf people and their hearing peers as a social disadvantage that needs to be revised. the case of indigenous communities is also worrisome. cuasialpud canchala (2010) writes: 14. there are few opportunities for indigenous students to have access to education. (p. 138) 15. the levels of school desertion of indigenous students in cauca, antioquia, and la guajira are relevant. . . . of 12,243 students registered in 1998 in sixth grade, by 2003 only 1,199 got their degree in high school. the main reasons for this failure are . . . lack of money, low encouragement as regards studying, family problems, and cultural causes. (p. 137) 16. indigenous students who come from a community in which spanish is learned as a second language become bilingual. there are usually indigenous teachers who are also bilingual and who are prepared professionally in ethno-linguistics education. however, these teachers are usually not well formed . . . so the level of this second language might be low for this population too. (p. 139) cuasialpud canchala (2010) identifies three main problematic social conditions for english language indigenous students. first, the colombian education system does not offer coverage for the whole indigenous peoples. second, indigenous peoples’ school background is precarious. they have gone through a primary and secondary education of low quality, with few human and material resources. third, indigenous students have to face multilingualism rather than bilingualism. in a first instance, they have to learn spanish, and usually go 3 existential assumptions are defined as those “assumptions about what exists” (fairclough, 2003, p. 55). to school without a high performance of the language, and then, they have to face a third language, english. besides, teachers are usually not well prepared to teach spanish and english from a multicultural approach. if communities are excluded from the mold, their native languages are also being excluded. guerrero (2008) explains this in her analysis of the title of standards: 17. notice that by saying “foreign languages” the possibility of “second languages” is excluded, which in colombia could be any of the indigenous languages spoken. this is the first hint that for the men indigenous languages do not represent any sort of capital, in bourdieu’s terms; henceforth, not worthy of investment, incentives, promotion, etc. (p. 31) 18. english encapsulates and represents the ideal of foreign languages and it is more than enough working on it and ignoring other languages (vélez-rendón, 2003). (p. 31) in excerpt 17, second languages nourishes the idea that indigenous languages spoken in colombia are included. additionally, the author identifies another image: for men, foreign language teaching must be oriented towards languages that represent a sort of capital. therefore, english represents capital, globalization, and internalization and becomes the main reasoning to exclude other languages from the mold of standards and the npb. reshaping the mold: coping with teaching realities category one shows that linguistic policies such as the npb and standards represent a mold being manufactured by men and the bc, which wave a flag with its brand advertising bilingualism. the mold is characterized by the instrumentalization of language learning, and its standardization, both of which compose the lid of the mold, which allows the exclusion of national knowledge, expertise, and minority groups. this second category denotes the authors’ attempt to reshape the mold, so that it is malleable, more diverse, universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras132 robayo acuña & cárdenas and inclusive. to do so, we require teachers’ empowering students to overcome barriers and acting based on guiding principles. empowering students to overcome barriers. the empowering of students can be constructed through two strategies: collaboration and creation of the classroom as a “meeting place”. collaboration. collaboration aims at strengthening the social dimension and building an inclusive society which combats discriminatory and segregating attitudes arising from molds. to do so, students, teachers, and parents work jointly to break down the barriers that may emerge. thus, collaboration allows for healthy, spontaneous interactions, as expressed by ávila caica (2011): 19. the group of deaf participants showed some strategies for spontaneous collaborative work to help them develop self-confidence and effectiveness in their personal and group english process. (p. 143) collaboration can emerge from the relationship between parents and children as well as parents and the educative center of their children. for ávila daza and garavito (2009), 20. teachers can attempt to promote that link by designing relaxed and meaningful tasks so that children and parents work together. (p. 106) another type of collaboration may be the interaction between teachers and students in individual tutoring. this can increase students’ confidence and improve elle performances while bearing in mind students’ own paces and needs. cuasialpud canchala (2010) notes: 21. individual guidance is a better tool to improve the english learning process. students felt more confident when having a personalized environment or being in a group in which all of them started from the same level. (p. 140) 22. the tutoring was a pressure-free activity in which the student did not need to worry about grades. (p. 140) collaboration is also crucial in blended learning (bl). bl is, in general terms, the combination of virtual instruction and face-to-face classes. efl internet resources play an important role in elt and elle as these allow collaborative work, enhance autonomy, and keep students motivated (ávila caica, 2011). as she found, 23. [bl] is not only useful for finding and sharing information, but also effective in helping individuals with special learning needs explore new learning environments in which they can learn through the use of their other senses and abilities (p. 133). 24. it is an effective way of making the english teaching process more practical and dynamic providing, at the same time, students with flexible schedules and new learning strategies. (p.144) the classroom as a “meeting place”. for the mold of the npb and standards, the classroom is a place for learning how to find a new job and better salaries. by contrast, a classroom in which teachers challenge the mold is a “meeting place”, where diverse cultures, communities, needs, and desires converge. 25. during the face-to-face sessions of the course, deaf learners demonstrated excellent group work skills and positive learning motivation. the course became a “meeting place” for some of them who belonged to different academic programs at the university and did not have frequent contact with their deaf peers. (ávila caica, 2011, p. 143) this inclusion of diversity in the elt classroom allows the creation of friendly, pressure-free learning environments in which students work collaboratively, value and respect their peers, and are aware of self and others (ávila caica, 2011). the author notes: 26. the greatest benefit of this collaborative work was reflected in the friendly class environment and the willingness to work that most of the students showed. (p. 144) 27. the familiarity and casual atmosphere fostered students’ participation making them feel included, valued, and respected. (p. 144) conversely, escobar alméciga and gómez lobatón (2010) advocate for a multicultural approach to elt. they suggest challenging the mold 28. by thinking about the concept of multicultural education, understood as the plurality of races, costumes, traditions and therefore 133profile vol. 19, no. 1, january-june 2017. issn 1657-0790 (printed) 2256-5760 (online). bogotá, colombia. pages 121-136 inclusive education and elt policies in colombia: views from some profile journal authors language that have to be recognized and accepted (solomon, 1988), just as in the case of minority languages, that claim for the right to be heard and respected without sacrificing their essence and identity. (p. 138) a multicultural approach has to be reflected by live and meaningful learning experiences that allow the recognition of the other as an equal individual. escobar alméciga and gómez lobatón (2010) explain: 29. according to rivilla & domínguez (2005), for the development of intercultural education, culture has to be taken beyond the presentation of cultural items in the classroom: culture has to be embraced as a live entity that lets students go through the processes of understanding, synthesis and analysis, about cultural aspects that could be different from and yet, similar to one’s own. (p. 138) acting based on guiding principles. empowering students to overcome barriers is not enough for reshaping the mold. we need to act based on guiding principles. elimination of barriers. we have examined some barriers which emerge mainly from the mold (the npb and standards): the instrumental view of language learning (i.e., elt and elle for economic advancement), the standardization of language learning (i.e., elt and elle as a way to pay for tests and meet scores), and the most worrisome barrier, the exclusion of national knowledge, expertise, and minority groups. nevertheless, other barriers need attention: those which emerge from social conditions that the manufacturers of the npb and standards make invisible because of their elitist conception of bilingualism. to mention some: • a great amount of colombian children and adolescents do not have access to education. • students in rural areas do not have the same living conditions as students from urban areas of the country. 30. the promoters of the pnb fail to acknowledge that not all children enjoy the same opportunities or access to education, especially in a society like the colombian one afflicted by so many social and economic problems. . . . the disparity between living conditions in rural and urban areas is huge . . . therefore, the possibility of attending school and the quality of education available there vary enormously. (guerrero, 2008, p. 36) • public schools have less and poor resources in comparison to private schools. 31. the second assumption, that all students who attend public schools have access to the same kind and quality of material and human resources, is misleading . . . (ayala & alvarez, 2005). (guerrero, 2008, p. 37) • not all students have the same economic resources to have access to better resources for a better elle (computer, access to internet, etc.). 32. the “other” group of colombian children, the invisible group for the pnb, students and non-students, will remain excluded from taking advantage of being bilingual (speaking english) because they do not have the economic resources. . . . a program like this will contribute to making the gap between the haves and have-nots bigger, to promoting inequality and injustice, and to maintaining the privileges of the very few (vélez-rendón, 2003). (guerrero, 2009, p. 38) as a consequence of the barriers which emerge from both linguistic policies and social conditions in colombia, we need to challenge and reshape the mold so that these inequalities diminish and students can enjoy successful learning performances. this may be the inclusion brand. creating the inclusion brand. reshaping the mold means, indeed, to create a new mold in elt, and therefore, a new brand in which teachers take informed decisions and act on guiding principles to challenge the existing one (escobar alméciga & gómez lobatón, 2010; guerrero, 2008; usma wilches, 2009). the inclusion mold implies that new linguistic and educative policies, teachers, and educative centers adopt an elt approach that recognizes: (1) the local contexts and necessities, (2) the local expertise and knowledge, (3) the right to be different, and (4) the duty to learn about/from other human beings. universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras134 robayo acuña & cárdenas conclusions the objective of this research was to examine the topic of inclusion in elt in colombia in regard to the policies that guide some authors’ articles published in the profile journal. it became evident that the implementation of the npb and standards are the linguistic and educative policies that the authors are concerned with the most. the authors reveal that these policies are characterized by the instrumentalization of language teaching, its standardization and the exclusion of local knowledge, expertise, and minority groups. these features allow concluding that the npb and standards do not facilitate the promotion of inclusive practices. nevertheless, we think the identification of sources of exclusion is a good place to start talking about inclusion. inclusion in elt means to recognize (1) the local contexts and necessities, (2) the local expertise and knowledge, (3) the right to be different and to have access to education of quality and equal opportunities, (4) the duty to learn about others, and (5) the students’ learning paces, desires, and needs. these ideas, plus the identification and elimination of barriers, motivate the authors to study matters concerning policies of inclusion in elt and to change their practices to an inclusive brand. the authors remark that inclusion in elt requires coping with teaching realities, students’ empowerment to overcome barriers, and acting based on guiding principles. practices that promote collaborative work, individual guidance, blended learning, a multicultural approach to education, and the creation of the elt classroom as a meeting place are key and enriching elements. inclusive classrooms should be places where diversity converges, interacts, and constructs to promote students’ successful learning. finally, acting based on leading principles entails putting into practice the elimination of barriers—those which emerge from linguistic and educative policies as well as those which emerge from the inequality in social conditions. furthermore, it demonstrates teachers’ attempts to create opportunities for students, to help each other, and to construct meaning and knowledge. references ainscow, m. 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(2009, february 9). decreto 366 [decree 366]. retrieved from http://www.alcaldiabogota.gov.co/sisjur/normas/ norma1.jsp?i=35084. universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras136 robayo acuña & cárdenas turner, b. s., & khondker, h. h. (2010). globalization east and west. london, uk: sage publications. usma wilches, j. (2009). education and language policy in colombia: exploring processes of inclusion, exclusion, and stratification in times of global reform. profile issues in teachers professional development, 11(1), 123-141. valcarce fernández, m. (2011). de la escuela integradora a la escuela inclusiva [from the integrating schools to inclusive schools]. innovación educativa, 21, 119-131. van dijk, t. a. (2001). multidisciplinary cda: a plea for diversity. in r. wodak & m. meyer (eds.), methods of critical discourse analysis (pp. 95-119). london, uk: sage publications. https://doi.org/10.4135/9780857028020.n5. wodak, r. (2001) what cda is about: a summary of its history, important concepts and its developments. in r. wodak & m. meyer (eds.), methods of critical discourse analysis (pp. 1-12). london, uk: sage publications. https://doi.org/10.4135/9780857028020.n1. about the authors lina robayo acuña holds a b.ed. in philology and languages: english from universidad nacional de colombia, bogotá campus. she is currently finishing a b.ed. in linguistics from the same university. her research interests include teaching english as a foreign language, inclusive education, and linguistic policies. melba libia cárdenas is an associate professor of the foreign languages department at universidad nacional de colombia, bogotá campus. she is currently studying for a phd in education at universidad de zaragoza, spain, thanks to a scholarship granted by fundación carolina. she is the editor of the profile and how journals, edited in colombia. 121profile vol. 19, no. 2, july-december 2017. issn 1657-0790 (printed) 2256-5760 (online). bogotá, colombia. pages 121-134 http://dx.doi.org/10.15446/profile.v19n2.57215 the crucial role of educational stakeholders in the appropriation of foreign language education policies: a case study el papel crucial de los actores educativos en la apropiación de la política lingüística: un estudio de caso oscar peláez* universidad católica luis amigó, medellín, colombia jaime usma** universidad de antioquia, medellín, colombia drawing on the concept of policy appropriation, this study investigates how different education stakeholders in a rural region of colombia perceive foreign language education policies, and how these perceptions shape the way they recreate these reforms at the ground level. contributing to the field of language policy analysis in colombia and abroad, findings in this study not only provide knowledge on foreign language policymaking processes in rural areas in colombia, but also shed light on the active role played by different stakeholders in the continuous recreation and appropriation of language education reforms. key words: bilingualism in colombia, foreign languages, language policy, policy appropriation, rural colombia. con base en el concepto de apropiación política, en el presente estudio se investiga cómo los distintos actores de la educación en una región rural de colombia perciben las políticas lingüísticas y cómo esto determina la forma en que ellos reconstruyen estas reformas a nivel local. como una contribución al análisis de la política lingüística en colombia y en el extranjero, las conclusiones de este estudio no solo proporcionan conocimientos sobre los procesos de formulación de la política lingüística en las zonas rurales de colombia, sino que arrojan luces sobre el papel activo que los distintos agentes de la educación juegan en la continua recreación y apropiación de las reformas educativas lingüísticas. palabras clave: apropiación de política, bilingüismo en colombia, colombia rural, lengua extranjera, política lingüística. * e-mail: oscar.pelaezhe@amigo.edu.co ** e-mail: jaime.usma@udea.edu.co how to cite this article (apa, 6th ed.): peláez, o., & usma, j. (2017). the crucial role of educational stakeholders in the appropriation of foreign language education policies: a case study. profile issues in teachers’ professional development, 19(2), 121-134. http://dx.doi. org/10.15446/profile.v19n2.57215. this article was received on april 29, 2016, and accepted on december 2, 2016. this is an open access article distributed under the terms of the creative commons license attribution-noncommercial-noderivatives 4.0 international license. consultation is possible at http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/. universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras122 peláez & usma introduction foreign language education policies1 in colombia have flourished in unprecedented ways with the formulation of the national bilingual program 2004-2019, the national program for the strengthening of foreign languages 2010-2014, the national law of bilingualism in 2013, the national english program 2015-2025, and more recently, bilingual colombia 2014-2018. all these different programs and policies have made evident the special interest of the central government to promote, improve, and regulate foreign language teaching, learning, and certification processes in the country, and thus look more attractive to foreign investment at times of economic globalization, transnational policymaking, and international competitiveness (usma, 2015). as the national officials have stated, the main purpose of these different policies and programs have been to educate good and competitive citizens who will be able to interact with the world through the use of a foreign language (ministerio de educación nacional, 2014). a number of publications continue to examine the multiple dimensions of these plans. some researchers point out that these reforms mainly respond to the transnational political and economic agendas that our country has undertaken in the last decades (usma, 2009); which have generally imported monolithic and homogeneous discourses of reform (guerrero, 2008), thus excluding local knowledge (gonzález, 2007). other scholars recognize these limitations, but also the multiple possibilities that these new trends may represent for teachers and students in the country (de mejía, 2011). more recently, some papers describe the limitations of urban and rural communities in the implementation of these policies, (s. x. bonilla & cruz-arcila, 2014; correa, usma, & montoya, 2014; usma, 2015), while 1 with spolsky (2004) we define foreign language education policies as those implicit and explicit norms or regulations that shape what, when, and how languages, and in this case, foreign languages, are taught and learned in the school system. others emphasize the multiple challenges of imposed policies that do not recognize the active role that different educational actors should play for a more successful introduction of these reforms in the country (correa & usma, 2013; guerrero, 2010). studies carried out at the national level (sánchez, 2012, 2013), as well as in places such as pasto (bastidas & muñoz, 2011), antioquia (correa et al., 2014), medellín (maturana, 2011; usma, 2015), bogotá (dávila pérez, 2012; parra, 2009; quintero & guerrero, 2013), and cali (cárdenas & chaves, 2013; cárdenas & hernández, 2012; miranda & echeverry, 2010, 2011), demonstrate that the acquisition of a communicative competence in english continues to be the privilege of a few and a challenge, not only for the national ministry of education, but for all school stakeholders in general. these studies show that, on top of a wide range of school and social factors that affects teachers and students, part of the failure in getting good results has to do with the lack of connection between the policies and programs being formulated, and the reality being experienced by educational communities in the different regions of the country (c. a. bonilla & tejada-sanchez, 2016). in order to contribute to this ongoing analysis, and hopefully to provide further insights to the formulation and reformulation of future policies and programs, this article examines the crucial role played by school stakeholders in the “appropriation” of foreign language education policy. we argue that even if we have some studies on the formulation and implementation of these reforms in the country, we have not necessarily examined the connection between local actors’ perceptions of these reforms and the role they play in policy “appropriation”, as a key concept in critical socio-cultural language education policy studies. additionally, most of these reports have been produced in the large cities in colombia and have not incorporated the views coming from rural areas. in the following sections we present the key concepts that illuminate this study, the method used, and the findings and implications for the field. 123profile vol. 19, no. 2, july-december 2017. issn 1657-0790 (printed) 2256-5760 (online). bogotá, colombia. pages 121-134 the crucial role of educational stakeholders in the appropriation of foreign language education policies... a critical socio-cultural view of policymaking drawing on previous analyses (usma, 2015), this study embraces a comparative, critical, and sociocultural approach for the study of policy. this perspective recognizes that language education policy texts in colombia respond to transnational policy agendas, which are then “appropriated” (levinson, 2004; levinson, sutton, & winstead, 2009; sutton & levinson, 2001) and reconfigured (hart, 2002) at the ground level according to the actual conditions, needs, and interests of the local communities and school actors (steinerkhamsi, 2004). drawing on ricento and hornberger (hornberger & johnson, 2007; ricento & hornberger, 1996), this perspective acknowledges the multiple layers of governance and agents that interplay in policymaking processes, and looks at how different educational actors inside and outside schools play an active role in the final enactment of initial stated policies. from this standpoint, the entire policymaking process is conceptualized as social and situated practice (levinson et al., 2009) and a highly political, dynamic, and unpredictable process in which initial policy texts interact with the individual and collective agency of the school actors, moving from processes of international policy transfer, and local policy formulation and reformulation, to processes of policy appropriation, reading, translation, transformation, and even resistance at the local community, school, and classroom level (bray & thomas, 1995; levinson & sutton, 2001; ricento & hornberger, 1996; steinerkhamsi, 2004). this is how the concept of policy appropriation becomes central in this study. as explained by levinson and sutton (2001), and has been elaborated upon in a recent publication (usma, 2015), this concept responds to the limitations of rational and critical approaches that usually minimize the power of the different stakeholders in the recreation of policy discourses and texts. as levinson and sutton (2001) emphasize, the concept of appropriation “highlights other moments of the policy process, when the formulated charter, temporarily reified as text, is circulated across the various institutional contexts, where it may be applied, interpreted, and/or contested by a multiplicity of local actors” (p. 2). in this sense, not only education and language policymaking become dynamic processes and social practices, but, more importantly, teachers and educational actors are conceived as policymakers (brown, 2010; menken & garcía, 2010), beyond passive implementers of policy texts or even “victims” of policy agendas (davis, 2014; heineke, ryan, & tocci, 2015; pease-alvarez & schecter, 2005; shohamy, 2009; varghese & stritikus, 2005). method, setting and participants this study adopted a qualitative case study approach and incorporated a variety of research procedures and types of data. following yin (2003), this research focused on an in-depth analysis of the selected case within a specific context surrounded by political, economic, social, and cultural interrelations. for this purpose, we selected a rural municipality where, according to a previous study carried out by one of the authors, some educational stakeholders were interested in the improvement of foreign language teaching and learning, but little improvement was actually perceived according to students’ results in the national exams. this municipality is located in the northern region of antioquia and 120 kilometers away from the department capital. it has 27 neighborhoods, around 52 small villages called “corregimientos” and “veredas”, and a population of around 46,800 inhabitants, 12,000 living in the rural areas (dane, 2016). as mentioned in the municipal educational plan, 90% of the population lives under low-income conditions, and are classified in the lowest socio-economic status according to the national system of identification and classification of potential beneficiaries of social programs (sisben). the town is located in a strategic place in the department, leading to a population growth in the last years. universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras124 peláez & usma data collected for this study included policy documents at the national and municipal level, and a series of interviews with key political, educational, and economic actors. participants were carefully selected in an attempt to cover different fields of the town. interviews were carried out in spanish and pieces of evidence included in this report were translated by the authors. we used pseudonyms to protect participants’ identities. since this study was focused on the role played by educational actors in the local appropriation of language policies, we found it relevant to interview local administration leaders such as the mayor of the municipality, school actors such as the principal of the main school, the english teacher coordinator in that school, an active student recommended by this teacher, and some key commercial actors, including some in the local bank and financial cooperative managers. stakeholders were individually interviewed and their voices were recorded and then transcribed for a better analysis. data collected were analyzed using nvivo 10. we carried out thematic analysis moving from the identification of general patterns to the systematization of emerging categories and themes which became the basis for the findings and interpretations. in these interviews, we asked participants about their general knowledge of recent education and language policies in the country, how they perceived these reforms, and how they were appropriating these policy texts in connection to their understandings and perceptions. this study observed the ethical principles and standards for educational research, especially those related to consent, harm, and privacy. in this sense, we were committed to respect participants’ and their organizations’ rights, dignity, and welfare and to avoid bias in findings and interpretations, always respecting and valuing participants’ voices and points of view, even if they were unexpected and/or controversial for the researchers. at the same time, confidentiality was maintained as data were collected, handled, communicated, and stored before, during, and after the study. in the same manner, participants were informed about their rights and voluntarily participation. all these ethical standards were incorporated into a written consent form that was discussed with and signed by every single participant before they provided any information for this study. findings findings in this research study account for the way administrative, school, and commercial stakeholders in this municipality appropriate current language education policies according to their expectations, needs, and understandings. as will be exemplified in this section, every actor and group perceive these policies from a different angle, and thus appropriate the initial discourses and plans differently, thereby highlighting the active role played by the community members in the policymaking process and confirming the importance of embracing the critical sociocultural perspective described above. in this section, we elaborate on these findings: administrative, school, and commercial stakeholders. administrative stakeholders local administrative educational actors in this region showed a general understanding of the language reforms being studied, which is a very enlightening initial finding. this is the case of pedro, the mayor in the municipality; alvaro, the general coordinator of the local branch of sena, the national technical college; and sergio, the school principal from the main school. as we could confirm in each of the individual interviews, they all are familiar with the existence of the reforms and the general goals behind them. they might be doubtful about some particularities such as dates or specific actions, but in general, they knew about the existence of these plans, and their focus towards the promotion of english along the educational system. as sergio, the principal in the main school in town expressed: the program is a regulation that is established at the national level to mandate the teaching of a foreign language and it is a general 125profile vol. 19, no. 2, july-december 2017. issn 1657-0790 (printed) 2256-5760 (online). bogotá, colombia. pages 121-134 the crucial role of educational stakeholders in the appropriation of foreign language education policies... policy established for the years 2006-2019, so people or students at a general level develop some level of communicative competence. however, even if administrative educational actors in this municipality knew about these reforms, they conceived these plans as abstract discourses with little impact on this type of rural municipalities. pedro, the mayor, for example, considered that the policy is a governmental declaration from the central state that lacks specific actions or tools to allow for proper implementation in this rural town. as he stated, these language policies can be described as: political statements of benevolence that even if they are well structured, they just remain as a discourse, as an ambition, or as a possibility conceived inside a development plan of a specific political leader in a specific time, but sometimes do not go beyond that. additionally, even if local officials in this rural municipality showed awareness of the policies, they were not optimistic in terms of reaching the objectives proposed in the political statements. as the mayor stated, “it will be difficult to achieve the proposed goals due to the ambitious and unrealistic nature of the discourse, lack of resources, and lack of well trained teachers” (interview with pedro). likewise, from this perspective, the implementation of such policies has failed because this policy does not respond to the specific needs of a rural municipality like the one being analyzed in this study. as pedro stated in relationship with the national program being analyzed: [the current foreign language policy] is a well-designed policy, but when it reaches the reality of a remote small town, too many actions are missing to really guarantee that colombian population will be bilingual. addit iona l ly, according to t he mayor, not only the policy is an insubstantial discourse or an unreachable reality but also the local administrators in the municipality do not have the possibility or the autonomy to manage the resources and the decisions regarding these language policies and programs. as they manifested, these decisions rely on the management of the central government: the mayor is not the direct authority responsible for the management of the public educational issue. such duty belongs to the national government since they are also the administrators of the financial resources. (interview with pedro) at the same time, these local authorities did not feel the continuous support and control from the national government, for which they highlighted the need of the government to establish “specific channels or responsibilities to implement the policy and to set a quality cycle with clear mechanisms to control all the processes and to determine if there has been any progress” (interview with sergio). they emphasized both the importance of having a well-structured policy and applying mechanisms to do a proper follow up of such policies as a way of assuring positive outcomes. so, in terms of how these local actors appropriated these reforms, we could find a connection between these stakeholders’ perceptions of current policies as ethereal discourses and well-structured but unreachable plans for the small and distant towns of the country, and their indifference and doubtful attitude towards the policy. this also made administrators invest the limited resources in other priorities and more urgent needs, but not necessarily to strengthen foreign language teaching and learning processes. as was manifested by the mayor: i am pessimistic regarding the policy and its implementation. i believe it will be difficult to achieve the proposed goals of these foreign language policies due to the ambitious and unrealistic nature of the discourse and the lack of resources to implement programs that can favor such ideals. i have to decide what the priorities in my municipality are, and the priority will always be to supply the town’s basic needs. besides, i do not have the autonomy to make the proper decisions in terms of the quality of the education, since we are not a certified2 municipality. 2 a certified municipality is that educational secretary that does not depend on the department’s management, but has enough universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras126 peláez & usma or as he stated later in the interview: in a town full of displaced people by the social conflict affecting our nation, and a town without enough resources to take care of the most essential problems, the teaching and learning of english becomes secondary. in addition, not only the mayor manifested that no actions could be led by the municipality, but other local authorities maintained that a more interactive, cooperative, and holistic understanding of policy was needed instead of the top-down approach that has been adopted so far. as expressed by alvaro, the coordinator of the sena branch in this region: i believe these polices need to be conceived, understood, and implemented in a holistic way, like in a chain where all the links are connected affecting each other. the ones responsible for policies should be all of us, not only the government, but all the members of our educational system. from this perspective, all the educational actors should be included in the policymaking process, which would allow all the different stakeholders to take on an active role and a sense of mutual responsibility. as they could express along the study, the current reform was perceived as a centralized effort to appear competitive as a country, while little recognition of the different actors’ voices was a pattern. as expressed by pedro: these policies focus on the need of bilingualism as a fundamental tool for the country to be part of the free trade agreements, and to launch the country in a globalized economy, without paying close attention to the reality of the colombian towns. so, as we may conclude from this initial section, even if political and education administrative actors were aware of the existence of these policies for the resources to sustain and develop its projects on its own. it handles its own teachers’ payroll and all expenses that are required for its proper functioning. there is a decree (2700 of 2004) that describes the process in which a municipality shall certify itself: http://www.mineducacion. gov.co/1759/articles-85921_archivo_pdf.pdf. development of english in the country, they considered that these reforms did not observe the specific conditions of the rural areas. at the same time, these reforms were not accompanied with specific resources and actions that allowed local authorities to take actions and give priority to english teaching and learning in this municipality. for these reasons, local authorities perceived the national policy as unreachable and had decided to prioritize other issues and needs in the municipality, thus reducing the possibility for future improvement in terms of english language teaching and learning in the town. in the next section, we will add to these realizations by examining the way school actors perceived and enacted these policy texts. school stakeholders martin, a teacher from a private school, and jackeline, a student from a public school, compose this group of school stakeholders. in this respect, and aligned with some of the previous findings, they not only were familiar with the statements and expected goals set in national reforms, but they also perceived english teaching and learning as something essential for citizens to be able to compete and improve their life quality, while enriching the artistic and personal growth of human beings. as martin, the school teacher, expressed: i believe english is important not only because it gives people the possibility to be part of the globalized community or because it gives tools to be more competitive in the neoliberal economy of our society nowadays, as expressed by the national bilingual program, but also because the communication is a basic, necessary, and mandatory human tool upon which the relationships in a society are built. jackeline, the student from the public school, also endorsed this perception. she also expressed her willingness to learn english as a means to finding a good job in the future and being able to communicate with visitants from abroad. as she manifested: i consider that english is important. as i told you, we can find job opportunities, but if we do not have that tool, then…we are going 127profile vol. 19, no. 2, july-december 2017. issn 1657-0790 (printed) 2256-5760 (online). bogotá, colombia. pages 121-134 the crucial role of educational stakeholders in the appropriation of foreign language education policies... to miss those offers. or maybe, a foreigner comes and i will not be able to help, because we would not be able to communicate… it would be great to learn english! however, martin’s and jackeline’s understandings about the importance of english in connection with being “competitive” in a global society were accompanied with a frequent complaint about the adverse conditions under which foreign languages were being taught and learned in the municipality. they considered that these adverse conditions finally and negatively affected the way most students perceived english as a mandatory subject, not necessarily as an opportunity. as martin manifested: there is more availability of resources for the central regions as compared to the outer communities. at the same time, people’s perception is likely to be different towards the language policies in both contexts. in the bigger cities, people tend to give more importance and to have a slightly more positive perception toward the learning of a foreign language. whereas in small town schools, either private or public, the student’s acceptance is not very positive and it does not play an important role in their lives. so, what happens is that it is going to be fairly complex for students to be enrolled in a university or be eligible for the admission in any higher education program if they do not have any preparation in the english language. we end up teaching english only because it is mandatory. in this respect, jackeline manifested: english classes are very basic…auxiliary verbs, and that kind of thing. moreover, i believe that teachers need to teach with more strategies, because if the teacher just assigns workshops, it means, “translate”. however, i believe that they should improve, so that we as students can learn easily. in this sense, as manifested by these participants, even if they recognized the importance and value of communicating in english, there was a common perception or feeling in the community about english language policies being implemented with little resources, with the same teaching strategies used for years, and under unfavorable conditions, and thus only because they connote an obligatory nature. this brings as a main result, and in terms of how different stakeholders appropriate these reforms, a resistance by the school practitioners who feel themselves forced to implement the policy envisioned by the government. as a consequence, english ended up being taught at the schools because it had been established as mandatory by the legal regulatory framework in our country, and not necessarily because students and teachers find the favorable conditions for an effective teaching and learning process, or, even worse, because the majority of students thought there was a real need or a real possibility of using the language outside the classroom. as a result, school actors ended up losing credibility in the authorized language policy and got discouraged. as martin sadly concluded: what happens is that students take english saying like “what do we need english for? here we speak spanish and we are not going abroad”…but i believe that this archaic mentality needs to change, because a second language is important. however, teachers need to change their methods, if this is what is not working for us to learn english! summarizing, these two educational actors initially recognized the importance of english learning as something essential to improve the life quality of the citizens and a strategy for competitiveness. however, even if they recognized this importance, at the time of recreating the policy in their final enactment, they referred to the adverse conditions under which teachers carry out their jobs, and how teaching methods do not respond to students’ expectations and needs. this is how the teacher and the student ended up manifesting that english language policies and programs were being implemented inside schools just because it was a mandatory subject inside the educational system, which contributed to generate resistance in the school practitioners. in the coming section we will add some details as we refer to the local commercial actors. universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras128 peláez & usma commercial stakeholders this group of commercial actors is composed of two participants, genaro, the executive manager of the municipal cooperative bank, and samuel, the regional branch manager of a national bank offering its services in this municipality. in terms of the general impressions of these commercial actors, we could find that, aligned with previous findings, the commercial sector also recognized the importance of foreign language education policies in the country in these times of economic globalization as trade across multiple countries. as they expressed, learning english could bring many advantages for the inhabitants of colombia and would bring new possibilities for the nation. as genaro expressed: national residents would need to learn a second language to communicate and to make commercial transactions if the country wants to strengthen further commercial ties with other nations. they also recognized the importance of this language for the country now that the national government was signing commercial and trade agreements with other countries. as samuel expressed: since the free trade agreement is relatively new, it has not strongly influenced the learning of a foreign language, but in a short or average term it will certainly have a positive incidence. however, these perceptions started to change as these actors referred to the specific conditions of this rural region. they expressed their belief in those policies as being laws or regulations created by the national government in order to establish a certain number of hours in which english must be taught in schools every week, while, for them, “there is not a real need of using english, especially, to carry on local business” (interview with samuel). they expressed that the policy itself had been framed just to the teaching of english, limiting it to a few hours spent in the educational institutions, but which does not go further than that in the municipality. as samuel stated: “students are limited to receiving just the class prepared by their teacher, but away from there, no more”. people from the commercial sector of the town not only considered the language policies and the use of english far from their local current reality, but they also manifested that people in the municipality were not very much invested in learning it. as genaro manifested: “many people feel frustrated because they have started an english course and then have given up, because it is often conceived as a waste of time”. in terms of appropriation, this explained why the commercial actors in this municipality did not take any initiative in favor of improving english teaching and learning in the town, and how they had found ways to solve the issue inside the commercial sector or even inside their families. as samuel manifested: it has not been necessary to use the language, the only possible situation of application is related to the usage of technological devices, but when those cases show up the company just looks for a technician who is capable of solving such concerns; although a proper implementation of the language policies in the town will bring a positive impact in the future, currently the use of the language has not been necessary for doing business because the costumer profile is different from the one in the bigger cities. meanwhile we can send our children to study in medellín, which is what i do with my son, because in the future he is going to need english. this is how while they all were sensitive to the importance of english at times of international economic transactions and potential opportunities, they all agreed on the little importance given to english in their daily life in this municipality, as well as the adverse conditions for students to learn english inside schools. but, sadly, and in terms of the role these commercial stakeholders were playing in the appropriation of these reforms, these findings also illustrated how they were not contributing to the improvement of this situation, and how their family’s immediate needs in terms of english learning could be solved without the need for a wider english program for the whole municipality, and just sending their kids to the capital city on weekends, a privilege that only very few people have, given the fact that the majority 129profile vol. 19, no. 2, july-december 2017. issn 1657-0790 (printed) 2256-5760 (online). bogotá, colombia. pages 121-134 the crucial role of educational stakeholders in the appropriation of foreign language education policies... of the population live under low-income conditions. they recognized the potential importance of english for their kids, but decided not to change the situation for the whole municipality. these findings add to the quite moving findings described above when administrative and school stakeholders considered the policies as being unrealistic as they are not equally supported across the whole territory of the country due to the limited resources they have, and also because these reforms do not take into account the particular context and realities of the rural communities. in the coming section we will come back to these findings and discuss what we can learn in terms of policy appropriation. discussion and conclusion this study provides a number of findings that contribute to a better understanding of foreign language education policymaking in colombia and the role played by different policy actors in their local appropriation. at the same time, this investigation illustrates the importance of policy appropriation as a key concept in policy research, and how as an analytical tool it may serve the purpose of education policy investigators in our country. drawing on a critical sociocultural approach to policy analysis, and based on the findings presented above, we corroborate that the way different actors in society understand and perceive language education policies determine how they appropriate initial policy texts, thus explaining why the adoption of international standards and reforms models in the country does not necessarily imply uniformity inside municipalities and schools. in this particular case, while municipal administrators perceived language policies as an insubstantial discourse with unreached objectives and insufficient resources, which led them to be apathetic and doubtful about the policy and to prioritize other issues besides english in the municipality, the school actors in the study recognized the importance of english, but perceived current english language education policies as defunded and centralized that ended up being resisted by the school community, thus reducing english language teaching and learning to a mandatory process that did not reflect the local community priorities. finally, these findings were confirmed by the municipal commercial actors in the study who perceived the english programs and policies as not necessarily relevant for this rural place, for which they showed indifference and little desire to contribute to a real strengthening of the english plans in the town. as a general pattern in the findings, we could confirm that the national policies and programs being adopted by the national ministry of education did not reflect the need, lacks, and priorities of the rural municipality, which ended up in a short response from the local actors. in the section below, we elaborate on these findings and interpret them, intending to highlight certain topics that serve as the bases for discussion and further analysis for the readers. the perpetuation of inequality through unconsensual and centralized policies as we may conclude from this study, in this almost desperate need to respond to the competitiveness demanded by the global economy, policies in colombia are being formulated with far-off scopes, ignoring the particular needs and capabilities of small communities. as expressed by participants in this study, as language policies are formulated by the ones who exert power in the central government, such policy formulation and enactment processes do not take into account the reality of rural communities. in this respect, we notice that despite the intentions of the central government to place the entire nation in the global economy, the reality of this region is another. issues like the distance from the metropolitan area, the lack of health centers, violence due to a complex socio-economic reality, abandonment of small farmers by the central government, among many other realities, are not taken into consideration when language policy is formulated. it is there in that universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras130 peláez & usma town and in that context, one perhaps not so different from the reality of most of the villages of other regions in colombia, where the bilingual policies—english for competitiveness, development of communicative skills in english, positioning of colombia in the global market, and so on—are far from being convincing. we, therefore, state that the ideal of english is separated from people’s real existence. even though they acknowledge that speaking a foreign language could be an asset in their lives, at the same time, they believe that the policies that regulate the teaching and learning of it are decontextualized, far-off and in no concordance with what they expect. perhaps this dichotomy between the acknowledgement of english for competitiveness and the feeling of a decontextualized policy that regulates teaching is explained by the fact that language policies are not touching people’s social lives. no wonder people in rural colombia tend to think of english as something valuable only in the future, or as something not needed at the moment because high school graduates or technicians do not need english to return to their farms to milk cows or grow cabbage. as expressed by correa and usma (2013) the formulation of language policies requires a careful consideration of the political, economic, cultural, and social reality of our country. it is not the same to learn english in a cosmopolitan city like bogotá as it is in the countryside, or in a highly touristic town like santa fe de antioquia as in a farming town like toledo. but all of this diversity of objectives and contents is lost when imported homogenizing standards, methodologies, texts, exams, and professional development proposals are used. language policy appropriation as a chain, not a top-down execution of centralized mandates an important theme that emerged from the findings and reflects the way local actors in this rural municipality understand and enact policy discourses associated with english during the current times has to do with policymaking as a link, not as a top-down execution of centralized and, most times, decontextualized mandates for the rural areas. in this sense, one of the participants in the study referred to the image of a chain composed of many links, which, by being connected, are part of the components of the policy as a whole. this metaphor, similar to the many layers of the onion, proposed by ricento and hornberger (1996), insinuates that language policies are multilayered constructs, where their essential components, agents, levels, and processes, permeate and interact with each other in multiple and complex ways, as policies are translated from their initial formulation until they reach local contexts, where they actually find their fulfillment. in this respect, as spolsky (2004) manifests: “language policy exists within a complex set of social, political, economic, religious, demographic, educational, and cultural factors that make up the full ecology of human life” (p. 7). unfortunately, language policies in colombia, as we have presented in this study, have not sufficiently taken into account the role played by different administrative, educational, and commercial actors; a role which is even magnified when we talk about rural communities far from the capital district of bogotá, from where the policies have been delivered. in the case of teachers, and concurring with a rationalist approach to policy formulation (correa & usma, 2013), this national reform has centered primarily on the question of whether the policy has been properly implemented, not necessarily on how the complex variety of needs, lacks, and wants (nation & macalister, 2012) have been incorporated in the reform. as we have confirmed at the ground level, and was stated by guerrero (2010) in her critical analysis of the national standards booklet produced by the national government as part of this reform, teachers, and we would argue local policy actors, have been attributed the role of “problem solvers” and “clerks” with little opportunity to enrich the policy texts with their concerns and particularities. in this 131profile vol. 19, no. 2, july-december 2017. issn 1657-0790 (printed) 2256-5760 (online). bogotá, colombia. pages 121-134 the crucial role of educational stakeholders in the appropriation of foreign language education policies... line of thought, ricento and hornberger (1996) argue that teachers should be placed at the center of language policies, as they are the final arbiters of what happens inside classrooms. however, as we could confirm in this analysis of this rural municipality, teachers are not placed at the heart of the language policies as actors able to transform and reshape the policy; rather, they tend to be pointed out, even by their students, as the responsible ones for the policy that fails to produce the expected results. contrary to that perception, we argue that language policies have not had any significant impact in the region under examination because formulation and enactment of language policies by government officials ignore the role played by educational actors as they are in the core of the educational system, and finally they are the ones who determine the way policies discourses are enacted. but as we pointed out, local teachers tend to be blamed by the central authorities and presented to the public as the key people responsible for the little improvement in the educational system in connection with the reform. this ends up with language teachers being held accountable for the negative results, while the convoluted and complex panorama where these policies are enacted is usually ignored or oversimplified, at the expense of those who have traditionally been ignored all along the policy formulation process. this top-down and centralized model of reform may represent an array of consequences for the coming years. first, the policies might lose their primary essence, whereas the initial objectives that gave origin to the policies may not be represented for what happens at the ground level. a possible reason has to do with the way the national government enacts the policies, and how policymakers at the national level execute power from governmental offices and import guidelines that ignore the local contexts of regions. consequently, in a town like the one chosen, language policies do not go beyond raising the curiosity of the locals, who perceive these reforms as decontextualized ideas that do not necessarily respond to the reality surrounding the community. another consequence of ignoring this central link, as far as a strategy for competitiveness and as it is highlighted in the findings, has to do with the way such policy discourses do not raise the interest of that particular community. in the specific case of the selected municipality, students do not “buy” this discourse of competitiveness. perhaps in bigger cities, students are mindful of the importance of learning english to be able to compete in the global economy. however, this particular ideology has not penetrated the minds and hearts of young students in the selected municipality, considering the particular conditions of their own town. as we may argue, based on this study, the role played by the different educational actors, especially teachers, is critical in the enactment of language policies and should be considered. nonetheless, the message conveyed by the language policies as such is not clear in regard to the incorporation of all educational actors in the enactment and dissemination of the policies. moreover, this understanding of policymaking as blaming teachers and educational actors at the bottom of the educational system, is very far away from that of ricento and hornberger (1996) who, in analyzing the role of english language teaching (elt) professionals, argue that “elt professionals are already actively engaged in deciding language polices, how they promote policies reaffirming or opposing hierarchies of power that reflect entrenched historical and institutional beliefs and how they might affect changes in their local contexts” (p. 401). one of the reasons to attribute this designation to teachers as suggested by the interviewed administrative leader is that as teachers are immersed in the classroom, they are the ones, then, who can give reasons for the accurate or inaccurate implementation of language policies. here, the engagement and the active participation proposed by ricento and hornberger are voided by a simple role of implementer that was attributed to educational actors. universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras132 peláez & usma as we may conclude from this case, as in a mechanical chain where all pieces need to be assembled, the important role of each education actor must be taken into account and this includes not only those at higher levels but also every single individual in the great chain of education so that all processes may work. considering this, language policies should be conceived as a chain at national, institutional, and local levels, allowing, this way, the processes of permeability and the active participation of all education actors in the formulation and dissemination of language policies. that was, at the end, what the education actors from this region sought. references bastidas, j. a., & muñoz, g. 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(2015). from transnational language policy transfer to local appropriation: the case of the national bilingual program in medellín, colombia. blue mounds, us: deep university press. varghese, m. m., & stritikus, t. (2005). “nadie me dijo (nobody told me)”: language policy negotiation and implications for teacher education. journal of teacher education, 56(1), 73-87. http://doi.org/10.1177/0022487104272709. yin, r. k. (2003). case study research: design and methods (3rd ed., vol. 5). london, uk: sage. about the authors oscar peláez is a teacher educator and researcher in the english language teaching program, universidad católica luis amigó, medellín, and a member of the evaluation and action research group in foreign languages (giae), universidad de antioquia, medellín. jaime usma is a teacher educator and researcher at the school of languages, universidad de antioquia in colombia and the coordinator of the evaluation and action research group in foreign languages (giae) in that institution. 17profile: issues teach. prof. dev., vol. 20 no. 2, jul-dec, 2018. issn 1657-0790 (printed) 2256-5760 (online). bogotá, colombia. pages 17-33 https://doi.org/10.15446/profile.v20n2.67805 scaffolding learner puzzling in exploratory practice: perspectives from the business english classroom andamiaje de preguntas de aprendizaje en la práctica exploratoria: perspectivas desde el aula de inglés de negocios chris banister*1 regent’s university london, london, united kingdom this study describes a teacher-researcher’s experience of scaffolding his business english learners in identifying, formulating, and exploring language learning puzzles using the principles of exploratory practice. adopting both qualitative and quantitative methods, the teacher-researcher reflected upon the learner-initiated and learner-centred inquiry as it played out in his uk university setting. learners’ perspectives revealed an enthusiasm for puzzling, especially when connections were established with their wider world. however, tensions also emerged, including the opaqueness of the scaffolding role and the mind-set shift required from learner-researchers and the teacher-researcher alike. practical recommendations for teacher-researchers in similar contexts are provided: the need to highlight connection-building between learner puzzles and learners’ wider lives and the importance of recognising distinctions between puzzles and problems. key words: business english, exploratory practice, learner puzzles, teacher research. este estudio describe la experiencia de andamiaje de un docente-investigador con aprendices de inglés de negocios mientras investigaban sus preguntas de aprendizaje o “puzzles” usando la práctica exploratoria. adoptando métodos mixtos el docente-investigador reflexionó sobre el proceso investigativo de sus aprendices universitarios. las perspectivas de los aprendices fueron entusiastas, especialmente entre aquellos que establecieron conexiones entre “puzzles” y su experiencia vivencial, pero también revelaron tensiones con la facilitación del “puzzle”, incluida la opacidad del andamiaje y el cambio de mentalidad del docente-investigador y los aprendices-investigadores. se hacen recomendaciones para docentes-investigadores en contextos similares: la necesidad de resaltar la conexión entre “puzzles” y la experiencia de los aprendices fuera de la clase y la importancia de distinguir entre “puzzles” y problemas. palabras clave: inglés de negocios, investigación docente, práctica exploratoria, “puzzles” de aprendices. * e-mail: banisterc@regents.ac.uk how to cite this article (apa, 6th ed.): banister, c. (2018). scaffolding learner puzzling in exploratory practice: perspectives from the business english classroom. profile: issues in teachers’ professional development, 20(2), 17-33. https://doi.org/10.15446/profile.v20n2.67805. this article was received on september 18, 2017 and accepted on march 9, 2018. this is an open access article distributed under the terms of the creative commons license attribution-noncommercial-noderivatives 4.0 international license. consultation is possible at https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/. universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras18 banister introduction as a member of the practitioner research family, exploratory practice (ep) envisages learners as potential co-researchers of their classroom environment (allwright, 2005; allwright & hanks, 2009; hanks, 2017a). the ep literature evidences teachers and learners successfully exploiting the principles of ep, working collegially on teacher-initiated puzzles to enhance understanding of their language teaching/learning experiences (e.g., banister, 2017; dar, 2015; hanks, 2015b; perpignan, 2003; slimanirolls, 2003). however, the extent to which learners can develop, explore, and set their own research agendas is less well-documented and forms the focus of this paper. this paper describes my experience as a business english teacher-researcher working with my tertiary level learners in line with the inclusivity principle of ep (see appendix a for the full list of ep principles), asking them to identify a language learning “puzzle” and guiding them as we aimed to enhance what gieve and miller (2006) refer to as “quality of life”. this paper provides an overview of ep, drawing upon literature about puzzles and how learners can use puzzles to set research agendas and learning paths. my mixed methods approach, including my use of case studies to foreground my learners’ perspectives, is then outlined. the subsequent analysis and discussion focuses on the opportunities and challenges arising from learner puzzlement in the business english classroom. finally, recommendations are given for teacher-researchers considering facilitation of learner puzzling. literature review this section provides an overview of ep and examines examples of puzzling by both teachers and learners. it concludes by highlighting some issues that have been identified around learner puzzling. exploratory practice the scepticism with which english language teachers view the relevance of research findings in their field has long been a cause for concern (anwaruddin, 2016; borg, 2009; rainey de díaz, 2005). ep, a form of practitioner research, has emerged as one way to address concerns around the research-pedagogy divide (allwright, 2005; allwright & hanks, 2009; hanks, 2017a). ep is a form of practitioner research which has been used by and for language teachers to seek understanding of counter-intuitive aspects of classroom life, which ep refers to as puzzles. for example, dar (2015) wondered why her students failed to take responsibility for learning beyond the classroom and costantino (in press) considered how she could promote learner engagement with her written feedback. proposing “practice as research” (hanks, 2016, p. 28), ep gets the former done whilst simultaneously doing the latter. studies have highlighted how ep has helped teachers see their learners as legitimate co-investigators of their language learning experience (hanks, 2015b) and the mutual benefits to be gained from ep’s integration of research and teaching via potentially exploitable pedagogic activities or pepas (hanks, 2016). thus, ep repositions the classroom at the confluence of teaching, learning, and research. this “subtly radical move” (hanks, 2017b, p. 47) reconceives the learning space as a site not only of knowledge consumption, but also as a legitimate scene for what allwright (2006, p. 15) calls “locally helpful understandings”. puzzles puzzles are central to ep, providing the focus of inquiry. teachers and learners are encouraged to identify puzzles in their classroom contexts and explore them, striving primarily towards understanding to boost quality of life in their local, idiosyncratic settings (allwright & hanks, 2009). ep prefers the word “puzzle” (and extended forms to puzzle, puzzling, and puzzlement). this preference reflects a rejection of problem-solution paradigms over an emphasis on the quest for understanding of practitioners’ language teaching or learning experiences. 19profile: issues teach. prof. dev., vol. 20, no. 2, jul-dec, 2018. issn 1657-0790 (printed) 2256-5760 (online). bogotá, colombia. pages 17-33 scaffolding learner puzzling in exploratory practice: perspectives from the business english classroom hanks (2015a) links learner puzzling to a freirean pedagogy with its sense of empowerment. she explains that seeing phenonema as puzzles rather than problems is essentially a matter of adopting a different mind-set (hanks, 2017a). however, a precise definition of a puzzle and how puzzles differ from problems fail to emerge clearly from the literature. slimani-rolls and kiely (in press) note the difficulty that novice teacher-researchers may have in distinguishing between puzzles and problems. grappling with this elusive puzzle-problem distinction, dar (2015) contends that “not all puzzles are problematic” (p. 51) and, indeed, the literature does include examples of positively framed puzzles such as goral’s (in press) “why do discussion boards work so well?” or hanks’ (2015a) student, who puzzled: “why do people learn bad words = swear words more easily?” admittedly, negatively framed puzzles, which more closely resemble problems, are more prominent in the ep literature. teacher puzzles teacher-researchers have heeded ep’s call to explore their own teaching puzzles. numerous studies attest the resulting positive impact of ep on classroom quality of life (e.g., banister, 2017; costantino, in press; dar, 2015; perpignan, 2003). in addition, slimani-rolls and kiely’s (forthcoming) volume acknowledges the value of teacher puzzlement for continuing professional development. in the studies above, learners were empowered as co-researchers to explore their teachers’ puzzles. however, ep proposes that learners formulate and explore their own puzzles. in contrast to the studies focusing on teacher puzzles (listed in the exploratory practice section of this literature review), the literature on learner-initiated puzzles is sparse. four such studies are drawn upon below. learner puzzles chu’s (2007) study described her experience working with fifth grade school learners on uk study skills courses. her learners explored their own puzzles over five months and chu found they welcomed how puzzling allowed them to exercise decision-making power in their learning (chu, 2007). chu’s learners wrote reflective journals and discussed their puzzles to better understand classroom life. chu cited initial concerns about learners’ expectations of responsibility but concluded that having a puzzle promoted active engagement with learning (chu, 2007). dawson’s (2017) account draws upon learners at a private language school in the uk preparing for academic study and ielts assessment. she noted that learners’ potential as productive puzzlers of their own learning can be viewed against the backdrop of learner autonomy and empowerment (dawson, 2017). she concluded that the understandings learners gained through puzzle exploration lacked depth. yet she saw value in the process itself which she claims illuminated her own teaching puzzle about the attractiveness for students of solution-based approaches. she also observed her learners becoming increasingly independent and confident as they embraced new working modes such as teamwork (dawson, 2017). learners reported that puzzling promoted classroom collaboration and boosted confidence in language use (dawson, 2017). hanks’ twin studies (2015a and 2017b) examined learner perspectives and experiences of ep in a uk pre-sessional english for academic purposes (eap) context. her 2015 study described how learners enjoyed the exploration of a question to which the answer was unknown but understanding of which appeared directly relevant, set as it was, by learners themselves (hanks, 2015a). hanks’ (2017b) study detailed the opportunities and challenges of an ep approach and process for neophyte practitioner-researchers. hanks concluded that ep’s base in the participants’ lived experience makes it “entirely relevant” for eap practitioners (both teachers and learners), representing a potential path towards true inclusivity in the research endeavour (hanks, 2017b). universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras20 banister taken collectively, the studies by chu (2007), hanks (2015a, 2017b) and dawson (2017) offer grounds for optimism for practitioners looking to scaffold learner puzzling in other localised contexts. however, a number of issues were also highlighted by these studies which warrant closer attention. challenges around learner puzzlement firstly, there is the practical implementation of learner puzzlement. as dawson (2017) notes, there is no single method of implementing learner puzzling. however, the studies described above all moved systematically from learners first identifying puzzles, then reflecting and reformulating whilst concurrently exploring as they strove towards understanding. yet the extent to which a teacher can or should guide learners as they attempt to set their own research agendas remains unclear. teacher-researchers might worry that too much scaffolding could invalidate the process but too little might see it peter out. secondly, there is the time factor. hanks (2017b) and chu (2007) were both fortunate to have syllabuses which could accommodate an extensive ep component. it remains to be seen how learner puzzling would fare in a syllabus with less space for the extended project work that hanks (2017b) and dawson (2017) organised. a further temporal aspect of learner puzzling relates to the extent to which understanding of learners’ language learning experiences continues beyond the formal period of puzzling. dawson suggests that it was only some weeks after their course finished that her learners started to recognise the greater sense of confidence that learner puzzling had provided (dawson, 2017). the literature raises a third issue. some learnerresearchers in dawson’s (2017) account noted that learner puzzling was sometimes seen as an unwelcome distraction from their main aim, namely, exam practice. hanks (2015a, 2017b) noted similar learner resistance and this goes to the heart of concerns about implementing ep. whilst hanks’ (2015a) study reported that the success of puzzling was rooted in its direct relevance to learners’ lives, she also recognises that participants in other studies (gunn, 2010 & rowland, 2011 as cited in hanks, 2017b) comprised “specialized groups” (hanks, 2017b, p. 40), some of whom were, in fact, language teachers themselves and might be viewed as positively predisposed to puzzling about language teaching/learning experiences. in addition, the learners in hanks’ (2017b) case study were on pre-sessional eap courses preparing for undergraduate study. these learners may have had more time to puzzle than undergraduate learners immersed in their studies and with all the associated stresses and strains of university life to contend with. finally, learner puzzlers in all four studies found the puzzle-problem distinction problematic. the focus of the learner-researchers often coalesced around problem-solving rather than prioritising understanding of their language learning experiences and represented a move away from the intended aim of puzzling. dawson (2017) related how her learners found it a challenge to move away from a solutionbased mind-set. she concluded that the understandings her learners gained through puzzle exploration lacked depth but hints that the process of facilitating learner puzzling helped advance her understanding of learners’ fixation on problem-solution paradigms. hanks (2017b) has also identified learners’ apparent fixation with solutions as an area of difficulty and connects it to the temporal issues outlined previously, stating that a: challenge for implementing ep, then, is to successfully convey the importance of puzzling, and to give enough time for a question framed as a “problem” to transmute into genuine puzzled curiosity. there is a fine distinction between a problem (requiring remedial action) and puzzlement (a cognitive challenge), which merits further investigation. (hanks, 2017b, p. 48) while hanks (2017a, 2017b) prefers to distinguish between “seeing” something as a puzzle rather than a problem, chu (2007) points out that a solution can be seen as a form of understanding. meanwhile, as dawson’s (2017) learners wrestled with puzzles that might 21profile: issues teach. prof. dev., vol. 20, no. 2, jul-dec, 2018. issn 1657-0790 (printed) 2256-5760 (online). bogotá, colombia. pages 17-33 scaffolding learner puzzling in exploratory practice: perspectives from the business english classroom prove a challenge even for language teachers, hanks (2017b), by contrast, reported that her learners enjoyed tackling puzzles that exposed genuinely counter-intuitive phenomena and cites this as a perceived strength of the ep process. to summarise, there is a broad acknowledgement in the existing literature on learner puzzling that it is far from straightforward to introduce and implement in the language classroom. hanks (2017b) suggests that future studies situated in different language learning settings could illuminate the challenges and related to learners setting their own research agendas through puzzling. the present study takes up this call by providing an account of a teacher-researcher supporting learner puzzlement in a different context: a business english course for undergraduate exchange students in the uk. these learners were concurrently studying on business programmes. as such, this represented a highly time pressured context and one which heightened the challenges around the facilitation of learner puzzlement. research focus my previous experience of exploring teacher puzzles via ep had proved rewarding, boosting my teacher self-efficacy (banister, 2016) and instilling a sense that my learners could potentially set and explore their own research agendas. facilitation of learner puzzling presented a further opportunity to gauge the extent to which this conception of learners was grounded in reality. at the same time, it had the potential to promote a culture of curiosity, the prospect of which prompted the following questions to frame this research: 1. what kind of puzzles would learners be interested in? 2. what, if any, benefits would accrue from learner puzzling? 3. what, if any, aspects of learner puzzling would prove challenging? in line with ep’s principle of exploration for understanding, these three research questions also imply a focus on underlying notions of “why?” moreover, the undergraduate level business english context represents a new setting within which learner puzzling could play out. method this section describes my participants and the setting for this research. subsequently, the data collection procedures and tools of analysis used are laid out but this section starts with a focus on some ethical considerations for the study. ethical issues ep foregrounds ethical aspects by attempting to redress the balance between the researcher and the researched (allwright, 2005), giving the latter greater agency in the process. however, my previous experiences of engaging with ep and its core principles highlighted the need to avoid imposing an unacceptably heavy workload on participants. this therefore informed my approach as i followed hanks’ (2017b) advice to reframe sessions rather than replace them when looking for ways to integrate learner puzzling into my already busy business english syllabus. moreover, care was taken to select business-related content that could both promote learner puzzling yet maintain a clear business focus on sessions. in addition to these ethical challenges around the research framework, the institution’s ethical procedures were also carefully followed. participants were informed of both the nature and the aims of the research process via an in-class presentation and consent forms that were distributed at the outset. anonymity was preserved in writing up the research and data stored securely. participants: my learners and me the participants were 14 (8 in the autumn 2016 cohort and 6 in spring 2017) 3rd year undergraduate exchange students at a uk university. all participants were studying for business degrees and had elected to take a business english module as part of their exchange universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras22 banister in the uk. the students were all at an advanced english language proficiency level. the two cohorts (autumn 2016 and spring 2017) represented a range of l1 backgrounds including chinese and slavic languages but these three latin-based languages, french, spanish, and italian, predominated. as a teacher-researcher striving to understand how ep might promote learner puzzlement and how learners could be supported in the process, i was also very much a participant in this research, and inevitably brought my own experiences of ep to the process. my earlier teacher puzzles explored why it was a challenge to obtain meaningful learner feedback and evaluations (banister, 2016) and learners’ decisionmaking when peer teaching vocabulary (banister, 2017). teaching, learning, and research context our module, advanced business english for exchange students (b6 henceforth), incorporates 36 classroom contact hours over a twelve-week semester and focuses on both language (business english) and content (business). b6 aims to develop learners’ business english skills and boost employability. written genres such as business reports and spoken genres such as oral presentations form an important part of the course. the module covers business topics such as finance, entrepreneurship, and branding. language (grammar, lexis, pronunciation, and style) development is based on learners’ in-class and written discussions of business news issues. learners are assessed on their ability to communicate to business audiences and through a final written report on a business topic selected earlier by learners themselves. data collection: research as practice ep envisages that research gets done at the same time as teaching and learning (allwright, 2005; allwright & hanks, 2009; hanks, 2017a). pepas are proposed as a means to unobtrusively explore puzzles and therefore, the familiar language classroom activities were utilised. whilst b6 learners do engage, often enthusiastically, with the language learning aims of the module, they typically expect a very clear business frame for any language work; and from the outset of the research, i was mindful that anything which could not be linked in some way with the business context might prove incompatible with learners’ expectations. with their prioritisation of business, it was unclear whether my learners would be willing to engage with language learning puzzles. this made it of the utmost importance from the beginning that learners saw puzzling as integrated into the curriculum and not a superfluous add-on. in the previous ep research i had conducted around my teacher puzzles, i had enjoyed designing pepas that shed light on my teacher puzzle. however, in this present study my teacher’s role was very different. instead of looking for ways to explore my own puzzle, the focus was on guiding my learners in exploration of their own research agendas. i recognised the need to provide all learners with opportunities to explore their puzzles. recognising that our busy syllabus called for a compact enactment of ep, i prepared classroom and homework tasks designed to foreground reflection, discussion, and sharing of understanding whilst still leaving learners the agency to work with puzzles in a way that suited them. as chu (2007) notes, teachers can stimulate and motivate their learners by giving them decision-making power. the activities used, which also form the basis of data collection for this study, are summarised in appendix b. procedure i introduced the concept of a puzzle in week one. this was done via a single question on a standard needs analysis form (na) which asked learners what puzzled them about learning english and business english in particular. this was to gauge learners’ areas of interest early on and help me as a facilitator of puzzling. the inclusion on the na of this question was also an attempt to locate puzzling within the wider context of learners’ past, present, and future language needs. in week two 23profile: issues teach. prof. dev., vol. 20, no. 2, jul-dec, 2018. issn 1657-0790 (printed) 2256-5760 (online). bogotá, colombia. pages 17-33 scaffolding learner puzzling in exploratory practice: perspectives from the business english classroom i presented an overview of ep, outlined its principles with examples of teacher and learner. i had a teacher puzzle of my own but intentionally held this back until week three to avoid influencing learners’ own choice of puzzles. it was important for me as the teacher to have a puzzle to explore my own classroom experience but also to project a sense of solidarity. in other words, i hoped that this demonstration of aspects of classroom life remaining elusive to their teacher might legitimise puzzling for my learners. i further hoped it might help overcome any reluctance about revealing weaknesses to peers, and, of course, the teacher who would later be assessing their english. the understanding gained from exploration of this puzzle can be found elsewhere (banister, 2017) but lies beyond the scope of this paper. in the following weeks, learners were given a series of in-class and homework tasks to facilitate refinement and exploration of their puzzles and develop their research agendas. some activities involved individual work but there was scope for and promotion of peer-sharing and discussion (appendix b). as noted previously, there is no prescribed procedure for working with learner puzzles but the procedure outlined above broadly aligns with implementations by chu (2007), hanks (2015a, 2017b), and dawson (2017). the intention at the start of the process was to capture learners’ thoughts at multiple points. as a busy teacher, i preferred to collect written data as it is less time-consuming to analyse. for the autumn 2016 cohort, i captured learners’ summarising thoughts through written reflective reports and in spring 2017 used the same questions reformatted as open-ended questionnaires (see appendix c for these reflective report/questionnaire items). i supplemented this data with observations of my learners as they worked on the pepas and recorded these in my teacher reflective journal. in this journal i also recorded learners’ thoughts about their puzzles which emerged from in-class discussions and ad-hoc learner comments. individual mid-module tutorials yielded further data to record in my reflective journal. additional language learning artefacts such as na forms, tutorial record forms, and a dedicated learner puzzle folder in our online learning space were also utilised. it should be reiterated that all the pepas were activities that learners would normally undertake as part of b6. they did not intrude (see ep principle 7, appendix a) and learners were required to practise their english language skills whilst undertaking them. for instance, learners were reminded to practise “signpost” language when giving the mini-presentations in week 4. similarly, delayed language-related feedback was provided after discussions of puzzles and learners were encouraged to read peers’ written reflective reports in a low-key end-of-module dissemination stage. data analysis the procedure outlined above and the inclusion of questionnaires and surveys yielded data suitable for quantitative analysis. however, ep’s focus on human aspects such as quality of life and the modest size of the learner cohorts lent itself to qualitative analyses. three learners were selected for the case studies presented in this paper. they came from a range of first language backgrounds (czech, cantonese, and french) and nationality (czech, chinese, and french-canadian, respectively). selection was partly on the basis of these learners providing the fullest datasets (attended class regularly, participating in the puzzle-related activities completing the end of module questionnaires/reflective reports). one learner, pierre, was selected in an attempt to foreground a more critical voice on learner puzzling. in my analysis of open-ended responses to surveys, reflective reports, and reflective journal entries, i used manual coding to stay close to my qualitative data and identify prominent themes in the dataset. collaboration with teacher-researchers from my institute enabled an exchange of materials and ideas. a colleague from my extended professional network provided an outsider perspective on facilitation of learner puzzling via ep principles which further informed data analysis and universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras24 banister interpretation. note that in the subsequent reporting, b6 2016 denotes an autumn 2016 learner and b6 2017 a spring 2017 learner. findings and understanding in this section i present my analysis, referred to here as “understanding” in line with ep’s principles. i start by examining the nature of my learners’ puzzles before moving on to foreground learners’ perspectives on the process of puzzling, utilising the three case studies and drawing upon supplementary data from other learners. focus and nature of learner puzzles my first research question was: “what kind of puzzles would learners be interested in?” this can be addressed in terms of the focus and the nature of their puzzles. of the 14 participants, 12 students participated in and completed the vast majority of pepas designed to scaffold puzzle exploration. in the autumn 2016 cohort of eight students, seven out of eight wrote a summarising reflective report. due to a timetable issue, only two out of six spring 2017 learners completed the summative questionnaire. whilst this was disappointing, until this point, high engagement levels with pepas in class were observed and the additional classroom artefacts supplemented my teacher-researcher reflections. of the 14 learners across the two cohorts, 12 learners each formulated one puzzle in relation to their english language learning experiences. learners’ puzzles gravitated towards vocabulary, speaking, and pronunciation and, overall, speaking emerged as the most puzzled aspect. however, beyond these popular areas, puzzlement also covered formality in written production, and tense usage. learners’ puzzles are listed in figure 1 with their final iterations/wording retained for the sake of authenticity. figure 1. list of learners’ puzzles speaking 1. why is it that i can easily understand english native-speakers but i struggle to be �uent when i speak? writing 2. why do i feel that my writing is not formal enough? vocabulary 3. why is it so dif�cult for me to memorize new vocabulary? why do i have the feeling that i have a lack of technical vocabulary? pronunciation 4. the struggle with a pronunciation aspect and with achieving the genuine sound of the language. grammar 5. why am i not able to use the right tense in the right context even if i already studied it many times? speaking and vocabulary 6. why do i lose my vocabulary while speaking? 7. why is it sometimes dif�cult to �nd the right words at the right moment to speak �uently? 8. why is my vocabulary basic especially when i speak whereas i understand most of the speci�c words when reading newspapers? 9. why can't i use the advanced or new vocabulary words i know when i speak �uently? 10. why can't i �nd and use the right words when speaking even if i am familiar with the words? reading and vocabulary 11. whether we should stop to look up the new words when reading and how long does it take to read english articles without coming across endless new words? writing and pronunciation 12. why is there such a difference between the way you write and the way you pronounce a word in english? single aspect puzzles dual aspect puzzles 25profile: issues teach. prof. dev., vol. 20, no. 2, jul-dec, 2018. issn 1657-0790 (printed) 2256-5760 (online). bogotá, colombia. pages 17-33 scaffolding learner puzzling in exploratory practice: perspectives from the business english classroom the majority of learner puzzles (7/12) were multifaceted, demonstrating awareness of how multiple aspects of language learning might impact each other. for example, vocabulary and speaking were linked in five puzzles (6-10). when single aspect puzzles are considered alongside dual aspect puzzles, speaking and vocabulary feature most prominently (on 6 occasions in both cases). nine respondents gave reasons for their choice of puzzle in the questionnaire and reflective reports with a problem-based approach evident in eight out of nine cases. a linguistic analysis of this data allows the identification of three significant sub-themes (note that some responses mentioned two of the following sub-themes hence, the total number of instances exceeds the 9 respondents). • negative affect (6 instances): “endless”, “struggle/s”, “frustrates”, “frustration”, “embarrassment”, “deepest concern”. • inadequacy/inability (4 instances): “a lack of ”, “unable to”, “not enough”, “don’t remember”. • complexity (3 instances): “difficult”, “prevents”, “basic”. only one learner took a different outlook, framing their puzzle selection more positively and explaining that it would prove “useful to communicate in a proper way” (b6 2017 learner). despite the negative framing, overall, learners’ reactions to having a puzzle were largely positive. of the nine students who completed the reflective report or questionnaire, eight addressed the question: do you think that having a puzzle is a useful component to this module? why? of these nine students eight stated that they felt puzzles were useful. when asked why they felt positive about puzzling, learners cited the chance to work on understanding something specific to their individual situation, noting that puzzling “allows to focus on a personal issue” and “it has definitely been interesting to explore it” (b6 2017 learners). while the vast majority of learners found puzzling to be a positive experience, one learner was less enthusiastic. i now present the experience and perspectives of three learners, two who were more positive, and in the interests of balance and a more critical discussion, that of the learner less enthusiastic about puzzling. pseudonyms are used below. case studies naomi’s perspective naomi, from hong kong, puzzled about encountering new lexis when reading. she enjoyed charting her fluency in reading but wondered how native speakers coped when they must “have experienced the same process and how come they ended up so differently?” expressed like this, naomi seems close to the sense of wonderment that hanks (2017a) hopes ep can cultivate. naomi was overburdened with new words when she started to read business related texts and found this a barrier to her reading. naomi reflected on how she had tried memorising lists of words but found it “inefficient and tedious”. she then sourced an article that suggested graded readers and was pleased with its positive impact on her reading fluency: “it did help!” however, she later returned to business articles, wrestling with these and experiencing a setback: “everything became frustrating again . . . i was so tortured . . . and didn’t want to let a new word go.” finally, a mentor and work colleague shared shorter finance related articles via a whatsapp group, which resulted in a satisfying equilibrium: “i read articles there every morning…which does not take me a long time while buffing up my vocabulary day by day!” naomi concluded that having a puzzle was useful because “it engages us . . . and helps us to excel.” janice’s perspective meanwhile, janice, a czech learner puzzled about why she struggled to pronounce the sounds of english, “the genuine sound of the language”. she showed early awareness of the physiological differences between her universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras26 banister native tongue and english when it came to accurate oral production. reflecting on the process, janice said that she reaped the benefits early on in the process: i believe just formulating my puzzle actually did help me a lot. since then i was focusing consciously on a way people-especially native speakers-talk, to be honest not only the sounds but also the stresses and pace of their speeches. she explained her methods as she researched her puzzle: how she overcame her embarrassment to ask people for help during conversation and how she used phonetic symbols to record problematic pronunciation. in addition, she listened to english via audio-books and online tv. after a class activity in which learners had acted as tv commentators for partners who had their backs to the screen (with the audio off ), janice linked this to her puzzle and understood that she might focus more effectively on pronunciation features without the distraction of the images. however, she also came to understand that fossilised mispronunciation was difficult to shift: “the only thing i can do is to hope that when i correct myself for the thousandth time, i will eventually remember.” pierre’s perspective by contrast with naomi and janice, pierre’s perspective on puzzling was more critical and he seems to have found puzzling less worthwhile. a native speaker of french, pierre puzzled about why he struggled to achieve fluency in spoken english despite being able to understand native speakers with relative ease. pierre’s reaction in the first class was interesting. as i introduced learners to the concept of puzzles and related it to the world of business, he asked: “where exactly are we going with this chris?” an early indication that he might be resistant to setting his own research agenda. despite indicating in his reflective report that his puzzle represented a deep concern, he was not able to describe any methods he had used to research this puzzle other than personal reflection. this, coupled with his relative lack of enthusiasm when we undertook the pepas in class, hinted that he found puzzling a waste of time. this was confirmed when he said that puzzles were useful but on the condition that “it helps the student in the end” and his somewhat depressing final admission that “in the end, i don’t know why we did this really.” these three learner perspectives provide a snapshot of learner puzzling in a business english classroom. in the following discussion section, the cases above and additional learners’ voices are interwoven with my own reflections and observations from my privileged insider perspective. discussion opportunities: positive connection-making my second research question focused on the potential advantages of getting learners to set their own research agendas: “what, if any, benefits would accrue from learner puzzling?” my experience scaffolding learner puzzling chimed with that of perpignan (2003), who recognised that rather than the understanding gained, it is often in the exploration itself where real value resides. in other words, quality of classroom life is best understood as a process rather than product (gieve & miller, 2006). for example, in the present study, having and exploring a puzzle in a business english context also seemed to prompt some positive connection-making by learners within their wider lived experience. this was achieved through finding a business connection, a connection with pedagogy or with their exchange experience. naomi’s case demonstrates that through the linking of her puzzle to her business interest (finance articles), she was able to ensure that it stayed directly relevant, which proponents of ep (hanks, 2017b) claim as one of the key advantages of puzzling via ep principles. 27profile: issues teach. prof. dev., vol. 20, no. 2, jul-dec, 2018. issn 1657-0790 (printed) 2256-5760 (online). bogotá, colombia. pages 17-33 scaffolding learner puzzling in exploratory practice: perspectives from the business english classroom other kinds of positive linkage emerged from learner puzzling. janice used her puzzle to make connections to her native language and her past language learning experiences. in fact, she also linked pedagogic activities to her puzzle to gain greater understanding. janice concluded that her listening skill might best be developed through audio-only exposure to listening texts (as opposed to audio plus images). janice made a link to a class activity in which students had listened to an excerpt from a tv show without seeing the related images. similarly, another b6 learner mentioned in her reflective report that after puzzling she now realised that vocabulary knowledge is not always reflected in spoken production. this student concluded that she should make a conscious effort to incorporate recently seen words into written and spoken language production. this example reveals how puzzles can highlight the potential usefulness of language learning strategies; encouraging learner buy-in to suggestions made by teachers or published materials. a common thread in learners’ puzzles was a focus on oral production of the language (in 6/12 puzzles). learners especially linked speaking and vocabulary knowledge. this preoccupation with oral skills comes as little surprise. my learners’ focus on speaking skills perhaps reflects their desire to survive their sudden immersion in a new academic and social environment. another learner, whose puzzle revolved around a lack of vocabulary, related how a shopping trip prompted her puzzle: i was interested in this…because…when i moved to london, i need to go and buy some pots, cutlery, plates…it was horrible to find the specific names of each pot…i just felt embarrassed because of my lack of vocabulary. (b6 2016) if puzzles can draw upon learners’ wider lived experiences, even negative experiences, and bring these into the classroom, it might aid learners in setting their own research agendas, learning goals and paths, and sustaining their search for understanding. challenges: puzzlement mind-sets and tensions in facilitation of puzzling my third and final research question considered the difficulties that might arise: “what, if any, aspects of learner puzzling would prove challenging?” my learners all focused on problematic aspects (inadequacies, complexities, and negative affect) and spent considerable time focused on a negative aspect of classroom life. this mirrored the findings from previous studies exhibiting similar tendencies (chu, 2007; hanks, 2017b). as many business english materials follow an action-oriented business case study approach, it might be tentatively suggested that learners found it difficult to move from this paradigm on their business modules (where they were concurrently studying) when asked to prioritise understanding of their language learning experiences ahead of a need for action. despite this, janice and naomi’s statements show progression in the search for understanding of their puzzles. the problem-solution gravitation points to a tension in ep though: having already decided to shape learners’ puzzles into a “why?” frame, i found myself reluctant to interfere further by insisting that they turn a negative into a positive frame. the broader issue lies in the extent to which the teacher-researcher facilitating puzzles can or should legitimately influence learners’ puzzles before, at some point, the puzzle ceases to be truly owned by the learners themselves. that said, my learners stated in tutorials and class discussion that they felt under no pressure to find solutions and many students mentioned why this might be unrealistic given our limited timeframe. learners recognised that their puzzles would require further exploration, which some learners indicated they were willing to consider. it is easy to forget the challenge that a researcher role entails for learners and a further tension in the puzzle facilitation process relates to how teacher-researchers communicate the purpose of learner puzzling. pierre, universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras28 banister the least enthusiastic about having a puzzle, later stated that he had thought his puzzle was more to help me with my research than something likely to be of benefit to him. i had introduced ep in the context of my own positive experiences of puzzling, partly in an attempt to build solidarity with my learners, yet pierre’s comments allude to a perceived lack of ownership of the research process, despite my repeated reminders of his agency. they also point to the potential confusion that may result from ep’s relatively non-prescriptive and open-ended approach. if the purpose of learners’ puzzling is not successfully conveyed, the teacher’s privileged, insider position in the ep process is threatened and the whole process potentially compromised. thus, communicating the aims of learner puzzlement and the role of both teacher-researchers and learner-researchers within ep requires careful and considered presentation on the part of the facilitator of puzzling. conclusion the questionnaire and reflective report responses of my business english learners in this study revealed that a majority engaged positively with ep and in particular the aspect of learner puzzling. whilst a small minority of learners approached puzzling with less enthusiasm, the vast majority of them successfully identified, formulated and to some extent, explored a puzzle, gaining some understanding and building some useful connections between their wider lived experience and their current context of study. there remain some notable challenges and unresolved tensions for the teacher-researcher looking to promote learner puzzling. these include encouraging a mind-set shift from puzzling to problemsolving in learner-researchers which could in turn help prioritise learners gaining a genuine, in-depth understanding of language learning experience rather than a more mechanical problem-solving. persuading sceptical learners that setting their own research agenda is something that they can genuinely own and benefit from is a further challenge. moreover, the level of input and guidance in the process of setting and exploring learner puzzles that teacher-researchers should or need to offer remains opaque. however, the example provided by these learners of business english suggests that those who can establish links between their english language puzzles and aspects of their wider world (e.g., exchange student status, business interests) are more likely to see their puzzle given life and injected with the relevance required to sustain their search for understanding over the course of the 12-week module and scaffolding by teacher-researchers. implications teacher-researchers looking to work on developing learner puzzles and develop learner-researcher identities in their language classrooms might wish to consider the following points. firstly, to facilitate the positive connection-making that some learners in this study experienced at the outset, learners could be provided with a bank of pepas aimed at supporting their research journey. in order to maintain learners’ sense of ownership of their puzzles and avoid a prescriptive approach creeping in, learners could then be free to select tasks that they feel might illuminate their puzzle and to add additional novel tasks of their own. if the tasks were logged they could then prompt a later discussion in class in which learners explained which tasks they found best illuminated their puzzle and why. the list could feature tasks aimed at inducing positive connection-building between learners’ puzzles and their current or future business interests and/or their exchange study period in the uk. throughout the inquiry process learners should be encouraged to share their explorations with each other. in doing so, a sense of solidarity could be fostered and classmates might be able to shed light on puzzles of their fellow learner-researchers. learners might be able to head off negative feelings arising when puzzling is difficult. similarly, they could support each other and help each other regain momentum when puzzling proves challenging. 29profile: issues teach. prof. dev., vol. 20, no. 2, jul-dec, 2018. issn 1657-0790 (printed) 2256-5760 (online). bogotá, colombia. pages 17-33 scaffolding learner puzzling in exploratory practice: perspectives from the business english classroom secondly, teachers hoping to scaffold learner puzzlement in business english contexts could helpfully unpack not only the similarities to be found between business study and ep principles (e.g., the power of understanding “why?”) but also the potential differences. this might help learners distinguish between the problem-solving emphasis common in business which may jar with the notion of prioritising puzzlement required of learnerresearchers. equally, this distinction must be clear in the mind of teacher-researchers aiming to scaffold the setting of learner research agendas. understanding of these issues and tensions represents a useful starting point for teacher-researchers wishing to facilitate learner puzzlement through the adoption of ep principles, especially those who are trying to convey the notion and benefits of puzzling to undergraduate learners of business english. references allwright, d. (2005). developing principles for practitioner research: the case of exploratory practice. the modern language journal, 89(3), 353-366. https://doi. org/10.1111/j.1540-4781.2005.00310.x. allwright, d. (2006). six promising directions in applied linguistics. in s. gieve & i. k. miller (eds.), understanding the language classroom (pp. 11-17). basingstoke, uk: palgrave macmillan. https://doi.org/10.1057/9780230523166_2. allwright, d., & hanks, j. (2009). the developing language learner: an introduction to exploratory practice. basingstoke, uk: palgrave macmillan. https://doi. org/10.1057/9780230233690. anwaruddin, s. m. (2016). language teachers’ responses to educational research: addressing the “crisis” of representation. international journal of research and method in education, 39(3), 314-328. https://doi.org/10.1080/174 3727x.2016.1166485. banister, c. (2016, may). obtaining meaningful student feedback and evaluations of the learning experience in a business english context. paper presented at the international elt conference: cultivation of quality culture in elt in higher education, ege university, izmir, turkey. banister, c. (2017). exploring teacher and learner perceptions of value around peer-teaching of vocabulary: convergences and divergences (working paper 1702: rwp1702). regent’s working papers 2017. borg, s. (2009). english language teachers’ conceptions of research. applied linguistics, 30(3), 358-388. https://doi. org/10.1093/applin/amp007. chu, p.-y. (2007). how students react to the power and responsibility of being decision makers in their own learning. language teaching research, 11(2), 225-241. https://doi.org/10.1177/136216880607074613. costantino, a. (in press). understanding “local” pedagogy: a written feedback puzzle. in a. slimani-rolls & r. kiely (eds.), exploratory practice: an innovative form of continuous professional development. uk: palgrave macmillan. dar, y. (2015). exploratory practice: investigating my own classroom pedagogy. in d. bullock & r. smith (eds.), teachers research! (pp. 51-59). faversham, uk: iatefl. retrieved from http://resig.weebly.com/ uploads/2/6/3/6/26368747/teachers_research__online_ version.pdf. dawson, s. (2017). eap learners explore their language learning lives through exploratory practice. in t. stewart (ed.), insider accounts of classroom life: higher education (pp. 7-13). annapolis, us: tesol press. retrieved from http:// www.tesol.org/docs/default-source/books/14036_sam. pdf ?sfvrsn=2. gieve, s., & miller, i. k. (2006). what do we mean by “quality of classroom life”? in s. gieve & i. k. miller (eds.), understanding the language classroom (pp. 18-46). basingstoke, uk: palgrave macmillan. https:// doi.org/10.1057/9780230523166_3. goral, m. (in press). exploratory practice: embracing new identities. in a. slimani-rolls & r. kiely (eds.), exploratory practice: an innovative form of continuous professional development. uk: palgrave macmillan. hanks, j. (2015a). “education is not just teaching”: learner thoughts on exploratory practice. elt journal, 69(2), 117-128. https://doi.org/10.1093/elt/ccu063. universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras30 banister hanks, j. (2015b). language teachers making sense of exploratory practice. language teaching research, 19(5), 612-633. https://doi.org/10.1177/1362168814567805. hanks, j. (2016). what might research as practice look like? in k. dikilitas, m. wyatt, j. hanks, & d. bullock (eds.), teachers engaging in research (pp. 19-30). faversham, uk: iatefl. hanks, j. (2017a). exploratory practice in language teaching: puzzling about principles and practices. london, uk: palgrave macmillan. https://doi.org/10.1057/978-1-137-45344-0. hanks, j. (2017b). integrating research and pedagogy: an exploratory practice approach. system, 68, 38-49. https:// doi.org/10.1016/j.system.2017.06.012. perpignan, h. (2003). exploring the written feedback dialogue: a research, learning and teaching practice. language teaching research, 7(2), 259-278. https://doi. org/10.1191/1362168803lr125oa. rainey de díaz, i. (2005). efl teachers’ research and mainstream tesol: ships passing in the night? profile: issues in teachers’ professional development, 6(1), 7-21. slimani-rolls, a. (2003). exploring a world of paradoxes: an investigation of group work. language teaching research, 7(2), 221-239. https://doi.org/10.1191/1362168803lr123oa. slimani-rolls, a., & kiely, r. (eds.). (in press). exploratory practice: an innovative form of continuing professional development. uk: palgrave macmillan. about the author chris banister teaches academic and business english at regent’s university london. he holds an ma in tesol from ucl institute of education and his current research interests include: supporting learnerresearchers, eap vocabulary lists, and obtaining learner feedback/evaluations. he is a committee member for the annual istanbul teachers research! conference. 31profile: issues teach. prof. dev., vol. 20, no. 2, jul-dec, 2018. issn 1657-0790 (printed) 2256-5760 (online). bogotá, colombia. pages 17-33 scaffolding learner puzzling in exploratory practice: perspectives from the business english classroom appendix a: the seven principles of exploratory practice 1. focus on quality of life as the fundamental issue 2. work to understand it before thinking about solving problems 3. involve everybody as practitioners developing their own understandings 4. work to bring people together in a common enterprise 5. work cooperatively for mutual development 6. make it a continuous enterprise 7. minimize the burden by integrating the work for understanding into normal pedagogic practice (allwright & hanks, 2009, p. 260) universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras32 banister appendix b: procedure for the facilitation of learner puzzling l = learner, c = classwork, h = homework week activity comments 1 c: needs analysis (one item asks about puzzles). ascertain ls’ initial areas of interest. 2 c: presentation on ep, previous teacher-research. c: discussion of week 1 responses to “what puzzles you about learning english?” h: read a business article and an ep-related text (adapted open letter from d. allwright to learners from allwright and hanks (2009, pp. 273-274) h: ls reframe puzzles into “why” questions. motivate ls with a local success story involving previous cohorts. opportunity to exchange thoughts with peers. establish a connection between ep’s focus on puzzling to better understand the language classroom and the importance of understanding “why” for businesses. encourage ls’ puzzling to move deeper, beyond what, when, and how to why. 3 c: ls report on initial reflections and progress. c & h: ls given options for puzzle exploration (reading, asking, sharing ideas). provide ls with the chance to modify their puzzle and identify others with whom they might collaborate. ls provided with scaffolding to drive explorations. 4 c: presentation and group discussion of emerging puzzles. sharing of progress and methods used. provide input on peers’ puzzles. 5 h: upload puzzles framed as why questions to online folder. encourage ls to refine puzzle formulations. provide opportunities to see all puzzles together. 6 h: ls presented with prompts (used for final reflective reports or questionnaires). c: l discussion of progress promote l reflection upon puzzling generally and their puzzle in particular. sharing methods, understanding, and issues. 7/8 tutorials: ls reflect and discuss preliminary understanding (if any). chance for one-to-one discussion with teacher. 10 h: ls explore puzzle using other methods. final opportunity to explore puzzles. 11/12 c: ls write a reflective report or complete a survey. summarise ls’ final thoughts on their puzzle, the ep process and understanding gained. highlight future scope for exploration. reflective reports displayed in class. 33profile: issues teach. prof. dev., vol. 20, no. 2, jul-dec, 2018. issn 1657-0790 (printed) 2256-5760 (online). bogotá, colombia. pages 17-33 scaffolding learner puzzling in exploratory practice: perspectives from the business english classroom appendix c: reflective reports prompts to stimulate learners’ reflective reports. what was your puzzle? why was it of interest? how did you explore it? (reading, discussing it, reflection, research, etc.) what, if any, new understanding did you gain? what barriers to understanding did you come across? do you now better understand why it was a puzzle to begin with? do you think you will continue to explore it? why/ why not? do you think that having a puzzle is a useful component to this module? why/ why not? 109profile: issues teach. prof. dev., vol. 22 no. 1, jan-jun, 2020. issn 1657-0790 (printed) 2256-5760 (online). bogotá, colombia. pages 109-122 https://doi.org/10.15446/profile.v22n1.76925 english language student-teachers developing agency through community-based pedagogy projects estudiantes de licenciatura desarrollando agencia a través de proyectos de pedagogía basados en la comunidad 1wilson hernández varona* daniel felipe gutiérrez álvarez** universidad surcolombiana, neiva, colombia this paper presents a narrative inquiry study on agency development in student-teachers of an english language teacher program at a public university in the south of colombia. our goal was to understand how student-teachers develop agency when narratively inquiring their community by planning and conducting community-based pedagogy projects on issues they found pertinent to investigate. the data were gathered through semi-structured focus group interviews, individual journal entries, and videorecorded talks about their inquiries. as a conclusion, we acknowledge that certain social and narrative practices such as interacting within their inquiry groups, interacting with their communities, voicing their communities’ necessities, and acting upon the inquired necessities facilitated developing agency and contributed to rethinking their roles as transformative members of their communities. key words: agency development, community-based pedagogy, narrative inquiry, pre-service teachers of english. este artículo presenta un estudio de investigación narrativa sobre el desarrollo de agencia en estudiantes de un programa de licenciatura en inglés en una universidad pública en colombia. nuestro objetivo es comprender cómo los estudiantes de esta licenciatura desarrollan agencia al investigar narrativamente su comunidad, planificando y dirigiendo proyectos de pedagogía basados en la comunidad y sobre temas que ellos decidieron investigar. los datos se recopilaron a través de entrevistas semiestructuradas con grupos focales, registros individuales en diarios y charlas videograbadas sobre sus investigaciones. como conclusión, reconocemos que ciertas prácticas sociales y narrativas tales como interactuar en sus grupos de investigación, interactuar con sus comunidades, expresar las necesidades de sus comunidades, y actuar sobre las necesidades investigadas, facilitaron el desarrollo de agencia. palabras clave: desarrollo de agencia, estudiantes de licenciatura en inglés, investigación narrativa, pedagogía con base en la comunidad. * e-mail: wilson.hernandez@usco.edu.co ** e-mail: daniel.gutierreza@campusucc.edu.co how to cite this article (apa, 6th ed.): hernández varona, w., & gutiérrez álvarez, d. f. (2020). english language student-teachers developing agency through community-based pedagogy projects. profile: issues in teachers’ professional development, 22(1), 109-122. https:// doi.org/10.15446/profile.v22n1.76925. this article was received on december 19, 2018 and accepted on august 15, 2019. this is an open access article distributed under the terms of the creative commons license attribution-noncommercial-noderivatives 4.0 international license. consultation is possible at https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/. universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras110 hernández varona & gutiérrez álvarez introduction at the turn of the 21st century, research in the field of english language teaching (elt) has directed efforts towards the understanding and the implementation of critical pedagogy to raise awareness about the social and cultural implications that permeate all pedagogical practices (giroux, 1997; freire & macedo, 2005; janks, dixon, ferreira, granville, & newfield, 2013). it is important to start inquiring about how certain practices have remained unquestioned in elt—practices which disregard any chance of social and political participation. the necessity to investigate agency development in student-teachers (henceforth sts) lies in the recurrent association of agency development with the teachers’ isolation and autonomy embedded in their professional roles in conventional teaching practices and settings (rodríguez, 2013); instead of illuminating how dialogic practices involving their communities may lead them to a more critical development of agency. additionally, bringing and adopting sociocultural resources from inner circle countries which claim ownership of the language (kachru as cited in gonzález, 2007) have become commonplace for many elt settings. it is necessary to advocate for a local approach that seizes “learning to perceive social, political, and economic contradictions and to take action against the oppressive elements of reality” (freire, 2005, p. 35). therefore, there is a necessity to look back at our learners and all that makes them who they are, to understand how the interaction with their surrounding sociocultural resources may lead to the understanding of agency development. thus, focusing on the learners’ experiences when they inquired narratively into their communities may disclose certain social and narrative factors to guide us towards comprehending the development of agency of english language sts in a pre-intermediate english course. specifically, we explored how english language sts develop agency when narratively inquiring into sociocultural resources of their community. we also investigated how developing agency influenced sts’ perspectives on sociocultural resources of their community. consequently, we analyzed the sts’ stories of narrative inquiries conducted in a south colombian city to understand how inquiring into their community’s local sociocultural resources elicited agency in the sts. initially, we introduce the concepts of agency development, narrative inquiry, and community-based pedagogies to illustrate our view on understanding the development of agency. then, we explain the research methodology, the instruments used to collect data, and the data analysis procedure. later, we briefly describe the participants and their narrative inquiry group projects. finally, we present the findings of the study and the conclusion. theoretical framework to properly contextualize this study, there are three constructs that need to be considered first. initially, we are going to discuss the concept of agency and present what is going to serve as a definition to our study’s purpose. secondly, we are going to revise the concept of narrative inquiry as a phenomenon and how it may foster the development of agency. finally, we are going to look at the concept of community-based pedagogy to support the sts’ narrative inquiry projects. agency development in his conceptualization of critical pedagogy, giroux (2004) argues that agency “becomes the site through which power is not transcended but reworked, replayed, and restaged in productive ways” (p. 34); suggesting that power is at the core of the pedagogical practices that may generate action, in a critical sense. consequently, crucial to our understanding of agency in this study was to know further about the circumstances in which it may be developed. we came to realize that agency does not simply flourish ex nihilo, and that there are certain conditions that facilitate its appearance. 111profile: issues teach. prof. dev., vol. 22 no. 1, jan-jun, 2020. issn 1657-0790 (printed) 2256-5760 (online). bogotá, colombia. pages 109-122 english language student-teachers developing agency through community-based pedagogy projects the main condition that may or may not restrict agency development is posed by freire (1974) when he draws our attention to the traditional education paradigm and how such paradigm threatens the development of popular participation as it is an “educational practice which failed to offer opportunities for the analysis and debate of problems, or for genuine participation” (p. 32). additionally, we noticed this traditional paradigm perpetuates a conservative educational discourse (giroux, 1997) that reduces the student’s role to following instructions, memorizing facts, taking tests, and displaying neat in-class behavior. accordingly, giroux (2004) asserts that “the fundamental challenge facing educators within the current age of neoliberalism is to provide the conditions for students to address how knowledge is related to the power of both self-definition and social agency” (p. 34). unfortunately, these conditions are, basically, nonexistent in many educational contexts such as ours, due to neoliberal agenda and the ambition to regulate all social spheres, without excluding, naturally, the educational sphere. consequently, it is our duty as teachers to expose students to knowledge that may lead them to emancipation, instead of keeping on replicating knowledge whose main aim is to regulate what is learnt (santos, 2009) and intends to maintain unshakeable the foundations of colonial academicism. narrative inquiry as a phenomenon narrative inquiry is guided by the comprehension of the value of the story told, and the personal experience embedded in the story. in a straightforward attempt to describe it, narrative inquiry is “the study of experience as story, then, is first and foremost a way of thinking about experience” (connelly & clandinin, 2006, p. 479). narrative inquiry may bring educational consequences for english language sts and english teacher educators in relation to experiencing personally their community, which in turn will foster social awareness and the knowledge of their community’s realities and needs. xu and connelly (2009) discussed that “teacher knowledge is personal knowledge, and anything taught to teachers as knowledge-for-teachers becomes teacher knowledge and touches the very heart of who teachers are by touching their identity as teachers and as persons” (p. 223). thus, when considering teacher knowledge as a narrative construct that may contribute to the formation of english language sts, there comes the need to address the narrative interaction with sts and their communities to develop a clear understanding of their local sociocultural resources, primarily during their undergraduate programs. then, narrative inquiry acts as a door to access both teacher knowledge and teacher identity, which results in an education for teacher development (xu & connelly, 2009). consequently, it may allow the participating sts to reflect upon their contexts and local knowledge to consequently understand who they are and who they are becoming (clandinin et al., 2006), and empower them to teach, create, or act aware of the importance of their social context, of the people they are part of and whom they may eventually teach. drawing upon these factors in the teaching of english could unveil a critical purpose to lead teacher educators and teachers and learners of english away from a pragmatic set of rules on how to use the foreign language and more so towards a local apprehension and use for that language. community-based pedagogies community-based pedagogies (henceforth, cbps) are broadly defined as “learning that extends classbased learning beyond the school or which involves children and young people working on community projects” (johnston & davis, 2008, p. 353). a more in-depth explanation of cbps, and more appealing to our liking, is the one found in sharkey, clavijo-olarte, and ramírez (2016) whereby cbps are defined as an “asset-based approach that does not ignore the realities of curriculum standards that teachers must address universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras112 hernández varona & gutiérrez álvarez but emphasizes local knowledge and resources as starting points for teaching and learning” (p. 2). in other words, cbps are pedagogies that seek to bridge the gap between local knowledge, curriculum, and learners (sharkey, 2012, p. 10) by encouraging students to reencounter with their communities and the issues that are locally relevant. cbps are deeply connected with how students develop agency and the necessity to inquire about their community. relying on a curricular principle followed by the department of education in victoria, australia, we can maintain that “learning connects strongly with communities and practice beyond the classroom [by interacting with] local and broader communities and community practices” (department of education, victoria, as cited in johnston & davis, 2008, p. 352). conversely, as it is commonly observed, curricula are detached from local reality and overtly ignore the pressing issues of our context (freire, 1974, p. 32). cbps offer the possibility to start from the immediate reality surrounding the community where teaching takes place by advocating for a bottom-up approach that reflects on the local needs. by inquiring into their communities and local sources, sts are likely to experience a compelling shifting of roles in terms of knowledge learning and production. cochran-smith and lytle (2009) assert that: inquiry-oriented work in which students position themselves as researchers provides an edgy and palpable means for disrupting the current policy/political climate, in which teachers are consistently positioned as the transmitters of others’ knowledge and students as the recipients. (pp. 15-16) thus, this so-called role shift from passive recipients to active agents of knowledge becomes pivotal. additionally, as “teaching and learning are social activities” (lastra, durán, & acosta, 2018, p. 212), it is important to facilitate the ambience to strengthen the relationships within the learning community to generate co-constructed forms of knowledge out of solidarity. the study this study followed the main features of a narrative inquiry. clandinin and connelly (2000) defined narrative research as “a way of understanding experience [involving] collaboration between researcher and participants, over time, in a place or series of places, and in social interaction with milieus” (p. 20). when conducting this narrative study, we were able to establish a close relationship with participants, allowing us to engage in their lived experiences on the narrative inquiries into their community, and interact with them, collecting significant active data which facilitated a thorough and constant inquiry. additionally, narrative inquiry acted as a way to understand the experiences retold by the participating sts as stories and found in such stories a contribution to the analysis of the development of agency. narrative inquiry as a method acknowledges sociality, temporality, and place as aspects that may serve as a framework for narrative inquiry practices and which differentiate it from other methodologies (clandinin & huber, 2010). it is rather considerable to contrast such definition to the one of agency presented by emirbayer and mische (1998) in which similar dimensions are to be considered when addressing agency. they suggested agency as: the temporally constructed engagement by actors of different structural environments—the temporal-relational contexts of action—which, through the interplay of habit, imagination, and judgement, both reproduces and transforms those structures in interactive response to the problems posed by changing historical situations. (p. 970) incorporating narrative inquiry’s richness of the interviewees’ experiences with their community lived through the projects, we could see it as a chance to observe the knowledge and agency developed through narrative inquiry. although narrative inquiry “leads less to generalizations and certainties and more toward wondering about and imagining alternative possibili113profile: issues teach. prof. dev., vol. 22 no. 1, jan-jun, 2020. issn 1657-0790 (printed) 2256-5760 (online). bogotá, colombia. pages 109-122 english language student-teachers developing agency through community-based pedagogy projects ties” (clandinin & huber, 2010), we think there might be a chance to analyze narratively the participants’ development of agency regarding the characteristics of their context. participants all participants were students of an elt program at a public university in the south of colombia. the research study motivation took place during a preintermediate english lesson, at the beginning of august 2018, in which teacher and students were discussing the possibilities of modifying the dates and topics for an activity that was pre-established in the syllabus. after some important contributions from the students on negotiating the syllabus activity, we decided to invite the 28 students of the class (aged 18 to 22) to participate in the study. they freely formed groups of four to six students but, in the end, eight students refused to participate in the study due to teamwork problems and a strike at the university. data collection instruments the study was conducted over a four-month period in which we asked participants to write two journal entries individually in order to recall experiences of their narrative inquiries. we proposed a guideline for each journal entry, the first one on the experiences lived when choosing topics to inquire about and defining their roles in the projects, and the second one on the experiences lived when approaching their sources for the first time. then, we had separated narrative focus group interviews considering the number of participants, one interview with each project group. the interviews were conducted in spanish to present participants with a more comfortable environment. we interviewed each group twice. upon completing their narrative inquiries, we asked participants to give a talk about the experiences lived through the entire inquiries, particularly, how they took action on the inquired community’s necessities. at the end of the inquiries, we asked all participating sts to write a personal narrative describing their experience before, while, and after carrying out the narrative inquiries. we collected 10 interviews (lengths 30 to 60 minutes), 23 personal narrative journals, and five video-recorded talks of approximately 40 minutes each. data analysis it is relevant to mention that narrative inquiries divide into two distinct groups and such division offers two ways to analyze narrative data: (a) analysis of narratives, that is, studies whose data consist of narratives or stories, but whose analysis produces paradigmatic typologies or categories; and (b) narrative analysis, that is, studies whose data consist of actions, events, and happenings, but whose analysis produces stories (e.g. biographies, histories, case studies). (polkinghorne, 1995, pp. 5-6) as we followed narrative inquiry as a methodology for this study, we focused on the stories as lived and told throughout the inquir y and valued the stories in their individuality, but also we carried out an analysis of narratives to observe common features that could lead us to identify the development of elt sts’ agency. primarily, the reasons are because the implementation of both types of analyses (analysis of narrative and narrative analysis) would result too extensive to consolidate in one article, and secondarily because we considered that by identifying the common features in the participants’ experiences we could contribute to the comprehension of the process of developing agency. hence, for the analysis of narratives in this study, we organized data by features, subsequently categorizing such features of data into common categories within the chronological order experienced by the participants along the course of their inquiries. the results of the analysis of narrative data revealed that participants’ significant inquiry experiences contributed to developing agency in four moments. universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras114 hernández varona & gutiérrez álvarez the stages of the narrative inquiry projects four stages guided the process to conduct the narrative inquiry projects. the first one was named planning your inquiry and consisted of having the participants select an issue in their community and express how they were going to research it. the second stage was local inquiry, in which participants approached their source for the first time, getting to know more about the issue from the primary source. in a third stage, complementary local inquiry, participants had the opportunity to cover certain doubts brought about in the previous research encounter, and experience inquiring in-depth using their source for more detailed information. in the end, a fourth stage took place, reflect and share, where participants were suggested to reflect on the work they had done and take into consideration why and how their voices could be heard through this intervention. researchers and participants agreed to share such reflection with an audience involving professors of the elt program and senior sts using different visual aids and presentation styles they considered useful. it is important to state that we never interfered with any group decisions (e.g., project name, inquiry process, presentation). in the following part, we are going to describe the participating five narrative inquiry projects. animal shelters (5 sts). two sts from this team were concerned with animal safety and adoption in our city and proposed that issue for inquiry. the other members were not too familiarized with the topic, but right after their first visit to the only animal shelter in the city, they knew this issue deserved attention. it was also after the first visit to the shelter that they discussed doing something for the animals living there (220 dogs and 180 cats). they decided to have a donatón (a fundraising event like a telethon) and reach out to local radio stations, tv programs, and social networks to invite people to participate. they collected enough food to feed all the animals twice a day for two months. for the presentation, they decided to make a 16-minute documentary. sociocultural perspectives of children about peace (4 sts). one of the members of this team had been working with a relative on a doctoral project regarding peace imaginaries of children in colombia. from this, she got the idea and presented it to the other members of the team. they all found it significant and useful due to its relation to education. they decided to visit the municipal department of education to obtain information about the rank of public schools with children from families displaced by violence and who live now in conflicting areas of the city. they chose the school at the top of the rank and interviewed some students, teachers, and family members; however, this resulted very difficult because, as the sts mentioned, “they [displaced families] are fed up with people asking about their pasts and doing nothing for them”. this team listened to the experiences of children and teachers in this community, recognizing how these experiences had shaped their understanding of peace. the presentation was a live theatrical performance, displaying elements of war, schools, toys, and families’ memoirs; followed by an explanation of their project and findings. sensitive side of women: a prostitution story (5 sts). concerned with social issues present in our community, two members of the team deliberated over the issue of women in prostitution as a one-sided story that always shows a materialistic perspective but does not reflect upon emotions, the reasons to initiate it, and/ or messages coming from the women involved. they proposed this concern to the other members and agreed on inquiring about it. they discussed with the group an initial interest as to verifying people’s opinions about prostitution, expressed directly by the primary source and not by others. these sts went to two casas de citas (brothels), from different social strata, and decided to have conversations with different women about their stories in prostitution. in their presentation, they showed clips of the interviews, of people’s opinions about prostitution, advice from the interviewees on life choices, and delivered a well-structured speech at the end of their presentation. 115profile: issues teach. prof. dev., vol. 22 no. 1, jan-jun, 2020. issn 1657-0790 (printed) 2256-5760 (online). bogotá, colombia. pages 109-122 english language student-teachers developing agency through community-based pedagogy projects disability is diversity (4 sts). after taking the university course “special needs education for cognitive impairment”, the members of this inquiry group decided to investigate more about how disability was seen, experienced, and engaged by our educational system. but, above all, they wanted to know the perspectives of teachers, people with disabilities, and school administrators. they interviewed the professor in charge of the course mentioned previously, a blind student, and a teacher working in a school for people with disabilities. this team decided to present their project using videoclips of children with disabilities interacting in a school and of the interviews conducted. they complemented their presentation addressing the audience with a speech on the importance of being aware of disabilities and the responsibilities they have as prospective teachers. drug addiction (5 sts). all members declared interest in this topic and planned to visit strategic places in the university where drug consumers gather. they recorded around 40 short interviews with drug users, and there was one manuscript that resulted from that. one of the team members decided to present one of the interviews as an essay, describing the experience of a young man that had initiated drug consumption as a result of the lack of family time and dedication to him. they started their presentation with messages about drug addiction, then, they showed information about the data gathered and findings. findings in this section, first we are going to describe how english language sts developed agency through a fourmoment process consisting of (a) interacting within inquiry groups, (b) narratively interacting with the community, (c) voicing the untold necessities of the community, and (d) the moment of taking action (see figure 1). second, we are going to focus on how the development of agency influenced reconceptualizing participants’ perspectives on the local sociocultural resources they inquired. interacting within inquiry groups narratively interacting with the community the moment of taking action voicing the untold necessities of the community reconceptualizing perspectives on local sociocultural resources 1 2 3 4 r figure 1. agency development process interacting within narrative inquiry groups agency development in this study is considered to have started when the participants interacted within their narrative inquiry groups. this interaction emerged from defining the topics to inquire, assigning roles and tasks, to discussing how to engage the inquiry. this category attempts to describe the beginning of the process of agency development as evidenced in this study. in excerpt 1, a member of the group sensitive side of women described how she suggested the topic to other members. universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras116 hernández varona & gutiérrez álvarez excerpt 1 that was what i had proposed to my classmates, as some of them were going to inquire about education and children and the like. then, i told them why not change it and do something more interesting that nobody has done before, something that nobody sees or believes important and we give relevance to that. (interview 1, julieta,1 “sensitive side of women”) julieta explained the reasons she had to propose the topic of prostitution, and to encourage her peers to inquire about topics people do not usually acknowledge as important. after this discussion over a topic to inquire about, participants moved up to another relevant moment—assigning roles and tasks. in excerpt 2, santiago narrated how he and his peers experienced assigning the roles and tasks of their project. excerpt 2 we can take care of the most difficult part. for example, we look for the sources and you make the report. also, because we talked about it and we said we had to get rid of all kinds of bad thoughts because one of my classmates said that if she went, she could be looking at them [prostitutes] a lot. we said we cannot do that, we have to be very careful. (interview 1, santiago, “sensitive side of women”) santiago reported in this interview how they had decided, in their group, to assign roles based on the difficulty of the tasks. similarly, the animal shelters group shared with us how they assigned roles based on skills. dayana, a member of this group, defined the process in the following excerpt. excerpt 3 let’s say it was the two of us, the truth is that, we make all the decisions. but, right now didier is the one in charge of the audiovisual part, he recorded all the notes with his cell phone, everything. on television (marketing) edwin is helping, you also [pointing at jairo]. well, i’m the one with the contacts and those things, and they are more like support [pointing at alexa and karla]. (interview 1, dayana, “animal shelters”) 1 all excerpts were translated from spanish and pseudonyms are used to refer to the participants. as evidenced below, the stories reported by the participants unveiled another important moment lived when interacting within their narrative inquiry groups— teacher’s and peers’ acceptance of topics. excerpt 4 teacher: what if i had said no? julieta: well, if you had said no, the topic is wrong, obviously, and by majority of the group, even if i had wanted . . . xiomara: we would not have done it. t: you were expecting my final call… j: i had received the first approval from xiomara, because xiomara had the other one ready [an interview appointment for another topic], so, i was expecting to obtain you approval [teacher’s] and now the other one from my partners. (interview 1, “sensitive side of women”) this group described the power that lies in the teacher’s hands, and how if the situation had been different and the teacher had said no to their proposal, they would have had to decide on another topic. we consider that this aspect was fundamental to allow the sts to experience agency. permitting sts to experience their community, interacting within their narrative inquiry groups, evidenced a first step in the process of developing agency. on the other hand, the data collected from participants in the animal shelters group evidenced that the freedom of choice over the methodology and topic of the inquiry and the involvement of the teacher (i.e., the teacher’s over-controlling guidance) could in fact affect the development of their inquiries, as discussed in excerpt 5. excerpt 5 danielle: well, i believe that it also has to do with the fact that you like this issue [referring to the situation of animals] even more, and that encouraged us. if it had been another issue, well, i don’t know . . . edwin: and that there were no steps, as you said. that is why we have come up to this point, because there were no barriers or limits, or the teacher saying “you have to do this and that” and to follow steps, but we did it ourselves, we found the steps, the options . . . 117profile: issues teach. prof. dev., vol. 22 no. 1, jan-jun, 2020. issn 1657-0790 (printed) 2256-5760 (online). bogotá, colombia. pages 109-122 english language student-teachers developing agency through community-based pedagogy projects d: the ways. (interview 1, “animal shelters”) these findings show that interacting within narrative inquiry groups and experiencing the different moments of such interaction (e.g., defining the topics to inquire about, assigning roles and tasks, discussing how to engage the inquiry), was a fundamental factor that led (to) the process of agency development. the second moment of the process conveys participants’ narrative interaction with the community as another crucial moment that facilitated the development of agency. we are going to discuss it in the upcoming category. interacting with the community interacting with the community is understood in this study as the dialogic practice when sts inquired as to the sources in their community. the interaction of the participants with their community allowed them to identify the conditions exhibited in it, to acknowledge how some members of the community were contributing to solving their necessities, and to reflect upon these two factors, guiding themselves towards taking further action. in excerpt 6, marcela expressed her concern regarding the conditions of her community. excerpt 6 marcela: i live in surorientales. it’s a marginalized sector and when you pass by any of those narrow streets, you’ll see kids in every corner. i think they’re, from what i’ve seen, around 7 to 15 years old. they’re not 18 or 20 or whatever, just kids. teacher: doing…? m: prostitution, smoking, consuming every kind of drugs. once, i ran into some girls around 13 or 15 years old . . . why didn’t they keep going to school? what made them drop out of school? what can we do to prevent them from the involvement in these hood conflicts? because they, let’s say, become thugs. so, how can we help students who are studying to hang in there and create peace instead of war? (interview 2, “sociocultural perspectives of children about peace”) the community in which marcela lives provides her with aspects to ponder regarding the circumstances lived by the inhabitants, particularly kids and, consequently, to attempt to comprehend the life experiences lived there. foremost, marcela’s reflection pleaded for action on helping those kids to remain in schools and build peace, not war. another considerable aspect was the one discussed by didier from the group inquiring about animal shelters. he stated: excerpt 7 that old lady who gets up at 5:00 every morning, every day. she gives them [the pets] their meds, she cleans every cell, she feeds the pets, she gives them water. she’s in charge of the dogs, of the place itself. . . . it’s clear that she’s toiled from all that. but she’s still there, i mean, she’s persistent in this matter. (interview 1, didier, “animal shelters”) these data indicate that didier could observe the efforts of a woman for improving the conditions of animals in this shelter despite the lack of support. similarly, carlota, from the disability is diversity group, described how observing some students with visual impairment encouraged her to inquire into this issue: excerpt 8 an experience that captivated me and motivated me to keep on searching about this issue was to observe a couple of students with visual disabilities in the class where we had to carry out the practicum; they were doing some math with big numbers that even for me where hard to solve right away as they did. (journal 1, carlota, “disability is diversity”) it becomes evident that community-sts’ interaction is acting as a contributing factor and context that facilitated the group members’ access to knowledge and understanding of the reality that surrounds them, and sometimes ignore. moreover, interacting with their community has led them to reflect on their role involving the necessities of their community, as discussed in excerpt 9. universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras118 hernández varona & gutiérrez álvarez excerpt 9 sometimes, we’re just focused on our own reality, and we don’t take the time to know what’s going on beyond, what problems are displayed in our community. and, throughout the development of the project and when i observed this problematic closer, i was able to reflect that i want to teach from a more humane perspective, to teach for diversity, to see abilities where others see disabilities. (journal 2, carlota, “disability is diversity”) when sts interacted with the community, they started to observe, from a more critical stand, its current conditions. as supported in these findings, they observed what some people were doing to deal with the problematic prevailing in their community. this interaction offered some sts an initial reflective stage in which they evaluated their roles as members in their community. we are going to describe next how voicing the necessities of the community, a moment that resulted from this interaction, strengthens the development of agency. voicing the untold necessities of the community this moment illustrates the sts’ necessity to voice what others simply cannot, as the result of segregation. inevitably, interaction with the communities led students to question the way different members of their community have been blatantly silenced due to their life conditions. excerpt 10 illustrates a necessity of voicing the untold. in an interview with the group sensitive side of women, julieta explained why they had selected the issue they inquired into referring to this aspect. excerpt 10 i had some doubts, but then i said, “that’s great, let’s do it, let’s show the other side of women”, because they have a lot of problems, not only discrimination, they’re harmed, hurt, it’s awful. (interview 1, julieta, “sensitive side of women”) in this data, julieta showed her concern for the profound aspects that are not usually considered or told about women affected by their job as prostitutes. julieta and her group were aware that prostitution is commonly seen as taboo in our society and that there is a common tendency to discuss the topic mostly to talk ill about it. this is precisely why their common goal consisted of digging up the aspects that have been buried under the debris of prejudice. in the same vein, nelly described to us her experience when addressing the topic of violence directly from people who have suffered it: excerpt 11 but, as the project progressed, i began to experience closeness to this issue of violence, the violence that has been discussed for more than 50 years. . . . the reality of what happened: the crimes, the revenge, the thirst for power, and the innocents who were hurt, were some of the things that happened and that were impressive for them, and for us it was something shocking. it was moving to hear the voices of those who lived the war and those who were victims. (journal 2, nelly, “imaginaries of peace”) similarly, the disability is diversity group sought to give a particular twist to the uncalled-for tendency to think poorly about people with disabilities. this is what carlota expressed in regard to this matter: excerpt 12 with the inclusion for people with disabilities topic, we want to show a reality that is barely discussed, which is the hard time they have to keep on studying at educational institutions, due to several factors such as the lack of training for teachers, lack of materials in the institutions, lack of motivation to teach, among others. (journal 1, carlota, “disability is diversity”) the educational factors mentioned by carlota are crucial to understand her stand. by emphasizing the unfortunate conditions that people with disabilities have to face on a daily basis, carlota is trying to turn the gist of this issue upside-down. she argued that people’s disabilities have always had a negative connotation because this is the way society and some educational institutions have gotten freed from the responsibility 119profile: issues teach. prof. dev., vol. 22 no. 1, jan-jun, 2020. issn 1657-0790 (printed) 2256-5760 (online). bogotá, colombia. pages 109-122 english language student-teachers developing agency through community-based pedagogy projects of providing them with the necessary conditions to integrate them as valuable citizens. additionally, the necessity to unveil the untold helped as a voice extension for animal recognition, too. edwin and the rest of his group were able to notice how little informed people were about the conditions in which these stray pets lived, as edwin explained (excerpt 13) when talking about the animal conditions in the local shelter. excerpt 13 the fact that they’re fed once a day was a factor that shocked everybody, because we told them “there are about 400 animals” and people were like “wow! that’s a lot!”. the cells were not in the conditions . . . they should be. okay, there are a lot of sick dogs; sure, well, that’s normal. that was a fundamental factor to encourage people and that we used social media a lot to spread the impact. (interview 2, edwin, “animal shelter”) they decided to crunch some numbers and share them with the community, so they could get people’s attention and direct it towards the things many people ignored about the local shelter. the group felt compelled to let people know the big effort volunteers make to keep these dogs and cats in decent conditions, and, by doing so, raise their voices on behalf of them. the next category examines the moment of taking action as a determining factor in developing agency. the moment of taking action this category illustrates a concluding moment in the process of agency development, as argued in this study. the narratives of sts reported how their experiences when inquiring into the community made them contemplate the possibilities of taking action. in excerpt 14, didier noticed the gap between acknowledging necessities in the community and taking action. excerpt 14 when i was doing the interviews, i realized something, with the students, there are a lot of students who like animals but nobody who motivates them, who guides them, and takes them there to help. (interview 1, didier, “animal shelters”) this, interwoven with other aspects they spotted (e.g., lack of food for animals, lack of government support), triggered them to do the donatón and act upon the issue found while inquiring. likewise, nelly shared with us the importance of finding in the community ideas on how to take action; in excerpt 15, she addresses how. excerpt 15 an elder said that to build peace would be very difficult, but we are not so far away. for that, you need parents, teachers, and anyone who is accompanying them [students] so they do not fall into this kind of thing [problem] then it is very important to listen to them, bring proposals, and raise awareness in the parents or those who are interested in doing something. people do not trouble themselves about something to repair them [students]; then, part of this inquiry is to find proposals that can contribute to that. (interview 2, nelly, “sociocultural perspectives of children about peace”) the data here portray how after sts have passed through the previous three moments of the agency development process assumed in this study, they look for solutions to assist the necessities found in their communities. more importantly, they give a clear purpose to this final moment of taking action, as it is evidenced in excerpt 16. excerpt 16 this project was a motivation for me, because, in it, we were looking for a solution to help the children affected by the violence in different areas, and i’d like to keep these kids from being contaminated by such violence and keep them from becoming part of this violence in the future. i’d like to create an environment of peace around them, . . . having one place, at least, where they can be at peace, is enough to start. (journal 2, miriam, “sociocultural perspectives of children about peace”) the previous category provides important insights into participants’ decisions towards taking some steps to tackle issues found as problematic in their inquiries universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras120 hernández varona & gutiérrez álvarez and through reevaluating their roles, become active members of a community that evidently needs them. reconceptualizing perspectives on local sociocultural resources a reconceptualization of the sts’ perspectives on local sociocultural resources was evidenced as a result of the engagement in the four-moment process of agency development. this reconceptualization comprised the identification of local beliefs sts held that were constantly rethought as they enacted these agentic processes. in this category, we discuss the specific moments in which sts displayed this sort of reconceptualization and the actions which triggered it. in excerpt 17, mariana, from the drug addiction group, shares how the results of all their inquiry led the group to rethink beliefs about young drug addicts: excerpt 17 this [the results of the inquiry] made us realize that not everything is as society says, right? so, we didn’t keep the concepts that they daily use to question and judge them [drug consumers] just because they consume drugs. we also observed that no matter the reason that took them to this, they believe to have the total control of their life, and it’s not true, they say “i can quit it whenever i want,” but it’s not true, because in this moment they’re like, they don’t have enough will to fight this monster that is swallowing them every single day. (video-recorded talk, mariana, “drug addiction”) here, mariana’s reconceptualization of local beliefs about young drug addicts was generated by unmediated interaction with this community. consequently, this interaction led mariana to question the local beliefs she had about drug addiction by contrasting it with what is commonly speculated (what “society says”) and what she was able to inquire along with her group. similarly, we identified an analogous reconceptualization in santiago, as he evidenced in excerpt 18, how their inquiry helped him to change his “conception about this job [prostitution],” and to rethink his former judgement of this occupation: excerpt 18 [the process of inquiring] made me change my conception about this job, about those girls and our reality, we cannot judge and criticize, we don’t know how others are living; there are many things that this could change the expectations of people...if you want to do something, do it and get it; even if we fail, what better way to learn! (journal 2, santiago, “sensitive side of women”) here, local beliefs are characterized by santiago as unfounded judgment of prostitution. for santiago, there is a correlation between doing and learning. hence, by doing these inquiries, santiago learnt more about how “others are living,” which, analogously, led him to reconceptualize the way he used to think about prostitutes. in a similar fashion, catalina, from the disability is diversity group, expressed, in excerpt 19, that her interaction with people with disabilities led her to think how we apathetically reject certain issues that are not directly related to our individual life: excerpt 19 all this information makes me think that we are not interested in certain issues because we don’t suffer them or we’re not affected by them; we live in a bubble where we encapsulate ourselves in our own problems and we don’t see beyond to think about others. we have the misconception that people with disabilities are limited, that they will not be able to fulfill their goals. that is where the problem lies, people with disabilities are not limited, society is the one that sets in those people the limits and obstacles. (journal, catalina, “disability is diversity”) catalina is reflecting here upon the situation of a teenage girl with down syndrome who did not have access to higher education due to her condition. she implies that we are constantly being filled with information and facts about segregated people but little knowledge to approach and reconnect with them. all of the above-mentioned findings led us to consider some theoretical aspects that need to be considered in the discussion and conclusion below. 121profile: issues teach. prof. dev., vol. 22 no. 1, jan-jun, 2020. issn 1657-0790 (printed) 2256-5760 (online). bogotá, colombia. pages 109-122 english language student-teachers developing agency through community-based pedagogy projects discussion we consider there are some educational conditions in colombia that may constrain the development of agency: (a) the countless methods (e.g., grammar translation, natural approach, the communicative language teaching, etc.) (macías, 2010, p. 188) that do not fit in the characteristics of our context, restraining the possibility of knowing how students learn by using the method as a lens that prevents knowing the student holistically (how they learn, the assets they bring to their learning, their understanding of the learning process, etc.); (b) elt policies and the colonial discourses (gonzález, 2007, p. 319) that seek to train teachers and students as mere technicians and passive consumers of knowledge produced by “experts” (cárdenas, gonzález, & álvarez, 2010, p. 51) to privilege the industry behind elt; (c) the distorted nature of education in colombia and the link between this and the economy to meet the needs of a capitalist world (guerrero, 2010) instead of looking for knowledge that meets the necessities of our community. consequently, there is a need to further research agency development in the field of elt in our country. conclusions this research study provided us with valuable insights to begin to understand how sts could develop agency. through the interaction of the participants with their community, we could observe pertinent aspects that contributed to their building of knowledge from people outside of the classroom, to know their community necessities, and to reflect upon how they and their actions could support improvement or, at least, generate awareness. most importantly, and as described by some participants, this research study granted the opportunity to experience how sts know and how they can bind their abilities, and their teacher self-realization with the reality of their contexts. references cárdenas, m. l., gonzález, a., & álvarez, j. a. 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(2009). inquiry as stance: practitioner research for the next generation. new york, us: teachers college press. connelly, f. m., & clandinin, d. j. (2006). narrative inquiry. in j. l. green, g. camilli, & p. b. elmore (eds.), handbook of complementar y methods in education research (pp. 47 7-488). mahwah, us: erlbaum. emirbayer, m., & mische, a. (1998). what is agency? american journal of sociology, 103(4), 962-1023. https://doi. org/10.1086/231294. freire, p. (1974). education for critical consciousness. london, uk: continuum. freire, p. (2005). pedagogy of the oppressed. new york, us: continuum. freire, p., & macedo, d. (2005). literacy: reading the word and the world. london, uk: routledge. https://doi. org/10.4324/9780203986103. universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras122 hernández varona & gutiérrez álvarez giroux, h. a. (1997). pedagogy and the politics of hope: theory, culture and schooling. boulder, us: westview press. giroux, h. a. (2004). critical pedagogy and the postmodern/modern divide: towards a pedagogy of democratization. teacher education quarterly, 31(1), 31-47. gonzález, a. (2007). professional development of efl teachers in colombia: between colonial and local practices. íkala, revista de lenguaje y cultura, 12(1), 309-332. guerrero, c. h. (2010). is english the key to access the wonders of the modern world? a critical discourse analysis. signo y pensamiento, 29(57), 294-313. janks, h., dixon, k., ferreira, a., granville, s., & newfield, d. (2013). doing critical literacy: texts and activities for students and teachers [kindle for pc]. london, uk: routledge. https://doi.org/10.4324/9780203118627. johnston, r., & davis, r. (2008). negotiating the dilemmas of community‐based learning in teacher education. teaching education, 19(4), 351-360. https://doi. org/10.1080/10476210802436492. lastra, s. p., durán, n. c., & acosta, d. (2018). community based pedagogy as an eye-opening for pre-service teachers’ initial connections with the school curriculum. colombian applied linguistics journal, 20(2), 209-229. https://doi.org/10.14483/22487085.13047. macías, d. f. (2010). considering new perspectives in elt in colombia: from efl to elf. how, 17(1), 181-194. polkinghorne, d. e. (1995). narrative configuration in qualitative analysis. international journal of qualitative studies in education, 8(1), 5-23. https://doi. org/10.1080/0951839950080103. rodríguez, g. m. (2013). power and agency in education: exploring the pedagogical dimensions of funds of knowledge. review of research in education, 37(1), 87-120. https://doi.org/10.3102/0091732x12462686. santos, b. (2009). una epistemología del sur: la reinvención del conocimiento y la emancipación social. buenos aires, ar: consejo latinoamericano de ciencias sociales. sharkey, j. (2012). community-based pedagogies and literacies in language teacher education: promising beginnings, intriguing challenges [editorial]. íkala, revista de lenguaje y cultura, 17(1), 9-13. sharkey, j., clavijo-olarte, a., & ramírez, l. m. (2016). developing a deeper understanding of communitybased pedagogies with teachers: learning with and from teachers in colombia. journal of teacher education, 67(4), 1-14. https://doi.org/10.1177/0022487116654005. xu, s., & connelly, f. m. (2009). narrative inquiry for teacher education and development: focus on english as a foreign language in china. teaching and teacher education, 25(2), 219-227. https://doi.org/10.1016/j. tate.2008.10.006. about the authors wilson hernández varona is a visiting teacher of english at universidad surcolombiana. he is studying for his master’s degree in english didactics offered at the same university. his areas of interest are teacher education and development, educational research, critical literacies, and community-based pedagogies. daniel felipe gutiérrez álvarez is a teacher of english at universidad nacional abierta y a distancia (unad) and universidad cooperativa (colombia). he is currently completing his master’s degree in english didactics at universidad surcolombiana. his research areas of interest are multiliteracies, discourses, and foreign language teaching and learning. embracing conceptualizations of english language teacher education from a complexity perspective 281profile: issues teach. prof. dev., vol. 23 no. 2, jul-dec, 2021. issn 1657-0790 (printed) 2256-5760 (online). bogotá, colombia. pages 281-295 https://doi.org/10.15446/profile.v23n2.82765 embracing conceptualizations of english language teacher education from a complexity perspective acoger conceptualizaciones de la formación del docente de inglés desde una perspectiva compleja martha garcia-chamorro1 universidad del atlántico and universidad del norte, barranquilla, colombia nayibe rosado-mendinueta universidad del norte, barranquilla, colombia current conceptualizations of foreign language teacher education fail to represent the complexity of such education. this reflection highlights the need to embrace english language teacher education from a complex perspective. to explain this position, we define complex systems and complexity principles through examples of interconnected components of teacher education. then, we trace emergent conceptualizations from theory and governmental documents that resonate with a complexity perspective. we suggest that efforts in this direction may better prepare prospective english teachers to face challenging realities in educational settings and will eventually improve students’ learning, an outcome every stakeholder is aiming at. keywords: complex system, complexity perspective, complexity principles, english language teacher education las conceptualizaciones actuales de la formación de docentes de lenguas extranjeras no representan la complejidad de dicha formación. esta reflexión destaca la necesidad de abordar la formación de profesores de inglés desde una perspectiva compleja. para explicar esta posición, definimos los sistemas complejos y los principios de complejidad a través de ejemplos de componentes interconectados de la formación del profesorado. a continuación, rastreamos las conceptualizaciones emergentes de la teoría y los documentos gubernamentales que resuenan con una perspectiva de complejidad. los esfuerzos en esta dirección pueden preparar mejor a los futuros profesores de inglés para enfrentarse a las desafiantes realidades de los entornos educativos y, en última instancia, mejorarán el aprendizaje de los estudiantes, un resultado al que aspiran todas las partes interesadas. palabras clave: formación de docentes de inglés, perspectiva de complejidad, principios de complejidad, sistema complejo martha garcia-chamorro  https://orcid.org/0000-0002-7329-9870 · email: marthagarcia@mail.uniatlantico.edu.co nayibe rosado-mendinueta  https://orcid.org/0000-0003-1865-2464 · email: nrosado@uninorte.edu.co how to cite this article (apa, 7th ed.): garcia-chamorro, m., & rosado-mendinueta, n. (2021). embracing conceptualizations of english language teacher education from a complexity perspective. profile: issues in teachers’ professional development, 23(2), 281–295. https:// doi.org/10.15446/profile.v23n2.82765 this article was received on october 9, 2019 and accepted on may 24, 2021. this is an open access article distributed under the terms of the creative commons license attribution-noncommercial-noderivatives 4.0 international license. consultation is possible at https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/ https://doi.org/10.15446/profile.v23n2.82765 https://orcid.org/0000-0002-7329-9870 mailto:marthagarcia@mail.uniatlantico.edu.co https://orcid.org/0000-0003-1865-2464 mailto:nrosado@uninorte.edu.co https://doi.org/10.15446/profile.v23n2.82765 https://doi.org/10.15446/profile.v23n2.82765 https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/ universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras282 garcia-chamorro & rosado-mendinueta introduction world changes affect economic, political, communicative, technological, and relational areas in society (gómez-francisco, 2010). these changes affect people’s thoughts, perceptions, knowledge, and reactions to those dynamics (vaillant, 2007). also, people bi-directionally influence culture, family, society, educational settings, and relationships, which are historically located, diverse, and versatile (lópez-rupérez, 1997). this “changeism” (hill-jackson & lewis, 2010, p. xxi) affects education, given its socio-political and institutionalized nature (morante & gómez, 2007). for this reason, education is of great importance for societies (ministerio de educación nacional [men], 2013; rubiano, 2013) if they are to understand change and advance, progress and improve living and relational conditions of human beings. therefore, it is important to inform education from perspectives that can take account of its bidirectional relationships with society and that recognize its inherent complexity. within a climate of constant change, teachers are fundamental agents in nations’ achievement of their intended goals (garcía-jaramillo et al., 2014; schuck et al., 2018). teachers’ quality has been considered a key factor to assure that forthcoming generations maintain and upgrade their social and living conditions to their fullest. as scholarship shows (darling-hammond, 2006; hattie, 2008; mclean davies et al., 2015; vezub, 2007), teachers are crucial in guaranteeing students’ improvement in the educational system provided other factors are also developed (cochran-smith et al., 2017; morante & gómez, 2007) . global societal changes demand the alignment of education and teacher education (te) to new visions. societies need te programs developed from perspectives that prepare teachers to respond to the increasing demands of educational settings (darling-hammond, 2006; schuck et al., 2018; vaillant, 2007). programs are designed to equip teachers with knowledge, skills, and understandings so they can deal with changing realities. therefore, english language teacher education (elte) configurations should recognize te is a complex phenomenon and use that understanding to include knowledge derived from other sciences, which have advanced in their comprehension of how such complex phenomena function. programs should, for instance, demonstrate in their designs how multiple factors interconnect to influence teachers’ learning thus ultimately affecting teacher quality. therefore, we propose that elte should attempt to integrate complexity epistemologies into their proposals to allow both teacher educators and preservice teachers to develop the knowledge skills and understandings to face variant, diverse, unique, and intricate phenomena (vaillant, 2007) that surface in their classrooms. in line with this, this paper aims at highlighting the need for current elte theoretical approaches to recognize and act upon the understanding that te is a complex phenomenon. we suggest that teacher educators and designers should start thinking of language teachers’ preparation using those considerations. we pose that elte programs should be distanced from a simplicity paradigm, which focuses on content knowledge over other highly influential factors. these factors are frequently addressed in relevant research, but they are far from being integrated into theoretical underpinnings of elte programs. elte needs to be informed by knowledge areas able to explain how a complex phenomenon such as english language teachers’ learning really emerges. joint efforts to improve their quality can be made in this direction. such efforts would better equip prospective english language teachers to face challenging realities in educational settings and would eventually improve students’ learning and development, an outcome every stakeholder is aiming at. a brief note on paradigms the concept of paradigm has two main characteristics: a certain way to conceive and interpret reality and a shared world vision by a group of people (sandin, 2003, 283profile: issues teach. prof. dev., vol. 23 no. 2, jul-dec, 2021. issn 1657-0790 (printed) 2256-5760 (online). bogotá, colombia. pages 281-295 embracing conceptualization of english language teacher education from a complexity perspective p. 28). the scientific classical paradigm is grounded in positivist-rationalist perspectives and entails procedures that separate phenomena into their parts to make them understandable and tractable for human beings. this implies fragmentation, simplification, reduction, and determination of such phenomena to be able to comprehend them. most known phenomena have been studied under this paradigm. this “classical” paradigm has had a strong influence on three major aspects in education: theoretical, epistemological, and methodological. at this point, most of the elte configurations have grounded their theoretical foundations on the classical paradigm (also found in the literature as positivist, rationalist, and empiricist), which usually translates into models of transmission of knowledge. this is what counts as valid knowledge, which in turn is able to explain educational phenomena (arellano, 2016). however, teaching and learning in education and in elte cannot be explained merely on the bases of the classical paradigm (davis & sumara, 2012; gómez-francisco, 2010; roa-acosta, 2006; tello, 2004) as we argue in this reflection. as mentioned, our current paradigmatic comprehension of education has derived from the classical paradigm, and therefore our understandings of how knowledge should be taught and learned result from it. this may have an incidence in the crisis we are living these days, which the world development report (wdr) has labelled as a “learning crisis” (world bank, 2018). the wdr notes the crisis is happening in developing countries and further underlines the lack of recognition from the educational agents: “the learning crisis is real, but too often education systems operate as if it is not” (p. 83). part of this crisis derives from ignoring that te is a complex phenomenon and to improve it we first need to understand it better. scholarship in education has gradually started to establish more complex relations among teaching and learning processes; however, only until recently, the analysis of theoretical reflections in elte models has started to shift. there is a slow movement from traditional paradigms where knowledge transmission is equated to learning, to perspectives that integrate into the equation other interconnected factors such as reflection on teacher’s classroom actions. recent perspectives resonate with constructivist and sociocritical underpinnings as well as humanistic theoretical foundations (for a review of models, see fandiño-parra et al., 2016). the paradigmatic stance taken by elte influences how teaching and learning are instantiated in the programs. as follows, we will illustrate this point introducing conceptual orientations that have been traced in various reviews. main conceptual orientations in teacher education feiman-nemser (1990) indicates five conceptual orientations from her review of theoretical perspectives in te. the author defines conceptual orientation as “a coherent perspective on teaching, learning, and learning to teach that gives direction to the practical activities of educating teachers” (p. 6). the first one is academic orientation understood as terms of transmission of knowledge and development of understanding. the teacher is considered an “intellectual leader, scholar, subject matter specialist” (p. 7). the second is personal orientation, in which the student teacher is the core of the teaching and learning process and the focus is on learning, instead of teaching: “learning to teach is construed as a process of learning to understand, develop, and use oneself effectively” (p. 8). the third is critical orientation, which emphasizes the power of education in creating a fairer and more democratic society. the fourth is technological orientation, which centers on the idea that teachers are consumers of research in order to use principles and practices. the fifth is practical orientation; it revolves around “knowledge about teaching and a means of learning to teach” (p. 15). in this regard, vieira and moreira (2008, as cited in fandiño-parra et al., 2016) point out that elte still universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras284 garcia-chamorro & rosado-mendinueta tells teachers what and how to do things. even though these orientations have marked elte configurations and made great contributions to the field, they have done so from a fragmenting view, thus falling short in preparing teachers from stances that recognize the multidimensionality of elte. when te is looked at from a diachronic historical perspective, one can say that it has transitioned from conceptions based on behaviorism and constructivism to humanistic and socio-historical views of teaching and learning. the underlying conception defines the main components of elte; therefore, elte has shifted from aiming that teachers exhibit desirable behaviors producing good teaching to focusing on their gaining awareness of the assumptions, beliefs, and perceptions that influence their classroom practices and promote effective teaching; to helping teachers design and experience practices that respond to local contexts and needs (ell et al., 2017). an illustration of such shifts is provided as follows. as has been explained frequently, the behaviorist view of learning translates into as a series of learned “skills, tasks, routines, and strategies” (stuart & tatto, 2000, p. 500) that student teachers need to put into action in the classroom. instances of “what works best” in teaching can be seen in this conception (richards, 1998). this understanding assumes traditional models isolated from contexts or classroom situations, “and despite this, prospective teachers are expected to reproduce what they learned in a ‘cascade’ or replica effect, in a kind of contagion of what they have learned” (determinism; salas, 2006, as cited in rodríguez & alamilla, 2018, p. 16). the constructivist view in elte entails that student teachers develop an understanding of subject matter and pedagogy with the purpose of reflecting and creating instances of theory and practice in context. the humanistic approach to elte considers that teaching is based on the interactions of human beings, highlighting that learning is a human experience (iannone & carline, 1971). this approach aims at meeting preservice teachers’ human needs and at preparing them to encounter students with a wide range of intellectual and humanistic needs. the ultimate goal is supporting human growth. those conceptions have given support to different models which emphasize cores of intellectual, social (k. e. johnson, 2009; nguyen, 2016), humanistic, or technical stances (see cochran-smith & lytle, 1999; fandiño-parra et al., 2016; feiman-nemser, 1990; freeman, 2006; wallace, 1991) or more integrative elte proposals (kumaravadivelu, 2012). this shows a gradual shift that acknowledges elte as a complex endeavor aimed at uncovering the relationship of the multiplicity of components that affect teachers’ learning. current teacher education configurations morin (2005) remarks that to acknowledge a complexity perspective we first have to acknowledge the existence of a simplicity one. a simplicity or classical paradigm explains phenomena in terms of linear cause– effect, fragmentation, determinism,1 and mechanism by separating their parts, in the understanding that to study the whole implies studying the sum of its parts. this paradigm is grounded on “evidence, fragmentation, lineal causality, exhaustivity, immutability, irrefragability, universality, and reversibility” (roa-acosta, 2006, p. 151). to illustrate the linearity, we can consider the theory and practice dichotomy. this follows a cause–effect relationship, where teachers receive knowledge (the empty vessel concept) and consequently they will know how to apply it in class. in other words, the cascade effect: “a certain and linear process within which knowledge is transmitted more or less directly from teacher to student by following a fixed and scientifically predetermined sequence of instructions” (cochran-smith, 2003, p. 97). 1 “the philosophical attitude . . . that everything that is going to happen is absolutely determined (fixed) by what has already happened; everything that has already happened can in principle be determined (calculated) by careful scrutiny of current conditions” (davis & sumara, 2006, p. 9). 285profile: issues teach. prof. dev., vol. 23 no. 2, jul-dec, 2021. issn 1657-0790 (printed) 2256-5760 (online). bogotá, colombia. pages 281-295 embracing conceptualization of english language teacher education from a complexity perspective fragmentation, in this context could be exemplified with the series of discrete components commonly found in elte programs, suggesting that separated learning components (or parts) will lead to effective preservice teacher learning and practice (the whole). furthermore, elte and specifically, initial elte, in many contexts, have focused on training, which emphasizes the hierarchy of instructional methods as the priority of most programs’ rationale. fragmentation has resulted in the profession being instrumentalized or infused with a technical vision (cárdenas et al., 2010; schön, 1987). as zemelman (1998, as cited in tello, 2004) states, this represents a constraint since we simultaneously “have to ask ourselves the question about how to stimulate the willingness to think, especially when what is privileged is simply the ability of how to do” (p. 7). we suggest that elte configurations have been fragmented and therefore instrumentalized. to overcome this, aoki (as cited in pinar & irwin, 2004) proposes a movement towards a multidimensional curriculum and suggests that “we need to seek out new orientations that allow us to free ourselves of the tunnel vision effect of mono-dimensionality” (p. 1). aoki advises the design and implementation of te based on “human experiences within the classroom situation” (p. 3) allowing this way that preservice teachers “theorize from their practice and practice what they theorize” (kumaravadivelu, 2012, p. 15), contributing to a more multidimensional orientation in elte. aoki (as cited in pinar & irwin, 2004) also recommends those experiences be undertaken on the basis of reflection. being a teacher means more than performing skills and delivering content. he highlights the issue of curriculum-as-plan and curriculum-as-lived in the “in between” that emerges from these two perspectives, which call for “an understanding of our own being as teachers” (p. 15). he indicates that attention has been focused on the outcomes of teaching (the what and how to) instead of on the “understanding of teaching” (p. 17) (the whys). within the outcome orientation, effective teaching has been reduced to views of “doing,” sidelining that teaching “may have more to do with the being of teacher—who a teacher is” (p. 17) than with outcomes. in our reflection, we subscribe to aoki’s view. in his interpretations of curriculum-as-lived, this author has connected the complexity of the classroom to the teaching world: multiplicity, layers, spaces of difference, in a more humanized frame for understanding teaching and teachers, thus moving away from an understanding of teaching and teachers as means: a complex view of elte. teacher education and its instantiation in the colombian context given the fact that global te has been developed mainly under the simplicity perspective, it is not surprising that te in colombia has also been permeated by this worldwide perspective, and traces of this vision might persist in some educational settings. the decree 18583 (2017) comprises the four components for te programs in colombia: (a) general foundations, (b) subject matter and disciplinary subjects, (c) the foundations of education and pedagogy, and (d) didactics. however, the document makes no explicit reference to attitudes and aptitudes to support the development of teachers as agents of social change; also, there is not much reference to schools as places of social and cultural development. this perspective does not seem to be enough to explain complex phenomena such as knowing and learning (kumaravadivelu, 2012) in education or elte. calls for a more complex perspective are found in the literature. arismendi (2016) acknowledges the need to recognize the cultural and plurilingual colombian diversity; giraldo et al. (2019) challenge the traditional and fragmented curricular foundations; fontalvo (2017) suggests curricular views be “open, critical, decolonizing, complex, non-linear, and self-organizing” (p. 228); the oecd report underscores the need for contextualized universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras286 garcia-chamorro & rosado-mendinueta colombian initial teacher education (radinger et al, 2018); and castañeda-londoño (2019) highlights language teachers’ necessity to construct local knowledge base mindsets. therefore, efforts should be made to ensure elte programs embrace diversity and increase contextualization to prepare teachers for the challenges of our variegated educational contexts. teacher training and reflective practices play a key role in elte but are not sufficient on their own to account for the complexity of this phenomenon. evidently, teachers need to learn “how to do things,” and exhibit effective techniques and skills in classrooms; they also need to reflect on their experiences undergone during practices, what went wrong or right, to improve their practices. however, the classroom scenario challenges teachers to do more than that; they need to integrate other factors that contribute to the whole of teaching. elte needs to recognize the influence of factors such as the context itself, and the interactions between teachers and students in the background of the school context, for instance. such factors affect teachers’ actions and students’ learning and development. this perspective understands education as a complex system, embracing the “new relationship[s] between the whole and its parts” (gómez-francisco, 2010, p. 191). this new understanding should assume “that teaching is a complex and somewhat uncertain process with knowledge constructed in the interactions of particular teachers, students, materials, texts, and prior experiences” (cochran-smith, 2003, p. 97). a complexity perspective to support understanding of teacher education elte programs should acknowledge advances deriving from complexity perspectives and incorporate what is pertinent from these advances into their theoretical approaches to infuse curricular plans, methodologies, and didactics (roa-acosta, 2006). current elte theoretical perspectives recognize some components which are instantiated in subjects related to instructional methods, pedagogy, disciplinary matters, and theories of education; other components related to english language teachers’ learning are not easy to grasp and evidence such as teachers’ beliefs, assumptions, reflections, learning experiences, and personal values, to name just a few. these components seem to be interrelated, enriched, and affected by the interactions of teachers, students, educational policy, curriculum (as agents), as well as the environment (context and setting dynamic conditions; society and culture). these interactions are complex and affect te, teacher development, and practices. so, efforts should be made to understand the complexity of elte. this raises the question of what a complex system is, what complexity is, and how these concepts relate to teacher education. systems and complex systems to understand why education and, consequently, elte are considered complex systems, one must start with a definition of system. morin (1990) explains that a system is “an interrelation of elements which constitute an entity or a global unit” (p. 123). according to morin (1990), two important conditions stand out here: elements are interrelated, and the unit, understood and constituted by those interrelated components. also, when this unit and its interrelated components have a regular and stable relation, the system is said to be organized. morin (1990) explains that systems organization entails the disposition among components or individual’s relations which produces a complex unit or system. this one possesses unknown qualities in the elements level. organization brings together elements, events, or individuals that end up forming a unit (a whole). organization in the system “transforms, produces, gathers, and maintains” (p. 126) the system itself. complexity is conceived at this point because the unit reveals “infinite combinations of simultaneous interactions and that 287profile: issues teach. prof. dev., vol. 23 no. 2, jul-dec, 2021. issn 1657-0790 (printed) 2256-5760 (online). bogotá, colombia. pages 281-295 embracing conceptualization of english language teacher education from a complexity perspective abounded in non-linear interrelations” (barberousse, 2008, p. 99). this means that complexity is born within the same system. as in education, multiple interactions of agents result in multiple decisions. problems originate from diverse and varied situations and decisions occurring on a daily basis in schools as well as varied ways of solving problems. these interactions, problems, and decisions are not evident in curricula or syllabi. this illustrates that systems cannot be explained by only the elements that constitute it, but also by the multiple interactions of its components and the agents in it. key principles of complexity and of complex systems n. johnson (2009, pp. 13–16) identifies some key principles of complexity evident in any complex system as follows: 1. “the system contains a collection of many interacting objects or agents” (p. 13). to illustrate this, notice that education is considered a complex system due to the multiple agents that constitute it: students, teachers, supervisors, coordinators, and educational stakeholders that take part in this context and share information, duties, and so on. therefore, individual agents cannot be conceived out of the system (for example, teachers cannot be conceived without their relations to students). according to n. johnson (2009), these agents interact physically as members of the same group, and share information as a group. within a given group, some subcommunities emerge as well because they share other types of information or features with certain members. these interconnected networks and agents are one of the most important characteristics of a system. 2. “the agents’ behavior is affected by feedback” (n. johnson, 2009, p. 14). this means that actions in the past have effects in the present. also, actions of an event or context can have an effect in another context. therefore, systems have memory of actions which they can use to transform or have an effect on the present. 3. “the objects/agents can adapt their strategies according to their history” (p. 14). this means, according to n. johnson (2009), that they can improve their performance by adapting their own behavior by themselves. 4. “the system is typically open” (p. 14). n. johnson (2009) explains that a system can be influenced or affected by its environment. in education, this can easily be registered when schools need to adapt their own curriculum due to policy reforms or technological changes that influence schools to transform their own functioning. 5. “the system appears to be alive” (p. 14). n. johnson (2009) indicates that a system’s evolution occurs in a highly “non-trivial” (see morin, 2005) and most of the time “complicated” way. complicated means determined by agents’ ecology who interact and adapt thanks to memory or feedback, as explained previously. 6. “the system exhibits emergent phenomena which are generally surprising and may be extreme” (n. johnson, 2009, p. 15). this means that systems are “far from equilibrium” (n. johnson, 2009, p. 15); which means that everything could happen and that the resulting phenomena cannot be predicted based on the information (based on the properties) each object/agent has. 7. “the system shows an intricated mix of ordered and disorder behavior” (p. 15). systems are considered to operate in a sort of flow between order and disorder. we suggest, as other authors, that te is a complex system (davis & sumara, 2006; koopmans, 2017; michel, 2016; van geert & steenbeek, 2014). hence, we think that many of the principles of complexity allow for better understanding of how te works as such perspective “aims to account for how the interactive parts of a complex system give rise to the system’s collective behavior and how such a system simultaneously interacts with its environment” (larsen-freeman & cameron, 2008, p. 1). in that sense, a complexity perspective could trace how elte components and their articulation infuse prospective teachers’ universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras288 garcia-chamorro & rosado-mendinueta responses to problems, decision-making, and professional growth in a multiplicity of school contexts and occurrences. it could also trace how the components’ multiple interactions and use of information, both past and present, inform preservice teachers’ learning and the role of the environment in teachers’ learning and self-organization; in short, how this information is understood to enhance teachers’ learning. carta de fortaleza (2010) proposes thinking of education from a complexity and transdisciplinary view supported by three formative dimensions: auto formation, hetero formation, and eco-formation, which are pivotal to revitalize te as well as acceptance of “openness, flexibility, dialogue, self-eco-organization and autonomy, in addition to greater attention to emergencies, to the ecology of action, to intersubjectivity enriched by multiple references” (p. 4). a complexity perspective does not reject knowledge derived from classical perspectives; it advances from it to solve its limitations to understand complex phenomena (lópez-rupérez, 1997) and account for the relationships between the whole and the parts; therefore, we need to inquire how they interconnect and interact to produce and acquire knowledge leading to meaningful outcomes for all agents. tello (2004) highlights that all agents in the te system are active agents; therefore, able to transform knowledge. we concur with tello (2004) that those in charge of education are obliged to revisit education concepts and “vary the training and profession categories” (p. 7) consistent with their particular necessities, as well as “deepen the education analysis from a multidimensional opening of social reality and senses, without anticipating what the teacher’s role will be because it will surely be different from what the teacher ‘is being prepared’ for” (p. 7). we suggest that te, and specifically initial te research, should continue to deemphasize the linearity still persistent in how we approach and understand te. as cochran-smith et al. (2014) argue: in many countries, there are multiple studies intended to improve initial teacher education. these have generally focused on pieces of teacher education rather than wholes, and have used an underlying linear logic. it may be, however, that what is needed are new research questions and theoretical frameworks that account for wholes, not just parts, and take complex, rather than reductionist perspectives. (p. 1) in fact, educational research has gradually unveiled other bodies of knowledge that have demonstrated the exertion of great influence on teachers’ education and their professional performance in the classroom: school culture and beliefs (hongboontri & keawkhong, 2014), beliefs affecting different teachers’ performances and behaviors (garcía & rey, 2013; gómez-muñoz, 2010; mansfield & volet, 2014), empowerment (fandiñoparra, 2010), more contextualized reflective practice and resistance to dominant discourses (guerreronieto & quintero-polo, 2009; torres-martínez, 2009), identity (arvaja, 2016; hamilton & clandinin, 2011; pennington & richards, 2015; santoro, 2014). therefore, elte should expand its knowledge bases to improve prospective teachers’ education with what best supports their learning and future classroom practices. such components also encompass the development of critical and reflective attitudes, autonomy, and awareness of classroom and students’ particularities (martínez agudo, 2011). in a similar vein, livingston and flores (2017) report a 40-year review on research and highlight a variety of topics that suggest meaningful emerging areas enriching the “how to” in te: teacher professional learning, research and enquiry in te, partnerships in teacher education, linking research and the use of data to teaching, teacher leadership, intercultural and multicultural issues, inclusive education, diversity, mentoring, reflective practice, digital competence, teacher portfolios, teacher retention, identity, motivation for teaching and teacher educators. (p. 551) 289profile: issues teach. prof. dev., vol. 23 no. 2, jul-dec, 2021. issn 1657-0790 (printed) 2256-5760 (online). bogotá, colombia. pages 281-295 embracing conceptualization of english language teacher education from a complexity perspective livingston and flores (2017) report the theory and practice divide as a matter of constant inquiry and indicate that “identify[ing] the professional learning needs of teachers at the initial teacher education is necessary.” there is also recognition of “the complexity of learning and teaching as a social, moral, political and economic endeavor” (p. 555). findings from this review suggest that te is moving (but probably too slowly) in the acceptance and acting upon the knowledge of the multiplicity of existing components that should be considered in te conceptualizations. authors as ling (2017) make a strong call for the recognition of complexity in te if we are to respond to the challenges posed by our present and future societal demands. the author explains current challenges faced in te conceptualization: teacher education needs to be an iterative process rather than a linear one and needs to be backwards, forwards, inside-out and outside-in somewhat simultaneously, because it is complex, recursive and has multiple layers. add to this the broader issues faced within a super complex, twenty first century knowledge society, where the future is not only unknown but unknowable, and where the frameworks by which we make sense of our world are moving, blurring and shifting as well as being highly contested and contestable. (p. 562) we suggest it is possible to conceptualize elte as a complex system. it seems that some elte components and agents are more visible (performance in classroom) than others (decision-making, identity, beliefs, assumptions, ideologies, moral and ethical values) that may be revealed through discourse. they can also influence and interact with teachers’ learning. furthermore, they interact following principles of complex systems, that is, contexts and educational settings provoke emergence of new responses, new learning, and growth. teachers have the potential to improve their own behaviors. conceptualizations of teacher education in colombia in terms of conceptualization of teacher preparation, the colombian ministry of education (men, 2013) gave its first steps by acknowledging that te needs to be recognized as a complex system. this stance presents te as a complex system in its general structure, recognizing it as an organization with its inherent dynamics. according to the men (2013), this system consists of three interrelated units that connect in different ways: initial te, in-service education, and professional teacher development. within this system, there are three recognized articulation axes: pedagogy, research, and evaluation (p. 59). accordingly, the men (2013) considers it important to highlight the purposes that the sistema nacional de formación de educadores (national system of teacher education) proposed in the 1996–2016 ten-year educational development plan, namely, teacher education and initial and ongoing integral development as key factors to guarantee the quality of education. however, the men claims these components do not function in isolation and quality should be articulated with the education system, policies, and other areas such as labor, infrastructure, and supplies. the document also states that teachers are agents who should recognize their role in constructing quality in three dimensions: personal, social, and professional. teachers are considered social agents, with knowledge and pedagogical experiences, in relation to their socio-cultural contexts and are able to build innovation through their own praxis with a great role in social transformation (men, 2013, p. 44). however, decree 18583, enacted in 2017, does not deepen in these instances. the men document defines the importance of teachers as social agents seeking for social transformation. the document presents teachers as embedded in four types of learning: doing, knowing, living, and being; universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras290 garcia-chamorro & rosado-mendinueta these learnings happen through teachers’ pedagogical experiences, not in isolation but in a given socio-cultural context (p. 44). the men document puts forward a complexity perspective for teacher preparation in order to improve teachers’ human development from the very initial phases (men, 2013): the main issue is that of the educators themselves, since it is a matter of preparing not a process and procedure operator, but a qualified human being for a very significant social task, whose horizon must impact not only the country’s economic development, but also social and moral development in general, quality life and human well-being. (p. 20) global challenges and national societal demands call for elte configurations from a complex view to tackle the complexities of elte itself; as well as to respond to the different and diverse educational settings claiming for social transformation in our context. the men has kept in mind that teacher quality requires the coordinated process of different stakeholders with the intention of improving education in the nation. within this context, the men recognized the complexity of systems as a way to respond to the rapid changes of transformations in the knowledge society; these demand the reorganization of the processes of teacher qualification and education. “therefore, teacher education goes beyond enabling professional and labor function for the educational system; it aims at an integral teacher’s formation: of being, knowing, doing, and living with others” (men, 2013, p. 46). this multidimensionality requires assuming a different conceptual stance that acknowledges other interconnected aspects. the men (2013) also recognizes that due to its nature, te should be approached from a complexity view, “supported in social and cultural dynamics, which in turn also demand its transformation” (p. 46). at this point, elte, approached under a complex perspective, may reveal some components which are invisible in elte configurations, their interrelations, and operation, and how they affect preservice teachers’ growth and learning such as “personal beliefs and values as strong influences” (ell et al., 2017, p. 341). consequently, research to help identify and recognize invisible components, their influences, interactions, and emergence in teachers’ formation is essential. moving from conceptualization to design the need to comprehend and research the different components that constitute elte (initial and ongoing) is increasing as highlighted by different scholars (davis & sumara, 2006; ell et al., 2017; gray & colucci-gray, 2010; ludlow et al., 2017; ricca, 2012; smitherman pratt, 2011). however, there is a long way to go in that direction. elte naturally evolves as a complex system in which known components (disciplinary knowledge, pedagogy, teaching practice, culture, educational setting, identity, conceptions, perceptions, and beliefs) interact with each other and influence preservice teachers’ learning and development; as well as their practices in classrooms and in the world. these elements that make up part of a teacher’s system interact as well with students and communities which are complex systems too. they all come into play, interacting, making relations, influencing each other, emerging as new systems to prompt for making decisions; consequently, teachers themselves become the key to unveil the phenomena, as suggested by phelps (2005): no-one knows the complex interplay of factors that impact on an individual, or the significance of any one factor, greater than the individuals themselves. this is not to assume for a moment that the individual learner is fully aware of all these factors, but rather that they are in a better position to understand them than anyone else. (p. 40) english language teachers in processes of initial education as well as all other teachers are always 291profile: issues teach. prof. dev., vol. 23 no. 2, jul-dec, 2021. issn 1657-0790 (printed) 2256-5760 (online). bogotá, colombia. pages 281-295 embracing conceptualization of english language teacher education from a complexity perspective developing, learning, knowing, being, and constantly becoming social and human beings. this implies not stable, but permanent formation and transformation, not only for teachers, but also for the reality around them: “the educator listens to the word of the other and her or his own voice; from here, he/she is transformed and renewed. an educator who is not formed him/ herself in ‘formation’ does not form, only informs” (mèlich, 2011, p. 50). as highlighted by cochran-smith and zeichner (2005), people, when asked, would agree that teacher education needs to be improved, but there is a vast disagreement about how, why, and for what purposes. calls for change stem from complex social, political, and organizational goals that are quite different from one another in history and tradition. (p. 43) more than ever, elte cannot be regarded as an isolated area, where pedagogy and content override other type of influences in teachers’ learning; instead, it should be seen as operating within human actions for future transformation and empowering teachers for social design. instances of theory and practice cannot be explained in only epistemological frames of knowledge transmission, or linear cause–effect. calls to develop more integrative, complex analysis of teachers’ learning should be happening. elte programs systematically and intentionally designed and studied from a complex perspective could facilitate the understanding of the complex nature of teachers’ learning and development. this understanding would lead to new ways of working and enhancing prospective teachers’ professionalism as well as their learning and developmental conditions. understanding te in such an integral way will go beyond listing components to understand their relations, interdependencies, interactions, and influences; in other words, how the te system works and emerges. it is time to further acknowledge elte as a complex system and, as such, start working to see how as a system it is entangled and nested in multiple classroom dynamics that comprise connected, dependent, and interdependent phenomena. nevertheless, according to davis and sumara (2006), this complexity perspective cannot be seen as an explanatory system. . . . the fact that complexity thinking pays attention to diverse sensibilities should not be taken to mean that the perspective represents some sort of effort to embrace the “best” elements from, for example, classical science or recent postmodern critiques of scientism. (p. 4) there are no doubts english language teachers play an important role in society’s transformation, therefore elte demands continuous efforts to comprehend the complex nature of teachers’ learning and development. how do interactions of components in teacher education occur? what aspects emerge as a result of individual and collective interactions, associations, and connections? how can we start visualizing these aspects in concrete images or understandings? can they be materialized in a curriculum? if so, how? could a better understanding of this complexity help to improve and transform societies? can “good teaching” and “effective teaching” be materialized as one if we develop a better understanding of elte complexity? these questions should guide ours as well as other teacher educators’ reflections and actions to enrich conceptualizations of elte. references arellano, m. c. 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(2000). designs for initial teacher preparation programs: an international view. international journal of educational research, 33(5), 493–514. https://doi.org/10.1016/s0883-0355(00)00031-8 tello, c. j. (2004). la formación docente en argentina: abordaje epistemológico desde el paradigma de la complejidad. profesorado: revista de currículum y formación del profesorado, 8(1), 1–9. torres-martínez, s. (2009). las vicisitudes de la enseñanza de lenguas en colombia. diálogos latinoamericanos, (15). vaillant, d. (2007). do initial and continuing professional development sufficiently prepare teachers to understand and cope with the complexities of today and tomorrow’s education? journal of educational change, 8(2), 175–179. https://doi.org/10.1007/s10833-007-9028-8 van geert, p., & steenbeek, h. (2014). the good, the bad and the ugly? the dynamic interplay between educational practice, policy and research. complicity: an international journal of complexity and education, 11(2), 22–39. https:// doi.org/10.29173/cmplct22962 vezub, l. f. (2007). la formación y el desarrollo profesional docente frente a los nuevos desafíos de la escolaridad. profesorado: revista de currículum y formación del profesorado, 11(1), 1–23. https://www.redalyc.org/articulo. oa?id=56711102 wallace, m. j. (1991). training foreign language teachers: a reflective approach. cambridge university press. world bank. (2018). world development report: learning to realize education’s promise. the world bank group. https://doi.org/10.1596/978-1-4648-0484-7_world_ development_report about the authors martha garcia-chamorro is an associate professor at universidad del atlántico in pedagogy, english and research for the foreign language teaching program. she holds a specialization in english teaching and a master’s degree in education. nayibe rosado-mendinueta is a language teacher and teacher educator at universidad del norte in colombia. her research interests reside in the complex intersection of students and teacher learning and how language affects the construction of reality in contexts such as classrooms and in other institutions that surround us. https://doi.org/10.1016/s0883-0355(00)00031-8 https://doi.org/10.1007/s10833-007-9028-8 https://doi.org/10.29173/cmplct22962 https://doi.org/10.29173/cmplct22962 https://www.redalyc.org/articulo.oa?id=56711102 https://www.redalyc.org/articulo.oa?id=56711102 https://doi.org/10.1596/978-1-4648-0484-7_world_development_report https://doi.org/10.1596/978-1-4648-0484-7_world_development_report tutors’ and tutees’ behaviors, attitudes, and perspectives regarding efl peer tutoring in higher education in mexico 167profile: issues teach. prof. dev., vol. 23 no. 2, jul-dec, 2021. issn 1657-0790 (printed) 2256-5760 (online). bogotá, colombia. pages 167-182 https://doi.org/10.15446/profile.v23n2.87744 tutors’ and tutees’ behaviors, attitudes, and perspectives regarding efl peer tutoring in higher education in mexico comportamientos, actitudes y perspectivas de tutores y tutorados hacia la tutoría entre pares en un contexto de inglés como lengua extranjera en educación superior en méxico janeth sanchez-aguilar1 benemérita universidad autónoma de puebla, puebla, mexico this article reports on the findings of a mixed methods research study on tutors’ and tutees’ behaviors and attitudes during the tutoring sessions and their perceptions about english language peer tutoring at a bilingual, international, and sustainable university in central mexico. observation, peer assessment, and semistructured interviews results suggest that tutees and tutors asked and answered questions and had a positive attitude towards error correction in almost all the sessions. likewise, they reveal that participants clarified doubts, seemed motivated, motivated their peers, and had a constructive attitude towards teaching and learning from a peer most of the time during the tutoring. furthermore, results indicate that the participants were positive about the experience, the sessions, their peers, and the influence in their learning. keywords: english language learning, higher education, peer tutoring este artículo reporta los resultados de una investigación de métodos mixtos sobre el comportamiento y la actitud de tutores y tutorados durante las sesiones de tutoría y sus percepciones sobre la tutoría entre pares para el aprendizaje del idioma inglés en una universidad tecnológica bilingüe, internacional y sustentable en el centro de méxico. los resultados obtenidos mediante observaciones, evaluación de pares y entrevistas semiestructuradas sugieren que los tutorados y tutores realizaron y respondieron preguntas y estuvieron dispuestos a corregir errores en casi todas las sesiones, así como, que los participantes aclararon dudas, parecían motivados, motivaron a sus compañeros y tuvieron una actitud positiva hacia la enseñanza y aprendizaje entre pares, la mayor parte del tiempo durante las tutorías. además, los resultados indican que los participantes apreciaron positivamente la experiencia, las sesiones, a sus compañeros y la influencia en su aprendizaje. palabras clave: aprendizaje del inglés, educación superior, tutoría entre pares janeth sanchez-aguilar  https://orcid.org/0000-0002-4856-0408 · email: janeth.saguilar@alumno.buap.mx this article is based on the master’s thesis completed by sanchez-aguilar (2020). how to cite this article (apa, 7th ed.): sanchez-aguilar, j. (2021). tutors’ and tutees’ behaviors, attitudes, and perspectives regarding efl peer tutoring in higher education in mexico. profile: issues in teachers’ professional development, 23(2), 167–182. https://doi.org/10.15446/ profile.v23n2.87744 this article was received on may 28, 2020 and accepted on march 9, 2021. this is an open access article distributed under the terms of the creative commons license attribution-noncommercial-noderivatives 4.0 international license. consultation is possible at https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/ https://doi.org/10.15446/profile.v23n2.87744 https://orcid.org/0000-0002-4856-0408 mailto:janeth.saguilar@alumno.buap.mx https://doi.org/10.15446/profile.v23n2.87744 https://doi.org/10.15446/profile.v23n2.87744 https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/ universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras168 sanchez-aguilar introduction the language education field has taken on a significant change to a more learner-centered approach in order to better promote the varied dimensions of learning (matukhin & bolgova, 2015). teaching and learning a second language should not always follow a linear approach, with the teacher at one end and the student at the other. locastro (2003) highlights that other learners are one of the main sources of information that language learners are exposed to. vygotsky claims that learning is socially and culturally promoted and constructed among students, and between teacher and students (as cited in razia, 2012). learning in collaboration is not a new idea, and the concept of tutoring is probably as old as civilization itself, yet it was not until the 1700s when it began to be used academically (topping as cited in kalkowski, 1995). in the 19th century, british educational reformer joseph lancaster empowered the initiative of developing children’s tutoring skills by allowing them to become involved in his “monitorial system”; a controversial and revolutionary yet cost-cutting system that helped many poor children to learn to read and write and to be able to monitor other kids after that (aldrich, 1998). peer tutoring is now one way cooperative learning is used in the education field since it is recommended by unesco as a highly effective practice for inclusive teaching (duran, 2006). there has been a significant increase of peer tutoring programs in higher education worldwide (chen & liu, 2011). according to topping (1996), this is due to the need to address low academic performance and to the cost-effectiveness of the peer tutoring strategies. this study aimed to investigate the participants’ behaviors and attitudes in an english as a foreign language (efl) peer tutoring experience in higher education and to explore the impact of peer tutoring on students’ english learning and socio-effective outcomes. for this purpose, the following research questions are addressed: 1. what are the tutors’ and tutees’ behaviors and attitudes during the tutoring sessions? 2. what are the tutors and tutees’ perceptions about english language teaching (elt) peer tutoring? literature review the definition of peer tutoring has evolved as more approaches and perspectives have emerged. according to topping (1996), “archaic definitions of peer tutoring perceived the tutor as a surrogate teacher, in a linear model of the transmission of knowledge, from teacher to tutor to tutee” (p. 322). similarly, damon and phelps (as cited in kalkowski, 1995) claim that a succinct definition of peer tutoring involves an expert child instructing another novice child. however, the notion of experts and novices has been discussed in today’s educational contexts. thus, more recent studies relate peer tutoring to mutual help. in his notion of learning by teaching, topping (2005) highlights that peer tutoring “involves people from similar social groupings who are not professional teachers helping each other to learn and learning themselves by doing so” (p. 631). from the point of view of chen and liu (2011), peer tutoring “is a kind of peermediated, peer-assisted learning, employing problem solving and systematic teaching strategies to help the disabled student” (p. 2). for duran et al. (2015) peer tutoring is a way of learning among students, usually organized in pairs in which the tutor learns by offering pedagogic help to the tutee who learns through the adjusted and permanent help provided by the tutor. types of peer tutoring peer tutoring encompasses a variety of approaches or models and these will be explored in the following sections. cross age tutoring this approach is characterized by joining students of different ages. robinson et al. (2005) mention that this form of peer tutoring “involves students at different 169profile: issues teach. prof. dev., vol. 23 no. 2, jul-dec, 2021. issn 1657-0790 (printed) 2256-5760 (online). bogotá, colombia. pages 167-182 tutors’ and tutees’ behaviors, attitudes, and perspectives regarding efl peer tutoring... grade level[s], with the older student acting as a tutor for the younger student(s)” (p. 329). similarly, cross age tutoring often involves dyads where tutors are entitled and expected to organize work, ask questions, encourage interactions, and facilitate better study habits (hott & walker, 2012). during cross age tutoring the position of tutor and tutee do not change, with the tutor usually having higher skill levels. peer assisted learning according to the university of the west of england in bristol (n.d.), peer assisted learning (pal) is an educational assistance scheme where students are trained to assist other students, an activity which provides opportunities for lower year students to consolidate their own understanding of the discipline within a collaborative environment and supports students with their transition to university. a main characteristic of pal is that learners can function as tutors or tutees at different times since the pairs or teams typically work at the same proficiency level (hott & walker, 2012). cooperative learning topping (2005) refers to cooperative learning as a working together activity within a small group that “is likely to involve the specification of goals, tasks, resources, roles and rewards by the teacher, who facilitates or more firmly guides the interactive process” (p. 632). topping also points out that cooperative learning “often requires training to ensure equal participation and simultaneous interaction, synergy and added value” (p. 632). according to yusnani (2018), cooperative learning aims to transform classroom activities into academic and social learning experiences to direct students’ diversities towards cognitive, behavioral, and social interdependence. reciprocal peer tutoring falchikov (2001) describes reciprocal peer tutoring (rpt) as a form of peer tutoring where randomly selected pairs of students test each other in preparation for a class test. rpt enables each student to play the role of the tutor and tutee, and thus reap the benefits derived from teaching, and being taught by another student. (p. 20) for hott and walker (2012) rpt utilizes a format that encourages teaching materials and evaluation of peers. academic, social, and affective benefits of peer tutoring research on peer tutoring techniques suggests significant improvements in academic achievement in the targeted area and cognitive gains for both tutors and tutees (duran, 2016; falchikov, 2001; kalkowski, 1995; nguyen, 2013; topping, 2005). similarly, green (2011), regarding the pedagogical advantages of collaborative learning techniques, refers to improved performance and increase in student retention which refers to the successful completion of tasks and/or students’ engagement in their studies. kalkowski (1995), in her descriptive analysis of research findings, suggests that tutors and tutees have reported the benefits of tutoring in mathematics, language arts, reading, and sciences. falchikov (2001) identified academic outcomes such as better performance, and metacognitive awareness such as learning how to learn. likewise, nguyen (2013) claims that peer tutoring as a supplement to traditional instruction promotes higher-order thinking since it encompasses “explaining concepts in detail, high level questioning, and the use [of] supportive communication skills” (p. 3). comfort and mcmahon (2014) analyzed the effect of peer tutoring on academic achievement. they demonstrated that the peer tutored group achieved significantly higher grades in comparison to those who were not peer tutored for both tutees and tutors. the benefits of peer tutoring in the education field are not limited to the academic aspect. many positive outcomes have been documented on the social and affective sides. kalkowski (1995) highlights universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras170 sanchez-aguilar improvements in self-esteem, social skills, attitude towards school, and school attendance. compilating some studies and their sources, vincent (1999) enlists common effects found in peer tutoring programs on the tutor and the learner including higher academic achievement and improvements on motivation, use of instructional time, self-direction and independence, attitude towards tutored subject area, and increased self-confidence. topping (2005) indicates that affective changes in attitude to school, the teachers, the subject, the peer, and the self might be found in peer tutoring programs. according to falchikov (2001), the different peer tutoring approaches appear to have non-academic benefits in terms of affect, motivation, cooperation, and confidence. while examining the benefits of peer tutoring based on existing research, nguyen (2013) suggests that the gains of peer tutoring strategies are also reflected in positive effects on social, self-control, and behavioral outcomes. also, that “training students in peer tutoring strategies can help students take responsibility for their learning and academic failures” (p. 3). according to a manual for the implementation of peer tutoring by the ministry of public education in mexico (secretaría de educación pública, 2014), peer tutoring improves attitude and readiness toward learning, fosters the tutor and tutee personal development, and helps to strengthen the learners’ identity. related research while the literature on peer tutoring in the classroom is quite broad, research on this strategy in the field of foreign language in higher education is not extensive. in a program conducted at a university in japan, bradford-watts (2011) concluded that despite the obstacles encountered, students are able to learn and share what they have learned with their peers and that they can also develop interesting and interactive classes for their peers. through participant observation and interviews in a case study in malaysia, sharif et al. (2012) suggest that the nature of the activities used in peer tutoring, which are not threatening and are less intimidating compared to the more rigid class environment, can encourage students to put the language into practice. in an action research study in colombia, viáfara and ariza (2008) explored students’ and teachers’ perceptions in order to uncover the limitations of an existing peer tutoring program. they found that the main issues were teachers’ and students’ lack of time, lack of trust among teachers and students, students’ fear, and students’ uncertainty about the aspects to work on. huerta et al. (2010) implemented a peer tutoring program in oaxaca, mexico, highlighting the encouragement of students’ participation in their learning, the increase of tutors’ teaching skills, and more opportunities for the tutors to improve their level of english; the authors concluded that the participants’ and the teachers’ self-esteem was benefited. studies on the behaviors and attitudes of participants towards peer tutoring in higher education are scarce. mckellar (1986) studied behaviors used in peer tutoring while learning esperanto and examined the relationship of those behaviors to the degree of learning achieved. she revealed that tutors’ most frequent verbal behavior was “reading information from the study guide with minimal alteration or rewording” (p. 165). this author also found that it was common for tutors to give tutees incorrect information regarding rules, pronunciation, and vocabulary. regarding tutees, she found that their most frequent verbal behavior was to say words or sentences at the tutors’ request and that “the only behavior predictive of tutee test scores was the tutee’s asking for clarification of information” (p. 166) given that the more tutees asked for clarification, the higher their scores was. madaio et al. (2017) investigated the extent in which interpersonal closeness among participants affected “tutors’ use of indirectness with feedback and instructions and the impact of those uses on tutees’ problem-solving” (p. 1). they found that friend tutors use less indirect instructions and less positive feedback 171profile: issues teach. prof. dev., vol. 23 no. 2, jul-dec, 2021. issn 1657-0790 (printed) 2256-5760 (online). bogotá, colombia. pages 167-182 tutors’ and tutees’ behaviors, attitudes, and perspectives regarding efl peer tutoring... to their tutees compared to stranger tutors. however, it was stranger tutees who succeeded more at solving problems. in a similar study in which madaio et al. (2018) examined the impact that rapport, self-efficacy, and prior knowledge have on the teaching and learning process and outcomes of peer tutoring; they found that tutors in high-rapport pairs offered more help and encouraged more their tutees to explain their problemsolving reasoning process than low-rapport pairs. the research on p eer tutoring for english learning over the last decades has contributed to better understanding of learning-by-teaching. the evidence suggests that peer tutoring schemes today can be structured to provide benefits to all participants in a number of important areas such as academic improvement, self-esteem, and confidence. yet, more research is needed on efl peer tutoring in the latin american contexts. method to explore participants’ behaviors, attitudes, and perceptions during and towards a peer tutoring experience, a mixed methods research approach was employed in this study. according to creswell and plano clark (2007), mixed methods research design involves philosophical assumptions that guide the collection and analysis of qualitative and quantitative data. for these authors the “premise is that the use of quantitative and qualitative approaches in combination provides a better understanding of research problems than either approach alone” (p. 5). integrating quantitative and qualitative data collection and analysis in this study would provide deeper answers to the research questions and thus a richer picture of the efl peer tutoring experience. setting the research took place at a bilingual, international, and sustainable university in a semirural area in central mexico. this institution belongs to the bilingual, international and sustainable (bis) model in higher education. the ministry of public education in mexico describes the bis as a cutting-edge model in higher education in mexico since it responds to international trends and is unique in latin america. bis universities follow a bilingual pedagogical scheme where courses are mostly offered in the foreign language. this implies that the beginning students are immersed in an intensive english program in which they have five-hour english classes daily for about four months during their first semester and continue reinforcing their language training throughout the entire career. this study was developed with the help of participants from the immersion course of this university. participants seven tutees and five tutors participated in the research: two trios (one tutor, two tutees) and three dyads. the participants were seven women and five men with ages from 18 to 23 years. the peer tutors were students from the third or quarter 3 semester who were selected by the institution, specifically by the english coordinator based on their english language proficiency level, their interpersonal abilities, and their interest and agreement in becoming tutors. tutees were students from the immersion course or quarter 0 in which students do not take any content class and thus are grouped by their language level rather than their area of interest. they were selected by their immersion english teachers on their low level and low performance of english, and their interest in participating in the program. procedure the research followed three stages. the first stage focused on exploring the participants’ initial opinions about peer tutoring. this diagnostic phase contributed to direct the tutorial sessions based on students’ perceptions; the outcomes obtained gave insights to better understand what the other instruments should explore. the model of peer tutoring employed in the study was universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras172 sanchez-aguilar cross age. the outcomes obtained during this stage as well as results from previous studies in the field led to integrating the guidelines, approaches, materials, and tutors’ training preparation for the tutoring sessions. since this study is part of a broader research on the impact of peer tutoring among university students learning efl, only the implications of stage 2 and 3 are addressed in this paper. in stage 2, the tutor–tutee working teams and pairs were formed and schedules for the tutoring sessions were arranged. the tutoring sessions were arranged in two different schedules due to the tutors’ classes and school activities. after the peer tutoring organization was established, participants’ behaviors and attitudes were observed and documented while they worked and socialized. the observations were carried out semi-structured, implementing an observation checklist and note instrument (see appendix) during the tutoring sessions. creswell (2003) claims that observations, whether unstructured or semistructured, allow the researcher to take notes on the behavior and activities of participants. black (2003) states that when observing activities of individuals, a checklist can provide the researcher with the guidance required to ensure the obtainment of pertinent events and ignore irrelevant ones. the data from the observations were supplemented by tutors’ and tutees’ assessment of their peers to obtain information on the participants’ behaviors and attitude during the tutoring sessions. to this end, a peer assessment instrument was developed and provided for the participants at the end of the sessions. in both cases, a likert scale was used for the assessment of tutors and tutees. due to unexpected school activities, some participants had seven sessions while others had six, from which it was possible to observe five. meetings between tutors and tutees were held once a week for one hour. in stage 3 a semistructured interview was used to investigate students’ perceptions towards peer language learning. turner (2010) considers that interviews provide in-depth information on perspectives and experiences. participants were interviewed after the implementation of all the sessions. both the tutors and tutees were presented with a consent form before their first tutoring sessions to inform them about the observations and interviews. data analysis from the five observed sessions of the five working teams, a total of 20 peer tutoring interactions were analyzed. it is worth saying that interaction refers to the peer tutoring sessions the teams had. to analyze and describe the data gathered through observations, certain steps were followed. firstly, the observation checklist data were analyzed to obtain frequency of the behavior of tutors and tutees during the tutoring sessions. secondly, the data gathered in the observation notes were scrutinized to find major themes. regarding the participants’ assessment data, the process of data analysis was ongoing as the tutors’ and tutees’ assessments were collected and analyzed after each session. as there were pairs as well as trios participating in the peer tutoring sessions, a total of 40 evaluations of tutors were collected and analyzed, and a total of 28 assessments of tutees were collected and analyzed. regarding the semistructured interviews, 11 were conducted in spanish from which a total of 135.48 minutes were transcribed. then transcripts were classified and summarized according to tutors’ and tutees’ perceptions about peer tutoring for english language learning. results and discussion the findings are presented with reference to the research questions of the study: tutors’ and tutees’ behaviors and attitudes during the tutoring sessions and participants’ perceptions about elt peer tutoring. 173profile: issues teach. prof. dev., vol. 23 no. 2, jul-dec, 2021. issn 1657-0790 (printed) 2256-5760 (online). bogotá, colombia. pages 167-182 tutors’ and tutees’ behaviors, attitudes, and perspectives regarding efl peer tutoring... participants’ behaviors and attitudes tutors’ and tutees’ behaviors and attitudes during the tutoring sessions are first presented and discussed in terms of observation data. then, the findings from the peer assessment instrument are offered and discussed. table 1 presents the results obtained during the tutoring sessions and through the observation checklist and notes data. tutors and tutees asked and answered questions in 20 interactions. during the observations, correction occurred in 19 out of the 20 interactions in which participants showed a positive attitude towards errors. positive attitudes in this study refers to participants being kind when correcting and being corrected as well as comfortable in accepting mistakes and a willingness to correct them. it was also found that both tutors and tutees clarified doubts and showed motivation in 18 of the sessions. participants had a positive attitude towards peer tutoring in 17 out of the 20 interactions. for tutees, it was found that they were interested in the activities in 17 interactions while tutors showed understanding of the content in 17 of the 20 interactions. motivation and attitudes towards peer tutoring are not observable per se. the actions that were observed to interpret as motivation were tutors’ motivating and encouraging words to their peers and tutees’ expressions of coziness and contentment when praised or motivated. regarding positive attitudes towards peer tutoring, it was based on participants’ friendly relationship, good rapport, and initiative to extend their session as well as tutors’ preparation and tutees’ attention and comfort to learn from their peers. the findings from the observations suggest that tutors were constantly encouraging their tutees to ask them questions, a gesture which gave the tutees the confidence to solve their doubts in all the sessions. although tutors appeared to ask more questions than tutees, tutees looked comfortable asking questions in relation to the topics and clarification of instructions. these findings are in line with duran’s (2016) argument that in learning-by-teaching techniques, tutors ask questions to introduce the topic and to direct tutees’ train of thoughts. correction occurred in 19 out of the 20 sessions in which participants showed a positive attitude towards errors. it was observed that tutors tried to make their peers identify and correct their mistakes, and when correcting they were kind and patient; furthermore, tutees were not bothered by the corrections and in fact took their peers’ advice. topping (2000) points out that peer tutoring can be effective in different ways, including more questioning, more modeling, and more self-correction. table 1. behaviors and attitudes during the tutoring sessions element team asking and answering questions positve attitude towards errors clarification of doubts motivation in the team positive attitude towards tutoring tutees’ interest in the activity tutors’ understanding of the content no. of sessions in which the elements were observed trio 1 5 5 5 5 5 5 5 trio 2 5 4 5 5 5 4 5 pair 1 2 2 2 0 0 1 2 pair 2 4 4 3 4 4 4 2 pair 3 4 4 3 4 3 3 3 total 20 19 18 18 17 17 17 universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras174 sanchez-aguilar clarification of doubts occurred in most of the interactions in which tutors provided explanation of the topics and modeled the activities for their tutees; the tutors also clarified their tutees’ doubts regarding vocabulary, pronunciation, grammar, and instructions for activities. clarification of doubts was observable not only from tutors to tutees; for example, in the trios, tutees also provided explanations and examples to other tutees for better understanding of instructions, syntax, and pronunciation. likewise, the results indicated that motivation was observable in most of the interactions. during the sessions, tutors often motivated and encouraged their peers to learn and use the language while others praised and acknowledged their tutees’ improvement. topping (2005) claims that tutors’ enthusiasm and competence can influence tutees’ confidence and that reciprocal responsibility can help motivation in the pair. similarly, topping (2000) states that in peer tutoring techniques, both the tutor and tutee can learn to give and receive praise. the results also show that participants had a positive attitude towards the tutoring in most of the interactions. tutors seemed to enjoy teaching their peers; for example, most of them shared a learning technique or some advice about learning english with their peer tutees, and occasionally spent more than the allotted time. tutees seemed comfortable learning from their peers and paid attention to their explanations, advice, and comments. both tutors and tutees created a good relationship with team peers and even with tutors and tutees from other teams. these outcomes are aligned with almassaad and alotaibi’s (2012) claim that students can accept peer tutoring for learning processes. finally, it was revealed that tutors showed understanding of the content in a similar number of interactions as tutees showed interest in the activity. in this regard, it was observed that tutors were familiar with the content of the session in most of the interactions despite facing occasional issues with vocabulary, pronunciation, and grammar. most of the time tutees seemed engaged in the activities and appeared to enjoy the games, especially in the trios. however, in some sessions two tutors were found to have difficulties in understanding the content of the lesson, particularly when they did not review the topic and content before the tutorial session. results in this regard suggest that tutors’ understanding of the content influenced tutees’ interest in the activity. in the next section the results from the participants’ assessment will be provided in tables 2 and 3. table 2 presents the assessment of tutors in terms of behaviors and attitudes. the outcomes indicate that tutees perceived that their tutors gave them confidence to ask them questions most of the time. similarly, tutees considered that their tutors usually helped them clarify their doubts, encouraged and motivated them to learn, helped them identify errors, knew the content of the lesson, and showed a positive attitude towards teaching. table 3 reveals that tutors perceived that their tutees responded positively to correction most of the time and usually responded to the help they provided table 2. behaviors and attitude: assessment of tutors your tutor…. always almost always sometimes almost never never gives you confidence to ask them questions 38 (95%) 2 (5%) helps you clarify doubts 34 (85%) 6 (15%) encourages and motivates you 32 (80%) 5 (12.5%) 3 (7.5%) helps you identify errors 36 (90%) 4 (10%) knows the content of the session 31 (77.5%) 8 (20%) 1 (2.5%) shows a positive attitude towards teaching 37 (92.5%) 3 (7.5%) 175profile: issues teach. prof. dev., vol. 23 no. 2, jul-dec, 2021. issn 1657-0790 (printed) 2256-5760 (online). bogotá, colombia. pages 167-182 tutors’ and tutees’ behaviors, attitudes, and perspectives regarding efl peer tutoring... and showed a positive attitude towards peer learning. it was also found they considered that tutees often showed interest in the activity, seemed motivated, and asked questions. the main findings from table 2 indicate that tutees perceived that tutors gave them confidence to ask questions in almost all the sessions. also, that tutees perceived that their peers showed a positive attitude in the sessions and helped them to identify their errors most of the time they worked together. the main discoveries from table 3 show that tutors considered that their peers responded positively to corrections most of the time. the findings from tables 2 and 3 are similar to the ones obtained from the observation data in relation to confidence provided by the tutors for tutees to ask questions and a positive stance towards errors as the most recurring behavior and attitude of participants during the tutoring sessions. these results are also in line with those in table 1 in the observations in relation to clarification of doubts, positive attitudes towards teaching and learning, and tutors’ understanding of session content. participants’ perceptions of efl peer tutoring in this section participants’ perceptions about peer tutoring in english language learning are presented and discussed in two categories: tutees’ perceptions and tutors’ perceptions. tutees’ perceptions thoughts and experience. tutees were asked about their thoughts concerning peer tutoring after being tutored by their peers. all of them mentioned help, support, and clarification of doubts: “help and also support because i mean, it strengthens your knowledge” (tutee-m);1 “support in doubts, in topics that were not clear to me in class” (tutee-s). when asked to share their experience of peer tutoring, all tutees expressed liking it and said they would recommend peer tutoring for language learning to other students: “i liked it and i would like to repeat the experience again if possible” (tutee-c); “i would recommend it…we as beginners we like these types of support to improve the language” (tutee-s). the data from the participants show that they conceived peer tutoring as highly supportive in solving their doubts. so, they perceived it as an experience where the topics already studied in class, questions and doubts were explained in detail. feelings during the sessions. all participants reported positive feelings during the tutorial sessions: “with confidence also i feel that there is trust because if i was wrong, well there was no problem” (tutee-m); “above all, i felt a lot of confidence” (tutee-a). 1 tutees were interviewed in spanish. their answers have been translated for publication purposes. table 3. behaviors and attitudes: assessment of tutees your tutee(s)…. always almost always sometimes almost never never asks questions 14 (50%) 5 (17.9%) 7 (25%) 2 (7.1%) responds to the help you provide them 20 (71. 4%) 5 (17.9%) 3 (10.7%) seems motivated 16 (57.1%) 5 (17.9%) 6 (21.4%) 1 (3.6%) responds positively to corrections 25 (89.3%) 3 (10.7%) shows interest in the activity 18 (64.3%) 3 (10.7%) 6 (21.4%) 1 (3.6%) shows a positive attitude towards learning 20 (71.4%) 6 (21.4 %) 2 (7.1%) universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras176 sanchez-aguilar the results indicate that six tutees felt confident and comfortable during the sessions as they received individual attention and support from someone who was more at their level in comparison to a teacher. their opinions suggest that in tutoring sessions, tutees seem to be under less pressure of committing mistakes and that they are more open to learning as a result. being helped by a peer. when exploring tutees’ feelings about being helped by a classmate, they reported feeling good, motivated, and relaxed: “well, it makes me feel more motivated to continue, that i can improve more, they give me confidence as well” (tutee-e). “i felt good because i had never had a tutor before, it was good because we understood each other better than with an adult” (tutee-c). tutees’ words show that they do not feel intimidated by their peers and that students can enjoy being involved in peer tutoring interactions. the influence of peer tutoring in their learning. participants were questioned about their perceptions on the influence of peer tutoring in their learning of english: “it helped me more in, in pronunciation. it helped me in grammar, in how to structure sentences” (tutee-e). “in vocabulary and pronunciation” (tutee-m). “some words i didn’t know how to pronounce, and she explained me how to pronounce…also in grammar, how to structure” (tutee-y). tutees’ answers indicate that peer tutoring influenced their english learning especially in pronunciation and grammar topics. also, improvement was perceived by some tutees in writing, listening, and vocabulary. these outcomes support nguyen’s (2013) conclusion that peer tutoring is an effective strategy to promote academic success. the findings also lend support to topping’s (1996) acknowledgement of the effectiveness of peer tutoring techniques in higher education for students’ academic gains. affective and social gains. other than nonacademic benefits, participants reported positive influence, mainly in their confidence, but they also reported benefits in motivation and communication, and to a lesser degree, in socialization improvement: “also promoting confidence because well, i barely speak with people and that i was helped, it also did me good” (tutee-c); “you learn to socialize more, and it makes you learn faster by being with a person who perhaps understands you better than a teacher” (tutee-s). the outcomes in this study support falchikov’s (2001) claim that peer tutoring provides confidence, affection, and motivation. they also support nguyen’s (2013) and rubio’s (2009) arguments that peer tutoring helps to develop and improve social skills. opinions about the tutors and suggestions for the program. tutees were also asked to give their opinions about their tutors and all of them provided positive comments, such as: “she came and yet she had classes all day, she came with a good attitude” (tutee-m); “sometimes she had doubts about the topic” (tutee-s); “very sociable and motivating” (tutee-e); “she taught us with kindness” (tutee-y); “her way of teaching was excellent” (tutee-a). the above participants highlighted their tutors’ positive attitude and abilities to teach and share. however, two tutees added some lack of content understanding from their tutors: “sometimes she had doubts about the topic” (tutee-s); “with some things she also got confused” (tutee-e). these findings are similar to those obtained through observations and peer assessments in the sense that two tutors showed some lack of understanding in some topics and their tutees could notice it. tutees were also asked to give comments and suggestions to improve the program. they all recommended having more sessions while one tutee added the inclusion of readings and listening activities. no other comment was given for improvement of the tutoring. however, they suggested that future tutees have a positive attitude in the sessions, be committed to learn, and be disciplined and constant. 177profile: issues teach. prof. dev., vol. 23 no. 2, jul-dec, 2021. issn 1657-0790 (printed) 2256-5760 (online). bogotá, colombia. pages 167-182 tutors’ and tutees’ behaviors, attitudes, and perspectives regarding efl peer tutoring... tutors’ perceptions this section provides tutors’ perceptions of their efl peer tutoring experience. thoughts and experience. tutors were asked about their thoughts concerning peer tutoring and their experience tutoring their classmates. two participants mentioned the following: “a way to support each other” (tutor-k);2 “communication among friends” (tutor-n). after the experience, the tutors had different definitions of peer tutoring which were highly related to their own experience tutoring their peers. for instance, half of the tutors defined it as mutual learning and support as they explained that peer tutoring helped tutors and tutees to recall topics and practice the language. another tutor described it as communication among friends, giving her perception of her and her tutees as not being acquainted and being distracted as a result. another participant defined it as mere clarification of doubts since she expressed her tutee needed a lot of help and that she was not really prepared for that and it got her confused as a result. when asked about their experience as tutors their opinions varied. they mentioned liking tutees’ interest in learning, finding it difficult at the beginning, rewarding, and being double-edged: “it was rewarding because there was an improvement indeed” (tutor-l); “yes, i think i would help [future tutors] a lot and at the same time it would help students from quarter 0” (tutor-n). despite the differences, all the participants agreed they would recommend other students to act as tutor as they perceived it to be beneficial for both tutees and tutors and as an aid for teachers not only for language learning but for learning other subjects as well. feelings during the sessions. when exploring tutors’ feelings during the sessions, they mostly reported feeling good about teaching their peers: “i felt very excited. when i taught a new topic and they understood 2 tutors were interviewed in spanish. their answers have been translated for publication purposes. it and they did the exercises well…it feels great that they do learn and that you can share what you know with someone else” (tutor-k). “i was nervous at the beginning but, i felt good in the next sessions” (tutor-r). these results indicate that despite feeling nervous or frightened at the beginning, tutors enjoyed the tutorial sessions with their peers as they got to know each other better and developed confidence working together and became more self-confident in their tutoring skills after some time. feelings about helping others. tutors were also asked about their feelings about helping their peers. most of them expressed feeling good, excited, and happy to help their classmates in their learning (see the previous excerpt by tutor-k); “for me it’s super cool, it makes me feel good morally and as a person to contribute with something” (tutor-l). the tutors’ comments reveal that they felt excited and fulfilled to be part of their peers’ learning. topping (2005) argues that peer tutoring influences the development of a cultural norm of helping and caring. the influence of peer tutoring in their peers’ learning. most tutors considered the tutorial sessions helped their tutees to improve their pronunciation while the rest considered the tutoring influenced their tutee’s grammar advancement: “i think they did improve a lot in their pronunciation” (tutor-k). these findings echo tutees’ perceptions on improved pronunciation and grammar topics as the items most influenced by the peer tutoring experience. gains for tutors. all the tutors mentioned acting as tutors for their peers helped them to recall and practice grammar topics and clarify doubts to themselves: “i feel it did help me a lot to practice again topics that i had not seen in a long time” (tutor-k); “when communicating, it helped me because i am not as shy as before to express myself in english” (tutor-r). these outcomes support viáfara’s (2014) findings that peer tutoring helps tutors to increase their knowledge of english. additionally, some of the participants universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras178 sanchez-aguilar mentioned improved communication skills as well, which lend support to sharif et al.’s (2012) conclusion that the benefits of peer tutoring are transferable to social and communication skills outcomes also for tutors. opinions about the tutees and suggestions for the program. when asked about their opinions concerning their tutees, four participants had different thoughts: “they were very eager to learn, and that was quite motivating for me” (tutor-k); “they showed a lot of interest and that encouraged me to continue teaching them” (tutor-n); “i feel he needed to study more” (tutor-l); “nervousness doesn’t help her…she would get distracted” (tutor-r). the findings revealed that half of the tutors perceived a lot of interest in their tutees and felt more motivated to teach them as a result, while the others expected more engagement and participation from their peers for more improvement and a more suitable experience. interestingly, the tutors who emphasized tutees’ weaknesses were the ones perceived by their tutees as showing some lack of content understanding. topping (2005) claims that “the helper’s modelling of enthusiasm, competence and the possibility of success can influence the self-confidence of the helped, while a sense of loyalty and accountability to each other might help to keep the pair motivated and on-task” (p. 637). it is possible that tutees’ engagement was influenced by their tutors’ doubts and that tutors’ perceptions of tutees was influenced by both tutees’ engagement and tutors’ teaching skills. similar to tutees, when asked to give comments to enhance the tutoring sessions, all tutors suggested longer sessions as they would need more time to accomplish their teaching goals. tutors’ and tutees’ recommendations indicate that more tutoring time would have been of greater benefit for both participants. despite the limited number of sessions and tutors’ issues with vocabulary, pronunciation, instructions, and grammar, the findings from the observations, peer assessment, and interviews reveal that apart from providing learning opportunities for both tutors and tutees, the peer tutoring experience encouraged selfconfidence, fostered good relations among students, and influenced participants’ learning engagement. therefore, structured and organized peer tutoring can be a good strategy to support english language learning in higher education in mexico, particularly at bis universities. conclusions this study explored the behaviors and attitudes of tutors and tutees during cross-age tutoring sessions and their perceptions about peer tutoring for english learning at a bis university in mexico by means of observation, peer assessment, and interviews. results from observation and peer assessment indicate that tutees and tutors showed positive behaviors and attitudes during the tutoring sessions and that those behaviors and attitudes significantly contributed to a favorable teaching–learning experience. the findings from the interviews showed that both tutors and tutees perceived peer tutoring for english learning as a rewarding learning experience at academic and affective level. a number of conclusions can be drawn from these results. first, it appears that peer tutoring positively influenced participants’ confidence and social and communication skills as it seemed to reduce the distance between students, promoting interaction among them. this highlights the importance of non-academic skills at any educational level as the study revealed that achieving learning outcomes was related to improvements in affective and social skills. secondly, the results suggest that the peer tutoring experience fostered a non-threatening atmosphere where posing and asking questions, clarifying doubts, and self-correcting became easier. this indicates that by including peer tutoring strategies in the classroom, teachers can take advantage of students’ pedagogical skills to provide more learning opportunities and to improve students’ english language self-perception. 179profile: issues teach. prof. dev., vol. 23 no. 2, jul-dec, 2021. issn 1657-0790 (printed) 2256-5760 (online). bogotá, colombia. pages 167-182 tutors’ and tutees’ behaviors, attitudes, and perspectives regarding efl peer tutoring... these findings provided evidence of the effectiveness of peer tutoring in an efl setting. yet, there are a number of limitations to consider. for instance, organizing and structuring the tutoring sessions in this study were time-consuming. similarly, this study was limited by the number of training sessions tutors had, which highlights the importance of tutors’ training for a successful implementation. for peer tutoring effectiveness to be maximized, i recommend that tutors and tutees possess interest and engagement in working with their peers as well as tutors’ adequate tutoring and language skills. another constraint was the number of sessions, which were relatively few. further research may benefit from a larger number of participants and sessions. another possibility of further research that would contribute to a fuller understanding of elt peer tutoring in bis and higher education contexts would be to examine elt peer tutoring at different proficiency levels or by incorporating a different model, such as pal, to focus on the impact on tests. additionally, comparing the performance among trios and pairs and its influence on students’ behavior, attitude, and academic improvement may be of benefit. in english language learning, it is desirable to increase competence, while reducing language anxiety, in ways that promote self-confidence and communication skills among students. this may be effective by increasing the use of peer tutoring techniques in the classroom. i believe that the use of peer tutoring techniques in higher education can be particularly beneficial in large classrooms with no possibility of personalized attention or individual support, especially for those students with learning disadvantages. the results in this study contribute to a better understanding of students’ behaviors and attitudes in collaborative learning strategies and their pedagogical implications for teachers and students. however, research 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(2010). qualitative interview design: a practical guide for novice investigators. the qualitative report, 15(3), 754–760 https://bit.ly/3bvxwbc https://bit.ly/3bvxwbc https://bit.ly/31xljuu https://bit.ly/3bv9avp https://doi.org/10.1016/j.sbspro.2015.10.044 https://doi.org/10.1016/j.sbspro.2015.10.044 https://doi.org/10.1080/00220973.1986.10806416 https://doi.org/10.1080/00220973.1986.10806416 https://bit.ly/3bag0yw https://bit.ly/3bag0yw https://doi.org/10.1007/s10648-005-8137-2 https://bit.ly/3brawg6 https://doi.org/10.1016/j.sbspro.2012.11.288 https://doi.org/10.1016/j.sbspro.2012.11.288 https://doi.org/10.1007/bf00138870 https://doi.org/10.1007/bf00138870 https://doi.org/10.1080/01443410500345172 https://doi.org/10.1080/01443410500345172 https://bit.ly/3enyh5y 181profile: issues teach. prof. dev., vol. 23 no. 2, jul-dec, 2021. issn 1657-0790 (printed) 2256-5760 (online). bogotá, colombia. pages 167-182 tutors’ and tutees’ behaviors, attitudes, and perspectives regarding efl peer tutoring... viáfara, j. j. (2014). efl student teachers’ learning in a peertutoring research study group. colombian applied linguistics journal, 16(2), 201–212. https://doi.org/10.14483/ udistrital.jour.calj.2014.2.a05 viáfara, j. j., & ariza, j. a. (2008). un modelo tutorial entre compañeros como al apoyo de aprendizaje autónomo del inglés [a peer-tutoring model as support to autonomous english learning]. íkala, revista de lenguaje y cultura, 13(19), 173–209. vincent, s. (ed.). (1999). the multigrade classroom: a resource handbook for small, rural schools. book 7: planning and using peer tutoring. regional educational laboratory. yusnani. (2018). theoretical perspectives on cooperative learning. kne social sciences, 3(4), 976–986. https://doi. org/10.18502/kss.v3i4.2005 about the author janeth sanchez-aguilar has been an efl teacher since 2010 with experience teaching children and adults. she holds an ma in english language teaching from benemérita universidad autónoma de puebla. her research interests include professional development, learning strategies, and applied linguistics. https://doi.org/10.14483/udistrital.jour.calj.2014.2.a05 https://doi.org/10.14483/udistrital.jour.calj.2014.2.a05 https://doi.org/10.18502/kss.v3i4.2005 https://doi.org/10.18502/kss.v3i4.2005 universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras182 sanchez-aguilar appendix: observation checklist and note instrument elements trio 1 trio 2 pair 1 pair 2 pair 3 notes 1. asking and answering questions 2. clarification of doubts 3. motivation in the team 4. positive attitude towards errors 5. understanding of the content 6. interest in the activity 7. positive attitude 25profile: issues teach. prof. dev., vol. 20 no. 1, jan-jun, 2018. issn 1657-0790 (printed) 2256-5760 (online). bogotá, colombia. pages 25-40 https://doi.org/10.15446/profile.v20n1.64911 addressing the problem of negative lexical transfer errors in chilean university students cómo abordar el problema de la transferencia negativa de léxico en estudiantes universitarios chilenos paul anthony dissington1* universidad chileno-británica de cultura, santiago, chile studies of second language learning have revealed a connection between first language transfer and errors in second language production. this paper describes an action research study carried out among chilean university students studying english as part of their degree programmes. the study focuses on common lexical errors made by chilean spanish-speakers due to negative first language transfer and aims to analyse the effects of systematic instruction and practice of this problematic lexis. it is suggested that raising awareness of lexical transfer through focused attention on common transfer errors is valued by students and seems essential for learners to achieve productive mastery. key words: first language influence, fossilization, lexical errors, lexical transfer, second language production. los estudios del aprendizaje del segundo idioma señalan una conexión entre transferencia del primer idioma y errores en la producción del segundo. este artículo describe un estudio de investigación acción llevado a cabo con estudiantes chilenos en cursos de inglés como parte de sus carreras universitarias. el estudio se enfoca en errores comunes en el léxico producidos por hispano-parlantes chilenos debido a la transferencia negativa del primer idioma y tiene como objetivo analizar los efectos de la instrucción sistemática y práctica del léxico que genera problemas. se sugiere que la creación de conciencia de la transferencia del léxico a través de la atención enfocada en errores comunes de transferencia es valorada por los estudiantes y parece esencial para que logren un dominio en la producción. palabras clave: errores léxicos, fosilización, influencia del primer idioma, producción en el segundo idioma, transferencia léxica. * e-mail: pdissington@ubritanica.cl how to cite this article (apa, 6th ed.): dissington, p. a. (2018). addressing the problem of negative lexical transfer errors in chilean university students. profile: issues in teachers’ professional development, 20(1), 25-40. https://doi.org/10.15446/profile.v20n1.64911. this article was received on may 15, 2017, and accepted on october 4, 2017. this is an open access article distributed under the terms of the creative commons license attribution-noncommercial-noderivatives 4.0 international license. consultation is possible at https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/. universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras26 dissington introduction it has long been acknowledged that a learner’s first language (l1) has a considerable influence on both the acquisition and use of second language (l2) vocabulary (swan, 1997). this influence often manifests itself in lexical errors in oral and written production which are seemingly difficult for the learner to eradicate. the fossilization of erroneous lexical forms is especially likely when learners are in a monolingual educational environment, as much of their exposure to english comes from other language learners who share the same l1, such that the same errors are reinforced and normalized. this problem is compounded by the fact that teaching materials often come in the form of course books which are designed for the international market and therefore cannot address the common lexical errors that speakers of one specific l1 are prone to. as a consequence, teachers may give too little attention in class to dealing with these errors and to raising awareness amongst learners of how l1 can help or hinder accurate vocabulary use. university students for whom english is an integral part of their degree programme often need to achieve a high level of linguistic competence and accuracy, which means that basic vocabulary errors need to be minimized, or if possible eliminated. i therefore perceived a clear need for this issue to be addressed in some way in my context, since, although there has been considerable research on the effect of l1 influence on second language acquisition (sla), little has been written about how to approach the problem of negative lexical transfer in the classroom. literature review two main areas of the literature were instrumental in framing this research. these were the influence of l1 on second language learning, especially in the area of vocabulary acquisition and production, and intentional versus incidental second language vocabulary learning. to consider how far l1 influence may hinder second language learning, we need to have a clear understanding of the phenomenon. however, jarvis (2000) points out that despite decades of research in this area, there is still no commonly accepted definition of l1 influence or even agreement that such a definition is possible. perhaps because of this fundamental problem, there are also widely varying estimates of how many errors in l2 production can be attributed to l1 influence, with some studies claiming them to be as low as 3%, and others as high as 51% (ellis, 1985). against such uncertainty, jarvis settles on a definition of l1 influence on sla as “any instance of learner data where a statistically significant correlation . . . is shown to exist between some feature of learners’ [interlanguage] performance and their l1 background” (p. 252). jarvis and pavlenko (2008) identify nine categories of linguistic transfer: phonological, orthographic, lexical, semantic, morphological, syntactic, discursive, pragmatic, and socio-linguistic. much of the literature focuses on grammatical structure, perhaps because it is where the majority of negative transfer occurs. for example, in one study of spanish high school students, alonso (1997) found that of 138 interlingual errors, 96 were due to transfer of grammatical structure. despite these findings, lexical transfer errors deserve attention for two reasons: first, lexical selection consists mainly of content words, and so errors of this type are potentially very disruptive as they may impede communication, in particular placing a greater burden on the reader of written production (hemchua & schmitt, 2006). the second reason is that english language course books largely deal with the types of grammatical errors spanish speakers make, since these are more universal in nature than the specific lexis which causes problems. alonso (1997) identifies three ways in which negative lexical transfer from spanish to english may occur: overextension of analogy (false cognates), substitution errors, and interlingual/intra-lingual interference. false 27profile: issues teach. prof. dev., vol. 20 no. 1, jan-jun, 2018. issn 1657-0790 (printed) 2256-5760 (online). bogotá, colombia. pages 25-40 addressing the problem of negative lexical transfer errors in chilean university students cognates are words which have identical or similar forms in english and spanish, but which have different meanings. a typical example is the spanish word sensible, which means sensitive in english. the overextension of analogy by spanish speakers leads to mistakes such as: “i can’t go out in the sun much, as i have very sensible skin”. substitution errors are seen as those in which the learner uses a direct translation of a word or expression in spanish in a context which is not appropriate in english. a common example is the use of the word “know” in the sentence “i would like to know france” (quiero conocer francia). although conocer can be expressed by the word know in many contexts, in this one, it is inappropriate. finally, interlingual/intralingual interference errors refer to cases where there is word distinction in l2 where none exists in l1. an example is the sentence “i arrived late because i lost the bus.” the distinction is made in english between lose and miss, whereas in spanish, only perder is used. although these errors would affect intelligibility for native english speakers, they may not necessarily cause problems of communication between l2 learners in a monolingual classroom context. this is because they sound familiar, precisely because they come from the learners’ l1. the familiarity of, and familiarization with, these erroneous forms in the monolingual classroom is highlighted by amara (2015) as one reason why it is important to carry out correction, since “there is the danger that by leaving errors untreated, the defective language might serve as an input model and be acquired by other students in the class” (p. 61). l1 often plays a positive role in sla and may account for much of what is correct in a learner’s interlanguage (swan, 1997). according to hulstijn (2001), “beginning l2 learners… often appear to link the l2 word form directly to a corresponding l1 word form” (pp. 260261). so, at an early stage of learning, l1 may aid l2 vocabulary knowledge. however, as swan (1997) points out, learners will repeatedly make mistakes with words they have learnt correctly,1 especially if the knowledge of a particular language item is not reinforced through repeated exposure and rehearsal. frantzen (1998) echoes this point, noting that “even after students are repeatedly exposed to the target language meanings of false cognates, they continue to misuse them in their speech and writing” (p. 243). swan says that when retrieving lexical items for recall, learners usually have to choose from a number of possibilities, and often select the language form that most resembles a counterpart in l1 because they have more fully automated control over this form than the correct target language equivalent. kavaliauskiene (2009) suggests that negative transfer errors may occur because learners lack the attentional capacity to activate the correct l2 form. swan (1997) points out that between closely related languages, there is more transfer, and therefore more scope for interference errors as learners equate forms which are similar, but have different meanings. corder (1983) claims that the greater the perceived distance between the language being learnt and the learner’s l1, the less likely the learner will be to borrow from the l1 and hence there will be fewer “borrowing errors” (p. 27). however, he suggests the highest incidence of this type of error will occur in languages which are “moderately” similar rather than those which are closely related. since english shares a common linguistic root with spanish, yet is not as closely related to it as romance languages such as italian or portuguese are one should expect the incidence of l1 transfer errors from spanish-speaking learners of english to be fairly high. raising learners’ awareness of cross-linguistic transfer in order to facilitate linguistic development is seen as essential by a number of researchers. swan (1997) points 1 learners may have learnt a lexical item correctly in the sense that they understand its correct usage, but they will still make mistakes in freer production due to the influence of l1. for example, a spanishspeaking learner, when asked to explain the difference between sensible and sensitive in english, may be able to tell you their correct usage, but may continue to say “sensible” instead of “sensitive” in free oral production due to the fact that l1 more readily influences their word choice. universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras28 dissington out that improved understanding of the similarities and differences between l1 and l2 will help learners “to adopt effective learning and production strategies” (p. 179). talebi (2014), who conducted research on cross-linguistic awareness amongst iranian learners, considers that teachers have a responsibility to raise learners’ awareness by using materials which are specifically designed for the purpose of teaching for transfer. this point is echoed by kavaliauskiene and kaminiskiene (2007), whose study indicates that the use of translation as a learning tool facilitates the raising of linguistic awareness in learners of english for specific purposes. considering the problems caused by negative lexical transfer, and the difficulty of eradicating fossilized lexical transfer errors in a monolingual english as a foreign language context, it is important to consider how they can be dealt with in the classroom. however, there seems to be little research in this area. in the next part of my review, therefore, i focus more broadly on research on vocabulary teaching and how this affects acquisition, retrieval, and production of lexis. much of the literature on vocabulary acquisition has addressed the comparative benefits of incidental versus intentional vocabulary learning. hulstijn (2001) defines incidental vocabulary learning as “the learning of vocabulary as a by-product of any activity not explicitly geared to vocabulary learning” and intentional vocabulary learning as “any activity aiming at committing lexical information to memory” (p. 270). krashen (1989) contended that learners will acquire all the vocabulary they need through extensive reading, and that therefore teachers should promote activities which are conducive to incidental learning and discourage intentional vocabulary learning procedures. however, the position that exposure alone is enough to ensure effective vocabulary learning is not widely supported. nation (2001) accepts that large amounts of incidental vocabulary learning will result from the reading of large quantities of comprehensible text, but holds the view that some vocabulary requires special attention and therefore, teachers should deal with it in a principled and systematic way. he believes that the giving of elaborate attention to a word or words, which he terms “rich instruction”, can be of real benefit to the l2 learner, especially when dealing with high-frequency items which are deemed important or are of particular use to the students, and when it is not to the detriment of other components of the course. according to nation (2001), there are three important steps which facilitate the learning of new vocabulary: noticing, retrieval, and generation. noticing can happen in a number of ways, but basically implies decontextualization, whereby attention is given to a lexical item as part of the language rather than part of the message; retrieval is when a learner needs to express the meaning of a certain item and is obliged to retrieve its spoken or written form; and generation implies the production of the item in new ways and/or new contexts. for nation, these processes are essential for effective learning. it is also important to understand that learners have a receptive and productive vocabulary. schmitt (2008) states that since “acquiring productive mastery of vocabulary is more difficult than acquiring receptive mastery” (p. 345), it cannot be assumed that having receptive exposure will automatically lead to productive mastery. he believes that words acquired by incidental learning are unlikely to be learned to a productive level and that recall learning from reading is more prone to forgetting than recognition learning. he concludes that for productive mastery to be developed, learners need to engage in productive tasks. for schmitt, the idea of engagement is central to the effectiveness of vocabulary learning. this encompasses a range of factors, such as time spent on a lexical item, the attention given to it, increased noticing of lexical items, manipulation of the target item, and a requirement to learn. he sees the promotion of high levels of engagement with the lexis as a fundamental responsibility of researchers, materials writers, teachers, and students. 29profile: issues teach. prof. dev., vol. 20 no. 1, jan-jun, 2018. issn 1657-0790 (printed) 2256-5760 (online). bogotá, colombia. pages 25-40 addressing the problem of negative lexical transfer errors in chilean university students hulstijn (2001) highlights the importance for learners to attain quick and automatic access to vocabulary (automaticity). he points out that rich, elaborate processing on its own is not sufficient for this, and that frequent reactivation of lexical forms is also essential. for this, he proposes the allocation of sufficient classroom time for deliberate rehearsal of problematic lexis and the recycling of previously seen items. schmitt (2008) also highlights the importance of increasing the automaticity of lexical recognition and production, noting that “knowledge of lexical items is only of value if they can be recognized or produced in a timely manner that enables real-time language use” (p. 346). drawing on this literature, this study focused on a number of specific areas. the first of these was the need to raise learner awareness of the issue of negative transfer amongst spanish-speaking learners of english. due to the relative proximity of spanish and english lexis, and therefore the scope for erroneous transfer, the focus was lexical interference. jarvis’ (2000) definition of l1 influence was used to justify the choice of lexical transfer errors analysed in the study, as was alonso’s (1997) taxonomy of l1 errors, since this came from a study of spanish-speaking learners. finally, the study aimed to increase learner engagement with problematic lexis as a way to improve their attentional capacity and automaticity. translation activities were employed to raise awareness of l1/l2 difference and correspondence. also, nation’s (2001) three steps were employed as part of the lexical analysis and practice: close analysis of erroneous and correct lexical usage (noticing), oral and written translation exercises and controlled practice oral discussion activities (retrieval), and mini-presentations and small group discussions of word pairs (generation). my research questions were as follows: 1. would a sustained, explicit, systematic approach to addressing the transfer of l1 lexical errors reduce the production of this type of error by students? 2. how would students respond to a sustained, explicit, systematic approach to addressing the transfer of l1 lexical errors? method this study was conducted within the context of a year-long teachers’ action research programme in 2016 at the universidad chileno-británica de cultura (ucbc). ucbc is a small, private university in santiago, chile, offering undergraduate degrees in translation, secondary english teaching, and primary teaching and nursery school teaching with a special focus on english. it is an action research project which addresses a local problem and follows the cycle of planning, implementation, observation, and reflection to bring about change and improvement in practice (burns, 2015). in this section, i will first describe the participants, then the design and realization of the implementation stage, and finally the data collection and analysis. my project was carried out with two groups of ucbc students over a 13-week period during the first semester of 2016. both groups were studying in general english language courses as part of their degree programmes. an overview of the profile of these groups can be found in table 1. one of these courses was lengua inglesa 3 (english language 3), which students take in the first semester of their second year, and the other was competencia comunicativa 1 (communicative competence 1), which is taken in the first semester of the fourth year. the former class was made up of 25 students from both translation and teacher training degree programmes. they had an intermediate/upper-intermediate level of english and were using a cambridge first certificate in english (fce) course book as part of their course material. the fce examination corresponds to a level b2 of the common european framework of reference for languages (cefr). the latter class consisted of 20 students from the translation degree programme, who had an advanced level of english and were using a cambridge certificate in advanced english (cae) course book (cefr level c1). universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras30 dissington i taught the lengua 3 course with another teacher, who focused on grammar, vocabulary, listening, and speaking. that component took up two thirds of the course time. the remaining component, which i taught, focused on reading and writing. in the competencia comunicativa 1 course, i was the only teacher. students in both courses are assessed by means of written tests, oral tests/presentations, and written assignments throughout the term (70% of their final mark) and three final exams (use of english and listening, reading and writing, and oral) which have a weighting of 30% of the final mark. i decided to carry out the project with two groups to see how useful it would be for students at different stages of the language learning process. all of the participants were chileans and native spanish speakers. their ages ranged from 20 to 30, but the majority of them were in their early 20s. table 1. groups taking part in research project course lengua 3 competencia comunicativa 1 semester of programme 3rd (of 9) 7th (of 9) level intermediate (b2) advanced (c1) nº of students 25 20 degree programme translation and teacher training translation nº of teachers 2 1 length of course 196 hours 160 hours no. of hours per week 4 hours reading and writing (with me) 8 hours grammar, vocabulary, listening and speaking (with co-teacher) 10 hours my initial task for this research project was to develop a bank of typical l1 errors. my main considerations when choosing the lexical items to be included were frequency of error occurrence and intelligibility of the erroneous form to a native english speaker—intelligibility because such errors are greater obstacles to communication, and frequency because high-frequency lexis merits attention if students are aiming for productive mastery. i developed the word bank from my memory of typical lexical transfer errors made in class, along with examples i found in approximately 75 second and third year students’ written examinations from previous years. this list was then cross-referenced with examples given to me by university colleagues and other english teachers who had been informed of my project. i subsequently selected 40 items to use in the input sessions, taking into account the two considerations previously mentioned of frequency and intelligibility. i programmed 13 weeks for the intervention, setting aside between 45 and 60 minutes of class time per week. in week 1, students were asked to complete a pre-test to establish the extent of their knowledge of some of the target lexis and also to provide a point of comparison for the post-test which would be used at the end of the project. in week 2, students were informed about the objectives of the project, asked to complete a questionnaire, and given an explanation of key concepts, such as transfer, l1 interference, cognates, and so on. finally, the participants were asked to read a document about the purpose and nature of the study, and to sign a consent form if they wished to participate; all of the students agreed to do so. the teaching input and analysis of the lexical items took place from weeks 3 to 12 and took two main forms: teacher-led activities, which involved the analysis of a short text or series of sentences which i devised, and student-led activities, which took the form of minipresentations followed by small group discussions. my programme allowed for eight input sessions, in each 31profile: issues teach. prof. dev., vol. 20 no. 1, jan-jun, 2018. issn 1657-0790 (printed) 2256-5760 (online). bogotá, colombia. pages 25-40 addressing the problem of negative lexical transfer errors in chilean university students of which five lexical items would be analysed, thus covering the 40 items selected from the word bank. this approach allowed time for testing, feedback, revision, and quizzes (see table 2). table 2. overview of project programme week intervention data collection 1 pre-test 2 introduction to project: objectives and key concepts questionnaire/ audio recording of students 3-12 teacher-led activities: 5 x textual analysis input sessions 2 x revision sessions student-led activities: 3 x minipresentations mid-project feedback (audiorecorded) 13 post-test audio-recorded focus group meetings the pre-test contained two types of items: • items 1-8 – translation: the first set of items contained eight sentences in spanish, sections of which the students were asked to translate into english. most of the underlined sections contained words or expressions in l1 where students often make mistakes due to negative transfer (see figure 1, i.). • items 9-16 – error identification. the second set of items was an error correction exercise, in which students were given eight sentences and asked to identify errors. the students were told that the sentences may contain one, two, or no errors. again, these errors were typical l2 lexis errors that come from l1 interference (see figure 1, ii.). figure 1. examples of questions in pre-test i. quiero hacer una fiesta (15) el fin de semana que viene, pero depende de mis papás. (16) 15………………………………………………………………… 16.………………………………………………………………… ii. 5. one of the requirements of the course is that students assist at least 75% of the classes. …………………………………………………………………… before the pre-test was carried out, students were informed that it was a general diagnostic test which had no bearing on their course evaluation, and therefore they were not aware of what specific aspect of language use was being assessed. my aim was to obtain as accurate an idea as possible of the problems these lexical items caused. all the items in the test were included in the input during the following weeks along with other items from my word bank. the first stage of each of the five teacher-led activities—the “textual analysis input sessions” (see table 2)—consisted of identifying errors in a short text or series of questions in english. students were given a few minutes to read the text/sentences and identify the errors. by this stage, they were aware that they were looking for examples of negative transfer. there then followed whole class feedback and analysis of the errors, during which students were encouraged to suggest why a chilean spanish speaker might make them. students were encouraged to make a note of these items in their notebooks to build up a word bank of l1 interference items containing examples of misuse and correct usage. the final stage was a controlled practice activity. this activity was usually done as a written translation where half the students in the class were given one set of sentences and the other half given a different set to translate into spanish. both sets contained the target language and students were encouraged to use natural spanish. they then swapped their papers with someone from the other group and translated universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras32 dissington their classmates’ spanish sentences back into english, being careful to avoid erroneous l1 transfer. when done orally, the activity involved splitting the class into two groups with different texts to translate into spanish. students were then paired off (one from each group) to read their translations to their partner, who had to translate it back into english, again being careful to avoid l1 interference. an example of a written translation activity can be seen in appendix a. this translation stage was not employed in all of the five teacher-led sessions. on one occasion, the error identification stage came in the form of a series of pairs of questions, such as those in figure 2. each pair contained the same word, once correctly used, and once erroneously used as a result of typical l1 interference. in this case, following the identification, analysis, and recording stages, the students were asked to discuss the questions in pairs. they were then given just the target lexis, isolated from the questions on the board and asked to discuss the questions again with a new partner. figure 2. example of error correction / controlled practice activity 3a. does it impress you when you hear young children swearing? (correction: shock) 3b. do people that speak three or four languages fluently impress you? (correct) the student-led activities were a series of three minipresentations. on each occasion, four or five volunteers from each class were given five pairs of words—one in english and one in spanish (see appendix b). the volunteers each prepared a short oral presentation which explained the usage of the words in english and spanish, highlighting any correspondence and difference between the two and giving examples. they delivered their presentations individually in class the following week to a group of about five students. after 15-20 minutes, i drew the different groups together as a whole class, and we discussed their ideas. i gave feedback and examples for the class to record. (during this stage and the presentation stage, words also came up in discussion which had not been in the word pairs, such as the words “bookshop” and “stationer’s” which came up when analysing “librería– library”). a controlled practice activity followed, in which students used the target vocabulary to complete a series of opinion questions. in the final stage, students discussed the questions in pairs. as well as these presentations, all students from the fourth-year class prepared a separate presentation of between five and ten minutes, delivered in pairs, which involved them recording (or finding a recording of ) a native spanish speaker talking in english. they analysed the recording and presented it to the class, commenting on any examples of l1 interference. in order to answer the first research question regarding the impact of the intervention on students’ lexical errors, quantitative data in the form of results from the two tests were collected. the pre-test has been described in some detail in the section above. the post-test was carried out in the final week (13) of the study. it was the same as the pre-test in terms of format, and included many of the lexical items from that test and also some items that had not been in the initial test, but had been analysed in class over the course of the project. in order to address the second research question regarding the students’ perceptions of the intervention, qualitative data were collected at the beginning of the project, mid-project, and at the end: prior to the beginning of the input and practice sessions (week 2) students completed a questionnaire and, audio recordings of students’ opinions were made. students’ opinions were also recorded mid-project (week 7) and immediately after the post-project test (week 13). students’ opinions were collected post-project via focus discussions with five members of each class. the discussions lasted about 20 minutes each and were audio-recorded. these were semi-structured interviews 33profile: issues teach. prof. dev., vol. 20 no. 1, jan-jun, 2018. issn 1657-0790 (printed) 2256-5760 (online). bogotá, colombia. pages 25-40 addressing the problem of negative lexical transfer errors in chilean university students whose aim was to remind students of the objectives of the research project, ascertain whether, in their opinion, these had been achieved, and get a general idea of how useful they thought the project had been. the interviews were carried out in english and spanish. (questions were asked in english, but students were encouraged to respond in spanish if they felt they could express themselves more clearly in that language). these interviews took place immediately after the post-project test and i invited students who tended to be more willing to express their opinions in class to participate so as to maximize the data i would receive. the audio recordings from the focus group sessions were later transcribed so that they could be analysed more thoroughly. findings the data collected from the tests, questionnaire, recorded group discussions, and focus groups are presented and analysed here with reference to my two research questions. research question 1: would a sustained, explicit, systematic approach to addressing the transfer of l1 lexical errors reduce the production of this type of error by students? not all of the students who completed the pre-test completed the post-test (see table 3).this was particularly true of the lengua 3 group, whose low attendance may have been due to students’ perceived need to study for tests in other subjects during this period. table 3. number of students who completed preand post-tests course nº of students who did pre-test nº of students who did post-test nº of students who did both tests l3 (2nd year) 24 13 12 cc1 (4th year) 20 17 17 in both the preand the post-tests, each question was marked either correct or incorrect. in some cases, half marks were given (if an expression was wrongly translated but without signs of l1 interference in item 1, and where an error was correctly identified but not corrected in item 2). although the allotting of half marks in this way is somewhat subjective, i strove to maintain consistency in the marking of both tests. the marks for each student’s test were then transformed into a percentage and an average was calculated for the whole group. table 4 shows that both groups improved their scores on both translation and error correction exercises. the post-test results for the fourth-year group are around 20–25% higher than the pre-test results, and those of the second-year group are around 30–40% higher. the final column shows that almost all, and in one case all, of the students improved their individual marks in the post-test. research question 2: how would students respond to a sustained, explicit, systematic approach to addressing the transfer of l1 lexical errors?2 the questionnaire which students were asked to complete in week 2 was in english and required them to provide their names and ages. the aims of this instrument were: to obtain information about students’ exposure to native english speakers; to gauge how aware they were of the problem of l1 interference; to find out if and how the issue had been addressed in their previous classes; to ascertain whether they thought it useful to spend time in class analysing the problem in a systematic way, and to elicit suggestions on what classroom activities might facilitate such an analysis. there were nine items, two which were limited response questions, five which were open questions, and the remaining two which were yes/ no questions with the option to give further details. from analysis of these questionnaires, it became apparent that less than half the students (in both 2 the quotes that appear in this section have been translated by the author from the original spanish and pseudonyms have been used. universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras34 dissington groups) had any real awareness of negative lexical transfer. only six students (15% of the total number) mentioned having previously looked at this problem in any systematic way, which coincided with the number claiming to have made any attempt to keep a record of these types of errors (only three of whom mentioned actually writing a word list). interestingly, one student made the comment that he thought that only native (english) speakers would notice the transfer problem, lending weight to the point made by amara (2015) that students in a monolingual l1 classroom would struggle to correct these errors and may even have them reinforced. however, all students expressed the opinion that it was either very useful or essential to spend time in class focusing on transfer. following the completion of the questionnaires, students spent about 15 minutes, in groups of four or five, discussing some of the questions featured in the questionnaires and a spokesperson from each group then summarized the opinions discussed. this summary was recorded. the main points that were highlighted were: • greater exposure to/contact with english is needed to help eliminate errors of negative transfer. • it is natural for students to try to adapt their spanish lexis to english if there is a gap in knowledge. • error correction/analysis, translation activities, more writing practice, and the recording of word lists would be useful ways of addressing the issue. another small-group discussion session was carried out in week 7. students worked in groups of four or five and discussed five pre-prepared questions. they were asked how appropriate they deemed the time spent in class on the project, the lexical items analysed, and the practice activities we had done. they were given the opportunity to suggest alternative ways of approaching the issue, and were asked to consider whether they now felt more aware of their own lexical transfer errors and of the issue of l1 interference in general. a spokesperson from each group then summarized the ideas of their group. this discussion was recorded. the responses were mostly positive, though students naturally expressed preferences for some activities over others. the overall table 4. comparison of results from preand post-tests group pre-test results– average scorea post-test results–average score difference in results between preand post-test scores number of students who improved their score 4th year (cc1) item 1 (translation) 68% 87.5% 19.5% 17/17 item 2 (error correction) 45% 72% 27% 14/17 2nd year (l3) item 1 (translation) 37% 66% 29% 10/12 item 2 (error correction) 13% 52% 39% 11/12 a these averages are taken solely from the results of the students who also took the post-test. the averages of all students who took the pre-test diverged negligibly from the averages shown (0%–+2.5%). 35profile: issues teach. prof. dev., vol. 20 no. 1, jan-jun, 2018. issn 1657-0790 (printed) 2256-5760 (online). bogotá, colombia. pages 25-40 addressing the problem of negative lexical transfer errors in chilean university students impression was that they appreciated taking part in the project and valued its aims. at the end of the project, a focus group was conducted with five students from each group. in these meetings, the students were asked their opinions on a series of questions about the project. in response to the first question about whether they thought that the activities carried out in class had helped them avoid l1 interference errors, the students were overwhelmingly positive. all the students said that the activities had helped them become more aware of these errors and many gave specific examples: one mistake that i always made was “share time”. (camila, l3) in the written tasks, i still write “called my attention” and then i think, “no wait! it’s ‘caught my attention’”. (francisco, l3) i always said “arrive to” instead of “arrive at”. (sofia, l3) i always translated “dar una prueba” and “practicar un deporte” wrongly. (andrea, cc1) now i am much more aware of these types of errors, and thanks to everything we have done in class, i am increasingly managing to avoid them. (sofia, l3) some of the students from the fourth-year group (cc1) made the point that they had already been aware of some of the errors highlighted during the project but pointed out that they nevertheless thought that the activities had been valuable: we were aware of the majority [of these errors] but we think in spanish so we still make mistakes…so i think it is still worth practising them. (soledad, cc1) this comment reflected a general appreciation that the errors we analysed were difficult to eliminate because they had become entrenched. for example, pablo (l3) pointed out that although he was aware of the correct versions of the lexical items, he was often unaware that the other alternative (in this case, an example of negative transfer) was not acceptable. other comments reflected the perception students have of how important it is for them to eliminate these errors: when we leave here and go out and get jobs, we won’t be able to make these types of mistakes, because as translators and teachers, it will affect our work. (francisco, l3) the students also favoured the systematic treatment of negative transfer errors over dealing with errors as they arose: before, when we made one of these mistakes, for example, in a writing task, it was highlighted, but we never did exercises to help us to not make the mistake again, and so we continued making them. (soledad, cc1) other students expressed the view that the time spent analysing these errors, and the translation and discussion activities that we did to practise the correct forms, were helping them to avoid these errors. the point was made that simply drawing students’ attention to examples of negative lexical transfer at the moment the errors occurred would not raise awareness of the issue: if you had only corrected these mistakes in class when we made them, and mentioned that they were examples of l1 interference, we wouldn’t have paid much attention to it. but since it became part of the class, it made it easier for us to remember them. (camila, l3) i also asked the students about whether they thought that the activities had raised their awareness of the general problem of negative lexical transfer. again, the response was positive. students from both groups claimed that they had noticed changes in the way they thought when writing and, to a lesser extent, speaking. this development was not limited to the problem of false cognates, as students also mentioned thinking more about collocation and whether or not certain combinations of words used in spanish could be used in the same way in english. before now, i just sat down and wrote, and l1 interference happened, but now i take my time and think about what i have written and whether it actually comes from spanish, and if it will be understood. this has been a turning point. (francisco, l3) universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras36 dissington i have realized that i think in spanish a lot and translate spanish to english word for word. now i am more aware that i make certain mistakes and i ask myself, “does this combination of words work in english?” (vicente, cc1) we are much more careful about not making these mistakes. if we make a mistake, it is immediately going to sound wrong and we’re going to say, “no. that’s not right,” especially with the words that we have practised, but we are also more careful about not making mistakes that we haven’t seen. (soledad, cc1) another noteworthy comment, which was made by a number of students, both during the mid-project group discussions and the focus group meetings, was that the activities should be included in the syllabus from year one. francisco (l3) summed up this view: i think that instead of being just a one-off project, this should be part of the syllabus because for us as translators and teachers, whether we like it or not, this is something essential. towards the end of the project, i was pleasantly surprised to receive an e-mail from one of the secondyear students with further examples of possible l1 interference. when asked to tell the group about her reflections, she commented: i had been thinking about [l1 interference] for a while, and suddenly i thought of the word realize and i said to myself, “i’m sure some people think that means realizar” and i looked it up. then i thought of another one, which was slow motion which means cámara lenta, but people might translate it as slow camera and that would be wrong. (claudia, l3) i found this student’s comments very encouraging. not only did they provide evidence that she was engaged in the issue of l1 interference and was perhaps beginning to think differently about the two languages she spoke, but also because they offered a clear example of what i, as a teacher, had wanted to achieve, which was for students to think more critically about how spanish and english correspond and differ. discussion my initial impression of how the students reacted to the activities we did during the project was that many of them were less able to identify examples of negative transfer than i had expected. some of them seemed surprised to learn that language forms that they had assumed to be correct for many years were actually wrong. however, once they had recognized these errors as stemming from l1, and so to a certain extent “theirs”, students from both groups quickly became engaged with the issue. on the whole, students participated enthusiastically in both the teacher-led activities and the mini-presentations, which generated extended and animated discussion. students were keen to seek clarification about correspondence and difference between l1 and l2 and they became more alert to possible instances of negative transfer. these impressions were confirmed by comments made in both focus groups. both the quantitative and qualitative data from this study seem to support the claim made by nation (2001), schmitt (2008), and hulstijn (2001), among others, that direct focus on, and engagement with certain lexical items (in this case, those which cause problems for chilean spanish speakers) help learners make those items part of their usable vocabulary. furthermore, the type of instruction carried out seems to have raised awareness of a common problem of second language learning: that of l1 interference. it should be noted that despite the positive results of the study, some of the errors which were dealt with were still being made in instances of freer production by some students after the project. this point highlights the importance of repeated revision over the long term to ensure automaticity of recall and production. conclusion when drawing conclusions about the impact of this research project, it is important to be aware of the limited nature of the study. first, it has to be acknowledged that 37profile: issues teach. prof. dev., vol. 20 no. 1, jan-jun, 2018. issn 1657-0790 (printed) 2256-5760 (online). bogotá, colombia. pages 25-40 addressing the problem of negative lexical transfer errors in chilean university students the errors which were analysed were somewhat artificial in the sense that they were not collected from samples of free oral or written production of the students who participated in the study. neither did the instruments used to analyse students’ knowledge of the target items incorporate free production. in addition, the qualitative data obtained from the students throughout the study were collected in the presence of the researcher, which may have influenced the answers and opinions given. finally, it must also be observed that due to the shortterm nature of the project, it was not possible to check the retention of learning over time and so the long-term impact of the instruction, discussion, and practice done in class is still questionable. nevertheless, the findings of the study seem to give some indication that the systematic analysis of typical examples of negative lexical transfer can, at least in the short-term, reduce the frequency of the errors being produced. they also indicate that the students generally valued the opportunity to focus on the typical lexical mistakes that they are prone to making as spanish speakers and point to an increased awareness in the participants of the lexical pitfalls implicit in having an l1 which shares roots with the l2 being learnt. this research project has highlighted an area of study which has hitherto been neglected or overlooked in many english language-teaching institutions. this is because course programmes in many schools, institutes, and universities are often closely tied to general english language course books which have been produced for the international market and which therefore cannot cater to local learner needs. the need to focus on the specific linguistic problems which arise in monolingual classes and to design appropriate materials for this purpose is, therefore, something which ought to be addressed by course planners, not just in chile but in all contexts where l1 interference is a significant problem. the participants in this study were university students studying translation and english teaching degrees. they expressed the view that the fossilization of certain errors might impede the attainment of the linguistic proficiency required in their future careers. it is therefore important that lexical l1 interference be given sufficient attention. in terms of future research, there are a number of avenues which could be explored further. a longer-term study would allow for investigation of the possible impact of this type of vocabulary instruction on l1 interference errors in free production and provide a more credible measure of improvement over the long term. another area for exploration would be more specific research into the frequency and type of lexical transfer errors made by students of different ages and levels, and in different educational contexts, for the purpose of building and piloting a number of target lexical lists and study materials which could be incorporated into syllabuses. references alonso, m. r. (1997). language transfer: interlingual errors in spanish students of english as a foreign language. revista alicantina de estudios ingleses, 10, 7-14. https:// doi.org/10.14198/raei.1997.10.01. amara, n. (2015). errors correction in foreign language teaching. the online journal of new horizons in education, 5(3), 58-68. burns, a. (2015). perspectives on action research. cambridge, uk: cambridge university press. corder, s. p. (1983). a role for the mother tongue. in s. m. gass & l. selinker (eds.), language transfer in language learning (pp. 18-31). amsterdam, nl: john benjamins publishing. ellis, r. (1985). understanding second language acquisition. oxford, uk: oxford university press. frantzen, d. (1998). intrinsic and extrinsic factors that contribute to the difficulty of learning false cognates. foreign language annals, 31(2), 243-254. https://doi. org/10.1111/j.1944-9720.1998.tb00571.x. universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras38 dissington hemchua, s., & schmitt, n. (2006). an analysis of lexical errors in the english compositions of thai learners. prospect, 21(3), 3-25. hulstijn, j. h. (2001). intentional and incidental second language vocabulary learning: a reappraisal of elaboration, rehearsal and automaticity. in p. robinson (ed.), cognition and second language instruction (pp. 258-286). cambridge, uk: cambridge university press. https://doi.org/10.1017/ cbo9781139524780.011. jarvis, s. (2000). methodological rigor in the study of transfer: identifying l1 influence in the interlanguage lexicon. language learning, 50(2), 245-309. https://doi. org/10.1111/0023-8333.00118. jarvis, s., & pavlenko, a. (2008). cross linguistic influence in language and cognition. new york, us: routledge. kavaliauskiene, g. (2009). role of the mother tongue in learning english for specific purposes. esp world, 8(22), 2-8. kavaliauskiene, g., & kaminiskiene, l. (2007). translation as a learning tool in english for specific purposes. kalbotyra, 57(3), 132-139. https://doi.org/10.15388/klbt.2007.7566. krashen, s. (1989). we acquire vocabulary and spelling by reading: additional evidence for the input hypothesis. modern language journal, 73(4), 440-464. https://doi. org/10.1111/j.1540-4781.1989.tb05325.x. nation, i. s. p. (2001). learning vocabulary in another language. cambridge, uk: cambridge university press. https://doi. org/10.1017/cbo9781139524759. schmitt, n. (2008). instructed second language vocabulary learning. language teaching research, 12(3), 329-363. https://doi.org/10.1177/1362168808089921. swan, m. (1997). the influence of the mother tongue on second language vocabulary acquisition and use. in n. schmitt & m. mccarthy (eds.), vocabulary: description, acquisition and pedagogy (pp. 156-180). cambridge, uk: cambridge university press. talebi, s. h. (2014). cross-linguistic transfer among iranian learners of english as a foreign language. issues in education research, 24(2), 212-227. about the author paul anthony dissington has been an english language teacher for over 25 years, working in language institutes in england, spain, portugal, australia, and venezuela. he is now living in chile, where he has been working for the last 13 years in different state and private universities. 39profile: issues teach. prof. dev., vol. 20 no. 1, jan-jun, 2018. issn 1657-0790 (printed) 2256-5760 (online). bogotá, colombia. pages 25-40 addressing the problem of negative lexical transfer errors in chilean university students appendix a: translation exercise student a read the sentences below and translate them at the bottom of the page: 1. the degree programme that i am studying in lasts five years. 2. he hardly ever attends class, and when he does he arrives late. 3. teacher, if i give you $50,000, will you give me a 7? 4. his strange accent caught my attention. 5. if we are going to have a party, we need to think about the food. (when doing this exercise, students were encouraged to use the following terms in spanish: carrera, asiste a, ponerme, me llamó la atención, hacer/pensar en but not to retranslate erroneously into english as: career, assist, put me, called my attention, do/make a party / think in) universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras40 dissington appendix b: instructions for mini-presentations you are going to give a short presentation to a group of about four students on the differences and similarities in the use of the following pairs of words, which might cause problems for spanish speakers: 1. actualmente–actually (adv.) 2. librería–library (n.) 3. perder–lose (v.) 4. recordar–remember (v.) 5. revisar–revise (v.) can any of these words in spanish be translated as the word in english? if so, is it the only way to translate the word? if not, how would you translate the words? are they equivalent in meaning in some contexts and not in others? can you provide examples of the usage of the words? bridging inequality: cooperative learning through literature in two vulnerable schools in santiago 49profile: issues teach. prof. dev., vol. 22 no. 2, jul-dec, 2020. issn 1657-0790 (printed) 2256-5760 (online). bogotá, colombia. pages 49-63 https://doi.org/10.15446/profile.v22n2.81384 bridging inequality: cooperative learning through literature in two vulnerable schools in santiago cerrar la brecha de la desigualdad: aprendizaje cooperativo mediante la literatura en dos escuelas vulnerables en santiago erika de la barra1 soffía carbone universidad mayor, santiago, chile this paper reports a qualitative action-research study on the use of cooperative learning through literature in two vulnerable english as a foreign language (efl) classrooms in chile. the study aimed at bridging efl inequality by exposing students to a different methodology using cooperative learning, and content-based instruction through literature, which are inexistent methods in vulnerable schools. improving students’ performance and increasing their personal growth were also pursued. data were gathered through lesson observations, language tests, and surveys. results evidenced that students improved their cooperative learning skills and personal growth, yet their linguistic proficiency was not significantly enhanced. as a conclusion, promoting cooperative learning together with content-based instruction through literature resulted in a suitable combination to improve learners’ learning strategies and personal growth. keywords: content-based instruction, cooperative learning, english as a foreign language, inequality, literature este artículo reporta una investigación-acción cualitativa sobre el aprendizaje cooperativo mediante la literatura, adelantada en dos aulas chilenas vulnerables de inglés como lengua extranjera. se buscó disminuir la desigualdad en el aprendizaje del inglés como lengua extranjera y mejorar el rendimiento y el crecimiento personal de los estudiantes. estos estuvieron expuestos al aprendizaje cooperativo mediante la literatura, algo inexistente en escuelas vulnerables. la recolección de datos incluyó la observación de clases, pruebas de lenguaje y encuestas. se evidenció un incremento en las habilidades de aprendizaje cooperativo y en el crecimiento personal de los alumnos, aunque su competencia lingüística no mejoró significativamente. en conclusión, combinar un aprendizaje cooperativo con el uso de la literatura resulta apropiado para mejorar las estrategias de aprendizaje y el crecimiento personal de los estudiantes. palabras clave: aprendizaje basado en contenidos, aprendizaje cooperativo, desigualdad, inglés como lengua extranjera, literatura erika de la barra · email: erika.delabarra@umayor.cl soffía carbone · email: soffia.carbone@umayor.cl how to cite this article (apa, 7th ed.): de la barra, e., & carbone, s. (2020). bridging inequality: cooperative learning through literature in two vulnerable schools in santiago. profile: issues in teachers’ professional development, 22(2), 49–63. https://doi.org/10.15446/profile. v22n2.81384 this article was received on july 31, 2019 and accepted on february 6, 2020. this is an open access article distributed under the terms of the creative commons license attribution-noncommercial-noderivatives 4.0 international license. consultation is possible at https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/ https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/ universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras50 de la barra & carbone introduction the problem of inequality in english as a foreign language (efl) has been a serious concern for several chilean governments. research suggests the idea that public schools have access to substantially poorer learning materials and incompletely trained teachers (council on hemispheric affairs, 2008; matear, 2006). it can also be observed that municipal schools keep using old fashioned methodologies such as the grammar translation method whereas private schools make use of more modern approaches that help students develop productive skills such as speaking and writing (abrahams & farías, 2010; herrada et al., 2012; mcbride, 2010; yilorm, 2016). proof of this inequality is the sustained gap in the results obtained in the simce in english, the standardised test carried out by the ministry of education between the advantaged schools and the disadvantaged schools (agencia de la calidad de la educación, https://informate.agenciaeducacion.cl/). having worked at both public and private schools as teachers of english and having also supervised preservice teachers in several schools, we saw how it was easy to appreciate that the existing gap between materials, didactics, and methodology used in public schools and in private ones is still a big issue which damages the possibility of vulnerable children to learn english appropriately. the objective of this research is to examine the effects of both the cooperative learning and content-based approaches in two vulnerable schools in santiago. these two approaches are widely employed in private schools because they are more effective and because students become the centre of the learning process allowing them to develop productive skills rather than just receptive ones. the research describes the effects of an inter vention carried out in the selected schools and the impact it had on the children who had never worked with these methodologies. literature review inequality in the efl classroom there are several studies and tests that have demonstrated the inequality and variation in chilean students’ linguistic proficiency when using efl (abrahams & farías, 2010; herrada et al., 2012; see also the website of the agencia de la calidad de la educación, https:// informate.agenciaeducacion.cl/). nevertheless, the best results are achieved by those who have been exposed to the language from earlier years. in chile, english is mandatory from grade 5 to 8, with education on the subject before grade 8 depending on the school (mckay, 2003). there is a high number of public schools which do not teach english to earlier years as they do not have the monetary resources as to spend on english teachers or materials, whereas private schools begin teaching the language in nursery school. carbone (2015) explains that simce 2010 established that 20% of students obtaining certification began learning english in nursery school, while 5% of students did not study the language until grades 4 or 5, and just 3% in grade 8. the situation was confirmed in simce 2014: 26% of students who began english in nursery school obtained certification while 8% of students who began english in grades 4 or 5 did likewise; and 4% of certified students belonged to the group which started in the eighth grade. on another note, abrahams and farías (2010) claim that there is a difference among those teachers working at high budget schools and those who work at less wealthy institutions. these authors discovered that teachers working at fee-paying private schools were trained at better universities and had completed postgraduate studies related to their field. better qualified teachers apply for better jobs at private schools, while those who attended less prestigious universities and have not undertaken training courses, frequently apply for jobs at public schools. supporting this view, herrada et al. (2012) analysed 3,079 teachers and discovered that more than half of the sample had attended private universities https://informate.agenciaeducacion.cl/ https://informate.agenciaeducacion.cl/ https://informate.agenciaeducacion.cl/ https://informate.agenciaeducacion.cl/ 51profile: issues teach. prof. dev., vol. 22 no. 2, jul-dec, 2020. issn 1657-0790 (printed) 2256-5760 (online). bogotá, colombia. pages 49-63 bridging inequality: cooperative learning through literature in two vulnerable schools in santiago and that a third had not been trained in english for their main degree, as they had studied other subjects or primary education. all throughout latin america, efl teachers face difficulties when it comes to training and continuity. according to cronquist and fiszbein (2017), even though in countries such as colombia, panama, and peru there are programs available for efl teachers to study abroad, there is little evidence on the positive impact that these programs may cause in teachers. furthermore, in some countries most teachers have not received official training in teaching english; for example, only 27% of peru’s secondary english teachers are licensed to teach the subject (cronquist & fiszbein, 2017). herrada et al. (2012) also discovered that teachers working at public schools in chile are less proficient, do not speak as much english as they are expected to in the classroom, and tend to rely on old-fashioned teaching methods. this is not an isolated situation in chile, as cronquist and fiszbein (2017) explain; in latin america, english language teaching has shown to be weak when it comes to the quality of both teachers’ training and proficiency. policy frameworks have set the bar from the b2 to c2 level on the common european framework of reference (cefr), and several studies and tests have demonstrated that many efl teachers do not reach the level. costa rica and chile are the strongest countries when it comes to teacher proficiency, while other countries such as brazil, colombia, and peru, show less auspicious results (cronquist & fiszbein, 2017). old fashioned teaching methods are not only present in public schools but also in subsidised ones. as de la barra (2016) suggests, most efl teaching in these schools is teacher-centred and students have very little participation in their own process. it is urgent to redefine the roles of the teacher and students in an efl context. english cannot be learnt if the teacher is the only one who speaks. besides, by perpetuating a teachercentred approach, schools are not providing room for the development of social skills that will help students grow up as citizens with a pro-social behaviour. only individualism, indifference, and inequality are being fostered because cooperative learning is mostly absent in public and subsidised schools but is vastly used in private schools. cooperative learning cooperative learning falls within the social approaches to learning. one of the founding fathers of the social development theory is vygotsky (1934/1978), who stresses the fundamental role of social interaction in the process of learning. in other words, he strongly believed in the relevance of the community and culture in learning. cooperative learning as such became really popular in the 80’s with researchers such as johnson et al. (1991), slavin (1985, 1987, 1989), and kagan (1989) who, through different experimental studies, developed principles and categories for this method that became immensely fruitful in the 90’s and 2000’s. cooperation is an essential trait of an ethical and moral society because it suppresses individuals’ egotistical self-interests and helps them to open to others providing help and care which is the basis for a pro-social behaviour (tomasello & vaissh, 2013). on the same line of thought, cooperation teaches the individual about the value of relationships, the value of helping, sharing, and reciprocity instead of just competing with other human beings to get an objective, that is, helping others and working together towards a common goal can be more effective and rewarding. cooperation, in fact, seems to be a defining feature of human social life. in cooperative behaviour the individual humanizes; hence the individual becomes more humane and exhibits higher levels of sophistication and flexibility than when working alone. however, as some recent studies in developmental psychology suggest (warneken, 2018), cooperation faces two important challenges for human beings. the first has to do with envisioning the benefit of cooperation as more effective than personal achievement and the second is how to distribute gains among universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras52 de la barra & carbone the community who have worked together towards a common goal. it’s important to consider that from a cooperative approach, leadership responsibility also changes and moves from one person to the other. in the field of education and learning, cooperative learning provides a set of instructional techniques aimed at developing interpersonal skills and a more student-centred learning. one of the founders of this method is kagan (1989), whose definition of cooperative learning provided a valuable umbrella for other authors who also developed this methodology. in his definition, kagan emphasises the organisation of social interaction in the classroom which provides a certain structure that facilitates the use of activities with a focus on cooperativeness to enhance learning. this approach is different from collaborative learning which sometimes is wrongly used as a synonym but which differs in the fact that cooperative learning is more focused on specific knowledge and learning processes that take place in the classroom while collaborative is rather an attitude towards life, and has less focus on the specific structure (panitz, 1999). now, something important to consider is that students merely sitting in groups and expected to work cooperatively will not actually be engaging in cooperative learning. that is why kagan (1989) is so emphatic about the structure. for example, the conformation of the groups is something to pay attention to. questions such as the composition of the groups (by level of proficiency, by students’ preferences, etc.), group size, and frequency and consistency of the groups are worth considering beforehand. another important contributor to cooperative learning is slavin (1989), who after synthesising 60 studies both in elementary and secondary schools, finally arrived at the conclusion that learning cooperatively was more effective than learning individually or through competition. to arrive at this conclusion, slavin designed experiments where he taught the same contents to the experimental groups that would receive cooperative instruction and the control groups that followed a traditional pattern. the results showed that in 72% of the cases the cooperative instruction had been more successful than the traditional one (slavin, 1989). the work of johnson et al. (1991) is also relevant for cooperative learning. they established five principles of cooperative learning, which are still in use today: (a) positive interdependence that puts the emphasis on the idea that students need each other to complete a certain task; (b) face-to-face promotive interaction where students put the emphasis on the importance of sharing and helping each other; (c) individual accountability is the principle that emphasises that each member of the group is responsible for his/her contribution to the group; (d) the development of social skills such as leadership, decision making, trust building, communication, and conflict management; and, finally, (e) group processing as a way for the members of the group to monitor if they are achieving the goals and keeping good and effective relationships among themselves. some recent studies have shown that the implementation of cooperative learning has been very successful in different areas of knowledge. in a study carried out by andré et al. (2013), cooperative learning proved to be incredibly successful with pupils in france who had learning disabilities related to risk taking. this study shows the benefits of cooperative learning in environments that require a context of inclusion to enhance positive social relationships. this inclusion encourages acceptance by peers and the self-confidence of the disabled students whose learning disability was related to their poor writing and reading skills. the participants of this study were 168 pupils from middle school aged 11 and 12 years. the results showed an increase in the risk-taking attitude of children with learning disabilities. another successful study carried out by zhang (2018), combined the use of flipped classroom techniques with cooperative learning at university level, and it involved 130 students from three majors in the first year at luoyang normal university, china. the study concluded 53profile: issues teach. prof. dev., vol. 22 no. 2, jul-dec, 2020. issn 1657-0790 (printed) 2256-5760 (online). bogotá, colombia. pages 49-63 bridging inequality: cooperative learning through literature in two vulnerable schools in santiago that the results were successful as the students became more autonomous under the use of flipped classroom and then increased their interaction with other students due to cooperative techniques. sharan (2010) states that the main benefit of cooperative learning is that both academic and social skills are developed through this method; furthermore, it also helps to promote better classroom management and better signs of inclusion in classes that are largely multicultural. however, something important to consider before implementing cooperative learning is the cultural context where the experience is going to be developed because success is not always guaranteed. such are the cases described by mai nguyen (as cited in sharan, 2010); these examine the application of cooperative learning techniques in a vietnamese context in secondary schools whereby female students did not want to sit next to boys; students took a long time to form the groups, which created widespread chaos. this shows that the successful implementation of cooperative learning depends a lot on cultural characteristics. vietnamese children felt uncomfortable in a learning environment where the source of knowledge was not the teacher and that was less structured compared to a lecture. so again, knowing the culture where the method is going to be implemented is vital, so the teachers in charge can structure their lesson as to generate confidence in the students. however, sharan states that there is always a gap between the cooperative learning promise and theory, and the actual implementation. another important element to consider before implementing successful cooperative learning is the right combination of this method with short periods of lecturing. this proves to be more effective than implementing pure cooperative learning activities. fernández-santander (2008) proved this in an intervention carried out with first year students of optics and optometry. the study showed that the combination of the two methods proved highly effective and the data obtained through anonymous university interviews revealed that students thought that they had learned better with these two methods combined. through cooperative learning, team members were encouraged to rely on each other to achieve common goals. additionally, students perceived that the cooperative learning sessions were more interesting than the traditional methods. students stated that the most positive elements of this methodology were that studying at home was easier, that the contents of the lesson were fully grasped as sessions were more amusing, that difficult items were easier to learn, that their work was more valued by the teacher, and that there was a lot of help inside the group. it is also important to consider the role of the teacher when using cooperative learning. in a study carried out by hsiung et al. (2014), the authors advocated for the early identification of ineffective groups in cooperative learning. as mentioned before, due to cultural traits, the implementation needs to follow a very strict structure and the role of the teacher is to identify if the groups are working well during the implementation. when a group does not work cooperatively, it is very difficult to put a stop to the dynamics that hinder students’ engagement in cooperative learning. some researchers have suggested that the use of peer rating is a very efficient technique to detect the students who are not working according to what is expected. content-based instruction since the use of the grammar translation method does not provide a strong basis for communication and a more natural approach to language, it was also the aim of this research to combine the use of cooperative learning with content-based instruction (cbi). the emphasis of cbi is not on form but on meaning and provides an environment for contextualized learning which encourages students to discuss and communicate. although this approach is not new, dating back to the canadian immersion programmes in the 60’s, it has had some interesting varieties, frameworks, and developments. universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras54 de la barra & carbone one of the most interesting developments is the one called content and language integrated learning (clil). this approach, adopted in the 90’s, emerged as a response to the european union’s plurilingual agenda and the increasing number of immigrants that were coming to europe. in this sense, english was taught through a content and the teaching and learning of the subject matter was as important as the language itself (stoller & fitzsimmons-doolan, 2016). although it can be argued that cbi, including clil approaches, are at the service of the hegemonic cultures of europe and the usa, because they give response to political agendas, we truly believe that cbi also provides the educational context for social criticism and is more effective in developing critical thinking than the grammar translation method. the use of cbi also provides more opportunities to work cooperatively because students can talk and help each other in a way that connects their learning to affective elements, a process which resembles freire (1968/1970) and his dialogic pedagogy where there is not a central authoritative figure who can claim a monopoly on knowledge, but rather a process whereby all the participants involved cooperate to create knowledge together. cbi reinforces the principles of the communicative approach and allows for a more active participation of the students in their learning process. according to richards and rogers (2001), cbi takes into consideration two important principles: first, people learn the language more effectively if they use the language to acquire information rather than an end in itself; and second, cbi reflects the situation of the learners who really need to understand and act accordingly. brinton (2003) states that, as teachers, we should • base our instructional decisions on content rather than language criteria; • integrate linguistic skills; • involve students in the learning process; • choose content for its relevance to students’ lives and interests; and • emphasise the choice of authentic texts. method to carry out the present study a qualitative interpretative design was used. we designed special material that included the selection of simple literary material and the creation of units that put into play a cooperative and a content-based approach to efl. the units that we created were based on literature in english. some of the texts were simpler than others; with a variety of vocabulary and simple grammar to contribute to the learning of the students. when choosing the readings and the activities that would be applied by the teachers, we took into consideration some of the principles offered by brinton (2003). the content used in this research is literature which includes short fables and poems: some by well-known authors such as aesop and ray bradbury while others were quite unknown. most of these authors are speakers of english but who do not belong to the hegemonic cultures of the centre but come or are from eastern countries such as india, iran, and pakistan. we chose these authors and texts considering students’ interests, and we also decided to use literature instead of other subjects because it helps students become aware of their feelings and emotions, which are areas commonly neglected in education. this paper promotes the use of literature over other genres as, in tosta’s (1996) words, this genre “deals with universal themes, such as love or hate, which are familiar to the readers” (p. 62), while at the same time exposing students to a cultural and linguistic context with the myth of complexity being approached in a positive manner, working as an emotional factor, especially when students understand a literary text and experiment a feeling of accomplishment. participants and background the intervention involved 35 students from 8th to 12th grades from two vulnerable schools in santiago. one of the schools is in san josé de maipo, a small town to the east of santiago, in the mountainous area of cajón 55profile: issues teach. prof. dev., vol. 22 no. 2, jul-dec, 2020. issn 1657-0790 (printed) 2256-5760 (online). bogotá, colombia. pages 49-63 bridging inequality: cooperative learning through literature in two vulnerable schools in santiago del maipo. the other school is in the centre of santiago. both are vulnerable municipal schools and the number of hours of english students are exposed to is three per week, with the grammar translation method as the most used methodology. the students from san josé de maipo comprised a total of 24, 17 females and seven males; while the students in santiago made up a total of 11, seven females and four males. all the students who were part of this study were between the ages of 13 and 17. the school in san josé de maipo has a vulnerability rating of 91% whereas the school in santiago reaches 62%.1 we created a workshop to improve students’ effectiveness in learning. the instructors in charge of making the intervention invited the students to participate in this activity on a voluntary basis because it was important that students perceived they were not being compelled to participate. as all of them were under 18 years old, we sent informative consent forms to their parents to get authorization for them to participate in the workshop. there were two teachers who participated in the project. one of them, a graduated 28-year-old male teacher with three years of experience who worked at cajón del maipo, and a 24-year-old male preservice teacher who worked in santiago. we selected these teachers because they were willing to participate in a project that would provide new opportunities for their students; also, these teachers were interested in learning about cooperative learning as they had never actually used this methodology before. when we invited them to participate, we asked them to read a few articles to get familiarized with the elements of cooperative learning. they were also asked to keep a 1 the vulnerability indicator is constructed taking into consideration the socio-economic background of the students and their risks of dropping out from school associated with poor attendance, academic problems, special needs, and so on (junta nacional de auxilio escolar y becas, n.d.). journal where they registered all their insights about the implementation of the project. both teachers had trained to become english teachers at universidad mayor (chile) in a program that takes five years and includes subjects within the areas of english language, as linguistics, methodology and didactics, literature, thesis, and teaching practice. the area of teaching practice includes the participation in schools of different social backgrounds—private, state, and subsidized—and during the last year of teaching practice, students work an average of 22 hours at the school before completing their education with a bachelor’s degree examination in education. procedure the teachers in charge of making the intervention carried out a weekly english workshop that went from october to december 2018. each session lasted one hour and students who attended stayed for the workshop after the regular lessons. we provided the two teachers with a set of materials with the units to be covered at the beginning of october. so, in or during each lesson the teacher covered one unit which was adapted according to the students’ needs. all the units were based on content related to literature in english basically through short stories and poems and with specific indications on cooperative activities that students had to work on. table 1 summarizes de names of the units that were used in the intervention, their literary genre, their main theme, their difficulty level, and associated cooperative activities. at the beginning of the workshop the teachers spent some time explaining the basis of cooperative work and assigned students to groups that changed throughout the intervention. neither teacher used a specific method to assign each student to one certain group or another. most of the time, students kept the same groups because they already knew each other. universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras56 de la barra & carbone data collection cooperative learning rubric to observe the lessons, we designed a rubric taking into consideration the five principles stated by johnson et al. (1991). the rubric graded the presence of the criteria according to four levels of achievement: 4 = strong, 3 = capable, 2 = emerging, and 1 = weak. each of the levels was assigned a score to help quantify the level of cooperativeness in the classes observed. the rubric was validated by observing a cooperative lesson. the objective of validation was to make sure that the table 1. literature based units unit name literary genre main theme difficulty level cooperative activities unit 1: “defeated by pride” (by aesop, retrieved from http://www.english-forstudents.com/defeated-bypride.html) narrative fable pride easy • pre-reading vocabulary activity • reading and memorizing the story • speaking and telling the story unit 2: “nails in the fence” (unknown author, retrieved from http://www. inspirationpeak.com/cgibin/stories.cgi?record=50) narrative fable anger preintermediate • pre-reading activity (predicting) • read the story in groups • discussion of a sentence unit 3: “my greatest regret” (retrieved from http:// giftedminds.com.ng/) poem lost love preintermediate • group reading of the poem • discussion of vocabulary • discussion of questions • role play unit 4: “foolish imitation” (retrieved from http://www. english-for-students.com/ foolish-imitation.html) narrative -fable creativity difficult • brainstorming activity: concepts from the pictures • reading the story for the second time unit 5: “the night train at deoli” (by ruskin bond) narrative short story love at first sight difficult • discussing what they think the story is about • pre-reading activity. look up vocabulary groups • providing a new ending to the story unit 6: “there will come soft rains” (by ray bradbury) narrative short story science fiction future very difficult • pre-reading vocabulary activities • reading as a group • create a comic based on the story http://www.english-for-students.com/defeated-by-pride.html http://www.english-for-students.com/defeated-by-pride.html http://www.english-for-students.com/defeated-by-pride.html http://www.inspirationpeak.com/cgi-bin/stories.cgi?record=50 http://www.inspirationpeak.com/cgi-bin/stories.cgi?record=50 http://www.inspirationpeak.com/cgi-bin/stories.cgi?record=50 http://giftedminds.com.ng/ http://giftedminds.com.ng/ http://www.english-for-students.com/foolish-imitation.html http://www.english-for-students.com/foolish-imitation.html http://www.english-for-students.com/foolish-imitation.html 57profile: issues teach. prof. dev., vol. 22 no. 2, jul-dec, 2020. issn 1657-0790 (printed) 2256-5760 (online). bogotá, colombia. pages 49-63 bridging inequality: cooperative learning through literature in two vulnerable schools in santiago rubric measured the cooperative activity of the students in an english class. pre-test and post-test in order to measure the level of english at the beginning of the intervention and after the intervention, a test was adapted from the straightforward quick placement & diagnostic test (macmillan publishers limited, 2007). it has two parts, one of grammar and the other of vocabulary, with a total of 25 multiple choice questions. this test was validated by two fulltime academics from the english department at our university. students’ survey we constructed a survey to get students’ feedback and to measure students’ motivation levels. this is the only instrument that was carried out in spanish because of students’ level of english; it was validated by two full-time academics. the criteria we used for asking questions was: whether the classes had been entertaining and fun; if the materials had been attractive and interesting; if the workshop allowed understanding english better; if the workshop allowed students to work in groups better; if the snacks provided had been good for them; if the workshop had helped improve their vocabulary; and if they would recommend this workshop to other people. the survey considered three answers (very happy, average, sad) and students had to mark the one that suited them the most. ethical considerations under the university regulations regarding research using human subjects, ethical considerations were considered during the intervention. as the subjects were under 18, we asked their parents to sign an informed consent that explicitly stated that the research would always respect their privacy with confidentiality as the most important part, and results dealt within the strictest confidence. findings and discussion pre-test and post-test regarding the results of the intervention, it can be stated that from an academic perspective the experience had an important impact especially in cajón del maipo as indicated in table 2. this is due to an increase in the average score obtained by the students at the end of the experience. in santiago centro, on the contrary, there was a slight decrease in the scores obtained by students. table 2. average score entrance and exit tests quick placement test average score entrance test average score exit test cajón del maipo 6.2 7.4 santiago centro 8 7 it is important to mention that, although both teachers worked well and applied cooperative learning in their lessons, the teacher in cajón del maipo was more experienced and had higher levels of adaptability, creativity, and flexibility; which made it possible for him to combine cooperative learning with other more teacher directed activities. this explains in part that the experience was more successful in that school. however, the other reasons have to do with the application of the principles of cooperative learning. as it will be explained with more details later when the rubric results are analysed, two of the principles of cooperative learning (individual accountability and contribution to the group and considerations of others) reached appropriate levels of development whereas the other two principles (social skills and face to face promotive interaction) were present but to a lesser extent. to achieve higher academic results, all principles should have similar development while the teacher who makes the implementation needs to have the flexibility to adapt materials and possibly universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras58 de la barra & carbone combine with other methods to enhance cooperation as suggested by fernandez-santander (2008). degree of cooperativeness table 3 indicates the levels of cooperativeness of the lessons supervised. as it can be observed, lesson 1 in cajón del maipo and lesson 2 in santiago centro were the most cooperative because they were within the range of capable and strong; while the other two were in a range of emerging. nevertheless, cooperation traits were present in every lesson. individual accountability and contribution to the group as stated by johnson et al. (1991) the category of individual accountability and contribution to the group emphasizes that each member of the group is responsible for his/her contribution to the group. from this perspective it is interesting to notice that this was slightly stronger in cajón del maipo than in santiago centro. the teacher who did the intervention in this school was truly aware of the importance of making use of the approach in the class, and he promoted activities that helped students with their own individual accountability and their contribution to the group. in santiago centro, the teacher also implemented the cooperative activities and, little by little, gained more confidence to apply the rest of the material improving cooperativeness in the lessons. what is relevant here is that students in both schools were able to become aware of the importance of social learning and that their contribution to the group and active participation in the cooperative activities had an impact in their own learning and the learning of the others. this bridges inequality as the relevance given to social learning is not that present in public schools as it is in private institutions in chile. consideration of others as explained by tomasello and vaissh (2013) cooperation is an essential trait of a pro-social behaviour where the individual forgets about his/her egotistical needs to consider the other in a more reciprocal relationship. it is interesting to observe that this category ranked capable in both schools. this means that in both classes, students were sensitive to the feelings and learning needs of others and this attitude remained until the end. table 3. degree of cooperativeness in the schools criteria san josé de maipo santiago centro lesson 1 (22/10/2018) lesson 2 (29/10/2018) lesson 1 (25/10/2018) lesson 2 (15/11/2018) individual accountability and contribution to group 4 3 2 3 consideration of others 4 2 3 3 social skills 3 2 1 3 face to face promotive interaction 3 2 2 2 note. 1 = weak, 2 = emerging, 3 = capable, 4 = strong 59profile: issues teach. prof. dev., vol. 22 no. 2, jul-dec, 2020. issn 1657-0790 (printed) 2256-5760 (online). bogotá, colombia. pages 49-63 bridging inequality: cooperative learning through literature in two vulnerable schools in santiago it is interesting to consider that, although traditional teacher-centred education does not reinforce social interaction in class, students seem to have naturally a positive attitude towards the feelings of others and in general they showed solidarity with the weakest students. social skills this category, which takes into consideration the students’ social skills to interact with the group, ranked emerging in both schools, and it shows that in spite of all the good work carried out by both teachers, it was difficult for students to show skills such as leadership, decision making, trust building, and conflict management. in general terms, it was difficult for students to work their differences in a friendly way. in lesson 2 of cajón del maipo and lesson 1 of santiago centro, we could appreciate that students shouted at each other to solve their conflicts and that required the constant interventions of the teacher in each of the groups to moderate behaviour. after the intervention, it was clear to us that this principle needed to be reinforced and modelled prior to any application of cooperative learning. face to face promotive interaction face to face promotive interaction intended to measure whether students helped each other by sharing and encouraging efforts to learn. in the first lesson observed in cajón del maipo students ranked capable for this category, while in the second lesson students merely ranked emerging, which meant that students did not use strategies such as making requests and giving or asking for advice, and so on. in the school in santiago centro there were no changes between lesson 1 and lesson 2, as the category ranked 2 (emerging). this showed that the students who attended the workshop had some budding notions of interactive strategies such as negotiation, turn-taking, and how to interpret verbal and nonverbal clues. as a conclusion, it can be stated that cooperative learning was implemented in both schools with a successful development of the principles of individual accountability and contribution to the group and consideration of others. the other two principles had an emerging development. this means that the trait was present in the lessons, but more work needs to be done to increase cooperation. students’ feedback table 4 shows students’ feedback once the intervention ended. all the students from both schools agreed that the lessons were motivating and fun. this is because the approach taken from a cooperative perspective and a content-based approach was innovative for the students who are more used to a grammar-focused teacher-centred approach. most of the students felt that the materials were attractive and interesting for their learning. most students also had the perception that the workshop helped them understand english better and helped them improve their vocabulary. through the observations of four different lessons, it was clear that as the teachers tried to use english most of the times; hence, the abilities to understand vocabulary were enhanced. students recognized this as they were able to provide answers for the teachers. regarding the cooperative work in the group, most students perceived that cooperation was something relevant and valuable to achieve certain tasks. this is an important contribution because these students were not used to working cooperatively and most of them learned individually. finally, it is worth mentioning that all the students who took part in the workshop would recommend it to others. in other words, the experience was rated positive by the students. universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras60 de la barra & carbone the reality that learning has a social component as vygotsky (1934/1978) mentioned was a great discovery for students. the social dimension of learning, which seems to be so underdeveloped in chile, appears to have been awakened in students making them more aware of the relevance of the community, and the importance of changing their egotistical self-interest for a more pro-social behaviour (tomasello & vaissh, 2013). the results obtained can be useful for efl teachers who by fostering space for cooperation can enhance learning (kagan, 1989; slavin, 1989). however, it is also important to consider that implementation of cooperative learning must consider cultural background as stated by sharan (2010). chilean educational culture emphasizes the role of the teacher as the source of knowledge and not the students as co-creators of knowledge, so for cooperative learning to work, it is necessary to model and explain the principles and how they function. conclusions to conclude this study, it can be stated that bridging efl inequality is possible if changes are produced. first, the incorporation of alternative approaches and methodologies such as cooperative learning and cbi is possible if teachers in charge prepare students to live this experience positively. relying only on the classical grammar translation method is the easiest thing to do, but it has proven to be ineffective. of course, applying new approaches is always a challenge because chilean students have learned that education is teacher centred. they must be trained in the importance of cooperation for the future development of their professional skills and because human beings develop better when they are inserted in a community. students in both public and subsidized schools can learn to work with these methodologies and become more active in their learning. as we previously mentioned, one of the most interesting challenges for the chilean culture nowadays table 4. students’ feedback from the survey survey’s questions san josé de maipo (n = 24) santiago centro (n = 11) very happy average sad very happy average sad the lessons conducted by the teacher were fun. 24 11 the materials were attractive and interesting for me. 15 9 10 1 the workshop allowed me to understand english better. 22 2 9 2 i learned and valued the importance of working in groups. 22 2 7 4 the workshop helped me improve my vocabulary. 20 4 9 2 i liked the snacks provided by the teacher. 24 10 1 i would recommend this experience to other people. 24 11 61profile: issues teach. prof. dev., vol. 22 no. 2, jul-dec, 2020. issn 1657-0790 (printed) 2256-5760 (online). bogotá, colombia. pages 49-63 bridging inequality: cooperative learning through literature in two vulnerable schools in santiago is to give more room to social development, and the role of social interaction in the process of learning. as tomasello and vaissh (2013) mentioned, cooperation is the basis for social behaviour, and this emphasises the value of relationships, sharing, and reciprocity which has been somehow forgotten due to a rather individualistic and competitive view. one of the reasons why there is so much inequality in our country is because of the emphasis on competition. in the second place, it is important that efl teachers also modify their preconceived ideas and assumptions. for instance, it is possible to speak english and motivate students to have an active role in understanding what the teacher is saying. also, teachers must rely on their students and believe that they can build their own learning if well guided and finally, it is essential that students’ interests are taken into consideration when planning lessons. in the study conducted both teachers tried to implement a cooperative approach to learning in the schools. this was a challenge because the students were not used to this approach and chilean culture, at least in terms of education and learning, does not seem very cooperative. in other words, students expect a traditional approach even if this is ineffective because they are expecting to receive all the knowledge from the teacher. they do not see themselves as active participants in their knowledge and contributing to the learning of the group. in the third place, it is necessary to point out that by using cooperative learning and cbi there is personal growth through english. students not only learn about grammar, and lexis, but also about becoming responsible for their learning, sharing it with others and helping the ones that are slower. so, through these methodologies, we are also fostering social behaviour and solidarity. proof of this is the positive feedback provided by the students at the end of the experience. students are bored with the traditional teacher-centred approach and would like to try new methods that would help them develop better as human beings. besides, the possibility to learn about other topics and discuss them develops critical thinking and a connection to the affective realm of the students. regarding the limitations of this study, it is important to mention the time span for the interventions and to train students about this method. as it was stated previously, this intervention lasted 7 to 8 weeks and after close consideration of the results, we strongly believe that the experience would have been more successful if more time had been dedicated to help students learn the methodology. of course, the teachers in charge explained what the workshop was about, but given the fact that students in chile are rather teacher-centred themselves, some more weeks of induction for this purpose would have been very useful. the other aspect, that we consider a limitation and yet, an opportunity for this study, is providing training for teachers. none of the teachers who participated in this research had undergone a specific training workshop to apply the methodology. they had had some training at university in the methodology courses, and they were provided some articles to read, but a specialized workshop on cooperative learning and cbi would have been a great asset. the study showed that it was not easy for teachers to discern when to use the cooperative approach and how to combine it with other methods throughout the lessons to become more effective. to sum up we would like to encourage efl teachers to try different methods and approaches. cooperative learning, for example, and cbi can provide not only meaningful learning experiences for students, but also become an agent of change to bridge the inequality gap that has affected our country for such a long time. references abrahams, m. j., & farías, m. (2010). struggling for change in chilean efl teacher education. colombian applied linguistic journal, 12(2), 110–118. https://doi. org/10.14483/22487085.87 https://doi.org/10.14483/22487085.87 https://doi.org/10.14483/22487085.87 universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras62 de la barra & carbone andré, a., louvet, b., & deneuve, p. (2013). cooperative group, risk-taking and inclusion of pupils with learning disabilities in physical education. british educational research journal, 39(4), 677–693. https://doi.org/dk7w brinton, d. (2003). content-based instruction. in d. nunan (ed.), practical english language teaching (pp. 199–224). mcgraw-hill. carbone, s. (2015). are chilean school teachers of english as a foreign language encouraging the personal growth of students in order to tackle inequality? [unpublished master’s thesis]. king’s college, london, england. council on hemispheric affairs. (2008, july 30). the failings of chile’s education system: institutionalized inequality and preference for the affluent. https://bit. ly/2sr1dbx cronquist, k., & fiszbein, a. (2017). english language learning in latin america. the inter-american dialogue. https:// bit.ly/2h23zbm de la barra, e. (2016). aprendizaje cooperativo en la clase de inglés en cuatro colegios subvencionados de la región metropolitana [cooperative learning in english language classes in four subsidized schools in santiago]. pensamiento educativo: revista de investigación educacional latinoamericana, 53(1), 1–14. https://doi.org/10.7764/ pel.53.1.2016.10 fernández-santander, a. (2008). cooperative learning combined with short periods of lecturing. biochemistry and molecular biology education, 36(1), 34–38. https:// doi.org/10.1002/bmb.20141 freire, p. (1970). pedagogy of the oppressed (m. bergman ramos, trans.). bloomsbury. (original work published 1968) herrada, m., rojas, d., zapata, a. (2012). el desempeño profesional de los profesores de inglés según los datos de la evaluación docente [the professional performance of english language teachers according to teacher evaluation data]. https://bit.ly/2s2mrh2 hsiung, c. m., luo, l. f., & chung, h. c. (2014). early identification of ineffective cooperative learning teams. journal of computer assisted learning, 30(6), 534–545. https://doi.org/10.1111/jcal.12062 johnson, d. w., johnson, r. t., & holubec, e. j. (1991). cooperation in the classroom. interaction book company. junta nacional de auxilio escolar y becas. (n.d.). índices de vulnerabilidad escolar [school vulnerability indices]. https://www.junaeb.cl/ive kagan, s. (1989). the structural approach to cooperative learning. educational leadership, 47(4), 12–15. macmillan publishers limited. (2007). straightforward quick placement & diagnostic test. https://bit.ly/2upiaoa matear, a. (2006). barriers to equitable access: higher education policy and practice in chile since 1990. higher education policy, 19(1), 31–49. https://doi.org/10.1057/ palgrave.hep.8300114 mcbride, k. (2010). podcasts and second language learning: promoting listening comprehension and intercultural competence. in l. b. abraham & l. williams (eds.), electronic discourse in language learning and language teaching (pp. 153–168). john benjamins publishing company. https://doi.org/10.1075/lllt.25.12mcb mckay, s. (2003). teaching english as an international language: the chilean context. elt journal, 57(2), 139–148. https://doi.org/10.1093/elt/57.2.139 panitz, t. (1999). collaborative versus cooperative learning: a comparison of the two concepts which will help us understand the underlying nature of interactive learning (ed448443). eric. https://files.eric.ed.gov/fulltext/ ed448443.pdf richards, j. c., & rodgers, t. s. (2001). approaches and methods in language teaching (2nd ed.). cambridge university press. https://doi.org/10.1017/cbo9780511667305 sharan, y. (2010). cooperative learning for academic and social gains: valued pedagogy, problematic practice. european journal of education, 45(2), 300–310. https:// doi.org/10.1111/j.1465-3435.2010.01430.x slavin, r. e. (1985). an introduction to cooperative learning research. in r. slavin, s. sharan, s. kagan, r. h. lazarowitz, c. webb, & r. schmuck (eds.), learning to cooperate, cooperating to learn (pp. 5–15). plenum press. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4899-3650-9_1 https://doi.org/dk7w https://bit.ly/2sr1dbx https://bit.ly/2sr1dbx https://bit.ly/2h23zbm https://bit.ly/2h23zbm https://doi.org/10.7764/pel.53.1.2016.10 https://doi.org/10.7764/pel.53.1.2016.10 https://doi.org/10.1002/bmb.20141 https://doi.org/10.1002/bmb.20141 https://bit.ly/2s2mrh2 https://doi.org/10.1111/jcal.12062 https://www.junaeb.cl/ive https://bit.ly/2upiaoa https://doi.org/10.1057/palgrave.hep.8300114 https://doi.org/10.1057/palgrave.hep.8300114 https://doi.org/10.1075/lllt.25.12mcb https://doi.org/10.1093/elt/57.2.139 https://files.eric.ed.gov/fulltext/ed448443.pdf https://files.eric.ed.gov/fulltext/ed448443.pdf https://doi.org/10.1017/cbo9780511667305 https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1465-3435.2010.01430.x https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1465-3435.2010.01430.x https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4899-3650-9_1 63profile: issues teach. prof. dev., vol. 22 no. 2, jul-dec, 2020. issn 1657-0790 (printed) 2256-5760 (online). bogotá, colombia. pages 49-63 bridging inequality: cooperative learning through literature in two vulnerable schools in santiago slavin, r. e. (1987). cooperative learning: student teams (2nd ed.). the national education association. slavin, r. e. (1989). cooperative learning and achievement: six theoretical perspectives. in c. ames & m. l. maehr (eds.), advances in motivation and achievement. jai press. stoller, f. l., & fitzsimmons-doolan, s. (2016). content-based instruction. in n. van deusen-scholl & s. may (eds.), second and foreign language education: encyclopedia of language and education (3rd ed., pp. 1–14). springer. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-02323-6_7-1 tomasello, m., & vaish, a. (2013). origins of human cooperation and morality. annual review of psycholog y , 64 , 231–255. https://doi.org/10.11 46/ annurev-psych-113011-143812 tosta, a. (1996). poetry? it’s worth a try! english teaching forum, 34(3–4), 62–63. vygotsky, l. s. (1978). pensamiento y lenguaje [thought and language] (m. m. rotger, trans.). la pléyade. (original work published 1934) warneken, f. (2018). how children solve the two challenges of cooperation. annual review of psychology, 69, 205–229. https://doi.org/10.1146/annurev-psych-122216-011813 yilorm, y. (2016). proceso de enseñanza aprendizaje de la lengua inglesa en escuelas públicas chilenas: ¿producción o reproducción? [the learning teaching process of english as a foreign language in chilean public schools: production or reproduction?]. estudios pedagógicos, 42, 103–116. https://doi.org/10.4067/ s0718-07052016000300009 zhang, l. (2018). english flipped classroom teaching model based on cooperative learning. educational sciences: theory & practice, 18(6), 3652–3661. https:// doi.org/10.12738/estp.2018.6.278 about the authors erika de la barra is a full-time professor at universidad mayor (chile). she holds a phd in literature from universidad de chile and has been involved in literature and language teaching at different private and public institutions. she has published in the area of literature and efl contexts and presented in relevant efl conferences. soffía carbone is a full-time professor at universidad mayor (chile). she holds a master’s in education from king’s college, london, and a master’s in tefl from universidad de jaen (spain), and has been involved in language teaching in public and private institutions. she has published in the area of poetry and presented in relevant conferences. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-02323-6_7-1 https://doi.org/10.1146/annurev-psych-113011-143812 https://doi.org/10.1146/annurev-psych-113011-143812 https://doi.org/10.1146/annurev-psych-122216-011813 https://doi.org/10.4067/s0718-07052016000300009 https://doi.org/10.4067/s0718-07052016000300009 https://doi.org/10.12738/estp.2018.6.278 https://doi.org/10.12738/estp.2018.6.278 153profile: issues teach. prof. dev., vol. 20 no. 1, jan-jun, 2018. issn 1657-0790 (printed) 2256-5760 (online). bogotá, colombia. pages 153-166 https://doi.org/10.15446/profile.v20n1.60001 classroom management in foreign language education: an exploratory review1 el manejo del salón de clases en la educación en lenguas extranjeras: una revisión exploratoria diego fernando macías2* universidad surcolombiana, neiva, colombia this review examines studies in the area of classroom management in foreign language education. it is organized into three large areas: the first area focuses on the distinctive characteristics of foreign language instruction that are more likely to impact classroom management in foreign language classes. the second area provides a description of classroom management issues that foreign language teachers usually encounter in their practice; and the third area centers on the different alternatives to reduce the negative impact of classroom management on foreign language classes. conclusions suggest a need for more research particularly on the relationship between classroom management and aspects such as target language use and teaching methods. key words: foreign language instruction, classroom management, target language use. esta revisión examina estudios en el área del manejo de clase en la educación en lenguas extranjeras. está organizada en tres áreas: la primera aborda las características particulares de la instrucción en lenguas extranjeras que más impactan el manejo de clase. la segunda describe aspectos del manejo de clase que docentes de lenguas extranjeras usualmente encuentran en su práctica; y la tercera presenta alternativas para reducir el impacto negativo del manejo de clase en el área de lenguas extranjeras. las conclusiones sugieren más investigación particularmente sobre la relación entre el manejo de clase y el uso de la lengua extranjera y métodos de enseñanza. palabras clave: instrucción en lenguas extranjeras, manejo de clase, uso de la lengua objeto de estudio. 1 this article is a revised version of a paper submitted by the author as part of the activities of the doctoral studies he was involved in at the university of arizona. * e-mail: diego.macias@usco.edu.co how to cite this article (apa, 6th ed.): macías, d. f. (2018). classroom management in foreign language education: an exploratory review. profile: issues in teachers’ professional development, 20(1), 153-166. https://doi.org/10.15446/profile.v20n1.60001. this article was received on september 11, 2016, and accepted on may 29, 2017. this is an open access article distributed under the terms of the creative commons license attribution-noncommercial-noderivatives 4.0 international license. consultation is possible at https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/. universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras154 macías introduction classroom management appears to be one of the most recurring teachers’ concerns, namely for beginning teachers. this may be related to the fact that “the ideals that the beginning teacher formed during teacher training are replaced by the reality of school life where much of their energy is often transferred to learning how to survive in a new school culture” (farrell, 2006, p. 212). issues such as classroom discipline, dealing with individual differences and mixed-ability classes, organization of class work, relationships with parents, insufficient and/or inadequate teaching materials, overcrowded classrooms, sitting arrangement, noise, and social and cultural activities (sariçoban, 2010; veenman, 1984), to name a few, usually get in the way of teachers, especially in their initial years of teaching. in many settings, such issues tend to constitute real challenges that all teachers must learn to cope with. despite the vast amount of research on classroom management from a general education perspective, the particular impact of foreign language instruction on classroom management issues appears to be rather scarce. teacher educators in foreign language programs and foreign language teachers themselves must be aware of the impact that particular features of foreign language instruction such as target language use, interaction patterns, and communicative competence can have on the process of managing the classroom. these features ought to be examined in terms of how they may hinder or facilitate the development of classroom management skills. this is absolutely relevant as prospective foreign language teachers are often taught to promote the above features in their classes while seeking to maintain adequate classroom management. conducting this exploratory review then helps to consolidate the view of classroom management as a constant concern for those involved in teacher education, and it raises awareness among future and in-service foreign language teachers to be prepared to successfully respond to the many conflicting issues and situations inherent to the classroom environment. before proceeding any further, it is relevant to make reference here to the conception of classroom management. brophy (1996) referred to classroom management as “actions taken to create and maintain a learning environment conducive to successful instruction” (p. 5) while marzano (2003) stated that it consisted of the integration of four areas: “establishing and reinforcing rules and procedures, carrying out disciplinary actions, maintaining effective teacher and student relationships, and maintaining an appropriate mental set for management” (p. 88). similarly, doyle (1986) affirmed that “management is commonly viewed as a pre-requisite to instruction, something to get out of the way so that teaching can occur” (p. 394) and crookes (2003) further highlighted the importance of a relatively orderly classroom, or at least as he claims; “one in which whatever superficial manifestations of disorder may occur either do not prevent instruction and learning, or actually support them” (p. 144). in short, most of the previous conceptions of classroom management highlight the construction of an appropriate atmosphere in the classroom so that teaching and, consequently, learning can occur. this paper provides a review of this complex phenomenon of classroom management in relation to the field of foreign language education. i will start by offering a brief account of the methodology i used to conduct this review. after that, i will describe how research in classroom management has evolved in general education with emphasis on the most significant contributions. then, i will present a synthesis of the main features of the foreign language classroom followed by reference to the distinctive aspects of classroom management in foreign language education. next, i will focus on how research has described or characterized classroom management in foreign language education and the ways or mechanisms that various studies have proposed to reduce its impact. finally, i will draw conclusions and offer suggestions for what might constitute potential avenues of research on classroom management in foreign language education. 155profile: issues teach. prof. dev., vol. 20 no. 1, jan-jun, 2018. issn 1657-0790 (printed) 2256-5760 (online). bogotá, colombia. pages 153-166 classroom management in foreign language education: an exploratory review procedure in the context of this review, i initially consulted google scholar and then complemented my search with various databases including eric and education full text. i entered the keywords “classroom management” and “foreign language education/teaching” and found articles in various general journals (such as teaching and teacher education, and system) and more subjectmatter specific journals (such as elt journal and foreign language annals). after a careful examination of 29 articles from nine journals and eight books and book chapters, i decided to exclude those that did not report results of research or that had serious limitations in terms of providing information about essential components of the research process. although it was not difficult to find books on the subject of classroom management in foreign language education, most of these (farrell, 2008; marzano, gaddy, foseid, foseid, & marzano, 2005; scrivener, 2012) were how-to books focused on offering quick prescriptions and practical tips or activities to help language teachers cope with issues of classroom management in their teaching. in contrast, there were not many books that specifically address the phenomenon of classroom management in the field of foreign language education from a theoretical or research perspective. wright’s (2005) classroom management in language education was without a doubt, a unique exception and an influential source in this review. likewise, the chapter by brophy (2006) in evertson and weinstein’s (2006) handbook of classroom management also provided a nice historical review of the literature on classroom management although from a general education point of view. the final corpus of the study regarding classroom management in the foreign language classroom was composed of 19 publications—fourteen articles from seven journals, two books, two book chapters, and a doctoral dissertation, all of which are referred to throughout this paper. some publications on foreign language methodology and classroom management from a general educational perspective were additionally considered due to their relevance for understanding classroom management issues. the main shortcomings of the review had to do with restricted access to some publications within my working context; and a lack of examination of other studies on teaching methods (e.g., task-based language learning, content and language integrated learning) that may directly or indirectly deal with classroom management issues. thus, the present study may be better understood as an exploratory review. classroom management from a general education perspective research on classroom management in foreign language education appears to be noticeably missing from the large amount of literature on classroom management in general education. in examining the content of the handbook of classroom management (evertson & weinstein, 2006), i did not find a single chapter that addressed the issue of classroom management from a language education perspective. it appears that “the literature has taken the issue of classroom discipline or behaviors of resistance in language classes for granted” (crookes & schmidt as cited in rahimi & hosseini, 2012, p. 310). it could also be the case that the literature perceived classroom management as inherently equal to all subject matter areas and so ignored the distinctive characteristics of classroom management for specific content areas. in a historical review of research on classroom management, brophy (2006) outlined various periods in the development of classroom management, beginning with an emphasis on habit formation and less importance on aspects such as self-regulation and cooperative learning in early 1900s. brophy claimed that there was little research on classroom management until the 1950s when there seemed to be more concerns for involving students in developing rules and procedures, and helping them achieve appropriate levels of internal self-control. brophy equally stated that a balance universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras156 macías between authoritarian and laissez-faire approaches to classroom management began to evolve around this time. initial actions towards this balance came from behavioral and ecological studies. accordingly, behavioral studies promoted the use of techniques to increase students’ desired behavior (e.g., token reinforcement program, praise and approval, establishing clear rules and directions, etc.) and procedures to decrease undesired behavior (e.g., extinction, self-reprimands, time out from reinforcement, etc.). ecological studies held the idea that classrooms were environmental settings and so, according to brophy (2006), relied on the assumption that “one needs to take into account the affordances and constraints created by teachers, peers, and other human actors, not just the settings’ physical characteristics” (p. 27). a significant contribution during this time was kounin’s (1970) discipline and group management in classrooms where the author presented results and conclusions of various research studies. one of such studies focused on how a teacher’s method of managing the behavior of a student influenced other students as they comprised the audience of the event; this came to be known as the ripple effect in discipline, while another study consisted of videotaping classroom lessons aimed at studying disciplinary techniques. kounin also suggested that there were several dimensions of teacher behaviors that affected the behavior of students. for example, “withitness” (or the teacher’s being aware of what is happening everywhere in the classroom at all times), overlapping (or attending to two issues at the same time), transition smoothness (or absence of dangles, thrusts), and planning for learning-related variety in seatwork. brophy (2006) then stated that process-outcome studies took place during the 1960s and through the 1980s. these studies focused on the effects or outcomes of teacher actions and student interaction patterns and adapted concepts and ideas from kounin’s work. other relevant work on classroom management during this time was doyle’s (1984) research on successful classroom managers, and glasser’s (1990) choice theory model, which considered individuals as capable of making their own choices in terms of their behaviors and based on their needs and feelings. in short, brophy pointed out that research on classroom management had been of very good quality. it had moved from inculcating good behavior habits to engagement in learning activities; from reactive discipline to proactive installation of desired procedures and routines; and from unilateral teacher control to development of students’ capacities for exercising responsibility and self-regulation. brophy also concluded that management that was preventive, that clarified what students were expected to do and helped them do it was more likely to be effective than management that focused on misbehavior and afterthe-fact discipline. approaches to foreign language teaching understanding classroom management issues in foreign language education requires an examination of the theoretical approaches and teaching methods that have characterized foreign language learning and teaching. thus, this section makes a brief reference to such approaches and methods in an attempt to understand how they may impact classroom management. researchers in second language acquisition have, to a great extent, been guided in their thinking by the several theoretical approaches to the study of first language acquisition. bohannon and bonvillian (2008) provide a rich description of the main approaches (behavioral, linguistic, and interactionist) to the study of second language acquisition. in that order, behavioral approaches focus on the observable and measurable conditions of language behavior whereas language development is a matter of “linking various stimuli in the environment to internal responses, and these internal responses to overt verbal behavior” (p. 261). teachers view learners typically as passive recipients of environmental pressures. in contrast, linguistic approaches emphasize that 157profile: issues teach. prof. dev., vol. 20 no. 1, jan-jun, 2018. issn 1657-0790 (printed) 2256-5760 (online). bogotá, colombia. pages 153-166 classroom management in foreign language education: an exploratory review language has a structure or grammar. proponents claim the existence of a set of universal grammar rules while individuals are naturally endowed to learn a second language by progressively testing their own evolving grammars against the data provided by the environment. interactionist approaches, added bohannon and bonvillian, assume that many factors (linguistic, social, biological, cognitive, etc.) interact and modify each other and therefore affect the course of language acquisition and development. the interactionist approaches are further divided into cognitive interactionist and social interactionist approaches. the former see language as emerging from or closely tied to advances in children’s cognitive development whereas the latter view language development “as an orderly, although complex, interactive process where social interaction assists language acquisition and the acquisition of language allows more mature social interaction” (bohannon & bonvillian, 2008, p. 292). wright (2005) also talks about three models of teaching: transmission, exploration, and social constructivism. teaching as transmission is characterized by teacher control of the learning context in which teachers emphasize students being seated facing the teacher, memorization, rote learning, drills, and question-and-answer practices. exploratory teaching puts the learner at the center and the teacher is responsible for “assisting learners in designing for themselves the selection, pace and evaluation of appropriate learning experiences” (p. 201). wright further highlights “the individual learner’s direct experience through which they ‘discover’ new knowledge and formulate their own ideas and meanings, as ‘active scientists’” (p. 201). in contrast, social constructivism stresses the role of the social context of learning and collaborative work so that students constantly engage in talk (wright, 2005). the previous theoretical approaches and models have served as the foundations to a large plethora of methods and approaches to foreign language teaching. richards and rodgers (2001) outline a chronology of the most significant teaching methods in this field. interestingly, language teachers and teacher educators have witnessed how each new language teaching method promotes the belief that the teaching practices it supports provide a more effective alternative for teaching than the methods that came before it (richards & rodgers, 2001). all in all, there has been a move from grammar-based teaching methods towards more communicative approaches in foreign language teaching. grammar-based methodologies accentuated aspects such as analysis and memorization of grammar rules, translating texts into and out of the target language, reading and writing in the target language, using the students’ native language, and teaching grammar deductively. in contrast, communicative approaches advocate aspects such as learning to communicate, comprehensible pronunciation, dialogues centered on communicative functions. communicative competence is the desired goal; students are expected to interact with other people, and the target language is learned by constantly struggling to communicate. wright (2005) points out that the methodologies or teaching models used by teachers can be inferred from observing “the different types of activity they use, the order in which they use them and the ways in which participation in classroom talk is managed” (p. 190). this evolution in teaching approaches and methods in language education has come to represent a transition from teacher-centered to learner-centered approaches advocated by foreign language teachers worldwide. interestingly, every new teaching method has brought implications and consequences for classroom management as elements such as teachers’ and learners’ roles, interaction patterns, and target language use tended to vary across such methods and therefore affected classroom management in different ways. the relationship between teaching approaches or methods and classroom management becomes even more challenging as teachers almost never followed one methodology to the exclusion of others. in fact, wright (2005) argues that “teachers universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras158 macías use a fairly wide variety of teaching activities, however; [they] seem to gravitate towards a set of shared beliefs and assumptions about what constitutes ‘good practice’, from which a common pedagogy emerges” (p. 192). i will return to the connection between teaching methods and classroom management later in this paper. distinctive characteristics of classroom management in foreign language education despite the fact that managing the classroom is an inherent aspect to the teaching profession and therefore makes its presence across all content areas, i believe that there are particular or unique features of the foreign language teaching profession that may have an impact on classroom management. to begin with, borg (2006) identified eleven characteristics that distinguish language teachers from teachers of other subjects; i have highlighted below those i consider are most likely to affect classroom management (p. 24): • foreign language teaching is the only subject where effective instruction requires the teacher to use a medium (language) the students do not yet understand. • effective foreign language instruction requires interaction patterns such as group work, which is desirable but not necessary for effective instruction in other subjects. • the methodology of language teaching is more diverse and aimed at creating contexts for communication and maximizing student involvement. as can be observed, aspects such as target language use, patterns of interactions, and teaching methodologies constitute distinctive features in foreign language education and therefore may impact classroom management in various ways. given the lack of research on how interaction patterns and teaching methodologies affect classroom management in foreign language education and the limited scope of this paper, i have decided to focus on how using the target language as the medium of instruction and overall communication in class impacts classroom management. the use of the target language in the classroom has traditionally been emphasized in the foreign language teaching profession mainly in view of contemporary teaching methods that advocate a communicative orientation in language teaching. mercer (2001) highlights teachers’ use of language as the principal tool of their responsibilities which may include controlling unruly behavior, teaching a specific curriculum, and monitoring and assessing students’ progress. allwright and bailey (1991) also state that performing in a foreign language class is in a way more stressful than performing in other subject classes. in mathematics, for example, you may get the answer wrong, but at least you can be reasonably sure of saying the numbers correctly. in language work, by contrast, even if in a sense you get the answer right (you find the correct form of the verb, say, in a blank-filling item) you may still make an almost infinite number of mistakes in what you say—for example, with imperfect pronunciation of individual sounds, wrong word stress, wrong sentence stress, and so on…in short, the risk of making a fool of yourself in a language class is very high, and you need to be a singularly robust character to avoid being affected adversely by feelings of anxiety in such a setting. (p. 174) from conducting my own search, i found that few studies have addressed the impact of first or target language use on managing the foreign language classroom. for example, kang (2013) explored how english as a foreign language (efl) teachers used their first language and/or the target language for classroom discipline. the study involved the participation of two efl teachers at two elementary schools in korea. kang investigated the significance of the differences between first language (l1) and target language (tl) use for two efl teachers at two elementary schools in korea. one of the teachers demonstrated using more the tl as opposed to the l1 for disciplinary purposes. kang concluded that low-level students found tl use to be difficult to comprehend, and claimed that it influenced their 159profile: issues teach. prof. dev., vol. 20 no. 1, jan-jun, 2018. issn 1657-0790 (printed) 2256-5760 (online). bogotá, colombia. pages 153-166 classroom management in foreign language education: an exploratory review behavior little whereas high-level students considered it helpful in increasing their target knowledge, and in increasing their respect for the teacher’s proficiency and their obedience to her. this teacher’s shift to more tl use seemed to “constitute her effort to reclaim her position as the authority figure, irrespective of its actual effectiveness for initiation and sustainment of classroom discipline” (p. 156). the other teacher employed more the l1 than the tl for classroom discipline which was connected to her lack of tl proficiency, and to the considerable unruliness of her students. in contrast, the students expressed that their lack of comprehension of the content that the teacher taught got them to engage in noisy chatter. another teacher similarly admitted that her anxiety incited her to depend more on the l1 for classroom discipline. evans (2012) similarly contended that the foreign language classroom led both pre-service and in-service teachers into management issues that were uncommon or did not exist in other content area classrooms. she worked with five participants who had been student teachers for one semester from the fall of 2006 to the spring of 2010, and were currently working as in-service foreign language teachers. evans found that tl use is a variable that positively affected student behavior. however, she cautioned that the use of the tl may not always be a winning classroom management strategy for foreign language teachers. the study equally allowed the identification of other particular or exclusive aspects in foreign language education (e.g., the lack of respect for the study of foreign language, and the inclusion of students who were heritage speakers of the tl) that may influence classroom management issues. other studies (bateman, 2008; nation, 2003; wilkerson, 2008) have examined the use of the l1 and the tl in foreign language education. although classroom management has not been a central concern for these authors, the studies have served to establish a clear connection between l1 or tl use and several other aspects of foreign language teaching including classroom management. nation (2003) justified using the tl in the classroom on the basis that learners did not usually have the chance to use the tl outside the classroom, and insisted that classroom management was one way to promote tl use in class. this could include controlling behavior, explaining activities, and giving directions or instructions. nation also argued that “if the use of english [as the target language] in classroom management is done in a planned, consistent way, then classroom management can be a very effective opportunity for learning through meaning focused input” (p. 2). bateman (2008) found that classroom management significantly contributed to the avoidance of the tl by student teachers at a private university who were worried that they would lose control of the class if they did not use their l1. interestingly, one of the participants in this study indicated that “her mentor teacher had asked her to focus on classroom management instead of using the target language” (bateman, 2008, p. 19). in this regard, the national association of district supervisors of foreign languages (n.d.) argued that a teacher’s use of [l1] to establish control had uniquely detrimental effects in the language classroom since students were supposed to communicate, take risks, and engage in meaningful interactions and tasks in the tl. wilkerson (2008) also focused on the use of english as the first language in a couple of spanish as a foreign language courses in the united states. the study sought to understand why language instructors used english as the students’ l1 while teaching. different from the previous studies, these teachers did not claim a lack of proficiency in the tl as one of the reasons to avoid its use. instead, they used the l1 “to save time, demonstrate authority, and reduce ambiguity” (p. 315). wilkerson indicated that participant teachers used the l1 to manage aspects of the classroom such as controlling the speed of classroom interactions, eliminating waiting or lag time, and limiting students’ turn taking. this section has focused on the role that tl use plays in managing the foreign language classroom. despite universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras160 macías the widespread demand for tl use to manage all the processes in the foreign language classroom, many teachers still tend to use the students’ l1 for purposes of classroom management. even though lack of tl proficiency was an aspect identified in some studies as one of the reasons for teachers to be reluctant to use the tl, the fact remains that using the l1 appears to offer teachers better control of the learning environment and reduces the risk of inappropriate behavior and ambiguity. nonetheless, the field of foreign language education needs more research to examine the role or impact of the tl on managing the classroom especially in view of the results presented by kang (2013) between low-level and high-level learners. features of classroom management in foreign language education various studies (burnett, 2011; evans, 2012; eveyikaydın, kurt, & mede, 2009; farrell, 2003; macías & sánchez, 2015; quintero & ramírez, 2011; wadden & mcgovern, 1991) have sought to identify and characterize the phenomenon of classroom management in foreign language teaching. some studies have attempted to document the existence of classroom management as a pressing concern, a frequent struggle, and a serious challenge mainly for beginning foreign language teachers (balli, 2009; quintero & ramírez, 2011; lewis, 2002). they have focused on teachers’ beliefs, views, and experiences in terms of classroom management; typical examples of students’ misbehavior; and the influence of previous teacher preparation coursework on teachers’ classroom management skills, among other issues. overall, those studies offer a rich description of the many aspects that are usually involved in classroom management from various perspectives. wadden and mcgovern (1991) introduced the term negative class participation to refer to classroom misbehavior, and identify examples of students’ misconduct including “disruptive talking and sleeping in class…persistent inaudible response and unwillingness to speak in the target language” (p. 119). clearly, although most of the previous examples of student misbehavior may occur across all content areas, there are others such as unwillingness to speak in the tl that would pertain solely to foreign language education. it is by establishing clear rules or guidelines and sticking to them from the beginning that language teachers can solve problems associated with negative class participation, the authors concluded. the first part of quintero and ramírez’s (2011) project looked at how five efl teacher trainees understood, explained, characterized, and dealt with discipline-related challenges in public school classrooms in colombia. these teachers conducted action research projects at public schools in urban areas that serve low social stratum neighborhoods. quintero and ramírez found that public school classrooms represented a difficult world where situations involving “complaints, arguments, varying emotions, confusion, conversation, and playing” (p. 66) abound. most trainees in the study stated that their enthusiasm to learn and teach was brutally destroyed by sometimes minor and sometimes serious student misbehavior that hurt their self-esteem and made them feel frustrated. one of the most interesting findings in the previous study had to do with teacher trainees feeling unrecognized as figures of authority in class, presumably due to their young age and inexperience. macías and sánchez (2015) found a similar issue in working with pre-service efl teachers in colombia. these teachers reported still seeing themselves as college students as opposed to teachers, a perspective which was perceived as an obstacle for gaining classroom management skills. other challenges, possibly more inherent to foreign language education, that affected these pre-service teachers’ classroom management included students’ negative attitude towards the foreign language and their apparent low level of tl proficiency. two other studies involved the participation of a beginning efl teacher in singapore (farrell, 2003), 161profile: issues teach. prof. dev., vol. 20 no. 1, jan-jun, 2018. issn 1657-0790 (printed) 2256-5760 (online). bogotá, colombia. pages 153-166 classroom management in foreign language education: an exploratory review and a more experienced efl teacher in turkey (eveyikaydın et al., 2009). farrell (2003) investigated the role that support (from the school and colleagues) played during the teacher’s first year teaching whereas eveyikaydın et al. (2009) researched the relationship between the teacher’s classroom management beliefs and her actual teaching practices. although farrell did not focus explicitly on classroom management, it indirectly touched on this issue as one of the many compelling challenges that beginning teachers experienced in their first year of professional language teaching. findings in farrell’s (2003) study in regard to classroom management were related to the phases this teacher went through during that year. accordingly, the teacher moved from an early idealism as he wanted to connect and make a difference in his students’ lives, to experiencing some shock from the reality of the classroom as he moved through his first semester. in an attempt to survive this phase, this teacher sought quick fixes for the discipline problems he experienced in one of his classes, but he still encountered some difficulties with the class and his communication with his colleagues. he then moved to a phase of beginning to recognize these difficulties and causes as he also wondered if he would make it as a teacher. as the first year progressed, this teacher began to cope better with his classes (his teaching methods and classroom management). on the other hand, results of eveyik-aydın et al.’s (2009) study showed that the teacher had interactionalist orientations (that is, she considered that students and teachers should both be responsible for managing the classroom) on instructional and people management while she had interventionist beliefs (that is, she believed that students master proper behavior mainly when such behavior are reinforced by a system of rewards and punishments) on behavior management. the studies conducted by burnett (2011) and evans (2012) involved more than one participant, and also sought to obtain teachers’ views in regard to various issues associated with classroom management in foreign language teaching. burnett (2011) focused on two practicing language teachers working in public schools in southern mississippi. one of these two teachers revealed that much of what she had learned in previous graduate coursework did not apply to the classroom since most of her talk centered on controlling out-of-turn talking by students. similarly, both participant teachers in the same study used several strategies to deal with student misbehavior including telling the students they would have a quiz if they did not behave properly, moving a student’s desk by the teacher’s desk, giving detentions and calling on principals, counselors, and parents for help. in contrast, evans (2012) noted that all five teachers in the study had a very positive view of their teacher education coursework. they believed that it had provided them with powerful tools to understand and deal with classroom management issues. the studies in this section present a general view of the many aspects that characterize classroom management in the field of foreign language education. these studies have offered a description of this phenomenon from the perspectives of beginning teachers to a large extent and of more experienced foreign language teachers to a lesser extent. studies by evans (2012) and wadden and mcgovern (1991) served to confirm that foreign language teachers often face classroom management issues that appear to be exclusive to the field of foreign language education. for example, issues such as inaudible responses, unwillingness to communicate in the target language, lack of respect for the study of foreign languages, and the inclusion of students who were heritage speakers of the tl, are likely to have a significant impact on foreign language teachers’ classroom management skills. studies by burnett (2011) and evans (2012) led to a divided opinion in relation to the influence of previous preparation coursework on how teachers manage their classrooms. universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras162 macías reducing the impact of classroom management problems in foreign language education research on classroom management in foreign language education has also focused on providing ways or mechanisms to help foreign language teachers reduce the impact of classroom management issues in their courses. soares (2007) replicated an action research study of her own aimed to reduce the negative class participation of a group of misbehaving and unmotivated efl students in a language school in brazil. she concluded that building rapport and developing awareness-raising activities constituted an effective way to minimize behavior problems in the foreign language classroom, especially regarding aspects previously identified by wadden and mcgovern (1991) such as disruptive talking, incomplete homework, and unwillingness to speak only english in class. the author highlighted that teachers had to learn to “value students as individuals and show them they are capable of going beyond their perceived limitations” (soares, 2007, p. 53). similarly, teachers had to help students to understand that they were responsible for constructing a positive learning environment by contributing their share to it. two other survey studies (fowler & sarapli, 2010; rahimi & hosseini, 2012) aimed to investigate efl students’ perspectives and expectations of their teachers’ classroom management strategies and techniques. findings in rahimi and hosseini’s (2012) study revealed that efl teachers used recognition and reward most often and punishment and aggression less frequently when dealing with misbehavior in their classes. the study similarly indicated that public school female teachers tended to use aggression as a strategy more than teachers in private schools. on the other hand, fowler and sarapli (2010) found that effective classroom management was just as important to english language students as it was to teachers, and that a rather strict classroom where teachers valued and respected students was usually expected by students. the authors added that efl students also claimed that they needed to know what teachers expected of them in terms of their behavior and fair testing practices. waters (1998) claimed that an understanding of the “monkey”, a concept from management studies used to denote the “next move” in a problem-solving process, could help to ease the problem of classroom management in english language teaching. the monkey management system established that priority should be given to who should solve the problem. in the context of foreign language teaching, it often happens that the teacher accepts responsibility for solving problems that students should solve. in other words, “if teachers solve problems for their learners which they can solve for themselves, they collect their learners’ monkeys. as a result, they soon become overworked, while the learners sit back and take it easy” (waters, 1998, p. 13). waters stressed that developing appropriate monkey management attitudes in class may lead teachers to put a learner-centered approach to classroom management into practice in english language teaching. other studies (castellanos, 2002; quintero & ramírez, 2011) have also identified a great variety of ways or strategies to help foreign language teachers reduce the impact of classroom management problems in the courses they teach. participants in quintero and ramírez’s (2011) study emphasized talking with the involved students, including providing a variety of activities in lessons, maintaining students’ attention, giving clear explanations and instructions, keeping learners busy, and managing time wisely were among the strategies they used to deal with discipline problems. castellanos (2002) revealed a series of strategies such as focusing, monitoring, modeling, non-verbal cueing, environmental control, and assertive and positive discipline, among others, that may contribute to better classroom management. this study took further significance as it offered support to the importance of working on students’ self-esteem and teachers playing 163profile: issues teach. prof. dev., vol. 20 no. 1, jan-jun, 2018. issn 1657-0790 (printed) 2256-5760 (online). bogotá, colombia. pages 153-166 classroom management in foreign language education: an exploratory review fair as factors that contribute to reduce children’s level of aggressiveness and to construct a positive classroom environment. this section has looked at different ways or mechanisms that research has contributed to help foreign language teachers better cope with classroom management issues. interestingly, some of the suggested mechanisms may result in the application of particular concepts or frameworks such as waters’ (1998) monkey concept while others advocate teachers’ new dispositions such as abandoning punishment and aggression in favor of more recognition and reward (rahimi & hosseini, 2012) or promoting students’ self-esteem and responsibility in maintaining a positive learning environment (castellanos, 2002; soares, 2007). the story structure framework (farrell, 2006) may also help to create a safe and non-judgmental support system for foreign language teachers to share their emotional burden and isolating experiences when they first enter the world of teaching. this story structure framework, according to farrell, follows a pattern of setting-complicationresolution where the setting addresses questions such as: who was involved? what took place? when did it take place? the complication centers on the problem that arose together with critical moments in the story and the resolution focuses on how the teacher dealt with those complications. sources such as those i mentioned earlier in this paper (farrell, 2008; marzano et al., 2005; scrivener, 2012) offer more concrete tasks and activities intended to help foreign language teachers alleviate classroom management issues. however, i would encourage foreign language teachers to be cautious about implementing quick fix solutions to classroom management issues without previously considering the circumstances of their teaching contexts. discussion and conclusions within the scope of this literature review, research on classroom management in foreign language education has followed predominantly qualitative methodologies with a particular emphasis on case studies, and has involved the use of classroom observations, interviews, questionnaires, journals, and field notes. furthermore, most studies have relied on the participation of foreign language students, student teachers, beginning teachers, and in-service teachers of mainly english and, in a couple of cases, spanish as foreign languages. most of the studies were also conducted from an etic perspective where the researchers were university faculty, practicum supervisors, or outside teachers and “experts” investigating classroom management in a context they had connections with. the review points out the existence of distinctive aspects of the field of foreign language teaching that may affect classroom management in particular ways. these aspects include tl use, interaction patterns, teaching methods, the inclusion of heritage speakers of the tl (particularly in the case of spanish as a foreign language in the united states), and the lack of respect for the study of a foreign language. it follows that no other aspect seems to have gained more attention that the use of the tl in the foreign language classroom. however, despite the vast amount of research on the use of l1 or tl in the foreign language classroom (littlewood & yu, 2009; nation, 2003; wilkerson, 2008), very few (evans, 2012; kang, 2013) have looked at it from the perspective of the implications for classroom management. the other distinctive aspects of foreign language education that may impact classroom management appear to have received little or no attention in the literature. teaching methods and approaches have nonetheless been of particular relevance here as they are likely to influence the classroom management skills teachers need to develop in response to more particular aspects of teaching such as class activities, materials, patterns of interaction, and teachers’ and students’ roles. in relation to the description or characterization of classroom management in foreign language education, i feel that most studies have focused on reaffirming the existence of classroom management problems in universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras164 macías foreign language teaching. these studies have offered lists of issues or problems that foreign language teachers typically encounter in their lessons, how these problems affect teachers, how they deal with them from their own perspectives, the beliefs and views they have of classroom management, and how their previous teacher preparation coursework has influenced their classroom management practices. i nonetheless believe that these studies can help to obtain an overview of what characterizes classroom management in foreign language education. it is important to realize that many of the problems in classroom management in foreign language classes identified throughout the literature (e.g., insufficient or inadequate materials and resources, overcrowded classrooms, etc.) clearly coincide with problems teachers of other content areas usually confront, while other issues (e.g., unwillingness to speak in the target language, students at different levels of language proficiency) pertain almost exclusively to the area of foreign language education. many of the actions suggested in the studies reviewed seem to come from teachers’ own experiences in the context of the research projects or from ideas established previously in the literature in general education or in other fields. for instance, some of the alternatives for teachers to cope with classroom misbehavior in various studies seemed rather prescriptive and dogmatic. they emphasized the promotion and awareness-raising actions of rules or guidelines usually established by the teacher with no apparent student participation or involvement in the making of such rules. teacher preparation programs usually continue to promote theories and practices which revolve around the concept of the ideal learner (soares, 2007) and so turn a blind eye to issues of classroom misbehavior in actual foreign language classrooms. this leaves teachers, particularly beginning teachers, with “little but their intuition to guide them” (soares, 2007, p. 43). i consider there should be more concern about the potential implications of coping (or not) with classroom misbehavior in foreign language education. it is the responsibility of all those involved in teacher preparation to guide new teachers in designing and implementing alternatives to confront those particular aspects that may influence classroom management in the teaching and learning of foreign languages. directions for further research despite the great amount of research on classroom management from a general education perspective, there seems to be ample need for research on various features of foreign language education in terms of how they impact classroom management for teachers in various positions. issues related to tl use, patterns of interaction, and teaching methods are in need of being investigated from the perspective of the influence they can have on classroom management issues in foreign language education. to further illustrate, a particular research initiative could examine the connection between classroom management problems and the teaching method used by foreign language teachers. this is particularly relevant in the light of the principles emphasized by communicative approaches in language teaching. a study of this nature may contribute to validate the assumption that the teaching method(s) that teachers choose to follow will in a great part determine the classroom management challenges they will encounter in their practice. there is also a need to investigate classroom management issues in the foreign language classroom from an emic perspective, that is, from teachers themselves as researchers. teachers are in a unique position to investigate issues of their immediate teaching setting. i have come to realize that teachers can do a lot for their own professional development if they seriously assume the role of researchers of their own classrooms. analysis of the classroom management approach that foreign language teachers rely on equally constitutes another avenue of inquiry. it may be interesting to generate opportunities for foreign language teachers 165profile: issues teach. prof. dev., vol. 20 no. 1, jan-jun, 2018. issn 1657-0790 (printed) 2256-5760 (online). bogotá, colombia. pages 153-166 classroom management in foreign language education: an exploratory review to characterize and reflect on their own approach to managing the classroom so 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(2005). classroom management in language education. new york, us: palgrave macmillan. https://doi. org/10.1057/9780230514188. about the author diego fernando macías works as an associate professor in the english teacher education program at universidad surcolombiana. he is a fulbright scholar currently pursuing his phd in second language acquisition and teaching at the university of arizona. his interests include teacher learning and classroom management in foreign language instruction. clil and comprehensive sexual education: a case of innovation from argentina 199profile: issues teach. prof. dev., vol. 22 no. 2, jul-dec, 2020. issn 1657-0790 (printed) 2256-5760 (online). bogotá, colombia. pages 199-209 https://doi.org/10.15446/profile.v22n2.80528 clil and comprehensive sexual education: a case of innovation from argentina aicle y educación sexual integral: un caso de innovación desde argentina darío luis banegas1 university of strathclyde, glasgow, united kingdom & ministerio de educación del chubut, rawson, argentina cristina lauze escuela no. 713, esquel, argentina social issues are believed to enrich english language teaching with meaningful topics. in this article we describe and reflect on an innovative practice which combined content and language integrated learning with comprehensive sexual education at a state secondary school in argentina. by law, comprehensive sexual education must be included across the argentinian curriculum and english language learning cannot be the exception. therefore, we designed and implemented a collaborative-driven innovation that allowed learners to learn english and comprehensive sexual education with a focus on authentic materials, purposes, and tasks. the innovation was developed over a month and it involved learners delivering presentations on comprehensive sexual education topics. reflections on the effect of the innovation and possible future directions are included. keywords: argentina, authenticity, awareness, comprehensive sexual education, content and language integrated learning, english language teaching se cree que el análisis de cuestiones sociales aporta temas significativos a la enseñanza del inglés. en este artículo describimos una práctica innovadora que combinó el aprendizaje integrado de contenido y lengua extranjera con la educación sexual integral, en una escuela secundaria estatal en argentina. por ley, la educación sexual integral debe incorporarse a todo el currículo escolar, y el aprendizaje del inglés no queda exento. por consiguiente, diseñamos e implementamos una innovación colaborativa para permitir que los estudiantes aprendieran inglés y educación sexual integral, a partir de materiales auténticos, objetivos y tareas. la innovación duró un mes e incluyó presentaciones grupales de los estudiantes sobre temas de la educación sexual integral. el artículo incluye reflexiones sobre los efectos de la innovación y los posibles caminos a futuro. palabras clave: aprendizaje integrado de contenido y lengua extranjera, argentina, autenticidad, concientización, educación sexual integral, enseñanza del inglés darío luis banegas  https://orcid.org/0000-0003-0225-0866 ∙ email: dario.banegas@strath.ac.uk cristina lauze· ∙ email: cristinalauze@gmail.com how to cite this article (apa, 7th ed.): banegas, d. l., & lauze, c. (2020). clil and comprehensive sexual education: a case of innovation from argentina. profile: issues in teachers’ professional development, 22(2), 199–209. https://doi.org/10.15446/profile.v22n2.80528 this article was received on june 19, 2019 and accepted on march 30, 2020. this is an open access article distributed under the terms of the creative commons license attribution-noncommercial-noderivatives 4.0 international license. consultation is possible at https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/ https://orcid.org/0000-0003-0225-0866 https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/ universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras200 banegas & lauze introduction in formal education, english language teaching (elt) is imbricated in a complex network of curriculum imperatives which include the need to educate learners for diversity, inclusion, and above all, social justice. thus, the english lesson cannot turn a blind eye to key concepts which are expected to be addressed across the entire school curriculum. since 2006, comprehensive sexual education (cse) is mandatory across the curriculum in argentinian education. law 26.150 (2006) establishes that learners have the right to receive cse from a gender perspective in order to promote diversity and equality. a gender perspective hinges on the position that sexuality is one dimension of human life and examines the impact that gender has on people’s roles, opportunities, and access to economic and cultural capital (gognar et al., 2013; morgade & alonso, 2008). from this perspective, cse includes topics such as identity, gender relations, gender violence, sexuality and health, interpersonal relationships and respect, gender and human rights, sexual harassment, and the deconstruction of sociohistorical and cultural practices. enforcement of this law entails the obligation of including cse topics across the curriculum not only as a mandatory subject but also as content present in other areas such as literature, science, history, and english as a foreign language (efl). while this law has been celebrated by some, supporting the extension of human rights and attacked by others on moral and religious grounds, it is generally agreed that in order to secure careful and sustainable cse implementation, teachers need to be properly trained to dismantle their own beliefs and develop their cse awareness together with pedagogical tools to include cse in their own subject-specific teaching practices. framed in exploratory practice (hanks, 2017), the innovation described in this article emerged from cristina’s (one of the authors of this paper) two interwoven puzzles: (a) how to include cse in the efl class, and (b) how to boost motivation and language learning among teenage learners. through personal communications, we agreed to the inclusion of cse topics in elt following a content-and-language-integrated learning (clil) approach for a period of four weeks, that is, four lessons. darío (one of the authors of this paper) was interested in implementing and examining the effects of cse in elt in state secondary education. in argentina, efl is a mandatory subject present throughout the six years of secondary education and it is, in the state sector, taught two hours a week usually framed in communicative language teaching with instantiations of a code-switching approach where l1 (spanish) is used in the lesson for specific purposes such as clarifying doubts, checking understanding, or guiding learners’ task completion. in light of the tangible need to include cse in efl, we believed that clil was a helpful approach to operationalise the inclusion of cse in efl with secondary school learners. in this article, we first offer a concise conceptualisation of clil. we then review connections between clil and cse, which support our pedagogical innovation. we describe the innovation itself including teaching materials, learners’ posters, and voices from the classroom to understand the effect of the innovation. in the final section, reflections and future directions are integrated to offer a comprehensive evaluation of this innovative practice and how it can resonate in regard to other elt contexts. theoretical framework clil is often defined as a dual-focus approach through which curriculum content is taught through an additional language so that learners gain in terms of content and language learning at the same time (ball et al., 2015; coyle et al., 2010; genesee & hamayan, 2016). given the focus on integration and the multiplicity of clil realisations in practice (díaz pérez et al., 2018), clil may usually be configured as (a) a content-driven approach or (b) a language-driven approach. the first approach entails teaching a subject through the medium 201profile: issues teach. prof. dev., vol. 22 no. 2, jul-dec, 2020. issn 1657-0790 (printed) 2256-5760 (online). bogotá, colombia. pages 199-209 clil and comprehensive sexual education: a case of innovation from argentina of an additional language, for example teaching science (e.g., garzón-díaz, 2018) or history (e.g., lara herrera, 2015) in english. the second approach is adopted in efl lessons in which english learning is contextualised in curriculum to increase authenticity of purpose and topics (pinner, 2013) and enhance language learning motivation (banegas, 2013). in the case of our innovation, we adopted a language-driven clil approach since the subject was still english and we were not fully qualified to teach cse, yet it is mandatory to include a gender perspective across the curriculum in argentinian education. clil practitioners, theory, and research support the position that clil enhances motivation (doiz et al., 2014), language learning, critical thinking skills (coyle et al., 2010), citizenship education (porto, 2018), and content learning (pérez cañado, 2018) in ways that reveal the benefits of developing comprehensive and cross-curricular aims. in view of this, language-driven clil may afford the teaching of english through cse topics and in so doing learners develop their english language proficiency to discuss matters that are relevant, critical, and present in their daily lives inside and outside the school environment. in the broad context of our experience, cse is a right, a must, a need, and a drive to promote social justice, diversity, and inclusion. according to unesco’s (2018) website, comprehensive sexual education is a curriculum-based process of teaching and learning about the cognitive, emotional, physical and social aspects of sexuality. it aims to equip children and young people with knowledge, skills, attitudes and values that will empower them to realize their health, well-being and dignity; develop respectful social and sexual relationships; consider how their choices affect their own well-being and that of others; and understand and ensure the protection of their rights throughout their lives. (“what is comprehensive sexuality education?,” para. 1) unesco (2018) suggests applying a learner-centred approach to address cse across the curriculum. therefore, language-driven clil, in accordance with current imperatives in education, places the learner at the centre of the educational experience to discuss the broad spectrum of topics found under the terms gender and sexuality. in line with the general literature on gender and sexuality, within the elt literature (e.g., nelson, 1999, 2004, 2006, 2009, 2010), sexuality and gender are understood as identitary constructs under constant change that need to be deconstructed and discussed in language education in order to respect and value diversity among learners, educators, and society as a whole. according to evripidou (2018a), gender as a social and stratifying institution regulates different aspects of human activity, and heteronormativity needs to be challenged in order to include the wide spectrum of diverse gender identities found among human beings. with interrelated foci, scholars have addressed gender as a multifaceted construct in second language learning: inclusive pedagogies (sauntson, 2018), identity (nguyen & yang, 2015; norton & pavlenko, 2004), lgbt learners’ trajectories and classroom participation (evripidou, 2018a; moore, 2016), interaction from feminist poststructuralism (pavlenko, 2004), teacher preparation (mojica & castañeda-peña, 2017), teachers’ perceptions (evripidou, 2018b), coursebooks (ariyanto, 2018; gray, 2013), teacher-developed materials (govender, 2019), and awareness raising in educational communities (pakuła et al., 2015). these studies, from a praxiological notion, are unified by the following stance: elt cannot ignore human action; it should adopt an attitude that allows learners to understand the purposes behind human behaviour and the diversity of actions found across institutions and social practices. from this stance, there is a pressing need to imbue elt pedagogical contours with gender topics to ensure diversity, equity, and social justice not only at a conceptual level, but more importantly, at an activity level. in other words, language learners should not reflect on gender diversity and other cse-related topics but should work towards enacting diversity with universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras202 banegas & lauze their daily language-mediated activities. however, the first step to achieve this aim is to raise awareness and to provide learners with content about cse. two unpublished studies make explicit connections between clil and cse. in an exploratory study carried out in hong kong higher education, ho (2017) drew on clil to design a sexuality equity curriculum for a language enrichment programme. findings show that the adult learners developed critical awareness about gender and sexuality issues and increased their motivation to read and participate in class as they emotionally engaged with literary texts and other multimodal resources which explored gender and identity in the asian context. in latin america, a qualitative study carried out with colombian teenagers (vargas reyes & porras hernández, 2015) investigated the impact of designing language-driven clil lessons on contraceptive methods given learners’ limited knowledge concerning content. while this study offers support for the inclusion of cse in efl, it addresses cse from a biological stance, which, in current conceptions of sexuality education, is limited as it does not fully embrace the totality of what sexuality entails as it is achieved through a gender perspective. these studies show that awareness raising is vital, and that learners should occupy a central position so that they can build new knowledge based on prior lived experiences. they also highlight that, as defined by unesco (2018), cse should not be limited to sexuality as a biological trait; it should sit at the intersection of gender and identity and the effects that these have on all human activities such as personal rights, relationships, and work-related aspirations and practices. in light of this framework and the argentinian context, we believe that in efl educational settings, language-driven clil may become a helpful approach to increase learners’ awareness of wider and critical social issues while developing their english language proficiency. in the innovation in practice reported in this article, we included cse as curricular content to teach english in tandem. concomitantly, the experience transformed itself into an in-service professional development opportunity for cristina for it combined language-driven clil pedagogies applied to the domain of cse. the teaching context our innovation was carried out in year 6 at a state secondary school in southern argentina. the school year started in march 2018 and finished in december 2018; nevertheless, classes were interrupted between may and july due to major teacher strikes in the province. the class consisted of 20 teenage learners, 11 females and 9 males, with an average age of 17, and spanish was their l1. although they were in the last year of secondary education, their english language proficiency ranged between a1–a2 according to cefr levels. only one learner was a b2. graduated from an argentinian university, cristina was their regular efl teacher and she expressed interest in peer teaching with darío, a teacher educator and curriculum developer in the region. the innovative practice took place during october and november 2018. the innovation as described above, the innovative practice consisted of developing and delivering cse-based efl lessons to a group of teenage learners in their last year of secondary education. the aims were: (a) to allow learners to deepen their views on cse topics; (b) to engage in authentic materials, purposes, and tasks; (c) to develop their language skills, particularly focusing on reading and listening, and to a lesser extent writing and speaking; (d) to learn cse-specific vocabulary, and (e) use grammatical structures and items learnt so far through their regular coursebook and lessons. to this effect, we decided to engage in peer teaching for four lessons. due to time constraints and workload, peer teaching entailed darío sharing 203profile: issues teach. prof. dev., vol. 22 no. 2, jul-dec, 2020. issn 1657-0790 (printed) 2256-5760 (online). bogotá, colombia. pages 199-209 clil and comprehensive sexual education: a case of innovation from argentina his plan with cristina and refining the dynamics of each lesson via whatsapp. darío collected materials for each lesson and co-delivered the four lessons having complementary roles. we agreed that we would use both english and spanish in our teaching and that learners would be allowed to operate in both languages for processing and encoding meanings. we also agreed that darío would keep a journal, and that cristina would help in recording learners’ perceptions and assessment of the innovation. in lessons 1 and 2, an informal group discussion took place to gain learners’ insights. while darío asked questions, cristina recorded learners’ contributions. we also took pictures of learners’ working and evidences of teaching and learning (e.g., notes on the whiteboard, learners’ posters). in the subsections below we describe each lesson and share the effects it had on the actors involved as the innovation unfolded. introducing the innovation in lesson 1, we introduced the aim of the lessons for a month. darío explained in english specific aspects of the projects such as collaborative work, the use of authentic materials, and the presentation of posters as the final product. it was highlighted that we would discuss five cse-related topics: (a) same-sex marriage (legal in argentina since 2010), (b) abortion, (c) lgbt rights, (d) gender equality, and (e) gender violence. in english, we elicited learners’ prior knowledge on each topic and noted their comments on the board. this moment was also used to present subject-specific terminology. once we had a map of these five topics, darío asked the class to work in groups to discuss possible reasons for addressing such topics. as one representative from each group voiced their views, cristina collected learners’ responses. below, we summarise their main perceptions: these topics are important to prevent pregnancies and sexually-transmitted diseases. (marcos) because sometimes our families don’t support us and learners need to find someone who can listen to them and that help may be found here at school. (sheila) to take care of ourselves, among ourselves, and remind ourselves that everybody deserves respect. (rocío) in this lesson, we were positively surprised as the learners asked about inclusive/nonsexist language in english and its differences and similarities with spanish (banegas & lópez, 2019; mare, 2018). we took this opportunity to revise vocabulary (e.g., policeman/ policewoman vs. police officer) and pronouns (e.g., his/her, their). we reflected on the social implications of inclusive language and the applications of the cooperative principle to achieve linguistic and social goals without forgetting aspects such as representation and empowerment through language-mediated practices. drawing on systemic functional linguistics, we all agreed that language was dynamic, that it belonged to speakers and that we could accommodate it to represent new realities; however, we also admitted that language change is a process which cannot be imposed. we then organised the class into five groups and each group selected one of the topics mentioned above. we noticed that the learners took the topics without any concerns. in fact, they expressed that it was high time these topics could also be discussed in the efl lesson: miss, this is fantastic. it’s the first time we talk about gender diversity in english. we always talk about straight couples and stereotypical families. this is real and i like it! (tamara) we explained that during the lessons concerning the five topics we would be summarising authentic materials and discussing some topics in particular. we clarified that both spanish and english could be used in the lessons but that the final poster presentation would be carried out in english. next, each group received a set of printed authentic sources according to the topic universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras204 banegas & lauze of their choice. we agreed that together with their prior knowledge, the learners should handle content from quality sources so that their views were argumentatively valid. in so doing, we sought to develop their critical thinking skills and work towards developing learners’ informed ideas. in addition, we shared with them websites and videos. for example, for the topic of gender violence, the group had texts on movements such as me too, time’s up now, and ni una menos (not one less), which described the origin and aims of each movement and outlined achievements and statistics related to gender violence. with that material, groups were asked to read for general understanding, highlight key words, and summarise main ideas through bullet points and graphic organisers. to scaffold the process, they could use english–spanish dictionaries. developing the innovation in lesson 2, we revised the main concepts we had discussed in lesson 1. we favoured listening and speaking skills as we also noted that the learners were interested in more exposure to english and more opportunities for using english to talk about cse. we then explained that first we would focus on gender violence. as a pre-watching activity, we asked them to say what types of violence we could find. we then showed a video called the mirror, a domestic short film on violence, downloadable from youtube. this video had not been shared with the learners as we wished to introduce new sources of input when discussing some of the topics. after a first watching, we asked them to determine what type of video it was (a short film promoting a helpline). on a second watching, we paused the video at specific moments to make a list of the signs of violence the woman suffers and how each situation becomes more dangerous. we introduced new vocabulary and structures and reflected on ways people could ask for help in argentina. in lesson 3, we followed a similar plan for the video-based tasks around gender violence. we started the lesson asking for learners’ views on abortion, a hot topic in argentina in 2018 as a bill to legalise abortion in the first 14 weeks of pregnancy was passed by the lower house but rejected by the senate. we then showed them a video called “understanding argentina’s abortion debate: both sides of the issue,” found on the new york times youtube channel. through a graphic organiser, we helped learners notice the balance of divergent views on the video and language items used to express support or concerns with the bill. the rest of lessons 2 and 3 were devoted to learners’ group work reading and summarising the contents of the materials provided. some groups produced summaries in spanish which they then translated back into english. we took advantage of this process to teach and revise new structures and vocabulary, and, most importantly, discuss the implications and resonances of each topic with the groups. by the end of lesson 3, some groups had already produced a summary of the material and had produced a bullet-point list which would constitute the backbone of their posters. wrapping up the innovation lesson 4 was divided into two parts. part 1 was devoted to providing feedback on groups’ summaries and bullet points. then each group started producing their posters. while they were working on them, we supported them by reading aloud their posters and summaries to help them with pronunciation and overall understanding. in part 2, each group presented their posters. while stronger learners delivered their contributions in english, less confident learners codeswitched between english and spanish. thus, one of the language areas in the spotlight was speaking together with reading as the project unfolded. finally, all the posters were taped on the corridor walls to share the experience with the rest of the school. below, we include the posters (figures 1, 2, 3, and 4) from which permission of the learners was granted. 205profile: issues teach. prof. dev., vol. 22 no. 2, jul-dec, 2020. issn 1657-0790 (printed) 2256-5760 (online). bogotá, colombia. pages 199-209 clil and comprehensive sexual education: a case of innovation from argentina figure 1. poster by students on same-sex marriage figure 2. poster by students on gender violence figure 3. poster by students on abortion figure 4. poster by students on gender equality universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras206 banegas & lauze the four posters show that in terms of content, learners developed summarising strategies to synthesise the main concepts and terms on the cse addressed. in this regard, summarising became both a powerful cognitive and linguistic tool to communicate the main features of each topic. the posters reveal that learners acquired knowledge about when abortion is legal or illegal, facts about the movement called ni una menos and the difference between gender and sex. in terms of language development, the posters attest to learners’ use of subject-specific terminology (e.g., foetus, harassment) and complex syntactical constructions featuring subordinate and relative clauses. reflections at the end of lesson 4, we switched to spanish and asked learners to reflect on the effects of this innovative experience in their regular elt lessons. learners’ voices became our data to understand the impact of our clil-cse endeavours. the class discussion in lesson 4 was audio-recorded using our mobile phones. we then transcribed their views and applied thematic analysis for initial codes and unifying categories. through thematic analysis we identified four overarching themes: (a) content and english language learning through clil, (b) opportunity for collaborative work, (c) oral skills development, and (d) authentic materials as a positive challenge. the language-driven clil approach adopted to combine cse topics with english language learning allowed learners to experience positive effects regarding content and language learning. as promoted in the clil literature (e.g., ball et al., 2015; genesee & hamayan, 2016), the learners were able to notice that clil helped them acquire new content and new language items at the same time. the learners’ voices included below are proof of this theme: in my group we learnt about ni una menos. we’ve heard and talked about it but we had never learnt anything about how it started, and the history of this movement is central because it can teach us about how to defend people’s rights and gender issues. so we learnt about the topic and specific words to talk about it. that makes learning english motivating and relevant. (nelson) i didn’t know we have in argentina so many laws to defend gender diversity and act against gender violence. that was new to me and i enjoyed learning english because it was connected to a critical aspect of society; we need the laws and we also need their enforcement. and because we did it in english, i learnt the words needed to talk about them such as law, bill, etc. (vera) the learners’ comments indicate that cse from a gender perspective (morgade & alonso, 2008) is important in secondary education and that they can benefit from it both contentand language-wise. gender is recognised as a critical dimension of social practice (evripidou, 2018a; nelson, 2010) which deserves serious attention. as previously reported (banegas, 2013; doiz et al., 2014), clil can therefore become a solid and motivating educational approach to design and achieve content and language aims which provide learners with the opportunity to exercise agency, develop critical thinking skills, and cultivate critical citizenship (coyle et al., 2010; porto, 2018). the learners’ comments show their higher-order thinking as the learning of content in the efl lesson helped them become aware of the necessity to learn about history and social justice. in relation to collaborative work, all the learners agreed that the lessons allowed them to establish new relationships with their peers as they worked with people they did not normally work with. two learners expressed: i thought we were going to kill each other! but that didn’t happen, on the contrary it was enriching to work with others. (daniela) it was good fun. by discussing abortion in my group, i got to know my mates a lot more and i understood other views on the topic. (carolina) 207profile: issues teach. prof. dev., vol. 22 no. 2, jul-dec, 2020. issn 1657-0790 (printed) 2256-5760 (online). bogotá, colombia. pages 199-209 clil and comprehensive sexual education: a case of innovation from argentina while daniela’s metaphor refers to her presumption that the topics would generate heated antagonism, carolina found the experience rewarding for getting to know her classmates through discussion of cse topics. in both cases, cse acted as a space for mutual understanding and growth. the sociocultural nature of our project seemed to have contributed to learner motivation and content learning with peers (coyle et al., 2010). most learners valued that working with videos and our favouring english over spanish to lead the lessons forced them to pay more attention and develop their listening and speaking skills. one learner expressed that despite having problems with speaking, he felt he had improved his pronunciation: i can’t speak fluently, but i think that i improved my pronunciation of key words. or i am more careful and pay attention when the teachers speak and notice how they pronounce important words. (julio) another learner said: the videos were authentic, kind of difficult because we weren’t used to real videos, but i managed to pay attention and focus on the main ideas, the most important concepts. like i learnt to focus on what was important. (camila) julio’s and camila’s words are important because they show that language-driven clil through the use of authentic materials allowed them to develop their oral skills, which are not usually foregrounded in the literature (ball et al., 2015; genesee & hamayan, 2016). concerning authentic materials, most of the learners welcomed the challenge as it provided them with instances of genuine english on topics which were worth including in elt. on the process of reading and summarising the authentic texts, one learner commented, we made an extra effort. we made an effort to read, understand, translate and summarise back in english. i think that helped us remember and understand the topics a lot more because we were more conscious of what we were doing. (camila) as discussed in pinner (2013), authenticity proved to be an essential feature of the project. in our languagedriven clil exploration, authenticity was present at the levels of content, materials, and tasks. learners engaged in tasks which resembled genuine language-mediated social practices such as summarising or giving an opinion on a given issue. conclusion framed in exploratory practice (hanks, 2017), the aim of this contribution was to describe and discuss a four-week project carried out with state secondary school learners in argentina which consisted of enthusing learners by combining cse topics with english language learning. language-driven clil, particularly featuring authentic materials, was employed to provide learners with opportunities for relevant and socially situated content and language learning. according to learners’ views, there was improvement in content learning and language development, especially in relation to vocabulary and oral (speaking and listening) skills. they also exhibited improvement in summarising strategies and higher order thinking skills. cse in the efl lesson became a space for citizenship development as gender-related topics were linked to wider issues such as social justice and human rights. albeit limited and context-specific, our experience shows that elt can extend to include critical issues which reflect the diversity and complex landscape within and outside schools. as part of a wider curriculum, elt in formal education cannot ignore gender and sexuality matters; therefore, it must create opportunities for critical engagement with such topics. to achieve this goal, elt educators and educational authorities need to work collaboratively and embrace topics which have been underrepresented in elt curriculum and materials. future teaching and research experiences should foster investigation of the effects of cse through languagedriven clil with different age groups and contexts and examine materials which reflect diversity and inclusion. universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras208 banegas & lauze references ariyanto, s. 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(2018). from cultural awareness to scientific citizenship: implementing content and language integrated learning projects to connect environmental science and english in a state school in colombia. international journal of bilingual education and bilingualism. https:// doi.org/10.1080/13670050.2018.1456512 genesee, f., & hamayan, e. (2016). clil in context: practical guidance for educators. cambridge university press. gogna, m., jones, d., & ibarlucía, i. (2013). the challenges of sexology in argentina. international journal of sexual health, 25(1), 13–26. https://doi.org/10.1080/19317611.2012.737447 govender, n. n. (2019). negotiating gender and sexual diversity in english language teaching: “critical”-oriented educational materials designed by pre-service english teachers at a south african university. in m. lópez-gopar (ed.), international perspectives on critical pedagogies in elt (pp. 125–149). palgrave. https://doi. org/10.1007/978-3-319-95621-3_7 gray, j. (2013). lgbt invisibility and heteronormativity in elt materials. in j. gray (ed.), critical perspectives on language teaching materials (pp. 40–62). palgrave. https:// doi.org/10.1057/9781137384263_3 hanks, j. (2017). exploratory practice in language teaching: puzzling about principles and practices. palgrave. https:// doi.org/10.1057/978-1-137-45344-0 ho, m.-b. (2017). engaging sexual identities in tertiary english classrooms: a content-and-language-integrated-learning (clil) approach to designing a critical sexual literacy curriculum [unpublished doctoral dissertation]. university of hong kong. lara herrera, r. (2015). mexican secondary school students’ perception of learning the history of mexico in english. profile: issues in teachers’ professional development, 17(1), 105–120. https://doi.org/10.15446/profile.v17n1.44739 ley 26.150: programa nacional de educación sexual integral [national comprehensive sexual education program], congreso de la nación argentina (2006). https://bit. ly/33vye4i mare, m. (2018). sobre el cambio lingüístico [about linguistic change]. in m. mare & m. f. casares (eds.), ¡a lingüistiquearla! (pp. 77–97). educo. mojica, c. p., & castañeda-peña, h. 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(2016). inclusion and exclusion: a case study of an english class for lgbt learners. tesol quarterly, 50(1), 86–108. https://doi.org/10.1002/tesq.208 morgade, g., & alonso, g. (2008). cuerpos y sexualidades en la escuela: de la normalidad a la disidencia [bodies and sexualities at school: from normality to dissent]. paidós. nelson, c. d. (1999). sexual identities in esl: queer theory and classroom inquiry. tesol quarterly, 33(3), 371–391. https://doi.org/10.2307/3587670 nelson, c. d. (2004). beyond straight grammar: using lesbian/ gay themes to explore cultural meanings. in b. norton & a. pavlenko (eds.), gender and english language learners (pp. 15–28). teachers of english to speakers of other languages. nelson, c. d. (2006). queer inquiry in language education. journal of language, identity, and education, 5(1), 1–9. https://doi.org/10.1207/s15327701jlie0501_1 nelson, c. d. (2009). sexual identities in english language education. routledge. https://doi.org/10.4324/9780203891544 nelson, c. d. (2010). a gay immigrant student’s perspective: unspeakable acts in the language class. tesol quarterly, 44(3), 411–464. https://www.jstor.org/stable/27896741 nguyen, h., & yang, l. (2015). a queer learner’s identity positioning in second language classroom discourse. classroom discourse, 6(3), 221–241. https://doi.org/10.1 080/19463014.2015.1093952 norton, b., & pavlenko, a. (2004). addressing gender in the esl/efl classroom. tesol quarterly, 38(3), 504–514. https://doi.org/10.2307/3588351 pakuła, ł., pawelczyk, j., & sunderland, j. (2015). gender and sexuality in english language education: focus on poland. british council. pavlenko, a. (2004). gender and sexuality in foreign and second language education: critical and feminist approaches. in b. norton & k. toohey (eds.), critical pedagogies and language learning (pp. 53–71). cambridge university press. https://doi.org/10.1017/cbo9781139524834.004 pérez cañado, m. l. (2018). the effects of clil on l1 and content learning: updated empirical evidence from monolingual contexts. learning and instruction, 57, 18–33. https://doi. org/10.1016/j.learninstruc.2017.12.002 pinner, r. s. (2013). authenticity of purpose: clil as a way to bring meaning and motivation into efl contexts. asian efl journal, 15(4), 138–159. porto, m. (2018). intercultural citizenship in foreign language education: an opportunity to broaden clil’s theoretical outlook and pedagogy. international journal of bilingual education and bilingualism. https://doi.org/10.1080/136 70050.2018.1526886 sauntson, h. (2018). language, sexuality and inclusive pedagogy. international journal of applied linguistics. https:// doi.org/10.1111/ijal.12239 unesco. (2018, february 15). why comprehensive sexuality education is important. retrieved from https://en.unesco.org/ news/why-comprehensive-sexuality-education-important vargas reyes, v. a., & porras hernández, a. a. (2015). clil to support sex education [unpublished undergraduate monograph]. universidad distrital francisco josé de caldas, bogotá, colombia. about the authors darío luis banegas is a lecturer in tesol at the university of strathclyde (uk), a teacher educator and curriculum developer for the ministerio de educación del chubut (argentina), and an associate fellow with the university of warwick (uk). he leads modules on elt approaches, linguistics, and educational research. his main interests are: clil, action research, and initial language teacher education. cristina lauze is a teacher of english in secondary schools in esquel (argentina) and a teacher educator at an initial english language teacher education programme. she is actively involved in professional development opportunities and is interested in social and psychological factors behind language learning. https://doi.org/10.1002/tesq.208 https://doi.org/10.2307/3587670 https://doi.org/10.1207/s15327701jlie0501_1 https://doi.org/10.4324/9780203891544 https://www.jstor.org/stable/27896741 https://doi.org/10.1080/19463014.2015.1093952 https://doi.org/10.1080/19463014.2015.1093952 https://doi.org/10.2307/3588351 https://doi.org/10.1017/cbo9781139524834.004 https://doi.org/10.1016/j.learninstruc.2017.12.002 https://doi.org/10.1016/j.learninstruc.2017.12.002 https://doi.org/10.1080/13670050.2018.1526886 https://doi.org/10.1080/13670050.2018.1526886 https://doi.org/10.1111/ijal.12239 https://doi.org/10.1111/ijal.12239 https://en.unesco.org/news/why-comprehensive-sexuality-education-important https://en.unesco.org/news/why-comprehensive-sexuality-education-important a collaborative autoethnography on being preservice english language teachers throughout the bachelor’s degree 169profile: issues teach. prof. dev., vol. 24 no. 2, jul-dec, 2022. issn 1657-0790 (printed) 2256-5760 (online). bogotá, colombia. pages 169-183 https://doi.org/10.15446/profile.v24n2.91113 a collaborative autoethnography on being preservice english language teachers throughout the bachelor’s degree una autoetnografía colaborativa acerca de ser profesores de inglés en formación dentro de la licenciatura de inglés cristian camilo peynado1 maría camila morales-triviño universidad distrital francisco josé de caldas, bogotá, colombia jairo enrique castañeda-trujillo universidad surcolombiana, neiva, colombia this article analyzes the experiences of two preservice english language teachers within their bachelor’s degree and their pedagogical practicum through a collaborative autoethnography. the authors discuss their empowerment as a contributing agent to the field of english language teaching and address issues such as methodologies, mentor teachers, native speakerism, colonial ideologies, and decolonization processes. findings suggest that preservice english language teachers should be allowed to reflect, analyze, and thus contribute to understanding the social dynamics of what it means to teach and be a language teacher. preservice english language teachers are not passive agents but builders of knowledge, capable of transforming their vision of education, making visible the critical aspects of education, and resisting imposed colonial pedagogical processes. keywords: collaborative autoethnography, coloniality in elt, identity, language teacher education este artículo analiza, mediante una autografía colaborativa, las experiencias de dos profesores de inglés en formación mientras adelantan estudios en una licenciatura y desarrollan su práctica pedagógica. los autores discuten su empoderamiento como un factor que contribuye a la enseñanza del inglés y abordan cuestiones como las metodologías, los profesores mentores, el hablante nativo, las ideologías coloniales y los procesos de descolonización. los comentarios finales sugieren que se debería permitir a los profesores de inglés reflexionar, analizar y contribuir a la comprensión de la dinámica social de lo que significa enseñar y ser profesor de inglés. los profesores de inglés en formación no son agentes pasivos sino constructores de conocimiento, capaces de transformar su visión de la educación, hacer visibles aspectos críticos y resistirse a los procesos pedagógicos coloniales impuestos. palabras clave: autoetnografía colaborativa, colonialidad en la enseñanza del inglés, identidad, formación de profesores de idiomas cristian camilo peynado  https://orcid.org/0000-0002-8498-3125 · email: ccpeynadom@correo.udistrital.edu.co maría camila morales-triviño  https://orcid.org/0000-0001-9040-572x · email: mcmoralest@correo.udistrital.edu.co jairo enrique castañeda-trujillo  https://orcid.org/0000-0002-3002-7947 · email: jairo.castaneda@usco.edu.co this paper is the result of the work of two preservice english language teachers and researchers and their tutor as part of the activities in the research seedbed called “enseñanza y aprendizaje en lenguas extranjeras, cultura y justicia social.” the authors belong to the research group estupoli (universidad distrital francisco josé de caldas). how to cite this article (apa, 7th ed.): peynado, c. c., morales-triviño, m. c., & castañeda-trujillo, j. e. (2022). a collaborative autoethnography on being preservice english language teachers throughout the bachelor’s degree. profile: issues in teachers’ professional development, 24(2), 169–183. https://doi.org/10.15446/profile.v24n2.91113 this article was received on october 21, 2020 and accepted on september 12, 2021. this is an open access article distributed under the terms of the creative commons license attribution-noncommercial-noderivatives 4.0 international license. consultation is possible at https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/ https://doi.org/10.15446/profile.v24n2.91113 https://orcid.org/0000-0002-8498-3125 mailto:ccpeynadom@correo.udistrital.edu.co https://orcid.org/0000-0001-9040-572x mailto:mcmoralest@correo.udistrital.edu.co https://orcid.org/0000-0002-3002-7947 mailto:jairo.castaneda@usco.edu.co https://doi.org/10.15446/profile.v24n2.91113 https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/ universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras170 peynado, morales-triviño, & castañeda-trujillo introduction becoming an english teacher in colombia involves enrolling in an academic program, learning the target language, understanding and applying teaching methodologies, and getting involved in research processes (viáfara, 2011). however, becoming an english teacher also implies a series of transformations that affect the very context where the process occurs. additionally, the positions, beliefs, and emotions of preservice english language teachers (pelt) also play an essential role. therefore, to allow the pelts’ voices regarding their training process to be fully heard, it is necessary to open spaces for reflection and establish a relationship of dialogue with the context in which they are involved. in this way, pelts may be able to build their understanding of what it has meant for them to be participants in a community of practice made up of members of the undergraduate program to which they belong (castañeda-trujillo, 2020). in this sense, it is necessary to see research as a twoway process: when the researcher investigates himself/ herself and when they establish a co-interpretation with another researcher. consequently, these research spaces for reflection, such as the one carried out here, help to unveil what is not perceptible from an external position to the undergraduate program. furthermore, these research experiences provide conditions for empowerment and critical emancipation while inquiring about oneself and others (kincheloe et al., 2018). thus, the research presented here regards researchers as participants, turning them into agents capable of building knowledge and making contributions towards constructing the pelt identity in colombia (castañeda-trujillo, 2018). we decided to do a collaborative autoethnography based on two of the authors’ experiences, who happen to be pelts in their last year of university studies, and a third author, their mentor teacher, who guided the reflection processes as well as the methodology and theory related to the study. this paper addresses teaching and learning methodologies, mentor teachers, native speakers, speakerism, colonial ideologies, and decolonization. theoretical framework english language teacher education in colombia teaching english in colombia has increasingly become a way forward during the last two decades. due to globalization, bilingual education programs require this type of education by viewing english as an economic asset and an essential requirement for modern life, for students, professionals, and the general population (valencia-giraldo, 2006). thus, colombia is actively advancing to apply an education supplemented by a foreign language (english) for future development towards a more tolerant society (de mejía, 2006). we can thus say that professional development in english implies all types of professional learning assumed by in-service english language teachers apart from formal teacher preparation (buendía & macías, 2019). this fact has become a remarkable aspect to support the demanding necessity of instructing different audiences. in colombia, university teacher education programs usually prepare english teachers and offer alternatives for their professional growth (buendía & macías, 2019). such change aligns with the ministry of education (men) bilingual education as one of its 2025 goals. these include positioning colombia as the most educated country in latin america in 2025 (men, n.d.). however, this expected education goal is disconnected from teachers’ reality in both practical and conceptual terms (buendía & macías, 2019), limiting their alternatives to receiving early and meaningful tutoring and coaching. consequently, issues with tutoring and coaching “fail to give teachers the time and support they need to learn” (sweeney, 2005, p. 4), which is considered necessary in the process of teaching practice. 171profile: issues teach. prof. dev., vol. 24 no. 2, jul-dec, 2022. issn 1657-0790 (printed) 2256-5760 (online). bogotá, colombia. pages 169-183 a collaborative autoethnography on being preservice english language teachers... preservice english language teachers in colombia research on pelts in colombia has increased recently. although most studies focus on teacher educators rather than on pelts, we can consider research involving pelts as main participants regarding different topics. we identified four main topics around pelt research in colombia: • cultural content and intercultural communicative competence in english teaching in university courses (olaya & gómez, 2013). • the development of investigative skills in colombia’s undergraduate foreign language students such as teachers’ strategies for reading purposes or even in-training teachers’ beliefs about their teaching practice (mcnulty-ferri & usma-wilches, 2005). • the relevance of the first pedagogical experience and the fundamental role mentor teachers play in shaping pelts’ future teaching practices (aguirresánchez, 2014; lucero & roncancio-castellanos, 2019). • pelts’ essential role in english teachers’ education and the practicum as a space where pelts feel empowered and resist colonial epistemologies of english language teaching (elt; castañedatrujillo, 2018). although olaya and gómez (2013), mcnulty-ferri and usma-wilches (2005), aguirre-sánchez (2014), and lucero and roncancio-castellanos (2019) focus on what is essential and relevant to learn more about pelt training process, they fall short of explaining the actions taken by pelts during their teaching practice. conversely, castañeda-trujillo (2018) analyses pelts’ pedagogical practicum and their role in real contexts, which is closely connected to our research aim. when we consider the pedagogical practicum, we visualize it as the primary encounter in which pelts lay the foundations upon which they construct themselves as english language teachers (lucero & roncancio-castellanos, 2019). during the practicum, they experience, essentially for the first time, what it is like to be immersed in a classroom; a process that is “full of feelings and emotions” (lucero & roncanciocastellanos, 2019, p. 173). the advice of mentor teachers is also fundamental at this point, as pelts can have access to an expert’s opinion, which may assist them in reformulating their own practicum. ideologies in english language teacher education teaching as a profession. many authors agree that part of the english language teacher education agenda relies upon professionalization and social control (cochran-smith & fries, 2001; popkewitz, 1985). professionalization implies preparing english as a second language and sheltered english teachers by teaching them language acquisition theory, language teaching methodologies and approaches, and a range of content/ subject matter (bartolomé, 2010). thus, social power affects how the dominant social ideologies shape the curriculum and impose power, culture, and language disposition over the teacher and the students (cochransmith & fries, 2001; giroux, 1985). therefore, a professionalized language teaching education relies on methods, theoretical principles, and classroom procedures. kumaravadivelu (2008) examines these parameters and tries to bring a critical vision of l2 learning and teaching alongside the connection with professionalized teaching education. the primary purpose is to transition from traditional and standard methods to post-methodological processes where the best method is not “out there ready and waiting to be discovered” (kumaravadivelu, 2002, p. 7) and where theory, research, and practice are fundamental to enhance the professionalized stage of language teaching education. english and englishes. according to garside (2019), over the past 200 hundred years or so, english has universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras172 peynado, morales-triviño, & castañeda-trujillo become the lingua franca (shared language) in a vast range of industries and areas, so it is now recognized as the standard language for international communication. thus, english is no longer exclusively used by native speakers: “there are currently as many people learning english as there are native speakers of this language in the world” (garside, 2019, p. 1). there is a relative value of the different varieties of english used by native and non-native speakers. those english varieties are known as “englishes” and are part of the world of englishes or the worldwide practices that acknowledge english varieties bestowed on the nations within which they are spoken (mahboob & szenes, 2010). such englishes have discrete linguistic features to contrast one variety with another and give a sense of the transformation of the english language from one place to another as part of its use as lingua franca. the problem, however, is not the varieties (englishes) of english per se, but which varieties are selected and taught, a decision that basically rests upon what different educational authorities (government, school managers, etc.) perceive as “a culturally ‘normal’ demographic” (garside, 2019), and which is often based on the idea of native-speakerism. in colombia, the handbook basic standards of competences in foreign languages: english (men, 2006) treats the english language as neutral, prescriptive, denotative, and uniform (guerrero-nieto & quintero-polo, 2009). therefore, viewing the language as standardized and with a set of rules, and also with a denotative function (specific activities that are expected to be carried out in an english class), prevents students from coming into contact with other varieties of the language, thus “fulfilling the purists’ dream of keeping the language as unaltered as possible” (guerrero-nieto & quinteropolo, 2009, p. 142). moreover, there is a preservation of the idea of using just two accepted varieties of english to be taught and learned: standard british english and midwestern american english (garside, 2019). in the end, a language becomes merely an instrumental tool that limits teachers from accessing the richness of the language itself. native-speakerism. part of our identity as teachers of english refers to the definition of oneself as a teacher on our professional development. one example is the concept of native-speakerism, which, as holliday (2005) argues, “is a pervasive ideology within elt, characterized by the belief that ‘native-speaker’ teachers represent a ‘western culture’ from which spring the ideals both of the english language and of english language teaching methodology” (p. 385). consequently, native-speakerism can be understood as an ideology that privileges western elt institutions’ voices by reinforcing stereotypes to classify people, especially language teachers, as superior or inferior depending on whether they belong to the native speaker group or not. many authors (bonfiglio, 2010; davies, 2012; faez, 2011; holliday, 2013, 2015) recognize “speakerhood” as similar to race; both concepts are not biological, but rather a socially constructed imaginary concept in elt. according to singh (1998), speakerhood is interpreted from social and discourse factors such as ethnic background, accent, name, and disposition to self-identify as a native speaker. the concept is often a very subjective and political matter. native-speakerism needs to be discussed at the level of the prejudices installed in the teacher’s practice and the dominant professional discourses to promote new relationships and understand the material consequences of this symbolic relationship. the impact of native-speakerism is evident in many aspects of professional life, from policies to language presentation. according to essentialist cultural stereotypes, holliday (2005) claims that an underlying theme is the “othering of students and colleagues outside of the english-speaking west. the influence native-speakerism exerts on the careers of ‘native’ and ‘non-native speakers’ is a complex one and very much depends on the context” (p. 25). rivers (2013) proposes that both groups can suffer 173profile: issues teach. prof. dev., vol. 24 no. 2, jul-dec, 2022. issn 1657-0790 (printed) 2256-5760 (online). bogotá, colombia. pages 169-183 a collaborative autoethnography on being preservice english language teachers... adverse effects; however, native-speakerism does not equally affect the two groups and does not always have to be negative. lowe and pinner (2016) describe two experiences related to teachers’ self-confidence and authority. the first is a lack of trust from students and colleagues due to not being a “native speaker” and not having an authentic voice in the language. the second one is not being perceived as an authoritative voice and losing recognition and value as professionals. it demonstrates some of the effects of native-speakerism in teachers’ lives, depending on the category into which they are placed, and how it disturbs their personal and professional identities and circumstances. english language teacher’s identity after conducting a literature review, we found two factors in establishing teachers’ professional identities. the first type includes individual characteristics such as their personal experiences as students and pelts. a second type is connected to external discourses associated with teaching and learning. these discourses come from the theory, education policies, different contexts, and models of practice. the first type presents many studies approaching individual identity related to professional identity. authors such as o’connor (2008), shapiro (2010), and vavrus (2009) highlight the importance of personal factors in constructing professional identity. these studies focus on the connection between personal identity, emotions, and the importance of self-image in building teachers’ professional identity. olsen (2008) considers that personal history is paramount to professional identity development, integrating teachers’ induction period experiences, particularly ideas from personal or professional understandings. olsen’s concept of identity describes it as emerging from teachers’ experiences. from this perspective, teachers are always engaged in different interactions with others while recreating themselves as professionals: the collection of influences and effects from immediate contexts, prior constructs of self, social positioning, and meaning systems (each itself a fluid influence and all together an ever-changing construct) that become intertwined inside the flow of activity as a teacher simultaneously reacts to and negotiates given contexts and human relationships at given moments. (p. 139) olsen (2008) seeks to reconceptualize teacher learning as a constant, positioned, holistic, and identityrelated process designed to integrate past and present experiences. the author also presents the negotiation between different teaching discourses that emerge from teachers’ experiences as students and educators, imaginaries of teaching, and professional practice. the second group of scholars looks at the connection between social aspects and professional identity. this group can be subdivided into those focusing on studies regarding the importance of learning contexts for professional identity development and those discussing identity concerning socio-political contexts, mainly connected with education policies and professional development. social identity theory promotes a definition of identity or self-definition based on social categories, such as nationality, race, class, and so on, that deal with power and status issues. individuals develop their identities depending on the social types they belong to. this self-definition is a dynamic process in continual change and is determined by time and context (sherman et al., 1999); furthermore, identifying with a negatively valued group will have a negative impact on teachers’ self-esteem. method this study’s objective is to express the insights of two preservice teachers about the teaching profession after they have experienced the practicum from their perspective as participants and researchers. to do so, we decided to use collaborative autoethnography universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras174 peynado, morales-triviño, & castañeda-trujillo (cae) as our research method (ngunjiri et al., 2010). cae places self-investigation at the center stage and allows us as researchers to work collectively and cooperatively to question our experiences. the cae methodology assumes that, as participants, we are active agents of change. it positions us within the other’s experiences and reveals various aspects of forming our identity as processors within the bachelor’s degree in elt (ellis & bochner, 2006; ellis et al., 2011; yazan, 2018). as researchers and participants, we shared the same context, in this case, a public university in bogotá where we are finishing our bachelor’s degree in elt. throughout the bachelor’s degree program, we have had the opportunity to take seminars related to linguistics, the teaching and learning of languages, and other seminars complementary to our training. additionally, we took four semesters of pedagogical practice, two in primary school and two in secondary school. that enabled us to carry out this research, and together with our advisor, we prepared everything to start the process of data collection and analysis using the cae methodology. for data collection, we followed the suggestions provided by chang et al. (2013) to obtain a more detailed description of our socio-cultural context and improve our stories’ credibility. first, we used personal memories and personal reflections on this study’s central theme and wrote them in a journal. second, we created spaces for discussion about our experiences. these spaces allowed us to obtain other data types that came from sharing and to delve into what was collected in the journals. subsequently, we iteratively reviewed the two instruments (the journal and the discussion transcripts) to find the similarities and differences in our experiences. with the data resulting from this iterative process and established from the theoretical framework, we triangulated and extracted common categories for us as participants and researchers. these findings are explained in the next section. findings during the data analysis, we found four main categories we considered significant as part of our pelts experience in the bachelor’s degree in elt (see figure 1). data instruments categories imaginary of teaching: being a teacher in colombia is the classroom a laboratory? evaluation in efl classes teachers’ identity (personalprofessional) journals group discussions figure 1. data instruments and categories 175profile: issues teach. prof. dev., vol. 24 no. 2, jul-dec, 2022. issn 1657-0790 (printed) 2256-5760 (online). bogotá, colombia. pages 169-183 a collaborative autoethnography on being preservice english language teachers... imaginary of teaching: being a teacher in colombia our vision of what it is like to be a teacher in colombia is reflected in how we express the feeling of becoming a teacher. although our backgrounds are different, we encountered similar social imaginaries of teaching that did or did not affect our decision to study for a bachelor’s degree. from those perspectives, we realized that we would not earn much money by applying for a bachelor’s degree, and that it was challenging to be a teacher. moreover, it was not worth studying a demanding profession to receive little money. those beliefs made us wonder if we were making the right decision by following this path. why does society always think this bachelor’s degree is less worthy than others? why do we qualify the value of something by the income we might receive? all professions are demanding; they require innumerable skills, abilities, and substantial effort. however, teaching does not receive the recognition it deserves, and it is not the teachers’ fault that the educational system underestimates those who educate society. judging by the admission processes, the value of teaching seems to be discredited and underrated, as the dean of the universidad pedagógica y tecnológica de colombia in 2018, diana elvira soto, affirms: this is a severe problem in social imaginaries. it would seem that those of us who have entered programs to study for a bachelor’s degree are mentally retarded because we are assigned the lowest score for admission. hence, premises such as “anyone can be a teacher,” “study this career and then move on to the one you like,” “even as a teacher, what matters is work.” this makes teachers’ profiles significantly varied since many enter the career without knowing the educator’s function. (¿vale la pena ser profesor en colombia?, 2018, para. 3; translated from spanish by the authors) the previous excerpt is a good example of the general perception most people in our country have towards the teaching profession. it is seen by many as an unviable career with undemanding admission criteria, which generates the feeling that “anyone can be a teacher.” moreover, the government does not invest money in teaching careers, certification, training, and staff, although they require teachers in colombia to be certified if they want to teach, which puts the economic burden on teachers themselves: tests and trainings represent a hefty load for colombian teachers, especially for those at the beginning of their career, because of their high costs. . . . a person on the colombian minimum wage would require a full month of work to pay for the ielts test and two months to pay for the course. (le gal, 2018, p. 5) in the end, this leads to inadequate teacher training, few opportunities for teachers to improve professionally, and inequitable wages. furthermore, schools are not usually willing to provide spaces for teaching practice, and they demand experience and other requirements that are not easy to attain. as a result of the reflection carried out, we converged around our experience as pelts at the beginning of our bachelor’s degree. camila was influenced by a family of teachers who already knew what being a teacher means. camila was thinking deeply about it. sometimes she heard people saying that the pay was not enough and that it was better to apply for another degree, which made her doubt her decision. in the case of cristian, even though he did not have external influences regarding teaching, he had never thought of becoming one. he enrolled in the bachelor’s program due to his interest in the english language. he always thought being a teacher was challenging and somewhat humiliating because of everything he had to go through to be respected by others. similar to what has been described in the excerpt above, he conceived of teaching as an undemanding career and, therefore, easy to study. he just wanted to have something to do, and because he liked languages, it was an opportunity to learn them. he never had in universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras176 peynado, morales-triviño, & castañeda-trujillo mind what a teacher was and what the implications of the bachelor’s degree were. is the classroom a laboratory? we will discuss this category from the two contexts where the practicum took place: primary and secondary school our practicum at primary school there are some struggles in facing the realities of the classroom where we are trying to discover the best way to teach. however, in our pedagogical practicum experience at primary school, there seemed to be a sort of testing yet expected process that is not open to other possibilities of teaching beyond the pre-established methodology based on the traditional stages of presentation, practice, and production. as long as we closely followed such a method, planned our lessons, and created teaching material accordingly, we would comply with what was expected of us. as soon as we started the practice, we were already inhibited from doing what we consider would be more suitable for our students’ learning. we had to follow the ministry’s curricular guidelines, the school syllabus, and what the mentor teacher set as the practicum objectives. planning changes were minimal, and this made us feel that we could not do the things we consider best for our teaching. we sometimes felt that our opinion, or that of our students, was unworthy. mentor teachers like the one in our primary school pedagogical practicum always highlighted the importance of innovating; however, this idea disappeared over time, and we ended up repeating the same patterns that we intended to break. all ideas to transform pedagogy were trampled because the system followed the same traditional pattern. moreover, in the school where our teaching practice took place, we faced the school’s unwillingness to invest in innovative pedagogical spaces: there were technological resources that they did not allow us to use for fear of their being damaged, topics we considered important to address (such as cultural awareness) were rejected as being unsuitable for young people, among other things that we believed placed the english class as a space for teaching grammar without context. we understand that this is not totally the teachers’ fault because there are many factors that have a bearing on the situation, such as the country’s educational system, teaching experience, sociocultural factors, and so on, which affect a school’s decisions as well as the way in which teachers do their practice. however, we believe that with the support of experienced mentor teachers, spaces of an experiential type of education can be created with certain freedoms for preservice and in-service teachers to test and try new ways of teaching and learning. if a classroom is considered a place for testing how to learn and how to teach, we could probably use that as an advantage to see what works best, what students would like, and what teachers would like. these processes should be monitored and recorded by the guidance teacher to avoid mistakes and guide the learning experience. besides, one possible way for future teachers to better know their teaching style is by letting them try what they have in mind for the process of teaching. nonetheless, as wheeler (2016) says, “innovative teaching is where good teachers are inventive and creative—where they continue to discover and devise new methods and content to ensure that students always get the best learning experiences” (para. 5). our practicum at secondary school it is not all about difficulties, however. as we have mentioned, teachers are not the ones to condemn. some are really trying to transform their way of teaching with their practices. we recall our pedagogical practicum at secondary school since day one. after a bad experience in primary with our previous mentor teacher for nearly a year, we were not expecting much from what was coming, but we knew that things might be slightly different now that we had a different mentor teacher. what we did not expect was to have the freedom to manage our 177profile: issues teach. prof. dev., vol. 24 no. 2, jul-dec, 2022. issn 1657-0790 (printed) 2256-5760 (online). bogotá, colombia. pages 169-183 a collaborative autoethnography on being preservice english language teachers... classes (following the men’s curricular guidelines). we were amazed to hear from the teacher that we were in full charge of our class. we selected the most suitable methodologies, approaches, and topics considering our students’ needs, the context, and the theoretical and academic resources suggested by our mentor teacher. for example, cristian can remember that one of his lesson plans was about sexual and reproductive rights. at first, he thought it would be difficult to put it into practice since he was dealing with tenth graders, and sometimes they take these types of issues as a joke. cristian also felt that the headteacher (the teacher usually in charge of the class) might not like what he had planned. however, the lesson was a success and the students actively participated in recognizing the rights of their sexuality as young women and men. the lesson touched on usually controversial topics such as sexually transmitted diseases and ways to prevent them, the lgbtq+ community, abortion, and colombian sexual laws. the students even found out that one of their classmates was about to become a father and, although this young student may not be prepared to do so, his peers showed him empathy and acceptance. such experiences made students participate more and argue that the school had never taught them about these topics, and in the end, they thanked cristian for that session; even the headteacher liked what he did. the example given is the most powerful free action taken by pelts that gave them the sensation of being in control of their class. when you encounter significant experiences like these in your first years of teaching, you fall in love with teaching. you cannot merely apply things in which you are interested, you can also approach students’ needs even if they did not know those were essential. besides contextualizing them regarding topics such as sexuality and sex within their immediate local environment, we as teachers can change how education is approached. why? it seems to us that such topics are still taboo in an english class and, sometimes, the same educational institutions consider them inappropriate. however, recognizing for example that sex is normal, that there exist sexual and reproductive rights for each human being, and that students have questions to ask about that, is part of the pedagogy. in the case of camila, her secondary school pedagogical practicum followed a pedagogy based on workshops to develop particular skills. the workshops were created and directed by the students themselves and it was the children who decided which to register for depending on their interests. this time, the pedagogical proposal was based on writing and reading comprehension. here there are two crucial elements to highlight. the first was the organization of the workshops. they fostered a new pedagogical proposal based on diverse artistic and thematic elements that fit the educational context. both students and we ourselves, as participants, contributed to the development of the workshops considering our skills, interest, and ideas about teaching and learning. the population consisted of children between the first and fifth grades, which allowed us to make a more varied intervention. second, as pelts, we were not seen as mere apprentices and our opinions, unlike our experience in the primary school practicum, were taken into account during planning of the workshops. with all the freedom and trust given to us, we could become aware of our abilities and mistakes. abilities considered the strengths and ways that we have had to develop the classes and been successful in doing so. mistakes focused on those actions in which we felt we had failed while implementing our material and our lesson plans. the guidance we received focused on the workshops’ pedagogical aims, but this never interfered with their application. for us, the most important parts of the pedagogical intervention were the personal reflections regarding improvement of the proposals, our performance, and the results of the teaching activities developed by us. on the other hand, the workshops transformed the students’ vision of normal assessment and they, with universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras178 peynado, morales-triviño, & castañeda-trujillo the preservice teacher, worked together to construct knowledge. the students’ relationship with us was horizontal, so that many of the contents and activities had their input and suggestions. the students could decide not only about which workshops were of interest but also how to carry them out. we decided not to assign grades in an effort to increase students’ intrinsic motivation. this enabled students to get involved and innovate in their class projects, making them produce new understanding or knowledge to work on their tasks. this teaching and pedagogical practice perspective represented enormous growth in our pelts’ identity and perspective regarding the possibilities and challenges for education and how to face and redefine them from our profession. evaluation in efl classes according to walsh (2020), evaluation can serve as a decolonization element. teachers and students follow a universal, standardized, and commodified assessment system that contributes to colonization by the european and north american cultures. the concept of global evaluation classifies knowledge and decides what is valid and what is not; this idea denies the value of many ancestral, empirical, and traditional understandings that disappear over time. this random idea that the better the score, the better the knowledge you have, is not valid in the end. students’ competencies and abilities are not and should not be based on numerical parameters that classify who is at the top and who is at the bottom. we do not stand in the way of a commodity that denigrates and leaves other skills aside (artistic, for instance). we know what it is like because we have always faced it at school, at university, and in our personal and professional lives. as far as we know and consider, we can provide other evaluation methods by using student-centered learning strategies, turning them into assessments where we not only advocate for the recognition of students’ abilities but also where intercultural spaces are projected in the proposed activities and that qualifying evaluative standardizations are ended where inequality, inferiorization, racialization, and discrimination persist (walsh, 2010). while assessing our students’ performance, we cope with their needs by gathering from different information sources that show the voices, needs, and ways of building and transmitting the knowledge that the student possesses. in the end, assessment can serve as an activity where all kinds of relationships are woven, and knowledge is built. thus, it could help us see students’ results in terms of their pedagogical experience and what we need to do to reinforce it. for instance, using tasks to assess, or playing roles, or even crafting, can denote a process of learning and assessing it, not just assigning a score to comply with the requirements, but to really assess the students’ performance of tasks. teachers’ identity (personal–professional) we could say that positive experiences are those that strengthen our continuous construction of professional identity. however, not everything we consider positive is what makes us better regarding that identity. ibarra and schein (as cited in slay & smith, 2011), define professional identity “as one’s professional self-concept based on attributes, beliefs, values, motives and experiences” (pp. 87). these features are linked to everything that surrounds the individual and his or her relationship with the means of action in which he or she operates, which makes them feel, experience, think, and live in different ways. thanks to this, it is possible to learn and relearn how to teach and discern about teaching, strengthening one’s capacities and skills, and the professional aspects that transform the individual’s conceptions of the world while he or she gathers new experiences, knowledge, failures, disappointments, joys, and much more. in our case, that chance of changing our conceptions of the world is possible when we belong—or feel we belong—to different communities of practice, such as the schools where we carried out our pedagogical practicum, our 179profile: issues teach. prof. dev., vol. 24 no. 2, jul-dec, 2022. issn 1657-0790 (printed) 2256-5760 (online). bogotá, colombia. pages 169-183 a collaborative autoethnography on being preservice english language teachers... fellow pelts with whom we shared our pedagogical practicum experiences, the research group of which we are members at the university, and so on. thus, in these communities, knowledge is obtained, and this allows us to interpret the world and make sense of it (lave & wenger, 1991), and while we are trying to figure that out, we start shaping those features that strengthen parts of our identity. as part of our reflections, we discussed the influence of many factors of being part of such communities of practice. we understood that teaching is learned day by day, that the being is formed as the result of what is lived, that there are no perfect teachers and there are no ideal methodologies, so that a teacher capable of teaching is carved out. the teacher is not always an expert in the sense that he or she does not know everything, but the willingness to teach with passion and effort allows him or her to adapt and seek the best of the environment to transmit meaningful, didactic, functional, and above all, humanistic practices. the teaching identity also refers to how teachers subjectively live their work, keeping in mind the aspects that satisfy them and those that do not. identity does not arise automatically; it occurs through a complex, dynamic, and sustained process in time (beauchamp & thomas, 2011; beijaard et al., 2004) and is continually prolonged and varied throughout the teacher’s career. moreover, it is affected by personal and professional aspects that shape such identity or identity varieties, built up thanks to contact with the environment. this allows pelts to recognize and be recognized in a relationship of identification and differentiation concerning other pelts. as colombian pelts, we learn english from a nativist perspective, and we have assimilated these patterns through our professional and academic development. this is analyzed by gonzález (2007), who affirms that colombian teachers’ professional development “advocates the superiority of the native speaker and favors british english (a prestigious variety of the inner circle) over other varieties of language” (p. 327) since it adheres to “power and colonial discourses that perpetuate the dominant status of the culture and speakers of english” (gonzález, 2010, as cited in le gal, 2018, p. 5).the concept of “the ideal english speaker” has settled a standard that all professionals must meet; the idea of native speakers as the most qualified to teach the language favoring the status and knowledge of the native speaker over colombian teachers who cannot be categorized into what a native model features (espinosa-vargas, 2019; guerrero, 2008), which is a way of exclusion and repression for future english language teachers. the native speaker association with proper language and proficiency to teach positions non-native teachers as “inauthentic.” this positioning characterized as inauthentic has consequences for teachers’ identity; for example, teachers are judged continuously and compared unfavorably with native-like speakers, who gain more attention and relevance. as pelts, we feel insecure because of our students’ stereotype of an authentic efl teacher; we frequently must establish our credibility, especially if we do not have a native accent. the impact of such experiences on pelts’ identity is represented in the constant challenges to our credibility, making us feel nervous and insecure about our ability to succeed. this lack of confidence seems to mainly stem from our teachers, students, and even partners’ lack of acceptance, which limits our full potential. we have seen how this affects pelts who take a passive role in the learning process and limit their possibilities to teach the language. we feel that, by accepting the discourse which regards our variety of english as deficient, we are just imposing limits on our professional aspirations. the lack of recognition of teachers’ english varieties and foreign language education due to promoting a particular accent and pronunciation as a necessary qualification, excludes cultural and personal characteristics that are useful while learning the language. furthermore, we think that pelts should be universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras180 peynado, morales-triviño, & castañeda-trujillo allowed to develop language skills and not feel excluded because of their way of speaking. we should recognize that native-like english does not necessarily represent a skillful teacher, and it should not be considered a defining feature to judge their quality. conclusions although this study is the result of collaborative autoethnography research, we believe that our experiences during the practicum can serve as valuable insights for the community of pelts, especially in colombian public universities. we could understand certain issues related to pelts from our reflections about being enrolled in an undergraduate program and our pedagogical practicum experiences. for us, pelts play a fundamental role in teacher education. their lack of teaching experience can be seen as a liability, but we argue that it can also be an opportunity for fresh insights into classroom realities, which may lead to pedagogical innovations if appropriate guidance is provided. this, in turn, would reinforce the identity-building process in pelts since they have a voice in decisions concerning school practice. it is necessary to analyze the importance and meaning of being a teacher in colombia to position the profession in the place it deserves; 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(2018). toward identity-oriented teacher education: critical autoethnographic narrative. tesol journal, 10(1), e00388. https://doi.org/10.1002/tesj.388 about the authors cristian camilo peynado and maría camila morales-triviño hold a ba in education with a major in english language teaching from the universidad distrital francisco josé de caldas (colombia). they belong to the research study group “enseñanza y aprendizaje en lenguas extranjeras, cultura y justicia social” from that same university. jairo enrique castañeda-trujillo is a phd candidate in the education program at the universidad distrital francisco josé de caldas. he is an assistant professor and researcher at universidad surcolombiana (colombia). he belongs to the research groups ilesearch and estupoli. acknowledgements we would like to express our thanks to all our colleagues, teachers and preservice teachers, who have inspired us to study about ourselves as english language teachers. additionally, we would like to thank the research group estupoli, for allowing us to develop such a risky work. finally, our gratitude to the universidad distrital francisco josé de caldas and universidad surcolombiana for the experiences lived there and the space provided for sharing such experiences. https://revistas.unal.edu.co/index.php/profile/article/view/20552 https://revistas.unal.edu.co/index.php/profile/article/view/20552 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sumpmn4souc https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sumpmn4souc http://steve-wheeler.blogspot.com/2016/10/what-is-innovative-teaching.html http://steve-wheeler.blogspot.com/2016/10/what-is-innovative-teaching.html https://doi.org/10.1002/tesj.388 efl teachers’ professional identity: a narrative study with colombian graduate students 47profile: issues teach. prof. dev., vol. 24 no. 2, jul-dec, 2022. issn 1657-0790 (printed) 2256-5760 (online). bogotá, colombia. pages 47-62 https://doi.org/10.15446/profile.v24n2.91744 efl teachers’ professional identity: a narrative study with colombian graduate students identidad profesional de docentes de inglés: un estudio narrativo con estudiantes colombianos de posgrado jhon eduardo mosquera-pérez1 universidad pedagógica y tecnológica de colombia, tunja, colombia jhon jairo losada-rivas universidad surcolombiana, neiva, colombia this paper reports a qualitative narrative study that explored the trajectories of english language teachers’ identities before and after their participation in a master’s program in english language teaching at a colombian public university. after analyzing the data gathered through oral narratives and narrative interviews, results showed that teachers’ identities are part of an endless process nurtured by experiences at the academic, pedagogical, and personal levels. we found that such experiences were constantly cultivated and analyzed in the master’s seminars, which positively influenced the development of the participants’ identities by making them more reflective and critical practitioners. most teachers reported developing higher levels of social commitment, critical-reflective engagement, and research-oriented practices due to their graduate academic experience. keywords: professional development, reflective teaching, teacher education, teacher identity este artículo reporta los hallazgos de un estudio cualitativo narrativo que exploró las trayectorias de las identidades de profesores antes y después de su participación en un programa de maestría en enseñanza del inglés en una universidad pública colombiana. tras analizar los datos recolectados mediante narrativas orales y entrevistas, los resultados mostraron que la identidad profesional es un proceso interminable, continuamente nutrido por experiencias académicas, pedagógicas y personales. encontramos que dichas experiencias fueron constantemente cultivadas y analizadas en los seminarios de la maestría, lo cual influyó positivamente en el desarrollo de las identidades de los maestros al hacerlos más reflexivos y críticos. la mayoría de los docentes reportaron mayores niveles de compromiso social, envolvimiento crítico-reflexivo y prácticas orientadas hacia la investigación debido a su experiencia académica de posgrado. palabras clave: desarrollo profesional, educación docente, enseñanza reflexiva, identidad docente jhon eduardo mosquera-pérez  https://orcid.org/0000-0003-4027-3102 · email: jhon.mosquera01@uptc.edu.co jhon jairo losada-rivas  https://orcid.org/0000-0002-2204-0658 · email: jhon.losada@usco.edu.co this article is based on the master’s thesis completed by mosquera-pérez (2020). how to cite this article (apa, 7th ed.): mosquera-pérez, j. e., & losada-rivas, j. j. (2022). efl teachers’ professional identity: a narrative study with colombian graduate students. profile: issues in teachers’ professional development, 24(2), 47–62. https://doi.org/10.15446/ profile.v24n2.91744 this article was received on november 21, 2020 and accepted on september 5, 2021. this is an open access article distributed under the terms of the creative commons license attribution-noncommercial-noderivatives 4.0 international license. consultation is possible at https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/ https://doi.org/10.15446/profile.v24n2.91744 https://orcid.org/0000-0003-4027-3102 mailto:jhon.mosquera01@uptc.edu.co https://orcid.org/0000-0002-2204-0658 mailto:jhon.losada@usco.edu.co https://doi.org/10.15446/profile.v24n2.91744 https://doi.org/10.15446/profile.v24n2.91744 https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/ universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras48 mosquera-pérez & losada-rivas introduction historically speaking, language teacher identity (lti) has been associated with the overall set of practices, beliefs, and behaviors that characterize educators immersed within the language teaching field. nevertheless, the recent insertion of other theoretical perspectives into lti theory, particularly those drawing from psychology, sociolinguistics, and even philosophy, has made the theorization of lti more complex (varghese et al., 2005). for norton (2017), lti “indexes both social structure and human agency, which shift over historical time and social context” (p. 81), whereas to barkhuizen (2016) and beauchamp and thomas (2009), lti is related to the gradual and constant negotiation of language teachers’ identity markers inside and outside the classroom contexts (gee, 2000; kumaravadivelu, 2012). that is to say that the sociocultural and contextual experiences they go through in their lives as teachers help them reflect upon who they want to become (van lankveld et al., 2016). in colombia, academics such as macías-villegas et al. (2020) have held that lti is a process of construction that occurs within academic and non-academic contexts. when lti takes place within the first setting, language teacher education programs as well as continuous professional development programs gain relevance (freeman, 1989). this is reasonable bearing in mind that language teacher education programs represent the place where preservice teachers are first exposed to their teaching experiences. alternatively, lti construction can also take place within the framework of the second scenario, where social interactions and community involvement play a fundamental role. bearing that in mind, this research study seeks to contribute to the body of scholarly literature revolving around the field of lti in colombia by reporting how a master’s program with an emphasis on english language teaching (elt) influenced the identity trajectories of a group of four english language teachers. in doing so, we set the following research objectives: (a) to explore four english as a foreign language (efl) teachers’ identities trajectories before and after their participation in a master’s program in elt and (b) to describe the role of the master’s program in elt in the shaping or reshaping process regarding efl teachers’ professional identities. literature review developing a language teacher identity scholars from varied settings have long suggested that lti develops based on individuals’ constant academic experiences during their time as preservice teachers within the framework of language teacher education programs (freeman, 1989; trent, 2010). in the international scenario, crandall (2000) has manifested that lti constitutes the space where preservice teachers’ contact with learning and teaching methodologies shape not only their initial professional development dimension and their initial teaching repertoire as language instructors, but also their initial lti. this makes sense considering that teacher education programs represent the place where preservice teachers are exposed to their initial teaching experiences. in colombia, authors such as macías-villegas et al. (2020) have held that pedagogical, methodological, sociocultural, and community-based experiences contribute to the development of initial language teachers’ identities, beliefs, and teaching practices (freeman, 1989; trent, 2010). these aspects are reaffirmed by hernández-varona and gutiérrez-álvarez (2020) who found that, when engaged in communityand social-based projects, preservice language teachers were able to develop other dimensions of their teaching selves. crandall (2000) also suggests that teachers’ previous experiences become essential to understand how these might contribute to shaping their views towards learning and teaching processes and their overall identity. borg (2004) and freeman (1989) have also supported the idea that teachers’ early learning experiences do not only 49profile: issues teach. prof. dev., vol. 24 no. 2, jul-dec, 2022. issn 1657-0790 (printed) 2256-5760 (online). bogotá, colombia. pages 47-62 efl teachers’ professional identity: a narrative study with colombian graduate students allow them to envisage their practices as future novice teachers, but also to recognize the kind of individual they would like to become, suggesting that lti is not a linear process that necessarily develops based on collegeand academic-related experiences. it also emerges from non-linear experiences embedded in the social, cultural, contextual, and personal dimensions. in view of this, lti involves analyzing “how a person understands his/her relationship to the world, and how that relationship is constructed across time and space” (norton, 2013, p. 45). in the international spectrum, lti has been widely examined under several lenses. while some scholars have used bakhtinian and vygotskyan frameworks, others have followed principles of critical positioning theory and communities of practice (kayi-aydar, 2019) to understand how language educators integrate their experiences into the classroom setting. abednia (2012) established that lti develops from continuous participation in professionalization programs. he found that, after constant exposure to critical efl theories, the participants (seven iranian english teachers) were able to gradually move from their roles as “passive technicians” (kumaravadivelu, 2003) to what kumaravadivelu (2003) regards as “reflective practitioners” and “transformative intellectuals.” this occurred because of the exposure to critical theories and the opportunities the participants shared to detach from hegemonic/ neoliberal perspectives. similar findings were reported by brutt-griffler and samimy (1999), who analyzed the self-representation of a group of non-native english-speaking teachers (nnests) and established that these usually subordinated themselves to their counterpart, the native speakers. yet, through the constant integration of critical theory into the classes these teachers were enrolled in, they found that deficit discourses (hayes et al., 2017) about nativeness were dismantled and abandoned. thus, participants were able to develop a collective consciousness regarding their condition as nnests as well as their own transformed professional voices. other studies have centered on areas such as the negotiation of language teachers’ sociocultural identities and their context (ajayi, 2010; duff & uchida, 1997), the relationship between the working life and construction of professional identities of efl/esl teachers through life history narratives (johnston, 1997; simon-maeda, 2004), the intersection between race and lti (amin, 1997; golombek & jordan, 2005; motha, 2006), and the combination of lti and narrative inquiry (liu & xu, 2011; tsui, 2007). these studies have made important contributions to the lti field and have demonstrated that it is an area of interest that has been growing within the last few years. in colombia, scholars’ interest in lti has also gained increasing attention. to ratify this, we carried out a categorization exercise within the framework of five elt specialized journals and two specialized databases. we specifically searched for articles revolving around the themes of “identity,” “language teacher identity,” and “language teacher identity in colombia.” this task led us to conclude that research studies in colombia have explored lti in diverse scenarios, that is, the intersection between lti and undergraduate education (hernández-varona & gutiérrez-álvarez, 2020; macías-villegas et al., 2020); queer lti (lander, 2018; ubaque-casallas & castañeda-peña, 2021); lti negotiation within the context of deterritorialized spaces (guerrero & meadows, 2015); the identity of indigenous english language teachers (arias-cepeda, 2020); and the intersection between lti and autoethnography (castañeda-trujillo, 2020). these studies contribute to a wider understanding of how lti has been integrated into the field of language education in the colombian context. the literature review allowed us to determine that, although undergraduate education has been a recurrent scenario for exploring and understanding lti construction processes, more recently, the area of professional development as well as components inherent to it have been gaining increasing interest. therefore, this universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras50 mosquera-pérez & losada-rivas study may reduce the existing gap on teacher’s identity shaping in the context of professional development programs; and more specifically, within the framework of postgraduate education with an emphasis on elt. method in this study, firstly, we followed the principles of qualitative narrative research, which allowed us to explore, analyze, and understand experiences embedded within the socio-educational dimension (flick, 2009; saldaña, 2011; stake, 2010). secondly, we applied principles of narrative inquiry because eliciting individuals’ stories constitutes an excellent source of knowing and making meaning of their experiences (dwyer & emerald, 2017), and provides the chance to understand them from within (bell, 2014; kramp, 2004). in this regard, authors such as barkhuizen (2016) and merriam (2009) contend that narratives constitute an essential element for understanding identity. participants and context of the study we chose the participants of our study using a judgment sampling technique. the judgement or purposeful sampling technique consists of selecting the “most productive sample to answer the guiding research question” (marshall, 1996, p. 523), which implied recruiting participants (in this case, english language teachers) who had attended and successfully graduated from a master’s program in elt from a local university in southern colombia. bearing these considerations in mind, we initially invited, via email, 30 english teachers to participate: four of them accepted. to protect their real identities, we assigned some pseudonyms. “julio” was the name given to the only man of the group, while “daniela,” “angela,” and “fernanda” were assigned to the three female participants. below we provide a richer description of the participants’ profiles. julio is a 28-year-old teacher who currently works in a rural school in garzón, huila.1 he pursued his bachelor’s degree and master’s degree in elt in the region of huila. julio has been an english teacher for eight years and his research interests lie in rural education and material development; this, because of his proximity to this context. daniela is 29 years old and works in a public school in teruel, huila. she completed her undergraduate studies in 2013 and, by 2014, she decided to continue her studies in the master’s degree in elt. she graduated from the program in 2017. she has six years of teaching experience in the private and public sector and her interests are the development of communicative skills and didactics. angela is a 30-year-old teacher who pursued her bachelor’s and master’s degree in english education in huila. angela is a full time english teacher at a public school in garzón, huila, and her research interests revolve around professional development, teacher identity, and primary teacher practices in relation with elt. fernanda is a 28-year-old efl teacher who finished her bachelor’s degree in 2015 and her master’s degree in 2017. she has been an english teacher for eight years and her main research interests deal with the incorporation of multimodal tasks into efl processes. characteristics of the master’s program in elt this specific master’s program in elt is a postgraduate educational level offered by a public university located in huila. typical candidates who enroll in the program are english language teachers. yet, individuals whose educational backgrounds are different can be accepted if they meet a very specific requirement: having at least a demonstrable b2 level of english proficiency (according to the common european framework of 1 huila is one of the administrative divisions of colombia. it is in the southeast of the country. 51profile: issues teach. prof. dev., vol. 24 no. 2, jul-dec, 2022. issn 1657-0790 (printed) 2256-5760 (online). bogotá, colombia. pages 47-62 efl teachers’ professional identity: a narrative study with colombian graduate students reference). in general, the master’s lasts four semesters and its overall curriculum contents cover specific subjects within the fields of second language acquisition and english language teaching and research. researchers’ positionality by the time we conducted the study, we were two efl teachers with different roles: one of us was an active efl public rural school teacher and a iv semester student of the master’s program we referred to previously, while the other was an efl teacher educator with an ma in elt. since we had been involved in the same academic experience, we intended to minimize possible biases by checking for alternative viewpoints regarding the study. in doing so, we consulted a colleague who specializes in qualitative research and, based on the discussion revolving around lti and narrative inquiry we had with him, we refined some sections of the study to increase its degree of trustworthiness. even though we did not know the participants personally, our own participation as former ma students in elt seems to have been one of the vital elements for triggering their interest in enrolling in this research, as they acknowledged being concerned about their teaching selves (danielewicz, 2014) before and after such academic experiences. overall, their acceptance was beneficial because they showed a very high level of commitment and openness towards the research. we believe, though, that having a larger sample of participants in future studies would be favorable to keep shedding light on other aspects regarding lti, including lti construction either as researchers or as language teacher educators. data collection instruments and analysis two data collection instruments were used for this study: oral narratives and narrative interviews. overall, narratives elicit stories in order to explore one or several moments in the participants’ lives (barkhuizen, 2016) and can be collected in different formats (written or oral). understanding this, and given the participants’ availability, we decided firstly to gather their narratives orally. secondly, we implemented narrative interviews because of the opportunities they provide to “[reconstruct] social events from the point of view of informants” (muylaert et al., 2014, p. 185). according to kartch (2017), “in a narrative interview, the researcher is not looking for answers to questions; rather, he or she is looking for the participant’s story” (p. 1073). consequently, both oral narratives and narrative interviews were conducted interchangeably to complement the information gathered from each instrument and thus increase the grade of detail in each participant’s story. in this order of ideas, we collected oral narratives and performed interviews at three instances: first, we explored participants’ initial contact with english during their childhood, their school time as primary and secondary students, and their (if there were) english learning experiences in language institutes. second, we examined participants’ experiences as preservice english language teachers in the undergraduate program, their experiences abroad, and their first formal jobs as language teachers. finally, we delved into participants’ experiences as candidates and then as students in the master’s in elt. the data collection process took place in the last semester of 2019 and the first trimester of 2020. for data analysis we followed the principles of the paradigmatic approach. this approach recommends the proposition of categories (polkinghorne, 1995, p. 14) and encourages the identification of particular occurrences within the data to relate them with the established categories to make sense of the stories. consequently, we followed a fourstep analysis: step 1 consisted of becoming familiar with participants’ experiences; step 2 was related to the initial process of coding the narratives in the software atlas.ti; step 3 centered on expanding the initial categorization and analyzing data stemming from the oral narratives along with the narrative interviews; and step 4 focused on illustrating the research categories emerging from the overall process of data analysis (see figure 1). universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras52 mosquera-pérez & losada-rivas findings in this section, we present the results obtained from the analysis of the collected data aimed at exploring four efl teachers’ identities trajectories prior to and after their participation in a master’s program. two main categories emerged (see table 1) which were paramount in understanding that identity construction is a dynamic process continuously developing from the experiences lived by the educator (even before becoming one) and is not limited to a particular event. additionally, the categories show that postgraduate education promotes opportunities for further identity development, enabling teachers to reflect upon and think critically about their role in education. step 1 step 2 step 3 step 4 • initial reading of the narratives (no categorization or coding) • becoming familiar with participants' experiences. • initial steps of the process of coding oral narratives following principles of paradigmatic analysis • creation of a word document to have a detailed register for possible modi�cations • analysis between data generated in the oral narratives against data generated in the interviews • expansion of the initial categorization • illustration of the research categories • organization of the document figure 1. data analysis steps table 1. research categories and subcategories research question main categories subcategories how does efl teachers’ participation in a master’s program in elt shape their professional identity? efl teachers’ professional identity: influences from the past initial experiences as english language learners the teacher education program: incubator of efl teachers’ identities deployment of teaching identities: an endless path towards professionalization contributions of the master’s program in elt to efl teachers’ professional identity finding value in the other becoming empowered critical reflective educators widening the spectrum: understanding teaching from a renewed perspective 53profile: issues teach. prof. dev., vol. 24 no. 2, jul-dec, 2022. issn 1657-0790 (printed) 2256-5760 (online). bogotá, colombia. pages 47-62 efl teachers’ professional identity: a narrative study with colombian graduate students efl teacher professional identity: influences from the past lti construction is regarded by some professionals as a process that begins when individuals formally enroll in language teacher education programs and begin to receive methodological and pedagogical influences to become teachers. this first category elicits the process participants went through since the very first contact they had with elt methodologies from their positions as primary and secondary students. it also unveils their initial educator’s identity construction in their undergraduate program. initial experiences as english language learners this subcategory shows that participants’ previous learning experiences in primary and secondary education played a determining role in the reflection made around their initial practices as language teachers. positioning themselves in their former role as pupils, participants intrinsically identified common teaching characteristics and behaviors enacted by their school teachers and made connections with their subsequent decision to become teachers. i had two spectacular teachers; one [of them] was a very special person and educator. i loved her classes. the other teacher’s classes were spectacular. i think that is one of the reasons why i like english. (daniela, narrative interview 1)2 my mother is a primary school teacher. she has worked in rural zones. my cousin also studied english in the teacher education program. i have another cousin who studied child pedagogy. i was raised in an environment of teachers . . . i consider that growing in such environments makes you feel attracted to the profession. the context in which one grows is important. (julio, narrative interview 1) in the previous excerpts, the two participants reflect upon their experiences as english language learners during primary and secondary school where 2 excerpts have been translated from spanish. they acknowledge having been influenced directly or indirectly by their former efl teachers. about this aspect, borg (2004) highlights that “the apprenticeship of observation describes the phenomenon whereby student teachers arrive for their training courses having spent thousands of hours as school children observing and evaluating professionals in action” (p. 274). likewise, freeman and richards (1996) stress that novice teachers replicate classroom practices gained from apprenticeship of observation, which leads us to suggest that previous experiences with educators and the teaching context (in general) constitute a fundamental element in the construction of a prospective efl teacher’s identity. considering this, efl teacher’s identity embraces a multifaceted process which begins to be shaped from students’ passive roles as language learners and which is equally influenced later by other social, educational, and cultural settings related to formal elt processes. the teacher education program: incubator of efl teachers’ identities this subcategory exemplifies the identity consolidation of efl teachers resulting from their enrollment in a language teacher education program. codes such as “initial experiences in the undergraduate program,” “experiences with classmates and professors,” and “elt in situ” strengthen the notion of preservice education programs as seedbeds for their initial teacher professional identity construction. at the beginning, i did not see myself as a teacher. i saw myself only as someone who was learning efl. (julio, oral narrative 1) at first, i was not fully aware of my future as a teacher. (daniela, oral narrative 1) having [name-of-teacher] as my first professor in the teacher education program motivated me because i saw in her a successful woman, who was teaching english at a university. i wanted to be like her. i think that the professor’s image was beneficial to my formation and made me feel more secure about my decision about the program. (angela, narrative interview 1) universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras54 mosquera-pérez & losada-rivas although participants did not see themselves initially as teachers, most experiences they had as university students did change this perspective, and cemented their own teaching images, which means that undergraduate programs represent adequate scenarios for preservice teacher identities to emerge because of their academic, social, and pedagogical dimensions (pianta et al., 2012; vermunt, 2014). although the academic and social dimensions play a determining factor in the initial consolidation of teachers’ identity, in-situ teaching experiences and exchange encounters also triggered these formation processes, as seen in the following excerpt: we had to make class observations for the university. all of them were oriented by the teachers. there was an objective behind each observation. also, we had to reflect upon what we had seen. after this, we analyzed the methodology employed by the teacher, the thematic unit, and the objectives of the class. then, you had to create a class, i mean some short classes for a period of time before the teaching practicum. . . . now that i recall having been in [the us], having listened to varied accents, and having learned different vocabulary, i consider it fundamental for the development of language educators. i was not the same before and after that trip. (julio, narrative interview 1) as evidenced previously, julio suggests that his first approximations to language teaching allowed him to put into practice certain methodological procedures, which gave him the opportunity to reflect and work on what he had studied. following wenger’s (1999) view, identity formation “begins when it takes place in the doing” (p. 3), which indicates that in-situ experiences provide student teachers with valuable approximations to the teaching field, thus forging views on methodologies and approaches as well as the decision-making behind a class. additionally, julio suggests that his identity changed after a trip to the us. in this regard, authors such as medina et al. (2015) and martinsen (2011) have noted that multicultural and traveling abroad experiences are essential for student teachers’ preparation because these foster a more positive attitude toward language learning and teaching. deployment of teaching identities: an endless path towards professionalization we found that participants faced other circumstances after finishing the undergraduate program. being in shock with reality and implementing contextsensitive teaching practices were some of the most reported situations. the first formal job i had as an efl teacher was at a private institution. it was a very small private school located in the city of neiva. i had to teach third, fourth, and fifth graders. in fifth grade there were 15 students. in fourth grade there were nine students. student population was small. i remember that the kids learned very fast. (julio, narrative interview 2) when i began to teach, i implemented strategies such as designing posters and using stickers in order to keep classroom management. i implemented this strategy mainly with preschoolers and first graders. at the beginning, i used sad and happy faces; however, after some time, i began to use only happy faces with the students, and i noticed that this worked much better than using sad faces. (daniela, narrative interview 2) the participating teachers suggest that the experiences they underwent in their respective jobs allowed them to rely on classroom management strategies along with more situated practices. they remark that these actions were beneficial for the development of their teacher identity. concerning this, castañeda-trujillo and aguirre-hernández (2018) have suggested that the teaching practicum helps student-teachers develop a more sensitive understanding of their own classroom. regarding teacher’s reality shock, bridges (1980, as cited in caires et al., 2009, p. 17) describes entering the profession as a “normal process of disorientation and 55profile: issues teach. prof. dev., vol. 24 no. 2, jul-dec, 2022. issn 1657-0790 (printed) 2256-5760 (online). bogotá, colombia. pages 47-62 efl teachers’ professional identity: a narrative study with colombian graduate students reorientation, which marks the turning point in the direction of growth.” consequently, teachers’ adaptability and renegotiation of their teaching practices gains importance in the ongoing construction of their identity as efl educators. equally important, participants expressed becoming aware of the need for continuous professionalization and provided distinct characterizations of themselves as efl teachers before the master’s in elt. i decided to do the master’s program because one needs to continue gaining knowledge. pursuing master’s studies also contributes to one’s professional development, living status, and life quality. . . . i was less critical about education in general. i have learned that, as a teacher, you have to show students the reality, the truth. i think that english becomes a point of reference for students; if they see a critical person in front of them, they will indirectly learn to be critical and generate social awareness. (daniela, narrative interview 2) i consider i was a less confident teacher. i was also less reflexive. before, i could get frustrated much more easily as preconceptions created in my time as a university student did not allow me to see other things. (angela, narrative interview 2) we perceived that participants had several reasons for enrolling in a master’s program. professional development opportunities along with better job chances were some of the most common among them. this is evidenced in daniela’s and angela’s comments who posit that they were less critical and reflective about education in general before their postgraduate academic experience. for viáfara and largo (2018), teachers’ participation in master’s programs is beneficial because this postgraduate experience can provide them with new methodological and instructional trends. furthermore, the overall master’s degree experience appears to have helped teachers move from what kumaravadivelu (2003) called “the passive technician” period to what he also named as the “reflective” stage, since continuous exposure to updated trends in the language teaching field also allowed the participating teachers to develop more critical/reflective skills in relation to their own teaching roles. contribution of the master’s program in elt to efl teachers’ professional identities this second category deals with the contributions derived from studying a master’s program in elt in relation to the identities of participating teachers. the analysis was carried out based on the information gathered from the second and third oral narratives and interviews with the participants. finding value in the other all teachers underscored the inherent value of their interactions with other classmates (former students of the master’s program), their professors, and other professionals within the elt community of their programs. they referred to experiences lived in different contexts, through diverse strategies and teaching practices of their colleagues. part of this enabled them to shape their own identities as language educators and professionals. the following excerpts exemplify the aforementioned points: getting to know other contexts is good as, in that way, i could notice i was not alone. there are other people facing the same difficulties as me. that experiential issue was enriching as a professional. (julio, narrative interview 2) when i talked to my classmates, i could also see the reality they were living in their schools, what they did, and the kind of students they had. (daniela, narrative interview 2) based on gee’s (2000) view, teachers’ continuous sharing of contextual experiences influence others’ identities as educators in what he calls institutional identity. this was reflected in all participants’ claims as they admitted that their colleagues’ experiences had universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras56 mosquera-pérez & losada-rivas influenced them to the point that they had begun to become aware of the challenges, needs, and lessons other teachers had in their own immediate teaching contexts. likewise, the participants referred to experiences with professors and classmates from the master’s program that they found beneficial for their academic and professional growth. my thesis advisor was an excellent professional. she was always willing to collaborate with the simplest and with the most complex doubts i had about the project. i think having selected her as my thesis advisor was a factor of motivation to continue working on the project. (julio, oral narrative 2) i think that sharing with the professors was fundamental regarding our teaching identity. although the first experience with one of the professors in terms of research was kind of shocking as she was not fully aware about the context of the master’s, i think that the human quality of most of the professors was high. (fernanda, narrative interview 2) the participating teachers highlighted the human quality of their professors, often reflected through cordiality and willingness to teach, and by clarifying their doubts in and out of the classroom. although there were also a few accounts of negative situations with some of them, all experiences draw on the impact that such events generated on the participants’ motivation and learning attitudes. positive experiences with their professors made them feel more comfortable and confident to learn, to ask questions, to participate more actively in class. on the other hand, negative experiences triggered lack of motivation and uncertainty towards the process, making them more reflective of the need for good traits and the importance of an appropriate classroom environment. becoming empowered critical reflective educators teachers claimed that they became more reflective educators, eager to take action and change the realities of their own contexts. part of this eagerness was also promoted by the orientation received in their courses and the influence that these generated in their perceptions as language educators. participants’ insights suggest that witnessing their professors’ pedagogical strategies in the classrooms led them to be actively involved in pedagogical processes at their university (as students) and in their respective workplaces (as teachers). most of the courses allowed us to reflect upon our context in a more profound way. also, they enabled us to see things we did not see before. (angela, narrative interview 2) some courses were related to language learning, bilingualism, how languages interact within the social dimension, and how research contributes to the development of society. others were related to curriculum, how it works within the classroom [as well as] assessment with its components: self-assessment, peer-assessment. (julio, narrative interview 2) participants acknowledged that the influence exerted by these courses impacted their teaching practices positively and encouraged them to design and implement new ones in their local contexts. such implementations not only transcended traditional classroom procedures, but also equipped them with new views of their teaching realities. as suggested by angela, although certain things had always been present, they had not been visible to them in the past. thus, experiences of this kind made participants engage in more critically self-oriented reflections, as they could “begin to see” aspects which had never been noticed before. a robust body of academic literature supports the idea that continuous teacher’s professionalization does not only contribute to improving teaching practices, but also allows teachers to be in contact with the newest trends within the elt field (coldwell, 2017; farrell, 2013; freeman, 1989). in this case, teachers’ renewed practices are prone to combine global elements with 57profile: issues teach. prof. dev., vol. 24 no. 2, jul-dec, 2022. issn 1657-0790 (printed) 2256-5760 (online). bogotá, colombia. pages 47-62 efl teachers’ professional identity: a narrative study with colombian graduate students local needs, resulting in what kumaravadivelu (2008) called “glocalized” practices. this is especially portrayed in julio’s and angela’s data where they comment that the readings they made, along with other class related experiences, led them to analyze their own immediate contexts in light of their newly acquired knowledge. widening the spectrum: understanding teaching from a renewed perspective in addition to the aspects explained above, we found that teachers developed a renewed perspective on language teaching and research in education. they recognized themselves as agents of social change and developed other dimensions of their teaching identities. the following excerpts display “a renewed sense of teaching and the teacher persona,” which presents teachers’ insights on their participation in the master’s programs and situations which made them change their views on teaching and their own self as educators. when i finished the master’s program, i had more experience in terms of teaching, i had known more contexts, i had already overcome many of the difficulties i had at the beginning. also, my level of commitment is higher. i feel that being a teacher is not only a job, but also a responsibility. (angela, narrative interview 2) i feel as a more experienced teacher, a person with a higher level of expertise in terms of qualitative, quantitative research. now i know how to do research, how to formulate a research question, how to contribute to my educational context, and [i have] the desire to continue growing as a professional. (julio, narrative interview 3) it is worth noticing that participants do not make distinctions between the teacher and the persona they are. instead, they combine both elements, suggesting that the influence of the master’s program impacted more than one of their identities as individuals. this goes in line with davis’s (2011) assertions, who claims that the teacher persona (understood as the role that individuals assume when they actively perform their role as teachers in educational contexts) is directly influenced by other experiences at the social, cultural, and academic levels. in addition to this, part of the data gathered from participants denotes situations where they exteriorize their social commitment at their institutions as part of their now reinforced social consciousness. the teacher is also an agent of social change because you do not only teach about your subject, but you also transform your students’ lives. you educate, which makes your students change their way of thinking. teachers show other realities, things that occur in the world, things that exist, and objectives that you can achieve. (daniela, narrative interview 2) english teachers not only teach english, but we also have an advantage over other teachers: having the capacity to read research in other languages, studies conducted in other contexts, and adapt them to our context. we have a big advantage as we work in all areas of knowledge through english and we are more receptive to difference, but we have not done enough. however, i believe that all the english teachers have the capacity to transform social realities. (angela, narrative interview 2) the previous excerpts show how participants reinforce the idea of english language teachers as agents of social change who contribute to education and social improvement in general. indeed, participants have assumed a more critical-reflective position, where social related issues have gained relevance from their teaching perspective. they have moved from what kumaravadivelu (2003) called “the reflective practitioner” to what he later came to call “teachers as transformative intellectuals.” interestingly, teachers also recognized the importance of research as an essential component in education. doing research within the master’s was a very complex and nice experience. the project allowed me to become aware of the characteristics that primary school teachers have when teaching english. also, through this experience, i learned to be more organized. (angela, narrative interview 2) universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras58 mosquera-pérez & losada-rivas when i come across a problem, i immediately think of how i could address it from research. (angela, oral narrative 3) doing research for me was an enriching experience because it allows you to see things differently. gathering and analyzing the data is a very interesting process. nowadays, i keep doing research, but with a different scope. (fernanda, narrative interview 2) in support of this analysis, barkhuizen (2016) argues that teacher’s identity is a fluid and negotiated complex process which is constantly evolving based on varied experiences. thus, participation in academic contexts becomes crucial to widen teachers’ understanding of their teaching selves as these are subject to be reshaped based on their immediate academic lessons (as students and with their own students; barkhuizen, 2017; danielewicz, 2014). opportunities given by the master’s program in elt and by the participants’ own working settings set a pathway for them to explore and understand language methodologies, research interests, and educational theories. conclusions firstly, the study shows that early educational experiences allowed teachers to recognize and develop similar behaviors to those of their previous teachers. however, as they gained more experience, they were able to detach from these practices to develop their own (authentic) pedagogical philosophies. thus, providing constant exposure to teaching opportunities, methodologies, and procedures is essential for the initial teacher’s identity construction. likewise, we established that, although constant exposure to academic experiences played a fundamental role in lti’s initial construction process, sociocultural and community-based involvement permeated other dimensions of the participants’ teaching selves. in view of this, examining these elements inside and outside formal and informal contexts, and the relation these play in connection with lti construction, is an aspect that deserves more attention. another conclusion is that although the participants believed their education at the level of undergraduate level did not contribute to generate a profound understanding of english teaching among indigenous and vulnerable communities, the ma in elt provided them with new scenarios to share and reflect upon professional experiences, constituting therefore a turning conceptual shift by means of constant debates, exchange of ideas, mini-talks, paper discussions, and oral presentations. hence, continuous exposure to socio-academic experiences was one of the most remarkable aspects that exerted greater influence on their identities. finally, the study also demonstrated that the participants’ level of reflection increased based on their participation in the master’s. this was portrayed in several instances (especially in the second and third oral narratives and narrative interviews) where participants manifested having learned about new trends within the elt field, which subsequently triggered their interest in continuing learning about these elements to combine them with their own practices. implications for further research this study sets the ground for other researchers to explore changes in teachers’ perceptions concerning the adoption and implementation of bilingual policies in colombia, the construction of critical-reflexive perspectives towards language teaching, the understanding of interculturality and multimodality, and the promotion of professional development programs in other school contexts. these themes are paramount to develop a better understanding of the ongoing identity construction we all face in our teaching careers, the role played by postgraduate education in the consolidation of our teaching practices, and the pedagogical contributions that these programs provide to the teaching community in general. 59profile: issues teach. prof. dev., vol. 24 no. 2, jul-dec, 2022. issn 1657-0790 (printed) 2256-5760 (online). bogotá, colombia. pages 47-62 efl teachers’ professional identity: a narrative study with colombian graduate students in this line of thought, we would like to end by inviting other researchers to delve into the contributions in efl teachers’ professional development process resulting from their participation in doctoral programs. we think the reasons that motivate efl students to become language educators are also worth exploring. studying these realities can give us a better outlook of an individual’s identity consolidation prior to or after becoming an educator. to sum up, the implementation of this research project evidenced that teacher identity is not a fixed element, since continuous exposure to classroom experiences and social and academic interaction (cooper & olson, 1996) enrich teachers’ ongoing negotiating identities (barkhuizen, 2016). thus, much more research needs to be done at the level of this area of knowledge as there are teacher identity dimensions which remain unexplored. references abednia, a. 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(2005). theorizing language teacher identity: three perspectives and beyond. journal of language, identity & education, 4(1), 21–44. https://doi.org/10.1207/ s15327701jlie0401_2 https://doi.org/10.1016/j.tate.2010.10.013 https://doi.org/10.1016/j.tate.2010.10.013 https://doi.org/10.1016/j.tate.2020.103055 https://doi.org/10.1016/j.tate.2020.103055 https://doi.org/10.1093/fampra/13.6.522 https://doi.org/10.1093/fampra/13.6.522 https://doi.org/10.36366/frontiers.v25i1.346 https://doi.org/10.2307/40264541 https://doi.org/10.1590/s0080-623420140000800027 https://doi.org/10.1590/s0080-623420140000800027 https://doi.org/10.21832/9781783090563 https://doi.org/10.21832/9781783090563 https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4614-2018-7_17 https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4614-2018-7_17 https://doi.org/10.1080/0951839950080103 https://doi.org/10.1080/0951839950080103 https://doi.org/10.2307/3588347 https://doi.org/10.2307/3588347 https://doi.org/10.1080/02607471003651672 https://doi.org/10.1080/02607471003651672 https://doi.org/10.1002/j.1545-7249.2007.tb00098.x https://doi.org/10.1002/j.1545-7249.2007.tb00098.x https://doi.org/10.17227/folios.53-11291 https://doi.org/10.17227/folios.53-11291 https://doi.org/10.1080/07294360.2016.1208154 https://doi.org/10.1080/07294360.2016.1208154 https://doi.org/10.1207/s15327701jlie0401_2 https://doi.org/10.1207/s15327701jlie0401_2 universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras62 mosquera-pérez & losada-rivas about the authors jhon eduardo mosquera-pérez is a full-time teacher educator at universidad pedagógica y tecnológica de colombia. he holds an ma in english language teaching and is a candidate in the ma in learning and teaching processes in second languages at universidad pontificia bolivariana. jhon jairo losada-rivas holds a ba in english language teaching and an ma in english didactics from universidad surcolombiana. he is a full-time teacher at universidad surcolombiana. his research interests are language assessment, professional development, and bilingual policies in education. vermunt, j. d. (2014). teacher learning and professional development. in s. krolak-schwerdt, s. glock, & m. böhmer (eds.), teachers’ professional development: assessment, training, and learning (pp. 79–95). springer. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-6209-536-6_6 viáfara, j. j., & largo, j. d. (2018). colombian english teachers’ professional development: the case of master programs. profile: issues in teachers’ professional development, 20(1), 103–119. https://doi.org/10.15446/ profile.v20n1.63323 wenger, e. (1999). communities of practice: learning, meaning, and identity. cambridge university press. https://doi. org/10.1017/cbo9780511803932 https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-6209-536-6_6 https://doi.org/10.15446/profile.v20n1.63323 https://doi.org/10.15446/profile.v20n1.63323 https://doi.org/10.1017/cbo9780511803932 https://doi.org/10.1017/cbo9780511803932 contextualization of training input in multi-level replication and scaling-up approach in efl teacher-training 31profile: issues teach. prof. dev., vol. 24 no. 2, jul-dec, 2022. issn 1657-0790 (printed) 2256-5760 (online). bogotá, colombia. pages 31-45 https://doi.org/10.15446/profile.v24n2.92497 contextualization of training input in multi-level replication and scaling-up approach in efl teacher-training contextualización de módulos de capacitación como estrategia para la repetición multinivel y el escalamiento en la formación de docentes de inglés hazel acosta1 diego cajas universidad nacional de educación, azogues, ecuador elizabeth minchala kansas state university, manhattan, usa this study deviates from the standard view of template-based training courses that have dominated the experience of in-service english teachers in ecuador. its purpose is to underscore the contextualization of training modules as a strategic method for duplicating and scaling up multi-level teacher training to sustain their knowledge and skills. the impact is assessed through a three-level survey administered to 394 teachers from three provinces. the results suggest that the influence of class size and the adaptability and replicability of training are factors that influence the effectiveness and sustainability of an english as a foreign language program. the study highlights the crucial role of collaboration that facilitates collective efforts to contextualize training to achieve profound insight related to classroom practices. keywords: contextualization, in-service, replication, scaling-up, sustainability, teacher-training este estudio se desvía de la postura tradicional de las capacitaciones que han dominado la experiencia de los profesores de inglés en ecuador. se buscó realzar la contextualización de los módulos de capacitación como un método estratégico de reiteración y ampliación para consolidar el conocimiento y habilidades de los docentes. para evaluar el impacto del método, se realizó una encuesta a 394 profesores de tres provincias. los resultados sugieren que el tamaño de la clase y la adaptabilidad y reiteración de las capacitaciones son factores que influencian la efectividad y sostenibilidad de un programa de inglés. este estudio reafirma la importancia de la colaboración a fin de aunar los esfuerzos colectivos para lograr reflexiones profundas relacionadas con la práctica docente. palabras clave: ampliación, capacitación docente, contextualización, docentes en ejercicio, sostenibilidad, reiteración hazel acosta  https://orcid.org/0000-0002-0281-2681 · email: hazel.acosta@unae.edu.ec diego cajas  https://orcid.org/0000-0001-6792-1443 · email: diego.cajas@unae.edu.ec elizabeth minchala  https://orcid.org/0000-0001-5112-3797 · email: oeminchalab@ksu.edu this work was supported by the alumni engagement innovation fund 2017 of the united states state department under grant number s-ec750-17-in-0020. how to cite this article (apa, 7th ed.): acosta, h., cajas, d., & minchala, e. (2022). contextualization of training input in multi-level replication and scaling-up approach in efl teacher-training. profile: issues in teachers’ professional development, 24(2), 31–45. https:// doi.org/10.15446/profile.v24n2.92497 this article was received on december 23, 2020 and accepted on october 4, 2021. this is an open access article distributed under the terms of the creative commons license attribution-noncommercial-noderivatives 4.0 international license. consultation is possible at https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/ https://doi.org/10.15446/profile.v24n2.92497 https://orcid.org/0000-0002-0281-2681 mailto:hazel.acosta@unae.edu.ec https://orcid.org/0000-0001-6792-1443 mailto:diego.cajas@unae.edu.ec https://orcid.org/0000-0001-5112-3797 mailto:oeminchalab@ksu.edu https://doi.org/10.15446/profile.v24n2.92497 https://doi.org/10.15446/profile.v24n2.92497 https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/ universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras32 acosta, cajas, & minchala introduction the release of the 2016 basic education curriculum in ecuador mandates that english be offered as a mandatory subject in primary education (year 2–year 10) and in secondary school. the mandate has resulted in a shortage of approximately 2,800 english language teachers (constante, 2016), and this has compelled some school administrators to ask non-english teachers to teach english. besides human capital, familiarity with the new set of teaching materials, knowledge of the pedagogical models, and better proficiency skills are pressing challenges that have confronted english and non-english language teachers alike. the apparent lack of continued professional development in teaching english as a foreign language (efl) inadvertently rendered these teachers helpless while they were struggling to achieve teaching competence, access work mobility, and take spaces for promotion. to mitigate the shortage of teachers and respond to their concerns over content and strategies in english teaching, we submitted the project “building inclusive efl teacher training networks” to the alumni engagement innovation fund (aeif) in 2017. the aeif is a global project competition in which alumni of various united states department of state-sponsored programs participate. our project was one of the two submissions from ecuador, which was selected for funding out of 1,014 proposals from 125 countries (u.s. department of state, n.d.). our team is composed of three alumni: project leader, management point person, and the logistics head. the goal of the project was to provide efl teachers in ecuador with professional development training that would serve as a mechanism to mitigate the shortage of human capital. it also aimed to offer training that responds to the pedagogical challenges of the 2016 english curriculum (ministerio de educación del ecuador [mineduc], n.d.), as most teachers are unfamiliar with the teaching approaches and methods that the curriculum promotes. our project followed a three-phased approach that facilitates the replication of training content and capability-building of in-service teachers. its fundamental strategy was to construct 12 modules grouped into three sets of skills—productive, receptive, and pedagogical skills. each module has three general teaching strategies that are conceptualized based on the threads and themes of the mineduc’s (n.d.) english component of the curriculum. furthermore, each module has three features: differentiation of instruction, accommodation of learners’ different needs, and integration of information and communications technology (ict) to respond to learners’ academic needs from year 2 in primary school to year 3 in secondary school. the trained teachers modified the 12 modules in the replication phase, and they assumed the trainer’s role to ensure that the training responded to their needs and was appropriate to their classroom situation. when the trained teachers modified the modules (training input), and led the replication training, they contextualized their strategies. finding out how the contextualization of modules as training input influenced participating teachers’ experience and practices during the implementation of the aeif project constitutes the rationale of this study. the survey helped us generate data to establish the impact and influence of the project. specifically, this paper aims to highlight the importance of contextualizing input, such as modules, as an effective strategy in a multi-level replication and scaling-up approach in teacher training. the paper also intends to produce sets of concrete features and characteristics of training modules that can serve as essential tools for in-service teachers in transforming the pedagogical approaches espoused in the curriculum into effective techniques and practices in their efl classrooms. 33profile: issues teach. prof. dev., vol. 24 no. 2, jul-dec, 2022. issn 1657-0790 (printed) 2256-5760 (online). bogotá, colombia. pages 31-45 contextualization of training input in multi-level replication and scaling-up approach in efl teacher-training literature review status of professional development in efl in ecuador for the last three decades, the ministry of education of the ecuadorian government has promoted national strategies, created programs, and made significant investments to expand opportunities to learn english from year 2 until year 3 of senior high school. these initiatives aim to improve english language learning (ell). this has been reflected in the enactment of educational policies and the creation of english programs that have resulted in more people around the country having chances to learn english. however, despite the enhancements in ell policy and curricular reforms, studies indicate that english proficiency remains low. the educational system does not seem to produce satisfactory proficiency levels among students (ortega-auquilla & auccahuallpa-fernández, 2017). based on the 2019 english proficiency index of education first (2019), ecuador ranks 81 out of 100 countries that took part in the study and occupies the lowest in south america. its proficiency is considered very low against the index used to measure the different areas of the test. in recent years, the mineduc (n.d.) has made significant changes within its educational policies. the release of the national curriculum guidelines for english as a foreign language (ncgefl) finalized the formulated policies. the guidelines introduced a series of educational innovations, and one of them is focused on implementing professional development programs for in-service english teachers. to develop teacher competence, the mineduc and the national secretary of higher education, science, technology, and innovation launched the go teacher program as a professional development program that benefited approximately 3,000 teachers. the go teacher program aimed to enrich the competencies and skills of teachers after an academic immersion from three to nine months in some selected universities in the united states. it provided opportunities for recipients to interact with the language in an english-speaking country and gain the knowledge and skills needed to be highly effective teachers. despite the forceful enactment of the go teacher program, the impact was not widespread due to a lack of cascading mechanisms where knowledge acquired by those who went abroad was not shared with and used by the larger population of teachers who remained in schools. through the project “strengthening the teaching of english as a foreign language,” the mineduc (n.d.) has been on the frontline of recruiting qualified english teachers. the ministry has acknowledged the crucial role of constant professional training of efl teachers in the in-service (mineduc, n.d.) sector to help teachers cope with the pedagogical and content challenges in implementing the curriculum in their classrooms. several studies have revealed the lack of professional development programs for efl in-service teachers in ecuador (burgin & daniel, 2017; villafuerte-holguin & macías-mosquera, 2020); however, the few training programs implemented lack research to determine their effectiveness. according to calle et al. (2012, 2015), it is necessary to expand research studies on the impact of professional development and teacher training while taking diverse educational contexts in ecuadorian classrooms into account. some studies have reported the need for professional development courses to be embedded in policies that recognize the importance of teachers’ work and consider the educational realities they have to face daily in their contexts (calle et al., 2012, 2015). these studies affirm that training programs must effectively carry out the pedagogical approaches spelled out in the curriculum. when teachers have insufficient knowledge about pedagogical approaches that are privileged in curricula, like the communicative language teaching (clt) approach (al asmari, 2015), the teaching-learning process does not seem effective. universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras34 acosta, cajas, & minchala the mandatory offering of english to all public schools in ecuador, which espouses pedagogical approaches in implementing it, entails professional development courses that prepare teachers for the job. enriching professional training entails contextualizing resources such as modules or books that adjust teaching to the reality of the teachers and the nature of the learners. contextualization of training input teachers’ professional development has become tightly connected to school improvement efforts in many different ways worldwide. the main purpose of professional development efforts is to help teachers recognize the need to reflect on their learning, and use their insight to improve practices (avalos, 2011). english teachers need to update their teaching competence through professional training to boost students’ academic performance in learning english. professional development training is an integral component of in-service training. teachers are provided with activities and instruction in the field to update their pedagogical skills and enable them to respond to challenges in education such as curriculum change and the adoption of different teaching approaches. to ensure that in-service training responds to the needs of teachers, al-wreikat et al. (2010) underscore that “teachers who attended or are currently attending in-service training courses must be given some role in determining the training topics and activities that they actually need” (p. 24). topics must be relevant, timely, and responsive to their needs. in ecuador, language institutes, publishing houses, and teacher education institutions (teis) provide teacher training on efl. for instance, publishing houses have in-house trainers who offer training when sets of books they produce are selected as the main student textbook in a school. the drawback of this type of training is its lack of responsiveness to the context of teachers and students. schools and government institutions that request professional development courses must ensure that training considers the situation of the institution— teachers’ needs, the learning environment, and the students’ characteristics (brauckmann et al., 2020, p. 2). administrators who are sensitive to varying school contexts would most likely plan comprehensive training programs for teachers that promote collaboration and facilitate the sustainability of knowledge and skills learned from any training. pre-packaged training or “ready-made” courses generally provide professional updating to in-service teachers; however, not everything they have received from this type of input is translated into effective practices in efl classrooms. teachers may find trainers and their training exemplary and innovative; however, they do not always use what is learned when returning to their classrooms. the non-implementation of the classroom strategies can be attributed to many factors, such as teachers’ perceived inability to repeat the technique as trainers demonstrated it and their inability to implement their training in the classroom. due to their lack of understanding, their input from the training is not feasible for implementation in their school’s context. vold (2017) affirmed this when he examined teachers’ sense of preparedness for teaching a subject based on curricular intentions and demands. he found out that effective teacher education programs must consider the school’s context and meet the needs of students, schools, and society. this justifies the contextualization of the training input through the resources, activities, and materials shared with teachers or participants. the limited pedagogical knowledge of the curriculum’s prioritized teaching approaches impedes the successful implementation of curricular demands in efl classes. in most of his works, vold (2017) draws attention to the mismatch between teachers’ pedagogical content knowledge or what they are expected to know (richards, 2010) and the curricular demands may hamper the implementation of the curriculum. bunch (2013) suggests that the concept of pedagogical content knowledge is needed to develop english purposefully. however, 35profile: issues teach. prof. dev., vol. 24 no. 2, jul-dec, 2022. issn 1657-0790 (printed) 2256-5760 (online). bogotá, colombia. pages 31-45 contextualization of training input in multi-level replication and scaling-up approach in efl teacher-training this type of teaching is not widely practiced in schools. this is where the contextualization of training input in professional development programs addresses the gap between what teachers know and are prepared to teach and what the curriculum expects them to implement in their classes. vold (2017) emphasizes that most efl teachers suffer from linguistic insecurity, thus making them feel less confident. less confidence in their linguistic performance leads to textbook dependence and propensity to use traditional methods of instruction (richards, 2010) in their teaching. further, this lack of confidence in proficiency skills is more pronounced among novice teachers (fraga-cañadas, 2010) and with those who do not have a bachelor’s degree in english teaching but are teaching english due to a shortage of teachers in schools. despite exposure to professional development programs such as teacher training, some in-service teachers have not transferred what they have learned into effective teaching practices in their efl classes. the problems related to the transfer of knowledge can be attributed to several factors. among these factors is the ineffectiveness of teaching techniques shared (al-wreikat et al., 2010, p. 18); insufficient room for collaboration in methodology; and lack of relevant approaches that sustain practices. it is essential to create effective strategies in developing in-service training programs to ensure that insight into pedagogy, content, and techniques is gained. teachers who gain such understanding can transfer their knowledge to their colleagues and ultimately to their students. in creating the training input, the modules developed for the aeif project factored in the pedagogical approaches espoused in the ministry of education curriculum. the process of contextualizing training input in the aeif project capitalized on collaboration as the crucial element in knowledge transfer and promoted a scaling-up approach in teacher training. nguyen and ng (2020) point to teacher collaboration as key in introducing change in practices characterized by having shared goals, the interdependence of key actors, willingness to participate in the process, and sustained interactions in activities. in the aief project, the collaboration of in-service teachers in the three phases is viewed as one of the strategic approaches that promote teacher’s ownership of their training and ensures the sustainability of teaching strategies and methods at the classroom level. due to challenges related to pedagogy, content, and strategies, a contextualized teacher training is needed to respond to in-service teachers’ varying needs; not the standard, recipe-style, and template approach in content delivery. the gap in the in-service training courses highlights the importance of contextualized and relevant training in improving efl teachers’ performance by selecting successfully implemented strategies. in this context, the previous studies indicate the importance of evaluating efl teachers’ in-service training courses through teachers’ perceptions and their performance in efl classrooms. the incorporation of feedback of the trained participants ensures that relevant and appropriate strategies and resources are modified and adjusted to suit the context, and that the learning environment, students’ baseline knowledge, and participants’ profile are covered. incorporating feedback, likewise, facilitates replication and scaling-up of the training. context is an influential element that either facilitates or impedes the replication of training and the implementation of strategies in classrooms. gebre and polman (2020) view context as an attribute defined by different stakeholders such as teachers and curriculum developers. its nature as a defined element does not render it flexible; thus, it cannot be simply changed to fit professional development programs’ strategies. a sociocultural perspective is used to overcome the limitations posed by context. it underscores the importance of incorporating trainees’ experiences to modify and adjust the context that defines what can and cannot be done. some researchers such as gebre and polman (2020) and silseth and erstad (2018) have universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras36 acosta, cajas, & minchala adopted the sociocultural perspective. this perspective entails the contextualization of teaching to incorporate authentic practices and learning into instruction. significant input and contributions from learners and teachers are included when contextualizing teaching, and this transforms the context without deliberately changing the core elements that define it. instead, contextualization efforts enrich the training and implementation activities in classrooms. in a similar vein, contextualizing training entails the adjustment, modification, and adaptation of strategies and resources based on the feedback and comments of participants. when training is replicated in a multi-level approach for scaling up purposes, trained participants can adjust the sequence, modify the steps of a strategy, and adapt teaching resources to fit the school context. when strategies are implemented at the classroom level, classroom teachers may also contextualize the strategy to address the students’ needs and overcome limitations concerning aspects of the learning context. the survey helped us verify the effectiveness and extent of influence of the training’s contextualization, which constitutes the justification of this study. method before writing the modules, our team conducted a needs assessment. this type of assessment was carried out through document analysis, informal conversations with teachers, and classroom observations during teaching practice in selected schools. in-service teachers at cooperating schools helped determine the teaching areas they find difficult or challenging in implementing the curriculum’s pedagogical approaches: content and language integrated learning (clil) and clt. the needs assessment done in preparation for the training input factored in these two approaches to determine whether or not in-service teachers are adept at or familiar with them. based on the needs assessment results, we prepared 12 modules that served as the main strategy and content of the professional development training. to ensure that the modules respond to the needs of the in-service teachers, our project had three phases: in-house training (phase 1), replication of training in schools (phase 2), and the classroom implementation of the modules (phase 3) in the in-service teachers’ schools. the in-service teachers served two roles during the project implementation: as training participants and as a lead trainers to their colleagues. during phase 1, the project team selected 52 out of 918 english teachers from 17 districts in three provinces of zone 6 in ecuador through a qualifications-based process. through a scale-up capability-building approach in phase 2, the 52 teachers returned to their districts and formed a training team of three teachers. all training teams from different districts gave 20 more teachers in their province the same training. one team alone trained 22 participants. in phase 2, two types of teachers received the training: english language teachers and non-english teachers. non-english language teachers are those whose specialization is not english, but who are tasked to teach english due to a shortage of teachers, especially in rural schools. in-service teachers became lead teachers or teachers who spearheaded the replication training in their districts in phase 2. they adapted and adjusted the training modules to their context. they used alternative resources if they did not have the materials used during the training as long as the strategy’s essence remained. the training in districts lasted between one week and one month. after that, 342 in-service teachers were trained in the three provinces of azuay, cañar, and morona santiago. the 342 trained teachers tried the strategies they learned from the lead teachers, and out of 342, 305 teachers (89%) implemented the 12 modules in their classrooms (phase 3). at the classroom level, the trained teachers further adjusted and adapted the strategies to their context. in the first and second phases, the trained teacher modified the 12 modules to respond to their situation and context. this modification served as the indicator of whether the training project impacted the teachers’ professional development or not. our team administered 37profile: issues teach. prof. dev., vol. 24 no. 2, jul-dec, 2022. issn 1657-0790 (printed) 2256-5760 (online). bogotá, colombia. pages 31-45 contextualization of training input in multi-level replication and scaling-up approach in efl teacher-training a survey questionnaire to determine the impact of the modules after the completion of the two phases. the modules were evaluated against 10 indicators that served as the basis for their conceptualization and construction. upon completing the training project, another survey was administered that evaluated the combined overall impact of the training modules in phases 1 and 2. it measured the effectiveness of the features and characteristics of the modules. the study employed a quantitative approach using a survey as a data collection method to determine the modules’ impact after in-house training (phase 1), the training replication (phase 2) in districts, and its implementation at the classroom level (phase 3). twelve trainers developed the 12 modules that were grouped into three skills: productive, receptive, and pedagogical. there were 202 applications for the in-house training in phase 1, and 52 lead trainers were selected based on three requirements: b2 proficiency level, tenured teacher of the ministry of education, and willingness to replicate the training in their districts. the 52 teachers answered the survey twice—after phases 1 and 3—and 342 teachers answered the second survey after phase 2. each module consists of three formulated strategies based on two principal approaches: clt and clil. the mineduc mandates the use of these approaches. the structure consists of the curricular thread, the description of the strategy, step-by-step implementation in the classroom, and the differentiation techniques in each module. table 1 shows the 10 parameters that were used to evaluate the modules in all phases. the 10 parameters served as the basis for developing the 12 modules, and they were the same parameters used to evaluate the impact of the module in the three phases. the modules on productive skills focus on writing and speaking skills. speaking skills focus on building teachers’ ability to facilitate student’s oral production interactively and communicatively. writing skills develop teachers’ ability to provide constructive feedback on students’ sentence construction and literacy development. the modules on receptive skills highlight the development of listening and reading. strategies for listening promote active techniques that develop teachers’ capacity to understand conversations in different situations. reading strategies help teachers follow specific techniques and use resources that facilitate students’ understanding of texts and meaning. pedagogical skills improve teachers’ manner and mode of teaching in assessment, classroom management, and cooperative learning strategies that facilitate students’ interaction in an efl classroom. table 1. the 10 parameters used in evaluating the modules parameters descriptions practicability the techniques and steps are workable. ease of steps each step leads to another in an organized way. skills-based strategies develop the specific skills (productive, receptive, and pedagogical) targeted in each module. flexibility the strategy is applicable in different learning situations. adaptability the resources needed to carry out the strategies are easy to make in the classroom. creativity the strategies develop teacher’s creativity. engaging the strategies are attractive to and motivating to students. replicability the strategies can easily be repeated using the resources available in schools. curriculum-oriented the strategies can be adapted to the ministry of education english curriculum suitability to class size the strategies can work well with big class sizes. universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras38 acosta, cajas, & minchala descriptive statistics are used to describe the features and characteristics of the modules that teachers find effective when they replicated the training they received and when they tried the modules in efl classrooms. a scale from 1 (not at all) to 5 (to a great extent) was constructed to establish how the modules’ features and characteristics had an impact on the in-house training, replication, and classroom implementation. the scale is also used to determine the extent of the overall impact of the modules on the two phases. a three-level survey was administered after every phase of the project was finished. the 52 participants (phase 1) and the 343 participants (phase 2) answered the survey. in the overall impact survey, only 52 teachers answered the survey due to their involvement in all project implementation phases. there were two types of participants: the lead trainers (52 participants) and teachers (343 participants) trained by the lead trainers in phase 2. both types are in-service teachers from the 17 districts of the three provinces of zone 6 of ecuador. results and discussion after phase 1, the 52 lead trainers evaluated the modules used in the weeklong training against the 10 parameters. participants evaluated the modules against each parameter on a scale of 1 to 5, with five as the maximum value (see table 2). in general, the participants rated the modules at 4 to 4.6, which means that the modules are effective to a certain extent. among the 10 parameters, the suitability of the techniques to the class size in public schools was rated the lowest. this can be attributed to the participants’ perception that although the modules are effective, it may be challenging to implement them in big classes. class size in most ecuadorian classrooms typically ranges from 35 to 40. teachers may find training effective and relevant, but this does not automatically translate into changed classroom practices due to the perceived notion that the techniques learned are not suitable to the class sizes they deal with within their schools. the challenge that class size poses to the effectiveness of professional training is affirmed in the results of two more parameters: replicability in classrooms and whether teaching resources are curriculum-oriented or not. the potential of the modules to be replicated and applied in efl classrooms is viewed as only useful to a certain extent since teachers who receive training would always adapt the input they receive the way it is demonstrated during training. teachers often see training input as effective to a great extent when applied to their classroom context. they have a tendency to not modify or revise the information or input to suit their needs and class. this implies that administrators must ensure that the institution’s situation (brauckmann et al., 2020) is considered when providing training. table 2. evaluation of modules in phase 1 parameters m practicability 4.6 ease of steps 4.5 skills-based 4.5 flexibility 4.5 adaptability 4.4 creativity 4.5 engaging 4.5 replicability 4.1 curriculum-oriented 4.1 suitability to class size 4.0 note. the survey was administered to 52 lead trainers using a likert scale with values of (5) to a great extent, (4) to a certain extent, (3) to a minimal extent, (2) to a low extent, and (1) not at all. m denotes the mean of the computed values. 39profile: issues teach. prof. dev., vol. 24 no. 2, jul-dec, 2022. issn 1657-0790 (printed) 2256-5760 (online). bogotá, colombia. pages 31-45 contextualization of training input in multi-level replication and scaling-up approach in efl teacher-training in-service teachers rated other parameters—ease of steps and flexibility of the topics to learners—higher. these features are often viewed as not necessarily tied to the implemented curriculum, or features not influenced by class size. similarly, skills-based activities, creative strategies, and engaging features of the modules are rated with a mean of 4.5. these features are regarded as effective in module conceptualization for teachers’ professional training, and this emphasizes the importance of studentdriven and universal elements in activities where class size and the curriculum do not impede implementation and replication of the modules in efl classrooms. the practicability of the modules is a characteristic that teachers consider easy to replicate and implement in classes. teachers view technique-oriented teacher training programs or courses as doable in their classrooms as long as these techniques are appropriate to their context, including the class size, availability of teaching resources, and practical exercises. factoring in teachers’ ideas promotes the collaboration of stakeholders like teachers (gebre & polman, 2020) and enables a socio-cultural perspective (silseth & erstad, 2018) in contextualization efforts. the practicability (4.6) of the techniques in the training modules enriched the participants’ knowledge and skills in teaching english; however, some of these techniques do not inherently render them capable of contextualizing the training resources when confronted with class size issues and curriculum-related concerns. when teachers witness excellent professional training, they have undoubtedly learned from the demonstration. however, when they are asked to replicate with their colleagues and their students the training received, they find it difficult to tailor-make the training strategy and input to their contexts. when results from the survey are compared with the types of skills taught in the modules, the results show that productive skills are more challenging to replicate and implement in the classroom. table 3 shows the comparative results in the three skills that categorize the three sets of the 12 modules, where each set of four modules are focused on each of the three skills: receptive, productive, and pedagogical skills. in developing productive skills, the lead trainers rated the modules as “effective to some extent” (3.8) with respect to class size in schools. similarly, receptive skills modules were rated almost the same (4.0)—just slightly higher under the same parameter. both values imply that actual school class sizes should be factored in when designing and conceptualizing training modules. the values are almost the same as the replicability and applicability parameters that developed teachers’ productive and receptive skills. among the three skills, however, the lead trainers evaluated pedagogical skills higher than the other two in all three parameters. pedagogical modules are general strategies that develop teachers’ assessment, classroom management, and collaborative techniques. often, teachers view these strategies as embedded in teaching; thus, they are easier to adapt and adjust to their class size and classroom context. table 3. evaluation of the modules by skills type of skills suitability to class size replicability applicability to curriculum m m m productive skills 3.8 4.1 4.1 receptive skills 4.0 4.1 4.2 pedagogical skills 4.2 4.3 4.3 note. the survey is administered to 52 lead trainers using a likert scale with values of (5) to a great extent, (4) to a certain extent, (3) to a minimal extent, (2) to a low extent, and (1) not at all. m denotes the mean of the computed values. universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras40 acosta, cajas, & minchala in phase 2, the contextualization strategy included adjustment that considered the nature of the learning environment, class size, availability of instructional materials, and the teacher’s knowledge, skills, and abilities to implement the modules and their strategies. after the month-long training in phase 2, the 342 teachers evaluated the modules under the same parameters as in phase 1. table 4 shows the comparative results of the participants’ evaluations of the two modules in the two phases. after the revisions made in phase 1, the 342 participants who received the lead teachers’ training rated the modules higher than the values obtained in phase 1. the difference ranges from 0.1 to 0.7 except in “practicability,” where the value remains the same. the significant jump in the value is evident in the parameters “engaging” (0.3) and “curriculum-oriented” (0.7). table 4. comparison of evaluation results in two phases parameters phase 1 (lead trainers) phase 2 (public school teachers) m m practicability 4.6 4.6 ease of steps 4.5 4.6 skills-based 4.5 4.6 flexibility 4.5 4.6 adaptability 4.4 4.5 creativity 4.5 4.7 engaging 4.5 4.7 replicability 4.1 4.3 curriculumoriented 4.1 4.8 suitability to class size 4.0 4.3 note. the survey is administered to 342 public school teachers using a likert scale with values of (5) to a great extent, (4) to a certain extent, (3) to a minimal extent, (2) to a low extent, and (1) not at all. m denotes the mean of the computed values. the improvement in the mean values in phase 2 can be attributed to the contextualization of the modules during post-training time. in phase 2, the lead trainers adapted the strategies and used their techniques to teach and make the training input operational without changing the nature and essence behind the creation of the modules. the contextualization of the modules refers to the adaptation in three aspects: sequence of activities, instructional materials, and teachers’ techniques to adapt to the classroom context where the teachers teach. teachers adapted the modules based on what they considered and viewed as relevant and appropriate for their classes. they changed some sequences of some strategies due to their students’ age and proficiency level; they used other teaching resources based on cost and availability of resources in their schools. they changed some techniques in some strategies due to class size. the increase in the mean value from phase 1 to phase 2 in all parameters supports al-wreikat et al.’s (2010) idea that teachers must be given roles in leading replication training in their schools to facilitate the adaptation of training input. for example, during the in-house training, one of the modules promotes role-play using total physical response (tpr). the university trainer changed the classroom into a restaurant ambiance, where participants participated in the different activities that characterized a typical restaurant. the participants were provided with all the materials and real-life tools to practice authentic conversations using tpr. when it was the replication time in districts, teachers did not create the restaurant scenario; instead, they came up with a different set-up using recycled materials and cheaper resources. they combined some of the steps to adjust to the learners’ linguistic competence. in phases 2 and 3, the trained teachers had the “freedom” to adapt the modules based on their context as long as the crux of the strategies in the modules are not changed to a different one. this contextualization strategy was key in adapting the training modules to the curriculum’s context and classroom teachers’ resources. 41profile: issues teach. prof. dev., vol. 24 no. 2, jul-dec, 2022. issn 1657-0790 (printed) 2256-5760 (online). bogotá, colombia. pages 31-45 contextualization of training input in multi-level replication and scaling-up approach in efl teacher-training in most efl teacher training programs in ecuador, the modules used and techniques demonstrated are replicated in classrooms without modification to preserve the “standard template,” which is considered the factor that assures effectiveness in teacher training. however, teachers do not usually try or use strategies and activities they view as difficult and challenging to implement in their classrooms. an institution or organization can provide exemplar and excellent teacher training. its participants may view the input and experience provided as commendable; but there is no guarantee that what is learned is translated into practices that would significantly impact the learners as end-users. it is more challenging in the efl area due to chronic problems related to teachers’ proficiency in the english language and limitations to understanding pedagogical approaches espoused in the national curriculum. any excellent training proves to be ineffective when teachers or participants do not develop a profound understanding of rationale and logic behind the strategies. contextualization of the training is needed when participants are asked to repeat what they have learned to their colleagues and carry out a classroom implementation of the modules to ensure the sustainability of practices. in the last phase or phase 3, the replication of the modules’ strategies was implemented at the classroom level. the 52 lead trainers and the 305 (89%) of the 342 public school teachers trained in phase 2 applied the modules’ strategies to their classes. the contextualization of the classroom modules was generally the same in phase 2; however, the emphasis was on teachers’ techniques and the way they implemented the strategies they deemed effective and appropriate to their classroom and their students. after a month, the 52 lead trainers were asked to evaluate the overall impact of the modules. they were selected in the final impact evaluation due to their involvement in the year-long professional training program. moreover, they assumed two roles: participant and lead trainer, which allowed them to gain a more profound insight into how contextualized training input can benefit teachers in their practices and ensure that the knowledge, skills, and abilities are sustained at the classroom level. in evaluating the modules’ overall impact in all phases, three aspects were used as parameters: improvement of teacher’s english language teaching (elt) skills, adaptability of the modules to the curriculum of the mineduc, and usefulness of efl strategies (see figure 1). 90% 80% 70% 60% 50% 40% 30% 20% 10% 0% improvement of elt skills adaptability of the modules usefulness of strategies not al all to a low extent to a minimal extent to a certain extent to a great extent figure 1. overall impact evaluation of the modules in the three phases universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras42 acosta, cajas, & minchala based on figure 1, 84% of the teachers find the usefulness of the strategies in the modules as effective to a great extent, and only 15% view the strategies as effective to a certain extent. improvement of elt skills is another aspect that teachers consider effective (83%) to a great extent. the improvement can be attributed to the modules constructed and prepared to help teachers improve their pedagogical knowledge and abilities to develop students’ receptive and productive skills in learning efl. further, most teachers find the adaptability of the modules to the context as effective to a great extent (73%). adapting modules to teachers’ context and understanding how input from professional training should be carried out in classrooms is challenging. in phases 1 and 2, lead trainers were allowed to tweak and adjust the strategies to ensure that they were appropriate and relevant to the teaching-learning process. by contextualizing the training modules, the content is adapted to the curriculum, which results in a learning environment where the activities become more relevant, appropriate, and doable. this reinforces the importance of contextualizing training input and professional development programs by providing opportunities for teachers to “transform their knowledge into practice” (avalos, 2011, p. 10) to maximize students’ potential to learn a foreign language. despite the scale-up approach in the aeif project, where the quantity of teachers trained is important, the usefulness and purpose for which the modules were created did not get lost in the replication process. this is due to the contextualization of training input as a strategy in professional development training. conclusions the impact of professional development projects such as teacher training rests primarily on their effectiveness in classroom instruction that benefits students as end-users. furthermore, the sustained character of professional development projects is transferred not just to those who were trained but also to others who need it the most. teachers who need it the most are those who feel and are conscious that their pedagogical knowledge is insufficient. they are the ones who think they do not have a firm grasp or profound understanding of the strategies needed to bring the curriculum demands to fruition. our project implemented a three-phased replication strategy anchored on capability building and a scale-up approach in training. the 12 modules, which are the primary strategy and input of the training, facilitated teachers’ knowledge, skills, and abilities to teach efl in three key language teaching skills: productive, receptive, and pedagogical skills. the replication strategy was a mechanism for determining the value of the modules used by the lead teachers in their training. furthermore, its effectiveness was also measured when implemented at the classroom level by those who were trained during the replication phase. this strategy emphasizes the crucial place of collaboration among teachers to assume roles as trainers for their colleagues. when teachers assume the lead trainer’s role, they use their lens in adapting the modules. changes in roles pave the way for teachers to gradually become independent implementers of the strategies with less reliance on outside experts. assuming different roles in any teacher-training program encourages teachers’ mobility, as they do not remain participants but can become trainers as well. the scaling-up approach in professional training does not always refer to an increase in the number of beneficiaries. in this study, the approach considers the sustainability of innovative practice through collaboration among teachers as pivotal. contextualization of the training modules was the strategic approach to ensure what coburn (2003, p. 3) refers to as the scale of training which includes “depth, spread, shift and sustain, and sustainability” of projects. in phase 1 of the project, three features of the 12 modules were evaluated comparatively lower than the 43profile: issues teach. prof. dev., vol. 24 no. 2, jul-dec, 2022. issn 1657-0790 (printed) 2256-5760 (online). bogotá, colombia. pages 31-45 contextualization of training input in multi-level replication and scaling-up approach in efl teacher-training others, namely, replicability of the strategies, orientation to the ministry of education curriculum, and suitability to class size. while teachers generally recognize the quality of the content and the usefulness of the strategies of training modules, the factors that influence their decision to help their colleagues use the strategy is the extent of replicability, suitability, and affinity to the curriculum they are mandated to use. teachers have the penchant to copy what was demonstrated to them during training, and if they feel that such a strategy poses challenges when tried in real classrooms, they would most likely not use it. when the evaluation results from phase 1 are compared with the results in phase 2, the evaluation of the modules increases in all 10 parameters. the increase can be attributed to the contextualization of the modules where lead teachers modified and adjusted the modules to suit their training needs and their colleagues’ professional needs. the results show that when professional development projects such as teacher training incorporate the participants and empower them to own the training as their mandate, the impact is more relevant and knowledge transfer is more sustained. as part of professional development, teacher training is always conceived of as a place for teachers to update and improve their baseline knowledge, skills, and abilities; however, in most cases, what teachers often get from this training is a “template” of what and how to do the strategy or technique. they tend to view training input as a set of strategies and activities that have to be followed without considering the context that influences the effectiveness and impact of training when it lacks the adjustment, modification, or revision that the classroom teacher needs to do. another aspect reaffirmed through the aeif project and evaluated through the survey is that productive skills are generally more challenging to develop in efl teacher training than receptive and pedagogical skills. the challenge in providing training input that helps teachers build students’ productive skills in learning english is usually influenced by class size. teachers find it difficult to imagine using the strategies they have learned from the training to develop students’ writing and speaking skills when the number of students is overwhelming. when teachers view class size as a hindering factor, the replicability of the input, such as strategies learned from the training, is considered difficult to implement at the classroom level. teachers’ views about the implementation potential of strategies learned from professional development projects are always associated with the teachers’ opinion of their capability to do it in the context that inadvertently influences their teaching. there seems to be a lack of understanding of the basic tenets and the logic behind strategies learned during professional development training. it is not the repetition of the strategy that poses a problem. it is how teachers understand the logic and the essence of the strategy and apply what they have learned in their classes. the usefulness and the improvement of the elt skills are two important features of the module strategies (figure 1) responsible for the success of the training contextualization process. after introducing contextualization strategies in two phases, the lead teachers witnessed the improvement in their teaching practices in the classroom through the modules they revised, adjusted, and modified to suit students’ needs and to respond to the challenges of efl teaching. the contextualization of teaching practices and input is notably done in administration-related courses (brauckmann et al., 2020), science topics integration in schools (gebre & polman, 2020), and incorporation of cultural resources (silseth & erstad, 2018) in instruction, all aimed at providing appropriate resources and activities. in this study, the contextualization shifts to training input to help english teachers appreciate the influence of context in replicating professional development courses. references al asmari, a. a. 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https://educacion.gob.ec/curriculo-lengua-extranjera/ https://educacion.gob.ec/curriculo-lengua-extranjera/ https://doi.org/10.1080/19415257.2020.1787206 https://doi.org/10.1080/19415257.2020.1787206 https://doi.org/10.29394/scientific.issn.2542-2987.2017.2.6.3.52-73 https://doi.org/10.29394/scientific.issn.2542-2987.2017.2.6.3.52-73 https://doi.org/10.1177/0033688210372953 https://doi.org/10.1177/0033688210372953 https://doi.org/10.1016/j.lcsi.2017.12.002 https://alumni.state.gov/aeif/aeif-2017-winners https://alumni.state.gov/aeif/aeif-2017-winners https://doi.org/10.1016/j.ijer.2016.12.002 https://doi.org/10.1016/j.ijer.2016.12.002 45profile: issues teach. prof. dev., vol. 24 no. 2, jul-dec, 2022. issn 1657-0790 (printed) 2256-5760 (online). bogotá, colombia. pages 31-45 contextualization of training input in multi-level replication and scaling-up approach in efl teacher-training about the authors hazel acosta holds a phd in development studies with a specialization in educational research and development. as an educator, she is a us department of state susi fellow, an earmus visiting academic, and a national trainer in the philippines. currently, she heads research and teacher training in ecuador. diego cajas has a doctorate in applied linguistics from the university of warwick, uk. he is a fellow of the us susi program and a koica grantee. in the last decade, he has been working in preservice and graduate english teaching and research programs. elizabeth minchala is a doctorate candidate in curriculum and instruction at kansas state university, usa. she is professor of english as a second language, curriculum and instruction, and learning theories at the college level. she is currently serving as a graduate teaching assistant in the college of education at kansas state university. configuration of racial identities of learners of english 137profile: issues teach. prof. dev., vol. 23 no. 2, jul-dec, 2021. issn 1657-0790 (printed) 2256-5760 (online). bogotá, colombia. pages 137-150 https://doi.org/10.15446/profile.v23n2.90374 configuration of racial identities of learners of english configuración de identidades raciales de aprendientes de inglés sandra ximena bonilla-medina1 karen vanessa varela katherine garcía universidad distrital francisco josé de caldas, bogotá, colombia racial identity, as well as other social identities, is intrinsically related to language learning. nevertheless, this relationship has been taken for granted. despite research done in the area, not a lot has centred explicitly on finding the connections between race and language learning. this article addresses that point in an attempt to shed light specifically on english language learning and teaching. we used a qualitative research methodology to analyse oral and written narratives that were produced by participants telling their experience as english language learners. this article underscores the results that relate language learners’ racial experiences as a crucial factor in the configuration of their identity as well as the economic, social, and cultural factors involved. keywords: english language learning, english language learners, race, racial identity la identidad racial, como otras categorías sociales, está intrínsecamente relacionada con el aprendizaje de idiomas. sin embargo, esta relación se ha dado por sentado. a pesar de las investigaciones realizadas, no mucho se ha centrado explícitamente en encontrar conexiones entre la raza y el aprendizaje de idiomas. este artículo aborda ese punto en un intento por iluminar el aprendizaje y la enseñanza del idioma inglés. se utilizó una metodología de investigación cualitativa para analizar las narraciones orales y escritas, producidas por participantes aprendices de inglés, sobre su experiencia. este artículo resalta los resultados que relacionan las experiencias raciales de los estudiantes con los idiomas como un factor crucial en la configuración de su identidad, así como los factores económicos, sociales y culturales involucrados. palabras clave: aprendientes de inglés, aprendizaje del inglés, identidad racial, raza sandra ximena bonilla-medina  https://orcid.org/0000-0002-6625-501x · email: sxbonillam@udistrital.edu.co karen vanessa varela  https://orcid.org/0000-0001-5970-3278 · email: kvvarelac@correo.udistrital.edu.co katherine garcía  https://orcid.org/0000-0002-9029-9303 · email: kgarciar@correo.udistrital.edu.co how to cite this article (apa, 7th ed.): bonilla-medina, s. x., varela, k. v., & garcía, k. (2021). configuration of racial identities of learners of english. profile: issues in teachers’ professional development, 23(2), 137–150. https://doi.org/10.15446/profile.v23n2.90374 this article was received on september 6, 2020 and accepted on march 16, 2021. this is an open access article distributed under the terms of the creative commons license attribution-noncommercial-noderivatives 4.0 international license. consultation is possible at https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/ https://doi.org/10.15446/profile.v23n2.90374 https://orcid.org/0000-0002-6625-501x mailto:sxbonillam@udistrital.edu.co https://orcid.org/0000-0001-5970-3278 mailto:kvvarelac@correo.udistrital.edu.co https://orcid.org/0000-0002-9029-9303 mailto:kgarciar@correo.udistrital.edu.co https://doi.org/10.15446/profile.v23n2.90374 https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/ universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras138 bonilla-medina, varela, & garcía introduction learning a foreign language implies a commitment to the foreign culture and the language itself; however, language learners cannot separate language from identity since, as norton (2013) says, language is intrinsic in the identity of the individual. in this sense, the interaction with others allows learners to establish their self-identifications, configuring identities as a discursive process (davies & harré, 1990; de fina & georgakopoulou, 2012; harré et al., 2009), which implies taking one side or another through sharing with others. hence, the use of another language does not only involve communication with native speakers, but also the organization of meanings about who the learners are and how they are related to the social world (norton, 2013). thus, racial identity is implicit in second language learning due to the connections that coexist in language and identity (bonilla-medina, 2018). those ideas relate language learning to identity construction by means of the tensions that can arise about who the speakers of a determined language are or what it means to become its user. in the following article, we focus on the way english language learners configure their racial identity through the process of learning the language. in order to develop this study, we formulated the following research questions: how do the processes of learning english as a foreign language in the colombian context relate to the construction of the racial identity of the learners? what relationships can be established between the meanings that learners give to the learning of a particular foreign language and the construction of their racial identities? in doing so, we use a narrative approach where we collected life stories from 10 participants who were learning english in the colombian context. in these stories, they expressed their thoughts about their processes of learning and the changes that they had experience along the way, and they related racial experiences. we expanded the information through in-depth interviews where we tried to direct the conversation toward identity and english learning. in this manner, the analysis made on those instruments was useful for us to determine categories that were linked to the theory and the research question. consequently, we identified three categories: (a) the construction of the learners’ imaginary based on global whiteness, (b) temporary identities subsidised by english whiteness, and (c) learners’ racial identity constructions fighting and negotiating structural racism reinforced by english. all these categories reflected the complexities in terms of identity configuration in the process of learning and language and how race was imbricated in such a process. theoretical basis race and second language teaching background in the field of second or foreign language teaching and learning in the country, studies addressing race are rather few and they indirectly relate racial categories as fixed, and singularised in reference to majorities and minorities. usma et al. (2018) is one of the examples whose reflection develops a political agenda towards highlighting indigenous identities as a community affected by the way linguistics policies in the country are planned and mandated. with the same goal but from a different perspective, clavijo (2017) pinpoints characteristics of community pedagogies to teach english as a suitable approach to rescue the values and principles of indigenous communities. others, such as agudelo (2007), propose innovative pedagogical models to teach english incorporating intercultural perspectives that balance both foreign language curiosity with interest in local autochthonous indigenous knowledge. in this line of thought, these and other studies particularly relate to indigenous and afro-colombians as the centre of attention. race referring to racial identities that do not fit in these categories appear not to be addressed in these 139profile: issues teach. prof. dev., vol. 23 no. 2, jul-dec, 2021. issn 1657-0790 (printed) 2256-5760 (online). bogotá, colombia. pages 137-150 configuration of racial identities of learners of english studies. it appears that race categories are exclusive of indigenous or afro-colombian communities so there is an assumption that “others” are not racialised or affected by racial structures. in agreement with critical race theory (crt; delgado & stefancic, 2000) and more specifically, whiteness theory (bonnett, 2000; clarke & garner, 2009; telles & flores, 2013), one of the arguments in this study is that individuals, whatever their origin or socially constructed race category, are immersed in a race system which constitutes their identity, and this construction usually comes to provide privileges or disadvantages. from this perspective, language is taken as a relevant factor involved in racialised practices and discourses produced by racial structures which need to be explored in the context of language learning. the previous studies are instances of research that have started to emerge in the country in regard to the relations between race and foreign language learning; nevertheless, those studies also attempt to define racial identity as an unalterable category. stating the view that racial identities, as well as other type of identities, are not fixed or unchangeable (charles, 2019; carbado & gulati, 2003; yosso, 2005), one presents the cited studies which show that there is a need to explore what thesen (1997) coined as “transition identities.” that is, those identities that seem to be non-racialised as opposed to those where emphasis is given to racial categories (such an indigenous and afro-colombian communities in the colombian context). in this case, we also want to refer to language as a marker of racialised discourses that may shape language learners’ racial identity despite their origin, skin colour, or phenotype. in fact, those racialised discourses and practices may grant privileges as well as mask disadvantages to language learners who are part of a race-structured world. those practices are referred to here as constitutions of racialised experiences which are generated by the general race system (centred in whiteness). in this vein, analysing the way in which language learning has impacted learners’ identity would be a path that is a contribution to the studies initiated in this area. checking the arena of racial identity and the learning of a second language, conclusions lead one to say that these types of studies have been more popular in the usa (norton, 1997; thesen, 1997), england (leung et al., 1997) and australia and their major interests have revolved around the role of language itself rather than its effects on racial identity. in this study, the main purpose is precisely to examine that latter area. premises to conceptualising race in the analysis of language learning there are important theoretical underpinnings that were part of the approach given to this study. first of all, race is a social construction (alexander & knowles, 2005; du bois, 2001; runge-peña & muñozgaviria, 2005), therefore, this underlines the idea that race is created and reinforced in social practice. in other words, race is not real, however, it is perceived as such (chadderton, 2009). in this manner, thoughts surrounding the idea of race are also created, produced, and reproduced in social practice (banton, 2002; bernasconi, 2001; lott, 2001). underscoring this thinking is significant because it explains how social tags, such as the ones created in racial categories, are powerful as to maintain discriminatory conditions towards individuals or groups while social practices sustain those conditions (banton, 2002). in this respect, race is problematised in order to understand it in practices to see how it may contribute to unequal relationships. critical race theory: whiteness as a lens to foreign language learning and identity we used crt to have a theoretical framework backed on a critical, historical, and structural viewpoint to analyse race in the learning of a language. it was used with the purpose of understanding how race tags play a role in the realisation of most social practices. universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras140 bonilla-medina, varela, & garcía furthermore, crt helped us to challenge circumstances in which racial categories interacting with language learning are used to marginalise individuals or social groups (carbado & gulati, 2003; ladson-billings & tate, 2006; solorzano & yosso, 2001). according to crt theorists, uncovering discrimination in a system that has taken practices for granted has been their major goal (decuir & dixon, 2004; gillborn, 2006, 2010; leonardo, 2002). that is to say, crt is committed to combating subtler forms of racism, especially those practices that have become accepted, unquestioned, and normalised. although crt is soundly important in identifying features that have allowed the reproduction of unperceived discriminatory practices, it is necessary to say that determining differences based on skin colour in colombia would be rather difficult (koopman, 2012). therefore, this research used “whiteness” as a theory which attempts to envisage practices that go beyond skin colour (bonnett, 2000; clarke & gardner, 2009; king, 1991). in this regard, whiteness is not a way to label subjects with certain skin colour, but it is a cognitive dimension that is displayed in discourses that have been embedded in social practices and that situate some in a racial, social, economic, political, and cultural hierarchical position. whiteness, as a theory, resonates with this study because it looks to explain racial structures that shape the identities of individuals apart from their conventionally assigned race tags. it is a theory that coincides with the analytical marker of “whiteness device” (dispositivo de blancura) as explained by castro-gómez (2000) and mignolo (2000, 2005) who, from a postcolonial perspective, have argued that latin-american countries have been colonised not only historically and economically, but also symbolically. in this vein, these authors assert that after colonisation, social, economic, and cultural structures remained latent and they became common sense to people of this territory subjecting them to different levels: the knowledge level (coloniality of knowledge), the political level (coloniality of power), and the subject level (coloniality of being; granados-beltrán, 2016). in turn, this constructed a common sense that has become a regime of truth (said, 1976) that has been a platform for a whiteness cognitive device. that is, a psychological instance that maintains human beings organised and divided in racial categories. whiteness theory has been focused on as going beyond the racial structures as a socio-political and economic system to scrutinise more deeply the symbolic dimension of race and derived constructs of a race hierarchy. in this manner, the “whiteness device” of post colonialists and a debate for a whiteness unconsciousness in crt are interwoven and they come to be useful to explain what happens in english language learning in regard to conceptions of racial identity, self-identification, and the consequences that those ideas bring about. method this study was carried out in bogota, colombia. the methodology used in this project was narrative-oriented. in this context, written life stories and in-depth interviews were collected from 10 intermediate–advanced english language learners (see table 1) who told about their english learning process and related racial experiences. most participants were colombians, except for one taiwanese woman (maya), and they learned english for personal purposes. to choose participants we focused on a variety of socio-economic and physical aspects that could lead us to obtain rich data from the participants’ experiences. narratives, considered as a form of construction of social reality (somers, 1994; spector-mersel, 2010), favour the creation of meanings about social phenomena (de fina & georgakopoulou, 2012) and facilitate access to the realities that individuals construct. in this view, data were analysed through the lenses of our theoretical framework and emerging themes were grouped in order to try to find relationships with the learners’ meanings of their experiences. 141profile: issues teach. prof. dev., vol. 23 no. 2, jul-dec, 2021. issn 1657-0790 (printed) 2256-5760 (online). bogotá, colombia. pages 137-150 configuration of racial identities of learners of english table 1. participants’ information pseudonym age group gender damian 20–25 male charlie 20–25 male connie 25–30 female manuela 40–45 female louise 20–25 female jean pierre 20–25 male johns 20–25 male pola 25–30 female edwin 40–45 male maya 25–30 female results the analysis of the narratives developed by the participants let us see that the learners’ experiences as speakers of a foreign language are usually fraught with certain ideals or expectations around that language and its native speakers. those experiences, and the ones proper of the learning activity, are the ones that we want to highlight for the analysis of racial identity construction. what is clear here is that most of the participants started learning english with the interest of traveling around the world and interacting with diverse cultures. however, this desire has some nuances that learners are usually unconscious about and that, from the point of view of race, must be dismantled. as researchers, we consider that this exercise would contribute to bringing a new lens to language learning and that, by learning from these experiences, language learning could be addressed to more responsible, equitable practices. three are the emergent categories. the first category—the construction of the learners’ imaginary based on global whiteness—describes how language learners constitute themselves by constructing imaginaries which usually come to them in discriminatory discourses of global whiteness where english is subsidiary. the second category—temporary identities subsidised by english whiteness—is related to the way learners consciously and unconsciously take advantage of racial structures enhanced by english. in doing this, learners experience social mobility, but without being aware that those gains are temporary and that they also reproduce subtle discriminatory practices. and the third category—learners’ racial identity constructions fighting and negotiating structural racism reinforced by english—aims to describe learners’ identity construction shaped by structural racism in english learning practices as well as other practices that learners develop in order to fight and resist injustice caused by other racial structures. the construction of the learners’ imaginary based on global whiteness this category is defined by the symbolic power that extends from whiteness to a global level by imperceptible means, and which builds the learners’ imaginaries of desire about language and what it means constructing their identity. according to delgado and stefancic (2001), english global recognition has been greatly enhanced by pop culture. that is, the media, technology, music, films, and so on, have helped strengthen the status of english as the language of business as well as increase the perceived prestige and power of this language. in this line of thought, english, as well as its command, has gained more importance and prestige over other languages. in other words, having knowledge of english builds a coloniality of being in the learners’ imaginaries where this language becomes the ideal that aligns with that of the ideal native speaker (leung et al., 1997). this idealisation of english is subtle if we follow what delgado and stefancic (2001) claim: “whiteness [represented in english] is often associated with innocence and goodness” (p. 75) which clearly become very attractive for receivers (learners). that is the case of maya, a taiwanese woman, who learns english in the colombian context and who asserted that her interest in the language increased through films. thus, the mass universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras142 bonilla-medina, varela, & garcía media appear to influence the way she sees the culture of the language and herself. in the following excerpt, we asked maya if she had a preference for any variety of english. she answered: i would say the british accent is always very cool . . . it sounds very cool . . . england centuries movies which are really fun, like pride and prejudice or like, i would say, harry potter . . . that british accent . . . although, i can’t understand them but it’s really cool, how they speaking that way yeah. [sic] maya’s taste for the english accent directly related to what she has seen in films, unveils that those media discourses have instilled in her an imaginary of the foreign language that is full of fantasy. indeed, media appear here to have a big role in furthering the prestige of a given accent, in this case, the english one. these are aspects that construct an imaginary that reinforces dominant ideologies. quijano (as cited in castrogómez, 2000) refers to this created desire for others’ culture as a derivation of whiteness that colonization has left in the mindset of the colonized countries’ population. intelligibility, which is a very relevant element in maya’s learning process, is sacrificed by her view, as long as the accent sounds “cool.” in this sense, the coloniality of being, spread by media, usually seduces foreign language learners rather than oppresses by means of those propagated discourses of goodness and superiority that english language has. in jean pierre’s narrative, this power of english comes via other means and affects differently the way he constructs his identity as an english learner. although he appears to be aware of the imperialism of the english language that governs academic production (a coloniality of knowledge), this recognition does not lead him to take an active role as a learner (coloniality of power) because he thinks in the end there is no other choice but to assume a subaltern position and accept that the idea that language is superior at the global level. today english produces knowledge, then that generates, like a linguistic or idiomatic monopoly . . . it detracts other languages that also give opportunities . . . if you look for… like scientific research or…academic writings, most of them are going to appear in english. and many times, it’s even written by people who don’t speak english as a native language, . . . the language of science is english.” [sic] as seen, jean pierre suggests that for someone to aspire to scientific production, english is indispensable. behind the participant’s words there is the idea that, nowadays, scientific knowledge is exclusively produced in english. by asserting that “the language of science is english” jean pierre promotes the belief (or imaginary) that, in the scientific arena, this language is superior to all other existing languages. in this vein, english is hiding discriminatory discourses that connect learners to white supremacy since english is a synonym of whiteness: bringing ideas of white power, privilege, and taken-for-granted benefit (clarke & garner, 2009). thus, english, as well as whiteness, becomes a membership where a person who possesses it is automatically benefited with the privileges of the dominant race (mcintosh, 2004). this imaginary of english language based on global whiteness is transformed in charlie as an unconscious feature of identity construction. this is argued because, he claims he identifies with the english culture to the point that he becomes detached from his own colombian culture, music, and language. look, first i don’t feel identified living in this country . . . there are cultural issues that i don’t feel identified with. [i prefer to be in contact with] english most of the time, in the youtube videos, the movies, and literature. [sic] as seen, global whiteness spread through english is a symbolic power that influences learners’ identity construction, heavily accommodating to racialised discourses of blind acceptability to whiteness. as reflected in the participants, apparent innocent discourses spread 143profile: issues teach. prof. dev., vol. 23 no. 2, jul-dec, 2021. issn 1657-0790 (printed) 2256-5760 (online). bogotá, colombia. pages 137-150 configuration of racial identities of learners of english whiteness subtly and individuals accept these discourses consciously and unconsciously but also perpetuating the estrangement of selves and causing what for charlie is a detachment of his own culture, his identity. temporary identities subsidised by english whiteness as related in the previous category, whiteness represented in english supports the construction of a racial identity which is subordinated to a stereotypical environment established by social convention. in this vein, we can say those stereotypes in english also provide economic opportunities for people who learn this language. this category is then, related to the learners’ construction of their identity favoured by the cultural and economic dimensions present in the english language ideas. this dimension works similarly to what race theorists have called white privilege. in this sense, the category means that learners experience a shifting of their (racial) identities as they go along their path of learning the language. english language learners are aware of the language’s privileged status which, according to them, grants them access to better jobs, schools, occupations, and various economic opportunities (telles & flores, 2013), and they seem to use this knowledge strategically to modify social status. however, as seen in the data, this racialised experience is usually temporary, and does not really transcend learners’ life project and keep them subaltern (spivak, 1988). this is why we refer to these racial identities as temporary or transitional, following thesen (1997). edwin, one of our participants who was in police service as part of the government’s mandatory rule for men in colombia, appeared to construct this transitional identity that granted him access to the privileges attached to english. he was promoted in police internal ranks thanks to his previous knowledge of english. a captain arrived and, we started to speak in english so, he said: “what are you doing, at this time here? wasting yourself, nooo, go tomorrow for tourism!” then, the next day [the captain] made me a letter and he sent me for the tourism speciality. the tourism police is one of the best workspaces they have because there, they accompany the tourists who come and, [diplomats], people from abroad come. [sic] as edwin relates in this brief story, the opportunity to speak in english to a superior police officer allowed him to be moved to a better position in his police career. thus, english worked as a provider of opportunities which, in this case, had to do with the chance of obtaining a better position in society (vela, 2012; wade, 1995). in other words, edwin takes advantage of english white privilege to escalate to a higher status that at that moment was provided for him. from this perspective, edwin was able to be part of a select group in which, not only did he obtain prestige at a social level, but he also managed to place himself in a higher level in terms of employment. those are benefits provided for edwin because of the whiteness that the language brings. edwin claims that due to his proficiency in english, he had the opportunity to interact with foreign diplomats, which also allowed him to look like someone from a superior social position. in this way, english as a means of whiteness became a type of “property” for him from which he obtained benefits that according to harris (1995, as cited in decuir & dixson, 2004) are “the right of possession, the right to use, and the right to disposition, the right to transfer, the right of use and enjoyment” (p. 28). however, as we named in our category, those benefits do not last long. as seen in edwin’s description, english proficiency allowed him to use the whiteness of english to enjoy social advantages at a certain moment of his mandatory military service. nonetheless, this did not appear to be a long-lasting advantage since it worked in favour of the rich (white) foreign diplomats visiting the country rather than changing edwin’s socioeconomic position. this is something that crt has called “interest convergence,” which is, white’s social universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras144 bonilla-medina, varela, & garcía sensitivity for others working for the white benefit (delgado & stefancic, 2001). as seen, english as well as whiteness works in this learner’s identity as a kind of property which gives him privilege. privilege that is social and economic, and yet, it is also temporary because it is provided according to the needs of traditional privileged english speakers who come to the colombian context rather than new english speakers such as edwin. pola, a future teacher of english, is another participant who narrates in her story how her identity was shifting during her learning of the language and how she strategically used whiteness through english as socio-economic advantage. this was represented in how, thanks to a trip she made to the united states, she managed to get a job easily back in colombia. i arrived from the usa in august and in october i already had a job, and…even though i didn’t have certified work experience and i didn’t have an international exam, then i think…that can be seen to be like an advantage. there are many people who go to work in different things such as in a call center or, well, i don’t know, in other jobs . . . or tourist guide and they earn the same as what they earn as teachers or even a little more. [sic] pola’s gain can be seen as white privilege as it was provided to her as a property that she could use to obtain a job. this white privilege is even beyond the language itself, as it is also related to the idea of what living the experience in a foreign country such as the usa means. by asserting to have had experience abroad, she realised she was easily hired without any certification by a company and started to earn good money. however, this is also described here as a temporary identity because there are hidden discriminatory practices involved. she does not take into account that this privilege comprehends non-professional jobs that may not maintain social benefits for long (mignolo, 2000). that is why she even disdains her own future profession as a teacher by establishing a comparative view on the wages each job may provide. self-discriminatory identity is what comes to her as a professional. accordingly, it can be affirmed that pola’s identity started shifting when she took advantage of whiteness at that moment, however, in the long term, this would not assure the brilliant opportunities she devised. the shifting of identity in pola’s case uses the advantages of speaking english but mainly of having had an experience abroad. this experience positioned her above the other applicants for the same job revealing how the power of english impacts various fields of the learner’s social practice. one of these fields has to do with the difference in employment opportunities one has when using this language. this power equated in these terms is a device that facilitates the acquisition of economic status in society (castro-gómez, 2000). that is, as a commodity that one possesses. for that reason, the language learner, as stated by zentella (1995), may potentially come to be part of a society that creates stereotypes, labelling those who do not speak english as coming from deplorable socio-economic backgrounds, or as people who do not deserve to enjoy corporate employment opportunities. in summary, the experiences of english language learners let us see this situation critically and affirm that, even though economic and cultural benefits were obtained, thanks to english, there are two main factors to consider: first, that benefits are not long-lasting because they have limits mediated by interests which usually do not impact the economy of peripheral populations and the economy of the so-called third world countries (usma et al., 2018); and second, that this shifting of identity may bring about subtle discriminatory discourses addressed to those who are not associated with the language speakers. 145profile: issues teach. prof. dev., vol. 23 no. 2, jul-dec, 2021. issn 1657-0790 (printed) 2256-5760 (online). bogotá, colombia. pages 137-150 configuration of racial identities of learners of english learners’ racial identity constructions fighting and negotiating structural racism reinforced by english this category attempts to describe learners’ identity construction shaped by structural racism in the english learning process and the practices that learners develop in order to fight and resist injustice caused by racial structures. first of all, it is necessary to refer to structural racism which, from the view of crt, is related to racism embedded in institutions shaping people’s practices and identities and converting discrimination into common sense (delgado & stefancic, 2000). structural racism is then developed through a set of values, attitudes, symbols, and practices that produce and reproduce stereotypes that usually place a group of people over another (mamani, 2020). in the case of english language learners, their physical characteristics or their identity as bilingual speakers of colombian origin are aspects that usually link them to structural racism and consequently contribute to shaping their identity along their learning route. manuela, for example, is a self-identified afrocolombian english learner and teacher. her personal narrative reveals how, despite becoming a competent professional who has been recognised as good teacher and language speaker, she has been overtly attacked because of her skin colour, even by her colleagues. this case represents one of the most visible recognised racist experiences shaping a learner’s identity as a result of structural racism based on skin colour. moreover, as mamani (2020) says, structural racism contributes to normalising practices that usually give privilege to a group of people and excludes another not only on the basis of phenotype, but also nationality, culture, religion, place of living, class, or gender. therefore, intersections of race with categories such as class or gender also play a key role in this category. that english is racialised and produces structural racism is not unknown to various participants in this study. for example, louise touches several times upon the prevalence of racist linguistic policies disseminated by the government in our country: i think that “colombia bilingüe,” is a program that discriminates a lot; why? first, because it creates standards in which only certain social wealthy groups are favoured, and…there are not resources for that, and those are creating stereotypes of…that is, of a political content that is behind those standards” [sic] nevertheless, when the structural racism involved in those policies becomes a practice affecting people’s identity, it is usually accepted and unquestioned. in connie’s narrative, it is evident how, as part of the normalization of those practices, her identity as a teacher was racialised, that is, she felt discriminated against and undervalued as a colombian english language teacher. a school where she used to work required teachers to have international experience to keep being part of the staff. such pressure fostered discrimination among the teacher staff. connie: when i was working in a school, well, one of the requirements of the school was that, as teachers, we had to have an experience abroad studying or living. researcher: and what happened if a teacher could not go? c: well, they gave you some time, and afterwards, they didn’t hire you anymore. r: and how long did they give you? c: me? no…i worked there for a year and a half and the year after, i had the chance to travel and i left. r: did you know about any teacher who had been given time limit if that experience was not achieved? c: no, most of them had travelled and, i travelled, and other three teachers were going to travel too, to the united states, hmm with an organisation that used to take teachers to teach spanish in the usa? well, i don’t remember. r: and those teachers travelled because the school helped them to do so? or they did it by their own means? universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras146 bonilla-medina, varela, & garcía c: no! not at all, nothing, everything was to keep our job when we came back. r: and did they wait for you? c: oh yes, but none came back…i mean, we didn’t come back. r: was that written anywhere or it was just what happened in the school? c: no, really, it was not written, when the…the language boss gave us feedback, she would always, told us what we had to do if we wanted to keep on working there. [sic] structural racism lived in the school as reported by connie here is embedded not only in the way school institutional policies work to increase the english level of teachers, but it is also seen in how the practices around those policies reproduce those racist attitudes by the teachers themselves. despite that, apparently, the institutional policy was not officially written anywhere, and the teachers themselves contributed to the social pressure over those teachers who have not had the experience abroad. in connie’s narrative it is clear that the school culture was represented not only in policies, but in teachers’ practices sustained in a racist system that privileged centralisation of english nativeness. such attitudes pushed her to have an experience abroad and to transform her identity to become a “good teacher” in the school’s eyes. following gillborn (2006), this structural racism has wider implications in teachers’ identity that transcends the symbolic dimension represented in that social prestige achieved by the native speaker experience, and goes to the economic dimension for teachers to fulfil this need as a matter of preserving their jobs. obviously, the economic conditions were not given for these teachers to comply with the school’s needs because, as connie said, teachers were not economically supported, that is, “everything was to keep [their] job when [they went] back”. hence, racism is not only symbolic, but also economic and this would certainly contribute to constructing a racialised identity as a teacher in what louise noted as “standards in which only certain social wealthy groups are favoured.” that is, only the ones who have the economic possibilities would have access to travel, and therefore, keep their job. in colombia, a country where the economy is weak, it is not strange that those opportunities are limited because of factors such as family or personal needs. therefore, teachers may represent another group that ends up losing their jobs and being slammed by racism intersected with socio-economic conditions. notwithstanding the difficulties mediated by structural racism, learners who, in this case, are also teachers, construct their identities with capacities to negotiate with those structural conditions in multiple and incommensurable ways. connie particularly accounts for her persistence to try to travel and achieve, not only because of that symbolic power of a native speaker her school demands, but also in order to gain certain social mobility that would allow her to avoid going back to her former school, as she reported in the excerpt. further in the interview, she also relates how that desire of fighting the social conditions in which she seemed to be encapsulated, empowered her to fight hard. researcher: and do you think that learning the language in the british context as a latin american has advantages? connie: as a latin american? well, of course, there are differences, in the educative area, for example, latin american people have to pay more in terms of education. while, obviously britons have, they have their bursaries. of course, it is much more difficult for a colombian person. to study abroad in that sense, well…many times has to do with preferences. well, those preferences for the native speaker hmm, well, that is. [sic] as seen in the excerpt, connie’s narrative shows that, to overcome those barriers imposed by racial structures, she was involved in an economic and symbolic investment (bourdieu, 1986). in other words, acceptance of asymmetric relationships between an 147profile: issues teach. prof. dev., vol. 23 no. 2, jul-dec, 2021. issn 1657-0790 (printed) 2256-5760 (online). bogotá, colombia. pages 137-150 configuration of racial identities of learners of english english native and latin american student led her to pay more money for her education while she also perceived native british were even provided with bursaries to do so. moreover, she accounts for white supremacy which was the symbolism of a native speaker she had to face to be able to achieve her dreams. she says, “it is much more difficult for a colombian person.” to study abroad, “many times has to do with preferences. well, those preferences for the native speaker.” what she calls “preferences” is really whiteness which, echoing mcintosh (2004), works here as a commodity bringing benefit to the ones who possess it and that she, as a latin american, did not. these factors forced her to make other skills stand out and through them increase her hope to overcome the racial barriers that framed her colombian identity. we can see that in the following excerpt: researcher: how did you reach the experience to work as an english teacher over there if you already realised that it was that difficult for a latin american? connie: i finished my language program, i had experience teaching in colombia, i got an a+ in my training course, i was outstanding in my practicum with college students, i prepared excellent material, i delivered very good lessons, the feedback from my students was always really good. [sic] this is evidence of the participant’s fights against racial structures in which there is an awareness process of a racialisation of her identity as a latin american that involved her in an unjust system and which she found as the motivation to fight harder to overcome it. finally, other testimonies showed how english as a whiteness device (castro-gómez, 2000) seemed to be used strategically by participants as a resource to negotiate and fight against other racial structures that shaped their identity based on phenotype. a significant example was presented by manuela in her life history when she talks about the poor socioeconomic circumstances she had to live as an emigrant from quibdó, moving first to medellin, and then to bogotá. she emphasised how she felt social conditions were always more difficult for an afro-colombian family like hers. in her hometown she felt it was not that demanding while the attitude of people in medellin and bogota towards them always shaped them as “different”; a feeling that usually came associated with estrangement and disdain. in her narrative, she explained that phenotypical racial structures played in her favour once when she was given the opportunity to work as a marketing assistant in a shop: “we were 100 candidates and only 10 were chosen, and i was picked in that bunch because they said they required to have a white blond, a brown, and black girl to serve as the publicity for their products.” unfortunately, with time, she realised that the job conditions were poor. she was assigned full-time work and that meant working 12 hours a day from monday to sunday and earning the minimum wage. then, she decided to start another type of investment by enrolling in the university to achieve a career as an english teacher, so she used english as a whiteness device strategically to fight the given social conditions on her racialised identity as a black woman. in her view, this new decision would always be better than staying and enduring the racialised conditions to which she was submitted at the shop. then, manuela’s story tells that race was always crucial in her life as a black person and being an english language learner provided whiteness as an opportunity to cope with her phenotypical racialisation. conclusions the development of this article helps one to understand that racial identity and english learning maintain power relations, which are worthy of being addressed in research so new understandings of language learning are visualised. the direction taken from this study aimed to address the complexities of language learning that usually involves hidden discriminatory practices affecting identities. this study reveals the preponderance of universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras148 bonilla-medina, varela, & garcía hierarchical discourses that classify groups and provide advantages and disadvantages to different people under different circumstances. we think that understanding those relations may be a way to illuminate areas in language learning to find clues for developing more socially sensitive practices. specifically, in the findings of this study, it has been seen how learners’ identity is shaped by being involved in a sentiment of attraction to the language and speakers that is usually transmitted unconsciously through media. through this construction, it is shown that this imaginary of english and its speakers not only affects learners’ perception of the foreign culture, but also affects the image that they have of themselves. having in mind these affections, learners also appear to model and shift their identity according to the characteristics that are provided with by the environment and social conditions. that was evident as learners accommodate to major discourses of english as success but ignore the discriminatory practices that are subtle and keep them as subaltern. finally, those experiences presented by learners here reveal that, despite the constant reproduction of racist practices, they also sometimes offer learners tools to develop strategies to overcome such racial barriers. references agudelo, j. j. 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(1995). la hispanofobia del movimiento “inglés oficial” en los estados unidos por la oficialización del inglés [the hispanophobia of the “official english” movement in the united states for the officialization of english]. alteridades, 5(10), 55–65. about the authors sandra ximena bonilla-medina holds a doctor of education degree from the university of east london. she is currently a full-time professor and researcher of universidad distrital francisco josé de caldas. she is a member of the research group estupoli and director of the “semillero” second language teaching and learning, culture, and social justice. karen vanessa varela and katherine garcía are students in the bachelor’s degree programme in english language teaching at universidad distrital francisco josé de caldas. they are members of the “semillero” second language teaching and learning, culture, and social justice. https://doi.org/10.35362/rie390808 https://doi.org/10.35362/rie390808 https://doi.org/10.1007/bf00992905 https://doi.org/10.1075/ni.20.1.10spe https://doi.org/10.1075/ni.20.1.10spe https://doi.org/10.1215/00182168-2210858 https://doi.org/10.1215/00182168-2210858 https://doi.org/10.2307/3587835 https://doi.org/10.17533/udea.ikala.v23n02a03 https://doi.org/10.1080/1361332052000341006 https://doi.org/10.1080/1361332052000341006 13profile: issues teach. prof. dev., vol. 21 no. 1, jan-jun, 2019. issn 1657-0790 (printed) 2256-5760 (online). bogotá, colombia. pages 13-26 https://doi.org/10.15446/profile.v21n1.69603 a discussion on english language students’ body image: beauty standards and fatness una discusión sobre la imagen corporal de alumnos/as de inglés: patrones de belleza y gordura pedro augusto de lima bastos1* rosane rocha pessoa2** universidade federal de goiás, goiânia, brazil in this qualitative study, we intend to discuss how adolescent students in a brazilian public school classroom define their body image and personalize the themes beauty standards and fatness. grounded on a critical approach to language teaching, these two social themes were problematized in eight lessons of ensino médio (secondary education). the discussion of the empirical material suggests that (1) body image is strongly connected to gendered relations, making life experiences of men and women different based on the bodies they have, and (2) beauty standard and fatness are strongly related to students’ lives since twelve out of nineteen students personalized the themes by telling oppressive stories they went through because of their bodies. key words: beauty standard, critical language teaching, fatness, social themes. en este estudio cualitativo, nos proponemos discutir cómo alumnos/as adolescentes en un aula de una escuela pública brasileña definen su imagen corporal y personalizan los temas patrones de belleza y gordura. basándose en un enfoque crítico a la enseñanza de inglés, esos dos temas fueron problematizados en ocho clases de enseñanza secundaria. la discusión del material empírico sugiere que (1) la imagen corporal está conectada con relaciones de carácter general, haciendo que la experiencia de hombres y mujeres sea diferente según sus cuerpos, y (2) los patrones de belleza y gordura están fuertemente conectados a las vidas de los/as alumnos/as, ya que doce de diecinueve alumnos/as personalizaron el tema al contar historias de opresión que ellos/as vivenciaron a causa de la imagen que hacen de sus cuerpos. palabras clave: enseñanza crítica de lenguas, gordura, patrones de belleza, temas sociales. * e-mail: pedro_itapaci@hotmail.com ** e-mail: pessoarosane@gmail.com how to cite this article (apa, 6th ed.): de lima bastos, p. a., & pessoa, r. r. (2019). a discussion on english language students’ body image: beauty standards and fatness. profile: issues in teachers’ professional development, 21(1), 13-26. https://doi.org/10.15446/profile.v21n1.69603. this article was received on december 28, 2017 and accepted on august 5, 2018. this is an open access article distributed under the terms of the creative commons license attribution-noncommercial-noderivatives 4.0 international license. consultation is possible at https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/. universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras14 de lima bastos & pessoa introduction in a text titled “why bodies matter: discourse and materiality after mass murder”, the linguistic anthropologist bucholtz (2016) affirms that bodies should be placed at the centre of our thinking, as they are not only the locus of lived experience, but also the site of power relations and the source of social agency. according to her, many language-oriented scholars of various stripes have maintained a steady focus on different aspects of embodiment. one of these approaches examines the embodied politics and practices of race, gender, sexuality, and other axes of difference as organizing categories of society, culture, and power, including the semiotics of self-presentation and cultural interpretation, such as voice quality, linguistic forms, and ideological discourses that render bodies culturally legible or illegible, valued or marginalized. (bucholtz, 2016, p. 4) ideological discourses concerning bodies have also been of great concern in critical language teaching scholarship (pessoa, 2014; pessoa & de urzêda freitas, 2016; kubota & lin, 2009; moita lopes, 2002; nelson, 2009; norton & toohey, 2011), but, to our knowledge, the themes beauty standards and fatness have not been much addressed. besides, these themes are not mentioned in the domains of critical applied linguistics, as we can see below: [critical applied linguistics] presents a way of doing applied linguistics that seeks to connect it to questions of gender, class, sexuality, race, ethnicity, culture, identity, politics, ideology, and discourse. (pennycook, 2001, p. 10) we consider there is a strong need for taking these themes seriously at school and addressing them in language teaching scholarship since, according to moy (2015), there has been a rapid increase in rates of body dissatisfaction and unrealistic beauty ideals, and they have a negative influence on body image.1 1 according to croll (2005), “body image is the dynamic perception of one’s body—how it looks, feels, and moves” (p. 155). this overconcern with body image is profoundly influenced by beauty standards propagated by cultural and mediatic messages (croll, 2005) and it can lead to “restrictive dieting and unhealthy weight control methods” causing “potentially dangerous disordered eating behaviors” (croll, 2005, p. 158). grounded on davison, markey, and birch, moy (2015) also affirms that the “issue of body image is mostly acute for adolescents whose pubertal development results in physical changes” (p. 1), but “children as young as five years old are concerned about their weight, and many girls by the age of nine display signs of body image dissatisfaction and problematic eating behaviors” (p. 3). so, what we want to highlight in this study is a minority category which, to our knowledge, has not been represented in critical applied linguistics studies and it has not been problematized in language classrooms. based on our experience with critical language teaching (crookes, 2012, 2013; de urzêda freitas, 2012; hawkins & norton, 2009; janks, 2010; jordão & fogaça, 2012; kubota, 2015; kumaravadivelu, 2012; norton & toohey, 2004; okazaki, 2005; pennycook, 1999, 2001; pessoa, 2014; pessoa & de urzêda freitas, 2012) and on the first author’s experiences as an individual who lived his adolescence as a fat person, we aimed to develop this research by bringing the themes fatness and beauty standards to the english language classroom. this paper is part of a study developed in eight english lessons of a 1st year classroom of ensino médio (secondary education), which corresponds to the last three years of basic education in brazil. the question we want to address in this paper is how adolescent students in a brazilian public school classroom define their body image and personalize the themes beauty standards and fatness. to guide our discussion, we use theorizations that problematize the social construction of the fat individual as an obese, sick subject (cooper, 2010; harjunen, 2002, 2003, 2009; oliver, 2006), and body image (croll, 2005; lorber & martin, 2007; silva, taquette, & coutinho, 2014). we aim to show the importance of researching 15profile: issues teach. prof. dev., vol. 21 no. 1, jan-jun, 2019. issn 1657-0790 (printed) 2256-5760 (online). bogotá, colombia. pages 13-26 a discussion in english language students' body image: beauty standards and fatness and dealing with fatness and beauty standards in language lessons. because of space constraints, we do not focus on the pedagogical aspects of dealing with such themes in language lessons, an issue that can be addressed in future research. what we want to show are stories of oppression regarding body size that emerged in the research data. these stories cannot be denied since they are inside our classrooms and can affect how students think about themselves and act in this world. this paper is divided into five parts: first, we provide a general overview of our research; second, we aim to show how bodies are politically and socially constructed, and what we understand by a critical approach to the teaching of english; third, we contextualize the research; fourth, we discuss how students define their body image and personalize the themes beauty standards and fatness based on the theoretical reflections previously made; fifth, we conclude by showing the importance of dealing with the themes body image and fatness in language lessons. different views on the body and our understanding of critical language teaching we consider that every aspect of our society is socially constructed. in the case of our bodies, it would not be different since “members of a society construct their bodies in ways that comply with accepted views of masculinity and femininity” (lorber & martin, 2007, p. 228). we expect women’s and men’s bodies to look the way they are discursively constructed to look; for example, we expect men to look stronger than women. croll (2005) argues that puberty is a crucial period for adolescents, as boys acquire characteristics admired by society such as strength, broadness, and height, whereas girls “generaly get rounder and have increased body fat” (p. 155). lorber and martin (2007) point out that a person is seen in different ways depending on whether they follow beauty standards or not, since “people whose bodies comply with valued conventions are admired, praised, and held up to others as ideals to be emulated” (lorber & martin, 2007, p. 230). nonetheless, the others, for example, the fat individual, who is a nondisciplined figure of how a body should look, “is still often reduced to a mere question of individual life-style choices and personal morals” (harjunen, 2009, p. 26). an example of how the adjective fat characterizes an experience can be found in mason (2012). in her article about weight discrimination, she “examines the income inequalities between fat and nonfat people” (mason, 2012, p. 412) and she provides “evidence for the existence of weight-based employment discrimination” (mason, 2012, p. 433). from mason’s (2012) words, we can interpret that discrimination towards divergent bodies is also structural. but what influences our conceptions of normal and accepted? foucault (1995), in discipline and punish, theorizes a subtle kind of power that is constant, effective, and invisible: the disciplinary power. this type of power happens through “a multiplicity of often minor processes, of different origin and scattered location, which overlap, repeat, or imitate one another” (p. 138). disciplinary power is invisible because it hides its face behind disciplinary institutions such as hospitals, schools, military, etc. harjunen (2002) affirms that, for fat bodies, the “school is one of the most central places where discipline is learnt” (p. 80). foucault (1995) also defends that disciplinary power makes “possible the meticulous control of the operations of the body, which assured the constant subjection of its forces and imposed upon them a relation of docilityutility” (p. 137). disciplinary power, then, intends to create docile bodies. these bodies are supposed to be “subjected, used, transformed, and improved” (rabinow, 1984, p. 180). the examination is crucial in determining how bodies are allowed and prohibited to act because it “combines techniques of an observing hierarchy and those of a normalizing judgement [and] makes it possible to qualify, to classify, and to punish” (foucault, 1995, p. 184). with the help of such a discerning instruuniversidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras16 de lima bastos & pessoa ment, bodies go through a process of normalization: “the normal is established as a principle of coercion” (foucault, 1995, p. 184) and it either excludes or imposes correction to what is abnormal. these notions developed by foucault (1995) are pertinent when we look at the fat body with political lenses. the body mass index (bmi), which is an exam that is frequently used to classify whether bodies are normal or overweight and obese, is an example of how disciplinary power works in the health field. oliver (2006) argues that “such labels also become internalized by the ‘overweight’ or ‘obese’ who think that something is wrong with them or that they must change their behavior in order to meet a particular physical ideal” (p. 15, emphasis on original). oliver also discusses how these normalization processes of the fat body come from a political standpoint. he points out that the reason why fat people in america are considered obese and sick are more related to “the pecuniary interests of the pharmaceutical industry” (oliver, 2006, p. 16) than to harmful health problems. oliver (2006) also explains how obesity became an epidemic in the usa because of money and how this notion was spread out in the world. we start to see how the concept of obesity is related to the market when we are aware of what is behind the obesity discourse: (a) the american obesity association, which intends to fight against obesity, gets almost all its funding from weight-loss companies; and (b) every year, americans spend more than 45 billion dollars on weight-loss products “and the pharmaceutical industry desperately wants a larger share of this market” (oliver, 2006, p. 51). that is why weight-loss products are usually only supposed to make a person thinner, not healthier, as the obesity discourse advocates. oliver provides us with an example of a weight-loss medication that was approved by the food and drug administration in the mid-1990s to be commercialized in the usa and only later it was discovered that it caused heart damage (p. 53), that is, if obesity is so judged for inducing heart damage, why would the food and drug administration approve a medication that causes it? these concerns raised by oliver make it hard not to question the discourse of obesity. following a foucauldian line of thought, wright (2009) debates on the concept of biopedagogies, which involve two notions: biopower and pedagogies. based on foucault, wright defines biopower as “the governance and regulation of individuals and populations through practices associated with the body” (p. 1). moreover, the term pedagogy is not simply defined as teaching or techniques for education, but “a practice that involves the negotiation of knowledge (ideas) in relations of power and one that goes beyond the classroom” (wright, 2009, p. 8). therefore, biopedagogies cannot be linked only to the classroom as human beings negotiate knowledge about themselves and the world through their daily interactions. biopedagogies attempt to understand the meanings associated with the body through its interactions, whether in the classroom or outside, in a more politicized way. its practices happen everywhere around the world: “on the web, on television, radio, film, billboards, and posters, and pamphlets in doctors’ waiting rooms” (wright, 2009, p. 7). these meaning-making practices can influence how people see themselves, act on themselves, and see or act on others. we all know that education, media, and social institutions influence the way we act, but how does it influence our conception of our own bodies? silva et al. (2014) developed a study inside four regular schools in rio de janeiro with adolescents to find out any correlation between their body image and the media. they analyzed their data and discovered three major points: (a) adolescents are worried about their body image and try to follow beauty standards propagated by media even though they consider them as harmful; (b) they understand the thin sculptured body as the only possibility for being healthy; and (c) they recognize that people who do not make an effort to change their appearance might be rejected and excluded 17profile: issues teach. prof. dev., vol. 21 no. 1, jan-jun, 2019. issn 1657-0790 (printed) 2256-5760 (online). bogotá, colombia. pages 13-26 a discussion in english language students' body image: beauty standards and fatness by their peers for deviating from beauty standards. this study suggests that even human beings at an early age are aware of the influence of media on our body image and on our notions of what being healthy is. harjunen (2003) also intends to understand fat women and their social interactions. in her article, she uses the notion of liminality to analyze narratives of women concerning the experience of being fat. liminality is a concept that describes the in-between. a person in liminality is in between two different states. this is exemplified by harjunen’s (2003, p. 1) discussion when she argues that the number of people who have become permanently fat has increased worldwide, while in our culture we see the thin body as the original one and the fat body as a “temporary disruption”. harjunen (2003) contends that this state leaves the agency of these women behind because fat people must transform their bodies first so they can act, that is, a “proper subjectivity and agency can only be achieved in a thin body” (p. 6). this discussion allows us to affirm that fatness and beauty standards are political issues related to “power, disparity, difference, or desire” (pennycook, 2001, p. 7). the way we think about our bodies is completely social and political, and not neutral as the medical discourse seems to be. therefore, if we are to follow a critical stance to language teaching, we need to problematize these social issues in the classroom and understand bodies beyond the medical discourse, that is, from a social, discursive perspective. we agree with moita lopes (2003) when he argues that language education is at the core of contemporary life as we live in a world where nothing important is done without discourse. he argues that at the same time we have access to a multiplicity of discourses about different cultural forms of life which allow us to experience new subjectivities, we also run the danger of the single discourses, such as the discourse of global capitalism, which transforms things into commodities and people into clients. thus, language teachers are in a crucial position to address social and political issues at school. as hightlighted in the previous section, the culture of thinness is one of the single discourses in modern western societies that should be dealt with by language teachers. the teaching of a foreign language in brazil is known for being funny and entertaining, and many language teachers “have adopted a merely functional understanding of language in their classes” (pessoa & de urzêda freitas, 2012). because of that, there is a great focus on linguistic aspects rather than on social content, and the teacher “backs away from connecting language to broader political context” (pennycook, 1999, p. 334). however, this represents a huge loss, since language teachers are in a key position to address educational inequality, both because of the particular learners they serve, many of whom are marginalized members of the wider community, and because of the subject matter they teach—language—which can itself serve to both empower and marginalize. (hawkins & norton, 2009, p. 32) hawkins and norton (2009) contend that it is through language that meanings are reproduced and negotiated, and it is not a neutral practice. in doing so, “what we do, think, say as humans is always affected by larger questions of social power and to some extent reproduces those same relations, which then reaffect what we do, think, or say” (pennycook, 2001, pp. 119-120). it is because of this that classrooms should be considered political sites where macro relations can be either reproduced or changed. so, classrooms are places where teachers are in a crucial position to act against social injustices. pennycook (1999) affirmed that, at first, critical work focused on issues of “class, race, or gender”, and then it started encompassing areas such as “sexuality, ethnicity, and representations of otherness” (p. 331). we consider that this list should expand to include any social theme as long as the focus is on inequality. fatness and beauty standards are two of these themes, universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras18 de lima bastos & pessoa and, in spite of their importance especially to children and adolescents, they do not seem to have been much studied by critical applied linguists in brazil or elsewhere. the study we adopt a qualitative research paradigm since our aims are to discuss how adolescent students in a brazilian public school classroom define their body image and how they personalize the themes beauty standards and fatness. merriam (2002) affirms that the qualitative paradigm lies with the idea that meaning is socially constructed by individuals in interaction with their world. the world, or reality, is not a fixed, single, agreed upon, or measurable phenomenon that is assumed to be in positivist, quantitative research. (p. 3) therefore, “qualitative researchers are interested in understanding what those interpretations are at a particular point in time and in a particular context” (merriam, 2002, p. 4). considering that, a key word for qualitative research is interpretation because “researchers strive to understand the meaning people have constructed about their world and their experiences” (merriam, 2002, pp. 4-5). we follow a critical stance in qualitative research since one of our aims is to investigate “how the social and political aspects of the situation shape the reality” (merriam, 2002, p. 4), that is, how the social and political aspects of having a divergent body can shape students’ realities. the research context is a 1st year classroom of ensino médio in a brazilian public school. twenty-seven students were in the classroom, but only 23 signed the consent form and accepted to take part in the research. from the 23 students, 12 were male and 11 were female. their ages ranged mostly from 15 to 17, and two students were 18. they chose fictitious names and that is how they will be referred to in this text. another participant in this research is the collaborator, who will be referred to as isabela. during the study, she kindly accepted to observe the first author’s classes and reflect on them. since the first author of this paper was the teacher of the group, we refer to him using his first name, pedro. the empirical material was generated in december 2015, and in this article we analyze three sources of this material in which participants shared experiences as having divergent bodies: (a) an initial questionnaire (henceforth iq), focusing on how students feel or think of their body image; (b) a final interview (henceforth fi), in which they give opinions about the lessons and the relationship between the two themes and their lives; and (c) reflective sessions (henceforth rs) with the collaborator, in which the teacher and the collaborator discussed important moments he was not able to observe alone. the first two sources were generated in portuguese, while the last was generated in a mixture of portuguese and english. after generating the empirical material, we tried to identify the most recurrent themes, two of which are discussed here. initially, we aimed to analyze the pedagogical implications of working with the critical approach in a public school. however, in the sources we used, students showed a strong connection to the topics we discussed. because of that, we had to broaden our objectives. so, the discussion in this paper emerges from the empirical material and was not previously established. the first discussion, based on the iq, focuses on how students felt about their bodies, and the second, based on the iq, fi, and rs, focuses on how students related the themes to their personal experiences. the transcription of the interviews was not done literally; however, the content of the speeches was not changed. interjections, unnecessary repetitions, and incomplete sentences were eliminated. the students’ excerpts were translated from portuguese into english. table 1 shows the transcription symbols used. table 1. transcription symbols “...” to introduce thoughts of speeches from other people […] suppression [ ] our comments 19profile: issues teach. prof. dev., vol. 21 no. 1, jan-jun, 2019. issn 1657-0790 (printed) 2256-5760 (online). bogotá, colombia. pages 13-26 a discussion in english language students' body image: beauty standards and fatness the first author of the article taught eight lessons of 45 minutes each. table 2 offers a description of the topics addressed in each lesson: table 2. lessons lessons themes first lesson presentation of the research. second lesson vocabulary presentation: adjectives of appearance and personality. third lesson socially constructed beauty. fourth lesson fat people stereotypes; bullying at school. fifth lesson media and photoshop manipulations of advertisements. sixth lesson influence of media on body image. seventh lesson health discourses and crazy diets. eighth lesson media and the fat body. de urzêda freitas (2012) states that “the critical approach does not intend to transform foreign languages/english classes into sociology class—as it has been argued”2 (p. 93). the classes planned aimed to teach language through the problematization of social issues. we prefer to say that our objective was to teach students how to negotiate meaning (canagarajah, 2013) through the topics discussed. so, in every class, students were in contact with videos, pictures, and written text because we believe that students negotiate meaning and learn to communicate through the mediation of real-world texts. all the materials used in class were in english and the teacher spoke predominantely in english, but discussions were mostly held in portuguese as the students were not used to discussing topics in that 2 citations originally read in portuguese were translated into english by the authors. target language. linguistic resources from english and portuguese were used for negotiating and constructing meaning about beauty standards and fatness, so the teacher and the students moved across languages. social experience with divergent bodies beauty standards and body image are socially constructed and are influenced by “cultural messages and societal standards of appearance and attractiveness” (croll, 2005, p. 155). we aim, in this session, to qualitatively analyze how adolescent students in a brazilian public school english classroom define their body image and personalize the themes beauty standards and fatness. in the iq, we found a difference on how the girls and the boys defined their body image. most of the students with negative body image were girls compared to the other boys as presented in table 3. table 3. negative/positive body image negative body image positive body image total male 1 (11%) 8 (89%) 9 (100%) female 5 (45%) 6 (65%) 11 (100%) note. twenty-three students participated in the research, but only 20 were present in the first class and answered the iq. we categorized students as having either positive or negative body images depending on how they described their appearance. the speeches below are examples of negative and positive body images that students have about themselves: sinto que devo mudar meu corpo para ser mais aceita na sociedade. (ana clara, female, iq) [i feel as if i should change my body to be more accepted in society.] às vezes me sinto constrangida por conta das acnes que saem pelo meu corpo, como no rosto, na costa, no colo peitoral. em muitos casos evito usar certas roupas, um pouco decotada, pois sinto vergonha pelo fato das pessoas ficar comentando e criticando. universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras20 de lima bastos & pessoa (jymmi, female, iq) [sometimes i feel embarrassed because of the acne that appears on my body, like on my face, on my back, or on my bosom. in many cases i avoid wearing certain types of clothes, like low-cut ones, because i am ashamed of the fact that people keep commenting and criticizing.] eu não me acho bonito e me acho um pouco desengonçado. as pessoas devem me achar pequeno e desengonçado. (jorge, male, iq) [i do not think i am handsome and i find myself clumsy. people might think of me as short and clumsy]. eu me sinto, em relação a meu corpo e minha aparência, bem satisfeito, pois não me acho feio, apesar de não acreditar que exista pessoas feias. (heródoto, male, iq) [i feel very satisfied in relation to my body and appearance, because i do not think i am ugly, though i do not believe there are ugly people.] me sinto bem comigo mesmo e me acho bonito, não sou obcecado pela aprovação da opinião dos outros. (gabriel, male, iq) [i feel good about myself and i think i am handsome; i am not obsessed with the approval of others’ opinions.] these speeches suggest that differences in body image are gendered (harjunen, 2009; lorber & martin, 2007) and are in accordance to what lorber and martin (2007) say about girls: “the pressure to have a conforming body begins early in life” (p. 240), which is the case of the students researched, who are around 15 years old. ana clara’s and gabriel’s excerpts focus on how they think their bodies are seen by others. their speeches indicate that women are far more pressured than men to have an accepted body, since, for ana clara, her body must be changed in order to achieve social acceptance, while gabriel affirms he does not give any importance to what others think about his body. the way ana clara and jorge define their bodies is also another point that corroborates the gendered aspect of body image. a deeper discussion on how ana clara feels about her body is developed at the end of this section, but here we can see that she is a fat girl who thinks she should be smaller to be more accepted, while jorge affirms that people find him very short, and maybe, because of that, he might look clumsy. jorge’s speech shows how he is affected by the notion that men are supposed to look bigger than women, as lorber and martin (2007) argue, while the female student feels pressured to look smaller. croll (2005) affirms that “puberty for boys brings characteristics typically admired by society—height, speed, broadness, and strength” (p. 155). however, a late development of these characteristics, as could possibly be jorge’s case, may “have an impact on body image as well as psychological health.” (croll, 2005, p. 155) the feelings these students express towards their bodies reflect broader social structures that define men’s characteristics as “superior to women’s, thus justifying men’s social dominance” (lorber & martin, 2007, p. 232). when men do not achieve this expected dominance and such masculinity is challenged, it may result in a negative body image as in jorge’s speech. although some women feel they should look smaller than men, three out of eleven girls partially challenged what lorber and martin (2007) and croll (2005) point out when it comes to female standards of beauty. they affirmed they would like to get a little weight and look bigger, as shown in the speeches below: sobre meu corpo, eu sinto que pode melhorar tipo eu engordar um pouco e entrar na academia para ficar com o corpo definido e com as pernas e os glúteos maiores. (luiza, female, iq) [in relation to my body, i feel that it can be improved, like, i could gain some weight and go to the gym to get a fit body with bigger legs and glutes.] particularmente eu gosto do meu corpo e da minha aparência, mas acho que ele deve mudar já que quero que minhas pernas e meu glúteo cresçam mais um pouco. (maria clara, female, iq) [i particularly like my body and my appearance, but i think it should be changed, since i want my legs and my glutes to grow a little.] às vezes eu me sinto mal por me sentir feia e magra de mais, isso é uma das piores coisas, não se sentir bem com você mesma. eu poderia ser diferente. (isabela, female, iq) [sometimes i feel bad for feeling ugly and too thin. this is one of the worst things, not feeling good about yourself. i could be different.] the standard these girls are trying to achieve is different from lorber and martin’s (2007) observations 21profile: issues teach. prof. dev., vol. 21 no. 1, jan-jun, 2019. issn 1657-0790 (printed) 2256-5760 (online). bogotá, colombia. pages 13-26 a discussion in english language students' body image: beauty standards and fatness in terms of size. however, mentioning the word “big” as a desired physical trait does not mean they want to challenge social norms or get fat, but that they intend to get muscular. this “new standard” is also legitimized by media discourses as we show in the excerpt below, published in one of the most famous brazilian sports site: currently, the female body standard has been changing. now women want to have a stronger and well-shaped body. . . . the female public wants thicker thighs, larger glutes, stronger arms, increasing the muscular mass. (oliveira, 2014, para. 1) in the rs, the teacher researcher had the chance to discuss his lessons with the collaborator and try to expand his views about them. here, we bring an event in which a boy said to a girl she could not be cured with photoshop: isabela: [quando você mostrou o vídeo sobre manipulação em photoshop], ela falou: “deixa eu baixar esse photoshop”. e o outro aluno falou: “você não tem cura não”. [[when you showed the video about photoshop manipulation], she said: “i want to download this photoshop”. and then the other student said: “you don’t have any cure”.] [...] pedro: então assim, ela não tem cura. o que ele acabou de falar? que tem um padrão melhor que o outro, e que não tem como cê chegar nesse padrão. [so, she does not have any cure. what has he just said? that there is a better pattern than the other and that you cannot achieve this beauty pattern.] isabela: é como se [o photoshop] fosse uma cura, né, então ela tá doente. [it’s as if [photoshop] were a cure, right? so, she is sick.] pedro: sim, a gente patologiza tudo, transforma tudo em doença. feiura é doença. pra que isso? pra controlar as pessoas. porque tudo que é doença, controla a gente e influencia o nosso modo de viver e agir. [yes, we pathologize everything, transform everything into a disease. being “ugly” is a disease. why? to control people, because everything that is considered a disease controls us and influences our way of living and acting.] (teacher and collaborator, male and female, rs) the event narrated by the collaborator may not be related to how a student defines his/her body image, but it is important to show how notions of beauty can be established in an interaction, and, therefore, influence one’s body image. we can observe how the student opens the discussion for medicalization by indexing his speech with the word cure. since cure refers to a whole array of words related to health, such as medicine and treatment, he medicalizes the other’s difference according to his perspective. conrad (2005) affirms that the body, mainly the female body, “has become a project, from ‘extreme makeover’ to minor touch ups, and medicine has become the vehicle for improvement” (p. 8). we must also note the gendered differences in beauty standards, as the student who uttered such message is male, and the student who desired being photoshopped is female. we agree with oliver (2006) and conrad (2005) that medicalization processes of divergent bodies is of great interest to the cosmetic and pharmaceutical industries, and “drug companies are having an increasing impact on the boundaries of the normal and the pathological, becoming active agents for social control” (conrad, 2005, p. 11). interestingly enough, we must also remember that these discourses are inside the english language classroom, constituting it as an essential place for the problematization of such discourses. another aspect to be considered is how students personalized the theme in the final interview. in the fi, they talked about the classes and the relationship of the themes with their lives. in table 4, we show the quantity of students who personalized the themes: table 4. personalization of the themes personalization no personalization total male 4 (50%) 4 (50%) 8 female 8 (73%) 3 (27%) 11 total 12 (63%) 7 (37%) 19 note. from 23 students, only 19 participated in the fi. our criterium for analyzing the personalization of the theme was: students telling personal experiences universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras22 de lima bastos & pessoa they went through because of the bodies they have/ had. from the twelve students who personalized the theme, five reported stories especially about bullying experiences, either being the perpetrator or the victim. in the following fragments, we have an example of a girl telling how she bullied fat children when she was a kid and a boy telling how he suffered from bullying: eu já era bem preconceituosa quando eu era pequena, em relação a pessoa que era gordinha. hoje eu me arrependo, acho ridículo, né? mas já mudei essa forma. me arrependo já por ter xingado, batido, essas pessoas, que eram colega de sala e só pelo fato de ser gordinha eu achava horrível. (jymmi, female, fi) [i was really prejudiced in relation to fat people when i was little. today i regret it, i think it is ridiculous. i changed. i regret having called names and hitting these people who were my classmates. just because of the fact they were fat, they were terrible people to me.] eu já fui gordo quando eu era menor e eu já sofri bullying quando eu era menor. uma vez eu tava passando numa pracinha, aí vinha três meninos e eles começou a me bater porque eu era gordo. e com isso eu fiquei com raia e até fiz dieta pra emagrecer. (scorpion, male, fi) [i used to be fat when i was little and i suffered from bullying. one day, i was passing by a square, and then three boys came and they started hitting me because i was fat. then, i got really angry and started dieting to get thinner.] jymmi seems to consider the fat body as “a bodily abnormality and a form of deviance” (harjunen, 2002, p. 81) and as deserving punishment. the speeches also confirm harjunen’s position that the “school is one of the most central places where girls are taught the boundaries of the acceptable or ideal female body” (harjunen, 2002, p. 90). in the case presented, it is not just the fat female body that is marginalized at school, but also the male body as in scorpion’s case. moreover, the reports are also in accordance with the conclusion silva et al. (2014) reached in their study: people who deviate from this acceptable body “are rejected and even excluded from the group when it is perceived they do not put any effort in improving their appearances” (p. 442). seven out of these twelve students mentioned how standards of beauty were oppressive to them in various contexts, family being one of them. in the following dialogue, we have ana clara’s speech about her life and her family: ana clara: [...] na minha família, eles costumam achar que os magros são mais bonitos, mas a maior parte da minha família é tudo gordo. [in my family, they usually think that thin people are prettier, but most of my relatives are fat.] pedro: mas como assim eles acham os magros mais bonitos? [but how come they think thin people are prettier?] ana clara: é porque a minha mãe, ela sempre tá propondo pra mim emagrecer, porque ela acha que eu não sou saudável, digamos, porque meu peso é muito grande, porque fica difícil pra encontrar roupa, pra encontrar alguém que goste de mim do jeito que eu sou. aí por isso ela quer que eu emagreça [com voz trêmula]. [it is because of my mother, she is always asking me to get thinner, because she thinks it is not healthy, let’s say, because i am overweight, because it is difficult to find clothes, to find somebody who really likes me the way i am. that’s why she wants me to get thinner [with a trembling voice]]. pedro: o que você acha disso? [what do you think about that?] ana clara: eu acho muito pesado porque às vezes eu choro, porque nem minha mãe me aceita do jeito que eu sou. [i think it is very sad because sometimes i cry, because not even my mother accepts me the way i am.] (student and teacher, female and male, fi) in ana clara’s case, it is her family which is the institution that attempts to control, normalize, and make her body docile (foucault, 1995). ana clara subjectivizes her mother as hierarchically superior, and thus, as being in a position of control and touting normalization. her family also defines what is beautiful and what is not, and “obesity is not seen as an accepted mode of being” (harjunen, 2003, p. 6). ana clara’s experience corroborates with other studies which affirm that family is in a crucial position to develop a positive body image in adolescents, and the lack of family support may result in body dissatisfaction (croll, 2005). notwithstanding, it seems that her life “is put on hold to wait for the day 23profile: issues teach. prof. dev., vol. 21 no. 1, jan-jun, 2019. issn 1657-0790 (printed) 2256-5760 (online). bogotá, colombia. pages 13-26 a discussion in english language students' body image: beauty standards and fatness . . . [she] has lost weight” (harjunen, 2003, p. 6), that is, her ability to act in this world is static and her mother does not see her as “a competent agent” (harjunen, 2003, p. 6). from ana clara’s experience, we can see how fat people are subjected to a kind of oppression, by means of which it is understood that it is the individual’s responsibility to be accepted in society and the only way to achieve that is getting thinner. as presented before, twelve out of nineteen students personalized the theme. the other seven students did not mention personal stories in the interview, but five of them classified the experience of discussing such themes as important. besides, three of them told stories related to the theme about people they knew, and three out of the seven affirmed they enjoyed the lessons. final thoughts fatness and beauty standards are themes which, to our concern, have not been much addressed by critical applied linguists in classroom research. we aimed to focus on how adolescent students in a brazilian public school classroom defined their body image and personalized the themes beauty standards and fatness. even though the research uses local empirical material, we emphasize that the theme discussed is of global interest, since body dissatisfaction rates have increased considerably worldwide (moy, 2015). our study corroborates with others (croll, 2005; harjunen, 2009, lorber & martin, 2007; mason, 2012; petroski, pelegrini, & glaner, 2012) in the sense that body image is a gendered subject, that is, female and male adolescents experience their bodies differently because of gendered social constructions around concepts of beauty. moreover, regardless of whether they are following a lean thin beauty standard or a muscular one, we could see how women are much more pressured not to deviate from beauty standards. differences regarding students’ sexuality and race were not taken into consideration because of research time constraints, but we consider it to be of utmost relevance to find out how intersectionalization of other variables affects body image. twelve of the nineteen students who took part in the fi personalized the themes by telling personal stories. five told stories related to bullying, whether being the victim or the perpetrator, while seven told stories related to oppression suffered because of beauty standards. from these personalizations, we consider the importance of studying fatness from a social perspective, since fat is an adjective that characterizes an experience (cooper, 2010), not a disease. our empirical material suggests that being fat constrains fat people’s agency, limiting their possibilities in life. such notions reflect macro structures of power and need to be problematized through questioning the discourse of obesity and the beauty standards. we agree with moita lopes (2003) that language is discourse, and, as we have shown, the research participants are deeply affected by discourses of obesity and beauty standards. if we teach language following a structuralist approach favouring the teaching of language structures, we believe we are helping the dissemination and reproduction of naturalized discourses, such as the discourse of obesity. these naturalized discourses are not innocent or neutral: they are always ideological. problematizing fatness and body size in the language class should be aimed at making students feel positive about their bodies, so that students may have the opportunity to develop positive perceptions of their bodies and change the way they position themselves in the world. considering that “the way we view our bodies determines the way we participate in the world” (baker, 2014), if students are not confident with their bodies, we will not achieve one of the main purposes of education, which is subjectification, defined by biesta (2015) as “the way in which children and young people come to exist as subjects of initiative and responsibility rather than as objects of the actions of others” (p. 77). finally, we believe and hope that our interpretation of the empirical material and the theoretical discussion universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras24 de lima bastos & pessoa developed will raise the interest of critical applied linguists and language teachers to develop research and teaching practices based on the themes addressed, since they are strongly related to students’ lives. references baker, j. 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(2012). challenges in critical language teaching. tesol quarterly, 46(4), 753-776. https://doi.org/10.1002/tesq.46. pessoa, r. r., & de urzêda freitas, m. t. (2016). língua como espaço de poder: uma pesquisa de sala de aula na perspectiva crítica [language as space of power: classroom research from a critical perspective]. revista brasileira de linguística aplicada, 16(1), 133-156. https:// dx.doi.org/10.1590/1984-639820158394. petroski, e., pelegrini, a., & glaner, m. (2012). motivos e prevalência de insatisfação com a imagem corporal em adolescentes [reasons and prevalence of body image dissatisfaction in adolescents]. ciência & saúde universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras26 de lima bastos & pessoa coletiva, 17(4), 1071-1077. https://doi.org/10.1590/ s1413-81232012000400028. rabinow, p. (ed.). (1984). the foucault reader. new york, us: pantheon books. silva, m., taquette, s., & coutinho, e. (2014). senses of body image in adolescents in elementary school. revista de about the authors pedro augusto de lima bastos is a graduate student in linguistic studies at universidade federal de goiás. his research interests are decolonial and critical perspectives on language teaching and language teacher education. rosane rocha pessoa is an associate professor of english at the faculdade de letras of the universidade federal de goiás, regional goiânia. she develops research in the areas of language teaching and language teacher education grounded on critical perspectives. saúde pública, 48(3), 438-444. http://dx.doi.org/10.1590/ s0034-8910.2014048005083. wright, j. (2009). biopower, biopedagogies and the obesity epidemic. in j. wright & v. harwood (eds.), biopolitics and the obesity epidemic: governing bodies (pp. 1-14). new york, us: routledge. children’s social representations of english teaching and learning: a study in medellín, colombia 97profile: issues teach. prof. dev., vol. 24 no. 1, jan-jun, 2022. issn 1657-0790 (printed) 2256-5760 (online). bogotá, colombia. pages 97-113 https://doi.org/10.15446/profile.v24n1.93408 children’s social representations of english teaching and learning: a study in medellín, colombia las representaciones sociales de los niños sobre la enseñanza y el aprendizaje del inglés: un estudio en medellín, colombia isabel cristina cadavid-múnera1 universidad de antioquia, medellín, colombia this article reports the findings of a qualitative interpretive research study that explored the social representations children have about the teaching and learning of english as a foreign language in elementary schools in medellín, colombia. sixty children in first, third, and fifth grades of public and private schools participated in the study. techniques such as drawings, pretend play, conversations, and semi-structured interviews were used to collect data. three analogies summarize children’s perceptions in this study: learning as “echo,” teaching as a power instrument, and english as a tool to “survive” or to “live and interact with others.” finally, a reflection and some implications for the teaching of english to children are presented. keywords: english teaching, learning english, perceptions, social representations, young learners este artículo presenta los resultados de una investigación de corte cualitativo interpretativo que exploró las representaciones sociales que tienen los niños sobre la enseñanza y el aprendizaje del inglés en las escuelas primarias de medellín, colombia. sesenta niños de primero, tercero y quinto grados de escuelas públicas y privadas de la ciudad participaron en este estudio. se recolectaron datos por medio de dibujos, juegos dramáticos, conversaciones y entrevistas semiestructuradas. tres analogías resumen las percepciones que tienen los niños: el aprendizaje como “eco”; la enseñanza como “instrumento de poder”; y el inglés como una herramienta para “sobrevivir” o para “vivir e interactuar con los demás”. finalmente, se comparte una reflexión sobre la enseñanza de inglés a niños en nuestro contexto. palabras clave: aprendizaje de inglés, enseñanza de inglés, niños, percepciones, representaciones sociales 1 isabel cristina cadavid-múnera  https://orcid.org/0000-0002-9843-037x · email: isabel.cadavid@udea.edu.co how to cite this article (apa, 7th ed.): cadavid-múnera, i. c. (2022). children’s social representations of english teaching and learning: a study in medellín, colombia. profile: issues in teachers’ professional development, 24(1), 97–113. https://doi.org/10.15446/profile.v24n1.93408 this article was received on february 5, 2021 and accepted on september 7, 2021. this is an open access article distributed under the terms of the creative commons license attribution-noncommercial-noderivatives 4.0 international license. consultation is possible at https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/ https://doi.org/10.15446/profile.v24n1.93408 https://orcid.org/0000-0002-9843-037x mailto:isabel.cadavid@udea.edu.co https://doi.org/10.15446/profile.v24n1.93408 https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/ universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras98 cadavid-múnera introduction in her article about doing research with children, punch (2015) states how, in an adult-dominated society, children are not used to freely expressing their views or to being taken seriously by adults. typically, there has been an adult-centeredness in matters that concern children directly, and very rarely, their voices are heard. in the case of including english in the elementary school curriculum in colombia, for instance, voices from experts, scholars, teachers, and adults, in general, have been consulted, but children have not been asked; their voices have not been included. this article presents a research project carried out with children and for children, not only about children; a research project that asked them their views about english in their everyday lives and about the process of learning and teaching this language at school. two primary purposes guide this article: first, the description of this research project and its findings; second, a reflection on the teaching of english to children and an invitation to question our adult views based on theirs. what can adults learn from children, and from what they have to say? are young learners considered active participants in the process of education? this article will be structured as follows: first, a description of the research project that includes objectives, theoretical framework, data collection instruments, and results supported by evidence from drawings, pretend plays, and conversations with the children; the article will conclude with a reflection about english teaching to children in our context. background this study was conducted in medellín, colombia, with elementary school children from public and private schools. in this context, english can be considered a foreign language since the language surrounding students and the one in which life unfolds is spanish; english is a school subject, and most children in public schools have little exposure to the language at school and little access to the language outside the school context. even though it is the medium of instruction in some private schools, and is considered a second language, this is not the case for most public elementary schools in the city. local researchers have found a gap in the teaching of english in public and private schools regarding the teachers’ language proficiency and use of english in classes, the access to professional development programs, and teaching resources (bastidas & muñoz-ibarra, 2011; correa et al., 2012; gonzález, 2010). researchers agree that most teachers in public primary schools are teaching english because the law imposed it, but in most cases, primary teachers do not have the necessary preparation to face this task since they hold undergraduate or graduate degrees in areas other than foreign language teaching. besides, they are responsible for teaching all subjects (math, social studies, physical education, english, spanish, and others). english lessons are held once a week, usually for 45 minutes, with overcrowded classes of 45 to 50 students. activities carried out in those lessons are mainly affective or organizational; translation is used to ensure understanding and teachers often model and organize, while the learners generally answer the teacher’s questions, repeat individually or chorally, or copy from the board. as can be seen, the teaching of english in elementary schools in our context has been explored and insights have been gained from the perspective of researchers and teachers. we know what teachers think and do, but we do not know what children think or feel; their voices have been missing. although their views can contribute to making classrooms better for learners, they have not been included so as to express their ideas in processes of planning, assessment, or even research. it is precisely within this framework, that a group of researchers at universidad de antioquia decided to conduct this study to open the road of exploration of children’s attitudes, beliefs, and information regarding english and the processes of teaching and learning it in the city. we acknowledge that children’s views of 99profile: issues teach. prof. dev., vol. 24 no. 1, jan-jun, 2022. issn 1657-0790 (printed) 2256-5760 (online). bogotá, colombia. pages 97-113 children’s social representations of english teaching and learning: a study in medellín, colombia teaching and learning can inform curricular, methodological, and pedagogical decisions that affect children directly. those views can also help adults to question their beliefs and practices regarding english teaching. if we want to move towards educational processes that are truly learner-centered, the voices of those learners should be seriously considered and made visible. thus, we decided to explore children’s perceptions through social representations (hereafter sr), as this concept encompasses attitudes, beliefs, interpretations, and information young learners have. even though the importance of the study of sr in the field of education in general and foreign language education in particular is undeniable, there are very few studies about this specific topic with children in colombia. so, the study presented here is a contribution to the field of foreign language teaching as it focuses on the viewpoints of children and opens the path to future research. the purpose of the study was first, to explore children’s sr about english in their everyday lives and about the processes of teaching and learning it; and second, to try to derive possible implications that these representations would have for the teaching of english as a foreign language (efl) in our context to illuminate decision-making at the level of classroom practices and policy-making processes. theoretical framework social representations the concept of sr, one of the objects of study for social psychology, is one of the underpinnings of this project. sr were first studied and conceptualized by the social psychologist serge moscovici in his 1961 doctoral thesis where he claims that reality is a social construction arising from the interaction among subjects belonging to a group, and that these individuals, in turn, rely on this construction to develop their subjectivity and their position in the world. in the words of sotirakopoulou and breakwell (1992), sr become concrete in the ideas, beliefs, values, practices, feelings, images, attitudes, knowledge, understanding, and explanations about a particular social object. conversely, jodelet (1991) defines sr as images that summarize diverse meanings that allow people to interpret social events; they are categories that can be used to classify situations, circumstances, events, and people with whom we interact. both moscovici and jodelet highlight the importance of the social nature of knowledge construction and acknowledge the critical role played by the context in the construction and interpretation of sr. in the same vein, howarth (2006) characterizes sr as being the products of the interaction among individuals, that is, collective meaning construction on objects that allow for the identification of what is relevant to individuals in a given group and how they are affected by them. sr give an account of what things are truly real or valid for a group or society. similarly, for arayaumaña (2002), sr are mechanisms of classification and interpretation built within a community and allow us to define and make sense of the world we live in. araya-umaña (2002) defines three dimensions of an sr: attitude, information, and field of representation. attitude is the affective element of all sr. this component is always present and is the most evident of the three dimensions since it is expressed through emotions. although attitude is present in all sr, this alone does not constitute the sr. information refers to the knowledge that a group has about a social object. this dimension shows prejudices and stereotypes people might have about social phenomena. the field of representation is the dimension in which attitude and information are hierarchized and systematized, giving place to opinions, beliefs, and understandings. these elements allow the creation of conceptions and positions towards real-world issues. this three-dimensional framework will be used to present the findings of this study. universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras100 cadavid-múnera social representations, education, and foreign languages howarth (2006) points out how the field of sr is continuously growing, and, in the last 40 years, has interested new researchers from all over the world, especially europe, south america, australasia, and even the usa. one likely reason for this expansion is the richness that this concept offers in reading and interpreting social realities and phenomena. its multidisciplinary nature makes it a complex, polysemic notion that provides insights about different issues in different social and human sciences, including education and foreign language teaching. in education, jodelet (2011) highlights the appropriacy of the sr approach as an instrument and a mediation well suited to the multiple problems tackled in the field. sr are valuable in education because they allow an approximation to teachers’ and learners’ understandings of events in their environments and shape the way they act. the flexible nature of sr can be used to analyze various aspects of school life including the curriculum, interactions, the functions and purposes of education, and educational policies. according to jodelet (2011), in addition to giving an account of the conceptions that are held about educational realities and allowing their interpretation, sr have a pragmatic impact and contribute to shaping practices; also, exploring and analyzing sr sheds light on how these processes are perceived and how they can be modified. similarly, in the field of foreign languages, sr have been the object of study both for linguistics and language teaching. in this regard, castellotti and moore (2002) point out how sociolinguists have studied people’s attitudes and representations regarding, among others, languages and their nature, position, or function. concerning the teaching of foreign languages, the authors show the significant influence of the learners’ representations on the language learning process since they can reinforce and enhance it or, on the contrary, inhibit it. the study of representations provides useful insights on both perceptions and practices in foreign language teaching and have allowed the exploration of a wide range of diverse themes that include, but are not limited to, teachers’ beliefs (gabillon, 2012), culture in efl classrooms (menard-warwick, 2009), identity issues in textbooks (yen, 2000), and the perception of preservice teachers about racism and ethnocentrism (carignan et al., 2005). as can be seen, sr is a multifaceted concept that lends itself to explaining and comprehending complex educational phenomena. it is this connection to education in general, and to learning processes in particular, that makes sr a central and valuable concept for this study. the analysis of children’s perceptions of teaching and learning english can inform classroom practices, decision-making processes about education policies in foreign languages, and the relevance to the context where such policies are implemented. following castellotti and moore (2002), the importance of sr for educators lies in the fact that they would allow teachers to understand some language learning phenomena, and to implement suitable teaching activities. in the same vein, kuchah’s (2013) study involving young learners and their teachers in identifying good practice reveals that both teachers and learners have their own perceptions about what constitutes good practice, and those views (sometimes convergent, and sometimes divergent) have more impact on the life of the classroom than the guidelines established by the ministry of education. the author suggests that classroom practices should be grounded in the sociocultural realities experienced by the learners, and even be elicited from them. hence, the importance of doing research that includes the voices of children on this issue and gives them the opportunity to express what they think. the study the core question that guided this study was: what are the sr that children in private and public schools in medellin have regarding the english language and 101profile: issues teach. prof. dev., vol. 24 no. 1, jan-jun, 2022. issn 1657-0790 (printed) 2256-5760 (online). bogotá, colombia. pages 97-113 children’s social representations of english teaching and learning: a study in medellín, colombia the processes of teaching and learning it? we wanted to explore children’s views about the importance of english in general and in their everyday lives, what they use it for, and what they think about the teaching and learning of english and its significance in their lives. a qualitative interpretive research methodology was used in the study, and within this paradigm, the grounded theory methodology was selected to analyze data. strauss and corbin (1998) state that grounded theory is drawn from data, offers insight, and enhances understanding of the object of study. the authors also highlight that theory derived from data is more closely related to and resembles reality. in this study we aimed at understanding the meanings and interpretations of children and getting close to their sr regarding the teaching and learning of english. to do this, a grounded theory analytical process was used as categories emerged from the data and were not previously established. the project was developed in four stages. first, participants were selected and contacted: two private and two public elementary schools in the city were selected, and in each of them, three groups of children from first, third, and fifth grade were randomly selected to participate. sixty children altogether participated in the project. their parents signed consent forms before the implementation of the research. after this, data collection took place. given that this study aimed precisely at delving into children’s ideas, attitudes, and interpretations, it involved the implementation of data collection techniques that allowed us to come close to the children in a non-inhibiting way, namely, drawings and pretend play sessions, both accompanied by a conversation with the children to unveil the meanings they wanted to convey. data were collected in four different sessions in every school where we worked with the groups corresponding to first, third, and fifth grades separately. the purpose of the first session was to get to know each other, explain the purpose of the work to be done, have children get familiarized with the researchers and the tools to be used like tape recorders and video camera so that these devices were not a cause of distraction in future sessions. in the second session, children were asked to draw the english class, and then there was a semi-structured interview with one of the researchers; the third session was about pretend play: children were asked to “act out” one english class they liked, and one they disliked. video recordings of both were kept, and a conversation about these dramatizations took place afterward. the final session was a closure in which the children presented their drawings as in an art exhibit, followed by viewing the videos and a conversation to collect their final remarks and show appreciation for their participation. after obtaining the data and classifying the information by institutions and grades, we created an identification code for each one and we started the analytic process. for this, we used nvivo software, which allows uploading the data in their original format, that is, the drawings scans, scripts, and videos of the pretend play sessions, and the transcripts of interviews conducted after the drawings and pretend plays. once the information was organized, and coded, we used an inductive approach to data analysis (data-driven), as categories emerged from the data. this process implied open categorization, making memos or preliminary elaborations and interpretations of data, identification of a core category, and establishing relationships among categories, within the framework of grounded theory presented by creswell (2011). data analysis analysis of the drawings once the drawings were organized and properly coded, we analyzed them as visual texts, trying to make sense of the symbols, signs, and messages, that were present in those depictions of the english class. we use the term “visual texts” in the sense that albers et al. (2009) use it, referring to “a structure of messages within which are embedded social conventions and/ universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras102 cadavid-múnera or perceptions, and which also presents the discourse communities to which the visual text maker identifies” (p. 239). we used scheme analysis (sonesson, 1988) as a reference for interpreting the drawings and their messages. these schemata refer to traits or the organization of elements found within a visual text, which defines its content and meanings. based on the author, we analyzed the following schemata in the drawings: (a) principles of relevance, which include intensity of shapes, volume, repetition, colors, exaggeration and distortion of human features, size of human figure; (b) body scheme, which includes hair, body shape, directionality, clothing, and body parts; (c) behavior, which includes setting, actions, roles and interaction with others; (d) activities, which include the location of people involved in the drawings (students and teacher), active or passive movement, and so on. the appendix illustrates how these drawings were analyzed. from the analysis of those schemata, categories emerged. analysis of pretend plays every pretend play session was video-recorded, and each video text was transcribed in the form of a script that included actions and dialogue. the analysis of the data collected through the pretend plays was based on the content of such scripts. we identified recurrent aspects present in the way girls and boys assumed each character in the game. the framework of analysis proposed by sierra-restrepo (1998) was used for analysis. it focuses on actions, characteristics, expressions, relationships, and interactions between participants. with this framework we identified the role of students and teachers, the types of interactions that took place, the rapport between teachers and students, the kinds of activities and materials used in the classes, and the language of instruction, among others. based on the analysis of those elements in each of the scripts, we drew closer to children’s thoughts and feelings about the english class. categories emerged from the analysis; they were saturated with instances from all the sources (drawings, pretend plays, interviews), then refined and triangulated to obtain the findings presented below. although the examples from data presented to support the findings belong to one of the data sources, the findings condense the results obtained from analyzing all the sources used and are not limited to one or some of them. triangulation was ensured by the researchers’ perspectives and different information sources, namely, drawings, pretend plays, and conversations with the children. findings were condensed in the three dimensions of an sr: attitude (what they feel), information (what they know), and field of representation (what they believe or interpret; araya-umaña, 2002). findings what they feel one of the dimensions of sr, is attitude. it refers to emotions and feelings towards a social phenomenon or event. in this case, both public and private school children reported having a positive attitude towards english and the english class. concerning english, they expressed that it is a very important language, and there is a need to learn it (see below “what they believe or interpret”). regarding the english class, there was a generally positive perception of the activities developed, and the class atmosphere was described as pleasant. researcher: decime, ¿por qué decidiste dibujar esta clase de inglés y no otra? [tell me, why did you decide to draw this class and not another one?] student 1 (grade 3, public school): porque, no, porque me gusta, el momento en que ella llega es como algo alegre, como que uno cambia de clase, y ya es más divertida, y ya no hay que escribir tanto. [because i like it; the moment she arrives is like something happy, one changes to another class and it is more fun, and you do not have to write much.] 103profile: issues teach. prof. dev., vol. 24 no. 1, jan-jun, 2022. issn 1657-0790 (printed) 2256-5760 (online). bogotá, colombia. pages 97-113 children’s social representations of english teaching and learning: a study in medellín, colombia figure 1. drawing of the english class by student 4, grade 3, private school the previous quote summarizes two recurrent aspects highlighted by children in conversations: first, their positive attitude towards the english class and most of activities, and second, their dislike for writing activities in class. they refer to those activities as “copiar” (copying) and they consider this a boring class activity that takes a considerable amount of class time. in general terms, the english class was perceived as a cheerful, relaxed, agreeable moment that was different from the rest of the classes in the school day. most children expressed through drawings and in the conversations how they enjoyed the classes and the activities proposed by their teachers. the atmosphere of classes is perceived as positive; children in public and private schools enjoy activities like games and songs (see figure 1). they feel that the class environment is not stressful, and they do not find the english class especially difficult or unappealing. concerning the attitude of teachers, children presented them as displaying a positive attitude, most drawings show teachers with smiley faces, and children used the adjective “feliz” [happy] to describe them. based on the analysis of pretend plays, we can state that when dramatizing the english class they liked, teachers were represented as having a respectful, kind attitude towards students, and, in turn, children also had a positive attitude towards the class and the activities. from the interviews, we could infer how children established a causal relationship between children’s behavior and teachers’ positive attitude. children repeatedly expressed how, in order for the teacher to be in a good mood, their behavior was essential. describing his drawing, (see figure 2) a third-grade boy stated: el dibujo consiste en cuándo está el teacher feliz y cuándo está enojado. dependiendo de nuestro comportamiento se enoja o se pone feliz. feliz, nosotros estamos escribiendo, terminamos rápido, nos desatrasamos, todo. [the drawing represents when the teacher is happy and when he is upset. depending on our behavior, he gets mad or happy. happy, we write, finish quickly, catch up with work, everything.] it is striking to see in figure 2 how, when the teacher is happy, children are represented as if they were a group of little immobile “stones”; conversely, at the bottom, the teacher’s face changes when children are raising their hands and moving. this seems to indicate that a passive role from children is required for the teacher to be “happy,” and also how children’s positive behavior is rewarded by a positive attitude from the teacher that, in turn, becomes a critical element for a good classroom environment. this highlights the connection between teacher’s positive attitude and learners’ behavior. universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras104 cadavid-múnera figure 2. drawing of the english class by student 3, grade 3, private school the interrelation of affective factors and second/ foreign language learning has been the object of study of researchers from different fields. in educational psychology, wang and wu (2020) argue that the learning outcome of the second language acquisition is greatly influenced by the affective factors of the learner, such as motivation, attitude, anxiety, and empathy, to name but a few. in the field of language teaching, kumar (2017) also points out that emotions filter all learning and cognition, so the study of affective factors in second language learning is quite significant. the impact of affective factors on the learning process makes evident the need of provoking and sustaining positive attitudes towards learning and teaching. what they know based on the information children acquire from the adults around them, as well as media and propaganda, children consider english a very important language in the world and derive from there the importance of learning it. for instance: como el inglés es el lenguaje universal y mi mamá dice que yo soy muy disciplinada, entonces… [as english is the universal language and my mom says that i am very disciplined, then…]. (student 4, grade 5, private school) pues, es otra puerta que abrimos, porque cada vez que uno habla inglés es abrir una ventana. [well, it is another door we open, because every time one speaks english is like opening a window.] researcher: ¿para qué aprender inglés? [why learn english?] student 5 (grade 5, private school): para que nosotros avancemos y ellos nos puedan entender. [so that we move forward, and they can understand us.] these quotes show how english is seen as the requirement to connect to the world, since it opens doors probably to new possibilities, to a good job, to a better life. the last quote establishes a difference between them (english-speaking people) and us (colombians) and highlights how learning english is for us a sign of progress, a possibility to understand them, and also a requirement as we have to learn this language if we are to move forward. when asked about the use of english in their future, children repeatedly answered: researcher: ¿y a uno para qué le sirve por ejemplo aprender inglés? [and what is the use of learning english?] student 4 (grade 5, public school): de pronto cuando trabaje, una reunión o algo, a veces es en inglés. [maybe at work, meetings sometimes are in english.] 105profile: issues teach. prof. dev., vol. 24 no. 1, jan-jun, 2022. issn 1657-0790 (printed) 2256-5760 (online). bogotá, colombia. pages 97-113 children’s social representations of english teaching and learning: a study in medellín, colombia figure 3. drawings by third-grade students: private school (left) and public school (right) as can be seen, the discourse of children in public and private schools has been permeated by the values and views prevalent in their contexts in which the job market is one of the main reasons for learning english. the images presented to children in our context highlight the importance of learning english, not an additional language, and the purposes for learning it are usually instrumental, being access to a better job the most recurrent. regarding the context for learning english, in general terms, children see it as circumscribed to the classroom and to the use of books and dictionaries. figure 3 illustrates this point. children also show awareness of the importance of the context when learning a language. in their own words: es que es muy difícil aprender uno inglés en un lugar en el que uno no ve inglés, todo no es inglés como en estados unidos que cualquier letrerito está en inglés, todo está en inglés. es más difícil. [it is very difficult to learn english in a place where one does not see english, everything is not english as in the united states where any little sign is in english, everything is in english. it is more difficult.] (student 1, grade 5, private school) yo pienso que se aprende como el español estando rodeado de muchas personas que lo hablen, entonces uno se acostumbra. [i think that english is learned as spanish, being surrounded by many people that speak the language, then, you get used to it.] (student 5, grade 5, public school) children consider that learning english requires being surrounded by a supportive environment where the language is used and, for that reason, it is difficult to learn this language in our context where exposure to the language outside the classroom is scarce. in contrast to what they think about the process of learning the language and about the need of being exposed to it, children in elementary school know from their experience in class that learning english implies repeating, writing, and memorizing lists of words and grammar structures even though they consider that the purpose of learning a language means being able to speak it fluently in interactions with others: “saber inglés es como un idioma y una forma de comunicarse con otras personas.” [knowing english is like a language and a way of communicating with other people.] (student 3, grade 3, private school). as to learning, researcher: ¿tú cómo has aprendido inglés? [how have you learned english?] student 2 (grade 3, public school): porque la profe nos y repite, y repite, y ya nosotros lo sabemos, entonces cuando ya repetimos, y repetimos, ya primero nos sale mal porque no hacemos bien la pronunciación, y después ya que uno repite y repite ya, ya lo sabe bien. [because the teacher repeats, and repeats, and we learn it, so when we repeat, and repeat, first it turns out badly because we do not pronounce well, and then, as you repeat and repeat, you learn it.] there seems to be a gap between children’s views of english, what it means to have a good command of the language, and what happens in class. english for life outside school is one thing, and english at school is another. this universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras106 cadavid-múnera information children have about language itself and about teaching and learning processes is nourished by their experiences inside and outside schools and what they hear from adults and the media around them. what they believe and interpret this third dimension, field of representation, is related to what children believe and interpret. the findings about english, its usefulness in children’s lives, and what they believe about the processes of learning and teaching it are presented through the following analogies: learning as “echo”; teaching as a “power tool”; and english to “survive” or “to live and interact.” after analyzing the data and keeping in mind that sr are images that help explain the social phenomena studied, we decided to select images that captured the essence of the sr children had regarding english in their lives, and what learning and teaching meant to them. after establishing relationships among categories that emerged from the drawings, pretend plays, and interviews, the images that better depicted children’s beliefs and interpretations were learning seen as “echo” as it represents the idea of repetition, prevailing in the data; teaching as a “power tool” as this image accurately captures what children think about teaching and how they interpret their rapport with teachers; and english to live or survive, as a powerful image to show the difference between the views of children in public and private schools. learning as “echo.” as previously stated, learning is perceived by children in both private and public schools as a process of memorizing lists of words and structures, and being able to repeat them on an oral or written test as proof of their learning. researcher: ¿cómo se aprende inglés? [how do you learn english?] student 2 (grade 5, private school): escribiendo, memorizando, hablándolo, dibujando también hay veces. [writing, memorizing, speaking, and sometimes drawing.] researcher: y fuera de que una persona le repita a uno la palabra y uno se la vaya aprendiendo, ¿cómo más se puede aprender inglés? [and apart from having a person repeating the word for you to learn it, how else can you learn english?] student 3 (grade 3, public school): que uno escuche una palabra y todos los días la repita. [when you listen to a word and repeat it every day.] these answers seem to indicate that english teaching emphasizes activities of mechanical repetition and promotes children’s echoing of what teachers present in class; there are no opportunities to use language creatively, use imagination, or express feelings or ideas. it can be inferred that language is conceived as a code to be mastered, and repetition is the most effective way to achieve this goal. both public and private school children drew and described lessons where the teaching of grammar and vocabulary was the focal point, and their answers emphasized the need to memorize and repeat those lists. even though memorization and repetition are cognitive processes needed for learning a language, it should go beyond mechanical reproduction and promote meaningful uses of the language and social interactions within creative and flexible environments. this was also supported by children when they requested more playful class activities. it is essential then to transcend the mere repetition of words to promote meaningful uses of the language at the level of children. learning a language should be more than just “echo.” teaching as a power instrument. power issues are present in classrooms, and children made them evident in their drawings, pretend play sessions, and conversations. drawings usually depict a teacher in front of the class with the board behind, and children organized in lines working individually indicating a vertical relationship between teacher and students; children are usually seated and paying attention to the teacher with no interaction among themselves (see figures 4 and 5). 107profile: issues teach. prof. dev., vol. 24 no. 1, jan-jun, 2022. issn 1657-0790 (printed) 2256-5760 (online). bogotá, colombia. pages 97-113 children’s social representations of english teaching and learning: a study in medellín, colombia figure 4. drawing by student 3 (grade 5, private school) figure 5. drawing by student 2, grade 3, private school drawings portray children sitting down, writing, and sometimes raising their hands. individual work is recurrent in drawings and in the pretend plays indicating how children’s role is usually a passive, non-interactive one. this teacher-centeredness depicted in the drawings is reinforced by expressions children used to refer to what the teacher does in the classroom. common expressions like “nos pone a aprender, nos pone a escribir” (the teacher makes us learn, or write) show that power lies in the teacher and is not limited to instances of evaluation but has permeated the teaching process as well. only one of the drawings portrayed a child writing on the board; this is definitely the teacher’s action zone that creates distance with well-defined spaces for students and the teacher. these invisible limits reinforce a vertical relationship between the teacher and the children. the classroom setting is usually very similar in all the drawings, and some drawings portray little teacher–student interaction, let alone students’ interaction. both the drawings and pretend play sessions present teacher-centered lessons. the teacher oversees planning, teaching, evaluating, and universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras108 cadavid-múnera discipline, leaving children a passive role of obedience and acceptance. as a result of this, some children report how learning english implies being attentive, silent, and quiet. their role is a passive one. researcher: tell me, how do you learn english? paying attention, listening to the class, having a good memory capacity. (student 1, grade 3, public school) paying attention to the teacher. (student 2, grade 3, public school) listening, not speaking, paying attention, and everything. (student 1, grade 5, public school) more active, interactive, collaborative activities and learning environments are required for children to see english as a language that accomplishes multiple social purposes and to promote more social learning processes with children as the center of the activities. it is important to offer children opportunities for more equitable, less vertical relationships to learn with each other and from each other. one of the instruments traditionally used by teachers to exert their power is grades. however, in this project, we could observe that when teaching, this power was also evident in the control of discipline in the classroom through the punishment of disruptive behavior and the widespread use of writing as punishment. the following excerpt from a pretend play transcript illustrates this point: the teacher (n1) appears with a threatening attitude and points at n2 with her right index finger. teacher: sit down! sit down! n2: ok, ok! (n5 goes to his desk) the teacher stands in front of the students. n3 raises his hand. n3: can you explain this to me, please? teacher: no! silence! (pointing his index to n3). n2: teacher, can i go to the board? teacher: no! (pointing his finger energetically at n2). at the end of this pretend play, students decided to go to the principal to express their unconformity with the english class. now, n1 assumes the role of principal for a few moments. the principal approaches the children. n2: the english teacher is not teaching us anything and scolds us. n3: and it is english class, not scolding class. n4: and she does not even explain to us. principal: i am going to talk to the teacher. he leaves, and students return to the classroom. the teacher (n1) reappears where the children are. teacher: then you are going to write a book of at least five pages. n4: no teacher! this is a depiction of the power teachers have in the classroom, the passive role of obedience expected from students, and what they stated in several instances of conversation: writing is used as punishment. it also shows how students are empowered to take actions leading to change. they voice their inconformity with the principal and, aware of the situation, they act upon it and change it. they are not passively accepting the actions of teachers; they are moving towards change. fortunately, this teacher power is also a possibility; it can be used to make a difference, and some teachers actually do. even though one might expect better teaching practices in private schools given their favorable conditions in terms of resources, equipment, facilities, and prepared teachers, we found that positive teaching practices took place in both contexts regardless of their conditions. children in private schools reported visits to the computer room, song festivals, and connections to other content areas in the english class, and public-school children mentioned the use of some games in class and connection to other areas like physical education. 109profile: issues teach. prof. dev., vol. 24 no. 1, jan-jun, 2022. issn 1657-0790 (printed) 2256-5760 (online). bogotá, colombia. pages 97-113 children’s social representations of english teaching and learning: a study in medellín, colombia teachers make the difference with their ability to seek appropriate pedagogical and didactic strategies to bring children closer to the foreign language. the disparity in teacher preparation and access to equipment and resources means that the processes are different in the public and private sectors. for instance, the use of english in class is more evident in private schools than in public ones. in the drawings, the children reflect this (see figure 6), and also in the pretend plays in which the children of one of the private schools used english when dramatizing the english lesson. this means that children in private schools have more exposure to the language at school and outside school as well, as will be presented in the next section. a reason for this might also be that teachers in private schools hold an undergraduate degree in foreign language teaching, whereas most of the teachers in public schools hold degrees in many different fields, but not in language teaching. therefore, these teachers use different methodologies and use a different language as the means of instruction. figure 6. excerpts of drawings of the english class (boards): private school (left) and public school (right) private schools public schools english as a tool to “survive” or to “live and interact.” this finding reveals a big difference in the way children in public and private institutions conceive english. mostly for the former, english is a tool to pass exams or to obtain passing grades at school, that is, it is a tool to “survive” in their academic environments. in some cases, english is also a tool to “serve” others (foreigners) that come from abroad, and we should be prepared to understand them and determine what they need. in contrast, for the latter, english is a tool to read instructions, play video games, talk with relatives who live abroad, or interact with others when they travel. these two different perspectives reflect the possibilities children have access to or are deprived of depending on their contexts and socio-economic conditions. table 1 presents some answers about the use of english in their lives. universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras110 cadavid-múnera table 1. children’s answers about english use children in private schools children in public schools a veces en el internet hay cosas en inglés, entonces… [sometimes on the internet there are things in english, so…] para estudiar, para pasar todas las materias, y todos los años. [to study, to pass all the subjects, all the school years.] para escribir correos, para mandar cartas a estados unidos, para poder hablar con primas, tías. [to write emails, to send letters to the united states and talk to my cousins, aunts.] en un trabajo o en un restaurante, de pronto cuando viene gente del extranjero. [in a job or in a restaurant, or maybe when people come from abroad.] nos sirve para cuando vamos a viajar. por ejemplo, vamos a viajar a canadá entonces allá podemos intercambiar frases y oraciones con las personas de allá. [it is useful when we travel. for example, we are going to travel to canada, so there we can exchange phrases and sentences with the people there.] para las clases y pa’ las notas. [for the english classes, and also for the grades.] researchers that study sr have emphasized the influence of the context in which sr originate. castellotti and moore (2002) argue how these images are created, preserved, and spread in society through different means like media, literature, manuals, among others. according to the authors: representations vary according to learning macrocontexts, which include language teaching curriculum options, teaching orientations and relationships between languages both in society at large and in the classroom, and micro-contexts, which relate directly to classroom activities and the attitudinal and learning dynamics they set up. (p. 21, emphasis in the original) findings show that in our context, children see english as a universal language, as very important, as a window to another world or the door to the job market. these ideas circulate around them and are perpetuated by the educational system and the media. this project arose from the need to open a space to listen to children’s voices about english teaching and learning in medellín. we learned that it is necessary to develop research projects that can account for what children think and feel concerning education in our colombian context, with a view to illuminating teaching practices and educational policies in this field. research related to the teaching and learning of english in colombia has focused mainly on the perceptions of adults and thus, research that includes and takes seriously the views of children is needed as it could inform changes in the content taught or in the materials and methodologies used. when we hear the voices of children, we can hear our own adult voices and stop for a moment to reflect and question them. how can positive attitudes be supported and enhanced? is this the message we want to convey about teaching and learning? whose interests are we serving? do we want to maintain those power relations as they are? how can our beliefs and practices be transformed? conclusion this article presented a qualitative interpretive study about the sr that children in elementary schools in medellin, colombia, hold regarding english teaching and learning. drawings, pretend play sessions, informal conversations, and semi-structured interviews were used to collect data. findings reveal that both teachers and children have a positive attitude towards the teaching and learning of the language. children perceive english either as a tool to survive in the academic context (public 111profile: issues teach. prof. dev., vol. 24 no. 1, jan-jun, 2022. issn 1657-0790 (printed) 2256-5760 (online). bogotá, colombia. pages 97-113 children’s social representations of english teaching and learning: a study in medellín, colombia school children) or to communicate with others (private school children). for the participants in this study, the learning process is circumscribed to the classroom setting and implies repetition and memorization of words and grammar structures. vertical relationships between teachers and students are widespread, and little interaction is promoted in the english lessons. one of the limitations of this study was the analysis of data coming from children in first grade, given that we found it was difficult for these children to separate the english class from the other school day activities, and also because more knowledge about the cognitive and developmental processes of this group was required to be able to interpret what they expressed. more research is needed concerning the methodological tools to be used with this group of learners and also in the analytical processes to unveil their meanings. this paper is an invitation to further research that explores children’s interpretations, feelings, and thoughts regarding the learning and teaching of additional languages in our context. this may help overcome the adult-centeredness that has characterized research and teaching for so long. references albers, p., frederick, t., cowan, k. (2009). features of gender: an analysis of the visual texts of third grade children. journal of early childhood literacy, 9(2), 234–260. https:// doi.org/10.1177/1468798409105588 araya-umaña, s. (2002). las representaciones sociales: ejes teóricos para su discusión. facultad latinoamericana de ciencias sociales (flacso). bastidas, a., & muñoz-ibarra, g. (2011). a diagnosis of english language teaching in public elementary schools in pasto, colombia. how journal, 18(1), 95–111. carignan, n., sanders, m., & pourdavood, r. g. (2005). racism and ethnocentrism: social representations of preservice teachers in the context of multiand intercultural education. international journal of qualitative methods, 4(3), 1–19. https://doi.org/10.1177/160940690500400301 castellotti, v., & moore, d. (2002). social representations of languages and teaching: guide for the development of language education policies in europe from linguistic diversity to plurilingual education. council of europe. correa, d., gonzález, a., sierra, a., & usma, j. (2012). interpretación e implementación del programa nacional de bilingüismo: un estudio exploratorio en el departamento de antioquia. universidad de antioquia. creswell, j. w. (2011). qualitative inquiry and research design: choosing among five approaches (2nd ed.). sage publications. gabillon, z. (2012). revisiting foreign language teacher beliefs. frontiers of language and teaching, 3, 190–203. gonzález, a. (2010). english and english teaching in colombia: tensions and possibilities in the expanding circle. in a. kirkpatrick (ed.), the routledge handbook of world englishes (1st ed., pp. 332–351). routledge. howarth, c. (2006). a social representation is not a quiet thing: exploring the critical potential of social representations theory. british journal of social psychology, 45(1), 65–86. https://doi.org/10.1348/014466605x43777 jodelet, d. (1991). madness and social representations. harvester wheatsheaf. jodelet, d. (2011). aportes del enfoque de las representaciones sociales al campo de la educación [m. m. balduzzi, trans.]. espacios en blanco: revista de educación, 21, 133–154. kuchah, k. (2013). from bilingual francophones to bilingual anglophones: the role of teachers in the rising ‘equities’ of english-medium education in cameroon. in e. ushioda (ed.), international perspectives on motivation (pp. 60–81). palgrave macmillan. https://doi. org/10.1057/9781137000873_4 kumar, a. (2017). role of affective factors in english acquisition in urban–rural schools. international journal of technical research & science, 2(4), 206–211. menard-warwick, j. (2009). co‐constructing representations of culture in esl and efl classrooms: discursive faultlines in chile and california. the modern language journal, 93(1), 30–45. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1540-4781.2009.00826.x https://doi.org/10.1177/1468798409105588 https://doi.org/10.1177/1468798409105588 https://doi.org/10.1177/160940690500400301 https://doi.org/10.1348/014466605x43777 https://doi.org/10.1057/9781137000873_4 https://doi.org/10.1057/9781137000873_4 https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1540-4781.2009.00826.x universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras112 cadavid-múnera punch, s. (2015). research with children: the same or different from research with adults? childhood, 9(3), 321–341. https://doi.org/10.1177/0907568202009003005 sierra-restrepo, z. (1998). que tú eras una tortuga y que yo era un diablo: aproximaciones al estudio del juego dramático en la edad escolar. colciencias; universidad de antioquia. sonesson, g. (1988). methods and models in pictorial semiotics (report 3 from the semiotics project). lund university. sotirakopoulou, k. p., & breakwell, g. m. (1992). the use of different methodological approaches in the study of social representations. papers in social representations, 1(1), 29–38. strauss, a., & corbin, j. (1998). basics of qualitative research: techniques and procedures for developing grounded theory (2nd ed.). sage publications. wang, l., & wu, x. (2020). influence of affective factors on learning ability in second language acquisition. revista argentina de clínica psicológica, 29(2), 1232–1240. https:// doi.org/10.24205/03276716.2020.365 yen, y.-y. (2000). identity issues in efl and esl textbooks: a sociocultural perspective [doctoral dissertation, the ohio state university]. ohiolink. http://rave.ohiolink. edu/etdc/view?acc_num=osu1242845672 about the author isabel cristina cadavid-múnera, teacher-educator and researcher at universidad de antioquia. member of the research group “pedagogy and foreign language teaching” at the same university. she holds a ba in foreign languages, a diploma in translation from universidad de antioquia, and an ma in tesol from west virginia university. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1540-4781.2009.00826.x https://doi.org/10.1177/0907568202009003005 https://doi.org/10.24205/03276716.2020.365 https://doi.org/10.24205/03276716.2020.365 http://rave.ohiolink.edu/etdc/view?acc_num=osu1242845672 http://rave.ohiolink.edu/etdc/view?acc_num=osu1242845672 113profile: issues teach. prof. dev., vol. 24 no. 1, jan-jun, 2022. issn 1657-0790 (printed) 2256-5760 (online). bogotá, colombia. pages 97-113 children’s social representations of english teaching and learning: a study in medellín, colombia appendix: analysis of a drawing 11 http://dx.doi.org/10.15446/profile.v19n_sup1.68495 the effect of pecha kucha presentations on students’ english public speaking anxiety los efectos de presentaciones “pecha kucha” sobre la ansiedad a hablar en público de estudiantes de inglés abdullah coskun1* abant izzet baysal university, bolu, turkey the objective of this study is to investigate the effect of the pecha kucha presentation format on english as foreign language learners’ public speaking anxiety. the participants were 49 students in the english translation and interpretation department of a state university in turkey. a preand post-test experimental research design was used in this study. students were given a questionnaire as the pre-test prior to the preparation of their presentations and as the post-test immediately following the presentation in the classroom. according to the paired samples statistics, students’ english public speaking anxiety was reduced significantly as a result of their experience using the pecha kucha presentation format. it was concluded that this presentation format can be incorporated into the english as a foreign language classroom. key words: english as a foreign language, pecha kucha, speaking anxiety. el objetivo de este estudio es investigar el efecto del formato de presentación de pecha kucha en la ansiedad al hablar en público de estudiantes de inglés como lengua extranjera. los participantes fueron 49 estudiantes del departamento de traducción e interpretación en inglés de una universidad estatal en turquía. se utilizó un diseño de investigación experimental previo y posterior al ensayo. los estudiantes recibieron un cuestionario antes de la preparación de sus presentaciones e inmediatamente después de la presentación en el aula. de acuerdo con los resultados, la ansiedad de hablar en inglés de los estudiantes se redujo significativamente como resultado de su experiencia usando el formato de presentación de pecha kucha. se concluye que este formato de presentación puede ser incorporado en el salón de clases de inglés. palabras clave: ansiedad del habla, inglés como lengua extranjera, pecha kucha. * e-mail: coskun_a@ibu.edu.tr how to cite this article (apa, 6th ed.): coskun, a. (2017). the effect of pecha kucha presentations on students’ english public speaking anxiety. profile: issues in teachers’ professional development, 19(suppl. 1), 11-22. http://dx.doi.org/10.15446/profile.v19n_sup1.68495. this article was received on september 10, 2017, and accepted on november 7, 2017. this is an open access article distributed under the terms of the creative commons license attribution-noncommercial-noderivatives 4.0 international license. consultation is possible at https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/. profile: issues teach. prof. dev., vol. 19, supplement 1, 2017. issn 1657-0790 (printed) 2256-5760 (online). bogotá, colombia. pages 11-22 universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras12 coskun introduction it is important for university students to search for a particular topic, interpret the content they find, and organize it in the form of an oral presentation (garcía-laborda, 2013; garcía-laborda & litzler, 2015). these skills are expected not only to enable students to organize knowledge, but also to improve their public speaking skills. because skills such as presenting ideas in a systematic way and speaking effectively to an audience are necessary for university graduates (artyushina, sheypak, & khovrin, 2010; garcía-laborda & litzler, 2017), oral presentation has been the main focus of various courses at the university level. as suggested by murugaiah (2016), the most common way to present content verbally is to use microsoft office powerpoint. however, according to her observation, a number of issues might weaken the quality of students’ presentations, such as not concentrating on main points, reading from wordy slides, and overrunning the allocated time. therefore, she argues that students should be encouraged to use the powerpoint software more creatively. as an alternative to the time-consuming traditional presentations with text-heavy slides, pecha kucha (pk) has emerged as a result of the creative use of powerpoint software (klentzin, paladino, johnston, & devine, 2010; robinson, 2015). devised by two architects, astrid klein and mark dytham, pk is actually a japanese term for the sound of “chit chat”. although chit-chat is an informal talk, the originators of the idea seem to use the term ironically as they developed pk as an alternative to long, wordy, and boring powerpoint presentations often neglecting the use of images (lucas & rawlins, 2015). according to the official website (http://www.pechakucha.org/), pk requires the presentation of 20 slides, each of which can be displayed for 20 seconds. that is the reason why this fast-paced presentation style is also called “20x20” on its website. the rationale behind pk is to enable the speaker to present ideas by using images in an allocated time of six minutes and 40 seconds. pointing out that pk is a highly visual presentation style, christianson and payne (2011) highlight that the slides in a pk presentation must automatically run with a timer as time is the most critical aspect of this presentation format. even though pk was originally created as a public speaking technique to capture architects’ attention, its popularity went beyond the field of architecture and spread quickly to other disciplines as a novel means of presentation (tomsett & shaw, 2014). “pk nights” have also become popular around the world as a way of presenting a piece of work and sharing opinions related to a public issue (snow, 2006). moreover, pk is currently utilized frequently in the classroom (foyle & childress, 2015) as it offers many benefits within the education sphere. despite some of the drawbacks, such as presenting within a certain period of time and the inflexible nature and selection of visuals for each slide (christianson & payne, 2011); advantages of the pk presentation style outweigh its disadvantages. one of the greatest advantages of pk is that it is often very appealing, engaging, and enjoyable to the audience (christianson & payne, 2011; nguyen, 2015; shiobara, 2015; soto-caban, selvi, & avila-medina, 2011). according to a. m. beyer (2011), the creative use of powerpoint software has the potential to result in high student engagement on the side of both the presenter and the audience. in another study, it was found that pk is far more effective in terms of students’ explaining skills than the traditional presentation format (widyaningrum, 2016). in addition to its engaging nature, it is emphasized that through pk presentations, students can learn how to create visually attractive slides (shiobara, 2015). the time constraint in the pk presentation style is often regarded as a benefit rather than a drawback. reynolds (2012) illustrated the time limitation in pk as an advantage with a thought-provoking question: “which would be more difficult for a student and a better indication of their knowledge: a 45-minute recycled and typical powerpoint presentation or a 13profile: issues teach. prof. dev., vol. 19, supplement 1, 2017. issn 1657-0790 (printed) 2256-5760 (online). bogotá, colombia. pages 11-22 the effect of pecha kucha presentations on students' english public speaking anxiety tight 6:40 presentation followed by questions and discussion?” (p. 41). in a similar vein, it is stated that pk requires students to practice and rehearse for a long time in order to remain within the allocated time during the presentation, which reduces the mistakes often encountered during traditional presentations (a. a. beyer, gaze, & lazicki, 2012). especially in terms of learning and teaching english as a foreign/second language (efl/esl), the pk presentation style offers many opportunities. first of all, it has been pointed out that pk improves students’ speaking and oral presentation skills (nguyen, 2015; shiobara, 2015). the pk presentation format is also believed to pave the way for english language students to think about the linguistic, paralinguistic, as well as technological dimensions of the presentation (artyushina et al., 2010). likewise, baker (2014) maintains that the presenters can achieve the automaticity and speak more confidently as a result of the pk experience as such presentations necessitate a lot of rehearsal for the presenter to properly manage the allocated time. additionally, baskara (2015) found that students who made pk presentations became more autonomous in structuring their ideas and were more active in the language learning process. an added benefit of integrating pks into the language classroom is leading students to improve their information and communications technology (ict) skills (mabuan, 2016a). on the other hand, ryan (2012) revealed that using pks can help efl students improve their pronunciation by enabling them to produce natural speech to keep up with the tempo of the presentation style. last but not least, as michaud (2015) emphasizes, pks provide efl students with an opportunity to be creative and to make presentations on topics they are passionate about. in addition to the above-mentioned advantages of pks in the efl classroom, the researcher aims to explore whether this presentation style has an effect on students’ english public speaking anxiety. public speaking anxiety in general terms, foreign language classroom anxiety is described as “a distinct complex of self-perceptions, beliefs, feelings, and behaviors related to classroom language learning arising from the uniqueness of the language learning process” (horwitz, horwitz, & cope, 1986, p. 128). according to the literature, anxiety in the foreign language learning process can emerge as facilitative or debilitative anxiety. from scovel’s (1978) perspective, facilitative anxiety enables students to challenge the new task and leads them to the approval behavior; however, debilitative anxiety makes students avoid the new task by causing them to develop avoidance behavior. from this explanation, it is realized that facilitative anxiety motivates students to perform a task more efficiently by spending effort in coping with anxiety; in contrast, debilitative anxiety is considered an extreme level of anxiety affecting their performance negatively (simpson, parker, & harrison, 1995). among the four basic foreign language skills, speaking is the skill causing the highest level of anxiety (cheng, horwitz, & schallert, 1999; young, 1990). in other words, when students have to speak a foreign language, they are generally afraid of doing so. this common phenomenon experienced by the person who is afraid to make a speech is described as public speaking anxiety (ayres & hopf, 1993), and the fear of speaking in public is known as glossophobia. it is assumed that approximately 85% of speakers feel anxious before presenting a speech in their native languages (burnley, cross, & spanos, 1993). this statistic must be even higher when it comes to foreign language public speaking anxiety. mccroskey (1970) divides public speaking anxiety into four basic stages: pre-preparation anxiety, preparation anxiety, pre-performance anxiety, and performance anxiety. plangkham and porkaew (2012) explain that pre-preparation anxiety is an issue when a student knows that he/she will make a public speech universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras14 coskun soon; preparation anxiety becomes apparent when a student begins to prepare for a speech; pre-performance anxiety comes forth when a speaker rehearses the speech; and finally, performance anxiety appears while a student is making the public speech. it is argued in the literature that although english language teachers make a lot of effort to develop students’ english public speaking skills, the problem of public speaking anxiety is known to be an obstacle to many students (ciarrocca & brown, 2015). public speaking anxiety both in our first language and in a second/ foreign language usually appears when speakers think that their performance could be erroneous or not comprehensible (brown, 2000). lack of fluency in the target foreign language could be another reason why some students experience public speaking anxiety (beatty & friedland, 1990). therefore, it is suggested that english language teachers ought to be aware of public speaking anxiety and develop strategies to encourage their students to deal with it (ciarrocca & brown, 2015). one way to reduce public speaking anxiety is to enable students to practice speech through repetition and rehearsal (liao, 2014). according to many researchers, pk is one of the presentation styles enabling students to practice speech, and thus lowering their english public speaking anxiety (swathipatnaik & davidson, 2016). lucas and rawlins (2015) also found in their study that pk helped students handle public speaking anxiety by focusing on “how short a time they have for each slide instead of thinking about how long they have to talk” (p. 106). specifically for the language classroom, pk is believed to lead students to feel that the presentation is short enough to accomplish, which motivates them to spend more time practicing and rehearsing pk presentations than they do for traditional presentations (shiobara, 2015). it is likely for students to lower their public speaking anxiety after several rehearsals for their presentations. in a similar vein, it was found in a study that students who were involved in pk presentations scored significantly higher in english public speaking performance than the students who had traditional speaking lessons (zharkynbekova, zhussupova, & suleimenova, 2017). in addition, tomsett and shaw (2014) uncovered that pks can be used by language learners as a way of presenting content to help cope with the fear of speaking english in class. this finding was also echoed by mabuan (2016b) who came to the conclusion that pk presentations not only help students practice their english speaking skills but also increase their confidence while reducing their public speaking anxiety. on the other hand, sylvan payne, who is an expert on pk presentation format, gives the following example to illustrate the positive influence of pks on students’ english public speaking anxiety (personal communication, july 10, 2017): the pk adrenaline rush is normal and can be a positive thing if you channel it. and the best way to do so is through practice. i had a student recently who had been in the army and he compared it to combat training. once the bell rings and the presentation starts, if you’ve practiced enough, the training kicks in and you’re okay. and once you’ve been in combat once—or done a presentation—and survived, you know next time you’ll probably be okay. and you appreciate that you’ve practiced. considering the benefits of pks for the efl classroom and the assumption that it might reduce students’ public speaking anxiety, this study is an attempt to integrate the pk presentation format into efl speaking-based courses offered to english translation and interpretation students in a state university in turkey and to assess the effect of this presentation format on students’ english public speaking anxiety. need for the study although studies regarding the pk presentation format have been carried out in different parts of the world and have yielded promising findings about its 15profile: issues teach. prof. dev., vol. 19, supplement 1, 2017. issn 1657-0790 (printed) 2256-5760 (online). bogotá, colombia. pages 11-22 the effect of pecha kucha presentations on students' english public speaking anxiety use in learning and teaching english, the researcher has not come across any single paper focusing on pk in the turkish efl context. also, reviewed studies dealing with pk generally concentrate on students’ opinions about this presentation format, and their opinions have been obtained mostly through questionnaires or interviews. as no studies regarding the effect of pks on students’ english public speaking anxiety have been carried out, this study aims to delve into this issue by means of a preand post-test experimental research design to bridge the gap in the existing literature. additionally, participants of this study regularly prepare english presentations in line with the objectives of the english speaking-based courses in the research context. however, it was observed that their presentations were often dominated by long sentences which were generally read out loud. when such presentations were wordy, lacked images, and were too long; listeners were observed feeling bored or uninterested. for that reason, pk was integrated into the speaking-based courses to attract listeners’ attention, as well as to assess the effectiveness of pk from students’ perspectives. as pk was a brand-new idea in the context of the present study, some students were observed feeling very anxious when they first heard of the pk presentation style. therefore, it is a key concern for the researcher to dwell on the effect of pk on students’ english public speaking anxiety. furthermore, as speaking anxiety is one of the major concerns in the turkish efl context (öztürk & gürbüz, 2014; tok, 2009), it is deemed necessary to find novel ways to reduce students’ english speaking anxiety. consequently, the current study intends to explore whether pk can reduce turkish efl students’ public speaking anxiety as an alternative presentation technique. more specifically, the researcher aims to seek an answer to the following research question: “what is the effect of pecha kucha presentation format on students’ english public speaking anxiety?” method in this study, a preand post-test experimental research design was used. participants completed a questionnaire related to public speaking anxiety as the pre-test before they started preparing their pks. after they presented their pks, they filled out the same questionnaire as the post-test to explore the effect of the pk presentation format on their english public speaking anxiety level. participants participants were 49 upper-intermediate freshman, sophomore, and junior english translation and interpretation students taking english speaking-based courses (e.g., speaking skills in english) in a turkish university. as the department is new, it does not have senior students, and students whose presentations were not prepared in accordance with the pk presentation format were excluded from the study. data collection instrument to find out participants’ level of public speaking anxiety, a questionnaire was used in this study as the pre-test and post-test. the questionnaire in english was developed by plangkham and porkaew (2012) who adapted the personal report of public speaking anxiety designed by mccroskey (1970). the questionnaire includes 16 five-point likert scale items concerning four stages of public speaking which make up the following sub-dimensions in the questionnaire: pre-preparation (e.g., i feel tense when i see the words “speech” and “public speech” on a course outline when studying), preparation (e.g., while preparing to give a speech, i feel tense and nervous), pre-performance (e.g., i feel anxious while rehearsing a speech), and performance (e.g., my hands shake and some parts of my body feel very tense when i am delivering a speech). related to each sub-dimension, there are four items rated on a 1 (strongly disagree) to 5 (strongly agree) response scale. universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras16 coskun according to this rating, as the agreement level with the items increases, participants’ anxiety level also increases. for validity and reliability concerns, the questionnaire was piloted by plangkham and porkaew (2012) for the thai efl context. for its validity in the turkish efl context, it was also sent out for review to an assessment and evaluation expert as well as a foreign language teaching expert. also, five students who did not take part in this study gave feedback about the difficulty level of the items. no changes were deemed necessary for the original questionnaire. according to the pre-test results, the questionnaire was found to be reliable in this study with a cronbach’s alpha reliability coefficient of .91. for the pre-preparation, preparation, pre-performance, and performance sub-dimensions, the following cronbach’s alpha values were found respectively: .85, .69, .67, and .85. procedure and data collection all the students who took part in this study had made traditional powerpoint presentations earlier in speakingbased courses in the context of this study. therefore, they were already familiar with using microsoft office powerpoint. for this study, they were trained for two weeks (a total of six hours) on the guiding principles of the pk presentation format. the definition and the historical background of pk, its advantages and basic rules (e.g., the number of slides, timing of each slide, and the importance of presenting the content through images) were explained to the participants. during the training, students were shown the “pecha kucha rubric” developed by holliday (2013) to familiarize them with the requirements of a good pk presentation. in addition, two pk examples retrieved from the official website of pecha kucha (http://www. pechakucha.org) were demonstrated to make students aware of the conventions of pk. finally, the 20x20 powerpoint template developed by christianson and payne (2011) was provided to the students so that they could prepare 20 slides, each of which would be shown for 20 seconds before automatically proceeding to the next slide. therefore, students were expected to prepare a presentation that lasted six minutes and 40 seconds. in each group (i.e., freshmen, sophomore, junior), one volunteer student who was excluded from the study prepared a pk presentation to exemplify to his/her group how the presentation should look. these presentations were checked by the course instructor, who is also the researcher, to make sure that they would be in line with the pk format. after the training sessions, participants were allowed to choose the topic they would like to prepare a creative pk presentation about. the topics were negotiated with the course instructor. the selected presentation topics covered a range of social and academic issues, such as food, animals, health, and overpopulation. three weeks before students started to prepare their pks, the questionnaire aiming to identify their level of public speaking anxiety was given to the students as the pre-test. all the students performed their pks on the scheduled days within a 7-week time frame. during their preparation time, they were encouraged to confer with the instructor when they needed help. on the day of the presentation, both the instructor and the students gave feedback to the presenter regarding the quality of the presentation in accordance with the principles of pk presentation style. immediately after each presentation, the presenter was asked to fill out the questionnaire as the post-test by considering the possible effect of pk on their english public speaking anxiety. it took approximately seven minutes to complete the questionnaire. data analysis the data obtained by means of the preand posttests were analyzed using a statistical package for the social sciences (spss 23). to calculate whether there is a significant difference between the pre-test and post-test scores of the sub-dimensions in the questionnaire, the paired sample t-test was applied. 17profile: issues teach. prof. dev., vol. 19, supplement 1, 2017. issn 1657-0790 (printed) 2256-5760 (online). bogotá, colombia. pages 11-22 the effect of pecha kucha presentations on students' english public speaking anxiety findings the paired samples statistics of the preand posttest scores of each factor (i.e., items 1-4: pre-preparation anxiety; items 5-8: preparation anxiety; items 9-12: pre-performance anxiety; items 13-16: performance anxiety) were analyzed, and the following findings illustrated in table 1 and table 2 were revealed in relation to the research question “what is the effect of pecha kucha presentation format on students’ english public speaking anxiety?” as can be understood from table 1, the p-values (sig.) reached, as a result of the paired sample t-test, are less than 0.05. this means that there is a significant difference between pre-test and post-test scores in terms table 1. difference between the pre/post-test scores 95% confidence interval of the difference mean std. deviation std. error mean lower upper t df sig. (2-tailed) pair 1 pre-preparation anxiety pretest pre-preparation anxiety posttest .32143 .81809 .11687 .08645 .55641 2.750 48 .008 pair 2 preparation anxiety pretest preparation anxiety posttest .28571 .94097 .13442 .01544 .55599 2.125 48 .039 pair 3 pre-performance anxiety pretest pre-performance anxiety posttest .19898 .68651 .09807 .00179 .39617 2.029 48 .048 pair 4 performance anxiety pretest performance anxiety posttest .43878 .93615 .13374 .16988 .70767 3.281 48 .002 table 2. mean values of the pre/post-test scores (n = 49) mean std. deviation std. error mean pair 1 pre-preparation anxiety pretest 2.8418 .91954 .13136 pre-preparation anxiety posttest 2.5204 .88217 .12602 pair 2 preparation anxiety pretest 2.4592 .83595 .11942 preparation anxiety posttest 2.1735 .76751 .10964 pair 3 pre-performance anxiety pretest 2.6684 .75413 .10773 pre-performance anxiety posttest 2.4694 .85792 .12256 pair 4 performance anxiety pretest 3.0918 .95565 .13652 performance anxiety posttest 2.6531 .96395 .13771 universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras18 coskun of all pairs for each factor. in other words, students responded differently to the same questionnaire administered as pre-test and post-test before and after their pk experience. from the mean scores in table 2, it can be realized that the mean values of the factors are significantly higher in the pre-test. considering that the questionnaire administered as pre-test and post-test is related to the four sub-dimensions of public speaking anxiety level, it would be true to conclude that their english public speaking anxiety was reduced as a result of their involvement in preparing a pk presentation. discussion and conclusion in today’s world, public speaking skills are essential for both academia and for future employability (hunter, westwick, & haleta, 2014). as in many other courses at the university level, effective presentation is an indispensable course component in english language courses (simona, 2005). in the turkish efl context dominated by speaking anxiety and the unwillingness to speak english (dil, 2009; öztürk & gürbüz, 2014), it is considered necessary to reduce efl university students’ public speaking anxiety. with this necessity in mind, this study aims to reveal the impact of pk presentation format on efl university students’ english public speaking anxiety by giving them a questionnaire as pre-test and post-test before and after they had experience in preparing and performing a pk presentation on a topic they selected themselves. the questionnaire included items focusing on students’ anxiety levels at different stages of public speaking, such as pre-preparation, preparation, pre-performance, and performance. participants’ responses to the pre-test and post-test were analyzed by means of spss, and a significant difference was found between their scores on these tests. it was uncovered that their public speaking anxiety level was significantly reduced as a result of their pk experience. this finding corroborates the assumptions and the findings of other researchers (mabuan, 2016b; swathipatnaik & davidson, 2016; tomsett & shaw, 2014). according to these researchers, pk presentation format contributes to students’ confidence to speak english in public. it is also believed that pks improve not only students’ presentation skills but also their confidence in public speaking by helping them overcome speech anxiety (lucas & rawlins, 2015). the positive influence of pk on students’ public speaking anxiety can be justified by referring to the basic principles of this presentation format. as pk is a rigorous presentation style with time limitation, students have to practice and rehearse several times with a timer before the presentation. in other words, this presentation format forces the students to practice intensively as they cannot depend on text-heavy slides during presentations (baker, 2014; klentzin et al., 2010; lucas & rawlins, 2015). because students are wellprepared for the real performance, it is likely that their public speaking anxiety will be reduced. as simona (2005) argues, rehearsing a presentation raises speakers’ confidence and familiarizes them with the presentation content. similarly, motivating students to practice speech by means of repetition and rehearsal is known to be a useful way to reduce public speaking anxiety, and thus to raise confidence in speaking (liao, 2014). in a foreign language classroom, students tend to have the feeling that pk presentation is shorter and more manageable than the traditional presentation style and, consequently, they become more motivated to rehearse and practice for it (lucas & rawlins, 2015; shiobara, 2015). competing with the time and not having words on slides might give rise to anxiety for some students but the anxiety pk causes can be considered as facilitative anxiety rather than debilitative anxiety (scovel, 1978). it is true that pk presentation format might result in some tension but this tension can be associated with what brown (2000) refers to as “just enough tension” to achieve a task. therefore, facilitative anxiety is regarded as a good motivator that can keep the presenter alert and 19profile: issues teach. prof. dev., vol. 19, supplement 1, 2017. issn 1657-0790 (printed) 2256-5760 (online). bogotá, colombia. pages 11-22 the effect of pecha kucha presentations on students' english public speaking anxiety prevent the speaker from relaxing entirely. similarly, in bailey’s (1983) study, facilitative anxiety is thought to be one of the keys to success in language learning. although the highly controlled nature of pk might seem to be a source of presentation anxiety, some students in the study carried out by lucas and rawlins (2015) stated that it is more convenient to prepare a pk than to plan a flexible fiveto seven-minute presentation. in line with the positive findings of this study and the benefits of the pk presentation format reviewed in the literature (baker, 2014; baskara, 2015; lucas & rawlins, 2015; mabuan, 2016b; nguyen, 2015; ryan, 2012; sotocaban et al., 2011; swathipatnaik & davidson, 2016), the use of pk presentation style should be promoted especially in the university efl contexts. the following recommendations can also be made for english language teachers, prospective english language teachers, efl students, and researchers who are interested in the pk presentation style: • english language teachers need to be aware of the fact that public speaking is an important skill that should be acquired by all english language learners; moreover, students’ speaking anxiety should be lowered as it hinders them from improving their speaking skills (ciarrocca & brown, 2015). therefore, english language teachers can think of pk as an effective way of reducing students’ public speaking anxiety, but first they should familiarize themselves with the conventions of this presentation technique and incorporate it into their own teaching sessions. by this means, students’ awareness about the pk presentation format can be raised and they can become psychologically ready to use it for their presentations. as pk is quite different from the traditional presentation style, special training about how to prepare a pk presentation is deemed necessary for efl students (murugaiah, 2016; zharkynbekova et al., 2017). • the pk presentation style should also be integrated into pre-service efl teacher training programs as it can contribute to prospective english language teachers’ instructive skills (widyaningrum, 2016). tüm and kunt (2013) found in their study that turkish-speaking efl teacher candidates experience anxiety while speaking english, and they argue that the uncertainties of classroom discourse might be one of the reasons behind this. besides, making powerpoint presentations is regarded by candidate efl teachers in turkey as essential for their future careers (özaslan & maden, 2013), and it is known that the ability to use technology is one of the qualities of an effective language teacher (kourieos & evripidou, 2013). having all these in mind, it is suggested that pk could be incorporated into pre-service efl teacher training programs as an alternative way of presenting content. • pk can be a part of efl speaking classes, and it is favorable to give students the opportunity to select a topic they would like to talk about to allow creativity (michaud, 2015). as murugaiah (2016) states, students can also work in groups to prepare a pk project together because teamwork in the process of preparing a pk can lead to constructive discussion among group members, which leads to more effective presentations. from murugaiah’s perspective, another positive aspect of group presentations is that weak students could be supported by more proficient english speakers while preparing a pk. the benefit of pk as a team building presentation format was also highlighted by some other researchers (artyushina et al., 2010). • although there are reservations about the integration of pk into low proficiency level efl classes (murugaiah, 2016), this presentation format can be effectively integrated into efl courses to help upper intermediate level students reduce their english public speaking anxiety or into english for academic purposes (eap) courses (robinson, 2015). on the other hand, michaud (2015) acknowledges that encouraging low-level students to prepare pks is universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras20 coskun hard but is also worth trying. he suggests that lower level students could start with presentations with 10 slides to be shown for 10 seconds each. even though the finding of this study is promising for the promotion of the pk presentation format as a means to lower students’ speech anxiety, the result of the study cannot be considered conclusive. the study has a limitation in that the finding is based on students’ self-perceptions of their english public speaking anxiety at the end of presenting only one pk. in further studies, students could present more than one pk and a similar questionnaire should be administered some time after the presentation performance to reveal the long-term effect of this presentation format on students’ public speaking anxiety. also, by adding some open-ended questions to the questionnaire, further studies could uncover the inner feelings of the presenter before, while, and after preparing and presenting a pk. finally, the effect of pk presentation format on efl students’ fluency could be explored in further studies. references artyushina, g., sheypak, o., & khovrin, a. 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(2012). pechakucha presentations: what are they and how can we use them in the classrooms? shizuoka university of art and culture bulletin, 12, 23-27. universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras22 coskun scovel, t. (1978). the effect of affect on foreign language learning: a review of the anxiety research. language learning, 28(1), 129-142. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1467-1770.1978. tb00309.x. shiobara, f. (2015, april-may). pechakucha presentations in the classroom: supporting language learners with public speaking. paper presented at the asian conference on language learning, kobe, japan. simona, c. e. (2015). developing presentation skills in the english language courses for the engineering students of the 21st century knowledge society: a methodological approach. procedia: social and behavioral sciences, 203, 69-74. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.sbspro.2015.08.261. simpson, m. l., parker, p. w., & harrison, a. w. (1995). differential performance on taylor’s manifest anxiety scale in black private college freshmen: a partial report. perceptual and motor skills, 80, 699-702. https://doi. org/10.2466/pms.1995.80.2.699. snow, j. (2006, june). 20/20 vision: the tokyo-born pecha kucha phenomenon has the global creative community hooked. metropolis, (637). retrieved from http://archive. metropolis.co.jp/tokyo/637/feature.asp. soto-caban, s., & selvi, e., & avila-medina, f. (2011, june). improving communication skills: using pechakucha style in engineering courses. paper presented at 2011 asee annual conference & exposition, vancouver, canada. swathipatnaik, d., & davidson, l. m. (2016). pecha kucha: an innovative task for engineering students. research journal of english language and literature, 4(4), 49-54. tok, h. (2009). efl learners’ communication obstacles. electronic journal of social sciences, 8(29), 84-100. tomsett, p. m., & shaw, m. r. (2014). creative classroom experience using pecha kucha to encourage esl use in undergraduate business courses: a pilot study. international multilingual journal of contemporary research, 2(2), 89-108. tüm, d. ö., & kunt, n. (2013). speaking anxiety among efl student teachers. hacettepe university journal of education, 28(3), 385-399. widyaningrum, l. (2016). pecha kucha: a way to develop presentation. vision, 5(1), 57-74. https://doi.org/10.21580/ vjv5i1860. young, d. j. (1990). an investigation of students’ perspectives on anxiety and speaking. foreign language annals, 23(6), 539-553. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1944-9720.1990. tb00424.x. zharkynbekova, s., zhussupova, r., & suleimenova, s. (2017, june). exploring pechakucha in efl learners’ public speaking performances. paper presented at the 3rd international conference on higher education advances, universitat politecnica de valencia, spain. about the author abdullah coskun teaches in the department of translation and interpretation at abant izzet baysal university, bolu, turkey. he earned his ba and ma degrees in elt from abant izzet baysal university. he has a phd in elt from middle east technical university. acknowledgements the author would like to thank sylvan payne for his encouragement and advice, benjawan plengkham for the permission to use her questionnaire, hung nguyen for his useful comments on an earlier draft of this paper, and zoe marlowe for proofreading the paper. 13profile: issues teach. prof. dev., vol. 21 no. 2, jul-dec, 2019. issn 1657-0790 (printed) 2256-5760 (online). bogotá, colombia. pages 13-27 https://doi.org/10.15446/profile.v21n2.75172 multimodal texts in chilean english teaching education: experiences from educators and pre-service teachers textos multimodales en la formación docente en inglés en chile: experiencias de formadores y estudiantes de licenciatura 1miguel farías* universidad de santiago de chile, santiago, chile 2leonardo véliz** deakin university, melbourne, australia drawing on 10 pedagogical standards issued by the chilean ministry of education, three dealing with multimodality, we, in this research, examined english language pre-service teachers’ and educators’ approaches to the use of multimodal texts. data were gathered through two online surveys that explored the use of multimodal texts by teacher educators and pre-service teachers. results indicate that educators were familiar with the standards and multimodality when teaching reading and writing, but lack of resources, preparation, and time prevents them from working with multimodal texts. candidates read printed and digital newspapers, novels, and magazines outside university, but rarely use them academically. they extensively use social media, even for academic purposes. there is a mismatch between the use of multimodal texts by teacher candidates and teacher educators. key words: english teacher education, language teaching standards, literacy teaching, multimodality, second language learner. este artículo describe un estudio acerca de cómo los formadores de profesores de inglés y los estudiantes en formación abordan los textos multimodales. de diez estándares para formación inicial docente de inglés establecidos por el ministerio de educación de chile, tres incluyen textos multimodales. se aplicaron dos encuestas en línea para explorar el uso de textos por formadores y estudiantes universitarios. los datos se analizaron a partir de cuatro preguntas de investigación. los resultados muestran que los formadores están familiarizados con los estándares y la multimodalidad al enseñar lectura y escritura, pero la falta de tiempo, recursos, y preparación les impide trabajar plenamente con textos multimodales. los estudiantes leen periódicos impresos y en formato digital, novelas y revistas fuera de la universidad. ellos usan extensivamente las redes sociales, incluso académicamente. hay disparidad en el uso de textos multimodales entre estudiantes y formadores. palabras clave: enseñanza de literacidad, estándares disciplinarios, estudiante de segunda lengua, formación docente en inglés, multimodalidad. * e-mail: miguel.farias@usach.cl ** e-mail: leonardo.v@deakin.edu.au partial funding for this work came from a dicyt grant, universidad de santiago de chile. how to cite this article (apa, 6th ed.): farías, m., & véliz, l. (2019). multimodal texts in chilean english teaching education: experiences from educators and pre-service teachers. profile: issues in teachers’ professional development, 21(2), 13-27. https://doi.org/10.15446/profile.v21n2.75172. this article was received on september 27, 2018 and accepted on march 24, 2019. this is an open access article distributed under the terms of the creative commons license attribution-noncommercial-noderivatives 4.0 international license. consultation is possible at https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/. universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras14 farías & véliz introduction one of the educational issues that has received great attention amongst teachers, educators, stakeholders, and policy makers concerns the quality of teachers, recognized to be mandated by standards that can guide professional learning, teaching practices, and engagement. in australia, for example, the professional standards for teachers, dating back to 2009, constitute the domains of knowledge, teaching, and practice to which teachers have to be responsive in order to improve educational outcomes for students (australian institute for teaching and school leadership [aitsl], 2011). chile has not been exempt from the aftermath of standards-based systems and reforms. the 1980s witnessed the appropriation of neoliberal policies (teichman, 2001) reflected in elements of school privatization, and in successful attempts to establish performancebased standards for schools, teachers, and students (manzi, strasser, san martin, & contreras, 2008). since then, the educational system in chile has jumped onto the bandwagon of standardization to measure the effectiveness and performance of schools, teachers, and students mirrored in, for example, the implementation of standardized testing such as the sistema de medición de la calidad de la educación (simce) [system of measurement of quality of education], the establishment of standards for the teacher evaluation system (avalos & assael, 2006) and standards for teacher education programs (ministerio de educación de chile [mineduc], 2014), which is the focus of the present study. the standards for english language education include 10 principles that novice teachers graduating from university programs have to meet as professionals in the field of english language teaching (mineduc, 2014). according to díaz maggioli (2013), the chilean standards for english language education were based on the tesol standards that consider two dimensions: foundations and applications. amongst these 10 principles are those which relate to the role of multimodality in the production and comprehension of texts, as shown in table 1. in the field of multimodal studies, jewitt (2009) describes multimodality as being “concerned with signs and starts from the position that like speech and writing, all modes consist of sets of semiotic resources that people draw on and configure in specific moments” (p. 5). in turn, royce (2002) brought the concept of multimodality to the tesol classroom claiming that “the visual and the verbal modes complement each other to realize an inter-semiotically coherent multimodal text” (p. 192). perhaps due to the fact that technologies are changing so fast and/or that epistemologies in literacy education are recently incorporating new semiotic practices (manghi, crespo, bustos, & haas, 2016; trillos-carrillo & rogers, 2017), research on how language teacher education is facing the increasing use of multimodal texts is scarce. ajayi (2011) echoes this claim when he mentions that literature on pre-service teachers’ perceptions of their preparation to teach new literacies is yet to be further explored. table 1. disciplinary standards for english teacher education that address multimodal texts standard 2 standard 3 standard 8 understands the importance for their students to develop oral, written, and multimodal text comprehension skills, putting this knowledge into practice as a learning and teaching organizing concept. the novice teacher is familiar with the theories that account for the cognitive processes associated with the production of oral, written, and multimodal texts in english, and uses this knowledge in facilitating students’ comprehension. the novice teacher knows of a wide variety of resources in several formats and selects and uses multimodal texts in facilitating the evaluation and analysis of information on the basis of the diverse learning styles. 15profile: issues teach. prof. dev., vol. 21 no. 2, jul-dec, 2019. issn 1657-0790 (printed) 2256-5760 (online). bogotá, colombia. pages 13-27 multimodal texts in chilean english teaching education: experiences from educators... drawing on the standards for english teacher education programs, in this paper we wish to examine the role of multimodality in reading and writing as experienced, understood, and exercised by teacher educators and pre-service teachers at different universities in chile. the paper starts with a context on how reading and writing are treated in the standards and outlines the issues/ themes to be addressed in the survey questionnaires, followed by a review of literature on how literacy and multimodality have been dealt with in teacher education; the methodology is then introduced to be followed by the results and discussions. context: standards for teacher education programs mineduc issued the standards for teaching programs in 2013, known as estándares orientadores para carreras de pedagogía en educación media [guiding standards for secondary teacher education programs], among which are those for english language education under the name estándares orientadores para carreras de pedagogía en inglés [standards for english teacher education programs]. this last document contains both disciplinary and pedagogical standards that lay down the elements of high quality teaching. these standards are justified by the need to have some common quality references in a country that during pinochet’s dictatorship privatized higher education generating the proliferation of universities that offered english education programs with no quality control, except for mandatory accreditation for all teacher education and medical science programs. in her exploration of the curriculum for english language teacher education in chile, barahona (2014) attributes this increase in the number of programs to various factors, among which she includes “the implementation of a free market model in higher education, national educational reforms and the growing pressure for competent english speakers who can participate more actively in a globalized world” (p. 46). of interest for this study are the guidelines contained in the disciplinary standards for english teacher education for the treatment of reading and writing multimodal texts. as shown in table 1, for reading comprehension, standard 2 seems to not only acknowledge the various meaning-making modes, but stresses the centrality to equip future language teachers with the capacities to comprehend them. regarding the funds of knowledge the future teacher should bring to deal with text production; standard 3 includes knowledge of both the theories that account for the cognitive processes associated with the production of oral, written, and multimodal texts, as well as the pedagogical strategies to facilitate students’ comprehension. standard 8 deals with the use of physical and virtual resources in the teaching of english. this is manifested when teachers “select and use multimodal texts in facilitating the evaluation and analysis of information on the basis of the diverse learning styles”. these general guidelines about the role of multimodality in the comprehension and production of texts seem to not only sustain but also stimulate the increasing interest in using texts that combine two or more semiotic systems. motivated by this context and by the standards on the role of multimodality in the treatment of reading and writing, our study addresses the following research questions, where the first two explore issues relating generally to teacher educators’ multimodal pedagogies, while the last two tap into preservice teachers (teachers-to-be or teacher candidates): • to what extent are teacher educators familiar with the role of multimodality in the production and comprehension of texts? • are multimodal texts used by teacher educators when teaching the reading and writing components? • what types of texts do pre-service teachers use at and outside university? • what is the place and role of digital technologies in pre-service teachers’ academic studies, and in how they deal with reading and writing? universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras16 farías & véliz multimodality and teacher education it is undeniable that information is communicated in multiple modes. this is attested by the increasing use of blogs, websites, slideshows, webinars, media, cloud computing and other connectivity tools that have become nearly as common as print-based documents. a great deal of content within these tools is visually encoded. this means that a reader is presented with not only messages in words but also in images, pictures, graphics, and, if reading electronically, other components such as combinations of movement and sound that may be added (unsworth & chan, 2009; walsh, 2004, 2006). the leap from page to screen and the ensuing changes in the semiotic landscape creates new literacies; kress (2003) claims that “in the era of the screen and of multimodality some fundamental changes are inevitable as far as forms, functions and uses of writing are concerned” (p. 61). these various forms of reading and writing through different modes of meaning making have impacted all spheres of life, including education. texts that combine more than one mode in how meaning is communicated are called “multimodal” texts (walsh, 2006, p. 24). walsh also comments that the educational environment of students is filled with textual information that blends multiple modes of meaning making. it is then not unusual for students to encounter a variety of print and non-print multimodal texts in their daily lives. some of these include magazines, picture books, information books, encyclopedias, films, videos, emails, and the internet in general. in this respect, rowsell and burke (2009) point out that adolescent literacy practices along with the texts with which they interact are increasingly dynamic, visual, and multimodal in today’s world. siegel (2012) comments on multimodality with references to youth and their new literacy capabilities: it is tempting to suggest that this is the time of multimodality: a time when the privileged status of language is being challenged by the ease with which youth can access semiotic resources of all varieties— visual, aural, gestural, and spatial—to assemble meanings. (p. 671) this multimodal dexterity by youth is apparently not being used in the school and creates a disparity between the multimodal competences students bring to the classroom and the school curriculum, which was also highlighted by tan and guo (2009) in singapore when they conclude that “assessment remains language dominant when there is more than one semiotic resource for making meaning in today’s communication landscape” (p. 323). in this complex socio-semiotic context it is critical that school pedagogies mirror the diverse modes of reading and writing to which learners are constantly exposed. in their model of second language multimodal learning, plass and jones (2005) posed a key question relevant to our study: “in what way can multimedia support second language acquisition by providing comprehensible input, facilitating meaningful interaction, and eliciting comprehensible output?” (p. 471). studies carried out in second language multimodal reading by plass, chun, mayer, and leutner (1998) with learners of german demonstrated that learners performed better when they used verbal and visual annotations and that they evidenced better comprehension of a story when they used their preferred mode of annotation. in a study that focused on adolescent english language learners, yi (as cited in abraham & farías, 2017) informs teachers about implementing multimodal literacy in the l2 language classroom by addressing the constructs in multimodal literacy research and their possibilities and challenges in l2 teaching and learning. yi also mentions that “there is a small, albeit growing, body of research in l1 on digital and multiliteracy practices, but little on multilingual readers and writers in second or foreign language contexts” (as cited in abraham & farías, 2017, p. 64). the question these studies trigger in language teaching education, and that might support the inclusion of the standards in table 1, is how to make use of the multimodal knowledge learners bring to school and with which they enhance their critical appraisal of texts. in relation to this, several multimodal scholars (e.g., 17profile: issues teach. prof. dev., vol. 21 no. 2, jul-dec, 2019. issn 1657-0790 (printed) 2256-5760 (online). bogotá, colombia. pages 13-27 multimodal texts in chilean english teaching education: experiences from educators... unsworth & chan, 2009; walsh, 2006) have argued that the prominent multimodal nature of the majority of texts students encounter calls for a redefinition of literacy and literacy pedagogy. for example, manghi (2012), in the context of teacher education, highlights the need to understand the semiotic potential of the resources used in teaching, their characteristics and their affordances to represent the world and communicate. unsworth and chan (2009) comment on how the australian curriculum in english has already advanced the concept of traditional literacy to embrace the negotiation of multimodal texts. in regard to what is needed to pedagogically bridge the gap between students’ dealings with multimodal texts outside the school and the text mono-modality in school, rowsell, kosnik, and beck (2008) stress that “one of the central ideas of multiliteracies pedagogies is that there are many types of literacy” (p. 110), hence recognition of a diversity of language forms is critical in promoting a multimodal and multiliteracies pedagogy. in this way, the new london group (1996) advise that it would not be appropriate if schools focused only on a singular, canonical language form. what is needed is pedagogies that accommodate the different language forms generated by the diverse modes of communication into current practices of traditional literacy. even though the “multi” terms tend to collocate, their difference resides in multiliteracies being a more inclusive pedagogical concept that encompasses and was triggered by the appearance of multimodality and other complex cultural competences citizens need in order to survive in a globalized society. in the words of rowsell and walsh (2011) “multimodality comes first in that it informs how we make meaning, and multiliteracies, as a possible pedagogy, gives us tools for doing so” (pp. 55-56). for the implementation of these pedagogies in teacher education it is essential to have what hobson (2014) calls a meta-language to understand the relationships between the modes and cultural meanings available to people in any context. accordingly, unsworth (2006, 2008) has also argued for the need to have a metalanguage that not only describes the various relations among modes but that can also be used pedagogically to educate learners with the knowledge and skills of how multimodal texts are constructed. socio-semiotically, such meaning construction is culturally motivated (kress, leite-garcía, & van leeuwen, 2001), which requires from second language educators an understanding of the affordances the various semiotic resources bring to the multimodal text. these multimodal competences allow language learners to incorporate new ways and modes of textual representation that have an impact on how intersubjectivities and identities are constructed. candlin (2014) poses interesting questions in this respect: “what connections can be drawn between the lifeworld and institutional world identities of learners? how is a learner’s knowledge of multimodality and experience of its practice to be defined and appraised?” (p. 89). in second/foreign language learning, royce (2007) introduced the concept of multimodal communicative competence which concerns “how students can become competent in interpreting and constructing appropriate meanings multimodally” (p. 374). interestingly enough for the chilean context, royce’s construct involves an amplification of the socalled communicative competence syllabus around which language teacher education has revolved in the past decades (cronquist & fiszbein, 2017). implications of this extended concept of multimodal communicative competence for our chilean context would entail the evaluation of how the standards that include multimodality are being implemented in english language teacher education and its effects on the new generations of english language learners. research design method within the various quantitative methods available, one commonly used in applied linguistics and education universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras18 farías & véliz is questionnaire surveys. although “the results of a survey (questionnaire) are typically quantitative, the instrument could also contain open-ended questions that would require a qualitative analysis approach” (dörnyei, 2007, p. 101). surveys can have different purposes and can be of different natures. cohen, manion, and morrison (2007) point out that “surveys can be exploratory, in which no models or assumptions are postulated” (p. 207). in this respect, an exploratory survey attempts to gather data to establish connections, identify and explore reasons, causes, and their effects (cohen et al., 2007). our study fits well into this definition and categorization of survey research as through survey data different aspects of a particular phenomenon are being explored. accordingly, two surveys were designed to explore the role of multimodal texts both in the methodologies used by educators and in the daily and academic literacy practices of pre-service teachers in english language teaching education programs. one survey was directed to teacher educators who teach the methodology course(s) and the other to pre-service teachers. both surveys were validated with pilot applications to students and colleagues at a chilean university and included an informed consent protocol. description of the method and participants the survey to educators contained 14 questions (12 multiple choice and two open-ended). as described above, the questions were designed to elicit background data and capture the views, experiences, and thoughts about the role of multimodality in the comprehension and production of texts in relation to the standards for english teacher education programs in chile. the survey was sent via email to 32 educators in charge of methodology courses in chilean programs of english language teaching education. eighteen responded between july 25 and august 11, 2017. the survey to pre-service teachers also contained 14 questions, of which one was open-ended. as indicated earlier, the survey questions attempted to tap into pre-service teachers’ views of and experiences with multimodal texts as used in their daily lives and academic contexts. the survey for pre-service teachers was sent by email to 21 heads of english language education programs at 21 private and state-supported universities in chile, asking them to be distributed to all students in their programs. one-hundred-and-twenty pre-service teachers responded to the survey between july 30 and august 23. the participants, teacher educators and pre-service teachers, are all chilean and come from different universities throughout the country. teacher educators’ length of teaching experience varied from around three to over 10 years. to be precise, 22% had been teaching in higher education for less than five years, 38% between five and 10 years, and 40% had been teaching in the university sector for over 10 years. pre-service teachers were either third or fourth year students at english teacher education programs from both public and private chilean universities. data analysis the numerical representation and analysis of the quantitative data were assisted by the automatic generation of graphs, figures, and percentages through the google docs system. open-ended questions from both surveys were analyzed by using a content analysis procedure: responses were analyzed for key words or phrases in order to find common themes emerging as semantic constellations in the data. this was complemented with the use of antconc, a freeware corpus analysis toolkit for concordancing and text analysis. once certain themes were identified, representative samples were reported for an interpretive analysis. it is worth noting that data collected from both educators and pre-service teachers are intended to be representative of universities throughout the country, thus providing a panoramic view of the issue under investigation. 19profile: issues teach. prof. dev., vol. 21 no. 2, jul-dec, 2019. issn 1657-0790 (printed) 2256-5760 (online). bogotá, colombia. pages 13-27 multimodal texts in chilean english teaching education: experiences from educators... results the following sections present and discuss the findings gleaned from the analysis of survey data from teacher educators and pre-service teachers in chile. teacher educators research question 1: educators’ familiarity with the role of multimodality since the disciplinary standards for english teacher education programs have already been in place since 2012, one would expect that teacher educators have some familiarity with the existence, purpose, and role of standards in the preparation of teachers-to-be. one of the first questions that teacher educators were asked was whether or not they were familiar with the disciplinary standards set by mineduc. the majority of respondents (94.4%) indicated that the standards were familiar to them, with only 5.6% acknowledging familiarity with the standards but admitting to not having read them before answering the survey. given that the majority of teacher educators (61.1%) have taught methodology courses in english teacher education programs for a period of 5-10 years, it can be pointed out that throughout the years of their teaching experience they developed not only familiarity with the different standards, but probably various pedagogical and methodological ways to ensure the standards are successfully met. a more specific question that teacher educators were asked was one regarding their acquaintance with the role of multimodality in reading and writing. responses showed that 83.3% know about the role of multimodality in these two components. this is possibly indicative of not only the educators’ awareness and recognition of the place and role of multimodality in the teaching of reading and writing as indicated in the standards, but also of their understanding of the various complex modes of meaning making involved in what it means to read and write in today’s world (bazalgette & buckingham, 2013; unsworth & chan, 2009). this has important implications for how learning and, therefore, teaching are conceptualized in the classroom. within the tesol context, jones (2013) indicates that recent sociocultural and ecological approaches have provided a broader definition of learning which has come to include “hybrid varieties and multimodal forms of expression” (p. 843). in the case of the responses gathered on teacher educators’ familiarity with the role of multimodality in their pedagogies, these may suggest that the educators’ own view of learning (and teaching) is inclusive of the various modes of reading and writing in a language other than the first. research question 2: multimodal texts as used by educators in order to better understand the role of multimodality in teacher educators’ reading and writing instructional practices, we asked teacher educators about the types of texts they used in the teaching of reading and writing components in methodology courses. most teacher educators (64.7%) reported using a combination of printed and multimodal texts when teaching the reading component, while a slightly higher percentage (70.6%) also reported an inclination to using simultaneously both modes in the teaching of reading. this seems to indicate that teacher educators are increasingly incorporating multimodal texts when they have to deal with writing and reading in the preparation of future teachers of english. nevertheless, when asked about the frequency of use of multimodal texts when teaching writing, 77.8% responded that these are used “occasionally”, while only 16.7% indicated that multimodal texts are “always” used. this reveals an apparent mismatch between educators’ familiarity with multimodality and its actual use in their pedagogies. this, despite educators’ overt recognition of using printed and multimodal texts, seems to indicate that writing instructional pedagogies continues to be largely dominated by print-based texts. this raises, first and foremost, practical questions about what most educators really meant by incorporating a blend of universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras20 farías & véliz printed and multimodal resources in the teaching of writing. secondly, this also raises pedagogical questions about the systematic use of multimodal artefacts in the teaching of writing. regarding the teaching of reading, teacher educators were asked about the types of texts they use. the majority (64.7%) reported inclination for a combination of traditional print-based texts and multimodal texts, while 17.6% expressed a preference for multimodal texts only, and an equal percentage (17.6%) favored the use of print-based texts only. since images play a fundamental role in multimodal texts, participants were also asked how they deal with images in multimodal texts, where 55.6% answered that images contribute to the overall meaning of the text and 38.9% responded that they convey important meaning to the text. these two percentages evidence the centrality ascribed to images by educators in terms of their contribution to the text’s meaning. on the question of whether reading multimodal and print-based texts should be treated in similar or different ways, the majority of teacher educators (66.7%) responded that multimodal texts need to be treated differently while 27.8% said that multimodal texts and print-based texts can be treated in similar ways. the varying responses regarding familiarity with multimodality, its actual use in the classroom and pedagogical treatment of print-based and multimodal texts may be the result of teacher educators’ lack of systematic training and preparation for dealing pedagogically with multimodal texts in the teaching of reading and writing. this was partly revealed in the question that tapped into the ways that participants had learned teaching strategies for the treatment of multimodal texts. almost half of the respondents (44.4%) indicated that they had taught themselves how to; 22.2% responded that they had learned these strategies in graduate courses, and 16.7% had learned them at conferences. probably, for generational reasons, most of them had not received instruction in their professional preparation that would allow them to deal pedagogically with multimodal texts. the fact that almost 40% of the participants learned teaching strategies to deal with multimodal texts in graduate courses and conferences can be understood as possible benefits from pursuing further studies and attending academic events. these results may point in the direction of a lack of formal preparation to face multimodal texts that these teachers experienced in their own education. this may also be indicative of the current status of our english teacher education programs which do not seem to respond to the new blends of knowledge associated with the multimodal and multiliteracy skills. apart from the apparent lack of systematic preparation to deal pedagogically with multimodal texts, teacher educators identified several limitations that prevented them from using multimodal texts when teaching the reading and writing component. as shown in table 2, in the open-ended question, respondents showed varied positions, reflected in the following three emerging themes. table 2. emerging themes in educators’ open-ended answers theme 1 lack of materials and resources theme 2 need for training and preparation theme 3 time constraints and other complexities lack of materials and resources. an element limiting educators’ use of multimodality for teaching reading and writing is the lack of materials and resources. one of them indicated: “limitation of access to technological resources or infrastructure may make their use more of a challenge but do not prevent me” (educator 14). it is clear that although access to resources or infrastructure does not prevent this educator from incorporating multimodal texts in teaching reading and writing, there is overt recognition of challenges about accessing material tools that allow for the use of a broader range of texts in 21profile: issues teach. prof. dev., vol. 21 no. 2, jul-dec, 2019. issn 1657-0790 (printed) 2256-5760 (online). bogotá, colombia. pages 13-27 multimodal texts in chilean english teaching education: experiences from educators... different modes of meaning-making. the centrality of access to and need of multimodal resources is reiterated by another teacher educator: “access to appropriate materials” (educator 9). unlike the previous comment, this educator’s concern seems to point to the availability of resources that are “appropriate” to the context of teaching reading and writing with multimodal tools. another comment of a similar nature is made by a different educator: “we need availability of simple material” (educator 3). being brief and concise in answering the question, the educator emphasizes the necessity to access “simple” resources, a call that can certainly be interpreted in the context of the university’s lack of provision of pedagogical materials and tools for the educator to implement a multimodal methodology when approaching the teaching of reading and writing. although there is not much elaboration on what is meant by “simple material”, it should be noted that the educator’s attitude towards what is preventing them from using multimodal texts must be taken into account if the standards on multimodality are to be met by educators. as the oecd 2005 report claims, the quality of teaching depends also on the environment where teachers work. need for training and preparation. very much in line with a statement by ajayi (2011), who stresses that “the need to prepare teachers to integrate new literacies into their teaching practices is becoming increasingly urgent” (p. 6); educators’ responses were a clear reflection of this necessity. in recognition of the limitations to using multimodal texts in reading and writing, educator 4 commented: “i think one of the limitations it could be in terms of the preparation of professors [teachers] in order to use multimodality”. although the educator admits to having the knowledge and familiarity to deal with multimodality, she confirms that “students who have used multimodality for their action research have not been well taught because the colleagues do not know how to deal with that”. the educator’s observation reveals not only their colleagues’ lack of training in dealing with multimodal texts but also the overall impact of such unpreparedness on teaching and learning. in view of a seemingly strong necessity for “multimodal preparation”, the educator finally observes that: “professors [teachers] should be trained in using multimodality strategies when using multimodality for fostering writing and for understanding texts” (educator 4). it is assumed that although no explicit mention is made of the need of multimodality training for the teaching/learning of reading, the educator seems to be fully aware of the dynamic, complex, and hybrid blends of knowledge that need to be incorporated in teacher education courses in the treatment of reading, writing, and assessment. educator 4’s comment clearly points to an apparently overt absence of consistent and systematic preparation in teacher education courses to deal with multimodal texts. a rather similar observation is made by another respondent who openly admits that: “i need more training in this matter” (educator 11). these comments ratify educators’ perceptions of their lack of readiness and preparation to deal with multimodality in the treatment of reading and writing and reveal a shared sentiment about what seems to be a serious gap between the actual abundance of multimodal textual forms by which we are surrounded and a clear failure to incorporate these into our teacher education programs. educator 11 voices the need to “ensure teachers continue to engage in effective on-going professional learning” (oecd, 2005, p. 10). time constraints and other complexities. reflecting on the challenges of using multimodality in their pedagogies, educators 8 and 13 commented that “time” was a limitation in the use of multimodal resources in the treatment of reading and writing in their practices. having sufficient time to incorporate the everchanging affordances of information and communication technologies in our pedagogy and practices is critical in our fast-moving knowledge society. it would appear that coping with the demands of what has come to be universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras22 farías & véliz known as the textual “paradigm shift” (walsh, 2006, p. 24), where text meaning is communicated through a synchronization of modes, is more time consuming than ever before. in this way, as unsworth and chan (2009) state, “it is no longer adequate to consider reading simply as processing information in print” (p. 245); rather, the concept of reading should embrace the various forms of negotiation of multimodal texts. for another educator, addressing the different blended forms of meaning making when dealing with reading and writing poses several challenges: “levels of complexity, difficulty in processing information, strong absence of students is what makes a challenge to follow a sequence” (educator 15). what prevents this educator from treating reading and writing multimodally has to do with the complexities of multimodal texts and problems with information processing. in this way, the assumptions underpinning this educator’s view point in the direction that printbased and multimodal texts are of distinct natures and that they are processed differently. although research indicates that reading multimodal texts involves different processes from the reading of print-based texts (walsh, 2006), it is critical that educators and teachers familiarize themselves with such differences, and do not avoid incorporating multimodality to the teaching of literacy simply because they are seen as more complex and difficult to process. the following section reports on the findings from the surveys completed by pre-service teachers. pre-service teachers research question 3: types of texts used by pre-service teachers in relation to this question, respondents were asked what kinds of texts they had read in the last few weeks. sixty-one and a half percent indicated that they read primarily novels and literature, 48.3% said that they read newspapers while 44.2% read magazines. the text types that pre-service teachers read outside university may already give us an indication of the various modes of meaning making they might have to deal with when reading these texts. although all these genres are likely to contain blends of printed text, colors, images, graphs, tables, and diagrams; newspapers and magazines are probably the types of texts that carry the most multimodal content. we were also interested in exploring the formats or modes in which they are most likely to read these texts. the majority of respondents (58.2%) stated that they are most likely to read printed texts while a slightly lower percentage (52.5%) indicated that they read them on digital devices. although most young people in today’s world are exposed to a highly-saturated multimodal information environment (pahl & rowsell, 2005, p. xii), these findings reveal that interactions with printed materials continue to be equally dominant in comparison with digital literacy practices. these results show the coexistence of the two main modes in which today’s information is conveyed, each having its own characteristics, as asserted by walsh (2004), and each providing a valid source of input for language learning. to get a more comprehensive view of pre-service teachers’ literacy practices, the contexts in which these occur and how they relate to each other, participants were also asked whether the texts used in their daily lives are used at university. to this question, 32.8% of the respondents said that the texts they read outside university are “sometimes” used in their academic university contexts, while 27.9% said that these are “rarely used”. furthermore, 15.6% responded that these texts are “never” used in their academic studies. in order to further explore the connection and usefulness of these texts to the participants’ academic life, participants were asked another question on this. more than half of the respondents (59.8%) do not consider the texts they read outside university to be “related to what they read at university” while only a small percentage (8.2%) of the participants believe these are “very useful for their academic studies”. these responses evidence the 23profile: issues teach. prof. dev., vol. 21 no. 2, jul-dec, 2019. issn 1657-0790 (printed) 2256-5760 (online). bogotá, colombia. pages 13-27 multimodal texts in chilean english teaching education: experiences from educators... divorce between participants’ out-of-university literacy practices and those pertaining to their academic and professional development. this divorce may also be ratifying the fact that the literacy practices students engage in their daily lives are not utilized and exploited by the educational system as bridges that may help to construct academic literacies. in this respect, gee (2004) has mentioned that “young people today are often exposed outside of school to processes of learning that are deeper and richer than the forms of learning to which they are exposed in schools” (p. 107). what is needed, then, is that out-of-school (or university) literacy practices are brought into our classrooms so that a clearer correspondence is found in the social purposes for reading in and outside the school. this is, to a certain extent, consistent with what was indicated by almost 80% of teacher educators who commented that multimodal texts are only “occasionally” used. this scenario is obviously suggestive of an increasing need to a theoretical, methodological, and pedagogical shift in how reading and writing practices are dealt with in teacher education programs. research question 4: role of digital technologies in pre-service teachers’ academic studies first and foremost, we were interested in exploring pre-service teachers’ use of digital technologies to better understand the ways in which they deal with complex modes of reading and writing. prensky (2001) observes that today’s students spend their lives surrounded by a large number of digital tools and technologies, most of which have become central to their literacy environments. as regards the question of which digital technologies pre-service teachers used in their daily life, 90.8% of the respondents use the social media, 2.8% said they use online games, and 5.1% indicated that they use microsoft tools. these technologies are used at least “once a day” by 51.7% and “almost every day” by 43.3%. these percentages are somewhat similar when pre-service teachers are asked about what technologies they use for their academic studies, where they mention microsoft tools with 61.7% and social media with 30.8%; thirdly in this ranking is cloud computing with 5.3%. these findings are indicative of the growing numbers of computer literate individuals in our societies, where the phrase “they come with the chip in the dna” is no longer an exception that divides digital natives or millennials from immigrants into the cyber sphere (clavijo, quintana, & quintero, 2011; rueda & quintana, 2004). this is also affirmed by furman (2015) who points out that “our students have been born into a world that provides easy access to this virtual environment” (p. 3). on the question regarding the types of texts they are most likely to read for their academic studies, 67.5% answered that they read specialized books and papers, 27.5% read essays, 3.8% read reports, 2.5% novels, and 1.0% read poetry. these responses can be associated with the year of their studies: since most participants are in their last years of university education, they are most likely taking courses that require bibliographic reference to books and papers in the specialized areas dealing with language learning and teaching. what these results highlight is the slow process for innovations, multimodality precisely, to take root in language teacher education and the mismatch between the multimodal literacy practices of pre-service teachers and those used by teacher educators. they point to the need for a systematic agenda in teacher education to incorporate multimodality and, thus, bridge the divergence between teacher education and public policy (manghi et al., 2016). conclusions the present work set out to capture and explore teacher educators’ and pre-service teachers’ views, understandings, and experiences of the role of multimodality in reading and writing in light of the standards for english teacher education programs set by mineduc. universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras24 farías & véliz in general, the results are suggestive of a shift in how our current pedagogies deal with the teaching and learning of reading and writing. although most of the teacher educators admitted to being familiar with the role of multimodality in the standards, only occasional use of multimodal texts was acknowledged by most of the respondents. the low frequency with which multimodal resources are incorporated into the methodological courses of reading and writing are certainly due to a series of complex factors, most of which relate to limited access to multimodal materials, a severely noticeable lack of teacher preparation, and an apparently deeply-rooted conceptualization of literacy as being primarily associated with printbased texts. this slow incorporation of multimodality partly resonates with the necessity to reconceptualize literacy and literacy pedagogy (canagarajah, 2005; sharkey, clavijo, & ramírez, 2016). a shift towards a broader and more inclusive definition and conceptualization of literacy in the latin american context may involve three central moves. firstly, it may be needed that teachers’ and teacher educators’ own epistemological beliefs and assumptions about language and language learning be redefined, for their views and larger paradigmatic concepts of the nature of english and teaching may be influencing their instructional practices. extensive research into teacher cognition points to the powerful ways in which teacher beliefs impact their pedagogical practices (e.g., díaz et al., 2013; farrell, 2006; hawkey, 2006). secondly, reading (and writing) is not just about understanding and interpreting what is encoded in print-based materials (cassany, 2006); rather, with the increasingly prominent and pervasive use of technological and digital resources, being able to read and write in this complex semiotic context requires the development of not only “other literacy skills” but also what scholars (e.g., kress, 1997; unsworth, 2006, 2008) have referred to as a “metalanguage” to unpack the multiple modes of meaning making. although the call for developing a metalanguage for multiliteracy pedagogies was within the context of l1, it could be suggested that the same pedagogical and methodological approach could be of great value in the latin american second or foreign language arena. a third move involves bridging the gap between the texts used for academic purposes and those used by students in their daily practices. the evidence and reflections from this study may also contribute to the understanding of how multimodality is re-signified in the latin american educational communities where social justice, empowerment, and democracy are gravitating concepts. the question that remains, then, is if with the inclusion of multimodality in the standards, the pedagogical scenario may change and the future generations of teachers of english will be prepared to face multimodality effectively and critically in their classrooms. then, one of the concerns in teacher education is the monomodal pedagogies that still do not include the multimodal approach to processing language. even though the dimension of evaluation and assessment was not directly addressed in this study, it needs to be incorporated in english teacher education programs. the production and comprehension of multimodal texts require assessment strategies that are different from those that have been used for the only-print text. to conclude, the findings reported and discussed in this study enhance our knowledge and understanding of the role of multimodality in the production and comprehension of texts in chilean teacher education programs. more importantly, and as a revision of the standards has been mandated by mineduc following international guidelines (oecd, 2005), this investigation raises critical questions about, first of all, the current status of literacy practices in chile, and, secondly, about the adaptations and modifications required to promote systematic pedagogies that embrace the multiple modes and resources of meaning making encountered by students in and outside the school. 25profile: issues teach. prof. dev., vol. 21 no. 2, jul-dec, 2019. issn 1657-0790 (printed) 2256-5760 (online). bogotá, colombia. pages 13-27 multimodal 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(2004). reading visual and multimodal texts: how is ‘reading’ different? paper presented at the alea: multiliteracy and english teaching k-12 in the age of information and communications technology, university of new england, australia. walsh, m. (2006). the ‘textual shift’: examining the reading process with print, visual and multimodal texts. australian journal of language and literacy, 29(1), 24-37. adult literacy, 55(8), 671-680. https://doi.org/10.1002/ jaal.00082. tan, l., & guo, l. (2009). from print to critical multimedia literacy: one teacher’s foray into new literacies practices. journal of adolescent and adult literacy, 53(4), 315-324. https://doi.org/10.1598/jaal.53.4.5. teichman, j. a. (2001). the politics of freeing markets in latin america: chile, argentina, and mexico. chapel hill, us: the university of north carolina press. trillos-carrillo, l., & rogers, r. (2017). latin american influences on multiliteracies: from epistemological diversity to cognitive justice. literacy research: theory, method, and practice, 66(1), 373-388. unsworth, l. (2006). towards a metalanguage for multiliteracies education: describing the meaning-making resources of language-image interaction. english teaching: practice and critique, 5(1), 55-76. about the authors miguel farías is a full professor at universidad de santiago de chile. teacher of english from universidad de chile, m.a. from ohio university, and ph.d. from the catholic university of america. he teaches applied linguistics and critical discourse studies. his research interests include language learning, multimodality, and critical discourse studies. leonardo véliz is a lecturer in tesol in the faculty of arts and education, deakin university, where he also earned his doctor of philosophy. he teaches undergraduate and postgraduate courses in language studies, linguistics, and teacher education. his research interests include teacher cognition, conceptual metaphor, multimodality, and multiliteracies. 173profile: issues teach. prof. dev., vol. 21 no. 1, jan-jun, 2019. issn 1657-0790 (printed) 2256-5760 (online). bogotá, colombia. pages 173-185 https://doi.org/10.15446/profile.v21n1.71300 the pedagogical practicum journey towards becoming an english language teacher la travesía de la práctica pedagógica para llegar a ser un profesor de inglés edgar lucero1* katherin roncancio-castellanos2** universidad de la salle, bogotá, colombia this article discusses english language pre-service teachers’ pedagogical practicum experiences. we compiled, from their teacher journals and group talks, the lived teaching experiences of a group of 34 pre-service teachers who were majoring in english language education at a private university in bogota, colombia. the analysis of their stories makes us realize that their first practicum experiences are full of feelings and emotions, and that their first teaching practices are based on their mentor teachers’ pieces of advice. these first experiences, in turn, develop the foundation upon which they build themselves as english language teachers. key words: english language education, emotions, feelings, pedagogical practicum, pre-service teachers. este artículo versa sobre las experiencias en práctica pedagógica de los profesores de inglés en formación. recogimos, desde sus diarios y charlas de grupo, las experiencias de enseñanza vividas por un grupo de 34 profesores en formación, quienes estudiaban una carrera profesional de licenciatura en la enseñanza del inglés en una universidad privada de bogotá, colombia. con estos escritos, nos aventuramos a construir una sola historia que reuniera todas sus experiencias. las historias de los participantes evidencian que sus primeras experiencias están llenas de sentimientos y emociones y que sus primeras prácticas de enseñanza siguen los consejos de sus profesores tutores. estas primeras experiencias además les ayudan a construir lo que llegan a ser como profesores de inglés. palabras clave: enseñanza del inglés, emociones, práctica pedagógica, profesores en formación, sentimientos. * e-mail: elucero@unisalle.edu.co ** e-mail: kroncancio50@unisalle.edu.co how to cite this article (apa, 6th ed.): lucero, e., & roncancio-castellanos, k. (2019). the pedagogical practicum journey towards becoming an english language teacher. profile: issues in teachers’ professional development, 21(1), 173-185. https://doi.org/10.15446/profile. v21n1.71300. this article was received on march 28, 2018 and accepted on november 1, 2018. this is an open access article distributed under the terms of the creative commons license attribution-noncommercial-noderivatives 4.0 international license. consultation is possible at https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/. universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras174 lucero & roncancio-castellanos introduction this article contains reflections on the pedagogical practicum experiences of a group of pre-service teachers who are majoring in english language teaching (elt). in a previous article (lucero, 2015), we talked about how english language teachers lived the experience of mentoring pre-service teachers in their pedagogical practicum over five years. standpoints, definitions, and knowledge of those teachers mediate that mentoring. in this current article of reflection, we want to focus on the pre-service teachers’ first experiences of teaching english during their pedagogical practicum. these preservice teachers were senior students of a ba in foreign languages program at a private university in bogota, colombia, and were undergoing their pedagogical practicum during 2015 and 2016. in ba programs of elt, a pedagogical practicum is generally about knowing, doing, and relating to the teaching context (de tezanos, 2007; kemmis et al., 2014; lucero, 2015; malderez & wedell, 2007; zuluaga-garcés, 1999). the knowing applies to the convergence of different types of knowledge about elt that teachers must hold, such as disciplinary, professional, pedagogical, content, and experiential, among others (for more elaboration on this knowledge base, see cárdenas & suárez-osorio, 2009; castañeda-londoño,1 in press; clarke & pittaway, 2014; fandiño-parra, 2013; goodyear, 1991; richards, 2011). doing in a pedagogical practicum applies to the environments and the support that mentor teachers and educational institutions offer to guide pre-service teachers along their path to becoming new professionals (díaz-quero, 2006; goyes-morán, 2015). in doing so, mentor teachers should co-construct knowledge with pre-service teachers and develop self-regulation and critical reflection in them (de tezanos, 2007; malderez 1 castañeda-londoño offers a discussion on in-service teachers’ ecology of knowledges, how theory has likely conceived their knowledge in elt practices and how in-service teachers may have adopted those theoretical premises as the knowledge to have for effective teaching. the discussion tackles a politicized view of teacher knowledge that needs to be revisited from the periphery and in teacher education. & wedell, 2007; moreno, 2015). relating in pedagogical practicum accounts for, “creating and maintaining a functional relationship” (lucero, 2015, p. 151) with pre-service teachers and the practicum context by communicating and being with them in the momentto-moment of the practicum (mcniff & whitehead, 2005; silva, 2015). relating potentiates pre-service teachers’ knowledge, skills, and attitudes about elt. colombian scholars have steadily talked about pedagogical practicum experiences basically by concentrating on two main premises. the first is that pedagogical practicum must have foundations in research actions (de tezanos, 2007; fandiño-parra, 2013; lucero, 2015, muñoz-barriga, 2015; páez-martínez, 2015). this focus is based on the idea that there is a reciprocal relationship between teaching practices and observing, analyzing, and describing why and how they happen in context. the reciprocity between practicum and research has effects on students’ learning about how to teach. research is thought of as contributing to improving teaching practices and vice versa. the second premise, which intrinsically becomes part of any research process, refers to how pedagogical practicum must be accompanied by teaching practices and guidelines about what and how to teach from informed observations and analyses (fandiño-parra & bermúdez-jiménez, 2015; samacá-bohorquez, 2012). in this premise, research on pedagogical practicum may inform what aspects to concentrate on. in this order of ideas, a pedagogical practicum thus contains a repertoire of knowledge as well as literature about how to teach a second language. with respect to this, castañeda-peña, rodríguez-uribe, salazar-sierra, and chala-bejarano (2016) argue that (mentor) teachers need to foster the creation of teaching curricula and methodologies in their pre-service teachers and not simply expecting that so-called experts do it for them. in order to do so, mentor teachers must know their students and how they feel about, perform in, and perceive teaching practices within the context of the 175profile: issues teach. prof. dev., vol. 21 no. 1, jan-jun, 2019. issn 1657-0790 (printed) 2256-5760 (online). bogotá, colombia. pages 173-185 the pedagogical practicum journey towards becoming an english language teacher pedagogical practicum. this knowledge helps mentor teachers find and guide pre-service teachers’ interests and strengths in teaching practices. taking this into consideration, we see that a pedagogical practicum has three main components: mentor teachers, pre-service teachers, and the context in which the pedagogical practicum takes place. the abovementioned authors have discussed the relationship between mentor teachers and pedagogical practicum in context (although, rightly so, the conversation is ongoing as there is always more to be said). however, little has been implied about the relationship between pre-service teachers and their pedagogical practicum context. in this current article of reflection, we would like to talk specifically about pedagogical practicums in elt contexts and the important relationship this context has with preservice teachers in it. we focus on the feelings, emotions, and learnings that pre-service teachers experience during their first teaching experiences. by exploring this side of the coin, we also want to talk about how pre-service teachers receive mentor teachers’ directions, and how pre-service teachers envision themselves as english language teachers during a pedagogical practicum. in order to do so, we collected information, both written and oral, from 34 pre-service teachers who did their pedagogical practicum in english during 2015 and 2016. these participants wrote journals during these two years, writing entries of around 70 words for every two lessons taught.2 the entries were narrations of their lived teaching experiences, which included teaching at different schools, and being mentored by different teachers of the abovementioned ba program. the schools where they did their pedagogical practicums were mostly public schools with elementary and secondary students. in 2016, group talks of about 12 pre-service teachers were held each semester, one at midpoint, and the other at the culmination of the semester. these talks were about their most relevant lived teaching experiences narrated 2 these pre-service teachers taught 10-12 lessons every semester. in the journals. we used note-taking to document these talks. at the end of their pedagogical practicum, we collected their journals and our notes to find the preservice teachers’ common experiences and the manner in which they had lived them. with these insights, we ventured to construct one piece of text that compiled all of the participants’ experiences. as we were writing the story, we constantly shared it with the pre-service teachers so that they could suggest modifications.3 we then split the final version of the text into several parts so that we were able to talk about pre-service teachers’ thoughts and feelings on how they experienced their pedagogical practicums. in the following pages, we are going to present this whole text, part by part in a sequential way. each part is accompanied with a discussion about the english language pre-service teachers’ lived experiences during their pedagogical practicum. both the whole text and the discussion unveil the feelings, emotions, and learnings that pre-service teachers experience during their first teaching experiences. in addition, the whole text and the discussion show how pre-service teachers envision themselves as english language teachers during pedagogical practicums. we hope that this proposed organization helps the readers of this article of reflection discern how pre-service teachers may relate to this academic space. pre-service teachers’ baggage on their first day of practicum part 1: the time has come! the first bell to get to my practicum i was already awakened when the alarm clock rang. the chilled wind seemed to slowly slide inside my bedroom as if my angst was not enough to have my body already paralyzed. but that was not what really worried me. i was anxiously packing my bag with some markers, my eraser, pencils, rules, and my class material, everything for a just-in-case situation. “teachers must be prepared 3 we progressively shared five drafts of the story with them. although not all of them suggested modifications every time a draft was shared, all 34 participants contributed to it at least once. universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras176 lucero & roncancio-castellanos for everything”—i remembered my mentor teacher once told me that—meanwhile my bag was getting heavier. i wondered if my future routine would be the same every day and whether i would ever find all the answers about how to teach. anyway, it was my first class as a teacher after all, being frightened was my pilot feeling. now that i think about it, we pre-service teachers are always thinking about finding the secret for teaching english, and since i did not have an idea of it on my first day of practicum, i was shocked. when i took the bus to go to the school where i had to teach in my first semester of practicum, i started to think about how to get into the classroom and open my “teachings”. i also thought about my peers and how they would do so. i could catch a seat on the bus, so, that made me feel a little bit more relieved, it is very unusual to get one in my city, “it will be a good day after all”—i said to myself. looking through the window, i evoke those years of school and university when i was the student, waiting for my teachers’ job. judgements can be hard—i thought—being on the other side, now as a teacher, is not as easy as it seemed. how many times have we severely judged teachers? i felt scared thinking about it, i was about to become a teacher. i always wanted to change the world through teaching. that was the moment to prove it. i wondered if all the teachers who i had had so far had gone through that, especially the ones who inspired me, i also thought about how they did it. i even considered the ones who had caused negative feelings on me, how could they have gone through this? in a way, did they also prepare me for this? having a quite comfortable commute helped me visualize my main fears: not knowing how to manage the kids or what to say during a class, and ignoring the meaning of a word, or its spanish equivalent, mostly if a student asks me for it. with all the basics packed on my bag, i was expecting to have at least one chance to prove how much i had learned about being an english language teacher. this first part displays how a pedagogical practicum begins for the majority of english language pre-service teachers. a high level of anxiety is evident, which can cause blank minds and fears of failure during the initial experiences of teaching. although this can be a common feeling in pre-service teachers when starting their pedagogical practicum (childs, 2011; soloway, poulin, & mackenzie, 2011), a question remains: why do they feel so? this first part correlates with soloway et al.’s (2011) findings that anxiety can be the result of a feeling of unpreparedness to lead a class, mostly when pre-service teachers do not know what the students in the class are like or what contents they exactly need to teach. that feeling can also be the result of mentor teachers’ insufficient accompaniment in informing about the course and group, planning the lesson, or the possible lack of preparation and knowledge given to them by their teaching program and classes. childs (2011) suggests that this feeling is part of psychological aspects when an unknown situation is about to be encountered by an individual. although these findings are true in our context too, part 1 complementarily implies that english language preservice teachers keep in mind their teachers’ anecdotal discourses when about to face their first pedagogical practicum experiences. the participant pre-service teachers seem to remember discourses about elt; for instance, “keep everything you may need for class at hand”, “know every single word you are going to use in your teaching”, “rehearse how to explain topics”, “teaching is not easy”, and so on. we then wonder what discourses mentor teachers likely say aloud in order to prepare pre-service teachers for their first teaching experiences. beyond pedagogical practicum syllabi and tasks, mentor teachers’ discourses seem to have remarkable effects on pre-service teachers. we also learned that, at the beginning of the pedagogical practicum experiences, pre-service teachers did not seem to focus much on discourses about teaching theories or on what they could do with language teaching models or approaches. apart from mentor teachers’ discourses, they kept in mind the ones about themselves enacting the teaching. first teaching experiences are also portrayed as a matter of “them” as pre-service teachers; thinking about their performance as new english language teachers. they perform from what they have acquired in previous class activities such as 177profile: issues teach. prof. dev., vol. 21 no. 1, jan-jun, 2019. issn 1657-0790 (printed) 2256-5760 (online). bogotá, colombia. pages 173-185 the pedagogical practicum journey towards becoming an english language teacher presentations, micro teachings, debates, or discussions. all of these experiences make them become little by little new teachers of english. high levels of anxiety, mentor teachers’ anecdotal discourses, and starting to teach on their own at the exact moment of starting a pedagogical practicum builds within pre-service teachers a desire to demonstrate their readiness to teach. although it may sound contradictory with the unpreparedness to lead a class mentioned before, the study of castañeda-peña et al. (2016) gives evidence that these new teachers want to demonstrate that what they have learned during their major has enriched them enough to see themselves as prepared english language teachers ready to enact their learning. they want to demonstrate this knowledge primarily to their mentor teachers, eventually to the course’s students, and even to themselves. it would, hence, be worthy to ask if the appropriate placement of the pedagogical practicum for pre-service teachers is close to the end of their major, after they have taken classes on didactics and teaching theories, as usually happens in colombian english language teaching programs. although some theory must construct this foundation (naylor, campbell-evans, & maloney, 2015), it has been put forth that offering ongoing accompaniment, knowledge construction, and critical reflection from the beginning of the major may result in more profitable practices. the dilemma seems then to be which path is better to follow: placing the practicum after having been taught how to teach from theory or combining teaching and practicum. if a pedagogical practicum is a process, then we must ask, at what point should pre-service teachers meet the realities of putting into practice teaching during their major? even more, at what point of their major should pre-service teachers start recognizing and taking on their roles as english language teachers? in part 1 of the journal entries, we could infer that they were pushed to start teaching, more than feeling ready to teach. how can the curriculum design help decide when a teacherstudent should start practicum exercises? if immersion in a pedagogical practicum occurs in a non-gradual way, pre-service teachers’ exposure to teaching may lead to high levels of anxiety, which in turn may affect their performances, motivation, and attitudes. therefore, the manner in which this immersion occurs may affect pre-service teachers’ performances and knowledge when beginning to teach english. pre-service teachers’ first attempts at classroom management part 2: the classroom is not what i expected! finally, the moment of truth began. i was there in the classroom before my students. once i started, i felt warm and i knew that it was what i wanted to do in my life although my mind went blank during the first minutes of the lesson. the class structure i had on my mind collapsed. i did not remember how to distribute the board or use the material i had for the lesson. all those methods and procedures studied during the major were mixed in my head, i couldn’t see anything clearly. i could see expectation in my students’ eyes. i resorted to grammar as the solution for performing a good class, so i took some markers of different colors with me; this way on the board, i could write the grammar formulas and highlight important points on them. again, i was thinking about formulas. when the class finished, i was still nervous. some of my students smiled at me. my hands were sweating. that sensation of feeling tensed accompanied me until i got back home. we usually get a lot of theory in the classroom; however, once we are in the practicum, we are concerned about how our explanations can be effective, we want to show good results in teaching english. we also have the practicum forms to fill out and the lesson plans to do. these assignments in teachers’ academic lives can be like social media; instead of living your life, you spend time on other matters. well, sometimes what we write in those assignments is no more than the illusion of what it could be. we must confess that the idea of having a mentor teacher sometimes helps us to be relieved, because we think that this person will give us some tricks and things that will make our life easier; consequently, this is what we expect, to be effective because of all those “tricks.” i realize i had no “tricks” for others. so, i had to create my own. universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras178 lucero & roncancio-castellanos another of my main fears came up, and as if i had not been nervous enough, the mentor teacher’s instructions were “no grammar”, and “no spanish” in classes, alarming me more. if i have to be completely honest, i then say that during my first days of teaching, i did not know what i was doing. being in front of kids thinking about what their questions and behavior would be, having all my doubts and probably feeling more intimidated than them, made me reconsider my ideas about teaching. i do not know if teachers have felt the same way, all those feelings of having your first class and those scary thoughts of thinking what learners may ask and behave, thinking about pronunciation, formulas, and explanations, besides the fact of having no theoretical grounds in your head due to anxiety. but i can say for sure that many of us, pre-service teachers, have felt it and still feel it sometimes. this second entry displays three standpoints communicated in the writings of various pre-service teachers. the first is about themselves wondering how to organize their classes. pre-service teachers seem to be indifferent to following elt methods and approaches in the practicum context. by analyzing their first teaching experiences, we came to know that this part of disciplinary knowledge is not among their prime sources of reference to plan language teaching. their first thoughts are more directed toward learned manners of presenting the language, which are usually taken from the way previous english language teachers have taught them. these first thoughts come as well from the shared “tricks” to teach english, also taken from previous teachers or peers who have already had the experience of teaching the language. the participant pre-service teachers initially put these first thoughts and “tricks” into practice in a classroom, then prove them to be “effective” when they see evidence of student learning. the second standpoint is how new teachers seem to identify elt as a set of grammatical explanations that guarantee effectiveness in language skills (brown, 1994, 2007; larsen-freeman, 2000). bringing up what castañeda-trujillo and aguirre-hernández (2018) explain about this matter, reproduction of grammatical explanations fuels an effect of undeniable effectiveness, although pre-service teachers may see the practice and result of these explanations as immutable. in agreement with these authors, reproduction of grammatical explanations happens because no mechanisms of reflection on how to teach english in context are provided during the pedagogical practicum, the period when pre-service teachers usually start becoming teachers of this language. as fandiño-parra (2011) asserts, reflection on teaching practices is indispensable. however, we usually see that, in the rush for providing enough knowledge for pre-service teachers to be well-equipped to face pedagogical practicum, mentor teachers may fall into just imparting instrumentalized teaching techniques and “survival” practices to cope with this academic space. the third standpoint that we highlight from part 2 of the story is how proficient pre-service teachers may feel with english language knowledge and use. the english language proficiency level that they believe to have certainly provides them with high or low selfconfidence. according to what students reported in their journals, they feel afraid when covering “difficult” topics and questions about english language use, culture, or vocabulary in class. not being confident about how to explain a topic, partly also because of their own english language proficiency level, puts at risk their credibility as language teachers. this suggests that the higher the pre-service teachers feel their proficiency level is, the more self-confident they feel about language teaching in general. a point of reflection for future study is on how much the idea of being proficient in english language, according to standardized levels, affects the feeling of security in becoming a teacher of the language. this privileges language proficiency over teaching knowledge and experience. our perception about this matter is that pre-service teachers come into the practicum classroom with a structural view of the target language (kumaravadivelu, 179profile: issues teach. prof. dev., vol. 21 no. 1, jan-jun, 2019. issn 1657-0790 (printed) 2256-5760 (online). bogotá, colombia. pages 173-185 the pedagogical practicum journey towards becoming an english language teacher 2003), in which “understanding is seen as being composed of a knowledge base in the form of rules, concepts and discriminations” (duffy & jonassen, 1991, p. 8). in such an event, undoubtedly, pre-service teachers get this “base” from the discourse of their ba classes: english language proficiency levels work to define people as speakers of this language. with this as the premise, language proficiency levels can make them or break them as teachers. this discourse subconsciously inserts the idea that there is no space for modifications, constructions, or evolution in the teaching of a language; there is always the same content to teach about the language, mainly grammarbased. our view is that teachers in ba programs of english language education should also focus on how pre-service teachers perceive the language, how those views influence the way the language is taught, and what changes could be made for the future. starting a practicum without reflection on these ideas embroils the tendency of seeing elt as an absolutism which should be taught through formulas and structures. pre-service teachers’ feelings and emotions in first teaching experiences part 3: is my mentor teacher aware of what i am doing? all those memories about being an english language learner came to my mind: i spent a lot of effort trying to pronounce words, understand how structures work, comprehend what people say in videos and audio tracks, and not using translation for that understanding. after teaching a couple of lessons, i started to learn that teaching a language does not have a formula, and “neither does teaching how to teach it”—i thought. but well, in the next sessions of my practicum, apart from expecting good results in my teaching, i was expecting to teach students something useful for their lives. i wondered if my mentor teacher was aware of what i was doing. perhaps, one of our fears as pre-service teachers is to receive criticism about our teaching practices; there is no better person to brief us about that than our mentor teacher. we want to know what we are doing well and not just what we are doing wrong. anyhow, how many times have we been pointed out because of our mistakes without recognizing our skills, knowledge, and improvements? i wonder about it and i remember myself making those mistakes that great scholars warn novice teachers not to make. but, i didn’t feel i was making mistakes, only that things did not come out as expected. those moments helped me configure my methodology. the way i reacted in all those situations said to me how i was being constructed as a teacher. were they mistakes after all? is it wrong to make them? isn’t it a way to learn too? again, a formula would have perfectly filled these gaps of my first teaching practices, but i never found it, i still haven’t been able to find it, maybe i’ll never find it. everything is so dependable on so many factors and situations…i remember i got to my classes every day waiting to find it, but it turned out that there was a new story to be told in each class. during practicum tutorials, interaction with teachers was little, if doubts or questions came out, solving them was in our hands, mentors were only assessing and correcting. we carry upon our shoulders the obligation of being the face of truth, the first profession that students and kids come across with major rigor, so there is plenty of knowledge to be acquired and shared. however, all i could cite in my head was most of my teachers’ comments trying to show me what i was not supposed to do; so, “dazzled and confused”, i noticed that i was so buried in prohibitions; i did not know what was right or even worst. at first sight, this may sound as an excuse, but then i did not know everything that i could do when teaching a lesson. i noticed that it is not just applying studied approaches and methods or implementing my own teaching beliefs. in addition, getting all the practices and believing in errors may work as a cycle. after all, we all began by making mistakes in our lesson teachings. part of this difficulty in initial teaching is that we struggle to trust in our little teaching experience, or set aside learnings from our studies, we usually feel that knowing nothing is what prevails. this third part uncovers pre-service teachers’ feelings and emotions about managing their first teaching experiences. they feel worried and responsible for teaching their first classes well. they also feel an interesting mixture of fear, enthusiasm as well as anger for how those classes are developed. in concordance with lucero (2015) and avalos (2016), the role of emotions and universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras180 lucero & roncancio-castellanos knowledge that pre-service teachers hold during their first experiences in teaching situations, contributes to their survival and enduring commitment in a practicum. in this part of the story, the major trigger of those feelings and emotions is definitely the students’ reflection on their teaching performance. in agreement with lingam, lingam, and raghuwaiya (2014), pre-service teachers are concerned about having enough knowledge to deal with teaching challenges. the major challenges indicated in the participants’ journals are the fact that they are looking for ways to break the paradigm of grammar-based instruction, and facing the critics of their students, peers, and mentor teachers. a closer look into these concerns drives the analysis back to their “acquired language worries”: good pronunciation, a perfect understanding of english grammar, full comprehension of video/audiorecorded talks and conversations, a total avoidance of using spanish to understand or produce english, as well as the literal execution of planned activities. we then can deduce that pre-service teachers’ difficulties in learning the target language are directly related to their struggles with teaching it. being cornered by these feelings and emotions, preservice teachers are agonizing for the “magic formula” to teach english while getting a better handle on its oral and written use. in the search for a way out of this conundrum, they may get frustrated with the profession because they learn that the magic formula does not exist. their initial teaching experiences and reflections persistently lead them to discover that teaching english does not necessarily involve following particular methods, approaches, or procedures to the letter. although preservice teachers’ pedagogical practicum begins with the sensation that they are jumping from theory to practice, they appropriately infer that premises about teaching english develop differently in every context and classroom situation. in agreement with castañeda-trujillo and aguirre-hernández (2018), pre-service teachers start trying out their knowledge and capabilities, meanwhile adjusting their existing methodologies as well as creating new methods according to the classroom situations and contexts encountered during their pedagogical practicum. little by little they become flexible and resourceful, breaking away from remaining static and procedural. the effect that a mentor teacher’s views has in this construction is vital (avalos, 2016). when educating new teachers, mentor teachers’ opinions, assessments, and feedback on pre-service teachers’ performances represent one of several chisels that sculpt a new teacher’s professional practices. mentor teachers are the main source from which pre-service teachers discover the manner in which english teaching should happen. in them, pre-service teachers can see models of how to be independent, autonomous, and reflective. as castañedapeña et al. (2016) assert, during a pedagogical practicum, didactic transposition takes place and knowledge is shared, learned, and constructed. regrettably, part 3 of the story shows that mentor teachers mainly highlight pre-service teachers’ mistakes and weaknesses rather than strengths and successes. there is a tendency of seeing initial teaching difficulties as mistakes, not as challenging situations. mentor teachers usually just talk about class situations and rarely show how to do teaching side by side with pre-service teachers, as in co-teaching with them. eventually, mentor teachers push pre-service teachers for innovation, but they do not show them how to do it. this undoubtedly reinforces pre-service teachers’ sensation of being cornered by uncertainties. are they really teaching with mistakes? if so, when do these mistakes stop happening and everything falls into place? even more, how can preservice teachers identify when they are making a mistake in the actual moment of instruction? shouldn’t mistakes be exalted as chances to contribute to the teachingknowledge arsenal? we should not believe that when pre-service teachers make mistakes and have weaknesses, they are not following methods, approaches, or procedures correctly. however, if this is the premise, we can sadly see the reinforcement of a categorical belief in mentor teachers 181profile: issues teach. prof. dev., vol. 21 no. 1, jan-jun, 2019. issn 1657-0790 (printed) 2256-5760 (online). bogotá, colombia. pages 173-185 the pedagogical practicum journey towards becoming an english language teacher and pre-service teachers: language education principles are static; methods, approaches, and procedures prevail regardless of the context; directions need to be followed passively; innovation is only for the so-called experts. this belief clashes with pre-service teachers learning that context and classroom situations frame teaching theories. thus, do mentor teachers indeed intend to change conditions in the field of english language education, or are they unconsciously preserving those conditions with their mentoring? as a result, teachers’ interactional practices with pre-service teachers for sharing teaching experiences and knowledge become relevant. certainly, perspectives of language and language teaching which are interactionally presented by teachers are the foundation where pre-service teachers first learn about language and how to teach it. therefore, pre-service teachers take on these first perspectives from what they see within classroom interaction in order to apply them in their own teaching practices. as a result, these interactionallyshared perspectives contribute to the configuration of pre-service teachers’ teaching styles and the manner in which they will interact with their students from learned interactional practices during their major. lucero and scalante-morales (2018) talk about this issue from the results of their study about how mentor teachers create and co-construct classroom interaction and teaching styles to promote learning during elt classes. when we re-examine these feelings and emotions about managing and developing pre-service teachers’ first teaching experiences, we find that those sentiments help them construct what they are becoming as english language teachers. regardless of how those feelings and emotions come to be present, they configure the new teachers’ knowledge and capabilities used to face language classrooms. in this way, mentor teachers’ views about the language and its teaching, as well as the how and why they interact with pre-service teachers, constitute a model to follow for the subsequent generations of english language teachers. pre-service teachers’ learnings from the pedagogical practicum part 4: now we carry a heavy load upon our shoulders! however, after doing all the pedagogical practicum in our major, and during conversations with my peers about it, we came to the conclusion that it was the ultimate trial to know if we really wanted to be teachers. we now know that, over there, in the classroom, in front of the board, before students, the moment to know it comes. we, “the new generation” of english language teachers, are constantly collecting experiences, said and lived, to polish our own practices. we want to be better than the teacher educators we admire, those who have inspired us as they struggle day after day against realities, sometimes without recognition. they always give us hope and strength for not losing track, striking the chord of all the knowledges that have been shared with us. our teaching experience after practicum has been better and better. however, i need to confess that i am still afraid during lessons; my hands still shake when i see anxious looks in my students’ eyes, sometimes nobody smiles at me, but i keep on going. now i have the strength to work for my ever-evolving ideals in teaching and life. in casual conversations with my peers, i’ve heard about how much teacher educators pushed us to carry out varied teaching tasks. either we like it or not, they have had a strong influence in us, they have inspired us not to stop reaching our goals. this is the teacher’s job, pushing and inspiring people to be better despite frustration and bothering. i think we carry a heavy load upon our shoulders. the fact of considering the reasons why some students go to school, the contexts where we have to teach, the situations that our students face every day, the fact that we need to push them going, the decisions that we have to take every day, etc. all of this feeds our lives. all this makes us wonder every day if we really want to be or go on being teachers. thinking about it keeps making me be the teacher i am now: another teacher, part of the “gang”, looking for answers every day, learning from my students, my colleagues, myself, and my educators; dealing with everyday challenges as opportunities, building my own path with an open-mind perspective, involving my best critical perspectives, recalling others’ experiences and theories, being wise when teaching. universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras182 lucero & roncancio-castellanos we believe in changes, and we want to make some little by little. pedagogical practicum experiences places us in this profession. so… the secret? there is no secret. at the end, being a teacher is not about knowing all the answers but being constantly looking for them. that is why some of us still pack all our things in our bags, because we never know when a just-in-case situation may come up, we teachers need to be prepared for the unknown. this last part of the narration about how pre-service teachers experienced their pedagogical practicum exalts the contributions of this space and the mentor teachers in their development and evolution as new teachers. pre-service teachers uphold the idea that their pedagogical practicum is the moment when they have to face elt realities, most of them for the very first time. there is a combination of varied conditions from classroom to classroom; demands from school staff, their studies, from mentor teachers, peers, and their students as well as regulations from all sides. little by little, they learn to manage all of these areas and apply their knowledge to their demands without setting aside their academic and professional goals. by considering all of these aspects, we are able to say that the pedagogical practicum is quite a challenging stage in pre-service teachers’ lives. in spite of this fact, pre-service teachers recognize that the pedagogical practicum is rewarding and necessary for their development as teachers.4 all of the efforts and sacrifices made during this stage pay off. they have acquired teaching experiences, built the required confidence to teach, formed abilities to manage classroom situations and demands, and can revel in the pride of being a language teacher. all of the theory building, collaborative discussions with their mentor teachers, reflections on their teaching experiences, and the formulation of new ideas have 4 castañeda-trujillo and aguirre-hernández (2018) also account for this fact. the pre-service teachers participating in that study also highlight the importance that pedagogical practicum has in their development as teachers. created these necessary acquisitions in order to build their foundations as teachers. as indicated previously, contributions do not only come from the contexts of pedagogical practicums; mentor teachers are also vital to pre-service teachers’ development and evolution. mentor teachers have the arduous task of considering pre-service teachers’ performances under the scope of several perspectives, including but not limited to, students’ reactions, school demands, curricula, and major requirements, all of which are permeated by theory and policies. pre-service teachers recognize their mentor teachers’ efforts because, in the end, they know that their guidance has helped them evolve into the teacher they have become at the conclusion of their practicum experience. in plain words, as castañeda-trujillo and aguirre-hernández (2018) put it, pre-service teachers learn from their mentor teachers’ experiences. thus, teachers are, to some extent, the mirror in which pre-service teachers view themselves when teaching in the future. general interpretations and conclusions throughout this article, we have presented the reflections and insights of a group of pre-service teachers about how they experienced the stage of their pedagogical practicum for elt in a private university in bogotá, colombia. their lived experiences displayed what pre-service teachers feel and learn during this period at diverse schools and with different mentor teachers. we have discussed the high levels of anxiety that pre-service teachers feel; the anecdotal discourses of what to do in class, the sensation of being located directly within the practicum context, the difficulty of putting theory into practice, and the manner in which they begin to teach. all these aspects take a serious role when managing and developing pre-service teachers’ first teaching experiences. the way pre-service teachers experience and assimilate these aspects constructs them as english language teachers. 183profile: issues teach. prof. dev., vol. 21 no. 1, jan-jun, 2019. issn 1657-0790 (printed) 2256-5760 (online). bogotá, colombia. pages 173-185 the pedagogical practicum journey towards becoming an english language teacher likewise, we have also talked about the role that mentor teachers have in this construction. their opinions, assessment, feedback, and co-constructed interaction with regard to pre-service teachers’ performances seem to have a great effect on their development, although they at times weigh these performances as if pre-service teachers were already knowledgeable about what to do in practicum tasks and situations. we highlight the fact that pre-service teachers indeed acknowledge the efforts that their mentor teachers make so that they, as new teachers, can be more autonomous and capable professionals. the story and discussions presented throughout this article help make visible how pre-service teachers experience their pedagogical practicum from their own perspective. as barkhuizen (2013) explains, narrative texts (re)construct participants in the narration of meaningful moments. this is what has briefly happened here, a group of english language pre-service teachers has reconstructed themselves as the “new” teachers in the field through the narration of meaningful moments in their pedagogical practicum experiences. we have then shown, as hofer (2000) suggests, “how individuals come to know the beliefs they hold about knowing and how these ideas shape practices of knowing and learning” (p. 378). or as castañeda-londoño (in press) implies, the manner in which pre-service teachers cultivate and harvest knowledge. our interpretations and discussion, which are never closed statements but open to multiple understandings, are derived from what we have seen in their writings. our focus was to demonstrate a perspective of what pre-service teachers experience when they start their pedagogical practicum, the sort of knowledge that they cultivate, the seeds that they bring into their next stages of development, and what mentor teachers have to offer them in the course of their studies. with this article, we hope to raise awareness of the aforementioned issues in undergraduate programs of elt education. more often than expected, ba programs in language teaching seem to concentrate efforts on providing pre-service teachers with theoretical loads and practicum spaces in which pre-service teachers’ emotional dimensions are barely accounted for. the reflections presented in this article compile a taste of this emotional dimension. we are now sure that, if acknowledged and encouraged even more, reflection on teaching experiences can help increase pre-service teachers’ ability to cope with all the demands of english language education. we promote the idea of educating more professionals of language teaching, not mere technicians who just do as indicated in language teaching methods, approaches, or curricula (see kumaravadivelu, 2003, for this idea of teachers as technicians). we suggest not forgetting that a mentor teacher’s endeavor is more related with teaching others how to identify, avoid, and learn from difficulties and achievements down the road. it requires not only theoretical and practicum approaches, but emotional strategies as well. this final claim refers to offering more assistance to pre-service teachers during their classes and pedagogical practicum. these spaces should merge theory with practice, not treating each one as separate; they should connect reciprocally the theory-practice with the context of the practicum as well, keeping research as a remarkable tool to reflect and improve on their practices. in fact, all teachers should underline the connections between the theoretical-practical component of the major and the work expected of pre-service teachers in the contexts of the pedagogical practicum.5 pre-service teachers are not alone in their classrooms; they are always with their students, immersed in an educational institution, in a multi-cultural context, and with a unique set of knowledge, beliefs, emotions, and feelings within themselves. 5 see for example the studies done by fandiño-parra (2011), fajardo-castañeda (2014), and rodríguez-cáceres and pérez-gómez (2017). these studies have to some extent demonstrated that connecting theory, practice, and the pedagogical practicum context in the howto-teach triggers more reflection in pre-service teachers upon their professional practices. universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras184 lucero & roncancio-castellanos díaz-quero, v. (2006). formación docente, práctica pedagógica y saber pedagógico [educational formation, pedagogic practice and to know pedagogically]. laurus, 12, 88-104. duffy, t. m., & jonassen, d. (1991). constructivism: new implications for instructional technology? educational technology, 31(5), 7-12. fajardo-castañeda, j. a. (2014). learning to teach and professional identity: images of personal and professional recognition. profile: issues in teachers’ professional development, 16(2), 49-65. https://doi.org/10.15446/ profile.v16n2.38075. fandiño-parra, y. j. (2011). english teacher training programs focused on reflection. educación y educadores, 14(2), 269-285. https://doi.org/10.5294/edu.2011.14.2.2. fandiño-parra, y. j. (2013). knowledge base and efl teacher education programs: a colombian perspective. íkala, revista de lenguaje y cultura, 18(1), 83-95. fandiño-parra, y. j., & bermúdez-jiménez, j. (2015). práctica pedagógica: subjetivar, problematizar y transformar el quehacer docente. in r. m. páez-martínez (ed.), práctica y experiencia: claves del saber pedagógico docente (pp. 29-54). bogotá, co: ediciones unisalle. goodyear, p. (ed.). (1991). teaching knowledge and intelligent tutoring. norwood, us: ablex publishing corporation. goyes-morán, a. (2015). cuatro estrategias para fortalecer la intervención de los maestros de maestros de lengua. in r. m. páez-martínez (ed.), práctica y experiencia: claves del saber pedagógico docente (pp. 55-66). bogotá, co: ediciones unisalle. hofer, b. (2000). dimensionality and disciplinary differences in personal epistemology. contemporary educational psychology, 25(4), 378-405. https://doi.org/10.1006/ ceps.1999.1026 kemmis, s., wilkinson, j., edwards-groves, c., hardy, i., grootenboer, p., & bristol, l. (2014). changing practices, changing education. singapore: springer. https://doi. org/10.1007/978-981-4560-47-4. kumaravadivelu, b. 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(eds.), elt local research agendas i (pp. 159-219). bogotá, co: universidad distrital francisco josé de caldas. castañeda-peña, h. a., rodríguez-uribe, m., salazarsierra, a., & chala-bejarano, p. a. (2016). eventos narrativos, comunidades y arquitecturas de práctica docente: formación inicial de profesores de inglés y francés. bogotá, co: editorial ud. castañeda-trujillo, j. e., & aguirre-hernández, a. j. (2018). pre-service english teachers’ voices about the teaching practicum. how, 25(1), 156-173. https://doi.org/10.19183/ how.25.1.420. childs, s. s. (2011). “seeing” l2 teacher learning: the power of context on conceptualizing teaching. in k. e. johnson & p. r. golombek (eds.), research on second language teacher education: a sociocultural perspective on professional development (pp. 67-85). new york, us: routledge. clarke, m., & pittaway, s. (2014). marsh’s becoming a teacher. australia: pearson. de tezanos, a. 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(2015). learning to teach: what do pre-service teachers report. australian journal of teacher education, 40(11), 120-136. https://doi. org/10.14221/ajte.2015v40n11.7. páez-martínez, r. m. (2015). experiencia, práctica y saber pedagógicos: campos analógicos y posibilidades para el maestro. in r. m. páez-martínez (ed.), práctica y experiencia: claves del saber pedagógico docente (pp. 169-188). bogotá, co: ediciones unisalle. richards, j. c. (2011). competence and performance in language teaching. new york, us: cambridge university press. rodríguez-cáceres, m., & pérez-gómez, f. (2017). the teacher gets a story!? revista folios, (46), 117-127. samacá-bohorquez, y. (2012). on rethinking our classrooms: a critical pedagogy view. how, 19(1), 194-208. silva, j. a. (2015). más allá de la dictadura de clases. in r. m. páez-martínez (ed.), práctica y experiencia: claves del saber pedagógico docente (pp. 119-142). bogotá, co: ediciones unisalle. soloway, g. b, poulin, p. a., & mackenzie, c. s. (2011). preparing new teachers for the full catastrophe of the twenty-firstcentury classroom: integrating mindfulness training into initial teacher education. in a. cohan & a. honigsfeld (eds.), breaking the mold of pre-service and inservice teacher education: innovative and successful practices for the 21st century (pp. 219-227). new york, us: rowman & littlefield publishers. zuluaga-garcés, o. l. (1999). pedagogía e historia. la historicidad de la pedagogía: la enseñanza un objeto de saber. bogotá, co: siglo del hombre editores, anthropos, editorial universidad de antioquia. about the authors edgar lucero is a full-time teacher in the education sciences faculty at universidad de la salle, colombia. he is currently studying in a doctoral program in education, elt emphasis, at universidad distrital francisco josé de caldas, colombia. he holds an ma degree in applied linguistics for tefl from this university, and a ba in spanish, english, and french from universidad de la salle, colombia. katherin roncancio-castellanos has worked as an esl teacher for two academies in bogotá, colombia. during her pedagogical practicum, she worked on a research article about english reading micro-skills. she holds a ba in spanish, english, and french from universidad de la salle, colombia. she currently works as a language teacher in spain. 111 https://doi.org/10.15446/profile.v20n2.66515 integrating assessment in a clil-based approach for second-year university students incorporación de la evaluación basada en el aprendizaje integrado de contenidos y lenguas extranjeras para estudiantes universitarios de segundo año erika de la barra* sylvia veloso** lorena maluenda*** universidad chileno-británica de cultura, santiago, chile this article examines the intervention, through the design and pedagogical implementation of two rubrics based on theory from the content and language integrated learning (clil) approach, to assess the oral competences in english of a group of sophomores in a content subject. the data collection and subsequent analysis included both quantitative and qualitative sources to evaluate students’ oral production and linguistic awareness, and to gather information on students’ opinions concerning the intervention. the findings suggest that the implementation of the instruments was successful in terms of raising students’ language awareness in oral production and provided us with valuable insights regarding their perceptions of a new sort of assessment as part of their learning process. key words: assessment, content and language integrated learning, linguistic awareness, oral production, rubric. este artículo examina la intervención, a través del diseño e implementación de dos rúbricas basadas en las teorías surgidas del enfoque del aprendizaje integrado de contenidos y lenguas extranjeras para evaluar competencias orales en inglés de un grupo de estudiantes universitarios de segundo año en un curso de contenido dictado en ese idioma. la recolección de datos contempló fuentes cuantitativas y cualitativas para evaluar su producción oral y conciencia lingüística, y para recabar sus opiniones de la intervención. los resultados sugieren que la implementación de los instrumentos fue exitosa al mejorar la conciencia lingüística de esos estudiantes en la producción oral y nos proporcionó información valiosa relacionada con sus percepciones sobre nuevos tipos de evaluación como parte de su proceso de aprendizaje. palabras clave: aprendizaje integrado de contenidos y lenguas extranjeras, conciencia lingüística, evaluación, producción oral, rúbrica. * e-mail: edelabarra@ubritanica.cl ** e-mail: sveloso@ubritanica.cl *** e-mail: lmaluenda@ubritanica.cl how to cite this article (apa, 6th ed.): de la barra, e., veloso, s., & maluenda, l. (2018). integrating assessment in a clil-based approach for second-year university students. profile: issues in teachers’ professional development, 20(2), 111-126. https://doi.org/10.15446/profile. v20n2.66515. this article was received on july 21, 2017 and accepted on march 12, 2018. this is an open access article distributed under the terms of the creative commons license attribution-noncommercial-noderivatives 4.0 international license. consultation is possible at https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/. profile: issues teach. prof. dev., vol. 20 no. 2, jul-dec, 2018. issn 1657-0790 (printed) 2256-5760 (online). bogotá, colombia. pages 111-126 universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras112 de la barra, veloso & maluenda introduction the need to improve linguistic and communicative skills in english has been a major aim of different governments in chile. some important steps have been taken in this direction by the ministry of education, such as the creation of the “inglés abre puertas” (piap) or english opens doors programme in 2004, aimed at improving english levels for students from grade 5 to 12 through the definition of certain national standards to learn english and a strategy for professional development. however, the results published by the national accreditation commission from simce (sistema de medición de la calidad de la educación) examinations have shown that there is still much work to be done as the majority of students at the secondary level, especially in public and subsidized schools, still do not reach the expected cefr (common european framework of reference) a2-b1 level on standardized tests, which is required to get a certification. as a matter of fact, three major simce examinations have been conducted in chile to measure students’ level of english. the tests have only included the receptive skills and they are correlated with cefr standards. the first examination took place in 2010, and only 11% of the students were certified. in 2012, 18% of the students got a certification while in 2014, 25% of the students were certified. according to english first (2017), the low level of english performance in chile echoes a similar reality throughout latin america. in contrast to europe and asia that always perform over the world average, latin american countries are below the average. the only country in latin america that possesses a rather high level of english is argentina; the rest of the countries such as uruguay, brazil, mexico, peru, ecuador, chile, and colombia have a low level. moreover, english teachers in the latin american region generally show a low level of performance with the exception of costa rica and chile, where the majority of the teachers surveyed had a b2 or b2+ level in 2015. the chilean ministry of education (mineduc, 2014), through piap and the academic standards for the country, stipulates that students enrolled in english teacher training programmes must reach the cefr c1 level in order to obtain their teaching degree. considering the low levels of linguistic competence students develop while in secondary school, this presents a huge challenge to students and teacher trainers. at universidad chilenobritánica de cultura (ucbc), in which the present study took place, students must show a minimum of a cefr a2 level to be accepted in the translation and english teaching training programme; therefore, there is a major challenge to help students in our english as a foreign language (efl) context advance from an elementary level of english to a proficient and professional one within the 4½ year degree programmes. the research outlined in this article was carried out at the ucbc as part of an action research programme sponsored by the university in 2016 (see burns, westmacott, & hidalgo ferrer, 2016, for a description). the study was conducted with second year students enrolled in both the programmes of english teacher training and translation, and specifically in the course of british studies i (bs1), which is compulsory for students of both programmes. this course has always been taught in english and its main objective is that students analyse and discuss the most important historical events within the context of british history and culture. until this study, the summative assessments of the course required students to demonstrate their content knowledge and analytic skills in english, but did not involve any assessment of their linguistic or pragmatic competence. similarly, teachers of this course noticed that students seemed to be somewhat “relaxed” about their use of english, both in class and in assessments. we believed then that if linguistic competence were included in the assessment, it would improve students’ awareness of language use and, consequently, linguistic competence. this is part of the rationale in content and language integrated learning (clil) models, such as the 113 integrating assessment in a clil-based approach for second-year university students profile: issues teach. prof. dev., vol. 20 no. 2, jul-dec, 2018. issn 1657-0790 (printed) 2256-5760 (online). bogotá, colombia. pages 111-126 ones provided by räsänen (1999) and mohan and huang (2002), who state that both language and content must be assessed in order to improve the learning process. this is also supported by maggi (2011) who agrees that both language and content must be assessed, and the assessment instruments should be shared with students beforehand, as this is a better procedure to assess integrated competences (barbero, 2012). based on the belief and the scholarly evidence that students should improve their awareness of the language if they were assessed on their linguistic competence together with the content, we designed two rubrics that included both aspects. with the aim of investigating students’ learning experiences and their perspectives of such an approach, we asked the following questions: 1. does the integration of the assessment of oral linguistic competence in bs1 have an effect on students’ language awareness? 2. what are students’ perceptions of the integration of the assessment of oral linguistic competence in the bs1 course with regard to its impact on their oral language production? literature review as was previously mentioned, the course on british studies is compulsory for second year students. before this research was carried out, only content was assessed which, we suspected, resulted in a reduced focus on their language use. based on the theory of clil, this research highlights the integration of both language and content, which states that language is learnt more effectively if there is a meaningful context, as in real life people talk about content they find meaningful and not about language itself (snow, met, & genesee, 1989). in the typical academic context, the linguistic component and content are usually taught independently, and as has been noted (e.g., dalton-puffer, 2007), linguistic instruction alone is not usually as successful as hoped. the integration of both would favour motivation and real meaning, which is a condition for a more naturalistic approach to learning a foreign language. the pro-clil argument is that the curricula of the so-called content subject (e.g., geography, history, and business studies) “constitutes a reservoir of concepts and topics, and which can become the ‘object of real communication’ where the natural use of the target language is possible” (dalton-puffer, 2007, p. 3). as a result, the possibilities of becoming more competent linguistically in english increase if such an approach is taken instead of merely assessing content. in a more clil oriented approach, both language and content become protagonists in the student’s learning process. language awareness research has shown that the use of clil-based approaches in content courses helps students remain interested in the process of learning a language and, for that reason, their language awareness increases. publications exploring this area reveal that clil-based instruction showed improvements in terms of linguistic accuracy (lamsfuß-schenk, 2002; lasagabaster, 2008; pérez-vidal & roquet, 2015; ruiz de zarobe, 2008) if contrasted with traditional instruction. as it is a key concept for our study, we will discuss some of the implications of language awareness. language awareness is “a person’s sensitivity and conscious awareness of the nature of language and its role in human life” (van essen, 2008, p. 3). pedagogical approaches that aim at increasing language awareness seek to develop in students the capacity to observe the language rules and mechanisms; as a result, students can grow more interested in how language works (hawkins, 1984). van essen (2008) adds that traditionally language awareness has been associated with the ability to know how the target language works at the phonological, semantic, and morphological level. other studies (papaja, 2014; van lier, 1995) have also established that language awareness may be a positive outcome of clil approaches. language awareness requires development of different dimensions of language. svalberg (2009) proposed universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras114 de la barra, veloso & maluenda a framework that includes three main areas, which contribute to the enhancement of language awareness: the cognitive, the affective, and the social domain. the first area is related to the ability to become aware of patterns, contrasts, categories, rules, and systems; thus, language learners need to be alert to and to pay focused attention to those aspects in order to construct or expand their knowledge of the target language. the second aspect, the affective domain, has to do with the development of certain attitudes, such as attention, curiosity, and interest; effective language learners display a positive attitude towards the language, a willingness to improve, and autonomy to overcome difficulties with tasks. finally, the social domain refers to language learners’ ability to successfully and effectively initiate and maintain an interaction. these three domains combined may lead to the development of the language learners’ attention, noticing, and understanding of the target language (lightbown & spada, 2006). with that goal in mind, the intervention in the present study aimed to provide students with explicit, guided, and personalized feedback on their oral production so that they would become more conscious of all these aspects involved in learning a second language, and also to assist them in focusing attention on their less developed areas. oral language production since this study focuses on language awareness in relation to its impact on oral production in general courses that convey certain content through english, it is relevant to mention some essential features of oral production. firstly, oral production is considered a difficult macro skill to master since it involves knowledge that goes beyond the linguistic aspects (bygate, 2003; pollard, 2008). in order to articulate a comprehensible utterance, language learners activate not only their morphological, phonological, and syntactic knowledge, but they also need to take into consideration the target listener or audience. this ability, or pragmatic competence (bachman, 1990), can be a decisive factor at the moment of selecting words and adjusting the message. considering this, we deemed it pertinent to include pragmatic competence in the assessment of this group of students’ oral production. it is also important to consider that oral production is affected by time factors. unlike writing, when speaking we are making choices of words in situ; although a speech can be pre-planned, the responses from the audience cannot be controlled. however, and given the nature of oral production, communicative impasses can be overcome by using strategies such as redundancy, repetition, changing the rate of delivery or intonation, or the use of fillers, among other discourse strategies (brown, 2001). the present study intended to evaluate the use of these strategies by giving the group of language learners two different assessments of their oral production: a more pre-planned instance—an oral presentation—and a more spontaneous instance—an oral interview—in which they could apply the strategies mentioned by brown (2001). the pedagogical implications of this were that students improved their communication strategies and their pragmatic competences in the oral production in a course that had been originally planned to develop only critical and research skills. integrated assessment: the rubric the main question we wanted to answer was how to make students more aware of their oral language production within a content course. following a review of work by authors recommending clil-based approaches, we concluded that it was through assessment that we could help students become more aware of the language while they learned the content at the same time. in fact, some authors have argued that within a clil-based approach it is necessary to assess both language and content (mohan & huang, 2002; räsänen, 1999). also, maggi (2011) recommends that “the weight given to the content of the discipline and the language should be determined 115 integrating assessment in a clil-based approach for second-year university students profile: issues teach. prof. dev., vol. 20 no. 2, jul-dec, 2018. issn 1657-0790 (printed) 2256-5760 (online). bogotá, colombia. pages 111-126 and shared with the students” (p. 57). similarly, barbero (2012) states that: “assessment is fundamental to the success of clil, as in any other field of education, since we know that assessment guides learning and students end up focusing on what they are assessed” (p. 38). barbero also states that an appropriate tool to evaluate integrated competences in clil approaches are assessment rubrics. all the scholarly evidence supports the idea that including the assessment of both content and language in a rubric would help students become more aware of the linguistic competence in content courses, and their language learning would be consequently more effective. barbero (2012) defines the rubric as “a tool in the form of a matrix which is used to assess learners’ performance” (p. 49). in a rubric, there are rows listing the characteristics of the performance that will be assessed, and in the columns, the descriptors indicate the qualities of this performance and their scores. the advantages of using a rubric in an integrated system are that it is possible to provide feedback for the students, it represents a guide for students and for teachers, and it also makes assessment easier as it becomes more objective. barbero states that in clil the content and language can be integrated into one rubric where the two are correlated and combined thus providing a complete description of students’ competences. she also argues that for the language part of the rubric the scales of the cefr can be useful. taking this into consideration, the rubrics designed for the purposes of this research consider the cefr scale for the language component of the rubric. this allows students to compare their performance in english in the course of bs1 and in the language course that uses the cefr scale as well. students who are doing the bs1 course are doing an english course aligned with b2 level in the cefr. the rubric designed for this study is an analytic rubric that integrates both language and content. it contains the criteria or the characteristics of the task to be assessed, and the descriptors that provide the proficiency levels of the performance. there is also a rating score to measure the levels of performance. to design this rubric, it was important to keep in mind the learning goals of both the contents of the course of bs1 and the linguistic goals of the second-year students in terms of language. this is particularly important in clil, as barbero (2012) suggests, as all the content and language elements are involved in evaluation. the steps we followed in the construction of the rubric considered the process elaborated by barbero (2012) and maggi (2011): • identify the tasks that are typical of the subject; • develop the set of standards consistent with the teaching objectives; • identify the criteria and the essential elements of the task; • identify competence levels for each criterion; • find competence descriptors for each level and criterion; • design the scores for the rubric. it is worth mentioning that the rubric design process described above also led us to consider two relevant aspects in any assessment experience: validity and reliability. to define validity, we have employed the definitions provided by cambridge english language assessment (2016) since all the rubrics used in the language courses at the university in which this study was carried out use cambridge rubrics as background models to build their own. according to cambridge english language assessment, validity “is generally defined as the extent to which an assessment can be shown to produce scores and/or outcomes which are an accurate reflection of the test taker’s true level of ability” (p. 20). it is then connected to the inferences drawn from the test as appropriate and meaningful in specific contexts and, therefore, results retrieved from the test end in evidence from which certain interpretations can be made. luoma (2009), in turn, defines reliability as score consistency. universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras116 de la barra, veloso & maluenda in short, this consistency refers to the degree to which an assessment tool produces stable and consistent results within a context and over time. validity in cambridge examinations considers content and context-related aspects such as profile of test takers, implementation of procedures to ensure that bias in test items is minimised, and the definition of task characteristics and how they are related to the skill being assessed, among others. as for reliability, some of the elements considered to ensure this aspect comprise criterion-related aspects (e.g., developing and validating rating scales, and having a rationale to make sure that test materials are calibrated so that standards are set and maintained), and scoring related aspects, such as investigating statistical performance of items and tasks to determine if they are performing as expected. the oral interview rubrics designed for the purpose of carrying out this project were inspired to some extent by the cambridge english b2 speaking assessment scale in terms of some of categories and descriptors included (grammar and vocabulary, discourse management, pronunciation, and interactive communication), and procedures, by having two assessors in the oral presentation and an interlocutor and an assessor in the oral interview (cambridge english language assessment, 2011). the context as mentioned in the introductory part of this paper, this project was carried out with third semester students who were taking bs1. these students belong either to the english teacher training or to the translation studies programmes. these degree programmes have a formal length of nine semesters each. therefore, by the time the students reach their second year or third semester, they have already been exposed to at least 432 english language teaching hours. among the participants, 11 students were enrolled in the english teaching training programme (pei) while the remaining 21 were part of the translation programme (tie). this represents a total of 32 participants for the purposes of this research. the principle aim of bs1 is to help students analyse the main historical, political, and economic events that have taken place in great britain since early celtic times to the wars of the roses. as described earlier, the course is taught in english but the focus has been mostly on the content and not on the linguistic aspect. students meet twice a week for three hours of classes and they are assigned certain reading material from the illustrated history of britain (mcdowall, 2008), and the oxford history of britain (morgan, 2010). before this action research project was conducted in the first semester of 2016, in terms of assessment, students were asked to carry out an individual presentation on different topics and they were assessed through a rubric that used seven criteria (introduction of the topic; knowledge of the topic; ability to engage and involve the audience; suitability of presentation for purpose and audience; voice: clarity, pace, and fluency; vocabulary: sentence structure and grammar; and pronunciation) with a maximum score of 70 points. scores were placed at three levels: “below expected level”, allotted 1-3 points; “at expected level”, given 4-5 points; and “above the level” category allotted 6-7 points. the emphasis of the assessment was on content and only 20% of the rubric was devoted to assessing the linguistic aspect. the correct use of the target language played a minor role in the former rubric; therefore, it did not include detailed band descriptors to guide the assessor or to help students focus on specific areas. thus, most of the students turned to their mother tongue whenever they felt unable to express themselves in english and that barely affected their final mark. for this reason, we wanted to explore whether a formal stage of preparation on two assessment instruments could improve the students’ oral performance, and determine if raising awareness of the rubrics and the linguistic elements to be tested had an impact on the oral production of this group of students in this content subject. 117 integrating assessment in a clil-based approach for second-year university students profile: issues teach. prof. dev., vol. 20 no. 2, jul-dec, 2018. issn 1657-0790 (printed) 2256-5760 (online). bogotá, colombia. pages 111-126 procedures this action research study followed a mixed methods design. the data collection and the subsequent analysis included both quantitative and qualitative sources; the former were gathered through the use of performance instruments, that is, the two rubrics, whereas the latter considered text information collected through a questionnaire. thus, the data collection process comprised three instruments: two rubrics to assess oral performance and one questionnaire. this approach allowed for the integration of several sources of data in order to have a better understanding of the issue (creswell, 2003). the first rubric (see appendix a) was used during the first two months of the semester to assess individual presentations; in this activity, each student was required to prepare a 15-minute presentation on a topic related to the contents of the bs1 course. since it was the first time they had been assessed using this rubric, they were gradually introduced to the instrument before the round of presentations started. first, they were shown the rubric, then, every category was analysed with the students and explained in detail; afterwards, they had the opportunity to try out some criteria of the rubric in short activities done in classes, and finally they used the complete instrument to assess a 15-minute presentation carried out by one of the researchers. this process took place over approximately six classes, which represented about three weeks, and aimed at both familiarizing students with the instrument, and guiding their awareness of what they were expected to display in each presentation. during each of the students’ presentations, two researchers were present using the rubric independently, so that results could be compared and a more objective assessment of the performance could be obtained. during the following class, students received oral feedback and a marked copy of the rubric. this first instrument encompassed four categories: presentation strategies (20 points), british studies content (40 points), linguistic competence (30 points), and pragmatic competences (10 points), so the maximum score for this rubric is 100 points. the categories are explained below: • presentation strategies: this category aims at assessing the skills each presenter displayed when carrying out their oral presentation. it is subdivided into two subcategories: audience and eye contact. the former refers to the capacity to adapt the presentation according to the audience; it also refers to the ability to include facts or information about the topics that might keep the audience interested. the latter refers to the capacity to monitor the audience efficiently as a whole and make changes or variations accordingly. • british studies content: this category assesses the command of the content presented by the student. it is subdivided into four subcategories: historical evidence, opposing opinions, conclusions, and historical facts. historical evidence refers to students’ capacity to select accurate information for the presentation; the second subcategory assesses the ability to analyse historical information from different points of view. the third one assesses students’ reflections and the ability to draw general conclusions based on the topics presented. finally, historical facts category assesses further interpretation or arguments on historical facts. • linguistic competence: this category comprises three aspects: grammatical competence, lexical and semantic competences, and phonological competences. the first one assesses the students’ control of simple and some complex grammatical forms; the second one assesses students’ use of vocabulary and accurate word choice; and the third one assesses the appropriate articulation of individual sounds. • pragmatic competence: this area is made up of one subcategory called discourse management, which refers to the students’ ability to combine ideas using linking words. the questionnaire was applied after the round of presentations was over; students were asked to complete universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras118 de la barra, veloso & maluenda and contrast of the results. the only category that was not considered here was the presentation strategies because of the nature of the second task. the total score of this rubric is 80 points. the process of data analysis comprised a detailed examination of the results obtained by the students in each of the components of both rubrics and took into account their opinions stated in the questionnaire. thus, in order to analyse the quantitative data we added up the scores obtained by each student in both rubrics although considering the content and the linguistic part separately; after that, results were compared according to the different categories and the descriptions. the qualitative part, on the other hand, was provided by the identification of recurrent themes which appeared basically in the answers from the questionnaire; these answers allowed us to classify students’ opinions in regard to the intervention. findings this research process led us to the findings discussed separately in the following section. language awareness as previously stated, the intervention process began before the assessment period; therefore, it could be expected that since students knew beforehand what was going to be assessed, their grades would be above the passing mark; the results achieved in both assessments: the oral presentation (op) and the oral interview (oi) in bs1 confirmed such. on a scale of 1 to 10, with 10 being the maximum score, the overall results show that in terms of grammatical competence, the average was 7.6 in the op while it reached 7.4 in the oi; regarding lexical and semantic competence the average of op was 8.5 while the oi was 7.9. the average in the phonological area was 7 in the op and 7.6 in the oi, and in terms of the pragmatic aspect, both assessments showed an average of 7.5. figure 1 provides a summary of the results in each of the assessed areas. an online survey in order to gather their perceptions of the rubric. it aimed to reveal whether the rubric had been useful for them in preparing their presentations and if it had helped them identify weaknesses concerning linguistic and pragmatic aspects. this semi-structured instrument consisted of 18 questions divided into three sections: content, organization, and usefulness of the rubric. each of the sections contained up to seven closed questions with a likert scale and one open question which aimed at gathering suggestions to improve the rubric in future assessment. the second rubric (see appendix b) was used to assess an oral interview at the end of the semester. in this activity, students had to answer questions about the contents of the course (bs1). the task required students to talk both individually and in pairs about selected topics. the examination format resembles a cambridge first certificate of english (fce) oral interview, including a warmer, individual questions, and pair interaction; this interview lasted about 12 minutes each pair. this format was chosen for two reasons: first, third year students use textbooks and materials in the ucbc language courses that prepare them to take the fce examination and their level of english is expected to be b1+; second, the students are already familiar with the format of this type of examination. since the second rubric was very similar to the first rubric, only one class was devoted to explaining the rubric and its requirements before the examination period started. during the oral interviews two researchers were present and used the instrument to assess individual performance. the week after the examination period, students received individual feedback and a copy of the rubric containing the final mark. as previously stated, the rubric constructed for the assessment of this task was similar to the rubric designed to assess the oral presentations. they have in common three of the categories: british studies content, linguistic competences, and pragmatic competences; thus, the similarities of the rubrics allow for comparison 119 integrating assessment in a clil-based approach for second-year university students profile: issues teach. prof. dev., vol. 20 no. 2, jul-dec, 2018. issn 1657-0790 (printed) 2256-5760 (online). bogotá, colombia. pages 111-126 figure 1. comparison of oral presentation and oral interview results as figure 1 shows, the average of all the scores of the participants in the study is high. this finding suggests that students performed well in both assessments, which we believe can be explained by the use of the rubric and its linguistic aspects making them more attentive to the language they used. this attentiveness to patterns, contrasts, categories, rules, and systems of the language is what svalberg (2009) refers to as a cognitive domain of language awareness. the oral presentation table 1 is included as a way of illustrating the results obtained. this shows the scores given independently by the two researchers who were present at the students’ presentations. this sample considers the scores of five randomly chosen participants. this comparison helped to validate the rubric, since the scores assigned by each researcher are quite similar. in the case of participants 1 and 2, who scored the highest, their main errors were in the phonological aspect such as the production of some phonemes like /f/ or /s/; and the pronunciation of /t/ at the end of the regular verbs. there seem to have been fewer problems in terms of grammatical competence or lexical and semantic competence, which means that at least in oral presentation oral interview 7,69 10,0 9,0 8,0 7,0 6,0 5,0 4,0 3,0 2,0 1,0 0,0 7,44 8,50 7,88 7,03 7,59 7,56 7,53 the case of these students they appear to have reached a high degree of awareness of how language works in terms of grammar and lexis. however, in the case of participants 3 and 5, the major problems were in grammatical competence because they still produced sentences with several elementary grammar or structural mistakes such as omission of -ed endings in the regular past tenses and extreme hesitation which made their speech difficult to follow. the feedback on the students’ performance was carefully provided one week later by the researchers in an interview that took at least 15 minutes per participant. along with acknowledging their achievements, they were also informed in detail about the linguistic problems that had appeared during the oral presentations. they were also given some suggestions for improvement; some of these activities involved writing sentences to use problematic words, or reinforcing structural areas through grammar activities, or recording another presentation so that students could listen to themselves and monitor their errors. in the questionnaire used later, 94% of the participants agreed that the feedback provided by the researchers had been very appropriate and useful and had helped them become more aware of the linguistic elements in the bs1 course. universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras120 de la barra, veloso & maluenda the oral interview the oral interview was assessed at the end of the semester and table 2 illustrates a sample of the scores given by two of the researchers independently to the same five participants. as with the oral presentation rubric, the scores provided by the researchers were quite similar, having differences of no more than 1 point. these results were slightly higher than those from the oral presentation, suggesting that students might have become more aware of the linguistic aspect because they were more careful with their grammar and vocabulary in this second assessment. they chose their words and expressions more carefully and tried to be more fluent and less hesitant. only participant 4 had problems with the -ed endings as she did not use them to refer to past events; the majority of the mistakes for all five students occurred at the phonological level with the mispronunciation of phonemes; misplaced stress in words like catholic, mythological, understand, important, and in terms of discourse management the main problems were the use of connectors that either were too simple (e.g., but, and, or instead of however, moreover, either…or) or were absent. however, all the participants were less hesitant and showed more confidence. as with the oral presentation, individual feedback was provided by the researchers so that students could become more aware of the linguistic aspects. table 1. sample scores in oral presentation oral presentation researcher 1 researcher 2 gc l&sc pc dm gc l&sc pc dm participant 1 9 10 8 10 8 10 8 9 participant 2 9 10 9 8 8 8 8 8 participant 3 7 7 5 6 7 8 6 6 participant 4 8 10 7 8 8 9 8 8 participant 5 6 6 4 4 6 5 4 5 note. gc = grammatical competence, l&sc = lexical and semantic competences, pc = phonological competences, dm = discourse management. table 2. sample scores in oral interview oral interview researcher 1 researcher 2 gc l&sc pc dm gc l&sc pc dm participant 1 9 10 9 10 10 10 9 9 participant 2 8 9 6 9 8 10 7 8 participant 3 8 10 8 9 8 9 8 9 participant 4 8 8 9 8 8 8 9 9 participant 5 8 9 9 9 8 9 9 10 note. gc = grammatical competence, l&sc = lexical and semantic competences, pc = phonological competences, dm = discourse management. 121 integrating assessment in a clil-based approach for second-year university students profile: issues teach. prof. dev., vol. 20 no. 2, jul-dec, 2018. issn 1657-0790 (printed) 2256-5760 (online). bogotá, colombia. pages 111-126 questionnaire this instrument gathered information on the students’ opinions about the use of the first rubric. it consisted of rating scale statements aimed at determining their perception towards the content, organization, and usefulness of this instrument, as well as open questions for students to make suggestions about other aspects that they would include in future oral assessments. concerning the content of the rubric the majority of the students claimed that they perceived this instrument to be very appropriate (61%) or appropriate (36%), with only one student out of 32 considering the content of the rubric to be inappropriate (3%). three students suggested that the rubric for the oral presentations should also evaluate the quality and appropriacy of the audio-visual materials used. regarding the organization, again most of the students considered the instruments very appropriate (54%) and appropriate (45%), whereas 6% of the sample described the layout as inappropriate. when asked if they would change the organization of the rubric 87.5% answered no, with only four students (12.5%) suggesting change. finally, concerning the usefulness of these two instruments, when students were asked whether the rubrics helped them to increase their awareness of the language used in oral assessments 78% agreed, 19% partially agreed, and one (3%) disagreed. when asked whether the rubrics helped them identify weaknesses and strengths in the target language most of them agreed and partially agreed (76% and 21% respectively) and 3%, or one student, disagreed. the last question aimed to determine if students thought that other courses from their programs should include assessment of the target language in oral presentations; 87.5% of the interviewees agreed, whereas 12.5% thought that the use of english should not be assessed in oral presentations. discussion as mentioned earlier, the purpose of this study was both to determine the effect of integrated assessment on students’ language awareness and explore students’ perceptions concerning this matter. the findings showed that students appeared to become more aware of the language aspects, including linguistic and pragmatic competence in the bs1 course. this finding is supported by the responses in the students’ questionnaire. most of them perceived the use of the rubrics and the feedback provided by the researchers as useful tools to evaluate both the content and linguistic aspects in oral tasks, giving them insights into the areas on which they should centre their attention to improve their performance in english. it is also worth mentioning, however, that the rubric used to assess the oral presentations needs to be revised in order to determine the incorporation of other elements such as quality and pertinence of the audio-visual materials, as suggested by the subjects of the study, or the dependency on notes. we observed that some students relied substantially on their notes while presenting; this issue can undoubtedly affect a valid assessment of the oral performance, since they are not producing language by themselves, but rather reading out loud prepared notes which are unlikely to reflect their actual performance. although this study considered integrated assessment and language awareness in only one course, bs1, we strongly believe that if other courses, which are also taught in english, could incorporate linguistic aspects in their assessments, the associated language skills of the students could be improved. it would require collaborative work among all the teachers in order to first, design suitable rubrics for each course, and second, determine a set of actions to familiarize students with the instruments before the assessments. the possibility to carry out this research gave us the chance to reflect on our teaching practice as students made some valuable suggestions. one of the most interesting is recording students’ performance which they perceive as a key element to become more universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras122 de la barra, veloso & maluenda confident in the language. apart from this, it has given us the chance to reflect on the assessment process that has been carried out at the university so far. we have realized it does not always include students to the point of making them active participants of their own evaluation. in fact, the number of students who still perceive evaluation and assessment as punishment instead of a proper opportunity to learn is not small. changing the minds of both teachers and students regarding assessment is an interesting insight that has come out of this project. finally, it is also worth mentioning that this may have implications as regards the way students are learning english at schools in chile. except for the bilingual schools, most of the public and subsidised schools have only a linguistic approach to the teaching of english and not a content approach. we strongly believe in the clil rationale that teaching english within a context can improve the linguistic awareness of the students. this could make a difference in the poor levels of performance that chile has experienced on the standardized tests. a policy in this aspect should consider both the introduction of content taught in english at schools, and reconsider how assessment is being carried out to involve students more thoroughly in their learning process. conclusions according to the analysis of the results and considering the research process, a number of conclusions can be drawn. first, it appears that integrated assessment benefited both the oral linguistic competence and awareness of the students. since it was the first time students were assessed using these instruments, the intervention period was of paramount importance. introducing them to the rubrics as well as giving them the opportunity to try them out themselves in different activities led the students to a better understanding of the requirements of the tasks and provided them with valuable insights into their weaknesses and strengths when it comes to oral performance. the task results suggest that the intervention not only empowered students to take responsibility for their own learning, but also helped them to self-direct their efforts in order to achieve the desired competences. secondly, in the questionnaire students expressed their appreciation of the specific feedback provided after both assessments and the explicit introduction to the rubric; most of them asserted that these two aspects helped them become more aware of the linguistic part of the course. they valued the fact that they received written feedback giving accounts of their potential areas for improvement in a course that was not specifically intended to be a language course. this had never been done before because all the feedback students used to receive was in terms of their content knowledge and not about the language. finally, we believe that raising awareness of the language in content courses reinforces the rationale behind the clil approach which states that students will learn a foreign language if it is presented and practised in meaningful contexts rather than just linguistic settings. if the target language is considered as part of the assessments in content courses such as bs1, students are likely to pay more attention to it. our study validates the research conducted by barbero (2012) as part of the three-year aeclil project in europe in terms of the relevance of rubrics to assess both content and language, as this is a key element in all the approaches based on clil rationale. for the university and for the teachers it has meant a revision of policies in terms of assessment of content courses taught in english which has facilitated making decisions. it also validates the experience described by carloni (2013) with the clil learning centre at the university of urbino, and 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(2008). lucy pollard’s guide to teaching english [e-book]. retrieved from http://lingvist.info/english/ lucy_pollards_guide_to_teaching_english/. räsänen, a. (1999). teaching and learning through a foreign language in tertiary settings. in s. tella, a. räsänen, & a. vähäpass (eds.), from tool to empowering mediator: an evaluation of 15 finnish polytechnic and university level programmes, with a special view to language and communication (pp. 26-31). helsinki, fi: edita. ruiz de zarobe, y. (2008). clil and foreign language learning: a longitudinal study in the basque country. international clil research journal, 1(1), 60-73. retrieved from http:// www.icrj.eu/11/article5.html. snow, a. m., met, m., & genesee, f. (1989). a conceptual framework for the integration of language and content in second/foreign language instruction. tesol quarterly, 23(2), 201-217. https://doi.org/10.2307/3587333. svalberg, a. m.-l. (2009). engagement with language: developing a construct. language awareness, 18(3), 242-258. https://doi.org/10.1080/09658410903197264. van essen, a. (2008). language awareness and knowledge about language: a historical overview. in j. cenoz & n. h. hornberger (eds.), encyclopaedia of language and education (2nd ed., vol. 6, pp. 3-14). new york, us: springer. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-0-387-30424-3_135. van lier, l. (1995). introducing language awareness. london, uk. penguin books. about the authors erika de la barra has been an english teacher since 1997. she is currently a full time professor at universidad chileno-británica de cultura where she teaches english, british culture, and literature. she holds a phd in literature from universidad de chile. sylvia veloso has been an efl teacher since 2012. she has experience in teaching children, teenagers, and adults. she is currently the teaching practice coordinator of the tefl programme at universidad chilenobritánica de cultura. she has a b.a. in english language teaching and an m.a. in applied linguistics and elt from pontificia universidad católica de chile. lorena maluenda has been an efl teacher since 2000. with experience teaching both teenagers and adults, she is currently course director of the tefl programme at universidad chileno-británica de cultura. she holds a b.a. in english language teaching and an m.a. in linguistics from pontificia universidad católica de chile. 125 integrating assessment in a clil-based approach for second-year university students profile: issues teach. prof. dev., vol. 20 no. 2, jul-dec, 2018. issn 1657-0790 (printed) 2256-5760 (online). bogotá, colombia. pages 111-126 a p p e n d ix a : o ra l p re se n ta ti o n r u b ri c b ri ti sh s tu di es i pe da go gí a en in gl és / tr ad uc ci ón in gl és -e sp añ ol ev al ua ti on c ri te ri a: o ra l p re se nt at io n st ud en t’s n am e: o bs er ve r: 60 % 40 % pr es en ta tio n st ra te gi es br s i c on te nt li ng ui st ic c om pe te nc es pr ag m at ic co m pe te nc e m ar ks a ud ie nc e ey e co nt ac t h is to ri ca l ev id en ce o pp os in g op in io ns c on cl us io ns h is to ri ca l fa ct s g ra m m at ic al co m pe te nc e le xi ca l & se m an tic co m pe te nc es ph on ol og ic al co m pe te nc e d is co ur se m an ag em en t 910 78 46 13 fa ils to m ee t t he a bo ve c ri te ri a universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras126 de la barra, veloso & maluenda a p p e n d ix b : in te rv ie w r u b ri c b ri ti sh s tu di es i pe da go gí a en in gl és / tr ad uc ci ón in gl és -e sp añ ol ev al ua ti on c ri te ri a: in te rv ie w st ud en t’s n am e: o bs er ve r: 60 % 40 % br s i c on te nt li ng ui st ic c om pe te nc es pr ag m at ic co m pe te nc e m ar ks h is to ri ca l ev id en ce o pp os in g op in io ns c on cl us io ns in te rp re ta tio n of fa ct s g ra m m at ic al co m pe te nc e le xi ca l & se m an tic co m pe te nc es ph on ol og ic al co m pe te nc e d is co ur se m an ag em en t 910 78 46 13 fa ils to m ee t th e ab ov e cr ite ri a 81 http://dx.doi.org/10.15446/profile.v19n_sup1.68617 didactic model: teaching the english temporal system to arabic freshman learners of english modelo didáctico: enseñanza del sistema temporal del inglés a estudiantes árabes universitarios thana hmidani1* near east university, mersin, turkey this study took place at a medical college with 57 arabic first-year students taking an intensive english course. the aim was to address the problems that learners experience when using the english tenses properly. the didactic model was developed and implemented in the study group only (27 students). pre, mid-, and post-tests were administered to study and control groups at three points in time. the model is a selection of aspects from different methods combined aiming to lead participants to a higher level of linguistic competence in terms of language awareness, reading and writing skills, and vocubulary building. the results indicated statistically significant differences in the post-test between the two groups over time regarding the level of linguistic competence. key words: arabic, didactic, language awareness, model, reading, vocabulary, writing. este estudio se llevó a cabo con 57 estudiantes universitarios árabes que participaban en un curso de inglés intensivo. el objetivo era resolver los problemas que se evidencian en los estudiantes al momento de usar los tiempos verbales del inglés. se desarrolló y aplicó un modelo didáctico con el grupo experimental (27 estudiantes). se aplicaron pruebas previas, medias y finales a los dos grupos en tres momentos. el modelo era una selección de aspectos de diversos métodos que se combinaron con el propósito de permitir a los participantes alcanzar una mayor competencia lingüística en términos de conciencia lingüística, habilidades de lectoescritura y construcción de vocabulario. los resultados muestars diferencias estadísticamente significativas en la prueba final entre los dos grupos en relación con el nivel de competencia lingüística. palabras clave: conciencia lingüística, didáctica, escritura, lectura, lengua árabe, modelo, vocabulario. * e-mail: thana.hmidani@neu.edu.tr how to cite this article (apa, 6th ed.): hmidani, t. (2017). didactic model: teaching the english temporal system to arabic freshman learners of english. profile: issues in teachers’ professional development, 19(suppl. 1), 81-97. http://dx.doi.org/10.15446/profile.v19n_sup1.68617. this article was received on september 3, 2017, and accepted on november 7, 2017. this is an open access article distributed under the terms of the creative commons license attribution-noncommercial-noderivatives 4.0 international license. consultation is possible at https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/. profile: issues teach. prof. dev., vol. 19, supplement 1, 2017. issn 1657-0790 (printed) 2256-5760 (online). bogotá, colombia. pages 81-97 universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras82 hmidani introduction the proper use of tenses is one of the main problems facing arabic-speaking learners of english. it does not only result from the poor situation of english language teaching and learning in syria and saudi arabia, but is almost common to the entire arab world. one of the reasons is the continuous search of the arabic-speaking students for morphological counterparts of the english tenses in arabic. when the students fail in their attempt to find equivalents for the english tenses in arabic because of their superficial understanding of the systems of both languages, they sometimes tend to use the english tenses randomly or resort to the strategy of avoidance and restrict their use to one or two tenses. one of the reasons is the nature of the arabic language. arabic presents a situation of diglossia1 through which temporal expression is not uniformly expressed in the two almost separate forms of arabic, namely, colloquial and standard. the aspectual and temporal distinctions exhibited in the perfect and progressive forms of english can be found in both varieties of arabic and the learners can draw upon them to understand the english temporal and aspectual system. the learner just needs to be made aware of both forms of arabic and the grammatical rules governing them to comprehend the proper equivalences presented in arabic of the english tenses. this leads us on to the second difficulty arab learners have with the english tenses. the wide variety of english tenses: twelve tenses if we do not count the passives ones baffles the arab 1 diglossia is “a situation in which two varieties of the same language live side by side, each performing a different function. it involves the use of two different varieties of a single language (colloquial arabic is basically spoken and msa [modern standard arabic] is basically written, whereas bilingualism definitely involves two different languages.” (kaye, 1987, p. 675). msa is formally taught in schools all over the arab world, while the colloquial varieties are actually the students’ real mother tongues. it is assumed, though, that as msa is the language formally learnt at school, it may also influence the students learning a foreign language. learners who had been taught the arabic “tenses” as being made up of only two: present and past. in fact, studying the english tense system reveals that not all the tenses are there to express time; their task is also to characterize action: perfective/imperfective, progressive/non-progressive and perfect/non-perfect (with all its subclassifications) (comrie, 1976), or what is called the “aspect”. tenses may also express “modality”, that is, the attitude of the speaker. we consider that awareness of the tense and aspect system and of modality in the native language as well as in the target language will facilitate the teaching/learning process of the english temporal system. the third reason for the difficulty presented by the english tenses is the methodology of teaching grammar in general, and the tenses in particular. this methodology is still traditional and relies mainly on the teacher giving lists of uses of the tenses followed by systematic practice that often proves to be meaningless when real use is needed (demirok, baglama, & besgul, 2015). considering the abovementioned problems coupled with the proliferation of language teaching approaches and methods, arab teachers no longer have to adhere to one specific method for teaching grammar and may therefore opt for an eclectic didactic modeling which meets the students’ needs. being a teacher herself, the researcher has developed her own model for teaching grammar based on her accumulated experience in teaching english to arabic learners, her observations of learners’ progress and achievement in addition to insights taken from various approaches and methods in language learning and teaching. literature review since the early 1920s linguists and educationalists have experimented with methods of teaching in an attempt to find the method through which second language acquisition can best be achieved. we shall review in this section those methods which formed the backbone of our approach. 83profile: issues teach. prof. dev., vol. 19, supplement 1, 2017. issn 1657-0790 (printed) 2256-5760 (online). bogotá, colombia. pages 81-97 didactic model: teaching the english temporal system to arabic freshman learners of english discourse-based approaches with a stronger return to grammar teaching in an innovative way, some researchers opted for discoursebased approaches (bicen & uzunboylu, 2013; nezakatgoo, alibakhshi, & mezajin, 2017). the focus of concern of discourse analysis is the study of those features of language that contribute to the understanding of spoken or written language such as topic continuity and textual connections (grammatical and lexical, explicit and implicit) (celce-murcia, 1990, 2002). grammar is relevant to discourse analysis to the extent that it contributes to the understanding and description of those features of discourse. before that, most l2 teachers used to tackle grammar as a “sentence-level phenomenon” (celce-murcia, 1990) free from context. they also used to contrive texts to serve the grammatical end resulting in artificial language, cut off from the real world. a reaction to this artificiality was a growing interest in teaching authentic language use, structures and their meanings in discourse and text (hinkel & fotos, 2002; ozcan & bicen, 2016; uzunboylu, hursen, ozuturk, & demirok, 2015) to make the relationship of form to meaning more realistic. the difference between discourse and any contrived texts lies in the experience that the learners get in handling authentic texts and approaching language as it is actually used by native speakers. discourse-based approaches to grammar teaching aim at teaching how discourse is generally constructed including sentencestructure and morphology. language awareness another line of research aims at integrating grammar with opportunities for communicative use of the language—“consciousness-raising tasks” or “structurebased tasks with an explicit focus on grammar” as they are often referred to in the literature. they fall within the general frame of “language analysis activities” and are also called “language awareness activities” or even “metacommunicative tasks” which are tasks where the focus is explicitly on language form and use (willis, 1996, p. 102). they encompass different aspects of language awareness: “explicit knowledge about language, and conscious perception and sensitivity in language learning, language teaching and language use” (svalberg, 2012, p. 376). they aim at developing explicit knowledge and are “effective in promoting awareness of grammatical features, both in terms of learners’ ability to judge the grammaticality of sentences and also their ability to subsequently notice the features in input” (ellis, 2005, p. 718). the use of consciousness-raising tasks has been widely advocated in second language classrooms. these tasks require the learners to solve grammar problems through interaction with the grammar structure, which forms the task content. the aim of these tasks is stated in rutherford and sharwood smith (1985) as “the deliberate attempt to draw the learner’s attention specifically to the formal properties of the target language” (p. 274). the rationale behind the use of this type of task is that once consciousness is raised, many learners are able to notice the structures in subsequent “meaning-focussed” activities (schmidt, 1990; uzunboylu & tugun, 2016). however, the task can either be followed by a formal lesson containing the target structure or preceded by instruction explaining the rules for its use so that learners can activate their previous knowledge of the form and integrate the new material with what they already know (fotos, 2002). we do not expect them to replace the formal lesson; and as rutherford and sharwood smith conclude, consciousness-raising “will [not] automatically ensure the acquisition of some structure [but] consciousness-raising is a sufficient condition for acquisition to take place” (p. 275). integrating language skills and vocabulary in grammar teaching grammar teaching should not be directed to only the teaching of rules, but should also encompass all the language skills. recent studies have investigated the role of grammar in the writing curriculum (myhill, 2005; myhill & watson, 2014), in developing communicative universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras84 hmidani abilities of second language learners (golabi & hajilou, 2015; kaymakamoglu, 2017; liamkina & ryshinapankova, 2012), in addition to its effect on students’ writing when it is taught within context (jones, myhill, & bailey, 2013; kuimova, uzunboylu, & golousenko, 2017). when grammar is taught within context, the occurrence of new words is inevitable. as hammerly (1982) said, in a full-fledged second language program, we should teach approximately 99 percent of the phonological rules and elements, 80 percent of the grammatical rules and patterns, and about three to five percent of the total vocabulary of the second language. (p. 124) in other words, while phonology and grammar can be taught, vocabulary cannot fully be controlled (novianti, 2016). however, research has shown that both first language learners and second language learners (krashen, 1989; waring & takati, 2003) may incidentally benefit from meaning through reading. the point is that context should be taken into consideration when vocabulary building comes into question and the strategy used is crucial (abdulhay, 2015). research supporting a combination of approaches from our review of the different approaches, we have noticed that effective teaching makes use of a variety of methods offered by approaches to teaching, because no single one of those reviewed can stand by itself and yield positive, long-lasting results. most of the studies conducted combined more than one approach and researchers could not always tell which one was responsible for the positive results obtained, as spada (1997) remarked. in spite of this return to grammar teaching, none of the new approaches integrates all the language skills in its presentation of the grammatical concept; they mostly take into consideration that grammar is part of efficient communication, and so its integration within communicative activities is primary. hence, effective grammar instruction should be weaved into the reading and writing activities that function as the backbone of the curriculum with special focus on vocabulary; and the only way to reach that goal is to be “eclectic” (ellis, 2006) in our didactic modeling in the sense that a combination of aspects from different methodologies of teaching should be put in the service of grammar teaching. review of problem-related studies for the teaching of the english tenses although the majority of arabic-speaking learners of english find problems in properly using the english tenses, little research has been conducted to probe this problem. richards (1981) discussed generally problems related to teaching the english perfect tense and how it is interpreted as an optional alternative to the simple past tense and that such an interpretation leads to frequent errors of tense usage. sieny (1986) stated that “two of the most disturbing grammatical errors committed by [arab] students were in the area of proper use of english verb forms, including tense, aspect and mode, both on the sentence and discourse levels” (p. 41). al-buanain (1992) found that the strategy of teaching the present progressive with the simple present on the basis of the differences between the verb forms does not help arab learners of english since the two forms are identical in their own language. the researcher rather finds that colloquial arabic makes distinctions between simple and progressive forms that are not made in modern standard arabic. colloquial arabic can therefore be used to make arab learners of english aware of that distinction which is crucial to the english language. objectives of the study aim of the study the aim of the study is to implement a didactic model for teaching the english temporal system to arabic-speaking learners of english. 85profile: issues teach. prof. dev., vol. 19, supplement 1, 2017. issn 1657-0790 (printed) 2256-5760 (online). bogotá, colombia. pages 81-97 didactic model: teaching the english temporal system to arabic freshman learners of english specific objectives 1. to assess the effect of the didactic model on language awareness, the reading and writing skills, and the vocabulary level of the freshman learners of english in the study group at three points in time (beginning of the semester, half way through, and at the end). 2. to assess the language awareness, the reading and writing skills, and the vocabulary level of the freshman learners of english in the control group who were taught english in the traditional method at three points in time (beginning of the semester, half way through, and at the end). 3. to assess the difference between the study and the control groups in the three concepts: language awareness, the reading and writing skills, and vocabulary. secondary objectives to train the freshman students to become autonomous learners through keeping a journal with which they monitor their progress. questions of the study the present research has the following questions to answer: 1. will the didactic model raise the language awareness, the reading and writing skills, and the vocabulary level of the freshman learners of english over time? 2. will the traditional approach improve the freshmen’s language awareness, the reading and writing skills, and vocabulary level over time? 3. are there differences between the control group and the study group in terms of the three concepts: language awareness, reading and writing skills, and their vocabulary level over time? hypotheses of the study the current study is an implementation of a didactic model to grammar teaching which transforms the grammar lesson into a language lesson where the students’ language awareness is raised, their reading and writing skills are improved, and their vocabulary is expanded. hypothesis 1 the didactic modeling will increase the participants’ language awareness, their reading and writing skills, and their vocabulary over time. hypothesis 2 the traditional method will not improve the participants’ language awareness, their reading and writing skills, or their vocabulary. hypothesis 3 there will be differences between the study group and the control group in the three concepts measured. method design and setting it is an experimental study. the researcher has developed her own didactic model for teaching the english temporal system to arabic freshmen in their first semester of english at the college of medical sciences (kingdom of saudi arabia). she implemented it in the fall semester. a demographic survey was designed for the inclusion and exclusion criteria, a pre-test was administered to all the students, and the model was implemented in the study group. another instructor from the department taught the control group in the traditional way, that is, she taught grammar deductively starting with an explanation of the rules followed by the exercises provided in the course book. we administered the midtest half way through the semester and the post-test at the end. the results of both groups were compared first with their scores on the pre-test and with one another after the implementation of the model. for reasons of objectivity, the researcher did not intervene in the correction or grading of either group. universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras86 hmidani the colleges of medical sciences has set the preprofessional program (24 hours/week) whose goal is to prepare the students for studying health sciences through the medium of english. the experiment the model is a selection of aspects from different methods combined in such a way that the resulting activities are compatible with each other and reinforce each other, aiming for a higher level of linguistic competence. it consists of four main phases. the terms used for the first two phases are adapted from piaget (1975) in which he describes the learning process, whereas the terms used for the last two phases are the researcher’s and they form a continuation of the learning process. in the appendix, a practical application of the approach is presented. the reception and assimilation phase it consists of comprehension-based exercises meant to initiate the students to the new structures. these exercises may take the form of reading comprehension passages where the target grammatical structure is used. so the initiation to the structure is done indirectly. the accommodation phase having initiated the students to the grammatical structure, we introduce the consciousness-raising exercises where the students discuss the form-meaning relationship in a passage through answering comprehension questions. this is followed by the translation exercises which raise the students’ awareness of the target structure and how it is expressed in their mother tongue. this technique works particularly well with adult students who find it hard to be detached from their language and culture. this translation technique also promotes vocabulary learning as the students have to read authentic or constructed texts and are asked to keep a log book in which they jot down pieces of language that capture their interest to be reviewed and checked later by the teacher. the production phase this phase aims to sensitize the students to actual language use and consequently improve their linguistic competence. they do reconstructive exercises followed by free writing. more practice is done at home through assigning the practical part of the book as homework assignment. the self-assessment phase this is the fourth and last phase of the model. it is ongoing throughout the learning process as the students are advised, at the start of the semester, to keep a journal or diary to be completed on three occasions during the course. the journal is divided into three sections: the first one contains questions for direct assessment; the second a list in which the new lexis and grammatical points are listed together with sentences illustrating their proper use; and the third section is used by the students to write their own mistakes and to provide corrections. the journal is submitted to the teacher to be reviewed, discussed, and graded. the use of such a record helps the students to develop the ability to monitor their progress and to judge their performance at the same time; it is also a source of reference which contains a stock of new vocabulary items. suitability of the model for the personality characteristics and the learning styles of arabs the researcher’s didactic model is expected to be well received by arab students because it is varied, so all learners will have the opportunity to show their aptitude in one or another of the language skills. arab learners are mostly of the careful type and avoid making fools of themselves in front of the class. therefore, comprehension-based exercises can function as warming up and input for more productive tasks. on the other hand, if the class comprises some learners of the adventurous type, who may feel bored with the comprehension-based exercises, the teacher 87profile: issues teach. prof. dev., vol. 19, supplement 1, 2017. issn 1657-0790 (printed) 2256-5760 (online). bogotá, colombia. pages 81-97 didactic model: teaching the english temporal system to arabic freshman learners of english can handle them by giving them more challenging questions. the students are expected to enjoy and pay much attention to the language-awareness exercises because they are of the dynamic type—as arabs are. moreover, the students do not get bored listening to lengthy explanations in english from the teacher, but are involved in answering questions on the reading passage. therefore, grammar teaching becomes more interesting for the students as it is supported by explanation in their mother tongue and illustrated by visual stimulation such as drawings and iconic mediators. in this way, any ambiguity is dispelled; the students feel more secure and therefore readier to pick up the new rules. the teacher might also bring up arabic sentences to further explain the grammatical point by comparing the l1 system with the l2 in order to make the students aware of how the l2 system works. on the other hand, reconstructive activities are also expected to be well received by arab learners because the students do not have to take many risks; they have all the elements required for successful fulfillment of the productive task. the context of language teaching the teaching conditions in the arab countries also favor the adoption of the researcher’s model as it meets four main factors mentioned in marton (1988, pp. 22-27): (1) intensity of teaching, (2) size of class, (3) level of language study, and (4) the teacher and his characteristics. intensity of teaching refers to courses ranging from 20 to over 30 hours of classroom instruction per week. this applies to the saudi medical freshman students for whom the first semester is devoted to improving basic language skills. as for the size of the class, the researcher’s model can work perfectly well with large classes (an average of 30 students per class). this is mainly because the interaction required among the students in the consciousness-raising and reconstructive activities is controlled. in other words, there is a time limit for every activity and the output is graded. therefore, teachers need to be competent in using and managing time effectively (keskinoglu, 2016). as for the context of language teaching, namely, the level of language study, the students’ level is assumed to be low-intermediate. with such a level, they need a great deal of exposure to the target language in order to consciously internalize its formal aspects and they need to be competent in many areas of language (mutlu, 2015). similarly the consciousness-raising exercises come to reinforce and promote explicit knowledge of grammar. the fourth factor affecting the teaching environment is the teacher’s proficiency in the l2. unfortunately, not all teachers are linguistically or pedagogically competent. therefore, they may effectively work within the framework of this model and provide listening or reading tasks that do not require much “language” from them. in a grammar course such as ours, which is cognitivelyoriented, the teacher should not imperatively be skilled in speaking as the comprehension questions may be supported, when necessary, by arabic to bring out the differences between the l1 and l2 systems. similarly, the consciousness-raising tasks require little communicative language as the discussion is mainly on linguistic phenomena. the participants the study subjects are saudi female freshman medical students enrolled in a one-semester intensive english course. they have recently graduated from high school and their level in english is hardly low-intermediate as per the entrance test and the interviews which they had on college admission. they were exposed to english in secondary school (3 hrs/w). in addition, a demographic survey profiled the participants. those who did not meet the inclusion criteria attended the grammar course, but their results were not included in the study. universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras88 hmidani sampling and sample size simple random sampling technique was used to select both groups from 150 students admitted to the college of medical sciences and randomly divided into five sections consisting of 30 students each. three students were excluded from the study group because they did not meet the inclusion criteria. therefore, the 150 medical students were divided into five sections, with one section (27 students) as the study group and another section (30 students) as the control group. data collection socio-demographic sheet the socio-demographic sheet was developed for determining the inclusion and exclusion criteria. the subjects should be high school graduates (freshman). it inquires about their age, their gpa, whether one of their parents is a non-arab, whether they have ever travelled to english-speaking countries or dealt with english speakers in their environment, or taken any extra english tutoring after graduation from high school. these criteria will eliminate any confounding factors. pre, mid, and posttests the three tests for both groups included the following components at each point in time, with 10 different sets of questions (one point for each question). language awareness tasks language awareness tasks measure the learners’ ability to solve grammar problems through interaction with the grammar structure, which forms the task content. reading and writing skills reading and writing skills can be measured in different tasks such as cloze exercises and fill-in gaps (bacha, 2002; sadeghi, 2014). vocabulary expansion in addition to the four skills of the language, vocabulary constitutes one main component of a sound basis in the english language. the questions are of the multiple choice type and test the students’ ability to infer meaning from a passage and to remember some root words given during the lesson. data collection and analysis the data were collected at three different times during the fall semester: beginning of september, midoctober, and end of november. a pre-test was first administered to both groups of freshman students following a program in medical sciences. the results of the mid and posttests were first compared with the students’ scores in the pre-test and with the variables after the implementation of the approach. for reasons of objectivity, the three tests were corrected and graded by an external examiner who had the answer key. the tests covered the content taught during the course. the data were analyzed using the statistical package for social sciences (spss), version 20.0 (ibm corp., released 2011). descriptive statistics were used to describe the students’ demographics. a repeated measure anova was used to measure the changes over time for both groups. results and discussion using repeated measure anova, all the results indicated statistically significant differences between the two groups regarding the three variables measured in the post-tests. the pre-tests showed no statistically significant differences between the two groups as they were almost homogeneous except for the three students whose results were excluded because they did not meet the inclusion criteria. as for the mid-tests and post-tests, language awareness (table 1) took precedence over the other two variables as the study group scored higher on 89profile: issues teach. prof. dev., vol. 19, supplement 1, 2017. issn 1657-0790 (printed) 2256-5760 (online). bogotá, colombia. pages 81-97 didactic model: teaching the english temporal system to arabic freshman learners of english both tests: mid (4.17, sd = 1.17) and post (4.54, sd = 1.18) compared with the control group (3.23, sd = .48) and (3.27, sd = .41), respectively. this indicates that the goal of the translation and language awareness exercises (which were mainly meant to give the students awareness of how the english structure is rendered in arabic) is achieved and the students outperformed the control group. coming to the second variable, namely, reading and writing skills (table 2), the results indicated no statistically significant differences between the two groups in the mid-test: (4.75, sd = .95) for the study group and (3.36, sd = .52) for the control group with p-value higher than .005. however, the post-test revealed the precedence of the study group over the control group with 4.81 (sd = .98) for the study group and 3.90 (sd = .39) for the control group with p-value = .014. this result was somehow expected as the reading and writing skills need more time to exhibit any effective improvetable 1. results of the language awareness test descriptive and anova results language awareness mean sd minimum maximum f p-value pre study group 3.28 .97 2.00 5.50 .18 .67 control group 3.11 .79 1.60 4.00 mid study group 4.17 1.17 3.00 6.00 5.50 .03 control group 3.23 .48 2.50 4.00 post study group 4.54 1.18 3.20 6.60 10.30 .005 control group 3.27 .41 2.80 4.20 ment. this result, as well as the result of the language awareness test, is supported by kim (2011) in a study on korean learners of english where the researcher proved that using translation exercises helped his students recognize the importance of accuracy for successful written communication; additionally, using the mother tongue in a second language writing classroom can be a positive tool for improving the students’ writing proficiency and helping them realize the importance of seeing their own writing more objectively. similar results were obtained in the vocabulary (table 3) as both groups showed no statistically significant differences in the mid-test with p-value = .37. the differences were obvious in the post-test with the study group scoring 4.94 (sd = .95) and the control group, 3.42 (sd = .81) with p-value = .001. here also both groups were taking other courses and their vocabulary was naturally growing; however, the post-tests witnessed table 2. results of the reading and writing test descriptive and anova results read & write mean sd minimum maximum f p-value pre study group 4.05 .73 3.00 5.00 4.93 .039 control group 3.32 .73 2.00 4.20 mid study group 4.75 .95 3.00 6.20 1.27 .273 control group 4.36 .52 3.00 4.80 post study group 4.81 .98 3.00 6.00 7.38 .014 control group 3.90 .39 3.00 4.30 universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras90 hmidani the outperformance of the study group over the control group because the study group was taught strategies on how to make use of contextual clues to glean the meaning. grammar questions were mechanically answered previously where comprehending the passage was not critical for solving them. the new approach with its involvement in the context for inferring the meaning was a challenge for the students who needed more time to apply it. this agrees with the study by huang, willson, and eslami (2012) in which they carried out a meta-analytic study of the effects of output tasks on second or foreign incidental vocabulary learning and included 12 studies. one of the mediators examined was the involvement load hypothesis. the results showed that learners who performed a task with a higher degree of involvement load, gained more vocabulary. conclusion and recommendations this experimental study was an attempt to see whether the researcher’s didactic model for teaching the english temporal to arabic freshman learners of english could yield the desired results. the outcomes of the study support our three hypotheses of the three variables measured. the study group outperformed the control group shortly after the implementation of the approach. the other two skills, namely, the reading and writing as well as the vocabulary took a little bit longer, table 3. results of the vocabulary test descriptive and anova results vocabulary mean sd minimum maximum f p-value pre study group 2.79 .82 1.75 4.70 .08 .77 control group 2.89 .60 1.75 4.20 mid study group 4.33 1.13 2.70 6.00 .84 .37 control group 3.90 .94 2.80 5.80 post study group 4.94 .95 3.75 6.30 14.60 .001 control group 3.42 .81 2.20 4.90 that is, up to the administration of the posttest to show the positive impact. therefore, its implementation is recommended in the grammar classes of arabic learners so that the traditional class is transformed into a more dynamic one. more research is needed to see whether the approach can be 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(1996). a framework for task-based learning. london, uk: longman. about the author thana hmidani holds an ma and a phd from université catholique de louvain (belgium) and an advanced diploma in tesol from manchester university, uk. her research interests include methods of teaching english, french, and arabic to speakers of other languages. 93profile: issues teach. prof. dev., vol. 19, supplement 1, 2017. issn 1657-0790 (printed) 2256-5760 (online). bogotá, colombia. pages 81-97 didactic model: teaching the english temporal system to arabic freshman learners of english appendix: sample teaching applying the eclectic approach teaching the past perfect: an activity completed before another past activity (the following exercise is given after the simple past and the present perfect have been taught. the comparison goes now between the simple past and the past perfect. the difference between the two tenses is explained on the time line. the teacher could also compare it with the way it is rendered in msa, i.e. kaana +qad + al-maadii.) a. reception and assimilation phase what a catastrophe! it happened about five years ago. i had invited my girlfriend, emma, and her parents to dinner. i hadn’t met her parents before and i wanted to impress them. i had planned soup first, then fresh salmon and a chocolate mousse dessert. in fact, i was quite looking forward to it. on the day of the dinner, i got home from work early and started to prepare the meal. everything went fine. emma and her parents arrived and, after giving them a drink in the sitting room, i went into the kitchen to do the last-minute preparations for the meal. i removed the fish, which was now ready, from the oven and decided to leave it in the kitchen while we were having the soup. when i went into the kitchen to bring in the fish, to my horror i found my cat looking very pleased with himself in the middle of the kitchen. he had, of course, eaten the entire salmon. needless to say, emma’s parents were very understanding. in the end, we all went to a chinese restaurant. (abbs & freebairn, 1994, p. 44) 1. read the magazine extract and find out who the writer had invited to dinner? 2. why was the invitation a special one? 3. what happened to the main dish? 4. fill in a table with the main verbs of the extract, their subjects and complements. subject verb complement/ adv/ obj. universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras94 hmidani b. accommodation phase 1. take out the verbs in the past perfect and establish their reference point. 2. draw the events on the time line. 3. indicate which event happened first. (students should notice that the verbs with had + past participle refer to actions or situations that are anterior to those expressed by the simple past forms). (students carry out a bottom-up analysis, followed by a consciousness-raising task, then a translation exercise). 4. how do we express in msa an action that happened prior to another action? an action that happened prior to another one is generally expressed in msa through kaana + qad + perfective verb, e.g., lam yatafaaja?uu bin-natiijati li?annahum kaanuu qad tawaqqacuuhaa. neg. they-surprise-jus. by-the-result because-they were perf. part. expect-they-it they were not surprised by the result because they had expected it. 5. translate the sentences which contain the form had + pp (or the past perfect) into msa. (in these sentences, the students are confronted with the main use of the past perfect, but also with the use of ago, which is, by now, supposed to have been assimilated by the students as being specific to the simple past tense. another difficulty is the use of lam for negating past affirmative sentences in msa. this particle brings about the jussive mood; however, arab learners have another option which is the colloquial negation particle maa, which behaves in an even simpler way than the english not. it just precedes the negated verb, irrespective of tense or mood or the need for an auxiliary, e.g., maa katabtu waajibii (not wrote-i homework-my). it happened about five years ago. i had invited my girlfriend. hasala dhaalika mundhu xamsi sanawaatin. kuntu qad dacawtu sadiiqatii… i hadn’t met her parents before and i wanted to impress them… lam ?akun qad qaabaltu ?ahlahaa min qabl wa?aradtu ?an ?atruka n-tibaacan.. i had planned soup first… kuntu qad qarrartu taqdiimal-hasaa? ?awwalan… when i went into the kitchen…, i found… he had eaten the entire salmon. cindamaa daxaltu ?ilaa l-matbaxi, wajadtu…kaana qad ?akala ?al-salamun bi?akmalih 95profile: issues teach. prof. dev., vol. 19, supplement 1, 2017. issn 1657-0790 (printed) 2256-5760 (online). bogotá, colombia. pages 81-97 didactic model: teaching the english temporal system to arabic freshman learners of english c. production phase 1. reconstruct the passage from the elements in the table. 2. write an anecdote that happened to you using the simple past and the past perfect. (pair work) d. self-assessment phase (the following exercise may be given at the end of the teaching sequence as a guided self-assessment tool in which the students can see whether they have really grasped the notion of the perfect. the exercise contrasts the simple tenses with the present and past perfect tenses). 1. choose the correct translation of the underlined verbs in the following sentences according to their context of use. a. i have visited england. laqad zurtu ingeltra (perf. part. visited-i) zurtu (visited-i) kuntu qad zurtu ingeltra (was perf. part. visited-i) (the students already know that qad/laqad + perfective comprise one of the typical ways of translating the english present perfect into arabic. so, the second verb zurtu, which is perfective, should contain an adjunct of time that says when it happened, e.g., last year. the third option kuntu qad zurtu would also need an adjunct of time like before i met you. therefore, the only equivalent to have visited is the first option). b. he had already finished his speech when she arrived. kaana qad ?anhaa kalimatahu cindamaa wasalat (he had finished his speech when she arrived) kaada ?an-yunhiya kalimatahu cindamaa wasalat (he nearly finished his speech when she arrived) ?anhaa kalimatahu cindamaa wasalat (he finished his speech when she arrived) (the first example corresponds to the past perfect, which expresses anteriority to a past action cindamaa wasalat. the third example expresses consecutive actions, which is why both verbs are in the perfective. in the second example, kaada + ?an + subjunctive indicates that the action was almost finished, when the second action occurred). universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras96 hmidani c. when he arrived home, he remembered that he had forgotten his key in his office. cindamaa wasala ?ilaa baytihi, tadhakkara ?annahu rubbamaa nasiyamiftaahahu fii maktabihi cindamaa wasala ?ilaa baytihi, tadhakkara ?annahu nasiyamiftaahahu fii maktabihi cindamaa wasala ?ilaa baytihi, tadhakkara ?annahu kaana qad nasiya miftaahahu fii maktabihi (the first example corresponds to the simple past preceded by a modal marker (rubbamaa “maybe”) to express possibility. the second example describes two consecutive actions. in the third example, kaana qad + perfective is used to express anteriority of the action. it should be remembered here that the second example might be accepted in msa when the aim is to use simplified arabic. however, having taught the students how to use the past perfect, we expect them to make the right choice). d. i have lived in the states since 1999. ?aciishufii ?amriikamundhu l-caam 1999 (i have lived in the states since 1999) cishtufii ?amriikamundhu l-caam 1999 (i lived in the states since 1999) cishtufii ?amriikafii l-caam 1999 (i lived in the states in the year 1999) (the first sentence is the correct translation because the verb is in the imperfective and the use of mundhu with that form of the verb implies the meaning of current relevance. the second sentence is wrong because the perfective form cannot be used with mundhu. in the third sentence, the perfective corresponds to the simple past). e. as soon as the driver comes, i will ride with him. haalamaa ya?ti as-saa?iq, sa-?adhhabu macahu (as soon as the driver comes, i will ride with him). as-saa?iq sa-ya?ti qariiban wasawfa ?adhhabu macahu (the driver will come soon and i will ride with him). cindamaa ya?ti as-saa?iq, sawfa ?adhhabu macahu (when the driver comes, i will ride with him). (the first sentence is the correct translation: it expresses two consecutive actions. in the second sentence, there are two coordinated clauses both of them in the future. the third sentence is an alternative choice to 1) f. i have stayed in america for six years. baqiitu fii ?amriikaa muddata xamsa sanawaatin (stayed-i in america for five years). ?aciishu fii ?amriikaa mundhu xamsa sanawaatin (i-live in america since five years). maa ziltu ?aciishu fii ?amriikaa mundhu xamsi sanawaatin (i-am still i-live in america since five years) (the first sentence is not a suitable translation because it refers to a past period of time referred to using muddata. the second sentence is correct because the verb is in the imperfective—a form which shows current relevance. the third sentence can also be considered correct because it uses the verbal form maa ?zaala, which shows the continuation of a past situation). 97profile: issues teach. prof. dev., vol. 19, supplement 1, 2017. issn 1657-0790 (printed) 2256-5760 (online). bogotá, colombia. pages 81-97 didactic model: teaching the english temporal system to arabic freshman learners of english 2. what conclusions can you draw from this exercise regarding the conditions of use of the different forms in english? (this exercise is meant to train the students to spell out the rules behind each use). building efl preservice teachers’ professional identity: does gender matter? 117profile: issues teach. prof. dev., vol. 24 no. 2, jul-dec, 2022. issn 1657-0790 (printed) 2256-5760 (online). bogotá, colombia. pages 117-131 https://doi.org/10.15446/profile.v24n2.95186 building efl preservice teachers’ professional identity: does gender matter? construcción de la identidad profesional docente de futuros docentes de inglés como lengua extranjera: ¿importa el género? elisa pérez-gracia1 rocío serrano-rodríguez alfonso pontes-pedrajas universidad de córdoba, córdoba, spain this study explores the beliefs of english as a foreign language preservice secondary education teachers regarding the construction of teachers’ professional identity. a questionnaire was used to obtain the opinions of 131 future teachers in the 2014–2020 academic years. results showed that the participants understood teachers’ professional identity to be connected to the ability to motivate students, manage the classroom, and care about interpersonal relations. women and men think differently regarding the effect of the acquisition of new methodologies, the psycho-pedagogical training, and a longer placement period in the construction of teachers’ professional identity. to conclude, this study provided the chance to reflect on the importance of strengthening the professional identity of english as a foreign language teachers while considering the gender perspective to introduce changes in the curriculum. keywords: english teacher education, identity, preservice teacher education, teaching profession este estudio explora las creencias de los futuros docentes de educación secundaria de inglés como lengua extranjera sobre la construcción de la identidad profesional docente. se aplicó un cuestionario a 131 futuros docentes durante el período 2014–2020. los resultados muestran que los participantes relacionan la identidad profesional docente con la capacidad de motivar al alumnado, gestionar el aula y la preocupación por las relaciones interpersonales. mujeres y hombres piensan diferente acerca de la influencia de la adquisición de nuevas metodologías, la formación psicopedagógica y un mayor período de prácticas en la construcción de la identidad profesional docente. para concluir, este estudio permite reflexionar sobre la importancia de fortalecer la identidad profesional de los docentes de inglés como lengua extranjera considerando la perspectiva de género para introducir cambios curriculares. palabras clave: formación docente de inglés, formación inicial docente, identidad, profesión docente elisa pérez-gracia  https://orcid.org/0000-0002-6219-7203 · email: elisa.perez@uco.es rocío serrano-rodríguez  https://orcid.org/0000-0002-9447-9336 · email: rocio.serrano@uco.es alfonso pontes-pedrajas  https://orcid.org/0000-0002-7958-5798 · email: apontes@uco.es how to cite this article (apa, 7th ed.): pérez-gracia, e., serrano-rodríguez, r., & pontes-pedrajas, a. (2022). building efl preservice teachers’ professional identity: does gender matter? profile: issues in teachers’ professional development, 24(2), 117–131. https://doi. org/10.15446/profile.v24n2.95186 this article was received on april 21, 2021 and accepted on may 6, 2022. this is an open access article distributed under the terms of the creative commons license attribution-noncommercial-noderivatives 4.0 international license. consultation is possible at https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/ https://doi.org/10.15446/profile.v24n2.95186 https://orcid.org/0000-0002-6219-7203 mailto:elisa.perez@uco.es https://orcid.org/0000-0002-9447-9336 mailto:rocio.serrano@uco.es https://orcid.org/0000-0002-7958-5798 mailto:apontes@uco.es https://doi.org/10.15446/profile.v24n2.95186 https://doi.org/10.15446/profile.v24n2.95186 https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/ universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras118 pérez-gracia, serrano-rodríguez, & pontes-pedrajas introduction numerous studies on teacher cognition have shown that preservice teachers have diverse ideas, attitudes, and motivations regarding teaching, learning, and other aspects related to the teaching profession that significantly influence the construction and development of their teachers’ professional identity (tpi; beijaard et al., 2004; garner & kaplan, 2019). therefore, the importance of preservice teachers building their tpi is being recognized at an international level (schaefer & clandinin, 2019; suelves et al., 2021). throughout this learning-to-teach process, it is important to make them reflect and wonder about who they are and how they see themselves as teachers in the immediate future (keary et al., 2020). thus, the scientific and educational grounding of this study is mainly based on the constructivist approach to teacher education because it defends the idea that learning occurs only when preservice teachers are thoroughly engaged in the process of meaning and knowledge construction (harfitt & chan, 2017). moreover, there is evidence to prove that mastery experience substantially contributes to preservice teachers’ constructivist teaching beliefs (cansiz & cansiz, 2019). furthermore, they develop an understanding of this approach so that they can apply it to their future practice in real educational contexts as an alternative to more traditional-oriented teaching approaches. in other words, future teacher needs to avoid reproducing the traditional teaching strategies they experienced as students in their early education (flores, 2020). moreover, the reflective approach to teacher education has also been a reference for this study since it focuses on preservice teachers’ beliefs. therefore, this approach provides the study with a solid justification because it highlights the importance of thinking about one’s teaching experiences in order to identify strengths and weaknesses and introduce variations when needed to improve the learning outcomes (blackley et al., 2017). thus, it is necessary to introduce activities into the preservice teacher training curriculum that enable them to reflect on diverse aspects connected to the teaching practice and the promotion of metacognition (pérez-garcias et al., 2020). in line with the abovementioned, most research on teacher education has mainly focused on subject matter, teachers’ competences, and traditional and nontraditional approaches over the past decade (cañadas, 2021; özcan & gerçek, 2019; werler & tahirsylaj, 2020). however, “scholars have begun to highlight additional important factors that shape teachers’ conceptions of and actions in teaching that should be incorporated into teacher professional learning frameworks” (garner & kaplan, 2019, p. 8). these other factors refer to teachers’ conceptions about themselves as teachers and their tpi since it has been proven to have an influence on their success in their careers. considering that, this study examines how english as a foreign language (efl) preser vice teachers understand tpi as well as their beliefs regarding which aspects determine its construction and development. additionally, it seeks to analyse whether there are significant differences in these aspects depending on the gender of the participants, mainly for two reasons. on the one hand, this variable was included because in a preliminary qualitative study, participants suggested that gender may affect their comprehension of the teaching profession. on the other hand, because there is certain disagreement in previous studies on whether male and female teachers concur in their perceptions about the teaching profession and their vocational attitudes, and evidence is still scarce regarding the effect of gender on the construction of tpi and the progression of teachers’ careers (egmir & celik, 2019; kapitanoff & pandey, 2017). in addition, the present study focuses on preservice teachers whose first language is english and on those whose first language is other than english (mainly spanish) because it seems they face a dualism of personalities (treve, 2021; vega et al., 2021). therefore, these feelings will 119profile: issues teach. prof. dev., vol. 24 no. 2, jul-dec, 2022. issn 1657-0790 (printed) 2256-5760 (online). bogotá, colombia. pages 117-131 building efl preservice teachers’ professional identity: does gender matter? directly affect their beliefs regarding the teaching profession, and, consequently, their tpi construction. efl teachers’ professional identity the initial teacher training process is of great importance in the development of tpi (rodrigues & mogarro, 2019). every future teacher should start developing their commitment and identity with the teaching profession during their initial training; however, there are some groups that could be more vulnerable than others. the construction of the professional identity of language teachers is a topic that has generated great interest in both research literature and the implementation of educational policies in recent decades (hashemi et al., 2021; mora et al., 2014; trejo-guzmán & mora-vázquez, 2018). in this study, the focus is on preservice teachers whose first language is not english because the “native vs. nonnative english speakers” dualism could affect the development of their tpi and, consequently, their professional development (zhu et al., 2020). in addition, there is also a significant variable that may accentuate this issue, and it has to do with the teacher training model (consecutive vs. simultaneous; gómez et al., 2017). to be specific, consecutive training models do not allow for the opportunity to combine subject and pedagogical content simultaneously and, thus, do not include a teaching element from the beginning, and this hinders the integration of the two. therefore, preservice teachers see themselves as professionals rather than teachers (schaefer & clandinin, 2019). the globalization and internationalization of our world brought about the phenomenon of englishization (lanvers & hultgren, 2018) in all fields, particularly in education. the spread of english has been significant, and it has even become the language of instruction in diverse educational levels (feddermann et al., 2021; macaro et al., 2018). it is undeniable that this situation has provoked great changes in language teaching and testing around the world. thus, it has caused a global need for english language teachers, mainly in efl countries (llurda, 2004). consequently, there is still a debate regarding what is better: whether to depend on professionals whose first language is english as the model in language teaching due to their culture and language proficiency, or to trust efl teachers with their linguistic and pedagogical skills (dervić & bećirović, 2019). in this regard, scholars tend to favor the second option on the grounds that efl lessons are more linguistically varied and allow teachers to switch codes when necessary. nevertheless, the discussion is still open due to the diversity of learning contexts, but, undoubtedly, this is something that has an impact on preservice efl teachers’ tpi (zhu et al., 2020). thus, beliefs about the teaching of efl affect the development of the professional identity of efl teachers and, given that identity is a construct with a multiple, dynamic, and changing character, teachers should be exposed to teaching experiences that contribute to building a professional identity with a sense of context awareness and with a multicultural vision (chacón, 2010; ortaçtepe, 2015). the dichotomy between teachers whose first language is english and those with another first language and the theories behind it have a major discriminatory impact on their careers. therefore, labels such as native vs. non-native should be reviewed against the negative effects of degrading categories (shin, 2008). the latter group is aware of this debate and how employment discrimination may affect them, mainly in the private sector (clark & paran, 2007). hence, it may impinge on the way they develop their tpi. in this sense, it is important to reinforce professional identity construction throughout their initial teacher education so as to prevent possible burnout rates (lu et al., 2019), strengthen their competences (roulston et al., 2018), and reduce their anxiety and feelings of helplessness and loneliness during preservice training and early career development (deng et al., 2018). universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras120 pérez-gracia, serrano-rodríguez, & pontes-pedrajas teachers’ professional identity influencing factors tpi is not a static attribute, teachers continuously develop and change their sense of self through looking at and analyzing their daily professional practice and their lives as teachers (vokatis & zhang, 2016). this tpi construction process starts from the moment they made the decision to become teachers (donnini-rodrigues et al., 2018). not only do they undergo variations in the development of their skills, but they also modify their conceptions of the teaching profession and its social image (torriente & villardón-gallego, 2018). scientific literature on this issue states that tpi may be influenced by a wide range of aspects, both personal and contextual as well as internal and external (rodrigues & mogarro, 2019). first of all regarding the personal aspects, there are studies that point out the need for teachers to have a deep interest in their own teaching-learning process and the ability to awake this concern among their students (leeferink et al., 2019), have an intrinsic vocation for education to avoid possible friction linked to motivation or commitment (meijer et al., 2011), be empathic and build a positive and solid self-esteem as future teachers (day, 2018), among others. in addition, at the individual level, other independent factors—such as gender—should be considered (chang & lo, 2016; nürnberger et al., 2016). moreover, egmir and celik (2019) suggested that educational beliefs and teachers’ identities during initial teacher training periods significantly differ in terms of variables such as gender, field of knowledge, and degree. focusing on gender as one of the most debatable issue, some studies highlight that differences between women and men in the field of teaching exist and affect their attitudes along their careers (kapitanoff & pandey, 2017). at first, monroy and hernández-pina (2014) did not find clear evidence of any effect of gender on the development of tpi. however, with the increasing interest in this issue, later research projects have noted significant differences in how men and women from different fields of knowledge construct their tpi during their initial teacher training process (e.g., pérez-gracia et al., 2019). along this line, healey and hays (2012) had already done a study where the differences between male and female participants with respect to aspects of professional identity were evaluated. the results of the discriminant analysis indicated gender differences in the development of professional identity. an additional regression analysis revealed a significant predictive relationship between professional engagement and professional identity development and orientation. however, no recent long-term and large-scale studies on efl teachers’ tpi were found. secondly, contextual factors should be considered within the training background. the placement period included in the secondary education teacher training master’s program is one of the aspects that has been more widely analyzed since preservice teachers’ participation in teaching practicum gives them both changes and challenges related to tasks such as planning or coordination with colleagues (leeferink et al., 2019). therefore, yuan et al. (2019) state that “confronting a new learning environment, student teachers are likely to create new forms of identities through their cognitive learning, social interactions and emotional experiences” (p. 975). consequently, they may start to create an identity different from the one they already have, and it will possibly influence their practice and development. these dissonances sometimes help them grew and reflect on their own professional learning. moreover, learning by doing with mentors and peers as well as designing a professional project are decisive in tpi building (schaefer & clandinin, 2019). finally, receiving specific training on pedagogy, psychology, and teaching methodologies also contributes to the way they feel dedicated to teaching (tashma-baum, 2014). all in all, we believe this study is important to deeply analyze how the participants understand tpi and which aspects they believe contribute to its development. thus, the results could bring about the opportunity to critically 121profile: issues teach. prof. dev., vol. 24 no. 2, jul-dec, 2022. issn 1657-0790 (printed) 2256-5760 (online). bogotá, colombia. pages 117-131 building efl preservice teachers’ professional identity: does gender matter? reflect on the ways their training could be reinforced so as to reduce the anxiety and lack of confidence caused by the native vs. non-native dichotomy (hashemi et al., 2021). in addition, this study results in newness in diverse issues: dualities on tpi construction among english as a first language preservice teachers and non-english as a first language preservice teachers, lack of studies focused on tpi construction as well as the importance of gender in tpi construction in this collective. the objectives of this study are: 1. to identify the beliefs of a group of non-english as a first language efl preservice teachers about tpi and its influencing factors. 2. to identify whether there are significant differences between men and women in this regard. 3. if differences are found, to identify the factors responsible for them. method this is an empirical and descriptive study based on the quantitative analysis of data collected over several academic years within a master’s degree in secondary education teacher training. participants the sample was made up of 131 preser vice efl teachers from six consecutive academic years (2014–2020), 84% were women and 16% men. the sampling technique applied was convenience sampling (emerson, 2015). since participants were selected based on availability and willingness to take part, they participated voluntarily in the study. the average age of the sample was 21.2. all participants were enrolled in the master’s degree in secondary education teacher training at universidad de córdoba (spain). however, their home university (where they carried out their degree studies) were as follows: most of the participants were from the universidad de córdoba (82%), while 9% were from other universities in andalusia, 7% were from other universities in spain, and 2% were from universities in other countries. in spain—and in other european countries (eurydice, 2018)—initial teacher education follows a consecutive training model which focuses on training in pedagogy. in the case of secondary education teachers, people first need to hold a degree in a specific area such as efl and then, if they are interested in becoming secondary education teachers, it is compulsory for them to enroll in the master’s degree in secondary education teacher training, which also includes a placement period where preservice teachers are immersed in real education contexts. instrument for data collection this study was carried out using a questionnaire designed on the basis of a previous qualitative study (pérez-gracia et al., 2021). the instrument is made up of 40 variables divided into two sections: • section 1 gathers information about the participants regarding nine independent variables related to various socio-demographic data, namely sex, age, field of knowledge, degree studies, time since they finished their degree studies, current employment situation, teaching experience, length of teaching experience, academic year in which they are enrolled in the master’s degree. • section 2 corresponds to a five-point likert scale with response options varying from 1 (totally disagree) to 5 (totally agree). it comprises 31 items organised in four dimensions (d1, d2, d3, and d4) related to the following respective aspects: d1 = 15 items on elements that globally characterize or define the tpi; d2 = five items on the development of the tpi in different stages of education; d3 = five items on differences in the way teachers and other professionals construct their professional identity, and d4 = six items on the aspects that contribute towards the development of the tpi. universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras122 pérez-gracia, serrano-rodríguez, & pontes-pedrajas however, for this study, two dimensions have been chosen: elements that globally characterize the tpi (d1) and aspects that contribute towards the development of tpi (d4). the decision was made to use these two dimensions due to the scope of the journal as well as because d1 and d4 respond to a more personal and reflective perspective whereas the other dimensions have to do with more professional and contextual issues (pérez-gracia et al., 2019). the instrument was validated in terms of content, comprehension, and construct. firstly, the content and comprehension validity were carried out by a panel of experts through a pilot study, so it was improved regarding readability, internal consistency, and appropriateness of the scale. then, after applying confirmatory procedures, the panel demonstrated the instrument has a satisfactory metric quality too. the indices show that the adjustment of the proposed model is highly appropriate, as the goodness of fit index (gfi) has a value of 0.889, 0.872 for the adjusted goodness of fit index (agfi) and 0.773 for the parsimony goodness of fit index (pgfi). the x2 has a value of 2.401. finally, the root mean square error of approximation (rmsea) shows that the model has a good fit, with an index of 0.05 (lo = 0.046–hi = 0.054), and the rmr is 0.044. all in all, the instrument is solid and has a reliable psychometric quality (0.879 cronbach’s alpha). research procedure the data employed in this study were collected at the beginning of the specific module of complements to disciplinary training of the master’s degree in secondary education teacher training at the universidad de córdoba (spain). we chose this module because it deals with issues regarding teachers’ professional profiles and development, which is in alignment with tpi formation. this module is taught in the first semester of the master’s studies, and data were collected during face-to-face lessons. prior to data collection, students were informed of the objective of the study and its importance. then, they were also told about the ethical issues such as the anonymity, confidentiality, and privacy of their answers. only those students who were willing to participate answered the questionnaire, which took them between fifteen and twenty minutes. data analysis diverse statistical treatments were applied in order to achieve the objectives of the study. firstly, based on the first objective, descriptive analyses (mean values and standard deviation) were applied in order to find out non-english as a first language efl preservice teachers’ beliefs regarding tpi understanding as well as its influencing aspects. these analyses were done using spss v25. secondly, to be able to identify whether there were significant differences among the participants based on their gender in both dimensions of the instrument (objective 2), we carried out the permutational multivariate analysis of variance (permanova). finally, in order to discover the variables responsible for these significant differences, simper (similarity percentages) was applied so as to calculate the percentages of similarity/dissimilarity between the two levels of the gender factor. thus, it allowed us to determine which items were responsible for the greatest proportion of gender differences among the variables on the questionnaire that the permanova determined as being significant. the permanova analysis was done using primer v6. results this section presents the results based on the objectives of the study. trends in efl preservice teachers’ beliefs on tpi considering the first objective, table 1 presents the participants’ beliefs about tpi and its influencing factors. 123profile: issues teach. prof. dev., vol. 24 no. 2, jul-dec, 2022. issn 1657-0790 (printed) 2256-5760 (online). bogotá, colombia. pages 117-131 building efl preservice teachers’ professional identity: does gender matter? table 1. efl preservice teachers’ beliefs on tpi dimension variable mean standard deviation d1: elements that globally characterize teachers’ professional identity 1a. having an adequate capacity to teach 4.21 0.883 1b. feeling a high level of commitment to the teaching profession 4.41 0.763 1c. having solid training regarding education and teaching 4.17 0.776 1d. building a positive self-image as an aspiring teacher 4.1 0.876 1e. knowing how to adapt yourself to educational changes based on the circumstances 4.4 0.677 1f. using and mastering teaching communication techniques 4.44 0.703 1g. showing an interest in knowing and understanding students 4.62 0.638 1h. integrating information and communication technologies into teaching 3.87 1.026 1i. properly combining theory and practise about teaching 4.44 0.703 1j. worrying about human relationships in the educational context 4.46 0.715 1k. ability to manage class work and solve possible conflicts 4.63 0.599 1l. having high self-esteem as a teacher 4.07 0.896 1m. being an expert in one’s discipline 4.32 0.757 1n. motivation to awaken the students’ interest in learning 4.76 0.528 1o. adopting a reflective and self-critical attitude with regard to teaching practice 4.42 0.733 d4: aspects that contribute towards the development of teachers’ professional identity 4a. longer placement period 4.21 0.977 4b. a broader psycho-pedagogical training during the master’s degree 3.92 1.053 4c. the recognition and social evaluation of the teaching profession 3.97 0.928 4d. the acquisition of new methodologies and the use of educational resources 4.07 0.994 4e. learning through experiences with other teaching professionals 4.42 0.723 4f. the promotion of teacher motivation and the development of a professional project 4.28 0.93 note. own elaboration. universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras124 pérez-gracia, serrano-rodríguez, & pontes-pedrajas the first dimension, which refers to the participants’ understanding of tpi, shows that there is a high level of agreement among participants since the frequency rates are higher than 3.5. the items with the highest frequency values are related to motivating pupils during the teachinglearning process (1n, x = 4.76), the ability to manage class work and solve possible conflicts (1k, x = 4.63), showing interest in knowing and understanding students (1g, x = 4.62), and worrying about human relationships in the educational context (1j, x = 4.46). on the other hand, the items with the lowest frequency, and therefore, with the lowest rate of agreement have to do with integrating information and communication technologies (ict) into teaching (1h, x = 3.87), having high self-esteem as a teacher (1l, x = 4.07), building a positive self-image as an aspiring teacher (1d, x = 4.1), and having a solid training regarding education and teaching (1c, x = 4.17). the frequencies of the responses in dimension 4 (aspects that contribute to the development of tpi) are slightly lower than in dimension 1. the items with the highest frequency refer to learning through experiences with other teaching professionals (4e, x = 4.42), the promotion of teacher motivation and the development of a professional project (4f, x = 4.28), and a longer placement period (4a, x = 4.21). however, the sample shows that a broader psychopedagogical training during the master’s degree (4b, x = 3.92) and the recognition and social evaluation of the teaching profession (4c, x = 3.92) are not that important in the development of the participants’ tpi, and there is a lower rate of agreement in this regard among preservice teachers. differences in terms of gender table 2 shows the results of the permanova analysis intended to identify the possible significant differences between the participating men and women regarding tpi understanding and influencing factors. table 2. results of permanova according to gender variable gl sc f p sex 1 188.91 3.438 0.004 residues 129 7088.5 total 130 7277.4 note. own elaboration. permanova results (table 2) show that the independent variable sex significantly affects the way participants respond to the items on the scale in both dimensions (men and women respond differently; f = 0.438; p = 0.004). finally, table 3 shows the items responsible for these gender differences. the results of the simper analysis (table 3) show an average dissimilarity of 11.03 between men and women. this difference is mainly owing to the following items: • 4d: the acquisition of new methodologies and the use of educational resources (6.56%) • 4b: a broader psycho-pedagogical training during the master’s degree (6.49%) • 4a: a longer placement period (6.36%) • 4f: the promotion of teacher motivation and the development of a professional project (6.06%) • 1h: integrating ict into teaching (5.99%) • 1b: feeling a high level of commitment to the teaching profession (5.54%) • 4c: the recognition and social evaluation of the teaching profession (5.33%) • 1d: building a positive self-image as an aspiring teacher (5.22%) • 1a: having an adequate capacity to teach (5.19%) women showed higher frequency levels than men in all of these items with the exception of 1a where the frequency was reversed. moreover, most of the items responsible for the differences in terms of sex belong to the dimension about the aspects that contribute to the construction of tpi. 125profile: issues teach. prof. dev., vol. 24 no. 2, jul-dec, 2022. issn 1657-0790 (printed) 2256-5760 (online). bogotá, colombia. pages 117-131 building efl preservice teachers’ professional identity: does gender matter? discussion and conclusions considering the relevance of how language teachers shape their tpi (trejo-guzmán & mora-vázquez, 2018), this research aims to make a contribution to educational research on initial teacher training from a gender perspective that contemplates various aspects of the way in which non-english as a first language efl preservice teachers build their tpi. specifically, it examines how non-english as a first language efl preservice teachers understand the concept of tpi and which aspects they think may modify it. additionally, it shows that there are differences in the participants’ beliefs in terms of gender. hence, this study is a new contribution to tpi field of research since there are no previous studies in which an independent variable such as gender has been analyzed as responsible for differences in non-english as a first language efl future teachers’ beliefs. most of the studies focused on tpi have considered external variables such as participants’ previous experience and training or their field of knowledge and devoted less attention to internal and personal variables such as gender or age. this group of future teachers who have followed a consecutive training model is sensitive for diverse reasons, but mainly, due to the controversy that still exists in non-efl countries regarding the aptitude of efl teachers (native vs. non-native). therefore, not only it is decisive to know in depth how they perceive the table 3. contribution of each item to the dissimilarity between men and women average dissimilarity = 11.03 women men dimension item mean mean av. diss. contr. % cum. % 4 4d 4.18 3.48 0.72 6.56 6.56 4 4b 3.99 3,52 0.72 6.49 13.04 4 4a 4.28 3.86 0.70 6.36 19.40 4 4f 4.38 3.76 0.67 6.06 25.46 1 1h 3.91 3.67 0.66 5.99 31.45 1 1b 4.53 3.81 0.61 5.54 36.99 4 4c 4.03 3.67 0.59 5.33 42.32 1 1d 4.17 3.71 0.58 5.22 47.55 1 1a 4.20 4.24 0.57 5.19 52.74 1 1l 4.13 3.76 0.55 5.00 57.74 1 1c 4.23 3.86 0.50 4.54 62.28 1 1j 4.52 4.14 0.48 4.37 66.65 1 1f 4.49 4.14 0.47 4.27 70.92 1 1i 4.51 4.10 0.46 4.20 75.12 1 1m 4.32 4.33 0.46 4.19 79.32 1 1o 4.45 4.24 0.46 4.13 83.44 4 4e 4.43 4.38 0.41 3.70 87.15 1 1e 4.43 4.29 0.39 3.57 90.72 note. own elaboration. universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras126 pérez-gracia, serrano-rodríguez, & pontes-pedrajas meaning and influence of tpi during their initial training so as to strengthen their social image, self-esteem, and commitment to the profession in their near future (yuan et al., 2019; zhu et al., 2020), but it is also necessary to study how the native vs. non-native dichotomy affects their tpi development in more detail while paying specific attention to those future teachers whose first language is not english. thus, future research may explore and analyze this issue considering its impact on teachers’ professional development. to start with the first research objective, this study shows that preservice teachers already have their own conceptions and beliefs regarding tpi, although their previous experience in education is limited. there is a broad degree of agreement among participants since they broadly relate the understanding of tpi to being motivated to awaken students’ interest in learning, having the ability to manage their classrooms and solve interpersonal conflicts, and being concerned about interpersonal relationships in educational contexts. these results coincide with previous studies (leeferink et al., 2019; meijer et al., 2011) that point out the connection between tpi and the attitude with which preservice and in-service teachers face their training and professional development. however, the participants did not agree to a great extent that the use of ict or receiving good training in education and teaching has anything to do with their identity as teachers. nor did they concur that building a positive image as an aspiring teacher and developing a high self-esteem had anything to do with tpi. these last results are not in line with day (2018) and torriente and villardón-gallego (2018), who clearly identified emotional wellbeing and resilience as framing tpi and teacher social prestige as a determining factor in identity and quality of education. this leads us to think that research on tpi should be focused and approached by areas of specialization since its construction changes depending on the group. as for dimension 1, participants did not show values of agreement as high as in dimension 4. however, they were consistent in believing that learning through experiences with other teaching professionals (their future colleagues), developing a professional project, and the placement period were the most decisive factors in tpi construction. these outcomes agree with other studies such as the ones carried out by yuan et al. (2019), schaefer and clandinin (2019), and deng et al. (2018), who emphasized the importance of practicum to solve the numerous dilemmas and internal conflicts that preservice teachers have regarding classroom authority vs. the ethic of caring, feeling part of an institution vs. feeling like a stranger, seeing themselves as teachers or other professionals, and dichotomies regarding teaching approaches. in this sense, the literature confirms that the first experience student teachers have in real educational contexts is conclusive in making them feel committed and engaged with their professional career. in contrast the participants in this study did not clearly associate broader psycho-pedagogical training and the social status of the teaching professions with tpi influencing factors. these ideas dissent with other studies—such as the one by day (2018)—since the scholars noted that preventing training needs and teaching social status directly contribute to the development of their identity as soon-to-be-teachers. the second and third objectives could be discussed together. this study shows that there are significant differences between how non-english as a first language efl preservice teachers respond to the questionnaire in term of their gender, that is, men and women answered differently as has already been highlighted in previous studies but in different fields of knowledge, not in efl. this coincides with a previous study done on future science and technology teachers in which gender was also determinant (pérez-gracia et al., 2019) and with egmir and celik (2019), who proved that preservice teachers’ educational beliefs and identities significantly diverge in terms of gender. moreover, this study also agrees with the perspectives and insights of kapitanoff and pandey (2017), who put emphasis on the existence of 127profile: issues teach. prof. dev., vol. 24 no. 2, jul-dec, 2022. issn 1657-0790 (printed) 2256-5760 (online). bogotá, colombia. pages 117-131 building efl preservice teachers’ professional identity: does gender matter? social stereotypes that indicate a progressive process of feminization of the teaching profession. however, these previous studies do not provide detailed information on the aspects of tpi construction about which men and women think differently. therefore, the present study goes further in this regard, and it also contributes to the lack of evidence indicated by monroy and hernándezpina (2014). the level of agreement is higher for women than for men in most of the variables. the items in which men and women differ more are mainly related to the aspects that contribute to tpi construction and development whereas there is higher consistency with respect to dimension 1. differences are more pronounced in issues related to the use of educational resources, psycho-pedagogical training, the need for a longer placement period, and the promotion of teacher motivation and development of a professional project. it seems that the participants are not quite sure that these aspects are related to tpi since they have low frequency values in the descriptive analyses too. all in all, one of the most relevant facts is that future non-english as a first language efl teachers showed an interest in the development of a professional teaching identity from the very beginning of their training and that their belief of tpi is closely linked to the interest in acquiring professional skills appropriate to improve the teaching and learning processes throughout the placement period (yuan et al., 2019). therefore, from these results we can infer the need to rethink the curriculum of this master’s degree and strengthen the work towards an adequate construction of tpi to improve future teachers’ confidence and commitment. moreover, identity and language build each other through a complex process, where identity is founded as a changing, multifaceted, and dynamic construct that arises from the interaction of the individual with their environment. this fact also has pedagogical implications for initial teacher training programs in our current context (chacón, 2010). in this respect, the results of various investigations of tpi in early career efl teachers show that academic transitions, the link with the english language, teacher training programs as well as the professional culture in the work environment have a major impact on the formation of their professional identity (trejo-guzmán & moravázquez, 2018). however, what is unique about this study is that it includes one more aspect to consider when designing curriculum and training programmes for efl future teacher, namely, gender. it cannot be part of the hidden curriculum but the results of the present research point to the need to reinforce different formative aspects in men and women during their periods as student teachers since it seems they may interpret tpi and the importance of its development in different ways. finally, incorporating reflection activities in various parts of the specific master’s degree module to reinforce their confidence and self-esteem could be determinant too. note that the data is the result of the participants’ self-perceptions, which may be a limitation due to subjectivity. therefore, there could be varied beliefs about the same fact depending on the context where the instrument is applied. however, it could also be seen as a positive point since it gives us first-hand information on how the participants understand tpi and its construction process (gutiérrez-castillo & cabrero-almenara, 2016). references beijaard, d., meijer, p. c., & verloop, n. 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(2020). efl student teachers’ professional identity construction: a study of student-generated metaphors before and after student teaching. journal of language, identity & education, 1–16. https://doi.org/10.1080/15348458.2020.1777872 https://doi.org/10.1016/j.heliyon.2021.e08049 https://doi.org/10.1016/j.heliyon.2021.e08049 https://doi.org/10.1016/j.edurev.2019.100286 https://doi.org/10.1016/j.edurev.2019.100286 https://doi.org/10.1080/10437797.2017.1336140 https://doi.org/10.1080/10437797.2017.1336140 https://doi.org/10.1080/13540602.2018.1532407 https://doi.org/10.1080/13540602.2018.1532407 https://doi.org/10.1080/13664530701827749 https://doi.org/10.1080/13664530701827749 https://doi.org/10.6018/reifop.469691 https://doi.org/10.1080/14708477.2014.934379 https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-67788-6_19 https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-67788-6_19 https://doi.org/10.14786/flr.v4i1.223 https://doi.org/10.1080/02619768.2020.1827388 https://doi.org/10.1080/02619768.2020.1827388 https://doi.org/10.1080/13540602.2019.1688286 https://doi.org/10.1080/13540602.2019.1688286 https://doi.org/10.1080/15348458.2020.1777872 131profile: issues teach. prof. dev., vol. 24 no. 2, jul-dec, 2022. issn 1657-0790 (printed) 2256-5760 (online). bogotá, colombia. pages 117-131 building efl preservice teachers’ professional identity: does gender matter? about the authors elisa pérez-gracia has a phd in languages and cultures. she works as an associate professor in the faculty of education at the universidad de córdoba (spain). her main research interests are initial teacher training, teachers’ professional identity, intercultural and inclusive education, and bilingual education. rocío serrano-rodríguez is an associate professor in the faculty of education at the universidad de córdoba. she teaches at the degrees of primary education and early years education. her research interests are initial teacher training, competences development, and teacher training needs. alfonso pontes-pedrajas holds a phd in physics. however, he has a solid and rigorous career in the education field. he is an expert in teacher training, and he devotes most of his research to this issue. he works as a professor and researcher at the universidad de córdoba. language pedagogy and teacher identity: a decolonial lens to english language teaching from a teacher educator’s experience 199profile: issues teach. prof. dev., vol. 23 no. 2, jul-dec, 2021. issn 1657-0790 (printed) 2256-5760 (online). bogotá, colombia. pages 199-214 https://doi.org/10.15446/profile.v23n2.90754 language pedagogy and teacher identity: a decolonial lens to english language teaching from a teacher educator’s experience pedagogía de la lengua e identidad docente: una lente decolonial para la enseñanza del idioma inglés desde la experiencia de un formador de maestros diego ubaque-casallas1 universidad distrital francisco josé de caldas, bogotá, colombia this paper describes a narrative study that emerged from various conversations with an english language teacher at a public university in bogotá, colombia. this research is based on intersectional narratives to locate the intersections between english language pedagogy and the identities of english language teachers. second, the study examined discourses that can construct english language pedagogy and teachers’ identities by avoiding simplistic generalizations and essentialisms. findings suggest that although there are still colonial roots that repress other ways of being and doing, english language pedagogy goes beyond the instrumental sense of teaching. as such, english language pedagogy is about transformation as it is never static because it is an extension of identity. keywords: colonialism, english language teaching, intersectional narratives, narrative, pedagogy este artículo describe un estudio narrativo que surgió de varias conversaciones con un profesor de inglés en una universidad pública de bogotá, colombia. en primer lugar, esta investigación se basa en narrativas interseccionales para localizar las intersecciones entre la pedagogía del idioma inglés y las identidades de los profesores de inglés. en segundo lugar, el estudio examinó los discursos que pueden construir la pedagogía del idioma inglés y las identidades de los profesores al evitar generalizaciones y esencialismos simplistas. los hallazgos sugieren que todavía existen raíces coloniales que reprimen otras formas de ser y hacer. sin embargo, la pedagogía del idioma inglés va más allá del sentido instrumental de la enseñanza. como tal, la pedagogía del idioma inglés trata sobre la transformación, esta nunca es estática ya que es una extensión de la identidad. palabras clave: colonialismo, enseñanza del idioma inglés, narrativa, narrativas interseccionales, pedagogía diego ubaque-casallas  https://orcid.org/0000-0001-8116-9163 · email: dfubaquec@udistrital.edu.co how to cite this article (apa, 7th ed.): ubaque-casallas, d. (2021). language pedagogy and teacher identity: a decolonial lens to english language teaching from a teacher educator’s experience. profile: issues in teachers’ professional development, 23(2), 199–214. https://doi. org/10.15446/profile.v23n2.90754 this article was received on september 26, 2020 and accepted on march 16, 2021. this is an open access article distributed under the terms of the creative commons license attribution-noncommercial-noderivatives 4.0 international license. consultation is possible at https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/ https://doi.org/10.15446/profile.v23n2.90754 https://orcid.org/0000-0001-8116-9163 mailto:dfubaquec@udistrital.edu.co https://doi.org/10.15446/profile.v23n2.90754 https://doi.org/10.15446/profile.v23n2.90754 https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/ universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras200 ubaque-casallas introduction pedagogy is a critical category in education. one can find the following notions: place-based pedagogy (calderon, 2014); queer pedagogies (sumara & davis, 1999); inquiry-based pedagogies (huber, 2006); multiliteracies pedagogies (reyes-torres & portalés-raga, 2020); and community-based pedagogies (sharkey et al., 2016), among many more. one can also find scholars who write about andragogy and pedagogy, the former being “the methods and approaches used in adult education and [that] is directed towards self-actualization, gaining experience, and problem-solving” and the latter, “an education method in which the learner is dependent on the teacher for guidance, evaluation, and acquisition of knowledge” (murray, 2018, p. 32). although pedagogy is an essential category in english language teaching (elt), its understanding in this field is closer to murray’s (2018) conceptualization. for instance, english language pedagogy (elp) has functioned as an umbrella term to plan how teachers should utilize knowledge in teaching. there have been linguistic and social aspects of the english language that have been incorporated to the notion of pedagogy through theories, methods, approaches, techniques, and strategies (see richards, 2015). moreover, the english language’s global importance as a communication tool for the knowledge economy and knowledge-skills (robertson, 2005) has maintained what flores and rosa (2015) refer to as imperial projects and economies evidencing how english is planned to be taught. as a result: the elt field has seen one method after another rollout of western universities and through western publishing houses to spread out all over the world. on each occasion, teachers in other countries and other cultures have been assured that this one is the correct one and that their role is to adapt it to their learners or their learners to it. (kumaravadivelu, 2006, p. 20) similarly, identity is a central category in elt. for instance, several studies have been conducted to document english language teachers’ identities (eltis) and how they are constructed (see salinas & ayala, 2018; costa, 2019). however, identity continues to be seen and researched within what mignolo (2009) labels as the colonial difference. for mignolo: the colonial difference operates by converting differences into values and establishing a hierarchy of human beings ontologically and epistemically. ontologically, it is assumed that there are inferior human beings. epistemically, it is assumed that inferior human beings are rational and aesthetically deficient. (p. 46) in this respect, the elt field has witnessed how colonial constructions of eltis have been combined with factors such as race, gender, ethnicity, class, language, and others (pennycook, 1998). however, these dynamics have also been a piece of the puzzle in the globalizing agenda as a neoliberal resource planned and executed by those who have maintained instruction on teaching methodologies (kumaravadivelu, 2003) as a unique mechanism to exist and know in the field. therefore, this manuscript seeks to locate the multiple intersections between elp and eltis through personal experience and, as well, examine dominant discourses that can construct them. additionally, i aspire to reclaim and relocate elp and its “ethical goal that goes into the construction of intersubjective meanings” (granados-beltrán, 2018, p. 175). theoretical considerations the rationale underpinning this theoretical section draws on zabala’s (2016) decolonial strategies for education: counter storytelling, healing, and reclaiming. i choose to resort to the decolonial strategies zabala constructs as “a particular kind of border thinking, a reenvisioning from the margins” (p. 2) to rethink what we understand as elp and identity. with this framework, i aim to name hegemonic notions of elp to position my own “geo-political and body-political location” (grosfoguel, 2011, p. 5) as a teacher-researcher. moreover, 201profile: issues teach. prof. dev., vol. 23 no. 2, jul-dec, 2021. issn 1657-0790 (printed) 2256-5760 (online). bogotá, colombia. pages 199-214 language pedagogy and teacher identity: a decolonial lens to english language teaching... i attempt to explain how elp intersects with eltis in the elt field. figure 1 illustrates how each element in it interlocks in a dynamic rather than linear relationship; “each is a dimension of the other” (zabala, 2016, p. 2). figure 1. intersectional narratives: a theoretical framework based on zabala’s (2016) decolonial strategies for education counter storytelling naming remembering reclaiming eltis narratives elpelt practice identities spaces healing social / collective spiritual / psychological english language pedagogy elp is a remnant of coloniality. in particular, elp in elt has separated the subjects from their bodies and their geographical location regarding the teaching practice (see ubaque-casallas & castañeda-peña, 2021). this attempt is evident in the insertion of the notion of competence as the only discourse mostly reproduced in teaching and teacher education (biesta, 2012). this unidirectional/dimensional discourse is what has caused that “english language teaching and learning identities are more oriented towards that goal of identifying decontextualized forms of being in the field of teaching” (castañeda-peña, 2018, p. 18). for instance, grosfoguel (2010), when discussing coloniality, claims that: by breaking the link between the subject of enunciation and the ethnic/racial/sexual/gender/epistemic place, western philosophy and science manage to create a myth about a real universal knowledge that masks, that is, conceals not only the speaker but also the epistemic, geo and body-political place of the structures of colonial power/knowledge from which the subject speaks. (p. 387) such a separation has adopted a homogeneous epistemology on language teaching and learning (mastrella-de-andrade & pessoa, 2019) that has even reached the research-based dimension. in this respect, lopes (2013) argues that “the research on foreign language teaching-learning and acquisition is still based on the search for identifying patterns of how to teach well—to detect what teachers do, or could do, efficiently that leads to student success” (p. 954). without a doubt, in colombia, this argument is supported by the inventory of ba graduate projects in education programs where “featured causality, technicality, and language instrumentality” (granados-beltrán, 2018, p. 189) are the most common approaches to research. nevertheless, this study is interested not in pointing to the evident but to reclaim elp capability of leading towards unlearning, learning, and relearning (escobargómez, 2019). otherwise,1 elp is understood as something given, as in handed, revealed; as in breaking through, transgressing, disrupting, displacing, inverting inherited concepts and practices, those psychic, analytic, and organizational methodologies we deploy to know what we believe we know to make different conversations and solidarities possible; as both epistemic and ontological project bound to our beingness. (alexander, 2006, p. 22) therefore, if we think of elp otherwise, as mignolo and walsh (2018) define it, the otherwise becomes “the ongoing serpentine movement toward possibilities of other modes of being, thinking, knowing, sensing, and living” (p. 81); a movement only possible if those who enact elp name it, reclaim it, and commit to “changing, disrupting, and dismantling the hegemonic relations” 1 this refers to the possibilities to construct and display strategies that are not nested in colonial/modernity frames. universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras202 ubaque-casallas (pennycook & makoni, 2020, p. 31) that have hindered alternative ways of doing and being (kumaravadivelu, 2016) in elt. english language teaching and teachers’ identity(ies) this study conceives elt as the field in which instructional and procedural applications of theoretical knowledge about language teaching are regulated. as teachers’ target language proficiency and their beliefs about language learning are significant factors determining their classroom teaching practices (kamhistein & mahboob, 2006), the elt field seems to be a colonial construction as well. according to canagarajah (1999), there has been an evident hegemonic influence of native speakers; “in fact, teacher trainers, curriculum developers, and testing experts are predominantly from the center [industrialized english-speaking countries]” (p. 85). such a perception is the challenge elt faces. this implies that theories and practices in elt are not just the results of colonial powers but also the product of colonial ideologies (pennycook, 1998) that have become the unique knowledge teachers are to utilize to make sense of their teaching. this tendency has not only made teachers “static and unwitting in their own epistemic beliefs” (ubaque-casallas & aguirre-garzón, 2020, p. 132), but has also caused an evident subalternization of knowledge and ways of being within the field. in elt, much of the related literature, mostly published in english, covers the term knowledge from its singularity (castañeda-londoño, 2019). this corresponds to a universalized understanding of knowledge that has become not only standard but also normative and legitimate. this normativization has also affected eltis as these have been subjected to “a dominant/ colonizing way of existing” (castañeda-peña, 2018, p. 29) in which english language teachers are the result of what they know. this interwoven relationship, however, is what calls for an epistemological/ontological shift to the otherwise, not just to move away from epistemic violences (andreotti, 2011), but to reclaim teachers’ agency. given such a call, identities, in the plural, should be understood as “produced in specific historical and institutional sites within specific discursive formations and practices by specific enunciative strategies” (hall, 2003, p. 4). intersectionality in narratives for gill and pires (2019), “intersectionality works well within the cracks of messy processes of subjectification forged by the modern/colonial project to make more space for inclusive theorizing and practice” (pp. 288–289). therefore, i would like to resort to intersectionality to allow the recognition of whom we are based on what we do. as “who we are and from where we speak is highly relevant for the intellectual projects we are likely to pursue” (moya, 2011, p. 79), intersectionality can assist in claiming agency (stone-mediatore, 2003) in spaces and territories where colonial histories have been present. furthermore, suppose intersectionality in narratives is seen as a mechanism to foreground how elt, elp, and english language teachers co-exist and intersect, as illustrated in figure 1. in that case, intersectional narratives are then discursive representations of experience in which there is conceptual integration among those conversing. in fact, intersectional narratives serve this study to ground concepts and interpretations for “knowledge co-creation, in which researchers and participants develop shared understandings and develop new ideas” (galafassi et al., 2018, p. 9). this is why intersectional narratives in this study comprise a relevant theoretical construct indispensable to investigating epistemological ruptures (arroyo-ortega & alvarado-salgado, 2016) in elp. consequently, intersectional narratives result from alterative conversations in which subjectivities are dynamic and relational (ortiz-ocaña & arias-lópez, 2019) among those who engage in conversation. nevertheless, as “implementing narrative intersectionality requires finding ways of exploring and analyzing the 203profile: issues teach. prof. dev., vol. 23 no. 2, jul-dec, 2021. issn 1657-0790 (printed) 2256-5760 (online). bogotá, colombia. pages 199-214 language pedagogy and teacher identity: a decolonial lens to english language teaching... material, structural and political realities that infuse and shape individual stories” (chadwick, 2017, p. 10), i will, in the methodological considerations, elaborate on how i attempt to engage with intersectionality as praxis through narrative research. method and data analysis this study adopts a narrative research methodology, that is, narrative inquiry. regarding this methodology, it is “an umbrella term for a mosaic of research efforts, with diverse theoretical musings, methods, empirical groundings, and/or significance all revolving around an interest in narrative” (smith, 2007, p. 392). this means that narrative inquiry helps intersectional narratives to be seen from andrey’s2 conversations to dismantle colonialist remnants in elp and break with the colonial genealogy in research (patel, 2016). consequently, as “the narrative is not exclusive to any scientific tradition, nor to its paradigmatic foundation” (yedaide et al., 2015, p. 30), a narrative approach to research commits only to the particular location within the global structures (anzaldúa, 2009) of those who employ it. in that line of argument, i aim to merge intersectional narratives with narrative research as intersectionality commits to “social justice goals, [by] granting epistemic and authoritative privilege to the stories, definitions and perspectives of marginalized persons” (chadwick, 2017, p. 9) who, like andrey, have not only suffered “the construction and imposition of terminology [that] reinforce[s] and instill[s] inferiority complex in the minds of the subaltern” (kumaravadivelu, 2016, p. 78), but who have also been tied to a single type of existence (castañeda-peña, 2018); an ontological form of colonization and subalternization that is still reproduced through discourses of professional identity (block, 2006). therefore, four conversations, mostly held in english, were transcribed and converted into hermeneutic units within a twelve-month period to be 2 a pseudonym for this study’s participant. further analyzed using atlas.ti, a specialized qualitative data analysis software that helped me locate analytical categories and their relationships within the conversations i sustained with andrey. although using atlas. ti may not fit into the lens of the decolonial attempt this study adopts, i think of this as an opportunity to find a methodological and epistemological rupture in which it “becomes an ethical and political bet of those [like me] who want to rethink the forms [of] traditional research” (arroyo-ortega & alvarado-salgado, 2016, p. 138), not by denying the use of analytical tools but to imbue them with a different epistemological interest to enunciate otherwise. this is why the analysis of each conversation included zabala’s (2016) decolonial strategies as a path to understanding how elp and eltis intersect. this process as a whole, far from looking for methodological accountability, intended to work as an angle of analysis to the meanings attributed to the experiences here co-constructed and, in so doing, locate intersectionality in elp. contextualization of the study i invited andrey, an english language teacher and teacher educator who works for a public university in bogotá, colombia, to talk about his beliefs and practices about elp and eltis as with him i found a shared interest in conversing about “practices, knowledge, and feelings” (ortiz-ocaña & arias-lópez, 2019, p. 15) within the elt field. although his teaching experience in varied educational contexts was pivotal in locating the multiple intersections between elp and eltis, his participation in this study was also influenced by his pedagogical experience with different teacher education programs, in which not only has he aimed to educate future english language teachers, but has also tried to challenge imported discourses and models of teaching that, for many years, have influenced colombian teachers themselves (muñoz-giraldo et al., 2002). therefore, it is a must saying that his voice and experience intersect with my own locus of enunciation as an elt researcher universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras204 ubaque-casallas concerned about teacher education. this concern situates this study within a personal attempt to break the hegemonic/colonial chains that still tie eltis and elp in teacher education programs. the aforesaid is fundamental as andrey and i try “to change the terms and not just the content of the conversation” (mignolo, 2010, p. 313) when it comes to the construction of these terms in the field. findings findings begin from the intersectional narratives framework presented in figure 1. based on zabala’s (2016) decolonial strategies for education, i permanently made connections with the literature that i had consulted and that i continued consulting during the analysis stage. first, i took into consideration that for zabala (2016), counter storytelling is about engaging in dialogue and reflection, a process whereby people name their social worlds as “a deliberate attempt to develop a language of critique that enables colonized peoples to understand their present situation as encircled by colonialism and its structural arrangements and cultural logics” (p. 3). in this respect, the conversations here reported aimed to trigger remembering within/ against coloniality. second, i also considered that for zabala (2016), to trigger a decolonial methodology in education, it is also relevant, while naming and remembering, to promote healing. this is precisely my attempt in this study: to “challenge dominant, western notions of education as a cognitive activity” (p. 4) in order to recover from any damage english language teachers have been subjected to, either ontologically or epistemologically, as colonized people. as a matter of fact, such an attempt assumes that conversations between andrey and i were a bridge to (re)connect to elp and its ethical purpose. third, i bore in mind zabala’s notion of reclaiming, as this strategy involves “recovering who people are, their practices, and their relation to place (land, cosmos)” (p. 5). consequently, as this study intends to locate the multiple intersections between elp and eltis, i thought of intersectionality among and within the strategies above to delve into the diverse realities behind individual stories (chadwick, 2017). as the above grounded my understanding of andrey’s conversation, i generated different categories and subcategories that i aim to discuss in this section. nonetheless, these categories did not follow the qualitative logic applied to preconceived categories or codes to the data (charmaz, 2006); instead, they emerged from the inspection of conversations as intersectional narrative accounts in which there was co-construction of data between those conversing. in doing so, i acknowledged that my positioning was not intended to elicit information from andrey, but instead, i was trying to configure his and my subjectivity by engaging in an alterative conversation (ortiz-ocaña & arias-lópez, 2019) in which other knowledges are created. as such, starting from figure 2, i argue that this intersectional approach proposes conversations from the interaction pertaining to the life experience here reported. i will now elaborate on some of the categories (see figure 2) that emerged in the study. these categories will serve to understand elp and identities, both otherwise, from an intersectional perspective. therefore, i begin from the assumption that these categories, although differentially experienced, portray experiences that are fluid and mutually constituted. in this paper, i have stated that elp is the result of a colonial narrative over teaching. consequently, although intersectionality has been mainly used to foster theorization of the intersection of multiple inequalities in gender theory (walby et al., 2012), i believe it can not only assist me in representing other positions, including those who do not exclusively experience an evident marginalization (bauer, 2014), but it can also become “a tool for capturing actors’ socially-constituted everyday subjective meanings in the context of unequal 205profile: issues teach. prof. dev., vol. 23 no. 2, jul-dec, 2021. issn 1657-0790 (printed) 2256-5760 (online). bogotá, colombia. pages 199-214 language pedagogy and teacher identity: a decolonial lens to english language teaching... structural positioning of social categories” (atewologun & mahalingam, 2018, p. 150) that, both epistemologically and ontologically, have been present in the elt field. my theory of language from andrey’s conversations, i noticed that how one views language and learning may explain how one approaches teaching. these two views are universal principles in any method. for instance, in any course about methodology in teacher education programs, student-teachers are walked through how a method is composed of a theory of language and a theory of learning (richards & rodgers, 2001). they are told that, for example, in the audiolingual method, language is seen from a structuralist perspective. it is seen as a system for the coding of meaning, and learning must be then a process of habit formation, a behavioral approach to learning. this and many other theoretical principles are transmitted to english language teachers in teacher education programs. this explains, perhaps, why we continue teaching structural drilling exercises for pronunciation practice when we become english language teachers. although these theories of language and learning are seen as crucial elements in teaching, it cannot be refuted that both carry colonial legacies that have imposed dominance over elp, subjugating, at the same time, eltis to disciplinary notions. echoing this, pennycook (1998) contends that “elt theories and practices that emanate from the former colonial powers still carry the traces of those colonial histories, both . . . derive from broader european cultures and ideologies that themselves are products of colonialism” (p. 19). consequently, theoretical constructions of language and learning have maintained an unquestionable dominance over personal constructions of elp (language-learning) and eltis. figure 2. english language pedagogy: tree of relations among categories elp otherwise co-occurs is a pro per ty o f co ntr ad ict s is pa rt o fis cause of contradictsco nt ra di ct s co-exist with is a property of colonial view of pedagogy / language what i do and look for as an english teacher how i see myself as an efl teacher my colonial self-awarenessmy theory of language universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras206 ubaque-casallas for instance, “the term ‘native speaker’ undoubtedly has positive connotations: it denotes a birthright, fluency, cultural affinity, and sociolinguistic competence [and] the term’ non-native speaker’ carries the burden of the minority, marginalization, and stigmatization” (braine, 2010, p. 9); with this, we may understand why the notion of method keeps on being a conflicting operating principle in elt (kumaravadivelu, 2016) as these continue to be imposed upon nonnative speakers. even though english language teachers have kept alive an identity of themselves as subalterns by subduing to theoretical principles about teaching, conversations here documented that personal theories of language can co-exist, but mostly contradict hegemonic theoretical constructions imposed in the elt field. i think i started thinking that language, when i was at the university, was about linguistics, full of semantics, syntax. but later, perhaps due to my personality development, the language was a cognitive transformer for me. i began to relate it as with a “gender key” as i relate it a lot to gender research. when i no longer lived in the country, i saw it as a matter of social transformation, and now i continue to see it as a matter of social, personal transformation, but from a pedagogy, as i feel that all the exercises that i have to do, at the personal and professional level, have to go for the sake of transforming myself, my environment, in one way or another, the environment of the people who are there. sometimes i consider that we see language as an exercise in reflection and, for me, it is important that language begins to change and transform the reality of the people who approach it, so i feel that there is a humanizing character and, let’s say there is a rebirth from the point of view from what the language does. forty years ago the language was, well it still is, a determinant of which culture was more important than the other, but now . . . language and thought go hand in hand and, language transforms the way we think, so if we think differently then we begin to energize that differently since people do something with the language and change the spaces of others; from pedagogy is from where we begin to transform life from the bottom up. (andrey) despite language being linked to its linguistic system, it is also imbued with other attributes. for instance, from andrey’s experience, his theory of language co-exists with canonical notions in which language is the linguistic knowledge teachers acquire and develop. however, co-existence between andrey’s and canonical theories of languages should be seen as an interrelating co-existence in which language is situated in time and space. in fact, andrey engages in a reflection in which language becomes an element of cognitive transformation. in the literature available, cognitive transformation is guided but not self-initiated. for example, timing on feedback (mathan & koedinger, 2005), or even the nature of feedback content (shute, 2008) have been present. however, for andrey, his pedagogy is the means to change others’ realities. consequently, andrey constructs his theory of language as a personalitydriven characteristic that intersects his identity. this intersection is a possibility to not only reclaim his identity but elp in a field in which linguistic knowledge and procedural skills are valued above all (darlinghammond & lieberman, 2012). another salient element in andrey’s conversation is agency. as agency is a fundamental factor for eltis, it cannot be ignored, it is an essential element for “reducing inequalities” (archanjo et al., 2019, p. 73). andrey’s efforts to not just co-exist with linguistic discourses and theories about language, but to name the purpose of his practice as an educator, puts on the table an intersection between language, pedagogy, and identity. in fact, when it comes to english language teachers, ferrara (2012) claims that they are influenced by epistemology or beliefs about teaching and learning. if english language teachers are static in their views of language, this could overshadow the epistemological/ 207profile: issues teach. prof. dev., vol. 23 no. 2, jul-dec, 2021. issn 1657-0790 (printed) 2256-5760 (online). bogotá, colombia. pages 199-214 language pedagogy and teacher identity: a decolonial lens to english language teaching... cognitive justice (de sousa-santos, 2009) that should take place in the classroom. my colonial self-awareness this category shows how andrey’s theories of language intersect with this identity as both are contingent and relational. in other words, “who we are as humans varies according to who we are talking to, where, and for what purposes” (vásquez, 2011, p. 539) and involves agency, emotions, meaning systems, and the self (beauchamp & thomas, 2009). paradoxically, in the canonical narrative in elt and teacher education programs, new external identities are established making teachers abandon their previous ones and adopt the external at the different levels of subjectivity. language has been used to construct superior notions of self; it is not surprising that nonnative english language teachers have constructed themselves, consciously or unconsciously, as inferior (pennycook, 1998) compared to native speakers. although this native-speaker ideology has been predominant in elt (holliday, 2005) and has been as well an axis for forms of expression in the modern/ colonial world (maldonado‐torres, 2011), andrey reveals that pedagogical practices are embodied as they transit eltis. andrey’s purpose to reclaim praxis over colonialist and objectified views of language, in which the latter has been subjected to western principles regarding english teaching, leverages the intersection above about his purpose in teaching through language. as such, andrey’s theory of language exercised through his elp serves as a mechanism to expose and transform his own colonial self. according to castañeda-peña (2018), “english language teaching and learning identities are more oriented towards that goal of identifying decontextualized forms of being in the field of teaching” (p. 18); however, my conversation with andrey exposes that one’s identity is not limited to ontological forms of colonization and subalternization; instead, it is healed and reclaimed when language and identity intersect. what i do and look for as an english teacher i believe that what i am looking for is to transform. i don’t know if it is a methodology, but i can say it is a kind of pedagogical perspective. it is a transformed pedagogical perspective because i start from the student’s need, i start my classes from what the student wants and what the student wants to transform in their practice; i do not start from my needs, or from what i believe. this is a setting in which the learner’s need prevails over the need of the person who provides the learning. for example, there are three courses that i teach. first, i plan with the students. i tell them: “here you have some sheets, you are going to write to me what you want to learn according to what you have transferred in” and from all their university studies. i do this mostly with students who are about to finish their degrees. second, with the students who are starting, i guide that reading because they do not have all the necessary tools, so i present them some paths and they decide which way they go, but i give them the ability to choose. (andrey) pedagogy is about transformation. andrey evidences this claim by setting it as an objective of his practice. such a perspective invites english language teachers to think that elp requires changes in the relationships between teachers and student-teachers as “openness and transformation in education could also mean what choices are given to the learner in any system of education” (vambe, 2005, p. 285); choices that are not part of the modern/colonial elt principles. for andrey, the ultimate goal is to give back studentteachers’ agency. in critical pedagogy, transformation implies a profound shift in perspective (cranton, 2011) that embraces changes in actions (mayo, 2004). the literature suggests that agency has mostly been linked to terms such as autonomy (toohey, 2007), yet, barely has it been thought of as the outcome of elp. a glimpse at the literature shows that “agency can be considered a combination of intention and universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras208 ubaque-casallas people, who i am training, will be my colleagues in a very short time. (andrey) andrey’s ontological positioning not only intersects with his elp, but it also intersects with the institution he refers to as the system. what seems an exciting outcome is that andrey sees himself as someone who plays in and out of the system. in the elt field, identities and elp have been subjected to a top-down approach where “traditional methods of education have not typically aimed to effect constructive social change [and] their practices tend to promote assimilation rather than transformation” (puett, 2005, p. 264). however, andrey can make the most of it by acknowledging that although the system may not be as dynamic as it should, it allows english language teachers to innovate and disrupt. therefore, in the pursuit of improving his practice, andrey is also subverting relationships between teacher and students, funds of knowledge to be “taught” to student-teachers, and power dynamics. the aforesaid is relevant as “classrooms are host to multiple practices that are simultaneously colonizing and decolonizing” (motha, 2006, p. 76) and that are, without a doubt, being transgressed by english language teachers and elp. conclusions as intersectionality modifies how a research problem is conceptualized, investigated, and even how findings are used to advance social justice (hankivsky, 2012), i believe it is then necessary to say that i first engaged in reflexivity as a means to examine how research processes and knowledge production in this study could reflect my locus of enunciation (grosfoguel, 2011). with this, i refer to my preconceptions, values, social positions, and interests (jootun et al., 2009) as a teacher-researcher. then, i would like to begin by situating andrey and myself within multiple and shifting dynamics of oppression that are inherent in intersectionality (see figure 1). this attempt is twofold. action that influences experience” (hadar & benishweisman, 2019, p. 138); such influence and action are self-initiated (biesta et al., 2015). similarly, for priestly et al. (2012), “the extent to which teachers can achieve agency varies from context to context, based on certain environmental conditions of possibility and constraint, and that an important factor in this lies in the beliefs, values and attributes that teachers mobilize” (p. 191). however, from andrey’s conversation, agency is to be given to student-teachers. this is quite relevant as the curriculum has always imposed a set of fixed knowledge to be learned, resulting in measuring agency through self-efficacy (bandura, 2001); yet this paradigm is what teaching and learning as a practice of freedom contradict (freire, 1968/1993), a practice andrey seems to look for in his teaching. how i see myself as an efl teacher although this paper was not looking for ontological underpinnings of identity, it was impossible to gloss over this finding as identities are “effective pedagogical tools” (motha et al., 2012, p. 14) and, as such, they shape elp. the following excerpt from my conversation with andrey will be used to comment on the argument above. i have to think about what i am from many perspectives. the first perspective is the system where i am. as you probably know, it is a not very dynamic system, it is a system in which things are not constantly renewed, but it is a system that allows teachers a lot of freedom to be and carry out practices; call them innovative or disruptive practices. in that sense, i see myself as a teacher who tries to make an adaptation of socio-emotional learning. what does that mean? it means that i link to a focus beyond the disciplinary and communicational field. the well-being and understanding of the student, but more from the socio-emotional aspect. so, as an educator, i see myself inside and outside the system, i feel in that constant search to improve practices, to make them better for my students. i am fully aware that the 209profile: issues teach. prof. dev., vol. 23 no. 2, jul-dec, 2021. issn 1657-0790 (printed) 2256-5760 (online). bogotá, colombia. pages 199-214 language pedagogy and teacher identity: a decolonial lens to english language teaching... first, i mean to “contend already existing discourses within the educational field which operate inhibiting the emergence of other identities through the colonial mechanisms rooted in global capitalism” (ubaquecasallas & castañeda-peña, 2020, p. 26); but i also attempt to provide a different glance towards elp and its existing paradigm in elt. in the colombian elt, there are still colonial roots that repress other ways of being and doing. although “the methods used to teach the language were derived from western culture and systems of knowledge” (rodrigues et al., 2019, p. 5), english language teachers are transgressing this hegemonic heritage through elp. therefore, the conclusions i am drawing from my conversation with andrey intend to open space to continue reflecting upon the importance of reclaiming elp in elt as it may contribute to the “restoring of agency to professionals in the periphery communities” (kumaravadivelu, 2003, p. 540). first, elp is about transformation. pedagogy is never static, nor is it tied to colonial notions about teaching. as such, elp is embodied, and not only is an extension of eltis, but it is also a mechanism to reclaim agency. in this respect, this echoes walsh (2013), who claimed that it should be understood as “an essential methodology within and for social, political, ontological, and epistemic struggles for liberation” (p. 29). therefore, what emerged from my conversation with andrey is that elp co-exists with colonial views of pedagogy. however, in such co-existence, teachers’ agency challenges decolonial approaches to teaching as elp reclaims its purpose in liberating practices and individuals by handing over to them different ways of being and doing in the elt field. second, elp is the result of english language teachers’ theory of language teaching. english language teachers are invited to think about their conceptions of language and critique what its purpose might be in teaching as it has been a source of marginalization in elt. then, this study invites english language teachers to “critique issues of coloniality and inequality affecting not only their educational contexts, but also their lives as subjects” (granados-beltrán, 2016, p. 184) since language has been limited to its instrumental application and, as a result, has been stripped of its personal, emotional, and even social dimension. therefore, although english language teachers have been classified in three domains: as workers, as instructors, and as learners (gonzález et al., 2002), they also possess an agentic dimension that builds them as human beings that engage in teaching and learning through their understanding of language in their teaching practices. third, elp is context related and not dependent. if elt has kept dominance over methods and methodologies, elp is a decolonial act as it transgresses hegemonic epistemological, ontological, and methodological legacies. as my conversation with andrey revealed, teachers’ agency is determinant in co-existing with the top-down approaches and discourses in education. although those reading this paper may consider a decolonial option is not about co-existing but resisting, i hold the view that in elt, we cannot ignore that english language teachers must work within institutional discourses about teaching and, as such, any bottom-up approach to dismantle the hegemonic chain must begin from within. lastly, discourses about elp and eltis have maintained the colonial architecture in elt. although these discourses construct pedagogy as a colonial political praxis (madge et al., 2009) and identity as a monolithic disciplinary-based category, a final conclusion drawn in this study suggests that andrey’s critical stance echoes other teachers in the field (see, castañeda-londoño, 2019; granados-beltrán, 2016; ubaque-casallas & castañeda-peña, 2020). they all seem to agree on elp as a path for teachers to configure “horizons of theorizing, thinking, doing, being, feeling, looking and listening—individually and collectively—towards the decolonial” (walsh, 2013, p. 67); a path only possible if english language teachers choose to transgress the colonial legacy. universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras210 ubaque-casallas references alexander, m. j. 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(2015). la investigación narrativa como moción epistémico-política [narrative inquiry as an epistemic and political drive]. revista científica guillermo de ockham, 13(1), 27–35. https://doi.org/10.21500/22563202.1685 zabala, m. (2016). decolonial methodologies in education. in m. a. peters (ed.), encyclopedia of educational philosophy and theory. springer. https://doi. org/10.1007/978-981-287-532-7_498-1 https://doi.org/10.21500/22563202.1685 https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-287-532-7_498-1 https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-287-532-7_498-1 113profile: issues teach. prof. dev., vol. 21 no. 2, jul-dec, 2019. issn 1657-0790 (printed) 2256-5760 (online). bogotá, colombia. pages 113-125 https://doi.org/10.15446/profile.v21n2.73385 the impact of information gap activities on young efl learners’ oral fluency el impacto de las actividades con vacío de información en la fluidez oral de estudiantes jóvenes de inglés como lengua extranjera 1ramón antonio ortiz neira* universidad católica de temuco, temuco, chile this study adopted a mixed method approach with an action research design. the aim was to determine the impact of information gap activities on young english as a foreign language learners’ oral fluency. information gap activities were based on the communicative approach as well as on task-based learning. twenty-three eighth graders participated in this action research. the students were immersed in a multicultural and at-risk context in a public high school in southern chile. their english-speaking level fluctuated between a1 and a2. the technique was applied over the course of a semester (ten weeks). data were collected by applying a pre-test, post-test, and focus group questionnaire. results suggest an improvement in oral fluency and a positive perception of the technique used during the intervention. key words: attitudes in english as a foreign language, english as a foreign language, information gap activities, young learners, oral fluency. este estudio adoptó un método mixto con un diseño de investigación-acción. el objetivo fue determinar el impacto de las actividades con vacío de información en la fluidez oral de estudiantes jóvenes de inglés como lengua extranjera. las actividades vacío de información fueron basadas en el enfoque comunicativo y en el aprendizaje basado en tareas. en esta investigación-acción participaron veintitrés estudiantes de octavo grado. ellos estaban inmersos en un contexto multicultural y de riesgo social en un liceo público en el sur de chile. su nivel de inglés fluctuaba entre a1 y a2. la técnica se aplicó durante diez semanas en el curso de un semestre. para la recolección de datos se aplicó una prueba previa, una posterior y un grupo focal a los estudiantes. los resultados sugieren una mejora en la fluidez oral y una percepción positiva de la técnica usada durante la intervención. palabras clave: actitudes, actividades con vacío de información, estudiantes jóvenes, fluidez oral, inglés como lengua extranjera. * e-mail: rortiz2007@alu.uct.cl how to cite this article (apa, 6th ed.): ortiz-neira, r. a. (2019). the impact of information gap activities on young efl learners’ oral fluency. profile: issues in teachers’ professional development, 21(2), 113-125. https://doi.org/10.15446/profile.v21n2.73385. this article was received on july 7, 2018 and accepted on may 13, 2019. this is an open access article distributed under the terms of the creative commons license attribution-noncommercial-noderivatives 4.0 international license. consultation is possible at https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/. universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras114 ortiz-neira introduction within the south american context, in chile the use of english as a foreign language (efl) has been gaining prominence because of globalization and the job opportunities that people can have to improve their economic conditions by knowing the language (british council, 2015). the english open doors program, created in chile in 2003 and supported by public policies, responds to such conditions and aims to improve the english level of students from the fifth to the twelfth grades (ministerio de educación, 2017). the latest evolution of mass media and social networks’ emergence have complemented and boosted the use of english in everyday contexts. increase in migration and multiculturalism have arisen as strong reasons for efl learning. these factors make efl learning, for either educational or recreational purposes, a necessity in our region. meanwhile, efl learning through information gap activities belongs to task-based learning, which is part of the communicative approach. it should be noted that ideas for this technique came from prominent researchers from the 80’s such as doughty and pica (1986) and prabhu (1987) as well as from more recent studies by authors such as ellis (2003) and larsenfreeman (2008), who aimed for oral efl/esl acquisition with the enrichment and practice of information gap activities and their procedures. although chilean teachers have mentioned the use of information gap activities in the efl classroom (díaz, martínez, roa, & sanhueza 2010), there is still no evidence of literature about an action research based on the technique and its results having been carried out previously in chile. therefore, this action research was meant to break new ground in terms of speaking activities that belong to this approach. the present research followed precedents from recent studies, with similar participants, conducted by jondeya (2011), putri (2014), defrioka (2016), ratnasari (2016), and rini (2017) to improve speaking skills by using information gap activities. these studies showed positive results in most of their participants. in consideration of such outcomes, information gap activities were effective in the experimental groups over the course of the interventions with quantitative and mixed method approaches. these researchers also carried out data collection by using pre-tests and post-tests. these studies contained tasks that promoted meaningful language learning in terms of content, because such studies needed “to be related to learners’ communicative needs” (mccarthy, 2013, p. 54). information gap activities are intrinsically based on tasks and, therefore, this supports the idea that while students are on task, they can have the opportunity to express feelings and perceptions over certain topics of their interest according to their grade level. furthermore, communication between learners needs to be meaningful with tasks that provide new knowledge and practice to foster language acquisition in real-world situations (mccarthy, 2013). the chilean curricular framework for english aims to help students manage the four language skills in daily-life situations and to reach level a2 (according to the common european framework of reference for languages, cefr) by the eighth grade (ministerio de educación, 2009). to evaluate the progress of this subject within the context of public education and to determine courses of action, the chilean ministry of education has implemented the national simce english test (british council, 2015). results from 2012 imply that the english level is still insufficient by the eleventh grade with only 18% of the students obtaining level b1 and, furthermore, the learners’ english level seems to be poor in all the rest of the grade levels as well (british council, 2015). chilean efl students lack the proper abilities to start producing fluent l2 in an autonomous way, somehow because of the low-quality that chilean public education has shown in the last decades (british council, 2015). the studies replicated in this research had a similar situation and context, in which students from public schools seemed to require more spoken 115profile: issues teach. prof. dev., vol. 21 no. 2, jul-dec, 2019. issn 1657-0790 (printed) 2256-5760 (online). bogotá, colombia. pages 113-125 the impact of information gap activities on young efl learners’ oral fluency english input. because of the apparent lack of proper speaking performance and the positive results from the studies previously mentioned, the intervention was considered pertinent. the aim of the study was to determine the impact of information gap activities on young efl learners’ oral fluency. students practiced this technique within a period of 10 lessons in 10 weeks. this technique can encourage, lead, and impact the students’ oral fluency production. to implement this technique, the students were given pieces of paper with two different kinds of exercises: “information exchange” and “spot/find the difference”. these activities usually include pictures or visual clues. the implementation of these information gap activities in most studies alternates between these two. literature review information gap activities prabhu (1987) points out that “information gap activities involve a transfer of given information from one person to another—or from one form to another, or from one place to another—generally calling for the decoding or encoding of information from or into language” (p. 46). this type of activity is labeled as a meaning-focused activity as well as “reasoning gap” and “opinion gap”. the “gap” is the incomplete information two speakers have about a conversation topic (harmer, 1998), that is, the moment when the learners’ need to communicate and to solve the problem emerges to make the speaking activity “unpredictable and therefore interesting” (lindsay, 2000, p. 157). to promote negotiation of meaning, learners need to solve a task or problem by locating and exchanging the missing information (larsen-freeman, 2008). this type of technique is also implemented to focus on meaning to “gain fluency at the expense of accuracy” (willis, 1996, p. 40). interaction is essential in information gap activities as they provide the opportunity to exchange ideas, perceptions, opinions, and observations about a dailylife topic that causes interest to talk (lindsay, 2000). a wide variety of activities for developing oral fluency can be found but, regarding information gap, learners can perceive this type of technique as practical and effective whenever a teacher aims to make students speak the l2 in the classroom providing real-world situations in a motivating way (lindsay, 2000). similarities exist that foster understanding of information gap activities in the same way. scrivener (2011) sees communication with “information gap” possible when there is a purpose for speakers to do so. in this way, experts agree on what “information gap activities” are and how they work. teachers can find established ways of working with the information gap activities in efl classrooms. teachers can help monitor the students’ progress of classwork and their role can be clearly defined by only guiding the information-gap tasks preferably to be carried out in dyads (richards, 2002). brown (2002) points out assorted language teaching techniques classification, in which they can be “ranging from controlled (drills, dialogues, reading aloud, display questions/answers, etc.) to semi-controlled (referential questions/answers, cued narratives, information gap activities, etc.) to free (role-plays, problem solving, interviews, discussions, etc.)” (p. 15). it can be concluded that information gap activities can be used in any level to promote speaking tasks; they provide optimization of time for learners to speak in class, with the teacher as a mere facilitator and monitor of the activities provided that the use of information gap activities is clear in terms of aims and procedures. oral fluency in efl fluency is not an easy aspect to define but “the narrowest definitions only include a few features, typically pausing, hesitations and speech rate, whereas the broadest uses are virtually synonymous with ‘speaking proficiency’” (luoma, 2009, p. 88). ellis (2003) asserts universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras116 ortiz-neira that “tasks that (1) provide contextual support; (2) have familiar or involving topics; (3) pose a single demand; (4) are closed; and (5) have a clear inherent structure are likely to promote fluency” (p. 127). regarding implications of fluency in speaking production, information gap activities are classified as a mixture of tasks that are open and closed but also more closely related to closed tasks (brown, 2002). therefore, learners can take advantage of the fewer possible ways to solve a closed task in which learners can take advantage of this, and eventually, they can achieve more fluency than with open tasks. (long, 2015). consequently, by designing the activities this way, learners can be responsible for developing their oral fluency more effectively as they can be guided to analyze the information. after that process, they would be able to find the gap and eventually to express the required information to “breach” such gap. these can be the actual steps for the students to have their oral fluency impacted because they focus on giving the proper information and once they have it, they focus on expressing the information as fluently as possible. regarding assessment, the students should know the way they would be assessed beforehand. as stated above, information gap activities are part of the communicative approach and, as such, they are useful to promote fluency and to motivate students to interact (lindsay, 2000). they specifically foster “communicative” activities that are a means to bolster language fluency instead of accuracy (harmer, 2001). teachers should instruct their students to know the procedures of a speaking activity in order to acquire the natural pace of the procedure and, after doing this; the learners’ fluency can be promoted (harmer, 2001). ejzenberg (1994) found an increase in oral fluency when learners developed guided tasks interacting with other people. therefore, in information gap activities, as well as in cued dialogues, learners would find a gap in which interaction is necessary to solve a task, and this may bolster oral fluency. attitudes of efl learners towards information gap activities it is of paramount importance to establish that there is no unified convention as to what attitudes are. according to a psychological definition, attitudes are related to the verbal expression of a person eventually turned into behavior (harris, 2011). there is also the sociological definition where attitudes are a “mental position with regard to a fact or state” and also “a feeling or emotion toward a fact or state” (attitude, n.d.). these definitions aim to understand learners’ reactions and behaviors during the implementation of information gap activities. in order to learn a foreign language, it is advisable to consider the students’ attitudes to determine and reflect if the tasks would be successful or not. elder and iwashita (2005) state that “attitudes towards a task and the conditions under which it is performed might itself have some impact on test performance” (p. 223). the students’ attitudes can be determined through the researcher’s ability to provide a suitable environment and the environment provided by the nature of the information gap activities themselves. motivations are part of attitudes as they are part of people’s behaviors. information gap activities can set the environment for motivating spoken interactions (scrivener, 2011). oxford (2001) states that “negative attitudes and beliefs can reduce learners’ motivation and harm language learning, while positive attitudes can do the reverse” (p. 168). in order to set the mood for positive attitudes towards information gap activities, it is also appropriate to consider the students’ opinions, views, and interests, to take advantage of real-life settings, as real people do (klippel, 1985). kormos and trebits (2011) found that learners with a positive attitude learned and achieved comprehension. in this action research study, through information gap activities, students were gradually able to build up meaningful communication and eventually that gave way to better student attitudes. furthermore, information gap activities are a means to interact with 117profile: issues teach. prof. dev., vol. 21 no. 2, jul-dec, 2019. issn 1657-0790 (printed) 2256-5760 (online). bogotá, colombia. pages 113-125 the impact of information gap activities on young efl learners’ oral fluency learners who have negative and positive attitudes in a bilingual context and, as such, teachers can gain the students’ sympathy by using their mother tongue every once in a while to foster the students’ positive attitudes towards the technique and to minimize negative ones (lam, 2013). therefore, through all the interactions and opportunities provided by information gap activities, students were able to have better attitudes towards the activities and even about english itself. in short, the more appealing the activities, the better the attitudes. method this study was carried out in southern chile. it adopted a mixed method approach with an action research design, and involved three instruments: a pre-test, post-test, and a focus group questionnaire. each test was assessed with a holistic rubric (see appendix a) adapted from “the test of english for educational purposes fluency scale” (weir, 1993, p. 44). the focus group was adapted from krueger (2002). the rubric and focus group were validated by three phd professors and five ma students. the pre-test, post-test, and the material used during the intervention had the format of information gap activities from a cambridge english: young learners test at the a2 level, according to the cefr (cambridge english language assessment, 2017a, b). the material was adapted according to the contents of the chilean curricular framework. the main objective of this research was to determine the impact of information gap activities on young efl learners’ oral fluency. three specific objectives were proposed: (1) to identify the young efl learners’ fluency level; (2) to examine the young efl learners’ fluency level through information gap activities; and (3) to uncover and analyze the young efl learners’ attitudes towards information gap activities. this study replicates the learning technique from research of jondeya (2011), putri (2014), defrioka (2016), ratnasari (2016), and rini (2017) in which they used information gap activities to improve eighth graders’ speaking skills. however, adaptations were made in this action research project because of the learners’ educational context. participants the participants of this study were 23 eighth graders from a public high school in southern chile. there were 15 female and 8 male learners of the ages of 13 and 14. their english speaking level was between a1 and a2. learners were observed and chosen because of their low performance in speaking activities. furthermore, the authors previously mentioned also conducted a study with young learners of a similar grade level. learners and their parents were informed about the study and they agreed to participate voluntarily by signing a consent letter. procedure first, the principal, parents, and students received and signed the consent letter previously mentioned. after that, another efl teacher was asked to be the examiner and applied the “cambridge young learners english: flyers speaking” (cambridge english language assessment, 2017a) for the pre-test at the beginning of the intervention. the intervention consisted of 10 lessons within 10 weeks using the information gap activities. the examiner used the holistic rubric for fluency to assess the pre-test. every lesson started with a brief vocabulary instruction of seven concepts with a “mind map” and then the task was modeled for the students. furthermore, modifications had to be made after the second class. these changes had a friendlier design to make the activities less monotonous and less time-consuming. for every class, information gap activities consisted of two task types: part 1: “spot/ find the difference”; in this task, learners worked in pairs, each one had a similar picture and talked about five of the differences they saw. part 2: “information exchange”; in this task, learners had an incomplete grid, then, they had to exchange information orally by posing questions and giving answers to complete the gaps. both tasks were assessed with the same holistic rubric as in the pre-test. by the end of the semester, another efl teacher carried universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras118 ortiz-neira out a different version of the “cambridge young learners english: flyers speaking” for the post-test (cambridge english language assessment, 2017b). finally, a focus group questionnaire was applied to six students from the class. they were selected considering their interests in common and their similar personality characteristics. data analysis the pre-test responded to the first specific objective, the post-test responded to the second specific objective, and the focus group was conducted to approach the third specific objective in this study. the quantitative data were codified and analyzed with spss software. the qualitative data were transcribed and categorized in a conceptual network. to correlate the results of the instruments and the main goal, the findings are represented in the next section. findings the intervention sought to approach the main objective: to determine the impact of information gap activities on young efl learners’ oral fluency. the group of learners took the “cambridge young learners english: flyers speaking” as a pre-test to identify their fluency level (cambridge english language assessment, 2017a). in part one, they took a “spot the difference” task, and in part two, “information exchange” task. the rubric for the test included criteria that went from 0 point for “not met” when there were utterances in spanish or no utterances at all, to 4 points for “fully met” where utterances, occasionally hesitant, were characterized by an evenness and flow, circumlocutions and connectors were used effectively as fillers, and there was, very occasionally, rephrasing (see appendix a). table 1 shows the preliminary students’ results obtained in the pre-test. the mean for fluency fluctuates close to the “partially met” criteria from the rubric. furthermore, about the type of tasks, in the “information exchange” task, learners got higher fluency scores than in the “spot the difference” task. after the intervention, the group of learners took another “cambridge young learners english: flyers speaking” as a post-test to examine their fluency level through information gap activities (cambridge english language assessment, 2017b). the international test had a similar format to the pre-test. to get the scores of the test, the same holistic rubric was used. table 2 shows that results of fluency in the post-test were near the “good” criteria from the rubric. furthermore, the scores were higher than the ones obtained in the pre-test. therefore, there were meaningful differences statistically between both tests in their fluency level (p < 0001) and t (5.284). table 1. information gap in preliminary oral fluency level pre-test parts minimum maximum acceptable score mean sd spot the difference 0.0 3.0 4 1.391 0.6564 information exchange 1.0 3.0 4 2.000 0.6742 total pre-test 0.5 3.0 4 1.696 0.6168 table 2. information gap in preliminary and post oral fluency level total pre-test and post-test minimum maximum acceptable score mean sd total pre-test 0.5 3.0 4 1.696 0.6168 total post-test 1.5 4.0 4 2.870 0.8689 119profile: issues teach. prof. dev., vol. 21 no. 2, jul-dec, 2019. issn 1657-0790 (printed) 2256-5760 (online). bogotá, colombia. pages 113-125 the impact of information gap activities on young efl learners’ oral fluency in a secondary analysis, there were unexpected results that required close attention (see table 3). the “spot the difference” task saw an increase in the post-test over the pre-test results. the “information exchange” task also obtained an increase in its post-test in contrast to the pretest. finally, between the two types of activities, learners equated their fluency scores in the “spot the difference” post-test and in the “information exchange” post-test. the following results were taken from the focus group to uncover and analyze the young efl learners’ attitudes towards information gap activities. figure 1 shows the students’ most recurring answers that represented and reflected such attitudes in terms of preferences about the use of information gap activities during the intervention. the focus group included opening questions, introductory questions, transition questions, key questions, and ending questions (adapted from krueger, 2002. see appendix b). only the questions and answers that were useful to address the third objective were considered. every utterance was transcribed, translated into english, and categorized. the categories were: preference for conversations, preference for cued conversations, and preference for the technique. table 3. information gap in both task types for oral fluency level pre-tests and post-tests parts minimum maximum acceptable score mean sd pre-test: spot the difference 0.0 3.0 4 1.391 0.6564 post-test: spot the difference 1.0 4.0 4 2.870 0.9679 pre-test: information exchange 1.0 3.0 4 2.000 0.6742 post-test: information exchange 1.0 4.0 4 2.870 0.9197 figure 1. answers about attitudes towards information gap activities learners’ attitudes towards information gap activities preference for conversations promoting conversations clear objective of the tasks semi-controlled practice oral practice fun tasks preference for cued conversations fluency preference for the technique discussion in accordance with this action research implementation, the efl young learners evidenced a positive impact in their oral fluency. information gap activities were essential for real-life communication and learners improved their oral communication because this technique was helpful to make them interact as they felt the need to communicate (harmer, 2001). after the intervention, learners demonstrated a better oral fluency performance in their speaking skills in the post-test in comparison to the pre-test. this could be caused by the progressive practice and the internalization of the activities procedure. there were similar empirical results in the studies of jondeya (2011), putri (2014), universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras120 ortiz-neira longer than expected. consequently, the length of the intervention had to be reduced. only three students, who did not participate in the focus group, expressed having felt tired of the activities. to solve the issue previously mentioned, the activities had to be redesigned to make them friendlier and slightly shorter. afterwards, such learners’ attitudes changed positively during classes. through observation, it seemed that the level of anxiety apparently decreased during the intervention. age and gender were not considered in this action research study. perhaps a study over a longer period would have revealed more gradable results. these previously mentioned aspects could be a relevant matter for further research. other teachers in efl context, especially in south america, should use this technique because of the improvements it could provide in speaking fluency and learners’ attitudes. students felt guided while the tasks were being developed. learners could also produce oral utterances in a fluent way and for them it was an innovative technique in contrast to other traditional activities they were accustomed to doing. young learners should use this semi-controlled activity (brown, 2002) because it avoids the use of traditionally controlled tasks and promotes participation with motivating tasks that are learner-centered (lindsay, 2000). with information gap activities, teachers may use contrived material and they can adapt elements of authentic material to be used as well. furthermore, efl teachers may include these types of activities to promote and refine speaking skills in the classroom, as they can be adapted and carried out by using any topic and content (lindsay, 2000) from the national curricular framework. it should be noted that the information gap activities procedure must be followed as it is presented in the pre-test and post-test to achieve meaningful outcomes; otherwise, teachers may not meet their expectations and benefits from this technique. as a suggestion, because of the positive results obtained in this action research, the chilean ministry of education could modify and incorporate defrioka (2016), ratnasari (2016), and rini (2017), in which they had significant results by using information gap activities with young learners. the learners showed positive attitudes towards speaking activities by using information gap activities. they expressed their attitudes described in three main categories: preference for conversations, preference for cued conversations, and preference for the technique. students pointed out that information gap activities helped them to learn how to communicate more fluently through conversations and to learn new words and pronunciation. they also felt that the activities helped to improve their spoken english and they were suitable for promoting conversations instead of the traditional use of the textbook. in comparison with free practice conversations, they argued that tasks had a clearer objective, the topics were specific, conversations were more direct containing visual cues and written chunks of language. regarding this idea, willis (1996) states that it is easier for learners to know their progress by using semi-controlled tasks because they can have more specific objectives with different ways of achieving a goal through a motivating procedure. furthermore, about how the activities helped them and what learners thought by recalling the technique, learners stated that the activities provided the chance to know what to say, they were more fun than textbooks and good for guided practice of english in the classroom. they believed that the activities made conversations and their thinking process easier as they were innovative. in terms of limitations, the young efl learners’ fluency level was inferior prior to the intervention. their lack of speaking skills may have been caused by their efl context and their limited opportunities to interact with native speakers outside the classroom in real-world situations. it was also observed that learners seemed to have experienced limited opportunities to approach speaking activities inside the classroom. time was a factor because the task procedure took 121profile: issues teach. prof. dev., vol. 21 no. 2, jul-dec, 2019. issn 1657-0790 (printed) 2256-5760 (online). bogotá, colombia. pages 113-125 the impact of information gap activities on young efl learners’ oral fluency new designs based on information gap activities to bolster the communicative approach in the national curriculum. conclusions this research project replicated the studies of jondeya (2011), putri (2014), defrioka (2016), ratnasari (2016), and rini (2017) in which they used information gap activities to provide the practice of spoken english in a motivating and fun way (ur, 1996) and it contributed to meaningful real-world communication with a semi-controlled technique (brown, 2002). furthermore, in chile, the students’ performance in speaking activities tend to present poor results (british council, 2015) and the abovementioned studies proved to be pertinent within the context of this action research study. therefore, the participants chosen for this study were 23 eighth graders from a high school in southern chile. these types of students seemed to need more spoken english input to achieve and refine their oral fluency production and, according to preliminary suppositions, the use of information gap activities was going to improve the students’ oral fluency by the end of the intervention. subsequently, the results of the pre-test and post-test showed that the students had an improvement in their oral fluency. additionally, this intervention helped most of the young learners to increase their positive attitude towards speaking activities by using information gap activities according to what they expressed in the focus group. both of the previously mentioned aspects responded to the main objective of this action research. furthermore, these kinds of tasks could be useful for students who tend to feel overwhelmed, lost, and frustrated with speaking activities because of their poor performance within similar contexts. to sum up, efl teachers may eventually find support and relief in their teaching practice with the benefits that information gap activities can cater for their learners, as it is an advisable technique to motivate and provide interesting material for speaking activities. references attitude. (n.d.). in merriam-webster’s online dictionary. retrieved from https://www.merriam-webster.com/ dictionary/attitude. british council. (2015). english in chile: an examination of policy, perceptions and influencing factors. london, uk: author. brown, h. d. (2002). english language teaching in the “post-method” era: toward better diagnosis, treatment, and assessment. in j. c. richards & w. a. renandya (eds.), methodology in language teaching: an anthology of current practice (pp. 9-18). cambridge, uk: cambridge university press. https://doi.org/10.1017/ cbo9780511667190.003. cambridge english language assessment. (2017a). young learners english test (vol. 1). cambridge, uk: university of cambridge. cambridge english language assessment. (2017b). young learners english test (vol. 2). cambridge, uk: university of cambridge. defrioka, a. (2016). the use of information gap activities in teaching speaking (classroom action research at smk). lingua didaktika: jurnal bahasa dan pembelajaran bahasa, 10(2), 116-126. https://doi.org/10.24036/ ld.v10i2.6418. díaz, c., martínez, p., roa, i., & sanhueza, m. (2010). una fotografía de las cogniciones de un grupo de docentes de inglés de secundaria acerca de la enseñanza y aprendizaje del idioma en establecimientos educacionales públicos de chile [a snapshot of a group of english teachers’ conceptions about english teaching and learning in chilean public education]. folios, (31), 69.79. https:// doi.org/10.17227/01234870.31folios69.79. doughty, c., & pica, t. (1986). “information gap” tasks: do they facilitate second language acquisition? tesol quarterly, 20(2), 305-325. https://doi.org/10.2307/3586546. ejzenberg, l. (1994, march). the role of tasks structure in oral fluency assessment. paper presented at the annual meeting of the teachers of english to speakers of other languages, baltimore, usa. universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras122 ortiz-neira elder, c., & iwashita, n. (2005). planning for test performance: does it make any difference? in r. ellis (ed.), planning and task performance in a second language (pp. 219-238). amsterdam, nl: john benjamins publishing company. https://doi.org/10.1075/lllt.11.14eld. ellis, r. (2003). task-based language learning and teaching. oxford, uk: oxford university press. harmer, j. (1998). how to teach english: an introduction to the practice of english language teaching. harlow, uk: longman. harmer, j. (2001). the practice of english language teaching (3rd ed.) cambridge, uk: longman. harris, c. (2011). attitudes, behavior, and social practice. journal of sociology & social welfare, 38(1). retrieved from http://scholarworks.wmich.edu/jssw/vol38/iss1/3. jondeya, r. s. (2011). the effectiveness of using information gap on developing speaking skills for the eighth graders in gaza governorate schools (master’s thesis). al-azhar university, gaza. klippel, f. (1985). keep talking communicative fluency activities for language teaching (1st ed.). london, uk: cambridge university press. kormos, j., & trebits, a. (2011). working memory capacity and narrative task performance. in p. robinson (ed.), second language task complexity: researching the cognition hypothesis of language learning and performance (pp. 267-286). amsterdam, nl: john benjamins publishing company. https://doi.org/10.1075/tblt.2.17ch10. krueger, r. (2002). designing and conducting focus group interviews. st. paul, us: university of minnesota. lam, a. (2013). bilingualism. in r. carter & d. nunan (eds.), the cambridge guide to teaching english to speakers of other languages (pp. 93-99). cambridge, uk: cambridge university press. https://doi.org/10.1017/ cbo9780511667206.014. larsen-freeman, d. (2008). techniques and principles in language teaching (2nd ed.). oxford, uk: oxford university press. lindsay, p. (2000). teaching english worldwide: a new practical guide to teaching english (1st ed.). san francisco, us: alta books center publishers. long, m. (2015). second language acquisition and taskbased language teaching (1st ed.). malden, us: john wiley and sons. luoma, s. (2009). assessing speaking. new york, us: cambridge university press. mccarthy, m. (2013). discourse. in r. carter & d. nunan (eds.), the cambridge guide to teaching english to speakers of other languages (pp. 48-55). cambridge, uk: cambridge university press. https://doi.org/10.1017/ cbo9780511667206.008. ministerio de educación. (2009). objetivos fundamentales y contenidos mínimos obligatorios de la educación básica y media. santiago, cl: gobierno de chile. ministerio de educación. (2017). manual de orientaciones sobre el proceso de enseñanza-aprendizaje del inglés: para directivos de establecimientos, jefes técnicos y autoridades ministeriales. santiago, cl: gobierno de chile. oxford, r. (2001). language learning strategies. in r. carter & d. nunan (eds.), the cambridge guide to teaching english to speakers of other languages (pp. 166-172). cambridge, uk: cambridge university press. https:// doi.org/10.1017/cbo9780511667206.025. prabhu, n. s. (1987). second language pedagogy. oxford, uk: oxford university press. putri, a. y. (2014). using information gap activities to improve the speaking skills of grade viii students at smp n 7 yogyakarta (undergraduate thesis). yogyakarta state university, indonesia. r at nas ar i, c. (2016). the ef fe c t iveness of using information-gap activities in teaching and learning speaking skill. e-journal mahasiswa universitas slamet riyadi surakarta, 2(1). retrieved from http://jurnalmahasiswa.unisri.ac.id/index.php/fkiping/article/ view/335. richards, j. c. (2002). addressing the grammar gap in task work. in j. c. richards & w. a. renandya (eds.), methodology in language teaching: an anthology of current practice (pp. 153-166). cambridge, uk: cambridge university press. https://doi.org/10.1017/ cbo9780511667190.022. 123profile: issues teach. prof. dev., vol. 21 no. 2, jul-dec, 2019. issn 1657-0790 (printed) 2256-5760 (online). bogotá, colombia. pages 113-125 the impact of information gap activities on young efl learners’ oral fluency rini, r. s. (2017). the effectiveness of information gap technique in improving students’ speaking ability at seventh grade of smpn 1 kras kediri (master’s thesis). universitas nusantara, kediri, indonesia. scrivener, j. (2011). learning teaching: a guidebook for english language teachers. vancouver, ca: langara college. ur, p. (1996). a course in language teaching: practice and theory. cambridge, uk: cambridge university press. weir, c. (1993). understanding and developing language tests. new york, us: prentice hall. willis, j. (1996). a framework for task-based learning. harlow, uk: pearson education. about the author ramón antonio ortiz neira is an efl teacher and holds a bachelor’s degree in education (universidad católica de temuco, chile). he has taught elementary and high school students. universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras124 ortiz-neira appendix a: fluency rubric (adapted from weir, 1993, p. 44) name: date: fluency part 1: find/spot the differences part 2: information exchange 4 = fully met utterances, when occasionally hesitant, are characterized by an evenness and flow. there are, very occasionally, rephrasing and circumlocutions. connectors are used effectively as fillers. 3 = good signs of developing attempts at using cohesive devices, especially conjunctions. utterances may still be hesitant, but are gaining in coherence, speed, and length. 2 = partially met utterances stopping and often incomplete except in a few responses. sentences are, for the most part, disjointed and restricted in length. 1 = needs improvement utterances stopping, fragmentary, and incoherent. 0 = not met utterances in spanish or no utterances at all. 125profile: issues teach. prof. dev., vol. 21 no. 2, jul-dec, 2019. issn 1657-0790 (printed) 2256-5760 (online). bogotá, colombia. pages 113-125 the impact of information gap activities on young efl learners’ oral fluency appendix b: focus group1 opening questions 1. what did you like the most about the speaking activities? 2. how did you use the activity to speak? introductory questions 3. tell me, what do you think about speaking activities now? 4. what are the characteristics of a motivating conversation for you? 5. would you give an example about how you can distinguish when it is an “information gap activity”? transition questions 6. think back over the semester and tell me, what was the most enjoyable memory regarding a speaking activity in any class? 7. if you could change something about the classes you had this semester, what would you do to make them better? key questions 8. when did we use the “information gap activities” technique? what is the difference between a traditional conversation and a conversation by using the “information gap activities” technique? 9. think about the “information gap activities”, what comes to mind? 10. how did the “information gap activities” technique help you to speak english? 11. what can each one of us do to improve the “information gap activities”? ending questions 12. let us suppose that you had 30 seconds to talk to the people in charge of designing the eighth graders’ syllabus, what suggestions would you make? 13. of all the things we discussed, what is the most important for you? 14. was this an appropriate summary? 15. have we forgotten something? 1 translation of the focus group has been made for publication purposes. 15profile: issues teach. prof. dev., vol. 22 no. 1, jan-jun, 2020. issn 1657-0790 (printed) 2256-5760 (online). bogotá, colombia. pages 15-28 https://doi.org/10.15446/profile.v22n1.78613 emotions attributions of elt pre-service teachers and their effects on teaching practice atribuciones de las emociones de los profesores de inglés en formación y sus efectos en el desarrollo profesional 1mariza g. méndez lópez* universidad veracruzana, veracruz, mexico this article presents the results of a qualitative study which aimed to develop an understanding of the emotions experienced by pre-service english language teachers during their teaching practicum and the emotions’ effects on instructional teaching. attribution theory was used as a framework for analysing the results, while the data were gathered through classroom observation, reflection journals, and semistructured interviews. results revealed a need for language teaching programmes to include classroom management strategies; however, there is also evidence of the urgent need for socio-emotional support to be provided to pre-service teachers to help them shape their teaching practice through reflection. providing a space for pre-service teachers to reflect on their beliefs and discuss the emotions experienced during practicum may help to instil commitment and responsibility in future teachers. key words: attributions, emotions, english language teaching, pre-service teachers, teaching practice. este artículo presenta los resultados de un estudio cualitativo cuyo propósito fue entender las emociones experimentadas por futuros maestros de inglés durante su práctica docente y los efectos de éstas en su enseñanza. la teoría de atribución se utilizó como marco para el análisis de resultados. los datos se recopilaron a través de observaciones de clases, diarios de reflexión y entrevistas semi-estructuradas. los resultados revelaron la necesidad de que los programas de prácticas docentes incluyan estrategias para el manejo de clases. sin embargo, también hay evidencia de la necesidad urgente de proporcionar apoyo socioemocional a los estudiantes para que puedan moldear su práctica docente a través de la reflexión. al proporcionar un espacio para que los maestros en formación reflexionen sobre sus creencias y discutan las emociones experimentadas durante su práctica docente, se puede ayudar a inculcar el compromiso y la responsabilidad en futuros maestros. palabras clave: atribuciones, emociones, enseñanza de inglés, maestros en formación, práctica docente. * e-mail: marimendez@uv.mx how to cite this article (apa, 6th ed.): méndez lópez, m. g. (2020). emotions attributions of elt pre-service teachers and their effects on teaching practice. profile: issues in teachers’ professional development, 22(1), 15-28. https://doi.org/10.15446/profile.v22n1.78613. this article was received on march 21, 2019 and accepted on october 15, 2019. this is an open access article distributed under the terms of the creative commons license attribution-noncommercial-noderivatives 4.0 international license. consultation is possible at https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/. universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras16 méndez lópez introduction the role of emotions in language learning and teaching has gained importance in the last decades through studies aiming to understand the role played by emotions in learning to teach (golombek & doran, 2014), teachers’ burn out (vaezi & fallah, 2011), selfefficacy (wyatt, 2018), and language learning motivation (méndez lópez, 2016a), among other variables. in the mexican context, research on emotions has been developed about the emotional experiences of language learners on their motivation (méndez lópez, 2011b), emotions experienced by english language teaching (elt) students (méndez lópez, 2015a, 2015b), and the emotions of experienced elt teachers about the implementation of educational policies and their working conditions (méndez lópez, 2016b). although there has been progress in the understanding of the role played by emotions on these aspects, very few studies have addressed the emotions experienced by pre-service elt teachers during the final year of their degree programme, in which they have to complete a practicum period teaching students at different levels. therefore, research on the emotions attributions of pre-service teachers during practicum is needed. in mexico, where spanish is the official language and english as a foreign language is a compulsory subject beginning with elementary school, the students tend to exhibit certain reluctance to learning the latter. in addition, some students who enrol in elt programmes do not have the calling for teaching (méndez lópez & fabela cárdenas, 2014). such lack of motivation, stemming from previous scholastic experiences or from an absence of vocation, may affect the performance of pre-service teachers during their practicum, originating diverse emotions in them. besides, factors such as the lack of resources and materials, number of students per class, and the lack of appropriate conditions in schools have been highlighted as affecting the teaching of english in mexico (ramirez romero, olave moreno, & villalobos, 2015). this article presents the results of a qualitative study researching both the emotions mexican preservice elt teachers experience during their practicum and the attributions they give to them. the emotions originated from the interactions of pre-service teachers with students, materials, and supervisors are analysed in order to understand to what they attribute those emotions and the effect of those emotions on their teaching practice, if any. literature review emotions of english language teachers emotions are individually experienced by teachers (hargreaves, 2001; zembylas, 2005) and are social constructions mediated by their interactions with educational policies, authorities, colleagues, parents, and students (nguyen, 2018). although teachers’ experience of an emotion is unique, this experience is shaped by the context in which it happens. thus, the contexts in which emotions are experienced are important to understand not only the emotion itself, but also the reaction and behaviour after it. various studies have explored the diverse range of emotions experienced by teachers (golombek & doran, 2014; sutton & wheatley, 2003) with some finding that the three emotions most frequently reported by teachers are enjoyment, anxiety, and anger (chang, 2013; frenzel, becker-kurz, pekrun, & goetz, 2015). emotions have been revealed as having positive and negative effects on students and teachers as well (méndez lópez, 2017; méndez lópez & peña aguilar, 2013). regarding preservice teachers, whose lack of experience may be seen as an additional source of emotions, some have been willing to improve their teaching practice thanks to the emotions originated in interactions with their students, colleagues, or institutional authorities. however, the same situations have made other pre-service teachers feel angry and frustrated. pre-service teachers who do 17profile: issues teach. prof. dev., vol. 22 no. 1, jan-jun, 2020. issn 1657-0790 (printed) 2256-5760 (online). bogotá, colombia. pages 15-28 emotions attributions of elt pre-service teachers and their effects on teaching practice not regulate these negative emotions develop stress that is damaging for their teaching practice. pre-service teachers are prone to experiencing both positive (enthusiasm, satisfaction, happiness, etc.) and negative (anxiety, anger, frustration, etc.) emotions during their teaching practicum due to the new experiences with which they are confronted (martínez agudo & azzaro, 2018). beliefs also play an important role in pre-service teachers’ emotional experiences since beliefs influence teaching (borko, davinroy, bliem, & cumbo, 2000). during practicum, pre-service teachers may have conflicting beliefs about some teaching practices they are asked to perform by their supervisors and because of this belief mismatch, they can develop anxiety and stress as reported in nguyen’s (2018) study. different studies have reported that positive emotions emerge in interactions with students (cowie, 2011; gkonou & miller, 2017; méndez lópez, 2017; nguyen, 2014). the establishment of positive interpersonal relationships with students is regarded as an important factor, not just for students’ learning but also for teachers’ emotional well-being (mercer, oberdorfer, & saleem, 2016). negative emotions are usually experienced by preservice teachers because of students’ poor participation, passiveness, noisiness, lack of motivation, and tiredness among other aspects (nguyen, 2018). although gu and day (2007) found that pre-service teachers with a teaching vocation are more resilient to negative experiences, negative emotions are also experienced by pre-service teachers who have the calling for teaching (arizmendi tejeda et al., 2016). nevertheless, pre-service teachers with a vocation tend to see negative emotions in an optimistic way, which prevent them from losing energy and motivation (cross & hong, 2012). this is an important finding for countries such as mexico in which the access to university is limited (méndez lópez & fabela cárdenas, 2014). some students without the calling for teaching decide to enrol in elt programmes because access is less difficult, or because their families cannot afford for them to study their dream career in a different city. thus, this lack of vocation may affect pre-service teachers’ emotional experiences and consequently their motivation, responsibility, and commitment. furlong and maynard (1995, pp. 73-98) identify five stages which novice teachers undergo: (1) early idealism, (2) survival, (3) recognising difficulties, (4) reaching a plateau, and (5) moving on. at the beginning of their career, novice teachers may have idealistic feelings and images of themselves. while they are primarily concerned with the application of the knowledge they have learnt in previous years, the demands of their new job can be a shock, as teaching is not simply a question of designing materials or applying a method or an approach. the same may happen to pre-service teachers during practicum since they may face difficult situations they may not be prepared for. it is important then, to provide them with the appropriate support so they can gain confidence not only on their teaching skills but also in other areas. thus, it is important to provide pre-service teachers with sufficient assistance in order to minimise the effects of unfavourable experiences (mercer et al., 2016). according to sutton and wheatley (2003), teachers who experience positive emotions in the classroom are more likely to generate new ideas and strategies to help them better solve or cope with problems. however, it seems that the diversity of experiences that novice teachers face is more likely to produce negative emotions than positive ones. britzman (2007), states that novice teachers’ negative emotions are a result of their lack of confidence, meaning that pre-service teachers may be more prone to experience negative emotions that may negatively influence their teaching practice. in some cases, the frequent occurrence of negative emotions can encourage pre-service teachers to leave the profession, which has been reported in studies from all over the world (hong, 2010). designing teacher education programmes based on knowledge of the range of emotions experienced universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras18 méndez lópez by pre-service teachers and an understanding of the meaning they ascribe to them can help to minimise their negative effects on future teaching practice (mercer et al., 2016). pre-service teachers need to be provided with a space in which they can undergo teaching experiences illustrative of the tribulations they may experience throughout their teaching career. they must also be given the tools and resources with which to overcome those experiences (nguyen, 2018). as furlong and maynard (1995) state, the development of concepts such as identity enables pre-service teachers to “gain control over their own teaching” (p. 73). it is paramount, then, that they are provided a space in which to reflect on their beliefs and emotions, enabling them to begin to understand themselves better as future professionals. previous studies two studies focused on mexican pre-service teachers were analysed. arizmendi tejeda, gillings de gonzález, and lópez martínez (2016) investigated if novice teachers used strategies to regulate the negative emotions experienced during practicum. they used observations and semi-structured interviews to collect data. results showed that participants used preventative and responsive emotional regulation strategies such as selecting situations and modifying their emotional expression. these authors found that pre-service teachers were influenced by their image and self-confidence when selecting a teaching level so as not to feel challenged or threatened. they also concluded that pre-service teachers did not use other regulation strategies, such as emotional understanding or masking their emotions, because they needed to be trained on how to apply these. finally, they emphasised that a component about the emotions involved in teaching a foreign language should be included in elt programmes so pre-service teachers can be better prepared when teaching. ocampo martínez (2017) conducted a study to identify the emotions experienced by first-year english teachers during their first year teaching and what caused those emotions. with the use of semi-structured interviews done at three different moments in their teaching practice during a period of six months, the researcher found that first-year english teachers’ positive and negative emotions originated in their interactions with students, administrative duties, and the lack of classroom management skills. interaction with students and administrative duties made them feel anger, frustration, and nervousness but also joy, confidence, and motivation. whereas the emotions experienced because of the lack of classroom skills were negative, participants expressed they were positive at the end of the school year because these emotions allowed them to look for strategies to reverse difficult situations, such as talking to colleagues and previous teachers about ideas to control children. these studies show that a small but growing body of research on how mexican teachers of english experience their work emotionally is being developed. attribution theory attribution theory assumes that “humans are motivated to know why an event has occurred (weiner, 1980, p. 276). thus, people usually attribute to someone or something the cause of a specific event or situation. the present study focuses on the attribution awareness process pre-service teachers go through when reflecting on their teaching performance during their practicum. according to weiner (1980, p. 393), “the most salient causal inferences are ability and effort, but many other factors are also influential”. among the properties identified by weiner for causal inferences are stability, locus, and controllability. thus, people can attribute success or failure to stable or unstable causes and to internal or external forces. all these shape our attributions and the way we carry out future activities. for example, pre-service teachers can attribute their lack of teaching skills to their lack of vocation (a stable cause) or to an incomplete instruction received in an elt programme (an unstable cause). finally, causes can 19profile: issues teach. prof. dev., vol. 22 no. 1, jan-jun, 2020. issn 1657-0790 (printed) 2256-5760 (online). bogotá, colombia. pages 15-28 emotions attributions of elt pre-service teachers and their effects on teaching practice be controllable or uncontrollable, which refers to the power we have to either control or not control certain factors in order to make them work to our benefit. for instance, if pre-service teachers attribute their lack of teaching skills to their lack of vocation, they will believe that no matter how many courses or how much training they take, they will not improve. however, if they attribute their lack of teaching skills to incomplete training, they will have the option to enrol in training courses to improve. weiner (1980) suggests that: reaching causal inferences, that is, deciding why one succeeds or fails, requires various sources of information to be utilized and combined. some of this information will originate from the current situation, while other evidence is gleaned from memories of past events. (p. 329) although attribution theory was developed to interpret human behaviour (weiner, 1992), its broad analytical lens has been applied to the analysis of students’ performances in different subjects, such as mathematics (baştürk & yavuz, 2010) and technology (maymon, hall, goetz, chiarella, & rahimi, 2018). the present study uses attribution theory to understand pre-service teachers’ causal inferences about their teaching performances during practicum in the final year of their undergraduate elt degree programme. the present study is grounded in the attributions pre-service teachers make about the emotions originated during their teaching practice and the actions taken by them after reflecting on those emotions and their causal inferences. pre-service teachers’ attributions can shape not only their future teaching performances but also their professional development. for instance, if pre-service teachers consider that their undeveloped teaching skills caused some negative emotions to arise during teaching practice, they will enrol in training courses in order to acquire or develop those skills. however, if pre-service teachers consider that the sources of negative emotions are stable (national educational policies, restrictions imposed by institutional authorities on the implementation of new ideas, the demands of the students’ parents, etc.), and that they can do nothing to change that, they may leave the teaching profession, feel less motivated to continue trying new techniques, or they may develop resilience to deal with these negative situations. thus, pre-service teachers’ professional development is shaped by the outcomes of past events, by means of their awareness of the causes for the success or failure of teaching strategies in the present. the attribution awareness process “is what moves us to pursue a specific course of action for new or future activities, or to stop doing certain things because we consider that we do not have the capacity to do them” (méndez lópez, 2011a, p. 90). it is important to note that these attributions are subjective, as they are formed based on our experience of and reflection on past and current events. the present study links this attribution awareness to our beliefs. if, as teachers, we believe that someone or some external factor is the cause of our failure or success in language teaching (e.g., the students, the materials we are working with, classroom activities, the focus of the syllabus), our motivational intelligence will provide us with strategies to overcome such barriers in the event of failure. thus, pre-service teachers’ personal assumptions are the determinant factors behind action or inaction, with any actions taken resulting from their inferences about particular teaching situations. understanding the actions taken by pre-service teachers after they have identified the cause of a particular situation can help teacher trainers to design activities that will enhance the teaching practice of the former. method in order to understand the emotions experienced by pre-service teachers during their practicum, it was necessary to provide a detailed account of their views and describe the context in which said emotions universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras20 méndez lópez originated. a qualitative approach was selected as the most suitable for the purpose of this research, as it was thought to facilitate a better understanding of the emotions experienced during practicum and the attributions given to these by pre-service teachers. the following research questions were formulated for the present study: 1. what emotions do pre-service english language teachers experience during their teaching practicum? 2. what were these emotions attributed to? setting the setting of the study was a university in a city in the southeast of mexico. the final year of the undergraduate elt programme requires that preservice teachers take two courses, práctica docente i (teaching practice i) and práctica docente ii (teaching practice ii), in which they must complete two teaching placements. involving teaching children, adolescents, or adults in state educational institutions, these placements provide pre-service teachers with experience in teaching different ages and levels, which are beneficial for their future teaching practice and may lead to job opportunities. participants the present study was conducted in 2015 with pre-service english language teachers from the undergraduate elt degree programme at a south eastern mexican university. the participants were fifteen preservice teachers, eight female and seven male, whose ages ranged between 20 and 23 and who, during the study period, were teaching for the first time. the university assigned pre-service teachers to educational institutions in the city, where they taught for a period of between 8 and 12 weeks for an average of three hours per week, with some lessons designed in pairs and some individually. journal entries describing their teaching performances and the emotions they experienced therein were written individually. data elicitation procedures data were collected via classroom observation, preservice teachers’ reflection journals, and semi-structured interviews. pre-service teachers were asked to write reflectively about their teaching sessions and describe the emotions they experienced during them. while the researcher did not specify a style, the pre-service teachers were asked to write a maximum of three pages per week as soon as possible after each teaching session and were provided with the following general guiding questions: (1) what emotions did you feel in your teaching practice? (2) to whom or what do you attribute those emotions? (3) what situations would you say caused those emotions? (4) what do you do about those emotions? semi-structured interviews were used at the end of the study period to clarify some of the issues expressed in the journal entries. the meanings the pre-service teachers gave to emotions and the situations in which they arose can only be understood through the lenses of their experiences. in addition, the researcher observed the participants twice during their teaching practicum, with the objective of understanding the context in which the emotions were experienced in order to aid the interpretation of the findings. data analysis by the end of the study, 118 teaching journals entries had been collected, 15 semi-structured interviews conducted, and 30 practicum teaching sessions observed. the data set was analysed using content analysis, a method providing an accessible and theoretically flexible approach to data analysis (patton, 1987). the data set was analysed in line with conventional content analysis in which “coding categories are derived directly from the text data” (hsieh & shannon, 2005, p. 1277). moreover, manifest analysis was undertaken, in which descriptions of what participants said were presented using their own words (bengtsson, 2016). pseudonyms of pre-service teachers are used throughout the article to protect their identity. 21profile: issues teach. prof. dev., vol. 22 no. 1, jan-jun, 2020. issn 1657-0790 (printed) 2256-5760 (online). bogotá, colombia. pages 15-28 emotions attributions of elt pre-service teachers and their effects on teaching practice results pre-service teachers experienced positive and negative emotions during their practicum. the most frequent positive emotions experienced were joy, happiness, and satisfaction and the most frequent negative emotions were despair, insecurity, frustration, worry, and stress. these emotions were attributed to three major themes: (a) students’ behaviour and attitudes, (b) undeveloped teaching skills, and (c) beliefs about teaching and learning. although there was some overlap among the responses in each theme (e.g., between theme a and theme b, with some pre-service teachers attributing the indiscipline of their students to their own undeveloped teaching skills), each theme is presented separately here to aid understanding and clarity. students’ behaviour and attitudes most participants worked with children and adolescents and attributed negative emotions to students’ undisciplined classroom behaviour and attitudes. negative emotions attributed to students related to undisciplined classroom behaviour and a lack of motivation, while positive emotions were attributed to the level of student engagement, namely their interest and participation in class activities. attributions of negative emotions most pre-service teachers were overwhelmed by the students’ undisciplined classroom behaviour and lack of interest in their classes, as some participants describe below: it makes me feel frustrated that while some kids have shown improvement, others just study for the exam and then forget about what they have learned. i have tried to give them as much attention and help as possible, but it is not working. (juan, journal, week 8) then, students came back after the break, but they were a little impolite and showed no interest in the class. my peers and i realized how difficult it is to work with teenagers. even if you create fun activities, they do not want to participate. (patty, journal, week 6) having unmotivated and undisciplined students also affects pre-service and novice teachers’ confidence and self-efficacy. although some of the pre-service teachers participating in the present research described having difficulty interacting with students during class (for such reasons as a lack of familiarity, their lack of experience, or the students’ response to their activities or classes), others described having no problem establishing a positive relationship with students. as one participant describes: i know my students of third grade are rebellious, mischievous, and dynamic but as i have been saying in all my journal reflections…this is due to their age. nevertheless, the more patient and tolerant the teacher is, the more effective the classes are. i really like giving my classes to them, and of course, i am going to miss them. (angela, journal, week 6) furthermore, these negative emotions may be regarded as experiences pre-service teachers needed to go through or had to face in order to gain confidence and experience. as one participant expressed: this situation [referring to a discipline event she had to face which involved the principal and a student’s mother] was something i had not thought about when wanting to be a teacher. i had always thought in this profession as positive and full of nice moments…this was like a reality shock for me. it is not just me and the students… (a silent moment) it is not easy, but i think this kind of situations are the ones that can help you to be more experienced and secure. i hope that. (luna, interview) although luna experienced negative emotions because of the behaviour of a student in class, she saw this experience as positive for their future performance as a professional. she also realized that being a teacher implied interactions with students’ parents and she needed to be prepared for these situations in the future. attributions of positive emotions although participating pre-service teachers did experience negative emotions, they also described universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras22 méndez lópez positive ones, which functioned as scaffolding to help them endure and overcome negative emotions during their practicum. most positive emotions were attributed to the students’ active performance. as one pre-service teacher (mary) wrote, “i was surprised that almost everybody followed the instructions correctly”, while another (ana) commented, “i was shocked to see that all children did an excellent job answering questions”. another pre-service teacher who had expressed some difficulties at the beginning of his teaching practicum stated that: the experience of working with kids this semester was good because i could learn how kids learn better. also, i could experience problems a teacher face with students of this age. this made me look for strategies to manage kids, i learnt some persuasion and control techniques that will help me in my career as a teacher. (sergio, journal, week 8) thus, by finding ways to control students, sergio was not only constructing his teacher identity, as he wanted to be seen as a teacher able to control his classroom, but also boosting his teaching practice by increasing his confidence and feelings of self-efficacy. the literature on emotions reports that teachers’ positive emotions are mainly caused by their interaction with students (cowie, 2011; méndez lópez, 2017). participants of this study worked with children and adolescents; working with students of these ages requires a great deal of professional and personal commitment, to not only designing materials and activities suitable for students but also to showing a real interest in them as people. as stated by arizmendi tejeda et al. (2016), preservice teachers who embrace teaching as a vocation tend to enjoy teaching, but this does not prevent them from experiencing negative emotions, which may affect their motivation (p. 40). in this study, having students who participated and showed interest in the activities designed for them motivated pre-service teachers to continue working. this finding concurs with nguyen’s (2014) study which found that student engagement in class is a predictor of pre-service teachers’ positive emotions and sense of fulfilment. this is an important aspect to consider, as classroom management and the forming of positive interpersonal relationships with students are regarded as important factors, not just for students’ learning but also for teachers’ emotional well-being (mercer et al., 2016). undeveloped teaching skills most pre-service teachers described realising that being in front of a group was not as easy as they had envisaged, enduring despair, insecurity, stress, worry, and frustration because of difficult classroom situations. the main difficulties reported by participants in this study were a lack of techniques for introducing a specific topic and a lack of strategies for disciplining students, as well as unmotivated learners and unforeseen problems during class. however, most pre-service teachers emphasized that the indiscipline of the children and teenagers in their classroom was their main concern during practicum. attributions to undeveloped teaching skills most participants described how they possessed undeveloped teaching skills, which some of them attributed to their lack of commitment to the profession, stating that they did not really want to major in english language teaching. an important aspect to be considered when analysing the different emotions or feelings expressed by pre-service teachers is their sense of vocation or calling for teaching. as a lack of financial resources sometimes limits access to mexican universities, students often find themselves enrolled in a degree programme very different to what they had envisaged. this can affect their motivation to teach, as expressed by one participant: this week few students arrived to class. i felt sad because i thought that it was because they did not like the way i give the class. that makes me feel bad because i know it is my fault because i am a bad teacher. this major was not my first choice…is discouraging. i do 23profile: issues teach. prof. dev., vol. 22 no. 1, jan-jun, 2020. issn 1657-0790 (printed) 2256-5760 (online). bogotá, colombia. pages 15-28 emotions attributions of elt pre-service teachers and their effects on teaching practice not really want to teach in the future. i want to work in tourism in cancún or playa del carmen. (tony, journal, week 4) this lack of vocation is likely to become strongly evident when the pre-service teachers face their first teaching experiences, generating intense emotions that may cause them to lose the desire to teach completely. the pre-service teachers without a sense of vocation for teaching seemed to display more emotional intensity in response to the negative events they faced during their practicum which, thus, affected their motivation. this week, discipline was a problem because when i arrived the kids were playing on the playground so when i started the class they were anxious and distracted. i found it very difficult to control them. (gaby, journal, week 4) something i need to improve is child management. i have had moments in which i do not know what to do. i feel lost. (sergio, journal, week 6) these classroom events affected not only their motivation but also their confidence as teachers. some realised they lacked strategies for teaching children, while others had to adjust their teaching practice to students with diverse learning needs. something caught my attention and i was shocked when i discovered that this special little girl was not able to speak or hear. i was worried about her because i did not know how to deal with that; i did not want to exclude her from class activities because of her physical limitations. (reyna, journal, week 1) i noticed that i have three students who are hyperactive and distract others. i have to think about a proper strategy to solve this. i did not get training for this type of students. (jair, journal, week 2) as we can see from the references above, the preservice teachers’ identities were being constructed through and shaped by their experiences in their incipient professional lives. although these situations were difficult, they helped the pre-service teachers’ teaching practice, as they were forced to consult their supervisors for ideas or approaches for fulfilling their students’ needs. the pre-service teachers not only asked their peers for advice or sought suggestions from more experienced teachers, but some also decided to enrol in further courses in order to better attend to their students’ needs in their future practice. thus, participants realised the necessity of developing specific skills for responding to their students’ needs and interests and managing their classrooms more naturally. i think that during this practicum, i improved my teaching skills because i improved on how to establish discipline to control the group. i consider myself more prepared to teach kids. i love to teach them but i am aware that i need more experience in other levels to develop certain skills. teaching practice and some specific courses can help me to continue improving. (reyna, journal, week 8) today was the last day of classes and i am happy because i have improved the way i give instructions, and the way i present some grammar rules. i feel more confident than before doing the practicum. this was a positive experience for me and i am not afraid of teaching teenagers anymore. i know that it is not easy but i am willing to be more prepared to face the diverse situations i am going to cope with in the future. (juliana, reflection journal, week 8) some participants expressed that they found teaching students at different levels burdensome, due to the fact that they did not really want to teach at all. they had enrolled in the course solely because it is a graduation requirement for the elt undergraduate degree, with the expectation of subsequently finding work in tourism in the northern part of the state. this affected their teaching practice, as it meant they showed no disposition to improve. other participants, in contrast, found the practicum experience positive and gained confidence from noticing how basic their teaching skills were, in that they realized they just needed more practice and training. these students also showed evidence of their developing skills as language teachers, with some expressing the need to be trained to deal with special needs students and children. teaching those kids was an amazing experience. i was nervous and afraid at the beginning but i had a great time. i also realised universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras24 méndez lópez that i need to be informed in all the aspects related to teaching children in order to facilitate the acquisition of english because some children have special needs. (diana, interview) although, pre-service teachers with a strong inclination for teaching have been found to be more committed and resilient (gu & day, 2007), they are not excluded from feeling negative emotions. most participants of this study did not express having a vocation for teaching which may have influenced the frequent experience of negative emotions due to their undeveloped teaching skills. thus, the pre-service teachers’ beliefs were hindering the improvement of their teaching skills, as they attributed their negative experiences to their lack of teaching abilities without intention or energy placed on improving these (weiner, 1992). on the other hand, when teachers have a calling for the profession, it has been found that they will regard negative experiences optimistically, thus benefitting their levels of energy and motivation (cross & hong, 2012). in this study, some participants that regarded negative experiences as events they had to go through also expressed this optimistic view. as described by nguyen (2018), pre-service teachers may experience different negative situations such as students’ poor participation, passiveness, noisiness, uncooperative attitude and impoliteness, lack of motivation, and tiredness that can cause emotional crises. participants of this study experienced some of the same situations that caused different emotions to emerge. preservice teachers expressed the need for more training in some aspects of classroom management, which is supported by studies done in the mexican elt context that have highlighted the neglect of classroom management skills for teaching children and adolescents (maintaining order, managing student behaviour, and overcoming unexpected events) (ramirez romero et al., 2015). in addition, pre-service teachers must be trained in socio-emotional competence, as it is a paramount skill for their teaching practice (mercer et al., 2016). thus, it is important to dedicate space in elt programmes not only for training in classroom management skills but also in socio-emotional skills so pre-service teachers will graduate as better-qualified professionals. beliefs about teaching and learning the pre-service teachers expressed their beliefs about teaching and learning in reflective journal entries. these beliefs could be the result of previous school experiences or the influence of a teacher they considered either good or not good, or one who provided them with positive experiences during their learning process. the pre-service teachers participating in the present research expressed their belief that a teacher can play different roles in relation to their students. rather than being simply a teacher who presents information and guides students in the construction of new knowledge, some teachers believe that they also must be a moral guide. some of the pre-service teachers expressed concern about not only language content but also their students’ more profound needs. nancy expressed this as follows: what i really want to do is to teach differently, not in the same traditional and boring way all teachers do. i want to go beyond that. i want to show students that i care for them not just for their learning but also for them as human beings. i want to teach values and things students can use for their life. (nancy, journal, week 3) pre-service teachers also state that teachers need to be aware of their students’ feelings to ensure that they are comfortable, patient, and tolerant. these beliefs are in line with the tenets of humanistic language teaching, an approach that places great importance on the development of students as human beings while at the same time developing language skills. moskowitz (1978) states that humanistic education’s main concern is “educating the whole person—the intellectual and the emotional dimensions” (p. 11). for some participants in the present study, providing learners with a secure environment, in which they do 25profile: issues teach. prof. dev., vol. 22 no. 1, jan-jun, 2020. issn 1657-0790 (printed) 2256-5760 (online). bogotá, colombia. pages 15-28 emotions attributions of elt pre-service teachers and their effects on teaching practice not feel intimidated when expressing their opinions, is paramount. pre-service teachers expressed the idea that, to be considered good professionals, teachers needed to take their students’ feelings into account and demonstrate patience, tolerance, and humour. thus, some participants in this study show how they were constructing their identity as english language teachers from the meaning they made of the different positive and negative situations they encountered during their practicum. although the task of helping students reflect on their identity is not included in most elt programmes in mexico, it is vital that students in the last year of their studies become emotionally prepared to endure the demands of teaching. pre-service teachers expressed beliefs about being good teachers. they expressed the idea that, to be considered good professionals, teachers needed to consider feelings and demonstrate patience, tolerance, and humour. this is in line with results of studies done in the mexican context (méndez lópez, 2011b, 2015b). the literature on attribution reveals that students with fixed ability beliefs usually attribute their success or failure to an innate ability or talent (weiner, 1992). pre-service teachers may extrapolate this to teaching, believing that they will never improve their teaching skills no matter how many training courses they take. this can make the practicum period a difficult one, not only for pre-service teachers but also for supervisors, who may find themselves overseeing reticent and closed-minded pre-service teachers. thus, it is important for supervisors and trainers to help pre-service teachers shape these beliefs so they can improve their teaching skills. conclusion this article explores the emotions experienced by pre-service teachers during their practicum period in order to understand the influence they have on their teaching practice. results show that pre-service teachers experience positive and negative experiences; however, negative emotions predominated during the practicum period. participants in the study were reacting to the reality shock of the classroom and felt overwhelmed by its complexity. thus, both their idealized images of being a teacher and the survival strategies they were forced to employ were at play when recognizing the difficulties they faced. this is understandable due to the idealism of pre-service teachers at the beginning of their teaching career (furlong & maynard, 1995). the situations they experienced helped the future teachers understand the complexities of the teaching profession. thus, some of their ideals had to be readjusted in order for them to adapt better to the particular contexts in which they were teaching. this process of adaptation also helped them to reshape their incipient identities as language teachers, which, as shown by their reflective journal entries, the pre-service teachers were constructing from the meaning they made of their emotions and experiences during practicum. this adaptation period also showed how the pre-service teachers’ previous experiences affected their current experiences and teaching practice. those pre-service teachers participating in the present study that showed a strong desire to be teachers expressed a positive attitude towards negative experiences. on the other hand, those pre-service teachers enrolled in the teaching major for other reasons expressed negative emotions more intensely, which affected their classroom performances. this indicates that pre-service teachers’ supervisors should be careful when working with students that state that they have no vocation for teaching, as they may be more prone to experiencing negative emotions, perceiving only the negative aspects of any classroom situation and, consequently, not being open to receiving appropriate support from peers or advice from supervisors. the attributions pre-service teachers give to their emotions are important since, by knowing those, supervisors can help them modify those through reflection. in this study, reflecting on their journal entries helped pre-service teachers to realize that some strategies may have not worked because the context in universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras26 méndez lópez which they were teaching was not the same as that in which they were taught. journal writing helped them to identify their strengths and weaknesses as teachers. given that resilience and commitment have been identified as two features teachers need in order to maintain their levels of energy and motivation (gu & day, 2007), it is paramount that course designers and trainers provide relevant support to pre-service teachers in order for them to be able to deal with the diverse situations they face. it is also important to help pre-service teachers shape their teacher identity, as some may not have a clear teaching philosophy at this stage. although some pre-service teachers may not have an inclination for teaching, it is argued that commitment and responsibility can be instilled through reflection (mercer et al., 2016). thus, knowing the attributions pre-service teachers give to their emotions can help trainers and supervisors help them modify these and make some changes to their teaching practice. if pre-service teachers continue attributing negative emotions to their lack of vocation or previous learning experiences, no room for improvement is left. the present research obtained and examined preservice foreign language teachers’ emotional experiences during practicum, revealing the emotions, embedded in the teaching process, that influence novice teachers’ identities and professional development. the study’s results indicate a definite need for language teachers’ trainers to include such aspects as maintaining order in the classroom, the appropriate management of student behaviour, and approaches for dealing with unexpected events to ensure that pre-service teachers’ needs at the end of any teacher-training programme have been met. however, there is also evidence of the need to provide socio-emotional support to help pre-service teachers construct their teacher identity through reflection. thus, pre-service teachers’ cognitive and emotional needs will be catered for, which can definitely contribute to their professional growth and, consequently, increase teaching quality. references arizmendi tejeda, s., gillings de gonzález, b. s., & lópez martínez, c. l. 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(2018). esl teachers’ emotional experiences, responses and challenges in professional relationships with the school community: implications for teacher education. in j. martínez agudo (ed.), emotions in second language teaching (pp. 243-257). cham, ch: springer. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-75438-3_14. ocampo martínez, d. (2017). emotions of first-year english teachers (unpublished master’s thesis). universidad de quintana roo, chetumal, mexico. patton, m. q. (1987). how to use qualitative methods in evaluation. newbury park, us: sage publications. ramírez romero, j. l., olave moreno, i., & villalobos, l. (2015). what is really happening with pnieb? programmes, curriculum and practices. paper presented at the 42nd international mextesol convention, cancun, mexico. about the author mariza g. méndez lópez holds a phd in education (university of nottingham, uk). she is a member of the mexican national research system. her areas of research are affective factors in foreign language learning and teacher professional development. deconstructing novice teachers’ actions and reactions to nonharmonic chilean school communities of practice 13profile: issues teach. prof. dev., vol. 23 no. 1, jan-jun, 2021. issn 1657-0790 (printed) 2256-5760 (online). bogotá, colombia. pages 13-26 https://doi.org/10.15446/profile.v23n1.83955 deconstructing novice teachers’ actions and reactions to nonharmonic chilean school communities of practice deconstruyendo las acciones y reacciones de profesores novatos ante comunidades de práctica no armónicas en chile gloria romero1 universidad de santiago de chile, santiago, chile this paper reports a small section of a larger study that uses a mixed-methods approach to examine participation experiences of novice teachers of english in chile beginning their careers in nonharmonic public, semiprivate, and private school communities. drawing on wenger’s framework of communities of practice, this paper reveals that novice teachers come across nonharmonic communities of teachers regardless of the types of schools where they work—that is, schools normally classified by socioeconomic background. as such, new teachers experience varying degrees of challenges that hinder their participation in such school communities. rather than being a detriment, these nonharmonic communities of practice positively impact novice teachers to strive, including by joining diverse forms of communities, during the first years of teaching. keywords: chilean context, english language teaching, novice teacher, school communities of practice este artículo informa una pequeña sección de un estudio más amplio que utiliza un enfoque de métodos mixtos para examinar las experiencias de participación de un grupo de profesores novatos de inglés en chile que inician sus carreras en comunidades escolares no armónicas del sistema público, subvencionado y privado. basándose en las comunidades de práctica de wenger, este documento revela que los profesores novatos encuentran comunidades no armónicas en colegios que son normalmente clasificados por su condición socioeconómica. allí, los profesores experimentan varios desafíos que dificultan su participación en dichas comunidades. en vez de ser un obstáculo, estas comunidades impactan positivamente a los profesores para salir adelante, quienes se unen a diversas comunidades al inicio de la profesión docente. palabras clave: comunidades de práctica escolares, contexto chileno, enseñanza del inglés, profesor novato gloria romero  https://orcid.org/0000-0003-1169-0644 · email: gloria.romero@usach.cl how to cite this article (apa, 7th ed.): romero, g. (2021). deconstructing novice teachers’ actions and reactions to nonharmonic chilean school communities of practice. profile: issues in teachers’ professional development, 23(1), 13–26. https://doi.org/10.15446/profile.v23n1.83955 this article was received on december 6, 2019 and accepted on july 31, 2020. this is an open access article distributed under the terms of the creative commons license attribution-noncommercial-noderivatives 4.0 international license. consultation is possible at https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/ https://doi.org/10.15446/profile.v23n1.83955 https://orcid.org/0000-0003-4011-788x https://doi.org/10.15446/profile.v23n1.83955 https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/ universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras14 romero introduction ample ink has been spent on novice teachers and the challenges they experience during the first years of teaching. some have compared a teacher’s early teaching period as “reality shocks” or the “sink or swim processes” (varah et al., 1986; veenman, 1984)—the result of social, contextual, administrative, pedagogical, and affective challenges novice teachers experience in educational institutions (falla, 2013; farrell, 2012, 2016; huberman, 1993). these challenges directly impact teaching practices and attrition (avalos & valenzuela, 2016; scheopner, 2010). studies on the experiences of novice teachers of english, a recent development in english language teaching (elt), are strongly informed by what has been conducted in general education (borg, 2008; farrell, 2008). and farrell (2016) asserts that in-depth understanding of novice teachers’ experiences is still insufficient—hence, little is known about the first elt years of novice teachers, especially those working in foreign-language contexts and complex educational systems. this article approaches this debate from the multicontextual chilean-school-system perspective. drawing on wenger et al.’s (2002) communities of practice (cops) lens, this paper examines the participation experiences of novice teachers of english in public, semiprivate, and private schools. wenger (1998) uses the concept of harmony to describe cops’ functioning. in harmonic cops, learning happens through community members’ co-participation. however, in the development of the cop theory, wenger et al. do not conceptualize communities that fail to function. rather, they briefly identify the downsides of communities within corporations such as the hewlett-packard company (e.g., cops with disconnected, overconfident, or arrogant experienced members or well-established cops that leave no room for newcomers to contribute and participate). in this paper, i incorporate the term nonharmonic applied to teaching cops, namely, english teaching school communities of practice. by these cops, i refer to already-established communities, formed by experienced and novice teachers, recognized by the school community, and in which established member relationships (e.g., cops with conflictive, closed, jealous, competitive experienced members) or external factors (e.g., school context) hinder the learning, participation domains, and opportunities of new teachers. using a mixed-methods design, this paper deconstructs nonharmonic e lt communities to determine how cops in diverse school contexts operate, how new teachers navigate their first years, and how those teachers endure chilean school challenges. it highlights (a) the coping mechanisms developed by chilean novice teachers of english to survive in nonharmonic or challenging school contexts and (b) the extent socioeconomic resources do not significantly affect cops’ functioning (i.e., nonharmonic communities exist within school types classified by socioeconomic background). this paper addresses the following questions: (a) how do novice teachers of english experience their participation in nonharmonic school communities? and (b) how do they cope with challenges to thereby thrive in their first teaching years? it begins by overviewing the chilean school system and the theoretical framework guiding this study. i later present the study’s research methodology and analyze and discuss the findings. the paper concludes with a call for research examining diversified school communities and newteacher social participation. multicontextual chilean school system novice teachers in chile begin their professional lives in a multi-educational context characterized by socioeconomic issues rooted in educational reforms imposed by the dictatorship in 1980. this new “educational model . . . promoted the privatization of the school system” (barahona, 2016, p. 17), the ministry of educa15profile: issues teach. prof. dev., vol. 23 no. 1, jan-jun, 2021. issn 1657-0790 (printed) 2256-5760 (online). bogotá, colombia. pages 13-26 deconstructing novice teachers’ actions and reactions to nonharmonic chilean school communities... tion’s decentralization of school administration, and the creation of semiprivate franchise schools (elacqua et al., 2011), all of which eroded public education (mcewan et al., 2008; santiago et al., 2013) and increased social and educational stratification between wealthy and low-income students (avalos & aylwin, 2007; avalos & de los rios, 2016). this reality has had severe repercussions on teachers’ working conditions. for example, private schools offer better salaries (40% more than public and semiprivate schools) and benefits; paid ongoing lesson preparation, meeting time, and extra hours (avalos & aylwin, 2007); and more professional support from principals and peers (laborde, 2014). in this way, these schools can employ more rigorous hiring procedures and hire teachers considered to be the best qualified (avalos & aylwin, 2007; barahona, 2016; mizala & torche, 2012; valencia & tant, 2011), thus increasing new-teacher demand and competition for employment. in contrast, teachers in public and semiprivate schools work under precarious conditions (cornejo, 2009)—they are given inappropriate and poor teaching materials and have to work with inadequate infrastructure and facilities; have little or no time for preparation, collaborative planning, and adequate teamwork; and have little job security. on top of that, they experience burnout, often suffer from lack of social and professional recognition, and find their teaching performance affected (cornejo, 2009). these conditions result in their diminished interest in pedagogy careers and decrease new-teacher retention in chilean public schools (avalos & valenzuela, 2016, valenzuela & sevilla, 2015). from this multi-context perspective, i argue that new-teacher experiences in schools should be examined from diversified educational contexts. studies focused on novice teachers’ participation experiences in diverse school communities are limited (avalos, 2009; avalos & aylwin, 2007; avalos & valenzuela, 2016), especially in chilean elt. theoretical framework the first years of teaching: pushing to survive the first years of teaching can be daunting, especially for novice teachers unaware of school challenges (farrell, 2016) that require new teachers “to act as fully formed teachers” (barahona, 2016, p. 30), assume full teaching responsibilities, become familiar with school policies and curricula immediately following training, and usually, establish relationships with students, colleagues, parents, and administrative staff (farrell, 2016; hancock & scherff, 2010). that novice teachers must cope with difficult classes, which experienced teachers do not typically want to teach, worsens this “reality shock” (bartell, 2004; billingsley et al., 2009; veenman, 1984). school organization and work environment are also critical to new teachers. poor colleague and administrative-staff support, meager colleague feedback, lack of collaboration opportunities, and student discipline and demotivation negatively impact teacher motivation, self-esteem, commitment, and the desire to remain in the profession (cooper & alvarado, 2006; scheopner, 2010). additionally, new teachers find themselves immersed in “controlling” (glas et al., 2019) school cultures whereby “points or grades are more important than meaningful learning” (glas et al., 2019, p. 49) thus hindering student and novice teacher motivation. elt shocks result from factors like the gap between teacher preparation and real teacher development, limited contact with program educators after graduation (farrell, 2012), and how novice teachers “from the first day must face the same challenges as their more experienced colleagues” (farrell, 2012, p. 436). farrell (2016) identifies three main “complications” (p. 104): pedagogical, curricular, and collegial. pedagogically—and because of administrative issues, isolation, or a need to fit into traditional elt communities—novice teachers are compelled to modify or abandon approaches and methods, including interuniversidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras16 romero active ones, learned in teacher-training programs (farrell, 2006; shin, 2012). pushed by experienced teachers and fearing student-interaction noise and loss of class control, new teachers tend to discard group-work activities (farrell, 2006). at a curricular level, novice teachers must choose between what they want to teach and department-required and -prepared content designed for test preparation. collegially, novice teachers are excluded from group meetings and pedagogic activities due to individualistic school cultures or complex relationships (farrell, 2006); thus, isolated novice teachers have “nobody (perceived or otherwise) to go to for help. this isolation does nothing to help them navigate these difficult waters because they cannot or do not reach out to others for advice and help” (farrell, 2016, p. 104). despite these challenges, novice teachers thus develop mechanisms to “swim” (varah et al., 1986). farrell (2019) argues that reflective practice helps teachers examine their beliefs and teaching, become responsible for their professional evolution, and develop strategized survival “resolutions” (farrell, 2006, p. 213) such as classroom interaction and extra material with which to complement school textbooks. having realistic workplace expectations; familiarizing themselves with students, teachers, and administrative staff; and having a proactive attitude also help (hebert & worthy, 2001). novice teachers cope better with hurdles if they already have social competence (e.g., they seek support from family, friends, and former classmates); personal efficacy (e.g., they take advantage of student, colleague, and department-head feedback); and problem-solving strategies (e.g., they “persevere, visualize solutions, and solve problems”; tait, 2008, p. 69). school collaboration, acceptance, and inclusion of new teachers further alleviates the social stress of first years’ teaching (ulvik et al., 2009). in sum, novice teachers thrive when they take action and make personal decisions (e.g., reflect, incorporate extra material, familiarize themselves with others, or develop proactive attitudes). however, in this paper, i add to the personal decision-making skills of new teachers, the social participation aspect present in the communities where they work, grow, and develop. theory of communities of practice this study adopts wenger et al.’s (2002) practitioneroriented domain, community, and practice framework, wherein cops are formed by “groups of people who share a concern, a set of problems, or a passion about a topic, and who deepen their knowledge and expertise in this area by interacting on an ongoing basis” (p. 4). even if an organization’s members do not always work together, during their time together, they discuss and share issues, situations, experiences, time, information, and advice. this well-spent time helps them do their jobs better, solve problems, induct newcomers, and use technology (wenger et al., 2002). as social beings, we adhere to more than one community, and experience gained in one cop can be used and applied in a new cop (wenger et al., 2002). multi-community membership provides members the opportunity to deal with familiar problems, the “flexibility to face new challenges, and the support to develop creative solutions and knowledge” (romero & vasilopoulos, 2020, p. 4). not all communities are cops, though—that is, not all groups provide member recognition nor interaction and participation learning opportunities. in this study’s context, social participation in cops can enable novice teachers to interact with other community members, do things together, think and reflect, develop belonging, and make sense of the teaching world (wenger, 1998). cops have the following characteristics: • domain: common grounds, purposes, goals, and a “shared domain of interest” and “competence” (wenger-trayner & wenger-trayner, 2015, p. 2) encourage member accountability, communitydevelopment commitment, and collective-goal valuation. 17profile: issues teach. prof. dev., vol. 23 no. 1, jan-jun, 2021. issn 1657-0790 (printed) 2256-5760 (online). bogotá, colombia. pages 13-26 deconstructing novice teachers’ actions and reactions to nonharmonic chilean school communities... • community: community members “engage in joint activities and discussions, help each other, and share information” (wenger-trayner & wenger-trayner, 2015, p. 2); a solid community fosters interaction, respect, trust, idea sharing, weakness acknowledgement, listening, acting, member involvement, and becoming. • practice: community practice is “a set of socially defined ways of doing things in a specific domain: a set of common approaches and shared standards that create a basis for action, communication, problem solving, performance, and accountability” (wenger et al., 2002, p. 38). though cops offer interaction and learning opportunities, communities are not always harmonious or peaceful as member diversity and interaction complexity can generate disharmony and animosity (wenger, 1998). wenger et al. (2002) warn that communities have “downsides” and that we should not “romanticise communities of practice or expect them to solve all problems without creating any” (p. 139). cops can create barriers for member learning, innovation, and participation and create community-growth-and-development obstacles. wenger et al. stress these downfalls in confronting future challenges. in this way and through the lenses of domain, community, and practice, i examine nonharmonic cops as the driving force used by new teachers to navigate first years’ chilean school teaching. method in addressing the research questions, i use a mixedmethods approach: collection and analysis of qualitative data gathered from an open-ended online survey, semistructured interviews, and observation. these data were integrated into a single study to tell a story (creswell, 2014; creswell & plano clark, 2011; creswell et al., 2006). all these data sources more completely demonstrate the participation experiences of novice teachers of english in diverse school communities in chile. that said, and as creswell and plano clark (2011) parallel, qualitative data capture more in-depth stories of novice teachers. recruitment the study started once ethics approval was granted by the ethics committee from the ethics board at my university. recruitment began with help from the english opens doors program (eodp) in the chilean ministry of education. information about the study and my contact information were sent to novice teachers and to universities offering english-teacher-education programs. the eodp or the universities did not receive study-participant information, were not involved in the study, had no participant record, and had no study-data access. respondents signed consent forms and were not asked to identify themselves; their confidentiality was secured by assigned codes: nte/pu = novice publicschool teacher, nte/sp = novice semiprivate-school teacher, nte/pr = novice private-school teacher. participants the demographic data from the online survey (n = 138) revealed 85% of the participants were women and 15% were men; with ages from 22 to 33; and worked in northern, central, and southern chile. regarding place of work, 65% of the participants worked in public schools, 20% worked in semiprivate institutions, and 15% worked in the private sector; they had one to five years’ teaching experience; worked at all levels from pk to grade 12; and typically had a b2 english level.1 almost all novice teachers in the public and semiprivate schools declared they had side jobs after school or during the 1 a b2 level indicates a person can understand main ideas of complex texts on concrete and abstract topics, including technical discussions in their field; interact with fluency and spontaneity that enables regular interaction with native speakers, free of strain for either party; produce clear, detailed text on wide-ranging subjects; and explain a topical viewpoint and provide advantages and independent disadvantages of perspectives (council of europe, 2001, p. 24). universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras18 romero week to make ends meet (e.g., elt in universities and language institutes, worked at more than one school, or taught private lessons to adults or children). this confirms what chilean scholars have stated about the working conditions of new teachers across different types of schools (avalos & aylwin, 2007; mizala & torche, 2012; valencia & tant, 2011). eleven participants took part in the interview and observation process described below. nine of the eleven interviewees were women and two were men; all were from 23 to 27 years old; four taught in private schools, four in semiprivate schools, and three worked in santiago’s public sector; all had 1 to 4 years’ teaching experience; and all worked at all levels, grades 1 to 12. these novice teachers declared they had c2, c1,2 and b2 levels. data collection this paper reports on a small subsection of a larger study that used a mixed-methods approach. in the larger study, data were collected in three ways: (a) an online survey developed with feedback from teacher trainers in chile. close-ended questions gathered demographic data about the participants (e.g., age, gender, years of teaching experience, etc.) and aimed at developing their profile. the open-ended section collected data about the respondents’ experiences in diverse school communities (e.g., community participation, membership, school support, joint practice, etc.). the survey was designed and distributed with fluid surveys and took no longer than 30 minutes to complete. one hundred and thirtyeight novice teachers responded to the survey. english 2 a c2 level indicates a person can easily understand nearly everything heard or read; summarize information from spoken and written sources; reconstruct arguments and accounts coherently; express themselves spontaneously, fluently, and precisely; and differentiate finer points of proficient meaning, even in complex situations. a c1 level indicates a person can understand a wide range of demanding, long texts; recognize implicit meaning; express themselves fluently and spontaneously with little obvious searching for expressions; use language flexibly and effectively for social, academic, and professional purposes; produce clear, well-structured, detailed text on complex subjects; show controlled use of organizational patterns, connectors, and cohesive devices. (council of europe, 2001, p. 24) and spanish versions were sent to allow for responses in preferred languages (van nes et al., 2010). (b) eleven novice teachers contacted me again to participate in semistructured interviews which were scheduled in advance with participants at times and places of their convenience. interviews took approximately one hour, were audio recorded, and the english or spanish option was given (van nes et al., 2010). questions resembled the survey’s open-section questions and aimed at gathering in-depth stories from participants. (c) to understand how novice teachers navigate varying community types, i conducted nonparticipant observations (lashley, 2018) of the interviewed study participants in their englishdepartments staff meetings. letters were sent to the heads of the english teaching departments explaining the purpose of the study and indicating that attention would be paid to the participation of the interviewees in their cops. all the department heads agreed to my presence at the meetings via email or phone communication. in the process, i did not interfere but rather took detailed notes about the participation of novice teachers. all meetings took place in schools during the school day at varying times, lasted approximately one and a half to two hours, and were carried out at the english teams’ convenience. in this paper, i report on the novice teachers who expressed working in challenging cops. to illustrate the findings, i largely use participants’ quotes from the interviews, some excerpts from the open-ended part of the survey, and one extract from one observation. data analysis inspired by wenger et al.’s (2002) cop framework, i sought to identify how novice teachers navigate their participation in nonharmonic cops and how they cope with challenges in such english teaching communities. to address the research questions that guide this study, i started the “process of making sense out of data” (merriam, 2009, p. 193) following merriam’s guide for qualitative data analysis. the data analysis process 19profile: issues teach. prof. dev., vol. 23 no. 1, jan-jun, 2021. issn 1657-0790 (printed) 2256-5760 (online). bogotá, colombia. pages 13-26 deconstructing novice teachers’ actions and reactions to nonharmonic chilean school communities... involved seven steps: (a) transcription of the qualitative data collected from the open-ended questions in the online survey, the interviews, and the observations; (b) reading through the transcripts and making tentative notes of how the elements of a cop’s domain, community, and practice manifest; (c) identification of patterns and tentative themes; (d) development of initial categories that illustrated the novice teachers’ participation experiences while working in chilean school cops; (e) as the participants described more complex multiple experiences in their diverse cops, new categories emerged linked to the three primary components of a cop; (f ) development of a coding protocol in order to re-code the data and to identify the most relevant patterns related to the participation of novice teachers in nonharmonic cops; (g) finally, use of the software nvivo 11 to cross-analyze the data. findings that private schools offer better job opportunities and working conditions to new teachers is a longstanding norm belief, yet my deconstruction of nonharmonic cops and novice-teacher participation revealed no difference between private, semiprivate, and public schools. regardless of the type of school where the participating novice teachers worked, they experienced var ying degrees of challenges that shaped their participation. this reveals that nonharmonic teaching communities were present in all types of schools no matter their financial resources. furthermore, nonharmonic contexts impelled new teachers to find survival and participation strategies. teachers working in these contexts developed their own goals, formed new cops, or joined cops already established inside or outside their schools. for ease of reading and to be consistent with my theoretical framework, i offer my claims by way of wenger’s three cop characteristics (domain, community, practice) and provide excerpts from transcripts obtained from different qualitative-data sources. unshared domains regardless of school socioeconomic background, participants characterized nonharmonic elt communities as lacking clear shared domains and communal goals (e.g., domains were undiscussed or undetermined). new teachers were compelled to establish individual goals or personal domains (i.e., independently determined goals as members of teaching communities), which i subcategorized as instrumental or motivational goals. a novice teacher reflects this: “i don’t know if the team shares this goal because we never talk about it. my own goal is to be able to guide the students, to be a good example, and not to teach them bad things” (nte/sp). on the one hand, novice teachers saw english as an instrument for students’ futures and stressed the importance of teaching students english for the sake of better job prospects and salaries. one teacher asserted, “i want to make students understand that english can help them later to go to university and get a [wellpaying] job” (nte/pr). on the other hand, participants’ motivational goals focused on helping learners to like or enjoy english, as illustrated by the following comment: i wish my students liked english. i don’t mind if they don’t learn much with me, but i’m happy if they love learning it. learning english is necessary. it’s fundamental because it opens a new world, new job opportunities. my goals are to motivate them to love the language, make them realize that they can learn if they want to and see that a whole world opens when you know another language . . . i have no clue if the team [teachers in the english department] shares this goal. what they do or want is unknown to me. (nte/pu) these statements indicate that undiscussed or unestablished teaching-community joint domains compelled novice teachers to develop their own—often revolving around student communities, not teaching communities. this evidences novice teachers were active, identifying other communities and resolving to direct their teaching despite primary communities’ lack of direction. universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras20 romero (mis)community life perceiving more downsides in nonharmonic public, semiprivate, and private communities, participants indicated poor integration and a “lack of support” from cop members. some new teachers reported feeling unwelcome and “isolated,” receiving “mistreatment,” or perceiving “envy” from experienced english cop members. one young teacher commented, “it’s been hard to feel integrated because experienced teachers do not welcome people without experience” (nte/sp). a novice teacher from a public school shared a similar sentiment: during my teaching practice and at work, i have always found bitter and impolite colleagues. one notices that in very few places people are willing to welcome you. as a new teacher, one must learn that human relations are complicated. (nte/pu) moreover, in such contexts, other members provided superficial or little support to new-teacher integration in elt cops, as illustrated by the following: when [experienced teachers] see that a new teacher already has a master’s in second language, they feel threatened. the support or help they have given me is good but superficial. teachers avoid talking about pedagogical issues or how to teach english. i work alone because no one shares their teaching experiences or what is good for a certain group of students. this community is individualist and hedonists [sic] to the point that i believe my colleagues are linguistic divas who believe they possess a higher level of knowledge and language than others. i don’t feel integrated in this community. (nte/pr) however, this teacher dealt with the challenge by forming a new cop with other novice teachers: “luckily, there are other new teachers in the science and math department. we have lunch together, give each other tips on classroom management, talk about students or simply laugh” (nte/pr). these and other novice teachers who experienced challenges in their immediate elt cops sought external communities to survive and thrive. external cops were formed by teachers from other disciplines within the school. this extract showcases this issue: i don’t feel integrated in my english community because they’re just a group of people. i feel better with the other teachers in the school. i get on well with 99% of them. my colleagues validate me as a teacher, they respect me. i can tell because they notice me, they observe me, they ask me things, and show interest in what i do. when i’m at my table hiding, working on my things, they approach me and ask: what are you doing? why are you doing this? (nte/pu) internal cops conflict also emerged from the data: though members worked on joint tasks, novice teachers’ suggestions and ideas were not considered by experienced teachers more concerned with internal problems than collaboration. a novice private-school teacher asserted, as a team we talk. we agree on things as teachers. for example, we choose the material, agree on the dates for evaluations, but i feel like switzerland, in the middle. when i ask or propose ideas, they don’t listen to me because they are more worried about their coexistence problems in the team . . . the team is divided. (nte/pr) i confirmed this conflict when i observed a staff meeting this novice teacher participated in, wherein two experienced teachers and the novice teacher were choosing readers (books) for their grades: teacher 1: [novice teacher], don’t forget it’s complicated if we mix the press publishers. teacher 2: [novice teacher] and this one? peter pan… for what class would it be? novice teacher: i was thinking of grades 7 and 8. teacher 1: [novice teacher], tell her that these are for ket (key english test) level. i don’t think it should be 7 and 8. it’s more for ket. 21profile: issues teach. prof. dev., vol. 23 no. 1, jan-jun, 2021. issn 1657-0790 (printed) 2256-5760 (online). bogotá, colombia. pages 13-26 deconstructing novice teachers’ actions and reactions to nonharmonic chilean school communities... novice teacher (looking at teacher 2): these are for ket. teacher 2: i loved these. novice teacher: they are very good. teacher 2: and i like them a lot for the culture thing. tell him that he has to read them this time. novice teacher: hmmm (looking at teacher 1). ok, it would be good if you read the books. data analysis indicated this young teacher possibly felt his community’s conflict constrained his participation. instead of being able to share ideas about teaching or teaching materials or benefiting from more experienced colleagues, he became a mere conflict mediator. nevertheless, he joined an external cop formed by teachers from other disciplines he could contribute to: to avoid all this conflict, i spend more time with the other teachers. they know who i am, my pros and cons, my weaknesses and strengths. i feel valued and liked. they consider my opinion and abilities. i provide technology support. we talk. they tell me their problems. yes, we help each other. (nte/pr) findings possibly indicated that novice teachers joined external communities, formed by experienced or novice teachers from other departments, when cops did not satisfy their own needs. hindered practice some school communities did not offer novice teachers many joint-practice opportunities. a main factor hindering practice was the competitive relationship of some private-sector teachers: my colleagues here are, let’s say, “special.” very competitive, always comparing themselves to others, and if you do something in the classroom that makes you feel proud, you share it, but they question everything, or they run to tell the head of department. they are all the time paying attention to what you do or don’t do, and if they have a problem, they don’t talk to you directly . . . they go straight to our boss. so, i end up doing things on my own, quietly and very low key. (nte/pr) this novice teacher cocreated a cop to compensate for this situation: with my university classmates we always talk about our lives at school. some have a good time while others, like me, don’t. so, we formed a whatsapp group where we share ideas, material, talk about our days, what to do with students, or how to teach things. it has helped me because i don’t feel lonely. (nte/pr) survey and interview data revealed joint practice was also restrained by school policies or by challenges imposed by the broader community (i.e., stakeholders running public and semiprivate schools). authorities did not give experienced and new english teachers enough time or resources to interact, meet, work together, and share ideas. for example, this novice teacher commented, i have realized that a lot has to do with the principals and coordinators in the institution—their leadership. here, we don’t have time to do anything together. we sometimes talk about our lesson plans or student discipline, but we don’t do any activities together, plan, or design evaluations because of lack of time. (nte/pu) another example of hindered joint practice came from a young teacher in a semiprivate school: in this school, we are paid only one hour every two weeks to meet and to plan lessons. the english team is known for having lots of face-to-face teaching hours, so it’s very hard for us to see each other at the same time and work together. only during our break time, we manage to do something. i normally use my break to prepare material, my powerpoints, pick up the photocopies, or fill in the class book. (nte/sp) again, publicand semiprivate-school novice teachers did not wait idly for elt community members to provide joint sharing and learning opportunities— universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras22 romero instead, they joined macro communities (e.g., redes de docentes de inglés or english teachers’ networks from the chilean ministry of education) to develop joint practice. one public-sector novice teacher said, “i’ve done more things with the ‘red de inglés than with my team. at the red we talk and share experiences; we receive training, get feedback, etc.” (nte/pu). novice teachers of english experienced challenges in public, semiprivate, and public-school contexts. my chilean school cops deconstruction revealed that challenges in nonharmonic communities were manifested in a lack of community-established domains and shared goals and sometimes turbulent relationships among members. working conditions directly and negatively impacted coexistence of cops with novice-teacher practice. yet despite cop challenges, novice teachers found ways to thrive: cocreating new cops or joining multiple communities to compensate for their elt cops’ lack of domains, community support, and joint practices. in sum, despite schools’ socioeconomic background and resources, novice teachers of english experienced challenges independent of the type of school they worked in. despite each school’s hurdles, novice teachers joined different kinds of communities to deal with their struggles. discussion that chilean private schools provide better working conditions because they have the economic resources to attract the best-qualified novice teachers, pay higher salaries, and offer better job prospects and resources than semiprivate and public-sector schools is a general belief (avalos & aylwin, 2007; barahona, 2016; cornejo, 2009). this study found that novice teachers from all school types (i.e., nonharmonic public, semiprivate, and private communities) experienced hurdles and turbulence, were not fully integrated, were given an unwelcoming attitude, and experienced conflict among department members. this implies that it is people rather than the school context that influences the quality of life in their communities. collegial relationships impact first years’ teaching (farrell, 2016). novice teachers agonize in educational contexts where they are neglected, undervalued, excluded, or abandoned by colleagues (farrell, 2006, 2008). this study found that novice teachers in all three school types reported isolation from more experienced, unwelcoming, and competitive colleagues or when there was conflict among cop members. in these contexts, other members were disinterested in discussing relevant teaching issues or providing minimum support of novice-teacher integration into the cops. findings also revealed that these nonharmonic contexts shaped shared domains and practice (wenger et al., 2002). participants described their teaching cops as having few common goals and simplistic or few joint practices. moreover, the broader publicand semiprivateschool community and school working conditions impacted communal practices (cornejo, 2009), implying stakeholder-management-policy obstacles which rendered the elt-community joint practices unfunctional (i.e., school demands constrained novice teachers and colleagues from doing things together); hence, the school at large plays an important role in cop functioning. also significant, despite the abovementioned challenges, novice teachers coped with complications (farrell, 2006) by forming new cops or joining alreadyestablished communities. findings show that when nonharmonic elt communities lacked shared domains (wenger et al., 2002), novice teachers developed their own learner-community-oriented goals. similarly, when their internal communities (i.e., department heads or experienced teachers of english) failed to provide needed support or opportunities for doing things together, novice teachers sought assistance in the school’s other communities (e.g., they asked and received help from teachers in other disciplines), who accepted and encouraged the novice teachers, gave feedback, asked questions, were respectful, showed interest, and provided a sense of inclusion and belonging. 23profile: issues teach. prof. dev., vol. 23 no. 1, jan-jun, 2021. issn 1657-0790 (printed) 2256-5760 (online). bogotá, colombia. pages 13-26 deconstructing novice teachers’ actions and reactions to nonharmonic chilean school communities... other novice teachers joined macro communities (i.e., communities external to their school context; e.g., regional elt networks organized by the chilean ministry of education, like “red de inglés” or whatsapp cops, cocreated with novice teachers’ former university classmates). in these communities, novice teachers could share practice (wenger et al., 2002), as reflected by the activities they described (e.g., asking questions, sharing ideas and materials, receiving feedback, and providing teaching/teacher support). i draw on wenger et al.’s (2002) theory of cops to argue novice teachers find better ways to thrive when they belong to at least one community whose members and interactions help them shape coping strategies and thrive in education. concluding remarks, limitations and implications this paper deconstructed downsides of elt school cops to better elucidate novice teachers’ first-years’ experience in the multi-complex chilean-school context. it addressed novice-teacher and elt-community concerns. nonharmonic communities delimit new teachers yet impel them to navigate schools normally stratified by socioeconomic resources. regardless of available external resources, novice teachers were able to find teacher-development strategies, including integration into diverse, supportive communities. community support (or lack thereof ) is critical at both cop and macro levels. community members cannot develop if the broader community and stakeholders do not provide experienced and novice teachers’ co-participation opportunities and time to share experiences and practice. government role is key and directly impacts young teachers. in this paper, i introduced the concept of nonharmonic english teaching cops. this adds to wenger et al.’s (2002) downsides within cops in the world of corporations. from the context of this study, young teachers perceive cops as nonharmonic when there is a lack of actively engaged core members in the social functioning of the communities. as such, new teachers join ongoing cops where there is tension among experienced members or enmity toward novice teachers; lack of joint practices and communally established domains; and nonfluid opportunities to participate and learn from others. identifying how such cops operate is valuable for novice teachers. in this way, they can learn how to turn the challenges of the first years of teaching into possibilities. i acknowledge that the findings concerning the participation experiences of new teachers in cops are limited to what teachers express. the current study did not query experienced teachers as participating members of cops. a more comprehensive view of the participation experiences of novice teachers should involve the views of experienced members. the study may have benefitted from more than one perspective. moreover, the findings and conclusions drawn from this study are context-bound and therefore, this may limit its generalizability. still, some characteristics of the chilean context and the impact of cops on novice teacher participation can be identified elsewhere. the narratives of novice teachers point to future directions for further research: what happens with experienced teachers in this process? how do they engage as members of cops with young teachers? another important avenue of research is to consider how chilean schools receive and welcome novice teachers, how they support them and prepare them in their journey of becoming an experienced teacher. indeed, there is a need to study the other side of the coin: how do novice teachers experience their participation in elt communities that offer support and opportunities to grow? future investigation may attempt to map the influences of harmonic and nonharmonic cops in the new teachers’ language teaching classroom practices. ultimately, this paper could benefit authorities, stakeholders, and experienced teachers to think back and reflect on how they treat and welcome new teachers, how they can strengthen english-teaching cops, and how to help them stay in the profession. universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras24 romero references avalos, b. 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(1998). communities of practice: learning, meaning and identity. cambridge university press. https://doi.org/10.1017/cbo9780511803932 wenger, e., mcdermott, r., & snyder, w. (2002). cultivating communities of practice. harvard business school press. wenger-trayner, e., & wenger-trayner, b. (2015). communities of practice: a brief introduction. retrieved march 2019 from https://bit.ly/3mctzzk van nes, f., abma, t., johnson, h., & deeg, d. (2010). language differences in qualitative research: is meaning lost in translation? european journal of ageing, 7(4), 313–316. https://doi.org/10.1007/s10433-010-0168-y varah, l. j., theune, w. s., & parker, l. (1986). beginning teachers: sink or swim? journal of teacher education, 37(1), 30–34. https://doi.org/10.1177/002248718603700107 veenman, s. (1984). perceived problems of beginning teachers. review of educational research, 54(2), 143–178. https://doi.org/10.3102/00346543054002143 about the author gloria romero has a phd in second language education from the university of ottawa, canada. she is an assistant professor in the faculty of humanities, universidad de santiago de chile. her research interests are novice teachers in school communities, volunteer english teaching, professional development, elt in chile, and social justice. https://doi.org/10.1017/cbo9780511803932 https://bit.ly/3mctzzk https://doi.org/10.1007/s10433-010-0168-y https://doi.org/10.1177/002248718603700107 https://doi.org/10.3102/00346543054002143 a practice-based approach to foreign language teacher preparation: a cross-continental collaboration 181profile: issues teach. prof. dev., vol. 23 no. 1, jan-jun, 2021. issn 1657-0790 (printed) 2256-5760 (online). bogotá, colombia. pages 181-196 https://doi.org/10.15446/profile.v23n1.85326 a practice-based approach to foreign language teacher preparation: a cross-continental collaboration un enfoque basado en la práctica para la formación de profesores de lenguas extranjeras: una colaboración internacional malba barahona1 pontificia universidad católica de chile, santiago, chile kristin j. davin university of north carolina at charlotte, charlotte, usa the international trend towards a practice-based approach in teacher education has permeated foreign language teacher education and english language teaching. a practice-based approach is based on the understanding that teachers learn to teach a language by engaging in “actual” teaching rather than “talking” about teaching. we report on the implementation of a practice-based approach in two different contexts: an initial english teacher education program in chile and an initial foreign language teacher education program in the united states. we provide practical recommendations and areas of caution for future enactments. the findings demonstrate that incorporating a practice-based approach into the university classroom offers a useful affordance for examining and illuminating the complexities of foreign language teaching practice across contexts. keywords: foreign language teaching, high-leverage practices, practice-based approach la tendencia internacional hacia un enfoque basado en la práctica en la formación del profesorado también se refleja en la formación del profesorado de lenguas extranjeras. un enfoque basado en la práctica se basa en la comprensión de que los maestros aprenden a enseñar un idioma mediante la enseñanza “real” en lugar de “hablar” sobre la enseñanza. en este trabajo informamos sobre la implementación de un enfoque basado en la práctica en dos contextos diferentes: un programa inicial de formación de docentes de inglés en chile y un programa inicial de preparación de docentes de idiomas extranjeros en los estados unidos. asimismo, proporcionamos recomendaciones prácticas y áreas de precaución para futuras promulgaciones. los resultados demuestran que la incorporación de un enfoque basado en la práctica en el aula universitaria ofrece una capacidad útil para examinar e iluminar las complejidades de la práctica de la enseñanza de lenguas extranjeras en todos los contextos. palabras clave: enfoque basado en la práctica, enseñanza de lenguas extranjeras, prácticas generativas malba barahona  https://orcid.org/0000-0003-4587-5794 · email: maria.barahona@uc.cl kristin j. davin  https://orcid.org/0000-0003-3590-7086 · email: kdavin@uncc.edu the paper presents key results of a research project funded by a chilean grant by anid/conicyt (agencia nacional de investigación y desarrollo) fondecyt no. 11170340. how to cite this article (apa, 7th ed.): barahona, m., & davin, k. j. (2021). a practice-based approach to foreign language teacher preparation: a cross-continental collaboration. profile: issues in teachers’ professional development, 23(1), 181–196. https://doi.org/10.15446/ profile.v23n1.85326 this article was received on february 25, 2020 and accepted on august 19, 2020. this is an open access article distributed under the terms of the creative commons license attribution-noncommercial-noderivatives 4.0 international license. consultation is possible at https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/ https://doi.org/10.15446/profile.v23n1.85326 https://orcid.org/0000-0003-4587-5794 https://orcid.org/0000-0003-3590-7086 https://doi.org/10.15446/profile.v23n1.85326 https://doi.org/10.15446/profile.v23n1.85326 https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/ universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras182 barahona & davin introduction a seminal article published by ball and cohen in 1999 began a shift in conceptions of teacher education toward greater incorporation of practice in the university classroom. they argued that teacher preparation must shift from predominating models in which educators describe the techniques and methodology of teaching, to a model that more effectively incorporates the practice of those techniques and methods. a primary motivation of this argument was to counter the tendency of teacher educators to teach in the ways in which they themselves were taught (donato & davin, 2018; lortie, 1975). instead, they contended that “much of what [teachers] would have to learn must be learned in and from practice rather than in preparing to practice” (ball & cohen, 1999, p. 10). since this call, a developing line of research has focused on identifying a set of high leverage teaching practices (hltps) required by teachers, as well as the formulation of a practice-based learning cycle through which student teachers can rehearse such practices. in this article, we report a collaborative self-study (troyan & peercy, 2018) that examined our own experiences and challenges in implementing a practice-based approach in our respective foreign language teacher preparation programs. when we first met in 2018, we each had begun to actively incorporate practice-based approaches as teacher educators. we soon realized that—despite the large physical distance between us (with malba in chile and kristin in the united states) and the many contextual differences—we shared many experiences and challenges in the implementation of this approach. in this article, we present the stages of the learning cycle that transcended localized contexts to support teacher educators considering the implementation of a practice-based approach in foreign language teacher education. through analysis of our own conversations and email exchanges, we discuss related recommendations for teacher education practice and areas of caution for each of the four major phases in the practice-based learning cycle. we draw on examples from both contexts to illustrate these recommendations and cautions and analyze data from one focus student as she moved through the four phases to illustrate how candidates might learn through this process. literature review hltps are teaching practices in which, “the proficient enactment by a teacher is likely to lead to comparatively large advances in student learning” (hlas & hlas, 2012, p. s78). to be considered an hltp, “a practice must improve the achievement of all students, occur frequently in instruction, and be learnable by novice teachers” (davin & troyan, 2015, p. 125). within a practice-based approach, instruction focuses on a limited number of hltps which are made accessible to preservice teachers, are revisited periodically, and can be practiced (ball et al., 2009). researchers within the field of foreign and second language education have begun the work of identifying their own set of hltps. troyan et al. (2013) began this work, discussing their implementation of a practicebased approach around three hltps: (1) using the target language comprehensively during instruction, (2) questioning for building and assessing student understanding, and (3) teaching grammar inductively in meaningful contexts and co-constructing understandings. glisan and donato (2017, p. 28) revised and built upon those practices, identifying six practices: • facilitating target language comprehensibility • building a classroom discourse community • guiding learners to interpret and discuss authentic texts • focusing on form in a dialogic context through pace (presentation, attention, co-construction, extension) • focusing on cultural products, practices, and perspectives in a dialogic context • providing oral corrective feedback to improve learner performance 183profile: issues teach. prof. dev., vol. 23 no. 1, jan-jun, 2021. issn 1657-0790 (printed) 2256-5760 (online). bogotá, colombia. pages 181-196 a practice-based approach to foreign language teacher preparation: a cross-continental collaboration many teacher-preparation programs internationally —including the two programs at the center of this research—have adopted their resulting orientation. to facilitate student teachers’ development of these hltps, a practice-based approach is often characterized by a four-phase cycle. the first phase is demonstration and deconstruction, in which the teacher educator shows student teachers a representation of the practice in context, such as a lesson video or transcript of a class. in this phase, student teachers and the teacher educator discuss how the components of the hltp are portrayed in the representation. for example, they might discuss instances in the video in which the teacher used visuals and gestures to support students’ understanding of the target language, which represents a key component of facilitating target language comprehensibility. the second phase is centered on planning. in this phase, student teachers typically plan a learning segment that highlights the hltp. ideally, the teacher educator provides student teachers with an instructional activity in which to situate the practice. for example, glisan and donato (2017) recommend that student teachers practice facilitating target language comprehensibility within the context of introducing six new thematicallyrelated vocabulary words within a meaningful context, such as introducing a story or text. after planning a lesson segment, student teachers then come together for the third phase, rehearsal and coaching. in this phase, student teachers rehearse a portion of their lesson segment, either in small groups or as a whole class if time allows, with the teacher educator acting as a guiding coach. coaching includes discursive moves such as giving directive feedback, highlighting moves made by the student teacher, inviting discussion, and playing the role of the student (teachingworks, 2018). after phase three, student teachers revise their plan and progress to the fourth phase, implementation and reflection. in this phase, student teachers video-record the enactment of their lesson segment in a more authentic context, typically a classroom field site. to prompt reflection, student teachers may, for instance, watch the video and deconstruct their own practice to identify ways in which they demonstrated (or should have demonstrated) the various components of the hltp. method context and participants although we both followed this four-phase practicebased learning cycle, we each worked in distinct contexts: malba in an initial english language teacher education program in chile and kristin in an initial foreign language teacher education program in the united states. in the chilean context, the student teachers at the center of this research (n = 20) were undertaking their second teaching practice experience—in tandem with a methods course—and were in the seventh semester of their learning program. these student teachers were engaged in a nine-semester undergraduate program, with curriculum organized into theoretical courses (in the fields of english, applied linguistics, and education), four didactics courses, and three schoolbased teaching practice experiences. at schools, they undertook activities such as monitoring students’ work, preparing learning materials, and teaching six classroom lessons. they worked in pairs throughout the semester, a structure which provided a consistent framework for the development of their work in both the methods course and practicum. in the u.s. context, student teachers (n = 5) in this research were graduate students seeking their initial teacher licensure in a 16-credit graduate certificate program. given the escalating demand for teachers in the united states, student teachers were practicing full-time teachers, despite being unlicensed. however, it was a requirement of their employment that they were concurrently enrolled in the graduate certificate program to earn that license. the practice-based learning cycle described in this article took place during their second of three semesters, when student teachers were universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras184 barahona & davin enrolled in a three-credit foreign language methods course, a two-credit foreign language assessment course, and a one-credit lab. all courses were online, with the exception of the lab which was a hybrid format that included three three-hour face-to-face meetings during the semester. student teachers engaged in the activities described in this article in the lab. all four phases of the practice-based learning cycle were embedded in online modules, with the exception of phase iii: rehearsal and coaching, which took place in the face-to-face meetings. our two contexts shared important similarities and critical differences. what was similar across the contexts was the implementation of the four-phased practicebased cycle and a focus on three of the hltps described by glisan and donato (2017). coincidentally, we had chosen two of the same hltps, facilitating target language comprehensibility and designing and conducting oral interpersonal communication tasks. critical contextual differences included the sociocultural context (chile vs. the united states), target language employed (english vs. spanish and chinese), student level (preservice undergraduate students vs. in-service graduate students), and delivery method (face-to-face vs. a hybrid format). data collection and analysis data were drawn from pedagogical tools (i.e., assignments, rubrics, teaching materials), student teachers’ reflections and scripts, videos of rehearsal and implementation (only in the u.s. context), and our own oral and written communication. because we were each using glisan and donato (2017) as a text, our approaches were similar and we had many of the same data sources (see table 1). beyond student teacher data, our email communications and meeting notes served as data sources. data analysis occurred in two phases. for the first phase, we examined data first individually, and developed themes related to recommendations and challenges of the practice-based approach. we then met for a week for collaborative analysis and to compare themes. our comparative analysis suggested potential productive actions and specific cautions that transcended each context, which we developed further with illustrative data from both settings. thus, we categorized the findings into recommendations and cautions. for the second phase, we chose one focus student for whom we could track progress through the four-phased cycle. we selected lucia (a pseudonym) from the u.s. context because we had video recordings of her rehearsal and implementation and because she was studying to be a spanish teacher, which eliminated the need for translation. lucia was an elementary school spanish teacher in her first year of teaching. we analyzed the four data sources displayed in table 1 for lucia to track her learning through the practicebased cycle. table 1. data sources from each phase of practice-based cycle phase data source 1. demonstration and deconstruction reflection on experiences with the hltp; graphic organizer completed by student teachers to deconstruct practice based on model of practice 2. planning lesson script created by student teachers for rehearsal 3. rehearsal and coaching field notes; video recordings (u.s. context) 4. implementation and reflection graphic organizer completed by student teachers to deconstruct practice based on their own implementation; reflection on implementation; video recordings (u.s. context) 185profile: issues teach. prof. dev., vol. 23 no. 1, jan-jun, 2021. issn 1657-0790 (printed) 2256-5760 (online). bogotá, colombia. pages 181-196 a practice-based approach to foreign language teacher preparation: a cross-continental collaboration findings phase i: demonstration and deconstruction recommendation 1. the first phase of the practicebased learning cycle consists of demonstrating and deconstructing the hltp into instructional moves (lampert et al., 2013). in this phase, after student teachers have read about the theoretical underpinnings and research base of the practice, the teacher educator guides students to deconstruct their practice and provide a representation of how the practice is enacted (ghousseini & sleep, 2011). when using video representations, it is critical that the teacher educator selects a video that clearly demonstrates the hltp, so that the teaching moves are easily recognizable. for example, when the first hltp (facilitating target language comprehensibility) was introduced in the chilean program, student teachers viewed a 15-minute segment in which a former student teacher was starting a lesson on daily routine. the teacher taught in the target language and enacted most of the teaching moves suggested by glisan and donato (2017) for that practice, including using gestures, visuals, comprehension-checking questions and providing students with language support so that they could interact using the target language. the lesson demonstrated in the video was familiar for student teachers because it was about a topic which was mandatory in the chilean national curriculum. the teacher educator facilitated an open discussion, using a checklist adapted from a pedagogical tool designed by glisan and donato, to allow student teachers to make sense of this hltp and exchange their views on affordances and constraints of implementing this practice in their own school contexts. recommendation 2. an alternative to video representations of an hltp is modelling, in which the teacher educator or other experienced teacher enacts a lesson as if they were in the field site, and as if student teachers were the intended students. modelling should be done in a highly structured way so that student teachers are instructed to use tools (e.g., checklists, rubrics, questions) to help them identify and understand the teaching moves enacted in the modelled practice. for example, in the case of the second hltp used in the chilean context, focus on form, the teacher educator prepared a 15-minute lesson following the pace model (donato & adair-hauck, 2016) about giving recommendations using the subjunctive form. instead of talking about the hltp, the teacher educator taught this lesson as if this were an english class for intermediate students. following the demonstration, student teachers identified examples of the various components of focus on form using a checklist (adapted from glisan & donato, 2017). they then discussed the affordances and constraints of the implementation of this practice in the student teachers’ own school contexts. a caution. the demonstration and deconstruction phase required a significant amount of time to analyze the practice and decompose it into teaching moves. however, this does not mean that theory should be abandoned or disregarded in this phase. on the contrary, student teachers should reflect on the hltp using sound theoretical support. in this sense, beliefs about target language use and teaching and learning a foreign language in class should be explicitly considered during class discussions. student teachers should also be encouraged to reflect on their own experiences as language learners to connect these experiences with their beliefs and research (donato & davin, 2018). for example, in both contexts, student teachers were asked to respond to a range of questions about their own learning experiences, such as: “consider a positive experience of foreign language learning. what did the teacher do? what did students do? what did the teacher do to encourage students to use the target language?” subsequently, student teachers had to critically examine their reflections and the hltp in light of its theoretical assumptions. in this sense, this first phase acted to mediate student teachers’ understanding of theory through the deconstruction of practice (peercy & troyan, 2017). universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras186 barahona & davin the recommendations of using different representations of practice, such as videos, modelling, or analysis of scripts as part of the demonstration and deconstruction phase should be followed with caution and should be situated in the context of teaching. although we both followed this learning cycle, each of us adapted tools and selected representations of practice according to our respective contexts including teachers’ characteristics and contexts for teaching (danielson et al., 2018). lucia’s experience in phase i, lucia reflected on her past experiences with facilitating target language comprehensibility and completed a graphic organizer deconstructing a teacher’s use of this practice. for the reflection, when asked about her experiences with this practice, she explained that english was her second language and that she felt that she “learned more when the teacher spoke only in the target language.” she wrote: in my first class in college (completely in english) when i was forced to understand the main ideas and the lesson’s purpose, that made me learn more. i can describe the experience as “bold” but i agree 100% with chapter 1. we learn more when we focus on the comprehension and the teacher talks 100% in the target language. however, when asked about her current teaching practices, she wrote that she needed “to improve in this aspect,” explaining: i use the target language 50%, sometimes less than that because i teach little kids and when they don’t understand i lose their attention. i think i should use more visual aids and the media (cartoons, short clips, songs) in the target language in order to get their attention for a longer period of time and maximize our time using the target language. for her graphic organizer, which is not included here due to space limitations, lucia accurately identified the subcomponents of the practice from the video demonstration. phase ii: planning recommendation 1. the second phase of the practice-based learning cycle is the planning phase in which student teachers create a plan for the lesson segment that they will rehearse in phase iii. in this phase, teacher educators should scaffold student teachers’ planning by specifying the instructional activity in which to situate the practice. an instructional activity provides the context in which student teachers should demonstrate the hltp (lampert & graziani, 2009). in our teacher education contexts, this meant specifying the type of lesson in which the practice should be embedded. for example, when preparing to practice facilitating target language comprehensibility, we asked student teachers to teach six new vocabulary words bound by a theme, within a meaningful and cultural context (glisan & donato, 2017, pp. 33–34). one student teacher, who was teaching rooms of the house, created a story about a person travelling to china and who was attempting to identify a desirable rental home. defining the instructional activity for student teachers removed the burden from student teachers of selecting a context (troyan et al., 2013). for instance, in the chilean context, as another way to provide opportunities for practice, student teachers were encouraged to script and rehearse instructions for an interpersonal communicative task. these instructions needed to integrate a wide range of instructional moves that facilitated target language comprehensibility. recommendation 2. a second recommendation related to phase ii: planning concerns the level of detail of the lesson plan that teacher educators should require. the plan that a student teacher submits for a practicebased course should be designed differently than the plan submitted for a more traditional methods course. for example, a more traditional lesson plan might include multiple portions of the lesson (i.e., focus & review, teacher input, guided practice) and provide a description of what will occur in each segment. when planning for lesson rehearsal, following the recommendations of 187profile: issues teach. prof. dev., vol. 23 no. 1, jan-jun, 2021. issn 1657-0790 (printed) 2256-5760 (online). bogotá, colombia. pages 181-196 a practice-based approach to foreign language teacher preparation: a cross-continental collaboration glisan and donato (2017), we determined that student teachers should carefully script a 10 to 15-minute segment of the lesson that they intended to rehearse. such scripting included both what the teacher intended to say, as well as what he or she expected the students might say. while certainly not expected to read or stay faithful to the script, thinking through the lesson segment in this way encouraged student teachers to more carefully consider discourse possibilities. moreover, it allowed them to more systematically analyze their scripts for the components of the hltp before submission. a caution. a critical component of phase ii is that it requires student teachers to submit their lesson scripts in advance, in order to allow time for the teacher educator to provide feedback and for the student teachers to revise. for example, in one case when engaged with the hltp of designing and conducting oral interpersonal tasks, a student teacher submitted a plan for her rehearsal that suggested she had not grasped the concept of interpersonal communication. her lesson did not require students to listen to each other, a key component of interpersonal communication (i.e., two-way spontaneous communication in the target language). had the teacher educator not reviewed the lesson script prior to the rehearsal, this student teacher’s rehearsal would have been fruitless for both her and her classmates. such advanced planning can be difficult because it requires student teachers to plan a lesson that will not be taught to their students for approximately two weeks. this is to permit sufficient time for the teacher educator to provide productive feedback, for the student teacher to make any necessary revisions, and for them to subsequently rehearse and revise the plan. the length of time between the rehearsal and the enactment in the k–12 setting influences not only the focus of the rehearsal (kazemi et al., 2016), but also impacts on how much of the coaching the student teacher remembers from the rehearsal. however, the time required for the process of feedback and revision is too critical to be compromised. lucia’s script after reflecting on her own experiences and deconstructing a model of the practice, lucia had a week to plan and script her own lesson. her lesson focused on teaching students sandwich vocabulary and how to order in a restaurant and was part of a larger unit on food. in addition to scripting what they planned to say as well as what they expected students might say, student teachers were also asked to include teacher actions in brackets. excerpt 1 displays the initial portion of the teacher input section of lucia’s lesson. excerpt 1. lucia’s rehearsal script for facilitating target language comprehensibility 1 maestro en la clase de hoy vamos a hablar sobre comida especialmente cómo pedir que nos hagan un emparedado con los ingredientes que deseamos comer. levanta la mano si te gustan los emparedados. 2 sts [students raise hands] 3 maestro levanta tu mano si te gusta ir a subway. 4 sts [students raise hands] 5 maestro ¡es muy importante aprender los nombres de los ingredientes que nos gustan, pues así podemos pedir que nos hagan un emparedado bien sabroso como para chuparse los dedos! si no sabes pedir correctamente los ingredientes corres el riesgo de que te preparen un emparedado que no te guste y luego vas a estar hambriento y disgustado todo el día. ¿qué necesitas saber para pedir que te preparen un emparedado en un establecimiento como subway? universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras188 barahona & davin 6 maestro [waits for students to respond] 7 maestro ¡¡necesitamos saber sobre los ingredientes de un emparedado!! (el maestro deberá estar preparado para escribir en la pizarra los ingredientes de un emparedado) 8 maestro ingredientes de un emparedado [escribir en la pizarra] a) pan/bread b) vegetales/vegetables c) queso/cheese d) carne/meat (hacer que los alumnos repitan) as excerpt 1 illustrates, lucia planned to begin her lesson by introducing the objective for the day. her entire script was in the target language and she had incorporated opportunities for students to respond. however, she included few brackets describing her own actions and there was no mention of visuals or gestures. phase iii: rehearsal and coaching recommendation 1. lesson rehearsals are approximations of practice, which form critical learning activities in a practice-based approach as they act as dialogic mediating tools for student teachers’ development (troyan & peercy, 2018). in this phase, student teachers enact their lesson segments with a special emphasis on the components of the hltp and pause—or are asked to pause—their teaching to be coached by the teacher educator. a key recommendation for this phase is to maximize the opportunities for rehearsal. in our teaching contexts, each student teacher had the opportunity to enact their lessons or segments of lessons and receive coaching. however, in the u.s. setting, student teachers planned their lessons individually and rehearsed each hltp in different rehearsal sessions. in the chilean context, student teachers worked in pairs and planned lessons collaboratively, with one student teacher rehearsing a segment of the lesson and receiving direct coaching. student teachers rotated to rehearse their lessons during the semester so that all were able to perform the role of the teacher and rehearse one hltp during the semester. another strategy that was used to enhance the opportunities for practice was having student teachers record themselves practicing segments of lessons in advance (i.e. starting the lesson, giving instructions, explaining vocabulary, conducting an interpersonal communication task). this strategy was used to scaffold the learning process and to contribute to the level of student teachers’ confidence and self-efficacy. however, it is important to note that these videos did not replace the rehearsal sessions, but worked primarily as stepping stones. recommendation 2: another key recommendation in phase iii: rehearsal and coaching is to carefully plan coaching moves, with careful attention to context, to provide opportunities for the interrogation of teachers’ practice and its consequences. when coaching, the teacher educator guides student teachers through the enactment of teaching moves. this includes such elements as giving directive feedback, highlighting the importance of a teaching move enacted by the student teacher, asking a question for reflection, or modelling a specific move to be enacted by the student teacher (teachingworks, 2018). in the chilean context, student teachers planned minilessons (with a focus on facilitating target language comprehensibility and building a discourse community) in pairs and subsequently rehearsed their lessons in class. the teacher educator paused the lesson at critical moments of the rehearsal to coach student teachers by making suggestions such as “use a synonym, point to the picture,” or by asking questions such as “why did you choose to 189profile: issues teach. prof. dev., vol. 23 no. 1, jan-jun, 2021. issn 1657-0790 (printed) 2256-5760 (online). bogotá, colombia. pages 181-196 a practice-based approach to foreign language teacher preparation: a cross-continental collaboration teach those words?,” or “what do you think your students would do after you said that?” the teacher educator enacted a wide range of coaching moves which required a high level of self-confidence to know when to pause the lesson and which coaching move to use. most student teachers were open to criticism and willing to interrogate their own practices. after the rehearsal sessions, student teachers wrote their reflections on the feedback and suggestions discussed in class and how they would consider them for their future implementations in school. a caution. in this phase, student teachers actively engaged in preparing the rehearsal session and enacting it. the rehearsals typically focused on one hltp or a set of instructional practices. however, it was important that a set of norms was established before the rehearsal session so that everyone understood its intended structure, as well as assigned roles and functions (kelley-petersen et al., 2018). for instance, in the chilean context, the first rehearsal session was a challenge. student teachers were not sufficiently clear as to their roles and the structure of the session. so, when the teacher educator paused the lesson, the first student teacher reacted very defensively and did not integrate the feedback into his teaching. in addition, in the case of some specific practices such as designing and conducting oral interpersonal communication, it can be difficult to effectively rehearse all aspects of the hltp. for the rehearsal, other student teachers need to play the role of students and be able to engage in the interpersonal task. in this sense, student teachers need to share the target language at a similar level of proficiency. in contexts in which the methods course is taught to teachers of different foreign languages, it is recommended that instead of rehearsing all aspects of htlp, only a set of instructional moves such as activating background knowledge and providing language support be enacted. teachers can still gain significant learning in planning the rehearsal of the interpersonal task and its instructions. lucia’s rehearsal as excerpt 2 illustrates, lucia’s rehearsal began slightly differently than she had planned. this was to be expected, because student teachers were told that they did not have to follow the script word-for-word, but that its purpose was more to carefully think through the lesson. excerpt 2. lucia rehearsal transcription 1 lucia pan emparedado. [holds up picture of sandwich bread] ¿levanta la mano si te gusta comer pan? te gusta comer pan levanta la mano. ¿levanta la mano si te gusta ir a subway? do you like subway? me gusta subway. entonces es importante cuando vamos a pedir comida saber los ingredientes. ¿cómo se llaman? ¿que queremos nuestro pan? si no sabes los ingredientes vas a estar triste. vas a llorar. i don’t like it. porque no sabes pedir que lo que lleva tu pan. así que hoy vamos a aprender sobre la comida y como preparar un pan en subway. ¿que van a necesitar? vamos a hacer una pequeña práctica. ustedes tienen tres vegetales. 2 teacher educator (te) let’s pause right there. let’s see. [te calls on student who does not speak spanish] do you know what we’re doing so far? 3 student 2 (s2) she’s telling some story. 4 te okay. do you know anything else? 5 s2 talking about the bread. universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras190 barahona & davin as excerpt 2 illustrates, lucia, began her lesson in turn 1 with a series of sentences interspersed with questions in spanish, just as she had planned to do. however, unlike her script, she translated her phrases to english twice (turn 1), despite the requirement that she use only the target language. in turn 2, the teacher educator interrupted lucia and called on a chinese student teacher in the class to inquire about whether she had understood lucia. turns 3, 5, and 7 revealed that she had not. as a result, the teacher educator complimented lucia’s use of pictures (turn 8), asked a question for reflection (turn 8), provided directive feedback (turn 12), and modeled a way to make her language more comprehensible (turn 14). phase iv: implementation and reflection recommendation 1. one of the most critical recommendations related to phase iv: implementation and reflection concerns the need for flexibility on the part of both the teacher educator and the student teacher. it is inevitable in schools that there will be unanticipated interruptions (such as an unexpected field trip or cancellation of school for a weather emergency) and student teachers will not necessarily be able to enact their lesson in the k–12 classroom on the day that they had planned. in some cases, we have had student teachers who were not able to enact the lesson that they had rehearsed at all. for example, one student teacher planned and rehearsed a lesson that illustrated the hltp of facilitating target language comprehensibility. however, when she returned to her field site the following week, she learned that her clinical educator had already taught the content. in this case, the student teacher had to implement the hltp in a lesson plan that she had not yet rehearsed. strict due dates on lesson implementations and reflections can cause added stress to student teachers who are already overwhelmed with the demands of learning to teach. 6 te okay. yeah. 7 s2 for some reason, she wanted something that she could not have. so, she cried. 8 te okay so far s2 thinks it’s something about bread. maybe it’s a story. maybe you are sad about something, so you cried. what are some ideas that would’ve made this intro part a little more comprehensible for s2? i love your visuals; those are so good. s2, did you get the part about subway? no. 9 s2 no. 10 te so, you might have students say that they don’t know what subway is. 11 lucia yeah. okay. 12 te so, maybe if you have a picture of the shop. 13 s2 i heard her mention that but i did not link to that. 14 te yeah. so you might say something like “un restaurante que se llama subway y allí se vende pan” or something like that right? 15 lucia okay perfect. 16 te perfect. 17 lucia a picture of a subway? 18 te exactly. i think that would help a lot. 191profile: issues teach. prof. dev., vol. 23 no. 1, jan-jun, 2021. issn 1657-0790 (printed) 2256-5760 (online). bogotá, colombia. pages 181-196 a practice-based approach to foreign language teacher preparation: a cross-continental collaboration recommendation 2. as the length of many teacher education programs across the world decreases, the placement of student teachers in field sites for student teaching becomes even more critical. for example, in the u.s. context described in this study, the graduate certificate program required only 16 credits, three of which were dedicated to student teaching. as a result, the practices and beliefs of clinical educators (often referred to as cooperating teachers in the united states or profesores mentores in chile) have a profound impact on student teachers’ development (delaney, 2012). to develop the ability to carry out these hltps, student teachers must be placed in classrooms where clinical educators model these practices on a daily basis. in both of our contexts, we have had experiences where student teachers were placed in classrooms in which the clinical educator did not agree with the focused practice of facilitating target language comprehensibility and wanted our student teachers to use more of the students’ first language and did not allow student teachers to implement other instructional moves. such placements undermine the practice-based learning cycle and put the student teacher in a stressful position that can inhibit their development as teachers. a caution. a critical component of phase iv is for student teachers to video-record their enactment, which comes with its own set of inherent challenges. on the most practical level, video-recording has become much simpler with cell phones; however, student teachers must remember that most phones stop recording after 15 minutes. a more profound consideration deals with who is captured in the video. in order for students to appear in the video, student teachers must secure signed permission forms from students’ parents. as a result, our student teachers often submit teaching videos that show only themselves teaching. it is often difficult to draw conclusions about the extent to which students were engaged, how many students were participating, and what exactly they were doing. in fact, a video of only the students might be more telling than a video of only the teacher. lucia’s implementation and reflection building on excerpts 1 and 2, excerpt 3 illustrates lucia’s implementation of the portion of her lesson rehearsed in excerpt 2. excerpt 3. lucia’s classroom implementation 1 lucia muy buenas tardes clase. buenas tardes. ¿cómo están? 2 students excelente. 3 lucia excelente. muy bien. hoy vamos a hablar de comida. [lucia holds up a picture of a subway restaurant]. 4 students subway! 5 lucia subway. yes! vamos a hablar de subway. ¿qué es esto que está aquí? [showing the newspaper of subway to the class] 6 students subway. 7 lucia y eso es para pedir un pan emparedado. raise your hand if you like subway? 8 student me! 9 lucia r aise your hand if you don’t like subway? okay. today we are going to learn how to ask for food in subway in spanish. vamos a hablar de cómo p e dir un emp are dado en subway pero primero tenemos que saber los ingredientes. excerpt 3 illustrates how lucia translated one instance of coaching into her lesson implementation with students. comparison of excerpts 2 and 3 universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras192 barahona & davin illustrates that lucia more effectively focused learners’ attention on the topic of the lesson by shortening her introduction and simplifying her language. while turns 7 and 9 revealed lucia’s continued struggles with using solely the target language, turns 3 and 5 revealed that she implemented the teacher educator’s feedback by providing students with a visual to make her talk more comprehensible. following lesson implementation, the student teachers also self-assessed their implementation using the same deconstruction tool that was used in phase i. table 2 displays lucia’s assessment of her own lesson with the highlighted elements corresponding to her perceived scores and justifications. this pedagogical tool allowed student teachers to examine their practices and find opportunities for improvement. table 2. lucia’s self-assessment criteria approaching expectations meets expectations exceeding expectations amount of target language used target language is used less than ¾ of class time. target language is used approximately ¾ of class time. target language is used more than ¾ of class time. justification of your score the class is conducted in spanish. most of the instructions and vocabulary is presented in spanish. comprehensible language student teacher paraphrases but may not adjust rate of speech, tends not to define new words with examples, may resort to english at times, and uses familiar vocabulary. student teacher paraphrases and adjusts rate of speech, defines new words with examples, and uses familiar vocabulary and structures. student teacher paraphrases and adjusts rate of speech, defines new words with examples, reenters new words frequently in input, signals new words with structures and tone of voice, and uses familiar vocabulary and structures. justification of your score with timestamps (8 min 40 s) the teacher writes the vocabulary words on the board. (1 min 25 s–2 min 47 s) the teacher reinforces the vocabulary words while giving the students the ingredients for activity 1. (the same happened for activity 2, when she introduces the meats.) contextual support students do not know the topic and objective of the lesson in advance. little use of gestures, visuals, and/or objects to support comprehension students know the topic and objective of the lesson in advance. teacher uses gestures, visuals, and/or objects to support comprehension. students know the topic and objective in advance. teacher uses gesture, visuals, and objects in creative ways to support comprehension. 193profile: issues teach. prof. dev., vol. 23 no. 1, jan-jun, 2021. issn 1657-0790 (printed) 2256-5760 (online). bogotá, colombia. pages 181-196 a practice-based approach to foreign language teacher preparation: a cross-continental collaboration justification of your score with timestamps students have been learning about food since the beginning of the unit, three classes ago. this activity has been an example of summative assessment for them. lesson context context may not be meaningful or purposeful. lesson has a meaningful context. meaningful and cultural context drives the lesson. justification of your score the lesson is meaningful because students are taught an activity that they can perform in a real-case scenario. content-specific language student teacher does not give students adequate time to think and respond using content-specific language. student teacher gives students time to think and respond using content-specific language. student teacher gives time to think and respond using contentspecific language and multiple modalities (writing, speaking, and performing the group task). justification of your score with timestamps students are required to speak, asking for the ingredients in their subway (emparedado) comprehensible interactions students are passive as teacher presents new material. teacher involves some students in the presentation of new material. teacher engages all students in the presentation of new material. justification of your score through the video, you can hear students’ participation. students are super-excited to participate in this activity. they all are asking for a turn to create their sub. clarify and extend thinking student teacher does not pose follow-up questions to clarify, probe, or extend thinking based on student responses. student teacher poses follow-up questions to clarify, probe, or extend thinking based on student responses. student teacher poses follow-up questions to clarify, probe, and extend thinking based on student responses without leading the student to one correct answer. students are able to extend and justify their thinking. justification of your score and three examples the teacher helps the students when they feel insecure about what ingredients to ask for. after the student’s response the teacher reaffirms the answer. universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras194 barahona & davin discussion and conclusion responding to international trends toward more practice-based approaches in language teacher education (davin & troyan, 2015; pang, 2018), we both incorporated a practice-based learning cycle in which student teachers engaged in language teaching practice. based on our individual experiences and dialogue about our contexts, supported by our reflections and the analysis of student teachers’ outcomes, we believe that incorporating this approach into the university foreign language teacher education classroom offers a useful opportunity to examine and illuminate some of the complexities of foreign language teaching practice across contexts. as demonstrated by our two experiences, student teachers need to engage in practice, enacting key instructional moves that are suitable for a situated context. however, this enactment needs to be accompanied by constant reflection about the implementation in real classrooms and its implications for students’ learning. this reflective process allows student teachers to make connections with theoretical underpinnings more meaningful and relevant for them, offering a potent means of potentially shaping and reshaping their conceptual knowledge (peercy & troyan, 2017). it also appears that this consistent dialogue and personal inquiry can foster student teachers’ identity development as more reflective teachers. rehearsal sessions have the potential to be crucial in teachers’ development as they are, informed not only by the knowledge for enacted practice that is the goal of the activity (i.e., unassisted implementation of the core practice), but also by the broader individual, historical, and contextual factors, including the kind of mediation provided, that construct the activity setting of learning to teach a second language. (troyan & peercy, 2018, p. 270) in this sense, it is important to consider that a practice-based approach is adopted in more than one course of a teacher education program. such iteration allows student teachers to develop a more sophisticated understanding of language teaching practice. this means not only developing an appropriate set of effective instructional moves, but also a complex understanding of what teaching and learning a foreign language implies. furthermore, this collaboration affirmed that teacher educators must carefully plan instructional activities within the context of the university setting, considering appropriate mediation tools and scaffolds in each phase of the practice-based learning cycle. the learning cycle implemented proved to be essentially student-centered and contributed to the construction of a continuum of practice-based teaching opportunities from university settings to school contexts. in this sense, we confirmed that instructional activities need to be aligned with the school so that they can foster student teachers’ learning in a situated context. reflecting on the outcomes of our differing implementations of this approach, we concur with the observations of peercy et al. (2019), who contend that: teacher educators must employ [practice-based teacher education] in ways that are mindful of tensions between providing sufficient support to [novice teachers], while also not ignoring context, teacher and student subjectivities and agency, and the cultural and linguistic resources that students and teachers bring to teaching and learning. (p. 9) as language teacher educators, we have been challenged in integrating and adopting this practice-based approach as a viable pedagogy in our foreign language teaching methods courses. we have implemented this approach, taking clear account of the cultural and linguistic resources of our student teachers, through the development of responsive tools to support them in our unique settings. however, we have also reflected on our own understanding and expertise of language teaching, as well as the complexities of practice (peercy & troyan, 2017). consistent with this perspective, we 195profile: issues teach. prof. dev., vol. 23 no. 1, jan-jun, 2021. issn 1657-0790 (printed) 2256-5760 (online). bogotá, colombia. pages 181-196 a practice-based approach to foreign language teacher preparation: a cross-continental collaboration concur with other studies (see grosser-clarkson & neel, 2019) that call for more “transparent reporting on practice and investigation of practice” (p. 11). such transparency can provide a more developed understanding of how the practice-based approach impacts teaching and thereby contribute to the design of more effective learning responses. finally, we conclude that future studies should critically investigate the longitudinal effects of a practicebased approach to teacher preparation to make a more robust empirical foundation for informing language teacher education practice. this form of research could potentially allow for the development of more responsive language teacher pedagogies that more effectively contemplate the realities of changing classroom practice. references ball, d. l., & cohen, d. k. (1999). developing practice, developing practitioners: toward a practice-based theory of professional education. in l. darling-hammond & g. sykes (eds.), teaching as the learning profession: handbook of policy and practice (pp. 3–32). jossey bass. ball, d. l., sleep, l., boerst, t. a., & bass, h. (2009). combining the development of practice and the practice of development in teacher education. elementary school journal, 109(5), 458–474. https://doi.org/10.1086/596996 danielson, k. a., shaughnessy, m., & lightning, p. (2018). use of representations in teacher education. in p. l. grossman (ed.), teaching core practices in teacher education (pp. 15–34). harvard education press. davin, k. j., & troyan, f. j. (2015). the implementation of high-leverage teaching practices: from the university classroom to the field site. foreign language annals, 48(1), 124–142. https://doi.org/10.1111/flan.12124 delaney, y. a. (2012). research on mentoring language teachers: its role in language education. foreign language annals, 45(s1), 184–202. https://doi. org/10.1111/j.1944-9720.2011.01185.x donato, r., & adair-hauck, b. (2016). pace: a story-based approach for dialogic inquiry about form and meaning. in j. l. shrum & e. w. glisan (eds.), teacher’s handbook: contextualized language instruction (5th ed., pp. 206–230). cengage learning. donato, r., & davin, k. j. (2018). the genesis of classroom discursive practices as history-in-person processes. language teaching research, 22(6), 739–760. https:// doi.org/10.1177/1362168817702672 ghousseini, h., & sleep, l. (2011). making practice studyable. zdm mathematics education, 43(1), 147–160. https://doi. org/10.1007/s11858-010-0280-7 glisan, e. w., & donato, r. (2017). enacting the work of language instruction: high-leverage teaching practices. actfl. grosser-clarkson, d., & neel, m. a. (2019). contrast, commonality, and a call for clarity: a review of the use of core practices in teacher education. journal of teacher education. https://doi.org/10.1177/0022487119880162 hlas, a. c., & hlas, c. s. (2012). a review of highleverage teaching practices: making connections between mathematics and foreign languages. foreign language annals, 45(s1), s76–s97. https://doi. org/10.1111/j.1944-9720.2012.01180.x kazemi, e., ghousseini, h., cunard, a., & turrou, a. c. (2016). getting inside rehearsals: insights from teacher educators to support work on complex practice. journal of teacher education, 67(1), 18–31. https://doi. org/10.1177/0022487115615191 kelley-petersen, m., davis, e. a., ghousseini, h., kloser, m., & monte-santo, c. (2018). rehearsals as examples of approximation. in p. grossman (ed.), teaching core practices in teacher education (pp. 85–106). harvard education press. lampert, m., franke, m. l., kazemi, e., ghousseini, h., turrou, a. c., beasley, h., cunard, a., & crowe, k. (2013). keeping it complex: using rehearsals to support novice teacher learning of ambitious teaching. journal of teacher education, 64(3), 226–243. https:// doi.org/10.1177/0022487112473837 lampert, m., & graziani, f. (2009). instructional activities as a tool for teachers’ and teacher educators’ learning. https://doi.org/10.1086/596996 https://doi.org/10.1111/flan.12124 https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1944-9720.2011.01185.x https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1944-9720.2011.01185.x https://doi.org/10.1177/1362168817702672 https://doi.org/10.1177/1362168817702672 https://doi.org/10.1007/s11858-010-0280-7 https://doi.org/10.1007/s11858-010-0280-7 https://doi.org/10.1177/0022487119880162 https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1944-9720.2012.01180.x https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1944-9720.2012.01180.x https://doi.org/10.1177/0022487115615191 https://doi.org/10.1177/0022487115615191 https://doi.org/10.1177/0022487112473837 https://doi.org/10.1177/0022487112473837 universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras196 barahona & davin the elementary school journal, 109(5), 491–509. https:// www.jstor.org/stable/10.1086/596998 lortie, d. (1975). schoolteacher: a sociological study. university of chicago press. pang, m. (2018). developing core practices for efl/esl teaching: a framework for methodology course design. tesol quarterly, 53(1). https://doi.org/10.1002/tesq.487 peercy, m. m., & troyan, f. j. (2017). making transparent the challenges of developing a practice-based pedagogy of teacher education. teaching and teacher education, 61, 26–36. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.tate.2016.10.005 peercy, m. m., varghese, m., & dubetz, n. (2019). critically examining practice‐based teacher education for teachers of language minoritized youth. tesol quarterly, 53(4). https://doi.org/10.1002/tesq.533 teachingworks. (2018). coached rehearsals resource guide. retrieved january 6, 2020, from https://bit. ly/3ommgwe troyan, f. j., davin, k. j., & donato, r. (2013). exploring a practice-based approach to foreign language teacher preparation: a work in progress. canadian modern language review of educational research, 69(2), 154–180. https://doi.org/doi:10.3138/cmlr.1523 troyan, f. j., & peercy, m. m. (2018). moving beyond “très bien”: examining teacher mediation in lesson rehearsals. in j. sharkey & m. m. peercy (eds.), self-study of language and literacy teacher education practices (vol. 30, pp. 263–282). emerald publishing. https://doi.org/10.1108/ s1479-368720180000030018 about the authors malba barahona is an associate professor in the facultad de educación at pontificia universidad católica de chile. she teaches undergraduate and graduate courses related to english language teaching methodology and public policies in foreign language teaching. her research focuses on foreign language teacher education, teacher identity, teacher agency, the development of pedagogical content knowledge, and inclusive practices in foreign language teaching. kristin j. davin is an associate professor of foreign language education in the cato college of education (university of north carolina at charlotte). she teaches undergraduate and graduate foreign and second language methodology and assessment courses. her research is situated in vygotskian sociocultural theory and focuses on second language development and assessment. https://www.jstor.org/stable/10.1086/596998 https://www.jstor.org/stable/10.1086/596998 https://doi.org/10.1002/tesq.487 https://doi.org/10.1016/j.tate.2016.10.005 https://doi.org/10.1002/tesq.533 https://bit.ly/3ommgwe https://bit.ly/3ommgwe https://doi.org/doi:10.3138/cmlr.1523 https://doi.org/10.1108/s1479-368720180000030018 https://doi.org/10.1108/s1479-368720180000030018 editorial: possible research paths for english language teacher-researchers in the wake of the covid-19 pandemic 7profile: issues teach. prof. dev., vol. 23 no. 1, jan-jun, 2021. issn 1657-0790 (printed) 2256-5760 (online). bogotá, colombia. pages 7-10 https://doi.org/10.15446/profile.v23n1.92134 editorial1 possible research paths for english language teacher-researchers in the wake of the covid-19 pandemic the covid-19 pandemic has undoubtedly been one of those global events that force us to adjust our behavior patterns in practically all aspects of our lives. in relation to teaching, which is by definition an interactive and social activity (especially so in regard to foreign language teaching), its scope of action appears to have been reduced, at all levels, to distance education and virtual environments as the only available alternatives. thanks to the digital era one could argue that the process of adaptation has been smooth; after all, teachers are no strangers to the use of digital platforms and computer assisted learning, as attested by the many articles revolving around these issues that have been published in the profile journal (and in many others) since the turn of the century. however, and as implied above, the situation is new in that teachers have to rely almost exclusively on virtual methodologies to ensure learning processes; that is, they have been left with not much room for face-to-face interaction, which, arguably, is still paramount in reinforcing said learning processes. clearly, this situation has come with its own challenges, both for teachers and for students, and upcoming research in english language teaching is likely to focus on or revisit phenomena like (a) teacher burnout due to, for instance, overwork while preparing virtual lessons or to a lack of familiarity with digital tools; (b) the emotional responses of students and teachers during confinement and their experiences about working or studying from home; (c) class interaction mediated by electronic devices; (d) alternative assessment; (e) learning autonomy; and (f ) the use of english as a lingua franca, among many other fertile topics. what we learn from the current situation will certainly allow us, as teachers of english, to complement teaching practices and to take full advantage of what the digital era puts at our disposal so that students have a more comprehensive learning experience. this should also have an impact on teacher education which is expected to pay more attention to distance and virtual education. additionally, and bearing in mind the increase in teachers’ workload, it is also important to account for the factors that affect teachers’ well-being in current times. although profile has not planned to devote special issues to gathering manuscripts around a unique theme, we would like to welcome contributions dealing with such issues. how to cite this article (apa, 7th ed.): cárdenas, m. l., nieto-cruz, m. c., & martínez, e. (2021). editorial: possible research paths for english language teacher-researchers in the wake of the covid-19 pandemic. profile: issues in teachers’ professional development, 23(1), 7–10. https://doi.org/10.15446/profile.v23n1.92134 this editorial was received on october 19, 2020 and accepted on november 6, 2020. this is an open access article distributed under the terms of the creative commons license attribution noncommercial-noderivatives 4.0 international license. consultation is possible at https://creativecommons. org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/ https://doi.org/10.15446/profile.v23n1.92134 https://doi.org/10.15446/profile.v23n1.92134 https://creativecommons. org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/ https://creativecommons. org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/ universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras cárdenas, nieto-cruz, & martínez 8 another important aspect of the digital era that the pandemic has brought to the fore, and one which is related to current practices in academic publication, is the possibility of accessing available crucial knowledge immediately and without restriction; it is what lies at the core of the open-access movement. we, at the profile journal, continue to embrace this spirit of sharing the insights of our authors in the hopes of advancing the academic knowledge of a growing community of scholars. hence, at this critical moment, when access to trusted sources of information appears to be mainly obtained online, we also hope that the contents we publish for our readers in the journal site somehow contribute to the new teaching/learning dynamics. obviously, the quality of the journal contents could not be guaranteed without the invaluable help of our team of reviewers, to whom we want to express our acknowledgment and appreciation, especially in these trying times. despite the disruptions brought about by the pandemic, our reviewers have kept on collaborating with the journal, which helps us in our objective of placing the journal as one of those trusted sources of high-quality academic information. the commitment of our reviewers, as well as that of our authors, is made visible in the articles selected for this issue. in this issue, we are very pleased to share with you 12 articles. eight correspond to the section issues from teacher researchers, two to the section issues from novice teacherresearchers and two to the section issues based on reflections and innovations. the contributions come from four countries: colombia, chile, the united states of america, and mexico. the topics discussed by researchers in the current issue concern english language teaching, foreign language teacher education, and teacher professional development as regards (a) pre and in-service teachers, (b) novice and experienced school teachers and undergraduate and graduate foreign education students, (c) the development of skills from different perspectives and actors, as well as (d) language policies, assessment, and action research as the main topics. the section issues from teacher researchers opens with an article by gloria romero (universidad de santiago de chile) that deals with english language teaching in the public, semiprivate, and private school contexts as provided by novice teachers. the paper reveals that novice teachers come across nonharmonic communities of teachers regardless of the types of schools where they work. rather than being a detriment, these nonharmonic communities of practice positively impact novice teachers to strive during the first years of teaching. this article is followed by a paper dealing with language policies and elementary school teachers. carmen helena guerrero-nieto and álvaro quintero-polo (universidad distrital francisco josé de caldas, colombia) showed how a bottom-up approach to the study of educational policies can shed some light on how elementary school teachers deal with educational policies to make them work. the study revealed that teachers are very aware of the influence of the neoliberalist ideas but find ways to make policies work while being critical of the way policies are designed and implemented. our issue continues with a contribution from ximena d. burgin and mayra c. daniel, (northern illinois university, usa). these researchers report on ecuadorian preservice and profile: issues teach. prof. dev., vol. 23 no. 1, jan-jun, 2021. issn 1657-0790 (printed) 2256-5760 (online). bogotá, colombia. pages 7-10 editorial 9 in-service teachers’ ability to conduct action research in the classroom as well as their skills to efficiently adjust instruction to address students’ cultural and linguistic diversity. findings suggest that training teachers to conduct action research will improve their ability to analyze data and improve students’ learning outcomes. our next article deals with policies regarding the results of high school students in the english proficiency state exam in colombia. researcher jorge eliecer benavides (universidad de nariño, colombia) analyzes the above-mentioned results and shows a worrying panorama between the goals established by the ministry of education and the final outcomes. benavides proposes a review of language policies, which according to the study must emerge from a bottom-up approach which means a sustained impulse in teacher training, methodology, and curricular and pedagogical organization. the next two articles deal with the mastery of writing with different participants and perspectives. the first paper explores how master thesis writers position themselves in the english language teaching academic community. researcher vicky ariza-pinzón (benemérita universidad autónoma de puebla, mexico) accompanies the process through which novel thesis writers approach this new and challenging task. the results show how postgraduate student-teachers draw from a set of interconnected genres—descriptions of the object of study, definitions, and personal exemplum—that build a shared experience with the reader as well as provide the persuasive purpose of the text. the second article deals with preservice teacher education as regards the impact reflective learning has in the academic writing skills of english as a foreign language preservice teachers. researchers angélica meza (instituto caro y cuervo, colombia) and ingrid rodríguez and lorena caviedes (universidad el bosque, colombia) examined how the participants’ academic writing skills developed when preparing for international writing exams while being accompanied by the researchers through reflections upon feedback and self-assessment. the results evidenced learners’ writing skills improvement while implementing reflecting learning, which led to self-regulation and metacognition. the last two articles of the section present research work coming from mexico and colombia. the mexican contribution also deals with writing as the previous two papers but on this occasion analyzed from the perspective of teachers who teach writing. elsa fernanda gonzález (universidad autónoma de tamaulipas, mexico) explores the classroom assessment process of 11 mexican teachers in the writing component through the incorporation of training. the results suggest an impact in three main areas: classroom teaching of writing, classroom assessment of writing, and teacher self-awareness. the colombian study examines the relationship between an action research study about the exploration of local communities and the emergence of agency and value of rural identity. results showed that when communities are linked with classroom practices and foreign language learning, english becomes a vehicle to explore their places, who they are as members of the community, and how to promote decision-making to help others. the researchers who worked on this fascinating quest were lucelly paredes-mendez, ingrid alexandra troncoso-rodríguez and sandra patricia lastraramírez (universidad del tolima, colombia). universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras cárdenas, nieto-cruz, & martínez 10 section 2, issues from novice teacher-researchers, includes two articles. both of them come from representatives of colombian universities located in different geographical points of the colombian territory. estefanía durán and katherin garcía from the universidad de pamplona, north-eastern colombia, explore the influence of english teachers’ methodological practices on the learning processes of english as a foreign language undergraduate students. the methodological approaches of teachers varied and these influenced students’ learning processes differently. from the southern region of colombia, specifically from the universidad de la amazonia, researcher jaime fernando duque-aguilar explores the assessment of speaking in a teacher education program as well. results revealed teachers’ preference for summative assessment practices to determine students’ progress regarding speaking. the author proposes language assessment as a meaningful process in which students, teachers, and the institution involved should benefit. our issue closes with the section issues based on reflections and innovations. in this opportunity we welcome a joint venture between a chilean researcher and an american one and the contribution of a colombian academic. the joint effort between malba barahona (pontificia universidad católica de chile) and kristin j. davin (university of north carolina at charlotte, usa), tackles teacher education from the perspective of a practice-based approach in which student-teachers learn to teach a language by engaging in “actual” teaching rather than “talking” about teaching. they report on the implementation of a practice-based approach in two different contexts: an initial english teacher education program in chile and an initial foreign language teacher education program in the united states. the findings demonstrate that incorporating a practice-based approach offers a useful affordance for examining and illuminating the complexities of foreign language teaching practice across contexts. finally, we have the contribution made by researcher frank giraldo (universidad de caldas, colombia). the reflection made by giraldo examines the connections that exist between language assessment literacy and teachers’ professional development. the article signals that there are existing language assessment literacy initiatives, and however limited they might be, they have the potential to advance teachers’ language assessment literacy at large and contribute to their professional development. as always, we hope that you find this new edition useful and interesting. enjoy it! melba libia cárdenas journal editor maría claudia nieto-cruz journal director edwin martínez assistant to the editor 167profile: issues teach. prof. dev., vol. 20 no. 1, jan-jun, 2018. issn 1657-0790 (printed) 2256-5760 (online). bogotá, colombia. pages 167-178 https://doi.org/10.15446/profile.v20n1.62327 the relevance of teachers’ practical knowledge in the development of teacher education programs la relevancia del conocimiento práctico de los profesores en el desarrollo de programas de formación de profesores débora izé balsemão oss1* caxias do sul municipality, caxias do sul, brazil teacher education programs have evolved mostly from the scholarly world’s perspective, which can eventually impact the work that practitioners face on an everyday basis, particularly in regard to dealing with their students. this article of reflection addresses aspects related to a brazilian teacher’s personal practical knowledge and the role of practitioners’ expertise in dealing with adolescent students (6th to 9th graders). it advocates that teachers’ personal practical knowledge is likely to evolve into professional knowledge provided that it is analyzed, verified, and improved. insights from second language teacher education, reflexive thoughts, and projects developed by the author illustrate what can be considered when developing strategies that are consistent with the envisioned teacher education programs. key words: english language teaching, personal practical knowledge, second language teacher education. los programas de formación de maestros han evolucionado sobre todo desde la perspectiva del mundo académico, lo que eventualmente puede impactar en el trabajo que los maestros enfrentan cotidianamente, particularmente en lo que respecta al trato con sus estudiantes. este artículo de reflexión aborda aspectos relacionados con el conocimiento práctico personal de una maestra brasileña y el papel de la experiencia de los practicantes en el trato con estudiantes adolescentes (6º a 9º grado). defiende que el conocimiento práctico personal de los profesores pueda evolucionar hacia el conocimiento profesional siempre que se analice, verifique y mejore. las reflexiones sobre la formación de maestros de segunda lengua, los pensamientos reflexivos y los proyectos desarrollados por la autora ilustran lo que se puede considerar al desarrollar estrategias que sean consistentes con los programas deseados de formación de maestros. palabras clave: alumnado, conocimiento práctico personal, educación de maestros de segunda lengua, enseñanza de lengua inglesa. * e-mail: debora.oss@gmail.com how to cite this article (apa, 6th ed.): oss, d. i. b. (2018). the relevance of teachers’ practical knowledge in the development of teacher education programs. profile: issues in teachers’ professional development, 20(1), 167-178. https://doi.org/10.15446/profile.v20n1.62327. this article was received on january 31, 2017, and accepted on august 25, 2017. this is an open access article distributed under the terms of the creative commons license attribution-noncommercial-noderivatives 4.0 international license. consultation is possible at https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/. universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras168 oss introduction teacher education programs have long and in many different contexts evolved solely from the scholarly world’s perspective, which is influential on policymakers’ decisions. such decisions are likely to eventually impact on the very work that practitioners face on an everyday basis, particularly in regard to dealing with young students. this is probably due to the fact that concepts that broadly address how youngsters learn do not seem to reach the basics of what pre-service teachers will when in their actual classrooms. approaching learners’ needs through practitioners’ expertise may be a good alternative to reaching a portion of teacher education programs that is still to be fairly covered. in this reflective manuscript, the reader is invited to consider aspects related to practitioners’ personal drives as well as their practical knowledge, which can be developed in and with academia. more specifically, it is my intent to borrow concepts that are well developed in the field of applied linguistics and which are addressed by second language teacher education (slte) programs in order to improve teacher education in general as well. i am a brazilian english language teacher and an independent researcher working in behalf of slte. the perspective that i adopt is grounded on an ethnographic study developed through my engagement in a regular public school context. after having worked for over ten years as a second language teacher educator and after having deepened my understanding of what english language teaching (elt) is like in my setting, i decided to immerse and undergo the business of teaching youngsters in public schools. this move has reinforced my awareness toward the lack of experience that teacher educators reveal when approaching contemporary student bodies. such revelation has also unveiled practitioners’ lack of proper theoretical background, which is essential in informing their practice. based on this idea, i argue that teacher educators’ development should count both on experience and on collaboration, just like pre-service teachers and practitioners do when undergoing training. relying on more experienced practitioners’ personal practical knowledge (ppk) could be a way towards integrating and valuing teaching theory and practice. background being culturally and socially immersed in teaching contexts that had previously been just experienced through observation has definitely become a unique opportunity that i availed myself of as a person and as an elt professional. almost two decades in the academic setting were both challenging and disturbing in the sense that many of the theoretical and practical instances would seldom converse. quitting the academia therefore was an even more challenging path i decided to take in order to meet the more practical issues related to teaching. theoretical and practical issues fused when aspects related to the composition of student body started to make sense (kennedy, 1991). according to mary m. kennedy, the former director of the national center for research on teacher learning (ncrtl), demographic changes in the student body was a major demand on teachers after the 1980s. the main explanation for such finding of the study, developed by the ncrtl during the decade of 1986-1996, was that teachers were then working with students whom they had traditionally had the most difficulty in dealing with; that is, “students whose families are poor, whose language is not english, whose race or cultural background differ from their teachers” (kennedy, 1991, p. 5). contextually speaking, it is possible to assert that after almost three decades of adjustments to a globalized society, the brazilian student body has reached its peculiar features, which can somehow be related to contemporary demands and to the agenda proposed by the ncrtl (kennedy, 1991). taken from a local perspective, it is fair to request that teacher educators and policymakers approach practitioners’ and young citizens’ needs, considering that they are, ultimately, the ones to be affected by the demands of a changing world. 169profile: issues teach. prof. dev., vol. 20 no. 1, jan-jun, 2018. issn 1657-0790 (printed) 2256-5760 (online). bogotá, colombia. pages 167-178 the relevance of teachers' practical knowledge in the development of teacher education programs as a current participant and one affected by the demands of this changing world, in the following section i share my informed insider’s viewpoint, hoping that it is a consistent contribution to be examined. personal drives and practical knowledge development the personal/professional turn i took after obtaining my doctoral degree in applied linguistics is the foreground of this study. after sixteen years working mostly in private academic settings, both as an english language instructor and as a second language teacher educator, including the prime design/coordination of humanities-english language undergraduate programs and teaching graduate students, it seemed that the time to touch the grounds of basic public education had arrived. influenced by specialists who assert that elt in public school settings (primary and secondary) around the globe are understudied (borg, 2003), and following the need for a better understanding of teachers’ cognitions (borg, 2006; feryok, 2010; freeman, 2002; johnson, 2006, 2009; oss, 2013; vieira-abrahão, 2012; woods, 1996, 2009), i decided to answer a personal practical knowledge development call (golombek, 1998, 2009). borg’s (2003) remarks were part of my main inspiration for quitting the higher education academic setting and moving into the grounds of basic education classrooms. borg points to the lack of studies that address contexts “where languages are taught by nonnative teachers to large classes of learners who, particularly in the case of english, may not be studying the language voluntarily” (p. 106). this was identified as the case of brazilian basic education in most regular school settings. in order to meet with the actual grounds of elt, the first step i took was to join the educational system by becoming a public servant and being appointed to teach primary levels. holding a public job and teaching preadolescents had not yet been part of my professional background. as a newcomer to the business of teaching public primary school students i had to adapt my teacher educator’s experience in order to become a youngsters’ english language teacher. it has been a fortunate venture—for the good and for the bad. the good part of the new endeavor was definitely having the chance to put into practice the things that i used to suggest to my former future teacher students. by doing that, i brought myself to the point of verifying what theoretical, methodological, and pedagogical aspects could actually be used in my own everyday teaching. another captivating facet of becoming a youngsters’ english language teacher is related to the rapport that was established with students. it is really amazing to observe how much pupils can be willing to engage in the projects proposed and how rewarding their participation can be, as is described later in this paper. students’ receptiveness seems particularly surprising perhaps due to the low expectations i brought as an outsider. understanding what elt is like in regular schools of the public sector takes much more than language teaching, i further realized. it was also surprising that students who were not in any of my classes would also appreciate greetings and small talks in english, as we ran into each other in the school halls. interacting in english on a more casual basis seemed to be a good strategy to have the kids become more familiar with the so-called foreign language. that seems to influence not only the students but also the school staff, from peer teachers to employees in general. the mere sight of “the english teacher” around school premises was likely to afford nice “good mornings!” and “how are you todays?” which is definitely rewarding to both parties. as for the “bad” share of the venture, it is relevant to mention that one of the sad findings that i eventually came across is the fact that not all english language teachers actually speak english. this understanding was first elaborated based on students’ and peer teachers’ testimonials and, later, on discouraging attempts to interact in english with english language teachers. universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras170 oss surprisingly, and even though i was aware of the fact that not all english language practitioners were proficient in the language, the judgment i had previously made was somehow inaccurate. although some of my colleagues did not actually feel comfortable speaking english for whatever reason, they did manage to encourage their pupils to do so. apparently, and despite all hindrances usually posed by teaching contexts, the daily interaction with the school setting and with the students is likely to compensate for some aspects addressed by slte programs, which usually focus on the theoretical elements of teaching to the detriment of the more functional ones (buarque, 2015; gatti, 2014). despite all the expertise that i have developed over the years, this move has been very precise in its proving that “good teaching is easier to talk about than to do” (kennedy, 1991, p. 4), particularly when it comes to dealing with youngsters whose social needs and skills have changed even more rapidly over the past twentyor-so years. it is my understanding that meeting demands from contemporary student bodies should be added to teacher educators’ learning curricula in order to be properly addressed by teacher learning research and eventually by teacher education syllabi. in the following section, i refer to some elements that are likely to impact the design of teacher education programs. a practitioner’s perspective the journey into elt in brazilian public schools described here has been influenced by specialists and professors, institutional duties and conferences, beliefs and doubts; but mostly, it has been inspired by the former english language undergraduate and graduate students i used to teach, many of which were already teaching under temporary contracts. to those who so generously shared their lived stories i owe all my respect and motivation which enabled me to have made such a daring professional move. specialists are also inspirational when it comes to challenging practitioners’ experiences and acknowledging that they “can enrich the knowledge base of l2 teacher education precisely because it is generated in and emerges out of teachers’ lived experiences” (johnson, 2009, p. 23). nonetheless, the greatest challenge relies on the actual sharing of such lived experiences “with the goal of making it shareable among teachers, open for discussion, verification, and refutation or modification” (hiebert, gallimore, & stigler, 2002, p. 7). there are many aspects that prevent practitioners’ experiences to be shared. one of them may be the fact that school teachers usually have to prioritize everyday assignments, such as bureaucratic records, classes preparation, correction, feedback, meetings, planning, reports, and so on, besides personal and professional development issues. in case the teacher actually enrolls in a long term professional development program, readings, research, publishing, and so forth are usually added to the school teachers’ tasks. in the case of brazilian teachers, it is fair to mention that most of them/us lack the time and funding to engage in teacher education programs that demand publications, which may prevent relevant and invaluable experience to be shared. elt practitioners are therefore left with defective representations of knowledge due to lack of examples that could have stemmed from theory (hiebert et al., 2002). this may be one of the facts that prevail in keeping many brazilian educational settings as they are. cox and assis-peterson (2008) assert that teacher education programs in brazil rely much more on theory than on more practical aspects of teaching. according to these specialists, undergraduates are subject to an overdose of theories that are not in accordance with what pre-service teachers can grasp once they are on their own (cox & assis-peterson, 2008). the scholars also point to the fact that slte should adopt a more collaborative approach, and investigate with practitioners instead of doing research about them. cox and assis-peterson’s (2008) self-criticism argues that what we discovered through research in the natural classroom context is not addressed to those who have donated their words, 171profile: issues teach. prof. dev., vol. 20 no. 1, jan-jun, 2018. issn 1657-0790 (printed) 2256-5760 (online). bogotá, colombia. pages 167-178 the relevance of teachers' practical knowledge in the development of teacher education programs their experiences, their anguish, their hopes, but [it is addressed] to our academia peers. we report/publish what we saw/heard behind these subjects’ backs and not in a co-authoring fashion and often we hide our interpretations from them because we are afraid of hurting their feelings. we cannot spare to make a self-criticism—with this spirit, our contribution to solving the chronic crisis of elt is nil. (p. 51, my translation) granting practitioners the conditions to become part of the actual enrichment of the knowledge base of slte would mean recognizing their lived experiences (bruner, 1997, 1998; johnson, 2009; oss, 2013; telles, 2002) as an actual source of sharable knowledge. one would never really know what an educational setting is like until one lives the experience of being part of it and dealing with its daily routines. there is a great gap between what has to be done in an elt classroom and what is doable. considering the viewpoint from where i stand, i would say filling this gap may be particularly challenging to be addressed by teacher educators, especially because dealing with the demands of contemporary student bodies is perhaps one of the farthest topics that teacher education programs have handled. moreover, future teachers may not be sufficiently aware of the major public expectations that fall on them, unless these are addressed through teacher education curricula. suggestions on how to overcome such hindrances are explored in the following section. teacher education and personal practical knowledge: the student body adolescence is a period of life which all school teachers have already been through; taken from that point, developing approaches to deal with teenagers should not mean much of a contention. nevertheless, it seems that teacher education programs lack the foreground needed to meet demands of contemporary student bodies. investing time and effort in developing such expertise could mean calling on practitioners’ personal practical knowledge (golombek, 1998, 2009), and having slte eventually include it in their programs. hiebert et al. (2002) regard practitioners’ knowledge as teachers’ craft knowledge, which may develop into professional knowledge as long as it is publicized, shared, and stored, as well as verified and improved. from that perspective, one may assert that practitioners’ personal practical knowledge is unlikely to become professional knowledge due, exactly, to what cox and assis-peterson (2008) posit as self-criticism. according to the brazilian teacher educators, it seems that practitioners’ craft knowledge is actually publicized with the legitimate intention of being shared and stored. however, the steps of verification and improvement seem to be aborted at some point of the process, which prevents the cycle from moving further. by not advancing, it seems that this professional knowledge cycle is accomplished for one precise reason: researchers’ publications. the party which would actually be able to verify and improve personal practical knowledge, and therefore help develop it into professional knowledge is oftentimes withdrawn from the process. such viewpoint corroborates cox and assis-peterson’s (2008) assertion: “we report/publish what we saw/heard behind these subjects’ backs and not in a co-authoring fashion” (p. 51). the perspective of slte seems to follow the same course, which in many ways neglects the sociocultural aspects of learning to teach (freeman & johnson, 1998; johnson, 2006; johnson & golombek, 2011; lantolf, 2011), which also happens in brazilian settings (leffa, 1999, 2011; miccoli, 2011; oss, 2013; vieira-abrahão, 2012). relying only on teacher education programs and on learning on a trial and error basis shall leave teachers too far behind in terms of professional development, particularly if one considers how fast teenagers learn and develop. being deprived of learning from reports or case studies, for instance, is likely to keep pre-service teachers from being able to produce and share and therefore benefit from basic skills that teacher education programs may disregard: reading and studying and universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras172 oss relying on more experienced peers, who in turn can encourage pre-service teachers to do the same. in that respect, it could also be inspirational to follow snow’s words (as cited in hiebert et al., 2002) when referring to american teachers: “they must operate in a system that allows them to treat ideas for teaching as objects that can be shared and examined publicly, that can be stored and accumulated and passed along to the next generation” (p. 7). although it may seem commonsensical that local and social features change from community to community, which is the case of brazil and its continental dimensions, learning about adolescents and their characteristics could be a way to unfold current issues that may be crucial to primary and secondary students’ lives these days. learners’ age range and characteristics that preteenagers and teenagers present at this precise moment of their lives is thus a current subject matter that cannot be disregarded by teacher education syllabi, exactly because adolescents do share common affective, intellectual, physical, and social features, no matter where they come from. in a brazilian study conducted with secondary school students, oss (2006) relies on dörnyei’s (1990) broader concept of integrative motivation to address adolescent students’ willingness to learn english at school. according to dörnyei’s construct, both instrumental and integrative motivations concur when the learning of a target language takes place away from its context of use, mostly due to challenges involved, need for achievement, and interest in different cultures, which broadened the integrative concept of motivation. this broadened concept of integrative motivation turned out to be the main drive for the 14to 18-year-olds that collaborated in oss’s investigation (2006). according to the study, although instrumental motivation played an important role in students’ willingness to learn english at school, learners were particularly interested in languages in general, in foreigners and in their cultures as well as in integrating into a new community. this last item, however, did not indicate any geographical region in particular, but the linguistic community of the target language that could be reached through the world wide web. in that same respect, pescador (2010) conducted an investigation that aimed at identifying and characterizing learning actions used by digital natives while interacting when playing online games in english. according to the researcher, the study indicates that learning possibilities unfold as digital technologies aid students in surpassing classroom walls. as such, real interactions and new vocabulary stem from students’ new skills and learning styles developed from the use of technological gadgets (pescador, 2010). students’ interests in integrating into new communities and developing new skills and learning styles are just a few features that can be addressed by teacher education programs, brazilian slte ones included. even though many institutions do address knowledge of learners and their characteristics as current issues of teachers-to-be education curricula, improving the quality and outcomes at the primary and secondary levels is still an urgent demand. for that matter, pescador (2010) reminds us that neuroscience studies indicate that, in response to constant stimuli elicited by digital technologies, this generation has developed some sophisticated skills which affect their ways of thinking, such as parallel processing, random access, among others (johnson, 2005), and this cannot be ignored by school-teachers, due to its learning potentials. (p. 93) sharing some personal practical knowledge and focusing on contemporary student bodies can help unveil crucial issues that are worth addressing in teacher education programs. based on experience and on expertise developed outside academic contexts, in the next section i refer to two projects i developed aimed at meeting students’ expectations in terms of learning english at school. 173profile: issues teach. prof. dev., vol. 20 no. 1, jan-jun, 2018. issn 1657-0790 (printed) 2256-5760 (online). bogotá, colombia. pages 167-178 the relevance of teachers' practical knowledge in the development of teacher education programs theories and methodologies in action becoming a public servant appointed to teach primary levels turned out to be a fine challenge to accept. teaching english language to 6th to 9th graders in one or two 45-minute classes per week could have meant not meeting many expectations. moreover, as i became familiar with the teaching syllabus proposed by the school board (zanette, rui, & pellin de bastiani, 2010), it was clear that the material displayed in the document was developed to merely fulfill institutional requirements, which in turn allowed practitioners to approach their teaching in the best way they found appropriate to meet students’ needs and wants, provided that they had been instructed to do so. in order to benefit from and to conform to the guidelines, the approach adopted relied on projects aimed at meeting the basics, according to each grade, group, and, ideally, individuals. by doing that, it was possible to address methods that some of my former future teacher students had adopted under my supervision—and which i would not necessarily agree with—as well as to experience their efficiency in my own teaching context. there were some projects developed with different levels of students that i would consider worth reporting, mainly due to students’ outcomes and testimonials. in the following subsections, i briefly outline two of them. new perspectives project i developed this project (oss, 2015) as an extraclass activity offered to 6th and 7th graders in a school unit where elt was offered once a week, in 45-minute classes. the idea of having elt as an extra-class activity was suggested by some of the 6th grade students, who enjoyed the classes that we were having in the regular school hours. as the idea was also mentioned to 7th graders, many of them became interested as well. the first step i took to provide students with extra classes was to request it formally to the school board, which included a term of responsibility asserting that i would not charge the school extra hours for the classes. it took around three months for the school board to respond and finally have the classes authorized in a volunteer work fashion. the school principal offered a room that was being used as a storage room, which turned into a nice classroom after some of my contacts in the social networks donated rugs, pillows, books, posters, dictionaries, and even a tv set and a vhs player. by the time the classes were actually allowed to start, our classroom was already a nice and cozy place, as can be seen in the presentation1 delivered in a local seminar. the name of the project—new perspectives—was inspired by a combination of the idea that had been triggered by students’ request, and later based on the classroom design and teaching approach envisioned. the classes started after winter break of 2014 and had a total of 30 students enrolled, both 6th and 7th graders. the extra class activity was developed for 15 weeks, in a 1 hour, 15 min period, both for the morning and afternoon students. although not all of them attended all classes, 24 students were regular attendees. considering that it was the students’ initiative, the whole project was based on their cooperation. students who had parents’ authorization to be at school in the opposite school shift were invited to help organize the classroom by displaying posters and maps and by doing some cleaning in what would become the classroom. that gave the group a sense of belonging, which was already part of the “new perspective” they could foresee from manipulating english books, dictionaries, and the maps and posters, for example. the chance to be around those students in a context apart from the regular classroom hours was also an opportunity to learn more about their interests and to become closer to them. as the project was offered to a 1 http://prezi.com/kr1yw98ssvwy/?utm_campaign=share&utm_ medium=copy&rc=ex0share (in portuguese). universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras174 oss morning group and to an afternoon group, it was also part of the learning to give/take improvements in the room that would be shared by the two different groups as well as to respect each other’s contributions. the final design of the classroom counted three chalkboards—one on each wall, except on the one where the door was; desks—these were displayed in groups of four; posters and maps—these were always available to be explored at any time a topic so required—books and dictionaries—these were displayed on desks against the walls and free to be used anytime; and there was also a reading corner furnished with a rug and pillows. different from the regular classes, the view behind the new perspectives was to have students experience alternative english learning ideas that came from their needs and suggestions. working in groups on a regular basis—instead of sitting in lines and rows—was a first move toward the new experience of attending “an english course,” as students called it. in the new perspectives classes, students did not have fixed places, which allowed them to have a different viewpoint in each class. sitting in different places and working with different groups was also consistent with the teaching approach and the classroom dynamics i proposed. the three chalkboards were used during the classes and the visual references were always available, even after the explanations were finished. in order to follow the classes, students had to turn toward the board that was being used and sometimes change places, reinforcing the new perspectives concept. a syllabus was developed based on an interdisciplinary fashion and the topics were developed from the idea of having students become members of an english club, where everyone could suggest new themes based on their interests. in order to do so, the first class was devised after the processing of a form that students filled in with personal data and interests. these topics were explored during the first classes, and from then on other themes were explored such as celebrations, school subjects, family relations, likes/dislikes, which led to vocabulary on culturally motivated themes (after halloween and thanksgiving, for instance), food, sports, school objects, and leisure, among others. the final balance of the new perspectives project was considered positive, particularly due to the feedback that students provided and because the objectives initially proposed were met. moreover, it is my understanding that developing strategies to learn about socially relevant issues by relying on students’ genuine interests and promoting citizenship by welcoming what they value in school should be included in the syllabus of slte programs. learning to read: a collaborative endeavor my main objective with this teaching project was to promote students’ autonomy and decision making through an alternative approach to elt for 9th graders. my linguistic goal was to instruct my learners to develop reading strategies that could guide them through a process of getting acquainted with basic vocabulary, sentence structure, and reading comprehension. outcomes suggest that they benefited from the approach, which encouraged them not only to develop their study skills but also to take an active part in organizing the syllabus, contributing to a research report, and helping weaker classmates, among other collaborative tasks. the project was developed during the school year of 2015, and in the following year it was granted an iatefl research sig scholarship.2 particularly important for the project is the fact that the school where it was developed is located in a socially vulnerable part of the city, where students are exposed to urban violence, drug dealing, and segregation of many sorts. the motivation to learn english in such neighborhoods is usually very low, considering the school demands that students have to deal with, their everyday lives, and the practical 2 http://resig.weebly.com/scholarship-winners-gallery.html 175profile: issues teach. prof. dev., vol. 20 no. 1, jan-jun, 2018. issn 1657-0790 (printed) 2256-5760 (online). bogotá, colombia. pages 167-178 the relevance of teachers' practical knowledge in the development of teacher education programs purposes that are usually associated with the learning of another language, among others. the idea of proposing a collaborative endeavor came from the need to make learning english a meaningful task to these learners. on the very first day of school, the presentation of the year’s program was made on a dual basis so students could either choose to work with the book and follow its units or engage in a project where they would have to read the material that had been previously selected. in order to have students feel that they were really taking part in their learning, the units of the book were displayed so they would have their choices grounded on some reliable information. students were familiar with the book series, so they were introduced to the topics that would be addressed throughout the year. the second option was the project, which was also presented through topics and described as an opportunity that they would have to help build content based on graded readings. in order to have a comparable prospect to the first alternative, the proposal was presented departing from topics as well: a place to live and environmental issues. in both topics, the goal was to have students engage in themes that would meet their curiosities and/or that would be close to their interests. a place to live included reading material about countries like australia and new zealand, the united states and ireland, which are countries that in a way or another share similar aspects to brazilian people’s features (e.g., irish happiness), historical aspects (e.g., australian colonization), and some familiarity with its culture (e.g., american songs, films, etc.). for the topic environmental issues, the reading material was about pollution and recycling. these two subtopics/ reading materials were chosen because the school is located near a river which is prone to pollution matters. not only that, but there are many recycling sites in this city area, where some parents and even some of the students work. students chose the second option, environmental issues, under a democratic and justifiable poll. the ones who did not vote for the project were encouraged to respect the majority’s decision, which in fact led to a good critical balance to be managed throughout the process. in the first term, besides the presentation and agreement on topics, some language reviews on sentence structure, verb tenses, word formation, dictionary work, vocabulary development, and so on, were emphasized based on the readings. during the second term, learners interacted with different types of readings: films, documentaries, news, magazines, and so forth were introduced and explored in this period. in the last term, actual reading comprehension with technological support was implemented. all classes of this term took place in the school lab, where students read, took quizzes, worked on their individual reading comprehension activities, learned about vocabulary development/translation apps, and collaborated with their classmates. at the end of the school year, the 29 students (16 from the morning class and 13 from the afternoon class) were requested to give feedback on the experience. according to the respondents (a total of 21), it was considered important to help decide which topics should be approached throughout the school year (20/21). they also considered that reading was a more interesting way of learning english at school than learning it in a traditional way (17/21). nonetheless, some of the learners considered that studying english with the support of regular english manuals would have been their preference (7/21). based on what i have learned from the students who adopted this project, i can assert that developing alternative approaches to elt for basic education is one of the greatest challenges that practitioners are likely to face these days. it is my contention that the personal practical knowledge developed in circumstances such as these should be encouraged and shared in slte programs, as i articulate in the following section. universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras176 oss reflective thoughts the spirit of the words shared in this manuscript is based on lived experiences and on the belief that practitioners’ personal practical knowledge cannot be left aside when developing teacher education programs. slte programs, in particular, are likely to benefit greatly from practitioners’ expertise, especially when regarding contemporary student bodies and the reasons why their idiosyncrasies should be explored. having such understandings in mind, one is likely to see the opening of new possibilities not only in the field of teaching and its various derivations, including elt, but also in promoting studies that can enlighten teachers’ roles in a myriad of settings. disclosing what practitioners’ responsibilities are and bringing their personal practical knowledge on how to deal with adolescents in contexts such as the ones discussed in this paper can be supportive to teacher educators, who would have real study cases to refer to and real practitioners to contact if/whenever needed. that would, in turn, bring the expanding community of language learners, pre-service teachers, teacher educators, and, ideally, policymakers together, aiming at more down-to-earth guidelines and ultimately more motivated learners in general. final considerations this manuscript has covered aspects related to slte from an english language teacher’s perspective. it has outlined how teacher education in general is likely to benefit from practitioners’ ppk, particularly in regard to developing strategies that can support teacher educators to approach contemporary student bodies. it is relevant to mention that although the perspective adopted is personal and local, there are many learning contexts that are likely to benefit from the ideas shared in this article. some aspects that would be worth considering from this viewpoint could be the following: 1. learning to teach may come from teaching itself, but teaching to learn demands background knowledge that not all teacher education programs provide learners with. 2. practitioners’ ppk may be regarded as craft knowledge just as long as there is room for teachers and pre-service teachers to actually publicize, share, store, verify, and improve it based on local demands. 3. knowing student bodies means being aware of the role of schooling in individuals’ lives and therefore promoting students’ learning from an informed and straightforward perspective. in order to do that, it is the practitioners’ duty to insist on the recognition of their expertise as well as to keep on studying and improving in the profession. the topics above aim at shedding light on some aspects that can only be seen through the lenses of an insider. although some may disagree, only those who are prone to daring moves shall grasp what it means not to take the paths already taken. that is probably what 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[teaching in public schools can work as long as...]. in d. c. de lima (org.), inglês em escolas públicas não funciona? uma questão, múltiplos olhares (pp. 171184). são paulo, br: parábola. oss, d. i. b. (2006). a motivação no ensino de inglês no ensino médio: um estudo descritivo [motivation in english teaching in secondary teaching: a descriptive study]. in m. s. lima & n. m. fontana (org.), língua estrangeira e segunda língua: estudos descritivos (pp. 241-286). caxias do sul, br: educs. oss, d. i. b. (2013). o profissional do ensino de língua inglesa e o seu objeto de ensino: ‘do you know what i mean?’ [the english language teaching professional and her/his teaching object: do you know what i mean?] (doctoral dissertation). universidade do vale do rio dos sinos, são leopoldo, brasil. universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras178 oss oss, d. i. b. (2015). new perspectives. revista bem legal, 5(1). retrieved from http://www.ufrgs.br/revistabemlegal/ edicoes-anteriores/vol5n1/new-perspectives-1. pescador, c. m. (2010). como aprendem os nativos digitais em suas interações em redes hipermidiáticas [how digital natives learn in their hypermedia interactions]. in e. m. soares & a. t. luchese (org.), educação, educações: história, filosofia e linguagens (pp. 79-95). caxias do sul, br: educs. telles, j. a. (2002). “é pesquisa, é? ah, não quero, não, bem!” sobre pesquisa acadêmica e sua relação com a prática do professor de línguas [is it research? oh, no, i don’t want it: about academic research and its relation to the practice of the language teacher]. linguagem & ensino, 5(2), 91-116. vieira-abrahão, m. h. (2012). a formação do professor de línguas de uma perspectiva sociocultural [language teacher education from a sociocultural perspective]. signum: estudos da linguagem, 15(2), 457-480. https:// doi.org/10.5433/2237-4876.2012v15n2p457. woods, d. (1996). teacher cognition in language teaching: beliefs, decision-making and classroom practice. cambridge, uk: cambridge university press. woods, d. (2009). review of the book teacher cognition and language education: research and practice, by s. borg. the canadian modern language review, 65(3), 511-513. zanette, c. s., rui, g., & pellin de bastiani, l. b. (2010). referenciais da educação da rede municipal de ensino de caxias do sul: planos de trabalho, língua estrangeira do 6º ao 9º ano [caxias do sul educational references: working plans for foreign languages 6th to 9th grades]. caxias do sul, br: secretaria municipal da educação. retrieved from http://educacao.caxias.rs.gov.br/mod/ resource/view.php?id=226. about the author débora izé balsemão oss holds a phd in applied linguistics (unisinos, brazil) and an ma in language acquisition (universidade federal do rio grande do sul, brazil). she is a public-sector english language teacher, where she has observed and independently researched the impact of language teacher education on teaching and learning in basic education. 143 https://doi.org/10.15446/profile.v20n2.63554 “claim – support – question” routine to foster coherence within interactive oral communication among efl students rutina “afirmar – respaldar – preguntar” para fomentar la coherencia en la interacción comunicativa oral en estudiantes de inglés como lengua extranjera fabiola arévalo balboa* universidad austral de chile, valdivia, chile mark briesmaster** universidad católica de temuco, temuco, chile this article reports on the results of an action research study that aimed to determine the effect of a thinking routine in the development of coherence in speaking interactions. the study was carried out with two groups of second year business students in an english as a foreign language program at a university in southern chile. a mixed methods approach was used to collect data before and after the intervention through questionnaires and preand post-tests. the findings suggest that the impact of the application of the routine was significant in promoting the speaking competence, especially in developing coherence within interactive communication. key words: claim support question routine, coherence, discourse competence, interactive communication. este artículo reporta los resultados de un estudio de investigación-acción que apuntaba a determinar el efecto de una rutina de pensamiento creativo en el desarrollo de la coherencia en las interacciones orales. el estudio fue conducido con dos grupos de estudiantes de segundo año de ingeniería comercial de una universidad del sur de chile. se usó un método mixto para analizar los datos obtenidos antes y después de la intervención a través de cuestionarios y pruebas. los resultados sugieren que el impacto de la aplicación de la rutina podría ser considerado significativo para promover la expresión oral, especialmente en el desarrollo de coherencia dentro de la interacción comunicativa. palabras clave: coherencia, competencia discursiva, comunicación interactiva, rutina afirmar respaldar preguntar. * e-mail: fabiola.arevalo@uach.cl ** e-mail: briesmaster@uct.cl how to cite this article (apa, 6th ed.): arévalo balboa, f., & briesmaster, m. (2018). “claim – support – question” routine to foster coherence within interactive oral communication among efl students. profile: issues in teachers’ professional development, 20(2), 143-160. https:// doi.org/10.15446/profile.v20n2.63554. this article was received on march 26, 2017 and accepted on march 13, 2018. this is an open access article distributed under the terms of the creative commons license attribution-noncommercial-noderivatives 4.0 international license. consultation is possible at https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/. profile: issues teach. prof. dev., vol. 20 no. 2, jul-dec, 2018. issn 1657-0790 (printed) 2256-5760 (online). bogotá, colombia. pages 143-160 universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras144 arévalo balboa & briesmaster introduction since the 1980s the paradigm has shifted in language teaching from a grammar-based approach to a more communicative one, thus students now are expected to use the language and communicate through it. however, there are two factors that affect the achievement of this goal in chile: one is that many students do not feel ready to produce the target language, which makes developing oral skills in students a challenge of major proportions. the other is that students are taught in an english as a foreign language (efl) context, which means they have few opportunities to access the target language outside the classroom (brown, 2001). this lack of exposure often causes students to become disengaged in classroom activities, especially those which require them to speak. in an attempt to reduce the impact of the aforementioned factors underlying students’ reluctance to speak in the classroom, the present research aims to investigate how the explicit teaching of the thinking routine claim, support, question (csq), developed by richhart (2002) and implemented by casamassima and insua (2015), could foster student coherence within interactive speaking. therefore, this study hopes to shed some light on speaking, coherence, and interactive communication, how they relate to each other, and on the impact these correlations may ultimately have on students. literature review as language represents the most basic form of human communication (lazaraton, 2001), it is not surprising to find that there are many english courses whose main objective is for students to achieve communicative competence. in fact, the role of foreign language teaching is “to extend the range of communication situations in which the learner can perform with focus on meaning” (littlewood, 1981, p. 89). thereby the teaching of english is associated with the learners’ ability to communicate in the target language. when students fail to fulfill the given tasks, they are judged to be lazy or reluctant to speak (tsiplakides & keramida, 2009); nevertheless, students’ low participation might not be due to a lack of motivation but to other factors, as the inability to take part in communicative tasks (gaudart, 1992). littlewood (2004), for example, attributes the problem to factors such as tiredness, fear of being wrong, lack of interest in the class, lack of knowledge in the subject, shyness, and insufficient time to formulate ideas. based on these data, teachers must be able to identify which of the aforementioned factors justify students’ reluctance to engage in speaking activities before labeling them as lazy or careless students. interactive speaking within the speaking skill, interactive speaking belongs to one of the four types of speaking, proposed by brown and abeywickrama (2010), which require at least two interlocutors to discuss a given topic by taking turns to express their ideas. according to them, there are two purposes for maintaining interactive speaking: (a) transactional (when the speakers use language for specific information exchange), and (b) interpersonal (when the speakers use language to maintain social interaction). communicative language teaching (clt) has as its primary objective interactive speaking; a goal where the nature of communication is collaborative and shaped by the interaction of its participants (savignon, 2001). canale and swain (1980) claim that “the primary objective of a communication oriented second language programme must be to provide the learners with the information, practice, and much of the experience required to meet their communicative needs in the second language” (p. 28). consequently, if teachers want their students to interact with their peers using the target language, first they will need to equip them with the necessary tools and allow them to experiment with the language; otherwise it would be inconsistent to provide the students with speaking practice at the 145 “claim – support – question” routine to foster coherence within interactive oral communication... profile: issues teach. prof. dev., vol. 20 no. 2, jul-dec, 2018. issn 1657-0790 (printed) 2256-5760 (online). bogotá, colombia. pages 143-160 intensive level—for example—and then to evaluate them in interactive speaking. giving students the opportunity to interact is highly beneficial because it brings the communicative task closer to the type of situation that students may encounter in the real world (littlewood, 1981), which is likely to keep the students on task for longer periods. along with this, interaction, which drives negotiation, also facilitates learning as learners’ attention is drawn to the linguistic forms that need to be improved (gass, 1997). discourse competence the fact that communicative competence is a complex construct that goes beyond the mastering of grammatical rules and allows the appropriate use of language in different communicative situations cannot be ignored (hymes, 1972). it is more than merely giving students a topic to discuss (shumin, 2002) and to achieve this competence “a number of processes and factors work together, whose importance may vary dependent on the particular communicative situation involved” (rickheit, strohner, & vorwerg, 2008, p. 46). canale and swain (1980) and canale (1983) propose that being able to communicate requires the management of four sub-competences, these are: grammatical competence (knowing the rules of language functioning), sociolinguistic competence (awareness of meaning in varied social contexts), strategic competence (how to overcome communicative breakdowns by using compensatory strategies), and discourse competence (how language is organized and put together to convey meaning). discourse competence deals with how words, phrases, and sentences are put together to convey meaningful language stretches (shumin, 2002). at this point it is important to mention that although in discourse analysis research the term discourse is used to refer to either spoken or written stretches of language, for the purposes of this study the concepts of discourse and discourse competence will be used to refer to spoken language. bygate (2001) defines the complexity of spoken discourse and states that the teaching of the speaking skill rarely focuses on the production of spoken discourse. coherence within the discourse competence and along with cohesion—how words and phrases make sense at sentence level (min, n.d.)—the concept of coherence plays an important role after decades of being dismissed by linguists, and emerges as “a key concept, perhaps even the key concept, in discourse . . . analysis” (bublitz, 1999, p. 1). however, some authors (bublitz, 1989, dontcheva-navratilova & povolná, 2009, renkema, 2004, tanskanen, 2006, wang & guo, 2014) agree that coherence is a difficult concept to define and there is no general agreement yet on a clear definition, although it seems to be connected to how the listener relates the discourse to his or her knowledge. thus, what may be coherent for some may not be for others. but “there is an attempt to reach a more user—and context—oriented interpretive understanding which is more interactively negotiated and is less dependent on the language . . . itself ” (bublitz, 1999, pp. 1-2), especially considering that coherence relationships are sufficient for successful discourse comprehension (blakemore, 2001). this study will adhere to the conception of coherence as that which makes discourse “hang together” in a meaningful way regarding a particular topic. since coherence is pursued to achieve communicative competence as the ultimate goal, it is not surprising that geluykens (1999) argues that it takes two to be coherent, as in this interaction “[at least] two participants attempt to come to some agreement on topical coherence by negotiating about it” (p. 35). developing coherence in speaking is a complex and demanding task. therefore, the routine which will be explained next is an attempt to contribute to students’ development of speaking coherence in interactive speaking. universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras146 arévalo balboa & briesmaster claim, support, question routine csq is a thinking routine proposed by ritchhart (2002) and was developed along with other thinking routines as part of the visible thinking project within the project zero at harvard university. ritchhart, palmer, church, and tishman (2006) explain that csq is a subcategory that belongs to the learning routines, as “it provides a recognizable structure for students to work within” (p. 6); as well as to the discourse routines, because it “structures the discussion and sharing of students’ learning” (p. 6), not in terms of grammar, but by providing a clear organization that makes the idea hang together. this routine was originally part of a project dedicated to promoting critical thinking among students in art classes and the like, and it attempts to make the students’ thoughts visible by means of verbalizing them (ritchhart & perkins, 2008). thus, because of its characteristics and as suggested in casamassima and insua’s study (2015), the routine attempts to serve the purpose of helping efl students to organize their thoughts in a given situation. they can have discussions, for example, where they “interact with each other to make a decision or solve a problem” (casamassima & insua, 2015, p. 24). the routine consists of three steps: 1. claim: students make a statement about a given topic. 2. support: students provide information to defend their claim. this can be statistical information or even an example to give evidence. 3. question: students formulate a question related to their claim to pass the speaking turn to their classmate. by using csq, it is possible for learners to negotiate meaning and build coherence while developing topical organization (geluykens, 1999). due to the aforementioned characteristics, the routine allows students to follow each step, while using their current level of linguistic competence; which is only the means to express their thoughts about a particular topic. the routine encourages students to provide a complex answer that goes beyond the “just because” phrase. furthermore, as this routine encourages students to reason with evidence, it also enables the teacher to have an idea of how students form an opinion related to certain topics. in other words, the routine attempts to show how the thinking process becomes visible. this study argues that the csq routine could help students develop coherence as they can follow a recognizable structure to express their thoughts within an interactive speaking situation. method the current study falls under the category of action research, which is done by teachers who seek to evaluate and improve an aspect of their teaching by generating a solution for a practical problem (parsons & brown, 2002). in order to answer the research question that drove this action research: “how does the csq routine influence the development of coherence within speaking interaction in efl learners?” a mixed methods approach was used mainly for two reasons: (a) its dual nature that enables the statistical analysis of the quantitative data and the interpretation of qualitative data, and (b) the triangulation of the data collected that allows a richer insight into the issues of the study (wiśniewska, 2011). as an attempt to improve the coherence of students in oral performance, this action research sought to determine the effects of the csq routine in the development of coherence in speaking interactions among efl students. the implementation of the study consisted of three stages: first a stage to gather information about the students’ initial level of english and perceptions on speaking coherence in both the control group (cg) and the experimental group (eg). in the second stage a routine to enhance coherence in speaking was presented only to the eg, and in the third stage, more information was gathered to measure the impact of the routine on the students (eg only) and any possible changes in their perceptions towards speaking (in both cg and eg). 147 “claim – support – question” routine to foster coherence within interactive oral communication... profile: issues teach. prof. dev., vol. 20 no. 2, jul-dec, 2018. issn 1657-0790 (printed) 2256-5760 (online). bogotá, colombia. pages 143-160 context and participants the study was carried out with second year undergraduate business students—aged 19 to 21—and who were taking the english iii course. their curricular plan includes five english classes over the course of the program, whose main objective is to prepare them to communicate in the target language. consequently, the courses are based mainly on the communicative approach mixed, to a lesser degree, with a grammar approach. initially the study included two groups of 20 students each that were assigned to each group randomly by the university platform; but, the number of participants decreased due to the fact that some students were exempted from the course, and others dropped it. in the end the study was carried out with the participation of 34 students, 16 in the cg and 18 in the eg. the variation on the number of participants in the display of results can be explained by the absence of some students on the days that the tests or questionnaires were applied. in the cg, all the students answered the questionnaires, but only 14 of them took the tests; while in the eg, 16 students answered the questionnaires and all of them took the tests. all the participants took a placement test that indicated they were between a2 and b1 level of the common european framework of reference for languages (cefr) (council of europe, 2001). based on the results obtained in the pretest, the highest achievement group was chosen as the cg. therefore, the lower achievement group was chosen to be the eg, as it was thought that they would benefit more and eventually bridge their gap in levels after the intervention. the 34 students willingly accepted to take part in the investigation by signing a consent letter that thoroughly explained the characteristics of the study and what was expected from them. it was requested by the business school administration that all the participants had to receive the same instruction in order to authorize the investigation, and the consent form had to be sent to the school director for approval. afterwards, all the students signed the same consent form, which thoroughly explained the characteristics of the study and what was expected from them; it also mentioned the teaching of the csq routine. at this point, it is crucial to clarify that the cg did not receive instruction on the routine until all the data presented in this article were collected. instruments questionnaires a pre-questionnaire (see appendix a), partially based on horwitz, horwitz, and cope’s (1986) anxiety questionnaire, was applied at the beginning of the study to both groups. even if this study does not focus on anxiety, a modified version of this questionnaire was thought to be useful as it can provide an initial background of students’ speaking perceptions, their own speaking performance appraisal, the factors they relate to their performance, and their use of organizational strategies for speech production. the 16 questions were classified into three variables: perception (students’ perception of their own speaking performance), coherence (students’ perception of their organization of ideas in speech), and motivation (students’ willingness to learn techniques to improve the aspects mentioned in the previous variables). a very similar questionnaire was applied at the end of the intervention, but this time an open-ended question was added to the eg to measure the understanding and use of the technique after the intervention. students had the opportunity to answer either in english or spanish, so as not to restrict their opinion because of language limitations (see appendixes a, b, and c). preand post-test the speaking part of the preliminary english test (pet) was administered to the students before and after the implementation of the routine. the fact that most of the participants were under the level that this test focuses on (b1) was not an impediment to choose it because the linguistic competence, which students are still developing, universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras148 arévalo balboa & briesmaster is only one of the four criteria that the test assesses. moreover, linguistic competence “is not sufficient on its own to account for how language is used as a means of communication” (littlewood, 1981, p. 1). the test assessed the students’ performance under four criteria (grammar and vocabulary, discourse management, pronunciation, and interactive communication) that demand students work independently and collaboratively in order to solve the given tasks. this test was selected because it was more challenging for the students as it takes them a step beyond their current level of proficiency (krashen, 1982); but mainly because it measures discourse management and interactive communication. although the other aforementioned criteria were also analyzed, the focus of the study was on those two parameters. pedagogical intervention in the first stage of the implementation, the pre-test and the questionnaire were applied to all the participants in order to obtain information concerning the students’ initial english level and management of coherence techniques during speaking. those instruments detected deficiencies in the areas mentioned. in the second stage, the csq routine was explicitly taught only to the students in the eg. prior to the instruction, two students were given a situation from the current unit of their course book; they were shown pictures of four people and asked to choose one of them to advertise a new chocolate bar. this is the transcription of the dialogue: student a: i think jake is a good option because i think he has a personality and as the chocolate, he has dark hair. student b: emm i think zoe is a good candidate because is a girl emm and she has a emm how do you say sonrisa? emm smile and emm and i don’t know her cv. student a: emm i think both are good candidates. and i think that the candidate lily is emm like emm too old, or for another anounce anouncement emm but i think she is not for the emm advertise of a chocolate bar. emm what do you think about jake? student b: well, i thought pete (he laughs) student a: i think he is kind, but the people don’t think the personality or how very good he is how he is in his…emm the people only want to see a good appearance and that’s why emm i think jake and zoe are the best options. student b: yes. then their classmates provided feedback on the performance and mentioned that it was a good conversation but realized that they did not make a decision. after that, the csq routine was explicitly taught to the students and they were told that it could be used every time they were asked to discuss or make a decision, in pairs or groups, about any topic. they had to follow three steps: make a point (claim); defend that point by providing reasons, examples, or extra information (support); and pass the speaking turn to a classmate by formulating a question about the topic (question). then, the other student would follow the same steps and so forth, until they reached a conclusion or agreement. after the explanation of the routine the students were given the same situation again, this time two different students solved the situation by following the steps of the new routine. the students were advised to clap, as an alternative to using a ball as in casamassima and insua’s intervention (2015), after each step of the routine in order to make them more aware of the process and also to help them to mechanize the routine. the following is the transcription of the dialogue: student a: i think it should be jake (clap) because he has a good personality and i think people will like him (clap). i don’t know if you agree with me. student b: emm i disagree with you. emm we should pick lili (clap) because she is older than the other people and, but she looks healthy. so, the people will think that the chocolate is healthy (clap). what do you think about that? student a: i don’t agree with you (clap) because she emm, i don’t think people would like her because she is not emm, like a charismatic person (clap). what do you think? 149 “claim – support – question” routine to foster coherence within interactive oral communication... profile: issues teach. prof. dev., vol. 20 no. 2, jul-dec, 2018. issn 1657-0790 (printed) 2256-5760 (online). bogotá, colombia. pages 143-160 student b: emm, it’s ok. emm ok, so in that case i guess we should take pete (clap) because he looks very happy and i don’t know, he emm he has the flow (he laughs). are you agree with that? student a: yeah, i think you’re right because he looks really funny and we can work with that. including the session just described, the csq routine was used in eight sessions, where students had the opportunity to acquaint themselves with it while engaging in interactive speaking tasks related to the contents of the course. it also included a written task (see appendix d) where the students had to elaborate on a given topic with the purpose of helping the visual students to make better sense of the routine (oxford, 2001). it is important to mention that in order to insert 45 minutes of speaking tasks, it was necessary to entrust the students with the amount of independent work established in the syllabus of the course. in that sense, a type of flipped classroom was conducted where students had to autonomously study the material uploaded to the platform (mainly grammar points and vocabulary) in order to take part in the activities prepared for the class period. in the last stage of the implementation, data were collected again through the post questionnaire and test. results this study reports on the students’ perceptions and performance on speaking. the data collected from the questionnaires and tests were entered into the spss 20.0 software, and the data collected from the open question were codified numerically. the results obtained by the control and experimental group, in both preand post-tests and questionnaires, were compared and the level of improvement was measured. then, these results were triangulated with the open-ended answers to determine if there was any significant variation in perception towards the speaking ability before and after the study that could be attributed to the use of the routine taught to the eg during the intervention. questionnaires regarding students’ perceptions towards speaking, table 1 shows that both groups initially had 3.09 in perception, but in terms of coherence and motivation the eg was superior by 2.94 over 2.50 and 4.13 over 3.81 respectively. as shown in figure 1, in the final post questionnaire both groups improved their perception (cg = 0.21 [4%], eg = 0.54 [11%]) and coherence (cg = 0.6 [12%], eg = 0.28 [6%]); while the motivation of the cg decreased by 0.14 (3%), it increased by 0.18 (4%) in the cg. despite the motivation drop in the cg, both groups witnessed an increase in the total perception (cg = 0.22 [4%], eg = 0.33 [7%]). if the fourth variable (technique) added to the post questionnaire of the eg is considered—which reveals that 88% of the students understood the routine and found it useful—the total perception increases by 0.5 (9%). table 1. mean perceptions in speaking questionnaire criteria control group (n = 16) experimental group (n = 16) pre-q post-q progress pre-q post-q progress technique 4.38 perception 3.09 3.30 0.21 3.09 3.63 0.54 coherence 2.50 3.10 0.6 2.94 3.22 0.28 motivation 3.81 3.67 -0.14 4.13 4.31 0.18 total 3.13 3.35 0.22 3.38 *3.72 0.33 *the new variable was not considered here in order not to alter the comparison with the cg. universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras150 arévalo balboa & briesmaster figure 1. perceptions towards speaking post-intervention 7% 4% 4% -3% 6% 12% 11% 4% total motivation coherence perception eg cg table 2. mean performance scores in pet oral exam criteria control group (n = 14) experimental group (n = 18) pre-test post-test progress pre-test post-test progress grammar and vocabulary 3.64 3.79 0.15 2.94 3.44 0.5 discourse management 3.29 3.71 0.42 2.83 3.56 0.73 pronunciation 4.57 4.43 -0.14 4.33 4.44 0.11 interactive communication 3.21 3.57 0.36 2.56 3.89 1.33 total 3.68 3.88 0.2 3.17 3.83 0.66 figure 2. students’ progress on test scores 13% 4% 27% 7% 2% -3% 3% 9% 14% 10% total gramar & vocabulary discourse management pronunciation interactive communication eg cg tests table 2 shows the mean scores obtained by both groups in the pet preand post-tests, whereas figure 2 illustrates the percentage of improvement. both groups improved in grammar and vocabulary (cg = 0.15 [3%], eg = 0.5 [10%]), discourse management (cg = 0.42 [9%], eg = 0.73 [14%]), and interactive communication (cg = 0.36 [7%], eg = 1.33 [27%]); meanwhile the pronunciation of the cg decreased by 0.14 (3%), and increased by 0.11 (2%) in the eg. in the end, the post test revealed that both groups had an improvement in the overall speaking performance (cg = 0.2 [4%], eg = 0.66 [13%]). 151 “claim – support – question” routine to foster coherence within interactive oral communication... profile: issues teach. prof. dev., vol. 20 no. 2, jul-dec, 2018. issn 1657-0790 (printed) 2256-5760 (online). bogotá, colombia. pages 143-160 in addition, figure 3 provides detailed information on the level of achievement obtained by the students in the post-test regarding the two criteria that are crucial to this study: discourse management (dm) and interactive communication (ic), it also includes the total score. data revealed that out of 14 students in the cg, six (43%) of them increased their scores in dm, and six (43%) maintained them. whereas in ic five students (36%) increased their scores, 8 (57%) maintained them, and only one (7%) scored lower. finally, in the total score, six students (43%) increased their total scores, 6 (43%) maintained them, and only two lowered their scores. on the other hand, out of 18 students in the eg, nine students (50%) increased their scores in dm, and the other half maintained them. regarding ic, 16 students (89%) increased their scores, and two (11%) maintained them. finally, 100% of the students increased their total scores in the post-test. figure 3. students’ achievement in post-test control group experimental group discourse management total decreased remained constant increased interactive communication discourse management totalinteractive communication 43% 36% 57% 57% 7% 14% 43% 43% 100% 89% 11% 50% 50% open-ended response finally, the answers provided by the students to the open-ended question included at the end of the post questionnaire of the eg only revealed that the 16 students (100%) that answered the questionnaire found the routine useful (see appendix e). as shown in figure 4, apart from finding the routine useful to organize their ideas while speaking, the students also reported other issues. two of them (12.5%) remarked that the routine also helped them to interact with their peers; four of them (31.25%) expressed that they would like to keep practising the routine to get better at it, four of them (25%) claimed they needed more vocabulary to complement the use of the routine, and one (6.25%) said that despite the usefulness of the routine s/he still did not feel prepared to speak in the target language or initiate a conversation. figure 4. students’ opinion on the csq routine 100% 31,25% 25% 12,50% 6,25% useful needed more practice needed more vocabulary helped interaction did not feel ready to speak discussion the findings seem to prove that the csq routine played an important role in the overall performance of the students in the eg, particularly in the development of coherence and interactive communication, which appears to be unavoidable when it comes to spoken discourse (bublitz, 1999). the fact that the students learned to base their opinion on what their interlocutors had previously said helped their conversations to run universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras152 arévalo balboa & briesmaster smoothly which, consequently, contributed to the improvement of coherence. recalling the first dialogue presented in the pedagogical intervention, we had that when student a asked b what he thought about jake, student b answered “i thought pete”. if the previous example is compared with the dialogue that took place immediately after the routine had been presented, it can be seen that the latter interaction made more sense than the former, as the ideas were connected, and the students were trying to come to an agreement. student a: personally, i think the best form for make new friends in the other city is go to different parties because it is a place and it is a situation very sociable and in this moment emm you can dance with different people and you can talk about different situations of the life. do you agree with me? student b: yes, i agree with you because i think the parties is a emm, is the best way because in the library is less probably than he finds friends there. emm and i think that he could also play soccer because he can make a lot of friends there. i think that those two options are good. do you agree with me? student a: i agree with you because this partner is a man and he can play football with other boys. but this situation can be emm they fight. but it is very interesting because is a sport that the people can be together. i don’t know if you agree with me. student b: yes, i think that those two options are the right ones for this guy. regarding the linguistic competence, the researchers expected the students to claim that they needed to improve their grammar in order to have a better command of the routine, but surprisingly none of the students mentioned it. this finding can be supported by the information presented in the literature review, which argues that insufficient mastering of structure can be compensated by effective spoken discourse. this idea is reinforced by littlewood (1981) who contends that “this may entail sacrificing grammatical accuracy in favor of immediate communicative ‘effectiveness’” (p. 4). aditionally, the students in the eg mentioned factors such as lack of time to practice and lack of vocabulary to convey their message as the main reasons that prevented them from fully using the routine. the fact that the students in the eg needed the teaching and application of a different approach to be able to even out their performance of the cg’s may be an indication of learning issues that can apparently be solved by using different learning strategies or techniques that can vary depending on the chracteristics of the learners’ needs (oxford, 2001). it is important to point out that even though the cg made less progress than the eg in the total score, it still obtained the highest score just as it did in the pre-test. this finding demands further reflection, as it may account for the effectiveness of the traditional methodology used in the english courses and/or the high average level of achievement of the participants— which might lead to the assumption that regardless of the method used, they would naturally progress. the latter leads to the urgent need for the researchers to try alternative teaching methods that would eventually boost the potential of high-achieving students, while helping low-achieving students to level up. to try and understand the decrease in motivation of the cg revealed in the post-questionnaire, it is important to remember that when the students signed the consent letter, they had to be told that a routine would be taught and presumably as they did not perceive any change in methodology during the eight sessions, their motivation decreased. although motivation is not the main focus of this study, it must be borne in mind that it is the engine that facilitates foreign language instruction and also the fuel that enables students to undergo the process. if it is not present, even the highest achieving students can be negatively impacted (guilloteaux & dörnyei, 2008). conclusion as mentioned at the beginning of this article, this study aimed to determine the effects of the csq routine in the development of coherence in interactive 153 “claim – support – question” routine to foster coherence within interactive oral communication... profile: issues teach. prof. dev., vol. 20 no. 2, jul-dec, 2018. issn 1657-0790 (printed) 2256-5760 (online). bogotá, colombia. pages 143-160 communication. it can be concluded that the speaking competence has great value in efl instruction. also, it was stated that discourse competence is a complex construct, and that coherence is part of it; this is naturally interwoven with interactive communication as a speaker’s message can only convey its meaning when the speaker’s interlocutor understands and validates that message (bublitz, 1999; edmondson, 1981; geluykens, 1999). the technique applied to the eg appeared to be useful as it promoted the development of both coherence and interaction. thus, it can be concluded that the application of the csq routine benefited the overall speaking performance of the students in the eg, as they improved the results obtained both in the questionnaire and test applied before the intervention; and above all, it benefited them by bridging the gap with the students in the cg. notwithstanding, the cg also presented an improvement in relation to their initial results on the questionnaire and test, which may indicate that the methodology regularly used to teach english at the university is effective. the study potentially opens a new path for future research that could help to determine the relevance of other areas that also play a role in spoken discourse, such as vocabulary, cohesive devices, exposure, and readiness to communicate in the target language. references blakemore, d. 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(2006). collaborating towards coherence: lexical cohesion in english discourse. amsterdam, nl: john benjamins. https://doi.org/10.1075/pbns.146. tsiplakides, i., & keramida, a. (2009). helping students overcome foreign language speaking anxiety in the english classroom: theoretical issues and practical recommendations. international education studies, 2(4), 39-44. https://doi.org/10.5539/ies.v2n4p39. wang, y., & guo, m. (2014). a short analysis of discourse coherence. journal of language teaching and research, 5(2), 460-465. http://doi.org/10.4304/jltr.5.2.460-465. wiśniewska, d. (2011). mixed methods and action research: similar or different? glottodidactica, 37, 59-72. retrieved from https://repozytorium.amu.edu.pl/ bitstream/10593/1693/1/wisniewska.pdf. 155 “claim – support – question” routine to foster coherence within interactive oral communication... profile: issues teach. prof. dev., vol. 20 no. 2, jul-dec, 2018. issn 1657-0790 (printed) 2256-5760 (online). bogotá, colombia. pages 143-160 about the authors fabiola arévalo balboa holds a ba in english teaching (universidad austral de chile) and an ma in teaching english as a foreign language (universidad católica de temuco, chile). currently she works as an efl teacher at centro de idiomas, universidad austral de chile. her research interests are communicative language teaching and research in education. mark briesmaster has been a language teacher for the past 32 years and holds a doctorate in intercultural education (biola university, usa). he is currently the director of the ma tefl program at the universidad católica de temuco (chile). his research interests include learner anxiety, learning styles, teacher roles and autonomy. universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras156 arévalo balboa & briesmaster appendix a: questionnaire: perceptions in speaking – cg / eg gender: age: date: please select the number that represents how you feel about speaking in the english class: 1 = strongly agree, 2 = agree, 3 = neutral, 4 = disagree, 5 = strongly disagree. statement 1 2 3 4 5 1. i always feel prepared to speak in class. 2. i always prepare when i have a speaking task. 3. i have plenty of opportunities to practice speaking before tests. 4. my teacher provides me with everything i need to do well on speaking tasks. 5. i feel confident answering questions i have not prepared in advance. 6. i always organize my ideas while speaking. 7. i am always satisfied with my oral performance and it reflects what i know. 8. speaking in english is very difficult for me. 9. it is difficult for me to organize my ideas. 10. i prefer not to speak because i do not know how to express my ideas. 11. i prefer not to join spontaneous conversation because i need to prepare in advance. 12. on english tests, i can get so nervous that i do not realize what i say. 13. i only focus on the message and express my ideas in a disorganized way. 14. i would like to learn some tips or techniques to organize my ideas better. 15. i would like to have more time to practice my english during the lessons. 16. i would like to prove that my english is better than what i show on oral tests. 157 “claim – support – question” routine to foster coherence within interactive oral communication... profile: issues teach. prof. dev., vol. 20 no. 2, jul-dec, 2018. issn 1657-0790 (printed) 2256-5760 (online). bogotá, colombia. pages 143-160 appendix b: questionnaire: perceptions in speaking – cg gender: age: date: please select the number that represents how you feel about speaking in the english class at this point of the semester: 1 = strongly agree, 2 = agree, 3 = neutral, 4 = disagree, 5 = strongly disagree. statement 1 2 3 4 5 1. now i feel better prepared to speak in class. 2. i always prepare when i have a speaking task. 3. i have had plenty of opportunities to practice speaking before the final tests. 4. my teacher has provided me with everything i need to do well on speaking tasks. 5. now i feel more confident answering questions i have not prepared in advance. 6. now i can better organize my ideas while speaking. 7. now i feel more satisfied with my oral performance. 8. speaking in english is still very difficult for me. 9. it is still difficult for me to organize my ideas. 10. i still prefer not to speak because i still do not know how to express my ideas. 11. i still prefer not to join spontaneous conversation because i need to prepare in advance. 12. i still get so nervous than i do not realize what i say. 13. i still only focus on the message and express my ideas in a disorganized way. 14. i still would like to learn some tips or techniques to better organize my ideas. 15. i still need more time to practice speaking during the lessons. 16. i still would like to prove that my english is better than what i show on oral tests. universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras158 arévalo balboa & briesmaster appendix c: questionnaire: perceptions in speaking – eg gender: age: date: section 1: please select the number that best represents how you feel regarding the “think – support – question” routine in relation to speaking in the english class: 1 = strongly agree, 2 = agree, 3 = neutral, 4 = disagree, 5 = strongly disagree. statement 1 2 3 4 5 1. i completely understood how to use the technique. 2. i found the technique very useful. 3. i had enough opportunities to practice the technique. 4. now i use the technique when i have to speak. 5. now i feel more prepared to speak in the class. 6. i always prepare when i have a speaking task. 7. i have had plenty of opportunities to practice speaking before the final tests. 8. my teacher has provided me with everything i need to do well on speaking tasks. 9. now i feel more confident answering questions i have not prepared in advance. 10. now i can better organize my ideas while speaking. 11. now i feel more satisfied with my oral performance. 12. speaking in english is still very difficult for me. 13. it is still difficult for me to organize my ideas. 14. i still prefer not to speak because i do not know how to express my ideas. 15. i still prefer not to join spontaneous conversation because i need to prepare in advance. 16. now i am more aware of what i say because i organize my ideas. 17. i only focus on the message and express my ideas in a disorganized way. 18. i still need more time to practice speaking during the lessons. 19. i would like to prove that my english is better than what i show on oral tests. 20. i would like to keep practicing the technique to get used to it. 21. i would like to learn more techniques to improve my speaking. section 2: please write your opinion about the “claim support – question” routine. was it useful? how? if it was not useful, please explain why. ___________________________________________________________________________ __________________________________________________________________________ 159 “claim – support – question” routine to foster coherence within interactive oral communication... profile: issues teach. prof. dev., vol. 20 no. 2, jul-dec, 2018. issn 1657-0790 (printed) 2256-5760 (online). bogotá, colombia. pages 143-160 appendix d: writing task name: ______________________________ date: ______________ instruction: develop the topic below in 150 200 words. make sure to include two verb tenses, infinitive of purpose, comparatives, adjectives, and frequency expressions. organizer: make a list of the things you want to include. my favorite season of the year claim support question teacher’s comments: ____________________________________________________________________________________ ____________________________________________________________________________________ ____________________________________________________________________________________ universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras160 arévalo balboa & briesmaster appendix e: responses to section 2 in the eg post-questionnaire student response 1 in my opinion it is a good routine because always is better to have an order of what you say. 2 in my opinion the routine is very useful in order to organize my ideas. 3 the routine is useful because i feel more prepared when i have to speak. thanks to it i can know what to say without thinking it too much. the only problem is that sometimes it’s difficult for me to create a question but i think with more practice the problem will be solved. 4* i think this routine is very useful but it needs to be complemented with more vocabulary. it helped me a lot to organize my ideas. 5* i think that this routine is very useful because it allows us to organize our ideas and so we can express ourselves better. however, personally i lack a lot of practice, and despite its being a good routine i still don’t feel prepared to speak in english or to start a conversation. 6* the routine has been of great help and i’ve been able to organize my ideas, although it doesn’t seem so. maybe when i use it i hesitate a bit, but it is because i lack vocabulary to be able to create a phrase. 7* the routine is really a useful tool with which we can express our ideas in english, since personally i have difficulty speaking in english and this facilitates the organization of ideas. besides, it allows us to speak with arguments. 8* the routine in my opinion is good and has helped me, but it is with the vocabulary where i fail and that is why i cannot communicate and say all i think. 9* i think that it is very functional, so that in this way i can organize my ideas in a clearer and more organized way. i can focus my attention on what an opinion and reality are; besides, it helps to structure the conversation. 10* i think the routine taught is of utmost importance because i can organize my ideas better. however, i personally have missed exactly those classes where this routine was particularly taught and enhanced. 11* this routine helped me a lot to express my ideas correctly; most of the time i had to reformulate my sentences. 12 in my opinion this routine is very useful because it helps us to organize our ideas. but when i have to talk, i forget the technique. maybe i need more practice. 13* i think the routine is very useful because it helps us to organize the ideas and to establish an order as to what we want to say. besides it is very good to talk to other people because there is interaction thanks to the question done at the end. 14 the routine is very useful. it helped me to organize my ideas. i think that now i can express in a better way what i want to say. 15 i think the routine is very useful and funny because it gives the opportunity to interact with the classmates and know their opinions. but i think we need more practice. 16* the routine has helped me to organize my ideas in a better way, i would like to have more instances to better develop this technique. *indicates the students’ responses that were translated into english. english language teachers’ oral corrective preferences and practices across proficiency groups 163profile: issues teach. prof. dev., vol. 22 no. 2, jul-dec, 2020. issn 1657-0790 (printed) 2256-5760 (online). bogotá, colombia. pages 163-177 https://doi.org/10.15446/profile.v22n2.82369 english language teachers’ oral corrective preferences and practices across proficiency groups preferencias y acciones correctivas de docentes de inglés entre grupos con competencias diferentes sajjad sepehrinia1 university of tehran, tehran, iran nahid fallah university of kharazmi, tehran, iran soad torfi islamic azad university, qazvin, iran studies on oral error correction in second language acquisition have been tilted towards cognitive aspects ignoring the affective and practical dimensions. this study attempted to fill this gap by investigating the role of students’ proficiency levels in five english language teachers’ corrective behavior. follow-up interviews were conducted with the observed teachers. the results showed that the teachers provided more corrections to less proficient learners though they preferred more correction for advanced learners and used mainly recast for both groups, avoiding explicit forms of correction. they were mainly concerned with the affective aspects of oral error correction and acted on their own value system and teaching experience. the findings carry important implications for teacher education programs and the studies in this regard. keywords: beliefs, emotional reactions, foreign language learning, oral corrective feedback, proficiency level los estudios sobre la retroalimentación oral correctiva en la adquisición de una segunda lengua se han concentrado en los aspectos cognitivos, en detrimento de las dimensiones afectiva y práctica. este estudio intenta llenar dicho vacío al explorar el papel que juega el nivel de competencia de los estudiantes en las prácticas correctivas de cinco docentes. se llevaron a cabo entrevistas de seguimiento con los docentes participantes. los resultados muestran que los profesores corrigieron más a los estudiantes menos avanzados, aunque prefirieron corregir a los más avanzados y evitar usar formas de corrección explícitas para ambos grupos. los docentes estaban mayormente preocupados por los aspectos afectivos de la retroalimentación oral y actuaron de acuerdo con su propio sistema de valores y experiencia. los resultados tienen importantes implicaciones para los programas de formación docente y para otros estudios similares. palabras clave: aprendizaje de lenguas extranjeras, creencias, nivel de competencia, reacción emocional, retroalimentación correctiva oral sajjad sepehrinia · email: ssepehrinia@ut.ac.ir nahid fallah  https://orcid.org/0000-0003-1941-3326 · email: n.fallah12@gmail.com soad torfi · email: soad.torfi@yahoo.com how to cite this article (apa, 7th ed.): sepehrinia, s., fallah, n., & torfi, s. (2020). english language teachers’ oral corrective preferences and practices across proficiency groups. profile: issues in teachers’ professional development, 22(2), 163–177. https://doi.org/10.15446/ profile.v22n2.82369 this article was received on september 25, 2019 and accepted on april 11, 2020. this is an open access article distributed under the terms of the creative commons license attribution-noncommercial-noderivatives 4.0 international license. consultation is possible at https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/ https://orcid.org/0000-0003-1941-3326 https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/ universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras164 sepehrinia, fallah, & torfi introduction second language acquisition researchers and practitioners agree that teachers’ corrective behavior should be informed by certain factors. for instance, yoshida (2008) found that teachers considered learners’ age as an important factor, and that they preferred to use recast to avoid embarrassing their adult students. kaivanpanah et al. (2012) found that most iranian english as a foreign language (efl) teachers did not favor peer feedback in the iranian context because, according to them, it created negative affective reactions, which, some have found (e.g., sheen, 2008; rassaei, 2013), is inhibitive to learners’ use of feedback. therefore, it seems that teachers’ decisions about correction of errors is informed by the factors that have been rarely addressed in empirical studies. in other words, researchers have been mainly preoccupied with cognitive and theoretical aspects of oral corrective feedback (ocf). furthermore, few studies have juxtaposed research findings with teachers’ beliefs and practices to find the areas of inconsistency. the present study is an attempt to shed light specifically on the role of one of the factors (i.e., learners’ proficiency level)—which is believed to influence learners’ ability to benefit from feedback—in teachers’ correction preferences. background the present study attempts to probe into teachers’ corrective behavior and examine the role of one of the factors believed to be influential in learners’ success in implementing correction to improve their interlanguage. considering the purpose of the study, this section presents a review of some studies that have examined teachers’ corrective practice and preferences. then, the gap existing in these studies, which the present study tries to fill, will be mentioned. teachers’ corrective preferences mackey et al. (2004) considered 18 experienced and inexperienced teachers’ use of incidental focus-onform techniques. each teacher taught for half an hour during which their behavior was examined. experienced teachers were found to use more preemptive focus on form, recasts, and explicit correction in comparison to the inexperienced teachers. using stimulated recall, polio et al. (2006) also examined the relationship between teaching experience and corrective behavior. after a two-way information exchange activity, the videotaped interaction was played to each native speaker teacher. each error and the teacher’s correction were marked as recast, negotiation, or ignore. the results showed that experienced teachers used more recasts (35% vs. 29%) but not more negotiations (9% vs. 11%). the difference was not significant, however. the cause of this small difference, they found, was that learners are likely to produce more language when talking with an experienced teacher because he or she uses more general statements and questions encouraging learners to speak. in another study, zyzik and polio (2008) examined the occurrence of incidental focus on form using observation, interview, and stimulated recall in the context of advanced-level literature classes. the results of their study were similar to those of mackey et al. (2004) in that teachers preferred to use recast for correcting their learners’ errors. their major reason was that it did not embarrass the learners. accordingly, explicit correction occurred only once because all the three observed teachers believed that it might cause embarrassment. authors speculated that other types of feedback that involve negotiation, in contrast to recast, might be more time-consuming. in a rather different study, lee (2013) examined both teachers’ and learners’ preferences for corrective feedback. he observed and analyzed the use of feedback in advanced conversation-based classes and compared students’ and teachers’ preferences. the participants included four native speaker teachers and 60 adult esl learners from different nationalities in the united states. after the fourth session, teachers and learners filled in 165profile: issues teach. prof. dev., vol. 22 no. 2, jul-dec, 2020. issn 1657-0790 (printed) 2256-5760 (online). bogotá, colombia. pages 163-177 english language teachers’ oral corrective preferences and practices across proficiency groups a questionnaire followed by interviews with 20 of the students. the results were almost similar to the previous studies; recast was the most commonly used type of feedback. there was a mismatch between teachers’ and learners’ preferences in this regard; teachers had a high preference for implicit feedback (recast) while students disliked it and preferred explicit forms of correction. mori (2011) examined the role of teachers’ beliefs in their correction in more detail by observing and interviewing two english language teachers in japan. one of the teachers used recast in 92% of the cases and the second teacher only in 5.7%. learners’ emotional reactions, instructional focus, time constraints, and the frequency of errors were the influential factors in the first teacher’s corrections; his major priority was to avoid hurting learners’ self-confidence and to help them take risks and contribute more to the classroom discussions, which made recast a good choice for him. the second teacher’s students, however, were not willing to express their beliefs because they were very afraid of making mistakes. the larger number of students (35) in comparison with the first class (18) caused further inhibition in the students. therefore, the teacher needed to “induce” or “coax” them to talk by “prompting” them to express themselves, and, via elicitation, to think of what structures, words, and idioms to use (14.3%). however, as the students were unwilling to risk talking and their proficiency level was quite low, the number of corrections involving the use of recast was limited (5.7%). in a more recent study, kamiya (2016) explored, via interviews and a single classroom observation, four native-speaking teachers’ stated beliefs and practices in providing ocf. the author also examined the role of experience in the correspondence between the teachers’ beliefs and actual corrective practices. the results showed that the teachers did not believe in the effectiveness of correction, particularly recast, which they considered as peripheral. they avoided explicit forms of correction in order to create a comfortable learning environment for the students. the teachers preferred recasts, instead, which are, according to the teachers, not humiliating. a comparison between three teachers’ practices and their views pointed to the existence of a correspondence between the two, particularly in the case of experienced teachers. roothooft (2014) included more teachers in his study and tried to compare their beliefs with their practice. he investigated 10 spanish teachers’ beliefs/ practices of corrective feedback through classroom observation and a following questionnaire for exploring their views. the findings from the study showed that although the teachers considered feedback to be important, they were not willing to interrupt their learners for correction and were concerned about the negative affective reactions that may develop following feedback. furthermore, the teachers were not aware of how much and even what types of feedback they wanted to provide. the results also attested to the mismatch between belief and practice. the results of a recent study by kartchava et al. (2018) were also indicative of a mismatch between teachers’ beliefs about correction and their corrective practices. they asked 10 teachers to complete a questionnaire based on theoretical and empirical findings in the literature related to the importance of providing feedback, students’ anxiety and motivation, interrupting the communicative flow, and the delay and extent of feedback. they also observed the teachers for one hour in an authentic language class with intermediate learners. the results revealed that the teachers made fewer corrections (only 17%) than they said they would (54% of the errors). recast was the most highly preferred and the most frequently used feedback type (66%) followed by explicit correction and prompts. furthermore, no interaction was found between type of error and the type of feedback the teachers preferred except in the case of plurals and questions for which the teachers preferred regular recast and isolated recast (recasting the erroneous part only), respectively. universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras166 sepehrinia, fallah, & torfi in a different study, roothooft and breeze (2016) also found clear mismatches, but this time between teachers’ and learners’ attitudes and preferences for correction. while the teachers believed errors should not be always corrected and showed a mixed attitude to immediate correction, the majority of their learners always expected to be corrected. the teachers believed correction may negatively influence learners’ selfconfidence and also their fluency and were less inclined to use explicit forms of correction to ensure positive emotions and a positive reaction to their corrections. their learners, in contrast, seemed to feel much more positive about explicit feedback forms. the focus of the study teacher cognition research and practice have witnessed fundamental changes over the years. the field has gradually become concerned with the nature of teacher learning and the factors contributing to teachers’ mentalities regarding various dimensions of teaching. along this line, borg (2003) reviewed research on teacher cognition and identified four factors feeding teacher cognition: previous learning, professional development initiatives, contextual factors, and experience. this line of inquiry, according to borg, has been concerned with the way teachers conceptualize their practice. in the field of error correction, teachers’ conceptualization of their practice has received less attention. this might lead to considerable gaps between what researchers recommend and what practitioners do. as an instance, there are certain contradictions between teachers’ practices and research findings. for example, teachers use recast although it does not produce much learning particularly for less proficient learners (see table 1). besides, proficiency level has been found to be related to learners’ preferences for feedback (brown, 2009; yang, 2016), but whether teachers differentiate between less and more proficient learners has not been touched upon. table 1. studies on the effect of learners’ language proficiency level and their use of correction study proficiency group result lin & hedgcock (1996) high and low • high-proficiency learners could notice and incorporate 42.8% to 100% of the metalinguistic feedback. • low-proficiency group used only a small proportion of the metalinguistic cues. philp (2003) high, intermediate, and low • high and intermediate groups recalled over 70% of the recasts while the low-proficiency learners were able to recall 60% of the recasts. • shorter recasts were recalled with more accuracy than the long ones even by the low-proficiency group. mackey & philp (1998) high and low • the only group making significant progress was the “recast ready” (highproficiency) group. ammar & spada (2006) low and high • prompts were found to be more effective than recasts for the low-proficient learners. • high-proficient learners effectively implemented both recasts and prompts. li (2014) low and high • no differential effects were found for the two feedback types on lowand high-proficiency learners’ performance in the case of classifiers. • recast did not improve low-proficient learners’ performance in the use of perfective -le (in chinese). 167profile: issues teach. prof. dev., vol. 22 no. 2, jul-dec, 2020. issn 1657-0790 (printed) 2256-5760 (online). bogotá, colombia. pages 163-177 english language teachers’ oral corrective preferences and practices across proficiency groups few studies (e.g., kennedy, 2010) have considered whether the level of proficiency influences teachers’ corrective behavior. kennedy used classroom data from the childes database and analyzed them in terms of the type of errors, type of feedback, and rate of learner uptake and repair for each proficiency group. the teacher recorded in the transcripts was an esl teacher whose first language (l1) was english. there were 15 grade 1 esl learners. kennedy found that the teacher used recast mainly for the low-proficiency group and elicitationlike types of feedback, which require self-correction, for the mid/high proficiency groups. kennedy’s study suffers certain shortcomings such as the use of a limited sample population: she used data from just one teacher. considering the importance of informing teachers of the empirical findings (roothooft, 2014), there is, first, a need to see if teachers’ practice reflects the research findings in this regard. therefore, the present study attempted to fill this gap by addressing the following research questions: 1. is there any relationship between learners’ level of proficiency and the amount of ocf preferred by teachers? 2. is there any relationship between learners’ level of proficiency and the types of ocf preferred by teachers? 3. is there any correspondence between teachers’ views and practice with regard to the amount and types of correction (to be) used for the two proficiency groups? method participants this is an observational and survey-based study evaluating language teachers’ practices and perceptions of oral error correction. this study was carried out in two private language institutes in tehran, iran. the participants included five efl teachers and 84 learners. the teacher participants had at least two years of teaching experience in conversation-based classes in private language institutes. they had either a ba (n = 3) or ma (n = 2) in applied linguistics. the number of students in the classrooms was limited (about 10 in each class) because the courses were all conversation-based. the participants were male (n = 39) and female (n = 45) efl learners ranging in age from 12 to 31. they were pre-intermediate (n = 43) and advanced learners (n = 41) according to the institutes’ classification, which was based on written exams and oral interviews at the beginning of each semester. all the learners had also received formal foreign language instruction either at schools or universities. instruments and procedure data were collected using 20 observations and audio recordings followed by interviews with the observed teachers. each of the five teachers was observed over four sessions (two in their lower-intermediate and two in advanced class) making up 20 one-hour observation sessions. the observed classes were also audio-recorded for further analysis. the teachers were not informed about the purpose of the study before the observations so that their teaching behavior would not be affected. accordingly, after the observations, which were aimed at understanding teachers’ corrective practice across proficiency groups, in the second phase of the study, semistructured interviews were carried out with the observed teachers to also learn about their beliefs and preferences in this regard. the interviews followed the observations to ensure that the purpose of the study would not be revealed and the teachers’ responses and comments in the interviews would not affect their teaching practice. each interview lasted from 20 to 35 minutes. the questions asked in the interviews were concerned mainly with the necessity, amount, and types of feedback preferred for different proficiency groups and how teachers differentiated between them (see appendix). the data from the content analysis of the interviews were finally matched against the results of the observation to figure out the possible areas of inconsistency between the teachers’ practice and beliefs. universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras168 sepehrinia, fallah, & torfi results and discussion the findings will be presented in two parts. the first part reports on the amount of correction used and preferred by the observed teachers for each proficiency group. the second part deals with the types of feedback used and preferred for the two proficiency groups. finally, the teachers’ beliefs are juxtaposed with their practice. amount of correction to find the amount of correction used in practice, almost all the utterances made by the students that had at least one error were reported. since the focus of the present study was on the different ways of error treatment by the teachers, we will report both the number of errors followed by feedback and errors that did not receive any correction (i.e., non-corrections). table 2 provides a report on the number of errors made by each proficiency group and the frequency of corrections made by the teachers. table 2. frequency of errors and corrections across proficiency groups advanced learners lower-intermediate learners number of errors frequency of corrections, n (%) number of errors frequency of corrections, n (%) 349 147 (42.1) 299 157 (52.5) as shown in table 2, the advanced learners made more errors than the lower-intermediate ones. this was because they had a more active contribution to the raised discussions considering their higher ability to express themselves. however, when the number of words was compared with the number of errors for the lower-intermediate and advanced groups (70 errors in every 1,000 words vs. 111 errors in every 1,000 words, respectively), the proportion of words to errors was higher for the lower-intermediate group meaning that they, in fact, made more errors. naturally, similar to the studies shown in table 1, the teachers made more corrections for the lowerintermediate group. the observed teachers’ individual performance (see table 3) showed that a majority of them, as in the previous studies (e.g., jean & simard, 2011; kartchava et al., 2018; lee, 2013), left more than half of the errors untreated. this was particularly so in the case of advanced learners; the teachers, except for teacher 5, provided fewer corrections for the advanced learners in practice. this was not matched with their belief, however. except for two, the other teachers said they either do not differentiate between the two proficiency groups (teachers 2 and 5) or prefer more correction for the advanced learners (teacher 4). teacher 1, for instance, noted that “i feel more comfortable when correcting my advanced students” because they have enough background knowledge to understand their errors. teacher 3 believed low-proficiency learners are more likely to be negatively affected by feedback: “i do not correct all their errors as they might lose their self-confidence.” teacher 2 stated that “the amount and the types of correction i use depend upon learners’ willingness to learn rather than their proficiency level.” however, he made more corrections for his lower-intermediate students, because, according to him, “lower-proficiency learners depend more on the teacher and expect more corrections.” similar to teacher 2, teacher 5 pointed out that she does not differentiate between the two proficiency groups. she preferred limited correction for both groups: “overcorrection might be discouraging and embarrassing at lower levels and interruptive for advanced learners.” in practice, she made more corrections for the advanced learners, which might be due to her belief that “high-proficiency learners feel emotionally more comfortable.” teacher 4 mentioned that she provides more corrections at the lower rather than advanced levels, which was consistent with her practice (see table 3). she believed that “[learners] do not know much of the language and are not discouraged by correction. in fact, they expect me to correct them.” 169profile: issues teach. prof. dev., vol. 22 no. 2, jul-dec, 2020. issn 1657-0790 (printed) 2256-5760 (online). bogotá, colombia. pages 163-177 english language teachers’ oral corrective preferences and practices across proficiency groups overall, although the teachers provided more corrections for the lower proficiency group during the observations, their beliefs were more consistent with the results of empirical studies. the results of these studies (e.g., ammar & spada, 2006; kartchava & ammar, 2014; lyster, 2001, 2004; lyster & ranta, 1997; mackey & philp, 1998; martoccio, 2017; sheen, 2006; trofimovich et al., 2007) confirm the teachers’ claim that lower-intermediate learners have the lowest rate of implementation of feedback. practice, however, does not necessarily follow exact beliefs. in fact, the teachers seemed to be mainly concerned about the practical aspects of providing feedback and learners’ emotional reaction to their correction which, according to them, influences their use of feedback. in other words, their differentiation between less and more proficient learners was mainly related to the different emotional reactions the teachers believed they show to correction; the more proficient the learners are, the less sensitive they will be to correction. vásquez and harvey (2010) and kartchava et al. (2018) also found that the teachers in their teacher education program initially emphasized the affective dimension of error correction. roothooft and breeze (2016) came up with a similar finding. however, in the present study, concern about creating negative emotions, as well as the context, played a determining role; the reason for using fewer corrections for the advanced learners was that it was not always possible to interrupt the advanced learners due to their higher fluency. types of feedback preferred the results related to the types of feedback used by the observed teachers, as presented in table 4, indicate that the frequency of recasts is much higher in both proficiency groups and the teachers were less inclined to use explicit forms of correction. as one of the teachers noted: “explicit forms of correction targeted at the individual students might make them feel exposed to others’ judgment.” rahimi and zhang (2016) also found that less experienced teachers did not favor explicit correction, elicitation, and metalinguistic feedback. furthermore, the teachers generally used output-prompting feedback types (i.e., elicitation and table 3. frequency of errors and corrections by each teacher across proficiency groups teacher practice belief advanced lower-intermediate number of errors amount of correction, n (%) number of errors amount of correction, n (%) 1 49 30 (61.2) 72 49 (68) more comfortable correcting advanced learners 2 96 38 (39.6) 93 48 (51.6) no difference: prefer more correction for learners more willing to learn 3 78 28 (35.9) 40 18 (45) in favor of more corrections for advanced learners 4 92 20 (21.73) 62 28 (45.1) more correction for lower-intermediate learners because they expect it 5 34 31 (91.1) 32 14 (43.7) no difference: prefer not to interrupt advanced learners and not to overcorrect lower-intermediate students universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras170 sepehrinia, fallah, & torfi clarification request), though much less frequently, for the advanced learners. this was consistent with the findings of studies (e.g., ammar & spada, 2006; li, 2014; mackey & philp, 1998; philp, 2003); elicitation has been found to be more beneficial to more proficient learners and less helpful for the low-proficiency learners; as long (2007) puts it, elicitation requires self-correction which requires a level of knowledge that low-proficiency students lack. with regard to inputproviding types of feedback (i.e., recast, metalinguistic feedback, and explicit correction), the teachers used recast and metalinguistic feedback almost equally for both groups but used explicit correction more for the lower-intermediates. table 4. distribution of feedback types for advanced and lower-intermediate groups group feedback type recast, n (%) elicitation, n (%) metalinguistic feedback, n (%) explicit correction, n (%) clarification request, n (%) advanced 110 (74.8) 12 (8.2) 10 (6.8) 11 (7.5) 4 (2.7) lowerintermediate 121 (77.07) 7 (4.45) 12 (7.65) 17 (10.83) 0 table 5. distribution of feedback types across each proficiency group teacher group feedback type belief recast, n (%) elicitation, n (%) metalinguistic feedback, n (%) explicit correction, n (%) clarification request, n (%) 1 advanced 17 (56.67) 5 (16.67) 7 (23.33) 1 (3.33) 0 metalinguistic feedback for lower-intermediate group and recast for advanced group lowerintermediate 40 (81.64) 4 (8.16) 3 (6.12) 2 (4.08) 0 2 advanced 36 (94.74) 0 0 0 2 (5.26) recast particularly for lower-intermediate groups / generally no difference between proficiency groups lower– intermediate 35 (72.92) 3 (6.25) 4 (8.33) 6 (12.50) 0 3 advanced 22 (68.57) 0 2 (7.14) 4 (14.29) 0 recast and explicit correction for advanced group lower– intermediate 14 (77.78) 0 2 (11.11) 2 (11.11) 0 4 advanced 16 (80) 2 (20) 0 0 2 (20) no difference between the two groupslower– intermediate 22 (78.57) 0 0 6 (21.43) 0 5 advanced 19 (61.29) 5 (16.13) 1 (3.23) 6 (19.35) 0 indirect forms of correction for lowerintermediate group / generally, no difference between the groups lower– intermediate 10 (71.43) 0 3 (21.43) 1 (7.14) 0 171profile: issues teach. prof. dev., vol. 22 no. 2, jul-dec, 2020. issn 1657-0790 (printed) 2256-5760 (online). bogotá, colombia. pages 163-177 english language teachers’ oral corrective preferences and practices across proficiency groups individually, the observed teachers had different practices and beliefs (see table 5). out of the corrections teacher 1 made for the lower-intermediate group, 81% was in the form of recast though she believed “recast is not beneficial to low-proficiency learners and even if they are corrected by recasting, they will not understand what was wrong with their utterance.” she also used metalinguistic feedback more for advanced learners though she preferred metalinguistic feedback (in belief) for the lower-intermediate group. teacher 2 used more recasts for the advanced learners; he preferred to use recast particularly for the lower-intermediate learners believing that “corrections should be made indirectly [using recast] and the feedback should be delayed no matter at what level of proficiency the learners are.” this was because he preferred “not to interrupt the learners during classroom discussion,” which made him rarely use other types of feedback. the feedback type highly preferred by teacher 3 was also recast, which she believed “should be used mainly for higher-proficiency learners because they are better able to benefit from it due to their higher level of knowledge.” she also asserted that explicit correction is also more appropriate for advanced learners and might hurt lower-intermediate learners’ self-confidence. during the observations, however, as shown in table 5, she used more recasts for the lower-intermediate learners. she used more explicit corrections for her advanced learners (14.29%) though. teacher 3’s concern about her students’ emotional reaction was also reflected in her avoidance of “challenging” feedback types, that is, elicitation and clarification request (see table 5). teacher 4 used recast for both proficiency groups. she used elicitation and clarification request only for advanced learners, though quite rarely, despite the fact that she mentioned in the interview that she does not differentiate between the two groups. she also used explicit correction very rarely and only for the lower group, because she believed it might make her students less willing to talk as “direct forms of correction might sound like reproaching to my students.” teacher 5’s reluctance to interrupt the learners was reflected in her use of recast due to its unobtrusive nature. this was more so, according to her, in the case of her less proficient students. she pointed out: less proficient students normally show a negative reaction to feedback. this might be partly because of their little learning experience; they have been less exposed to corrective feedback as compared to advanced learners… i prefer to use less correction and indirect forms of correction. this was observed in her practice; she used fewer corrections and mainly recast for correcting the lowerintermediate group. she used elicitation and more explicit correction for the advanced group but more metalinguistic feedback for the lower-intermediate learners. the results were generally indicative of the dominance of recast irrespective of the learners’ proficiency level. this result is consistent with the findings of previous studies (kamiya, 2016; lee, 2013; lyster & ranta, 1997; roothooft, 2014; roothooft & breeze, 2016; zyzik & polio, 2008), which also found that recast is the most frequently used feedback type among teachers. according to the results of the present study, there was no convergence between the teachers in this respect; some used it more for the advanced (e.g., teacher 2) and some for the lower-intermediate group (e.g., teachers 1, 3, and 5). the reasons behind the choice of recast were similar to those of the teachers in the previous studies (e.g., kamiya, 2016; mori, 2011; roothooft, 2014; zyzik & polio, 2008) but different for the two proficiency groups. based on the findings of the present study, in the case of lower-intermediate learners, the teachers used recast considering its emotional advantages; it does not interrupt, challenge, or embarrass the lower-intermediate learners. for advanced learners, however, the teachers universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras172 sepehrinia, fallah, & torfi used this feedback type mainly because of its practical advantages and unobtrusive nature; because advanced learners talked more fluently, the teachers preferred to use recast in order not to interrupt them in the middle of conversation. most of the teachers were also aware of the disadvantages of recast and mentioned, though on the periphery, its ambiguous nature—particularly for the lower-intermediate learners—and believed it does not benefit them because they do not notice it. however, its practical advantages and the teachers’ great concern about the learners’ emotional reaction, as in the previous studies (kamiya, 2016; roothooft, 2014; roothooft & breeze, 2016), made them ignore its disadvantages. this concern was higher in the case of lower-intermediate students as the teachers used recast even more frequently with them. another reason for the overuse of recast for the lower-intermediate learners might be the teachers’ misconception about how learners might negatively react to explicit forms of correction. this, as pointed out by borg (2003), might have something to do with the teachers’ previous experience as l2 learners. they might avoid using the techniques they would not have favored themselves as language learners. explicit correction, nevertheless, does not always result in negative emotions. tavakoli and zarrinabadi (2016) found that explicit feedback not only does not produce a negative response but promotes learners’ willingness to talk and even decreases their anxiety and increases their communication competence. yang (2016), as another instance, discovered that learners generally favored explicit correction and metalinguistic feedback on all types of errors. in the case of the advanced learners, however, as it was already mentioned, the main reason for the overuse of recast and less frequent use of other more explicit forms of correction was the fact that advanced learners were more fluent in speaking and it was not possible to interrupt them as much in the middle of conversation. in fact, the teachers did not favor interrupting the learners using explicit forms of correction when they were talking, which they believed, would be discouraging and make them lose track of what they were trying to say. another reason, however, might be the high frequency of errors. according to mori (2011), the more frequent the errors are, the more implicit the corrections become. overall, it seemed that the teachers preferred to use this feedback type due to its emotional and practical advantages for lower and higher proficiency groups, not because it produces better learning; it does not challenge or embarrass the learners and it does not interrupt them in the middle of conversation. the findings were also indicative of a lack of correspondence between the teachers’ views and their corrective practice with the teachers preferring more feedback for advanced learners but using more corrections for the lower-intermediate group and pointing to the ineffectiveness of recasting less proficient learners’ errors but still using it. this finding is in line with the findings of other studies (e.g., basturkmen, 2012; roothooft, 2014). in her review on the congruity/incongruity of teachers’ beliefs and practices, basturkmen (2012) reported the lack of a direct consonance between beliefs and practice, finding that contextual barriers and curricular constraints impeded the connection between beliefs and practices. this finding seems to support the claim made by borg (2003, 2010) in the sense that context makes a cardinal contribution to shaping teachers’ thought processes. in the case of the present study, the conversation-based activities and also the indirect nature of recast, which makes it less embarrassing, made it practically an ideal choice for correcting the errors. conclusion the findings from the observations and the interviews point to the conclusion that teachers have their own priorities and concerns different from those of researchers. their perception of how learners might react to correction and practical considerations play a more determining role in the teachers’ corrective behavior. 173profile: issues teach. prof. dev., vol. 22 no. 2, jul-dec, 2020. issn 1657-0790 (printed) 2256-5760 (online). bogotá, colombia. pages 163-177 english language teachers’ oral corrective preferences and practices across proficiency groups the perceptions of the participating teachers were different, however, across the proficiency groups; they used fewer corrections and mainly recast for advanced learners because they were more fluent and it was less possible to interrupt them; they used more corrections, more recasts but fewer explicit forms of correction on fear of causing negative emotional reactions in the less proficient learners. this also caused an inconsistency between their beliefs and practice; too much concern about learners’ emotional reaction led the teachers to use those feedback types that, according to them, less proficient learners have difficulty noticing (i.e., recast) and to avoid using other types of correction. on this basis, it seemed that previous learning experience, context, and experience play a more determining role and professional development programs do not seem to have a prominent place. the teachers’ practice was not particularly informed by research findings thus causing an inconsistency between research findings and teachers’ practice. this finding points to the need for dispelling teachers’ misconceptions about how learners may react to correction and informing them about the results of studies and the benefits of other types of feedback for different proficiency groups in the framework of professional development programs, which, as pointed out by borg (2003), play a determining role in forming teachers’ cognitive processes. as kartchava et al. (2018) noted, teachers’ limited knowledge “about how, when, and in what amounts to provide feedback prevents them from reconciling their beliefs with classroom practices” (p. 238). researchers, on the other side, seem to have been mainly concerned with the cognitive aspects of learning thereby limiting themselves to empirical and, in most of the cases, laboratory-based studies that examine the effectiveness of certain types of corrective feedback; with regard to proficiency level, as it was mentioned in the review section, empirical studies have compared the efficacy of different feedback types in lower and higher proficiency groups. the results of these studies, according to ellis et al. (2006), might not be generalizable to the classroom context. in fact, the lower effect size values for classroom-based observational studies on ocf (lyster et al., 2013) might be an indication of the complexities and the potential intervening variables related to the teachers’ way of correction. some of these complexities and intervening variables might be related to practical considerations and learners’ reaction to teacher feedback; in the case of the present study, proficiency level had a role to play in teachers’ corrective practice directing the teachers to use more implicit correction due to practical considerations in the case of the advanced learners and emotional considerations in the case of less proficient learners. accordingly, researchers might do well to draw on teachers’ experiences and take them as initiatives for more qualified research and to examine the role of these aspects of correction in learners’ ability to implement teacher correction. for instance, the researchers could investigate and compare lower and higher proficiency groups’ emotional reaction to correction to find the possible differences between the two proficiency groups in this respect. furthermore, despite the affective differences between adult and younger learners (roothooft & breeze, 2016; yoshida, 2008), few studies, if any, have compared their use of feedback. few studies (rassaei, 2013; sheen, 2008) have also examined the effect of negative emotions on learners’ use of feedback. finally, teachers seem to have misconceptions about how their students might react to correction. considering the mismatches between learners’ and teachers’ preferences and the limited number of studies examining this issue (kaivanpanah et al., 2012; lee, 2013; roothooft & breeze, 2016), a comparison between teachers and learners’ views can be more enlightening as to helping to find the areas of mismatch between these two groups’ preferences. unless learners’ views in this regard are sought, we cannot be sure whether learners have a negative or positive attitude toward the teachers’ practices. universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras174 sepehrinia, fallah, & torfi references ammar, a., & spada, n. 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(2008). incidental focus on form in university spanish literature courses. the modern language journal, 92(1), 53–70. https://doi. org/10.1111/j.1540-4781.2008.00686.x https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1540-4781.1998.tb01211.x https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1540-4781.1998.tb01211.x https://doi.org/10.1191/1362168804lr147oa https://doi.org/10.1191/1362168804lr147oa https://doi.org/10.1177/1362168816689802 https://doi.org/10.1177/1362168816689802 https://doi.org/10.1016/j.system.2011.10.014 https://doi.org/10.1016/j.system.2011.10.014 https://doi.org/10.1017/s0272263103000044 https://doi.org/10.1017/s0272263106060116 https://doi.org/10.1017/s0272263106060116 https://doi.org/10.1080/09571736.2013.858368 https://doi.org/10.1080/09571736.2013.858368 https://doi.org/10.1016/j.system.2013.05.002 https://doi.org/10.1016/j.system.2013.05.002 https://doi.org/10.1016/j.system.2014.07.012 https://doi.org/10.1016/j.system.2014.07.012 https://doi.org/10.1080/09658416.2016.1235580 https://doi.org/10.1080/09658416.2016.1235580 https://doi.org/10.1191/1362168806lr203oa https://doi.org/10.1191/1362168806lr203oa https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1467-9922.2008.00480.x https://doi.org/10.1080/17501229.2016.1195391 https://doi.org/10.1177/1362168810375365 https://doi.org/10.1016/j.system.2016.08.004 https://doi.org/10.2167/la429.0 https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1540-4781.2008.00686.x https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1540-4781.2008.00686.x universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras176 sepehrinia, fallah, & torfi about the authors sajjad sepehrinia is a phd graduate in applied linguistics from university of tehran. his research interests include foreign language teaching, teachers’ beliefs, focus on form, oral corrective feedback and development of explicit and implicit linguistic knowledge. he has published papers in international and national journals on the mentioned topics. nahid fallah is an assistant lecturer at the university of kashan. she has published papers on critical discourse analysis, teachers’ beliefs and corrective feedback and has presented papers on discourse and classroom interaction in different national conferences. her research interests are classroom discourse analysis, corrective feedback, and critical discourse analysis. soad torfi is an ma graduate in teaching english as a foreign language from islamic azad university, qazvin branch. her research interests include corrective feedback and teachers’ and learners’ beliefs and preferences. 177profile: issues teach. prof. dev., vol. 22 no. 2, jul-dec, 2020. issn 1657-0790 (printed) 2256-5760 (online). bogotá, colombia. pages 163-177 english language teachers’ oral corrective preferences and practices across proficiency groups appendix: guiding questions for the interview with the participating teachers to what extent, do you believe correction is effective in learning? how often do you provide correction? please explain. does learners’ proficiency influence the amount of correction you provide? what is the most important factor you take into account in correction? is proficiency a determining factor? how do you differentiate between your advanced and lower proficiency learners in the way you correct them? why? how do you normally correct your advanced and lower-intermediate learners’ errors? what type(s) of feedback do you prefer? do you think it is (they are) effective? is there any difference, you think, between lower-intermediate and advanced learners in their ability to benefit from any of these feedback types you use in your classes? to what extent do you consider learners’ emotional reaction to correction? is there a difference between less proficient and more proficient or advanced learners in this regard? 93profile: issues teach. prof. dev., vol. 22 no. 1, jan-jun, 2020. issn 1657-0790 (printed) 2256-5760 (online). bogotá, colombia. pages 93-107 https://doi.org/10.15446/profile.v22n1.77494 using spanish in english language chilean classrooms? perspectives from efl teacher trainees ¿usar el español en la clase de inglés en aulas chilenas? perspectivas de futuros profesores de inglés como lengua extranjera 1eladio donoso* universidad católica del norte, antofagasta, chile this article presents a study which explores perceptions of chilean future teachers of english as a foreign language regarding the usage of spanish as l1 in english lessons. the participants belong to firstand fourth-year levels of their programs at four universities located throughout chile. the data collection tool was mohebbi and alavi’s (2014) likert questionnaire, along with an open questions section. the data were subjected to descriptive statistical analyses and mean difference tests. the results indicate that the participants would use spanish in the english class mainly for two reasons: (1) for pedagogicaldidactic purposes and (2) to maintain the student-teacher relationship. the study concludes that there are no statistically significant differences in regard to the course-level year the subjects are enrolled in or regarding the university with which they are affiliated. key words: english as a foreign language, english language teacher training, use of l1 in the l2 classroom. este artículo presenta un estudio que investiga las apreciaciones respecto del uso del español como l1 en la clase de inglés que tienen futuros profesores de inglés como lengua extranjera chilenos que cursan primer y cuarto año de su programa de estudios en cuatro universidades de chile. los datos se obtuvieron a través del cuestionario tipo likert de mohebbi y alavi (2014) junto con una sección de preguntas abiertas. los resultados indican que todos los participantes sí usarían el español en la clase de inglés, principalmente por dos motivos: con fines pedagógicos-didácticos y para mantener la relación estudiante-docente. el estudio concluye que no existen diferencias estadísticamente significativas en los resultados dependiendo del año que cursa el sujeto ni a la universidad a la que pertenece. palabras clave: formación inicial de profesores de inglés, inglés como lengua extranjera, uso de l1 en la clase de l2. * e-mail: edonoso@ucn.cl how to cite this article (apa, 6th ed.): donoso, e. (2020). using spanish in english language chilean classrooms? perspectives from efl teacher trainees. profile: issues in teachers’ professional development, 22(1), 93-107. https://doi.org/10.15446/profile.v22n1.77494. this article was received on january 25, 2019 and accepted on august 12, 2019. this is an open access article distributed under the terms of the creative commons license attribution-noncommercial-noderivatives 4.0 international license. consultation is possible at https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/. universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras94 donoso introduction there are many factors involved in the teaching and learning of a foreign language. these factors include the language itself, in terms of its inherent characteristics as a system and its use, as well as other factors, such as the teacher, the learner and, also, the government policies that provide the guidelines regarding the educational standards in regard to the teaching and learning of foreign languages. the foci of this study are on, first, the teachers, more precisely english as a foreign language (efl) teacher trainees, in regard to the way in which they view the teaching of efl in the classroom and, secondly, the public policy establishing the criteria related to disciplinary standards, learning outcomes, as well as the methods to be used to achieve them. in chile, the ministerial guidelines require the use of teaching methodologies which promote a natural method of language acquisition and a communicative approach. the aforementioned methodologies advocate for the exclusive use of the target language in the classroom (ministerio de educación, 2012). in regard to this requirement, the ministry of education (ministerio de educación, 2013b) states: “this integrating perspective, apart from being aligned with the communicative approach, renders the language in a more natural way, closer to real situations, and it is therefore more motivating” (p. 246, our translation). the emphasis is placed on maximizing learners’ experience in the target language. however, reality shows us that, in the chilean context, this ideal is far from being realized: in other words, efl teachers do not follow the requirements set by the chilean ministry of education by conversely using different language teaching methods and by turning to their l1 (spanish) when teaching efl in the classroom (barahona, 2016). regarding this, lópez, rumeau, and valenzuela (2016) show in their study that the methodology required by the ministry of education is not being applied as envisaged. in fact, the use of spanish—both by teachers and students in the efl classroom—is a common practice. they also point out that no government document addresses the use of l1 in the classroom, neither to adopt a restrictive position nor to establish scenarios where it is admissible. given the above scenario, some questions that arise can be posited as follows: why do teachers resort to the l1, regardless of what is required by public policy? in what situations do they use the l1 in their l2 lessons? how often do they draw on the l1 in their l2 lessons? in this context, it is important to establish what perceptions future chilean efl teachers have, given the fact that these teacher trainees are presented with a number of different paradigms in regard to methodology, while at the same time encouraged to utilize those that seemingly promote the exclusive use of the l2 in the classroom in line with the ministry’s standards for efl teacher training which declare that: “the teaching of the language involves mainly the communicative approach (communicative language teaching), which can be harmonized with other approaches emphasizing communication” (ministerio de educación, 2013a, p. 21, our translation). the ministry of education, therefore, promotes and encourages the use of the target language by means of the communicative approach. from the above, the following questions arise: what is the perception that these future efl teachers have regarding the use of l1 in the l2 classroom? do their perceptions differ depending on their year level and/or the university to which they belong? this paper seeks to give an account of the answers to these questions. background throughout history, the use of l1 in the l2 as foreign language classrooms has been controversial with numerous research studies presenting evidence both in favor and against this practice. hence, the debate between whether teachers should exclusively use the l2 or allow the use of l1 in the classroom has been in constant flux 95profile: issues teach. prof. dev., vol. 22 no. 1, jan-jun, 2020. issn 1657-0790 (printed) 2256-5760 (online). bogotá, colombia. pages 93-107 using spanish in english language chilean classrooms? perspectives from efl teacher trainees (du, 2016; kayaoğlu, 2012; khati, 2011; nation, 2003; ostovar-namaghi & norouzi, 2015). benefits of the students’ l1 in the l2 as a foreign language classroom the teaching-learning of an l2 has been historically based on a bilingual approach, mainly through the method called the grammar-translation method. this changed as new paradigms emerged, giving rise to monolingual approaches, and the integration of new methodologies that emphasized the exclusive use of the l2 (richards & rodgers, 2014) in the classroom. one of the general principles of monolingual approaches is to maximize the use of the l2 in the classroom. as a result, some scholars reject any potential beneficial use of the l1 and advocate for the targetlanguage-only use in the l2 classroom (brown, 2014; harmer, 2001; larsen-freeman, 2000; richards & rodgers, 2014). similarly, they ignore that, in the real world, both students and teachers have different reasons for using the l1 in particular situations, especially where teaching-learning is given in the context of efl or when the l1 is shared by the teacher and his/her students (du, 2016; khati, 2011; nation, 2003). currently, the use of the l1 in the l2 classroom already has both theoretical and empirical postulates in its favor (auerbach, 1993; bozorgian & fallahpour, 2015; du, 2016; harmer, 2001; kayaoğlu, 2012; khati, 2011; levine, 2014; liao, 2006; nation, 2003; ostovarnamaghi & norouzi, 2015; yildiz & yeşilyurt, 2016), which show that a reasonable use of the l1 during the teaching-learning process of the l2 can, among other things: • facilitate the understanding and learning of new vocabulary. • be useful to perform contrastive analysis between both languages. • explain and clarify l2 grammar rules explicitly. • verify the understanding of contents, tasks, and activities. • explain and correct errors and mistakes made by students. • reduce anxiety levels in students. • maintain the flow of the class by optimizing the times used to explain tasks and activities, contributing to the classroom management. • enhance the autonomy of students during tasks and activities. • enhance the metacognitive processes involved when using both languages. in sum, reasonable and judicious use of the l1 is positive and enhances the teaching and learning process. considering this, some advocates still warn against its excessive use (cook, 2001; swain & lapkin, 2000). disadvantages of using the l1 in the l2 class as a foreign language in contrast to the above, there are authors such as yildiz and yeşilyurt (2016) and bozorgian and fallahpour, (2015) who assert that the use of l1 proves disadvantageous. one of the most common arguments discussed in the literature is that there is a reduction of exposure to the target language in the foreign language classroom. the foregoing is congruent and consistent with the postulates of monolingual approaches, which support the exclusive use of l2 in the foreign language classrooms. one of the principles that these approaches put forward is that the l2 can be learned in the same way as an l1, so it is vital to continuously expose learners to the l2 to achieve learning (kieu, 2010). in this context, the results shown in mora pablo, lengeling, rubio zenil, crawford, and goodwin’s (2011) study indicate that overexposure to the mother tongue in foreign language classes can generate in the students a dependency on using only the l1, truncating the possibility to practice the l2. this had been previously confirmed by harmer (2001) in his literary review on the subject. universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras96 donoso be useful when teaching new vocabulary, grammatical structures, and concepts difficult to explain in the l2. an important point mentioned by authors such as schweers (1999), rodríguez and oxbrow (2008), and lópez et al. (2016) is that the use of the l1 seeks to ensure that students can contrast their mother tongue with the foreign language, helping them to internalize knowledge and to notice differences and similarities between both languages, contributing to the facilitation of the l2 learning process. similarly, it is argued that the use of l1 shows benefits by encouraging and motivating students to learn english, consequently developing a pro-active participation of students and teachers (bozorgian & fallahpour, 2015; kovacic & kirinic, 2011; mohebbi & alavi, 2014; schweers, 1999; tang, 2002; yildiz & yeşilyurt, 2016). also, some research findings claim that the use of the l1 helps to teach students with low motivation and/or low mastery of the english language and to improve rapport between the teacher and student. according to yildiz and yeşilyurt (2016), due to the constant use of l2 in the classroom, there were cases of students who became more anxious when they could not understand what was being said in the l2 and consequently could not understand what was going on in the class, generating a negative attitude towards the learning process and the exclusive use of the target language. method despite the ample literature found on this topic, there has been none accounting for what happens in a chilean context, let alone in regard to chilean efl teacher trainees. therefore, this study seeks to focus on discovering what perceptions future chilean efl teachers may have regarding the use of spanish in the efl classrooms while taking into account which university year level they are and the university they belong to. this becomes an appealing question since an important issue to take into consideration in this scenario is that the use of l1 is commonly linked to a low mastery of the l2 by the teacher (kovacic & kirinic, 2011; ostovar-namaghi & norouzi, 2015; reimer, 2012). this may obviously hinder the students’ possibilities to have quality language input from their teachers. studies on the use of l1 in the foreign language classroom at present, the literature regarding the role played by the l1 in foreign language teaching and the research examining its different uses within the foreign language classroom make it clear that the use of the students’ native language is a common practice (bozorgian & fallahpour, 2015; kayaoğlu, 2012; kovacic & kirinic, 2011; lópez et al., 2016; mohebbi & alavi, 2014; reimer, 2012; rodríguez & oxbrow, 2008; schweers, 1999; tang, 2002; yildiz & yeşilyurt, 2016). the studies mentioned above examine aspects concerning the use of the l1 in the efl classroom regarding, for example, the frequency of l1 use (kovacic & kirinic, 2011; schweers, 1999, tang, 2002), the perceptions of teacher trainees (yildiz & yeşilyurt, 2016), the perceptions and opinions of in-service teachers (bozorgian & fallahpour, 2015; kayaoğlu, 2012, mohebbi & alavi, 2014), the perception of teachers and students (kovacic & kirinic, 2011; lópez et al., 2016; reimer, 2012; tang, 2002) and teachers’ attitude (schweers, 1999; tang, 2002). the data collected from the results and conclusions of the studies carried out by the aforementioned authors support the uses of l1 in the efl classroom. these findings also reveal how the use of the l1, addressed from different situations or purposes, influences the efl classroom. in regard to the teaching of lexis and grammar, the most repetitive results of the abovementioned studies show that both teachers and students believe the l1 to 97profile: issues teach. prof. dev., vol. 22 no. 1, jan-jun, 2020. issn 1657-0790 (printed) 2256-5760 (online). bogotá, colombia. pages 93-107 using spanish in english language chilean classrooms? perspectives from efl teacher trainees these teacher trainees are presented with different methodology paradigms during their education, but encouraged, as stated before, to utilize those that promote the exclusive use of the l2 in the classroom to comply with the ministry’s standards. given the above, the objectives of the study are to 1. determine the perceptions of efl teacher trainees regarding the use of spanish in the efl classroom, 2. find out if there exist differences in perceptions depending on the university year level the participants are in in the efl teacher training program, and 3. observe whether there are differences in perceptions depending on the university the participants belong to. paradigm given the aforementioned, the research reported herein is descriptive, non-experimental, and crosssectional (hernández, fernández, & baptista, 2006). it is also quantitative since the collected data can be transformed into usable unbiased statistics. participants and study context regarding the selection of the participants, it is of a non-probabilistic and for convenience type, as defined by hernández et al. (2006) as “subgroup of the population in which the choice of the elements does not depend on the probability but on the characteristics of the investigation” (p. 241, our translation). in this way, the participants of this study were 229 university students of the efl teacher training program (pedagogía en inglés, in spanish) at four chilean universities located in four regions of the country: arica-parinacota and antofagasta (two northern regions), and maule and ñuble (southern part of the country, covering around one thousand miles of the territory). out of the 229 participants, 132 were in the first-year level of the program and 97 in the fourth year. the total number of participants included 155 female and 74 male students. according to the geographical location of the participants, the breakdown is as follows: aricaparinacota, 27; antofagasta, 86; maule, 54; ñuble 62. the data collection was carried out in person during the month of october of 2017. appropriate facilities were used for this purpose and the ethical aspects involved in the research were secured. as for the four universities included in this study, they include the same axes and dimensions for efl teacher training. the first dimension is the communicative competence of the english language and the knowledge of linguistics, literature, and culture. the second dimension is the development of competencies related to the methodology and didactics of efl teaching, and the last one is the attitudinal dimension, linked to the personal and professional stance (abrahams & farias, 2010; ministerio de educación, 2013a). additionally, these four universities follow the guiding standards and current plans and programs of the ministry of education (ministerio de educación, 2013a) during the years of training. for that reason, the predominant methodological approach taught in the didactics and methodology courses of these four universities corresponds to communicative language teaching. data collection instrument the data were obtained by means of mohebbi and alavi’s (2014) questionnaire, which uses a likert scale with 22 statements (see appendix a). these statements were translated into spanish and adapted to meet the needs of the study regarding the participants who were not in-service teachers (mohebbi and alavi surveyed in-service teachers in their study). the 22 statements are related to situations or contexts in which spanish could be used in the efl classes. for each statement, the participants had to indicate the frequency of use of spanish according to the options never, rarely, sometimes, usually, and always. in order to verify the understanding and reliability of the statements, a piloting was carried out with the universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras98 donoso optimum number of factors to be retained. figure 1 illustrates the results of the test. figure 1 shows that only two factors were higher than the 95th percentile of the simulated eigenvalues, so a factorial solution of 2 factors will be considered. a factorial analysis was carried out using the maximum likelihood method as the extraction method and the direct oblimin method as rotation. regarding the sampling adequacy indexes, a kmo = .921 was obtained and for the sphericity test an x2 = 2398.422, p = .00. table 1 shows the exploratory factor analysis. items 12, 20, and 19 were excluded from the analysis since they failed to lean toward any of the two factors. the first factor explained 35.032% of the variance of the model and considered items 8, 9, 10, 11, 13, 14, 15, 16, 17, 18, and 21. by content, these items referred to the use of spanish with pedagogical-didactic purposes. the second factor grouped items 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, and 22 and explained 6.25% of the variance. this factor referred to the use of spanish to maintain the student-teacher relationship. participation of secondand third-year students of the efl teacher training program of only one of the universities included in the study. in addition, open questions were added in order to verify the internal validity of the instrument (see appendix b). to protect the ethical aspects of the investigation, the participants were asked to sign an informed consent form. the application of the instrument was given at the convenience of the students’ course schedule, which meant using approximately 45 minutes of class time of one of their courses. process of analysis and results once the instrument was applied, the statistical analysis of the data was carried out. these analyses are presented below. exploratory factor analysis in order to identify the internal structure of the data, a factor analysis was done. to do this, a parallel horn analysis was performed in order to identify the 10 5 0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 1 2 3 1 = real eigenvalues. 2 = percentage 95% of simulated eigenvalues. 3 = mean of simulated eigenvalues. figure 1. results of the horn statistical processing 99profile: issues teach. prof. dev., vol. 22 no. 1, jan-jun, 2020. issn 1657-0790 (printed) 2256-5760 (online). bogotá, colombia. pages 93-107 using spanish in english language chilean classrooms? perspectives from efl teacher trainees table 1. exploratory factor analysis factor 1 2 s15 .786 s11 .690 s16 .687 s14 .672 s10 .640 s18 .512 s8 .489 s9 .474 s17 .456 s13 .429 s21 .426 s2 .769 s1 .713 s3 .652 s4 .634 s6 .616 s5 .583 s7 .415 s22 .380 descriptive statistics and mean difference tests below are descriptive statistics of the calculated variables that were obtained with the exploratory factor analysis. table 2 summarizes the global descriptive statistics. table 2. descriptive statistics for dimensions of use of spanish language min. max. mean sd pedagogicaldidactical purpose 1.09 4.73 2.79 .76 studentteacher relationship 1.00 5.00 3.01 .70 as shown in table 2, the means are similar, in rather central values of the scale. however, the average of the use dimension for the student-teacher relationship is slightly higher. table 3 summarizes the descriptive statistics by university and at the same time places the contrast statistics for the group comparison. as observed, in both cases there were significant differences in at least one group with respect to the others (p < .05). subsequently, the post-hoc tests were analyzed to identify where the differences could be found. the tukey test was used since the assumption of equality of variances was not violated in either case. in the first place, for the use of spanish for pedagogical-didactic purposes, uni.4 was significantly superior to uni.2 and uni.1 but not to uni.3. on the other hand, with the dimension of use of spanish for the teacher-student relationship, there were only differences between uni.4 and uni.3 as shown in table 4. again, it was the first which had the highest average, which implies a greater use in this dimension. for the participants’ course level (first or fourth), no statistically significant differences were found in the means. this can be observed in table 5. universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras100 donoso table 3. descriptions of dimensions of use of spanish by university and proof of difference in means n min. max. mean typical deviation f p-value pedagogicaldidactical purpose uni.4 62 1.27 4.73 3.09 0.64 5.010 .00 uni.3 54 1.09 4.45 2.80 0.87 uni.2 86 1.18 4.09 2.65 0.72 uni.1 40 1.73 4.45 2.63 0.77 studentteacher relationship purpose uni.4 62 1.63 5.00 3.19 0.71 3.182 .03 uni.3 54 1.00 3.88 2.83 0.65 uni.2 86 1.50 4.50 2.94 0.64 uni.1 40 2.00 4.63 3.12 0.78 note. uni.1 in arica-parinacota, uni.2 in antofagasta, uni.3 in maule, and uni.4 in ñuble. table 4. post hoc comparisons for dimensions of spanish use among universities i j mean difference (i-j) typical error sig. 95% confidence interval lower limit higher limit pedagogicaldidactical purpose uni.4 uni.3 .29 .14 .17 -.07 .65 uni.2 .44* .12 .00 .12 .76 uni.1 .45* .15 .01 .07 .85 uni.3 uni.4 -.29 .14 .17 -.65 .07 uni.2 .16 .13 .62 -.18 .49 uni.1 .17 .16 .68 -.23 .58 uni.2 uni.4 -.44* .12 .00 -.76 -.12 uni.3 -.16 .13 .62 -.49 .18 uni.1 .02 .14 1.00 -.35 .39 uni.1 uni.4 -.46* .15 .01 -.85 -.07 uni.3 -.17 .16 .68 -.58 .23 uni.2 -.02 .14 1.00 -.39 .35 studentteacher relationship purpose uni.4 uni.3 .36* .13 .03 .02 .69 uni.2 .24 .11 .15 -.05 .54 uni.1 .07 .14 .96 -.29 .43 uni.3 uni.4 -.36* .13 .03 -.69 -.02 uni.2 -.11 .12 .78 -.42 .20 uni.1 -.29 .14 .19 -.66 .08 uni.2 uni.4 -.24 .11 .15 -.54 .05 uni.3 .11 .12 .78 -.20 .42 uni.1 -.17 .13 .55 -.51 .17 uni.1 uni.4 -.07 .14 .96 -.43 .29 uni.3 .29 .14 .19 -.08 .66 uni.2 .17 .13 .55 -.17 .51 *p < .05 101profile: issues teach. prof. dev., vol. 22 no. 1, jan-jun, 2020. issn 1657-0790 (printed) 2256-5760 (online). bogotá, colombia. pages 93-107 using spanish in english language chilean classrooms? perspectives from efl teacher trainees table 5. means by course level course level n mean sd t p pedagogical-didactical purpose first year 132 2.72 .77 -1.611 .108 fourth year 110 2.88 .75 student-teacher relationship purpose first year 132 3.07 .68 1.432 .151 fourth year 110 2.94 .72 in this regard, both purposes are statistically the same for both course levels. although this is not a longitudinal study, it may be possible to infer that the perceptions these participants have when they start the program will not change as they move along their training which, in turn, may mean that the teacher education they receive regarding exclusive use of the l2 in the classroom does not permeate their perceptions and beliefs. discussion and conclusions the study reported in this article set out to explore the chilean efl teacher trainees’ perceptions regarding the use of spanish in the efl classroom. in order to accomplish the purpose, three objectives were established. the first one was to determine the perceptions of efl teacher trainees regarding the use of spanish in the efl classroom. after having done a factorial analysis of the instrument, results show that the participants would use spanish in the efl classroom for two main reasons: (1) to maintain the studentteacher relationship, with an average of 2.79 and (2) for pedagogical-didactic purposes with an average of 3.01, as observed in table 2. these results also show evidence that all the 229 participants would use l1 when teaching english. the second goal was to find out if there exist differences in perceptions depending on the university year level (first and fourth) the participants are in in the efl teacher training program. in this case, no statistically significant differences were observed. however, as already described, in terms of the use of spanish in the efl classroom for pedagogicaldidactical purposes, the results for the university of the ñuble region were higher than the ones located in the antofagasta and arica regions, but lower than the maule region. nevertheless, and according to these results, it could be inferred that the amount of years in their study programs do not change the studentteachers’ perception as regards the use of spanish in the efl classes. for the last objective, which was to observe if there are differences in perceptions depending on the university the participants belong to, the results reported that differences among the four universities (of four geographical locations along chile) are not statistically relevant. however, it can be concluded that with regard to the use of spanish for pedagogicaldidactic purposes, the universities of the regions of antofagasta and arica-parinacota have the lowest averages (2.65 and 2.63 respectively) while the lowest averages on the use of spanish for student-teacher relations are given by the universities of the maule and antofagasta regions (2.83 and 2.94 respectively). concerning the factor of use of spanish in the efl classroom for developing and maintaining rapport between the teacher and student, differences are observed only between the participants of the ñuble and maule regions. the findings of this study are consistent with studies such as those done by schweers (1999), tang (2002), rodríguez and oxbrow (2008), kovacic and kirinic universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras102 donoso (2011), reimer (2012), mohebbi and alavi (2014), bozorgian and fallahpour (2015), lópez et al. (2016), and yildiz and yeşilyurt (2016) so long as the surveyed participants recognize the benefits of using the l1 in the l2 classroom. in the same way, it is possible to conclude that these future efl teachers do not intend to observe ministerial policy, which advocates for monolingual methods. this is aligned with the study by lópez et al. (2016) in which it is concluded that “communicative language teaching methodologies are not followed in our context; and that is what leads both teachers and students to use l1 and explain things (grammar structures mainly) that are not contemplated in these particular methodologies (clt)” (p. 69). this conclusion as well as the findings of our study, both in the chilean context, make it necessary to open up this matter for discussion so that both public policy, as well as the methodology and teaching courses in the initial efl teacher training, accept and optimize the use of the l1 in the efl classroom—considering the l1 rather as a useful tool, which should be used judiciously, depending, for example, on the learners’ communicative competence level and the subject matter covered in class, among other factors. although the findings of this study are compelling, its limitations are recognized in the same way that mohebbi and alavi (2014) conclude about their study. the authors suggest that future studies should expand the number of participants and include the perspectives of in-service efl teachers, taking into account variables such as their years of experience, the different socio-economic contexts, their personal experiences as teachers, and the teacher levels of language proficiency, among other factors. although this study is of an exploratory nature— since no studies about this issue have been reported in the current specialized literature in relation to efl teacher trainees in chile—another limitation considered was that the study was of a quantitativeonly nature. a qualitative component to it would have made the results more robust. in this sense, we suggest that future studies consider a mixed methodology. likewise, it is recommended that longitudinal studies be carried out with the purpose of following up, for example, participants’ possible changes of perceptions regarding this matter through time and to what extent. similarly, more in-depth studies could be conducted such as class observations, in-depth interviews with teachers and students, and so on. this is in order to analyze the phenomenon with a real-world approach and put forward strategies where the use of the l1 is allowed. findings of this sort could provide empirical evidence for efl teacher training. with the outcomes of this study, it is possible to predict that the participants of this study will most likely use spanish in the efl classroom, just as is the case of in-service teachers as reported by barahona (2016) and what we have observed in our visits to different schools in chile, both private and public. considering this a reality, we think that efl teacher training curricula and syllabi must integrate theory and practice regarding the use of the l1 in the l2 classroom. not doing so means to deny a fact that is evident. by the same token, the ministry of education should assume this reality and open up to a more flexible policy, where the focus should be placed on optimizing strategies and methodologies to improve the development of language proficiency in students. it would be really interesting to carry out studies of this nature in other countries of latin america in order to know what is done in efl teacher education regarding the topic presented here. also, it would be very informative to observe whether government language policies are similar and how these impact efl teacher training programs. all these should be done with the purpose of sharing and discussing what would benefit most the newest generations of language learners. 103profile: issues teach. prof. dev., vol. 22 no. 1, jan-jun, 2020. issn 1657-0790 (printed) 2256-5760 (online). bogotá, colombia. pages 93-107 using spanish in english language chilean classrooms? perspectives from efl teacher trainees references abrahams, m. j., & farias, m. 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(2011). students’ and teachers’ reasons for using the first language within the foreign language classroom (french and english) in central mexico. profile: issues in teachers’ professional development, 13(2), 113-129. nation, p. (2003). the role of the first language in foreign language learning. asian efl journal, 5(2), 113-129. ostovar-namaghi, s., & norouzi, s. (2015). first language use in teaching a foreign language: theoretical perspectives and empirical findings. us-china foreign language, 13(9), 615-622. https://doi.org/10.17265/1539-8080/2015.09.001. universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras104 donoso reimer, k. (2012). to use or not to use l1: that is the question. english teaching in china, 1, 7-12. richards, j. c., & rodgers, t. s. (2014). approaches and methods in language teaching. cambridge, uk: cambridge university press. rodríguez, c., & oxbrow, g. (2008). l1 in the efl classroom: more a help than a hindrance? porta lingarium, 9, 93-109. schweers, w. (1999). using l1 in the l2 classroom. english teaching forum, 37(2) 6-13. swain, m., & lapkin, s. (2000). task-based second language learning: the uses of the first language. language teaching research, 4, 251-274. https://doi. org/10.1177/136216880000400304. tang, j. (2002). using l1 in the english classroom. english teaching forum, 40(1), 36-43. yildiz, m., & yeşilyurt, s. (2016). use or avoid? the perceptions of prospective english teachers in turkey about l1 use in english classes. english language teaching, 10(1), 84-96. https://doi.org/10.5539/elt.v10n1p84. about the author eladio donoso holds a ba in efl teaching, an ma in english linguistics, an advanced studies diploma in spanish language, and a phd in linguistics. he has been teaching efl/esl and spanish as a foreign language for more than 25 years both in chile and the united states of america. for the past ten years, he has been training future teachers of efl at universidad católica del norte, chile. 105profile: issues teach. prof. dev., vol. 22 no. 1, jan-jun, 2020. issn 1657-0790 (printed) 2256-5760 (online). bogotá, colombia. pages 93-107 using spanish in english language chilean classrooms? perspectives from efl teacher trainees appendix a: l1 functions in l2 instruction questionnaire (taken from mohebbi & alavi, 2014, pp. 72-73) this questionnaire is designed based on second language acquisition (sla) research findings with regard to potential functions of second language (l2) learners’ first language (l1) in l2 classrooms. indicate the extent to which you agree with the following statements and practice them in l2 learning classrooms according to the scale below. please mark the most appropriate option for each statement. l1 functions in l2 learning classroom always usually sometimes seldom never i use learners’ l1 to teach new vocabulary. i use learners’ l1 to explain grammar. i use learners’ l1 to provide clarification when learners do not understand in l2. i use learners’ l1 to provide feedback and explain their errors. i use learners’ l1 in giving written corrective feedback on learners’ compositions i use learners’ l1 to explain instructions for assignments or projects. i use learners’ l1 to give meta-linguistic knowledge, in particular about discussing the tasks, such as the objective and the steps of tasks. i use learners’ l1 to negotiate the syllabus and the lesson. i use learners’ l1 in administrative issues like exams and announcements. i use learners’ l1 in dealing with discipline problems in class. universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras106 donoso i use learners’ l1 to establish or assert authority. i use learners’ l1 at the end of the class to answer possible questions. i use learners’ l1 to encourage and comfort learners. i use learners’ l1 to build rapport with learners. i use learners’ l1 in giving personal comments. i use learners’ l1 in making humorous comments. i use learners’ l1 in presenting information about the target culture, in particular discussing cross-cultural issues. i use learners’ l1 to supervise and guide them when learners perform a task collaboratively. i use learners’ l1 to conduct pre-task activities, namely prelistening and prereading. i use learners’ l1 in giving individual help to learners. i use learners’ l1 to save time on lengthy task explanations. i use learners’ l1 in making contrast between l1 and l2. 107profile: issues teach. prof. dev., vol. 22 no. 1, jan-jun, 2020. issn 1657-0790 (printed) 2256-5760 (online). bogotá, colombia. pages 93-107 using spanish in english language chilean classrooms? perspectives from efl teacher trainees appendix b: open questions please answer the following questions: 1. do you think it is convenient to use spanish while you are teaching english in chilean classrooms? explain. ________________________________________________________________________________________ ________________________________________________________________________________________ ______________________________________________________________________ 2. in what situations would you use (have you used) spanish in your english lessons? ________________________________________________________________________________________ ________________________________________________________________________________________ ______________________________________________________________________ 3. how often would you use (have you used) spanish in your english lessons? explain. ________________________________________________________________________________________ ________________________________________________________________________________________ ______________________________________________________________________ learning english from a critical, intercultural perspective: the journey of preservice language teachers 265profile: issues teach. prof. dev., vol. 24 no. 2, jul-dec, 2022. issn 1657-0790 (printed) 2256-5760 (online). bogotá, colombia. pages 265-279 https://doi.org/10.15446/profile.v24n2.97040 learning english from a critical, intercultural perspective: the journey of preservice language teachers aprendizaje del inglés desde una perspectiva crítica intercultural: una experiencia de profesores de inglés en formación claudia patricia gutiérrez1 universidad de antioquia, medellín, colombia critical language teaching education has become an inescapable endeavor for language teacher education programs. to contribute to this effort, this paper outlines the implementation of an english course from a critical, intercultural perspective, during the first semester of a language teacher education program in colombia. it also reports the ways preservice teachers responded to this implementation as evidenced in data stemming from their oral and written outcomes and from course evaluations. results indicate that this approach to language teaching allowed preservice teachers to affirm their multiple identities as they developed and strengthened their language skills in english. data also indicate that looking at the world from a more critical perspective entailed contradictions and challenges for preservice teachers and the teacher educator. keywords: critical interculturality, critical language education, culture, english as a foreign language, preservice teachers la formación de maestros de lenguas desde una perspectiva crítica es una labor inevitable para los programas de formación docente. para contribuir a esta labor, este estudio describe la implementación de un curso desde una perspectiva crítica intercultural dirigido a futuros maestros de inglés, durante el primer semestre de un programa de formación docente en colombia. se analizó la participación en clase de los futuros maestros, así como sus trabajos escritos y orales y las evaluaciones del curso y se encontró que la enseñanza del inglés desde esta perspectiva permitió a los participantes afirmar sus múltiples identidades mientras fortalecían sus conocimientos en inglés. asimismo, se evidenció que la incorporación de esta perspectiva crítica trajo consigo contradicciones y retos para los futuros maestros y los formadores de maestros. palabras clave: cultura, formación crítica de maestros, inglés como lengua extranjera, interculturalidad crítica, maestros en formación claudia patricia gutiérrez  https://orcid.org/0000-0002-5651-3687 · email: cpg1@uw.edu how to cite this article (apa, 7th ed.): gutiérrez, c. p. (2022). learning english from a critical, intercultural perspective: the journey of preservice language teachers. profile: issues in teachers’ professional development, 24(2), 265–279. https://doi.org/10.15446/profile. v24n2.97040 this article was received on july 1, 2021 and accepted on may 7, 2022. this is an open access article distributed under the terms of the creative commons license attribution-noncommercial-noderivatives 4.0 international license. consultation is possible at https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/ https://doi.org/10.15446/profile.v24n2.97040 https://orcid.org/0000-0002-5651-3687 mailto:cpg1@uw.edu https://doi.org/10.15446/profile.v24n2.97040 https://doi.org/10.15446/profile.v24n2.97040 https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/ universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras266 gutiérrez introduction in english as a foreign language (efl) teaching in colombia, the concept of culture has been approached through a constant contrast and comparison between the students’ culture and the “dominant” cultures associated with english. moreover, culture has been conceived of as a competence, which can be taught instrumentally, so that students “learn” to relate to english speakers “appropriately”. consequently, issues of race and power, inherent in all cultures, become invisible in the language classroom (walsh, 2010). growing awareness of the need to disrupt relations of power has led critical scholars to advocate for the education of intercultural citizens with a commitment to reading not only words, but also the world critically (freire, 1968/2000) and unlearning colonial ideals (walsh, 2010). these scholars also advocate for the promotion of dialogue across differences (walsh, 2010) and the need to educate students concerned with issues of inclusion (tubino, 2005). critical interculturality can greatly contribute to attaining this goal since it offers an approach to language teaching which does not neglect the local cultures and languages, and thus values diverse ways of being. achieving this transformation in efl teaching and turning these principles of critical interculturality into actual teaching practices requires a conscious effort in language teaching programs. theoretical framework language and culture have organically developed a connection in the english language teaching (elt) field. this connection allows language learners to see themselves and the other through their cultural lenses, while learning a language that carries along with it the wealth and ideological weight of the places and cultures where it is spoken. understanding that neither language nor culture are neutral and objective is the cornerstone of the promotion of interculturality founded on principles of equity and justice. the following section provides an account of how these concepts support this paper and advocates for the incorporation of this critical, intercultural perspective in the language classroom. language and culture language has been used as a tool of domination, conquest, and colonization throughout history (garcía, 2019). in the field of elt, language has been defined in multiple ways, from a eurocentric view that sees it as a mere linguistic code, to an “ideational signifying system that plays a central role in how we understand ourselves and the world” (pennycook, 1990, p. 13). according to pennycook, moving away from this functional view of language means that content can no longer be approached in a trivial fashion and that uncritically achieving communicative competence cannot be the ultimate goal of language teaching and learning. because language is not neutral (janks, 1993; lankshear, 1994), it constitutes a tool of power that can be used to reproduce and maintain dominant discourses or to challenge and deconstruct them to disrupt the status quo (shor, 1999). accordingly, texts are not neutral either; regardless of the mode texts take, they portray social, political, and historical ideologies that position the authors and audiences in specific ways. culture, like language, has been defined differently throughout history and is no longer conceived of as unchangeable and homogenous (atkinson, 1999; canagarajah, 2006). in the language classroom, the concept of culture has had numerous connotations such as cultural competence (byram & risager, 1999), intercultural competence (byram, 2000; byram et al., 2009), and intercultural communicative competence (byram & feng, 2005) to name a few. many of these connotations, however, have been criticized for treating culture as a skill that can be objectively taught and assessed (abdallah-pretceille, 2001; dervin, 2010, 2015; kramsch, 1993). along with this critique, kumaravadivelu (2003) contends that the incorporation of an “objective” approach to culture in the language classroom results in the denial of the 267profile: issues teach. prof. dev., vol. 24 no. 2, jul-dec, 2022. issn 1657-0790 (printed) 2256-5760 (online). bogotá, colombia. pages 265-279 learning english from a critical, intercultural perspective: the journey of preservice language teachers cultural diversity that students bring to the classroom and ascribes them to a single national and linguistic identity. all these critiques make the growing need to incorporate culture in the language classroom from a more comprehensive perspective evident. consequently, several scholars have challenged this static notion of culture with myriad propositions that surpass stereotypical attributes and acknowledge its complexity (dervin, 2016). thus, it is no longer enough to grasp factual information about the other, but to recognize how they have come to exist in their diversity which is central to an intercultural encounter (abdallah-pretceille, 2001). critical interculturality and language teaching critical interculturality has its foundations in the decolonial turn (maldonado-torres, 2010; mignolo, 2010) and focuses on the analysis of how power relations have systematically kept underserved communities and their languages and cultures in unprivileged conditions. at its core, decoloniality denounces coloniality as a pattern of structural, colonial, racial power in which different peoples, cultures, knowledge, and territories have been hierarchized through relations of domination (restrepo & rojas, 2010). disrupting this pattern requires an epistemic decolonization (mignolo, 2010) in which peoples’ cultures, experiences, and knowledges are centered in education. hence, critical interculturality becomes a pedagogical lens for social critique of our societies and their colonial, naturalized power relations of racialization which are intended to strengthen and encourage the ways of life and knowledge that have systematically been hidden and annihilated through coloniality (walsh, 2009, 2010). from this perspective, social exchanges in our multicultural societies are no longer grounded on the assimilation of marginalized groups into the dominant cultures (tubino, 2005). instead, critical interculturality challenges the role educational settings continue to play in a colonial society in which only western knowledge, values, and cosmogonies have a place (caicedo & castillo, 2008). furthermore, it allows students and teachers to reflect on the hierarchical relations among languages, the ways such relations have been naturalized, and the unequal relations among speakers of different languages (garcía-león & garcíaleón, 2014). literature review initial understanding of what culture meant resulted in equally reductionist approaches to teaching culture in the form of cultural celebration, which downgrades its complexity (sleeter, 2012). this approach to culture also fails to discuss theories of domination and results in a lack of understanding of how some powerful groups, languages, and literacies came to be in power (janks, 2000). this reality is not unlike colombia, where a study done by ortiz et al. (2020) demonstrated that english language teachers and learners notice the lack of a critical incorporation of issues related to students’ own cultures and local languages. students in a similar study reflected on the need to tailor course content so that it is more meaningful and allows their identities to become visible (gutiérrez et al., 2021). another study done at universidad de antioquia found that indigenous students faced constant discrimination in the education system and, although they feel compelled to learn english, some of them fear their languages and cultures might be further endangered (usma et al., 2018). in line with this finding, a study done by arismendi-gómez and ramírez-jiménez (2019) established that, to fight this process of assimilation, language teacher educators play a significant role in sustaining indigenous students’ identities in the foreign language classroom. fortunately, evidence indicates that a growing number of scholars in the field of elt in colombia has joined the quest for a more just, critical, intercultural education. (álvarez-valencia, 2014; álvarez-valencia & bonilla-medina, 2009; garcía-león & garcía-león, universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras268 gutiérrez 2014; gómez-rodríguez, 2015; granados-beltrán, 2016; usma et al., 2018). these scholars have made explicit connections between language learning and critical interculturality, thus making a case for the incorporation of this perspective in the language classroom and enabling practical applications. these practical applications have taken the form of the exploration and analysis of texts to scrutinize “the discourses that lie beneath the cultures that engage in interaction, the subjects, and the wider society” (álvarez-valencia & bonilla-medina, 2009, p. 163). they also engaged in critical analysis of issues of deep culture using foreign multicultural stories (gómez-rodríguez, 2015) while developing students’ language skills. from these studies, we can conclude that critical interculturality can be a powerful pedagogical tool in language education as it connects to a view of english teaching and learning as political activities (pennycook, 1989). we can also conclude that scholars and language educators have advanced the field of elt toward the construction of a more just society, through an approach to language teaching and learning that results in enhanced linguistic skills and critical understanding for students, and in a joint effort to build a more equitable society in which all languages, cultures, and identities are valued. achieving these goals calls for the envisioning of critical language teaching programs and teacher educators committed to pushing the boundaries in efl. method this study aligns with a critical research paradigm (kincheloe & mclaren, 2005), and is framed as an interpretative case study (stake, 2010; yin, 2011). from this perspective, issues are approached in a particular context and the participants’ points of view and values are at the core, which allows centering their voices in the study. this design also allows for multiple sources of information to be incorporated (yin, 2003). the following paragraphs describe the process of data collection and analysis, the context and participants, and the pedagogical unit. data collection and analysis data collection in this project included preservice teachers’ (pst) oral and written class productions, anonymous institutional course evaluations which ensured that pst did not feel pressured to answer the questions in a given way, and class recordings of lessons that took place during remote learning. participants were asked for consent to use and analyze their class productions and course evaluations and to record the lessons and conversations in breakout rooms. in addition, the language program committee consented to the use of course evaluations for this study. following richards (2003), data analysis was done through a descriptive and interpretative analysis of participants’ views and experiences as manifested in their class productions and course evaluations. additionally, class recordings were transcribed and analyzed inductively, followed by memo writing. at the end of every semester, data were displayed using charts which were systematically compared and contrasted using nvivo. once initial patterns began to emerge, a deductive analysis was done that resulted in the creation of three main categories: (a) affirmation of pst’s life stories, which indicated the personal connections participants made to class topics; (b) linguistic development, which referred to the multiple ways participants perceived their linguistic growth; and (c) responses to critical reflections, which contained pst’s reactions to the critical perspectives that framed this course. context and participants this study was done in an english course offered to pst during the first semester of a language teaching program at a public university in medellín, colombia. this course is part of a curriculum renewal framed in critical literacies and interculturality and it is intended to equip foreign language teachers with strong aca269profile: issues teach. prof. dev., vol. 24 no. 2, jul-dec, 2022. issn 1657-0790 (printed) 2256-5760 (online). bogotá, colombia. pages 265-279 learning english from a critical, intercultural perspective: the journey of preservice language teachers demic literacies and to spark in them a commitment to social justice. due to the university strike that took place in 2019 and covid, classes were interrupted and the duration of the semesters 2019–2 and 2020–1 was extended. this caused a significant decrease in the number of participants who enrolled or were able to continue in the program. thus, the total number of pst who participated in this study and signed their consent form was 35 spread across five academic semesters between 2018–2 and 2021. participants in this study came from diverse social and economic backgrounds and had english proficiency levels ranging from emergent knowledge about vocabulary to high written and oral commands of the language. they came from multiple urban and rural territories and, in a few cases, from indigenous reservations located throughout the country. their ages ranged from 17 to 45 and most participants did not have any teaching experience; the few who did, taught private lessons or worked hourly at private language institutes. pedagogical implementation this section describes the pedagogical implementation that took place over the course of three years in the first semester of this language teaching program. although the main text type suggested for this course is descriptive and focuses on present tenses, the materials chosen and explored did not necessarily follow discrete grammar items or vocabulary. speaking, writing, listening, and reading were included and, to meet students at their english levels, modeling, scaffolding, and autonomous work were fostered consistently. in addition, to tackle the challenges brought by dissimilar english proficiency levels, whole class discussions were limited, and a variety of grouping strategies were implemented so that pst could at times be paired with classmates who had a similar english proficiency or act as support for those whose linguistic proficiency was emergent. this was enforced by consistently positioning pst both as teachers and students. finally, all pst’s outcomes served as examples for pst entering the program the following semester, which set the purpose and audience for their outcomes. introductory unit: being critical starts from the self: my name, my identities this unit aimed at providing spaces for pst to learn about themselves and about their classmates, and to uncover the stereotypical ideas we often construct and perpetuate. to achieve this, this unit explored the ways their identities and names are connected and covered a number of oral and written texts that delved deeper into what comes with a name: history, a story, a life. this theme exploration began by reading an adaptation of the text “my name” from a long walk to freedom by nelson mandela (1995). the following is an excerpt of this text: on the first day of school, my teacher, miss mdingane, gave each of us an english name. this was the custom among africans in those days and it was due to the british influence of our education. the education i received was a british education, in which british ideas, british culture, british institutions, were automatically assumed to be superior. african culture was not important. (p. 3) aside from considering the origin of their names and its relationship to coloniality, pst discussed other aspects of colonization, abroad and in colombia. after analyzing this text and the similarities they found with our own country, pst researched the history and the story of their names, both of which are usually unknown by them. in addition, they analyzed and adapted a version of a research article explaining the impact stereotypical representations have on people due to their names (e.g., teachers and how they grade students, white/ black sounding names and opportunities to advance in society) and discussed how this topic could affect their perceptions about their own students. universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras270 gutiérrez finally, pst watched the first minutes of the ted talk the muslim on the airplane (kassir, 2016). the following is an excerpt from this ted talk: my name is . . . unapologetic muslim woman, syrian, american, hijabi . . . my name is writer, teacher . . . but at the airport, my name is random search. and on the street, it’s terrorist . . . oppressed. on the news, it’s isis . . . suspect. (1:03) this also allows the stereotypical representations expressed by the speaker to be connected to the ones about our own country which is a smooth transition to the next unit about countries, languages, and cultures. unit 1: debunking the myth of monolithic countries to uncover the multiple stereotypes we have about countries, which have historically been reinforced by media and education, pst examined a powerpoint presentation portraying diverse-looking people and attempted to answer the question: where are these people from? after looking at the actual information and challenging our biases, they analyzed why we tend to associate one country with one physical appearance and one language. to gather more evidence on this topic, pst do research on countries such as australia, nigeria, and colombia and find information about the languages spoken in those countries and the presence of indigenous communities. this research is intended to connect pst to the exploration of colonization, its influence on language loss, and the role of education in perpetuating single-sided stories of countries, languages, and cultures. through this, pst attempt to debunk the idea that countries are monolithic and ask why our knowledge about our own country and languages is so limited. in this unit, pst were also troubled about the idea of english as the language of success while they explore the texts no speak english by sandra cisneros and the picture book i hate english by ellen levine. aside from questions to check their understanding of main ideas and specific information, these texts set the ground for questioning why some people are afraid of losing their languages, why some people might resist learning english, the connections between languages and cultures, and the consequences of language loss. in addition, this unit explores countries, nationalities, and factors that affect routines in colombia and abroad such as access to water and electricity. finally, pst analyze which communities are systematically affected by these factors. unit 2: family–families aside from describing family members and their professions, this unit leads pst to ask why diverse family structures become invisible in school contexts. after examining myriad family structures, pst read the picture book families are different by nina pellegrini and answer questions such as: what types of families are represented in this story? what families are not included? why do you think these families are not represented? what family structures are usually invisible in schools/books? what family structures are common in our society? to further this conversation, pst read an adapted version of the online text “the ‘perfect’ family” (https://bit.ly/3eryuma) which allows them to question common myths surrounding family structures such as “harmony is the rule,” or “the nuclear family is the norm.” this unit closes by having pst write a text and create a video about their family. unit 3: our communities this unit provides pst with the linguistic repertoire to describe and compare places in their communities. these linguistic goals are addressed as students write, read, listen, and talk about diverse people and places in different communities. the great bulk of these goals are scaffolded as students read an adapted version of the story the dirty kid by mariana enriquez. the following is an excerpt from this story: https://bit.ly/3eryuma 271profile: issues teach. prof. dev., vol. 24 no. 2, jul-dec, 2022. issn 1657-0790 (printed) 2256-5760 (online). bogotá, colombia. pages 265-279 learning english from a critical, intercultural perspective: the journey of preservice language teachers but if you know how to handle yourself, if you understand the dynamics, the schedules, it’s not that dangerous. or not as dangerous. i know that, on friday nights, if i approach plaza garay, i may get trapped in a fight between various combatants: the small-time drug dealers of ceballos street, the brain-dead addicts who attack one another with bottles, the drunken transvestites determined to defend their stretch of pavement. (p. 2) over the last few weeks of the semester, pst discuss how this text relates to their communities, how transvestites are represented in this story, and the reasons behind these issues. this story also opens the door to talk about ways in which people can make a difference in those communities. hence, this final unit leads pst to plan an interview of a leader or someone who is usually marginalized in their communities. finally, it is important to mention that pst are allowed to do these interviews in spanish. aside from furthering their linguistic development in english, the purpose of this unit is to learn about the diversity of their communities and the multiple ways people are marginalized and/or contribute to building a better society. to attain both goals, all videos must contain subtitles in english; this undoubtedly requires a lot of support from the teacher, but this experience allows pst to expand their linguistic knowledge as they go beyond the linguistic boundaries of this unit. findings results from this implementation indicate that the incorporation of a critical perspective in language teacher education programs opened spaces for future educators to grow aware of and affirm their multiple life stories. secondly, it resulted in great development of pst’s language skills. finally, it made it evident that becoming critical of oneself and of the world around us is not a simple, straight path. instead, it is a path full of contradictions, challenges, and vulnerability. affirming pst’s life stories the implementation of these units created safe spaces for pst to affirm their life stories, be vulnerable, and openly write about and discuss some of the struggles they had encountered previously in relation to their names and belonging to diverse family structures. as evidenced in the following excerpts from students’ texts, by approaching class topics critically, conversations and class assignments became spaces in which pst confronted, affirmed, and embraced their identities. for example, i love my mother’s name, it is yanuba del carmen. yanuba is an indigenous name from the quimbaya tribe. however, it was not always like that. i remember that when i was young, i was ashamed of saying my mother’s name because the kids in the school would laugh at it. (pablo,1 written text, 2020) i was one of the first people who started getting separated from the religion imposition. it was a christian catholic school so my partners and even one teacher started calling me “mateo el ateo” [mateo the atheist]. (mathew, written text, 2021) like these examples above, there were multiple instances in which pst stated how they had grappled with stereotypical representations about their names and personal backgrounds. nonetheless, aside from bringing their stories to the classroom, class conversations encouraged them to think critically about their own stereotypical representations and the power educators have to revert or perpetuate harmful prejudices in the classroom: “i think we have to reflect and inform ourselves about the lies we accept as truths…as teachers, any relevant decision could be in our hands, and if we are full of stereotypes, we will probably ruin someone’s life” (dani, written text, 2021). similar realizations were evident during the exploration of the unit about families. every semester, when the myth of the perfect nuclear family was 1 all students’ names are pseudonyms. universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras272 gutiérrez challenged, pst consistently began opening up about their own family struggles and embraced vulnerability talking about their multiple family compositions and stories. my parents used to argue a lot, so it is better for everyone the way it is now. like this, everything is more peaceful . . . we are a good example of how single parent families can be just as functional as nuclear families—and sometimes even more. (vero, video script, 2018) i believe that the fact of living in a resguardo indígena2 doesn’t make us very different from other families. (jack, video script, 2019) in addition, as shown in the course evaluations, this class provided opportunities for students to affirm their own identities and honor their life stories: “this language has developed self-value in me, starting from inside to outside, i mean, to know myself to then know others”3 (pedro, course evaluation, 2019). likewise, embracing vulnerability led to reflections about the multiple stories that their future students will bring to the classroom and the need to affirm and validate them through teaching practices responsive to their needs and diversity. in this line of thought, by consistently positioning pst as educators, they began to envision themselves as educators even in this beginning stage of the teaching program: “[this course] has made more intricate my perspective and identity as a future teacher” (manu, course evaluation, 2019–1). “this has been a great way to start my major, i have started to have clearer foundations on what i want to do in my teaching career” (juan, course evaluation, 2019–2). seeing themselves as educators takes significant relevance given that, often, a number of pst begin to position themselves as such at a later stage in education 2 politically recognized indigenous lands. 3 quotes from course evaluations are originally in spanish. quotes from written and oral texts are originally in english and are kept as uttered by the participants. programs. in addition, findings indicate that, although this course was not explicitly oriented toward building pst’s teaching repertoire, they saw it as a model they could use for their future teaching practices: “this course has helped me to think as a teacher and place myself in the teacher’s shoes, which has helped me to visualize myself and to want to learn more how to be a good teacher” (sara, course evaluation, 2020). “this course is not only based on how to teach english and increase our skills, it is also about learning how to teach what we are learning” (ivan, course evaluation, 2019–2). this finding indicates that a recurrent engagement in language learning from a critical perspective might have an impact on future language teachers’ practices and contribute to a more just education as pst enhance their english learning. language development as pst dove into the exploration of myriad topics, they advanced in their writing, reading, speaking, and listening beyond the grammar boundaries set in the course. the videos, class discussions, and written texts they produced as well as the complexity of their responses to listening and reading comprehension workshops provide countless instances of this linguistic development. moreover, pst repeatedly commented on this: despite having an advanced english level, this class helped me notice many mistakes i didn’t know i was making . . . it helped me to have a basis in english not centered just on its grammar and production but more connected to the world. (samu, course evaluation, 2019–2) i started this class from scratch, and i have made great progress. (vale, course evaluation, 2019–1) as noted, regardless of their english proficiency levels, pst grew aware of their language enhancement. this, by no means, indicates that all students reached a similar language proficiency level. it does mean, however, that students who entered the program with a high 273profile: issues teach. prof. dev., vol. 24 no. 2, jul-dec, 2022. issn 1657-0790 (printed) 2256-5760 (online). bogotá, colombia. pages 265-279 learning english from a critical, intercultural perspective: the journey of preservice language teachers level of proficiency in english were still challenged to further their thinking and language use while students whose english level was emergent advanced in their linguistic development to meet, and often exceed, the linguistic and content objectives of the course. this disparity in english proficiency did not always come without challenges, though. for students who enter the program with basic knowledge of english, participating in class conversations can at times be a daunting and frustrating experience. nonetheless, students found that the supportive environment created in the classroom eased this learning experience: “the teacher . . . has bolstered bonds between us and has instilled a sense of support and understanding with those who know less” (jero, course evaluation, 2019). this finding might mean that, by positioning pst as teachers as they interacted with their classmates, they engaged in a more caring, trusting environment to learn. however, when it came to peer-assessment, pst perceived this strategy differently: “correcting each other’s work is not always the best way to realize our mistakes” (mariana, course evaluation, 2018–2). “with the teacher’s support we help each other and correct our mistakes, which has helped me realize my strengths and weaknesses” (pilar, course evaluation, 2019–2). these responses might indicate that pst will experience this strategy differently, depending on their expectations from the teacher. in sum, this finding indicates that language teacher educators can reconcile literacy development in english with critical, intercultural reflections although this road can be full of contradictions as will be further discussed. responses to critical reflections although pst demonstrated high levels of reflection about their own biases and stereotypes related to names toward the end of the introductory unit, once the unit about countries began, a new set of stereotypes emerged. for instance, to the question: “what do colombians look like?”, which was intended to show our long-held multiple stereotypical representations, students readily began answering and describing a unified physical appearance which, for obvious reasons, did not even reflect half of the people in our classroom. an example of this can be evidenced in the following whole class conversation: teacher: what do colombians look like? manuela: they look like the woman in the first slide (dark skin, tall). dylan: they look like the eighth guy (light skin, tall). teacher: ok. let’s see. so, do all colombians look like them? manuela: well, not all, many…well, some! (everybody laughs) teacher: so, manuela, you are not colombian. manuela: (she laughs) teacher, according to my theory, no, i’m not colombian. (everybody laughs) this conversation triggered discussions about the reasons why, even in light of overwhelming evidence, we are invested in repeating and perpetuating our long-held misrepresentations and essentializing versions of the world. at this point, many pst agreed that media has a role in creating these ideas and laughed at the absurdity of repeating these unquestioned beliefs. nonetheless, as soon as they started working in small groups, some students often attempted to reinforce stereotypical representations about entire communities, both local and foreign. this, however, did not always go uncontested by their classmates. another significant finding indicates that pst began to see how colonialism influences our perceptions of languages. this can be shown in the following conversation about language loss when answering the question: “why do some languages become more powerful than others?” juli: i think that, maybe, because they become easier, for example the english, hmm, pero es que no sé cómo explicarlo [but i just don’t know how to explain it]. universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras274 gutiérrez mauro: i believe is more like the consequence of like the colonization, ‘cause like, maybe you think spanish is more difficult because some ways and things like that, and english is more practical, that doesn’t mean our main language is english just because is more practical. these are a few instances of the ways pst began to unpack language ideologies around english. similarly, pst engaged in conversations that questioned the role of education in sustaining colonial views of the world while making indigenous languages and cultures invisible. the following is a conversation between two students in a breakout room in april 2021: mateo: the way we are educated at the school like, the teachers don’t usually tell us like “hey, preserve this country and find the principal things about… (he’s interrupted by his classmate) diego: yeah, they don’t say about languages, about indigenous languages, the teachers never mention them, like you only know because like, you investigated by yourself… mateo: yeah, just the english and that is all. diego: yeah, you’re right. likewise, some of them understood how necessary it was to take specific actions such as learning ancestral languages, to allow indigenous communities to become visible and valued. something that i think is very relevant is, for example, the things that the language school is doing, because they teach creole, embera, and like, preserving that is very important. because is another way, is what we should do to comprehend, not help, but make those communities be seen because we forget them. (dani, breakout room, march 2021) these findings also seemed to indicate that approaching language learning from this perspective allowed pst to see it in explicit connection with culture: “this class has been very significant because, thanks to it, i have strengthened my knowledge about english and i have integrated it with culture; something i hadn’t done before” (isabel, course evaluation, 2019–1). “you integrate the language and the world, so you understand more the culture you know and others in the same language” (santi, course evaluation, 2019–2). the incorporation of this critical perspective also seemed to spark a desire in pst to vindicate marginalized or misrepresented communities. instances of this were recurrent as they chose to interview myriad people such as a street vendor, an immigrant from venezuela, a transgender language teacher, and a teacher from putumayo (a region in the southern part of colombia) who supports fellow teachers whose basic resources are scarce. these are only a few of the examples of all the experiences and communities we learned from by engaging in this class assignment: “all the activities we’ve done have addressed not just technical content but spaces to reflect and analyze cultural or personal situations” (jhoan, course evaluation, 2019–1). “beyond advancing my knowledge about english, this class has allowed me to know about other contexts and realities i had stereotyped before” (maria, course evaluation, 2019–1). finally, although this has not been a recurrent finding, it is worth noting that the exploration of certain themes from a critical perspective represented a challenge specifically for a student with strong religious beliefs who argued that, for instance, the composition of gay families was against the laws of god. in this particular conversation, pst asked me for help to “explain to him why his belief was not right.” this situation led me to continue reflecting on the ways pst’s view of the world and multiple identities, and my own, could in some ways clash, and how necessary it was to constantly fight the urge to find consensus in the classroom. hence, instead of finding an ultimate answer, we all engaged in conversations around what factors shape our worldviews, why it might be difficult to transform our perspectives and how, as teachers, those perspectives might be oppressive to other people. 275profile: issues teach. prof. dev., vol. 24 no. 2, jul-dec, 2022. issn 1657-0790 (printed) 2256-5760 (online). bogotá, colombia. pages 265-279 learning english from a critical, intercultural perspective: the journey of preservice language teachers in sum, although this was not a linear path, findings suggest that approaching class topics from a critical perspective provided spaces for pst to interrogate and expand their worldview in conversation with that of their classmates. this approach also created opportunities to reflect on the influence of colonialism in education and language ideologies. at the same time, these findings demonstrate that foreign language learning can make available myriad opportunities to critically connect students to their own realities and affirm their life stories, as they increase their linguistic repertoire in english. discussion the above-mentioned findings show that the road to achieving social justice and critical language development can take multiple forms. it might take the form of encouraging students/pst to question their worldviews and challenge their stereotypes as they approach texts critically. it might also happen through the creation of spaces in which they affirm their identities and learn about their own and other contexts (cochran-smith et al., 2009), or it can be enacted through “an evolving repertoire of practices of analysis and interrogation” (comber, 2013, p. 589). this endeavor does not require the search and selection of specialized texts or the incorporation of texts that explicitly address social issues. in fact, because texts are never neutral, any issues or topics that relate to students’ life experiences and interests can be used to build curriculum that advances their critical literacy development (vasquez et al., 2019). these findings also demonstrate that approaching topics from a critical perspective allows subjectivities to emerge as students and educators make sense of class content (pessoa & urzeda-freitas, 2012). this allows us to bring forward buried life stories such as those about diverse family structures most of us belong to but are often ashamed to speak about in spaces where family trees portray a universal nuclear family. along this line, echeverri-sucerquia (2020) contends that, to push the boundaries of second language education, educators and students should engage together in understanding their own realities in order to “foster awareness of our own identities and what shapes them” (p. 27). likewise, conversations about indigenous languages and cultures demonstrated that even spaces in which a colonial language such as english is learned can provide powerful opportunities to interrogate pst’s own cultures and languages. that is to say, foreign language education does not need to (and should not?) shy away from taking an active role in interrogating, affirming, and sustaining students’ identities as they learn another language (arismendi-gómez & ramírez-jiménez, 2019). in fact, “because language, culture, and identity are integrally related, language teachers are in a key position to address educational inequality” (hawkins & norton, 2009, p. 32). conclusions this implementation is far from perfect, and i am convinced educators committed to the construction of a better society can think of myriad ways in which these units could be done better, include better materials, be scaffolded better, and more. what i offer here is not a recipe of how to do critical, intercultural language teacher education, but a reflection of the tiny steps i took in this direction and the ways it impacted my students. teaching this class during the past three years has consistently shed light on the potential language teaching education programs have to make language teachers aware of their power (and responsibility?) to contribute to the construction of a fairer society. this does not mean all pst achieved the same levels of reflection or demonstrated the same dispositions toward the themes explored, but becoming a homogenous whole was never the goal. an attempt to do this would have denied that our lived experiences will always inform the way we understand the world. thus, teacher educators should be aware that looking at the world from a more critical intercultural perspective is a bumpy journey that can universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras276 gutiérrez often be fraught with contradictions, resistance, and eyeopening moments, both for pst and teacher educators themselves. there is no straight path for becoming critical, just as there is no definite bar set to claim one has become critical. this is a never-ending process in which, once we uncover ways in which we oppress and have been oppressed, new forms of oppression become visible, just as new ways to contribute to build a better society do. in addition, pst bring along with them multiple beliefs, values, and identities, which might create discomfort during interactions. in fact, these conversations might be uncomfortable for teacher educators themselves who also bring a realm of beliefs and life experiences to the classroom. this realization should take us then to the understanding that exploring the multiple perspectives that converge in texts and in people’s interaction rather than indoctrinating students or homogenizing our understanding of the world is what lies behind. this takes particular relevance not only as educators, but as teacher educators whose demeanor and modeling often has an impact on pst. implications although findings indicate that this implementation positively affected pst’s critical understanding of themselves, their communities, and the world around them, this approach to language teaching cannot be relegated to a single course. instead, language teaching education programs should place critical literacies and interculturality at the core of their syllabi. as a result, pst can be continually encouraged to question their own worldviews and the ways these might impact their future teaching practices. likewise, constant exposure to this approach might not only result in pst’s stronger literacy development in english but also in an understanding of this language as a pedagogical tool to contribute to the construction of a more just society. additionally, teacher educators can impact pst by becoming models of language teaching from a critical perspective. this might instill in future teachers a desire to build a teaching repertoire throughout their major and find alternatives to the years of colonial education they have received throughout their schooling. finally, transforming language teacher education programs from this perspective will imply drawing on teacher educators’ dispositions to transform their teaching practices and to engage in continuous selfreflection about their beliefs and values and how they influence their selection of class materials, the questions they ask and choose not to ask when exploring texts. this might bring to the surface their own biases and contradictions, a process that is needed to understand how teaching practices are shaped. this might be a contested transformation because some language teachers might find that their beliefs do not align with critical literacies and interculturality aims. hence, further research could delve into the struggles and gains language teachers find in teaching this way as they also navigate their own understanding of critical theories in language teaching. it could also explore the impact this 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(2003). case study research: design and methods. sage. yin, r. k. (2011). qualitative research from start to finish. the guilford press. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uiam1g_vgn0 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uiam1g_vgn0 https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1467-971x.2003.00317.x https://doi.org/10.4324/9780429444289-6 https://doi.org/10.2307/3587534 https://doi.org/10.5070/l411004991 https://doi.org/10.1002/tesq.46 https://doi.org/10.1057/9780230505056 https://doi.org/10.1177/0042085911431472 https://doi.org/10.17533/udea.ikala.v23n02a03 279profile: issues teach. prof. dev., vol. 24 no. 2, jul-dec, 2022. issn 1657-0790 (printed) 2256-5760 (online). bogotá, colombia. pages 265-279 learning english from a critical, intercultural perspective: the journey of preservice language teachers about the author claudia patricia gutiérrez is a fulbright doctoral student of language, literacy, and culture at university of washington. she holds an ma in foreign language teaching from universidad de antioquia, colombia. she has been a teacher educator and researcher for over 10 years. her research interests include critical literacies, critical interculturality, and decoloniality. pedagogical practicum and student-teachers discursively conceived in an elt undergraduate program 183profile: issues teach. prof. dev., vol. 23 no. 2, jul-dec, 2021. issn 1657-0790 (printed) 2256-5760 (online). bogotá, colombia. pages 183-198 https://doi.org/10.15446/profile.v23n2.89212 pedagogical practicum and student-teachers discursively conceived in an elt undergraduate program práctica pedagógica y docentes en formación concebidos discursivamente en un programa de pregrado en la enseñanza del inglés edgar lucero1 andrea margarita cortés-ibañez universidad de la salle, bogotá, colombia the research study shows how pedagogical practicum is conceived, and how student-teachers are constructed as language teachers, within the discourses spoken in the initial meetings and institutional documents of pedagogical practicum in an english language teaching undergraduate program in bogota, colombia. the discourses were analyzed under the principles of ethnography of communication and linguistic ethnography. this study affords insights into a contributory conception of pedagogical practicum and into an institutional image and a teacher’s figure of student-teachers. pedagogical practicum contains several academic, professional, and experiential aspects that configure this space with established (pre-) requisites, tasks, and roles for student-teachers; these aspects in turn start constructing these individuals with particular manners of must-be and must-do. keywords: discourse, initial teacher education, pedagogical practicum el presente estudio muestra cómo la práctica pedagógica se concibe y cómo los docentes en formación se construyen como docentes de idiomas, en los discursos dichos en las reuniones iniciales y en los documentos institucionales de ese espacio, en un programa de pregrado en la enseñanza del inglés en bogotá, colombia. los discursos se analizaron siguiendo los principios de la etnografía de la comunicación y la etnografía lingüística. el estudio presenta como resultado una concepción contributiva de la práctica pedagógica y una imagen institucional con una figura de profesor para los docentes en formación. la práctica pedagógica contiene diferentes aspectos académicos, profesionales y experienciales que configuran este espacio con (pre)requisitos, tareas y roles para los docentes en formación; estos aspectos a su vez empiezan a construir a estos individuos con unas maneras particulares de deber-ser y deber-hacer. palabras clave: discurso, formación inicial docente, práctica pedagógica edgar lucero  https://orcid.org/0000-0003-2208-5124 · email: elucero@unisalle.edu.co andrea margarita cortés-ibañez  https://orcid.org/0000-0002-1063-6235 · email: ancortes@unisalle.edu.co how to cite this article (apa, 7th ed.): lucero, e., & cortés-ibañez, a. m. (2021). pedagogical practicum and student-teachers discursively conceived in an elt undergraduate program. profile: issues in teachers’ professional development, 23(2), 183–198. https://doi.org/10.15446/ profile.v23n2.89212 this article was received on july 16, 2020 and accepted on march 10, 2021. this is an open access article distributed under the terms of the creative commons license attribution-noncommercial-noderivatives 4.0 international license. consultation is possible at https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/ https://doi.org/10.15446/profile.v23n2.89212 https://orcid.org/0000-0003-2208-5124 mailto:elucero@unisalle.edu.co https://orcid.org/0000-0002-1063-6235 https://doi.org/10.15446/profile.v23n2.89212 https://doi.org/10.15446/profile.v23n2.89212 https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/ universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras184 lucero & cortés-ibañez introduction this study corresponds to the second stage of a wider research project that seeks to display how pedagogical practicum (only “practicum” henceforth) serves as a subject to nurture preservice teachers in english language teaching (elt) undergraduate programs in colombia.1 the first stage of this project showed valuable insights from mentor teachers (lucero, 2015) and preservice teachers (castañeda-trujillo & aguirre-hernández, 2018; lucero & roncancio-castellanos, 2019) about the way they lived the practicum in an elt undergraduate program in colombia. these insights have led us, now as a research group, to explore the discourses that take place in the communicative events of practicum in varied elt undergraduate programs in the country. knowledge about this matter can elucidate how english student-teachers are educated during practicum in our country. with this second stage, we commit now to offer an understanding about the way practicum is conceived, and the way student-teachers are constructed in the communicative events occurring in this space in elt undergraduate programs in colombia. we believe that part of what english teachers are nowadays started out via the way they were constructed from the held conceptions about what practicum and student-teachers should be when they were in these undergraduate programs. as part of this second stage, in this article we describe the discourse that takes place in the initial meetings with the coordinators, practicum advisors, cooperating teachers, and student-teachers at the beginning of practicum in an elt undergraduate program in bogota, colombia. this description helps shed light on how practicum is conceived, and how student-teachers start being constructed as language teachers within the discourses spoken in these meetings. 1 the project is pursued by the research group language and discursive practices in contexts of education. the insights from these two stages have led us to reflect on the conception of three terms in the whole research project. first, we have moved from using the terms of practicum supervisors or mentor teachers to using practicum advisors, preferably. this move responds to abandoning a vision of those teacher educators who accompany practicum as supervisors or mentors who are knowing in the field, who give and transmit knowledge and skills, manage studentteachers’ training, follow-up on them in terms of their attendance at schools, hold advisory meetings, and evaluate student-teachers by using established or predesigned checklists (dakhiel, 2017; fajardo-castañeda & miranda-montenegro, 2015; macías & sánchez, 2015). we prefer to adopt the vision of practicum advisors as one of those who create empathy and dialogue for pedagogical guidance, offer emotional support and professional socialization, develop teaching knowledge and practices collaboratively, foster student-teachers’ self-construction and esteem, and promote reflection on what is done, how, and why for language education (castañeda-peña et al., 2016; clandinin et al., 2009; liu, 2014; quintero-polo, 2016). second, we have moved from using the term of preservice teachers to using student-teachers in preference. this move avoids seeing them as loaded with instructional roles, commanded to do conventional tasks, susceptible to being observed and shaped, and having been trained for service purposes in the work market (ripski et al., 2011). we have opted to use the term student-teachers, since they come to practicum holding varied domains and senses of self-awareness, as well as holding constructed thoughts, knowledges, values, feelings, dispositions, and behaviors (schussler et al., 2010). something similar happens with the term pedagogical practice; thus, we have decided to use pedagogical practicum instead. the former tends to imply training, repetition, effectiveness, and transmission (crookes, 2003). the latter encompasses personal and contextual characteristics, educational backgrounds, and creation 185profile: issues teach. prof. dev., vol. 23 no. 2, jul-dec, 2021. issn 1657-0790 (printed) 2256-5760 (online). bogotá, colombia. pages 183-198 pedagogical practicum and student-teachers discursively conceived in an elt undergraduate program of subject matter knowledge; this term also stresses the importance of experiences, skills, knowledges, and dispositions of all its participants (fajardo-castañeda & miranda-montenegro, 2015; liu, 2014). conceptual framework the concepts in this section mostly come from local knowledge as we have been building the study from the situated experiences that we have lived as teacher educators during the practicum of elt undergraduate programs in bogota. with this, we do not want to say corresponding knowledge that comes from other countries, usually some in north america or europe, is invalid for the study. we acknowledge this fact, but this time we look for epistemological coherence in the understanding of these concepts for a study that has been born and situated in bogota, colombia. initial teacher education in colombia, decree 1278 of 2002, estatuto de profesionalización docente (teacher professionalization guidelines), establishes that curricula of initial teacher education (ite) programs must sustain pedagogy, evaluation, and research as the pillars to articulate disciplinary and academic contents with teaching contexts, realities, and learners’ needs for education (ministerio de educación nacional [men], 2014; restrepo-gómez, 1994; rincón-zabala, 2016). this articulation in turn allows the diversification of practicum and its guidelines into methodological, institutional, and instructional notions (gelvezsuarez, 2007; ríos-beltrán, 2018). by considering these principles, colombian education faculties prompt understanding ite as the curricular implementation for student-teachers’ pedagogical, academic, and socioaffective developments. this implementation is later consolidated in the spaces of practicum (resolution 2041 of 2016; londoño-orozco, 2009; men, n.d., 2014; ríos-beltrán, 2018). thus, practicum, as a subject of professional training, helps to a great extent to educate, construct, and constitute student-teachers as teachers in the ite programs. in the elt field, specifically, ite is part of the undergraduate programs in this matter. since 1994, with the passing of national law of education 115, men mandated an emphasis on professional development to achieve the specifics of the national law which encompass the establishment of foreign language teaching methods and approaches and the fostering of teachers’ exercise of autonomy with those teaching methods (gonzález-moncada, 2010). colombian education faculties then began adopting these aspects for their elt-program curricula; aspects that the men has reinforced with the national bilingual program since 2004 (colombia aprende, n.d.). therefore, in these programs ite seeks to foster student-teachers’ pedagogical and content knowledge, the learning of english to improve life quality, the development of consistent standards for elt, and the enhancement of ongoing professional development (gonzález-moncada, 2010; guerrero-nieto & quintero-polo, 2009; mora et al., 2019; usma-wilches, 2009). pedagogical practicum in consonance with zuluaga (1979, 1999), de tezanos (2007), fandiño-parra and bermúdez-jiménez (2015), londoño-orozco (2009), moreno-fernández (2015a), ortega-valencia et al. (2013), practicum refers to situated experiences of teaching that are verbalized through pedagogical discourse. besides, practicum may also occur outside classrooms since it is also a complex historical event that prompts a pedagogical analysis of context-situated knowledges. the authors explain that practicum should go beyond transmission or explanation of contents and skill sets; practitioners should be more active to confront the long-term educational issues of contexts and communities for their transformation. in the colombian elt field, practicum is a professional and academic space in which student-teachers, from their experiences and knowledges, are expected universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras186 lucero & cortés-ibañez to give their first classes as language teachers (esteve, 1998; posada-ortiz & garzón-duarte, 2013). studentteachers, on the one hand, put in practice and try out the compendium of knowledge learned throughout their major during practicum (aguirre-sánchez, 2014; chaves-varón, 2008). on the other hand, in this space, student-teachers internalize and construct pedagogical knowledge through being the mediators of their students’ english learning process (castañeda-trujillo, 2019; castellanos-jaimes, 2013; suárez-flórez & basto-basto, 2017; quintero-polo, 2019). in brief, practicum is concerned with knowing, doing, and relating (de tezanos, 2007; lucero & roncancio-castellanos, 2019; zuluaga, 1999). while student-teachers give their lessons and construct themselves as language teachers, they put in practice and build their disciplinary, professional, pedagogical, content, and experiential knowledges.2 student-teachers do this by receiving the support, accompaniment, and advice of their practicum advisors, cooperating teachers, and peers. a functional relationship should be created between student-teachers and their practicum advisors, as well as with the practicum context, so that studentteachers’ knowledges, skills, and attitudes about elt are potentiated (samacá-bohorquez, 2018). for most student-teachers in practicum, this is the time to have real experiences of teaching english. the role that different types of knowledge, but particularly experiential and pedagogical knowledge, have in student-teachers during practicum scaffolds their figures as mediators of english teaching, learning, and assessment (aguirre-sánchez, 2014; castellanos-jaimes, 2013; suárez-flórez & basto-basto, 2017). reflection for awareness of how student-teachers construct their pedagogical knowledge and their figures as language teachers collaboratively are also part of the experiences to live during the practicum (castañeda-trujillo, 2019; 2 we recognize the fact that other knowledges can also be part of language teachers. see a discussion about this matter in castañedalondoño (2018, 2019). samacá-bohorquez, 2008, 2012; quintero-polo, 2019; ubaque-casallas & aguirre-garzón, 2020). student-teachers commonly known as preservice teachers, studentteachers are those individuals majoring in education to be teachers. elt student-teachers in colombia are referred to as skilled practitioners with knowledge, wisdom, beliefs, emotions, attitudes, interests, and roles towards teaching (aguirre-sanchez, 2014; castañeda-trujillo & aguirre-hernández, 2018; castellanos-jaimes, 2013; lucero & roncancio-castellanos, 2019; olaya & gómez-rodríguez, 2013; suárez-flórez & basto-basto, 2017). student-teachers are object and subject of the relationship among knowledge, teaching, and policing. they are expected to show accepted or pre-established practices of teaching and to accumulate knowledge of language education in those practices under the light of curricula. they may assume themselves as figures of knowledge and power from those practices and from the roles and tasks that appear in language education discourses. this recently-advocated issue states that elt student-teachers in colombia become subjects throughout the historical modes of what it is to be an english teacher, socially, academically, and politically (davila, 2018; gómez-vásquez & guerrero-nieto, 2018; méndez-rivera, 2018; méndez et al., 2019). from this perspective, student-teachers may be subjectified and objectified in the elt field by dividing practices, expecting/expected behaviors and attitudes, and desired discourses and modes. in brief, these discourses and modes of subjectification and objectification are connected to the conceptualizations of who an english teacher should be and do in varied contexts and according to curricula. in this way, english (student) teachers are turned into subjects; this transformation defines how they relate to themselves and to teaching knowledge, practices, and discourses. 187profile: issues teach. prof. dev., vol. 23 no. 2, jul-dec, 2021. issn 1657-0790 (printed) 2256-5760 (online). bogotá, colombia. pages 183-198 pedagogical practicum and student-teachers discursively conceived in an elt undergraduate program when english student-teachers constitute themselves, or are constituted by elt knowledge, practices, and discourses, practicum is constituted too. therefore, a reciprocity appears, student-teachers constitute practicum as this space constitutes them. naranjo (2010) exposes the need to go beyond established knowledge, practices, and discourses to allow (student) teachers to discover themselves. ite programs and their spaces of practicum should generate processes that lead student-teachers to be aware of themselves and their own teacher knowledge, practices, and voices (castañeda-trujillo & aguirre-hernández, 2018; lucero & roncancio-castellanos, 2019; ubaque-casallas & aguirre-garzón, 2020). discourse(s) as a first statement, following van dijk (1997), we understand discourses as specific forms of social interaction, forms that stand for a complete communicative event in a social situation. thus, discourses are social practices that occur in multiple social events (saville-troike, 2003; rampton et al., 2015). as a second statement, pursuant to gee (2005), discourses are multifaceted and complex social acts in which meaning is emitted, gathered, and appropriated. in these two statements, in consonance with díaz-villa (2001), we see that a piece of discourse can be constituted by other discourses and, at the same time, be the source for constructing other discourses (we perceive that this happens during practicum). discourses are therefore the result of social dynamics, of interactions among its participants, and of relations between texts and contexts. by considering all this, we understand that discourses open spaces for the (re)production of coexisting and competing discursive conventions and frameworks that (re)construct and transform realities and subjects in each context (méndez-rivera, 2012). we acknowledge the fact that discourses are the result of socio-historic conditions of production, are potentially ideological (fairclough, 2006, as cited in chacón-chacón & chapetón-castro, 2018, p. 4), exert power and maintain control (bernstein, 1998, as cited in escobar-alméciga, 2013, p. 50), and are not neutral since their participants and texts play a role in their distribution and circulation (guerrero-nieto, 2010). in the colombian elt field, discourse has been studied from different angles (see a profiling done by castañeda-peña, 2012). specifically, with respect to practicum, scholars as guerrero-nieto (2010) and camargo-cely (2018) have demonstrated that discourses from the colombian language policies point towards what english (student) teachers must be and know about didactics and learning theories and the way this must be known. these discourses serve as foundations to construct teachers as subjects during practicum. apart from these two studies, little has been explored about how other discourses happen or are produced in the contexts of practicum, or in ite, of elt undergraduate programs in colombia. these other discourses may also reveal further discursive conventions, frameworks, ideologies, and practices occurring throughout time in these contexts. research design this study took place in an elt undergraduate program in bogota. we considered the discourses that took place in the initial meetings of practicum held by the program and the discourses written in the official documents of the program for practicum.3 the data of this study consisted of audio recordings of two initial meetings with two coordinators and 23 practicum advisors, and of two initial meetings held with the two coordinators, the 23 practicum advisors, and all student-teachers (around 200). each meeting lasted about one hour. these meetings were recorded in two 3 a consent letter, issued by the directors of the program, allowed recording these meetings, previous agreement with the individuals involved in the study, and getting access to the official documents of the program. universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras188 lucero & cortés-ibañez subsequent academic semesters. we also recorded four initial meetings at different schools where practicum was going to take place. the respective school’s cooperating teachers and the assigned practicum advisors (around five each), with their student-teachers (around 14), attended these four meetings. we transcribed each recorded meeting. we, the researchers of the study,4 used field notes as understood by martínez (2007) and moreno-fernández (2015a) to register statements occurring during the meetings as covert participants. we took notes in relation to what was said, and how it was expressed, about the practicum and student-teachers. we contrasted the field notes with the recordings and transcripts.5 the official documents consisted of the master document of the undergraduate program and its practicum regulations, seven syllabi, and eight institutional signed agreements. to frame the discourses worth for the study, we carried out an initial documentary analysis in two phases. the first, the formal analysis phase, corresponded to an external view of each document and its identification of the conventions proposed by moreno-fernández (2015b, pp. 99–101), to wit: type of document, date of publication, author, and thematic content for the study. we classified the documents in line with these conventions. the second, the internal analysis phase, involved working deeply on the thematic content of each document in the search of keywords, statements, and descriptions to establish what is said about the practicum and student-teachers in the documents. to do so, we concentrated on three questions of analysis: (a) what is a student-teacher during practicum? (b) what must/should a student-teacher do in this space? (c) how is practicum defined and what are 4 in total, we were four researchers collecting and analyzing data for the study. we four belong to the program but from different departments. 5 we took the field notes separately, then contrasted and analyzed them with the revision of two external colleagues to avoid bias. these two colleagues are also language teachers and practicum advisors. its goals? we identified this throughout the thematic content of each document. to analyze the discourses in the meetings and documents, we designed a study that combines the ethnography of communication with the linguistic ethnography. according to hymes (1996), cameron (2001), and flórez-romero (2004), ethnography of communication combines the sociocultural relationships that are expressed through language and the linguistic view of it as a system of cultural behaviors in a context. that is, the emphasis is placed on the interdependence between the language use, sociocultural activities, and the context in which they occur (duff, 2002). with this approach we examined, firstly, the interactional and discursive conventions within the discourses of those meetings and documents; secondly, how these conventions conceive practicum and construct what student-teachers should be.6 the linguistic ethnography allowed us to analyze the ways practicum and student-teachers were discursively conceived and constructed when those discourses were communicated in the meetings and through the documents. shaw et al. (2015) say that linguistic ethnography aims to understand how social and communication processes work in a specific context. as a matter of fact, with this approach, we were able to understand, firstly, what was said, how, and why, about the practicum and student-teachers in the meetings and documents; thus, we placed emphasis on the complexity of the discourses and the ideological meanings presented in them. insights in this section, we present the insights from the analysis of the discourses spoken in the above-mentioned meetings and documents of practicum. these look for discerning how practicum is conceived, and how 6 the results about this issue will be published in a forthcoming article. 189profile: issues teach. prof. dev., vol. 23 no. 2, jul-dec, 2021. issn 1657-0790 (printed) 2256-5760 (online). bogotá, colombia. pages 183-198 pedagogical practicum and student-teachers discursively conceived in an elt undergraduate program student-teachers start being constructed as language teachers in them. how is practicum conceived? in the discourses, practicum is conceived as a space that takes place only when its participants gather to do what they are expected to do in it. the general elements of educational guidance imply that studentteachers are the school’s instructors and advisors. the student-teachers become responsible for their students’ education concerning english teaching, learning, and assessment; they do so by the execution of the corresponding curriculum of this language and the school rules in general. the relevant elements of english teaching, learning, and assessment refer to preparing, conducting, and collaborating with the school and the cooperating teachers in the planning, development, and evaluation of english classes, activities, and examinations. practicum is not plainly a content subject, neither is it an academic space per se that holds a set of preestablished and sequenced contents. instead, it is a space in which general elements of educational guidance and relevant elements of english teaching, learning, and assessment converge for practicum advisors and student-teachers to work with. we present examples of these elements in excerpt set 1.7 we highlight the fact that these discourses overlook the contexts where the practicum is going to take place. along the same lines, we knew that the student-teachers and practicum advisors were given minimal elements to understand the overall content of the practicum documents. the discourses about practicum also indicate that student-teachers can only start it when they have completed a set of subjects and requisites within the 7 we translated the quotes listed in all these excerpt sets. the quotes were spoken by the practicum coordinators of the program in the initial meetings at the university and by the cooperating teachers who oversee the practicum at the schools. undergraduate program. these subjects can be about english, pedagogy, (language) didactics, history of education, and (language) teaching methods, among others. the requisites can cover a standardized-exam score of at least a b1-level of english proficiency, the completion of required subjects, language or content examinations, and a certification of health insurance. excerpt set 1 in the initial meetings at the university “practicum is not only giving a class; it is about the educational and instructional tasks that practicum advisors and studentteachers have to do at the institutions.” “practicum is the space for practicum advisors to teach student-teachers how to teach a language and manage groups of students.” in the initial meetings at the schools “practicum is a chance to learn about how to be a teacher in real situations and contexts.” “practicum offers you a chance to know what you are going to face as official teachers.” “in practicum, studentteachers can grasp what to be a schoolteacher is.” in the institutional documents “practicum looks for the interrelations among agents, cultural contexts, discursive forms, and teaching beliefs.” “teacher education is central to practicum; in this space disciplinary, professional, and research knowledges in the field of pedagogy take place.” in the analyzed discourses, academic, professional, and experiential aspects for practicum are also prominent. we present examples of these aspects in the following excerpt set 2. universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras190 lucero & cortés-ibañez excerpt set 2 in the initial meetings at the university “the university has offered student-teachers a set of contents and strategies that should be put in practice during practicum.” “practicum advisors need to document with observations and tutorials how student-teachers progress as teachers.” “each school can be different; student-teachers have to act accordingly.” in the initial meetings at the schools “during practicum, studentteachers can put in practice everything that has been learned during the major.” “student-teachers are expected to know about how to teach the language didactically and ludically.” “student-teachers are now the ones responsible for how children learn the language at the school.” “student-teachers could share their new knowledge with the more experienced homeroom teachers at the school.” in the institutional documents “before starting practicum, the program has offered a set of knowledge about pedagogy, language sciences, language didactics, and education.” “with this knowledge, studentteachers are expected to problematize how different theories of language teaching are related to language pedagogy.” “practicum empowers studentteachers as competent l2 usersspeakers with the capacity to solve their students’ language-based problems.” as follows, we show each prominent aspect from these examples. academic aspects include elements as contents, means, processes, and actions that the elt undergraduate program has offered to studentteachers in its curricula before starting the practicum. the program expects that student-teachers can put into practice, during practicum, all that has been taught thus far in the major. these academic aspects are closely connected to disciplinary, professional, and research knowledges in the general field of education and in the specific areas of english teaching, learning, and assessment. professional aspects are about what a language teacher is and how teaching a language should occur. during practicum, student-teachers are expected to start their experiences of teaching english. in all those experiences, student-teachers should consolidate their knowledges and practices related to english teaching, learning, and assessment, as well as their understandings about how to plan lessons, manage classrooms, and be a language teacher. these professional aspects turn into the realization of the academic aspects during practicum. equally, these professional aspects are closely connected to experiential aspects, since knowledge and experience are mutually constructed during practicum. practicum advisors and cooperating teachers demand varied tasks in this space, such as lesson planning and delivery, materials design, grade reports, reading assignments, progress documenting, and so on. consequently, experiential aspects refer to the individuals, situations, and artifacts with which student-teachers live their experiences as teachers during practicum. all these elements interact and interrelate one to another as well as with the socio-cultural aspects, discursive practices, and beliefs about education in the practicum context. all of these discourses make it clear how practicum is conceived. as this is not a content-subject as such, student-teachers are not expected to consider it as lesson deliveries. instead, this is a space in which student-teachers enter after completing a set of 191profile: issues teach. prof. dev., vol. 23 no. 2, jul-dec, 2021. issn 1657-0790 (printed) 2256-5760 (online). bogotá, colombia. pages 183-198 pedagogical practicum and student-teachers discursively conceived in an elt undergraduate program requirements in order to put into practice what has before been taught and learned about education in general and english teaching, learning, and assessment in particular. practicum is also a space for the student-teachers to consolidate those learnings and to construct themselves as english teachers, both from selected texts and experiences in context as well as from practicum advisors’ or cooperating teachers’ guidance about their performance as (language) teachers. this is particularly a contributory conception of practicum. we discuss the fact that this conception little accounts for inspecting how student-teachers come into practicum; for example, what their feelings, emotions, attitudes, fears, expectations, and beliefs are about education, language teaching, and sociocultural aspects of practicum contexts, as well as what being a language teacher is and what it represents. this contributory conception of practicum largely assumes that student-teachers are already charged with and prepared to receive contents, knowledges, and ways of teaching, all of which must be put in practice within the practicum tasks for constant reformulation and broadening. this contributory conception also presumes that practicum advisors and cooperating teachers should be there to guarantee this widening and experience. we advocate for more awareness of how student-teachers can start consolidating their knowledges and selves as language teachers collaboratively in close consideration with their personal and contextual characteristics, educational backgrounds, experiences, skills, and dispositions. it is in the convergence of all these aspects and elements that student-teachers are conceived as english teachers. as practicum is a space to perform what was taught and learned about language education, and to broaden this knowledge, student-teachers are conceived of as performers or implementers of practicum tasks. this opens our next insights. how do student-teachers start being constructed as language teachers? in the initial meetings of practicum and in the official documents of the program for practicum, in plain words, student-teachers are conceived of, firstly, as individuals who carry an institutional image and a teacher’s figure; secondly, and consequently, they are conceived of as student-teachers who must play a series of roles and do a series of tasks during practicum. carrying an institutional image demands of studentteachers to be the image of the university at the school where practicum takes place, and, at the same time, the image of the school in the english classes they give over there. in the analyzed discourses, these institutional images require that student-teachers embody the knowledges, behaviors, attitudes, discourses, and practices representative of the undergraduate program and of the school. the knowledges cover topics related to methods, approaches, strategies, and techniques of language teaching. the expected behaviors and attitudes should reflect qualities imparted in the program about what a competent teacher is, such as how to mediate, give advice, receive support, and manage students and classes. the discourses and practices should follow what a professional teacher from the university is when delivering lessons, motivating students to learn and do their assignments, and talking about lesson planning and delivery. the analyzed discourses also affirm that representing the figure of a teacher demands from student-teachers to know, act, and do what is expected from a teacher at school, as well as from a language teacher and a language user or speaker in the classroom. this figure requires that student-teachers know processes and protocols (including the normativity, curricula, syllabi, etc.) for situations that may happen during practicum. it also requires that they perform as (language) teachers do in class; for instance, managing classrooms, knowing how to learn the language, and how to plan, universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras192 lucero & cortés-ibañez this conception of student-teachers carrying an institutional image and a teacher’s figure overshadows them as thinkers of themselves about what type of (language) teachers they expect to be. the discourses that we encountered in the data indicate that the undergraduate program, the practicum and school coordinators, as well as the practicum advisors are the ones who more prominently define what images and figures studentteachers must represent during practicum. a great number of demands and requirements to sustain the established images and figures are loaded onto the student-teachers’ shoulders. thus, they must simply assume these demands and requirements and look for performing and broadening the established images and figures already mentioned. explain, practice, assess, and give language contents; and knowing how to listen, guide, and give advice to educate students. this teacher’s figure also demands that student-teachers perform well in practicum by giving reasons of lesson planning and by taking part in reflections; student-teachers must also perform well around the school by supervising during breaks, reporting grades, and helping during school events. the teacher’s figure as a language user or speaker demands that student-teachers be skilled and proficient speakers of the language they teach, know lots of vocabulary and cultural issues of that language, and prove their mastery of language abilities. we present some examples of these discourses in the following excerpt set 3. excerpt set 3 student teachers must be… student teachers must… in the initial meetings at the university “the image of the university.” “one who knows about the language to teach.” “not the students’ friends but the teacher’s image that students are going to keep in mind.” “patient, tolerant, but firm and strict at the same time.” “start recognizing themselves as teachers of languages.” “do the teaching tasks well, so that they can dignify the profession.” “do the tasks that practicum demands.” “plan and perform exemplary lessons.” in the initial meetings at the schools “the ones who start having the power of knowledge and education.” “the mediators, educators, advisors, concealers, and class managers.” “the teacher of a language, although not yet a homeroom teacher.” “the support of the homeroom teacher in the language lessons.” “know all the institutional documents of practicum and the school.” “know all the processes and protocols to follow when different situations happen at school.” “know the class, so that lesson planning is more fruitful and lesson giving easier.” in the institutional documents “the knowers of how to integrate and teach communicative elements of the language.” “the knowers of how to connect language, culture, and individuals in the context.” “pedagogical actors, critical subjects, l2 users, and competent professionals.” “tackle pedagogical and didactic problems in the students’ language construction.” “analyze and reflect on processes and knowledge of language teaching and learning.” “comply with the demands and responsibilities of the practicum.” “develop their communicative, pragmatic, and discursive skills.” 193profile: issues teach. prof. dev., vol. 23 no. 2, jul-dec, 2021. issn 1657-0790 (printed) 2256-5760 (online). bogotá, colombia. pages 183-198 pedagogical practicum and student-teachers discursively conceived in an elt undergraduate program as a result of this conception, they are also conceived as student-teachers who must play a series of roles and do a series of tasks during practicum. mentioned roles as educators, researchers, advisors, concealers, mediators, and language knowers are noticeable in the analyzed discourses. tasks as lesson planning and delivery, reporting students’ performance, observing and reflecting are also salient. together, elt student-teachers are the ones who know about the language and how to teach it, with everything that this fact implies, simply because this is what the program has taught them to do. the analyzed discourses insinuate that student-teachers must be conscious of everything that they are at the point of starting practicum: a language teacher who is in the final stage of his/her process of ite, who starts his/ her (language) teaching experiences and practices, and who is not yet a school teacher (or an in-service teacher), but is expected to be and act as one. notwithstanding this premise, the analyzed discourses state that the way student-teachers are expected to be and act may vary in line with the particularities and requirements of the practicum contexts. giving more detail to these roles and tasks, we classified them into five types of must-be and must-do, which may converge or diverge indistinctively according to each practicum context: 1. academic: lesson planning, school teacher’s support for language (teaching), administering language teaching, learning, and assessment resources and materials. 2. teaching: didactic and content knowledge, lesson delivery, identification of students’ languagelearning problems, implementation and evaluation of language teaching, learning, and assessment methodologies and strategies. 3. research: reflective observation and analysis of teaching/pedagogical experiences, well-supported solutions for language teaching, learning, and assessment difficulties. 4. legal: knowledge and actions corresponding to institutional language curricula, normativity, and protocols. 5. personal: knowledge and actions that studentteachers must prove about their own self (self-control and self-management), and historical, life, and teacher consciousness. in the analyzed discourses, discontinuities about language education and (language) teacher construction from self-awareness and self-reflection are little considered. as we have exposed thus far, the encountered discourses are majorly composed of large sets of statements about what practicum is and what a student-teacher must be and do in it. in our point of view, these statements standardize, on the one hand, a series of actions and skills necessary for performing during practicum. on the other hand, these statements look to reach the compliance of roles and tasks that student-teachers must play and do in this space and in the practicum contexts. along the same line of thought, these statements becloud the discourse about knowingto-be and knowing-to-do and impose a discourse of must-be and must-do. the rational construction of teacher educators is mostly transformed into an instituted, demanded, and even inflicted way of being and doing at the start of practicum. all in all, in the analyzed discourses, we can say that student-teachers are initially constructed as subjects with an idealized profile of a series of expected roles and pre-established tasks for practicum. equally, we can say that the analyzed discourses point to an efficient subject able and ready to perform well the expected roles and pre-established tasks as a student-teacher at the start of practicum. these insights leave us with several uncertainties, to wit: (a) how do student-teachers receive these discourses and assume these roles and tasks when they start practicum? (b) how do they really assume, re-configure, or (re)create these roles and tasks throughout practicum? (c) what type of student-teacher universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras194 lucero & cortés-ibañez subjects do they construct from the assumed roles and tasks during practicum? why? these are questions we hope to answer in a subsequent study with other elt undergraduate programs in colombia. conclusions and implications in our interest to offer an understanding about the way practicum is conceived, as well as the way student-teachers are constructed in this space in elt undergraduate programs in colombia, we have started exploring the discourses that take place in the communicative events of this space. in the study presented in this article, which can be replicated in other undergraduate programs, we have explored the discourses that take place in the initial meetings of practicum in an elt undergraduate program. these discourses conceive of practicum and construct student-teachers in specific manners. we have shown how practicum is a space in which elements of english teaching, learning, and assessment converge for their realization by studentteachers under practicum advisors’ monitoring and accompaniment. as part of ite, practicum fosters student-teachers’ pedagogical and content knowledge primarily, then established conventional standards for english education consistent with the aims that men pursues for this phase; practicum is a space for the student-teachers to consolidate those learnings and to construct themselves as english teachers. a set of requisites is necessary to start practicum so that student-teachers can put in practice what has before been taught and learned in the elt undergraduate program. we believe that all this propounds a contributory conception of practicum; a situation that can likely happen in other undergraduate programs, too. the ideological meanings presented in the analyzed discourses seem to impose the idea that student-teachers accumulate a series of knowledges that enable them to teach the language in determined contexts; later, they internalize and construct more pedagogical knowledge through being the mediators of their students’ english learning process. we invite elt undergraduate programs to think of practicum as a space in which its participants relate to themselves, to each other, to the contexts, and to (english) teaching knowledges, practices, and discourses in a more collaborative, dialogical, reflective, and transformative manner. with respect to english student-teachers, we have shown that they are conceived of as individuals who are weighted with an institutional image and a teacher’s figure, whose roles and tasks must be carried out as expected by institutional documents of practicum and practicum coordinators and advisors, as well as cooperating teachers at schools. by striking this, studentteachers tend to be subjectified as a particular type of english teachers and objectified as a person for doing determined tasks. the desired images and figures seem to be immersed in the understandings of the statements encountered in the institutionalized documents and discourses of practicum. the fact that english student-teachers put into practice the set of knowledges learned throughout their major during practicum is paramount, so is the fact that they must internalize and construct more pedagogical knowledge through being the mediators of their students’ english learning process. opportunities for the student-teachers to generate processes that lead them to be aware of themselves as language teachers and of their own knowledges, practices, and voices are scarce, almost inexistent at the start of practicum. we are convinced that these opportunities can help scaffold their selves as language teachers, and make them aware of how they can construct their knowledges during practicum. references aguirre-sánchez, i. 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(2003). the ethnography of communication: an introduction (3rd ed.). blackwell publishing. https:// doi.org/10.1002/9780470758373 schussler, d. l., stooksberry, l. m., & bercaw, l. a. (2010). understanding teacher candidate dispositions: reflecting to build self-awareness. journal of teacher education, 61(4), 350–363. https://doi.org/10.1177/0022487110371377 shaw, s., copland, f., & snell, j. (2015). an introduction to linguistic ethnography: interdisciplinary explorations. in j. snell, s. shaw, & f. copland (eds.), linguistic ethnography: interdisciplinary explorations (pp. 1–13). palgrave mcmillan. https://doi.org/10.1057/9781137035035_1 suárez-flórez, s. a., & basto-basto, e. a. (2017). identifying pre-service teachers’ beliefs about teaching efl and their potential changes. profile: issues in teachers’ professional development, 19(2), 167–184. https://doi.org/10.15446/ profile.v19n2.59675 ubaque-casallas, d. f., & aguirre-garzón, e. (2020). resignifying teacher epistemologies through lesson planning: a study on language student-teachers. profile: issues in teachers’ professional development, 22(2), 131–144. https://doi.org/10.15446/profile.v22n2.80687 usma-wilches, j. a. (2009). education and language policy in colombia: exploring processes of inclusion, exclusion, and stratification in times of global reform. profile: issues in teachers’ professional development, 11(1), 123–141. van dijk, t. a. (1997). discourse as social interaction. sage publishing. zuluaga, o. l. (1979). colombia: dos modelos de su práctica pedagógica durante el siglo xix. centro de investigaciones educativas, facultad de educación, universidad de antioquia. zuluaga, o. l. (1999). pedagogía e historia: la historicidad de la pedagogía, la enseñanza un objeto de saber. siglo del hombre editores. about the authors edgar lucero is currently a phd candidate in education, elt emphasis, at universidad distrital francisco josé de caldas, colombia. he is a full-time teacher educator in the education sciences faculty at universidad de la salle, colombia. his research interests are in classroom interaction and language teaching didactics. andrea margarita cortés-ibañez is a full-time teacher educator in the education sciences faculty at universidad de la salle, colombia. she holds an ma in teaching and a ba in spanish, english, and french from universidad de la salle. acknowledgements we acknowledge the participation of teacher educators guillermo hernández ochoa and ángela gamboa gonzález, universidad de la salle, colombia, as part of the research group language and discursive practices in contexts of education. https://doi.org/10.1002/9780470758373 https://doi.org/10.1002/9780470758373 https://doi.org/10.1177/0022487110371377 https://doi.org/10.1057/9781137035035_1 https://doi.org/10.15446/profile.v19n2.59675 https://doi.org/10.15446/profile.v19n2.59675 https://doi.org/10.15446/profile.v22n2.80687 45profile: issues teach. prof. dev., vol. 21 no. 2, jul-dec, 2019. issn 1657-0790 (printed) 2256-5760 (online). bogotá, colombia. pages 45-61 https://doi.org/10.15446/profile.v21n2.72648 employment of english language teachers in an efl context: perspectives from school administrators contratación de docentes de inglés en un contexto de inglés como lengua extranjera: perspectivas de administradores escolares 1sibel tatar* boğaziçi university, istanbul, turkey this paper presents a study on the employment criteria used by school administrators and their views on the strengths and weaknesses of local teachers and expatriate teachers. this study aimed to provide a perspective on the issue from an english as a foreign language context. questionnaires collected from administrators of 94 private primary and high schools in istanbul were analyzed. although being a native speaker of english ranked seventh out of the eight criteria, the presence of expatriate teachers in a school was considered important. in addition, participants from schools that employed both expatriate and local teachers attributed more importance to the native-speakerness criterion. finally, administrators found local teachers more knowledgeable in teaching methods, whereas expatriate teachers were perceived as better in language use. key words: expatriate teacher, hiring criteria, native-speaker-english-teacher, native-speakerness, nonnative-speaker-english-teacher. este artículo presenta un estudio sobre la importancia de ser hablante nativo de inglés en las decisiones de los administradores escolares en cuanto a la contratación de docentes de inglés. este estudio tuvo como objetivo proporcionar una perspectiva sobre el tema desde un contexto donde el inglés es lengua extranjera. se analizaron los cuestionarios recopilados de administradores de 94 escuelas primarias y secundarias privadas en estambul. aunque ser un hablante nativo de inglés ocupó el séptimo lugar entre los ocho criterios, la presencia de docentes extranjeros en una escuela se consideró importante. además, los participantes de las escuelas que empleaban tanto docentes extranjeros como locales atribuyeron más importancia al criterio de hablantes nativos. finalmente, los administradores encontraron que los docentes locales tenían más conocimiento en los métodos de enseñanza, mientras que los docentes extranjeros eran percibidos como mejores en el uso del lenguaje. palabras clave: criterios de contratación, docente de inglés nativo, docente de inglés no nativo, docente extranjero, hablante nativo. * e-mail: sibel.tatar@boun.edu.tr how to cite this article (apa, 6th ed.): tatar, s. (2019). employment of english language teachers in an efl context: perspectives from school administrators. profile: issues in teachers’ professional development, 21(2), 45-61. https://doi.org/10.15446/profile.v21n2.72648. this article was received on june 4, 2018 and accepted on march 28, 2019. this is an open access article distributed under the terms of the creative commons license attribution-noncommercial-noderivatives 4.0 international license. consultation is possible at https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/. profile_21_2-taco_jul3.indd 45 5/07/19 12:18 p.m. universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras46 tatar introduction the role of native-speakerness in hiring english teachers is a topic of international concern in the field of applied linguistics and tesol. braine (1999, 2010) argues that the unequal treatment of non-native english speaking teachers (nnests) in the english language teaching (elt) profession is most observable in employment practices. in countries where english is used as a foreign language (efl), teaching of english is carried out predominantly by local teachers, and the number of native english speaking teachers (nests) is relatively low. however, the situation is changing rapidly in many countries, especially with the growing demand for studying efl. for example, in turkey, increasing numbers of english teachers from inner, outer, and expanding circle countries (kachru, 1985) are being hired by private institutions at the primary, secondary, and tertiary levels (personal observation). parallel to the rising demand for english, the number of private primary level and high schools in turkey increased from 741 in the 1994-95 academic year to 2170 in 2006-07 (a 193% increase) and to 4896 in 2016-17 (a 560% increase) (turkish ministry of national education, 2017). as of 2017, about 17,000 english teachers were needed countrywide. anecdotal evidence suggests that it is commonly believed by parents, curriculum planners, and school owners that the presence of expatriate staff (or staffing with native speakers only) is an added prestige factor (garton, 2000). expatriate teachers are often offered attractive fringe benefits such as free accommodations, private health insurance, and reduced working hours, in addition to a highly competitive salary (personal observation). finally, it is a common perception that this favoring of nests puts local teachers at a disadvantage, even when they have relevant training and qualifications. while some researchers (clark & paran, 2007; mahboob, uhrig, newman, & hartford, 2004; zhang & zhan, 2014) have looked into hiring practices at tertiary level institutions in north american and british contexts, the criteria used by school administrators in hiring english language teachers remain largely unexplored in the context of private primary and high schools in efl contexts. the purpose of the present study, therefore, is to investigate the importance school administrators attribute to a variety of criteria, including native-speakerness, and their perception of the strengths of nests and nnests. administrator perspectives are particularly important to explore as administrators have a direct role in hiring english teachers and thus have the potential to shape the employment scene by their practices. the ns/nns division and nests and nnests in elt in the classical world englishes model by kachru (1985), the spread and use of english is described in three concentric circles: the inner circle (countries where english is spoken as a native language, such as the us or the uk), the outer circle (countries where english has become an institutionalized language, such as singapore, hong kong, and india), and the expanding circle (countries where english is used only in restricted contexts and not used widely for daily communication, e.g., poland, china, saudi arabia, turkey). although kachru’s model has been influential, it has been criticized for placing the inner varieties—and concomitantly the speakers of these varieties, mostly comprised of native speakers of english (ns) (graddol, 1997; kirkpatrick, 2007; modiano, 1999)—at the center. the global spread of english and its increasing use as a means of communication among nnss of english resulted in significant changes in the ownership of english. with this major shift and english emerging as an international language, sharp distinctions between kachruvian circles and nss and nnss began to dissolve. for example, some english users in the expanding circle, for instance in europe, may use english for business, education, or travel purposes more than some outer circle english users. similarly, the spread of technology has also had a great impact on increasing communication profile_21_2-taco_jul3.indd 46 5/07/19 12:18 p.m. 47profile: issues teach. prof. dev., vol. 21 no. 2, jul-dec, 2019. issn 1657-0790 (printed) 2256-5760 (online). bogotá, colombia. pages 45-61 employment of english language teachers in an efl context: perspectives from school administrators between individuals from different parts of the globe and creating a world without geographical boundaries. after all, “nobody owns english now” (crystal, 2002, p. 16). the ns/nns distinction inevitably leads to the labelling of english language teachers as nests and nnests, stemming from the idea that native speakers are ideal speakers of the language and therefore better teachers. this assumption, referred to by phillipson (1992) as the “native speaker fallacy”, has been called into question because it leads to discrimination against nnests and undervalues their professional status. similarly, holliday (2005) explains that the dichotomy leads to the marginalization of professionals from outside the english-speaking countries as the “other”, which he refers to as native-speakerism. native speakerism is “an established belief that ‘native-speaker’ teachers represent a ‘western culture’ from which spring the ideals both of the english language and of english language teaching methodology” (holliday, 2005, p. 6). therefore, some scholars (liu, 1999; matsuda & matsuda, 2001) have argued that, rather than contrasting nss and nnss, a continuum approach should be adopted. furthermore, the terms ns/nns are problematic on linguistic, sociolinguistic, ideological, and pedagogical grounds (brutt-griffler & samimy, 2001; canagarajah, 2005; nayar, 1994). some of the recent alternatives to the terms of ns/nns proposed are “l2 user” (cook, 2002), “new speaker” (o’rourke & pujolar, 2013), and “l1 vs. lx user” (dewaele, 2017). yet, although there is no agreement on what defines a ns or nns of english, the terms are still commonly used in elt discourse for practical reasons. with the influence of the nnest movement and the increasing interest in the differences between nests and nnests, the nest/nnest debate has become a productive area of research. an important body of work exists on the differences in teaching behavior among nests and nnests (árva & medgyes, 2000), student perceptions of nests and nnests (chun, 2014; ma, 2012a), self-perceptions of nnests (ma, 2012b; reis, 2011), and the training of nns tesol graduate students (kamhi-stein, 2004; llurda, 2005). challenging the native speaker fallacy, the authors of many studies (he & miller, 2011) have shown that students have positive attitudes towards both nests and nnests, and that they may prefer nnests for certain classroom activities (moussu, 2010). research has also established that nests and nnests have their own peculiar strengths in different contexts and have the potential to teach the language effectively (lasagabaster & sierra, 2005; pacek, 2005). recognizing the experience of nnests and the important contributions they make in the elt field, recent research has focused more on empowering nnests in the classroom and in the elt profession in general (mahboob, 2010) and the collaboration among nests and nnests (oliveira & clark-gareca, 2017). english language teacher hiring practices the misconception that nss are inherently better teachers results in unequal treatment of nnests in the profession, especially in hiring practices. one of the first studies was done by mahboob et al. (2004) who conducted a comprehensive survey on the hiring practices of intensive english program (iep) administrators in the us, using data from 122 iep administrators. they found that the “native english speaker” criterion ranked fourth out of ten criteria and was considered either somewhat moderately or highly important by 59.8% of the respondents. correlational analyses showed that the more the administrators regarded native-speakerness as important, the smaller the proportion of nnests in their program. mahboob (2009) further points out that “all other things being equal”, native-speaker status makes a difference in hiring (p. 33). a similar survey based on mahboob et al.’s (2004) study is clark and paran’s (2007) survey of uk institutions on their recruitment practices. data were collected from 90 employers in private language schools, universities, and other higher education institutions. seventy-two profile_21_2-taco_jul3.indd 47 5/07/19 12:18 p.m. universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras48 tatar percent of the respondents viewed the native english speaker criterion moderately or very important in hiring. further analysis showed that private school administrators placed more importance on this criterion compared to the two other institution types. in a similar study of six english as a second language (esl) program administrators in canada, participants expressed a belief that professionalism and language proficiency were more important in hiring decisions than native-speakerness (zhang & zhan, 2014). in contrast to the amount of research on hiring practices in esl contexts, such research in efl contexts is limited. one recent study was conducted in the saudi context. alenazi (2014) surveyed the perceptions of 56 saudi recruiters and compared these perceptions with their actual hiring practices. the results confirmed previous studies, showing that recruiters “either directly or indirectly expressed a preference to employ nests even if they were less qualified than nnests” (p. i). in the asian context, jeon and lee (2006) provide an overview of english teacher hiring processes in five asian countries, where they reveal that the recruitment and training of english teachers is highly systematized and regulated by the government in japan, hong kong, and south korea. through established projects such as jet (the japan exchange and teaching program), net (native-speaking english teacher scheme), and epik (english program in korea), large numbers of expatriate teachers are hired to work with local teachers to teach english. in taiwan and china, on the other hand, private agencies are responsible for teacher recruitment. in most cases candidates are required to be from an inner circle country to be eligible for hiring and are provided generous benefits. lung (as cited in braine, 2010), has criticized the favoring of nests over nnests in these projects. another area where the ns/nns division is evident is job advertisements. online job advertisements and recruitment websites consistently discriminate against nnests (mahboob & golden, 2013). for example, in selvi’s (2010) content analysis of two major job search sites, native or native-like proficiency frequently appears as a requirement. one striking finding of the study is that 82% of the advertisements identified as discriminatory occur in efl contexts. selvi concludes that the “native speaker fallacy is a practical reality” in hiring practices (p. 173). in ruecker and ives’s (2015) critical discourse analysis of written texts and visuals on 59 websites posting jobs in china, japan, korea, and thailand, being a native speaker of english appeared as a criterion in 81% of the advertisements. although some research (clark & paran, 2007; mahboob et al., 2004; zhang & zhan, 2014) highlights important issues regarding nnest employment and the role of native-speakerness in hiring decisions, they address mainly the practices of the inner circle, providing data from american, canadian, and british contexts. some data from asian contexts is available (jeon & lee, 2006) but evidence on administrator perspectives in efl contexts in general is limited. furthermore, there is a need to investigate k-12 contexts as much of the research to date has focused on only the practices of administrators at tertiary level institutions, that is, intensive english programs. in countries like turkey, private primary and high schools play a fundamental role in the teaching of english and the number of such schools is growing rapidly. additionally, unlike some efl contexts such as japan, south korea, or hong kong where expatriate english teachers are hired by the government, turkey does not have such an established, systematic mechanism (except for a few private agencies). it is therefore important to know what criteria private school owners or administrators use in hiring teachers of english and how they view the role of native and non-native teachers in the teaching of english. this study aims to contribute to the literature by providing perspectives from the primary and high schools in an efl context, specifically in turkey. moussu and llurda (2008) point out “the efl context is in great profile_21_2-taco_jul3.indd 48 5/07/19 12:18 p.m. 49profile: issues teach. prof. dev., vol. 21 no. 2, jul-dec, 2019. issn 1657-0790 (printed) 2256-5760 (online). bogotá, colombia. pages 45-61 employment of english language teachers in an efl context: perspectives from school administrators need of further studies about practices and beliefs of language program administrators” (p. 339). therefore, it is hoped that by presenting the perspectives of school administrators in turkey, this study will contribute to the understanding of english teacher hiring practices in an efl context. the research questions of the study are as follows: 1. what criteria do administrators employ in hiring english language teachers and what is the role of being a native speaker of english in making these decisions? 2. how do administrators view the strengths and weaknesses of local teachers and expatriate teachers in the turkish context? method the instrument the methodology of this study is survey research. the instrument consisted of a 15-item questionnaire with no subsections. five of the items were adapted from mahboob et al. (2004). the questionnaire, available in both turkish and english, included a preliminary statement to ensure the respondent was someone who was responsible for the hiring of english teachers. items 1 and 6-12 provided data on teachers and type of school. item 2 required rating the importance of certain criteria in recruitment. the respondents were asked to rate eight hiring criteria on a six-point scale. the hiring criteria used in the questionnaire were based on previous studies (clark & paran, 2007; mahboob et al., 2004), with adaptations to reflect the turkish context. for example, criteria such as accent, american citizenship, american/british/eu nationality, dialect, or ethnicity were removed, as these were deemed irrelevant to the turkish context. experience staying/living abroad was added, as this is considered important in hiring english teachers in turkey. in items 13 and 14 the respondents were asked to rank ten teacher strengths adapted from previous work on the strengths of nests and nnests (árva & medgyes, 2000; cook, 2005; moussu, 2006). in the questionnaire, the terms “foreign national teacher” and “turkish national (local) teacher” were used instead of nest and nnest. similarly, in reporting the results of this study, the umbrella term “expatriate teacher” was considered more appropriate than “native english-speaking teacher”. there are two reasons for this. first, in the turkish context, the distinction appears to be between foreign national teachers (regardless of their country of origin or ns/nns status) and turkish national teachers. the ns/nns dichotomy seems to be over-simplistic and fails to capture the variety in teachers’ linguistic backgrounds. second, the term “native english-speaker teacher” may be associated with teachers from the inner circle only and also because several definitions of “native speaker” exist. we could assume that the term “expatriate teacher” refers to all non-turkish, foreign national teachers who may have come from inner, outer, or expanding circle countries, including non-local nnests coming from countries such as romania, brazil, morocco, or poland. a further division among the expatriate teachers was not found meaningful for the purposes of this study as non-local nnests constitute a small portion of the expatriate group and further division would not contribute to the understanding of the matter under investigation. the context currently, there are primary (grades 1-4), secondary (grades 5-8), and high school (grades 9-12) levels in turkey. at the time of the study, primary and secondary levels were integrated into a single 8-year block and labelled as primary school. both private and public schools are subject to a centralized curriculum in all subject areas and english is a mandatory subject at all levels, while french and german are offered as elective courses (kırkgöz, 2009, p. 667). the quality and quantity of the english instruction in private and public schools profile_21_2-taco_jul3.indd 49 5/07/19 12:18 p.m. universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras50 tatar varies considerably. private schools are allowed to add more hours onto the core curriculum mandated by the turkish ministry of national education. therefore, the number of hours of english instruction per week in private schools can range from four to 12 or more, whereas only three to four hours of english per week are offered in public schools. english instruction can begin as early as preschool level in private schools. they can choose their own textbooks, whereas public schools use textbooks written by local teachers and academics from turkish universities that are provided by the state free of charge. private schools also hire their own teachers, while in public schools, teachers are selected and appointed by the turkish ministry of national education based on scores on a centralized teacher placement exam. knowledge of english is becoming a prerequisite to finding a well-paying job, so privately-owned schools are popular among families (who can afford them), largely because of the commonly-held belief that they teach english well. in this study, turkish, american, and international private schools (that comprised about 98% of all private schools in turkey (turkish ministry of national education, 2017) were selected as the focus because these schools would potentially hire the highest number of english language teachers. private schools that teach foreign languages other than english, were excluded. public schools were also excluded because their teachers are employed via ministerial appointment and—except for some special cases—almost no foreign nationals are employed. data collection background istanbul is the most densely populated city in turkey, with 20% of the country’s entire population. more private schools are located in istanbul than in any other city in the country, and for this reason it served as a good research site for the study. this study targeted individuals responsible for hiring english language teachers for private k-12 schools in istanbul. purposeful sampling procedures were followed. to identify potential schools, the list of all the turkish, american, and international private schools in each administrative district of istanbul was obtained from the website of the general directorate of national education (igdne). although some lists had inaccuracies, they provided the approximate number of private schools located in the 39 districts (325). of the 39 districts, five had no private schools. of the remaining 34, the twelve that had more than ten turkish, american, and international private schools were chosen as the focus of the study, one of which was later excluded due to logistics. the remaining districts, which had only a few schools, were excluded due to time limitations and transportation constraints. delivery of the questionnaires five of the researcher’s colleagues checked the questionnaire concerning format, style, and content to ensure clarity. some items were then revised before delivery. after receiving official permission from igdne, the researcher initiated the procedures for delivery of the questionnaires. two alternatives were possible: (a) mailing the questionnaires to each school by the researcher and (b) having the questionnaires mailed to schools through the directors in each district. due to a concern about the possibility of a low return rate, the second option was chosen. the eleven districts chosen for the study were visited by the researcher in person and the purpose of the study was explained to the directors. ten directors agreed to deliver the questionnaires to the schools under their supervision. the number of schools in these districts ranged from 10 to 17 (170 schools total). to collect as many questionnaires as possible, the researcher revisited each directorate in the following month. ninety-four questionnaires were collected, with an overall return rate of 55.29%. profile_21_2-taco_jul3.indd 50 5/07/19 12:18 p.m. 51profile: issues teach. prof. dev., vol. 21 no. 2, jul-dec, 2019. issn 1657-0790 (printed) 2256-5760 (online). bogotá, colombia. pages 45-61 employment of english language teachers in an efl context: perspectives from school administrators since no data were received from two of the districts, the researcher prepared an online version of the questionnaire to reach respondents. with a cover letter explaining the purpose of the study and a copy of the official permission to conduct the research, e-mails were sent to the addresses available on the websites of the schools located in these two districts. to ensure anonymity, a username and password for the online questionnaire were provided. this yielded eight more completed questionnaires. of the 102 questionnaires that were collected, 94 were usable. duplicate (three questionnaires had duplicates because they were mistakenly sent twice) or illegible copies were excluded from the analysis. the official permission by igdne is granted only if certain requirements about data collection and delivery of questionnaires are met. more precisely, (1) the questionnaire did not ask for any information that would identify a school or participant, and (2) responding or not responding to the questionnaire did not bear any potential risks on the part of the participants. as the researcher’s application met the requirements in question, the researcher proceeded to begin the study after official permission from igdne was granted. data analysis the data were analyzed using the statistical package for the social sciences (spss). frequencies, percentages, and totals were calculated for the items which provided data on teacher profile and the strengths of individual schools. the importance attributed to various hiring criteria, including native-speakerness, was determined by analyzing frequencies and percentages as well as the mean, mode, and the standard deviation for each criterion. to explore how the administrators perceive the strengths and weaknesses of expatriate and local teachers, sums for each characteristic were calculated. for the open-ended items such as those about teachers’ country of origin or fringe benefits offered to expatriates, the answers from each respondent were listed and frequencies were counted. results general information on participant schools and english teachers among the schools participating in the study (n = 94), there was one “american” and one “international” school. forty percent of the schools (n = 38) were primary level (grades 1-8) and 30% (n = 29) were high schools (grades 9-12). the remaining 26 schools (27%) had both primary and high school. one respondent provided no data on the status of their school. nearly half of the schools employed both expatriate and local teachers (n = 44) and the other half employed only local teachers (n = 50). as shown in table 1, expatriate teachers constitute 31.4% of the staff in schools that employ both expatriates and locals. overall, 20.8% of all english teachers in all schools are expatriates. table 1. profile of english language teachers in participating schools as reported by administrators teachers in schools with both expatriates and locals teachers in schools with locals only teachers in all schools n.º % n.º % n.º % females 505 81.4 279 88.8 784 83.9 males 115 18.5 35 11.1 150 16.0 turkish nationals 425 68.5 314 100 739 79.1 expatriates 195 31.4 0 0 195 20.8 all teachers 620 100 314 100 934 100 teachers’ countries of origin. table 2 presents all the countries of origin represented in the data, based on questionnaires from schools that employ both profile_21_2-taco_jul3.indd 51 5/07/19 12:18 p.m. universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras52 tatar expatriates and local teachers (n = 44). the majority of the expatriate teachers are from england, the us, canada, australia, ireland, and scotland, that is, predominantly inner circle countries. other countries listed are mostly expanding circle countries (except for singapore, the philippines, and pakistan-us). although the countries of origin are varied, their distribution suggests that there is a preference for native-english-speaking expatriates. table 2. country of origin of expatriate teachers (frequencies of each country listed) countries f % england* 26 59.09 us* 18 40.90 canada* 15 34.09 australia* 9 20.45 ireland* 4 9.09 scotland* 2 4.54 greece 2 4.54 wales 2 4.54 brazil 1 2.27 france 1 2.27 germany 1 2.27 morocco 1 2.27 north cyprus 1 2.27 pakistan-us 1 2.27 philippines 1 2.27 poland 1 2.27 russia 1 2.27 slovakia 1 2.27 singapore 1 2.27 spain 1 2.27 taiwan 1 2.27 *inner circle countries teachers’ formal training in the teaching of english as a foreign language. the respondents were asked if the expatriate teachers and local teachers currently employed in their schools had formal training in the teaching of efl. out of the 44 respondents to this item, 34 indicated that all their expatriate teachers had training in teaching efl. only nine indicated that they did not. one respondent left this item blank. in cases where the expatriate teachers did not have training in teaching efl, some respondents listed the minimum requirements to become a teacher in these schools. these included holding a university degree, an ability to speak english well, possession of a teaching certificate, graduating from a faculty of education, a good accent, teaching experience, ability to teach literature and drama, creativity and productivity, and professional experience in international schools. in contrast, all respondents indicated that the local teachers in their schools had training in the teaching of efl. this is expected, owing to the regulation that all local teachers must possess either an undergraduate degree in elt or an elt certificate approved by the turkish ministry of national education. fringe benefits for expatriate teachers. another item asked about fringe benefits for expatriate teachers such as free accommodation, private health insurance, reduced working hours, and airfare. six respondents indicated that no extra benefits were available; five left this item blank. thirty-three respondents (75%) reported offering fringe benefits to expatriate teachers, with 26 mentioning free accommodation, 24 mentioning private health insurance, 16 mentioning airfare, and nine mentioning reduced working hours. in addition to these, extra leave on non-turkish holidays such as christmas or thanksgiving, tuition-free education for their school-age children, a competitive salary, free lunches, fewer hours of hall duty, transportation, a cash bonus, free participation in extra-curricular activities, and free fitness club membership were listed. the hiring criteria the first research question investigated the criteria administrators employed in hiring teachers and the role of native-speakerness in these decisions. to determine the relative importance of eight criteria in hiring teachers, the mean, mode, and the standard deviation for each criterion were calculated. the results are displayed in table 3. profile_21_2-taco_jul3.indd 52 5/07/19 12:18 p.m. 53profile: issues teach. prof. dev., vol. 21 no. 2, jul-dec, 2019. issn 1657-0790 (printed) 2256-5760 (online). bogotá, colombia. pages 45-61 employment of english language teachers in an efl context: perspectives from school administrators the high means and mode value of 5 for “educational background/training,” “pronunciation,” and “teaching certificate/master’s degree” indicated that the respondents agreed on the importance of these criteria. administrators also found “teaching experience” and a “reference from individual/institution” important in hiring decisions, with a relatively high mean of 4.16 and 3.67 respectively, and a mode of 4. “experience staying/living abroad” received a mean of 2.97, “being a native speaker of english” received 2.63, and “citizenship” received 2.24 with a common mode of 3. “being a native speaker of english” had the highest standard deviation of all criteria with 1.51, indicating that the administrators were divided in their views, with many responses clustering at the high and low ends. similarly, administrators were also divided in their views on the importance of “experience staying/ living abroad” and “citizenship”. the respondents were asked to assign a score to each criterion from (0) to (5), with (0) being “not important at all” to (5) being “highly important”. the frequency and percentage of the responses to each criterion are shown in table 4. table 3. the mean, standard deviation, and mode for each hiring criterion hiring criteria mean standard deviation mode* educational background/training 4.72 0.51 5 pronunciation (in english) 4.69 0.60 5 teaching certificate/master’s degree 4.50 0.83 5 teaching experience 4.16 0.86 4 reference from individual/institution 3.67 1.15 4 experience staying/living abroad 2.97 1.17 3 being a native speaker of english 2.63 1.51 3 citizenship 2.24 1.45 3 *most frequently repeated score. table 4. frequency and percentage of responses for each hiring criterion 0 1 2 3 4 5 no/invalid response educational background/ training 0 0 0 3 (3.2%) 20 (21.5%) 70 (75.3%) 1 pronunciation (in english) 0 0 0 7 (7.4%) 15 (16.0%) 72 (76.6%) 0 teaching certificate/ master’s degree 0 1 (1.1%) 1 (1.1%) 12 (12.8%) 16 (17.0%) 64 (68.1%) 0 teaching experience 0 2 (2.2%) 1 (1.1%) 13 (14.1%) 40 (43.5%) 36 (39.1%) 2 reference from individual/institution 1 (1.1%) 5 (5.4%) 5 (5.4%) 26 (28.3%) 30 (32.6%) 25 (27.2%) 2 experience staying/living abroad 3 (3.2%) 7 (7.4%) 16 (17.0%) 41 (43.6%) 17 (18.1%) 10 (10.6%) 0 being a native speaker of english 12 (13.6%) 7 (8.0%) 18 (20.5%) 26 (29.5%) 14 (15.9%) 11 (12.5%) 6 citizenship 14 (15.4%) 15 (16.5%) 20 (22.0%) 26 (28.6%) 9 (9.9%) 7 (7.7%) 3 note. 0 = not important at all, 1 = not very important, 2 = slightly important, 3 = somewhat important, 4 = moderately important, 5 = highly important profile_21_2-taco_jul3.indd 53 5/07/19 12:18 p.m. universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras54 tatar confirming the high mean values, “educational background/training” and “pronunciation” were considered the two most important criteria. the administrators seemed to agree on the importance of having a “teaching certificate/master’s degree”, “teaching experience”, and a “reference from individual/institution” in hiring teachers. unlike the first four criteria, the responses for the last three criteria represented more variety. for these, the majority chose “somewhat important”. “being a native speaker of english” ranked seventh of the eight criteria and ‘citizenship’ was considered to be the least important of all. the native-speakerness criterion administrators’ views on the native-speakerness criterion were varied. the largest number of responses pointed to “somewhat important” (29.5%). when collapsed with “slightly important” (20.4%), these two categories accounted for half of the responses. the remaining responses showed an almost equal spread across the other categories. the total responses of “not important at all” and “not very important” collapsed and “moderately important” and “highly important” collapsed were 21.6% and 28.4%, respectively. overall “being a native speaker of english” was regarded as somewhat, moderately, or highly important by 57.9% of the participants, whereas 42.0% chose “not important at all”, “not very important” or “slightly important” for this criterion. the native-speakerness criterion had the highest no-response or invalid responses. the distribution of the responses to the nativespeakerness criterion varied across schools that had and did not have expatriates in their teaching staff. of the administrators that employed both locals and expatriates in their schools, 72.1 % found native-speakerness at least somewhat important, whereas only 44.4% of those who employed only locals found native-speakerness at least somewhat important. the administrators of schools with only local teachers who responded (0) or (1) outnumbered those in schools with expatriates (26.6%). also, five administrators of schools with only locals supplied no answer to this item (11.1%). this could be interpreted to mean that administrators who view native-speakerness as an important quality tend to employ expatriates more. to explore the importance placed on having expatriate teachers, administrators were asked to choose the strongest aspects of their schools from among five options (only schools that had both expatriate and local teachers were included in this analysis). respondents were allowed to choose more than one option. two questionnaires were excluded from the analysis because the respondents assigned numbers to each strength rather than simply ticking them (n = 42). the results are displayed in table 5. table 5. frequency of responses for various strengths of schools strength f (n = 42) % language syllabus/curriculum 39 92.9 teaching staff 39 92.9 encouraging language learning through extra-curricular activities 26 61.9 use of the most up-to-date technological tools 23 54.8 number of expatriate teachers 14 33.3 the percentage of expatriate teachers in each school ranged from 4% (the lowest) to 100% (the highest) of the english teaching staff. as table 5 shows, “number of expatriate teachers” was chosen as an important strength of their school by 14 respondents. the number of expatriate teachers in these schools ranged from 1 to 25, constituting 14% to 100% of the english teaching staff. interestingly, profile_21_2-taco_jul3.indd 54 5/07/19 12:18 p.m. 55profile: issues teach. prof. dev., vol. 21 no. 2, jul-dec, 2019. issn 1657-0790 (printed) 2256-5760 (online). bogotá, colombia. pages 45-61 employment of english language teachers in an efl context: perspectives from school administrators one school that had only two english teachers, one of which was an expatriate, chose “number of expatriate teachers” as a strength of their school. of the 28 respondents who did not choose “number of expatriate teachers” as a strength, 19 had an expatriate teacher percentage of 20 or below. the percentage of expatriate teachers in the remaining nine schools ranged from 4 to 50. this suggests that the number of expatriates is considered important by some school administrators, and so long as a school has a certain proportion of expatriates, some administrators preferred to promote that as a strength of their school. among the schools participating in the study were one “american” and one “international” school (“nonturkish” schools). the small numbers did not allow for further analysis or a comparison of turkish and non-turkish schools with regard to the importance they attribute to english native-speakerness. however, it could be expected that such schools would be more inclined to hiring expatriate teachers, as they offer more hours of english instruction and may follow a british/american/ib curriculum. unsurprisingly, in these two schools expatriate teachers constituted 92% and 100% of the language teachers, respectively, with all english teachers but one from inner circle countries. strengths of local and expatriate teachers as perceived by administrators the second research question aimed to assess how administrators viewed the strengths of local and expatriate teachers in the turkish context. to explore these views, two items on the questionnaire asked respondents to rank ten strengths by assigning each of the strengths a number ranging from 1 to 10, with 1 indicating the least strong and 10 the strongest aspect. table 6 shows the responses, based on data from 61 questionnaires. the participants perceived that local teachers were the most successful in their “ability to use language teaching methods effectively” and “classroom management”, whereas “being a good model for the learner” and “being knowledgeable in teaching the culture” were perceived to be their least strong aspect. the requirement for local teachers to hold an elt undergraduate degree or a teaching certificate seems to be working well, as administrators perceived that local teachers have a solid knowledge of language teaching methods. lack of knowledge in culture is not surprising as a majority of the local teachers study english in their own countries, with very limited opportunities to spend time abroad. table 6. ranking of local vs. expatriate teachers’ strengths by administrators expatriate teacher local (turkish) teacher strongest aspect fluency in speaking english ability to use language teaching methods effectively motivating the student to learn english classroom management ability to teach (english) speaking skills well ability to teach (english) speaking skills well ability to communicate with the student motivating the student to learn english pronunciation ability to communicate with the student being knowledgeable in teaching culture fluency in speaking english being a good model for the learner pronunciation ability to use language teaching methods effectively ability to teach grammar rules classroom management being a good model for the learner least strong aspect ability to teach grammar rules being knowledgeable in teaching culture profile_21_2-taco_jul3.indd 55 5/07/19 12:18 p.m. universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras56 tatar by contrast, expatriate teachers’ strongest aspects were their “fluency in speaking english” and “motivating the student to learn english”, while their skills in “classroom management” and “ability to teach grammar rules” were perceived to be low. expatriate teachers’ weakness in these two areas could be explained by their lack of experience in an educational context new to them, limited or no knowledge of the local language, and lack of metalinguistic awareness in english. “being a good model for the learner”, where both groups of teachers were perceived as weak, could have been interpreted to mean two different things by the respondents; as a good learner model or a good language model. due to the ambiguity, the respondents might have rated this low. interestingly, administrators considered local and expatriate teachers equally successful in their “ability to teach (english) speaking skills well”, which contradicts their view of local teachers as poor in their fluency. another finding that contradicts previous studies (reves & medgyes, 1994) is that administrators do not perceive local teachers as strong in teaching grammar rules. discussion contrary to previous studies that showed that administrators find native-speakerness important in hiring decisions (clark & paran, 2007; mahboob et al., 2004), the results of this study reveal a more nuanced view of native-speakerness as a criterion. according to the results, native-speakerness ranks seventh out of the eight criteria listed, with citizenship being the least important. the participants of this study do not consider native-speakerness more important than qualities such as educational background or teaching experience. however, although native-speakerness is not a main factor in making employment decisions, the presence of expatriates as part of a school’s staff is deemed important by some administrators. the reason for the inclusion of expatriates may be that private schools feel the need to accommodate their students and their caregivers by responding to their expectation of expatriate teachers on staff, a view shared by braine (1999) and alenazi (2014) as well. more expatriate teachers might signal a more prestigious school. while native-speakerness ranks only seventh among the eight criteria, “pronunciation” is the second most important criterion, considered more important than teaching experience or experience of living abroad. the criterion “pronunciation” is a complex one because it may have meant different things to different participants. some participants may consider good pronunciation a must for english teachers, regardless of one’s native or nonnative speaker status. considering the diversity in countries of origin, and that schools employ nests, non-local nnests, and locals, this explanation seems reasonable. on the other hand, the total absence or underrepresentation of some countries/regions in teachers’ countries of origin may be an indicator of a different perception of “pronunciation”. although not intended by the researcher, the criterion “pronunciation” may have been perceived by some participants as a representation of native speakerness or citizenship. then this means they may decide to hire or not to hire a teacher based on their pronunciation, which was documented as a discriminatory practice in hiring teachers by previous studies (boyd, 2003; buckingham, 2014). additionally, absence of some countries/regions could also be due to a lack of applicants from those countries/regions. therefore further exploration is needed to understand why and in what sense pronunciation is considered to be so important or whether certain accents or pronunciation are favored. the results indicate that local teachers are strictly held to the requirement to hold an elt degree or a valid elt certificate, whereas similar requirements do not apply to expatriate teachers without elt training, at least not to the same degree. this finding is consistent with those of other studies documenting how individuals without any professional qualifications or language teaching experience have the potential to be hired, profile_21_2-taco_jul3.indd 56 5/07/19 12:18 p.m. 57profile: issues teach. prof. dev., vol. 21 no. 2, jul-dec, 2019. issn 1657-0790 (printed) 2256-5760 (online). bogotá, colombia. pages 45-61 employment of english language teachers in an efl context: perspectives from school administrators based solely on their native speaker status (mahboob & golden, 2013; ruecker & ives, 2015; selvi, 2010). the expatriate teachers in this study are also offered several benefits. although the study did not investigate whether local teachers were offered any benefits, only limited benefits are available for local teachers such as tuition-free education for their school-aged children or free lunches (personal observation). this suggests that qualified local teachers are subject to unequal treatment in this sense. the strengths of expatriate teachers as perceived by the administrators are “fluency in speaking english”, and of local teachers “ability to use language teaching methods effectively”. based on this observation, it is apparent that expatriate teachers are perceived as better in language use, whereas local teachers are perceived to be superior in teaching methods. local teachers’ “fluency in english” ranks only sixth out of the ten strengths listed. considering that most english teaching is carried out by local teachers in efl contexts, “fluency in english” seems to be an area that needs improvement. previous research showed that nnests perceive fluency in english as one of their weaknesses (brinton, 1999). this problem can be addressed by including more language classes, with an emphasis on oral and written communication in teacher education programs. encouraging students to participate in study abroad programs where they can improve their oral skills could be another suggestion. for expatriate teachers, their “ability to teach grammar rules” and “classroom management” are perceived as their least strong aspects. classroom management was found to be a problematic area for nests in a recent study in the hong kong context (ma, 2012b). although the majority of respondents indicated that expatriate staff in their schools have training in teaching, there appears to be a need for more specific training focusing on the needs of the schools and learners. this finding is in line with research that puts forward the need for nests, especially, to improve their metalinguistic knowledge (barratt, 2010). among the ten strengths, both groups of teachers are viewed as equally good in teaching speaking skills. this finding is interesting because, traditionally, native speakers are considered to be ideal language speakers and teachers and therefore better qualified to teach conversation classes. for example, in árva and medgyes (2000)’s study, all but one native speaker teacher were asked to teach conversation classes whereas nnests taught grammar classes. the finding that administrators found both nests and nnests efficient in teaching speaking might indicate that these views are changing, as reflected in a participant’s comment: “we would prefer to hire a well-educated local teacher with efficient grammar knowledge and practical english knowledge, who can function better in this cultural and local environment, loves her students rather than a native speaker with low teaching abilities.” this statement also suggests that rather than taking an essentialist view of the abilities of expatriate or local teachers, we should bear in mind that language teachers’ effectiveness depends on their ability to teach successfully in their own contexts. conclusion it can be concluded that the picture in the efl scene is quite different from that in esl contexts, in the sense that although more and more expatriates are being hired for a variety of reasons, local teachers will continue to constitute the majority of english teachers in efl contexts. therefore, it can be suggested that although local teachers seeking employment in their own countries may not face as much competition with nests as in esl contexts (compared to nnests functioning in esl contexts), they may experience unequal treatment. some participants in the study reported that the expatriate teachers on their staff did not have any elt related training and were hired based on some other minimum requirements such as fluent english speaking skills, possessing a teaching certificate, and so on. it seems that some expatriate teachers without adequate training in the teaching of english may be profile_21_2-taco_jul3.indd 57 5/07/19 12:18 p.m. universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras58 tatar hired. based on this finding, two implications stand out. first, in order to create equal job opportunities for both local and expatriate teachers, both groups of teachers should be subject to similar requirements in hiring. necessary precautions should be taken to prepare an environment where both local and expatriate teachers will be hired solely based on their professional qualities/qualifications. second, expatriate teachers with insufficient training should be equipped with the necessary teaching skills before they start teaching. these teachers are mostly new both to the country and to the educational culture and practices. preparing them to be better teachers in efl contexts is an important issue that is rarely addressed in the literature. while this study provides a general picture of istanbul private school hiring preferences, more research is needed about the factors in the decision-making process, especially administrators’ understanding of who counts as a native speaker of english or their definition of pronunciation (comprehensibility? native-like pronunciation? language skills?). it would also be valuable to explore the motivation behind the hiring of expatriate teachers. as the variety in teachers’ countries suggests, expatriate teachers are not a homogenous group composed of both nests and nnests. in some cases local or non-local nnests are advertised as nests in order to meet the expectations of students or caregivers who demand native-speaker teachers (personal observation). when speaking of hiring, whether it matters if one is a nest or nnest expatriate could be investigated. teaching and learning english is a huge industry worldwide, so the presence of expatriate teachers possibly serves to promote schools in the eyes of the parents, a view shared by garton (2000). at this point, parents’ perceptions are worth studying. how do parents view the differences between local teachers and expatriate teachers? further studies could be designed to include a countrywide sample of schools and combine the views of parents, students and administrators, to have a broader picture. references alenazi, o. 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(2005). ‘personality not nationality’: foreign students’ perceptions of a non-native speaker lecturer of english at a british university. in e. llurda (ed.), nonnative language teachers: perceptions, challenges, and contributions to the profession (pp. 243-262). new york, us: springer. https://doi.org/10.1007/0-387-24565-0_13. phillipson, r. (1992). linguistic imperialism. oxford, uk: oxford university press. reis, d. s. (2011). non-native english-speaking teachers (nnests) and professional legitimacy: a sociocultural theoretical perspective on identity transformation. international journal of the sociology of language, (208), 139-160. https://doi.org/10.1515/ijsl.2011.016. reves, t. & medgyes, p. (1994). the non-native english speaking efl/esl teacher’s self-image: an international survey. system, 22(3), 353-367. https://doi. org/10.1016/0346-251x(94)90021-3. ruecker, t., & ives, l. (2015). white native english speakers needed: the rhetorical construction of privilege in online teacher recruitment spaces. tesol quarterly, 49(4), 733-756. https://doi.org/10.1002/tesq.195. selvi, a. f. (2010). ‘all teachers are equal, but some teachers are more equal than others’: trend analysis of job advertisements in english language teaching. watesol nnest caucus annual review, 1, 156-181. turkish ministry of national education. (2017). national education statistics: formal education 2016-2017. retrieved from http://sgb.meb.gov.tr/meb_iys_ dosyalar/2017_09/08151328_meb_istatistikleri_orgun_ egitim_2016_2017.pdf. zhang, f., & zhan, j. (2014). the knowledge base of nonnative english-speaking teachers: perspectives of teachers and administrators. language and education, 28(6), 568-582. https://doi.org/10.1080/09500782.201 4.921193. profile_21_2-taco_jul3.indd 60 5/07/19 12:18 p.m. 61profile: issues teach. prof. dev., vol. 21 no. 2, jul-dec, 2019. issn 1657-0790 (printed) 2256-5760 (online). bogotá, colombia. pages 45-61 employment of english language teachers in an efl context: perspectives from school administrators about the author sibel tatar has been teaching at the department of foreign language education at boğaziçi university (turkey), since 2003. she received her phd in language education from indiana university in bloomington, indiana. her research interests include foreign language teaching methodology and language teacher education. profile_21_2-taco_jul3.indd 61 5/07/19 12:18 p.m. english as a foreign language students’ emotional intelligence management when taking speaking exams 245profile: issues teach. prof. dev., vol. 23 no. 2, jul-dec, 2021. issn 1657-0790 (printed) 2256-5760 (online). bogotá, colombia. pages 245-261 https://doi.org/10.15446/profile.v23n2.88378 english as a foreign language students’ emotional intelligence management when taking speaking exams el manejo de la inteligencia emocional en los estudiantes de lengua extranjera mientras presentan sus exámenes orales de inglés sara bata1 cristal castro universidad de pamplona, pamplona, colombia this article is a mixed method study which examines how a group of six elementary students who study english as a foreign language manage their emotional intelligence while taking their speaking exams. data were collected through both quantitative and qualitative instruments such as an emotional intelligence test, non-participant observations, surveys, and individual interviews with open-ended questions. the results provide further insight into the students’ emotional intelligence and the coping mechanisms/ strategies used to manage their emotional intelligence while taking two different speaking exams. keywords: coping mechanism, emotional intelligence, foreign languages, speaking exams, test anxiety este artículo es un estudio mixto el cual examina cómo un grupo de seis estudiantes de inglés como lengua extranjera del nivel básico manejan su inteligencia emocional mientras presentan sus exámenes orales. los datos fueron recolectados a través de instrumentos cuantitativos y cualitativos como lo son: una prueba de inteligencia emocional, observaciones no participativas, encuestas y entrevistas individuales con preguntas abiertas. los resultados proporcionan una mayor comprensión sobre la inteligencia emocional de los estudiantes y sus mecanismos de afrontamiento utilizados para gestionar su inteligencia emocional mientras presentan dos exámenes orales diferentes. palabras clave: ansiedad ante los exámenes, exámenes orales, inteligencia emocional, lenguas extranjeras, mecanismos de afrontamiento sara bata  https://orcid.org/0000-0002-6939-2837 · email: sara.bata@unipamplona.edu.co cristal castro  https://orcid.org/0000-0002-9980-0512 · email: cristal.castro@unipamplona.edu.co this article is based on the undergraduate thesis completed by bata and castro (2020). how to cite this article (apa, 7th ed.): bata, s., & castro, c. (2021). english as a foreign language students’ emotional intelligence management when taking speaking exams. profile: issues in teachers’ professional development, 23(2), 245–261. https://doi.org/10.15446/profile. v23n2.88378 this article was received on june 17, 2020 and accepted on may 25, 2021. this is an open access article distributed under the terms of the creative commons license attribution-noncommercial-noderivatives 4.0 international license. consultation is possible at https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/ https://doi.org/10.15446/profile.v23n2.88378 https://orcid.org/0000-0002-6939-2837 mailto:sara.bata@unipamplona.edu.co https://orcid.org/0000-0002-9980-0512 mailto:cristal.castro@unipamplona.edu.co https://doi.org/10.15446/profile.v23n2.88378 https://doi.org/10.15446/profile.v23n2.88378 https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/ universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras246 bata & castro introduction “emotional intelligence is the capacity to control and regulate one’s own feelings and those of others and use them as a guide for thought and action” (barchard & hakstian, 2004, p. 440). supporting this statement, goleman (1995) describes emotional intelligence in terms of “abilities such as being able to motivate oneself and persist in the face of frustration, to control impulses and delay gratification; to regulate one’s moods and keep distressed from swapping the ability to think; to emphasize and to hope” (p. 34). moreover, fahim and pishghadam (2007) argue that academic achievement is “strongly associated with several dimensions of emotional intelligence (intrapersonal, stress management, and general mood competencies)” (p. 240) and that there is a positive and significant relationship between emotional intelligence, skills, and academic success. thus, students with high emotional intelligence have more academic success due to their stress management and general mood competencies. in the foreign language field, dörnyei (2005) also states that “researchers had to accept the fact that personality traits such as self-esteem, inhibition, anxiety, risk-taking, and extraversion, may well shape the ultimate success in mastering a foreign language” (p. 30). according to méndez-lópez and bautista-tun (2017), the speaking performance of foreign language students can be affected by diverse factors generated by performance conditions, such as pressure, planning, and the amount of support provided. furthermore, affective factors such as motivation, confidence, and anxiety can affect learners’ willingness to participate in class (méndez & fabela, 2014; shumin, 2002). (p. 153) this underscores the need for students to be aware of emotional intelligence management to cope with those factors, especially in situations like test-taking. in agreement with the statement above, young (1990) affirms that “speaking activities which require ‘on the spot’ and ‘in front of the class’ performance produce the most anxiety from the students’ perspective” (p. 551). on the other hand, smith (2019) claims that some people experience intense fear or worry on tests because there is pressure to do well in that specific situation. horwitz et al. (1986) also state that students usually realize, after taking a test, that they knew the correct answer but marked or gave the wrong answer due to nervousness; this means that the students could keep making preventable errors during their performance and that their anxiety—and errors—may increase with time. additionally, roso-bas et al. (2016) affirm that “students with pessimistic tendencies are more likely to drop out [and that] pessimism is related with depressive rumination and lower levels of emotional clarity and repair” (p. 57). this explanatory sequential mixed method research project aims to analyze a21 english as a foreign language (efl) students’ emotional intelligence management when taking speaking exams. thus, the question that guided this study was: how does a group of a2 efl students manage their emotional intelligence while taking speaking exams? to address this question, we sought to identify the participants’ level of emotional intelligence, the factors that influenced their emotional intelligence while taking speaking exams, and the coping mechanisms they used to control their emotions in this situation. theoretical framework salovey and mayer (1990) define emotional intelligence as a mental process that comprehends the following aspects: appraising and expressing emotions about oneself and others, regulating one’s own emotions and those of others, and using emotions in adaptive 1 english a2 level is the second level of english in the common european framework of reference (cefr). at this level, which might be described as “elementary,” students master the basics of english and can communicate simple, basic needs (council of europe, 2001). 247profile: issues teach. prof. dev., vol. 23 no. 2, jul-dec, 2021. issn 1657-0790 (printed) 2256-5760 (online). bogotá, colombia. pages 245-261 english as a foreign language students’ emotional intelligence management when taking speaking exams ways. in the same way, ciarrochi and mayer (2007, as cited in abdolrezapour & tavakoli, 2012) state that the “emotional quotient (eq) is about the intelligent use of emotions and utilizing the power or information contained in emotion to make effective decisions” (p. 2). in accordance with these statements, students with the aid of emotional intelligence can develop the mental process and competencies necessary to perform well academically. relationship between emotional intelligence and academic achievement emotional intelligence has been shown to play a meaningful role in academic and professional success. bar-on (1997) found that people with higher emotional intelligence performed better and had higher success rates than those with lower emotional intelligence. regarding students’ academic achievement, fahim and pishghadam (2007) affirm that there is a positive and significant relationship between emotional intelligence, skills, and academic success. for steinmayr et al. (2014) “academic achievement represents performance outcomes that indicate the extent to which a person has accomplished specific goals that were the focus of activities in instructional environments” (para. 1). in light of this, preeti (2013) also states that “[academic] achievement encompasses student ability and performances; it is multidimensional; it is intricately related to human growth and [to the] cognitive, emotional, social, and physical development [of the student]” (p. 9). psychological barriers of a foreign language in the efl field, gardner and macintyre (1993) describe the anxiety associated with learning a second language as “foreign language anxiety,” which is “the apprehension experienced when a situation requires the use of a second language with which the individual is not fully proficient” (p. 5). horwitz et al. (1986) describe three components of foreign language anxiety that can hinder students’ learning process: (a) communication apprehension due to the students’ shyness to express themselves in public and to their lack of vocabulary and knowledge of the target language, which lowers their ability to express themselves clearly; (b) fear of negative evaluation, that is, the apprehension of being negatively judged by their teacher or peers; and (c) test anxiety that arises from the students’ fear of failure. regarding speaking in a foreign language, boonkit (2010) considers that this is “one of the macro skills that should be developed as a means of effective communication” (p. 1305). however, speaking in the target language has been regarded as the most challenging skill for efl students due to its interactive nature (harumi, 2011; méndez-lópez, 2011; woodrow, 2006; zhang & head, 2010) and also because it is an anxiety inducing activity (young, 1990). furthermore, other potential sources of efl learners’ anxiety are the level of the language course, expected language skills, motivation, proficiency, teachers, instructor–learner interaction, tests, and culture (ellis & rathbone, 1987; oxford, 1992; price, 1991; sparks & ganschow, 1991; young, 1990). psychological burden of evaluations according to shaw and weir (2007), test anxiety can be considered beneficial for students as it can help them be more “alert and focused on the task.” however, a high amount of anxiety can backfire and create more problems. following hor witz et al.’s (1986) theories of components that can affect efl students’ learning process, test anxiety in specific refers to a special case of general anxiety consisting of physiological (sweating, shaking, rapid heartbeat, dry mouth, fainting, nausea, etc.), cognitive (blanking out, trouble universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras248 bata & castro concentrating, etc.), and emotional (depression, low self-esteem, anger, feeling of hopelessness, etc.) responses related to a fear of failure and pressure to do well in that situation (smith, 2019). according to oxford learning (2018) the possible sources of test anxiety can be divided in situational causes (time constraints, “poor study skills or a lack of preparedness,” evaluator’s attitude, “a history of stress related to test taking, lack of understanding the material, previous poor test performance”) and mental causes (“fear of poor grades, a feeling of lack of control, fear of letting down . . . parents [or] teachers, placing too much emphasis on single tests and exams, high [performance] expectations, . . . using grades as a reflection of self-worth, [and] poor self-esteem or negative self-talk”; causes of test anxiety section). coping mechanisms to manage stressful situations admasu (2019) defines coping mechanisms as “strategies people often use in the face of stress and/ or trauma to help manage difficult and/or painful emotions. coping mechanisms can help people adjust to stressful events while maintaining their emotional well-being” (p. 23). since an anxious foreign language learner is a less effective foreign language learner (horwitz, 1996), it is of extreme importance they learn to use coping mechanisms to control their anxiety. folkman and lazarus (1988, as cited in grover et al., 2015) divide the coping strategies into four groups: problem-focused (taking control, information seeking, and evaluating the pros and cons); emotion-focused (disclaiming, escape avoidance, accepting responsibility or blame, exercising self-control); support-seeking (seeking social support from others); and meaningmaking coping, which relates to what ignelzi (2000) describes as “the process of how individuals make sense of knowledge, experience, relationships, and the self ” (p. 5). likewise, weiten and lloyd (2008) identify four types of coping strategies: appraisal-focused (employing denial, humor, or distancing oneself from the problem); problem-focused (deals with finding out information on the problem and learning new skills to manage the problem); emotionfocused (releasing pent-up emotions, distracting oneself, managing hostile feelings, meditating and using systematic relaxation procedures); and occupation-focused coping (changing one’s activities or daily routine to avoid or distance oneself from the stressor). (p. 72) method this study takes on an explanatory sequential mixed method design. creswell and plano clark (2011) describe the explanatory sequential mixed method design as “a method consisting of first collecting quantitative data and then collecting qualitative data to help explain the quantitative results” (p. 69). this means that the qualitative results will help the researchers interpret and clarify the initial quantitative results by providing more in-depth information about the phenomenon. in this regard, this research followed the explanatory sequence method by first collecting the results acquired from the tmms–24 based on salovey and mayer’s (1990) trait meta-mood scale (tmms) test (which is the longer and original version of the test) and then classifying the participants with high and low emotional intelligence. next, qualitative data were gathered through non-participant observations, surveys, and individual interviews. participants for this research, a purposeful sampling technique was selected. according to creswell and plano clark (2011, as cited in palinkas et al., 2015) this type of sampling “involves identifying and selecting individuals or groups of individuals that are especially knowl249profile: issues teach. prof. dev., vol. 23 no. 2, jul-dec, 2021. issn 1657-0790 (printed) 2256-5760 (online). bogotá, colombia. pages 245-261 english as a foreign language students’ emotional intelligence management when taking speaking exams edgeable about or experienced with a phenomenon of interest” (p. 534). considering that foreign language anxiety has been shown for many years to be a key barrier in language learning—more so for beginners than for experienced language learners (liu, 2006)—this research was carried out with six participants from an elementary english (a2 level) course in the efl program at universidad de pamplona, a colombian public university in the northeast of the country. of the six participants (four women and two men whose ages ranged from 18 to 20 years) three obtained higher scores than average on the emotional intelligence test while the other three were at the lowest levels. data collection process the tmms-24 contains a list of 24 items related to feelings and emotions that the participants have to rate on a scale from 5 to 1 (strongly agree – strongly disagree). the aim of this instrument was not only to measure the students’ emotional intelligence level but also to help select the sample according to the conditions previously determined (the three students with the highest scores and the three with the lowest). the spanish version of this test, translated by fernández-berrocal et al. (2004), was used to guarantee the participants’ full understanding of the test items (see appendix a). the test was carried out online using google forms and it was answered in no more than 20 minutes by 17 a2 efl students. after collecting the quantitative data, we implemented the qualitative data collection instruments. on this occasion a survey containing six open-ended questions was applied via google forms to the selected six participants (see appendix b). later, three semi-structured interviews were carried out in different instances: one after the first term speaking exam, one before the second term exam, and one after it. the objectives of these instruments were to collect data about the participants’ emotions before and after taking speaking exams and to identify the coping mechanisms used by them when taking a speaking exam. each interview was composed of a semi-structured, contained, six open-ended questions categorized into seven themes: emotional factors, physical factors, psychological factors, cognitive factors, situational factors, emotional intelligence influence on academic achievement, and coping mechanism. for the interview applied after the first term speaking exam, four of the six participants were interviewed personally; the other two were interviewed and recorded (with their permission) via telephone since they were unable to meet with the researchers. for the interview that took place before the second term’s speaking exam, all of the participants were able to meet with the researchers to be interviewed. for the final interview that was carried out after the second term’s speaking exam, all the participants were interviewed via telephone since they were not in town due to an unexpected break in the academic calendar. to gain further insight of the phenomenon studied, it was vital to have a closer contact with the phenomenon and its natural setting. for this reason, two non-participant observations were carried out by the researchers: one during the first term speaking exam on a virtual platform and the other on the second term speaking exam inside the classroom. the objectives of this instrument were to collect information about the factors that could influence the participants’ performance in their speaking exams and to observe the participants’ psychical, emotional, and cognitive reactions while taking their speaking exams. during each observation, we monitored the participants’ physical, cognitive, and emotional responses, as well as the circumstantial factors that took place during a speaking exam. taking these factors into account, an observation chart was created for both occasions (see appendix c). for the first non-participant observation that took place during the first term’s speaking exam, there was a change in the manner in which the universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras250 bata & castro participants were going to be evaluated: initially they would be evaluated through an oral presentation, however, the teacher decided to have the participants film themselves speaking and then post the video on youtube. therefore, the participants’ videos became the source for the observation. in the videos the participants had to analyze a poem about loss and overcoming a difficult situation and talk about a personal experience related to the poem. it is worth noting that the test did not have a time limit. for the final non-participant observation, which took place in the second term’s speaking exam, we observe each participant interacting or speaking with other students for five minutes in the target language in the presence of their teacher and a co-evaluator. after having collected the data, we implemented the typological analysis method, which is described as “dividing everything observed into groups or categories on the basis of some canon for disaggregating the whole phenomenon under study” (lecompte & preissle, 1993, as cited in hatch, 2002, p. 257). as explained by hatch (2002), the primary strength of the typological analysis is its efficiency since it starts with predetermined typologies taking less time than “discovering” categories inductively. keeping in mind our research questions, the generalizations that emerged from our data analysis with the use of the software program maxqda are presented in three sections: (a) a2 efl students with high and low emotional intelligence levels, (b) the speaking exams’ circumstantial factors’ influence on the participants’ emotional intelligence, and (c) the coping mechanisms implemented by participants with low and high emotional intelligence. generalization (b) was further divided into two subsections: first term speaking exam and second term speaking exam. the data were collected in l1 (spanish) and translated into l2 (english) for the purpose of this publication. we use pseudonyms to refer to the participants for ethical considerations. findings a2 efl students with high and low emotional intelligence levels the tmms–24 test revolves around the following dimensions: • clarity of feelings, that is, the person is more or less aware of his or her own emotional feelings. • emotional repair in which the person is able to regulate his or her emotional state correctly. a high emotional repair shows a good control of positive and negative emotions. • emotional attention in which the person is capable of feeling and expressing his or her emotions and feelings in an appropriate way. unlike the other two dimensions, it is important that the person pay just enough attention to his or her emotions because too much attention could be harmful and cause unnecessary worry. the information drawn from the test helped us find the participants’ average score for each cognitive component, and thus, we were able to determine their levels of emotional intelligence (see table 1). table 2 shows the participants’ scores on the tmms– 24 test. these scores are divided into two categories: participants with high and participants with low emotional intelligence. in this case, the results of each of the three cognitive components of the emotional intelligence construct (attention to feelings, emotional repair, and clarity of feelings) are also shown. in total, the participants’ emotional intelligence levels ranged from 84 to 89, above the average, meaning that they have the skill to identify and recognize their feelings and those of the people around them; as such, they can recognize their emotions, label them, and understand the underlying causes behind their emotions. lastly, they can regulate or control their emotions and, in doing so, also help others regulate their own emotions. conversely, the participants whose total scores ranged 251profile: issues teach. prof. dev., vol. 23 no. 2, jul-dec, 2021. issn 1657-0790 (printed) 2256-5760 (online). bogotá, colombia. pages 245-261 english as a foreign language students’ emotional intelligence management when taking speaking exams table 1. scales of reference for the tmms–24 test male participant score female participant score emotional attention should improve his attention (pays little attention) < 21 should improve her attention (pays little attention) < 24 enough attention 22 to 32 enough attention 25 to 35 should improve his attention (pays a lot attention) > 33 should improve her attention (pays a lot attention) > 36 clarity of feelings should improve his clarity < 25 should improve her clarity < 23 enough clarity 26 to 35 enough clarity 24 to 34 excellent clarity > 36 excellent clarity > 35 emotional repair should improve his repair < 23 should improve her repair < 23 enough repair 24 to 35 enough repair 24 to 34 excellent repair > 36 excellent repair > 35 table 2. participants’ results of the tmms–24 test clarity of feelings emotional repair emotional attention total participants with high emotional intelligence girl 28 26 30 84 black panther 23 31 34 88 salem 37 25 27 89 participants with low emotional intelligence regina 17 11 16 44 florecita 15 17 16 48 tatiana 21 15 16 52 universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras252 bata & castro from 44 to 52 (below the average) should, according to salovey and mayer (1990), pay more attention to their emotions to be able to recognize them and their causes and should work on regulating or controlling their emotions to prevent them from overriding their rational thinking. the influence of speaking exams’ circumstantial factors on participants’ emotional intelligence first term speaking exam data revealed that the circumstantial factors of speaking exams exert a strong influence on students’ emotional intelligence. the circumstantial factors of the first term exam were different in the sense that the participants had to take their speaking exam through a video and in an individual manner in their homes; thus, they experienced such circumstantial factors as better preparation, time flexibility, absence of a second teacher evaluating, opportunity to edit mistakes, and autonomous work. the previously mentioned circumstantial factors had a significant effect on the participants’ emotional, physical, and cognitive responses. regarding emotional responses, the participants with high emotional intelligence showed calmness and relaxation with an overall low degree of anxiety while taking the first speaking exam. nevertheless, the observations did show some noticeable physical responses such as hand or body movements, random laughter, and the use of filler sounds. these responses can be the result of the participants trying to express themselves freely in a foreign language where they were alone in a front of a camera without a peer or teacher near. one thing that stood out about the participants with high emotional intelligence was their confidence, which allowed two out of the three of them to improvise or talk without reading a script. on the other hand, the emotional responses presented by participants with low emotional intelligence were not as calm and relaxed as their counterparts. they showed more physical responses of anxiety such as moving their arms, use of filler words, and not looking at the camera (two of the threes participants with low emotional intelligence were visibly reading what they had to say). these responses could be due to a lack of preparation or memorization on their part. on the other hand, one participant, tatiana, stated that she does not like recording herself since she always gets anxious and starts moving her body involuntarily and at random. second term speaking exam concerning the second term exam, which was an interaction between two students, the teacher asked them to perform a role play about a random situation using previous topics as a guide with a classmate (chosen by the teacher) and at the end of the role play they had to ask their partner questions and, in the same way, answer the questions their partners asked. both exercises had a time limit of 5 minutes and a preparation time of 5 minutes for the presentation of the role play. therefore, in this speaking exam different factors such as improvisation, teamwork, presence of a second evaluator, and time constraint had to be considered. the emotional responses of the participants with high emotional intelligence were anxiousness, nervousness, and worry. girl, for instance, indicated that these emotional responses were due to the small amount of time they had to prepare for the exam: “i improvised because i felt the teacher did not give enough time to prepare my oral presentation.” furthermore, the participants’ low proficiency in the foreign language as well as the need to improvise in that language made their cognitive responses more apparent. we could observe some participants becoming confused for short periods or making 253profile: issues teach. prof. dev., vol. 23 no. 2, jul-dec, 2021. issn 1657-0790 (printed) 2256-5760 (online). bogotá, colombia. pages 245-261 english as a foreign language students’ emotional intelligence management when taking speaking exams speech mistakes. this, in turn, caused participants to exhibit physical responses such as shaking, trembling, fidgeting, blushing, sweating, or crossing their arms and they often resorted to filler words, especially after making a mistake. in the same manner, the participants with low emotional intelligence showed more signs of anxiety, nervousness, and worry than the participants with high emotional intelligence. these participants’ low proficiency level in the target language also influenced their cognitive responses, more so than the participants with high emotional intelligence because they blanked out and made speech mistakes more frequently, which, at the same time, increased their worry of failing the exam: “i started to go blank, i forgot words. i think i made several conjugations wrong” (tatiana). “i didn’t know how to answer or how to ask a question well” (regina). however, it is relevant to mention that there was one participant with high emotional intelligence whose responses were very similar to those who had low emotional intelligence. during the observation, this participant’s physical, cognitive, and emotional responses were more transparent and numerous than the other participants with high emotional intelligence: “the partner i was with . . . did not speak fluently, i could not understand him when he spoke, that influenced my performance on the test” (black panther). the fact that the speaking exam was taken in pairs also impacted black panther’s performance since he was unable to understand his partner. this situation can be the result of not being able to choose a partner whom he trusts and feels comfortable with when speaking. in regard to the physical responses (random hand movements, nervous laughter, shaking, etc.) of the participants with low emotional intelligence, these were more noticeable as compared to the first exam; plus, the use of filler words was more evident as well. however, it is important to mention that tatiana, a participant with low emotional intelligence, experienced similar responses to those of the group with high emotional intelligence. during observation, tatiana’s anxiety and nervousness were less transparent than those of the other participants with low emotional intelligence. in the interview, she mentioned the fact that the speaking exam was taken in pairs influenced her performance because she did not feel at ease with her partner, who seemed very nervous during the exam: i was blanking out a little because of my partner…if you do not feel safe or trust that person, you too will be filled with nerves, and i felt that with my partner. when the exam started, i was confident, but my partner started to feel very nervous, then i started to go blank and i started to forget words. nevertheless, this particular factor did not seem to affect tatiana’s responses in a great manner since she also stated that at the end of the exam there was a feeling of satisfaction: “the truth is that i’m satisfied. i didn’t make it an excellent job...but i did it well” [sic]. coping mechanisms implemented by participants with low and high emotional intelligence in general, the coping mechanisms implemented by the participants to help control their anxiety or negative emotions while they were taking their speaking exams did not vary much from each group. in the first term speaking exam, all participants expressed in the interviews that they used the following coping mechanisms to lower their anxiety before taking the exam or while presenting it: listening to music, breathing slowly, and positive thinking. according to carver and connor-smith (2010), the coping mechanisms used by the participants are emotion-focused, that is, “aimed at minimizing distress triggered by stressors” (p. 685). in addition, two participants with high emotional intelligence (girl and black panther) and one participant with low emotional intelligence (florecita) placed emphasis on preparing themselves universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras254 bata & castro before the exam by reviewing or studying: “i relaxed too much listening to music before taking the oral exam; also, i studied a lot” (black panther). i tried to think positive, breathe, review what i studied and singing relax me too” (florecita) [sic]. as specified by folkman and tedlie-moskowitz (2004), studying for an exam is a problem-focused coping mechanism that aims at changing or eliminating the source of the stress by taking control of the problem and seeking information. in the second term speaking exam, two participants with high emotional intelligence (black panther and girl) emphasized again the importance of preparation and studying before the exam (a problem-focus coping mechanism). girl mentioned that for this exam she studied and practiced her speaking with a friend, which, according to folkman and tedlie-moskowitz (2004), is a support-seeking coping mechanism that deals with seeking social support from others in times of need. while i was preparing to take the exam, i played music in the background, but in this case, i have a classmate with whom i always practiced in english and we talk in class and outside in english. (girl) the other participants with high and low emotional intelligence mentioned having resorted to breathing, positive thinking, self-talk, and avoidance of the problem as mechanisms to control their anxiety, that is, emotion-focused coping mechanisms used to alleviate or minimized distress: “controlling your breath helps a lot, also the fact of speaking to yourself and saying ‘calm down, everything will be fine’” (florecita). i am used to taking deep breaths before and during the exam. also, i think positive during the exam and i repeat to myself that i am going to do very well, and if i do poorly, there will be another opportunity in the third term to have a better grade; then, i try to think the best and stay calm. (salem) discussion this study examined how a small group of six a2 level efl students managed their emotional intelligence while taking their speaking exams. according to the findings, the speaking exams’ circumstantial factors played a big role in the participants’ anxiety levels regardless of the results obtained on the tmms–24 test. however, the participants with high emotional intelligence were able to control their anxiety levels on both speaking exams that had different circumstantial factors (time preparation, teamwork, evaluators, difficulty level, etc.) more effectively than the participants with low emotional intelligence, who were visibly more nervous and anxious when taking their speaking exams; responses which led to more grammatical mistakes in the target language and forgetfulness. this result is consistent with zeidner’s (1998) idea that “students who experience test anxiety tend to be easily distracted during a test”; they also “experience difficulty in comprehending relatively simple instructions and have trouble organizing or recalling relevant information” (p. 4). conversely, there were two special cases that demonstrated different results: in the first term speaking exam, a participant who, according to the tmms–24 test, had a low emotional intelligence showed the same responses to anxiety as the participants with high emotional intelligence; in other words, he was confident, calm, and did not make many mistakes in his speech, but on the second term speaking exam, where the circumstantial factors were more demanding and difficult, his responses differed from those who had high emotional intelligence because he was noticeably more anxious and made more mistakes while speaking. in contrast another participant who, according to the tmms–24 test, had a low emotional intelligence level, showed similar responses on the first term speaking exam as those who had low emotional intelligence; that is, he was nervous and made some mistakes in his speech even though he was the only participant 255profile: issues teach. prof. dev., vol. 23 no. 2, jul-dec, 2021. issn 1657-0790 (printed) 2256-5760 (online). bogotá, colombia. pages 245-261 english as a foreign language students’ emotional intelligence management when taking speaking exams with low emotional intelligence that did not limit himself to reading what he wanted to say but tried to improvise in the target language. on the second term exam, his responses also varied or differed from those with low emotional intelligence because his anxiety and nervousness were less transparent than those of the other participants with low emotional intelligence. regarding the coping mechanisms implemented by the participants to control their anxiety while taking their speaking exam, all participants primarily used emotionfocused coping mechanisms such as listening to music, positive thinking, self-talk, and breathing exercises, as well as problem-focused coping mechanisms by studying before the exam. there was another type of mechanism used by only one participant with high emotional intelligence: the support-seeking coping mechanism in which the participant asked a classmate to practice her speaking. the results of this study show that the participants’ anxiety levels when taking a speaking exam depend in great measure on the speaking exams’ circumstantial factors: the preparation time, the trust they have in their partners, the presence of a second evaluator, their proficiency level in the target language, and so on. this result is in line with the large body of research linking the characteristics of the test such as the nature of the task, difficulty, atmosphere, time constraints, examiner characteristics, mode of administration, and physical setting to the level of anxiousness felt by the student (putwain et al., 2010; salend, 2012). furthermore, the results also showed that the coping mechanisms implemented by the participants were somehow effective in helping them to cope with their anxiety or nervousness when taking their speaking exams. as suggested by carver and connor-smith (2010), emotion-focused coping may reduce the influence of a stressor in such a way that it never brings out a negative emotional response and produces less anxiety. even though the main purpose of this strategy is also to decrease stress (endler & parker, 1999), this is not always successful, and, in some cases, it even increases stress. nevertheless, to assess the success of a coping mechanism, carver and connor-smith (2010) remind us that it is important to look at variables such as type of stress and individual (habitual traits) and circumstantial characteristics (environment). therefore, it is possible that the difficulty of the second term exam caused so much distress and anxiety to the participants that the coping mechanisms used lost their effectiveness. conclusions in conclusion, while the participants’ emotional intelligence levels were in some cases able to predict the participants’ performance when taking their speaking exams, the circumstantial factors of the exam also played a major role in the participants’ anxiety responses and in their performances. the participants with high emotional intelligence did manage their emotions more effectively than their low emotional intelligence counterparts, thus allowing them to perform better and act with confidence and clarity. in contrast, the participants with low emotional intelligence did not control their emotions as effectively, which opened the way to mistakes that could have been prevented had they not been as anxious and distressed. however, the speaking exams’ circumstantial factors changed or increased participants’ distress and anxiety to the point that the participants with low emotional intelligence made more mistakes on their speaking exam than did their high emotional intelligence counterparts. despite all this, the results are not always consistent since there were two participants whose results showed different responses to anxiety despite their emotional intelligence levels. these results demonstrate that the speaking exams circumstantial factors can influence any student’s performance despite their emotional intelligence levels and the use of coping mechanisms. sometimes positive thinking, self-talk, and breathing exercises were not enough to help them control or manage their emotions, anxiety, and distress. universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras256 bata & castro implications it is important for teachers and university administrators to understand that test anxiety and low emotional intelligence levels in students “can be potentially serious when it leads to high levels of distress and academic failure in otherwise capable students” (wachelka & katz, 1999, p. 191). therefore, teachers and administrators should find ways to help students control their anxiety and negative emotions that often manifest themselves before a speaking exam. according to bass et al. (2002), teaching organizational and study skills and effective test-taking strategies will allow students to be more successful and experience less anxiety during testing. therefore, teachers and administrators should consider implementing strategies within the curriculum such as test preparation and test-taking and anxietyreducing strategies to assist students with anxiety. it is also important that students find healthy ways to cope with their emotions and stressful situations, develop good study habits and good test-taking skills that will allow them to have better access to the information they have learned, focus on test questions, and have the confidence to answer them correctly. the insights gained from this study could be used for further research focusing on determining, analysing, and exploring useful and effective coping mechanisms that efl students may use when taking their speaking exams. also, further research could delve more deeply into how efl students speaking exams’ circumstances influence their performance. references abdolrezapour, p., & tavakoli, m. 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(1999). reducing test anxiety and improving academic self-esteem in high school and college students with learning disabilities. journal of behavior therapy and experimental psychiatry, 30(3), 191–198. https://doi.org/10.1016/s0005-7916(99)00024-5 weiten, w., & lloyd, m. a. (2008). psychology applied to modern life (9th ed.). cengage learning. woodrow, l. (2006). anxiety and speaking english as a second language. relc journal, 37(3), 308–328. https:// doi.org/10.1177/0033688206071315 young, d. j. (1990). an investigation of students’ perspectives on anxiety and speaking. foreign language annals, 23(6), 539–553. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1944-9720.1990. tb00424.x zeidner, m. (1998). test anxiety: the state of the art. plenum. zhang, x., & head, k. (2010). dealing with learner reticence in the speaking class. elt journal, 64(1), 1–9. https://doi. org/10.1093/elt/ccp018 about the authors sara bata and cristal castro are undergraduate students in the bachelor of arts in foreign languages program at universidad de pamplona, colombia. their research is centered on beginner foreign language students’ emotional intelligence. https://doi.org/10.1177/003172171209300605 https://doi.org/10.1177/003172171209300605 https://doi.org/10.2190/dugg-p24e-52wk-6cdg https://doi.org/10.2190/dugg-p24e-52wk-6cdg https://www.psycom.net/managing-test-anxiety/ https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1540-4781.1991.tb01076.x https://doi.org/10.1093/obo/9780199756810-0108 https://doi.org/10.1016/s0005-7916(99)00024-5 https://doi.org/10.1177/0033688206071315 https://doi.org/10.1177/0033688206071315 https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1944-9720.1990.tb00424.x https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1944-9720.1990.tb00424.x https://doi.org/10.1093/elt/ccp018 https://doi.org/10.1093/elt/ccp018 259profile: issues teach. prof. dev., vol. 23 no. 2, jul-dec, 2021. issn 1657-0790 (printed) 2256-5760 (online). bogotá, colombia. pages 245-261 english as a foreign language students’ emotional intelligence management when taking speaking exams appendix a: the tmms–24 (english version) below you will find some statements about your emotions and feelings. please read each statement carefully and decide whether or not you agree with it. place an “x” for the answer that comes closest to your preferences. there are no correct or incorrect answers, neither good nor bad. don’t spend too much time on each answer. 5 = strongly agree 4 = somewhat agree 3 = neither agree nor disagree 2 = somewhat disagree 1 = strongly disagree 1 2 3 4 5 1. i pay a lot of attention to feelings. 2. i usually worry a lot about what i feel. 3. i usually spend time thinking about my emotions. 4. i think it is worth paying attention to my emotions and mood. 5. i let my feelings interfere with what i am thinking. 6. i often think about my moods. 7. i often think about my feelings. 8. i pay close attention to how i feel. 9. i am clear about my feelings. 10. i can often define my feelings. 11. i almost always know how i feel. 12. i usually know my feelings about people. 13. i am often aware of my feelings on an issue. 14. i can always tell how i feel. 15. sometimes i can tell what my emotions are. 16. i can come to understand my feelings. 17. although i sometimes feel sad, i usually have an optimistic outlook. 18. even if i feel bad, i try to think of pleasant things. 19. when i am sad, i think of all the pleasures of life. 20. i try to have positive thoughts even if i feel bad. 21. if i think about things too much and complicate them, i try to calm down. 22. i worry about being in a good mood. 23. i usually have lots of energy when i’m happy. 24. when i am angry, i try to change my mood. note. the original version of the test is in spanish (fernández-berrocal et al., 2004); it has been translated for publication purposes. the spanish modified version of the tmms used in this study is available from the authors, free of charge, for research purposes only. universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras260 bata & castro appendix b: survey objectives: • to collect information about students’ emotions before taking an english-speaking exam. • to gather information about self-regulation strategies students use to control their emotional intelligence before taking an english-speaking exam. instructions: read each question carefully, then answer it honestly and try to be as descriptive as possible. there are no right or wrong answers. 1. how do you prepare yourself academically to take your english-speaking exam? (study methods) 2. what are your perceptions towards english-speaking exams? (difficult or easy, why?) 3. how do you feel before taking an english-speaking exam? 4. do you think your emotions may influence the results of your english-speaking exam? 5. do you think that the circumstances (complexity, time, evaluators, etc.) of the exam may influence its results? 6. do you often use coping mechanisms to control your emotions during a speaking exam? (pray, breathe deeply, or think positively, etc.) 261profile: issues teach. prof. dev., vol. 23 no. 2, jul-dec, 2021. issn 1657-0790 (printed) 2256-5760 (online). bogotá, colombia. pages 245-261 english as a foreign language students’ emotional intelligence management when taking speaking exams appendix c: observation chart pseudonym: date: hour: place: objectives: • to gather information about factors which influence students’ performances while taking an english-speaking exam. • to observe students’ reactions to an english-speaking exam. aspects to observe: • emotional responses to an english-speaking exam • cognitive responses to an english-speaking exam • physical responses to an english-speaking exam • circumstantial factors of the exam hour description comments aspects to observe observed not observed comments observable physical responses (e.g., sweating, fidgeting) cognitive responses (e.g., blanking out, trouble concentrating, etc.) observable emotional responses (e.g., expressions of anger, unease, annoyance, etc.) . circumstantial factors (e.g., evaluators, time of the exam, etc.) re-signifying teacher epistemologies through lesson planning: a study on language student teachers 131profile: issues teach. prof. dev., vol. 22 no. 2, jul-dec, 2020. issn 1657-0790 (printed) 2256-5760 (online). bogotá, colombia. pages 131-144 https://doi.org/10.15446/profile.v22n2.80687 re-signifying teacher epistemologies through lesson planning: a study on language student teachers resignificar la epistemología docente mediante la planificación de clases: un estudio sobre profesores de idiomas en formación diego f. ubaque-casallas1 universidad distrital francisco josé de caldas, bogota, colombia edgar aguirre-garzón pontificia universidad javeriana, bogota, colombia this paper reports the findings of a narrative study on language student teachers’ epistemological reconfigurations through lesson planning in a private university in bogota, colombia. the study aimed at exploring the possible forms of professional yet personal–local knowledge two language student teachers encounter and produce when they plan language lessons. we employed the life story interviewing to gather information on the subjective essence of the participant’s experiences in their teacher practicum. findings suggest that through lesson planning, language student teachers manage to re-signify certain methodological yet hegemonic constructions of teaching and learning. furthermore, their knowledge of themselves as teachers in relation to their practicum is shaped by circumstances they face in the process of planning and teaching lessons. keywords: foreign language teaching, lesson planning, student teachers, teacher epistemology, teacher identity, teaching practicum este artículo reporta los resultados de una investigación narrativa con docentes de lenguas en formación de una universidad privada en bogotá, colombia, sobre cómo reconfiguran las epistemologías mediante la planeación de clases. nos propusimos explorar las posibles formas de conocimiento profesional —local y personal— que docentes de lenguas en formación producen cuando planean sus clases de inglés. empleamos la entrevista de la historia de vida para recopilar información sobre la esencia subjetiva de las experiencias de los participantes en su práctica docente. los resultados sugieren que la planeación de clases permite a los docentes en formación resignificar ciertas construcciones metodológicas hegemónicas de la enseñanza y el aprendizaje, así como dar forma al conocimiento de sí mismos como docentes en relación con su práctica. palabras clave: docentes en formación, enseñanza de la lengua extranjera, epistemología docente, identidad docente, planeación de clases, práctica docente diego f. ubaque-casallas · email: dfubaquec@udistrital.edu.co edgar aguirre-garzón · email: edgar_aguirre@javeriana.edu.co how to cite this article (apa, 7th ed.): ubaque-casallas, d. f., & aguirre-garzón, e. (2020). re-signifying teacher epistemologies through lesson planning: a study on language student teachers. profile: issues in teachers’ professional development, 22(2), 131–144. https://doi. org/10.15446/profile.v22n2.80687 this article was received on june 26, 2019 and accepted on february 22, 2020. this is an open access article distributed under the terms of the creative commons license attribution-noncommercial-noderivatives 4.0 international license. consultation is possible at https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/ https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/ universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras132 ubaque-casallas & aguirre-garzón introduction teacher education programs are expected to foster teaching knowledge and abilities important for prospective language teachers to develop as professionals in educational contexts. to illustrate this, teacher education and development programs attend to areas such as language proficiency, pedagogical skills, and teaching approaches (buendia & macías, 2019) that can lead english language teaching (elt) student teachers to absorb lots of theoretical knowledge which they tend to utilize to make sense of their teaching. nevertheless, when student teachers begin their teaching practicum, they are influenced by overly technical and rational paradigms which seem to be largely acquired or “borrowed” from their teacher education programs (mcdonough, 2012). regarding elt student teachers in language education programs in latin america, there has been a western domination over language teaching theories that have existed as colonial remnants of teaching knowledge (de laurentis & siccardi, 2015). at the local level, most teacher education programs in colombia continue, to this day, schooling language student teachers on the importance of knowing methods to grasp what language education is. in this regard, kumaravadivelu (2003) warns about the marginalizing effect of methods in peripheral contexts as eurocentric idealizations of teaching a language. despite this overgeneralized vision of instruction, some have started to question these logics by suggesting the need to move away from existing colonial paradigms (granados-beltrán, 2018) as “elt theories and practices that emanate from the former colonial powers still carry traces of those colonial histories” (pennycook, 1998, p. 19). accordingly, teaching education programs in colombia have maintained epistemological domination over paradigms of language teaching. in this sense, as teacher educators and language teachers, we have witnessed unchanged instruction of contents over the years. for instance, we have beheld how some teacher education programs still train language student teachers to make use of the communicative approach and taskbased learning (see richards & rodgers, 2001), among others, to track the evolution of language teaching methodologies. this argument is supported by the inventory of ba graduate projects where “featured causality, technicality, and language instrumentality” (granados-beltrán, 2018, p. 189) are common approaches to research. paradoxically, we believe this tendency could have made some student teachers static and unwitting in their own epistemic beliefs. however, we argue that if epistemological beliefs are often unconscious (schommer-aikins, 2004), student teachers’ beliefs regarding teaching can be made accessible for examination. one way of achieving this is by decolonizing “the principles and practices of planning, learning, and teaching english” (kumaravadivelu, 2003, p. 540). in this fashion, decentering of western episteme would be the means to an end. as far as this study is concerned, we want to foster the conception of epistemic reflexivity (brownlee et al., 2017) to guide student teachers towards epistemic, liberatory, and transformative teaching practices. we hold the view that such practices originate from the scenario of thinking about planning a lesson. as such, some scholars have argued that the way student teachers construct knowledge is by using lesson planning (rusznyak & walton, 2011). as a result, instead of exploring lesson planning and its universal impact (midha, 2012), we propose to approach it as an epistemological space where student teachers can “think about instructional decisions” (young & luttenegger, 2014, p. 25) and voice their own epistemic endeavors to become language teachers in colombia. in this vein, this study assumes that teaching knowledges are a fragmented subject and a dynamic category of teacher epistemology. we argue this conception can serve to mobilize an epistemic liberation from the paradigm imposed in language education 133profile: issues teach. prof. dev., vol. 22 no. 2, jul-dec, 2020. issn 1657-0790 (printed) 2256-5760 (online). bogotá, colombia. pages 131-144 re-signifying teacher epistemologies through lesson planning: a study on language student teachers programs by (a) attempting to provide some reflective ground to teacher education programs and open room for new alternatives that regard student teachers as knowledge producers and not just as consumers of pedagogic knowledge and materials (kumaravadivelu, 2016); and (b) assuming an epistemological position towards contesting the “complicity in the relationship between colonizers and colonized and on the possibility of imagining relationships beyond coercion, subjugation, and epistemic violences” (andreotti, 2011, p. 17). theoretical considerations teacher epistemologies: a decolonial viewpoint teacher epistemology in this study draws from the dimensions of knowledge presented by walsh (2005). walsh (as cited in granados-beltrán, 2018) asserts that “the coloniality of knowledge entails the repression of other ways of producing knowledge different from the white european scientific one” (p. 178). consequently, we agree with castañeda-londoño’s (2019) stance that explores teacher epistemologies as a plural and not singular construct that embraces all knowledges that language student teachers construct by re-configuring teaching in the practicum. the main characteristic of these knowledges is that they have been made invisible by hegemonic logics that have tried to explain unsuccessfully all the experiences of teaching languages around the world. we argue that for student teachers to make sense of their becoming english as a foreign language (efl) teachers they can hold certain assumptions to be true and in turn those assumptions shape who they are and how they teach. additionally, we also take on the idea that those “true” assumptions can be contested through a process of critical exploration since most of the knowledge student teachers have when they begin their teaching practicum seems to be a colonial remnant of western notions about teaching. equally important, ferrara (2012) contends that teachers are influenced by epistemologies about teaching and learning. alternatively, we argue that student teachers’ epistemologies include a view of acquired fixed knowledge that is learned during teaching preparation courses; such view is imbued with several beliefs that are either dynamic or fixed depending on the experience they live. nevertheless, as mentioned above, due to the focus on language teaching methodologies, we assume rationalist teacher education as a “colonial construct of marginality” (kumaravadivelu, 2003, p. 541). as a result, advocating for a decolonization of elt episteme requires positioning local knowledges over the western model for the use of the language. the teaching practicum in language teacher education programs in colombia in teacher education, the teaching practicum constitutes one of the most influential stages in the initial process of becoming a teacher (trent, 2013). the term has been defined as the process where pedagogical knowledge is applied in classrooms, seen as meaningful contexts (roland & beckford, 2010). other authors such as halverson (2004) contend that during the teaching practicum, practitioners adjust knowledge to the context where they will use it. notwithstanding these vertical, western understandings of teaching practicum, we advocate for recognizing more localized configurations of the practicum as a complex social practice in which students engage when becoming teachers. in colombia’s teacher education programs, the pedagogical practicum has been characterized in terms of knowing and doing and the relating experiences emerging from teaching contexts (castañeda-trujillo & aguirre-hernández, 2018; lucero & roncanciocastellanos, 2019). nevertheless, concerning the quantity and quality of teaching practicum presence in language teacher education, a compelling study carried out by castañeda-trujillo (2017), that examined universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras134 ubaque-casallas & aguirre-garzón the syllabi of 22 different public and private colombian universities’ english teaching programs, revealed that there is a staggering high amount of content knowledge and general pedagogical knowledge (shulman, 1987) in those education programs. conversely, the evidence of weight in research and teaching practicum was overly low (less than 10% in each). in this regard, pinzón capador and guerrero nieto (2018) concluded on those results that “pre-service teacher preparation programs are still located within the passive technician and reflexive practitioner models” (p. 72). in general terms, it would appear that local studies have made headway in understanding the experiences of student teachers related to the knowledge developed in their contexts. nevertheless, it seems that hegemonic western paradigms, traditionally used to explain language teaching planning and practices, seem to fall short in understanding other realities that student teachers interact with in their teaching practicum and that contribute to reconfiguring practice through lesson planning. seemingly, there is still some sort of instrumentalization teacher practitioners face in their teaching practicum regarding procedures, methodologies, and theoretical concepts that make them see language teaching as a rationalized profession (granadosbeltrán, 2018). despite this emphasis on maintaining knowledge of the subject matter, teacher education programs in colombia have started to open paths to expose student teachers to more textured insights of teaching languages in the country. such exposure has also been schemed to open room for students to develop a fine-grained understanding of what occurs in classrooms (fajardo & miranda, 2015). this epistemic turn can constitute initiatives to move language teacher education away from the subaltern place that has established most of the teaching practicum as a mechanism for having student teachers test what has been already said by others in the global north (mignolo, 2009). identities in language student teachers we share the idea that “teachers are agents who actively construct their own roles” (mingren & shiquan, 2018, p. 91). as such, their identities are the result of the integration of past, present, and future experiences (giddens, 1991) that shape knowledge (franzak, 2002). in this respect, rogers and scott (2008) argue that teacher identity is a relational process of constant construction connected to lived experiences in the professional life. it follows that teacher identity, undoubtedly, is “constructed in interaction with society” (mingren & shiquan, 2018, p. 94). from this standpoint, student teachers’ identities become a dynamic process that is constantly shaped and re-shaped along the teaching practicum. thus, some teacher education programs hinder student teachers from shaping their own self since they are subjected to systematic examination of their teaching (freese, 2006) as they must comply with a pedagogical practicum curriculum that is often aimed at knowing, doing, and relating to the “teaching context” (lucero, 2015). as far as this study is concerned, student teachers’ identities are conceived within a continuum where they are constructed from a social, political, and personal perspective (johnston, 2012). consequently, by positioning identity as a dynamic construct, we hope to detach from onto-colonial notions of identity in which it is barely in need of negotiation of meaning (wenger, 1998) and transformation (monrouxe, 2010). lesson planning and teacher knowledge lesson planning is definitely important to know how one can best teach. bailey and nunan (1996) state that a lesson plan is “like a road map which describes where the teacher hopes to go in the lesson, presumably taking the students along” (p. 18). similarly, farrell (2002) conceives a lesson plan as “a written description of how students will move toward attaining specific 135profile: issues teach. prof. dev., vol. 22 no. 2, jul-dec, 2020. issn 1657-0790 (printed) 2256-5760 (online). bogotá, colombia. pages 131-144 re-signifying teacher epistemologies through lesson planning: a study on language student teachers objectives” (p. 30). in order to achieve this, it is important for teacher practitioners to scrutinize a set of elements that constitute a lesson plan, as well as develop adequate skills on how to elaborate learning outcomes and related teaching activities. in addressing the teacher knowledge issue derived from the practice of lesson planning, some research has focused on the idea of the universality of lesson planning application (midha, 2012). another study that delves into lesson planning as a source to efficient classroom practice is the study by rusznyak and walton (2011) in which they highlight the potential of lesson planning to develop pedagogical content knowledge (pck) and suggest a set of guidelines for students to follow so as to gain confidence in teaching and spur their pck. similarly, causton-theoharis et al. (2008) problematize lesson planning from an inclusive perspective to teaching by proposing a lesson planning template for the students to promote creative and active learning alternatives for inclusive practices. locally, though, there exists initiatives to decenter the understanding of lesson planning only as a technical prerequisite to teaching (carreño & hernandez, 2017). some research has promoted the idea that lesson planning helps “to organize content, materials, learning objectives, strategies, instructional procedures, assessment, and time allotted for each activity” (solís hernández, 2007, p. 229). nevertheless, in this paper, we purport to extend the conversation from instrumental assumptions about lesson planning as only an “instructional improvement strategy” (lewis et al., 2006, p. 3), to a space for epistemological (re) construction where student teachers can (re)configure personal and disciplinary knowledge(s). we contend those other knowledges can shape student teachers’ professional identities as well as their teaching. in this vein, we hope to open room for a more ecological vision of lesson planning that coexists with alternatives to conceive it as a place to being and knowing in situated milieus. method due to the decolonial outlook underpinning this study, we hold the view that a narrative methodology fits its purpose as it focuses on the voice of the participants (gilligan et al., 2003). therefore, we consider that beyond assuming a vision based on sociocultural theory in which an interconnection between individual and its context is promoted (moen, 2006), we propose to make experiences a pedagogically thinkable exercise to deepen the experience in teacher education. in doing so, we propose to move away from tendencies of the social sciences that divide and distance the subject and the object of knowledge (castro-gómez, 2007). narrative research entails exercising our own epistemic disobedience (mignolo, 2009) and thus detaching our realities from a methodology, which by its very nature is disobedient (ramalho & porta, 2019). to document participants’ experiences, we made use of a single data collection instrument. we opted to employ life story interviewing to gather information on the subjective essence of the participants’ experiences (atkinson, 1998). since approaching knowledge construction from the narrative lens implied for us to assume that narrative is a tool to create and contest dilemmas language student teachers face regarding their teaching practicum, life story interviewing assisted us in making explicit (atkinson, 1998) those practices regarding lesson planning. having that in mind, we administered the participants a series of interviews on a monthly basis over a period of two semesters. the question protocols were based on the nature of their stories in the teaching practicum in relation to the process of planning lessons. these interviews were recorded and transcribed as verbatim as possible to proceed to the analysis. context and participants this study was conducted during the second academic term of 2017 and the first of 2018 at a private university in bogota, colombia. the investigation was set universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras136 ubaque-casallas & aguirre-garzón within the language teacher education program, which promotes pedagogical education of student teachers in teaching practice contexts (teaching practicum) in private schools of the city. the participants were two female efl student teachers from sixth semester. both participants, andrea, 21 years old, and camila, 20 (names changed by the researchers), were doing their teaching practicum in two different schools of the city during the study. these students were chosen using creswell’s (2007) homogeneous and convenience sampling criteria, as they were requested to make sense of their teaching practicum by analyzing classroom practices and realities to propose a pedagogical intervention. in this respect, the interventions the language student teachers proposed were mediated through the conception of lesson planning activities. data management and coding data analysis in this qualitative narrative study accounts for the transformation of data into findings (patton, 2002). since the aim was not to diminish or misinterpret the nature of the life stories collected but to use them as units of analysis to unveil colonial practices in lesson planning events, this study attempted to install a decolonial sense/spirit in the analysis of the stories collected by not just interpreting what the participant said but by listening to what was shared. therefore, we believe narratives serve as a step by step methodology to move away from the typical narrative analysis that in most cases ends up in epistemological extractivism. we think it was needed to “attend to individuals’ lives remaining attentive to the larger contexts and relationships within which lives are nested” (clandinin et al., 2017, p. 91). from that gaze, the narrative research analysis employed intended to unveil unraveling normative understandings of language, lesson design, and teaching, entangled in macro hegemonic narratives of the colonial project. ultimately, the analysis can put forward knowledges, experiences, and traditions rendered invisible by such project (shell-weiss, 2019). findings andrea’s experience andrea has a particular understanding of her experience of becoming an efl teacher. for her, becoming a teacher is linked to lesson planning inasmuch as it is part of her performance as an english language teacher. she argues that one of the very first problems she encountered was the use of spanish when trying to plan a lesson that included a pedagogical intervention. the use of spanish is a problem because i think that, if you do not know something, you can teach with an image, with a synonym or something so that you do not have to use spanish, or at least i do when i plan my classes. where i work, i was told from the very first moment something like “you must have students speak english at all times”. when you travel nobody speaks to you in spanish and then you will face a real speaking context and you have to have to speak just english. then you must have students do it. i told myself “hey, that is true!” i lived in canada for a year, and i knew no english or french . . . either you speak it, or you will not be able to defend for yourself. then, as a teacher if i plan my class, i have to think a lot about how is that we learn and be very careful about how my students to [sic] learn. in addition, at university, the professors tell us “do not use or allow spanish usage” since it is not that good for the class, the rational [sic] is that one teaches english not spanish. yet, to be honest, sometimes one has to resort to spanish as a teacher or student, you know, it is part of us, one just does it and that is it. for andrea, using spanish seems to be troublesome. this belief is rooted in (a) her boss’s comments regarding the use of l1, (b) her own positioning regarding language teaching, and (c) her learning of the disciplinary knowledge imbued by her university teachers. with respect to andrea’s professional identity as a student teacher, the process of learning to teach is a very complex matter (mclean, 1999); as such, she develops a sense 137profile: issues teach. prof. dev., vol. 22 no. 2, jul-dec, 2020. issn 1657-0790 (printed) 2256-5760 (online). bogotá, colombia. pages 131-144 re-signifying teacher epistemologies through lesson planning: a study on language student teachers of professional identity where she incorporates her personal epistemologies regarding teaching and learning. we consider that andrea narrates a conflicting view in relation to teaching and learning. this view may emerge as a tensioning dilemma between what is said to be right and what seems to emerge in the practice. aligned to this posture, andrea’s idea of teaching a language is grounded on her personal experience as a student of languages. for instance, andrea presents her personal view on teaching by stating that when planning a lesson, she must be careful about what to teach as she might end up using spanish (l1), depending on the topic. once, in one private lesson i was teaching grammar and the person did not understand the use of some idiomatic expressions. then, i just found one in spanish that could hold the same meaning. i used “aunque la mona se vista de seda, mona se queda”, because in english, you say “the leopard cannot change its spots”, you see? i think i unconsciously did it but because i did not think as that andrea living in canada but as andrea the teacher who was trying to make a student understand something. i have to be honest, i never thought about doing that in my lesson plan; i just made the decision right there ‘cause i thought it was needed. for solís hernández (2007), “experienced teachers sometimes reduce their lesson plans to an outline, but most novice teachers need very detailed lesson plans and notes to guide their performance and to feel more confident” (p. 229). however, andrea appears to consider others’ needs when learning a language. learning to teach, then, is learning to use what we know to configure new ideas about teaching and learning. andrea seems to connect her ongoing experience with her way of teaching. she reinforces this notion in her narrative: for me, teaching is complex. in teaching courses, one sees that language can be a system of codes and that makes you teach your classes in a very grammatical way. that is, your approach to planning a class and how it is taught is reflected...influenced by what you believe and that makes your classes not be grammatical. as i said before, when you travel, you do not talk about grammars but about contexts. then the same should happen when you teach. however, i believe when lesson planning sometimes it allows us to make decisions for ourselves. in my classes i think first of the student and then of the grammar; before, it was not like that. by assuming that teaching implies adopting an approach to teaching, andrea refers to a theoretical stance a student teacher can take on in order to shape his or her own conception of teaching. then, it is important here to say that although any approach to teaching can also be just the reflection of colonial ways of teaching, it can also be the realization of a personal reconfiguration regarding teaching. in fact, l2 has been described as depending on different methods and approaches to teach it (brooks-lewis, 2009). one instance could be the direct method in which the idea of lessons being conducted only in the target language was introduced (lindsay & knight, 2006, p. 16). consequently, we argue that any personal philosophy to teaching is influenced by dualistic ways of knowing, where knowledge is conceptualized in terms of right and wrong (green & hood, 2013). in conjunction to the aforementioned, andrea also refers to lesson planning as a pivotal component to decision making. for andrea, lesson planning allows her to analyze her teaching priorities when designing a class. then, andrea’s self-engagement to ponder over her own lesson planning brings forward new understandings of this activity. nonetheless, beyond lesson planning serving as a road map (bailey & nunan, 1996) for novice and experienced teachers, we suggest this practice can be conceived also as a place for epistemological re-construction. moreover, andrea’s process of epistemological reconstruction began when she reflected upon the theoretical knowledge acquired in the ba courses (dinç & üztemur, 2017), by moving away from universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras138 ubaque-casallas & aguirre-garzón positivistic views of language to situate learners as the hub of her practice. andrea’s story also carries an important element in teacher epistemology. even though student teachers may not be aware of the personal epistemological assumptions, they certainly make knowledge claims that appear as theories-in-action (kuhn & weinstock, 2002). andrea makes these claims more concrete by arguing that learning happens in praxis. i believe one learns more in practice. the truth is that university classes are very theoretical. one doesn’t know why it is useful to know that in english one must have a method or a theory of learning and so on. nevertheless, when i started teaching, i used to teach math in english and in practice, i knew what clil is. however, i didn’t know until i looked into what i was planning. i had a format that they had given me and in it, i planned my classes, but i just described what addition and subtraction was and that was when i realized that i was doing maths in english, i added in my classes learning things and then i thought more about the person who was learning and that made me change everything. i think, one discovers many things along the way. in closing her experience, we find it relevant to mention that although we depart from the assumption that teachers’ epistemologies and practices “can be shaped and developed during the teacher education process” (lawson et al., 2015, p. 2), there is still room to contest them along the way. andrea’s questioning and taking position against certain imposed beliefs regarding teaching and learning posits “conflicting visions, disparaging considerations, and contesting interpretations” (britzman, 2003, p. 26) of what it means to be a teacher. that phenomenon is the beginning of a realignment of the experience of becoming a teacher. by inspecting andrea’s life experience, different ways of knowing about teaching which sometimes challenge assumed intellectual traditions are emerging by making sense of planning a lesson as a situated practice. we believe that although we did not intend to elucidate the varied forms in which dominant knowledge, unreflectively instructed in teacher education programs, eclipses diverse alternative expressions of knowing in local elt, we unveiled views of privileging western forms of knowledge as universal and applicable to any context (dussel, 2011). however, this is the opportunity to delve more into the conversation proposed by almeida et al. (2019) who claim that “gathering knowledge about the lived experiences of those who reside at the intersection of the colonial wound, requires a deep understanding of the powerful structures that create such relegation to form pathways for emancipation and liberation” (p. 149). this indeed could be the route to the task of decolonizing the sphere of education (cortina et al., 2019). camila’s experience camila’s participation in this study was, for her, a way to make sense of her initial teaching experience. during her practicum, camila was expected to identify a problem in the classes for further pedagogical intervention which, as she narrates, proved difficult for her. following this matter, it is known that student teachers experience a “praxis shock” (flores & day, 2006) when contextual variables in the classroom contest or shape their set of beliefs (farrell, 2008). camila expressed there was a certain clash when lesson planning. this epistemological collision took place when negotiating her own ideas about what a class should be, and the ones given by her head teacher. for me, to do a lesson plan was very hard but it helped me to go beyond the grammar visions that one always has because that is how they shape us, to know grammar. for example, i identified in my class problems of intervention that was about children’s behavior. they are very smart, but they shout and do not respect each other. there are no values for communication. then i tried to teach grammar at the beginning, as the head teacher told me, and that did not help, it was my job to think about how 139profile: issues teach. prof. dev., vol. 22 no. 2, jul-dec, 2020. issn 1657-0790 (printed) 2256-5760 (online). bogotá, colombia. pages 131-144 re-signifying teacher epistemologies through lesson planning: a study on language student teachers to make them be more sensitive upon the classroom and other in it. however, the head teacher did not like that; but when planning and teaching a class where grammar is a tool, a means and not a whole; the boys achieved many things. i think that one learns more in practice; i mean, the things of the university are useful, but the truth is that a real class is not how professors say it is. based on the above, we claim that lesson planning is also a meaning making activity. as far as lesson planning requiring student teachers to think of different dimensions regarding english language teaching, camila seems to have widened her knowledge by reasoning about her own teaching practice from alternative shores. this reasoning seems to portray “the complex ways in which teachers conceptualize, construct explanations for, and respond to the social interactions and shared meanings” (johnson, 1999, p. 1) they encounter in their practice. this would entail as well a “deeper understanding of the practice in terms of who they are as teachers, their students and the context” (aguirre-garzón & castañeda-peña, 2017, p. 89). as a result, camila was able to fracture traditional practices and build up an alternative vision of herself as a teacher and her practice. in inspecting her narrative, camila also shed light upon her own epistemic stance regarding teaching. she claimed to be aware of what she thinks has to be taught. in fact, camila expresses that it is hard to stand for a position where grammar, as content, is a major priority. certainly, the way to get to this understanding is through personal inquiry as to the classroom practices. in this respect, camila’s self-initiated inquiry led her to contest the assumptions that student teachers are immersed in during their walk through university life. by decentralizing hegemonic ways of doing, camila is on the way to reconfiguring personal theories or notions regarding teaching and that, in turn, will be seen as epistemological foundations of new knowledge. we contend this personal reasoning about teaching implies becoming aware of what teaching entails. consequently, camila’s reasoning and thinking about teaching is a process of personal construction where she re-signifies her role as a student teacher and what she thinks knowledge about teaching is about. therefore, camila’s experience seems to challenge the dynamics of “procedural knowledge that has to do with opportunities to construct theory related to the way teachers think” (aguirre-garzón & castañeda-peña, 2017, p. 86). thus, camila thinks beyond canonical views of teaching and other alternatives to do teaching. in closing our reference to camila’s experience, we wanted to display an excerpt of her narrative where she concludes by stating what she learned from her practice. camila refers to lesson planning as a means to identify what needs to be done. i think that something that i could understand planning my classes was that many times i focused too much on grammar. i used to think that it was the most important thing, now i think that the grammar is relevant, but the context is more important. you cannot teach someone without knowing who the person is. one day, i tried to teach the uses of can and could, modal verbs, and it was chaotic! the kids spat, they bothered each other, and i felt somewhat frustrated because in my idea of teaching i thought that teaching was to transmit grammar. i would say that planning classes helped a lot, it let me see what is important to me, i would just like to not be forced to follow those class planning formats, they are a bit confusing and sometimes you do not understand them. arguably, camila realized that to teach a successful lesson, lesson planning opens a path to discern personal epistemologies regarding teaching. as a matter of fact, camila was able to move away from instrumental practices and has now become more interested in undertaking the exploration of a more personal epistemology whereby “experience is fundamental to understanding life as it is lived” (ubaque & pinilla, 2018, p. 130). seemingly, the premise that “teaching is a complex task that universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras140 ubaque-casallas & aguirre-garzón requires qualified teachers” (mousapour & beiranvand, 2015, p. 776) might appear to be valid. nonetheless, this well-known “expertise” needs to be grounded not just on theoretical or linguistic knowledge, but especially on the potential of contesting imported and imposed paradigms that have marginalized teachers as transformative practitioners. final thoughts teachers’ knowledge construction is a never-ending experience. becoming a teacher is a fragmented and dynamic process where those involved get to change their perceptions about what they do and know. yet it is true that a number of language student teachers understand language pedagogy as being “focused on the meeting of standards which represent a certain level of acquisition of a skill” (granados-beltrán, 2018, p. 175). nowadays, elt student teachers are beginning to question certain methodological yet hegemonic constructions of teaching and learning that have, for years, been reproduced and remain uncontested within paradigms of teaching. regarding this, we could resort to andrea’s experience using l1 to plan and teach. we believe that in her questioning of the verticality of certain paradigms, there is an evident attempt, consciously or not, to find meaning in her transition as a teacher. this alternative stance towards learning and teaching shows a change in student teachers’ epistemology. by this token, it is worth saying that this study was interested in documenting and analyzing student teachers’ epistemologies about teaching and their construction of teaching knowledges in and through lesson planning events. arguably, data collected and inspected in this study support the idea that teachers’ epistemological beliefs are subjected to different colonial tools of what teachers are and how they should teach. nonetheless, data also made evident that this coloniality of knowledge (walsh, 2005) is not a repression of their knowledge(s); instead, it has become a source to conceive language teaching from a more personal alternative position. ultimately, following alvarado (2015), decolonial thinking inquires the acknowledging of these knowledges, “subsuming them in only one claim: the acceptance of ways of knowing which are alternative to occidental hegemony” (p. 110). as for the aforementioned discussion, the process of lesson planning emerged as an analytical tool to unpack the ideologies and discourses that student teachers confront inside and outside the classroom (kincheloe, 2008). these discourses emerged from students’ experiences in the process of becoming teachers. following the same line of thought, we could claim that lesson planning helped student teachers to gain awareness of the role they play in schools. this study fosters the idea that student teachers must learn how to question and discern all the dimensions that are involved when planning a lesson, since not only is lesson planning about instrumental notions of language, but also about how certain personal views may get to interplay with the aforementioned notions. the above-stated information implies that student teachers become aware of their own knowledges about teaching and learning as well as their own dynamics concerning their critical consciousness of what teaching should imply and entail for them. thus, it cannot be denied that lesson planning either “helps all teachers, especially novice ones, to organize content, materials, learning objectives, strategies, instructional procedures, assessment, or time allotted for each activity” (solís hernández, 2007, p. 229), or helps them to inquire into their teaching experience to make sense of their process of becoming teachers. therefore, we consider that these conclusions bring forth two fundamental opportunities for language teacher educators and teacher education programs. firstly, as student teachers can claim ownership of their teaching practices to delink from fixed, universal, and cartesian notions of conceiving teaching and being a teacher, it is key that teacher educators propose more horizontal relations between student teachers and 141profile: issues teach. prof. dev., vol. 22 no. 2, jul-dec, 2020. issn 1657-0790 (printed) 2256-5760 (online). bogotá, colombia. pages 131-144 re-signifying teacher epistemologies through lesson planning: a study on language student teachers knowledge foundations. in this way, student teachers would not have imposed upon them neo-colonial agendas in which being a teacher has to do with complying with the common european framework or with mere instrumental dimensions of teaching, but they would act as inquiry initiators to truly take steps towards the immanence of the critique of knowledge. this, as we see it, would restore students’ agency in the local and global field. second, since we consider it is necessary to boost teachers’ process of research, it seems pivotal to explore more the bonds between student teachers’ epistemological-political stances and their experiences as prospective teachers. this would strengthen student teachers’ understanding of contexts allowing them to make more informed decisions in their practicum. lastly, we consider teacher education programs should urge the enactment of a decolonial option (kumaravadivelu, 2016). by this, we mean to advocate for the need of discussing the constant training on hegemonic methods, materials, and rationalized notions about lessons and lesson planning. then, since academic colonialism will be present in colombian elt, teacher education programs should help student teachers and educators foster local knowledges and, in so doing, stop perceiving our knowledge as subaltern but more as a collective consciousness upon which to think and act. references aguirre-garzón, e. a., & castañeda-peña, h. a. 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(2014). planning “lessons for everybody” in secondary classrooms. american secondary education, 43(1), 25–32. about the authors diego f. ubaque-casallas is a language teacher and teacher educator who currently works at universidad distrital francisco josé de caldas. he holds an ma in applied linguistics to the teaching of english from universidad distrital francisco josé de caldas (colombia). edgar aguirre-garzón is a teacher educator who currently works at pontificia universidad javeriana. he holds an ma in applied linguistics to the teaching of english from universidad distrital francisco josé de caldas (colombia). https://doi.org/10.1017/cbo9780511667305 https://doi.org/10.20533/licej.2040.2589.2010.0015 https://doi.org/10.20533/licej.2040.2589.2010.0015 https://doi.org/10.1080/16823206.2011.619141 https://doi.org/10.1080/16823206.2011.619141 https://doi.org/10.1207/s15326985ep3901_3 https://doi.org/10.1207/s15326985ep3901_3 https://doi.org/10.5772/intechopen.84769 https://doi.org/10.5772/intechopen.84769 https://doi.org/10.17763/haer.57.1.j463w79r56455411 https://doi.org/10.17763/haer.57.1.j463w79r56455411 https://doi.org/10.15517/rfl.v33i2.1748 https://doi.org/10.15517/rfl.v33i2.1748 https://doi.org/10.1080/1359866x.2013.838621 https://doi.org/10.1080/1359866x.2013.838621 https://doi.org/10.19183/how.25.2.400 https://doi.org/10.19183/how.25.2.400 https://doi.org/10.1017/cbo9780511803932 https://doi.org/10.1017/cbo9780511803932 elementary school teachers in neoliberal times: the silent voices that make educational policies work 27profile: issues teach. prof. dev., vol. 23 no. 1, jan-jun, 2021. issn 1657-0790 (printed) 2256-5760 (online). bogotá, colombia. pages 27-40 https://doi.org/10.15446/profile.v23n1.83052 elementary school teachers in neoliberal times: the silent voices that make educational policies work maestros de primaria en tiempos de neoliberalismo: voces silenciosas que hacen que las políticas educativas funcionen carmen helena guerrero-nieto alvaro quintero1 universidad distrital francisco josé de caldas, bogotá, colombia this paper aims at showing how a bottom-up approach of the study of educational policies can shed some light on how elementary school teachers deal with educational policies to make them work. this is a partial report on a larger focus group study conducted in bogotá, colombia, where a group of elementary school teachers shared their opinions about educational policies. the data collected allowed us to see that teachers take actions, have their own perspectives about policies, and feel negatively treated by the national government, which give way to three categories: teachers’ micro-practices, clashing visions about education, and mistreatment. we conclude that despite the pervasiveness of neoliberalism in education, which teachers are very aware of, they find ways to make policies work while being critical of the way these are designed and implemented. keywords: educational policies, neoliberalism in education, policy makers, teachers’ micro-practices, elementary school teachers el objetivo de este artículo es mostrar cómo el adoptar una perspectiva de abajo hacia arriba en el estudio de políticas educativas puede dar luces sobre el modo en que los maestros de educación primaria enfrentan dichas políticas para hacer que estas funcionen. este es un reporte parcial sobre un estudio más amplio con grupos focales que se llevó a cabo en bogotá, colombia, donde un grupo de profesores de primaria compartieron sus opiniones acerca de las políticas educativas. los datos recogidos nos permitieron ver que, frente a las políticas, los maestros toman acciones, tienen visiones encontradas sobre educación, y se sienten maltratados por el estado, lo que generó tres categorías: microprácticas de los maestros, visiones encontradas sobre educación y maltrato. concluimos que, a pesar de la omnipresencia del neoliberalismo en la educación, de la cual los profesores son completamente conscientes, ellos encuentran formas de hacer que las políticas funcionen, pero al mismo tiempo son críticos de las formas en las que estas son diseñadas e implementadas. palabras claves: diseñadores de políticas, maestros de primaria, micro prácticas de los maestros, neoliberalismo en educación, políticas educativas carmen helena guerrero-nieto  https://orcid.org/0000-0003-4011-788x · email: chguerreron@udistrital.edu.co alvaro quintero  https://orcid.org/0000-0002-0315-8802 · email: aquintero@udistrital.edu.co how to cite this article (apa, 7th ed.): guerrero-nieto, c. h., & quintero, a. (2021). elementary school teachers in neoliberal times: the silent voices that make educational policies work. profile: issues in teachers’ professional development, 23(1), 27–40. https://doi.org/10.15446/ profile.v23n1.83052 this article was received on october 21, 2019 and accepted on october 1, 2020. this is an open access article distributed under the terms of the creative commons license attribution-noncommercial-noderivatives 4.0 international license. consultation is possible at https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/ https://orcid.org/0000-0003-4011-788x mailto:chguerreron%40udistrital.edu.co?subject= https://orcid.org/0000-0002-0315-8802 https://doi.org/10.15446/profile.v23n1.83052 https://doi.org/10.15446/profile.v23n1.83052 https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/ universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras28 guerrero-nieto & quintero introduction this paper aims at presenting a bottom-up perspective in the understanding of the role of teachers in the implementation of educational policies. we think it is important to hear from teachers themselves how they experience educational policies and how they face the multiple challenges and conflicting discourses that surround their implementation. each time an educational policy is issued, the national government expects it to work regardless of its feasibility, the provisions (or not) made for the implementation, and the training teachers receive to set the policy in motion. the government is particularly strategic in selling to the general public the idea that certain policy is needed by using two mechanisms. on the one hand, it circulates discourses that on the surface seem to represent the needs of the community, when in fact they are very far from them (van dijk, 1997), and on the other, the government hires external agencies (so called “experts”) to back up their educational polices showing that they value more the voice of “experts” than the voice of teachers. despite the call of many scholars and researchers to include teachers in the design of policies, in most parts of the world educational policies follow a topdown approach where policy makers design them and teachers are reduced to the role of implementers (shohamy, 2009). leaving out teachers, school contexts, and the needs and interests of communities results in monolithic and homogenizing policies. colombia is no exception and teachers are constantly flooded by new policies; they are expected to achieve the goals set by the government which generally are not rooted in reality and are, therefore, unattainable and unrealistic. but, when policies do not work, the government does not take any responsibility and places the blame on teachers (apple, 2002; wink, 2000). our purpose, then, is to show that such a perception is not accurate because in fact what happens is that teachers do “whatever it takes” to make things work; they adapt policies in order to better serve the needs of their communities, and they search for different ways of compensating for their lack of preparation to teach english with the purpose of balancing governmental regulations and students’ needs. this piece is part of a larger study framed within the socio-critical perspective that highlights a dialogic relationship between discourse and society (bourdieu, 2003; fairclough, 1992; foucault, 1970/2005). its purpose was to investigate the voices of some elementary school teachers about the design and implementation of educational policies, in bogotá (the capital city of colombia). the data were collected through five focus groups over the period of an academic year. the inductive analysis of the data led us to conclude that elementary school teachers are not passive implementers of policies but that they take actions, have their own perspectives about policies and their relationship with education, and are very aware of the treatment (or mistreatment) the national government gives them. in conclusion, this paper attempts to leave the reader some food for thought to challenge the belief that teachers are passive followers; instead, we should see them as intellectuals (giroux, 1988) who play a quiet yet effective role in both the implementation of educational policies and in filling the gaps left by policy makers and technocrats (shohamy, 2009). the knowledge, expertise, and contributions of teachers should be regarded as a cultural capital even if, as in many cases, this form of capital is not institutionalized (bourdieu, 1986; foucault, 1972). background of the study the origins of this research can be located, on the one hand, in previous studies about the images of teachers in official discourses and in the media carried out in colombia (correa & gonzález, 2017; guerrero, 2010; vargas et al., 2016) and on the other hand, on our own experience as teacher educators. in regard to images of teachers, guerrero (2010)—using critical discourse analysis—shows that teachers are portrayed 29profile: issues teach. prof. dev., vol. 23 no. 1, jan-jun, 2021. issn 1657-0790 (printed) 2256-5760 (online). bogotá, colombia. pages 27-40 elementary school teachers in neoliberal times: the silent voices that make educational policies work in a very negative light in one particular document issued by the ministry of education of colombia with the occasion of the implementation of the so called “national bilingualism program” (pnb for its initials in spanish). the role of mass media has also been critical in shaping teachers’ negative images as found by vargas et al. (2016) in a study in which they collected online opinion articles published from 2010 to 2014 along with the responses by users of the site. these opinion articles were published by the two major colombian newspapers and dealt with three main educational policies. the main objective of the study was to analyze how readers constructed their own concept of educational policies; some of their findings show that journalists and readers alike think that teachers are unprepared, lazy, and do not care about students. in another study that involved media and teachers, correa and gonzález (2017) conducted a research project in which they analyzed how major colombian newspapers portrayed colombian english language teachers. they collected news from 2005 to 2010 and found that not only were teachers presented in negative terms but also that these media had a strong influence on the negative perceptions colombians have about teachers (particularly those working in public schools). on the other hand, this study is also rooted in our own experience as teacher educators. our professional careers have provided us with unique opportunities to interact with hundreds of school teachers around the country and to know firsthand their teaching stories. by listening to them in different scenarios (like conferences, workshops, and classes) we realized we should collect those stories in a systematic way to make teachers’ voices heard. for this study we invited elementary school teachers for two main reasons. first, because they have to teach english in elementary school although they do not have any type of training to do so; and second, because they are the least heard by technocrats in charge of designing educational policies. the national government always favors the “expert” over teachers. in our context, “experts” fall into three broad categories: (a) international agencies like the british council which has been present in colombia since 1945; (b) national agencies like the fundación empresarios por la educación which do not have anything to do with education but are organizations whose main objective is to procure quality in the education system (as stated on their website); and (c) university professors, especially those who work in the private sector and are regarded as more knowledgeable (and who in some cases align themselves with the neoliberal take on policies). as méndez-rivera et al. (2020) put it: the world today relies on a techno-scientific knowledge in which only certain organizations claim the right to certify others. this relationship between “experts and non-experts” stimulates dependency and submission and leads to homogenization, which is the ultimate goal of “experts” since their economic interest lies there. the situation is even more critical in developing countries like colombia because, as a former colony, traces of colonialism and coloniality1 are still evident in governmental practices (gonzález, 2007; guerrero & quintero, 2009) and which play very well with the neoliberal economic model adopted in the country in the late 1980s motivated, mostly, by the need (the same as other latin-american countries) to renegotiate the external debt (díaz-borbón, 2009). in this context of colonialism, coloniality, and neoliberalism, teachers (in general) are not heard or consulted about the relevance and/or feasibility of educational polices, let alone elementary school teachers. 1 ávila-pacheco (2010) defines colonialism as the foreign occupation of a territory along with the imposition of racial and cultural superiority. coloniality, on the other hand, refers to the ways in which the western/capitalist/modern world system has determined labor, social, and cultural relationships in former colonized countries, where racialized hierarchies have been naturalized. this imposition facilitates capitalist exploitation, subalternization, and invisibilization of other epistemologies. while colonialism ended with the independence battles of the 19th century, coloniality is very much in effect today. universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras30 guerrero-nieto & quintero but while technocrats have the technical and theoretical knowledge, they lack the knowledge of reality that teachers possess. colombia is mainly a rural country, affected by more than 50 years by an armed conflict, where teachers and students are the target of crossfire among paramilitary groups, guerrilla groups, and state agents. studies like the one conducted by lizarralde (2003) and restrepo-méndez (2019) show the distance between technocrats and teachers in regard to what is needed in terms of educational policies in a vastly complex context like the colombian one. theoretical framework the relationship between educational policies, teachers, and neoliberalism is a rich, challenging, and provoking one. we have divided this section into two parts. in the first one we will discuss the pervasiveness of neoliberalism in education and in the profession; and in the second we will address conflicting discourses (which stem from neoliberalism) where teachers find themselves caught in the middle. teachers under suspicion: neoliberalism in education the state plays a crucial yet contradictory role in school reforms in times of neoliberalism. on the one hand, loyal to the ideal that the state should provide and take care of its nationals, it is the state, through its government, that organizes and controls the school system; the government sets directions in terms of curricular content as well as in terms of financial resources like regulating teachers’ salaries and students’ fees (apple, 2003). some of these measures cover both public and private schools whereas others apply only to the schools funded by the state. private schools determine their teachers’ salaries, hiring modalities, teachers’ duties, students’ fees, and so on. on the other hand, the state owes itself to the neoliberal principles that, as in the case of colombia, it decided to adopt in the late 1980s. in that sense, it seems the state no longer exists to protect its nationals but to serve the interest of the market. as such, the state keeps reducing the monies allocated to finance public schools and facilitates the creation of private schools, covered in discourses such as efficiency, efficacy, and productivity which, in the short run, “subordinates education to commercial values and vocational skills” (levidow, 2005, p. 156). neoliberal reforms in education have brought policies that have harmed the educational system at the level of content as well as at the level of schools’ autonomy and employment stability. by adopting neoliberal discourses and practices in education, the public-school system has been debilitated and, as stated by apple (2003), this involves conscious policies to institute neoliberal “reforms” in education (such as attempts at marketization through voucher and privatization plans), neoconservative “reforms” (such as national or statewide curriculum and national or statewide testing, a “return” to a “common culture,” and the englishonly [sic] movement in the united states), and policies based on “new managerialism,” with its focus on the strict accountability and constant assessment that so deeply characterize the “evaluative state.” (p. 7) although the context of this text is mainly the united states, it is very relevant to say that the current situation in colombia is no different; as stated by díaz-borbón (2009), colombia has been under the patronage of the united states in what has to do with economic policies. sadly, these school reforms have changed the very nature of education; while for pedagogues the aim of education is the holistic education of the human being, for neoliberals it is about fulfilling the demands of the market and being productive moneywise; while for pedagogues students are unique human beings with the potential to be whatever they want, for neoliberals students are products that can be adapted according to the needs of the clients; for pedagogues there is an 31profile: issues teach. prof. dev., vol. 23 no. 1, jan-jun, 2021. issn 1657-0790 (printed) 2256-5760 (online). bogotá, colombia. pages 27-40 elementary school teachers in neoliberal times: the silent voices that make educational policies work epistemological relation between the teacher and the students while for neoliberals there is a transaction between seller and buyer (díaz-borbón, 2009). under the spell of neoliberalism, policies that search for the homogenization of education, the adoption of a national curriculum, the implementation of standardized tests, the marginalization of indigenous languages, and the promotion of english as a superior language are all measures established to enhance productivity and guarantee revenue (bruno, 2007; shohamy, 2009). instead of moving forward to a more inclusive and diverse world, we are walking backwards to the 18th century to claim “one language one nation” as the way to economic and social progress. but more problematic is that by adopting these measures, we witness, as put by apple (2003): “the reproduction of both dominant pedagogical and curricular forms and ideologies and the social privileges that accompany them” (p. 7). so, it is not only that education is being taken over by those with neoliberal ideas but also that it segregates those who can have access to privileges from those who cannot. therefore, teachers are trapped within these discourses, practices, and policies and are deskilled (sayer, 2012) by the minute. in the neoliberal models, teachers are not there to think but to do, and students are there not to learn but to acquire the necessary skills to perform in the labor market. teachers are viewed as technicians who have to follow directions, obey distant authorities (giroux, 1988), and make things work, and of course they are under constant suspicion: that is why the government fosters the implementation of surveillance devices like tests, periodical teachers’ performance evaluations, lesson plans, working plans, and tons of other formats for teachers to “prove” they are really working (escalante-gonzalbo, 2019). teachers between dichotomies shohamy (2009) calls for the need to include teachers in the design of educational policies. as many of us think, she claims that teachers could greatly contribute to designing polices that are more connected to school realities; their expertise and knowledge can help set attainable goals since, as shohamy states: a big disconnect exists between powerful policy statements and those which are practice-driven; this can help explain the reasons why policies often fail as they are driven by wishes and aspirations, which may be good in themselves but not always feasible. (pp. 46–47) unfortunately, with the adoption of neoliberal models in education, this is far from happening; meanwhile, teachers are still caught up in dichotomies and tensions that have to do basically with their having to take sides, either with the mandates of the government or with their students and their needs. heterogeneity vs. homogeneity when talking about education, official discourses foster, on the surface, the idea that schools should be heterogeneous and favor diversity of all sorts: language, gender, class, race; teaching methods, class contents, school materials, and so forth; but practices go in an opposite direction (da silva-pardo, 2019). aligned with neoliberal discourses of competitiveness, the government implements different mechanisms geared towards homogeneity; according to shohamy (2009), the test is the most powerful one. she claims that the use of tests unfolds a series of actions that make people, whether they like it or not, end up accepting, embracing, and demanding homogeneity. teachers are caught up in the middle of these conflicting discourses, juggling with the ambiguous demands of the government. the school as a site for reproduction vs. the school as a site for change the school, as a concept, has been studied, analyzed, and problematized. for some scholars (bourdieu & passeron, 1970/1990; freire, 1968/1996; gramsci, 1995; mclaren, 2015) it is a site where the superstructures of society are reproduced. they see the way school life is universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras32 guerrero-nieto & quintero organized, from the special layout to the contents studied and the ways they are delivered, as the perfect architecture for reproduction where little or no room exists to think critically. the school exists to discipline the body and the mind (foucault, 1975/2012) in order to produce a submissive individual who obeys the rules of society and incorporates its practices without questioning them. but to others (fraser, 1997; hogan, 1982; & wong, 2002 as cited in apple, 2003) schools are places where social change can take place. for these authors, schools have been critical in challenging dominant powers and in bringing about social change. for them, there is a relationship between the school, as a government institution, and the school community where the latter have a rather active role in contesting the hegemonic practices of the former. teachers are then caught up in this dichotomy; on the one hand, they are part of the school as an institution, but on the other, as teachers, their role is to educate their students as holistic human beings. as we found in a previous research study (guerrero & quintero, 2016), teachers are caught in between deciding whether to comply with government regulations and mandates or to serve students’ needs. for many schoolteachers, students come first. this does not mean that they leave policies aside, but that they find a way to make policies work. these actions, or micro-practices, as we call them, should be visible and known by the rest of the society in order to understand the value and the contributions that teachers make for the same society. method our study is framed within a poststructuralist paradigm because we do believe that teachers’ voices do not simply reflect reality, but construct it while speaking (agger, 1991); along with their voices, we will try to problematize and destabilize the given. we agree with baxter (2008) and hatch (2002) that there is not only one single story, let alone one single truth (merriam, 2009), but many that deserve to be told. as stated above, this piece is part of a larger study conducted in bogotá, colombia. using the social network strategy, we invited elementary school teachers from different localities of the district of bogotá, and with the participating teachers we were able to form five focus groups in five localities.2 each focus group was made up of eight to ten teachers whose ages ranged from their twenties to their fifties; there were female and male teachers. according to galeano-marín (2010) focus groups fall into two main trends: the european and the american. the european differences itself from the american in that the former does not allow the moderator to intervene too much, while in the latter, the moderator controls the conversation. in our case, we adopted the european format because it was our interest to collect as much genuine information as possible. also, focus groups lend themselves as a suitable methodology because we wanted to gather teachers’ opinions, ideas, and perspectives on one particular issue: the implementation of educational policies. we met with the teachers at their own schools (all of them public schools) over a year. data consisted of recorded audios and videos and teachers were asked to sign a consent form. grounded theory was the approach we used to analyze data because, being consistent with the poststructuralist approach, our interest was to dig deep into the data to theorize by finding emergent categories. the unit of analysis was chunks of data where teachers made declarative statements expressing actions, opinions, perceptions, or ideas. the analysis was guided by the research question: “what do teachers’ voices reveal about the implementation of educational policies?” and was done manually using both open and axial coding. we also used two forms of triangulation: peers’ triangulation, in which we invited other researchers to cross-examine the data and our interpretations, and theory triangulation, in which we confronted the emergent categories with existing literature. 2 bogotá, the capital city of colombia, is the largest city in the country with a population of eight million inhabitants. the city is divided into eight “localidades,” that is, political districts. 33profile: issues teach. prof. dev., vol. 23 no. 1, jan-jun, 2021. issn 1657-0790 (printed) 2256-5760 (online). bogotá, colombia. pages 27-40 elementary school teachers in neoliberal times: the silent voices that make educational policies work findings and discussion after immersing ourselves in the voices of elementary school teachers, and as an answer to our research question, we found that teachers take actions—which feelings what do teacher’s voices reveal about the implementation of educational policies? micro-practices perspectives mistreatedhuman dimension clashing visions in the classroom beyond the classroom trading seeking for teachinglearning strategies buying schools materials follow up extracurricular activities policies as chimeras monetary motivation attacked harassedignored we have called micro-practices—have their own perspectives about policies, and feel negatively treated by the national government. in figure 1 we illustrate these categories and their subcategories. figure 1. categories and subcategories teachers’ micro-practices this category allows us to see that despite the pervasiveness of neoliberalism in education (apple, 2003; bruno, 2007; díaz-borbón, 2009; levidow, 2005; shohamy, 2009) teachers still put their students and their needs first when implementing educational policies. teachers are very engaged with the profession and with the responsibilities it carries, which, many times go beyond the instructional or disciplinary aspects of teaching. we observed that teachers carry out lots of different actions either within their classrooms or beyond, that were neither part of the curriculum nor in their capacity as teachers; and that they did not share with other colleagues or administrative staff. we called this pattern micro-practices and define them as actions that teachers do on their own, quietly, either within the walls of their classrooms or beyond those walls. these actions are their own because they are not initiated by the principal of the school, by any external agent, research group, consultant agencies, or official projects or initiatives. the other characteristic is that these actions take place quietly; by this we mean that teachers do not brag about what they are doing, and they do not invite anyone to be part of this action. by talking to them we figured out that they do not share their actions because they think they are meant to do these things as teachers, it is their job, and they do not see anything extraordinary about what they do. the third characteristic of micro-practices has to do with the scenario where these actions take place. sometimes teachers engage in actions that reach beyond the classroom, but most of them happen within their classrooms while they are teaching. the classroom is the place, as we reported somewhere else (quintero universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras34 guerrero-nieto & quintero & guerrero, 2013), where teachers feel powerful (in professional terms); they know their children and their contexts, and invent multiple ways to serve their students’ needs and expectations; to fill in the gaps left by policy makers and to fulfill the immediate needs of their contexts is a priority. as one of our participating teachers puts it: if you are a teacher, you always want to do more for your students and then, as much as possible, because if you see that something…is missing…fortunately in primary school we have that…like that advantage, that as we are almost all the time with the group, yes? so, uh…we can within closed doors, when one is in the classroom eh… do something that you see that the kids are needing and that…that arises from your experience, of observing, of what to do, right? that is happening naturally, that is the contribution that one can make. (ac–n)3 the human dimension of teaching when looking at the way many educational policies have been drafted, one can see they seem detached from reality, cold and distant. as stated by shohamy (2009), policy makers’ decisions are influenced by ideology, politics, economy, but “lack a sense of reality” (p. 46). it seems that policy makers forget that the act of teaching– learning is an act of humanity, or an act of love, as freire (1992/2004) would say. teachers, instead, are very clear about the nature of their profession. students are human beings who, beyond grades, tests scores, and rote learning, have their own lives, which, of course, they bring into the classroom. we learned that the human dimension of teaching is the driving force behind the micro-practices, that is, teachers’ actions are informed, driven, and inspired by it. teaching is not a result-oriented practice that focuses 3 at the end of each excerpt, we identify it with a codification, in parentheses, that starts with the two initials of the school, and ends with either the initial of the participant’s name or their pseudonym. only on doing as superiors say. in the participants’ declarations there are recurrent references to the place of caring in their teaching and the decisions they make in order to better serve the needs of their students. the excerpt below illustrates this point: what does one do in the classroom: the children arrive, one greets them, one looks at them, one asks them if they had lunch, who brought them, who brings them, with whom they sleep, why they did not do the homework, why the mother and father are not living with them. one also helps them academically when they do not understand a task; after a weekend they come home without the homework, what happened? why did he not make the homework? nobody helped them at home so one takes him, separates him from the group and dedicates some time to the children that have problems. (pn_solecito) in the data we identified that teachers’ micropractices fall into two main kinds: one that has to do with teaching per se, and happens in the classroom, and one that spans beyond the classroom and implies other forms of caring. micro-practices in the classroom. as we stated above, the classroom is where teachers feel powerful (quintero & guerrero, 2013), they feel their knowledge matters, and they feel they are really in charge and can make their own decisions. being aware that they lack the preparation to teach english (teachers in elementary school do not receive any training in this matter), they find ways to compensate for this by taking informed actions. they “trade classes”; this means that if, by any chance there is a teacher who is good at teaching english, they switch groups, as we can see in this excerpt: i have always looked for her, to deal with english in my group, so i had to go to her classroom to teach her kids religion, physical education, ethics, drawing, whatever i had to do, and she would come to mine to teach english to them. at least, the children take away a little foundation, a base for their high school. (an–p6) 35profile: issues teach. prof. dev., vol. 23 no. 1, jan-jun, 2021. issn 1657-0790 (printed) 2256-5760 (online). bogotá, colombia. pages 27-40 elementary school teachers in neoliberal times: the silent voices that make educational policies work another micro-practice is using others’ knowledge to learn some tips and strategies. for example, when there are student-teachers in the school, teachers ask them to come to their classrooms so they can take notes on both their pedagogy and their language usage (particularly in pronunciation which is something that worries them a lot). others, led by intuition, search for materials or activities that they think might help children learn english. they adapt those materials to the number of students in the classroom, to the english level of the kids, their age, the particularities of the context, and so on. although teachers find ways to cope and compensate for the lack of previsions in the design of the policies, these micro-practices have their dose of anguish, as the teacher in the excerpt below shows. then one makes moderate efforts, i say…the fact of being a teacher is definitely love, that is, i cannot say that i am a teacher by vocation, because it is not true, but i assume it with great responsibility, i cannot say what it was what i dreamed of…no, it was life circumstances that confronted me…but i think that when one assumes something, one has to assume it with full responsibility and then in those terms i assume it, well, i said well, i will have to do something and more with young children, well, one says, let’s use playful activities, let’s use songs, let’s use whatever tools we might know…but it is difficult. (ac–jo) micro-practices beyond the classroom. the other kind of micro-practices we identified are those that span beyond the classroom, which are also informed and motivated by the human dimension of teaching. on the one hand, we found that many teachers buy classroom materials for those kids who cannot afford them, and without second thoughts, they do this from their own pocket money. we also found that, in some cases related to child abuse or children with cognitive disabilities, they made a personal decision to visit the state offices in charge of dealing with those cases, and/or visiting children at home. and a third set of micro-practices beyond the classrooms was that in which teachers used their free time to teach children non-academic activities like playing chess or playing music. the excerpt below illustrates these micro-practices. there are no spaces, there are no times, but sometimes one has the will, for example i work here with a small group teaching them chess, here in this lounge i work a few days, i have a small group but i would love to have a large group. (pn–biribis) summing up, micro-practices constitute an alternative (in parallel) to teaching practice, in which the latter is the bulk set of activities that teachers must do: grade, instruct, discipline, punish, fill out forms, hand in report cards, behavior cards, attend meetings, and so on and so forth. micro-practices, on the other hand, are those tiny actions teachers carry out in or out their classrooms and that are not contemplated in the syllabus, or on any administrative check list. perspectives under this category we present the perspectives teachers have on educational policies and show how divergent these are in regard to those held by policy makers. in what follows we delve into those perspectives. clashing visions about the purpose of education teachers’ voices reveal that their visions about education differ greatly from those who design them. as discussed in the theoretical framework, most of the western world has adopted a neoliberal model that crosses all instances from economic to educational. for teachers, it is very clear that educational policies are dictated by supranational organizations like the imf, the world bank, and the oecd (nussbaum, 2011); in that sense it is clear to them that these policies have nothing to do with our context and needs. the data led us to identify two prominent ideas about educational policies: (a) policies as a chimera; (b) policies have a monetary motivation. universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras36 guerrero-nieto & quintero policies as a chimera. there is a generalized idea among teachers that policies are acontextual, homogenizing, and do not respond to the needs either of the society or of the students. by examining the educational reforms adopted under the neoliberal model, as stated by apple (2003), it is apparent that these are not intended to improve the quality of education but to set the grounds for capitalism to consolidate in our emerging economies. therefore, the promises of better education become a chimera. as stated by díaz-borbón (2009), for teachers, education has to do with caring and helping human beings to achieve their epistemological potential; for neoliberalism it has to do with maximizing the use of financial and human resources while reducing policy implementation to filling formats and reporting figures (han, 2017). the following excerpt presents this clashing vision: i would like to say something about the coverage policy, i think it is important to keep in mind that the established parameters are inadequate, they are not the most appropriate; 35 or 40 students per classroom; overcrowding; mega-schools; there is a great deal of investment in infrastructure but they have not invested in the quality of the education of the teachers; not of the students because after all, if one is well prepared, if one does research (not only doing things by trial and error) it can provide…provide a better quality education, that should be, among other policies, should be qualityoriented, it should not be oriented towards how many children pass the school year, and what the dropout rates are, and how many are repeating the grade; so, not to focus on the numerical part, but more on the knowledge part. right now, everything is numbers, how many passed the test, how many passed the icfes, how many children passed and how many failed. so that is failing the truth. (an–p4) monetary motivation. policy makers, probably with good intentions, prioritize labor the market and the demands from the oecd (colombia became a member in 2018) and those of the free trade agreements signed by our country. as a consequence, policy makers bring neoliberal practices to schools (apple 2003; ayala-zárate & álvarez, 2005), which changes the humanistic nature of education for one that cares about the production of goods. as such, discourses that include lexical choices like indicators, quality assurance, efficiency and efficacy, client, budget and others have been naturalized by schools. teachers claim that the economic interest is at the core of policy making and that the state makes decisions depending on how much money a policy will cost and what the revenue will be. the excerpt below voices this concern: or we see in decree 230…the background of everything is an economic background, why? because each child who repeats a year has an economic cost for the governments. the 230 was intended to cut expenses to the maximum; only 5% of children could repeat a year, uh…article 9, i think is the one that talks about 5% repetition in the courses, so you can see clearly…that…money-saving process, what economists call fiscal adjustment. (jp–misudo) here, teachers are talking about a decree that rules on the percentage of repetition per course. it cannot be over 5%. teachers interpret this decree not as a strategy to improve the quality of education but as a way to save money. unfortunately, in this neoliberal system, money that goes to schools is not seen as investment but as waste (apple, 2003; manzano & salazar, 2009). this other excerpt reinforces this vision of the prevalence of the economic aspect over the educational one: if you see the need for colombians to be taken into account, for the population to be taken into account— because that is what matters least to them, for them matters that a teacher has 45 students in a classroom; they don’t care if they are well prepared, or not; they care that there are 45 students per a teacher; that the teacher produces, yes? and it is advantageous in the economic aspect, but they do not care if the child can learn, or the 37profile: issues teach. prof. dev., vol. 23 no. 1, jan-jun, 2021. issn 1657-0790 (printed) 2256-5760 (online). bogotá, colombia. pages 27-40 elementary school teachers in neoliberal times: the silent voices that make educational policies work child cannot learn. and we see that right here in bogotá, the children who are studying in this area are different from those of xxx, they are different. (an–lucecita) all and all, teachers are very aware that policies are strongly attached to economic interests in two ways: (a) making schools sites for the reproduction of the status quo (bourdieu & passeron, 1970/1990; freire, 1968/1996; gramsci, 1995; mclaren, 2015) and as a key piece in the gear to supply a cheap workforce for the labor market; and (b) seeing schools as money drainers, in which case, the objective is to reduce their budget and force them to survive. this, of course, enhances the inequality in the country (colombia is the fourth most inequitable country in the world, according to the world bank group, 2016), because if teachers do not have all the financial resources to offer a good education, their students will drop out school to thicken poverty belts. feelings an unexpected category emerged in our analysis which had to do with the feelings teachers hold in regard to policies. we found that they felt, constantly, negatively treated by state agents; their voices led us to characterize this category as follows: teachers feeling mistreated by state agencies teachers voices also reveal that they feel mistreated by the national government and by policy makers. this is consistent with guerrero’s (2010) findings which show that the ministry of education has constructed a very poor image of teachers. indeed, teachers feel ignored, harassed, abused, and attacked (which are the most common words they use to express their feelings): many times, we feel attacked, that is the truth. because they attack us; this is how we feel, they attack us, they practically attack us, because they subject us to doing things without our consent and without seeing what the characteristics of our children are; what our characteristics are, and what are the means we have to make those changes and those approaches that they bring. so really, the aggression is strong and we feel it that way, and many times you do not participate…that is why, or many times you do things wrong because you do not have a personal motivation to do it, because one realizes that one is not taken into account at all and neither are children. (an–p2) as stated by giroux (1988) teachers are viewed as mere technicians, their role is reduced to implement policies with no questions asked. teachers are then, as sayer (2012) puts it, “deskilled”; ripped of their knowledge, expertise, and abilities. their voices are ignored because they are not considered “intellectuals” but implementers. and teachers do feel this disdain from the state which, in turn, leads them to stop participating when the state calls for feedback on new policies; of the older ones, experience has taught that their ideas will never be taken into account. here the voice of one of the teachers: all the voices were not heard, so, this policy is not accompanied by the voices of the teachers, so at one point they said that if we all participated, this would be it, but now, at the time of implementation, they have never come to ask “how is it going teachers?” they have never evaluated the impact of this policy in the schools. about the decree 1290, they have never asked what has happened in the schools, is it working? is it not working? and it turns out that now they call the headmasters and the coordinators and they are told we have to get our act together because a lot of children are going to fail. (ac–aid) teachers also claim they feel harassed, and as we stated in the theoretical framework, teachers are constantly under suspicion; they have to fill in endless forms to prove they are good teachers. paradoxically, to prove they are good teachers they only need to fill in forms; teaching is reduced to a report. this means that teaching is not important; what matters is whatever is written in the form. and school directors universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras38 guerrero-nieto & quintero flood teachers with these assignments which leave very little time for actual teaching. here is what one of the teachers says about this: and then, the directors end up harassing the teachers, telling them “i need these formats, i need this implemented, i need them to develop eighty thousand projects” and because all those policies respond more to a “boom,” completely like this. they absorb us and we end up saying: “well, what am i going to do with all this?”, what we do then, is to try to comply. to comply, but processes are not really being executed; school administration only and exclusively care for the formats, we are required to fill in the formats, that is what they pay attention to, but not the real work we do with the kids; the most important, which is the child, is completely forgotten. (ac–jo) we can conclude here that opposite of what is constructed in the media about who teachers are (correa & gonzález, 2017) and the constant neglect of governments to include teachers in the design of policies, teachers are critical of the norms imposed top-down by the government. also, that neoliberalism in education takes a toll, not only in the quality of education per se, but in the personal and professional lives of teachers who feel despair more and more about their role in the implementation of policies, but who also find the strength to keep fighting for their ideals. conclusions the adoption of neoliberal models in education are here to stay. day by day those discourses and practices become more and more naturalized which makes it harder to problematize and, eventually, eradicate them. discourses about the internationalization of education, globalization, and standardization for the sake of freedom nurture the ideas that neoliberalism does serve the individual needs of subjects. what it fails to show is that education is not a factory; students are not products for the market, and teachers are not clerks (giroux, 1988). teaching and learning are human activities, which imply a dialogical relationship that cannot be reduced to forms and figures. as stated by escalante-gonzalbo (2019) it is true that education should prepare people for work but it is also true that there are other purposes which are important too, like teaching students to be good human beings, to act ethically, and to care about others, for example. unfortunately, in the race for pleasing the markets, policy makers are leaving out these other purposes and stripping teaching of its true meaning, emptying it of its humanity. but, as a consequence of this, teachers do not give up, and despite feeling mistreated and silenced, they keep working to compensate for those flaws; teachers find different ways to resist the deskilling practices brought on them by neoliberalism to fight for their ideals and to secure a better future for their students. references agger, b. 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(2011). sin fines de lucro: por qué la democracia necesita de las humanidades [nonprofit: why democracy needs the humanities]. kats editores. https://doi. org/10.2307/j.ctvndv60c quintero, a., & guerrero, c. h. (2013). “of being and not being:” colombian public elementary school teachers’ oscillating identities. how journal, 20(1), 190–205. restrepo-méndez, c. d. (2019). rurality and conflict: english teachers’ narratives on the appropriation of language education policies in colombia [master’s thesis, universidad de antioquia]. http://hdl.handle.net/10495/13680 sayer, p. (2012). ambiguities and tensions in english language teaching: portraits of efl teachers as legitimate speakers. routledge. https://doi.org/10.4324/9780203803714 shohamy, e. (2009). language teachers as partners in crafting educational language policies? íkala, revista de lenguaje y cultura, 14(22), 45–67. van dijk, t. a. (ed.). 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(2016). poverty and shared prosperity 2016: taking on inequality. https://bit.ly/32pq7rq about the authors carmen helena guerrero-nieto is a full professor at universidad distrital francisco josé de caldas. her research interests and publications are in critical pedagogy, bilingualism, and teacher education. her work has aimed at voicing english teachers’ concerns, experiences, and interests. she is the main researcher of the group critical studies on educational policies. alvaro quintero is a full professor at universidad distrital francisco josé de caldas. he is the head of the ma program in applied linguistics to the teaching of english as a foreign language. he has taught in both undergraduate and graduate tefl programs in different colombian universities. he is co-director of the research group critical studies on educational policies. https://doi.org/10.3989/ris.2008.03.25 https://doi.org/10.4324/9781315633640 https://doi.org/10.2307/j.ctvndv60c https://doi.org/10.2307/j.ctvndv60c http://hdl.handle.net/10495/13680 https://doi.org/10.4324/9780203803714 https://bit.ly/32pq7rq efl teachers’ classroom management orientation, self-efficacy, burnout, and students’ l2 achievement 29profile: issues teach. prof. dev., vol. 24 no. 1, jan-jun, 2022. issn 1657-0790 (printed) 2256-5760 (online). bogotá, colombia. pages 29-44 https://doi.org/10.15446/profile.v24n1.91153 efl teachers’ classroom management orientation, self-efficacy, burnout, and students’ l2 achievement orientación de gestión del aula, autoeficacia y agotamiento de los profesores de inglés y rendimiento de sus alumnos en l2 mohammad hadi mahmoodi1 shiva hosseiniyar negin samoudi bu-ali sina university, hamedan, iran this correlational study examined the relationship among some english teachers’ characteristics and their students’ foreign language learning. eighty-two iranian high school teachers who taught english completed a battery of questionnaires. the scores of the teachers’ students on their final exam were collected as indicators of their english achievement. the results revealed that there was a positive relationship between the teachers’ self-efficacy, classroom management orientations, personal accomplishments (a subscale of burnout), and students’ l2 performance. however, the correlations between emotional exhaustion and depersonalization (two subcomponents of burnout) and students’ english learning were negative. furthermore, the findings indicated that the teachers’ self-efficacy was the strongest predictor of learners’ english learning. these findings highlight the importance of such teachers’ characteristics for their learners’ l2 learning. keywords: burnout, classroom management strategy, l2 teachers, self-efficacy, students’ l2 performance este estudio correlacional examina la relación entre algunas características de profesores de inglés y el rendimiento de sus alumnos en l2. con este fin, 82 profesores iraníes de lengua inglesa de secundaria completaron una batería de cuestionarios. las puntuaciones de los alumnos en su examen final se recopilaron como indicador de su rendimiento en l2. hubo una relación positiva entre la autoeficacia, las orientaciones de gestión del aula y el logro personal (una subescala de agotamiento) de los profesores y el desempeño de los alumnos en l2, pero una relación negativa entre los subcomponentes del agotamiento y el rendimiento de los alumnos. además, la autoeficacia de los profesores fue el vaticinador más fuerte del rendimiento de l2 de los estudiantes. palabras clave: agotamiento, estrategia de gestión del aula, autoeficacia, profesor de l2, rendimiento de los estudiantes en l2 1 mohammad hadi mahmoodi  https://orcid.org/0000-0002-2155-2387 · email: mhmahmoodi@basu.ac.ir shiva hosseiniyar  https://orcid.org/0000-0002-3202-5275 · email: shivahosseini321@gmail.com negin samoudi  https://orcid.org/0000-0002-7868-7020 · email: n.samoudi@urmia.ac.ir how to cite this article (apa, 7th ed.): mahmoodi, m. h., hosseiniyar, s., & samoudi, n. (2022). efl teachers’ classroom management orientation, self-efficacy, burnout, and students’ l2 achievement. profile: issues in teachers’ professional development, 24(1), 29–44. https:// doi.org/10.15446/profile.v24n1.91153 this article was received on october 25, 2020 and accepted on july 28, 2021. this is an open access article distributed under the terms of the creative commons license attribution-noncommercial noderivatives 4.0 international license. consultation is possible at https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/ https://doi.org/10.15446/profile.v24n1.91153 https://orcid.org/0000-0002-2155-2387 mailto:mhmahmoodi@basu.ac.ir https://orcid.org/0000-0002-3202-5275 mailto:shivahosseini321@gmail.com https://orcid.org/0000-0002-7868-7020 mailto:n.samoudi@urmia.ac.ir https://doi.org/10.15446/profile.v24n1.91153 https://doi.org/10.15446/profile.v24n1.91153 https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/ universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras30 mahmoodi, hosseiniyar, & samoudi introduction learners’ achievement and performance is influenced by the critical role of teachers (lasley et al., 2006). teachers are the ones who set the standards and create the conditions for students. teachers deliver a plethora of information to enhance learners’ achievements. however, as akbari et al. (2008) point out, less attention has been directed to teachers than learners in english language teaching (elt) research. whereas, in order for any educational system to be successful, teachers should be given adequate attention (scheopner, 2010). one of the most central psychological mechanisms that affects action, in general, and teaching in particular, is one’s self-perceptions of one’s capabilities, which is termed “self-efficacy” (bandura, 1997). in other words, a teacher’s level of self-efficacy is the extent to which he or she believes that he or she can enhance students’ outcome. in recent years, it has been proven that teachers’ self-efficacy could have a deep influence even on the daily lives of teachers and students (klassen et al., 2009). in the same vein, previous studies have provided empirical evidence supporting the effective dimensions of the teachers’ sense of self-efficacy in educational contexts (tschannen-moran & woolfolk-hoy, 2001). teachers’ sense of burnout is another factor which has proven to have a critical role on teachers’ action. researchers such as skaalvik and skaalvik (2010) believe that burnout is created through long-term occupational stress, particularly among those who have jobs providing services to other people. although most of the teachers deal successfully with such senses of stress, the sense of burnout is often the endpoint and the last step of dealing unsuccessfully with stress (jennett et al., 2003). another commonly voiced issue which may contribute to successful teaching and learning is classroom management ability (marzano & marzano, 2003). classroom management refers to the exercises that aim to compose and guide classes so as to accomplish particular objectives. barton et al. (1998) also indicated that in order to make the atmosphere conducive to learning some degree of classroom discipline is needed. otherwise, the process of learning and teaching and the effectiveness of even the most carefully planned lessons will be ruined by students’ misbehavior. although the literature attests to the contribution of teachers’ self-efficacy, burnout, and classroom management strategies to english as a foreign language (efl) learners’ l2 achievement, scant attention has been paid to the relationship between them in the iranian context. therefore, this study aimed at capturing a more contextualized picture of such l2 teachers’ characteristics and learners’ achievements and sought to determine a probable correlation between the aforementioned variables. literature review teachers’ self-efficacy over the last decades, self-efficacy has remained a deep-seated and important construct of social cognitive theory (barros et al., 2010). as stated by schunk and pajares (2005), self-efficacy is the staple of all human behaviors influenced by individuals’ vicarious experiences, mastery of experiences, and social persuasion. according to bandura’s (1994) social cognitive theory, self-efficacy can predict human motivation precisely. based on this theory, an individual’s working is correlated with his or her cognitive, behavioral, personal, and environmental factors. in research, in relation to teachers, the role of self-efficacy in instruction has been investigated with respect to the extent to which teachers are sure that they have the ability to develop learning and engagement of their students (tschannen-moran & mcmaster, 2009). in addition, bandura (1994) indicated that a teacher’s self-efficacy is related to instructional strategies, classroom organization, levels of task persistence, degree of risk-taking, innovation, techniques of questioning, teacher feedback to students, and also management of learners’ on-task time. usher and pajares (2006) also believe that teachers’ self-efficacy may be effective on students’ sense of self-efficacy, their efforts in facing 31profile: issues teach. prof. dev., vol. 24 no. 1, jan-jun, 2022. issn 1657-0790 (printed) 2256-5760 (online). bogotá, colombia. pages 29-44 efl teachers’ classroom management orientation, self-efficacy, burnout, and students’ l2 achievement difficulties, and, as a result, fostering their involvement in classroom activities (ross, 1998). akbari et al. (2008) studied the relationship between teachers’ self-efficacy and students’ achievement. in the study, 30 iranian efl teachers teaching in high schools participated in the research and answered the teacher sense of efficacy scale developed by tschannen-moran and woolfolk-hoy (2001). as the dependent variable, students’ final-exam scores were collected. the results revealed a significant relationship between teachers’ self-efficacy and their students’ l2 achievement. another study done by mojavezi and poodinehtamiz (2012) investigated the impact of teachers’ self-efficacy on students’ motivation and achievement. to do so, 80 senior high school teachers and 150 senior high school students were asked to answer two different questionnaires of teacher’s self-efficacy and students’ motivation. the findings of the study indicated that teachers’ self-efficacy has a positive association with students’ motivation and achievement. hassan (2019) also carried out a quantitative ex post facto study to probe the effect of teachers’ self-efficacy on learners’ achievement scores. in this study, multilingual instructions were used for students’ success on a randomly selected sample of 300 secondary school teachers and 800 students. the obtained data from teachers were collected by conducting the complete form of the teachers’ self-efficacy scale, and learners’ achievement scores were obtained from the board of intermediate and secondary education in lahore, pakistan. findings depicted that overall, teachers’ self-efficacy accounted for 65% of students’ achievement scores. classroom management strategy classroom management is the heart of teaching and learning in any educational setting (saghir et al., 2017). teachers have reported that classroom management is the most formidable responsibility to cope with and master for new and, sometimes, even for experienced teachers (wolfgang, 2005). in fact, classroom management is a broad umbrella term that describes a teacher’s attempts to oversee classroom activities such as students’ behavior, learning, and social interaction (martin et al., 1998). evertson and weinstein (2006, as cited in mahmoodi et al., 2015) define class management as the actions that teachers take to create an environment that supports and facilitates emotional, social, and academic learning. in all fields, teachers have always reported classroom management as one of their common and enduring challenges in the classroom (manning & bucher, 2003). according to wolfgang (2005), classroom management models are classified into three levels. first, the interventionist model according to which students’ appropriate behaviors will improve as they receive feedback in the form of rewards or punishment from their teachers. second, the non-interventionist model which contends that there is an inner drive within students that needs to find its expression in the classroom. in fact, non-interventionists believe that students should be allowed to exert significant influence in the classroom. third, the interactionalist model, according to which students’ interaction with the outside world of proper people and objects enhances their appropriate behaviors. in addition, evertson and weinstein (2006, as cited in mahmoodi et al., 2015) have proposed a frequently used framework in studies of classroom management which has introduced six distinct approaches of classroom management strategies: internal control of behavior, external control, classroom ecology, curriculum, discourse, and interpersonal relationships. rahimi and hosseini-karkami (2015) investigated the role of efl teachers’ management strategies on their teaching effectiveness and their learners’ motivation and l2 achievement. data were collected from a total of 1,408 junior high-school students who were asked to express their perceptions of the strategies their teachers had employed; also, the students evaluated the teaching effectiveness of their teachers by responding to some questionnaires. then, based on the students’ scores on their final exam, their l2 achievement in english was universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras32 mahmoodi, hosseiniyar, & samoudi determined. the results showed that motivation, teaching effectiveness, and l2 achievement were all associated with discipline strategies. in another study, mahmoodi et al. (2015) investigated the relationship between efl teachers’ classroom management orientations and students’ l2 achievement. to this end, 105 high school efl teachers were asked to fill out the attitudes and beliefs on classroom control inventory (martin et al., 1998). then, their third-year high school students’ (n = 2,673) scores on the english final exam were collected. the results revealed that there was a significant correlation between the teachers’ classroom management strategies and students’ l2 achievement. their findings also indicated no significant differences between the two genders regarding teacher’s classroom management orientations. in another study, talebi et al. (2015) examined the impact of classroom management strategies and academic achievement among english language students. to do so, 410 students in payamenoor university were selected, and as evaluating tools, the students’ final exam scores and the classroom management questionnaire of javaher et al. (2014) were used. it was concluded that there was a significant relationship between classroom management and academic achievement of the efl learners. in the research done by saghir et al. (2017) on the relationship of classroom management strategies and students’ academic performance at the college level, a sample of 370 teachers were selected from public colleges of lahore. the findings of the study showed that there was a positive correlation between teachers’ classroom management orientations and the performance of the students. estaji and vafaemehr (2018) also had a study on the effects of efl teachers’ reflection on their sense of classroom administration; the findings of which attested that more reflective teachers applied various types of management strategies to cope with their students’ social, emotional, and behavioral problems in comparison with their low reflective counterparts. however, in the study conducted by zamanian and soleimani-pouya (2017), which examined the relationship among novice and experienced teachers’ classroom management strategies and different styles of teaching, an overall relationship among the teaching styles of each group of the teachers and their classroom management strategies were not evidenced. teachers’ burnout the american psychiatrist of german birth, freudenberger (1974), first coined the term “burnout” to describe the depletion of emotions, losing motivation, as well as reduction in commitment that was experienced by human service workers after prolonged stressful conditions. several researchers as freudenberger (1974), maslach (1976), and maslach and jackson (1981) construed burnout as a psychological syndrome that involves three subscales: (a) emotional exhaustion which refers to the sense of being emotionally drained by some serious contact with other people; (b) depersonalization, referring to the negative attitudes towards people; and (c) reduction in personal accomplishment, which refers to a reduction in the people’s sense of competence and successful achievement in working with others (maslach et al., 2001). as elaborated by some researchers (e.g., maslach, 2003; maslach et al., 2001), the importance of the burnout issue is due to the impact it can have on the individual’s physical and mental health, behavior, and attitudes because it is an index of individuals’ weak performance in the workplace. according to various research studies (e.g., abel & sewell, 1999; van dick & wagner, 2001), teacher burnout can be triggered by different sorts of characteristics such as working conditions, lack of social support, professional recognition or prestige expenditure, number of students, lack of resources, level of specialization, poverty, student disruptive behavior, and relationship with colleagues. besides, pyhältö et al. (2020) claim that previous studies on teacher burnout have declared workload and years of teaching experience as main antecedents of teachers’ burnout. 33profile: issues teach. prof. dev., vol. 24 no. 1, jan-jun, 2022. issn 1657-0790 (printed) 2256-5760 (online). bogotá, colombia. pages 29-44 efl teachers’ classroom management orientation, self-efficacy, burnout, and students’ l2 achievement in the study done by rostami et al. (2015), the external factors that affect second language learning motivation were investigated. in their study, 120 efl teachers along with 1,270 of their students participated and dornyei’s l2 motivation self-system scale for students and the educator version of the maslach burnout inventory (mbies) were used for data collection purposes. the results showed that teachers’ burnout significantly influenced learners’ motivation and attitudes towards learning english in a negative way. moreover, there is another study conducted by shamsafrouz and haghverdi (2015) on the effect of burnout and, more specifically, its three subcomponents on the teaching performance of efl teachers teaching in private language institutes in iran. the participants of this study consisted of 30 english teachers and their l2 learners (n = 150). the data were collected via the maslach burnout inventory and the characteristics of successful iranian efl teachers questionnaire developed by moafian and pishghadam (2009). the results showed that burnout did not influence the teachers’ performance significantly and there were no significant differences between male and female teachers regarding their level of burnout. in a mixed-methods study conducted by roohani and dayeri (2019) on the relationship between iranian efl teachers’ burnout and motivation, however, it was found that a majority of the 115 participants, in general, did not report a high level of burnout. also, the qualitative analysis indicated that both organizational and personal factors had contributed to the observed minor burnout experience among the efl teachers. the main factors included conflict, lack of support in administration, lack of job security, demotivation, lack of autonomy, and students’ impropriety in the classroom. there is another research done by shirazizadeh et al. (2019) who examined the relationship as regards perfectionism, reflection, and burnout among 156 iranian efl teachers. the findings showed that teachers’ reflection had a significant negative correlation with burnout, but there was no significant relationship between the aspects of teachers’ perfectionism and burnout; their further analysis of two path models which considered their primary findings, revealed that components of perfectionism affected reflection positively, which, in turn, affected teachers’ burnout negatively. purpose of the study and research questions in the light of current understanding of the crucial role of the abovementioned teachers’ characteristics in the academic success of students, this research was done. accordingly, the following research questions are addressed: 1. is there any statistically significant relationship between iranian efl teachers’ use of classroom management strategies and their students’ l2 achievement? 2. is there any statistically significant relationship between iranian efl teachers’ self-efficacy and their students’ l2 achievement? 3. is there any statistically significant relationship between different components of teachers’ burnout (emotional exhaustion, personal accomplishment, depersonalization) and their students’ l2 achievement? 4. among iranian efl teachers’ classroom management strategies, self-efficacy, and burnout components, which one is the stronger predictor of their students’ l2 achievement? method participants the participants included 82 iranian efl teachers (39 men and 43 women) from hamadan and their students (1,932). teachers’ age ranged from 20 to 45. all of the teachers had a ba or an ma degree either in english translation or in the teaching of english as a foreign language. they were all third-year high school teachers of public and private schools and were universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras34 mahmoodi, hosseiniyar, & samoudi recruited from the government’s in-service teacher training programs. moreover, students’ scores on the english final exam were used as indicators of their l2 achievement. the sampling strategy for selection was convenience sampling because of the accessibility of the participants to the researchers. the gender was not considered as a moderator variable in this study. materials and instruments the following instruments were used in this study: maslach burnout inventory: educator’s survey (mbi-es) this instrument was developed by maslach et al. (1996) as a likert scale questionnaire with 22 self-reported items. this instrument includes three components, of emotional exhaustion (ee), depersonalization (dp), and personal accomplishment (pa) and is used to measure teachers’ burnout. higher scores on the ee and dp subcomponents and low scores on the pa subscale indicate burnout in the participants. iwanicki and schwab (1981) estimated cornbach’s alpha for each subscale of the questionnaire. the reported reliabilities are: α = .76, for ee; α = .76, for dp; and α = .76, for pa. also, this questionnaire has been used and validated in different studies in the context of iran (e. g., mahmoodi & ghaslani, 2014; pishghadam & sahebjam, 2012). in this study, its reliability was calculated through cronbach’s alpha consistency estimation (α = .74). attitudes and beliefs on classroom control inventory (abcc inventory) the likert scale abcc inventory was developed and validated by martin et al. (1998) to measure teachers’ classroom management strategies. it has 26 items divided into three broad dimensions addressing components of classroom management. that is, 14 items for instructional management, eight items for people management, and four items of behavior management. also, the questionnaire’s validity was estimated by mahmoodi et al. (2015). in the present study, its reliability (α = .714) was established via cronbach’s alpha consistency estimation. teacher’s self-efficacy scale this scale was developed by tschannen-moran and woolfolk-hoy (2001) and contains 24 nine-point likert type items. the validity and reliability of the questionnaire have been examined in the study by soodmand-afshar et al. (2015), who found the cronbach’s internal consistency of the questionnaire to be: α = .94. to estimate its reliability in this study, the cronbach’s alpha consistency estimation was deployed (α = .823). english test the final english exam in the third year of high schools in iran is a nationwide achievement test. it is prepared by the professional test developers in the assessment and control center of the ministry of education in iran. the test measures overall english achievement of the students and has both multiplechoice and essay-type items. the same version of the test is administered to all high school third year students and is scored anonymously by two teachers (in case of significant difference between the scores assigned by the two raters, a senior rater scores the exam once more). the content validity of the exam is ensured via review by some experienced third year teachers and its reliability is estimated via inter-rater method. procedure first, the purpose of the study was explained to the participating teachers. then, the questionnaires were administered to them in three consecutive sessions. finally, the scores obtained by the students (n = 1,932) of the participating teachers in their english course were collected from the registrars’ offices of the high schools as the measure of their l2 achievement. it is helpful to note that the third-year high school teachers were chosen as the participants for this study because the english exam for the iranian students at this level is a nation-wide test. therefore, the items and the scoring procedure are the same for all the students across the country. 35profile: issues teach. prof. dev., vol. 24 no. 1, jan-jun, 2022. issn 1657-0790 (printed) 2256-5760 (online). bogotá, colombia. pages 29-44 efl teachers’ classroom management orientation, self-efficacy, burnout, and students’ l2 achievement data analysis to answer research questions 1, 2, and 3, the pearson correlation coefficient was used. in order not to violate “the paired observations assumption” for computing correlation, the mean score of the students’ l2 achievement in each class was computed and matched with the teachers’ scores on the questionnaires (82 mean scores for 82 teachers). to answer the fourth research question, multiple regression was used. design of the study this is an exploratory pure research project which deploys the non-experimental quantitative design of correlational studies. teachers’ classroom management orientation, self-efficacy, and burnout (its subcomponents) are the predictor variables and students’ english achievement is arbitrarily the criterion variable. results first, the descriptive statistics of participants’ scores on the abovementioned variables were calculated (see table 1). it is vital to mention that the scores for the subscales of burnout (i.e., emotional exhaustion, personal accomplishment, and depersonalization) must be considered separately and a single score cannot be calculated for burnout (maslach et al., 1996). table 1. descriptive statistics for the variables (n = 82) minimum maximum mean std. deviation variance emotional exhaustion 14 37 23.10 5.20 27.12 personal accomplishment 12 45 26.70 8.96 80.41 depersonalization 6 24 12.07 4.19 17.57 classroom management 32 97 76.52 11.93 142.45 teacher self-efficacy 111 208 184.27 19.52 381.33 students’ l2 achievement 12.28 18.01 16.12 1.12 1.26 table 2. correlation coefficients between teacher characteristics and students l2 achievement (n = 82) students l2 achievement emotional exhaustion pearson correlation -.19 sig. (2-tailed) .07 personal accomplishment pearson correlation .07 sig. (2-tailed) .50 depersonalization pearson correlation -.06 sig. (2-tailed) .5 classroom management pearson correlation .23* sig. (2-tailed) .03 teacher self-efficacy pearson correlation .37** sig. (2-tailed) .00 *correlation is significant at the 0.05 level (2-tailed). **correlation is significant at the 0.01 level (2-tailed). universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras36 mahmoodi, hosseiniyar, & samoudi in order to answer the first three research questions, pearson product moment correlations were used, the results of which are summarized in table 2. as table 2 indicates, the correlation between teachers’ classroom management and students’ l2 achievement (r = .23) is significant at the .05 level (p = .03 < .05, n = 82). thus, there is a strong, positive, and significant correlation between these two variables. moreover, there is a strong, positive, and statistically significant correlation between teachers’ self-efficacy and students’ l2 achievement (r = .37, p = .00 < .05, n = 82). therefore, these two variables are also significantly correlated with each other. regarding burnout components, as can be seen in table 2, the correlation between teachers’ emotional exhaustion and students’ l2 achievement (r = -.19) is weak and negative (p =.07 > .05, n = 82), suggesting that in our sample, teachers’ emotional exhaustion and their students’ l2 achievement are negatively correlated with each other. however, the correlation between teachers’ personal accomplishment and students’ l2 achievement is weak and positive (r = .07, p = .50 > .05). the correlation between teachers’ depersonalization, as another component of burnout, and students’ l2 achievement (r = -.06), is also weak and negative (p = .53 > .05, n = 82). therefore, the correlations between the components of teachers’ burnout and students’ l2 achievement were not statistically significant. to determine which one of the teachers’ variables is the best predictor of students’ l2 achievement (question 4), a sequential (hierarchical) multiple regression analysis was run. the results are shown in tables 3, 4, and 5. the multiple correlation coefficient, the adjusted and unadjusted r square of teachers’ self-efficacy, classroom management strategy, and components of burnout, which were entered as predictors of the students’ l2 achievement via five models, are presented in table 3. as can be seen in table 3, r square for teacher self-efficacy (model 1) is .144, which means that this variable can account for 14.4 percent of the variation of the dependent variable (the students’ l2 scores). we can see the effect of adding the other predictors in the other models. r square for model 5, which examines the predictive power of all independent variables, is .18. therefore, it attests that 18.9 percent of the variance of participants’ l2 achievement can be predicted from the combination of teachers’ classroom management strategy, self-efficacy, and burnout components. table 3. model summary model r r square adjusted r square std. error of the estimate 1 .37 a .144 .13 1.04 2 .40 b .16 .13 1.04 3 .41 c .16 .13 1.04 4 .42 d .18 .14 1.04 5 .43 e .18 .13 1.04 note. dependent variable: students’ l2 achievement. a predictors: (constant), teacher self-efficacy. b predictors: (constant), teacher self-efficacy, classroom management. c predictors: (constant), teacher self-efficacy, classroom management, emotional exhaustion. d predictors: (constant), teacher self-efficacy, classroom management, emotional exhaustion, personal accomplishment. e predictors: (constant), teacher self-efficacy, classroom management, emotional exhaustion, personal accomplishment, depersonalization in order to examine whether the combination of the predictors, that is, teachers’ characteristics (i.e., classroom management strategy, self-efficacy, and burnout components) significantly predicted their students’ l2 achievement, an anova was run, the results of which are presented in table 4. examining the f value and significance level for the models in table 4 shows that self-efficacy can significantly predict the students’ l2 scores, f (1, 80) = 13.43, p =.00 < .05. the combination of teachers’ variables can also predict students’ l2 achievement, f (1, 80) = 3.53, p =.00 < .05. 37profile: issues teach. prof. dev., vol. 24 no. 1, jan-jun, 2022. issn 1657-0790 (printed) 2256-5760 (online). bogotá, colombia. pages 29-44 efl teachers’ classroom management orientation, self-efficacy, burnout, and students’ l2 achievement table 4. anova for sequential regression for the variables model sum of squares df mean square f sig. 1 regression 14.72 1 14.72 13.43 .00 a residual 87.64 80 1.09 total 102.36 81 2 regression 16.38 2 8.19 7.52 .00 b residual 85.97 79 1.08 total 102.36 81 3 regression 17.18 3 5.72 5.24 .00 c residual 85.18 78 1.09 total 102.36 81 4 regression 18.75 4 4.68 4.31 .00 d residual 83.60 77 1.08 total 102.36 81 5 regression 19.33 5 3.86 3.53 .00 e residual 83.03 76 1.09 total 102.36 81 note. dependent variable: students’ l2 achievement. a predictors: (constant), teacher self-efficacy. b predictors: (constant), teacher self-efficacy, classroom management. c predictors: (constant), teacher self-efficacy, classroom management, emotional exhaustion. d predictors: (constant), teacher self-efficacy, classroom management, emotional exhaustion, personal accomplishment. e predictors: (constant), teacher self-efficacy, classroom management, emotional exhaustion, personal accomplishment, depersonalization. table 5. coefficients model unstandardized coefficients standardized coefficients t sig. collinearity statistics b std. error beta vif 1 (constant) 12.10 1.10 10.97 .00 teacher self-efficacy .022 .006 .37 3.67 .00 1.00 2 (constant) 11.56 1.18 9.79 .00 teacher self-efficacy .020 .006 .33 3.13 .00 1.10 classroom management .013 .010 .13 1.24 .22 1.10 3 (constant) 12.32 1.47 8.34 .00 teacher self-efficacy .018 .00 .31 2.84 .00 1.16 classroom management .012 .010 .12 1.15 .25 1.10 emotional exhaustion -.020 .023 -.09 -.85 .39 1.08 universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras38 mahmoodi, hosseiniyar, & samoudi model unstandardized coefficients standardized coefficients t sig. collinearity statistics b std. error beta vif 4 (constant) 11.65 1.57 7.41 .00 teacher self-efficacy .018 .00 .32 2.89 .00 1.16 classroom management .014 .01 .14 1.35 .18 1.14 emotional exhaustion -.019 .02 -.08 -.80 .42 1.08 personal accomplishment .016 .01 .12 1.20 .23 1.03 5 (constant) 11.61 1.58 7.35 .00 teacher self-efficacy .018 .00 .31 2.82 .00 1.17 classroom management .014 .01 .14 1.35 .18 1.14 emotional exhaustion -.033 .03 -.15 -1.08 .28 1.84 personal accomplishment .020 .01 .15 1.38 .17 1.19 depersonalization .028 .03 .10 .72 .47 1.88 note. dependent variable: students’ l2 achievement. the amount of contribution of each of the independent variables (classroom management strategy, self-efficacy, and burnout components) to the dependent variable (l2 achievement) is presented in table 5. based on the results presented in table 5, the standardized coefficients beta (.37) and the t value (3.67) indicates that teachers’ self-efficacy (sig. = .00) is the strongest predictor of students’ l2 achievement. but the other independent variables, that is, classroom management and components of burnout, by themselves, do not significantly contribute to the prediction of the dependent variable (students’ l2 achievement). discussion this study contributes to the rather scarce literature on the association between efl teachers’ classroom management orientations, self-efficacy, and burnout components and learners’ l2 learning in the context of iran. moreover, the extent of the probable contribution of each of the teacher’s characteristics to their students’ l2 achievement has been examined. overall, the findings of the statistical analyses indicated that the teacher classroom management strategies and self-efficacy were significantly related to the dependent variable (students’ l2 achievement). nevertheless, all the components of burnout did not have a significant relationship with learners’ l2 development. as the teachers’ classroom management orientation is concerned, the findings of this study corroborate with the results of a number of studies which also reported a positive significant relationship between classroom management and students’ achievement (e.g., rahimi & hosseini-karkami, 2015; saghir et al., 2017; talebi et al., 2015). we found that there was a strong relationship between teachers’ management orientations and students’ l2 enhancement. it confirms the idea that classroom management builds a situation that facilitates and supports both academic and social emotional learning 39profile: issues teach. prof. dev., vol. 24 no. 1, jan-jun, 2022. issn 1657-0790 (printed) 2256-5760 (online). bogotá, colombia. pages 29-44 efl teachers’ classroom management orientation, self-efficacy, burnout, and students’ l2 achievement (evertson & weinstein, 2006, as cited in mahmoodi et al., 2015). however, this finding is in contrast with those of mahmoodi et al. (2015), who found a significant negative correlation between third-year efl teachers’ classroom management orientations and their students’ l2 achievement. this result also consolidates the idea that classroom management is a setup through which teachers build up and keep up conditions to empower learners in accomplishing educational destinations productively (barnabas et al., 2010). results regarding the second research question showed that teachers’ self-efficacy had a significant and positive relationship with learners’ l2 achievement. such a link has been demonstrated through many studies (e.g., akbari et al., 2008; good & brophy, 2003; hassan, 2019; mojavezi & poodineh-tamiz, 2012). this finding is in line with social cognitive theory that suggests there is a circular relationship between efficacy beliefs and teaching practices (bandura, 1997). this relationship can be explained by the persistence found in teachers who have high self-efficacy (good & brophy, 2003). as for the results pertinent to the burnout components in this research, depersonalization and emotional exhaustion had a negative correlation with students’ final scores while a positive correlation was observed between the other subcomponent of burnout, that is, personal accomplishment, and the dependent variable. however, all of these correlation coefficients were weak and statistically insignificant. these findings are contrary to most of the research findings to date that suggest a significant correlation exists between burnout and second language achievement (e.g., rostami et al., 2015; zhang & sapp, 2008). one reason for this non-significant relationship might be attributed to the influence that burnout can have on teachers’ grading practices. as a result of burnout, teachers might become more lenient, careless, and arbitrary to avoid further problems and complaints arising from low grades. it can also be assumed as a form of compensation for their inadequate teaching (arens & morin, 2016). another reason might be that in iranian high schools, third-year students are mostly motivated enough to study english because most of them aim to do well on their coming university entrance examination. therefore, in comparison with other educational settings, their teachers’ sense of burnout might not have seriously demotivated them so as to reduce their learning efforts. besides, as pyhältö et al. (2020) believe, the most important antecedent of teacher burnout is years of experience. therefore, the other possible reason for this finding may be that the participating teachers in the present study who were in a low range of age (maximum 45), had not yet experienced high levels of burnout to influence students’ learning. likewise, in the research done by roohani and dayeri (2019), low levels of burnout were reported for efl teachers, for the majority of the participants, and a significant effect on students’ motivation was not observed. another possible explanation for the insignificant relationship between teacher burnout and l2 achievement in this study is that based on the results of the research by arens and morin (2016), the reductive effect of burnout on l2 learning was shown to be more pronounced when students’ achievement was assessed via standardized achievement tests than when it was measured through school grades. that is, as reported by madigan and kim (2021), in a systematic review of the related literature, teachers who suffer from high levels of burnout may not be able to create an appropriate teaching/learning context to help students be successful in standardized achievement tests. nonetheless, the school grades are assigned based on subjective scoring and mainly depend on teachers’ individual preferences for evaluation and grading (mcmillan et al., 2002). as it turns out, school grades are generally less influenced by teachers’ burnout. in addition, teachers’ sense of burnout may cause them to apply stricter assessment practices in order to compensate for their suboptimal teaching and to force learners to rely on more self-initiated learning which does not cause extensive decrease in language universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras40 mahmoodi, hosseiniyar, & samoudi learning. however, the obtained result for the effect of burnout components in the current study supports that of shamsafrouz and haghverdi (2015) who similarly did not find a significant relationship between teachers’ burnout and their teaching practices. though insignificant, the negative effect of teachers’ burnout on effective teaching found in this research resonates with previous research (e.g., ghonsooly & raeesi, 2012; pishghadam & sahebjam 2012). as found by the studies done by rostami et al. (2015) and zhang and saap (2008), one reason for such negative effect of teachers’ burnout on their students’ l2 achievement may be the reductive impact of it on students’ motivation for l2 learning. that is to say, the low immediacy and lack of enthusiasm in teachers who experience burnout can have a negative effect on students’ attitudes towards learning. moreover, in the current study, it was found that teachers’ self-efficacy, in contrast to the other independent variables, was the strongest predictor of learners’ l2 success. based on ashton and webb (1986), the reason for this finding can be that teachers with higher self-efficacy tend to show more enthusiasm for their students’ growth, are receptive of student initiative, and are responsive to student needs. in the same vein, gürbüztürk and şad (2009) assert that self-efficient teachers persist for a longer time than their peers when confronted with challenges, show more enthusiasm for their job, are more resilient when they are faced with setbacks, and generally are perceived by others as more effective teachers. this finding can be supported with reference to the results of some studies (e.g., good & brophy, 2003; midgley et al., 1989) which have reported the greater influence of a teacher’s sense of self-efficacy on students’ success in contrast to some other teacher characteristics. for example, listiani et al. (2019) investigated the influence of both teachers’ self-efficacy and classroom management on students’ final exam results and found that not only self-efficacy had effects on students’ better gains, but it also fortified teacher’s management strategies. it was observed that the teachers with a higher level of self-efficacy in teaching led to more classroom management for both authoritarian and authoritative teachers. that is why the teachers who have high self-efficacy are reflective and flexible in the classroom, and always try to find a fun method in teaching. therefore, those teachers are less likely to experience student misbehavior, demotivation, or failure, which are considered important causes for teachers’ burnout. conclusion and implications taken together, the results of the current study put forward the prospect of developing a deeper understanding of efl teachers’ classroom management orientation, self-efficacy, burnout, and their impact on students’ achievement. based on the results of this study, it can be concluded that the sense of self-efficacy of teachers, as one of the critical teacher variables, should be strengthened so that teachers’ beliefs and perceptions of their competencies will increase in order to yield favorable results. that is to say, educational practitioners who worry about students’ confidence, educational declining level, deficiencies and learning approaches, need to enhance their self-efficacy to overcome the troublesome issues. theoretically speaking, in order to improve the standards and competencies that efl teachers are expected to perform, considerations regarding the construct of teachers’ self-efficacy should be further revised. moreover, the findings of this study regarding teachers’ management orientation have implications for efl teacher trainers and syllabus designers for teacher training courses to incorporate necessary programs for efl teachers to effectively improve classroom management methodologies. on the other hand, teachers should be encouraged to act as directors or facilitators to provide an atmosphere in which students have the opportunities to speak, act, and learn effectively. 41profile: issues teach. prof. dev., vol. 24 no. 1, jan-jun, 2022. issn 1657-0790 (printed) 2256-5760 (online). bogotá, colombia. pages 29-44 efl teachers’ classroom management orientation, self-efficacy, burnout, and students’ l2 achievement in the same token, based on our results concerning teachers’ burnout components, educators and supervisors should know that the burnout felt by teachers can cause depression, frustration, and demotivation for their teaching practice. accordingly, it is proposed that educational administrators consider the probable causes of teacher burnout and help teachers become equipped with the necessary coping strategies, such as problem-solving techniques, and provide better professional as well as financial support for teachers. teachers also need to develop realistic expectations about their job requirements and the teaching-learning process. in sum, it seems reasonable to suggest that teacher education programs, and particularly iranian policy makers, make preservice and in-service teachers aware of the effective teachers’ characteristics and provide them with psychological and social support if the aim is to educate efficient teachers, who, in turn, aim to enhance students’ growth. as with other studies, this research also has some limitations; here the focus was on third-year high school teachers with mostly a bachelor’s degree in english translation or teaching. therefore, the findings may not be generalizable to teachers in other areas of education or with higher degrees. besides, this research was conducted using the elt context of one city in iran. hence, care should be taken in generalizing results for other settings. the current study provides possible directions for further research. since each of the teacher characteristics investigated in this study is a multifaceted construct that might have varied effects and presentations across different tasks and settings, it would be beneficial to investigate them through further studies that provide a deeper realization of how these teachers’ characteristics influence learners’ l2 achievement. as another proposal, further mixed-methods research employing a combination of several data collection instruments like observations of teaching performance, questionnaires, and multiple interviews as additive sources of data for exploring teachers’ characteristics is suggested. last but not least, further studies can probe both personal and environmental factors collectively in explaining efl teachers’ traits. references abel, m. h., & sewell, j. 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(2015). investigating the effective component of classroom management in predicting academic achievement among english language students. procedia: social and behavioral sciences, 205, 591–596. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.sbspro.2015.09.085 https://doi.org/10.1146/annurev.psych.52.1.397 https://doi.org/10.1080/00220670209596593 https://doi.org/10.1080/00220670209596593 https://doi.org/10.1037/0022-0663.81.2.247 https://doi.org/10.4304/tpls.2.3.483-491 https://doi.org/10.5209/rev_sjop.2012.v15.n1.37314 https://doi.org/10.5209/rev_sjop.2012.v15.n1.37314 https://doi.org/10.1007/s10212-020-00465-6 https://doi.org/10.30466/ijltr.2019.120634 https://doi.org/10.30466/ijltr.2019.120634 https://doi.org/10.18869/acadpub.ijal.18.2.165 https://doi.org/10.18869/acadpub.ijal.18.2.165 https://doi.org/10.1016/j.edurev.2010.03.001 https://doi.org/10.1016/j.edurev.2010.03.001 https://doi.org/10.1080/2331186x.2019.1667708 https://doi.org/10.1016/j.tate.2009.11.001 https://doi.org/10.1016/j.tate.2009.11.001 https://doi.org/10.1016/j.sbspro.2015.06.069 https://doi.org/10.1016/j.sbspro.2015.09.085 universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras44 mahmoodi, hosseiniyar, & samoudi tschannen-moran, m., & woolfolk-hoy, a. (2001). teacher efficacy: capturing an elusive construct. teaching and teacher education, 17(7), 783–805. https://doi.org/10.1016/ s0742-051x(01)00036-1 tschannen-moran, m., & mcmaster, p. (2009). sources of self-efficacy: four professional development formats and their relationship to self-efficacy and implementation of a new teaching strategy. elementary school journal, 110(2), 228–248. https://doi.org/10.1086/605771 usher, e. l., & pajares, f. (2006). inviting confidence in school: invitations as a critical source of the academic self-efficacy beliefs of entering middle school students. journal of invitational theory and practice, 12, 7–16. van dick, r., & wagner, u. (2001). stress and strain in teaching: a structural equation approach. british journal of educational psychology, 71(2), 243–259. https://doi. org/10.1348/000709901158505 wolfgang, c. h. (2005). solving discipline problems: strategies for classroom teachers (5th ed.). allyn & bacon. z amanian, m., & soleimani-pouya, s. (2017). an investigation of efl novice and experienced teachers’ classroom management strategies and teaching styles. international academic journal of humanities, 4(2), 114–122. zhang, q., & sapp, d. a. (2008). a burning issue in teaching: the impact of perceived teacher burnout and nonverbal immediacy on student motivation and affective learning. journal of communication studies, 1(2), 152–168. about the authors mohammad hadi mahmoodi is assistant professor of applied linguistics at bu-ali sina university in hamedan, iran. he received his phd from allame tabatabaii university, tehran, iran, in 2010. he is currently interested in psycholinguistics, learning theories, and l2 motivation theories. shiva hosseiniyar has a master’s degree in language education from bu-ali sina university, hamedan, iran. she teaches english as a foreign language. her research interests are second language learning theories and teacher education. negin samoudi has a phd in tesol from urmia university. she is a lecturer and researcher in bu-ali sina university, iran. she has published in both accredited international and local journals. her main research interests are data-driven learning, dynamic assessment, and corpus-based materials development. https://doi.org/10.1016/s0742-051x(01)00036-1 https://doi.org/10.1016/s0742-051x(01)00036-1 https://doi.org/10.1086/605771 https://doi.org/10.1348/000709901158505 https://doi.org/10.1348/000709901158505 ensuring quality in a foreign language tutoring program for future teachers 13profile: issues teach. prof. dev., vol. 22 no. 2, jul-dec, 2020. issn 1657-0790 (printed) 2256-5760 (online). bogotá, colombia. pages 13-32 https://doi.org/10.15446/profile.v22n2.81894 ensuring quality in a foreign language tutoring program for future teachers ¿cómo asegurar la calidad de un programa piloto de tutorías en lengua extranjera para futuros profesores? deissy angélica velandia1 instituto tecnológico y de estudios superiores de monterrey, monterrey, mexico this article reports on an exploratory, mixed methods study aimed at identifying the methodological and epistemological criteria necessary to ensure the quality and a self-revision process of a pilot tutoring program offered to students enrolled in the bed in philology and languages (english and french programs) at universidad nacional de colombia, bogota. ten students of the french and english philology programs and six tutors voluntarily participated in the research. the data were collected through document reviews, focus group discussions, and questionnaires completed by the tutors and tutees. the study revealed that a comprehensive, personalized tutoring plan was needed. likewise, self-efficacy development, human capital, as well as technological and physical resources must be considered in order to determine the weaknesses, strengths, opportunities, and overall impact of the program. keywords: academic tutoring, foreign language learning, quality evaluation, tutor role este artículo describe un estudio exploratorio mixto que buscó determinar los criterios metodológicos y epistemológicos necesarios para asegurar la calidad y los procesos de autoevaluación de un programa piloto de tutorías ofrecido a los estudiantes de la licenciatura en filología e idiomas (programas de inglés y francés) de la universidad nacional de colombia, bogotá. seis tutores y diez estudiantes de estos programas participaron en el estudio. los datos se obtuvieron de la revisión documental, entrevistas con grupos focales y cuestionarios a tutores y estudiantes. se encontró que, para determinar las debilidades, fortalezas, oportunidades y el impacto general del programa, hay que considerar un plan de tutorías personalizado e integral, el capital humano, el desarrollo de la autonomía y los recursos físicos y tecnológicos. palabras clave: aprendizaje de lenguas extranjeras, evaluación de calidad, papel del tutor, tutorías académicas deissy angélica velandia  https://orcid.org/0000-0002-3716-7635 · email: davelandiam@unal.edu.co how to cite this article (apa, 7th ed.): velandia, d. a. (2020). ensuring quality in a foreign language tutoring program for future teachers. profile: issues in teachers’ professional development, 22(2), 13–32. https://doi.org/10.15446/profile.v22n2.81894 this article was received on august 26, 2019 and accepted on february 11, 2020. this is an open access article distributed under the terms of the creative commons license attribution-noncommercial-noderivatives 4.0 international license. consultation is possible at https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/ universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras14 velandia introduction quality assurance and pertinence represent leading challenges to higher education, mainly because, to a great extent, they both define universities’ direct and measurable contribution to society. in colombia, and particularly, in the foreign languages department of universidad nacional de colombia, a specific concern was revealed as to how the education community could assure that all its students were given equal opportunities and support to attain academic success (nieto et al., 2013) so that they would become excellent professionals and agents of change and growth in their community, regardless of their ethnic, racial, or socioeconomic status. according to king (2006), inequity continues to be present where minority education is concerned if compared to that of the majority or more privileged population. the universidad nacional de colombia has endeavored to alleviate the barriers experienced by ethnic/ racial minorities, particularly those students of lower socio-economic status, by providing high quality education at a very low cost. however, diverse factors affect students’ performance, learning process and confidence in higher education, including their age when starting higher education, the economic situation, having to move and live on their own in a bigger city, and prior academic background, to name just a few. reportedly, some students get frustrated or even give up for not being ready to cope with the high-demanding academic requirements. in 2005, the university established a follow-up and support system for students which indicated that a fixed schedule was to be set for timely academic tutoring and early support of students (agreement no. 016, 2005, article 26). this action, however, was being quite modestly implemented at the time (nieto et al., 2013). this need to provide further academic support for students in the foreign languages department of universidad nacional de colombia was also revealed with the case study conducted by velandia (2007) that dealt with a low-performance student, and which proved the benefits of an accompanying, monitoring, and tutoring plan. the student-subject in velandia’s study, who belonged to the inga indigenous group of putumayo (a region in the southwest of colombia), progressively showed more self-regulation and reflection regarding his own learning process after his active participation in face-to-face tutoring sessions. the benefits of tutoring were evident as his performance and self-confidence in the english class improved notably. another successful experience of tutoring in the context of a public university was reported by viáfara and ariza (2008) who, after implementing peer-tutoring as part of an action research study, outlined basic principles in peer-tutoring, described the profile of the studenttutor, and proposed a model for the tutoring process. the need for a tutoring plan addressed to the philology and languages students majoring in english and french teaching programs at universidad nacional de colombia was manifest. as a result, the lexi research group1 strived to understand the perceptions of teachers and students about the role of academic tutoring in foreign language learning as well as to identify the conditions for its implementation and success through a pilot tutoring program (nieto et al., 2013). on the bases of the works mentioned above, the study reported here focused on one of the questions that arose from the preliminary reflections and discussions with the members of the lexi research group regarding quality assurance methods in tutoring programs for foreign language students. this encouraged the need for identifying the epistemological and methodological guidelines that would allow a systematic follow-up of the achievements and shortcomings of tutoring in this 1 lexi (foreign languages and research, in spanish: lenguas extranjeras e investigación) is a research group at departamento de lenguas extranjeras, universidad nacional de colombia, bogota. the researchers are particularly concerned with language, foreign languages, culture, teacher education, translation, and the turkish language. 15profile: issues teach. prof. dev., vol. 22 no. 2, jul-dec, 2020. issn 1657-0790 (printed) 2256-5760 (online). bogotá, colombia. pages 13-32 ensuring quality in a foreign language tutoring program for future teachers specific context and with the objective of designing an index of quality indicators. the main objective of the research was to design an internal quality evaluation model for the pilot tutoring program offered for students of the bed in philology and languages with an emphasis in english and french in universidad nacional de colombia’s foreign languages department. this occurred in order to identify the program’s strengths and areas of improvement. the following are the specific objectives: 1. to identify the essential epistemological and methodological criteria to conduct quality tutoring in the bed program. 2. to describe and analyze the needs of a quality evaluation system for a tutoring plan from the perspective of the educators and the students, as the starting point to prepare a proposal of indicators for the tutoring plan. literature review this study was based on two main theoretical constructs: academic tutoring and quality evaluation. academic tutoring tutoring has proven to be an effective educational strategy to follow up on and accompany low-performance students, whether to strengthen their knowledge, clarify study topics, to foster autonomy or help improve their attitude towards the subject studied (cohen et al., 1982). it allows educators to provide a comprehensive educational process, as well as to foster the development of learners’ communicative abilities. all in all, its aim is to boost students’ capabilities and to overcome any weakness that may have arisen during their learning processes (comité coordinador de tutores, 2005). tutoring has been encouraged in higher education institutions in order to foster learning and to reduce dropout (cohen et al., 1982). several researchers have already reported the learning gains and, in many cases, the affective growth of students who have participated actively in tutoring. in colombia, chiriví and jiménez (1995) showed how face-to-face tutoring benefitted a group of at-risk high school students in their learning of english. similarly, the case study by medina (2009) reported the different dynamics that took place in a virtual english program offered to students of a public university in colombia and how the online tutoring sections interactions differed from traditional face-to-face english as a foreign language (efl) classes. similarly, viáfara and ariza (2008) gave an account of principles for peer tutoring and proposed a model for implementation with students of a foreign languages teaching program of a public university in colombia. the aim was to support students to improve communicative competence in l2, starting from the understanding of these students and their professors’ beliefs about tutoring and autonomous learning. research indicates tutoring is an effective means to provide an individualized, systematic, structured learning experience. it facilitates ethnic and racial integration, which results as well in better attitudes towards the subject area, as well as personal and academic growth (beasley, 1997). tutoring practice is claimed to have immediate cognitive gains that include “improved retention, greater meta-cognitive awareness and better application of knowledge and skills to new situations” (topping, 1996, p. 325), in addition to the immense benefits it has in the increase of autonomy, self-regulation, self-confidence, and motivation (schunk, 1985 as cited in topping, 1996). tutoring programs also vary in the types of tutors: same‐age or older peers, regular teachers, or professional tutors. peer-tutoring includes individuals of the same societal group supporting or guiding one another when one peer has more expertise or knowledge than the others (colvin, 2007; topping, 1996; viáfara & ariza, 2008). supplemental instruction can be done online or face-to-face, as well as conducted one on one or in small groups (cohen et al., 1982). universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras16 velandia regarding the expected profile of a tutor, álvarez gonzález et al. (2004) identify key knowledge he or she should have: • knowing the subject • knowing how to apply it • knowing how to interact (having social competences) • knowing how to be (attitudes and personal and participative behaviors) in the typology of peer-tutoring, topping (1996) proposed 10 dimensions, six of which are relevant to the present study: 1. curriculum content – which may be knowledge or skills orientated, or a combination . . . 3. place . . . 4. time – peer tutoring may be scheduled in regular class contact time, outside class, or in a combination of both . . . 5. tutee characteristics – [tutoring] may be [available] for all students or a targeted subgroup, e.g., the especially able or gifted; those considered at risk of under-achievement, failure or dropout; and those from ethnic, religious, and other minorities. 6. tutor characteristics . . . 7. objectives – [tutoring] may target . . . formal academic achievement, affective and attitudinal gains, social and emotional gains, self-image and selfconcept gains, or any combination. (pp. 322–323) quality evaluation ordúz (2012) describes evaluation as “a permanent and continuous process of identification of strengths and weaknesses . . . to improve the services offered to its users . . . which must prove effective in terms of results” (p. 2, my translation). this means that the achievement of the learning objectives and the success in students’ change of attitudes shall be considered as the ultimate target of the evaluation of the teaching process. evaluating is, therefore and generally speaking, obtaining duly documented pieces of evidence upon which institutions will make decisions. observation and data from varied sources should result in improved action plans (evans & lindsay, 2007). q u a l it y e v a lu at i on u lt i mately ai ms at t he recognition of educational achievement and its contribution to the outcomes of teaching and learning. the quality assurance processes are acquiring more and more relevance in the current world. tejedor (2003), with the purpose of describing the advantages of an evaluation system, states that the strategic function of such a process requires the data collected to lead to change and improved policies, as well as to identify and follow up learners’ performances. this continuous improvement cycle strengthens the commitment of institutions to comply with standards and systematically evaluate their school curriculums and practices. also, the responsible management of human capital and information increases quality and demands a self-evaluation culture in the education and foreign language and teaching field (kennedy, 1988; rea dickins & germaine, 1998). evaluation is expected to have immediate impact on policy making and great influence in shortand long-term decision making (rea dickins & germaine, 1998). from this perspective, all the participants must be involved in the learning and continuous improvement cycle (lynch, 2001). ensuring quality is evidently a continuous evaluation and self-evaluation process, a widely used approach is the deming cycle (or plan-do-check-act cycle) which is depicted in figure 1. the self-assessment continuous cycle is a key part of the quality assurance programs as it focuses on identifying, responding to, and meeting learner and school needs, assessing the effectiveness of organizational and educative practices, and using the understanding attained to make real, meaningful i mprove m e nt s , u lt i m at e ly i n c re a s i ng l e ar n e r achievement. 17profile: issues teach. prof. dev., vol. 22 no. 2, jul-dec, 2020. issn 1657-0790 (printed) 2256-5760 (online). bogotá, colombia. pages 13-32 ensuring quality in a foreign language tutoring program for future teachers figure 1. deming cycle for the evaluation of education programs note. adapted from la mejora continua y la calidad en instituciones de formación profesional: el proceso de enseñanzaaprendizaje (p. 30) by a. j. garzón castrillón, 2012, [doctoral dissertation, universitat autònoma de barcelona, spain]. tesis doctorals en xarxa. (http://hdl.handle.net/10803/96828). copyright 2012 by a. j. garzón castrillón. evaluation in applied linguistics and english language teaching (elt) as defined by lynch (1996) “is a systematic attempt to gather information in order to make judgments or decisions” (p. 2). this information can be collected by qualitative or quantitative means, or a mix of both through a positivistic and naturalistic paradigm. an elt program evaluation is meant to be flexible, context-adaptive, and heuristic (lynch, 2001); this is known as a context-adaptive model (cam) for language program evaluation as can be seen in figure 2 that summarizes the stages of program evaluation proposed for the teaching of a foreign language and applied linguistics field. the key factors that, according to lynch (1990, 2001), must be considered are firstly, the identification of goals, audience, and the role of the evaluator. this is done to establish the pertinence of internal or external evaluation, which in turn determines if the evaluator performs as a consultant, collaborator, judge, or decisionmaking facilitator. once this is established, then a context inventory is done in which the background of the program is comprehended (students, measures, timing, characteristics of the program, size and intensity, and resources, among others). the following stages include collecting data (by means of observation, interviews, tests, etc.), analyzing, interpreting, and reporting the evaluation findings. finally, depending on the results found, an action plan can be established. act • improvements are identi�ed and implemented plan • establishing expectations (goals, deliverables, objectives) check • differences between actual results and expected outcomes are analyzed do • executing and collecting data for analysis audience and goalswhy is it being evaluated? context inventory what is being evaluated? evaluating desing and data collection analysis and interpretation of �ndings evaluation reportst e p 1 st e p s 2 a n d 3 st e p s 4 a n d 5 st e p 6 st e p 7 figure 2. context-adaptive model for language program evaluation note. adapted from “a context-adaptive model for program evaluation,” by b. k. lynch, 1990, tesol quarterly, 24(1), p. 25 (https://doi. org/10.2307/3586850). copyright 1990 by tesol quarterly. universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras18 velandia research design regarding the design and method, the inquiry about the epistemological and methodological conditions for a tutoring program offered to low-performance undergraduate students of an initial teaching program, required putting the process under consideration from several angles. in order to meet the expectations, a pilot tutoring program was launched. interested students took part in continuous tutoring sessions with experienced teachers or peer-tutors for a period of approximately three months. during this intervention, the tutors and tutees identified their perceptions, opinions, and preferences with regard to the tutoring process; this was done through focus group interviews, document analysis, and questionnaires. this study used the quantitative–qualitative, or mixed, approach because it provides more comprehensive evidence for studying a research question than either quantitative or qualitative research only (creswell, 2003; lynch, 2001). likewise, this research was framed within the parameters of an exploratory analysis that, according to the classification made by gonzález (2005), shall formulate hypotheses, theories, and consequential studies on the part of other researches interested in this type of quality systems. this paper is, therefore, a setting for those interested in the reflection and current debate about quality issues in foreign language tutoring to be further explored. similarly, in line with the approaches of hernández et al. (2006), a nonexperimental and transversal approach was implemented as this study did not intend to predispose or manipulate research variables. besides that, it was being carried out in a unique point in time. figure 3 shows the overview of the stages of the pilot tutoring program based on lynch’s (1990) context-adaptive model. context and participants the study was carried out in 2012 in the department of foreign languages of universidad nacional de colombia at its bogota campus, a public, state, and research university with the largest number of curricular programs in the country. the universidad nacional’s philology and languages program places special emphasis on teaching, linguistics, translation, and literature. table 1 depicts an overview of the program. the student support system (sistema de acompañamiento estudiantil) established by the university required professors to devote time to provide early support or follow-up to students who needed it. however, its implementation was not necessarily rigorous or systematic. this action, as mentioned before, evidenced the need for a set of guidelines to implement the tutoring sessions in order to assure greater accountability and achievement. figure 3. pilot tutoring program: overview of the stages of the quality evaluation starting point • diagnostic context design • anticipation • preparation data collection • follow-up and monitoring results and report • interpretation and analysis of data • decision-making stage • quality evaluation proposal 19profile: issues teach. prof. dev., vol. 22 no. 2, jul-dec, 2020. issn 1657-0790 (printed) 2256-5760 (online). bogotá, colombia. pages 13-32 ensuring quality in a foreign language tutoring program for future teachers tutees thirty students voluntarily decided to be part of the tutoring plan for two reasons mainly: 63% felt they needed to clarify and consolidate what was studied in class and 37% indicated they had difficulties learning the foreign language. they attended the sessions on a regular basis, but only 10 of them are part of the sample group of tutees in this research as they consented to be part of the present study by completing and submitting a questionnaire or were part of the focus group interview. two students in the group of the tutees participated in the blended tutoring, which means that half of the sessions they attended were face-to-face meetings and the rest were online meetings through virtual classrooms (elluminate) or other online platforms (skype). the group of tutees included a male student and nine female students from the bed program in philology and languages; six students were currently enrolled in the english major and four in the french one. their ages ranged from 17 to 20 and they were mostly in their third and sixth semester of the program. four of the tutees lived with their parents and the remaining came from different cities and lived in residences or rented rooms. eight of them manifested obtaining low grades in their language class or having failed the course; the other two students were interested in improving and consolidating learning. tutors senior english and french language teachers and student monitors of the same curricular programs expressed interest in participating in this pilot tutoring plan. six tutors made up the sample group for this study as they agreed to share their perception about the tutoring program and allowed the researcher to analyze the information recorded in the tutoring session report forms. three tutors were from the english philology program and three from the french one. two of them were senior language teachers (tutors) and four were student-monitors (peer-tutors), who were selected for their high academic performance, motivation, and high proficiency in english or french. my role in the study i took part as an external tutor and researcher as i had worked before as an efl teacher and language tutor. my role was that of a participant-observer as i was table 1. bed in philology and languages: curriculum overview degree granted: bed in philology and languages with emphasis in english, german, or french language (licenciado(a) en filología e idiomas, filólogo(a) con especialidad en alemán/francés/inglés) credits: 140 number of semesters: 8 curriculum professional or disciplinary component foundation component elective courses • language course to master the use of the language both in its written and oral form: grammar, phonetics and phonology • language teaching • research • linguistics • foundations of education • literature and culture studies • students have the option to take a broad selection of courses across departments and disciplines. universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras20 velandia delivering tutoring sessions while collaborating with a larger research about this pilot program carried out by the lexi research group (nieto et al., 2013). ethical issues in relation to the ethical issues, a written informed consent form with relevant factual information pertaining to the study’s aims, background, and procedures was signed by each of the participants of the study. this was done in order to allow them to make an informed decision whether or not to participate in the study. also, their identity remained confidential in all cases. data collection as the pilot tutoring program was completed, the individuals involved were asked to provide information about their perceptions regarding strengths, weaknesses, and opportunities of the tutoring sections attended. this was done through online questionnaires (see appendices a and b) and focus groups; at the same time, a review of documents was conducted. the analysis of this data gathered included the coding and categorizing of information contained in the tutoring session reports and worksheets filled out after the completion of each tutoring session. the results of the questionnaires answered by tutors and students were crossed with the answers provided in the focused-group interviews and the information provided in the documents (burns, 1999; topping, 1996). table 2 presents a brief account of the different research tools that were used in the study to validate the findings. table 2. data gathering tools type instrument participants objective quantitativequalitative questionnaire (closed-ended questions with space for justification) tutors and peertutors • to identify their perceptions regarding what they consider ideal conditions for tutoring. • to identify their perceptions about the methodology, stages, roles, limitations, and methodological difficulties faced, as well as strengths, weakness, and recommendations to assure quality. questionnaire (closed-ended questions with space for justification) tutees • to identify their perceptions regarding what they consider ideal conditions for tutoring. • to identify their reasons to be part of the program. • to identify their opinions on strengths, weaknesses, and recommendations of the tutoring plan conducted. qualitative focus interview tutees in blended tutoring and tutors • to understand more broadly the needs and perceptions of tutees participating in blended tutoring in contrast to only face-to-face tutoring. document analysis (reports of the tutoring sessions, worksheets used during the sessions) tutors and peertutors • to identify the perceptions on how the specific needs of the tutees were met during tutoring and, in general, their opinions about the tutoring/learning/ evaluation process happening in the on-going tutoring sessions. 21profile: issues teach. prof. dev., vol. 22 no. 2, jul-dec, 2020. issn 1657-0790 (printed) 2256-5760 (online). bogotá, colombia. pages 13-32 ensuring quality in a foreign language tutoring program for future teachers data analysis coding and preliminary understanding of data was the next step. the most relevant concepts and their characteristics, occurrences, and dimensions were identified at this stage. pursuant to the guidelines described by strauss and corbin (1990), data were fragmented, examined in detail, and compared in order to find differences and similarities; this with the objective of classifying and grouping data into explicit categories. this allowed the identification of two main research categories: the preparation stage and the reflection and evaluation stage. the former was divided into three subcategories: (1) human resources, (2) learning environment, (3) blended tutoring, and the latter that includes (4) quality and results. triangulation was also used in order to ensure and evaluate the validity of the data in line with the approach by burns (1999). the analysis of the results started with the organization and classification of the collected data (lozoya, 2010). pedagogical intervention over 30 tutoring sessions were carried out in a semester. the tutoring sessions did not follow a strict, rigorous structure as the objective was to explore suitable approaches in order to meet the individual needs of the tutees. however, in most cases before the tutoring session, the tutees were asked to schedule the meeting in advance and inform the topic, objective, or skills they were to work on so that the tutors or peer-tutors could better prepare themselves for the session (scharle & szabó, 2000; topping, 1996). the first session started with a diagnostic exercise so as to get familiar with the strengths, weaknesses, and opportunities of the students’ learning process, their prior background knowledge, as well as learning style and preferences. after that, a learning pathway and/or action plan was established by the tutees with the guidance of the tutors (álvarez gonzález et al., 2004). the content, objectives, and logistics of each tutoring session were negotiated with each tutee and always aimed at meeting the needs of individual students (gaustad, 1993; scharle & szabó, 2000). the periodicity, time, and place, for instance, were arranged with the student and, as in all cases, this depended on the specific learning needs and objectives of the tutee. the topics and skills worked on during the sessions were also ver y diverse; they ranged from academic writing and grammar and vocabulary practice to oral discourse strategies or oral presentation strategies. after the tutoring session was carried out, the tutor and tutee were asked to reflect on autonomous and self-regulated learning and the outcomes of the session as a whole (scharle & szabó, 2000). the main objective of the tutoring sessions was always to give the tutees the tools to be independent, diligent, and active language learners; for this reason, aspects like autonomous learning, metacognitive awareness, and transferrable skills were emphasized in this tutoring report form. during the last tutoring session, the tutees were invited to answer the questionnaire and, if it applied, they also participated in the focus group interview. on average, seven tutoring sessions were delivered per tutee. table 3 depicts a summary of the pedagogical intervention. results and discussion table 4 shows the categories that emerged from the analysis of data. the codes and subsequent categories established derived from relevant research findings and the underlying conceptualization bearing in mind the research question (hernandez et al., 2006). universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras22 velandia what does it take to do tutoring? the preparation stage the first category grouped a number of planning and preparation aspects that, from the perspective of the tutees and tutors, allowed the tutoring to be carried out in the best way possible. in a nutshell, these are the aspects that must be taken into account to initiate and execute a tutoring program. this category included what has to do with (a) the human resources (profile, objectives of the tutoring session, role, as well as expected skills and characteristics; topping, 1996); (b) the learning environment (logistics, venue, equipment, resources, time and duration, etc.); and (c) blended tutoring (the particular implications of this type of tutoring). human resources the first subcategory of analysis evidenced primary aspects related to the planning or preparation stage. firstly, what has to do with the tutor’s toolbox in terms of skills, competences, training, and characteristics. table 3. pedagogical intervention overview before the session tutees • scheduled tutoring session • informed the tutors about their learning needs, objectives, skills, or topics to work on • prepared for the tutoring session tutors • diagnosed, identified, and analyzed learning needs • planned and prepared for the tutoring session during the session tutees • raised problems • actively participated • continuously self-evaluated • were asked to reflect on their own learning process, study skills, learning style and preferences tutors • identified tutee’s prior background knowledge, as well as learning style and preferences • guided tutee through the problem-solving process • applied different teaching strategies in order to help the tutee overcome difficulties • provided the tutee with learning strategies and autonomous study methods after the session tutees and tutors • reflected on autonomous and self-regulated learning and the outcomes of the session as a whole • established, adjusted and/or followed up on the tutee’s action plan, learning pathway, and independent work table 4. categories and subcategories categories subcategories 1. what does it take to do tutoring? (the preparation stage) human resources learning environment blended learning 2. attaining quality (the reflection and evaluation stage) quality and results 23profile: issues teach. prof. dev., vol. 22 no. 2, jul-dec, 2020. issn 1657-0790 (printed) 2256-5760 (online). bogotá, colombia. pages 13-32 ensuring quality in a foreign language tutoring program for future teachers the tutoring report forms showed that a tutor should be knowledgeable, empathetic, respectful, and patient with the students. for 83.33% of the tutors it is vital that they are disciplined, committed, and good communicators (gaustad, 1993; topping, 1996). apart from this, tutees valued that the tutors could clarify, explain, and support them academically, whether or not the session was conducted by a senior teacher or peer-tutor. topping (1996) warns that the quality of tutoring from a peer-tutor might be a “great deal inferior to that from a professional teacher (although this should not be assumed), and the need for monitoring and quality control cannot be overstated” (p. 325). here are some excerpts from the participants:2 [a tutor must be] a knowledgeable teacher, an educator, who has the time and attitude to do it [tutoring], that has an exceptional academic background, is up-to-date and good at communicating. (questionnaire, senior tutor) a tutor must have ample knowledge of the subject, and ability to share it. (questionnaire, tutee) the tutors and tutees agreed and highlighted reiteratively that tutors need to be able to increase self-confidence and autonomous learning (scharle & szabó, 2000). despite autonomy being sometimes regarded as a complementar y benefit and even achieved unintentionally, it is a very valuable aspect of tutoring. working on learning strategies helps the tutees to feel supported, more confident in their class and with the topics. (tutoring record form, tutor) it is to highlight the [tutor’s] desire to provide support, because this reduces the [student’s] fear to speak up, debate, and increases self-esteem. (tutoring record form, tutee) [that tutoring] ultimately gives [the tutee] support, selfassurance, and confidence for when they have to face an exam situation and oral presentation, etc. (tutoring record form, senior tutor) 2 excerpts have been translated from spanish. the tutoring sessions were also characterized by adapting to students’ pace and learning style in accordance with gaustad’s (1993) remarks, as a student and a tutor explained: i was able to understand topics that i couldn’t understand in class because the professor explains too fast. (focus interview, tutee) to identify learning styles so that the students can take advantage of their face-to-face classes as well as their tutoring. (questionnaire, tutor) the possibilities regarding the role of the tutor (cohen et al., 1982; torrecilla et al., 2013) ranged from being a counselor who builds a relationship based on affection and trust, to a facilitator who provides learning strategies and study skills—for instance, effective time management, writing, and note-taking skills—to an academic tutor who, more than anything, helps consolidate or revise language and content. in the study, tutees referred positively to their tutors as they devoted time to clarify relevant topics at the same time as they identified and corrected students’ mistakes. someone who takes the time to correct your mistakes is very important, in this way you can practice and improve your language competences to a great extent. (questionnaire, tutee) it is true that there is a time limitation, but i felt as a free tutor, i thought…oh i can take advantage of this opportunity and teach the tutee this here (now). (focus interview, tutor) learning gaps and difficulties are identified, we sometimes take for granted that the students have understood the topic, but in fact they still have doubts. (questionnaire, tutor) from the literature review it is known there are different styles to tutoring i.e. some tutors focus on the subject area or doubts, others plan carefully every stage of their tutoring session, while others prefer to be flexible and make decisions as the tutoring unfolds. however, universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras24 velandia what is desirable is that tutoring is a space for human and professional development, for mutual communication that allows the recognition of academic gaps, students’ interests, beliefs, values and ultimately prepares the student to become a better learner and professional (álvarez gonzález et al., 2004; gaustad, 1993). learning environment this subcategory has to do with the organizational side of tutoring, particularly with the length, venue, periodicity, and other bibliographical and technological resources available for the tutoring sessions. according to the ideal periodicity for the tutoring session (see figure 4), the tutors and tutees agreed that rather than having a fixed schedule—as it is a personalized process—it was better to come to a specific agreement to every student’s needs and teacher’s availability (colvin, 2007). in accordance with cohen et al.’s (1982) findings, less than half the students (40%) being tutored in this pilot indicated that they would prefer to attend tutoring once or twice a week, which shows they felt they had a greater need for tutoring than the one that was being offered to them. however, as for the duration of the sessions, only 20% of the tutees felt the time was not enough. each session usually ranged from 20 to 45 minutes. regarding timing, tutors expressed that they were often very busy with the university workload which makes it difficult to fully dedicate themselves to tutoring for a longer period of time and/or offer more frequent availability for tutoring. about physical space for the tutoring sessions, tutees’ views show that it is necessary to conduct face-to-face tutoring in a place different from the teacher’s office; this is because, as they expressed, it was not always the most appropriate venue. it is not very comfortable, it sometimes felt like the teacher was in a hurry, with so much noise and other people interrupting as well. (questionnaire, tutee) maybe it would be too much to ask, but an exclusive place for tutoring where we can focus and concentrate should be available. (focus interview, tutee) when the tutoring was conducted in the resource center it was evident that the tutors valued the fact that it was easy to have access to books and learning guides, and other technological tools like internet, headphones, and computers. blended tutoring sessions skype and elluminate were the most frequently used online platforms for this type of tutoring. the quite short 20% other 17% 45 minutes 67% 30 minutes 16% enough 80% students' perspective tutors' perspective figure 4. students’ perspective vs. tutors’ perspective about the length of the tutoring sessions 25profile: issues teach. prof. dev., vol. 22 no. 2, jul-dec, 2020. issn 1657-0790 (printed) 2256-5760 (online). bogotá, colombia. pages 13-32 ensuring quality in a foreign language tutoring program for future teachers students who participated in the focus group favored the latter since it offered more options (e.g., screen, audios, and file sharing, as well as simultaneous video/ audio conferencing). the tutors similarly expressed their preference for this tool over skype; nevertheless, they also mentioned that its use for tutoring “requires previous training and a payment” (tutoring record form, tutor). in the document review analysis, it was found that there were technical issues in 30% of the virtual tutoring sessions, including aspects such as internet connection, availability of power supply, or simply the access to technological tools that would allow smoother synchronic communication (e.g., having good quality microphones and earphones and stable internet connection). in this regard, a tutor stated that: although the online tutoring sessions were more convenient, this type of tutoring has the problem that it depends on too many factors—for example internet connection— and those things are often beyond the tutor’s as well as the student’s control. (tutoring record form, tutor) these findings relate to what álvarez gonzález et al. (2004) highlighted with regard to the necessity of a suitable space and time, appropriate resources, and a fixed schedule besides considering the aspects of remuneration and specific training for tutors or/and peer-tutors. particularly important was the evaluation of the processes and outcomes in order to identify specific gaps and needs at an early stage. attaining quality: the reflection and evaluation stage the second category includes aspects regarding the impact and outcomes of the tutoring sessions, that is, those which helped to determine their quality, areas of improvement, and continuous evaluation process. in this category, the perspectives from both the tutors and the tutees were collected as to identify what should be taken into account to prepare a set of quality indicators for the tutorial plan. this was done through postintervention questionnaires and focused-group interviews, instruments that would more accurately evidence the success and impact of tutoring on student’s l2 learning practices. generally speaking, the students who participated in the tutoring sessions agreed that tutoring was quite beneficial, because it either provided complementary support or revision of topics covered in the class that were not clear, as a student commented: today the tutor helped me understand linking words in essays; that was very useful. (tutoring record form, tutee) as evidenced in the literature as well (beasley, 1997; medina, 2009; topping, 1996), tutoring and peertutoring enhance the academic development of students. furthermore, the interaction that occurs between tutor and tutees can stimulate cognitive growth and, in turn, result in more understanding and retention of information studied earlier. half of the tutors highlighted the importance of communicating with the head teacher in order to follow and monitor students’ performances and perhaps to identify a change in attitude, perceptions, or commitment in class or a visible impact on their learning process. tutors also valued their grades and self-evaluation as a more reliable source of information, as opposed to a formal summative evaluation. the participation in tutoring should not have a grade because this is a personal/autonomous choice, every individual should self-evaluate. (questionnaire, tutor) self-evaluation tools can be implemented. the goal is to achieve autonomy, more autonomous learners who know themselves better. (questionnaire, tutor) i don’t see why to intrude and impose yet another evaluation [from tutors]. (questionnaire, tutor) similarly, as was evidenced in álvarez gonzález et al. (2004), remuneration and time availability for tutoring represent vital aspects to assure its quality. professors often have difficulties devoting time for universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras26 velandia definition of a baseline for a quality evaluation model for such a tutoring program. among the aspects to be considered prior to the tutoring sessions are the resources, more specifically human resources. this included the characteristics that a tutor should have in order to conduct successful tutoring sessions. on the one hand, being respectful, knowledgeable, patient, and on the other hand, facilitating the acquisition or consolidation of knowledge; having the ability to identify strengths and weaknesses, as well as assertive communication skills were highly valuable characteristics of a tutor or peer-tutor according to the individuals surveyed and to previous studies (cohen et al., 1982; colvin, 2007; viáfara & ariza, 2008). it was also made evident that the fact that tutors help in identifying study styles and learning needs and goals can determine the success of tutoring in a language learning process. regarding the organizational dimension of tutoring, the need for a mutual agreement between the tutor and the student as to the frequency and the duration of the sessions was highlighted. this arrangement should be done accounting for the specific student’s needs and learning goals that have been previously identified. this study demonstrated that quality tutoring has some challenges (álvarez gonzález et al., 2004; nieto et al., 2013) evidently; it is not only about teachers’ good intentions, but necessary that they are trained and empowered, as well as motivated, and their tutoring work is recognized and compensated. equally important is the support of the institution, by ensuring the availability of time and the appropriate physical and technological resources. some incidents related to technology interfered with the development of blended tutoring sessions, and online synchronic tutoring was not always effective due to the lack of training and specific technological resources. however, blended tutoring remained relevant, since it suits those cases in which students cannot attend face-to-face sessions on a regular basis. all in tutoring because of the various academic duties they are already responsible for. as some tutors indicated: not having a fixed time for tutoring creates overload; sometimes the students get tired of looking for you, or every now and then this time is simply dedicated to doing something else. (questionnaire, tutor) methodology and time availability from both people [the tutee and the tutor] guarantee the success of the tutoring; a language is not learnt in one or two hours. (questionnaire, tutor) in relation to this, other aspects found to influence the quality of tutoring were student motivation and attendance. regarding motivation, tutees and the tutors perceived that better overall results and greater academic success can be the result of tutoring if students were committed, engaged, and attended the tutoring sessions (cohen et al., 1982). on the other hand, teachers’ training in the use of technological tools for blended tutoring was also regarded as an important aspect in determining the quality of this type of tutoring (medina, 2009). this is especially evidenced in the fact that a large percentage of the tutors preferred face-to-face tutoring, mainly because of the demands of conducting virtual tutoring sessions (online learning platforms, technical and technological resources, etc.). all in all, the data collected provided valuable information to construe the impact of the tutoring sessions as well as to identify the ideal scenarios of this pilot program in order to implement a formal tutoring plan for all the students in the bed in philology and languages program at universidad nacional de colombia. conclusions the aim of this study was to identify the methodological and epistemological criteria needed to conduct quality tutoring by understanding the participants’ needs and concerns and their general perspectives about the tutoring sessions that would, in turn, permit the 27profile: issues teach. prof. dev., vol. 22 no. 2, jul-dec, 2020. issn 1657-0790 (printed) 2256-5760 (online). bogotá, colombia. pages 13-32 ensuring quality in a foreign language tutoring program for future teachers references acuerdo no. 016 de 2005 [agreement no. 016 of 2005], consejo nacional universitario, universidad nacional de colombia (2005). https://bit.ly/3egbyvl álvarez gonzález, m., dorio alcaraz, i., figuera mazo, p., fita lladó, e., forner martínez, á., homar, j. m., mauri majós, t., nogué gelma, m., rodríguez espinar, s., & torrado fonseca, m. (2004). manual de tutoría universitaria: recursos para la acción [manual for university tutoring: tools for action] (2nd ed.). ediciones octaedro. https:// bit.ly/2ukmye7 beasley, c. j. (1997). students as teachers: the benefits of peer tutoring. in r. pospisil & l. willcoxson (eds), proceedings of the 6th annual teaching learning forum: learning through teaching (pp. 21–30). murdoch university. burns, a. (1999). collaborative action research for english language teachers. cambridge university press. chiriví, r., & jiménez, m. (1995). ventajas de un plan tutorial ofrecido a estudiantes de secundaria que presentan un bajo rendimiento en inglés: estudio de caso [advantages of a tutoring plan offered to secondary level students who have lowperformance in english: a case study] [unpublished undergraduate monograph]. universidad nacional de colombia, bogotá. cohen, p. a., kulik, j. a., & kulik, c.-l. 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(2012). la mejora continua y la calidad en instituciones de formación profesional: el proceso de all, it can be regarded as a complementary strategy to ensure regularity and a convenient alternative that may diminish the drop-out rate. concerning the conditions that assure quality of the tutoring sessions, there are two moments that cannot be neglected: the planning and the evaluation or reflection stage. the success of tutoring involves not only scheduling sequential relevant activities, bearing in mind tutees’ needs as well as using strategies to identify impact and future steps (álvarez gonzález et al., 2004), but also allowing some flexibility to be able to tackle specific problems that may arise on the spot. this was evident from the data, because tutees and tutors valued being able to reflect and make constant decisions that helped the former become better lifelong learners (nieto et al., 2013). by all accounts, it is necessary to reflect upon the role of the tutors to unlock their tutees’ potential and maximize their performances, as well as upon the role of the tutees as to becoming active agents of their own language learning process (álvarez gonzález et al., 2004; scharle & szabó, 2000). the importance of tutoring is not only to facilitate and support language learning, but ultimately to achieve autonomy and self-efficacy. all things considered, it was clear that there is a high level of subjectivity when it comes to the assessment of the results of tutoring; determining quality levels and the impact on students’ performances in their regular face-to-face lessons. the overall effect on language learning strategies is a demanding, often uncertain task. in reality, most of the decisions made regarding evaluation of the quality of the tutoring sessions are based on pure intuition. this only proves the need for a quality evaluation model (nieto et al., 2013; tejedor, 2003) that encourages the use of measurable data, includes the voices of all the participants, and assures that its procedures, resources, and tools are easily assessed and improved upon on a regular basis. https://bit.ly/3egbyvl https://bit.ly/2ukmye7 https://bit.ly/2ukmye7 https://doi.org/10.3102/00028312019002237 https://doi.org/10.1080/13611260601086345 universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras28 velandia enseñanza-aprendizaje [continuous improvement and quality in professional education institutions] [doctoral dissertation, universitat autònoma de barcelona, spain]. tesis doctorals en xarxa. http://hdl.handle. net/10803/96828 gaustad, j. (1993). peer and cross age tutoring (ed354608). eric. https://files.eric.ed.gov/fulltext/ed354608.pdf gonzález, p. (2005). investigación educativa y formación del docente investigador [education research and education of teacher researchers] (2nd ed.). universidad santiago de cali. hernández, s., fernández, c., & baptista, l. (2006). metodología de la investigación [research methodology] (4th ed.). mcgraw hill. kennedy, c. (1988). evaluation of the management of change in elt projects. applied linguistics, 9(4), 329–342. https:// doi.org/10.1093/applin/9.4.329 king, j. e. (2006). gender equity in higher education: 2006. american council on education. https://bit.ly/2uwi0xx lozoya, e. (2010). el método cualitativo aplicado en un modelo de gestión educativa [qualitative method applied in educational management model]. revista electrónica de investigación educativa sonorense, 2(8), 6–30. https:// rediesonorense.files.wordpress.com/2011/08/redies8final. pdf lynch, b. k. 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(2012). módulo de evaluación [evaluation module]. universidad cooperativa de colombia. rea dickins, p., & germaine, k. (1998). managing evaluation and innovation in language teaching: building bridges. longman. scharle, a., & szabó, a. (2000). learner autonomy: a guide to developing learner responsibility. cambridge university press. strauss, a., & corbin, j. (1990). basics of qualitative research: grounded theory procedures and techniques. sage publications. tejedor, f. j. (2003). un modelo de evaluación del profesorado universitario [a model of evaluation of the university faculty]. revista de investigación educativa, 21(1), 157–182. https://revistas.um.es/rie/article/view/99151/94741 topping, k. j. (1996). the effectiveness of peer tutoring in further and higher education: a typology and review of the literature. higher education, 32(3), 321–345. https:// doi.org/10.1007/bf00138870 torrecilla, e., rodríguez, m., herrera, m., & izard, j. f. m. (2013). evaluación de calidad de un proceso de tutoría de titulación universitaria: la perspectiva del estudiante de nuevo ingreso en educación [quality evaluation of the tutoring process in a university degree: the perspective of the new entry student in education]. revista española de orientación y psicopedagogía, 24(2), 79–99. https://doi. org/10.5944/reop.vol.24.num.2.2013.11260 velandia, d. a. (2007). tutorial plan to support the english speaking skill of an inga student of an initial teacher education program. profile: issues in teachers’ professional development, 8(1), 121–130. https://revistas.unal.edu.co/ index.php/profile/article/view/10993 viáfara, j. j., & ariza, j. a. (2008). un modelo tutorial entre compañeros como apoyo al aprendizaje autónomo del inglés [a peer-tutoring model as support to autonomous english learning]. íkala, revista de lenguaje y cultura, 13(1), 173–209. https://aprendeenlinea.udea.edu. co/revistas/index.php/ikala/article/view/2696 http://hdl.handle.net/10803/96828 http://hdl.handle.net/10803/96828 https://files.eric.ed.gov/fulltext/ed354608.pdf https://doi.org/10.1093/applin/9.4.329 https://doi.org/10.1093/applin/9.4.329 https://bit.ly/2uwi0xx https://rediesonorense.files.wordpress.com/2011/08/redies8final.pdf https://rediesonorense.files.wordpress.com/2011/08/redies8final.pdf https://rediesonorense.files.wordpress.com/2011/08/redies8final.pdf https://doi.org/10.2307/3586850 https://doi.org/10.2307/3586850 https://doi.org/10.1017/cbo9781139524629 https://doi.org/10.1017/cbo9781139524629 https://doi.org/10.2307/3588435 https://doi.org/10.2307/3588435 https://revistas.unal.edu.co/index.php/profile/article/view/11446 https://revistas.unal.edu.co/index.php/profile/article/view/11446 https://doi.org/10.5294/edu.2013.16.3.5 https://revistas.um.es/rie/article/view/99151/94741 https://doi.org/10.1007/bf00138870 https://doi.org/10.1007/bf00138870 https://doi.org/10.5944/reop.vol.24.num.2.2013.11260 https://doi.org/10.5944/reop.vol.24.num.2.2013.11260 https://revistas.unal.edu.co/index.php/profile/article/view/10993 https://revistas.unal.edu.co/index.php/profile/article/view/10993 https://aprendeenlinea.udea.edu.co/revistas/index.php/ikala/article/view/2696 https://aprendeenlinea.udea.edu.co/revistas/index.php/ikala/article/view/2696 29profile: issues teach. prof. dev., vol. 22 no. 2, jul-dec, 2020. issn 1657-0790 (printed) 2256-5760 (online). bogotá, colombia. pages 13-32 ensuring quality in a foreign language tutoring program for future teachers about the author deissy angélica velandia holds a master’s degree in administration of educational institutions from itesm and a bed in philology and languages from universidad nacional de colombia. she has worked as an efl teacher in universities in bogota as well as in bihn doung (vietnam). she has been an elt consultant, a lecturer, and a teacher educator. universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras30 velandia appendix a: units and questions for tutors and peer-tutors unit question options academic staff which of the following skills of academic staff do you think are relevant to the appropriate development of a tutoring program? __ interpersonal relationship skills __ being disciplined __ being committed __ assertive communication __ ability to listen __ ability to work with a team __ ability to interact with students which of the following aspects do you consider necessary to know about your students, so that the tutoring process is carried out successfully? __ origin and social/economic background __ career prospects __ study habits and school practices __ cultural activities and interests __ academic background teachinglearning processes during the tutoring session how should the tutor identify the needs of the tutee? __ an entry diagnosis __ student request __ the head teacher referral other ________________ which of the following aspects should be the priority in the development of the tutoring sessions? __ development of study skills __ development of learning strategies __ communication skills practice __ assignment of tasks for revision/ consolidation __ revision activities for the face-to-face lessons how should the process of the tutoring session be assessed? __ a student survey __ final results in the tutee’s classes __ attendance and commitment to tutoring sessions what is the ideal time framework for a tutoring session and how often? __ half an hour __ 45 minutes __ 1 hour __ 2 hours other ____________ how often should a tutoring session be carried out? select only one. __ daily __ 2 times a week __ weekly __ fortnightly other ____________ 31profile: issues teach. prof. dev., vol. 22 no. 2, jul-dec, 2020. issn 1657-0790 (printed) 2256-5760 (online). bogotá, colombia. pages 13-32 ensuring quality in a foreign language tutoring program for future teachers quality do you think that the tutoring program improves the academic performance of your tutees? __ totally __ regular __ little __ nothing why? what aspects would guarantee the quality of the tutoring and why? open-ended question support resources and environment select which of the following support resources you consider relevant for the development of face-to-face tutoring __ computer __ internet access __ bibliographic resources __ learning guides __ speakers, microphone, and headphones virtual/mixed tutoring what means would facilitate the development of virtual tutoring and describe why? __ skype __ messenger __ elluminate __ virtual classroom __ blackboard __ chat other _____________ note. this is a translation by the researcher, the original survey was applied in spanish. universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras32 velandia appendix b: units and questions for tutees unit question options academic staff rank the tutor’s skills 1 to 5 (1 being the highest) __ empathy and respect __ skills for tutoring __ knowledge of institutional regulations __ willingness to help students __ willingness to provide the right academic support __ knowledge of the subject teachinglearning processes during the tutoring session which of the following aspects do you consider most relevant in the development of tutoring sessions? __ working on study skills __ working on learning strategies __ practice of communicative skills __ assignment of tasks for revision or consolidation __ development of activities for the regular classes support resources and environment how often should a tutoring session be carried out? __ daily __ 2 times a week __ weekly __ fortnightly other ____________ is the attention time that your tutor allocates to the tutoring sessions…? __ insufficient __ enough __ too much time how do you consider the venue where the tutoring sessions take place? __ suitable __ unsuitable why? the extent to which tutoring services are demanded why did you decide to participate in the tutoring program? select only the one you consider most important. __ because you have difficulties in learning the foreign language __ because you need to reinforce the topics studied in your regular class __ because you want to explore topics beyond the classroom syllabus __ it was a suggestion of your teacher other. which one? quality what aspects would guarantee the quality of the tutoring program and why? open-ended question 121profile: issues teach. prof. dev., vol. 21 no. 1, jan-jun, 2019. issn 1657-0790 (printed) 2256-5760 (online). bogotá, colombia. pages 121-135 https://doi.org/10.15446/profile.v21n1.71362 coaching as a professional development strategy for adjunct instructors in a colombian university el coaching como estrategia de desarrollo profesional para profesores de cátedra en una universidad colombiana claudia gómez palacio1* deisa enid gómez vargas2** hadaluz pulgarín taborda3*** universidad de antioquia, medellín, colombia this article reports the results of a study in which coaching was used as a professional development strategy with five foreign language adjunct instructors at a public university in colombia. a questionnaire, coaching sessions, interviews, and both coaches and coachees’ reports were the data collection sources. results showed that adjunct instructors consider coaching a useful professional development strategy that should be offered to all foreign language instructors. in addition, trust and genuine interest were considered determinant when administrators implement this professional development strategy, and self-leadership was crucial when foreign language instructors make decisions regarding their own professional development. key words: adjunct instructors, coaching, genuine interest, professional development, self-leadership. este artículo reporta los resultados de un estudio en el cual el coaching fue usado como estrategia de desarrollo profesional con cinco profesores de cátedra en una universidad pública de colombia. es un estudio de caso instrumental basado en los principios de la investigación cualitativa. las fuentes de recolección de datos fueron un cuestionario, sesiones de coaching, entrevistas semiestructuradas y reportes finales de los coaches y los cinco profesores participantes. en los resultados las voces de los docentes muestran las ganancias a nivel personal y profesional después de su participación en las sesiones de coaching, además la importancia de la confianza y el interés genuino para el desarrollo efectivo de las sesiones y su liderazgo personal para tomar decisiones en relación a su propio desarrollo profesional. palabras clave: coaching, desarrollo profesional, interés genuino, liderazgo personal, profesores de cátedra. * e-mail: claudia.gomez@udea.edu.co ** e-mail: deisa.gomez@udea.edu.co *** e-mail: hadaluz.pulgarin@udea.edu.co this article presents the results of the research project called “el coaching como estrategia de desarrollo profesional para los profesores de cátedra de la sección de servicios”, code 2015-4207, comité para el desarrollo de la investigación, codi, universidad de antioquia, grupo de investigación acción y evaluación de lenguas extranjeras, giae. how to cite this article (apa, 6th ed.): gómez palacio, c., gómez vargas, e., & pulgarín taborda, h. (2019). coaching as a professional development strategy for adjunct instructors in a colombian university. profile: issues in teachers’ professional development, 21(1), 121-135. https://doi.org/10.15446/profile.v21n1.71362. this article was received on march 31, 2018 and accepted on october 23, 2018. this is an open access article distributed under the terms of the creative commons license attribution-noncommercial-noderivatives 4.0 international license. consultation is possible at https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/. universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras122 gómez palacio, gómez vargas & pulgarín taborda introduction the need of professional development and the creation of a professional development program not only for full time professors, but for adjunct instructors, who are the most representative population among instructors in a public university in colombia, inspired this case study. final reports of professors who had passed their provisional years at this university (pineda hoyos, 2011; pineda montoya, 2013), the evaluation of a multilingual program (gómez palacio, 2014), preliminary findings of a case study (pineda montoya, 2015), and the context evaluation about the reading comprehension program at the university (quinchía ortiz, muñoz marín, & sierra ospina, 2015) also inspired this work. coaching as a professional development strategy became a tentative strategy to provide adjunct teachers with opportunities for professional learning because as it is expressed by velásquez arboleda and bedoya bedoya (2010) in their study about adjunct teachers’ factors of psychosocial risks, pay-by-the hour instructors lack time to enjoy their spare time due to their long hours of work. as a consequence, educational institutions should not expect adjunct instructors to have time for long hours of training sessions but instead, they should think about alternative professional development opportunities for them, such as coaching that can be performed in private sessions. therefore, with the assumption that adjunct foreign language instructors do not have enough time to attend long hours of training sessions, four strategies of professional development were proposed in 2013 in a professional development program at the public university: mentoring, coaching, chats, and training sessions (gómez palacio, álvarez espinal, gómez vargas, riascos gómez, & gil guevara, 2016). the instrumental case study (stake, 1995; stake as cited in creswell, 2007) we examine in this article was carried out during a year and a half with the aim to explore if coaching, one of the strategies offered in the professional development program at the outreach section of the university, works as a professional development strategy for adjunct foreign language instructors. therefore, the following questions guided our experience: • what are adjunct teachers’ gains with coaching as a professional development strategy? • what conditions should a professional development program that uses coaching as a professional development strategy have? theoretical framework professional development the professional development program in the outreach section of the colombian university from 2013 until 2015 followed this definition of professional development inspired from the works of diaz-maggioli (2003), head and taylor (1997), and lozano correa (2008): a continuous process in which a teacher makes reflections, thinks about his/her teaching practices, identifies his/her abilities to perform different activities, and what he or she is capable to learn by himself or herself in order to voluntarily make changes in his/ her teaching practices. in this process, the teacher discovers his or her true professional self—something that cannot be carried out without the firm awareness that a shift must be made in his/her professional inner self and not only as a result of external agents’ influence. (gómez palacio as cited in gómez palacio, álvarez espinal, & gómez vargas, 2018, p. 547) figure 1 illustrates the process. figure 1. professional development self-process (gómez palacio & gómez torres, 2016, slide 10) decisions change continuous process 123profile: issues teach. prof. dev., vol. 21 no. 1, jan-jun, 2019. issn 1657-0790 (printed) 2256-5760 (online). bogotá, colombia. pages 121-135 coaching as a professional development strategy for adjunct instructors in a colombian university diaz-maggioli (2003) points out that professional development is an “ongoing process” in which teachers “engage voluntarily” and find opportunities to learn, so they can adjust their teaching practices to their students’ needs. he considers professional development an “evolving process of professional self-disclosure, reflection, and growth” (p. 1) that combined with communities of practice and “job-embedded responsibilities”, show results over time. diaz-maggioli (2003) also emphasizes that for professional development to be successful, research on teachers’ needs should be done. he also examines different needs of professional development considering that teachers’ professional development also depends on the career stages in which teachers find themselves. therefore, he suggests different approaches to professional development, which should be explored taking into account that teachers at different career stages may differ on their professional needs. regarding head and taylor (1997), they define professional development as a continuous process in which “change and growth” take place having in mind that teachers are always asking themselves how to become “better teachers”. they place emphasis on the premise that this is a process “centred on personal awareness of the possibilities of change and of what influences the change process” (p. 1). in addition, they consider it is a “self-reflective process” because it is “through questioning old habits” that teachers will identify new versions of themselves and their performances. head and taylor highlight that professional development focuses on “individual needs”, and it is valued and developed in different ways considering teachers’ workplaces and their specific expectations for development. coaching coaching still has an uncertain origin in time, country, and discipline (ortiz de zárate, 2010; ravier, 2005). it is multidisciplinary according to brock (as cited in krapu, 2016). in addition, it is a discipline that needs research (latham, 2007). however, coaching is considered to have great possibilities as a professional career in the near future (brock as cited in krapu, 2016). if we go back to ancient greece, philosophers such as socrates performed similar practices to what north american, european, and latin american coaches have performed so far. it means that coaching has emerged from contributions of different practitioners who, in some cases, have come from academic and non-academic settings (brock as cited in krapu, 2016). socrates, for example, used questions among his followers, and that is a particular practice in coaching. heidegger, existential philosopher, who states that human beings should set up goals and follow them because human beings are finite, promotes part of the coaching strategy, that is, setting goals (ortiz de zárate, 2010; ravier, 2005). whitmore (2009) states that “coaching is unlocking people’s potential to maximize their own performance” (p. 10). he promotes the grow model (goal, reality, options, and what and when) as the model coaches should follow during a coaching session. the international coaching leadership in colombia (2011) defines the grow model as goals, reality, options, what and will. in the goal stage, coachees set short and long term goals. to examine the reality, it is indispensable to explore the situation at the present time. options refer to the different possibilities the coachee has and the strategies that he or she can use. what involves the actions, the performers, the commitment, and the will to achieve what has been set. both clutterbuck (2007) and goldvarg and perel de goldvarg (2012) as well as whitmore (2009) agree that coaching happens in conversations. all of them also concur that a coaching session is performed with a coach and a coachee, the two main characters in a coaching session. goldvarg and perel de goldvarg (2012) and whitmore (2009) highlight that the purpose of coaching is to make a person conscious and responsible for his/her own actions. universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras124 gómez palacio, gómez vargas & pulgarín taborda lozano correa (2008) emphasizes that every professional should go deep inside himself or herself to find his or her real self. she promotes coaching because it is a tool that contributes to people’s personal and professional growth. it is an activity that is developed between a coach and a coachee. in addition, she lists three types of coaching: personal coaching, business coaching, and coaching for education. personal coaching or life coaching focuses on people’s personal issues or concerns. business coaching is developed in three steps. in the first step, the coach helps the coachee identify improvement opportunities. in the second one, the coachee’s paradigms are questioned through the process and the coach’s goal is to invite the coachee to change blocking paradigms. on the third and last step, the coachee commits to actions. bou pérez (2013) points out that all definitions about educational coaching highlight the human being as the principal actor in personal growth; therefore, he invites all the educational system actors to rethink the educational system transforming the “learning to learn” attitude into necessary competence to manage change in order to accomplish stated goals (p. 15). lozano correa (2008) considers “the practice of coaching” necessary at any personal levels. she states that “the practice of coaching” helps people analyze what they are doing, their reality; it guides them to become more creative, and to learn how to solve obstacles they might encounter (p. 133). coach according to whitmore (2009), based on what participants in his courses have expressed, a coach is “patient, detached, supportive, interested in people, good listener, self-aware, attentive”. it is a person who has “retention and perception”, and he or she is always aware of what is going on. it is a person who has technical expertise, knowledge, and experience, which is the foundation to gain credibility and authority (pp. 51–52). catalao and penim (2009), for example, have a set of questions for coaches’ self-assessment. with the questions, coaches can ask themselves about their performance at the beginning of the process when they meet the coachee, and about their practice during the coaching session. some examples of those questions are found in the appendix. goldvarg and perel de goldvarg (2012) and whitmore (2009) agree that a coach is an expert in coaching, and it does not have to be an expert in the coachee’s professional field. nonetheless, we want to express that besides the characteristics mentioned by whitmore, the questions discussed by catalao and penim (2009), and the clarification about the coach’s field of knowledge, a coach is a non-professional or professional person who decides to coach others and finds an institution to obtain a certification in how to perform coaching sessions, something that we did not find expressed in this way in the literature. a coach is a person like you and us who is trained to perform coaching sessions. according to whitmore, a coach is “a detached awareness raiser” (p. 42). coachee a coachee is a person like you and us who has a specific purpose in mind, and in a specific personal area. for example, in this instrumental case study, our participants had to have a professional purpose in mind. we only explored our participants’ professional area. cubeiro (2011) states that a coachee is a person who is willing to change. it is a person who would like to explore his/her beliefs, show his/her emotions, and commit to actions. method we conducted an instrumental case study (stake as cited in creswell, 2007) because we wanted to identify how coaching sessions would help foreign language instructors in their professional development, and what their gains and changes were if there were some. 125profile: issues teach. prof. dev., vol. 21 no. 1, jan-jun, 2019. issn 1657-0790 (printed) 2256-5760 (online). bogotá, colombia. pages 121-135 coaching as a professional development strategy for adjunct instructors in a colombian university we used “multiple sources of information” (creswell, 2007, p. 73) such as a questionnaire, coaching sessions, interviews, and coaches’ and coachees’ final reports of the process. before we gathered the information from the participants, they signed a consent letter in which we explained all the steps and possible results after the coaching sessions. setting the outreach section at the public university is a section in charge of the foreign language courses offered to all students within the university. it is also responsible for the english courses offered to professors at the university whose aim is to learn or to improve the mentioned language. furthermore, the section is wellknown around the university for providing its services to different regions in a department in colombia where the university is present. the university has offered this service since 1990 when it was officially established. the first semester of 2017, the outreach section consisted of 134 faculty members among which five were tenured professors, 10 provisional professors, and 119 adjunct foreign language teachers, which has always been the most representative population. interdisciplinary research team foreign language instructors and psychologists worked collaboratively on this project. the research team consists of two research assistants in the process of earning an undergraduate degree, two provisional instructors, an adjunct instructor, two psychologists, and a tenured instructor who was the main researcher. both the psychologists and the main researcher, certified coaches by the international coaching leadership in colombia, were the coaches who ran the sessions in this project. participants five adjunct english instructors who we called coachees were the participants in this study. by the time we started the study at the outreach section, there were 175 foreign language instructors from which 165 were adjunct instructors, and 10 full time faculty. six adjunct english foreign language instructors volunteered to participate in the study, and after the main researcher explained to each of them the dynamics of the coaching sessions and the methodology of the study, one of them quit due to personal reasons. each of the participants suggested one pseudonym to be called during the study; they were elena, julieta, jazmin, bambam, and tom. the five of them represent the adjunct instructors’ population at the outreach section. two of them are professional translators, one holds a b.a. in foreign language teaching, one is a professional in languages, and the last one holds a degree in an area different from foreign language teaching. according to the information inserted in the database about instructors in charge of the university courses in the year 2017 semester 1, there are 134 foreign language instructors from which 15 instructors are professional translators, 73 hold a b.a. in foreign languages, 20 more are professionals in languages, and the other 14 hold a degree in an area different from the foreign language teaching one. there is one instructor who is in the seventh semester of a major that is not in the field of foreign languages, and 11 instructors do not have their degrees reported in the database (universidad de antioquia, 2015). data collection questionnaire the questionnaire was designed based on creswell (2012) and sent to the participants four months after we reviewed the literature about coaching, and then we decided the objective and questions we were going to ask. one of the objectives of the questionnaire was to find out how motivated our participants were to be part of the face-to-face coaching sessions with our three coaches. we also wanted to know, before the coaching universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras126 gómez palacio, gómez vargas & pulgarín taborda sessions, what our participants knew about coaching and if they really had a professional goal that they wanted to discuss in the coaching sessions, something that was one of the requirements the main researcher explicitly stated when the invitation to participate in the project was sent. coaching sessions we included the coaching sessions as “new and creative data collection methods” (creswell, 2007, p. 129). the coaching sessions are private, confidential, and targetoriented conversations between a coach and a coachee (goldvarg & perel de goldvarg, 2011, p. 261). they can last between 90 and 120 minutes (cubeiro, 2011, p. 27). the coaching sessions performed in our project lasted from 20 minutes to around 2 hours as table 1 shows. table 1. coaching sessions time first coaching session time second coaching session time tom march 8 54’18’’ april 5 32’25’’ elena march 10 1 hr 26’54’’ march 31 1 hr 37’25’’ jazmín march 11 20’ april 1 44’49’’ julieta march 11 41’13’’ march 30 46’38’’ bambam march 11 1 hr 4’ april 1 54’40’’ we planned to have five coaching sessions with each participant; however, we performed two coaching sessions with them; the other three sessions were used to give participants therapeutical orientation carried out by our two psychologists, members of the research group. we also agreed on having the coaching session with each participant and the three coaches (the two psychologists and the main researcher who is a foreign language teacher). during the first coaching session, the three coaches reviewed with each participant the information registered in the questionnaire, especially the part related to his/her professional goal. at the end of the first session, the coaches assigned homework to each coachee. during the second session, each participant was asked to report their experience with the homework. after the third session, each participant chose one of the psychologists to continue with the process and the three remaining sessions. the first two sessions were audio-recorded; however, we did not record the last three sessions with the psychologists because the focus of those sessions was on personal issues, and the study focused on the exploration of coaching as a strategy for professional development. figure 2 shows how we applied the grow model in the coaching sessions in the project. figure 2. grow model applied to teachers’ coaching sessions discuss the coachee’s professional goals. discuss coachee’s perception of his/her professional context. assign homework to the coachee. report of coachee’s experience with the assignment. discuss some options to address improvement opportunities. evaluate the process and give feedback. set up actions. commit to the process. first session: goal and reality second session: options third session: what and when 127profile: issues teach. prof. dev., vol. 21 no. 1, jan-jun, 2019. issn 1657-0790 (printed) 2256-5760 (online). bogotá, colombia. pages 121-135 coaching as a professional development strategy for adjunct instructors in a colombian university interviews the interviews were performed after the five sessions with each participant. we conducted a semi-structured interview, audiotaped it, and transcribed it (creswell, 2007). one of the interviewers also took notes. the interviewers were one of the co-researchers and one student assistance. the main researcher was also present during the interviews but as an observer. the interviews were carried out in spanish. data analysis we used a traditional data analysis for qualitative research which consists of preparing and organizing the information, then reducing it into themes through a coding process to finally present it in figures, tables, charts, or discussions. this is part of the three analysis strategies stated by creswell (2007, p. 148). additionally, we based our analysis on wolcott’s (1994) recommendations: • highlight certain information in description • identify pattern regularities, contextualize in framework from literature • display findings in tables, charts, diagrams, and figures; compare cases; compare with a standard. (p. 149) we also considered categorical aggregation and direct interpretation as types of analysis which are discussed by stake (1995, p. 78), who encourages the researchers to search for patterns based on the research question and be attentive for unexpected patterns that emerge from the analysis. we did not transcribe the entire coaching sessions; we only selected the information we needed such as the purpose of the conversation, the assignments left after the coaching sessions, and our coachees’ gains. we did not transcribe the whole conversations because we agreed with the participants in the consent form signed that personal information would not be revealed, and the majority of the information discussed in a coaching session is personal data about the coachee. in addition, our purpose with the development of this instrumental case study has been to identify the coachees’ professional purposes and their gains after a coaching session for professional development rather than to analyze how a coaching session is performed. both coaches and coachees presented a final report that researchers compared to analyze coachees’ professional purposes and their gains after the use of coaching sessions as a strategy for professional development. one of our research assistants transcribed all the interviews, and the researchers present in the interview also took notes. findings jazmin, elena, julieta, tom, and bambam consider coaching as a useful strategy for professional development. they consider it as a professional development opportunity for adjunct foreign language instructors (not only for english instructors) to grow both personally and professionally if trust and genuine interest are involved. we will discuss in the following paragraphs our participants’ gains after the coaching sessions, their definitions of coaching and professional development. in addition, we will explain the role that genuine care and trust play in coaching sessions as a strategy for teacher professional development. participants’ gains to be part of the research project, each participant had to have a professional purpose to discuss in our coaching sessions. according to the information collected, these were our participants’ professional purposes: elena wanted to improve, not only her teaching practices, but also herself as a person; jazmin wanted to improve professionally; julieta expected to enrich her responsibility and become an example for her students; bambam wanted to learn how to learn and how to become a better learner; tom wanted to improve his teaching practices and feel better about himself. universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras128 gómez palacio, gómez vargas & pulgarín taborda personal and professionals areas our participants became aware of personal aspects that they did not control within the class or during their daily routines. regarding her personal area, jazmin, for instance, became more confident about her students’ attitude towards her class when she realized, through the coaching sessions, that her students did not leave her class early because the class was not good: there’s no longer that little voice that tells me: they [students] left because they didn’t like the class. through the coaching sessions, let’s say that this excessive worry that i was demonstrating for if the class was good or not, improved. (interview)1 although it seems a simple aspect for an english instructor to take care of, and it may not have any relationship with the traditional view of professional development that is related to her teaching practices; for jazmin, it was something important that she learned after her reflections through questions because her anxiety diminished; she always thought her students did not like her class; it was her assumption: “i also learned how to reflect through questions in this project” (interview). jazmin learned not to make assumptions about her students’ behavior within the class and towards her class. she gained confidence, and she realized that if she has a doubt about her students’ behavior in class, she should ask. regarding jazmin’s gains in her professional area, she expressed that she learned how to control the time, so it takes her less time to plan a class: already there is a managing, already there is a major control of the time of preparation of class for example. (interview) tom gained more confidence (personal aspect) to become closer to his students. he wants to inspire his students, so they can take charge of their own learning process; he would like to empower them. 1 all evidences were translated from spanish into english. wholeheartedly, i want to achieve an excellent empathy with my students and well, motivate them to the point in which they find their own well to progress in their process. it seems to me like a big challenge, and i’m working on that. (interview) tom also became aware of the importance of being organized with grades, attendance, and students’ homework (professional aspects). other things i’ve implemented are, for instance, order in the attendance, grading, assign homework in every class, or yes, or being consistent with the assignments, looking for different sources, all of that. (interview) julieta became aware of the words she was using to treat herself and people around her (personal area): the exercise of judging myself, judging me like, no, like insulting myself, or telling myself stuff like “you are dumb!” “stupid!”. (interview) after the coaching sessions, julieta started an exercise to be coherent with what she thinks, what she says, and what she does. in this moment, i’m like doing some exercises that i wouldn’t have done before if it wasn’t because of these coaching sessions. well, exercises about things like, about something like the coherence of what i think, what i say, and what i do. for example, those kinds of things, that exercise, i never did it before; i’m doing it now. (interview) regarding julieta’s gains in her professional area, she expressed that since she feels better now about herself, she can be more creative, which impacts her professional life: when you feel better, you are more creative and obviously, if you are more, a more creative teacher, you will do well in your professional world. (interview) elena, our fourth coachee, became aware of how she has had “the lack of time” as an excuse for everything (personal area): 129profile: issues teach. prof. dev., vol. 21 no. 1, jan-jun, 2019. issn 1657-0790 (printed) 2256-5760 (online). bogotá, colombia. pages 121-135 coaching as a professional development strategy for adjunct instructors in a colombian university the psychologist, she was able to identify and tell me, with claudia as well, “do not use that much that of ‘i don’t have time’, that predisposition of saying all the time that you don’t have time”. (interview) she also became conscious of how much she judges people, situations, and things, and considers the fact of having realized her tendency to judge, an opportunity to become a stronger and better person: another aspect that i realized about, like that, like on a general level, was to stop like giving epithets to things, for example. all that seems to me like, it makes you stronger and improves you as a person. (interview) regarding elena’s gains in her professional area, she expresses that to make changes in her personal area will impact her performance in the classroom: i am going to contribute to my students with what i have, if i am not patient, how am i going to be patient in the classroom? if i judge, how do i expect students to do not judge me? (interview) bambam gained confidence to start writing again as he used to do many years ago. he expressed that writing was one of his major weaknesses; however, an assignment he did over the study showed the coaches that he used to write very well, something that he had stopped doing because of personal reasons: i really like that [the coaching sessions] and i have writing in mind, one of my biggest weaknesses. (interview) regarding bambam’s gains in his professional area, he expressed he would approach more technological devices. he wanted to keep writing with pens and pencils because his handwriting is beautiful; however, he had to accept that to achieve his academic goals, he would have to consider technological devices. bambam has had this impediment to write since 1981. his participation in the project made him raise awareness regarding the use of technological devices for his writing and research professional purposes expressed in the first coaching session. i would like to strengthen my foundations in research. i can talk, talk, and talk about many things and many topics; however, i would like to write about realities in teaching. (first coaching session) professional development from participants’ perspectives teacher professional development tends to focus on teachers’ development of a technique. workshops, lectures, courses, and mandatory training are still part of the opportunities of professional development in educational institutions (diaz-maggioli, 2003; hudelson, 2001; sierra piedrahita, 2016). although our participants still recognize the above-mentioned opportunities for professional development in their professional agenda, they also included both personal and professional areas when defining teacher professional development, which they also think should be continuous. i understand for professional development, is like…a group of activities or a project or a program that aims to improving the performance, in this case, of the teachers, looking not only to their job inside the classroom but other parts of that, like the human part, the personal part. (elena, interview) professional development is continuous, and it will always be a merging element between the professional human being and society. (jazmin, interview) basically, professional development for me is the evolution in my field of study, is how i’ve improved. (tom, interview) well it is any strategy, i mean, it is every kind of strategy or process aimed to enrich you in a professional level, that is, when i say every kind of strategy i mean to everything, that is, not only like that one, that this, a coaching project, no, like, i mean, conferences, everything, everything that helps you, everything, congresses, talks, that help you like to reflect about what you’re doing, if you’re doing it right, if you’re doing it wrong and the negative aspects, improve them, that, for me, is professional development. (julieta, interview) universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras130 gómez palacio, gómez vargas & pulgarín taborda coaching as a professional development strategy the participants of the study consider that coaching can be used as a strategy of professional development with all foreign language instructors at the outreach section; it is not only a strategy for english instructors. coaching is a process in which a person works on her or his improvement areas. coachees express how much they learned along the process. i realized that there is a human being behind the teacher. i discovered how emotions play an important role in the classes. (jazmin, interview) with this quote, jazmin confirms that she cares about emotions in her language classroom. she realizes how important her students’ attitudes towards her class are at the time she evaluates if her class is good or not. jazmin’s thoughts about her students’ attitudes towards her class reveal issues with jazmin’s self-esteem. elena comments that she gained tools to improve aspects of her personal life: the process was useful to me to identify some aspects in which i have to go in depth and it also gave me some tools to improve in important areas of my life. (written report) for tom, this process also helped him to learn more about himself and to evaluate himself as well. he considered the experience an opportunity to improve professionally. the process, in general, was about self-knowledge and self-assessment from my part, to keep improving as a professional in a constant way. (written report) as a result of the process, elena found balance and began to value what she has in life: as a result from this process, i felt like a liberation and i started a process of “harmony” with my body and my being…is just that sometimes we forget what we have because we are thinking of trifles that damage our health. (written report) bambam liked the process. he felt comfortable and recognized that he made decisions regarding work on academic writing and the use of technological devices. very nice, nothing that stressed me, very, everything was right, and very respectful. i liked it, i decided two very interesting things [to use technological devices and work on academic writing]. i felt really well. (interview) genuine interest and trust in coaching sessions for teacher professional development our coachees’ comments regarding trust and genuine interest are shown as follows. they also expressed that our coaching sessions were conducted in an informal and cozy environment that made them feel secure. it was an easy-going and cordial environment. (tom) i felt in an informal environment, and it makes you “let it go”. (julieta) total tranquility without external pressures of any type. (bambam) building trust was excellent. (elena) building trust was present. (jazmin) according to goldvarg and perel de goldvarg (2012), in institutions in which coaching sessions are mandatory, to build trust with their coachees is an important coaches’ step. they add that one of the strategies coaches may use to build trust with their coachees is to show “genuine interest for the person not only as an employee, but as a human being with concerns and needs” (p. 53). in our study, coachees were invited to participate voluntarily, and before they signed the consent form, our main researcher explained to them what the coaching sessions were about and what to expect after the process. as a consequence, to build trust and rapport with our coachees was not an aspect our coaches had to worry about. in fact, during one of our research meetings, our main researcher reported that “the two psychologist-coaches had agreed on that the instructors trust was placed on her [our main researcher], and as a result, they see that the process would be easy to carry out”. in addition, one of 131profile: issues teach. prof. dev., vol. 21 no. 1, jan-jun, 2019. issn 1657-0790 (printed) 2256-5760 (online). bogotá, colombia. pages 121-135 coaching as a professional development strategy for adjunct instructors in a colombian university the two psychologist-coaches’ conclusions was that “the coachees’ trust was placed in our main researcher and what she represented for them at the outreach section”. conclusions the goal of this study was to investigate adjunct teachers’ gains after attending five coaching sessions and see what conditions a professional development program should have in order to implement coaching as a professional development strategy. regarding the foreign language teachers of any affiliation, we can conclude that coaching is an alternative professional development opportunity that teachers can consider in their professional development agenda since with the use of this strategy, teachers can get involved in a “process of professional self-disclosure, reflection, and growth” as stated by diaz-maggioli (2003). coaching provides the perfect environment for teachers to grow personally and professionally as roux and mendoza valladares (2014) propose: “teacher professional development is a process of growth that the teacher lives around his/her educational occupation; it helps him/ her to improve his/her action, and to understand his/ her teaching profession better” (p. 14). one of the main findings was that coaching provided teachers with an opportunity for professional development in which the theoretical enrichment was not the focus but self-awareness. coaching as a professional development strategy invites teachers to be coherent with what they think, feel, and finally do. coaching also provides the perfect environment for teachers to explore the integrity of human beings with their students (martínez cardona & pulgarín taborda, 2016). in line with this finding, it could be argued that the development of professional skills, one of the main goals of any professional development program, depends primarily on the recognition of the importance of tackling personal issues first, and in this case, coaching could be a very appropriate strategy to be implemented. echeverri-sucerquia, arias, and gómez (2014) found that “teacher development experiences should not only strive for the development of theoretical clarity but also for the development of critical awareness of the self and the world around” (p. 167). we think that if professional development programs include coaching as one of the strategies in their agenda, teachers will become better human beings and will raise their awareness about themselves and their surroundings. teacher professional development programs should also consider different aspects when designing and implementing professional development programs with coaching as one of the strategies and their professional development agenda. goldvarg and perel de goldvarg (2012) remark that “trust is essential in a coaching relationship” (p. 48) and the coach must leave judgment apart and see the coachee as a whole and complete person. cubeiro (2011) states coachees should find someone with whom they feel comfortable to talk about their concerns, someone with whom they can find improvement opportunities. miedaner (2002) points out that when a person is looking for a coach, he or she should consider someone who has taken the coaching courses to make sure the person knows “the bases of the discipline” (p. 332). interdisciplinary teams should also be considered when having coaching as a strategy for professional development in teacher professional development programs. baltar de andrade, carrasco aguilar, jensen bofill, villegas fernández, and tapia rojas (2012) consider that teachers and psychologists contribute the best of their professional jobs when their relationship has been built with liberty and autonomy. in our study, teachers and psychologists decided to work together; it was not an administrative decision. baltar de andrade et al. (2012) also point out that both teachers and psychologists complement each other and learn together: teachers with their practical role and psychologists with their reflective one. in our study, the psychologists’ universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras132 gómez palacio, gómez vargas & pulgarín taborda contributions were relevant after the second session when coachees started talking about personal issues that had to be addressed therapeutically. coaching sessions should be performed in an environment of trust and genuine interests (goldvarg & perel de goldvarg, 2012). o’connor and lages (2005) remark that trust is crucial in a coaching relationship. professional development leaders should also be aware of what whitmore (2009) says: “coaching is not merely a technique to be wheeled out and rigidly applied in certain prescribed circumstances. it is a way of managing, a way of treating people, a way of thinking, a way of being” (p. 19). suggestions for further research coaching can provide not only adjunct foreign language instructors at the university level with the opportunity to gain consciousness about themselves and their surroundings to become agents of change, but also primary and secondary teachers. we suggest further research on primary and secondary settings since coaching could provide many gains for all type of teachers at any level of occupational education to explore themselves, their beliefs, and their dispositions to change. this research was an enriching experience since we had the opportunity to share knowledge and work from two different perspectives: foreign language education and psychology. we strongly recommend continuing to do research on coaching carried out by professionals of different areas that are involved in education, psychology, or any other human science. we encourage scholars interested in the professional development research line to explore teacher professional development not only from the pedagogical and cognitive perspectives, but also taking into account teachers’ working conditions as stated by imbernón (2011). professional development goes beyond pedagogical aspects; it even goes beyond teachers’ personal issues because professional development includes teachers’ pedagogical development, knowledge about themselves, cognitive and theoretical development in addition to their working conditions that allow or avoid the development of their careers (imbernón, 2011). references baltar de andrade, m. j., carrasco aguilar, c., jensen bofill, d., villegas fernández, c., & tapia rojas, n. 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(2016). contributions of a social justice language teacher education perspective to professional development programs in colombia. profile: issues in teachers’ professional development, 18(1), 203-217. https:// doi.org/10.15446/profile.v18n1.47807. stake, r. e. (1995). the art of case study research. thousand oaks, us: sage. the international coaching leadership in colombia. (2011). retrieved from http://www.iclcoach.com/index.php/ certificacion/estructura. universidad de antioquia. (2015). base de datos profesores de la sección de servicios. velásquez arboleda, o. h., & bedoya bedoya, e. de j. (2010). una aproximación a los factores de riesgo psicosocial a los que están expuestos los docentes contratados bajo la modalidad de horas cátedra en la ciudad de medellín [an approximation to the psychosocial risk factors to which university adjunct professors are exposed to in the city of medellin]. uni-pluri/versidad 10(2), 33-45. whitmore, j. (2009). coaching for performance: growing human potential and purpose. london, uk: nicholas brealey publishing. wolcott, h. f. (1994). transforming qualitative data: description, analysis, and interpretation. thousand oaks, us: sage. about the authors claudia gómez palacio is a full-time faculty member at universidad de antioquia. she holds a ba in modern languages from universidad pontificia bolivariana (colombia), an m.a. in tesol from greensboro college (usa), and a certification as a professional coach from the international coaching leadership. she is member of giae research group. deisa enid gómez vargas is a professional in languages: english-french from universidad de antioquia and holds a master degree in spanish and latin american studies from the university of bergen (norway). she works as adjunct english teacher at universidad de antioquia and universidad nacional de colombia. she is member of giae research group. hadaluz pulgarín taborda is a student from the foreign language teaching program and an adjunct instructor in the english program for children at universidad de antioquia. she is interested in research in foreign languages teaching and professional development. acknowledgments we thank paula andrea gómez torres and dora inés arredondo amaya, psychologists/coaches; edna tordecilla espitia and andrés felipe riascos gómez, foreign language professors; and manuel alejandro martínez cardona, research assistant, for their contributions to this academic work as part of the research team for the project presented in this article. 135profile: issues teach. prof. dev., vol. 21 no. 1, jan-jun, 2019. issn 1657-0790 (printed) 2256-5760 (online). bogotá, colombia. pages 121-135 coaching as a professional development strategy for adjunct instructors in a colombian university appendix: coaches’ self-assessment • do i really like people? • do i have a natural aptitude to be empathetic with people? • am i ready to establish an open communication relationship with others? • do i feel comfortable with unexpected processes that require my reasoning and flexibility to be practiced? • do i have intuition to read between lines as to what people tell me? • am i an active listener even when the topic does not have anything to do with me? • am i an attentive observer of my coachees’ behavior? • do i know and am i aware of human beings’ behavior? • am i able to let people who are around me grow without becoming a star behind them? • do i have levels of emotional intelligence? • do i have a positive attitude towards life and do i believe that tomorrow will be better than today? • do i like to comprehend the essence of things? • am i professional and personally mature? • do i believe that human beings are able to change? • do i believe that people have a potential to explore? (catalao & penim, 2009, pp. 19-20) 29profile: issues teach. prof. dev., vol. 22 no. 1, jan-jun, 2020. issn 1657-0790 (printed) 2256-5760 (online). bogotá, colombia. pages 29-41 https://doi.org/10.15446/profile.v22n1.78800 differences between native english-speaking teachers and their non-native counterparts when evaluating pronunciation diferencias entre profesores hablantes nativos de inglés y sus pares no nativos al evaluar pronunciación 1mauricio arcaya* pontificia universidad católica de chile, santiago, chile this article is a small-scale qualitative study whose objective was to identify differences between the way in which native english teachers and their non-native chilean counterparts assess pronunciation. to achieve this, teachers from both groups were asked to assess the same material produced by two students of english pedagogy in a chilean university. the results show that native english teachers rate students higher than their non-native colleagues. this is apparently due not only to differences in training but also the differences in the processes of acquisition. the outcome of this research concerns anyone interested in teaching and learning english as a second/foreign language. key words: assessment, english language teaching, evaluation, native, non-native, perception, pronunciation. este artículo es un estudio cualitativo a pequeña escala cuyo objetivo fue identificar diferencias en la manera en que los profesores nativos y chilenos no nativos del inglés evalúan la pronunciación. para esto, se les solicitó a profesores de ambos grupos evaluar el mismo material proveniente de dos estudiantes que cursan pedagogía en inglés en una universidad chilena. los resultados muestran que los profesores nativos evalúan con puntuaciones más altas que sus colegas no nativos. esto obedece aparentemente tanto a las diferencias en el entrenamiento de los profesores como a los diferentes procesos de adquisición. los resultados de esta investigación son de interés para quienes participan en la enseñanza del inglés como lengua extranjera. palabras clave: enseñanza del inglés, evaluación, nativo, percepción, pronunciación. * e-mail: mauricio.arcaya@uc.cl how to cite this article (apa, 6th ed.): arcaya, m. (2020). differences between native english-speaking teachers and their non-native counterparts when evaluating pronunciation. profile: issues in teachers’ professional development, 22(1), 29-41. https://doi.org/10.15446/ profile.v22n1.78800 this article was received on april 1, 2019 and accepted on august 26, 2019. this is an open access article distributed under the terms of the creative commons license attribution-noncommercial-noderivatives 4.0 international license. consultation is possible at https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/ https://doi.org/10.15446/profile.v22n1.78800 https://doi.org/10.15446/profile.v22n1.78800 https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/ universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras30 arcaya introduction research in the area of assessment of oral performance is abundant in english as a second/foreign language (esl/efl) literature but, if we focus more attentively on the assessment of pronunciation, the scope immediately diminishes, which is an indicator that the interest in this field is not highly regarded when compared to that in some other skills. furthermore, considerations on the differences between the way in which native english speakers (hereinafter nes) and non-native english speakers (hereinafter nnes) assess pronunciation are practically inexistent in the literature. this does not mean that there is an absence of research concerning this divide between nes and nnes teachers; it only means that these works usually have a different scope. for instance, martínez agudo (2017) has explored the relevance and significance of both types of esl/efl teachers and their roles as facilitators of learning. on the other hand, isaacs and trofimovich (2017) have begun to shed new light on the challenges that both nes and nnes teachers face when assessing esl/efl pronunciation, yet in their work there is no explicit comparison between the way in which nes and nnes teachers evaluate pronunciation. davies (2017) refers to the concept of the native speaker stating that it is a contentious one. he focuses on the attacks they usually experience, most of them related to political rather than linguistic considerations. in relation to this, it is important to clarify that the present study does not intend to criticize the role of nes (or nnes) teachers whatsoever. the view of the native speaker, in this study, is merely defined by the factors described in the methodology, such as having been born in an english-speaking country. nnes teachers perceive that nes tend to be, sometimes, more indulgent when assessing not only pronunciation, but also oral performance as a whole. of course, this premise does not constitute evidence of any kind, but the sole idea that nes may indeed assess students’ performances in a more lenient fashion when compared to nnes cannot be taken lightly as it would have important implications in the activity. first, and as obvious as it may sound, students do not feel comfortable with low marks, and many of them will surely avoid the stress caused by these low marks whenever possible. for instance, if a phonetics course in a given english teacher training program is offered in two separate sections, one taught by an nes teacher and the other by an nnes teacher, the differences in marks regarding oral production—which is usually the most important part of the course—may potentially lead to comparisons and conflicts among students. such comparisons might even, in turn, have repercussions among teachers and authorities of the program or department and even with the institution. without stating any judgment on the value of grades in education, the fact that they are an element that requires and receives attention in current educational systems must be acknowledged. having a good or bad mark can make a difference, since there is a reason many universities in the world require students, for instance, to score highly in their secondary education accomplishments to be accepted in their programs. additionally, marks are also important to obtain grants and subsidies for academic purposes. therefore, the differences found between the two groups of teachers would be relevant, especially considering that the presence of nes teachers in the so-called expanding circle (kachru, 1985) is not likely to change in the foreseeable future. the present study is guided by the following research questions: 1. are there differences in the ratings nes and nnes teachers assign students when evaluating their pronunciation? 2. in case these differences are present, are they significant in the context of higher education? 3. are there any differences in the ways in which nnes and nes teachers approach the evaluation task? 31profile: issues teach. prof. dev., vol. 22 no. 1, jan-jun, 2020. issn 1657-0790 (printed) 2256-5760 (online). bogotá, colombia. pages 29-41 differences between native english-speaking teachers and their non-native counterparts... in the first part of the article, a framework of relevant literature is provided followed by the methodology, including all the procedures to carry out the research. then, the results and discussion are presented together. finally, the conclusions and the most relevant findings, interpretations, and implications in the field of esl/ efl are offered. theoretical framework pronunciation in efl and esl contexts speaking skills have always been important in the teaching and learning of english as a foreign or second language, but those with several years of experience in the field know that the aspect of pronunciation has usually been neglected. in a recent study, edo marzá (2014) discovered that, in most spanish-speaking countries, there is an evident tendency to overlook the teaching of pronunciation in efl settings, and that the focus of instruction lies mostly on grammar, reading, and writing skills. additionally, gilbert (2010) has estimated that pronunciation continues to be overlooked in the esl and efl contexts. on top of all this, not all teachers seem to be receiving proper training in pronunciation. actually, breitkreutz, derwing, and rossiter (2001) conducted research in canada, and concluded that most instructors receive little to no training in the specific area of pronunciation. despite the lack of research in chile, our reality does not seem to differ from the above situation, since training programs do not commonly include independent modules—core or elective—aimed at reinforcing this area in learners, relying only on the teacher’s sensitivity to deal with particular problems in the classroom. this limitation may present further risks because, even though most english teacher-training programs include two semesters of english phonetics as a minimum, these courses do not usually prepare students on how to teach pronunciation. until not so long ago, research in the field seemed to mirror the problem related to the professional activity mentioned above. asher and garcia (1969) argued that pronunciation in second language acquisition (sla) was less studied than other components due to the different variables that are involved in the process—gender and motivation, among others. four decades later, derwing and munro (2005) stated that published research on the teaching of pronunciation is significantly smaller when compared to areas such as grammar and vocabulary, and teachers often end up relying on their own intuition rather than on empirical evidence to assess their students’ oral output. besides, kang (2010) has similarly noticed that there has been little research on the teaching of pronunciation in l2 contexts. recently, though, there have been noteworthy works on the matter. isaacs and trofimovich (2017), despite the absence of a comparison between nes and nnes teachers, refer to several aspects relevant to this study, such as the fact that some teachers only focus on comprehensibility when evaluating oral production, whereas others consider near-native or free-accent pronunciation as an important factor. they also refer to the debate on what the appropriate standard should be, as well as the pronunciation features that should be prioritized. concerning the latter point, neither nes nor nnes teachers receive any specific training in the teaching of pronunciation. since nnes teachers need to experience acquisition formally, they may naturally develop a degree of awareness concerning the aspects of pronunciation that are more challenging. on the other hand, nes teachers can only rely on their own perceptions. the relevance of interlinguistic comparison robert lado (1957) introduced the notion of contrastive linguistics. according to him, in order to solve the problem of what to teach, we need to carry out an interlinguistic comparison between the mother tongue and the target language as the former may facilitate the universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras32 arcaya learning of certain elements, and it may also affect the learning process negatively. in light of this, corder (1967) presents the concept of error analysis as a descriptive and comparative technique useful to the process of language teaching and learning. he points out that this technique serves to help teachers provide concrete solutions to problems in the classroom. one of the main problems regarding the role of contrastive analysis is that it assumes that all errors derive from interference with the learners’ mother tongue. nonetheless, by means of the aforementioned error analysis studies, it has been revealed that certain errors, made by various foreign language speakers with different l1 backgrounds, are recurrent among them and seem to be more related to the intrinsic difficulty of the subsystem involved and not necessarily to cross-lingual influence. for instance, concerning the use of prepositions in english, it would be nearly impossible for a non-native speaker of english not to make mistakes regardless of whether or not their own mother tongue has prepositions (lennon, 2008). widdowson (2003) also points out that knowing the learners’ l1 is not the only helpful source of information, but that being aware of the “bilingualisation” process is just as meaningful. despite the fact that there are various considerations that need to be taken into account in the area of pronunciation of a foreign/second language, the role of the mother tongue is important as a predictor of a series of potential errors students may present. for instance, the vowel system of english is a problem for speakers of most languages in the world as they have a relatively small inventory of vowels (five being the average), but germanic languages have a larger number of vowels, so learning how to produce english vowels is far more accessible than for a greek, japanese, or spanish speaker. the students’ mother tongue appears to be a relevant item to most authors in the field. for example, odlin (1989) believes that native language phonetics and phonology significantly influence second language pronunciation. similarly, akram and qureshi (2012) refer to the positive or negative influence of the native language since learners tend to replicate their l1 speech habits in their target language. in fact, the relevance of the mother tongue is what makes it hard for teachers and researchers to map out a common ground for the specific hardships in second language learning, thus standardizing the practice. some linguistic areas that may be affected by mother tongue interference in foreign language output are specific phonemic contrasts (brown, 1988), segmental vs. prosodic errors (anderson-hsieh, johnson, & koehler, 1992; johansson, 1978; palmer, 1976) and the negative impact on overall comprehension (fayer & krasinski, 1987; koster & koet, 1993). in this study, our concern is not the degree to which spanish l1 interference plays a role in the students’ pronunciation but to identify how the awareness of these areas of interference affects the judgements of nnes teachers. as a whole, spanish is a language that often poses difficulties for efl/esl students. edo marzá (2014) focuses on the many differences between spanish and english in terms of phoneme production, linking phenomena, intonation and stress, and goes on to explain that all these traits may negatively affect spanish speakers upon the production of oral speech. in the same vein, florez (1998) argues that errors in aspiration, intonation, and rhythm in english are likely to be caused by spanish interference. shoebottom (2011) also highlights the consistency of spanish spelling and pronunciation versus the corresponding inconsistency in english, which results in orthographic-like utterances. coe (2001) has provided an outline of the most common areas of interferences or potential difficulties for spanish speakers when attempting to produce english. among such hitches are found “difficulty in recognizing and using english vowels, strong devoicing of final voiced consonants, and even sentence rhythm, without the typical prominences of english” (coe, 2001, p. 91). all these hardships not only affect the learning process of students, but they may also have an effect on the 33profile: issues teach. prof. dev., vol. 22 no. 1, jan-jun, 2020. issn 1657-0790 (printed) 2256-5760 (online). bogotá, colombia. pages 29-41 differences between native english-speaking teachers and their non-native counterparts... perceptions of evaluators, particularly nnes teachers, who tend to be mostly aware of the influence of their mother tongue in the acquisition of a foreign language. in other words, the fact that they have achieved a relative success themselves in the target language may predispose them to be more demanding with their own students, as opposed to native speakers of english who never experienced language interference and, therefore, are unaware of the importance of l1. put simply, even if nes teachers were trained on spanish interference, the role of said interference would never be as significant as for nnes teachers due to their own experiences in learning the language. nes and nnes teachers and evaluation literature on the differences between the ways in which nes and nnes teachers approach evaluation of oral performance is not abundant and, in the chilean context, the material is even more restricted. one significant contribution regarding the teachers’ own perceptions in relation to assessment has been provided by barrios (2002) who, in her research, albeit limited only to spain’s reality, discovered that non-native english speakers saw themselves as more capable of evaluating students’ potential and of anticipating what their eventual areas of difficulty might be. it follows, then, that nnes teachers view the first language as an asset that nes teachers with no second or third language do not have. this idea, besides being supported by several authors and theories—e.g., corder (1967)—is mainly predicated on their personal experiences learning english as a foreign language and is rooted in the fact that they literally have the know-how after having acquired english successfully in spite of the difficulties that it presented. on the other hand, nes teachers are usually seen by most people as the most reliable english language source. in fact, it is well known that many language institutions advertise their courses with the hook of native instructors. in spite of this enlightening finding, there are not many studies that have attempted to examine the manners in which nnes and nes teachers evaluate their students’ oral output. although the study carried out in chile by baitman and véliz (2013) considered oral performance as a whole rather than pronunciation only, some of the conclusions appear relevant to the present study. the first and most important finding is that nes teachers, overall, tend to assess their students’ performances with higher grades on the speaking rubric than nnes teachers do. although we cannot refer to conversations among nnes teachers as proper evidence, the findings of baitman and véliz mirror the general impression that many chilean teachers have on this issue. another observation made by baitman and véliz is that nes teachers often give more relevance to items such as fluency and pronunciation when assessing their students’ oral performance, while nnes teachers tend to focus more on grammatical accuracy and vocabulary instead. in a similar study carried out in china, zhang and elder (2011) found that, although there were no differences in rating between nes and nnes teachers, nnes raters appeared to be more form focused and less communication focused than nes. their study also showed nes teachers were more likely to pay attention to features of interaction, while nnes focused more on linguistic resources such as accuracy. it follows, then, that the difference will be less significant in the present study, since it only focuses on pronunciation. on the other hand, the variables considered in the present study may not be comparable to any previous research. method the purpose of this research was to determine qualitatively whether there were differences between the judgements of nes and nnes teachers when evaluating pronunciation and, in the event that there were such differences, to identify them. through comments made by the teachers, the study also attempted to identify differences in the procedures that the two groups of universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras34 arcaya teachers carried out, including the particular subfields of pronunciation present in the evaluation sheet: production of vowels, consonants, stress and intonation. sampling design six nes and six nnes teachers were selected according to the criteria that follow. first, they were required to have a degree in the area of concern, either an english pedagogy and/or an esl/efl certification. alternatively, they could also hold a degree in the area of applied linguistics. regardless of their degrees, in chile people who currently serve as teachers of english as a foreign/second language possess different academic backgrounds—some of them do not even have a degree. the participating teachers were also expected to have a minimum of five years of experience in the area of english language training due to the undeniable fact that teaching and assessing are, to a certain extent, processes of trial and error. therefore, teachers who have accumulated a few years of experience tend to be less hesitant and pass judgments more definitively when evaluating language performance. regarding the distinct requirements for nes and nnes teachers, the former were selected only if they had been born in any of the countries in which english is spoken as a first language, and had actively participated in those communities until adolescence. the latter, in contrast, were born in countries in which english is considered a foreign language and showed no command of fluent spoken english before adolescence. authors such as leung, harris, and rampton (1997) and davies (2017) have claimed that variables such as nationality or ethnicity may be misleading to identify accurately native from non-native; hence, those variables were not considered in this study. the data were obtained from the evaluation of the 12 teachers who assessed four tasks produced by a first-year student and a second-year student participating in the teacher-training program at a major private university in santiago, chile. each student recorded two files—an interview and a reading passage—and the differences in each student’s level of english was a conscientious decision in order to explore another possible variable that may potentially interact with the perceptions from each evaluator. out of 12 samples obtained from six first-year students and six second-year students who recorded their tasks, only two were selected. the selection criteria included extra linguistic variables, such as voice volume, sound quality of the recording, and even discourse coherence in order to avoid any interference with the focus of the evaluation, which was pronunciation. materials the materials developed for this project included the following components: audio files. four audio files produced by the speech of two students were sent to each participant. two of the files consisted of spontaneous speech, each one lasting three minutes approximately. both recordings were obtained by means of an oral interview including various questions mainly about the personal background of the two students. additionally, students recorded two more audio files of approximately 40 seconds, each containing a written text read aloud by the two students. the text used was developed considering some of the areas of interference between english and spanish with the purpose of eliciting specific deviant forms. evaluation sheet. an evaluation sheet (appendix a) was included to collect the data from each teacher. this sheet did not include descriptors so that the teachers could freely jot down their own perceptions rather than refer to pre-defined specific ratings. however, specific categories in the area of pronunciation were included. segmental features, which involve sounds—namely vowels and consonants—and suprasegmental features—which are present across and beyond segments—including word stress and intonation. extra variables, such as rhythm or sentence stress, were not included because they require the expertise of highly specialized teachers with an ample knowledge of phonetics, which was not a requirement for the participants in this study. 35profile: issues teach. prof. dev., vol. 22 no. 1, jan-jun, 2020. issn 1657-0790 (printed) 2256-5760 (online). bogotá, colombia. pages 29-41 differences between native english-speaking teachers and their non-native counterparts... directions for evaluation. finally, specific instructions (appendix b) were provided to each teacher to avoid any significant differences in the assessment procedure. procedure recordings, scale of evaluation, and procedural instructions were sent to the participants involved in the research (teachers), and they were required to assess each recording including comments and observations on each category. they were required to send back their results within a period of two weeks. after data collection, the scores provided by nes were compared with those provided by nnes, and the same procedure was carried out. on this second occasion, the differences between the two students were evaluated. additionally, comments made by the subjects were analyzed in order to identify evaluation patterns in nes and nnes. results and discussion table 1 presents the ratings provided by both groups of teachers, nes and nnes. the chilean marking system sets 60% as the minimum level of achievement for a passing grade. both groups of teachers were asked to assess the students’ performances with marks ranging from 1 to 5, with 3 being the minimum passing mark. the assumption that nes teachers are not as demanding as their nnes counterparts to evaluate students’ pronunciation is confirmed by the results in table 1. both nes and nnes teachers rated student a higher than student b—which is consistent with the level of the students. in fact, considering a 60% scale of achievement, both nes and nnes teachers passed student a and failed student b. however, if we look at the mean score from each group, we find that nes teachers rated 3.3 (sd = 0.65) after all four tasks, which correspond to 66% of achievement, while nnes teachers rated 2.7 (sd = 0.99), which corresponds to 54%, thus showing that the ratings actually become more significant when combining the results of both students. as for the reasons why nes teachers rate students higher, their comments on the evaluation suggest that nes teachers focus on comprehensibility—or focus on meaning, which is directly related to understanding oral output at a macrostructural and cultural level (jung, 2010)—while nnes teachers concentrate on form. notes on the assessment sheets of the type “i had no problem to understand the speaker” are numerous in the nes group, which would suggest that they concentrate on comprehensibility rather than form. the above comments are actually rare in the assessment sheets of their nnes counterparts as most of them focused on deviant forms present in the students’ oral production, which is consistent with the findings of fayer and krasinski’s study (1987). additionally, their ratings may largely be based on their lack of proper training on english phonetics as argued by gilbert (2010) and breitkreutz, derwing, and rossiter (2001), among others. furthermore, the nes teachers’ evaluation of both the speaking and the reading tasks by both students was higher than that of nnes teachers. an additional reason for the aforementioned differences may be presented now from the perspective of the nnes teachers. as mentioned above, nes teachers do not take courses of pronunciation, but nnes teachers do. traditional universities in chile include a minimum of four semesters of english phonetics on average. table 1. evaluation ratings by nes and nnes teachers for each student and task student a student b reading task speaking task reading task speaking task mean score standard deviation nes teachers 3.7 4.0 2.7 2.8 3.3 0.65 nnes teachers 3.2 3.9 1.8 2.0 2.7 0.99 universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras36 arcaya despite the fact that students are not actually trained to “teach” pronunciation, the training they receive is, overall, rigorous. it includes a detailed theoretical description of the english phonological system (both at the segmental and the suprasegmental levels), as well as practical activities, like sound-discrimination, drillings, phonetic transcription, among others. after this training, students are not only prepared to comprehend english but also to discriminate output that does not resemble any of the traditional models (british or american standard accents), which are still used in universities in chile. the fact that all the nnes teachers in the present study have been exposed to that type of learning experience may make them predisposed—consciously or unconsciously—to setting higher expectations on the performances of the students. another important indicator of the differences in training between the two teacher groups concerns the type of language used in the comments. the amount of technical terms belonging to the field of phonetics and phonology was overwhelmingly greater in the comments made by the nnes group. words such as “schwa,” “bilabial,” “fricative,” “acoustic,” “neutralization,” “elision,” “clusters,” “canonical,” and others were used by nnes teachers. on the other hand, nes teachers used none of these terms with the exception of certain labels that are found in everyday english, such as “foreign accent” and “good ear.” for nes teachers, there seems to be a paradox in the use of the term “foreign accent” when talking about comprehension since, as stated by munro and derwing (1995), these are non-related concepts. actually, they have demonstrated that heavily accented speech may also be completely comprehensible. this pervasive notion is still a common misunderstanding as demonstrated by the same study. in table 2, we can see the same tendency presented in table 1, since nes teachers rated each one of the criteria higher (sd = 0.59) when compared to their nnes counterparts (sd = 0.85). the only exception was the category of word stress in student a, which was rated exactly the same. this may be explained by the actual number of mistakes—no more than two—which was simply not enough to produce a difference in perception between the nes and nnes teachers. this idea is further supported by the fact that the mark is relatively high (3.9 out of a maximum of 5). another factor that reflected the more holistic appreciation of the performance by nes teachers as opposed to the narrower, more form-based evaluation made by nnes teachers is also present in the comments. nes participants wrote notes such as “it seems she didn’t understand what she was reading” and “i noted that the speaker lacked confidence.” these comments were based on more pragmatic elements that are not traditionally considered when the assessment focuses on pronunciation regardless of other extra linguistic elements that are also part of communicative acts. in contrast, nnes teachers showed no concern for such elements and seemed to have concentrated only on linguistic features, which was illustrated by comments like “vowels interfered by chilean spanish,” “lack discrimination between alveolar, plosives and dental, fricatives”, “no overt differentiation of vowels 1-2 and 4-5”, “production is orthographically based”, among others. these findings are highly consistent with the one found by zhang and elder (2011). table 2. evaluation ratings by nes and nnes teachers for each criterion criteria evaluated vowels consonants word stress intonation overall impression st. a st. b st. a st. b st. a st. b st. a st. b st. a st. b nes teachers 4.1 2.9 4 2.6 3.9 2.8 3.3 2.9 4.1 2.8 nnes teachers 3.5 1.6 3.9 2.5 3.9 2.5 3 1.8 3.8 2 37profile: issues teach. prof. dev., vol. 22 no. 1, jan-jun, 2020. issn 1657-0790 (printed) 2256-5760 (online). bogotá, colombia. pages 29-41 differences between native english-speaking teachers and their non-native counterparts... the distinction between what is correct or incorrect is naturally more rooted in nnes teachers. another point that illustrates this distinction concerns intonation and the comments made by the two groups. one of the students in the speaking task consistently produced a rising intonation at the end of every utterance regardless of whether it was a statement or a question. nnes teachers described this pattern as being “incorrect,” “wrong,” or simply “not suitable,” while nes teachers (three of them, to be precise) associated the feature with “california valley intonation”, which, although it is stigmatized as a trait of ditzy or intellectually superficial speech, is not incorrect as, for them, it is an obvious possible form in which people speak english. without making any technical judgments regarding the way in which both groups faced the process of assessing pronunciation, it is noticeable that there are differences in the way in which both groups viewed the task. in fact, considering the language employed in the comments, it is surprising not to find a bigger gap in the ratings. the differences in their assessments and the comments provided by both groups of teachers suggest an overall differentiation in their roles in the assessment and what the assessment task entails. in other words, their own performances exhibit differences that are largely based on and imbued by their own backgrounds and professional training, which they extrapolate to their teaching practices. consequently, their professional performances differ in both intent and form. conclusion the objective of the present research was to determine whether there were any differences between the way nes and nnes teachers evaluate pronunciation of students, and to explore the aspect in which the procedures they carry out differ. nes teachers of english seem to rate performances higher than their nnes colleagues. even though the differences may not appear statistically significant in number, nes teachers constantly rated higher not only the overall performance of each student, but also the students’ performances for each criterion. however, both groups of teachers can similarly identify a weak from a strong performance between the tasks and students evaluated. taking into account the comments made by each group, one can see it follows that nes teachers have a more holistic approach towards the assessment of pronunciation as they appear to consider elements that are not necessarily within the purely linguistic categories, but which can rather be more closely associated with the area of pragmatics and communication as a whole. on the other hand, nnes teachers are far more structured in the way they assess precisely because the training they had as students was geared toward being structured, error-oriented and, in the end, much more punitive. it seems logical that one possible solution to minimize the effects of differentiated assessment by nes and nnes teachers is to hire teachers with very similar backgrounds, training, and qualifications; however, this procedure is not only hard to achieve—since teachers in reality come from different backgrounds—but it is also discriminatory as not all applicants would be given the same or similar opportunities. a far more sensible solution would be for institutions to organize workshops in which all teachers share and discuss the criteria they take into account for the assessment of their students’ oral production. by so doing, they would be able to outline and consolidate policies (jenkins, 1998) with the purpose of reducing the differences above, thus standardizing criteria to assess students as fairly and objectively as possible. this issue should be seriously undertaken by institutions, especially if english is being taught for professional purposes as there may be cases in which injustices could be made. such amendment is especially significant if we consider that in many institutions both nes and nnes teachers cohabit and assess students’ performances on a daily basis, thus making room for the aforementioned discrepancies. besides having a bigger sample, future research in this area could incorporate a follow-up study for universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras38 arcaya teachers to provide relevant reflections about their assessment practices and, in doing so, obtain insights on how to improve the assessment procedures in the area of pronunciation not only restricted to the context of teacher-training education. references akram, m., & qureshi, a. h. 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(1985). standards, codification, and sociolinguistic realism: the english language in the outer circle. in r. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1467-1770.1992.tb01043.x https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1540-4781.1969.tb04603.x https://doi.org/10.4067/s0716-58112013000100010 https://doi.org/10.4067/s0716-58112013000100010 https://doi.org/10.18806/tesl.v19i1.919 https://doi.org/10.2307/3587258 https://doi.org/10.2307/3587258 https://doi.org/10.1515/iral.1967.5.1-4.161 https://doi.org/10.1515/iral.1967.5.1-4.161 https://doi.org/10.2307/3588486 https://doi.org/10.2307/3588486 https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1467-1770.1987.tb00573.x https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1467-1770.1987.tb00573.x https://doi.org/10.1093/elt/52.2.119 39profile: issues teach. prof. dev., vol. 22 no. 1, jan-jun, 2020. issn 1657-0790 (printed) 2256-5760 (online). bogotá, colombia. pages 29-41 differences between native english-speaking teachers and their non-native counterparts... quirk & h. widdowson (eds.), english in the world: teaching and learning the language and literatures (pp. 11-30). cambridge, uk: cambridge university press. kang, o. (2010). esl learners’ attitudes toward pronunciation instruction and varieties of english. in j. levis & k. levelle (eds.), proceedings of the 1st pronunciation in second language learning and teaching conference (pp. 105-118). ames, us: iowa state university. koster, c. j., & koet, t. (1993). the evaluation of accent in the english of dutchmen. language learning, 43(1), 69-92. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1467-1770.1993.tb00173.x lado, r. (1957). linguistics across cultures: applied linguistics for language teachers. ann arbor, us: university of michigan press. lennon, p. (2008). contrastive analysis, error analysis, interlanguage. in s. gramley & v. gramley (eds.), bielefeld introduction to applied linguistics: a course book (pp. 51-60). magdeburg, de: aisthesis. leung, c., harris, r., & rampton, b. (1997). the idealised native speaker, reified ethnicities, and classroom realities. tesol quarterly, 31(3), 543-560. https://doi.org/10.2307/3587837 martínez agudo, j. (ed.). (2017). native and non-native teachers in english language classrooms: professional challenges and teacher education. boston, us: de gruyter. https:// doi.org/10.1515/9781501504143 munro, m. j., & derwing, t. m. (1995). foreign accent, comprehensibility, and intelligibility in the speech of second language learners. language learning, 45(1), 73-97. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1467-1770.1995.tb00963.x odlin, t. (1989). language transfer: cross-linguistic influence in language learning. cambridge, uk: cambridge university press. https://doi.org/10.1017/cbo9781139524537 palmer, j. (1976). linguistic accuracy and intelligibility. in g. nickel (ed.), proceedings of the 4th international congress of applied linguistics (pp. 505-513). stuttgart, de: hockschul verlag. shoebottom, p. (2011). the differences between english and spanish. retrieved from http://esl.fis.edu/grammar/ langdiff/spanish.htm widdowson, h. g. (2003). defining issues in english language teaching. oxford, uk: oxford university press. zhang, y., & elder, c. (2011). judgments of oral proficiency by non-native and native english speaking teacher raters: competing or complementary constructs? language testing, 28(1), 31-50. https://doi. org/10.1177/0265532209360671 about the author mauricio arcaya studied english linguistics and literature in universidad de chile and obtained his m.a. in linguistics and english teaching in universidad de santiago de chile. he has been working in efl/esl contexts for more than 15 years. he specializes in the area of english phonetics and phonology. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1467-1770.1993.tb00173.x https://doi.org/10.2307/3587837 https://doi.org/10.1515/9781501504143 https://doi.org/10.1515/9781501504143 https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1467-1770.1995.tb00963.x https://doi.org/10.1017/cbo9781139524537 http://esl.fis.edu/grammar/langdiff/spanish.htm http://esl.fis.edu/grammar/langdiff/spanish.htm https://doi.org/10.1177/0265532209360671 https://doi.org/10.1177/0265532209360671 universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras40 arcaya appendix a: sample evaluation sheet evaluate the oral performance focusing on the following aspects: • vowels: production of english vowels. • consonants: production of english consonants. • word stress: english words stressed on the correct syllable. • intonation: english-like intonation patterns. • overall impression: holistic appreciation of student’s performance. reading 1 / reading 2 / speaking 1 / speaking 2 category mark 1 = poor 2 = insufficient 3 = sufficient 4 = good 5 = excellent vowels consonants word stress intonation overall impression observations and comments: ________________________________________________________________________________________ ________________________________________________________________________________________ _________________________________________________________ 41profile: issues teach. prof. dev., vol. 22 no. 1, jan-jun, 2020. issn 1657-0790 (printed) 2256-5760 (online). bogotá, colombia. pages 29-41 differences between native english-speaking teachers and their non-native counterparts... appendix b: directions for evaluation 1. the evaluation is only focused on pronunciation. therefore, aspects such as grammar and vocabulary have no relevance. 2. initially, you must listen to each recording twice without stopping it unless there are fragments that you cannot understand, in which case you must take down the exact time of the occurrence. if the unintelligible fragment is longer than five seconds, jot down the start time and at the finish time of the fragment. in case of sudden interruptions, you can obviously stop the recording and play it again later. 3. note-taking is required. include all the errors you can identify and add holistic observations on all five categories. you can jot down your notes as each recording is playing or/and after you have finished listening. 4. listen to the four files in the order they appear on the assessment sheet. 5. mark each recording as soon as you finish listening. 6. keep in mind that the absence of descriptors in the assessment sheet is intentional, as it has been developed to obtain your own (subjective) perception of each student’s performance. evaluating teachers’ practices beyond content and procedural knowledge in a colombian context 99profile: issues teach. prof. dev., vol. 24 no. 2, jul-dec, 2022. issn 1657-0790 (printed) 2256-5760 (online). bogotá, colombia. pages 99-115 https://doi.org/10.15446/profile.v24n2.92797 evaluating teachers’ practices beyond content and procedural knowledge in a colombian context evaluación de las prácticas docentes más allá del conocimiento de contenido y procedimiento en un contexto colombiano indira niebles-thevening1 angela bailey nayibe rosado universidad del norte, barranquilla, colombia this article reports on a qualitative case study that explored the use of kumaravadivelu’s “knowing, analyzing, recognizing, doing, seeing” model as a teacher evaluation tool to identify critical and reflective aspects of teachers’ practices for their professional development. the participants were nine english language teachers and their students at a colombian university. teacher survey responses, journals, observations, and students’ perceptions were collected and thematically categorized and analyzed under the model. results suggest that teachers have strong procedural knowledge and self-perceptions but struggle with recognizing unique opportunities for critical approaches to their practice, indicating that the model provides more efficient ways of analyzing teachers and focusing on more specific contextual areas in the teachers’ professional development. keywords: english language teaching, kards model, language teacher education, professional development, teacher evaluation este artículo reporta un estudio de caso cualitativo que exploró el uso del modelo “saber, analizar, reconocer, hacer y ver” de kumaravadivelu como evaluación docente para identificar aspectos críticos y reflexivos de la práctica docente. participaron nueve profesores de inglés de una universidad en colombia y sus estudiantes. las respuestas a encuestas, diarios de los profesores, observaciones y las percepciones de los estudiantes se categorizaron y analizaron temáticamente teniendo en cuenta las áreas del modelo. los resultados sugieren que los profesores, si bien tienen un fuerte conocimiento procedimental y una autopercepción como profesores, encuentran difícil reconocer oportunidades para adoptar enfoques críticos en su práctica. esto indica que el modelo ofrece formas eficientes de análisis y de enfocar áreas contextuales más específicas para el desarrollo profesional. palabras clave: desarrollo profesional, educación de docente de lengua, enseñanza del inglés, evaluación docente, modelo kards indira niebles-thevening  https://orcid.org/0000-0002-1983-2208 · email: ithevening@uninorte.edu.co angela bailey  https://orcid.org/0000-0002-9817-0715 · email: abailey@uninorte.edu.co nayibe rosado  https://orcid.org/0000-0003-1865-2464 · email: nrosado@uninorte.edu.co this paper makes part of a larger study on english language professors’ practices and how they meet or fail to meet the post-method condition. this article presents qualitative data exploring the use of the kards model as a teacher evaluation tool and it was not sponsored. how to cite this article (apa, 7th ed.): niebles-thevening, i., bailey, a., & rosado, n. (2022). evaluating teachers’ practices beyond content and procedural knowledge in a colombian context. profile: issues in teachers’ professional development, 24(2), 99–115. https://doi. org/10.15446/profile.v24n2.92797 this article was received on january 15, 2021 and accepted on february 14, 2022. this is an open access article distributed under the terms of the creative commons license attribution-noncommercial-noderivatives 4.0 international license. consultation is possible at https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/ https://doi.org/10.15446/profile.v24n2.92797 https://orcid.org/0000-0002-1983-2208 mailto:ithevening@uninorte.edu.co https://orcid.org/0000-0002-9817-0715 mailto:abailey@uninorte.edu.co https://orcid.org/0000-0003-1865-2464 mailto:nrosado@uninorte.edu.co https://doi.org/10.15446/profile.v24n2.92797 https://doi.org/10.15446/profile.v24n2.92797 https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/ universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras100 niebles-thevening, bailey, & rosado introduction teacher education has shifted from teachers’ learning as observable behavior, to the cognitive mental processes in which they are involved, to the interaction of teachers in their contexts with other educational agents and processes (grossman et al., 2009; johnson, 2009; oosterheert & vermunt, 2003; putnam & borko, 2016; tsui & law, 2007). teacher education emphasized prescriptive concepts about how and what teachers should learn, a perspective informed by the “dualistic understandings of the relationship between thought and action which seeks proof of the transfer of learning through the evident application of knowledge” (ellis et al., 2010, p. 1). thus, teachers’ practices are often determined by their behavior through perceptions and knowledge, work environment, and institutional policies (goh et al., 2005; richards & lockhart, 1994). more recently, kumaravadivelu (2012) held that changes in society, such as globalization, make restructuring and re-conceptualizing teacher education imperative, particularly english language teacher’s education. also, in order to empower teachers to become strategic thinkers who can theorize from their practice, it is important to design comprehensive teacher education programs. the literature available also considers teacher’s education to include learning as cognition, reflection, and construction of identity as mainstays for better in-service teaching practices (borg, 2015). this occurs with novice teachers through shifts in identity during practice (kanno & stuart, 2011; quintero-polo & guerrero-nieto, 2013; thomas & beauchamp, 2011), by working in different cultural settings (block, 2015), or through social negotiations, knowledge and action, as well as ideological, political, and cultural inclinations (fajardo-castañeda, 2011). the british council (2019) proposed the continuing professional development (cpd) framework for teachers, consisting of four stages and 12 professional practices. these include activities such as planning, managing, and assessing learning and taking responsibility for professional development. cpd depends on teachers’ selfmotivation and awareness of their professional needs to engage in appropriate professional growth opportunities. this could be problematic if professional development is seen by teachers, especially in the public-school sector, as a self-financed burden (maussa-díaz, 2014). in latin america, chile has established the standards for english language teacher education (estándares para carreras en pedagogía en inglés) focusing on two dimensions: disciplinary and pedagogical. the disciplinary standards focus on knowledge of the language and second language learning theory (ministerio de educación, república de chile, 2014). the pedagogical standards center on theoretical knowledge of teachinglearning processes, including planning, teaching, and reflecting on classes, and curriculum-related aspects such as evaluation and design of materials. in colombia, similar attempts to establish a professional development framework for pre-service english language teachers started in 1991 with the colombian framework for english (cofe) project, a joint initiative between the colombian government and the british council. the project provided a group of universities with curricular reforms and standards for language proficiency, preparation in methodology through observation, co-teaching and internships, theoretical foundations for teaching english as a foreign language (efl), and evaluative processes (rubiano et al., 2000). however, gonzález et al. (2002) concluded that efl schoolteachers’ needs for professional development went beyond theoretical knowledge and language proficiency. paradoxically, teachers’ conception and sources of professional development center on optional training led by experts, training received in undergraduate studies, professional conferences, and publishers’ sessions (gonzález, 2003), which are sources of professional and procedural knowledge. similarly, cárdenas et al. (2010) concluded from their review of professional development in colombia that teachers need more reflective teaching practices rather than training. the authors also urged 101profile: issues teach. prof. dev., vol. 24 no. 2, jul-dec, 2022. issn 1657-0790 (printed) 2256-5760 (online). bogotá, colombia. pages 99-115 evaluating teachers’ practices beyond content and procedural knowledge in a colombian context professional development for efl teachers to be guided by post-method theories and meaningful practice. colombian researchers suggest a more critical professional development is needed (buendía & macías, 2019; cárdenas et al., 2010; cote-parra, 2012; cuestamedina et al., 2019; insuasty & zambrano-castillo, 2010; olaya-mesa, 2018; rodríguez-ferreira, 2009; viáfara & largo, 2018). however, evaluations of in-service language teachers’ practice do not reflect this, nor allow reflective aspects of teacher practice to be identified. as expected, literature on in-service teachers’ evaluation in colombia is scarce, with a few studies centered on public school teachers’ theoretical knowledge and classroom management (figueroa et al., 2018; lozano-flórez, 2008; novozhenina & lópez-pinzón, 2018). in this study, we shall try to identify specific critical and reflective aspects of teaching practices that respond to the previously highlighted needs in professional development in colombia, by taking an already suggested critical teacher education model and applying it to teacher’s evaluation from the classroom level outwards. by doing so, we may understand what teachers are doing and why, and how they and others perceive their practice. literature review in this section, we introduce the “knowing, analyzing, recognizing, doing, seeing (kards)” model (kumaravadivelu, 2012) and its relevance to teacher evaluation by comparing and contrasting its constituent elements to other teacher evaluation models, focusing on those currently in use in chile and colombia. kards modular model in this section, we describe each of the components of kumaravadivelu’s (2012, p. 125) modular model of language teacher education for a global society: kards. knowing knowing is the process whereby teachers are capable of acting upon r and reflecting upon their actions based on the combination of professional, procedural, and personal knowledge. professional knowledge is disciplinerelated, and it encompasses knowledge about language learning and teaching. procedural knowledge represents the teachers’ ability to manage classes efficiently. lastly, personal knowledge is the teachers’ ability to transform their identities and beliefs as a result of reflection, experiences, and observation of their context. furthermore, the tesol’s standards for esl/ efl identify eight performance-based standards that “represent the core of what professional teachers of esl and efl for adult learners should know and be able to do” (kuhlman & knežević, n.d., p. 6). these are planning, instructing, assessing, language proficiency, learning, identity in context, content, commitment, and professionalism. likewise, tesol standards for k–12 teacher evaluations include content knowledge (language and sociocultural knowledge), pedagogical knowledge (instruction and assessment), learning environments, and professional knowledge (kuhlman & knežević, n.d.). in colombia, the ministry of education’s evaluation of primary and secondary in-service teachers in public schools focuses on professional, personal, and procedural knowledge. this mandatory evaluation process focuses on functional competencies (pedagogical knowledge, curriculum related duties, design, and evaluation) as well as behavioral competences (values, leadership, teamwork, social and institutional commitment, interpersonal relationships; ministerio de educación nacional [men], n.d.). the moments where the evaluations take place are entry to the system, trial period, and yearly performance and promotion led by the schools’ principals. class videos, students’ evaluation of teachers, and observations account for the teachers’ competences, and their compliance with their duties and the school’s policies. this evaluation aims at identifying weaknesses and strengths that favor the development of work and pedagogical competences that guarantee the permanence of the ideal teacher (men, n.d.). universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras102 niebles-thevening, bailey, & rosado analyzing analyzing is the teacher’s skill to recognize and determine learner’s needs, motivation, and autonomy. learner needs is what students want, need to achieve, and have not been able to achieve. learner motivation is the students’ drive to learn a second/foreign language, whether this comes from a desire or a need. learner autonomy is the students’ agency in their own learning process. one system that may uncover aspects of analyzing is chile’s system for the evaluation of professional teaching performance (sistema nacional de evaluación del desempeño profesional docente, sned) for public primary and high school teachers. sned is aligned with the national standards and consists of a portfolio, a thirdparty recommendations report, a three-question interview with a trained evaluator (peer) and a self-assessment report (ministerio de educación, república de chile, n.d.). this latter instrument includes 12 yes-no questions about the students’ critical and reflective thought, selfassessment, curiosity, and autonomy, and whether and how teachers’ practices foster them. however, yes-no questions might elicit expected answers and not classroom realities regarding autonomy and motivation. recognizing recognizing indicates the teacher’s standpoint regarding the classroom. it is the ability to recognize the teaching self (composed of identities, beliefs, and values) and to renew it. teacher identity is the persona displayed in the classroom and to other people in the teaching context. teacher beliefs refer to conceptual ideas and theories on teaching that tell the teacher what a “good class environment” or a “good teaching of grammar” are. finally, recognizing includes teacher’s values, which are related to the teachers’ moral agency and the challenges posed by rule compliance and caring for students. in our review, we have not found an in-service teacher evaluation system that focuses on this crucial dimension. doing doing refers to “classroom actions”; the teachers’ choices when approaching a classroom situation. it is a critical response process to the constant changes, multiplicities, and possibilities to create meaning. doing encompasses theorizing, dialogue, and teaching. theorizing indicates the teachers’ sensitivity to introducing appropriate changes to issues arising in the classroom. it is the antithesis of one-fits-all solutions to classroom issues. dialogue is the ongoing and analytical processing and discussion of practice with oneself and with others that leads to personal and professional growth. teaching refers to the ability to magnify and multiply the opportunities for students to learn, and to foster growth beyond textbooks and knowledge of a second/foreign language. chile’s sned interview with a peer is meant to evaluate teachers’ ability to reflect on their practice, using scenario-like questions grounded on procedural and professional aspects of the teaching-learning context (e.g., what do you do when one of your students is not interested in your class?). however, the questions’ orientation toward the whats and not the whys may be favoring an orientation of teaching to outcomes (garcia-chamorro & rosado-mendinueta, 2021; pinar & irwin, 2004). seeing seeing is “perceptual knowledge,” the application of knowledge to connect agents to action and vice versa (i.e., the lived experiences). seeing encompasses the teacher’s, the learner’s, and the observer’s perspectives. teachers’ perspective is their evaluation of what happens in the classroom from a multifaceted position of control. the learner’s perspective provides information about the learning experience from an active position in the learning process. finally, the observer’s perspective provides a critical outlook on teachers’ practices and how these impact the students’ learning. boraie (2014) noted that teacher effectiveness could be determined through observations, students’ evaluations, 103profile: issues teach. prof. dev., vol. 24 no. 2, jul-dec, 2022. issn 1657-0790 (printed) 2256-5760 (online). bogotá, colombia. pages 99-115 evaluating teachers’ practices beyond content and procedural knowledge in a colombian context self-report systems, and evidence of learning. hence, the multiplicity of factors included in successful teaching and the need for multiple instruments with various evaluation scales and perspectives should be recognized. thus, as checklists become longer, and expectations broader, teacher evaluation systems, such as the men’s, tend to scare teachers into passivity and accommodating behaviors of compliance, rather than challenging them to continuously work on their personal and professional development. although a set of evaluative factors is important to include inside larger-scale evaluation systems that center on student learning, it is likely that such systems become top-down reflections only of the macro-level’s mostly punitive visions and missions. similarly, self-motivated and less punitive systems such as the british council’s cpd might fail to identify critical aspects of teachers’ practice since they lack the students’ and others’ perspectives, which are considered essential in successful teacher evaluations (boraie, 2014). instruments like chile’s sned interviews, with simulated situations of teacher’s practice, may be eliciting rehearsed command of procedural knowledge and failing to represent tokens of critical teaching practices. therefore, we believe that by adapting the kards language teaching framework and by creating an evaluation tool using the key ideas in these three perspectives (teacher, observer, and student), we could identify more specific areas for teacher professional development in colombia. thus, our research question is: how can the kards model be used as a teacher evaluation tool for reflective and critical practice? method this interpretative case study examined the practices of in-service efl teachers through observation, reflection, and student evaluation. case studies allow researchers to expand and generalize theoretical propositions (yin, 2018); our case study was directed at exploring, from different perspectives, the pertinence of the kards model as a teacher evaluation tool. research context and participants the participants in the study were efl teachers and their students at a private university in colombia. an email that introduced the project and its commitment level was sent to all the english language faculty (n = 90) encouraging participation in the study, to which nine teachers agreed. these teachers’ academic and professional experience ranges from one to over 20 years, with various master’s degrees including english language teaching, tesol, applied linguistics, and other areas of humanities (see table 1). in total, the nine participating teachers imparted lessons to 121 students. these students were also contacted (by email) and informed about the nature of the study. table 1. participating teachers’ academic and professional experience (n = 9) highest academic degree country where the degree was obtained n ma applied linguistics usa 1 ma tesol usa 1 ma tefl puerto rico 1 ma elt colombia (enrolled) 2 ma elt colombia 1 lis usa 1 ma applied linguistics/tesol usa 1 ma communication canada 1 years of teaching 0–5 3 6–10 4 16–20 1 21+ 1 note. tesol = teaching english to speakers of other languages, tefl = teaching english as a foreign language, elt = english language teaching, lis = library science. universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras104 niebles-thevening, bailey, & rosado data collection instruments the instruments used for data collection and analysis were the following: teachers’ survey. the survey contained closed and open-ended questions (see appendix a) regarding their academic and professional experiences. the open-ended questions included what the teachers considered their greatest strengths, areas for improvement, their theory of practice or approach to language teaching, and their self-perceptions within the classroom. teacher reflective journal. participants worked freely on the journal procedure and reported either every other friday for eight weeks or every third friday for 12 weeks. for convenience’s sake, each participant shared a google drive folder with researchers. the questions aimed at eliciting information on the teachers’ day-to-day practice that reflected each of the modules of the kards model. knowing and doing were placed together to encourage full answers (see appendix b). students’ questionnaire. this questionnaire aimed at capturing the students’ perception of the learning process and how the teacher fostered it. it included eight statements related to learning and teaching processes in their english class, along with a scale with five levels of frequency (see appendix c) and an open-ended question on the students’ perception of their classroom learning experience. observations. classroom observations lasted one or two hours. the teachers were observed at least twice during the eight weeks. we encouraged the teachers to plan classes as usual. the goal was to identify specific features in the teachers’ practices and determine whether they reflected or not traits of the kards model in the classroom. kards rubric. the data collected were analyzed through content analysis using the a priori categories provided by the kards model. the three perspectives (teacher, learner, and observer) were the methods of collection and triangulation of the data indicated by s (seeing; see appendix d). to help us meet the study’s objectives, we created a checklist that incorporated the components in each kards’s module, based on the three principles of the post-method pedagogy: (a) practicality, which refers to the practice of teachergenerated theory; (b) particularity, or the understanding of the political and sociocultural particularities of the learning context; and (c) possibility, associated with critical pedagogy that contributes to raising sociopolitical awareness among participants (kumaravadivelu, 2012). criteria were established to quantify the degree to which each trait or behavior of the component was met. a high degree of reliability was found among the raters’ measurements. the average measure interrater correlation coefficient was .909 with a 95% confidence interval from .779 to .976 (f (8,56) = 11.00, p < .001). procedure first, teachers completed the survey and kept their reflective journal. the observations were made concurrently during the semester, depending on the teacher and the observers’ availability. each teacher originally sent specific dates and class times to the observers, and the observers agreed upon who and when they were going to observe. observations of teachers were categorized quantitatively and additional notes detailed further key aspects of the teachers’ practices and aspects of the kards’ model that checking the boxes would not have provided. findings and discussion this section shows and discusses the results of the data analysis from the three perspectives: teachers, observers, and learners. we shall highlight patterns of elements of kards found in each one of the perspectives. teachers’ perspective teachers’ survey knowing and doing. teachers articulated explicitly their representation of teaching and learning. t1, t2, 105profile: issues teach. prof. dev., vol. 24 no. 2, jul-dec, 2022. issn 1657-0790 (printed) 2256-5760 (online). bogotá, colombia. pages 99-115 evaluating teachers’ practices beyond content and procedural knowledge in a colombian context t5, t6, and t81 reported eclectic, combined practices in which the communicative approach was the most prominent. they also adopted a humanistic approach prioritizing students’ feelings toward the class and towards them as teachers. according to t7, her sociolinguistic perspective helps her understand her students. t2 and t6 mentioned that they struggle with managing their “teacher speaking” time, classroom setup, structure, and discipline, issues already identified by novozhenina and lópez-pinzón (2018). t4 mentioned that his concern for the students encourages him to “continuously seek ways to improve my classes and teaching practice, whether this means picking up a new book about teaching pedagogy or opening up dialogues, in person or online, with colleagues and fellow tesol professionals about our teaching.” recognizing. all teachers described themselves as dedicated, passionate, friendly, and approachable. t1, t4, t5, and t6 expressed their advocacy for students’ autonomy, as facilitators, and not as the center of the knowledge experience. t4, t5, and t7 mentioned a disconnection with students, needing more patience to lower the students’ anxiety and not to rush them. t1 said she provides students with opportunities for language learning and personal growth, and for the co-construction of a positive and safe classroom environment as a means to encourage effective language learning. t2, t3, t4, and t7 gave a similar answer. analyzing. overall, teachers stated that their practice was focused on student motivation, autonomy, and needs. good rapport, flexibility, adaptability, patience, and perseverance are the strengths that contribute to the attainment of the student-related aspects. some teachers reported weaknesses such as prioritization of syllabus fulfillment, which undermined students’ autonomy and needs. as for rapport, there were difficulties establishing personal connections with students, in the case of 1 the participating teachers are identified with the letter “t” followed by a number. t4, due to cultural factors (chirkov, 2009), managing teacher speaking time, and discipline (novozhenina & lópez-pinzón, 2018). teacher reflective journals knowing and doing. regarding professional knowledge, the intellectual content of the discipline was clear for the teachers mentioned various approaches to classroom teaching of skills and transfer of knowledge. t5 and t6 alluded to the inductive approach and scaffolding, but most teachers demonstrated methodological and goal-oriented approaches. concerning procedural knowledge, most teachers seemed taskoriented in the management of their classrooms, with few shifts in action. t1, t4, and t8 reported adapting, changing pace, or using different methods of student interaction depending on the context’s particularities. regarding personal knowledge, we detected mostly goal-based discussion which seemed to reflect a more procedural and practical attitude to teaching. teachers wrote reflections rooted upon beliefs about what had worked and what had not, resourcefully connecting to their intellectual and procedural knowledge (farrell & ives, 2015; goh et al., 2005). activities seemed to have gone well, at least from my perspective and from students’ claims. i think they learned because they said they had, and i gave them some kahoot quizzes, which showed learning. again, i cannot state they learned it in class because they could also have studied the material at home or outside the class. (t8) some teachers are responding to needs and shifting responsibility, but most of them are not reaching a dialogic approach in their classroom, an aspect which has been widely identified in the literature (buendía & macías, 2019; cárdenas et al., 2010; cote-parra, 2012; cuesta-medina et al., 2019; gonzález et al., 2002; insuasty & zambrano-castillo, 2010; olaya-mesa, 2018; rodríguez-ferreira, 2009; viáfara & largo, 2018). teachers do, however, offer innovative ways to universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras106 niebles-thevening, bailey, & rosado learn english through the social, political, and cultural contexts as shown before by kumaravadivelu (1994) and fajardo-castañeda (2011). teachers chose statements such as adapting to fit learning style, using phones and game playing as resources, which seems to indicate the existence of contemporary identities to help construct ludic spaces for generating an encouraging learning environment. others contextualize and personalize content to connect it to the students’ lives. they wrote their paragraphs and we checked one of them by highlighting the parts together. yet this is not the way i like to have my classes; i must point out that at least they seemed to understand the topic and solve a task based on what they were supposed to learn. (t7) as for maximizing learning, most teachers mentioned providing opportunities, feedback, and safe spaces for motivation and affectionate communication. teacher inquiry, however, was not mentioned often in the discussion. only t4 referred to using research or even consulting friends to help students attain or “grasp” the concepts being discussed in class, which putnam and borko (2016) have concluded to be forms of critical, reflective teaching practices. analyzing. analyzing learners’ needs, motivation, and autonomy appears to be a challenging competence for these teachers. the skills and knowledge required for doing so effectively intersect with the demanding nature of the context. we found that the teachers’ abilities to analyze are mainly imbued with procedural skills and knowledge (goh et al., 2005). accordingly, the teachers mentioned that learners needed guidance, support, and directedness to focus on tasks. they also mentioned the need for encouragement towards autonomy, to relate learning contents to their lives and to enhance their language accuracy. then the next time i taught the class i got a particularly unresponsive group, which made me realize that i needed to make sure i had various forms of scaffolding in place to ensure all students were successful, which is ultimately what i want to see: every student experiencing success at the level they are ready for. (t4) an associated idea identified was the teachers’ tendency to focus on learners’ needs by observing and acting, but they never mentioned including the learners themselves, by asking them to identify their needs, or by engaging students in metacognitive practice. i have never asked the students if they felt that listening in this way helped them later [in their] exams so maybe that is a mistake that i can remedy going forward and making sure that i do this. this is a positive aspect of this kind of reflection because it forces me to think about why and what i am doing instead of moving along in my own comfort zone. (t3) the analysis of learner motivation is presented mainly as an all or nothing construct. the verbs the teachers chose to describe their class activities suggest this underlying belief: i asked, helped, pushed, made them participate (farrell & ives, 2015; goh et al., 2005). students were either motivated and demonstrated it by being involved in activities and showing enjoyment or not. however, teachers’ relation to learners’ motivation and needs seems to be perceived as “caused by the teacher.” only t1 and t4 analyzed motivation in a more interactive manner as a condition resulting from the student’s investment in the class. in this regard, there is a retrospective view of motivation, not a prospective, dynamic one. recognizing. concerning teachers’ ability to embrace and adapt their identity, beliefs, and values, some teachers are more aware of their teaching self, and are willing to let the realities of their classes reshape it (fajardo-castañeda, 2011; williams & power, 2010). some of the difficulties were engaging all the students one on one to make sure each had a bit of individual feedback. it took a long time to do this but, in the end, it helped make a successful hands-on lesson because the students had a stronger understanding of what was expected of them, and how to put together a good paragraph. (t1) 107profile: issues teach. prof. dev., vol. 24 no. 2, jul-dec, 2022. issn 1657-0790 (printed) 2256-5760 (online). bogotá, colombia. pages 99-115 evaluating teachers’ practices beyond content and procedural knowledge in a colombian context others struggle with adapting to the realities of the classroom and seem to have strict expectations of time management, interaction with students, ways of providing feedback, and on students’ behavior and participation in class (farrell & ives, 2015). some of the difficulties during the activities are time management on my part and on the student’s part. how much time do they really need for an assignment? should i be stricter and really push them to finish within a reasonable allotted time, or because i give them more time if necessary they are just goofing off or working slowly? (t1) as for beliefs, t2, t7, and t8 strongly consider that the students and the system (explicitly or implicitly stated administrative and academic norms) are to blame for underachievement. they attributed their students’ low english levels to a deficient level placement, lack of interest in the class and in studying, and even laziness, as t1 mentioned; however, there is little reflection on why these situations occur and on how to fix them. we can assume, from the teachers’ statements, that there is almost conformity towards the students’ lack of performance, level placement, and the pass/fail system (as found also by quintero-polo & guerrero-nieto, 2013). regarding values, t3 expressed not wanting to expose students to class embarrassment, which indicates sensitivity towards students’ feelings. another example is t4’s commitment to engage all the students in class, regardless of their language level, which, for other teachers, is an unavoidable consequence of their placement and pass/fail system. students’ perspective student evaluation of teachers knowing and doing. from students’ answers, we identified and categorized the following aspects in these modules: positively changed perception of students towards language learning, teachers’ interest in students’ learning, opportunities for students to learn from mistakes, and pleasant class environment. overall, students see appropriate methodologies and teaching strategies and relate those to their learning of the language. all the teachers provide them with motivation, opportunities to learn, support with error correction, and interesting topics for their future professional life. however, noticeably, t4 was not as highly praised as the rest of the teachers, which might be explained by, in his own words, “a disconnection” with his students. t4 considers that being a foreigner and being used to teaching older adults are the reasons for this disconnection. however, this recognition also comes with a reflection for improvement, in which he says: “so this disconnection i have experienced is something i am working on.” one student said the class positively changed their perceptions on the benefits of learning english. five students praised their teachers’ (t1, t2, t5, t7) interest in their learning and their efforts to facilitate it and create a good class environment. analyzing. salient aspects found in students’ answers were teachers’ skills to fulfill students’ needs for improving accuracy, motivation, and participation in class through fun activities and games, and including relevant, enriching topics in class. three students referred to t2 as “the best,” because the class contributes to the students’ active learning and constant participation. they also valued their teachers’ skill to teach and correct grammar through fun activities. two students highlighted t5 for teaching context appropriate topics and promoting their skills and a well-rounded education. however, students also expressed needs for t4’s classes to be more dynamic. similarly, one student asked t1 more balance between home and in-class activities, and another student suggested that t3 pay more attention to the students who are not doing well. recognizing. from students’ answers, two teachers’ identities were prominent: teachers as a source of fun and teachers as warm human beings who connect universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras108 niebles-thevening, bailey, & rosado emotionally with them. most of the students highlighted their teachers’ ability to create fun and what they called dynamic classes. t4’s students, on the other hand, highlighted the need for these. similarly, except for t4, the students mentioned how there is affection, respect, and kindness in t1, t2, t3, t5, and t7’s classes. as expected, this closeness, as students stated, inspires, motivates, and helps them to better understand topics and perform through their learning process (gruber et al., 2012). observers’ perspective observation of teachers knowing and doing. consistently with teachers’ and students’ perspectives, we saw devotion to the students, evident in the teachers’ attempts to provide constant guidance. t1, t2, t3, t4, and t7 evidenced a personal approach in their interactions and a strong investment in creating a friendly and engaging environment for their students. t4 and t8 used humor, and provided interactive, ludic opportunities for fun and play through game-like activities, which reflect their belief in the positive impact of an emotional connection on learning (farrell & ives, 2015). as for maximizing learning opportunities, although we saw time and space as input for the class, there were few cases of delving into or taking critical stances on cultural or political topics, when the opportunity arose (fajardo-castañeda, 2011). analyzing. overall, there was a marked focus on the textbook and lack of encouragement for autonomy and maximizing learning opportunities. this contradicts what t6 and t4 stated in their journals. additionally, t6, t7, t8, and t9 did not show responsiveness to the context and to students who deviated from the expected language level of the class, which they consider an irreparable flaw of the system they do not attempt to change (farrell & ives, 2015; quintero-polo & guerreronieto, 2013). this was coherent with a students’ answer in the teacher evaluation. recognizing. this aspect was not observable because class observations were non-participatory, and thus, there was no interaction between the observer and the teachers. conclusions we shall discuss the conclusions from the different teacher evaluation instruments developed around kards for each one of the three perspectives (teachers, students, observers) to propose an answer to our research question and, finally, draw some implications thereof. the teachers’ perspective by using survey questions and reflective journals with guiding questions based on the tenets of the kards model, and by performing content analysis under the same framework, we could observe that the teachers have strong procedural and professional knowledge and clear perspectives on who they are in their humanistic, affective dimension. they guide their practice on the belief that emotional connection with students promotes effective learning (farrell & ives, 2015; gruber et al., 2012), which could be more fruitful if used to listen and tend to the students’ learning needs. additionally, the model allowed us to unveil teachers’ beliefs on motivation and autonomy. for teachers, it seems, motivation is rooted in providing students with fun activities in class that also elicit correct answers. similarly, teachers refer to autonomy as the class moments that students have to complete a task without surveillance. likewise, teachers’ understanding of their own autonomy is limited to decision-making based on procedural and professional knowledge conditioned by compliance with the syllabus, as opposed to the essence of autonomy for post-method teachers, who “act autonomously within the academic and administrative constraints imposed by institutions, curricula, and textbooks” (kumaravadivelu, 2012, p. 10). we also observed that some teachers did not encourage the students’ autonomy or critical stances when opportunities arose. we suggest that 109profile: issues teach. prof. dev., vol. 24 no. 2, jul-dec, 2022. issn 1657-0790 (printed) 2256-5760 (online). bogotá, colombia. pages 99-115 evaluating teachers’ practices beyond content and procedural knowledge in a colombian context such orientation towards procedure limits the students’ agency. using kards, we discovered the inadequacy of the way motivation, autonomy, and learner needs are analyzed and understood in a society that calls for change (kumaravadivelu, 2012). the students’ perspective students’ responses framed on the kards model allowed us to understand their perception of their teachers’ practice and its impact on their learning process. additionally, we found convergence points between teachers’ and students’ perceptions. for instance, both students and teachers see motivation narrowly constructed as an externality, usually provided by games and good rapport with the teacher. consequently, students’ standards for good teaching practices involve games and entertainment. this can divert professional development from meaningful teaching practices, and it could also become an unfair evaluation of teachers whose approach does not involve games, more so if the evaluation consists of a checklist, such as the men’s (n.d.) questionnaire for students to evaluate their teachers. the observers’ perspective observing teachers through the core features of kards, and focusing on their practice beyond the “whats,” we found not only that the teachers have strong professional knowledge instantiated in goal-oriented actions and reflections, but also that their analyzing converges towards students’ needs and motivations from a procedural orientation. analyzing, for these teachers, follows linear views of teaching and learning or learning caused by teaching. however, some teachers lack responsiveness to the context or to students who are below their expectations. needs seemed derived from the predetermined syllabus in response to macro factors; paradoxically, at the micro level (i.e., the classroom), our analysis did not unveil any indication of teachers responding to the students’ particular needs and motivations. this could be problematic, as failing to do so could affect the learners’ motivation (benesch as cited in kumaravadivelu, 2012). through kards, we could see the teachers’ lack of dialogic approach toward their classroom and little inquiry orientation towards decision making, reflected also on their lack of participation in communities of practice. implications this study sought to explore the kards model as an evaluation tool from a classroom external perspective (teachers, students, and observer) that would help identify the specific teachers’ professional development needs for a more critical and reflective teaching, something that has already been highlighted in the colombian context by several studies (buendía & macías, 2019; cárdenas et al., 2010; cote-parra, 2012; cuesta-medina et al., 2019; insuasty & zambrano-castillo, 2010; olaya-mesa, 2018; rodríguez-ferreira, 2009; viáfara & largo, 2018). although the small number of participating teachers and the students’ lack of elaboration on the answers about their teachers were evident limitations, the application of the kards model as an evaluative tool for in-service teachers seems promising. its comprehensive and nonprescriptive nature allowed us to identify a mismatch between the understanding students and teachers have of autonomy and motivation and the meaning these concepts should have in a society that calls for change (kumaravadivelu, 2012). these are results and analyses that other teacher evaluations tools fail to elicit due to their prescriptive nature and their main focus on procedural and professional knowledge. two main sets of interrelated implications resulted from this study: those associated with the application of the kards model as an evaluative tool, and those related to teacher education and professional development needs that stem from its application. as for the application of this model as a teacher’s evaluation tool, its comprehensive nature poses challenges to its application and to stakeholders. first, its operationalization would require professional development to promote universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras110 niebles-thevening, bailey, & rosado the necessary conditions and abilities “for teachers to know, to analyze, to recognize, to do, and to see learning, teaching, and teacher development” (kumaravadivelu, 2012, p. 122). thus, not only will teachers 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(2004). curriculum in a new key: the collected works of ted t. aoki. routledge. https://doi.org/10.4324/9781410611390 https://revistas.udea.edu.co/index.php/ikala/article/view/3183 https://revistas.udea.edu.co/index.php/ikala/article/view/3183 https://revistas.udea.edu.co/index.php/ikala/article/view/3208 https://revistas.udea.edu.co/index.php/ikala/article/view/3208 https://doi.org/10.1080/13540600902875340 https://doi.org/10.1177/0273475312450385 https://revistas.unal.edu.co/index.php/profile/article/view/17682 https://revistas.unal.edu.co/index.php/profile/article/view/17682 https://doi.org/10.4324/9780203878033 https://doi.org/10.4324/9780203878033 https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1540-4781.2011.01178.x https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1540-4781.2011.01178.x https://bit.ly/3icaoim https://doi.org/10.2307/3587197 https://doi.org/10.2307/3587197 https://revistas.unal.edu.co/index.php/recs/article/view/9630 https://revistas.unal.edu.co/index.php/recs/article/view/9630 https://doi.org/10.21676/23897856.1355 https://bit.ly/378jqgl https://bit.ly/378jqgl https://bit.ly/3zxcmvx https://bit.ly/378k33x https://doi.org/10.19183/how.25.2.406 https://doi.org/10.19183/how.25.2.406 https://doi.org/10.19183/how.25.2.386 https://doi.org/10.19183/how.25.2.386 https://doi.org/10.1080/13540600309376 https://doi.org/10.4324/9781410611390 universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras112 niebles-thevening, bailey, & rosado putnam, r. t., & borko, h. (2016). what do new views of knowledge and thinking have to say about research on teacher learning? educational researcher, 29(1), 4–15. https://doi.org/10.3102/0013189x029001004 quintero-polo, á., & guerrero-nieto, c. (2013). “of being and not being:” colombian public elementary school teachers’ oscillating identities. how journal, 20(1), 190–205. https:// howjournalcolombia.org/index.php/how/article/view/30 richards, j. c, & lockhart, c. (1994). reflective teaching in second language classrooms. cambridge university press. https://doi.org/10.1017/cbo9780511667169 rodríguez-ferreira, c. (2009). evaluation in the teaching practicum of the english program at the universidad de la amazonía. profile: issues in teachers’ professional development, 11(1), 79–90. https://revistas.unal.edu.co/ index.php/profile/article/view/10546 rubiano, c. i., frodden, c., & cardona, g. (2000). the impact of the colombian framework for english (cofe) project: an insider’s perspective. íkala: revista de lenguaje y cultura, 5(1), 37–56. https://revistas.udea.edu.co/index. php/ikala/article/view/8545 thomas, l., & beauchamp, c. (2011). understanding new teachers’ professional identities through metaphor. teaching and teacher education, 27(4), 762–769. https:// doi.org/10.1016/j.tate.2010.12.007 tsui, a. b. m., & law, d. y. k. (2007). learning as boundarycrossing in school–university partnership. teaching and teacher education, 23(8), 1289–1301. https://doi. org/10.1016/j.tate.2006.06.003 viáfara, j. j., & largo, j. d. (2018). colombian english teachers’ professional development: the case of master programs. profile: issues in teachers’ professional development, 20(1), 103–119. https://doi.org/10.15446/profile.v20n1.63323 williams, j., & power, k. (2010). examining teacher educator practice and identity through core reflection. studying teacher education, 6(2), 115–130. https://doi.org/10.108 0/17425964.2010.495888 yin, r. k. (2018). case study research and applications: design and methods (6th ed.). sage publications. about the authors indira niebles-thevening has a master’s degree in applied linguistics from the university of queensland, australia. her teaching experience includes different ages and levels of education. she is a professor at universidad del norte. her research interests include english for specific purposes, teacher’s professional development, and curriculum design. angela bailey holds an edd from the university of phoenix and an ma in tesol. her teaching experience includes several universities and adult education. she is an assistant professor at universidad del norte. her research interests are teacher education, professional development, language learning and technology, and curriculum and instruction development. nayibe rosado is an assistant professor at universidad del norte. she holds an edd from universidad del atlántico. she is part of the research group “lenguaje y educación.” her research interests include teacher and student learning, complexity, technology in language teaching, and curriculum development. https://doi.org/10.3102/0013189x029001004 https://howjournalcolombia.org/index.php/how/article/view/30 https://howjournalcolombia.org/index.php/how/article/view/30 https://doi.org/10.1017/cbo9780511667169 https://revistas.unal.edu.co/index.php/profile/article/view/10546 https://revistas.unal.edu.co/index.php/profile/article/view/10546 https://revistas.udea.edu.co/index.php/ikala/article/view/8545 https://revistas.udea.edu.co/index.php/ikala/article/view/8545 https://doi.org/10.1016/j.tate.2010.12.007 https://doi.org/10.1016/j.tate.2010.12.007 https://doi.org/10.1016/j.tate.2006.06.003 https://doi.org/10.1016/j.tate.2006.06.003 https://doi.org/10.15446/profile.v20n1.63323 https://doi.org/10.1080/17425964.2010.495888 https://doi.org/10.1080/17425964.2010.495888 113profile: issues teach. prof. dev., vol. 24 no. 2, jul-dec, 2022. issn 1657-0790 (printed) 2256-5760 (online). bogotá, colombia. pages 99-115 evaluating teachers’ practices beyond content and procedural knowledge in a colombian context appendix a: teacher survey please take a few minutes to provide the following information prior to beginning the reflective narrative process. 1. gender 2. highest degree obtained. place 3. years as a language teacher 4. institutions you have worked for. time at each 5. what would you say are your greatest strengths as a language teacher? 6. what would you say are your areas for improvement? 7. describe your personal theory of practice or approach to language teaching 8. describe how you are as a language teacher inside the classroom appendix b: reflective journals deadline: every other friday for eight weeks or every third friday for 12 weeks. knowing and doing: what were some of the activities you did during the week? how did you do them? why? analyzing: what did you notice about your students’ interest, needs, and autonomy during these activities? how did you notice? what did you do about it? why? recognizing: what were some of the difficulties during the activities? how did you react to them? why? seeing: how did the activities go during the week? did the students learn? how do you know? were there any special changes you did to make the experience better? what were they? universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras114 niebles-thevening, bailey, & rosado appendix c: student questionnaire this questionnaire aims to understand your perspective as a student about the learning and teaching process in your current english classes at instituto de idiomas; answering it will not take longer than five minutes. your answers will be used in a study, and your identity will remain confidential. thank you in advance for your time. always frequently sometimes hardly ever never my teacher: understands the learning context and respects it. knows and uses a broad set of activities and methods in class. encourages discussion through activities that are appropriate for our context. listens to our needs and adjusts classes correspondingly. seeks to help us learn as individuals and as a group. i: feel motivated in my english classes. feel motivated to study and work on my own even without the teacher telling me so. briefly write how you feel in relation to the learning-teaching in your current english class at instituto de idiomas. you can write as much as you want in the back of this paper. note. this survey was translated into spanish for students’ convenience. 115profile: issues teach. prof. dev., vol. 24 no. 2, jul-dec, 2022. issn 1657-0790 (printed) 2256-5760 (online). bogotá, colombia. pages 99-115 evaluating teachers’ practices beyond content and procedural knowledge in a colombian context appendix d: kards rubric scale: 5 = the teacher obviously demonstrates the traits or behaviors incorporated into the category. 4 = there were remarkable demonstrations of the traits or behaviors incorporated into the category. 3 = at times there were demonstrations of the traits of behaviors incorporated into the category. 2 = the traits or behaviors incorporated into the category were rarely noticed. 1 = none of the traits or behaviors were noticed in the category. seeing 5 4 3 2 1 post-methods   making connections between what happens and “knowing” with clarity • particularity situational understanding: the holistic interpretation of situations and identifying how to improve them           observer perspective • practicality theory and practice/producer and consumer             • possibility classroom reality is socially constructed and historically determined             knowing process and product             • professional intellectual content of discipline             • procedural the teacher manages classroom teaching and learning             • personal the endeavor of teaching: the teacher has a sense of what does and does not work             analyzing the shift in cognitive psychology, postmodern thoughts, and critical pedagogy             • learner’s needs             • learner’s motivation             • learner’s autonomy             recognizing teacher from teaching • identities construction • beliefs disposition • values intrinsic perspective …moral judgment doing             • theorizing the teacher offers learners innovative ways to approach social, political, and cultural identities             • teaching maximizing learning opportunities             • dialogue professional development expressive writing to relieve academic stress at university level 17profile: issues teach. prof. dev., vol. 23 no. 2, jul-dec, 2021. issn 1657-0790 (printed) 2256-5760 (online). bogotá, colombia. pages 17-33 https://doi.org/10.15446/profile.v23n2.90448 expressive writing to relieve academic stress at university level escritura expresiva para aliviar el estrés académico a nivel universitario juanita argudo1 universidad de cuenca, cuenca, ecuador and universidad nacional de la plata, la plata, argentina this paper reports on a descriptive mixed-method study that aimed to identify the impact of expressive writing on relieving the academic stress of 157 undergraduate students at an ecuadorian university. data were gathered through two questionnaires and from focus groups. results showed enduring relief of academic stress. furthermore, they help to shed light on the need to study the impact of academic stress on university students and to look for different strategies that can alleviate it. these findings could help to understand students’ needs, as they have essential implications in teachers’ practices and, consequently, in students’ performance. in conclusion, expressive writing has a positive effect on helping to ease academic stress and overcome some difficulties caused by this issue. keywords: academic stress, expressive writing, students’ perceptions este artículo informa sobre un estudio descriptivo de métodos mixtos que tuvo como objetivo identificar el impacto de la escritura expresiva para aliviar el estrés académico en 157 estudiantes de pregrado de una universidad ecuatoriana. los datos se obtuvieron por medio de dos cuestionarios y de grupos de estudio. los resultados mostraron un alivio permanente del estrés académico. además, se evidencia la necesidad de estudiar el impacto del estrés académico en los estudiantes universitarios y buscar diferentes estrategias para aliviarlo. estos hallazgos podrían ayudar a comprender las necesidades de los estudiantes, las mismas que tienen implicaciones esenciales en las prácticas de los docentes y, en consecuencia, en el desempeño de los estudiantes. en conclusión, la escritura expresiva tiene un efecto positivo ya que ayuda a aliviar el estrés académico y a superar algunas dificultades que este genera. palabras clave: estrés académico, escritura expresiva, percepción de los estudiantes juanita argudo  https://orcid.org/0000-0002-3337-7803 · email: juanita.argudo@ucuenca.edu.ec this article is based on the doctoral dissertation completed by argudo (2019). how to cite this article (apa, 7th ed.): argudo, j. (2021). expressive writing to relieve academic stress at university level. profile: issues in teachers’ professional development, 23(2), 17–33. https://doi.org/10.15446/profile.v23n2.90448 this article was received on september 9, 2020 and accepted on march 22, 2021. this is an open access article distributed under the terms of the creative commons license attribution-noncommercial-noderivatives 4.0 international license. consultation is possible at https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/ https://doi.org/10.15446/profile.v23n2.90448 https://orcid.org/0000-0002-3337-7803 mailto:juanita.argudo@ucuenca.edu.ec https://doi.org/10.15446/profile.v23n2.90448 universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras18 argudo introduction studying at the university level can be a very stressful and anxiety-inducing experience which can affect many aspects of students’ lives. evidence indicates that english as a foreign language (efl) students face this problem in the language learning process, due to knowledge deficits and linguistic difficulties in the use of the target language (hashemi, 2011). one of the requirements to earn a university degree in ecuador is achieving a b1 level in english of the common european framework of reference for languages (semplades, personal communication, september 2011). research shows that efl students focus intently on this university requirement because they know that english proficiency can help them in their professional lives after graduation. however, the possibility of failure in this subject can change feelings about english study from excitement to pain and anxiety (hashemi, 2011). academic outcomes arising from being unable to understand and use the target language or from not having enough resources to meet university language requirements are concerns that need to be addressed. considering the difficulties this situation causes for students, it is necessary to find and employ stress management strategies and alleviate these negative feelings in efl students because, as stated by pennebaker (2018), “concealing or holding back powerful emotions, thoughts, and behaviors is itself stressful” (p. 226). in this regard, expressive writing has emerged in recent years as an interesting and effective alternative for stress reduction (bockarov, 2015; pennebaker, 2018). this expressive writing strategy to release academic stress calls for more research to gain additional insight in this realm. the aim of this study is to describe the impact expressive writing has on efl university students’ and preservice efl teachers’ perceptions of how it helps to relieve stress. this paper is organized as follows: first, an account is given of some aspects of teaching english in the ecuadorian context and of different issues that have affected this process at the university level in recent years. next, this paper considers english as a graduation requirement in the ecuadorian context in order to examine some important student characteristics and needs regarding this subject. finally, a discussion is held of evidence regarding the impact of using expressive writing to relieve academic stress. english as a graduation requirement in ecuadorian universities the ecuadorian constitution declares that all ecuadorians have a right to education, making it a priority in public policy (mineduc, 2011). at the same time, the constitution states that learning english is indispensable not only to communicate but also to be able to find and use technological and scientific information (mineduc, 2011). because of this constitutional mandate, university education in ecuador took action to address this concern. consequently, the academic regime regulation approved by the council of higher education established proficiency in a foreign language at a b1 level, according to the common european reference framework, as a graduation requirement for all students at university level (resolution 111, 2019). at present, each university can decide whether or not to include the subject of english language learning in the university curriculum. consequently, students can take english language classes within or outside the university. it is mandatory that students take a proficiency test in this language at the end of their studies. if they do not pass the test, they will not be eligible for graduation in any major (resolution 111, 2019). teaching english at university level in relation to teaching english, the current debate has focused on whether english as a lingua franca (elf) should replace efl programs, since it has become an instrumental language. in other words, it fulfills specific purposes. therefore, english is learned and used with 19profile: issues teach. prof. dev., vol. 23 no. 2, jul-dec, 2021. issn 1657-0790 (printed) 2256-5760 (online). bogotá, colombia. pages 17-33 expressive writing to relieve academic stress at university level particular communication purposes (rojas-carucí, 2012). “efl is defined as a means of communication between speakers who do not share the same mother tongue and who use english for certain purposes” (ur, 2010, p. 85). although elf is also used for communicative purposes, the level of intelligibility is the key here: as long as the message is understood, everything is acceptable, based on the “let it pass” principle (nagy, 2016). notwithstanding, teaching english in a formal context does not allow for variation and is based on the principle that to learn a language, it must be learned correctly, since, in most cases, those who learn it will not only use it in elf contexts, but also to communicate with english speakers who handle not only the language’s phonetic properties but also correct morpho-syntax. therefore, it is essential for college students to learn and use english appropriately, which means that until a practical model that integrates these two uses of english is found, elf cannot replace efl (nagy, 2016). in this regard, according to lightbown and spada (2016), proficiency in a language helps to develop mental flexibility, as well as some cognitive functions such as attention and communication. these two approaches to english use are important to consider since ecuadorian universities teach efl; then, learning english in this context might cause more stress than learning it in an elf one; as mentioned by hashemi (2011), students may experience linguistic difficulties in learning and using the target language in a formal context. in addition to the aforementioned situation, ecuadorian universities are working to ensure that their students achieve the desired proficiency level in a foreign language. however, university students are under a great deal of pressure and stress because they know that years of effort and study can be erased by the results of an english exam. these exams generate several negative emotional reactions since the results students obtain determines their future (álvarez-hernández et al., 2013). when this fear is accompanied by high levels of anxiety, it might interfere not only with their academic performance but also with their personal life. in this way, it can be said that while it is important and necessary for university students to acquire proficiency in a foreign language, it is also necessary to consider how the stress of taking an exam of this nature affects their physical and emotional health. thus, it is imperative to look for strategies to manage and counteract this type of stress, because by acquiring proficiency in a foreign language, students are acquiring an indispensable tool for their professional and personal future. expressive writing the use of personal and emotional writing skills as an alternative strategy to relieve stress is known as expressive writing (pennebaker & beall, 1986). this strategy has shown positive results in different fields, affecting people in several areas (pennebaker, 2004). according to pennebaker and evans (2014), expressive writing is a strategy that uses words in a healing way. the author indicates that writing can often be useful, especially when it comes to negative experiences. in expressive writing the emotional content of the written text becomes a factor in its appeal, which ends up being a relief strategy (pennebaker & evans, 2014). according to pennebaker and graybeal (2001), it is possible to identify and evaluate people’s behavior and mood in relation to several characteristics of their writing, since the choice of words can also reveal a lot about an individual. through writing, people express not only their thoughts and desires, but also who they are; consequently, through writing, a better understanding of related language, emotions, and thoughts is possible. academic stress and expressive writing students usually experience moments that make them vulnerable to stress. they must face the pressure to succeed in both their personal and academic lives; they are also affected by various social, emotional, family, universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras20 argudo or physical problems that might impact their academic performance as well as their regular learning process (jeronimus et al., 2014). several studies show positive results when using the expressive writing strategy with stressed students. pennebaker and beall (1986) carried out a study with undergraduate students with the aim of verifying whether writing about traumatic moments in the past would help them improve their physical health in the long term and improve their mood in the short term. these authors found that writing about disturbing experiences and mentioning their emotions and feelings reduced health problems and helped students to feel emotionally better. regarding the effects of expressive writing on students, there is evidence that this strategy helps increase the availability of working memory. klein and boals (2001) worked with university students who, after using expressive writing, felt less stressed when undergoing a formal evaluation. ramírez and beilock (2011) concluded that after practicing the expressive writing strategy before a test, students show a calmer attitude during an exam and perform better. in this same vein, studies have shown that anxiety about mathematics can negatively affect students’ problem-solving abilities in this area; though after using expressive writing, students experienced improved test performance (park et al., 2014). also, there is evidence of similar results in japan, the netherlands, mexico, and france with monolingual and bilingual students showing significant positive results (domínguez et al., 1995; rimé, 1995; schoutrop et al., 2002; yogo & fujihara, 2008). expressive writing in the participants’ mother tongue educational efl and english as a second language (esl) research has shown that, when gleaning information from participants, they express themselves in a free and more expressive way when using their mother tongue (ganuza & hedman, 2019). in this respect, bockarov (2015) has studied the effects of expressive writing on esl students, combining their mother tongue and the target language. she concluded that writing in the mother tongue can be a stronger stimulant of emotional responses; however, it helps students improve their performance whether using their mother tongue or the target language for the writing exercises. there is also evidence that expressive writing in the participants’ mother tongue helped tertiary second language (l2) students not only to feel engaged in writing tasks but also to develop and analyze ideas (pfeiffer & van der walt, 2017). similarly, gains and graham (2011) reported positive results in three workshops with teachers when using expressive writing in the participants’ mother tongue to improve their writing pedagogy competence which also resulted in better learners’ writing. it is to be mentioned that not many studies were found with efl students using expressive writing in their mother tongue to relieve academic stress. therefore, this study will examine how expressive writing in the mother tongue favors two specific groups of students (efl undergraduate students, and preservice efl program teachers) at the universidad de cuenca to reduce academic stress. in this way, the intention is to explore and describe various participants’ perceptions of how the act of expressive writing affects their academic behavior. for the purpose of this research, expressive writing is defined as a personal and emotional hand-written piece of writing about stressful academic experiences, in the participants’ mother tongue without taking into account punctuation, grammar accuracy, or any other mechanical feature of writing. in an effort to investigate university students’ academic stress and their perceptions of the effects of using expressive writing in the mother tongue as a strategy to reduce it, the following research question has arisen: what perceptions have been forged by efl undergraduate students and efl preservice teachers at the universidad de cuenca (ecuador) on the impact of the expressive writing strategy in the mother tongue to reduce their academic stress? 21profile: issues teach. prof. dev., vol. 23 no. 2, jul-dec, 2021. issn 1657-0790 (printed) 2256-5760 (online). bogotá, colombia. pages 17-33 expressive writing to relieve academic stress at university level method this is a mixed method descriptive study (mertens, 2015). data were collected for both quantitative and qualitative analyses as indicated by dörnyei (2007). this approach, as suggested by some authors (creswell, 2014; mertens, 2015), allows the researcher to select, analyze, and integrate the most specific techniques from both a quantitative and a qualitative perspective in order to obtain a more precise triangulation. the results and conclusions can then be rounded out, clarified, and expanded with greater precision, while increasing the credibility range (mertens, 2015). the objective of this research was to describe the effects the expressive writing strategy in the mother tongue has on students who are taking efl classes or studying in the preservice efl program at universidad de cuenca to relieve academic stress. participants and context this study took place at the universidad de cuenca, a public university in the southern part of ecuador. it has around 16,000 students. teachers and their intact classes in the preservice efl program and in the language department of the university were invited to participate; two classes from the preservice efl program and four from the language department accepted this invitation. it is necessary to mention the proposal to work with these two groups because even though they study english, they do it with a different purpose and in a different way. the efl learners from this research study belong to different academic majors and they attend english classes as a graduation requirement. they take their english classes without regard to their progress or current status in their majors. however, preservice efl program students take english classes in the early years of their program, including subjects such as reading and writing, grammar, conversation, and so on, to get prepared in the language domain. in their advanced courses, preservice efl students also take classes in content areas that are taught in english (argudo et al., 2018). as mentioned before, though these two groups study english, they do it differently and for different reasons. this is an important factor to be analyzed, as results in the use of the expressive writing strategy to heal academic stress in these two groups might have some important similarities and differences. for the quantitative phase of the study, intact classes, as suggested by mackey and gass (2005), were studied since these classes were previously established and research in the area of teaching does not always allow selecting samples at random. a non-probabilistic and intentional-type selection was made, since the classes were selected arbitrarily (creswell, 2014). one hundred and fifty-seven students participated in this phase of the study, 63 from the preservice efl program, and 94 from the university language department. the participants’ ages ranged from 18 to 35 years. they completed two questionnaires: a profile one (appendix a) and a survey (appendix b) to inquire about their perceptions on the use of expressive writing. for the qualitative phase of the study, all the students wrote in journals (appendix c) and some of them also participated in focus groups. to select focus group participants, students were classified by course into three groups: (a) those who reported that expressive writing had positively influenced them to relieve their academic stress before the formal assessments took place, (b) those who reported that expressive writing had not always helped them with their academic stress, and (c) those who reported that this strategy had not helped them. random sampling was then carried out and six participants per course were chosen, two from each group. then, the focus groups were conducted to allow an in-depth investigation of students’ perceptions of the influence of expressive writing on their academic stress, and to determine whether they would choose to use this strategy in the future. self-reported data were gathered from both the expressive writing acts and the focus groups. in this sense, pennebaker’s (2018) operational definition of perceptions was considered, since he defined universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras22 argudo it as the meaning attached to the expressive writing experience expressed by the participants and the way these experiences make sense on their lives. to maintain the confidentiality and anonymity rights of the participants as suggested by mackey and gass (2005), real names were not used; instead, a pseudonym was given to every person. data collection instruments a profile questionnaire (see appendix a) was used to gather student information such as age, gender, academic major, and marital status, as well as questions such as how many times they had visited health centers or private physicians because of academic stress since the beginning of the semester; also, whether they felt ill, or if these had made them stop their academic activities. pennebaker and beall (1986) suggested asking these questions before starting the expressive writing sessions. before every formal evaluation took place, students from the two groups (efl and preservice efl program students) wrote about a situation in the past when they experienced academic stress (see appendix c). right after they finish this expressive writing act, they were formally evaluated. then, a survey of people’s perceptions of using the expressive writing strategy developed by pennebaker and beall (1986) was used (appendix b). it is important to include in this survey data related to students’ perceptions and feelings regarding the use of expressive writing. importantly, this instrument is a self-report that accounts for the emotional state of individuals (watson et al., 1987); consequently, students’ perceptions and evaluation are highly subjective. the consistency of this instrument was evaluated using cronbach’s alpha, obtaining 0.913. finally, the focus groups were also organized. all the instruments (profile questionnaire, survey about perceptions, and the focus groups) were in spanish, the students’ native language, as recommended by filep (2009). whenever students are invited to reflect on different types of information and to assertively comprehend and express their feelings and perceptions, it is better to use their native language. in the case of the information gathered from the focus groups, it is important to mention that it was transcribed and translated into english; however, to ensure internal validity, the member checking strategy was used as suggested by creswell (2014). for the quantitative analysis the ibm spss 22 software was used to evaluate data and uncover important information that could help to elucidate the effects of expressive writing on students’ stress management. analogies to measure stress reduction in each expressive writing session were used with the wilcoxon nonparametric statistics test. regarding the qualitative analysis, the atlas. ti 8v software was used to create codes and categories. findings quantitative results data were collected in two stages. in the first stage, information about students’ profiles and their academic stress experience was collected. in the second stage, students were asked about their perceptions of the use of the expressive writing strategy. it is necessary to mention that this strategy was used in four different instances with every group of students during one semester. for this study, in the preservice efl program, the second and fourth of ninth class levels participated in the study, these courses had 31 and 32 students respectively (n = 63). on the other hand, 94 students from the language department program participated: two first-level groups, with 26 and 28 students respectively, one second-level group with 21 students, and one thirdlevel group with 19 students (see table 1). the group of students in the language department comprised various majors at the university. in this group, 17.8% of the students were studying business administration, 12.8% were studying architecture, 10.1% were studying psychology. the rest of the students were students of law, engineering, educational sciences, and journalism (see table 2). 23profile: issues teach. prof. dev., vol. 23 no. 2, jul-dec, 2021. issn 1657-0790 (printed) 2256-5760 (online). bogotá, colombia. pages 17-33 expressive writing to relieve academic stress at university level table 1. academic profiles of the participating groups group semester/level n % preservice efl program 2nd semester of the preservice efl program 31 19.6 4th semester of the preservice efl program 32 20.3 language department 1st level a 26 17.1 1st level b 28 17.6 2nd level 21 13.3 3rd level 19 12.1 total 157 100.0 table 2. students’ majors group major n % preservice efl program preservice efl program 63 40.3 language department business administration 28 17.8 architecture 20 12.8 psychology 16 10.1 law 12 7.7 engineering 10 6.3 educational science 5 3.1 journalism 3 1.9 total 157 100.0 during the last semester a higher number of students in the preservice efl program (47.8%) mentioned visiting the doctor because of stress than did the language department students (34%). on average, 39.5% of students reported having visited the doctor due to stress in the previous six months (see table 3). there is no great difference between one group and the other; 73% of the students in the preservice efl program felt ill because of stress, and 71.3% in the language department also felt ill for the same reason. on average, the majority (72.2%) stated that they had felt ill because of stress in the previous six months, an alarming situation since it means that a high percentage of english language students at the universidad de cuenca feel stressed, but have not necessarily visited the doctor (see table 4). there is no major statistical difference separating students who stopped their academic activities because of stress in one group or the other. the percentage of preservice efl program students who stopped their activities is 39.1% and in the language department 37.2%. thus, on average, nearly four out of ten (38.3%) students from both groups said they had stopped their academic activities (skipping classes or not doing homework) because of stress in the previous six months (see table 5). table 3. students who have visited a health specialist because of stress in the previous six months group visited the doctor because of stress preservice efl program language department total n % n % n % yes 30 47.8 32 34.0 62 39.5 no 33 52.2 62 66.0 95 60.5 total 63 100.0 94 100.0 157 100.0 table 4. students who felt sick because of stress in the previous six months group felt ill because of stress preservice efl program language department total n % n % n % yes 46 73.0 67 71.3 113 72.2 no 17 27.0 27 28.7 44 27.8 total 63 100.0 94 100.0 157 100.0 universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras24 argudo the students’ perceptions, in both groups, were measured in four instances right after they used the expressive writing strategy and were evaluated (session 1, session 2, session 3, and session 4). these do not show great variation in the three first instances of using expressive writing, since positive effects are in evidence in more than half of the students in a similar way (p > 0.05). however, in the fourth session, some significant differences with respect to the first measurement are noted (p < 0.05). this implies that the level of stress reduction is maintained in a similar way in each evaluation experience until the third intervention, and in the fourth intervention, a significant increase in the favorable effects of expressive writing is noted (see table 6), a situation that needs to be highlighted. qualitative analysis it is important to mention that for the qualitative analysis, as the results in the quantitative phase of the study did not show a significant difference between the two studied groups, it was unnecessary to have separated results for each group. in this respect, academic stress was conceptualized from two fundamental angles: the first looks at students’ general conceptions of academic stress, that is, looking at its effects, its frequency, and the teacher’s role. the second angle corresponds to the ideas expressed about the practice of expressive writing over the most recent six months. figure 1 shows the code and code-family interweaving. table 5. students who stopped their academic activities because of stress group stopped academic activities because of stress preservice efl program language department total n % n % n % yes 25 39.1 35 37.2 60 38.3 no 38 60.9 59 62.8 97 61.7 total 63 100.0 94 100.0 157 100.0 table 6. perceptions on stress reduction comparing the four expressive writing instances n = 157 median standard deviation sig. session 1 median = 0.54 deviation = 0.50 session 2 0.62 0.49 0.080 session 3 0.61 0.49 0.159 session 4 0.64 0.48 0.039* session 2 median = 0.62 deviation = 0.49 session 1 0.54 0.50 0.080 session 3 0.61 0.49 0.768 session 4 0.64 0.48 0.662 session 3 median = 0.61 deviation = 0.49 session 1 0.54 0.50 0.159 session 2 0.62 0.49 0.768 session 4 0.64 0.48 0.500 session 4 median = 0.64 deviation = 0.48 session 1 0.54 0.50 0.039* session 2 0.62 0.49 0.662 session 3 0.61 0.49 0.500 25profile: issues teach. prof. dev., vol. 23 no. 2, jul-dec, 2021. issn 1657-0790 (printed) 2256-5760 (online). bogotá, colombia. pages 17-33 expressive writing to relieve academic stress at university level about the specific events that occurred during the six months of this expressive writing process, students in the preservice efl program and in the language department offered various testimonies that are addressed in this study. regarding their conceptions of what academic stress is and how they feel about it, students reported that it is a situation they face in their academic life; when planning evaluations teachers should consider some of these aspects, as these situations can significantly influence not only students’ performances but also their daily life. concerning academic stress effects, multiple symptomatic manifestations were observed: maria: my voice breaks and sometimes words don’t come out. susana: my hands sweat, and they start to get cold, i feel so bad that i can’t even write, even knowing the answers. joaquin: the tension of that moment caused my blood pressure to drop excessively and i fainted. students mentioned that in some occasions they cannot cope with the academic stress they feel; consequently, when experiencing these situations, natural medicine, pills, or even substances as energizers or tranquilizers are needed; in this way, they seek to improve their academic performances and feel better. however, the effect may be contrary to expectations, as well as being an unhealthy practice. fernanda: in that moment i used energizers to stay awake to study. jaime: during exams, to feel calm, sometimes i need to go to the doctor and take some pills. susana: during exams week i usually drink some herbal teas to keep calm and concentrated. with regard to the situations in which academic stress occurs, most students recognized that it happens at the time of evaluations such as tests, exams, or assignments that usually occur at the same time during the semester, a situation that must be considered. therefore, teachers should organize the semester in order to give students enough time for assignments and presentations and time for exams without overloading them with tasks that could be done during the whole semester and not during exams week, which is already stressful for them. jaime: the week of the exams is the worst one, we are always overloaded with tests, and assignments, teachers should organize them better and spread them during the whole semester and not just all in one week. figure 1. code and code-family interweaving academic stress last 6 months at general level what is it? situations students face psychological physiological cognitive required medicine exams and evaluations triggering the problems (frustration) challenge effects frequency teacher’s role expressive writing reduces stress helping topics activities / friendsother strategies future visualization intervention universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras26 argudo carmen: i feel a lot of pressure when i have to take exams. juan: i experience academic stress, particularly during the week of exams. pedro: that in certain academic events such as exams and assignments there is always a lot of stress. students also mentioned that, sometimes, teachers cause the problem; being this a challenge students need to overcome in order to succeed. in this sense, it is to be mentioned that teachers need to be facilitators in the learning process, that is, they need to help students to acquire the necessary knowledge and to overcome leaning difficulties and not to be the reason for students to feel stressed and anxious, which will make this process more complicated. rebeca: i did not understand the teacher’s methodology, and because of this, i had bad grades and felt stressed. jose: the teacher, with all those pop quizzes and oral presentation assignments, caused a lot of stress for me. enrique: i feel that with some teachers . . . i have to prepare for tests and exams more than with other teachers, they try to make our life difficult. pedro: sometimes teachers come to class without planning, and they want us to do more than they do. that stresses me a lot. regarding the second angle of analysis, several participants in this study agreed that writing about past stressful academic situations helped them to release this bad feeling. furthermore, they felt more confident to express themselves by writing rather than talking, and it helped to release stress. this could happen because, when giving words to our emotions and feelings, the parts of the brain that deal with language and meaning activate (lindquist et al., 2015). this is a way to become less reactive and more mindfully aware. maria: i think it can be a bit similar to a narrative, because it is about the fact of having an experience, but at the same time being sincere when i write about it. i felt . . . that it is an event i experienced, something very personal. fernando: i think expressive writing helps me to explore some deep feelings or situations that happened and that are somehow in our minds, . . . and being able to get them out only is possible by the use of the expressive writing strategy. ana: it helped me because it relieves stress. it is a very personal piece of writing, a situation i don’t like to talk about very often. i feel somewhat relieved because i was able to write about how i feel. pedro: i think it worked as a relief to describe my experiences, it was a personal experience, i really needed to write about that experience. other alternative activities to reduce academic stress were also mentioned such as doing what they like, especially sharing time with friends, reading, and practicing exercises, among others. as the participants of the study mentioned, changing activities and doing things to clear their mind and recharge energy to keep studying are good ways to release stress. martin: practicing exercises can also help to release stress. juan: to lower stress i usually go out with my friends. maria: reading books or listening to music usually help me to feel relaxed. finally, when asked about the different strategies they will use in the future to relieve academic stress, several students responded they will use expressive writing, since it is a good alternative that helps to deal with stress and to know themselves better to face difficult circumstances of the learning process. cristian: i would use it, but it would be in certain circumstances, on certain occasions, because sometimes i am focused on something and i cannot do any other thing. daniela: it should be applied in subjects that are taught by strict teachers (laughs) . . . i mean, some of us already fear the teacher. lorena: i think that i will use it, because it helps us to internalize ourselves and to face the situation. 27profile: issues teach. prof. dev., vol. 23 no. 2, jul-dec, 2021. issn 1657-0790 (printed) 2256-5760 (online). bogotá, colombia. pages 17-33 expressive writing to relieve academic stress at university level roberto: i would use it, but, as i said before, before studying, to relax and study feeling a bit more relaxed, and yes it can also be before a test so i won’t feel nervous the moment i take it. discussion as salend (2011) observed, sometimes a great deal of stress is reflected not only in the affective side of a person, but also in the behavioral and physical side. students can experience sweating, headaches, stomach aches, nausea, tachycardia, insomnia, and so on. among the behavioral symptoms, forgetfulness of the studied contents can be observed, which can even cause a mental block that does not allow people to remember what was studied, to feel overwhelmed, along with a lack of concentration, attention, and memory. all these symptoms cause difficulties for students both when studying and preparing for the assessment, and during the exam, when they may not feel able to read or understand the questions. students of both groups in this study mentioned they experience some of these problems, and it should be noted that significant differences were not found in the results of the two groups. therefore, it is evident that today’s students are burdened with a great load of stress produced by academic life. smith et al. (2000) demonstrated that in higher education students must complete their assignments before certain deadlines, and it pressures them to perform well on tests or exams; additionally, as mentioned by hashemi (2011), efl learning increases the stress load. findings of this research show a similar situation at the universidad de cuenca where stress is perceived among the preservice efl program and the language department students in a similar way, since they mentioned that, especially when taking exams, they have assignments, tests, and expositions in the different subjects they are taking for the same deadlines. as demonstrated in this study, writing about past feelings and emotions before formal evaluations might be a means of relieving stress; as pennebaker (2018) has declared, keeping back these feeling and emotions is stressful. this might be the reason why some students mentioned that the expressive writing act is a way to externalize feelings and emotions. in recent years, there has been an increase in the number of studies that claim to have found positive results when using expressive writing to relieve stress (bockarov, 2015; mattina, 2011; pennebaker, 2018). in this study, the use of expressive writing in the mother tongue as a strategy led to a significant improvement after the fourth session. these students mentioned that the level of academic stress was reduced after having experienced an expressive writing process. it was observed that the expressive writing act works progressively; moreover, they reported that they felt comfortable and would continue using this strategy to feel relieved. these data are similar to other studies (bockarov, 2015; mattina, 2011) in which the participants reported improvements not only in their physical health, but also in their ability to regulate and accept their emotions. along these same lines, pennebaker and beall (1986) stated that the act of writing about traumatic events directly affects topics related to catharsis, self-disclosure, and the psychosomatic theory related to behavioral inhibition (park et al., 2014). in this regard, negative stress tendencies relate to tension felt at different, seemingly unrelated times, and to occasional lack of control (álvarez-hernández et al., 2013). it has been proven that people who report a large number of physical symptoms tend to visit doctors more times; this suggests that their health is being compromised. however, many people with a considerable number of these signs are objectively as healthy as the people who suffer from them to a lesser degree. several studies (pennebaker, 2004, pennebaker & beall, 1986; pennebaker & evans, 2014; pennebaker & graybeal, 2001) have found “that having people write about traumas can result in healthy improvements in social, psychological, universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras28 argudo behavioral, and biological measures” (pennebaker & evans, 2014). physical symptoms reflect people’s psychology almost as much as their biology (pennebaker & evans, 2014). for the students who participated in this study, expressive writing was also associated with personal and subjective writing, with writing that reveals their inner feelings, experiences, thoughts, and memories. according to pennebaker (2004), writing about stressful and distressing situations can give rise to positive physical and emotional sensations. this was apparent in the present study, since students experienced significant improvement, especially in the fourth and final session. expressive writing can be a way to transform emotions and feelings and can lead to positive effects for people who, as the participants in this study expressed, become more able to vent and self-analyze, as pennebaker and beall (1986) and park et al. (2014) found in their studies. being emotionally disinhibited can be compared to a form of relief or catharsis, as indicated by pennebaker and beall (1986). certainly, the students from both groups expressed having felt free, relieved of pressure, having gained a clear mind by facing their fears, and externalizing personal experiences. by feeling better and more able to self-regulate their stress, it could be said that motivation in students increases, as mattina (2011) mentions. in the present study, students externalized their emotions about a situation that caused them to feel stressed through expressive writing. conclusions after analyzing the different findings in this study, it might be concluded that expressive writing in the mother tongue before a formal evaluation helped the participants to lower their academic stress level caused by undergoing formal evaluations. in addition, this research helps demonstrate that college students experience anxiety and stress to significant degrees before undergoing an assessment. the reasons for that anxiety are the same whether students are taking english as a graduation requirement or are preparing to be future efl teachers. therefore, the results suggest that using an alternative strategy such as expressive writing, aimed at alleviating specific causes of anxiety and stress, could lead to a significant decrease in academic stress. likewise, it might be concluded that students perceived expressive writing as a positive strategy that eased their stress. it can be said that this strategy acts gradually, since significant results are noted after using this strategy over a period of time. furthermore, it can be asserted that using expressive writing is an effective strategy that can be applied at university level. finally, it is important to mention that students and the overload of tasks that they must fulfill cannot be ignored, especially because they mentioned that teachers trigger the problem and cause feelings of stress and frustration, a situation which undoubtedly influences their performance. thus, stressed students and teachers who cause it might not be able to develop an adequate or ideal teaching and learning process. references álvarez-hernández, j., aguilar-parra, j. m., fernándezcampoy, j. m., salguero-garcía, d., & pérez-gallardo, e. r. 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(1995). mental rumination, social sharing, and the recovery from emotional exposure. in j. w. pennebaker (ed.), emotion, disclosure, and health. american psychological association. https://doi. org/10.1037/10182-013 rojas-carucí, m. (2012). inglés instrumental y representaciones docentes hacia una visión de pedagogía creativa [instrumental english and teaching representations towards a vision of creative pedagogy]. salud, arte y cuidado, (5), 88–100. about the author juanita argudo holds a bachelor’s degree in english teaching from universidad del azuay and a master’s degree in english language and applied linguistics from universidad de cuenca (both in ecuador). she holds a phd in education from universidad nacional de la plata (argentina). she is a professor in the teachertraining program and in the languages department at universidad de cuenca. acknowledgments i would like to express my sincere gratitude to dr. silvana barboni for her expert advice and encouragement during the process of writing the doctoral dissertation on which the paper is based. https://doi.org/10.1177/004005991104400206 https://doi.org/10.1177/004005991104400206 https://doi.org/10.1159/000056282 https://doi.org/10.1159/000056282 https://doi.org/10.1300/j075v08n02_09 https://doi.org/10.1300/j075v08n02_09 https://doi.org/10.1348/135910707x252440 https://doi.org/10.1348/135910707x252440 https://doi.org/10.1111/1467-8721.00123 https://doi.org/10.4314/jlt.v50i2.3 https://doi.org/10.1126/science.1199427 https://doi.org/10.1126/science.1199427 https://bit.ly/3acfgdz https://doi.org/10.1037/10182-013 https://doi.org/10.1037/10182-013 31profile: issues teach. prof. dev., vol. 23 no. 2, jul-dec, 2021. issn 1657-0790 (printed) 2256-5760 (online). bogotá, colombia. pages 17-33 expressive writing to relieve academic stress at university level appendix a: students’ profile interview name: ______________________ age: _______________ gender: _____________________ marital status: _________ major: ______________________ subject: _______________ efl level or semester: ______________ since the beginning of the semester: have you visited a health center or a specialist because of stress? have you felt sick because of stress? have you stopped your regular activities due to stress? universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras32 argudo appendix b: survey on students’ perceptions after writing about an experience caused by academic stress, and having taken a formal evaluation, do you consider this strategy helped you relieve stress? yes: _____ no: _____ explain: how personal was the essay you wrote? how often do you talk to other people about what you wrote today? how much do you reveal your emotions in what you wrote today? briefly describe how you feel about what you wrote today: 33profile: issues teach. prof. dev., vol. 23 no. 2, jul-dec, 2021. issn 1657-0790 (printed) 2256-5760 (online). bogotá, colombia. pages 17-33 expressive writing to relieve academic stress at university level appendix c: topics for the expressive writing act text 1 write a short text, in spanish, of one of your past experiences caused by academic stress. _______________________________________________________________________________________ _______________________________________________________________________________________ _______________________________________________________________________________________ _______________________________________________________________________________________ _________________ text 2 write a short text, in spanish, of an experience in which you prepared very well to take a test or exam and at the time of it you were memory-blocked and did not remember what you had studied. detail some of your feelings and emotions at the time. _______________________________________________________________________________________ _______________________________________________________________________________________ _______________________________________________________________________________________ _______________________________________________________________________________________ _________________ text 3 most people are afraid before an exam; however, this feeling is irrational and does not help during the exam. sometimes it is expressed as fear or phobia in phrases such as “if i don’t pass this test, my life won’t be worth it.” write a short text in spanish, indicating if you ever had these kinds of feelings before an exam. _______________________________________________________________________________________ _______________________________________________________________________________________ _______________________________________________________________________________________ _______________________________________________________________________________________ _________________ text 4 most people are scared of tests to some degree. write a short text, in spanish, in which you express your emotions and feelings regarding the exam or test you are about to take. _______________________________________________________________________________________ _______________________________________________________________________________________ _______________________________________________________________________________________ _______________________________________________________________________________________ _________________ framing english as a medium of instruction within the iberian-american spanish-speaking education contexts 211profile: issues teach. prof. dev., vol. 24 no. 1, jan-jun, 2022. issn 1657-0790 (printed) 2256-5760 (online). bogotá, colombia. pages 211-225 https://doi.org/10.15446/profile.v24n1.93434 framing english as a medium of instruction within the iberian-american spanish-speaking education contexts el inglés como medio de instrucción en contextos educativos de habla hispana en iberoamérica wilder yesid escobar-alméciga1 universidad el bosque, bogotá, colombia education in spain and latin america has been experiencing an ever-increasing use of english as a medium of instruction at all levels and across curricula. bringing the vast research-literature into a reflective dialogue is paramount to advancing the discipline and to refining english teaching practices. as such, this literature review systematically situates english-as-a-medium-of-instruction literature related to higher education within the iberian-american school contexts where spanish was the students’ first language. thus, the paper asserts that while research that addresses methodological approaches, processes, procedures, and their effects in instruction is significant, there is still a pressing need for framing english-as-a-medium-of-instruction research within the reciprocal relationship existing among communication, classroom culture, social values, the classroom climate for learning, and ultimately, the students’ learning. keywords: bilingual education, english as a foreign language, english as a medium of instruction, learning climate la educación en españa y latinoamérica ha venido experimentando un aumento en el uso del inglés como medio de instrucción. así, resulta primordial llevar la investigación existente a un diálogo reflexivo para avanzar y perfeccionar las prácticas de enseñanza del inglés. este artículo de revisión sitúa sistemáticamente la literatura alrededor de la instrucción en inglés de la educación superior dentro de los contextos escolares iberoamericanos donde el español era el primer idioma de los estudiantes. se encontró que, si bien la investigación que aborda los enfoques metodológicos, procesos, procedimientos y sus efectos en la instrucción del inglés es significativa, todavía se requiere enmarcar la investigación dentro de la relación recíproca entre comunicación, cultura de aula, valores sociales, el clima del aprendizaje y, por último, el aprendizaje de los estudiantes. palabras clave: educación bilingüe, inglés como lengua extranjera, inglés como medio de instrucción, clima de aprendizaje 1 wilder yesid escobar-alméciga  https://orcid.org/0000-0002-5082-6236 · email: escobarwilder@unbosque.edu.co how to cite this article (apa, 7th ed.): escobar-alméciga, w. y. (2022). framing english as a medium of instruction within the iberianamerican spanish-speaking education contexts. profile: issues in teachers’ professional development, 24(1), 211–225. https://doi.org/10.15446/ profile.v24n1.93434 this article was received on february 11, 2021 and accepted on september 29, 2021. this is an open access article distributed under the terms of the creative commons license attribution-noncommercial-noderivatives 4.0 international license. consultation is possible at https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/ https://doi.org/10.15446/profile.v24n1.93434 https://orcid.org/0000-0002-5082-6236 mailto:escobarwilder@unbosque.edu.co https://doi.org/10.15446/profile.v24n1.93434 https://doi.org/10.15446/profile.v24n1.93434 https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/ universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras212 escobar-alméciga introduction while the way in which communication is configured influences the degree to which individuals have opportunities to engage in particular aspects of social life and participation, knowledge, in turn, regulates the extent to which an individual or a community can become empowered to actively take part in the construction and reconstruction of the immediate and the broader social systems (de mejía, 2002). similarly, knowledge is co-constructed and can only be evidenced through social interaction with others (fairclough, 2011; gee, 2011; kress, 2010, 2011; norris, 2004, 2014; vygotsky, 1978). in the field of child development, for instance, and in vygotsky’s (1978) words, “human learning presupposes a specific social nature and a process by which children grow into the intellectual life of those around them” (p. 88). he asserts that children can accomplish far more in collective action or through the guidance of others than by themselves, locating “learning” more in the social realm than in people’s individual, isolated, and internal psyche. accordingly, the literature review sheds light on two broad aspects relevant to english as a medium of instruction (emi). the literature examines research on academic instruction via english in the spanish-speaking higher education (he) classroom contexts. more specifically, it discusses the ways in which scholarship has addressed the relationship between the multimodal nature of communication and the english language teaching practice in the emi classroom in pursuit of learning. as such, it supports two main arguments. first, it reveals that the design and evaluation of interactive environments in the emi classroom represent a significant gap in the literature. second, it corroborates that comprehending more profoundly the transformative power that interactive, reflexive, participative, collaborative, and productive social environments have on learning is paramount to improving adult linguistic development and their learning of contents (booker, 2008; mcmahon et al., 2009; mercer, 2004). the organization of this literature review is mainly guided by geographical considerations taking as a point of departure those spanish-speaking contexts which are farther away (spain) and progressively moving inward into the colombian context, passing through emi literature from latin america and the caribbean. that is, a geographical area that cabrera-albert and castro-gonzález (1997) called the iberian-american emi context. they contend that since latin america, the caribbean, and the iberian peninsula in europe share significant social, cultural, and linguistic characteristics, they should be discussed in light of one another and referred to as one context when it comes to emi. as such, they acknowledged the need that the iberianamerican context has for a coherent, articulated, and better-defined english language teaching project carried out in cooperation with the countries therein using research as a basis for emi designs and implementations. emi literature from the spanish context spanish literature on emi concurs that teaching approaches which combine the teaching of english as a foreign language (efl) and the teaching of subject areas in he is spreading rapidly throughout european countries (julius & madrid-fernández, 2017; malicka et al., 2019; muñoz-luna, 2014; otero de juan & garcía-laborda, 2014; vidal & jarvis, 2020). one explanation for this proliferation is commonly associated with educational policy demands which, in turn, seek to respond to the economic micro and macro environments (muñoz-luna, 2014; otero de juan & garcía-laborda, 2014; vidal & jarvis, 2020). the scholars conclude that access to participation in academic communities and in the broader socioeconomic environment largely depends on the extent to which one has a high command of the english language. scholars have traced the evolutionary trajectory of efl teaching that resulted in the use of emi. muñozluna (2014), for instance, explained that this approach 213profile: issues teach. prof. dev., vol. 24 no. 1, jan-jun, 2022. issn 1657-0790 (printed) 2256-5760 (online). bogotá, colombia. pages 211-225 framing english as a medium of instruction within the iberian-american spanish-speaking education... to teaching emerged because of a paradigm shift in terms of the way both the target language and teaching of contents were traditionally conceived. muñoz-luna claims that, initially, language teaching favored structuralist approaches where language could be broken down into smaller units for the purpose of teaching and learning. as such, this approach heavily relied on language modeling and sentence drilling. progressively, pragmatics made their way into the field, highlighting context as an essential consideration in efl teaching and learning. finally, more sociocultural and constructivist explanations of learning framed the initiative of emi as an approach that would focus on communication and social interaction rather than on language accuracy. as such, muñoz-luna identified the need for specialized training that would enable educators to create communicative environments conducive to learning. most importantly, she advocates for research on affective, motivational, and social aspects of emi designs and implementations for he. despite the popularity that emi has gained on the continent and echoing the existing global literature (brutt-griffler, 2017; macaro et al., 2018), spanish research attests to the scarcity of literature on this educational phenomenon, particularly in regard to he (julius & madrid-fernández, 2017; malicka et al., 2019; muñoz-luna, 2014; otero de juan & garcíalaborda, 2014; vidal & jarvis, 2020). more precisely, the spanish literature exhibited a genuine concern for inquiring into contextual specificities and into ways in which language could be organized and deployed in the classroom in pursuit of the successful teaching and learning of both the target language and the subject area when these two aspects are simultaneously pursued (julius & madrid-fernández, 2017; malicka et al., 2019; muñoz-luna, 2014; otero de juan & garcía-laborda, 2014; vidal & jarvis, 2020). consequently, understanding learners’ individual traits, contextual specificities, and the role that particular linguistic features play in emi is paramount to creating inclusive emi classrooms where students can participate, reflect upon their process, and learn in conditions of equality. julius and madrid-fernández (2017), for instance, collected the perceptions that students and professors had about the type of learning taking place in an emi instructional design. the study proposed that students typically enrolled in an emi course or program have different english proficiency levels due to the varied experiences that they have had speaking english: some had more opportunities to use english in social and naturally-occurring interactions like stays abroad or summer immersion programs. as a result, the program offered uneven opportunities for students to access contents, to participate, and to learn. the study indicated that serving students with different backgrounds in efl and emi can lead to inequalities and marginalization of those who do not enjoy the benefits of extracurricular english exposure. in turn, such disparities affect students’ levels of motivation, investment, and engagement in the class which ultimately affects student learning. i would be remiss if i failed to acknowledge the importance of understanding the perceptions of students and professors. vidal and jarvis (2020), however, claimed that the problem does not only reside in the dearth of literature regarding the double task of teaching english and the subject area simultaneously in he, but that also the existing research has mainly focused on gathering opinions and perceptions about the teaching and learning processes in emi classrooms. they argue that more empirical research is needed in order to inform and improve the teaching practice within emi school contexts. therefore, they conducted an empirical qualitative study that analyzed 195 essays written by students from an undergraduate emi program at a university in spain. they discussed the results of three years of schooling via emi in terms of english writing proficiency, essay quality, and lexical diversity using oxford’s placement test. the study reported a significant improvement in the learners’ l2 writing proficiency and an increase in essay quality, but the universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras214 escobar-alméciga authors argued that lexical diversity did not show any sign of improvement. in addition, they delineated some of the shortcomings of emi courses and programs. to begin with, they explained that emi undermines language identity and language domain. that is, while attention is given to a second language, the first language and culture may be neglected. additionally, the study calls into question the capacity that spanish universities have to appropriately and successfully address subject areas in the target language. finally, the study suggests that english-medium lectures are not necessarily conducive to developing the abilities in the second language or in the subject area. bearing this in mind, one can see the study underlines the need for rethinking emi designs and implementations so as to provide opportunities for students to fully participate, collaborate, and interact in class activities in the interest of learning while developing the target language. drawing on the literature that discusses the quest of teaching both language and subject areas in the european context, it could be said that the integration of efl and specific contents as a teaching approach has experienced rapid growth over the past decade. such growth calls for empirical research that, beyond gathering people’s perceptions and overestimating standardized tests results as a measuring stick for research, inquires profoundly into the social, interactional, affective, motivational, and intellectual conditions emi creates for the teaching and learning environments. emi literature in the latinamerican context the research from the latin-american context addressing the pedagogical approach of integrating the teaching of efl and a subject area exhibited some commonalities with the research literature from spain outlined above. first of all, the spanish and latinamerican literature mainly addresses emi in contexts where spanish is spoken as a first language. the literature from both contexts assigns the popularity that emi has been gaining as to the desire that institutions and countries have to internationalize education and instill competences in students that would equip them to become competitive professionals globally (arias de la cruz et al., 2019; crawford et al., 2013; de la barra et al., 2018; despagne, 2019; lara-herrera et al., 2016; lópez & puebla, 2014; navas-brenes, 2010; rivera & mazak, 2017; vargas-vásquez et al., 2016). additionally, the literature from latin america reiterates the dearth of research on emi and the need for specialized professional development addressed in the spanish literature discussed above (arias de la cruz et al., 2019; crawford et al., 2013; de la barra et al., 2018; despagne, 2019; lara-herrera et al., 2016; lópez & puebla, 2014; navasbrenes, 2010; rivera & mazak, 2017; vargas-vásquez et al., 2016). it also exhibited the tendency of researchers to inquire into the perceptions of stakeholders about the implementation of emi (despagne, 2019; lara-herrera et al., 2016; rivera & mazak, 2017; vargas-vásquez et al., 2016) rather than conducting empirical studies directly focused on instruction and learning. studies on perceptions, however, offer a glimpse into the ways people experience such approaches and provide a point of departure for more empirical research to be conducted in direct observation of the phenomena at hand. lara-herrera et al. (2016), for instance, explored the perceptions of english teachers who, as students, went through an emi program model and who, later in life, became emi teachers themselves without further training. particularly, the study gathered and analyzed teachers’ perceptions about the implementation of emi at the university level in mexico. despite the fact that, as students, the teachers had been educated through the emi teaching model, they expressed how they did not feel fully prepared in terms of emi pedagogical competences to be left in charge of designing and teaching emi courses. as such, they claimed that emi implementations require educators to undergo specific and ongoing professional development that facilitates the development of competences for successful instruction. 215profile: issues teach. prof. dev., vol. 24 no. 1, jan-jun, 2022. issn 1657-0790 (printed) 2256-5760 (online). bogotá, colombia. pages 211-225 framing english as a medium of instruction within the iberian-american spanish-speaking education... not completely unrelated to this issue is that teachers, in lara-herrera et al.’s (2016) study, also expressed a heartfelt concern about their level of command of the english language in respect to the level needed to successfully impart subject contents in english. that is, subjects like mathematics or science have specialized discourses and communicative genres with which efl teachers may not be completely familiar and this could potentially hinder the teaching of subject-specific contents as well as the teaching of the language. the same holds true for the cases where non-language professors of subject areas teach their disciplines via english while lacking the pedagogical competences to teach in the language. consequently, the implementation of effective emi courses requires full support from the educational institutions and their leadership. this support may be represented via sponsoring teachers’ ongoing professional development, providing appropriate teaching resources, and giving their teachers sufficient class preparation time and the right conditions to do their jobs properly. in a similar manner, despagne (2019) examined efl teachers’ perspectives on the role of english in students’ education in two private universities in mexico. echoing the bulk of the literature, the author found that english was perceived by teachers as the language of international communication essential for international business and commerce, and a gateway to accessing academic and professional opportunities. the study also examined the perceived linguistic superiority implicit in teachers’ responses. despagne argued that when teachers described the english language with adjectives like “easy,” “clear,” and “straight,” they expressed an ideology wherein english enjoyed a higher status than spanish. the author warned about teachers’ responsibility to analyze and be sensitive to the way values are instilled in emi contexts and exhorted educators to adopt practices and attitudes that foster equality and linguistic ecology in emi settings. also addressing equality-related issues, rivera and mazak (2017) examined students’ attitudes toward translanguaging in the classroom of an undergraduate psychology program at a university in puerto rico. they investigated students’ language views on their instructor’s translingual pedagogy and found that language choices and language behavior in the classroom are heavily influenced by the broader political environment and by the class members’ attitudes towards the languages available to them. rivera and mazak assert that english and spanish have traditionally been treated as separate entities with little opportunity to meet and coexist in interaction and harmony, one with the other, especially bearing in mind the particular characteristics of the puerto rican context. the languages that a person speaks, they contended, are a part of one linguistic repertoire. however, negative attitudes can engender prejudice against languages and those who speak them and, in turn, restrict learning possibilities for some while privileging others. as such, the researchers attest to the need of rethinking the concept of education into something that transcends well beyond the simple acquisition of facts or the plain learning of english. hence, translanguaging represents a way of instilling positive attitudes toward minority languages in the classroom and of getting students involved in class activity. rivera and mazak found that students had a positive attitude toward translanguaging pedagogical practices mainly due to the affirmative attitude teachers displayed in the class and the flexibility they offered in terms of language use. in addition to the attitudes towards languages that teachers value and promote in the classroom, there are specific roles with particular characteristics that teachers are expected to adopt and enact in the emi classroom. as such, vargas-vásquez et al. (2016) inquired about the extent to which three instructors who were going through their student-teaching practice positioned themselves and took on the role of teachers in a taskbased undergraduate course. the researchers concluded that these student-teachers played an essential role sequencing the tasks and motivating the learners. vargasvásquez et al. argued that, even when the objective is to universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras216 escobar-alméciga decentralize the role of the teacher, the teacher is still at the core of emi programs given that it is the teacher who establishes the parameters and sets the tone for the class. in doing so, they recommend ongoing research on the teacher’s role within emi classes and their attitudes toward the languages that students speak. additionally, this piece highlights the researchers’ tendency to focus on the teacher’s actions evidenced in the literature thus far. that is, emi-related research focuses mainly on what the teacher does, what he or she is expected to do, the way he or she does things, or what they could potentially do—instructional procedures (see arias de la cruz et al., 2019; de la barra et al., 2018; lópez & puebla, 2014; navas-brenes, 2010). however, research aimed at explaining learning as an effect of communication as it pertains to interaction in emi has been conducted to a much lesser extent. emi research in latin america has also endeavored to increase language awareness and students’ self-reflection upon their learning process (de la barra et al., 2018; vargas-vásquez et al., 2016). for example, de la barra et al. (2018) examined the design and implementation of two rubrics following the principles of content and language integrated learning in second-year students at a university in chile to assess oral skills in terms of grammar and lexis. the study suggests that through this implementation, students’ language awareness increased and fostered the acquisition of grammatical and lexical competences. this implementation also made students aware of class expectations and requirements, which was paramount to their success. in regard to form-related aspects of language in emi, crawford et al. (2013) looked into the writing processes of two university students in an emi program in mexico. initially they sought to examine the development of rhetorical features in the students’ writing production. however, their research process drifted to explorations of identity-related aspects evidenced in the analysis. they identified differentiating aspects between spanish and english writing structures and found that despite the students’ identification as english writers, their writing in english exhibited the spanish writing structure and style at best and the structure of conversations in spanish at worst. they also observed that, as time passed, such issues decreased. thus, the researchers concluded that academic writing in efl is a literacy process which needs to be nurtured long-term before it displays any sign of development. similarly, lópez and puebla (2014) offered a critical reflection on reading processes in english in he in argentina using principles from vygotsky’s work as an analytical lens. the researchers designed and implemented cycles of didactic units about gender and as these didactic units unfolded, they looked into aspects like the zone of proximal development and mediation. the researchers maintained that reading in efl is a social practice that nurtures the development of higher order thinking skills and the appropriation of discipline-specific knowledge. they claimed that reading relies on semiotic practices where sociocultural referents and the reader engage in an ongoing exchange that mediates interpretation. as such, a pedagogical design for reading that was contextualized, mediated, and collaborative did not only facilitate language development and knowledge construction, but it also instilled in students confidence, responsibility, autonomy, and commitment to one another and their immediate academic community. language development and the construction and appropriation of knowledge is, unquestionably, a social endeavor shaped by historical, cultural, social, emotional, and intellectual referents. hence, it is a collective social practice for which mutual collaboration and support are paramount to its success (vygotsky, 1978). navas-brenes (2010), for instance, created a sample lesson for an emi university course in costa rica. this study presented a language lesson using authentic materials based on the principles of content-based instruction. he asserted that teaching content-based courses requires a high level of creativity on behalf of the teacher, collaboration 217profile: issues teach. prof. dev., vol. 24 no. 1, jan-jun, 2022. issn 1657-0790 (printed) 2256-5760 (online). bogotá, colombia. pages 211-225 framing english as a medium of instruction within the iberian-american spanish-speaking education... from colleagues, and support from all the stakeholders, primarily, from the institution. in short, the emi-related literature in the latinamerican context generally coincides with the literature from spain. the emi research in latin america also focuses on instructional procedures disregarding research on the learning and communication processes in the emi classroom. in addition, it introduces an important debate regarding the attitudes towards the languages that students speak and toward classroom practices of language use. in doing so, the scholars promote a reflection on the role that emi professors play in creating the conditions for equality, collaboration, and participation, which are paramount to student success. emi literature in the colombian context the colombian literature regarding the use of english for classroom instruction in he where spanish is spoken as a first language resembles scholarship from the broader iberian-american context in four main ways. first, the research agrees that the main reasons for the popular adoption of the emi approach are associated with educational policies at the micro and macro levels that seek to internationalize he for academic participation, competences for global economies, and opportunities for students to access international participation (corrales et al., 2016; garcía, 2013; sernadimas & ruíz-castellanos, 2014). second, research on perceptions regarding emi continues to be widespread in the colombian context (corrales & maloof, 2011; corrales et al., 2016; garcía, 2013; sánchez-solarte et al., 2017). third, the colombian literature also exhibits the tendency of researchers to focus on the procedural aspects of instruction by assessing the effect of didactic implementations (bautista-barón, 2013; gualdron & castillo, 2018; guapacha-chamorro & benavidezpaz, 2017; palacio et al., 2016; rodríguez-bonces, 2011; sánchez-narváez & chavarro-vargas, 2017) while disregarding much-needed research on the way learning occurs or fails to occur as a result of the quality of communication in the emi classroom. finally, colombian literature also attests to the lack of research on emi in he in spanish-speaking contexts (bautista-barón, 2013; corrales & maloof, 2011; corrales et al., 2016; garcía, 2013; gómez-flórez et al., 2011; granados-beltrán, 2018; gualdron & castillo, 2018; guapacha-chamorro & benavidez-paz, 2017; ortega, 2019; palacio et al., 2016; sánchez-narváez & chavarro-vargas, 2017; sánchezsolarte et al., 2017; serna-dimas & ruíz-castellanos, 2014; uribe-enciso, 2012; viáfara-gonzález & lópez, 2011). beyond echoing some of the issues present in the broader iberian-american context, the colombian literature also engages in debates regarding more abstract themes like the roles that different interaction-related elements play in the development of the target language and the acquisition of contents as well as the shaping of learning environments. in reference to the research on perceptions and attitudes regarding emi implementations in colombia, for instance, garcía (2013) discusses a literature review that contributed to the longstanding debate regarding the ideologies surrounding native and non-native speakers of english and their place in english language teaching. he discussed students’ and teachers’ attitudes toward english as an international language and the presence of standard and non-standard varieties of english in school. in his work, the author challenged the notion that the ownership of the english language should be strictly assigned to the native speakers of dominant varieties. rather, the article advocates for the idea of the legitimate speaker of english regardless of their nationality or whether they are native or non-native speakers of the language. in the literature that garcía reviewed, he found a tendency in which students and teachers show a higher regard for “standard” english. such ideologies have direct implications for teaching as they inevitably draw teacher’s attention away from communication and toward prescriptivism and formfocused instruction that favor the development of universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras218 escobar-alméciga accuracy over the negotiation of meaning. in doing so, these beliefs also establish unattainable phonology and fluency-related objectives for learners of efl in he. consequently, his work calls for a more profound reflection on efl and the teaching practices to be held in colombia considering the specificities of the learners and the bilingual interactional environment they inhabit. similarly, sánchez-solarte et al. (2017) surveyed 130 students from 10 different undergraduate programs, inquiring about their positions on the english courses they had to take as a part of their program course load. upholding the view that a balance between communication and academic success needs to be achieved in english language teaching, the authors endorsed a post-method approach where three basic elements were at the core—particularity, practicality, and possibility. particularity referred to the need of bringing into consideration the specific traits that characterize the students, the context, and the situations into the instructional designs and implementations. practicality was concerned with the extent to which theory informs the teaching practice. finally, possibility had to do with the opportunities a class affords students to bring their knowledge, culture, and identities into the teaching and learning processes so as to enrich their experience. the aforementioned principles, however, pose great challenges for the type of education that promotes standard english, linguistic accuracy, or lectures, since they leave little room for individuality, negotiation, participation, and the co-construction of knowledge. furthermore, in the quest for understanding the extent to which emi supports language development and the acquisition of subject-specific knowledge, corrales and maloof (2011) conducted a qualitative study on a university course in medicine taught in english, finding that the use of authentic materials, the implementation of highly-contextualized activities, and ample possibilities for students to bring their knowledge into the teaching and learning processes nurtured the development of language and content knowledge in the class. additionally, this emi course offered students the opportunity to perform—rather than only to acquire informational facts—the knowledge they acquired through their interactions in class. however, corrales and maloof argued that while these methodologyrelated factors fostered learning, it really came down to the type of social environment educators could create for the class regardless of the classroom methodology used. that is, while emi classrooms can have designs that favor communication, thus positively shaping the learning environment, there are other emi designs, like lectures, that leave little room for teachers to create a communicative classroom environment. thus, educators need to make it their main objective to create a communicative classroom environment where students feel safe, welcome, valued, challenged, and included. even more directly related to matters of interaction and collaboration among emi students as aspects that drive learning, serna-dimas and ruíz-castellanos (2014) designed activities aimed to develop language competences in a course from the physical therapy undergraduate program. the research accounted for the collaboration among two professors in the design and implementation of the activities and the interaction patterns that the students exhibited as they carried out the class tasks. despite the fact that the researchers’ interest was mainly concerned with interaction, the theory that framed the study pivoted around second language acquisition, krashen’s (1982) input and swain’s (1985) output hypothesis, and the english for specific purposes model. more peripherally, the theory framing the study also included cooperative learning and differentiated instruction. unfortunately, theory regarding interaction or communication was not included or operationalized to a great extent. serna-dimas and ruíz-castellanos discovered that interaction and participation can be promoted to the extent to which these aspects will be considered in the design process of emi classes. in the case of this particular group, the professors exhibited a flexible approach that allowed students to ask questions, 219profile: issues teach. prof. dev., vol. 24 no. 1, jan-jun, 2022. issn 1657-0790 (printed) 2256-5760 (online). bogotá, colombia. pages 211-225 framing english as a medium of instruction within the iberian-american spanish-speaking education... make comments, and monitor their own language use. as such, the researchers recommended that instructional designs be constantly evaluated, reflected upon, and adjusted to meet students’ needs and to continuously improve learning outcomes. similarly, they advised that special attention should be paid to social dynamics as the class should offer equal opportunity for participation and high-quality activities that result in the type of interaction that leads to learning. also addressing issues of equality and social justice, ortega (2019) reported on a classroom experience where the professor used translanguaging for instruction. framed between theories of plurilingualism and translanguaging, the researcher examined the way students’ linguistic and cultural knowledge was valued and involved in class activity. in regard to plurilingualism, he asserted that education in colombia still needs to come to appreciate the linguistic and sociocultural diversity in the classroom. it needs to create instructional designs that set students’ backgrounds, cultures, knowledge, and identities as the stage for teaching focusing on developing the competences that would equip students to understand and transform their social realities. as for translanguaging, the author explained that instructional design should aim at presenting and interacting with material in ways that foster the learning of languages and concepts. additionally, these designs should also seek to strengthen the target language through social collaboration. interaction-related emi literature in he in colombia has also discussed, incidentally, ways in which learning can be well-served by multimodal approaches to teaching. although not explicitly framed within multimodality, gualdron and castillo (2018), for instance, explored the outcomes of an emi methodology based on theatrical plays implemented in an undergraduate course at a public university. as a result, they proposed that this methodology lowered students’ inhibitions stimulating the use of the target language and cognitive processing. the theoretical underpinnings established comprehensible connections between the communicative properties of language and those involved in theater. both practices, they asserted, rely on culture referents for meaning negotiation. they argued that using theater in emi empowered and motived students and facilitated cooperative and collaborative work among them. additionally, theater required students to practice the four language skills that are usually evaluated in tests. as such, they laid the theoretical platform on four main theories. namely, (a) krashen’s five-part hypothesis focusing particularly on the input hypothesis and the affective filter hypothesis; (b) constructivism which puts interaction at the core of the learning process; (c) motivation which determines levels of engagement and investment; and (d) authentic environments referring to the extent to which the class can resemble actual social contexts and realities. while these theories framed the study in a comprehensible manner, theories within the field of social semiotics and multimodal communication would substantiate the explanations on “performance” as an integrated mode of communication which plays a central role in interaction and cognition (kress, 2010; norris, 2004, 2014). alternatively, theories regarding the role of movement in cognitive mediation and knowledge construction could also provide solid bases upon which this approach can be grounded and its outcomes explained (boyd et al., 2018; franks & jewitt, 2001; goldin-meadow, 2000; hostetter & alibali, 2008; roth, 2001). adding a new way in which multimodal communication was indirectly addressed in the emi literature in the colombian context, viáfara-gonzález and lópez (2011) discussed a longitudinal qualitative study that collected data on the teaching experience of two professors who used portfolios in their emi university courses. the use of portfolios was initially intended to enhance the development of communicative competence, and theory was used to explain and discuss portfolios as a pedagogical tool. this approach, integrating portfolios universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras220 escobar-alméciga into the emi classroom, promoted the debate about learning-assessment from both perspectives: process and product. as for the process, the use of portfolios invited students’ creativity, culture, identities, and disciplinespecific knowledge into the construction of an artefact (the product) which, to an extent, served to provide evidence for students’ learning. the professors were mainly concerned with encouraging self-reflection among the students about what they learned, how they learned it, and the factors that contributed to such learning. the researchers found that the use of portfolios diversified the ways in which students were assessed and increased student involvement and autonomy. the construction of portfolios opened up a world of opportunities for students to resort to additional modes of communication like images, color, design, writing, drawing, and so forth, thus promoting collaborative work among them. framing studies of this sort within social semiotics and multimodal communication would contribute to the discussion about the relationship between multimodal communication and learning in collaborative endeavors. the multimodal nature of communication has also been contemplated in emi literature in terms of verbal and nonverbal communication. such is the case of uribe-enciso (2012), who stressed the importance that verbal and nonverbal discursive mechanisms play in interaction and learning. she investigated the way students in an emi class used clues and strategies for turn taking and turn yielding and incorporated backchannels to maintain the flow of discussions. the researcher made distinctions regarding the transactional and interactional skills involved in class communication and argued that, in both cases, verbal and nonverbal communicative actions served to construct empathy and to convey friendliness. initially, student discussions exhibited a lack of command of the pragmatic use of such verbal and nonverbal mechanisms. however, after eight three-hour sessions, the students began to become aware of these elements and to incorporate them into their discussion practices. uribe-enciso concluded that students with higher levels of proficiency in english acquired the pragmatic use of backchannels more quickly. the researcher assigned this effect to the fact that more proficient english speakers have more linguistic and paralinguistic resources to draw on when resolving such communicative situations. she also asserted that promoting discussion in the classroom fosters the development of linguistic as well as pragmatic abilities and that learning to use the language is more valuable than learning about the language. another example of how multimodality is indirectly addressed in the emi literature is found in the work by sánchez-narváez and chavarro-vargas (2017), who looked into communicative behavior in a blended course offered to efl teachers as a component of their professional development. the objective was to assess the extent to which information and communication technologies shaped the communicative behavior of the content-subject teachers who participated in the course. the researchers declared that blended learning increased the learners’ oral production. additionally, communicative behavior exhibited an enormous amount of body language, self-monitoring, lexical diversity, and communication in language chunks. despite the fact that this study is not rooted in theories of multimodality, it can be argued that blended courses draw on a wealth of semiotic resources, an array of appealing layouts, and a vast scope of opportunities to use multiple modes of communication. such characteristics, when efficiently deployed, contribute to the teaching and learning processes in the blended environment. indirectly, the researchers acknowledged the multimodal, culturallygoverned, and yet emergent nature of communication and its relationship to learning. in addition to acknowledging the multimodal properties of communication, the emi-related literature from the colombian context was also concerned with creating learning environments that promote natural interaction. gómez-flórez et al. (2011), for instance, inquired 221profile: issues teach. prof. dev., vol. 24 no. 1, jan-jun, 2022. issn 1657-0790 (printed) 2256-5760 (online). bogotá, colombia. pages 211-225 framing english as a medium of instruction within the iberian-american spanish-speaking education... about the effect that content-based instruction could potentially have on the development of language skills. to such an end, they designed a study for a molecular microbiology class at a public university. they concluded that content-based instruction improved the students’ speaking and oral comprehension skills. as such, the researchers highly recommended the implementation of content-based instruction as it helps students to use language for communicative purposes and creates environments that resemble naturally-occurring communication more closely. assessing the learning outcomes from such particular learning environments through standardized testing would fall short in accounting for the contextspecific learning that took place. in that regard, palacio et al. (2016) account for the experience that a group of professors underwent for the design, validation, and application of a language test to be implemented in their specific emi classroom. the study discussed the test item by item providing descriptive statistics, correlational analysis, validity analysis, and reliability estimates. making comprehensible differentiations between standard testing and classroom testing, the researchers found that designing and validating a tailormade test for the group of students they were working with enhanced the teaching practice and motivated reflection among professors regarding actions they can take to contextualize their evaluation procedures. palacio et al. argued that exams should require answers that are relevant and context-dependent. however, designing context-specific exams, and creating the type of collaborative and productive environments that the emi literature promotes demands a wealth of resources and support from the institution that grants access to such resources. bautista-barón (2013), for instance, conducted action research at a police training institute in colombia. she designed reading workshops based on the cognitive language learning approach (calla) intended to increase reading proficiency in english and learners’ autonomy. the study was concerned with identifying the extent to which a productive learning environment could potentially be created in the emi class. as a result of her investigation, bautista-barón claimed that one of the greatest obstacles for teaching an emi course successfully was not having access to the appropriate resources like audiovisual materials and web pages with access to listening, reading, grammar, lexis, online dictionaries, and online pedagogical games. the author found that by investing in the creation of these reading workshops, she was able to familiarize students with new reading strategies and instill in them abilities to self-monitor and self-evaluate their process which, in turn, increased students’ reading comprehension. similarly, guapacha-chamorro and benavidez-paz (2017) designed workshops to develop learning strategies among students based on calla and task-based language teaching (tblt). this was implemented in a group of 33 preservice teachers at a university. implicit instruction on language learning strategies increased the students’ ability to reflect upon and manage their own learning. this study reports that students strengthened their speaking skill and diversified their vocabulary. to sum up, the emi-related literature also showed a general concern for instilling autonomy in students so that they would be capable of self-managing their own learning. it also stressed the importance of creating environments that are productive, interactive, and safe as well as which provide equal opportunities for all students to learn. scholars maintain that these objectives can be achieved to the extent that all stakeholders support the cause and offer professional development and resources. additionally, the emi-related literature emphasizes the dearth of pertinent research on teaching and learning processes in the emi classroom. while emi-related research has been conducted to an extent, it exhibits researchers’ tendency to focus on instructional procedures. research on the learning processes in emi environments has been conducted to a much lesser degree. even more scarce, but equally needed is research addressing the relationship universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras222 escobar-alméciga between interaction and learning in the emi framed within a social semiotics perspective. with this in mind, and considering the scarcity of research on emi in the colombian as well as in the broader iberian-american contexts (macaro et al., 2018; mcdougald, 2015), the pressing need for research on emi is clearly evidenced in national and international contexts. such research should broadly inquire into whether instruction in english promotes or inhibits full participation and the type of communication that leads to the development of proficiencies in both the subject areas and efl (anderson et al., 2015; fandiñoparra, 2013; mcdougald, 2015). references anderson, c. e., mcdougald, j. s. & cuesta-medina, l. 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(2018). creating a teacher development program linked to curriculum renewal. profile: issues in teachers’ professional development, 20(2), 249-266. https://doi.org/10.15446/profile.v20n2.67937. this article was received on september 25, 2017 and accepted on march 12, 2018. this is an open access article distributed under the terms of the creative commons license attribution-noncommercial-noderivatives 4.0 international license. consultation is possible at https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/. profile: issues teach. prof. dev., vol. 20 no. 2, jul-dec, 2018. issn 1657-0790 (printed) 2256-5760 (online). bogotá, colombia. pages 249-266 universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras250 ferrer ariza & poole introduction teachers engage in development for various reasons (bailey, curtis, & nunan, 2001). sometimes it happens as a consequence of teachers’ intrinsic motivation to improve the quality of their teaching practices, gain respect and recognition, become a more effective educator, or to increase individual satisfaction in pursuit of a successful teaching career. in other cases, it comes about as a consequence of extrinsic motivation from a teacher brought on by factors such as maintaining a job or position, obtaining a better salary, accessing higher quality jobs in the field, or getting a promotion. heystek and terhoven (2015) explain that both types of motivation can be important for sustainable and participative teacher development, especially connected to curriculum. in the same way, teacher development can be motivated by institutional needs such as increased teacher awareness, updating of teacher knowledge, and adoption of new teaching practices, among many others. in this way, the institution can play a key role in transforming teacher development into a “process of ‘we are developing’ rather than a process of ‘you must develop’ because you are underperforming” (heystek & terhoven, 2015, p. 629). in this paper, we reflect on the process of building and implementing a teacher development program (tdp) linked to curriculum renewal in a university english as a foreign language (efl) program on the caribbean coast of colombia. in detailing the process, we explain how university and program faculty were involved in reflecting, analyzing, and making informed decisions about their teaching practices within the framework in order to better design and implement the new curriculum. contextual background the specific context in which this tpd was designed is that of an eight-level, undergraduate efl program that serves around 12,000 students annually and relies on approximately 60 teachers, most of whom are colombian. students in the program belong to a variety of majors ranging from graphic design or engineering to psychology or social communication. throughout the program, teachers are expected to help students develop a b2 level of language proficiency according to the common european framework of reference (cefr) (council of europe, 2001). based on systematic classroom observations at all levels of the program, we found students were not developing their language proficiency at the expected level. careful analysis of students’ grades and exit exam results corroborated these observations and showed that more than 50% of the students were not achieving a b2 level. in order to address this situation, the language institute initiated a curriculum development project (cdp) based on backwards design, using desired learning outcomes to guide the construction of a new curriculum (wiggins & mctighe, 2005). the cdp aimed to identify needs in the program as well as propose a new curriculum that would take into account aspects such as: course goals and outcomes, course materials, student performance, teacher performance, and assessment in a more comprehensive and structured way than before. after a needs analysis was carried out, a preliminary design created, and new course materials chosen, a major challenge arose: working with teachers to reflect on, evaluate, and implement the new curriculum in the classroom. to respond to this challenge, a tpd was designed to prepare teachers for and involve them in curriculum implementation through taking into account their perceptions and making corresponding adjustments. creating a program for teacher development when creating a teacher development program, several aspects must be clear, including the objectives it aims to achieve in terms of institutional and professional needs. in regard to the tpd in question, the time frame desired for its execution was also important, bearing in mind that the curriculum implementation had fixed dates. 251 creating a teacher development program linked to curriculum renewal profile: issues teach. prof. dev., vol. 20 no. 2, jul-dec, 2018. issn 1657-0790 (printed) 2256-5760 (online). bogotá, colombia. pages 249-266 institutional needs in the efl program in question, there were several institutional needs that motivated the cdp and the tpd. these needs included: fewer and more succinct objectives in course syllabi, a clear progression of student learning outcomes (slos), increased awareness among teachers of the content of each level, as well as a need to standardize assessment practices. professional needs the tpd also took into account varied professional needs of the teachers within the efl program who would be implementing the new curriculum, the most important of which were: teaching practice update, especially regarding skills instructions, sharing of good classroom practices with their colleagues, and reflection as a professional tool. general program objectives in an attempt to address all of the abovementioned needs, the following general objectives were formulated for the tpd: • to involve teachers in the process of evaluating designed curriculum and making suggestions for improvements. • to improve teacher receptiveness and openness to curricular ideas pre, during, and post-curriculum implementation. • to provide teachers with spaces to learn about and practice using tools for implementing the new curriculum effectively. • to facilitate spaces for voicing and addressing teachers’ concerns. • to facilitate spaces for reflecting on curriculum implementation. • to promote problem-solving and critical thinking teamwork among teachers. it is important to clarify that while the program had clear general objectives, it was not a fixed program from the start. as new needs arose or established needs changed during curriculum implementation, the planned activities were evaluated and adjusted to assure they continued meeting the needs identified. teacher development it is important to note that there is a distinction between teacher training and teacher development. richards and farrell (2005) define teacher training as involving “activities directly focused on a teacher’s present responsibilities and . . . aimed at short-term immediate goals” (p. 3) in order to prepare the teacher to accept new responsibilities or positions in their unique context. teacher development, on the other hand, tends to focus on “general growth not focused on a specific job [and] serves a longer-term goal” (p. 4) that involves a teacher reflecting on their teaching practice. both concepts are critical for understanding a teacher’s continued growth in and outside the classroom. more specifically, teacher development is regarded as “the process whereby teachers’ professionalism and/ or professionality may be considered to be enhanced” (evans, 2002, p. 131). evans (2002) identifies two key elements of teacher development: attitudinal development and functional development. whereas the former is concerned with the process through which teachers modify their attitudes towards their work, the latter is concerned with the process through which teachers’ professional work may be improved. from this perspective, teachers may experience changes either in their intellectual or motivational development and/ or in their general teaching practice. impact on institutions while most definitions of teacher development focus on the teacher, ongoing professional development and teacher education is not only important for teachers, but also have a significant impact on the success of the programs and institutions they work in and with (richards & farrell, 2005). according to a review of universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras252 ferrer ariza & poole studies related to elementary school teachers carried out by rel southwest (yoon, duncan, lee, scarloss, & shapley, 2007), teachers that receive approximately 50 hours of teacher development were shown to increase their students’ scores on achievement tests by 21 percentile points. likewise, hanbury, prosser, and rickinson (2008) conclude from their study of the impact of professional development programs in higher education that benefits at a departmental level were related to: developments in educational practices, enhanced profile for teaching and learning, inter-departmental links, staff induction and mentoring. in the same way, chalmers and gardiner (2015) claim, based on their extensive review of studies concerning the impact of teacher development on teaching and learning, that “it is possible to evidence changes in teacher understanding, knowledge, skills and practices, and the consequential effect of these on student engagement and approaches to learning” (p. 83). impact on professors in regard to the impact on professors, richards and farrell (2005) explain that the need for ongoing renewal of professional skills and knowledge is not a reflection of inadequate training but simply a response to the fact that not everything teachers need to know can be provided at pre-service level, as well as the fact that the knowledge base of teaching constantly changes. (p. 1) therefore, teacher development not only serves to update theoretical and practical knowledge among educators, but it also serves as an expansion of the learning that took place in their formal, pre-service training and education (mizell, 2010). hanbury et al. (2008) also confirm, through a review of several empirical and investigative studies, that teacher development can have positive benefits on teachers’ approaches to learning, especially regarding a move away from teacher-centered approaches and a move towards student-centered approaches. characteristics of good professional development in general, the following characteristics are considered as some of the most important for successful, good, quality, and effective teacher and professional development. • it is connected to the particular context of the institution or program where it is implemented. • it involves collaboration and cooperation among teachers as well as the specific educational community. • it promotes the construction of a support system among teachers and the learning community. • it is planned and carried out over time in a sustainable way. • it places emphasis on the teacher as an active and reflective learner throughout the process. • it involves active learning connected to program objectives and student learning. (cohen & hill, 2001; desimone, porter, garet, yoon, & birman, 2002; diaz-maggioli, 2004; generation ready, 2013; sedl, 1997; unesco, 2015) ultimately, “effective professional development should be understood as a job-embedded commitment that teachers make in order to further the purposes of the profession while addressing their own particular needs” (diaz-maggioli, 2004, p. 5). teachers should, therefore, be placed at the center of their own professional development, perceived as life-long learners involved in activities that emphasize growth that will impact both their short-term and long-term teaching in the classroom and overall development as educators. based on the aforementioned needs and characteristics, the tpd designed was a hybrid model that incorporated elements of both teacher development as well as teacher training. as a hybrid model, it aimed to incorporate all the characteristics of quality teacher development. by doing so, it worked to ensure teachers were exposed to activities and opportunities that were 253 creating a teacher development program linked to curriculum renewal profile: issues teach. prof. dev., vol. 20 no. 2, jul-dec, 2018. issn 1657-0790 (printed) 2256-5760 (online). bogotá, colombia. pages 249-266 directly relevant to their role as teachers in the efl program who were implementing the new curriculum. likewise, the model connected with their role as always evolving teachers in the field of education. in this way, teachers were able to receive and share knowledge, tools, and experiences to prepare them for and involve them in curriculum implementation while at the same time developing skills and acquiring knowledge that would serve them in future educational contexts. teacher development models aiming to b est incor p orate the previously mentioned characteristics, teacher professional development has, over the last 20 years, gained a lot of momentum. as villegas-reimers (2003) argues: “for years, the only form of ‘professional development’ available to teachers was ‘staff development’ or ‘in-service training,’ usually consisting of workshops or short-term courses that would offer teachers new information on a particular aspect of their work” (p. 11). today, teacher professional development is rather understood as extended and continuous improvement in which teachers should engage as they advance in their career. it is not a one-day, one-time learning unrelated experience, but the combination of progressive, diversified, and relevant learning that teachers gather throughout their work in teaching contexts. different authors have proposed models or frameworks to guide institutions, programs, policy makers, and teachers to undertake teacher development aimed at improving teachers’ pedagogical foundations and practices and, therefore, improving students’ learning. one of these authors is guskey (2002), who places changes in students learning at the center of effective teacher development (p. 383). in this way, student change is a triggering factor for actual teacher change as represented by figure 1. guskey (2002) argues that “significant change in teachers’ attitudes and beliefs occurs primarily after they gain evidence of improvements in student learning (p. 383).” regardless of the nature of the teacher development process carried out, this will be internalized by teachers when they observe evidence that their adjustments or implementations have worked and can be observed through changes in students’ learning. according to guskey, without observation of these changes, teachers will make no use of the opportunities. likewise, kennedy (2005) argues that since the purpose of continuing professional development is to empower teachers with the necessary foundations to become critical individuals who shape their own practice, who make informed decisions in the classroom, and who interpret policies with a critical eye, models for teacher development should be progressively selected and implemented depending on the needs and characteristics of the context. according to these ideas, teachers should be given the opportunity to increase their professional autonomy moving from controlling models to more constructive-creative ones as demonstrated in figure 2. figure 1. guskey’s model of teacher change (2002, p. 383) professional development change in teachers’ classroom practices change in student learning outcomes change in teachers’ beliefs and attitudes universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras254 ferrer ariza & poole figure 2. spectrum of cpd models (kennedy, 2005, p. 248) model of cpd purpose of model the training model the award-bearing model the deficit model the cascade model transmission the standards-based model the coaching/mentoring model the community of practice model transitional the action research model the transformative model transformative • transformational: the last two models mentioned by kennedy push teachers to become researchers in their contexts (action-research model) and to transform themselves as teachers (transformative model). both models require teachers to be aware of their practices and the conditions of their teachinglearning contexts and to use these aspects to better themselves as teachers. another model for teacher development is the one proposed by diaz-maggioli (2004) where teacher development is understood as a collaborative and continuous process in which teachers are expected to enrich and strengthen their practices by analyzing students’ needs and adjusting their teaching styles accordingly. what makes this model different from those previously mentioned is the conscious identification of teacher’s awareness of needs and lack of knowledge in establishing a teacher development framework. in other words, the more aware teachers are of their lacks in knowledge and their needs in improving teaching effectiveness, the more targeted and defined the professional development plan can be to meet these specific needs and lacks. figure 3 represents “the four quadrants of the teacher’s choice framework” which guides the design of a teacher development plan based on this model (diaz-maggioli, 2004). the models in figure 2 can be summarized in the following way (kennedy, 2005, pp. 236-237): • transmission: the first two models in this category emphasize the teacher as being a passive receiver of information whether it is through training carried out by an expert (training model) or the completion of a course offered by an external institution (award-bearing model). the last two models place more responsibility on the teacher by asking the teacher to work on particular identified weaknesses (deficit model) or by participating in a professional development activity and sharing what was learned with fellow colleagues (cascade model). • transitional: the transitional models move away from focusing only on the teacher and begin to involve students as well as the teaching community. the standards-based model places importance on making empirical connections between teacher professional development (tpd) and students’ achievement. a bit different, the coaching/mentoring model and the community of practice model both stress teachers’ roles in their professional community as key. in the first, more experienced teachers are placed as mentors with less-experienced teachers. in the second, the entire teaching community works together to achieve a common tpd goal set by the community or institution. increasing capacity for profesional autonomy 255 creating a teacher development program linked to curriculum renewal profile: issues teach. prof. dev., vol. 20 no. 2, jul-dec, 2018. issn 1657-0790 (printed) 2256-5760 (online). bogotá, colombia. pages 249-266 figure 3. the four quadrants of the teacher’s choice framework (diaz-maggioli, 2004, p. 15) updated knowledge lack of knowledge level 2level 1 awareness lack of awareness level 4level 3 according to figure 3, there are four levels at which teachers can be placed depending on their own analysis and reflections on their strengths and areas of improvement. for instance, more experienced teachers, aware of their teaching foundations and context, can mentor less experienced colleagues, or they can prepare inhouse training workshops or document their successful experiences as a point of reference for other teachers. the experienced teachers would classify at level one while less experienced teachers, not aware of their lacks and needs, would place at level four, with professional development consisting of participation in in-house workshops or processes of mentoring (diaz-maggioli, 2004). in the same way, two of the most relevant factors that characterize this model are the expected willingness teachers should have for continuous improvement and the high value placed on collaborative work in the form of learning communities. for this model to be successful, teachers should demonstrate an intrinsic commitment and willingness to engage in development activities as well as a positive disposition towards collaborative work with peers in their context. teacher development and curriculum according to unesco (2015), curriculum change is a dynamic and challenging process, and its success depends on all stakeholders having the capacity to develop or adopt a shared vision, positive attitudes and commitment. moreover, they need to develop the necessary professional competencies in the various aspects of curriculum change. (para. 6) even so, there is sufficient evidence to argue that, when a new curriculum is implemented, few teachers actually change the way they are teaching to match what the curriculum calls for in terms of teaching practices in the classroom (cohen & hill, 2001; cuban, 1990; hardman & a-rahman, 2014; sargent, 2011; yan, 2012), whether it be due to insufficient knowledge of the curriculum, lack of few professional development or training opportunities (nunan, 2003), effects of poor leadership (brooks & gibson, 2012), or other contextual factors. sargent (2011) reports on a study in china that looked at the effects of curriculum renewal on teachers’ beliefs and classroom practices, educational structures, and learning outcomes. although teachers were utilizing some of the teaching methods required for the new curriculum to be effectively implemented, in the analysis of classroom practices post-curriculum implementation, data showed that there was still frequent use of traditional teaching methods such as memorization and recitation and lecture style teaching. consequentially, professional development and training opportunities, such as peer observations, local trainings and workshops, research activities, and learning communities, for teachers were considered prerequisites to a successful implementation of the new curriculum proposed. in order to reduce teacher resistance and better prepare teachers to implement a new curriculum, unesco (2015) focuses on the idea of capacity building: “the process of assisting an individual or group to gain insights, knowledge and experiences universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras256 ferrer ariza & poole needed to solve problems and implement change” (para. 7). capacity building activities, then, work to both inform all parties involved of the curriculum to be implemented through the improvement and development of necessary competencies and also to change the attitudes and perceptions of those teachers who may oppose the curriculum change. through capacity building activities, teachers and teacher educators should be able to: • understand their changing roles as curriculum changes; • comprehend curriculum objectives and national curriculum standards; • master subject matter and pedagogical skills to deliver subject-specific content; • have a positive attitude to curriculum change and be an agent of change; • break down isolation and develop team spirit; • engage in continued professional learning and development. (unesco, 2015, para. 10) capacity building activities can include: training sessions, workshops, follow-up activities, and observations on which feedback is received, and so on, which in the best case scenario make up part of a customized teacher development program that meets the contextual needs of the educational institution and its community (teachers, learners, administrators, local community, etc.) (unesco, 2015). in a study carried out with teachers in california, cohen and hill (2001) found that teacher development related to new curriculum and policy implementation was more effective when it focused on activities aimed at developing pedagogical strategies directly related to the curriculum and involved materials that could be used with the curriculum in question rather than activities that focused on generalized pedagogical strategies or materials. in the same way, according to a study in canada, teachers involved in the implementation of a new curriculum acknowledge the importance and the positive impact curriculumlinked professional development can have (brooks & gibson, 2012). similarly, when incorporating elements of the new curriculum into teacher development activities, penuel, fishman, yamaguchi, and gallagher (2007) highlight the advantages of having teachers work collaboratively and participate as a group to foster a system of trust and support as they navigate the new curriculum together. teachers in brooks and gibson’s (2012) study also highlighted the importance of having this support system and collegial community as they engaged in professional development for new curriculum implementation. throughout the process of designing and implementing the tpd for the efl program in question, capacity building was a key element in designing and carrying out activities and affording experiences to participating teachers. likewise, the curriculum design team was conscious of engaging teachers in collaborative activities as well as using elements of the newly designed curriculum in as many of the teacher development activities as possible. this aimed to ensure teacher exposure to and experience with the curriculum before and during its implementation in order to provide teachers with more personalized and relevant skills and tools together with a network of peer support. teacher development program linked to curriculum renewal bearing in mind the various models of teacher development in existence, one can see that the model of teacher development program for curriculum renewal designed here does not limit itself to any one model, but rather incorporates elements of various models such as the training and coaching/mentoring models mentioned by kennedy (2005), guskey’s (2002) student centered model, and diaz-maggioli’s (2004) teacher-centered model in order to create a 257 creating a teacher development program linked to curriculum renewal profile: issues teach. prof. dev., vol. 20 no. 2, jul-dec, 2018. issn 1657-0790 (printed) 2256-5760 (online). bogotá, colombia. pages 249-266 model that could more effectively meet the needs of the institution, program, teachers, and students. it is a curriculum renewal-linked professional development program that focuses on “how to enact pedagogical strategies, use materials, and administer assessments associated with particular curricula” (penuel et al., 2007, p. 928). in this way, the model being described here combines and integrates elements of various models and aims to find an adequate balance between teachercentered and context-specific teacher development in such a way that teachers are able to expand their formal knowledge, engage in job-embedded learning opportunities, participate in reflective teaching activities, and carry out transformative practice, all of which address both the immediate needs related to the new curriculum as well as the short and long-term professional needs of teachers. process of designing teacher development program in designing the curriculum renewal linked teacher development program, the following steps were followed: 1. execution of a two-pronged needs analysis with teachers and students 2. exploration of existing frameworks for curriculum implementation 3. creation of objectives for the teacher development framework 4. choice and design of teacher development activities 5. confirmation of final program design 6. implementation of tpd structure of teacher development program in order to achieve the general objectives set forth, the teacher development for curriculum renewal program included a variety of capacity building activities: • efl program meetings with all teachers in the program • introductory curriculum open houses • teacher-led meetings • in-house workshops • teacher presentations of their best practices • workshops by textbook authors • workshops by international experts • reflective article discussions • teacher observations and feedback sessions overall, the program was organized in such a way that every semester began and ended with a general, but tailored activity for all teachers as well as in a way that allowed for constant and individualized activities throughout the semester. types of activities used in the program in order to provide teachers with as many opportunities as possible to prepare them for and guide them through curriculum implementation, a variety of activities were included in the tpd including both teacher-led as well as expert-led activities. first, information sessions were included in the program at several moments, used principally to share important and succinct information with teachers and the institutional community. these sessions were mostly occupied with presenters explaining and presenting information to teachers with some time allotted for short question and answer sessions. likewise, there were many workshops included throughout the teacher development program. richards and farrell (2005) describe workshops as “one of the most powerful and effective forms of teacherdevelopment activity” (p. 25) as they allow and create ideal spaces for receiving input from expert, exploring practical classroom applications, increasing teachers’ motivation, developing collegiality, supporting innovation, being flexible in terms of organization, and functioning in short-term time frames. aware of these benefits, the program implemented several types of workshops, designed both internally and universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras258 ferrer ariza & poole externally. internally designed workshops included those that were: institutional led, teacher led, and curriculum design team led, while externally designed workshops included those that were led by invited textbook authors, skills experts, and teacher development experts in the efl field. at the same time, there were several reflective type sessions incorporated into the teacher development program as spaces for teachers to be exposed to learning moments that focused on reflection and discussion with colleagues guided by an internal colleague and/or an external expert where reflection was seen as “the process through which teachers comprehend and learn from their teaching experiences and assign significance to their teaching practices” (zhao, 2012, p. 57). all of these sessions aimed to encourage teachers to reflect critically on their practices in the classroom both during and after the curriculum implementation. in the same way, several opp or tunities for both individual teacher obser vations as well as peer observations were included in the program. individual teachers were observed by curriculum d e s i g n te am me mb e rs and a ls o by t he i r l e vel coordinators in the program, not to evaluate their teaching, but to observe how the new curriculum was being implemented and identify any areas that might need attention. these observations helped to assure that the needs of teachers in the early stages of curriculum implementation were continued to be met within the tpd. peer observations are collaborative, developmental activit[ies] in which professionals offer mutual support by observing each other teach; explaining and discussing what was observed; sharing ideas about teaching; gathering student feedback on teaching effectiveness; reflecting on understandings, feelings, actions and feedback and trying out new ideas. (bell as cited in bell & mladenovic, 2008, p. 736) they can help create a sense of community among teachers by allowing them to give and receive support from their colleagues, which is important for teachers involved in new curriculum implementation (brooks & gibson, 2012). all of the peer observations carried out in this tpd were designed for developmental purposes rather than evaluative, just as the individual teacher observations, which were to try and lower resistance to observations as well as avoid any possible negative perceptions of this process (lomas & nicholls, 2005). likewise, peer observations were used in a way similar to those in bell and mladenovic’s study (2008), which allowed teachers to discuss the observations and any challenges related to them in a collaborative and supportive environment. overall, the activities included in the tpd were based on the curriculum to be implemented as this connection makes the professional development more meaningful and helpful (brooks & gibson, 2012). table 1 shows the tpd designed and implemented with activities and objectives according to the phase during which they were carried out: pre-implementation, implementation, or post-curriculum implementation. 259 creating a teacher development program linked to curriculum renewal profile: issues teach. prof. dev., vol. 20 no. 2, jul-dec, 2018. issn 1657-0790 (printed) 2256-5760 (online). bogotá, colombia. pages 249-266 ta b le 1 . te a ch e r d e ve lo p m e n t p ro g ra m l in k e d t o c u rr ic u lu m r e n e w a l a ct iv it y d es cr ip ti on o f a ct iv it y pa rt ic ip an ts sp ec ifi c o bj ec ti ve s p ha se : p re -i m pl em en ta ti on r efl ec tiv e se ss io n i: pr ep ar in g fo r cu rr ic ul ar re ne w al th is s es si on w as h el d al on g w ith th e in iti al in st itu tio na l m ee tin g fo r th e se m es te r. d ur in g th e se ss io n, a d ra ft id ea of th e ne w c ur ri cu lu m w as a nn ou nc ed . s ub se qu en tly , te ac he rs w er e or ga ni ze d in to s m al l g ro up s (5 -6 ) i n w hi ch th ey d is cu ss ed q ue st io ns re la te d to h ow th e ne w cu rr ic ul um c ou ld b en efi t t he p ro gr am a s w el l a s w ha t ch al le ng es th ey c ou ld fo re se e in it s im pl em en ta tio n. w hi le e ac h gr ou p sh ar ed it s an sw er s in a w ho le g ro up di sc us si on , a t t he e nd o f t he s es si on , e ac h gr ou p al so su bm itt ed a w ri tt en s um m ar y of th ei r id ea s an d op in io ns to th e cu rr ic ul um d es ig n te am w ho u se d th es e re sp on se s to b et te r ad dr es s an y po ss ib le c ha lle ng es id en tifi ed b y te ac he rs . le ad er s: c ur ri cu lu m de si gn te am pa rt ic ip an ts : a ll te ac he rs in th e ef l pr og ra m • to e ng ag e in re fle ct io n ab ou t h ow th e cu rr ic ul ar re ne w al c ou ld h el p be tt er a ch ie ve p ro gr am ob je ct iv es /s lo s • to p os it po ss ib le c ha lle ng es to th e im pl em en ta tio n of a n ew c ur ri cu lu m • to e xp lo re p os si bl e so lu tio ns to p ot en tia l ch al le ng es to th e im pl em en ta tio n of a n ew cu rr ic ul um • to d ev el op a s en se o f c om m un ity a nd co op er at iv e w or k in a nt ic ip at in g an d so lv in g pr ob le m s c ur ri cu lu m pi lo tin g b ef or e th e ne w c ur ri cu lu m w as im pl em en te d, a s m al l gr ou p of te ac he rs p ilo te d th e in iti al v er si on o f t he cu rr ic ul um in o ne le ve l o f t he p ro gr am . th es e te ac he rs pi lo te d th e ne w s yl la bu s, n ew a ss es sm en ts , t ex tb oo k op tio ns , s up pl em en ta ry m at er ia ls a s w el l a s st ud en t le ar ni ng o ut co m es a nd g av e co ns ta nt fe ed ba ck to th e cu rr ic ul um d es ig n te am th ro ug h te ac he r jo ur na ls a nd fe ed ba ck s es si on s. 6 te ac he rs fr om th e ef l pr og ra m , in cl ud in g 2 te ac he rs fr om th e cu rr ic ul um de si gn te am • to s tr en gt he n co op er at io n be tw ee n cu rr ic ul um de si gn te am a nd e xp er ie nc ed te ac he rs fr om lo ca l c on te xt • to g en er at e ac tiv e te ac he r in vo lv em en t i n cu rr ic ul um d es ig n • to fa m ili ar iz e lim ite d gr ou ps o f t ea ch er s in th e pr og ra m w ith th e ne w c ur ri cu lu m • to id en tif y ar ea s of im pr ov em en t i n cu rr ic ul um be fo re m as s im pl em en ta tio n • to c on fir m a ss es sm en t f ra m ew or k an d te xt bo ok to b e us ed w ith n ew c ur ri cu lu m fo rm al pr es en ta tio n of ne w c ur ri cu lu m th e fo rm al a nd c om pl et e pr es en ta tio n of th e ne w cu rr ic ul um w as h el d du ri ng th e in st itu tio na l c lo si ng m ee tin g of th e se m es te r. a t t hi s tim e, th e cu rr ic ul um de si gn te am p re se nt ed a n ov er vi ew o f t he n ew c ur ri cu lu m , hi gh lig ht in g th e sy lla bu s co ns tr uc tio n, a ss es sm en t fr am ew or k, in st ru ct io na l m at er ia ls , a nd s tu de nt le ar ni ng ou tc om es fo r ea ch le ve l o f t he p ro gr am . c ur ri cu lu m de si gn te am , in st itu tio na l a ca de m ic c om m itt ee , a ll ef l pr og ra m te ac he rs • to fo rm al ly p re se nt th e st ru ct ur e an d fu nc tio n of n ew c ur ri cu lu m to a ll te ac he rs in th e pr og ra m • to h av e te ac he rs re fle ct o n th ei r ro le s w ith in an d ap pl ic at io n of n ew c ur ri cu lu m universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras260 ferrer ariza & poole r efl ec tiv e se ss io n ii : po st -p ilo tin g ex pe ri en ce s th is se ss io n w as h el d di re ct ly a fte r t he fo rm al p re se nt at io n of n ew c ur ri cu lu m . th is se ss io n in vo lv ed sp lit tin g te ac he rs in to sm al l g ro up s, ea ch o ne le d by 12 te ac he rs in vo lv ed in th e pi lo tin g of th e cu rr ic ul um . i n ea ch g ro up , t he te ac he r( s) fr om th e pi lo tin g sh ar ed th ei r e xp er ie nc es w ith te ac he rs in th e pr og ra m a nd p re se nt ed e xa m pl es o f s tu de nt a ss es sm en t pe rf or m an ce , a s m an y te ac he rs w er e co nc er ne d w ith h ow ne w a ss es sm en ts w ou ld fa re w ith st ud en ts . th er e w as a ls o a sp ac e fo r t ea ch er s t o hi gh lig ht c on ce rn s o r r es er va tio ns th ey m ay h av e ha d ab ou t t he n ew c ur ri cu lu m a nd g et fe ed ba ck fr om te ac he rs in th e pi lo tin g ab ou t t he m . le ad er s: t ea ch er s w ho p ilo te d th e cu rr ic ul um pa rt ic ip an ts : a ll te ac he rs w ho w ou ld b e te ac hi ng w ith th e ne w c ur ri cu lu m • to h av e te ac he rs fr om th e pi lo tin g sh ar e th ei r ex pe ri en ce s w ith o th er te ac he rs in th e pr og ra m an d m ed ia te a s m en to rs • to fa ci lit at e a sp ac e fo r te ac he rs to v oi ce po ss ib le c on ce rn s ab ou t t he n ew c ur ri cu lu m • to in tr od uc e te ac he rs to th e ne w a ss es sm en t fr am ew or k w ith re su lts fr om p ilo tin g c ur ri cu lu m op en h ou se to g iv e te ac he rs a b et te r c ha nc e to fa m ili ar iz e th em se lv es w ith th e ne w c ur ri cu lu m a nd re so lv e an y do ub ts th ey m ay ha ve h ad a bo ut it s i m pl em en ta tio n, th e cu rr ic ul um d es ig n te am re ad ie d a sp ac e w he re te ac he rs c ou ld c om e ex pl or e an d pe ru se c ur ri cu la r d oc um en ts su ch a s c ou rs e sy lla bi , s am pl e as se ss m en ts fo r e ac h le ve l o f t he p ro gr am , s up pl em en ta ry m at er ia ls, a nd n ew te xt bo ok s f or th e le ve ls as w el l a s t al k to th e cu rr ic ul ar d es ig n te am a bo ut a ny q ue st io ns o r c on ce rn s th ey h ad th at h ad n ot b ee n de al t w ith in th e r efl ec tiv e se ss io n ii: p os tpi lo tin g ex pe ri en ce s. th e cu rr ic ul um o pe n ho us e w as h el d on th re e di ffe re nt o cc as io ns to m ak e su re a ll te ac he rs h ad th e ch an ce to p ar tic ip at e. le ad er s: c ur ri cu lu m de si gn te am pa rt ic ip an ts : a ll te ac he rs w ho w ou ld b e te ac hi ng w ith th e ne w c ur ri cu lu m • to s ha re a ll ne w c ur ri cu la r do cu m en ts w ith te ac he rs • to h av e te ac he rs fa m ili ar iz e th em se lv es w ith ne w te xt bo ok s, s up pl em en ta ry m at er ia ls , a nd as se ss m en ts fo r th e pr og ra m • to p ro vi de a s pa ce fo r te ac he rs to a sk cu rr ic ul um d es ig n te am q ue st io ns a bo ut o r ad vi ce fo r im pl em en tin g th e ne w c ur ri cu lu m p ha se : i m pl em en ta ti on in -h ou se sk ill sba se d in st ru ct io n w or ks ho ps th e th re e m em be rs o f t he c ur ri cu lu m d es ig n te am cr ea te d a se t o f i nho us e w or ks ho ps fo cu se d on h ow to te ac h di ffe re nt s ki lls w ith in th e ne w c ur ri cu lu m u si ng th e cu st om iz ed m et ho d “e m ph as is o n sk ill s w ith in a n in te gr at ed a pp ro ac h. ” se ss io ns w er e he ld a t t he b eg in ni ng , m id dl e, a nd e nd o f t he s em es te r. w or ks ho p fa ci lit at or s: c ur ri cu lu m de si gn te am pa rt ic ip an ts : a ll te ac he rs te ac hi ng w ith th e ne w cu rr ic ul um • to re fle ct o n an d sh ar e co nc ep ts o f t ea ch in g sk ill s in th e cl as sr oo m • to p re se nt n ew to ol s an d id ea s fo r te ac hi ng sk ill s w ith th e ne w c ur ri cu lu m • to p ra ct ic e us in g an d ap pl yi ng n ew to ol s a nd id ea s f or te ac hi ng sk ill s w ith th e ne w c ur ri cu lu m • to d es ig n an d ad ap t a ct iv iti es a pp ro pr ia te fo r ac hi ev in g ne w c ur ri cu la r ob je ct iv es co lla bo ra tiv el y 261 creating a teacher development program linked to curriculum renewal profile: issues teach. prof. dev., vol. 20 no. 2, jul-dec, 2018. issn 1657-0790 (printed) 2256-5760 (online). bogotá, colombia. pages 249-266 b en ch m ar ki ng se ss io ns (c on du ct ed p er le ve l i n th e ef l pr og ra m ) th es e se ss io ns w er e ca rr ie d ou t i n se ss io ns o rg an iz ed w ith te ac he rs fr om e ac h le ve l o f t he p ro gr am a nd th ei r l ev el co or di na to r. le ve l c oo rd in at or s c re at ed b en ch m ar ki ng ac tiv iti es fo r t he n ew w ri tin g an d sp ea ki ng a ss es sm en ts be in g im pl em en te d. t ea ch er s c om pl et ed th e ac tiv iti es a t ho m e, a nd , t he n, c om pa re d th ei r e va lu at io ns a nd c om m en ts to ge th er in a g ro up se ss io n w ith a ll te ac he rs fr om th e le ve l an d th e le ve l c oo rd in at or to re ac h a co ns en su s o n ho w to gr ad e th e as se ss m en ts w ith in th e ne w c ur ri cu lu m . fa ci lit at or s: l ev el co or di na to rs in th e efl p ro gr am pa rt ic ip an ts : a ll te ac he rs in th e ef l pr og ra m te ac hi ng w ith th e ne w c ur ri cu lu m • to b en ch m ar k an d gi ve fe ed ba ck o n ne w as se ss m en ts • to w or k co lle ct iv el y on a ss es sm en t l ite ra cy im pr om pt u te ac he r ob se rv at io ns d ur in g th e fir st s em es te r of im pl em en ta tio n, th e cu rr ic ul um d es ig n te am a nn ou nc ed im pr om pt u ob se rv at io ns to m on ito r cu rr ic ul um im pl em en ta tio n. th e fo cu s w as o n ho w te ac he rs a nd s tu de nt s w er e in te ra ct in g w ith th e cu rr ic ul um . i nf or m at io n ga th er ed fr om th es e ob se rv at io ns w as u se d to g ui de th e fo cu s an d to pi cs o f di sc us si on in le ve l m ee tin gs in th e ef l pr og ra m . o bs er ve rs : c ur ri cu lu m de si gn te am te ac he rs ob se rv ed : a ll te ac he rs in th e efl pr og ra m • to o bs er ve in te ra ct io n w ith n ew c ur ri cu lu m • to id en tif y st re ng th s as w el l a s ar ea s fo r im pr ov em en t i n th e ne w c ur ri cu lu m • to id en tif y ar ea s fo r te ac he r de ve lo pm en t a ss es sm en t an d ev al ua tio n w or ks ho p th e w or ks ho p in tr od uc ed k ey p ri nc ip le s of e va lu at io n an d as se ss m en t a s w el l a s in vo lv ed te ac he rs in h an ds on , c ri tic al th in ki ng a ct iv iti es re la te d to a ss es sm en t a nd ev al ua tio n w ith in th e ne w c ur ri cu lu m . le ad er : e xt er na l, in te rn at io na l, ev al ua tio n an d as se ss m en t e xp er t pa rt ic ip an ts : a ll te ac he rs in th e ef l pr og ra m • to r ai se a w ar en es s of a ss es sm en t a nd e va lu at io n pr in ci pl es a nd te ch ni qu es • to id en tif y an d ap pl y ke y ev al ua tio n an d as se ss m en t p ri nc ip le s fo r ap pl ic at io n w ith th e ne w c ur ri cu lu m c ur ri cu lu m fe ed ba ck se ss io ns a t t he e nd o f t he fi rs t s em es te r of im pl em en ta tio n, te ac he rs m et in g ro up s ba se d on th e le ve l t he y w er e te ac hi ng a nd p ar tic ip at ed in a fe ed ba ck s es si on w ith le ve l c oo rd in at or s. th e se ss io ns w er e di vi de d in to tw o pa rt s: a g ro up d is cu ss io n w ith le ve l c oo rd in at or a nd a n an on ym ou s w ri tt en s ur ve y re sp on se . b ot h pa rt s ce nt er ed on id en tif yi ng s tr en gt hs o f t he n ew c ur ri cu lu m a s w el l a s ar ea s fo r im pr ov em en t t ha t c ou ld b e be tt er ed b ef or e th e se co nd s em es te r of im pl em en ta tio n. m od er at or s: le ve l co or di na to rs pa rt ic ip an ts : a ll te ac he rs in th e ef l pr og ra m • to e va lu at e st re ng th s an d ar ea s of im pr ov em en t of n ew c ur ri cu lu m • to g en er at e re fle ct io n on te ac hi ng p ra ct ic es a nd st ud en t l ea rn in g in th e ne w c ur ri cu lu m • to p ro vi de a s pa ce to v oi ce o pi ni on s of th e ne w cu rr ic ul um universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras262 ferrer ariza & poole b es t p ra ct ic es pr es en ta tio ns d ur in g th e se co nd s em es te r of c ur ri cu lu m im pl em en ta tio n, c er ta in te ac he rs v ol un te er ed to p re se nt ex am pl es o f s uc ce ss fu l t as ks , a ct iv iti es , s tr at eg ie s, to ol s, or m at er ia ls th ey h ad u se d w ith th e ne w c ur ri cu lu m . th es e te ac he rs s ha re d th ei r pr ac tic es in le ve l c oo rd in at io n m ee tin gs , w he re te ac he rs o f t he s am e le ve l w er e pr es en t. le ad er s: t ea ch er s fr om th e ef l pr og ra m pa rt ic ip an ts : a ll te ac he rs in th e ef l pr og ra m , o n a le ve l b as is • to s ha re s uc ce ss fu l a sp ec ts o f t ea ch in g in th e ne w c ur ri cu lu m • to e nc ou ra ge te ac he rle d pr of es si on al de ve lo pm en t a ct iv iti es • to c on so lid at e re so ur ce b an ks o f u se fu l in fo rm at io n an d pr ac tic es fo r ea ch le ve l o f t he pr og ra m sk ill s w or ks ho ps a t t he b eg in ni ng o f t he th ir d se m es te r of c ur ri cu lu m im pl em en ta tio n, tw o ed uc at io na l e xp er ts a nd a ut ho rs o f on e of th e te xt bo ok s be in g us ed w ith th e ne w c ur ri cu lu m le d a se ri es o f w or ks ho ps c en te re d on s tr at eg ie s an d ac tiv iti es p er tin en t f or s ki llba se d in st ru ct io n. th es e w or ks ho ps fo cu se d no t o nl y on a ct iv iti es a nd s tr at eg ie s us ef ul fo r im pr ov in g te ac hi ng a nd le ar ni ng w ith in th e ne w cu rr ic ul um , b ut a ls o fo r up da tin g te ac he rs ’ k no w le dg e an d aw ar en es s of n ew p ed ag og ic al p ra ct ic es in th e fie ld . le ad er s: ed uc at io na l ex pe rt s an d te xt bo ok a ut ho rs pa rt ic ip an ts : a ll te ac he rs in th e ef l pr og ra m • to u pd at e pe da go gi ca l p ra ct ic es a nd k no w le dg e re la te d to th e te ac hi ng o f s pe ci fic s ki lls • to s ha re in st ru ct io na l t oo ls a nd s tr at eg ie s fo r im pl em en tin g th e ne w c ur ri cu lu m pe er ob se rv at io ns th ro ug ho ut th e th ir d se m es te r of c ur ri cu lu m im pl em en ta tio n, te ac he rs p ar tic ip at ed in p ee r ob se rv at io ns . d ue to s ch ed ul e co nfl ic ts , s ev er al c la ss es w er e fil m ed a nd u se d fo r pe er o bs er va tio n ac tiv iti es . e ac h te ac he r in th e le ve l o bs er ve d a pe er b y w at ch in g th e fil m ed cl as s an d pa rt ic ip at in g in a g ro up d is cu ss io n w ith th e le ve l co or di na to r as a m od er at or . e ac h ob se rv at io n w as ta ilo re d to a s pe ci fic a sp ec t o f t ea ch in g or le ar ni ng w ith in th e ne w cu rr ic ul um . pa rt ic ip an ts : a ll te ac he rs in th e ef l pr og ra m • to fo st er c lo se r re la tio ns hi ps a m on g te ac he rs in th e sa m e le ve ls o f t he p ro gr am • to a na ly ze k ey a sp ec ts o f c ur ri cu lu m im pl em en ta tio n in a ct io n • to p ro vi de s pa ce s fo r te ac he rs to o bs er ve v ar ie d fo rm s of im pl em en tin g th e ne w c ur ri cu lu m • to e nc ou ra ge d is cu ss io n of c ur ri cu lu m im pl em en ta tio n am on g te ac he rs in sm al le r g ro up s r efl ec tiv e se ss io n ii i: r efl ec tiv e te ac hi ng a nd pr of es si on al de ve lo pm en t a t t he e nd o f t he th ir d se m es te r of c ur ri cu lu m im pl em en ta tio n, a n in te rn at io na l e xp er t i n re fle ct iv e te ac hi ng p ra ct ic es c ar ri ed o ut a w or ks ho p du ri ng w hi ch te ac he rs e xp lo re d w ay s of in cl ud in g re fle ct io n in th ei r pr ac tic e. w hi le th is s es si on h ad c er ta in ti es to th e ne w cu rr ic ul um , i ts m ai n fo cu s w as to r ai se te ac he rs ’ a w ar en es s of th e im po rt an ce o f r efl ec tin g in th ei r pr ac tic e in g en er al . le ad er : in te rn at io na l ex pe rt pa rt ic ip an ts : a ll te ac he rs in th e ef l pr og ra m • to r ai se a w ar en es s of re fle ct iv e te ac hi ng pr ac tic es • to e nc ou ra ge re fle ct iv e te ac hi ng p ra ct ic es in th e cu rr ic ul um im pl em en ta tio n 263 creating a teacher development program linked to curriculum renewal profile: issues teach. prof. dev., vol. 20 no. 2, jul-dec, 2018. issn 1657-0790 (printed) 2256-5760 (online). bogotá, colombia. pages 249-266 share ideas and opinions from your coordinator and colleagues teaching the same level. • i learned new strategies to isolate the skills. • i think this is a worthwhile experience that has contributed enormously to my professional development. • this was a great semester of growth for me as a teacher. similarly, through the implementation of this model, teachers became more conscious of the local and contextual curricular and teacher development needs that had been identified together with those needs that were being met through the new curriculum itself. this awareness of needs was generated specifically through the involvement of professors in the construction of the tpd and the activities that it involved. in a focus group at the end of the first semester of curriculum implementation, teachers concluded: • this approach [to curriculum implementation] considers different learning styles, highlighting areas that one is most experienced in and challenging you to work on those areas where you have difficulty. • the curriculum implementation has represented a challenge for teachers in that it obligates them to rethink their teaching methodology and strengthen their own weaknesses in the skills (reading, writing, listening, and speaking) to better favor an integral learning experience for students. likewise, in the end of semester program evaluation focus groups, informal feedback sessions with coordinators, and wrap-up questionnaires after the implementation of the development framework, teachers expressed the feeling that one of the strengths of the program had become the professional development activities and support for teachers offered by the program. professors also commented that, due to the program, they were exposed to a constant process of evaluation and self-evaluation focused on improveimpact in the efl program in many cases, institutions and programs bring in external experts to implement tpds or activities (kennedy, 2005). however, in the case of this tpd, the institution created the framework internally, relying primarily on local teachers and staff to design and implement development activities and counted on external experts on very few occasions. with the use of this model, the institution was not only able to directly prepare its professors for the curriculum renewal, but was also able to observe a variety of positive effects related to the implementation of the teacher development program linked to curriculum renewal. the major positive effects of the tpd observed were: increased consistency in curriculum implementation by teachers, increased understanding of new professional and practical roles of teachers within the new curriculum, and a new vision of coordination meetings within the program. in terms of the impact on teachers, one of the most important effects observed was the alignment of teachers’ understanding and implementation of the new curriculum. at the same time, and perhaps more importantly, teachers’ conceptualization and practice of their role within said curriculum also became clearer. both of these effects were noted in the observations carried out as part of the framework as well as in formal and informal feedback sessions with teachers. not only did teachers feel they better understood how to teach within the new curriculum, but they also felt more comfortable in their role as teachers. below are a few comments from teachers on a questionnaire administered in the curriculum feedback sessions that reflect the impact the tpd had on them: • i am getting familiar with this new methodology and i find it an enriching experience. • it’s good when as a teacher your teaching practice is enriching and have wonderful opportunity to universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras264 ferrer ariza & poole ment in their teaching practice. these comments demonstrate the positive effects the framework had on teachers’ perceptions of the program they work in as well as the program’s concern for their professional growth. in the same way, the tpd developed initiated positive changes in the overall structure of the coordination and faculty meetings carried out not only for the efl program, but for the language institute as well. thanks to the changes within the tpd, level coordination meetings were strengthened and took on a more practical, collaborative, and reflective focus where coordinators and teachers not only discussed important information but also shared ideas and challenges, reflected on ways to improve the level, and worked on collaborative projects. conclusions the teacher development program linked to curriculum renewal designed and presented in this paper represents one efl program’s attempt to prepare teachers for implementing a new curriculum, make the implementation more successful, and, at the same time, engage teachers in professional development activities and opportunities. while no tpd is perfect and can cover everything, through the careful combination and integration of key aspects of various models of teacher and professional development, institutions and programs can design and implement models that best meet their local and contextual needs to generate positive change among 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(2012). “we can only change in a small way”: a study of secondary english teachers’ implementation of curriculum reform in china. journal of educational change, 13(4), 431-447. https://doi.org/10.1007/s10833-012-9186-1. yoon, k. s., duncan, t., lee, s. w.-y., scarloss, b., & shapley, k. l. (2007). reviewing the evidence on how teacher professional development affects student achievement (issues & answers report, rel 2007 no. 033). washington, dc: u.s. department of education, institute of education sciences, national center for education evaluation and regional assistance, regional educational laboratory southwest. retrieved from http://ies.ed.gov/ncee/edlabs. zhao, m. (2012). teachers’ professional development from the perspective of teaching reflection levels. chinese education and society, 45(4), 56-67. https://doi.org/10.2753/ ced1061-1932450404. universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras266 ferrer ariza & poole about the authors erica ferrer ariza is a teacher-coordinator of the ma in english language teaching program at the universidad del norte. her research interests include curriculum development and discourse analysis. she holds a ba in education (universidad de atlántico, colombia) and an ma in language teaching and learning (university of liverpool, uk). paige m. poole holds an ma in tesol studies (university of leeds, england). she currently works as the coordinator of the specialized english programs and is a teacher in the english for international relations program at universidad del norte. 43profile: issues teach. prof. dev., vol. 22 no. 1, jan-jun, 2020. issn 1657-0790 (printed) 2256-5760 (online). bogotá, colombia. pages 43-56 https://doi.org/10.15446/profile.v22n1.75401 university students’ attitudes towards efl: a case from the south of chile la actitud de estudiantes universitarios hacia el inglés como lengua extranjera: un caso del sur de chile 1eric gómez burgos* universidad san sebastián, puerto montt, chile 2soledad sandoval molina** universidad de los lagos, osorno, chile attitude towards english as a foreign language is a new field of study in tertiary education in latin-american countries, especially in chile. however, its importance in the process of learning a language has been reported upon around the world. the aim of the current study was to identify the attitudes towards english as a foreign language of 131 university students from different educational institutions in chile; the students’ programs included english courses as part of their study plan. the three components of attitude were analyzed by means of the participants’ replies to the statements of a questionnaire. results gave evidence that university students hold a positive attitude towards english as a foreign language; nonetheless, the behavioral aspect of attitude obtained the lowest average of agreement among the respondents. key words: attitudes, chile, english as a foreign language, undergraduate students. la actitud hacia el inglés como lengua extranjera es un nuevo campo de estudio en la educación universitaria en los países latinoamericanos, especialmente en chile. sin embargo, su relevancia en el proceso de aprendizaje de una lengua se ha investigado alrededor del mundo. el presente estudio busca identificar las actitudes hacia el inglés como lengua extranjera de 131 estudiantes universitarios de diferentes instituciones educativas del sur de chile, cuyas carreras de pregrado incluyen cursos de inglés como parte de su plan de formación. se analizaron los tres componentes de la actitud por medio de las respuestas de los participantes. los resultados evidenciaron que los estudiantes tienen una actitud positiva hacia el inglés como lengua extranjera, especialmente en el dominio cognitivo; no obstante, el aspecto conductual obtuvo el promedio más bajo entre los encuestados. palabras clave: actitud, chile, estudiantes universitarios, inglés como lengua extranjera. * e-mail: ericgomezb@gmail.com ** e-mail: soledad.sandoval@ulagos.cl how to cite this article (apa, 6th ed.): gómez burgos, e., & sandoval molina, s. (2020). university students’ attitudes towards efl: a case from the south of chile. profile: issues in teachers’ professional development, 22(1), 43-56. https://doi.org/10.15446/profile.v22n1.75401. this article was received on october 8, 2018 and accepted on august 9, 2019. this is an open access article distributed under the terms of the creative commons license attribution-noncommercial-noderivatives 4.0 international license. consultation is possible at https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/. universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras44 gómez burgos & sandoval molina introduction english as a global language has spread all over the world not only in second language settings, but also in foreign language contexts. according to matear (2008) “the number of people learning english as a foreign language is growing across [latin america]” (p. 131); this is because this language has the status of the lingua franca (gómez burgos & pérez pérez, 2015; harmer, 2003); the international language (pennycook, 1994); and the language of business, science, and technology worldwide. the status of english promotes people’s wishes and needs for learning that language and, at the same time, gives people more opportunities to become more competent in the world of work. similarly, it is widely recognized that being competent in english opens doors to access a number of opportunities in different areas such as cultural exchange, knowledge, business, and education. in latin american countries for many decades, knowing english was mainly a hallmark of the economic and political power of the upper echelons of society (matear, 2008) because wealthy people had easier access to learn this language; then, they were better prepared to face this new requirement of the globalized world. recently, however, governments in latin america have proposed new educational policies which promote the insertion of english in the curricula of their countries in publicly funded schools during the last years (lindahl & sayer, 2018); these new proposals are intended to democratize the teaching of the language, and people from lower and middle classes may see this initiative as an opportunity for them to be better prepared and to obtain better jobs in the near future. in the case of chile, teaching english as a foreign language (efl) has gained importance during the last decades. as a consequence, english was included as the compulsory foreign language in the chilean curriculum during the 1990s, starting in year 5 in elementary education until year 12 in secondary education. with the new educational reform in 1998, english was presented as a primordial skill in the new curriculum in order for it to develop competencies in students to obtain access to information and facilitate international communication and business (mckay, 2003). from this period onwards, efl has been taught in the chilean classrooms and its coverage broadened via its insertion from first cycle in primary levels in the last ten years. however, results of the last national examination applied to measure 11th graders’ english level showed that fewer than 20% of them obtained an a2 certificate of proficiency (gómez burgos, 2017). a similar situation has occurred in chilean tertiary education. nowadays, english is part of many study plans (matear, 2008) of diverse programs in the areas of science, engineering, health, arts, and humanities. this insertion has been done by including english courses in the curriculum of undergraduate programs to give the students access to scientific information written in english and develop professional language skills in the target language. but, in spite of having more english courses at university level, results from international tests revealed the very basic knowledge of english students hold. for example, a study conducted by education first (2017) placed chile in number 45 of 80 participating countries and in the category called “low proficiency” of language use; this aspect reflects that a considerable number of chileans have a very limited management of the foreign language. bearing in mind the previous information concerning the inclusion of efl in latin america, but mainly in chile, we can see that many factors might influence the students’ low proficiency in english, especially affective variables such as motivation and attitude. hashwani (2008) informed that positive attitudes towards a language are a fundamental factor in the process of learning a foreign language. nonetheless, studies in this field have not been reported in chile in tertiary levels during the last decade even when attitudes towards a language have been reported as crucial factors in language learning (fakeye, 2010) in different levels of education. in this regard, gómez burgos and pérez 45profile: issues teach. prof. dev., vol. 22 no. 1, jan-jun, 2020. issn 1657-0790 (printed) 2256-5760 (online). bogotá, colombia. pages 43-56 university students’ attitudes towards efl: a case from the south of chile pérez (2015) and kormos and kiddle (2013) suggested that there is limited research conducted in the field of affective factors in efl in chile, which leads us to believe the present study contributes to expanding the existing literature in the area. considering the above-mentioned factors, we see this research reports on the attitudes of a group of 131 university students towards efl in chile. simultaneously, this report intends to characterize the way undergraduate students perceive efl, especially in the south of the country, by analyzing their responses given to the 78 statements of the questionnaire applied in the three different dimensions of attitudes, namely: behavioral, cognitive, and emotional. affective factors in efl learning in light of the new tendency that shows the increment of efl learners in the region, but the low results of people’s language proficiency, an interesting topic in this area has to do with affective factors that interfere positively or negatively in the process of language learning (ahmed, aftab, & yaqoob, 2015; hashwani, 2008). studies in the area have reported the relevance of these variables when learners face the complex process of second language acquisition, and even more complex, foreign language learning, not only because it is time demanding, but also because it is a difficult process when negative variables intervene. studies about affective factors affecting efl learning are limited in south america. puerto zabala and reyes vargas (2014) reported on a group of colombian students’ perception of efl towards english for specific purposes; results evidenced that students are conscious of the importance of english in the globalized world. similarly, peña dix (2013) completed a study in colombia and concluded that efl learning and teaching are complex processes where motivation plays a foremost role. in the same way, chilean students, their parents and teachers are reported to hold favorable perceptions towards the management of the english language since its use improves future job and study opportunities (cide, 2004). a similar study carried out by gómez burgos and pérez pérez (2015) concluded that 12th graders held a favorable perception towards efl because they consider the target language essential for their future; however, they do not want to devote time to it. all in all, the conclusions of the reduced studies in the field agree on the importance of affective variables in the process of learning efl. kormos, kiddle, and csizér (2011) established in their study that the most significant learning outcome of the students had to do with “the status of english as a lingua franca, and the wish to use english as a means of international communication” (p. 513); and acknowledging that an “esl/efl learner’s motivation is affected by learner’s attitude towards learning language” (noreen, ahmed, & esmail, 2015, p. 96). we expect chilean undergraduate students hold favorable attitudes towards efl. it is clear that favorable attitudes towards a language positively predispose learners to its learning process; therefore, attitude is an essential variable to consider when teaching and learning efl. attitude in efl learning attitude has been regarded as a key factor in learning a foreign language. according to zainol, pour-mohammadi, and alzwari (2012), attitude is one of the key affective issues for success in learning a foreign language; it plays a crucial role in the learning process since it is a predisposition towards an object which can be either positive or negative. in the case of foreign language learning “positive language attitudes let learner [sic] have positive [sic] orientation towards learning english” (karahan, 2007, p. 84); consequently, when facing a teaching-learning process like learning a language, the learner’s mood with a favorable foundation is more suitable than a learner with an unfavorable basis. positive inclination towards the language has an effect on the process of learning the language. universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras46 gómez burgos & sandoval molina additionally, wenden (1991) proposed a definition of attitudes that covers three dimensions, namely, cognitive, affective, and behavioral. first, the cognitive dimension has to do with the individual’s beliefs or opinions about the object; second, the affective component alludes to the individual’s feeling and emotions towards the object; and third, the behavioral constituent refers to the individual’s behavior or actions towards the object. therefore, attitudes are made up of all three components and, in the case of foreign language learning, they suggest “linguistic behaviour in particular” (al-mamun, rahman, rahman, & hossain, 2012, p. 200) because they have a clear influence over our behavior resulting from the social activities performed by using the target language (gómez burgos & pérez pérez, 2015). in the last decade, many studies have revolved around the issue of attitudes learners at different levels have towards efl. concerning university students’ attitudes towards efl, soleimani and hanafi (2013) recently conducted a survey of 40 iranian medical students; their findings indicated that the participants held highly favorable attitudes towards the language. in the same year, tahaineh and daana (2013) informed of 184 jordanian undergraduates’ motivations and attitudes towards learning efl; their findings showed the positive support english enjoys for participants’ instrumental use. likewise, al-tamimi and shuib (2009) described a research study about petroleum engineering students’ motivation and attitudes towards learning english; their findings revealed that learners held positive attitudes towards the use of english in social and educational contexts. all the studies informed above reported on favorable attitudes towards english as a universal language and highlighted the importance of english in the globalized world. in regard to chile, mcbride (2009) investigated the students’ perceptions about the techniques used when teaching efl in chile. results showed that students had positive perceptions towards english, especially concerning its use in order to facilitate communication with other language speakers. in this line, it seems the evidence shows that chilean learners hold positive attitudes towards the target language; however, the inexistence of studies reported in tertiary education in this area makes it difficult to definitely conclude in this regard. as stated previously, this study aims to investigate and report on a group of 131 university students’ attitudes towards efl in chile in order to characterize their attitudes towards the target language at university level. method this research project is a descriptive survey study that uses quantitative methodology. it aims to characterize a group of university students’ attitudes towards efl by means of their responses given to the statements on a questionnaire. participants the participants were 131 students from four different universities in the south of chile who answered an online questionnaire; 68 respondents were women (52%) and 63 respondents were men (48%). their ages were varied: 49 respondents ranged in age from 17 to 20 (37%), 75 respondents ranged from 21 to 25 (57%), 6 respondents ranged from 26 to 30 (5%), and 1 respondent was more than 30 years old (1%). the participants’ fields of study were varied as well; 8 respondents were from arts and architecture (6%), 1 participant from education (1%), 67 participants from health (51%), 32 respondents from engineering (24%), 22 participants from social sciences (17%), and 1 respondent from another field (1%). in regard to the respondents’ year of study in their programs, 4 participants were in their first year (3%), 55 students were in their second year (42%), 26 respondents were in third year (20%), 13 students were in fourth year (10%), and 33 students were in fifth or senior years (25%). 47profile: issues teach. prof. dev., vol. 22 no. 1, jan-jun, 2020. issn 1657-0790 (printed) 2256-5760 (online). bogotá, colombia. pages 43-56 university students’ attitudes towards efl: a case from the south of chile data collection instruments a questionnaire was designed to gauge or probe a group of university students’ attitudes towards efl in the south of chile. it was developed based on the analysis of previous related instruments (see gómez burgos & pérez pérez, 2015; soleimani & hanafi, 2013; tahaineh & daana, 2013). the instrument was also previously piloted and refined in order to measure the reliability level of the different items; similarly, it was proofread by three professors to corroborate the validity of the items of the questionnaire. all comments received were considered at the moment of modifying the instrument before applying it. the questionnaire has two main parts: the demographic information and the statements related to the three domains of the instrument. the former has questions that require information about the respondents’ gender, age, fields of study, number of years studying, number of subjects related to english, and number of hours dedicated to learning english. the latter is composed of 78 statements that pertain to the three domains of attitude: cognitive, behavioral, and emotional. each domain is further divided into two categories as shown in table 1. the value of cronbach’s alpha was 0.886 which shows an acceptable consistency of reliability of the instrument. procedure the development of the research consisted of three stages: the development of the instrument, the application of the instrument, and the analysis of the data. first, several questionnaires were studied and analyzed in order to choose the most appropriate ones for the purposes of the current research; the criteria to select the instruments were (a) acceptable value of cronbach’s alpha, (b) similarity with the chilean reality, and (c) chilean context. after the analysis of the collected instruments, three previous investigations were considered (see gómez burgos & pérez pérez, 2015; soleimani & hanafi, 2013; tahaineh & daana, 2013). later, the instrument was designed and sent to three professors to corroborate its validity; it was also piloted with ten students randomly selected from the target population. then, all comments were considered and the final version of the instrument was presented. as a second stage, the questionnaire was sent to students of five different universities in the south of chile by email with an invitation to participate. the first answer was received on 10/23/2016 and the last answer was recorded on 12/22/2016; the questionnaire was available from october until the end of december 2016. finally, the responses to the questionnaire were analyzed using the statistical program spss. results the most important results will be discussed in terms of the distribution of frequencies and percentages, the total means value, the standard deviation for each domain, and the results of the non-parametric test mann-whitney-u test. cognitive domain the cognitive domain of attitudes is represented by 30 statements. the results of the domain are represented in table 2. universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras48 gómez burgos & sandoval molina table 1. questionnaire to characterize university students’ attitudes towards efl domain nº items subdomain nº items description cognitive 30 english as a universal language 9 this sub-domain is composed of the following statements: 1. people who study english are better educated. 4. people who speak english are more valued in society. 7. the english language is a really helpful tool for the future prospects of any professional. 10. speaking english allows communication with people from all over the world. 13. speaking english opens work opportunities. 17. people who study english for a longer time have wider general knowledge. 20. all college students should speak english by the time they graduate. 22. all college students should have english modules. 24. everybody should be able to communicate in english. english at the university and academic purposes 21 this sub-domain is composed of the following statements: 26. being a good english student in college helps me study for other subjects. 27. the english modules in college help me learn more. 31. studying english in college helps me connect with what i learned in secondary school. 32. the english modules in college cover contents from many different areas of knowledge. 36. studying english in college helps me understand papers from other subjects. 37. the english modules in college cover contents related to my specialty. 41. studying english helps connect new information with my previous knowledge. 42. i am capable of analyzing information in english related to other subjects from my program. 46. studying english in college helps me communicate more efficiently. 47. i feel that the english training from college will help me speak english fluently. 51. i cannot apply the contents from the english lessons in college to real life situations. 52. the english lessons i receive in college are important for my future. 56. in my opinion, the level of english taught in college is hard to learn. 57. i have trouble focusing when i study english. 61. my results in the english modules are not good even if i study hard. 62. my grades in the english module are low. 66. i think i am a good student in the english module. 67. i have skills to learn english easily. 71. i think it is necessary to keep studying english after college. 72. i believe i will never use english at work after i graduate. 76. learning english is an important goal for me to achieve. behavioral 20 english at home and leisure 10 this sub-domain is composed of the following statements: 3. i have a fixed schedule at home to study english. 6. i regularly read materials written in english. 9. i reinforce my english level by looking for materials on websites related to english learning. 12. i reinforce my english level with multimedia materials (music, tv series, movies, etc.). 49profile: issues teach. prof. dev., vol. 22 no. 1, jan-jun, 2020. issn 1657-0790 (printed) 2256-5760 (online). bogotá, colombia. pages 43-56 university students’ attitudes towards efl: a case from the south of chile 15. i postpone my english homework as much as possible. 16. i watch movies in english without spanish captions in my free time. 19. i listen to music in english during my free time. 21. i study english regularly even if i do not have any tests at the university. 23. i look for additional information apart from the content studied in class. 25. i do not study english at home. english at the university and academic purposes 10 this sub-domain is composed of the following statements: 30. i regularly participate during the english lesson. 35. when i hear a classmate speaking english, i try to practice with him/ her. 40. whenever i miss an english lesson, i never ask my classmates or teacher about homework. 45. i do not pay attention when my english teacher explains contents. 50. i attend english lessons eager to learn. 55. i am forced to attend english lessons. 60. i study english only to pass the module. 65. i feel relaxed whenever i need to speak english in college. 70. i feel embarrassed to speak english. 75. i am not eager to attend the english module in college. emotional 28 english as a universal language 6 this sub-domain is composed of the following statements: 2. people who study english should be proud of themselves. 5. english is socially the most highly regarded language. 8. i do not like being taught english at the university. 11. i like that english is spoken in most of the countries. 14. i would like for the teaching of english to become a priority in chile. 18. i do not feel that english is necessary for professionals. english at home and academic purposes 22 this sub-domain is composed of the following statements: 28. i like being taught english in college. 29. studying english in college is nice. 33. i like feeling that i am making progress in english. 34. i am interested in studying english in college. 38. studying english in college makes me feel anxious. 39. the english lessons in college make me have more confidence to talk. 43. studying english in college makes me feel confident about my future. 44. i like spending time on my english lessons. 48. the english modules are unnecessary for my professional training. 49. honestly, i am not very interested in english lessons. 53. i am not anxious when i answer questions orally in english. 54. i feel scared when i practice english with my classmates. 58. i like communicating in english with other people. 59. not being able to speak english worries me. 63. not being able to communicate in english frustrates me. 64. i feel indifferent towards english. 68. i like perceiving that i am learning english. 69. i would like to express myself in english more fluently. 73. not learning english fast enough discourages me. 74. my experience in secondary school makes me dislike learning english. 77. i prefer to learn english the way i was taught in secondary school. 78. the english lessons in college have been more useful than the lessons from secondary school. universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras50 gómez burgos & sandoval molina table 2. results of cognitive domain item # frequency (percentage) means std dev agree disagree sub-category: english as a universal language 1 40 (43%) 53 (57%) 2.779 1.2967 4 100 (90%) 11 (10%) 3.985 .9686 7 124 (99%) 1 (1%) 4.649 .6067 10 117 (96%) 5 (4%) 4.389 .8093 13 121 (98%) 2 (2%) 4.588 .7111 17 43 (51%) 41 (49%) 3.031 1.1763 20 84 (86%) 14 (14%) 3.779 1.0546 22 106 (92%) 9 (8%) 4.229 1.0120 24 87 (86%) 14 (14%) 3.824 1.0847 sub-category: english at the university and academic purposes 26 55 (56%) 43 (44%) 3.115 1.2443 27 63 (71%) 26 (29%) 3.389 1.0639 31 67 (66%) 34 (34%) 3.351 1.2085 32 74 (82%) 16 (18%) 3.588 1.0067 36 83 (76%) 26 (24%) 3.740 1.3450 37 109 (92%) 10 (8%) 4.160 1.0511 41 76 (82%) 17 (18%) 3.603 .9975 42 79 (64%) 24 (36%) 3.481 1.0767 46 75 (82%) 17 (18%) 3.611 1.0566 47 62 (70%) 27 (30%) 3.397 1.1548 51 29 (29%) 72 (71%) 2.557 1.2351 52 99 (92%) 9 (8%) 4.000 .9282 56 13 (14%) 80 (86%) 2.267 1.0139 57 38 (37%) 66 (63%) 2.618 1.3270 61 35 (34%) 69 (66%) 2.534 1.3773 62 31 (34%) 61 (66%) 2.405 1.3114 66 64 (65%) 34 (35%) 3.221 1.1916 67 66 (63%) 38 (37%) 3.252 1.2238 71 86 (84%) 16 (16%) 3.939 1.2010 72 19 (17%) 95 (83%) 1.924 1.2380 76 96 (88%) 13 (12%) 3.985 .9844 figures in table 2 show that the average of the participants in agreement regarding the 30 statements of the cognitive domain of attitude was 68% against 32% of the respondents who disagreed. however, when the analysis is conducted by sub-categories in the same domain, the classification english as a universal language evidenced an average of 82% in agreement with the nine statements of that group in comparison to the category english at the university and academic purposes that showed only 62% in agreement. item 7 of the survey (“the english language is a really helpful tool for the future prospects of any professional”) obtained the highest level of agreement among the participants with 99% of positive preferences, while item 17 (“people who study english for a longer time have wider general knowledge”) was the lowest score with 51% in agreement on the positive side. other remarkable items of the domain are item 13 (“speaking english opens work opportunities”) that garnered 98% of positive preferences and item 10 (“speaking english allows communication with people from all over the world”) where the percentage of positive attitude was 96%, among others. behavioral domain the behavioral domain of attitude is represented by 20 statements. the most significant results are shown in table 3. table 3 reveals that an average of 40.5% of the participants agreed on the statements of the behavioral domain in contrast to 59.6% of participants who marked disagreement on the 20 statements as an average. regarding sub-category 1 (english at home and leisure) the average percentage of agreement was 42%, while in sub-category 2 (english at the university and academic purposes) the average was 39%. when analyzing specific items in the behavioral domain of attitude, four statements obtained an average of more than 80% of choices that reflected positive attitude towards the assertions. on the one hand, item 51profile: issues teach. prof. dev., vol. 22 no. 1, jan-jun, 2020. issn 1657-0790 (printed) 2256-5760 (online). bogotá, colombia. pages 43-56 university students’ attitudes towards efl: a case from the south of chile 45 (“i do not pay attention when my english teacher explains contents”) showed that 87% disagreed with the statement, that is, participants demonstrated a positive attitude towards the assertion. item 50 (“i attend english lessons eager to learn”) ranked an average of 87% as well regarding positive preferences. on the other hand, item 3 (“i have a fixed schedule at home to study english”) indicated that 94% of the contestants disagreed with the statement. table 3. results of behavioral domain item # frequency (percentage) means std dev agree disagree sub-category: english at home and leisure 3 7 (6%) 101 (94%) 1.779 .9710 6 47 (47%) 52 (53%) 2.992 1.2800 9 35 (36%) 61 (64%) 2.634 1.2166 12 87 (82%) 19 (18%) 3.786 1.1702 15 33 (34%) 63 (66%) 2.687 1.2221 16 25 (23%) 84 (77%) 2.198 1.3268 19 93 (86%) 15 (14%) 4.053 1.1523 21 18 (20%) 74 (80%) 2.344 1.1147 23 36 (36%) 64 (64%) 2.656 1.2075 25 54 (52%) 49 (48%) 3.076 1.3337 sub-category: english at the university and academic purposes 30 59 (59%) 41 (41%) 3.168 1.2719 35 31 (30%) 71 (70%) 2.542 1.1849 40 26 (23%) 88 (77%) 2.183 1.3405 45 16 (13%) 109 (87%) 1.695 1.1087 50 76 (87%) 11 (13%) 3.702 .9663 55 33 (31%) 72 (69%) 2.511 1.3380 60 37 (36%) 66 (64%) 2.641 1.3131 65 43 (45%) 52 (55%) 2.908 1.1796 70 45 (46%) 53 (54%) 3.000 1.2950 75 18 (17%) 86 (83%) 2.084 1.1769 emotional domain the emotional domain of attitude was represented by 28 assertions. table 4 shows the main results. table 4. results of emotional domain item # frequency (percentage) means std dev agree disagree sub-category: english as a universal language 2 73 (77%) 22 (23%) 3.603 1.1141 5 108 (95%) 6 (5%) 4.252 .8801 8 14 (12%) 106 (88%) 1.672 1.0410 11 77 (81%) 18 (19%) 3.687 1.1374 14 106 (94%) 7 (6%) 4.137 .9262 18 12 (10%) 108 (90%) 1.672 1.0630 sub-category: english at the university and academic purposes 28 91 (83%) 19 (17%) 3.855 1.1840 29 84 (88%) 12 (13%) 3.863 1.0360 33 109 (95%) 6 (5%) 4.244 .8952 34 96 (88%) 13 (12%) 3.939 1.0937 38 39 (41%) 57 (59%) 2.756 1.2655 39 63 (68%) 29 (32%) 3.321 1.1386 43 68 (73%) 25 (27%) 3.511 1.1527 44 82 (82%) 18 (18%) 3.748 1.1459 48 32 (28%) 83 (72%) 2.244 1.4681 49 20 (18%) 92 (82%) 2.099 1.2144 53 49 (54%) 41 (46%) 3.115 1.1207 54 29 (28%) 74 (72%) 2.473 1.1788 58 85 (86%) 14 (14%) 3.794 1.0577 59 69 (63%) 26 (27%) 3.519 1.2791 63 65 (70%) 43 (40%) 3.221 1.4158 64 13 (12%) 94 (88%) 1.893 1.1180 68 107 (96%) 4 (4%) 4.229 .8187 69 122 (98%) 3 (2%) 4.611 .6858 73 51 (51%) 49 (49%) 2.947 1.2546 74 21 (21%) 80 (79%) 2.191 1.2897 77 21 (19%) 89 (81%) 2.137 1.2635 78 83 (86%) 13 (14%) 3.817 1.1149 universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras52 gómez burgos & sandoval molina in the emotional component of attitudes, the general average percentage of agreement was 61.2%. the highest average of agreement for this group was obtained on item 69 (“i would like to express myself in english more fluently”) with 98% of preferences whereas the lowest score was from item 49 (“honestly, i am not very interested in english lessons”) which showed a positive attitude with 82% disagreement with the statement, followed closely by item 77 (“i prefer to learn english the way i was taught in secondary school”) which ranked 19% in agreement. if the analysis is conducted per sub-category, the first one, english as a universal language obtained a 62% average of agreement and the second category, english at the university and academic purposes, achieved 61% of preferences. however, the analysis per specific items shows that six assertions obtained more than 90% average of preferences; for example, item 68 (“i like perceiving that i am learning english”) was marked 96% as the average of agreement; similar to items 5 (“english is the most highly regarded language socially”) and 33 (“i like feeling that i am making progress in english”) that obtained a 95% average of preferences. finally, the mann-whitney u test was run in order to compare male and female participants’ attitudes. based on the results obtained, it was evidenced that there was no significant difference between the two groups, that is, subjects reported similar answers to the statements of the questionnaire. the results of the three components of attitudes, according to the mann-whitney u test are shown in table 5. from this data, we can conclude that the attitude among male and female participants is the same as the p-value, which was higher than the level of significance (0.445 > 0.05), meaning that there was no significant difference between male and female students. meanwhile, the results show that the three specific components of attitude had slight differences as the cognitive component obtained less value than the behavioral and the emotional ones. conclusions and implications the current study aimed at investigating undergraduate students’ attitudes towards efl in university contexts in chile. the findings evidenced that 131 students hold highly positive attitudes regarding efl at the tertiary level in chile. the cognitive aspect of attitude towards english showed evidence of the highest mean score while the behavioral domain of attitude in our study represented the lowest mean score; similar to what was reported by soleimani and hanafi (2013). this study showed that attitudes have a very precise influence on learners’ behavior, similar to what gómez burgos and pérez pérez (2015) reported in their work. a positive attitude towards a foreign language is fundamental to learning it (fakeye, 2010; hashwani, 2008; lai & aksornjarung, 2018; zainol et al., 2012) because it allows learners to have a favorable predisposition towards its learning (karahan, 2007). however, there was statistically no significant difference between male and female students after applying the non-parametric mann-whitney u test. table 5. results of mann-whitney u test attitudes cognitive component behavioral component emotional component mann-whitney u 1930.429 1897.533 1912.300 1978.625 wilcoxon w 4183.353 4166.533 4159.300 4218.554 z -1.023 -1.187 -1.0958 -0.7951786 asymp. sig. 0.445 0.37 0.42 0.53 53profile: issues teach. prof. dev., vol. 22 no. 1, jan-jun, 2020. issn 1657-0790 (printed) 2256-5760 (online). bogotá, colombia. pages 43-56 university students’ attitudes towards efl: a case from the south of chile with respect to the cognitive aspect of attitude, this study showed that this domain was extremely well accepted by the participants; both sub-categories obtained the highest percentage of agreement, especially the sub-domain english as a universal language, which ranked as having the greatest value of the study. this is aligned to the idea of english as an international language (pennycook, 1994) and the participants’ awareness of the importance of english as a global language as reported by puerto zabala and reyes vargas (2014) and asghar, jamil, iqbal, and yasmin (2018). similarly, respondents ascertained that learning english is a specific resource that gives power, as previously alleged by matear (2008). in regard to the behavioral and emotional aspect of attitude, the findings in this category are aligned with the reports given by asghar et al. (2018) and puerto zabala and reyes vargas (2014), among others, due to the learners’ positive attitude towards these components in spite of the lower results obtained in the behavioral aspect. in this domain, the sub-group english at the university and academic purposes obtained negative approval by the respondents because the group was related to the participants’ own responses and behavior towards the english lessons and their study habits. based on the responses, the learners are keen about learning english and they attend the lesson enthusiastically, but they do not pay enough attention to their instructors and they are embarrassed about speaking in class. even though the students wish to be part of the international english-speaking community, they might find themselves trapped by their own time-consuming university obligations, which interfere with more constant practice and study of the language prior to the lessons (kormos et al., 2011). evidently, there are a number of factors, other than lack of time, that make an impact on the level of students’ participation and involvement in the english lessons: attitudes towards the language, anxiety, or fear of ridicule. as an additional component, even if english is generally perceived as a very important skill to be acquired at some point in their professional training, the perception of english as a subject is usually regarded as less important than the core modules for each program. this might help explain this apparent nonchalant attitude towards the lessons. with reference to the emotional aspect, learners showed their interest in learning english as presented by asghar et al. (2018); data also revealed that learners like english and those who speak it, similar to the report of al-mamun et al. (2012). this study might contribute to complement research in the field of efl in chile as “there is a lack of research in the area of affective factors that influence the learning of the target language, especially the role of positive or favorable attitudes that students hold in different classrooms” (gómez burgos & pérez pérez, 2015, p. 323). in this line, the current study contributes to complement the information available of the chilean learner specially in the area of the learners’ opinions towards the foreign language in tertiary programs. participants of this investigation alleged that they would like for the teaching of english to become a priority in chile (94% agreement with the assertion) and suggest this be considered by the national authorities when deciding on the new policies related to the inclusion of the foreign language in the country. these findings can be used to complement pertinent public policies in chile in order to promote the inclusion of english in the country. as to the implications offered by this study and the analysis of its results, it can be affirmed that this piece of research seeks to open a new path for efl research in tertiary education in latin america, particularly in chile where, as reported by barahona (2015), research lines in efl settings correspond to “teachers’ beliefs, the practicum, identity formation, teacher’s perception of their own practices, teacher mentors and pre-service teacher relationships and teachers’ metacognitive knowledge” (p. 8). therefore, it is to be concluded that a study on the university learners’ side of the spectrum, more specifically, about their attitudes universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras54 gómez burgos & sandoval molina towards efl, is an underdeveloped topic that might lead to interesting findings to widen the field of efl research in chile. the institutions included private and public spheres, and the wide age range of the participating students shedding light on the importance of investigating how a relevant affective factor—attitude—might impact the acquisition of a foreign language in university students from all sorts of origins, making this issue a transversal one. placing more emphasis on areas like english for specific purposes (esp) in university programs offers more opportunities for undergraduate students to merge their fields of expertise with a second language, which has proven to trigger positive attitudes towards its acquisition. in order to achieve this goal, it would be necessary to introduce some changes in the way english is taught in tertiary education. these changes should cover aspects such as syllabi design, the training of teachers to provide challenging yet attainable esp lessons at university level, and the consideration for students’ needs when designing courses via survey application, to name a few. this way, teachers will ensure that tasks and practical activities promote the use of the target language for professional and academic purposes in a sheltered environment, where students feel comfortable while producing english. the combination of these factors would undoubtedly heighten affective factors such as motivation and positive attitudes towards the language, since the students will relate to the contents studied, while knowing they will be able to use english in practical ways for their future careers. as for the limitations of the study, the number of participants (131 undergraduate students), and the number of participating institutions (4) might be seen as a drawback as they are from only one region in the south of the country. accordingly, the study could be expanded to other regions of chile so as to have a wider variety of participants and, therefore, an assortment of institutions. a wider sample of students and institutions might in turn provide additional variables to consider, such as socio-economic backgrounds, types of programs, and geographic location, all of which can enlarge the scope of the present study. with that in mind, there would be an in-depth study and analysis of the chilean reality in this matter. a final aspect to consider has to do with the limited evidence reported from studies conducted in this particular field of language teaching, specifically in tertiary education. as this work is a pioneer in the area, there are no standards or literature with which to compare these outcomes. nonetheless, it opens a new avenue for expanding research in efl in chilean contexts. references ahmed, m., aftab, m., & yaqoob, h. (2015). students’ motivation toward english language learning at undergraduate level. advances in language and literary studies, 6(3), 230-238. https://doi.org/10.7575/aiac. alls.v.6n.3p.230. al-mamun, a., rahman, m., rahman, a. r., & hossain, a. a. (2012). students’ attitudes towards english: the case of life science school of khulna university. international review of social sciences and humanities, 3(1), 200-209. al-tamimi, a., & shuib, m. (2009). motivation and attitudes towards learning english: a study of petroleum engineering undergraduates at hadhramout university of sciences and technology. gema online: journal of language studies, 9(2), 29-55. asghar, a., jamil, i., iqbal, a., & yasmin, m. (2018). learner attitude towards efl learning: a response from art and design. open journal of social sciences, 6(5), 81-88. https:// doi.org/10.4236/jss.2018.65007. barahona, m. 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(2017). use of the genre-based approach to teach expository essays to english pedagogy students. how, 24(2), 141-159. https://doi.org/10.19183/how.24.2.330. gómez burgos, e., & pérez pérez, s. (2015). chilean 12th graders’ attitudes towards english as a foreign language. colombian applied linguistics journal, 17(2), 313-324. https://doi.org/10.14483/udistrital.jour.calj.2015.2.a10. harmer, j. (2003). the practice of english language teaching. london, uk: longman. hashwani, m. s. (2008). students’ attitudes, motivation and anxiety towards english language learning. journal of research and reflections in education, 2(2), 121-144. karahan, f. (2007). language attitudes of turkish students towards the english language and its use in turkish context. journal of arts and sciences, 7, 73-87. kormos, j., & kiddle, t. (2013). the role of socio-economic factors in motivation to learn english as a foreign language: the case of chile. system, 41(2), 399-412. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.system.2013.03.006. kormos, j., kiddle, t., & csizér, k. (2011). systems of goals, attitudes, and self-related beliefs in second-languagelearning motivation. applied linguistics, 32(5), 495-516. https://doi.org/10.1093/applin/amr019. lai, y., & aksornjarung, p. (2018). thai efl learners’ attitudes and motivation towards learning english through content-based instruction. mojes: malaysian online journal of educational sciences, 6(1), 43-65. lindahl, k. m., & sayer, p. (2018). early efl instruction and l1 literacy. colombian applied linguistics journal, 20(2), 170-184. https://doi.org/10.14483/22487085.12900. matear, a. (2008). english language learning and education policy in chile: can english really open doors for all? asia pacific journal of education, 28(2), 131-147. https:// doi.org/10.1080/02188790802036679. mcbride, k. (2009). percepciones estudiantiles sobre las técnicas utilizadas en la enseñanza del inglés como lengua extranjera [students’ perceptions on the techniques used when teaching efl]. revista universum, 24(2), 94-112. https://doi.org/10.4067/s0718-23762009000200006. mckay, s. (2003). teaching english as an international language: the chilean context. elt journal, 57(2), 139148. https://doi.org/10.1093/elt/57.2.139. noreen, s., ahmed, m., & esmail, a. (2015). role of students’ motivation, attitude and anxiety in learning english at intermediate level in pakistan: a gender-based study. educational research international, 4(2), 96-108. pennycook, a. (1994). the cultural politics of english as an international language. london, uk: longman. peña dix, b. (2013). motivation and the concept of selfregulation: theory and implications for english language teaching and learning in colombia. voces y silencios: revista latinoamericana de educación, 4(1), 71-85. https:// doi.org/10.18175/vys4.1.2013.04. puerto zabala, p., & reyes vargas, r. (2014). efl students’ perceptions about their english language learning and its uses for specific purposes at international languages institute at uptc duitama branch. enletawa journal, (6). soleimani, h., & hanafi, s. (2013). iranian medical students’ attitudes towards english language learning. international research journal of applied and basic sciences, 4(12), 3816-3823. tahaineh, y., & daana, h. (2013). jordanian undergraduates’ motivations and attitudes towards learning english in efl context. international review of social sciences and humanities, 4(2), 159-180. wenden, a. (1991). learner strategies for learner autonomy. london, uk: prentice hall. zainol, m. j., pour-mohammadi, m., & alzwari, h. (2012). efl students’ attitudes towards learning english language: the case of libyan secondary school students. asian social science, 8(2), 119-134. https://doi.org/10.5539/ass. v8n2p119. universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras56 gómez burgos & sandoval molina about the authors eric gómez burgos is a generalist teacher with a minor in english from universidad de los lagos (chile); also, he holds a master’s degree in applied linguistics to english as a foreign language from pontificia universidad católica, chile. his areas of research interest are related to teaching methods and teacher training. soledad sandoval molina holds a bachelor of arts degree in english language teaching from universidad de los lagos, chile; and a master’s degree in english language teaching and applied linguistics from king’s college, london. her areas of research interest are related to language acquisition and teacher training. 175profile: issues teach. prof. dev., vol. 22 no. 1, jan-jun, 2020. issn 1657-0790 (printed) 2256-5760 (online). bogotá, colombia. pages 175-188 https://doi.org/10.15446/profile.v22n1.73733 strategies to enhance or maintain motivation in learning a foreign language estrategias para aumentar o mantener la motivación en el aprendizaje de una lengua extranjera 1ana muñoz-restrepo* 2marta ramirez** 3sandra gaviria*** universidad eafit, medellín, colombia motivation is one of the most important factors in the enjoyment and success in learning any subject, especially a foreign language. many students approach the learning of a language based on academic mandates, family impositions, job requirements, and so on. these non-intrinsic motivations make learning a more difficult, frustrating, and non-pleasurable experience, both for students and teachers. therefore, skills in motivating learners should be seen as central to teaching effectively. in this article, we provide a series of strategies for teachers to gradually lead students from an extrinsic motivation to a more internal and autonomous motivation. this approach is framed within one of the most recent and well-known theories of motivation: self-determination theory. key words: autonomy, engagement, motivational strategies, self-determination theory, types of motivation. la motivación es uno de los factores más importantes en el disfrute y el éxito del aprendizaje de cualquier tema, especialmente de un idioma extranjero. muchos estudiantes se acercan al aprendizaje de un idioma a partir de mandatos académicos, imposiciones familiares, requisitos de trabajo, etc. estas motivaciones no intrínsecas hacen que el aprendizaje sea una experiencia más difícil, frustrante y no placentera, tanto para los estudiantes como para los maestros. por lo tanto, las habilidades para motivar a los alumnos deben considerarse centrales para la eficacia de la enseñanza. en este artículo, proporcionamos una serie de estrategias para que los maestros guíen gradualmente a los estudiantes desde una motivación extrínseca a una motivación más interna y autónoma. este enfoque se enmarca en una de las teorías de motivación más recientes y conocidas: la teoría de la autodeterminación. palabras clave: autonomía, compromiso, estrategias motivacionales, teoría de la autodeterminación, tipos de motivación. * e-mail: apmunoz@eafit.edu.co ** e-mail: mararamirez96@hotmail.com *** e-mail: sgaviria@eafit.edu.co how to cite this article (apa, 6th ed.): muñoz-restrepo, a., ramirez, m., & gaviria, s. (2020). strategies to enhance or maintain motivation in learning a foreign language. profile: issues in teachers’ professional development, 22(1), 175-188. https://doi.org/10.15446/profile. v22n1.73733. this article was received on july 26, 2018 and accepted on august 23, 2019. this is an open access article distributed under the terms of the creative commons license attribution-noncommercial-noderivatives 4.0 international license. consultation is possible at https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/. universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras176 muñoz-restrepo, ramirez, & gaviria introduction despite the numerous publications that have analyzed and described motivational strategies (e.g., dörnyei, 1994, 2001; oxford & shearin, 1994; williams & burden, 1997), the amount of research devoted to motivating learners in second language settings has been rather small (dörnyei, 2003; mceown, noels, & saumure, 2014; noels, 2009; oga-baldwin, nakata, parker, & ryan, 2017; vibulphol, 2016). therefore, there is an evident need to continue to research to devise instructional interventions that teachers can apply in the classroom to elicit and stimulate student motivation. the motivating process is usually a long-term affair; one that is gradually constructed with patience, trust, care, and hard work. it is widely recognized that, particularly, in teaching it is rare to find dramatic motivational events that—like a lighting or a revelation—reshape the students’ mindsets from one moment to another. rather it is typically a series of nuances that might eventually culminate in a long-lasting effect. (dörnyei, 2001, p. 25) this long-term affair necessarily has to begin with the teacher’s own enthusiasm or motivation. a teacher’s strong desire to teach, a willingness to be resourceful, creative, and informed usually pave the way for students’ own motivation to learn. as expressed by dörnyei (2001), sometimes the best motivational practices are those that have to do with improving the clarity and quality of instruction. following this lead, the current article describes the importance of autonomy, competence, and relatedness as the basic psychological motivators within self-determination theory (sdt). based on these three motivators, we provide and explain a series of strategies to help teachers understand how these psychological needs (autonomy, competence, and relatedness) function as motivational triggers. the strategies can improve the quality of relationships in the classroom, the clarity of instruction, and ultimately lead to greater enthusiasm and engagement both in teaching and learning. motivational strategies guilloteaux and dörnyei (2008) have defined motivational strategies as the teaching practices that trigger student motivation. more specifically, dörnyei (2001) describes them as the “motivational influences that are consciously exerted to achieve some systematic and enduring positive effect” (p. 28). the most systematic collection of l2 motivational strategies has been laid out by dörnyei (1994, 2001). this compendium provides 100 recommendations containing macro and micro strategies. the author explains that this quantity of strategies is overwhelming and difficult for the average classroom teacher. he reports that various teacher-training courses have shown that teachers need a smaller amount of strategies in order to be able to fully concentrate their attention on the implementation of these strategies. research on motivation has also been conducted within sdt (deci & ryan, 2008; niemiec, ryan, & deci, 2010; ryan & deci, 2017). this theory proposes an organismic approach to human motivation and emotion that has yielded many useful implications for the design of motivational strategies in the educational domain. sdt is one of the most influential theories in motivational psychology today with robust empirical support. this theory posits that when teachers promote autonomy, competence, and relatedness in the classroom, students are more likely to become autonomously motivated, that is, to autonomously engage with and internalize the study material (niemiec & ryan, 2009). the natural psychological need for autonomy (de charms, 1968) refers to the experience of being able to make our own choices and decisions. for example, students experience autonomy when they are able to willingly dedicate time and attention to their studies. competence (white, 1959) is the confidence that one can perform effectively. students feel competent when they are not afraid to meet an academic challenge. relatedness (baumeister & leary, 1995) refers to the students’ feelings of connection with significant others. for instance, according to ryan and deci (2000), students who feel 177profile: issues teach. prof. dev., vol. 22 no. 1, jan-jun, 2020. issn 1657-0790 (printed) 2256-5760 (online). bogotá, colombia. pages 175-188 strategies to enhance or maintain motivation in learning a foreign language that their teachers genuinely listen, value, and respect them are more likely to identify with their teachers’ values and practices. these three basic psychological needs are essential to foster motivation and engagement in the classroom (jang, reeve, & deci, 2010) resulting in enhanced performance and persistence (hardre & reeve, 2003; ratelle, guay, vallerand, larose, & senécal, 2007), creativity and well-being (black & deci, 2000), conceptual understanding (benware & deci, 1984; grolnick & ryan, 1987), and lower levels of dropout (vallerand, fortier, & guay, 1997). in addition, sdt warns that if any of these psychological needs are not met, the emotional, physical, and social well-being of a person can be negatively affected. according to sdt, intrinsic motivation is the target for optimal classroom learning, yet it is not easy to promote in educational activities that are not self-endorsed by students, but rather undertaken to satisfy some external demand (e.g., curriculum or job requirements, parents’ wishes). however, sdt asserts that support for need satisfaction can facilitate the process of internalization; that is, the active, natural process of coming to endorse the value of a non-intrinsically motivated activity (ryan, 1993). indeed, internalization “is essential for students’ self-initiation and maintained volition for educational activities that are not inherently interesting or enjoyable” (niemiec & ryan, 2009, p. 138). four different types of extrinsic motivation are described by sdt which vary in their degree of internalization and, thus, in the experience of autonomy. external regulation is the type of extrinsic motivation which is the least autonomous. in other words, the behavior is done in order to obtain a reward, avoid a punishment, or is controlled by circumstances external to the student. for instance, a student may say: “i am studying english just because i want to comply with an academic requirement.” the next type of extrinsic motivation is introjected regulation, in which the behavior is caused by a desire not to seem incompetent in the eyes of classmates or teachers (to avoid shame), or to seek approval from teachers or parents (to feel pride). external and introjected motivations are both types of controlled motivation. the next type of extrinsic motivation is identified regulation, in which the behavior is done because of its personal value and importance. for instance, a student might say: “i am studying english because it is important to communicate when in a foreign country.” the final type of extrinsic motivation is integrated regulation, in which the value of the behavior is not only identified but also synthesized with other values and aspects of the self, as when a student says: “i am studying english because it is necessary when living abroad, which is one of my life goals and aspirations.” both identified regulation and integrated regulation—along with intrinsic motivation (e.g., “i am studying english just because i enjoy it”)—are autonomous forms of motivation. research has shown that more autonomous forms of motivation are associated directly or indirectly with more academic engagement and outcomes (goldberg & noels, 2006; ma, 2009; tanaka, 2009). from the perspective of sdt, the facilitation of autonomous motivation (internalization) helps students transform controlled behaviors (i.e., external regulation and introjected regulation) into autonomous behaviors (i.e., identified regulation and integrated regulation) (deci & ryan, 2000). therefore, it is important that teachers can recognize the type of motivation students bring and understand the reasons why they desire to learn the language. in addition, it is important to consider that students may have multiple reasons to learn a language and that the types of motivation can vary depending on the context. in the next section, we offer a set of non-exhaustive strategies that can be used by teachers in their efforts to motivate students. some of these strategies have been discussed in the sdt literature, others reflect our elaborations based on different authors and on our own research and experience within sdt and, therefore, represent a contribution to the application of this theory in second language teaching. universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras178 muñoz-restrepo, ramirez, & gaviria autonomy explaining the purpose and benefit of tasks research in learning motivation suggests that when students perceive that a lesson has personal value or relevance, they tend to engage more, make more efforts, and achieve more (miller & brickman, 2004; vansteenkiste, simons, lens, soenens, & matos, 2005; wigfield & eccles, 2000). according to jang (2008), students can be helped to value an activity in terms of “high task value, utility value, interest value, attainment value, instrumental value, future goals, future consequences, future time perspective, and/or intrinsic goals” (p. 798). helping students find value for teachers’ requests (rules, activities, procedures), has been referred to as providing explanatory rationales. a rationale is a “verbal explanation of why putting forth effort during a learning activity might be a useful thing to do” (reeve, jang, hardre, & omura, 2002, p. 185). rationales are particularly useful for requests that students initially find uninteresting or unpleasant. according to reeve and su (2014), when the rationale is honest, valid, and satisfying, students have the opportunity to internalize the value of what others find important and useful. on the contrary, when students do not understand why the teacher is making certain requests, “they often view the request as arbitrary, imposed or simply meaningless busywork” (reeve & su, 2014, p. 355). therefore, the way in which teachers present requests has a direct relation to how students receive and react to them (dörnyei, 2001). for instance, dörnyei emphasizes the need to present a task in a way that takes into consideration students’ motivation and proposes that the motivational introduction of an activity should fulfill, among other functions, the explanation of the purpose and utility of the task. giving students instructions, describing what they will accomplish and how they will be assessed is not enough to bring about positive effects on student motivation. if students are expected to give their best when attending to a task, it is necessary that they understand why a particular activity is important or meaningful. in accordance, dörnyei (2001, pp. 79-80) suggests the following strategies when presenting a task: • emphasize that the task is a learning opportunity to be valued rather than an imposed demand to be resisted. • explain where the activity fits in within a sequence or bigger picture, and how it relates to the overall goals of the class. • describe the intended purpose of the activity and what this implies about how students should respond to it (e.g., what they should concentrate on or be particularly careful about). • try and make a connection between the task and the students’ personal daily life and point out how the skills learnt will be useful in enabling them to achieve real-life agendas. furthermore, teachers can ask students to think of different ways of using the language in future opportunities. when students can establish connections between what they have learned in the classroom and the possibilities of using this learning for their needs in the real world, their motivation for learning a language can increase. providing choices according to black and deci (2000) and reeve (2009), motivating teachers provide choice and decision-making opportunities to students and make them feel autonomous to learn. these teachers convey the message: “i am your ally; i will help you; i am here to support you and your strivings” (reeve, 2016, p. 130). furthermore, teachers who provide choices and decision-making opportunities create a sense of accomplishment in students. this feeling of accomplishment, in turn, can increase motivation and desire to be more productive in the classroom. giving choices in the classroom is not just about doing anything, but about offering options that are 179profile: issues teach. prof. dev., vol. 22 no. 1, jan-jun, 2020. issn 1657-0790 (printed) 2256-5760 (online). bogotá, colombia. pages 175-188 strategies to enhance or maintain motivation in learning a foreign language connected to students’ needs, preferences, goals, and desires. in this case, the choices create an opportunity for self-realization that is experienced as motivating for the students (katz & assor, 2007). some research indicates that when the choices are not connected to students’ interest, volition, and goals, the act of choosing itself is not what motivates them, but the value they find in the options in relation to their self and personal goals (assor, kaplan, & roth, 2002; reeve, nix, & hamm, 2003; reynolds & symons, 2001). when giving choices, it is important not to offer numerous or complex options. according to iyengar and kamenica (2010), too many choices can create frustration in students, which can affect their ability to choose and commit to one option. the authors argued that when students feel overwhelmed by too many choices or believe that they could make a wrong choice, they may, instead, decide not to choose, or may ask another student or the teacher to choose for them. additionally, research has shown that offering choices of intermediate difficulty support competence and are, therefore, motivating. however, when choices are too easy or too difficult motivation tends to be undermined (deci & ryan, 1985; pintrich & schunk, 2002). types of choices. different researchers (alfi, assor, & katz, 2004; assor et al., 2002; reeve, jang, carrell, jeon, & barch, 2004; stefanou, perencevich, dicinto, & turner, 2004) suggest different ways to support choice and decision making: • let students choose the format in which to present ideas • ask students how they would like to develop a specific task • ask students to find ways to solve a problem • allow students to formulate goals and propose tasks • allow students to decide on the work methods and how they would like to be assessed • ask for students’ input into the lesson plan • let students make decisions regarding how they want to tackle learning tasks (method, self-pace) or who they want to group with (in pairs, individually, small group). these types of choices are motivating because they are based on the students’ interests and preferences. competence scaffolding in learning a language, students can be more motivated when they are provided with the necessary guidance to perform activities. providing step-by-step directions and enough support throughout the different instructional stages enhances students’ motivation by keeping them on task, managing their behavior, and avoiding confusion during lessons (larkin, 2001; skinner & belmont, 1993; tucker et al., 2002). offering support during instruction has been called scaffolding, which refers to the temporary assistance instructors give students in order to help them complete a task that students would not be able to achieve on their own. the term is associated with vygotsky’s theory (1978) of zone of proximal development (zpd) and is described as “the distance between the actual developmental level as determined by independent problem solving and the level of potential development as determined through problem solving under adult guidance or in collaboration with more capable peers” (p. 86). more specifically, teachers scaffold instruction when they change the level and amount of support in order to suit the cognitive capacities of the student. for instance, when a student is having difficulties with a particular task, the teacher provides more support and, over time, less support as the student masters the task. van de pol, volman, and beishuizen (2010) distinguished several scaffolding techniques to support the learning activities. the authors argued that a teaching strategy qualifies as scaffolding when it is used in an unplanned way and when the teacher gradually assigns the responsibility to the student. universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras180 muñoz-restrepo, ramirez, & gaviria some of these techniques or means of assisting instruction are: modeling. of all our senses, seeing is the one with which we learn best, therefore, instructors should always show students a sample of the expected product or production before they are actually asked to perform an activity. for instance, if a teacher assigns a narrative essay, a model should be presented along with the assessment rubric in order to guide students and inform them of the expected outcome. a second type of modeling is “talk-alouds,” which require the teacher to verbalize the thought process or problem-solving strategy while demonstrating the task. in the case of language learning, it can be done during the explicit explanation of grammar or when giving the solution to an activity such as a scavenger hunt or a webquest (hogan & pressley, 1997). offering explanations. teaching learners from different age groups is also an important factor when scaffolding activities. for example, kindergarteners are unable to follow simple directions or a story line and to name common objects and may find it difficult to express themselves clearly. elementary students have problems with temporal and spatial concepts (e.g., before-after, some, few) and blending sounds and they still have difficulties finding words. secondary students find it difficult to gain information from class lectures and textbooks, to express their thoughts in writing, and to participate in classroom discussions. as a result of the aforementioned difficulties, teachers need to be able to explain to learners how the target language functions at all levels having in mind learners’ cognitive and cultural limitations. at the beginning of instruction, explanations in language instruction should incorporate all the components: syntax, semantics, and pragmatics and should be repeated in different language exercises and contexts. hogan and pressley (1997, p. 17) explained that “as the learners gain experience, explanations consist of only hints or key words, which prompt the learners to recall important information and that, eventually, explanations are removed altogether.” providing and contributing clues. it is common to find instructors that try to fill the class gaps with answers to their own questions. instead of supplying an entire solution or detailed instructions, the instructor can provide clues or suggestions to help the student develop the thinking skills that will facilitate learning and give a three to five second period of wait time for students to give an answer. when students display limited proficiency or while trying to find out how much students know about any given topic, the teacher can ask them to contribute clues or ideas rather than ask them for direct participation (hogan & pressley, 1997). in addition, during a class discussion, for instance, the teacher can add her/his own ideas to guide the discussion, to make corrections, or simply to keep the conversation going. ellis and larkin (1998) also proposed a four-stage scaffolding model that we consider as a way to gradually fade the teacher support and transfer the responsibility to the student, to wit: (a) the teacher demonstrates, (b) the whole class practices, (c) a small group practices, and (d) the individual student practices. during the first stage teachers can use scaffolding techniques such as modeling and offering explanations. during the second stage, instructors can also offer explanations and provide clues. during the third stage, instructors can invite students to participate and provide and contribute clues and, throughout all the stages but especially during the last stage, instructors should provide individual students with detailed feedback and ask questions that elicit linguistically and cognitively engaging responses. providing descriptive feedback feedback of great quality is that which is “highly specific, directly revealing or highly descriptive of what actually resulted, clear to the performer, and available or offered in terms of specific targets and standards” (wiggins, 1998, p. 46). descriptive feedback helps students revise their own performance in order to meet the learning objectives. 181profile: issues teach. prof. dev., vol. 22 no. 1, jan-jun, 2020. issn 1657-0790 (printed) 2256-5760 (online). bogotá, colombia. pages 175-188 strategies to enhance or maintain motivation in learning a foreign language according to muñoz-restrepo (2017), feedback needs to be based on the learning objectives and the actions the students need to take in order to perform better and not on merely grades and judgments about their progress. when providing feedback, the author suggests avoiding comments such as “good work”, “excellent!”, “you need to improve”, and so on, since they are not descriptive of the behavior. instead, she recommends the use of descriptive feedback, such as: “your presentation was developed in an orderly and organized way. you included specific information that supported the topic. the content was powerfully focused and informative. your performance related directly to the task specifications” (p. 122). feedback is more likely to be effective when students understand the learning objectives and the criteria by which their performance will be assessed. as noted by wiggins (1998): students must have routine access to the criteria and standards for the task they need to master; they must have feedback in their attempts to master those tasks; and they must have opportunities to use the feedback to revise work and resubmit it for evaluation against the standard. (p. 64) some common characteristics of effective feedback as cited in the literature are: • it is specific to each student’s performance and not standardized. providing individual, face-to-face feedback allows the student to interact with the teacher by expressing opinions, clarifying doubts, and establishing agreements. this, in turn, leads to a mutual understanding between teacher and student of the comments provided (higgins, hartley, & skelton, 2001; ivanić, clark, & rimmershaw, 2000). in this sense, feedback can be seen more as a dialogue between teacher and student where the student is an active and responsible participant of his learning process. by making sense of the different sources of information received from the teacher, the student can make decisions to enhance his learning or his learning strategies (carless, salter, yang, & lam, 2011). • it is descriptive, non-judgmental, and noncoercive. it is based on regular observations of student behavior and not on explanations or judgements related to the students’ performance. for this reason, it is advisable to concentrate on the student’s behavior and not on the person, describing what she has or has not done with respect to the learning objectives. teachers can also show that they are actively listening to the student (rephrasing what the student has just said, nodding, asking clarification questions, etc.). likewise, coercive language like: “you should…” “you have to…” “you must…” or generalizing statements “you always…” “you never…” need to be avoided because this type of language acts as an external imposition that does not empower the students and does not motivate them or encourage them to reflect on their behavior. • it should not be overwhelming. it is common for teachers to want to point out every single mistake made by the students. however, this might be overwhelming and discouraging for the student and, therefore, limit the possibilities of effectively using feedback to improve learning. • feedback should be timely given. if there is an assessment activity, feedback should be given soon after the assessment so that the event is still fresh in the mind of the student and teacher. relatedness demonstrating appropriate teacher behavior according to a survey conducted by dörnyei and csizér (1998), teachers’ behavior was considered to be the single most important tool for motivating students. the survey also concluded that this “tool” was one of the less considered and used in classroom practices. in the remainder of this section, we suggest some universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras182 muñoz-restrepo, ramirez, & gaviria strategies that can help teachers develop or enhance feelings of relatedness in the classroom. show your own enthusiasm. show and talk about your own enthusiasm for the subject, the course, and your methodologies. additionally, talk to students about the importance of learning an l2 and how it enriches your life experience. take students’ learning process seriously by: • genuinely demonstrating to students that you care about their learning process • making yourself available for academic issues • believing in your students’ capacities to achieve goals • offering specific advice or instructions when needed • responding as soon as possible when help is requested • correcting quizzes, tests, and papers promptly (one week) • using available technology to send relevant or interesting material • encouraging extracurricular activities and, if possible, offering assistance • showing concern and talk to students when something is not going well maintaining a good relationship with students according to dörnyei (2001): teachers who share warm, personal interactions with their students, who respond to their concerns in an empathic manner and who succeed in establishing a relationship of mutual trust and respect with the learners are more likely to inspire them in academic matters than those who have no personal ties with the learners. (p. 36) some strategies that can help teachers establish relatedness with students are: develop a personal relationship with your students by: • remembering students’ names • getting to know about their lives outside the school • communicating with your students in an open, honest, and caring manner • demonstrating a positive, non-judgmental attitude toward your students • holding your students responsible for what they do without criticizing, comparing, or judging them • showing interest in their hobbies and talents • getting to know their strengths and weaknesses • including personal topics in class activities establishing group norms. establishing a logical set of norms to be used in the classroom eliminates confusion and constant, repetitive questions; saves time; and helps to create a more organized, efficient classroom where students are clearly aware of what is expected of them. this set of rules will help students to accomplish the different classroom activities in a more effective and orderly manner, thus increasing student motivation to learn (ehrman & dörnyei, 1998). it is important that these group norms are established with input from all group members so that students will have some measure of ownership over them. when there is consensus, it is more likely that students will accept and comply with the established rules. according to dörnyei (2001), it is helpful and important to have rules “for the students,” (e.g., don’t be late to class) “for the teacher” (e.g., mark tests and homework within a week), and “for everybody” (e.g., let’s try to listen to each other). when establishing class rules, take into considera tion: • formulate and discuss possible norms • discuss with students the rationale for each norm • try to phrase rules in a positive and simple manner • specify consequences for the violation of the norms • if possible, post the rules somewhere in the classroom • make rules as few as possible • once rules are agreed upon, make sure that they are consistently enforced 183profile: issues teach. prof. dev., vol. 22 no. 1, jan-jun, 2020. issn 1657-0790 (printed) 2256-5760 (online). bogotá, colombia. pages 175-188 strategies to enhance or maintain motivation in learning a foreign language • advocate enforcement of rules and good behavior, but overlook minor incidents in certain situations protecting self-concept and confidence coping with a subject that is new and, in most cases, difficult makes the majority of people insecure and vulnerable. that is the reason why one of the most motivating things that an l2 teacher can do for a student is to help her/him develop or maintain a good self-concept. students with a positive self-concept have more confidence in themselves, take more risks, have more frustration tolerance, and are more successful in general (roman, cuestas, & fenollar, 2008). a teacher cannot develop self-esteem for a student. however, according to dörnyei (2001) teachers can have an impact on students’ self-image in a positive way. if students realize that the classroom is a safe place where they feel that their self-worth and dignity are protected, they gain confidence. by being empathic, offering guidance, support, and honest encouragement, a positive self-concept is not imposed, but fostered overtime. build self-concept and confidence by: • providing sufficient preparation (pre-task activities) for all classroom activities • letting students know you are there if they require assistance with a given task • making the success criteria as clear as possible • anticipating frustration or possible obstacles to learning (if necessary, address these in advance with students) • creating multiple opportunities for students to succeed • helping students identify their strengths and build on them • providing honest recognition and encouragement as often as possible • avoiding social comparison • avoiding criticism and correcting students in ways that might feel humiliating or embarrassing • avoiding putting students on the spot without some measure of consent • correcting (discipline) students with empathy and understanding rather than anger and lecturing communicating effectively communication is one of the essential elements necessary to create an emotional environment that makes it easier for students to be open to what is new and difficult. according to sdt, teachers’ communication style can be associated with students’ motivation and experiences of psychological need satisfaction. acknowledge feelings. instead of dismissing, denying, judging, or criticizing students’ opinions, comments, answers, or attitudes, acknowledge their feelings. when a student is bombarded with criticism, comparisons, threats, or advice, she/he finds it difficult to think about her/his problem or take responsibility. instead, she/he will become fixated on teachers’ angry, humiliating, or lecturing behavior. therefore, welcome students’ feelings and thoughts; do not dismiss students’ negative remarks, but rather try to get students to describe or explain what it is about the activity that is not, for example, interesting, fun, and so on. protecting motivation in order to protect motivation for future experiences, it is vital that teachers teach their learners to explain past successes and failures in a constructive way. in doing so, attribution theory is very useful; this is a psychological theory (weiner, 1986, 1992) around the idea that subjective explanations about failure or success in past events play a significant role in future decisions, actions, and experiences. a student might attribute failure to stable and uncontrollable causes such as lack of ability rather than to changeable factors that are within his control such as not enough effort, not universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras184 muñoz-restrepo, ramirez, & gaviria enough time dedicated, lack of concentration, competing thoughts, and insufficient use of appropriate learning strategies. some of the most common attributions in an educational setting are ability, effort, past difficulties, luck, mood, family background, help or hindrance from others (teacher or group), and the language program, method or materials (tse, 2000; ushioda, 2001; williams & burden, 1999). according to dörnyei (2001) two of these attributions—ability and effort—have been identified as the most influential causes in western cultures. attributing failure to ability is extremely discouraging whereas believing that we did not work hard enough is a constructive attribution. promote failure attributions for past failures by: • helping learners explain failures by insufficient effort or lack of appropriate learning strategies, rather than by lack of ability • helping students set and assess their goals realistically. help them understand that because they don’t succeed in a specific task or goal, that does not make them a failure or any less of a person • doing your best to refuse ability attributions, instead make it clear that the goal, the activity, or the curriculum are within the students’ ability range • helping students clarify faulty thinking that leads to misinterpretations of events • help students channel defeatist self-talk and thinking, while acknowledging student disappointment the implementation of motivational strategies depends on each individual teacher’s willingness (and persistence) to improve her/his teaching practices. further, it requires the ongoing support from the administration through in-service programs where teachers are guided and accompanied by continuous support and tools to measure the impact of the strategies. conclusion we have presented a series of motivational strategies aligned with sdt. according to this theory, intrinsic motivation can be enhanced or maintained by fostering three basic psychological needs present in all human beings. these needs are: autonomy, competence, and relatedness. some of the strategies described to provide feelings of autonomy are: offering rationales for requests that students initially find boring or not pleasant and giving meaningful choice opportunities to all students. to enhance feelings of competence, we have suggested diverse strategies to scaffold learning and to provide feedback. finally, we described multiple ways to promote relatedness within strategies such as demonstrating appropriate teacher behavior, maintaining a good relationship with students, establishing group norms, protecting self-concept and confidence, communicating effectively, and protecting motivation. it is important to mention that all the strategies provided can be effective in different socio-educational contexts. as dörnyei and csizér (1998) claimed: no motivational strategy has absolute and general value because such strategies are to be implemented in dynamically changing and very diverse learning contexts, in which the personality of the individual learners and the teacher, as well as the composition and structure of the learner group, will always interplay with the effectiveness of the strategy. (p. 224) this statement implies that, before choosing any strategy, a motivating teacher needs to identify the students’ needs and motivational orientations as well as the context, the dynamics of the group, and the students’ learning stage (mceown et al., 2014). based on this, a teacher can introduce in his daily lesson plan one or two strategies, examine their impact and devise further actions. the experience of working with sdt-based strategies can help teachers to widen their views and practices concerning motivation, going beyond beliefs and traditional forms of motivating students which 185profile: issues teach. prof. dev., vol. 22 no. 1, jan-jun, 2020. issn 1657-0790 (printed) 2256-5760 (online). bogotá, colombia. pages 175-188 strategies to enhance or maintain motivation in learning a foreign language are usually based on rewards and punishments. this implies a gradual change of paradigm from a behaviorist and artificial form of motivating to a more humane and natural way to enhance or maintain motivation. references alfi, o., assor, a., & katz, i. 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(1998). educative assessment: designing assessments to inform and improve student performance. san francisco, us: jossey-bass. williams, m., & burden, r. l. (1997). psychology for language teachers: a social constructivist approach. cambridge, uk: cambridge university press. williams, m., & burden, r. (1999). students’ developing conceptions of themselves as language learners. modern language journal, 83(2), 193-201. https://doi. org/10.1111/0026-7902.00015. about the authors ana muñoz-restrepo holds an m.a. in tesol from eastern michigan university, usa. she has been the coordinator of the research unit at the language center, universidad eafit, since 2000. her research interests cover language assessment and language learning motivation. marta ramirez has an m.a. in psychology from new school university (usa). she has wide experience as student counselor and psychoanalyst. her current research covers the area of language learning motivation. sandra gaviria holds a master’s degree in tesol from west virginia university and a master’s in education from maharishi university of management. she has been the english for adults program coordinator at idiomas eafit since 2000. her main interests include assessment and curriculum design. exploring efl teaching and learning processes in two undergraduate mandatory courses 145profile: issues teach. prof. dev., vol. 23 no. 1, jan-jun, 2021. issn 1657-0790 (printed) 2256-5760 (online). bogotá, colombia. pages 145-160 https://doi.org/10.15446/profile.v23n1.85931 exploring efl teaching and learning processes in two undergraduate mandatory courses exploración de los procesos de enseñanza y aprendizaje en dos cursos de inglés obligatorios de pregrado estefanía durán1 katherin garcía universidad de pamplona, pamplona, colombia this multiple case study explored the influence of english teachers’ methodological practices over undergraduate students’ learning processes in two english as a foreign language mandatory courses for different majors, at universidad de pamplona (colombia). data were gathered through non-participant observations, field notes, stimulated recall interviews, and semistructured interviews. findings revealed that teacher-centeredness, the grammar-translation and audiolingual methods dominated the lessons; textbook-oriented classes with an emphasis on listening and writing characterized the courses; teacher and peer correction were encouraged; and classroom tasks and evaluation mostly focused on grammar and vocabulary. although teachers had methodological practices, these influenced students’ learning processes differently. keywords: english as a foreign language, learning, teaching, undergraduate students este estudio de caso múltiple exploró la influencia de las prácticas metodológicas de profesores de inglés sobre los procesos de aprendizaje de estudiantes universitarios de programas diferentes, en dos cursos obligatorios de inglés de la universidad de pamplona (colombia). la información se recolectó por medio de observaciones no participantes, notas de campo, entrevistas de recuerdo estimulado y entrevistas semiestructuradas. los resultados revelaron un predominio de las clases centradas en el profesor y orientadas por el libro, con énfasis en la comprensión oral y la producción escrita; el uso de los métodos de traducción gramatical y audio lingual; la corrección por parte del profesor y de pares; y tareas de clase y evaluaciones centradas en la gramática y el vocabulario. dichas prácticas metodológicas influyeron de modos diferentes el proceso de aprendizaje de los estudiantes. palabras clave: aprendizaje, enseñanza, estudiantes universitarios, inglés como lengua extranjera estefanía durán  https://orcid.org/0000-0002-5571-3521 · email: estefania.duran@unipamplona.edu.co katherin garcía  https://orcid.org/0000-0001-7672-9074 · email: katherin.garcia@unipamplona.edu.co how to cite this article (apa, 7th ed.): durán, e., & garcía, k. (2021). exploring efl teaching and learning processes in two undergraduate mandatory courses. profile: issues in teachers’ professional development, 23(1), 145–160. https://doi.org/10.15446/profile.v23n1.85931 this article was received on march 28, 2020 and accepted on october 4, 2020. this is an open access article distributed under the terms of the creative commons license attribution-noncommercial-noderivatives 4.0 international license. consultation is possible at https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/ https://doi.org/10.15446/profile.v23n1.85931 https://orcid.org/0000-0002-5571-3521 https://orcid.org/0000-0001-7672-9074 https://doi.org/10.15446/profile.v23n1.85931 https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/ universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras146 durán & garcía introduction english has become a significant language for use in professional, academic, social, and economic settings. in colombia, for example, the ministry of education (ministerio de educación nacional, men) has implemented the national bilingualism program (programa nacional de bilingüismo, pnb), to “improve [the country’s] human capital and economic development by increasing participation in the largely englishspeaking global economy” (british council, 2015, p. 14). therefore, the colombian english language policy requires high standards of proficiency for university graduates. additionally, the men implemented standardized english proficiency tests as an exit requirement for undergraduate students to accomplish the b2 english level of the common european framework of reference (council of europe, 2001) before finishing their bachelors’ degrees. hence, to help students achieve such proficiency level, universidad de pamplona, for example, has implemented two more alternatives for those students who do not pursue a language degree: english free-access courses and english mandatory courses. the former includes five levels and lasts 12 weeks. the latter, which is the context of this study, is offered for the students doing careers in economics, philosophy, music, electronic engineering, and bachelor of arts in the spanish language and communications programs. the english mandatory courses option consists of three or four levels—depending on the degree—with an intensity of 64 hours each course (agreement 023, 2014). thus, by successfully accomplishing any of these two alternatives, undergraduate students at this university will be exempted from taking the proficiency test required by the men because they will be granted the required b2 level when finishing their degrees. campo-barrios (2017) studied the influence of non-linguistic factors in the english learning process only within the english free-access courses in this same university. conversely, the present study focuses on the english as a foreign language (efl) mandatory courses as an attempt to gain a deeper understanding of the conditions and the effectiveness of these alternatives. thus, we analyzed the teaching practices and learning processes following wang’s (2009) teaching perspectives: instructional approaches, language pedagogy, use of textbooks, student modality, error correction, and classroom tasks. additionally, we included a seventh factor: evaluation. this study aimed at answering the following questions: 1. what type of methodological practices do teachers adopt when teaching english in mandatory universities’ courses? 2. how do teachers’ methodological practices influence their students’ english learning processes? the purpose was to explore the english language teaching practices along with their influence over the learning processes experienced by two groups of mixed undergraduate students from the programs mentioned above. theoretical framework in this section, we will define the six aspects of wang’s (2009) teaching perspectives and an additional factor: evaluation. wang’s teaching perspectives in order to answer the research questions, we analyzed the participating teachers’ methodologies and followed wang’s (2009) teaching perspectives: • instructional approaches are “the way in which students are taught and are organized” (wang, 2009, p. 36). wang differentiates between two basic types of instructional approach: teacher-centered and student-centered. she relates teacher-centeredness to teachers who play the role of transmitter of knowledge and controller of activities. in the former, teachers are seen as providers of information in the 147profile: issues teach. prof. dev., vol. 23 no. 1, jan-jun, 2021. issn 1657-0790 (printed) 2256-5760 (online). bogotá, colombia. pages 145-160 exploring efl teaching and learning processes in two undergraduate mandatory courses classroom; in the latter, they design, organize, and manage every single classroom activity. conversely, in student-centeredness the role of the teacher is “to facilitate learning, and to foster responsibility and autonomy among learners” (p. 56) for them to participate in the classes. in our study, we explored how each of these variants influenced students’ learning process. • language pedagogy “refers to how a language is taught” (wang, 2009, p. 40). wang links this term with approaches that are “theories about the nature of language and language learning that serve as the source of practicing principles in language teaching” (richards & rodgers, 1986, p. 16) and methods, “an overall plan for the orderly presentation of language material” (richards & rodgers, 1986, pp. 15–l6). we identified which methods or approaches informed our participating teachers’ language pedagogy. • use of textbooks, according to wang (2009), these “guide[s] teachers’ lectures to impart knowledge systematically and logically” (p. 46) to make the teaching and learning processes fully effective. subsequently, the present study focused on identifying whether and how textbooks guided teachers’ methodological practices within the efl mandatory courses. • student’s modality, that is defined by richards and schmidt (2002, as cited in wang, 2009) as “the mode or manner in which language is used” (p. 489), through the four language skills. we identified whether listening, speaking, reading, and writing skills were used together or separately. • error correction, understood as “feedback in response to learners’ errors in second language acquisition” (wang, 2009, p. 47). debreli and onuk (2016) propose three different error correction approaches: peer correction, self-correction, and teacher correction. we wanted to identify which of the three was more prevalent in the settings under study. • classroom tasks, which are “basic unit[s] of classroom activity-interaction, purposely designed to control and regulate the teaching of meaning, focused so as to achieve a particular goal and outcome” (wang, 2009, p. 593). as a result, we analyzed the contribution of classroom tasks to the learning of efl within the mandatory courses. additionally, we also focused on evaluation, defined as a way to quantify students’ learning processes through tools such as tests or exams wherein assessment involves a reflective element to help identify the effectiveness of such learning process (álvarez, 2003, as cited in rodríguez-ferreira, 2009). literature review in this section, we briefly review some studies focused on efl teaching and learning processes in university settings. teachers’ methodological practices in efl education at universities there are several studies that deal with teaching methodologies and practices in the efl arena including influential teaching factors and error correction approaches. in colombia, recent studies have found that english language teaching at some universities is dominated by some methodologies focused mainly on grammar instruction (jiménez et al., 2017; pavasamado, 2017; sánchez-solarte et al., 2017). perhaps one exception to such tendency was identified by posadaortiz and patiño-garzón (2007), who studied the efl teaching methodology at universidad del valle and found that it was based on cooperative learning and the communicative approach. second, bastidas (2017), who investigated methods and approaches in efl teaching in colombian history, found that, mostly, the universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras148 durán & garcía methodologies have been textbook-oriented. similarly, in india and china, for instance, authors showed that textbooks are still being used as the main teaching material in efl classrooms (radić-bojanić & topalov, 2016; wang, 2009). regarding teaching factors affecting students’ english learning processes, in asia, for example, güneş (2011) and nguyen et al. (2014) found that grammarbased instruction, uninteresting teaching styles, and insufficient time for practicing the target language hindered undergraduate students’ learning processes. additionally, anwar (2017) and quezada-sarmiento et al. (2017; a study conducted in ecuador) concluded that teachers’ lack of training and overuse of the mother tongue obstructed the learning processes. two resembling factors were corroborated in the colombian context by pavas-amado (2017), who revealed that grammar-driven instruction and inexperienced teachers inhibited learners’ english learning processes. tertiary education students’ learning experiences in efl courses in colombia, undergraduate students have perceived the english language as an essential tool for their professional development, communicative reallife situations management, and knowing about other cultures (bailey, 2017; gómez-paniagua, 2017). concerning students’ perceptions of teachers’ methodological practices, sánchez-solarte et al. (2017) and jiménez et al. (2017) found that students perceive english language teaching methodologies as too focused on grammar subjects. likewise, in kourieos and evripidou’s (2013) and ağçam and babanoğlu’s (2016) studies, findings revealed that cypriot and turkish students disapproved of grammar instruction or the use of textbooks in efl teaching. in contrast, fereidoni et al. (2018) contradicted the aforementioned outcomes, in view of iranian students’ preference for the grammar-translation method and coursebooks with grammar content. furthermore, chien (2014) revealed that the grammar-translation method and the communicative language teaching and collaborative learning approaches worked effectively for university students’ enhancement of the four language skills and grammatical knowledge. considering research on students’ attitudes and perceptions on error correction in european higher education contexts, kavaliauskienė and anusienė (2012) and kourieos and evripidou (2013) demonstrated that students preferred the teacher’s immediate correction. in chile, westmacott (2017) found that students favored the teacher’s indirect and coded feedback because it contributed to their cognition. in terms of undergraduate students’ preferences on classroom activities, samperio-sanchez (2017) indicated that mexican students favored listening, grammarbased, and drilling activities. conversely, ağçam and babanoğlu’s (2016) study demonstrated turkish students’ inclination for speaking activities. method design this study was guided under a constructivist research paradigm given that, according to lather (1992) and robottom and hart (1993): “participants are able to describe their vantage points of reality which allows the researcher to better understand the participants’ actions” (as cited in baxter & jack, 2008, p. 4). this study adopted a multiple case study “in which multiple cases are described and compared to provide insight into an issue” (creswell, 2005, p. 439). the two groups in charge of each participating teacher represent the two cases under study. context and participants this research was conducted at universidad de pamplona, a public university in colombia, during the first semester of 2019. we studied two third level efl undergraduate mandatory courses. these courses 149profile: issues teach. prof. dev., vol. 23 no. 1, jan-jun, 2021. issn 1657-0790 (printed) 2256-5760 (online). bogotá, colombia. pages 145-160 exploring efl teaching and learning processes in two undergraduate mandatory courses used the world english 2 textbook, level b2, and had a duration of 64 hours. after having reviewed the timetables of three potential groups, we decided to study group a and group c due to their availability. both groups had students from the music, electronic engineering, and economics degree programs as well as from the bachelor of arts in spanish language and communications programs. in total, there were 58 students: 38 students in group a and 20 students in group c; however, following creswell’s (2012) simple random sampling, we selected 10 students from group a and nine from group c to be interviewed. this sampling technique allowed participants the same probability to represent the population under study. to protect the participants’ identity, we provided them with pseudonyms, as follows: margaret, the teacher from group a, holds a ba in foreign language; her students were labelled with the letter a and a number (e.g., participant a1). frank, the teacher from group c, holds a specialization degree in translation with an emphasis on english to spanish; his students were labelled with the letter c and a number (e.g., participant c1). data collection instruments data were collected through four instruments: • six non-participants observations in each classroom (creswell, 2012); • the corresponding field-notes to register relevant data from participants; • semistructured interviews with each teacher and with the previously selected students; and • two stimulated recall interviews (sri-1 and sri-2), which refer to the “‘self-reporting technique’ in which audio and/or video records of participant[s] . . . are used to stimulate recall of concurrently occurring internal thought processes (marland et al., 1984, as cited in wang, 2009, p. 97). we recorded two lessons from each teacher. while students and teachers were interviewed, we played back some segments to stimulate their reflections on particular learning and teaching actions. findings data were analyzed qualitatively following hatch’s (2002) interpretative analysis which “details a way to transform data that emphasizes interpretation” (p. 179). in doing so, we analyzed and interpreted the data gathered in light of two aspects: first, the research questions about the participating teachers’ methodological practices and their influence on students’ english learning processes; second, wang’s (2009) teaching perspectives along with evaluation. instructional approaches regarding the way in which students were taught and organized (wang, 2009), the teacher-centered approach dominated the teaching and learning processes in both groups since teachers played three main roles: transmitters of knowledge, controllers of activities, and monitors. in addition to these roles, one teacher also assumed the role of a manager (archana & usharani, 2016). the student-centered approach was slightly reflected through pair work, group work, and elicitation, that is, “any technique or procedure that is designed to get a person to actively produce speech or writing” (richards & schmidt, 2014, p. 191). teacher-centered approach teacher-centeredness was reflected in teachers’ lecturing when they explained the grammar topics, gave instructions of the activities, and provided students with advice. coupled with this, frank behaved as a manager and margaret dictated grammar concepts in spanish and gave commands in order to maintain students’ discipline during the explanation of the topics. transmitter of knowledge role. margaret and frank explained the grammar topics mostly in spanish while standing in front of the class and using the board. universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras150 durán & garcía participants, on their own, regarded their teachers as the prior source of knowledge, as participant a2 stated: “i think that [the teacher] has lots of knowledge and masters the topics”1; and as the one responsible for correcting their errors and grammar mistakes (interview). monitor role. both teachers tended to walk around the classroom during the development of activities to check students’ progress and to assist them with any questions. according to frank, for example, when he resorted to this role, he “allowed the students to gain some confidence.” additionally, he stated: “when i explain a topic, a lot of questions emerge and when i approach the students, they are able to ask questions they did not ask in front of the group.” as a result, the students benefited from this role because, as participant c7 explained: “the teacher shows interest in the learning processes,” along with the development of the activities (sri-1). controller of activities role. in this role, both teachers controlled the completion of activities by reading aloud the instructions and carefully explaining them in spanish. although frank sometimes initiated the activities by revealing the first answers of the worksheets, both teachers concluded by revising students’ work and, sometimes, collecting their worksheets. this role limited students to pronouncing isolated words and hindered their interaction during the activities. apart from the aforementioned shared major roles, frank played the role of a manager. his students perceived him as rigorously organized and aligned with the stipulated time for the development of the lessons. frank’s students suggested that the lessons should have exhibited more flexible timing of activities and the topics explained more thoroughly. student-centered approach margaret commented that she continuously elicited students’ understanding of a topic by asking questions about it in spanish. similarly, frank explained that 1 excerpts have been translated from spanish. he implemented this technique to refresh students’ knowledge about grammar rules and structures, in spanish as well. indeed, during the six observations, frank constantly elicited the correct use of grammar rules from the students, while revising homework and introducing new topics. furthermore, he also elicited the correct pronunciation of isolated words. in both groups, only 10% of the participants answered teachers’ questions by providing isolated vocabulary and short phrases, mostly in spanish. pair work and group work were also promoted during the development of classroom activities. eighty percent of the participants from both groups agreed that this sort of arrangement allowed them to help and support each other since they perceived the third level course as complex, as participant a5 stated: “two heads are better than one” (sri-2). however, 10% of margaret’s students regularly favored pair work and group work because, sometimes, not every member of the group was actively involved; only one or two students completed the activity. participant a7 explained: “it depends on each person, if they cheat and let the others do everything or if they help” (sri-2). therefore, participant a10 suggested: “[pair work] is a good method but it should not be used all the time” (sri-2). therefore, according to students, individual work was also needed for showing their particular language abilities. although frank encouraged pair work when students had long worksheets to complete, he also asked them to work individually because, as he remarked, “during pair work, one student may work more than the other one, which is not equitable” (sri-1). language pedagogy language pedagogy was associated with use of the grammar-translation and the audiolingual methods. grammar-translation method the way the two teachers used the grammartranslation method was reflected by deductive grammar, 151profile: issues teach. prof. dev., vol. 23 no. 1, jan-jun, 2021. issn 1657-0790 (printed) 2256-5760 (online). bogotá, colombia. pages 145-160 exploring efl teaching and learning processes in two undergraduate mandatory courses use of the mother tongue, use of translation, and a focus on reading and writing skills. in both groups, teachers placed a major emphasis on grammar and vocabulary. margaret explained the grammar topics traditionally, in spanish, while practicing eliciting with the students. afterwards, she would ask them to complete class activities related to the grammar subject and vocabulary learnt in previous lessons. she carried out the explanations explicitly, focusing on the structure of sentences and the meaning of words using the board. likewise, frank introduced new grammar topics, explained structures of sentences, carried out activities based on grammar by delivering worksheets, and assigned homework. participant c6 affirmed that: “as we are taught new grammar rules each class, [frank] provides us with a sentence for us to compare and implement the grammar rules such as ‘used to’ or the passive voice” (interview). both teachers used the mother tongue as a medium of instruction (richards & rodgers, 1986) and communication when they explained a topic, asked and answered students’ questions, dissipated learners’ doubts, and corrected their mistakes. additionally, margaret dictated grammar concepts and gave commands and instructions in spanish about the activities. although frank clarified instructions in spanish as well, he tried to use the target language when greeting students at the beginning of the lessons and when giving short commands such as “sit down” or “silence.” both teachers explained that using the target language was a challenge due to students’ low proficiency levels. this was corroborated in most of the observations since students from both groups seemed to be confused when the teachers uttered short statements in english during the development of the lessons. teachers also translated examples they gave during the explanations, as well as the ones provided by the textbook in its grammar boxes. although they both asked students to translate isolated vocabulary from english to spanish, frank sometimes asked for the translation of short sentences from spanish to english and assigned homework based on translation of complex texts taken from the textbook units. furthermore, as characteristic of the grammartranslation method, margaret mostly focused on the reading and writing skills given that most of classroom activities were based on reading short texts and practicing students’ writing through grammar and open-ended question exercises. consequently, learners’ oral participation was always limited to saying isolated words, grammar rules, and short phrases as answers to activities. participants from both groups perceived the use of the grammar-translation method differently. in margaret’s group, 60% of the participants considered grammar-focus classes as boring because of basic and repetitive topics. conversely, 90% of frank’s participants perceived the teaching of grammar rules and linguistic structures as essential to learn efl. both teachers and a few of the participating students agreed that there was a benefit in using the mother tongue and translation in class, as participant a8 stated, “the use of the mother tongue in class is necessary because i would understand nothing otherwise” (interview). nonetheless, 10% of the participants called for the alternation of the target language and the mother tongue in order for them to become familiar with the english language and enhance their pronunciation along with the listening and speaking skills. participant a1 expressed his dislike in this situation by arguing that: “it is an error to give the lessons in spanish because we are in the third level of english” (interview). this evidence shows that participants did not favor the frequent use of spanish and translation during the lessons. audiolingual method frank used the audiolingual method as he focused a great percentage of his lessons on memorization and repetition of dialogues, isolated words, and short phrases (celce-murcia, 1979, as cited in brown, 1994). universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras152 durán & garcía after grammar explanations, he always asked students to first listen attentively to the audios of native speakers provided by the textbook. then, he asked them to repeat the dialogues or words mentally, and finally, to repeat them in unison, in pairs, and individually several times. during one interview, frank explained that he implemented the above-mentioned sequence in each class due to two main reasons: to listen to [the students] in order to know whether they have worked [on pronunciation] at home or not [and] to provide the students with the pronunciation of new words…given that this was the vocabulary that would be addressed in the textbook unit. (sri-1) with reference to frank’s participants’ perceptions about his use of the audiolingual method, 80% of them agreed with the frequency in which the teacher trained their pronunciation through drilling exercises. participant c7 stated: “it is good because drilling generates learning” (sri-2). however, this method was also perceived as monotonous and exhausting. “the teacher spends a lot of time in pronunciation of isolated words, and it is exhausting. we need more participation in class, through conversations, for example” (participant c10, sri-2). bearing this in mind, this method also restricted learners’ participation. use of textbooks the third level of efl mandatory courses required the use of the textbook world english 2 that featured content from national geographic and ted talks. the book is built upon the competency-based approach. it comprises 12 units that integrate the four skills as well as grammar, vocabulary, and pronunciation, and includes a workbook section at the end. in both courses, the textbook guided teachers’ methodological practices. while being interviewed, margaret and frank explained that they planned their lessons based on the contents and objectives provided by the textbook. they adapted classroom activities such as gap filling and matching and reading comprehension exercises based on the book. in contrast to margaret’s strategy, frank based the development of the classes entirely on the completion of the textbook units on several occasions. he first explained the topics by referring to the grammar boxes in the book and provided the students with vocabulary related to the units. then he allowed his students to complete some exercises in the interactive textbook cd-rom. considering the influence of the textbook on their learning processes, margaret and frank’s students generally perceived this teaching resource as interesting and good. this was because the textbook contained exercises integrating the four language competences, provided students with broad vocabulary, and helped reinforce the topics learnt in class. however, 80% of the participants from both groups thought that the textbook was basic and had a low grammar focus. frank spent most of the time using the textbook during his lessons, resulting in two students stating that it made the classes monotonous and annoying. participant c6 suggested that: “it would be good to use teaching resources different from the textbook” (interview). this suggestion was also given by margaret’s students since they considered the book as boring. students’ modality taking into account that students’ modalities refer to how the language is used through the four language skills, teachers in both groups worked on them separately. writing skills in margaret’s group, writing was one of the skills she centered the class on. generally, she first explained the grammar topic according to the textbook and then asked the students to complete written exercises to practice the topic. participants agreed that she placed a major emphasis on students’ writing skill during the development of the lessons. participant a1 stated: 153profile: issues teach. prof. dev., vol. 23 no. 1, jan-jun, 2021. issn 1657-0790 (printed) 2256-5760 (online). bogotá, colombia. pages 145-160 exploring efl teaching and learning processes in two undergraduate mandatory courses well, at the beginning of the course, [the teacher] had told us: “well, we are going to work on listening, speaking, writing”...but...we have not seen anything of that, just writing. no audios, nothing like that...just photocopies or activities from the book. (interview) margaret affirmed that she regularly asked students to write short paragraphs and to answer simple questions about diverse grammar topics and vocabulary prompted by the textbook. however, she usually asked students to write such paragraphs at home. she only worked on writing during class when asking students to develop grammar exercises in which they had to fill in blanks and, sometimes, answer reading comprehension questions. for margaret, practicing writing in this way may have had a positive influence on students given that she pointed out: “while i was revising some written productions, i got surprised because many of them were really good…and also because coherence was great and there [was neither] spelling nor word order mistakes” (interview). listening skills frank prioritized listening skills through the development of oral comprehension exercises based on gap filling and following the pre-, while, and after listening stages. it was customary for frank to play audios in which native british people pronounced isolated vocabulary and short utterances, and videojournals with subtitles provided by the textbook. he preferred to work on the receptive skills (listening and reading) since they were “easier to control and maintain students concentrated while reading or listening.” this was somehow reflected during observations as students were only exposed to listening attentively to the audios, followed by controlled oral activities in which frank asked them to drill or pronounce certain words or dialogues. according to participant c9, “focusing on the listening skill helped us improve our pronunciation, intonation, and vocalization of words.” therefore, 90% of frank’s participants favored a listening emphasis. reading skills margaret and frank implemented reading exercises provided by the textbook. margaret, for example, asked students to mostly read and answer open-ended questions related to a text, in pairs or groups. frank also taught this skill when asking students to read the texts that introduced each textbook unit, in order to translate them into spanish as homework. speaking skills although the speaking skill was not sufficiently taught in both groups, margaret and frank related its teaching with drilling, reading texts aloud, and asking students for responses or pronunciation. as margaret’s students expressed, they practiced the spoken english language when she asked them to read short utterances or answer grammar exercises aloud. as a result, they perceived these strategies only as an opportunity to pronounce words and sentences in isolation. frank explained that the principal drawbacks when practicing the speaking skill were the number of students and time constraints that hindered the possibility to provide students with conversational practices. he explained that he would have emphasized this skill only if he had “monitored [speaking activities] with no more than four or five students and with a sufficient amount of time” (interview). all the participants from both groups equally called for the integration of the four skills and more practice of oral and writing skills inside the classroom. they suggested developing their speaking skills through discussions around different topics and interaction with their partners instead of focusing on grammar all the time. participant a4 suggested “making a balance between the two [skills], as much as speaking as writing…and listening. the four [skills]. taking into universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras154 durán & garcía account that pronunciation is not emphasized at all” (sri-2). this evidences students’ need for working on all the four language skills in an integrated way rather than separately. error correction the way the participating teachers corrected students’ mistakes can be considered from three aspects: approach, timing (immediately or delayed), and manner (implicitly or explicitly). approach margaret and frank implemented different error correction approaches according to those proposed by debreli and onuk (2016). margaret claimed that she supported teacher-correction and did not encourage self-correction or peer-correction, due to students’ low proficiency levels to correct their own mistakes. when learners read their answers from grammar and reading comprehension exercises, margaret corrected their pronunciation mistakes by reading aloud the correct answers with the appropriate pronunciation to enable students to listen attentively to the accurate articulation of english words and phrases. moreover, when students approached margaret’s desk to show their written answers from grammar exercises, she corrected the mistakes individually by giving them hints, providing examples, and explaining how to correct them. according to participant a2: [teacher-correction] seems good in the sense that she gives an example. well, in my case i dissipate doubts as well. when i don’t understand something, she gives me an example, and if i don’t understand, i ask her again and she dissipates my doubts. i mean, no matter how many times i ask, she clarifies my doubts again. (interview) in this way, 80% of participants favored individual teacher-correction when they approached margaret to check their answers. on the other hand, frank encouraged peercorrection and self-correction since he preferred to let students become aware of their own mistakes. he corrected students’ pronunciation through the support of audios. he first listened attentively to students’ performances, then asked the whole class to repeat the correct pronunciation. after replaying the audio, the students corrected themselves by listening to the native speakers. if students continued pronouncing incorrectly, he asked other students, in english, to give their opinion on their classmates’ mistakes. for instance, on several occasions, frank asked them: “what do you think, is it correct or incorrect?”, and then wrote on the board the mispronounced word or phrase and asked students to pronounce it accurately. peer-correction was highly favored by most students. they expressed their preference for this practice since they felt less intimidated and less exposed so they could correct their mistakes individually instead of in front of the whole group. timing (immediate or delayed) there were a few circumstances in which students used the target language orally in class. margaret rarely corrected students’ speech mistakes. in contrast, frank emphasized students’ pronunciation. however, when interviewing margaret, she highlighted that she corrected students’ oral mistakes immediately when reading a text or answering questions aloud. according to participant a9, the teacher barely corrected their oral mistakes. as he stated: “just the other day, when she asked us to read what we had done, and then, i read it and she did not correct me” (sri-2). this participant also argued that margaret seldom corrected their speech or pronunciation because there were simply not enough opportunities to speak. conversely, since frank focused on pronunciation, participants stated that there were several times in which the teacher corrected their pronunciation mistakes, 155profile: issues teach. prof. dev., vol. 23 no. 1, jan-jun, 2021. issn 1657-0790 (printed) 2256-5760 (online). bogotá, colombia. pages 145-160 exploring efl teaching and learning processes in two undergraduate mandatory courses mostly, once they had finished their speech. this was differently perceived by his participants, as 80% of them favored immediate correction. for example, participant c9 stated: “i prefer the teacher to correct my mistakes immediately because, in this way, i realize my mistake at the moment, and not at the end. maybe, i can forget it” (interview). twenty percent of frank’s students preferred the teacher to correct their pronunciation mistakes after their speech. as explained by participant c2: “i feel comfortable with the way in which the teacher corrects errors” (interview). manner (implicit or explicit) although margaret preferred explicit corrections, frank favored implicit corrections. for example, margaret directly explained the mistakes she spotted while students completed grammar and reading comprehension exercises. moreover, in written productions, she corrected students’ errors explicitly by underlining students’ mistakes (see figure 1) and specifying whether they were misspellings, misused words, or incorrect grammar. conversely, frank pointed out students’ mistakes implicitly. for instance, during students’ speech, he encouraged implicit correction when he allowed them to realize their own mistakes. during the development of grammar exercises, he asked students to re-read and review their sentences for them to spot the grammar mistakes by themselves. classroom tasks in both groups, we identified that teachers favored grammar exercises similarly (e.g., gap filling, matching, and circling exercises). there were a few other tasks characteristically used by each teacher. margaret affirmed that she asked students to complete gap filling exercises and identify the error in a list of incorrect sentences in order for them to understand the appropriate way of figure 1. margaret’s explicit correction of a student’s text universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras156 durán & garcía using the grammar topics previously learnt. additionally, her students confirmed having completed reading comprehension exercises such as “true or false” and open-ended questioning related to the texts; matching exercises, in which they had to connect some concepts with different nouns; and unscrambling exercises. in addition, 90% of the participants perceived that although the textbook was the usual source for such exercises, they were good but repetitive. they stated that those exercises did not provide them with enough capabilities to be able to practice such knowledge later through speaking or listening activities. margaret acknowledged having brought different activities to the class when those from the textbook seemed repetitive. during some classroom observations, for instance, she asked the students to answer open-ended questions based on flashcards with first conditional sentences and to complete a crossword based on identifying the correct vocabulary on a text about giving advice. she also asked students to perform a short oral presentation, in spanish, in which they were asked to briefly explain the modal verbs “must” and “have to.” margaret’s students perceived the crossword, for example, as good, creative, and fun because it included reading comprehension and helped them to learn vocabulary. however, 90% of them argued that this activity was extremely complex because of non-contextualized words. they confirmed that the oral presentation allowed them to learn the topics better since they first had to look for the information by themselves and then present it to their classmates. besides, it also enabled them to pronounce certain words when giving examples in english. however, during this activity, some students seemed nervous while waiting for the one who would be selected to explain the topic in front of the classmates. moreover, frank’s students agreed that classroom activities were based on translating texts, listening to audios about dialogues and repeating them. they also did gap filling, matching, and multiple-choice exercises, and sometimes, reading comprehension exercises such as “true or false” and open-ended questioning. they affirmed that the repetition of audios helped them remember and get used to the correct pronunciation of certain words and identify new vocabulary. however, they occasionally got confused when listening to native speakers’ pronunciation since it was sometimes difficult to comprehend. ninety percent of frank’s students perceived this activity as monotonous due to the amount of time frank played the same audio. as participant c7 stated: “he wastes a lot of time of the class on pronunciation…so he says that we have to save time by listening to an audio three times and then repeating it once again, which makes it monotonous” (sri-2). evaluation the participating teachers stated that the main emphasis of students’ evaluation was on grammar and vocabulary. although their evaluation practices were aligned with the university evaluation system (15% to tests and classroom activities and 20% to final exams for each school term), they evaluated their students differently. frank usually evaluated the content from the textbook through listening comprehension. for example, students listened to a passage three times and then completed blanks by writing down missing words. although this practice was regarded as very basic and easy, 70% of his students approved it. however, 30% of them perceived it as difficult because of the complex pronunciation of the speakers. for instance, participant c8 argued: “it is unfair to evaluate listening when the teacher’s pronunciation is way too different from the audios” (sri-2). this demonstrated their dislike for this evaluative practice. in addition, frank tried to integrate the four language competences in which listening was evaluated the same way as the tests mentioned before. the competences were: speaking, with a 25-question questionnaire that required students to translate and unscramble sentences orally; reading 157profile: issues teach. prof. dev., vol. 23 no. 1, jan-jun, 2021. issn 1657-0790 (printed) 2256-5760 (online). bogotá, colombia. pages 145-160 exploring efl teaching and learning processes in two undergraduate mandatory courses comprehension, through true or false exercises; and writing, by means of gap filling exercises. in contrast, margaret centered students’ evaluation solely on grammar exercises. however, participant a1 stated that “at the beginning of the semester . . . she told [us] that she would evaluate the four [language] competences” (interview). she also evaluated students’ understanding of grammar through the various class activities (e.g., crosswords, open-ended questions, true or false questions related to a specific text, and gap-filling exercises). generally, participants from both groups earned better grades during class activities than the ones of the final exams. conclusion with regard to teaching methodologies, as in wang’s (2009) research, the participating teachers of this study favored a teacher-centered approach. although in wang, the teacher centeredness was reflected only in two roles (transmitter of knowledge and controller of activities), in our study teachers played three main roles when teaching efl. teachers were transmitters of knowledge and, as characteristic of grammar translation, both of them taught grammar deductively. they explicitly focused on the structure of sentences and translated them into spanish due to the students’ target language low proficiency. this panorama has not changed much since, according to some studies, english language teaching at some universities in colombia is focused mainly on grammar instruction (jiménez et al., 2017; pavasamado, 2017; sánchez-solarte et al., 2017). finally, it was also evidenced that they taught language skills separately placing major emphasis on writing and reading comprehension. teachers monitored their students’ progress paying close attention to the way they completed class assignments while interacting in spanish. they perceived the use of the mother tongue more beneficial and effective for giving instructions, answering questions, explaining grammar, and correcting mistakes. teachers controlled the way the students responded to classroom activities from the beginning to the completion of them. they frequently used the textbook as the main source of knowledge and upon which to base their class tasks. in a way, this echoed bastidas’s (2017) and posada-ortiz and patiño-garzón’s (2007) studies in the sense that the teaching of english in colombia has been textbook-oriented. the teachers mostly used textbooks to teach grammar structures and gap-filling exercises. additionally, one of the teachers favored the audiolingual method as he provided students with several opportunities to practice listening and drilling activities. along with wang’s (2009) perspectives, this study examined the teachers’ evaluative practices. it was clear that the approaches they followed strongly marked the way they evaluated. with respect to the grammartranslation method, it was common that students translated reading passages. both teachers evaluated the skills in isolation and included grammar as a key component of the quizzes and final exams. sometimes, students were even asked to orally translate isolated sentences from english to spanish and vice versa. as characteristic of the audiolingual method, one of the teachers evaluated listening and speaking on the final exams. with regard to learning processes, these were largely influenced by the teachers’ practices, the use of the textbook, and the use of spanish as a means of teaching. although the participating teachers’ practices offered the students low involvement in class activities, all the students succeeded at learning different language structures and new vocabulary. although these courses aimed at acquiring a b2 english level, the participating teachers were aware of the difficulties most of the students faced due to their low language proficiency. the students mostly played a passive role. however, sometimes pair and group work and elicitation exercises allowed them to actively participate in class. universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras158 durán & garcía although the students generally considered the textbook as interesting and good, its frequent use was perceived as monotonous and boring. this makes sense as the teachers planned their lessons based on the contents and objectives of the book and adjusted classroom activities to it. as for the use of the mother tongue, most students agreed that the use of spanish in class eased their understanding. this may contradict somehow quezada-sarmiento et al.’s (2017) study in which the use of the mother tongue constrained the learning processes. further research and limitations we hope that these findings may foster further research on how english is taught to those who do not pursue a foreign language degree. similarly, findings from this study support the need for more conclusive research that includes students’ learning preferences. we faced some limitations related to participants and time. for instance, a few of the students did not attend some interviews due to their schedules and occupations. besides, considering the academic semester duration, we feel that the number of observations and interviews we did were a hindrance to describe in-depth the issue under study. references acuerdo 023 del 12 de marzo de 2014 [agreement 023], consejo superior de la universidad de pamplona (2014). https://bit.ly/2d3tszw ağçam, r., & babanoğlu, m. p. 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(2017). direct vs. indirect written corrective feedback: student perceptions. íkala, revista de lenguaje y cultura, 22(1), 17–32. https://doi.org/10.17533/udea. ikala.v22n01a02 https://doi.org/10.17533/udea.ikala.v22n02a03 http://hdl.handle.net/11693/15193 http://hdl.handle.net/11693/15193 https://doi.org/10.19183/how.24.2.335 https://doi.org/10.19183/how.24.2.335 https://doi.org/10.5539/elt.v6n11p1 https://doi.org/10.5539/elt.v6n11p1 https://doi.org/10.5539/elt.v7n8p94 https://doi.org/10.14483/22487085.3148 https://doi.org/10.23919/cisti.2017.7975819 https://doi.org/10.5937/zrffp46-12094 https://doi.org/10.4324/9781315833835 https://doi.org/10.14483/calj.v19n1.9292 https://doi.org/10.19183/how.24.1.310 https://doi.org/10.19183/how.24.1.310 https://hdl.handle.net/10289/3291 https://doi.org/10.17533/udea.ikala.v22n01a02 https://doi.org/10.17533/udea.ikala.v22n01a02 universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras160 durán & garcía about the authors estefanía durán is a fifth-year student in the ba in foreign languages program at universidad de pamplona (colombia). she is interested in attending teachers’ and learners’ academic needs in the english language learning field. katherin garcía is a fifth-year student in the ba in foreign languages program at universidad de pamplona (colombia). she is interested in the teaching and learning processes of the english language. acknowledgements we express our gratitude to professor gabriel cote parra for sharing his wisdom, experience, and support to really enhance ourselves, as foreign languages students, in the research field during the course of this study. likewise, we are immensely grateful to dr. grace gwitira, who reviewed this article and satisfactorily contributed to its improvement. examining current and future ecuadorian educators’ experiences using action research in the english as a second language classroom 41profile: issues teach. prof. dev., vol. 23 no. 1, jan-jun, 2021. issn 1657-0790 (printed) 2256-5760 (online). bogotá, colombia. pages 41-55 https://doi.org/10.15446/profile.v23n1.84020 examining current and future ecuadorian educators’ experiences using action research in the english as a second language classroom análisis del rol de la investigación-acción en la práctica de futuros docentes en ecuador en aulas de inglés como segundo idioma ximena d. burgin1 mayra c. daniel northern illinois university, dekalb, usa this paper reports on ecuadorian pre-service and in-service teachers’ ability to conduct action research in the classroom as well as their skills to efficiently adjust instruction to address students’ cultural and linguistic diversity. a qualitative case study approach was implemented to collect information from teacher candidates in 2015, in-service teachers from a public school in 2017, and in-service teachers from a private school in 2019. data were collected through focus groups and interviews conducted in spanish. findings suggest that training teachers to conduct action research will improve their ability to analyze data and improve students’ learning outcomes. keywords: action research, ecuador, english as a second language, teachers’ knowledge este artículo se enfoca en la capacidad de los maestros en su labor diaria y de futuros docentes ecuatorianos para realizar investigación-acción en el aula, así como ajustar la instrucción tomando en cuenta la diversidad cultural y lingüística de sus estudiantes. este proyecto cualitativo investigó el conocimiento de docentes y estudiantes de licenciatura con respecto a la investigación-acción como un medio para mejorar la instrucción en el ecuador. para ello, se implementó un enfoque cualitativo de estudio de caso con el fin de recopilar información de los estudiantes de licenciatura en 2015, docentes de una escuela pública en 2017 y docentes de una escuela privada en 2019. los datos fueron recolectados a través de grupos focales y entrevistas en español. los resultados sugieren que los maestros que se capacitan para realizar investigación-acción mejoran su preparación pedagógica y su capacidad de analizar datos. esto contribuye al aprendizaje de los estudiantes. palabras clave: conocimiento de los profesores, ecuador, inglés como segundo idioma, investigación de acción ximena d. burgin  https://orcid.org/0000-0002-3494-569x · email: xrecald1@niu.edu mayra c. daniel  https://orcid.org/0000-0003-2702-0071 · email: mcdaniel@niu.edu this project was supported by the create center at northern illinois university. how to cite this article (apa, 7th ed.): burgin, x. d., & daniel, m. c. (2021). examining current and future ecuadorian educators’ experiences using action research in the english as a second language classroom. profile: issues in teachers’ professional development, 23(1), 41–55. https://doi.org/10.15446/profile.v23n1.84020 this article was received on december 9, 2019 and accepted on october 5, 2020. this is an open access article distributed under the terms of the creative commons license attribution-noncommercial-noderivatives 4.0 international license. consultation is possible at https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/ https://orcid.org/0000-0002-3494-569x https://orcid.org/0000-0003-2702-0071 https://doi.org/10.15446/profile.v23n1.84020 https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/ universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras42 burgin & daniel introduction in recent years the landscape of educational mandates and both teacher preparation and professional development (pd) in ecuador have changed, with empowerment of the country’s educators becoming a stronger focus. the country’s educators have been asked to implement pedagogical practices with an increased focus on learner-centered instruction and fewer teacherled lectures. as a result, our research team developed a project to explore current action research (ar) practices and examine in-service teachers’ and teacher candidates’ knowledge of ar as a means to modify and improve instruction in ecuador’s classrooms. the theoretical framework of this study was based on carr and kemmis’s (1986) definition of ar as “a form of self-reflective enquiry undertaken by participants in social situations in order to improve the rationality and justice of their own practices, their understanding of these practices, and the situations in which the practices are carried out” (p. 162). the term ar was coined by kurt lewin in the 1930s (mills, 2007), and since then, scholars have developed several models (kemmis & mctaggart, 1988; wells, 1994) to explain the relationship among all the steps that compose ar methodology. creswell and guetterman (2019) indicated that the purpose of ar is to solve educational problems, and hendricks (2006) described the ar process as a “systematic inquiry based on ongoing reflection” (p. 9). ar models may look different due to the focus placed on improvement, such as reflective practice, that looks at one’s reflective practices as a continuous improvement (mills, 2007; york-barr et al., 2016). on the other hand, participatory research looks at a study’s participants to provide insights about the dynamics of the organization or a community to participate in designing a project, data collection, interpretation of findings, and development of recommendations for future action (mcintyre, 2008; wyatt, 2011). the study’s researchers are teacher educators, one from ecuador and the other from cuba, whose work focuses on the preparation of teachers to work with culturally and linguistically diverse students in the united states and latin america. data gathered in this three-phase investigation are relevant for educators in diverse educational environments because they allow teachers to gain insights for improving their practice. the research team collected information from practicing teachers (open-ended questions and interviews in 2017 and 2019) and teacher candidates (focus groups in 2015) to assess teachers’ understanding of ar and its implementation. in addition, we delivered workshops focused on preparing the educators to use different instructional and affective strategies to teach students from multilingual and multicultural backgrounds. in this article, the focus is a workshop aimed at enhancing teacher candidates’ and practicing teachers’ knowledge of and ability to implement ar practices. findings from the workshop’s activities were examined to identify effective steps that would help educators overcome instructional challenges and reflect on their pedagogical practices as part of their educational role. ecuadorian educational reform: a brief history at the end of the twentieth century, ecuador did not have a long-term educational plan for achieving its educators’ and government leaders’ desired educational objectives. in addition, there was not a single unified policy that regulated implementation of a curriculum across all k–12 educational institutions (kuhlman & serrano, 2017). ecuador’s department of education provided the curricular requirements, while educational institutions were responsible for its implementation. institutions were given the flexibility to deliver instruction according to their own needs and resources. working groups were formed to analyze suitable implementation for the specific educational institution. english language standards were developed during 2012 and 2013 to ensure quality instruction for 43profile: issues teach. prof. dev., vol. 23 no. 1, jan-jun, 2021. issn 1657-0790 (printed) 2256-5760 (online). bogotá, colombia. pages 41-55 examining current and future ecuadorian educators’ experiences using action research in the english... students to meet desired proficiency in english (díazmaggioli, 2017). toward the latter half of 2002, ecuador designed a national plan that was hotly debated in the nation’s educational institutions (isch-lopez, 2011). the plan aimed to increase educational expectations; however, it was never implemented. by 2016 the “plan decenal 2006–2015” (10-year plan) included eight guidelines the government proposed for approval by the ecuadorian people (ministerio de educación y cultura del ecuador, 2006). these guidelines incorporated a renewed focus for schooling focused on equity and a vision of increased cultural tolerance and inclusiveness. the goal was to strengthen the readiness of all ecuadorian citizens to advocate for the rights of its diverse citizenry. to achieve the plan objectives, the ecuadorian government created a national curriculum that made free education the duty of the state. the plan stipulated that teacher positions would be selected on a merit system: teachers would be trained and evaluated based on the curriculum and the teachers’ professional competency. mandates were subject to the specific legal rules indicated in the general law of education, educational reforms, and ministerial agreements of the ministry of education (organic law of intercultural education, 2012). population diversity in ecuador rodriguez (2013) explained that awareness of the “racial, cultural, ethnic, and socioeconomic differences that exist among student populations and teachers in many educational settings is imperative for creating teaching-and-learning environments characterized by mutual understanding” (p. 87). the concept of ethnicity applies to groups working to maintain their cultural and political identity and ensure their protection, advancement, and access to resources in a national system (helmberger, 2006; lecompte & schensul, 2010). the magnitude of the diversity in ecuador’s classrooms poses instructional challenges for all stakeholders. the instituto nacional de estadística y censos (inec, 2015) reported that 93% of ecuador’s population speaks spanish and 4.1% speaks quechua. census information documented the country’s population was composed of 71.9% mestizos (mixed amerindian and white), 7.4% montubio, 7% amerindian, 6.1% white, 4.3% afroecuadorian, 1.9% mulatto, 1% black, and 0.4% other (inec, 2015). according to the ethnologue website (https://www.ethnologue.com/country/ec/languages), ecuadorians speak 21 indigenous languages (e.g., cofán and quechua). action research in other countries action research has been used to foster the development of higher levels of knowledge and skills in language teachers as part of pd (edwards, 2020). ar has been utilized in several countries in africa to help teachers navigate/determine/re-envision their teaching roles. in lesotho (mokuku, 2001), malawi (stuart & kunje, 1998), and ethiopia (jebessa-aga, 2017) researchers worked with teachers utilizing the ar cycle. the teachers found the process useful; however, they did not realize the time and effort needed to implement ar, potential to improve teaching practices, and limited resources to sustain the process long-term. edwards and burns (2016) conducted a study with 16 in-service australian teachers, reporting that the ar program had a positive impact on teachers’ self-confidence about their teaching, connections established with students, teachers’ engagement with research, and teacher’s recognition for their efforts. time and support from the administration was cited “as crucial in helping them to pursue their research interests and facilitate positive effects of the ar program” (p. 13). burns et al. (2016) reported that after an ar workshop focused on the ar process, six bilingual (spanish–english) in-service teachers in chile indicated the ar process was valuable; however, teachers specified time to be dedicated to ar as an issue due to the demands of their profession. in another study (rahmani-doqaruni, 2014), https://www.ethnologue.com/country/ec/languages universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras44 burgin & daniel 16 iranian teachers participated in ar within their classroom context demonstrating the potential to support teachers’ development of research skills and knowledge. mehrani (2017) identified challenges and opportunities for language teachers conducting action research. the opportunities included the participants’ understanding of language education as a framework to reflect on the teaching profession, and the opportunities to advocate for students’ needs. the challenges reflected teachers’ time limitations to devote to the effort, their limited research knowledge, unpredictable administrative support available, and the overall lack of collaboration across all educational sectors. another study conducted in spain (soto gómez et al., 2019) highlighted the results of 10 years of using lesson study combined with ar to address teachers’ practical knowledge about teacher training. the findings indicated that lesson study helped the teachers reconstruct their thinking and strengthened the teaching community. data from these aforementioned studies suggest the strong possibility that ar serves to empower teachers to improve their pedagogy. according to wood et al. (2019), ar provided pathways to understand critical educational questions regarding the creation and use of knowledge within schools or classrooms, and educators to engage in transformative practices when systems were in place to support the sustainability of their efforts. furthermore, soto gómez et al. (2019) stressed the importance of practical experience and reflection for teachers to gain knowledge and change their attitudes and pedagogical practices. the ar process can support changes through curriculum reform, innovations that support institutional change, and/or educational system changes. ar processes can help educators address problems (stuart & kunje, 1998); however, ar is clearly a transformational process that requires teacher engagement, critical reflection, and innovative ways to build knowledge (wood et al., 2019). exploring the rationale and possibilities for action research in the ecuadorian context to date, discussing whether ecuadorian teachers have adequate knowledge and training with ar methods to implement this type of research has not been a priority. patera et al. (2016) conducted a participatory action research (par) study at the centro audiovisual don bosco in ecuador to develop teachers’ competencies and capabilities to produce quality multimedia products for education. the study’s results identified the need for pd to examine the par process in ecuador and engage teachers in a continuous evaluation of the learning environment. nugent et al. (2012) indicate that ar links theory and practice through its goal “to make the theory explicit in order to justify the actions” (p. 7). ar involves stakeholders in reflection leading to dialectal critique to show whether existing systems work efficiently to support each other. all voices are considered significant in collaborative ar due to triangulation of data collected and analyzed in allowing for a plurality of interpretations. this freedom of expression is needed in all school systems undergoing reforms. the ar process varies as individual teachers recursively implement its steps in their classrooms until the problem is solved. teachers typically “(a) identify an area of focus, (b) collect data, (c) analyze and interpret data, and (d) develop an action plan” (mills, 2007, p. 263). teachers engage in practitioner research work to improve their classroom practices through data gathering and analysis. teacher inquiries include a cycle to identify a problem, find solutions, implement solutions, and assess the effects on the students (creswell & poth, 2017; kemmis & mctaggart, 1988). through inquiry, teachers become researchers who consciously test their own theories and explanations about teaching and learning (creswell & guetterman, 2019). ar provides a path to effect the type of change for which ecuadorian 45profile: issues teach. prof. dev., vol. 23 no. 1, jan-jun, 2021. issn 1657-0790 (printed) 2256-5760 (online). bogotá, colombia. pages 41-55 examining current and future ecuadorian educators’ experiences using action research in the english... authorities are advocating. teachers might focus on a specific topic to investigate, commit to gathering data to learn new pedagogies to improve the focus of study, and systematically reflect on the processes and results (mills, 2007). the steps help educators understand their approaches to the problem and do more than measure results. edge (2005) argues that english language teachers should reflect on their teaching practices and philosophies to grow professionally. stakeholders collaborate to create a community that works through the ar process to mobilize resources and/or to understand ideas and practices that empower them to transform the problems under analysis into solutions (mehrani, 2017; santoro lamelas, 2020). this research asked if programs of teacher preparation in ecuador might more effectively incorporate educational mandates through ar implementation (constitución de la república del ecuador, 2008). the researchers of this study posited that teachers need the freedom to examine educational practice within their own socio-cultural context, and that ar consists of human interactions to originate meaning (mills, 2007). in this work we proposed that conducting ar would lead ecuadorian practitioners to create teaching and learning environments characterized by crosscultural understandings that support constructivist pedagogical practices. english language programs after ecuadorian educational reforms ecuador’s constitution asserts the rights of its citizens “to engage in interpersonal intercultural communications in all dimensions” (constitución de la república del ecuador, 2008). language policies in schooling practices showcase the power of english in ecuador’s educational system. although the constitution acknowledges spanish as the country’s official language, and while quechua is spoken by its indigenous populations (constitución política de la república del ecuador, 1998), they are not part of required school curricula. english is the language of commerce; textbooks used in many tertiary programs are written in english, and ecuador’s official currency is the us dollar. therefore, it is key to ensure educator awareness that in bilingual and multilingual practices there may be a hidden underlying assumption that “coming to voice takes place in english only… while students’ vernaculars are denigrated and ignored, rendering bilingual education colonial-like in nature” (macedo & bartolomé, 2014, p. 24). to prepare english teachers to deliver english as a second language (esl) instruction, the ecuadorian government signed agreements with the alliance of progress from the us and the british council. by 2012, agreements with select tertiary institutions in the us were in place (e.g., new mexico state university and kansas state university; reforms for education in ecuador, 2014). the agreements were to provide assistantships for teachers and teacher candidates to study english in the us and be better able to improve the education system in ecuador. the program “teach english 2014” was designed to improve teacher preparation, teachers’ level of english language acquisition, and teachers’ knowledge of english language teaching (elt) theories and practices. grants were provided to help ecuadorian teachers study second language pedagogies in englishspeaking countries in order to have opportunities to interact with english-speaking cultures to meet with the mandate of teaching english from the 8th through the 12th grade levels (agreement 0041-14, 2014). ecuadorian teachers’ ideologies effective methods of elt require educators to hold implementable visions of empowerment and positive ideologies of advocacy that support all stakeholders. in elt, besides a focus on the target language of instruction, teachers need to examine the design of their lessons and how methods help students develop mastery of the content presented. this study investigated possibilities for implementing ar as a means to support english teachers’ ideologies of equity in their educational practice universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras46 burgin & daniel (díaz-bazo, 2017; macedo & bartolomé, 2014). while ecuadorian teachers accepted the charge of making curricular changes to the delivery of english language instruction across all grade levels in their country and the mandate to do so quickly, they were taxed with simultaneously receiving the pd that would enable them to do so (isch-lopez, 2011). this research brought teachers’ knowledge and beliefs about their role as second language educators to the fore as we presented methods of ar to support culturally responsive pedagogy (díaz-bazo, 2017). the type of ongoing reflection that is enhanced in ar (york-barr et al., 2016) appeared to be an overlooked cog in the wheel of designing curricular changes that could result in higher levels of academic achievement for students. elt as a semiotic tool is supported by teachers’ ability to think thoughtfully about the application of theory in the classroom context (gonzalez et al., 2005). we posited ar would serve to enhance the links between theory and practice in elt (creswell & guetterman, 2019; edwards, 2020). envisioning action research in ecuador’s schoolhouse numerous top-down mandated changes to ecuador’s educational system have been implemented in recent years (van damme et al., 2013) with little room allotted for teachers to contribute input as the curricular changes were incorporated. at the same time, increased pd required of teachers was based solely on learners’ academic achievement in examinations. prior to beginning this research, we hypothesized ecuadorian teachers might not be engaging in reflective processes that would allow them to evaluate whether the enacted curriculum addressed students’ educational needs. in this environment, it seemed unlikely that top-down mandates imposed by the government supported teachers’ efforts to perform ar. for teachers to gain expertise throughout their careers, they need time to conduct ar so they can reflect, evaluate, reflect again after analyzing gathered data, and take action. thus, current and future teachers could learn how to analyze social, economic, and cultural relations in their society. teachers’ identities as educators (fitts et al., 2008) require that they have opportunities to empower themselves and their students. this inquiry into the presence or absence of ar in ecuador’s schools sought to establish whether teachers have opportunities to engage in reflective practice, if they are taught how to conduct ar, if they know how to document and examine formative and summative data, and if the educational system in ecuador supports bottom-up changes and the creation of teacher leaders and researchers. method the researchers of this study implemented a qualitative case study methodology to examine the level of implementation of ar in ecuador’s classrooms from the participants’ perspectives. this study utilized focus groups and interviews conducted in spanish for one hour to collect data from three different groups of teachers to answer the research questions for this exploration of ar methods in the context of ecuadorian schooling. the methodology selected for this research considered that through participation in focus groups, group discussions, and interviews (creswell & guetterman, 2019), the practitioners could reflect on their experiences as teachers. the interviewer was an interpreter of what was heard in the research context (fontana & frey, 2003). data collection the collected data document the participants’ knowledge of ar and their ability to implement ar processes in their classrooms. researchers had access to three different school settings to explore the use, knowledge, and implementation of ar in ecuadorian classrooms. the first group of participants included teacher candidates completing their formal education training in 2015. in-service teachers from a public 47profile: issues teach. prof. dev., vol. 23 no. 1, jan-jun, 2021. issn 1657-0790 (printed) 2256-5760 (online). bogotá, colombia. pages 41-55 examining current and future ecuadorian educators’ experiences using action research in the english... school comprised the second group in 2017. data were gathered from a third group of teachers from a private school in 2019. although the data collection procedures were similar, the open-ended questions were different for each group. as the project evolved from work with teacher candidates in their teacher preparation program, to in-service teachers, and their implementation of ar practices in the classroom, the ar inquiry method changed. researchers obtained institutional review board approval before conducting the research to comply with human subjects’ research requirements. in 2015, teacher candidates participated in focus groups before the ar workshop and completion of a hands-on activity to practice the implementation of ar. in 2017, in-service teachers from a public school participated in focus groups before and after an ar-focused workshop. in 2019, in-service teachers from a private school participated in in-depth interviews. the purpose of the data collection was to explore how in-classroom teachers used ar and to establish the level of knowledge teacher candidates had about the purposes and benefits of conducting ar in the classroom. the questions that guided this study were: 1. how are teacher candidates and practicing teachers prepared to conduct ar? 2. how do teacher candidates and practicing teachers implement ar in their teaching practices? the qualitative data were audio recorded, transcribed, and analyzed utilizing a constant comparison technique to develop codes and themes. constant comparison is an analytical process to compare existing findings with new information to develop codes by reading the entire set of data. the qualitative technique allowed for inductively coding the data so the codes could emerge during the iterative process. the data were coded (categorized) and codes were compared and grouped by similarity (leech & onwuegbuzie, 2007). ar workshops with teacher candidates and in-service public-school teachers the ar workshops were performed at a state university in ecuador that prepares teachers to teach esl in the k–12 school system. a total of 40 teacher candidates completing the last semester (eighth level) of their studies were invited to participate in the 2015 workshop. a total of 26 in-service teachers from a public school participated in the 2017 workshop. the workshop was designed to teach teachers how to implement ar processes in their classrooms. the 5-hour workshop included topics such as (a) the basics of action research, (b) research design, (c) data analyses, (d) interpretation of results, and (e) hands-on application of ar. the workshop started with a definition of ar as a form of self-reflective inquiry that can be used to investigate and improve an educational problem (mcintyre, 2008). the next step was to communicate instruments and techniques to collect data (e.g., grades, interviews, and observations). finally, an activity was implemented to give the teacher candidates and in-service teachers the opportunity to practice their new knowledge. participants were divided into groups to create (a) a lesson plan including objectives, topic, duration, and assessment tools and (b) an ar plan including a problem to be researched, methodology and instruments to be used, and data analyses to be performed. in the debriefing, participants presented their work to be critiqued regarding what could be improved, how it could be improved, and why it needed revisions. throughout the workshop, the researchers shared the different aspects of ar such as (a) the use of data to adjust lesson plans and improve outcomes, (b) the use of data to adjust instruction based on a needs assessment of the content background, and (c) understanding and identification of pedagogical strategies to address students’ educational needs. universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras48 burgin & daniel participants this study reports findings from the data collected from three groups of participants: (a) 2015 teacher candidates, (b) 2017 in-service teachers from a public school, and (c) 2019 in-service english teachers from a private school. 2015 teacher candidates four focus groups (each with eight candidates 22 to 25 years old with balanced gender representation) were conducted with future teachers from an urban-rural area of ecuador. the participants were completing requirements to graduate from their teacher preparation program such as internships in k–12 schools as well as writing a thesis and undergoing clinical placements which included experiences with two different mentors in their respective classes. three open-ended questions were posed to the teacher candidates: 1. what have you learned about ar? 2. how do you implement ar in the classroom? 3. how would you use ar to adjust instruction in the classroom? 2017 in-service teachers from a public school: workshop participants the participants were 26 practicing teachers (6 men and 20 women) with a range of 4 to 30 years of teaching experience. the participants taught literature and esl at the secondar y school level (grades 9–12). four focus groups were organized before and after the workshop. the open-ended questions for the focus groups aimed to understand the participants’ training and knowledge about implementing ar: 1. how do you know how to implement ar in the classroom to adjust instruction? 2. if you know how to implement ar, please provide an example. 2019 in-service english teachers from a private school: interview of participants eight practicing teachers with 10 to 18 years of teaching experience participated in one-on-one interviews. the teachers had spent their entire teaching career teaching english at different grade levels in a k–12 institution in an urban area of ecuador. these teachers did not participate in the workshop because they were already informally using ar in their classrooms. instead the interviews sought information about their implementation of ar through the following questions based on the steps in the ar process: 1. how do you identify academic problems in the classroom? 2. what type of information do you collect after having identified the academic problem? 3. what process do you use to study or interpret the identified academic problem? 4. how do you develop an action plan after having identified the academic problem? qualitative analyses analysis of the findings generated three themes related to knowledge about the ar process from all three groups of participants. the first theme demonstrates the limited formal instruction about ar during program preparation or pd opportunities. the second theme shows the implicit knowledge teachers possess about the ar steps. the third theme communicates the explicit knowledge about the ar process expressed by teachers. limited formal instruction on ar participant responses gathered in 2015 from teacher candidates demonstrate insufficient understanding of how to find answers to educational problems using ar for data collection and subsequent analysis. during the focus group sessions held prior to the ar workshop, teacher candidates indicated they had not received any formal training focused on ar. one trainee said ar was not necessary because “educational mandates from the 49profile: issues teach. prof. dev., vol. 23 no. 1, jan-jun, 2021. issn 1657-0790 (printed) 2256-5760 (online). bogotá, colombia. pages 41-55 examining current and future ecuadorian educators’ experiences using action research in the english... department of education tell teachers what to teach and how to teach.” another teacher trainee added that “the lack of available time would be a barrier to implement ar in the classroom.” many of the teacher candidates related ar to other types of research such as using the world wide web to find information for completing classroom assignments. for example, a teacher candidate stated, “lately we have had the opportunity to take students to the computer lab to search the internet.” another mentioned: “while working on the thesis, i realized that we are used to traditional methodologies; the teacher comes and delivers instruction.” another trainee stated that “in millennium schools, each student has his/her own computer to do research.” these statements suggest that teacher candidates were not exposed to adequate modeling about how to plan, implement, and use ar in the classroom as a systematic approach for exploring and resolving pedagogical problems. in the focus groups held with in-service teachers before the workshop in 2017, participants were asked about their knowledge and skills in implementing ar and how they utilize information to adjust instruction. after a participant stated, “i know little about the subject,” others agreed, further indicating they had not received sufficient training either during their formal education to become teachers or through their post-graduate pd. other teachers described ar as research that involves students. one teacher said: “it is important to look for new strategies to help students,” and others supported the comment with examples of how to get students’ attention (e.g., games). a majority of the 2017 in-service teachers were unsure of how to implement ar to adjust instruction. three teachers related ar to writing a research paper. one teacher indicated: “research topics are provided and forums created for students to express their thoughts based on their culture.” another teacher stated that “students’ research habits help them maximize the lecture time because of students’ content knowledge prior [to] the lesson.” a third teacher mentioned: “this topic [ar] could be interesting. however, the number of students and the physical space in the classroom do not allow for it.” four teachers provided examples of classroom research topics such as african slavery. one suggested “web self-evaluation and projects” as an example of ar. a second teacher stated: “i can be innovative and consolidate knowledge with ar in the classroom when i apply knowledge through forums, projects, etc.,” while yet another teacher mentioned, “adjust[ing] classroom instruction, a teacher should always motivate the students to be part of the complete process.” the examples provided by the teachers in the focus groups involved content-related activities in which the student was the researcher looking for new information rather than the teachers trying to solve an academic problem based on their students’ responses. analysis of the responses indicated that teacher candidates would benefit from learning to conduct ar (patera et al., 2016; stuart & kunje, 1998). answers to the open-ended questions did not demonstrate reflection on how teaching practices could support students from diverse backgrounds or those learning esl. the teacher candidates and in-service teachers did not demonstrate familiarity with how ar helps monitor students’ learning and adjust instruction, nor did they provide accurate examples of what ar might look like (nugent et al., 2012). implicit knowledge about ar the answers provided by the participants indicated they connected their teaching practices to ar concepts; however, the process of adjusting instruction was not explicitly addressed and the examples showed that teachers had limited understanding about how to adjust instruction using a systematic ar approach. the participants shared the ar process as informal and usually there are no records of its implementation. some participants from the 2017 in-service teacher group demonstrated implicit knowledge of the ar process. when they were asked how they identify an academic problem in the classroom, they all indicated universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras50 burgin & daniel they use anecdotal observations of students’ academic achievement. several teachers made reference to having had a student in their classroom the previous academic year and thus being familiar with the student’s behavior and academic performance. one teacher talked about a “student who was cheerful until one day the teacher saw the behavior change from cheerful to sad.” she said, “i asked him what was wrong and encouraged him to grasp that he was not responsible for the problems in his family.” other participants explained that in these cases, the teachers tried to provide academic activities for the students to help them concentrate on assigned tasks. the researchers asked about the types of data the teachers collect in their classrooms, teachers shared how “at the beginning of the school year, we administer a content test to understand the level of knowledge of the students and that information is used to study and inform instruction.” when this group of teachers was asked about the action plan they developed after the ar cycle was completed, they indicated that they based the action plan on the results obtained after identification of the problem. the participants described the ar steps; however, information detailing their practices through a reflective process to identify a problem was not stated (hendricks, 2006). moreover, the implementation and testing of theories and interventions with students to determine the impact of implemented solutions were not clearly identified (creswell & guetterman, 2019). the data did not adequately indicate the level of inquiry. thus, the information presented by the participants shows an informal implementation of the ar cycle in which teachers’ experiences influence their use of interventions to solve academic issues. data from the 2019 in-service teachers from a private school demonstrated an implicit knowledge of the ar process. when participants were asked about identification of an academic problem, two teachers indicated that before the lesson starts, i have an activity, such as a game, to determine the level of knowledge of the students about the objects in the classroom. this activity helps me to categorize my students into groups based on their responses. other teachers noted that the english lesson about identifying parts of the body started by singing the song “head, shoulders, knees, and toes.” the children enjoyed the singing, which allowed the teacher to move to the next activity and show the students both the names of the different parts of the human body (e.g., legs and head) and how sentences are formed utilizing proper grammatical structures. a teacher stated that as the english lesson about the body continued, he provided examples such as “i have a head,” “he has two arms,” and “they have hands.” other teachers started the lesson with a game using puppets in which the teacher named the members of the family (e.g., grandmother, sister, and father) using the puppets. the teacher asked the students to repeat the names. two teachers stated they give first-grade students a test before the lesson is conducted. “i may decide to group students with more knowledge and students demonstrating less knowledge in small groups.” the teachers used information gathered through an activity or a test to frame the next steps of instruction. some teachers “deliver instruction utilizing a variety of strategies (e.g., lecture, working in groups, and worksheets).” then “i ask the students several questions to assess the level of comprehension of the new knowledge.” other teachers provide worksheets for the students to practice recognizing the body parts and generating sentences. another strategy was working together to match pictures with sentences: “this matching activity in groups helped the students who did not understand the lecture…his/her friends in the group would help him/her to recognize the days of the week in the classroom assignment.” other teachers used a coloring/matching activity “to teach the names of the different objects in a house (e.g., chair and table).” one noted, 51profile: issues teach. prof. dev., vol. 23 no. 1, jan-jun, 2021. issn 1657-0790 (printed) 2256-5760 (online). bogotá, colombia. pages 41-55 examining current and future ecuadorian educators’ experiences using action research in the english... i also provide a worksheet including words and a house for the students to circle the objects in the house. if a student does not recognize the name of the objects in the house, s/he is expected to ask, “what is that?” prior to the workshop debriefing, when the teachers were asked about developing an action plan to support learning based on the students’ needs. a teacher noted, i will have to tailor instruction because the homework shows that i have to reinforce the information for some of the students...most likely, i will divide the students into groups. each group will be assigned a different activity while i work with the students that need extra instruction. one teacher listed her next steps to ensure mastery. she noted that concepts from a lesson are included in follow-up lessons, assignments, and assessments. she claimed this gives her “the opportunity to follow up with my students to monitor the gaps in knowledge.” other teachers indicated there are always more opportunities to reinforce information in the future. another teacher indicated that at this point, i am not going to assess any content knowledge for this lesson because i am going to continue building on this knowledge for the next two lessons…i will assess content at the end, and i will decide what needs to be done. other teachers noted, the students will have other opportunities to learn the names of the objects. i am interested in their listening skills, speaking skills, and how they would ask about what they don’t know (e.g., “what is that?” “what is the name of that?”). when asked about the next steps, the teacher indicated: “this knowledge will be included in the next lesson…the new words will be used.” the participants explained identification of the problem, data collection, data analysis and interpretation, and an action plan (mills, 2007), which are part of the ar cycle; however, connecting the reflexivity process to the problem to be solved was not clearly indicated (hendricks, 2006). moreover, the interventions presented by the participants seemed to indicate classroom strategies instead of testing the impact of interventions on students’ academic achievement (creswell & guetterman, 2019). these results demonstrated that in-service teachers in the public school and the private school applied the ar stages to enhance pedagogical approaches and classroom assessments and to adjust instruction in their classrooms without explicitly knowing it. explicit knowledge about ar three in-service public-school teachers in the group from 2017 expressed understanding how to use the ar process to adjust instruction. they collected information by administering content pre-tests, analyzing the results to identify academic and behavioral problems, and identifying strategies to be implemented with specific students. they incorporated the strategies into academic plans involving three pillars: cognitive, psychomotor, and affective. during data collection, the teachers used classroom activities and homework to determine concepts that needed to be retaught as suggested by the gathered data. when teachers developed an action plan, they described previously implemented instructional strategies, such as engaging students in an activity in games or small groups work. they shared that they monitored the students’ knowledge and knowledge gains through scaffolded instructional tasks. although the ar steps were identified, the participants did not explicitly identify the self-reflection component of ar. self-reflection is important to improve teachers’ teaching methods, so the absence of this process might indicate the teachers depended on their experience to implement strategies to improve students’ academic outcomes. the findings show teacher candidates had limited exposure to the ar process during their formal educauniversidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras52 burgin & daniel tion about how to enhance pedagogical approaches, select classroom assessments, and adjust instruction based on the students’ needs to meet the desired academic achievement. on the other hand, the results from practicing teachers in the public school and the private schools demonstrated they applied the ar stages in their classrooms without explicitly knowing it, as only three in-service teachers explained the ar process and how they used it in the classroom. furthermore, a common thread was the teachers’ limited use of selfreflection to improve teaching pedagogies and students’ academic achievement outcomes. having teachers with the knowledge and skill to adjust instruction based on students’ needs will enhance the education system (barber & mourshed, 2007; van damme et al., 2013). conclusions and implications this paper investigated ecuadorian pre-service and in-service teachers’ ability to conduct ar in the classroom and their skills to efficiently adjust instruction to address students’ cultural and linguistic diversity. the participants’ knowledge of the ar cycle demonstrated insufficient clarity of the definition and appropriate use of ar. after exposure to ar concepts in the workshops, data suggest teachers grasped the benefits of ar for improving their teaching practices; however, a discussion of limitations such as time and resources to sustain the methodology was also present, evidencing obstacles to be overcome. several researchers (burns et al., 2016; edwards, 2020; edwards & burns, 2016; mehrani, 2017) identified the benefits of ar for supporting teachers in their educational role; however, they also found that issues with time and administration support created a formidable challenge to the sustainability of ar in the classroom. it is evident that ecuadorian educators found the ar process informative and applicable to their practice, paralleling research that has demonstrated the importance of implementing the ar cycle based on the teachers’ reflections (edwards, 2020; mcintyre, 2008; mills, 2007; santoro lamelas, 2020; soto gómez et al., 2019; stuart & kunje, 1998; wyatt, 2011; york-barr et al., 2016). edwards (2020) stated that teachers benefit from ar by increasing their awareness of teaching-related practices and research-related development that can lead them to new skills, beliefs, and engagement as well as identification of their educators’ roles. findings in this study indicate the need to prepare teachers to understand ar and be able to implement the ar process to improve academic outcomes. currently, participants seemed to perform the ar steps in their formative and summative assessments of students as well as for students’ performance to adjust instruction, but collectively, none of the three groups described the reflection process as a means for adjusting instruction to meet desired academic goals based on students’ needs, particularly students learning esl, or to adjust instruction based on the multicultural and multilingual environment of the classroom (organic law of intercultural education, 2012). the awareness of the process will improve teachers’ practices and “(possibly) maintain a reflective research perspective” (edwards, 2020, p. 9). ar is a tool for systematically approaching the improvement of teaching practices through reflection to connect theory to practice (creswell & guetterman, 2019). there are a few implications. first is the importance of reflecting on ar as a journey instead of implementing a “fixed set of ideas” (mokuku, 2001, p. 197). if the ability to implement ar in classrooms is essential and ecuadorian teachers, like those in this study, do not seem to have had formal exposure to this practice in training programs, teacher education institutions may want to look at increasing this type of training. collaboration with university researchers can provide mentorship opportunities to train teachers as researchers to improve teachers’ pedagogical practices and students’ academics (edwards, 2020; rahmani-doqaruni, 2014). second, the school community influences the need of merging pd with ar for teachers to improve academics in the classroom. as the ar process uncovers instructional 53profile: issues teach. prof. dev., vol. 23 no. 1, jan-jun, 2021. issn 1657-0790 (printed) 2256-5760 (online). bogotá, colombia. pages 41-55 examining current and future ecuadorian educators’ experiences using action research in the english... gaps and/or other academic issues to be solved, the process to explain them will create opportunities for teachers to support all students, including those with multilingual and multicultural backgrounds. finally, the findings of this study could drive change in school policy and practice to empower those committed to the ar process to improve themselves and lead other teachers to better their teaching practices. the limitations of the study include the reality that ar is scarce in ecuador 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(spain). educational action research, 27(4), 527–542. https://doi.org/10.1080/09650792.2019.1610020 stuart, j., & kunje, d. (1998). action research in developing african education systems: is the glass half full or half empty? educational action research, 6(3), 377–393. https://doi.org/10.1080/09650799800200071 van damme, w., aguerrondo, i., crespo burgos, c., & robalino campos, m. (2013, september 10–12). a story of change: how ecuador seeks to sustain its development agenda through large scale educational reform [paper presentation]. ukfiet international conference on education and development – education and development post 2015: reflecting, reviewing, revisioning, oxford, england. https://bit.ly/2cwpd6m wells, g. (1994). changing school from within: creating communities of inquiry. heinemann. wood, l., mcateer, m., & whitehead, j. (2019). how are action researchers contributing to knowledge democracy? a global perspective. educational action research, 27(1), 7–21. https://doi.org/10.1080/096507 92.2018.1531044 wyatt, m. (2011). teachers researching their own practice. elt journal, 65(4), 417–425. https://doi.org/10.1093/ elt/ccq074 york-barr, j., sommers, w. a., ghere, g. s., & montie, j. k. (2016). reflective practice for renewing schools: an action guide for educators (3rd ed). sage publications. https:// doi.org/10.4135/9781506350530 about the authors ximena d. burgin, edd, is an assistant professor at northern illinois university (usa). her research interests relate to the assessment of culturally responsive classrooms to improve students’ academic outcomes. she has evaluated a variety of state and federal programs in k–12 education and adult education employing different methodological techniques. mayra c. daniel, edd, is a professor at northern illinois university (usa). her work centers on preparation of teachers to work with immigrant populations in the united states. her research interests relate to the preparation of culturally sensitive educators in the united states and latin america. https://doi.org/10.1080/09650792.2019.1610020 https://doi.org/10.1080/09650799800200071 https://bit.ly/2cwpd6m https://doi.org/10.1080/09650792.2018.1531044 https://doi.org/10.1080/09650792.2018.1531044 https://doi.org/10.1093/elt/ccq074 https://doi.org/10.1093/elt/ccq074 https://doi.org/10.4135/9781506350530 https://doi.org/10.4135/9781506350530 the repertory grid interview: exploring qualitative and quantitative data on language teachers’ pedagogical beliefs 215profile: issues teach. prof. dev., vol. 24 no. 2, jul-dec, 2022. issn 1657-0790 (printed) 2256-5760 (online). bogotá, colombia. pages 215-229 https://doi.org/10.15446/profile.v24n2.95749 the repertory grid interview: exploring qualitative and quantitative data on language teachers’ pedagogical beliefs la técnica de rejilla: una exploración de datos cualitativos y cuantitativos sobre las creencias pedagógicas de los profesores de idiomas kenneth richter1 patricia marie anne houde krisztina zimányi universidad de guanajuato, guanajuato, méxico this article focuses on the use of the repertory grid technique as a research instrument for conducting and analyzing interviews in the field of teaching english as a foreign language. as a demonstration of the explanatory usefulness of this methodological framework, a pilot study was carried out to elicit second language teachers’ tacit beliefs concerning cultural perceptions of good language teaching. repertory grid interviews were conducted with nine teachers at a public university in central mexico. the data from each group were compared to uncover possible cultural influences on participants’ beliefs. it is hoped that this overview of the method encourages an interest in repertory grid interviews and their analytic techniques in the field of applied linguistics and in english as a foreign language teaching in particular. keywords: foreign language teachers, mexico, mixed-method approach, pedagogical beliefs, repertory grid technique interviews este artículo explora el uso de la técnica de rejilla como instrumento de investigación para realizar y analizar entrevistas en el campo de la enseñanza del inglés. para demostrar la utilidad explicativa de este marco metodológico, se realizó un estudio piloto para conocer las creencias tácitas de los profesores de segunda lengua sobre las percepciones culturales de la buena enseñanza de idiomas. las entrevistas se hicieron con nueve profesores de una universidad pública del centro de méxico. se compararon los datos de cada grupo para identificar posibles influencias culturales en las creencias de los participantes. se espera que esta descripción general del método fomente el interés en la técnica de rejilla dentro de la lingüística aplicada y de la enseñanza del inglés en particular. palabras clave: creencias pedagógicas, enfoque de método mixto, maestros de lenguas extranjeras, méxico, técnica de rejilla kenneth richter  https://orcid.org/0000-0003-2072-0569 · email: k.richter@ugto.mx patricia marie anne houde  https://orcid.org/0000-0003-3730-4828 · email: p.houde@ugto.mx krisztina zimányi  https://orcid.org/0000-0003-1065-596x · email: krisztina@ugto.mx how to cite this article (apa, 7th ed.): richter, k., houde, p. m. a., & zimányi, k. (2022). the repertory grid interview: exploring qualitative and quantitative data on language teachers’ pedagogical beliefs. profile: issues in teachers’ professional development, 24(2), 215–229. https://doi.org/10.15446/profile.v24n2.95749 this article was received on may 13, 2021 and accepted on april 22, 2022. this is an open access article distributed under the terms of the creative commons license attribution-noncommercial-noderivatives 4.0 international license. consultation is possible at https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/ https://doi.org/10.15446/profile.v24n2.95749 https://orcid.org/0000-0003-2072-0569 mailto:k.richter@ugto.mx https://orcid.org/0000-0003-3730-4828 mailto:p.houde@ugto.mx https://orcid.org/0000-0003-1065-596x mailto:krisztina@ugto.mx https://doi.org/10.15446/profile.v24n2.95749 https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/ universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras216 richter, houde, & zimányi introduction this paper discusses the use of the repertory grid technique (rgt) as a credible research tool in the field of teaching english as a foreign language (tefl), specifically for research focused on issues related to teacher beliefs. as an example of its use, we describe a case study concerning foreign language teachers’ cultural perceptions about good pedagogy. because research into culture is particularly fraught with methodological difficulties (baldwin et al., 2006), the topic serves as a useful focus to illuminate some of the advantageous features of the rgt. the role of culture in second and foreign language teaching and learning is well established, and research on the topic is extensive. in the last decade or so, at least four literature reviews on the subject have been published (álvarez-valencia, 2014; lessard-clouston, 2016; risager, 2011; young et al., 2009). most empirical studies comparing and contrasting cultural views on pedagogy (language or otherwise) have typically relied on questionnaires, often supported by structured interviews, using previously validated and standardized items (e.g., clark-gareca & gui, 2019; liu & meng, 2009; organization for economic cooperation and development [oecd], 2009; pawlak, 2011; schulz, 2001). these data elicitation techniques are not without problems. questionnaires have been criticized for their susceptibility to common method variance, which occurs when respondents’ answers do not genuinely reflect their authentic views but are instead influenced by the instrument’s design (gorrell et al., 2011). research has identified several ways in which this kind of method bias can pollute questionnaire data (podsakoff et al., 2003). to mitigate the inherent defects of questionnaires, many researchers support them with structured interviews. such interviews, however, are subject to their own limitations, including the possible downsides of “subjectivity, the generalisation of the findings, conscious and unconscious biases, influences of dominant ideologies and mainstream thinking” (diefenbach, 2009, p. 875). when data from questionnaires and structured interviews are used together, problems arise in aligning data derived from the two methods. poor alignment can be attributed to the complexity and instability of the construct being investigated, difficulties in making data comparable, lack of variability in participant responses, greater sensitivity to context and seemingly emotive responses within the interview, possible misinterpretation of some questionnaire prompts, and greater control of content exposure in the questionnaire. (harris & brown, 2010, p. 1) the rgt is a type of structured interview associated with the field of personal construct psychology (pcp). combining the best features of both qualitative and quantitative techniques, the grid technique militates against some of the weaknesses of both. first, the structure of repertory grid interviews helps mitigate method bias. as with any qualitative interviewing method, there is always a danger that the rgt researcher may impose constructs or lead participants. however, because the main role of the interviewer is to focus and clarify a participant’s responses rather than guide the interviewee through a series of predetermined questions, the potential for “leading the witness” is reduced. second, unlike elicitation techniques that necessitate post-hoc thematic analyses, the repertory grid process brings the most essential themes of an interview immediately to the fore. finally, because rgt data is amenable to statistical analysis, it allows researchers to uncover patterns in participant responses which reflect psychological relationships within the “construing systems” of both individuals and groups (fransella et al., 2004, p. 81). the following is a consideration of the rgt as a methodological instrument. specifically, the paper describes an analysis of the commonalities and individuations of the pedagogic beliefs of nine language teachers at a public university in central mexico in order to illustrate how the rgt can profitably be employed 217profile: issues teach. prof. dev., vol. 24 no. 2, jul-dec, 2022. issn 1657-0790 (printed) 2256-5760 (online). bogotá, colombia. pages 215-229 the repertory grid interview: exploring qualitative and quantitative data on language... in the field of applied linguistics and tefl. first, an overview of the rgt is provided. second, several studies in the field of tefl that have utilized rgt interviews are reviewed. third, literature concerning the impact of cultural beliefs on language pedagogy is presented to situate the subsequent discussion of repertory grid analysis. finally, a case study is presented as one example of how the grid technique can be used to capture information about cultural dissimilarities in teachers’ pedagogic beliefs and, by extension, to capture information concerning pedagogic beliefs in general. the repertory grid technique the rgt is a specific type of interview utilized to analyze the content and structure of the implicit theories that people rely on to construe reality. of the methodologies associated with kelly’s (1955, 1963) theory of pcp, the rgt is the most well-known. although repertory grids were initially developed by kelly for use within the field of clinical psychotherapy and primarily focused on the individual level of analysis, scholars in other disciplines have adopted its premises and employed its methods to understand belief systems at the collective level (jankowicz, 1987). kelly’s (1955) writings on “commonality” and “sociality” explicitly address the tendency of groups to create tacit theories of the world. people, of course, define themselves in overlapping ways as members of ethnicities, genders, economic classes, age cohorts, and professional or occupational groups. all such sub-cultures build on a shared perspective that orders their respective “fields of experience to provide identification and solidarity for its members” (kay, 1970, as cited in diamond, 1982, p. 401). as wright (2004) points out, when individual constructions are brought together, “certain underlying collective frames of reference emerge that reflect a sense of common understanding and shared meaning” (p. 354). sechrest (2009) argues that uncovering these frames likely has more definite implications for research than any other area of kellian theory. the rgt is a “two-way classification of data in which [entities or] events are interlaced with abstractions” (shaw, 1984, as cited in zuber-skerritt, 1988, “the repertory grid” section, para. 2). repertory grids “reflect part of a person’s system of cross-references between their personal observations and experience of the world . . . and their personal classifications or abstractions of that experience” (zuber-skerritt, 1987, p. 604). using kellian nomenclature, personal observations and experiences are denominated “elements”; abstractions of experiences are denominated “constructs.” elements are a set of events and entities external to the interviewee. in clinical psychology, for instance, elements might be family members. in marketing, elements might be a set of different cars, or vacation destinations, or cellphones. in the current research, participants were asked to think about their past teachers. the choice of “past teachers” as grid elements is premised on lortie’s (1975) theory of the “apprenticeship of observation,” which denotes the internalization of teacher roles, identities, and practices that occurs over the course of an instructor’s time as a student. these beliefs about teaching constitute what have been referred to as “folk pedagogies,” a term which emphasizes the cultural dimension of how students come to understand teaching (joram & gabriele, 1998). constructs, kelly (1955) asserted, are the personal theories that arise when humans compare or contrast any two entities. humans develop hypotheses based on these theories which, in turn, are tested through on-going “experiments” (i.e., interactions) with their environments (beail, 1985; fromm, 2004; hardison & neimeyer, 2012). in other psychological approaches, these theories may be variously referred to as personality, attitudes, habits, reinforcement history, information coding system, psychodynamics, concepts, or philosophy (fransella et al., 2004). borrowing jerrard’s (1998) denotation, in this paper constructs are defined as a “basic dimension of appraisal” (p. 41). universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras218 richter, houde, & zimányi the constructs in kelly’s (1955) model are always bipolar. when elicited during an rgt interview, the two poles are designated the emergent pole and the implicit pole. the emergent pole refers to the original comparison or contrast given by the participant; the implicit pole is elicited by asking the participant to provide what they believe to be the semantic opposite of the emergent pole. because each construct is bipolar, it is possible for participants to use a numerical scale to evaluate each element. that is, each completed grid can be thought of as a “personal differential questionnaire” (tomico et al., 2009, p. 57) that participants can use to numerically rate elements in terms of constructs, allowing for a variety of statistical analyses to be conducted. the repertory grid in tefl research since its development in the 1950’s, the repertory grid has been adopted by a wide range of researchers with interests outside its original psychotherapeutic context (king & horrocks, 2010). indeed, the rgt has proven to be such a useful instrument for eliciting and analyzing verbal commentaries that the technique is often dissociated from its underlying theory. although scholars within the field of pcp warn against decoupling repertory grid interviews from kelly’s theories of personality (beail, 1985; denicolo & pope, 1997), researchers outside the area of pcp have found repertory grids to be a practical, stand-alone data collection technique: repertory grids have been employed in more than 2,000 books, book chapters, research articles, and academic work in a wide variety of fields (luque et al., 1999; neimeyer et al., 1990; saúl et al., 2012), with an average of 100 works utilizing the technique published each year (saúl et al., 2012). in the field of general education, there are numerous studies of teacher development and cognition based on repertory grid data. however, only a handful of investigations in the field of tefl have utilized the rgt. one of the first of these was a study carried out by bodycott (1997), who investigated conceptions of the “ideal teacher” among 12 preservice english language instructors in singapore. the author supplied the grid elements, all of which were based on social and professional identities such as “self,” “past self,” “ideal self,” “mother,” “father,” “school principal,” and “language teacher.” bodycott reported that the research participants’ opinions about “good” teaching emphasized the personal traits and values of language instructors rather than pedagogic knowledge. sendan and roberts (1998) used the rgt to investigate the complexities of change in student cognition. arguing that much of the teacher cognition literature defines thinking in terms of one-dimensional “lists” of variables, they instead approached student-teacher cognition as a dynamic developmental process. through a diachronic, statistical analysis of one student-teacher’s repertory grid data, the authors found that the participant’s beliefs about effective teaching were indeed dynamic, changing not only in terms of content but also in terms of structure. murray’s longitudinal investigation (2003, as cited in borg, 2006) focused on the development of language awareness among preservice teachers. over the course of a seven-month class in english as a second language (esl) pedagogy, participants were interviewed three times. murray provided samples of learner language, native-speaker language, and coursebook language and asked his research participants to discuss similarities and differences between them. murray’s data analysis was unconventional: although he used a repertory grid elicitation technique, actual grids were not constructed. instead, the researcher analyzed interview transcripts and located constructs within them. in subsequent interviews, he then tracked how these constructs changed and were supplanted by others. yaman (2008) relied on repertory grid interviews to follow a single english language teacher’s development over the course of a one-year, in-service training program. the author emphasized that the rgt had great potential as a tool for reflection, concluding that the technique 219profile: issues teach. prof. dev., vol. 24 no. 2, jul-dec, 2022. issn 1657-0790 (printed) 2256-5760 (online). bogotá, colombia. pages 215-229 the repertory grid interview: exploring qualitative and quantitative data on language... allowed her to “gain access to and monitor changes in the teacher’s personal theories with relatively less imposition of the researcher’s own construction of the issues than would have been possible with methods such as observations, questionnaires or checklists” (p. 38). kozikoglu (2017), in an rgt study of 36 prospective teachers in turkey, aimed to identify their cognitive constructs regarding ideal teacher qualifications. six participants were selected from the department of foreign language education. in all, 356 cognitive constructs were produced. the author concluded that, according to the study, “ideal teachers should have qualifications such as humaneness, joviality and personal values as well as professional knowledge (content knowledge and pedagogical skills)” (p. 72). more recently, eren (2020) investigated the intercultural views of three instructors from germany, syria, and iran regarding the concept of teacher autonomy. eren gathered data using repertory grid interviews along with traditional semi-structured interviews and classroom observations. findings suggested that the teachers understood “teacher autonomy” in similar ways, notwithstanding their national origins. the impact of cultural beliefs on language pedagogy the widely acknowledged idea that socio-cultural forces influence teachers’ pedagogical beliefs and professional practices is encapsulated in the term situated cognition (brown et al., 1989). this concept is based on the notion that knowledge is always developed within a given context. teaching and learning are never neutral acts: they are inseparable from their socio-cultural settings (brown et al., 1989; lave, 1988; lave & wenger, 1991). through classroom activities, teacher models, and peer influence, students are apprenticed into a particular culture of learning that reflects wider cultural assumptions (lave, 1988). teachers are likewise enculturated. the anthropologist conrad kottak (2004, as cited in read et al., 2009) defines enculturation as the process where the culture that is currently established teaches an individual the accepted norms and values of the culture in which the individual lives. the individual can become an accepted member and fulfill the needed functions and roles of the group. most importantly, the individual knows and establishes a context of boundaries and accepted behavior that dictates what is acceptable and not acceptable within the framework of that society. it teaches the individual their role within society as well as what is accepted behavior within that society and lifestyle. (p. 52) there is considerable empirical evidence to support these ideas. for instance, the oecd’s teaching and learning international survey (2009) compared perspectives on pedagogy in 16 oecd and seven partner countries. findings indicated that the influence of culture and pedagogical traditions on teachers’ beliefs and practices is “exceptionally high” (p. 96). schleicher (2018)—summarizing the oecd’s most recent 2018 survey of teaching and learning—reaffirmed the cultural dimensions of teaching, noting that “the meaning of teacher professionalism varies significantly across countries, and often reflects cultural and historical differences” (p. 29). language education, like all education, is a cognitively situated activity. whether overtly or covertly, a process of “cultural scripting” (stigler & hiebert, 1999) encourages both teacher and students to conform to the socio-cultural practices of their educational environment. how socio-cultural forces influence teacher and student perspectives on foreign language pedagogy has been a fertile area of study in tefl research (see, for instance, amiryousefi, 2015; widiati & cahyono, 2006; yoo, 2014). indeed, the large number of such studies supports atkinson’s (1999) assertion that “except for language, learning, and teaching, there is no more important concept in the field of [tesol] than culture” (p. 625). universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras220 richter, houde, & zimányi given the sheer volume of research focused on questions of culture, it is remarkable that there are relatively few studies in the field of tefl devoted to cross-cultural comparisons. the exception here is the research contrasting chinese and western beliefs and attitudes about efl pedagogy (anderson, 1993; burnaby & sun, 1989; clark-gareca & gui, 2019; degen & absalom, 1998; hong & pawan, 2015; rao, 2013; shi, 2009; simpson, 2008; stanley, 2013; zhang, 2016; zhou et al., 2011). other comparative studies, however, are relatively rare (aubrey, 2009; can et al., 2011; liu, 2004; pawlak, 2011; richter & lara-herrera, 2017; rubenstein, 2006; schulz, 2001). method this exploratory study is concerned with the tacit beliefs of foreign language teachers concerning cultural perceptions of good language teaching. it is offered as an example of the usefulness of the rgt, both in terms of the productiveness of elicitation and the utility of subsequent analysis. participants possible participants were identified through convenience sampling. nine second and foreign language teachers working at a university in central mexico ultimately agreed to take part in the study: three spanish language teachers, three french teachers, and three english teachers. a larger pool of participants was deemed unnecessary given that this article aims to illuminate the rgt as a methodological instrument rather than to delve deeply into matters of culture, per se. procedure the participants were interviewed individually. grid elements were chosen by the participants, who were asked to think of six of their past teachers: an excellent language teacher, an excellent content teacher in another field, an average language teacher, an average teacher in any subject, a poor language teacher, and a poor teacher in any subject. they were also asked to think of themselves at three moments during their teaching career: in the past, in the present, and in the future. through researcher-directed dyadic elicitation, the participants were subsequently asked to compare and contrast the elements they had chosen, thus generating a list of personal constructs. at the intersection of each element and construct, participants were asked to provide a numerical rating, representing an evaluation of each element in terms of its corresponding construct’s emergent and implicit poles. to analyze any group as a whole, it is necessary to homogenize individual responses. this is generally achieved by pooling all the participants’ constructs and categorizing them according to the meanings they express. there are essentially two ways of going about this. the first, referred to as “bootstrapping,” consists of analyzing the collected constructs systematically and identifying the most salient connections or themes. the second method requires that the researcher preselect a set of constructs, generally one encountered in the literature or one that is theoretically based (jankowicz, 2004). to overcome the highly idiosyncratic nature of the results and to create a standardized classification scheme, we employed the second option. constructs were placed into a number of categories suggested by dunkin (1995). dunkin’s taxonomy breaks teaching into eight distinct dimensions: teaching as structuring learning, as motivating learning, as encouraging activity and independence in learning, as establishing an atmosphere conducive to learning, as experience, as content knowledge, as pedagogic knowledge, and as personal/professional orientation. the resulting categorizations allowed for both interand intra-grid analyses of the constructs elicited from the english, spanish, and french groups. while sacrificing some detail in each of the individual grids, this system allowed for the identification of trends common to all of them (jankowicz, 2004). we analyzed the categories in terms of three dimensions: (a) dominance, (b) importance, and (c) semantic similarity. dominance refers to the degree 221profile: issues teach. prof. dev., vol. 24 no. 2, jul-dec, 2022. issn 1657-0790 (printed) 2256-5760 (online). bogotá, colombia. pages 215-229 the repertory grid interview: exploring qualitative and quantitative data on language... of inter-group agreement about the importance of a given construct category. if, for instance, constructs associated with “structured learning” were elicited more often from one group than another, one could plausibly conclude that structured learning is more important to the first group than to the second. in pcp, elicitation order is used to measure a construct’s importance to a given participant (tomico et al., 2009). an importance index was created by calculating the normalized order in which constructs were elicited (with constructs reported first being considered more important to the participant than those reported later). finally, semantic similarity can be computed using hierarchal cluster analysis, which in turn can be visually represented by a dendrogram of taxonomic relationships. such an analysis is useful because it provides a way to understand the extent to which given elements and constructs are seen as similar in meaning, both interand intra-personally. findings and discussion in all, the nine participants generated 177 constructs. the average number of constructs among the english teachers was 21; among the spanish teachers, the average was 26; and among the french teachers, the average was 11. in all, 1,770 pieces of data (i.e., all emergent and implicit constructs plus the participants’ ratings on the constructs) were elicited. dominance and importance measures table 1 displays the relative percentages (i.e., dominance) for each construct category as well as the elicitation order (i.e., importance) for the english, spanish, and french teachers. the elicitation order index was derived by calculating the mean of the order of all constructs within each construct category. based on the total number of constructs generated, the order of the constructs was normalized for each participant to a range of 0 to 1: a 0 value reflects the first construct that was elicited, and a 1 value reflects the last construct. a standard normalization formula was used: x normalized = (b–a) * [ (x–y) / (z–y) ] + a this can be reduced to normalized order = order rank – 1 / total constructs – 1 the standard deviations (which are critical for estimating the homogeneity of a category of constructs in the relative order) are included in parentheses after each rank. table 1. dominance and importance measures dominance (relative percentage %) importance (elicitation order) construct categories english spanish french english spanish french content knowledge 8 6 3 .20 (.14) .41 (.21) .80 (.00) encourages activity & independence 3 6 0 .80 (.00) .77 (.10) establishes atmosphere conducive to learning 31 24 18 .51 (.50) .63 (.40) .49 (.73) experience 1 0 3 .61 (.00) .50 (.00) motivates learning 8 12 9 .40 (.29) .44 (.51) .08 (.10) pedagogic knowledge 3 20 3 .23 (.27) .29 (.47) .64 (.00) personal / professional orientation 26 25 49 .57 (.42) .53 (.52) .62 (.23) structures learning 20 7 15 .50 (.32) .63 (.14) .64 (.14) note. the dominance of each category (measured by the relative percentage of total constructs) and the importance of each category (measured by the elicitation order) for the english, spanish, and french teachers. standard deviations are displayed in parentheses. universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras222 richter, houde, & zimányi the dominance analysis highlighted major alignments and disjunctures between the three groups. for instance, the relative percentage measures demonstrate that all of the teachers regarded the personal and professional aspects of their work as significant. constructs in this category, which included “willingness to grow,” “ability to adapt,” and “dedication,” demonstrated a commitment towards instructional excellence and professional development. the french teachers emphasized this aspect of their work: almost 50% of their constructs had to do with their personal and professional orientation. overall, all three groups shared beliefs about the importance of establishing a classroom atmosphere conducive to learning. the english and french teachers were alike in that both groups generated a significant number of constructs having to do with structuring learning, such as careful planning, organization, and assessment (20% and 15% of total constructs, respectively). the spanish teachers placed a great deal of emphasis on the importance of pedagogic knowledge (20% of the total constructs generated by this group). these findings are enhanced by the nuance afforded by an analysis of the importance indices. while the english teachers offered the largest number of constructs related to establishing an atmosphere conducive to learning, according to the elicitation index, content and pedagogic knowledge may be more important to them (these constructs were ranked as 1 and 2, respectively). the agreement between the english teachers regarding their rankings, as reflected by the low standard deviation scores, adds credence to this claim. pedagogic knowledge was similarly important to the spanish teachers. interestingly, the relative percentage here is more in line with the salience of the construct. that is to say, the spanish teachers both created a high number of constructs associated with pedagogic knowledge and rated these constructs as the most important to their practice. finally, for the french group, although personal and professional orientation was the most “replete” category (comprised of 49 constructs), “motivating learning” was ranked as the most important construct. semantic similarity measures semantic similarity is a metric defined by how closely or remotely an individual perceives the distance between the meanings of two (or more) units of language, concepts, or instances (harispe et al., 2015). when a hierarchical cluster analysis of correlations is applied to the numerical data in a repertory grid, the more that constructs or elements are alike, the closer they approximate a score of 100, which would signify a perfect correlation. thus, in figure 1, the construct categories “establish an atmosphere conducive to learning” and “personal and professional orientation” are closely linked (a 95.7% match). this suggests that for the english teachers, an instructor who makes students feel secure, is approachable, and “nurturant” (dunkin, 1995, p. 24) and is probably also a teacher who tends to integrate their personal and professional identities (sabirova et al., 2016). for the english teachers, content knowledge and experience were also highly correlated (94.3% match). in terms of elements, the english teachers viewed being a language teacher in roughly the same terms as being any other type of teacher (94.4% match). figure 2 shows that the spanish teachers also believed there to be a strong connection between establishing an atmosphere conducive to learning and an instructor’s personal and professional orientation (94.4% match). in comparison to the english participants, the spanish group, however, viewed the pedagogic characteristics of language teachers as being relatively distinct from the characteristics of the non-language teachers they had identified as elements (85% match). 223profile: issues teach. prof. dev., vol. 24 no. 2, jul-dec, 2022. issn 1657-0790 (printed) 2256-5760 (online). bogotá, colombia. pages 215-229 the repertory grid interview: exploring qualitative and quantitative data on language... the french teachers viewed both the construct categories and the supplied elements as semantically independent units with relatively little overlap between them. as seen in figure 3, for this group, the concepts “establishing an atmosphere conducive to learning” and “personal and professional orientation” were also the most semantically similar. however, unlike the english and spanish groups, these concepts only matched at a relatively low 89.6%. for the french instructors, a “great teacher” and a “great second language teacher” only matched at approximately 75%, suggesting that for this group, language teachers possess several characteristics and beliefs that distinctly separate them from teachers in other fields. to understand these differences better, follow-up interviews would have to be conducted. figure 1. cluster analysis of english teachers’ construct categories and supplied elements figure 2. cluster analysis of spanish teachers’ construct categories and supplied elements encouranging activity & independence experience structuring learning personal / professional orientation establish atmosphere conductive to learning content knowlegde motivating learning pedagogic knowlegde an average teacher a poor sec. lang. teacher a poor teacher you as you used to be an average sec. lang. teacher a great sec. lang. teacher you as you are now you as you could be a great teacher 15 15 35 35 35 15 15 70 70 10 10 10 40 30 30 60 50 20 10 14 10 30 22 28 60 57 20 10 10 10 32 22 38 52 68 66 16 15 13 21 18 30 45 64 60 17 15 18 26 20 29 38 63 59 21 16 25 45 36 32 46 63 53 10 25 25 40 30 30 30 65 50 70 70 70 70 70 70 70 70 100 90 80 100 90 80 70 60 encouranging activity & independence experience structuring learning personal / professional orientation establish atmosphere conductive to learning content knowlegde motivating learning pedagogic knowlegde an average teacher a poor sec. lang. teacher a poor teacher you as you used to be an average sec. lang. teacher a great sec. lang. teacher you as you are now you as you could be a great teacher 13 16 15 26 35 30 40 51 53 10 15 16 25 30 30 35 50 45 10 14 12 15 24 33 39 45 50 10 ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? 11 12 16 26 38 50 53 52 10 12 17 12 20 36 47 52 57 10 12 12 12 17 40 46 54 58 10 12 10 11 14 35 45 49 50 70 70 70 70 70 70 70 70 100 90 100 90 80 70 60 universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras224 richter, houde, & zimányi conclusion the repertory grid is an interview technique that explores the structure and content of the implicit theories people rely upon to construe their experiences. as mentioned in the introduction, the technique merges the strengths of both qualitative and quantitative approaches in a way that mitigates a number of methodological difficulties associated with other qualitative, quantitative, and mixed-methods procedures. in this study, nine language teachers at a public university in central mexico were interviewed about their conceptions of “good” language pedagogy. the dominance and importance measures demonstrate that all the language teachers viewed the personal and professional aspects of their work as important. all three groups shared beliefs about the importance of establishing a classroom atmosphere conducive to learning. both the english and french teachers generated a significant number of constructs having to do with structuring learning. in addition, the spanish teachers placed a high emphasis on the importance of pedagogic knowledge. findings like this demonstrate the usefulness of the technique in uncovering tacit, pedagogical beliefs, a knowledge of which would, of course, be useful in second language teacher education, particularly in terms of opportunities for self-reflection and monitoring changes in pedagogical perspectives over time. as this research was premised on creating an example of how repertory grids function, the study must be considered exploratory and illustrative. and as with any such study, the results must be heavily caveated. in the present case, first, the concept of culture is infamously “messy” (fives & buehl, 2012; pajares, 1992) and thus would have to be carefully disambiguated were this research to advance beyond its current state. second, there are unresolved questions regarding sample size. the literature is notoriously unresolved as to requisite sample sizes in repertory grid investigations, with different researchers advocating sample sizes of between six and 25 to approximate the universe of meaning within a given population (dillon & mcknight, 1990; dunn, 1986; ginsberg, 1989; hassenzahl & trautmann, 2001; heckmann & burk, 2017; moynihan, 1996; tan & hunter, 2002). in any follow-on study, the question of proper sample size would have to be carefully addressed. lastly, were the research to be carried further, whether to rely on pre-formulated categories or to undertake figure 3. cluster analysis of french teachers’ construct categories and supplied elements encouranging activity & independence an average teacher a poor sec. lang. teacher a poor teacher you as you used to be an average sec. lang. teacher a great sec. lang. teacher you as you are now you as you could be a great teacher experience 10 10 30 30 40 70 50 50 10 10 32 20 45 42 35 53 60 32 16 30 26 25 32 35 49 50 53 10 18 20 20 24 32 46 54 44 10 10 20 20 40 40 70 60 60 23 13 30 13 46 33 40 33 53 20 30 30 50 30 20 20 40 70 70 70 70 70 70 70 70 70 100 90 80 70 100 90 80 70 60 ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? structuring learning personal / professional orientation establish atmosphere conductive to learning content knowlegde motivating learning pedagogic knowlegde 225profile: issues teach. prof. dev., vol. 24 no. 2, jul-dec, 2022. issn 1657-0790 (printed) 2256-5760 (online). bogotá, colombia. pages 215-229 the repertory grid interview: exploring qualitative and quantitative data on language... conceptual content analysis is a question that would need to be resolved. these methodological concerns, however, are largely tangential to the purpose of the current article, which offered a small-scale study to elucidate how rgt interviews are conducted and to present a few of the ways in which the resultant data can be analyzed. as should be apparent, the rgt’s usefulness is in no way limited to the topics explored in this article. it is a data elicitation and analysis approach suitable for any study focused on teacher, student, or shareholder beliefs. it allows for comparisons of beliefs between a variety of people on a wide range of topics. in sum, repertory grids are distinguished for their ease of use, their utility in precisely defining concepts without the need for post hoc analyses, their usefulness in uncovering connections between seemingly dissimilar concepts, 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(2011). intercultural competence and efl teaching in china. in l. jin & m. cortazzi (eds.), researching chinese learners: skills, perceptions and intercultural adaptations (pp. 138–166). palgrave macmillan. https://doi.org/10.1057/9780230299481_7 zuber-skerritt, o. (1987). a repertory grid study of staff and students’ personal constructs of educational research. higher education, 16(5), 603-623. https://doi.org/10.1007/ bf00128424 zuber-skerritt, o. (1988). eliciting personal constructs of research, teaching and/or professional development. in j. steele & j. g. hedberg (eds), designing for learning in industry and education: proceedings of edtech 88. https://bit.ly/38liljc https://doi.org/10.1057/9780230299481_7 https://doi.org/10.1007/bf00128424 https://doi.org/10.1007/bf00128424 https://bit.ly/38liljc the socio-emotional influence of past teachers on novice english teachers’ beliefs 215profile: issues teach. prof. dev., vol. 23 no. 2, jul-dec, 2021. issn 1657-0790 (printed) 2256-5760 (online). bogotá, colombia. pages 215-230 https://doi.org/10.15446/profile.v23n2.90809 the socio-emotional influence of past teachers on novice english teachers’ beliefs la influencia socioemocional de los docentes anteriores en las creencias de profesores noveles de inglés maritza rosas-maldonado1 macarena durán-castro universidad andres bello, santiago, chile annjeanette martin universidad de los andes, santiago, chile teachers’ past learning experiences, also referred to as “apprenticeship of observation,” can affect their beliefs and, in turn, their teaching practices. this study focused on the apprenticeships of observation of chilean novice english teachers and sought to identify the possible influence of their past english teachers on their teaching and learning views in an english as a foreign language context. the qualitative multiple case study design gathered the narratives of 18 teachers using an open-ended survey and in-depth interviews. results showed that the teachers’ apprenticeship of observation influenced their socio-emotional and affective views on teaching with a main concern on teacher-student relationships. from a sociocultural perspective, it was found that feelings associated with these experiences helped them understand their own practice. keywords: apprenticeship of observation, novice efl teachers, past english teachers, socio-emotional influence, teacher-student relationships las experiencias anteriores de aprendizaje de los y las docentes —“aprendizaje por observación”— pueden afectar sus creencias y su práctica. este estudio se enfocó en las experiencias vividas por docentes noveles de inglés en chile y en cómo sus propios docentes anteriores de inglés influyeron en su visión de la enseñanza y aprendizaje del idioma. en este estudio cualitativo de casos múltiples se recolectaron narraciones de 18 docentes mediante una encuesta abierta y entrevistas en profundidad. el análisis demostró que las experiencias vividas por los y las docentes influyeron en su visión socioemocional y afectiva de la enseñanza con foco en la relación docenteestudiante. desde una perspectiva sociocultural, se evidenció que los sentimientos asociados a estas experiencias facilitaron la comprensión de su propia práctica. palabras clave: aprendizaje por observación, docentes anteriores de inglés, influencia socioemocional, docentes noveles de inglés como lengua extranjera, relación docente-estudiante maritza rosas-maldonado  https://orcid.org/0000-0003-4652-3600 · email: maritza.rosas@unab.cl macarena durán-castro  https://orcid.org/0000-0002-4645-9381 · email: m.durncastro@uandresbello.edu annjeanette martin  https://orcid.org/0000-0003-3083-5319 · email: amartin@uandes.cl this paper presents results of the first phase of a three-year research project that was supported by the comisión nacional de investigación científica y tecnológica (conicyt: the ministry of education of chile) under the fondo nacional de desarrollo científico y tecnológico (fondecyt: grant number 11181138). how to cite this article (apa, 7th ed.): rosas-maldonado, m., durán-castro, m., & martin, a. (2021). the socio-emotional influence of past teachers on novice english teachers’ beliefs. profile: issues in teachers’ professional development, 23(2), 215–230. https://doi.org/10.15446/profile.v23n2.90809 this article was received on september 29, 2020 and accepted on march 25, 2021. this is an open access article distributed under the terms of the creative commons license attribution-noncommercial-noderivatives 4.0 international license. consultation is possible at https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/ https://doi.org/10.15446/profile.v23n2.90809 https://orcid.org/0000-0003-4652-3600 mailto:maritza.rosas@unab.cl https://orcid.org/0000-0002-4645-9381 mailto:m.durncastro@uandresbello.edu https://orcid.org/0000-0003-3083-5319 mailto:amartin@uandes.cl https://doi.org/10.15446/profile.v23n2.90809 https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/ universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras216 rosas-maldonado, durán-castro, & martin introduction teachers’ conceptions and beliefs regarding what teaching and learning entails is influenced by their own past learning experiences, which serve as an “induction to the methods, norms, and discourse of an education system” (moodie, 2016, p. 29). this influence has been found to affect the views and practices of english as a second or foreign language (esl/efl) teachers throughout their careers (barahona, 2014; s. borg, 2003; kuzhabekova & zhaparova, 2016). in fact, it has been found to be even more influential than teacher education programmes, which may explain the “weak effect” that esl/efl teacher education has been found to have on student teachers (m. borg, 2005; johnson, 1994; korthagen, 2010; zeichner & tabachnick, 1981). preservice teachers’ mental images and memories of how they learned as students have been shown to impact their own visions of teaching. they tend to replicate similar strategies and activities that proved effective or enjoyable as students, or to reject negative teaching models, seeking to provide better teaching than they received. past teachers’ personalities and affective characteristics are also influential, inspiring imitation or rejection of similar dispositions and behaviours in their own classrooms (miller & shifflet, 2016; moodie, 2016). exploration of esl/efl teachers’ prior language learning experiences (plle), or what has been referred to as an “apprenticeship of observation” (aoo; lortie, 1975), is crucial in understanding teacher beliefs, practices, and development, as it is one of the main reasons for teachers’ inability to modify their views or practices (kagan, 1992; pajares, 1992; vélez-rendón, 2002). studies of teacher cognition have found that what teachers think, know, and believe greatly impacts their decisions inside the classroom (barnard & burns, 2012; s. borg, 2003). however, the impact of plle on teachers’ beliefs and the pedagogical decisions they make in the classroom has not been thoroughly studied, particularly in efl settings (s. borg, 2006). additionally, because the focus has been mostly on preservice teachers, analysis of aoo has been restricted to early teacher education (kuzhabekova & zhaparova, 2016). this highlights the need for broader research, particularly regarding the teaching and learning beliefs of novice in-service teachers in an efl setting (s. borg, 2009; kubanyiova, 2014). in this context, this paper seeks to understand and analyse the phenomenon of aoo by focusing on the impact that past school and university teachers of english have on novice efl teachers’ views about teaching and learning. by doing so, we hope to help english teachers appreciate the importance of reflecting on their pre-existing knowledge of teaching and learning and how it may affect their own practice. additionally, by analysing novice teachers’ beliefs regarding teaching and learning, we seek to encourage efl teacher education programmes to rethink how future english teachers are learning to teach. literature review sociocultural perspective this study is framed within a sociocultural perspective of teacher learning and professional development. as with other research in these areas (golombek & johnson, 2019; johnson & golombek, 2016; kubanyiova, 2012), we adhere to a more inclusive view of teacher cognition, which highlights what teachers think, know, and believe (s. borg, 2003), but also encompasses the socio-emotional and affective aspects of teaching (johnson & golombek, 2011, 2016; kubanyiova, 2012; kubanyiova & feryok, 2015). this broader view of teachers’ mental lives recognises, as vygotsky (1981) argues, that cognition is socially mediated. in other words, higher or complex mental functions originate on the interpsychological plane as people participate in social activities. through these interactions, knowledge is gained and gradually “internalised” through a transformative process that occurs via “mediation” (golombek & johnson, 2019). 217profile: issues teach. prof. dev., vol. 23 no. 2, jul-dec, 2021. issn 1657-0790 (printed) 2256-5760 (online). bogotá, colombia. pages 215-230 the socio-emotional influence of past teachers on novice english teachers’ beliefs this process of mediation in teacher learning is “shaped in and through their experiences as learners, the cultural practices of teacher education, and the particulars of their teaching context, all embedded within larger sociocultural histories yet appropriated in individual ways” (johnson & golombek, 2016, p. 4). this implies that the pedagogical knowledge, acquired both before and during teacher preparation, is mediated by interactions with others (e.g., teacher educators, tools) in a social environment. thus, training teachers, according to a vygotskian perspective, involves engaging in “a three-way conversation that places teachers’ prior experiences as learners and often tacit beliefs about pedagogy into conversation with pedagogical content of the teacher education program and observations of teaching and learning in field placements” (warford, 2011, p. 252). this suggests that teachers need to negotiate their past experiences, their pedagogical beliefs, and the knowledge received from their language teaching education programme. given the interplay of aspects that form part of the learning to teach process under a vygotskian perspective, the phenomenon of aoo is relevant. apprenticeship of observation teacher cognition research from a sociocultural perspective has highlighted a gap in our understanding of teachers’ lives. cognition not only encompasses what teachers believe, think, and know, but also connects to their passions and their “emotional journeys,” and how these influence their teaching practices (kubanyiova, 2012, p. 23). cognition and emotion form a complex interplay within the process of learning to teach, during which teachers associate emotions with their own learning experiences, which help them to understand their teaching practice (johnson & worden, 2014). teachers’ emotional experiences are triggered by their past experiences and are unique to each individual (johnson & golombek, 2016). teachers’ past experiences influence their views on teaching and learning in that they become default options to which they can revert at crucial moments in their teaching practice (gray, 2019; lortie, 1975; tomlinson, 1999). lortie’s (1975) seminal work on what he referred to as “apprenticeship of observation” explained how past experiences provided future teachers with a “frontstage” panorama of what teaching involves. however, this view does not grant the “backstage” perspective, which includes teachers’ private intentions, decision-making process, and personal reflections before, during, and after their classroom performance. from a sociocultural perspective, parallels can be drawn between lortie’s concept of aoo in regard to teachers’ lived experiences as learners and vygostky’s term perezhivanie, which refers to “teachers’ emotional experiences grounded in their schooling histories” (johnson & golombek, 2016, p. 43). as these scholars explain “[teachers’] mediation is shaped by the complex interplay of cognition and emotion, originating in and reshaped through [teachers’] own perezhivanie” (johnson & golombek, 2016, p. 43). this may explain why the models or anti-models (moodie, 2016) imitated or rejected by teachers have been found to be related to emotionally relevant experiences. this was evidenced by miller and shifflet (2016), whose participants referred to past teachers—both friendly and unpleasant—as “ghost” teachers, given the persistence of these figures in their memories. in addition to positive models, they found that several participants had had unpleasant learner experiences and referred to some educators as “anti-models” due to the negative attitudes they displayed. the impact of such experiences affected these novice teachers throughout their careers, preventing them from using strategies implemented by these teachers. ruohotie-lyhty and kaikkonen (2009) also found evidence of the impact of past school teachers on novice language teachers. in their study, images of former teachers who were liked and admired were used as models of “good” teachers, while those they disliked universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras218 rosas-maldonado, durán-castro, & martin were considered “failure” models. they wanted to emulate positive characteristics, such as being competent, pleasant yet strict, approachable, fair, and assertive, and to reject interactions characterised by unfairness or miscommunication. gray (2019) also evidenced the emotional impact of teachers’ plle related to former teachers and their classroom management. the novice teachers gray worked with recalled negative learning experiences, former teachers who made them feel threatened, insecure, and even broken. however, despite these negative memories, eight of the ten participants used similar classroom management systems in their own practices, illustrating the relevance of their aoo on their approach. moodie (2016) also found negative plle, but these novice efl teachers decided not to replicate what they had experienced as learners. indeed, aoo as related to former teachers can be so influentialas to provide a source of positive or negative motivation in the kind of educator teachers aspire to become (furlong, 2013). chilean context english teaching in chile, as in other efl contexts, has undergone curricular changes in an attempt to improve proficiency outcomes. however, low levels of english learning achievement persist as evidenced by the results of standardised english tests (agencia de calidad de la educación, 2015). this may be due to the difficult working conditions of teachers, enduring low salaries, long working hours, and little time for other important teaching-related activities, such as class preparation (ávalos, 2013). english teachers experience even greater difficulties than educators in other disciplines as concerns motivating students (glas, 2013) to participate, interact, and use the language in the classroom (rojas et al., 2013). this makes it harder to comply with ministry requirements and meet learners’ diverse needs, driving many teachers to resort to traditional teaching practices (yilorm-barrientos & acosta-morales, 2016), more grammar than communication oriented (barahona, 2015; sato & oyanedel, 2019). furthermore, there are few instances of systematic reflection and self-inquiry provided by second language teaching education programmes in chile (martin, 2016). given the importance of guided reflection in changing preservice teacher belief systems, this absence may create a greater challenge for future teachers. novice english teachers are further hindered by the different types of educational contexts where they work. public schools are state funded and operated, private-subsidised schools are privately operated but receive both private and state funding, and private schools are privately funded and operated. these contexts differ in available teaching resources, number of students per classroom, number of hours of english instruction, salary and contractual conditions, and curricular requirements. the present study considering the interplay of aspects involved in learning to teach and the somewhat adverse teaching scenarios, the core goal of this study is to explore the influence of past school and university teachers of english on novice english teachers’ views on teaching and learning in an efl context. method design a qualitative multiple case study (stake, 2005) was conducted as part of a larger research project that aimed to explore the phenomenon of aoo and its influence on novice english teachers’ beliefs and practices regarding language teaching and learning. the main research project approach was to study a number of cases jointly to investigate teachers’ mental lives and the emotions and feelings (kubanyiova, 2012) they experienced as learners. the nature of this phenomenon was wellsuited for this research design allowing an in-depth 219profile: issues teach. prof. dev., vol. 23 no. 2, jul-dec, 2021. issn 1657-0790 (printed) 2256-5760 (online). bogotá, colombia. pages 215-230 the socio-emotional influence of past teachers on novice english teachers’ beliefs analysis of novice english teachers’ personal accounts from working in three different educational settings. participants using purposive sampling, the larger study involved 18 novice english teachers (nets henceforth; 14 women, 4 men) aged from 23 to 35 and working in different educational contexts in the santiago metropolitan region of chile. the study focused on novice teachers, expecting that memories of their plle would be fresher than those of more experienced teachers who have had more opportunities for reflection (kuzhabekova & zhaparova, 2016). teachers from the three types of schools (public, private-subsidised, and private) were included to provide a more complete view of the influence of past experiences on different teaching contexts. all participants graduated from education programmes within the region and were undertaking their first three years of teaching. the paper focuses on the participants’ in-depth accounts of how their own teachers influenced their current beliefs regarding teaching and learning english. pseudonyms have been used for all participants. data collection the data for the larger study were collected by means of an online questionnaire and subsequent faceto-face in-depth interviews. the questionnaire was sent to novice english teachers within the metropolitan region via social networks and emails directed at teaching programmes, which helped us reach ex-students now working as teachers. the software used for this initial instrument was surveygizmo. once teachers had completed the survey and agreed to participate in the follow-up stages (18 participants in total), they were contacted via email to schedule interviews covering their perceptions and narratives as expressed in the questionnaire. in-depth interviews were conducted individually within a month of questionnaire completion. the whole process took around six months. both data enquiry instruments complied with ethical requirements. the design of the instruments is detailed below. questionnaire for the larger project, an initial questionnaire was designed to include a closed-ended section that elicited teachers’ general beliefs on teaching and learning english (adapted from a. v. brown, 2009) and an open-ended section using narrative frames that gathered a brief account of teachers’ plle in school and university settings (taken from moodie, 2016). this survey format allowed collection of uniform data in terms of type and degree of specificity and provided an initial encounter with teaching and learning beliefs and plle upon which to base the interviews. for the purpose of this paper, only data from the open-ended section of the questionnaire involving teachers’ recollections of their plle were considered. narrative frames are similar to open-response questionnaires (j. d. brown, 2001) because they elicit detailed data and can guide the respondent towards particular events, such as their experiences as learners (barkhuizen, 2011). this instrument includes an important “temporal aspect that allows participants to relate past experiences with current or future actions” (moodie, 2016, p. 32). this instrument also makes it possible to connect diachronic experiences with participants’ perspectives (mackey & gass, 2005), and functions as a mediational tool by helping teachers to “make their tacit thoughts, beliefs, knowledge, fears, and hopes explicit” (johnson & golombek, 2011, p. 491). the instrument used seven frames adapted from moodie (2016) that participants completed online via the surveygizmo software platform. prompts (see appendix) were adapted to the chilean context and translated into spanish, the participants’ mother tongue, to favour rich, descriptive responses and piloted with novice english teachers and english teacher-researchers. a response of between 50 and 100 words was required for each prompt in order to provide sufficient data. universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras220 rosas-maldonado, durán-castro, & martin interviews in-depth interviews were conducted with the 18 teachers who had completed the questionnaire and expressed willingness to continue in the study. preliminary data from the questionnaire were used to design interviews unique to each teacher. this face-toface encounter made it possible to clarify information expressed in the questionnaire, enquire further into participants’ plle, and confirm preliminary connections between plle and beliefs regarding teaching and learning. each interview lasted one hour and was audio recorded and subsequently transcribed for analytical purposes. data analysis the data gathered from the interviews were examined using theme analysis. each researcher conducted a preliminary reading of the interviews to familiarise themselves with the content and apply coding to key ideas. the researchers then discussed their coding before classifying the information into broader themes (creswell & poth, 2018). a codebook was created from the data and uploaded into the online analytical application dedoose for final codification. for the purposes of this paper, the evidence presented here focused on one main theme, that of “teacherstudent relationships,” which emerged from working with holistic coding of entire excerpts (saldaña, 2016). this theme was one of the most frequently appearing, referenced in 66% (12 of the 18 nets) of the interviews conducted. within this theme, the most representative aspects that teachers mentioned are presented in the findings. in the following section, the ideas of this theme are illustrated and analysed in selected excerpts (authors’ own translations) from participant accounts. following qualitative procedures, the ideas presented in the findings were not quantified. it should be noted that, for the present paper, only four of the narrative frames (items 1–4, see appendix) used in the second section of the questionnaire were analysed in conjunction with the interviews as they specifically concerned recollections of english lessons and/or teachers from school and university. as mentioned, the interviews allowed teachers to add depth to those initial narratives. study trustworthiness was confirmed through data triangulation and peer examination (lincoln & guba, 1985), the former using the two data sources gathered and the latter through the discussion of key elements during analysis. findings the teachers’ reflections on their particular learning experiences, both positive and negative, that will be presented below in the findings have influenced their views on teaching and learning english. as will be shown, their reflections illustrate the impact of their plle on their appreciation and concern regarding the importance of building a positive teacher-student relationship. socio-emotional connection and support the participating teachers were primarily concerned with providing socio-emotional support to their students to help them connect to english. they expressed a desire to be close to their students, to support them emotionally and connect individually with them, and show interest and affection for them as human beings. some also expressed the intention of emphasising students’ individual strengths, thus motivating them to learn english. these ideas are reflected in the following excerpt from lorena, a teacher from a private-subsidised school: i try to be close to my students, just like my teachers at university were with me; i try to connect with them . . . i don’t befriend my students, but [i want] them to see me as somebody they can ask questions, somebody they can trust. you also have to be more affectionate with the younger ones than with the older students because . . . they look to you for emotional support. 221profile: issues teach. prof. dev., vol. 23 no. 2, jul-dec, 2021. issn 1657-0790 (printed) 2256-5760 (online). bogotá, colombia. pages 215-230 the socio-emotional influence of past teachers on novice english teachers’ beliefs lorena reflected on what is important for her as a teacher, referring to a past experience in which she felt close to her university teachers. her concern for closeness and emotional support is particularly important within her current school context. accounts provided by other teachers working in similarly vulnerable contexts suggest that these schools are particularly challenging because teachers often find themselves providing emotional support. lorena elaborated, recalling a teacher who helped her through personal difficulties while at university: i experienced all of this at university . . . i was going through a vocational crisis and my linguistics teacher took me aside because he realised i wasn’t ok and we had a long talk . . . in fact, i think it was because of him that i stayed at university, because i was about to walk out . . . it’s about more than teaching methodologies. lorena connected a particular experience as a university student to her main concern as a teacher today. she recalled a teacher whose approachability, assertiveness, and kindness helped her through a difficult time, and the emotions she felt then still seem to resonate today; she perceived her own teaching as an affective/emotional activity, which she considered just as relevant as classroom teaching strategies. this theme of connecting with students is further developed by karina, a teacher working in a private school, who recalled one teacher who established a connection by empathising with students. karina highlighted how her teacher got to know her students and their interests to motivate them to learn: i particularly remember this primary school teacher . . . she tried to involve herself in what you liked, to motivate you, because only three hours of english classes a week isn’t much time to connect with the students . . . one has to bear in mind that we’re working with human beings; it’s not like you’re working with computers that turn on, store information, and then leave. she was able to achieve that connection. i think she influenced me in that way. (interview) karina recalled and appreciated her teacher’s effort (still to this day) and the impact gave rise to the efforts she made to connect with her own students during their few hours of english instruction—three hours per week is typical in many chilean schools. for karina, connecting with her students is fundamental, as she views teaching from a socio-humanistic perspective, not merely as content delivery. our participants’ best memories were of empathetic and trustworthy teachers who were emotionally supportive and involved in their students’ interests, motivating them to learn. these learning experiences are now having a positive influence on how these novice teachers relate to their own students (miller & shifflet, 2016; moodie, 2016). in both cases above, the teachers related positive feelings that they had experienced as students—emotions that have helped them understand and think about their own teaching (johnson & golombek, 2016; johnson & worden, 2014) as a humanistic and active endeavour, not only a cognitive one. as such, it is connected to the feelings and actions they experienced as students: “as an emotional practice, teaching activates, colors, and expresses teachers’ own feelings, and the actions in which those feelings are embedded (i.e., teachers’ inner streams of experience)” (hargreaves, 1998, p. 838). similar to lorena and karina’s experiences, daniela, who works in a subsidised-inclusive type of school, commented on the importance of possessing the socioemotional competencies necessary to establish positive connections with students. she observed that these skills are overlooked or ignored in most teaching programmes; teacher-student closeness is often viewed negatively given the potential problems it could provoke. however, she disagreed with this view, considering emotional support to be of great importance to english teaching. i think that it has to do with the social skills of each person, because not all teachers have the ability to calm their students down and you don’t learn that at university. they teach you methodology, perhaps didactics, but they universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras222 rosas-maldonado, durán-castro, & martin don’t teach you how to connect with students. in fact, the more distant you are from the student, the better, because that way you’re less likely to have problems. i don’t share that [view] myself. . . . i think that emotions are a central factor in learning any content or language. daniela further elaborated on why she considered teachers’ socio-emotional skills as crucial to the learning process. if students are not emotionally well in the classroom, they are less likely to be interested and motivated to learn. this seems to be of particular concern in certain school contexts where it is more difficult to engage and motivate adolescents: if you’re not in a positive frame of mind or you don’t feel well, you’re not going to learn anything. if you have problems at home and you’re sad or frustrated or fed up, especially in high school . . . when you teach in high school, teenagers, even in 8th grade, they’re just not interested . . . and there are a lot of personal problems and negative emotions. daniela related this view to her time as a student, connecting positive feelings to her learning experiences in which former teachers provided emotional support, helping her overcome teenage motivational issues. also, many teachers helped me when i was a teenager and i didn’t want anything to do with anything or anybody, . . . i never said that to them, but through their motivation, care…“you can do it”…a hand on your shoulder…“it’s ok, if you’re not learning, it doesn’t matter, it’s not the end of the world.” it’s that calmness, and you say, “they’re right”; i think that as a teacher, you have to cross that human-to-human barrier. daniela still recalled her former teachers’ ability to calm their students, to care for their well-being at a particularly difficult age. these abilities and attitudes still resonate with her today and affect the way she perceives her own teaching. it is clear that this experience has mediated her own learning as a teacher and helped mould her understanding and approach to teaching, focusing more on her students’ well-being than on their academic success (gkonou & mercer, 2017). building positive horizontal relationships related to connection and support, the participating teachers expressed a keen interest in building horizontal relationships, unlike some of the traditional, hierarchical teacher-student relationships they had experienced. felipe, another teacher in a private-subsidised school, emphasised the importance of horizontal, non-directive teacher-student relationships: i believe in the social development of the human being; for me, that’s the aim, especially in the classroom . . . if we could make students understand that they are important people in a small society and soon in a big society, that would be ideal. i think that comes from my experience at university. sometimes you perform better when you feel that the teacher’s more human, not so distant; that also gives you more confidence to ask them questions, because they’re not seen as a distant authority with whom you can’t even talk. i think that’s why i’m like that. connected to his own experience as a university student and the associated positive emotions, felipe understood teaching as a social activity whose focus should be on equal partnerships between teacher and students. felipe believed that a classroom environment should be based on non-directive communication (joyce et al., 2004), which is crucial to students’ learning and performance in class and to their future insertion into society. felipe mentioned a particular teacher from the university whose way of relating to students made an impact on him. she is absolutely the best of all the teachers at my university. she really knows her stuff, but she’s also the most modest. you can tell that she values all of the students’ efforts and relates to them horizontally. you 223profile: issues teach. prof. dev., vol. 23 no. 2, jul-dec, 2021. issn 1657-0790 (printed) 2256-5760 (online). bogotá, colombia. pages 215-230 the socio-emotional influence of past teachers on novice english teachers’ beliefs don’t end up seeing her as some distant idol or anything like that, although that happens a lot at university. here, felipe recalled a past teacher who acknowledged and valued the efforts of all students, regardless of status, based on relationships of equality. the positive feelings experienced by felipe as a student were clearly reflected in the way he thinks about his teaching practice today: this helps me to appreciate that i am no better than my pupils, that, really, we are all learning. i’m only in my second year of teaching and i’m also learning with them, so i can’t feel superior if we’re all learning together. i feel that without those role models i might not see it like that. felipe’s views on equal relationships were shaped by his own learning experiences as he observed and experienced how a particular teacher related to her students (johnson, 2009). as in the previous cases, felipe’s positive emotions triggered by this lived learning experience clearly influenced his humanistic perspective on teaching, where all students are viewed as equals (furlong, 2013). anti-model a less pleasant plle was lived by amanda, a teacher in a private-subsidised school, who recalled one particular past teacher who served as an anti-model that she was determined not to follow. i remember that she presented this image of a teacher who just doesn’t want to teach. i don’t know whether that was the reason, or perhaps she was just totally exhausted . . . she did it without any enthusiasm. she would just sit behind her desk all day. the only time she would move would be to write on the board occasionally . . . to me that was precisely what not to do . . . i remember that her voice was, like, flat. that semester was terrible for me; i hated it. amanda began her reflection on this past teacher and her learning experience with a strong statement: “she presented this image of a teacher who just doesn’t want to teach.” although she tried to identify the reason for this teacher’s behaviour, she firmly believed that it was not an acceptable way of teaching. from further recollection, it is clear that this past teacher’s attitude generated a lack of interest and motivation on the part of her students, and her failure to build a teacher-student relationship was likely mirrored by them. [the teacher’s attitude] takes away all interest, all motivation, seeing the teacher just sitting there, giving her class, and leaving . . . there’s no time to get to know each other. i don’t even remember her asking me my name or having to introduce ourselves during the first lesson. i remember that at the end of the semester she told us that she was bad at remembering names, but there were only nine of us! (amanda) amanda described what she considered a negative attitude from her former teacher: “seeing the teacher just sitting there, giving her class, and leaving . . . there’s no time to get to know each other.” above, karina referred to an anti-model, which she rejected in her own teaching, and this perspective was evidently shared by amanda. amanda connected negative emotions to this past interaction, which helped her form an opposing view of teaching, with an affective/ emotional focus: to be honest, for me it’s everything; my relationship with my students is everything. this connection, it’s… the way i stand in front [of the class], my attitude in school, outside school. sometimes i’ll be waiting for the bus and talking with five 9th grade kids. amanda further reflected on how important she now thinks it is to build a teacher-student relationship. she added that such a connection requires a nurturing attitude in all aspects of school life, and that teachers should try to relate to students both in and beyond the classroom. universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras224 rosas-maldonado, durán-castro, & martin amanda’s recollections illustrate how negative learning experiences can motivate teachers to turn them into something positive for their own students (moodie, 2016). amanda was able to leave behind a “feared vision” of a teacher she did not aspire to imitate and turned it into a “desired vision” of the teacher she is today (furlong, 2013; miller & shifflet, 2016). this further confirms the impact of aoo in shaping teachers’ thinking regarding their own practice and how by enquiring further into their plle, teacher educators are more likely to understand and help future teachers reshape their attitudes. in amanda’s case, this mediational process occurred through personal reflection on an unpleasant learning experience and the associated negative emotions (johnson, 2009; johnson & golombek, 2016). discussion the novice teachers who participated in the study showed strong positive and negative emotions associated with experiences lived as students. in the cases analysed here, these experiences reflected the way past english teachers related to them as students. although a positive teacher-student relationship can be important in any content area, in these specific cases analysed and because they are efl teachers, they specifically recalled how those relationships impacted their feelings about learning english. these learning experiences helped shape participants’ views on teaching and prioritise affective/emotional aspects (i.e., positive teacher-student relationships) in their own practice. this suggests that interactions with former teachers have mediated their process of learning to teach in favour of their own professional development (johnson & golombek, 2016; johnson & worden, 2014). it is clear from their reflections that the teachers understand teaching as primarily an emotional activity in which the teacher-student relationship is central (hagenauer et al., 2015; he & cooper, 2011). they are concerned about connecting with their students through approachability and kindness, providing emotional support, and engaging in horizontal relationships. these elements are central to nurturing quality teacher-student relationships that prioritise student well-being over academic performance (gkonou & mercer, 2017). closer inspection of this shared concern reveals that it has indeed been shaped by interactions with former teachers (gray, 2019; miller & shifflet, 2016; moodie, 2016; ruohotie-lyhty & kaikkonen, 2009) whose attitudes and behaviours in the classroom inspired these novice teachers to conceive their own teaching practice as humanistic and affect-oriented (furlong, 2013). most of what they remember from these former teachers has to do with kindness, creating pleasant learning environments through emotional support and connection, and getting to know their students (miller & shifflet, 2016). as in miller and shifflet’s study, our novice teachers highlight the positive and negative feelings associated with these learning experiences. similar to the notion of “ghost teachers,” they remember specific teachers themselves more clearly than the teaching strategies used. in amanda’s case, the influence of these past teachers was so strong that the associated negative feelings led her to reject the teacher model she observed, transforming it into an anti-model, and a desire to be a different kind of teacher: one who has succeeded in shedding that “ghost” teacher (miller & shifflet, 2016) or “failure” model (ruohotie-lyhty & kaikkonen, 2009). this suggests that teacher models—informed by teachers’ aoo—can influence novice teachers’ views of their practice, especially those former teachers who are emotionally meaningful to them, either positively or negatively (davin et al., 2018; gray, 2019; miller & schifflet, 2016). in fact, prior teacher models can act as a “frame of reference” for novice teachers’ understanding of teaching and of themselves as teachers (flores & day, 2006, p. 224). it is worth considering that the impact of teachers’ aoo on their beliefs may be perceived more clearly in novice teachers who may have yet to analyse their 225profile: issues teach. prof. dev., vol. 23 no. 2, jul-dec, 2021. issn 1657-0790 (printed) 2256-5760 (online). bogotá, colombia. pages 215-230 the socio-emotional influence of past teachers on novice english teachers’ beliefs prior views of teaching and learning (s. borg, 2006; freeman, 2002; lortie, 1975). however, other factors may also influence these teachers’ perspectives. the position of a novice teacher is challenging given the unfamiliar reality and struggles they face (farrell, 2012; he & cooper, 2011; korthagen, 2010). the novice teachers analysed here show a desire to get to know their students and to understand their learning and emotional needs as a means to connect with them and engage them in the learning process (curry et al., 2016; he & cooper, 2011). finally, the school context also plays a role in the humanistic and affective teaching perspective of these novices. in two of the cases presented here, lorena and daniela make it clear that the teacher-student relationship was fundamental in their specific educational contexts and teaching levels. lorena felt that she must support her students emotionally based on the vulnerability of their context. for daniela, working with teenagers meant that she had to connect with them in order to motivate them to learn. they were each influenced by their specific teaching contexts (flores & day, 2006; he & cooper, 2011) and the additional challenges associated with teaching english in chile, particularly in terms of motivation when compared to other disciplines (glas, 2013). conclusion although each of the participating teachers experienced different past learning situations in different contexts, one resulting belief was shared by all of them: the importance of building and nurturing a positive teacher-student relationship. learning experiences involving certain past teachers appeared to be strong enough to impact their current views on teaching and their understanding of how to be a “good” teacher. these novice teachers’ humanistic and affective perspective on teaching is important, as it confirms that they view teaching not only as a cognitive activity, but also as an emotional process (hargreaves, 1998). this in turn confirms what the sociocultural perspective proposes in relation to the learning to teach process: “it is not merely what teachers saw and did as learners that influences their thinking about teaching and learning, it is the emotional experiences [perezhivanie] associated with their schooling histories that play a central role in understanding teaching activity” (johnson & worden, 2014, p. 128). the present study calls on efl teacher education programmes to rethink how future english teachers learn to teach. we believe that preservice teachers’ impressions of teaching—derived from their aoo— should be acknowledged, as these inform interpretations that they believe to be true (calderhead & robson, 1991). such impressions must be analysed reflectively and critically as part of the process of learning to teach within the second language teacher education agenda (wright, 2010). as johnson and golombek (2018) propose: establishing a sense of teachers’ perezhivanie can help teacher educators understand teachers’ past (e.g., apprenticeship of observation) and present (e.g., how they are experiencing the practices of teacher education) and engage in mediation that is responsive to teachers’ future (the teacher they envision being). (p. 6) in view of our participant teachers’ main concern, we consider that socio-emotional skills should be addressed in teacher education programmes. this recommendation is supported by studies within language learning psychology that have shown the relevance of students’ well-being (gkonou & mercer, 2017; mercer & gkonou, 2020) and teachers’ emotional well-being (hagenauer et al., 2015) above measurable learning outcomes. the main limitation of this study concerned the number of teachers that volunteered to participate, which may reflect an element of self-selection; the access to a wider network of possible participants, rather than relying on social media; and the fact that all universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras226 rosas-maldonado, durán-castro, & martin of the teachers were from the populated metropolitan region of the country. future studies would benefit from reaching a wider base of teachers and including novice teachers from other areas of the country. further research could be extended to explore the ways in which efl teacher education programmes guide future teachers in negotiating their current views on teaching relative to their plle as part of their identity formation process (johnson & golombek, 2016). references agencia de calidad de la educación. 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jul-dec, 2021. issn 1657-0790 (printed) 2256-5760 (online). bogotá, colombia. pages 215-230 the socio-emotional influence of past teachers on novice english teachers’ beliefs about the authors maritza rosas-maldonado, phd, is an english teacher and researcher at universidad andres bello, santiago, chile. her research interests are related to teaching and learning foreign/second languages and initial efl teacher education. macarena durán-castro is an efl teacher and research assistant. she is currently doing a tesol ma at universidad andres bello, santiago, chile. her research interests are related to english teaching and learning and initial efl teacher education. annjeanette martin, phd, is a language teacher, teacher educator, and researcher at universidad de los andes, santiago, chile. her current research interests are related to teaching and learning foreign/second languages and initial efl teacher education programs. universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras230 rosas-maldonado, durán-castro, & martin appendix: narrative frames 1. the english lessons that i remember most clearly are from [primary school/secondary school/university]. they were... 2. the english teachers that i remember most clearly are from [primary school/secondary school/university]. they were... 3. my best memories of english lessons at [primary school/secondary school/university] are... 4. my worst memories of english lessons at [primary school/secondary school/university] are… 5. the student experiences that have positively and negatively influenced the way i teach today are… (describe at least one positive and one negative, and explain why you think they have influenced your teaching method). 6. as a teacher, i think that nowadays, english lessons at [primary school/secondary school/university] are... 7. i have had some successful teaching experiences in the classroom. i think that the main reasons for this success are... fostering talk as performance in an efl class through the critical analysis of youtubers’ content 181profile: issues teach. prof. dev., vol. 22 no. 2, jul-dec, 2020. issn 1657-0790 (printed) 2256-5760 (online). bogotá, colombia. pages 181-195 https://doi.org/10.15446/profile.v22n2.82510 fostering talk as performance in an efl class through the critical analysis of youtubers’ content fomento del desempeño oral en público en una clase de inglés como lengua extranjera mediante el análisis crítico del contenido de youtubers yesika aristizábal-jiménez1 universidad de antioquia, el carmen de viboral, colombia this paper reports an action-research study aimed at exploring the benefits of the critical analysis of youtubers’ content through the empowerment spiral model to foster students’ talk as performance. twenty 11th-grade students shared alternative messages related to social issues based on content analysis and reflections. data were collected via preservice teachers’ journals, students’ written and multimedia artifacts, and voice recordings, whose analysis was done through processes of codification and categorization. the results showed that the implementation of critical media literacy helped students become aware of the content they were consuming and improve their english oral performance by means of specific oral activities. therefore, this study has a balance between english as a foreign language learning and the use of critical approaches. keywords: cooperative learning, critical media literacy, empowerment spiral model, english as a foreign language, project-based learning, talk as performance este documento muestra los resultados de una investigación-acción orientada a identificar las ventajas del análisis crítico del contenido de los youtubers —mediante el modelo “la espiral de empoderamiento”—, para mejorar el desempeño oral de los estudiantes de inglés. basándose en el análisis del contenido y la reflexión, veinte estudiantes de grado 11 crearon y compartieron mensajes alternativos sobre temas sociales. los datos se obtuvieron de diarios de la profesora practicante, trabajos escritos y de multimedia de los estudiantes, al igual que grabaciones de voz. el análisis se fundamentó en procesos de codificación y categorización. se encontró que la implementación de perspectivas críticas ayudó a los estudiantes a ser más conscientes del contenido que consumen y a mejorar su desempeño oral en público, mediante actividades orales específicas. así, este estudio muestra un balance entre el aprendizaje del inglés como lengua extranjera y el uso de perspectivas críticas. palabras clave: aprendizaje basado en proyectos, aprendizaje cooperativo, desempeño oral, espiral de empoderamiento, inglés como lengua extranjera, literacidad crítica de medios masivos de comunicación yesika aristizábal-jiménez  https://orcid.org/0000-0001-9113-0692 ∙ email: yesika.aristizabal@udea.edu.co how to cite this article (apa, 7th ed.): aristizábal-jiménez, y. (2020). fostering talk as performance in an efl class through the critical analysis of youtubers’ content. profile: issues in teachers’ professional development, 22(2), 181–195. https://doi.org/10.15446/profile.v22n2.82510 this article was received on september 27, 2019 and accepted on april 13, 2020. this is an open access article distributed under the terms of the creative commons license attribution-noncommercial-noderivatives 4.0 international license. consultation is possible at https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/ https://orcid.org/0000-0001-9113-0692 https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/ universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras182 aristizábal-jiménez introduction this action-research project had its foundation in my interest in creating meaningful learning experiences through critical perspectives of language learning during my practicum, leaving aside traditional ways of teaching. this interest came from my own experience as an english learner at school, which was not worthwhile because my teachers proposed the same activities all the time and addressed the same topics year after year and did not promote talk as performance (j. c. richards, 2008) as a way of sharing ideas in english. for this reason, i wanted to change that story and be a better teacher by helping students learn a foreign language from their interests and needs and express their insights orally. currently, it is common to observe english as a foreign language (efl) classrooms in colombia where grammatical structures and monotonous activities are the focus instead of the development of oral skills. that is the case of the 11th-grade english class where this study was carried out. the class took place in a colombian rural public institution in which the cooperating teacher’s lesson were based on the suggested curriculum and the basic learning rights for 11th grade framed in the colombia bilingüe policy.1 however, although this lesson planning provided oral activities and group projects to foster talk as performance, these kinds of activities were not evident during the time of my observation and students did not use the function of talk performance as the policy expected. different circumstances seemed to contribute to this as: (a) english instruction was grammar-based and focused mainly on syntax and morphology. (b) activities were monotonous and did not challenge students to use the language with a meaningful purpose. the students mainly wrote sentences or filled in the blanks to practice grammar structures, leaving aside oral and spontaneous written production. (c) students’ attitude towards the 1 the colombia bilingüe program has been structured to strengthen the english teaching and learning processes in elementary and secondary education in the colombian education system (ministerio de educación nacional, n.d.). proposed activities was not positive as they expressed displeasure and unhappiness. finally, (d) since the start of term the lessons revolved around the same topic: school problems; and this resulted boring for the students. the abovementioned circumstances are not connected to my beliefs as a teacher. i agree with current teaching methodologies that suggest the creation of meaningful learning experiences through the implementation of critical perspectives, which can offer options to help students go beyond grammar structures and isolated sentences and realize the real sense of using a language—in this case, english—as a way to read and write the world (freire, 1968/1970). following this idea, i was interested in giving students opportunities to explore new topics which could help them discover who they were and express themselves without reservations. thus, i conducted a focus group in which i asked students some questions to identify topics of interest. as a result, i found that students wanted to communicate their thoughts and to address up-to-date topics related to mass media, specifically youtubers’ content. thus, i realized that they were very comfortable with this material and it could be the foundation for developing critical media literacy (cml) and project-based learning (pbl) to foster oral production, mainly, talk as performance, as i discuss below. given the problems i described above, i proposed to address this situation by analyzing how the empowerment spiral model of cml (thoman & jolls, 2005) applied to youtubers’ content in the efl classroom can foster talk as performance in a group of 11th-grade students at a colombian rural school. for this aim, i designed, implemented, and evaluated one project that was carried out in groups under a structured process. this proposal had the following objectives: • to evaluate how lessons under the pbl approach with critical perspectives can foster oral production, • to analyze how the implementation of the empowerment spiral (thoman & jolls, 2005) applied to youtubers’ content impacts students’ 183profile: issues teach. prof. dev., vol. 22 no. 2, jul-dec, 2020. issn 1657-0790 (printed) 2256-5760 (online). bogotá, colombia. pages 181-195 fostering talk as performance in an efl class through the critical analysis of youtubers’ content development of language learning and talk as performance, and • to examine how critical perspectives in the language classroom helped students foster talk as performance. likewise, the most important aspects were the knowledge students gained and the socialization of the final outcome, in which the improvement of oral production based on a critical perspective was analyzed. theoretical framework this theoretical framework seeks to define pbl, cml, and oral production and cooperative learning, which were the core concepts that guided this action research. project-based learning pbl is an approach to language learning in which students learn autonomously by means of self-discovery and group work to create projects that reveal their insights and findings (bell, 2010). according to thomas (2000), those projects entail that students participate in actions related to generating ideas, making decisions, solving problems, and working autonomously to reach feasible outcomes. in a like manner, in pbl students seek solutions to problems or meet a challenge “by asking and refining questions, debating ideas, making predictions, designing plans and/or experiments, collecting and analyzing data, drawing conclusions, communicating their ideas and findings to others, asking new questions, and creating artifacts” (blumenfeld et al., 1991, p. 371). this fact suggests that pbl fosters the development of productive skills, especially oral production since students are working in groups and are using the target language for communicating among themselves during the process of developing projects (dooly & sadler, 2016) and the presentation of the final product. stoller (2002) states some features of pbl that illustrates its nature: first, pbl addresses topics of interest to students that also place them in contextualized problemsolving settings (blumenfeld et al., 1991); second, teachers offer support and guidance during the process; third, students work cooperatively and necessarily communicate in an oral way; fourth, there is an accurate integration of skills in the development of the project; fifth, there is a final product that should be shared, and finally; sixth, pbl encourages, empowers, and challenges students in their learning process. likewise, there are seven essential project design elements that help teachers to guide learning experiences through pbl: • challenging problem or question to be solved or answered • sustained inquiry processes that take time • authenticity, which is the connection with the real word • student voice and choice as main objectives • reflection about learnings • critique and revision • a public product to share with others solutions, answers, or performances (buck institute for education, 2015) in addition to these features and elements, brumfit (1984, as cited in beckett, 2002) states that pbl can also have a positive impact on the development of critical thinking and decision-making skills providing comprehensible output in l2 and fostering accuracy and fluency that emerge “from the communicative needs of students within the framework of the project” (p. 54). correspondingly, pbl has the potential to promote skills such as planning, monitoring, and evaluating (blumenfeld et al., 1991), which are in concordance with the four-step empowerment spiral model proposed by thoman and jolls (2005) for the implementation of the cml approach. this process includes awareness, analysis, reflection, and action. critical media literacy cml is an approach that “provides a framework to access, analyze, evaluate, and create messages in a universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras184 aristizábal-jiménez variety of forms—from print to video to the internet” (thoman & jolls, 2005, p. 21). likewise, cml stimulates skills to understand the role of media in society and helps students become able to interpret, in a critical way and through questions, all media forms and the messages disseminated through them (thoman & jolls, 2005). similarly, kellner and share (2005) define cml as the ability to interpret the meanings transmitted by media texts, to analyze their repercussion, and to produce alternative media from a critical and social point of view that also allows students to express their own voices. thus, teachers and students use their previous experiences to comprehend and make connections between their ideas and the messages presented in texts. in addition, they become meaning makers and text critics while they are doing a process of decoding the actual information and their purposes (luke & freebody, 1999 as cited in mclaughlin & devoogd, 2004). in the same way, thoman (1993, as cited in jolls & wilson, 2014, p. 73) suggests five core concepts of cml. 1. media messages are constructed. 2. media messages are constructed using a creative language with its own rules. 3. different people experience the same media message differently. 4. media are primarily businesses driven by a profit motive. 5. media have embedded values and points of view. these concepts can be analyzed and studied through a five key questions model, in which teachers provide opportunities for students to reflect on five important elements of media messages including the author, the format, the audience, the content, and the purpose (thoman & jolls, 2005, p. 22). finally, thoman and jolls (2005) also describe a four-step empowerment spiral model, based on the work of paulo freire. the model helps learners understand, analyze, and make informed choices concerning media texts. this empowerment spiral includes the phases of awareness, analysis, reflection, and action, that, in this action research, will be the steps for the development of the project. the awareness phase makes reference to certain critical moments in which students make connections and realize that there is something behind messages that were unknown to them. the analysis is the deconstruction of media texts by means of key questions related to the core concepts mentioned above to have a complete view of the media text. in the reflection step, learners identify the influence media texts have on them and start creating an alternative message, which is materialized in the action phase. in this regard, the main purpose of this final step is to encourage learners to define valuable proposals that allow individuals to “formulate constructive actions that will lead to personal changes in their own media choices and viewing habits as well as working to make changes locally, nationally, or globally” (thoman, 1993, as cited in jolls & wilson, 2014, p. 73). oral production oral production is one of the four language skills that learners develop while they are learning a language. in this action-research project, oral production is focused on the generation of verbal utterances that express meaning in a process of interaction while students are producing, receiving, and processing information (florez, 1999, as cited in bailey & nunan, 2005). to achieve this, bailey and nunan (2005) propose some principles for teaching oral production in which they suggest some actions for teachers in the classrooms. these actions include providing an interesting topic to encourage learners to talk about it; generating opportunities for students to cooperate with each other by using group work, fostering motivation and independence; and using the physical space and arrangements to promote speaking practice and interaction. oral production also involves different competences that should be considered for effective english-speaking performance. these are the grammatical competence, knowledge of the structure of the language; discourse 185profile: issues teach. prof. dev., vol. 22 no. 2, jul-dec, 2020. issn 1657-0790 (printed) 2256-5760 (online). bogotá, colombia. pages 181-195 fostering talk as performance in an efl class through the critical analysis of youtubers’ content competence, which is related to coherence and cohesion while speaking; sociolinguistic competence, the ability to use the language according to a context; and strategic competence, which is the ability needed by learners to make their speech comprehensible to others (bailey & nunan, 2005). these competences allow speakers to use and understand the language in a complete way, which contributes to their confidence while speaking (boonkit, 2010). furthermore, oral production emphasizes the importance of some functions of speaking, which, according to j. c. richards (2008), include talk as interaction, talk as transaction, and talk as performance. in this research, just talk as performance is going to be developed due to the nature of the action research. in that sense, talk as performance refers to a talk that informs an audience about a certain topic through classroom presentations, public announcements, and speeches, among others. additionally, this function has a specific organization and progression; gives importance to scheme, accuracy, and written language; and maintains the audience engaged (j. c. richards, 2008). furthermore, talk as performance is connected with pbl since this teaching strategy allows students to learn autonomously by means of self-discovery and group work to formulate projects that voice their findings and share them (bell, 2010, p. 39). cooperative learning cooperative learning is the process in which teachers encourage students to work together to complete learning objectives through projects or tasks by discussing topics, analyzing materials, and understanding and reflecting inquiry requirements (johnson & johnson, 1999). moreover, cooperative cases foster students’ positive interdependence since they “perceive that they can reach their learning goals if and only if the other students in the learning group also reach their goals” (johnson et al., 1994, p. 8). it also promotes the speaking skill through the inevitable face to face interaction and motivates individual accountability to contribute to the final outcome and own learnings (johnson et al., 1994). according to oxford (1997), cooperative learning promotes intrinsic motivation and an improvement of self-esteem since all students are active learners and contribute to the task achievement. finally, cooperative learning in efl classrooms “is considered likely to facilitate optimum development of a learner’s ability to communicate in the target language because it provides increased opportunities for comprehensible input, real-life experience of language use, and positive peer interaction” (ning, 2011, p. 62). method this research was done under the characteristics of qualitative inquiry. in words of denzin and lincoln (2013), it is a set of actions and interpretations that make the “world visible” by studying genuine contexts or phenomena with the help of participants and the insights they have (p. 6). concerning the type of research, this study followed the principles of action research whose goal is “to address a specific problem in a practice-based setting, such as a classroom, a workplace, a program, or an organization” (merriam & tisdell, 2015, p. 4). context the setting was a colombian rural school whose mission is to educate children and young people in self-improvement, responsibility, respect, and environmental care. in addition, this institution, as stated in its constitutional documents, promotes meaningful and experiential learning by providing students, under the holistic pedagogical approach, with the necessary knowledge to transform their lives and values. the participants were twenty 11th-graders whose age ranged from 16 to 19 years and who belonged to low and mid-income households. based on a questionnaire analysis, most of the students had positive feelings in relation to the english language. for 84% of the respondents (questionnaire 1, observation process), english was an universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras186 aristizábal-jiménez important tool to get to know different cultures and to have better academic and professional opportunities in the future. nevertheless, the questionnaire also revealed that students’ english background was limited. fifty-two percent of the students affirmed that they were able to give personal information in english and to describe routines and future plans and events. in relation to the four english skills, the one they mastered the most was writing followed by reading, listening, and speaking, in that order. finally, their main interests were listening to music, surfing the internet, and watching tv. another participant was the homeroom teacher (the teacher who traditionally gives the english lessons at the school). her functions were to support and evaluate the processes in the implementation of the action research made by the preservice teacher who, in this case, is the researcher as well. planning actions this action plan lasted 12 weeks which were divided into 12 lessons and it was based on pbl and the four-step empowerment spiral model suggested by thoman and jolls (2005). to address all the empowerment spiral phases, six main actions during the implementation of this research were proposed (see figure 1). the procedure of these six activities is further explained below in the development of actions section. figure 1. main actions in the implementation data collection methods during the process of the proposal definition, one focus group was created with the purpose of validating the problems i observed with the students. to achieve this aim, key questions were asked addressing topics such as the homeroom teacher’s methodologies, activities, and classroom atmosphere. additionally i designed a diagnosis activity to identify the students’ existing abilities regarding talk as performance critical media literacy and cooperative learning. in this activity, the participants created groups of four, watched a youtuber’s video of their choice and paid attention to its structure (welcome, development of ideas, and closure). afterwards, each group created their own short video. what i could observe is that the participants had trouble communicating in english (lack of coherence, unclear ideas, mispronunciation) which made their messages difficult to understand. other methods used were preservice teacher’s journals, students’ artifacts, voice recordings, and a semistructured interview. journals were registered after each lesson by including students’ reactions and performances and some personal reflections that helped me clarify aspects at the moment of data analysis. students’ artifacts such as the graphic organizer, the comic, and the final video evidenced students’ work, level of language, improvements, and willingness to learn. they were analyzed with rubrics, which allowed me to reach general conclusions based on students’ performance. five-minute voice recordings of oral activities were transcribed by using selective transcription considering the most relevant information for this study (k. richards, 2003). the analysis of these recordings showed students’ abilities and improvements to perform orally. finally, a semistructured interview was done with my cooperating teacher at the end of the process, whose protocol included the title of the action research, the research question, the purpose of the interview, and the questions. this interview allowed me to learn the cooperating teacher’s opinion concerning the actions 1. awareness activities: graphic organizers oral presentations and re�ections 2. analysis activities: key questions 2. preparing language 1. applying the �ve demands 1. comic 2. comic presentations 6. post-production: video editing presentation of the video dissemination of the video development of media and digital media skills 5. production process: filming process 4. pre-production process 3. re�ection activities: 187profile: issues teach. prof. dev., vol. 22 no. 2, jul-dec, 2020. issn 1657-0790 (printed) 2256-5760 (online). bogotá, colombia. pages 181-195 fostering talk as performance in an efl class through the critical analysis of youtubers’ content i implemented and improvements she identified in students’ talk as performance and some other aspects of the language. development of actions following the actions mentioned above, the empowerment spiral model in cml and the pbl, principles of language learning by means of self-discovery, and group work to reveal students’ insights and findings (bell, 2010), i designed my preservice teaching agenda and lesson plans bearing in mind the cyclic process of awareness, analysis, reflection, and action to have a final outcome to share with the school community and to evidence improvements in students’ oral performance. during the first week of implementation, i carried out a diagnosis activity as explained above. i made students aware of the structure of a youtuber’s video including an introduction (a greeting, information about the creators of the video, and a general idea about them), a development (instructions or explanations about a topic of interest), and a conclusion (to say goodbye to your followers and include some conclusions). after that, i proposed a grammar review and exercises we developed through a game called “jeopardy.” this game was aimed at remembering and practicing key grammar structures such as the simple present, the present continuous, the simple past and the use of “will” and “be going to”; all this, to facilitate processes during the development of the project in terms of accuracy. in this game, learners had to choose a grammar category (the ones mentioned above) and do the corresponding exercise; if it was good, students won points; if it was not, other students had the opportunity to do the exercise. at the end, the students had clarity about the grammar structures we practiced and were also prepared to use them in the development of future activities related to the empowerment spiral phases. the first phase of the empowerment spiral model i addressed was the awareness stage, which was also the first step of the project. during the following two weeks, i proposed different awareness activities that had as a purpose to “provide the ‘ah-ha’ moments that unlock a spiral of critical inquiry and exploration that is the foundation of media literacy pedagogy” (thoman & jolls, 2005, p. 31). to begin with, i suggested students work in a cooperative way to achieve common learning objectives through a project about youtubers’ content. hence, students formed groups of four and, as a first activity, chose one youtube video. in order to accomplish oral and cml objectives, the videos were chosen based on the following conditions: (a) the video had to be in english and (b) the video belonged to a well-known youtuber. then, students created graphic organizers to identify information such as author, the main idea of the media text (youtuber’s video), purpose, explicit messages, hidden messages, and the audience. to do this, students, in their groups, watched the videos and identified the aspects mentioned before discussing and agreeing on specific ideas. then, students presented their graphic organizer in a poster session, which was the oral activity to share their findings in this phase of the spiral. for this activity, in one of the lessons i provided some guidance related to the dynamics of a poster session, the material needed to perform it, and the content of the poster through examples. regarding the analysis phase and the second step of the project, students deconstructed the media text they chose (some of the media texts were related to make-up tips, challenges, and sports). to do that, they worked in different corners of the classroom answering key questions related to the five core concepts of cml in group discussions that allowed students to use the target language and to “figure out how the construction of any media product influences and contributes to the meaning they make of it” (thoman & jolls, 2005, p. 31). as a result, students got important information related to the author, the content, the format, and other concepts of cml that was the basis for the next stage in the spiral model. universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras188 aristizábal-jiménez during the reflection phase of the spiral—the third step of the project—students revealed their personal experiences concerning the media texts guided by the following questions: “what are the positive or negative effects that the video and the youtuber might have on ourselves or others? how has the message from the video influenced my decisions? how do i and others feel when watching the video?” the students then designed a comic strip with the use of a template and started to create their alternative messages having as a point of departure their personal experiences and interpretations of the original video. after that, students presented their comic strip to their classmates including information such as the name of the comic, the characters, the story, and personal reflections. finally, in the action phase, students had to do four exercises, which were also the final steps of the project. the first one was to write the script of their own video following a specific format that i provided and explained, in which students used the information from the previous three phases of the spiral to contextualize the audience, to share the analysis of the original video, and to create an alternative message for the school community. here, my role was to support students in terms of language demands and clarifications about the format. the second activity consisted of the production of their own videos with all that this implied: putting the script into action with creativity and imagination, the use of camera angles, the number of scenes needed to clearly communicate the content and showing their talk as performance. the third activity was the edition process of the video and finally, in the fourth and final activity, students shared their alternative messages (that is, their fully developed videos) at the school, finishing their projects and leaving a legacy of critical analysis and reflection of youtubers’ content. data analysis to analyze the data, i followed the codification and categorization steps suggested by saldaña (2015). the codification step consisted of organizing the data by using labels according to the needs of the study, which allowed me to identify the salient categories. these categories were defined based on the similarities among codes or the characteristics they shared (saldaña, 2015). moreover, i used an excel file to help me organize the data and filter the most relevant information. at the end of this process, findings and conclusions related to the improvement of talk as performance emerged. findings and interpretations in accordance with the empowerment spiral model, the findings of this action research are organized according to the categories and subcategories i identified (see figure 2). figure 2. categories and subcategories found based on the empowerment spiral model findings and interpretations sharing hidden messages, main ideas, and purposes in youtube content impact of youtubers’ content on students’ realities socializing re�ections about youtube content students’ production of media to express well-structured alternative messages sharing alternative messages through videos gathering and writing information about the context, analysis, re�ection, and production of alternative messages of a youtube video re�ecting on feelings and negative and positive impacts youtube can have on people uncovering hidden messages, main ideas, and purposes in youtube content awareness of social issues in youtubers’ content and improvement of students’ language skills analysis of youtubers’ content to construct ideas 189profile: issues teach. prof. dev., vol. 22 no. 2, jul-dec, 2020. issn 1657-0790 (printed) 2256-5760 (online). bogotá, colombia. pages 181-195 fostering talk as performance in an efl class through the critical analysis of youtubers’ content awareness of social issues in youtubers’ content and improvement of students’ language skills collected data in the awareness phase of the empowerment spiral evidenced how students became aware of social issues within youtubers’ content while improving language skills. this was possible by means of discussions and a poster presentation. further explanations related to these activities are provided below. uncovering hidden messages, main ideas, and purposes in youtube content. in the diagnosis stage, some problems regarding syntax and grammar structures were evident. students used grammar structures but with many mistakes related to word order that made messages difficult to understand: “we advance the right foot and bring the right hand to the chest, the raise the left foot and bring both hands towards the chest and after this, we return” [sic] (participant 1, diagnosis activity, lesson 2). in contrast, in the written awareness activity, which was discussing the purpose, main idea and hidden messages, students used grammar structures with occasional mistakes that made the message easy to understand. this may have occurred thanks to the grammar practice done at the beginning of the process and group efforts to make the message comprehensible in their graphic organizers which were part of the awareness phase of the empowerment spiral model. the following fragments are clear examples of this improvement: main idea: she tells facts about her life that may be another people want to know. shared ideas beyond messages: motivate people to talk about their lives in public. (participant 2’s graphic organizer, lesson 3) main idea: ninja made 27 kills with his teammates in a game. shared ideas beyond messages: addiction to video games and obesity. (participant 3’s graphic organizer, lesson 3) these pieces of evidence show how the process of completing a graphic organizer format addressing familiar material (youtube videos) helped students improve syntax while they were finding information by comparison with the diagnosis activity results. the information was related to youtube videos’ main ideas, purposes, audience, open and hidden messages related to social issues. thus, as thoman and jolls (2005) mention, through projects framed into the cml it is possible for students to develop academic literacies and increase “the ability and proficiency to express and disseminate their thoughts and ideas” (p 40). sharing hidden messages, main ideas, and purposes in youtube content. in regard to talk as performance, the analysis of the diagnosis activity showed students had important difficulties at the beginning of the process. these difficulties were related to expressing complete ideas, using the characteristics of talk as performance, and pronouncing in an acceptable way. concerning the expression of complete ideas, the majority of them needed to be better structured as evident in the following excerpt: “this challenge [referring to a challenge the student had observed in a youtuber’s video] consisting [sic] of filling a condom with water and throw the head of a friend” [sic] (participant 4, diagnosis activity, lesson 2). regarding talk as performance, the students’ videos in the diagnosis activity did not have good audio and there was a lot of background noise. besides, in some cases, students were not in front of the camera and their talk as performance was not evident. similarly, the pronunciation in all the videos was poor because students read the words with a spanish pronunciation, which made messages difficult to understand. conversely, during the poster session, students showed some positive changes while presenting their discoveries related to youtube videos’ main ideas, purposes, audience, messages, and hidden messages. those positive changes were evident in the poster session analysis, in which the majority of ideas were complete, well-structured, and comprehensible during presentations. moreover, the most important aspects of universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras190 aristizábal-jiménez students’ interventions were acceptably well pronounced and students’ talk as performance improved considerably. the following excerpts illustrate the aspects mentioned above: it is clear the students’ interest to do a good presentation with clear ideas and visual aids to engage an audience, which is part of the function of speaking i am addressing in this action research: talk as performance. (preservice teacher’s journal 3) the poster session was an activity or is a very significant activity, which helped students to improve their oral production, in this case in english. besides, it also helped students with their expression.”2 (homeroom teacher’s interview) consequently, presenting discoveries about youtubers’ content through a poster session appeared as a tool to encourage students to share complete ideas and to use the function of talk as performance based on their interests which made them realize that they are able to speak and express ideas in english. additionally, as dooly and sadler (2016) suggest, pbl promotes the development of oral production since students are working in groups and sharing ideas in english during the development of projects and in the presentation of outcomes. analysis of youtubers’ content to construct ideas data revealed how students improved their vocabulary and syntax through the analysis of youtubers’ content by answering key questions about cml core concepts in the analysis phase. considering the diagnosis activity as baseline data, it is clear that students improved these grammatical aspects (vocabulary and syntax) leaving aside poor results and confusing ideas. this was possible thanks to a specific activity in which students were rotating in different corners or spaces 2 all of the excerpts from the homeroom teacher’s interview were translated from spanish for publication purposes. in the classroom by answering questions related to the author, format, audience, content, and purpose of the youtube video they had chosen. likewise, to do this activity, students used dictionaries and were allowed to ask about unknown words and ways to write specific ideas. the following excerpts illustrate these statements: students were rotating for all the corners in the classroom and they stayed in each one for 14 minutes. besides, students were asking questions in relation to vocabulary and grammar structures that allow them to use new words and better-structured sentences. (preservice teacher’s journal 4) question 1: what do i think and feel about this video? answer: we think that the video is very personal to be publicated.” [sic] (students’ artifact 3, lesson 5) question 2: “what lifestyles, values, and points of view are represented in or omitted from this message?” (thoman & jolls, 2005, p. 26) answer: the values represented in the video are respect, intelligence, responsibility and skill, and the old people are omitted in the video. [sic] (participant 6, analysis activity, lesson 5) as shown above, the analysis of youtube videos— bearing in mind the five key concepts of cml—was an opportunity for students to get new vocabulary and structure sentences in a correct way. this allowed students to improve their grammatical competence which, as mentioned by bailey and nunan (2005), is very important as it is part of both written and oral production. impact of youtubers’ content on students’ realities the reflection phase in the empowerment spiral also contributed to the positive results. the analysis of data showed how reflection activities allowed students not only to become aware of the impact youtubers’ content had on them but also of their language skills improvements. 191profile: issues teach. prof. dev., vol. 22 no. 2, jul-dec, 2020. issn 1657-0790 (printed) 2256-5760 (online). bogotá, colombia. pages 181-195 fostering talk as performance in an efl class through the critical analysis of youtubers’ content reflecting on feelings and negative and positive impacts youtube can have on people. another activity that facilitated the use of new vocabulary was the creation in groups of a comic strip. in the purpose of this comic strip was to promote students’ reflection on the impact youtubers’ content and hidden messages had on them and their realities. in that sense, the activity demanded the use of new and appropriate vocabulary that was in acordance with students’ ideas and reflections. in figure 3, it is possible to observe the use of more english words while creating dialogues in comic strips. figure 3, with the use of words such as influence, accept, brand, products, advertise, and self-esteem, illustrates students’ interest to communicate their thoughts in english. the image also supports the ideas of brumfit (1984, as cited in beckett, 2002) who stated that project work, in this case the third step of the project in which students created alternative messages, provides students with opportunities for comprehensible output fostering the use of precise words that arise “from the communicative needs of students within the framework of the project” (p. 54). in a like manner, it is also evident that the cooperative work helped students complete learning objectives; in this case they gained new vocabulary by reflecting on inquiry requirements (johnson & johnson, 1999). socializing reflections about youtube content. presenting the comic strip with their classmates as audience fostered students’ use of the function of talk as performance. regarding this point, data revealed that 80% of the students were able to present their comics talking about the title of the comic, its characters, and the alternative messages they proposed without significant problems. additionally, the stories and drawings were very creative and they transmitted students’ ideas in a varied way. in sum, their presentations were opportunities to perform orally and share their creations. as evidence of these statements, i present the following excerpt taken from a voice recording: hello, the characters of the comic are the son and the mother boy: oh nooo!!, i am killed. mother: what’s wrong? boy: i am angry. mother: keep calm, you see what video games do. boy: yes. i’ m sorry for getting mad only for one play. mother: ok. boy: the best that i will do is do homework; i will control more the video games. [sic] (voice recording 2) to achieve this, it was relevant to follow one of the principles for teaching oral production proposed by bailey and nunan (2005), which suggests providing an interesting topic to encourage learners to talk about; in this case, students’ reflections on the impact youtubers’ content had on them and their realities. figure 3. participant 7’s artifact: comic strip, lesson 7 universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras192 aristizábal-jiménez students’ production of media to express wellstructured alternative messages the final steps of the project, while students developed the action phase of the empowerment spiral, also provided some results. data showed that the production of videos encouraged students to organize different ideas in a complete text as a guide to perform orally. gathering and writing information about the context, analysis, reflection, and production of alternative messages of a youtube video. students found writing a script for the video, after i had given participants some instructions, was favorable for them in order to organize different ideas in a complete text. it means that students were involved in a process in which they had to collect all the information from the previous phases of the empowerment spiral for the final outcome of the project. that script became the foundation for oral performance in the video, as shown in the following excerpt: the reason to created the video, is to show the love they feel through this small details that they gave at christmas. what we liked was, teach many values, give messages of motivation and some of the gifts were very useful because they were necessary for them. something that we didn’t like is that this kind of videos can influence people to expensive obsesions and the things of brand. some hidden messages: of give unnecessary things. [sic] (participant 8’s script, lesson 9) as is evident, students were able to write coherent ideas in a complete text. this may also have been due to the fact that they worked cooperatively and took advantage of some clarifications i provided (related to word order, use of appropriate words, new vocabulary) in order for them to improve their pieces of writings. these characteristics are connected to some of the ones mentioned by stoller (2002), in which the main features are that students work cooperatively, there is an accurate integration of skills in the development of the project, and teachers offer support and guidance during the process until the presentation of the final product. in addition, as oxford (1997) mentions, the cooperative work allowed students to become active learners to contribute to the task achievement, as was evident in the scripts. sharing alternative messages through videos. creating videos and sharing them were activities that evidenced students’ talk as performance. hence, students made great efforts to introduce the original content, contextualizing the audience, expressing thoughts and feelings, and sharing alternative messages based on updated and interesting topics including bullying, selfesteem, and self-improvement. the following excerpt shows students’ performance and the final outcome of their project: the messages it shares are inspiration, new goals, fellowship, teamwork, dedication. the purpose of the video is create a trend, increase followers, increase visits, motivate players, show his playing skills. moreover, show new records. however, he also has negative messages the obesity, addiction to video games, violence, and weapons. [sic] (participant 9’s video, lesson 11) similarly, and thanks to this project, it is noticeable that pbl motivated students to identify hidden messages and propose alternative ones. this was possible by asking and answering questions, “debating ideas, designing plans, collecting and analyzing data, drawing conclusions, communicating their ideas and findings to others, and creating artifacts” (blumenfeld et al., 1991, p. 371), which, in this implementation, were videos as final outcomes. those videos also became the instruments to show students’ talk as performance, specifically one of its characteristics, that, in words of j. c. richards (2008), allow people to inform an audience about a certain topic through classroom presentations, public announcements, and speeches, among others. 193profile: issues teach. prof. dev., vol. 22 no. 2, jul-dec, 2020. issn 1657-0790 (printed) 2256-5760 (online). bogotá, colombia. pages 181-195 fostering talk as performance in an efl class through the critical analysis of youtubers’ content conclusions and implications this study had as its purpose to explore how the implementation of the empowerment spiral model (thoman & jolls, 2005) applied in youtubers’ content could foster talk as performance in a group of 11th-grade students in the efl classroom. after the data analysis, i can conclude that the activities based on the empowerment spiral model and the development of a project helped students improve their use of some mechanical aspects of the language and their oral skills through the critical analysis of very familiar material. the mechanical aspects of the language were improved thanks to cooperative work and the different written activities i proposed during the empowerment spiral cycle. throughout the process, improvements related to vocabulary were evident, as well as the expression of complete ideas and the mastery of grammar structure and meaning, which facilitated not only the critical analysis but also students’ talk as performance at the end of the project (thoman & jolls, 2005). in relation to students’ talk as performance, the proposed oral activities fostered students’ oral skills when they faced an audience. in that sense, students managed to talk about an interesting topic with confidence, used formats to share their messages—such as posters, powerpoint presentations, and videos—and had a specific audience in mind (j. c. richards, 2008). furthermore, this study showed that learners can face challenging activities. in my case, i could see that through my proposed activities, students were able to state nonpredetermined answers to questions they were not used to reflecting about and develop important analyses related to social issues in media. this was also one expected result that guided my actions and proposed activities during my practicum. additionally, the implementation of this action research entails certain pedagogical implications for future practices. to begin with, it is necessary that teachers consider foreign language teaching and learning processes as opportunities to address media and the hidden messages behind that media while students develop language skills. another implication is that teachers should develop a critical view of the content they teach in order to permeate lesson planning and the activities used in class to guide students in the process of analysis of media texts. it is also important to address updated and interesting topics for students in order to encourage them to use the language while doing critical activities. in that way, teachers can find a balance between language learning and the use of critical approaches. furthermore, to foster oral production, it is necessary to give importance to writing processes because texts are the foundations for students to speak and share ideas. in that sense, students may feel confident and could take more risks thanks to the support that their texts offer. similarly, as principles in teaching practices, it is important to take into account students’ interests in order to engage them in their own learning process. in that sense, students may be more willing to develop activities and actively participate in class discussions while they are improving their language skills. moreover, cooperative work allows students to participate during all the process and reach the learning goals with the support of their peers (johnson et al., 1994). this is important since students gain motivation and feel part of the project. likewise, providing clear instructions, presenting appropriate examples, and having a final outcome framed into a project help students throughout the process, promote autonomous work, and facilitate the teacher’s role. another key point is that this project could be the starting point for future actions that may strengthen current results. thus, future actions could be the use of a different media text in a different efl context and with different participants. for example, the critical analysis of advertisement of toys for kids to evidence their reflections and language improvements. moreover, it could be possible to register possible changes in other language skills such as writing, reading, and listening. hence, further research may include not only the analysis universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras194 aristizábal-jiménez of improvement regarding language skills but also a critical stance towards and production of media based on cml core concepts. finally, there was a limitation in the study that should be considered in future research: time. since the study was developed over four months, it was not possible to have an in-depth view of the improvements of each participant. that means that data were analyzed in a general way and results showed general ideas regarding students’ critical analysis and talk as performance. references bailey, k., & nunan, d. (2005). practical english language teaching: speaking. mcgraw-hill. beckett, g. h. (2002). teacher and student evaluations of project-based instruction. tesl canada journal, 19(2), 52–66. https://doi.org/10.18806/tesl.v19i2.929 bell, s. (2010). project-based learning for the 21st century: skills for the future. the clearing house: a journal of educational strategies, issues, and ideas, 83(2), 39–43. https://doi.org/10.1080/00098650903505415 blumenfeld, p. c., soloway, e., marx, r. w., krajcik, j. s., guzdial, m., & palincsar, a. (1991). motivating projectbased learning: sustaining the doing, supporting the learning. educational psychologist, 26(3–4), 369–398. https://doi.org/10.1080/00461520.1991.9653139 boonkit, k. (2010). enhancing the development of speaking skills for non-native speakers of english. procedia: social and behavioral sciences, 2(2), 1305–1309. https://doi. org/10.1016/j.sbspro.2010.03.191 buck institute for education. (2015). gold standard pbl: essential project design elements. mypblworks. https:// bit.ly/3ajhirh denzin, n. k., & lincoln, y. s. (eds.). (2013). collecting and interpreting qualitative materials (4th ed.). sage. dooly, m., & sadler, r. (2016). becoming little scientists: technologically-enhanced project-based language learning. language learning & technology, 20(1), 54–78. freire, p. (1970). pedagogy of the oppressed (m. bergman ramos, trans.). continuum. (original work published 1968) johnson, d. w., & johnson, r. t. (1999). making cooperative learning work. theory into practice, 38(2), 67–73. https:// doi.org/10.1080/00405849909543834 johnson, d. w., johnson, r. t., & johnson holubec, e. (1994). the new circles of learning: cooperation in the classroom and school. ascd. jolls, t., & wilson, c. (2014). the core concepts: fundamental to media literacy yesterday, today and tomorrow. journal of media literacy education, 6(2), 68–78. https://doi. org/10.23860/jmle-2016-06-02-6 kellner, d., & share, j. (2005). toward critical media literacy : core concepts, debates, organizations, and policy. discourse: studies in the cultural politics of education, 26(3), 369–386. https://doi. org/10.1080/01596300500200169 mclaughlin, m., & devoogd, g. (2004). critical literacy as comprehension: expanding reader response. journal of adolescent & adult literacy, 48(1), 52–62. https://doi. org/10.1598/jaal.48.1.5 merriam, s. b., & tisdell, e. j. (2015). qualitative research: a guide to design and implementation (4th ed.). john wiley & sons. ministerio de educación nacional. (n.d.). programa nacional de bilingüismo. colombia aprende: la red del conocimiento. https://aprende.colombiaaprende. edu.co/es/colombiabilingue/86689 ning, h. (2011). adapting cooperative learning in tertiary elt. elt journal, 65(1), 60–70. https://doi.org/10.1093/ elt/ccq021 oxford, r. l. (1997). cooperative learning, collaborative learning, and interaction: three communicative strands in the language classroom. the modern language journal, 81(4), 443–456. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1540-4781.1997. tb05510.x richards, j. c. (2008). teaching listening and speaking: from theory to practice. cambridge university press. https://doi.org/10.18806/tesl.v19i2.929 https://doi.org/10.1080/00098650903505415 https://doi.org/10.1080/00461520.1991.9653139 https://doi.org/10.1016/j.sbspro.2010.03.191 https://doi.org/10.1016/j.sbspro.2010.03.191 https://bit.ly/3ajhirh https://bit.ly/3ajhirh https://doi.org/10.1080/00405849909543834 https://doi.org/10.1080/00405849909543834 https://doi.org/10.23860/jmle-2016-06-02-6 https://doi.org/10.23860/jmle-2016-06-02-6 https://doi.org/10.1080/01596300500200169 https://doi.org/10.1080/01596300500200169 https://doi.org/10.1598/jaal.48.1.5 https://doi.org/10.1598/jaal.48.1.5 https://aprende.colombiaaprende.edu.co/es/colombiabilingue/86689 https://aprende.colombiaaprende.edu.co/es/colombiabilingue/86689 https://doi.org/10.1093/elt/ccq021 https://doi.org/10.1093/elt/ccq021 https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1540-4781.1997.tb05510.x https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1540-4781.1997.tb05510.x 195profile: issues teach. prof. dev., vol. 22 no. 2, jul-dec, 2020. issn 1657-0790 (printed) 2256-5760 (online). bogotá, colombia. pages 181-195 fostering talk as performance in an efl class through the critical analysis of youtubers’ content richards, k. (2003). qualitative inquiry in tesol. palgrave macmillan. saldaña, j. (2015). the coding manual for qualitative researchers. sage. stoller, f. l. (2002). project work: a means to promote language and content. in j. c. richards & w. a. renandya (eds.), methodology in language teaching: an anthology about the author yesika aristizábal-jiménez is a foreign language teacher graduated from universidad de antioquia (colombia). her research interest is critical media literacy in efl contexts. currently, she is an english teacher in different institutions in the eastern region of antioquia. she has teaching experience from preschool to higher education. of current practice (pp. 107–119). cambridge university press. https://doi.org/10.1017/cbo9780511667190.016 thoman, e., & jolls, t. (2005). literacy for the 21st century: an overview and orientation guide to media literacy education. center for media literacy. thomas, j. w. (2000). a review of research on project-based learning. autodesk foundation. https://doi.org/10.1017/cbo9780511667190.016 a synthesis of efl research in chilean high schools: research shortage or research opportunities? 227profile: issues teach. prof. dev., vol. 24 no. 1, jan-jun, 2022. issn 1657-0790 (printed) 2256-5760 (online). bogotá, colombia. pages 227-246 https://doi.org/10.15446/profile.v24n1.92155 a synthesis of efl research in chilean high schools: research shortage or research opportunities? una síntesis de la investigación del inglés como lengua extranjera en la enseñanza media chilena: ¿escasez de investigación u oportunidades de investigación? claudio jaramillo-yanquepe 1 university of toronto, toronto, canada this article is a configurative literature review that aims to synthesize available research on english as a foreign language education, undertaken specifically in chilean high-school settings. drawing on a pre-covid-19 research corpus, i identified a limited number of concordant accounts (n = 23) published during the last decade. i used a critical interpretive synthesis methodology which yielded three research fields ranging from didactics to socio-structural problematics. the synthesis shows that the research addresses curricular aspects devoid of socio-political and historical contexts, emphasizing primarily teachers’ teaching tensions and challenges. finally, i discuss the english as a foreign language research limitations and implications for the chilean context, for which i suggest some innovations to broaden future inquiry critically. keywords: chilean high school, critical interpretive synthesis, english as a foreign language, efl research este artículo es una revisión configurativa que apunta a sintetizar la literatura sobre la enseñanza del inglés como lengua extranjera específicamente en contextos de enseñanza media en chile. a partir de un corpus pre-covid-19, identifiqué un número acotado de estudios conexos (n = 23) publicados durante la última década. utilicé el método de síntesis interpretativa crítica la cual reveló tres campos de investigación que abarcan temas desde la didáctica hasta problemáticas socio-estructurales. la síntesis interpretativa crítica demuestra que la investigación se centra preponderantemente en áreas curriculares ligadas a las tensiones y desafíos del docente y su enseñanza. finalmente, discuto las implicancias y limitaciones en la investigación en inglés como lengua extranjera en el contexto chileno, para las cuales sugiero algunas innovaciones con el fin de ampliarla críticamente. palabras clave: educación secundaria chilena, inglés como lengua extranjera, investigación en ile, síntesis interpretativa crítica claudio jaramillo-yanquepe  https://orcid.org/0000-0001-8520-7104 · email: claudio.jaramillo@mail.utoronto.ca this project is funded by the program becas chile, from the national investigations and development agency (agencia nacional de investigación y desarrollo, anid) dependent of the ministry of science, technology, knowledge, and innovation of the chilean gov ernment. folio: 72190042. how to cite this article (apa, 7th ed.): jaramillo-yanquepe, c. (2022). a synthesis of efl research in chilean high schools: research shortage or research opportunities? profile: issues in teachers’ professional development, 24(1), 227–246. https://doi.org/10.15446/profile. v24n1.92155 this article was received on december 4, 2020 and accepted on september 29, 2021. this is an open access article distributed under the terms of the creative commons license attribution-noncommercial-noderivatives 4.0 international license. consultation is possible at https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/ https://orcid.org/0000-0001-8520-7104 mailto:claudio.jaramillo@mail.utoronto.ca https://doi.org/10.15446/profile.v24n1.9215 https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/ universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras228 jaramillo-yanquepe introduction the organisation for economic co-operation and development (2017) reports that “[educational] research activity is incipient in chile” (p. 48). this observation is consistent with english as a foreign language (efl) education research. barahona (2016) and lizasoain (2017) point out that, overall, research is scant. indeed, efl inquiry, particularly in high school settings, is even more limited. high-school efl education has so far been largely overlooked, thus, needing more critical and in-depth inquiry. interestingly, this high school research shortage is particularly relevant because it signposts unexplored are as re qu i r i ng c r it i c a l e x am i nat i on t hat are fundamental for teacher education programmes, curriculum, and policy. additionally, researching these areas entails unpacking a wider debate among researchers and school communities. in this article, i suggest that a critical synthesis of the current research findings of high-school efl classroom life can help set focalized informed parameters to characterize and discuss fundamental aspects of its complex reality. these parameters may bring directionality to such inquiry and future pedagogy-oriented attempts to explore how we understand these classrooms, what happens in them, what their outcomes are, how they are investigated, and how they serve as reference for future teacher training. i also argue that we need to examine current research boundaries. they can compel inquiry initiatives to expand and crystalize additional areas beyond the prevailing linguisticsoriented paradigms. given the lack of more comprehensive efl research in high-school classrooms, high-stakes statistical information from standardized testing, such as simce inglés,1 has been the primary source 1 simce stands for system measurement of quality of education. this is a nation-scale standardized test administered in chilean schools of data (agencia de calidad de la educación, 2018). these data have been gathered during three time periods, 2010, 2012, and 2014. since 2017, the source has been replaced by the national english language study.2 as placeholders, both tests’ purpose has been to serve curricular navigation and other educational support initiatives based on the results collected from grade-11 students across chile. in general, their results have provided us with fragmentary descriptions of students’ low linguistic attainment. even though being system-level assessment instruments (creswell, 2016) with an ample sampling, there remain several aspects of the efl classroom life about which relatively little is known. aims in this article, i synthesize the available efl studies undertaken in high school settings using a critical interpretive synthesis (cis; gough et al., 2012). further research in this area would help position high schools as a pivot for inquiry to shape further explorations. i hope with this cis to help depict more thoroughly what happens in chilean high-school efl classrooms. the aims of this article are: 1. to map the broader english language education research landscape in chile. 2. to generate a critical interpretive synthesis of the evidence obtained from high-school research accounts. method syntheses are useful in various ways. they can account for how knowledge is generated and how much we know, thus providing foundations for engaging in new research endeavours (depraetere since 1988. its english battery was first administered in 2010. 2 national english language study (estudio nacional de inglés) is a purposive representative test that replaced the simce inglés as of 2017. 229profile: issues teach. prof. dev., vol. 24 no. 1, jan-jun, 2022. issn 1657-0790 (printed) 2256-5760 (online). bogotá, colombia. pages 227-246 a synthesis of efl research in chilean high schools: research shortage or research opportunities? et al., 2020; flemming, 2010; gough et al., 2012; hannes & macaitis, 2012). gough et al. (2012) also note that reviews expand broader discussions “with explicit assumptions and leveraging many studies rather than debates about individual studies” (p. 12). in this study, the mosaic metaphor is essential to understand and visualize the nature of a synthesis. i undertook a configurative review approach, which “can be likened to the patterns in a mosaic, in which the findings from each study are slotted together to form a coherent whole” (gough et al., 2012, p. 51), using as method a cis (depraetere et al., 2020; flemming, 2010). the cis is an approach that “draws on traditional systematic review methodology whilst incorporating a qualitative tradition of enquiry [and that] enables the generation of theory with strong explanatory power” (flemming, 2010, p. 202). as my primary method, the synthesis of qualitative, mixed, and quantitative evidence becomes compatible regardless of their distinct epistemological origins. the cis develops output from the evidence collected into a synthesizing argument (dixon-woods et al., 2005; flemming, 2010). schick-makaroff et al. (2016) review the main approaches to research synthesis to combine research findings. this meta-analysis approach is critical in that it explicitly allows an interpretative process, providing new directions in research in a way primary authors have not previously considered (dixon-woods et al., 2005; flemming, 2010; schick-makaroff et al., 2016). accordingly, a critical paradigm underpins this review. i situate this article on the premise that facts can never be isolated from their ideological inscriptions and sociohistorical conditions in which they take place (denzin & lincoln, 2018; kincheloe et al., 2018; lincoln et al., 2011). also, i intend to signal critical aspects of research as a form to understand— and enact—power relations (kincheloe et al., 2018; winkle-wagner et al., 2019). i approach facts within a value-laden context. therefore, such facts are read, interpreted, and discussed using this critical scope. this synthesis is also exploratory in nature. i have reviewed the literature extensively to identify relevant sources—no previous synthesis reports, of any type, on english language teaching (elt) research education existing in the chilean context. the findings and the discussion are presented in a narrative format (hoon, 2013) rather than as a statistical aggregative report (garg et al., 2008). although simple descriptive statistical figures will be used to portray some of the findings, this qualitative discussion is centred on the studies’ synthesis implications. in this report, i use the terms secondary school and high school indistinctively. stages of the corpus construction process the corpus analyzed is the result of a two-year review and systematization of literature i conducted as part of my doctoral dissertation. i proceeded in three stages: first, the identification of studies; second, the mapping of research areas in the corpus; and third, the organization of high-school studies to perform a closer examination. i provide a two-layered characterization based on the studies collected: breadth (in a broad research landscape in less detail) and depth (in a narrow landscape in higher detail). the process of data collection, and the stages of organization and analysis are depicted in figure 1, which i will explain in the subsequent sections. universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras230 jaramillo-yanquepe stage 1: search and identification of data the first stage consisted of a purposive and flexible search and identification of studies conducted in english language education at all levels and settings within the chilean context published until november 2020. wos, eric, ebsco, scielo, and scopus databases were consulted. additionally, i complemented the search with examinations of journal websites, online repositories, and other academic websites through which researchers disseminate their academic work (e.g., academia, researchgate). once the broader corpus was finally constructed, i started with its appraisal. additionally, i conducted a comprehensive review of the various academic formats identified, including all types of sources and documents available, that is, articles, books, studies, reports, and conference papers available in online repositories. the refined criterion i applied to this corpus was the revision of the documents’ purposes. this revision resulted in selecting only empirical accounts over more informal documents, such as efl magazines, reports, and other studies in which research methodologies were not explicit. as a result, three academic formats were considered: indexed articles, books, and chapter contributions in edited books. by indexed articles, i refer to an analysis of short extension inquiry based on empirical evidence related to an educational problem that is searchable in available databases (corvalán & ruffinelli, 2007; dochartaigh, 2012). in the case of books, only those reporting complete research accounts were selected (e.g., glas, 2013). stage 2: mapping the broader research landscape the second stage of this corpus construction consisted of mapping the collected documents, recording their date and area of study. at this stage, i did not intend to elicit important details or theoretical nuances, but simply to identify their general information to outline clusters of similar studies. i defined the initial sampling criterion by adapting hawker et al.’s (2002) analytical framework, which i display in figure 2. i pre-defined categories that later resulted in the definition of the broader areas of research interest. the initial strategy to set a preliminary order was the publication year. the chronological organization enormously facilitated the snowball search to trace further references. the assessment form was used to characterize the studies. this organization quickly yielded a more refined delineation of boundaries among the different efl research areas. table 2, which is provided later in this paper, offers detailed results. figure 1. process of collection, organization, and selection of high school based studies excluded studies breadth depth stage 1: search and identi�cation of studies stage 2: mapping of studies (broad landscape) stage 3 : elicitation of high school studies (narrow landscape) excluded studies selected data set complete corpus process of corpus characterization and organization area 1 area 2 area 3 area 4 area 3 (school-based research) final selection of studies high school studies other school related studies number of studies criterion used total corpus: 297 excluded: 26 type of document selected: indexed journals, books, chapters coding type assessment form stage 1 & 2 filtered and organized corpus: 271 locus and focus organization assessment form stage 1 & 2 corpus cluster: 42 accounts included in synthesis: 23 locus and focus organization assessment form stage 3 holistic, pattern, & theoretical coding 231profile: issues teach. prof. dev., vol. 24 no. 1, jan-jun, 2022. issn 1657-0790 (printed) 2256-5760 (online). bogotá, colombia. pages 227-246 a synthesis of efl research in chilean high schools: research shortage or research opportunities? figure 2. assessment form stages 1–2assessment form: broad corpus stages 1 & 2 author(s): title: date of publication: doi/isbn: study design [] quantitative [] qualitative [] mixed format [] indexed article [] book [] book chapter [] reports/study [] conference paper/ppt [] dissertation [] other locus of study [] university settings [] school settings [] primary [] secondary [] adult [] other [] mixed settings [] not mentioned [] other area of study [] teacher education [] school (all provisions) [] curriculum, policy [] elt research [] critical approaches [] applied linguistics [] teaching practices, strategies, and methods [] others study speci�c topic s1 s2 note. adapted from hawker et al.’s (2002) analytical framework. figure 3. assessment form stage 3 assessment form stages 3: narrow corpus (high school) author(s): title: date of publication: doi/isbn: study design [] quan�ta�ve [] qualita�ve [] mixed format [] indexed ar�cle [] book [] book chapter school provision [] private [] subsidized [] public [] delegated [] mixed se�ngs [] not men�oned [] other location [] metropolitan [] regional-urban [] rural [] other topic participants [] students [] teachers [] mixed [] other members no. of participants/ size of data data collection research questions/objectives time frame journal no. of references language key �ndings speci�cs universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras232 jaramillo-yanquepe stage 3: the narrow research landscape construction once i organized the broad landscape clusters, the school studies cluster was thoroughly reviewed. the number of micro corpus studies found (n = 42) was more straightforward to arrange, given its lower quantity than other larger clusters. in this stage, the identification of the focal studies required a third criterion to identify their locus. the studies locus allowed identifying three settings: primary, secondary, and mixed educational settings. after compartmentalizing the total number of high-school studies, a similar process was used to organize the broader landscape: chronological organization and the analysis of structural components. in figure 3, i present the criteria used. additionally, the analysis in this stage required several rounds of coding, including holistic, pattern, and theoretical coding (saldaña, 2009) to review the studies’ findings. limitations some limitations encountered in the organization of studies were the oftentimes blurriness in the formalities, such as misleading titles, unclear abstracts, and an opaque research design missing relevant specification about the context and participants. thorough examination of concepts was required in some articles describing “teachers’ beliefs” or “applied linguistics” to determine the study’s locus (not always explicit, e.g., either in schools or universities). once the study’s setting was determined, the second filter (the focus) was applied. this focus consisted of discriminating studies based on their inquiry focus, that is, whether they reported sheer language analysis, or the analysis of a pedagogical situation embedded into a high school setting. in these cases, the latter case was selected for stage 3. findings this section will follow the same structure as the three stages, that is, from the broader to the narrower landscapes’ findings. i will consider the stages’ organization to present the findings, that is, stage one, the general search results; stage two, the thematic mapping of studies; and stage three, the characterization of high school research. the broader landscape the final scrutinized corpus resulted in 272 documents. of the total 298 documents that were found (which included all kinds of publications), only 26 were discarded because they did not comply with the primary selection criterion (i.e., type of publication). additionally, their sources and purpose differed significantly with research accounts and format, such as powerpoint presentations, book reviews, editorials, essays, elt magazine articles, agency reports, and dissertations. the spread shown in figure 4 is the outcome of stages 1 (the search) and 2 (the mapping). the spread shows the available online published english language research collected, ranging from 1942 to 2020. the numbers included in the bars represent the number of indexed publications, books, and book chapters. the findings show a gradually increasing production of scientific work in the field. this growth in publication coincides with other macro reports on research in latin america, which also show a similar systematic expansion (guzmán-valenzuela & barnett, 2019). although the efl chilean research production is not extensive in terms of quantity, it has sustained a steady growth. the most preferred publication formats identified are the article, followed by the edited book chapter contribution, and finally, books. the average number of publications is 10 per year. in table 1, i present the publication preference distribution. table 1. format preference in publications type books chapters articles final corpus n 7 25 240 272 % 2.6 9.2 88.2 100.0 233profile: issues teach. prof. dev., vol. 24 no. 1, jan-jun, 2022. issn 1657-0790 (printed) 2256-5760 (online). bogotá, colombia. pages 227-246 a synthesis of efl research in chilean high schools: research shortage or research opportunities? figure 4. spread of the analysed efl research 1942–2020 1 1 1 1 1 1 4 1 3 1 0 2 3 5 11 8 7 14 10 14 20 20 29 30 25 27 31 0 5 10 15 20 25 30 35 eight thematic areas were identified in the corpus. in table 2, i have mapped a broad summary of stage 2 assessment, which consisted of categorizing areas with a focus on research interest and a thematic emphasis description. these areas served to configure the map of the nature of inquiry in the broadest chilean elt field. for this paper’s purpose, i only focus on the cluster related to high schools. i present this broader data set to underpin some claims later in this paper. however, i would like to draw attention to some of the points found at this synthesis stage. it is important to note that over 65% of the research has been conducted within the boundaries of teacher education programmes at universities, including area 1, elt teacher education, 2, teaching methodology, and 4, applied linguistics. in the case of the applied linguistic area, 89.5% of the inquiry was undertaken in undergraduate programmes. these results frame the inquiry agenda in the chilean context as teacher-education centred. these results frame many of the findings i discuss in the following sections concerning the high school studies. table 2. summary of pivotal efl research interests research area of interest broader themes and emphases frequency % 1. efl teacher education teacher-student’s beliefs, cognitions, practicum stage, teacher education practices, professional identity development in teacher education programmes. 105 38.6 2. teaching methodology language teaching strategies, group dynamics, teaching methods, activities and practices, types of tasks, assessment. 59 21.7 3. school (all provisions) pedagogical focus on motivation, teaching methodology, strategies and educational beliefs, socioeconomic conditions. 42 15.4 4. applied linguistics the learning of some linguistic items within the context of teacher education, language form, and focus learning. 39 14.3 5. curriculum and language policy a heterogeneous topic that comprehends material design, standards, syllabus design, the state of efl in chile, and other legally related issues, implementation, discussion or evaluation of initiatives in efl education. 10 3.7 6. critical approaches exploration of neoliberalism impact on the identities and roles teachers fulfill in the chilean society. 8 2.9 universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras234 jaramillo-yanquepe research area of interest broader themes and emphases frequency % 7. other humanistic approaches (sociolinguistics in education, pedagogy) cultural aspects of efl provision and other sociolinguistic aspects. 6 2.2 8. elt research new aspect in the local efl milieu, and with a clear focus on action research as the main discussion topic. 3 1.1 272 100.0 the narrow landscape: efl high-school studies one of the readily observable characteristics of the general efl school research—with primary, mixed levels, and secondary considered all together—is its limited number. the school cluster is divided into three subareas: primary education (n = 16, 38.1%), high school education (n = 23, 54.8%) and mixed accounts (n = 3, 7.1%). the mixed accounts’ findings were not always distinctive in relation to either the type of school (e.g., public–private) or the (sometimes mixed) teaching level (primary, secondary, university, and language institute). as such, these findings were discarded. in figure 5, i contrast the available broad landscape and the efl high school proportions per year. the nature of efl research conducted in high-school settings differs in many aspects. this variability involved a more detailed analysis of its thematic variability, contexts, choice of methods, procedures, and theoretical framing. in table 3, i display the stage 3 final corpus of high school studies search. together they provide findings that help us visualize the little variability of foci, regardless of their diverse nature, centred mostly on teachers, teaching, and to a lesser extent, on the students. most of these studies relate to action-oriented and decision-making challenges that teachers regularly face in their classrooms, addressed from their perspectives. the research traditions are well balanced among the efl high-school studies, as presented in table 4. several reflections emerge from this panoptic review of the research on secondary school realities. i have summarised the studies following the research traditions to reach a holistic synthesis of the research findings. i begin this report addressing the mixed methods tradition (n = 5), followed by quantitative (n = 7), and i conclude with the qualitative (n = 7) contributions, which include non-empirical works (n = 2) that do not make explicit their orientation, yet they can be allocated in this group. then, i continue with a critical synthesis of findings. figure 5. stacked contrast between efl broader and school research accumulation 1 2 3 3 3 4 1 3 31 1 1 1 1 1 4 1 3 1 2 3 5 11 8 6 12 10 11 20 17 26 26 24 24 28 0 5 10 15 20 25 30 35 1. total no. educational efl research per year (excluding high school) 2. efl high school studies per year 235profile: issues teach. prof. dev., vol. 24 no. 1, jan-jun, 2022. issn 1657-0790 (printed) 2256-5760 (online). bogotá, colombia. pages 227-246 a synthesis of efl research in chilean high schools: research shortage or research opportunities? table 3. summary of chilean high school efl research author(s) year title of publication approach type of publication central topic journal/ editorial & language díaz et al. 2010 a snapshot of a group of english teachers’ conceptions about english teaching and learning in chilean public education mixed article teachers’ cognition folios (spanish) díaz et al. 2011 comparing teaching styles and personality types of efl instructors in the public and private sectors does not report article teaching styles profile (english) díaz 2011 exploring knowledge of english-speaking strategies in 8th and 12th graders quant. article students’ knowledge of speaking strategies profile (english) correa et al. 2013 the impact of explicit feedback on efl high school students engaged in writing tasks qual. article teachers’ feedback provision in writing tasks profile (english) glas 2013 teaching english in chile, a study of teacher perceptions of their professional identity, student motivation and pertinent learning contents mixed book teacher identity explorations in efl classrooms peter lang (english) kormos & kiddle 2013 the role of socioeconomic factors in motivation to learn english as a foreign language: the case of chile quant. article english language learning motivations system (english) gómez & pérez 2015 chilean 12th graders’ attitudes towards english as a foreign language quant. article students’ attitudes to english learning colombian journal of applied linguistics (english) díaz et al. 2015 a case study on efl teachers’ beliefs about the teaching and learning of english in public education qual. article teachers’ beliefs porta linguarum (english) universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras236 jaramillo-yanquepe author(s) year title of publication approach type of publication central topic journal/ editorial & language glas 2016 opening up ‘spaces for manoeuvre’: english teacher perspectives on learner motivation qual. article teachers’ perspectives on students’ motivation research papers on education (english) sato & viveros 2016 interaction or collaboration? group dynamics in the foreign language classroom qual. chapter forms of interaction moves and collaborative patterns in peer interaction john benjamins (english) de la barra van treek 2016 cooperative learning in english language classes in four subsidized schools in santiago mixed article variables affecting classroom management and teaching pensamiento educativo (spanish) pereira & ramos 2016 design of textbooks for teaching english: a curriculum proposal does not report article textbook design colombian journal of applied linguistics (spanish) saavedra & brauchy 2017 the use of digital video making projects to enhance motivation in the english foreign language teaching high school classroom qual. article use of video projects tasks to enhance motivation the lec journal (english) correa et al. 2017 relationship between group seating arrangement in the classroom and student participation in speaking activities in efl classes at a secondary school in chile qual. article sitting arrangement during speaking activities folios (english) walczak et al. 2017 which factors affect english language attainment? a study of school students in chile. impact of cambridge english exams and english language learning programmes in a variety of contexts quant. article factors affecting language attainment in the simce 2014 research notes (english) 237profile: issues teach. prof. dev., vol. 24 no. 1, jan-jun, 2022. issn 1657-0790 (printed) 2256-5760 (online). bogotá, colombia. pages 227-246 a synthesis of efl research in chilean high schools: research shortage or research opportunities? author(s) year title of publication approach type of publication central topic journal/ editorial & language jorquera et al. 2017 high school students’ affective reaction to english speaking activities qual. article exploration of attitudes in speaking activities how (english) cárcamo 2018 types of listening comprehension promoted in the chilean efl textbook global english qual. article listening comprehension activities in textbooks colombian journal of applied linguistics (english) farías & radu 2019 from looking north to participating globally as empowered users of the language: international posture in chilean learners of english mixed chapter students’ postures about english eduel (english) walper 2019 an exploration of chilean efl teachers’ interactional practices in feedback provision quant. chapter interactional practices during feedback provision cambridge scholar publishing (english) de la barra & carbone 2020 bridging inequality: cooperative learning through literature in two vulnerable schools in santiago qual. article cooperative learning through the use of literature profile (english) cárcamo 2020 readability and types of questions in chilean efl high school textbooks quant. article readability inconsistencies in high school textbooks tesol journal (english) cancino & díaz 2020 exploring the codeswitching behaviours of chilean efl high school teachers: a functionfocused approach quant. article teachers’ codeswitching profile (english) sato & oyadenel 2020 “i think that is a better way to teach but …”: efl teachers’ conflicting beliefs about grammar teaching mixed article teachers’ beliefs on grammar teaching system (english) universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras238 jaramillo-yanquepe table 4. methodology preferences per research domain in efl high school studies methodology number of publications % methodological design choices language quantitative 9 39.1 experimental and quasi experimental psychometric scale measures (likert, surveys) correlational measures descriptive statistics non-participant observation english 100% qualitative 7 30.4 descriptive and interpretive approaches action research case studies interviews document analysis english 100% mixed 5 21.7 psychometric scale measures (likert, surveys) correlational measures descriptive statistics interviews class observations english 60% (n = 3) spanish 40% (n = 2) non-empirical 2 8.1 descriptive document analysis (with qualitative orientation) english 50% (n = 1) spanish 50% (n = 1) total 23 100 first, the mixed-methods studies have been relatively continual across time. their findings are diverse, holistic, and speak primarily about how efl pedagogy is implemented. they provide evidence on teaching conditions in high-school settings and the relations between practices and the beliefs that inform those practices. a recurrent theme in nearly all the studies examined is the dissonance between teachers’ practices, belief systems, and discourses. in these reports, teachers’ identities are reported as constant-struggling selves that strive within constrained spaces—schools and classrooms—ruled by tensions and contradictions and inconsistencies. these studies have provided evidence drawing on teachers’ discourses, beliefs, and practices (de la barra van treek, 2016; díaz et al., 2010; díaz et al., 2012; glas, 2013; sato & oyanedel, 2020). additionally, these studies consistently suggest the gap between school reality and teacher training as an unattended issue (díaz et al., 2012; sato & oyadenel, 2020). they report how teacher training programmes do not link the schools with their sociocultural and sociopolitical contexts. these contradictions have also been reported elsewhere in teacher education settings and policy analysis studies (see lizasoain, 2017; and martin & rosas-maldonado, 2019, for further discussions). certainly, this misalignment is an important issue for future research. the chilean quantitative studies stand out in their large sampling techniques in relation to the other approaches. they have been relevant for generating more and farther-reaching synchronous portraits of the chilean high school efl population. high-school efl quantitative inquiry is generally bounded to the pedagogical outcomes and linguistic performance in the english class. to some degree, these studies also map classrooms and schools demographically, that is, who those people 239profile: issues teach. prof. dev., vol. 24 no. 1, jan-jun, 2022. issn 1657-0790 (printed) 2256-5760 (online). bogotá, colombia. pages 227-246 a synthesis of efl research in chilean high schools: research shortage or research opportunities? are. an interesting aspect of these studies is that most of them are focused exclusively on the students. the quantitative findings, and subsequent discussions, establish a strong correspondence between an efl pedagogy and the surrounding immediacy of the socioeconomic and sociocultural spaces in which students learn english (kormos & kiddle, 2013). for instance, walczak et al. (2017) report that the socioeconomic background is a “strong predictor of language attainment” (p. 64), raising concerns to look at classrooms and their challenges embedded in particular socioeconomic conditions (e.g., private and public settings) and geographical (e.g., urban and rural) contexts. nevertheless, these studies’ contributions are descriptive in their nature. the impracticality of complementary narrative inquiry prevents us from understanding the causality of such characterizations. other studies in this approach focus on pedagogical dynamics (díaz et al., 2011; walper, 2019) and linguistic factors (cancino & díaz, 2020; cárcamo, 2020). qualitative inquiry has zeroed in the tensions among the high school system and the members’ professional relationships and a comprehensive gaze on the particularities of the contexts, focusing on interaction between teachers and students. these studies also examine the pedagogical relations among the development of teaching skills, the mediating instruments (e.g., textbooks), and the socio-cognitive foundations of these groups’ interactions. some of these works provide compelling findings. for example, in díaz et al. (2012), teachers’ identity tensions are explored. teachers are reported as dealing with the tensions between being either educators or linguists as separate components of their professional identities. in a similar tone, and in more depth, glas (2013) provides an analysis of the professional views of teachers who experience tensions and negotiate with their social spaces, beliefs, disciplinary knowledge, socioeconomic conditions, and material support, which create a sensation of powerlessness. as in the mixed methods studies, teachers are similarly described as holding inconsistencies between their discursive repertoires, pedagogical actions, and beliefs. an overriding characteristic reported is that communicative language teaching underpinnings dominate their teaching discourses but not their teaching practices (de la barra van treek, 2016; díaz et al., 2010, díaz et al., 2015). these inconsistencies are suggested to be contextually and personally constrained. cis outcomes: mapping fields of inquiry the map of inquiry fields, shown in figure 6, results from the thematically synthetic constructs emerging from the research findings’ codification nodes and their connections. subsequently, the synthetic constructs and the studies’ interpretation were combined, producing specific topics that led towards larger theoretical clusters. the three distinct fields of inquiry identified were (a) the outer, (b) the liminal, and (c) the inner. the conceptualization i used emerged from the data during the analysis, that is, i have not used predefined conceptualization to interpret or classify the data. these three fields are configured within a continuum that ranges from themes rooted in structural-functional views to more phenomenological perspectives of efl education. their boundaries are well-defined. for example, teachers’ classroom management research findings are rarely associated with social dynamics or issues of power dynamics in the classrooms but to practical methodological concerns. first, the outer field considers aspects of the sociopolitical world (lo bianco, 2008). this inquiry field is the least represented, and it consists of all the broader sociopolitical research areas that inscribe the normative, cultural, ideological, and social parameters, determining value systems and material and symbolic conditions in relation to efl education. the findings reported in this field, as in farías and radu (2019) and walczak et al. (2017), point to the correspondence between social class and language attainment opportunities and the sets of values that sustain the relations with english as a world dominant language. nevertheless, efl education is generally presented as detached from its sociohistorical conditions. universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras240 jaramillo-yanquepe figure 6. fields of inquiry map in high school efl education sociostructural phenomenological outer field of inquiry sociocultural domains including broader units of the sociopolitical landscapes in which efl education happens liminal field of inquiry intermediate spaces of interaction between school and the immediate sociocultural context inner field of inquiry curriculum domains including smaller units of study within the school reach sociohistorical context and conditions cultural value systems material and symbolic conditions dispositions social class normative (pedagogical and linguistic) ideologies families’ role in students’ educational trajectories families’ educational background efl educational expectations future social expectations access to english families’ socioeconomic status �e high school boundaries stcurtsnoc citehtnys yllacita meht language attainment focus teaching methodologies efl discipline subjects artifacts classroom dynamics (management, social relations in the classroom) identities beliefs attitudes motivation professionalism socio -cognitive dynamics discourses textbooks and materials technology less researched more researched next is the liminal field of inquiry. this field encompasses those intermediate spaces in which relationships between the broader sociopolitical landscape and the school members operate. this field includes the connections between youth learning experiences and their immediate sociocultural environments (e.g., students’ family sociocultural backgrounds). one key concept in this field (and also mentioned in the other two fields studies) is access, which seems to be a recurrent metonymy that needs careful unpacking and cautious exploration. a better understanding may lead to deeper comprehension of issues related to discourses that justify and sustain segregation, inequality, vulnerability, and learning attainment failure (de la barra & carbone, 2020; glas, 2008; gómez & pérez, 2015; kormos & kiddle, 2013; walczak et al., 2017). english enjoys high social value, which sustains english as a desired “tool” across all the socioeconomic groups in our society (glas, 2008). consequently, the “access to better opportunities” that the english language grants is reported as being construal in a way that shapes identity, world visions, and expected (socio)economic paths (glas, 2008; kormos & kiddle, 2013; kruglanski & higgins, 2007; matear, 2008). the third and last field of inquiry, the inner field, includes three clusters: efl discipline, teacher cognition, and artifacts. they narrow the focus on the instrumental aspect of teaching, that is, teaching methods and strategies, classroom management, use of materials, quality of teaching delivery, and students’ engagement (correa et al., 2017; saavedra & brauchy, 2017; walper, 2019). they also incorporate various aspects of dynamics involving interaction, negotiation, decision making, resistance, and change (farías & radu, 2019; gómez & pérez, 2015). at the core of this field, there is a clear focus on subjects, particularly on the teachers. issues revolve around characterizing their cognitions: who these teachers are, how they think, how they perform, 241profile: issues teach. prof. dev., vol. 24 no. 1, jan-jun, 2022. issn 1657-0790 (printed) 2256-5760 (online). bogotá, colombia. pages 227-246 a synthesis of efl research in chilean high schools: research shortage or research opportunities? and what instruments they implement to reach their aims (cárcamo, 2020; díaz et al., 2010; walper, 2019). as a secondary subject, we can find some discrete descriptions about students, mostly characterized and reported through psychometric scales, as in gómez and pérez (2015). in relation to the formal aspects of high-school research, the cis, and in particular three fields’ sum of evidence, signals prosperous directions regarding new research methods, design and opportunities to be revisited, hoping that they may trigger further critical research on issues relevant to the schools. the overall characterization shows that: 1. research on high-school efl education is recent (2010–2020) and scant. 2. studies vary widely in depth, scope, complexity, and reflection. 3. research about efl education undertaken in high school is teacher-centred. 4. research design is consistently balanced among the three traditions (quantitative, qualitative, and mixed). 5. the contextualization of the studies is oftentimes unclear and brief. 6. none of the studies reviewed uses participatory methods or polyvocal designs. the final outcomes of this critical interpretive synthesis of the chilean high-school efl research in the synthesis below, contains the interpretative portion, and as such, i provide the new configuration of the findings in the studies discussed, which suggest that: 1. the conditions and dispositions in efl education have changed very little in ten years. 2. the communities’ socioeconomic conditions are a powerful force that profoundly constrains teachers’ decisions, students’ fate, and the school structures in terms of control and power-share. teachers struggle with these underlying socioeconomic forces, which seem to cause their disassociation between their practices, beliefs, and discourses, thus affecting their imaginaries and pedagogical expectations. 3. efl teachers are little prepared to understand and contest socioeconomic condition forces. consequently, they readily resort to behaviorist teaching methods as a form of control, and seemingly, as professional validation mechanisms. 4. a factor underlying part of this dissonance is the lack of updated disciplinary knowledge, still rooted in the earlier stages of the communicative approach merged with elements of grammarcentred/translation teaching. 5. secondary students’ perceptions are characterized as contradictory. students’ motivation is generally low, yet their attitude towards efl education is positive and favorable. although they acknowledge the relevance of the english language in their future careers and lives, they exert little effort in learning. this may be the result of an (efl) educational system that struggles with inconsistencies. 6. supporting materials for the efl class, in particular textbooks, need better alignment with the diverse educational realities and needs of the country. in the following section, i will discuss some considerations i deem relevant in relation to these synthesis findings and the chilean efl contextual particularities to finally conclude with a reflection. discussion this cis set out to examine the overall chilean elt research advancement, focusing on high school studies. the overall elt research has steadily increased from 2000 to 2020, unlike high school studies, which have seen meagre growth. the cis also shows that several essential areas in high-school efl education remain unexplored in this respect. the efl high schools research pivots primarily around teachers’ perspectives and teaching dynamics. universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras242 jaramillo-yanquepe when the focus is placed on students, this pivots around their dispositions, attitudes, and motivation. accordingly, the analyzed research corpus results converge on the curriculum implementation, although not necessarily connected to the national curriculum itself, which remains unscrutinized. given the teacherbound nature of the available research, addressing the curricular policy may help understand the multiple dissonances surrounding pedagogical practices, particularly addressing the identitary and sociopolitical dimension of efl education and its ultimate purposes for the chilean society. these angles may also help expand our understandings of the efl educational complexities in radical ways beyond the interests of practices grounded on verbocentrism, that is, a restricted approach centred on language proficiency as the dominant curricular goal. understanding high school-based research, as a powerful belief-shaping instrument, could help outline the exercise of educators’ pedagogical hermeneutics. what information do future teachers receive for their professional development? is it only informed by the international experience? what is the role of local research? the relevance of empirical evidence from local school settings is utterly necessary to appraise and critique curricular development decisions, policies, and above all, better teacher education program alignments with the local educational system. sato and loewen (2019) argue that efl pedagogy may benefit significantly from research. high-school teachers’ needs primarily revolve around (urgent) pragmatic and complex questions deeply rooted in knowledge repertoires that need constant updating (bellei et al., 2020; herrada et al., 2012; joram, 2007; manzi et al., 2011). thus, a situated knowledge-oriented efl discipline, enacted through local inquiry-based practices, may gradually propel critical approaches to understanding and transforming their educational landscapes. the question is then how such features could be effectively articulated collaboratively. thus, the importance of imagining gradual forms of collaborative inquiry-based practices. the value of ciss is that they illuminate future initiatives to better align research with local needs. indeed, all these new directions may contribute to rethinking efl research and pedagogy in high schools, particularly considering the covid-19 pandemic hiatus. revisiting efl education in high schools in light of covidian times will yield new perspectives on researching the prevailing construals. some of them involve what key factors mean for efl education, such as successful relationships in the classroom, teaching practices, learning experiences, the influence of the abysmal socioeconomic gap between social classes, and technology access. most likely, these dimensions will need further revisiting considering the covidian conditions. this cis also points at a pending task, questioning the currently implemented efl curricula and their impact on the communities. regarding efl practices in research, they are still profoundly entrenched in the binary relationship between researcher and researched. this limitation is another opportunity to better understand efl research repertoires by selecting non-traditional research methods to further integrate voices. for instance, using polyvocal and collaborative inquiry research methods (e.g., duoethnography, bricolage, collaborative research) is a possibility to strengthen critical elt pedagogy in a move towards more equal and sustainable research practices. furthermore, incorporating critical and intersectional frameworks such as decolonial, racial and feminist approaches, to name but a few, would also enrich our interpretations of the context. by adding to this equation the geographical location and the diversity of sociocultural contexts across chile, efl educational research may also take an enriching turn involving minorities, racialized and indigenous communities, and rural educational communities. such views grant a fertile landscape to embed criticality and social justice as part of the efl research agenda to counter prevailing positivist logic, challenge colonizing epistemologies, and neoliberal capi243profile: issues teach. prof. dev., vol. 24 no. 1, jan-jun, 2022. issn 1657-0790 (printed) 2256-5760 (online). bogotá, colombia. pages 227-246 a synthesis of efl research in chilean high schools: research shortage or research opportunities? talist interests in educational research (casassus, 2010; giroux, 2001; habermas, 1968/1971; quijano, 2007; de sousa santos, 2016). conclusions: not seeing the forest for the trees? if you want to research us, you can go home. if you have come to accompany us, if you think our struggle is also your struggle, we have plenty of things to talk about. (glesne, 2007, p. 171) in this article, i have mapped, synthesized, and discussed indexed efl high-school research. critically framed research remains utterly necessary to defy the rigid patterns in the current research cannons in various ways, such as exploring those classrooms beyond the logic of the language-attainment-only paradigm. a social turn in our efl high school research—and pedagogy—would involve revisiting our secondary classrooms’ overt and latent structures of power, inequality, marginalization, ideological underpinnings, and forms of oppression. how will these characteristics in high schools evolve as a result of the pandemic? perhaps, and hopefully, new meaningful possibilities of linking school and academia may emerge. finally, taking stock of critically comprehensive research in high schools may allow us to understand that sheer teacher-centred research may only contribute to a more restrictive understanding of the spaces we are trying to improve. classrooms are complex social systems that are not only occupied by teachers. naturally, i do not wish to convey the idea of excluding teachers from the picture; on the contrary, i have argued that the teachers’ portrayal in the research accounts addressed in this article is somewhat incomplete. the larger picture is missing; there is more to it, and there is more beyond the instrumental aspects of verbocentric goals. moreover, broader educational changes resulting from the covid-19 pandemic are rendering new dimensions to undertake research. therefore, amplifying research alternatives and extending participatory opportunities to other members with equal prominence and voice can stimulate us to explore the forest and not just focus on the trees. references agencia de calidad de la educación. 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(2020). “i think that is a better way to teach but …”: efl teachers’ conflicting beliefs about grammar teaching. system, 84, 110–122. https:// doi.org/10.1016/j.system.2019.06.005 sato, m., & viveros, p. (2016). interaction or collaboration? group dynamics in the foreign language classroom. in m. sato & s. ballinger (eds.), language learning & language teaching (vol. 45, pp. 91–112). john benjamins. https://doi.org/10.1075/lllt.45.04sat schick-makaroff, k., macdonald, m., plummer, m., burgess, j., & neander, w. (2016). what synthesis methodology should i use? a review and analysis of approaches to research synthesis. aims public health, 3(1), 172–215. https://doi.org/10.3934/publichealth.2016.1.172 walczak, a., harrison, g., muratorio, m., flores, c., brunner, s., & docherty, c. (2017). which factors affect english language attainment? a study of school students in chile. research notes, 65, 51–65. walper, k. 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(2019). critical theory and qualitative data analysis in education. routledge. https://doi. org/10.4324/9781315158860 about the author claudio jaramillo-yanquepe is a phd candidate at the ontario institute of studies in education, oise, university of toronto (canada). he has been a teacher educator for 15 years. he holds an ma in tefl and has participated in efl curriculum design in the ministry of education in chile. https://doi.org/10.1787/9789264284425-en https://doi.org/10.1787/9789264284425-en https://doi.org/10.14483/calj.v18n2.8689 https://doi.org/10.1080/09502380601164353 https://doi.org/10.1080/09502380601164353 https://doi.org/10.1016/j.system.2019.06.005 https://doi.org/10.1016/j.system.2019.06.005 https://doi.org/10.1075/lllt.45.04sat https://doi.org/10.3934/publichealth.2016.1.172 https://doi.org/10.4324/9781315158860 exploring the reasons behind iranian tefl graduate students’ academic failure 151profile: issues teach. prof. dev., vol. 23 no. 2, jul-dec, 2021. issn 1657-0790 (printed) 2256-5760 (online). bogotá, colombia. pages 151-166 https://doi.org/10.15446/profile.v23n2.89251 exploring the reasons behind iranian tefl graduate students’ academic failure explorando las razones detrás del fracaso académico de los estudiantes iraníes de posgrado en enseñanza del inglés como lengua extranjera minoo alemi1 islamic azad university, west tehran branch, iran atefeh rezanejad allameh tabataba’i university, tehran, iran bijan marefat islamic azad university, tehran, iran this cross-sectional study explored the reasons behind academic failure among iranian students of teaching of english as a foreign language. interviews were used to collect data from 56 graduate students (19 men and 37 women) and three officials of the university. results indicated that four main factors led to the academic failure of the students, namely, (1) the student, (2) the professor, (3) the university, and (4) the source materials. moreover, the results of chi-square tests indicated that no significant relationship existed between the gender and age of the students and their academic failure. finally, a number of guidelines to prevent academic failure in this context are presented. keywords: academic failure, graduate students, iran, reasons, teaching of english as a foreign language este estudio interdisciplinar exploró las razones detrás del fracaso académico entre los estudiantes iraníes de enseñanza del inglés como lengua extranjera. el principal instrumento utilizado para la recolección de información fue la entrevista y los datos se obtuvieron de 56 estudiantes graduados (19 hombres y 37 mujeres) y tres miembros oficiales de la universidad. los resultados indicaron que cuatro factores principales condujeron al fracaso académico de los estudiantes; (1) el estudiante, (2) el profesor, (3) la universidad y (4) los materiales utilizados. además, los resultados de pruebas chi cuadrado indicaron que no existía una relación significativa entre el género y la edad de los estudiantes y su fracaso académico. finalmente, se presentan una serie de pautas para prevenir el fracaso académico. palabras clave: enseñanza del inglés como lengua extranjera, estudiantes de posgrado, fracaso académico, irán, razones minoo alemi  https://orcid.org/0000-0001-9703-831x · email: alemi@sharif.ir atefeh rezanejad  https://orcid.org/0000-0002-3271-4273 · email: atefeh_rezanejad92@atu.ac.ir bijan marefat  https://orcid.org/0000-0002-0615-134x · email: bijan.marefat@iseikco.com how to cite this article (apa, 7th ed.): alemi, m., rezanejad, a., & marefat, b. (2021). exploring the reasons behind iranian tefl graduate students’ academic failure. profile: issues in teachers’ professional development, 23(2), 151–166. https://doi.org/10.15446/profile.v23n2.89251 this article was received on july 18, 2020 and accepted on march 9, 2021. this is an open access article distributed under the terms of the creative commons license attribution-noncommercial-noderivatives 4.0 international license. consultation is possible at https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/ https://doi.org/10.15446/profile.v23n2.89251 https://orcid.org/0000-0001-9703-831x mailto:alemi@sharif.ir https://orcid.org/0000-0002-3271-4273 mailto:atefeh_rezanejad92@atu.ac.ir https://orcid.org/0000-0002-0615-134x mailto:bijan.marefat@iseikco.com https://doi.org/10.15446/profile.v23n2.89251 https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/ universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras152 alemi, rezanejad, & marefat introduction higher education in graduate levels has always been accompanied with different vicissitudes and the students in these levels confront different challenges before being able to accomplish their degree. interestingly, there is a general implicit assumption that those entering higher education will also be able to successfully finish the course, as they were permitted to enter it (ajjawi et al., 2019; fraser & killen, 2003). the concept of academic failure is of significant importance since it should not be regarded as a personal problem, but a social one which will lead to a great loss in educational expenses, the general progress, as well as the motivation of the students (hazavehei et al., 2006). to stress the significance, ajjawi et al. (2019) call it a “world-wide problem.” in fact, academia plays a very important role in the success or failure of the students (nkhoma et al., 2019). accordingly, identification of academic failure in the early stages of education has been brought into the limelight (sarra et al., 2019). the point is that, in some cases, there is a lack of correlation between the real capacities and talents of the students and their academic achievement level, in which it is necessary to provide the students with some guidance and help to overcome their challenges, as failure may mostly be due to improper instructional procedures or teaching methods (kochhar, 2000). whatever the reason, because of the great impact of pupils’ achievements on the whole society in general (ulriksen et al., 2010), more careful attention needs to be paid to this concept, its reasons, and also some solutions to eradicate the dilemma. against this backdrop, the present study focused on iranian teaching of english as a foreign language (tefl) graduate students who are experiencing more difficulty in their studies (due to studying in a non-english context) and have an important responsibility in educating efl students. the issue gets more prominence noting that nearly 10% of tefl students experience academic failure every semester and, unfortunately, most of them quit education. these facts motivated us to conduct this study and explore the reasons behind academic failure among the iranian graduate students of tefl. in the next stage of the study, we also conducted interviews with some university officials to investigate a set of practical procedures to solve the problem. literature review the concept of academic failure is complex and multidimensional and it may hinge upon numerous factors and reasons. generally, academic failure is defined as a lack of success in the educational process which may lead to numerous personal as well as social losses. lots of different factors have been cited as having an impact on the academic success or failure of university students, namely gender (pirmohamed et al., 2017), economic and financial issues (roman, 2014), different class times (beşoluk et al., 2011; enright & refinetti, 2017), lack of adaptability (collie et al., 2017), the students’ communication skills (abdullah, 2005), as well as limited technology and internet use (torres-díaz et al., 2016). as academic failure is a common phenomenon happening to different students in academia, different scholars have investigated the issue from diverse perspectives and in a variety of educational contexts. in the following section, we present a brief chronological review of some previous studies on the notion of academic failure in the university context. wimshurst and allard (2008) examined academic failure among 12,093 students in the faculty of arts of an australian university during the educational years of 1998 to 2000. to be more specific, they made a distinction between failure in reaching an acceptable grade and failure in the submission of projects. the results of their study indicated that male students, younger ones, and also those with lower scores on the entrance exam were among the majority of the failed ones. they also asserted that more than anything else, 153profile: issues teach. prof. dev., vol. 23 no. 2, jul-dec, 2021. issn 1657-0790 (printed) 2256-5760 (online). bogotá, colombia. pages 151-166 exploring the reasons behind iranian tefl graduate students’ academic failure personal and organizational factors were the most leading factors influencing academic failure. moreover, najimi et al. (2013) explored, through a questionnaire, the reasons behind academic failure among 280 medical sciences students from isfahan university in iran during the educational year 2009. the results of their study indicated that more than anything else the students believed that failure was rooted in inadequacies in the curriculum regarding the students’ needs and educational conditions. other influential factors were the educator, the learning environment, family, and socioeconomic conditions. they also reported a significant relationship between the gender of the students and some factors. however, no relationship was observed insofar as their ages, careers, or marital statuses and their attitudes. in the same vein, lancia et al. (2013) conducted a retrospective observational study on 1,006 italian nursing students starting their education at university in five different educational years. the aim was to explore the predicting factors in the success or failure of these students. more specifically, the impact of their grades in the uppersecondary levels and their entrance exam scores were observed. the results indicated that the students who failed had the lowest upper-secondary diploma grades. the results also showed that most of the failed students were men. moreover, sibanda et al. (2015) stressed the significance of observing both success and failure reasons and concepts through a validated questionnaire distributed among 94 entrepreneurship second year undergraduate students in south africa. the questionnaire included 38 items on factors related to academic success and 41 items on academic failure. the results indicated that regular study and class attendance were the main reasons for success and a noisy lecture environment was the top reason for failure. mansur et al., (2017) utilized social network analysis in order to discover the interrelationships between different aspects influencing the academic success or failure of 20 sample students. the results indicated that there were strong interactions among the students and, more than anything else, study time and the absence from classes had the strongest effect on the students’ failure. in another study, nkhoma et al. (2019) identified the reasons behind underperformance of the students in a university in southeast asia. the data were collected from 968 letters written by students who were at risk of failure. the results of their study revealed five main reasons for the academic failure of the students. the causes included the students’ learning skills, issues with the assessment, problems in time management, the university courses and, finally, the students’ family. finally, in one recent study, d’uggento et al., (2020) focused on the influence of economic status and financial problems of 7,485 university students in italy. the main aim was to explore the impact of tuition fees on the academic achievement of the students. two groups were involved: those who had economic problems and did not have to pay tuition fees and those who had to pay the fees. the results indicated a significant difference between the two groups and the group exempt from tuition fees outperformed the other one. as the review of the related studies shows, academic failure is an important issue which has recently been greatly noticed by academics, as it will lead to personal and social drawbacks. academia agree that some fundamental steps need to be taken in order to root out this issue to prevent greater societal losses in the future. thus, the issue of academic failure and achievement at university level needs more investigation. due to the multidimensional nature of academic failure (fullananoell, 1992), this need further extends to specific educational and cultural contexts and among different fields of study. to the best of our knowledge no other study has investigated the issue of academic failure at university level among iranian graduate students of tefl. accordingly, and due to the importance of this issue, the present study was set to probe the iranian graduate tefl students’ possible reasons behind academic failure universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras154 alemi, rezanejad, & marefat and the possible solutions to eradicate the problem. consequently, the following research questions were formulated: 1. what are the possible factors which influence iranian tefl graduate university students’ academic failure? 2. do these possible factors influencing tefl graduate university students vary according to gender? 3. do these possible factors influencing tefl graduate university students vary according to age? 4. what strategies can be implemented to reduce academic failure among iranian tefl graduate university students? method participants there were two main groups of participants in the current study. first, a total of 56 students (19 men and 37 women, with an average age of 27) were selected based on convenience sampling (a type of non-probability sampling method) and availability. they were in fact tefl graduate students with academic failure experience from one of the universities of tehran (islamic azad university). as the rules and regulations in the iranian universities say, any student whose scores fall below the standard (grade point average = 12 out of 20) for three semesters throughout his or her educational period will be sent to the university educational commission in order to be judged about his or her academic status. these students were in fact regarded as those with academic failure in the present study. second, three university officials took part in this study. they were interviewed to investigate their points of view regarding the sources of academic failure of students and the different procedures to be implemented in order to root out the problem. the first official was the head of the tefl department at the aforementioned university. she was in fact an associate professor who had more than 20 years of teaching experience in higher education in the field of tefl and was completely aware of the typical reasons of academic failure among the iranian university students. the other two officials were head of the education center and the deputy manager who were also in close contact with the majority of the students and, based on their work experience (25 years and 17 years, respectively), had valid information on the reasons behind academic failure. data collection instruments this study mainly drew on a semi-structured interview in order to collect more comprehensive and detailed data on the reasons behind academic failure among iranian graduate tefl students. semi-structured interviews were the most appropriate data collection procedure with the accessible graduate students who had experienced academic failure at university (mackey & gass, 2005). in fact, we used a preplanned list of questions, and we also asked further questions to elaborate for more information (see appendix). to facilitate the process of data collection, the confidential educational files of the failed students were carefully studied. later, the main outline of the interview was decided upon. it needs to be mentioned that the interview questions were also cross-checked by some psychologists and language experts to add to their validity. the interviews were conducted in the students’ first language (persian) and later the answers were translated into english. at the beginning of the interviews, the participants were kindly asked to introduce themselves and talk briefly about themselves and their educational background. later they were invited to share their own opinions and attitudes toward their academic failure through some series of short questions and answers between the interviewer and the students. each interview took between 15 to 20 minutes and was recorded with the interviewees’ permission for later analyses. later the interviews were transcribed and sent for content analysis. moreover, it needs to be pointed out that a similar protocol to the one used for the semi-structured inter155profile: issues teach. prof. dev., vol. 23 no. 2, jul-dec, 2021. issn 1657-0790 (printed) 2256-5760 (online). bogotá, colombia. pages 151-166 exploring the reasons behind iranian tefl graduate students’ academic failure views with the students was applied in conducting the interviews with the three official members. after setting an appropriate time, they were kindly asked to meet in the head of the department’s room. the interview was conducted in the form of a focus group and they were asked to share their views on the students’ academic failure. the interview lasted for about an hour and half and was led by one of the researchers. it was recorded and later transcribed for more comprehensive analysis. the interview was conducted in persian and later the transcriptions were translated into english. data analysis this study followed a qualitative research technique. the content analysis procedure was used in order to analyze the collected data. in this regard, conceptual content analysis (also known as thematic analysis) was manually employed to examine and quantify the presence of the contributing elements related to the concept of academic failure. to put it differently, we read and reviewed the interview transcripts many times; this way, we could create the initial codes which were revised some more by us and two other coders (a professor and an associate professor of tefl at the university) to ensure their validity and reliability. due to the nature of qualitative studies and the fact that codes are emergent, and based on dörnyei’s (2007) suggestion, we did not have any specific taxonomy in mind. this allowed for iterative revisions in the process of data analysis. different coders independently labelled these segments and the intercoder reliability analysis was conducted using spss and cohen’s kappa statistic was calculated. the results showed a kappa statistic of 0.97 (p < 0.001), which indicated an almost perfect intercoder agreement (von eye & mun, 2005). also, the frequencies and percentages of the different observed codes were reported. moreover, in order to inspect any significant relationship between the graduate university students’ gender or age and their academic failure, the statistical procedure of chi-square was utilized. results the first research question in this study was: “what are the possible factors which influence iranian tefl graduate university students’ academic failure?” the results of the interviews indicated that, generally, the iranian tefl graduate students considered four main factors affecting the academic failure of the students. as depicted in table 1, the majority of the participants (n = 39, 69.64%) generally thought that the student factor (including four subfactors) was the most important one. to clarify our findings, some examples of the comments by the participants are provided below. excerpt 1 illustrates subfactor 4, family problems, whereas excerpt 2 illustrates subfactor 3, economic and occupational problems. excerpt 1 you know, i like my major and studies. i always wanted to be successful in teaching english and everyone told me i can do it very well. but, unfortunately, recently i have been facing some personal problems in my family and you know, my mind is so engaged. i can’t concentrate. (female student, 36 years old)1 excerpt 2 my job is another important thing. i work every day for about nine hours, and i just need this money. i have to work…sometimes i had to skip some classes because of my job. (male student, 32 years old) the findings also indicated that the next mostly mentioned factor was the professor factor (with seven subfactors) stated by 53.57% (n = 30) of the participants. excerpt 3 illustrates subfactor 2, inappropriate teaching method, whereas excerpt 4 illustrates subfactor 3, unknowledgeable instructors. excerpt 3 not only me, but also most of my friends, well, we try so much to understand the lesson, but we really can’t. i mean, we listen to the lesson, we study hard, but we can’t still 1 all excerpts have been translated from persian by the authors. universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras156 alemi, rezanejad, & marefat figure out the content of the book. i think the professors need to teach better. (male student, 32 years old) excerpt 4 yes, i agree. unfortunately, some of our professors, of course just some of them, can’t properly answer our questions in the class. (female student, 29 years old) moreover, 44.64% (n = 25) of the participants believed that different issues related to the university can affect their academic success or failure. to be more specific, the university factor itself included seven subfactors and below some interview excerpts are provided to clarify the point. excerpt 5 illustrates subfactor 5, internet availability, whereas excerpt 6 illustrates subfactor 7, the library and educational resources. excerpt 5 as far as i know, the other universities have free internet services for the students, but here, i don’t know why we always have connection problems. as an ma student i need to search a lot and update my knowledge. (male student, 30 years old) excerpt 6 we have a library, yes, but i can’t find every book that i need there. sometimes i have to go to some other nearby universities or finally just buy them in the market. (male student, 31 years old) table 1. descriptive statistics for the factors affecting academic failure main factors subfactors frequency percentage student factor 1. lack of interest & adequate preparation 15 26.78% 2. low linguistic knowledge & irrelevant ba degree 10 17.85% 3. economic & occupational problems 8 14.28% 4. family problems 6 10.71% total 39 69.64% professor factor 1. lack of proper behavior from instructor 14 25% 2. inappropriate teaching method 10 17.85% 3. unknowledgeable instructors 2 3.57% 4. assigning non relevant term projects 4 7.14% total 30 53.57% university factors 1. university administrators and their behavior 4 7.14% 2. managerial programming 3 5.35% 3. classroom facilities and equipment 3 5.35% 4. accurate and good classes schedules 4 7.14% 5. internet availability 3 5.35% 6. tuition fees 6 10.71% 7. the library and educational resources 2 3.57% total 25 44.64% sources factor 1. relevance of the source materials 4 7.14% 2. the size and bulk of the reading materials & projects 5 8.92% 3. new or old teaching materials 2 3.57% total 11 19.64% 157profile: issues teach. prof. dev., vol. 23 no. 2, jul-dec, 2021. issn 1657-0790 (printed) 2256-5760 (online). bogotá, colombia. pages 151-166 exploring the reasons behind iranian tefl graduate students’ academic failure furthermore, the least mentioned factor was related to the source materials. by and large, 19.64% (n = 11) of the participants mentioned this point. excerpt 7 illustrates subfactor 2, the size and bulk of the reading materials & projects, whereas excerpt 8 illustrates subfactor 3, new or old teaching materials. excerpt 7 this term we had a lesson named as testing, and we had to read about an overall of 500 pages, can you believe it?! it was too much really. [sic] (female student, 28 years old) excerpt 8 another problem that i have is that some older professors introduce us some very old resources, i mean some outdated books, and we don’t like to read them, because…well, they are not interesting anymore. [sic] (female student, 27 years old) the second research question in this study was: “do these possible factors influencing tefl graduate university students vary according to gender?” since most of the graduate students of tefl (more than 70%) were women, there was no equilibrium between women and men in this study. thirty-seven women and 19 men participated in the interviews. thus, the data obtained from 17 male students were compared to data of 17 female students who were selected randomly and analyzed by spss. the report with the results and analysis is as follow: table 2 shows the frequency of main factors in interviews across gender. as can be seen, the most important factors were the students (n = 34, 33.33%), the professor (n = 28, 27.5%), university (n = 22, 21.6%), and sources (n = 18, 17.6%). in addition, it needs to be pointed out that the results of the chi-square test (x2 (3) = 3.50, p = .95) of independence showed that there was no statistically significant relationship between gender and academic failure. the third research question in this study was: “do these possible factors influencing tefl graduate university students vary according to age?” the age range of the participants was between 22 and 50 years. to facilitate the data analysis, it was divided into three groups of 22–30 as the first group, 30–40 as the second group, and more than 40 as the third age group. table 3 shows the frequency of the main factors of academic failure mentioned by the participants in the interviews across different age groups (i.e., 20–30, 30–40, and above 40). regarding student, the most frequently mentioned factor (n = 34, 33.3%), was found nine (26.5%) times in the 20–30 group, 17 (50%) times in the 30–40 group, and eight (23.5%) times in the above-40 table 2. student, professor, university, and materials sources and gender crosstabulation   gender total women men main reported factors student count 17 17 34 (33.3%) % within main 50 50 100 professor count 16 12 28 (27.5%) % within main 57.1 42.9 100 university count 12 10 22 (21.6%) % within main 54.5 45.5 100 sources count 10 8 18 (17.6%) % within main 55.6 44.4 100 total count 55 47 102 (100%) % within main 53.9 46.1 100.0 universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras158 alemi, rezanejad, & marefat group. also, with regard to sources, the least frequently mentioned factor (n = 18, 17.6%), was found three (16.7%) times in the 20–30 group, 11 (61.1%) times in the 30–40 group and four (22.2%) times in the above-40 group. in addition, it needs to be pointed out that the results of the chi-square test of independence (x2 (6) = 2.05, p = .91) indicated that there was no statistically significant relationship between the age of the participants and their academic failure. the fourth research question in this study was: “what strategies can be implemented to reduce academic failure among iranian tefl graduate university students?” in order to answer the last research question and figure out some fundamental solutions to the problem of academic failure among tefl graduate students, three official workers were interviewed. the results of the interviews and their mentioned guidelines are summarized here in this section. an excerpt of this focus-group interview is presented below (for the sake of anonymity they are presented as a, b, and c, and it needs to be noted that they are our own translation). a: yes, as dr. x said we have lots of economic problems currently in our country. everything is getting more and more expensive every day and our students need to work in order to be able to pay the tuition fees and this is not easy for them to work and study at the same time. i heard many times that some students can’t attend classes on time because of their job. c: yeah, economic problems cannot be denied, of course. especially in the case of male students who are also married and have a family of their own. a: exactly. b: i agree with you, but don’t forget that we are not talking about kids in primary school, we are discussing the issue concerning university students in higher levels, so in my idea our students need to accept the responsibility of their education more fully. . . what i am going to say is that, as far as i can see, most of the students don’t have enough motivation to continue their studies. they feel they have no future as there is a lot unemployment in the society. we need to boost their motivation to study and be present in academic contexts. a: yeah, sure. c: you are right. they are not very motivated. but what can we do? i feel it’s like something intrinsic. b: well, the teacher, the class, the environment, they are very important. our students mainly need to feel and get that motivation from their professors. table 3. student, professor, university, and materials sources and age crosstabulation   age total 20–30 30–40 +40 main factors students count 9 17 8 34 (33.3%) % within main 26.5 50.0 23.5 100 professor count 6 15 7 28 (27.5%) % within main 21.4 53.6 25.0 100 university count 7 9 6 22 (21.6%) % within main 31.8 40.9 27.3 100 sources count 3 11 4 18 (17.6%) % within main 16.7 61.1 22.2 100 total count 25 52 25 102 (100%) % within main 24.5 51.0 24.5 100 159profile: issues teach. prof. dev., vol. 23 no. 2, jul-dec, 2021. issn 1657-0790 (printed) 2256-5760 (online). bogotá, colombia. pages 151-166 exploring the reasons behind iranian tefl graduate students’ academic failure after the interviews were conducted, we decided to present the results in the form of some readily accessible and easily applied guidelines so that the academics would easily be able to implement them. it needs to be noted that the extracted guidelines were later sent to the three official members to be cross-checked. accordingly, they all agreed on and favored these concluding 13 items. these guidelines are as follows and are presented in the order in which they were raised in the discussion: 1. it would be better to accept and enroll students in the graduate courses with similar degrees in the undergraduate levels. 2. universities may limit the accepted students to those with only top scores. 3. as most of the students at graduate levels are married or work full-time jobs, considering some classes on weekends (thursday and friday in iran) may seem a good idea, so that all students would be able to attend the classes. 4. the students at any level of education need to be encouraged not to lose motivation. in this regard, it would be better to reward the students with high scores and remind them of the long path they have taken. 5. as many students mentioned that financial problems are a key factor in academic failure, the universities need to facilitate and help the new students with their registration process, especially during the first semester. 6. the universities need to employ experienced, responsible, and pleasant professors who will actively assist the students in finishing their degrees. 7. training teachers on how to care for the students’ needs is of significant value too. teachers need to be taught the main elements of fruitful tutoring. 8. professors need to be more cooperative, kind, and treat all students equally. 9. the assignments and term projects are also a very important issue. university professors need to take care to assign appropriate, related, and useful term projects; ones which will lead to students’ real engagement and learning. 10. universities need to provide the students with the required modern pedagogical facilities. 11. different parts of the university (such as library, café, or labs) need to be equipped according to the main needs of the students so that they would feel comfortable in the educational milieu. 12. the university tuition needs to be decreased and students with financial problems should be identified and supported. 13. with regard to teaching materials, the sources need to be interesting, manageable, up-to-date, and newly published. this will lead to more active participation of the students in class activities. discussion the present study aimed at identifying the main reasons behind academic failure among the iranian tefl graduate students who have experienced it. the careful content analysis of the interviews indicated that, generally, four main factors, namely, the student, the professor, the university, and the sources, pertain to the issue. it needs to be noted that each of these factors included some subfactors. moreover, no significant relationship was observed between the gender and age of the participants and their academic failure. with regard to the observed factors in the failure or success of the students, our results are in line with wimshurst and allard (2008), who also reported that the student factor accounted for 15% of failure among australian students. their results also indicated that the course or the source factors accounted for 32% of the academic failure rate. almuammria (2015) also reported that some factors such as the learner, family, and the educational context can affect the academic achievements of the students. by the same token, sibanda et al., (2015) also pointed out that those factors related to the student himself/herself (e.g., regular studies, hard work, and regular attendance in classes) were universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras160 alemi, rezanejad, & marefat among the highest rated factors in the success of the students. similarly, ajjawi et al., (2019) and brooker et al. (2017) also stated that students’ lack of skills in time management to properly complete their term projects and studies on time was a main reason for their academic failure. moreover, the economic and occupational problems brought up in the present study (n = 8, 14.28%), were also pointed to in the study done by sahragard and ansaripour (2014) on 170 iranian tefl students. in addition, nearly 25% (n = 14) of our participants argued that family and financial problems may lead to academic failure. this brings to the fore the different responsibilities that both male and female students may experience during higher education besides their personal life. this finding resonates with ajjawi et al. (2019), who also reported higher rates of failure among students who led complex personal or occupational lives. our findings are further in tandem with naylor et al. (2018) and o’shea (2015), as they have also found that managing a life with complex identities will lead to higher rates of academic failure. however, the current study’s results are not in accordance with sibanda et al. (2015). in their study, they found that the relationship between the teacher and the students were among the least rated factors. however, in the present study more than half of the participants (n = 30, 53.57%) claimed that the instructors can be an important factor in the academic failure or success of the tefl graduate iranian students. this may in fact be rooted in the specific socio-cultural backgrounds of the students in different countries. similarly, kaivanpanah and ghasemi (2011) stated that the teacher, teaching materials, and the educational facilities, are the main factors which may cause demotivation and lead to academic failure among the iranian students at university level. nevertheless, our results run counter to those of dörnyei and ushioda (2011) in which the teacher was reported to be the prominent factor of demotivation/academic failure, while in this study it was placed second as the reasons for academic failure. furthermore, in line with our study, the results of the study by al-jamal and al-jamal (2014) indicated that the university and the class environment were among the leading factors in the academic performance of the students. some other factors, reported in the present study, such as the student and occupational problems were also reported by aydin (2012). additionally, with regard to the other factors, roman (2014) also reported that economic status and financial issues were significant factors in the academic failure of the students of bucharest university of economic studies. furthermore, concerning source factors, it was observed that nearly 9% (n = 5) of the students thought that many students fail different courses because of the number of projects, too much homework, and, accordingly, the stress arising from them. this finding is in line with naylor et al. (2018) who also reported the same results regarding the workload put on the students’ shoulders among the australian first-year university students. as mentioned before, this study also sought to investigate whether these possible factors influencing iranian tefl graduate university students var y according to gender. the results, however, indicated that there was no significant relationship between the two variables. the results of the present study are consistent with some previous studies (e.g., muhonen, 2004; rastegar et al., 2012) which also reported no significant differences between men and women concerning their academic failure. in fact, what needs to be mentioned is that generally female students outnumber the male ones in graduate levels in iran and this may be the reason for having more failed female students in the department. on the contrary, the results of our study run counter to those of wimshurst and allard (2008), who reported that the majority of failed students were men, and this was justified by their lack of motivation and engagement 161profile: issues teach. prof. dev., vol. 23 no. 2, jul-dec, 2021. issn 1657-0790 (printed) 2256-5760 (online). bogotá, colombia. pages 151-166 exploring the reasons behind iranian tefl graduate students’ academic failure in the course. similarly, mcinnis and hartley’s (2002) study also indicated that younger male students were less engaged with the teaching material during the course. the results of the studies done by mclaughlin et al. (2010) as well as mulholland et al., (2008) also indicated that, generally, female students are more successful in graduating within the official educational semester. lancia et al. (2013) also reported that the majority of failed nursing students were male students. in the same vein, izadi sabet et al. (2015) also argued that there were more cases of academic failure among men rather than women in the iranian medical universities. however, our results indicated no statistically significant relation between gender and academic failure. similarly, mozahem (2019) also argued that course withdrawal rates among engineering courses and among male students in bachelor level are higher. in the same way, d’uggento et al. (2020) also reported that italian female students were more likely to successfully complete their academic courses. another section of this study was concerned with whether these possible factors influencing iranian tefl graduate university students vary according to age. we wanted to figure out if any relationship exists between age and the academic achievements of the iranian graduate students in tefl. the results displayed that there was no significant relationship between the age of the students and their academic success or failure. as all of the participants were from graduate level, it sounded logical that they had reached an acceptable degree of sensibility and intelligence; one which could justify the significance of higher education and academic advancements. the results of our study are in tandem with dante et al. (2011) and bulfone et al. (2011), who also reported that there was no significant relationship between the students’ ages and their academic failure. this lack of any relationship could be due to the educational level of the students. nevertheless, the current study’s findings contrast with the study by mulholland et al. (2008), as they reported that there was a significant relationship between the age of the university nursing students and their level of academic achievement. similarly, pryjmachuk et al. (2009) also stated that a strong relationship was found between age and the possibility of academic failure. in this regard, academic failure was more prevalent among younger students, which may of course be justified on the grounds of the increased ability level of older students in comparison to the younger ones. the final aim of the current study was to figure out some practical guidelines that can easily be applied in the academic context in order to reduce academic failure rates. the results of the interviews with the official workers at university showed some interesting and viable techniques to be implemented. the point is that, just as azari et al. (2015) argue, the future consequences of academic failure are so great that there is a more than ever need to solve the issue through conducting workshops or educational courses for those students who are at risk of failing, and perhaps also with professors to make them aware of these problems, as they play a significant role. we hope that the results of the current study will remind academia of the significance of raising awareness of the professors and also of the students regarding the negative personal and social consequences of academic failure and the factors and possible solutions. conclusion this cross-sectional study aimed at investigating the reasons behind academic failure among iranian graduate tefl students. the results of this study indicated that, overall, four main factors were regarded as important in the academic failure of the students, namely, the student, the professor, the university, and the sources materials. moreover, it was found that no significant relationship existed between the gender and age of the students and their academic failure. as the results of the current study showed, there is no single reason for the academic failure of the graduate students and numerous factors play a role. this further proves the universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras162 alemi, rezanejad, & marefat complex nature of the phenomenon and the necessity of dealing more meticulously with the issue. the results of the current study can have important implications for academics not only in the field of tefl but in any other field of study as academic failure has become very common in that many students are experiencing it, which has an impact on university dropout rates (ajjawi et al., 2019; li & carroll, 2017). we would argue that in any educational context or level, a better understanding of the influential factors on the academic success or failure of the students can lead to a redirection in the instructional procedures, which in itself may later lead to improvements in the students’ education and a whole different society. the main goal is in fact the long-term success of the students. it seems that the first step in this regard is raising the awareness of students and professors to the main reasons for low achievements at university level. hopefully, by knowing the reasons and causes of failure, both groups will be more capable of dealing with the issue and overcoming the challenges of eliminating failure. moreover, as argued by some scholars (e.g., hai-tao et al., 2020; karaci, 2019; sheng-dong, 2011), an important procedure to be taken in order to root out academic failure is related to its prediction. more and more educational contexts are becoming cognizant of the fact that early predictions of the students’ failure would definitely inhibit the issue to some extent and assist both the instructors and the students in taking follow-up actions. in this regard, it is highly recommended that universities devote more attention to the students’ academic status, trace their failure and success from the beginning, and accordingly take any necessary follow-up step. just like any research study, this study has its own limitations too and caution must be exercised when generalizing its results. the present research was only focused on the academic failure of tefl ma students in one of the universities in iran. we also investigated the relationship between academic failure and the variables of gender and age. moreover, academic failure was investigated based on the reported results from the students and the professors, but not from their actual performance. future interested researchers may explore the topic in a wider context and with a higher number of participants. in addition, there is a need to investigate the effects of more variables such as ethnicity, financial status, and family background. also, similar studies may be conducted across different fields of study and among the students of different levels (i.e., ba and phd) as well as different fields or areas of knowledge. moreover, another interesting line of research, mostly neglected, would be to explore the students’ personal and emotional responses to academic failure and the consequences afterward. references abdullah, a. 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(2016). internet use https://doi.org/10.1016/j.procs.2017.10.031 https://doi.org/10.1016/j.nedt.2009.08.005 https://doi.org/10.1108/jarhe-11-2018-0225 https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1365-2648.2008.04758.x https://doi.org/10.4103/2277-9531.112698 https://doi.org/10.4103/2277-9531.112698 https://doi.org/10.1080/07294360.2017.1370438 https://doi.org/10.1080/07294360.2017.1370438 https://doi.org/10.1080/0144929x.2019.1617349 https://doi.org/10.1080/0144929x.2019.1617349 https://doi.org/10.1037/a0038996 https://doi.org/10.1108/jarhe-03-2016-0015 https://doi.org/10.1108/jarhe-03-2016-0015 https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1365-2648.2008.04852.x https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1365-2648.2008.04852.x https://doi.org/10.1016/j.sbspro.2013.12.679 https://doi.org/10.1007/s11205-018-1901-8 https://doi.org/10.15407/dse2015.02.103 https://doi.org/10.15407/dse2015.02.103 165profile: issues teach. prof. dev., vol. 23 no. 2, jul-dec, 2021. issn 1657-0790 (printed) 2256-5760 (online). bogotá, colombia. pages 151-166 exploring the reasons behind iranian tefl graduate students’ academic failure and academic success in university students. comunicar: revista científica de comunicación y educación, 24(2), 61–70. https://doi.org/10.3916/c48-2016-06 ulriksen, l., madsen, l. m., & holmegaard, h. t. (2010). what do we know about explanations for drop out/opt out among young people from stm higher education programmes? studies in science education, 46(2), 209– 244. https://doi.org/10.1080/03057267.2010.504549 von eye, a., & mun, e. y. (2005). analyzing rater agreement: manifest variable methods. lawrence erlbaum. wimshurst, k., & allard, t. (2008). personal and institutional characteristics of student failure. assessment & evaluation in higher education, 33(6), 687–698. https://doi. org/10.1080/02602930701772911 about the authors minoo alemi is associate professor of applied linguistics at islamic azad university, west tehran branch. she is the associate editor of applied pragmatics and sits on the editorial boards of many journals. her areas of interest include l2 pragmatics, technology enhancement education, teacher education, and esp. she has also published over 100 papers in different journals. atefeh rezanejad holds a phd in tefl from allameh tabataba’i university, tehran, iran. she has taught english since 2003 and currently she is instructing students in various university courses in applied linguistics. her areas of interest include intercultural language learning, pragmatics, teacher educations, and sociolinguistics. bijan marefat holds an ma in tefl from islamic azad university, west tehran branch, iran. he has taught english for more than 30 years and his main areas of interest include pragmatics, esp, and textbook evaluation. https://doi.org/10.3916/c48-2016-06 https://doi.org/10.1080/03057267.2010.504549 https://doi.org/10.1080/02602930701772911 https://doi.org/10.1080/02602930701772911 universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras166 alemi, rezanejad, & marefat appendix: interview questions 1. please tell me a little about yourself. 2. what is failure in your opinion? how about academic failure? 3. have you ever failed? tell us about a time when you failed? 4. how did you deal with your academic failure? how did you handle your failures? 5. why do you think you failed? what was/were the reason(s)? 6. how do you think you can prevent academic failure? 7. what is/are your suggestion(s) for reducing academic failure? 8. is it possible to stop academic failure completely? efl preservice teachers’ technology integration in managing and teaching speaking skills during emergency remote teaching 149profile: issues teach. prof. dev., vol. 24 no. 2, jul-dec, 2022. issn 1657-0790 (printed) 2256-5760 (online). bogotá, colombia. pages 149-165 https://doi.org/10.15446/profile.v24n2.97497 efl preservice teachers’ technology integration in managing and teaching speaking skills during emergency remote teaching integración de la tecnología por parte de docentes de inglés en formación en la gestión y enseñanza de habilidades orales durante la enseñanza remota de emergencia i putu indra kusuma1 universitas pendidikan ganesha, singaraja, indonesia this study aimed at investigating the efl preservice teachers’ technology integration in managing and teaching speaking skills online during emergency remote teaching in indonesia. this study employed a single case study approach by implementing an explanatory sequential mixed method design. the findings showed that even though the preservice teachers used various technology tools, they frequently implemented whatsapp, youtube, and google forms for classroom management and teaching speaking purposes. this study offers some implications to advance english language teacher education programs to prepare the future efl preservice teachers in the post-pandemic era. keywords: covid-19, english as a foreign language, preservice teachers, technology integration, teaching speaking online en este estudio se investigó la integración de la tecnología por parte de futuros docentes de inglés como lengua extranjera en el manejo y enseñanza de las habilidades del habla en línea durante la enseñanza remota de emergencia en indonesia. se empleó un enfoque de estudio de caso único mediante la implementación de un diseño de método mixto secuencial explicativo. los hallazgos mostraron que aunque los docentes en formación utilizaban diversas herramientas tecnológicas, con frecuencia implementaban whatsapp, youtube y google forms para la gestión del aula y la enseñanza de la conversación en inglés. este estudio ofrece algunas implicaciones para el avance de los programas de formación de docentes de inglés en la era pospandémica. palabras clave: covid-19, docentes en formación, enseñanza oral en línea, inglés como lengua extranjera, integración de la tecnología i putu indra kusuma  https://orcid.org/0000-0002-1574-6070 · email: indra.kusuma@undiksha.ac.id how to cite this article (apa, 7th ed.): kusuma, i. p. i. (2022). efl preservice teachers’ technology integration in managing and teaching speaking skills during emergency remote teaching. profile: issues in teachers’ professional development, 24(2), 149–165. https://doi. org/10.15446/profile.v24n2.97497 this article was received on july 27, 2021 and accepted on may 11, 2022. this is an open access article distributed under the terms of the creative commons license attribution-noncommercial-noderivatives 4.0 international license. consultation is possible at https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/ https://doi.org/10.15446/profile.v24n2.97497 https://orcid.org/0000-0002-1574-6070 mailto:indra.kusuma@undiksha.ac.id https://doi.org/10.15446/profile.v24n2.97497 https://doi.org/10.15446/profile.v24n2.97497 https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/ universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras150 kusuma introduction covid-19 has significantly altered education worldwide (nisiforou et al., 2021), including english language teaching (yi & jang, 2020). hundreds of countries discontinued school instruction because of this virus’s rapid spread (basilaia & kvavadze, 2020; viner et al., 2020). thus, teachers had no choice but to provide emergency remote teaching (ert) in online modes (chang, 2021; evans et al., 2020; ferdiansyah et al., 2020; moorhouse & beaumont, 2020) as an alternative to prevent covid-19 from spreading to pupils (gerber & leong, 2021; murphy, 2020). however, this quick shift to ert is novel for educators, particularly for preservice teachers who may lack online teaching experiences but must still undertake online practice teaching. although most of the current preservice teachers are considered digital natives very acquainted with technology (park & son, 2020; thompson, 2013), implementing technology to manage online courses and teach english online during ert might not be as simple as people assume. moreover, previous studies show that english as a foreign language (efl) preservice teachers inconsistently integrate technology in their teaching (batane & ngwako, 2017; baz et al., 2018, 2019; park & son, 2020). moreover, in english language learning, speaking is considered the most difficult one to learn among the four language skills (zhang, 2009), and it undoubtedly requires certain considerations to be taught. during the quick shift to ert, technology integration certainly becomes one of such considerations. but, unfortunately, little is known regarding how efl preservice teachers would integrate technology in managing and teaching speaking skills during ert, especially pertaining to online instruction. additionally, very little is known about which tools they intend to use and how they plan to use them. considering these gaps, this study aimed at investigating a group of indonesian preservice teachers’ technology integration in managing and teaching speaking skills online during ert. the research question that guided the study was: how did a group of efl preservice teachers integrate technology in managing and teaching speaking skills online during ert due to the covid-19 pandemic? literature review teaching speaking skills using technology effective communication necessitates the ability to do both monologues and dialogues (burns & joyce, 1997). therefore, speaking is an essential part of language development (naibaho, 2019) because it is both a necessity and a means of communicating ideas. additionally, having good oral communication proficiency is viewed as an achievement in language learning (piechurska-kuciel, 2015) since people tend to judge the learners who are new to a foreign language on their ability to communicate using that language (mcdonough et al., 2013). thus, mastering english speaking skills is always one of the focuses of language learners (kusuma, 2020). recent technological advancements have had a profound impact on teaching speaking skills. for instance, the personal computer, internet-accessible devices, and computer programs have provided foreign language learners with opportunities to obtain more authentic materials and learning experiences (bowles et al., 2015; golonka et al., 2014; kern, 2006). with all features and benefits, technology supports english language learning (bowles et al., 2015; chun et al., 2016; golonka et al., 2014). a growing number of studies have also revealed that technology disruptions—a current term representing technological innovations in education using technology tools that are not initially designed for teaching and learning purposes—are being implemented to facilitate speaking activities (amiryousefi, 2019; cepik & yastibas, 2013; h.-c. hsu, 2016; huang & hung, 2010; hung & huang, 2015a, 2015b; sun & yang, 2015). for example, watkins and wilkins (2011) utilized youtube to improve 151profile: issues teach. prof. dev., vol. 24 no. 2, jul-dec, 2022. issn 1657-0790 (printed) 2256-5760 (online). bogotá, colombia. pages 149-165 efl preservice teachers’ technology integration in managing and teaching speaking skills... students’ learning exposure to languages, linguistic knowledge, and cultures. several studies have also adapted youtube for teaching and classroom management purposes. for instance, youtube has been adapted as a means of submitting speaking videos where the students upload their videos on youtube instead of sending them via email to the teacher (cepik & yastibas, 2013; sun & yang, 2015). additionally, lin and hwang (2018) implemented the commenting feature on facebook for students’ discussions. furthermore, amiryousefi (2019) and ferdiansyah et al. (2020) adapted social network services—such as telegram and whatsapp— and used them to support students’ learning by posting instructions, text, audio, and videos. the above studies have shown that the implementation of technology tools has facilitated technology disruptions in english language teaching and could exert better speaking activities and performances. thus, technology disruptions improve the technology-enhanced language learning paradigm. efl preservice teachers’ practice teaching using technology increasing the quality of teachers could improve the quality of schools and boost the students’ education (opfer & pedder, 2011). teacher education programs (teps) are therefore necessary to generate well-trained teachers. teps are responsible for providing teachers with knowledge and teaching experiences. to date, many teps around the globe have provided their preservice teachers with technological pedagogical content knowledge (tpack; yüksel & kavanoz, 2011), a framework that helps teachers to understand how to teach a subject matter using technology (koehler & mishra, 2005, 2009; mishra & koehler, 2006). according to koehler and mishra (2005, 2009), tpack consists of seven domains: technology knowledge, content knowledge, pedagogy knowledge, technological pedagogical knowledge, technological content knowledge, pedagogical content knowledge, and tpack. this framework is often inserted into the curriculum through technology courses, content-specific courses, pedagogy courses, and teaching experiences (hofer & grandgenett, 2012). related to technology courses, kusuma (2021) reported that indonesian english language teps provided technology and educational technology courses to their efl preservice teachers. moreover, the instructors also implemented various technology tools to give examples and meaningful learning experiences to their efl preservice teachers. technology courses, content-specific courses, and pedagogy courses are expected to provide the preservice teachers with technology knowledge, content knowledge, and pedagogy knowledge. these three knowledge domains are necessary to create balanced interplays (zyad, 2016) to yield other knowledge, such as technological pedagogical knowledge, technological content knowledge, pedagogical content knowledge, and tpack. thus, preservice teachers will have the knowledge and skills to manage and teach english using technology. recent studies have demonstrated that tpack has affected how much someone prefers using technology and their willingness to integrate new technology into their teaching (habibi et al., 2020; l. hsu, 2016; incik & akay, 2017; joo et al., 2018; yildizdurak, 2019). thus, the knowledge of using technology gained by preservice teachers from teps that introduce the tpack framework is expected to influence their technology integration in their teaching. while having a solid understanding is necessary for becoming a skilled teacher, efl preservice teachers also require field experience through teaching practicum or practice teaching. the teaching practicum is a means for learning how to teach, and it offers preservice teachers the chance to strengthen their identities, both as individuals and as teachers, by using what they have learned from teps (altalhab et al., 2021; safari, 2020). furthermore, it makes the preservice teachers feel more prepared before their induction phase, which is the phase of their first year as teachers (haim et al., 2020). interestingly, regarding technology integration during practice teaching, some recent studies have found universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras152 kusuma that preservice teachers in their practice teaching tend not to utilize technology in their induction teaching phase—even if they were well acquainted with it— mainly because of unfamiliarity with the tools used in schools and the lack of supporting infrastructures. for instance, merç (2015) recruited 86 efl preservice teachers in turkey to explore their use of technology in their practice teaching and found that schools lacked the necessary technology tools to enable these preservice teachers to use technology in their practice. merç also found that these preservice teachers did not implement technology because they were unfamiliar with the tools implemented by the schools. similarly, baz et al. (2019) conducted a study with 22 turkish efl preservice teachers, following their training on the voicethread program. the authors found that the participants had no intention of implementing this platform due to the lack of facilities available in most schools. conversely, other studies have found the opposite, that is, a great interest on the part of efl preservice teachers in using technology during their induction phase. for instance, baz et al. (2018) reported that 36 turkish efl preservice teachers incorporated numerous technology tools—such as instagram, skype, twitter, and powerpoint—to enhance their teaching further. in addition, park and son’s (2020) longitudinal study with six efl preservice teachers in hong kong showed that they implemented several types of software and web resources—such as digital audio editors, recording programs, online quiz applications, learning management systems, and video sharing websites. furthermore, akayoglu et al. (2020) conducted a study and found that 113 turkish preservice teachers implemented technology tools, such as social media tools, learning management tools, quiz maker platforms, material design applications, presentation tools, and online storage applications. finally, fathi and ebadi (2020) researched how six iranian efl preservice teachers used numerous technology tools to teach english after training. unfortunately, the above studies did not report on how those tools were implemented when managing and teaching speaking skills, especially in fully online learning modes. emergency remote teaching during the covid-19 pandemic several recent studies have documented how rapid ert was undertaken during this pandemic period. for instance, in a study by evans et al. (2020), google meet and google classroom were extensively used. evans et al., in implementing google meet, would start the class using poems, vocabulary, or images. then, they asked the students to talk about the language used in the text. the researchers also instructed the students to create tasks and submitted them to google classroom. this study showed that google meet and google classroom could be used as technology tools for conducting ert. another example is moorhouse and beaumont (2020), who developed an online english course for an english language teacher in hong kong. this development was initiated by the disappointment toward the synchronous mode provided by a school where this teacher taught during ert. moorhouse and beaumont designed live lessons via zoom for this teacher. additionally, the teacher also implemented various innovative technology tools throughout the live classes, including mentimeter and kahoot for quizzes and games. thus, combining zoom and other platforms seemed to help this english language teacher to conduct online teaching even though it remains unclear whether this combination is effective or not. apparently, using zoom as a means to perform synchronous modes is very popular in hong kong. chang (2021) also described his teaching experience during this pandemic time using zoom and moodle to teach english literature to his students, where he would explain the materials using zoom and often ended the course with a discussion on moodle. in addition, using online literature circles and whatsapp to give instruction, ferdiansyah et al. (2020) had their pupils follow their lead. during ert, the pupils 153profile: issues teach. prof. dev., vol. 24 no. 2, jul-dec, 2022. issn 1657-0790 (printed) 2256-5760 (online). bogotá, colombia. pages 149-165 efl preservice teachers’ technology integration in managing and teaching speaking skills... were instructed to read several chapters of books and discuss via the voice message feature in whatsapp. then, the students wrote summaries of what they had read and could use digital writing assistants, online dictionaries, or other platforms to support writing their summaries. thus, ferdiansyah et al. have shown the possible implementation of whatsapp for education, conversation, and group work. the above studies have shed some light on the preservice teachers’ technology integration in teaching english and how ert was conducted. however, the studies reviewed above have shown several important gaps, especially during the sudden online teaching due to the covid-19 pandemic. the above studies did not investigate how preservice teachers used ert to manage and teach speaking skills during this pandemic. the information of which technology tools and how they are implemented for ert will add to the literature of teaching english using technology. method design, setting, and context of research to have a complete understanding of the participants’ varied experiences, i employed a case study approach through detailed data collection (creswell & poth, 2018; merriam & tisdell, 2016; stake, 1995). particularly, i employed a single case study approach to explore a unique case (stake, 1995). therefore, even though the participants were from different universities, the single case study allows them to come from various groups (see schoch, 2019; yin, 2018) as long as one case is investigated. furthermore, the case investigated in this study was the indonesian efl preservice teachers’ technology integration, and it was bounded in teaching speaking skills online during ert due to the covid-19 pandemic. moreover, a single case study allows the implementation of mixed methods (yin, 2018). therefore, to get profound data to explain the case, this study employed an explanatory sequential mixed methods design that started by collecting quantitative data and used them to plan the qualitative phase (creswell & creswell, 2018). in this study, i collected the quantitative data through a survey, and i also used semi-structured interviews based on the data gathered from the survey. this study was conducted in indonesia since i am an indonesian lecturer and a faculty member at a state education university in indonesia, enabling easy access to contact the research sites. i then contacted potential education universities with english language teps and preservice teachers who had finished conducting online practice teaching. in the end, out of six universities contacted, only three education universities (two state and one private) gave access to conduct this study with their preservice teachers. these three universities have long histories in indonesian education and are very well known for their quality of english language teps. furthermore, these three universities offered four-year programs with the tpack framework in which the curriculum provided the efl preservice teachers with content, pedagogy, and technology knowledge through relevant courses. participants prior to contacting the participants, i sought irb approval. once the proposal was approved, i invited approximately 400 indonesian efl preservice teachers from three education universities in indonesia through an email that described the present study, including the risks, benefits of joining this study, and the link to the survey. a month later, 301 indonesian efl preservice teachers (203 women and 98 men) completed the questionnaires with a 75.25% return rate. to support the data gathered from the survey, i also recruited 18 male (n = 9) and female (n = 9) preservice teachers who had completed the questionnaires for the interviews using the purposive sampling technique (ary et al., 2019; mertens, 2015). these indonesian efl preservice teachers had conducted online practice teaching for 3–4 months in 2020. for confidentiality purposes, the universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras154 kusuma participants in this study are labelled with numbers from 1 to 18. on average, the 18 participants who were interviewed were 21 years old and were assigned to teach in junior (n = 10) and senior high schools (n = 8). methods of data collection and instrument in this study, i employed data/source triangulation (farmer et al., 2006; farquhar et al., 2020) to ensure the validity of the research results (farmer et al., 2006; stake, 1995) through collecting data from various sources, such as questionnaires, online interviews with efl preservice teachers, researchers’ notes, and lesson plans from the 18 participants. furthermore, i developed a questionnaire that used likert scales ranging from 1–5 (never, rarely, sometimes, often, and very often), which measured offline and online technology tools in teaching speaking skills (see appendix). in developing the questionnaire, i sent the questionnaires to second language acquisition experts for evaluation and a small group try-out. then, i conducted content and face validity through employing an inter-rater agreement model proposed by gregory (2015). finally, i employed empirical validity using the pearson product moment analysis technique where all items were above 0.01 and 0.05, and all items were therefore valid. however, only the data about online technology tools are presented in this study. to complete the data gathered from the survey, i also developed an interview protocol that contained four questions (see appendix). the interviews were conducted in the indonesian language to reduce the anxiety of the participants. then, the interviews were transcribed into the indonesian language and were sent back to the participants to ensure the trustworthiness of the data before proceeding to the coding analysis. data analysis methods regarding data analysis methods, i employed descriptive statistics to identify the usage of online technology tools implemented by 301 indonesian efl preservice teachers in teaching speaking skills during the covid-19 pandemic. then, it was continued by analyzing the interview results of 18 participants. the transcriptions were carefully analyzed to generate potential codes. the data were coded using the in-vivo technique. then, all codes were analyzed using the thematic analysis technique to identify themes based on theoretical or analytic interest in the area (braun & clarke, 2006). i also implemented the bracketing method by writing memos during interviews and analysis to support the interview analysis (tufford & newman, 2012). the memos were used to examine and reflect upon the researcher’s engagement with the data. the analysis generated two themes, six sub-themes, and 13 codes, and 109 excerpts were found. the codes created were about how the participants implemented whatsapp, youtube, and google forms to manage and teach speaking skills. therefore, the themes and sub-themes that emerged from the analysis centered around managing and teaching speaking skills using those platforms. findings kinds of online technology tools implemented in teaching speaking skills during the covid-19 pandemic the first analysis conducted was on the data gathered from the questionnaires completed by 301 participants. the descriptive statistic results in table 1 show that the most frequent online technology employed by most participants in teaching speaking skills during ert was whatsapp (m = 4.32, mdn = 5, mode = 5, sd = 1.01), followed by youtube (m = 3.16, mdn = 3, mode = 3, sd = 1.15), and by google forms (m = 3.03, mdn = 3, mode = 2, sd = 1.36). moreover, the analysis on the lesson plans submitted by the 18 participants also showed extensive usage of whatsapp, youtube, and google forms to support online teaching, including teaching speaking skills during their online practice teaching. 155profile: issues teach. prof. dev., vol. 24 no. 2, jul-dec, 2022. issn 1657-0790 (printed) 2256-5760 (online). bogotá, colombia. pages 149-165 efl preservice teachers’ technology integration in managing and teaching speaking skills... table 1. kinds of online technology used in teaching speaking skills during emergency remote teaching (n = 301) items variability m mdn mode sd social network services/instant messaging a. whatsapp 4.32 5 5 1.01 b. telegram 1.61 1 1 1.04 c. line 1.42 1 1 0.95 d. sms 1.24 1 1 0.62 e. facebook messenger 1.33 1 1 0.83 f. email 2.44 2 1 1.34 g. other 1.38 1 1 0.86 web 2.0 platforms a. facebook 1.45 1 1 0.90 b. instagram 1.63 1 1 1.04 c. youtube 3.16 3 3 1.15 d. twitter 1.25 1 1 0.72 e. tiktok 1.30 1 1 0.81 f. ted-ed 1.19 1 1 0.56 g. blogs 1.41 1 1 0.78 h. flipgrid 1.15 1 1 0.50 i. duolingo 1.27 1 1 0.64 j. other 1.25 1 1 0.69 online quiz maker platforms a. google forms 3.03 3 2 1.36 b. quizizz 1.65 1 1 1.02 c. kahoot 1.57 1 1 1 d. other 1.19 1 1 0.62 purposes of implementing online technology tools in managing and teaching speaking skills the statistical results showed that the participants frequently implemented whatsapp, youtube, and google forms, and, during the interviews, they talked about how they implemented those tools to teach speaking skills. the profound analysis from interview results about the purposes of implementing online technology tools in teaching speaking skills yielded two themes, six sub-themes, 13 codes, and 109 excerpts (see table 2). universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras156 kusuma table 2. the purposes of implementing online technology tools in managing and teaching speaking skills themes sub-themes codes sample excerpts managing speaking courses implementing whatsapp for managing speaking courses for checking students’ attendance “i often used whatsapp to confirm my students’ presence.” (participant 10) for speaking material sharing purposes “when the online teaching started, i would inform the students via whatsapp group and sent the materials to the group.” (participant 6) for speaking task submission purposes “i used whatsapp for sending materials and task submission only.” (participant 4) implementing youtube for managing speaking courses for speaking material sharing purposes “i employed youtube to give additional materials other than the ones i created.” (participant 17) for speaking task submission purposes “my students used youtube as a means to upload their speaking videos where they spoke in english.” (participant 15) implementing google forms for managing speaking courses for checking students’ attendance “when i taught, i used google form to check my students’ presence.” (participant 18) for speaking task submission purposes “the students uploaded the link of their video projects on google form. it also became the proof that they did the assignment.” (participant 2) teaching speaking skills implementing whatsapp for teaching speaking courses for speaking practices purposes “when it came to the discussion, my students and i discussed using the voice message feature in whatsapp. for example, if i am not mistaken, the topic was asking opinion, and i asked the students to record their voices asking and giving opinions using the voice message feature.” (participant 5) for explaining speaking materials “during the practice teaching, i used whatsapp to explain the speaking materials to my students.” (participant 2) implementing youtube for teaching speaking courses for explaining speaking materials “i used youtube videos to explain to my students about some oral communication skills visually.” (participant 6) for testing students’ speaking performance “i used youtube once to ask my students to create youtube videos talking about the procedures of making something. after that, i watched them and gave them scores.” (participant 1) implementing google forms for teaching speaking courses for testing students’ linguistic features “besides sending materials and having the discussion, i also asked the students to complete the quizzes on google forms.” (participant 5) for receiving students’ feedback “i employed this google form to get feedback from my students. it was like reflections. i asked my students to give feedback about the topics or materials that they still could not understand.” (participant 1) 157profile: issues teach. prof. dev., vol. 24 no. 2, jul-dec, 2022. issn 1657-0790 (printed) 2256-5760 (online). bogotá, colombia. pages 149-165 efl preservice teachers’ technology integration in managing and teaching speaking skills... implementing whatsapp for managing speaking courses even though instructions were delivered online during ert, the preservice teachers still regularly checked their students’ attendance. the interviews revealed that three participants frequently utilized whatsapp to check whether students were following the online instructions. for example, participant 1 said, “i employed whatsapp to know who read and did not read my messages. there is a feature on whatsapp that allows me to see who has or has not read the messages.” the only way to deliver the speaking materials during this ert was via internet technology. the interviews revealed that the participants used the learning management system rarely, especially for material sharing purposes. however, the participants confessed that they implemented whatsapp as an alternative since the students often used this tool. thus, 14 preservice teachers admitted to routinely using whatsapp to deliver speaking materials, such as language expressions, dialogs or monologs, and speaking videos. for instance, participant 7 said, “i employed whatsapp in my practice teaching to send information, including the speaking materials and assignments. before the class started, i sent the materials to the whatsapp group.” interestingly, five interviewees admitted to using whatsapp for speaking assignment submissions. the students submitted their written dialogs or monologs, voice messages, speaking clips, or the links of the speaking clips if they uploaded them on youtube. for instance, participant 18 said, “during my online practice teaching, i asked my students to use whatsapp to submit their speaking assignments. i also used this platform to send speaking prompts or instructions about the speaking assignments.” implementing youtube for managing speaking courses the interviewees stated that, during the covid19 pandemic, they frequently adapted youtube as a means of sharing speaking materials. for instance, participant 3 said, “to give further explanation and speaking examples to my students, i shared youtube videos and asked them to watch.” apart from providing examples for the students, the participants also used youtube for speaking task submissions. four participants indicated that they frequently requested students to create their own speaking clips and upload them on youtube because they were already familiar with the process. for instance, participant 10 instructed students to create and publish speaking clips on youtube: if i gave speaking assignments to my students, i would ask them to record their performance using smartphones and upload the clips on youtube because it was easy to access if they uploaded them on youtube rather than using google drive. implementing google forms for managing speaking courses google forms made it possible for five participants to use the service to track their students’ attendance. either their teacher supervisor requested they utilize it, or they had this idea and implemented it independently. for instance, participant 3 said, “i mostly employed google forms to record my students’ attendance. besides, my teaching supervisor also suggested using this platform.” participant 2 admitted that she used google forms for speaking assignment submission, which is unusual. she said, “the students uploaded the link of their video projects on google forms. it also became the proof that they did the assignment.” implementing whatsapp for teaching speaking courses as most participants stated, developing speaking skills requires practice in areas such as pronunciation and conversation. even while they admitted that designing universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras158 kusuma online speaking exercises was frustrating, 10 participants indicated that they used whatsapp, particularly the voice message feature, to facilitate pronunciation and dialog practices. these participants often asked their students to practice their pronunciation by sending their voices to their whatsapp group. for instance, participant 15 said, “my students used whatsapp for speaking practices. so, they would say what picture a said, and their peers would say what picture b said. that was how i used whatsapp for speaking practice.” the interview results revealed that 14 participants used whatsapp to explain the speaking materials. they would send the materials and explain them through chats or voice messages. for instance, participant 13 said, “i sent the speaking materials to my students. i used the voice messages to explain those materials as well as the examples of how to say some language expressions in english.” implementing youtube for teaching speaking skills the interview results revealed that 12 participants used youtube videos to explain speaking skills to their students. for example, they would record themselves talking about language expressions and upload them on youtube to be watched by their students. they would also send some relevant videos and use voice messages to explain them. for instance, participant 10 said: if i taught new speaking topics, i would give some example videos and explain to my students using voice messages. i sometimes recorded my explanations and uploaded them on youtube. so, my students could watch my recordings at their convenient time. interestingly, four participants mentioned that they adapted youtube for assessing their students’ speaking performance. the participants would ask their students to record themselves talking in english in either monologs or dialogs with their partners. then, the participants would watch and score the students’ performances. for example, participant 2 said, i remember when i taught a topic about giving opinions, i asked my students to create a project with their peers. they had to give their opinions in english, record their speeches, and upload them on youtube. then, i asked them to share the links on whatsapp groups. so, other students and i could watch the videos. implementing google forms for teaching speaking skills the preservice teachers recognized that, to increase students’ speaking abilities, they needed to provide them with opportunities to practice linguistic features. as a result, almost all participants reported that they used google forms to generate quizzes or mid-term assessments to aid in practicing linguistic features such as grammar, vocabulary, and language expressions used in the monologs or dialogs learned by the students. for example, participant 4 said, “when i did my online practice teaching after i gave materials in the first week, i would give quizzes to the students in the second week. so, i would give quizzes every two weeks using google forms.” the preservice teachers claimed that google forms’ various features allowed them to collect data during the interviews. for example, two participants utilized this platform to receive feedback from the students about their speaking skills development: i used google forms to know my students’ speaking development. i received feedback from my students about their strengths and weaknesses in oral communication. also, i asked them to answer some reflective questions to identify what they needed to improve related to a speaking topic. (participant 1) discussion this study aimed at investigating the indonesian efl preservice teachers’ technology integration in teaching speaking skills online during ert due to the covid-19 pandemic. the statistical results in this 159profile: issues teach. prof. dev., vol. 24 no. 2, jul-dec, 2022. issn 1657-0790 (printed) 2256-5760 (online). bogotá, colombia. pages 149-165 efl preservice teachers’ technology integration in managing and teaching speaking skills... study showed that the preservice teachers (n = 301) implemented various online technology tools during online teaching. the findings therefore echoed previous studies (akayoglu et al., 2020; baz et al., 2018; fathi & ebadi, 2020; park & son, 2020) that reported preservice teachers implemented various online technology tools. on the other hand, these findings also contradicted the previous studies (baz et al., 2019; merç, 2015) that reported that preservice teachers did not implement technology because they did not know how to use some tools for teaching purposes. furthermore, the findings in this study even indicated that these indonesian efl preservice teachers knew how to utilize online technology tools effectively to support their online instruction, especially when teaching speaking skills. nonetheless, the study’s quantitative results suggested that indonesian efl preservice teachers did not frequently use all online technology tools during ert, preferring whatsapp, youtube, and google forms when teaching speaking courses. nevertheless, the interview results indicated that they could design engaging and appropriate speaking activities through implementing those platforms. as tpack is pivotal to creating proper instruction with technology (koehler & mishra, 2009), the preservice teachers’ knowledge of teaching using technology seemed to guide them to select which tools could facilitate appropriate speaking activities for the students during ert. moreover, it is also surmised that the selection of those tools was also inspired by the preservice teachers’ considerations to use the tools that could work best with their students. for example, interviews with those who had installed a learning management system showed that, despite having implemented a platform like this, the interviewees preferred to utilize whatsapp since most students were using it and frequently checking their notifications. as technology integration into the classroom relies on teacher beliefs in this regard (prestridge, 2012), it is thus presumed that, despite the participants in this study used a variety of online teaching and learning tools, they only used the ones that they perceived beneficial and that could work best for teaching speaking skills. according to the indonesian efl preservice teachers’ interviews, they had frequently implemented online platforms—particularly whatsapp, youtube, and google forms—for classroom management and teaching purposes. in addition, the interviews showed that those platforms could be adapted to facilitate exciting classroom management as well as teaching and learning activities. in addition, when merely using whatsapp, youtube, and google forms, the preservice teachers could facilitate both synchronous and asynchronous speaking activities. these findings indicate that technological disruptions, which were being used in the classroom before the pandemic—as demonstrated in earlier studies (amiryousefi, 2019; cepik & yastibas, 2013; h.-c. hsu, 2016; lin & hwang, 2018; sun & yang, 2015)—, continue to be present during pandemic times. as a result, technological disruptions are projected to continue, and more new technology tools are likely to be adapted if they possess qualities that could aid education. the findings in this study offer three implications to advance english language teps, especially to prepare the future efl preservice teachers who might migrate from conducting practice teaching in fully online forms to blended learning in the post-covid scenario. first, as also claimed by several previous studies (habibi et al., 2020; l. hsu, 2016; incik & akay, 2017; joo et al., 2018; yildiz-durak, 2019), the findings showed that preservice teachers, especially those who study in english language teps that provide the tpack framework, will likely implement online technology tools, including doing technology disruptions, in their teaching practices. therefore, the english language teps must continue to provide tpack for preservice teachers as their knowledge will significantly influence their future actual technology integration in the classroom (fathi & ebadi, 2020). thus, the efl preservice teachers will universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras160 kusuma still implement technology in their teaching, especially when teaching speaking skills. second, as shown in this study, the participants frequently adapted whatsapp, youtube, and google forms for classroom management and teaching speaking purposes. thus, it is suggested that english language teps should identify other possible online technology tools for effective online classroom management and teaching speaking purposes in the post-pandemic era so that implementations are not limited to whatsapp, youtube, and google forms. third, as digital technology is common during this pandemic, there is an urgent need to update pedagogy with online resources and appropriate teaching methods to adapt to the change (jie & sunze, 2021). the english language teps could use this study’s information to consider providing their efl preservice teachers with the knowledge that would allow them to use technology in teaching. therefore, future efl preservice teachers could have sufficient knowledge of managing and teaching speaking skills using technology when conducting fully online or blended learning in the post-pandemic era. conclusion this study revealed that efl preservice teachers employed various technology tools during ert even though not all of them were implemented frequently. moreover, they often implemented whatsapp, youtube, and google forms as the primary online technology tools for classroom management and teaching speaking skills in fully online instruction during the covid19 pandemic. in addition, they also adapted those technology tools to facilitate some appropriate online speaking activities for their students. however, this study has several shortcomings that future studies should cover. this study did not explore the reasons for adapting several online technology tools profoundly. an in-depth exploration of why preservice teachers adapted technology tools that are not designed for teaching speaking skills is necessary to advance our understanding of their decisions. this study also did not explore the challenges the preservice teachers face during their induction phase as they are not fully prepared for online teaching. analyzing these challenges would help the english language teps prepare the upcoming preservice teachers to conduct online practice teaching. therefore, future studies should address these limitations to enhance the literature of english language teps and preservice teachers’ technology integration. references akayoglu, s., satar, h. m., dikilitas, k., cirit, n. c., & korkmazgil, s. 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(2011). using youtube in the efl classroom. language education in asia, 2(1), 113–119. https://doi.org/10.5746/leia/11/v2/i1/a09/watkins_wilkins yi, y., & jang, j. (2020). envisioning possibilities amid the covid-19 pandemic: implications from english language teaching in south korea. tesol journal, 11(3), e00543. https://doi.org/10.1002/tesj.543 yildiz-durak, h. (2019). modeling of relations between k–12 teachers’ tpack levels and their technology integration self-efficacy, technology literacy levels, attitudes toward https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1467-9620.2006.00684.x https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1467-9620.2006.00684.x https://doi.org/10.1002/tesj.545 https://doi.org/10.1002/tesj.545 https://doi.org/10.1080/13523260.2020.1761749 https://doi.org/10.1080/13523260.2020.1761749 https://bit.ly/3cwia3p https://doi.org/10.1080/09523987.2021.1930484 https://doi.org/10.1080/09523987.2021.1930484 https://doi.org/10.3102/0034654311413609 https://doi.org/10.1080/02188791.2020.1815649 https://doi.org/10.1080/02188791.2020.1815649 https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-642-38339-7_6 https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-642-38339-7_6 https://doi.org/10.1016/j.compedu.2011.08.028 https://doi.org/10.1016/j.compedu.2011.08.028 https://doi.org/10.1080/15348458.2019.1650279 https://doi.org/10.1080/15348458.2019.1650279 https://doi.org/10.1080/09588221.2013.818555 https://doi.org/10.1016/j.compedu.2012.12.022 https://doi.org/10.1016/j.compedu.2012.12.022 https://doi.org/10.1177/1473325010368316 https://doi.org/10.1177/1473325010368316 https://doi.org/10.1016/s2352-4642(20)30095-x https://doi.org/10.1016/s2352-4642(20)30095-x https://doi.org/10.5746/leia/11/v2/i1/a09/watkins_wilkins https://doi.org/10.1002/tesj.543 universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras164 kusuma technology and usage objectives of social networks. interactive learning environments, 29(7), 1136–1162. https://doi.org/10.1080/10494820.2019.1619591 yin, r. k. (2018). case study research and applications: design and methods (6th ed.). sage publications. yüksel, g., & kavanoz, s. (2011). in search of pre-service efl certificate teachers’ attitudes towards technology. procedia computer science, 3, 666–671. https://doi.org/10.1016/j. procs.2010.12.111 zhang, s. (2009). the role of input, interaction and output in the development of oral fluency. english language teaching, 2(4), 91–100. https://doi.org/10.5539/elt.v2n4p91 zyad, h. (2016). pre-service training and ict implementation in the classroom: elt teachers’ perceptions. international journal of education and development using information and communication technology, 12(3), 4–18. https://files. eric.ed.gov/fulltext/ej1124885.pdf about the author i putu indra kusuma holds a phd in education and human development (western michigan university, usa). he is an assistant professor of english at universitas pendidikan ganesha, indonesia. his research focuses on linguistics studies and english language education, including sub-topics like language assessment, tesol, and technology-enhanced language learning. https://doi.org/10.1080/10494820.2019.1619591 https://doi.org/10.1016/j.procs.2010.12.111 https://doi.org/10.1016/j.procs.2010.12.111 https://doi.org/10.5539/elt.v2n4p91 https://files.eric.ed.gov/fulltext/ej1124885.pdf https://files.eric.ed.gov/fulltext/ej1124885.pdf 165profile: issues teach. prof. dev., vol. 24 no. 2, jul-dec, 2022. issn 1657-0790 (printed) 2256-5760 (online). bogotá, colombia. pages 149-165 efl preservice teachers’ technology integration in managing and teaching speaking skills... appendix: research instruments likert questionnaire statements never rarely sometimes often very often 1 how often do (or did) you use the following google platforms in your teaching? a. google slides b. google drive c. google docs d. google sheets 2 how often do (or did) you use the following learning management system platforms in your teaching? a. schoology b. edmodo c. google classroom d. moodle 3 how often do (or did) you use the following social network services/instant messaging in your teaching? a. whatsapp b. telegram c. line d. sms e. facebook messenger f. email 4 how often do (or did) you use the following web 2.0 platforms in your teaching? a. facebook b. instagram c. youtube d. twitter e. tiktok f. ted-ed g. blogs h. flipgrid i. duolingo 5 how often do (or did) you use the following online quiz maker platforms in your teaching? a. google forms b. quizizz c. kahoot interview questions note. here, questions 2, 3, and 4 have been merged into one. 1. please mention the technology tools that you implemented in teaching speaking skills. 2. in my record, you mostly implemented whatsapp/youtube/google forms. how did you use whatsapp/youtube/google forms in teaching speaking skills? preservice efl teachers’ experiences in their first teaching practicum: a collaborative autoethnography 193profile: issues teach. prof. dev., vol. 24 no. 1, jan-jun, 2022. issn 1657-0790 (printed) 2256-5760 (online). bogotá, colombia. pages 193-207 https://doi.org/10.15446/profile.v24n1.91259 preservice efl teachers’ experiences in their first teaching practicum: a collaborative autoethnography las experiencias de los profesores de inglés en formación en su primera práctica docente: una autoetnografía colaborativa kelli johana ariza-quiñones1 lizzeth dayana hernández-polo kelly julie lesmes-lesmes elcy lorena molina-ramírez universidad surcolombiana, neiva, colombia this paper reports a collaborative autoethnography on a first teaching practicum at universidad surcolombiana. the study aimed at how we, as novice researchers and preservice english as a foreign language teachers, make sense of our teaching experiences in our first teaching practicum using collaborative autoethnography as a research method. the data were collected by reflective journals and ethnographic observations. results show the meaning that we give to our experiences, before and during the covid-19 pandemic, by recognizing and analyzing our sociocultural context. additionally, we were immersed in a virtual learning environment where we had the opportunity to confront unforeseen changes imposed by the pandemic, familiarize ourselves with possible issues that teachers grapple with, and imagine new ways to be ourselves. keywords: collaborative autoethnography, teaching practicum, preservice efl teachers, sociocultural perspectives este artículo reporta una autoetnografía colaborativa en una primera práctica docente en la universidad surcolombiana. el estudio es un análisis de como nosotras, como investigadoras y profesoras de inglés en formación, le damos sentido a nuestras experiencias docentes en nuestra primera práctica docente, y para ello utilizamos la autoetnografía colaborativa como método de investigación. los datos fueron recolectados por medio de diarios reflexivos y observaciones. los resultados muestran el significado que le damos a nuestras experiencias, antes y durante la pandemia de covid-19, mientras reconocemos y analizamos nuestro contexto sociocultural. además, estuvimos inmersas en un entorno de aprendizaje virtual, donde tuvimos la oportunidad de enfrentar cambios imprevistos impuestos por la pandemia, familiarizarnos con posibles problemas que los maestros enfrentan e imaginar nuevas formas de ser nosotros mismos. palabras clave: autoetnografía colaborativa, perspectivas socioculturales, práctica docente, profesores de inglés en formación 1 kelli johana ariza-quiñones  https://orcid.org/0000-0002-3335-6957 · email: u20161146270@usco.edu.co lizzeth dayana hernández-polo  https://orcid.org/0000-0003-3862-425x · email: u20161146651@usco.edu.co kelly julie lesmes-lesmes  https://orcid.org/0000-0002-8777-7749 · email: u20161144673@usco.edu.co elcy lorena molina-ramírez  https://orcid.org/0000-0001-8791-8479 · email: u20161146101@usco.edu.co how to cite this article (apa, 7th ed.): ariza-quiñones, k. j., hernández-polo, l. d., lesmes-lesmes, k. j., & molina-ramírez, e. l. (2022). preservice efl teachers’ experiences in their first teaching practicum: a collaborative autoethnography. profile: issues in teachers’ professional development, 24(1), 193–207. https://doi.org/10.15446/profile.v24n1.91259 this article was received on october 29, 2020 and accepted on september 27, 2021. this is an open access article distributed under the terms of the creative commons license attribution-noncommercial-noderivatives 4.0 international license. consultation is possible at https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/ https://doi.org/10.15446/profile.v24n1.91259 https://orcid.org/0000-0002-3335-6957 mailto:u20161146270@usco.edu.co https://orcid.org/0000-0003-3862-425x mailto:u20161146651@usco.edu.co https://orcid.org/0000-0002-8777-7749 mailto:u20161144673@usco.edu.co https://orcid.org/0000-0001-8791-8479 mailto:u20161146101@usco.edu.co https://doi.org/10.15446/profile.v24n1.91259 https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/ universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras194 ariza-quiñones, hernández-polo, lesmes-lesmes, & molina-ramírez introduction in the colombian teaching context, preservice english language teachers should do their teaching practicum in the last years of their degree according to the study plans designed by the teaching training programs. in some cases, the practicum is mandatory for those students who aspire to obtain their vocational qualifications. according to nguyen (2014), in this phase, the preservice english as a foreign language (efl) teachers have a chance to be in contact with a real teaching context, which helps them reinforce, expand, and improve what they learned at university. it means that in this process, preservice efl teachers have the opportunity to develop the skills to achieve an integral formation as human beings and professionals. several studies about the teaching practicum have been conducted. we could find some specific features, such as the preservice efl teachers’ reflection process, where they are supposed to become critical of their practicum (insuasty & zambrano-castillo, 2010). another aspect is the “critical incidents” that teachers find and have to face in their preservice teaching process (farrell, 2008). also, we identified the worries and responsibilities preservice efl teachers have at the moment of performing their teaching role, as well as the hopes and feelings of fear, enthusiasm, and even anger that arise while they design and deliver their lessons (lucero & roncancio-castellanos, 2019). other studies focus on preservice efl teachers’ voices, showing us that those voices would contribute to curriculum development within institutions (castañeda-trujillo & aguirre-hernández, 2018). the contributions made by these and other researchers have turned out to be very important to better understand the teaching practicum process and its participants. however, we created a proposal for carrying out a research study analyzing our experiences in our first teaching practicum through a collaborative autoethnography method. the objective of this study was to interpret and make sense of the challenges that emerged from our expectations and motivations in our first teaching practicum and how we were forced to examine some particularities that emerged from the covid-19 pandemic. moreover, we are not leaving behind our initial expectations and motivations, since this research could provide a useful perspective for other preservice efl teachers who are expected to be in the same situation and who want to know a little about how to make this whole process meaningful and enriching. literature review four constructs supported our research, namely: (a) teaching practicum context, (b) preservice teachers’ connection between theory and practicum, (c) the sociocultural approach, and (d) agency development. they are described in the following paragraphs. teaching practicum context teaching practicum has been considered as the process every preservice teacher needs to undergo/ engage in in an educational center (primary/high schools, universities, and so on). according to roland and beckford (2010), the teaching practicum is the application of pedagogy in a real context: the classroom. in other words, “the teaching practicum then constitutes an opportunity for pre-service teachers to be in contact with real context and to enrich it with social and cultural aspects they might incorporate into their teaching process” (pinzón-capador & guerrero-nieto, 2018, p. 72). some teachers have conducted studies related to the english teacher’s practicum. according to velasco (2019), the teaching practicum facilitates “a pre-service teacher’s general understanding of the teaching profession and reflects on his/her identity and role as a teacher” (p. 117). this process is viewed more as an “exercise that involves examining the many facets of one’s practice to serve as a guide for a thoughtful assessment” (velasco, 2019, p. 118). köksal and genç (2019) argue that the teaching practicum also “has a fundamental mission as preparing the prospective 195profile: issues teach. prof. dev., vol. 24 no. 1, jan-jun, 2022. issn 1657-0790 (printed) 2256-5760 (online). bogotá, colombia. pages 193-207 preservice efl teachers’ experiences in their first teaching practicum: a collaborative autoethnography teachers for the world of teaching since those teacher candidates are mainly expected to be involved in a reciprocal interaction with the learners in the real classrooms during the practicum period” (p. 895). it makes us understand that the teaching practicum is an important aspect of the professional training of preservice teachers since it is here where they have initial contact with a real educational context. trent (2010) looks at the teaching practicum “as a crucial aspect of a teacher education program. during the practicum, teacher-interns obtain relevant classroom experience, translate theory to practice, expand their awareness about goal setting and reflect on teaching and learning philosophies” (gebhard, 2009, as cited in velasco, 2019, p. 118). likewise, okan (2002) claims that “the ability to teach can only be gained through experience. courses do not prepare you for it. there is too much you have to find out yourself ” (p. 176). many of these scholars agree with the statement that the only way to become an english language teacher is to be in the classroom. preservice teachers’ connection between theory and practicum during our professional training, we could notice that teacher education programs are more focused on theory. but, once in the practicum, we evidenced that it goes beyond the theory taught during the course. sometimes, preservice efl teachers experience difficulties at the moment of relating theories learned in universities to what happens in their teaching practicum (meijer et al., 2002). for that reason, the aim of the teaching practicum is to provide preservice efl teachers the opportunity to be conscious about practicing the theories, methods, and techniques that they acquired in parallel with the process of teacher education (köksal & genç, 2019). in other words, the preservice efl teachers “need multiple opportunities to examine the theoretical knowledge they are exposed to in their professional development opportunities within the familiar context of their learning and teaching experiences” (johnson & golombek, 2002, p. 8). the sociocultural approach we consider that our behaviors, habits, and practices come together and develop from what is ordinary, common, shared, rooted in our close, every day, and familiar surroundings within our culture. in other words, we create personal behavior and lifestyle and adapt them to our surroundings with the other people to take part and get along in society. these patterns (attitudes, values, norms, rules, notions, perceptions, and representations) intervene and determine our way of thinking and acting; therefore, they must be considered as something fundamental when reflecting on how we learn, what we learn, why we learn, and how we teach today. johnson (2009) presents some strong arguments where she explains how sociocultural perspectives change the way l2 educators think about teacher learning, language, and language teaching. furthermore, “learning takes place in a context and evolves through the interaction and participation of the participants in that context” (richards, 2008, p. 6). preservice teacher learning is not just about translating knowledge and theories into practice, but also about how the preservice teachers build new knowledge and theories through participation in social contexts. in this sense, the sociocultural perspective is very useful for analyzing and evidencing processes where meaning is generated. karimnia (2010) emphasizes that “when language is conceptualized as social practice, the focus of l2 teaching shifts toward helping l2 learners develop the capacity to interpret and generate meanings that are appropriate within the relevant languaculture”1 (p. 222). agency development agency is the preservice efl teacher’s process to move forward, looking to transform and improve his or her professional identity. as giroux (2004) said, agency “becomes the site through which power is not 1 agar (1994, as cited in norris & tsedendamba, 2015) states that “language users draw on all kinds of things besides grammar and vocabulary such as past knowledge, local and cultural information, habits and behaviours” (p. 205). universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras196 ariza-quiñones, hernández-polo, lesmes-lesmes, & molina-ramírez transcended but reworked, replayed, and restaged in productive ways” (p. 34). this means that preservice efl teachers should look for the enrichment and improvement of their pedagogical work that may generate action which helps them to consolidate their professional role and performance. giroux (2004) also asserts that “the fundamental challenge facing educators within the current age of neoliberalism is to provide the conditions for students to address how knowledge is related to the power of both self-definition and social agency” (pp. 34–35). in short, if teachers develop a sense of agency, this may help them become emancipated from imposed agendas or teaching models and, thus, allow them to construct their own way of teaching and learning. method this research was done under the characteristics of the qualitative approach following a collaborative autoethnography design. according to castañeda trujillo (2020), “this research method permits a collective exploration of researcher subjectivity; it helps to reduce, to a certain extent, the power tensions that can happen while researching in collaboration” (p. 232). in this way, collaborative autoethnography increases and enriches the data and information from an individual interpretation to a collective interpretation. so, this process contributes to building a more in-depth understanding and learning of the self and others. collaborative autoethnography “consolidates the sense of community since each researcher-participant shares personal accounts that become part of the social construction of the community” (castañeda-trujillo, 2020, p. 232). collecting data through autoethnography allows the researcher to identify and make sense of the various experiences that emerge from the individual to the collective, which are valuable sources of learning. autoethnography is a relatively personal process because it is based on the personal experiences of researchers. it is, likewise, a highly social process. autoethnography cautiously looks at how researchers have interacted with different people within their sociocultural context and the way social forces have encouraged their lived experiences. this study is specific to a concern that emerged in how we, as english language preservice teachers, make sense of our first teaching practicum experiences in our sociocultural context and aim to explore attitudes, perceptions, fears, and challenges surrounding our first teaching practicum. context we were enrolled in an english language teaching ba program at a colombian public university. the program consists of nine semesters and the last two are usually set aside for the teaching practicum. there is a first practicum (eighth semester) that lasts 16 weeks and where preservice teachers have an initial approach to the classroom experience. the second practicum (ninth semester) serves as consolidation and also lasts 16 weeks. for the purposes of our study, we will focus on the first teaching practicum. in both practicums, preservice teachers constantly interact with a cooperating teacher and a supervisor, which are a vital component in the pedagogical practicum. the cooperating teacher is a “teacher teaching english at the school identified for practicum [and who] could be requested to assist the university supervisor in observing student teachers teach in classes and offering them comments and further guidance” (al-mekhlafi & naji, 2013, p. 9). for preservice teachers, cooperating teachers are a meaningful and necessary element in the classes. once we arrive at the classroom, we exchange places with the cooperating teacher since we must be completely immersed in the school context and assume our role as teachers. even when the cooperating teacher and we exchange our positions, the cooperating teacher does not leave the classroom at any moment. they are always observing us to share recommendations, new teaching strategies, and classroom management techniques. on the other hand, “supervisors are expected to 197profile: issues teach. prof. dev., vol. 24 no. 1, jan-jun, 2022. issn 1657-0790 (printed) 2256-5760 (online). bogotá, colombia. pages 193-207 preservice efl teachers’ experiences in their first teaching practicum: a collaborative autoethnography provide their student teachers with a model of instruction, a source of support, feedback and evaluation” (al-mekhlafi & naji, 2013, p. 8). during the teaching practicum, preservice teachers are constantly supervised by the cooperating teacher or the supervisor. unlike the cooperating teacher, the supervisor regularly observes preservice teachers in their classes and meets with them at least once a week to give feedback on their lesson plans and observations. the supervisor should provide preservice teachers adequate feedback to help them improve their teaching skills. since the supervisor is an english teacher of the english language teaching program, he or she will also help the preservice teacher improve his or her language proficiency. for this unique and individual experience, the scenarios were in a public primary school and a private school (1st, 4th, and 5th grades), but also in a public secondary school (10th). in the beginning, we had to go to school six times a week to work with those grades for one or two hours, depending on the schedule of the english classes. as a result of the global outbreak of the covid-19 pandemic, we only had three weeks of face-to-face classes. thus, we had to continue our teaching practicum virtually through synchronous platforms (platforms that simulate traditional face-to-face interaction, and which can be used to provide alternative learning environments for exchange of meaningful information in real time) such as google meet and zoom, or asynchronous (platforms that have to do with the time one can access the information [real-time vs. delayed time]) such as whatsapp. the period of the practicum was limited to 10 weeks due to the health emergency. the participants we are four participants, three preservice efl teachers (elcy, johana, and kelly) who met the requirements of the english language teaching program for doing the first teaching practicum, and one student teacher (lizzeth) in the seventh semester of the same program. since she was not doing her first teaching practicum, she could not participate in all the data collection processes. for that reason, her role within this research was to analyze and interpret the data collected from reading the journals. the four of us were in our early twenties. since three of us were about to share a similar experience as it would be our first teaching practicum, we decided to research the challenges, expectations, and insights that we should have in the teaching context to make sense of them from a sociocultural and autoethnography approach. in this study, we played the role of both participants and researchers since our research approach, collaborative autoethnography, allowed us to do so and to engage in self-reflection. as claimed by castañeda-trujillo (2020), “collaborative autoethnography is a research process where pelts [preservice english-language teachers] will play a role as researchers, to understand their transition from being pelts to become professional english-language teachers” (p. 221). data collection tools to collect the data, we used journals and ethnography observations systematized in written field diaries. according to richards and lockhart (2004), a journal is a teacher’s or a student teacher’s written response to teaching events. keeping a journal serves two purposes: (a) events and ideas are recorded for later reflection and (b) the process of writing itself helps trigger insights about teaching. (p. 7) for this study, each of us kept a journal wherein we wrote entries at three points, approximately every two weeks (one prior to the practicum, one during the practicum, and one after having finished the practicum) which afterward were then analyzed collectively. each entry had a prompt (see the appendix) created by us, in which we wrote individual reflections about our perceptions, feelings, experiences, problems or difficulties, and relationships found within the context of the practicum where we were teaching. we also used ethnography observation, which consists of three stages (wolcott, 1994, as cited in merriam, universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras198 ariza-quiñones, hernández-polo, lesmes-lesmes, & molina-ramírez 2009, p. 201), namely: (a) description (what is going on here?), (b) analysis (the identification of essential features and the systematic description of interrelationships among them), and (c) interpretation (what does it all mean?). the first stage is related to the process of writing journals based on what is happening in our teaching context. the second stage is the process of collecting the journals, and the meetings we will have in each collection to share our experiences through platforms (google meet or whatsapp) to find out common aspects among the data collected. the last stage was developed immediately with the previous one because while we were sharing the information, we also analyzed and highlighted relevant, useful, and common issues that would help us to draw the main findings. data analysis according to merriam (2009), data analysis is the process of making sense out of the data. and making sense out of data involves consolidating, reducing, and interpreting what people have said and what the researcher has seen and read—it is the process of making meaning. (pp. 175–176) the approach for this research study is the collaborative autoethnography utilizing a systematic approach to qualitative research methods. “the process involves the simultaneous coding of raw data and the construction of categories that capture relevant characteristics of the document’s content” (merriam, 2009, p. 205). we focused on the following three stages: reviewing data includes “reading text data, analyzing archival materials, graphic information, and physical artifacts” (chang et al., 2013, p. 102). in this study, we read, reread the journals, and jotted down insights, comments, emerging patterns, and ideas for further work. segmenting, categorizing, and regrouping data involves “constructing a preliminary list of topics emerging from the reviewing data and using the topics as the initial codes” (chang et al., 2013, p. 104). in this stage, we identified some more relevant topics among our experiences and made a preliminary regrouping of data. finding themes and reconnecting with data occurs by identifying the main themes to categorize them and explain how data support and illustrate those themes (chang et al., 2013). here, we were able to establish common patterns of two main categories with some subcategories (see figure 1). findings the reflections were collected, and the appropriate analysis was made to establish common patterns among the participants, in which two categories were identified based on the reflective journals, ethnographic observations, field diaries and conversations obtained. figure 1 illustrates the main findings of this study. figure 1. categories and subcategories category 1: emerging challenges from expectations and facing a new reality classroom atmosphere personal interests and beliefs pedagogical knowledge the supervisor’s and mentor teacher’s roles personal fears category 2: some particularities that emerged due to the covid-19 pandemic recursiveness/virtual learning environment empathy 199profile: issues teach. prof. dev., vol. 24 no. 1, jan-jun, 2022. issn 1657-0790 (printed) 2256-5760 (online). bogotá, colombia. pages 193-207 preservice efl teachers’ experiences in their first teaching practicum: a collaborative autoethnography category 1: emerging challenges from expectations and facing a new reality this category resulted from our concerns prior to experiencing the teaching practicum. thus, the excerpts used in the following subcategories are mainly drawn from entry 1 of our journals where we wanted to get a sense of the expectations we all had regarding what can be considered our first teaching experience. classroom atmosphere within this category, we used our individual experiences and knowledge to describe aspects related to our expectations in our first teaching practicum. having control of the classroom was our main concern before the teaching practicum, which indicates that the preservice teachers’ beliefs in this regard are too narrow. we used to think about classroom management as the process of taking control of the class and over our students, that we would be able to give the class without any interruptions. some examples of it are johana’s concern that she would not “be able to take control of the class and, at the same time, catch students’ attention.” elcy also expressed such worry: “it will be very difficult for me to manage the students.” however, as we mentioned above, this can be seen as a narrow belief if we accept brophy’s (1996) definition of classroom management as the “actions taken to create and maintain a learning environment conducive to successful instruction” (p. 5). it means that classroom management is not merely to keep control and have rules to maintain order in the schoolroom but also to incorporate the relationship/ rapport with the students to create a pleasant environment/atmosphere for the learning process. many beliefs about teaching are pre-built from our experiences, or in johana’s and elcy’s cases built from others’ perspectives. from a sociocultural standpoint, previous experiences bear great significance in the ways our beliefs evolve and change since we are always immersed in some sort of context, interacting with and participating in it. the aspects of the sociocultural context influence our way of thinking and acting. for instance, drawing from previous experiences and from the opinion of others, johana and elcy wrote the following: i had heard from other preservice teachers that the majority of students from secondary are more difficult to work with. (johana, entry 1)2 as it has been always known, in the public sector there are many students inside one classroom (35 or more). (elcy, entry 1) as former students in public schools, we have witnessed the difficulties of being a teacher in the public sector where, among others, there is the issue of overcrowded classrooms. besides, as students in an efl ba program, we have heard from other preservice and in-service efl teachers as regards their experiences during their teaching process and some extra information that made us reconsider if our decision of becoming a teacher was appropriate. during the short time that we had face-to-face classes, we understood that, as teachers, we had to create and develop strategies to catch and maintain the attention and interest of our students in our classes. here, we recognized that our perceptions about “classroom management” were unfounded and too narrow as to what other preservice teachers told us, that it is not based only on having control and order of the classroom, but it goes further. in entry 3 of her journal johana mentioned: classroom management is not merely to give students the class rules and that care about their behavior. it should also take into account their individual needs, likes, and ideas, to take advantage of them, to improve and increase their comfort and participation in classes. 2 after the excerpts, we will add in parentheses the exact entry from which each excerpt is taken. thus, entry 1 is prior to the practicum, entry 2 is during the practicum, and entry 3 after the practicum. universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras200 ariza-quiñones, hernández-polo, lesmes-lesmes, & molina-ramírez likewise, as teachers, we understood that as part of this context (classroom atmosphere), we enter a constant phase of convincing and negotiating knowledge. we seek to obtain information about our students’ experiences and prior knowledge to create bridges of dialogue and understanding as part of the teaching process and starting point in shared learning. personal interests and beliefs other aspects that became visible were the interests focused on the search to transform the self and the other; interests oriented towards mutual strengthening and individual skills to consolidate our personal and professional identities, as evidenced in our journals. in entry 1 of the journal (before the practicum) elcy mentioned: i want to focus on helping to make each student a little better than they are in each one of my classes. i want that the time they will spend in my classes to be time spent becoming better persons or citizens. kelly said “i will try to give my best, to research and bring to the classroom meaningful activities for them, where they can develop all their skills almost without realizing it.” prior to the practicum, we all agreed that we did not only want to transform our students with our work but also to build new skills to help us in our identity-building process, both in the personal and the professional dimensions, as highlighted by johana: “i will be able to gain knowledge not only about how to teach english to teens and/or to improve my skills.” zambrano (2002, as cited in floriano, 2015) affirms that “learning becomes the starting point, and the fundamental concept is the search for such transformation” (para. 2, our translation). due to our professional training, we realized the need to be a more sensitive and empathetic teacher with students; teachers who care about teaching content and look for ways to influence each of the students positively. in the teaching practicum, we share beliefs, attitudes, behaviors, and perceptions of identity as individuals impacting the students’ learning through the classroom atmosphere, the types of methodologies, and the strategies we promote in our classes. we believe that teachers are essential in providing students with a meaningful learning environment, an environment where the teacher is not at the center and students passively receive content and knowledge, as was usually the case in our educational experiences (at school and at university). in this measure, we highlight that education involves the act of knowing and not the mere transmission of theory. it is a process characterized by the horizontality of teacher–student relationships where together they learn, seek, and build knowledge. the most important thing is that we see students’ formative stage as a personal transformation process that helps both (students and teachers) build their principles for social projection. in entry 1 of her journal, kelly emphasized the impact that the teacher can have on the students’ lives: “i have always thought that primary school teachers have a very important role in children’s learning process. they are the ones who create the solid foundations for the rest of life.” this corresponds to freire and horton’s (1990) notion: the teacher is of course an artist, but being an artist does not mean that he or she can make the profile, can shape the students. what the educator does in teaching is to make it possible for the students to become themselves. (p. 181) this means that teachers, in their role as guides, supporters, and mediators of knowledge and context, seek to provide their students with the essential foundations so that they assume their role as main actors in the learning process. thus, through the learning process, students develop and reinvent knowledge, develop self-confidence, self-esteem, and autonomy that allows them to be strong and critical beings in any situation. 201profile: issues teach. prof. dev., vol. 24 no. 1, jan-jun, 2022. issn 1657-0790 (printed) 2256-5760 (online). bogotá, colombia. pages 193-207 preservice efl teachers’ experiences in their first teaching practicum: a collaborative autoethnography pedagogical knowledge how do we know if theory can be put into practice? as preservice efl teachers, we feel a recurring fear when facing the teaching practicum because we do not feel fully prepared to deal with the reality of putting into practice what we have learned during our professional training. in the university, our professors taught us certain theories, contents, and themes that we must apply once we are in our teaching practicum, but once there, we encountered the individualities of our students, which represented for us not just a source of anxiety and doubts, but also a challenge to overcome. in our journals, we mentioned a concern about the adaptation of the pedagogical knowledge into the context we were going to be immersed in. for instance, in entry 1 of her journal, elcy said: “i hope that all that knowledge works for me within the new context in which i am going to be immersed.” likewise, johana’s expectation was about putting into practice what she had learned in the university, and kelly’s concern was “not knowing how to do things.” it is at this point where we found a gap between what we had learned and the realities of a classroom context. our professors prepared us as english language teachers mainly through the exposition of the themes in the curriculum and the introduction of techniques and teaching methods. however, the teaching practicum helped us see that educational contexts vary, and that teaching should be adapted to the distinct classroom realities, something which was not explicitly taught in our former courses. so, we are left with the question: how do we link all the theory and content learned during our training to the reality/context of each student? the supervisor’s and cooperating teacher’s roles one of the fundamental components of the pedagogical practicum is the cooperating teacher and the supervisor. we were aware of the importance of these people in our pedagogical practicum. during the data analysis, we agreed that the relationship between the cooperating teacher and the preservice efl teacher should be one of communication, collaboration, and permanent support. on the other hand, the supervisor is a big source of knowledge due to his or her teaching experience. the view of the supervisor as an “expert” and the preservice teacher as a “novice” may not be conducive to a fully productive and mutually beneficial relationship. however, we expected supervisors and cooperating teachers to provide us with all their experience in teaching. they would point out aspects such as classroom management or designing and conducting a class and, after every class observation, give us feedback that would enrich and helped us to improve in different aspects. one example of it is elcy’s expectation: i expect that my supervisor and my cooperating teacher nurture me with all the experience that they have teaching and to learn from them many techniques and strategies for designing an appropriate lesson plan, conducting the lesson, or how to deal with problems arising in class. (entry 1) the expectations are very high concerning the supervisor’s and the cooperating teacher’s roles. in one of the meetings in which important aspects such as challenges and expectations regarding teaching practicum were discussed, we mentioned that we did not want them only to review the lesson plans because, for us, having their support and guidance is vitally important in this new path that will mark our professional training. personal fears in this subcategory, johana and elcy have three personal fears in common. the first was the fear of being judged by the cooperating teacher who observed our lessons. it was a new experience for us to be supervised by another teacher who would evaluate the way we conducted the lessons or revealed our language knowledge. universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras202 ariza-quiñones, hernández-polo, lesmes-lesmes, & molina-ramírez thus, we became anxious about planning the lessons and about the way we interacted with the students. the other aspect was related to the knowledge of the language that the cooperating teacher might have. elcy and johana placed emphasis on the english level of the cooperating teacher (beginner, intermediate, upper-intermediate, advanced) since, according to them, it would have a great impact on the development of the teaching practicum and their performance as teachers. johana and elcy also feared the corrections they could receive from the mentor teacher while they were carrying out the lessons. they thought that the way such corrections are delivered may somehow damage their image in front of their students: these may lose the respect towards the preservice teachers or doubt their abilities. we agreed that such insecurities stemmed from our previous educational experiences, where most of the times, the teacher was seen as an authoritative figure and the depositary of all the knowledge; students, in these conditions, are not expected to make mistakes. the last fear is related to our students, as, prior to the practicum, there is the uncertainty about their behavior, their learning process, and how the students are going to receive us. johana stated: i have to confess that i feel nervous because of the grades i am going to teach and how i will be and how i will create and feed the rapport with my students [or] if i will be able to teach/explain a topic and the students will . . . understand it. (entry 1) elcy also expressed such worry: “it will be difficult for me to manage students because of their ages, their different learning styles, their english level, their behavior.” but, in kelly’s case, her fear is related to dealing with the different students’ realities. we were willing to put into practice all the theories and concepts we had learned. the concern arose when we faced not only the context of the teaching practicum but also with the different situations that emerged from the individualities of our students. we were immersed in a context where our personalities and realities became invisible from our teaching process since our students were the main actor in classes. category 2: some particularities that emerged due to the covid-19 pandemic this categor y was developed while we were immersed in the practicum. as such, the reflections that we share here are mainly drawn from entries 2 and 3 in our journals. we briefly describe the unexpected challenges brought about by the pandemic and how we managed to respond to them. recursiveness/virtual learning environment in colombia, as in other parts of the world, online lessons have emerged as an alternative to face-to-face lessons due to the restrictions brought about by the covid-19 pandemic. as a result, education changed dramatically, with the notable rise of online learning, whereby teaching is conducted remotely and on digital platforms. the following question emerged within this new modality: were we, as preservice efl teachers and students, really prepared to face this challenge? to answer bluntly, this unexpected situation caught us unprepared. the technology courses at our university were not enough to help us fill in the learning gaps so that we could effectively impart online lessons, amid all the limitations and inequalities in students’ lives that the situation has made even more evident. according to sosa-penayo (2020), “confinement for health issues undoubtedly exposes the large gaps not overcome in the different societies despite the scientific and technological advances of humanity in recent decades” (p. 1, our translation). this global emergency brings out the result of many years of social inequality among colombian families. a fact that did not go unnoticed by us since in the context in which we were immersed, a significant gap between students from privileged and 203profile: issues teach. prof. dev., vol. 24 no. 1, jan-jun, 2022. issn 1657-0790 (printed) 2256-5760 (online). bogotá, colombia. pages 193-207 preservice efl teachers’ experiences in their first teaching practicum: a collaborative autoethnography disadvantaged environments was visible: where the students without the necessary tools or conditions for a quality online education struggled to participate in digital learning. one example of it is elcy’s experience: i conducted classes by whatsapp and i felt helpless and frustrated during my first classes because even though my students were very excited to receive the classes, they could not attend due to lack of resources. (entry 2) apart from that, another concern was that students were not having direct face-to-face contact with their teachers; they did not receive feedback about their lessons during their learning process as they were used to. consequently, we used our individual experiences in our first teaching practicum context to describe how recursiveness has become an essential part of the current situation. due to the new educational context, we had to reinvent ourselves, train and reflect on our work to think of new methodologies, strategies, dynamics, and engage in a reflective analysis on how we would adapt learning and link it with the needs, interests, and particularities of each of our students in such a way that their educational process was not interrupted. these aspects are noticeable in our journals. for instance, johana mentioned that she had to be more recursive and look for new tools and activities. moreover, she had to change her way of teaching, to plan new strategies for online classes, and kelly said that this very particular situation has made her become more recursive and increasingly look for new ideas and tools to implement in her teaching process. for that reason, we started using a variety of different digital tools and programs. but we also designed teaching materials, videos, and guides for those students who could not connect to virtual classes. empathy the changes imposed by the pandemic also made us reflect deeply on the role we had to play in this new context. from the outset, we were aware that it is vital not to leave aside the human dimension of being a teacher and the importance of building rapport with our students. it means that we saw our students as people, and set a relationship based on trust, respect, understanding, listening, and dialogue. we recognized each student as a different being, and not as someone inferior. within this new context, we strengthened our empathy towards our students and became more aware of their realities and needs. we were worried about those students who could not attend the online classes, so we offered alternatives by designing additional materials for those students. these new experiences made us get out of our comfort zone and brought us enrichment and improvement. we also became more creative and recursive teachers. “emotions are integral, influential factors in all human beings. they are not only personal dispositions, but also social or cultural constructions, influenced by interpersonal relationships and systems of social values” (zembylas, 2004, as cited in garcía-sánchez et al., 2013, p. 117). in other words, preservice efl teachers’ attitudes and/or behaviors can vary by keeping in contact with people who are around us: cooperating teachers, supervisors, students, parents, in short, society at large where the role of teachers is under scrutiny. conclusions and implications this study revealed that we encountered numerous new challenges that emerged from our expectations related to our pedagogical knowledge, interests and personal beliefs, classroom management, aspirations, fears, and vulnerabilities about our first teaching practicum. in addition to this, we strived to find a “professional identity as an ongoing process of interpretation and reinterpretation” (rasheed, 2017, p. 42) of our relationships built within and out of the teaching contexts. the teaching practicum was the fundamental space for us to contextualize and implement what we had learned (theory and content) in our teacher training courses. we noticed that those courses failed to take into account the individualities and realities of the students. although it was a big challenge for us, we were able to handle the situation universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras204 ariza-quiñones, hernández-polo, lesmes-lesmes, & molina-ramírez by recognizing students’ individualities, analyzing their needs, understanding their facilities, and formulating goals and objectives for their learning process. the process of collaborative autoethnography, in which we shared significant events from the individual to the collective, helped us to understand the teaching practicum and ourselves in a different way, to be more aware of how our experiences become a set of common understandings, to share textual interpretations that give meaning to our experiences, and to create our own perspectives on the context in which the exchange of knowledge took place. but also, to ask ourselves questions and to understand the actions, behaviors, and demands that emerged in our role, in our classes, and in students within the teaching practicum. hearing and reading the experiences from us was a stimulating, liberating process, and full of new knowledge. we could listen to different points of view and the strategies used by each of us, which were useful for our performance as teachers. finally, we were immersed in a virtual learning environment, where we had the opportunity to confront unforeseen changes imposed by the pandemic, familiarize ourselves with possible issues that teachers grapple with, and imagine new ways to be ourselves. we could also provide spaces and generate a creative and innovative impact for learning, and to think of new possibilities of linking the pedagogical curriculum to different contexts where the construction of learning is possible. besides, it made us reflect, improve our creativity, become more resourceful, and to put ourselves in our students’ shoes by designing the classes and activities in an easy and understandable way while considering the technological problems our students faced. in this research, some concerns arise about how different personal, experiential, and contextual factors may influence preservice efl teachers in teaching practicum spaces. based on the findings, we concluded that, as preservice efl teachers, we could find ourselves in the process of self-reflection about 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(2019). conceptualizing the practicum experience of pre-service english language teachers through reflection. international journal of learning, teaching and educational research, 18(2), 117–130. https://doi. org/10.26803/ijlter.18.2.9 https://www.howjournalcolombia.org/index.php/how/article/view/26 https://www.howjournalcolombia.org/index.php/how/article/view/26 https://files.eric.ed.gov/fulltext/ej795233.pdf https://files.eric.ed.gov/fulltext/ej795233.pdf https://revistas.unal.edu.co/index.php/profile/article/view/17682 https://revistas.unal.edu.co/index.php/profile/article/view/17682 https://doi.org/10.4324/9780203878033 https://doi.org/10.4324/9780203878033 https://doi.org/10.1080/02619761003660277 https://doi.org/10.1080/02619761003660277 https://doi.org/10.15446/profile.v21n1.71300 https://doi.org/10.15446/profile.v21n1.71300 https://doi.org/10.1177/002248702237395 https://doi.org/10.1177/002248702237395 https://doi.org/10.5539/elt.v8n1p205 https://doi.org/10.5539/elt.v8n1p205 https://dergipark.org.tr/en/pub/cusosbil/issue/4366/59725 https://dergipark.org.tr/en/pub/cusosbil/issue/4366/59725 https://doi.org/10.19183/how.25.2.459 https://doi.org/10.19183/how.25.2.459 https://doi.org/10.1177/0033688208092182 https://doi.org/10.1177/0033688208092182 https://doi.org/10.20533/licej.2040.2589.2010.0015 https://doi.org/10.20533/licej.2040.2589.2010.0015 https://bit.ly/3ckrtcy https://doi.org/10.14221/ajte.2010v35n7.1 https://doi.org/10.26803/ijlter.18.2.9 https://doi.org/10.26803/ijlter.18.2.9 universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras206 ariza-quiñones, hernández-polo, lesmes-lesmes, & molina-ramírez about the authors kelli johana ariza-quiñones, lizzeth dayana hernández-polo, kelly julie lesmes-lesmes, and elcy lorena molina-ramírez hold a ba from the english language teaching program at universidad surcolombiana (colombia). 207profile: issues teach. prof. dev., vol. 24 no. 1, jan-jun, 2022. issn 1657-0790 (printed) 2256-5760 (online). bogotá, colombia. pages 193-207 preservice efl teachers’ experiences in their first teaching practicum: a collaborative autoethnography appendix: prompts for entries of the journal as we know, the teaching practicum is a space immersed in continuous changes that arise from the different situations of daily life that are evidenced by the relationships or links created within this context. as part of our english as a foreign language teacher training, we have to do two teaching practicums in the last two semesters of the degree. we knew that we were going to face the first one, and due to the anxiety, excitement, and nervousness that it caused us, we asked ourselves some questions that later became prompts that allowed us to collect the first data of our experience. prior to the teaching practicum as a pre-service teacher, write about the expectations and motivations you have about your first teaching practicum before it starts. during the teaching practicum considering those weeks of their teaching practicum. what learning or interpretation did the teaching context (classroom and its actors) provide for you? after the teaching practicum based on your experience gained by the first teaching practicum, did your expectations change? or in what ways were your motivations affected or enriched? a reflection on initiatives for teachers’ professional development through language assessment literacy 197profile: issues teach. prof. dev., vol. 23 no. 1, jan-jun, 2021. issn 1657-0790 (printed) 2256-5760 (online). bogotá, colombia. pages 197-213 https://doi.org/10.15446/profile.v23n1.83094 a reflection on initiatives for teachers’ professional development through language assessment literacy una reflexión sobre iniciativas para el desarrollo profesional docente mediante la literacidad en evaluación de lenguas frank giraldo1 universidad de caldas, manizales, colombia in this reflection article i examine language assessment literacy initiatives and their possible impact on teachers, and i discuss the connections that exist between language assessment literacy and teachers’ professional development. i explain that training for language assessment literacy may primarily foster teachers’ knowledge and skills and, secondarily, principles for language assessment (e.g., fairness). in conclusion, existing language assessment literacy initiatives, while limited in number, have the potential to advance teachers’ language assessment literacy overall and contribute to their professional development. thus, this article may be useful to language teacher educators, particularly in the colombian context. keywords: language assessment literacy, language testing and assessment, professional development programs, teachers’ professional development, teacher training en este artículo de reflexión examino las iniciativas que han surgido alrededor de la literacidad en evaluación de lenguas y su posible impacto en la docencia. asimismo, establezco la relación entre dicha literacidad y el desarrollo profesional docente, y explico cómo la capacitación en este ámbito se ha enfocado, primero que todo, en el conocimiento y las habilidades y, seguidamente, en los principios de evaluación de lenguas (por ejemplo, la justicia). en conclusión, las iniciativas existentes en la literatura, si bien son pocas, podrían fomentar la literacidad de evaluación de docentes de idiomas y, así, contribuir a su desarrollo profesional. por ello, este artículo puede ser útil para formadores de profesores, en particular en el contexto colombiano. palabras clave: capacitación docente, desarrollo profesional docente, evaluación de lenguas, literacidad en evaluación de lenguas, programas de desarrollo profesional frank giraldo  https://orcid.org/0000-0001-5221-8245 · email: frank.giraldo@ucaldas.edu.co how to cite this article (apa, 7th ed.): giraldo, f. (2021). a reflection on initiatives for teachers’ professional development through language assessment literacy. profile: issues in teachers’ professional development, 23(1), 197–213. https://doi.org/10.15446/profile.v23n1.83094 this article was received on october 22, 2019 and accepted on july 27, 2020. this is an open access article distributed under the terms of the creative commons license attribution-noncommercial-noderivatives 4.0 international license. consultation is possible at https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/ https://doi.org/10.15446/profile.v23n1.83094 https://orcid.org/0000-0001-5221-8245 https://doi.org/10.15446/profile.v23n1.83094 https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/ universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras198 giraldo introduction language assessment literacy (lal) is one of the most recent discussions in the area of language testing. research in this specific aspect of the field has gained increasing attention since davies’s (2008) review of language testing textbooks and what they aim to teach. davies concludes that textbooks revolve around three components: knowledge, skills, and principles for language testing. particularly, current discussions in lal include the need that various stakeholders (e.g., teachers, students, language testers, and others) have to deal with language assessment. an appropriate contextsensitive level of lal can allow these stakeholders to derive sound interpretations to make appropriate decisions based on scores from assessment. specifically, lal is needed across a range of contexts and people because language assessment plays a prominent role in educational and social contexts (fulcher, 2010). finally, at a more fine-grained level, scholarly work on lal has attempted to define what this construct is, and authors have proposed definitions and models to operationalize lal. because of the discussions that lal has triggered, this construct is necessarily expanding, with calls being made to include stakeholders such as students and school administrators (malone, 2017) and to provide specific competencies of lal for teachers (stabler-havener, 2018). in fact, language teachers have been a central stakeholder group in the lal puzzle. the research for these agents of language assessment has, most prominently, examined their practices, received training, and specific needs in lal (frodden armstrong et al., 2004; fulcher, 2012; hasselgreen et al., 2004; lópez mendoza & bernal arandia, 2009; vogt & tsagari, 2014). authors have also offered insights into what shape lal should have for language teachers (fulcher, 2012; inbar-lourie, 2013b). in synthesis, language teachers’ lal comprises a wide range of knowledge, skills, and principles, some examples of which are presented in the following list: knowledge of • models describing language ability; • key concepts, (e.g., validity, reliability, and authenticity); • language pedagogy; • second language acquisition theories; • bilingual issues. skills in • the design of instruments for assessing language skills; • connecting language assessment and instruction; • statistical interpretation and calculation; • planning, implementation, and evaluation of assessments; • reporting interpretations from language assessment to various users. principles for • guarding language assessment against misuses; • treating students fairly; • using language assessment data ethically; • evaluating the quality of language assessment procedures; • bringing about positive consequences for student learning. because of its width and depth, a major impetus in researching teachers’ lal is warranted in the near future. for example, the field is still debating what exactly the lal for teachers can and should be (stabler-havener, 2018). thus, construct operationalization is ongoing, specifically because language assessment is naturally responsive to the contexts where teachers do their work (hill, 2017; scarino, 2013). notwithstanding the need for further research, a trend is evident in the literature: scholars in language testing suggest and expect that teachers have a wide repertoire in lal, and language teachers themselves have reported burning needs in a wide variety of issues for professional development in language assessment, as i discuss below. the call for teachers to have appropriate levels of lal is sensible. they are the ones most directly and frequently involved in collecting data about their 199profile: issues teach. prof. dev., vol. 23 no. 1, jan-jun, 2021. issn 1657-0790 (printed) 2256-5760 (online). bogotá, colombia. pages 197-213 a reflection on initiatives for teachers’ professional development through language assessment literacy students’ language ability. as commented, they claim they need to increase their lal across the board, and the call for this to happen is constant. thus, the need for professional development in lal is ever present. my purpose with the present reflection, then, is to offer language teacher educators in colombia a reflection and synthesis of existing initiatives for language teachers’ lal and, especially, focus on how they seem to help language teachers develop professionally in the area of language assessment. to make the analysis useful to teacher educators, i have divided the reflection into five sections. the first part is about the meaning of professional development in language teaching and its relation with lal. then, i review particulars of how assessment literacy and lal have been defined, and i provide a synthesis of lal specifics for language teachers. in the third section i examine studies that report teachers’ needs in language assessment, followed by a review of trends in lal initiatives to foster this construct. i end the paper by explaining how initiatives for lal and language teachers’ professional development intersect. professional development in language teaching in general terms, professional development is considered a reflection-based approach to teachers’ improvement in language education. various authors (díaz-maggioli, 2004; farrell, 2013; freeman, 1989) generally contrast professional development with training, arguing that the former seeks to empower teachers to become reflective and proactive towards their work as teachers; training, on the other hand, is related to specifics and technicalities of the teaching profession (farrell, 2013; richards & farrell, 2005). more recently, farrell (2013) warns that teachers should not be recipients of top-down professional development by outside experts but become engaged in what he calls bottom-up professional development; this approach is more akin to teachers’ context of teaching. farrell defines professional development as “a continual intellectual, experiential, and attitudinal growth of teachers” (p. 22). in conclusion, the consensus seems to be that professional development, rather than training, is the goal of teacher education. however, as might become apparent later in this article, teachers in lal initiatives have been recipients of training, which may also involve professional development. to promote professional development, authors have agreed on a number of principles upon which professional development programs are designed and their types. table 1, by no means an exhaustive list, includes features that scholars have suggested for effective professional development (atay, 2008; cárdenas et al., 2010; castañeda-londoño, 2017; clarke, 2003; díaz-maggioli, 2004; gonzález, 2007; johnston, 2009). table 1. principles and types of professional development programs principles types • based on context-specific needs of teachers; • based on reflection, collaboration, observation, feedback, and change; • responsive to and respectful of teachers’ voices; • receiving explicit and sustained institutional support (e.g., time to be in workshops). • study groups; • collaborative action-research; • reflective writing, (e.g., in journal entries or narrative inquiry); • group discussions; • formal professional development programs administered by institutions; • narrative inquiries; • blended learning. universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras200 giraldo undoubtedly, the task of doing language assessment is part of teachers’ practices. thus, furthering their professional development must also involve close attention to how and why teachers do language assessment (giraldo, 2020; hill, 2017; scarino, 2013). in fact, principles such as delivering professional development programs based on teachers’ needs and providing sustained support are echoed in lal discussions (brindley, 2001; inbar-lourie, 2008). importantly, for lal programs to happen, the construct of lal needs to be operationalized. next, then, is an overview of what assessment literacy and lal mean. assessment literacy, lal, and language teachers’ lal in general education, the term assessment literacy is attributed to stiggins (1991). he defined assessment literacy as the knowledge and ability necessary to use and evaluate assessments effectively to account for student learning. more specifically, teachers’ general assessment literacy has been operationalized through standards proposed by the american federation of teachers et al. (1990). the standards cover a range of issues in assessment, from using and designing assessments and their results, to criticizing uses and misuses of assessment. similarly, lal comprises these generic competencies but, clearly, the term language differentiates lal from assessment literacy (inbar-lourie, 2012). because lal is an ongoing issue in language testing, the construct has embraced multiple shades of meaning. for instance, it is agreed that lal includes knowledge, skills, and principles for language assessment (davies, 2008; inbarlourie, 2008). however, teachers’ lal has taken a rather granular level. inbar-lourie (2013b) claims that their lal should include the following elements: 1. understanding of the social role of assessment and the responsibility of the language tester. understanding of the political [and] social forces involved, test power and consequences. (p. 27) 2. knowledge on how to write, administer and analyze tests; report test results and ensure test quality. (p. 32) 3. understanding of large scale test data. (p. 33) 4. proficiency in language classroom assessment. (p. 36) 5. mastering language acquisition and learning theories and relating to them in the assessment process. (p. 39) 6. matching assessment with language teaching approaches. knowledge about current language teaching approaches and pedagogies. (p. 41) 7. awareness of the dilemmas that underlie assessment: formative vs. summative; internal external; validity and reliability issues particularly with reference to authentic language use. (p. 45) 8. lal is individualized, the product of the knowledge, experience, perceptions, and beliefs that language teachers bring to the teaching and assessment process (based on scarino, 2013). (p. 46) as can be discerned from the list above, language assessment is far-reaching in teachers’ professional development, so it cannot be understudied in language teacher education, as research has shown (lópez mendoza & bernal arandia, 2009; sultana, 2019; vogt & tsagari, 2014). additionally, lal may be a catalyst of reflection in professional development, especially because it can have an impact on technical aspects (i.e., design of assessments), people, and institutions. in fact, fulcher’s (2012) empirical definition of lal for language teachers highlights these areas: the knowledge, skills and abilities required to design, develop, maintain or evaluate, large-scale standardized and/or classroom-based tests, familiarity with test processes, and awareness of principles and concepts that guide and underpin practice, including ethics and codes of practice. the ability to place knowledge, skills, processes, principles and concepts within wider historical, social, political and philosophical frameworks in order to understand why practices have arisen as they have, and to evaluate the role and impact of testing on society, institutions, and individuals. (p. 125) 201profile: issues teach. prof. dev., vol. 23 no. 1, jan-jun, 2021. issn 1657-0790 (printed) 2256-5760 (online). bogotá, colombia. pages 197-213 a reflection on initiatives for teachers’ professional development through language assessment literacy as the definitions above clearly suggest, much is expected of language teachers. most importantly, perhaps, is that these authors do not conceive assessment as an afterthought but rather something that underlies language teachers’ professional development. for instance, both authors agree that teachers need to be aware of and evaluate how assessment impacts society; i argue that this implies a reflective stance natural to professional development. however, the authors also highlight the technical aspect of assessment (e.g., the act of design) as a fundamental part of lal. this, as i will show, reflects the training aspect of lal: one that requires detailed knowledge and skills for sound practices. it seems then that lal for teachers should conceive both training (i.e., study of operational skills for assessment) and development (e.g., reflection upon the impact testing can have). studies that have tapped into language teachers’ needs for lal have suggested this dual approach. in the next section, then, i review studies that support this contention. teachers’ perceived training and needs in lal most of the research to date on teachers’ lal has focused on describing their perceived training and needs. consistently, studies have indicated that these stakeholders feel unprepared for doing language assessment and this has remained a trend in the literature (berry et al., 2017; hasselgreen et al., 2004; lam, 2015; lan & fan, 2019; tavassoli & farhady, 2018; tsagari & vogt, 2017). considering their lack of lal, when asked about further training, teachers express needs regarding theoretical and technical aspects, with secondary attention to critical issues such as the impact of testing on social communities (farhady & tavassoli, 2018; fulcher, 2012; lam, 2015; vogt & tsagari, 2014). overall, their needs reflect davies’s (2008) components: knowledge, skills, and principles. the studies also remark, perhaps naturally, on the need for emphasis on classroombased language assessment, as opposed to large-scale testing. however, as vogt and tsagari (2014) argue, teachers should become critical towards the power that large-scale tests have and their impact on the language classroom; here it is worth remembering that fulcher’s (2012) definition of lal also connects language teachers to evaluating large-scale testing. while the trends above—especially lack of training—are common to lal research across various regions in the world, studies have also shown some specificities. for example, xie and tan (2019) studied the perceived needs of both practicing and preservice teachers on the verge of becoming in-service ones. the results in this study indicated that preservice teachers felt prepared for assessing speaking and writing and for adapting their assessment practices based on students’ needs. the authors, citing deluca and klinger (2010), claim that this attitude could be considered unrealistic optimism and that perhaps the preservice teachers did not really envision the complexities of doing assessment in context. further, in a study on teachers’ assessment literacy related to assessing writing, crusan et al. (2016) found that teachers generally reported themselves as being able to deal with the task of assessing writing; however, they expressed specific needs in rubric creation. lastly, giraldo and murcia’s (2018) study with preservice teachers pointed towards a specific aspect that may impact lal. when asked about what to learn in a language assessment course, these stakeholders expressly expected attention to general assessment policies in colombian education. two crucial aspects about the findings in these studies warrant analysis. clearly, language teachers and lal researchers agree on the burning need to foster higher levels of lal. more importantly—and i believe this marks a central call—the studies emphasize the need for language assessment courses to be foundational in language teacher education programs. authors have repeatedly called for this emphasis (herrera & macías, 2015; lam, 2015; lópez mendoza & bernal arandia, 2009). language assessment should not be studied universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras202 giraldo superficially; if such is the case, teachers might have to resort to learning about language assessment on the job through experience and contextual factors (berry et al., 2017; vogt & tsagari, 2014; xie & tan, 2019; yan et al., 2018). i would like to think language education programs in colombia are increasingly becoming more adept towards embracing core courses for language assessment; if so, then they should disseminate their practices for interested stakeholders to learn from these experiences. the other crucial aspect is that the studies above suggest the need for training more than the need for professional development. in other words, teachers seem to want more lal for operational purposes rather than for reflective ones. for instance, quantitative surveys consistently show higher percentages when it comes to tasks such as designing language assessments or knowledge of theoretical aspects (e.g., validity and reliability; brown & bailey, 2008; fulcher, 2012). however, teachers do not explicitly report the need to study ethics and fairness in language assessment (giraldo & murcia, 2018; harding & kremmel, 2016; vogt & tsagari, 2014); arguably, these topics may spark more reflection than technicalities and therefore be more aligned with what professional development represents. perhaps teachers take these issues as relevant to their teaching in general, and this is why they do not report any need in these aspects for language assessment. additionally, ethics and fairness are mostly discussed in large-scale testing and are under-researched in classroom language assessment. thus, these two principles could lead to interesting discussions if included in professional development programs for teachers’ lal, but this may imply a judgment call by teacher educators. since teachers report various needs in language assessment, this represents a challenge and an opportunity for teacher educators to foster lal. the next section, then, discusses trends in initiatives that seek to help language teachers to improve their lal. the section focuses on proposed foci for lal programs to help teachers learn about language assessment; an overview of self-access materials; and finally, a review of formal programs (e.g., workshops) for teachers. lal initiatives self-access materials self-access materials for fostering lal can be divided into three kinds: textbooks for language testing, scientific journals, and other online resources. on the one hand are textbooks for language testing. some of these resources can be somewhat theoretical but there is an increasing call to make them more practical for language teachers. for example, fulcher’s book (2010) is based on feedback given by language teachers as to what they would expect from a language testing book. the practical book by carr (2011) offers practitioners the opportunity to study basic measurement with the use of excel; brown’s (2011) has a similar approach. of course, these resources explore common theoretical aspects such as validity and authenticity. finally, these textbooks also include guidelines for constructing assessments and they explore the social aspect of language testing, particularly the works by fulcher and carr. (for reviews on textbooks for language testing, see brown & bailey, 2008; davies, 2008; fulcher, 2012; and malone, 2017.) while many of these textbooks include practical exercises with answer keys, a challenge may be that teachers do not get feedback from more knowledgeable peers. teachers get what is offered in the book only. another possible challenge is the books’ relatively high cost, but this of course depends on personal budget. besides, various textbooks can be bought online, so the problem of not having access to specialized bookstores can be overcome. publications such as journal articles or research reports, though in many cases technical, can be a second source for lal. publications such as language testing, language assessment quarterly, papers in language testing and assessment, and studies in language testing 203profile: issues teach. prof. dev., vol. 23 no. 1, jan-jun, 2021. issn 1657-0790 (printed) 2256-5760 (online). bogotá, colombia. pages 197-213 a reflection on initiatives for teachers’ professional development through language assessment literacy are particularly written for an expert audience of language testers and applied linguists. occasionally, they have articles with a more practical approach. however, more general journals in language education include language assessment articles that have teachers as their audience. table 2 lists some journals that include articles on language assessment that do not generally require advanced knowledge of the field. to find articles in these journals, teachers can access the links and use a search bar. then, they can type keywords (or combinations thereof ) to find relevant articles, for example: assessment, portfolio, peer assessment, testing reading, exam, and so on. many universities pay to have access to journals, so if teachers have an official university email account, they may be able access their universities’ paid online databases to find the journals above and others. a last type of self-access materials in this review are those delivered online. some of these require teachers to pay a fee, but there are others that teachers can access for free. i will focus on four that can be used at no cost. the british council’s how language assessment works (https://www.britishcouncil.org/exam/aptis/ research/assessment-literacy) is a video-based exploration of key qualities and issues in language assessment like test development and validity, the assessment of language skills, and others. this resource also includes a pdf for teachers to study the glossary about language assessment (coombe, 2018). this resource can be used to target the knowledge side of lal (davies, 2008). table 2. some journals with teacher-oriented articles on language testing and assessment journals fee required open access elt journal (https://academic.oup.com/eltj) x tesol quarterly (https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/journal/15457249) x tesol journal (https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/journal/19493533) x the journal of asia tefl (http://journal.asiatefl.org/) x english teaching forum (https://americanenglish.state.gov/forum) x íkala: revista de lenguaje y cultura (http://aprendeenlinea.udea.edu.co/revistas/index.php/ikala) x profile: issues in teachers’ professional development (https://revistas.unal.edu.co/index.php/profile) x how journal (https://www.howjournalcolombia.org/index.php/how) x colombian applied linguistics journal (https://revistas.udistrital.edu.co/index.php/calj) x https://www.britishcouncil.org/exam/aptis/research/assessment-literacy https://www.britishcouncil.org/exam/aptis/research/assessment-literacy https://academic.oup.com/eltj https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/journal/15457249 https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/journal/19493533 http://journal.asiatefl.org/ https://americanenglish.state.gov/forum http://aprendeenlinea.udea.edu.co/revistas/index.php/ikala https://revistas.unal.edu.co/index.php/profile https://www.howjournalcolombia.org/index.php/how https://revistas.udistrital.edu.co/index.php/calj universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras204 giraldo understanding assessment (http://www.cal.org/ flad/tutorial/), developed by the center for applied linguistics, is a resource where teachers can explore language testing issues such as practicality and reliability. it includes an online glossary and a link to external resources for lal. however, some of these external materials no longer exist. the information is presented through examples and has an interactive component that asks users to reflect on questions before they see suggested answers. this resource may also be considered on the knowledge side of lal. the teachers’ assessment literacy enhancement project (tale) is a comprehensive resource for teachers which has a downloadable handbook (tsagari et al., 2018) that teachers and teacher educators can print and refer to whenever needed. the handbook covers issues such as purposes, methods, and constructs for assessment. it also provides sample items and tasks for teachers to evaluate and extra suggested sources for lal. importantly, the handbook also engages users in examining test impact as it underlies assessment practices. thus, the handbook targets lal at large: knowledge, skills, and principles. additionally, tale provides users with eight open courses for language assessment. to access them, teachers need a user account. the courses cover the same areas as the handbook but teachers can provide feedback to course tasks. another advantage is that the courses include embedded videos that illustrate topics in assessment. the tale project is arguably one the most complete free resources for practitioners to thoroughly learn about language assessment at large (http://taleproject.eu/). glenn fulcher’s language testing resources website (http://languagetesting.info/) can also aid in developing lal. this website offers numerous articles about language testing and includes videos and podcasts in which scholars offer definitions for concepts such as test impact, validity, integrated skills, and others. although the contents may be theoretical for practicing language teachers, the materials are curated by an expert (fulcher) and thus offer reliable information. finally, fulcher frequently updates the site with relevant news articles and recent publications. to date, there are no published reports that trace the effect of these free online resources on their users. thus, the extent to which they impact teachers’ lal, and their professional development, is currently unknown. however, tsagari et al. (2018) explain that, by accessing tale’s courses, teachers express their consent on data usage for research purposes. this means there might be official reports, at least of this program. professional development programs for lal the focus in this section is on research studies that sought to target specific aspects of language teachers’ lal, from only knowledge, to knowledge, skills, and principles. table 3 includes information about the type of professional development program the teachers were engaged in, the topics and/or tasks that formed the contents of the programs, and the most salient learning points in the studies. to find these studies, i consulted specialized journals (e.g., language assessment quarterly) and local journals in colombia. the main criteria for selecting the studies was that they had to explicitly report (a) initiatives in which teachers studied language assessment and (b) clearly reported results from these programs. several commonalities may be discerned in the studies below. except for giraldo and murcia (2019), the professional development initiatives did not last long periods of time but a week (for example, baker & riches, 2017) or three weeks (kremmel et al., 2018), or even a few hours (boyd & donnarumma, 2018). the reason for this can be traced to a second commonality: all studies, except giraldo and murcia, involved in-service teachers who were not taking official courses and naturally were doing their in-service work. http://www.cal.org/flad/tutorial/ http://www.cal.org/flad/tutorial/ http://languagetesting.info/ 205profile: issues teach. prof. dev., vol. 23 no. 1, jan-jun, 2021. issn 1657-0790 (printed) 2256-5760 (online). bogotá, colombia. pages 197-213 a reflection on initiatives for teachers’ professional development through language assessment literacy table 3. studies reporting the impact of professional development programs on teachers’ language assessment literacy (lal) publication type of program focus of lal main results impacting lal nier et al. (2009) blended learning course knowledge and skills: key concepts; task and rubric development; assessing culture participants expanded their understanding of assessment. walters (2010) workshops skills and principles: standards reversed engineering, item specifications; critical analysis of items and standards • increase in critical awareness regarding standards and performance indicators for english language learning. • awareness of possible connections between standards and indicators, and test items. arias et al. (2012) collaborative action research knowledge and skills: communicative language ability, key concepts (e.g., validity and reliability), design of instruments for speaking • better articulation between formative and summative practices • rigorous design of instruments • reliable practices • higher levels of interactiveness in alternative assessments • high content validity in instruments • greater inter-rater reliability. • transparent practices thanks to rigorous rubrics • fair and democratic assessment practices baker & riches (2017) a series of workshops that lasted one week. knowledge (superficially), skills, and principles: key concepts (e.g., validity and reliability); writing test items and tasks for reading, vocabulary, grammar, and writing; analyzing sample test items; doing studentcentered assessment participants in this study • became critical towards large-scale test items used in their country; • learned how to create questions for reading comprehension; • described intricate constructs for reading assessments, that is, from superficial understanding to inferences; • became aware of the importance of vocabulary tasks for teaching and assessment; • learned how to design test items in grammar, vocabulary, and writing by having texts as their base; • connected teaching and assessment; • developed a more formative view of assessment; • became aware of the existence of key concepts such as validity and reliability; and • had difficulties sharing and/or accepting ideas from other workshop participants. universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras206 giraldo publication type of program focus of lal main results impacting lal boyd & donnarumma (2018) one three-hour workshop knowledge and skills: assessment purposes; traditional and alternative assessment; communicative competence as a construct; validity, reliability, and other assessment qualities; guidelines for the design of test items participants in this study • developed confidence to judge the validity of a test; • became aware of how students may react to assessments; • learned to identify poorly designed test items (e.g., questions); • connected test preparation and learner performance; • realized they needed further training for writing multiple-choice questions and judging writing and/or speaking performance; and • raised awareness on the importance and complexity of testing. kremmel et al. (2018) training for teachers as item writers. three workshop weeks each year, for three years in a row. mainly skills: test specifications; using oral texts for listening; tasks for writing and items for listening; rating scales; item and task evaluation; improvement of tasks and items after trials; benchmarking participants in this study • learned mostly about item and task development (writing and evaluation); designing test specifications; test development (e.g., stages); test selection; validity, practicality, and reliability • related knowledge for large-scale testing to their own classroom assessment. giraldo & murcia (2019) language assessment course for preservice teachers (16 weeks, 4 hours weekly) knowledge, skills, and principles: qualities such as validity, reliability, and authenticity; design of items for listening and reading; design of tasks for writing and speaking; communicative language testing; ethics and fairness; general assessment policies in colombia participants in this study • radically changed conceptions: they went from a grade-only view to a broader conception of assessment. • developed a sophisticated metalanguage to analyze and critique assessment and assessment instruments • became aware of the intricacy involved in designing assessments (i.e., items and tasks) • connected their developing lal to their practicum experience 207profile: issues teach. prof. dev., vol. 23 no. 1, jan-jun, 2021. issn 1657-0790 (printed) 2256-5760 (online). bogotá, colombia. pages 197-213 a reflection on initiatives for teachers’ professional development through language assessment literacy as explained earlier, scholars have urged teacher educators to have a contextual, needs-based approach to professional development programs. arias et al. (2012) and giraldo and murcia (2019) completed studies that directly align with this principle. in walters (2010), the study was based on teachers’ context but there is no explicit reference to their needs or institutional context in his research. in baker and riches (2017), the authors asked teachers about standardized examinations in haiti before the workshop took place, but the authors do not report having planned the workshop based on teacher feedback, although it may be sensible to think they did. finally, the remaining studies do not report how the professional development programs were planned but rather focus on how they were delivered. this does not mean these programs do not align with professional development principles at all. for example, kremmel et al. (2018) had teachers carefully analyze and improve test items and tasks, which required consistent reflection. additionally, these programs respected teachers’ voices to analyze language assessment issues (boyd & donnarumma, 2018; nier et al. 2009; walters, 2010): teachers had the chance to criticize policies for language learning, increased their awareness of language assessment, and reflected on how language assessment impacts students. lastly, most of the initiatives mainly focused on the knowledge + skills side of language testing (davies, 2008). in other words, emphasis was placed on the nuts and bolts of testing, but the programs did not explicitly target critical issues such as ethics and fairness, or the social impact of language assessment. in this respect, kremmel et al. (2018) clearly state that this was not the focus of the training they provided. conversely, principles such as fairness and transparency were pivotal in arias et al. (2012). these authors in fact highlight these principles as major findings in their study. interestingly, the findings in giraldo and murcia (2019) do not refer to ethics and fairness, even though these were central contents in their lal program. thus, it remains unclear whether students in giraldo and murcia became aware of these issues in language assessment. three conclusions are worth highlighting. not only did these initiatives teach specific aspects of language assessment (e.g., validity), but they helped teachers become more critical towards their practices or assessment systems. for example, in baker and riches (2017), the participating teachers became critical towards the way standardized tests are designed; also, in walters (2010), teachers criticized test items and their relationship, or lack thereof, with standards for learning english. finally, the participants in boyd and donnarumma (2018) aligned knowledge of high-stakes testing to how they involve students in assessment; additionally, these teachers identified strengths and gaps in their learning. thus, explicit training in language assessment can have the potential to lead to reflection, a major feature of professional development. the second conclusion refers to the connection between teachers’ needs and the development of their lal. as commented above, teachers mainly report they need training in practical matters of language assessment. the studies in table 3 seem to align well with such needs. this trend may be another reason why principles are not generally featured in lal initiatives. notice, however, that giraldo and murcia’s (2019) study did include explicit attention to principles; the authors explain that this was a judgment call in their diagnostic study (giraldo & murcia, 2018) rather than something the preservice teachers needed or expected. similarly, arias et al. (2012) explicitly addressed principles in language assessment, with corresponding positive effects. in this case, however, the authors deliberately included these aspects, because, in an earlier study, they found unsystematic and invalid practices (see arias toro & maturana patarroyo, 2005) and therefore had compelling reasons to address principles. finally, some of the studies targeted lal within a wider social context. baker and riches (2017), boyd and donnarumma (2018), and kremmel et al. (2018) universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras208 giraldo educated teachers in their studies by having socially impactful tests (i.e., high-stakes) as points of reference. walters (2010), similarly, studied items—a small unit of analysis—to scrutinize public standards for english as a second language. scoping the territory: lal and professional development there are enough empirical and conceptual arguments to highlight lal as a crucial aspect of language teachers’ professional development. the call, as commented elsewhere, has been constant and emphatic. only recently, however, the answer to cultivating teachers’ lal has gained impetus, but current resources and programs for lal have clear potential to foster teachers’ lal. whereas several resources for lal development require fees, there are other available materials teachers can use on their own. some of the latter i have reviewed in this paper. fortunately, they may be considered of high quality since they are developed by experts. thus, one recommendation for teacher educators and teachers in general is to explore these initiatives and personally reflect on how they impact and help to advance lal. language teachers’ self-reported needs in language assessment have tended to relate to skills + knowledge. fortunately, the resources and programs reviewed in this paper have responded to these needs. what seems to be a revealing trend is that as teachers are engaged in technical aspects of language testing, their institutional and broader social contexts come to play a role. consequently, it can be argued that training in language assessment leads to reflection, an expected feature of teachers’ professional development in language education. in other words, as teachers are studying the design and nature of instruments, they may become aware of the social implications of language assessment. as for the professional development programs reviewed (see table 3), they are, perhaps not surprisingly, well received among teachers and exert positive change overall. most importantly, teachers in professional development programs, as the studies report, tend to connect learning about language assessment to their general teaching and their students’ learning. it is unfortunate, however, that few programs for language teachers’ professional development in lal are reported in journals (see more in the limitations section below). more experiences should be made available to further fuel the lal discussion (inbarlourie, 2013a). figure 1 shows the relationship between lal and professional development, as i have discussed it in this paper. figure 1. relation between language assessment literacy and professional development language teachers’ needs for language assessment literacy sources of language assessment literacy: · textbooks · journals · websites · professional development programs training in language testing and assessment: · knowledge · skills · principles professional development: · awareness · change · reflection 209profile: issues teach. prof. dev., vol. 23 no. 1, jan-jun, 2021. issn 1657-0790 (printed) 2256-5760 (online). bogotá, colombia. pages 197-213 a reflection on initiatives for teachers’ professional development through language assessment literacy the needs language teachers express regarding lal seem to be starting points for initiatives to happen. this decision makes sense and is consonant with principles for professional development in general; that is, professional development in language education is receptive of teachers’ needs and contexts. for example, fulcher’s (2010) textbook for language testing, tsagari et al.’s (2018) tale, arias et al.’s (2012) professional development program, and giraldo and murcia’s (2018, 2019) course are all based on thick descriptions of teachers’ needs. this means some of the sources for lal presented in figure 1 are informed by teachers’ life-worlds (scarino, 2013). taken together, the sources of lal are used for training teachers, mostly in knowledge and skills and with some emerging attention to principles. thus, training programs lead to professional development as teachers reflect on and raise awareness of what language assessment means (giraldo & murcia, 2019; nier et al., 2009), how language assessment impacts or relates to learning (arias et al., 2012; baker & riches, 2017; boyd & donnarumma, 2018; kremmel et al., 2018; walters, 2010), and what positive changes can occur through enhanced lal (arias et al., 2012). limitations two limitations need discussion in this paper. my search for studies on the connection between lal and professional development was limited to major specialized and general journals, through both paid and open-access sources. however, there may be other studies in less commonly-known journals of which i was unaware at the time i wrote this paper. thus, language teacher educators interested in reading about lal initiatives may do their own search to see if more information can be found. overall, as of 2019, there is a scarcity of research studies that bring lal and professional development together; notice that table 3 shows most studies started to appear after 2017. more case studies can be useful to aggregate findings and lead to conclusions on how programs impact teachers’ lal, especially if they report what methodologies and principles for professional development are used, what contents are included, and what results arise from the experiences. another related limitation is that the trends i have highlighted in this paper may not be indicative of lal initiatives at large. for example, i argue that there is limited emphasis on principles of language assessment, but this needs empirical validation, especially because of the limited available literature. as i commented, studies have recently started to appear, so it seems that research integrating lal and professional development is and will be ongoing. conclusions and recommendations lal definitely contributes to language teachers’ professional development; because of this positive impact, it is past time that lal become a more prominent component of language teacher education programs. lack of lal in pre and in-service teachers’ professional development may have detrimental effects on their practices and therefore on student learning. in this reflection paper, i have reported that, in general, language teachers want training in practical and technical aspects of language assessment. when engaged in training, however, teachers may become aware of issues that go beyond practical matters and into critical ones. this seems to connect lal and professional development but further research is needed to confirm or refute the trend. because of the needs expressed by teachers, the initiatives upon which i reflected in this paper have responded accordingly. in other words, they have targeted the knowledge + skills side of language assessment, though a few others have addressed principles. overall, there exist valuable, high-quality resources for teachers to improve their lal levels. the free resources i included in this paper have the added universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras210 giraldo advantages that they are compiled and designed by experts and can be used however needed or desired. additionally, if teachers can have the chance to be engaged in official professional development programs for language assessment, then it is likely that they will improve their lal in general, that is, knowledge, skills, and principles. against these conclusions, i first invite language teacher educators to use the highlights in this paper to have a general perspective of how lal helps with professional development. along with general principles for professional development programs, these stakeholders can use the resources and insights in this paper to plan and implement programs that can impact teachers’ professional development in language assessment. teacher educators can also encourage language teachers to use the available resources and customize them for their specific needs; for example, if teachers need to work on the assessment of reading, they can read articles in journals (see self-access materials section and table 2) or take relevant courses (e.g., in tale). also, teachers can use these resources in study groups so they can give and receive feedback on their developing lal. collectively, these efforts should lead to language assessment practices and instruments that are based on the theoretical, technical, and critical dimensions of the field. references american federation of teachers, national council on measurement in education, & national education association. 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(2010). cultivating assessment literacy: standards evaluation through language-test specification reverse engineering. language assessment quarterly, 7(4), 317–342. https://doi.org/10.1080/15434303.2010.516042 xie, q., & tan, s. (2019). preparing primary english teachers in hong kong: focusing on language assessment literacy. the journal of asia tefl, 16(2), 653–673. https://doi. org/10.18823/asiatefl.2019.16.2.14.653 yan, x., zhang, c., & fan, j. j. (2018). “assessment knowledge is important, but …”: how contextual and experiential factors mediate assessment practice and training needs of language teachers. system, 74, 158–168. https://doi. org/10.1016/j.system.2018.03.003 about the author frank giraldo holds an ma in english didactics from universidad de caldas (colombia), and an ma in tesol from university of illinois at urbana-champaign (the usa). he works as a teacher educator in the modern languages program and in the ma in english didactics at universidad de caldas, colombia. https://doi.org/10.1080/15434303.2014.960046 https://doi.org/10.1080/15434303.2014.960046 https://doi.org/10.1080/15434303.2010.516042 https://doi.org/10.18823/asiatefl.2019.16.2.14.653 https://doi.org/10.18823/asiatefl.2019.16.2.14.653 https://doi.org/10.1016/j.system.2018.03.003 https://doi.org/10.1016/j.system.2018.03.003 using reverse mentoring to transform in-service teachers’ beliefs about how to teach english 63profile: issues teach. prof. dev., vol. 24 no. 1, jan-jun, 2022. issn 1657-0790 (printed) 2256-5760 (online). bogotá, colombia. pages 63-76 https://doi.org/10.15446/profile.v24n1.93061 using reverse mentoring to transform in-service teachers’ beliefs about how to teach english transformación de las creencias de los profesores en ejercicio acerca de la enseñanza del inglés mediante la mentoría inversa liliana valle1 danilsa lorduy-arellano universidad de córdoba, montería, colombia nohora porras-gonzález universidad cooperativa de colombia, bucaramanga, colombia this qualitative research study delves into elementary school teachers’ beliefs and the potential contribution of reverse mentoring to improve english language teaching for children. the purpose was to explore how elementary in-service teachers’ beliefs could be transformed after participating in a reverse mentoring experience. a group of in-service teachers from two public elementary schools and a group of studentteachers from universidad de córdoba (colombia) were the research participants. data were gathered through a questionnaire, interviews, and classroom observations. findings showed that reverse mentoring played an important role in transforming in-service teachers’ beliefs about teaching english to children regarding the difficulties of language learning, communicative strategies, motivation and expectations, foreign language aptitude, and the nature of language learning. keywords: beliefs, in-service teachers, student-teachers, reverse mentoring, teaching english este estudio exploratorio indagó cómo las creencias de profesores en ejercicio sobre la enseñanza del inglés a niños eran transformadas después de participar en una experiencia de mentoría inversa. participaron un grupo de profesores de dos escuelas públicas de primaria y un grupo de practicantes de la universidad de córdoba (colombia). la información se recolectó mediante un cuestionario, entrevistas, notas de diarios de campo y observaciones de clase. los resultados mostraron que la mentoría inversa jugó un papel importante en la transformación de las creencias de los profesores sobre la enseñanza del inglés, con respecto a dificultades en el aprendizaje, las estrategias comunicativas, la motivación y expectativas, la aptitud hacia la lengua extranjera y la naturaleza del aprendizaje de lenguas. palabras clave: creencias, enseñanza del inglés, mentoría inversa, practicantes, profesores en ejercicio 1 liliana valle  https://orcid.org/0000-0002-6088-988x · email: lbvalle@correo.unicordoba.edu.co danilsa lorduy-arellano  https://orcid.org/0000-0002-9700-7422 · email: dlorduy@correo.unicordoba.edu.co nohora porras-gonzález  https://orcid.org/0000-0003-3051-9666 · email: nohora.porrasg@campusucc.edu.co how to cite this article (apa, 7th ed.): valle, l., lorduy-arellano, d., & porras-gonzález, n. (2022). using reverse mentoring to transform in-service teachers’ beliefs about how to teach english. profile: issues in teachers’ professional development, 24(1), 63–76. https://doi.org/10.15446/profile.v24n1.93061 this article was received on january 26, 2021 and accepted on september 3, 2021. this is an open access article distributed under the terms of the creative commons license attribution-noncommercial-noderivatives 4.0 international license. consultation is possible at https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/ https://doi.org/10.15446/profile.v24n1.93061 https://orcid.org/0000-0002-6088-988x mailto:lbvalle@correo.unicordoba.edu.co https://orcid.org/0000-0002-9700-7422 mailto:dlorduy@correo.unicordoba.edu.co https://orcid.org/0000-0003-3051-9666 mailto:nohora.porrasg@campusucc.edu.co https://doi.org/10.15446/profile.v24n1.93061 https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/ universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras64 valle, lorduy-arellano, & porras-gonzález introduction beliefs are inextricably tied to human nature. they represent the accumulation of social interactions and life experiences from different sources. they are conceptualized as preconceptions people have internalized; for instance, in the education context, teaching beliefs can be the starting point for teaching-learning decision making that also determine certain academic actions and intentions (ferguson & bråten, 2018). following khader (2012), “teachers’ beliefs are a set of ideas rooted in the psychological and mental content of the teacher and play a central role in guiding his/her teaching behavior” (p. 73). teachers hold different beliefs about teaching which guide their actions in classroom practices. these beliefs may benefit or hinder teachers’ performance and ultimately influence the quality of their instruction, thus, to explore the beliefs about teaching english to a group of elementary teachers with little or no knowledge of that language, and who lacked the pedagogical tools to effectively teach it, we outlined a research project to provide them with strategies to help them improve their english teaching practices. hence, the participants were a group of student-teachers from the foreign language teaching program at universidad de córdoba and a group of in-service elementary school teachers from two public schools in the department of córdoba, colombia. the school teachers were responsible for teaching all school subjects, including english. mcnulty-ferry and quinchía-ortiz (2007) have analyzed the lack of expertise in the english instruction of many teachers in colombia. some of their findings conclude that teachers at the elementary school level do not have enough training and preparation to teach english. in recent studies, chaves and fernández (2016) describe a similar experience by mentioning that, since they are homeroom teachers, they do not have any specific training for teaching the language. furthermore, porras (2007) states that in colombian elementary schools “there is a shortage of qualified teachers who have been trained as english teachers” (p. 8). this project is a response to the concerns linked to this lack of training in english language instruction and aims at improving english teaching practices in elementary schools through a reverse mentoring experience. at the beginning of this study, the group of in-service teachers expressed serious concerns in terms of their limitations regarding teaching english to children. at first, a variety of beliefs and assumptions, which had hindered their teaching of english, were identified. consequently, a process of reverse mentoring was implemented between student-teachers and in-service educators. once the reverse mentoring stage finished, new data were collected and analyzed to determine how the teachers’ beliefs could have been transformed and to provide them with strategies to better cope with english teaching constraints due to their lack of expertise on the subject. literature review reverse mentoring traditional mentoring is a relationship between a more experienced individual, generally an experienced/senior (mentor) and a younger one, with little or no experience (mentee). reverse mentoring is an approach characterized by mutual trust and cooperation whose goal is to facilitate learning and the academic development of senior colleagues (ziegler, 2009). additionally, zauchner-studnicka (2017) explains that reverse mentoring is a process in which the traditional roles of mentoring—experienced/inexperienced—are reversed. in this case, a less experienced person serves as a mentor to a more experienced learner who plays the role of the mentee. reverse mentoring was first introduced formally by jack welch in 1999, a general electric former chief executive officer, who asked 500 of his best managers to interact with competent internet workers (greengard, 2002). this mentoring approach has been primarily used in the business field as one of the “best practice” entrepreneur strategies. 65profile: issues teach. prof. dev., vol. 24 no. 1, jan-jun, 2022. issn 1657-0790 (printed) 2256-5760 (online). bogotá, colombia. pages 63-76 using reverse mentoring to transform in-service teachers’ beliefs about how to teach english for example, dell (harvey & buckley, 2002), procter & gamble (greengard, 2002), time warner (hewlett et al., 2009), and the society of manufacturing engineers (lennon, 2019) are all examples of corporations which used reverse mentoring as a way of building intergenerational relationships, diversity on initiatives, and innovation. reverse mentoring has been proven to be one of the most useful tools when it comes to widening perspectives and developing new trends while obtaining cross-generational and technical knowledge. this type of mentorship benefits leadership development as an effective strategy for mutual learning between mentors and mentees, which enhances teamwork and organizational environment. studies about reverse mentoring in the field of language teaching and education are scarce. the impact of this kind of mentorship for educational purposes has been researched in relatively few studies around the world. one has been that of cotugna and vickery (1998), who carried out a study where college students worked together with senior professionals to teach them internet use and technological skills. in a similar study, leh (2005) conducted some research in a school of education at a state university which focused on training the university’s president in college level initiatives to teach faculty members and graduate students how to use and integrate technology in their classes. christie et al. (2004) have explored how reverse mentoring helped in the process of collaborative learning between high school students and graduates for the purpose of bringing technology into k–12 classrooms as well as to modify participants’ perceptions and attitudes. goossens et al. (2009) carried out a student-mentor project in the business school at the university of hertfordshire with students who had some skills in technology, whose purpose was to improve staff skills in technology. in more recent studies, augustinienė and čiučiulkienė (2013) focused on revealing some positive characteristics of reverse mentoring as an effective tool for novice teachers to build up their own self-authorship process in their professional development. reverse mentoring in education is not only related to the roles of juniors and seniors, but is more a matter of reciprocal learning from/for both parties. augustinienė and čiučiulkienė claim that “effective reverse mentoring is based on the duality of roles and is always a twoway flow of learning which may be characterized as a boomerang effect” (p. 76). likewise, porras et al. (2018) affirm that the relationship between in-service elementary school teachers and student-teachers in a reverse mentoring experience was strengthened because the attitude of both sides was open and collaborative. this concept is coherent with murphy’s (2012), who points out that mentoring facilitates reciprocal gains for those involved in terms of learning, growth, and development therefore, these aspects are clearly related to changes in assumptions and participants’ preconceived notions of themselves as mentors and mentees. preconceived ideas can constrain knowledge building since they are rooted in belief systems closely linked to efficiency, productivity, and personal and professional performance. according to kato (2018), the importance of implementing a skill-based mentoring program for experienced advisors at a japanese university evidenced professional development and growth for both mentors and mentees. this program relied on reverse mentoring as an effective approach which facilitated learning opportunities for both parties—mentor and mentee. conceptualizing “beliefs” beliefs can be understood as something that is assumed as true. in social and academic settings what is usually true is contingent on the establishment of seniority, authorship, and research. in terms of english language teaching, it is sometimes assumed or believed that experienced educators have all the necessary tools to teach effectively. however, the idea or belief that teaching and learning is a one-way process where only experienced mentors are authorized to teach inexperienced mentees can be disrupted since merely having seniority may not universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras66 valle, lorduy-arellano, & porras-gonzález guarantee good teaching practices. borg (2011) helps us re-assert that beliefs “are propositions individuals consider to be true and which are often tacit, have a strong evaluative and affective component, provide a basis for action, and are resistant to change” (p. 370). on the other hand, gilakjani and sabouri (2017) conceptualize beliefs as an important part of the process of understanding how educators shape their teaching practices. consequently, understanding how different teaching practices are shaped by different sets of beliefs can also facilitate the re-conceptualizing of educators’ teaching methods and their decisions in the classroom. additionally, richards et al. (2001) assert that understanding the beliefs and principles teachers operate on is part of the process of grasping how teachers conceptualize their work and how they approach it. here, we may conclude that beliefs are connected to the way(s) in which the individual notions and personal judgement teachers have about themselves have an impact on their teaching practices in the classroom. barrot (2016) theorizes that teachers’ beliefs are also closely connected to cognition, which plays a crucial role in teachers’ development and their classroom practices. borg (2003) conceptualizes teacher cognition as “the unobservable dimension of teaching—what teachers know, believe, and think” (p. 81). therefore, if beliefs are related to cognition, it can be argued that they are deeply internalized and assumed as general truths or common knowledge that is seemingly undisputable. crookes (2015) insists that beliefs and cognition can be used interchangeably, which reinforces the notion that what we believe in is what we know and vice versa. barcelos (2000) identifies how beliefs can strongly influence teaching methods, behaviors, attitudes, and teaching decision-making processes in the classroom. she also mentions how beliefs are complex notions of what is assumed as true; therefore, it is also a complex process to change them entirely. furthermore, johnson (as cited in cota-grijalva & ruiz-esparza-barajas, 2013) states that “most teachers guide their actions and decisions by a set of organized personal beliefs and that these often affect their performance, consciously or unconsciously” (p. 82). there is no doubt that teachers’ beliefs guide and affect what teachers do in the classroom, so there is a close relationship between beliefs and actions. another element connected to beliefs is practical knowledge. practical knowledge is developed when interacting through experience in the field. according to ross and chan (2016), the accumulation of teachers’ life experiences such as schooling, upbringing, and so on, is unique and personal and shapes their teaching practices in the classroom as well as the way materials are designed to facilitate learning. moreover, the classroom constitutes a space where practical knowledge is gained, and beliefs shaped. consequently, the more practical opportunities teachers can have, the more actions can be taken to re-purpose beliefs and implement professional development programs (richardson, 1996). research on changes in teachers’ beliefs suggests that classroom and schooling experiences become strong influences on assumptions and knowledge formation. not only are beliefs commonly associated with thought processes, but they are also related to the socio-historical contexts where human activity can be the object of study in terms of actions and how those contribute to shaping thought (burns et al., 2015). based on the theoretical framework and the limited research done on the use of reverse mentoring in the educational field, we argue that reverse mentoring is a useful approach throughout the teaching process. teachers’ beliefs are likely to be modified and this can serve as a starting point to eventually provide in-service teachers with strategies to optimize their english teaching which would ultimately lead to the improvement of the teaching of english in elementary schools. method this study utilizes qualitative methods of collecting information such as questionnaires, interviews, and class observations. we carried out an in-depth exploration 67profile: issues teach. prof. dev., vol. 24 no. 1, jan-jun, 2022. issn 1657-0790 (printed) 2256-5760 (online). bogotá, colombia. pages 63-76 using reverse mentoring to transform in-service teachers’ beliefs about how to teach english of participants’ beliefs about teaching english to young learners and how those beliefs were modified after observing student-teachers’ english teaching practices. the mentoring between english student-teachers (mentors) and in-service elementary school teachers (mentees) constitutes a reverse mentoring experience. participants this study had two groups of participants: (a) five elementary school teachers in montería (colombia) who were willing to participate in the project and who, despite lacking strong foundations in teaching english, had to teach it, and (b) a group of five eighth-semester undergraduate students from the english language teaching program at universidad de córdoba, who carried out their pedagogical practicum in an elementary school. we were the student-teachers’ practicum advisors and were responsible for collecting and analyzing the information. data collection the data collection process was conducted in three stages. first, we identified the school teachers’ beliefs and assumptions about learning and teaching english to children by using three data collection instruments: questionnaires, interviews, and class observations. the questionnaire was an adapted teacher version from the balli—beliefs about language learning inventory— by horwitz (1988; some questions from the original version were modified and scale options were yes/no). in-service teachers were interviewed by using a semistructured format. also, we observed four lessons to determine the coherence between the teachers’ stated beliefs (identified through the questionnaire) and their classroom practices. during the second stage, or the reverse mentoring implementation, teachers kept journals to reflect on student-teachers’ teaching practices. after the observations, there were feedback sessions whereby each student-teacher met the school teacher and the researchers, who acted as moderators, in one-hour sessions, aimed at asking questions regarding the strategies and procedures in the student-teachers’ lessons. we recorded and transcribed these conversations. in the third stage, we observed the teachers six additional times to confirm changes in their classroom practices after the student-teachers had finished their practicum process; a final interview was also applied with the same purpose. table 1 presents a summary of the stages and different data collection procedures used in this study. table 1. research stages and data collection stage data collection instruments identification of in-service teachers’ beliefs about teaching english • questionnaire • interview • observations student-teachers’ teaching practicum (reverse mentoring process) • in-service teachers’ journals • feedback sessions identification of possible changes in beliefs and improvement in the teaching practice • interview • observations data analysis the first (diagnosis) and second (reverse mentoring implementation) stages of the research study played a crucial role in identifying teachers’ beliefs and assumptions as well as their english teaching practices through the questionnaire, interviews, and observations. the data obtained were triangulated and analyzed, and the results presented following the categories in horwitz’s (1988) balli, to demonstrate how teachers’ beliefs were either transformed or remained the same after the implementation of the reverse mentoring process. findings findings focus on the influence of the reverse mentoring relationship on in-service teachers’ beliefs and practice toward teaching english to children. universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras68 valle, lorduy-arellano, & porras-gonzález beliefs about foreign language proficiency before the reverse mentoring process, a strong belief that teachers had was that english could be taught as any other school subject in the curriculum, so anyone could teach it; that is, they were convinced that teaching english did not require specific methodological knowledge. this perception was ratified through the answers collected in both the questionnaire and interviews: “the teacher of primary levels teaches nine areas at the same time, including english”1 (interview 1, teacher 2). and then she added “i use the booklet and follow the pronunciation that appears there.” along the same lines, teacher 4 mentioned: “i teach my english class as i teach the rest of the subjects” (interview 1). during the first stage, the collected information also reflected how this belief was evidenced in the classroom; for example, some teachers wrote decontextualized lists of vocabulary or grammar structures on the board and translated them into spanish. fajardo (2013) has reflected on english teaching practices and concluded that being unaware of recent methodologies to teach english is one of the main reasons why in-service teachers end up using their own set of beliefs to teach english to children instead of having a clear methodological approach in mind. it means that even though in-service teachers considered themselves capable of teaching english to children, their practice did not reflect the appropriate procedures to do so. however, the teachers’ beliefs about english language teaching were transformed during the second stage while the teaching practicum was in progress, as their reflections on what was observed from studentteachers were positive. for instance, teacher 1 wrote in his journal entry: the methodology implemented is always very active and interactive; making use of mutual inductive and deductive activities, where the student is the center of the teaching 1 all teachers’ excerpts have been translated from spanish. process. the student-teacher always integrates abilities: writing, speaking, listening…she also uses pictures and interactive activities and this is why her classes are always fun and motivating. similarly, teacher 2 showed a positive attitude towards the methodology implemented by studentteachers. as she expressed in her journal: “[the student-teacher] motivates her classes very well since the very beginning of the lesson (warming up, leading in, instruction, and so on), she is able to get students’ attention so that they become interested in the topic and activities.” this shows that being an english teacher at any school level requires not only a good command of the language, but also the use of a specific methodology. according to porras et al. (2018), “it is paramount that teachers be sufficiently qualified since they play an important role as facilitators of the teaching and learning process, equally, [they] are a source of input for their students, especially at the elementary level” (p. 170). for this reason, the reverse mentoring stage was beneficial for the in-service teachers since they became aware of the importance of possessing knowledge as regards how to teach english to children. consequently, in stage three, when teachers were teaching their english classes, their effort to minimize the translation strategy was observed, especially in the leading-in activity. instead, they encouraged learners to participate in class by asking questions to activate pupils’ previous knowledge, imitating what student-teachers had done during their classes. particularly, teacher 2 changed the way she started her classes. the following excerpt of a conversation between teacher 2 and her students evidences the students’ engagement in the english class through the use of their background knowledge: teacher: miguel, what is your mother’s name? (in spanish) student 1: keila, teacher! teacher: good! (with thumbs up) the teacher pastes a chart on the board teacher: okay. what is this? (pointing to the board) 69profile: issues teach. prof. dev., vol. 24 no. 1, jan-jun, 2022. issn 1657-0790 (printed) 2256-5760 (online). bogotá, colombia. pages 63-76 using reverse mentoring to transform in-service teachers’ beliefs about how to teach english student 3: a chart (in spanish). a big tree! teacher: a family tree, repeat! . . . and what are there on those tree branches? (in spanish) [sic] student 1: pictures of people! (in spanish) student 3: they are mom and dad. (in spanish) teacher: bravo! this is the father (pointing to the picture on the board) and this is the mother. repeat! after the reverse mentoring took place, the english lesson was delivered differently. therefore, the class topic (i.e., the family) was approached in a more functional way. in previous observations, teacher 2’s lessons were more focused on grammatical structures and translation, but after the reverse mentoring her classes seem to be more communicative. the collected data show all the biases teachers had about their own learning of english. during the feedback sessions, they mentioned being concerned about their inability to speak english well since they did not think they had the necessary skills to learn it. teachers based their opinions on their previous schooling experience and all the barriers they seemed to have experienced when learning english. these perceptions about learning english confirm what moodie (2016) has expressed about the impact of schooling on the shaping of english teachers’ teaching practices and the development of communicative skills in the classroom. from the gathered data, it can be drawn, for example, that unsuccessful english learning experiences have negatively influenced elementary school teachers’ perceptions of their own learning abilities. these perceptions or beliefs have also hindered the way(s) in which english classes are planned and implemented since teachers rely on their limited knowledge to teach english and are unaware of language teaching approaches due to their lack of specific training. however, despite their english language limitations, teachers also showed a great deal of commitment and tried to re-evaluate, re-design, and re-think previous language teaching practices due to the effectiveness in the implementation of reverse mentoring. teacher 2 corroborates the positive impact reverse mentoring had on their teaching when mentioning that “observing student-teachers teaching english motivated her to start doing something to improve her english level as well as her own teaching” (journal). beliefs about learning and communication strategies regarding learning and communication strategies, two important aspects related to beliefs were evidenced. the first was linked to the slight importance given to teaching speaking to children since, as the participating teachers conveyed, their students would never use english in real life; therefore, exposure to the language was not necessary. it is evident that the teachers are not aware that learning a language implies being proficient in all skills, including speaking. regarding speaking, brewster et al. (2007) state that although children are not proficient in a foreign language, they always look for occasions to show others what they learn in their classroom. it is very common to find children who want to express themselves using the foreign language inside and outside the classroom since they feel proud of their new learning. another belief associated with the previous one has to do with practice and fluency. at the beginning of the process, the teachers believed that a lot of practice to develop fluency was not necessary at early ages. however, practice is fundamental for learning a second language: the more you use the language, the better. practice helps learners to automatize the new language and, consequently, gain fluency (jones, 2018). even though children are beginning the language learning process, they can start their path towards fluency thanks to the different kind of practices teachers expose them to. that is why teachers should provide students with a lot of controlled and guided practices that will help them internalize the new language and prepare them for more demanding tasks. universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras70 valle, lorduy-arellano, & porras-gonzález both beliefs mentioned above were confirmed in the class observations; however, after the reverse mentoring process, teachers expressed that their students needed to be exposed to the foreign language for its use both inside and outside the classroom. teacher 3 mentioned that: they may use it inside and outside the class…because you can see them trying to use what the teacher has taught. additionally, they see its use everywhere…in the games, in tv shows, and in announcements. people are always using english; it is an invasion of english words wherever you go. (feedback session 3) even though at the beginning of the process the teachers thought children would not use english, they changed their mind once they observed children trying to use what they had learned in the class with studentteachers. the teachers became aware of the importance of using the language in different contexts, not only inside the classroom, but also outside it. besides, they realized that the language can be practiced in other scenarios or through other means such as tv, music, and video games, among others although they were not able to teach the whole class in english, a change in their attitude towards language learning was noticeable, especially in their willingness to do it in a different way, as evidenced in one of our observation entries: teacher 3 began the class greeting students in english, followed by the sign of the cross in english. then, she wrote on the board the word “star” and asked the students its meaning. student said “no,” and the teacher expressed “they shine at night sky” and immediately students said in spanish that it was a star. the teacher called a student to go to the board to draw a star. the teacher continued writing other words on the board (sun, moon, cloud, and others). she used gestures and key words to make pupils guess the meaning. most teachers’ beliefs and attitudes were re-shaped due to their interest to improve their teaching practices and make the language learning process more meaningful for children. thus, they started implementing strategies and steps used by the student-teachers, such as greeting students and praying in english at the beginning of each lesson. based on our observations, four of the five teachers used body language and were engaged in urging learners to guess the meaning of the words and associate them with pictures. the use of reverse mentoring as a language teaching approach for experienced teachers to learn from student-teachers encouraged them to re-think and re-purpose their beliefs and teaching practices so that the learning of english resulted in a more meaningful experience for their learners. beliefs about the nature of language learning/teaching the information gleaned from the questionnaire and interviews during the first phase of the project revealed three aspects related to beliefs or assumptions about the language teaching process. firstly, there is great concern about pronunciation since it is seen as a relevant element when it comes to the teaching of speaking. as teacher 4 commented: we have the topic…the days of the week…i write monday in spanish and in english, then we read the word and we pronounce it in english…do you understand me? having them pronounce since that is the important thing about english. (interview 1) teacher 4 considers pronunciation to be an important aspect of learning and speaking english as well as having an “excellent” accent. teachers are aware of the importance of pronunciation when learning another language. according to levis and grant (2003), pronunciation plays a vital role in communication. it is essential to recognize the influence pronunciation has on the speaking skill: pronunciation may block or permit oral communication. the second belief teachers reflected on was related to the idea that a child who has not firmly learned his 71profile: issues teach. prof. dev., vol. 24 no. 1, jan-jun, 2022. issn 1657-0790 (printed) 2256-5760 (online). bogotá, colombia. pages 63-76 using reverse mentoring to transform in-service teachers’ beliefs about how to teach english mother tongue cannot learn a foreign one. according to teacher 2, “children that already have strengthened their mother tongue…we say…it becomes easier for them to learn any foreign language” (interview 1). in fact, there has been a long discussion about the influence of l1 in l2 learning. l1 can serve as a support system in l2 learning since it is the language that children already know. however, it can also have a negative impact as some of the mistakes might be linked to the interference of the students’ l1. a third aspect related to beliefs and/or assumptions discussed by teachers has to do with the importance of teaching english with a different theoretical or methodological approach. teachers 1 and 2 did not agree that there is the need for a specific approach to teach english to children. teacher 1 supported this belief by saying, in the initial interview: “i do not see any difficulty in teaching english orally…at least at primary level… because in high school things are more advanced. at primary i do not think it is difficult to learn [english], nor to teach it.” after the reverse mentoring process, teacher 3 expressed in her journal her overemphasis on pronunciation and the work student-teachers did in her lessons. although at the beginning of the process teachers believed that english can be taught as any other subject, after observing student-teachers, they recognized the importance of being a professional in this field and acknowledged that student-teachers had a good methodology for teaching english to children. likewise, they were aware of the need to have a good command of the language since they might have been teaching pronunciation mistakes. regarding the use of the mother tongue, teachers agreed that learning and teaching a foreign language was similar to learning and teaching the mother tongue, and they agreed on the need for using it in communication. teacher 2 wrote: when the student-teacher arrived, the children and i were blown away. he entered the classroom speaking in english, kids remained very quiet listening to him… that is what makes us be concerned with their [children] speaking in english. i do not say they do no use spanish in class, but they use english more frequently now. (journal) the exposure children get in the l2 is beneficial for their learning. the more the students are exposed to the new language, the more they will become familiar with it. along the student-teachers’ practicum, children became accustomed to communicating in the english language as they used it most of the class time. this implied the limitation of l1 and the need to communicate in the foreign language, so children started to use it. likewise, after observing student-teachers, the participating teachers could recognize that this kind of classroom practices are possible and favorable for the children’s language learning process. teacher 3 also commented on the benefits of mentoring: “i think it would be beneficial to have a teacher who could implement new strategies because, maybe, i am making mistakes” (interview 2). furthermore, their belief related to methodology for teaching english was also altered. as teacher 4 expressed in her journal: “i teach my english class as i teach the rest of the subjects…but now i believe there is a special method for teaching english to children.” furthermore, teacher 2 mentions: “the student-teacher brings materials and incorporates information and communication technologies, games, and so on. the classes are very dynamic, and i try to put that into practice.” teaching english to children requires special methodologies and teaching strategies since children have particular features and characteristics. it was rewarding to observe that teachers’ beliefs about this category were transformed after observing lessons carried out by the student-teachers. besides, observations after the practicum finished counted for the teachers’ endeavors to improve their practice, as it was registered in their journal. teacher 1 said: “for me this has not been easy. this has been a challenge for me. i am learning with universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras72 valle, lorduy-arellano, & porras-gonzález the kids. i am trying to learn english with them, too.” it was evident that after the reverse mentoring stage, these teachers grasped some new knowledge about how to teach english to children, as well as strategies that they consider might be useful in their teaching practice. beliefs about motivation and expectations in terms of desires and opportunities, the teachers had the idea that if they learned to speak english very well, it would help them or other people to get better job opportunities. along these lines, teacher 4 mentions: “it is important to learn this language well. because of jobs opportunities…and, you know, it is the universal language and a lot of information today is written in english.” this was also identified in some of the answers that teachers provided in other data collection instruments and remained the same after the reverse mentoring process. additionally, the teachers’ awareness as related to foreign language learning really changed after the reverse mentoring experience since they acknowledged the importance of improving their english level, not only for job opportunities, but also to be able to verbally interact with other people and understand a lot of information they need for their current jobs and daily lives. during one feedback session, one teacher mentioned that one of the main lessons she had learned from student-teachers was the improvement of her speaking skills and the satisfaction of having enhanced her teaching practices as well. nevertheless, she said that time was not enough to gain more knowledge from student-teachers. these changes in awareness about the teaching process was also evidenced during stage two of the process while teacher 3 was observing student-teachers. she looked satisfied when her students were interacting with the student-teacher and describing some images. in another feedback session and after having observed one lesson by the student-teacher, teacher 4 showed his concern towards his language teaching practices and the little interaction he offered his students. he stated: “this is one of my weaknesses, i only concentrate on the topic i’m going to teach [referring to the grammar topic].” after analyzing the findings, it is important to mention that not only did reverse mentoring transform teachers’ beliefs about teaching english to children, but it also encouraged them to improve their teaching practices through the implementation of strategies used by the student-teachers. after the reverse mentoring process ended and teachers began teaching their classes again, we observed that they increased their use of english inside the classroom: they asked their students questions in english, gave instructions in english more frequently, and encouraged students to participate in communicative activities, as evidenced in the following observation excerpt: teacher 3 greets students as usual in english, she decided to start the class with a song about animals in english, through that song the teacher introduced the topic. she wrote on the board “the animals” and asked students which animals were mentioned in the song, and she wrote them in english. while she was writing, she asked children to repeat the words and, at the same time, she asked the student-teacher if pronunciation was good or wrong. next, the teacher read and pronounced each word and asked the students for repetition. (observation 5) discussion this study explored the ways reverse mentoring contributes to transforming teachers’ beliefs about teaching english to children. the findings revealed that teachers’ beliefs about language teaching are closely tied to their self-image and their teaching skills based on their experience as teachers of other subject areas. therefore, they just used their previous teaching experiences to teach english and assumed that the most important aspects when teaching english was to focus on vocabulary, basic grammar rules, and meaning. that is, the lack of knowledge in english teaching meth73profile: issues teach. prof. dev., vol. 24 no. 1, jan-jun, 2022. issn 1657-0790 (printed) 2256-5760 (online). bogotá, colombia. pages 63-76 using reverse mentoring to transform in-service teachers’ beliefs about how to teach english odologies and strategies allowed for teachers to make overgeneralizations about the things they thought were important, leaving speaking and communication out of their teaching practices since they did not think it was important to emphasize those areas. the teachers’ previous approach to teaching is coherent with the skills segregation view (harmer, 2015); for instance, lists of words written in english with the corresponding translation in spanish. the teachers’ focus on translation was tied to the background experience they had had as learners; using l1 and translating from spanish into english and vice versa (prator & celce-murcia, 1979). teachers also seemed to reproduce the same teaching techniques with which they were once taught (lortie, 2002). however, they believe that speaking should be taught by a proficient teacher, which is connected to their own anxieties due to their lack of proficiency to do so. to elaborate, the teachers’ background knowledge might have played a role in the way(s) they thought about their own english teaching practices. burns et al. (2015) have discussed how the cognitive view of language teaching combines internal and external cognitive constructs—especially beliefs, assumptions, and previous experience—which is at the center of how teachers make certain teaching decisions and approach various subjects differently depending on their prior knowledge. similarly, gilakjani and sabouri (2017) have stated that “beliefs are part of the process of understanding how teachers shape their work, which is significant to the comprehending of their teaching methods and their decisions in the classroom” (p. 78). when it comes to methodology, the teachers believed that english should be taught in the same way they teach in other subject areas, which is also linked to the notion that there is one method to teach all disciplines across curriculum. this idea was significantly challenged when they recognized—through reflection and involvement—the need for a special approach when teaching english. therefore, getting teachers involved in re-thinking their own teaching practices and reflecting on new approaches to teach english seemed to be a fruitful process. their classroom practices positively changed, and they became interested in using more up-to-date teaching methods and being lifelong learners as well. reverse mentoring contributed to the progress of teachers’ knowledge of english while their teaching practices benefited from the observation of the studentteachers’ teaching strategies. teachers were able to reflect on their own teaching practices and improve them, which implies that the reverse mentoring experience urged them to reshape the pre-conceived ways of teaching english to children. gilakjani and sabouri (2017) also mentioned that “teachers’ beliefs are affected by training courses, learning experiences, professional development, teaching experiences, and teaching practices” (p. 82), an opinion which supports the notion that reverse mentoring could provide teachers with tools for them to grow and upgrade their own teaching methodologies. conclusions after the implementation of reverse mentoring as a process and approach to improve teaching practices in the english classroom, we can conclude that this process was helpful in that teachers became more aware about the development of their teaching practices, and consequently, the learning of english for their students. through this professional development experience, the in-service teachers showed a better understanding of the need to use different teaching strategies according to the expected outcomes from their students. also, teachers were able to challenge themselves and their preconceived notions that have been created and reinforced through their own learning experiences. hopefully, they changed their beliefs in understanding english teaching as an opportunity for developing elementary students’ english skills based on their cognitive levels. the improvement of english teaching practices should remain a constant concern so that the teaching of english universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras74 valle, lorduy-arellano, & porras-gonzález starts becoming a meaningful experience for both teachers and students. although reverse mentoring may become a helpful and effective strategy to reduce the harmful impact of non-proficient english teachers in class, this does not constitute the only way in which english teaching practices can be enhanced. this study has also contributed to the improvement of english teaching practices via the implementation of a reverse mentoring plan with meaningful steps that can transform teachers’ sets of beliefs, which ultimately lead teachers to take action to effectively upgrade their classroom practices. the new teaching practices and knowledge were the result of an apprenticeship of observation and the reflections prompted by the reverse mentoring process. different scholars prioritize different steps during the teaching-learning process. for moodie (2016) and lortie (2002), the apprenticeship of observation is the first step, while schön (1983) and fenstermacher (1994) focused on reflection, and clandinin (1986) on practice. on the other hand, carter (1990) and fenstermacher (1994) mentioned that experience in the classroom is also thought to shape beliefs and practical knowledge. once teachers incorporate new information into their daily practice and knowledge, getting a better and informed understanding of the learning process and teaching methodologies is quintessential. limitations and implications one of the limitations was that the researchers were responsible for both the implementation of reverse mentoring by student-teachers and observing the progress teachers were making. although we tried to distance ourselves from our roles as advisors and researchers, it is also likely that participants were biased since they were trying to present a positive view of the program and its results. on the one hand, student-teachers were interested in earning a passing grade. on the other hand, the teachers wanted to show progress and professionalism. a second limitation we experienced was the hours of english instruction per week. since there are very few hours of english teaching every week, reverse mentoring, observations, and the analysis of results took longer. an important implication that comes from the implementation of reverse mentoring for the improvement of english teaching practices is that student-teachers are seen by the teachers as a credible source of knowledge and as possessing expertise. in other words, studentteachers became role models for elementary school in-service teachers. hence, this study opens up the possibilities for further research with a focus on using reverse mentoring to develop different language skills and improve teaching practices. finally, although reverse mentoring might have contributed to the improvement of the teaching practices of those 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(2009). mentoring: konzeptionelle grudalagen und wuirksamkeitsanalyse [mentoring: conceptual basics and effectiveness analysis]. in s. heidrun (ed.), mentoring: theoretische hintergründe, empirische befunde und praktische anwendungen (pp. 7–30). pabst. about the authors liliana valle is a full time english teacher and current chair of the foreign languages licentiate program at the universidad de córdoba (colombia). she holds a master’s degree in education and is part of the edutlan research group. she has 20 years of teaching experience in higher education. danilsa lorduy-arellano is a full time english teacher in the foreign languages licentiate program from the universidad de córdoba (colombia) and holds a master’s degree in education with an emphasis in english language teaching from universidad del norte (colombia). she has experience leading teaching practicums. nohora porras-gonzález is a doctoral candidate in education and holds a master’s degree in the same field. she has been a foreign language professor and educator for more than 20 years. currently, she is the practicum coordinator and the coordinator of the students’ research group in the school of education at universidad cooperativa de colombia in bucaramanga. https://bit.ly/3yjxcxr https://doi.org/10.1002/j.1949-3533.2003.tb00125.x https://doi.org/10.1002/j.1949-3533.2003.tb00125.x https://doi.org/10.7208/chicago/9780226773230.001.0001 https://doi.org/10.7208/chicago/9780226773230.001.0001 https://doi.org/10.1016/j.system.2016.05.011 https://doi.org/10.1002/hrm.21489 https://doi.org/10.14483/22487085.12422 https://bit.ly/3jicgly https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-10-0369-1_1 https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.1129019 https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.1129019 the factors contributing to language teachers’ effectiveness in an efl learning context: a questionnaire validation study 63profile: issues teach. prof. dev., vol. 24 no. 2, jul-dec, 2022. issn 1657-0790 (printed) 2256-5760 (online). bogotá, colombia. pages 63-79 https://doi.org/10.15446/profile.v24n2.93571 the factors contributing to language teachers’ effectiveness in an efl learning context: a questionnaire validation study factores que contribuyen a la eficacia de los docentes de idiomas en un contexto de aprendizaje del inglés como lengua extranjera: estudio de validación de un cuestionario akram nayernia1 rana nosrati iran university of science and technology, tehran, iran hassan mohebbi european knowledge development institute (eurokd), ankara, turkey this mixed-methods study explores the factors contributing to the language teachers’ effectiveness in the context of english as a foreign language. through a systematic review of the literature, six main factors were extracted: assessment literacy, content and pedagogical content knowledge, experience, oral proficiency, personality type, and self-efficacy. in the first phase of the study, 13 experts in the field shared their attitudes towards these factors through a semi-structured interview. the data obtained from the interviews was analysed thematically to develop a questionnaire. ninety-three language teachers participated in a pilot study to validate the newly developed questionnaire. the results were factor analysed. after the required modifications based on the factor analysis were introduced, a questionnaire with 19 items entitled “efl language teachers’ effectiveness” was developed. keywords: assessment literacy, content and pedagogical content knowledge, effectiveness, efl teachers, experience, oral proficiency, personality type, self-efficacy. este estudio de diseño mixto explora los factores que contribuyen a la eficacia de los docentes de idiomas en un contexto de aprendizaje del inglés como lengua extranjera. de una revisión sistemática de la bibliografía, se extrajeron seis factores principales: conocimientos en evaluación, conocimiento del contenido y del contenido pedagógico, experiencia, competencia oral, personalidad y autoeficacia. en la primera fase del estudio, trece expertos opinaron sobre estos factores en una entrevista semiestructurada. los datos de las entrevistas se analizaron temáticamente para desarrollar un cuestionario que fue validado en un estudio piloto con 93 docentes. después de las modificaciones necesarias, basadas en el análisis factorial de los resultados, se diseñó un cuestionario con 19 ítems titulado “eficacia de los docentes de inglés”. palabras clave: autoeficacia, competencia oral, conocimiento del contenido y del contenido pedagógico, conocimientos en evaluación, docentes de inglés, eficacia, experiencia, personalidad akram nayernia  https://orcid.org/0000-0001-9335-5916 · email: a_nayernia@iust.ac.ir rana nosrati  https://orcid.org/0000-0003-3908-9826 · email: rana_nosrati@alumni.iust.ac.ir hassan mohebbi  https://orcid.org/0000-0003-3661-1690 · email: hassanmohebbi@ut.ac.ir how to cite this article (apa, 7th ed.): nayernia, a., nosrati, r., & mohebbi, h. (2022). the factors contributing to language teachers’ effectiveness in an efl learning context: a questionnaire validation study. profile: issues in teachers’ professional development, 24(2), 63–79. https://doi.org/10.15446/profile.v24n2.93571 this article was received on february 12, 2021 and accepted on february 24, 2022. this is an open access article distributed under the terms of the creative commons license attribution-noncommercial-noderivatives 4.0 international license. consultation is possible at https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/ https://doi.org/10.15446/profile.v24n2.93571 https://orcid.org/0000-0001-9335-5916 mailto:a_nayernia@iust.ac.ir https://orcid.org/0000-0003-3908-9826 mailto:rana_nosrati@alumni.iust.ac.ir https://orcid.org/0000-0003-3661-1690 mailto:hassanmohebbi@ut.ac.ir https://doi.org/10.15446/profile.v24n2.93571 https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/ universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras64 nayernia, nosrati, & mohebbi introduction due to the essential role of language teachers in the teaching profession, researchers have focused on the crucial factors that would improve their performance and, consequently, their effectiveness. hence, it is of primary importance to identify factors contributing to language teachers’ effectiveness (pishghadam et al., 2011). in teaching literature, the word effectiveness seems to lack an explicit, straightforward, and robust definition. hunt (2009) defined effective teachers as those who can teach their learners to be good and effective citizens in the future. galluzo (2005) defined teachers’ effectiveness in relation to students’ success. if we focus on foreign language teachers, as this study does, there is at least one more variable to consider: teachers’ effectiveness is associated with the students’ competence in the foreign language. for galluzo, teachers’ effectiveness plays a significant role in the students’ academic achievement and linguistic performance. he argues that effective teachers finish a course where the majority of students succeed in achieving the course’s goals. therefore, the course’s objectives are important, and teachers’ effectiveness may vary in different courses and contexts and from one objective to another. therefore, exploring the characteristics of teacher effectiveness is essential for improving the quality and productivity of foreign language teacher’s training courses. hence, the present study investigates the factors contributing to language teachers’ effectiveness in improving teacher’s training courses, leading to successful language learning programmes. literature review to date, researchers have investigated teacher’s effectiveness from different perspectives to shed light on the factors which play a key role in promoting teachers’ productivity and efficiency. zamani and ahangari (2016) defined effectiveness as what is perceived by a language learner in an english as a foreign language (efl) context. their definition focuses primarily on the quality and kind of relationship that teachers have with language learners. furthermore, they concluded that effectiveness helps teachers have discipline in their classrooms, which is a fundamental aspect of teachers’ effectiveness. according to their study, discipline and the teacher–learner relationship come to the fore when investigating language teachers’ effectiveness. similar research has been done on effectiveness, but none has provided a comprehensive definition of the construct that would involve all its contributing factors (e.g., mitchell & bradshaw, 2013; pane, 2010). liakopoulou (2011) sees a good teacher as someone who is effective in how he or she teaches. she searched for the qualifications that contribute to a good teaching; however, she rightly argued that an explicit definition of a good and effective teacher is neither possible nor desirable because, essentially, it varies from one context to another. one of the factors that she mentioned, and which was absent in other studies, was the teachers’ experience. she claimed that experience could facilitate, to a large extent, their task and guarantee their effectiveness. goodwin et al. (2019) acknowledged the importance of experience in language teachers’ effectiveness. however, in a longitudinal study, they concluded that experience and its effect on teachers’ performance were more significant in the first years of teaching. afterwards, its significance decreases in an unprecedented scale. however, they found that language learners favour experienced teachers, and, in many situations, they see experienced teachers as the most effective ones. an issue closely related to language teachers’ effectiveness is their assessment literacy and practice. language teachers’ assessment literacy has recently received much attention (for a recent comprehensive review, see coombe et al., 2020; giraldo, 2021; levi & inbar-lourie, 2020; vogt et al., 2020). in a recent study, kremmel and harding (2020) highlighted the need for promoting language teachers’ assessment literacy. they also emphasised the need for further research in this field. hao and johnson (2013) investigated the relation65profile: issues teach. prof. dev., vol. 24 no. 2, jul-dec, 2022. issn 1657-0790 (printed) 2256-5760 (online). bogotá, colombia. pages 63-79 the factors contributing to language teachers’ effectiveness in an efl learning context... ship between the teachers’ use of different classroom assessment types (such as multiple questions, short answers, and paragraph writing) and oral communication across several classes in different countries. they observed that teachers’ assessment literacy helps them provide their class with an appropriate assessment frame that suits their objectives. thus, their interpretation of the learners’ performance may be more valid in their evaluation of learners. more precisely, it seems that the teachers’ experience and education affect their assessment literacy and, consequently, their effectiveness (asl et al., 2014). when it comes to teacher’s effectiveness, content and pedagogical content knowledge is another issue that should not be neglected. shulman (1987) first discussed pedagogical content knowledge and asserted that teachers needed to have curricular knowledge, pedagogical knowledge, subject matter knowledge, knowledge of students, knowledge of the school, and pedagogical content knowledge. since then, many researchers have investigated these factors in various teaching contexts to develop measurement instruments (e.g., han-tosunoglu & lederman, 2021). three decades after shulman’s seminal study, grieser and hendricks (2018) defined pedagogical content knowledge considering two subcategories: in-field and out-of-the-field pedagogical content knowledge. out-of-the-field pedagogical content knowledge is when teachers’ preparation does not correspond to their teaching assignments. to have pedagogical content knowledge, teachers should be aware of the context and social norms that may contribute to the topic and to the subject matter they teach (liakopoulou, 2011). the construct of experience and its effect on students’ achievement has been examined in different contexts. however, considering experience as one of the effective teachers’ features is controversial. harris and sass (2011) studied the various types of teacher’s training courses and their productivity in promoting teachers’ effectiveness and students’ achievement. in their study, they equated teachers’ effectiveness with their productivity. the result of their study revealed that pre-service and in-service teachers’ productivity increases with experience; interestingly enough, it was observed that the increase was significant in the first few years. chambless (2012) claimed that many teachers whose content knowledge was sufficient were experts in the subject matter. however, their oral proficiency and their expertise in the content area were not evaluated, and this may affect the way that language learners welcome teachers. therefore, it goes without saying that the teachers’ speaking skills is what makes the first impression on language learners. in a recent study, faez et al. (2019) conducted a meta-analysis to examine the potential relationship between language proficiency and teaching ability. they observed a moderate relationship between language proficiency and teaching self-efficacy. therefore, they concluded that self-efficacy should not be limited to the teachers’ language proficiency. moreover, the teachers’ personality in the classrooms has been considered a critical factor for success in their work (santilli et al., 2011). to date, different subcategories of teachers’ personality have been studied (e.g., akyıldız & çelik, 2020; li & li, 2019; oryan & ravid, 2019; sato, 2020). self-efficacy is another factor contributing to language teachers’ effectiveness, which has been extensively investigated in recent years (e.g., choi & lee, 2016; moradkhani et al., 2017). as wang and sun (2020) rightly highlighted, since bandura’s publication on selfefficacy in 1977, we have witnessed a growing body of research in this field. according to the research to date, self-efficacy is distinguished from teachers’ effectiveness, for self-efficacy is defined as the beliefs teachers hold about themselves. therefore, it may be considered as a subcategory of language teachers’ effectiveness. the research findings support the pivotal importance of self-efficacy in teachers’ effectiveness (e.g., hoang & wyatt, 2021; thompson, 2020; thompson & dooley, 2019; thompson & woodman, 2019). universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras66 nayernia, nosrati, & mohebbi the study as the literature indicates, language teachers’ effectiveness has always been a controversial issue in language teaching research. this issue is more critical in efl contexts as there are few opportunities for practicing new languages. although many people who live in efl contexts may not find any opportunity to use english or any other foreign language, they are still willing to learn them. due to an increase in the willingness to learn new languages, especially english, institutes and educational systems are looking for effective language teachers. they welcome teachers who can be categorised as successful and effective by their institutes (noorbakhsh et al., 2018). that is why this study aims to explore language teachers’ effectiveness in an efl context (iran). we hope this study’s findings may shed light on the importance of effective language teachers in such contexts and how they are evaluated as effective. to this end, the following research question guided this study: what are the factors contributing to language teachers’ effectiveness in the iranian language learning context? method the present study was a mixed-methods study aimed at exploring the factors contributing to foreign language teachers’ effectiveness. the study was conducted in two phases. the first phase employed qualitative methods (theme analysis and interviews), and the second phase used a quantitative method (factor analysis) to answer the study’s research question. participants in the first phase of the study, directed at extracting and verifying the factors contributing to teacher effectiveness, 13 efl lecturers, as experts in applied linguistics, participated in this research project (one woman and 12 men). they were required to have a phd, to have graduated from state universities and have at least three years of teaching experience at universities. these lecturers came from four state universities in iran. they were considered experienced lecturers for their teaching experience at universities ranged from 5 to 40 years. in the second phase of the study, which validated a teacher’s effectiveness questionnaire, 93 efl teachers participated, ranging in age from 20 to 45 years. about 26.9% were men, and the rest were women. all of them had academic english degrees and were teaching in private-sector language institutes. seventeen participants held a ba in english, and 76 held an ma in english language teaching. they were asked to report their years of experience in language teaching in institutes. the majority had less than five years of experience (about 34.4%). twenty-nine per cent had between five to eight years of experience, 25.8% between nine to 12 years, less than 6% between 13 to 16 years, about 2% between 17 to 20 years, and the rest (around 2%) more than 20 years. they took part in the study through an online questionnaire shared in specialised groups on different social media outlets, namely telegram and whatsapp. procedure relevant studies the first instrument used to identify the factors contributing to language teachers’ effectiveness was the relevant studies. we tried to find the most recent and relevant studies published in the refereed journals in the field. the studies were reviewed and subjected to thematic analysis to extract the items related to the language teachers’ effectiveness to be judged by the experts. expert questionnaire (semi-structured interview) based on the thematic analysis of the literature review, 40 items were developed to be rated by the experts. these 40 items included statements about language teachers’ effectiveness. the constructs underlying this questionnaire (see appendix a) were labelled as assessment literacy (items 6, 12, 20, 24, 27, 29, 35), 67profile: issues teach. prof. dev., vol. 24 no. 2, jul-dec, 2022. issn 1657-0790 (printed) 2256-5760 (online). bogotá, colombia. pages 63-79 the factors contributing to language teachers’ effectiveness in an efl learning context... content and pedagogical knowledge (items 2, 9, 11, 22, 31, 34), experience (items 1, 17, 21, 30, 33), oral proficiency (items 3, 5, 16, 26, 28, 39), personality type (items 7, 8, 10, 13, 14, 15, 18, 23, 25, 37, 40) and self-efficacy (items 4, 19, 32, 36, 38). we identified the major categories and their corresponding subcategories. the participants were asked to respond on a 5-point likert-type scale (from strongly agree to strongly disagree). one open-ended question at the end of the questionnaire asked the respondents to provide additional comments. language teachers’ effectiveness: the first draft questionnaire based on the responses collected in the first step of the study, we came up with a 21-item questionnaire in the likert scale format. two new items were added: creativity, which was grouped under personality type, and first language (l1) use when considered necessary, classified as a subcategory of experience following the experts’ suggestions and comments obtained from the interviews. the experts’ comments and suggestions were also considered in reviewing items and their wording. overall, 24 items were prepared at this stage. then, the items were distributed among the english language teachers working at different institutes at this stage. the new questionnaire also included six constructs (see appendix b). however, the number of items in each construct changed as follows: assessment literacy (items 3, 10, 19), content and pedagogical knowledge (items 4, 7, 15, 18), experience (items 11, 17, 24), oral proficiency (items 1, 2, 13, 14, 22), personality type (items 5, 6, 8, 12, 21, 23) and self-efficacy (items 9, 16, 20). results an extensive and intensive review of the literature was conducted to extract a comprehensive list of factors contributing to language teachers’ effectiveness to address the study’s goal. after performing the review, six main categories were extracted (see table 1). table 1. factors qualitatively extracted from the literature and from interviews factors example study assessment literacy teachers’ assessment literacy will help teachers use more valid information about their learners to teach more effectively (pastore & andrade, 2019). content and pedagogical content knowledge teachers should be aware of the context and the appropriate instruments and techniques they might need for more effective and transparent lesson presentations (liakopoulou, 2011). experience the role of experience in teachers’ effectiveness is more significant in the first years of teaching (staiger & rockoff, 2010). oral proficiency language teachers’ oral proficiency is considered to be the first impression on learners. it can affect the way learners welcome a teacher (chambless, 2012). personality type (subcategories: creativity, extrovert vs. introvert, discipline, gesture, flexibility) personality is an indivisible part of the effects that teachers have in any educational system, and it is one of the key factors in their effectiveness (penner, 1984). self-efficacy in many studies, researchers have tried to find factors contributing to teachers’ self-efficacy and, therefore, to their effectiveness. for instance, the effect of the teachers’ language proficiency on their self-efficacy (choi & lee, 2016). universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras68 nayernia, nosrati, & mohebbi after the experts rated the items presented to them, those items obtaining more than 80% agreement from experts (items 3, 5, 6, 9, 10, 11, 13, 19, 20, 21, 25, 26, 28, 31, 32, 33, 34, 35, 36, 37, 39) were selected to be included in the first draft of the questionnaire, which would be distributed to the efl teachers. besides these 21 items, three items were also added following the experts’ suggestions and comments. they were about teachers’ creativity and the l1 use in classrooms. about 10 (out of 13) experts suggested teachers’ creativity be included, and eight mentioned that appropriate l1 use in language classrooms should be considered in an efl context. in appendix b, creativity (items 6 and 23) and selective use of l1 (item 24) have been added to the 21 previously extracted items. the main categories of these two items were also discussed with the experts suggesting them. creativity was then defined as one of the subcategories of the personality type and selective use of l1 was considered one of the subcategories of experience. a chi-square analysis was conducted to obtain the iranian efl teachers’ attitude towards factors contributing to the effectiveness of language teachers (see table 2). based on the analysis, the agreed sample adequacy is 0.6 or above. according to table 2, sampling adequacy was about 0.57, close to the one agreed upon (0.6). regretfully, because of the situation caused by the covid-19 pandemic, it was impossible to collect more data during this phase. subsequently, we decided to accept this value and continue with the study. additionally, bartlett’s test of sphericity value should be 0.05 or smaller; table 3 shows that it was .000, that is, bartlett’s test was significant, so the factor analysis was appropriate. table 2. the construct validation sample adequacy approx. chisquare df sig. .568 623.317 276 .000 table 3. the reliability statistics cronbach’s alpha n .755 24 table 3 verifies a good level of reliability for the questionnaire. accordingly, the reliability of the items was .775, which is acceptable. figure 1 confirms that nine factors were above one. therefore, it can be concluded that the nine factors were extracted. in table 4, the item’s loading factor is also provided. figure 1. the scree plot for the item’s factor load 5 4 3 2 1 0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 factor number e ig e n v a lu e 69profile: issues teach. prof. dev., vol. 24 no. 2, jul-dec, 2022. issn 1657-0790 (printed) 2256-5760 (online). bogotá, colombia. pages 63-79 the factors contributing to language teachers’ effectiveness in an efl learning context... table 4. results from factor analysis of language teachers’ effectiveness questionnaire language teachers’ effectiveness items factor loading 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 factor 1: oral proficiency 1. i communicate well in english .34 -.32 .33 2. i pronounce words clearly .69 -.36 -.47 13. i consider my oral proficiency as one of the first factors that impress my students .37 14. i adjust my speaking speed to the level i am teaching .44 .39 .32 22. i emphasise my oral proficiency as one of the main input tools for language learners .50 factor 2: personality 5. i am punctual -.49 .39 6. i am creative in using tasks and activities -.32 .46 8. i am aware of my gestures in the classroom -.32 .33 21. i am open to using various techniques .30 .42 23. i am creative in presenting lessons -.40 .33 factor 3: content and pedagogical content knowledge 4. i am prepared for questions in the content area .45 -.32 15. i know the social norms of the class where i teach .44 factor 4: self-efficacy 16. i use my experience to improve my self-efficacy .45 9. i am self-confident -.47 .61 factor 5: experience 11. i use my learning experience as well as my teaching experience -.54 .34 17. i use my colleagues’ experience .33 factor 6: assessment literacy 3. i assess my students fairly -.39 .32 10. i consider course objectives when assessing my students .44 -.35 19. i use assessment results to improve classroom productivity -.34 .30 .32 universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras70 nayernia, nosrati, & mohebbi the items excluded from table 4 (items 7, 12, 18, 20, and 24) were not found appropriate for the questionnaire. according to the results, items 7, 12, and 18 had no loading in any factors or in any other items. item 20 loaded negatively only in factor 5, and item 24 loaded in three factors, all negative. in this table, the factors and their items were confirmed. we then concluded: factor one included items 1, 2, 13, 14, and 22 for oral proficiency. factor two included items 5, 6, 8, 21, and 23 for the personality type. factor 3 was eliminated because only two items were loaded negatively (items 4 and 15). factors 4 and 5 included two items (9 and 16 in factor 4; 11 and 17 in factor 5), which measured the content and pedagogical content knowledge and self-efficacy. factor 7 was also eliminated because only one item was loaded negatively. factor 8 included items 3, 10, and 19 related to assessment literacy. item 1 loaded in factor 9, but as it was loaded in factor 1 and was related to the other items loaded in the same factor, it was decided to ignore it and finish the table with six factors: 1, 2, 4, 5, 6, and 8. we finally developed the final questionnaire with 18 items (appendix c). discussion this study attempted to explore the factors contributing to language teachers’ effectiveness in an efl context and develop a questionnaire involving constructs in this definition. after developing 40 statements according to the literature review, personality type had the most items. eleven items were included for personality type, seven for assessment literacy, six for content and pedagogical content analysis, six for oral proficiency, five for experience, and five for selfefficacy. in the following questionnaire, which included 24 items, most items pertained to personality type (personality type = 6; oral proficiency = 5; assessment literacy, experience, and self-efficacy, each got three; and content and pedagogical content knowledge = 4). according to the literature, it was expected that more items would be devoted to personality type. however, in the final questionnaire (see appendix c), with 18 items selected after factor analysis, the number of items for personality type and oral proficiency was the same. each had five items. evidently, based on the results, teachers’ personality is arguably an indivisible part of teacher’s effectiveness (santilli et al., 2011). the interesting point about personality type is that two items of creativity remained in the final questionnaire. therefore, it confirms li and li’s (2019) point that creativity is an essential factor for language teachers’ effectiveness. it may be concluded that language learners and language institutes should look for innovative teachers regarding teaching activities and strategies. such innovation allows teachers to be more prepared for their classroom, and to offer students attractive and motivating lessons. otherwise, they might be considered boring teachers with no specific techniques and strategies. as li and li have mentioned, creative teachers can produce creative language learners; those who can think outside the box (akyıldız & çelik, 2020). oryan and ravid (2019) see good teachers as those who are open to new methods and strategies. while developing the questionnaire, we realized that two important teaching strategies, often overlooked, have to do with the teacher’s body language (gestures) and discipline management. as many researchers (bowcher & zhang, 2020; fatemi et al., 2016; sato, 2020) rightly argue, teachers’ care of their gestures and nonverbal behaviour is strongly associated with their success and effectiveness. moreover, another factor under this category is the teachers’ discipline, presented as teacher’s punctuality. it has benefits for students, but it also helps teachers manage their classrooms effectively (jeloudar & yunus, 2011). the only remaining point in teachers’ discipline and personality type is the teachers being “extrovert vs. introvert.” according to fatemi et al. (2016), students favour extroverted teachers, those who show their care for students through verbal and nonverbal behaviour. however, the results showed that teachers 71profile: issues teach. prof. dev., vol. 24 no. 2, jul-dec, 2022. issn 1657-0790 (printed) 2256-5760 (online). bogotá, colombia. pages 63-79 the factors contributing to language teachers’ effectiveness in an efl learning context... are not so interested in considering this aspect as part of their effectiveness. the item developed for this aspect did not obtain enough agreement to be included in the final questionnaire. regarding teachers’ oral proficiency, and as bateman (2008) has shown, the recent passion for developing speaking skills when learning new languages has affected attention to oral proficiency in teachers and learners. further, chambless (2012) has mentioned that teachers lacking oral proficiency, but being experts in the content area, may be less welcomed by language learners. this result shows a similar finding and shows that teachers are aware of the need of language learners to be proficient speakers. oral proficiency obtained five items in the final questionnaire (the same as personality type). the next factor with three items is assessment literacy. in the pilot phase of the questionnaire, none of its items was deleted. it shows that the respondents believe they have enough knowledge of this factor and that different approaches are vital for a language teacher’s effectiveness. considering the factors agreed upon by experts and language teachers, three aspects of assessment have been included: teachers’ fairness, course objectives and mutual relationship between assessment and class productivity. according to hao and johnson (2013), if teachers take into consideration course objectives in their assessments, their interpretation shall be more valid, and their class productivity improved. these items have been validated in the final questionnaire. teachers’ fairness is affected by their experience (asl et al., 2014). due to the relationship between experience and assessment, when considering experience items in the questionnaire, we observed that using colleagues’ experience and teaching and learning experience help language teachers to be fair and effective. in the relevant literature, teaching experience was considered a controversial factor for language teachers’ effectiveness. harris and sass (2011) hold that experience positively affects teachers’ effectiveness during the first years of their profession. henry et al. (2011) confirmed that it derives from a sense of satisfaction that preservice language teachers feel as they obtain a wider experience during the first years of teaching. however, one point should be kept in mind. the number of years is important for a teacher to be considered experienced, and so is the number of classes and courses they have held. a teacher with two years of experience having had a maximum of six sessions per week is not the same as a teacher having the same years of experience but 18 sessions per week. we therefore decided to include teaching experience in the questionnaire, but no clear criterion regarding the number of teaching years was provided. only item 24 in appendix b was eliminated after the pilot. considering the remaining items, it may be concluded that experience and its effects are not limited to the first years of teaching. one of the items is “using colleagues’ experience” because even experienced teachers may use their colleagues’ experience for teaching new classes. content and pedagogical content knowledge, self-efficacy, and experience had the same number of items (two items each). in the literature, content knowledge and the ability to effectively present that knowledge to audiences was considered necessary. it was mentioned that teachers have many sources from which to obtain content knowledge, such as preservice training and in-service courses, to name but a few (grieser & hendricks, 2018). interestingly, content and pedagogical content knowledge lost two items during the pilot phase. since the research’s target was language teachers’ effectiveness, this is a point that should be further analysed. one reason for this loss may be the easy access to many sources to obtain knowledge, such as websites and educational applications. therefore, if teachers are not sure about some aspect of language, such as idioms or similar issues that are mainly cultural, they may ask students to research them or develop a project, and even devise some tasks. thus, we believe that easy access to content knowledge explains why this factor did not obtain many questionnaire items. however, this does not apply to knowledge of words and universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras72 nayernia, nosrati, & mohebbi grammar; they are the basis of the content knowledge that each language teacher should have. finally, we identified the self-efficacy factor. according to the literature review, language teachers’ self-efficacy is directly and indirectly affected by many factors (afshar et al., 2015), such as teaching experience and language proficiency. based on moradkhani et al. (2017), we initially decided to include one item related to the relationship between reflective thinking and self-efficacy. item 20 in appendix b represented this relationship, but, interestingly, this item was deleted during the pilot. this seems to show that language teachers did not see reflective thinking as an integral part of their self-efficacy and, consequently, of their effectiveness as a whole. conclusions the main output of the present study was to validate a questionnaire on language teachers’ effectiveness that other studies may use to address this issue in similar contexts. furthermore, the main contribution of the present study to the growing body of research on the promotion of teacher training courses is that it develops an understanding of language teachers’ effectiveness from their own point of view. this study was an attempt to make language teachers look at their effectiveness and to promote their vocation. the data collected from this study, highlighted in the literature, investigated factors related to language teachers’ effectiveness and tried to categorise them into major themes. the relatively high number of items for oral proficiency shows the importance of this factor in language teaching. oral proficiency and language teachers’ ability to speak and communicate the target language well is fundamental for effectiveness. furthermore, to be effective, a language teacher not only should be competent in one area like language usage, but also should care about personality, verbal and nonverbal behaviour, assessment literacy, self-efficacy, oral proficiency, and other factors that may be needed in the particular teaching context. in most factors, professional experience plays a role. however, the number of years by itself cannot predict teacher’s effectiveness, for it depends largely on the person’s engagement. a teacher might be in this profession for a short period of time but be more committed, while another might have been teaching for a long time but is less engaged. primarily, this study attempted to encourage teachers to be aware of the multiple aspects effectiveness in their profession has. this study’s findings can be informative and useful for language teachers and stakeholders directing institutes, teacher training courses, and teacher education programs in academia. as seen in the review of the literature, language teachers’ effectiveness is a multi-faceted construct, and teachers should not improve one aspect at the cost of others. they should think about their effectiveness and try to improve their weak aspects. according to the findings of this study, it is highly recommended that teachers develop their speaking skills, as it is the one skill that leaves a lasting first impression on their learners. meta-cognition is also recommended so that teachers are more responsible in their evaluations and consider how they affect their classrooms’ productivity. furthermore, educational institutions can use a teachers’ self-evaluation to compare it with their classroom achievement results. such comparisons may be used to improve the productivity of training programs, teachers’ effectiveness, and language courses. it is suggested that future researcher investigates the validity of our questionnaire in an array of similar and different educational contexts. we need more studies on the contextual and ecological variables that shape teachers’ effectiveness. we also need mixed-methods longitudinal cross-sectional research to have a more complete and accurate picture of teachers’ effectiveness in the long term. the outbreak of covid-19 tested teachers’ computer literacy as online platforms made education possible. accordingly, this research field should also include technological pedagogical content knowledge as a variable, for it is considered a crucial 73profile: issues teach. prof. dev., vol. 24 no. 2, jul-dec, 2022. issn 1657-0790 (printed) 2256-5760 (online). bogotá, colombia. pages 63-79 the factors contributing to language teachers’ effectiveness in an efl learning context... skill required from teachers who use digital technologies (schmid et al., 2021; for a recent review, see njiku et al., 2020). it is suggested, therefore, that researchers study foreign language teacher’s effectiveness in various contexts as research in this field is still in its infancy in terms of conclusive findings. references afshar, h. s., rahimi, a., ghonchepour, a., & saedpanah, e. 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(2016). characteristics of an effective english language teacher (eelt) as perceived by learners of english. international journal of foreign language teaching and research, 4(14), 69–88. about the authors akram nayernia is an assistant professor of applied linguistics in iran university of science and technology. her main research areas are language testing and assessment, teacher education, and esp. she has presented and published several articles in these areas. rana nosrati is a phd student at tarbiat modares university, tehran, iran, majoring at tefl. she got her ma from iran university of science and technology in 2020. her areas of interest include teacher education, teacher development, and language learning. she has presented and published several articles in these areas. hassan mohebbi is an editorial board member of language testing in asia (springer), asian-pacific journal of second and foreign language education (springer), language teaching research quarterly (eurokd), and australian journal of applied linguistics (book reviews editor). his main research interests are writing, individual differences, assessment literacy, esp, eap, and erpp. https://doi.org/10.1080/08824096.2011.588583 https://doi.org/10.1016/j.system.2020.102215 https://doi.org/10.1016/j.system.2020.102215 https://doi.org/10.1016/j.chb.2020.106586 https://doi.org/10.17763/haer.57.1.j463w79r56455411 https://doi.org/10.1257/jep.24.3.97 https://doi.org/10.1257/jep.24.3.97 https://doi.org/10.21832/thomps5396 https://doi.org/10.21832/thomps5396 https://doi.org/10.1007/s12564-019-09607-y https://doi.org/10.1007/s12564-019-09607-y https://doi.org/10.1080/1359866x.2018.1498062 https://doi.org/10.1080/1359866x.2018.1498062 https://doi.org/10.1080/15434303.2020.1776714 https://doi.org/10.1016/j.system.2020.102366 universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras76 nayernia, nosrati, & mohebbi appendix a: questionnaire to obtain experts’ opinions dear professor, it would be appreciated if you, as an expert, participate in this data collection process for an ma thesis entitled language teacher effectiveness: contributing factors (nosrati, 2020), at iran university of science and technology. your attitudes and identity will be kept confidential. regards. i. please enter your information name: years of teaching at university: the university you teach at: ii. you shall find 40 statements about effective language teachers. please mark with an asterisk (*) the option that best represents your opinion regarding each statement. effective language teachers should: strongly agree agree don’t know strongly disagree disagree 1. be experienced 2. have a high level of topical knowledge 3. speak english well 4. believe in their ability 5. pronounce words appropriately 6. assess students fairly 7. treat students in a friendly manner 8. be flexible in their discipline 9. be prepared for possible questions in the content area 10. be punctual 11. know how to present the content 12. use different methods of assessment 13. be aware of their gestures in the classroom 14. care for their physical appearance 15. be aware of the negative and positive effects of distance between them and their students 16. be a good oral proficiency model for learners 17. abstain from teaching at course levels in which they have no experience 77profile: issues teach. prof. dev., vol. 24 no. 2, jul-dec, 2022. issn 1657-0790 (printed) 2256-5760 (online). bogotá, colombia. pages 63-79 the factors contributing to language teachers’ effectiveness in an efl learning context... 18. have a sense of humour 19. be self-confident 20. consider course objectives in their assessment 21. use their learning experience as well as their teaching experience 22. know how to react when their preparation does not correspond to their teaching assignments 23. give regular assignments to their students 24. know and use different interpretation models in assessments 25. be motivational for language learners 26. work on their oral proficiency as one of the first impression factors on learners 27. assess all aspects of language 28. adapt their speech to the level of teaching 29. use dynamic assessments to help students learn while being assessed 30. increase their experience in the first years of teaching as much as possible 31. know the social norms of the class 32. use their experience to improve their self-efficacy 33. use their colleagues’ experience 34. consider the context for effective lesson presentation 35. use assessment results as a tool for improving class productivity 36. practice reflective thinking to improve their self-efficacy 37. be open to using new and various strategies 38. have a high level of emotional intelligence 39. work on their oral proficiency as one of the main input tools for language learners 40. show their emotions (such as interest, enthusiasm, and anger) to students universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras78 nayernia, nosrati, & mohebbi appendix b: pilot questionnaire items strongly agree agree don’t know strongly disagree disagree 1. i communicate well in english well 2. i pronounce words appropriately 3. i assess students fairly 4. i am prepared for questions in the content area 5. i am punctual 6. i am creative in using tasks and activities 7. i know how to present the content 8. i am aware of my gestures in the classroom 9. i am self-confident 10. i consider course objectives in my assessment 11. i use my learning experience as well as teaching experience 12. i can motivate students 13. i consider my oral proficiency as one of the first factors that impress my students 14. i adjust my speaking to the level at which i am teaching 15. i know the social norms of the class in which i am teaching 16. i use my experience to improve my self-efficacy 17. i use my colleagues’ experience 18. i consider the context for effective lesson presentation 19. i use assessment results to improve classroom productivity 20. i practice reflective thinking to improve my self-efficacy 21. i am open to using various teaching techniques 22. i emphasise my oral proficiency as one of the main input tools for language learners 23. i am creative in presenting a lesson 24. i use the students’ native language if necessary 79profile: issues teach. prof. dev., vol. 24 no. 2, jul-dec, 2022. issn 1657-0790 (printed) 2256-5760 (online). bogotá, colombia. pages 63-79 the factors contributing to language teachers’ effectiveness in an efl learning context... appendix c: validated questionnaire. efl language teachers’ effectiveness items of language teachers’ effectiveness strongly agree agree don’t know strongly disagree disagree 1. i communicate well in english well 2. i pronounce words appropriately 3. i assess students fairly 4. i am prepared for questions on the content 5. i am punctual 6. i am creative in using tasks and activities 7. i am aware of my gestures in the classroom 8. i am self-confident 9. i consider course objectives in my assessment 10. i use my learning experience as well as teaching experience 11. i emphasise my oral proficiency as one of the main tools of input for language learners 12. i adjust my speaking to the level at which i am teaching 13. i use my experience to improve my self-efficacy 14. i know the social norms of my class 15. i use my colleagues’ experience 16. i use assessment results to improve classroom productivity 17. i am open to using various techniques 18. i am creative in presenting lessons english language teachers’ perceived classroom assessment knowledge and practice: developing and validating a scale 247profile: issues teach. prof. dev., vol. 24 no. 2, jul-dec, 2022. issn 1657-0790 (printed) 2256-5760 (online). bogotá, colombia. pages 247-264 https://doi.org/10.15446/profile.v24n2.90518 english language teachers’ perceived classroom assessment knowledge and practice: developing and validating a scale percepciones de docentes de inglés sobre el conocimiento y la práctica de la evaluación en el aula: desarrollo y validación de una escala zia tajeddin1 tarbiat modares university, tehran, iran zari saeedi vahid panahzadeh allameh tabataba’i university, tehran, iran this study sought to develop and validate a classroom-based language assessment literacy scale to measure teachers’ perceived classroom-based assessment knowledge and practice. exploratory factor analysis revealed that the scale items clustered around four factors: (a) purposes of assessment and grading, (b) assessment ethics, (c) student involvement in assessment, and (d) feedback and assessment interpretation. moreover, the scale was administered to 348 iranian english as a foreign language teachers. the findings showed that the majority reported to be literate in classroom-based language assessment and agreed to the allocation of more space to classroom-based language assessment in teacher education courses. the findings suggest that the newly-developed scale can serve as a valid and reliable tool to explore language teachers’ classroom-based assessment literacy. keywords: classroom assessment, classroom-based language assessment literacy, english as a foreign language teachers, scale development este estudio desarrolló y validó una escala de literacidad de evaluación del lenguaje para identificar las percepciones de 348 docentes de inglés iraníes sobre el conocimiento y la práctica de la evaluación en el aula. los ítems de la escala se dividieron en: a) propósitos de evaluación y calificación, b) ética de la evaluación, c) participación de los estudiantes en la evaluación y d) retroalimentación e interpretación de la evaluación. varios participantes informaron ser competentes en la evaluación del lenguaje en el aula y estuvieron de acuerdo con asignar más tiempo para este aspecto en los cursos de formación docente. la escala desarrollada puede ser una herramienta válida y confiable para explorar la competencia de evaluación en el aula de los profesores de idiomas. palabras clave: desarrollo de escalas, evaluación en el aula, evaluación del lenguaje en el aula, literacidad, profesores de inglés zia tajeddin  https://orcid.org/0000-0002-0430-6408 · email: tajeddinz@modares.ac.ir zari saeedi  https://orcid.org/0000-0003-2165-8891 · email: saeedi.za@atu.ac.ir vahid panahzadeh  https://orcid.org/0000-0003-1007-1841 · email: panahzadeh_vahid93@atu.ac.ir how to cite this article (apa, 7th ed.): tajeddin, z., saeedi, z., & panahzadeh, v. (2022). english language teachers’ perceived classroom assessment knowledge and practice: developing and validating a scale. profile: issues in teachers’ professional development, 24(2), 247–264. https://doi.org/10.15446/profile.v24n2.90518 this article was received on september 13, 2020 and accepted on february 14, 2022. this is an open access article distributed under the terms of the creative commons license attribution-noncommercial-noderivatives 4.0 international license. consultation is possible at https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/ https://doi.org/10.15446/profile.v24n2.90518 https://orcid.org/0000-0002-0430-6408 mailto:tajeddinz@modares.ac.ir https://orcid.org/0000-0003-2165-8891 mailto:saeedi.za@atu.ac.ir https://orcid.org/0000-0003-1007-1841 mailto:panahzadeh_vahid93@atu.ac.ir https://doi.org/10.15446/profile.v24n2.90518 https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/ universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras248 tajeddin, saeedi, & panahzadeh introduction recent years have witnessed calls for teachers to view classroom assessment as an inseparable part of the teaching and learning process, and to use assessment data to enhance instruction and promote students’ learning (deluca et al., 2018; shepard, 2013). in line with the educational shift in the conceptualization of assessment, it has been contended that teachers need to gain competency in utilizing a variety of methods in assessing students’ learning, irrespective of whether the assessment is employed to support learning through provision of feedback (lee, 2017), or it is used to measure learning outcomes (campbell, 2013). despite repeated calls for teachers’ capitalization on various assessment methods and skills (e.g., taylor, 2013), research has generally shown that teachers lack adequate assessment proficiency—or what has come to be known as assessment literacy—to take advantage of and inform their instructional practice (deluca & bellara, 2013; fives & barnes, 2020; popham, 2009). in one of the early attempts to introduce the concept of assessment literacy, stiggins (1995) defined it as teachers’ understanding of “the difference between sound and unsound assessment” (p. 240). popham (2011) defined assessment literacy as “an individual’s understandings of the fundamental assessment concepts and procedures deemed likely to influence educational decisions” (p. 265). the term language assessment literacy (lal) has recently appeared in the literature on assessment literacy owing to the distinctive features of the context of language teaching and learning (inbar-lourie, 2008; levi & inbar-lourie, 2019). although the concept of lal is relatively new, it is a large and gradually developing construct in applied linguistics, which has been conceptualized in various ways in the literature (fulcher, 2012; inbar-lourie, 2008, 2017; lan & fan, 2019; lee & butler, 2020). due to the increasing importance of lal in meeting the increased demand for and the use of assessment data by language teachers and other stakeholders for the new age (inbar-lourie, 2013; tsagari & vogt, 2017), researchers have paid close attention to the investigation of teachers’ lal (e.g., deluca et al., 2018; lam, 2019; xu & brown, 2017). the majority of these studies have utilized multiple-choice or scenariobased scales inquiring into preservice or in-service language teachers’ assessment knowledge, beliefs, and/or practice (e.g., ölmezer-öztürk & aydin, 2018; tajeddin et al., 2018). the scales used in these studies have been tightly aligned with the seven standards for teacher competence in educational assessment for students (american federation of teachers [aft] et al., 1990). however, as brookhart (2011) noted, the 1990 standards are outdated in terms of not considering current conceptions of formative assessment knowledge and skills as well as of accountability concerns. moreover, the previous scales have briefly touched on teachers’ classroom-based assessment literacy. according to xu (2017), classroom assessment literacy refers to “teachers’ knowledge of assessment in general and of the contingent relationship between assessment, teaching, and learning, as well as abilities to conduct assessment in the classroom to optimize such contingency” (p. 219). the present study, therefore, addresses the classroombased assessment gap by developing a classroom-based language assessment literacy (cblal) scale to come up with items that solicit realistic and meaningful data applicable to the classroom context. also, the study seeks to explore iranian english as a foreign language (efl) teachers’ status of classroom-based language assessment knowledge and practice using the newlydeveloped scale. literature review conceptualization of language assessment literacy the term lal has been conceptualized by many scholars in the past two decades (e.g., fulcher, 2012; inbar-lourie, 2008; pill & harding, 2013; taylor, 2013). 249profile: issues teach. prof. dev., vol. 24 no. 2, jul-dec, 2022. issn 1657-0790 (printed) 2256-5760 (online). bogotá, colombia. pages 247-264 english language teachers’ perceived classroom assessment knowledge and practice... lal was defined by inbar-lourie (2008) as “having the capacity to ask and answer critical questions about the purpose for assessment, about the fitness of the tool being used, about testing conditions, and about what is going to happen on the basis of the test results” (p. 389). fulcher (2012) defined lal as “the knowledge, skills and abilities required to design, develop, maintain or evaluate, large-scale standardized and/or classroombased tests, familiarity with test processes, and awareness of principles and concepts that guide and underpin practice, including ethics and codes of practice” (p. 125). taylor (2013) put forward a model of assessment competency and expertise for different stakeholder groups. placing language teachers at an intermediary position between the measurement specialist and the general public, taylor argued that lal is best defined in terms of the particular needs of each stakeholder group. likewise, pill and harding (2013) rejected a dichotomous view of “literacy” or “illiteracy,” arguing for viewing lal in terms of a continuum from “illiteracy” to “multidimensional literacy.” they contended that non-practitioners do not require assessment literacy at the “multidimensional level” or the “procedural level;” rather, it would be desirable for policy makers and other non-practitioners to gain “functional level” of assessment literacy in order to deal with language tests. research on language assessment literacy the last two decades have witnessed an increasing number of studies investigating teachers’ self-described levels of assessment literacy (e.g., lan & fan, 2019; vogt & tsagari, 2014; xu & brown, 2017), approaches to assessment (e.g., deluca et al., 2018; deluca et al., 2019; tajeddin et al., 2018), perceptions about language assessment (e.g., tsagari & vogt, 2017), and assessment use confidence (e.g., berry et al., 2019). for instance, vogt and tsagari (2014) explored the current level of language testing and assessment (lta) literacy of foreign language teachers from seven european countries through questionnaires and teacher interviews. they found that the lta literacy of teachers was not very welldeveloped. xu and brown (2017), utilizing an adapted version of the teacher assessment literacy questionnaire developed by plake et al. (1993), investigated 891 chinese university english teachers’ assessment literacy levels and the effects of their demographic characteristics on assessment literacy performance. the findings of the study revealed that the vast majority of the teachers had very basic to minimally acceptable competencies in certain dimensions of assessment literacy. tajeddin et al. (2018) aimed at exploring 26 novice and experienced language teachers’ knowledge and practices with regard to speaking assessment purposes, criteria, and methods. the researchers concluded that, although divergence between novice and experienced teachers’ knowledge and practice of assessment purpose was moderate, the data revealed more consistency in the experienced teachers’ assessment literacy for speaking. deluca et al. (2018) sought to explore 404 canadian and american teachers’ perceived skills in classroom assessment across their career stage (i.e., teaching experience). the researchers observed that more experienced teachers, as opposed to less experienced teachers, reported greater skill in monitoring, analyzing, and communicating assessment results as well as assessment design, implementation, and feedback. more recently, deluca et al. (2019) looked into 453 novice teachers’ classroom assessment approaches using five assessment scenarios. the researchers observed that teachers were quite consistent regarding their learning principles. however, they showed some difference in their actual classroom practice, indicating the situated nature of classroom assessment practice. in another study, lan and fan (2019) explored 344 in-service chinese efl teachers’ status of lal. they observed that teachers’ classroom-based lal was at the functional level, namely “sound understanding of basic terms and concepts” (pill & harding, 2013, p. 383). the researchers concluded that teacher education universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras250 tajeddin, saeedi, & panahzadeh courses should acquaint teachers with the necessary knowledge and skills for conducting classroom-based assessment literacy. considering the variety of conceptualizations of the term lal and its intricacies, more studies must be carried out in local contexts (inbar-lourie, 2017) with a focus on language teachers’ perspectives (lee & butler, 2020) in order to help the field come to grips with the dynamics of the issue. also, as the above literature review shows, we still have a limited understanding of language teachers’ classroom-based assessment literacy. against this backdrop, the main purpose of this study is twofold: developing and validating a new cblal scale to assess language teachers’ perceived classroom-based assessment knowledge and practice, and looking into iranian efl teachers’ perceived classroom-based language assessment knowledge and practice. the following are the questions that guided this study: 1. which factors underlie language teachers’ perceived classroom-based assessment knowledge and practice? 2. what is iranian efl teachers’ perceived classroombased assessment knowledge and practice? method participants the participants of the study for the initial piloting of the scale were 54 iranian efl teachers, including 23 male (42.6%) and 31 female (57.4%) teachers. it should be noted that the pilot study participants, albeit identical to those in the main study, did not take part in the later study. a total of 346 efl teachers, including 143 men (41.3%) and 203 women (58.7%), participated in the development and validation of the scale as well as the investigation of the classroom-based assessment literacy of efl teachers. the teachers were all teaching general english (i.e., integrated four language skills) to various levels and age groups in private language schools in the iranian context. in these language schools, teachers are required to follow a fixed syllabus using well-known communicationoriented international textbook series (sadeghi & richards, 2015). the private school supervisors commonly use written examinations and interviews to recruit qualified teachers and regularly observe their performance for promotional and career growth purposes (sadeghi & richards, 2015). the participants’ ages ranged between 18 and 67, with the average age of 32. all teachers, based on a convenience sampling procedure, voluntarily took part in the study. more than half of the teachers had majored in teaching efl. moreover, almost half of the teachers had taken a language testing/assessment course at university (see table 1). table 1. demographic information of the participants category n % gender male 143 41.3 female 203 58.7 educational level ba student 71 20.5 ba graduate 50 14.5 ma student 38 11 ma graduate 130 37.6 phd student 41 11.8 phd graduate 16 4.6 field of education tefl 187 54 english language literature 108 31.2 translation studies 14 4.1 linguistics 12 3.5 other 25 7.2 taken assessment/ testing course at university yes 167 48.3 no 179 51.7 251profile: issues teach. prof. dev., vol. 24 no. 2, jul-dec, 2022. issn 1657-0790 (printed) 2256-5760 (online). bogotá, colombia. pages 247-264 english language teachers’ perceived classroom assessment knowledge and practice... scale development the process of developing the cblal scale began with a review of previously validated assessment literacy scales in the literature (e.g., fulcher, 2012; mertler & campbell, 2005; plake et al., 1993; zhang & burrystock, 1994). it was observed that most previous studies exploring teachers’ assessment literacy used the teacher assessment literacy questionnaire (plake et al., 1993), or its adapted version—the assessment literacy inventory (mertler & campbell, 2005). both scales included 35 items assessing teachers’ understanding of general concepts about testing and assessment, which were tightly aligned to the seven standards for teacher competence in educational assessment for students (aft et al., 1990). to address the recent conceptualizations of classroombased assessment needs of language teachers (brookhart, 2011), we set out to develop a cblal scale based on xu and brown’s (2016) six-component interrelated framework of teacher assessment literacy in practice (talip). assessment knowledge base, constituting the basis of the framework, was used for developing the cblal scale in this study. according to xu and brown, teacher assessment knowledge base refers to “a core body of formal, systematic, and codified principles concerning good assessment practice” (p. 155). the key domains of teacher assessment knowledge base are briefly defined next: • disciplinary knowledge and pedagogical content knowledge: knowledge of the content and the general principles regarding how it is taught or learned. • knowledge of assessment purposes, content, and methods: knowledge of the general objectives of assessment and the relevant assessment tasks and strategies. • knowledge of grading: knowledge of rationale, methods, content, and criteria for grading and scoring students’ performance. • knowledge of feedback: knowledge of the types and functions of various feedback strategies for enhancing learning. • knowledge of assessment interpretation and communication: knowledge of effective interpretation of assessment results and how to communicate them to stakeholders. • knowledge of student involvement in assessment: knowledge of the benefits and strategies of engaging students in the assessment process. • knowledge of assessment ethics: knowledge of observing ethical and legal considerations (i.e., social justice) in the assessment process. it should be noted that as the present study sought to develop a language assessment-specific scale to be used for pinpointing language teachers’ classroom-based assessment knowledge and practice, the first domain of the assessment knowledge base (i.e., disciplinary knowledge and pedagogical content knowledge) was not taken into account in the scale development process. it was reasoned that an adequate understanding of the disciplinary content and the general principles regarding how it is taught or learned is a pre-requisite for all teachers regardless of the content area they are teaching (brookhart, 2011; firoozi et al., 2019). after existing assessment literacy scales were reviewed by the researchers, 25 assessment knowledge items (i.e., 62.5%) which corresponded to the subcomponents of the xu and brown’s framework (i.e., assessment literacy knowledge base) were identified. next, they were borrowed and reworded in order to measure teachers’ (a) perceived classroom-based assessment knowledge, and (b) perceived classroom-based assessment practice. according to dörnyei (2003, p. 52), “borrowing questions from established questionnaires” is one of the sources that successful item designers mostly rely on. then, 15 assessment knowledge items (i.e., 37.5%) were originally developed by the authors to ensure an acceptable number of items for each subcomponent. later, 40 assessment practice items were developed corresponding to the 40 assessment knowledge items. the final draft of the cblal scale comprised a demographics part and two universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras252 tajeddin, saeedi, & panahzadeh other sections. the demographics part consisted of both open-ended and close-ended items inquiring into the participants’ demographic information. the first of the other two sections aimed at exploring language teachers’ knowledge of classroom-based assessment. a pool of 40 items was generated in line with the six components of xu and brown’s framework. the items asked teachers to evaluate their own knowledge of assessment on a likert scale ranging from 1 (strongly disagree), 2 (slightly disagree), 3 (moderately agree), to 4 (strongly agree). the items in the second part of the last two sections of the scale corresponded to the preceding one in terms of the targeted construct (i.e., the six components of xu and brown’s framework). however, they were modified to probe into the teachers’ perceptions of their classroom-based assessment practices. there was a total of 40 items on a likert scale ranging from 1 (never), 2 (rarely), 3 (sometimes), 4 (very often), to 5 (always) in the last section of the scale. prior to subjecting the scale to psychometric analysis, it was filled out by six teachers to check the intelligibility of the items. having resolved the ambiguities and unintelligible items based on the teachers’ feedback, the researchers pilot-tested the scale on 54 teachers to assure its reliability using cronbach’s alpha. as for the validity of the scale, a panel of four instructors doing their phd in applied linguistics was consulted to review the content validity of the scale. also, exploratory factor analysis (efa) was performed in the main phase of the study to extract major factors and item loadings of the scale. to do so, the scale was distributed among a large pool of language teachers through both online media (e.g., email) and personal contacts. overall, a total of 346 teachers filled out the scale and their results were subjected to efa. regarding the status of language teachers’ classroom-based assessment knowledge and practice, descriptive statistics were run based on the teachers’ responses to the cblal scale. results having validated and administered the cblal scale to iranian efl teachers, the researchers explored teachers’ status of classroom-based assessment knowledge and practice. the findings are presented in the following sections. exploratory factor analysis the initial 80 items of teachers’ cblal, including 40 classroom-based assessment knowledge items on a 4-point likert scale and 40 classroom-based assessment practice items on a 5-point likert scale, were subjected to efa, namely principal axis factoring (paf) with direct oblimin rotation. the suitability of data for factor analysis was investigated prior to performing paf. first, the normality of the distribution of the data was checked by considering the skewness and kurtosis measures of the items. it was found that all items’ statistics ranged between -2 and +2, satisfying the assumption of normality (tabachnick & fidell, 2013). second, the kaiser-meyer-olkin (kmo) measure was used to estimate the sampling adequacy for the analysis. as can be seen in table 2, the kmo value was .91 for assessment knowledge items and .92 for assessment practice items, exceeding the recommended minimum value of .6 (pallant, 2016; tabachnick & fidell, 2013). further, as shown in table 2, bartlett’s test of sphericity reached statistical significance for both measures, which indicated that correlations between items were sufficiently large for paf. table 2. kaiser-meyer-olkin and bartlett’s test assessment knowledge assessment practice kaiser-meyer-olkin measure of sampling adequacy .916 .922 bartlett’s test of sphericity approx. chi-square 9367.020 9664.243 df 780 780 sig. .000 .000 253profile: issues teach. prof. dev., vol. 24 no. 2, jul-dec, 2022. issn 1657-0790 (printed) 2256-5760 (online). bogotá, colombia. pages 247-264 english language teachers’ perceived classroom assessment knowledge and practice... after running paf on the assessment knowledge items, an initial 7-factor solution emerged with eigenvalues exceeding 1, explaining 40.4%, 5.8%, 4.7%, 4.2%, 3.1%, 2.8%, and 2.6% of the variance, respectively. however, an inspection of the scree plot and parallel analysis showed only four factors with eigenvalues exceeding the corresponding criterion values for a randomly generated data matrix of the same size (40 variables × 346 respondents; pallant, 2016). the final 4-factor solution of assessment knowledge measure explained a total of 55.3% of the variance. the internal consistency of the assessment knowledge scale as a whole was estimated and its cronbach’s alpha was found to be .95. regarding assessment practice items, an initial 7-factor solution emerged, with eigenvalues exceeding 1, explaining 40.6%, 7.2%, 4.5%, 4.0%, 3.3%, 2.9%, and 2.5% of the variance, respectively. the inspection of the scree plot and parallel analysis, however, yielded a 4-factor solution for the assessment practice scale, which explained a total of 56.5% of the variance. the internal consistency of the assessment practice scale as a whole was estimated and its cronbach’s alpha was found to be .94. to aid in the interpretation of the extracted factors, oblimin rotation was performed. also, only variables with loadings of .4 and above were interpreted, as suggested by field (2013). it should be noted that items 25 and 26 were omitted from the assessment knowledge scale due to their low coefficients (see table 3). moreover, item 21 was omitted from the assessment knowledge scale due to cross-loadings. regarding the assessment practice scale pattern matrix (table 4), items 14, 15, 16, and 40 were suppressed by spss from the factor solution because of their low coefficients. table 3. pattern matrix of the extracted factors for assessment knowledge assessment knowledge factors item # 1 2 3 4 1 i am familiar with using classroom tests (e.g., quizzes) to pinpoint students’ strengths and weaknesses to plan further instruction. .875 2 i know how to use classroom tests for the purpose of assigning grades to students. .766 3 i know how to use classroom tests to track students’ progress during the course. .603 4 i am knowledgeable about using classroom tests for the purpose of planning future instruction. .721 5 i have sufficient knowledge to use classroom tests to help me divide students into different groups for instructional purposes. .704 6 i know how to use various types of classroom tests (e.g., speaking tests or grammar quizzes) depending on the intended course objectives. .770 7 i can adapt tests found in teachers’ guidebooks to fit intended course objectives. .577 universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras254 tajeddin, saeedi, & panahzadeh 8 i know how to use a detailed description of intended course objectives to develop classroom tests. .754 9 i am familiar with using different types of classroom tests to assign grades to students. .636 10 i maintain detailed records of each student’s classroom test results to help me assign grades. .497 11 i know how to grade each student’s classroom test performance against other students’ test performance. .623 12 i can develop rating scales to help me grade students’ classroom test performance. .703 13 i have sufficient knowledge about grade students’ classroom test performance against certain achievement goals. .742 14 i know how to consult with experienced colleagues about rating scales they use to grade students’ classroom test performance. .555 15 i know how to consult with my colleagues about assigning grades to students. .486 33 i recognize students’ cultural diversity and eliminate offensive language and content of classroom tests. .745 34 i know how to match the contents of my classroom tests with the contents of my teaching and intended course objectives. .464 35 i know how to use the same classroom tests and the same rating scales for all students to avoid bias. .631 36 i observe assessment fairness by avoiding giving lower grades to students from lower socioeconomic status. .497 37 i am knowledgeable about how to help students with learning disability during classroom tests. .586 38 i know how to avoid using new items in my classroom tests which did not appear on the course syllabus. .440 39 i know how to inform students of the test item formats (e.g., multiple choice or essay) prior to classroom tests. .417 40 i know how to announce students’ classroom test scores individually, rather than publicly, to avoid making them get embarrassed. .459 27 i encourage students to assess their own classroom test performance to enhance their learning. .472 28 i help my students learn how to grade their own classroom test performance. .446 29 i can ask top students in my class to help me assess other students’ classroom test performance. .811 30 i know how to encourage students to provide their classmates with feedback on their classroom test performance. .740 255profile: issues teach. prof. dev., vol. 24 no. 2, jul-dec, 2022. issn 1657-0790 (printed) 2256-5760 (online). bogotá, colombia. pages 247-264 english language teachers’ perceived classroom assessment knowledge and practice... 31 i know how to give students clear rating scales by which they can assess each other’s classroom test performance. .635 32 i know how to explain to students the rating scales i apply to grade their classroom test performance. .464 16 i provide students with regular feedback on their classroom test performance. -.529 17 i provide students with specific, practical suggestions to help them improve their test performance. -.690 18 i praise students for their good performance on classroom tests. -.688 19 i know how to remind students of their strengths and weaknesses in their classroom test performance to help them improve their learning. -.620 20 i know how to encourage my students to improve their classroom test performance according to the feedback provided by me. -.689 21 i use classroom test results to determine if students have met course objectives. .411 -.465 22 i know how to use classroom test results to decide whether students can proceed to the next stage of learning. -.606 23 i can construct an accurate report about students’ classroom test performance to communicate it to both parents and/or institute managers. -.466 24 i speak understandably with students about the meaning of the report card grades to help them improve their test performance. -.597 the assessment knowledge items that clustered around the same factors (bolded items) in the pattern matrix presented in table 3 suggested that factor one, containing 15 items, represented “knowledge of assessment use and grading.” the items elicit teachers’ familiarity with the purpose of classroom tests and how to choose appropriate classroom tests to fit intended course objectives. factor one also probes into teachers’ knowledge of grading students’ classroom test performance and how to get assistance from experienced colleagues in this regard. factor two comprised 8 items which represented “knowledge of assessment ethics.” it elicits teachers’ knowledge of how to observe assessment fairness and to avoid assessment bias in classroom tests. factor three comprised 6 items which tapped on “knowledge of student involvement in assessment.” the items examine teachers’ knowledge of strategies to encourage students to assess their own and their peers’ classroom test performance. finally, factor four consisted of 8 items which represented “knowledge of feedback and assessment interpretation.” the items inquire into teachers’ knowledge of providing students with regular feedback (i.e., practical suggestions) to help them improve their test performance. the items also elicit teachers’ familiarity with reporting and communicating students’ classroom test performance to both parents and/or school managers. universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras256 tajeddin, saeedi, & panahzadeh table 4. pattern matrix of the extracted factors for assessment practice assessment practice factors item # 1 2 3 4 1 using classroom tests (e.g., quizzes) to pinpoint students’ strengths and weaknesses to plan further instruction. .790 2 using classroom tests for the purpose of assigning grades to students. .700 3 using classroom tests to track students’ progress during the course. .739 4 using classroom tests for the purpose of planning future instruction. .786 5 using classroom tests to help me divide students into different groups for instructional purposes. .620 6 using various types of classroom tests (e.g., speaking tests or grammar quizzes) depending on the intended course objectives. .648 7 adapting tests found in teachers’ guidebooks to fit intended course objectives. .558 8 using a detailed description of intended course objectives to develop classroom tests. .636 9 using different types of classroom tests to assign grades to students. .560 10 maintaining detailed records of each student’s classroom test results to help me assign grades. .461 11 grading each student’s classroom test performance against other students’ test performance. .621 12 developing rating scales to help me grade students’ classroom test performance. .698 13 grading students’ classroom test performance against certain achievement goals. .574 17 providing students with specific, practical suggestions to help them improve their test performance. .429 32 explaining to students the rating scales i apply to grade their classroom test performance. .497 33 recognizing students’ cultural diversity and eliminating offensive language and content of classroom tests. .724 34 matching the contents of my classroom tests with the contents of my teaching and intended course objectives. .591 35 using the same classroom tests and the same rating scales for all students to avoid bias. .752 36 observing assessment fairness by avoiding giving lower grades to students from lower socioeconomic status. .582 37 helping students with learning disability during classroom tests. .546 257profile: issues teach. prof. dev., vol. 24 no. 2, jul-dec, 2022. issn 1657-0790 (printed) 2256-5760 (online). bogotá, colombia. pages 247-264 english language teachers’ perceived classroom assessment knowledge and practice... 38 avoiding using new items in my classroom tests which did not appear on the course syllabus. .758 39 informing students of the test item formats (e.g., multiple choice or essay) prior to classroom tests. .651 26 participating in discussion with institute managers about important changes to the curriculum based on students’ classroom test results. .477 27 encouraging students to assess their own classroom test performance to enhance their learning. .587 28 helping my students learn how to grade their own classroom test performance. .729 29 asking top students in my class to help me assess other students’ classroom test performance. .803 30 encouraging students to provide their classmates with feedback on their classroom test performance. .860 31 giving students clear rating scales by which they can assess each other’s classroom test performance. .771 18 praising students for their good performance on classroom tests. -.586 19 reminding students of their strengths and weaknesses in their classroom test performance to help them improve their learning. -.723 20 encouraging my students to improve their classroom test performance according to the feedback provided by me. -.775 21 using classroom test results to determine if students have met course objectives. -.422 22 using classroom test results to decide whether students can proceed to the next stage of learning. -.507 23 constructing an accurate report about students’ classroom test performance to communicate it to both parents and/or institute managers. -.412 24 speaking understandably with students about the meaning of the report card grades to help them improve their test performance. -.469 25 speaking understandably with parents, if needed, about the decisions made or recommended based on classroom test results. -.507 as for assessment practice items, those that clustered around the same factors (bolded items) in the pattern matrix presented in table 4 suggested that factor one, comprising 13 items, represented “assessment purpose and grading.” it elicits the frequency of the use of classroom tests to track students’ progress during the course, to plan future instruction, and to assign grades to students. factor two, consisting of 9 items, represented “assessment ethics.” factor two items inquire into observing assessment fairness and avoiding assessment bias in classroom tests. factor three, comprising 6 items, implies “student involvement in assessment.” it explores the frequency of assisting students to learn how to grade their own and their peers’ classroom test performance. finally, factor four, with 8 items, refers to “feedback and assessment interpretation and communication.” universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras258 tajeddin, saeedi, & panahzadeh table 5. mean and response percentages of classroom-based assessment knowledge factors factors strongly disagree slightly disagree moderately agree strongly agree mean sd knowledge of assessment use and grading 3.93% 19.47% 41.25% 35.35% 3.08 0.82 knowledge of assessment ethics 2.60% 14.93% 34.55% 47.93% 3.27 0.78 knowledge of student involvement in assessment 6.73% 22.18% 39.93% 31.15% 2.95 0.87 knowledge of feedback and assessment interpretation 0.95% 10.99% 35.69% 52.38% 3.39 0.69 the items elicit the frequency of reminding students of their strengths and weaknesses in their classroom test performance and of using classroom test results for decision-making purposes. overall, the classroom-based assessment knowledge and practice items loaded on four thematic areas with 37 items falling under classroom-based assessment knowledge and 36 items relating to classroom practice. teachers’ classroom-based assessment knowledge and practice the newly-developed cblal scale was used to probe into iranian efl teachers’ knowledge and practice of four factors of these teachers’ classroom-based assessment knowledge base (xu & brown, 2016). table 5 presents the percentages of the teachers’ responses on classroom-based assessment knowledge factors. as can be seen in table 5, the teachers in the present study reported to be knowledgeable about classroom assessment by moderately or strongly agreeing with the items. more specifically, around 76% of the teachers self-reported to be knowledgeable about the uses of assessment and grading procedures in language classrooms. regarding knowledge of assessment ethics, around 82% of the teachers believed that they were knowledgeable about ethical considerations in the classroom. as for knowledge of student involvement in assessment, 71% of the teachers believed they were knowledgeable about how to encourage students to assess their own and their peers’ classroom performance. finally, regarding knowledge of feedback and assessment interpretation, 88% of the teachers were of the belief that they knew how to provide accurate feedback as well as report on students’ class performances. as for the teachers’ classroom-based assessment practice, table 6 presents the percentages of their responses on a 5-point likert scale. 259profile: issues teach. prof. dev., vol. 24 no. 2, jul-dec, 2022. issn 1657-0790 (printed) 2256-5760 (online). bogotá, colombia. pages 247-264 english language teachers’ perceived classroom assessment knowledge and practice... table 6 shows that around 61% of the teachers stated that they use classroom assessment for the purpose of grading students’ performance as well as informing future instruction. also, around 71% of the teachers were of the belief that they very often consider ethical issues in their everyday classroom assessment tasks. as for student involvement in assessment, more than half (51%) of the teachers reported that they help students learn how to grade their own classroom test performance. finally, as for feedback and assessment interpretation and communication, around 72% of the teachers were of the belief that they practice constructive feedback in their classes to help students set goals for their future success. discussion the present study sought to develop and validate a new scale to tap teachers’ classroom-based assessment knowledge and practice. to do so, a total of 40 items on classroom-based assessment knowledge and a corresponding set of 40 classroom-based assessment practice items were developed and subjected to efa. it was revealed that the six factors of xu and brown’s (2016) teacher assessment knowledge base collapsed into four factors in the context of the present study. the items on the scale clustered around the following themes: (a) purposes of assessment and grading, (b) assessment ethics, table 6. mean and response percentages of classroom-based assessment practice factors factors never rarely sometimes very often always mean sd assessment purpose and grading 4.03% 10.54% 24.08% 37.22% 24.13% 3.66 1.05 assessment ethics 2.73% 6.10% 19.33% 34.19% 37.64% 3.97 1.01 student involvement in assessment 7.98% 13.63% 26.90% 31.50% 19.98% 3.41 1.15 feedback and assessment interpretation and communication 1.98% 5.50% 19.90% 37.06% 35.56% 3.98 0.94 (c) student involvement in assessment, and (d) feedback and assessment interpretation. it can be reasoned that since a large number of students strive for international examinations (i.e., ielts) at private language schools in iran (sadeghi & richards, 2015), teachers’ view of assessment is largely quantitative (i.e., grade-based), and they see grading as the principal purpose of assessment procedures. as a result, the items on assessment purpose and grading loaded together in the efa. moreover, not only was knowledge of assessment feedback and assessment communication and interpretation found to be interrelated in the context of the study, but it was also found that there is a high negative correlation between the factor of “feedback and assessment interpretation” and other three factors. it may be contended that teachers look at feedback and interpretation as part of “good” teaching practice rather than good assessment (berry et al., 2019). in other words, teachers regard the process of providing feedback as a teaching mechanism helping students notice their strengths and weakness in order to facilitate their learning. such a perspective has, however, been explained as “assessment for learning” in the literature (lee, 2017). having validated the scale, the researchers investigated the status of iranian efl teachers’ classroombased assessment knowledge and practice. the findings of the study reveal that most participants (around 80%) universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras260 tajeddin, saeedi, & panahzadeh reported to be knowledgeable, to different extents, about classroom-based assessment by moderately or strongly agreeing with the items on the four factors. also, most teachers (around 65%) reported practicing classroombased assessment quite frequently in their classrooms in terms of the four classroom-based assessment practice factors. these findings corroborate those of crusan et al. (2016) in that teachers reported to be familiar with writing assessment concepts and use various assessment procedures in their classes. the findings of the study, however, run counter to those of lan and fan (2019), tsagari and vogt (2017), vogt and tsagari (2014), and xu and brown (2017). for instance, vogt and tsagari (2014), exploring language testing and assessment (lta) literacy of european teachers, concluded that the teachers’ lta literacy is not well-developed, which was attributed to lack of training in assessment. similarly, lan and fan (2019) investigated in-service chinese efl teachers’ classroom-based lal. they observed that teachers lacked sufficient procedural and conceptual lal for conducting classroom-based language assessment. language teachers’ high levels of self-reported assessment knowledge and practice in the present study might also be attributed to demographic (i.e., educational level) and affective (i.e., motivation) variables. since many teachers teaching in iranian private language schools hold an ma or phd in teaching efl, they may have been familiarized with some of the recent developments on the use of language assessment in classrooms (sadeghi & richards, 2015). also, as private language school teachers face relatively less “meso-level” (i.e., school policies) constraints (fulmer et al., 2015) and enjoy considerably more autonomy (i.e., space and support) in their teaching context (lam, 2019), the chances of developing practical assessment knowledge and trying out renewed conceptualization of assessment in their classes is increased. reviewing the teachers’ responses to open-ended questions in the first section of the cblal scale (i.e., demographic information) showed that more than half of the participants (51.7%) had not taken any course with a particular focus on assessment. the remaining teachers (48.3%) unanimously reported to have taken such a course at university, indicating that teacher training courses (ttcs) offered at private language schools do not hold a special position in shaping teachers’ assessment literacy. to further support this contention, teachers’ responses to open-ended questions revealed that the topics covered in language testing courses offered at universities (i.e., including designing test items, test reliability and validation, and testing language skills and components) did not equip them with the dynamics of classroom assessment. moreover, the teachers’ responses to open-ended questions confirm that most (around 80%) agreed to the allocation of more time to language assessment component in their preservice and/or in-service ttcs. they conceived of assessment as an essential component of the teaching process without which instruction would not lead to desirable outcomes. however, they unanimously stressed the need for the inclusion of a practical classroom-based assessment component in preservice and in-service teacher education courses. conclusion the principal purpose of the present study was to develop and validate a new cblal scale, and then to explore iranian efl teachers’ status of classroombased assessment knowledge and practice. it was found that teachers’ assessment knowledge base is composed of four main themes. also, private language school teachers’ responses to the cblal scale revealed that they self-reported to be moderately assessment literate. however, the findings of the open-ended section of the scale painted a different picture. the majority of teachers expressed their need for a specific course on language assessment, which demands a cautious interpretation of the findings of the study. the findings imply that in the absence of an assessment for learning component in teacher education 261profile: issues teach. prof. dev., vol. 24 no. 2, jul-dec, 2022. issn 1657-0790 (printed) 2256-5760 (online). bogotá, colombia. pages 247-264 english language teachers’ perceived classroom assessment knowledge and practice... courses for language teachers to equip them with recent updates on classroom assessment, teachers would resort to their past experiences as students, or what vogt and tsagari (2014) call “testing as you were tested.” teacher education courses should then adopt vygotsky’s sociocultural theory, particularly his concept of the “zone of proximal development.” with its emphasis on the contribution of mediation and dialogic interaction with teachers’ professional development (johnson, 2009), a sociocultural theory perspective on teacher education can cater for an opportunity for teachers to “articulate and synthesize their perspectives by drawing together assessment theory, terminology, and experience” (deluca et al., 2013, p. 133). by externalizing their current understanding of assessment and then reconceptualizing and recontextualizing it, teachers can discover their own assessment mindset orientation and develop alternative ways of engaging in the activities associated with assessment (coombs et al., 2020; deluca et al., 2019; johnson, 2009). the findings have important implications for language teacher education and professional development in that, by spotting classroom-based assessment needs of teachers and considering them in teacher education pedagogies, teachers’ conceptions and practices can be transformed (loughran, 2006). also, the findings have implications for materials developers, who are responsible for providing and sequencing the content of teaching materials. by becoming cognizant of the intricacies of classroom assessment, materials developers can include appropriate topics and discussions in their materials to help teachers acquire necessary classroom-based assessment knowledge base. a number of limitations were, however, present in this study, which need to be acknowledged. the study only probed into language teachers’ self-reported account of classroom-based assessment knowledge and practice without any evidence of their actual practice. a further limitation was that teachers may have intentionally marked their assessment knowledge and practice items positive for some behavioral and “social desirability” reasons (coombs et al., 2020). therefore, future studies are invited to observe language teachers’ assessment practices (i.e., rather than their perceptions) to obtain a more realistic picture of their classroombased assessment literacy. future studies could also consider the implementation of “focused instruction” (deluca & klinger, 2010) on the use of both formative and summative assessments in classrooms and the potential impact of such a course on language teachers’ classroom-based assessment literacy development. references american federation of teachers, national council on measurement in education, & national education association. 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(1994). assessment practices inventory. the university of alabama. https://files.eric.ed.gov/fulltext/ed490355.pdf https://files.eric.ed.gov/fulltext/ed490355.pdf https://doi.org/10.1186/s40468-018-0075-2 https://doi.org/10.1186/s40468-018-0075-2 https://doi.org/10.1177/0265532213480337 https://doi.org/10.1177/0265532213480337 https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1745-3992.1993.tb00548.x https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1745-3992.1993.tb00548.x https://doi.org/10.1080/00405840802577536 https://doi.org/10.1080/00405840802577536 https://doi.org/10.1080/08878730.2011.605048 https://doi.org/10.1108/etpc-03-2015-0019 https://doi.org/10.1177/0265532213480338 https://doi.org/10.1177/0265532213480338 https://doi.org/10.1080/15434303.2014.960046 https://doi.org/10.1080/15434303.2014.960046 https://doi.org/10.1007/s40299-017-0342-5 https://doi.org/10.1016/j.tate.2016.05.010 https://doi.org/10.1016/j.tate.2016.05.010 universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras264 tajeddin, saeedi, & panahzadeh about the authors zia tajeddin is professor of applied linguistics at tarbiat modares university, iran. he is the co-editor of two international journals: applied pragmatics (john benjamins) and second language teacher education (equinox). his research interests center on l2 pragmatics, teacher education, and eil/elf pedagogy. zari saeedi received her phd in applied linguistics from the trinity college cambridge (uk) and is an associate professor at allameh tabataba’i university, iran. she has presented in different national/international conferences and published papers and books on a range of topics, including language learning and culture. vahid panahzadeh is a phd candidate of tefl at allameh tabataba’i university, iran. he has presented papers at national and international conferences. his main area of interest is language assessment. selfand peer-assessment of student-generated podcasts to improve comprehensibility in undergraduate efl students 67profile: issues teach. prof. dev., vol. 23 no. 2, jul-dec, 2021. issn 1657-0790 (printed) 2256-5760 (online). bogotá, colombia. pages 67-85 https://doi.org/10.15446/profile.v23n2.88928 selfand peer-assessment of student-generated podcasts to improve comprehensibility in undergraduate efl students autoevaluación y evaluación por pares de podcasts generados por alumnos para mejorar la comprensibilidad de estudiantes del pregrado de inglés como lengua extranjera albedro cadena-aguilar1 claudia patricia álvarez-ayure universidad de la sabana, chía, colombia this study reports on a mixed-methods research project into selfand peer-formative assessment of student-generated podcasts in a group of 18 undergraduate students. the aim was to determine whether there were any gains in the spoken comprehensibility of the participants while having them reflect on and adjust their use of suprasegmentals (thought groups, sentence stress, and intonation). data were gathered from student logs, student-generated podcasts, and a questionnaire. results unveiled the exhibition of self-regulated behaviours and gains in comprehensibility. this study highlights the importance of helping learners look critically and reflectively at their own oral production and of incorporating training on suprasegmentals within english as a foreign language courses to help learners communicate more effectively within a globalised context. keywords: english as a foreign language, formative assessment, higher education, podcasts, self-directed learning, spoken comprehensibility este estudio reporta una investigación de métodos mixtos sobre autoevaluación y evaluación formativa por pares de podcasts generados por 18 estudiantes de pregrado. el objetivo fue determinar si había algún aumento en la compresión hablada de los participantes mientras se les hacía reflexionar y ajustar su uso de suprasegmentos (grupos de pensamiento, acentuación en oraciones y entonación). los datos se obtuvieron de registros y podcasts generados por los estudiantes, y de un cuestionario. los resultados muestran comportamientos autorregulados y aumento en la comprensión. este estudio resalta la importancia de ayudar a los estudiantes a examinar crítica y reflexivamente su producción oral e incorporar capacitación en suprasegmentos en cursos de inglés como lengua extranjera para ayudarlos a comunicarse efectivamente en un contexto globalizado. palabras clave: inglés como lengua extranjera, aprendizaje autodirigido, comprensión del discurso hablado, educación superior, evaluación formativa, podcasts albedro cadena-aguilar  https://orcid.org/0000-0002-0633-3856 · email: albedro.cadena@unisabana.edu.co claudia patricia álvarez-ayure  https://orcid.org/0000-0001-7425-6437 · email: claudiap.alvarez@unisabana.edu.co how to cite this article (apa, 7th ed.): cadena-aguilar, a., & álvarez-ayure, c. p. (2021). selfand peer-assessment of student-generated podcasts to improve comprehensibility in undergraduate efl students. profile: issues in teachers’ professional development, 23(2), 67–85. https://doi.org/10.15446/profile.v23n2.88928 this article was received on july 6, 2020 and accepted on march 10, 2021. this is an open access article distributed under the terms of the creative commons license attribution-noncommercial-noderivatives 4.0 international license. consultation is possible at https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/ https://doi.org/10.15446/profile.v23n2.88928 https://orcid.org/0000-0002-0633-3856 mailto:albedro.cadena@unisabana.edu.co https://orcid.org/0000-0001-7425-6437 mailto:claudiap.alvarez@unisabana.edu.co https://doi.org/10.15446/profile.v23n2.88928 https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/ universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras68 cadena-aguilar & álvarez-ayure introduction the incorporation of formative assessment practices into the english as a foreign language (efl) classroom has been considered an essential element to promote learning and achievement (harlen & winter, 2004; hattie & timperley, 2007; van de watering & van der rijt, 2006). however, in higher education efl contexts, assessment often remains dependent on teachers (yorke, 2003), a situation that may hinder the development of self-regulation and lifelong learning skills (nicol & macfarlane-dick, 2006) and deprive students from taking a more active role in their learning process. at the same time, much english language instruction is still oriented towards classroom exchanges, with excessive emphasis on achieving native-like pronunciation (derwing & munro, 2015; levis, 2018; macías, 2010; tahereen, 2015). this focus is out of step with processes of internationalisation in higher education; these seek to integrate international, intercultural, or global dimensions (knight, 2003) with knowledge, attitudes, and values that help learners compete in global marketplaces (green & shoenberg, 2006). given the status of english as an international language (crystal, 2003; jenkins, 2015; jenkins et al., 2018), learners should focus more on achieving mutual comprehensibility with english speakers from different backgrounds than on achieving native-like pronunciation (bøhn & hansen, 2017; jenkins, 2015; tahereen, 2015; r. walker, 2010). accordingly, the present study examined how self and peer-assessment of student-generated podcasts influenced participants’ comprehensibility. in this light, the study was guided by two research questions: (rq1) does the use of formative assessment practices help students improve their comprehensibility when recording a podcast? (rq2) what is the effect of training students in the use of suprasegmental features seeking comprehensibility? theoretical framework selfand peer-assessment the shift from teacher-centred assessment to student self-assessment reports significant gains when the latter is used as a formative rather than a summative procedure and when students are guided properly (ross, 2006; sargeant, 2008). in this light, this study abides by the definition provided by andrade and du (2007), who explain self-assessment as a formative process through which “students collect information about their own performance and see how it matches their goals and/ or the criteria for their work” (p. 160). nevertheless, self-assessment must be attempted only upon prior and proper coaching where not only do students get acquainted with assessment instruments and criteria but also become involved in their construction along with training on their application within a safe learning environment. despite challenges with anxiety levels and concerns about the reliability of student feedback in peerassessment (topping, 1998; a. walker, 2001), it has been found that peer feedback has positive effects on the development of higher-order thinking, adoption of positive attitudes towards lifelong learning, and enhancement of social attitudes and trust in others (hamer et al., 2015; noonan & duncan, 2005). in this light, zimmerman (1990) claims that students can become more effective learners as they self-regulate motivational, metacognitive, and behavioural aspects of their learning. similarly, chong (2016) notes benefits for both givers and receivers of peer feedback, observing that “those who assess their peers would use their strengths and would feel more confident giving feedback. on the other hand, those who are assessed would think that the peer assessors are more knowledgeable than they are in the area” (p. 22). the current study considers this mutual benefit as a key asset in consistent formative assessment practices (boud & molloy, 2013; harlen, 69profile: issues teach. prof. dev., vol. 23 no. 2, jul-dec, 2021. issn 1657-0790 (printed) 2256-5760 (online). bogotá, colombia. pages 67-85 selfand peer-assessment of student-generated podcasts to improve comprehensibility... 2007) with evaluation instruments that are sufficiently flexible to adapt to students’ strengths (chong, 2016) and facilitate students’ continuous involvement in and reflection on the learning process. the present study examined the participants’ perceptions on selfand peerassessment practices as they engaged in the recording of podcasts to improve spoken comprehensibility (derwing & munro, 2015). comprehensibility the present study adopts derwing and munro’s (2015) conceptualization of comprehensibility: “the ease or difficulty a listener experiences in understanding an utterance” (p. 5). this conceptualization attains the target language (l2) practitioners’ purpose of helping learners achieve intelligible pronunciation which is paramount in their communicative success in day to day interaction with l2 speakers. specifically, our research argues that the comprehensibility of oral discourse should be evaluated in terms of how easily both native english speakers (ness) and non-native english speakers (nness) understand it. similarly, jenkins et al. (2018); jenkins (2015); levis (2018); macías (2010); and tahereen (2015) agree that students need not seek native-like pronunciation provided they are able to communicate with a wide range of english speakers. the present study argues that the enhancement of comprehensibility should be one of the priorities in l2 pronunciation lessons and that instruction on suprasegmentals (sentence stress intonation, thought groups) can be an effective way to achieve that objective. podcasts previous research (campbell, 2005; ng’ambi & lombe, 2012; popova & edirisingha, 2010) has shown that using student-generated podcasts (sgps) in combination with selfand peer-formative assessment can enhance engagement with learning materials and promote further learning beyond the classroom. these affordances are common in efl and english as a second language context, where sgps are frequently used to support the development of speaking and listening skills (farangi et al., 2015), foster group work (ng’ambi & lombe, 2012), and promote interactive student-student environments (rosell-aguilar, 2013). however, such studies also show there has been little work on incorporating sgps into formative assessment methodologies while training students to participate effectively in them. in the present study, podcasts were used as an instrument to help learners rehearse, practice, and evaluate their spoken production—practices necessary at early stages of efl language development. method context and participants this study was conducted at a private university in colombia. the participants consisted of 18 native spanish speakers (11 male, seven female), aged 17 to 23, with an a2–b1 cefr level (council of europe, 2011) previously determined by means of a cambridge placement-l2 english test. all were full-time students in different degree programmes taking a 64-hour englishlanguage course in which they met for four hours each week. however, analysis of diagnostic tests, classroom observations, and informal interviews with participants showed that, overall, their oral production was basically incomprehensible for their classmates and the course instructor mainly because their discourse presented salient issues in the formation of thought groups and in the use of sentence stress and intonation. this situation limited their chances for successful communication with native and non-native speakers in everyday informal exchanges. pedagogical intervention towards the enhancement of comprehensibility to support the participants’ development of comprehensibility while generating their podcasts, we taught universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras70 cadena-aguilar & álvarez-ayure using a blended-learning strategy over five months, both inside the classroom (20 hours) and in an online learning environment (20 hours). during that time, participants were guided to analyse models of podcasts about mishaps to: (a) become aware of their structure; (b) identify commonly used verbal tenses; (c) familiarize themselves with useful language; and (d) identify suprasegmental features. to help participants focus on the analysis and use of suprasegmental features, they were first made aware of the rhythmic differences between their native language (spanish) and the language of instruction (english). they realized spanish is a syllable-timed language, in which all syllables have equal length, while english is stress-timed, with equal intervals between stressed syllables (abercrombie, 1967; celce-murcia et al., 2010). accordingly, we used mark-up as in the following example to indicate differences between the rhythms of both languages. · · · · · · (1) the girl was looking for help · · · · · · · · · · · (2) la joven estaba buscando ayuda second, participants began work on suprasegmental features by identifying thought groups. participants used scripts from model podcasts about mishaps to identify groups of words that represented semantically and grammatically coherent units of meaning (celce-murcia et al., 2010). then, they listened to recordings to verify that the thought groups they had identified coincided with the pauses made by the speaker. afterwards, to train participants in the use of sentence stress, their attention was directed to content and function words in sentences or utterances to identify those with prominent stress. to help participants become familiar with intonation, they listened to model podcasts while marking the scripts with upward arrows for rises in intonation and downward arrows for falls. students’ selfand peer-assessment practices after their training in suprasegmental features, participants engaged in a formative assessment process (figure 1) consisting of self-and peer-assessment. initially, participants recorded a podcast about a mishap using the models previously presented. then, they became familiar with assessment criteria through a rubric (see appendix a) designed for evaluating comprehensibility and self-assessing their own podcasts. using the same rubric, they then peer-assessed their classmates’ podcasts. the rubrics provided space for students to write comments on the aspects that went well and on those that needed improvement. this cooperative learning and the assessment process were intended to accustom the participants to providing and receiving feedback from different sources whilst “developing their capacities in monitoring and evaluating their own learning” (boud & molloy, 2013, p. 704). the process finalized when participants re-recorded their podcasts, seeking improvements in thought groups, sentence stress, and intonation by using their self and peer-assessments. instruments and data collection data needed for rq1 were collected from student logs and a questionnaire (see appendix b). the student logs, used throughout the pedagogical intervention and applied after each self-and peer-assessment activity, guided the participants to provide insights into their experiences (cohen et al., 2007); their reflection was guided by a set of predesigned questions. the questionnaire, administered at the end of the intervention, focused on participants’ viewpoints in the role of formative assessment in developing their comprehensibility using a five-point likert scale. to measure the effects of formative assessment practices on the participants’ comprehensibility levels, all of 71profile: issues teach. prof. dev., vol. 23 no. 2, jul-dec, 2021. issn 1657-0790 (printed) 2256-5760 (online). bogotá, colombia. pages 67-85 selfand peer-assessment of student-generated podcasts to improve comprehensibility... them were required to record a podcast about a mishap both at the beginning and end of the study. afterwards, to address rq2, the podcasts were transcribed to analyse the participants’ discourse and observe any changes in their use of suprasegmental features. additionally, these podcasts were subjected to the evaluation of comprehensibility by external evaluators, and the results were stored in a matrix for subsequent analysis. evaluating comprehensibility four evaluators—the course tutor and three other evaluators external to the course—with varied educational backgrounds, representing each of kachru’s (1985) circles and with c2 (cefr) english proficiency levels, evaluated the levels of comprehensibility in the sgps. the course tutor was a local non-native english teacher (nnest1) from the expanding circle (i.e., countries where english has no historical or governmental role, but where it is used as a medium of international communication; kachru, 1985) with a postgraduate degree in education. the first external evaluator was a native english speaker (nes) from the inner circle (i.e., countries with traditional bases of english and its speakers; kachru, 1985). the second external evaluator was a non-native english-speaking teacher (nnest2) from the outer circle (i.e., places where non-native official varieties of english are spoken because of their colonial history; kachru, 1985) with a broad teaching background. the third external evaluator was a local expert (exp) and a language teacher trainer from the expanding circle. the evaluators evaluated both sgp1 and sgp2 to determine their levels of comprehensibility using the criteria shown in table 1. the analysis of the results from these evaluations allowed us to answer rq2. data analysis in the analysis of data related to rq1, the participants’ logs were transferred to maxqda (verbi software, 2018) for better visualization and management. the grounded theory approach (corbin & strauss, 2015) was used to classify sets of data into patterns, determine subcategories, and establish a main category. reliability of the coding was checked by a fellow qualitative researcher who also analysed blind-coded students’ excerpts. this blind-coder and the authors coincided on 80% of the coded data and then agreed on the best coding for the remaining 20% of the information. the quantitative data obtained from the questionnaire were used to corroborate the qualitative data from the students’ logs. we then triangulated these two sets of data. to this end, the participants’ views on formative assessment reflected on the questionnaire as well as their insights and reflection throughout the learning process exhibited in students’ logs were triangulated. concerning rq2, we first transcribed sgp1 and sgp2 to analyse participants’ uses of suprasegmentals. analysis of the transcripts was carried out using a paired t-test. figure 1. formative assessment process student-generated podcast 1 recording (month 1) training & familiarization with rubric (month 2) student-generated podcast 2 preparation recording (month 4) self-assessment (month 3) peer-assessment (month 3) comprehensibility rubric universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras72 cadena-aguilar & álvarez-ayure this involved the generation of a matrix in which we counted instances in which the participants actually used suprasegmental as was evident in both the sgp1 and sgp2. additionally, a pearson correlation analysis (sas 9.4) was performed on the three variables (thought groups, sentence stress, and intonation) in both podcasts. an analysis of variance (anova) stratified by students was used to measure the effects of suprasegmental use on the participants’ levels of comprehensibility. the evaluators’ measurements of comprehensibility in sgp1 were contrasted with those in sgp2. participants’ data and time were used as a control factor for stratification. therefore, the four evaluators evaluated each student’s oral performance to determine any differences in the levels of comprehensibility within sgp1 and sgp2. table 1. levels of comprehensibility comprehensibility level description 5. fully comprehensible fc+ fc– speech is effortless to understand pitch variation may make the speech sound lively or engaging 4. largely comprehensible lc+ lc– speech requires little effort to understand speech may be characterised by too many or too few variations in pitch, sounding disjointed or monotonous 3. reasonably comprehensible rc+ rc– speech requires some effort to understand errors somewhat interfere with the message (e.g., misplaced word stress, sound substitutions, not stressing important words in a sentence) 2. basically incomprehensible bi+ bi– speech is effortful to understand errors are detrimental to the message (e.g., misplaced word stress, sound substitutions, not stressing important words in a sentence) 1. largely incomprehensible li+ li– speech is painstakingly effortful to understand, or indecipherable errors are debilitating to the message (e.g., misplaced word stress, sound substitutions, not stressing important words in a sentence) 0. incomprehensible i speech cannot be rated speech is not assessable or is unresponsive to the task note. adapted from “developing a user-oriented second language comprehensibility scale for english medium universities” by t. isaacs, p. trofimovich, j. a. foote, 2017, language testing, 35(2) (https://doi.org/10.1177/0265532217703433). the original rating scale is publicly available on the iris digital repository (https://www.iris-database.org/iris/app/home/detail?id=york:932362). cc by-nc-sa 3.0. results does the use of formative assessment practices help students improve their comprehensibility when recording a podcast? analysis of the participants’ views regarding their participation in formative assessment practices, as expressed through the student logs and the questionnaire, indicated they believed their oral production was improved by exercising self-regulated behaviours represented in metacognitive and behavioural aspects and the fostering of motivational beliefs. the student logs provided the examples quoted in the present study and were reproduced as written by the participants. 73profile: issues teach. prof. dev., vol. 23 no. 2, jul-dec, 2021. issn 1657-0790 (printed) 2256-5760 (online). bogotá, colombia. pages 67-85 selfand peer-assessment of student-generated podcasts to improve comprehensibility... exhibition of self-regulated behaviours our analysis of the student logs and the questionnaire revealed metacognitive strategies and motivational beliefs that supported self-regulated behaviours (see table 2). table 2. participants’ self-regulated behaviours aspects traits exhibition of self-regulated behaviours metacognitive • monitoring learning • implementing speaking strategies • using assessment tools behavioural changing attitudes towards formative assessment practices fostering motivational beliefs • sense of achievement • self-confidence metacognitive aspects. one characteristic of selfregulated learners is their management of metacognitive strategies (zimmerman, 1990). metacognition is represented in what a student knows about themselves as a learner and has been conceptualised as a blend of knowledge and regulation (flavell, 1979). students’ knowledge about learning strategies and the ways they monitor, plan, and evaluate their learning (trujillobecerra et al., 2015) are also aspects of metacognition. the coding procedures revealed that participants managed their learning through three metacognitive strategies: monitoring learning, implementing speaking strategies, and using assessment methods. monitoring learning. analysis of data collected through student logs showed that participants recognized gradual benefits from practising self-assessment. in the following excerpt, the participant contrasts their difficulties when recording sgp1 and sgp2. in the first diagnostic i was terrible, i had a bad pronunciation, i didn’t put the stress of the words and i was very nervous. now, i am still nervous, but when i listen my new recording, i got happy. i really improved my work, that’s wonderful. [sic] (log, participant 7) implementation of speaking strategies. as the study progressed, participants showed initiative in using strategies that helped them produce more intelligible speech in the target language. participant 8 referred to how organizing their speech whilst reinforcing it at a segmental level (sounds) and at a suprasegmental level (prose division) led to oral improvement: “with the time i learnt to create stories with the correct organization, pronunciation, grouping and the final recordings were better than the first” [sic]. using assessment methods. on the questionnaire, all the participants rated the rubric used to selfand peer-assess their podcasts as useful (n = 5 extremely useful, n = 10 useful, n = 3 somewhat useful). in considering how the rubric helped determine the degree of task completion and the learning derived from selfand peer-evaluation, participant 17 noted: now i can decide when a work is well-done or need to be improved. it is thanks to the rubric. i also learn of my classmates as i learn of my own work, so i really found benefits with this experience. [sic] (log) however, using the rubric challenged some participants. for example, one claimed to have gained only partial understanding of the rubric criteria even by the end of the pedagogical intervention: “i think that the rubrics are still being difficult. but i interpret them better” [sic] (log, participant 18). behavioural aspects. zimmerman (1990) identifies the systematic use of behavioural strategies represented in “responsiveness to feedback regarding the effectiveness of their learning; and by their self-perceptions of academic accomplishment” (p. 14) as another trait common to self-regulated learners. similarly, analysis of universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras74 cadena-aguilar & álvarez-ayure the participants’ perceptions about their participation in formative assessment practices revealed attitudes that supported more active involvement in the pursuit of higher achievement. changing attitudes towards formative assessment practices. in this study, formative assessment consisted of selfand peer-assessment of sgp1 and sgp2. concerning self-assessment, participants’ abilities to self-assess evolved from limited or restricted participation to active involvement. at the beginning of the course, some participants were apprehensive about selfand peer-assessment and mainly awaited teacher assessment: “i guess that the person who have judgement to tell us our mistakes are the teachers” [sic] (log, participant 20). by the end of the course, however, participants’ perceptions of their role changed significantly: while i had been evaluating my work, i could see a lot of things that i was making in a wrong way and i correct them. now, my evaluation is more accurate because i know what things i have to take into count when i do it. [sic] (log, participant 18) likewise, participants showed no inhibition about self-assessment, acknowledging it as a previously unexplored learning strategy: “i don’t have any problem to reflect upon my podcast, finally we have to learn as best we can and also this is a good strategy” (log, participant 3). in terms of peer-assessment, at the beginning of the course, participants were reluctant to face their classmates’ judgement: “i do not like other people listen my audio because i consider that my pronunciation in different aspects is not appropriate” [sic] (log, participant 6). as the course progressed, however, participants’ views on peer assessment became more positive: “evaluate my partners is good because i find the correct way of pronunciation some words” [sic] (log, participant 15). students also seemed to notice differences in their peers’ production: “before i couldn’t understand some word that my partners said” [sic] (log, participant 4). such perceptions are paralleled by participants’ questionnaire responses concerning the usefulness of peer-feedback versus teacher feedback. we found that most participants (n = 16) felt peer-feedback was as useful as teacher feedback, while a few (n = 2) agreed that it was at least somehow useful. nevertheless, when asked about the usefulness of peer-feedback, only 20% believed it was very useful, while 50% thought that peer-feedback was somewhat useful, and the remaining 30% found it just useful. fostering motivational beliefs. participants mostly regarded their own active participation in formative assessment practices as a positive experience, since it helped them increase their sense of achievement and build their self-confidence. sense of achievement. when participants rated their comprehensibility at the end of the course, 90% (n = 16) considered themselves reasonably comprehensible while 10% (n = 2) perceived themselves as largely comprehensible. these perceptions are further paralleled in data from the student logs on how they perceived their progress: “the final version is too different to the original; it is more worked and absolutely better” (log, participant 10). this excerpt exemplifies how participants recognised progress between the first and final versions of their podcasts, perhaps motivated by their own involvement whilst refining the product. self-confidence. data from the student logs also suggest the participants’ enhanced self-confidence derived from a sense of achievement in a variety of domains. for example, one participant attributed their improved performance to lowered inhibitions and greater confidence as the course progressed: “but in the last day, my performance was better, i was more relax and for that reason i could express better my ideas” (log, participant 2). another participant who had exhibited considerable frustration at the beginning of the course reported enjoyment upon completing their round of podcasts. their self-confidence increased as they undertook formative assessment throughout the course: 75profile: issues teach. prof. dev., vol. 23 no. 2, jul-dec, 2021. issn 1657-0790 (printed) 2256-5760 (online). bogotá, colombia. pages 67-85 selfand peer-assessment of student-generated podcasts to improve comprehensibility... at the beginning of the course i really hated to listen my voice in english, i used to think that it sound terrible, but when the pass of the days i really started to enjoy listen my voice in english and know it feels so good. [sic] (log, participant 18) what is the effect of training students on the use of suprasegmental features seeking comprehensibility? rq2 was addressed by analysing transcripts of the sgp1 and sgp2, the subsequent matrix of participants’ attempts to use suprasegmental features, and the levels of comprehensibility reported by evaluators. student-generated podcasts 1 (sgp1) for sgp1 and sgp2, we analysed the transcripts to observe participants’ uses of suprasegmentals before and after training. the mark-up used to identify the use of each suprasegmental is as follows: thought groups = /, sentence stress = underline, rising intonation = ↑ and falling intonation = ↓. inaccurate pronunciation was signalled in italics. the following sample illustrates the basic use of suprasegmentals attempted by one of the participants in sgp1. (1) one day there was a group of friends/their name [sic] were mateo luis camila (2) and oscar/dead were so happy and united/so they decide to travel around the (3) mountain to find a new kind of mind/by connecting with the earth/but/they didn’t (4) have in mind which kind of problem they would have/so/they start to travel one (5) saturday at the morning/there was a sunny day/ but when they moved/they saw (6) differents scennaries [sic] with snow/and specially↑ a mountain of color red/one (7) day↓ when were when they were at this snow site↑/ one of the friends↑ mateo/get (8) sick/so/ they start to/search about the mountain a different kind of (9) plants/to/to/have or get better to mateo/so in one part of this place/they found a (10) mystery plant . . . (sgp1, participant 12) in this sample, the participant made early attempts to pause and form semantically and grammatically coherent segments of discourse or thought groups (lines 1–4). however, some other thought groups were wrongly assembled (lines 5–8). with regard to sentence stress, the discourse does not generally contain prominent words except for the case of the word “one” in line 9. the researchers agreed that this was the participant’s attempt to convey nuanced meaning by drawing the listeners’ attention to the very first part of the statement. the use of rising and falling intonation in sgp1 is restricted to parenthetical expressions (celce-murcia et al., 2010), as observed in lines 6 and 7, where the participant used adverbials (i.e., “specially,” “one day”) to utter non-finite asides, varying the intonation contour and, thereby, generating expectation of a main idea. student-generated podcasts 2 (sgp2) for sgp2, we used the same mark-up as for sgp1; however, the analysis of sgp2 sought to identify changes in participant use of suprasegmentals. accordingly, the following sample exemplifies a more sophisticated use of suprasegmentals by the same participant above. (1) once upon a time↓/a group of students from the xxxxxx university/ they lived in (2) colombia↓/ each one with the respective family↓/ they decided to take a trip to the (3) world’s high mountains↓/ they began their journey through the mountains↓/ and (4) every step that they walked/ they knew more and more new things↓/they had ever (5) seen in their life↓/ they saw new animals↑/ abandonate houses↑/ and universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras76 cadena-aguilar & álvarez-ayure (6) occasionally↓/people walking by the same way↓/ after walking↓/ the scouts (7) decided to take a shortcut↓/ to get faster/ where they began their journey through (8) the mountains/ but↓/ between many trees↑/ they began to walk/ and they saw/that (9) the way didn’t have output↓/ so they decided to return/and always came to the (10) same point↓/ all people felt concerning /because they didn’t find a solution to the (11) problem↓/ and the sky was already getting dark↓/ there was a time that one of the (12) people ↑/ who had found↑/wanted to help↓/ so he decided to call the police/ (13) finally↓/ they . . . (sgp2, participant 12) in contrast with participant 12’s performance on their sgp1, their sgp2 sample demonstrates greater ability to pause logically during the stream of speech, as shown in lines 2–8, where speech pauses marked with a slash (/) helped frame more coherent utterances. the participant’s use of sentence stress improved also, giving more prominence to certain content words (e.g., “more and more new things,” “shortcut,” “many trees”) and additional shades of meaning to their discourse (e.g., “the sky was already getting dark,” “they were very happy”). the sample also shows that, in contrast with sgp1, the participant used intonation for different purposes; for example, the phrases “once upon a time” (line 1), “occasionally” and “after walking” (line 6), and “finally” (line 13) were uttered with an initial high pitch followed by a terminal fall. in lines 8–9, there was fluctuation in intonation, changing from low, to intermediate, and then to high pitch before reaching the terminal fall. through the use of such pitch variations, the participant was able to generate a sense of surprise; the researchers were easily able to infer the message there was no way out (line 9), despite the participant’s wrong choice of the word “output.” in line 10, the participant’s stress on the words “all” and “didn’t” helped the researchers clarify quantity and react to an unexpected result; these words were also uttered with a higher intonation contour, probably with the intention of drawing the listener’s attention. matrix analysis the analysis of suprasegmentals in sgp1 and sgp2 using a paired t-test revealed a significant trend toward increased accuracy in the use of thought groups, sentence stress, and intonation (table 3). the pair t-test applied to sgps showed correlation within suprasegmentals before and after the sample population (n = 18) underwent training on the variables thought groups, sentence stress, and intonation to seek comprehensibility. these variables indicate correlation as the p-value in each of them is lower than 0.05 or 5%; thought groups (0.0004), sentence stress (0.0006), and intonation (0.0001). lastly, intonation revealed the most significant correlation of all, followed by sentence stress and thought groups. table 3. differences between scores before and after the pedagogical intervention for each variable per student variables n mean sd std. error mean t df p-value thought groups 18 0.2091 0.1993 0.0470 4.45 17 0.0004* sentence stress 18 0.3161 0.3205 0.0756 4.18 17 0.0006* intonation 18 0.2121 01539 0.0363 5.85 17 0.0001* *p < 0.05 ns: non-significant 77profile: issues teach. prof. dev., vol. 23 no. 2, jul-dec, 2021. issn 1657-0790 (printed) 2256-5760 (online). bogotá, colombia. pages 67-85 selfand peer-assessment of student-generated podcasts to improve comprehensibility... levels of comprehensibility in answering rq2, the medians of grades reported by each of the evaluators (figure 2) were also considered. figure 2. evaluators’ scores for comprehensibility levels in sgp1 and sgp2 nes sgp1 note. sgp = student-generated podcast, nes = native english speaker, nnest = non-native english speaking teacher, exp = expert nnest1 exp nnest2 0.0 0.5 1.0 1.5 2.0 2.5 3.0 3.5 4.0 sgp2 the evaluation of sgp1 and spg2 revealed differences in the levels of comprehensibility (isaacs et al., 2017) of the average across the 18 participants in the study, as reported by each of the four evaluators. nes, nest1, and exp rated sgp1 as reasonable comprehensible while nnest2 rated it as basically incomprehensible. nes rated sgp1 as reasonably comprehensible (rc+) with the highest score (3.5) in contrast with nnest 2 who rated it as basically incomprehensible (bi+) with the lowest score (2.5). nnest1 and exp coincided in rating sgp1 as reasonably comprehensible (rc–). in sgp2, nes, nnest1, and nnest2 reported a slight gain in comprehensibility (0.5) when contrasting scores with sgp1 while exp reported a more significant gain (1.0). nes and exp coincided in rating sgp1 as largely comprehensible (lc–). nnest2 reported that sgp2 barely achieved a reasonably comprehensible (rc–) level. none of the evaluators scored sgp2 as fully comprehensible (fc– or fc+). nes rated both podcasts with some level of comprehensibility, sgp1 as reasonably comprehensible (rc+) and sgp2 as largely comprehensible (lc–); he perceived a slight gain in comprehensibility between sgp1 and sgp2 (0.5). evaluations of sgps (figure 3), contrasting the means of evaluators’ grades in sgp1 (m = 2.83) and sgp2 (m = 3.54), reveal an overall gain in comprehensibility of 0.71 units. thus, sgp1s were rated as basically comprehensible, while sgp2s were evaluated as reasonably comprehensible. figure 3. comprehensibility gains sgp1 sgp2 0.0 0.5 1.0 1.5 2.0 2.5 3.0 3.5 4.0 discussion this study examined how the use of formative assessment practices with student-generated podcasts influenced participants’ spoken comprehensibility. for rq1, the results show that participants’ involvement in formative assessment practices, supported by selfregulated behaviours, contributed to their production of more comprehensible podcasts. we suspect a number of factors contributed to this result. first, participants had the goal of producing more comprehensible speech to meet their academic requirements despite their speaking flaws. thus, producing a series of podcasts gave them opportunities to monitor their performances and use their speaking strategies while simultaneously benefiting from giving and receiving feedback (chong, 2016). this aligns with black and wiliam’s (1998) findings that students tend to react positively to frequent formative assessment. in their view, the use of formative assessment helps students reflect honestly on what they have learnt and also on what they still need to learn to achieve a particular learning objective. second, engaging in selfand peer-assessment challenged students with an assessment task that, in their context, was more likely to be performed by teachers (yorke, 2003). although before universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras78 cadena-aguilar & álvarez-ayure the intervention, students seemed reluctant about self and peer-assessment and in favour of instructors being the only credible assessment entity, they clearly did not report any major differences in value between feedback received from peers and from the teacher. third, the internal and external reference points (peer-assessment and rubric) and the students’ central role in feedback processes (nicol & macfarlane-dick, 2006) helped them observe their own progress with a sense of achievement and self-confidence. these findings align with nicol and macfarlane-dick’s (2006) views on the influence of self-generated feedback on cognitive, motivational, and behavioural levels. in their view, comparison of the progress achieved (in this case, the two versions of the podcasts) against the goals desired (comprehensible speech) can encourage students to reinterpret tasks and adopt new tactics and strategies, a characteristic of higher-performing students who tend to use more language-learning strategies (griffiths, 2008). such changed learner awareness could, in turn, have positive effects on the cognitive and motivational domains, as well as self-regulation. similarly, kawai (2018) found that participants who undertake rehearsal, planning, and monitoring experienced reduced fear of failure and, thereby, more successful performances. for rq2, we observed improved use of suprasegmental features in sgp2, with intonation as the feature showing the greatest improvement, followed by thought groups and sentence stress. this result was not unexpected because, as participants attended training sessions on the use of suprasegmentals and rehearsed while recording a second version of their podcasts, it became easier for them to group their ideas and decide how pitch should fluctuate (celce-murcia et al., 2010) to achieve more clarity in their discourse. in this regard, the greater levels of confidence and audience awareness achieved during the training process and formative assessment experience may have encouraged the participants to make new attempts to pitch changes in parenthetical expressions. as a result, these provided evaluators with better hints as to the message being conveyed and enhanced participants’ overall comprehensibility in sgp2. this suggests that explicit instruction on suprasegmental features in efl could help learners achieve higher levels of comprehensibility (gordon & darcy, 2016). in contrast to the study of bøhn and hansen (2017), in which a group of teachers agreed on the importance of comprehensibility over native-like pronunciation but were unsure or not clear on the role of intonation when assessing pronunciation, the present study concludes that, after training on suprasegmentals, improvements on intonation were indeed the most significant aspects to help participants enhance their comprehensibility. the present study also reports on the participants’ changing levels of comprehensibility as observed by various qualified evaluators from different backgrounds. the results show that the evaluators perceived similar gains in comprehensibility, equal to 0.71 units with respect to the two evaluations performed (sgp1 and sgp2). unlike the discourse observed in sgp1, in which only occasional words or phrases could be easily comprehended by listeners, the discourse exhibited in sgp2 contained longer stretches of language in which no significant effort from the listener was required for comprehension (isaacs et al., 2017). accordingly, we conclude that the level of comprehensibility in this group of learners generally evolved from basically comprehensible (m = 2.83) to reasonably comprehensible (m = 3.54). nevertheless, although evaluators reported similar gains in comprehensibility, it is interesting that nes’ evaluation was more forgiving of grammar and wordlevel irregularities than the one provided by the other evaluators, who were more attentive to accuracy. this difference may have been influenced by their educational backgrounds: nest1, nest2, and exp possess university degrees in english language teaching, whereas the nes has a university degree in a different area and was in the process of learning spanish. these conditions probably led nes to focus more on communication, accepting the accuracy and pronunciation flaws often presented by 79profile: issues teach. prof. dev., vol. 23 no. 2, jul-dec, 2021. issn 1657-0790 (printed) 2256-5760 (online). bogotá, colombia. pages 67-85 selfand peer-assessment of student-generated podcasts to improve comprehensibility... users of english as an international language (jenkins, 2015; r. walker, 2010). in contrast, nest1 and nest2 tended to be more concerned about accuracy, perhaps obeying rooted older paradigms of english language teaching despite the trends of globalisation on contemporary english usage (crystal, 2003; tahereen, 2015). to conclude, because the participants in this study were experiencing difficulties when attempting a clear discourse in english, a pedagogical approach using explicit instruction, enhanced by student-driven assessment on the use of suprasegmentals—thought groups, sentence stress, and intonation—was incorporated into their regular efl course. a promising finding was that participants progressed from producing basically comprehensible to reasonably comprehensible discourse for an audience of both native and non-native speakers. moreover, the present study adds to the body of empirical evidence concerning student-content generation mediated by podcasts, demonstrating that students can go far beyond content generation when student-generated podcasts are intertwined within a selfand peer-formative assessment framework that allows them to rehearse, practice, and revise gaps in oral production. such practices can help learners not only achieve higher levels of comprehensibility but, more importantly, exert control over their own learning as they experience senses of achievement and self-confidence while both giving and receiving feedback. overall, selfand peer-formative assessment practices create a potential for change in classroom practices by getting students involved in their learning achievement and, consequently, empowering them to develop self-regulated behaviours that, in turn, contribute to more autonomous and effective lifelong learning for a globalised world. limitations and further research there were a number of limitations in the present study that should be acknowledged. due to time and availability constraints, some students decided not to take part in the study; having a larger group of participants could have illuminated more issues. also, an additional round of selfand peer-assessment of podcasts would have probably helped students to reflect more confidently on what they had already learnt, what they were in the process of learning, and what they had not yet learnt. finally, the short duration of the present study represents another limitation; a lengthier study could provide further opportunities to strengthen the training on suprasegmental features. further research can target the role of teachers in formative assessment practices, more specifically on the provision of models and demonstrations of selfand peer-assessment procedures that help students to enact these practices confidently. research on the role of external evaluators in determining the degree of comprehensibility of the students’ oral discourse can help instructors better understand how to tailor their lessons to help their students communicate effectively with a broader range of english speakers. references abercrombie, d. 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(2010). teaching the pronunciation of english as a lingua franca. oxford university press. yorke, m. (2003). formative assessment in higher education: moves towards theory and the enhancement of pedagogic practice. higher education, 45(4), 477–501. https://doi. org/10.1023/a:1023967026413 zimmerman, b. j. (1990). self-regulated learning and academic achievement: an overview. educational psychologist, 25(1), 3-17. https://doi.org/10.1207/s15326985ep2501_2 about the authors albedro cadena-aguilar is a lecturer and researcher in the languages department at the universidad de la sabana. he is also a coordinator and a teacher in the english proficiency programme for the upperintermediate level. his areas of research lie within self-directed learning, assessment, and teacher training. claudia patricia álvarez-ayure works as a lecturer in the on-campus and online master’s programmes for elt in the faculty of education at the universidad de la sabana. her research ranges over online learning environments, formative assessment, and teacher education. https://doi.org/10.1017/9781108241564 https://doi.org/10.1080/03075070600572090 https://doi.org/10.1080/03075070600572090 https://doi.org/10.7275/a166-vm41 https://doi.org/10.7275/a166-vm41 https://doi.org/10.1016/j.sbspro.2010.03.816 https://doi.org/10.7275/9wph-vv65 https://doi.org/10.1002/chp.148 https://doi.org/10.2307/1170598 https://doi.org/10.14483/udistrital.jour.calj.2015.2.a05 https://doi.org/10.14483/udistrital.jour.calj.2015.2.a05 https://doi.org/10.1016/j.edurev.2006.05.001 https://doi.org/10.2304/plat.2001.1.1.28 https://doi.org/10.2304/plat.2001.1.1.28 https://doi.org/10.1023/a:1023967026413 https://doi.org/10.1023/a:1023967026413 https://doi.org/10.1207/s15326985ep2501_2 universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras82 cadena-aguilar & álvarez-ayure a p p e n d ix a : r u b ri c fo r s e lf -a n d p e e ra ss e ss m e n t c a te g o ry m e e ts e x p e ct a ti o n s m e e ts m o st e x p e ct a ti o n s s h o w s co n si st e n t p ro g re ss n e e d s im p ro v e m e n t s h o w s m in im a l p ro g re ss u nd er st an di ng th e ta sk a nd or ga ni za tio n • n ar ra te s a pe rs on al ex pe ri en ce m is ha p us in g a lo gi ca l a nd c oh er en t se qu en ce : s et tin g, b eg in ni ng , cl im ax , a nd fi na liz es w ith a n am us in g co nc lu si on . • sh ow s hi gh k no w le dg e an d co m m an d of th e su bj ec t/ to pi c. • m ak es e xc el le nt u se o f co nn ec tiv e de vi ce s as w el l as d is co ur se a nd s eq ue nc e m ar ke rs . • m an ag es ti m e ad eq ua te ly (2 m in ut es ). so m e tr ai ts o f 5 an d so m e tr ai ts of 3 . • th e m is ha p st ru ct ur e do es n ot in cl ud e tw o or m or e of th e el em en ts re qu ir ed . • sh ow s so m e kn ow le dg e an d fa ir c om m an d of th e su bj ec t/ to pi c. • c on ne ct iv e de vi ce s an d or d is co ur se m ar ke rs ar e m is si ng a nd o r no t al w ay s us ed c or re ct ly . • t im e lim it is s lig ht ly ex ce ed ed o r is b ar el y re ac he d. so m e tr ai ts o f 3 an d so m e tr ai ts of 1. • th e m is ha p is m in im al ly de ve lo pe d. • sh ow s lim ite d or n o kn ow le dg e of th e su bj ec t/ to pi c. • c on ne ct iv e de vi ce s an d/ or di sc ou rs e m ar ke rs a re n ot us ed /a re in co rr ec tly u se d. • t im e is m an ag ed in ap pr op ri at el y. n ar ra tin g ac tio ns in a m is ha p • ex pr es se s id ea s w ith e as e in w el lco nt ro lle d se nt en ce st ru ct ur e. • u se s ap pr op ri at el y a ra ng e of na rr at iv e ve rb te ns es (s im pl e, co nt in uo us , a nd p er fe ct p as t te ns es ) so m e tr ai ts o f 5 an d so m e tr ai ts of 3 . • ex pr es se s id ea s an d re sp on se s w ith e no ug h co nt ro l o f g ra m m at ic al fo rm s an d pr op er se nt en ce s tr uc tu re . • u se s a li m ite d ra ng e of na rr at iv e ve rb te ns es w ith a fa ir d eg re e of a cc ur ac y. so m e tr ai ts o f 3 an d so m e tr ai ts of 1. • fr eq ue nt ly e xp re ss es id ea s an d re sp on se s w ith in co ns is te nt a nd fr ag m en te d se nt en ce st ru ct ur e. • sh ow s se ve ra l in co ns is te nc ie s w ith v er b te ns e us ag e. u si ng th e ri gh t w or ds • m ak es c on si st en t a nd ap pr op ri at e w or d ch oi ce a s re ga rd s th e to pi c an d co nt ex t. • u se s co rr ec t w or d in fle ct io ns to fo rm n ou ns , a dj ec tiv es , ad ve rb s. so m e tr ai ts o f 5 an d so m e tr ai ts of 3 . • m ak es fa ir w or d ch oi ce w ith o cc as io na l fl aw s or un ne ce ss ar y re pe tit io n. • m ak es fa ir a tt em pt s to w or d in fle ct io ns al th ou gh s om e ar e no t ap pr op ri at e. so m e tr ai ts o f 3 an d so m e tr ai ts of 1. • sh ow s lim ite d vo ca bu la ry th at is li tt le re la te d an d oft en re pe tit iv e. • la ck s aw ar en es s of w or d in fle ct io n. 83profile: issues teach. prof. dev., vol. 23 no. 2, jul-dec, 2021. issn 1657-0790 (printed) 2256-5760 (online). bogotá, colombia. pages 67-85 selfand peer-assessment of student-generated podcasts to improve comprehensibility... m ak in g m ys el f cl ea r • d el iv er s sp ee ch s m oo th ly a nd sh ow s lit tle h es ita tio n. • g ro up in g of w or ds h el ps to un de rs ta nd th e st or y be tt er . • u se s in to na tio n ap pr op ri at el y m os t o f t he ti m e. • pl ac es s en te nc e st re ss ac co rd in gl y. • a rt ic ul at es in di vi du al s ou nd s cl ea rl y m os t o f t he ti m e. so m e tr ai ts o f 5 an d so m e tr ai ts of 3 . • d el iv er s sp ee ch c le ar ly en ou gh d es pi te s om e he si ta tio n. • a tt em pt s to u se gr ou pi ng , b ut so m et im es in ap pr op ri at el y. • u se s in to na tio n w ith fa ir ap pr op ri ac y. • a tt em pt s to p la ce se nt en ce s tr es s al th ou gh in ap pr op ri at el y in s om e oc ca si on s. • m is pr on ou nc es s om e in di vi du al s ou nd s th at do n ot in te rf er e w ith co m pr eh en si on . so m e tr ai ts o f 3 an d so m e tr ai ts of 1. • d el iv er s sp ee ch w ith s om e di st or tio n an d fr eq ue nt he si ta tio n. • m ak es w ro ng g ro up in g an d/ or d is tr ac ts th e lis te ne r. • la ck s aw ar en es s of in to na tio n di ffe re nc es / us es w ro ng in to na tio n. • u se s st re ss in ac cu ra te ly . • m is pr on un ci at io n of in di vi du al s ou nd s oft en ca us es m is un de rs ta nd in g. c om m en ts g oo d th in gs th in gs to im pr ov e __ _ i c er tif y i h av e m ad e a th or ou gh a nd o bj ec tiv e an al ys is o f t he p od ca st s a ss ig ne d to m e. universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras84 cadena-aguilar & álvarez-ayure appendix b: students’ assessment questionnaire dear students, the responses to this survey will assist us in determining your perception of selfand peer-assessment practices seeking comprehensibility. select the option that best describes you. feedback instruments very useful useful somewhat useful not useful not very useful 1. the implementation of rubrics as an instrument to evaluate my peers’ work is... 2. the guideline questions in the student logs used to reflect on self and peer assessment were… level of success strongly agree agree somewhat agree disagree strongly disagree 3. i believe my own feedback on podcasts helped me exceed/achieve my speaking goals for this course. 4. i believe peer recording and listening to podcasts was a valuable strategy to become a more fluent speaker. personal views on peer feedback 5. i see peer feedback as an opportunity to reflect and learn from others. 6. to me, peer feedback is as useful as teacher’s feedback usefulness of feedback very useful useful somewhat useful not useful not very useful 7. in my opinion, the feedback i gave my peers on the stories told for the purposes of this course was... 8. the feedback my peers gave on the stories i told for the purposes of this course was... 85profile: issues teach. prof. dev., vol. 23 no. 2, jul-dec, 2021. issn 1657-0790 (printed) 2256-5760 (online). bogotá, colombia. pages 67-85 selfand peer-assessment of student-generated podcasts to improve comprehensibility... future benefits of feedback strongly agree agree somewhat agree disagree strongly disagree 9. in my view, students who take this course and record several versions of podcasts incorporating feedback from peers, would improve comprehensibility of storytelling podcasts. very likely likely somewhat likely unlikely very unlikely 10. how likely would you be to recommend peer feedback on podcasts as a strategy to improve comprehensibility in a second language? teachers’ assessment approaches regarding efl students’ speaking skill 161profile: issues teach. prof. dev., vol. 23 no. 1, jan-jun, 2021. issn 1657-0790 (printed) 2256-5760 (online). bogotá, colombia. pages 161-177 https://doi.org/10.15446/profile.v23n1.85964 teachers’ assessment approaches regarding efl students’ speaking skill enfoques de evaluación de los maestros con respecto a la habilidad oral de estudiantes de inglés como lengua extranjera jaime fernando duque-aguilar1 universidad de la amazonia, florencia, colombia this paper reports an exploratory and descriptive qualitative study on speaking assessment approaches in a teacher education program at a colombian university. the study aimed to explore how four in-service english language teachers approach the assessment of students’ speaking skill. the data were gathered through classroom observations, interviews, and documentary analysis. results revealed teachers’ preference for summative assessment practices to determine students’ progress regarding speaking. as a conclusion, teacher professional development in terms of language assessment may be seen as an alternative to develop significant assessment processes where students, teachers, and the institution can be benefited. keywords: english as a foreign language, speaking assessment, teacher education, university students este artículo informa acerca de un estudio cualitativo, exploratorio y descriptivo sobre enfoques evaluativos del habla en un programa de formación docente en una universidad colombiana. el estudio exploró cómo cuatro maestros de inglés abordan la evaluación de la habilidad del habla de los estudiantes. los datos se recopilaron mediante observaciones, entrevistas y análisis documental. los resultados revelaron la preferencia de los maestros por prácticas de evaluación sumativa para determinar el progreso de los estudiantes. como conclusión, el desarrollo profesional de los docentes en términos de evaluación del lenguaje puede ser una alternativa para desarrollar procesos de evaluación significativos donde los estudiantes, los docentes y la institución puedan beneficiarse. palabras clave: estudiantes universitarios, evaluación oral, formación docente, inglés como lengua extranjera jaime fernando duque-aguilar · https://orcid.org/0000-0003-2489-7679 · email: jai.duque@udla.edu.co this article is based on the master’s thesis completed by duque-aguilar (2019). how to cite this article (apa, 7th ed.): duque-aguilar, j. f. (2021). teachers’ assessment approaches regarding efl students’ speaking skill. profile: issues in teachers’ professional development, 23(1), 161–177. https://doi.org/10.15446/profile.v23n1.85964 this article was received on march 30, 2020 and accepted on october 10, 2020. this is an open access article distributed under the terms of the creative commons license attribution-noncommercial-noderivatives 4.0 international license. consultation is possible at https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/ https://doi.org/10.15446/profile.v23n1.85964 https://orcid.org/0000-0003-2489-7679 https://doi.org/10.15446/profile.v23n1.85964 https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/ universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras162 duque-aguilar introduction foreign language assessment has been a field of challenges and controversies along the decades for teachers and students. generally, foreign language classes are ruled by summative assessment practices aimed to measure learners’ mastery of discrete language points and linguistic accuracy, rather than assessing students’ communicative competence (shaaban, 2005). however, although summative speaking assessment continues provoking reluctant attitudes in students, teachers may hardly approach this process differently, which may eventually lead learners either to succeed, fail or give up on the learning process (green, 2013). therefore, a change of mind in this regard would be welcome in the teaching practice. in this line, green (2013) claims that when it comes to assessing students’ speaking skill through the implementation of a test, teachers may highlight its importance to improve teaching and learning processes rather than as a yardstick that determines control. in light of this problematic situation, i sought to characterize the teachers’ assessment approaches regarding the speaking skill in an english language teaching (elt) program. furthermore, the study by garcía and artunduaga (2016) conducted in this context, together with my teacher experience, motivated me to explore teachers’ speaking assessment approaches and analyze how these relate to their actual classroom speaking assessment practices. this exploratory and descriptive qualitative study focuses on characterizing teachers’ speaking assessment approaches and identifying the relationship between their stated assessment approaches and their actual classroom speaking assessment practices. i conducted the present qualitative study with four elt program inservice teachers from a public university in florencia (colombia). english as a foreign language (efl) teachers should bear in mind that some learners may encounter great difficulties when participating in activities and examinations that assess their oral production. these difficulties are mainly reflected in students’ negative results, due to lack of time in classroom speaking practices (richards & rodgers, 2001) or even emotional factors experienced before, while, and immediately after students are involved in oral production activities (cook, 2002). theoretical framework speaking is an essential means for our daily communication and a primary instrument of interaction among human beings in a certain community (coombe & hubley, 2011; lado, 1961; mauranen, 2006). bygate (2001) claims that speaking is reciprocal, it is to say that “interlocutors are normally all able to contribute simultaneously to the discourse, and to respond immediately to each other’s contributions” (p. 14). furthermore, in oral interaction people can participate in any spoken encounter by constructing meaning according to their intentions, their goals for communication, and the message the speaker wants to convey (green, 2013); thus, this process makes speaking more unpredictable than writing as ideas are not usually premeditated and flow according to the rhythm of the conversation (mauranen, 2006). in consequence, assessing the speaking skill is a complex process that requires special considerations for educators (burns, 2012). for instance, teachers need to identify a suitable instrument or strategy that allows them to properly assess learners either “live” or through recorded performances (ginther, 2012). moreover, speaking assessment processes have to be closely related to teachers’ instruction to help them make decisions considering students’ linguistic abilities and course goals in order to select appropriate speaking tasks (fulcher, 2018; ginther, 2012; shaaban, 2005). summative assessment of speaking skills some of the most common speaking assessment practices in foreign language learning are direct tests. they assess students’ speaking skill in actual perfor163profile: issues teach. prof. dev., vol. 23 no. 1, jan-jun, 2021. issn 1657-0790 (printed) 2256-5760 (online). bogotá, colombia. pages 161-177 teachers’ assessment approaches regarding efl students’ speaking skill mance, for example, interviews with semistructured or structured interaction (ginther, 2012). generally, testing practices are seen as summative assessment, which takes place at the end of a course cycle to determine and evaluate students’ knowledge and the skills developed throughout that particular period (lado, 1961). summative assessment practices need to be carefully considered in higher education contexts where grades are mainly influenced by test results. if these test outcomes do not fulfill the educational standards established in the institution, it may in some cases end in sanctions for schools, educators, and even learners (o’neil, 1992). tests may be designed to tackle particular needs regarding foreign language learning, such as spoken interaction, listening comprehension, and reading and writing. however, carter and nunan (2001) mention that regardless of the tests’ scope, and their focal point (which is mostly viewed as numerical), there are elements needed for their administration. these elements include (a) validity, as tests should measure accurately what they were meant to measure; (b) reliability, as tests results need to be consistent between the sample of test-takers; and (c) practicality, as tests should by design allow adequate time and availability of the resources for their implementation, and facility for scoring and evaluation procedures (brown, 2004; coombe & hubley, 2011; lado, 1961). formative assessment an assessment variation as to testing methods may be the implementation of a more humanistic approach that stresses alternative and formative assessment practices (ginther, 2012; irons, 2007; o’neil as cited in shaaban, 2005). according to huerta-macias (as cited in brown & hudson, 1998), alternative assessment involves journals, logs, videotapes and audiotapes, selfevaluation, and any other task that encourages learners to show their potential in performance-based tasks (shaaban, 2005). moreover, yorke (2003) states that formative assessment may be given in formal (highstake) or informal (low-stake) practices. the former are planned and consider students’ preparation and assessment criteria for their respective development. the latter comprise the development of any activity that takes place in class where students do not need to follow specific instructions for their execution. similarly, teachers in formative assessment go beyond giving a specific grade to the students (irons, 2007), that is, grades “help them identify areas that require further explanation, more practice, and methodological changes” (muñoz et al., 2012, p. 144), in order to overcome difficulties presented in students’ learning process. in consequence, to inform learners about their difficulties or strengths in certain topics, feedback is essential (green, 2013). this helps to improve and adapt teaching with the aim of meeting learning needs. providing feedback to learners has to be specific, focused on the task developed, and imparted while it is still relevant (black & william, 1998). in short, coombe and hubley (2011) claim that whatever the assessment approach is, assessment practices may display the aimed course objectives which support the learning and teaching of the target language. therefore, foreign language teachers should continuously analyze the effectiveness of their assessment procedures, especially in local contexts where tests are the only assessment method; thus, teachers become “gatekeepers for higher education opportunities for many high school or college graduates” (herrera & macías, 2015, p. 306). related studies this section briefly describes some recent studies on the effectiveness of teachers’ approaches and strategies to assess students’ speaking skills and how this assessment process shapes teachers’ instruction. the action research study conducted by de la barra et al. (2018) aimed to identify the effects of integrated speaking assessment based on the content and language integrated learning (clil) approach on 32 third-semester universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras164 duque-aguilar students enrolled in the translation and english teaching training program at universidad chileno-británica de cultura. data collection involved two rubrics used to assess students’ speaking skill and one questionnaire to gather information about students’ opinions concerning the assessment approach used. findings showed that students took responsibility for their improvement in both language and course content based on teachers’ feedback, which served as a guide to strengthen the speaking skill. this study highlights the importance for both teachers and students of familiarizing students with the speaking assessment instrument because this makes explicit beforehand the terms under which the students’ speaking performance will be judged by teachers. moreover, köroğlu (2019) implemented an action research study to explore the efficacy of the interventionist model of dynamic assessment (da) in speaking instruction and assessment on student-teachers. this research entailed 29 participants registered in the english language teaching department of a public university in turkey. the data gathering instruments were questionnaires and video recordings. in short, findings revealed that da was meaningful for participants as they demonstrated a significant improvement in their self-confidence making them able to express their ideas clearly and smoothly in front of the teacher and peers. consequently, the importance of this study underpins da not only as a speaking assessment method, but also as a permanent source of formative feedback for learners. this is due to teacher mediation and scaffolding strategies that took place during students’ speaking assessment. these two worked as a way of feedback for learners to explore their potential, identify their weaknesses, and take control of their own speaking improvement. additionally, namaziandost and ahmadi (2019) conducted an action research study to explore the incidences of holistic and analytic assessment approaches in 70 students’ speaking skill from an english language teaching program at islamic azad university of abadan in iran. the data gathering instruments were analytical and holistic rubrics, teacher’s notes, and audio recordings. the findings of this study revealed that the implementation of analytic and holistic approaches is suitable to get reliable scores from a student’s performance as these facilitate the evaluator to identify gaps in terms of fluency, intonation, grammar, or vocabulary. in essence, the relevance of this study lies in that it advocates the use of holistic and analytic approaches towards students’ speaking assessment. likewise, by implementing these two approaches, teachers are capable of working on the students’ weaknesses in relation to the mastery of the target language to empower their learning and the performance of their future speaking practices. finally, liubashenko and kavytska (2020) developed a case study to explore the contributions of assessing interactional competence in the development of the speaking skill among 44 students from taras shevchenko national university of kyiv, and 36 students from igor sikorsky kyiv polytechnic institute. the data gathering instruments entailed surveys, video recordings, and questionnaires. findings evidenced a significant improvement in students’ speaking skill thus promoting their interactional competence since they were capable of solving task-based problems presented by the instructors in their assessment. moreover, learners worked in groups and co-constructed their knowledge, supporting each other in terms of problem-solving. hence, it is important to acknowledge that instructors should take into account the development of students’ interactional competence since it enables them to convey their points of view under speaking assessments rather than focusing on well-structured language utterances. the related literature showed the benefits of strategies and approaches with different samples in terms of students’ speaking skill assessment. overall, the assessment alternatives explored in the aforementioned studies have a significant impact on participants’ speaking skill. furthermore, it could be argued that the success of the 165profile: issues teach. prof. dev., vol. 23 no. 1, jan-jun, 2021. issn 1657-0790 (printed) 2256-5760 (online). bogotá, colombia. pages 161-177 teachers’ assessment approaches regarding efl students’ speaking skill different assessment strategies described in the previous studies mainly depended on one factor: teachers being consistent with the assessment practices they adopted. thus, delving into a foreign language, teachers’ stated and actual speaking assessment approaches carries great importance because, ultimately, this may be an indicator of students’ speaking achievements. the problem english language teachers at universidad de la amazonia feel the need to reflect upon their own teaching approaches so they can carry out meaningful processes in terms of students’ learning and assessment. four efl teachers from this university participated in the study, and my intention was to raise awareness of their speaking assessment approaches as a first step towards improving assessment practices at the university as well as towards changing the oral classroom assessment perceptions of both teachers and students. the study was then informed by these two questions: 1. how do teachers approach the assessment of speaking in an english teacher education program? 2. what is the relationship between teachers’ stated assessment approaches to the speaking skill and actual classroom assessment speaking practices? method this is a qualitative, exploratory, and descriptive study (glass & hopkins, 1984; hernández-sampieri et al., 2007; kumar, 2011) as it explored and described the speaking assessment approaches of the four participating teachers. qualitative research works with the data of few participants given the depth of description, which mainly concerns their subjective opinions and experiences in their natural context (mackey & gass, 2005). descriptive studies describe a situation or a problem of a sample with few known aspects and which need to be explored (dörnyei, 2007; kumar, 2011). basically, descriptive studies also involve gathering data that describe participants’ events and thinking, which are organized, tabulated, and depicted to have a better understanding of the issue (glass & hopkins, 1984). on the other hand, given its specific nature, one disadvantage of descriptive studies is that they do not provide an answer about how and why an issue takes place in participants; therefore, rather than examining consequences or associations, i focused on describing the characteristics towards the issue that is being explored in the four participants (kumar, 2011). purposeful sampling method was implemented to select the participants for the present study. this has the aim of identifying information related to the issue of interest (patton, 2002) through the selection of a sample considered to be knowledgeable regarding the phenomenon under study (creswell & plano clark, 2011). bearing in mind the aforementioned, the four participants were individually contacted in their workplace and invited to participate in the study. they accepted the invitation on a voluntary basis and signed consent forms. context and participants the english teacher education program at universidad de la amazonia is the only undergraduate program in the amazon region that trains efl teachers. the program seeks for graduates to become qualified in the teaching and learning processes of the english language at regional and national levels. the participants of this qualitative study comprised four elt program professors whose teaching experience ranged from two to ten years. they were three men and one woman; one of them holds a master’s degree and the other three hold bachelor’s certificate degrees. all teachers, except for teacher 4, were in charge of one english course. due to ethical considerations, i have labelled participants with a number: teacher 1, teacher 2, teacher 3 and teacher 4. table 1 provides details about each participant. universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras166 duque-aguilar table 1. characteristics of the four english teachers of the study participant teaching experience (years) gender course teacher 1 10 male advanced english i teacher 2 9 female basic english i teacher 3 3 male intermediate english ii teacher 4 4 male basic english ii & advanced english ii data collection and analysis creswell (2002) expresses that gathering data involves identifying and selecting individuals for a study, obtaining their permission to study them, and collecting information by asking questions or observing their behaviors in their natural settings. bearing this in mind, the instruments i used for gathering data were one semistructured individual interview (harklau, 2011; kumar, 2011) with teachers about their speaking assessment approaches (see appendix); observations (creswell, 2002; kumar, 2011) of their actual speaking assessment practices; and documental analysis (kumar, 2011) of their rubrics used to conduct these speaking assessments. the use of a voice recorder and a video camera strategically placed allowed me to capture every piece of information from the individual teachers’ interviews and their speaking assessment practices respectively. for data analysis, i implemented a grounded approach (charmaz & belgrave, 2015). every piece of data gathered was examined to identify commonalities across teachers’ stated approaches to assessing students’ speaking skill, speaking assessment practices, and rubrics implemented. thus, data were labeled and organized according to the instrument used: ir = interview recordings, ovr = observation/video recordings, and rt = rubrics. for validity purposes, data were reduced and coded (male, 2016) through a process of triangulation (carter et al., 2014; patton, 1999; polit & beck, 2012). thus, the major categories that emerged from the data were: (a) the balance between the humanistic and the technical dimensions of speaking assessment and (b) depositioning speaking assessment as an essential element for enhancing the teaching and learning process. findings this section elaborates on the findings that emerged from the interpretation of the data. consequently, the first section includes findings related to the four teachers’ stated approaches and practices in speaking assessment. the second section reports findings that provide the relationships of stated teachers’ speaking assessment approaches and their actual speaking assessment practices. the balance between the humanistic and the technical dimensions of speaking assessment empowering the teaching and learning process through speaking assessment this subcategory highlights three views among the participants towards speaking assessment. the data come from sample interview answers that display participants’ commonalities. first, they commonly stated that speaking assessment is a permanent process developed along the course, where educators closely monitor students’ learning. 167profile: issues teach. prof. dev., vol. 23 no. 1, jan-jun, 2021. issn 1657-0790 (printed) 2256-5760 (online). bogotá, colombia. pages 161-177 teachers’ assessment approaches regarding efl students’ speaking skill speaking assessment...in fact is a process...it involves students learning and it is continuous. it has to be worked each week, each class. (teacher 1, ir) if we assess students’ speaking skill throughout the course, it enables us to identify the needs to tackle, what activities they prefer, and know how much the learner has improved. (teacher 4, ir) in this regard, the samples above confirm that speaking assessment and teaching are connected. as teacher 4 describes, speaking assessment allows educators to identify learning gaps and thus, implement activities to successfully contribute to students’ needs. similarly, these four teachers stated that feedback is an essential strategy to consolidate students’ learning as it recognizes the aspects they need to overcome for future performances. feedback in speaking assessment is always essential but no only provided as a score; let’s say...individual comments are meaningful especially to motivate students who are beginning to learn a foreign language, they require feedback to notice the mistakes, or the things they have to enhance through the time. (teacher 4, ir) feedback is important in assessment, but spontaneous or unplanned activities do not need feedback on students’ performance. when you know your students have prepared and have considered your instructions, feedback is essential then. (teacher 3, ir) samples show the importance of feedback in speaking assessment. teacher 4 states that this is not always presented in scores, but in the way of comments to encourage learners to improve their speaking performances. conversely, teacher 3 claims that providing feedback on students’ speaking skill depends on the complexity of the activity conducted, that is, as long as it requires students’ preparation, feedback is provided; otherwise, it is not. the second stated view relies on the implementation of alternative speaking assessment practices aimed to foster students’ participation and elicit authentic learners’ interaction in different contexts. we sometimes use our whatsapp group to talk about our day through voice notes. also, we gather once a month in a restaurant to practice speaking by exchanging some ideas or ordering food in english…waiters don’t understand most of the time, and i have to translate what they said. however, it helps me to notice how much my students have improved regarding their speaking skill and they don’t even realize i’m assessing them. (teacher 3, ir) class participation, video recordings, and role plays foster engagement among learners. they are useful for assessing speaking. however, speaking tests are always essential as they comprise an important part in measuring the learning process of all students. basically, tests show you what students have learnt, and it is a strategy all teachers implement in certain moments of the courses. (teacher 4, ir) these excerpts highlight the use of alternative practices to promote comfortable spaces of interaction among learners and freely exchange ideas without even noticing they are under assessment. notwithstanding, despite teacher 4 recognizing the importance of using alternative assessment, he also suggests that summative practices, such as direct tests, are mainly implemented by teachers as these provide an accurate view of the learners’ speaking improvement. third, although there are mainly four assessment criteria considered by participants for conducting their speaking assessment practices such as pronunciation (teachers 1, 2, and 4), accuracy (all), vocabulary (teachers 2 and 4), and intelligibility (teachers 2 and 3), a dichotomy is presented in regard to how these aspects are approached to assess students’ speaking skill. while teachers 2, 3, and 4 stated that they prioritize learners’ universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras168 duque-aguilar ability to exchange ideas in assessment practices, teacher 1 stresses the accurate use of language under the light of these assessment criteria. for assessing speaking you can pay attention to [students’] pronunciation, their vocabulary, and how ideas are structured, but you cannot ignore their level and the context they come from when you request them to use a foreign language…therefore…it is important to be flexible as long as they are able to communicate their ideas. (teacher 2, ir) the aim of communication must be to be understood... especially in our context where for no reasons sometimes we demand our students to adopt native idioms or expressions…therefore, i assess my students positively although they present mistakes in their speech because these mistakes do not hinder their understanding. (teacher 3, ir) students can answer questions and more, but it must be very complete, the intonation, the accent. i do not like flat accents or local accents, because if we are speaking a foreign language then the idea is that we use the accents of that language as such. so, i think that intonation, obviously pronunciation, and grammar are absolutely important. (teacher 1, ir) although teachers 2 and 3 did not use the specific name for intelligibility, these two participants approached the concept proposed by munro and derwing (2011) to support its importance in students’ speaking assessment. these two teachers’ answers evidence the idea that speaking assessment is more than just measuring learners’ speaking skill. however, teacher 1’s view restricts flexibility in his assessment practice as this underpins nativeness principles, which do not acknowledge the variety of students’ accents and language proficiency levels in the program. finally, participants stated that they incorporate assessment criteria through the implementation of rubrics to properly conduct and determine students’ performance in their speaking assessment practices. i try to design a rubric…so that they can see it earlier, and students know…let’s say…what i keep in mind to be assessed and thus report a fair score. (teacher 4, ir) rubrics are used to integrate the elements considered for their speaking assessment. this instrument allows me to inform learners what is their expected performance. (teacher 2, ir) these samples also indicate benefits of informing and providing students the rubrics with their respective evaluation criteria in advance, which allows them to recognize the elements that will be considered in their upcoming speaking performances. together, the sample data above suggest that these teachers’ stated assessment approaches towards students’ speaking skill were beneficial for strengthening the instruction and learning process. furthermore, these views positioned speaking assessment not only as a way to measure learners’ speaking skill but as a way to engage them through alternative assessment activities supported by feedback. relying on summative practices to measure students’ speaking skill this subcategory includes what teachers actually did for assessing learners’ speaking skill in their courses. the data come from assessment practices observations and analysis of the instruments implemented during these activities. in this regard, summative assessment (teachers 2, 3, and 4) and alternative assessment (teacher 1) are the practices implemented among participants. individual interviews, peer discussions, and peer interviews—which are also known as direct tests—were used for summative assessment; an individual recorded presentation was the alternative method (see table 2). 169profile: issues teach. prof. dev., vol. 23 no. 1, jan-jun, 2021. issn 1657-0790 (printed) 2256-5760 (online). bogotá, colombia. pages 161-177 teachers’ assessment approaches regarding efl students’ speaking skill table 2. actual classroom speaking assessment activities activity course setting teacher 1 individual recorded presentation advanced english i students’ preference teacher 2 peer interview basic english i elt program lab teacher 3 peer discussion intermediate english ii classroom teacher 4 individual interview basic english ii & advanced english ii elt program lab & teacher’s office before the execution of both summative and alternative assessment practices, these four teachers informed students about the guidelines, characteristics, and the criteria considered for their assessment. thus, learners had a clear understanding of what they had to do precisely on their examinations. during summative methods, teachers elicited students’ insights and interaction using transcribed questions and by exchanging information in moments in which they wanted to highlight ideas contributed. teacher 2: that’s wonderful…would you try it again? student: yes…of course!...yes. teacher 2: perfect…why?…did you like that?…was the experience nice? student: definitely, i felt i could make some friends easier than before. i felt secure. (ovr) the sample above stresses the importance for the teacher to be part of the assessment activity development and thus allow students to feel uninhibited and motivated to expand their oral contributions. conversely, teacher 1’s alternative method did not entail any kind of teacher’s interaction or exchanging of learners’ information given the nature of the activity. instead, this comprised a speech which sought to evidence learners’ use of language to strategically address a free topic that triggered reflection and critical thinking. additionally, the use of analytic rubrics was integrated to assess students’ speaking skill during these direct tests. rubrics were composed by following assessment criteria which were given in advance to learners, their descriptors, and a corresponding scoring scale (see table 3). table 3. actual assessment criteria implemented by participants teacher 2 teacher 3 teacher 4 content knowledge ✓ grammar accuracy ✓ ✓ word-sentence stress ✓ discourse management ✓ fluency ✓ ✓ vocabulary ✓ ✓ voice: clarity, intonation, fluency ✓ interactive communication ✓ pronunciation ✓ ✓ background knowledge and argument ✓ universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras170 duque-aguilar these assessment criteria looked particularly appropriate for the suitable integration of a larger scope of language features in students’ performance. in this sense, teachers considered greater elements that required students to demonstrate the corresponding mastering of the course content, and their communication skill. moreover, during the conduction of these summative methods, feedback was generally provided at the end. teachers relied on the notes taken regarding students’ utterances during the development of the examinations, and this sought to highlight strengths in students’ speaking performance: teacher 4: in general, you provided interesting ideas… you had a nice use of vocabulary…and…the mistakes observed did not hinder your performance. student: what kind of mistakes, teacher?...pronunciation? teacher 4: no…well…there were minor aspects regarding pronunciation to improve…but precisely…the use of demonstratives with the use of plural and singular nouns needs to be revised, ok? student: ok. (ovr) this sample shows that feedback was not only focused on pointing at the students’ weaknesses, but it also had formative purposes as it highlighted learners’ ability to convey meaning and provide ideas despite presenting some difficulties in their speech. similarly, feedback was only presented immediately during the development of teacher 3’s direct test when students repeatedly mispronounced a word or used an l1 word to support their answers: student:…and so the scientit may… teacher 3: scientist! student:...the scientist may! (ovr) student: how do you say adictos? teacher: you mean...addicted? student: yes...addicted, ok. (ovr) these samples also confirm that feedback was presented in teacher 3’s direct test as corrective to indicate the correct form of a word erroneously pronounced by the student. in the same way, teacher 3 was willing to assist students when they asked for help during their performances, mainly to answer queries about unknown words. it is important to mention that teacher 1 did not incorporate any criteria or instrument to assess his students’ speaking skill. he orally informed students that the aspects to be assessed in his alternative method were interestingly the ones he emphasized during his individual interview: pronunciation and accuracy. furthermore, teacher 1 only reported learners’ scores to inform the overall performance obtained in his speaking assessment practice. the last section of findings aims to answer research question 2: what is the relationship between teachers’ stated assessment approaches to speaking skill and actual classroom assessment speaking practices? the main relationships and discrepancies are directly reflected in three aspects: actual type of assessment, speaking assessment criteria, and feedback. depositioning speaking assessment as an essential element for enhancing the teaching and learning process prevailing measurement over engagement in students’ speaking assessment this subcategory shows teachers’ preference towards the use of summative practices over alternative practices for the development of students’ speaking assessments. in this regard, data revealed that summative assessment (direct tests) is the approach by default present in the lessons of teachers 2, 3, 4. consequently, the execution of these practices reinforced participants’ initial views about considering tests as an essential strategy to be used at certain moments in their courses, but at the same time, made them prone to forget that speaking assessment should be an in-depth process if it aims 171profile: issues teach. prof. dev., vol. 23 no. 1, jan-jun, 2021. issn 1657-0790 (printed) 2256-5760 (online). bogotá, colombia. pages 161-177 teachers’ assessment approaches regarding efl students’ speaking skill to contribute positively to the teaching and learning needs of students. on the other hand, teacher 1’s alternative assessment did emerge as an activity certainly aligned with a continuous speaking assessment process that benefited teaching and learning practices. this was because teacher 1’s practice did not resemble the regular teacherstudent interaction and transcended the limitations of the summative assessment methods implemented by the other three participants. seeking accuracy in speaking assessment the second subcategory in this section displays the integration of technical assessment criteria for conducting students’ speaking assessment. consequently, findings reflected the incorporation of criteria for summative assessment activities that requested learners to have an appropriate speaking performance. the above indicates that teachers 2, 3, and 4 not only expanded the range of linguistic elements for students’ language use, but also contradicted their initial stated views about implementing flexible approaches primarily aimed at assessing learners’ ability to deliver spoken messages rather than the accuracy of those messages. although the use of rubrics was extended for the conduction of summative assessment practices, teacher 1 was the only participant who did not use any instrument to assess his students despite having stated the importance of its use to conduct valid assessment practices. this participant orally informed his learners about the elements to consider for his activity, and valued their individual performances in relation to the appropriate integration of these criteria (pronunciationaccuracy) in their presentations. the need for in-depth teacher feedback on students’ speaking performance the last subcategory highlights the need to incorporate feedback to positively impact learning and assessment practices. in this sense, data indicated that although the four participants positioned feedback as one of the essential elements to strengthen assessment and learning practices, it was only evidenced in the direct tests implemented by teachers 2, 3, and 4. teacher 1 detached this process from his speaking assessment and did not provide his students with feedback that truly sought to contribute or generate a positive impact in relation to the students’ current and future speaking practices. while the rest of the participants relied on formative feedback to highlight learners’ strengths and to even make them aware of aspects for improving their speaking performance, teacher 1 simply gave learners individual scores as an overall description of their performance. in consequence, the data suggest that the relationship between teachers’ stated approaches towards the speaking skill and their actual practices did not truly reflect seeking an empowerment for the teaching and learning process. the conduction of direct tests with rigorous assessment criteria, and limiting feedback to summative functions and detaching the use of assessment instruments, are certainly practices that depositioned speaking assessment as a core element in the language classroom to close the gap in regard to learners’ needs and at the same time refine teaching. discussion i will start the discussion by first pointing out that resorting to the implementation of tests as the main way to assess students’ speaking may not be significant if teachers fail to acknowledge that, regardless of its summative principles, testing may serve learners for formative purposes (lópez & bernal; muñoz et al. as cited in giraldo, 2019). therefore, an alternative approach to speaking assessment practices should be implemented so that learners are encouraged to show their potential and confidence when delivering ideas, and not restrict their speaking assessment to summative practices (huerta-macias as cited in brown & hudson, 1998). universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras172 duque-aguilar in second place, the integration of feedback in speaking assessment should highlight learners’ speaking strengths rather than their weaknesses in order to foster their learning (hattie as cited in lynch & maclean, 2003). this is aligned with hatziapostolou and paraskakis’s (2010) findings where feedback had formative purposes to ensure that students are engaged in their assessment process, and thus promote their learning. similarly, in relation to the results presented in pineda (2014), the rubrics implemented by teachers 2, 3, and 4 allowed them to record evidence of their students’ speech and, at the same time, provided learners the opportunity to know what was expected of them during their performances because they were made aware of the assessment criteria beforehand (chowdhury, 2019; de la barra et al., 2018; green, 2013). on the other hand, the lack of the implementation of any instrument in teacher 1’s speaking assessment practice is a negative indicator for contributing to valid and meaningful assessment practices. as explained in jonsson and svingby (2007), the absence of an instrument for conducting speaking assessment practices limits teachers’ ability to provide learners fair and consistent judgments about their performance. similarly, teacher 1’s feedback in the way of reporting scores is aligned with hardavella et al.’s (2017) findings in that the learners may not identify the aspects to improve or strengthen assuming that their mistakes might be presented as usual, hence constructing a false perception of their performance improvement. third, the strategies observed in teacher 3’s assessment activity, such willingness to help, and corrective feedback relate to those presented in ebadi and asakereh (2017), namaziandost et al. (2017), and tamayo and cajas (2017) as these were positive for refining learners’ discourse and for helping students become aware of the elements to improve without affecting the flow of their ideas (gamlo, 2019). however, and similar to findings in hernández-méndez and reyes-cruz (2012), teacher 3 looked at corrective feedback only as a technique to improve accuracy in students’ speaking, particularly in pronunciation and morphosyntax. in consequence, hernández-méndez and reyes-cruz suggest that it is important to know more about corrective feedback effects and their role in interlanguage learners’ development if this is only limited to accurately improve learners’ pronunciation and ideas construction. in the assessment process conducted by participants in this study, other valuable assessment practices such as peer-feedback, peer-assessment, or self-assessment were not mentioned or evidenced in the observations and interviews. these feedback and assessment practices can be also effective and contribute positively to the learning process, since they empower the student by making them an active participant in their process, and are not limited to the common teacher-student interaction where only the former provides tools for learning. conclusions the present study explored four teachers’ stated speaking assessment approaches and the relationship these had to their actual speaking assessment practices. the stated approaches included the view of speaking assessment as a continuous process that improves teaching and learning through the development of activities with assessment criteria to engage and foster students’ communication. additionally, the four teachers stated that they implemented feedback as an essential practice to highlight learners’ speaking strengths and aspects to improve. conversely, their speaking assessment practices mainly entailed summative methods which integrated assessment criteria using rubrics to measure students’ speaking skill. surprisingly, during these summative practices feedback with formative purposes was evidenced to report and support students’ speaking performance after and during their tests. notwithstanding, in the only alternative assessment activity conducted to assess students’ speaking skill, the lack of an assessment instrument and the use of summative feedback to report 173profile: issues teach. prof. dev., vol. 23 no. 1, jan-jun, 2021. issn 1657-0790 (printed) 2256-5760 (online). bogotá, colombia. pages 161-177 teachers’ assessment approaches regarding efl students’ speaking skill students’ speaking performance were aspects against the formative purposes that underpinned the principles of this practice. in regard to the relationship among stated approaches and actual practices, findings yielded that the teachers’ humanistic understanding of students’ speaking assessment to benefit their learning and teaching process became highly limited by the integration of a summative approach. results indicated that teachers seemed not to be aware of the dimensions of their implemented speaking assessment approaches, as they limited their scope to summative principles. the implementation of summative methods, the integration of technical assessment criteria, the use of summative feedback, and the lack of an instrument to properly conduct these practices detached students’ speaking assessment as a beneficial factor for learning and teaching, and merely summarized their assessment under summative purposes. finally, how teachers actually conducted their speaking assessment practices advocates herrera and macías’s (2015) call to provide training spaces for educators in terms of language assessment literacy (lal) to support both their teaching and the learning process of students. in consequence, based on the findings in this study, lal training may be an opportunity for participants to raise awareness about how instruction and learning are interrelated to develop assessment practices detached from summative principles, consolidate and implement assessment instruments, support students’ guidance through feedback, and interpret assessment results to take decisions based on these (herrera & macías, 2015). limitations of the study one of the main limitations is regarding the exploration of the assessment principles (validity, reliability, practicality). there was not an examination of these elements in the speaking assessment activities and instruments implemented by each educator, and the criteria articulated for developing the respective students’ speaking assessments. this study focused on the description of the stated teachers’ assessment approaches, and the relationships between what they state they will do and what they actually conduct in practice. therefore, further research may delve into this aspect. further research this study focused on teachers’ assessment approaches regarding students’ speaking skill. it would be advisable for further research to explore 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(2003). formative assessment in higher education: moves towards theory and the enhancement of pedagogic practice. higher education, 45(4), 477–501. https://doi. org/10.1023/a:1023967026413 about the author jaime fernando duque-aguilar holds a ba in english language teaching from universidad de la amazonia, colombia, and an ma in english language teaching from universidad surcolombiana, colombia. his interests include language assessment, designing and creation of contextualized materials, and phonetics and phonology. https://doi.org/10.14483/22487085.11315 https://doi.org/10.14483/22487085.11315 https://doi.org/10.1023/a:1023967026413 https://doi.org/10.1023/a:1023967026413 177profile: issues teach. prof. dev., vol. 23 no. 1, jan-jun, 2021. issn 1657-0790 (printed) 2256-5760 (online). bogotá, colombia. pages 161-177 teachers’ assessment approaches regarding efl students’ speaking skill appendix: semistructured interview 1. how would you describe your students’ speaking assessment process? why? 2. how do you conduct your students’ speaking assessment practices in your respective course or courses? 3. what activities do you implement to conduct your students’ speaking assessment in your respective course or courses? why? 4. do you use any instrument or strategy to assess your students’ speaking skill? if so, which are these? 5. what aspects do you focus on when assessing your students’ speaking skill? if any, do you incorporate them in your speaking assessment instruments? 6. do you actually provide feedback during or after the development of these speaking assessment practices? if so, how do you do this? the relationship between demographic features and iranian efl teachers’ attachment style 45profile: issues teach. prof. dev., vol. 24 no. 1, jan-jun, 2022. issn 1657-0790 (printed) 2256-5760 (online). bogotá, colombia. pages 45-61 https://doi.org/10.15446/profile.v24n1.91098 the relationship between demographic features and iranian efl teachers’ attachment style la relación entre las características demográficas y el estilo de apego de profesores iraníes de inglés como lengua extranjera mansoor ganji1 farzane safarzade samani chabahar maritime university, chabahar, iran this study investigated iranian english as a foreign language teachers’ attachment styles and possible influential factors such as age, teaching experience, gender, and educational degree. the participants were 108 female and 79 male iranian english teachers, chosen through convenience and snowball sampling. using google forms, a researcher-made questionnaire was sent to the participants. there was a positive relationship between age and a secure style, and a negative relationship between fearful and preoccupied styles and age. further, there was a positive correlation between a secure style and teaching experience, and a negative relationship between fearful and preoccupied styles and teaching experience. male teachers were more secure, and educational degree made no difference in secure and preoccupied styles. keywords: attachment style, demographic features, english language teachers este estudio investigó los estilos de apego de profesores de inglés como lengua extranjera iraníes y los posibles factores influyentes como edad, experiencia docente, género y nivel educativo. los participantes fueron 108 mujeres y 79 hombres, seleccionados por el muestreo de conveniencia y en cadena. se elaboró un cuestionario en línea que se envió a los participantes. las respuestas revelaron que, en cuanto a la edad, existía una relación positiva con el estilo seguro y una negativa con los estilos temerosos y preocupados. además, en cuanto a la experiencia docente, hubo una correlación positiva con el estilo seguro y una negativa con los estilos de miedo y preocupación. los hombres indicaron sentirse más seguros y el nivel educativo no mostró diferencia para los estilos seguro y preocupado. palabras clave: características demográficas, estilo de apego, docentes de inglés 1 mansoor ganji  https://orcid.org/0000-0002-0352-8404 · email: ganji@cmu.ac.ir farzane safarzade samani  https://orcid.org/0000-0002-7384-5245 · email: samani@mail.cmu.ac.ir how to cite this article (apa, 7th ed.): ganji, m., & samani, f. s. (2022). the relationship between demographic features and iranian efl teachers’ attachment style. profile: issues in teachers’ professional development, 24(1), 45–61. https://doi.org/10.15446/profile.v24n1.91098 this article was received on october 21, 2020 and accepted on september 8, 2021. this is an open access article distributed under the terms of the creative commons license attribution-noncommercial-noderivatives 4.0 international license.consultation is possible at https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/ https://doi.org/10.15446/profile.v24n1.91098 https://orcid.org/0000-0002-0352-8404 mailto:ganji@cmu.ac.ir https://orcid.org/0000-0002-7384-5245 mailto:samani@mail.cmu.ac.ir https://doi.org/10.15446/profile.v24n1.91098 https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/ universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras46 ganji & samani introduction the first relationship that children establish is with parents and siblings in their homes. the children’s daily interactions with adults and peers propel their future learning and development (choi & dobbs-oates, 2016; krstić, 2015). after a child begins to dis-attach him or herself from the parents or other siblings, the other adults with whom a child builds meaningful relationships are often the teachers. the positive relationship between teacher and children provides them the emotional security needed for engaging in learning activities and improving their social, behavioral, and self-controlling competencies (barker, 2015; granot & mayseless, 2001). thus, the attachment styles of teachers and students deserve some attention, and it is a topic worth researching because the quality of early attachments determines the quality of adults’ academic, emotional, and social abilities (de castro & pereira, 2019). attachment style, as a kind of relationship initiated by a person with others, is usually formed during the first years of life, but it goes on throughout that person’s life (bowlby, 1973). it is not synonymous with dependency as it is the anchor from which children begin to explore their world (bergin & bergin, 2009). in a family setting, both mother and father are understood as “attachment figures”; and “although considerably more attention in the attachment field has been given to mothers, interest in fathers emerged very early in the development of attachment theory” (bretherton, 2010, p. 9). however, the main point is that, in school, this attachment figure is usually a teacher. children failing to bond with their attachment figures in their early life may later develop significant attachments with their teachers (bergin & bergin, 2009; de castro & pereira, 2019; polek, 2008). several factors are involved in the formation of attachment styles. hazan and shaver (1987) maintain that the perceptions about children’s relationships with parents, and their parents’ relationship with each other, are the best predictors of adult attachment styles. a few studies attribute children’s cognitive skills and school achievements to their secure attachment to parents (cassidy et al., 2013; de castro & pereira, 2019; granot & mayseless, 2001). gervai (2009) mentions that environmental and biological factors may exert influence on adulthood’s attachment style, and there is also the number of significant relationships, which increase as children mature (veríssimo et al., 2017). thus, the attachment style of adults is logically to a large extent a function of the amount of care and emotion they received during childhood (ackerman, n.d.; granot & mayseless, 2001). on the other hand, attachment styles may exert effects on students’ success and behaviors in educational contexts (de castro & pereira, 2019). attachment relationships with parents and teachers can impact both school adjustment and success (bergin & bergin, 2009; granot & mayseless, 2001; krstić, 2015). negative teacher–student attachment may cause withdrawing from school (de castro & pereira, 2019; o’connor & mccartney, 2007). furthermore, teachers usually depend on their students’ mental representations, which help them maintain their professional identity (riley, 2009). although there exists a large body of studies which investigate the factors influencing attachment styles of elementary and middle school children (bergin & bergin, 2009; cassidy et al., 2013; choi & dobbs-oates, 2016; granot & mayseless, 2001; ogelman & seven, 2012; o’connor & mccartney, 2007; stevenson-hinde & verschueren, 2002; verissimo et al., 2017) and adult students (bartholomew & horowitz, 1991; de castro & pereira, 2019; simpson & rholes, 2017; tagay & karataş, 2012), there exists little research focusing on teachers’ attachment style, english language teachers in particular, and how it may vary according to commonly known factors. considering all the above-mentioned factors, this study aims to focus on iranian english as a foreign language (efl) teachers’ attachment styles and examine the factors that influence these styles. the factors included in this study are age, teaching experience, gender (women vs. men), and educational degree (e.g., ba, ma, phd). the 47profile: issues teach. prof. dev., vol. 24 no. 1, jan-jun, 2022. issn 1657-0790 (printed) 2256-5760 (online). bogotá, colombia. pages 45-61 the relationship between demographic features and iranian efl teachers’ attachment style research question is as follows: is there any relationship between the attachment styles of iranian efl teachers and (a) their age, (b) their experience, (c) their gender, and (d) their educational degrees? literature review background the theory of attachment can be viewed from environmental and psychological perspectives. gervai (2009) believes that bowlby’s attachment theory could be truly environmental because it has explained individual differences by individual variation in relation to caregivers’ behavior. ainsworth et al. (1978) assert that optimal secure behavior could be related to sufficient sensitive responsiveness at home. gervai also mentions factors such as income and size of the family; age and education of parents; major nerve-wracking events like loss of a parent, birth of a sibling, severe illness, marital relationships; and relationship breakdowns seem to exert an effect on the standard of attachment relationships. several studies suggest the existence of a strong link between the adolescents’ attachment styles and psychological functioning (allen & land, 1999; gervai, 2009; simpson & rholes, 2017). an adolescent’s preoccupied style, for instance, has a close relationship with internalizing problems, in particular to the degree of self-reported depression (allen & land, 1999). “the attachment system . . . motivates vulnerable individuals to seek close physical and emotional proximity to their primary caregivers” (simpson & rholes, 2017, p. 19). nevertheless, attachment formation, either environmentally or psychologically, is considered a developmental process that goes far beyond infancy and early childhood (shumaker et al., 2009). categorization of attachment styles ainsworth and bell (1970) identify three major styles of attachment: secure, ambivalent-insecure, and avoidant-insecure. on the other hand, moss and stlaurent (2001) identify four types: secure, insecure/ avoidant, insecure/resistant, and insecure/disorganized or controlling. bartholomew and horowitz (1991) divide the attachment styles in adulthood to four categories: secure, fearful, dismissive, and preoccupied. these four attachment styles are defined according to a mixture of a person’s positive or negative self-image and the image provided by others (again positive or negative). since our study uses the four attachment styles developed by bartholomew and horowitz, we briefly define them next. secure: it is relatively easy for people belonging to this category to develop intimacy with or become emotionally close to others. relying on others and having others rely on them is also quite usual for them. they do not worry about being alone, do not have problems with needing others’ approval or not being accepted by others (bartholomew & horowitz, 1991; polek, 2008). they also act better to control their emotions and impulses (de castro & pereira, 2019). teachers with a secure attachment style use warm, positive words when talking to their students and do not resort to corporal punishment; they are less controlling and demonstrate more positive moods and enjoyment (bergin & bergin, 2009). dismissing: adults with the dismissing style tend to live comfortably without enjoying a close emotional relationship. being independent and self-sufficient is extremely important for them, and they have low anxiety but show high avoidance of relationships (polek, 2008; toffoli, 2015). teachers high in avoidance are less inclined to compromise in a conflict situation with students. they may avoid helping the students with difficult tasks (stevenson-hinde & verschueren, 2002), and they may not be available when the children are in emotional turmoil (bergin & bergin, 2009). preoccupied: preoccupied adults very much tend to be quite intimate with others but may think others are reluctant to get to them as much as they would like. these people need others’ opinions to feel worthy and feel uncomfortable in their life when having no universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras48 ganji & samani close relationships (polek, 2008; toffoli, 2015). a preoccupied person may show exaggerated feelings and is difficult to soothe (bergin & bergin, 2009). teachers with this attachment style may be demanding and preoccupied with their students (stevenson-hinde & verschueren, 2002). this group of people may also get mad at their students even while trying to please them and may seem dependent on their approval (bergin & bergin, 2009). fearful: individuals with this style are somewhat uncomfortable getting close to others, anxious within relationships, and highly need to be accepted in a relationship (bartholomew & horowitz, 1991; segal et al., 2009). these people question their self-worth and expect the other person to abandon them or harm them in some way. they find it very hard when they want to trust or depend on others (polek, 2008; simpson & rholes, 2017; toffoli, 2015). as teachers, fearful adults are apprehensive, and their stressful behaviors may even be worse when attending their classes. these teachers may try to reduce uncertainty and may seem confident, but still are sensitive and anxious (stevenson-hinde & verschueren, 2002). related studies the studies investigating the association between attachment styles and education are mostly conducted on children. bergin and bergin (2009) show how attachment to parents was connected to school achievements. these authors gave 12 suggestions on how to improve student–teacher relationships and how school bonding could be fostered. these suggestions include: increase sensitivity and warm, positive interactions with students . . . be well-prepared for class and hold high expectations for students . . . be responsive to students’ agendas by providing choice whenever possible . . . use induction rather than coercive discipline . . . help students be kind, helpful, and accepting of one another . . . implement interventions for specific, difficult relationships. (bergin & bergin, 2009, pp. 158–159). krstić (2015) focuses on the quality of attachment between students and teachers and teachers’ practices. results showed that attachment to teachers greatly influenced the students’ opinions about school and the learning process in both fourth and fifth grades, and it also affected their school marks. the quality of the support provided in teaching influenced students’ academic attachment, and teachers’ warm relationship with learners impacted their school marks and attitudes towards school and learning. riley (2009) worked on adults’ attachment perspective, the relationships between student and teacher, and classroom management difficulties. in his study, the attachment styles of 291 preservice and experienced elementary and secondary school teachers were investigated. the results showed that the experienced teachers were more secure than their inexperienced colleagues and the elementary teachers were more secure than their secondary colleagues. elementary teachers tended to be less anxious and less avoidant of close relationships. as their experience increased, this difference became more pronounced for both men and women; however, male teachers were highly sensitive in this regard. de castro and pereira (2019) worked on the early school dropout rate of portuguese students and introduced the alternative curricular course (acc), which enhances the basic learning skills. in their study, they compared students in acc to students in regular education (re), examining aspects such as students’ internal working models and student–teacher relationships, and the association of these factors with school performance. the results revealed that students of the acc enjoyed a less secure internal working model than students in re, and that the quality of the student–teacher relationship was correlated with a better educational attainment. although the previous studies mainly focus on children, they show evidence that teachers’ attitudes inside the classroom are an important factor in students’ academic success. thus, it is worth knowing and exploring teachers’ attachment styles as this may help identify their impact on students’ learning achievements. 49profile: issues teach. prof. dev., vol. 24 no. 1, jan-jun, 2022. issn 1657-0790 (printed) 2256-5760 (online). bogotá, colombia. pages 45-61 the relationship between demographic features and iranian efl teachers’ attachment style method design this study follows descriptive and correlational design. as no experimental or control group or treatment was defined, a quantitative and non-experimental approach was utilized. the researchers collected data by administering the attachment style questionnaire (see appendix) and entered the numerical data into spss (statistical package for the social sciences). the teachers’ attachment style was the target variable and teachers’ age, gender, teaching experience, and educational degree were studied for their possible correlation with the attachment style. the strength of association between attachment styles and age, and attachment style and experience (two continuous variables) were measured by a correlation test, while the difference between attachment styles of different genders and educational degrees (one continuous and one nominal variable) was determined via comparison. participants data were obtained from 187 iranian english teachers working in different cities of iran and whose teaching experience ranged from 1 to 25 years. table 1 shows the demographic information of the participants. table 1. demographic information of the participants educational degree n men women diploma holders/ba students 5 2 3 ba holders 56 25 31 ma holders 95 42 53 phd students 7 4 3 phd holders 24 6 18 total 187 79 108 the participants worked as teachers in private language institutes (n = 98) and in state high schools (n = 62) or as lecturers in state universities (n = 19). a small proportion (n = 8) chose not to report their place of work as this was optional. the participants’ first language was persian, and their ages ranged from 20 to 59 years. data collection instrument a researcher-made and validated questionnaire was used to find out about the teachers’ attachment style. the researchers developed the questionnaire based on two different questionnaires by van oudenhoven et al. (2003) and poole heller (2014). the researchers added 20 items of poole heller and 22 items of van oudenhoven et al., and then narrowed them down, deleting some items which were vague, cutting long statements into half to make them simpler and more understandable, and rephrasing three to four items in each category. this was done until the items related well to the goals of the research. the final version of the questionnaire was sent for two experts in the field to check for the validity of the items. this piloting resulted in the rephrasing of several items, and the addition of five items since they were double-barreled in the previous version. the final version of the questionnaire consisted of 45 short statements, out of which nine items related to the secure attachment style, 10 items to the fearful attachment style, 14 items to the preoccupied attachment style, and 12 items to the dismissing attachment style. the statements addressed how the participants felt in emotionally intimate relationships. moreover, the participants were asked to answer questions about their age, gender, teaching experience, and educational degree. the scale ranged from one (strongly disagree) to five (strongly agree, see appendix). data collection and analysis procedure the questionnaire was prepared using google forms, and its link was sent to the participants using whatsapp, telegram, and email. the participants were identified through convenience and snowball sampling techniques. the participants answered the questionnaire statements anonymously, so they felt at ease in answering them. as riley (2009) suggested, universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras50 ganji & samani to increase the chances of valid responses to the instrument, it was determined that participants would be more likely to see the benefit of honest responses to the questionnaire, which contains a number of challenging statements, only after they had gained some knowledge of attachment theory and its connection to their professional lives. (p. 628) in light of the foregoing, the attachment style was defined, its different types were explained, and the respondents were promised that the results of the research would be sent to them later. consequently, the researchers provided their emails at the end of the questionnaire so that the respondents could contact them. some of them, whom the researchers could visit, signed a consent form, but for those who were living in other cities, it was explained at the beginning of the questionnaire. the data were analyzed using the spss statistical package (version 23). statements are scaled from 1 (strongly disagree) to 5 (strongly agree), educational degree from 1 (diploma holders/ba students) to 5 (phd) as well as gender as 1 (men) and 2 (women). for age and experience, no scales were defined. then statements under each category of four attachment styles were computed and merged; and new variables (e.g., secure, fearful, preoccupied, and dismissing) were created. the final result was the mean score of each attachment style for each participant. the data, then, were checked for normality assumption. the test showed that, except for preoccupied style, the rest of the scores and means were not normally distributed. however, researchers decided to run a non-parametric test for all variables since there was not any significant difference between the final results. for answering the first and second research questions—the relationship between attachment styles and age and teaching experience—spearman’s rank–order correlation was run. to answer the third research question which compares men’s and women’s attachment styles, the mann-whitney u test was run. finally, for comparing participants’ attachment styles regarding their educational degree, the kruskal wallis test was administered. results the data were initially checked for normality assumption, and table 2 presents the results from the kolmogorov-smirnov test and the shapiro-wilk test. as the kolmogorov-smirnov test is more appropriate for large sample sizes (< 50 samples), this test was used as a numerical means of assessing normality. table 2 shows that the significant values of the kolmogorov-smirnov test for “secure,” “fearful,” and “dismissing” attachment styles were .000, .014, and .000, respectively. thus, they deviated from a normal distribution and, non-parametric tests were used. regarding “preoccupied” style, the significant value of .200, which was greater than 0.05, showed that the data were normally distributed and a parametric test could be used. however, since there existed no difference between parametric and non-parametric results for this variable, the researchers preferred to use a nonparametric test. table 2. tests of normality kolmogorov-smirnov a shapiro-wilk statistic df sig. statistic df sig. secure .094 187 .000 .984 187 .036 fearful .074 187 .014 .981 187 .012 preoccupied .052 187 .200* .990 187 .214 dismissing .095 187 .000 .973 187 .001 a lilliefors significance correction. *this is a lower bound of the true significance. 51profile: issues teach. prof. dev., vol. 24 no. 1, jan-jun, 2022. issn 1657-0790 (printed) 2256-5760 (online). bogotá, colombia. pages 45-61 the relationship between demographic features and iranian efl teachers’ attachment style table 3. descriptive statistics of attachment styles f % valid percent cumulative percent valid secure 103 43.1 55.1 55.1 fearful 13 5.4 7.0 62.0 preoccupied 28 11.7 15.0 77.0 dismissing 43 18.0 23.0 100.0 total 187 78.2 100.0 missing system 52 21.8 total 239 100.0 table 3 presents the descriptive statistics of four attachment styles. among 187 participants, 103 chose secure style (43.1%), 13 fearful (5.4%), 28 preoccupied (11.7%), and 43 were of dismissing style (18%). table 4 shows the descriptive statistics of age and experience and four attachment styles. age groups were divided into eight groups from 20 to 59 years old. except for the 25–29 and the 45–49 age groups, the percentage of secure style among participants increased as the age increased, whereas the percentage of fearful and preoccupied styles decreased by increasing age. the most fearful (14.8%) and the most preoccupied (22.2%) participants were among the 20–24 age group. years of experience were divided into five groups ranging from 1–25 years. the results showed that as the teaching experience increased, the percentage of the secure styles increased too. participants who had 16 to 25 years of experience (77% to 80%) were the most secure. whereas teachers with 1 to 5 years of experience were among the most fearful (8.7%) and the most preoccupied ones (19.7%), and teachers with 6 to 10 years were the most dismissing (27.5%). table 4. descriptive statistics of age and experience age range 20–24 25–29 30–34 35–39 40–44 45–49 50–54 55–59 f % f % f % f % f % f % f % f % secure 15 55.5 19 35.1 32 58.1 23 71.8 11 84.6 2 50 1 100 0 0 fearful 4 14.8 4 7.4 2 3.6 2 6.2 1 7.6 0 0 0 0 0 0 preoccupied 6 22.2 10 18.5 8 14.5 4 12.5 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 dismissing 2 7.4 21 38.8 13 23.6 3 9.3 1 7.6 2 50 0 0 1 100 total 27 100 54 100 55 100 32 100 13 100 4 100 1 100 1 100 years of experience 1–5 6–10 11–15 16–20 21–25 f % f % f % f % f % secure 43 47.2 34 58.6 15 62.5 7 77.7 4 80 fearful 8 8.7 3 5.1 2 8.3 0 0 0 0 preoccupied 18 19.7 5 8.6 4 16.6 1 11.1 0 0 dismissing 22 24.1 16 27.5 3 12.5 1 11.1 1 20 total 91 100 58 100 24 100 9 100 5 100 universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras52 ganji & samani table 5. descriptive statistics of gender and educational degrees gender educational degrees men women diploma holders/ba students ba ma phd student phd f % f % f % f % f % f % f % secure 52 65.8 51 47.2 2 40 30 53.5 50 52.6 5 71.4 16 66.6 fearful 3 3.7 10 9.2 0 0 5 8.9 7 7.3 0 0 1 4.1 preoccupied 9 11.3 19 17.5 2 40 9 16 14 14.7 1 14.2 2 8.3 dismissing 15 18.9 28 25.9 1 20 12 21.4 24 25.2 1 14.2 5 20.8 total 79 100 108 100 5 100 56 100 95 100 7 100 24 100 table 5 presents the descriptive statistic for gender and degrees with regard to the four attachment styles. out of a total of 187 participants, 79 were men and 108 were women. among the men, 52 participants preferred a secure style (65.8%), 15 dismissing, nine preoccupied, and three fearful. among the women, 51 participants had a secure style (47.2%), 28 dismissing, 19 preoccupied, and 10 fearful. thus, men showed more security than women. regarding educational degrees, the more secure participants were among phd students (71.4%) and phd holders (66.6%). ba holders showed secure slightly more than ma holders (53.5%). the ba group also showed the most fearful one (8.9%) in comparison to their ma counterparts. the ba group turned out to be more preoccupied than the ma group and phd group, while the ma group was the most dismissing one. for finding out the relationship between attachment styles and age, a correlation test was run. the results are presented in table 6. a spearman’s rank–order correlation showed that there was a strong negative correlation between fearful style and age (r s (8) = -.160, p = .029); and preoccupied style and age (r s (8) = -.172, p = .018). that is, as age increases, people become less fearful and less preoccupied. there was also a negative relationship between dismissing style and age, which was not statistically significant (r s (8) = -.078, p = .286). the results showed no significant correlation between secure style and age (r s (8) = .023, p = .755). table 6. correlation between attachment styles and age (n = 187) age spearman’s rho secure correlation coefficient .023 sig. (2-tailed) .755 fearful correlation coefficient -.160* sig. (2-tailed) .029 preoccupied correlation coefficient -.172* sig. (2-tailed) .018 dismissing correlation coefficient -.078 sig. (2-tailed) .286 *correlation is significant at the 0.05 level (2-tailed). 53profile: issues teach. prof. dev., vol. 24 no. 1, jan-jun, 2022. issn 1657-0790 (printed) 2256-5760 (online). bogotá, colombia. pages 45-61 the relationship between demographic features and iranian efl teachers’ attachment style table 7. correlation between attachment styles and experience (n = 187) experience spearman’s rho secure correlation coefficient .074 sig. (2-tailed) .311 fearful correlation coefficient -.133 sig. (2-tailed) .069 preoccupied correlation coefficient -.107 sig. (2-tailed) .146 dismissing correlation coefficient .015 sig. (2-tailed) .842 *correlation is significant at the 0.05 level (2-tailed). a spearman’s rank–order correlation was run to determine the relationship between the four attachment styles and experience (see table 7). as the results show, there was a negative correlation between fearful style and experience (r s (8) = -.133, p = .069), and preoccupied style and experience (r s (8) = -.107, p = .146). there was a positive correlation between secure style and experience which was not statistically significant (r s (8) = .074, p = .311). there was not any significant relationship between dismissing style and experience (r s (8) = .015, p = .842). then, the differences between men and women were investigated. as the researchers aimed to compare differences between these two groups concerning attachment styles, which were continuous but not normally distributed, they used the mann-whitney u test. table 8 provides the test statistic, u statistic, and the asymptotic significance (2-tailed) p-value. it can be concluded that men and women were significantly different in secure style (u = 4201.500, p = .859) with men showing more secure than women. they possessed the least difference in fearfulness (u = 3471, p = .029) with men again showing they are less fearful teachers than women. finally, the study looked for the differences between educational degrees (i.e., diploma holders/ba students, ba, ma, phd student, and phd) and attachment styles, thus, a non-parametric (i.e., kruskal-wallis) test was run. table 9 shows that these five groups of educational degrees showed significant difference in preoccupation, χ2 (2) = 9.530, p = 0.049 (diploma holders/ba students were more preoccupied than the others) and not any statistically significant difference in the secure (χ2 (2) = 8.125, p = 0.087), fearful (χ2 (2) = 5.977, p = 0.201), and dismissing styles (χ2 (2) = 7.411, p = 0.116). table 8. mann-whitney test comparing men and women styles secure fearful preoccupied dismissing mann-whitney u 4201.500 3471.000 3722.000 3601.500 wilcoxon w 7361.500 6631.000 6882.000 6761.500 z -.177 -2.178 -1.489 -1.821 asymp. sig. (2-tailed) .859 .029 .136 .069 note. grouping variable: gender. universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras54 ganji & samani table 9. kruskal wallis test comparing educational degrees secure fearful preoccupied dismissing chi-square 8.125 5.977 9.530 7.411 df 4 4 4 4 asymp. sig. .087 .201 .049 .116 note. grouping variable: educational degree. discussion the present study addressed whether attachment styles of iranian english teachers were associated with their age, gender, teaching experience, and educational degree. in total, among the 187 participants, 103 selected secure style, 13 fearful, 28 preoccupied, and 43 dismissing style. it is worth mentioning that although in this study individuals were conceptualized and placed into one category and a dominant style was considered as their attachment style, segal et al. (2009) mention that attachment style cannot be viewed as a categorical construct, and thus must be measured dimensionally. the following paragraphs discuss each research question by investigating attachment styles from the dimensional point of view. concerning the correlation between the four styles and age, it was revealed that except for the 25–29 and the 45–49 age groups, there was a positive relationship between age and secure style and a strong negative relationship between fearful and preoccupied styles and age. investigating responses of 27 teachers who were in their early twenties revealed that they had mainly a secure style. after that, preoccupied and fearful styles were dominant. in addition, the results of 55 teachers in their early thirties indicated that the dominant styles were secure (58.1%) and dismissing (23.6%) styles. as feeling independent and self-sufficient, not depending on others, and focusing on their own needs are the salient characteristics of dismissing individuals, the incidence of this style at this age group or older ones is predictable. an individual with the dismissing style is considered to have high self-esteem (akbağ & i̇mamoğlu, 2010). this may be another reason why older turkish teachers showed a dismissing style. similarly, segal et al. (2009) also found a lower number of persons with preoccupied and ambivalent (fearful) attachment styles and came up with a higher number of dismissing attachment styles in older adults in comparison to younger adults. they believed that “it is likely the differences found were a consequence of the unique social, cultural, and historical forces that have affected differently the two groups” (p. 128). to be more exact, younger adults are more likely to have higher rates of mental discomfort than older adults, or older adults may be less willing to report uneasy feelings than those in the younger group. regarding the relationship between attachment styles and experience, there was a positive correlation between the secure style and the experience of teachers. riley (2009) reported that teachers with more than five years of experience were significantly more secure than novice teachers. for teachers, riley (2012) considered experience a more effective predictor of attachment style than age. furthermore, he believed that “the internal working model (iwm), a largely unconscious attachment mechanism, changes in teachers as a result of their classroom experience” (p. 12). the results of this study also showed that there was a negative relationship between fearful and preoccupied styles on the one hand and teaching experience. these results are in line with de castro and pereira’s (2019) study, conducted in portugal. they asserted that insecure attachment is due to the lack of experience in the executive functions such as difficulty in organizing, monitoring, evaluating, and planning actions, as well as being weak in abstract thinking, initiation, and working memory. experienced teachers show confidence and acceptance to their students which promote positive relationships and learning experiences. the results also showed a statistically significant difference between men and women in secure style. men were more secure than women, but women 55profile: issues teach. prof. dev., vol. 24 no. 1, jan-jun, 2022. issn 1657-0790 (printed) 2256-5760 (online). bogotá, colombia. pages 45-61 the relationship between demographic features and iranian efl teachers’ attachment style proved more preoccupied and more dismissive than men. these results were supported by tagay and karataş’s (2012) study where turkish women were more fearful and dismissing than men. they concluded that turkish men were usually in charge of the family and were expected to meet the needs of other family members more than their own needs; therefore, they were expected to experience a higher preoccupied attachment level covering the idea that others are more important. according to tagay and karataş, turkish women are usually afraid of and anxious about their close relationships in their lives, so their generally submissive character and obedient behaviors are supported. in another study conducted in turkey, women showed to be more affected by their mistakes and more interpersonally sensitive than men, which may make them more fearful and preoccupied (akbağ & i̇mamoğlu, 2010). in riley’s (2009) study, young australian female teachers showed a less secure style compared to young men teachers. he believed that women usually gain more benefits from their work experience than their men counterparts. in general, researchers have proposed that gender differences in an attachment style may be predictable. studies with czech and slovak women showed that they develop anxiety-related attachments, while men show avoidance-related attachments (rozvadský-gugová & heretik, 2011; scharfe, 2017). however, del giudice (2011) named geographic region and effect of age as the variables that may confound these results. finally, regarding the differences between individuals in relation to different educational degrees, there was not any statistically significant difference in educational degrees between the secure, fearful, and dismissing styles, but there was a significant difference in the preoccupied style, where diploma holders/ba students showed to be more preoccupied than others. teachers who were phd students and teachers holding phd degrees were more secure than other groups. teachers holding ba degrees were either the fearful or preoccupied ones, while teachers with ma degrees were the most dismissing teachers. in choi and dobbs-oates’s (2016) research, teachers holding a higher-education degree showed lower teacher–student closeness (dismissing style) compared to other teachers. teachers having higher education reported an equitable level of close relationship with boys and girls, whereas younger teachers whose degree was lower than ma or phd displayed a higher closeness with girls than with boys. their findings suggested that more educated teachers may act as a buffer for learners who have the potential to form less close teacher–student relationships based on their gender. riley (2009) concluded that “pre-service training that emphasizes relationship building may have long-lasting positive effects on teachers” (p. 634). the chances are high that these mostly collegial relationships will be much longer-lasting than teacher–student relationships as they provide the corrective experiences for teachers. conclusion this study set out to determine iranian efl teachers’ attachment styles and investigate the factors which might have a correlation with or effect on them. teachers’ ages was shown to be one of the factors that were related to teachers’ secure bonding with students. as revealed in this study, the more mature teachers were more secure and less fearful and preoccupied. however, teaching experience turned out to be among the most effective factor since it had a more positive correlation with the secure style and a strong negative correlation with the fearful and preoccupied styles. furthermore, the responses to the questionnaire indicated that men teachers saw themselves very secure and not fearful, while the female teachers self-described as more preoccupied and dismissing. educational degrees, however, did not make any statistically significant difference between the secure and preoccupied styles, but teachers holding phd degrees were more secure than other groups. universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras56 ganji & samani it can be concluded that attachment styles are not stable over time. thus, teachers with insecure style problems (e.g., being uncertain, stressful, and anxious) tend to keep a distance from students, usually withdraw from helping their students, and struggle with feelings of low self-esteem. however, these teachers might later reach a secure attachment style as their age and teaching experience grows. teachers can facilitate ways to cope with insecure styles through practices like cognitivebehavioral therapy, which is a “short-term therapy technique that can help people find new ways to behave by changing their thought patterns [and by focusing] on their present-day challenges, thoughts, and behaviors” (davis, 2018, paras. 1–4); or mindfulness therapy, which is a technique for relieving and improving symptoms of stress and anxiety, mental health concerns, physical pain, and so on (hoffman et al., 2010). the fact that higher educated teachers showed a more secure style suggested that, by upgrading their education, teachers can cultivate a secure style. the fact that teachers having a highereducation degree may display a dismissing style cannot be ignored, though. to help student teachers overcome insecure style problems, a tool called the recovery assessment scale is recommended to be included in in-service education programs. this tool, developed by hancock et al. (2015), incorporates ideas like self-esteem, feeling powerful, receiving support from society, and living standard. finally, regarding gender differences, and if women can compete with men to be more secure, it may seem unlikely because it largely depends on societal conditions which are beyond the scope of this study and, as noted above, women usually are the ones who exhibit more fearful attitudes, and avoid close relationships in certain cultures (such as the iranian one), because in their culture it is the men who usually make most of the decisions to start, continue, or end a relationship such as marriage. therefore, women are often worried about losing relationships and more likely than men to consider the consequences of getting involved in a close relationship (pourmohseni-koluri, 2016). therefore, as long as the attitudes of society are unchanged, women’s attachment styles will also remain unchanged. like all survey studies, verifying the results depended largely on the accuracy and honesty of the participants’ responses. although the researchers encouraged participants to read and answer the questions carefully and assured them their answers would be strictly confidential, inaccuracy in answering the questions seems inevitable. there were also some limitations in finding teachers over 50 years old as most of them were either retired or not available, or they were university chancellors who refused to fill out the questionnaire. due to the limited works done in this area in iran and around the world, there was not much literature at hand for researchers with which to compare the results in the discussion section. further research can be done on teachers’ attachment styles and students whose english teachers have both secure and insecure styles to see how teachers’ attachment styles can affect students’ performance in learning different language skills. this line of research needs to be complemented by qualitative data collected through observation and focus group interviews. more research can be carried out regarding the men and women issues mentioned above. in addition, research can be conducted on planning strategies to help teachers overcome their attachment difficulties, and teacher educators who oversee preservice and in-service teacher education might benefit from including these strategies in their curriculums. it must be kept in mind that such studies need to benefit from follow-up data collection cycles in which data are collected at least six months after the training since changing a behavior takes time. the obtained results of the study would be useful for teachers, teacher educators, curriculum designers, and administrators. however, since quantitative data and research might not be able to give a complete picture of the situation, future researchers are encouraged to conduct qualitative and mixed-methods studies while researching the change of behaviors in teachers. 57profile: issues teach. prof. dev., vol. 24 no. 1, jan-jun, 2022. issn 1657-0790 (printed) 2256-5760 (online). bogotá, colombia. pages 45-61 the relationship between demographic features and iranian efl teachers’ attachment style references ackerman, c. e. 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(2003) and poole heller (2014), is designed to gather data about attachment styles of iranian efl teachers. the questionnaire consists of 45 items in which you have to carefully read each item and check what best describes you. the statements concern how you feel in emotionally intimate relationships and how you generally experience relationships. your answers to the questions will be strictly confidential. a. please complete personal information. age: gender: years of teaching experience: degree: place of work: b. please respond to each statement by marking a circle to indicate how much you agree or disagree with the statement (1 = strongly disagree, 2 = disagree, 3 = neutral, 4 = agree, 5 = strongly agree). 1 2 3 4 5 1. i feel at ease in emotional relationships. 2. i would like to be open in my relationships, but i can’t trust other people. 3. i feel uncomfortable when relationships with other people become close. 4. i find it difficult to fully trust other people in close relationships. 5. i prefer that others are independent of me. 6. i am preoccupied with what others think of me. 7. i usually avoid close relationships with people around. 8. i feel that i like others better than they like me. 9. i like it when other people can rely on me. 10. i am often afraid that other people don’t like me. 11. it is important for me to be independent. 12. i find it easy to get engaged in close relationships. 13. i feel at ease in intimate relationships. 14. i like to be self-sufficient. 15. i find myself ready to apologize or take responsibility for things i did not do. 16. i think it is important that people can rely on each other. 17. i don’t worry about being alone. 18. i am afraid that i will be deceived when i get too close with others. 19. i usually find other people more interesting than myself. 20. i trust that my partner will be there for me when i need him/her. 21. i am afraid to get hurt if i get engaged in a close relationship. 22. it is important to me to know if others like me. 23. i act like i don’t need reassurance or encouragement. 61profile: issues teach. prof. dev., vol. 24 no. 1, jan-jun, 2022. issn 1657-0790 (printed) 2256-5760 (online). bogotá, colombia. pages 45-61 the relationship between demographic features and iranian efl teachers’ attachment style 24. i am not able to repair and receive repair attempts from others in relationships. 25. i usually trust in others and in the future realistically. 26. i prefer the company of animals instead of people. 27. i need constant reassurance about the reliability of my relationships. 28. i am concerned if other people value me. 29. when love happens or is available, i reject it because it is too good to be true. 30. i feel i actively reject opportunities for connection. 31. i have trouble saying no to people when needed. 32. it is difficult for me to be clear about my feelings. 33. i focus more on work and hobbies than relationships. 34. i have obsessive thoughts about how to keep the relationship going. 35. i minimize the importance of close relationships. 36. i predict catastrophic outcomes and events. 37. i always feel superior and that i don’t need others. 38. i have trouble setting boundaries in my relationships. 39. i rarely worry about my partner leaving me. 40. i don’t worry whether people like me or not. 41. i don’t need other people very much. 42. i am afraid of losing my partner. 43. i often wonder whether people like me. 44. i cannot think clearly most of the time. 45. i like that i am independent of others. thank you so much for your cooperation. self-efficacy of english language teachers with low and high curriculum literacy in indonesian schools 81profile: issues teach. prof. dev., vol. 24 no. 2, jul-dec, 2022. issn 1657-0790 (printed) 2256-5760 (online). bogotá, colombia. pages 81-97 https://doi.org/10.15446/profile.v24n2.96187 self-efficacy of english language teachers with low and high curriculum literacy in indonesian schools la autoeficacia de docentes de inglés con niveles de conocimiento curricular altos y bajos en escuelas de indonesia burhanuddin yasin1 usman kasim faisal mustafa saiful marhaban universitas syiah kuala, banda aceh, indonesia endang komariah universitas lampung, lampung, indonesia this study explores the difference in self-efficacy between high school english language teachers with two levels of curriculum literacy. the data were collected using a curriculum literacy test and a selfefficacy scale that were delivered online to 251 english teachers in indonesia. the respondents were split into two groups based on their curriculum literacy scores. the findings show that teachers with higher curriculum literacy levels were more self-efficacious than those with a lower level of curriculum literacy. this implies that curriculum related courses in preservice teacher programs need to be improved, and in-service teacher training should focus on curriculum knowledge. keywords: curriculum implementation, curriculum literacy, english language teachers, self-efficacy este estudio explora las diferencias de autoeficacia entre docentes de inglés con dos niveles de conocimiento curricular. los datos se recolectaron a partir de una prueba de conocimiento curricular y una escala de autoeficacia que fueron distribuidas en línea a 251 docentes de inglés de secundaria en indonesia. los participantes se dividieron en dos grupos de acuerdo con sus puntajes de conocimiento curricular. se encontró que los docentes con mayores niveles de conocimiento curricular son asimismo los más eficaces. esto implica que se deben mejorar los cursos sobre el currículo en los programas de preparación inicial docente, así como dar mayor énfasis al conocimiento curricular durante la formación continua de docentes en ejercicio. palabras clave: autoeficacia, conocimiento curricular, docentes de inglés, implementación curricular burhanuddin yasin  https://orcid.org/0000-0001-6476-5051 · email: burhanyasin@unsyiah.ac.id usman kasim  https://orcid.org/0000-0003-4265-948x · email: usman@unsyiah.ac.id faisal mustafa  https://orcid.org/0000-0001-8619-5117 · email: faisal.mustafa@unsyiah.ac.id saiful marhaban  https://orcid.org/0000-0003-1157-6630 · email: saiful22@unsyiah.ac.id endang komariah  https://orcid.org/0000-0003-3581-2554 · email: endang.komariah@fkip.unila.ac.id how to cite this article (apa, 7th ed.): yasin, b., kasim, u., mustafa, f., marhaban, s., & komariah, e. (2022). self-efficacy of english language teachers with low and high curriculum literacy in indonesian schools. profile: issues in teachers’ professional development, 24(2), 81–97. https://doi.org/10.15446/profile.v24n2.96187 this article was received on may 27, 2021 and accepted on april 27, 2022. this is an open access article distributed under the terms of the creative commons license attribution-noncommercial-noderivatives 4.0 international license. consultation is possible at https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/ https://doi.org/10.15446/profile.v24n2.96187 https://orcid.org/0000-0001-6476-5051 mailto:burhanyasin@unsyiah.ac.id https://orcid.org/0000-0003-4265-948x mailto:usman@unsyiah.ac.id https://orcid.org/0000-0001-8619-5117 mailto:faisal.mustafa@unsyiah.ac.id https://orcid.org/0000-0003-1157-6630 mailto:saiful22@unsyiah.ac.id https://orcid.org/0000-0003-3581-2554 mailto:endang.komariah@fkip.unila.ac.id https://doi.org/10.15446/profile.v24n2.96187 https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/ universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras82 yasin, kasim, mustafa, marhaban, & komariah introduction self-efficacy is the belief held by a person that they can achieve a certain task. it influences a person’s thoughts and emotions, which can affect motivation. the concept of self-efficacy was first popularized by albert bandura in the second half of the 20th century. it was developed based on the concept of behavioral change (bandura, 1977). following the establishment of a self-efficacy scale, much research involving self-efficacy was conducted in many fields (berg & smith, 2016). in the field of teaching, it is one of the most important factors which determines the success of teachers in motivating their students and improving their academic achievement. research in the field of teacher education shows that teachers with high self-efficacy tend to be more committed to teaching (wolters & daugherty, 2007), more excited about teaching (skaalvik & skaalvik, 2010), and more satisfied about their profession as teachers (skaalvik & skaalvik, 2014). research has also confirmed that self-efficacy is developed and improved during preservice training and is resistant to change in spite of negative experiences during teaching practice (bandura, 1997). in addition, professional development has been found to also improve teachers’ self-efficacy (zonoubi et al., 2017). previous research has extensively explored teacher self-efficacy in relation to job satisfaction and student performance (oliveira-fernandez et al., 2016), teacher burnout (fathi et al., 2021; skaalvik & skaalvik, 2010), and teaching motivation (barni et al., 2019). these studies found that self-efficacy is associated with those variables. in addition, the sources of self-efficacy have been popular subjects for research, such as mastery experience, physiological and emotional states, vicarious experience, and social persuasion (bandura, 1997). previous research dealt mostly with meta sources influencing self-efficacy. among those meta sources are tutoring provided during preservice training (clift & brady, 2009), academic qualification and experience (shazadi et al., 2011), personal values (barni et al., 2019), the quality of preservice teacher training, colleague and principal’s support, mentor support, and characteristics of teaching assignments (çapa, 2005). however, little information is available on how self-efficacy and curriculum literacy interact to help teachers perform their tasks effectively. therefore, in this study, data on english teachers from one indonesian province was utilized to identify whether teachers with different levels of curriculum literacy have different measurements of self-efficacy. self-efficacy was measured in terms of teaching accomplishment, skill development in teaching, social interaction with students, parents and colleagues, and coping with stress in teaching. the results of this research could be used by teacher training institutions to develop curriculum and training for both preservice and in-service teachers. the results may also fill a gap in the literature regarding the relationship between self-efficacy and curriculum literacy. literature review self-efficacy and its dimensions the belief of how well or poorly a person will perform a task is believed to determine whether the task is performed at all. this belief is based on the fact that “people who are aware of being able to make a difference feel good and therefore take initiatives” (flammer, 2001, p. 13812), which is the basis for self-efficacy under the concept of social cognitive theory developed by bandura. self-efficacy has been used to predict personality (kong et al., 2021), learning interest (oppermann & lazarides, 2021), whether a person leads a healthy lifestyle (bektas et al., 2021), and even daily smoking intention (wang et al., 2021). the productive use of self-efficacy to predict behavior has led to the development and validation of the self-efficacy scale (chen et al., 2001; nel & boshoff, 2016). although studies in self-efficacy and its relation to behavior and performance are abundant, gaps in the research are still present, and many studies are being conducted to fill these gaps. 83profile: issues teach. prof. dev., vol. 24 no. 2, jul-dec, 2022. issn 1657-0790 (printed) 2256-5760 (online). bogotá, colombia. pages 81-97 self-efficacy of english language teachers with low and high curriculum literacy in indonesian schools the variability of self-efficacy falls on three dimensions: magnitude, strength, and generality, as originally proposed by bandura (1977). therefore, the measurement of self-efficacy should be based on these three dimensions (van der bijl & shortridge-baggett, 2001). magnitude, or level, represents the difficulty of the task. when a task can be done easily without it being too challenging or having too many risks, most individuals show an ability to perform the task successfully. thus, a self-efficacy scale should be constructed to “identify the level of challenge or impediment to successful performance of the required activities” (bandura, 1997, p. 43). the second dimension—strength—refers to the confidence of an individual to successfully perform a task. according to bong (1997), people with a lack of confidence due to low-perceived competence are more likely to withdraw from a task. finally, generality refers to “the extent to which magnitude and strength beliefs generalize across tasks and situations” (chen et al., 2001, p. 63). a developed sense of self-efficacy to perform a certain task results in strong self-efficacy toward other related tasks due to a feeling of mastery over the original task. this experience may also affect self-efficacy towards less related tasks (bandura, 1977). teacher self-efficacy teacher self-efficacy relates to how much teachers believe in their competence as teachers (perera & john, 2020). this belief influences a teacher’s behavior in how well they perform their teaching duties (van gasse et al., 2020). the significance of teacher self-efficacy is also reflected in their attitudes toward approaching problems that the students may have. teachers with negative self-efficacy have a higher level of motivation depletion, burnout, and stress (fathi et al., 2021). they also tend to report more student problems (caprara et al., 2003) and are skeptical about their students’ success in learning (bandura, 1997). meanwhile, teachers with positive selfefficacy tend to use more teaching methods to address students’ learning problems (riggs & enochs, 1990) and are more tolerant of students’ negative behavior (zee & koomen, 2016), and consider that they, as teachers, contribute to a student’s failure in learning (woodcock et al., 2019). thus, students taught by teachers with positive self-efficacy tend to have more motivation to learn (burić & kim, 2020) and better academic achievement (caprara et al., 2006). the use of innovative teaching methods in the classroom by self-efficacious teachers has been found to positively influence student self-efficacy, which also increases their motivation and learning achievements (boroumand et al., 2021). previous research has explored the factors which positively influence self-efficacy among teachers, and the findings seem to be uniform. preservice teacher training, such as university education, was found to be the most influential factor, and self-efficacy was shown to improve significantly during these programs (gurvitch & metzler, 2009; malmberg & hagger, 2009). however, short-term professional development training also improves the self-efficacy of elementary and secondary school english teachers (lee & davis, 2020). research also reported that the self-efficacy of practicing teachers is higher than that of preservice teachers. the improvement of self-efficacy at this stage is caused by the development of knowledge related to teaching and teaching experience. in fact, an analysis conducted by lauermann and könig (2016) showed that in-service teachers’ pedagogical knowledge is significantly correlated to their self-efficacy. in the field of language teaching, a teacher’s english proficiency level is positively correlated to their self-efficacy both when english proficiency is self-reported (ghasemboland & hashim, 2013; hoang & wyatt, 2021; yilmaz, 2011) and when tested using a standardized test (sabokrouh, 2013). self-efficacy is measured using a self-efficacy scale based on the theory of social cognition (bandura, 1977). the construction of this scale is based on the construct of efficacy expectations, which are “performance accomplishments, vicarious experience, verbal persuasion, and emotional arousal” (bandura, 1977, 1997). the general self-efficacy scale, as used by schwarzer and jerusalem universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras84 yasin, kasim, mustafa, marhaban, & komariah (1995), is flexible and can be adjusted to a specific situation. a more general teacher self-efficacy scale has been constructed through adaptation and consists of 10 items (schwarzer et al., 1999). a more detailed scale is the 24-item ohio state teacher efficacy scale designed and validated by tschannen-moran and hoy (2001). a more recent scale is the norwegian teacher self-efficacy scale, which consists of 24-items and was developed and pilot-tested by skaalvik and skaalvik (2007). all of these scales use the likert scale with points between 4 and 6. in this study, a 10-item scale was used to compare the teachers’ curriculum literacy. curriculum literacy the term curriculum literacy or curriculum knowledge refers to the understanding of the concepts of a particular curriculum (steiner et al., 2018). it is independent of pedagogical content knowledge (hashweh, 2005) but is a part of overall pedagogical knowledge. this subcomponent of pedagogical knowledge is a very significant factor which contributes to the success of curriculum implementation (sural & dedebali, 2018). previous studies have revealed that the implementations of curriculum in india, pakistan, and argentina were limited because of teachers’ lack of knowledge of the implemented curriculum concept (ali & baig, 2012; carrera et al., 2003). teachers who have low curriculum literacy have also been found to be more conservative with regards to new curriculum and chose to continue using the old curriculum instead (carrera et al., 2003). knowledge significant to implementation of the curriculum includes: (a) general knowledge regarding the implemented curriculum (mandukwini, 2016), (b) standard of content, (c) standard of process, and (d) standard of assessment specified by the curriculum (gani & mahjaty, 2017). general knowledge of the curriculum includes the general concept of curriculum and the concept which underlies the establishment of the target curriculum (su, 2012). standard of content is the scope of the materials to be taught and the level of knowledge of the materials to be achieved by the students (shulman, 1986b). the standard of process is the approach used to deliver the materials. an example of this would be the scientific approach, which comprises the stages of observation, questioning, data collection, associating, and communicating (gani & mahjaty, 2017). this standard also includes the knowledge of how to design lesson plans that cover the content area, as well as how to format the lesson plans. the standard of assessment determines how the standard of content is assessed, such as through authentic assessment (lund & tannehill, 2014). the general concept of a curriculum is learned during the preservice teacher training program, and it is during this training that teachers are also equipped with comprehensive knowledge of the latest curriculum (osamwonyi, 2016). other knowledge is received through curriculum socialization and training prior to and during the implementation of the curriculum (mandukwini, 2016). the present study this research aims to find scientific evidence to prove whether teacher self-efficacy is significantly different between teachers with differing levels of curriculum literacy. four major areas of expected job skills within the teaching profession, as appeared in schwarzer and hallum (2008), were used as the framework for this research. this study focused on the self-efficacy dimension of strength, which is defined as the belief that a task with a certain difficulty level can be performed successfully (chen et al., 2001), as suggested in schwarzer and jerusalem (1995). those areas include (a) job accomplishment, (b) skill development on the job, (c) social interaction with students, parents, and colleagues, and (d) coping with job stress (schmitz, 1998). job accomplishment is associated with dealing with difficult students because it poses the greatest challenge in a teaching profession. in addition, teachers are expected to be innovative in their teaching approach, and such 85profile: issues teach. prof. dev., vol. 24 no. 2, jul-dec, 2022. issn 1657-0790 (printed) 2256-5760 (online). bogotá, colombia. pages 81-97 self-efficacy of english language teachers with low and high curriculum literacy in indonesian schools innovations are sometimes met with disapproval by skeptical colleagues. teachers need to be able to motivate themselves in order to develop their skills regardless of constraints. the third skill, social interactions, is the fundamental basis of teaching. social interactions in the educational context do not only involve students, but they also include colleagues and students’ parents. finally, the profession also expects that teachers deal with work difficulties in a stress-free manner to create a learning-conducive experience for the students. method we used a quantitative method to answer the research question, and data were analyzed using inferential statistics for hypothesis testing. the data were displayed to show descriptive statistics in order to provide a general overview of data characteristics prior to further statistical analysis. instruments this research utilized two instruments: a test of the teachers’ knowledge of the currently implemented curriculum in indonesia and a teacher self-efficacy scale. the test was designed to include a general concept of the curriculum, a standard of content, standards of process, and a standard of assessment in the curriculum. the test consisted of 55 questions in the form of a four-option multiple choice test with one correct answer. the test was piloted to 25 teachers. the test was revised considering the item difficulty index, the discrimination index, and the distractor analysis. the revised version of the test achieved an internal consistency of 0.71, which was calculated using cronbach alpha at a significance level of 0.05. the teacher self-efficacy scale—taken from schwarzer et al. (1999)—consists of 10 items. it uses the four-point likert scale, which ranges between exactly true (4) and not true at all (1). the scale covers four major areas: job accomplishment, skill development, social interaction, and coping with job stress. participants the target participants for this research were 1,000 high school english teachers (about 50% of all high school english teachers) from aceh, the westernmost province of indonesia. the participants who completed the test were 288 (29% of the target participants), and 380 (38%) target participants completed the self-efficacy scale. twenty-five percent of the target population (251 participants) completed both assessments: 216 women (86%) and 35 men (14%). the detailed figures for each region of the province are presented in table 1, and the consort participant flowchart in figure 1. table 1. distribution of the participants who completed both assessments (n = 251) level men women eastern region senior high school 3 (7%) 40 (93%) junior high school 5 (11%) 47 (89%) central region senior high school 9 (25%) 27 (75%) junior high school 0 9 (100%) western region senior high school 9 (11%) 73 (89%) junior high school 9 (31%) 20 (69%) universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras86 yasin, kasim, mustafa, marhaban, & komariah data collection the self-efficacy scale was delivered via google forms to the target participants through the head of a teacher forum, which is similar to a district-level teacher association, in each district and municipality. the teachers were informed that the test and selfefficacy scale would both be used for the research purpose. only those teachers who agreed to participate (n = 251) were allowed to complete each instrument. the self-efficacy scale was delivered prior to the test because it is easier and does not take much time to complete. this was done because it was expected that more teachers would complete the self-efficacy scale than the test. the teachers were given three weeks to complete the self-efficacy scale. in the next step, the same procedure was followed to distribute the curriculum literacy test. teachers were able to view their scores upon completing the test. the questionnaire was distributed online because the research was conducted during the covid-19 outbreak when travel restrictions and social distancing policies were being enforced in the province. this also made it less likely that teachers consulted one another on completing either the self-efficacy scale or the curriculum literacy test due to the work-from-home rule set by the education department in indonesia. data analysis to test the hypothesis, we utilized inferential statistical analysis. the analysis was divided into two steps. first, enrollment allocation follow-up analysis available participants (n = 417) lost to follow-up (n = 129) lost to follow-up (n = 37) analysed (n = 251) analysed (n = 251) completing curriculum literacy completing self-efficacy scale (n = 380) test (n = 288) target participants (n = 1,000) excluded (n = 583), because • they lived in rural areas • their phone was unreachable • they had other reasons figure 1. consort participant flowchart 87profile: issues teach. prof. dev., vol. 24 no. 2, jul-dec, 2022. issn 1657-0790 (printed) 2256-5760 (online). bogotá, colombia. pages 81-97 self-efficacy of english language teachers with low and high curriculum literacy in indonesian schools the data were split into two categories: the first category was based on the median, where the participants were split into a lower group consisting of participants whose curriculum literacy was lower than the median, and a higher group for participants with curriculum literacy higher than the median. thus, 106 participants were allotted to the higher curriculum literacy group and 120 to the lower curriculum literacy group. participants with a score similar to the median were removed (25 participants, approximately 1% of the total participants), and they serve as a gap between the higher and lower group. the second category was based on the quartiles q1 and q3, to give a wider gap between the lower and higher groups. the lower group consisted of participants with a score lower than the first quartile (min. to q1) and the higher group comprised of participants with a score higher than the third quartile (q3 to max.). the gap between the higher and lower curriculum literacy groups was wider in this category, with 45% of the participants curriculum literacy scores being higher than the lower group but lower than the higher counterpart. using both group categories allowed for a more confident interpretation and conclusion. further group splitting was not possible due to small sample sizes in both groups, which would prevent inferential statistical analysis. in the second step, the self-efficacy of teachers in the lower group was compared to that of the higher group. the analyses were repeated for each group category. because the data were categorical, the mann whitney u test was used. the hypothesis was set to be rejected at the significance level of 0.05. therefore, the alternative hypothesis that self-efficacy of teachers with lower curriculum literacy is significantly different from self-efficacy of teachers with higher curriculum literacy is accepted if the p-value is lower than 0.05. however, a p-value of higher than 0.05 was considered and interpreted with caution. in addition to calculating the p-value for each category, effect size was also calculated by computing the value of the correlation coefficient r. effect size is commonly defined as “the size of an effect in a population” (privitera, 2018, p. 523), which provides information on how meaningful the difference provided by the p-value is. unlike p-value, effect size is much less influenced by sample size (fan & konold, 2010). we used the following formula to calculate the effect size for the mann whitney u test, as suggested by tomczak and tomczak (2014). in the formula, z refers to the z-score obtained from the mann whitney calculation, and n is the sample size. findings the objective of this research was to find out whether self-efficacy levels were different between teachers with higher and lower curriculum literacy. the data analyses were divided into two steps, namely, descriptive analysis and inferential analysis. curriculum literacy scores the test was completed by 288 teachers, but scores from 37 teachers were removed because they did not complete the teacher self-efficacy scale. the scores obtained by the 251 teachers are visualized in figure 2. figure 2 shows that the data were evenly distributed, where the number of participants who obtained a lower score were approximately similar to those who obtained higher scores. the density line (curved line) is plotted to show the distribution of the data. the median of the data was 52.72 out of 100. for the purpose of the first analysis, the participants were split using the median as the cutoff point, which resulted in 120 participants with lower curriculum literacy and 106 participants with higher curriculum literacy. in the second analysis, the participants were divided into two groups where the first group consisted of teachers whose scores were lower than 70% of all teachers (54 teachers) and the second group consisted of teachers whose scores were higher than 75% of all teachers (58 teachers). r = z n√ universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras88 yasin, kasim, mustafa, marhaban, & komariah figure 2. scores of the curriculum literacy test figure 3. self-efficacy of teachers in four curriculum literacy groups 0.06 p e rc e n ta g e o f p a rt ic ip a n ts 0.05 0.04 0.03 0.02 0.01 0.00 0 20 45.45 52.72 60.00 curriculum literacy (%) 40 60 80 100 20 15 10 5 0 1.0 1.5 2.0 2.5 3.0 3.5 4.0 lower group based on median higher group based on median lower group based on quartile 1 higher group based on quartile 3 self-ef�cacy 1.0 1.5 2.0 2.5 3.0 3.5 4.0 self-ef�cacy 1.0 1.5 2.0 2.5 3.0 3.5 4.0 self-ef�cacy 1.0 1.5 2.0 2.5 3.0 3.5 4.0 self-ef�cacy n u m e r o f p a rt ic ip a n ts 20 15 10 5 0 n u m e r o f p a rt ic ip a n ts 20 15 10 5 0 n u m e r o f p a rt ic ip a n ts 20 15 10 5 0 n u m e r o f p a rt ic ip a n ts 89profile: issues teach. prof. dev., vol. 24 no. 2, jul-dec, 2022. issn 1657-0790 (printed) 2256-5760 (online). bogotá, colombia. pages 81-97 self-efficacy of english language teachers with low and high curriculum literacy in indonesian schools teacher self-efficacy there were 380 teachers who completed the selfefficacy scale, more than those who completed the curriculum literacy test. therefore, the scores from 129 participants (34%) were eliminated due to their absence from the curriculum literacy test. the participants were then split based on the median and quartiles of their curriculum literacy scores. the self-efficacy of all groups is illustrated in figure 3. the bar charts and density lines in figure 3 show that the self-efficacy of teachers with higher curriculum literacy is more populated to the right compared to that of teachers with lower curriculum literacy. the detailed description of self-efficacy of both teacher groups based on both categories is presented in table 2. the description covers five-number summary and standard deviation. table 2 shows that the means of self-efficacy between the lower group and the higher group based on both median and quartile were different. table 3 presents the same information for each job skill related to the teaching profession. table 2. descriptive statistics of self-efficacy of teachers in two curriculum literacy groups test n min. q1 med. q3 max. mean sd based on median lower group 120 1.00 2.48 2.90 3.10 4.00 2.68 0.74 higher group 106 1.00 2.73 3.00 3.20 3.90 2.89 0.53 based on quartile lower group 54 1.00 2.17 2.80 3.00 4.00 2.57 0.81 higher group 58 1.00 2.73 3.00 3.20 3.90 2.92 0.48 table 3. descriptive statistics of each part of teacher self-efficacy in two curriculum literacy groups test n min. q1 med. q3 max. mean sd based on median lower group ja 120 1.27 2.31 2.76 2.76 4.00 2.44 0.57 higher group ja 106 1.00 2.32 2.76 2.80 4.00 2.57 0.50 lower group sd 120 1.91 2.98 3.41 3.41 3.89 3.08 0.59 higher group sd 106 1.91 2.98 3.41 3.41 3.89 3.22 0.46 lower group si 120 1.00 2.00 3.00 3.00 4.00 2.74 0.91 higher group si 106 1.00 3.00 3.00 3.00 4.00 2.91 0.63 lower group cjs 120 1.37 2.80 3.01 3.01 3.85 2.80 0.65 higher group cjs 106 1.37 2.89 3.01 3.01 3.85 2.94 0.50 based on quartile lower group ja 54 1.27 2.00 2.32 2.76 3.27 2.35 0.61 higher group ja 58 1.00 2.33 2.76 2.81 4.00 2.58 0.51 lower group sd 54 1.91 2.98 3.41 3.41 3.89 3.01 0.67 higher group sd 58 1.91 2.98 3.41 3.41 3.89 3.26 0.39 lower group si 54 1.00 2.00 3.00 3.00 4.00 2.63 0.96 higher group si 58 1.00 3.00 3.00 3.00 4.00 2.88 0.62 lower group cjs 54 1.37 2.42 2.96 3.01 3.85 2.72 0.66 higher group cjs 58 1.37 2.96 3.01 3.01 3.85 2.99 0.48 note: ja = job accomplishment, sd = skill development, si = social interaction, cjs = coping with job stress universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras90 yasin, kasim, mustafa, marhaban, & komariah table 3 shows that the means of self-efficacy for each scale section between the lower group and the higher group, based on both median and quartile, were different with some similarities except for mean and standard deviation. the next subsection presents the results of inferential statistical analysis to show whether these differences are significant. hypothesis testing the hypothesis to be tested was: “the self-efficacy of teachers with lower curriculum literacy is not significantly different from the self-efficacy of teachers with higher curriculum literacy.” because self-efficacy is a categorical variable, the mann whitney u test was used to test the hypothesis. the result of the hypothesis testing is presented in table 4. the results of hypothesis testing show that the hypothesis was rejected for both group categories because the p-values are lower than the significance level of 0.05. the effect size, however, is greater in the groups determined using quartiles (min. to q1, and q3 to max.). therefore, there is statistical evidence that the self-efficacy of teachers with lower curriculum literacy is significantly different from the self-efficacy of teachers with higher curriculum literacy, and the higher the gap between levels of curriculum literacy, the larger the difference in self-efficacy. further analyses were conducted for each different job skill within the teaching profession: job accomplishment, skill development, social interaction, and coping with job stress. the results of the hypothesis testing for each area are presented in table 5. table 4. hypothesis testing for self-efficacy and curriculum literacy groups mean median statistic p-value effect size based on median 5234 0.02121 0.154 lower group 2.68 2.90 higher group 2.89 3.90 based on quartile 1096.5 0.00610 0.260 lower group 2.57 2.80 higher group 2.92 3.00 table 5. hypothesis testing for self-efficacy and curriculum literacy in each self-efficacy construct groups mean median statistic p-value effect size based on median job accomplishment 5564.5 0.09825 0.11 lower group 2.44 2.76 higher group 2.57 2.76 skill development 5643.5 0.1058 0.108 lower group 3.08 3.41 higher group 3.22 3.41 social interaction 5968 0.3432 0.0631 lower group 2.74 3.00 higher group 2.91 3.00 coping with job stress 5391 0.03711 0.139 lower group 2.80 3.01 higher group 2.94 3.01 91profile: issues teach. prof. dev., vol. 24 no. 2, jul-dec, 2022. issn 1657-0790 (printed) 2256-5760 (online). bogotá, colombia. pages 81-97 self-efficacy of english language teachers with low and high curriculum literacy in indonesian schools the results of mann whitney u test for each part of the teacher self-efficacy scale show that the hypotheses were rejected for teacher self-efficacy of coping with job stress at the significance level of 0.05 for both group classification (median and quartile), and mastery experience, or job accomplishment, at the significance level of 0.1. since the significance level used in this research was 0.05, the significance level for mastery experience was treated with caution. the effect sizes were greater for the group determined using the quartile than those using the median. discussion this research can be treated as confirmation or as empirical evidence that there is a relationship between curriculum literacy and self-efficacy, which had been qualitatively predicted in previous studies (see gurvitch & metzler, 2009; lee & davis, 2020; malmberg & hagger, 2009). it also adds to what is previously known regarding the correlation between a teacher’s pedagogical content knowledge and self-efficacy. grossman (1990) divided pedagogical content knowledge into knowledge of subject matter, knowledge of curriculum, knowledge of instruction, and knowledge of purpose of teaching. previous research studies have found that a teacher’s knowledge of the subject matter and knowledge of instruction influences their self-efficacy (eslami & fatahi, 2008; lauermann & könig, 2016). in this study, it has been revealed that knowledge of curriculum is also correlated to a teacher’s self-efficacy. this result was expected because knowledge of curriculum or curriculum literacy comprises knowledge of how materials are “organized and packaged for instruction” (shulman, 1986a, p. 26), and it is part of a teacher’s duty to know how to translate this organized material into a lesson plan. in addition, curriculum literacy is also a reflection of knowledge of a subject matter (gess-newsome & lederman, 2002), which has been found to be correlated with self-efficacy. the results of this study also provide an explanation for a prediction made by mahler et al. (2017) in that teachers develop their self-efficacy during preservice university education. preservice teachers learn and obtain pedagogical content knowledge, including curriculum knowledge, at university. the development of that knowledge results in the development and improvement of self-efficacy. thus, teachers with higher levels of curriculum literacy are expected to show higher levels of self-efficacy. this explanation is also highlighted by schipper et al. (2018) who found that teachers who participated in professional development training showed improvements in their self-efficacy. based on further analyses, teachers with high curriculum literacy believe that they are more likely to succeed based on quartile job accomplishment 1246 0.05841 0.180 lower group 2.35 2.32 higher group 2.58 2.76 skill development 1294 0.07721 0.167 lower group 3.01 3.41 higher group 3.26 3.41 social interaction 1396 0.2367 0.112 lower group 2.63 3.00 higher group 2.88 3.00 coping with job stress 1125.5 0.007164 0.254 lower group 2.72 2.96 higher group 2.99 3.01 universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras92 yasin, kasim, mustafa, marhaban, & komariah in accomplishing a difficult teaching-related task than those with lower curriculum literacy. bandura (1997) claims that the reason for this perceived higher sense of self-efficacy was due to a belief that they had adequate knowledge to guarantee their success in teaching. another important component of teacher self-efficacy, which is different among teachers with different curriculum literacy, is the ability to cope with job stress. studies have found that job stress is associated with teacher burnout (kyriacou, 2015; schwarzer & hallum, 2008). thus, the ability to cope with job stress is very important to prevent job dissatisfaction among teachers. the current study has revealed that teachers with better curriculum literacy are likely to cope with job stress better than their lower curriculum literacy counterparts. the results also show that two groups with a large difference in curriculum literacy also exhibited a larger effect size than those with a smaller difference. effect size refers to “the magnitude and importance of the result obtained” (tomczak & tomczak, 2014, p. 19), and it allows for the conclusion of the extent to which the difference provided by the p-value is meaningful. the results suggest that teachers with very high curriculum literacy levels have different levels of self-efficacy than their low curriculum literacy counterparts, and this difference is more meaningful than the difference in self-efficacy among teachers with almost the same levels of curriculum literacy. these results emphasize the importance knowledge regarding the curriculum has with regards to possessing better self-efficacy, which also leads to better student achievement and perception as proposed by oliveira-fernandez et al. (2016). pedagogical implications the results of this study provide significant pedagogical implications for preservice and in-service teacher training. studies have found that teachers develop their self-efficacy during preservice training. however, based on the results of the current study, the teachers’ knowledge regarding curriculum was low and moderate. this alarming result should be treated as a suggestion to improve courses on curriculum at teacher training departments in universities. the national qualification framework-based curriculum is uniform across all universities in indonesia. thus, the results of this study have revealed that the curriculum courses offered at indonesian universities are not adequate in terms of quality and quantity. only 12 credits (out of 140 credits) were associated with knowledge of curriculum spread across five courses, and only two credits (one course) were intended for general concepts of curriculum, while three credits were offered for other curriculum related courses. therefore, universities should offer more credits for curriculum courses, and credits for the general concept of curriculum and teaching practices need to also be added. these courses are fundamental in helping preservice teachers translate the content of the curriculum into their instruction, which in turn helps to improve their selfefficacy (syamdianita & cahyono, 2021). noorollahi (2021) has found that an improvement in self-efficacy is followed by an immediate improvement in academic achievement. in addition to preservice teachers, in-service teachers also need to be provided with training about knowledge of curriculum. the current professional development programs in indonesia only emphasize lesson planning (knowledge of instruction) and assessment, while training on curricular knowledge was rarely offered. this same case was also found in malaysian schools. this is also evident from a study conducted by albakri et al. (2021), which found that in-service teachers who were assigned to supervise other in-service teachers could not perform their jobs properly due to a lack of pedagogical knowledge. with improvements in preservice and in-service teacher training, teachers will have more positive self-efficacy, which has been found to contribute to better academic achievement from their students. limitations of the study a quantitative study is intended to make generalizations out of the results, which can then be applied 93profile: issues teach. prof. dev., vol. 24 no. 2, jul-dec, 2022. issn 1657-0790 (printed) 2256-5760 (online). bogotá, colombia. pages 81-97 self-efficacy of english language teachers with low and high curriculum literacy in indonesian schools to a larger context. however, the generalizability of the results in the present study are subject to some limitations. first, the sample size used for this research was rather large and included participants from many different areas and levels of high schools around indonesia. however, most participants had low and moderate levels of curriculum literacy. the results might have been different if more teachers with better curriculum literacy were involved. during the time this study was conducted, access to such participants was not available. therefore, it is recommended that a large-scale research study be conducted in the future that involves participants with more heterogenous curriculum literacy. second, both the curriculum literacy test and selfefficacy scale were delivered online. there is a small possibility that teachers cheated in completing the test, and it is suspected that some teachers were not serious in their attitudes toward the test and rushed to complete it. had the test been conducted in classrooms where the researchers could supervise the participants, then they might have taken the test more seriously, and the results would have been more accurate. if a future study was able to deliver the questionnaire in-person, then the accuracy of the research results would be assured. finally, there is also a possibility, although small, that the teachers misunderstood the self-efficacy scale questionnaire because each item on the questionnaire was not explained to them. in addition, many of the teachers, especially those teaching in rural schools, were not accustomed to participating in a self-efficacy survey, so there is a possibility that they over-reported their self-efficacy. therefore, further studies can confirm our results by using larger sample sizes or involving more urban school teachers who have better access to curriculum training. it is also suggested that future studies deliver both the self-efficacy scale and curriculum literacy test in a classroom, where teachers can ask questions to the researchers when necessary and cheating is less likely to occur. conclusion this research attempted to determine whether the self-efficacy of teachers with higher curriculum literacy levels was different from that of teachers with lower levels of curriculum literacy. the objective was to determine if self-efficacy was associated with curriculum literacy among teachers. a curriculum literacy test, which included general concepts of curriculum, standards of process, standards of assessment, and standards of content was administered to 251 english as a foreign language teachers in all regions of aceh, indonesia, along with a self-efficacy scale. the results show that the self-efficacy of teachers with a higher level of curriculum literacy was significantly stronger than that of teachers with a lower level of curriculum literacy, which suggests that teachers with higher curriculum literacy tend to be more self-efficacious. therefore, it is recommended that future professional development training programs for in-service teachers focus on all constructs of curriculum literacy in order to improve teachers’ self-efficacy. further research can help to inform whether such professional development programs can improve teachers’ self-efficacy by using empirical data from an experimental research study. references albakri, i. s. m. a., ismail, n., hartono, r., tahir, m. h. m., abdullah, m. s. h. b., sarudin, a., & zulkepli, n. 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(2017). efl teacher self-efficacy development in professional learning communities. system, 66, 1–12. https://doi. org/10.1016/j.system.2017.03.003 about the authors burhanuddin yasin holds a phd in education management and is a senior lecturer at the english language education department, faculty of teacher training and education, university of syiah kuala, indonesia. he is currently the head of the study program of english language education at the same university. usman kasim is a professor at the department of english education, syiah kuala university, indonesia. he graduated from leeds university in 1991, majoring masters in tesol, and phd in english education at state university of malang (indonesia) in 2003. his research interest covers teaching methodology and language acquisition. faisal mustafa is a lecturer at the english education department, universitas syiah kuala, indonesia. his research interests include linguistics, language pedagogy, language testing and assessment, statistics in language teaching and testing, translation, and vocabulary. saiful marhaban is a lecturer at english education department, syiah kuala university, indonesia. he completed his master’s degree from la trobe university (australia) and obtained his doctoral degree from the state university of malang, indonesia. his research interest covers language teaching, language assessment and academic writing. endang komariah is a lecturer at the department of english education, universitas lampung, indonesia. she obtained her undergraduate degree from universitas lampung and her master’s degree from malang state university (indonesia). her research interests are in language testing and assessment, english teaching methods, and second language acquisition. acknowledgments the researchers express their gratitude to universitas syiah kuala, which funded this research under a professor candidate research scheme. in addition, great appreciation also goes to emily peterson for feedback on the writing style of this manuscript. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.tate.2019.102989 https://doi.org/10.1016/j.addbeh.2021.106877 https://doi.org/10.1016/j.addbeh.2021.106877 https://doi.org/10.1037/0022-0663.99.1.181 https://doi.org/10.1037/0022-0663.99.1.181 https://doi.org/10.1016/j.ijer.2019.07.007 https://doi.org/10.1016/j.ijer.2019.07.007 https://doi.org/10.2224/sbp.2011.39.1.91 https://doi.org/10.2224/sbp.2011.39.1.91 https://doi.org/10.3102/0034654315626801 https://doi.org/10.3102/0034654315626801 https://doi.org/10.1016/j.system.2017.03.003 https://doi.org/10.1016/j.system.2017.03.003 plurality of voices in reflecting upon the research process: trajectories of collaboration in an argentinian setting 157profile: issues teach. prof. dev., vol. 24 no. 1, jan-jun, 2022. issn 1657-0790 (printed) 2256-5760 (online). bogotá, colombia. pages 157-171 https://doi.org/10.15446/profile.v24n1.92319 plurality of voices in reflecting upon the research process: trajectories of collaboration in an argentinian setting pluralidad de voces en la reflexión sobre el proceso de investigación: trayectorias de colaboración en el contexto argentino melina porto1 universidad nacional de la plata and conicet, la plata, argentina anahí pesci mariela riva universidad nacional de la plata, la plata, argentina this article describes the trajectories of collaboration experienced by three individuals in three different roles (informant, research assistant, and supervisor) in two research projects about english as a foreign language reading in a higher education context in argentina. data come from reflection logs and retrospective narratives written by them from 2009 to 2016 which were analyzed using content analysis, focusing on a continuum of collaboration. the article aligns with the critique of the discourse of “newer researcher” as a linear developmental trajectory as it illustrates the participants’ fluid, critical, complex, and personally relevant pathways. placed within the debate regarding the affordances, complexities and challenges of the measured university, this research contributes perspectives from a peripheral setting generally underrepresented in the literature. keywords: language education research, newer researcher, research process, simultaneous roles este artículo describe las trayectorias de colaboración de tres individuos con diferentes roles (informante, asistente de investigación y supervisor) en dos proyectos de investigación sobre la lectura en inglés como lengua extranjera en un contexto de educación superior de argentina. los datos incluyen sus diarios de reflexión y narrativas retrospectivas escritos durante 2009–2016, que fueron analizados usando análisis de contenido, con el foco en el continuo de colaboración de macfarlane. el artículo se alinea con la crítica al discurso del “investigador novato” como una trayectoria de desarrollo lineal ya que el estudio ilustra los caminos fluidos, críticos, complejos y personalmente relevantes experimentados por los participantes. la investigación contribuye perspectivas de un contexto de la periferia. palabras clave: investigación en enseñanza de lenguas, investigador novato, proceso de investigación, roles simultáneos 1 melina porto  https://orcid.org/0000-0002-9159-171x · email: melinaporto@conicet.gov.ar anahí pesci  https://orcid.org/0000-0001-5941-5946 · email: apesci@unaj.edu.ar mariela riva  https://orcid.org/0000-0001-7738-3335 · email: somostranslarte@gmail.com how to cite this article (apa, 7th ed.): porto, m., pesci, a., & riva, m. (2022). plurality of voices in reflecting upon the research process: trajectories of collaboration in an argentinian setting. profile: issues in teachers’ professional development, 24(1), 157–171. https://doi. org/10.15446/profile.v24n1.92319 this article was received on december 11, 2020 and accepted on september 3, 2021. this is an open access article distributed under the terms of the creative commons license attribution-noncommercial-noderivatives 4.0 international license. consultation is possible at https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/ https://doi.org/10.15446/profile.v24n1.92319 https://orcid.org/0000-0002-9159-171x mailto:melinaporto@conicet.gov.ar https://orcid.org/0000-0001-5941-5946 mailto:apesci@unaj.edu.ar https://orcid.org/0000-0001-7738-3335 mailto:somostranslarte@gmail.com https://doi.org/10.15446/profile.v24n1.92319 https://doi.org/10.15446/profile.v24n1.92319 https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/ universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras158 porto, pesci, & riva introduction the following extract is a retrospective narrative written in 2012 by co-authors anahí and mariela in our roles as informants in a research study and later as research assistants. the excerpt illustrates our changing views about reading and the learning of english as a foreign language (efl) at a local university, or put differently, the scholarly conversations we engaged in during the 2009–2016 period. at the same time, the extract gives a flavor of the non-linear, critical, reflective, and multifaceted pathways that we experienced in our trajectories toward becoming researchers in a higher education setting. in our first approach to the texts, although we were conscious of the importance of the cultural aspects, we assumed the role of students, paying more attention to the content and its interpretation, and taking into account local, lexical, and linguistic aspects. without realizing it, we attached importance to the fact of remembering. in our second approach to the texts, we stopped directing our attention to the linguistic content to start focusing on other factors, such as the approach from an intercultural perspective. this double perspective allows us to distance ourselves from our initial position as active individuals but mere informants in the research carried out by others, to situate ourselves now as researchers. this extract is about informants, researchers, and their changing views of what efl reading means in this setting. it resonates with literature that attributes a central role to the participants in the research process (brew & jewell, 2012), particularly in language education (canagarajah, 1996; li, 2007; mearns, 2012), and that highlights the need to use alternative ways of talking about research and of communicating research findings in the scientific-academic domain, in this case in the field of english language teaching (elt; canagarajah, 2006, 2012). this article seeks to describe the trajectories of collaboration experienced by three individuals who fulfilled three different roles in two research projects, over an eight-year period, about efl reading in a higher education context in argentina. these roles are informant, research assistant, and supervisor. after a general background of the research and a brief theoretical framework about the usefulness of contributing an article with a plurality of voices in the language education field, we introduce macfarlane’s (2017) recent continuum of different forms of collaboration to illustrate our case. our content analysis indicates that three forms of collaboration surfaced, namely, collaboration as intellectual generosity, as mentoring, and as communication. we tie our findings to a critique of the discourse of “newer researcher” because our data indicate that we did not follow a linear developmental trajectory but rather experienced fluid, critical, complex, and personally relevant pathways that are unique to us. we argue that the critical trajectories revealed here were possible by the engagement in scholarly conversations during the process. an example of this scholarly conversation is the debate about what reading in a foreign language involves—illustrated in the initial vignette. we then locate our article within the debate regarding the affordances, complexities, and challenges of the measured university of current times, and we show that in our case, the experience of different forms of collaboration during this eight-year period led to a sense of agency. the specific value of the research reported here resides in the particular peripheral setting, generally underrepresented in the literature. we conclude with some implications. background information about the research projects broadly speaking, the data on which this article is based come from two research projects undertaken between 2009 and 2016 about the cultural dimension of efl reading in argentina (project 1: 2009–2012 and project 2: 2013–2016). the theoretical framework follows a constructivist perspective on learning and a socio159profile: issues teach. prof. dev., vol. 24 no. 1, jan-jun, 2022. issn 1657-0790 (printed) 2256-5760 (online). bogotá, colombia. pages 157-171 plurality of voices in reflecting upon the research process: trajectories of collaboration... cultural conception of reading that takes into account intercultural perspectives. both projects were funded by the argentinian ministry of science and technology and the national research council and were carried out in the school of humanities and sciences of education at universidad nacional de la plata (unlp, argentina). the general objective was to describe how the population under study in this context (college students—future english teachers and translators—at unlp) understood the cultural content of literary narrative texts in efl (see porto & byram, 2017). the argentinian setting is in tune with the need expressed by tesol professionals (canagarajah, 1995; vavrus, 2002) regarding the importance of the individual and the local in-classroom-based research efforts that describe how literacy in english is experienced in peripheral countries. following canagarajah (2002) and canagarajah and said (2011), argentina can be seen as an example of a peripheral country in south america. thus, this article echoes the compelling need pointed out in the literature to recover local aspects from specific cultural contexts and can be considered as “work which seeks understanding of the experience of people involved in education” (byram, 2008, p. 91, his emphasis). the informants were argentine prospective teachers and translators of english, from 21 to 22 years of age at the beginning of the first project. mariela and anahí were part of this group of undergraduate students and melina was the project supervisor. students read three literary narrative texts in english about christmas celebrations in different contexts, and they performed some tasks. for instance, they wrote a reading response (that is, a personal interpretation of the texts) and they also produced a visual representation whereby they portrayed each text visually (using drawings, charts, graphs, cartoons, etc.). they were then interviewed individually. data were collected in the native language, spanish, during 2009–2010. overall, the main finding is that “the process of cultural understanding . . . is not composed of independent and discrete elements, processes, or stages” (porto & byram, 2017, p. 29) but is fluid and complex. this article does not focus on these data. however, this background about the research projects is necessary at this point because the article shall offer reflections about the conceptions of reading that the informants had when the first project was launched in 2009, to reveal later how these views changed as they engaged in scholarly conversations about cultural understanding in foreign language reading during the eight-year period reported here. justification for the need for, and importance of, an article with plurality of voices in language education research in the field of tesol, canagarajah (1996) states that the need for coherence in the report—achieved by the closure, the tight structure, and seamless writing—can hide the false starts, wrong moves, misleading tracks, and interpretive gambles that usually characterize the research process. there is a similar suppression of the gaps, contradictions, and conflicts in the data for the sake of textual coherence. the report thus gets considerably removed from the existential conditions of research. (p. 324) while an analysis of why this happens is beyond our scope here, it is possible that “‘the bureaucratization of writing [that is] the way in which a certain writing style is encouraged, perhaps even rewarded in the academy” (kindt, 2016, p. 1086) has something to do with it. canagarajah (1996) suggests the need to explore alternative, more critical ways of communicating research to the academic community. in this sense, one possibility resides in co-authored texts, that is, texts that “are jointly written by the researcher and the informants/subjects and, therefore, are considered collaborative reports. they attempt to dramatize the tensions between the perspectives of the researchers and subjects” (canagarajah, 1996, p. 326). an alternative genre is the dialogic text, universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras160 porto, pesci, & riva which “consists of counterpoised dialogues between the researcher and informants/subjects. although the text more authentically explores the conflicting voices of the subjects, resolving the ensuing interpretive tensions is the responsibility of readers” (canagarajah, 1996, p. 327). häusler et al. (2018) use “collective memory-work, a research framework with transformative aspirations that integrates narrative writing with group analysis and dissolves the boundaries between theory and method as well as researcher and research participants” (p. 282). we take canagarajah’s (1996) conclusion as our starting point when he states that it is necessary, therefore, to see reports co-authored by esol researcher/teachers and students. rather than the researchers filtering the students’ divergent positions through their own perspectives, it is important to let the students’ views remain in tension (if necessary) with the researchers’ positions. (p. 328) this article is an example of this kind of report. furthermore, the focus on a plurality of voices that we propose in this article contributes to the ecological validity of the research (cohen et al., 2018) given its descriptive and exploratory nature. from this perspective, our research, and this article, echo the advantages mentioned by canagarajah and said (2009): rather than looking at communities and classrooms through professional spectacles, we see them for what they are as we design specific approaches to suit them . . . such an ecological approach additionally has the advantage of keeping all the variables and contextual richness intact, as we teach or research english in diverse contexts. (pp. 169–170) this article is conceptualized with this intention in mind, and it is, for its part, a hybrid between the genres mentioned before. the plurality of voices distinguishes this article from others in language education research. for example, li (2007) writes in the first person about a third party (a graduate student) and canagarajah (2012) writes in the first person and offers different voices that come, however, from the same individual (canagarajah as a teacher, as a researcher, etc.). in our case, we present the multiple voices of three participants involved in the research projects in different roles and capacities. collaboration as a moral continuum theoretically, we depart from macfarlane’s (2017) discussion of the current neoliberal university that cares about measurement, performativity, market drives, and individuality, and that places conflicting demands on collaborative work amongst researchers, oriented toward individual goals on the one hand and collective goals on the other. peseta et al. (2017) describe the challenges involved in this way: the demand to count, measure, rank, quantify, evaluate and judge the work of universities (along with those who labour and study in them) haunts virtually all aspects of our work: from the quality of research, to targets for income generation, counts of patents, citations of articles and public testimonies of policy impact made visible and likeable online; from the quality of curriculum, to teaching with technology, responding to student feedback, watching the employment destinations and salaries of graduates as a comment on the value of their education; to whether a university is healthy, sustainable, sufficiently globalized or doing enough to position itself as the world leader in this or that discipline. (pp. 453–454) likewise, sutton (2017) affirms that “performativity is central to the culture of measurement within contemporary universities” and concludes that “the soul of academic labour is becoming lost in performativity” (p. 625). along similar lines, bottrell and manathunga (2019) conclude that this neoliberal ethos runs counter to “conceptions of universities as collegial institutions concerned with public and democratic purposes” (pp. 1–2). 161profile: issues teach. prof. dev., vol. 24 no. 1, jan-jun, 2022. issn 1657-0790 (printed) 2256-5760 (online). bogotá, colombia. pages 157-171 plurality of voices in reflecting upon the research process: trajectories of collaboration... within this framework, macfarlane (2017) argues that “collaboration is a modern mantra of the neoliberal university and part of a discourse allied to research performativity quantitatively measured via co-authorship” (p. 472). he highlights the complex and contradictory nature of this mantra because “academic staff are exhorted to collaborate, particularly in respect to research activities, but their career and promotion prospects depend on evaluations of their individual achievements in developing an independent body of work and in obtaining research funding” (p. 472). he proposes a continuum of collaboration as a moral continuum containing two types of collaboration he calls “self-regarding” and “other-regarding.” self-regarding (or self-oriented) collaboration aims at personal and career benefits and comprise the following: • collaboration-as-performativity to increase research output; • collaboration-as-cronyism by means of practices “that reinforce the power of established networks”; and • collaboration-as-parasitism involving the exploitation of junior researchers by seniors. in turn, other-regarding (or other-oriented) collaboration focuses on knowledge as a common goal, academic duty and friendship in academic life, and interest in helping less experienced researchers and comprises these points below: • collaboration-as-intellectual generosity involving the free sharing of ideas for the common good of scientific advance; • collaboration-as-mentoring to foster the development of less experienced colleagues; and • collaboration-as-communication to disseminate knowledge in scholarly platforms. this classification is useful in the current debate regarding the affordances, complexities, and challenges of the measured university (hancock et al., 2016; macfarlane, 2017; peseta et al., 2017; sutton, 2017) since collaboration as intellectual generosity, as mentoring, and as communication seem naïve in the surge for performativity (macfarlane, 2017). this research framed within participatory and narrative research and auto-ethnographic studies (cohen et al., 2018), this study was designed and planned as a longitudinal investigation of the trajectories of the collaboration experienced by three individuals who fulfilled three different roles in two research projects over an eight-year period about efl reading in a higher education context in argentina. these roles are informant, research assistant, and supervisor. it is an example of self-study research aimed at examining and learning about one’s practice (in teaching, research) to forge new opportunities based on a process of exploration, discovery, reflection, and critical analysis (mitchell et al., 2005). the research question is: what trajectories of collaboration do individuals experience as they take part in a longitudinal research undertaking in which they perform different roles? data come from reflection logs and retrospective narratives written by three research participants, the co-authors of this article, during 2009–2016 at a public national university in argentina. dr. melina porto, an experienced investigator in the field of foreign language education and professor in the english teaching/translation programme, was the research director. anahí started taking part in this case study as an undergraduate student in the english teaching programme in 2009 and graduated in 2012. she was in her early twenties then. mariela, who is blind, is a teacher of spanish graduated from unlp. she was in her late twenties when this case study began and was an advanced student in the english teaching/translation course at the time. ana h í and mar i el a we re f i rst i nvolve d as informants in 2009–2010 and wrote logs reflecting on the research. these reflection logs resembled the stream of consciousness approach characteristic universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras162 porto, pesci, & riva of learner diaries (allwright & bailey, 1991) with no specific guiding questions. they were both u n d e r g r a du at e s tu d e nt s t h e n . in e a r l y 2 0 1 2 , they produced a retrospective narrative of their experiences as informants who had provided data in 2009–2010 (following written instructions) and they also became research assistants. these narratives were written during 2011 until august 2012 (between one and two years after they had participated in the original project). they participated as research assistants from september 2012 to 2016 and also wrote reflection logs during this period. melina kept reflection logs during the eight-year period as research supervisor. the instructions and questions that functioned as a guide for the retrospective narratives were: • write about your perceptions on how you conceptualized your participation in the project as informant that generated data. what matters is the process, your perceptions, the views that you have as insiders. • write, in spanish, a stream of consciousness on what you remember about the 2009–2010 experience. these questions may serve as a guide, although it is not necessary that you limit yourselves to them: what do i remember about my participation in that project? how did i understand the tasks to be performed? do i understand them in the same way today? what motivated me to participate? what aspects are negative and which ones could be positive about that experience? they responded in spanish and voluntarily translated their responses into english for the purpose of this article. data were analysed qualitatively focusing on content analysis (cohen et al., 2018). particular attention was given to the six forms of collaboration identified by macfarlane (2017), namely collaboration as intellectual generosity, as mentoring, as communication, as performativity, as cronyism, and as parasitism. there were three layers of analysis. following cohen et al. (2018), the first layer comprised a holistic overview of all data sources to get a global sense of what was happening. the second layer of analysis was deductive and involved tracing evidence of macfarlane’s six forms of collaboration in the reflection logs and retrospective narratives and coding on this basis. the third and final phase was inductive or data-based, involving the identification of emerging themes, commonalities, and unique perspectives which would otherwise have remained unnoticed. descriptive, narrative, and interpretive vignettes and multiple examples were used throughout the process to document the analysis and illustrate findings. table 1 includes a summary of participants, research instruments, analysis, and timeline. table 1. methodology: participatory, narrative, auto-ethnographic research   melina anahí mariela age (at the beginning of study in 2009) early forties early twenties late twenties degrees ma in elt and phd in educational sciences advanced student in english teaching course (graduated 2012) teacher of spanish. advanced student in english teaching/translation programme 163profile: issues teach. prof. dev., vol. 24 no. 1, jan-jun, 2022. issn 1657-0790 (printed) 2256-5760 (online). bogotá, colombia. pages 157-171 plurality of voices in reflecting upon the research process: trajectories of collaboration...   melina anahí mariela teaching experience professor in a teaching/ translation programme at a national university first formal teaching experience in primary and secondary education in 2012 experience as a private and on-line tutor of spanish and english research experience experienced researcher at national research council first trajectories during the projects described in this paper roles supervisor informants (2009–2010) and research assistants (2011–2015) research instruments and timeline reflection logs (free style, spontaneous, no guiding questions, stream of consciousness approach) between 2009–2016 (as research supervisor) during 2009–2010 (as informants) and 2013–2016 (as research assistants) retrospective narratives (following guiding questions)   during 2011–2012 (based on experiences as informants in the first project) data analysis layers of analysis 1. holistic, impressionistic 2. deductive using macfarlane’s continuum of collaboration 3. data-based: emerging themes, commonalities, and unique perspectives findings four propositional statements combining the three layers of analysis findings and discussion following cohen et al. (2018), findings are presented in propositional statements that capture the essence of the thematic analysis undertaken combining the second and third layers of analysis focusing on the forms of collaboration that were evidenced and on recurrent themes respectively. data extracts appear verbatim, and clarifying information appears between brackets. the evidence for the points made is highlighted in the data extracts that serve as illustration. other-regarding forms of collaboration prevailed the analysis did not reveal any of the three forms of self-regarding collaboration identified by macfarlane (2017), namely performativity to increase research output, cronyism reinforcing the power of established networks, and parasitism involving the exploitation of junior researchers. it did show the other-regarding forms, namely collaboration as intellectual generosity (“sharing ideas freely with others for the advancement of science as a common good”), as mentorship (“working with less experienced colleagues to encourage and support their development”) and as communication (“disseminating knowledge claims via a range of scholarly platforms”; macfarlane, 2017, p. 477). of these three, collaboration as mentorship was prevalent. in the supervisor’s words: anahí and mariela were outstanding students in my course. as informants, they revealed critical and reflexive perspectives about reading, and interest in research. we prepared a collaborative paper for a local conference and i accompanied them to deliver their first talk in a universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras164 porto, pesci, & riva university setting. after that, i invited them to join my research and they worked enthusiastically. i was never given these opportunities when i began my research career and i wished to change that. (reflection log, melina, 2014) from the informants’ perspective, this mentoring began initially with member checks. according to bishop (1999), checking with the actual informants is the ideal scenario [because] sharing our work with our informants as often as is feasible and as interactively as possible will not only enrich our cultural understanding, involve us in triangulation as process, but also allow our readers to know what we did and why it worked out that way.” (pp. 120–123) similarly, freeman et al. (2007) say that “qualitative methodologists also encourage member checks [because] the practice of checking a researcher’s interpretations and representations with participants prior to publication is valued” (pp. 26–28). member checks were continuous during the eight-year period and became “an important step for helping students navigate the scholarly conversations in our discipline” (leung et al., 2017, p. 217). it should be recalled that, at the beginning of this case study and when these member checks were first undertaken, anahí and mariela were undergraduate students, that is, totally unacquainted with current theories of foreign language reading. for instance, an example of mentoring through such scholarly conversation is precisely the debate about what reading in a foreign language involves— illustrated in the initial vignette. this debate revolves around the need to go beyond remembering textual information with accuracy (to say that somebody has comprehended a text) toward being able to interpret linguistic and cultural elements appropriately in context taking into account personal interest (porto & byram, 2017). the next excerpt illustrates the initiation into this scholarly debate: in our first approach to the texts, although we were conscious of the importance of the cultural aspects, we assumed the role of students, paying more attention to the content and its interpretation, and taking into account local lexical and linguistic aspects. without realizing it, we attached importance to the fact of remembering—or not—what we read in punctual aspects, perhaps under the influence of our own learning of english, basically mnemonic. on some occasions, we gave importance to the things that the text somehow marked as prominent, sometimes without exploring in greater depth the importance that such elements had in the light of our own interests, put at stake in our understanding of the texts, and even when we did not incorporate, later, those items into our reading hypotheses. (retrospective narrative, anahí and mariela, 2012) the text in italics indicates awareness of the excessive influence of the linguistic dimension to the detriment of the cultural during comprehension in this setting. at the same time, there is evidence (underlined) of an evolving understanding of reading that takes individual interpretations into account. it is important to mention that this evolution in conceptualization occurred as anahí and mariela visualized themselves as undergraduate students on this occasion, that is, not as proper participants of the research, which is indicated in bold. the following extract also shows this understanding of the move from the linguistic toward the cultural during interpretation, which represents a turning point in the focus of attention, a distancing from the linguistic in order to consider other aspects such as the intercultural or the pragmatic: even when we did spend some time on linguistic aspects, we no longer considered them as elements to be decoded with respect to their content, but rather we approached them on the basis of their pragmatic function, or their contribution to our understanding from this cultural perspective. (retrospective narrative, anahí and mariela, 2012) 165profile: issues teach. prof. dev., vol. 24 no. 1, jan-jun, 2022. issn 1657-0790 (printed) 2256-5760 (online). bogotá, colombia. pages 157-171 plurality of voices in reflecting upon the research process: trajectories of collaboration... this change of focus from the linguistic toward the intercultural in comprehension forms part of a current scholarly conversation in the field of foreign language reading (porto & byram, 2017) and can be seen as a form of collaboration around mentorship. collaboration became the seed of the researcher in the following excerpt, there is a shift from a vision as students toward a perspective as researchers, which arose from the methodological decision to use member checks: in this sense, it was also of some help to have the results of the research, to which we had previously accessed [at the time of member checks in 2011], at our disposal. . . . to become part of the project as subjects [informants], we were motivated by the desire to approach research, with that initial curiosity which is the mother of research work. (reflection log, anahí, 2014) in other words, it is possible to observe here a genuine and disinterested desire for research, away from the performative, instrumental, and individual drives characteristic of the measured university (macfarlane, 2017; peseta et al., 2017; sutton, 2017). this engagement with research was sparked by the invitation to join as informants in 2009–2010. it is worth remembering that by the time the data were initially collected (2009–2010), anahí and mariela were still only half through their courses of study, which means that their role as undergraduate students was predominant. furthermore, anahí and mariela developed a great capacity to reflect and think critically. this reflection and critical analysis significantly contributed to the evaluation of the methodological decisions taken at that moment from perspectives emerging from their role as research assistants. the evidence is italicized in the following extract, which is again simultaneously an example of collaboration as mentorship: in this case we were not only placed as “subjects” [informants], but rather we were incorporated to the research itself, being allowed to reflect on our own reading practices. in this sense, what contributed to a great extent were, on the one hand, the deferred interviews, which allowed us to think some concepts and reading strategies over, and on the other hand, the possibility to make comments after the activities and readings were over. [sic] they considered their participation in the 2009– 2010 project as an opportunity to reflect on their own reading practices. never during the research was it explicitly indicated that this reflection was valuable. they discovered its value on their own and the evidence is underlined. moreover, they identified the research tool which made this possible, the deferred inter views and the comments after the gathering of data. the evidence appears in italics where a chain of evaluative terms can be identified (“what contributed to a great extent,” “which allowed us to,” “the possibility to”). in sum, collaboration as mentorship, as experienced by anahí and mariela in this study when they were undergraduate students, took the form of an initiation into scholarly conversations around current conceptualizations of foreign language reading. in turn, these conversations, complemented by melina’s invitation to engage as research assistants, sparked their interest in research and, by 2011, they were research assistants in a funded research project even though they were simultaneously undergraduate students. this is very rare in this argentinian context because it breaks with the expected developmental pattern associated with the career as researcher that one can experience in this country (for example, to be a researcher the candidate must have at least an undergraduate degree and must be enrolled in a postgraduate programme). this scenario is related to the discourse of the newer researcher that we address next. universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras166 porto, pesci, & riva critical reflection and personal stories dominated the discourse of “newer researcher” during the third layer of data analysis focusing on emerging themes, it was evident that, although anahí and mariela could certainly be considered “newer researchers,” as the excerpt below illustrates, they both evaluated critically the advantages and disadvantages of one research instrument—the deferred interview—in this specific context of work and considered its suitability on the basis of the identities and roles in which they engaged along the research process. criticality and reflexivity, characteristic of the research endeavour, are evidenced for instance in the chain of expressions in bold. however, the interviews, as they were carried out, also presented a somewhat limiting aspect, at least in our case. when transcribing our own interviews, we realized that our contributions could have been much richer. we account for this drawback by referring to something that has already been said, the fact that during our first approach to the texts, after which the interviews took place, we still adopted the role of students, which somewhat placed us in an asymmetrical position with respect to the educator/interviewer. (retrospective narrative, anahí and mariela, 2012) this critical reflexivity is key in a critical discourse of “newer researcher” as opposed to the developmental one focusing on progression in pre-determined career paths (hancock et al., 2016). this consciousness and critical reflexivity permeated anahí’s and mariela’s roles as informants and research assistants, even when they were still undergraduate students as the opening vignette of this article also illustrates: this double perspective allows us to distance ourselves from our initial position as active individuals but mere informants in the research carried out by others, to situate ourselves now as researchers. (retrospective narrative, anahí and mariela, 2012) overall, the critical reflexivity shown in this section accompanies the critique of the discourse of the “early career” or “newer researcher” based on an assumed progression from relevant undergraduate study to subsequent doctoral study and postdoctoral roles [by taking] account of the critical (rather than developmental) function of he [higher education] research [and] the different contexts within which research is undertaken in the academy. (hancock et al., 2016, p. 283) in terms of context, as mentioned initially, this research portrays the lived experiences of english literacy by spanish speakers as well as their fluid and complex paths in becoming researchers in a peripheral country (canagarajah, 2002; canagarajah & said, 2011). in terms of the discourse of the “newer researcher,” anahí and mariela did not follow the linear and traditional career trajectory associated with it, that is, they began being undergraduate students and in the eight-year research process reported here, only one of them earned her degree and enrolled in a master’s programme. by contrast, this article captures their critical reflection trails, personal stories, and experiences in this process, or the “non-linear and often serendipitous ‘pathways’ that problematise the question of who is a researcher of he” (hancock et al., 2016, p. 290), showing that “the temporality and trajectories of he researchers are more complex and considerably less linear than this discourse implies” (hancock et al., 2016, p. 292). the following reflection log, written by mariela in 2015, illustrates these pathways (evidenced in italics). departing from what can be considered a limitation, her blindness opened up unthinkable expectations for personal development and engagement in research in this case. the significance of personal experience and individual stories is highlighted in bold. i have never started any course of studies thinking of my blindness as an obstacle, although it is also true that i have never wanted to study something for which 167profile: issues teach. prof. dev., vol. 24 no. 1, jan-jun, 2022. issn 1657-0790 (printed) 2256-5760 (online). bogotá, colombia. pages 157-171 plurality of voices in reflecting upon the research process: trajectories of collaboration... my blindness made me unsuitable . . . by the time i graduated as a literature teacher, i found out that something had changed in my expectations: i had started studying english, mostly on my own, and had decided to start the english translation course of studies. that was, i guess, a turning point in my life. until then my only prospects had to do with a job as a teacher or a private tutor and maybe the possibility of becoming a writer...someday. somehow, i believed that as a blind student/teacher, these were the things i would be able to do. however, my participation as an informant in this project made me look beyond those goals to consider going further. i decided to participate in the project because i was curious to know how much i could learn from the experience, and maybe that curiosity shows an incipient tendency to do research. if so, i was not aware of such a tendency in me . . . and then there was no turning back. once the process started, it just could not be stopped. these trails, personal stories, and experiences were significant in anahí’s and mariela’s growth as researchers partly because they were valued by melina, their supervisor, and supported by her concrete actions. in her words: our faculty did not have a braille printer available for blind researchers and there was only one computer with the software she needed. i wrote several letters to the authorities and contacted the relevant office to get financial support. after two years of comings and goings, we got one computer for our research group. the printer, however, was never available during the eight-year period. (reflection log, 2015) collaboration instilled a sense of agency the thematic analysis also revealed that anahí’s and mariela’s participation in this research in their roles as informants and research assistants, supported by melina as their supervisor, motivated them to adopt an active and transforming role in their teaching practices. the notions of agency and discretionary judgement, which are required in every professional activity, particularly in the case of teaching, emerged here (freidson, 2001; tatto, 2007). with the comparison between the way in which they learnt english at school and during their first years at university, and the reading experience that they participated in during these research projects as a starting point, they reconsidered significant changes in their current teaching practices (italicized in the excerpt below). they mentioned concrete initiatives that they would try to implement in their teaching practices, such as the use of two research instruments, the immediate reflection log and the visual representation, in their own teaching. we started to wonder about the possibility of transferring the reading tools that we approached during our work on the texts (immediate reflection log and visual representation) and take them into the classroom, in order to apply them in our own teaching practices. this interest emerges when comparing our own initiation into the foreign language, where what probably took priority was the approach to the texts by memorizing lexis and structures, and the decoding of words, with this reading experience, where we can observe that greater opportunities are given to approach the text from the reader’s experience and particular perspective, aiming at a holistic understanding. (retrospective narrative, anahí and mariela, 2012) all of this happened in the context of the process of their undergraduate studies at university: the context of an english teaching course at unlp. in this sense, the experience described in this article acquires profound significance for teacher education and continuous professional development, in particular through the sense of agency that it instilled in the research assistants. this sense of agency is described by brew (2010) in these terms: the capacity of individuals to inquire not only into their learning and teaching, but also into other aspects of academic practice, becomes critical to the change universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras168 porto, pesci, & riva process . . . the scholarship of academic practice is academic development because when academics take responsibility for inquiring into aspects of their practice, they learn about their practice and they learn how they may be able to change it. (p. 113) this sense of agency developed as they were able to put into practice, by means of their participation in these research projects, their theoretical knowledge about different aspects related to teaching acquired during their studies as undergraduate students. the following excerpt illustrates the scholarly conversations anahí engaged in (italicized). in my case, i believe that my education in the school contributed a lot to my change of perspective, too. partly, the development of the linguistic competence itself as we advanced in our studies allowed me to take a different approach to the texts. i think that even though decoding is not a central aspect to reading, the ability to do the decoding more fluently frees us from having to pay attention to this level in order to focus on more global aspects. in this sense, i am thinking about the roles of code breaker, meaning maker, text user, and text analyst as presented by anstey and bull (2006). the subject called “didactics” was, for me, fundamental to change my perspectives on language and the teaching of english, to understand, for example, the importance of lexis and routines in language; i also believe that didactics helped me a lot to develop a sense of agency. for all this, i think that research maintains continuity with such academic learning rather than breaking away from it, as a possibility to continue in the same direction in new roles. (reflection log, 2016) this sense of agency became real in a research context which encouraged the interconnection between research and continuous professional development through collaboration. in the supervisor’s perspective: it was satisfying to see that participation in this research project led to awareness of key theoretical notions, familiarization with new research instruments in the field of reading and the initiative to engage in pedagogic innovation in the foreign language classroom. (reflection log, melina, 2016) conclusion and implications here we have reflected upon the research process as we experienced it in two projects during an eight-year period in argentina. two of us, anahí and mariela, were initially informants and produced part of the data for analysis while later we became research assistants, guided by melina, our supervisor. the plurality of voices in this article highlights three fundamental aspects. first, it captures the recursiveness, complexity, temporality, non-linearity, and personal investment involved in becoming a he researcher, which comprised critical reflection paths and personal stories and experiences over an eight-year process. thus, the study aligns with the critique of the discourse of “newer researcher” as a linear developmental trajectory put forth by hancock et al. (2016) in the debate regarding the affordances, complexities, and challenges of the measured university of these times (also macfarlane, 2017; peseta et al., 2017; sutton, 2017). while our university does not escape global trends in performativity and accountability, this study subverts these trends and accommodates the non-linear, the personal as well as individual experience. second, the process cultivated scholarly conversations (leung et al., 2017) about current issues in our discipline such as the cultural dimension of reading in a foreign language and, in this sense, it constitutes a step forward in anahí’s and mariela’s academic socialization by “assisting the transition to academia” (matthews et al., 2014, p. 112). this article highlights the importance of “offering support for research at the level of process and creating opportunities for peer learning in a context in which peers are not discipline experts but equal participants in the [research] learning process” (blaj-ward, 2011, p. 705). the plurality of voices described here offers 169profile: issues teach. prof. dev., vol. 24 no. 1, jan-jun, 2022. issn 1657-0790 (printed) 2256-5760 (online). bogotá, colombia. pages 157-171 plurality of voices in reflecting upon the research process: trajectories of collaboration... testimony of the research paths that anahí and mariela took as research assistants, which were characterized by a combination of support and autonomy leading to selfefficacy, with the confidence that they “can successfully perform research tasks”, consequently contributing to their feeling “more interested and motivated to conduct research” (overall et al., 2011, p. 792). thirdly, the process also bears testimony to anahí’s and mariela’s emerging sense of agency and discretionary judgement as educators (elliott, 2015), contributing in this way to their professional development and to the forging of an identity as educators marked by reflection, a critical spirit, and action (elliott, 2015; scott, 2014) and situated in an argentinian setting that is simultaneously local and peripheral (canagarajah, 2002). this study has theoretical, ethical, and practical implications. theoretically, gibson et al. (2017) highlight that including students as co-enquirers in participatory research requires attention to matters of identity, agency, ownership, and labelling beyond the procedural level of carrying out a participatory investigation. the underlying conceptualizations of these notions have an impact on all research stages and processes as well as on stakeholders. together with häusler et al. (2018), they argue that “studies which aim for participants to act as co-enquirers are political by their nature” (gibson et al., 2017, p. 110). critical reflection on these dimensions is fraught with challenges and becomes essential. ethically, this study illustrates the potential and challenges of participatory research in this local setting. for example, anahí and mariela experienced shifting identities that resisted fixed labelling such as “student as participant,” “student as co-enquirer,” “research assistant,” “newer researcher.” this labelling was problematic in terms of identity issues and how to name and address all the co-authors of this article at different moments in this longitudinal study. naming and labelling stakeholders poses methodological challenges which are political by nature and challenge power issues and institutional structures (häusler et al., 2018). practically, these challenges have an impact on several dimensions, of which research reporting is an example. in this case, the drafting and redrafting of this article fostered deep questions about naming, representation, and labelling. overall, as mcginn and niemczyk (2013, p. 1) remark, there is a need for what can be called “research praxis development”: “distinctive spaces for learning and teaching research . . . for research team members to acquire, practice, and enhance research knowledge and skills through participation and collaboration with others who have different skills, interests, and background experiences” (also grundy & mcginn, 2009; mcburnie, 2011). this study illustrates how this space was enacted and how this praxis was developed in this local context, contributing to the call for more research in this area (mcginn & niemczyk, 2013; turner, 2010), underexplored in the south american region. references allwright, d., & bailey, k. 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(2002). postcoloniality and english: exploring language policy and the politics of development in tanzania. tesol quarterly, 36(3), 373–397. https://doi. org/10.2307/3588418 about the authors melina porto, ma elt (essex university), phd in sciences of education (universidad nacional de la plata, unlp) and postdoctoral degree in humanities and social sciences (universidad de buenos aires). she is a researcher at the national research council (conicet), professor at unlp, and honorary research fellow at the university of east anglia (2019–2024). anahí pesci is an efl teacher at secondary and higher education levels, graduated from unlp. mariela riva is a spanish language teacher, graduated from unlp. she has extensive experience in the fields of literature and translation. https://doi.org/10.1080/07294360.2017.1288707 https://doi.org/10.1080/07294360.2017.1288707 https://doi.org/10.1080/1360144x.2012.724421 https://doi.org/10.1080/1360144x.2012.724421 http://jrp.icaap.org/index.php/jrp/article/view/384/310 https://doi.org/10.1080/09571736.2011.621212 https://doi.org/10.1080/09571736.2011.621212 https://doi.org/10.1080/07294360.2010.535508 https://doi.org/10.1080/07294360.2017.1293909 https://doi.org/10.4324/9781315562520 https://doi.org/10.1080/07294360.2013.863844 https://doi.org/10.1080/07294360.2013.863844 https://doi.org/10.1080/07294360.2017.1289365 https://doi.org/10.1080/07294360.2017.1289365 https://doi.org/10.15730/books.11 https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1467-8373.2010.01425.x https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1467-8373.2010.01425.x https://doi.org/10.2307/3588418 https://doi.org/10.2307/3588418 language teachers’ emergency remote teaching experiences during the covid-19 confinement 121profile: issues teach. prof. dev., vol. 23 no. 2, jul-dec, 2021. issn 1657-0790 (printed) 2256-5760 (online). bogotá, colombia. pages 121-135 https://doi.org/10.15446/profile.v23n2.90195 language teachers’ emergency remote teaching experiences during the covid-19 confinement experiencias con la enseñanza remota de emergencia de docentes de lenguas durante el confinamiento por covid-19 catalina juárez-díaz1 benemérita universidad autónoma de puebla, puebla, mexico moisés perales universidad de quintana roo, chetumal, mexico this study describes 26 english language teaching faculty members’ and 32 preservice english as a foreign language teachers’ emergency remote teaching experiences and emotions. verbal data gathered through an online questionnaire with open questions were analyzed using semidirected content analysis. most faculty and all students reported negative feelings, which were connected with some faculty members’ focus on delivering content without interaction and with insufficient internet access. some students’ autonomy allowed them to overcome the first of these challenges. teachers with online education training reported better experiences. thus, universities and the state must provide more training and equipment to close the digital gap and ensure effective emergency remote teaching. keywords: covid-19 confinement, emergency remote teaching, language teachers, learning experience, teaching experience este estudio describe las experiencias y emociones de 26 profesores y 32 docentes de inglés en formación con la enseñanza remota de emergencia. los datos verbales, recolectados mediante un cuestionario con preguntas abiertas realizado en línea, se analizaron con un análisis semidirigido del contenido. la mayoría de los profesores y la totalidad de los estudiantes reportaron sentimientos negativos relacionados con la falta de interacción y con la brecha digital. la autonomía de algunos estudiantes les permitió afrontar lo primero. los profesores capacitados en educación a distancia tuvieron mejores experiencias. así, las instituciones y el estado deben proporcionar más capacitación y equipamiento para reducir la brecha digital y hacer efectiva la enseñanza remota de emergencia. palabras clave: confinamiento por covid-19, enseñanza remota de emergencia, experiencias de aprendizaje, experiencias de enseñanza, profesores de lenguas catalina juárez-díaz  https://orcid.org/0000-0002-8079-5039 · email: catalina.juarez@correo.buap.mx moisés perales  https://orcid.org/0000-0001-6279-1520 · email: mdperales@uqroo.edu.mx how to cite this article (apa, 7th ed.): juárez-díaz, c., & perales, m. (2021). language teachers’ emergency remote teaching experiences during the covid-19 confinement. profile: issues in teachers’ professional development, 23(2), 121–135. https://doi.org/10.15446/profile. v23n2.90195 this article was received on august 29, 2020 and accepted on march 24, 2021. this is an open access article distributed under the terms of the creative commons license attribution-noncommercial-noderivatives 4.0 international license. consultation is possible at https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/ https://doi.org/10.15446/profile.v23n2.90195 https://orcid.org/0000-0002-8079-5039 mailto:catalina.juarez@correo.buap.mx https://orcid.org/0000-0001-6279-1520 mailto:mdperales@uqroo.edu.mx https://doi.org/10.15446/profile.v23n2.90195 https://doi.org/10.15446/profile.v23n2.90195 https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/ universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras122 juárez-díaz & perales introduction mexican institutions began to offer distance education massively during the confinement caused by the covid-19 pandemic. this shift marked the abrupt, forceful maturation of the information and communications technology (ict) introduction process that started around 1980 in latin america (conceição, 2006). however, the digital gap is an obstacle to implementing ict-mediated instruction efficiently. in some developing countries, less than half of their population owns a computer, and wireless access is limited. accordingly, in mexico only 44.9% of the population owns a computer, 73.5% own a cellphone, and 52.9% have an internet connection. a high percentage of internet users (89%) pay for that service, and only 11% have wireless access (inegi, 2019). the digital gap is probably the reason why face-to-face education continues to be the option favored by most of the population. as of 2019, more students (3,610,744) were enrolled in face-to-face higher education institutions, and only 641,411 were registered in online schools (secretaría de educación pública, 2019). despite that fact, the vast majority of mexican institutions have moved fully online since march 2020. teachers and students cannot attend schools as they did pre-covid-19. as a result, they have to work online. since the confinement came into being, institutions closed and teachers were in need to teach virtually, so they had to move abruptly to the online modality. according to hartley (2007), the integration of ict in education should be gradual, planned, challenging, and complex; however, in some contexts, that process can be careless and unplanned. due to the health contingency, the transition to remote teaching could not wait even though some institutions were not ready to face the challenges brought about by such transition. teachers and students working in a face-to-face setting had to move their classes to the online mode abruptly and, in many cases, with little to no preparation. considering this complex reality, we conducted the study reported here and addressed the following research questions: (a) what have been english language teaching (elt) faculty members’ and preservice teachers’ experiences with emergency remote teaching (ert) during the covid-19 confinement? (b) how do teachers and students feel about working in that way? theoretical framework as stated by mcavinia (2016), “terminology describing the use of technology in education is in a constant state of flux, and this can make discussion of the field extremely difficult” (pp. 4–5). cognizant of this fact, we adopt paulsen et al.’s (2002) proposal of the features of online education: (a) physical separation of teachers and learners, (b) involvement of an educational institution that oversees the planning and execution of the process and provides constant support, and (c) the use of a computer network (the internet) both to distribute the content and to afford interaction among teachers and students. the massive shift of higher education to a fully online delivery mode in mexico and elsewhere has brought about a need for new terms to distinguish the carefully planned process of online education from the abrupt, unplanned delivery of content fully online brought about by crises like the covid-19 confinement. one such term is ert, which hodges et al. (2020) define as follows: a temporary shift of instructional delivery to an alternate delivery mode due to crisis circumstances. it involves the use of fully remote teaching solutions for instruction or education that would otherwise be delivered faceto-face or as blended or hybrid courses and that will return to that format once the crisis or emergency has abated. the primary objective in these circumstances is not to re-create a robust educational ecosystem but rather to provide temporary access to instruction and instructional supports in a manner that is quick to set up and is reliably available during an emergency or crisis. when we understand ert in this manner, we can start to divorce it from “online learning.” (emergency remote teaching section, para. 1) 123profile: issues teach. prof. dev., vol. 23 no. 2, jul-dec, 2021. issn 1657-0790 (printed) 2256-5760 (online). bogotá, colombia. pages 121-135 language teachers’ emergency remote teaching experiences during the covid-19 confinement hodges et al. (2020) highlight some features of ert, namely limited resources for faculty support and training and the paramount importance of ensuring that content is accessible to all students in an inclusive and flexible manner. for that reason, they recommend privileging asynchronous options in ert. they acknowledge that some traditional goals of online education, such as the promotion of collaboration and deep learning of content, might need to be de-emphasized in ert due to its inherent limitations. although hodges et al. do not address it explicitly, we suggest that lack of student support and training in online learning skills is an important feature of ert too. this is because students accustomed to traditional, face-to-face instruction may lack the digital literacies and autonomous learning skills necessary to learn effectively in ert. as implied by hodges et al. (2020), faculty knowledge of icts as applied to education is important for the success of ert. this principle applies to english as a foreign language (efl) teachers too who, nowadays, are expected to know how to teach with icts. this knowledge includes several dimensions such as assuming new roles, learning to manage time, developing social skills, and even adopting different teaching styles. teachers also need to be increasingly creative to teach online successfully (hampel & stickler, 2005, as cited in guichon & hauck, 2011). teaching online demands time, effort, and engagement from teachers and institutions to employ ict appropriately, reconceptualize teaching, and establish communication and interaction with students. institutions seeking to migrate to distance education through online teaching and learning should do so gradually. in the transition to the online modality, institutions should prepare and support teachers and learners both pedagogically and technologically, especially those uninterested in teaching online (comas-quinn, 2011). however, due to the unexpected and abrupt nature of the transition during the covid-19 pandemic, the experience of moving to a fully online mode was likely a new and challenging one for unprepared teachers and learners. in this study, experience is defined as something that happens to people, which involves a change in the ways they understand and relate to one another and/or to some aspect of reality (sklair & larrosa, 2009). the quality of teachers’ and learners’ experiences with ert can be shaped by a variety of factors, some of which are described below. ideally, teachers and learners working together online should create communities of inquiry. a community of inquiry (coi) is a group of people composed of teachers and students; they interact in a discursive process “to construct meaning and confirm understanding” (garrison & vaughan, 2008, p. 9). garrison et al. (1999) proposed a framework to guide teachers to create learning experiences in cois. in those experiences, teachers should consider three recursive presences: cognitive presence, teaching presence, and social presence. they are vital in learning experiences to achieve successful learning outcomes (rourke et al., 2001). the cognitive presence integrates reflection and interaction to work with information. students are exposed to it; they interchange information, conceptualize it, and apply it. this presence allows the construction of knowledge and corroboration of understanding through communication. the teaching presence is a component that ensures productivity in a coi. teachers are in charge of selecting the teaching methods and approaches, designing, facilitating, mediating, and directing the learning experience (garrison & vaughan, 2008). the social presence is the ability of teachers and students to portray themselves and interact on the basis of their identities, which sets the basis for engagement in the coi (garrison et al., 1999). it creates a fun and productive community of learning and increases encouragement and cooperation (garrison et al., 2001). it supports cognitive and affective goals. cognitive goals are reinforced because social presence abets critical thinking. the second type of goals are supported “by making the group interactions appealing, engaging, and thus intrinsically rewarding, leading to an increase universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras124 juárez-díaz & perales elsewhere but is often invited to teach courses and supervise theses there. the college offers face-to-face, online, and blended-learning degree programs. however, most of the students are enrolled in the face-to-face mode, which is also where most of the faculty teach. faculty members teaching in the online and blendedlearning programs are trained to do so. training in distance education for the rest of the faculty was not offered when the covid-19 confinement began and only began to be offered after the data for this study were collected. the sampling process was voluntary (hernándezsampieri et al., 2014). the researchers invited faculty and students of the face-to-face ba program in elt to participate in the study via an email to the college’s listserv containing a link to a google form (see below) on may 30th, 2020. due to the low number of responses, we asked the program’s coordinator to re-send the invitation. the students and faculty who answered the invitation by june 26th were included in the study. the sample consisted of 26 faculty members (five men and 21 women) and 32 students (eight men and 24 women). the teachers’ ages ranged from 37 to 58 years old, and the students were 18–26 years old. all the students were enrolled in the face-to-face program at the beginning of the pandemic. three of the teachers taught in both the face-to-face and online programs, and the remaining 23 only in the face-to-face program. in the excerpts below, the acronym pts is used to identify participating teachers, and pss to identify participating students. instruments the participants who accepted the invitation received an informed consent letter and a questionnaire via email. initially, we had planned to conduct an interview, but we discarded this idea due to time and internet access constraints on the part of the participants. the questionnaire was adapted from that used in juárez-díaz (2020). this questionnaire was designed to investigate efl learning experiences at the college level. it was in academic, social, and institutional integration and resulting in increased persistence and course completion” (tinto, 1987, as cited in rourke et al., 2001, p. 52). the framework by garrison et al. (1999) should guide teachers to include the three vital presences necessary to obtain successful learning outcomes. shield, lamy, and goodfellow (1984, as cited in shield et al., 2001, p. 79) propose that there are two kinds of tutors in online environments: the cognitive tutor and the social tutor. the cognitive tutor pays attention to knowledge construction, and the social tutor focuses more on interaction. the interaction and roles of teachers depend on the type of tutor they are at any given time. the cognitive tutor’s role is that of an observer and content expert. the roles of the social tutor are those of a confidant trying to encourage students’ autonomy, a counselor who guides students through the problems they experience while working online, and a human being interacting with students at any time (hauck & haezewindth, 1999, as cited in shield et al., 2001). the roles and types of tutor influence the dynamics of the learning environment. as suggested by hodges et al. (2020), these ideal features of online education (the creation of cois, an adequate balance among the types of presence and tutor) may not be present in ert due to its inherent limitations. method this qualitative content analysis study examined teachers’ and students’ experiences while working online during the pandemic confinement. we chose a qualitative research approach because it allows for the study of “the meaning of people’s lives, under real-world conditions” (yin, 2011, p. 29). context and participants the study was conducted in the college of modern languages (cml) of a large public university in central mexico. the first author works in this college and is very familiar with the context. the second author works 125profile: issues teach. prof. dev., vol. 23 no. 2, jul-dec, 2021. issn 1657-0790 (printed) 2256-5760 (online). bogotá, colombia. pages 121-135 language teachers’ emergency remote teaching experiences during the covid-19 confinement reviewed and validated by a panel of four mexican and one bolivian university professors with expertise and recognition in education and/or efl, including this study’s second author. it includes questions about learning experiences as well as feelings, thoughts, and actions arising from the experiences. the wording of the questionnaire was changed slightly to focus on online learning and, for faculty participants, teaching. the two resulting questionnaires (one for teachers and one for students, see appendix) were sent to the participants as google forms in spanish. the participants answered the questionnaire in spanish, thus, the excerpts in the results section are translations. procedures after the participants’ responses were received, the first author read them to make sure that they were clear and informative. she determined that two participating teachers had not provided enough information or the information they provided was not clear enough. then, she contacted these participants by phone and asked them to elaborate on their answers. while speaking with them, she typed on the microsoft word files containing their written answers to capture the participants’ new information. the participants’ responses were analyzed using semidirected qualitative content analysis (hsieh & shannon, 2005). the first author read the participants’ answers without initially looking for the presence of any theoretical constructs. as categories began to emerge from similarities and differences across different responses (hernández-sampieri et al., 2014), the first author noticed that many of them could be captured by existing constructs such as the two types of tutors or the three types of presence. she then began to reduce and label categories accordingly, while keeping the process open for other categories not present in existing frameworks. the resulting coding was audited by the second author, who read the transcripts and verified the applicability and consistency of the codes. the principle of saturation was reached so that only 32 out of 43 responses were considered for the study (álvarezgayou, 2003). results and discussion teachers’ and students’ online experiences the data discussed below paint a picture of complex decision-making on the part of the teachers in the face of competing needs and no training for both teachers and students. this had a negative impact on students’ and teachers’ experiences and emotions, but a few were able to thrive thanks to their autonomous learning skills. confronted with the reality of ert and the absence of clear institutional policies and support, the unexperienced teachers made an effort to learn how to teach remotely on their own. most of the participants worked with google classroom, schoology, whatsapp, and email to send materials, assign tasks, and store students’ products. they had different reasons for using those platforms. among those were ease of use and financial accessibility for themselves and for students who did not own a computer and/or did not have access to the internet. below are excerpts from the participants’ answers that show their choices and the rationale behind them: i used schoology because i needed a platform to organize my courses. (pt5) i chose to work with edmodo and assigned activities weekly. i decided not to work through video conferences because there were students who told me that they did not have the means or financial resources to be connected. (pt3) i use asynchronous materials presentations, explanations, online resources…i used them because not all students have internet at home or at their workplace, so they could access the materials whenever they managed to have an internet connection. (pt12) universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras126 juárez-díaz & perales i use whatsapp because, when users refill their data plans, they get free social networks, and this works for almost the whole student population. (pt1) teachers used those platforms to work online; they allowed teachers to send materials and tasks. they received, stored, and checked students’ tasks. they took advantage of the possibility to work synchronously or asynchronously according to their and the students’ conditions and limitations (conceição, 2006). in this way, teachers could give a chance to students to work when they could. the decision to promote learning through those tools suggests that teachers became cognitive tutors since they acted as content experts and focused on the construction of knowledge by concerning themselves with content delivery (shield, lamy, & goodfellow, 1984, as cited in shield et al., 2001). this is in alignment with extant recommendations for ert in terms of prioritizing equal access to content (hodges et al., 2020). at the same time, the participants’ focus on making material available and gathering students’ products showed their lack of experience with online education. according to conrad (2004) inexperienced online teachers tend to become content-oriented. this happened to most of our teacher participants as they focused on providing enough material to the learners, except those with training in online education. in other words, the type of interaction promoted by their online teaching was mainly student-material. learner–learner and teacher– learner interaction, which is widely recommended for online education (cundell & sheepy, 2018), tended not to occur due to the limitations inherent to ert. using the platforms to distribute and store content seemed appropriate to many teachers as they thought that this allowed them to support students who did not have technological tools and/or had rigid work schedules. although this is a good ert practice per hodges et al. (2020), many students found it unhelpful. most students reported that most teachers only provided content and assigned homework without giving opportunities to ask questions. thus, 54.5% reported disliking this way of teaching because they felt that they were on their own and did not learn as much as in face-to-face classes. then, the absence of interaction and feedback did not fit these students’ perceived needs. this affected them negatively, leaving them with questions and with the experience of not having learned: i have an endless number of assignments, i felt stressed out because i did not understand, and i just delivered things. i did not learn the right way. (ps10) teachers just overwhelmed us with assignments and personally, i didn’t learn anything. (ps11) i feel like i’m not learning what i should learn. many teachers only send homework and do not give any explanation as they used to do in face-to-face classes, and many times this is a bit complicated and confusing. (ps13) i don’t understand the classes, the teachers only send activities. (ps14) the teachers assign a lot of homework and don’t teach anything. (ps17) some teachers only sent the material and we didn’t have any support or comments in order to understand the topics accurately. (ps18) this result is similar to allen et al.’s (2002) finding that students learn less in online courses because such courses involve less teacher–student interaction than face-to-face classrooms do. according to rourke et al. (2001), it is necessary to integrate the three presences mentioned above in the learning experiences to reach the learning goals. students’ experiences suggest that teachers mostly performed the teacher presence in the sense that they organized the content and activities in the course. however, students perceived that teachers left aside the cognitive presence, which helps to verify understanding and develop knowledge (garrison & vaughan, 2008). as for the type of tutor, students’ reports that teachers mostly focused on content rather than interacting meaningfully with students or promoting meaningful student–student interaction dovetail with 127profile: issues teach. prof. dev., vol. 23 no. 2, jul-dec, 2021. issn 1657-0790 (printed) 2256-5760 (online). bogotá, colombia. pages 121-135 language teachers’ emergency remote teaching experiences during the covid-19 confinement teachers’ own reports in suggesting that teachers were primarily cognitive tutors. nevertheless, the focus on content was probably adequate in light of the recommended emphasis on content accessibility in ert, its intrinsic limitations, and the digital gap in mexico. these students’ and teachers’ comments also show that the social presence was absent in the experience of learning and teaching online during the pandemic. the social presence is the basis for setting communication and motivating students to learn (tinto, 1987, as cited in rourke et al., 2001). the social presence creates a pleasant and productive community of learning. it increases encouragement and cooperation to learn (garrison et al., 2001). as teachers neglected this presence due to the training limitations inherent to ert, the learning outcomes were affected. this is an undesirable but potentially unavoidable feature of ert, particularly at its early stages. in the context of planned online education, online teachers must fulfill three main responsibilities: organizing the course (e.g., organizing content, managing time), monitoring students’ understandings while promoting collaboration and reflection, and diagnosing learners’ needs (garrison & anderson, 2003). nevertheless, the experiences reported above by teachers and learners show that the teachers only took one responsibility out of the three they have as online tutors, which was organizing the course. they did not monitor students’ understandings or promote collaboration and reflection. furthermore, teachers did not accomplish their third responsibility, which was to diagnose learners’ needs (garrison & anderson, 2003). these shortcomings are to be expected in ert. they were compounded by the fact that, at first, the university did not implement any measures to diagnose learners’ digital literacy and autonomous learning needs to better prepare them for an ert situation. the students’ comments above suggest that those specific students (ps10, ps11, ps14, ps17, ps18) and others who made similar comments (ps7, ps9, ps12, ps23, ps26, and ps30) are somewhat dependent on teachers rather than autonomous. it seems that they make teachers responsible for their learning outcomes and prefer to receive information passively as, unlike other students, they did not report taking an active role in their learning. this finding matches that in mali (2017). ert thus triggered an unfavorable learning experience in students accustomed to working in teacher-centered contexts. however, not all students felt helpless in the face of minimal teacher support. a minority (21.8%)— exemplified by ps16, ps19, and ps24—overcame their learning difficulties by taking control of their learning process. once they realized that interaction with teachers would be minimal or non-existent, they acted to learn and understand the topics by themselves. according to grow (1991, as cited in narváez-rivero & pradamendoza, 2005), self-directed students can learn with or without the help of an expert and move independently in the learning process. they plan, organize, carry out, and evaluate their learning. thus, a few students took the responsibility of their learning outcomes, which is an essential characteristic of self-directed learning (garrison, 1997). here are their reported experiences: i sought more information on my own in order to learn. (ps16) i learned by myself because online classes didn’t work for me. (ps19) i am autonomous and due to the lack of support from some teachers, i had to search more information on my own. (ps24) it was advantageous for these students to have selfdirected their learning processes. this allowed them to experience learning despite the absence of the teacher presence and the social presence. they actively worked on their learning process and felt that they had learned. in other words, they became autonomous learners. similarly, other studies have found that online learning helped students become autonomous (çelebi et al., 2016; herrera-díaz, 2012; mali, 2017). universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras128 juárez-díaz & perales although most of the teacher participants (54%) focused on providing material and assignments, a large minority (46%) used platforms that allowed them to interact, provide feedback and explanations synchronously, such as zoom or skype. they used these platforms to communicate with their students and monitor students’ understanding: we connect via zoom, we practice and upload work in a virtual room. i consider it the best way to have “faceto-face” explanations. (pt17) i used zoom for interaction…whatsapp to have communication and build trust and motivation. (pt20) i use whatsapp, mail, skype, or zoom. it has been the most practical way i have found to communicate and guide content work. (pt21) the use of platforms where virtual sessions could take place generated positive learning experiences in students. in contrast to those students whose teachers did not interact with them online, students whose teachers held virtual classes reported more positive experiences. they found it convenient to have video conferences to clear out questions, receive explanations, and interact with their teachers. such interactions generated a positive learning experience. this finding is similar to the one obtained in muñoz-marín and gonzález-moncada (2010), who found that students’ learning experience was positive when teachers guided them with technology use, provided feedback and individualized attention. below are some students’ comments in this regard: i like to have classes with zoom because it has helped me to get answers for my questions. (ps1) the online classes or videos with the teachers explaining helped me to learn. (ps4) i learnt with the online classes, where i can interact with my teachers. (ps12) i liked the online classes; they are easy to understand as they are similar to being in a classroom. (ps22) i learned with the classes by video calls because the topics were explained to clarify the topics. (ps30) in those experiences, the social, cognitive, and teacher presence were involved. teachers made students feel as if they were working face-to-face with their teachers, and that helped them learn. rourke et al. (2001) state that these three types of presences are vital for learning to occur. besides, the participants found videoconferences useful to interact with teachers, clarify questions, address misunderstandings, and have a learning experience similar to that of a traditional classroom. candarli and yuksel (2012) obtained a similar result: students work better with platforms that allow them to work alongside their teachers to construct knowledge. despite these positive student experiences, teachers reported that access remained a problem for other students. teachers said that some students missed the online classes because they did not have a computer or internet access to work virtually. the participating teachers volunteered the following comments: not all students have access to the platform or the internet. (pt2) not all students connect to the videocalls; the internet keeps malfunctioning. (pt4) the lack of equipment affects students, they do not have computers to carry out activities remotely. some students live in communities where access to the internet is spotty. (pt7) it is not surprising that students missed online classes in light of the fact that computer ownership and internet access remain limited in mexico (inegi, 2019). this issue confronted not only the students, but also at least one teacher: “not all of us have easy access to a computer or the internet. i am contributing not only my effort to cover the contents, but also my resources, my computer, my connection” (pt12). teachers also mentioned that some students who took the virtual classes did not engage in them; their participation was low and they cheated on the tasks: some students only entered the session, but they did not participate. (pt10) 129profile: issues teach. prof. dev., vol. 23 no. 2, jul-dec, 2021. issn 1657-0790 (printed) 2256-5760 (online). bogotá, colombia. pages 121-135 language teachers’ emergency remote teaching experiences during the covid-19 confinement there are some students who registered as members of the platform, but they do not do any of the activities that i request. (pt13) i noticed that students cheated on the tasks, they asked some relatives or friends to do their homework, they handed in perfect tasks and in a zoom meeting where we talked about the exercise experiences, they couldn’t say their name or good morning in english. (pt22) i scheduled my classes at 7 in the morning and 50% of the students did not log in. (pt11) in online education, one of the teachers’ duties is to encourage students to be involved and engaged in the sessions. de los arcos and arnedillo-sánchez (2006, as cited in rosell-aguilar, 2007) suggest that online teachers employ teaching strategies to increase students’ attention and interaction. some researchers recommend telling students directly and precisely what teachers expect from them regarding engagement in discussions, attendance, and responsibilities in the learning process (sharpe et al., 2006). in this way, students might have a clearer idea of teachers’ expectations about their behavior, functions, and roles in the online learning experience. according to comas-quinn (2011), online teachers must reconceptualize their and students’ roles and how they construct knowledge through online interaction. however, the rushed transition and the limited resources and support typical of ert make it unrealistic to hold teachers to such high standards. in addition, the digital gap might make student participation impossible regardless of the strategies that teachers deploy. this problem demands an educational policy response at a higher level in order to train teachers to teach online in ert circumstances and to reduce the digital gap. the next section turns attention to the participants’ feelings. feelings toward online teaching-learning most teachers (56%) reported that they did not like to work online. they preferred face-to-face classes whereas 42.30% of the teachers expressed that they like to work online. teachers had both positive and negative feelings about online teaching-learning. some teachers felt uncomfortable working online because of the problems they encountered in the teaching experiences. teachers had to work harder and for longer hours than they did in face-to-face classes before the confinement. in other studies, teachers experienced the same problems related to increased work time and workload (cladellas & castelló, 2011; comas-quinn, 2011; weasenforth, 2001). the time demand and work overload generated negative emotional states such as feeling overwhelmed, annoyed, stressed out, tired, and frustrated. according to some researchers, negative feelings affect teachers’ performance and health. work overload causes them anxiety and stress and their general welfare is affected negatively (houlihan et al., 2009). the participating teachers said: teaching online demands more time to prepare classes and follow up with each student in a personalized way, especially when there are large groups. (pt3) i am overwhelmed with work. it is very demanding to work online. (pt10) i am tired because the time i spend teaching has tripled. (pt13) i feel stressed by everything, my students, my children, my house, the situation worldwide. (pt17) it is crucial to prevent negative feelings because they cause mental and physical disturbances that affect teachers’ performance. stress, nervousness, anxiety, and anger may have severe or chaotic consequences not only at work but outside work. those feelings can lead to poor decision-making (cladellas & castelló 2011). by contrast, online teaching generated positive feelings in some participants such as satisfaction when teachers could develop new teaching strategies, learn about ict, and apply their knowledge to ert. this was true of the three experienced teachers but also of a few more. the former ones were comfortable because they universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras130 juárez-díaz & perales already had online education training and experience; the latter adapted to the new way of working. they felt challenged to look for ways to continue working and being in touch with their students. when they witnessed students’ academic development, they felt satisfied and happy: i feel satisfied, i think it was a beautiful experience where i learned new ways to teach. (pt26) i feel comfortable, it is in fact a process that i have already practiced for 6 years. (pt14) unlike the teachers, who had more varied feelings on both the positive and the negative side, all participating students reported that the experience of learning online during the confinement triggered negative feelings in them. this was true even for those who felt that they had learned and interacted with teachers. the students felt stressed out, frustrated, overwhelmed, sad, unsatisfied, confused, anxious, bored, empty, and pressured. they attributed those feelings to the number of assignments, the lack of computer and/or internet access, boring classes, and lack of understanding and learning. similarly, online learning has been found to provoke negative feelings such as depression, anxiety, and disinterest in non-ert contexts (whitman et al., 1984). it was to be expected that such negative feelings should increase in an ert situation considering the uncertainties in education and life at large brought about by the pandemic (hodges et al., 2020). the student participants expressed the following: i feel frustrated, confused, overwhelmed, unmotivated because in online classes i am not learning effectively and it only generates excessive physical and mental fatigue. (ps2) i am stressed out about the homework and worried about learning because online classes don’t work, and we weren’t ready for this. (ps19) i feel stressed out because sometimes the technical failures of the internet interrupt my online classes and i also feel that this tool has not been enough for my learning. (ps22) students felt stressed out from working online because they were not prepared for ert, lacked autonomous learning skills and, in some cases, had inadequate ict resources. these difficulties resulted in an increased cognitive and emotional burden as most students felt unable and were untrained to cope with the demands of ert. when students feel stressed out, they can also feel disempowered. in turn, this might affect their performance, cognition, decision-making, and attention (whitman et al., 1984). teachers’ reports of academic disengagement and difficulties with content appear to confirm these negative effects. however, as discussed above, some students met the challenges of ert, overcame stress and felt an increased sense of competency. conclusions the experiences of most teachers with ert during the confinement revolved around providing content and assignments and performing the teaching presence as cognitive tutors (i.e., focusing on knowledge via content delivery), but without the social presence or the reflective, metacognitive component of the cognitive presence. most teachers refrained from using video calls or other synchronous types of communication out of a desire not to exclude those students with limited equipment or internet access. accordingly, the experiences of most students focused on completing and submitting assignments, without opportunities to ask questions and clarify misunderstandings. these students reported that they did not learn. nevertheless, a few students experienced this absence of cognitive presence as an opportunity to take command of their own learning by looking for and processing information on their own. however, a minority of teachers (including those with previous online teaching experience) used video calls and synchronous communication, which allowed them to perform the cognitive and social presences and to act as social tutors. the students of this second type of teacher report that learning occurred. nevertheless, 131profile: issues teach. prof. dev., vol. 23 no. 2, jul-dec, 2021. issn 1657-0790 (printed) 2256-5760 (online). bogotá, colombia. pages 121-135 language teachers’ emergency remote teaching experiences during the covid-19 confinement these teachers also reported that some students were excluded, did not participate at all, or cheated on their assignments. exclusion and lack of engagement might have been caused by the digital gap. as such, these data speak of a trade-off between exploiting interactive technologies like video calls and inclusion. in other words, the concern of the first group of teachers that using data-intensive tools like video calls would exclude some students appears to have been validated by the second group’s reports of disappearing and/or disengaged students. this resonates strongly with hodges et al.’s (2020) recommendations to work asynchronously and prioritize equitable access to content in ert over other goals such as promoting collaboration and deep content learning. regarding feelings, the second group of teachers reported satisfaction from professional growth and from witnessing student learning. however, the digital gap, students’ attitudes, and increased work hours and workload caused the online teaching experience to trigger negative feelings. from the students’ standpoint, the online learning experience triggered many negative feelings. that finding is similar to the one obtained in herrera-díaz (2012), whose participants had negative feelings while working online and were in favor of face-to-face classes. most teachers and students experienced difficulties with ert during the pandemic. many teachers worked asynchronously by providing content and assignments. while this is recommended practice in ert (hodges et al., 2020), it was not satisfactory to most students. during normal online education, teachers must promote appropriate learning experiences with the cognitive, teaching, and social presences that are necessary for the learning cycle to occur. additionally, both teachers and institutions must promote learner autonomy in the context of online education. however, due to insufficient training and the abrupt nature of the shift to ert, most teachers used icts in content-focused ways and most students were not able to learn autonomously. all of this had a negative impact on learning outcomes. because such negative effects on learning are intrinsic to ert, hodges et al. (2020) recommend adjusting grading methods to reflect that reality. unfortunately, the grading practices at cml were not adjusted to the circumstances of ert, which probably contributed to the stress and anxiety that teachers and students felt while working online. therefore, a recommendation for institutions preparing for ert is to provide not only technical support but also emotional support. in addition to adjusting grading practices, such support can include stress management strategies. managing stress positively helps students learn. on the contrary, when stress is not coped with successfully, it affects students’ and teachers’ decision-making and general welfare. therefore, stress management should be a component of institutional support during ert. another implication of this study is that, when preparing for ert, training needs to be provided not only to teachers but also to students. this training should address not only technological skills but also autonomous learning skills. as discussed above, this type of skills appears to have helped some student to have positive learning experiences despite the asynchronous, non-interactive nature of the teaching they were exposed to at cml. the digital gap (inegi, 2019) made inclusion in the online modality difficult as evidenced by the fact that not all students attended virtual sessions or participated in them actively. this digital gap, along with insufficient teacher preparation in online teaching and student preparation in autonomous learning indicates that mexican institutions such as the one where this study was conducted were not ready to implement ert in an effective and inclusive manner. these shortcomings challenge public institutions and the state itself to take action to reduce the digital gap in mexican higher education. universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras132 juárez-díaz & perales because ert events may happen again in the future due to the increased likelihood of extreme climate events (diffenbaugh et al., 2017) and even new pandemics (yamey et al., 2017), it is important for educational institutions to minimize harmful impacts on learning by addressing critical ert areas. this study has identified four such areas: the digital gap, teacher training, student training in both ict use and autonomous learning, and stress management support. at the time of writing this manuscript and after the initial shock of moving to ert abruptly, cml and other institutions have begun to provide ert support. the nature and impact of such support must be investigated by future studies. conducting such studies would be important to increase the field’s knowledge of ways that ert support can contribute to the resilience of efl educational systems in the face of catastrophic events. while there are published studies of educational resilience following earthquakes (kinchin, 2019), we are not aware of any studies that have addressed ert as part of efl educational systems’ resilience and pandemic preparedness. pandemic preparedness in particular appears to have been addressed primarily from the perspective of health systems (yamey et al., 2017). however, as the current covid-19 pandemic has shown, educational systems are also critical for the functioning of societies. therefore, their pandemic preparedness and resilience must be theorized and investigated in order to maximize opportunities for meaningful learning to occur in the context of ert events. references allen, m., bourhis, j., burrell, n., & mabry, e. 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(2011). qualitative research from start to finish (1st ed.). the guilford press. about the authors catalina juárez-díaz holds a ba in modern languages (english). she is a lecturer in the college of modern languages of the benemérita universidad autónoma de puebla, mexico. she has published papers on learning styles, learning experiences, and foreign language learning. she is an official candidate for membership within mexico’s national research system. moisés perales holds a phd in english and education from the university of michigan, usa. he is a full-time associate professor of language and education at universidad de quintana roo, mexico. he is an appointed member of mexico’s national research system and of the editorial and review boards of several journals. https://bit.ly/3o6susi https://bit.ly/3o9pws6 https://files.eric.ed.gov/fulltext/ed246832.pdf https://doi.org/10.1016/s2214-109x(17)30203-6 https://doi.org/10.1016/s2214-109x(17)30203-6 135profile: issues teach. prof. dev., vol. 23 no. 2, jul-dec, 2021. issn 1657-0790 (printed) 2256-5760 (online). bogotá, colombia. pages 121-135 language teachers’ emergency remote teaching experiences during the covid-19 confinement appendix: the two questionnaires note. the original language of the questionnaires was spanish. the preservice teachers’ questionnaire: 1. as a student, how do you feel during this confinement period? 2. why do you think you feel this way? 3. do you like how your teachers are working during this confinement period in your different courses? why? 4. how do the teachers of your different subjects teach their classes during this confinement period? 5. do you reflect on what you learned in your different subjects during this confinement period? yes or no? why? 6. what has helped you the most to learn during this confinement period? 7. what has made it more difficult to learn during this confinement period? 8. what else can you say about your learning experience during this confinement period? the faculty questionnaire: 1. how do you teach the content of the courses to your students during this confinement period? 2. how do you feel about the way you are working during this confinement period? 3. why are you working the way you mentioned in question 1? 4. how are your classes during this confinement period? 5. do you think that your students have learned in your different courses? why? 6. have you had any favorable teaching experiences during this confinement period? 7. as a teacher, what has been the best thing you have experienced in the different courses you teach? 8. have you had any unfavorable teaching experiences during this confinement period? 9. as a teacher, what has been the worst thing you have experienced in the different courses you teach? 10. what other aspect do you consider relevant to talk about regarding your teaching experience during this confinement period? english learning and teaching at a polytechnic university in mexico: towards bilingual education? 185profile: issues teach. prof. dev., vol. 24 no. 2, jul-dec, 2022. issn 1657-0790 (printed) 2256-5760 (online). bogotá, colombia. pages 185-199 https://doi.org/10.15446/profile.v24n2.97530 english learning and teaching at a polytechnic university in mexico: towards bilingual education? enseñanza y aprendizaje del inglés en una universidad politécnica en méxico: ¿hacia la educación bilingüe? diana leslie castillo-nava1 irasema mora-pablo universidad de guanajuato, guanajuato, mexico this study aims to examine the implementation of the sustainable international bilingual model at a polytechnic university in central mexico. drawing upon qualitative research, this instrumental case study explores teachers’, students’, and coordinators’ experiences with the aforementioned model. data were gathered through semistructured interviews. results show that participants consider the university has started a positive change, focusing on improving teachers’ and students’ linguistic abilities in english. however, they also acknowledge some challenges, such as a lack of teachers’ training, the context of the university, and teachers’ knowledge of the language. the data suggest that actions need to be taken to avoid the same poor results the national english programs in mexico have had over the past years. keywords: bilingual education, english teaching, teacher training, university education este estudio examina la implementación del modelo bilingüe internacional sustentable en una universidad politécnica del centro de méxico. sobre la base de la investigación cualitativa, este estudio de caso instrumental explora las experiencias de profesores, estudiantes y coordinadores con el modelo. los datos se recabaron mediante entrevistas semiestructuradas. los resultados muestran que los participantes consideran que la universidad ha empezado un cambio positivo, enfocado en mejorar las habilidades lingüísticas de los profesores y estudiantes. sin embargo, también reconocen algunos retos, como la falta de capacitación de profesores, el contexto universitario y el conocimiento de los maestros sobre el idioma. los datos sugieren que se requieren acciones para evitar los pobres resultados que los programas nacionales de inglés en méxico han obtenido en los últimos años. palabras clave: capacitación de profesores, educación bilingüe, educación universitaria, enseñanza del inglés diana leslie castillo-nava  https://orcid.org/0000-0002-3959-7874 · email: dl.castillonava@ugto.mx irasema mora-pablo  https://orcid.org/0000-0001-8532-5522 · email: imora@ugto.mx this article is based on the master’s thesis completed by castillo-nava (2022). how to cite this article (apa, 7th ed.): castillo-nava, d. l., & mora-pablo, i. (2022). english learning and teaching at a polytechnic university in mexico: towards bilingual education? profile: issues in teachers’ professional development, 24(2), 185–199. https://doi.org/10.15446/ profile.v24n2.97530 this article was received on july 29, 2021 and accepted on may 8, 2022. this is an open access article distributed under the terms of the creative commons license attribution-noncommercial-noderivatives 4.0 international license. consultation is possible at https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/ https://doi.org/10.15446/profile.v24n2.97530 https://orcid.org/0000-0002-3959-7874 mailto:dl.castillonava@ugto.mx https://orcid.org/0000-0001-8532-5522 mailto:imora@ugto.mx https://doi.org/10.15446/profile.v24n2.97530 https://doi.org/10.15446/profile.v24n2.97530 https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/ universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras186 castillo-nava & mora-pablo introduction since 1926, the introduction of english into mexican public schools has experienced changes (ramírez-romero & sayer, 2016). many state and national programs have tried to reinforce english language teaching (elt) in public schools to help students improve their performance in the language (petrón, 2009). these english programs have focused their attention on the elementary and secondary levels of education in mexico. consequently, english has become a required subject in the curriculum of mexican schools. at the tertiary level, however, there are no national guidelines, and each university implements its own english program (despagne, 2010). this has also been the case in polytechnic and technological universities. in 2012, the “sustainable international bilingual model” (bilingüe internacional sustentable, or bis, in spanish) was created as a response to the need for internationalization and mobility of mexican university students (secretaría de educación pública [sep], 2016b). the bis model intends to increase the number of people who can speak a second language (l2), especially english, and therefore, 29 polytechnic and technological universities have adopted english as a medium of instruction (emi) since 2012 (sibaja, 2019). as a result, more teachers and students within the country are in contact with bilingual education where subjects such as mathematics, history, and chemistry, for instance, are taught through english (garcía, 2009). existing research in mexico (palomares-lara et al., 2017; sibaja, 2019) shows that the implementation of emi in polytechnic and technological institutions is perceived as a tool that can help faculty and students develop skills in english. examining emi in mexico will likely allow for an understanding of the impact it has on teachers’ and students’ personal and professional lives. therefore, this study delves into the implementation of the bis model in one public university in central mexico, and the research questions that guided this inquiry were: • rq1: what are the perceptions of english teachers, emi teachers, students, and coordinators regarding the implementation of emi at a polytechnic university in central mexico? • rq2: how is emi being implemented in the classroom according to the participants? literature review to gain an insight into what has been done in the area of elt in mexico and the need to look at the bis model, we will start by providing a historical overview of elt in mexico. then, we will explain the difference between traditional language education programs, bilingual education, and emi programs. finally, we will describe the bis model in mexico. english language teaching in mexico: trends and outcomes in mexico, english has been taught in secondary and high schools since 1926 (calderón, 2015). until the 1980s, many learners only had their first contact with the language when they started secondary education. this late exposure resulted in students’ low performance in the subject. in 1994, mexico became a member of the north american free trade agreement (nafta), which prompted new economical demands. the proficiency in english was perceived as pivotal for the required technological, economic, and industrial advances; thus, the mexican government saw the urgency of introducing english in the elementary education curriculum. from then on, diverse national english programs have been issued, especially at elementary education, with the aim of tackling the challenges posed by the teaching of english in mexico (see figure 1). 187profile: issues teach. prof. dev., vol. 24 no. 2, jul-dec, 2022. issn 1657-0790 (printed) 2256-5760 (online). bogotá, colombia. pages 185-199 english learning and teaching at a polytechnic university in mexico: towards bilingual education? we can divide the programs into two major periods: the first one leaning more towards the participation of some states, and the second one with a national project of making english accessible to the majority of the students. the first programs (the english in primary school project, state programs, and enciclomedia) had the main characteristic that they were operated differently by each state (sep, 2006). this represented challenges not only in the teaching practices and integration of these programs, but also in the temporary recruitment and status of the teachers, lack of an official curriculum and teacher training, unavailability of material, and, in general, “lack of logistics to support the development [of these programs] across the country” (trejo, 2020, p. 12). the second era of the english programs in mexico started in 2007. according to the sep (2015), the main objective was to help students attain a b1 level of english by the time they concluded secondary school. this level is described in the common european framework of reference for languages (cefr) as an intermediate level in which learners are independent users of the language, meaning that they can express their ideas and participate in conversations in a more natural way without being assisted by a teacher (council of europe, 2020). the national english program for basic education (pnieb, in spanish), the s246 program to strengthen the quality of basic education, and the national english program (proni, in spanish), aimed to strengthen english teaching and learning in public primary schools (sep, 2016a). however, each program was a hybrid arising from crossing the previous one “without making explicit the relationship with either of them or the reason for the creation of a new program” (ramírez-romero & sayer, 2016, p. 9). nevertheless, all these programs have failed in improving the english proficiency of learners, as evidenced by the poor results they have obtained in national tests, and even though the outcomes of the national programs have been questioned, the increased importance of english has motivated institutions, from elementary to university levels, to introduce it into the curriculum. in an effort to help mexican students acquire the language, alternative bilingual programs have emerged across the country, especially at the university level. but, in order to understand their importance, we now define traditional education programs, bilingual education, and emi programs. from traditional language education programs to english as a medium of instruction programs traditional language education programs differ from bilingual education. garcía (2009) suggests that the realization of such divergence may be difficult due figure 1. development of english programs in mexico 1926 english as a mandatory subject in middle and high schools 2006-2011 english enciclomedia 2013-2016 the s246 program to strengthen the quality if basic education 1993-2010 the english in primary school project and state programs note. developed by the authors based on the information from the english national programs. 2007-2013 national english program for basic education (pnieb) 2016-present the national english program (proni) universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras188 castillo-nava & mora-pablo to the types of programs implemented by schools. she points out that: for the most part, these traditional second or foreignlanguage programs teach the language as a subject, whereas bilingual education programs use the language as a medium of instruction; that is, bilingual education programs teach content through an additional language other than the children’s home language. (p. 17) in other words, in traditional language classrooms, the focus is on english to be understood and used— for instance, students in elementary schools learning how and when to use the verb “be.” conversely, in bilingual education programs, students learn mathematics, physics, history, among other subjects, in english. bilingual education, as bilingualism, is not only about two languages. it is a complex phenomenon that specifies “how the language is used in the classroom and at home, or the purposes that it serves” (lozano, 2018, p. 19). english, in particular, has become the lingua franca around the world, and hence, it is the main language taught as a second or foreign language. as joya and cerón (2013) assert, “in latin america, young professionals have oriented their training in a second language exclusively to english as a strategy to improve their job opportunities by enhancing their cvs and professional development” (p. 232). in order to enhance these opportunities, “several governments in the region are developing and implementing policies aimed at increasing english competence among its citizens, and especially among primary and secondary school students” (gonzález & llurda, 2016, p. 90). from a globalized perspective, becoming competitive involves the exchange and interchange of information, and the use of a second language as a mandatory fact. the bilingual policy has defined bilingualism as a priority in education for the generation of people who are going to be able to gain access to the labor market. (joya & cerón, 2013, p. 234) this vision continues to preserve the view that true bilingualism is “only that which includes access to the language of an economic empire” (gonzález & llurda, 2016, p. 90), what de mejía (2002) calls “elite bilingualism.” in recent years, a series of emi programs have emerged which place great emphasis on the importance of learning english as part of a university degree. in these programs, students are “encouraged to develop their linguistic, communicative, academic, and professional competencies without the need to travel to those countries whose language they are studying” (madrid & julius, 2020a, p. 26). studies focusing on analyzing the academic performance of students in emi programs are still scarce (dafouz & camacho-miñano, 2016; escobarurmeneta & arnau-sabatés, 2018; griva & chostelidou, 2011; yang, 2015). in spanish speaking countries, there have been a few studies that have analyzed how students perceive emi programs and their level of satisfaction. for example, madrid and julius (2020a) examined the academic performance of bilingual and non-bilingual students pursuing a primary school teaching degree and their level of satisfaction with the degree program. results showed no significant differences between the two groups in eight subjects; differences in favor of the non-bilingual group were present in two subjects: mathematics and learning disabilities. in another study, madrid and julius (2020b) aimed to research the students’ level of satisfaction with their program. they examined the profile of spanish university students in bilingual degree programs that employ emi by utilizing the bilingual section of the teaching degree course at universidad de granada (spain) as a sample. their results showed that most students (70%) were satisfied with the program offered, but they also detected some deficiencies, which led to various suggestions as to how university bilingual programs might be improved. in the following section, we will describe the bis model in mexico, which emerges from the interest in implementing emi at universities. 189profile: issues teach. prof. dev., vol. 24 no. 2, jul-dec, 2022. issn 1657-0790 (printed) 2256-5760 (online). bogotá, colombia. pages 185-199 english learning and teaching at a polytechnic university in mexico: towards bilingual education? the sustainable international bilingual model in mexico the bis model has tried to incorporate emi at polytechnic and technological public universities in mexico. its creation is a response to the need for internationalization and mobility of mexican students and its purpose is to increase the number of people who have proficiency in an l2, particularly in english (sep, 2016b). saracho (2017, as cited in sibaja, 2019) contends that: the aim of the bis universities in mexico is to provide bilingual education to low-income students who otherwise would have never had the opportunity to develop english language skills, access scholarships to study abroad, or have opportunities to position themselves in the international industry sector. (p. 10) the bis model offers different programs that are mostly taught in english by faculty that have been trained in english-speaking countries (sep, 2016b). freshmen within this model must take an english-only first semester to acquire the language. this strategy should enable students to understand content in english as of the second semester. furthermore, students, with no exception, must learn two other additional languages throughout their programs to expand their opportunities in mixed markets (sep, 2016b). the bis model was firstly implemented in the technological university of aguascalientes in 2012, followed by the polytechnic university of querétaro in 2013 and by the polytechnic university of cuautitlán izcalli, in the state of mexico, in 2014. by 2016, 21 polytechnic and technological bis universities offered bilingual education in 14 states in mexico (sibaja, 2019). moreover, the sep planned to open one bis university in each state to comply with the demand from the industry (nuño, 2017). this national strategy motivated other polytechnic and technological institutions to transition to the bis model and, in 2019, it was possible to find 29 bis universities across the country. bis universities work under a specific scheme as shown in figure 2. even though this program focuses on the provision of content through english, bis universities first include an introductory term as several learners arrive with limited knowledge of the language. english allocation is at 100%, and the purpose is to help learners develop basic skills to comprehend content in english as of the next term. by the end, they will have taken 525 hours of english. in the first term, which lasts four months, the model includes two content subjects in english and 10 hours of english as a foreign language (efl). here, spanish is still the dominant medium of instruction due to students’ budding proficiency in english. in the second term, however, the delivery of four content subjects and 10 hours of efl lessons increase the exposure to english. from term three onwards, the medium of instruction should be 100% in english (sibaja, 2019). bis universities are underpinned by three educative pillars: • bilingual: bis universities offer bilingual education through emi. • international: bis universities promote international programs that allow faculty and students to develop their skills in english. • sustainable: bis universities focus on education that promotes sustainability through projects that acknowledge the importance of the environment. according to sibaja (2019), with these three main pillars, polytechnic and technological universities attempt to (a) train students and teachers to become competitive in the global market, (b) support teachers and students to be bilingual citizens who can use the language in diverse contexts, and (c) raise awareness of environmental issues among teachers and students to collaboratively devise projects and design technology that respects and values the environment. universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras190 castillo-nava & mora-pablo in bis universities there are two types of teachers: emi teachers, who are in charge of content subjects, and english language teachers, who concentrate on general english classes. at a first glance, it may seem that these teachers have similar profiles; the reality, however, is that their knowledge base differs. both emi teachers and english language teachers should possess specific traits to deliver content. as asserted by inbar-lourie and donitsa-schmidt (2019), the level of english, the teacher characteristics, and the teaching method employed by emi lecturers can have an impact on the implementation of emi in the classroom. as a consequence, “emi teachers are required to obtain both rich content knowledge and [a] proficient english level” (qiu & fang, 2019, p. 2). they should demonstrate that (a) they are knowledgeable of the content, (b) they are acquainted with the specific pedagogical strategies to teach their subject, (c) they know their students and prepare their classes to reach different needs, and (d) they possess language pedagogy skills. in other words, they must know how to help learners build reading, writing, speaking, and listening skills through english content (li, 2012). method we considered that a qualitative approach suited this study because we focused on how participants lived and experienced bilingual education. according to denzin and lincoln (2018), “qualitative research consists of a set of interpretive, material practices that make the world visible” (p. 43). the method that we decided on as the basis for this project is an instrumental case study. dörnyei (2007) asserts that instrumental case studies are “intended to provide insight into a wider issue while the actual case is of secondary interest; it facilitates our understanding of something else” (p. 152). that is to say, figure 2. scheme of bis universities educational model bis universities with two choices of degree 525 hours immersive english course 1 fourth-term 2 and 4 emi subjects english as a foreign language 1 2 3 4 5 7 8 9 10 116 internship internship english a2 from term 3 onwards, all are emi subject university senior technician level 5 english b2 english c1 1,560 hours 5 fourth-terms 1 year, 8 months 3,375 hours 7 fourth-terms 2 year, 4 months 4,935 hours 12 fourth-terms 4 year engineering level 6 191profile: issues teach. prof. dev., vol. 24 no. 2, jul-dec, 2022. issn 1657-0790 (printed) 2256-5760 (online). bogotá, colombia. pages 185-199 english learning and teaching at a polytechnic university in mexico: towards bilingual education? the researcher makes use of tools that are not the focus of the research; however, using these tools will lead the researcher to understand a more complex phenomenon. this research project attempted to understand the complexities of bilingual education at a public university in central mexico. therefore, we focused on distinct stakeholders’ experiences and perceptions. it is important to highlight that, even though case studies “usually involve the collection of multiple sources of evidence, using a range of quantitative . . . and . . . qualitative techniques” (crowe et al., 2011, p. 6), we only employed semi-structured interviews due to the covid-19 pandemic and the lack of access to official documents, programs, or course syllabi. nonetheless, since the technique was applied to four diverse groups of participants, it was possible to gain a richer picture of the implementation of emi, and the information about participants’ experiences as teachers, students, and coordinators converged during the analysis. first, to pilot the interviews, we designed four guides, one for each group of participants. after the feedback was provided by the volunteers who participated in the piloting sessions, we examined the four guides and modified them. the trustworthiness of the interview data assured that coding data was correctly registered using a protocol (boyle & fisher, 2007; cohen et al., 2017). our study considered construct validity, which assures the connection between questionnaire items and the dimension’s supporting epistemology (dörnyei, 2003; michalopoulou, 2017). likewise, the study considered content validity as it aimed to ensure the domain of content relevant to all items. for conducting the interviews, we had decided to go back to the place where the university is situated. unfortunately, the covid-19 pandemic affected this arrangement due to social distancing. however, following the categorization of opdenakker (2006)—in which he includes types of interviews that are not only face-to-face verbal exchanges but also telephone interviews, messenger interviews, and email interviews—we decided to ask the participants if they would participate in an online interview. each group had a separate interview. once they agreed, we sent them a letter of informed consent where we explained that we would use pseudonyms to protect their identities. all the interviews were conducted in spanish,1 audiorecorded, and immediately transcribed. we conducted a thematic analysis using maxqda software to analyze the data. the data coding is as follows: i for interview, et for english teachers, ct for emi teachers, s for students, and ec for coordinators. for instance, the code i–silvana–et represents the participation of an english teacher whose pseudonym is silvana. context and participants the university under research is one of the three previously mentioned bis institutions in central mexico. in 2017, it transitioned to the bilingual model, offering emi in the electronics and telecommunications and robotics programs. later, in 2019, administration was also offered as an emi program (sibaja, 2019). participants belonged to four groups: students, english language teachers, emi teachers, and coordinators of area. the ages of the students ranged from 20 to 33 years old at the time the interviews were carried out. the learners were enrolled in the emi programs offered by the university: electronics and telecommunications, robotics, and administration. they were studying in the second, fifth, and eighth semesters when they were interviewed. having participants from distinct semesters provided richer information about how they perceived the model throughout time, how they adapted to emi programs, how their learning processes were shaped, and how they could relate to others with similar past experiences. three english language teachers were part of the second group (two women and one man). one teacher worked in the electronics and telecommunications 1 for the purposes of this article, all the excerpts were translated from spanish into english. universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras192 castillo-nava & mora-pablo program and the other two professors taught in the administration program. the first teacher had worked at the university for eight months and the other two, for two years. their ages ranged from 28 to 40 when they were interviewed. for the third group, there was a call to invite three emi professors. however, only two agreed to take part. the two women in this group worked with content classes in english. one of them had been teaching human development and ethics in english for three years, and the other basic concepts of administration for six months. when the interviews were carried out, they were 33 and 50 years old. finally, in the group of coordinators, there were two participants. they were responsible for coordinating the english area in the programs of electronics and telecommunications, robotics, and administration. they had worked as coordinators of area for six months. the participants of this group were 24 and 26 at the time the interviews were carried out. results and discussion during the analysis of the data, distinct themes emerged from the transcriptions of the interviews. for this article, we will focus on the different types of knowledge addressed by the participants as essential components in the development of the bis model. then, we will discuss the participants’ perspectives on the implementation of the model. teachers’ knowledge according to shulman (1987), effective teaching “requires basic skills, content knowledge, and general pedagogical skills” (p. 6). that is, teachers should not only know about their subject but also about the strategies, the materials, and the learners to demonstrate that they are effective teachers. in this theme, we present diverse types of knowledge participants discussed as an integral part of implementing the bis model in this polytechnic university: content knowledge, emi teachers’ knowledge of english, and english teachers’ knowledge of english. content knowledge content knowledge is significant as it refers to the teachers’ understanding of a subject. there may be, however, circumstances in which teachers are not acquainted with the discipline and yet they must teach it. for helena, an emi lecturer, not knowing the content was a challenge to overcome: in the subject that i gave, the idea was to help students learn vocabulary. being honest with you, it is really important. when i studied to teach the content…since, well, i am not an administrator and that was the main conflict . . . i said “geez! this is more complicated because i am not an administrator.” it is observable that helena’s profession did not match the content she was asked to teach. this excerpt implies that teachers’ profiles and expertise may not be considered when programming the classes. however, they are required to teach specific content. in the next excerpt, amanda—helena’s student—never perceived the lack of content knowledge: the teacher . . . helped us express our ideas according to what was expected from us and with the words that we already knew how to pronounce and, well, not only did she know english but she also knew about the subject. amanda considered that helena was knowledgeable of the content. even though helena’s profile was different from the subject she was assigned to teach, it is clear that she dedicated herself to expanding her knowledge of the subject so that she could cover the topics in the syllabus. unfortunately, not all teachers are willing to learn something new, as helena did. for instance, emma, an english coordinator, admitted that some english teachers have reached a plateau: 193profile: issues teach. prof. dev., vol. 24 no. 2, jul-dec, 2022. issn 1657-0790 (printed) 2256-5760 (online). bogotá, colombia. pages 185-199 english learning and teaching at a polytechnic university in mexico: towards bilingual education? regarding teachers, i believe that a great problem is that, as a teacher, you do not progress, that you continue with the same knowledge you have…i believe that if you are not a creative teacher, you will continue with your same knowledge, but it can be very harmful. it can harm students so much. emma realized that being an english teacher entails constant learning. as a coordinator, she had to observe classes and noticed that some educators did not progress. she believed that this can harm students’ progress in the language. this excerpt denotes that, even though teachers possess content knowledge, they may not search for opportunities to improve it, which should be essential due to the constant epistemological advances in education. since professors are part of a bilingual university, this fact demands that they be proficient in english. the following subtheme explains how emi teachers are seen as users of the language. emi teachers’ knowledge of english emi teachers’ knowledge of english seemed to be a factor that should be considered for the bilingual model to be better implemented. some students, like miguel, believed that their emi teachers did not seem to be qualified to use the language: “i think that our [emi] teachers were not familiarized with the language . . . they perceived teaching us in english as a mandatory thing…i saw our teachers were very lost.” this participant observed some emi teachers’ limited proficiency in the language. interestingly, this fragment denotes that even when emi lecturers have an insufficient level of english, they are required or even forced to use it. paulina, another student, also noticed that lecturers had difficulties in the classroom. interestingly, she mentioned what some of them expressed concerning teaching their content subjects in english: some teachers that gave me content and wanted to give it in english were not proficient or they were learning the language at the same time. some told us that it was hard for them to teach their subject in english. others just tried once and then gave up. so, some of them only gave us the materials in english. paulina was aware of emi teachers’ level of english. she also commented that they expressed that it was difficult to teach in english. it seems that emi teachers started the course using english. however, as they continued, they might not have felt comfortable with their level or they found it challenging, which led them to stop using the language. this, in turn, seems to be affected by the recruitment process they underwent. in the following, the two content teachers indicate how they became emi lecturers: it was super simple. the coordinator told me: “this is the subject, and you have to give it in english because it is for the bilingual groups.” period. that was all. (i–cecilia–ct) [my boss] told me that only two teachers could give the subject and that there were several groups. so, then i said: “i bet she is going to give me the subject.” she never explained to me how to do it or what to do. (i–helena–ct) from these two excerpts, it is evident that these two professors did not expect to teach their content subject in english because, initially, they were not hired as emi lecturers. the limited english proficiency that students observe among their teachers most likely comes from the latter’s lack of preparation and expertise in emi. in addition, the recruitment process at this institution may not be strict, and the administration requires some personnel to teach content in english only because they had previous contact with the language. since this is a bilingual institution, the demand for emi teachers must be high and the solution provided was hiring teachers who have certain skills in english, even if these do not reflect the b2 level required by the model. it is additionally perceived that no classroom observations are carried out. no process ensures universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras194 castillo-nava & mora-pablo that students experience bilingual education as it is stipulated by the coordination of polytechnic and technological universities. if emi faculty were observed and received emi training and courses to learn the language, students would not perceive their teachers’ low level of english. regarding english language teachers’ proficiency, some participants also addressed the theme, as we see next. english teachers’ knowledge of english since this polytechnic university is bilingual, professors who are responsible for teaching efl must demonstrate they are proficient in the language. for some students, like laura, the experience with english teachers has been positive: “in my opinion, the english teachers are super qualified. they speak the language very well and prepare us well.” laura acknowledges that english language teachers are proficient and qualified to be in front of the class. similarly, ximena and christian considered that their teachers could use the language proficiently. the teacher we currently have explains very well. he also has an advanced level of english. sometimes he uses spanish when we do not understand, but he almost always speaks in english. (i–ximena–s) talking about their proficiency in english, i have had good experiences. each of them teaches differently, but in general, i consider them qualified to be there. they speak english very well. (i–christian–s) both students consider that english teachers are proficient, which has allowed for positive experiences even when teachers use spanish. this might have been due to the requirements that english teachers have to fulfill. nazario, an english coordinator, provided information about those requirements: they have to hold a bachelor’s degree, a language proficiency certificate with at least a b2, it can be the toefl…also, they need to demonstrate they have experience teaching english and obviously, they have to give a demo class in which we can prove that everything stated in their documents is evident in the demo class. whereas strict requirements for english teachers are observable, emi faculty does not seem to have a formal recruitment process. these discrepancies within the institution need to be addressed as they may have negative impacts on the provision of bilingual education. we will now turn to discuss how the participants perceive the development of the model. the participants’ perspectives on the implementation of the bilingual model in this section, we will discuss two aspects that emerged from the data. first, we will show the complexities of trying to implement this bilingual model and how participants doubt this is possible. second, we will discuss aspects that hinder the effective implementation of the model. towards bilingual education? students and teachers perceived that this polytechnic university has a different dynamic. yet, learners provided evidence that may unveil the reality of bilingual education at this institution. for instance, when laura, a second-semester student, was asked about emi classes, she answered: “supposedly, there is a subject that has to be given in english, but due to the complicated situation we are experiencing, we still do not have any content subjects in english.” laura believed that the covid-19 pandemic was an obstacle to receiving content through english. according to the stipulations of the model, a student in the second semester should be given two emi classes. perhaps the pandemic affected the organization, and teachers were more concerned about the content than the language. similarly, ximena, another student, thought that the pandemic allowed for some changes in emi classes: 195profile: issues teach. prof. dev., vol. 24 no. 2, jul-dec, 2022. issn 1657-0790 (printed) 2256-5760 (online). bogotá, colombia. pages 185-199 english learning and teaching at a polytechnic university in mexico: towards bilingual education? i believe that our teachers were considerate and agreed to teach the content in spanish. in that way, it would not be difficult for us to understand or to miss any knowledge because we would practically be missing a semester. ximena considered that her teachers were sympathetic and preferred to use spanish to help them understand the subjects. the pandemic possibly affected the dynamic of emi. nevertheless, students in more advanced semesters revealed that there are inconsistencies in the emi classroom. julia, for example, mentioned: right now, we are supposed to be taking physics and calculus, but they are not in english. sometimes the exercises or exams are in english, and our reports should be in english, but our teachers do not speak in english. according to the general guidelines, julia should receive all her classes in english. as she stated, she only had two classes, and they were not given in the language. once again, it is noticeable that emi lecturers are not instructing in the language. an interesting finding was that for miguel, an eighth-semester student, the bilingual experience disappeared some time ago: in the end, i believe that our teachers gave up because, as of semester four, they stopped teaching content in english. they went back to the traditional thing again. they used spanish and, well, the english subject continued. i mean, in the end, it did not work. miguel was almost finishing his program, and it seems that his teachers were not able to maintain the bilingual experience as it should be expected. for other students in the same semester the experience was similar. the following excerpt illustrates that emi classes are inexistent: to be honest with you, i do not take any content classes in english. i believe it is a good idea because, as i mentioned, it is complicated. those subjects are complicated even in spanish because we use a lot of numbers, and that is complex. so, i cannot imagine what that would be like in english. (i–christian–s) christian’s excerpt implies that emi programs are not consistent and that, perhaps, the institution should evaluate what programs can be offered under a bilingual scheme. in that way, teachers and students’ experiences could be improved. the following subtheme discusses other aspects that can be affecting the implementation of emi at this university. aspects that hinder the effective implementation of the model participants mentioned some aspects that should be considered for the model to be developed more appropriately. one emi teacher mentioned that culture was one factor that affects the implementation of the model: i think that what we are missing is culture. the model is good. it is a good idea, but, as i have mentioned many times, we cannot implement something that works well in europe in mexican culture because we are so different. mexicans are like, “yeah, tomorrow!” (i–helena–ct) helena acknowledged that bilingual education is an advantage, but she also implied that perhaps mexicans are not ready to embrace bilingual education due to cultural beliefs. for silvana, an english teacher, the context of the university may also pose challenges as she explained: “i do not really know if the model is useful in the context where we live since many students are not in contact with different companies. their parents are businessmen and have never required any knowledge of english.” the university is situated in a region where commerce has a great impact on the lives of many businesspeople. for silvana, the learners’ context plays a significant role. she questioned the usefulness of such a model due to students’ previous contact with the language and how much they will require it in the future. universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras196 castillo-nava & mora-pablo as she mentioned, students’ parents are mainly traders and have built their heritage throughout the years. some students plan to inherit their parents’ businesses and they do not see english as a relevant tool in their lives, and that is why bilingual education might not seem important to them. regarding the usefulness of the language, another english teacher also questioned the implementation of this model: regarding the model, we try to do our best, and, in the attempt, we lose the vision. students are required to achieve certain levels of english to continue with their studies, and it is subjective to try to measure under those standards; measuring the language when you are not really measuring its practicality and usefulness. all of this in a context that requires students to demonstrate they can use english and content concretely. (i–carlos–et) carlos believed that the way students were evaluated was not related to how much they could apply their knowledge to situations that are connected to the language and their careers. it looks as though the most important aspect was to pass the subjects. this has resulted in a challenge for some students like ximena: why do they demand that we learn english? i mean, we may use it and it can be helpful to us, but i felt angry when they told us that if we did not achieve the levels, i could not continue with my major or that they would kick me out of school even when i have good grades in other subjects. it is observable that the school measures students’ progress and that attaining certain levels of english is mandatory. otherwise, learners cannot continue with their programs. ximena likely encountered challenges to reach the levels required and she did not understand why she had to abandon her studies if she was not proficient in english. this excerpt denotes the authorities’ misbeliefs that if students do not acquire english, they cannot become successful professionals. another aspect that may hinder the model was the context. nazario, an english coordinator, mentioned: i believe the context plays a significant role. there can certainly be teachers who are good at teaching their subjects, but we live in a hispanic context. i mean, the predominant language here is spanish…therefore, if you create a model, you have to check that your teachers satisfy the model’s needs…if you cannot find those teachers in your context, you must train them…and that takes a long time. nazario considered that the model could work properly if teachers were trained to fulfill the needs of bilingual education. unfortunately, not all emi professors are experts in english. although he considered that the university could help professors, he also stated that this process takes time. this might be the reason for learners to experience bilingual disenchantment shortly after they started their studies. in general, factors such as culture, the applicability of the language, students’ context, and teachers’ profiles play a significant role in the development of the model. this suggests that focusing attention on these aspects could have better outcomes at this polytechnic university. for instance, if the institution provided training, teachers could become bilingual, and students could experience bilingual education throughout their programs. students could also see that, regardless of their context, english is a skill that may provide them with enriching opportunities. finally, the university could position itself as a real bilingual school. on the subject of teachers’ knowledge, students and teachers considered that knowing the language, the content, and students’ needs, context, weaknesses, and strengths are factors that had an impact on the development of the model and the progress of learners at this university. concerning the implementation of the model, it is perceived that the bilingual model was efficient during the first semester; however, factors such as the lack of training, the context, and the usefulness 197profile: issues teach. prof. dev., vol. 24 no. 2, jul-dec, 2022. issn 1657-0790 (printed) 2256-5760 (online). bogotá, colombia. pages 185-199 english learning and teaching at a polytechnic university in mexico: towards bilingual education? of the language in authentic environments contributed to a deficient development of emi. conclusions this research project aimed to explore the implementation of a bilingual model in a polytechnic public university in central mexico. additionally, it sought to explore the experiences of english and emi teachers, students, and coordinators involved in the model. emi teachers perceived their experiences were negative due to their lack of proficiency in the language. they acknowledged they were not acquainted with emi and were not initially hired as emi faculty. therefore, they had difficulties delivering content in english. english coordinators acknowledged the importance of teacher training; however, more efforts need to be visible in this aspect since teachers mentioned they need constant training to be able to teach their classes in english. students perceive the difficulties teachers have when trying to teach content in english, however, they do appreciate and value when teachers are creative and encourage them to learn more. through the participants’ voices, it was possible to see what aspects of emi could be improved at this university. it is observable that, after three years of implementation, the stakeholders still struggle to comply with the requirements. this paper will hopefully serve the administrators at this institution to evaluate how they have implemented emi and how they can assist lecturers to improve their english and pedagogical-content skills. the observable lack of training and the limited information the stakeholders have about emi has likely influenced the development of this program. it is recommended that the stakeholders work collaboratively and devise strategies to train teachers. additionally, they should conduct a needs analysis to understand what aspects are paramount to be resolved in the near future and what modifications are feasible due to the context, the materials, the policies, the teachers, the financial support, and the type of teachers and students. otherwise, there is a risk this bis model faces the same scenario as the national english programs. over the years, the efforts of implementing english formally in the mexican educational system have gone through different programs. however, these have not provided positive results and the same challenges are still present and unsolved. polytechnic and technological universities aim for a bilingual model, but we recommend looking at the history of english teaching in mexico and its realities so that the bis model can succeed and overcome the challenges faced by previous programs. from the analysis of the data, we were able to illustrate how the participants perceive emi and some of the challenges and benefits experienced. in addition, at a global level, this research adds to the ongoing discussion of emi in higher institutions as it sheds light on the situation of emi in the mexican context. to obtain a clearer picture of emi and the participants’ experiences, further research should include more than one technique to gather data and more participants. observations, journals, and focus groups would likely provide more insights into the situation of emi at bis universities. future research should continue investigating emi programs in other polytechnic and technological universities across the country as many of them have adopted or will transition to this type of bilingual education in the years to come. references boyle, j., & fisher, s. 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(2015). content and language integrated learning next in asia: evidence of learners’ achievement in clil education from a taiwan degree programme. international journal of bilingual education and bilingualism, 18(4), 361–382. https://doi.org/10.1080/13670050.2014.904840 about the authors diana leslie castillo-nava holds a ba in languages from universidad autónoma del estado de mexico. she is currently pursuing a master’s degree in applied linguistics in english teaching at universidad de guanajuato. her research interests are second language acquisition, bilingual education, english as a medium of instruction, and sociolinguistics. irasema mora-pablo is a full-time teacher universidad de guanajuato (mexico) in the language department and currently coordinates the ma in applied linguistics in english language teaching. she holds a phd in applied linguistics (university of kent, uk). her areas of interest are bilingualism, return migration, and identity formation. https://doi.org/10.17169/fqs-7.4.175 https://doi.org/10.17169/fqs-7.4.175 https://www.jstor.org/stable/40364009 https://www.jstor.org/stable/40364009 https://doi.org/10.1080/13670050.2019.1707769 https://doi.org/10.1080/13670050.2019.1707769 https://doi.org/10.14507/epaa.24.2502 https://doi.org/10.14507/epaa.24.2502 https://bit.ly/3kshmi7 https://bit.ly/3kshmi7 https://bit.ly/3h0bpj8 https://bit.ly/3h0bpj8 https://www.gob.mx/sep/documentos/s270-programa-nacional-de-ingles https://www.gob.mx/sep/documentos/s270-programa-nacional-de-ingles https://educacionsuperior.sep.gob.mx/comunicados/2016/271216.html https://educacionsuperior.sep.gob.mx/comunicados/2016/271216.html https://doi.org/10.17763/haer.57.1.j463w79r56455411 https://bit.ly/3av7fwy https://doi.org/10.1080/13670050.2014.904840 assessment of students’ oral communicative competence in english through a web conferencing platform 143profile: issues teach. prof. dev., vol. 24 no. 1, jan-jun, 2022. issn 1657-0790 (printed) 2256-5760 (online). bogotá, colombia. pages 143-156 https://doi.org/10.15446/profile.v24n1.91282 assessment of students’ oral communicative competence in english through a web conferencing platform evaluación de la competencia comunicativa oral de estudiantes de inglés a través de una plataforma de videoconferencias maría de los milagros cruz-ramos1 escuela normal “juan enriquez”, veracruz, mexico luz edith herrera-díaz universidad veracruzana, veracruz, mexico this manuscript reports on a study carried out at a public university in southeast mexico aimed to determine whether changes in the instructional design of an online english course benefit students’ oral communicative competence. the research followed a quantitative quasi-experimental design that involved two groups of students. one of them took a modified version of an online english ii course that provided contextualized instruction of the syllabus language topics. this group’s communicative competence was assessed online, which represented a major shift from the face-to-face assessments typically delivered to online groups. the results showed that online assessment is possible, and also that students’ communicative competence improved and was directly related to the intervention. keywords: assessment, instructional design, language instruction, online courses, oral communicative competence este estudio se llevó a cabo en una universidad pública del sureste mexicano. su principal propósito fue determinar si las modificaciones al diseño instruccional de un curso de inglés en línea beneficia la competencia comunicativa oral de los estudiantes. el diseño del estudio fue cuantitativo y cuasiexperimental con dos grupos; uno de ellos recibió instrucción contextualizada de los diferentes temas lingüísticos del programa. la competencia comunicativa de este grupo fue evaluada en línea, lo cual representó un cambio importante con respecto a la evaluación presencial que tradicionalmente se suministra a estos grupos virtuales. los resultados mostraron que la evaluación en línea es viable, y que la competencia comunicativa de los estudiantes mejoró en relación directa con la intervención. palabras clave: competencia comunicativa oral, cursos en línea, diseño instruccional, enseñanza de idiomas, evaluación 1 maría de los milagros cruz-ramos  https://orcid.org/0000-0003-1346-662x · email: milcruz@msev.gob.mx luz edith herrera-díaz  https://orcid.org/0000-0003-0410-4328 · email: luherrera@uv.mx how to cite this article (apa, 7th ed.): cruz-ramos, m., & herrera-díaz, l. e. (2022). assessment of students’ oral communicative competence in english through a web conferencing platform. profile: issues in teachers’ professional development, 24(1), 143–156. https://doi. org/10.15446/profile.v24n1.91282 this article was received on october 31, 2020 and accepted on september 3, 2021. this is an open access article distributed under the terms of the creative commons license attribution-noncommercial-noderivatives 4.0 international license. consultation is possible at https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/ https://doi.org/10.15446/profile.v24n1.91282 https://orcid.org/0000-0003-1346-662x mailto:milcruz@msev.gob.mx https://orcid.org/0000-0003-0410-4328 mailto: luherrera@uv.mx https://doi.org/10.15446/profile.v24n1.91282 https://doi.org/10.15446/profile.v24n1.91282 https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/ universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras144 cruz-ramos & herrera-díaz introduction english is the most taught foreign language in mexico, which in turn has forced both public and private institutions to make english as a foreign language (efl) courses available in various modalities of instruction. online courses became particularly popular due to the time and space constraints they can help surpass. in the particular case of a public university in southeast mexico, online courses are available for the two compulsory basic english levels undergraduate students have to take as part of their bachelor’s degree programs. however, online efl courses have been found to be the most criticized modality of instruction within that institution, being two of the biggest problems the online course design and the support provided to students (herrera-díaz & gonzález-miy, 2017; ocampo-gómez & gonzález-gaudiano, 2016). within the official course curriculum, the ultimate goal of all compulsory english courses within this university is for students to be able to engage in meaningful communication in this foreign language (sampieri-croda & moreno-anota, 2015). however, according to the work of multiple linguists over the last decades (bachman, 1995; canale & swain, 1980; council of europe, 2001; hymes, 1972; nguyen & le, 2013; sanhueza-jara & burdilesfernández, 2012), being able to engage in communication is related to the development of learners’ communicative competence, which seems not to be happening in the context where our study took place. based on the abovementioned authors, this competence is defined within this paper as the use individuals make of their grammatical knowledge of morphology, phonology, and syntax, as well as their social knowledge to exchange information and negotiate meaning in communication. nevertheless, as mentioned before, upon analyzing the compulsory online english courses at the university under study, the disarticulation between the course goals, instruction, and assessment also seemed evident. on the one hand, the current instructional design fosters little interaction between participants and instructor in the target language. that is to say, students are not exposed to language models that allow them to actually learn the language according to the principles of the teaching approach used in other modalities (the communicative language teaching [clt] approach). it is also possible to argue that without input in the target language (activity instructions, examples and explanations are usually presented in spanish), students are not likely to be able to go through all three stages of the interaction hypothesis, which purports to explain how the learning of a language occurs (ellis, 1991, 2008; gass & mackey, 2007; ghaemi & salehi, 2014). the stages in the interaction hypothesis, according to ellis (1991), are described as follows: (a) noticing, the individual perceives and is aware of the linguistic characteristics of the input he or she is receiving through interaction; (b) comparison, the individual compares the characteristics of the input with that of his or her own spoken output; (c) integration, the individual constructs his or her own linguistic knowledge, thanks to the two previous elements, and internalizes it. therefore, if online instruction does not provide students with interaction and enough language models, it would be nearly impossible for them to build their own language. that is, we would be expecting students to communicate in the language without providing them with the tools to do so. assessment, on the other hand, is standardized for all modalities of instruction. this means that those students enrolled in the online version of the courses are expected to take communicative oral tests at the end of the course even if they were not given the chance to ever interact orally with their classmates in the target language prior to the test. moreover, these oral assessments are provided to online course students in a traditional face-to-face setting, disregarding the technology-based nature of the course itself. so far, the institution has not shown any real interest in delivering oral assessment in a way that is congruent to the principles of online courses, which, in turn, could be discouraging teachers from pursuing it as well. nevertheless, according to the principles of clt, instructional design, and assess145profile: issues teach. prof. dev., vol. 24 no. 1, jan-jun, 2022. issn 1657-0790 (printed) 2256-5760 (online). bogotá, colombia. pages 143-156 assessment of students’ oral communicative competence in english through a web conferencing platform ment of communication, it seems evident that both the technological and pedagogical aspects of the course can be improved so as to provide students with a real opportunity of developing communicative competence in these online courses. consequently, this educational intervention aimed at improving the techno-pedagogical design of the second level of the compulsory efl online courses within this mexican university. according to coll et al. (2008), the term techno-pedagogical emphasizes the two dimensions of instructional design for courses supported by technology: (a) the technological, concerned with the tools and resources to be applied within the learning environment; and (b) the pedagogical, which has to consider students’ characteristics and needs, as well as the learning objectives and competences to be achieved. the modifications made to the english ii online course were based on the rase (resources, activities, support, evaluation) techno-pedagogical model, proposed by churchill et al. (2013), as well as on the clt approach, as described by larsen-freeman and anderson (2012). the four components tackled by the rase model were modified and enriched following not only its own proposed principles (churchill et al., 2013), but also disciplinary principles for language teaching and learning. both the rase model and the clt approach are based on constructivism, which made their integration unproblematic. as a matter of fact, both of them regard evaluation and assessment as a task or series of tasks that must relate and be similar in nature to the resources and activities students were exposed to throughout the course (churchill et al., 2013; larsen-freeman & anderson, 2012). therefore, online synchronous interaction in the target language among participants and online assessment can work together to achieve the course’s goal: have students develop the skills and competence they need to communicate in english through the exchange of information and negotiation of meaning. it is worth mentioning that the present article is focused on the fourth component of the rase model: evaluation, that is, communicative assessment online, as was provided to students in the aforementioned english ii online course. therefore, the objectives that guided the study, with regard to evaluation, were: • to describe how communicative assessment can be implemented online following the same disciplinary and institutional principles applied in face-to-face assessment. • to determine whether the provision of synchronous contextualized oral practice influences the students’ communicative competence. literature review understanding the concept of communicative competence hymes (1972) coined the term communicative competence relating it to the importance of learning not only what is grammatically correct but also what is appropriate. although hymes’ work was not originally created in relation to learning foreign languages, it led linguists such as canale and swain (1980) and savignon (1983) to reassess the original definition, determining that this competence must be observable in communicative acts. these authors also identified the need to look for ways to contribute to the development of communicative competence, as well as their evaluation since they considered it measurable. several other authors (bachman, 1995; council of europe, 2001; pilleux, 2001; sanhueza-jara & burdiles-fernández, 2012; widdowson, 1983) have laid the foundations for the development of new techniques, methods, and approaches to teaching/learning languages, as well as for the evaluation of communication. the common european framework of reference (cefr) for learning, teaching, and language assessment (council of europe, 2001, 2018) provides one of the most accepted descriptions of communicative competence based on “different competence models developed in applied linguistics since the early 1980s” universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras146 cruz-ramos & herrera-díaz (council of europe, 2018, p. 130). drawing from the work of the authors mentioned in this section, it is possible to distinguish at least three dimensions of communicative competence: linguistic competence, pragmatic competence, and sociolinguistic competence, each of which can be studied through certain indicators (see table 1). table 1. dimensions and indicators of communicative competence dimension definition indicators linguistic competence use an individual gives to his or her grammatical, lexical, and phonological or spelling knowledge (depending on the means or modality of the communication). • grammatical accuracy, control, and range • lexical accuracy, control, and range • phonological or orthographical accuracy, control, and range pragmatic competence communicative use of the language that is consistent and appropriate according to the function or need that the individual intends to fulfill when interacting in the target language. • discourse organization • style • register • fluency • coherency • cohesion sociolinguistic competence appropriate use of linguistic and pragmatic competences according to the context in which communication takes place. • contextual appropriateness the introduction of methodologies and approaches aimed at communicative learning and assessment of a language in order to reflect the components of the so-called communicative competence was nothing less than revolutionary (savignon, 2017). following the work carried out by savignon (1983) almost five decades ago, one could see it was demonstrated that grammatical accuracy (related to linguistic competence) could be developed to the same degree in groups that had had communication-focused practice and in groups that had not been exposed to that type of practice; however, it would be the groups exposed to the communicative practice that would show greater mastery of the foreign language when exposed to different communicative situations (savignon, 2017). therefore, communication is essential to both the teaching and assessment of students’ communicative competence because during communication the use of all three components of this competence are evidenced. in this study, communication is understood as: “the exchange and negotiation of information between at least two individuals with the use of verbal and nonverbal symbols, oral and written/visual models, and the production and comprehension processes” (canale, 1983, p. 4). communicative competence is, then, reflected during the communication and interaction between individuals through the use of linguistic components (linguistic competence), combined with a consistent and adequate use, according to the function or need that the individual intends to fulfill/satisfy (pragmatic competence), and according to the social context in which the communication takes place (sociolinguistic competence). principles for the assessment of students’ communicative competence the cefr provides guidelines for the teaching, learning, and, perhaps most importantly, assessment of communication skills in foreign languages. according to the cefr, it is of utmost importance that an assess147profile: issues teach. prof. dev., vol. 24 no. 1, jan-jun, 2022. issn 1657-0790 (printed) 2256-5760 (online). bogotá, colombia. pages 143-156 assessment of students’ oral communicative competence in english through a web conferencing platform ment procedure be practical (council of europe, 2001). this relates to the fact that assessors only see a limited sample of the language the student is able to produce, and they must use that sample to assess a limited number of descriptors or categories in a limited time. what this means is that if we were trying to assess all indicators of all three dimensions of students’ communicative competence, the procedure would not be practical, and it might not be feasible due to time constraints while carrying out the assessment. moreover, the council of europe (2001), through their cefr, establishes that oral assessment procedures “generalize about proficiency from performance in a range of discourse styles considered to be relevant to the learning context and needs of the learners” (p. 187). therefore, an oral assessment procedure should keep some relation to certain needs and situations speakers of a language face in real life. the cefr also addresses the subjective nature of the grades awarded to students. grading of direct oral performance is awarded on the basis of a judgment, which means assessors decide how well a student performed taking into account a list of factors or indicators. these decisions are usually guided by a pre-established set of guidelines which is usually nurtured by the assessors’ own experience. nevertheless, the advantage of this subjective approach is that it acknowledges “that language and communication are very complex, do not lend themselves to atomization and are greater than the sum of their parts” (council of europe, 2001, p. 188). in other words, guided-judgement-based assessment is a fit solution to a complex issue, especially since the subjective factor can be controlled through the use of a clear set of criteria or guidelines to use for the assessment, and the undertaking of training on how to use said criteria. another key issue to the assessment of oral performance is what to assess. when attempting to assess students’ communicative competence, it would seem obvious to measure each of the indicators shown in table 1, in the previous section. however, a set of eleven indicators would reduce the practicality factor an oral assessment procedure is supposed to keep. in consequence, the cefr advises that indicators should be combined, reduced, and even renamed into a smaller set of criteria deemed appropriate to the needs of learners and the requirements of the task. according to the council of europe (2001), the resulting criteria could be awarded the same weight or not, depending on whether certain factors are considered more crucial than others. here we could even propose that when assessing communicative competence, it is important to find a balance between form (represented by the linguistic competences) and use (related to the pragmatic and sociolinguistic competences). we could argue that finding this balance in indicators of form and use relate to the original tenets of hymes (1972) and would thus help assess whether students have learned what is grammatically correct and can use it appropriately. in consequence, an instrument to measure three indicators that represent form and three that represent use was designed to be used as part of this intervention, and it will be described in the method section. the guidelines provided by the cefr, in addition to those by authors such as brown (2005) and fulcher and davidson (2007), allow the development of communication-oriented tests which can also be referred to as communicative tests. in this regard, brown indicates five characteristics that a test must have to be considered communicative: (a) the use of authentic situations, (b) the production of creative language, (c) significant communication, (d) integrated language skills, and (e) unpredictable language input. bakhsh (2016) adds that communicative tests differ from other language tests in that they intend to predict how students would react in a real communicative situation. facing real communication situations involves the integrated use of language skills. the effectiveness of communication will depend on the extent to which the conversation helps students meet the fictitious needs assigned to them in the communicative test. universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras148 cruz-ramos & herrera-díaz method context of the study as has been previously mentioned, oral assessment of the target language, within the higher education institution where the study was carried out, follows the same standardized procedures regardless of the modality of instruction. this means students from blended, autonomous, and online courses are expected to undergo the same oral assessment procedure as those who have received 90 hours of instruction and practice of the language in a traditional face-to-face setting. nevertheless, under the current instructional design of online english courses, students never communicate orally in the target language prior to the oral assessment. all students enrolled in any of the compulsory english courses are assessed at least twice to determine their oral performance in the language: the first time (partial exam) around the eighth week of the course and the second (final exam) after the sixteenth week. even though there is a written counterpart to the oral assessment procedure, the oral test seems to be more challenging for students even when enrolled in a traditional face-to-face course. the oral performance is assessed in pairs or trios, during two tasks, the first of which is individual with the instructor asking each candidate a set of personal questions related to heretofore covered language points or topics. the second task is carried out in pairs or trios, and demands for the participants to engage in an unplanned conversation, which, as previously stated, the students had never been prepared for. this conversation must emerge from a communicative situation they are provided with on a card. the communicative-situation cards contain the description of a fictitious situation and a list of language prompts they can use to create questions around that situation. according to several authors (bakhsh, 2016; brown, 2005; fulcher & davidson, 2007), these kinds of tasks fit within the definition of a communicative test because they try to predict how students would react in a real-life communicative situation. that is the main reason why the institution where the intervention took place gives the same oral tests to all students, regardless of the modality under which they take the course, because the aim is to determine how effectively students can communicate in (semi)authentic situations. during the oral assessment procedure, the assessor listens and grades concurrently. assessors grade two areas, form and communication, thus assigning two scores for each task. even when these two areas are the ones we mentioned in the previous section in relation to the tenets of hymes (1972)—what is grammatically correct and what is appropriate—we can now argue that including only two indicators for each task might oversimplify what we have already established as a complex issue: communication. not providing enough indicators could lead to subjectivity issues the cefr warns about. the oral assessment procedure described in the present section is always carried out in a faceto-face setting, which means that students, who study english online during the whole semester, are required to meet their teachers/online instructors at the language center facilities. by not finding ways to arrange online assessment, the whole purpose of allowing students to benefit from a modality of instruction that avoids time and space constraints is partially defeated. using a web conferencing tool for communicative assessment the intervention carried out in the present study aligned the four elements of the rase model (resources, activities, support and evaluation) through the use of contextualized explanations and group practice (guided by the instructor), synchronous peer interaction (through online interactive resources and activities), as well as oral assessment (through a web conferencing tool). in other words, students in the experimental group were provided with explanations, resources, and opportunities to use the language in contextualized situations (e.g., plans after they graduate, directions around the campus, previous vacations), and they were 149profile: issues teach. prof. dev., vol. 24 no. 1, jan-jun, 2022. issn 1657-0790 (printed) 2256-5760 (online). bogotá, colombia. pages 143-156 assessment of students’ oral communicative competence in english through a web conferencing platform evaluated accordingly. it must be said that both the activities and the evaluation were administered on the web conferencing tool. during the investigation, students were assessed three times, which means an additional assessment moment was added to the two that usually take place, as described above. that is to say, students were required to meet their english instructor before the official start of the course in order to take a pre-test and sign the corresponding consent forms. this first assessment (pre-test) used the contents from the previous course, english i, and sought to gather information on students’ oral performance before the intervention. both the experimental and control groups took the pre-test under identical circumstances (see the composition of the groups in the design of the study section). as a matter of fact, the groups were mixed during the procedure and no distinction was made in regard to which group participants belonged to until after the data had been recorded in the corresponding grid. after the pre-test, over the next two assessment moments (one control test and a post-intervention test), the oral assessment procedures were carried out completely online for the experimental group (eg). this implied first and foremost a change in the setting, but it also helped make schedules more flexible and accessible to students. in other words, assessing students’ oral performance online allowed them to avoid time and space constraints in the same way online courses work. the oral assessment was carried out via the zoom platform, and each online session involved four participants: a pair of students, the course instructor, and an assistant teacher. only when both students were online, did the instructor open his microphone and started delivering instructions. the nature of the tasks during the control test did not change from the face-toface counterpart; there were still two: (a) an individual task where the instructor asked the students personal questions based on the contents of the corresponding units; and (b) a joined communicative task, where the students were presented with a communicative situation for which they had to interact with each other, asking and answering questions to fulfill a fictitious need. the delivery of task instructions slightly changed for the second task, as students listened to the instructions instead of reading them on a situation card. while the instructor read the situation and instructions to them, the assistant teacher typed the same instructions in the chat section and delivered them to each student individually (in private chat messages) in case they needed support. in sum, the main difference in the assessment procedure for the second task was the method of delivery of instructions: no situation cards but oral instructions/ prompts for the assigned communicative situation, and the fact that the students were not provided with prompt words like the ones found on the communicative situation cards handed out in face-to-face settings. the tasks in the post-intervention test were slightly changed, but still complied with what was established in the program for the online english ii course: a final project presentation in which students were asked to prepare a short presentation they delivered orally during a synchronous web conferencing session. this assessment procedure consisted of two tasks: (a) presenting information they had a chance to plan in detail in relation to some key topics of the course (talking about past experiences, family, future plans, hobbies, etc.); and (b) answering nonplanned questions the instructor and the assistant teacher asked regarding the information they had just presented. the second task was given particular attention because it involved the spontaneous production of language and the use of integrated language skills (listening to some of the questions and reading some others in the chat), while talking about their own life and experiences. therefore, this new oral assessment procedure still complied with the key characteristics of a communicative test as described by brown (2005). grades were recorded in the same way they would be if the assessments had been applied face-to-face; that is to say, the assessor (course instructor) assigned universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras150 cruz-ramos & herrera-díaz them concurrently as the students performed using what could be considered guided judgement. instead of simply assessing form and communication as in the institutional scoring grid, the assessor used a new instrument that assessed six areas or indicators of the three dimensions involved in communicative competence. the instrument was specifically designed for this study and will be described in the next section. design of the study this study follows a quasi-experimental design that uses two groups (experimental and control) and three data collection moments. this kind of design aims to test a hypothesis by manipulating at least one independent variable in contexts where random sampling is not possible (fernández-garcía et al., 2014). the variable to be manipulated was the instructional design of an online english ii course. as explained previously, the course followed the principles of the rase model and of the clt approach. according to different authors (campbell & stanley, 2011; fraenkel et al., 2012), a design with these characteristics gains certainty in the interpretation of its results due to the multiple measurements made. the 221 students enrolled in the online course during the 2019 spring semester across the five regions of the university constituted the target population of the study; whereas, the accessible population was constituted by the 46 students enrolled in said course in the veracruz-boca del río region over the same period of time. students enrolled in these online english courses usually have diverse backgrounds in regard to their previous educational experiences studying the language. however, a characteristic they all have in common is having validated or credited the previous course or level (english i). students in the accessible population belonged to 21 different degree programs. the 46 students taking the course were divided into two groups: experimental (eg) and control (cg). however, the final sample was constituted by the 17 students who were active in the eg and the 13 who were active in the cg. for this intervention, as part of the changes made to the instructional design regarding the second component of the rase model (activities), the students in the eg were asked to join web conferencing sessions where they received contextualized instruction as well as interactive oral and written practice in the target language. to achieve this, the students used their microphones and the chat capabilities of the web conferencing platform zoom, where the oral assessment of the language also took place. the cg, for their part, took the online course under the original instructional design and conditions, that is, they followed the course remotely with no opportunities for peer-on-peer interaction, and were then assessed in individual face-to-face sessions with the instructor. assessment instrument an assessment grid was designed to record the scores obtained by the eg students in the two communicative tasks they were to complete as part of the pre-test procedure. the design of the grid took into account the guidelines and examples offered by the cefr (council of europe, 2001). the operationalization of the communicative competence variable into dimensions and indicators (see table 1) was also considered in the creation of this instrument, and it was based on the literature presented in the literature review section. six aspects were included, three of which were related to linguistic competence and the other three to pragmatic and sociolinguistic competences, to balance form and use. the aspects originally included in the oral assessment grid were: (a) accuracy and lexical and grammatical control; (b) lexical and grammatical range; (c) pronunciation; (d) style and register; (e) fluency, coherence, and cohesion; and (f ) contextual property. in agreement with the ideas of leung (2005), these indicators allowed assessors to consider not only standard english, but also what we may call a local variety of the target language. that is to say, the students were expected to perform as effective users of the target language during their assessment process, with no consideration for specific accents. 151profile: issues teach. prof. dev., vol. 24 no. 1, jan-jun, 2022. issn 1657-0790 (printed) 2256-5760 (online). bogotá, colombia. pages 143-156 assessment of students’ oral communicative competence in english through a web conferencing platform table 2. v of aiken coefficient linguistic competence pragmatic competence sociolinguistic competence aspect 1 aspect 2 aspect 3 aspect 4 aspect 5 aspect 6 coh rel coh rel coh rel coh rel coh rel coh rel 1.00 1.00 0.92 1.00 1.00 1.00 0.83 0.83 0.92 1.00 0.75 0.75 1.00 0.96 1.00 0.83 0.96 0.75 0.99 0.90 0.75 0.88 note. coh = coherence, rel = relevance. the grid uses a scale from 1 to 5 (5 being the maximum score for each aspect), resulting in a score of 5 to 30 points. in order to determine the validity of the instrument, two procedures were followed. the first consisted of a workshop where three experts in teaching efl, all of which had previous experience working with online english ii groups within the institution, emulated the process originally followed for the design of the grid. as a result of that workshop, it was decided that cohesion should not be assessed in the oral performance of students of such a basic level, since their utterances are usually short. the second procedure for testing the validity of the instrument was expert evaluation. a different group of experts was asked to evaluate the coherence and relevance of each aspect included in the grid, specifically in relation to the measurement of students’ communicative competence. the experts scored each indicator using a format proposed by escobar-pérez and cuervo-martínez (2008), which resulted in the v of aiken coefficient shown in table 2. due to the subjective quality of the instrument, product of the guided judgement required to use it, two assessors tested the scoring agreement as a means to ensure its reliability. having two oral examiners, or assessors, is not only common but also recommended in certain institutions, due to the fact that two different interpretations of the qualification criteria can balance each other, leading to the advantage of impartiality when assessing (sun, 2014). eleven students (apart from the 46 participants of this study) were assessed in two communicative tasks at the end of an online english course at the institution where the study was conducted. nine students received identical or very similar scores, and two received scores with drastically different results. the results of the pilot test to determine scoring agreement in relation to the reliability of the instrument show an agreement at an acceptable level in line with the principles established by fraenkel et al. (2012). data analysis in order to determine how students’ communicative competence had developed over the 16 weeks the course lasted, students were assessed three times. students from both the eg and the cg were given an oral pre-test in a traditional face-to-face setting before the online course started. afterwards, two oral assessment procedures were carried out online on the web conferencing tool called zoom with the eg, and the members of this group were scored using the grid described in the previous section. the same grid was used with the cg, which was following the traditional assessment procedure. the data analysis followed the four stages proposed by creswell (2015): data processing, basic analysis, advanced analysis, and in-depth analysis. during the first two stages, the scores originally registered in the grid were transcribed into a database in spss®, which was repeatedly cleaned. as part of the advanced analysis, the mean scores of each group were obtained and contrasted. the descriptive statistics were also obtained as per the indications of creswell and guetterman (2019). in the final stage, a shapiro-wilk normality test was run and contrasted against q–q plots. the reasoning behind choosing the universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras152 cruz-ramos & herrera-díaz shapiro-wilk test is that it is suitable for small sample sizes (pedrosa et al., 2014; razali & wah, 2011) such as the one reported in this article. once the data were proved to have a normal distribution for all three oral assessment moments, the conditions for a repeated measures test established by ho (2006) and pituch and stevens (2016) were verified and the aforementioned test was carried out. results as can be observed in table 3, the average scores the eg obtained when measuring its members’ oral communicative competence increased steadily from the first to the third oral assessment procedure. however, the average scores for the cg decreased from the first to the second test and increased again on the third test. table 3. mean communicative competence scores of the experimental (eg) and control groups (cg) eg cg pre-test 17.20 18.00 control test 19.50 13.67 post-intervention test 20.21 17.23 even though the cg managed to recover from the second to the third assessment moment, the mean score they obtained in the post-intervention test was still almost three points below the one of the eg. a possible cause for the fall of their communicative competence mean score from the first to the second moment, in particular when compared to the scores obtained by the eg, could be the fact that the control test for english ii (for both groups) covers a language point that is typically regarded as challenging for students: the simple past tense. although the mean scores obtained by the eg showed a better oral performance and thus a more developed communicative competence, this result was further confirmed as a product of the modifications to the instructional design through the use of a statistical test. based on the number of measurements made across time, as well as on the fact that we had two groups, a repeated measures test was selected to determine whether the mean scores obtained by the groups were or were not related to the treatment. nevertheless, a number of conditions needed to be met before running such a test (pituch & stevens, 2016), namely: 1. independence of the observations: since the oral assessment involved interaction between participants (specifically in task 2), we acknowledge that, just like in any other study that involves interaction, students might have influenced each other’s performance. 2. multivariate normality: proved through a shapiro-wilk test. 3. sphericity or circularity and homogeneity of covariance matrixes: due to lost data from those participants who either joined the course late or missed one of the assessment procedures. the group size proportion changed from 1.3 (given that the 17 students from the eg and the 13 from the cg had taken three tests), to 2.0 (since only 10 of the students from the eg and 5 from the cg took all three tests), it was necessary to run mauchly’s sphericity test. the shapiro-wilk test and the q–q plots showed the data distribution could be considered normal. besides, the results of the shapiro-wilk test show a p value greater than 0.05, thus proving the data meet the criteria of normality (see table 4). the data were also tested with the help of a mauchly’s test where a p value of 0.459 proved sphericity, one of the essential conditions to be met before executing a repeated measures test (ho, 2006; pituch & stevens, 2016). when executing the repeated measures test, it was determined that, although there were significant differences in students’ oral communicative competence throughout the implementation, those differences were not equivalent for the eg and cg. consequently, an additional test was run in order to determine if the interaction of the betweensubjects factor (the group where they were placed) and the within-subjects factor (the repeated measures) had been significant. to achieve this, the coding of the repeated measures test was modified on spss as follows: 153profile: issues teach. prof. dev., vol. 24 no. 1, jan-jun, 2022. issn 1657-0790 (printed) 2256-5760 (online). bogotá, colombia. pages 143-156 assessment of students’ oral communicative competence in english through a web conferencing platform table 4. normality test kolmogorov-smirnov a shapiro-wilk statistic df sig statistic df sig pre-test 0.151 15 .200* .965 15 .777 control test 0.90 15 .200* .953 15 .577 post-intervention test 0.106 15 .200* .969 15 .835 a lilliefors significance correction. *this is a lower bound of the true significance. dataset activate conjuntodatos1. glm ptccoral tcccoral posttccoral by group /wsfactor= time 3 polynomial /method= sstype(3) /plot=profile(time*group)type=line errorbar=no meanreference=no yaxis=auto /emmeans=tables(time) compare adj(bonferroni) /emmeans=tables(group*time) compare (group) compare adj(bonferroni) /emmeans=tables(group*time) compare (time) compare adj(bonferroni) /print=descriptive etasq opower homogeneity /criteria= alpha(0.5) /wsdesign= time /design=group upon execution of the new command, it was determined that the differences between the communicative competence demonstrated by the groups in the pre-test were not statistically significant (p = 0.979). nevertheless, the time-pair comparisons showed that the differences in students’ communicative competence across time were statistically significant exclusively for the eg (p = 0.031) between the first and the final assessment moments. the same was not true for the cg (p = 0.255). the changes in mean scores across time are summarized in figure 1. based on the results obtained and described in this section, it is possible to attribute the improvement in the eg’s communicative competence between the first and the third oral assessment procedures to the intervention in which said group was provided with synchronous contextualized practice in the target language and oral assessment on a web conferencing tool. this was carried out in agreement with the modifications and alignment of the elements of the rase model. figure 1. mean scores obtained by each group across time 12,00 14,00 16,00 18,00 20,00 22,00 pre-test control test post-test e st im a te d m a rg in a l m e a n s estimated marginal means control group time experimental group conclusions assessing students’ oral communicative competence online is not usually pursued within the institution where this study took place. however, in relation to the first research objective, we can assert that online assessment was feasible, mainly thanks to the use of a web conferencing platform students found easy to use, and the support of an experienced instructor. thus, it has been proved that not only is online evaluation of students’ oral performance commendable, but also successful when its execution is carefully planned. this study also found that it was possible for assessors to deliver instructions, and for students to time universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras154 cruz-ramos & herrera-díaz perform communicative tasks aligned with the principles of oral assessment and communicative tests established by several english language teaching authors (bakhsh, 2016; brown, 2005; council of europe, 2001; fulcher & davidson, 2007). students who took the oral online assessment through the web conferencing tool (zoom) did not experience any major inconveniences and were able to perform as they normally would in a face-to-face setting. one of the clear advantages of using this web conferencing platform, instead of having students meet their instructor in person within a limited timeframe, was the feasibility to align the elements of the rase model and have the evaluation process become congruent with the online modality of the course. in line with the recommendations provided by sandoval-sánchez and cruz-ramos (2018), a second instructor or assistant can help with technical aspects as well as with the delivery of instructions, thus improving the quality of the experience for students. the assistant was always ready to help students with backup questions that might escape the main instructor when carrying out the oral assessment procedures on a web conferencing platform. regarding the second research objective, the study also proved that the eg’s communicative competence improved steadily from the beginning to the end of the implementation, and this improvement was a product of the changes made to the instructional design of the english ii course. this also helps highlight the importance of aligning resources, activities, support, and evaluation when dealing with a language course online. moreover, we could argue that students who were enrolled in the eg were able to cope with new, and sometimes challenging, language points better than their cg counterparts during assessment. it must be mentioned that we found some limitations of the study, such as having a small sample chosen non randomly, the possible existence of extraneous variables, and the lack of independent statistical analysis for each dimension of the communicative competence. accordingly, we may suggest further research on the same topic but by including more groups of online english courses within the same institution or any other with similar characteristics; studying each dimension separately as well as the communicative competence as a whole; identifying those variables, besides the ones related to the instructional design, that may affect the intervention as well as the results. we hope the present manuscript encourages teachers, online instructors, and institutions to embrace the capabilities of online language courses by providing online assessment options that are truly congruent with the principles of online instruction. references bachman, l. f. 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(1983). learning purpose and language use. oxford university press. about the authors maría de los milagros cruz-ramos holds a phd in instructional technology. she is an english teacher and has participated as a moderator and instructional designer in online english courses for multiple institutions. her main field of research is the use of technology in tefl within varied learning environments. luz edith herrera-díaz is a professor in the language center at universidad veracruzana, a counselor in the self-access center, and was coordinator of the ma in tefl at the same university. she holds a phd in language studies (kent university, uk). her research interests include language teaching-learning modes and contextualized educational innovation. https://bit.ly/3d3iuga https://doi.org/10.17227/01234870.36folios97.113 https://doi.org/10.17227/01234870.36folios97.113 https://doi.org/10.1002/9781118784235.eelt0047 https://doi.org/10.1002/9781118784235.eelt0047 https://files.eric.ed.gov/fulltext/ej1176869.pdf editorial: profile in quartile 1 of the scimago journal rank 9profile: issues teach. prof. dev., vol. 23 no. 2, jul-dec, 2021. issn 1657-0790 (printed) 2256-5760 (online). bogotá, colombia. pages 9-14 https://doi.org/10.15446/profile.v23n2.96647 editorial1 profile in quartile 1 of the scimago journal rank in previous editorials we have mentioned the role indexing and ranking systems play in academic journals nowadays. they acknowledge the compliance of national and international standards for publication in terms of editorial processes and, in turn, have an impact on the evaluation of scholars’ and institutions’ productivity. the results of such evaluations do also count for the accreditation of preand postgraduate programmes as well as the accreditation of universities, among others. profile has worked steadily to incorporate such standards and thus, has been accepted in several ranks, as shown in figure 1, where we depict the journal’s timeline in its inclusion in databases and indexing systems. figure 1. profile’s timeline in databases and indexing systems included in publindex 2006 accepted in doaj accepted in scielo accepted in redalyc accepted in esci doaj= directory of open access journals eric= education resources information center esci= emerging sources citation index scielo= scienti�c electronic library online sjr= scimago journal rank accepted in scopus q2 in sjr q1 in sjr accepted in eric 2007 2008 2010 2016 2018 2020 2021 2015 it took us six years to be included in the colombian rank and another one to be accepted in the directory of open access journals (doaj). the inclusion of profile in the scientific how to cite this article (apa, 7th ed.): cárdenas, m. l., & nieto-cruz, m. c. (2021). editorial: profile in quartile 1 of the scimago journal rank. profile: issues in teachers’ professional development, 23(2), 9–14. https://doi.org/10.15446/profile.v23n2.96647 this editorial was received on may 26, 2021 and accepted on june 4, 2021. this is an open access article distributed under the terms of the creative commons license attribution noncommercial-noderivatives 4.0 international license. consultation is possible at https://creativecommons. org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/ https://doi.org/10.15446/profile.v23n2.96647 https://doi.org/10.15446/profile.v23n1.92134 https://creativecommons. org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/ https://creativecommons. org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/ universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras cárdenas & nieto-cruz 10 electronic library online (scielo) in 2008 and in redalyc, in 2010, together with the change in its periodicity, from annual to biannual, marked a turning point in the advancement towards higher visibility thanks to the open access policies that characterize both digital repositories. in 2016, the journal was included in the emerging sources citation index and, at the same time, submitted to scopus for a two-year observation period. this paid off and, after a positive evaluation, the journal was included in scopus for the first time in 2018. that achievement was an important step to become part of the scimago journal rank (sjr), which classified profile in quartile 2, in the report for the year 2019.1 in the 2020 report of the sjr (published in may 2021), the profile journal moved from quartile 2 to quartile 1 in the category of linguistics and language. within this area the journal is now number 229 of the 997 journals classified worldwide, number 2 in latin america, and number 1 in colombia. the fact that the journal moved up one quartile in one year tells us that it is consistently gaining a space among the most prestigious publications in the area, regionally and around the world. it also evidences the interest it has generated in the international arena and the role it is playing as a reference source for scholars in the field of education, in general, and in the areas of english language teaching, teacher education, linguistics, and language, in particular. according to the scimago website (https://www.scimagojr.com/aboutus.php), the sjr represents an attempt to visualize the current behaviour and dynamics of published scientific knowledge in 27 major thematic areas (which are further subdivided into 313 subject categories). the report is issued annually and classifies the titles that are part of the scopus database according to their citational impact. thus, the more the contents of a publication are cited by the scientific community, the higher the ranking that publication can achieve. the idea here is that those contents that are part of an active discussion are also the ones which are effectively impacting the way new knowledge is constructed. there is no lack of controversy surrounding this kind of ranking, and two issues can be mentioned in this regard. first, data are drawn from a selected group of publications (those in the scopus database) with the exclusion of a substantially greater number of publications outside the database. second, the impact of a title is almost exclusively measured in received citations without consideration for any other kind of impact that is not directly determined by citations. for instance, in our field, practitioners may resort to the contents of a publication to shape their daily practice or use those contents for class activities, among other alternatives. this may take place in english language classrooms or in teacher education programmes. in the former, the publication can have an impact on the incorporation of new teaching practices. the latter can embrace the examination of articles to update teachers’ pedagogical knowledge, the familiarization with new trends or further development of given issues, or a means to foster research and academic writing. 1 the report is launched annually, around may or june, and relies on citation data from the previous year to get a complete picture of a journal’s impact, instead of a partial one. thus, the report released in 2020, for instance, was based on data up to december 2019. https://www.scimagojr.com/aboutus.php profile: issues teach. prof. dev., vol. 23 no. 2, jul-dec, 2021. issn 1657-0790 (printed) 2256-5760 (online). bogotá, colombia. pages 9-14 editorial 11 despite the controversy behind metrics that are too quantitatively oriented, the sjr can be used as an additional tool to assess the characteristics of a scientific publication and thus allow editorial teams to take more informed editorial decisions (in terms, for instance, of international collaboration or relevant topics) or authors to decide which venues are more attuned to the findings in their studies (the report offers a series of similar publications which can be contrasted). in brief, as in many other cases, it is the good use we give to such information that helps strengthen any publication endeavour. in this issue, we are very pleased to share with you 17 articles. fourteen correspond to the section issues from teacher researchers, one to the section issues from novice teacher researchers and two to the section issues based on reflections and innovations. the contributions come from six countries, colombia with 10 articles, mexico with three articles, and chile, ecuador, uruguay, and iran with one article each. the topics discussed by researchers in the current issue concern english language teaching, foreign language teacher education and teacher professional development, the development of skills from different perspectives and actors, as well as english in content areas, identities, remote teaching, emotional intelligence and tutoring as the main topics. these topics occur at different levels: in elementary education, in secondary education, but mainly at the tertiary level with undergraduate preservice teachers, in-service teachers, and english as a foreign language (efl) learners. juanita argudo, from universidad de cuenca (ecuador), opens the first section with an article dealing with expressive writing to relieve academic stress at university level. the paper sheds light on the need to study the impact of academic stress on university students and looks for different strategies that can alleviate it. expressive writing has a positive effect on helping to ease academic stress and overcome some difficulties caused by this issue. this article is followed by a paper dealing with the gains and challenges experienced by an interdisciplinary group of efl students who participated in the implementation of a critical reading unit taught within a reading comprehension course at a university in medellín, colombia. the article is a joint effort between juan david castaño-roldán, from the universidad nacional de colombia in medellín, and doris correa, representing the universidad de antioquia (colombia). the authors found that students experienced several gains but also had some challenges related to aligning with the author’s position, seeing positionality in factual texts, and taking middle positions. the authors concluded that there are some specific areas in which these students need additional support. the next article is a contribution from patricia carabelli, professor at the universidad de la república in montevideo, uruguay. the paper deals with the hypothesis that the greater the vocabulary that dentistry students possess, the better they will be able to understand written dentistry texts. the results reveal that not only does a good vocabulary bank contribute to the understanding of an academic text but that multiple reading comprehension skills are involved in the process. the fourth article of this section is a contribution from albedro cadena-aguilar and claudia patricia álvarez-ayure from the universidad de la sabana (colombia). the researchers wanted universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras cárdenas & nieto-cruz 12 to improve comprehensibility in undergraduate efl students via selfand peer-assessment of student-generated podcasts with special attention to the use of suprasegmentals. results unveiled the exhibition of self-regulated behaviours and gains in comprehensibility. this study highlights the importance of helping learners look critically and reflectively at their own oral production and of incorporating training in suprasegmentals within efl courses to help learners communicate more effectively within a globalised context. josefina quintero and diana yurany álvarez from the universidad de caldas (colombia) and andrea arcila from the centro colombo americano in manizales (colombia), contributed the next article. it deals with the integration of the teaching of english and the natural sciences through cross-disciplinary lessons that followed the principles of content-based instruction. results revealed that the cross-disciplinary lessons were appropriate and useful to connect the foreign language learning with other school subjects. the topic of the next paper is the fostering of citizenship and english language competences in teenagers through task-based instruction by yanilis romero and adriana pérez from the universidad del norte (colombia). this paper proposes the design of a unit with social components as the main meaningful task for the teaching of the english language and for fostering citizenship competencies for a2 level learners. findings report that tasks might foster english language use if those are designed taking into account students’ context and interests and if they are authentic. the following article is a contribution from catalina juárez-díaz, who is a teacher at the benemérita universidad autónoma de puebla (mexico), and moisés perales from the universidad de quintana roo (mexico). they discuss a topic that has changed the way we do things in the present: remote teaching from the perspective of english language teaching faculty and preservice efl teachers. both groups reported negative feelings, which were connected with some faculty’s focus on delivering content without interaction and with insufficient internet access. sandra ximena bonilla-medina, karen vanessa varela, and katherine garcía from the universidad distrital francisco josé de caldas (colombia) in the next article developed a study in which they discuss the relationship between racial identity and language learning. this article addresses the connection in an attempt to shed light specifically on english language learning and teaching. the results relate language learners’ racial experiences as a crucial factor in the configuration of their identity as well as the economic, social, and cultural factors involved. iranian researchers minoo alemi, atefeh rezanejad, and bijan marefat, from the islamic azad university and the allameh tabataba’i university in tehran, iran, explored the reasons behind academic failure among iranian students of the teaching of efl. results indicated that four main factors led to the academic failure of the students, namely, (a) the student, (b) the professor, (c) the university, and (d) the source materials. as an end product, a number of guidelines to prevent academic failure in this context are presented. janeth sanchez-aguilar from the benemérita universidad autónoma de puebla (mexico) studied tutors’ and tutees’ behaviours, attitudes, and perspectives regarding efl peer tutoring in higher education in mexico. results indicate that the participants were positive about the experience, the sessions, their peers, and the influence in their learning. edgar lucero and profile: issues teach. prof. dev., vol. 23 no. 2, jul-dec, 2021. issn 1657-0790 (printed) 2256-5760 (online). bogotá, colombia. pages 9-14 editorial 13 andrea margarita cortés-ibañez from the universidad de la salle (colombia) researched the pedagogical practicum in an elt undergraduate program. the pedagogical practicum contains several academic, professional, and experiential aspects that configure this space with established (pre-)requisites, tasks, and roles for student-teachers; these aspects in turn help these individuals in their construction with particular manners of must-be and must-do. a second article on identity is presented now. it is connected to teacher identity and language pedagogy from the perspective of a teacher educator’s experience. the researcher diego ubaque-casallas from the universidad distrital francisco josé de caldas (colombia) locates the intersections between english language pedagogy and the identities of english language teachers. findings suggest that although there are still colonial roots that repress other ways of being and doing, english language pedagogy goes beyond the instrumental sense of teaching. in this way, english language pedagogy is about transformation as it is never static because it is an extension of identity. in order of appearance now we count on our chilean colleagues maritza rosas-maldonado and macarena durán-castro, from universidad andres bello, and annjeanette martin from universidad de los andes, in santiago, chile, who reveal the socio-emotional influence of past teachers on novice english teachers’ beliefs. they assert that teachers’ past learning experiences, also referred to as “apprenticeship of observation,” can affect their beliefs and, in turn, their teaching practice. results showed that the teachers’ apprenticeship of observation influenced their socio-emotional and affective views on teaching with a main concern on teacher-student relationships. our last article from this section, comes from mexico. perla villegas-torres and m. martha lengeling from the universidad de guanajuato (mexico) approach teaching as a complex emotional experience as our previous contributors have also commented on. this article presents the study of a mexican english teacher and examines the professionaldevelopmental stages based on huberman’s (1993) career cycle model. the article shows the realities a teacher faces by exploring the concepts of emotions, identity, socialization, and agency. it questions the belief that teachers achieve expertise through accumulating years of practice. our section 2, issues from novice teacher-researchers, includes one article. in it, sara bata and cristal castro from the universidad de pamplona (colombia) examine how a group of six elementary students that study efl manage their emotional intelligence while taking their speaking exams. the results provide further insight into the students’ emotional intelligence and the coping mechanisms/strategies used to manage their emotional intelligence while taking two different speaking exams. our issue closes with the section issues based on reflections and innovations. in this opportunity we welcome two articles from two different contexts in colombia. in the first article frank giraldo from the universidad de caldas (colombia) presents a review of the literature on the topic of language assessment literacy and teachers’ professional development. the author analysed the features and impacts of 14 programmes which promoted teachers’ language assessment literacy. findings suggest that the programmes universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras cárdenas & nieto-cruz 14 were geared towards practical tasks in which teachers used theory critically. also, the studies show that teachers expanded their conception of language assessment, became aware of how to design professional instruments, and considered wider constructs for assessment. finally, we rest on the article provided by martha garcia-chamorro and nayibe rosadomendinueta from universidad del atlántico and universidad del norte (colombia). the authors argue that current conceptualizations of foreign language teacher education fail to represent the complexity of teacher education. they suggest that efforts in this direction may better prepare prospective english teachers to face challenging realities in educational settings and will eventually improve students’ learning. as you see, the contents in this issue include a series of diverse and complex topics, and we hope the selection of articles presented here will provide readers with valuable insights into some relevant aspects related to the teaching and learning of english. thank you for all your support! melba libia cárdenas journal editor maría claudia nieto-cruz journal director in-service university-level efl instructors’ language assessment literacy and training needs 77profile: issues teach. prof. dev., vol. 24 no. 1, jan-jun, 2022. issn 1657-0790 (printed) 2256-5760 (online). bogotá, colombia. pages 77-95 https://doi.org/10.15446/profile.v24n1.93676 in-service university-level efl instructors’ language assessment literacy and training needs requerimientos de capacitación y de literacidad en evaluación de lenguas de docentes de inglés en ejercicio ali sayyadi1 university of tehran, tehran, iran the study examined university-level english instructors’ assessment training experiences, classroombased assessment practices, and assessment training needs in iran. sixty-eight instructors who were randomly selected through academic social networks filled out a questionnaire. eight instructors were also interviewed. the results indicated that the instructors had received insufficient training, especially in practical aspects, because they had solely been exposed to assessment concepts and theories in the limited and impractical assessment courses offered to preservice teachers in their universities. also, they had recurrently failed to put their limited assessment knowledge into practice. despite this situation, they preferred to get basic rather than advanced assessment training due to personal and contextual constraints. the study bears implications for university english instructors, teacher educators, and university administrators. keywords: assessment training needs, iranian context, language assessment, literacy, university english instructors este estudio indagó sobre las necesidades y experiencias de capacitación y las prácticas de evaluación de 68 docentes de inglés universitarios iraníes. los participantes, seleccionados al azar de redes sociales académicas, diligenciaron el cuestionario. ocho participantes fueron entrevistados. los resultaron mostraron que los participantes habían recibido poca capacitación, especialmente en aspectos prácticos, a través de limitados cursos diseñados para docentes en formación sobre aspectos conceptuales y teóricos. los participantes también indicaron un consistente fracaso para poner en práctica su poco conocimiento sobre evaluación. a pesar de esto, los participantes prefieren recibir capacitación básica en lugar de una más avanzada debido a limitaciones personales y contextuales. el estudio tiene implicaciones para docentes de inglés universitarios, formadores docentes y administrativos universitarios. palabras clave: evaluación de lenguas, contexto iraní, docentes de inglés universitarios, literacidad, requerimientos de capacitación 1 ali sayyadi  https://orcid.org/0000-0003-2055-9154 · email: ali.sayyadi@ut.ac.ir how to cite this article (apa, 7th ed.): sayyadi, a. (2022). in-service university-level efl instructors’ language assessment literacy and training needs. profile: issues in teachers’ professional development, 24(1), 77–95. https://doi.org/10.15446/profile.v24n1.93676 this article was received on february 16, 2021 and accepted on october 18, 2021. this is an open access article distributed under the terms of the creative commons license attribution-noncommercial-noderivatives 4.0 international license. consultation is possible at https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/ https://doi.org/10.15446/profile.v24n1.93676 https://orcid.org/0000-0003-2055-9154 mailto:ali.sayyadi@ut.ac.ir https://doi.org/10.15446/profile.v24n1.93676 https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/ universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras78 sayyadi introduction assessment has been widely recognized as an indispensable part of a language teacher’s job. a great deal of a teacher’s time is typically spent on undertaking various assessment and evaluation activities such as developing and administering tests, rating examinees’ performances, and making appropriate decisions regarding the test-takers’ proficiencies and the quality of teaching and learning activities (ashraf & zolfaghari, 2018; deluca & klinger, 2010). language assessment is not solely a means to monitor and rank students’ achievements at the end of a course and make decisions about their futures (i.e., assessment of learning). teachers may also carry out assessment for learning in order to improve students’ learning through providing frequent informative feedback, building their confidence, and helping them undertake self-regulated learning and assessment to feel responsible for their own success (levi & inbar-lourie, 2020; stiggins, 2002). it might also be beneficial for teachers by providing them with ample evidence to regulate their instruction and to sharpen their pedagogic and evaluative qualities (mertler, 2016). accordingly, it is necessary for language teachers to have sufficient language assessment literacy (lal) to maximize teaching and learning practices in classrooms through carrying out efficient assessments (deluca & klinger, 2010; harding & kremmel, 2016). widely acknowledged as a significant construct (scarino, 2013; taylor, 2013), lal is generally regarded as the skills, abilities, knowledge, and expertise that language assessors are required to attain in order to carry out efficient language assessments (fulcher, 2012; inbar-lourie, 2017). fulcher (2012) defines teachers’ lal and, more specifically, the skills that they need to acquire to be assessment-literate as: the knowledge, skills and abilities required to design, develop, maintain or evaluate, large-scale standardised and/or classroom based tests, familiarity with test processes, and awareness of principles and concepts that guide and underpin practice, including ethics and codes of practice. the ability to place knowledge, skills, processes, principles and concepts within wider historical, social, political and philosophical frameworks in order to understand why practices have arisen as they have, and to evaluate the role and impact of testing on society, institutions, and individuals. (p. 125) in spite of the continuing controversy about what lal is required for different stakeholders (inbar-lourie, 2017), there is a consensus that language teachers are the largest group of lal users and, consequently, require lal most immediately (harding & kremmel, 2016). to perform assessment activities that are consistent with the desired learning objectives, language teachers are required to obtain appropriate lal. lack of lal would threaten the reliability and validity of a test considered for the evaluation of language learners and, as a result, impede students’ language learning (xu & brown, 2017). therefore, promoting teachers’ lal through, for instance, launching language assessment training programs, appears essential in developing their assessment skills. apart from tapping into the knowledge and skills that teachers are required to acquire to be assessment-literate, language assessment training programs need to address teachers’ perceptions and personal training needs (vogt et al., 2020). different facets of language assessment training have been studied in western academic settings including teachers’ training needs and the efficiency of face-toface and virtual training (malone, 2008; vogt & tsagari, 2014). however, it is still underexplored in the higher education context, particularly in parts of the world where education is exam-oriented (yan et al., 2018). accordingly, there is a dearth of research concerning language assessment training in the iranian higher education context. in other words, previous studies have scantly explored the assessment training university english instructors have received or wish to receive in the iranian context. the present study, therefore, sought to examine university-level english instructors’ assessment 79profile: issues teach. prof. dev., vol. 24 no. 1, jan-jun, 2022. issn 1657-0790 (printed) 2256-5760 (online). bogotá, colombia. pages 77-95 in-service university-level efl instructors’ language assessment literacy and training needs training experiences, classroom assessment practices, and assessment training needs (atn) in iran. university instructors are recurrently busy with assessment-based activities such as generating and administering tests, rating or ranking performances, providing feedback, and making decisions. therefore, exploring university instructors’ atns may help them generate a more profound understanding of their assessment skills and, consequently, induce teacher educators to design and offer training programs in line with the instructors’ needs. the present study sought to find appropriate answers to the following questions: 1. what assessment training have iranian university english instructors received? 2. what are iranian university english instructors’ assessment training needs? literature review the term assessment, for many years, was associated with the process of evaluating and summing up what pupils had learned and achieved at the end of a certain course. in this traditional approach, known as summative assessment or assessment of learning, “the actions that guided learning processes before the end of the course were generally not regarded as kinds of assessment” (william, 2011, p. 4). more recently, however, there has been a growing tendency to practice formative assessment or assessment for learning with the aim of guiding and forming students’ learning based on their potential capabilities and adjusting pedagogic practices to the needs of the learners. despite some minor distinctions between formative assessment and assessment for learning (see swaffield, 2011), the two terms are usually used synonymously in the related literature (see dann, 2014, for further discussion). motivated by the assessment for learning initiative, developing lal has become critical for language teachers and the subject of discussion and research in the related literature (see hasselgreen, 2008; hasselgreen et al., 2004; reckase, 2008; scarino, 2013; taylor, 2009; vogt & tsagari, 2014; walters, 2010). the related literature is replete with studies which have examined lal among english language teachers working in schools (e.g., chung & nam, 2018; guerin, 2010; hasselgreen et al., 2004; watmani et al., 2020; yan et al., 2018; zulaiha et al., 2020) and institutes (e.g., crusan et al., 2016; deluca & klinger, 2010; lam, 2015). the teachers in most studies (e.g., crusan et al., 2016; lam, 2015; malone, 2017; vogt & tsagari, 2014; watmani et al., 2020) were reported to demonstrate underdeveloped lal and to lack adequate skills and knowledge to carry out a fair and efficient assessment. watmani et al., for instance, studied lal among 200 iranian high school teachers of english and concluded that the teachers had poor assessment literacy competence. the disappointing condition of language teachers’ lal highlights the urgent need for training teachers in this regard (fulcher, 2012; malone, 2017). hasselgreen et al. (2004), for example, examined this issue in the european context and came to the conclusion that insufficient attention was paid to training teachers in the field of language assessment and evaluation. guerin (2010) also reported that the participants in his study had not received adequate assessment training and called for programs that could enable them to become more skillful assessors. fulcher (2012) and chung and nam (2018) have also reported similar findings in their studies in which the participating instructors voiced the need for training programs that prepared them to be experts in designing and developing tests. on the other hand, the teachers who participated in gan and lam’s (2020) study did not give much weight to assessment training programs and refrained from attending such programs due to personal factors. hence, it seems that no consensus on the criticality of assessment training programs has been reached in the related literature. in general, the findings reported in previous related studies have suggested atns as highly contextualized and individualized factors. language instructors from various settings with specific educational norms have reported different training needs. tsagari and vogt universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras80 sayyadi (2017), for example, scrutinized language teachers’ atns across seven european countries and found that the instructors from different countries focused on varying priorities in their assessment training programs and whether they showed desires to attend training programs depended on the assessment culture of their country. greek teachers, for instance, required advanced training courses since the english curriculum standards as well as the ministry of education in the country emphasized the significance of assessment practices in academia. in contrast, german teachers exhibited moderate training desires concerning skill-based assessment because german foreign language learners were evaluated by national tests mainly based on linguistic skills. due to the context-specific nature of lal, atns are often customized. specifically, since teachers’ lal involves their knowledge, abilities, attitudes, and beliefs about assessment (scarino, 2013), their atns can differ individually. the english language teachers participating in various studies (e.g., deluca & klinger, 2010; yan et al., 2018) voiced greater training needs for assessment practice than for assessment theory. they, specifically, did not show any interest in theoretical principles of language assessment and refrained from applying the theories in their assessment practices. atns are also individualized owing to some contributing factors. yan et al. (2018) argued in this regard that an enormous workload prevents language teachers from expressing their atns in assessment theories and principles because it is challenging and time-consuming to study and acquire these theories and principles. teachers’ varying individual desires may also be due to the imbalanced training contents that they have received (lam, 2015). lam (2015) also argued that language assessment courses fail to provide preservice teachers with the essential assessment skills. this inefficiency, in his view, results in the generation of different assessment skills and, consequently, various atns. although the previous studies have yielded precious insights into assessment training for language teachers, they have mainly been concerned with english teachers working in schools or institutes and only a few were on university instructors. likewise, as the review of the related literature indicates, university english instructors’ atns are underexplored in the iranian context. the current study, therefore, was carried out to fill this gap. method a mixed-method design was used in the present study. more specifically, in order to complement and triangulate the collected data to provide a more profound understanding of iranian university english instructors’ atns, both quantitative and qualitative data were accumulated and analyzed. online questionnaires and semi-structured interviews were employed to collect quantitative and qualitative data respectively. participants the study was conducted after the outbreak of covid-19 in 2020, which gave the researcher no choice but to find appropriate cases through social networks. more specifically, to sample the participating university instructors, the researcher randomly looked for appropriate cases in some academic social networks such as linkedin and academia and sent them messages containing a brief description of the objectives of study along with formal participation requests and the questionnaire. they were also requested to share their demographic information and leave their telephone number or email address at the end of the questionnaire if they were interested in receiving the follow-up interview. the messages were sent to more than 300 english instructors who taught at the university level in iranian state, azad, payame-nour, and applied science and technology universities. eventually, 68 instructors (28 men and 40 women) with the age range of 30 to 58 years participated in the study by filling in the questionnaires. fifty-nine participants taught english to non-english major students and nine taught english major students. the majority 81profile: issues teach. prof. dev., vol. 24 no. 1, jan-jun, 2022. issn 1657-0790 (printed) 2256-5760 (online). bogotá, colombia. pages 77-95 in-service university-level efl instructors’ language assessment literacy and training needs of the participants (about 80%) got a master’s degree in applied linguistics, linguistics, english literature, or english language translation. the rest had a doctoral degree in the mentioned fields of studies. their teaching experiences ranged from 3 to 21 years. fourteen participants agreed to receive followup interviews. the researcher, subsequently, selected one volunteer randomly and interviewed him through skype. after analyzing the recorded data, he interviewed another case through the same procedure and kept it up to reaching the status of data saturation and coherence. the recorded data saturated after the participation of eight participants whose demographic information is shown in table 1. table 1. demographic information of the interviewees interviewees gender age teaching experience degree i1 male 35 5 years master’s i2 female 38 9 years phd i3 female 36 5 years master’s i4 male 39 11 years phd i5 female 32 3 years master’s i6 female 35 3 years master’s i7 female 37 6 years master’s i8 female 45 15 years phd data collection instruments to accumulate the quantitative data, the questionnaire developed by vogt and tsagari (2014) was adapted and used. this instrument was selected since it has also been employed and validated in similar studies on atns such as lan and fan (2019). it consists of three sections. the first section seeks participants’ demographic information including their gender, age, academic degree, teaching experience, student types (english or nonenglish major), and educational background. the second section investigates the assessment training respondents have received and wish to get. this section comprises three thematic areas including concepts and content of language testing, aims of testing and assessment, and classroom assessment performances. each thematic area is divided into two parts: received training and needed training. a three-point likert scale is used for each item with not at all, a little, and advanced options for received training and none, basic, and advanced for needed training. it is worth mentioning that the terms a little, basic, and advanced are quantified to dispel any likely ambiguity. more specifically, the terms a little, basic, and advanced are specified as training for one day, two days, and three or more days respectively. at the end of the questionnaire, one open-ended question is used to seek instructors’ perceptions about their specific atns. the questionnaire was piloted with four english instructors teaching in iranian universities. as a result of the comments provided by the respondents, some minor changes were made to the questionnaire including removing similar items, rewording the technical terms, and reordering the items. eventually, the questionnaire (see appendix a) comprised 22 items including nine items for concepts and content of language testing, four items for aims of testing and assessment, and nine items for classroom assessment performances. semi-structured interviews were also used to triangulate the collected data and let the respondents extend, elaborate on, and provide details about their perceptions of their atns. such a plan could lead to the richness and depth of the responses given by the respondents as well as the comprehensiveness of the emerging findings. the interview questions were concerned with the respondents’ classroom assessment practices, assessment training experiences, assessment learning resources, and atns. the interview questions (see appendix b) were developed in english and, subsequently, checked by two experts who were teaching english-major students in iranian universities. data collection procedure since the study was conducted after the outbreak of covid-19 in 2020 and also focused on a wide range universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras82 sayyadi of university teachers from various universities in the country, the researcher sought to take the advantage of academic social networks (e.g., linkedin and academia) to collect the data. more specifically, the researcher found cases with the required features on social networks and sent them the intended message and the questionnaire. seventy-one respondents returned the questionnaires after about three months. three submissions were excluded due to incomplete responses. the responses given in the rest (68 questionnaires) were loaded into spss 24 to be analyzed. after collecting the quantitative data, the researcher strived to contact the respondents who left their telephone number or email address at the end of the questionnaire and set an interview time with the volunteers. the interviews were conducted and recorded through skype. to facilitate the communication and give the respondents the chance to elaborate on their viewpoints at length, they were privileged to opt for the language to respond freely. to ensure the trustworthiness of the data, the researcher sought to avoid bias through the recommended strategies (for more details see mcmillan & schumacher, 2006). more specifically, he persistently employed field work, accounted for participants’ language verbatim accounts, and checked the data informally with the participants during the interviews. in addition to recording all interviews with the permission of the participants, the researcher took hand-written notes of the key points of the interviewees’ responses throughout the interviews. data analysis procedure spss 24 was employed to analyze the data collected through the questionnaires. analysis of the data indicated a strong internal and consistent reliability of the questionnaire (α = 0.92). descriptive statistics of the 23 items, including their frequencies and percentages, were reported to answer the research questions quantitatively. besides, the frequency of the recurring themes was calculated to analyze the responses given to the open-ended question. the recorded interviews were analyzed inductively and deductively. to conduct the inductive procedure, the interview contents were analyzed through codelabeling and identifying recurring themes. that is, the data from both interviews and open-ended questions were transcribed verbatim and integrated with the notes taken. the transcriptions were then read frequently and recursively so that the interactions could be envisaged in detail. this also helped to find connections between the results emerging from both sources. the researcher developed open codes concerning the research questions independently, which sometimes entailed going back and forth through the data. the categories and relationships among the themes emerged from more refined crossreferencing among the themes, memos, and participants’ accounts. this procedure proceeded incrementally up to data saturation and coherence and, eventually, conclusions. the deductive approach taken in the data analysis procedure involved referring to questionnaire items as categories. to ensure coding reliability, coding and thematizing were verified by an expert who was an associate professor of applied linguistics and had a great wealth of research experience. results from questionnaires the results are discussed in the three thematic areas considered in the questionnaire including concepts and content of language testing, aims of testing and assessment, and classroom assessment performances. content and concepts of language testing as can be seen in table 2, it seems that most of the training the respondents received in the content and concepts revolved around the qualities of a test. that is, less than 11% of the respondents claimed that they had received no training in the concept and content of test reliability, validity, and discrimination. only two respondents reported no training in the concept and content of test reliability and validity. on the other 83profile: issues teach. prof. dev., vol. 24 no. 1, jan-jun, 2022. issn 1657-0790 (printed) 2256-5760 (online). bogotá, colombia. pages 77-95 in-service university-level efl instructors’ language assessment literacy and training needs hand, more than half of the participants did not receive any remarkable training in the content and concept of assessing language skills and the social dimension of language assessment. social dimension, among all content and concept areas, appears to be the most neglected one in training, with 74% of respondents reporting no training in this regard. integrated language skills were reported to be the second least trained area of content and concepts among the respondents, 70% of whom claimed no training at all. table 2. respondents’ assessment training received and needed in content and concepts received training needed training f % f % receptive skills (listening/reading) not at all 36 53 9 13 a little 27 40 37 54 advanced 5 7 22 33 productive skills (writing/speaking) not at all 36 53 9 13 a little 27 40 37 54 advanced 5 7 15 33 integrated language skills not at all 48 70 6 9 a little 18 27 43 63 advanced 2 3 19 28 validity not at all 2 3 6 9 a little 51 75 41 60 advanced 15 22 21 31 reliability not at all 2 3 6 9 a little 51 75 41 60 advanced 15 22 21 31 discrimination not at all 8 11 8 11 a little 52 76 39 58 advanced 8 13 21 31 difficulty not at all 10 15 6 9 a little 50 73 42 61 advanced 8 12 20 30 statistics not at all 15 23 5 8 a little 46 67 36 53 advanced 7 10 27 39 social dimension not at all 50 74 8 12 a little 16 23 39 57 advanced 2 3 21 31 note. the percentages have been rounded up and down. universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras84 sayyadi concerning the respondents’ atns, table 2 indicates that the majority of the respondents longed to receive training in all concept and content areas of language assessment. however, their needs for basic training were unveiled to be stronger than those for advanced training. that is, more than half of the respondents reported a need for basic training in all content and concept areas, whereas about onethird of them desired advanced training in content and concepts. aims of testing and assessment the results in table 3 show that more than one-third of the participants had not received any training in the four areas concerned with the purposes of testing and assessment. one out of two respondents claimed that they had received basic training in the four issues dealing with the purpose of testing. it was also revealed that the amount of advanced training that they had received in any of the four areas was negligible. that is, only less than 5% of the respondents reported receiving advanced training in the purpose of testing and assessment. table 3. respondents’ assessment training received and needed in purpose of testing received training needed training f % f % giving grades not at all 25 36 7 10 a little 40 59 43 63 advanced 3 5 18 27 finding out what is needed in teaching and learning not at all 27 39 2 3 a little 39 58 37 54 advanced 2 3 29 43 placing students not at all 26 38 9 13 a little 38 58 44 64 advanced 4 4 15 23 selecting students not at all 26 38 10 16 a little 38 58 41 59 advanced 4 4 17 25 note. the percentages have been rounded up and down. most of the participants also thought they still lacked training in the four areas covered in this theme. however, they showed greater tendencies to attend basic training sessions about the purposes of testing and assessment rather than advanced ones. the participants seeking to receive training in “finding out what is needed in teaching and learning” made up the largest percentage of advanced training applicants at 43 percent. it may indicate the respondents’ attention to the significant connection between assessment and teaching. classroom-based assessment performances the results in table 4 indicate that more than half of the respondents received no training in the practical aspects of classroom assessment except for “selecting appropriate assessment methods,” with less than twothirds of the respondents receiving training. among these classroom-based assessment practices, “preparing students for high-stakes tests” and “using integrated assessment” seem to be the most neglected areas in 85profile: issues teach. prof. dev., vol. 24 no. 1, jan-jun, 2022. issn 1657-0790 (printed) 2256-5760 (online). bogotá, colombia. pages 77-95 in-service university-level efl instructors’ language assessment literacy and training needs training, with more than four-fifths of respondents reporting no training in these aspects. less than 8% of the respondents reported attending advanced training sessions in any of the classroom-based assessment practices. on the other hand, nearly 90% of the respondents expressed their desire to attend either basic or advanced training sessions in the practical aspects. except for “preparing students for high stakes exams,” the instructors expressed more need for basic training in classroom-based assessment practices. table 4. respondents’ assessment training received and needed in classroom-based assessment practices received training needed training f % f % developing classroom-based assessment not at all 50 73 8 11 a little 15 22 36 53 advanced 3 5 24 36 selecting and using ready-made tests not at all 43 63 6 9 a little 22 32 36 53 advanced 3 5 26 38 giving feedback based on assessment not at all 35 51 6 9 a little 30 44 30 44 advanced 3 5 32 51 using self-assessment not at all 52 76 8 11 a little 15 23 50 73 advanced 1 1 10 16 using peer-assessment not at all 53 77 6 8 a little 14 22 48 70 advanced 1 1 14 22 using integrated assessment not at all 55 81 8 11 a little 12 18 45 66 advanced 1 1 15 23 using portfolio not at all 40 58 8 12 a little 20 29 39 57 advanced 8 13 21 31 preparing students for high-stakes tests not at all 55 81 2 3 a little 13 19 30 44 advanced 0 0 36 53 selecting appropriate assessment methods not at all 25 36 10 12 a little 37 54 40 57 advanced 6 10 8 31 note. the percentages have been rounded up and down. universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras86 sayyadi table 5. overall trend of assessment training received training needed training % % content and concepts not at all 34 9 a little 55 58 advanced 11 33 purpose of testing not at all 38 10 a little 58 60 advanced 4 30 classroom-based assessment practice not at all 66 9 a little 30 57 advanced 4 34 note. the percentages have been rounded up and down. overall results as indicated in table 5, the majority of the instructors (66%) had not received any training in the practical aspects of classroom assessment, which also turned out to be the most neglected area among the examined assessment themes. the proportion of the instructors receiving no training in the other two thematic areas was similar (i.e., about one-third). besides, most of the training that the respondents had received was reported to be basic. the results also show that the respondents demonstrated similar atns in the three thematic areas. that is, nearly 60% and 30% of the instructors reported their desire to get basic and advanced training respectively in any of the examined areas. also, about 10% of the respondents had no interest in receiving training in any of the three thematic areas. findings from the interviews and the open-ended question the interviews were carried out to reveal the respondents’ assessment training experiences, classroom assessment practices, and atns. the latter was also scrutinized by the open-ended question used at the end of the questionnaire. training experiences and classroom practices iranian preservice instructors are typically exposed to various assessment and testing concepts, principles, and approaches in formal higher-education courses for the first time (i1, i2, & i6). some common testing and assessment concepts —including reliability, validity, practicality, rating, and assessment purposes— were learned from those courses (i1, i2, i5, & i6). however, as four of the respondents argued, they have failed to apply the knowledge and skills they learned in actual classes since they became in-service instructors. also, no training plan has been considered by universities to help in-service instructors to extend and enact their prior assessment knowledge (i2, i4). this is vividly presented in i2’s words: i have to admit the fact that i have learned nothing about language testing except some broad theories, definitions, and principles that were presented in my university courses. honestly, what happened to me 87profile: issues teach. prof. dev., vol. 24 no. 1, jan-jun, 2022. issn 1657-0790 (printed) 2256-5760 (online). bogotá, colombia. pages 77-95 in-service university-level efl instructors’ language assessment literacy and training needs regarding language testing was just superficial learning. i just memorized the most important definitions and notes to pass my testing exams. and, honestly, i do not remember much about my testing lessons because i have never tried to use those theories in my classroom assessment practices. also, my university has never required us or has never considered a program to train us to employ our testing knowledge in practice. the interviewees were also asked to elaborate on the strategies they had used to compensate for the lack of assessment training. seven out of the eight respondents maintained that they had done nothing to promote their classroom assessment abilities after graduation and had never been exposed to any language testing resources because language testing had never been their academic area of interest. two instructors (i2 & i7) also attributed this negligence to their universities, which did not attach much weight to “recent and up-to-date testing methods” (i7) and required their instructors to “stick to old-fashioned methods” (i7). i3 was the only instructor who had compensated for his lack of assessment training through “reading assessment books and recently-published papers.” assessment training needs nearly 90% of the participants who answered the open-ended question aired their needs for training in various assessment areas. they were eager to receive training in practical aspects of testing (n = 42) and, more specifically, learn to develop a standard test (n = 16), implement formative assessment in their classes (n = 12), interpret test scores efficiently (n = 8), and prepare candidates for high-stakes exams (n = 5). along the same lines, all interviewees unanimously voiced strong desires for getting training in assessment because, to them, it might lead to promoting their lal, classroom-assessment practices, and students’ quality of learning. they were also required to elaborate on their specific training needs. although three respondents did not provide any clear response to this question, the rest expected to receive training in some assessment skills including various formative assessment methods and techniques, test and scale development, item writing, and score interpretation. concerning her specific atns, i5 stated: i like to learn basically how to apply formative assessment in my classes because i have always used summative assessment to evaluate my students’ performance. although i assign some scores to students’ class activity and attendance, i know what i do is not systematic or scientific. i2 called for training programs that mainly focus on applied aspects of classroom assessment rather than theories and principles: “we are fed up with various theories of language testing. i suppose we did not learn how and where to apply those theories. i am eager to get training in anything which can be used in classrooms.” discussion the current study sought to examine iranian university english instructors’ assessment training experiences, classroom assessment practices, and atns. the results of the study showed that the instructors had received insufficient assessment training (specifically in classroom-based assessment practices), had low lal, and had failed to put their limited testing and assessment knowledge into practice because they had solely been exposed to various theoretical assessment lessons in the limited courses they had taken in their undergraduate and post-graduate studies. similar findings have been reported in studies conducted in other settings (e.g., fulcher, 2012; jin, 2010; vogt & tsagari, 2014). jin (2010), likewise, attributes the failure of enacting language instructors’ assessment knowledge in classrooms to the limited time devoted to classroom practice in language testing and assessment courses. the results, however, are not supported by lam’s study (2019) in which university instructors in hong kong were reported to have high universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras88 sayyadi lal for receiving professional training in language assessment. this difference might be explained by the fact that instructors in this region are mandated to pass the language proficiency assessment for teachers test to be qualified officially to start their career (coniam & falvey, 2013). therefore, taking professional assessment training to prepare for the test appears to be necessary for the instructors. on the contrary, getting such a qualification is not considered a job prerequisite in the iranian context. besides, assessment training programs offered to preservice instructors in hong kong, unlike in iran, are reported to be comprehensible and efficient (lam, 2015). the results of the study also revealed that the participants, despite their lack of assessment training, had refrained from using other resources to compensate for their insufficient lal since they were not interested in the testing and assessment area and also had to comply with the testing regulations adopted in their universities. this is not consistent with the results in tsagari and vogt’s study (2017) where the instructors were reported to resort to books and recently-published papers and turn to their colleagues for practical advice in order to make up for their low lal. another important finding of the study was that a great majority of the respondents (nearly 90%) expressed their desire to get assessment training. it appears that they assumed taking efficient assessment training programs to be effective in addressing their assessment needs and, consequently, enhancing their assessment literacy competence. as tajeddin et al. (2011) concluded in their study, taking assessment training programs can help untrained or insufficiently-trained iranian teachers develop a more profound understanding of different language proficiency concepts and make, for instance, more insightful and reliable raters through mainly focusing on macro-level and higher-order components of language while assessing their students’ performance. on the other hand, the teachers mainly showed unwillingness in taking advanced and rigorous training programs and required basic training in content and concepts in assessment, purposes of testing, and classroom-based practices owing to their disinterest in the language assessment area (i.e., a personal factor) and insufficient support from their universities (i.e., a contextual constraint). this is in line with the findings reported in the study by yan et al. (2018) in which the participants mainly tended to take less advanced assessment training courses to improve their lal and, consequently, classroom practices. yan et al. also argued that the tendency to get basic rather than advanced training can be accounted for by personal factors and/or contextual constraints. it accordingly seems that the university instructors may reinforce their interest in promoting their assessment knowledge and skills if more emphasis is placed on their assessment competence in their workplaces and adequate support and budget are provided for them to improve their lal. a lack of support as well as strict regulations set by universities may discourage instructors from improving their lal and assessment practices because the instructors are generally graded and evaluated based on the quality of their publications rather than on classroom practices (mohrman et al., 2011). more support and emphasis on lal may reinforce the instructors’ interest in getting more advanced assessment training and induce them to pursue more recent and novel approaches to language assessment (lam, 2015). for instance, they may strive to practice assessment for learning to support students’ learning and benefit from their assessment results to improve the quality of their teaching. also, they may resort to the sociocultural theory of language teaching, learning, and assessment to assist their learners to move through their zone of proximal learning through constructive feedback on their performances and scaffolding. the tendency to grow such skills was also pointed out by the instructors who voiced their desire to learn to practice formative assessment. 89profile: issues teach. prof. dev., vol. 24 no. 1, jan-jun, 2022. issn 1657-0790 (printed) 2256-5760 (online). bogotá, colombia. pages 77-95 in-service university-level efl instructors’ language assessment literacy and training needs the results also showed that when the interviewees were required to voice their specific atns, some of the respondents were found to be hesitant to answer. this supports tsagari and vogt’s (2017) study in which the language instructors failed to specify their atns clearly. as hill (2017) argued, the difficulty to know atns appears when instructors fail to employ their assessment knowledge in classrooms or when they lack skills to elaborate on the efficiency of their classroom assessment practices. conclusion the study attempted to explore university english instructors’ assessment training experiences, classroom assessment practices, and atns in iran. in general, the findings revealed that the instructors had not received enough training to promote their lal and classroombased assessment practices because they had solely been exposed to language assessment principles in the limited courses offered to preservice teachers in universities, which had mainly revolved around concepts and theories of language assessment and had given short shrift to the practical aspects. in spite of this situation, the instructors had a stronger desire for one-to-twoday training programs (i.e., basic training programs) rather than advanced ones lasting more than three days. this tendency might be ascribed to different personal and contextual constraints including the instructors’ disinterest in the language testing and assessment area and lack of support from universities. the study, however, is subject to some limitations that could be addressed in future research. first, it is a small-scale study with 68 participants who filled out the questionnaire and eight interviewees. moreover, some terms used in the questionnaire (e.g., basic and advanced) may still look ambiguous, although they are quantified by being day-based. this ambiguity may give rise to varying interpretations and, consequently, different responses from participants. despite such limitations, the study may have some practical implications to enhance assessment training for university english instructors in iran. for instance, the results obtained in the current study may contribute to growing the body of knowledge in the related literature. they may also raise teacher educators’ awareness of the iranian university instructors’ lal, assessment training experiences, classroom-based assessment practices, and atns. this awareness might induce them to design and implement more efficient assessment training programs in line with instructors’ lacks and actual needs. further, the results may encourage iranian university administrators and department heads to give more weight to their instructors’ assessment practices, to consider practical and effective assessment training programs for the preservice and in-service instructors, and to provide enough financial support for them to promote their lal. references ashraf, h., & zolfaghari, s. 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(2020). an investigation into efl teachers’ assessment literacy: indonesian teachers’ perceptions and classroom practice. european journal of contemporary education, 9(1), 189–201. https:// doi.org/10.13187/ejced.2020.1.189 about the author ali sayyadi holds a phd in teaching english as a foreign language from the university of tehran. his main area of interest is language assessment. https://doi.org/10.1177/0265532213480128 https://doi.org/10.1177/003172170208301010 https://doi.org/10.1080/0969594x.2011.582838 https://doi.org/10.1080/0969594x.2011.582838 https://doi.org/10.1017/s0267190509090035 https://doi.org/10.1017/s0267190509090035 https://doi.org/10.1177/0265532213480338 https://doi.org/10.1177/0265532213480338 https://doi.org/10.1080/15434303.2014.960046 https://doi.org/10.1080/15434303.2014.960046 https://doi.org/10.1080/15434303.2020.1781128 https://doi.org/10.1080/15434303.2020.1781128 https://doi.org/10.1080/15434303.2010.516042 https://doi.org/10.1016/j.stueduc.2011.03.001 https://doi.org/10.1016/j.stueduc.2011.03.001 https://doi.org/10.1016/j.system.2018.03.003 https://doi.org/10.1016/j.system.2018.03.003 https://doi.org/10.13187/ejced.2020.1.189 https://doi.org/10.13187/ejced.2020.1.189 universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras92 sayyadi appendix a: questionnaire on language assessment literacy and assessment training needs part i. general information 1. do you work in (country)? yes ☐ no ☐ 2. what subject(s) do you teach? 3. what subjects have you studied? 4. what is your highest qualification? please specify: 5. type of school/institution you teach at: 6. average age of pupils: 7. your functions at your school/institution: ☐ teacher ☐ head of department or school ☐ mentor ☐ advisory function for authorities (local government, ministry, etc.) ☐ other? please specify: 8. during your preservice or in-service teacher training, have you learned something about testing and assessment (theory and practice)? ☐ yes (please specify:) ☐ no 93profile: issues teach. prof. dev., vol. 24 no. 1, jan-jun, 2022. issn 1657-0790 (printed) 2256-5760 (online). bogotá, colombia. pages 77-95 in-service university-level efl instructors’ language assessment literacy and training needs part ii. questions about training in language assessment 1. content and concepts of language testing 1.1. please specify if you were trained in the following domains. not at all a little advanced assessing receptive skills (reading/listening) assessing productive skills (speaking/writing) assessing integrated language skills assessing social dimensions of language establishing reliability of tests/assessment establishing validity of tests/assessments establishing test/assessment discrimination determining the test difficulty using statistics to study the quality of tests/assessment 1.2. please specify if you need training in the following domains. none basic advanced assessing receptive skills (reading/listening) assessing productive skills (speaking/writing) assessing integrated language skills assessing social dimensions of language establishing reliability of tests/assessment establishing validity of tests/assessments establishing test/assessment discrimination determining the test difficulty using statistics to study the quality of tests/assessment 2. aims of testing and assessment 2.1. please specify if you were trained in the following domains. not at all a little advanced giving grades finding out what needs to be taught/learned placing students into courses, programs, etc. awarding final certificates (from school/program; local, regional, or national level) universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras94 sayyadi 2.2. please specify if you need training in the following domains. none basic advanced giving grades finding out what needs to be taught/learned placing students into courses, programs, etc. awarding final certificates (from school/program; local, regional, or national level) 3. classroom-assessment performances 3.1. please specify if you were trained in the following domains. not at all a little advanced preparing classroom tests using ready-made tests from textbook packages or from other sources giving feedback to students based on information from tests/ assessment using self-assessment using peer-assessment using integrated assessment preparing students for high-stakes tests using portfolios selecting appropriate assessment methods 3.2. please specify if you need training in the following domains. none basic advanced preparing classroom tests using ready-made tests from textbook packages or from other sources giving feedback to students based on information from tests/ assessment using self-assessment using peer-assessment using integrated assessment preparing students for high-stakes tests using portfolios selecting appropriate assessment methods 3.3. please specify if you have any other language assessment training needs. 95profile: issues teach. prof. dev., vol. 24 no. 1, jan-jun, 2022. issn 1657-0790 (printed) 2256-5760 (online). bogotá, colombia. pages 77-95 in-service university-level efl instructors’ language assessment literacy and training needs appendix b: the interview questions 1. how familiar are you with different contents and concepts of language assessment? 2. do you use different language assessment methods to evaluate your students? 3. have you ever received any training in language assessment? a. if yes, what were the training programs? b. how long did they last? c. what was the training mainly about? d. how effective was the training? e. to what extent have you applied the training topics in your actual classes? f. do you think you have been sufficiently trained? 4. have you done anything to compensate for your lack of assessment training? if yes, what? 5. what are your language assessment training needs? 6. do you prefer to get basic or advanced language assessment training? why? mentoring language student-teachers: a narrative perspective to mentors’ experiences from borders and cracks 133profile: issues teach. prof. dev., vol. 24 no. 2, jul-dec, 2022. issn 1657-0790 (printed) 2256-5760 (online). bogotá, colombia. pages 133-147 https://doi.org/10.15446/profile.v24n2.93096 mentoring language student-teachers: a narrative perspective to mentors’ experiences from borders and cracks tutoría de estudiantes-profesores de idiomas: una perspectiva narrativa de experiencias de mentores desde fronteras y grietas edgar aguirre-garzón1 pontificia universidad javeriana, bogotá, colombia diego ubaque-casallas universidad distrital francisco josé de caldas, bogotá, colombia this narrative study analyzes two mentors’ experiences in their mentoring practices with language student-teachers in a private university in bogotá (colombia). employing life-story interviews and drawing on ways of thinking and theorizing from praxis as a standpoint to enact decoloniality, we approach mentors’ narratives from the notion of crack. findings reveal that, for mentors, mentoring practices represent a space for knowledge reconfiguration, a locus of collective knowledge construction, and territories where student-teachers can mobilize and exercise their agency. overall, when making meaning of clashing experiences in mentoring, mentors have constructed ways to fracture traditional and hegemonic logics of seeing knowledge and the self in teacher education. keywords: decolonization, mentoring, personal narratives, student-teachers, teacher education este estudio narrativo analiza las experiencias de dos educadores en sus tutorías con futuros docentes de lenguas de una universidad en bogotá (colombia). utilizando entrevistas y adoptando formas de pensar y teorizar la praxis como una postura para representar la descolonización, nos aproximamos a las narrativas de los tutores desde la noción de grieta. los hallazgos revelan que las tutorías representan un espacio de reconfiguración y construcción colectiva de saberes y territorios donde los estudiantesprofesores pueden ejercer su agencia. en general, al dar sentido a experiencias conflictivas en la tutoría, los mentores han encontrado maneras de fracturar las lógicas tradicionales y hegemónicas de ver los saberes y a sí mismos en la formación docente. palabras clave: descolonización, estudiante-profesor, formación de docentes, narrativas, tutoría edgar aguirre-garzón  https://orcid.org/0000-0001-7537-9236 · email: edgar_aguirre@javeriana.edu.co diego ubaque-casallas  https://orcid.org/0000-0001-8116-9163 · email: dfubaquec@udistrital.edu.co how to cite this article (apa, 7th ed.): aguirre-garzón, e., & ubaque-casallas, d. (2022). mentoring language student-teachers: a narrative perspective to mentors’ experiences from borders and cracks. profile: issues in teachers’ professional development, 24(2), 133–147. https://doi.org/10.15446/profile.v24n2.93096 this article was received on april 15, 2021 and accepted on april 23, 2022. this is an open access article distributed under the terms of the creative commons license attribution-noncommercial-noderivatives 4.0 international license. consultation is possible at https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/ https://doi.org/10.15446/profile.v24n2.93096 https://orcid.org/0000-0001-7537-9236 mailto:edgar_aguirre@javeriana.edu.co https://orcid.org/0000-0001-8116-9163 mailto:dfubaquec@udistrital.edu.co https://doi.org/10.15446/profile.v24n2.93096 https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/ universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras134 aguirre-garzón & ubaque-casallas introduction teacher mentoring is a prominent complement scenario in teacher education programs (teps) for furthering student-teachers’ experiences in practicum settings (bullough & draper, 2004). as an education practice, mentoring has described different approaches in teacher education literature. some views comprise mentoring to develop knowledge and skills for future teachers (ambrosetti & dekkers, 2010; walkington, 2004) or build their teaching profession (hudson, 2013b; parker, 2010). other more critical postures view mentoring as a process of assisting student-teachers to “enter the profession as critical inquirers and knowledgeable practitioners” (edwards-groves, 2014, p. 151). regardless of the perspective, the variety of studies on mentoring acknowledges the importance of the teaching practice (field experience, practicum) in the educative process of future teachers (liu, 2014; mena et al., 2017). arguably, this influence of practicum in learning is believed to contribute to student-teachers’ understanding of their roles as teachers and their ability to learn from field experiences (graham, 2006). moreover, additional literature has brought forward the importance of teacher educators (mentors) in developing knowledge and expertise about student-teachers’ teaching (mcintyre et al., 2005; mena et al., 2017). notwithstanding, a few studies propose to re-think the linearity of accepted visions in mentoring that continue to suggest “hierarchical relationships between mentors and mentees” in which “the mentor has or can provide knowledge and skills that the mentee wants or needs” (ambrosetti & dekkers, 2010, p. 43). relatedly, in this paper, we find the opportunity to broaden the understandings of mentoring as a realization instilled by the dialogical nature of relationships between student-teachers and educators and the potential reconfigurations of notions about teaching, language, and the selves that can emerge for participants in teacher mentoring practices (tmps). we shared the idea that essential logics that naturalize hierarchical roles and verticalize knowledge constructions in mentoring are rooted in patterns of epistemic domination, power, and powerlessness reproduced in education. in this regard, some colombian studies have questioned the colonial foundations that prevail in teacher education (fandiño-parra, 2013; granados-beltrán, 2018). consequently, the decolonial option to approach how both mentors and studentteachers co-construct and negotiate their systems of beliefs concerning where they exist, think, and do, is another valid standpoint of thought. this implies engaging in a praxis of exposing the universal signifier in teacher education and “disturb the totality from which the universal and the global are most often perceived” (mignolo & walsh, 2018, p. 2). therefore, approaching teacher education from the mentors’ and mentees’ perspectives would help restore teachers’ agency and disrupt naturalized beliefs in teps that dislocate pedagogical realities. this study explores mentors’ situated experiences in mentoring as dialogical pedagogic territories by unveiling more textured understandings of mentors, mentoring, and teaching and learning english. to that end, we approximate mentors’ experiences and discourses from the notion of crack. according to mignolo and walsh (2018), “cracks enable us to re-configure ourselves as subjects outside [the] us/them binary . . . to construct alternative roads, create new topographies and geographies . . . to look at the world with new eyes, use competing systems of knowledge, and rewrite identities” (p. 83). thus, we intend to find ruptures in mentors’ experiences to navigate into their epistemological and ontological conceptions and construct an alternative notion of teacher education from mentoring. theoretical framework mentoring in teaching education literature about language teacher mentoring has substantially addressed the potential to foster prospective teachers’ learning in teacher education. 135profile: issues teach. prof. dev., vol. 24 no. 2, jul-dec, 2022. issn 1657-0790 (printed) 2256-5760 (online). bogotá, colombia. pages 133-147 mentoring language student-teachers: a narrative perspective to mentors’ experiences from borders... some scholars have problematized mentoring as a social practice (kemmis et al., 2014) that empowers “prospective teachers to think about expanded ways of engaging [in curricula and] in pedagogy” (campbell & brummett, 2007, p. 50). in the same vein, sandelowski and barroso (2007) conceive mentoring as a cornerstone in preservice teacher education since it encompasses teaching experiences for preparing new teachers for ever-changing educative contexts. others have defined mentoring as “both a relationship and a process” (kwan & lopez-real, 2005, p. 276), or as “a particular mode of learning wherein the mentor not only supports the mentee but also challenges them productively so that progress is made” (smith, 2007, p. 277). from a more dialogical viewpoint, though, fairbanks et al. (2000) assume mentoring as “complex social interactions that mentor teachers and student teachers construct and negotiate for a variety of professional purposes and in response to the contextual factors they encounter” (p. 103). while literature about definitions and approaches on mentoring abounds, most of those constructions respond to traditional archetypes of mentors, mentees, and knowledge. in echoing this posture, mena et al. (2017) contend that “many teacher education programs (whether knowingly or otherwise) are criticized for reproducing unidirectional views of mentoring that are more aligned to traditional approaches in which validated knowledge from research in teacher education is conveyed (transmitted) to pre-service teachers” (p. 48). on the one hand, mentors (teacher educators) are still assigned roles of experts and transmitters of western knowledge that the mentees (student-teachers) need to know (see, for example, ambrosetti & dekkers, 2010), epitomizing the positionings of colonial selves over subaltern others (kumaravadivelu, 2003). on the other hand, knowledge is fragmented and simplified under transmissible categories such as “skills” and “strategies” where the construct pedagogical knowledge is still used as a unitary facet of teacher knowledge (shulman, 1986). according to castañeda-londoño (2019), this episteme “stems from the european modernity,” hence “does not leave room for other forms of knowledge” (p. 226). indeed, this juncture has called for situated studies of mentoring in teacher education. darwin (2000), for instance, critiqued arbitrary “expert and learner” portrayals in mentoring and explored more democratic practices that engender “opportunities for dialogue” (p. 206). khoja-moolji (2017) proposed a type of pedagogical encounters to subvert colonial ways of knowledge production in teacher education. furthermore, wetzel et al. (2017) worked on mentoring from the basis of struggling against notions that perpetuate mentors’ roles as trainers who install in student-teachers an array of discrete competencies to teach. at the local level, lucero (2015) reflected on what mentors need to know for pedagogical practicum mentoring. in more recent research, pattisson (2020) found out how practitioners’ agency was hindered due to cultural assumptions that both mentors and mentees bring to mentoring. on a different note, studies that focus on mentors’ construction of identities (lammert et al., 2020; smit & du toit, 2021), professional growth (walters et al., 2020), and dialogic reflective practice for the construction of mutual knowledge (hall, 2020) are bringing in valuable discussions to the field. nevertheless, there is still a necessity to research on unveiling how the diversity of subjectivities, visions, and experiences struggle to emerge in borders and cracks within and across mentoring practices. language teacher practicum teacher practicum is a type of social practice that turns into a pedagogical praxis when reflections are individual and collective between teacher educators and student-teachers. vásquez (2006) contends that in the teaching practicum, educative and academic dynamics converge. in this way, the practicum turns into territories where commitments with being, doing, and knowing about pedagogy emerge. these perspectives universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras136 aguirre-garzón & ubaque-casallas align with most recent local studies that problematize teacher practicum and make efforts to delink it from the theoretical tenets and conceptual instruments of western thought. in this regard, concerning the teacher education field, some colombian authors, such as fandiño-parra and bermúdez-jiménez (2015), claim that teacher practicum cannot be reduced to the mere practice of teaching english and its technical processes in the classroom. beyond that, it is fundamental to open dialogic spaces that broaden the understandings of practicum to see its real scope and nature (fandiñoparra & bermúdez-jiménez, 2015). lucero and roncancio-castellanos (2019) carried out a study to discuss english language student-teachers’ pedagogical practicum experiences. they studied how student-teachers envisioned themselves as english language teachers during the pedagogical practicum. the authors found out that ba programs in language teaching concentrate on theory instruction and disregard emotional dimensions when becoming teachers. as regards this perspective, it has been documented that the teaching practicum is “believed to be an important stage . . . helping [student-teachers] reinforce, expand and improve what they have learned in the pedagogical institutions” (nguyen, 2014, p. 47). nevertheless, it is also a moment when acquired knowledge is contested or developed. then, it becomes a critical moment in student-teachers’ careers to question the idea of competence (biesta, 2012). bearing this in mind, there seems to be an evident instrumentalization at the time of accompanying student-teachers in their teaching practicum. ubaquecasallas and aguirre-garzón (2020) found that, after analyzing lesson planning events, student-teachers tend to base their practices on all theoretical knowledge instructed by the mentors or the acquired beliefs on how english should be taught. looking critically at this, it results from an evident hegemonic dominance over english language teacher education maintained through the instruction on language teaching method(s). according to kumaravadivelu (2003), this is a “colonial construct of marginality” (p. 541) that has perpetuated epistemological and ontological control over mentors and student-teachers’ practices and discourses. our thinking on decoloniality decoloniality is “the disengagement of the logic of modernity and an alternative epistemic other” (rincón et al., 2015, p. 75). this assumption recognizes that knowledge and practices outside the bounds of western modernity are often ignored, marginalized, or repressed; a decolonial approach would signify decoloniality as an option to construct in mentoring from and within the cracks. this means understanding mentoring from “the place of our location, agency, and everyday struggle” (mignolo & walsh, 2018, p. 82). by the same token, our understanding of decoloniality is simple. it is a way of thinking and being installed “in the postures, processes, and practices that disrupt, transgress, intervene and in-surge in, and that mobilize, propose, provoke, activate, and construct an otherwise, that decoloniality is signified and given substance, meaning, and form” (mignolo & walsh, 2018, p. 34). in this sense, decoloniality emerges as an option to think of possibilities of knowing and being otherwise. according to andreotti (2011), there should be some emphasis on inquiring colonial relations within a “discursive orientation, learning toward poststructuralism, focusing on contestation and complicity in the relationship between colonizers and colonized and on the possibility of imagining relationships beyond coercion, subjugation, and epistemic violences” (p. 17). despite the advances of teps towards more liberatory and situated educative practices, there are still, conscious or unconscious, coercive and repressive belief systems that disable the transformation of the discourse and relationships of inequality in educational contexts. therefore, we agree with mcewan (2019), who claims that to decolonize traditional spaces of education, it is paramount “to create different educational 137profile: issues teach. prof. dev., vol. 24 no. 2, jul-dec, 2022. issn 1657-0790 (printed) 2256-5760 (online). bogotá, colombia. pages 133-147 mentoring language student-teachers: a narrative perspective to mentors’ experiences from borders... establishments in which . . . subaltern ways of knowing form the basis of scholarly and pedagogical practices” (p. 364). one way to think differently about educating teachers is to disclose and disrupt how mentoring may work as the means for the de/colonization in teacher education. method narrative inquiry as research path this study takes on narrative inquiry as a research path. we see this approach as “a means to develop and value knowledge that had not always been valued in teacher education, one rooted in experience rather than research” (mcalpine, 2016, p. 34). for barkhuizen et al. (2014) “narrative inquiry can help us to understand how language teachers [and mentor teachers] and learners organize their experiences . . . and represent them to themselves and to others” (p. 5). arguably, narrative inquiry becomes a pathway to embracing contradictions and multiple possibilities within stories rather than seeking coherence (white & epston, 1990). additionally, we believe narrative inquiry helps this study document mentors’ experiences from borders and cracks. these experiences are narratives that bring numerous overlapped and interrelated (berbary, 2011) meanings about mentoring. we see such meanings as “the meaning-making, learning, or knowledge construction that takes place during the narrative research activities of (co)constructing narratives, analyzing narratives, reporting the findings, and reading/watching/ listening to research reports” (barkhuizen, 2011, p. 395). further, since narratives offer influence—the narrator views themselves and makes decisions to act (holley & colyar, 2009), we believe they become a sort of “pedagogy of narrating life” (elbaz-luwisch, 2002, p. 408) that encourages teacher’s agency, (re)signifying and legitimizing stories that have been commonly marginalized. context and participants the study took place in a private university in bogotá, colombia, within a language education program frame. as part of their practicum process in schools, student-teachers complement their teaching practice with mentoring sessions led by a teacher educator (mentor) in the university, who accompanies them in their teaching practicum. mentoring practices are a complementary component of the course “teaching practicum.” mentors hold these encounters every other week during one semester with groups of maximum four students assigned by the program. in those sessions, both mentors and student-teachers get together more informally, in a less structured way than a standard class, and dialogue and reflect upon the practicum and pedagogical situations emerging from it. two male mentors, edward and dimitri (pseudonyms), participated in this study. due to the accessibility of the teacher educators, convenience sampling was employed to select the participants. both participants hold ma degrees, and their trajectories (i.e., their time at the university in the teaching practicum) were relevant to explore their situated experiences in mentoring. before partaking in the study, the participants received information about its objective and scope, and the procedure to share their experiences. they signed consent forms that evidenced agreement and willingness to participate. data analysis and exploration of experiences the study employed life story interview as a tool to gather mentors’ experiences. therefore, we adopted a holistic approach of analysis in which the complete account of experiences was separated into sections and analyzed; each section being constantly contrasted with the rest of the whole story (lieblich et al., 1998). through this approach, we acknowledged that although life stories can be composed of sequences of events, their complexity is greater as a story is each person’s representation of universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras138 aguirre-garzón & ubaque-casallas his or her experience (atkinson, 1998). moreover, we aimed to establish a horizontal conversation from the experiences inspected by avoiding scientific hierarchies (ortiz-ocaña et al., 2018) in the analysis. we chose to conduct interviews in spanish and then translated them into english to be further transcribed. as such, since “it is impossible to anticipate what a life story interview [would] be like, not so much for how to do it, but for the power of the experience itself ” (atkinson, 2012, p. 119); we did not focus on structuring the interviews. in fact, “the less structure a life story interview has, the more effective it will be in achieving the person’s own story in the way, form and style that the individual wants to tell it in” (atkinson, 1998, p. 41, emphasis in the original). accordingly, in the analysis of experiences, we did not consider either “coding for themes, [or] categorizing these and looking for patterns of association among them” (barkhuizen, 2013, p. 11) to present them as data. instead, we aimed to guarantee voices’ subjective essence (atkinson, 1998) by setting eyes on personal thoughts, perceptions, and interactions (barkhuizen, 2014) as relevant aspects of understanding mentors’ experiences. moreover, we can say that in both the analysis and in the findings report, we drew on the notion of crack to configure a body of research “toward the edges and borders” (mignolo & walsh, 2018, p. 82). from this perspective, we attempted to provide an alternative notion of teacher education by tailoring the analysis of experiences with theory and starting a discussion about the epistemological configurations that mentors install, guide, co-construct, or configure in or with student-teachers. experiences about mentoring our conversation with edward this conversation departs from the recognition of two important concepts. first, “mentoring makes public the knowledge necessary for good practice in the form of symbolic representations (e.g., language statements) within the immediacy of action setting” (mena et al., 2016, p. 54); and second, that teacher practicum is a critical component of teacher preparation (zeichner, 2010). as teacher practicum has been fundamental in teacher education (trent, 2013), it is essential to pinpoint that it encapsulates feelings, beliefs, and background experiences in which mentor teachers and studentteachers engage in a mutual construction of the teaching experience (lucero, 2015). therefore, revealing the intimacy of our conversations with edward attempts to delink (mignolo, 2007) from fixed notions of mentoring. although teacher practicum enables “pre-service efl teachers to have a better understanding of being a teacher” (tüfekçi-can & baştürk, 2018, p. 189), it is relevant as well for mentor teachers who seem to co-construct and negotiate with student-teachers their systems of beliefs. take, for example, edward’s construction in which mentor teachers can mold student-teachers’ beliefs about teaching. the excerpt below opens the room to inspect deeper this assumption. in the university, it is precisely about accompanying students to schools, observing their sessions, and guiding them in the methodological and didactic designs they will implement in schools. one tries to guide them in one way or another. however, i discovered a fine line between what it is to show and, let us say, how to open the way for the student-teachers to find those ideologies, those teaching philosophies, language philosophies, philosophies of learning. these are built in their practice sites, and what the teacher shows can influence, maybe, in modeling those philosophies. edward makes evident that, although mentor teachers have to accompany student-teachers in the teacher practicum by observing and guiding them in the disciplinary/instrumental dimension of teaching, mentor teachers play a role in the epistemological construction of student-teachers. for instance, the literature available still builds teacher education as “the sum of experiences and activities through 139profile: issues teach. prof. dev., vol. 24 no. 2, jul-dec, 2022. issn 1657-0790 (printed) 2256-5760 (online). bogotá, colombia. pages 133-147 mentoring language student-teachers: a narrative perspective to mentors’ experiences from borders... which individuals learn to be language teachers” (freeman, 2001, p. 72). this has meant for studentteachers and mentors to “keep aligned to that imposed knowledge and practices, [in which] there is no space for a pre-service language teacher to explore different alternatives” (castañeda-trujillo & aguirrehernández, 2018, p. 159). traditionally, language teaching ideologies and philosophies have been rooted in what pennycook (1998) defines as the imperialistic nature of english language teaching (elt). for instance, the teacher practicum has been an instrumentalized space for student-teachers to use methods and approaches learned in their teps. nevertheless, edward’s narrative reveals that mentor teachers play a role in offering a choice between just guiding in the implementation of what has been learned and guiding student-teachers in the discovery of the teaching practice. being the former the act of maintaining rationality over teaching by having student-teachers “adapt [a method] to their learners, or their learners to it” (kumaravadivelu, 2006, p. 20), and the latter an attempt to delink from the subaltern condition (mignolo, 2010) imposed on english language teachers. such an attempt can be a path edward builds upon. in the following excerpt, we aim to connect to edward’s agency as a mentor teacher. there are readings by different authors in a course. [student-teachers] read them and think, perhaps at some point, that this literature is part of a system of knowledge that they should apply in practice when they reach a school. so, there is that verticality. they somehow translate it when they come to college as interns. they hope that both the professor at university and the mentor give them guidelines or instructions to follow in the classroom. i try to avoid that because what i believe is that they should base their teaching philosophy, establish it or adapt it, from which the teacher has already denounced; i mean, how am i going to do the same thing that he is doing? so, we open a way for them to start reflecting. edward denounces the vertical knowledge construction student-teachers are exposed to in the teps. such a construction is part of a sign and value system that student-teachers believe needs to be applied. nonetheless, his doing as a mentor teacher goes beyond this positivist paradigm. instead, he engages in a more liberatory role in which “student teachers can claim ownership of their teaching practices to delink from fixed, universal, and cartesian notions of conceiving teaching and being a teacher” (ubaque-casallas & aguirre-garzón, 2020, p. 140). importantly, edward seems to look for a path toward reflection. such a path is geared towards delinking from the verticality in knowledge construction. in the teps, it cannot be disregarded that knowledge production has been tied to the form, use, and content of the target language as the unique angle from where teachers understand their practice. in this respect, mentoring seems to embrace a different dimension in which it moves away from the idea of mentoring to “make teachers perfect in all aspects of teaching” (aman, 2019, p. 243). instead, edward constructs mentoring as a space where student-teachers can make their own decisions informed by practical and theoretical knowledge. this breaks the traditional yet oppressive top-down perspective in which mentor teachers are seen as knowledge holders due to their experience. such a construction advocates for the conception of alternative knowledges with different enunciative strategies in which mentor teachers’ abilities dislocate the asymmetric relationship between mentors and mentees. however, edward’s decision to open a path for reflection is also opening a way to disrupt the relational ontologies (escobar, 2007) that have prevailed in the elt field. the following excerpt allows a more in-depth inspection of the path above. i like to think precisely about constructing the knowledge that emerges from where they are doing the practice. within the mentor’s work, there is a particular inevitable accompaniment to processes that are already specific universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras140 aguirre-garzón & ubaque-casallas and, let’s say, more operational in the class, right? the lesson plan is an example that the student comes with a concern about whether this activity works, or not. instead of telling them what they should do, we propose a dialogic process because they know more about the field than i do as a mentor. they know the students more than i do as a mentor because of a dialogical process of questioning them. they make those decisions together with the mentor; it is like co-construction, more or less. however, what i was referring to more than anything, was like a general teaching philosophy. they begin to create a more informed philosophy in what they live and what they mean, than in what the mentor tells them. that allows them to make sense of the knowledge they obtain and build in their practice and with me. edward proposes a dialogical construction of the tmps. this proposal encourages student-teachers to create and mobilize knowledge based on their experience as student-teachers and on the dialogue with their mentors. as a matter of fact, johnson and golombek (2002) argue that: when theoretical knowledge is situated within the social contexts where it is to be used, when the interconnectedness of that knowledge is made apparent, and when language teachers have multiple opportunities to use that knowledge in interpretative ways, then theoretical knowledge has relevance for practice. (p. 8) nevertheless, edward also seems to posit a framework towards a re-significance of the teacher mentoring process, in which students can mobilize and exercise their agency. in this respect, “agency appears as a key factor in reducing inequalities” (archanjo et al., 2019, p. 73), a factor that has been continuously reduced and made invisible by frames of disciplinary knowledge imposed on student-teachers. in closing this analysis, mentors and studentteachers’ possibilities to exercise their agency and disrupt the monolithic and fixed roles assigned in education are enacted in tmps. edward has empowered them to focus on constructing and identifying ways of knowing (kumaravadivelu, 2012) and being. hopefully, those will shed light on distinctive ways to understand language, teaching, and learning from mentoring as praxis’ pedagogical territories. our conversation with dimitri dimitri has mentored prospective language teachers for two years, accompanying student-teachers in local private schools. there, factors and practices can be demanding from pedagogical, institutional, and population points of view. considering this, he has constructed a vision of teacher mentoring as a practice that suggests horizontal dialogues between alternative human configurations and academic narratives existing in teps. my involvement always starts from the institutional perspective. the mentor is the one who accompanies the practitioner in their pre-professional training. therefore, the concepts we use are always from a traditional view, such as in-service teachers, preservice teachers. dimitri acknowledges there is an institutional narrative that underpins the tmps in the university. this narrative shapes roles, functions, and practices that the practice of mentoring entails. additionally, teps can converge specific value systems and ideologies with mentors’ epistemologies of teacher education in mentoring spaces. in this sense, dimitri argues that, in the mentoring practice, certain enunciations, roles, and positionings available for students-teachers (and mentors) from traditional logics of teacher development prevail. in echoing this posture, hudson (2013a) argues that teacher education departments should invest more in preparing teacher educators “to become well-informed mentors” since they “must be prepared in their roles [emphasis added] by having particular knowledge [emphasis added] to take deliberate action in their mentoring” (p. 781). this might suggest ready141profile: issues teach. prof. dev., vol. 24 no. 2, jul-dec, 2022. issn 1657-0790 (printed) 2256-5760 (online). bogotá, colombia. pages 133-147 mentoring language student-teachers: a narrative perspective to mentors’ experiences from borders... made versions of unitary knowledge and assigned roles mentors need to assume to be “well-informed” to do their task. as mentioned earlier, the previous discussion fits within the strategies of reproduction of the colonial matrix as it continues to privilege the “paradigm of the expert” discourse over the knowing-other. the process of pedagogical mentoring from this perspective stands over this basis of knowing and being. nevertheless, although dimitri addresses those logics as substantiating factors in initial language teacher mentoring, recognizing these traditional bases is a departure point to configure a more relational and dialogic outlook of his tmp. we, the ones who accompany student-teachers, are the ones who have some knowledge of the context in the central pedagogical practice, since we have already spent a few more years teaching. the accompaniment is precisely aimed at the practitioner, who comes with knowledge from her or his curricular program, from the pedagogical practice, and the understanding of the context, also from conversations with their mentor. they somehow build their vision or version of what language teaching should be. here i withdraw a bit from what i was saying before, which is very different in the pedagogical practice. dimitri discloses an understanding of mentoring as an epistemological locus of collective construction where we recognize a triad of converging sources. one is the disciplinary and pedagogical knowledges prospective teachers obtain from the teps at the university. another one is the knowledges they re-configure at the teaching practicum in the school. the other is the knowledges emerging from pedagogical conversations in the mentoring process. these three sources of knowledges interweave to shape different forms of knowing about teaching languages. we propose to analyze dimitri’s configuration of pedagogical knowledges in the tmps under the metaphor of ecology. this helps to understand the circulations and spatial properties of knowledge (akera, 2007). under this perspective, knowledges emerge from and across different geographical contexts and are interrelated, just like ecological systems in nature. tmps from dimitri’s experience can be seen as a system where the plural complexity of knowledge production is valued (akera, 2007) and legitimated as a source for student-teachers’ knowledge reconfigurations. seemingly, this analysis of language teacher mentoring resounds in praxis from a decolonial gaze, which withdraws from the modern belief that we first theorize and then apply, as denounced by mignolo and walsh (2018). dimitri’s theorization emerges from a dynamic of living, thinking, and doing across his experience in tmps, and conceives student-teachers’ re-construction of teaching knowledge in the same vein. it is in the “praxis of living and the idea of theoryand-as-praxis and praxis-and-as-theory, and in the interdependence and continuous flow of movement of both” where “decoloniality is enacted and, at the same time, rendered possible” (mignolo & walsh, 2018, p. 7). this decolonial outlook of praxis emerging from tmps imagines prospective teachers as knowledge generators (kumaravadivelu, 2003). hence, it “undertakes both resistive and reparative work” (khoja-moolji, 2017, p. 146) in teacher education. it removes academia as a universal source of teaching knowledge and restores agency for language teachers (kumaravadivelu, 2003) while seeking to decenter dominant forms of intellectual productions (mignolo, 2000). therefore, mentoring, referred to as a locus of collective knowledge construction, is an ecological system fueled by clashing experiences that constitute epistemological cracks in dimitri’s experience. in the following excerpts, there is a realization of the role of disruptive phenomena emerging in prospective teachers’ practicum topographies as a source for knowledge configurations in mentoring: in a school, this girl [a student-teacher] somehow was in a tough context. there were 60 students in a classroom; we had afro students, students with disabilities, who universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras142 aguirre-garzón & ubaque-casallas came from very vulnerable strata or socioeconomic conditions. hence, it was a rich teaching environment in terms of the texture it had. however, at the same time, it was a very challenging environment for the pedagogical practice since this practitioner’s lesson planning was always somewhat thought in linguistic terms, understood as what is taught. language was not maybe considered from another perspective. . . . however, it was a context in which i believe that those who carry out pedagogical practice often start with that vision; with a version, or an incomplete image of what teaching is likely to be. dimitri retrieves this example to problematize a dislocated and essential teaching perspective that prospective teachers bring from teacher training scenarios into the practicum. in this regard, we have argued elsewhere that “student teachers’ epistemologies include a view of acquired fixed knowledge that is learned during teaching preparation courses” (ubaquecasallas & aguirre-garzón, 2020, p. 133), and that sometimes, unwittingly or not, emerge in mentoring (mena et al., 2017). this logic is referred to as rationalist teacher education, which evolves from a construct of coloniality in elt education. in this vein, granadosbeltrán (2016) argues that it is likely that coloniality sways student-teachers’ beliefs, behaviors, and expectations related to their teaching practice. language teaching imaginaries that are principled, mystified, and idealized versions shaped by teps are fractured in conflicting teaching settings and re-dimensioned through dialogue in teacher mentoring. the girl i have told you about, in the beginning, her pedagogical practices were based on handouts which sought that the students learned, for example, the use of modal verbs. in the reflections, we managed to locate a behavioral problem that arose, given the problematic relationships that her students had with each other. in the mentoring that we had with this student-teacher, what we achieved was to have a look a bit more from the ethnographic point of view, in terms of understanding how our students relate to each other. . . . also, i remember a lot that she, without my intervention, managed to find a mechanism to reconcile both voices, meaning, the first reading she made of reality and what emerged from conversations. in mentoring, dimitri has achieved a vision of himself as a mediator of prospective teacher’s analytical praxis and mentoring itself as a site of re-orientingpedagogical encounters where practitioners’ language teaching visions are co-delineated and re-dimensioned by the agents in the process. in such re-orientingpedagogical encounters, the student-teacher found an opportunity to look inward and backward and orient her teaching practices towards a more context-sensitive one (kumaravadivelu, 2003) by making sense, along with the mentor, of conflictive experiences or cracks in her teaching practice. seemingly, in this process, we argue that both the prospective teacher and dimitri himself have committed to engaging in action toward anti-rational and decolonial ends (khoja-moolji, 2017) in language teaching. that discussion takes place also in dialogue as a path to democratize thought in tmps. i believe that from the moment we sat down and asked a practitioner why she did or didn’t do something, why she kept quiet, why she didn’t, why he stood up, why he sat down. this implies leading in some way to the first meetings of reflection, to a kind of intervention that is a bit more critical in terms of why things are done in the classroom. dimitri resorts to dialogical practices and pedagogical questioning to guide prospective teachers to navigate their own language teaching experiences. in doing so, it seems that both re-establish their subjectivities and their knowledges about teaching. on the one hand, dimitri configures his mentoring process towards an epistemological and ontological (re)shaping practice. on the other, the student-teacher sets on to devise different ways of sensing, being, thinking, and know143profile: issues teach. prof. dev., vol. 24 no. 2, jul-dec, 2022. issn 1657-0790 (printed) 2256-5760 (online). bogotá, colombia. pages 133-147 mentoring language student-teachers: a narrative perspective to mentors’ experiences from borders... ing about teaching. a pedagogical orientation aimed towards constructing democratic options for dialogue (darwin, 2000), like the ones observed in dimitri’s tmps, connects with a decolonial pedagogical praxis as much as it does not position teacher practitioners as subaltern others nor drags them to the periphery (ortiz-ocaña et al., 2018). finally, since we explored shades of decolonial thought emerging in the tmps situated experiences in this paper, we open the discussion towards the plural value of latin american thought (mignolo & walsh, 2018). with this caveat in mind, alternative visions of language teaching co-delineated and re-configured in tmps bring together a linguistic analysis of language teaching with more textured, local, and disruptive ways of doing foreign language pedagogy. thus, avoiding a rejection or erasure of western thought, as “western thought is also part of the pluriversal” (mignolo & walsh, 2018, p. 3). the aforementioned is portrayed in dimitris’ voice as follows: i think that this pedagogical practice served two purposes. she established a language teaching in terms of the instrumentalization of what the kids had to learn according to what the course syllabus offered them. however, she also managed to find in that class something more socially, critically oriented. in dimitri’s experience we could envision a rich theorization of how subjectivities and epistemologies are collectively shaped for both student-teachers and teacher mentors, from a perspective of mentoring as a locus of collective knowledge construction. with this, we have attempted to extend the fixed conversation of mentoring for only enhancing prospective teachers’ educational practices and building their level of expertise (hudson, 2013a). this alternative construction of tmps flows through a path of resisting static and hegemonic logics in teacher education that, according to walsh (2015), is achieved by displacing and subverting inherited concepts and practices. conclusions and implications mentoring continues to be a contested site where knowledge, practices, and subjectivities are shaped in pedagogical key. we demonstrated, by exploring edward and dimitri’s life stories, how those constructions are still permeated by colonial ways of knowing, being, and doing that prevail in language teacher education. nevertheless, we also showed that in the interrelation of mentoring practices and clashing experiences, edward and dimitri constructed alternative ways to see themselves as teacher educators and see knowledge as plural accounts of the epistemic fabric of teaching. despite the realization that mentoring hides a colonial logic in its rhetoric, not only did we see various cracks that can contest epistemic postulates in crisis, but also we observed in the mentors’ narratives a more ecological notion of knowledges as they emerged from and across different topographies and dialogue with traditional, disciplinary knowledge. we conclude that this epistemic interrelation is also part of the actionings of decoloniality in pedagogy, since “decoloniality does not imply the absence of coloniality but rather the ongoing serpentine movement toward possibilities of other modes of being, thinking, knowing, sensing, and living” (mignolo & walsh, 2018, p. 81). both edward and dimitri’s experiences become a fertile ground to encourage more in-depth conversations about teaching experiences in teps and mentoring. although findings reported here cannot become a universal guide to explore mentors’ experiences elsewhere, nor should they be, it seems relevant for mentors in other teps to capitalize mentoring practices as a locus to question personal conceptions and the givens in teacher education. also, these findings can trigger a more textured conversation around the need for more horizontal and dialogical options in mentoring. similarly, the localized epistemological ground established in this paper can inform teps to think of student-teachers’ experiences in teacher practicum as the basis of the mentoring process and as a pedagogical universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras144 aguirre-garzón & ubaque-casallas option to promote more ecological possibilities for knowledges (re)constructed in tmps. again, these thoughts are not to be seen as definite but as initiators of broader discussions in research around mentoring and teacher education in other periphery contexts. references akera, a. 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(2010). re-thinking the connections between campus courses and field experiences in college and university-based teacher education. journal of teacher education, 1(1-2), 89–99. https://doi. org/10.1177/0022487109347671 about the authors edgar aguirre-garzón is a teacher educator and researcher who currently works at pontificia universidad javeriana (bogotá, colombia). he holds an ma in applied linguistics to tefl from universidad distrital francisco josé de caldas (colombia). diego ubaque-casallas is a language teacher and teacher educator who currently works at universidad distrital francisco josé de caldas (colombia). he holds an ma in applied linguistics to tefl from universidad distrital francisco josé de caldas. https://doi.org/10.1080/13611260701202032 https://doi.org/10.15700/saje.v41n2a2010 https://doi.org/10.15700/saje.v41n2a2010 https://doi.org/10.1080/1359866x.2013.838621 https://doi.org/10.1080/1359866x.2013.838621 https://doi.org/10.26468/trakyasobed.437672 https://doi.org/10.15446/profile.v22n2.80687 https://doi.org/10.1080/02601370.2014.991522 https://doi.org/10.1080/02601370.2014.991522 https://doi.org/10.1108/ijmce-01-2019-0005 https://doi.org/10.1108/ijmce-01-2019-0005 https://doi.org/10.4324/9781315520537 https://doi.org/10.4324/9781315520537 https://doi.org/10.1177/0022487109347671 https://doi.org/10.1177/0022487109347671 fostering citizenship and english language competences in teenagers through task-based instruction 103profile: issues teach. prof. dev., vol. 23 no. 2, jul-dec, 2021. issn 1657-0790 (printed) 2256-5760 (online). bogotá, colombia. pages 103-120 https://doi.org/10.15446/profile.v23n2.90519 fostering citizenship and english language competences in teenagers through task-based instruction fomento de la ciudadanía y las competencias del idioma inglés en adolescentes mediante la instrucción basada en tareas yanilis romero1 adriana pérez universidad del norte, barranquilla, colombia this research analyzes how citizenship and communicative competences can be fostered through a taskbased approach to language teaching. this paper proposes the design of a unit with social components as the main meaningful task for the teaching of the english language and for fostering citizenship competencies in a2 level learners. an action research method was used; data collection techniques included observations, diaries, interviews, and students’ artifacts. findings report that tasks might foster english language use if those are designed by taking into account students’ context and interests. furthermore, real-life tasks derived from contextual features can enhance civic engagement and promote values, which can be signals of citizenship. keywords: citizenship education, communicative competence, english language, values esta investigación analiza cómo se pueden fomentar la ciudadanía y las competencias comunicativas mediante un enfoque basado en tareas para la enseñanza de idiomas. este artículo propone el diseño de una unidad con componentes sociales como la principal tarea significativa para la enseñanza del idioma inglés y para el fomento de las competencias ciudadanas para los estudiantes de nivel a2. se utilizó un método de investigación-acción; las técnicas de recolección de datos incluyeron observaciones, diarios, entrevistas y artefactos de los estudiantes. en primer lugar, los hallazgos informan que las tareas podrían fomentar el uso del idioma inglés si se diseñan teniendo en cuenta el contexto y los intereses de los estudiantes. en segundo lugar, las tareas de la vida real derivadas de características contextuales pueden mejorar el compromiso cívico y promover valores, que pueden ser señales de ciudadanía. palabras clave: competencia comunicativa, educación ciudadana, inglés, valores yanilis romero  https://orcid.org/0000-0001-7954-5393 · email: yanilisr@uninorte.edu.co adriana pérez  https://orcid.org/0000-0003-0438-979x · email: aderamirez@uninorte.edu.co how to cite this article (apa, 7th ed.): romero, y., & pérez, a. (2021). fostering citizenship and english language competences in teenagers through task-based instruction. profile: issues in teachers’ professional development, 23(2), 103–120. https://doi.org/10.15446/profile. v23n2.90519 this article was received on september 13, 2020 and accepted on may 25, 2021. this is an open access article distributed under the terms of the creative commons license attribution-noncommercial-noderivatives 4.0 international license. consultation is possible at https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/ https://doi.org/10.15446/profile.v23n2.90519 https://orcid.org/0000-0001-7954-5393 mailto:yanilisr@uninorte.edu.co https://orcid.org/0000-0003-0438-979x mailto:aderamirez@uninorte.edu.co https://doi.org/10.15446/profile.v23n2.90519 https://doi.org/10.15446/profile.v23n2.90519 https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/ universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras104 romero & pérez introduction in colombia, 50 years of armed conflict and economic chaos has shaped a society in which conflicts are solved by means of violence and aggression, where many people seem to have no hope or vision for a better future, and where many care only for their own wellbeing instead of the collective one. however, the chance to improve colombia as a country in which to live and progress is not only a duty of the government; every single person must take responsibility and do what is appropriate to help and be part of the transformation process. education is a key means through which a new country can be built; one from which a new type of citizen can start to actively participate in the construction of a peaceful society. jaramillo-franco (2008) points out that society is interested in citizens who can be referenced as good role models, people who can put the collective demands over the individual ones, and who are able to solve their struggles in a constructive way. the colombian general law of education (1994) explicitly states: “education is a process of permanent, personal, cultural and social development that is based on a comprehensive concept of human beings, their dignity, their rights and duties” (p. 1, our translation). even though all schools are expected to promote citizenship education, their approaches may vary. in some settings, it is taught as an obligatory subject, whereas in other schools, it gets taught rather implicitly (chaux, 2004). in addition, teachers often focus on teaching core subjects and on students’ scores in order to demonstrate learning achievement in these areas on national standardized tests. this singular emphasis on core subject matter discredits the concept of “integral” education. according to wetsby (2002, as cited in shaaban 2005), in most school programs teachers are not fully trained to complement their academic duty to address their students’ citizenship education. given the urgent need to intervene in this state of affairs, we sought to introduce citizenship education inside the foreign language classroom. this involved putting into practice a number of strategies at a high school in montería1 (colombia) and focusing on teaching values and citizenship competencies, so that students were given opportunities to fully develop their potential and become active members of the communities and participate in the construction of a better future. the main objective of this study was to analyze how citizenship and communicative competencies are fostered in the ninth grade english as a foreign language (efl) classroom at this school through a task-based approach to teaching english. literature review the theories and concepts which underpin this study are: citizenship education and citizenship competencies, task-based learning, sociocultural theory of learning, and communicative competence. citizenship education a great number of researchers, scholars, and teachers contemplate education as the answer to many of the issues that humans face in society, with educational institutions playing a big role in this area. according to shaaban (2005), a designer of a proposal for incorporating moral education into the english as a second language (esl)/efl classroom in beirut, lebanon, “all schools have the obligation to foster in their students personal and civic virtues such as integrity, courage, responsibility, diligence, service and respect for the dignity of all persons” (p. 201), since all of these values are believed to develop distinctive traits of good citizens. currently, education aims to educate a student who can achieve understanding in the different fields of knowledge, develop critical thinking abilities, behave as a responsible citizen, and who can positively commit to the building of a more inclusive society where there is equity. in the late 20th century, with the development of an increasingly globalized world, there was a marked 1 monteria is a medium-size colombian city located in the northwestern part of the country. 105profile: issues teach. prof. dev., vol. 23 no. 2, jul-dec, 2021. issn 1657-0790 (printed) 2256-5760 (online). bogotá, colombia. pages 103-120 fostering citizenship and english language competences in teenagers through task-based instruction emphasis on directing education as a means to ensure youth employment. as pointed out by unesco (1998), due to the competitiveness that the globalized economy brought about in the early 90s, policymakers focused on the development of students’ employability skills, leaving aside the fostering of citizenship values. thus, citizenship education has gone from being an essential foundation for instruction, to being removed and even outlawed by schools to then being again a significantly important focus of attention in schools’ syllabuses. studies have investigated direct, significant benefits from having introduced citizenship education to the students, the school environment, and the community at large. harecker (2012), in her research in austria, stated: using exercises in schools which are based on a “valuescentered” pedagogy is considered to be a worthwhile investment, which brings even more worthwhile dividends with it. in many cases, teaching can become easier, more enjoyable and has more effect; the pupils become more focused, more active and more independent. (p. 3) hébert and sears (2004) also claim that “citizenship education should not be limited to one subject or school discipline, but shared with other disciplines—for example, with language and literature courses” (p. 8). since language art does not have an explicitly detailed content, esl/efl has the perfect characteristics, materials, and resources to implement citizenship education (shaaban, 2005). citizenship education in colombia in colombia, the concept of citizenship education has been viewed as a crucial issue in the pursuit of peace. it is believed by many that, due to the circumstances lived by colombians through the last 50 years, it is crucial to take action to prevent acts of violence and intolerance from continuing; therefore, the government has decided to implement citizenship education. according to the ministry of education (ministerio de educación nacional [men], 2004): education is one of the ways that can make peace a reality . . . if we give our children quality education, we will be not only getting them away from poverty, but also, giving them the opportunity of living and making a country of peace. (p. 3, our translation) the colombian education system in the last decade has paid attention to the development of the citizenship competences within schools. thus, the “educational revolution program” has been created to help students gain, through a good education service, all the competences to develop as global citizens, with the ultimate purpose of ensuring students with values and ethical behavior. educational centers are crucial to establish strong foundations to promote citizenship education, but this teaching has to be experiential instead of just theoretical. that is why citizenship education is not meant to be just a lecture where students are filled with information and facts, but a lesson where students get to interiorize the values and put them into practice in their lives. the men (2004) issued the standards for citizenship education, which introduced an integral program in civic and citizenship education. but the question is what to teach? the teaching should be contextualized according to each community and its needs, thus, special relevance in this project is given to two important values: respect and responsibility as they are closely linked to the three main groups of competencies (i.e., coexistence and peace; democratic participations and accountability; as well as plurality, identity, and appreciation of differences) proposed by the ministry (men, 2004) in order to categorically encourage the development of citizenship behavior. communicative and task-based language teaching hymes (1970, as cited in johnson, 2004) called the ability to express utterances with the appropriateness of when to use them, according to the context, sociolinguistic universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras106 romero & pérez lence, and poor academic performances. additionally, disciplinary reports evidence the students’ negative attitude to study, failure to complete homework or bring material to classes, purposeful interruptions of teachers’ classes, and lack of engagement in their learning process. in terms of english teaching and learning, students are taught using a mix of strategies with no clear definition of the method to guide their learning process. in regard to the syllabus, it is annually designed by the teachers, which means that the content is changed frequently with little monitoring of the sequencing of the lessons. however, there does not seem to be any concrete action plan for bringing about a true transformation of the situation or any specific follow up plan to track students’ progress in terms of citizenship and values education. participants the ninth graders formed a large group of 44 students: 25 young women and 19 young men, whose ages ranged from 12 to 15. they had been learning english for three years and were dynamic and liked working hard when they were fully engaged in doing tasks, especially tasks that required movement. they love asking questions and taking surveys among themselves; this aspect was discovered in a survey project class in which most of them fulfilled the requirements of the activity. thus, they were easily attracted to work when something new was brought to the class. another participant was a female english teacher (part of the research team) with five years of experience working at the institution. her language level was b2. she had taught the target students for two years in a row. her role involved the design of the activities, rubrics, and the implementation of the unit. procedure this small-scale project followed the principles of action research, which requires a thoughtful process competence. for him, in addition to the knowledge of structures that enable someone to express ideas, feelings, and opinions, language is a means to communicate. his concept of communicative competence includes both the knowledge and the ability to use the language. canale and swain (1980) proposed a second language communicative competence framework comprising three elements: grammatical competence, sociolinguistic competence, and strategic competence. the goal in many esl/efl educational contexts is to equip learners to interact successfully with native speakers or someone who uses english as a means of communication, and to make the person more competitive for a globalized world. concerning task-based instruction, willis (1996) proposes tasks as helpful goal-driven assignments that foster meaningful communication and thus support the language learning process. nunan (1989) offers two types of tasks: real-world tasks designed to practice or rehearse those tasks that students are likely to face in daily situations, and pedagogical tasks, which are theory-based and aimed at facilitating language acquisition, but which are not necessarily similar to real-world tasks. for the sake of this research, a pedagogical task is proposed in its three basic forms: pre-task, task, and post task. in other words, by using tasks, it is possible to introduce “children to the global goals as part of foreign language lessons, which can redress this balance and integrate a more holistic, personalized approach to children’s education into our classroom practice” (maley & peachey, 2017, pp. 10–11). method context this study was carried out in a public school that offers integral education from k to 11 to approximately 2,200 students coming from the lowest income families around the southern part of the city of montería. the high school is dealing with issues as bullying, rude manners, disrespect, lack of discipline, campus vio107profile: issues teach. prof. dev., vol. 23 no. 2, jul-dec, 2021. issn 1657-0790 (printed) 2256-5760 (online). bogotá, colombia. pages 103-120 fostering citizenship and english language competences in teenagers through task-based instruction by which the teacher-researcher reflects on their own educational practice and, at the same time, collects and analyzes data to provide solutions to an identified problem. the problem, as described above, stems from the urgent need to implement methodologies that will develop citizenship competences in the schools and, specifically, the need to assess the methodology implemented in the ninth grade efl classroom at a local high school in terms of its contribution to the development of both citizenship and communicative competences. action research, as mentioned by cohen et al. (2017), aims at improving practice by acting and reflecting on it. it is designed to bridge the gap between research and practice and, as a form of “self-reflective” inquiry,” it allows researchers to examine their practice in context and thus find ways to improve it so that it can have a positive impact on social justice. as cohen et al. discuss, action research turns practical problem-solving into a systematic tool to collect relevant data to expand knowledge; it enhances the competencies of participants to be able to do research. the researchers immerse themselves in an ongoing cyclical process that allows them to gather robust information to better understand particular complex social situations, which may ultimately explain processes of change within social systems at large. thus, there is an implied ethic principle to improve the quality of human actions starting from specific problems that practitioners face in their professional practice. design of activities a task-based unit was designed with the purpose of providing opportunities to expose learners to learn english and use it meaningfully, as well as to promote civic awareness about a global problem. the topic chosen by the researcher in consensus with the teacherresearcher was global warming. as a result, the unit proposed has some linguistic features, competencies, and evaluation and a general plan of action made up of details that are more specific about the lesson such as timeframe, objectives, procedures, and materials needed (see appendices a and b). data collection techniques observations an external teacher observed each lesson. observation helped the teacher-researcher to analyze aspects such as exposure to the target language, the amount of time devoted to learning, materials, methodology, and evaluation. seven observations were carried out for four weeks, comprising 12 hours of observation in total. diaries diaries—called notepads for students (a friendlier tag)—were chosen to obtain information on how learners perceived the class. diary entries were recorded by students at the end of each class. the questions were given in students’ native language so their act of reflecting would be clear. students’ entries were guided by pre-established questions (see appendix c). the sample of diaries analyzed were from five students whose profiles differ in terms of interest and engagement during the sessions. videotaping as burns (1999) states, video recording is used for capturing in detail naturalistic interactions and verbatim utterances produced by either the learner or the teacher. the researcher chose this data source to analyze aspects such as exposure to the language, attitude, and features of the teaching methodology. all the lessons were video-recorded, with the camera located in an inconspicuous place. the videos were transcribed and analyzed after the implementation of the whole unit and relevant data obtained were coded to identify categories. universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras108 romero & pérez 8 students: thank you miss! 9 teacher: how was your weekend, eh? how was last week? how was your saturday? how was sunday? ok, good, fine? 10 student: normal… 11 teacher: normal? what did you do? 12 student: regular. 13 teacher: what did you do? 14 student: we did party. 15 teacher: oh…you went to a party, omg…whose party? 16 students: [in chorus] eimis’s in turn 15 the teacher recast a student error, giving this student the opportunity to notice the correct way to say it. students also showed a budding ability to functionally use their linguistic resources to convey meaning and give an accurate reply when the teacher asked. as seen from the last part of turn 6 to 16 in excerpt 2, the three students involved showed that they understood what they had summarized in the previous class and were capable of communicating their ideas orally using english as a means to transfer the message. excerpt 2 also shows that the summary of the participants was good, which was in accordance with the unit’s aim of writing the synthesis of a video. excerpt 2. promoting pragmatic competence (taken from lesson 1)2 8 teacher: let’s review, we are going to review our topic y luego de que ya recordamos entonces iniciamos con la lectura. quién me quiere voluntariamente ayudar con la lectura. entonces vamos a leer qué es global warming en la lectura [and after we have recalled, then we will start by reading the text, who voluntarily wants to help reading the text? ok, let us read what global warming is in the reading]. ¿qué consiguió [student 1] que era global warming? please, read aloud for the rest of the class. 2 it is worth mentioning that, in this excerpt, the teacher reported having used spanish (the students’ mother tongue) as a strategy to guarantee that students understood the content. interviews semi-structured interviews were held with two different groups of five students each: one group prior to the intervention and the other after the intervention. the interviews were recorded and transcribed. the information gathered was analyzed thematically in categories. the interviews combined predetermined questions with opportunities for the interviewer to ask follow-up questions to better grasp the participants’ insights. students’ artifacts powerpoint presentations made by the students were taken as a source to get relevant data to support their understanding about the social issue. slides from each group were analyzed to nurture the findings of this study. results first we carefully analyzed the information gathered and contrasted it with our own thoughts, ideas, and impressions. then we coded the data into categories to finally attempt some interpretation and description of the patterns revealed by each instrument regarding students’ communicative and citizenship competences. in this analysis, the students are given a number to protect their identity (e.g., student 1, student 2, etc.). analysis of the observations after the observations, it was possible to state that students’ communicative competence was promoted. next, we present some evidence of the pragmatic, linguistic, and sociolinguistic competences in practice. turns 7 and 8 in excerpt 1 show that students understood what the teacher was requesting from them and there was some behavior that responded to what she had just asked them to do. something similar happens in turns 9 and 10 where the teacher once again asked and students used english correctly to provide non-elaborated answers. excerpt 1. promoting pragmatic competence (taken from lesson 1) 7 teacher: could you please sit down? 109profile: issues teach. prof. dev., vol. 23 no. 2, jul-dec, 2021. issn 1657-0790 (printed) 2256-5760 (online). bogotá, colombia. pages 103-120 fostering citizenship and english language competences in teenagers through task-based instruction 9 student 1: global warming. global warming refers to the increase of the earth’s temperature due to the increase of the amount of gas in the atmosphere. 10 teacher: in the atmosphere. ok, thank you. ¿qué encontraron que eran las causas allí? las causas quién quiere ayudarme con las causas. ¿quién tiene las causas? levante la mano. [student 2], ¿me puedes ayudar por favor? [could you help me, please?] 11 student 2: causes: driving a car, flying an airplane, greenhouse, contamination. 12 teacher: again. read louder. 13 student 2: driving a car. 14 teacher: ok, driving a car, driving cars, the greenhouse effect, ¿qué mas? [raising the voice tone to call everyone’s attention] 15 student 2: contamination. 16 teacher: and contamination. ahora sí, quién tiene los effects [now, who has the effects?]. thank you [student 2]. ¿alguien más? [anybody else?]. effects. lady? 17 student 3: and some animals are moving to new houses because of their natural habitats. 18 teacher: yes! animals are moving to new houses or to new areas. muy bien. sociolinguistic competence was also fostered during the teaching unit, as can be seen in excerpt 3. the teacher was waiting for some students to begin their presentation, but they were having trouble with the electronic devices and a student used formal language to ask her to wait some more minutes. excerpt 3. evidence of sociolinguistic competence (requesting time politely) miss, yanilis…do you mind waiting, please?…we need some time. the computer does not accept my pen drive… we are trying. (taken from lesson 7) the other category was citizenship competencies: the findings in this category come from observations made by the teacher-researcher who construed students’ interaction as an ongoing process where citizenship competencies took place. the promotion of citizenship competencies was an active component of the teaching and learning process of the english sessions. we acknowledge that fostering citizenship requires a long process, which in this specific context, had positively started. in addition, this category recognizes the idea that students in the target group were and are experiencing a series of realities that may help them become better citizens in a long-term process. as a whole, it is possible to say that classes presented opportunities for learning and practice, not only english but also civic behavior among students and teachers. this single factor matches the idea proposed by the socio-cultural theory where the learning process is seen as a social process within a given context and learners as active agents under the guidance of an adult (vygotsky, 1978). the methodology (task-based learning) offered opportunities for social interaction between the teacher and the students; it seemed that the classroom was a democratic place where the participation of both (learners and teacher) was necessary for the success of the sessions; the teacher constantly invited students to participate and ask for the clarifications they thought they needed. we may argue that the teacher unconsciously applied some of the strategies proposed by shaaban (2005) because she promoted students’ active involvement, cooperative learning, and explanation as part of the unit she was carrying. though her methodology was based on a task-based approach, it clearly suits shaaban’s suggestions as to teaching citizenship competences. in this way, students were able to be actively involved and broke the pattern in which only the teacher asks questions. excerpt 4 evidences that the relation was set to be bidirectional instead of unidirectional. note that in the observer’s comment students are the active actors of the class, as one of the students asked what the word “anthropogenic” meant, followed by an explanation universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras110 romero & pérez from the teacher who supported the definition with an example. excerpt 4. asking for clarification and supplying requested information about new words (taken from lesson 1) 125 teacher: [the teacher is presenting the activity]. in the next activity, you have headings, headings are like titles. you are going to identify which heading goes with each picture, ok? i’m going to give you two minutes to try to find out which one goes with which one, one picture is left out, there are only five…1, 2, 3, 4, 5, so i’m going to label just five pictures, i’m gonna give you two minutes, think about which picture goes with each heading. which picture with which headings? 126 student 3: what is floods, miss? 127 teacher: look at me. the sinú river is increasing [used body language] and then goes to houses, and then got floods. another word that you don’t know? 128 students: flood. 129 teacher: yes, another word that you don’t know? 130 student 2: anthropogenic. 131 teacher: anthropogenic…do you know what is anthropogenic? it is caused by human activity, if i for example cause the rain [body language], let’s suppose that i am doing things and then the rain will come, that is anthropogenic, so the rain is caused by my activity, anthropogenic means that people cause that…another word? no? ok, let’s see which words go with each one. another minute so you could finish. again, you are going to put one heading under the picture, ok. in excerpt 5, more specifically in turn 18, the teacher assigned turns for students who were willing to participate in the class and they responded positively to this routine. they were patient, they listened to each other; it is possible to see that students were feeling capable and competent when participating. excerpt 5. assigning turns (taken from lesson 2) 18 teacher: yes. animals are moving to new houses or to new areas. muy bien, ese es uno. ¿otro efecto?, another effect? student 3? 19 andrea: due to the earth heating…sea level are raising [and] people have to move away from the coast. although students were not all the time displaying responsibility, it can be argued that they could have been developing argumentative competencies. when the teacher called out a student, she told the teacher to allow her to do her group presentation next class, and when the teacher asked for the reasons, she sustained her position with an argument, trying to negotiate with the teacher. apparently, the teacher allowed more time, and the students promised to make a better effort and present a quality product. excerpt 6. negotiating and reaching agreements (taken from lesson 4) 33 student 3: teacher, can we leave it for tomorrow? 34 teacher: why for tomorrow? what is it for tomorrow that cannot be done today? 35 student 3: for tomorrow, we are going to be more prepared. 36 teacher: so, what do we do? 37 student 3: we practice hard. student 3’s behavior was a confirmation that she was on the way to developing citizenship competencies, as she was able to manifest her position, listen to the uncomfortable situation, and ask for a second opportunity to comply with the task. the aforesaid performance paired with another standard typified as a communicative one in the documents for citizenship competencies (men, 2004). thus, it was found that students were partially practicing values such as responsibility, which is a fundamental trait we considered when establishing a connection between citizenship education and moral values. 111profile: issues teach. prof. dev., vol. 23 no. 2, jul-dec, 2021. issn 1657-0790 (printed) 2256-5760 (online). bogotá, colombia. pages 103-120 fostering citizenship and english language competences in teenagers through task-based instruction as part of the three citizenship objectives for the unit (see appendix a), students reflected on a problematic situation, as shown in excerpt 7. they were relating to the citizenship standards described by men (2004): “actively collaborate to reach common goals in my classroom and recognize the importance of rules to attain those goals” (p. 17, our translation) and “constructively work as teams [and] participate with my teachers and classmates in a project-oriented to a common welfare” (p. 19 , our translation). excerpt 7. promoting citizenship competences (taken from lesson 3) 8 teacher: so that’s the problem that we need to talk about, because that is the problem that every day a guy is putting a lot of noise. now, which would be the solution for that problem? one person! 9 student 5: dialogue. 10 teacher: yes, dialogue. 11 students: manners. 12 teacher: yes. these competencies were developed thanks to the task-based methodology as learners were first exposed to situations that presented a problem affecting the people of the world. afterward, they analyzed it, reflected upon it, and proposed possible solutions; later, as a task, students were asked to find a problematic situation affecting their community and then do some kind of research about the problem, the effects or consequences, and then propose possible solutions. this methodology promoted the planned citizenship goal since it prompted students to construct and celebrate agreements regarding what problem to discuss in their presentation, how to distribute the work and responsibilities among themselves, what text finally to present in their slides; to decide who would be those to present the work orally in front of the others. it is important to admit that students attempted to keep their agreement and sometimes failed, but what is more important to highlight is that they finally did what was required of them and made a presentation. the fact that students were able to look around in their communities with critical eyes and question what was perhaps taken for granted and accepted as an everyday reality constituted an important citizenship exercise. analysis of the interviews the interviews were analyzed in a systematic manner by splitting the text into significant components, creating categories and putting similar ideas together, thus helping the analysis make more sense (burnard, 1994). these categories were the teacher’s methodology, participation, diaries, learning, and motivation. teacher’s methodology. in the first set of questions, students acknowledged the teacher’s methodology as a significant factor in their performance. student 1 stated:3 i feel that now students understand a little bit more and participate in class. i don’t feel the teacher is explaining something, but that we all are constructing the lesson. participation. students also reported that another factor that helped them was the stress-free environment, since the teacher motivated participation voluntarily, not obligatorily; therefore, they felt more at ease and were eager to participate. i like the class because [the teacher] is not threatening us to participate, she doesn’t say it is a mark, but she says: “who wants to contribute?” (student 1) diaries (notepads): students’ impressions about the notepads were all positive. we can let off steam with the notepad. we just have to write and learn, and by writing we can revise what we have learnt. (student 1) since the teacher asks us to write about what happens in the class, we reflect on the topics and the experiences that the lesson gives us. (student 3) 3 the interviews were held in spanish and we have translated the students’ answers. universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras112 romero & pérez such insights allowed the perception that the notepad was a tool that helped students delve deeper into their thoughts and feelings. learning. likewise, in the second interviews, carried out at the end of the study, students displayed acknowledgement of improvement both in the academic part as well as in the personal one. in the academic part i have changed, i felt that it has been better, the lessons, every day we have learnt more things, more experiences. (student 2) i have changed a little in the academic part, my mind is wider open. (student 3) motivation. motivation was another aspect students mentioned; they expressed the following: interviewer: is there a word you could use to express how you feel now in classes? student 2: motivated. before my mind wasn’t able to catch all those things in english, and now, i feel more motivated, more excited about english. (student 3) analysis of students’ powerpoint presentations powerpoint presentations in the foreign language classes have been used for quite some time and they have demonstrated several advantages, such as making both teaching and learning interactive and an enjoyable and rewarding activity (musa & al-dersi, 2013). students who were part of this study had been working on the unit called “global warming.” throughout the unit students were then asked to carry out a group miniresearch project which included identifying a particular environmental problem affecting their communities, thinking of its causes, consequences, and possible solutions, and, as a final product, they were asked to make a powerpoint presentation to report their findings to the class. this task was intended for students to continue developing the ability to identify a problematic situation, construct a problem-solution text, synthesize it in powerpoint slides, and orally present it to the class. we designed a rubric to evaluate the presentations (see appendix d). the criteria used for that evaluation were completeness, use of discourse markers and connectors, clarity and coherence, and citizenship competence. next, we summarize the findings after analyzing the slides of five groups. it is worth mentioning that all the students demonstrated in this analysis the capacity to identify an environmental problem affecting their community. some of the problematic situations found by students were: the excessive pollution of water and soils (group1), street contamination (group 2), bad odors and mosquitos due to accumulation of waste (group 3), noise pollution (group 4), and security problems (group 5). the content of the five presentations was organized taking into account the main four aspects (problem, causes, effects, and solution) which students discussed. regarding the identification of the issue, students were able to recognize relevant problems in their surroundings; most of them provided an example, made a comment, and showed photos of them. these three elements in their work also demonstrated that learners had understood and possessed clarity about their intended research, that they were able to have a critical look at their environment. the students were also able to give more details about the problem, specifying what they considered to be the causes and the consequences. groups 1 and 2 rightly identified some of the conditions leading to excessive pollution of water and soils (see figure 1). regarding the identification of causes and effects, these groups were able to identify the precise effects of the problem they were stating. this situation was a good indicator to know that students did not only learn about the characteristics of a problem-solution text but also about how those issues have an undesirable impact on the environment and on people (see figure 2). 113profile: issues teach. prof. dev., vol. 23 no. 2, jul-dec, 2021. issn 1657-0790 (printed) 2256-5760 (online). bogotá, colombia. pages 103-120 fostering citizenship and english language competences in teenagers through task-based instruction figure 1. slides showing problems found in the community by groups 1 and 2 figure 2. slides showing causes presented by groups 1 and 2 figure 3. slides showing the proposed solutions by groups 4 and 5 universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras114 romero & pérez all the groups proposed practical solutions. group 4 gave a peaceful and collective solution and group 5 showed awareness and knowledge of their legal rights (see figure 3). these proposed solutions were consistent with some of the proposed standards for citizenship education (men, 2004): “identify and analyze situations in which civil and political rights are violated” (p. 23, our translation). the slides also evidence the students’ growing command in english: they not only wrote fairly accurate texts, but most of them managed to give spoken messages during the oral presentations. the task-based instruction provided instances in which the foreign language was used to convey ideas and promote communication among the actors in the classroom. analysis of students’ notepads students were given the chance to self-evaluate their role during the class, and their attitude to face conflict while the sessions were taking place. participants were numbered to provide confidentiality of the identities of the students. student 1 was concerned and understood that every action brings consequences either positive or negative. she wrote in the reflection for lesson 3 that her classmates did not do the right thing; then, the teacher called students’ attention for not being responsible. she even recognizes that the teacher was scolding them, as they were not behaving as expected. in the same sense, she finally admitted that the “scolding part” was a good thing to do as the teacher brought them down to earth. she wrote: “but the teacher gave us a talk, one of those i called scolds, but i like them. she brings us down to earth. so, after this, everybody must present tomorrow.” the form in which student 1 expressed her consciousness about not coping with the objectives of the class and immediately starting a call for commitment was evident in her reflection for this class. thus, she started to develop citizenship competencies, especially the one that refers to a person who foresees the consequences in the short and long term about his or her actions and avoid those that can cause harm to others or themselves. in general terms, students showed that the class motivated them to talk in english as their oral participation was noticeable throughout as it increased throughout the lessons. the fact that students were able to write summaries, complete charts, read, comprehend, and give their own conclusions using the english language are proof that students’ communicative competence was being developed through the activities proposed in the unit. some other aspects to highlight are that most students’ responses in english were fairly well-constructed, and they initiated verbal interventions in english, which means that they felt comfortable communicating ideas using the english language. the above-mentioned evidence may indicate that the task encouraged learners in a constructive way to learn language through meaningful interaction while developing activities and tasks, as feez (1998) claims in his assumptions on task-based instruction. in a general view, students understood and conveyed messages, but it is evident that they should work on spelling, syntax, and cohesion, among other elements (see figures 4 and 5 where there is a sample of students’ synthesis from the video). figure 4. transcription of the synthesis of a video written by student 6 [sic] ana is a business management, she spoke in the video about global warming, the effects of global warming, the green house effect. causes: problem affecting humanity, green house causes poor economy, and in all the humanity. principal solution: not to contaminate, plant trees, carpool, reduce waste, reuse bulbs. change your way of thinking. 115profile: issues teach. prof. dev., vol. 23 no. 2, jul-dec, 2021. issn 1657-0790 (printed) 2256-5760 (online). bogotá, colombia. pages 103-120 fostering citizenship and english language competences in teenagers through task-based instruction figure 5. transcription of the synthesis of a video written by student 7 [sic] ana is a person; she talks about the problem of contamination in the video. she mentioned the effects of the big problem of global warming, and others. some causes: this problem affects all the animals and the people. another problem is the economy because it affects the soil solution: stop contamination, use the 3 r’s, and use cars with many people in figures 4 and 5 showed that english language learning was taking place during the implementation of the lessons. the students’ writings were more comprehensible, and ideas were organized. this evidence is coherent with willis’s (1996) ideas about evaluating tasks in terms of achievement of an outcome as they bear some resemblance to real-life language use. conclusions after the application of this research project, we could see that citizenship and communicative competences were fostered using a task-based approach to language teaching, because the role of the task proposed in the unit let learners experience several situations like identifying a problematic issue; proposing possible solutions for it; interacting with classmates, teachers, and people from the community; and producing a problem-solution text. such experiences contributed to the understanding of the students’ role in society and how they can contribute to the solution of real-life problems that could also benefit their communities and impact society at large. that is to say, learners were the participants of this study and it was possible to evidence the process through which they were undergoing while learning english and displaying positive civic behavior as future citizens. upon concentrating on the evidence of citizenship competencies developed in this ninth grade efl class, it was perceived that most learners were capable of adjusting to the rules proposed for the harmony of the class and demonstrating that they could all come to an agreement to turn in a requested product. in addition to this, students showed certain commitment to foster values such as respect and responsibility. nevertheless, it is indispensable to say that they still needed time to work on those aspects, since pupils are within the process of developing character, which is meant to be a long process. coexistence was seen among students, respect and responsibility existed in the classroom and they were put into practice when students listened to each other and conducted themselves in an ethical manner. to be realistic, the promotion of citizenship competencies needs more than a unit to be developed and they can be perceived not in the way they are written in the standards but with small actions, insofar as students are provided with chances to assume a positive attitude while participating in the process. an important lesson derived from this experience is the fact that the teacher can plan more detailed scaffolding for the students before they are able to produce the type of text they are expected to produce. as it was, the teacher never showed the class an example of the final product they were supposed to produce and was never explicit about the criteria of evaluation (the students never knew the rubric for the oral presentation). some students fully engaged with the task showed awareness of different tools with which they had to fight for their own rights, which aligns with the purpose of the study: to see how the students’ citizenship competences were developed. the verbalization of awareness of responsibility or participation in the problematic situation or in the solution was taken as an indicator of a higher level of awareness. other signals of the development of citizenship competences were students’ attitude to resolve conflicts during the lessons and the receptive attitude to work on the weaknesses when being corrected by the teacher. for further studies, the assessment of citizenship via the use of validated instruments is recommended. universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras116 romero & pérez references burnard, p. (1994). the telephone interview as a data collection method. nurse education today, 14(1), 67–72. https://doi. org/10.1016/0260-6917(94)90060-4 burns, a. (1999). collaborative action research for english language teachers. cambridge university press. canale, m., & swain, m. (1980). theoretical bases of communicative approaches to second language teaching and testing. applied linguistics, 1(1), 1–47. https://doi. org/10.1093/applin/i.1.1 chaux, e. (2004). introducción: aproximación integral a la formación ciudadana [comprehensive approach to citizen training]. en e. chaux, j. lleras y a. m. velásquez (eds.), competencias ciudadanas: de los estándares al aula. una propuesta de integración a las áreas académicas (pp. 13–28). ministerio de educación nacional, universidad de los andes. https://doi.org/10.7440/2004.01 cohen, l., manion, l., & morrison, k. (2017). research methods in education (8th ed.). routledge. https://doi. org/10.4324/9781315456539 feez, s. (1998). text-based syllabus design. ames. harecker, g. (2012). teaching values at school: a way to reach a better understanding in our world. https://bit.ly/39spxgh hébert, y., & sears, a. (2004). citizenship education. https:// bit.ly/39ub5t3 jaramillo-franco, r. (2008). educación cívica y ciudadana como respuesta a la violencia en colombia [civic and citizenship education as an answer to violence in colombia]. transatlántica de educación, 4, 65–76. johnson, m. (2004). a philosophy for second language acquisition. yale university press. ley general de educación [general education law], diario oficial no. 41.214 (1994). maley, a., & peachey, n. (eds.). (2017). integrating global issues in the creative english language classroom: with reference to the united nations sustainable development goals. british council. ministerio de educación nacional. (2004). formar para la ciudadanía… ¡sí es posible! lo que necesitamos saber y saber hacer [training for citizenship…it is possible! what we need to know and know how to do]. https://www. mineducacion.gov.co/1621/articles-75768_archivo_pdf. pdf musa, k. a., & al-dersi, z. e. m. (2013). advantages of using powerpoint presentation in [the] efl classroom & the status of its use in sebha university. international journal of english language and translation studies, 1(1), 3–16. nunan, d. (1989). designing tasks for the communicative classroom. cambridge university press. shaaban, k. (2005). a proposed framework for incorporating moral education into the esl/efl classroom. language, culture and curriculum, 18(2), 201–217. https://doi. org/10.1080/07908310508668742 unesco. (1998). learning to live together in peace and harmony: values education for peace, human rights, democracy and sustainable development for the asia-pacific region. https:// unesdoc.unesco.org/ark:/48223/pf0000114357 vygotsky, l. s. (1978). mind in society: the development of higher psychological processes (rev. ed.). harvard university press. willis, j. (1996). a framework for task-based learning. longman. about the authors yanilis romero holds a master’s degree in english language teaching (elt) and is studying for a phd in education at universidad del norte (colombia). she has worked researching on projects regarding the improvement of teaching and learning english processes with different audiences in public institutions. adriana pérez holds a phd in educational sciences from the latin american and caribbean university (venezuela), a master’s degree in education in teaching spanish, and a ba in education from the universidad de oriente in venezuela. she is currently working for the spanish department in universidad del norte. https://doi.org/10.1016/0260-6917(94)90060-4 https://doi.org/10.1016/0260-6917(94)90060-4 https://doi.org/10.1093/applin/i.1.1 https://doi.org/10.1093/applin/i.1.1 https://doi.org/10.7440/2004.01 https://doi.org/10.4324/9781315456539 https://doi.org/10.4324/9781315456539 https://bit.ly/39spxgh https://bit.ly/39ub5t3 https://bit.ly/39ub5t3 https://www.mineducacion.gov.co/1621/articles-75768_archivo_pdf.pdf https://www.mineducacion.gov.co/1621/articles-75768_archivo_pdf.pdf https://www.mineducacion.gov.co/1621/articles-75768_archivo_pdf.pdf https://doi.org/10.1080/07908310508668742 https://doi.org/10.1080/07908310508668742 https://unesdoc.unesco.org/ark:/48223/pf0000114357 https://unesdoc.unesco.org/ark:/48223/pf0000114357 117profile: issues teach. prof. dev., vol. 23 no. 2, jul-dec, 2021. issn 1657-0790 (printed) 2256-5760 (online). bogotá, colombia. pages 103-120 fostering citizenship and english language competences in teenagers through task-based instruction appendix a: unit planning aspect description task to make a presentation about a local problem and propose solutions for it. communicative competences linguistic, pragmatic, and sociolinguistic linguistic features words that signal a problem lexis around environmental problems discourse organizers cause & effect indicators citizenship competence to critically analyze conflicts among groups, in my neighborhood, town, or country. to construct, implement, keep, & repair agreements between groups. to show respect and tolerance. evaluation students’ participation during the task cycle. final presentation. criteria: identification of problem, proposal of solutions, spelling, and use of lexis universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras118 romero & pérez appendix b: detailed plan of action class stage objective/competencies/ standards teacher’s procedures and students’ activities warmup (15–30 min) follow instructions given during classes to do academic activities. show a tolerant attitude and respect when listening to others. the teacher does a warm-up activity. silently, some students act out some words while others infer the meaning in spanish (unknown words in a video they will watch). pre-task (2 hr) use general knowledge of the world to comprehend what is heard. students watch a video twice. they have to take notes as the video is playing. coherently organize texts when writing taking into account formal elements such as punctuation and spelling. teacher asks students what the video is about. she uses yes/no questions. summarize information from a video in writing. in groups of three, students write a short paragraph about a video message based on what they know or on notes taken. development of respect and tolerance when listening to others and working together students share what they write while the teacher writes key words on the board. later, she induces students to notice three things: 1. the problem 2. the causes and the effects 3. the possible solutions express opinions, likes, and preferences about topics discussed in class. students give their opinions related to the topic (interesting, important: why or why not?) task (3 hr) identify a problem-solution text and understand it. students read a problem-solution related to global warming. critically analyze conflicts between groups in the neighborhood or community. in groups, students discuss their understanding of the causes, effects, and possible solutions. students fill out a chart and then share as a class. construct, celebrate, and keep agreements among people and groups. students read another cause–effect text and answer some comprehension questions regarding the problem, the cause, and the effects. in groups of four, students think of a problem in their community. they design a presentation using slides to show the problem, causes, and consequences (pictures needed). 2 hr make short oral presentations on findings of a research. in groups of four, students formally present their findings in a fiveminute presentation. listeners should write down possible solutions to the problem presented by each group. express opinions orally about the topics developed in class. the best groups share their work with other groups from the same grade. post-task (3 hr) students make short oral presentation about their findings. students report to the class their findings in a very informal way. propose a solution to a given problem. students organize the information and investigate further so they can do a short oral presentation for the class. 119profile: issues teach. prof. dev., vol. 23 no. 2, jul-dec, 2021. issn 1657-0790 (printed) 2256-5760 (online). bogotá, colombia. pages 103-120 fostering citizenship and english language competences in teenagers through task-based instruction appendix c: prompts of questions to be answered in students’ diaries note. the questions were originally given to the students in spanish. 1. what was your role (positive or negative) in the english class and/or in the group work? explain. 2. how was your contribution? (positive, negative, significant, unhelpful, useless). 3. how did you perceive the contribution of the other partners? 4. what went right/wrong in the class, and/or in the group work? 5. what could have been done differently? 6. was there a conflict in the class? describe it. 7. how was your participation in the conflict? 8. was it solved? how was it solved? or how could it be solved? universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras120 romero & pérez appendix d: rubric to evaluate students’ oral presentations oral presentation: problems in our community note. the original was provided in spanish. teacher’s name: student’s name: category 4 3 2 1 content shows a complete understanding of the subject. shows a good understanding of the topic. shows a good understanding of part of the topic. does not seem to understand the topic very well. completion the work has the complete content: three slides with visual aids. the work has almost all required parts: three slides with visual aids, loaded with text. the work has all the parts. the work does not have all required parts. oral presentation shows preparation, enthusiasm, and uses a good tone of voice. the ideas are presented in a clear and orderly manner. shows some preparation, enthusiasm, and uses a good tone of voice. the ideas are presented properly but not very coherently and orderly. shows very little preparation and enthusiasm, and uses a low tone of voice. shows isolated ideas with little organization. does not show preparation, enthusiasm, and does not use an appropriate tone of voice. does not present ideas orally and lacks coherence regarding the ideas. language facial expressions and body language generate strong interest and enthusiasm about the topic. facial expressions and body language sometimes generate strong interest and enthusiasm about the topic. facial expressions and body language are used trying to generate enthusiasm, but it seems fake. very little use of facial expressions or body language. they do not generate much interest in the way they introduce the topic. visual aids students use several visual aids, which show considerable work/creativity, and they make the presentation. students use 1–2 visual aids, which show considerable work/ creativity, and they make the presentation better. students use 1–2 visuals aids that make the presentation better. students do not use any visuals or any support during the presentation. the educational purpose of language teaching at university: giving voice to native communities 115profile: issues teach. prof. dev., vol. 24 no. 1, jan-jun, 2022. issn 1657-0790 (printed) 2256-5760 (online). bogotá, colombia. pages 115-124 https://doi.org/10.15446/profile.v24n1.92481 the educational purpose of language teaching at university: giving voice to native communities el propósito educativo de la enseñanza de lenguas en la universidad: dar voz a los pueblos originarios gabriela n. tavella1 s. carina fernández universidad nacional del comahue, san martín de los andes, argentina this paper reports the findings of a case study carried out in an english for specific purposes class with student tour guides at an argentinean university. the main objective of this research project was to analyse how the teaching practices in the english language classes favoured intercultural exchanges. data were gathered through document analysis, surveys, and interviews with students and with coresubject professors. results were analysed qualitatively. we conclude that we must foster a friendly and safe learning environment to give voice to learners from native communities so that they can express their own identities and thus give way to enriching intercultural dialogue. keywords: education, english for specific purposes, foreign language instruction, intercultural communication, native communities este trabajo informa sobre los resultados de un estudio de caso en una clase de inglés con propósitos específicos con estudiantes de guía universitario de turismo en una universidad argentina. el objetivo principal del trabajo de investigación fue analizar el modo en que las prácticas áulicas en las clases de inglés favorecieron los intercambios interculturales. los datos fueron recolectados a través del análisis de documentos, encuestas y entrevistas a estudiantes y a docentes de las materias específicas de la carrera. los resultados se analizaron cualitativamente. concluimos que debemos propiciar un ambiente de aprendizaje amigable y seguro en el cual los aprendientes de pueblos originarios tengan voz para expresar sus identidades y así enriquecer el diálogo intercultural. palabras clave: educación, comunicación intercultural, enseñanza de una lengua extranjera, inglés para propósitos específicos, pueblos originarios 1 gabriela n. tavella  https://orcid.org/0000-0002-4649-2667 · email: gabriela.tavella@fadel.uncoma.edu.ar s. carina fernández  https://orcid.org/0000-0003-1739-5865 · email: silvia.fernandez@fadel.uncoma.edu.ar the project was carried out between 2017 and 2020. it presents final results of a research project sponsored by facultad de lenguas, universidad nacional del comahue, under the code j-029. how to cite this article (apa, 7th ed.): tavella, g. n., & fernández, s. c. (2022). the educational purpose of language teaching at university: giving voice to native communities. profile: issues in teachers’ professional development, 24(1), 115–124. https://doi.org/10.15446/profile. v24n1.92481 this article was received on december 20, 2020 and accepted on september 7, 2021. this is an open access article distributed under the terms of the creative commons license attribution-noncommercial-noderivatives 4.0 international license. consultation is possible at https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/ https://doi.org/10.15446/profile.v24n1.92481 https://orcid.org/0000-0002-4649-2667 mailto:gabriela.tavella@fadel.uncoma.edu.ar https://orcid.org/0000-0003-1739-5865 mailto:silvia.fernandez@fadel.uncoma.edu.ar https://doi.org/10.15446/profile.v24n1.92481 https://doi.org/10.15446/profile.v24n1.92481 https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/ universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras116 tavella & fernández introduction the aim of this paper is to report the findings of a case study carried out in an english for specific purposes (esp) class with student tour guides in argentina. the main objective of this four-year research project was to analyse how the teaching practices in the english language classes favoured intercultural exchanges; how pedagogical interventions considered students’ beliefs, expectations, and prejudices towards the learning of english; and how teachers could give voice to every student in the class (tavella & fernández, 2019a). over the years, our esp courses at university have gradually moved from a more traditional standpoint towards a more context-sensitive approach. in doing so, we started to reconsider the theoretical background of our teaching practices in light of content and language integrated learning (clil), intercultural competence, and post method pedagogies. theoretical background within our esp practices, needs analysis (dudleyevans & st john, 1998) has always been considered when designing our syllabi; however, in recent years we have additionally revisited our materials and teaching practices to suit our specific situational context. in doing so, we decided to abandon the use of textbooks, for we adhere to tomlinson’s (2008) concepts about mass-produced course books. these materials do not foster strong personal and affective relationships between content and learner, as they usually select insipid texts with the purpose of avoiding culturally controversial themes. they suggest literal interpretations from the learners, instead of aesthetically intense and singular readings. content and language integrated learning clil and its four cs (coyle, 2007)—content, cognition, communication, and culture—has paved our path towards the reformulation of our classes. content was selected considering the curricula of core subjects, which are: natural resources, historical and cultural heritage, tourism as a social practice, recreation, professional practices, tourist organisations, social and group psychology, and first aid. cognition is fostered through the design of meaningful activities aimed at promoting the development of thinking skills, namely, the activities and practices are situated. just to mention an example, when dealing with interpretive stops,1 we go around the town and the students carry out their guided tours trying to use the l2 to interpret2 their local heritage. afterwards, we take some time for reflection upon linguistic and non-linguistic needs (language and content). communication is enhanced through the choice of relevant linguistic items meant to convey meaning. for example, when dealing with historic buildings in town we anticipate students’ language needs by providing them with specific lexis and grammar. finally, culture is embedded in all teaching practices to fit the particular class identity. in any guided tour, students’ cultures are represented in their utterances, for they choose what to say and share, how to express it, and what to omit. many times, it is only when they present a topic of their choice that students from native communities share aspects related to their origins and identities. we adhere to the concept of intercultural communicative competence, defined by byram et al. (2002), as the “ability to ensure a shared understanding by people of different social identities, and [the] ability to interact with people as complex human beings with multiple identities and their own individuality” (p. 10). this notion is the result of considering the close interdependence between language and culture and thus, the impact on language teaching and learning. classroom activities 1 according to gutiérrez et al. (2004; chair of professional practice at the university where the study took place), an interpretive stop can be a monument, building and/or a natural element with heritage value at the time it is selected, analysed, and included within the tourist attractions of an area. 2 interpreting in tourism refers to the contextualization of the natural or cultural resource and the multiple relations this may have with the environment. this means that students not only describe the natural or cultural attraction but also interpret its context. 117profile: issues teach. prof. dev., vol. 24 no. 1, jan-jun, 2022. issn 1657-0790 (printed) 2256-5760 (online). bogotá, colombia. pages 115-124 the educational purpose of language teaching at university: giving voice to native communities are chosen considering this interrelation; for instance, when dealing with local mapuche stories students are given the choice of which story to retell and how to tell it. each student in our english classes chooses among their multiple identities which one(s) to share in order to generate appropriate understanding. furthermore, the post method approach and its three parameters (particularity, practicality, and possibility) have also enlightened our analysis. particularity refers to the idea of considering the specific context in which teaching and learning take place. “situational understanding” (kumaravadivelu, 2006) is a key issue and a guiding principle when selecting, designing, and adapting the materials to be used in our classes. it has been our main aim to choose and design tasks relevant to the specific context in which we are immersed. typical flora and fauna of our national parks are dealt with, historic buildings are interpreted in terms of the historic period in which they were built, and natural processes that affected the area are also tackled. thus, the post method teachers reflect, monitor, and act in their own teaching context (practicality) and they are aware of what a good practice implies. this parameter is clearly reflected in our research questions: how the teaching practices in the english language classes favoured intercultural exchange; how pedagogical interventions considered students’ beliefs, expectations, and prejudices towards the learning of english; and how teachers could give voice to every student in the class. as revealed in the research questions, teaching practices were regularly self-monitored, with a deep awareness that all of them are always tainted with teachers’ and learners’ ideas concerning the learning of a foreign language in particular (possibility; tavella & fernández, 2019b). further research areas our research areas were expanded considering english as a lingua franca (elf; jenkins, 2007) and postcolonialism, discourse as symbolic power (bourdieu, 1991; butler, 1997; kramsch, 2011; weedon, 1987) and language teaching with educational purposes (porto & byram, 2015). these lines of research arose as a result of giving voice to students’ own perspectives as regards material design, choice of words, and teaching practices. regular feedback from students was taken into account to select context-sensitive content, to rethink and reformulate materials and teaching practices, and to reflect upon the denotation and connotation in the choice of words and utterances. we adhere to the concept of elf from a pluricentric approach (jenkins, 2009, p. 202), which implies that the learning of a language should favour intercultural communication and that there is no idealised target culture to reach. the implications of learning english in particular cannot be disregarded as the english language teaching tradition has always tended to rely on methods and teaching practices pervasively linked to the ideology of native speakerism (holliday, 2005). within this paradigm the learner has been considered an outsider, a “linguistic tourist” (graddol, 2006) who seeks the approval of the target community. according to kumaravadivelu (2012), “the non-english speaking world learns and uses the english language more for purposes of communication than for purposes of cultural identity formation” (p. 7). in the case of future tour guides, the search for freedom to express their local identities brings about the development of local linguistic varieties which in traditional approaches would be considered as interferences in the development of the target language. in our multicultural context, students come to english classes with varied linguistic codes, different ideas of what is correct and appropriate (kramsch, 2014). as stated by seidlhofer (2007), nowadays, communities of practice share particular registers, with english being the most used code. in line with elf insights, our practices have been revisited so as to listen to the plurality of voices present in our classes. feedback sheets are distributed regularly in order to listen to our students’ opinions on the materials, universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras118 tavella & fernández the choice of topics, and the way of approaching local/ regional content. in a similar vein, reflection upon the situated syllabus is triggered. in addition, the texts and activities about mapuche traditions, local stories, and rukas3 were assessed by students of mapuche origin in terms of choice of words, ways of addressing the topics, and respect for the mapuche people’s cosmovision; and they were modified when necessary. in this context, it is important to understand discourse as symbolic power (kramsch, 2011) as it reveals aspects of social identities, collective memories, emotions, and aspirations. as stated by sapir (1929), “language is a guide to ‘social reality’ . . . it powerfully conditions all our thinking about social problems and processes” (p. 209). consequently, the choice of words to express ourselves is revealing of our ideas, feelings, and values. this research intended to foster the notion that the teaching of a foreign language should be intertwined with a deep respect for intercultural citizenship. the reformulation of our teaching practices made us transcend the instrumental purpose of the teaching of english to promote intercultural dialogue and consider its educational purposes (porto & byram, 2015). according to kumaravadivelu (2012), although learners can see the importance of speaking english, they are also aware of the need to preserve and protect their linguistic and cultural identities, as is the case of the target population in this study. method the research team was multidisciplinary; there were four teachers of english as a foreign language, a teacher of a content subject (natural resources), the administrative coordinator of the course of studies, two graduate students, and an undergraduate belonging to a native community (mapuche) in patagonia. this project lasted four years and was designed as a case study defined by yin (2018) as “an empirical 3 dwelling places in mapuche communities. inquiry that investigates a contemporary phenomenon within its real-life context, especially when the boundaries between phenomenon and context are not clearly evident” (p. 15). in our study, the boundaries can sometimes be blurred as we are teacher-researchers carrying out research upon our own context of practice. context and target population this research study was carried out at one of the campuses of a state-run university in argentinean patagonia between 2017 and 2020. this campus welcomes students from all over the country each year. as described in tavella and fernández (2013, 2017), the course of studies started in san martín de los andes in 1992, and the groups have usually been composed of students who come from mapuche4 communities in patagonia, students who have been born and raised in the town, and other students who come from around the country. they come from diverse backgrounds and with varied concepts and pre-concepts about english. the target population of this research project in particular was student tour guides belonging to the above-mentioned native mapuche communities. these students, in turn, come from varied backgrounds. some of them spend their childhood with their families within native communities located in the countryside, in the mountains, or in the patagonian steppe. the lands they inhabit have generally been assigned to these peoples by the provincial government after many years of conflict. the children usually go to rural primary schools5 and then commute to the secondary schools in the nearest towns. there are also cases of students who attend 4 native peoples who live in the territory of argentinean and chilean patagonia. in argentina, they inhabit neuquén, río negro, chubut, santa cruz, and tierra del fuego, the region of antarctica and south-atlantic islands. the university has campuses distributed along neuquén and río negro provinces. 5 the teaching of mapudungun (mapuche people’s ancestral language) as a foreign language is included in the curricula of rural schools in neuquén province. this was incorporated as a means to promote the use of mapudungun, which is gradually disappearing, especially among younger generations. 119profile: issues teach. prof. dev., vol. 24 no. 1, jan-jun, 2022. issn 1657-0790 (printed) 2256-5760 (online). bogotá, colombia. pages 115-124 the educational purpose of language teaching at university: giving voice to native communities primary and secondary state-run boarding schools and return home at weekends. some others live in patagonian towns and attend urban schools. when the students coming from native communities graduate, they usually go back home to help their people offer better services to tourists and use the additional language to share aspects of their own culture with visitors from around the world who are not always native speakers of english (tavella & fernández, 2019a, p. 19). before starting our research, we had noticed that the percentages of university students representing each of the three groups mentioned above (students of mapuche origin, local students, and students from around argentina) varied every year. yet, what remained unchanged, year after year, was our concern about our teaching practices: did they give voice to minority groups? data collection during the first year, we gathered information about interculturality from university documents. for the revision of bibliography on intercultural teaching practices and clil, we received guidance from two experts in these fields who were the project’s external consultants. we also designed and carried out students’ surveys. they were completed by the students who were finishing their first and third semester of the english course. all students in the english class (a total of 37) participated in the survey. the following year, our work was mainly devoted to the analysis of the surveys. in the same year, the three student-participants— who had volunteered to be part of the project after an open call carried out by the chair—regularly carried out classroom observation tasks. as follow-up, informal interviews took place, and students shared their notes about classroom practices connected to the issues under research: content developed and omitted during the class (intercultural considerations) and how this content was tackled (intercultural considerations and teaching practices), plus the way in which language teachers addressed students (intercultural considerations and teaching practices). in the two remaining years, interviews with 11 teachers from the content subjects mentioned above were carried out. the corpus (document analysis, classroom observation notes, surveys, and interviews) used for the project was heterogeneous and we will describe and explain the data obtained from its analysis qualitatively (mertens, 2015) considering different standpoints. data analysis document analysis the curriculum, the profile of graduate students, and the university initiatives were looked into in terms of intercultural practices. in its introduction, the course curriculum describes the profession of the tour guide as a social one. the tour guide’s performance is closely linked to the environment and the expectations of those who visit the tourist site. then, this social activity is crossed by its diversity. groups are diverse in terms of age, nationality, interests, financial situation, and personal stories. tour guides are diverse as well and that diversity is present in the heart of the hosting community. (our translation) within the professional profile, the document states that the tour guides will have a sensitive attitude, will be engaged in and respectful of the local development and the local values. as regards the sociocultural, historic, physical, and financial dimensions, they will adopt a critical mindset and will be responsible for the needs and interests of the groups of tourists. they will also respect the features of the place where they will be guiding. (universidad nacional del comahue, 2006; our translation) after the analysis, the question to pose was whether these concepts were mere theoretical claims or if there were institutional policies to promote diversity and respectful practices. universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras120 tavella & fernández in this sense, most recently there have been university initiatives that include the intercultural aspect among the issues to be considered in order to foster the development of institutional capacities to cater for people with special needs (secretaría de políticas universitarias, 2016). our university has started to include intercultural principles as a means to abandon monocultural practices and promote its insertion in the context in which it is settled. one of the actions implemented is regular visits to small villages in northern patagonia and to mapuche communities. these visits are aimed at informing prospective university students about access to the free-of-charge university education offered by state-run universities in our country; the wide choice of courses of studies in the different university campuses; the features of and requisites for the different scholarships; plus, the chance of using students’ dormitories as dwelling places throughout the course of studies. after analysing the curriculum, the profile of graduate students, and the university initiatives, we concluded that our university policies have gradually started to promote interculturality and inclusion. surveys students’ responses were analysed and relevant segments of the responses were underlined. this constituted the initial coding phase (mertens, 2015); then two broad categories emerged: intercultural considerations and teaching practices. the students’ mother tongue (spanish) was used for the design of the questions and for their responses. for the purpose of this paper, we will focus on those answers that enlighten the analysis. intercultural considerations. in the responses, students refer to diversity in terms of place of origin and individual characteristics and how these different identities mark the features of the class. most of the answers refer to the wide variety of hometowns and provinces present in the class, which covers the five-thousandkilometre distance of our vast country. students also mention their diverse socio-cultural backgrounds as an asset to their professional development. within this context, it is relevant to mention that in the english class most students from mapuche communities do not dare to share their origin. in many cases this could be related to instances of discrimination they have suffered. this constituted a major constraint throughout our research project. of special interest is that in the surveys, students in general do not make a distinction between their cultures and the mapuche’s, only some of them mention the fact that our university is made up of students from different origins and thus, possess different identities. there is one response that we consider worth analysing for the aim of the present contribution: “we deal with their traditions, legends, and this helps us understand their culture a bit more” (student a,6 our translation and emphasis). the choice of words in this answer could be interpreted as an instance of an intercultural exchange as described by the council of europe (2016), a “dialogue that takes place between individuals or groups who perceive themselves as having different cultural affiliations from each other” (p. 6). at the same time, this response could also show that the student places themself as being an outsider, not belonging to the mapuche community. the student refers to the activities in the english class as being inclusive because the mapuche culture is dealt with. the use of “their” to refer to another culture which is not their own may reflect the student’s inability to get familiar with the unfamiliar, unable to place themself from the perspectives and worlds of the other (porto et al., 2016). teaching practices. teaching practices were not directly addressed in the students’ answers. the only relationship we can establish between their answers and the category of analysis is when they emphasize group work as a type of pedagogical intervention, which 6 to protect students’ identities, we will use letters to differentiate them. 121profile: issues teach. prof. dev., vol. 24 no. 1, jan-jun, 2022. issn 1657-0790 (printed) 2256-5760 (online). bogotá, colombia. pages 115-124 the educational purpose of language teaching at university: giving voice to native communities promotes attitudes such as respect and understanding of others. they stress the time shared with different people with different ideals and knowledge; plus, group work conceived as a means to promote interaction and to learn from others. they point out the possibility of exchanging varied standpoints with people of varied origins with varied ideas and cultures. in one of the answers there is a transfer of this particular teaching practice to the tour guide’s specific field: “we can share different knowledge from different viewpoints; group work helps provide more experiences that build up social identity” (student b, our translation). interviews with student participants from the unstructured interviews carried out with student-participants, we will refer to the responses given by one of the female students. the reason why we selected this interview in particular is because of its relevance for the present study in terms of the experiences she went through as a member of a mapuche community in the neuquén province. the interviewee was asked about why some members of the mapuche community were reluctant to share their origins. student c explicitly stated that many did not do it because they were afraid of being discriminated against. she told us the story of a university classmate, a member of a mapuche community in the province, whom for the aim of this account will be called student d. when referring to mapuche people, student d talked about “them,”7 excluding themself from that group; deliberately choosing the pronoun “they.” as stated by lakoff (2001), language choice “legitimizes power, and power permits the blanketing of all conduits with the messages of one group, to the exclusion of others” (p. 310). student c spoke about the social burden of belonging to native communities in the region and referred back to her personal experience in the building 7 the terms are deliberately written between inverted commas as they are translated quotes of the terms used by student c. of her pride to belong. she shared some childhood experiences in an urban school where some peers made fun of her origins teasing her with pejorative terms. at this stage of the interview, she made a point about the role of her family in the construction of her identity as a descendant of two mapuche families. student c rejects the use of “we” and “they,” “they” being the mapuche people. in her view these pronouns are words that index social identity; she is showing social reality through speech; thus, expressing dislike for being seen as one of “the others.” consequently, it is of utmost importance to seriously consider the selection of words. power is exercised through the choice of language. language is arbitrary; it is not just a code. it always indexes something; something which is different for each individual. in this particular case the others index the mapuche community, the ones that are being discriminated against. therefore, it is important to understand discourse as symbolic power (kramsch, 2011); it reveals aspects of social identities, collective memories, emotions, and aspirations. during the interview, student c talks about “suffering,” “getting distressed,” and “being hurt.” these words arise when referring to some experiences encountered during school and university life. she tells us the story of a comment made by a teacher: “people from your origin have difficulties in acquiring university knowledge” (our translation). in this particular case, student c is being wounded, this utterance has had a strong effect on her as it was performed by one in a position of power and, as butler (1997, p. 26) states, it has the effect of resubordinating those who are already in a subordinate position. as has been previously mentioned, language produces effects. student c has been injuriously addressed and affected by the professor’s utterance. language can wound: language can act in ways that parallel the infliction of physical pain and injury . . . certain words or certain forms of address not only operate as threats to one’s universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras122 tavella & fernández physical well-being, but there is a strong sense in which the body is alternately sustained and threatened through modes of address. (butler, 1997, pp. 4–5) interviews with core-subject teachers semi-structured interviews were conducted in which all content teachers participated. the interviews focused around three key points: the concept of interculturality, the approach taken by each chair, and the role of the tour guide. regarding the concept of interculturality, through the interviews we could conclude that teachers have varied standpoints. from the professors’ stances, the term was depicted as a social construct which depends on the socio-cultural and historical context. it was associated with culture, with cultural diversity. it was also considered a complex and difficult concept to define, sometimes confusing, not easy to tackle. it was linked to the understanding of other people’s cultures and it was also connected to respecting one’s own culture. it is worth mentioning that all respondents associated interculturality with the mapuche communities in the area. just to mention an example, the professor of historical and cultural heritage pointed out the limitations of talking about other peoples’ cosmovision when one feels like an outsider. as for the way of addressing intercultural matters in each subject, the answers showed that all teaching practices included these issues either as specific curriculum content or as an aspect to be covered across each subject. some teachers stated that university experiences empower the students from mapuche communities, give them voices, and strengthen their identities. for instance, one of the teachers of recreation pointed out that students shared their childhood experiences when recalling the games they used to play. in this account, their students’ own culture was evidenced even when the concept was not directly addressed. the professor of social and group psychology pointed out the importance of dealing with the concept of interculturality all throughout the subject, and to relate it to the students’ future professional role. in reference to the role of tour guides, it was asserted that they were key agents when sharing their insights with others. professors stated that there were different ways to interpret realities framed within the perspective of each tour guide. more specifically, the respondents referred to the role of the tour guide in our region as intercultural and interethnic informants. the standpoint of the professor of professional practices is to be mentioned. she stated that in a mapuche [people’s] display at a museum, when a student that is a member of that community is guiding, they place their own stamp; their beliefs are revealed in the organisation of the speech and in the choice of words. (our translation) from the analysis of the professors’ interviews, we can say that intercultural issues were covered in all subjects. in addition, we can conclude that, in general, students from mapuche communities are reluctant to share their origins. in this context, giving voice to learners from native communities can foster a friendly learning environment in which they can safely express their own identities; thus, giving way to enriching intercultural dialogue. concluding remarks turning back to the research questions, the project was conceived on the assumption that our language classes were planned placing intercultural exchanges at the core. they were intended to foster respect for students’ identities, individualities, previous knowledge, ideas, and pre-concepts, and to give voice to all students. through surveys and students’ feedback, interviews, and document analysis, we started to question our pedagogical interventions so as to evaluate whether all our students were given voice in our classes. the scope of the research was widened to the development of intercultural dialogue and the enhancement 123profile: issues teach. prof. dev., vol. 24 no. 1, jan-jun, 2022. issn 1657-0790 (printed) 2256-5760 (online). bogotá, colombia. pages 115-124 the educational purpose of language teaching at university: giving voice to native communities of tolerance and responsible citizenship. this new line of research was due, on the one hand, to students’ feedback and surveys, and, on the other, to the above-developed interview with the student member of the mapuche community. both reveal that individual identities are respected in the english classes. however, we still believe that there is a need to cater to every student’s needs and to give voice to learners belonging to native communities. it is only when students of mapuche origin dare share aspects of their own being that we feel we are giving voice to every student in our class and that our teaching practices really become inclusive. in the present study, explicit actions were taken to listen to the voice of students from mapuche communities by trying to analyse our own teaching practices from their perspectives. this is backed by porto et al. 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(2007). english as a lingua franca and communities of practice. in s. volk-birke & j. lippert (eds.), angliestentag halle 2006 proceedings (pp. 307–318). wissenschaftlicher verlag. tavella, g., & fernández, s. c. (2013). cultural bonding in the 21st century language classroom. in l. renart & d. l. banegas (eds.), roots & routes in language education. bi/ multi/plurilinguism, interculturality and identity: selected papers from the 38th faapi conference (pp. 98–108). asociación de profesores de inglés de buenos aires. tavella, g., & fernández, s. c. (2017). esp teaching practices: fostering cultural bonding. argentinian journal of applied linguistics, 5(1), 37–46. tavella, g., & fernandez, s. c. (2019a). an esp class at a university in argentinean patagonia: giving voice to minority groups. iatefl elt research, (34), 18–21. http:// resig.weebly.com/issue-34.html tavella, g., & fernández, s. c. (2019b). esp in the postmethod era: do we clil? in g. espinosa, m. f. fernandez beschtedt, p. formiga, & m. a. verdú (eds.), conocimiento y diversidad en el estudio y la enseñanza de lenguas (pp. 109-115). educo. tomlinson, b. (2008). introduction: language acquisition and language learning materials. in b. tomlinson (ed.), english language learning materials: a critical review (pp. 3–13). continuum. universidad nacional del comahue. (2006). consejo superior, ordenanza 1062. https://www.uncoma.edu.ar/index. php/consejo-superior/ weedon, c. (1987). feminist practice and poststructuralist theory (1st ed.). blackwell. yin, r. k. (2018). case study research and applications: design and methods (6th ed.). sage publications. about the authors gabriela n. tavella is an esp professor and director of a research project in the facultad de lenguas, universidad nacional del comahue (argentina). her main research interests are elt methodology, clil, culture/intercultural matters in elt, and individual differences in language learning. s. carina fernández is an esp lecturer and researcher in the facultad de lenguas, universidad nacional del comahue (argentina). her main research interests are intercultural matters in the teaching of languages, postmethod pedagogies, and elf. acknowledgements we are grateful to professor darío luis banegas (strathclyde university, uk) and professor melina porto (universidad nacional de la plata, argentina) for their guidance and for acting as the external consultants for this research project. https://doi.org/10.1075/prag.11.3.04lak https://doi.org/10.1075/prag.11.3.04lak https://doi.org/10.1080/07908318.2015.1087555 https://doi.org/10.1017/s0261444816000094 https://doi.org/10.1017/s0261444816000094 https://doi.org/10.2307/409588 https://bit.ly/3aeqoto https://bit.ly/3aeqoto http://resig.weebly.com/issue-34.html http://resig.weebly.com/issue-34.html https://www.uncoma.edu.ar/index.php/consejo-superior/ https://www.uncoma.edu.ar/index.php/consejo-superior/ disciplinary power lying behind the requisite of english language mastery in international scholarships 175profile: issues teach. prof. dev., vol. 24 no. 1, jan-jun, 2022. issn 1657-0790 (printed) 2256-5760 (online). bogotá, colombia. pages 175-191 https://doi.org/10.15446/profile.v24n1.91112 disciplinary power lying behind the requisite of english language mastery in international scholarships poder disciplinario que yace detrás del requisito de dominio del idioma inglés en becas internacionales alber josué forero-mondragón 1 álvaro hernán quintero-polo universidad distrital francisco josé de caldas, bogotá, colombia this article reports a study about how the discourse of standard english exercises disciplinary power in five international scholarships programs. this research interest arises from problematizing the discourse of standard english present in the requisite of proficiency certification through so-called valid tests. adapting fairclough’s critical discourse analysis model, we analyzed a corpus of five scholarship calls for applications open from 2011 to 2014. findings reveal that the discourse of standard english entangles with the discourses of globalization, education quality, and competitiveness and qualifications to serve as the path to the construction of the subjects’ scholarship applicants. in this entanglement, school is set as a breeding ground whose disciplinary techniques (e.g., test training) objectivize people to satisfy multinational corporations’ hiring processes. keywords: discourse of standard english, english language teaching, international scholarships, power, standardized testing el presente artículo reporta un estudio sobre cómo se ejerce el poder disciplinario en cinco programas de becas internacionales. dicho interés parte de una problematización del discurso del inglés estándar materializado en el requisito de dominio del inglés mediante certificaciones resultado de tomar tests válidos. adaptando el modelo de análisis crítico del discurso de fairclough, analizamos un corpus de cinco convocatorias abiertas entre 2011 y 2014. los hallazgos indican que el discurso en mención se entrelaza con discursos como la globalización, la calidad en educación, y la competitividad y cualificaciones para construir los aspirantes. en dicho entrelazamiento, la escuela se configura como caldo de cultivo cuyas técnicas disciplinarias objetivan a las personas para satisfacer los procesos de contratación de corporaciones multinacionales. palabras clave: becas internacionales, el discurso del inglés estándar, enseñanza del inglés, exámenes estandarizados, poder alber josué forero-mondragón  https://orcid.org/0000-0002-1232-0832 · email: ajforerom@correo.udistrital.edu.co álvaro hernán quintero-polo  https://orcid.org/0000-0002-0315-8802 · email: aquintero@udistrital.edu.co this article is based on the master’s thesis completed by forero-mondragón (2020). how to cite this article (apa, 7th ed.): forero-mondragón, a. j., & quintero-polo, á. h. (2022). disciplinary power lying behind the requisite of english language mastery in international scholarships. profile: issues in teachers’ professional development, 24(1), 175–191. https://doi.org/10.15446/profile.v24n1.91112 this article was received on october 21, 2020 and accepted on september 7, 2021. this is an open access article distributed under the terms of the creative commons license attribution-noncommercial-noderivatives 4.0 international license. consultation is possible at https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/ https://doi.org/10.15446/profile.v24n1.91112 https://orcid.org/0000-0002-1232-0832 mailto:ajforerom@correo.udistrital.edu.co https://orcid.org/0000-0002-0315-8802 mailto:aquintero@udistrital.edu.co https://doi.org/10.15446/profile.v24n1.91112 https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/ universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras176 forero-mondragón & quintero-polo introduction in one of his essays, literature and totalitarianism, orwell (1941) cogently asserts that: the totalitarian state . . . cannot allow the individual any freedom what ever. when one mentions totalitarianism, one thinks immediately of germany, russia, italy, but i think one must face the risk that this phenomenon is going to be world-wide. (para. 3) this assertion seems a prediction from the 1940s, because orwell warns us about the spread of totalitarianism around the world. with it, the individual’s freedom to think and to act is restricted. nowadays, thought and behavior control creates an ideology and always tries to rule our emotional and behavioral lives. this gives rise to an artificial world in which individuals have the criteria to compare themselves with the outside world through uniform patterns devised for massive control. in this article, we extrapolate the orwellian idea of thought and behavior control to the execution of disciplinary power by means of language. in line with this, we turn again to orwell and the newspeak as a language created by the state that appears in his masterpiece 1984, to point out that actors who hold control create a language to prevent critical creative thought. we report here on a critical discourse study about the use of the discourse of standard english to exercise disciplinary power through english language testing practices. our study focuses on the fact that applicants to some international scholarships must hold certified english proficiency through tests. the scholarships under examination are those offered by the alliance between the association internationale des étudiants en sciences économiques et commerciales (aiesec) and instituto colombiano de crédito educativo y estudios técnicos en el exterior (icetex). research problem the research problem stems from the premise that the concession of aiesec–icetex scholarships is determined by social orders (fairclough, 2001). such concession is mediated by the requisite of certified english proficiency as the result of profiling candidates by means of school discipline. thus, the problem has a three-fold dimension: the first dimension, scholarships as exercise of disciplinary power in colombian schooling, relates to the role that disciplinary power plays to reach the social ends attributed to school. in colombia, disciplinary power has been exercised differently in accord with three pedagogical models that have permeated school, namely the lancasterian school, the enseñanza simultánea (simultaneous teaching), and the active school (restrepo-mejía as cited in saldarriaga, 2003). from the pedagogical models in question, the second one deserves special attention. this is because awarding students for their performance becomes a strategy for school pupils to internalize their duties without being punished (saldarriaga, 2003) and upgrade their virtues by emulating prodigious models that awaken the good (restrepo-mejía as cited in saldarriaga, 2003). in this framework, school awards have taken different shapes such as honorable mentions, exams exemptions, and scholarships. scholarships are used for honoring students who demonstrate meeting the social ends of schooling. the second dimension, traces of discipline in icetexmediated grants, calls for a contextualization about what icetex is and what it does. icetex is an agency of the colombian education system whose aim is to promote access to and permanence in university programs of low-income students by means of offering financing mechanisms and administration of own and thirdparty resources, and scholarships from national and international supporting agencies (law 1002, 2005). it is a common requisite for applicants—to be granted an international scholarship—to demonstrate intermediate or high english proficiency levels through tests based on the common european framework (cefr). those tests are known for promoting a standard variety of the english language in social practices such as education, work, and traveling (educational testing service, n.d.; international english language testing system, n.d.; university of michigan, n.d.). this feature makes them 177profile: issues teach. prof. dev., vol. 24 no. 1, jan-jun, 2022. issn 1657-0790 (printed) 2256-5760 (online). bogotá, colombia. pages 175-191 disciplinary power lying behind the requisite of english language mastery in international scholarships become deemed as valid tests, constituting these tests’ creators as the access point of the english language testing system. by access point, we refer to “systems of technical accomplishment or professional expertise that organize large areas of the material and social environments in which we live today” (giddens, 2013, p. 27). to illustrate this dimension, there are alliances mediated by icetex that offer scholarship programs for colombians in diverse countries. it is paradoxical that, for instance, even though peru is not officially an english-speaking country, the requisite of certified english proficiency is demanded in the scholarship programs. those programs ask for mastery of the english language. the third and last dimension is the requisite of certified english in aiesec–icetex scholarships as a disciplinary component. it relates to the two previous dimensions and guides our attention to a troublesome statement of aiesec scholarship programs that corroborates the requisite of certified english through valid tests: “the requisite of english is necessary even though the practice takes place in a spanish-speaking country or another” (icetex & aiesec, 2011; 2012; 2013a; 2013b; 2014, para. 20). aiesec is a youngsters’ non-profit organization led by young people from 126 countries; it is acknowledged by unesco and sponsored by multinational corporations worldwide (e.g., apple, nike, electrolux, accenture, and nokia, among others; aiesec, n.d.-c). it claims to advocate for peace and human potential development, to contribute to the development of associated countries and their people, and to commit to international cooperation (aiesec, n.d.-c). in addition, its mission is to serve as an international platform and global learning environment for youngsters to discover and develop their leadership potential in order to impact positively on society (aiesec, n.d.-c). this makes us infer that the goals of aiesec and the access point in question intersect. both promote economic and social practices such as working, studying, and traveling abroad. in this intersection, the access point certifies a person who can use standard language varieties for being competent in these practices. one point that relates to the social and political agendas behind aiesec–icetex scholarship program is made by shohamy (2017) when she states that tests are powerful in the sense that “they can lead to differentiation among people and for judging them” (p. 444). in the case of aiesec–icetex scholarships, language tests classify people so as to determine who is proficient in the standard english varieties under the benchmarks imposed (i.e., cefr). this functioning of tests already portrays a social interest: fostering roles in society (e.g., so-called bilingual workers). by classifying people into their language proficiency beforehand, language tests already objectivize (gruenfeld et al., 2008) test-takers at the access point. the problematization of the requisite in question occurs within a tensional social space (school) and its processes (schooling), more explicitly in its disciplinary practices and components. the statement about the existence of a problem made so far, made us pose the question that guided the study reported on in this article: how does the discourse of standard english exercise disciplinary power in aiesec–icetex scholarships concessions? theoretical considerations the theoretical considerations for this study stem from a discussion about the relationship between two constructs: school as a disciplinary field and the english language curriculum as a disciplinary micro field. one main argument of such relationship is that school is a field in which different discourses dispute and/or adhere to one another, forging disciplinary practices that aim to create useful and docile subjects (foucault, 1975/1977, 1975/2002). the former construct, school as a disciplinary field, from bourdieu’s (1989) field theory, leads us to conceive school as a social space where actors relate to each other mediated by forms of capital. in addition, the social actors’ relationships and practices within the field of school can be of various types; for instance, hierarchical, that imply domination or submission, or horizontal, that imply equality. school as a social space has been constituted as universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras178 forero-mondragón & quintero-polo a field where objectification processes construct amenable human beings by means of disciplinary power. students, teachers, principals, secretaries, coordinators, and security guards, among others, participate in the power relations of school (van der horst & narodowski, 1999). they are responsible for the embodiment of school power dynamics, yet hardly ever take part in their decisions. on the other hand, other social actors such as politicians, entrepreneurs, technocrats, religious leaders, and so on, influence the delineation of policies and enactment of laws that determine school demands. however, school social ends are not the result of a wide consensus. turning our attention to school discipline, we can say that it has abandoned the most coercive mechanisms, for instance, physical punishment, and has adopted subtler techniques to make schools objects of scientific disciplines and dividing practices (foucault, 1988). objectification refers to “an instrument of subjugation whereby the needs, interests, and experiences of those with less power are subordinated to those of the powerful, and this facilitates using others as means to an end” (gruenfeld et al., 2008, p. 111). thus, school disciplines students in order to achieve its social, economic, and political ends. in this perspective, foucault’s (1975/2002) idea of means of correct training— hierarchical observation, normalizing punishment, and examinations—constitute a guarantee of order and control. framed in the aforesaid school dynamics, aiesec– icetex scholarships embody the discursive construction of the good student, someone who subsequently would become a good applicant and later, a good worker. this assertion is based on the fact that applicants to these scholarships must adjust to selection criteria, for example, grade point average, and academic background (i.e., having a major in offered areas; icetex, n.d.-a). as for the concern of this study, the required so-called valid english language tests (icetex, n.d.-a) are bred within the disciplinary micro-field of english language curriculum. the second construct, the english language curriculum as a disciplinary micro-field, is based on our understanding of curriculum as a net of force relations (bourdieu, 1995, as cited in rincón-villamil, 2010) that is set due to domination and subordination practices. in this light, (social) curriculum actors vested with major capital are dominant and, thereby, establish the norms of the field (orthodoxy). in turn, a group of dominated actors uses arguments to overthrow the dominants (heterodoxy), and another group will use a popular discourse with no major impact on the field (doxa; rincón-villamil, 2010). in colombia, orthodoxy in the english language curriculum is represented within social actors such as publishing houses, international governmental organizations, and cultural institutes (e.g., the british council). this is because these corporations set the access point (giddens, 2013) of the english language testing system. in turn, alternative but isolated efforts of research groups and teacher-researchers constitute heterodoxy. they have put emphasis on how language policies, cultures, policy-makers, and practitioners constitute power relations, which lead to resistance, subjugation, privilege, and alienation in the colombian educational system (e.g., escobar-alméciga, 2013; forero-mondragón, 2017; guerrero, 2010; guerreronieto & quintero-polo, 2009). yet, their efforts do not echo as hard as the dominant actors do because they are constrained by dominant discourses exclusion systems (foucault, 1981). resultantly, heterodox discourses do not adhere easily to others in the english language curriculum disciplinary micro-field. in the third level, the doxa is represented in the opinions of parents/caretakers, teachers, students, and so on, who welcome, apprehend, and reproduce the discourses from the orthodoxy. these opinions revolve around opportunities for social mobility and personal and professional growth that are generally associated with english learning (guerrero, 2010; spring, 2008). they are constructions of discursive representations that sell the wonders of english to access an imagined community of english speakers (guerrero, 2010). although inside the doxa there also exists resistance towards dominant discourses, dominant social actors’ agendas are stronger owing to an imposed set of benchmarks and discourses. 179profile: issues teach. prof. dev., vol. 24 no. 1, jan-jun, 2022. issn 1657-0790 (printed) 2256-5760 (online). bogotá, colombia. pages 175-191 disciplinary power lying behind the requisite of english language mastery in international scholarships regarding the concept of standard english, we focus on its twofold dimension: ideological (milroy, 2001; razfar, 2012) and discursive (fairclough, 2001). as an ideology, standard english relates to language and a capitalist belief system. in this vein, standard english is functional since it fosters effective communication for economic purposes (milroy, 2001). similarly, as it unifies the interactions of people, it has been useful for the consolidation of political systems like nationstates at the expense of marginalized groups and their so-called dialects (razfar, 2012). on the other hand, standard english as a discourse, that is, language as a social practice (fairclough, 2001), implies that dominant groups such as bourgeois classes represent social reality aligning it with their interests by means of language. both ideology and discourse relate to one another in the sense that the former uses the latter as a mediator in order to restrict access to discursive practices. resultantly, the discourse of standard english emerges from the assumption that standard english enjoys prestige for its uniformity (milroy, 2001) concreted in “few differences in grammar between them” (cambridge university press, n.d., para. 1). finally, this characterization is not exhaustive but allows us to identify the main social function of said discourse: ensuring the quality of english language teaching, learning, and assessment. method our study was developed following fairclough’s (2001) critical discourse analysis model. said model is divided into three stages, namely: description, interpretation, and explanation. description deals with the analysis of formal features of the text (fairclough, 2001). by text, we refer to a product of discourse (fairclough, 2001; martín-rojo, 1996) that in this study owns a linguistic nature. in the study reported here, description entailed two phases. first, we analyzed five texts (calls for applications) considering aspects such as their authors, target readers, and channels of distribution. second, we analyzed a clause complex extracted from one of these calls. a clause complex is a “grammatical construction consisting of two or more (simplex) clauses” (andersen & holsting, 2018, the clause complex in ifg section, para. 1). here the clause complex in question was deemed as a fragment of a text, that is, the call for applications labelled 1207511. figure 1 presents the relationship among discourse, text, and clause complex in this study. figure 1. relationship among discourse, text, and clause complex in this study �e discourse of standard english call for applicants 1207511 text “�e requisite of english is necessary even if the practice takes place in a spanish speaking country or another” clause complex text and clause complex as determiners of and determined by the discourse of standard english note. own elaboration. universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras180 forero-mondragón & quintero-polo we conducted the aforementioned descriptive analysis using a language approach devised by linguist michael halliday (1996): systemic functional linguistics (sfl). the reason behind this choice was that it permitted this critical discourse study to cast understanding on how language as a social practice (discourse) exercises disciplinary power. in this vein, we identified lexicogrammar in sfl terms as components that evidenced power exercise. these components were interpersonal relationships between authors and readers of the corpus (e.g., a hidden imperative mood, obligation modality, and impersonal construction); and the performance of processes among participants under certain circumstances (i.e., transitivity), for instance, relational processes of the attributive type (flowerdew, 2013). the analytical stage interpretation dealt with the inferences drawn from the first analytical stage as for the relationships among social actors in the clause complex. interpreting these relationships required analyzing two features: social orders and interactional history (fairclough, 2001). both social orders and interactional history constituted our interpretive toolbox, which led us to wonder about what was not in black and white in the clause complex: the impersonal forms employed that hid the actors responsible for uttering the peremptory character of certified english in aiesec–icetex scholarships. this situation called for a tracking of other texts in pursuit of wider understanding in this respect: the booklet basic standards of foreign language proficiency (henceforth, booklet 22; ministerio de educación nacional [men], 2006) and the article “bases for a bilingual and competitive nation” from the newsletter altablero, issue 37 (henceforth, newsletter article; men, 2005). the former was chosen because it enforced so-called valid english certifications as part of the discourse of standard english across the colombian educational system when icetex and aiesec produced the clause complex (2011). the latter was selected as it justified the standardization of english language education in basic standards of competence. making these choices, we sought to characterize the representations of english as a gatekeeper to a globalized economy in which the social actors in the clause complex (i.e., applicants and offerors) participated either in the processes of production, distribution, or consumption (fairclough, 2001) of the discourse of standard english. the explanatory stage implied linking the practices of production, distribution, and consumption unveiled in the previous stage to their social and historical conditions (fairclough, 2001). in linking both standard english discursive practices and conditions, we resorted to the theoretical considerations presented in the previous section. accordingly, this analytical stage aimed to argue the social implications of the findings from the descriptive and interpretive analytical stages. findings our study aimed at shedding light on how the discourse of standard english exercised disciplinary power in five calls for applications of the alliance aiesec–icetex from 2011 to 2014. informed by a socio-constructivist ontology (constantino, 2008) and an interpretive epistemology (firmin, 2008), we analyzed these calls for applications adapting fairclough’s (2001) analytical model. in the following lines, we account for the most significant findings. the requisite of certified english: interpersonal relations without persons the first stage (i.e., description) was centered on analyzing the authorship, readership, and relation authorship–readership of the corpus. its purpose was to describe the interpersonal relationships between the social actors embedded: offerors and applicants. for analyzing said interpersonal relationships, we drew from halliday’s sfl view on tenor and transitivity. regarding authorship of the corpus, we labeled icetex and aiesec as first-hand authors; in other 181profile: issues teach. prof. dev., vol. 24 no. 1, jan-jun, 2022. issn 1657-0790 (printed) 2256-5760 (online). bogotá, colombia. pages 175-191 disciplinary power lying behind the requisite of english language mastery in international scholarships words, those that embodied authorship in the first place for being the scholarships offerors. however, texts are cause and effect of other texts; therefore, identifying a definite list of authors was not our purpose. examining the social mission of the first-hand authors, we noted that the colombian state agency and the nonprofit organization shared some values and visions of the world. figures 2 and 3 illustrate this assertion. figure 2 is a photo taken from a banner at one icetex office in bogotá, colombia. it contains terms such as breaking boundaries, high quality education, internships abroad, administration funds, higher education funding, and growth, and so on. as an agent of global education, icetex aims to spread a view of a globalized world where investing in education to develop human capital for economic growth (spring, 2008) is a way to access better opportunities. figure 2. aims of icetex note. photo we took in an icetex office in 2020 figure 3. screenshot of aiesec facebook post note. taken from aiesec (n.d.-a) universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras182 forero-mondragón & quintero-polo figure 3 portrays a screenshot taken in october 2019 from aiesec colombia’s facebook post that seeks to promote aiesec calls for applications. as evidenced in its content, aiesec also fosters human development in a globalizing world, which responds to its social mission, that is, serving as a platform for young people to develop their potential in a global learning environment (aiesec, n.d.-c). this post shows that aiesec aims to be a gatekeeper to the global market. multinational corporations are depicted as organizations that aid senior university students and professionals to develop their potential. likewise, there is a cultural component that seems to attract applicants: the chance to be immersed in a different culture. this feature corresponds to globalization. according to spring (2008), the global market searches for immigrants willing to be part of brain circulation, in other words, going abroad and returning to their countries to talk about the benefits they gained when traveling and working overseas. in this light, aiesec promotes a globalized world that allows people to upgrade their professional skills and be immersed in other cultures (aiesec, n.d.-a). consequently, the alliance icetex–aiesec nurtured the global market by calling people to be interns and workers overseas. congruently, when they allied from 2011 to 2014, their goal was a common ground. they opened five calls for applications labeled numerically on the website of icetex (see table 1). table 1. aiesec–icetex calls for applications year name of the call for applications 2011 1207511 2012 1200112 2013 1200213 2013 1200314 2014 1200414 note. from icetex (n.d.-b) the applicants were constructed as passive social actors because this corpus targeted people of certain profiles. for example, call 1200112 was directed to recent university alumni and senior students in university programs such as “language teaching or modern languages, administration, business, marketing and sales, industrial engineering, and education sciences” (icetex & aiesec, 2012, our translation). people willing to participate in these calls also should have shared some values. call 1200213 states that “the program is especially designed for youngsters with a global vision and projection who desire to discover and develop their potential to have a positive impact on society and, besides, have aptitudes and experience in the exercise of leadership” (icetex & aiesec, 2013a, our translation and emphasis). accordingly, values like global vision, development of potential to have a positive impact, and leadership had to be met by the applicants. applicants to these grants had to fulfill other requirements, for example holding certified english proficiency. in other words, their possibilities to be awarded depended on the compliance of preset profiles. because of our research interest, we delved into how this passive role was subtly set in the requisite of english expressed in the clause complex the requisite of english is necessary even if the practice takes place in a spanishspeaking country or another (icetex & aiesec, 2011, 2012, 2013a, 2013b, 2014). considering that the first-hand authors’ objects intersected in the production of five calls for applications and the passive role readers of the calls for applicants, we focused ulterior analysis on a clause complex (i.e., the one requiring certified english proficiency). this analysis emphasized transitivity and the contextual parameter tenor according to sfl. transitivity refers to language users’ codification of their “experience of the processes of the external world, and of the internal world of [theirs]” (halliday, 1973, p. 134). therefore, transitivity entails “the different types of processes involved, their relations to the roles of the participants and how these processes, roles and circumstances relate to one another” (flowerdew, 2013, p. 17). in sfl, six are the processes types that account for transitivity: relational, mental, material, existential, behavioral, and 183profile: issues teach. prof. dev., vol. 24 no. 1, jan-jun, 2022. issn 1657-0790 (printed) 2256-5760 (online). bogotá, colombia. pages 175-191 disciplinary power lying behind the requisite of english language mastery in international scholarships verbal (flowerdew, 2013). in order to account for the kind of process involved in the clause complex (i.e., the requisite of english is necessary even if the practice takes place in a spanish-speaking country or another), it was necessary to identify its lexicogrammar elements. the first element to describe was the number of clauses making up the clause complex. in this vein, this clause complex is originally made up of two clauses that are joined by a conjunction. table 2 displays this. table 2. clauses that constitute the clause complex of analysis the requisite of english is necessary even if the practice takes place in a spanish-speaking country or another. clause 1 conjunction clause 2 note. from icetex (n.d.-b, our translation) from the previous taxonomy, we arrived at two conjectures. first, clause 2 depends on clause 1. in sfl terms, clause 1 is superordinate and clause 2, a subordinate one. regarding semiotic implications, we inferred that the requisite of english (clause 1) is compulsory regardless of the circumstances. second, both nominal groups “the requisite” and “the practice” are carriers of attributes present in the adjectival groups “necessary,” “spanish-speaking,” and “another.” for this reason, the transitivity processes carried out in the clause complex are relational of the attributive type. by relational we refer to processes of existing and being (flowerdew, 2013). in turn, attributive means the process of relation between carrier and attribute. in a bigger picture, clause 1 attributes a condition of being to clause 2 in the sense that the content of clause 2 does not affect the compulsory nature of clause 1, as suggested before. as evidenced so far, the analysis on transitivity did not reveal signs of activeness regarding the applicants. in fact, candidates applying to these scholarships had to certify their english proficiency if they wanted to apply. the preset passiveness of the readers of the clause complex was more explicit when the contextual parameter tenor was examined. tenor is linked with “the relations of the participants in the text” (flowerdew, 2013, p. 12). these relations are mediated by lexicogrammar elements such as mood, modality, and person. the first of them is related to whether a clause is imperative or indicative; the second one, to modal verbs or phrases; the third, to first, second, or third person, either singular or plural. table 3 illustrates tenor as for the clause complex in question. table 3. tenor in the clause complex under analysis lexicogrammar item type mood indicative modality obligation person third person singular table 2 shows that the clause complex is a statement, which makes it indicative. however, in semiotic and practical terms the function of this statement transcends indication because it ends up mandating the requisite of english. second, the clause complex does not include any modal verb of obligation. the adjective “necessary” accounts for that, though. finally, the third person is represented in two nominal groups: “the requisite” and “the practice.” the textual analysis let us understand that the requisite of certified english is completely compulsory, which is an index of hidden intentions in the calls for applications. likewise, the impersonal forms employed in the clause complex (e.g., the above-mentioned nominal groups) indicate that the social actors that participate in the social practice of aiesec–icetex scholarship concessions are not relevant for meaning-making and then, are suppressed. what is the aim of this discursive universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras184 forero-mondragón & quintero-polo strategy? why do not authors and readers, that is, offerors and applicants appear in black and white? the entangled discourse of standard english the prior textual analysis permitted us to realize that the relationship authors-readers in aiesec–icetex calls for applications implies activeness and passiveness. first-hand authors (aiesec and icetex) determined the role that readers (applicants) had to comply with: meeting requisites such as age, profession, global values, cities of residence, and certified english through so-called valid tests, this latter being our research concern. nonetheless, that analytical stage fell short in unveiling the discursive production of the clause complex chosen for in-depth examination. said analysis, which corresponds to the interpretive stage, would subsequently help shed light on the political, social, and economic agendas embedded in the requisite of english. interpreting the discursive production of the clause complex was relevant to characterize the representation of english as something testable, uniform, and functional for the global market (fairclough, 2001; milroy, 2001; spring, 2008) that we label as the discourse of standard english. moreover, the interpretive stage led us to understand the entanglement among this discourse and other discourses such as globalization, quality in education, and competitiveness and qualifications. such inferences emerged from an exercise that consisted of setting intertextual relations between the clause complex and two other texts. tracing the inexorable and unilateral requisite of certified english in aiesec–icetex scholarships, we established intertextual relations with two texts of a normative character, namely, the booklet 22 (men, 2006) and the newsletter article (men, 2005). the reason why we selected these two texts is they derived from a colombian state policy that circulated the discourse of standard english: the national bilingual program (men, 2006). the interpretive stage cast light on the entangled nature of the discourse of standard english. put simply, the analysis of the booklet and the news article evidenced that such a representation of reality, practices, and actors takes part in a discursive entanglement represented in figure 4. figure 4. discursive entanglement producing the corpus ˗ clause complex ˗ basic standards of competence (bsc) ˗ news article “bases for a bilingual and competitive nation” �e discourse of standard english �e discourse of globalization �e discourse of competitiveness and quali�cations �e discourse of quality in education . note. own elaboration. 185profile: issues teach. prof. dev., vol. 24 no. 1, jan-jun, 2022. issn 1657-0790 (printed) 2256-5760 (online). bogotá, colombia. pages 175-191 disciplinary power lying behind the requisite of english language mastery in international scholarships figure 4 presents the discourse of standard english as the cause and consequence of other discourses, that is, the discourse of globalization, the discourse of competitiveness and qualifications, and the discourse of quality in education. this entanglement enables the discourse of standard english to construct social realities in which students are passive actors both in the learning process and in the labor market (e.g., when they apply to aiesec–icetex scholarships). hereunder, fragments from booklet 22 and the newsletter article will be used to illustrate our argumentation. the discourse of globalization the colombian ministry of education conceived the national bilingual program as a measure to “reach citizens capable of communicating in english in order for them to able to insert the country in the processes of universal communication, global economy, and cultural opening with internationally comparable standards” (men, 2006, p. 6, our translation and emphasis). the phrases in italics let us gain understanding of the ends of the program and the role english language education should play: developing communicative competences in order to sell the idea of english as the key to access the wonders of the modern world (guerrero, 2010). for the ministry, learning english equals becoming bilingual: being a competent english user allows citizens to be part of global market practices such as knowledge economy, social mobility, and human capital development (spring, 2008). in sum, the ministry of education privileges a view of bilingualism as a synonym of english learning given that english is the language of global commerce. yet, what varieties of english fit the aforementioned characterization? as discussed in the introductory section, so-called valid language tests (i.e., toefl, met, and ielts) evaluate standard english varieties, those that permit social mobility. this framework lets us infer that the discourse of globalization assigns to the discourse of standard english a purpose that justifies processes the discourse of globalization such as standardized testing and other reified forms of standard english (e.g., textbooks, materials, and standards). in other words, the discourse of globalization answers the why one should learn these uniform, prestigious, and functional language varieties (milroy, 2001). a question emerges: how does the discourse of globalization ensure standardized language practices? a second discourse comes into play: the discourse of quality in education. the discourse of quality in education making sure standard english is learned and used in social spheres, including school and industry, is the role the discourse of quality in education plays. for achieving this, booklet 22 adopted a set of “internationally comparable standards” (men, 2006, p. 6): the common european framework of reference for languages: learning, teaching, and assessment (council of europe, 2001). overall, the cefr served the purpose of establishing a standardized conception of language that should favor communication based on an array of communicative competences (i.e., linguistic, pragmatic, and sociolinguistic) that are attained through a gradual learning process divided into levels of proficiency (men, 2006). how is this attainment validated? the ministry of education started to implement cefr-based testing in the educational system, that is, school (men, 2006), which took shape in statewide examinations. such process began in 2005 when the ministry asked university senior students (those with majors not related to languages) to take “an english test, within the framework of exámenes de calidad de la educación superior [which was] aligned with the framework of reference and goal proposed” (men, 2005, “educación superior y manejo del inglés” section, para. 3, our translation). in the case of senior students from language-related majors, they had to take the first certificate in english (men, 2005). the former arguments constitute the basis for the assertion that school is set up as a hotbed for inserting universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras186 forero-mondragón & quintero-polo colombian students into the global market through the platform aiesec. in this school machinery (varela & álvarez-uría, 1991), certified standard english (b2 level, according to the cefr) is one of the gatekeepers along with the compliance of other characteristics. together, these requisites are manifestations of the discourse of quality in education as they construct the type of subjects the global economy expects: competent and qualified individuals. precisely, this construction is due to the intervention of another discourse, that is, the one of competitiveness and qualifications. the discourse of competitiveness and qualifications we have already argued that the discourse of standard english is a subsidiary of the discourses of globalization and quality in education, which does not mean the former is merely an effect of the other two. on the contrary, it is a two-way constitution, that is, the discourse of standard english also reinforces the representations of society the other two discourses circulate. in this light, being part of a set of requisites, certified proficiency in standardized english testing became a qualification that allowed aiesec–icetex applicants to compete with others in order to obtain a scholarship. this subscribes to the discourse of competitiveness and qualifications. english learning is seen as a result of the banking education model (guerrero & quintero, 2016). students are conceived as containers that are filled with knowledge: “many standards are repeated, strengthened and deepened in different grades . . . in accordance with the cognitive level of students” (men, 2006, p. 16, our translation and emphasis). accordingly, the ministry of education constructs students as passive actors, that is, consumers of imposed knowledge. far from being a coincidence, the forging of passiveness in students, who could become applicants to aiesec–icetex scholarships, is the fertile ground for materializing the discourse of competitiveness and qualifications. the discourse of standard english and disciplinary power in aiesec–icetex scholarships: language does things aiesec–icetex selected applicants who fulfilled the needs of the global market. notwithstanding, we have not explained how this platform worked. the explanation to this is that aiesec–icetex permitted the consolidation of hiring practices of corporations that sponsor aiesec. this inference emerged from analyzing five testimonies from aiesec colombia alumni.1 as follows, we will broach two voices of aiesec former members asking the question “how is your life after aiesec?” their names were replaced by the nicknames a4 and a2. being responsible for managing the young strategies of the world economic forum sounds extremely challenging but after one has passed through an organization such as aiesec, i feel i have enough capacities. (a4, interview, our translation and emphasis) when the interviewee affirmed having enough capacities to manage a great task at work, a manifestation of the discourse of competitiveness and qualifications was evident in the word “capacities.” in this sense, a4 deemed aiesec as a gatekeeper of better professional opportunities. this testimony led us to identify two implicatures: (a) this individual must have met all the requisites demanded (see the corpus under analysis), including english proficiency; (b) this person enrolled in the world economic forum due to being selected in an aiesec program. the former conjectures were ratified when we analyzed the voice of alumnus a2. currently. i have just moved to malaysia. i am working in a company called mindvalley which is in kuala lumpur. for those people who do not know the organization, apart from being a global partner of aiesec, it is a company 1 we found these testimonies under the label huellas alumni ep on the youtube channel aiesec alumni colombia aac (https://www. youtube.com/channel/ucu55aej6_rkdfyf-rresb7q). https://www.youtube.com/channel/ucu55aej6_rkdfyf-rresb7q https://www.youtube.com/channel/ucu55aej6_rkdfyf-rresb7q 187profile: issues teach. prof. dev., vol. 24 no. 1, jan-jun, 2022. issn 1657-0790 (printed) 2256-5760 (online). bogotá, colombia. pages 175-191 disciplinary power lying behind the requisite of english language mastery in international scholarships that works in the educational sector. (a2, interview, our translation and emphasis) interestingly, a2 highlighted the partnership between aiesec and sponsors, evidencing that for this alumnus, taking part of aiesec meant a job opportunity in one of aiesec’s premium sponsors (i.e., mindvalley). by premium sponsors, we refer to enterprises that can obtain a higher status and more privileges with aiesec, as depicted by an excerpt taken from the webpage (figure 5). figure 5. aiesec premium sponsors benefits note. from aiesec (n.d.-b) the testimonies and figure 5 confirm that aiesec is a labor platform that connects its members to work opportunities in international corporations. for this to happen, applicants must meet different requisites, english proficiency being the one of interest here. put simply, aiesec scholarships, including those co-offered with icetex, aim to attract high-quality professionals and senior university students for easing recruitment processes for its sponsors. ✓ opportunities are promoted get the best candidates from all over the world by highlighting your opportunities in our search and increasing your candidates number. ✓ unique brand on aiesec build a strong employer brand in our platform by the special branding options enabled just for our global partners. ✓ featured in aiesec media gain recognition and affiliation with our partners group on our website, annual report and media channels. ✓ premium support get customized support from your account man agers and build a strategy for reaching your recruitment goals more effectively. aiesec–icetex scholarships concession had a discursive constituent that consisted of the entanglement of the discourses of globalization, quality in education, and competitiveness and qualifications. however, the selection of candidates did not only occur at the moment of applying. rather, it was one of the last steps for materializing the foregoing discursive entanglement. where did it all start? as posited in the theoretical considerations section, school is a disciplinary field where tensional forces (social actors) struggle and/or adhere to one another in pursuit of the spread of their interests in the social spheres. in doing so, school disciplinary practices such as exams and honor-based discipline (i.e., honor rolls, payment exemptions, and grants) are techniques employed to construct docile and utile subjects that meet those interests. in this field, there are micro-fields; for example, the english language curriculum. vested with its own tensions, this micro-field is governed by dominant social actors that constitute the orthodoxy; among these are cefr-oriented publishing houses, testing enterprises, governmental agencies, and cultural institutes (e.g., the british council and the u.s. information agency), and materials designers. orthodoxy circulates the discourse of standard english through standardized forms of language teaching, learning, and assessment. these manifestations are contested by heterodox actors and consumed/reproduced by the doxa (bourdieu, 1986). see this tensional relationship among social actors in figure 6. in figure 6, the micro-field of english curriculum is crossed by four discourses, namely: the discourse of globalization, the discourse of competitiveness and qualifications, the discourse of quality in education, and the discourse of standard english. this affirmation departs from the fact that booklet 22 universalize the communicative competences and their evaluation schoolwide. nevertheless, these discourses do not spread their representations of social reality and social actors separately. on the contrary, they entangle one another, which makes them subsidiary but also a constituent of each other. universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras188 forero-mondragón & quintero-polo figure 6. disciplinary discursive entanglement at school orthodoxy doxa heterodoxy english language curriculum �eld school as a disciplinary �eld tension among social actors discourses entaglement school disciplinary techniques aiesec–icetex applicants note. own elaboration. portrayed in the diamond in figure 6, this discursive entanglement is where the discourse of standard english becomes powerful, that is, exercises disciplinary power. the discourse in question bounds the construction of high-quality workers for the capitalist society, which is typical of school (saldarriaga, 2003). put simply, the discourse of standard english reaches in school, more precisely in an english curriculum, the dissemination of a value-laden view of language (i.e., merely communicative) that is beneficial to international corporations thanks to global and local platforms such as aiesec and icetex, respectively. this discursive spread takes concrete shape by means of test-oriented teaching, learning, materials, assessment, and other resources that progressively train students in the escalated practice of standard english tests; not to mention the effects of this discourse on the design of statewide exams. on account of what is pinpointed above, for the discourse of standard english to construct candidates for aiesec–icetex calls for applications, it had to implement english curriculum at school as a breeding ground through the exercise of disciplinary power. consequently, unequal power relationships among orthodoxy and doxa derived into the perpetuation of social orders. conclusions this critical discourse study aimed to shed light on how the discourse of standard english exercised disciplinary power in five scholarships granted by the alliance aiesec–icetex from 2011 to 2014. as a result of a three-tiered analysis (adapted from fairclough, 2001), the descriptive, interpretive, and explanatory stages findings are synthesized as follows: the discourse of standard english exercised disciplinary power in said scholarships by classifying human beings as competent and not competent users of standard english varieties through examinations, particularly, language tests 189profile: issues teach. prof. dev., vol. 24 no. 1, jan-jun, 2022. issn 1657-0790 (printed) 2256-5760 (online). bogotá, colombia. pages 175-191 disciplinary power lying behind the requisite of english language mastery in international scholarships regarded as valid in the calls for applications. this classification, which was intended to select apt interns and practitioners for aiesec partners, took a textual shape, namely, a clause complex requesting language proficiency levels through so-called valid tests. yet, the discourse in question did not exercise power in the vacuum. rather, it held an intersection with the discourses of globalization, quality in education, and competitiveness and qualifications. in this vein, the applicants to aiesec–icetex scholarships had to fulfill a profile of ideal speakers (competent users of standard english varieties) that were qualified as such as a result of sitting language tests underpinned by measurable indicators (colella & díaz-salazar, 2015), that is, the cefr. with this in mind, we suggest following up, in further studies, on the role that english language teaching curriculum performs in such construction of language users because it is the field where their subjectivation processes occur mediated by language. references andersen, t. h., & holsting, a. e. m. 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(2008). research on globalization and education. review of educational research, 78(2), 330–363. https:// doi.org/10.3102/0034654308317846 university of michigan. (n.d.). the michigan english test. https://michiganassessment.org/michigan-tests/ michigan-english-test-met/ van der horst, c., & narodowski, m. (1999). orden y disciplina son el alma de la escuela. educação & realidade, 24(1), 91–113. varela, j., & álvarez-uría, f. (1991). la maquinaria escolar: arqueología de la escuela. ediciones de la piqueta. about the authors alber josué forero-mondragón holds an ma in applied linguistics and a ba in english language teaching, both from universidad distrital francisco josé de caldas (colombia). he teaches at fundación universitaria compensar (colombia). his academic interests are critical discourse studies and hip-hop pedagogies. he is a member of the research group estupoli. álvaro hernán quintero-polo holds a doctorate in education and an ma in applied linguistics. he is a full professor at universidad distrital francisco josé de caldas (colombia). his areas of interest are language teacher education, critical discourse studies, and educational policies. he is co-director of the research group estupoli. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-02261-1_26 https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-02261-1_26 https://doi.org/10.3102/0034654308317846 https://doi.org/10.3102/0034654308317846 https://michiganassessment.org/michigan-tests/michigan-english-test-met/ https://michiganassessment.org/michigan-tests/michigan-english-test-met/ are language teaching methods really dead as some tesol gurus have proclaimed? 203profile: issues teach. prof. dev., vol. 24 no. 2, jul-dec, 2022. issn 1657-0790 (printed) 2256-5760 (online). bogotá, colombia. pages 203-213 https://doi.org/10.15446/profile.v24n2.96952 are language teaching methods really dead as some tesol gurus have proclaimed? ¿realmente el método de enseñanza de los idiomas ha muerto tal como lo han declarado algunos gurús de la enseñanza del inglés? jesús alirio bastidas 1 universidad de nariño, pasto, colombia up to the last two decades of the 20th century, the era of methods prevailed as a key component, especially in the field of teaching english as a second language. nevertheless, by the end of the century, many tesol authorities were questioning the usefulness and scope of methods. consequently, the idea was declared dead and the postmethod condition emerged. in this reflection article, it is argued that the nature and scope of a method in the teaching field cannot die for a series of reasons. it is concluded that what can be proclaimed is the death of a unique, universal method, but not the death of methods per se, since this is an essential component of any teaching process. keywords: approach, language teaching, method, methodology, postmethod hasta las últimas dos décadas del siglo xx, la era del método prevaleció, especialmente en el campo de la enseñanza del inglés como segunda lengua. no obstante, a finales del mismo siglo, muchas autoridades en el área de la enseñanza del inglés cuestionaron la utilidad y el alcance del método. como consecuencia, se declaró su muerte y surgió la idea del postmétodo. en este artículo de reflexión se sustenta que el método educativo, con su naturaleza y alcance, no puede “morir” por una serie de razones. en conclusión, lo que se puede proclamar es la muerte del método único o universal, pero no la del método per se, ya que éste es un componente esencial de cualquier proceso de enseñanza. palabras clave: enfoque, enseñanza de idiomas, método, metodología, postmétodo jesús alirio bastidas  https://orcid.org/0000-0002-7094-7123 · email: jabas3@udenar.edu.co how to cite this article (apa, 7th ed.): bastidas, j. a. (2022). are language teaching methods really dead as some tesol gurus have proclaimed? profile: issues in teachers’ professional development, 24(2), 203–213. https://doi.org/10.15446/profile.v24n2.96952 this article was received on june 26, 2021 and accepted on may 6, 2022. this is an open access article distributed under the terms of the creative commons license attribution-noncommercial-noderivatives 4.0 international license. consultation is possible at https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/ https://doi.org/10.15446/profile.v24n2.96952 https://orcid.org/0000-0002-7094-7123 mailto:jabas3@udenar.edu.co https://doi.org/10.15446/profile.v24n2.96952 https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/ universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras204 bastidas introduction the field of language teaching, whether as a second language (l2) or foreign language, has been very productive in the area of teaching approaches, methods, and strategies. in fact, while larsen-freeman and anderson (2011) refer to 15 techniques and principles, richards and rodgers (2014) analyze 16 approaches and methods. what these authors show is that the language teaching field was dominated by an era of methods in the 19th and the 20th century. despite the richness of approaches and methods, around the middle of the 20th century, some voices started to highlight the limitations of the concept of method. examples of these early voices were mackey (1965) and kelly (1969). additionally, by the 1980s and 1990s, other voices such as those of stern (1983), clarke (1983), pennycook (1989), and prabhu (1990) warned teachers against accepting teaching methods without a critical attitude because those scholars were doubtful about the support of the nature and scope of methods. furthermore, methods of language teaching were declared dead by such authorities as allwright (1991) and brown (2002) in the 1990s and 2000s. finally, kumaravadivelu (1994, 2001, 2003, 2006) supported the emergence of what was called the postmethod condition in order to “restructure our view of language teaching and teacher education” (2006, p. 170). although the authorities above have strong arguments for questioning the nature, scope, and application of methods in any sociocultural context, can they really assign the concept of method “to the dustbin” of history (nunan, 1989, p. 2) and proclaim its death? the purpose of this article is to support the importance of the role of method in language teaching, whether as an l2 or as a foreign language. the article is divided into the following sections: a brief chronological review of the method era, the method crisis, the counterargument to support the importance of methods, and conclusions. a brief chronological review of the method era chronologically, the method era can be classified into six moments: (a) oldest methods, (b) structuralist approaches, (c) cognitive approaches, (d) innovative methods, (e) communicative approaches, and (f ) latest trends. the first group includes the grammar-translation method (gtm) and the oral methods. according to howatt (1984), gtm appeared towards the end of the 18th century. this method was not supported by any theory of language or learning. its emphasis was on the teaching of grammar and the development of translation skills. vocabulary was also important, and it was taught by means of isolated lists of words. in contrast, the oral methods included the series method, the natural method, and the direct method. as the general name of this group implies, they emphasized the oral aspect of a target language. they appeared before the end of the 19th century between the 1880s and the 1990s as a result of the reform movement and were promoted by various authorities from germany, france, and great britain who were not satisfied with the level of students’ language learning as a result of the use of the gtm (howatt, 1984; howatt & widdowson, 2004). although there were no definite theories of language and learning at that time, these methods were supported by rationalist principles about child language learning, phonetic principles, and methodology principles. each one of the previous methods used a series of activities, procedures, and resources to fulfill their oral objectives, so that the students could process the new language without recurring to their mother tongue (diller, 1971). the second group, called structuralist approaches, consisted of the audio-lingual method (alm) and the audio-visual method (avm). their emphasis was also on the aural-oral skills of a language, and they were supported by the principles of learning from the perspective of behaviorist psychology and of language coming from structuralist linguistics. although they 205profile: issues teach. prof. dev., vol. 24 no. 2, jul-dec, 2022. issn 1657-0790 (printed) 2256-5760 (online). bogotá, colombia. pages 203-213 are language teaching methods really dead as some tesol gurus have proclaimed? did not teach grammar directly, their syllabi were carefully sequenced from easier to harder language structures. the alm appeared by the 1940s in the usa, and the avm towards the 1950s in france. according to bastidas (1993), the avm did not use structuralist linguistics principles about language, but some teaching techniques—such as observation, mimicry, repetition, and memorization—were borrowed from behaviorism. finally, these methods were characterized by the incorporation of the technology available at that time, such as language laboratories, tape recorders, overhead projectors, films, and slides. the third group has been labeled the cognitive approaches. they are the cognitive-code learning approach (cla) and the silent way. the cla was the result of chomsky’s critical analysis of the skinnerian neobehavioristic theory of learning and its application on language teaching through the alm (chomsky, 1966). as a result, some authors tried to design a new approach supported by principles of cognitive psychology and generative-transformational grammar. the cla was advocated by carroll (1966), chastain (1969), and chastain and woerdehoff (1968). in this approach, language learning is a creative and active mental process that allows learners to acquire and use the new language to communicate. even though the cla emphasizes the conscious learning of grammar, the learners should understand the rules, select them to fit the context, and use them meaningfully. according to chastain (1976), a cla class should include a series of activities that promote meaningful practice, expression of meaning, and meaningful learning. another method that can be classified as cognitive is the silent way because of its emphasis on the development of the learners’ mental powers. according to richards and rodgers (1986), the silent way was supported by some principles of cognitive psychology. this method was not based on any theory of language. its strength is its learning theory, which is learner-centered. for gattegno (1972, 1976), its inventor, language learning is a creative process that is facilitated by intensive attention, autonomy and independence, learning to learn, silent periods, self-correction, cooperation, problem solving, and self-discovery. in the silent way, the use of “cuisenaire rods,” fidel charts for developing pronunciation and vocabulary, and some reading and writing materials are well known. the fourth group is composed of community language learning, total physical response, and suggestopedia. these methods were published in the 1960s. some authors labeled them as innovative approaches (blair, 1982) and others classified them as humanistic approaches (the british council, 1982). these methods are characterized by basing their conceptions of learning on psychoanalysis, counseling, humanistic psychology, developmental psychology, suggestology, and yoga. they do not provide any linguistic support for their concepts of language. all of these methods aim at helping students get a good command of the language by lowering their affective filter through a series of activities such as the use of the first language (l1), cooperative work, physical commands and movement, relaxation techniques, yoga, classical music, and so on. in other words, they try to create the best conditions for language learning. the fifth group is called the communicative approaches which emerged in the 1970s and flourished by the 1980s (bastidas, 1993, richards & rodgers, 2001; waters, 2012) as a result of questioning some of the principles of chomsky’s generative and transformational grammar, especially those of linguistic competence and performance by such sociolinguists as hymes (1972), and philosophers of language such as austin (1969). these authors stressed the role of social context and the notion of communicative competence to explain language from a functional perspective. the approaches included in this group are the situational approach, the communicative approach to language teaching, the natural approach, task-based language teaching, the lexical approach, competency-based language teaching, and content-based universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras206 bastidas instruction. as the name implies, all of these approaches were designed to develop the learners’ communicative competence. consequently, their theoretical foundations are based on sociolinguistics, speech acts, semantics, second language acquisition, corpus linguistics, educational standards, syllabus design, among others. these approaches use a variety of activities, tasks, and materials to promote interaction, negotiate meaning, and share information. typical types of communicative activities are information gap, opinion gap, information transfer, mingling, cued dialogues, role plays, picture strip stories, drama, games, and so forth (bastidas, 1993). examples of tasks are jigsaw, opinion exchange, decision making, problem solving, and so on (richards & rodgers, 2001). finally, in the 21st century, two tendencies are spreading around the world in language teaching: content and language integrated learning (clil) and emerging uses of technology in language teaching and learning (tltl; larsen-freeman & anderson, 2011). although clil is being used to teach foreign languages in some european countries, most of the european experiences relate to the integration of content and language learning for teaching regional or minority languages and official languages. this means that clil is mostly a type of innovative methodology in the field of bilingual and plurilingual education (eurydice, 2006). tltl cannot be considered a language teaching approach or method. however, it is the latest trend that deserves special attention in our field. tltl is a source of a variety of digital resources for teaching and is a means of enhancing students’ language learning (larsen-freeman & anderson, 2011). examples of technology tools are computers, cell phones, tablets, digital cameras, projectors, printers, video beams, among others. examples of information and communication technology (ict) are software applications, operating systems, web-based applications, computer language learning software, search engines, and so on. some of the advantages of the use of icts in language teaching for students are: instant access to the use of authentic oral and written language, synchronically or asynchronically; using computers and cell phones to work both independently and collaboratively; organization and participation in online or virtual communities; autonomy in what the students want to learn; monitoring their progress by using programs that allow them to test their language knowledge; communication with e-pen pals, both orally and in writing in real time; learning a new language wherever and whenever they want to; and motivation to learn a new language by themselves (chouthaiwale & alkamel, 2018). this review of teaching methods and approaches shows many strengths that this area has contributed to support the field of language teaching methodology (ltm). first, it shows that there has been a long-lasting tradition of searching for new methods and approaches as was shown above. second, many authorities around the world have looked for new ways to change, innovate, and reform the teaching of second or foreign languages. third, there has been an increasing effort to support the methods with a variety of beliefs, principles, and theories coming from a diversity of disciplines, the most relevant being linguistics, psychology, pedagogy, psycholinguistics, sociolinguistics, and sociology. fourth, the richest component of methods has been the procedural one, which accounts for the great number of activities, tasks, and techniques implemented in classes internationally. fifth, all of the methods took advantage of the technology available in each period of time with the most innovative one being the new icts. finally, although none of the methods are ideal, comprehensive, or not appropriate for every context, their proponents have tried to provide teachers with more effective ways of teaching l2 or foreign languages so that learners could reach the highest levels of language proficiency. despite the previous strengths of the method era, by the middle of the 20th century, some analysts of language teaching methods voiced their concerns about 207profile: issues teach. prof. dev., vol. 24 no. 2, jul-dec, 2022. issn 1657-0790 (printed) 2256-5760 (online). bogotá, colombia. pages 203-213 are language teaching methods really dead as some tesol gurus have proclaimed? the limitations of the concept and scope of methods, the exaggerated claims of the proponents of methods, and the teachers’ uncritical acceptance and application of them in any context (kelly, 1969; mackey, 1965; stern, 1983). these critical views had been stated at that time even though in 1963 anthony (1963/1972) had attempted “to lessen a little the terminological confusion in the language field” (p. 8) by proposing the use of three terms organized hierarchically: approach, method, and technique. in his own words: “the organizational key is that techniques carry out a method which is consistent with an approach” (p. 5). the method crisis the crisis of method in the field of ltm was declared by the 1990s. for example, some well-recognized authorities affirmed that the concept of method should “[be laid] to rest” (brown, 2002, p. 11), “not . . . exist at all” (jarvis, 1991, p. 295), be assigned “to the dustbin” of language teaching history (nunan, 1989, p. 2), and that a “requiem” should be written for the “recently interred methods” (brown, 2002, p. 14). some reasons for the previous assertions could have been that the word method meant “so little and so much” (mackey, 1965, p. 139), the existence of methods was unhelpful (allwright, 1991), the concept of method had lost its significance (kumaravadivelu, 2006), and that the concept of method is “shrouded in a veil of vagueness, despite its central importance” (kumaravadivelu, 2006, p. 162). in conclusion, there were not only reasons for a crisis of method in ltm, but enough arguments to sentence the methods to death, just at the start of the new millennium (brown, 2002). kumaravadivelu (2006), in fact, corroborated this when he wrote: and particularly the ambiguous use of the term method, and the multiple myths that are associated with it, have contributed to a gradual erosion of its usability as a construct in language learning and teaching, prompting some to say that the concept of method is dead. (p. 168) the previous assertions are very dangerous for the language teaching practitioners. for example, preservice language teachers could infer that there is no need to study the language teaching methods in their tesol courses, and the in-service language teachers might think that the issues of method are not important to consider when they plan their language courses and their daily or weekly lessons. the counterarguments to support the importance of method in spite of the arguments stated above by the wellknown and respected tesol authorities, the question is: can we really affirm that a language teaching method can die? in this section, it is argued that there are convincing reasons to demonstrate the essential role and importance of methods, not only in language teaching, but also in teaching any other discipline. some of the reasons why it cannot be affirmed that a language teaching method can die are the following. method is a concept that is supported in various disciplinary fields. starting with philosophy, it is well known that philosophers used a variety of methods to pursue knowledge. for example, descartes used the concept in his famous work discourse on method (1637/1968). he used the etymological meaning of “methodos,” coming from greek, which was equivalent to a path, a track, or a road to pursue knowledge. classical examples of methods in philosophy are methodic doubt, argument, and dialectics. another discipline where the study of a specific type of knowledge is important is epistemology. this type of knowledge is called scientific knowledge or science in general. according to piaget (1970), epistemology uses the following methods: method of direct analysis, the formalizing epistemological method, and the genetic method. finally, statistics, as a branch of mathematics, uses a variety of methods to collect, organize, analyze, and interpret data. the universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras208 bastidas main methods used to analyze data are descriptive and inferential statistics. methods are the main object of study of a general discipline called methodology. this is an old discipline closely related to epistemology and logic. it is defined as the critical study of methods to solve complex, theoretical, and practical problems (morles, 2002). according to morles (2002), there are different types of methodologies, such as research methodology, planning methodology, teaching methodology, methodology of technological and industrial production, and so on. as stated above, methods are the main component of the structure of methodology and are defined as a set of systematic and orderly operations, procedures, and instruments employed to look for solutions to problems. in research methodology, methods have always played a salient role in the process of collecting and analyzing data. in this area, methods are conceived of as a set of rules, procedures, strategies, and techniques to collect and analyze data in order to study physical and social reality. methods are the path to building scientific knowledge and that is why to do science, one needs a scientific method. methods are also necessary in science to validate knowledge. examples of specific research methods are observation, interviews, questionnaires, surveys, experiments, and so on (hernández-sampieri et al., 2014). methods are very important in the field of general didactics. in fact, one of the main components of the objects of study of general didactics is methods. this serves to answer the question, how do teachers teach? the other objects of study of general didactics are students, the teachers, the objectives, and the contents of the subjects. according to de mattos (1974), methods are the rational organization of activities and resources in order to reach objectives efficiently. this means that a good method can facilitate students’ learning. this area includes a variety of teaching methods such as deductive method, inductive method, direct instruction, inquiry-based learning, discovery learning, differentiated instruction, personalized learning, flipped learning, and so on. in the process of learning and teaching, method is an essential component. a method is a bridge between learning and teaching. in fact, according to mayer (2008), in educational psychology a method is not only a component of teaching, but also an object of research. “how can we tell whether instruction [teaching] affects learning?” (p. 8); three approaches to research on teaching methods have been used: the behaviorist, the cognitive, and the contextual. furthermore, in order to be effective learners, students need to apply the appropriate learning strategies, which are part of a method. in educational planning, a priori decisions about method are very important. in any human endeavor, planning is necessary to guarantee success, and that is why educational institutions plan their activities every year. medina-rivilla and mata (2009) affirm that the basic components of planning are didactic objectives, contents and competencies, activities and resources, and evaluation. the procedures, activities, and resources are the main elements of a method. teachers need to plan the use of varied, appropriate, and useful methods so that the students understand and apply the contents of the school syllabi, reach educational objectives, and develop the competencies planned in advance. decisions about method are also essential in the process of lesson planning. this is a corollary of the importance of decisions regarding method in institutional planning stated above. according to harmer (1983), “the best teachers are those who think carefully about what they are going to do in their classes and who plan how they are going to organize the teaching and learning” (p. 218). previous questions about selection, orderly organization, sequence and pace of contents, activities, and resources to accomplish the lesson objectives and to develop the students’ competencies refer to method. according to de mattos (1974), a method establishes a practical relationship between procedures, 209profile: issues teach. prof. dev., vol. 24 no. 2, jul-dec, 2022. issn 1657-0790 (printed) 2256-5760 (online). bogotá, colombia. pages 203-213 are language teaching methods really dead as some tesol gurus have proclaimed? resources and activities, and the students’ learning objectives or results. the nature, constituents, and stages of what you observe in a lesson or class are the essence of method. whatever happens in class is the result of a teaching and a learning method. this means that even if teachers cannot teach a class as planned, what they do in class represents a method. in other words, a method is an inherent characteristic of a lesson. the quality of the students’ learning an l2 or a foreign language might depend on the effectiveness of a good teaching method. although students can learn a new language by themselves, teachers are needed to serve as mediators in an l2 or a foreign language lesson. to accomplish this, teachers should design and implement active, varied, flexible, and motivating methods to facilitate students’ language learning. for instance, de mattos (1974) states that when teachers teach a subject with a good method, the contents of the course work become rich, suggestive, and effective. this way the students’ minds will be energized, inspired, and open to new study and life. in contrast, when teachers use inappropriate methods, the subject can become dry, irrelevant, and not motivating for the students. methods have always played a significant role in ltm. as soon as people began to teach classical languages to children at home, they started to use techniques, procedures, and resources, which are the main components of a method. the same happened to early teachers who taught classical languages at school. little by little teachers and people interested in language teaching accumulated and organized their procedures, activities, and resources to support methods and approaches. this process has been described and organized in such works as the one written by kelly (1969), who traces the development of language teaching between 500 bc until 1969, to cover a period of 25 centuries. ltm has been a very dynamic, productive, innovative, controversial, cyclical, popular, and unpopular field of teaching methods. this has been demonstrated by method analysts such as mackey (1965), diller (1971, 1978), richards and rodgers (2014), larsen-freeman and anderson (2011), and kumaravadivelu (2006). finally, if a method is an important component of general didactics, it should also be important in language teaching didactics because both types of didactics deal with the process of teaching and learning. interest in language teaching methods is resurfacing in the 21st century. despite the existence of some discrediting voices against language teaching methods, there is a tendency in the 2000s to support their value due to the knowledge and the experience of some language teaching authorities, such as block (2001, as cited in bell, 2007), larsen-freeman (2001, as cited in anker, 2001), bell (2003), and adamson (2004) and the results of some research by bell (2007). block (as cited in bell, 2007), for example, has argued that while method has been discredited at an etic level (that is, in the thinking and the nomenclature of scholars) it certainly retains a great deal of vitality at the grass-roots, emic level (that is, it is part of the nomenclature of lay people and teachers. (p. 142) in addition, bell (2007) did a qualitative study with four groups of teachers (145 students in an ma program in applied linguistics at an american university and 16 students in a preservice certificate program at the same university). the objective of the study was to assess block’s claim that “whereas the notion of method no longer plays a significant role in the thinking of applied linguists, it still plays a vital role in the thinking of teachers” (p. 135). data were collected by means of interviews, discussion board postings, autobiographies, and teaching journals. results of the study indicated that “teacher interest in methods is determined by how far methods provide options in dealing with particular teaching contexts. rather than playing a vital role in teacher thinking, teacher attitude towards methods is highly pragmatic” (p. 135). universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras210 bastidas conclusions the tesol authorities previously mentioned—such as allwright (1991), brown (2002), kumaravadivelu (1994, 2001, 2003, 2006), and nunan (1989)—have had strong arguments regarding the limitations of the method era of language teaching. there is no question about the inexistence of the ideal, unique, and universal “one size fits all” method to be applied in any sociocultural context. in addition, there is no perfect approach or method, and consequently, their promoters have exaggerated their claims about the innovation and superiority in comparison to other methods, the effectiveness in facilitating students’ learning of a new language, and so on. finally, it is certainly true that method is not the solution to the complex problem of learning an l2 or a foreign language effectively around the world. another critique that goes back to the 1960s refers to the use of a variety of terms in language teaching (anthony, 1963/1972) and to the vagueness of the concept of method (kumaravadivelu, 2006; mackey, 1965). to solve these difficulties, anthony (1963/1972) proposed the use of the terms approach, method, and technique. he also defined method in accordance with its etymological meaning: “method is an overall plan for the orderly presentation of language to students” (p. 6). in addition, in an effort to systematize and evaluate the knowledge and experience accumulated in the method era, other authors proposed other terms to support the concept of method. however, their efforts seem to have created more confusion than clarity. for example, richards and rodgers (1982) expanded the concept of method to include approach, design, and procedure. stern (1983) converted the method into a theory of teaching, and larsen-freeman (1986) presented methods as composed of principles and techniques. finally, kumaravadivelu defined method as a construct. in conclusion, instead of going forwards, we have gone backwards in relation to the conceptualization of method in such a way that mackey’s (1965) concern continues to be valid: as a result, much of the field of language method has become a matter of opinion rather than of fact. it is not surprising that feelings run high in these matters, and that the very word “method” means so little and so much. (p. 139) the problem with the previous arguments is that the tesol gurus sentenced the concept of method to death. according to them, the concept of method has lost significance, is unhelpful, has no substance, and “has little theoretical validity and even less practical utility” (kumaravadivelu, 2006, p. 170). metaphorically, what they have done is “throw the baby out with the bathwater.” the answer to the question that motivated the writing of this article, “can we really affirm that a language teaching method can die?” is a resounding “no” for the following reasons. firstly, method is a construct that has been substantiated in a variety of disciplines, such as philosophy, epistemology, statistics, and so on. secondly, method is the object of study of a traditional discipline called methodology. thirdly, method is essential in research methodology. fourthly, method is a key component of two related disciplines to ltm: general didactics and educational psychology. last but not least, method is an inherent component of the teaching and learning process. everything teachers and students do from the start to the end of a language lesson is the result of method. referring to the nature and scope of method, one suggestion is to maintain the idea used in general didactics. in this discipline, the word method comes from the latin word methodus, which means “way of teaching” and was expanded with ideas or orderliness and regularity in order to reach an end. that is, method is a means to an end. consequently, the didactic method has been described as the rational and practical organization of procedures, activities, and resources to accomplish learning objectives effectively and efficiently (de mattos, 1974). in addition, a method should be supported by 211profile: issues teach. prof. dev., vol. 24 no. 2, jul-dec, 2022. issn 1657-0790 (printed) 2256-5760 (online). bogotá, colombia. pages 203-213 are language teaching methods really dead as some tesol gurus have proclaimed? theoretical principles of language learning, language teaching, and the role of the sociocultural context. finally, a method should be adapted to the educational aims, the contents of a course, the types of students, and to the institutional and external sociocultural context (medina-rivilla & mata, 2009). finally, the attempts to explain the complex problem of learning an l2 or a foreign language successfully should be assigned to theories of language learning, and not to methods of language teaching. despite the criticism stated above against the methods in tesol, one cannot ignore some of their strengths. the results of the analysis of methods indicate that some of them are based on sound theoretical principles of language learning and teaching, while others have developed and applied a variety of activities and procedures. some have been well designed, and still others have and are just now taking advantage of the advances in the new icts. the lesson for language teaching practitioners is that we cannot throw all of this knowledge and experience into the dustbin of history, but should use them, at least, as a source of enlightenment to design and implement our methods of teaching an l2 or a foreign language in our everyday classes. references adamson, b. (2004). fashions in language teaching methodology. in a. davies & c. elder (eds.), the handbook of applied linguistics (pp. 604–622). blackwell. https:// doi.org/10.1002/9780470757000.ch24 allwright, r. l. (1991). the death of the method (working paper no. 10). the university of lancaster; the exploratory practice centre. anker, w. p. (2001). the joy of watching others learn: an interview with diane larsen-freeman. english teaching forum, 39(4), 2–9. anthony, e. m. (1972). approach, method, technique. in h. allen & r. campbell (eds.), teaching english as a second language (2nd ed.). mcgraw-hill. (original work published 1963) austin, j. l. (1969). how to do things with words. clarendon press. bastidas, j. a. (1993). opciones metodológicas para la enseñanza de idiomas. servicios gráficos. bell, d. m. (2003). method and postmethod: are they really so incompatible? tesol quarterly, 37(2), 325–336. https:// doi.org/10.2307/3588507 bell, d. m. 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(1969). the audio-lingual habit theory versus the cognitive code-learning theory: some theoretical considerations. iral: international review of applied linguistics in language teaching, 7(2), 97–106. https:// doi.org/10.1515/iral.1969.7.2.97 chastain, k. (1976). developing second-language skills: theory to practice. rand mcnelly college publishing company. chastain, k., & woerdehoff, f. j. (1968). a methodological study comparing the audio-lingual habit theory and the cognitive code-learning theory. modern language journal, 52(5), 268–279. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1540-4781.1968.tb01905.x chomsky, n. (1966). linguistic theory. in r. g. mean, jr. 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(1983). the scope of approach, the importance of method, and the nature of technique. in j. alatis, h. stern, & p. strevens (eds.), georgetown university round table on languages and linguistics (pp. 106–115). georgetown university. de mattos, l. a. (1974). compendio de didáctica general. editorial kapelusz. descartes, r. (1968). discourse on method and the meditations (f. e. sutcliffe, trans.). penguin. (original work published 1637) diller, k. c. (1971). generative grammar, structural linguistics and language teaching. newbury house. diller, k. c. (1978). the language teaching controversy. newbury house. eurydice. (2006). aprendizaje integrado de contenidos y lenguas (aicle) en el contexto escolar europeo. comisión europea, dirección general de educación y cultura. gattegno, c. (1972). teaching foreign languages in schools: the silent way (2nd ed.). educational solutions worldwide. gattegno, c. (1976). the common sense of teaching foreign languages. educational solutions worldwide. harmer, j. (1983). the practice of english language teaching. longman. hernández-sampieri, r., fernández-collado, c., & baptistalucio, p. (2014). metodología de la investigación (6.ª ed.). mcgraw-hill. howatt, a. p. r. (1984). a history of english language teaching (1st ed.). oxford university press. howatt, a. p. r., & widdowson, h. g. (2004). a history of english language teaching (2nd ed.). oxford university press. hymes, d. (1972). on communicative competence. in j. b. pride & j. holmes (eds.), sociolinguistics: selected readings (pp. 269–293). penguin books. jarvis, g. a. (1991). research on teaching methodology: its evolution and prospects. in b. f. freed (ed.), foreign language acquisition research and the classroom (pp. 295–306). d. c. heath & co. kelly, l. g. (1969). 25 centuries of language teaching. newbury house. kumaravadivelu, b. (1994). the postmethod condition: (e)merging strategies for second/foreign language teaching. tesol quarterly, 28(1), 27–48. https://doi. org/10.2307/3587197 kumaravadivelu, b. (2001). toward a postmethod pedagogy. tesol quarterly, 35(4), 537–560. https://doi. org/10.2307/3588427 kumaravadivelu, b. (2003). beyond methods: macrostrategies for language teaching. yale university press. kumaravadivelu, b. (2006). understanding language teaching: from method to postmethod. lawrence erlbaum associates. https://doi.org/10.4324/9781410615725 larsen-freeman, d. (1986). techniques and principles in language teaching (1st ed.). oxford university press. larsen-freeman, d., & anderson, m. (2011). techniques and principles in language teaching (3rd ed.). oxford university press. mackey, w. f. (1965). language teaching analysis. longman. mayer, r. e. (2008). learning and instruction (2nd ed.). pearson education. medina-rivilla, a., & mata, f. s. (coords.). (2009). didáctica general. pearson prentice hall. morles, v. (2002). sobre la metodología como ciencia y el método científico: un espacio polémico. revista de pedagogía, 23(66), 121–146. nunan, d. (1989). designing tasks for the communicative classroom. cambridge university press. pennycook, a. (1989). the concept of method, interested knowledge, and the politics of language teaching. tesol quarterly, 23(4), 589–618. https://doi.org/10.2307/3587534 piaget, j. (1970). naturaleza y métodos de la epistemología. editorial proteo. prabhu, n. s. (1990). there is no best method–why? tesol quarterly, 24(2), 161–176. https://doi.org/10.2307/3586897 https://bit.ly/3pf4wr6 https://doi.org/10.2307/3587197 https://doi.org/10.2307/3587197 https://doi.org/10.2307/3588427 https://doi.org/10.2307/3588427 https://doi.org/10.4324/9781410615725 https://doi.org/10.2307/3587534 https://doi.org/10.2307/3586897 213profile: issues teach. prof. dev., vol. 24 no. 2, jul-dec, 2022. issn 1657-0790 (printed) 2256-5760 (online). bogotá, colombia. pages 203-213 are language teaching methods really dead as some tesol gurus have proclaimed? richards, j. c., & rodgers, t. s. (1982). method: approach, design, and procedure. tesol quarterly, 16(2), 153–168. https://doi.org/10.2307/3586789 richards, j. c., & rodgers, t. s. (1986). approaches and methods in language teaching (1st ed.). cambridge university press. richards, j. c., & rodgers, t. s. (2001). approaches and methods in language teaching (2nd ed.). cambridge university press. https://doi.org/10.1017/cbo9780511667305 richards, j. c., & rodgers, t. s. (2014). approaches and methods in language teaching (3rd ed.). cambridge university press. https://doi.org/10.1017/9781009024532 stern, h. h. (1983). fundamental concepts of language teaching. oxford university press. waters, a. (2012). trends and issues in elt methods and methodology. elt journal, 66(4), 440–449. https://doi. org/10.1093/elt/ccs038 about the author jesús alirio bastidas is a professor at universidad de nariño who holds a phd in language, literacy, and learning from the university of southern california, usa, and a postdoctoral certificate from universidad autónoma de barcelona. he has published several books and articles. he directs a research group in language sciences. https://doi.org/10.2307/3586789 https://doi.org/10.1017/cbo9780511667305 https://doi.org/10.1017/9781009024532 https://doi.org/10.1093/elt/ccs038 https://doi.org/10.1093/elt/ccs038 compiling a corpus of audiovisual materials for efl learning: selection, analysis, and exploitation 125profile: issues teach. prof. dev., vol. 24 no. 1, jan-jun, 2022. issn 1657-0790 (printed) 2256-5760 (online). bogotá, colombia. pages 125-141 https://doi.org/10.15446/profile.v24n1.91448 compiling a corpus of audiovisual materials for efl learning: selection, analysis, and exploitation compilación de un corpus de materiales audiovisuales para el aprendizaje de inglés como lengua extranjera: selección, análisis y explotación paula wood-borque1 universidad de zaragoza, zaragoza, spain films and series are usually consumed in leisure moments, but they can be included in the english as a foreign language classroom as they offer real-life language in context, which can help develop learners’ communicative competence. this paper examines how audiovisual materials can promote english acquisition in secondary education and proposes a corpus of films and series for this purpose. two surveys will be presented, one for compiling fragments, and the other regarding students’ viewing habits. the fragment selection process will be explained, and some illustrations of the fragments’ exploitation will be described. this medium’s language learning benefits will be discussed, and it will be argued that using this corpus can have a positive influence on students’ communicative competence development. keywords: audiovisual materials, communicative competence, corpus, secondary education las producciones audiovisuales pueden servir como material en la enseñanza del inglés como lengua extranjera, pues ofrecen ejemplos del lenguaje en contexto, lo cual ayudaría a desarrollar la competencia comunicativa de los estudiantes. este artículo estudia cómo los materiales audiovisuales favorecen la adquisición del inglés en la educación secundaria, y propone un corpus de películas y series con este propósito. se presentarán dos encuestas, una hecha para la compilación de fragmentos, y la otra relacionada con los hábitos de visualización de los estudiantes. se explicará el proceso de selección de fragmentos, con algunos ejemplos de esta explotación. se argumentará que el uso del corpus puede tener una influencia positiva en el desarrollo de la competencia comunicativa de los estudiantes. palabras clave: competencia comunicativa, educación secundaria, corpus, materiales audiovisuales 1 paula wood-borque  https://orcid.org/0000-0003-4686-7067 · email: 718596@unizar.es this article is based on the master’s thesis completed by wood-borque (2020). how to cite this article (apa, 7th ed.): wood-borque, p. (2022). compiling a corpus of audiovisual materials for efl learning: selection, analysis, and exploitation. profile: issues in teachers’ professional development, 24(1), 125–141. https://doi.org/10.15446/profile.v24n1.91448 this article was received on november 10, 2020 and accepted on september 2, 2021. this is an open access article distributed under the terms of the creative commons license attribution-noncommercial-noderivatives 4.0 international license. consultation is possible at https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/ https://doi.org/10.15446/profile.v24n1.91448 https://orcid.org/0000-0003-4686-7067 mailto:718596@unizar.es https://doi.org/10.15446/profile.v24n1.91448 https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/ universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras126 wood-borque introduction students in secondary education today are usually skilful in the use of technology, and some studies have focused on the usefulness of this exposure to the media for the l2 classroom (feng & webb, 2020; montero-pérez, 2020; webb & rodgers, 2009b). moreover, most schools are starting to normalize the use of technological devices in the classroom. many teachers and educational researchers have seen an opportunity in this technological and media proficiency on the part of the students, and its acceptance on the part of the schools, as a way of taking advantage of the media’s intrinsic motivation for learners in english as a foreign language (efl) teaching. as a result, this article presents the process undertaken to create and exploit a corpus of audiovisual materials (am)—such as films and tv series—to use as a learning resource in the efl classroom to improve language learning and the development of students’ communicative competence. recent studies have explored the benefits of using am in the efl classroom, such as the many examples of language use in real-life context they display (peters & muñoz, 2020; puimège & peters, 2020), the variety of topics they might tackle (sert & amri, 2021), the advantages of imagery for vocabulary learning (webb & rodgers, 2009a; pujadas & muñoz, 2020) and the possibility to use captions while viewing (lee & révész, 2020; peters & muñoz, 2020; wisniewska & mora, 2020). films are usually intrinsically attractive (provided the topic appeals to the viewer) and they are said to be one of the most enjoyable and accessible forms of entertainment, which can work as a motivator and an educator for efl students (feng & webb, 2020), enhancing the language learning process as long as appropriate materials are selected and suitable activities designed (donaghy, 2015). the main purpose of this paper is to explore how am, such as scenes from films and series, can be selected, analysed, and exploited in the efl classroom to develop students’ communicative and comprehension skills. the creation of a corpus of useful and exploitable audiovisual fragments will be explained, identifying and collecting examples of fragments of films and series that can be used to promote language learning. this could help other teachers by offering possible scenes to use in class that are also relevant in their professional contexts. furthermore, the way in which the intrinsic attractiveness of audiovisual resources may improve secondary education students’ motivation and engagement will be highlighted. first, there is a discussion of the theoretical framework behind the compilation of the corpus camells (corpus of audiovisual materials for english language learners in secondary) and its exploitation. next, the methodology used will be explained, which was based on two surveys distributed to secondary education students to learn more about their likes and preferences on films, series, and efl classroom activities. the process undertaken to choose scenes in the corpus will be described. finally, the main findings will be presented, which stem from another survey done regarding the use of am and other common practices in the efl classroom. in this section, the camells corpus will also be presented, and some possible ways of exploiting it in the secondary education classroom will be discussed. the limitations and implications of the study will be highlighted in the conclusions section. theoretical background making use of am in the efl classroom can present many benefits while learning the second language, as “meaning is communicated through moving images more readily than print because of its immediacy, making film literacy an incredibly powerful teaching tool” (donaghy, 2015, p. 12). this means that the visual component of am is likely to help with language acquisition, since the images “support the verbal message and provide a focus of attention” (p. 19). moreover, these kinds of materials can be very useful, especially in terms of improving students’ motivation and engagement (feng & webb, 2020; peters 127profile: issues teach. prof. dev., vol. 24 no. 1, jan-jun, 2022. issn 1657-0790 (printed) 2256-5760 (online). bogotá, colombia. pages 125-141 compiling a corpus of audiovisual materials for efl learning: selection, analysis, and exploitation & muñoz, 2020; pujadas & muñoz, 2020). films and tv series will probably be intrinsically attractive to students, especially if they are interested in the topic. therefore, a survey was designed (see method section and appendix a) to learn more about students’ interests and preferences. motivation is said to be “one of the main determinants of second/foreign language (l2) learning achievement” (dörnyei, 1994, p. 273), which means that if students do not feel motivated or are not engaged in the lessons, it will be more difficult for them to acquire the language. dörnyei (1994) claims that there are three levels in the l2 motivation framework: the language level, the learner level, and the learning situation level (p. 279). these three levels were taken into account to try and increase the attractiveness of the content of the course under investigation by using authentic am and visual aids and exploiting them to increase students’ interest and involvement. another benefit of the use of these resources can be familiarizing students with the english language in real-life contexts and situations for communication, so language learning can be improved by providing authentic input that might be hard to display through other materials (alluri, 2018; donaghy, 2015; king, 2002). real-life audiovisual models of the foreign language can help develop comprehension skills, aside from providing different contexts for the development of activities. am provide a clear context for the students to better understand and acquire vocabulary (kalra, 2017) since multi-sensory input is likely to aid memory retention more effectively. using am helps train “verbal skills, writing, vocabulary, grammar and cultures,” but it is the teacher’s job to come up with activities that work these skills (alluri, 2018, p. 148). furthermore, films and tv series make a great tool for intercultural communication, since they are “cultural documents” that help to communicate cultural values and customs to viewers, as well as making them “better understand their own culture” (donaghy, 2015, p. 19). they also offer “an opportunity for being exposed to different native speaker voices, slang, reduced speeches, stress, accents, and dialects” (king, 2002, p. 511). this means that they are an appropriate and realistic source of representation of different anglo-speaking countries with their different accents and registers, which is something required to develop students’ communicative competence and its sociolinguistic component. also, “by introducing various cultures to students through films we can make students tolerant, liberal and sensitive to other cultures and respect them” (alluri, 2018, pp. 148–149), which is something that must be taken into account since one objective as an efl teacher is to develop students’ intercultural competence without prejudices or stereotypes. the benefits of am for promoting students’ communicative competence, their motivation and engagement, and their intercultural awareness have been well attested. as has been pointed out, when seeking to introduce am in the efl classroom attention has also to be placed on what use is made of such materials and how they are exploited. ellis et al. (2002) argue that students will not achieve a high level of linguistic competence if there is not a focus on form in the efl lessons. this means that teachers cannot rely on the film’s topic alone if they want students to acquire the language. in his words, “learners need to do more than to simply engage in communicative language use; they also need to attend to form” (p. 421). am are a source of authentic language which can be brought and exploited in the classroom to foster communicative competence in line with communicative language teaching principles (brown, 2007; larsen-freeman, 2014; richards, 2006), but in order to be effective, students’ attention needs to be drawn to specific features of the language (han et al., 2009; izumi, 2002). through films and series students can be exposed to contextualized language and such input can contribute to developing their grammatical, discourse, functional, and strategic competences. this can be done through the use of input enhancement. larsen-freeman (2014) explains that “by highlighting . . . certain non-salient grammatical forms in a reading passage, students’ attenuniversidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras128 wood-borque tion will be drawn to them” (p. 258), and thus, input enhancement is achieved. han et al. (2009) points out the reasons why input enhancement should be used in the l2 classroom; first, learners may “lack sensitivity to grammatical features of target language input.” secondly, “certain grammatical features in the input . . . are inherently non-salient,” so learners may not notice them. and finally, “learners’ first language may act as a hindrance to their ability to notice certain linguistic features in the input” (p. 598). when using am, learners’ attention can be drawn to particular language features, for example through the use of subtitles: “movie subtitles through input enhancement can have a facilitative role in the achievement among the participants and it can affect their speaking ability” (okar & shahidy, 2019, p. 101); or by highlighting specific salient features as will be argued in the findings section. previous research on the effects of am on students’ acquisition of english as an l2 has pointed out the importance of such authentic input to be comprehensible and the actual impact on vocabulary, grammar, and pronunciation learning. the input students are exposed to needs to be comprehensible, and for that, a vocabulary of the most frequent word families need to be covered by the films and series. webb and rodgers (2009a) determined that a lexical coverage of 3,000 word families would be necessary, concluding that “if 95% coverage is sufficient for comprehension then movies may be an appropriate source of l2 input for many language learners” (p. 418). in contrast, if 98% coverage is necessary then additional support should be given in order to ease comprehension, like pre-viewing activities or the use of captions or scripts (webb & rodgers, 2009a). very similar results were found when investigating the vocabulary coverage of tv programs (pujadas & muñoz, 2020; webb & rodgers, 2009b). combining visual and aural input might make comprehension easier than listening comprehension, since it may “effectively link l2 form with l1 meaning” (webb & rodgers, 2009a, p. 410), and that in an efl context these materials could “improve listening skills, [improve the] learn[ing of ] vocabulary,” and help “focus on specific language points” (p. 420). pujadas and muñoz (2020) argue that, even if students are motivated to use am for language learning, some films or series might be too difficult to understand, and they showed how captions eased such comprehension. students’ vocabulary range has been shown to improve thanks to am. puimège and peters (2020) explored the incidental learning of formulaic sequences (fs) from audiovisual input, and found that knowledge of fs benefits language processing in both native speakers and l2 learners and is a key predictor of l2 writing and speaking proficiency. nevertheless, fs usually present difficulties for l2 learners due to their low frequency in texts. in the light of their results, puimège and peters concluded that “tv viewing can be a highly effective method for acquiring l2 vocabulary” (p. 546). as regards the development of students’ grammatical knowledge, lee and révész (2020) argue that “captions cannot only facilitate the acquisition of l2 vocabulary but also have the capacity to promote development in l2 grammatical knowledge” (p. 642). finally, wisniewska and mora (2020) examine the potential benefits of captions on pronunciation, finding that they enhanced “not only the ability to segment speech, . . . but also the ability to process speech faster and more efficiently” (p. 616). looking at the findings of all of these recent studies on audiovisual input for language learning, i think it could be affirmed that am can be very useful in the efl classroom if they are appropriately selected, and if they are suitably exploited. this paper aims to present the process of selection, analysis, and exploitation of am in the efl secondary education classroom. method instruments two surveys were designed with the purpose of creating the camells corpus and exploiting it. the 129profile: issues teach. prof. dev., vol. 24 no. 1, jan-jun, 2022. issn 1657-0790 (printed) 2256-5760 (online). bogotá, colombia. pages 125-141 compiling a corpus of audiovisual materials for efl learning: selection, analysis, and exploitation first one was aimed at secondary education and baccalaureate students (i.e., 12to 18-year-olds in spain). it was sent to the participants through google forms in the students’ l1 (spanish). the survey called for information such as age, gender, the academic year in which they were currently studying, and requested participants to name two or three english-speaking films and two or three english-speaking series they enjoy watching (see appendix a). the main intention of this first survey was to take into account students’ preferences and find out what kind of films and series appeal to different ages in order to ensure that the clips to be used will actually be motivating for the students. the second survey was carried out with the intention of finding out students’ opinion on using audiovisual resources in the efl classroom and what kind of activities they find most engaging during these classes. this survey concerned three main points: the participants’ viewing habits as an out-of-class activity; the use of am in their efl classes; and the activities they usually carry out in the efl classroom. it first asked how participants usually watch english-speaking films and series (if dubbed into spanish, with english or spanish captions, or in the original version) and why would they prefer to watch am in english—if they did so. then, if they ever use am in the efl classroom, and how they do so (similar to the first question). finally, the survey requested students to grade typical efl activities according to their level of engagement. it consisted of six linear-scale questions and three open-answer ones (see appendix b). participants secondary education and baccalaureate students (i.e., 12to 18-year-olds in spain) participated in the first survey, while only fourth year secondary education students (i.e., 15–16 years old) took part in the second survey. the first survey received 46 responses (32 female and 14 male respondents) and 49 students participated in the second one. procedure for the administration of the survey responses to the first survey were progressively collected and then a list was made with the films and series that had more than one vote. initially there was a great variety of titles, but most of them had been selected by just one person (since the survey was open-question, the responses had little cohesion), so only the titles, which had more than one vote, were selected (see tables 2, 3, and 4). the titles in the corpus were intended to be used with fourth-year secondary education students (i.e., 15–16 years of age). however, since the sample would have ended up being too small if only the titles chosen by students of this age were considered, the ones suggested by students one year younger or older were also taken into account (considering that most answers had been given by third-year students). procedure for the selection of titles and fragments however, some of the titles chosen by fourth-year secondary education students were finally not used because of their topic or because of age restrictions, even if they had received many votes—titles such as it (which received four votes), joker (four votes) or the walking dead (two votes). these are a substantial number of votes considering that the majority of films and series that the participants selected had just one or two, and that it was an open-question survey (that is, the participants could write down any title they wanted as long as english was the original language). i decided not to include these titles using my own criteria as a teacher, since i would not want the clips used in class to upset any student (both for moral and practical reasons; a frightening or generally uncomfortable clip would probably affect the students’ performance when carrying out an activity), and because there were many others to work with. similarly, even if many titles from this final selection could be useful due to their content, there were also an ample number of them that i considered unattractive due to their lack of action and that were not used. again, my own criteria were used for universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras130 wood-borque this, since the idea of something being boring or tedious is very subjective. the scenes considered non-engaging were the ones which included long dialogues with no action (for instance, some of these were found in the first episode of peaky blinders), that may not be appealing to students. after this, i started watching the films and series on the final list and noting down different fragments that were expected to be both practical for english language teaching and engaging for the students. the fragments were selected taking into account two main elements: the topic(s) and the linguistic features present, which needed to follow the fourth-year standards in this case. to meet these criteria, the fragments had to include some sort of dialogue with useful language for the students (e.g., grammatical and syntactic structures, lexis), and also include interesting topics, ensuring that students would find them enjoyable. procedure for the analysis of selected fragments then, the fragments selected (24 in total, as can be seen in table 4 in the findings section) were analysed. this entailed transcribing the corresponding script and highlighting different language elements (such as vocabulary, grammatical structures, and syntax, among others) that would be suitable for the academic year i was focusing on. a coding system was used on the scripts (see figure 1) to highlight the main linguistic features that should be taught in the fourth year of secondary education. this could also make it easier for the learners to notice certain elements, if they also work with the scripts and not just with the audiovisual fragments. figure 1. coding system of fragments selected courtesy and register, accent and slang vocabulary descriptions, reported speech grammar (structures, verb tenses, syntax) instructions + directions modality regarding the exploitation of camells, two different protocols were followed for the initial step of the development; either choosing a fragment that could be useful for a specific academic year and then coming up with an activity; or thinking about a convenient activity to work some particular features and then choosing a scene that could be employed for this. due to the nature of this project and the corpus of fragments created, the first protocol was the one followed for the most part, so most of the activities are based on a previously analysed fragment. in regard to the second protocol (first coming up with an activity or deciding what the activity should focus on before having a scene for it), the scenes chosen included important grammatical and/or lexical features for the students’ level, as well as those that had relevant topics. the intention of the fragments chosen was to focus students’ attention on particular forms and make them notice them through input enhancement in subtitles and scripts (okar & shahidy, 2019). findings in this section, the results of the two surveys conducted will be presented. then, the corpus camells, which was compiled according to the results obtained from the surveys, will be described. the corpus presented in this paper can be considered a pilot version, since it is expected to be developed in the future through further research. results from the surveys in the first survey, 46 responses were received, most of them including 5–6 titles, so the corpus ended up with 67 film titles; there were 99 suggestions in total regarding film titles, but as this included the repetition of titles the final number was 67. the same goes for the series titles; there were 92 suggestions in total, but counting the repeated ones, it turned out to be 57 titles (table 1). from the 46 responses, 27 (58.7%) were selected as a representative sample of the academic years under study: 11 from the third-year secondary education, 8 from the fourth-year secondary education, and 8 from the first-year baccalaureate. 131profile: issues teach. prof. dev., vol. 24 no. 1, jan-jun, 2022. issn 1657-0790 (printed) 2256-5760 (online). bogotá, colombia. pages 125-141 compiling a corpus of audiovisual materials for efl learning: selection, analysis, and exploitation table 1. summary of results for first survey on students’ choice of audiovisual materials (n = 46) initial number of suggested film titles final number of film titles (excluding repeated ones) 99 67 initial number of suggested series titles final number of series titles (excluding repeated ones) 92 57 academic year of the participants’ responses considered 3rd-year secondary education 4th-year secondary education 1st-year post-secondary education 11 8 8 in regard to the second survey, results revealed that 28 out of 49 participants (57.15%) watch films and series in english as a leisure activity. the main reasons for this are that they believe watching them in english will help them learn and practice the language (appendix c). they also acknowledged that they prefer hearing the actors’ real voices and original script because of problems like mistranslated puns. therefore, more than half of the participants stated they would find watching films in english in the efl classroom useful and enjoyable. moreover, even if 21 participants declared they do not watch films or series in english for leisure, 43 out of 49 (87.75%) participants claimed to have watched films or series in the efl classroom before.1 regarding what kind of activities the students found most motivating, they indicated that they would like to break away from the routine of using their every-day english books and doing grammar exercises. they expressed they would like to be active participants in the efl classroom and use different resources and materials. this is related to the question regarding students’ attitude towards watching films in english in the efl classroom, since 10 participants (20.4%) claimed that they would enjoy watching videos or films and commenting on them. this information is further supported by the results obtained in the question “what would you change or improve about your english lessons?” more than half of the answers (30 out of 59) belonged to the 1 full results from the second survey can be consulted in appendix c. group “more fun, entertaining, and interactive” lessons, and changes in relation to academic work and the use of am in class was also demanded. in summary, the participants report they prefer more engaging and interactive lessons, less focused on grammar and more focused on speaking and games. these results revealed that the lack of motivation for most students lies in dörnyei’s (1994) learning situation level, which can be divided into three areas: coursespecific motivational components, teacher-specific motivational components, and group-specific motivational components. most of the answers expressed in the survey were related to course-specific motivational components, since students claimed to be displeased with the teaching method, the learning tasks, and the materials. taking all of these data into account, one sees it can be affirmed that using audiovisual resources could help with students’ engagement, especially of an interactive kind in which they are active participants. this would make our lessons more effective in terms of language acquisition and motivation. description of the camells corpus after compiling the responses of the 46 participants of the first survey, the final count was of 67 film titles and 57 series titles, although many of these were selections with just one vote. the number of votes each title received was included in a table, ending up with 16 film titles (table 2) and 16 series titles (table 3), to make way for the next step. universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras132 wood-borque table 2. film titles in camells 2 votes the da vinci code, mean girls, the greatest showman, the notebook, wonder, the lion king, the incredibles, a monster calls 3 votes the hunger games, spider-man, five feet apart 4 votes star wars, joker, it 5 votes harry potter 6 votes avengers table 3. series titles in camells 2 votes game of thrones, the walking dead, vikings, grey’s anatomy, jane the virgin, csi, raising dion, voltron: legendary defender 3 votes shadowhunters, glee, the society 4 votes peaky blinders, gossip girl, 13 reasons why 6 votes stranger things 8 votes friends some problems were encountered during the first response count; for instance, many students had written down avengers as their favourite film, which posed a challenge since there are many films related to this title (the avengers, avengers: age of ultron, avengers: infinity war, and avengers: endgame), and most of the main characters have their own film. there were also many students who wrote down titles of films belonging to this saga (such as iron man, doctor strange, and spider-man). because of this, all of these titles were counted as belonging to the category of avengers since they are all quite similar in their topics and style, thus of these films being appropriate for my project. the fragments used in this project were selected so as not to contain spoilers, or at least not significant ones. they are from the first episodes of the series they belong to, from the first scenes of a film, or from the first film of a well-known saga. the main purpose of this is not to spoil the films or series for my students, since that might even decrease their motivation or produce some kind of discontent that could affect the session, like raising their affective filter. krashen (1981) defines the affective filter as an attitude related to second language acquisition, in which “performers with high or strong filters will acquire less of the language directed at them, as less input is ‘allowed in’ to the language-acquisition device” (p. 22). that is, if the learner is stressed, anxious, or in a bad mood it can prevent him or her from learning, which is something to avoid as a teacher. spoiling some tv series or film that students might have liked to watch at some other moment can negatively affect their mood, and thus their attitude towards the lessons and their disposition to learn. table 4 shows the titles compiled with the fragments selected and their exploitation. the first column includes the titles of the films or series from camells, selected for script analysis. the middle column contains what episode or film from the franchise was chosen (in the case of the da vinci code it was left blank, since there is only one film). the last column indicates the fragments analysed and their minutes. each fragment received a title, with the intention of reflecting the main topic and to make it easier to identify. the titles in bold have been selected to illustrate the two protocols followed for their exploitation in the next section. 133profile: issues teach. prof. dev., vol. 24 no. 1, jan-jun, 2022. issn 1657-0790 (printed) 2256-5760 (online). bogotá, colombia. pages 125-141 compiling a corpus of audiovisual materials for efl learning: selection, analysis, and exploitation table 4. titles and fragments selected in camells films or series selection for exploitation selection of relevant fragments avengers iron man “meeting a celebrity” (0:40–3:50) harry potter 1st movie “a new family” (1:35–4:00) “a disappointing birthday” (4:04–5:55) “visiting the zoo” (6:00–8:32) “meeting hagrid” (12:30–18:22) “choosing a wand” (24:43–28:45) “you-know-who” (28:45–31:00) “looking for platform 9 ¾” (31:05–33:55) “new friends” (34:20–37:47) “welcome to hogwarts” (39:30–41:27) “the sorting hat” (42:50–46:05) “nasty snape” (51:18–53:16) “flying class” (55:05–59:10) the da vinci code “cultural relativism” (3:30–5:13) the hunger games 1st movie “the president’s speech” (12:50–14:00) “survival techniques” (26:00–28:36) friends season 5, ep. 9 season 10, ep. 3 “ross’ sandwich” (11:35–13:35) “fake tan” (4:40–7:12) peaky blinders season 1, ep. 1 “pub fight” (10:00–14:35) stranger things season 1, ep. 1 season 1, ep. 2 “dungeons and dragons” (1:43–4:50) “will’s whereabouts” (11:08–12:40) “school bullies” (12:50–13:57) “officer hopper” (16:15–18:52) “a weird girl” (0:10–4:30) exploitation of camells after the compilation of camells while bearing in mind students’ choices and preferences of films and series, and its analysis in terms of potential uses in the secondary education efl classroom, the two protocols that can be used for the exploitation of the selected fragments will be illustrated. an example of the corpus lexico-grammatical analysis using the coding system specified in figure 1 can be found in figure 2. as can be seen, there is a particular feature that is repeated recurrently—modal verbs—and thus students’ attention, once their comprehension of the fragment has been checked, could be drawn to it, focusing on form (ellis et al., 2002) as modal verbs are presented in a meaningful, relevant context. some features could be marked when students are focusing on the comprehension of the message making use of input enhancement strategies (larsen-freeman, 2014; okar & shahidy, 2019), both using the script or captions when viewing (pujadas & muñoz, 2020). the modal verbs present are for positive deduction (must), prediction (will), permission/request (can, could), obligation (have to/have got to) and possibility (might). the teacher may also have to explain and provide examples of the modals not present in the fragment, like ability, negative deduction, no obligation/necessity, prohibition, and advice. students could be asked to identify and point out the modal verbs in this fragment, which would help them understand them better and recognize them in future texts. also, modal verbs could universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras134 wood-borque be highlighted to make them salient making use of input enhancement techniques and drawing their attention to them (larsen-freeman, 2014; okar & shahidy, 2019). figure 2. example of coded fragment in camells harry potter and the philosopher’s stone (31:05–33:55) hagrid: what are you looking at? blimey, is that the time? sorry, harry, i’m gonna have to leave you. dumbledore’ll be wanting his… well, he’ll be wanting to see me. now, uh, your train leaves in 10 minutes. here’s your ticket. stick to it, harry that’s very important. stick to your ticket. harry: platform 9 ¾? but hagrid, there must be a mistake. this says platform 9 ¾. there’s no such thing… is there? man: sorry. harry: excuse me, excuse me. trainmaster: right on your left, ma’am. harry: excuse me, sir. can you tell me where i might find platform 9 ¾? trainmaster: 9 ¾? think you’re being funny, do ya? mrs. weasley: it’s the same year after year. packed with muggles, of course. harry: muggles? mrs. weasley: come on. platform 9 ¾ this way! all right, percy, you first. fred, you next. fred: he’s not fred, i am! george: honestly, woman, you call yourself our mother! mrs. weasley: oh, i’m sorry, george. fred: i’m only joking. i am fred. harry: excuse me! c-could you tell me how to mrs. weasley: how to get on the platform? yes, not to worry, dear. it’s ron’s first time to hogwarts as well. now, all you’ve got to do is walk straight at the wall between platforms 9 and 10. best do it at a bit of a run if you’re nervous. ginny: good luck. this fragment also has different functions related to the topics it covers, like asking for and giving directions, use of politeness and giving instructions. because of this, the scene can also be exploited in other ways and used for different lessons. an activity focused on teaching how to give instructions can be combined with teaching modal verbs, since instructions are usually constructed with them (must/mustn’t, need/not need to and have/ not have to will probably be used for this purpose). this may also be the case with an activity focused on politeness (asking for things politely, like harry does in this scene; could, may, might, and will are probably going to be used). aside from the modal verbs and the topics mentioned, the character of hagrid speaks with a west-country english accent and uses rustic expressions, like “will be wanting to see me.” this may be useful for the efl classroom as an example of english accents and expressions different from the “standard” usually present in the efl course books. some useful vocabulary has been highlighted, as well as a collocation (“stick to it”), which can also be learnt from audiovisual input and which are important for students to know (puimège & peters, 2020). whereas in the example in figure 2 a particular grammatical feature stood out, in other fragments selected in camells, that may not be the case (see figure 3). in this case the exploitation is based on the fragment’s meaning and content to a greater extent. this is a good scene with which to talk about the topic of symbolism and cultures with students. this fragment focuses mostly on vocabulary (mainly racism, religion, mythology, and pop culture) and the grammar present is quite simple and within fourth-year students’ level (it is limited to how-questions, that-relative clauses, present simple and continuous, and demands), so in this case it may be more interesting and beneficial for students that the activities have a focus on meaning. the scene is very versatile; the activities arising from it could focus on current symbolism, that is, new language (like emojis and memes, which students will be familiar with), but also on the idea of multiculturalism and the relativity of images depending on how and where one has been brought up. students could be asked to give their opinions and to write messages making use of those new ways of expressing meaning these days. 135profile: issues teach. prof. dev., vol. 24 no. 1, jan-jun, 2022. issn 1657-0790 (printed) 2256-5760 (online). bogotá, colombia. pages 125-141 compiling a corpus of audiovisual materials for efl learning: selection, analysis, and exploitation figure 3. example of coded fragment in camells the da vinci code (3:30–5:13) langdon: thank you. thank you. symbols are a language that can help us understand our past. as the saying goes, “a picture says a thousand words.” but… which words? interpret for me, please, this symbol. first thing that comes to mind, anybody. woman 1: hatred, racism. man 1: ku klux klan. langdon: yes, yes, interesting. but… they would disagree with you in spain. there they are robes worn by priests. now, this symbol. anyone? man 2: evil. woman 2: la fourche du diable. langdon: in english, please? man 3: devil’s pitchfork. langdon: poor, poor poseidon. that is his trident, a symbol of power to millions of the ancients. now this symbol. woman 3: madonna and child. woman 4: faith, christianity. langdon: no, no, it’s the pagan god horus and his mother isis centuries before the birth of christ. understanding our past determines actively our ability to understand the present. so, how do we sift truth from belief? how do we write our own histories, personally or culturally, and thereby define ourselves? how do we penetrate years, centuries, of historical distortion to find original truth? tonight, this will be our quest. it could also be useful for cross-curricular activities or projects, since it can be easily related to subjects such as history (with the theme of the ku klux klan and the robes used in the easter celebrations in spain), art and literature (the images of poseidon and isis). although this suggestion is not related to the main efl activities proposal, it could be interesting to relate the english language classes to other subjects to motivate students and help them associate concepts, since many things that are taught in school should not be seen in isolation if the objective is to promote better understanding. when checking the different fragments analysed for exploitation, i found that it is very difficult to find one that focuses on only one or two linguistic items (either lexical, syntactic, or grammatical items) as is the case of the example in figure 2. there tends to be variety in the use of the language, as films and series usually attempt to mimic real-life situations and conversations, and people do not normally use just one tense or type of adverb (for instance) when communicating. regarding the subject matters of the fragments, initially many of the themes in the analysed fragments were similar. for instance, several examples of instruction-giving and commands were found (in stranger things, friends, and various scenes of harry potter), as well as the theme of bullying (harry potter, stranger things). however, the fragments can be exploited in different ways—mainly because some of them do not cover just one topic, and because one can choose to put the focus of an activity on either form or meaning. in any case, students would be exposed to authentic uses of the language and would be having an active role responding and working with it, fostering their communicative competence in the english language. conclusion secondary education efl students nowadays are constantly surrounded by am through the media, and teachers are starting to include these in their lessons as a means of motivation and presentation of authentic language. taking this into account, a corpus of audiovisual titles and fragments (camells) was proposed. apart from keeping learners engaged in the lessons, this corpus could promote effective learning of the english language by developing their communicative and comprehension skills. the process of the creation of camells was explained, which took into account learners’ opinions on the titles used as well as their impressions on their efl class practices. am, in addition to intrinsically attracting students, are a source of authentic language models and clear contexts for better comprehension. camells was thus constructed by carrying out a survey regarding students’ preferred titles. however, in order to improve efl students’ comuniversidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras136 wood-borque municative competence, appropriate activities for each fragment in line with communicative language teaching principles should be carried out. by studying the scripts through a coding system, one is able to determine which fragments would be most useful for each academic year, regarding either the topics or the lexico-grammatical features available. additionally, a second survey revealed that secondary education students demanded a more active role in their efl lessons, with more interactive activities and a higher use of am, which should also be considered in their exploitation. my study presents some limitations. first, the number of students that participated in both surveys can be considered low and were restricted to a very particular context. the titles and fragments in camells were chosen taking into account responses of participants in the fourth year of secondary education, and the analysis of fragments was also done taking the curriculum of this year into account. it would be a good idea to expand camells for it to include titles and fragments suitable for every year of secondary education. another limitation is that the activities proposed have not actually been implemented and evaluated for an efl lesson. as some future lines of research, the fragments proposed should be implemented in the secondary education efl classroom, along with suitable activities, in order to verify the actual effect of their use on the learners’ language learning and communicative competence development. it would also be important to take into account students’ level of satisfaction with this procedure, since this is also a crucial aspect to ensure language acquisition. moreover, there is an aim to expand camells—since, as mentioned earlier, the one presented in this paper should be considered a pilot version—and to make it more encompassing, addressing every grade of secondary education. references alluri, p. 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(2020). examining adolescent efl learners’ tv viewing comprehension through captions and subtitles. studies in second language acquisition, 42(3), 551–575. https://doi.org/10.1017/s0272263120000042 richards, j. c. (2006). communicative language teaching today. cambridge university press. sert, o., & amri, m. (2021). learning potentials afforded by a film in task-based language classroom interactions. the modern language journal, 105(s1), 126–141. https://doi. org/10.1111/modl.12684 webb, s., & rodgers, m. p. h. (2009a). the lexical coverage of movies. applied linguistics, 30(3), 407–427. https:// doi.org/10.1093/applin/amp010 webb, s., & rodgers, m. p. h. (2009b). vocabulary demands of television programs. language learning, 59(2), 335–366. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1467-9922.2009.00509.x wisniewska, n., & mora, j. c. (2020). can captioned video benefit second language pronunciation? studies in second language acquisition, 42(3), 599–624. https:// doi.org/10.1017/s0272263120000029 wood-borque, p. (2020). using audiovisual materials for teaching efl in secondary education: a corpus for the design of learning activities [master’s thesis]. universidad de zaragoza, spain. about the author paula wood-borque is a phd student at the universidad de zaragoza (spain). she completed an ma in english teacher training for secondary education in 2020. her research focuses on the use of audiovisual materials in the efl classroom to enhance students’ learning and engagement. acknowledgements i would like to express my great appreciation to professor victoria gil, who guided me through this research. i am also very grateful for the assistance provided by dr. pilar mur during the writing of this article. their encouragement and suggestions have been essential to my work. https://doi.org/10.1017/s0272263120000108 https://doi.org/10.1017/s0272263120000108 https://doi.org/10.1017/s0272263120000145 https://doi.org/10.1017/s0272263120000212 https://doi.org/10.1017/s0272263120000212 https://doi.org/10.1017/s027226311900055x https://doi.org/10.1017/s0272263120000042 https://doi.org/10.1111/modl.12684 https://doi.org/10.1111/modl.12684 https://doi.org/10.1093/applin/amp010 https://doi.org/10.1093/applin/amp010 https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1467-9922.2009.00509.x https://doi.org/10.1017/s0272263120000029 https://doi.org/10.1017/s0272263120000029 universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras138 wood-borque appendix a: survey 1 1. gender:2 a. female b. male c. i’d rather not say d. other 2. age: 3. academic year: a. 1st year of secondary education b. 2nd year of secondary education c. 3rd year of secondary education d. 4th year of secondary education e. 1st year of post-secondary education f. 2nd year of post-secondary education g. other 4. what films do you like? (write 2 or 3 titles): please, they must be originally in english. 5. what series do you like? (write 2 or 3 titles): please, they must be originally in english. 2 the two surveys were originally presented in spanish, but they have been translated here for publication purposes. 139profile: issues teach. prof. dev., vol. 24 no. 1, jan-jun, 2022. issn 1657-0790 (printed) 2256-5760 (online). bogotá, colombia. pages 125-141 compiling a corpus of audiovisual materials for efl learning: selection, analysis, and exploitation appendix b: survey 2 1. what academic year are you in now? a. 2nd year of secondary education b. 3rd year of secondary education 2. if you watch films/series filmed in english, how do you watch them? a. dubbed into spanish b. in the original version (english) c. in the original version (english) with spanish subtitles d. in the original version (english) with english subtitles e. other 3. if in the question above you selected that you watch films/series in english (either with or without subtitles), please explain why. (write a short answer) 4. do you ever watch films/series/videos in the efl classroom? a. yes b. no 5. if the answer to the previous question was “yes,” how do you watch them? a. in the original version without subtitles b. in the original version with english subtitles c. in the original version with spanish subtitles d. other 6. how much do you like working cooperatively with your classmates? 1 2 3 4 5 i don’t like it at all i really like it 7. how much do you like doing role-plays? 1 2 3 4 5 i don’t like it at all i really like it 8. how much do you like speaking in english in the efl classroom? 1 2 3 4 5 i don’t like it at all i really like it universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras140 wood-borque 9. how much do you like doing grammar exercises from the student’s book? 1 2 3 4 5 i don’t like it at all i really like it 10. how much do you like working with your smart planet english books? 1 2 3 4 5 i don’t like it at all i really like it 11. how much do you like using additional materials? (e.g., photocopies) 1 2 3 4 5 i don’t like it at all i really like it 12. please, indicate another activity in the efl classroom that you enjoy: 13. overall, what is your opinion on your efl lessons? 14. what would you change or improve about your efl lessons? 141profile: issues teach. prof. dev., vol. 24 no. 1, jan-jun, 2022. issn 1657-0790 (printed) 2256-5760 (online). bogotá, colombia. pages 125-141 compiling a corpus of audiovisual materials for efl learning: selection, analysis, and exploitation appendix c: second survey results reasons for watching audiovisual materials in english (survey 2, question 3)3 learn/practice it’s better in english (real voices/ bad translations) other (the question was not properly understood or the answer was unclear) 14 10 7 what kind of activities do students find most motivating? (survey 2, question 12) videos and films (and commenting on them) 10 games (such as irregular verb bingo) 10 dialogues, role plays, and speaking 10 thematic classes and activities (for especial days such as halloween or easter) 4 other (crafts, video calls, multimodal activities) 4 tasks and projects 3 mind maps and diagrams 3 workbook exercises 3 none 3 listening exercises 2 what would you change or improve about your english lessons? (survey 2, question 14) more fun, entertaining, and interactive activities changes in relation to academic work more audiovisual materials changes in relation to people other 30 18 4 2 5 more interactive activities (e.g., theatre). more speaking and dialogues. more fun activities. fewer exercises, more games and projects. more group exams. more explanations (not just copying). repetitive grammar. no more web vocabulary. watch films at the end of the term. watch more videos. treat students better. choose the cooperative group. don’t change anything. change everything and the book. more didactic lessons. 3 answers were given in spanish, but a translation into english has been made for publication purposes. colombian scholars’ discussion about language assessment: a review of five journals 231profile: issues teach. prof. dev., vol. 24 no. 2, jul-dec, 2022. issn 1657-0790 (printed) 2256-5760 (online). bogotá, colombia. pages 231-245 https://doi.org/10.15446/profile.v24n2.94468 colombian scholars’ discussion about language assessment: a review of five journals discusión de académicos colombianos sobre la evaluación en lenguas: revisión de cinco revistas académicas sonia patricia hernández-ocampo1 pontificia universidad javeriana & universidad de los andes, bogotá, colombia the current discussion about assessment in the language teaching context—involving topics such as immigration and citizenship, and university entrance—has brought with it the issue of justice in assessment. although in colombia such concerns are not generally discussed, it is important to consider fairness when it comes to classroom assessment. this paper presents a review of five colombian well-known journals during the period 2009–2020 aiming to identify the scholarly discussion regarding language assessment and testing in the country. findings suggest that colombian researchers are concerned with fair and democratic assessment practices, and the involvement of students in peerand self-assessment practices to improve learning and promote autonomy. also, there is a perceived need for more teacher education in language assessment. keywords: classroom-based assessment, colombia, language assessment, language assessment literacy la discusión actual sobre evaluación en el contexto de enseñanza de lenguas —la cual incluye temas como inmigración y ciudadanía y admisión a la universidad— trae consigo el tema de justicia en la evaluación. aunque en colombia estos temas no han sido objeto de preocupación, sí es importante considerar la justicia cuando se trata de evaluación en el aula de clase. este artículo presenta la revisión de publicaciones sobre evaluación en lenguas durante el período 2009–2020 en cinco revistas académicas reconocidas, a fin de identificar los intereses de académicos colombianos en esta área. entre dichos intereses están las prácticas de evaluación justas y democráticas, así como el uso de la autoy la coevaluación para mejorar el aprendizaje y promover la autonomía. también se percibe una necesidad de mayor formación a los profesores en evaluación en lenguas. palabras clave: colombia, competencia de evaluación en lenguas, evaluación en el aula, evaluación en lenguas sonia patricia hernández-ocampo  https://orcid.org/0000-0002-6590-6167 · email: hernandez-s@javeriana.edu.co how to cite this article (apa, 7th ed.): hernández-ocampo, s. p. (2022). colombian scholars’ discussion about language assessment: a review of five journals. profile: issues in teachers’ professional development, 24(2), 231–245. https://doi.org/10.15446/profile.v24n2.94468 this article was received on march 17, 2021 and accepted on may 9, 2022. this is an open access article distributed under the terms of the creative commons license attribution-noncommercial-noderivatives 4.0 international license. consultation is possible at https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/ https://doi.org/10.15446/profile.v24n2.94468 https://orcid.org/0000-0002-6590-6167 mailto:hernandez-s@javeriana.edu.co https://doi.org/10.15446/profile.v24n2.94468 https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/ universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras232 hernández-ocampo introduction during the last decade, the discussion about language assessment in the english-speaking context has involved concerns such as immigration and citizenship (mcnamara & ryan, 2011; shohamy & mcnamara, 2009), and entrance to universities (deygers, van den branden, & van gorp, 2018; deygers, zeidler, et al., 2018). this has brought with it the issue of justice linked to assessment, which has taken on great relevance due to the social implications some uses of tests have in terms of equity in a broader sense. as mcnamara and ryan (2011) affirm, “justice questions the use of the test in the first place, not only in terms of its effects and consequences but in terms of the social values it embodies” (p. 165). in colombia, there has been little discussion of these concerns; yet, the issue of justice in assessment needs to be considered when it comes to the classroom setting, where context plays an important role (scarino, 2013). in this sense, i would rather use the term fairness since it basically refers to issues of bias and impartiality and “assumes that a testing procedure exists” (mcnamara & ryan, 2011, p. 165). in other words, a test can be fair but unjust if used as a policy instrument without considering cultural contexts, for example (deygers, van den branden, & van gorp, 2018). language assessment literacy (lal) is another issue currently discussed in the area of language assessment, and it is important for the purpose of this paper since it considers language teachers’ competence in language assessment. with its roots in assessment literacy (fulcher, 2012; stiggins, 1995), lal relates to the skills, knowledge, and practices of assessment that different stakeholders should possess (taylor, 2009). inbarlourie (2008) maintained that lal “comprises layers of assessment literacy skills combined with language specific competencies” (p. 389), which implies knowledge about what to assess, why and how—in stiggins’s (1995) words—anticipating what can go wrong and being able to take actions regarding the type of assessment used. inbar-lourie summed up assessment literacy as “the capacity to ask and answer critical questions about the purpose for assessment, about the fitness of the tool being used, about testing conditions, and about what is going to happen on the basis of the results” (p. 389). malone (2013), for her part, included the classroom context when defining lal, maintaining: “language assessment literacy refers to stakeholders’ (often with a focus on instructors’) familiarity with measurement practices and the application of this knowledge to classroom practices in general” (p. 330). with this in mind, i intend to describe how language assessment is addressed in the colombian context, what the concerns of language teachers and academics in this respect are, and how they are responding to these current global concerns of justice/fairness and lal. to do so, i have reviewed five colombian academic journals that specialize in publishing articles in the field of language teaching. i analyzed the publications that dealt with language assessment and testing and found six categories related to the main issues in this area: assessment practices, beliefs about assessment, skills involved, testing, teacher education and development, and language assessment literacy. method this paper analyzes the articles published between 2009 and 2020 in five colombian academic journals: colombian applied linguistics journal (calj), how, íkala, lenguaje, and profile. all of them, except for how, belong to well-known public universities in the country and they cover language teaching. how, for its part, is published by asocopi—the colombian association of teachers of english. for the journals íkala, lenguaje, and profile, i searched using the phrase “language assessment” and “language testing” in the titles and keywords in the ebscohost database and limited the search to the above-mentioned period. the results showed 12, 10, and 38 publications, respectively. using the same filter and phrases, i searched the calj webpage directly and obtained 53 results. then i 233profile: issues teach. prof. dev., vol. 24 no. 2, jul-dec, 2022. issn 1657-0790 (printed) 2256-5760 (online). bogotá, colombia. pages 231-245 colombian scholars’ discussion about language assessment: a review of five journals revised the article abstracts to ensure that the publications had originated in colombia. for the review of the how journal, i searched volume by volume, identifying titles that included “(language) assessment” or “testing,” and then i read the abstracts to ensure that they met the proposed criteria for a final decision. all this resulted in a corpus for this review composed of 29 articles, distributed as shown in figure 1. i then read the publications and identified common interests which subsequently became the categories that i will introduce later. figure 1. colombian journal publications in language assessment during the period 2009–2020 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 11 1 1 1 2 2 3 3 2 2 2009 2010 2011 2012 lenguajeprofile íkala how calj 2013 2014 2015 2016 2017 2018 2019 2020 an overview the discussion by colombian researchers about language assessment presented higher frequency—yet low if the relevance of assessment in education is considered— in the second third of the 12-year period (between 2013 and 2016), in which all the reviewed journals had at least one related publication. overall, articles were of two types: those based on research and those derived from the researchers’ reflections. with six articles of reflection, the vast majority were of the first type. these included three articles reporting quantitative studies and two giving an account of mixed-methods studies; the rest of the articles (85%) reported qualitative research. in this large group (12 articles in total), action research (six articles) and case studies (six articles) were the designs explicitly reported. some of the other qualitative studies were designed as exploratory, others as descriptive, and others as interpretive. furthermore, there was one article reporting a theoretical analysis. the articles were published in english, except for three that were written in spanish. with regard to the methods used to collect information, inter views appeared in first place, followed by journals—written by teachers, students, or researchers—, and assessment forms—that included selfand peer-assessment. figure 2 shows the wide variety of methods and the frequency with which these were used. nevertheless, regarding the convenience of having multiple sources of data in qualitative studies as some scholars maintain (creswell, 2014; merriam & tisdell, 2016), a good number of these studies fell short in this aspect. with a range of one to five methods to collect information in the articles under review, one third of the papers reported using two methods, while one fifth reported three methods. five methods were used in only one of the studies while four studies reported to have used four methods. universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras234 hernández-ocampo the researchers’ interests scholarly interest in the field of assessment during this period showed considerable variety. i grouped these interests into six categories: assessment practices, beliefs about assessment, skills involved, teacher education and development, testing, and language assessment literacy. i will now discuss each of these and will present a table that summarizes the common findings in each category. assessment practices muñoz-marín (2009)—in an exploratory study— identified teachers’ assessment practices in the english reading comprehension program at a public university. he found that there “may be as many assessment practices as there are teachers in the programs” (p. 78). one possible reason for this, he said, was that teachers had autonomy in designing their courses, and there was no assessment approach defined by the institution yet. another finding reported by muñoz-marín was that the teachers in the study used quantitative assessments and translated the results into qualitative concepts, as required administratively. this seemed to respond to the teachers’ difficulty to deal with qualitative assessment as well as to the students’ lack of familiarity with it—and their preference for numbers rather than concepts in the assessments. besides, the author found that the participating teachers were not familiar with alternative assessments, and they felt the need to verify students’ learning through instruments such as tests and quizzes that gave more precise and valid information about their achievement of goals. gonzález and ríos (2010), for their part—in a qualitative descriptive study—gave an account of the discourses about instruments and practices of evaluation used by teachers of french in the planning, design, and development of evaluation in a language teaching program at a public university. similar to muñoz-marín (2009), they found that the assessment practices in the french component were “heterogeneous due to the subjectivity of conceptions, beliefs, pedagogical knowledge and experiences and the lack of continuous training” of the teachers, who “followed the institutional regulations strictly” (gonzález & ríos, 2010, p. 133, translated from spanish). they also found poor test figure 2. different methods used to collect information in the reviewed articles video recordings think-aloud protocols surveys students’ written texts questionnaries pre-test/post-test portfolios journals interviews focus group exams data documents discussion sessions class observations assessment forms audio-taped conversations 0 2 4 6 8 10 12 235profile: issues teach. prof. dev., vol. 24 no. 2, jul-dec, 2022. issn 1657-0790 (printed) 2256-5760 (online). bogotá, colombia. pages 231-245 colombian scholars’ discussion about language assessment: a review of five journals design and lack of sound assessment tools. although the authors evidenced an effort to use new assessment practices centered on competences, the main purpose of assessment was still conceived as to classifying, selecting, and punishing in practices in which the teachers’ power prevailed. similarly, faustino et al. (2013) found heterogeneous assessment practices and agreed that it was due to the particular conditions of their institution, a public university; echoing muñoz-marín’s (2009) and gonzález and ríos’s (2010) findings, they explained that this heterogeneity derived from the absence of a common assessment system in their teaching program and the knowledge and experience of the teachers involved. the analysis of the french and english courses syllabi in their language teacher education program revealed the use of both formative and summative assessment, presented as continuous and fixed-point assessment, respectively. there were also indications of alternative assessment—portfolios being the main instrument— and the use of selfand peer-assessment. nevertheless, faustino et al. considered that there was more evidence of summative assessment, probably due to institutional requirements. despite this, the authors highlighted that the participating teachers’ agreement about the final grade came from the weighing of a variety of activities rather than from one single assessment at the end of the course. arias et al. (2012) implemented an action-research study focusing on an agreed assessment system in three different foreign language programs. this was closely related to assessment practice and its implications, derived from a prior study that had revealed a lack of coherence between language assessment and student promotion. this system was presented as a means of articulating assessment practices that “allow to reach consensus between teachers and administrators and promote coherence by offering common criteria and the same language about assessment” (arias et al., 2012, p. 102, translated from spanish). the assessment system was general, flexible, and it could be adapted to the particularities of different programs, as well as being rigorous and continuous. as a result of the implementation, assessment practices turned into fair and democratic practices that benefited students, teachers, and institutions. another topic discussed relating to fair and democratic assessment was the use of rubrics that were agreed upon by both teachers and students. in this respect, picón-jácome (2013)—in an article of reflection based on his own pedagogical experience—gave an account of the highly positive impact that involving students in the design of rubrics had. as he explained, not only did it increase the assessment validity and transparency, but also promoted student participation—which turned it into a democratic assessment practice—and ensured formative assessment. the author argued that teachers should use equitable and democratic forms of evaluation and proposed the use of inclusive and democratic rubrics to facilitate students’ learning. table 1 presents a summary of the common findings in this category of assessment practices. table 1. common findings in the category of assessment practices studies common findings muñoz-marín (2009) gonzález & ríos (2010) faustino et al. (2013) assessment practices in the language classroom are heterogeneous. this is because they rely on the teachers’ experience and preferences when there is absence of a common assessment system in the language programs. arias et al. (2012) picón-jácome (2013) assessment practices become fair and democratic when there is participation of different stakeholders (administrators, teachers, and students) in the design and implementation. universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras236 hernández-ocampo beliefs about assessment although fewer articles address the issue of beliefs about assessment, some scholars recognized that they played an important role in teachers’ assessment practices (gonzález & ríos, 2010; muñoz-marín, 2009). lópez-mendoza and bernal-arandia (2009)—in a qualitative study that examined 82 teachers’ perceptions about language assessment—found that the level of training in language assessment impacted their perception about it. teachers with no training, the authors concluded, tended to have a negative perception of language assessment or associated assessment to grades and institutional requirements mainly; conversely, teachers who had had formal training in assessment viewed it as a part of teaching and as a tool to promote learning. for this reason—as well as this finding, in the same study, that there was little published research in the field of assessment and few assessment courses offered by universities in both undergraduate and graduate language teaching programs—the authors recommended that teachers should receive training in language assessment before they started teaching the language and advocated for the professionalization of teachers in the field of assessment. similarly, muñoz et al. (2012)—in an empirical research study that aimed to identify the beliefs of a group of 62 teachers about assessment—found that teachers’ beliefs did not match their practice completely. the study revealed that, although the participating teachers considered formative assessment relevant in enhancing their students’ learning, they tended to focus on summative assessment. the authors also argued that in order to change teachers’ assessment practices, their beliefs should be taken into account in the implementation of new assessment systems. in fact, three of the reasons for change in the assessment practices that the participating teachers acknowledged were professional development, self-discovery, and institutional policy. self-discovery, muñoz et al. considered, allows teachers to be aware of their beliefs and how their teaching reflects them; as this happens, teachers “will be more able to change their beliefs and practices in a constructive and beneficial way” (p. 155). these scholars focused on the need to strengthen efforts to promote the practice of formative assessment which, in their view, could be accomplished within professional development programs. areiza-restrepo (2013), for his part, carried out a qualitative study to examine students’ views of formative assessment as well as their perceptions of the implementation of this system in their language course. the author found that his students viewed formative assessment as a tool that helped them “become aware of their weaknesses and strengths in their communicative competence and of the situations in which this awareness arose; and thanks to fa [formative assessment] they experienced a sense of achievement because they realized they had learned” (p. 173). also, with respect to the implementation of the formative assessment system in their class, students perceived this as a transparent process. as a result of this experience, the author called on teachers to involve their students in democratic assessment practices that include their voices in the description of learning outcomes in their course. in similar fashion, rojas-serrano (2017) wanted to know how students who were used to quantitative assessment viewed the qualitative assessment system at an english institute, as well as the perception they had about the alternative assessment activities he gave them. the author found that it took students some time to get used to qualitative assessment; they felt that quantitative assessment was more accurate at the moment of a “non-pass” situation, for example. however, students saw some benefits in the new alternative assessments they were given, such as being able to recognize their strengths and weaknesses—in agreement with areizarestrepo (2013)—, lowering anxiety during assessment, and receiving feedback. in the end, rojas-serrano acknowledged that alternative assessment demands a lot of time and energy from the teachers, added to the 237profile: issues teach. prof. dev., vol. 24 no. 2, jul-dec, 2022. issn 1657-0790 (printed) 2256-5760 (online). bogotá, colombia. pages 231-245 colombian scholars’ discussion about language assessment: a review of five journals skills involved this category represents the topic that colombian researchers find most interesting in the field of assessment. the studies in this category focus on the use of different assessment forms or tools relating to or aiming at the development of skills such as writing, speaking, critical thinking, and argumentation. in the first case, espitia and cruz-corzo (2013) analyzed the use of peer-feedback to help students improve their writing skills through online interaction. in a case study report, the authors described how students undertook the task of giving online feedback to their peers’ written compositions and how students reacted to such peer-evaluation, helping them to improve their writing skills. students were involved in the construction of rubrics to assess their peers’ texts and, in doing so, they became aware of what was expected from their own written production. as a result, students’ writing showed linguistic improvement. however, espitia and cruz-corzo found that the students’ beliefs regarding authority in assessment prevented them from giving feedback to their peers more actively. students believed that it was the teacher’s job and did not consider that their partners’ feedback would be appropriate. despite this, with their involvement in the construction of rubrics, students showed that they were more willing to accept their peers’ comments. similarly, gómez-delgado and mcdougald (2013) examined the role of peer-feedback in the development of coherence in writing. in an action-research study that involved students’ feedback to their partners’ blog entries, the researchers found that by exchanging feedback through informal writing exercises students improved or maintained coherence—specifically regarding text unity and clarity—in a text. they also found that this practice shaped students’ cognition and affection. with respect to assessment of oral production, pineda (2014) reported the experience of a study group with the design and use of a rubric to assess students’ oral performance. the author described the process of designing and training teachers to use a rubric to assess the oral performance of young learners at the beginner level, a process that took at least two years. findings suggested that, in general, teachers who participated in the study found that the rubric was practical and easy to use, although some of them confirmed that it was difficult to get used to using it. they acknowledged the importance of being trained to use the rubric and also “discovered in need to train students in it, but it is worthwhile since this kind of assessment fosters reflection and autonomy, and students do appreciate the benefits. more recently, giraldo (2018a) explored the beliefs and practices that a group of 60 english teachers held when designing an achievement test. he found that this group of teachers believed that the designed tests should meet four principles of assessment; these tests should be valid, reliable, authentic, and provide positive washback. also, the study revealed that the teachers’ practices in the design of the test reflected their beliefs to a great extent. table 2 summarizes the common findings in this category. table 2. common findings in the category of beliefs about assessment studies common findings lópez-mendoza & bernalarandia (2009) muñoz et al. (2012) beliefs play a leading role in teachers’ practices. they are affected by teachers’ training in assessment and need to be addressed so that changes in assessment practices really happen. areiza-restrepo (2013) rojas-serrano (2017) students’ beliefs about formative assessment changed positively, although with some difficulty due to their familiarity with quantitative assessment. universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras238 hernández-ocampo the rubric a tool for obtaining evidence of their students’ performance, helping students become aware of their weaknesses and strengths, and making them responsible for their learning needs” (pineda, 2014, p. 192). in another study involving speaking, gómez-sará (2016) identified the linguistic, affective, and cognitive needs of a group of 14 in-service teachers working at a private school and proposed a strategy that involved peer-assessment and a corpus to address such needs. the pedagogical intervention had two stages: (a) a training stage, in which participants became familiar with the study and with the peer-assessment forms and the corpus, and (b) a main implementation stage, during which the author collected information. through qualitative analysis of the data, the researcher found that the strategies used in her study (peer-assessment and the corpus) impacted the participants’ oral production positively as they became more willing to improve, used compensatory strategies, and constructed a personalized version of the corpus. nonetheless, the participating teachers tended to over-depend on the corpus and to under-assess their peers. the third study related to the assessment of speaking was carried out by caicedo-pereira et al. (2018), in which they examined the use of self-assessment to improve the oral production of a group of 27 participants. the researchers looked into the impact of self-assessing recorded videos of ielts-like oral tasks using an adapted version of the ielts rubric, and they focused on the assessment of grammar accuracy and grammatical range only. through both qualitative and quantitative data analysis, the authors found that participants could recognize their flaws and establish a route to improve and overcome their shortcomings. also, as they were able to become aware of their own improvement after analyzing subsequent videos, their motivation increased noticeably. the development of critical thinking was another aspect aimed at being fostered through assessment. torresdíaz (2009), in a qualitative study at a public school, analyzed the use of portfolios and peerand self-assessment in order to enhance critical thinking skills in her students. she found that writing portfolios fostered the students’ autonomy since they could explore their interests and set the path to follow in their learning process. in doing this, students were able to reflect on their own progress from a critical perspective, deciding what they needed to improve (self-assessment practice). also, as students had to read their partners’ portfolios, they made comments on their peers’ work. the researcher found that her students were open to receiving their peers’ feedback and, based on that, they reflected on their own work and took actions to improve it. all in all, torres-díaz found that the use of portfolios accompanied by peerand self-assessment practices helped develop critical thinking skills such as self-examination and self-regulation. the last in this group of skills involved in assessment focused on developing argumentation skills with the practice of peer-assessment. ubaque-casallas and pinilla-castellanos (2016) carried out an action-research project to help their students overcome the difficulties in developing their ideas when there was class discussion. the researchers provided students with argumentation outlines and, when it was shown that it was not enough to help them develop their arguments, they incorporated peer-assessment. they concluded that through the assessment of oral tasks learners created individual knowledge regarding their own argumentation skills and abilities to be used in connection with certain vocabulary. [the constructed knowledge was] also the result of a collaborative endeavor where peers co-constructed new learning schemas that helped modify the existing ones. (ubaque-casallas & pinilla-castellanos, 2016, p. 118) what is more, according to the authors, students’ engagement in peer-assessment of oral performance in class discussions fostered reflection on their own argumentative skills and this resulted in more self-reflective speakers who assumed agency in the development of their arguments when discussing topics in class. the common findings in this category are shown in table 3. 239profile: issues teach. prof. dev., vol. 24 no. 2, jul-dec, 2022. issn 1657-0790 (printed) 2256-5760 (online). bogotá, colombia. pages 231-245 colombian scholars’ discussion about language assessment: a review of five journals testing four papers reported studies that addressed the issue of language testing. in the first one, lópez and janssen (2010) examined the ecaes1 english exam validity. through content evaluation sessions with 15 university english teachers and think-aloud protocols with 13 university students, the researchers framed a validity argument (in favor and against) from evidence based on the following aspects which emerged as categories in the analysis: interactiveness, impact, construct, and authenticity of the exam under scrutiny. they found that, despite the positive evidence for the validity, negative evidence was stronger to build a case against the validity of the test in the way it was then designed. in their words: 1) general english language proficiency cannot be accurately judged from this test; 2) we cannot make responsible generalizations about the test takers’ english language ability beyond the testing situation; and 3) we cannot make responsible predictions about the test takers’ ability to use the english language in real-life situations. the central problem in the validation argument for the ecaes english exam in its current form is that it is being used to describe a student’s english language level based on the cefr. (lópez & janssen, 2010, p. 443) the second paper reported on a quantitative study that aimed to respond whether students had reached 1 the ecaes (quality of higher-education test, for its acronym in spanish) examines the students’ competences in the last year of undergraduate programs. the language level required for graduation in a language teaching program. this study was framed within the language teaching program evaluation. kostina (2012) used the results of the institutional proficiency exam in a six-year period to identify the english level that their students had reached by the end of their program. she found that about half of the students reached the expected b2 level. this proved, according to the author, that it was necessary to take action to help students improve their language proficiency not only at the classroom level, but also at curricular level. third in this group was a paper that reported on a quantitative study by janssen and meier (2013), who aimed at determining the efficacy of the reading subsection in a placement test for doctoral students. with the use of descriptive statistics, reliability estimates, and measures of item facility and discrimination, the researchers found that this section of the test was highly reliable. nonetheless, the study revealed that some items, specifically those involving vocabulary and grammar, appeared to be very easy to the test-taker population and the researchers suggested that test developers should create more challenging items of these kinds. janssen and meier also addressed the relevance of involving local instructors in continuous test development processes, which could result in sounder assessment practices. lastly, palacio et al. (2016) examined the validity and reliability of tests designed in alignment with an english program for adults in a private university. these were criterion-referenced, discrete-point tests table 3. common findings in the category of skills involved studies common findings espitia & cruz-corzo (2013) gómez-delgado & mcdougald (2013) the development of students’ writing production was enhanced with peer-feedback. gómez-sará (2016) caicedo-pereira et al. (2018) oral production was also improved using selfand peer-assessment. torres-díaz (2009) ubaque-casallas & pinilla-castellanos (2016) critical thinking and argumentation skills were also positively affected through the implementation of selfand peer-assessment practices in the classroom. universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras240 hernández-ocampo administered at certain moments during the semester. using the same tools as janssen and meier (2013) plus correlational analysis, the researchers found that the developed set of tests were reliable and valid. the validity arguments for these classroom assessments that the researchers created were categorized in terms of content—meeting course standards—, consequences— pass/fail decisions that might delay graduation for students—, and values implications—as designed tests reflected the institutional teaching values. they also found that this involvement of teachers in the design of curriculum-related items for the tests impacted teaching and assessment practices. the common finding in this category is shown in table 4. table 4. common finding in the category of testing studies common finding lópez & janssen (2010) janssen & meier (2013) palacio et al. (2016) what researchers aimed at in these studies was to determine the validity and reliability of different tests. they highlighted the importance of involving teachers in this type of studies since it helped them improve their classroom assessment practices. teacher education and development this review showed that the researchers advocated teacher training in assessment or evaluation; the emphasis, however, was on teacher development (targeting in-service teachers) rather than on teacher education (targeting preservice teachers). to start with, lópez-mendoza and bernal-arandia (2009), in their study to examine teachers’ perception about language assessment, reviewed the curricula of 27 undergraduate and seven graduate language teacher education programs in colombia. they found that very few of these programs offered training in either educational or language assessment. because of this finding—and the impact that training in assessment had on teachers’ perceptions (see category beliefs about assessment) and, therefore on assessment practices—, the researchers strongly suggested that all prospective teachers take at least a course in language testing before they start teaching, and should strive to better themselves through in-service training, conferences, workshops and so forth to create a language assessment culture for improvement in language education. (lópez-mendoza & bernal-arandia, 2009, p. 66) janssen et al. (2014)—in an article that exemplified the use of classical testing theory and item response theory—tried to provide language teachers with assessment knowledge that they could use to develop sound classroom assessments. the authors demonstrated the use of these two theories to understand the performance of a placement test. this they did, responding to their belief about promoting assessment literacy and hoping that “program teachers begin to inform themselves from a variety of perspectives about the quality of the instruments they are designing and employing” (janssen et al., 2014, p. 181) so that the uses teachers make of tests are fair, proper, and valid. herrera and macías (2015) advocated teacher development in language assessment calling for the improvement of teachers’ lal. however, as the key point in this article of reflection was lal, i decided to group it in the following category. also dealing with lal, but highlighting the professional development of preservice language teachers, giraldo and murcia (2019) looked into the impact that a language assessment course had in students of an undergraduate language teaching program. the course first presented students with theory about language assessment and how this was reflected in designed 241profile: issues teach. prof. dev., vol. 24 no. 2, jul-dec, 2022. issn 1657-0790 (printed) 2256-5760 (online). bogotá, colombia. pages 231-245 colombian scholars’ discussion about language assessment: a review of five journals language assessment literacy lal is one of the most recent trends in the discussion about language assessment. in colombia, based on this journal review, the first researchers to address this topic explicitly were herrera and macías (2015). in an article of reflection, the authors attempted to raise awareness of the relevance of lal and claimed that more preparation and development were necessary. they defined both assessment literacy and lal, presenting a review of studies in lal in teacher education, and suggesting what could be included in the knowledge base of lal based on contributions by different authors. furthermore, herrera and macías recommended a questionnaire—adapted from fulcher’s (2012)—to diagnose teachers’ lal needs. this instrument, the authors argued, helped teacher educators to “determine efl teachers’ current knowledge and awareness of the many aspects that are involved in lal” (herrera & macías, 2015, p. 308). finally, they claimed that, in teacher education, coursework assessment should be given the same attention as instruction. later, giraldo (2018b)—in another article of reflection—showed how the scope of lal has expanded to different stakeholders, for example. he also presented a list of lal contents for language teachers based on his theoretical exploration. the author acknowledged that “this list is not meant to be an authoritative account of what lal actually is for language teachers” (giraldo, 2018b, p. 191); instead, he expected that this would serve to stimulate discussion in lal for language teachers in particular. backing up his attempt to raise awareness of the relevance of lal and its implications in the design of sound assessments, giraldo (2019a) states that “language assessments can be influenced by three major components: theoretical ideas that apply to language assessments, technical issues that represent professional design, and contextual and institutional policies in which language assessment occurs” (p. 133). in this article of reflection, the author described the central qualities of language assessments and provided guidelines for the design of useful assessments. also, the author used a sample of a listening exam to prove how the poor design of any assessment can be detrimental. giraldo closed his reflection by noting that teachers needed to reflect on the assessments they designed and to consider the three components that, in his view, influenced language assessments; in this way teachers would be able to make sound interpretations of their students’ language ability and potentiate their learning. tests. the second part of the course was devoted to the design of items and tasks for language assessment and carried out peer-assessment to improve them. in the last part of the course, students discussed issues related to language assessment in colombia. the study revealed that the course had great impact on the students’ conceptions of language assessment and provided them with a wide theoretical framework used to design language assessments. table 5 shows the common finding in this category. table 5. common finding in the category of teacher education and development studies common finding lópez-mendoza & bernalarandia (2009) janssen et al. (2014) herrera & macías (2015) giraldo & murcia (2019) researchers advocated the professionalization of language teachers in assessment, not only through teacher development programs but also in their initial language teaching education. universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras242 hernández-ocampo giraldo (2019b) also examined the lal of five colombian teachers of english through their practices and beliefs regarding assessment. in this qualitative study, the author identified six major categories to describe his participants’ contextual lal: practices, beliefs, knowledge, skill, principles, and needs. according to the researcher, the study revealed that the participants used both formative and summative assessments in their classrooms; the knowledge that participating teachers reported aligned with what the literature evidenced in terms of validity and methods of assessment. first of all, the teachers reported having affective skills related to assessment—which the author connected to the particularities of the context. furthermore, feedback was regarded as a principle of language assessment practice in their classrooms. in addition, the author believed that teachers would benefit from more training in language assessment focusing on theoretical and practical issues of testing. finally, the author claimed that these findings could serve as a baseline for lal development programs. in another article of reflection, giraldo (2020a) discussed the need to expand research methodologies to better understand teachers’ lal. he proposed adopting the post-positivist and interpretive paradigm to help reveal the complexities of lal as situated practice. the author described different research constructs in the field as well as different qualitative methodologies that could be used in the further construction of knowledge about teachers’ lal. last in this group, giraldo (2020b) showed, in a reflection article, how language teachers could benefit from the use of basic statistics to understand test scores in their classrooms. in doing so, the author introduced descriptive statistics—aimed at describing scores and their behavior—, and evaluative statistics—focusing on the determination of test quality. giraldo, in agreement with janssen et al. (2014), considered that the use of statistics helped teachers not only to decide on the quality of the tests they use in the classroom, but also to raise their lal levels which, in the end, would redound in more appropriate assessment practices, better teaching, and, therefore, better learning. table 6 shows the common finding in this category. table 6. common finding in the category of language assessment literacy studies common finding herrera & macías (2015) giraldo (2018b) giraldo (2019a) giraldo (2020a) giraldo (2020b) in these articles of reflection there was a common concern about providing teachers with different tools to help them become more language-assessment literate, which—according to the researchers—would redound in sounder classroom assessment practices. conclusion and further considerations this review shows that colombian scholars’ interests in language assessment in the last decade have been varied, as varied are the assessment practices some of them found in their research. not only is this enriching for the discussion in the field, but it is also necessary to have a more comprehensive understanding of language assessment, its possibilities and implications. with regard to the issues involved in the current global discussion, presented in the introduction of this paper, none of the articles i reviewed addressed the issue of justice in language assessment. there was, however, some interest in addressing the issue of fairness when, for example, some scholars proposed the use of democratic practices of assessment or when the principles of assessment 243profile: issues teach. prof. dev., vol. 24 no. 2, jul-dec, 2022. issn 1657-0790 (printed) 2256-5760 (online). bogotá, colombia. pages 231-245 colombian scholars’ discussion about language assessment: a review of five journals were tackled. lal, for its part, appeared as an emerging interest in the colombian language teaching community. the researchers who addressed the issue of assessment practices found that these varied widely due to lack of training, personal experiences, and absence of an approach established by the teacher education programs. although this seems to be negative, it sheds light on what needs to be addressed in an attempt to help our teachers carry out sounder assessment practices. carrying out varied assessments is recommended as long as they are sound practices that respond well to the context where they are developed and result in improving learning. on the other hand, beliefs have been proved to play an important role in the practices of assessment— on the teachers’ part—and this is why some scholars recommended taking into account teachers’ beliefs so that changes can really happen. the relationship between beliefs, practices, and training is a cycle expected to become virtuous as long as teachers become aware of their practices, reflect on them, identify needs, address them, and modify their beliefs concerning assessment. on the students’ part, beliefs were studied to determine how they experienced particular forms of assessment. this is also helpful in the reflection about practices and identification of needs in the assessment cycle. regarding the improvement of language skills, the use of self-assessment and peer-assessment was frequent. whenever there was explicit reference to peerassessment, self-assessment appeared to be involved. this shows high scholarly interest in the promotion of alternative assessment to foster students’ autonomy and language learning. we teachers need to make students aware of the benefits of these practices and train them in carrying them out constantly. despite the fact that some students considered that assessment was a teachers’ job, teachers do not need to check their work all the time to make sure that assessment, in the form of feedback, is correct. if learning goals are clearly stated and students know them, they can track their learning themselves and do the same with their peers. scholars were also interested in discussing principles of language assessment and testing. this is indeed relevant. however, it is also important to bring this discussion to the classroom setting and examine more often whether classroom-based assessment meets those principles that need to be adapted to the context. finally, there was a common call for training in language assessment in teacher education and development programs. this was strongly linked to the discussion involving lal. some scholars ventured to propose what could constitute a knowledge base of lal, others suggested instruments to establish knowledge and needs of lal. there were also recommendations to use tools that help teachers understand and take advantage of tests results, and suggestions about research methodologies and constructs to expand the knowledge of lal for teachers. these, however, were presented mostly in articles of reflection, based on the experience of the author or theoretical reviews. while this is not negative at all, it is necessary to have more empirical-based research that looks into the particularities of contexts, for example. this is an invitation for language teachers to be more attentive to their assessment practices and take notes more systematically on what happens in their classrooms so that more action research, to say the least, allows us to build more knowledge about classroom assessment within the language teacher community. references areiza-restrepo, h. n. 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(2016). argumentation skills: a peer assessment approach to discussions in the efl classroom. profile: issues in teachers’ professional development, 18(2), 111–123. https:// doi.org/10.15446/profile.v18n2.53314 about the author sonia patricia hernández-ocampo is a teacher educator and phd candidate in education. her research interests include language assessment literacy, teacher education, and interculturality. she is a member of the research groups lenguaje, discurso y complejidad (universidad javeriana) and educación para el bilingüismo y el multilingüismo (uniandes). acknowledgments i would like to thank dr. anne-marie truscott de mejia and professor magda rodriguez-uribe for their generosity and willingness to read this paper and all their suggestions to improve it. https://doi.org/10.25100/lenguaje.v38i2.4916 https://doi.org/10.1177/0265532213480129 https://doi.org/10.1080/15434303.2011.565438 https://doi.org/10.15446/profile.v18n2.53302 https://doi.org/10.15446/profile.v18n2.53302 https://doi.org/10.15446/profile.v16n1.43203 https://doi.org/10.15446/profile.v19n2.57178 https://doi.org/10.15446/profile.v19n2.57178 https://doi.org/10.1177/0265532213480128 https://doi.org/10.1080/15434300802606440 https://doi.org/10.1080/15434300802606440 https://doi.org/10.1017/s0267190509090035 https://doi.org/10.1017/s0267190509090035 https://doi.org/10.15446/profile.v18n2.53314 https://doi.org/10.15446/profile.v18n2.53314 english language preservice teachers’ identity construction within academic and other communities 247profile: issues teach. prof. dev., vol. 24 no. 1, jan-jun, 2022. issn 1657-0790 (printed) 2256-5760 (online). bogotá, colombia. pages 247-260 https://doi.org/10.15446/profile.v24n1.93110 english language preservice teachers’ identity construction within academic and other communities la construcción de identidad de los futuros docentes de inglés dentro de las comunidades académicas y otras comunidades julia posada-ortiz1 universidad distrital francisco josé de caldas, bogotá, colombia this article reports on a doctoral research that sought to unveil the identities present in the communities to which four english as a foreign language preservice teachers belong. the study was carried out with a decolonial perspective that included an interepistemic dialogue among narrative inquiry, narrative pedagogy, and the indigenous research paradigm. the main instrument of data collection was autobiographies. the participants and the researcher analysed data jointly. the findings indicate that the preservice teachers’ identity construction is mutable and not essentialised. mutable as it changes over time and not essentialised since it involves social, cultural, and personal dimensions. keywords: communities, identity, preservice teacher education, professional identity este artículo reporta una investigación de doctorado que buscaba identificar las identidades presentes en las comunidades a las que pertenece un grupo de futuros docentes de inglés. el estudio tiene una perspectiva descolonial que promueve un diálogo interepistémico entre la indagación narrativa, la pedagogía narrativa y el paradigma de la investigación indígena. el principal instrumento de recopilación de datos fue la autobiografía. los hallazgos indican que la construcción de la identidad de los futuros docentes de inglés es mutable y no esencializada. mutable ya que cambia con el tiempo y no esencializada ya que involucra dimensiones sociales, culturales y personales. palabras clave: comunidades, identidad, formación docente inicial, identidad profesional 1 julia posada-ortiz  https://orcid.org/0000-0001-8919-5286 · email: jzposadao@udistrital.edu.co how to cite this article (apa, 7th ed.): posada-ortiz, j. (2022). english language preservice teachers’ identity construction within academic and other communities. profile: issues in teachers’ professional development, 24(1), 247–260. https://doi.org/10.15446/profile.v24n1.93110 this article was received on january 27, 2021 and accepted on october 15, 2021. this is an open access article distributed under the terms of the creative commons license attribution-noncommercial-noderivatives 4.0 international license. consultation is possible at https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/ https://doi.org/10.15446/profile.v24n1.93110 https://orcid.org/0000-0001-8919-5286 mailto:jzposadao@udistrital.edu.co https://doi.org/10.15446/profile.v24n1.93110 https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/ universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras248 posada-ortiz introduction language teacher identities (ltis) have gained considerable attention during the last decades (barkhuizen, 2017; miller, 2009; torres-rocha, 2019; varghese et al., 2005). according to norton (2013), identity must be understood in relational terms, a concept that suggests that individual teachers need to join the communities to which they desire to belong (barkhuizen, 2017). in this sense, ltis are “struggle and harmony: they are contested and resisted, by self and others, they are also accepted, acknowledged and valued by self and by others” (barkhuizen, 2017, p. 7). the purpose of this article is to show the identities present in the communities to which four english as a foreign language (efl) preservice teachers belong and how these identities contribute to the construction of their professional identity. i would also like to point that, rather than problematizing the issue of identity that would give way to a doctoral thesis on its own, what i intend in this article is to acknowledge the identities that emerged in the joint analysis that was carried out with the participants that i will call research collaborators. the results of this research might contribute toward enhancing the knowledge of identity construction from a situated perspective. within the modern concepts of community, namely, communities of practice (wenger, 1998), target communities (higgins, 2012), and imagined communities (anderson, 1983), the efl preservice teachers are constructed as apprentices, native speakers vs. non-native speakers. according to norton (2013), english language learners might resist or accept identities that are presented and sometimes imposed on them, an idea that also applies to efl preservice teachers. in doing so, these dominant discourses construct essentializing discursive “borders” of who individuals “are,” and “can” and/or “should” be or become, both in terms of the ownership, learning, use, and instruction of english in elt, and of community membership in the context in which the elt is constructed and located. (yazan & rudolph, 2018, p. 7) according to yazan and rudolph (2018), we can imagine that essentialisation leaves little room for the efl preservice teachers’ identity construction. however, this would mean ignoring individuals’ agency in their learning and decision-making process. the research collaborators of this study presented different identities within the constellation of communities they belong to: a constellation of communities inside and outside scholarship and in which they negotiate different identities. due to the characteristics of the research process, the research collaborators presented the identities associated with their daily life and practices. this is the reason why we found identities not only connected to their academic life, but also to other communities, such as their family and interest groups. in what comes next, i will describe how preservice teachers’ identities construction has been studied recently and the commonalities and differences between those studies and the one i carried out. efl preservice teachers’ identity construction identity construction is the process through which a person comes to define who they are. a key element of identity construction is identification, that is, the extent to which a person internalizes a given identity or part of it as a self-concept (ashforth & schinoff, 2016). the efl preservice teachers’ identity construction has been studied in latin america and colombia from a local perspective. this perspective has shown the confluence of four different factors. firstly, the efl preservice teachers’ previous experiences as learners, identification with teachers they admire and whom they want to emulate, construction, de-construction, and re-construction of their projected identities according to the experiences they live day by day, as well as a commitment to grow personally and professionally (quintero-polo, 2016; torres-cepeda & ramos-holguín, 2019). secondly, social interactions 249profile: issues teach. prof. dev., vol. 24 no. 1, jan-jun, 2022. issn 1657-0790 (printed) 2256-5760 (online). bogotá, colombia. pages 247-260 english language preservice teachers’ identity construction within academic and other communities and experiences within their learning environments that involve professional and personal dimensions (salinas & ayala, 2018). thirdly, overcoming imposed marginalising conditions (quintero & guerrero, 2018); negotiations that involve emotions such as love, desire, imagination, and fluidity (sarasa, 2016; sarasa & porta, 2018; valencia, 2017). finally, archanjo et al. (2019) and viáfara (2016) found that in the construction of their identities, the efl preservice teachers still struggle to achieve native speaker proficiency. the studies mentioned above share some similarities to the ones carried out by timmerman (2009) and izadinia (2015). according to timmerman, preservice teachers’ identities construction is a longstanding process to develop a professional identity in which role models—especially the secondary school teachers’ role—are a key factor due to the vivid memories the preservice teachers have about them. izadinia found an interplay between mentoring relationships and the development of the professional identity of preservice teachers. timmerman’s and izadinia’s recognition of role models is related to the identifications and disidentifications mentioned by torres-cepeda and ramos-holguín (2019). although these studies have focused on identity construction, these views have been constructed from the researchers’ perspective and do not acknowledge the identities the preservice teachers identify by themselves as does this study. the description of the identity construction of the english language preservice teachers made by the scholars mentioned above shows that these studies are moving beyond dichotomies such as master/ apprentice, opening the room for an emergent body of literature drawing on socio-cultural studies, and postcolonial, postmodern, and poststructuralist theories in approaching identity (méndez & clavijo-olarte, 2017; yazan & rudolph, 2018). the efl preservice teachers’ identities, present in the communities described by the research collaborators of this study, also move beyond the essential and monolithic identities that the modern view of community envisions for them. the efl preservice teachers who collaborated on this project belong to a constellation of communities that drive them to undertake agentic initiatives through which they “exert control over [their learning and decision-making processes] and give direction to the course of [their life]” (huang & benson, 2013, p. 13). the research collaborators identified their families, primary and high schools, the university, and transmedia communities, among others, as their main communities. within these communities, they present different identities through which they develop a sense of self over time that represents what they would like to become, and are afraid of becoming, as well as the attributes they believe they ought to possess. in a nutshell, their possible selves (markus & nurius, 1986). context and research collaborators this study was carried out with four students from a public university in bogotá (colombia); they are part of an english language teacher education programme that is characterised by a critical pedagogy approach and that has a strong focus on developing the research skills of the efl preservice teachers (posada-ortiz & garzónduarte, 2014). the ages of the participants ranged from 17 to 25 years and at the time the data were collected they were in the sixth semester of the programme. according to the decolonial turn (grosfoguel, 2011; maldonado-torres, 2008; mignolo & walsh, 2018, among others), names and concepts matter (ortiz-ocaña & arias-lópez, 2019); therefore, the participants in this project are called “research collaborators” because they were people with whom i worked throughout the research process and we all were accountable. this is also the reason why, instead of a data collection process and analysis, i will refer to an interaction to exchange and generate knowledge since i carried out a research process with the efl preservice teachers and not about universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras250 posada-ortiz them. i worked with luna, marcela, santiago, and camilo,1 who volunteered to take part in this study. type of study this study is framed within qualitative research. it was designed with a decolonial perspective that includes an interepistemic dialogue (parra & gutiérrez, 2018) among narrative pedagogy (np), narrative inquiry (ni), and the indigenous research paradigm (irp). although np, ni, and the irp seek to decenter the ways research is conducted by privileging the participants’ voices, the first two approaches are framed within the western qualitative paradigm and the latter incorporates ancestral traditions (kaltmeier, 2012). these three approaches were used taking into account their intersections and resonances, one of them being the use of narratives to understand how people make sense of their life, place, and history, and how they give shape and meaning to their experiences and life in the interplay with others (barkhuizen et al., 2013; goodson & gill, 2011; webster & mertova, 2007). moreover, they promote the co-construction of knowledge, dialogue, and respect (posada-ortiz, 2021). therefore, np, ni, and the irp were useful to understand the identities present in the different communities the preservice teachers belong to from their own perspective and aided the design of the research methodology. thus, the interepistemic dialogue allows an expansion of western qualitative research by incorporating the indigenous epistemology that stands on the principles of holism, equalizing asymmetry, and flux (kovach, 2018). holism refers to the connection of the universe around us as human beings, including the spiritual energies. asymmetry entails negotiation that emulates the balance the universe creates through interconnectivity and coexistence. equalizing asymmetry minimizes the dual superiority/inferiority relationship and individualism in concepts such as property ownership that character1 pseudonyms used to protect the participants’ identity. izes western research. flux is about the evidence of the two former principles in our daily lives, which are in constant flux, that is, they come in cycles and follow repetitive patterns. we applied these principles as we agreed on where to carry out the sessions to write our autobiographies and where to publish them. we analysed data together thus letting go of the privileged role of the researcher. this is how we met at a yoga centre, a place that let us approach the project not only as an academic endeavour but also as an encounter in which we learned who we were, are, and want to become. we decided to post the autobiographies in blogs and we agreed on poetic representation as a means to show data. np, ni, and the irp rely on narratives to understand how people make sense of their experiences and, for that reason, narratives are key to understanding identity construction (barkhuizen, 2011). the main instrument of data collection was the efl preservice autobiographies because, according to larrosa (1995), the use of autobiographies in initial teacher education is a pedagogical practice that allows producing and mediating certain subjectivation forms, in which the one who reflects, modifies, and analyses their own experience is the one who writes it. we also used the transcriptions of the sessions that i describe in what comes next. interaction to exchange and generate knowledge the data were collected in five sessions. each session followed a protocol as a way to show respect towards the research collaborators since everyone knows what they are expected to do. these sessions consisted of a mindfulness exercise, writing about a topic jointly selected, reading aloud the written document, and a session of questions (if there were any) focused on those aspects we had listened to and wanted to know more about in-depth. the sessions were organized in talking circles (chilisa, 2012), which is an ancestral tradition that 251profile: issues teach. prof. dev., vol. 24 no. 1, jan-jun, 2022. issn 1657-0790 (printed) 2256-5760 (online). bogotá, colombia. pages 247-260 english language preservice teachers’ identity construction within academic and other communities consists of sitting in a circle to listen to each other without any interruptions; this is why while reading, nobody could be interrupted and the questions came afterwards. this practice allows listening profoundly, which implies active involvement and attention and reciprocity between hearing and being heard as well as seeing and being seen (santos, 2018). it also allows creating a stimulating environment in which democratic and equal participation diminishes power relations and allows the co-construction of knowledge, similar to what happens when dialogic gatherings are used as a centred-person methodology (barros-del-rio et al., 2021). the sessions and autobiographies were carried out in english at the request of camilo, luna, marcela, and santiago. after each session, we shared some refreshments and left with the commitment to write and modify our autobiographies according to what we had done in the sessions. co-construction of knowledge the co-construction of knowledge started when the research collaborators asked me to teach them how to analyse data. i provided them with a chart divided into four columns. in the first column, they had to write their own names; in the second, the communities and identities they had identified in the transcripts and autobiographies; in the third, they had to write the excerpt related to those communities and identities; and, finally, in the fourth column—labelled “comments”— they had to explain what they had written in column two. each research collaborator analysed their own autobiography and i asked for some clarifications when i did not understand the comments. once we identified the communities and identities, we used them as the topics to re-present data by resorting to poetic re-presentation. leavy (2009) and richardson (2001) state that when we use poetic re-presentation, we should resort to excerpts from the narratives that we have, transcribing verbatim what the participants say. thus, this offers the researcher an opportunity to write with the research collaborators and challenge the academic discourse that names, categorizes, and constructs colonized selves (leavy, 2009). in this study, we took excerpts from the autobiographies and sessions in which we had identified the communities and identities. i would like to make clear that by the time poetic re-presentation began, marcela and santiago had already started to work, so they did not write the poems with me. so i asked for their permission to complement the poems on their behalf and they accepted. thus, these poems exhibit a dialogic character (bakhtin, 1984) since they contain marcela’s and santiago’s voices and my perspective. camilo and luna, on the other hand, wrote their own poems following the guidelines by leavy (2009) and richardson (2001). each collection of poems received the same name the research collaborators gave to their blogs. each poem is identified in this paper with roman numerals (poem i, poem ii, etc.). poetic re-presentation contributes to the preservice teachers’ identity construction “as it involves reflective self-construction” (goodson & gill, 2011, p. 140) while selecting and refining the excerpts taken directly from their autobiographies and words from the transcripts (leavy, 2009). the communities identified by the research collaborators can be grouped into kinship and interest/ academic driven communities. within the first group, luna, marcela, and santiago identified their families, and in the second group, camilo, marcela, and santiago described their interest communities. these interest communities are transmedia communities, which i define as a group of digital media technologies and practices around which young people organize their life as members or not members of communities. these technologies include youtube, twitter, facebook, instagram, mobile devices, and video games among others. the practices are related to informal learning, participation, consumption, production, and collaboration in the production of universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras252 posada-ortiz knowledge as well as the configuration of old and new communities in social networks. (posada-ortiz, 2020) the primary and secondary schools, the teacher education programme, and the placement school were signaled by luna, marcela, santiago, and camilo as their academic communities. within these communities they presented the identities i describe below. results the construction of identity within the communities the preservice teachers belong to were grouped into three main categories: (a) becoming a language teacher is linked to my family and origin, (b) exercising agency in transmedia communities, and (c) developing a reflective professional language teacher role. becoming a language teacher is linked to my family and origin most scholars who have studied the lti construction process have concluded that it begins due to an interest in the english language or as a result of rewarding experiences with english in the teachers’ educational settings (archanjo et al., 2019; sarasa, 2016; torres-cepeda & ramos-holguín, 2019). although there are similarities in the findings of this study with these assertions, it was also found that the research collaborators expressed that their interest in becoming language teachers began in their families (their kinship communities) and not necessarily in connection with the language but with larger areas—such as interest in human sciences—or by the desire to change family traditions, as happened with marcela and luna. poem i portrays marcela’s identity construction process as a journey, in which her mother inspires her relatives to move to bogotá. i you may wonder why i chose this path i will start from the very beginning when my mother left her hometown. marcela was born in bogotá and feels she belongs to two cultures, the llanera and rola2 ones, and that she has characteristics of both. this makes marcela interested in these two cultures and, at the same time, in other cultures. she describes her identity as “regional,” meaning: my identity is not determined by geography or ethnicity; rather, i’m pointing to the fact that my identity is influenced by a mixture of two cultures and even by my perceptions of foreign ones. my perception of identity is not static; in contrast, i explicitly say that it can change according to my experiences. (co-construction of knowledge, session 2) marcela feels that having the characteristics of a rola and a llanera, and because she is a language learner, her identity goes beyond the territory and that her “regional identity” is more of a mixture of different cultures, thus showing her bicultural identity, which entails both a local and global identity that “gives [her] a sense of belonging to a worldwide culture” (arnett, 2002, p. 777). marcela is also constructing a glocal professional identity, which refers to a “teacher whose identity is not attached to a particular place but to the world” (quintero & guerrero, 2018, p. 91). marcela spoke of a contrasting identity that opposes the normalized choice in her family of careers related to numbers. she, as her father before her and unlike the other members of the family, leans toward the social sciences. as for luna, she grew up in a family without a father figure but with a strong female presence. she thinks that she can be instrumental in making the women in her family break away from their self-assigned roles (which, perhaps, stem from societal expectations) such as having to care for everybody, even at their own 2 the term rola is used in colombia to refer to someone from bogotá. llanera, on the other hand, is for someone from the eastern part of the country. 253profile: issues teach. prof. dev., vol. 24 no. 1, jan-jun, 2022. issn 1657-0790 (printed) 2256-5760 (online). bogotá, colombia. pages 247-260 english language preservice teachers’ identity construction within academic and other communities expense. luna sees that her mother and grandmother have assumed that role: for example, my grandmother is always worried about everyone, except for herself, and it also happens to me all the time, so…the idea is to break with that thought, that dna…so that the other people, the other women in my family can see that there is another way out. (coconstruction of knowledge, session 3) for luna, that way out is education; through education she can become a heroine who, as a teacher, can contribute not only to changing that traditional role of women but also to improving the school system in colombia. exercising agency in transmedia communities according to archanjo et al. (2019) “pre-service teachers’ identity oscillates between identifying as students and as teachers” (p. 62) and that is one of the reasons why they seek to legitimate their future language teacher’s role and language proficiency by trying to achieve an ideal language level. honing their language skills represents their agentive actions. nevertheless, in this study, the preservice teachers exert agency on developing their whole selves. they seek and take part in cultural interactions in transmedia communities mediated by english and other languages, where they seem to achieve holistic learning. marcela’s, camilo’s, and santiago’s interactions and self-motivated learning in transmedia communities are not defined by institutional authorities “setting standards and providing instruction but from [marcela, camilo, and santiago] observing and communicating with people engaged in the same interests and in the same struggles for status and recognition that they are” (ito et al., 2010, p. 22). that is, they are recognised as speakers of english and of other languages, as nonbinary gender people, and above all, as agents of their own decision-making, growing up, and learning process. in transmedia communities, marcela, camilo, and santiago find relationships that center on their interests, hobbies, and career aspirations. they construct and express their likes and identifications; keep up-to-date; learn about languages, music, and politics; among other things. marcela feels that learning english in transmedia communities is less tense than learning in the classroom and she enjoys it: in order to practice and have more contact with the language, in my free time i watch movies and series. i not only resort to “serious” and “professional” things, but i also enjoy doing things a native speaker would probably do, such as watching talk shows, for example. i like them because i learn a lot of informal vocabulary. (marcela’s blog) in her analysis, marcela noted that she is “an active language learner,” something that she finds “a very positive” trait in her identity building: “i can perceive that the most positive aspect of my identity is the one of a language learner, in these excerpts i want to portray that i am an active language learner” (co-construction of knowledge, session 2). she, as a regular user of transmedia communities, resorts to facebook, twitter, youtube, and instagram not only to learn english but also to learn about politics, economics, korean and pop cultures, among others. santiago, who describes himself as a videogames fan, recognises that, derived from his fondness for videogames, he not only has learned english but also some values for his life. in addition, the english that he learned through games helped him to become very popular in high school, as he helped those students who did not have good results with english. later, this ability to help others would play a very important role in his decision to become a teacher, as i will explain further on. we can see these aspects in these extracts from poems i and ii: universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras254 posada-ortiz i in front of the console i learned sounds and words that allowed me to play and undertake missions english was in all my visions a video games fan i became ii english made me a class hero i helped those who understood zero i enjoyed being a little teacher although at school english was just another subject at home, it was my hobby camilo re-presented youtube, his favourite transmedia, in poem iii. he stated that youtube allows him multiple activities: from watching series to learning the english language, interacting with people from other countries, and developing the identity with which he is most identified: a singer. iii youtube is my daily basis i have to confess there is not a single day that i am not there. i can see video blogs main channels and people all around the world. youtube helps me to discover who i really am what i still have to learn this platform can be chaotic and not reliable at all but if you give it a chance you can enjoy what it has to show: from learning languages, and listening to songs to watch lots of series and even learning to talk. in sum, marcela, santiago, and camilo negotiate different identities in transmedia communities where they interact and carry out activities to construct different aspects of their whole selves, away from the supervising eye of their teachers and parents. this is how marcela identifies herself as an active language learner, camilo as a non-binary gender person, and santiago as a game fan. luna explained to me that she is not keen on transmedia communities. when we talked about transmedia communities she claimed: “i canceled all my social networks, i realize they made me waste my time and, to be honest, i do not miss them” (co-construction of knowledge, session 3). this is an interesting aspect that shows that the so-called “digital natives” is a fixed and monolithic term since “most of the empirical evidence demonstrates that it is not obvious that such a digital generation actually exists homogeneously” (gros et al., 2012, p. 191). therefore, labeling young people as “digital natives” does not acknowledge some young people’s subjectivities and agentic actions, as in luna’s case. developing a reflective professional language teacher role previously, we learned that transmedia communities are interest/academic driven communities where camilo, marcela, and santiago acquire practical and academic knowledge. within these communities, they construct identities related to their whole selves. now we are going to see that these preservice teachers within their academic communities, namely, primary and secondary school, the programme in which they are enrolled, and the placement school where they carry out their practicum, construct their future by foreseeing themselves as transformative intellectuals (giroux, 2001); that is, as free men and women whose function 255profile: issues teach. prof. dev., vol. 24 no. 1, jan-jun, 2022. issn 1657-0790 (printed) 2256-5760 (online). bogotá, colombia. pages 247-260 english language preservice teachers’ identity construction within academic and other communities is to contribute to the education of active and critical citizens. luna, marcela, santiago, and camilo visualize themselves as teachers with the ability to transform the contexts in which they work through reflection and using the language as an excuse for such reflection. for torres-cepeda and ramos-holguín (2019) preservice teachers construct and reconstruct their identities across previous experiences with different teachers. these experiences influence the kind of teachers they would like to become. in this sense, the role of secondary school language teachers is key, since preservice teachers tend to have a detailed memory of the experiences they went through with these teachers (timmerman, 2009). nonetheless, in this study, i found that not only secondary school teachers, but also primary teachers and classmates impact the desired self the researcher collaborators of this study want to achieve. in poem ii, luna tells us about her experience during primary school: ii primary school brings me bad memories teachers looked like trunchbull. they seemed to be stuck, using methods that even then were old unfortunately, for luna, her elementary school years seem to have been spent in a very unpleasant environment, generated mainly by teachers who resembled trunchbull (one of the characters in matilda, a book by british novelist roald dahl). trunchbull is a cruel teacher who bullies children, and thus, luna remembers her elementary teachers as having “no patience with children, they were rude and strict and their methods were out of date,” just like trunchbull. in contrast, her high school years offered luna a very different experience as we can see in poem iii: iii in high school i used to live the average life of a colombian girl when i met the person who changed my way alicia my teacher, who inspired me to become an english teacher. it is during high school that luna has an experience that would change her life: meeting her english teacher. we can see how the primary and high school learning experiences had an impact on luna’s identity construction as an english language teacher, as she affiliates her future profile with a teacher she admires and seeks to become a good teacher herself, projecting a desired teacher image who differs from the ones she encountered in primary school, as she stated in session 5: “as a teacher, i would like to give the people the opportunity to become the best version of themselves, and but doing so, contribute a little bit to change education processes.” luna’s words allow us to see the construction of a teaching role assumed as a reflective professional, an intellectual capable of taking charge of a socially and politically contextual pedagogy that considers social transformation as an explicit objective of its practice (giroux, 2001). in poem iii, marcela recognizes the influence of her father, her classmates, and teachers in the construction of her professional identity, which she sees as an ongoing process with a happy ending in which she visualizes herself as a language teacher with a master’s degree. iii friends come and go each one leaves a footprint the same is true for teachers whose print i will reflect in every part of who i am universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras256 posada-ortiz in one of the sessions, marcela expressed that she did not like “the task giver” kind of teachers and that she knew that teaching was about “very much more.” these words suggest that marcela understands that education goes far beyond instrumental issues (giroux, 2001). santiago, who had initially started studying electronic engineering, decided to drop out and enter the langauge teacher education programme encouraged by the good memories he had of secondary school, where he could help his classmates improve their english skills. he finds this more satisfactory than the competitive and material world of his previous career studies where “there is no human interaction because there everyone is…very…very selfish. they do not care about you. they just think about money” [sic] (co-construction of knowledge, session 1). the above evidences that santiago’s professional choice is part of a professional identity construction based on his desire to exercise intellectual and moral leadership as a teacher (giroux, 2001). camilo thinks that the values he finds in the teacher education programme are well in line with his own, since this programme stimulates a diversity of ways of thinking that develop a critical attitude and an interest in transforming the existing reality towards the construction of a better world (méndez & bonilla, 2016): [when] you teach, you learn…[and learning is]…like crossing a river that is always changing [because] knowledge is always changing…it is the same with education, you need to educate yourself to understand that the society is falling apart…you need to change the perspective of education. (co-construction of knowledge, session 4) when camilo states that “you need to change the perspective of education,” he shows his interest “to promote new forms of social relations and modes of pedagogy within the school itself ” (giroux, 1983, p. 241). camilo, luna, marcela, and santiago were doing the teaching practicum. for izadinia (2015) the teaching practicum and the role of the mentor teachers in this experience are key in the construction of the preservice teachers’ identities. for camilo, the teaching practicum was an opportunity to develop an institution-identity derived from the fact that, at the placement school, they associate the programme with practitioners whose pedagogical skills and language level are good. as he indicated: “when my homeroom teacher knew i was part of this programme she exclaimed: superb! [and] that made me feel very comfortable” (co-construction of knowledge, session 5). nevertheless, camilo developed a burnout feeling with the teaching practicum since there was too much paperwork and he found himself “spending day and night preparing lesson plans” (poem iv). for marcela, the teaching practicum showed her “what teaching is really about” and for santiago it was a “great responsibility.” marcela and santiago also experienced conflict derived from the difference between the theory they learn and the realities of the classroom. luna postponed the teaching practicum and undertook it on her own “on saturdays with my cousins” (co-construction of knowledge, session 4) and with her boyfriend as her mentor. she decided to do so as she did not like the mentor assigned her because she asked luna to have her hair cut, something luna refused to do as “my hair is part of my identity” (co-construction of knowledge, session 4). in terms of her identity construction, luna’s determination demonstrates her agency through a personal decision related to the sequence of her mandatory teacher education programme in which she prioritizes her well-being over academic requirements (sarasa, 2016). for luna, her boyfriend is an important part of her academic and professional growth since they attend conferences, study together, and, as i have just described, support each other, even in the teaching practicum. 257profile: issues teach. prof. dev., vol. 24 no. 1, jan-jun, 2022. issn 1657-0790 (printed) 2256-5760 (online). bogotá, colombia. pages 247-260 english language preservice teachers’ identity construction within academic and other communities conclusion the results of this study indicate that the research collaborators who took part in this study construct their identities in “their daily interactions with significant others” (izadinia, 2015, p. 2) and that these interactions take place in the interplay with the different communities to which they belong (wenger, 1998). although izadinia (2015) affirms that professional identity starts in teacher education and begins to form during the practicum, the findings presented in this report confirm that professional identity construction commences earlier within the preservice teachers’ families, through the processes of identification or disidentification with their parents’ or relatives’ professions. identification and disidentification continue to happen in school with the experiences the preservice teachers went through with their teachers and classmates. although timmerman (2009) has suggested that secondary teachers have a strong influence on the identity formation of preservice teachers, our results cast a new light on this aspect since we found that some of the preservice teachers have clear memories of their primary teachers and their influence on their desired selves. we also found that transmedia communities bring to the fore the agentic action of preservice teachers in the construction of their identities, not only in terms of the improvement of their language and pedagogical skills but also in their whole selves. the results of this study are aligned with sarasa and porta’s (2018), which recognises the temporal disinvestments of preservice teachers in the mandated programmes in favour of their well-being, as in the case of luna, who postponed her pedagogical practicum due to her mentor’s demands, with which she disagreed. camilo, luna, marcela, and santiago see themselves as transformative teachers who understand that teaching is more than dealing with instrumental and methodological issues and, instead, is a call to contribute to the education of their future pupils as agents of change in the construction of a better world. to sum up, the identities present in the communities identified by the research collaborators of this study contribute to their professional identity construction. these identities cannot be reduced to what the communities they belong to expect them to be and, therefore, cannot be essentialised; instead, preservice teachers’ identities are the result of their interests, likes and dislikes, agentic actions, and interactions as members of different collectivities (norton, 2013; torres-rocha, 2019). the present study confirms that identities are always changing, as marcela stated “i am still building my identity” (co-construction of knowledge, session 1) and luna summarizes in poem xi: xi my main question is who am i? i will find the answer by living my life limitations of the study from my experience as a researcher transiting to a decolonial research perspective, i would like to state this endeavour was full of tensions, among which the most important was my internal struggle with the mainstream researcher who still dwelled inside and against whom i had to fight several times. this struggle made me go back and forth during the research process, especially in the co-construction of knowledge that took place during the interaction to exchange and generate knowledge and the poetic re-presentation stages where i was tempted to interpret the data from the privileged researcher’s perspective. consequently, i forgot i was researching with camilo, marcela, luna, and santiago and not about them. fortunately, the voices of the decolonial scholars i had read; the helping hand of my tutor; camilo’s, marcela’s, luna’s, and santiago’s willingness; and my universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras258 posada-ortiz own determination to contribute to the decolonial project gave me the strength to start anew. as a doctoral student framed within academic and time constraints, the project contained questions and objectives that were set up in advance and not with camilo, marcela, luna, and santiago. the way the research sessions were designed make them appropriate for small groups only; a larger number would demand too much time, not only in terms of what we usually know as data collection but also in the co-construction of the knowledge process. on a more personal note i would like to add that i was pleased to find that camilo, luna, marcela, and santiago stated that, by having taken part in this project, they not only had learned about research but also about themselves by reading and re-reading their autobiographies in order to write the poems. luna stated that she learned about her capabilities, marcela about her strengths, camilo, of how much he has changed, and santiago understood why he has come to be the person he is right now. references anderson, b. 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